CHAPTER XXXVII
DAWN
What a commotion when dawn breaks at last; it comes grey, dull, leaden,scarce lighter than the night, the haze more dense, the frost morebiting. But it does break at last after that interminable night ofexcitement and sleeplessness and preparations for the morrow.
Jan has never closed an eye, he has scarcely rested even, pacing up anddown, in and out of those gargantuan beams, with the molens and itssecrets towering above his head. Nor I imagine did those noble lords andmynheers up there sleep much during this night; but they were tired andlay like logs upon straw paillasses, living over again the past fewhours, the carrying of heavy iron boxes one by one from the molens tothe wooden bridge, the unloading there, the unpacking in the darkness,and the disposal of the death-dealing powder, black and evil smelling,which will put an end with its one mighty crash--to tyranny and theStadtholder's life.
Tired they are but too excited to sleep: the last few hours are like avivid dream; the preparation of the tinder, the arrangements, theposition to be taken up by Beresteyn and Heemskerk, the two chosenlieutenants who will send the wooden bridge over the Schie flying insplinters into the air.
Van Does too has his work cut out. General in command of theforces--foreign mercenaries and louts from the country--he has Jan forable captain. The mercenaries and the louts know nothing yet of whatwill happen to-morrow--when once the dawn has broken--but they are wellprepared; like beasts of the desert they can scent blood in the air;look at them polishing up their swords and cleaning their cullivers!they know that to-morrow they will fight, even though to-night they havehad no orders save to see that one prisoner tied with ropes to a beamand fainting with exposure and loss of blood does not contrive toescape.
But the Lord of Stoutenburg is more wakeful than all. Like a caged beastof prey he paces up and down the low, narrow weighing-room of themolens, his hands tightly clenched behind his back, his head bare, hiscloak cast aside despite the bitter coldness of the night.
Restless and like a beast of prey; his nostrils quiver with the lust ofhate and revenge that seethes within his soul. Two men doth he hate witha consuming passion of hatred, the Stadtholder Prince of Orange,sovereign ruler of half the Netherlands, and a penniless adventurerwhose very name is unknown.
Both these men are now in the power of the Lord of Stoutenburg. Thebridge is prepared, the powder laid, to-morrow justice will be meted outto the tyrant; God alone could save him now, and God, of a surety, mustbe on the side of a just revenge. The other man is helpless and aprisoner; despite his swagger and his insolence, justice shall be metedout to him too; God alone could save him, and God, of a surety, couldnot be on the side of an impudent rogue.
These thoughts, which were as satisfying to the Lord of Stoutenburg asfood placed at an unattainable distance is to a starving beast, kept himawake and pacing up and down the room after he had finished his workunder the bridge.
He could not sleep for thinking of the prisoner, of the man's insolence,of the humiliation and contempt wherewith every glance he had broughtshame to his cheeks. The Lord of Stoutenburg could not sleep also forthinking of Gilda, and the tender, pitying eyes wherewith she regardedthe prisoner, the gentle tone of her voice when she spoke to him, evenafter proof had been placed before her that the man was a forger and athief.
The Lord of Stoutenburg could not sleep and all the demons of jealousy,of hatred and of revenge were chasing him up and down the room andwhispering suggestions of mischief to be wrought, of a crime to beeasily committed.
"While that man lives," whispered the demon of hate in his ear, "thouwilt not know a moment's rest. To-morrow when thy hand should be steadywhen it wields the dagger against the Stadtholder, it will tremble andfalter, for thoughts of that man will unsettle thy nerves and cause theblood to tingle in thy veins."
"While that man lives," whispered the demon of revenge, "thou wilt notknow a moment's rest. Thou wilt think of him and of his death, ratherthan of thy vengeance against the Stadtholder."
"While that man lives," whispered the demon of jealousy more insistentlythan did the other evil spirits, "Gilda will not cease to think of him,she will plead for him, she will try mayhap to save him and then----"
And the Lord of Stoutenburg groaned aloud in the silence of the night,and paused in his restless walk. He drew a chair close to the table, andsat down; then resting his elbows upon the table, he buried his head inhis hands, and remained thus motionless but breathing heavily like onewhose soul is fighting a losing battle.
The minutes sped on. He had no means of gauging the time. It was justnight, black impenetrable night. From down below came the murmur of allthe bustle that was going on, the clang of arms, the measured footstepswhich told of other alert human creatures who were waiting inexcitement and tense expectancy for that dawn which still was fardistant.
The minutes sped on, on the leaden feet of time. How long the Lord ofStoutenburg had sat thus, silent and absorbed, he could not afterwardshave said. Perhaps after all he had fallen asleep, overcome with fatigueand with the constant sleeplessness of the past few days. But anon hewas wide awake, slightly shivering with the cold. The tallow candle wasspluttering, almost dying out. With a steady hand the Lord ofStoutenburg snuffed the smouldering wick, the candle flickered up again.Then he rose and quietly walked across the room. He pulled open the doorand loudly called for Jan.
A few minutes later Jan was at the door, silent, sullen, obedient asusual.
"My lord called?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Stoutenburg, "what hour is it?"
