VERY early next morning Adrian came home from the Prinsen-hof. Yet the streets were thronged already with citizens, who were crowding to the churches to pray for the Prince; and Adrian had the joy of giving many of them, in passing, the tidings that he was still alive, and holding his ground. But, at his own door, Neeltje met him with a scared face, and, too frightened even to find an appropriate proverb, told him in plain Dutch, that the Juffrouw had been talking nonsense all night about spies and Jesuits, and murderers and martyrs. Dame Catherine was with her now: Mynheer Wallingford had never once come near her, which was strange. What was the good of being betrothed at all, if one’s betrothed was never in the way when he was wanted?
The moment Adrian saw his sister, he knew she was in brain-fever; and he was not surprised. He quickly made such arrangements as occurred to him, prescribed the usual remedies, and gave full directions about her to Dame Catherine and to Neeltje, entreating them to watch her carefully. But he was himself obliged to hasten back to the Prinsen-hof, to attend a consultation of physicians appointed for an early hour.
Later in the day, he entered the cathedral to join the praying multitude, many of whom never left the churches from morning till night during those days of intense public anxiety. He found himself near Dirk, who drew him aside as they came out.
‘Tell me, Mynheer,’ said he, in great excitement, ‘what is the meaning of this?’ He pointed to a placard on the wall, where, amongst other notices relating to the great crime, there was offered a reward for the apprehension of one calling himself Edward Wallingford, and hitherto supposed to be an English gentleman. ‘Is it a mistake in the name—or what?’ asked the bewildered Dirk.
Whereupon Adrian told him the whole terrible story, speaking with that clear, trenchant simplicity which, when strongly moved, he could always command.
Dirk’s amazement may be imagined. He could not understand how an impostor could have deceived everybody for so long a time. His expressions of half-incredulous wonder struck rather painfully on the ear of Adrian, and made him curse his own dreamy abstraction and want of observation more bitterly than before. ‘I can see you think me a fool,’ he said. ‘But, remember, even Marie was deceived at first. We had not seen him for more than five years—and years spent, as we thought, in close prison, which changes men so sorely. Then latterly, I thought they had done something—given him some potion, perhaps— which had made him other than he used to be. But I was a fool indeed not to have suspected.’
Dirk’s hand sought his with a touch that spoke volumes. ‘It is not the fools, but the wise and good men, who think no evil,’ he said. ‘And perhaps, after all,’ he added, he has nothing to do with the deed. Every spy is not a murderer. Adrian shook his head. ‘He is a Jesuit,’ he said, ‘and a Jesuit Catechism has been found upon Jean Jauregay.’
‘That may have no more significance than the other strange things he had about him, by way of charms,’ said Dirk: ‘bits of hare skin, a dried toad, a wax-taper, an Agnus Dei. Oh, Mynheer, the horror of it!’ he broke out suddenly. ‘Agnus Dei—Lamb of God!—amongst those silly heathenish baubles, and counted just like one of them! Think of his tablets, written all over with prayers, to the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel, and the Saviour, and the Saviour’s Son! with promises to them all, if they would prosper him in his devil’s work Christ—our Lord Jesus Christ—was to have “a new coat of costly pattern!”’
‘Well,’ said Adrian, ‘he stands in His presence now, where all is true, and all lies are swept away. And, I think, it will go less ill with him there than with the abler and cooler villains who made him their tool. Hast heard of this morning’s discoveries?’
‘No. I heard yesterday that Vinero, Anastro’s cashier, and Zimmerman, a Dominican friar who lived in his house, had been apprehended, but I know not on what grounds, save that Jauregay was a clerk of Anastro’s.’
‘I can tell you a great deal more. This morning the watchmen at the city-gates brought the mail-bags, by order, direct to the magistrates in the Town Hall. Letters were found from Anastro, which fatally compromise the cashier and the monk.’
‘Where is Anastro?’
‘Safe in the lines of Parma. The crafty villain has known how to slip his own neck out of the noose.’
‘I suppose Wallingford has also slipped out of the town,’ Dirk observed.
‘I don’t believe he could,’ answered Adrian, ‘so strict is the watch kept at the quays and at all the gates. Anastro got off, you see, before the event. But, Dirk, I pray of thee, come home with me, for I need thee sore.’
‘That will I, Mynheer, if in aught I can help thee.’
‘Can a son help a father, Dirk?’
Dirk went with him, and, in the dark days that followed his services were invaluable.
