CHAPTER XLIII
LEYDEN ONCE MORE
After that Gilda had lived as in a dream: only vaguely conscious thatgood horses and a smoothly gliding vehicle were conveying her back toher home. Of this fact she was sure Nicolaes was sitting quite closeunder the hood of the sledge and when first she became fully aware ofthe reality of his presence, he had raised her hand to his lips and hadsaid 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 shefell 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 forfood and drink.
The nearness of her brother, his gentleness toward her, gave her a senseof well-being, even though her heart felt heavy with a great sorrowwhich made the whole future appear before her like an interminable vistaof blank and grey dullness.
It was at her suggestion that arrangements were made for an all nighthalt at Leyden, which city they reached in the early part of theafternoon. She begged Nicolaes that they might put up at the hostelry ofthe "White Goat" on the further side of the town, and that from thence amessenger might be sent to her father, asking him to come and meet herthere on the morrow.
Though Nicolaes was not a little astonished at this suggestion ofGilda's--seeing that surely she must be longing to be home again andthat Haarlem could easily have been reached before night--he did notwish to run counter to her will. True enough, he dreaded the meetingwith his father, but he knew that it had to come, and felt that,whatever might be the future consequences of it all--he could notpossibly bear alone the burden of remorse and of shame which assailedhim every time he encountered Gilda's tear-stained eyes, and saw howwearied and listless she looked.
So he called a halt at the "White Goat" and as soon as he saw his sistersafely installed, with everything ordered for her comfort, and atasteful supper prepared, he sent a messenger on horseback at once toHaarlem 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 itswide oak staircase--over which she had been carried five days ago, dizzyand half fainting--the blackened rafters would mayhap still echo withthe sound of a merry laughter which she would never hear again.
But when the sledge finally turned in under the low gateway and drew upin the small courtyard of the inn--when with wearied feet and shakingknees she walked up those oaken stairs, it seemed to her that the vividmemories which the whole place recalled were far harder to bear thanthose more intangible ones which--waking and sleeping--had tortured herup to now.
The bedroom too, with the smaller one leading out of it, was the same inwhich she had slept. As the obsequious waiting-wench threw open the doorfor the noble jongejuffrouw to pass through she saw before her the wideopen hearth with its crackling fire, the high-backed chair wherein shehad 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 splendidfigure would suddenly emerge out of the semi-darkness to confront herwith his mocking eyes and his smiling face. She seemed to see himeverywhere, and she had to close her eyes to chase away that all tooinsistent vision.
The waiting-wench did not help matters either, for she askedpersistently and shyly about the handsome mynheer who had such anirresistible fund of laughter in him. Maria too, in her mutterings andgrumblings, contrived--most unwittingly, since she adored Gilda--toinflict a series of tiny pin-pricks on an already suffering heart.
Tired in body and in mind, Gilda could not sleep that night. She wasliving over again every second of the past five days: the interview withthat strangely winning person--a stranger still to her then--here inthis room! how she had hated him at first! how she had tried to shameand wound him with her words, trying all the while to steel her heartagainst that irresistible gaiety and good humour which shone from himlike a radiance: then that second interview in Rotterdam! did she stillhate him then? and if not when was hatred first changed into the lovewhich now so completely filled her soul?
Looking back on those days, she could not tell. All that she knew wasthat when he was brought before her helpless and pinioned she alreadyloved him, and that since that moment love had grown and strengtheneduntil her whole heart was given to that same nameless soldier of fortunewhom she had first despised.
To live over again those few brief days which seemed now like aneternity was a sweet, sad pleasure which Gilda could endure, but whatbecame intolerable in the darkness and in the silence of the night wasthe remembrance of the immediate past.
Clearly cut out before her mental vision were the pictures of her lifethis morning in the hut beside the molens: and indeed, it was a lifetimethat had gone by in those few hours.
Firstly Stoutenburg's visit in the early morning, his smooth words andcareless chatter! she, poor fool! under the belief all the time that thetreacherous plot had been abandoned, and that she would forthwith beconveyed back to her father. Her thoughts of pleading for the condemnedman's life: then the tramping of feet, the cries of terror, herbrother's appearance bringing the awful news of betrayal. She lived overagain those moments of supreme horror when she realized how Stoutenburghad deceived her, and that Nicolaes himself was but a traitor and amiserable liar.
