THE EVENTS OF NEXT DAY
Considering the events of that night, one may be tempted to suppose that
I lay awake for a long time in restless anxiety. But I did no such
thing. I had had a hard day of it, and, in addition to that, my personal
sorrow and the reaction from what I had passed through, so overcame me
that I fell into a kind of stupor, and slept without undressing. When I
awoke in the morning it was broad day. The room, however, was not
bright, for the shutters, which had been open when I went to bed, had
blown together during the night. A sheet of dusty sunlight slanted
through the room. I lay half awake, half asleep, watching the shadows
fold like tapestry in the sunbeams. I tried to see pictures in them as
one does in the clouds of a summer’s night; and soon I found myself
dwelling upon the grotesque features of the dwarf, and on the words he
had spoken to me when we parted the night before.
“I shall not tell you what we have been doing,” he had said. “But I
swear, before God, hereafter to be your true friend.”
I knew that he had spoken the truth. A few moments before he had been
engaged in an attempt to take my life; yet, when he said these words,
his voice rang with unmistakable sincerity. He looked me in the face,
which is not the way of a liar, and the expression in his face was the
expression of truth itself. Of this fact I was mortally certain. What
had I done to make his feeling change towards me? We had had but a small
matter of words. I had helped him to carry poor old Meg to a place of
safety. What else had I done? “Ha!” thought I. “It was she who first
warned me of my danger.” Could it be that there was some connection
between these two, some unexplained relation that would put a new light
upon the small kindness I had shown her? I sprang to my feet. Then I
discovered—for I had come fully awake at last—that the door of my room
was shut tight and barred on the outside.
I fell into a rage. Had they not done enough the night before? Was this
some new trap they had laid for me? I beat and banged upon the floor. I
kicked viciously against the door. It did not take much of this to bring
a response. There was a clattering of feet in the corridor without, the
bolt was quickly drawn back and then the door flew open. In the hallway
opposite my door stood the patroon. The white-haired dwarf, peering
beneath his arm, was making strange faces at me from his half-sheltered
position behind his master’s back. Did he mean them for signs of
warning? Beyond these two clustered half a dozen surprised domestics.
Van Volkenberg gazed at me for a moment and then burst into a fit of
hearty laughter.
“So they locked you in, did they? Ha, ha, ha! I forgot to tell them that
there was a new lodger in the house. We forgot it, eh, Louis?”
He spoke with his usual precision, as if reciting a lesson. There was no
light in his eyes and the moment he was done talking his face became
stolid and set like one who has said his part and was glad to be done
with it. The patroon was a good actor, and yet there were times when a
child could see through his artifice. As he turned to the dwarf, Louis’
face, which a moment before had been strangely contorted, instantly grew
impassive. I conceived the idea that he had been making signs, wishing
to convey some secret intelligence to me. Whereupon I resolved to give
him a chance to speak to me in private if he chose to do so.
“By my soul, St. Vincent!” exclaimed the patroon. “You have slept late.”
“Have I? Indeed, I do not know what time it is,” I answered, scarce
knowing what to say. The patroon was so ill at ease, so manifestly
acting a part, that I knew it behooved me to be careful and not to lose
my temper.
“It is hard upon the hour of noon,” he continued. “Come, come; you shall
break your fast royally despite the hour.”
We set out along the corridor, which was dimly lighted and echoed the
sound of our footsteps in a gloomy manner. This was the time to test the
dwarf, and to find out what he had to communicate to me.
“I have forgotten my sword,” I cried to him. “Will you fetch it?”
Without a moment’s hesitation the dwarf started back towards my room. I
can see him yet, almost running in his quick, mincing steps, his
half-bent arms dipping to the same time, and his ill-shaped head and
flowing locks of white hair all bobbing together in unison. Yet for all
this apparent haste he progressed no faster than an ordinary walk.
I let him proceed but a short distance when I made some excuse to the
patroon and followed his henchman to my room. When I got there, Louis
was already bending over my bed, where my sword lay. One arm was up and
one heel slightly off the ground, as if he had suddenly been arrested in
the midst of his capricious way of walking. I touched him on the
shoulder and he collapsed with startled fear. Evidently he had not heard
me approach.
