Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/44

9, 1859.] They entered Rotterdam by the Schiedamze Poort; and, as Gerard was unacquainted with the town, Peter directed him the way to the Hooch Straet, in which the Stadthouse was. He himself was going with Margaret to his cousin, in the Ooster Waagen Straet; so almost on entering the gate, their roads lay apart. They bade each other a friendly adieu, and Gerard dived into the great town. A profound, an aching sense of solitude, fell upon him, yet the streets were crowded. Then he lamented too late that, out of delicacy, he had not asked his late companions who they were and where they lived.

“Beshrew my shamefacedness!” said he. “But their words and their breeding were above their means, and something whispered me they would not be known. I shall never see her more. Oh! weary world, I hate you and your ways. To think I must meet beauty and goodness and learning—three pearls of price,—and never see them more!”

Falling into this sad reverie, and letting his body go where it would, he lost his way; but presently meeting a crowd of persons all moving in one direction, he mingled with them, for he argued they must be making for the Stadthouse. Soon the noisy troop that contained the moody Gerard emerged, not upon the Stadthouse, but upon a large meadow by the side of the Maas; and then the attraction was at once revealed. Games of all sorts were going on: wrestling, the game of palm, the quintain, legerdemain, archery, tumbling, in which art, I blush to say, women as well as men performed, to the great delectation of the company. There was also a trained bear, which stood on his head, and stood upright and bowed with prodigious gravity to his master; and a hare that beat a drum, and a cock that strutted on little stilts disdainfully. These things made Gerard laugh now and then; but the gay scene could not really enliven it, for his heart was not in tune with it. So, hearing a young man say to his fellow that the Duke had been in the meadow, but was gone to the Stadthouse to entertain the burgomasters and aldermen and the competitors for the prizes, and their friends, he suddenly remembered he was hungry, and should like to sup with a prince. He left the river-side, and this time he found the Hooch Straet, and it speedily led him to the Stadthouse. But when he got there he was refused, first at one door, then at another, till he came to the great gate of the court-yard. It was kept by soldiers, and superintended by a pompous major-domo, glittering in an embroidered collar and a gold chain of office, and holding a white staff with a gold knob. There was a crowd of persons at the gate endeavouring to soften this official rock. They came up in turn like ripples, and retired to make way for others equally unsuccessful. It cost Gerard a struggle to get near him, and when he got within four heads of the gate, he saw something that made his heart beat: there was Peter, with Margaret on his arm, soliciting humbly for entrance.

“My cousin the alderman is not at home. They say he is here.”

“What is that to me, old man?”

“If you will not let us pass in to him, at least take this leaf from my tablet to my cousin. See, I have written his name: he will come out to us.”

“For what do you take me? I carry no messages. I keep the gate.”

He then bawled, in a stentorian voice, inexorably:

“No strangers enter here but the competitors and their companies.”

“Come, old man,” cried a voice in the crowd, “you have gotten your answer; make way.”

Margaret turned half round imploringly:

“Good people! we are come from far, and my father is old; and my cousin has a new servant that knows us not, and would not let us sit in our cousin’s house.”

At this the crowd laughed hoarsely. Margaret shrank as if they had struck her. At that moment a hand grasped hers—such a grasp: it felt like heart meeting heart, or magnet steel. She turned quickly round at it, and it was Gerard. Such a little cry of joy and appeal came from her bosom, and she began to whimper prettily:

They had hustled her and frightened her for one thing; and her cousin’s thoughtlessness in not even telling his servant they were coming was cruel; and the servant’s caution, however wise and faithful to his master, was bitterly mortifying to her father and her. And to her—so mortified, and anxious and jostled—came suddenly this kind hand and face. “Hinc illæ lacrimæ.”

“All is well now,” remarked a coarse humorist; “she has gotten her sweetheart.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” went the crowd.

She dropped Gerard’s hand directly, and turned round, with eyes flashing through her tears:

“I have no sweetheart, you rude men. But I am friendless in your boorish town, and this is a friend; and one who knows, what you know not, how to treat the aged and the weak.”

The crowd was dead silent. They had only been thoughtless, and now felt the rebuke, though severe, was just. The silence enabled Gerard to treat with the porter.

“I am a competitor, sir.”

“What is your name?” and the man eyed him suspiciously.

“Gerard, the son of Gerard.”

The janitor inspected a slip of parchment he held in his hand:

“Gerard Gerardssoen can enter.”

“With my company—these two?two?” [sic]

“Nay; those are not your company: they came before you.”

“What matter? they are my friends, and without them I go not in.”

“Stay without, then.”

“That will I not.”

“That we will see.”

“We will, and speedily.”

Gerard then raised a voice of astounding volume and power, and shouted, so that the whole street rang:

“Ho! !”

“Are you mad?”

“.”

“Hush, hush!”

“.”