“Our vote for that--rejection of the terms of France--and cut the
dykes!”
William coloured brightly.
“Our troops are within the province of Holland, which will be turned
into an island; but many of the enemy are on low ground, and nothing
but a swift retreat will save them--they do not suspect us of this
desperate course and will be utterly unprepared. I have the reports of
the superintendents of the dykes.… A complete inundation would take
five days,… When King Louis receives our refusal of his terms he will
march immediately on Amsterdam and the Hague--and I see no way but to
perish or open the sluices.”
He stooped and pulled some papers from the pocket of his mantle.
“M. de Witt suggested this at the beginning of the war as a possible
resort--he had instructions drawn up and reports made--we thank his
foresight that there is much done. There must be no delay now.
“I know the objections; what many of the magistrates will say. The hay
stands, the corn is uncut, the cattle will starve without pasturage,
the waters becoming foul may cause the plague--I have thought of it all.
“But there is no other way.
“Better be at the mercy of the sea than at the mercy of the French.
“This price we must pay for our liberty.”
“My noble lords, I leave you to deliberate on what I have said. As
you are patriots and believers, you will sacrifice yourselves to your
fatherland and your faith, than which no nobler things to die for can
be found.”
The dusky-coloured sunlight rested on his face and covered his slight
figure in its appointments of war; it picked him out against the
background of dark panelling and gleamed dimly in his cuirass.
His eyes were solemn but his lips smiled proudly.
The Assembly stirred and breathed--
“Open the sluices; cut the dykes!”
CHAPTER X
THE VICTOR VANQUISHED
The Duke of Monmouth and the King’s brother were playing tennis in the
green courtyard of Zeyst.
Near them, close to a wall bright with coloured roses, walked Madame
Lavalette and the Marquis de Pomponne.
She wore a habit like a gentleman’s military coat, blue, braided with
silver, and a beaver with a plume of feathers azure as her eyes; her
long skirt brushed the grass backwards into a resemblance to ruffled
velvet as she stepped.
In her hands was a riding-whip that she bent across the stiff skirts of
her coat.
“Marquis,” she said, “Monsieur Cornelius de Witt has been arrested.”
“I heard--last night.”
“Well?”
She looked at him searchingly.
“Well?” he echoed, and smiled.
“You know the facts?”
“Scarcely, Madame.”
“It is on Michael Tichelaer’s accusation Monsieur de Witt has been
arrested,” answered the Duchess sharply.
“On the charge of a conspiracy to murder the Prince of Orange, is it
not?”
“Yes.”
“The attempt that failed at Bodegraven,” said de Pomponne. “Well, it
does not touch us.”
The Duchess’ whip made havoc with M. Van Odyk’s roses.
“That is what I wondered,” she said. “M. de Louvois does not like those
he trusts to be clumsy.”
“In brief, you fear a _lettre de cachet_, Madame, eh?”
The curling petals swept on to the grass from the August roses.
“We failed,” said Madame Lavalette.
“Mon Dieu, yes! but St. Croix is not alive to tell tales--he was safely
shot by the Dutch soldiers as he strove to escape. Sir Edward Seymour
told me--he had hardly cleared the camp himself.”
“There is Tichelaer.”
“He has chosen his part----”
The Duchess interrupted impatiently--
“What part does he play?”
“He wishes to please the mob and ruin the de Witts--why not?--an
obscure ruffian!”
“But he knows something.”
De Pomponne shrugged.
“Are you afraid?”
She frowned.
“M. le Marquis, that man knows that we hired St. Croix to put the
Prince of Orange out of the way.” She spoke very low. “That it was
M. de Louvois’ scheme; and that he, Tichelaer, was to give out M. de
Witt was in the plot, so as to crush the Grand Pensionary as well as
the Stadtholder. Van Mander, the fool who spoilt it all, thought M.
Cornelius, at least, deep in; and now--the Prince escapes, St Croix is
shot--the design fails--but Michael Tichelaer persists in his part,
accuses Monsieur Cornelius, and rouses Holland against the de Witts
with his false oaths.”
“He hath a personal spite against Monsieur Cornelius--that is why we
selected him----”
Again she broke in--
“What if he says a little more?--if he declares M. de Louvois hatched
this scheme, and that you and I were his agents?”
“He will not.”
“You think so?”
“Mon Dieu, yes! We paid him well; and what object would he serve? He
poses as a patriot, remember, and finds himself very popular; he would
not care to admit he tampered with us. Besides, it would damage his
fabrications against M. de Witt.”
“Then--we are safe?”
“From Michael Tichelaer.”
“M. de Louvois would never forgive us if it got blown abroad he was at
the bottom of this.”
They walked for a way in silence; then the Duchess spoke again--
“And Monsieur Cornelius?”
De Pomponne raised his eyebrows.
“It seems to me that there is not much hope for M. Cornelius. Some
such excuse as this was only needed to give a vent to the popular fury
against him and his brother--can you imagine a better one? He has tried
to murder the young hero of the moment! No, there is no escape for M.
de Witt.”
“They will discover this man Tichelaer’s falsehoods.”
“The Dutch are not in the humour to be just.”
She fingered her whip.
“And no one knows the truth save ourselves?”
“No one.”
She laughed, rather desperately.
“We shall not speak!”
“I think--no!”
“Mon Dieu!” sighed the Duchess, “I recall the younger de Witt; if ever
a man was a saint he is one.”
“He will meet with a saint’s fate, I do not doubt, Madame.”
“Unless His Majesty reaches the Hague in time to save him from the
mob,” returned the Duchess; “the King would be generous. When shall we
be at the Hague, Monsieur le Marquis?”
“In two--three days.”
Monmouth came running across the grass towards them.
He was flushed and panting.
He flung down his racquet and got into his crimson coat.
“Did you see my lord Arlington?--passed by but now--such a face! La!
something amiss.--You Frenchmen are too deep for us, Marquess.--The
Duke of Orleans plays a good game--I’d like to race him, he is very
light.”
He paused, and suddenly laughed in a wholly pleasant, conciliating way
he had.
“You play yourself out of breath,” said Madame Lavalette, speaking in
the soft tone all women used to Lord Monmouth.
“Save me!” he cried, “but it is a question of politics--I swear it,
Madame, I was not meant for a statesman.--Here comes my lord Bucks.--He
is very clever, Marquess, but though he made a war nearly as easily as
he writes verses--he does not find making a peace as easy as playing
the fiddle.”
At this his idle eye was caught by the roses and the drifting petals
beneath them.
“Ah, Madame, you have slain the flowers--cruel! I would like to stick
them together again--roses are rare in Holland, Madame, and the summer
is nearly over.”
He gave her his sweet smile, and she answered it by one slightly
mocking.
“Your Grace is very deceptive--you talk like Sir Calydor and look like
the Red Cross Knight--but I fear you are but a worthless rogue after
all.”
“I vow,” he replied, “I have been absolved from all my sins.--I
carry with me,” he touched his breast, “the document by which His
Majesty pardons me all murders committed before this May--absolved
and pardoned!--See, a fine butterfly!--Could I scale this wall with
my hands tied, think you?--Madame, do you love wrestling?--Ah, sure,
George is purely annoyed.”
And he pointed to Buckingham, coming across the smooth, level turf
towards them.
De Pomponne went to meet him.
Buckingham laughed.
“The terms rejected!” he said.
“Rejected?”
“M. de Louvois has the news.”
De Pomponne was surprised.
“In what manner is the refusal sent?”
“The most contemptuous possible--the Prince deigns no answer at all,
but merely sends a copy of the resolution of the States by which the
proposals of peace are rejected.”
“Insolence!” exclaimed the Marquis.
Buckingham smiled sourly.
“Louvois is furious, of course--this defiance is unlooked for.”
He laughed again.
He was fast tiring of his last hobby of politics. The Dutch war had
lost its novelty, and the attempt to seduce the Prince of Orange
disgusted by reason of its failure. He was tired of the sights of war;
and Whitehall, which had lately sated him, appeared again delightful to
the Duke’s changeful mind.
The matter was more serious for M. de Pomponne.
“M. de Louvois was furious?”
“Absolutely.”
“And the King?”
“Surprised too, I think--they are in conclave now.”
“I will go in.--I suppose we shall march on the Hague at once?”
“The Hague?” repeated Buckingham. “It is the most beautiful village in
the world--I hope His Majesty will not burn it, Marquis.”
Monmouth approached, his racquet in his hand, all eagerness for the
news.
“Peace rejected--war to be continued!”
The thoughtless soldier is pleased: his quick fancy sees the green
tennis-court, the roses, the placid sky exchanged again for the charge
of the cavalry, the attack on the bastions, the English flags against
the smoke of the noisy cannon.
He sees himself commended, flattered, praised by the great King,
complimented by the great Condé again, as he was before the trenches of
Nymwegen.
He catches up his hat, and slips his arm through my lord Buckingham’s
blue velvet sleeve; laughing together they go into the castle.
The Marquis and Madame Lavalette follow; the tennis-court stands
empty; the rose-petals drift over the smooth grass and cling in the
nets.
A wind rises, and it is chilly for an August twilight.
The sun sets behind the flat, misty horizon in a dun and blood-coloured
vapour; the camp-fires of the French, which may be seen from the towers
of Amsterdam, spring up in the low meadows.
Other lights, softer, more delicate, appear in the windows of the
castle.
A ball is to be given in the great rooms looking on to the ramparts.
The sentries keeping watch hear the music of the _contre danse_ falling
through the silent air.
M. de Rochfort is expected with his cavalry regiments--has been
expected all day. He does not come; the King is a little vexed.
He has become of late impatient if every hour does not bring a fresh
triumph.…
My lord Monmouth steps the minuet as well as he wrestles or runs; he
dances till the moon sets.
There is much talk of the coming conquest, of the balls to be held in
the Orange Saloon, and in the winter on the ice--a novelty!
His Majesty will return to Saint Germains after his entry into the
Hague; but he will come back in the winter for these new festivities.
Tales are told of the wealth of Amsterdam. Her meanest streets make the
proudest walks of London and of Paris appear paltry; her houses are
like palaces.
Buckingham was amazed at the Hague; the width of the roads, the height
of the houses, the avenues of trees, the wealthy shops.…
This is a conquest worth the making.
So they dance to the dawn.
As it grows light, Monmouth leaves the castle.
He has his quarters at another château not far distant, and as he steps
out on to the ramparts he lingers a little to watch the dawn.
My lord is twenty-five, and full of joyous life. He can take as much
pleasure in watching the sun rise as in a brawl in Whitefriars. He can
stick a man through and never think of it again, but he listens to
a little bird singing in a lonely fashion and would not harm it for
another dukedom.
He lingers, dallying with the cool loveliness of the moment. He
sets his elbows on the battlements, and leans on the stone, where
blush-roses trail as beautiful as himself, and he looks over the
expanse of half-revealed country lying beneath him.
As the sun brightens it glimmers in a curious streak of silver, there
on the horizon.
