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."