AGNETA DE WITT
“Did you see the Prince to-day, my father?”
Agneta de Witt dropped her fine sewing into her lap and looked at the
Grand Pensionary.
They were together in the garden, under the new golden foliage of the
wych elms and limes. The air was filled with a soft and melancholy
sunshine; the trees cast faint and moving shadows over the black-clad
figure of John de Witt, who leant back in the rustic seat and, his face
resting on his hand, gazed at his daughter.
“I saw him this afternoon, Agneta.”
“I thought, sir, that you had.”
“And why?” The Grand Pensionary smiled.
Agneta fixed her pale blue eyes on him anxiously; her colourless,
gentle face looked pure and grave as an infant’s in the precise white
cap.
“Forgive me, sir--but it is because you have seemed sad.”
“I am tired,” answered John de Witt quietly. “Very tired, Agneta.”
His daughter turned her face away.
Across the close grass came a couple of pigeons, white on the green,
and the two on the seat were so still that the birds strutted to their
feet.
“You are always tired now, sir.”
“I can expect nothing else, my dearest.”
She picked up her sewing.
“And you are so seldom here … you have not sat like this with me … for
so long, sir.”
“The house is too sombre for you,” answered John de Witt tenderly. “You
must return to Dordt----”
“No,” breathed Agneta quickly, looking up into his face. “Oh no! let me
stay here, sir.”
“My dearest!”
He laid his fine hand lightly on her shoulder.
“If I could help you …” she said in a low voice.
“There is no help for us save in God,” answered the Grand Pensionary
gravely, “and surely He will not forsake us.”
Agneta bowed her head low over her sewing. The white pigeons brushed
her long grey skirts with their wings, and the sunshine flickering
through the lime leaves caught the pale yellow locks on her smooth brow.
“You are always sad when you have seen the Prince, father. I think he
is an ungodly young man.”
John de Witt smiled mournfully.
“You must not dwell on politics, Agneta.”
“I cannot help it.” She kept her lids down that her father should not
see her eyes were filled with tears. “I … I hear such horrible things,
I see you so occupied, so weary.…”
He answered her with a grave tenderness--
“We are in troublous and bitter times, dearest. Danger to the State,
to each and all of us, is very near; dismay unmans many … but I hope
to save the Republic, Agneta; you must pray that God will give me
strength.”
“I am praying for you, sir, in my heart always,” the tears trembled on
her cheeks.
There was a pause.
The pigeons fluttered away, and up through the sunny leaves.
“Will there be war?” Agneta spoke at length, under her breath.
“I think there will be war.”
John de Witt’s gaze went past his daughter, as if it rested on some
threatening vision of the future.
She shyly wiped her tears.
“With France--and England, father?”
“I do fear it, Agneta.”
She shuddered. War was a terrible thing to her, but still more terrible
was the anxious bearing of her noble father.
“The people riot, sir; is it because of the war?” she asked timidly.
“It is the Prince’s faction,” he answered abstractedly. “He is
extraordinarily beloved by the people, Agneta.”
“He hath done nothing,” she said simply. “Why do they riot?”
“He would be Captain General … and it may not be.”
A colour came into her fair face. “I fear and mislike him!”
John de Witt turned his soft gaze on her.
“Nay, Agneta--do not say that, nor think it.”
Once more the white linen she sewed sank into her lap.
“Sir, the other day on the Voorhout there was a man wearing an orange
favour--he had others with him--I was with my aunt Johanna, and when
they saw us, these men, they called after us insolently--my Aunt
Johanna asked one of them ‘Why?’ He said, ‘We are for the Prince and
you are John de Witt’s women’--and the crowd were with them, sir.”
John de Witt frowned and coloured.
“You never told me this.”
“No--perhaps I should not have told you now, my father,” her eyes
rested anxiously upon his face; “but--the Prince cannot be your friend,
sir.”
“He hath no control over the brawling mob,” answered the Grand
Pensionary hastily. “He would not wish me to be insulted.… I must make
an example of some of these rioters--an example,” he repeated.
