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

have been inclined to disobey.”

“A truce on your taunts, my lord!” broke in the burgomaster firmly. “What is your pleasure with us?”

“Just what I have had the honour to tell you,” Stoutenburg replied coolly. “That you return forthwith to your apartments.”

“But my daughter, my lord?”

“She sups here, with her brother Nicolaes and with me.”

“ ’Tis only my dead body you’ll drag away from here,” the burgomaster rejoined quietly.

Once more Stoutenburg broke into that harsh, mirthless laugh which had become habitual to him and which seemed to find its wellspring in the bitterness of his soul.

“Fine heroics, mynheer!” he said derisively. “But useless, I fear me, and quite unnecessary. Were I to assure you that your daughter hath ceased to rouse the slightest passion in my heart or to stir my senses in any way, you would mayhap not credit me. Yet such is the case. The jongejuffrouw, I’ll have you believe, will be as safe with me as would the ugliest old hag out of the street.”

“Nevertheless, my lord,” Beresteyn rejoined with calm dignity, “whilst I live I remain by my daughter’s side.”

Stoutenburg shrugged his shoulders.

“Jan,” he called, “take mynheer the burgomaster back to his apartments. I have no further use for him.”

VII

Mynheer Beresteyn was still a comparatively young and vigorous man. In his day, he had been counted one of the finest soldiers in the armies of the Prince of Orange, and had accomplished prodigies of skill and valour at Turnhout and Ostend. The feeling that at this moment, when he would have given his life to protect his daughter, he was absolutely helpless, was undoubtedly the most cruel blow he had ever had to endure at the hands of Fate. His eyes, pathetic in their mute appeal for forgiveness, sought those of Gilda. She had remained perfectly still all this while, silent in the dark corner whither Jan and the soldiers had thrust her at their first onslaught on the burgomaster. But she had watched the whole scene with ever-increasing horror, not at thought of herself, of her own danger, only of her father and all that he must be suffering. Now her one idea was to reassure him, to ease the burden of sorrow and of wrath which his own impotence must have laid upon his brave soul.

Before any of the men could stop her, she had evaded them. Swift and furtive as a tiny lizard, she had wormed her way between them to her father’s side. Now she had her arms round his neck, her head against his breast.

“Do not be anxious because of me, father dear,” she whispered under her breath. “God hath us all in His keeping. Have no fear for me.”

A deep groan escaped the old man’s breast. His eyes, fierce and indignant, rested with an expression of withering contempt upon his enemy.

“Jan,” Stoutenburg broke in harshly, “didst not hear my commands?”

Four pairs of hands immediately closed upon the burgomaster. He, like a creature at bay, started to struggle.

“Someone knock that old fool on the head!” his lordship shouted with a fierce oath.

And Jan raised his fist, overwilling to obey. But, with a loud cry of indignation, Gilda had already interposed. She seized the man’s wrist with her own small hands and turned flaming eyes upon Stoutenburg.

“Violence is unnecessary, my lord,” she said, vainly striving to speak coolly and firmly. “My father will go quietly, and I will remain here to listen to what you have to say.”

“Bravely spoken!” Stoutenburg rejoined with a sneer. “And you, Mynheer Beresteyn, would do well to learn wisdom at so fair a source. You and your precious daughter will come to no harm if you behave like reasonable beings. There is such a thing,” he added cynically, “as submitting to the inevitable.”

“Do not trust him, Gilda,” the old man cried. “False to his country, false to his wife and kindred, every word which he utters is a lie or a blasphemy.”

“Enough of this wrangle,” Stoutenburg exclaimed, wrathful and hoarse. “Jan, take that ranting dotard away!”

Then it was that, just before the men had time to close in all round the burgomaster, Gilda, placing one small, white hand upon her father’s arm, pointed with the other to the door at the far end of the room. Instinctively the old man’s glance turned in that direction. The door was open, and Nicolaes stood upon the threshold. He had heard his father’s voice, Stoutenburg’s brutal commands, his sister’s cry of indignation.

“Nicolaes is here, father dear,” Gilda said simply. “God knows that he is naught but an abominable traitor, yet methinks that even he hath not fallen so low as to see his own sister harmed before his eyes.”

At sight of his son an indefinable look had spread over the burgomaster’s face. It seemed as if an invisible and ghostly hand had drawn a filmy grey veil all over it. And a strange hissing sound⁠—the intaking of a laboured sigh⁠—burst through his tightly set lips.

“Go!” he cried to his son, in a dull, toneless voice, which nevertheless could be heard, clear and distinct as a bell, from end to end of the vast hall. “A father’s curse is potent yet, remember!”

Nicolaes broke into a forced and defiant laugh, tried to assume a jaunty, careless air, which ill agreed with his pallid face and wild, scared eyes. But, before he could speak, Jan and the soldiers had finally seized the burgomaster and forcefully dragged him out of the room.

X A Prince of Darkness I

Gilda had seen her father dragged away from her side without a tear. Whatever tremor of apprehension made her heart quiver after she had seen the last of him, she would not allow these two men to see.

She was not afraid. When a woman has suffered as Gilda had suffered during these past two days, there is no longer in her any room for fear. Not for physical fear, at any rate. All her thoughts,