My lord is a little puzzled. Were it not that his reason tells him it
is impossible he would think he saw water--saw the distant line of the
sea.
He wraps his grey mantle round his brocaded ball-dress and leaves the
castle, saluted by the silent sentinels.
He has missed his friends.
A sudden silence succeeds the gaiety of the night.
He crosses the moat and enters the meadows; the air is unaccountably
cool. He follows the raised causeway between the thick grass, crosses a
bridge over a canal, and stops, amazed.
The meadow before him is flooded; spikes of grass and branches of trees
rise from placid grey water.
“The river has overflowed,” thinks Monmouth--yet there has been no rain.
He follows the causeway hastily. The next field is under water, and the
next under water. It seems to him it rises; as he watches a clump of
alders, high enough, are nearly submerged.
The duke stops and stares about him.
The brightening sun discloses a cottage buried to the roof beneath the
water.
The camp!
Monmouth turns about quickly. The tents are on higher ground--but
this--it is a flood.…
He hesitates, daunted and dismayed.
The water is certainly rising; now it is lapping against the
causeway--soon it will cover it.
Monmouth retraces his steps, turns towards the camp. He has to cross a
corner of one of the meadows; here the water is over his ankles, his
light shoes are soaked, his finery wetted.
Bewilderment and terror clutch at his heart; he quickens his steps
along the cobbled pathway.
The canal is one with the fields now; a swirling current hurries
against the trees. Monmouth stops again; the sun sparkles on the gleam
of harness; a drowned horse--a soldier’s horse is swept against a clump
of willow.
Beyond--another glitter and something blue.… A man.
Monmouth bends over, pulling aside the tangled grasses and leaves.
He stares down into the dead face of a French soldier.
A soldier in the brilliant uniform of M. de Rochfort’s regiment.
With a little exclamation the Duke drops to his knees.
He reaches his hand into the water and carries it to his lips.
Salt!
His wild surmise is confirmed. He gives a quick cry--
“The sea! the sea!”
Suddenly the French trumpets break into the stillness; they proclaim
alarm, confusion, terror, a retreat.…
The water is rising; covering the causeway.
The gleaming cuirass and blue uniform are tangled in the alders; the
soldier’s head jerks as if he heard the trumpet-call.
My lord gets to his feet. His mantle slips back from his splendid
dress; he claps his hand to his sword, though no sword shall avail
against this.…
The grass, the weeds, the trunks of the trees disappear.
Drifting wreckage floats by: a beam, a hat, a French colour.…
As my lord hurries, the water on the causeway is over his feet.
“My God!” he cries. “They have opened the sluices and let in the
sea!--They have cut the dykes, and let in the sea!”
CHAPTER XI
THE FALLEN STATESMAN
The courage and resolution of one man had saved the country from the
conquest that would have terminated her existence.
The sea swept back the invaders. Heroism, springing from extremity, had
by a great outburst of patriotism preserved the liberty of the United
Provinces and raised the Protestant Faith to a security it would never
lose again.
It had taken five days to cut the dykes; Amsterdam had set the example.
The wealthiest merchants were the first to dismantle their pleasure
gardens, their picture galleries, their splendid country villas; farms
were razed to the ground and turned into fortifications, the mills
alone being spared.
Many thousands of guilders were voted by the town council for the
carrying out of the inundations. Every one helped; arms, food, powder,
were taken into the town.
The great city stood almost impregnable; a vast fort rising above her
own rich property, sacrificed by herself to her ally the sea.
The sailors from the Fleet were employed to defend the dykes; the
frigates guarded the Zuyder Zee; the citizens enrolled themselves into
militia companies under the command of the noblest families.
The manufacture of powder was carried on day and night. Every town
exerted itself to send supplies of wheelbarrows, shovels, and pickaxes
to the frontier to assist in the fortifications.
Armed sloops and gunboats sailed down the rivers to prevent the enemy
advancing in boats; levies were raised all over the country, one man
in every two being obliged to serve. Hope and courage rose high in a
nation lately reduced to despair.
The Stadtholder set his soldiers to the work of demolishing the dykes.
The sea rushed over his country palaces, burying in their hot-houses
his beautiful collection of exotics and ruining his parks and gardens.
All the meadow-land became marsh; the army of the States was obliged to
camp where they could find ground higher than the sea; almost the only
means of progress was by boats.
But Holland was saved!
Zeeland, animated by the example, turned with fury on the vainglorious
conqueror. Aadenburg, the key to the province attacked by Nancré, flew
to arms, and, small as was its garrison, not only resisted the French
but, issuing from the town, inflicted on them a severe defeat.
Groningen beat back the invaders.
The country was at bay. Louis had roused more than he had looked for;
his haughty march was checked, and only a hasty retreat left him.
Louvois was furious; he had thought to see the Hague pillaged in a
matter of days.
The King, mortified and enraged, returned to Saint Germains; yet he had
the greatness to admire the heroism that had sent him back.
The French army found itself disconcerted, bewildered. Spain was
arming, the Empire and Brandenburg.
Fortune turned swiftly.
The utter agony of shame, bitterness, despair, gave place to the return
of hope. Even the vastness of the sacrifice could not discourage the
country that breathed once more in freedom.
The English commissioners returned to Whitehall: Buckingham disgusted
with politics; Arlington consoled by the rich bribes from France that
had followed on the treaty of Heeswyck; Halifax full of admiration for
the youthful warrior who had sprung into fame with his defiance of
France.
Buckingham also had something to say of William of Orange.
“He hath not a single redeeming vice, and I like him not--but he will
set the world by the ears as surely as any Tamerlane or Cæsar.”
So the English returned from their fruitless errand, and the great King
was adored in Paris.
Sweden, Denmark, turned against the French. Europe was shaken from
end to end; and in a few weeks, even days, the storm that had nearly
overwhelmed the United Provinces became a great war whirlwind
enveloping the world.
John de Witt does his part. His heart swells with pleasure at the
deliverance of his country; he does justice, too late, to the Prince
whom he has always mistrusted.
He is reviled, hated, cursed; the storm has already engulfed his
brother.
Cornelius de Witt, who left the Hague with a guard of honour as
plenipotentiary of Their Noble Mightinesses, returned to it on foot, a
prisoner.
He is accused by one Tichelaer, a barber-surgeon, of a conspiracy to
murder the Prince of Orange.
So vile is this man, so weak and improbable his tale, that at first
John de Witt is not much concerned; his brother’s innocence, he thinks,
is too obvious.
To him, not to the people.
Tichelaer’s story is good enough for them. It is accepted; spread
through the country with horrid additions.
The Grand Pensionary finds that all his influence is not sufficient to
save his brother. He spares nothing; he toils day and night, but he is
a fallen man.
In the Gevangenpoort, under whose dark archway he has so often passed
in his splendour, Cornelius de Witt lies expecting death, as he has
expected it since the day at Dordt when he resisted the will of the
people.
He is sick, and as he lies there in hospital he cuts with a little
knife into the wood of his bed a view of his house at Dordt, of his
brother’s house, and of _The Seven Provinces_.
“Ah, is it over, the glory, the peace, the happiness?--must disgrace
and shame end a life that was so pure and noble!”
Jacob de Witt is dazed. He cares nothing for the great events that tear
the country; he has but one thing to say to his younger son--
“Where is Cornelius?… Why do they not set him free?”
He cannot understand that his once powerful son is helpless.
John de Witt, desperate, tries to save his brother by disarming the
resentment of his enemies. He goes to the Assembly and resigns the post
he has held most nobly for twenty years.
The States accept it. They ask the Prince if they may thank him for his
services.… The Stadtholder, absorbed in the war, sends answer “Yes.”
Still he cannot save Cornelius.
The people want blood.
The elder de Witt is put to the torture, which is a thing beyond
credence, horrible; no confession is extorted from him. The unjust
judges are defeated in their endeavours to please the mob.
John de Witt is distracted by the agony of Maria de Witt, the fears of
his own children, the piteous bewilderment of his father, the dismay of
his friends; his very trust in God is almost shaken.
In the bitterness of his despair he appeals to the man who was once his
pupil.
The day before the final verdict on Cornelius (and his brother does not
doubt that it will be death) the Stadtholder returns unexpectedly to
the Hague.
Such a tumult of passionate, fierce joy greets him that for a moment
even the accusations of Michael Tichelaer and the hate of Cornelius de
Witt are forgotten.
He has come to ask the consent of the States to the removal of the
Fleet from the Texel. He is received by the Assembly with more
submission than ever his uncle obtained from his Parliament, they
humbly recommend to him the necessity of restoring order in the
country.
He reminds them that all the troops are needed on the frontier; he
refuses to employ force. It is not likely that he would turn on the
people who have put him where he is.
M. de Groot has fled to Brussels, Colonel Bampfield and other
republican officers are dismissed the Army.
But the young Stadtholder takes no revenge on his enemies. He even
publishes a proclamation commanding that no violence be used against
the members of the fallen party; this is denounced as a forgery by
those who are resolved to seal their triumph with blood.
John de Witt’s resignation has not appeased the violence of his
opponents, nor are they moved by his modest speech in the Assembly;
afterwards some are haunted by these sentences--
“Great and Noble Lords--it was nineteen years ago on the 30th of
July last that, for the first time, I took the oath in your Assembly
in the capacity of Grand Pensionary of the Province of Holland.… It
has pleased God, in His anger, to bring down upon the States those
misfortunes in which they are now involved, and that in a manner so
difficult to understand … that posterity will find it hard to believe.
“What is most distressing at this unhappy conjuncture is, that these
sudden disasters and misfortunes have produced in the minds of the
people not only a sentiment of general fear and dread, but a sinister
feeling against their magistrates.…
“Unjust as these suspicions are, I, at any rate, am overwhelmed by
them, though I cannot but think that I might have been spared, since,
as a humble servant of the State, I have only been bound to obey
implicitly the commands of my masters.
“But whether it is that I am thought not to have properly carried out
the functions of my office, or that ignorant people imagine that I have
appropriated what never passed through my hands, I am so furiously
inveighed against that I can in conscience come to no other conclusion
than that my services must henceforth be prejudicial to the State.… I
have, therefore, thought it would be best to beg your Noble and Great
Mightinesses, as I very humbly do, that it may please your goodness to
relieve me of the exercise of my office.”
Thus John de Witt, speaking for the last time in the Assembly, a few
days before the States informed the Prince that the Perpetual Edict had
been torn leaf from leaf, and each town returned the signature of its
Deputies.
His resignation had been granted with grudging. There had been talk of
an inquiry first; more than a hint of suspicion.
Yet the man who was accused of enriching himself from the public funds,
left after a lifetime of office so poor that he was forced to remind
the States of their oft-repeated promise of a seat in the High Court,
in order to have a livelihood for himself and his family.
And he had to endure the humiliation of this post being reluctantly
given him; for the six hundred guilders it was worth, piteous sum as it
was, would be his principal fortune.