Agneta put her little hand timidly on his arm.
“Sir, we are no longer beloved in the Hague nor at Dordt … they say
such things of you----”
There she checked herself. They had all agreed to keep from John de
Witt what his growing enemies said of him.
“It is not strange,” he answered mournfully; “but it is strange, and
cruel, that it should come to thy ears, Agneta.”
A frightened expression stole into her large, pale blue eyes.
“Father, why are these people turning against you?--nay, I must speak
of it--M. Fagel is no longer friendly----”
“He hath elected to follow the Prince.”
“And--and there are others.…”
“Dearest, very many forsake me … but God will support me in what I have
to do.”
“Will--will my uncle Cornelius have to go with the Fleet?”
“I think so, dearest.”
Agneta reflected a second, then said--
“But we are always victorious on the sea.”
“Cornelius and the others, Agneta, will do their utmost to preserve
this dear land’s liberty … and we must trust in God.”
“My uncle Cornelius could never be defeated,” insisted Agneta. “But you
are anxious.”
He stroked the little fingers lying on his sleeve.
“About the India fleet--now being convoyed home--de Ruyter hath gone to
meet it--but I am anxious, sweet----”
“Would the English attack it?” Her fair brows contracted.
“How wise thou art become!” He smiled down into her upturned face.
“Yes, I do fear the English ships.”
“But war is not yet declared, my father.”
“No, and may not be--still there is so much--so much--and I am tired,
dear, how tired I only know when I rest--and to think they hate me,
Agneta.”
“Ah, no one hates you!” she cried.
His sad smile deepened.
“Did you not say so, yourself, dear heart, but now? The people have
neither trust in me nor love--after twenty years of toil--of such
toil.… Do you recall, Agneta, how they repaid Olden Barnenveldt?”
“Father!”
“He was a virtuous man, Agneta, and did more for his country than ever
I have been able to do.”
She went very pale.
“But--father--it is not possible!”
“What, dearest?”
“M. Olden Barnenveldt was beheaded, father!”
“Sometimes I think of it--to-day when I crossed the Plaats----”
Agneta shuddered.
“Sir, do not speak like that.”
He roused himself from a sad reverie.
“Nay, sweet heart, I must not grieve thee with my foolish thoughts;
’tis not often that thou beguilest me into talking State affairs
here--where I am at peace.”
He glanced with a sigh round the quiet garden.
“And I am so seldom at peace now I am a very fool to mar it. We will
talk of other things.”
“There is nothing else that interests me, father.”
“That must not be, see how I have distressed thee. Nay, do not spoil
my little hour of repose with these tears, dearest.… Why should you
weep? Indeed I am well, only tired, a little tired, dear.… Nay, this is
weakness, my Agneta.”
She was weeping silently.
“My burdens are not more than I can bear, but it hurts me you should
weep.”
She stifled her tears.
“I think of you always, sir. When I was away in Dordt I wearied to be
here--and I can be of no use to you … you are lonely.”
“Lonely?” he echoed wistfully.
Agneta trembled closer to him.
“Since my mother died.…”
He took her hands and gazed down into her sad face.
“Thy mother was very gentle and timid, dearest … perhaps she was spared
more than she could have borne. Perhaps had she known she would have
chosen … to go … and I to let her … they cannot insult her, she died
while her name was still respected.… Ah, thou art a beloved child … and
hast her eyes.… ‘Blessed be God in happiness and affliction’.… ‘The
Lord gave and the Lord taketh away’.…”
He drew her gently towards him and kissed her forehead.
“While we do our duty we cannot be wholly unhappy, Agneta; and while
the angels are about us we cannot be lonely--not wholly lonely.”
The sun reddened to its setting, and a full and ruddy light was shed
among the quivering leaves and over the spring grass.
The chimes of the Groote Kerk fell on the silence with a swift, clear
rise and fall.
Agneta dropped her head on to her father’s breast and sobbed.
“Why--what is the matter?” he asked, distressed.
She sprang up holding her hands before her face, and fled, leaving her
white sewing on the grass.
