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

and untidy, covered with dust from the floor, where he had lain stretched out for the past three hours, trying to get a wink of sleep; whilst Stoutenburg, restless and alert, had kept his ears open and his nerves on the stretch for the first sound of Jan’s return.

“You have been a long time getting to Lang Soeren and back,” the latter remarked further to Jan.

“I was guiding a drunken man on a wearied horse,” the man replied curtly. “And I myself had been in the saddle all day.”

“Then get another hour’s rest now,” Stoutenburg rejoined. “You will accompany my lord of Heemskerk back to Doesburg as soon as the sun is up.”

Jan made no reply. He was accustomed to curt commands and to unquestioning obedience. Tired, saddle-sore and wearied, he would be ready to ride again, go anywhere until he dropped. So he turned on his heel and went out into the cold once more, in order to snatch that brief hour’s rest which had been graciously accorded him.

Heemskerk gave an impatient sigh.

“I would the dawn were quicker in coming!” he murmured under his breath.

“The atmosphere of the Veluwe is getting oppressive for your fastidious taste,” Stoutenburg retorted with a sneer. Then, as his friend made no other comment, he continued lightly: “Dead men tell no tales. I could not risk that blabbering fool going back to Amersfoort and speaking of what he saw. Even your unwonted squeamishness, my good Heemskerk, would grant me that.”

“Or, rather,” rejoined the other, almost involuntarily, “did not the unfortunate man suffer for being the messenger of evil tidings?”

Stoutenburg shrugged his shoulders with an assumption of indifference.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Though I doubt if the news was wholly unexpected. Yet I would have deemed Gilda Beresteyn too proud to wed that plepshurk.”

“A man with a future,” Heemskerk rejoined. “He is credited with having saved the Stadtholder’s life, when the lord of Stoutenburg planned to blow up the bridge under his passage.”

“And Beresteyn is grateful to him too,” added Stoutenburg with a sarcastic curl of his thin lips, “for having rescued the fair Gilda from the lord of Stoutenburg’s fierce clutches. But Nicolaes might have told me that his sister was getting married.”

“Nicolaes?” ejaculated Heemskerk, with obvious surprise. “You have seen Nicolaes Beresteyn, then of late?”

For the space of a few seconds⁠—less perhaps⁠—Stoutenburg appeared confused, and the look which he cast on his friend was both furtive and searching. The next moment, however, he had recovered his usual cool placidity.

“You mistook, me, my friend,” he said blandly. “I did not say that I had seen Nicolaes Beresteyn of late. I have not seen him, in fact, since the day of our unfortunate aborted conspiracy. Rumor reached me that he himself was about to wed the worthy daughter of some prosperous burgher. I merely wondered how the same rumor made no mention of the other prospective bride.”

Once again the conversation flagged. Heemskerk regarded his friend with an anxious expression in his pale wearied face. He knew how passionately, if somewhat intermittently, Stoutenburg had loved Gilda Beresteyn. He knew of the original girl and boy affection between them, and of the man’s base betrayal of the girl’s trust. Stoutenburg had thrown over the humbler burgher’s daughter in order to wed Walburg de Marnix, whom he promptly neglected, and who had since set him legally free. Heemskerk knew, too, how Stoutenburg’s passion for the beautiful Gilda Beresteyn had since then burst into a consuming flame, and how the obscure soldier of fortune who went by the nickname of Diogenes had indeed snatched the fair prize from his grasp.

Nigh on three months had gone by since then. Stoutenburg was still nurturing thoughts of vengeance and of crime, not only against the Stadtholder, but also against the girl who had scorned him. Well, this in truth was none of his friend’s business. Hideous as was the premeditated coup against Maurice of Nassau, it would undoubtedly, if successful, help the cause of Spain in the Netherlands, and Heemskerk himself was that unnatural monster⁠—a man who would rather see his country ruled by a stranger than by those of her sons whose political or religious views differed from his own.

Thus, when an hour later he took leave of Stoutenburg, he did so almost with cordiality, did not hesitate to grasp the hand of a man whom he knew to be a scheming and relentless murderer.

“One of us will come out to wait on you in two days’ time,” he said at the last. “I go back to camp satisfied that you are not so lonely as you seem, and that there is someone who sees to it that you do not fare so ill even in this desolation. May I say this to De Berg?”

“If you like,” Stoutenburg replied. “Anyway, you may assure him, and through him the Archduchess, that Maurice of Nassau will be in his grave before I, his judge and executioner, perish of hunger or of cold.”

He accompanied his friend to the door, and stood there while the latter and Jan were getting to horse. Then, as they went out into the open, he waved them a last adieu. On the far distant east, the pale, wintry sun had tinged the mist with a delicate lemon gold. The vast immensity of the waste lay stretched out as if limitless before him. As far as the eye could see not a tower or column of smoke broke the even monotony of the undulating ground. The shadow of the great molen with its gaunt, mained wings lay, like patches of vivid blue upon the vast and glistening pall of snow.

The two riders put their horses to a trot. Soon they appeared like mere black specks upon a background of golden haze, whilst in their wake, upon the scarce visible track, the traces of their horses’ hoofs, in stains of darker blue upon the virgin white, were infinitely multiplied.

Stoutenburg watched them until the mist-laden distance had completely hidden