The clamorous cries of the crowd assailing the very clouds with the
name of William of Orange came to his ears even through the peace of
his beloved garden.…
Cornelius was in the Gevangenpoort expecting death … and his brother
must see the Prince.
He took from his desk the letter the Stadtholder had sent him in answer
to his appeal about his own affairs, and read it through again, as if
he hoped to gain some knowledge of the writer’s real feelings towards
him. It had been delayed until Fagel had made known to the Prince John
de Witt’s refusal to serve under the new Chief of the State.
It was written from Bodegraven.
“SIR,--I have received your letter of the 12th inst. with the
pasquinade that accompanied it. I should not have failed to
answer it sooner had not the multiplicity of my occupations
prevented me.
“I can assure you that I have always despised reports which are
started in this manner, since not only my family, but I myself,
have been attacked with a freedom and avidity beyond all bounds.
“As to the two points of which you make mention in yours,
namely, your handling of the Secret Service money, and the
little care you are reported to have taken in providing the
Army with all requirements, I can only say that as to the first
I have no knowledge of it, and that the Deputies of the States,
as you very properly observe, can better testify to this than
any one else.
“As to the second, I do not, and cannot, doubt that you took
such care of the Armies of the States, both by land and sea, as
the conditions of affairs and of the times would allow, and in
such a manner that they would have been capable of resisting
the enemy.
“But you must be aware yourself that it would be impossible to
specify all that may have been wanting, particularly to the
land forces, and to verify either the trouble taken to supply
deficiencies, or that which might and ought to have been taken
at the time, or to determine who was in fault; for I am so
taken up with business that I have involved myself as little as
possible in looking into the past.
“You will, therefore, find a much better justification in your
past acts of prudence than in anything you can obtain from me.
“I trust with all my heart to have some other opportunity of
proving myself your affectionate friend,
“WILLIAM HENRY, Prince of Orange.”
John de Witt read and re-read the letter. It was cold, reserved he
thought, well turned as was all the Prince indicted; as friendly,
perhaps, as he could have expected.… It meant, possibly, that the
Prince refused him all protection, but he could not hesitate at
scruples of pride now.
He must appeal to the one man who could save his brother.
He took his hat, his cane, and mantle, and left the house, alone. His
always modest establishment was already reduced to two servants and one
clerk.
He was now merely a private citizen, and had neither means nor
occupation for more.
Calling this one clerk, Van Ouvenaller, to him before he left, de Witt
gave him a letter of hope and comfort for Maria de Witt, Cornelius’
wife, bidding him see that it caught the post for Dordt.
Once in the streets he pulled his hat over his eyes to avoid the
hostile recognition of the crowd thronging the streets to give a
reception to the Prince, who had just left the Assembly and was
returning to the Marithuis.
John de Witt mingled with the others who filled the Stadtholder’s
chambers, and waited, with them, at the head of the fine double
staircase.
The sound of cheers and shouts, that seemed as if they would never
cease, was borne from without as the Prince entered the Palace.
He came slowly up the stairs, accompanied by a press of people carrying
their hats in their hands.
He wore a dove-coloured suit and a black sash, a pink velvet mantle and
a beaver with black feathers; there was a gold ribbon on his cane and
gold cords on his right shoulder. M. Fagel was speaking to him, and he
listened unsmilingly.
At the head of the stairs he paused and glanced round the people
gathered to meet him.
Instantly his eye fell on John de Witt and he blushed violently.
He said nothing, but raised his hat. M. de Witt did the same, and those
about them were silent.
“Highness,” said John de Witt calmly, “will it please you to grant me
speech with you?”
The red still lingered in William’s cheek. He hesitated; a slight thing
in most, in him, always so decided, a marked one.
M. Fagel fell back.
“I am glad to see you, Mynheer,” said the Stadtholder. He seemed very
mindful of the spectators. “Will you go into the cabinet … perhaps you
do not know it.…”
He moved forward and opened the door on his left.
John de Witt followed him. The others, even William Bentinck, remained
without.
Prince John Maurice’s cabinet was a beautiful room filled with
treasures from the East Indies, fine pictures, Persian rugs, and inlaid
furniture; the high window looked straight on to the end of the Vyver,
and the walk by the side of it where the people gathered to catch a
glimpse of the Prince.
It was late in the day, and the sun had left the cabinet, filled now by
a cold, dusky light.
The Prince took off his hat as John de Witt uncovered.
They had not met since William’s departure for the war, a matter of
weeks in time but a period full of great changes. Three months had
served to cast down John de Witt, to make of him a reviled and hated
man, and to exalt William of Orange into a hero.
There was little of the boy left about the young Stadtholder; his
gravity was no longer the disguise of youthful passions but the
seriousness of manhood.
He had put off his scholar’s air of retirement and wore a composed
manner of authority and alertness.
“You have changed,” said John de Witt, looking at him steadily.
“Mynheer, I have been remodelled by my duties,” answered the
Stadtholder, “and altered by the necessity of the times.”
He stood against the light arch of the window; his profile was towards
John de Witt, who still gazed at the keen, thin face tanned by out-door
life, the brilliant eyes cast down, and the heavy, waving hair falling
on to the lace collar.
“We did not part lovingly, Highness, but it was with more ease we spoke
then than now, I think.”
The Prince looked up.
“What can we have to say to one another, Mynheer John de Witt?”
“Not much, perhaps, but something.… I think we meet for the last time.”
There was a difference also in de Witt. His late illness and his
distresses had left him wasted, lined and worn; his old stateliness
remained, but at times his voice shook and broke a little.
As he spoke he seated himself with a fatigued air.
“I cannot frame into sentences what there is between us, Highness.”
The Prince spoke suddenly, almost fiercely--
“Do you know me now, Mynheer? Do you see what manner of man I am? You
need not have feared.”
John de Witt looked at him earnestly and sadly.
“I do admit that you have nobly belied what I once thought of you.”
“Why did you think such things of me? You imagined I should become the
tool of France, a traitor; you always mistrusted and disliked me. Why
do you come to me now? I think you wronged me.…”
He turned his face away sharply, and gazed at the glittering waters of
the Vyver glimpsing through the window.
John de Witt answered slowly--
“I was the fool of my own desires, the dupe of my hopes.… I dreamed to
make you a great citizen of a great Republic.”
The Prince did not look round.
“You chose the wrong material, Mynheer; you cannot trim a Nassau into
the compass of burgher virtues.”
“I was at fault.… I did not allow for your ambitions.”
William turned now.
“My ambitions are to save my country and the Reformed religion.… When I
was a child I desired my birthright.… I could never serve.… I was not
schooled in ways of love and gentleness.… You did your duty to me as
you conceived it, and taught me much,--for one thing the bitterness of
a long humiliation, and the lessons that may be learnt in loneliness. I
cannot make a parade of gratitude--I cannot thank you--I cannot forget
what will influence all my life; but I understand you as you never
understood me--and so I can forgive.”
John de Witt bent his head.
“I did what I thought right, what I must think right still.… I taught
you to be a patriot and to fear God. I acted for the love of my country
and for no vile motive of my own.”
He looked up.
“And for my temerity in opposing a Nassau I am very bitterly punished,
Your Highness.”
William put his hand on the back of the chair behind him.
“You could have stayed in office if you would have served me.”
“The States are my master, and I resigned while they were still my
master.”
The Stadtholder interrupted--
“You shall be unmolested in your retirement, Mynheer.”
“I do not think of myself.”
“Of whom then?”
“My brother.”
A shade crossed William’s face.
“Your brother,” he repeated.
John de Witt rose.
“My brother--unjustly accused, unjustly tried; a victim to the fears of
the magistrates, the passions of the crowd.”
William faced him.
“I cannot believe your brother guilty,” he said; “yet he has failed to
clear himself on his trial--and the man who was killed at my feet in
the camp mentioned his name--yet--I do not believe it.”
“Then,” cried M. de Witt, “save him, for you alone can!”
“Hath he not a fair trial?” demanded the Stadtholder.
“By Heaven, no!”
“I have heard very little of it.… I have been so occupied with the war.”
“Your Highness has the civil administration also.”
William glanced at him quickly.
“If your brother is innocent will he not be acquitted?”
“He will be condemned to death unless Your Highness interferes--he,
_my_ brother, on the word of a man whom he once ordered to be fined for
beating his maid-servant.”
The Stadtholder did not answer.
John de Witt spoke again, his cheek pale but his eyes burning.
“My noble lord--if you ever hated me, you are avenged. I would never
have wished you a tenth of what has befallen me. You have your father’s
dignities; the people have placed you where he sat, and my Republic is
swept aside--is a mere interlude in the reign of the House of Orange.
If ever you wished me evil consider that I see my life-work come to
nothing, that I hear myself cursed by the people I have toiled for,
that I am accused of being a thief and a traitor--and be satisfied.
“If ever I have humiliated you or angered you--and never did I so
wantonly--consider that I have had to ask the States to give me a
position that will bring me bread; consider that my family is ruined,
that I leave nothing but a heritage of failure to my sons--and again be
satisfied.
“I shall not trouble you--I am not made for intrigue; had I been I need
not have stood before you now asking for my brother’s life.… After my
great labour I shall be content to take a little idleness in which to
prepare me for death.… I shall not trouble you.
“Give me my brother’s life.… He is an innocent man; you, who have
looked on him, must know it.… He is a man who has given all to his
country; he has been great … and … they tortured him.… Oh, God forgive
Your Highness if you knew of that!…”
The Prince moved towards the window.
“I only heard to-day.”
John de Witt put his hand over his hot and aching eyes.
“He is also sufficiently punished for having withstood your Highness.…
I ask, nay, I demand, his life.”
William turned; he too was pale.
“Were he guilty, Mynheer, he should not die by virtue of your
honourable family.… I blame myself that I did not sooner interpose--and
greatly am I ashamed that he was put to the torture.… But the mob
rules here, not I. I have a task so manifold before me that I might
well despair--the country under water; the peasants rising; the enemy
but just repulsed; the towns in a state of revolution.… My amnesty is
scarcely heeded.… Yet I will save M. Cornelius de Witt.”
“I do not need to thank Your Highness, for you would injure your own
honour should you have refused.”
William coughed.
“I will do what I can … at least, they shall not take his life.… But if
they banish him, you must not blame me.”
“I know there is an astonishing fury against us.… Banishment! I have
lived here twenty years, but all now has changed; with Cornelius I will
gladly go into banishment, if it must be.”
The Stadtholder’s large eyes rested on him gravely.
“Mynheer, as I can judge the temper of the people, you are scarcely
safe at the Hague. I would advise you leave it soon--to-morrow,
you--and M. Cornelius de Witt.”
“My noble lord,” said John de Witt proudly, “you know me guiltless of
these charges laid to me?”
“My letter told you so.”
“It was not warm in my defence.”
The Stadtholder answered straightly--
“I think you made mistakes, I told you so when our positions
were reversed. I think the defences of the country shamefully
neglected--your peace policy fatal--your embassy to Louis calculated to
give colour to vile reports; but I know you, Mynheer, for an honourable
man.”
