CHAPTER XXXVIII
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 LordStoutenburg is deeply angered against you. I could do nothing with himon your behalf."
Diogenes turned his head in the direction whence had come the voice. Hesaw Nicolaes Beresteyn standing there in the cold grey mist, with hisfur cloak wrapped closely up to his chin, and his face showing above thecloak, white and drawn.
The situation was not likely to escape Diogenes' irrepressible sense ofhumour.
"Mynheer Beresteyn," he exclaimed; "Dondersteen! what brings yourMightiness here at this hour? A man on the point of death, sir, has nocall 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 theother'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 withunalterable good-humour, through which there pierced however an obviousundercurrent of contempt. "Ye gods!" he added with a quaint sigh, "thesemen have not even the courage of their infamy!"
The words, the tone, the shrug of the shoulders which accompaniedthese, stung Nicolaes Beresteyn's dormant dignity to the quick.
"I do not wonder," he said more firmly, "that you feel bitter contemptfor me now. Your generosity for which I did not crave hath placed memomentarily at a disadvantage before you. Yet believe me I would not beoutdone by you in generosity; were it not for my allegiance to the LordStoutenburg I would go straight to my sister now and confess my guilt toher.... You believe me I trust," he added, seeing that Diogenes' merryeyes were fixed mockingly upon him, "did fate allow it I would gladlychange 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 haveyou think of me as something less of a coward than I seem. Were I tomake full confession to my sister now, I should break her heart--but itwould not save your neck from the gallows."
"And a rogue's neck, sir, is of such infinitely less value than a goodwoman's heart. So I pray you say no more about it. Death and I are oldacquaintances, oft hath he nodded to me en passant, we are about tobecome closer friends, that is all."
"Some day my sister shall know, sir, all that you have done for her andfor 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. Butthis I would have you know, that when I accepted the ignoble bargainwhich you proposed to me in my friend Hals' studio, I did so because Ithought that the jongejuffrouw would be safer in my charge then than inyours!"
Beresteyn was about to retort more hotly when Jan, closely followed byhalf a dozen men, came with swift, firm footsteps up to the prisoner. Hesaluted Beresteyn deferentially as was his wont.
"Your pardon, mynheer," he said, "my lord hath ordered that the prisonerbe forthwith led to execution."
Nicolaes' pale face became the colour of lead.
"One moment, Jan," he said, "one moment. I must speak with mylord ... I...."
"My lord is with the jongejuffrouw," said Jan curtly, "shall I send totell him that you desire to speak with him?"
"No--no--that is I ... I ..." stammered Nicolaes who, indeed, wasfighting a cruel battle with his own weakness, his own cowardice now. Itwas that weakness which had brought him to the abject pass in which henow stood, face to face with the man he had affected to despise, and whowas about to die, laden with the crimes which he Nicolaes had been thefirst to commit.
Stoutenburg's influence over him had been paramount, through it he hadlost all sense of justice, of honour and of loyalty; banded withmurderers he had ceased to recognize the very existence of honesty, andnow he was in such a plight morally, that though he knew himself to beplaying an ignoble role, he did not see the way to throw up the part andto take up that of an honest man. One word from him to Gilda, his frankconfession of his own guilt, and she would so know how to plead for thecondemned man that Stoutenburg would not dare to proceed with thismonstrous act.
But that word he had not the courage to speak.
With dull eyes and in sullen silence he watched Piet the Red untyingunder Jan's orders the ropes which held the prisoner to the beam, andthen securing others to keep his arms pinioned behind his back. The mistnow was of a faint silvery grey, and the objects around had thatmysterious hushed air which the dawn alone can lend. The men, attractedby the sight of a fellow creature in his last living moments, hadgathered together in close knots of threes and fours. They stood by,glowering and sombre, and had not Jan turned a wilfully deaf ear totheir murmurings he would have heard many an ugly word spoken undertheir breath.
These were of course troublous and fighting times, when every man's handwas against some other, when every able-bodied man was firstly a soldierand then only a peaceable citizen. Nor was the present situation anuncommon one: the men could not know what the prisoner had done todeserve this summary punishment. He might have been a spy--aninformer--or merely a prisoner of war. It was no soldier's place tointerfere, only to obey orders and to ask no questions.
But they gave to the splendid personality of the condemned man thetribute of respectful silence. Whilst Jan secured the slender whitehands of the prisoner, and generally made those awful preparations whicheven so simple a death as hanging doth demand, jests and oaths werestilled one by one among these rough fighting men, not one head but wasuncovered, not a back that was not straightened, not an attitude thatwas not one of deference and attention. Instinct--that unerring instinctof the soldier--had told them that here was no scamp getting his justreward, but a brave man going with a careless smile to his death.
"Has mynheer finished with the prisoner," asked Jan when he saw thatPiet had finished his task and that the prisoner was ready to be ledaway. "Is there aught your greatness would still desire to say to him?"
"Only this," said Beresteyn firmly, "that were his hands free I wouldask leave to grasp them."
A look of kindly amusement fell from the prisoner's eyes upon the paleface of the young man.
"I have never known you, sir, save by a quaint nick-name," continuedBeresteyn earnestly, "but surely you have kith and kin somewhere. Haveyou no father or mother living whom you will leave to mourn?"
The prisoner made no immediate reply, the smile of kindly amusementstill lingered round his lips, but presently with an instinctive gestureof pride, he threw back his head and looked around him, as one who hasnothing to fear and but little to regret. He met the sympathetic glancecast on him by the man who had done him--was still doing him--aninfinite wrong, and all round those of his mute and humble friends whoseemed to be listening eagerly now for the answer which he would give toMynheer. Then with a quick sweep his eyes suddenly rested on the woodenerection beyond the molens that loomed out so tragically through themist, pointing with its one weird arm to some infinite distance faraway.
Something in the gentle pathos of this humble deference that encompassedhim, something mayhap in the solemnity of that ghostly arm suddenlyseemed to melt the thin crust of his habitual flippancy. He looked backon Beresteyn and said softly:
"I have a friend, Frans Hals--the painter of pictures--tell him whennext you see him that I am glad his portrait of me is finished, and thatI asked God to bless him for all his goodness has meant to me in thepast."
"But your father, sir," urged Beresteyn, "your kindred...."
"My father, sir," replied Diogenes curtly, "would not care to hear thathis son had died upon the gallows."
Beresteyn would have spoken again but Jan interposes once more, hum
blybut firmly.
"My lord's orders," he now says briefly, "and time presses, mynheer."
Beresteyn stands back, smothering a sigh. Jan on ahead, then Piet theRed and the six soldiers with the prisoner between them. A few stepsonly divide them from the gruesome erection that looms more solidly nowout of the mist. Beresteyn, wrapping his head up in his cloak to shutout sound and sight, walks rapidly away in the opposite direction.