Vinero, the cashier of Anastro, a young man of three or four-and-twenty, made a full confession the next day. Greed, rather than fanaticism, was at the bottom of the plot. Anastro, finding himself on the verge of bankruptcy, thought of the murder of the Prince as a means of retrieving his ruined fortunes. But the wary merchant did not trust for his reward to the word of King Philip, as set forth in the Ban. Through an agent, named Yssunca, he arranged the matter with the monarch himself, and obtained from him, signed with, his hand and sealed with his seal, a premise that, if he took the life of the Prince, he should receive 80,000 ducats and the cross of Sant’ Jago! ‘Alas for Sant’ Jago,’ the battle-shout that rang so proudly over many a well-fought field, where Moor and Christian triumphed with glory or fell with honor! Alas for Spanish chivalry, dragged in the dust by him who should have been its guardian, the Catholic King!
Anastro and his cashier took counsel together, and agreed to entrust the execution of the business to young Jauregay, a Biscayan like themselves, and known for his determined and obstinate character. The poor dupe was quite willing, enticed by the promise of both an earthly and a heavenly recompense. So ignorant was he, that Anastro persuaded him that immediately after the deed he would be rendered invisible, through the intervention of the saints! He had not the least idea how to use a pistol, so Anastro was obliged to have him secretly instructed in the art by one whom he could trust, but whose name had not transpired. Zimmerman supplied the element of fanaticism, which seems to have been wholly wanting in Anastro and Vinero: he said Mass every day for the success of the enterprise, and filled the mind of Jauregay with the superstitious fables that hired him to his Boom.
The unraveling of this web of greed and meanness, of fraud and folly, happily removed suspicion from the innocent. Especially it exonerated the French, the plot being manifestly and wholly Spanish. But this brought small consolation to the aching hearts in the Prinsen-hof, as they watched, hour by hour, the long struggle between life and death. If anything could have comforted them, it would have been the knowledge that millions were hoping, fearing, praying, along with them. What the men of Leyden said, in their letter of condolence, expressed the thought of all: ‘In the death of the Prince we all foresee our own death.’
Wednesday, the 21st of March, was given over wholly, in Antwerp, to fasting and prayer. All work and amusements were forbidden, by order of the magistrates; and never was order more willingly and more universally obeyed.
The precious life hung by a thread. But as the slow days passed, the thread began to grow a little stronger, a little firmer in its hold. In another week men were venturing to tell one another there was hope.
It was the following Wednesday, the 28th of March. From every pair of Antwerp the citizens were streaming in crowds to the Grande Place. They were going to see an execution: and at what time, in the history of mankind, have men not been eager to behold ‘the mysteries in the face of death’? Many an illustrious, innocent victim died in those days, under the eyes of thousands, on the scaffold, or at the stake. But these victims were not illustrious—only a Dominican friar and a merchant’s clerk—nor were they innocent; they were the convicted and confessed in a crime of deepest dye. Not curiosity alone, but indignation and horror, made men throng to witness their well-earned punishment. So fierce was the wrath against them, that, only for the precautions taken by the magistrates, old Antwerp might have witnessed that day a specimen of what would now be called ‘Lynch Law.’
Dirk, who had no taste for such scenes, was passing quickly along by the church of St. Michael. He had been up all night with Marie, who was in violent delirium, and needed a strong man to control her. St. Michael’s was the only church in Antwerp which was then in the possession of the Catholics; and although, by order of Anjou, whose palace adjoined it, Masses were said there continually for the recovery of the Prince, those who frequented the unpopular worship were looked upon with some suspicion by their fellow-citizens. Dirk saw that a couple of apprentices seemed disposed to deal roughly with a man who wished to enter—a shabby, ill-dressed fellow, looking like a journeyman out of work. One of the lads seized his arm rudely, as if to drag him away, and Dirk noticed that he winced and staggered, as though he were hurt.
‘Perhaps he is ill,’ he thought, looking at his face; but the man’s very dark complexion showed no change of color. The hair that appeared under his ragged cap, and his shaggy, unkempt beard, were coal-black; Dirk thought he must be Spaniard or an Italian. But he addressed him in Flemish, and found himself understood.
‘If you want to go in there, no man shall hinder you,’ he said.
‘He is a Papist!’ cried the youth who had seized him by the arm. ‘He is going to pray for the villains who killed the Prince.’
‘And if he were, my friend,’ said Pastor Grandpére, who happened to come up at that moment, ‘hast never heard who prayed for His murderers on the cross?’
Dirk passed on, glad enough to leave the matter in the hands of the pastor, as he had gone to fetch something needed in the sick-room, and did not care to be absent long. At a few words of rebuke from Grandpére, the lads slipped away abashed; then he turned to the man.