John de Witt very slightly smiled.
“I thank your Noble Highness for so much,” he said.
William coloured in response to the tone of it.
“Have you ever held such worthy opinions of me,” he asked, “that I
should bear warm testimony to your virtues? Your policy is not my
policy.”
“You have saved Holland; with you rests the glory of her deliverance,
as with me the odium of her fall; but I would no less have saved her
had hatred given me time to speak or malice allowed me space to act--I
still, Highness, defend my policy.”
He rested his eyes full on the Prince’s face, but William kept his eyes
averted.
“I would do justice to you, Mynheer--had I known you in any capacity
save that of gaoler I might have loved you.… I always hated speech,
and am not skilled at explanations.… If I have been ungracious let
circumstances be my excuse.…”
John de Witt answered ardently.
“If you love your country I will forgive you that you hate me,--nay,
if my fall be of advantage to the State in raising up a stronger
protector, one that the people trust and love, I am thankful for it.…
They trusted me once, and shouted for Cornelius when we rode our
galiots in the Thames.… Beware of popularity, my noble lord.”
William pressed his handkerchief to his lips, still looking away.
“Do not fear that I will not serve my country--I bear an unfinished
motto, when I was a boy I completed it proudly ‘I will maintain the
power and glory of the House of Orange’--now I would add ‘Liberty and
the Protestant Religion’ to those words of mine.”
John de Witt was silent a moment, then he said slowly--
“I grieve the chance that makes us enemies, for we should have shown
well as friends, my lord.”
The Prince turned and fixed at last his bright glance again on de Witt.
“Mynheer, when King Mithridates Eupator came to the throne, he sent
a message to his enemies telling them of his accession.… No more was
needed, they understood and destroyed themselves.… So between us; you
will not serve me, and I need not tell you you must go.… Leave the
Hague, Mynheer--and soon.”
“When my brother is set at liberty, Your Highness.”
“That shall be to-morrow.”
“You are staying here?”
“I quit early to-morrow for Woerden, Mynheer, to inspect the
fortifications of the town.”
“Then will you leave some soldiery behind Your Highness, for I have a
fear of the unchecked violence of the mob. The Gevangenpoort hath been
twice attacked, and I think my brother’s life in danger.”
“Count Tilly’s dragoons shall remain to keep order in the Hague.”
“I thank Your Highness.”
Mechanically John de Witt fastened together the clasps of his black
velvet mantle.
The Prince still stood, his aristocratic figure in the dove grey in
keeping with the rich, quiet, and sombre room.
They were looking at each other, and there was more in the eyes of each
than any words could have touched.
M. de Witt moved slowly towards the door.
“I cannot leave you--” he said in a low voice, and with a simple air
of grandeur, “you who have been my pupil--I cannot leave you for ever
without saying how I shall ever pray for your prosperity, and that,
though you cannot be more zealous, you may be more fortunate than I
have been in serving our country.
“You have begun very nobly, may God keep you faithful to your ideals,
guard you from your enemies, and make you worthy of the trust reposed
in you by this unhappy land. Good-night, my lord.”
William made a half movement towards him.
“M. de Witt!” he said in a stifled voice. “M. de Witt!”
The fallen Minister smiled, almost tenderly.
“You have a hard task before you--as I well know.”
William held out his hand.
“Forget I am Nassau and take my hand as that of one who should be
grateful to you.…”
John de Witt responded instantly; the fine fingers clasped. It seemed
as if both men must speak, but no word passed.
“Good-night, Mynheer,” the Prince said at last.
“Good-night, Your Highness.”
John de Witt passed through the crowded antechamber and out into the
street.
For the first time in twenty years he found himself without the cares
of government, without the routine of pressing business to attend to.
His body obeyed the new condition of his mind; he found himself
wandering with no set purpose, a thing he had not done since his
student days in Dordt.
He realised as he went on his way that it was pleasant to walk
aimlessly in the last glow of an August sun … perhaps he was a little
stunned, weakened by illness and misfortune; his thoughts travelled
back to early hopes and interests. He was a free man at last--at last
he could find rest.…
At last.
He and Cornelius and their old father could live peaceably in the
Spanish Netherlands. He would grow peaches and tulips, translate
Horace, and watch his daughters spin or play the guitar.
It would be harder for Cornelius, for he was ever a man of action; but
for himself he could not deny that he was utterly weary and that repose
seemed sweet.
Leaving the crowded streets, he walked along the side of the canal that
led to the Nieuwe Kerk.
He sighed with a pleasurable sense of the peace to come as he watched
the slow barges pass down the bright water.
Some were laden with flowers and fruits; from the tall trees came soft
scents and delicate sounds of the branches.
John de Witt sighed again.
A stork with a fish in its beak, looking like the very arms of the
Hague, stood on the bank a moment, then flew off to one of the red
roofs mounting like double steps to the highest stone of painted brick.
The sun was setting behind Ryswyck; the sight of the clear sky purged
with celestial fire from all vapours and clouds animated the heart of
John de Witt like prayer or music.
He bared his head.
It was quiet here, no one to molest or insult the melancholy, divine
dignity of evening.
He crossed the little bridge before the church, walking lightly like
one who does not think of the earth on which he treads.
It was over; his life-work done; nor was he afraid of God’s judgment on
his actions though man had condemned them all.
He advanced to the church thinking to pray there, for his mood was
exalted.
As he opened the door a paper pinned to it caught his eye.
It bore bold writing, and he stepped back to read.
The light of the sunset was still bright enough for him to see.
“Lucifer calls from Hell, ‘When is Cornelius de Witt coming? I grow
impatient--let him come at once, let him bring his brother but leave
his head!’
“Lucifer calls from Hell, ‘When are the de Witts coming?’
“The burghers call from the Hague, ‘Expect them to-morrow!’”
John de Witt stood on the church step staring at the paper.
The rapture died from his face; his eyes widened and his cheek paled.
Rapidly the sunset faded.
Another barge went by, a shadow in the dusk; it brought no image of
peace now to the man at the door of the church.
What is brewing--what is enmeshing us?
He did not enter the church, but turned back to his own house slowly.
“Lucifer calls from Hell, ‘When are the de Witts coming?’
“The burghers call from the Hague, ‘Expect them to-morrow!’”
CHAPTER XII
AUGUST 20, 1672
He was still dressing when Johanna de Zwyndrecht came to him.
“The gaoler’s maid from the Gevangenpoort, John----”
She could say no more.
“From Cornelius?”
He had just finished shaving, and stood with his collar untied and the
strings in his hand.
“Yes.”
“Ah, he sends for me?”
“Yes.”
John de Witt stepped up to her and put his arm about her.
“Johanna--my dear--has he been sentenced?”
“To banishment--the councillors, the maid says, read him his sentence
in the prison this morning.”
She dropped her head on his shoulder and a sob broke from her full
heart.
“Oh, John!”
“My dear, my dear, he has his life and his liberty. I will go fetch him
from the prison--at once.”
His sister shuddered.
“Yes, and yet----”
“What?”
“Ah, they have been rioting all night--I wish we were away from the
Hague----”
“We shall be--to-day.”
He drew her gently downstairs.
There his daughter Anna waited in the dining-room.
It was not yet nine, and the early sun had not touched the cool chamber.
The gaoler’s maid had gone again, simply leaving this message, that M.
de Witt was to be set at liberty, and had, on hearing this, at once
requested that his brother might be sent for.
“I will go,” repeated John de Witt, “at once--and bring him away.”
His daughter, who held her hands clenched and pressed upon her heart,
looked at him with a wild expression.
“Father--must you go? Cannot Uncle Cornelius be brought here? _Must_
you go?”
“Anna!”
“Do you know what the streets are like?--the maid said every one was
furious because my uncle was not condemned to death.”
She rose, and her pale eyes brimmed with tears.
“Do not go----”
“Cornelius sent for me.”
“He did not understand----”
“Dearest, the Hague is safe enough----”
“No, no!”
“There are the burgher companies----”
“They are Orangist.”
He was not to be persuaded.
“Cornelius sent for me.”
Johanna also was fearful.
“You will, at least, not go alone?” she said.
“I will take the clerk and Van den Wissel if it please you.”
“Yes--I will tell them.”
Anna was not to be comforted. What she had seen and heard these last
weeks at the Hague had utterly unnerved her; she clung to her father
convulsively, dumb with the swelling sobs.
Agneta sat in the wide window-seat, her head bowed on to her knees.
M. Van Ouvenaller, who had been abroad that morning, had repeated to
her, in his agitation, some of the remarks he had heard in the streets.
“Michael Tichelaer,” he declared, “is running up and down telling every
man he meets that M. Cornelius is as good as acquitted, and that he
must by no means escape his punishment.”
The presage of unimaginable evil conveyed in this held Agneta
speechless; her spirit was so chained with terror that she could not
even join Anna in her vain entreaties.
John de Witt strove to quiet and console them all by speaking of homely
things; he desired his sister to prepare a meal for Cornelius, who
would have had but a prison breakfast, and to lay out some garments for
him, for he intended to take his brother at once to his country-house,
where Maria--his wife--and her children stayed.
Jacob de Witt, he knew, would wish to accompany him, but the old man
was sitting happily in the garden with his little grandson John, who
had rushed to tell him that Cornelius was safe, and he would not
trouble him, so commanded them not to let him know of his departure.
Not waiting for the coach, he bid the man bring it round to the
Gevangenpoort in half an hour’s time. The prison was but a few yards
away. As he gave this order the women were silent, and averted their
eyes from one another.
They knew it meant that Cornelius would not be able to walk, or perhaps
even to stand.
The day before he had been tortured … by the rack, the pulley and the
cord.
Johanna felt as if the screws were turned on her own heart as the
hideous image of her brother in agony flashed before her; she turned
aside with gulping tears.
At about half-past nine John de Witt gently left their sorrowful
company and set out on foot for the Gevangenpoort.
He had with him the two clerks, M. Bacherus and M. Ouvenaller, and his
faithful servant, Van den Wissel, who had nearly been slain in Van der
Graef’s attack on his master.
It was a warm, lovely morning; little flakes of gold lay in the ripples
of the Vyver, and there was a shimmering of light and shade in the
chestnuts and elms.
John de Witt noticed nothing warranted to rouse the fears his sister
and daughters entertained.
There were the women going to market, the farmers drawn by their dogs
in their little painted carts, the usual passers-by; one saluted him,
for the rest he was unnoticed.
He passed the spot where John Van Olden Barnenveldt had been executed,
and thought of it, as he had continually done of late when he crossed
the Plaats.
Many times had he looked at the old gate prison, now with a horrid
interest and a painful shrinking.
The plain brick building, with its high, tiled roof pierced with two
gabled windows built over the low, dark arch, above which the arms of
Holland were set, had always been a place of awe to him, because it had
witnessed the imprisonment and agonies of those early Reformers who
had been martyred by the Inquisition, but now its association made him
quiver to his heart.
