THE HOUR
A curiously timid voice roused the philosopher from his dreams.
"Is there aught I can do for you, sir? Alas! my friend the Lord
Stoutenburg is deeply angered against you. I could do nothing with him
on your behalf."
Diogenes turned his head in the direction whence had come the voice. He
saw Nicolaes Beresteyn standing there in the cold grey mist, with his
fur cloak wrapped closely up to his chin, and his face showing above the
cloak, white and drawn.
The situation was not likely to escape Diogenes' irrepressible sense of
humour.
"Mynheer Beresteyn," he exclaimed; "Dondersteen! what brings your
Mightiness here at this hour? A man on the point of death, sir, has no
call for so pitiable a sight as is your face just now."
"I heard from my Lord Stoutenburg what happened in the hut last night,"
said Beresteyn in a faltering voice, and determined not to heed the
other's bantering tone. "You exonerated me before my sister ... sir,
this was a noble act ... I would wish to thank you...."
"And do so with quaking voice and shaking knees," quoth Diogenes with
unalterable good-humour, through which there pierced however an obvious
undercurrent of contempt. "Ye gods!" he added with a quaint sigh, "these
men have not even the courage of their infamy!"
The words, the tone, the shrug of the shoulders which accompanied
these, stung Nicolaes Beresteyn's dormant dignity to the quick.
"I do not wonder," he said more firmly, "that you feel bitter contempt
for me now. Your generosity for which I did not crave hath placed me
momentarily at a disadvantage before you. Yet believe me I would not be
outdone by you in generosity; were it not for my allegiance to the Lord
Stoutenburg I would go straight to my sister now and confess my guilt to
her.... You believe me I trust," he added, seeing that Diogenes' merry
eyes were fixed mockingly upon him, "did fate allow it I would gladly
change places with you even now."
"I am about to hang, sir," quoth Diogenes lightly.
"Alas!"
"And you are forced, you say, to play a craven's part; believe me, sir,
I would not change places with you for a kingdom."
"I do believe you, sir," rejoined Beresteyn earnestly, "yet I would have
you think of me as something less of a coward than I seem. Were I to
make full confession to my sister now, I should break her heart--but it
would not save your neck from the gallows."
"And a rogue's neck, sir, is of such infinitely less value than a good
woman's heart. So I pray you say no more about it. Death and I are old
acquaintances, oft hath he nodded to me en passant, we are about to
become closer friends, that is all."
"Some day my sister shall know, sir, all that you have done for her and
for me."
The ghost of a shadow passed over the Laughing Cavalier's face.
"That, sir, I think had best remain 'twixt you and me for all times. But
this I would have you know, that when I accepted the ignoble bargain
which you proposed to me in my friend Hals' studio, I did so because I
thought that the jongejuffrouw would be safer in my charge then than in
yours!"
Beresteyn was about to retort more hotly when Jan, closely followed by
half a dozen men, came with swift, firm footsteps up to the prisoner. He
saluted Beresteyn deferentially as was his wont.
"Your pardon, mynheer," he said, "my lord hath ordered that the prisoner
be forthwith led to execution."
Nicolaes' pale face became the colour of lead.
"One moment, Jan," he said, "one moment. I must speak with my
lord ... I...."
"My lord is with the jongejuffrouw," said Jan curtly, "shall I send to
tell him that you desire to speak with him?"
"No--no--that is I ... I ..." stammered Nicolaes who, indeed, was
fighting a cruel battle with his own weakness, his own cowardice now. It
was that weakness which had brought him to the abject pass in which he
now stood, face to face with the man he had affected to despise, and who
was about to die, laden with the crimes which he Nicolaes had been the
first to commit.
Stoutenburg's influence over him had been paramount, through it he had
lost all sense of justice, of honour and of loyalty; banded with
murderers he had ceased to recognize the very existence of honesty, and
now he was in such a plight morally, that though he knew himself to be
playing an ignoble rôle, he did not see the way to throw up the part and
to take up that of an honest man. One word from him to Gilda, his frank
confession of his own guilt, and she would so know how to plead for the
condemned man that Stoutenburg would not dare to proceed with this
monstrous act.
But that word he had not the courage to speak.
With dull eyes and in sullen silence he watched Piet the Red untying
under Jan's orders the ropes which held the prisoner to the beam, and
then securing others to keep his arms pinioned behind his back. The mist
now was of a faint silvery grey, and the objects around had that
mysterious hushed air which the dawn alone can lend. The men, attracted
by the sight of a fellow creature in his last living moments, had
gathered together in close knots of threes and fours. They stood by,
glowering and sombre, and had not Jan turned a wilfully deaf ear to
their murmurings he would have heard many an ugly word spoken under
their breath.
These were of course troublous and fighting times, when every man's hand
was against some other, when every able-bodied man was firstly a soldier
and then only a peaceable citizen. Nor was the present situation an
uncommon one: the men could not know what the prisoner had done to
deserve this summary punishment. He might have been a spy--an
informer--or merely a prisoner of war. It was no soldier's place to
interfere, only to obey orders and to ask no questions.
But they gave to the splendid personality of the condemned man the
tribute of respectful silence. Whilst Jan secured the slender white
hands of the prisoner, and generally made those awful preparations which
even so simple a death as hanging doth demand, jests and oaths were
stilled one by one among these rough fighting men, not one head but was
uncovered, not a back that was not straightened, not an attitude that
was not one of deference and attention. Instinct--that unerring instinct
of the soldier--had told them that here was no scamp getting his just
reward, but a brave man going with a careless smile to his death.
"Has mynheer finished with the prisoner," asked Jan when he saw that
Piet had finished his task and that the prisoner was ready to be led
away. "Is there aught your greatness would still desire to say to him?"
"Only this," said Beresteyn firmly, "that were his hands free I would
ask leave to grasp them."
A look of kindly amusement fell from the prisoner's eyes upon the pale
face of the young man.
"I have never known you, sir, save by a quaint nick-name," continued
Beresteyn earnestly, "but surely you have kith and kin somewhere. Have
you no father or mother living whom you will leave to mourn?"
The prisoner made no immediate reply, the smile of kindly amusement
still lingered round his lips, but presently with an instinctive gesture
of pride, he threw back his head and looked around him, as one who has
nothing to fear and but little to regret. He met the sympathetic glance
cast on him by the man who had done him--was still doing him--an
infinite wrong, and all round those of his mute and humble friends who
seemed to be listening eagerly now for the answer which he would give to
Mynheer. Then with a quick sweep his eyes suddenly rested on the wooden
erection beyond the molens that loomed out so tragically through the
mist, pointing with its one weird arm to some infinite distance far
away.
Something in the gentle pathos of this humble deference that encompassed
him, something mayhap in the solemnity of that ghostly arm suddenly
seemed to melt the thin crust of his habitual flippancy. He looked back
on Beresteyn and said softly:
"I have a friend, Frans Hals--the painter of pictures--tell him when
next you see him that I am glad his portrait of me is finished, and that
I asked God to bless him for all his goodness has meant to me in the
past."
"But your father, sir," urged Beresteyn, "your kindred...."
"My father, sir," replied Diogenes curtly, "would not care to hear that
his son had died upon the gallows."
Beresteyn would have spoken again but Jan interposes once more, humbly
but firmly.
"My lord's orders," he now says briefly, "and time presses, mynheer."
Beresteyn stands back, smothering a sigh. Jan on ahead, then Piet the
Red and the six soldiers with the prisoner between them. A few steps
only divide them from the gruesome erection that looms more solidly now
out of the mist. Beresteyn, wrapping his head up in his cloak to shut
out sound and sight, walks rapidly away in the opposite direction.