CHAPTER XLI
"VENGEANCE IS MINE"
It was like a man possessed of devils that the Lord of Stoutenburg ranout through the mist toward the molens.
The grey light of this winter's morning had only vaguely pierced thesurrounding gloom, and the basement beneath the molens still lookedimpenetrably dark. Dark and silent! the soldier--foreign mercenaries andlouts--had vanished in the fog, arms hastily thrown down littered themud-covered ground, swords, pistols, muskets, torn clothing, here andthere a neck-cloth, a steel bonnet, a bright coloured sash. Stoutenburgsaw it all, right through the gloom, and he ground his teeth together tosmother a cry of agonised impotence.
Only now and then a ghostly form flitted swift and silent among theintricate maze of beams, a laggard left behind in the general scramblefor safety, or a human scavenger on the prowl for loot. Now and then agroan or a curse came from out the darkness, and a weird, shapeless,moving thing would crawl along in the mud like some creeping reptileseeking its lair. But Stoutenburg looked neither to right nor left. Hepaid no heed to these swiftly fleeting ghostlike forms. He knew wellenough that he would find silence here, that three dozen men--cowardsand mercenaries all--had been scattered like locusts before a gale.Overhead he heard the tramping of feet, his friends--Beresteyn,Heemskerk, van Does--were making ready for flight. His one scheme ofvengeance--that for which he had thirsted and plotted and sinned--hadcome to nought, but he had yet another in his mind--one which, ifsuccessful, would give him no small measure of satisfaction for thefailure of the other.
And ahead the outline of the hastily improvised gallows detached itselfout of the misty shroud, and from the Lord of Stoutenburg's throat therecame a fierce cry of joy which surely must have delighted all the demonsin hell.
He hurried on, covering with swift eager steps the short distance thatseparated him from the gibbet.
He called loudly to Jan, for it seemed to him as if the place wasunaccountably deserted. He could not see Jan nor yet the prisoner, andsurely Piet the Red had not proved a coward.
The solid beams above and around him threw back his call inreverberating echoes. He called again, and from far away a mocking laughseemed alone to answer him.
Like a frightened beast now he bounded forward. There were the gallowsnot five paces away from him; the planks hastily hammered togetherawhile ago were creaking weirdly, buffeted by the wind, and up aloft therope was swinging, beating itself with a dull, eerie sound against thewood.
The Lord of Stoutenburg--dazed and stupefied--looked on this desolatepicture like a man in a dream.
"My lord!"
The voice came feebly from somewhere close by.
"My lord! for pity's sake!"
It was Jan's voice of course. The Lord of Stoutenburg turnedmechanically in the direction from whence it came. Not far from where hewas standing he saw Jan lying on the ground against a beam, with a scarfwound loosely round his mouth and his arms held with a cord behind hisback. Stoutenburg unwound the scarf and untied the cord, then hemurmured dully:
"Jan? What does this mean?"
"The men all threw down their arms, my lord," said Jan as soon as he hadstruggled to his feet, "they ran like cowards when Lucas of Sparendambrought the news."
"I knew that," said Stoutenburg hoarsely, "curse them all for theirmiserable cowardice. But the prisoner, man, the prisoner? What have youdone with him? Did I not order you to guard him with your life?"
"Then is mine own life forfeit, my lord," said Jan simply, "for I didfail in guarding the prisoner."
A violent oath broke from Stoutenburg's trembling lips. He raised hisclenched fist, ready to strike in his blind, unreasoning fury the oneman who had remained faithful to him to the last.
Jan slowly bent the knee.
"Kill me, my lord," he said calmly, "I could not guard the prisoner."
Stoutenburg was silent for a moment, then his upraised arm fellnervelessly by his side.
"How did it happen?" he asked.
"I scarce can tell you, my lord," replied Jan, "the attack on us was soquick and sudden. Piet and I did remain at our post, but in the rush andthe panic we presently were left alone beside the prisoner. Two men--whowere his friends--must have been on the watch for this opportunity, theyfell on us from behind and caught us unawares. We called in vain forassistance; it was a case of sauve qui peut and every one for himself,in a trice the cords that bound the prisoner were cut, and three men hadvery quickly the best of us. Piet, though wounded in the leg, contrivedto escape, but it almost seemed as if those three demons were determinedto spare me. Though by God," added Jan fervently, "I would gladly havedied rather than have seen all this shame! When they had brought me downthey wound a scarf round my mouth and left me here tied to a beam, whilethey disappeared in the fog."
Stoutenburg made no comment on this brief narrative, even the power ofcursing seemed to have deserted him. He left Jan kneeling there on thefrozen ground, and without a word he turned on his heel and made his wayonce more between the beams under the molens back toward the hut.
Vengeance indeed had eluded his grasp. The two men whom on earth hehated most had remained triumphant while he himself had been broughtdown to the lowest depths of loneliness and misery. Friendless, kinlessnow, life indeed, as he had told Gilda, was at an end for him. Baffledvengeance would henceforth make him a perpetual exile and a fugitivewith every man's hand raised against him, a price once more upon hishead.
The world doth at times allow a man to fail in the task of his life, itwill forgive that one failure and allow the man to try again. But asecond failure is unforgivable, men turn away from the blunderer incontempt. Who would risk life, honour and liberty in a cause that hastwice failed?
Stoutenburg knew this. He knew that within the next hour his friendswould already have practically deserted him. Panic-stricken now theywould accompany him as far as the coast, they would avail themselves ofall the measures which he had devised for their mutual safety, but intheir innermost hearts they would already have detached themselves fromhis future ill-fortunes; and anon, in a few months mayhap, when theStadtholder had succumbed to the disease which was threatening his life,they would all return to their homes and to their kindred and forgetthis brief episode wherein their leader's future had been so completelyand so irretrievably wrecked.
They would forget, only he--Stoutenburg--would remain the pariah, theexile, that carries the brand of traitor for ever upon the pages of hislife.
And now the hut is once more in sight, and for one brief instant aninward light flickers up in Stoutenburg's dulled eyes. Gilda is there,Gilda whom he loves, and whose presence in the sorrow-laden years thatare to come would be a perpetual compensation for all the humiliationand all the shame which he had endured.
To-day mayhap she would follow him unwillingly, but Stoutenburg'spassion was proof against her coldness. He felt that he could conquerher, that he could win her love, when once he had her all to himself ina distant land, when she--kinless too and forlorn--would naturally turnto him for protection and for love. He had little doubt that he wouldsucceed, and vaguely in his mind there rose the pale ray of hope thather love would then bring him luck, or at any rate put renewed energy inhim to begin his life anew.