Chapter IX: Winter Time

The castle of Dillenburg was now a house of mourning, the Countess of Hoogstraaten now wore black also; all the women went softly, talking in whispers, and shuddering when a messenger rode into the courtyard.

Count John was desperately employed in raising money for the Prince; a further mortgage was put on such lands as they still could control, further portions of the Prince's possessions—those few he had retained for himself were sold; his chapel furniture was melted to obtain the gold and silver it contained, he had himself sold by auction all his camp equipment—even his horses, his weapons, his armour—leaving himself with one mount, one sword, one suit of mail like any poor trooper.

He had sent orders that his remaining household should be dismissed. Some had gone with Anne to Cologne; others, scenting ruin, had already dispersed; the remainder left, now returning to their homes or seeking other employment. The Prince, who had been the most richly attended of any man in the Netherlands, had now not one servant; and he, the splendour of whose garments had been one of the glories of the capital, now wrote to his brother to send him "Two more pair of hose—the mended silk ones in my cabinet and those under repair at the tailor"; he who had always been regally magnificent in his gifts, now besought John to "find a good grey horse, which might be paid for by one of the silver ornaments still remaining in my cabinet, or a piece of the chapel service," with which to reward one of his faithful agents.

He had tried to persuade his troops to take service with the French Huguenots, but they had refused, and demanded to be led back to Germany; he was accordingly at Strasburg, where he disbanded this army on which so many gallant hopes had been set, and which had ruined him so utterly.

The gloom deepened over Dillenburg, even John, usually so resolute and cheerful, appeared sombre; he too was almost ruined; his fortune and his children's heritage had largely vanished in this fruitless and fatal campaign; he saw himself burdened with debts and liabilities which it was scarcely possible he could ever repay.

The women cried in secret, but were outwardly serene, and Juliana of Stolberg wrote encouraging letters to the Prince and to Louis, and her dreads and terrors only showed for an instant in the words with which she besought them to have a care of Henry and not needlessly risk his young life.

In this household Rénèe le Meung still lingered, supported by the kindness of the Countess of Nassau and her daughters in what was the blackest period of her sad life.

In the flight of Anne she saw her own failure, the collapse of her own long years of patient labour—all had been useless. Anne had fulfilled her destiny, and the waiting-woman was left without occupation and without any object in life—behind her the wasted barren years, before her a hopeless future.

She was as bankrupt as the Prince and as lonely.

It was clear she could not remain at Dillenburg; she was but a burden and an encumbrance in a household beginning to be run with the strictest economy. Anne had fiercely refused to take her to Cologne, nor did Rénèe wish to go, for her influence over the Princess had ceased and Anne was openly defying her husband and her kinsfolk. She was living at Cologne surrounded by any rabble she could find to sympathize with her, and she had put her legal affairs—her frantic attempts to recover her property, and her wild expedients to raise money—into the hands of Jan Rubens, the Brussels' lawyer.

Rénèe sickened to think of this; her whole spirit was crushed by the misfortunes which had overwhelmed not only her country and her faith but all she cared for, and the little world in which she had moved and served.

There was no further occupation for her at Dillenburg; William's children were in charge of his mother and sisters and of the Landgravine Elisabeth, Count John's wife.

The Court of the Elector Palatine—that refuge of all persecuted Protestants—occurred to Rénèe; some German ladies she had known at Dresden were prepared to welcome her there.

She suggested this plan to the Countess of Nassau one heavy November day when they walked in the castle gardens to catch the faint chill glimpse of the winter sun.

"You, too, are eager to leave us!" exclaimed the Countess, who could not forget Anne's fierce denunciations of the dulness of the life at Dillenburg.

"No, Madame, no," said Rénèe eagerly; "but I must work—in some way I must justify my life—or die."

Juliana pressed her hand kindly.

"I know, my child, I know. There is indeed nothing but idleness for you here where we women are too many already."

"It is terrible to be a woman!" cried Rénèe. "Too many, ah yes, too many!"

"But we are not useless," said the Countess gently.

The waiting-woman answered with passionate conviction—

"Not such women as you with five sons!—but women such as I! I am like a dead leaf before the breeze; if I am cast away and lost, no one will be the poorer. If I had been a man, however mean and humble, I could have followed—followed," she avoided the Prince's name, "the Protestant flag—I could have at least died. It is not even permitted to women to die nobly."

The Countess looked at her curiously and was silent. To Juliana also the enclosed life of a woman seemed at times terrible; there was something awful in this post in the background, always to be patient, always serving, always waiting—worst of all, the waiting.

At that moment the fate of the women seemed worse than that of the men; their piteous figures stood out mournfully against the red background of the persecutions and the war: Sabina of Egmont left starving with her children at the mercy of the man who had slain her husband; the Dowager Countess of Hoorne, having lost one son on the scaffold, moving heaven and earth to save the other from a similar fate; Hélène, Montigny's wife, widowed after a four month's marriage, and weeping a husband enclosed in the hopeless depths of a Spanish prison; the Countess of Hoogstraaten, ruined, thrice bereaved; the Countess of Aremberg suddenly widowed; and all those more obscure women who were orphaned, bereft of husband and child, spurned from their dismantled homes to beg or starve.

Perhaps it was better to be a man and face a swift death in the open field.

"But we have no choice," said the Countess, with a little smile that creased her fresh wrinkled face; "we must do what falls to our lot and not think of the difficulties."

"What falls to me?" asked Rénèe; "no one wants me, nor ever has since my mother died. The Princess always hated me. I made no friends; my home, my family, was swept away in a ruin that has pursued everything I have loved or cared for ever since—my country, my faith, my——"

She checked herself suddenly and went pale.