Cornelius had been tortured here … yesterday.
De Witt went very pale as he traversed the passage of the arch.
At the door of the prison-house, on the right, a small, mean entrance,
were two soldiers of the burgher guard.
They had been placed there ever since the attempt of the mob to carry
forth Cornelius de Witt.
John de Witt set his lips.
The moment cost him something.
M. Van Ouvenaller rang the heavy iron bell.
The gaoler opened to them, and almost immediately.
“Which way?” asked M. de Witt.
The gaoler stared.
“Come,” said M. Van Ouvenaller, “you know M. John de Witt.”
The man pulled off his cap at that, and M. de Witt followed him across
the narrow threshold and up a narrow stairway, worn, old and dark,
that wound up to a long, dark corridor lit by small windows giving on
the inner courtyard.
Opposite one of these windows the gaoler stopped, slipped back the
bolts from a low, heavy wooden door, and stood aside for M. de Witt to
enter.
He stepped into a fair-sized room with a rough-beamed ceiling, plaster
walls, a low-arched, brick fireplace, and one window overlooking the
Plaats and barred lengthwise and across with iron.
There were a few chairs, rush-bottomed, a handsome carved table, and
opposite the fireplace, and sideways to the window, a simple wooden
bed, on which lay Cornelius in his nightgown, a red coverlet over him;
near him stood a second, smaller table, on which were a few books and a
shining, brass candlestick.
Seeing the door open, Cornelius raised himself on his elbow expectantly.
John de Witt crossed the room, the clerks, servant, and the gaoler
behind him.
When the brothers had parted, four months ago, one had been the
governor of his country at home, the other the guardian of her honour
at sea; they had been treated with deference, surrounded with respect;
the greatest men in the land … four months ago.
They were both stately and of austere manners, both mindful that they
were not alone.
“How are you, brother?” asked John, advancing to the bedside. “I have
not seen you since your return from the Fleet.”
Cornelius was equally resolved not to show the feeling that was too
deep indeed for expression.
“Nor I you since your wounds and illness,” he answered.
He fell back again on his hard pillow. John glanced at his bandaged
hands, at his grey and drawn face, and the colour rushed into his own
and ebbed again.
“I am come to take you away, Cornelius,” he said faintly.
The Ruard’s brown eyes flashed with their old fire.
“Not yet, I do not submit to my sentence.”
John seated himself on the rush-bottomed chair beside the bed.
“What was the crime your sentence accused you of?”
“None--that is my point; by a flagrant breach of the law the sentence
made no accusation, but merely condemned me to banishment.”
“It was read to you here?”
“Yes--though I claimed it should be delivered at the bar of the court …
it was for fear of the riots, they said.”
John looked at him in a troubled, earnest way.
“Forgive me,” said Cornelius, breathing heavily with pain. “I was under
torture for two hours yesterday, and as my rheumatism made me sensitive
… it has left me weak.… I cannot explain it all to you as I should
wish.”
John wiped his brow, and then clenched his handkerchief in his hand.
“I must get you away; you are at least free, Cornelius.”
“No--I will appeal to the Grand Council against this unlawful sentence.”
“I dare not consent to any delay in your release.”
Cornelius answered proudly--
“Shall I leave this prison a condemned criminal when I am innocent?”
“Alas! I fear you will never obtain justice--only through my personal
appeal to the Prince have the people been disappointed of your death.”
“The Prince!” repeated Cornelius fiercely. “I do not wish the pity of
the Prince, but the justice of the States.”
“That is,” said John, “what you will never obtain in these wild and
passionate times.”
“What we shall neither of us obtain under William of Orange,” replied
Cornelius.
The gaoler had left them, yet even before the two clerks the remark was
rash.
“The Stadtholder,” said John de Witt, “did what he could--he warned me
to leave the Hague soon.”
But Cornelius was ever the more fiery and unyielding of the two; he had
a warlike pride not easily subdued; with the same unshaken firmness
with which he had endured the rack he protested that he would appeal to
the Grand Council.
His brother represented that it would be in vain, as the decision of
the court was held to be final.
“I wonder,” said Cornelius, “that you try to persuade me against my
honour. Why should I submit to tyranny?”
He looked at his hands, through the linen bandages of which the blood
was oozing.
“Have I not borne enough?” he demanded proudly.
John de Witt rose in agitation.
“I think of your safety … let us get out of the Hague----”
“Not banished, and dishonoured,” said Cornelius firmly; “and ruined
too. They have taken all my offices and dignities from me, and ordered
me to pay the costs of the trial. Shall I go to my children a useless,
degraded man?”
“Ah, Cornelius, but you cherish a vain dream when you imagine that the
Grand Council can or will do you justice. I wish to save your life--for
that is all that we can save.”
“See my sentence,” answered Cornelius eagerly; “it is so full of flaws,
of breaches of the law, that they would not dare to refuse my appeal.”
John saw his brother was resolved; that he must, at least, humour him.
“I will see the sentence,” he said. “Go to the Record Office and fetch
me here a copy of my brother’s sentence.”
The clerk left the room.
John de Witt went back to the bedside.
“I am in anguish till I see you out of this,” he said.
“I will appeal.”
“Cornelius, the coach waits below--to take you home.”
“Home! Am I not a banished, outcast man?”
“There are Maria and your children.”
Cornelius was silent.
“You think I give cowardly counsels,” said his brother, “but I am but
too well convinced that we need hope for nothing more in Holland.”
He turned away abruptly to hide his agitation, and crossed to the
window.
Little groups of people were gathered on the Plaats, mostly looking
towards the prison.
The Groote Kerk struck half-past ten.
John walked up and down the rough boards, looking on the ground.
Cornelius watched him with dark and resolute eyes.
Both were very pale.
“What of Maria?” asked Cornelius at length, very low.
“She has written to you?”
“Every day--but was always so eager to hearten me, poor soul, that I
know not much of herself.”
“She is well; she hath kept up a wonderful courage.… She is coming to
the Hague to be the first to greet you on your release.”
Again Cornelius was silent, then he said--
“She will hardly know me.”
John could not answer.
The Ruard spoke again--
“John, I am innocent of even the shadow of what is imputed to me.”
“This to me!” cried his brother reproachfully.
“A man might well get bemused with all their lies,” said Cornelius
wearily.
Silence again. An unaccountable uneasiness possessed John de Witt; he
longed to see his brother at his side in his coach, the open country
before them, the Hague behind.
“Bacherus is very long.” He broke the pause at last.
The Record Office was only a few moments’ walk distant.
John looked from the window again.
The crowd had increased.
“Van Ouvenaller,” he said, “go and see what hath become of M. Bacherus.”
The second clerk left.
The window commanded a view of the Plaats, the Vyver, and the
Kneuterdyk Avenue, with John de Witt’s house at the corner, and the
window in the narrow corridor looked on to the court enclosed by the
prison building, but they were without any means of discovering what
was happening in the Buitenhof opposite the prison door.
In a few moments M. Ouvenaller returned, pallid and trembling.
“Ah, Mynheer,” he exclaimed, “there is an angry crowd gathered--they
have sent away your carriage, and I fear that M. Bacherus will not be
able to return.”
“What is this?” cried Cornelius, starting up. “John, you must go at
once--I should never have sent for you!”
“What do they say?” asked the younger de Witt.
“They say that they will not have Mynheer Cornelius leave in triumph,
but that he must go on foot.”
“Is Tichelaer there?”
“Yes, among the ringleaders--calling horrid names on you both,
Mynheeren!”
“John,” said Cornelius firmly, “you must leave me while you--can.”
“Yes,” answered his brother, catching up his mantle, “I will leave you,
because I will go to the States and complain of these disturbances; but
I shall return very shortly to liberate you.”
“I trust to your advice,” answered Cornelius. “I will go with you on
your return, if you think it fit. Good-bye--brother.”
“Good-bye, for a little while.”
Putting on his hat, and accompanied by Van Ouvenaller and his servant,
John de Witt descended to the mean passage from which the insignificant
door gave straight on to the street.
The gaoler, Van Bossi, opened it for his exit, but as de Witt made to
step out of the prison the two burghers on guard crossed their muskets
before him.
“No one can leave,” one of them said, and roughly motioned him back.
John de Witt surveyed him sternly.
“Why not?” he demanded. “You know very well who I am.”
Others of the burgher company came running up to where M. de Witt stood
in the narrow doorway behind the crossed muskets.
“You cannot leave without an order!” a soldier shouted.
“Whose order do you require?” asked John de Witt.
“That of our officer.”
The crowd began hurrying up from all quarters; seeing who stood in the
doorway, they raised a shout of--
“Fire! Fire!”
A musket was discharged.
John de Witt coloured with anger, and was in the act of forcing his way
out, regardless of the threatening yells, when the gaoler thrust him
violently back and quickly closed the door.
John de Witt had been handled with such force that he stumbled and fell
at the foot of the stairs.
As he rose again he lifted the long, disordered hair from his face,
on which was an expression of horror, as if he had seen an image of
hideous death.
“I wish I were out of this,” he muttered. “How can I get out of this?”
The gaoler stood dumb and terrified.
Quickly John de Witt composed himself.
“Take me back to my brother,” he said.
He had not ascended half the stairs before the bell of the prison rang.
Two burgher captains stood without: Van Os, a postman, and Van Asselyn,
a bookseller.
John de Witt was called down to speak to them; they were moved by his
composed, serene demeanour, and promised to persuade the captain of the
guard to let him pass.
He waited for their return, but in vain; the other burghers prevented
it.
“I wish I were out of this,” repeated M. de Witt. “How shall I get out?
Is there no other way but this?”
“No, Mynheer.”
“No other exit at all?”
“None whatever, Mynheer,” admitted the frightened gaoler.
John de Witt bit his lower lip.
“Very well, I am going back to my brother,” he said
He had already been in the prison nearly two hours.
As he mounted the stairs he could hear, clearly enough, the shouts and
cries of the mob.
Johanna’s fears and the tears of Anna--the placard of last night--were
all very clear in his mind. He shuddered despite himself. There was an
atmosphere about the dull, confined spaces of the prison sufficient in
itself to depress the heart and check the delusions of hope.
The gaoler, alarmed by the turn things were taking, confided to M. de
Witt that Michael Tichelaer, before his release that morning (he had
been in prison during the trial of Cornelius) had uttered the most
horrid threats against the brothers, so that he, Van Bossi, had sent to
ask the judges to keep him in the prison until the Ruard was in safety.
But the judges had ordered Tichelaer to be released, declaring that
they would see that order was preserved. But all the morning Tichelaer
had been going up and down the Hague, inflaming the people by saying
they were like to lose their victim through the foolish clemency of His
Highness.
Van Bossi added that he would send his servant to the States, who were
now sitting, asking them to dispatch a force to hold the people in
check.
“Is the Stadtholder still at the Hague?” asked M. de Witt.