She knew then that it was the adventurer, the penniless soldier offortune whom she had tried to hate and to despise, who had quietly goneto warn the Stadtholder, and that his action had been the direct workingof God's will in a brave and loyal soul: she knew also by a mysteriousintuition which no good woman has ever been able to resist, that the manwho had stood before her--self-convicted and self-confessed--hadaccepted that humiliation to save her the pain of fearing and despisingher own brother.
The visions now became more dim and blurred. She rememberedStoutenburg's fury, his hideous threats of vengeance on the man who hadthrown himself across his treacherous path. She remembered pleading tothat monster, weeping, clinging to his arm in a passionate appeal. Sheremembered the soul agony which she felt when she realized that thatappeal had been in vain.
Then she had stood for a moment silent and alone in the hut. Stoutenburghad left her in order to accomplish that hideous act of revenge.
After that she remembered nothing clearly. She could only have beenhalf-conscious and all round her there was a confusion of sounds, ofshouts and clash of arms: she thought that she was being lifted out ofthe chair into which she had fallen in a partial swoon, that she heardMaria's cries of terror, and that she felt the cold damp morning airstriking upon her face.
Presently she knew that Nicolaes was beside her, and that she was beingtaken home. All else was a blank or a dream.
Now she was tossing restlessly upon the lavender-scented bed in thishostelry so full of memories. Her temples were throbbing, her eyes feltlike pieces of glowing charcoal in her head. The blackness around herweighed upon her soul until she felt that she could not breathe.
Outside the silence of the night was being gravely disturbed: there wasthe sound of horses' hoofs upon the cobble-stones of the yard, thecreaking of a vehicle brought to a standstill, the usual shouts forgrooms and ostlers. A late arrival had filled the tranquil inn with itsbustle and its noise.
Then once again all was still, and Gilda turned her aching head upon thepillow. Though the room was not hot, and the atmosphere outside heavywith 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 wrappedclosely around her. Then she found her way across to the window and drewaside the curtain. No light penetrated through the latticed panes: thewaning moon which four nights ago had been at times so marvellouslybrilliant, had not yet risen above the horizon line. As Gilda's fingersfumbled for the window-latch she heard a distant church clock strike themidnight hour.
She threw open the casement. The sill was low and she leaned
out peeringup and down the narrow street. It was entirely deserted and pitch darksave where on the wall opposite the light from a window immediatelybelow her threw its feeble reflection. Vaguely she wondered who wasastir in the small hostelry. No doubt it was the tap-room which wasthere below her, still lighted up, and apparently with its smallcasement also thrown open, like the one out of which she was leaning.
For now, when the reverberating echo of the chiming clock had entirelydied away, she was conscious of a vague murmur of voices coming up frombelow, confused at first and undistinguishable, but presently she hearda click as if the casement had been pushed further open or mayhap acurtain pulled aside, for after that the sound of the voices became moredistinct and clear.
With beating heart and straining ears Gilda leaned as far out of thewindow as she could, listening intently: she had recognized her father'svoice, and he was speaking so strangely that even as she listened shefelt all the blood tingling in her veins.
"My son, sir," he was saying, "had, I am glad to say, sufficient prideand manhood in him not to bear the full weight of your generosity anylonger. He sent a special messenger on horseback out to me thisafternoon. As soon as I knew that my daughter was here I came as fast asa sleigh and the three best horses in my stables could bring me. I hadno thought, of course, of seeing you here."
"I had no thought that you should see me, sir," said a voice which byits vibrating tones had the power of sending the hot blood rushing tothe listener's neck and cheeks. "Had I not entered the yard just as yoursledge turned in under the gateway, you had not been offended by mineunworthy presence."
"I would in that case have searched the length and breadth of this landto find you, sir," rejoined Cornelius Beresteyn earnestly, "for half anhour later my son had told me the whole circumstances of his associationwith you."
