Читать книгу I Will Maintain - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 10

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“Crowds came in on all sides, the streets were nearly impassable; windows, roofs, even masts and trees, black with spectators. The Abbey was so full of people in carriages and on foot that it was hardly possible to reach the Prince’s apartments. Nor must I forget to tell Your Highness that during the two hours the Prince stood at the window the civic militia fired salutes in his honour,—and they are still sending up fireworks from the Stadhuis. His Highness reached here yesterday at three o’clock; his yacht sailed through shipping dressed with flags, and these vessels answered his salutes with a triple discharge of their guns. The Magistrates of the town had come down to the quay to receive him; the burgher companies were under arms. He entered a coach and six and was conducted to the Abbey, where the Deputies of the State came to congratulate him. The councillor pensionary made a speech to him in their name, and the different representatives of the provincial government followed his example. To-morrow His Highness is to be conducted to the Hall of Assembly. The loyalty of the people is beyond a question.

“Prince John Maurice of Nassau hath remained at Bergen-op-Zoom, under pretence of illness, fearing to compromise himself in the eyes of the Government by sharing in this dangerous enterprise; but Your Highness need have no fear, the prudence of the Prince balances his youth, and he would have reason to complain of me if I did not say that his management of this affair has shown a wisdom far beyond his years.”

Lange Jan struck, after a prelude of dancing bells, the hour of two, and Mr. Bromley laid down his pen and looked round.

His own elation and excitement had found pleasurable vent in this letter to the Princess Dowager, which he wrote, by the Prince’s orders, to give some account of the reception in Middelburg. He had sat over it longer than he had thought; it was with some slight shock that he realised it to be deep into the night.

Middelburg was still at last. The crowds had departed from the courtyard of the Abbey, the bells had ceased to ring, the military salutes were hushed; the town lay silent under the September stars.

Mr. Bromley went to the small, pointed, Gothic window of his chamber and looked out.

Opposite, clear in the moonlight rose the three, pointed towers of the southern side of the Abbey; the windows projecting from the sloping roof threw distinct shadows, and the vanes on the three turrets turned slowly in the wind. Through the low-arched, dark gate, above which could be seen, carved deep in the stone, the Zeeland Lion rising from the waves, was the figure of the sentry walking up and down, the moonlight glittering on his halbert.

The courtyard was filled with trees, now almost bare of their leaves, that cast a dark tracery of shadow on the ground with their softly stirring branches.

Again the melancholy little air rang out, and Lange Jan struck a quarter past the hour. The sound was close and loud, since the Groote Kerk adjoined the Abbey wing and the tall clock-tower rose immediately behind Mr. Bromley’s room, a small chamber communicating with the Prince’s apartments.

These chimes, that at every quarter of an hour were ringing out over the Seven Provinces day and night, had a curious, almost uncanny meaning for the Englishman. He had never become used to them. Often, at the Hague, he would wake up to hear the chimes of the Groote Kerk, and always with a start; so loud, so insistent, yet so melancholy were these old bells, ringing out dutifully, as their long-dead makers had bidden them, as every fifteen minutes passed.

So had they rung here in Middelburg when the Counties of Holland stepped this Abbey; so did they ring in the sunny spaces of the afternoon above a silent town; and so in the utter stillness of the night their mournful carillon played unheeding the notes of warning, of sadness, of remembrance.

Mr. Bromley took his heavy brass candlestick from the table and placed it on the mantelshelf, put away his unfinished letter, and was about to undress when a soft knock upon the door interrupted him.

He opened it. M. Heenvliet, the Prince’s first gentleman-in-waiting, stood without, holding a candle. He was fully dressed.

“The Messenger from the Hague has arrived. I and M. Van Odyk were not yet abed, so saw him come up to the Abbey; M. Van Odyk thinks His Highness should see the letters now.”

“From whom are they?” asked Mr. Bromley.

“The Princess and M. de Witt.”

“They can wait till the morning—the Prince sleeps so ill.”

“M. Van Odyk thought he should have time to consider them before he makes his speech in the Assembly to-morrow.”

“Is every one else abed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I will go rouse His Highness,” said Mr. Bromley reluctantly. “Will you desire M. Van Odyk to come up with the letters?”

M. Heenvliet withdrew, and Mr. Bromley crossed to the adjoining chamber, a long, low apartment that the fitful light of his single candle showed hung with tapestries and to be plainly but richly furnished.

Middelburg Abbey had been the palace of the Prince’s ancestors, and still retained some of the splendour of those days.

At the farther end of this room was the door leading into the Prince’s bedroom. Mr. Bromley hesitated; he was inclined to think the letters might have waited. William slept badly at best, and to-night must need all that he could get of rest. There was no intermediary whom Mr. Bromley might consult since the Prince had left both valet and page at the Hague, having, indeed, no excuse for taking servants on a hunting expedition.