John de Witt sat silent, his form half bowed, his head bent.
Beside Agneta’s place rested a paper-bound book, his own, he saw: _On
the Value of Life Annuities as Compared with Perpetual Annuities_--the
book of which the Prince had spoken. It dealt with the enormous
difficulty of the war taxation; a monument of learning, of research, of
patriotism.
Agneta, who was gravely studying mathematics, had begged a copy from
her uncle Vivien and carried it about with her. It touched John de Witt
exceedingly to see it there.
Had she been reading it that she might understand his learned talk
of the means by which he had saved the finances of the United
Provinces?--poor child!…
He sat for a while staring at the humble little volume; hands and
brains for once idle, the sunset flushing the garden about him and the
tender breeze caressing his face.
When he at length slowly moved at the sound of a step on the gravel
path he saw his father, Jacob de Witt, coming towards him with the
careful gait of age.
The Grand Pensionary rose smilingly.
Jacob de Witt was still as erect as when he had defied the
Stadtholder, William II., in 1650. A fine and sedate gentleman, with
soft white hair falling under his black cap; stern, melancholy, and
pale.
“Sit down, John, I wish to speak to you.”
The Grand Pensionary obeyed. The elder de Witt, despite his eighty-two
years, still held important offices of state and had the manner of
authority.
He seated himself beside his son.
“This must be answered,” he said. He held out a paper in his colourless
hand.
“Another pamphlet”--John de Witt’s tone was mournful. “Father, they are
distributed openly, under my very eyes. What may one do but scorn them?”
A silence followed. The life of John de Witt had been austere and
irreproachable beyond that of any man of his time; yet his father knew
that the violence of party hatred was holding him up to the contempt of
his fellow-citizens under every vile aspect imaginable.
For twenty years of upright dealing, of pure patriotism, of incessant
toil; for an unswerving devotion to his friends and a generous and
unchanging policy of conciliation towards his enemies, he was now
rewarded by the basest ingratitude from the opponents he had always
respected, and with the vilest accusations from the people whom he had
so nobly served.
These things were in the mind of Jacob de Witt as he looked at his son,
and even the stern resignation taught by their common creed hardly
sustained him against these bitter calumnies of his belovèd’s name.
John de Witt was the first to speak.
“Why should we trouble about these things?”
He took the pamphlet from his father’s hand gently, and laid it on the
seat between them.
The elder de Witt’s voice trembled a little.
“This must be answered, my son--every citizen of the United Provinces
is reading it--the charges are most gravely and categorically stated …
the vileness of it is almost beyond credit.”
The Grand Pensionary half turned and picked the pamphlet up.
It was entitled: _Advice to every Good and Faithful Hollander_.
“What do they say?” he asked wearily.
“They say--” Jacob de Witt drew himself erect,--“this libel says that
you have purloined money from the Treasury and sent it to a bank in
Venice, where you propose to retire after the conquest of the United
Provinces.… That you have betrayed your country by leaving it without
defence, and that you have appropriated yearly eighty thousand florins
of the Secret Service money.…”
John de Witt rested his tired eyes on the gentle trees.
“How can I answer that?” he said simply. “The mere frothings of spite.”
“You must answer it--you must disprove it!” cried his father firmly.
“Disprove that!” He half smiled.
“Ay! A villain may throw mud at a saint,” said Jacob de Witt, answering
his son’s meaning of lofty contempt,--“but if it is not removed it
leaves a smirch; no saint even may disregard these things. What hath
the Republic come to that any should dare what this man hath dared?”
He struck the paper, and his dim eyes flashed fiercely.
The Grand Pensionary put his hand to his brow and pushed back the soft
hair.
“My life hath been entirely open.… My money hath been invested
entirely in the public funds--with the fortune of Holland, my fortunes
fall--every one knows this. Can I stoop to defend myself against party
lies?”
“Your silence will not disarm their implacable resentment--you must
turn on them.”
