LEYDEN ONCE MORE
After that Gilda had lived as in a dream: only vaguely conscious that
good horses and a smoothly gliding vehicle were conveying her back to
her home. Of this fact she was sure, Nicolaes was sitting quite close
under the hood of the sledge and when first she became fully aware of
the reality of his presence, he had raised her hand to his lips and had
said in response to a mute appeal from her eyes:
"We are going home."
After that a quiet sense of utter weariness pervaded her being, and she
fell into a troubled sleep. She did not heed what went on around her,
she only knew that once or twice during the day there was a halt for
food and drink.
The nearness of her brother, his gentleness toward her, gave her a sense
of well-being, even though her heart felt heavy with a great sorrow
which made the whole future appear before her like an interminable vista
of blank and grey dullness.
It was at her suggestion that arrangements were made for an all-night
halt at Leyden, which city they reached in the early part of the
afternoon. She begged Nicolaes that they might put up at the hostelry of
the "White Goat" on the further side of the town, and that from thence a
messenger might be sent to her father, asking him to come and meet her
there on the morrow.
Though Nicolaes was not a little astonished at this suggestion of
Gilda's--seeing that surely she must be longing to be home again and
that Haarlem could easily have been reached before night--he did not
wish to run counter to her will. True enough, he dreaded the meeting
with his father, but he knew that it had to come, and felt that,
whatever might be the future consequences of it all--he could not
possibly bear alone the burden of remorse and of shame which assailed
him every time he encountered Gilda's tear-stained eyes, and saw how
wearied and listless she looked.
So he called a halt at the "White Goat" and as soon as he saw his sister
safely installed, with everything ordered for her comfort, and a
tasteful supper prepared, he sent a messenger on horseback at once to
Haarlem to his father.
Gilda had deliberately chosen to spend the night at the hostelry of the
"White Goat" because she felt that in that quaint old building with its
wide oak staircase--over which she had been carried five days ago, dizzy
and half fainting--the blackened rafters would mayhap still echo with
the sound of a merry laughter which she would never hear again.
But when the sledge finally turned in under the low gateway and drew up
in the small courtyard of the inn--when with wearied feet and shaking
knees she walked up those oaken stairs, it seemed to her that the vivid
memories which the whole place recalled were far harder to bear than
those more intangible ones which--waking and sleeping--had tortured her
up to now.
The bedroom too, with the smaller one leading out of it, was the same in
which she had slept. As the obsequious waiting-wench threw open the door
for the noble jongejuffrouw to pass through she saw before her the wide
open hearth with its crackling fire, the high-backed chair wherein she
had sat, the very footstool which he had put to her feet.
It seemed to her at first as if she could not enter, as if his splendid
figure would suddenly emerge out of the semi-darkness to confront her
with his mocking eyes and his smiling face. She seemed to see him
everywhere, and she had to close her eyes to chase away that all too
insistent vision.
The waiting-wench did not help matters either, for she asked
persistently and shyly about the handsome mynheer who had such an
irresistible fund of laughter in him. Maria too, in her mutterings and
grumblings, contrived--most unwittingly, since she adored Gilda--to
inflict a series of tiny pin-pricks on an already suffering heart.
Tired in body and in mind, Gilda could not sleep that night. She was
living over again every second of the past five days: the interview with
that strangely winning person--a stranger still to her then--here in
this room! how she had hated him at first! how she had tried to shame
and wound him with her words, trying all the while to steel her heart
against that irresistible gaiety and good humour which shone from him
like a radiance: then that second interview in Rotterdam! did she still
hate him then? and if not when was hatred first changed into the love
which now so completely filled her soul?
Looking back on those days, she could not tell. All that she knew was
that when he was brought before her helpless and pinioned she already
loved him, and that since that moment love had grown and strengthened
until her whole heart was given to that same nameless soldier of fortune
whom she had first despised.
To live over again those few brief days which seemed now like an
eternity was a sweet, sad pleasure which Gilda could endure, but what
became intolerable in the darkness and in the silence of the night was
the remembrance of the immediate past.
Clearly cut out before her mental vision were the pictures of her life
this morning in the hut beside the molens: and indeed, it was a lifetime
that had gone by in those few hours.
Firstly Stoutenburg's visit in the early morning, his smooth words and
careless chatter! she, poor fool! under the belief all the time that the
treacherous plot had been abandoned, and that she would forthwith be
conveyed back to her father. Her thoughts of pleading for the condemned
man's life: then the tramping of feet, the cries of terror, her
brother's appearance bringing the awful news of betrayal. She lived over
again those moments of supreme horror when she realized how Stoutenburg
had deceived her, and that Nicolaes himself was but a traitor and a
miserable liar.