He knocked gently and received no answer.

Lange Jan shook his chimes into the night again. There was a pause as his melody died away, then Mr. Bromley opened the door.

The candle revealed a handsome, square room with a painted, beamed ceiling, walls hung with stamped leather, and two windows, unshuttered and set open. The moonlight streamed through and lay along the polished floor.

The bed, with its plain but richly worked hangings, stood fronting the window.

On a table at the foot were a silver candlestick, a couple of small books, and a watch lying on a lace handkerchief.

Across the high-backed, wooden chair beside the bed were spread the Prince’s green velvet riding-coat, his black sash, his gloves and Mechlin cravat, and hanging on the wall above his beaver with the long ostrich plume.

Another chair, set in a corner, and covered with a high Gothic canopy, held across its carved arms the Prince’s sword-belt and the piled up addresses presented to him yesterday.

Mr. Bromley paused. He could hear the regular, rather laboured, breathing of the sleeper, and no other sound.

He went up to the bed, and, shading the candle, looked down.

The curtains were gathered back within their cords, and revealed the Prince lying on his side, his head raised by a pile of pillows, his hands outside the coverlet.

Any one not knowing him so well as did Mr. Bromley would have been startled by the extreme pallor of the face, which had an almost deathlike look in contrast with the tumbled auburn hair. His whole appearance was more that of one in a swoon than in normal sleep, save that his lips were closed firmly and his fine nostrils quivered with his breathing.

“Your Highness,” said Mr. Bromley, and moved his hand so that the candlelight flashed over the bed.

William gave a little sigh and opened his great eyes.

“Is that you, Bromley?”

“Yes, Sir, it is I.”

The Prince sat up, in a moment alert and composed. It was wonderful how his eyes gave life and animation to his pale and frail appearance. The look of great delicacy so noticeable in his sleep seemed hardly there when his brilliant glance dominated his face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A Messenger from the Hague, Highness, with letters.”

“They could have waited till the morning,” answered William fretfully.

“One is from M. de Witt.”

“Still, it could have stayed. Ye need not have roused me for a message from M. de Witt.”

“Another is from the Princess Dowager.”

The Prince pushed the heavy hair back from his forehead.

“She is a silly old woman,” he declared, “and a letter from her does not interest me at all.”

Mr. Bromley, who had an unconfessed liking for the Princess, ventured to answer—

“Her Highness hath been under great anxiety as to your safety, Sir.”

“Oh, pshaw!” returned William. “She hath made her peace with the Republic by now. Who suggested waking me?”

“M. Van Odyk, Highness; he is coming up. He thought you would wish to consider these letters at once.”

“M. Van Odyk sometimes exceeds his duty,” remarked the Prince calmly. “And nothing any one can write or say will cause me to alter my intentions. I wish you would put that candle down, Bromley, it is flickering horribly.”

Mr. Bromley obeyed.

“It is caused by the open windows, Highness,” he answered. “No candle will burn straight in this draught.”

“Close them,” said the Prince petulantly.

Mr. Bromley again obeyed, forbearing to comment on the fact that the room was chilled with the night air, for he knew that the Prince could not sleep, or indeed hardly breathe, with the windows shut.

William leant back against the head of the bed; his lawn shirt, the sheets, pillows, and his face were turned to the same ivory hue in the candlelight.

“Why were you not abed, Bromley?” he asked.

“I was writing to the Princess, Highness.”

“Did you say Prince John Maurice had stayed at Bergen-op-Zoom?”

“Yes, Highness.”

“He will have told the Princess himself,” remarked William. “Being by now recovered of his sickness,” he added dryly.

“Shall I see if M. Van Odyk hath returned?” asked Mr. Bromley.

“Bring him here,” commanded William briefly.

The Englishman returned in the dark to his room, and reached it as M. Van Odyk appeared at the door.

“The Prince is awake and will see you—but he was not over pleased to be roused.”

“The matter is important,” answered M. Van Odyk.

Mr. Bromley had no more to say. William Van Odyk, rich, a connection of the House of Orange, clever, son of the man who was once the most trusted adviser of the Prince’s mother, had perhaps as much of William of Orange’s confidence as he ever bestowed on any one; for those placed about the Prince were not of his own choosing, he had always been too restricted to be able to find advisers or confidants. His grandmother he had never forgiven for her overtures to the republican party, and such men as he had given his rare friendship to, Cornelius Triglandt, the Lord of Zuylestein, and William Bentinck, had been removed from him by M. de Witt.

The few who had followed him to Middelburg he tolerated. He had no great trust in them, but relied on his own genius for command to make these, or any others, subservient to him.

When Mr. Bromley returned with M. Van Odyk to the Prince’s chamber, they found him half dressed and seated at the table at the foot of his bed snuffing the candle.

