When Joris Van Heemskirk received this letter, he was very much excited by its contents. Putting aside his joy at the return of his beloved daughter, he perceived that the hour expected for years had really struck. The true sympathy that had been so long in his heart, he must now boldly express; and this meant in all probability a rupture with most of his old associates and friends—Elder Semple in the kirk, and the Matthews and Crugers and Baches in the council.
He was sitting in the calm evening, with unloosened buckles, in a cloud of fragrant tobacco, talking of these things. "It is full time, come what will," said Lysbet. "Heard thou what Batavius said last night?"
"Little I listen to Batavius."
"But this was a wise word. 'The colonists are leaving the old ship,' he said; 'and the first in the new boat will have the choice of oars.'"
"That was like Batavius, but I will take higher counsel than his."
Then he rose, put on his hat, and walked down his garden; and, as he slowly paced between the beds of budding flowers, he thought of many things,—the traditions of the past struggles for freedom, and the irritating wrongs that had imbittered his own experience for ten years. There was plenty of life yet in the spirit his fathers had bequeathed to him; and, as this and that memory of wrong smote it, the soul-fire kindled, glowed, burned with passionate flame. "Free, God gave us this fair land, and we will keep it free. There has been in it no crowns and sceptres, no bloody Philips, no priestly courts of cruelty; and, in God's name, we will have none!"
He was standing on the river-bank; and the meadows over it were green and fair to see, and the fresh wind blew into his soul a thought of its own untrammelled liberty. He looked up and down the river, and lifted his face to the clear sky, and said aloud, "Beautiful land! To be thy children we should not deserve, if one inch of thy soil we yielded to a tyrant. Truly a vaderland to me and to mine thou hast been. Truly do I love thee." And then, his soul being moved to its highest mark, he answered it tenderly, in the strong-syllabled mother-tongue that it knew so well,—
"Indien ik u vergeet, o Vaderland! zoo vergete mijne regter-hand zich zelve!"
Such communion he held with himself until the night came on, and the dew began to fall; and Lysbet said to herself, "I will walk down the garden: perhaps there is something I can say to him." As she rose, Joris entered, and they met in the centre of the room. He put his large hands upon her shoulders, and, looking solemnly in her face, said, "My Lysbet, I will go with the people; I will give myself willingly to the cause of freedom. A long battle is it. Two hundred years ago, a Joris Van Heemskirk was fighting in it. Not less of man than he was, am I, I hope."
There was a mist of tears over his eyes—a mist that was no dishonour; it only showed that the cost had been fully counted, and his allegiance given with a clear estimate of the value and sweetness of all that he might have to give with it. Lysbet was a little awed by the solemnity of his manner. She had not before understood the grandeur of such a complete surrender of self as her husband had just consummated. But never had she been so proud of him. Everything commonplace had slipped away: he looked taller, younger, handsomer.