The First Sir Percy, Baroness Orczy [most important books to read TXT] 📗

“Yes,” the Stadtholder broke in decisively, “I’ll see him. Let someone go out into the streets at once and find the man. Tell him that we are waiting⁠—”

“He knows his way about the town,” Nicolaes interposed, with an ill-concealed note of spite in his voice. “Why should he need a pilot?”

There was a moment’s silence. Everyone looked nervy and worried. Then the Stadtholder turned once more to the burgomaster, and queried abruptly:

“Are those two companions of my lord’s still in your house, mynheer? Can you not send one of them?”

The suggestion met with universal approval. And Mynheer Beresteyn himself urged the advisability of finding my lord’s friends immediately. He took his daughter’s hand. It was cold as ice, and quivered like a wounded bird in his warm grasp. He patted it gently, reassuringly. Her wild eyes frightened him. He knew what she suffered, and in his heart condemned his son for those insinuations against the absent. But this was not a moment for delicacy or for scruples. The hour was a portentous one, and fraught with peril for a nation and its chief. The individual matters so little at such times. The feelings, the sufferings, the broken heart of one women or one man⁠—how futile do they seem when a whole country is writhing in the throes of her death agony?

“Go, my dear child,” Beresteyn admonished firmly. “Obey His Highness’s commands. Find my lord’s friends and tell them to go at once, and return hither with my lord. Go,” he added; and whispered gently in Gilda’s ear, as he led her, reluctant yet obedient, to the door, “Leave your husband’s honour in my hands.”

She gave him a grateful look, and he gave her hand a last reassuring pressure. Then he let her go from him, only urging her to hurry back.

It must not be supposed for a moment that he did not feel for her in her anxiety and her misery. But the man in question was a stranger⁠—an Englishman, what?⁠—and Mynheer Beresteyn was above all a patriot, a man who had suffered acutely for his country, had sacrificed his all for her, and was ready to do it again whenever she called to him. The Stadtholder stood for the safety and the integrity of the United Provinces; he was the champion and upholder of her civil and religious liberties. His personal safety stood, in the minds of Beresteyn and his fellow burghers, above every consideration on earth.

Gilda knew this, and though she trusted her father implicitly, she knew that her beloved would be ruthlessly sacrificed, even by him, if, through misadventure or any other simple circumstance entirely beyond his control, he happened to have failed in the enterprise which had been entrusted to him. Nicolaes, of course, was an avowed enemy. Why? Gilda could not conjecture. Was it jealousy, or petty spite only? If so, what advantage could he reap from the humiliation of one who already was a member of his own family? But she felt herself encompassed with enemies. No one had attempted to defend my lord’s honour when it was so ruthlessly impugned save her father, and he was too absorbed, too much centered in thoughts of his country’s peril, to do real battle for the absent.

It was with a heavy heart that she turned to go up the stairs in search of the two men who alone were ready to go through fire in the defense of their friend. A melancholy smile hovered round Gilda’s lips. She felt that with those two quaint creatures she had more in common at this hour than with her father, whom she idolized. In those too poor caitiffs she had all that her heart had been hungering for: simple hearts that understood her sorrow, loyal souls that never wavered. For evil or for good, through death-peril or through seeming dishonour, their friend whom they reverenced could count upon their devotion. And as Gilda went wearily up the stairs, her mind conjured up the picture of those two ludicrous vagabonds, with their whimsical saws and rough codes of honour, and she suddenly felt less lonely and less sad.

Great was her disappointment, therefore, when she reached the guest-chamber, which they still occupied, to find that it was empty. The whole house was by this time in a hopeless state of turmoil and confusion. Serving-men and maids rushed aimlessly hither and thither, up and down the stairs, along the passages, in and out of the rooms; or stood about in groups, whispering or cowering in corners. Some of them had already fled; the few who remained looked like so many scared chickens, fussy and inconsequent⁠—the maids, with kirtles awry and hair unkempt, the men striving to look brave and determined, putting on the air of masters, and adding to the maids’ distress by their aimless, hectoring ways.

There was nothing in the house now left of that orderly management which is the pride of every self-respecting housewife. Doors stood open, displaying the untidiness of the rooms; there was noise and bustle everywhere, calls of distress and loud admonitions. From no one could Gilda learn what she desired to know. She was forced to seek out Maria, her special tiring-woman, who, it was to be hoped, had some semblance of reason left in her. Maria, however, had no love for the two rapscallions, who were treated in the house as if they were princes, and knew nothing of the respect due to their betters. She replied to her young mistress’s inquiries by shrugging her shoulders and calling heaven to witness her ignorance of the whereabouts of those abominable louts.

“Spoilt, they have been,” the old woman asserted sententiously. “Shamefully spoilt. They have neither order nor decency, nor the slightest regard for the wishes of their betters⁠—”

“But, Maria, whither have the two good fellows gone?” Gilda broke in impatiently.

“Gone? Whither have they gone?” Maria ejaculated, in pious ignorance of such probable wickedness. “Nay, that ye cannot expect any self-respecting woman