“Ah, I have so much else to do, my father, so much.…”
The light had faded from the garden and lingered only in the tops of
the trees and on the roof of the modest house. It was quite warm; the
pigeons flew up through the golden air, in among the leaves of the
limes, and back again to the bright grass.
“I think there will be war,” said John de Witt suddenly, and with a
terrible note in his voice. “I would God would let me give my life
to avert it--war, in this rich and prosperous country, war against
overwhelming odds,” he stared straight before him with narrowed
eyes--“war provoked by base tyranny of the French and baser tyranny of
the English--what have I to do? For they hate me--how can I serve them
when they hate me?”
“There are those who are faithful.” Jacob de Witt grasped his son’s
hand.
“I have given Gaspard Fagel the Grand Secretaryship,” answered John de
Witt in an absorbed way, “to win him to us … but on every side they
fall away from me.… It is strange that I should be so hated----”
“We are in the hands of God, who for His own ends tries us.”
The younger de Witt bent his head.
“I show myself a weakling, I am tired to-night. I saw the Prince this
afternoon, and it saddened me--I have been disappointed in him.”
The one-time prisoner of Loevenstein answered sternly--
“He is a worldly, ambitious, and deceitful young man--a danger to the
State. Little do I doubt he is in league with Charles Stewart, as
little as I doubt he is behind such attacks as these.”
He struck the paper on the seat beside him.
“I believe nor one nor the other,” answered John de Witt. “It must be
that he is honourable, and I know him God-fearing.”
“He is even as his father was!”
“The Captain Generalship is his claim now--and he is well supported.”
“If he obtain it--’twill be the first step to the Stadtholdership.”
“If I have any power left, father, he will not obtain it--and if he
obtain it in spite of me, he will find that the office is incompatible
with the Stadtholdership.” John de Witt set his lips firmly. “I have
seen to that.”
“He hath an extraordinary presumption to pretend to such an office!”
The Grand Pensionary answered slowly, almost reluctantly--
“I believe it is the wish of the Army--such is their folly.”
“They are very eager to forge their own chains,” said Jacob de Witt
grimly.
“It is a strange thing--I think it is the name hath the glamour--they
would take him untried.…”
John de Witt paused a moment, then went on in a low and laboured voice--
“There are so many difficulties … a domestic revolution threatened … a
foreign invasion … but if they trusted me I could save them yet … from
France and from themselves.”
He straightened himself and put his hand to his breast.
“If they should give this command to the Prince, if they should put
into that boy’s hands all our defences … and he should.…”
“Play us false,” finished Jacob de Witt sombrely. “Well, what then?”
“What then?… Ruin!… This land, that we have made one of the greatest in
the world, would be a fief of France before the year is out.”
He bent his head for a moment, then rose abruptly.
“Father, I envy Cornelius, who can work with his hands, and pay with
his blood; I would I might face the enemy on the high sea, nor stay
here to face the factions with weary logic.”
“Your task, being the more difficult, is the more glorious, John.”
The Grand Pensionary pressed his hand to his brow and gazed at the
glimpses of fading sky to be seen between the fluttering leaves.
“It is nearly twenty years since I took up this responsibility. …
They cannot say that I have served them ill, as far as my abilities
went----” He roused and controlled himself. “It is not often that I
talk so weakly--let us go into the house, it grows cool here, under the
trees.”
Jacob de Witt rose and took his son’s arm.
They were both of a height, tall, upright; dressed alike in black with
lace collars, the same in demeanour and expression, the grey locks
touching the brown as they walked slowly through the twilight that was
gradually falling over the garden.
The birds made a pleasant noise in the upper branches, and above
the low brick wall was a vision of sunset clouds, pink, remote and
peaceful, floating across the placid sky.
Agneta de Witt stepped out of the long, open windows; a slim and pale
figure in the uncertain light.
She came to meet her father.
“Aunt Johanna says that you stay out too late, sir, and that it is yet
over soon in the year to be abroad after the sun hath set.”
All traces of tears had vanished; she spoke with a grave air of wisdom.
Jacob de Witt smiled at her.