“Mynheer, he left for Woerden at half-past eight this morning.”
John de Witt entered in silence his brother’s room, leaving his clerk
and servant below. He found Cornelius reading a little Elzevir Horace,
which he held awkwardly in his bandaged hands.
“Cornelius.”
“John--returned!”
They were alone now, unwatched; their one care to conceal their
uneasiness from each other.
“I cannot leave the prison,” said John, seating himself beside the bed,
“the streets are too disordered----”
“Trapped!” muttered Cornelius, “trapped!--that rogue Tichelaer means my
death.”
“The gaoler has sent his servant to the States,” answered his brother
quickly, “to demand protection for the prison.”
“Ah!--it is as serious as that?”
Cornelius laid down the Horace.
“I wish I could stand,” he said through his teeth.
John turned his eyes away.
“I should never have sent for you,” continued his brother, reproaching
himself.
“I am safe enough--the Prince left Count Tilly behind----”
A sudden roar from the Plaats broke off his speech.
“Tilly’s dragoons!” cried Cornelius, who heard horsemen.
John was at the window.
“No--the burgher companies.”
Not the forces of the States, but the soldiers of the people were
arriving at the Plaats; perhaps fifteen hundred of them already
surrounding the prison.
The company of the blue stationed itself by the Vyver; four other
companies marched out of sight; while the division of the white,
orange, and blue took up their position in front of the Gevangenpoort.
John de Witt could see them exchange pleasantries with the crowd, while
many among them echoed the popular cry--
“Up with Orange, down with de Witt!”
“Heaven guard us,” he muttered, “if we must trust to these!”
Van Bossi returned.
The message had, he said, been taken to the States, who had ordered out
the cavalry, and dispatched a messenger to the Prince of Orange, as he
was the only man, they declared, who could restore order in the Hague.
“Have the magistrates no power?” asked Cornelius scornfully.
Very little, it seemed--since the arming of the burgher companies they
trembled for their own lives.
“How far is the Prince’s camp?” asked John de Witt.
“Eight leagues, they say.”
The gaoler added that the Hague was in a hideous state of ferment and
passion, and that the States feared a general riot, in which every one
of republican sympathies would be massacred.
John de Witt rose with an uncontrollable sound of anguish, for he
thought of his family separated from him by only a few yards, yet at
the mercy of the mob.
“O God, my God,” he cried, “spare me that at least!”
Cornelius struggled into a sitting position.
“Van Bossi,” he said firmly, “desire some of these burghers to come and
speak with us.”
John turned eagerly.
“Yes, bring these men before us--let them state their grievances to our
faces.”
“Mynheeren, I dare not bring any of them into the prison.”
“We are not afraid,” said Cornelius calmly.
Van Bossi looked from one to the other.
“I wish you both out of this, Mynheeren,” he declared.
“Has any one been to the States?” cried John de Witt, walking up and
down. “If they would let me out that I might speak to the States
myself.”
He could not believe that the Assembly he had swayed for twenty years
would be deaf to him.
“Have a little patience, Mynheer,” answered Van Bossi, “and I will
speak to Van Ruysch, the colonel of the burghers, who is outside the
door.”
“We thank you,” said Cornelius. “And, my friend, since my brother is
like to be detained here will you send us some food?”
The man stared at him, confounded at his calm.
“It is past midday,” said John. “Bring us what you have.”
The gaoler left in silence.
Cornelius took up a book with an air of unconcern; it was a volume of
French plays, but he did not look at the pages; his eyes could not
leave his brother, who was standing by the barred window gazing out on
to the Plaats.
“What are they doing?” asked Cornelius after a while.
“Gathering in great numbers--armed, all armed,” answered John. “There
comes Tilly and his men.”
He could not repress a little sigh of relief as the guards, three
hundred strong, swept through the crowd and took up their position
before the prison.
A cry of “Long live His Highness!” broke from the people, and “Down
with the de Witts!”
“We are of the same opinion!” some of the soldiery shouted back.
“They too are disaffected,” muttered John.
“But Count Tilly is a brave and loyal officer,” said Cornelius.
Each was very careful not to show the slightest sign of inward
uneasiness; they did not dare speak on intimate subjects for fear they
should betray themselves.
John left the window and came back to the bedside.
The sun was blazing full across the bars and throwing their likeness on
the rough floor. The maid who had brought the message to John de Witt’s
house entered with a homely meal of bread, cheese, and dried fish.
“Why are you crying, my child?” asked John gently.
She pressed her apron to her eyes.
“Oh, Mynheer,” she said in terrified sobbing, “the people! … outside …
they grow every moment more excited.…”
“What do they want?” asked Cornelius calmly.
“To kill you!” she answered in a burst of terror. “Oh, Mynheer!”
The Ruard’s dark eyes flashed.
“Very well,” he said, “I am here--let them come--but they have no
excuse to detain my brother.”
“They will not let Mynheer John escape,” the girl sobbed, shivering.
“Some of them are searching the houses next door to see if there should
be any secret passage, and there has one climbed on to the roof with a
gun--if you try to escape.”
“We have no thought of it,” said Cornelius proudly.
The maid gave him a wild look and hurried out of the room.
The brothers avoided each other’s glance. John surveyed the window,
stoutly barred, the iron-clamped door giving on to the narrow corridor
… certainly they were in a trap.…
He set the meal himself on the smooth polished table, and his
thoughts were in his home on the Kneuterdyk. He pictured Johanna’s
piteous preparations for their return; her anxious arrangement for
dinner--which was standing now untouched in the dining-room--her
setting out of travelling garments for Cornelius; their old father,
happy again at the thought of his son’s release; the doves in the trees
and the girls in their pale dresses.…
What bitterness were they enduring as the time went on and the
threatening crowd spread between them and the prison?
These little trifling recollections were the keenest stabs in the
wounded heart of John de Witt.… Not the thought of his useless
life-work, not the vision of approaching death were as potent to
lacerate his soul as the thought of those waiting in vain … in vain.
Cornelius spoke--
“How is our father of late?”
John did not look at him as he answered--
“Well--but failing. He is engaged on a book of meditations, he writes
them down in the evenings.…”
“I should have liked,” said Cornelius, “to see him again.”
He was under no delusions as to his own fate, his one hope was to save
his brother.
“You shall see him,” answered John firmly, though his heart swelled
with choking anguish. “We shall get out of this. Why, these people are
our countrymen--they are not murderers.”
“John, I was doomed since that day in Dordt,” returned Cornelius. “How
they howl! I wonder why they hate us so?”
His eyes narrowed as he listened to the noise rising from the Plaats.
Neither spoke until they had finished their meal, each eating to
maintain this show of calm before the other.
At the end, John rose and went again to the window.
He could not forbear a start.
In the centre of the Plaats a section of the burgher company of the
red was putting up the scaffold, always erected on this spot for an
execution.
Cornelius could not but perceive his agitation.
“What are they doing now?”
“Nothing--only it is such a vast crowd.”
He was absolutely composed again, though he could not doubt for whom
the scaffold was intended.
He was saved from further question by the entry of Van Bossi.
The gaoler was almost inarticulate with fear and dismay.
They gathered from his broken speech that two of the burgher captains
had scaled the walls of the prison-yard and, in company with Ruysch,
who had been admitted, demanded to see the brothers.
Before he had finished speaking, noisy voices were heard in the
corridor, and the three men pushed rudely into the chamber.
They were armed with swords and muskets, and wore flaunting orange
favours.
The gaoler stepped aside, and the intruders found themselves face to
face with John de Witt, who had turned full towards them.
Seeing a tall gentleman of a princely carriage, erect and stately
as any soldier, with a pale but perfectly composed countenance of a
handsome nobility, looking at them with the eyes that had faced Europe,
their mere violence was abashed.
“What is your authority?” asked John de Witt.
“I come from the States,” said Ruysch sullenly. “To see you do not
escape before we hear what His Noble and Mighty Highness proposes to do
with you.”
“Did the States send you on that errand?” demanded Cornelius.
“Would you rather be left to the citizens of the Hague?” said one of
the other men, avoiding his eye.
“If you have been sent to protect us from the violence of the mob, I
thank you,” said John. “But we are neither answerable to the States nor
to His Highness, but are free men.”
“We do not deny it,” replied Ruysch, who wished to keep on the side of
the law.
“Very well.” John took up his hat. “I will go to the States, while you
guard my brother, and procure an order for his release.”
His calm air of authority overawed them, but they stepped before the
door.
“By what right do you detain me?” he demanded.
Ruysch, who had no pretext, could only say, “Wait a little longer, sir,
the people are too excited.”
John de Witt looked at him a moment in silence, then he said--
“Will you let my clerk and servant depart?”
They could not in decency refuse.
Ruysch gave ungracious acquiescence.
“Will you send one of your men with them to see them through the crowd?”
M. Ruysch hesitated, then saw a chance of ridding himself of an onerous
duty.
“I will go myself,” he said.
John de Witt perceived his motive, but did not quarrel with it, since
it equally well served his turn.
There were pen and ink on the table; tearing the fly-leaf from the
French volume he wrote on it an urgent message to Van Ouvenaller,
entreating him to conduct his children into a place of safety. He
handed it to M. Ruysch.
“Give this to my clerk who is below,” he said; and with an earnest look
of nobility that brought the blood to Ruysch’s cheek, he added simply,
“I know very well what is ahead of me, and I ask you, as you fear God,
to see my children safe.”
“I will do it,” answered Ruysch awkwardly.
He left, meanly glad to escape the task of protecting the brothers.
“I wish,” he said as he stepped from the prison, “that I had never seen
the MM. de Witt.”
John now turned to the two burgher officers; with a disarming courtesy
he bid them sit at the table, and Cornelius offered them wine.
“You are brave men and honourable citizens, my brother is innocent--you
will defend him, you will assure the people he is innocent.”
The statesman who had guided his country through the storms of European
politics for twenty years found no trouble in influencing a couple of
ignorant burghers whom he employed all his arts to gain.
They protested their goodwill and went out to keep guard in the
corridor.
John de Witt’s hope now rested in Count Tilly, who with the utmost
firmness was sweeping the crowd back across the Plaats.
A goldsmith named Verhoef, in company with Michael Tichelaer, had taken
the head of one of the burgher companies, and was practically master of
the moment.
John de Witt could hear him threateningly order Tilly to retire; he saw
Tilly ride out from his troops to answer them.
His words came with a faint clearness to the prison window.
“Burghers of the Hague, do you wish to fill your streets with blood? If
you do, possibly you may be the first to suffer for it.”
Wild shouts answered him--
“Withdraw your troops!”
“No. I obey my orders.”
“Tilly stands firm,” said John to Cornelius.
Verhoef, mounted on a white horse, rode up to the cavalry of the
States, an Orange flag in his hand.
“Very well,” he shouted fiercely, “if it is orders you want we will get
them for you!”
And he and his troop galloped off in the direction of the Stadhuis.
John drew back from the window.