"An association of which Mynheer Nicolaes will never be over-proud, I'llwarrant," came in slightly less flippant accents than usual from theforeigner. "Do I not stand self-confessed as a liar, a forger andabductor of helpless women? A fine record forsooth: and ere he orderedme to be hanged my Lord of Stoutenburg did loudly proclaim me as suchbefore his friends and before his followers."
"His friends, sir, are the sons of my friends. I will loudly proclaimyou 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 hisshameful proposal to you in regard to his own sister, down to thismoment when you still desired that Gilda and I should remain inignorance of his guilt."
"What is the good, mynheer, of raking up all this past?" said thephilosopher lightly, "I would that Mynheer Nicolaes had known how tohold his tongue."
"Thank God that he did not," retorted Cornelius Beresteyn hotly, "had hedone so I stood in peril of failing--for the first time in my life--inan important business obligation."
"Not towards me, mynheer, at any rate."
"Yes, sir, towards you," affirmed Beresteyn decisively. "I promised youfive hundred thousand guilders if you brought my daughter safely back tome. I know from mine own son, sir, that I owe her safety to no one butto you."
"Ours was an ignoble bargain, mynheer," said Diogenes with his wontedgaiety, and though she could not see him, Gilda could picture his facenow alive with merriment and suppressed laughter. "The humour of thesituation appealed to me--it proved irresistible--but the bargain in noway binds you seeing that it was I who had been impious enough to layhands upon your daughter."
"At my son's suggestion I know," rejoined Beresteyn quietly, "and fromyour subsequent acts, sir, I must infer that you only did it because youfelt that she was safer under your charge than at the mercy of her ownbrother 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," saidDiogenes more seriously, "it will cheer me in the future, when I and allmy 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. TheStadtholder hath need of soldiers...."
"And he will, sir, find none better than you throughout the world. Andwith a goodly fortune to help you...."
"Speak not of that, mynheer," he said firmly, "I could not take yourmoney. 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 canever be serious. For six days now I have had a paymaster: MynheerNicolaes' money has burned a hole in my good humour, it has scorched myhands, wounded my shoulder and lacerated my hip, it has brought on meall the unpleasant sensations which I have so carefully avoidedhitherto, remorse, humiliation, and one or two other sensations whichwill never leave me until my death. It changed temporarily theshiftless, 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, itis more fit for you to handle than for me. Let me go back to myshiftlessness, my penury, my freedom, eat my fill to-day, starveto-morrow, and one day look up at the stars from the lowly earth, with akindly bullet in my chest that does not mean to blunder. And if in thedays to come your thoughts ever do revert to me, I pray you think of meas happy or nearly so, owning no master save my whim, bending my backto none, keeping my hat on my head when I choose, and ending my days ina ditch or in a palace, the carver of mine own destiny, the sole arbiterof my will. And now I pray you seek that rest of which you must besorely in need. I start at daybreak to-morrow: mayhap we shall nevermeet again, save in Heaven, if indeed, there be room there for such athriftless 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, nofurther words reached her ears just then. She tiptoed as quietly as shecould across the room, finding her way with difficulty in the dark. Atlast her fumbling fingers encountered the latch of the door of the innerroom where Maria lay snoring lustily.
It took Gilda some little time to wake the old woman, but at last shesucceeded, and then ordered her, very peremptorily, to strike a light.
"Are you ill, mejuffrouw?" queried Maria anxiously even though she wasbut 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 herswhen she exacted implicit obedience from her servants. Alas! the lastfew days had seen that mood submerged into an ocean of sorrow andhumiliation, and Maria--though angered at having been wakened out of afirst sleep--was very glad to see her darling looking so alert and sobrisk.
Indeed--the light being very dim--Maria could not see the brilliant glowthat lit up the jongejuffrouw's cheeks as with somewhat febrilegestures she put on her dress and smoothed her hair.
"Now put on your dress too, Maria," she said when she was ready, "andtell my father, who is either in the tap-room down below or hath alreadyretired to his room, that I desire to speak with him."
And Maria, bewildered and flustered, had no option but to obey.