“Louis,” I said, “that was a strange promise you made to me last night.
What did you mean by it?”
Suddenly his whole figure was transformed. I saw this change often in
the next few weeks, but then it was new to me and almost took my breath
away. When Louis walked he seemed all joints and quivering elastic
bands. Now, like a flash, he turned to stone—nay, to steel and iron.
Every tremor of his body vanished. Every line in his face, the very
droop of his hair made one feel as if the Gorgon’s head had been thrust
before him. Then he gripped my hand, and I winced inwardly from the pain
of it.
“Hush,” he whispered. “You can trust me. She is my mother. Hark! The
patroon is coming back. Let me warn you hastily. There is distrust here.
Do not start whatever you may hear down stairs. Beware, you are treading
on a powder mine. Believe me. I am your friend. She is my mother. Let
that suffice for reason.”
That moment the patroon returned. Louis began helping me to buckle on my
sword. In a moment all his rigidity had disappeared and his old manner
returned to him. I had no time then to think of the suspicion he had
referred to, for the patroon led me down stairs to the dining room at
once. As we traversed the corridor for the second time, I could hear
Louis’ pattering steps behind us like a faithful dog; and in my mind’s
eye I saw his wagging head and bent arms keeping time to his nimble
step.
As I say, we went below, but had hardly entered the dining room when
Mistress Miriam darted into it. She was bonneted, dressed in riding
clothes, and her cheeks were flushed with exercise.
“Oh, father,” she cried passionately, “Monsieur Le Bourse is dead.”
“Dead!” echoed the patroon.
At that moment I felt Louis Van Ramm’s fingers close on my wrist like a
vise. In an instant he relaxed his grip, for the patroon turned to look
at me.
“You are pale,” he said abruptly. “You should be hungry.”
But of the two, he must have been the paler.
However, he would have nothing more to say to me till I had eaten. I was
not sorry, for, in very truth, I was as hungry as a bear, and the
silence that followed gave me time to think over what had happened.
Evidently Louis’s warning and the locking of my door were pieces of the
same cloth. No doubt of Louis’s honesty came into my mind. I knew by an
experience I had had in France that a deformed person like this dwarf
was likely, however vicious he might be at heart, to feel a dog-like
attachment to any one who had befriended him. The fact that Meg was his
mother was enough to justify my belief in his honesty. I felt now that,
beyond peradventure, I might trust in him. But the suspicion he had
warned me against—what was that? What could it be but that I was
discovered? I recalled the fact that both Lady Marmaduke and Pierre had
recognized me. Had the patroon? I confess to trembling at the moment,
and I looked up to see if I were noticed.
“Your hand trembles,” said the patroon. Trust him for seeing everything
that was in sight!
“Trembles,” I answered. “Which?”
“Your right,” he replied, with a vicious smile on his dark features.
I stretched my right hand out before him as steady as his own.
“Mere accident,” I said, careful not to show either too much disregard
or too much interest in what he had just said. “What made you think so,
or did it really tremble for an instant?”
“I thought it did, Le Bourse, but I may have been mistaken.”
I fell to eating savagely. He had called me by my right name! Ah, yes;
Louis was right. That was his master’s suspicion, was it? But now I was
fully warned. He should not catch me napping. I paid no attention to his
remark and went on eating. This behavior seemed to reassure the patroon.
When I next looked up he wore a more satisfied expression. His elbows
were on the edge of the table and his eyes fixed on the tips of his
fingers, which were tapping each other softly.
“Now you are done eating,” he said at last, “let us hear her story.
Miriam, tell us of your visit.”
I then learned that, for some reason unknown to herself, Mistress Van
Volkenberg had been sent by her father to Lady Marmaduke’s, in New York.
Her errand was to inquire my whereabouts. She was told at the hall that
I was dead and that my body lay in the small room upstairs, which had
been mine.
“Ay, but was he dead?” interrupted her father. “Did you see him,
Miriam?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I saw him. Oh!” She shuddered and turned to leave
the room.
