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----”

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