The man of iron soul is kneeling before the altar piece, from which his daughter’s eyes look down at him, and sobbing—he who never sobbed before.
It is the last Alva has of his child in this world from now on. After the beautiful being who had been the joy of his declining years turns her back on him, fortune turns her face from him also. Though he wins Haarlem, and his executioners, five of them, working day and night, butcher the burghers of that hapless town and kill the bravest defenders of its walls, Ripperda, Hasselaer, and its other heroes of heroes; Don Fernando fails at the siege of Alkmaar.
He is not the Alva of old; and when some months after he departs for Spain he goes broken in mind and body, having lost the confidence of his king, but gained the immortal infamy of being the most cruel man of a most cruel age—all his unpaid creditors in Holland and Brabant shout execrations as he leaves their shores; they do not know the true story of his statue.
Even Requesens, the succeeding Viceroy, believing his soldiers’ rumors, tears Alva’s great image down, and goes to digging for his treasure—to find naught but the wondrous casket that contained it.
But the Duke takes with him to Spain one thing; [[268]]that he now values most of all on earth—the altar piece painted by the genius of Oliver, and it is set up on high behind the grand altar in the cathedral near Vittoria, where my lord of Alva worships. Soon peasant tales are told that he of iron heart cries each day before the Madonna, for the myriad lives that had been lost to the world through him in the Low Countries. And now in after years that picture is attributed to the early brush of Murillo, and goes to make that Master’s glory—tourists being told it is without price.
So the dead Oliver lost even renown. His genius went to give another fame; his body tossed into his own beloved Y; his head thrown into Haarlem as carrion. He died that Holland might live free, that a new age might come when men could live their own lives, think their own thoughts, and cry out to God in their own way. He has only the glory of the patriot—but is not that enough?
From the sight of her father’s despair and humiliation Guy carries his bride to the landing-place. Here all his boats await him, the seamen rapidly bringing down such of Hermoine’s belongings as they can readily put hands upon, Alida, the Moorish girl, directing them. Finally, her mistress’s jewel case in her hand, she takes seat by Hermoine in the stern sheets of the gig.
Then Chester calls to his men and the seamen bending to their oars, the gig parts the waters of the Schelde making toward the Dover Lass.
“Dost remember our last boating on this river together?” whispers Guy, into the ear of his bride. “The unknown lady, who was to promote me to a Colonel, eh?”