She knew then that it was the adventurer, the penniless soldier of
fortune whom she had tried to hate and to despise, who had quietly gone
to warn the Stadtholder, and that his action had been the direct working
of God's will in a brave and loyal soul: she knew also by a mysterious
intuition which no good woman has ever been able to resist, that the man
who had stood before her--self-convicted and self-confessed--had
accepted that humiliation to save her the pain of fearing and despising
her own brother.
The visions now became more dim and blurred. She remembered
Stoutenburg's fury, his hideous threats of vengeance on the man who had
thrown himself across his treacherous path. She remembered pleading to
that monster, weeping, clinging to his arm in a passionate appeal. She
remembered the soul agony which she felt when she realized that that
appeal had been in vain.
Then she had stood for a moment silent and alone in the hut. Stoutenburg
had left her in order to accomplish that hideous act of revenge.
After that she remembered nothing clearly. She could only have been
half-conscious and all round her there was a confusion of sounds, of
shouts and clash of arms: she thought that she was being lifted out of
the chair into which she had fallen in a partial swoon, that she heard
Maria's cries of terror, and that she felt the cold damp morning air
striking upon her face.
Presently she knew that Nicolaes was beside her, and that she was being
taken home. All else was a blank or a dream.
Now she was tossing restlessly upon the lavender-scented bed in this
hostelry so full of memories. Her temples were throbbing, her eyes felt
like pieces of glowing charcoal in her head. The blackness around her
weighed upon her soul until she felt that she could not breathe.
Outside the silence of the night was being gravely disturbed: there was
the sound of horses' hoofs upon the cobble-stones of the yard, the
creaking of a vehicle brought to a standstill, the usual shouts for
grooms and ostlers. A late arrival had filled the tranquil inn with its
bustle and its noise.
Then once again all was still, and Gilda turned her aching head upon the
pillow. Though the room was not hot, and the atmosphere outside heavy
with frost, she felt positively stifled.
After a while this feeling of oppression became intolerable, she rose,
and in the darkness she groped for her fur-lined cloak which she wrapped
closely around her. Then she found her way across to the window and drew
aside the curtain. No light penetrated through the latticed panes: the
waning moon which four nights ago had been at times so marvellously
brilliant, had not yet risen above the horizon line. As Gilda's fingers
fumbled for the window-latch she heard a distant church clock strike the
midnight hour.
She threw open the casement. The sill was low and she leaned out peering
up and down the narrow street. It was entirely deserted and pitch dark
save where on the wall opposite the light from a window immediately
below her threw its feeble reflection. Vaguely she wondered who was
astir in the small hostelry. No doubt it was the tap-room which was
there below her, still lighted up, and apparently with its small
casement also thrown open, like the one out of which she was leaning.
For now, when the reverberating echo of the chiming clock had entirely
died away, she was conscious of a vague murmur of voices coming up from
below, confused at first and undistinguishable, but presently she heard
a click as if the casement had been pushed further open or mayhap a
curtain pulled aside, for after that the sound of the voices became more
distinct and clear.
With beating heart and straining ears Gilda leaned as far out of the
window as she could, listening intently: she had recognized her father's
voice, and he was speaking so strangely that even as she listened she
felt all the blood tingling in her veins.
"My son, sir," he was saying, "had, I am glad to say, sufficient pride
and manhood in him not to bear the full weight of your generosity any
longer. He sent a special messenger on horseback out to me this
afternoon. As soon as I knew that my daughter was here I came as fast as
a sleigh and the three best horses in my stables could bring me. I had
no thought, of course, of seeing you here."
"I had no thought that you should see me, sir," said a voice which by
its vibrating tones had the power of sending the hot blood rushing to
the listener's neck and cheeks. "Had I not entered the yard just as your
sledge turned in under the gateway, you had not been offended by mine
unworthy presence."
"I would in that case have searched the length and breadth of this land
to find you, sir," rejoined Cornelius Beresteyn earnestly, "for half an
hour later my son had told me the whole circumstances of his association
with you."
"An association of which Mynheer Nicolaes will never be over-proud, I'll
warrant," came in slightly less flippant accents than usual from the
foreigner. "Do I not stand self-confessed as a liar, a forger and
abductor of helpless women? A fine record forsooth: and ere he ordered
me to be hanged my Lord of Stoutenburg did loudly proclaim me as such
before his friends and before his followers."
"His friends, sir, are the sons of my friends. I will loudly proclaim
you what you truly are: a brave man, a loyal soldier, a noble gentleman!
Nicolaes has told me every phase of his association with you, from his
shameful proposal to you in regard to his own sister, down to this
moment when you still desired that Gilda and I should remain in
ignorance of his guilt."
