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

he felt quite sure that lavish hospitality would promptly follow. These gentlemen had no doubt heard of Diogenes, his comrade in arms, the faithful and gallant friend for whom he⁠—Pythagoras⁠—would go through fire and water and the driest of deserts. They would immediately accord a welcome to one who had declared himself honoured by the friendship of so noble a cavalier. Great was the unfortunate man’s disappointment, therefore, when his glib speech was received in absolute silence; and he himself was still left standing upon the lintel of the door, with an icy cold draught playing upon him from behind.

It was only after a considerable time that my lord deigned to resume his questionings again.

“Where dost come from, fellow?” he asked.

“From Ede, so please your lordship,” Pythagoras replied dolefully, “where I partook⁠—”

“And whither art going?” Stoutenburg broke in curtly.

“I was going to Amersfoort, my lord, when I lost my way.”

“To Amersfoort?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Mynheer Beresteyn hath a house at Amersfoort,” Stoutenburg said, as if to himself.

“It was to Mynheer Beresteyn’s house that I was bound, my lord, when I unfortunately lost my way.”

“Ah!” commented my lord dryly. “Thou was on thy way to the house of Mynheer Beresteyn in Amersfoort?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“With a message?”

“No, my lord. Not with a message; I was just going there for the wedding.”

“The wedding?” ejaculated Stoutenburg, and it seemed to Pythagoras as if my lord’s haggard face took on suddenly an almost cadaverous hue. “Whose wedding fellow?” he added more calmly.

“That of my friend Diogenes, so please your lordship, with the jongejuffrouw Beresteyn, he⁠—”

“Take care, man, take care!” came with an involuntary call of alarm from Heemskerk; for Stoutenburg, uttering a hoarse cry like that of a wounded beast, had raised his arm and now strode on the unfortunate philosopher with clenched fist and a look in his hollow eyes which boded no good to the harbinger of those simple tidings.

At sound of his friend’s voice, Stoutenburg dropped his arm. He turned on his heel, ashamed no doubt that this stranger-varlet should see his face distorted as it was with passion.

This paroxysm of uncontrolled fury did not, however, last longer than a moment or two; the next instant the lord of Stoutenburg, outwardly calm and cynical as before had resumed his haughty questionings, looked the awestruck philosopher up and down; and he, somewhat scared by the danger which he only appeared to have escaped through the timely intervention of the other gentleman, was marvelling indeed if he had better not take to his heels at once and run, and trust his safety and his life to the inhospitable wild, rather than in the company of this irascible noble lord.

I think, if fact, that he would have fled the very next moment, but that my lord with one word kept him rooted to the spot.

“So,” resumed Stoutenburg coolly after awhile, “thou, fellow, art a bidden guest at the marriage feast, which it seems is to be solemnized ’twixt the jongejuffrouw Beresteyn and another plepshurk as low as thyself. Truly doth democracy tread hard on the heels of such tyranny as the United Provinces have witnessed of late. Dost owe allegiance, sirrah, to the Stadtholder?”

“Where Diogenes leads, my lord,” replied Pythagoras, with a degree of earnestness which sat whimsically upon his rotund person, “there do Socrates and I follow unquestioningly.”

“Which means that ye are three rascals, ready to sell your skins to the highest bidder. Were ye not in the pay of the lord of Stoutenburg during the last conspiracy against the Stadtholder’s life?”

“We may have been, your honour,” the man replied naively; “although, to my knowledge, I have never set eyes on the lord of Stoutenburg.”

“ ’Twere lucky for thee knave, if thou didst,” rejoined Stoutenburg with a harsh laugh, “for there’s a price of two thousand guilders upon his head, and I doubt not but thy scurrilous friend Diogenes would add another two thousand to that guerdon.”

Then, as Pythagoras, almost dropping with fatigue, was swaying upon his short, fat legs, he jerked his thumb in the direction where the tantalizing bottles and mugs were faintly discernible in the gloom. My lord continued curtly:

“There! Drink thy fill! Amersfoort is not far. My man will put thee on thy way when thou hast quenched thy thirst!”

Quench his thirst! Where was that cellar which could have worked this magic trick? In the corner to which my lord was pointing so casually there was but one bottle, which my lord had put down a while ago, and that, after all, was only half full.

Still, half a bottle of wine was better than no wine at all, and my lord, having granted his gracious leave, took no more notice of the philosopher and his unquenchable thirst, turned to his friend, and together the two gentlemen retired to a distant corner of the place and there whispered eagerly with one another.

Pythagoras tiptoed up to the spot where unexpected bliss awaited him. There was another bottle of wine there beside the half-empty one⁠—a bottle that was full up to the neck, and the shape of which proclaimed that it came from Spain. Good, strong, heady Spanish wine!

And my lord had said “Drink thy fill!” Pythagoras did not hesitate, save for one brief second, while he marvelled whether he had accidentally wandered into Elysian fields, or whether he was only dreaming. Then he poured out for himself a mugful of wine.

Twenty minutes later, the last drop of the second bottle of strong, heady Spanish wine had trickled down the worthy Pythagoras’ throat. He was in a state of perfect bliss, babbling words of supreme contentment, and seeing pleasing visions of gorgeous feasts in the murky angles of the old millhouse.

“ ’Tis time the plepshurk got to horse,” Stoutenburg said at last.

He strode across to where Pythagoras, leaning against the raftered wall, his round head on one side, his sugar-loaf hat set at the back of his head, was gazing dreamily into his empty mug.

“To horse, fellow!” he commanded