Mistress Van Volkenberg, then almost unknown to me, was a woman who
could not pass unnoticed in any place. She was tall and slender, with a
high forehead and piercing brown eyes like her father’s. What most
characterized her, however, was the color in her cheeks. I have seen her
since in sickness and in health, and always there was the same color of
blooming red, which was the more welcome for the beauty it gave her
face. She was flushed, perhaps overflushed, when she left the room, and
both the patroon and I noticed it.
“Poor child,” he said softly with a yearning look in his eyes. “She has
had too much excitement. I should not have sent her.”
Van Volkenberg had little to say for a while. He was wholly taken up
with the news his daughter had brought. Often he would be in a brown
study for minutes at a time. I said nothing to rouse him, for I was
bound that he should lead our conversation till I should be less in the
dark as to what he knew about me. At last he seemed to notice how
evident his moody conduct was.
“This man Le Bourse,” he said, at the same time bending his bright eyes
upon my face as if he would read me through and through, “this man, Le
Bourse, was a man I wished to see. Alas the while! I wish he were yet
alive.”
“A friend of yours?” I asked, mustering my voice as well as I could. I
knew instinctively that I was under examination.
“No, hardly a friend; and yet I owed him some reparation for an injury.
I wish he were here.”
“There is no fetching dead men back to life,” I said. And then I added:
“At least in the flesh.”
“He will not haunt me, if that is what you mean.”
The patroon walked thoughtfully across the room, and stood for some time
with his back towards me, looking out of the window across the broad
terrace where I had seen Ronald Guy and the execution the night before.
I could see his figure relax and droop a little.
“Alas, poor Guy,” I heard him mutter. He could afford to pity, now that
it was all over.
Then his figure against the lighted window stiffened and he seemed to
gather strength again. Two minutes later, when he turned to face us once
more, he was quite himself. The night before I had asked myself a
question; now I was ready to answer it. Yes, there were two actors in
Van Volkenberg manor. I was one. The other was the patroon.
And from that moment I conceived a fair notion of how the ground lay
between us. Perhaps he knew me, perhaps not; but, at any rate, he
suspected me, and this was like to prove my ruin. I recalled just then
one of the war cries of the English revolution that my father used to
talk so much about. The King and the parliament were pitted one against
the other till the bitter end. It was the great church hero, Cromwell,
so my father used to say, who first foresaw what the end was going to
be. Then grew up that motto, “Thy head or my head,” which neither
Roundhead nor Cavalier forgot for many years.
Thus it was between Van Volkenberg and me. Disclaim superstition as I
would, I could not resist the idea that fate had had a hand in our first
meeting and had molded subsequent events. Van Volkenberg, as I learned
later, regarded me with even greater superstition than I felt towards
him. Though I managed to allay his suspicions for a while, he never
seemed quite free in my presence, even when he took me into his
confidence and made me his right hand man.
As I said, he turned towards us from the window overlooking the terrace,
and his manner was quite composed.
“Come to my room,” he said cheerily. “I have something of importance to
say to you. You may come, too,” he added to the dwarf.
We went to the room where he had first received me when I came to the
manor-house to present my silver buttons. I glanced warily around the
room. There were the books and the maps on the walls, the table littered
with papers, and the windows on one side flooding the center of the room
with light. I was with my face to the window and the patroon stood
opposite me.
“Sit.”
As he jerked out the short monosyllable, he waved his hand to Louis and
me. The dwarf climbed into a huge chair and collapsed loosely into a
heap till you would hardly have recognized in him a human being.
The patroon, however, made a more striking figure. He was dressed all in
black, save for the crimson cap he always wore in the house, and the
pale lace about his neck and wrists. His long black coat was trimmed in
silver buttons artificially darkened till they were of a deep grey. His
knee breeches and hose were also black. His shoes, instead of being
fastened with huge silver buttons, as was the custom, were tied with
narrow black ribbons. His black robes set off his silvery
hair—prematurely white through trouble and disease—with superb effect.
The only other bit of color about him was the gold head of his ebony
cane, which he held between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were
about to lift it lightly from the floor.