He looked up as they entered, and smiled with his eyes.

“Bromley,” he said, “I have absolutely no clothes at all—and those we begged from Prince John Maurice,” he added, with a touch of humour, “are so utterly too large.”

Mr. Bromley was compunctious.

“I am sorry, Highness—it was forgotten——”

“I can procure you anything you wish in the town to-morrow Highness,” interrupted M. Van Odyk.

“Nay, it is no matter,” answered the Prince, “only to-night I should have been grateful to the States of Zeeland for a dressing-gown. Now, where are these letters, Mynheer?”

M. Van Odyk laid them on the table, and Mr. Bromley withdrew.

The Prince picked up the letter from M. de Witt and opened it, bending closer to the candle.

William Van Odyk, Lord of Beverwaert, handsome, gay, worldly, a frivolous youth behind him and no ambitions ahead beyond the pleasure of an adventure, stood in the window embrasure and observed him curiously. So slight a boy to have thrown down this bold challenge to the power whom he regarded as a usurper, thereby destroying at a blow the policy of conciliation John de Witt had pursued so unflinchingly for eighteen years. But William of Orange had been pursuing his policy almost as long. A diplomat from his cradle, he had affected a resignation to his position that the Grand Pensionary had never doubted, and that the Lord of Beverwaert himself had been deceived in until within the last two years.

He recalled now, as he watched the Prince read his letter, with what interest he had followed William’s behaviour in the hands of the republican party. How he and other partisans of the House of Orange had had their hopes half crushed by the Prince’s taciturn gravity and natural reserve, which made it impossible to guess his real designs.

He had grown up in an atmosphere of adversity, been educated in a school of distrust; and the constant necessity he was under of concealing his passions had made him, while yet a child, an adept in dissimulation.

He had never made the slightest attempt to gain the affection or confidence of the faction always loyally supporting his House. He had neither the virtues nor the vices that are loved by the crowd; his life was austere, his tastes sober, he was rarely seen and always silent. Van Odyk was thinking now how little he really knew of him. Twice this boy’s age, and man of the world as he was, he had never drawn more from the Prince than his now almost public intention to claim the inheritance of his family.

The Lord of Beverwaert brought energy, talents, and goodwill to the cause, but little confidence. Of the mighty, almost regal, power that had once belonged to the House of Orange, nothing remained to this young man but the renown of his ancestors, and what force, courage, or strength he might find in himself.

William Van Odyk wondered, and fixed his pleasant blue eyes in such an intent fashion on the Prince that the latter looked up and glanced at him keenly.

“M. de Witt writes at length,” he said, and laid the letter down.

“To what purpose does he write?” asked the Lord of Beverwaert.

William motioned to the chair on the other side of the table.

“Will you not sit, Mynheer?”

Van Odyk took his place opposite to the Prince, and the solitary candle that illuminated them both showed a striking contrast in their persons: the Lord of Beverwaert, florid, fair, his gallant good looks displayed to advantage by his handsome red uniform, his gold baldric and bullion-fringed sash, tall, stoutly built, bearing every sign of easy, pleasant living, with eyes slightly dissipated, and a mouth a little full and soft in contour; the Prince, delicate, and even weakly, in appearance, his green coat flung on carelessly over his laced shirt, wearing riding-breeches and dusty top-boots, drooping a little as he sat with an air of weariness and gravity at variance with his years, yet conveying with every movement the charm of youth and an unconscious aristocratic grace, a precocious maturity stamped on his proud and composed features, yet showing in his brilliant eyes the fire of youthful blood and the energy of a haughty race.

He tore open the other letter, glanced over it and put it down.

“M. de Witt has seen the Princess,” he said. “She is, of course, frightened——”

“For your safety, Highness?”

“For her own share in this affair; flattered too, I think, by M. de Witt’s overtures. She never could resist tampering with the Republic—she has always injured me with her intrigues,” he added, with feeling.

“And M. de Witt?”

“He bids me take care what I say to the States of Zeeland, warns me that he withdraws his promise with regard to the Council of State—that he will, in fact, do all in his power to prevent my election, and that since I have proved myself his enemy he cannot treat me as his friend. There is a great deal more, very worthy matter, but that is the pith of it.”

He took up his grandmother’s letter.

“Her Highness would keep on good terms with M. de Witt. She advises me to say as little as possible here, and to return as quietly as may be.…”

“What do you think of this advice?” asked M. Van Odyk.

William gave him a quick, keen glance.

“Do you imagine that it could make any difference?”

“To your intentions, Highness?”

“Yes.”

“I think it will not, Highness,” smiled the Lord of Beverwaert.

“I shall speak in the Assembly as I intended to speak,” said the Prince composedly.

“Yet it would be worth a little prudence to secure the good graces of M. de Witt.”