“Hast a letter there?”
She held it out eagerly.
“Yea, sir, from Anna.”
“From Anna!” repeated John de Witt tenderly. “What does she say?”
“That she is coming home to-morrow, sir.”
“Nay, that cuts her holiday too short.”
“She says she is resolved to come, sir.”
“And what else, dearest?”
“Oh, she says my aunt Maria took her to the fair at Dordt--and that
they had a feast of pancakes, and all drank your health twice over.”
She slipped her letter into the Grand Pensionary’s hand. “There is one
for you indoors,” she added.
They entered the house by the wide-open windows of the library; at
that moment a servant brought in the candles, and the two men paused on
the threshold of the room.
At a lacquered Chinese cabinet Maria de Witt, in a prim white dress,
sat on a high chair, her feet dangling, laboriously and gravely writing
with a huge quill that waved over her shoulder and tangled itself with
her yellow curls.
Beside her, tiptoeing that he might see, was her little brother, who
supported himself by his hands on the desk.
A child still in skirts sat on the floor near them; he was in red
leading-strings fastened to a heavy arm-chair, and appeared to be
engaged in working his feet out of his shoes.
Agneta pursed up her mouth.
“Maria cannot write because John spills the ink, he spoilt my letter to
Uncle Cornelius this morning.”
The Grand Pensionary caught his breath and turned away quickly to the
mantelshelf.
He leant there, looking down into the empty hearth.
“Father,” Maria lifted a flushed face, “how do you spell ‘trouble’?”
John de Witt glanced up and gazed at her.
“What need hast thou for that word, Maria?”
“She is very ignorant,” said her brother scornfully; “I know how to
spell it,” and he struggled to wrest the pen from her.
“Thou needest not use the word trouble to thy uncle,” said Jacob de
Witt.
“I write--‘There is much trouble at the Hague’; is it not true, father?”
“Yes, dearest,” he answered gently. “Agneta will tell thee how to spell
it.”
“_I_ know,” insisted the younger John.
The Grand Pensionary met his father’s glance across the room that was
now filled with the pleasant candlelight, then crossed to the child on
the floor and stood him up.
“Thou art almost too old for petticoats,” he smiled.
The little Jacob looked at him and smiled back brilliantly. John de
Witt dropped on one knee beside him, and Agneta came and stood behind
them, uneasy because her brother’s jacket was crumpled, and, to her
housewifely eye, untidy.
But the boy’s father did not notice that; he smoothed the fair curls
with a gentle hand.
“I think thou hast grown since I saw thee last,” he said yearningly.
With a sudden shyness the child hid his face on the Grand Pensionary’s
shoulder.
John de Witt pressed him close.
There was silence in the room save for the scratching of Maria’s quill.
Jacob de Witt seated himself in his usual place by the hearth; his
hands clasped in his lap. His silver-bound Bible was on the table by
his side.
With dim but resolute eyes he looked on at his son and his son’s
children, and in his heart he gave thanks to God for his noble
offspring.
John de Witt was such an one as the pure faith might be proud of; one
who had followed in the footsteps of the early members of a stern and
persecuted faith; one such as Jacob de Witt would have his son, an
upright and humble servant of high things.
Very far away seemed the clamour of the factions, the rumours of wars,
the jealousies, the ambitions, the heat of politics; very far from this
peaceful home of John de Witt.
Neither did it seem possible that hate or malice should enter here,
that lies or calumny, or any ignoble passions, should strike at such
goodness and such innocence.
The vilest must love John de Witt, the meanest respect him in his
simple, bereaved, and united home.
His helpless children were not more spotless, more free of dishonour,
than he who for twenty years had guided a great nation through a
difficult and perilous way.
And how are they rewarding him? thought Jacob de Witt grimly. How are
they rewarding him?
Into the gathered peace and silence came a distant, ominous sound.
The Grand Pensionary listened.
The noise grew.
He put down his little son and rose.
“What is that?”
Agneta shuddered.
“Another riot----”
“Close the window,” said John de Witt; “close the window.”