"... Your love?" finished the Countess softly. "Surely you have loved some one?"

Rénèe hesitated a moment then answered in a low voice—

"Yes, I loved. Some one who is not of my station and who hardly knows my name nor my face. He—he went to the war, and he, like all, is quite ruined now and quite desolate. Probably I shall never see him again."

She stopped suddenly and faced the Countess, her warm rich beauty glowing in the grey air against the grey background of garden wall and castle.

"That is my story and my life," she said. "What would you do with such a life, Madame?"

Truly the Countess did not know; her own years had been so full that she could not picture an empty existence.

"You cannot understand," added Rénèe, "what it is to mourn the loss of what you never had."

"You will love again," said the Countess, whose outlook was eminently practical and sane, "or at least you will take a husband, and then your life will be full."

"Some women love once only, alas for them!" answered Rénèe, "perhaps it is a foolishness, but one cannot change one's heart."

Then she shrank into herself and was once more enfolded in reserve deeper than before, as if afraid of having said too much.

The sun had disappeared now, to be seen no more that day, and dark clouds full of rain or perhaps snow closed over the sky. The two women returned to the castle, which was cheerful with the light of great wood fires and pleasant with the sound of children playing.

By the hooded chimney-piece of the dining-room, where the meal was being already prepared, sat Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist. He had been sent by his master, who still placed implicit faith in his charts and tables, to persuade Count John that further exertions on the behalf of the Netherlands were useless, and that the stars plainly indicated that the Prince should return to Germany and not risk his fortunes further.

It was strange to Rénèe to see the old man and recall how she had last seen him at the brilliant Leipsic wedding, and to think of all that had gone between, and how that famous marriage had ended, and yet how, in a circle, things had come round, and how Augustus was still consulting the stars and casting horoscopes and charts, and the alchemist still searching for the Philosopher's Stone and only a little greyer and more bent than before.

His talk was still of his experiments; outside events had touched him very little, and he took but a slight interest in the tasks of fortune-telling the Elector, his patron, set him. His eyes were still fixed on the Great Discovery, the _magnum opus_—eternal gold, eternal youth, eternal health—and in the pursuit of this object, for which he had lost both gold, youth, and health, he was as eager and as sanguine as he had ever been.

He remembered Rénèe, and asked if she still had the charm he had given her; she showed it to him instantly, her only ornament, hidden in the folds of her cambric vest.

She asked the old man if he had heard of Duprès, and he told her calmly, without surprise, that the skryer, after escaping from the bloody rout of Jemmingen, had returned to him at Dresden and begged to be taken into his old master's service.

"They always return at length these restless rascals," added Vanderlinden. "And I have taken him back, for he is clever, and when the mood is on him can raise the spirits in the crystal."

So Duprès' tale had ended in a circle too, and he was back again at his old employment under his old master; somehow Rénèe was glad that he was not in Cologne.

The Countess of Nassau joined the two as they stood and talked by the fire.

"Well, Magister," she said, "do you still hope to find the Philosopher's Stone?"

"I do not despair at all, Your Excellency," he answered quietly.

"But if there is no such stone?" asked the Countess.

He smiled as one who cannot restrain his amusement at the foolishness of the ignorant.

"It has been discovered, Madame, many times," he answered gently.

"And always lost again?"

"And always lost."

"That is strange, Magister, that more care was not taken to preserve such a secret."

"Ah, Madame, it is too great a thing to be lightly imparted from one man to another; it can only be attained after much labour, much suffering, prayer, and humiliation."

"It would change the world," said Rénèe, and she thought of the Prince and how gold was all the difference between success and failure. William had failed through lack of it; for that reason Alva might fail too.

"It would be a terrible power," added the Countess thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is as well that it is not often discovered."

The old man stroked his beard and looked into the fire silently; he seemed so humble, so serene, so insignificant, that Rénèe wondered why he was so eager for gold and power. Then she thought that perhaps he cared for neither, and that he had pitted himself against this secret as William had pitted himself against Philip, and that in both it was not the thought of the reward that urged them on to undertake tasks seemingly impossible, but the glory of the struggle, the mighty pleasure of overcoming, the ultimate hope of attainment.

"And my sons?" asked Juliana of Stolberg; "what disastrous prophecies have you made against the House of Nassau?"

Vanderlinden came from his dreams with a sigh.

"They might all be safe if they would be warned," he said. "Your Excellency heard that an astrologer warned Count Hoorne not to go to Brussels? And yet he went and died."

"A brave man cannot take these warnings," said the Countess stoutly. "It is not for Princes and leaders to count the cost of the steps they make, nor to think of their own lives."

"Then my charts and tables are useless," replied the alchemist.

"They please the Elector," said Juliana.

The alchemist was silent; he knew himself that his prophecies did little more than amuse his master.

"You shall speak to Count John, as the Elector bade you," resumed the Countess, "but you will not suppose that any one can turn back the Count nor his brothers from what they have set their hands to."

She spoke with pride and courage, but sorrowfully, as one who sees clearly and unfalteringly ahead and sees nothing but grief and trouble.

With an unconscious gesture of patience she folded her hands together and looked at the window against which big drops of rain were beginning to splash.

Her thoughts had returned to her three defeated sons at Strasburg, as the alchemist's thoughts had returned to the Elixir of life and wealth. Rénèe, standing between them, felt forgotten by both; she, too, was thinking of Strasburg and of the man there disbanding his troops in humiliation and failure.