"Somewhere near six I should say, my lord. I heard the tower-clock atRyswyk strike five some time ago."
"How long is it before the dawn?"
"Two hours, my lord."
"Time to put up a gibbet, Jan? and to hang a man?"
"Plenty of time for that, my lord," replied Jan quietly.
"Then see to it, Jan, as speedily as you can. I feel that that man downbelow is our evil genius. While he lives Chance will be against us, ofthat I am as convinced as I am of the justice of our cause. If that manlives, Jan, the Stadtholder will escape us; I feel it in my bones:something must have told me this in the night--it is a premonition thatcomes from above."
"Then the man must not live, my lord," said Jan coldly.
"You recognize that too, Jan, do you not?" rejoined Stoutenburg eagerly."I am compelled in this--I won't say against my will, but compelled bya higher, a supernatural power. You, too, believe in the supernatural,do you not, my faithful Jan?"
"I believe, my lord, first and foremost in the justice of our cause. Ihate the Stadtholder and would see him dead. Nothing in the world mustplace that great aim of ours in jeopardy."
Stoutenburg drew a deep breath of satisfaction.
"Then see to the gibbet, my good Jan," he said in a firm almost lustyvoice, "have it erected on the further side of the molens so that thejongejuffrouw's eyes are not scandalized by the sight. When everythingis ready come and let me know, and guard him well until then, Jan, guardhim with your very life; I want to see him hang, remember that! Come andtell me when the gallows are ready and I'll go to see him hang ... Iwant to see him hang...."
And Jan without another word salutes the Lord of Stoutenburg and thengoes out.
And thus it is that a quarter of an hour later the silence of the nightis broken by loud and vigorous hammering. Jan sees to it all and agibbet is not difficult to erect.
Then men grumble of course; they are soldiers and not executioners, andtheir hearts for the most have gone out to that merry compeer--theLaughing Cavalier--with his quaint jokes and his cheerful laugh. He hasbeen sleeping soundly too for several hours, but now he is awake. Janhas told him that his last hour has come: time to put up a gibbet with afew stiff planks taken from the store-room of the molens and a length ofrope.
He looks round him quite carelessly. Bah! death has no terrors for sucha splendid soldier as he is. How many times hath he faced death erethis?--why he was at Prague and at
Madgeburg where few escaped withtheir lives. He bears many a fine scar on that broad chest of his andnone upon his back. A splendid fighter, if ever there was one!
But hanging? Bah!
The men murmur audibly as plank upon plank is nailed. Jan directsoperations whilst Piet the Red keeps guard over the prisoner. Two orthree of the country louts know something of carpentering. They do thework under Jan's watchful eye. They grumble but they work, for no onehas been paid yet, and if you rebel you are like to be shot, and in anycase you lose your pay.
And Diogenes leaning up against the beam watches with lazy quaintlysmiling eyes the preparations that are going on not a hundred paces awayfrom him. After a while the darkness all around is beginning to yield tothe slow insistence of dawn. It rises slowly behind the veils of mistwhich still envelop the distant East. Gradually an impalpable greynesscreeps around the molens, objects begin to detach themselves one by oneout of the gloom, the moving figures of the mercenaries, the piles ofarms heaped up here and there out of the damp, the massive beams slimyand green which support the molens, and a little further on the tallerection with a projecting arm round which great activity reigns.
Diogenes watches it all with those same lazy eyes, and that samegood-humoured smile lingering round his lips. That tall erection overthere which still looks ghostlike through the mist is for him. The gameof life is done and he has lost. Death is there at the end of theprojecting arm on which even now Jan is fixing a rope.
"Death in itself matters but little," mused the philosopher withhis gently ironical smile. "I would have chosen another mode thanhanging ... but after all 'tis swift and sure; and of course now shewill never know."
Know what, O philosopher? What is it that she--Gilda--with the faircurls and the blue eyes, the proud firm mouth and round chin--what is itthat she will never know?
She will never know that a nameless, penniless soldier of fortune hasloved her with every beat of his heart, every thought of his brain, withevery sinew and every aspiration. She will never know that just in orderto remain near her, when she was dragged away out of Rotterdam heaffronted deliberately the trap into which he fell. She will never knowthat for her dear sake, he has borne humiliation against which everynerve of his splendid nature did inwardly rebel, owning to guilt andshame lest her blue eyes shed tears for a brother's sin. She will neverknow that the warning to the Stadtholder came from him, and that he wasneither a forger nor a thief, only just a soldier of fortune with acontempt for death, and an unspoken adoration for the one woman whoseemed to him as distant from him as the stars.
But there were no vain regrets in him now; no regret of life, for thishe always held in his own hand ready to toss it away for a fancy of anideal--no regret of the might-have-been because he was a philosopher,and the very moment that love for the unattainable was born in his hearthe had already realized that love to him could only mean a memory.
Therefore when he watched the preparations out there in the mist, andheard the heavy blows upon the wooden planks and the murmurs of hissympathizers at their work, he only smiled gently, self-deprecatingly,but always good-humouredly.
If the Lord of Stoutenburg only knew how little he really cared.