"What is the good, mynheer, of raking up all this past?" said the
philosopher lightly, "I would that Mynheer Nicolaes had known how to
hold his tongue."
"Thank God that he did not," retorted Cornelius Beresteyn hotly, "had he
done so I stood in peril of failing--for the first time in my life--in
an important business obligation."
"Not towards me, mynheer, at any rate."
"Yes, sir, towards you," affirmed Beresteyn decisively. "I promised you
five hundred thousand guilders if you brought my daughter safely back to
me. I know from mine own son, sir, that I owe her safety to no one but
to you."
"Ours was an ignoble bargain, mynheer," said Diogenes with his wonted
gaiety, and though she could not see him, Gilda could picture his face
now alive with merriment and suppressed laughter. "The humour of the
situation appealed to me--it proved irresistible--but the bargain in no
way binds you seeing that it was I who had been impious enough to lay
hands upon your daughter."
"At my son's suggestion I know," rejoined Beresteyn quietly, "and from
your subsequent acts, sir, I must infer that you only did it because you
felt that she was safer under your charge than at the mercy of her own
brother and his friends.... Nay! do not protest," he added earnestly,
"Nicolaes, as you see, is of the same opinion."
"May Heaven reward you, sir, for that kindly thought of me," said
Diogenes more seriously, "it will cheer me in the future, when I and all
my doings will have faded from your ken."
"You are not leaving Holland, sir?"
"Not just now, mynheer, while there is so much fighting to be done. The
Stadtholder hath need of soldiers...."
"And he will, sir, find none better than you throughout the world. And
with a goodly fortune to help you...."
"Speak not of that, mynheer," he said firmly, "I could not take your
money. If I did I should never know a happy hour again."
"Oh!"
"I am quite serious, sir, though indeed you might not think that I can
ever be serious. For six days now I have had a paymaster: Mynheer
Nicolaes' money has burned a hole in my good humour, it has scorched my
hands, wounded my shoulder and lacerated my hip, it has brought on me
all the unpleasant sensations which I have so carefully avoided
hitherto, remorse, humiliation, and one or two other sensations which
will never leave me until my death. It changed temporarily the
shiftless, penniless soldier of fortune into a responsible human being,
with obligations and duties. I had to order horses, bespeak lodgings,
keep accounts. Ye gods, it made a slave of me! Keep your money, sir, it
is more fit for you to handle than for me. Let me go back to my
shiftlessness, my penury, my freedom, eat my fill to-day, starve
to-morrow, and one day look up at the stars from the lowly earth, with a
kindly bullet in my chest that does not mean to blunder. And if in the
days to come your thoughts ever do revert to me, I pray you think of me
as happy or nearly so, owning no master save my whim, bending my back
to none, keeping my hat on my head when I choose, and ending my days in
a ditch or in a palace, the carver of mine own destiny, the sole arbiter
of my will. And now I pray you seek that rest of which you must be
sorely in need. I start at daybreak to-morrow: mayhap we shall never
meet again, save in Heaven, if indeed, there be room there for such a
thriftless adventurer as I."
"But whither do you mean to go, sir?"
"To the mountains of the moon, sir," rejoined the philosopher lightly,
"or along the milky way to the land of the Might-Have-Been."
"Before we part, sir, may I shake you by the hand?"
There was silence down below after that. Gilda listened in vain, no
further words reached her ears just then. She tiptoed as quietly as she
could across the room, finding her way with difficulty in the dark. At
last her fumbling fingers encountered the latch of the door of the inner
room where Maria lay snoring lustily.
It took Gilda some little time to wake the old woman, but at last she
succeeded, and then ordered her, very peremptorily, to strike a light.
"Are you ill, mejuffrouw?" queried Maria anxiously even though she was
but half awake.
"No," replied Gilda curtly, "but I want my dress--quick now," she added,
for Maria showed signs of desiring to protest.
The jongejuffrouw was in one of those former imperious moods of hers
when she exacted implicit obedience from her servants. Alas! the last
few days had seen that mood submerged into an ocean of sorrow and
humiliation, and Maria--though angered at having been wakened out of a
first sleep--was very glad to see her darling looking so alert and so
brisk.
Indeed--the light being very dim--Maria could not see the brilliant glow
that lit up the jongejuffrouw's cheeks as with somewhat febrile
gestures she put on her dress and smoothed her hair.
"Now put on your dress too, Maria," she said when she was ready, "and
tell my father, who is either in the tap-room down below or hath already
retired to his room, that I desire to speak with him."
And Maria, bewildered and flustered, had no option but to obey.