Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch

by H. Rider Haggard

“I and all my house, my father, my mother, my sister, and the maiden whom I am to marry. They told me at The Hague that I must seek of you or the young Heer Pieter van de Werff, knowledge of those things which we of the Faith need to know; who are to be trusted, and who are not to be trusted; where prayer is held, and where we may partake of the pure Sacrament of God the Son.”

Dirk took his cousin’s hand and pressed it. The pressure was returned, and thenceforward brother could not have trusted brother more completely, for now between them was the bond of a common and burning faith.

Such bonds the reader may say, tie ninety out of every hundred people to each other in the present year of grace, but it is not to be observed that a like mutual confidence results. No, because the circumstances have changed. Thanks very largely to Dirk van Goorl and his fellows of that day, especially to one William of Orange, it is no longer necessary for devout and God-fearing people to creep into holes and corners, like felons hiding from the law, that they may worship the Almighty after some fashion as pure as it is simple, knowing the while that if they are found so doing their lot and the lot of their wives and children will be the torment and the stake. Now the thumbscrew and the rack as instruments for the discomfiture of heretics are relegated to the dusty cases of museums. But some short generations since all this was different, for then a man who dared to disagree with certain doctrines was treated with far less mercy than is shown to a dog on the vivisector’s table.

Little wonder, therefore, that those who lay under such a ban, those who were continually walking in the cold shadow of this dreadful doom, clung to each other, loved each other, and comforted each other to the last, passing often enough hand-in-hand through the fiery gates to that country in which there is no more pain. To be a member of the New Religion in the Netherlands under the awful rule of Charles the Emperor and Philip the King was to be one of a vast family. It was not “sir” or “mistress” or “madame,” it was “my father” and “my mother,” or “my sister” and “my brother;” yes, and between people who were of very different status and almost strangers in the flesh; strangers in the flesh but brethren in spirit.

It will be understood that in these circumstances Dirk and Brant, already liking each other, and being already connected by blood, were not slow in coming to a complete understanding and fellowship.

There they sat in the window-place telling each other of their families, their hopes and fears, and even of their lady-loves. In this, as in every other respect, Hendrik Brant’s story was one of simple prosperity. He was betrothed to a lady of The Hague, the only daughter of a wealthy wine-merchant, who, according to his account, seemed to be as beautiful as she was good and rich, and they were to be married in the spring. But when Dirk told him of his affair, he shook his wise young head.

“You say that both she and her aunt are Catholics?” he asked.

“Yes, cousin, this is the trouble. I think that she is fond of me, or, at any rate, she was until a few days since,” he added ruefully, “but how can I, being a ‘heretic,’ ask her to plight her troth to me unless I tell her? And that, you know, is against the rule; indeed, I scarcely dare to do so.”

“Had you not best consult with some godly elder who by prayer and words may move your lady’s heart till the light shines on her?” asked Brant.

“Cousin, it has been done, but always there is the other in the way, that red-nosed Aunt Clara, who is a mad idolator; also there is the serving-woman, Greta, whom I take for little better than a spy. Therefore, between the two of them I see little chance that Lysbeth will ever hear the truth this side of marriage. And yet how dare I marry her? Is it right that I should marry her and therefore, perhaps, bring her too to some dreadful fate such as may wait for you or me? Moreover, now since this man Montalvo has crossed my path, all things seem to have gone wrong between me and Lysbeth; indeed but yesterday her door was shut on me.”