“They have gone to procure an order for Tilly’s withdrawal,” he said in
a low voice.
The eyes of the brothers met across the prison space.
“The magistrates will never give that order.”
John put his hand to his breast.
“Oh, pray God they do nothing base, for they were great--my Republic.”
Quickly he composed himself again.
“We will not believe it, Cornelius.”
“No man could be so weak or so wicked,” said his brother, “as to
deliver us to certain death.”
“No,” said John. “No----”
But he added almost instantly.
“I would the Prince was at the Hague, Cornelius.”
“The Prince!” answered his brother, “he is too good a politician.… He
was very careful not to be at the Hague to-day.”
“Ah, no, Cornelius.…”
The Ruard smiled in an angry kind of scorn.
“They have sent for him--well--he will not come.”
“I believe he will--let him only get the message in time----”
“Ah--‘let him’--that is his skill, to cloak himself with ‘ifs’ and
‘lets’.…”
“You never liked him,” said John de Witt, “but I cannot believe him
vile.”
Cornelius dragged himself painfully into a sitting posture.
“Hark to that!”
He listened to the manifold and surging noises of the crowd without,
held only at bay by Tilly’s dragoons.
“Some devil’s arts have struck this fury out of them.”
“It is Michael Tichelaer,” answered John, staring from the window.
“Michael Tichelaer! a boor!--who is behind Michael Tichelaer?”
John was silent.
“I will answer you--William of Nassau--I think his agents are there now
below urging the people on.”
“Cornelius--I do not credit it--ah! do not let us fill our thoughts
with such images.”
He moved away from the window, his hand to his brow.
“Not now,” he added--“not now.”
Cornelius looked at him with a fierce tenderness. He had never from the
first alarm thought to save himself, but he had not anticipated the
horror of involving his brother in his fate.
“I was mad to send for you,” he said bitterly.
John de Witt did not speak.
He sat droopingly in one of the rush-bottomed chairs, his black velvet
mantle hanging from his shoulders, his long hair and the silk ties of
his cravat falling over his breast; the clear-cut, fine lines of his
face were set off by the heavy lace round his throat; his thick brows
were slightly contracted; the firm, full lips set resolutely under the
slight moustache.
He gazed absently at the rough prison floor and mean walls to which
his destiny had narrowed: endeavour, achievement, dignities, honour,
labour, the council, the Cabinet, high hopes, noble toil, all come to
this paltry square of boards and plaster where he sat forsaken.
His life-work had been over before he entered the humble door, but he
had cherished modest desires: some little leisure to teach his son and
love his daughters, some peaceful time in which to draw nearer the God
he had always served … in the heart his countrymen had broken.
He thought of all the things he had wished to do and had left
undone--of his home and the farewells that morning that were never to
be spoken again.
His heart seemed to contract, then swell, stifling him.
He turned in his chair with a quick movement of agony and saw his
brother’s dark, resolute eyes gazing at him.
“Cornelius!”
“I curse myself that I brought you here,” said the Ruard.
“Even if I had foreseen this I would have come,” answered John. “We are
at least together,” he smiled. “Since we have shared everything for so
long it is good that we share this now.”
He went swiftly to the door and opened it on the two burgher officers
without.
“Mynheeren,” he said courteously, “how go events without?”
The men were both troubled and frightened; one had been down to speak
to Tichelaer, who had just returned from a parley with the magistrates,
who were utterly in the power of the mob.
Tichelaer and Verhoef had both been deaf to the pleadings of the
councillors, and had declared their intention of dragging the brothers
from the prison and hanging them on the gibbet, refusing even to wait
until the Prince reached the Hague.
“His Mighty Noble Highness is too tender-hearted,” Tichelaer had
declared; “the work must be done in his absence.”
Under the excuse that a body of rebellious peasants were marching on
the Hague, the burgher companies had ordered Tilly to withdraw and
defend the entry to the town. But on his firm refusal to obey any but
his masters, the States, Tichelaer, seeing all attempts to gain the
prison useless while he kept guard, had gone before the magistrates a
second time to extort the written command for his withdrawal.
“But, Mynheer,” said the burgher officer, “they will not give it.”
John de Witt gave him a sweet look never to be forgotten.
“You are a good fellow,” he said, “and have done your best for us … it
must be as God sees fit.”
He turned into the room again.
Cornelius was reading in the little Horace, on the fly-leaf of which he
had that morning written his name and the date in commemoration of his
sentence.
He was about to speak, but such a furious shouting rose from the Plaats
that he was silent.
John went to the window.
He saw Tichelaer, the foam whitening his horse, ride up to Tilly, a
paper in his hand.
“He has the order!” exclaimed John de Witt; and even as he spoke the
command was given, the dragoons wheeled round and galloped away across
the Plaats, the triumphant crowd making way for them … howling, yelling.
“Have they gone?” asked Cornelius grimly.
John’s beautiful hand clutched the cold bars.
“Oh, this is a bitter way to die!” he murmured.
He turned his head that he might not see the struggling press below;
the ferocious, distorted faces of men and women hastening on with
shining arms and glittering knives burning in the sunshine.
“Why were not the bullets merciful at Southwold bay?” exclaimed
Cornelius. “I would rather have death any way but this--the life beaten
out of me by those curs!”
He made a passionate gesture with his bandaged hand towards the window.
“I would not have believed they would have done it … no … have given
that order … not that.…” said John faintly.
He stood with his hand on his breast, his eyes wide.
The refined and beautiful body shrank from the thought of torture and
humiliation as the noble soul blenched from degradation and shame.
He was afraid of the manner of his death; drew back from it with
loathing as he would from a sight of horror.
A volley of musketry sounded, and violent blows; the crowd were
attacking the prison door.
John put his hand over his eyes; an awful, sick giddiness overcame him.
Cornelius struggled to his feet and caught his blue mantle round him.
“Is there no way out?” muttered John. He moved desperately from one
side of the prison to the other, and beat his hand against the cruel
iron bars--trapped--forsaken.
With a hideous, harsh crash of iron on iron the door below gave way;
yells and the crash of weapons came up the narrow stairway, and one of
the burgher officers rushed in, crying--
“They are in! They are forcing Van Bossi to give them the keys.”
“There is no need,” said Cornelius calmly, “the door is open.”
He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in his blue mantle, a close
cap on his head, from under which his brown curls escaped on to his
shoulders; his colourless face, marred with suffering, was composed and
resolute.
“I will make them listen to reason!” answered the soldier, and went out
into the corridor.
“This is the end,” said Cornelius.
John smiled in sudden exaltation.
He took up his brother’s Bible and seated himself in the rush-bottomed
chair beside the bed, the pages fluttered a moment under his white
fingers, then he began to read--
“‘Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect--yet not the
wisdom of this world nor of the princes of this world, that come to
naught----’”
Cornelius bowed his head.
“‘But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery _even the hidden wisdom_,
which God ordained before the world unto our glory--which none of the
princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have
crucified the Lord of Glory----’”
Outside their sole defenders were endeavouring to restrain the
onslaught of Tichelaer; the corridor was choked with swords and muskets.
John de Witt continued, in an uplifted voice--
“‘But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for
them that love Him.’”
The Groote Kerk struck four.
With angry curses at the delay, Tichelaer and his men broke across the
threshold.
John de Witt laid down the Bible, put on his hat and turned to face the
door.
“What do you want?” he asked, and gazed at them with narrowed eyes.
They had all been drinking heavily; they were all roused to the height
and very extreme of brutish passions, but they fell back smitten where
they stood, their violence turned upon themselves at the sight of John
de Witt.
Like a creature of another world, trapped and helpless, yet abashing
its hunters, who feared to be laid low by some disguised and hidden
god, he stood looking at them, composed, unarmed.
“What do you want?” he repeated.
Tichelaer lurched forward; but made no attempt to touch him.
“We want this villain,” he said, and turned to Cornelius.
More men were forcing into the room, fiercely accusing of bribery the
two who strove to prevent them.
Encouraged by sheer numbers, Tichelaer strode to the bed.
“Come, get up,” he said roughly to the Ruard. “Pray to God and prepare
yourself, for you must die.”
“What harm have I done you?” asked Cornelius calmly.
Verhoef the goldsmith answered--
“You have attempted the life of his very Noble Mightiness the Prince,
and you are an ugly traitor--make haste and get up.”
John stepped towards him.
“You,” he said to Tichelaer, “_know_ my brother is innocent.”
Under the terrible fire of his eyes the false accuser shrank back.
Another ruffian, a miller, aimed the butt end of his musket at the head
of Cornelius.
John, catching the fellow’s arm, turned it aside, it hit and shattered
the bed-post; on this a notary named Van Saenen struck the back of his
head with a pike.
De Witt turned and looked at him proudly and calmly.
Again they hesitated; not one of them offered to seize him.
He removed his hat, pulled out his handkerchief and bound it round his
head, for the blood was dripping down his curls.
“Is it your intention to kill me also?” he asked.
A murmur came from those at the back.
“Yes, traitor, thief, and rascal, you shall have the same fate as your
cursed brother!”
“Dress yourself!” shouted Verhoef, and flung the Ruard’s clothes on the
bed.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked them. “Where do you want me to
go?”
He was as calm and resigned as he had been before the torture. He
tried to draw on his violet stocking over his maimed foot, but was so
threatened with a dagger at his throat that he had to stumble to the
floor undressed as he was.
“What do you want with me?” he repeated haughtily.
“You will soon find out!” they shouted back; and Tichelaer turned on
John, who was advancing towards his brother.
“Do you wish my life?” asked de Witt. “Very well, then take it.”
But Verhoef caught Tichelaer back.
“These traitors must die on the gibbet!” he cried. “Spare them till
then.”
Again the hideousness of his death presented itself overwhelmingly to
de Witt; he drew back against the plaster walls, sick at heart.
“Are you all less than men?” he demanded. “Give me a sword----”
He made a futile effort to snatch one from the crowd ringing him round.
“Traitor!” shouted Tichelaer.
“Do _you_ dare use that word to me?” answered John de Witt. “Had all
done their duty as I did not a town had been lost----Give me a sword,”
he added. “Some weapon----”
Tichelaer gathered courage to strike him with the end of his musket.
“God has overtaken you!” he yelled.
John de Witt held up his mantle to protect himself.
“You dare to take the name of God?” he answered. “You have long since
denied Him by your villanies.”
As he spoke he saw Cornelius raise clasped hands to heaven as he was
thrust violently on to his knees.
“Let me get to my brother!--I could yet make this little room
glorious----”
“Do not finish them here!” cried Verhoef. “Take the ruffians to the
gibbet!”
They worked themselves up again into the fury the actual presence of
the de Witts had cowed. Tichelaer and his followers, among them a lusty
butcher armed with an axe, pushed between the brothers, separating them
by the width of the room.
Some one struck John de Witt on the face, cursing him.
The insult brought the blood to his cheek.
“Fellow, I will not take that!” he said, and cast the man down.