‘Pray, if you will, for Vinero and Zimmerman,’ the pastor said, ‘but make haste, for they will soon be beyond your prayers: though I am aware you Catholics think not thus.’
‘There will be time enough—even before,’ said the stranger, ‘with something like a shudder. To such as they, death comes slowly.’
‘Not to these. Have you not heard? Their great crime bears no greater penalty than had they struck at the meanest life among us. In any other country in the world they would be broken on the wheel, or torn by wild horses.’
‘Of course. Why not here?’
‘Because the man they sought to slay wrote with his own hand entreating grace for them.’
The stranger was silent. Grandpére looked at him more attentively, and noticed that, though his complexion was of the darkest, his eyes were blue, and that they were full of tears.
He went on: ‘By the Prince’s will they have been used throughout with all justice, and with all gentleness possible in the circumstances. During the trial no torture was employed; and now they die only by the cord, like ordinary malefactors.’
‘Do you think that is well done, Mynheer?’ the stranger asked, drawing a little nearer. ‘Would it not have been more wise to make them a terror to others, who, tempted the great reward offered in the Ban, might try what they triad, and with better success?’
‘I think the Prince will scarce repent it, when he comes to stand before a Judge who Himself has suffered, and forgiven.’
‘Sir, you speak like a good and Christian man. Will you do me a favor?’
‘Willingly, my poor fellow. I can guess what thou wouldest of me. Thy clothing cries out upon an empty purse.’
‘No, not that. |iI| thank your worthiness, but I need no alms. Although I am out of work, I have friends. I used to be a baker’s journeyman, and serve with bread the household of Dr. Adrian Pernet, in the Place aux Gants.’
‘Ah! I thought I knew thy voice. I must have heard thee crying thy French rolls and the like.’
‘Many a good word have I had from that sweet lady, Dr. Pernet’s sister,’ the man went on. ‘And now I hear she is sick, and like to die. Mynheer, can you tell me if this be true?’
‘Too sadly true,’ the pastor said. ‘She is sore stricken.’
‘She lies at the gate of death, raving in delirium, knowing no one, not even the brother she loves.’
The stranger raised his hand to his head, and for some moments did not speak, while the pastor too stood silent, and watched him rather curiously. At last he asked, in a low voice, ‘Is there any hope?’
‘Her life, like the Prince’s, is in the Hand of God. I cannot read His purpose, but I think He means to take her to Himself. Better so—for her.’
‘There was another silence, then the poor man said, turning towards the church I thank you, sir. I will go in here and pray for her, and for the Prince.’
As he entered, the death-bell from the cathedral, which had been tolling all the time they spoke, ceased suddenly. Two souls had gone to their account, sinful but repentant, having humbly confessed their crime, asked pardon of God and man, and owned the justice of their doom.
Austen Wallingford sank upon a bench in the almost empty church. He was faint with the mingling of many emotions; and his face, but for the walnut-juice that stained would have shown a deadly paleness. He ought to have been relieved from a terrible dread. He had had every reason to fear that the criminals, under torture, would have revealed the name of Jauregay’s instructor, which they both knew. Then the search for him would have become tenfold hotter, and he could scarcely have escaped it. If discovered, his doom was sealed. As it was, there was nothing definite to connect him with the great crime. A reward indeed was offered for his apprehension, but in the intense general excitement his case had been in a measure overlooked, if not forgotten. He thought it would not be difficult, when the fever of the public mind had abated somewhat, to make good his escape to England, or elsewhere.
Yet he was not relieved; he was crushed—crushed beneath a double burden of remorse and anguish. If Marie died, would he not be her murderer? And for what had he taken her blood upon his soul? Anastro’s plot, if he had not meddled with it, would still have been carried out. Some one else, he supposed, would have taught Jauregay; and of the moral aid he had given the conspirators, the courage he had inspired them with, the prayers he had offered for them, he scarcely thought then. He seemed, to himself, as one who had ‘wrought no deliverance in the earth.’
Was the deliverance wrought at all? Would the Prince live or die? Austen, of course, desired his death —what else? Yet he did not hate, he even rather admired him, as a brave man may admire unblamed ‘a foeman worthy of his steel.’ Hot shame rushed over him as he realized that this enemy of the Faith had won a genuine victory. Wounded sore, probably dying, still he had his triumph over the Ban, its author, and its executioners. For cruelty is the offspring of fear, and in that they could not make him stoop to cruelty, he proved that they could not make him yield to fear.
Austen fulfilled his promise to Grandpére. He prayed passionately for the life of Marie; and although for the other life in peril he could not pray, he could pray, and he did, for the salvation of a soul with which, in other circumstances, his own would have known how to sympathize.