But all this description of how the patroon looked is the result of a
moment’s glance and after recollection. For almost in an instant I
forgot everything, and saw only those eagle eyes like jewels gazing at
me. Was it the dove and the serpent over again? No, no, Patroon Van
Volkenberg. You have a man to deal with this time. “Thy head or my
head,” saith the King.
At last he spoke to me.
“If you are to cut a figure in the Red Band, you must know somewhat of
my affairs. I spoke a while ago of a man Le Bourse.” He kept his eyes
fiercely on me. “I have cause to hate this dog, for I hold him little
better than a dog. If I ever have him in arm’s reach—you saw how I dealt
with Ronald Guy?”
“Yes, I saw it. What is your grievance against Le Bourse?”
“I have done him wrong.”
“Therefore you would do him more?”
“Is not that logic? I would break him upon the rack. Bah, he is no fool.
I must watch him close.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“Ay, dead if not alive. Lately he had the impudence to hang about that
very window and spy upon my affairs.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, but he kept his eyes on me. I saw
through his plot clearly. He did not know that I was Le Bourse, but he
thought so, and wanted me to betray myself. I was more than a match for
him, however, as events soon proved. He told me briefly what he knew of
my escapade of a few nights before and how it led up to his expulsion
from the privy-council. All the while he watched me narrowly, though now
and then glancing for a moment at Louis, who seemed more asleep than
awake in the great chair. At last the patroon let his cane slip. It came
down with a startling rattle upon the floor, and when he picked it up
again he leaned back in his chair with a silent, sullen manner. He was
evidently at the end of his string for that moment. My first ordeal was
over. He had tried me in the balance and found—nothing. Evidently the
patroon was not convinced one way or the other.
He did not wait long before he was at me again. This time he took a new
tack that was harder to resist ten times over. He began to talk about
Ruth. So long as his thrusts were aimed at me alone the game was in my
own hands. But he played strong cards when he alluded to my sister. I
had much ado to control my feelings. He must have seen me wince more
than once. But, besides an angry flush or two, or a sign of sullen
humor, I did nothing to increase his suspicions, though, on the other
hand, I did nothing to allay them. For my part, I was drawn tight as a
harp string. I felt that one more twist of the key would snap me, come
what would. Then it all ended suddenly and in a marvelous way. Just as I
was at my wit’s end for self-control, I heard the patroon gasp and cry
out:
“My God, St. Vincent, do you know whom I took you for? I thought you
were Le Bourse.”
They say it is nearly a hundred years since the English play writer
wrote his Hamlet; yet it is so good a play that it can still be seen
upon the London stage. I well remember a scene in it where Hamlet is
laying what he calls a mouse-trap to catch his uncle Claudius. Hamlet
has the players play something like the murder of his father before the
King. Hamlet thought that if the King were guilty he would betray
himself by some sign. Once in dumb show and once in real acting the
murder was performed before the King, who remained calm and silent,
betraying no sign of guilt. This failure of his plan so exasperated
Hamlet that he broke down himself and flew into hysterics singing little
nonsense songs. In the confusion, the King called for a light and took
his leave. But I could see from the expression of his face that another
moment would have broken him.
This was the situation of the patroon. While he had been piercing me
with one prong of the fork the other turned and twisted among his own
nerves. It was when my calm behavior became too much for him that he
broke down pitifully, crying that he took me for Le Bourse. Hardly had
he said it than he repented; but it was too late. For very shame he had
to disguise his suspicion now. So he carried on his play-acting; but I
was well aware that the confidence he now pretended to show in me was
acting like the rest.
“Well, well, well. I’ll just tell you all. Henrie—I’ll first name you
now because you are in the Red Band—Henrie, do you know how near you
were to following Ronald Guy? Ronald was a good man in his way, but
there was no obedience in his bones. Louis, whom did we take St. Vincent
for?”
The dwarf looked at me for a full minute before he said a word. Then he
replied:
“We took you for Michael Le Bourse.”