The Prince’s eyes flickered over him at this in a manner conveying that M. Van Odyk had but a small share of William’s confidence or esteem.

“I have never lacked caution,” he said quietly; “and you know, Mynheer, that I had to forego M. de Witt’s good graces when I undertook this journey.”

“I know; but now the thing is done, you can excuse yourself——”

William interrupted.

“Mynheer, what use are the good graces of M. de Witt to me?”

The Lord of Beverwaert shrugged his shoulders.

“He represents the United Provinces.”

The Prince pushed back the heavy, reddish curls that gave such a marked character to his face.

“The United Provinces and I understand each other,” he answered impatiently, “without the intervention of M. de Witt.”

Then, seeing the look in M. Van Odyk’s face, he blushed with vexation lest he had been betrayed for once into an expression too outspoken.

“I shall offend M. de Witt no further than I can help,” he added, his manner instantly restrained again. He looked down at the Princess’s letter that he still held.

“We will return to the Hague to-morrow, Mynheer, and I will see Her Highness before she becomes enmeshed in intrigues.”

“You have not much confidence in Her Highness,” remarked the Lord of Beverwaert.

“What can one expect from a woman?” returned the Prince in a tone of quiet but boundless contempt. “I thank God I can take my affairs into my own hands,”—uncontrollable annoyance clouded his face,—“but for her I had never lost Orange—and my estates have been utterly mismanaged, it will be a month’s work straightening her accounts; the land hath been left unsold and I have as many debts as a captain of cavalry——”

He checked himself with his habitual distrust, as if he repented already of such a long speech, and rose, taking up the candle.

M. Van Odyk accepted his dismissal.

“I need not have disturbed Your Highness,” he said, rising.

“It is no matter,” answered the Prince, with a little cough.

Lange Jan struck, but neither noticed how his noisy chimes broke the stillness of the night, for each had heard such peals ringing out over the Seven Provinces every hour of every day and night since they could remember anything.

The Lord of Beverwaert took the candle from the Prince and opened the door.

“I forgot to tell Your Highness, a man came here—from the Hague. He desired to see you, but the crowd made it impossible. He wished to join your service. I do not think that it was a matter of any importance.”

“Who was he?” asked William, holding his brow.

“One Florent Van Mander, who has been with M. de Witt.”

“I remember him,” said the Prince.

“I told him to return to-morrow, Highness.”

“He is rather hasty in changing masters,” said William, with a half malicious smile in his eyes. “I cannot pay as well as M. de Witt—yet.”

“There are those would rather serve you, Highness, nevertheless.”

“Thank you, Mynheer.”

William held out his beautiful, aristocratic hand, and the Lord of Beverwaert kissed it.

“Good-night, Mynheer.”

“Shall I send Bromley to you, Highness?”

“No—I require nothing.”

But Van Odyk hesitated.

“You look very pale—I am remorseful that I disturbed you.”

“Oh, as to that,” the Prince gave a sudden, brilliant smile, “I have a damnable headache, which is too ordinary an affair to be remarked on, is it not? Do not rouse poor Bromley, and get to bed yourself, Mynheer.”

“Shall I not leave the candle, Highness?”

“Nay, I have another. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Highness.”

The Prince closed the door on the Lord of Beverwaert and returned to the table at the foot of his bed.

He began to strike the flint and tinder, but a sudden cough shook him so that he had to put the box down in order to hold his head, suddenly throbbing with acute agony.

For a while he sat quiet, drawing his breath painfully, then, at a second attempt, lit the candle, and the tall flame sprang up and mingled with the moonlight.

The Prince thrust the two letters into the pocket of his coat and moved the candle away from his eyes.

Then he drew towards him the books on the table: one a black-letter Bible with silver corners and clasps, the other, Idea or Portrait of a Christian Prince, by Cornelius Triglandt, humbly bound in black.

William languidly opened this, then glanced at the watch beside his elbow.

It was close on four o’clock.

Resting his head in his hand, he lifted his eyes and gazed at the moonlit square of window. He could see, rising opposite against the clear sky, the turrets of the Abbey, their weathervanes turning in the cold sea-wind, and the boughs of the elms decked scantily with their last leaves.

William glanced again at the book. It lay open at the fly-leaf that bore his arms, the lion rampant against the billets, and underneath his motto—

“Je sera Nassau, moi, je maintaindrai.”

The Prince put his hand down on the page and drew a quick but instantly repressed breath.

Over the sleeping city the old clock chimed again, the little ancient melody, the jangling strokes.

William leant back in the chair. The candle cast his shadow, moving and fantastic, on the wall behind him, drew out lines of red gold in his hair and threw a faint glow over his colourless features.

It was utterly silent save for his labouring breath. M. Triglandt’s book lay open beside the light that flickered over the motto engraved between fine flourishes—

“Je sera Nassau, moi, je maintaindrai.”