It was the signal; here was the incentive. A dozen clutching hands laid
hold on John de Witt’s mantle.
“Ah, do you lay hands on me!” he cried, and lifted high his mantle to
screen his face.
Verhoef gave him a push that made him stagger and fall.
“Behold the downfall of the Perpetual Edict!” shrieked Tichelaer.
John de Witt got to his feet again; there was a look of startled horror
on his face. The handkerchief was shaken from his head and the blood
ran down his collar.
They were quick to see his anguish, and laughed, seizing him by the
arms and dragging him towards the door.
But quickly composure came again; he spoke with a coolness that
confounded them.
“I have never betrayed you--I swear to God I have always done my
duty----”
Tichelaer threatened him with his sword, but did not dare touch him
because of the great brilliance of his eyes.
“Let me get to my brother----”
“Why do not you strike?” shouted Verhoef.
“Our friends below must have a hand in this--they are getting
impatient,” the others shouted back; and John de Witt, at the point of
a dozen swords, was forced down the close stairs.
Having lost everything else, he was still resolute to save his honour.
“I die by calumny--I am not what you think----” came his clear cry.
They pushed him forward. He drew back as he reached the first landing,
for he could see the armed and hideous crowd below filling the open
door of the prison, waiting for him; he could see the upturned faces.
He set his lips, and his nostrils distended, as he heard the shrieks of
furious triumph which rose as they saw him--at last.
“Make haste!” they cried to Tichelaer. “Make haste!”
Verhoef dragged him forward; at that moment Cornelius, bruised and
maimed, scarcely able to stand, was struck with a plank and flung down
the first flight of stairs.
John turned and held out his arms across the swords and muskets.
For a second their hands were just able to touch; they looked into each
other’s eyes, and even smiled, as they were torn asunder and delivered
to the greedy, waiting crowd.…
“Farewell, Cornelius!”
“Brother--farewell!”
CHAPTER XIII
WILLIAM OF ORANGE
A coach was drawn by a pair of fresh brown horses, at a gallop through
the quiet village of Ryswyck, an hour short of the Hague.
The sun was near its setting, and the peasants leaving their work
turned to mark with surprise the haste of the coach as it swung on its
leathers along the smooth white road.
It had just reached the little church with the lead cupola when a
horseman spurred up from the opposite direction.
“Halt!” he cried.
He spoke with such an air of authority that the coachman drew rein,
swerved his vehicle, and stopped.
“Do you ride to the Hague?” asked the horseman, panting.
“Ay, to the Hague;” the man stared at his questioner.
“Then turn back! turn back! … the Hague is no place for honest men …
turn back!”
His voice and face were wild, his appearance dishevelled.
“The MM. de Witt have been murdered!” he said hoarsely, “two hours
ago--my God! my God! They were to hang them on the gibbet--they dragged
them out of the prison for that end--but they had not got them through
the gate before they tore them to bits.… There was nought left to tell
John from Cornelius save the difference in their height.…”
“Oh, my lady!” cried the coachman, and sat stunned.
The villagers had gathered round and were listening in a bewildered
terror. The horseman dismounted, so possessed by what he had seen that
he must babble of it.
“I say they cut their hearts out.… They are hanging head downwards on
the gibbet--all red … the MM. de Witt!… See, I bought this … for two
sous.… They cut off his fingers for he used them to sign the Perpetual
Edict.”
He unfolded his cloak from something he carried against his breast and
held it out.
“Oh, my lady!” moaned the coachman and let the reins fall.
The coach door was opened, a lady in a garnet-coloured mantle stepped
out and came towards the increasing and horrified group.
“What have you got there?” she asked in a strange voice. “Show it to
me.”
The horseman turned to her frantically.
“I saw it done--while he lived, too--look!”
He held out a beautiful human hand, torn and bloody, half enwrapped in
a length of fine lace.
The lady drew closer.
“I know that hand very well,” she said. “Yesterday it was on the body
of my husband.”
A shriek ran round the group. The wretched stranger, finding himself
face to face with the wife of Cornelius, fell on his knees in the road
and could not speak.
Maria de Witt was quite collected. In that instant when she heard,
through the coach window, that she was too late--when she heard what
had happened at the Hague--heart and brain had broken.
“I have been very patient,” she said, “for it was God’s will--but I
must hasten now, for I wish to accompany him into exile.--I heard at
Dordt this morning, Mynheer, that he was exiled.”
She turned towards the coach.
“Why do you not drive on?” she asked, and fell against the dusty wheel.
There was no one with her save the two men-servants; they dismounted
and led her to the roadside, themselves incapable with grief.
“Where is his hand?” she asked. “My lord gave me his hand----”
She turned sweet, expressionless eyes on the horseman, who laid the
bloodstained relic reverently in her lap; she sat on a heap of stones
beneath a tall poplar tree.
“She must not go to the Hague!” he cried. “Find her shelter here.”
“Mynheer John’s children?” gasped the coachman.
“His clerk took them to safety. It is like a fair at the Hague--the
magistrates all dumb with dread … and on the Plaats----Oh! I am sick
with what I saw.”
It had grown dusk; the villagers crept softly round the figure of Maria
de Witt as she sat meekly clasping the hand to her breast.
“He is hurt, hurt!” she said in accents of agony,--“the rack, the
pulley and the boot, but I have balsam in the carriage--Ladies, there
will be an engagement at sea to-day, and my husband will save us all.”
They appealed to the pastor to take her in; but he was too cowardly to
give her shelter, so they led her, unresisting, to the humble inn.
One servant stayed with her, the other embarked for Rotterdam to bring
to her her sister-in-law, Maria Hoeuft.
She would not leave the parlour which she had first entered, nor take
food, nor leave the fair right hand that she carried against her breast
as tenderly as if it were her child.
The village surgeon would not visit her; the peasants stood aloof,
fearful of befriending one so unfortunate.
For awhile they thought that she did not know the extent of her misery,
but presently she called for a quill and ink-horn, and took from her
pocket Cornelius’ little brass-bound diary.
Over a clean page she had written the date, meaning to add beneath it
her husband’s release. Very clearly and steadily she made now this
entry, it ended the record of the Ruard’s domestic life, kept very
carefully by him until his imprisonment--
“This day, August, my beloved husband was horribly murdered at the
Hague by the burgher faction, with our brother, John de Witt.
“He was in his fiftieth year, having been forty-nine years old on
June 19, 1672. He had been taken on the last day of July to the Court
of Justice, and from thence, on August 6, to prison, there to be
cruelly tortured on the sole accusation of an infamous person, Michael
Tichelaer, barber of Piershill.
“May God preserve all men from such misfortunes as those by which the
twentieth of this month has been so sorrowfully signalised.”
When she had finished she looked up with a wild air.
“Is it right?” she asked, “is it right?--we must submit to God!--all my
happiness!”
Then she rose.
“Cornelius--you must snuff the candles----”
She sank on to the chair, smiling and unconscious.
They lifted her on to the settle and put out the light.
There was much to do in the little inn, and she was the widow of
Cornelius de Witt, so they left her alone.…
When she recovered she sat up in the dark, then rose to her feet
unsteadily.
Enough torchlight glimmered through the window for her to see the door;
she pulled it open and stood listening.
In the opposite room, across the narrow corridor, men were talking
together; their door stood ajar, and a thick bar of yellow fell across
the darkness.
“If he had had the first message it had been prevented, Bentinck.”
“I never saw him so moved as when he heard the news.”
“This delay frets him--he cursed the groom for that loose shoe----”
“Yet now it is too late.”
The speakers swung out into the corridor; soldiers both, richly dressed.
They took no notice of Maria, and her useless brain attached no meaning
to their presence or their words.
They strode out into the courtyard. The whole inn was full of noise and
confusion, sudden lights and runnings to and fro.
Maria stood forgotten, not heeding or caring anything. Then she heard
some one say, suddenly--
“The Prince is impatient to be gone----”
The Prince!
Her scattered wits caught at the word. She turned back into the
chamber, now bright from end to end with the light of the torches in
the courtyard outside; she took up the stiff white hand wrapped in the
stained lace.
“The Prince,” she said.
For a moment her clouded brain cleared; she stepped into the corridor,
looking about her, drawn erect.
The door of the parlour opposite was open wide now, and she could see,
by the light of a tallow candle set on the table, a young man sitting
gloomily, his cheek propped on his palm and his face hidden by his
chestnut hair.
Maria de Witt stepped into the small, sombre chamber.
“You are the Prince,” she said. “I saw you once in a _traineau_ on the
ice--you wore a mask, but I know you.”
William of Orange looked up, and stared across the smoky yellow light.
Seeing a lady splendidly dressed, her black hair on her shoulders, a
face horrified, and fierce and desperate eyes keenly regarding him, he
gave a little exclamation as he rose.
“You are the Prince,” she repeated.
His violet cloak fell apart over his cuirass and his lace cravat; he
made no answer as he moved slightly away.
“I wonder what I should say to you,” said Maria de Witt.
She put the thing she held at her breast down on the table between them.
“That is the hand of your enemy--are you proud of what you have done?”
He turned his head away with a sick look.
“Madame, who are you?”
“I am his wife.”
She looked fixedly at the Prince.
“_You_ are his murderer.”
He put his fingers to his lips and stared at the dead hand.
“Is this the hand of John de Witt?--I clasped it yesterday----”
“It is my husband’s hand.”
His great eyes travelled to her face.
“You are unsettled in your mind, lady. Have you no better shelter than
this?”
She struck her breast vehemently--
“I must curse you! Are you content--at last? You hated them so.”
“This is unendurable!--I--Madame,” he pushed his hair back from his low
brow,--“I am guiltless of this horror.”
“No!” she said softly, and her eyes flickered with an insane light.
“_They_ hang on a gibbet on the Plaats--what shall I wish you? You who
let it be?”
She pulled at her long lace collar, staring at the Prince.
The two soldiers re-entered the dim room, and gazed at the half-seen
figures in the tawny, fluttering light.
“Bentinck,” said William, “I shall be greatly shamed for this.”
Maria de Witt did not lower her dark eyes from his face.
“If you should ever love and then bear what I now bear,” she
whispered,--“would that be punishment?”
The three men stood motionless.
“If you should die childless with your work incomplete--would you be
punished then?”
William winced, and caught at M. Bentinck’s sleeve.
“They would have lived for me, Madame.”
Her proud poise relaxed; she fell into the chair the Prince had risen
from.
“God, God, God!” she said dully. “We must submit to Him--why did He not
save Cornelius?”
M. Zuylestein peered over the table.
“The hand of the Grand Pensionary,” he shuddered.
Maria de Witt slipped to her knees.
“They tortured him!” she cried, clasping her hands, “and my balm is all
spent----”
William of Orange gave her a wild glance.
“There are many hearts like to break before this task of mine is done,”
he said, “perhaps my own amongst them. Come away--my work will not
wait--I think those laggard knaves have shoed my horse--come away----”
_Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh_