Lange Jan struck, after a prelude of dancing bells, the hour of two, and Mr. Bromley laid down his pen and looked round.
His own elation and excitement had found pleasurable vent in this letter to the Princess Dowager, which he wrote, by the Prince’s orders, to give some account of the reception in Middelburg. He had sat over it longer than he had thought; it was with some slight shock that he realised it to be deep into the night.
Middelburg was still at last. The crowds had departed from the courtyard of the Abbey, the bells had ceased to ring, the military salutes were hushed; the town lay silent under the September stars.
Mr. Bromley went to the small, pointed, Gothic window of his chamber and looked out.
Opposite, clear in the moonlight rose the three, pointed towers of the southern side of the Abbey; the windows projecting from the sloping roof threw distinct shadows, and the vanes on the three turrets turned slowly in the wind. Through the low-arched, dark gate, above which could be seen, carved deep in the stone, the Zeeland Lion rising from the waves, was the figure of the sentry walking up and down, the moonlight glittering on his halbert.
The courtyard was filled with trees, now almost bare of their leaves, that cast a dark tracery of shadow on the ground with their softly stirring branches.
Again the melancholy little air rang out, and Lange Jan struck a quarter past the hour. The sound was close and loud, since the Groote Kerk adjoined the Abbey wing and the tall clock-tower rose immediately behind Mr. Bromley’s room, a small chamber communicating with the Prince’s apartments.
These chimes, that at every quarter of an hour were ringing out over the Seven Provinces day and night, had a curious, almost uncanny meaning for the Englishman. He had never become used to them. Often, at the Hague, he would wake up to hear the chimes of the Groote Kerk, and always with a start; so loud, so insistent, yet so melancholy were these old bells, ringing out dutifully, as their long-dead makers had bidden them, as every fifteen minutes passed.
So had they rung here in Middelburg when the Counties of Holland stepped this Abbey; so did they ring in the sunny spaces of the afternoon above a silent town; and so in the utter stillness of the night their mournful carillon played unheeding the notes of warning, of sadness, of remembrance.
Mr. Bromley took his heavy brass candlestick from the table and placed it on the mantelshelf, put away his unfinished letter, and was about to undress when a soft knock upon the door interrupted him.