“Ay, that we did,” continued Van Volkenberg. “Do you remember Caesar? We
set him on your track last night. Where do you think he went? Straight
for my study window on the outside. Perhaps you don’t know that this
Michael Le Bourse stood out there the other night—well, if he were not
dead he should feel my hand.” The patroon’s face clouded for an instant;
then he continued: “When the dog went there I thought that you were Le
Bourse in disguise, for there is a familiar look about your eyes, and I
only half believed your story. But Ronald’s business pressed, and after
that Louis held out that it was all a mistake.”
“It was,” mumbled the dwarf.
“Yes, yes, stick to it. Louis is a bulldog to his belief. Nothing would
suit him but to try the hound again. This time he led us a long chase to
a place where Louis had met some friends of his by Webber’s tavern—never
mind who they were. Do what we could, the hound would not take another
scent. So Louis stuck out that there was no meaning in it at all, and I
had to give in to him. But fast on that came a report that you—I mean,
Le Bourse—had gone post for Albany. I’m quick at putting two and two
together, and I said to Louis: ‘Not at all. He’s gone post to the
Hanging Rock.’ It came close to going hard with you then.”
“How did it come to pass otherwise?” I managed to say in a tolerably
firm voice.
“Let Louis tell. It was his doing. Speak up my little hawk.”
He lifted his impassive face slowly. “It is my habit to make sure. The
master could not go. The young mistress was the only other one who had
seen you. I said, 'Send her.'”
“And she found you dead.” The patroon laughed loudly at his joke. “Yes,
she found you dead. So that settled my doubts. Here is my hand. Welcome
to the Red Band.”
After a few more words he dismissed the dwarf in order to talk to me
alone.
“St. Vincent,” he began, “I have a delicate task for you to undertake.
Doubtless you know that I and my household are in bad repute in Yorke.
You see, this putting arms into the hands of my retainers is a new
custom in the province. We patroons are bound to get the power, but I am
the only one who has had the courage to begin in the proper way. The
gossips tell strange stories about me and mine. I keep them away from
the ears of Miriam; but—God bless her!—she loves to see the gay sights
of the town. I shall let her ride to Yorke this afternoon and you shall
ride with her. Mind you keep her ears stuffed with wax against the
common murmur. That is your task.”
Towards three o’clock I stood before the terrace beside our horses
awaiting Mistress Miriam’s coming out. Soon she came. The blood mantled
in her cheek and she drew back when her eyes fell upon me.
“I thought I should go alone or with Annetje,” she said to her father.
“I think that Monsieur St. Vincent will be better company. Pretty maids
like you should not ride alone nowadays.”
Whether she objected to riding with me, or whether she suspected that I
was set as a spy upon her, one could not have told from anything she
said or did. She thanked me kindly, so kindly for my trouble, that I did
not feel the pain of her refusal. She bade me lead her horse back to the
stable and then re-entered the house.
I had hardly taken the saddle off when Louis came in all apant with
running.
“Put it on again,” he cried. “She has changed her mind.”
I resaddled the horse. Five minutes later Mistress Van Volkenberg
stepped upon the terrace. She wore the same riding habit as before, but
this time she wore a mask that concealed her features. When I helped her
to mount, she bowed her thanks, but did not speak to me. Soon we were
riding at a rapid pace through the park towards New York.
I rode behind as fitted a man in my position. When we neared the Kissing
Bridge she reined in her horse slowly till we rode side by side. I
wondered at her action. Something little Pierre had said about Annetje
and the way she always made him go before when they crossed the Kissing
Bridge caused a shadow to fill my heart. Was my young mistress—? I did
not have time to follow the thought further before she laid her hand
upon my bridle. Both horses stopped with their front feet upon the
bridge. I could see her eyes twinkling through the holes in her mask.
“Why do we stop?” I asked.
“Why do we stop? Why don’t you—” She laid her hand lightly upon my
shoulder. “Why don’t you kiss me?”
I started back suddenly. My companion burst into the happiest, merriest
peal of laughter I ever heard.
“What a coward. I shall tell Pierre.”
With that she snatched off her mask. To my astonishment, I saw the
dancing black eyes of my mistress’ maid, Annetje Dorn.