The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel

"May Heaven reward you, sir, for that kindly thought of me," said Diogenes more seriously, "it will cheer me in the future, when I and all my 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. The Stadtholder hath need of soldiers…"

"And he will, sir, find none better than you throughout the world. And with a goodly fortune to help you…"

"Speak not of that, mynheer," he said firmly, "I could not take your money. 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 can ever be serious. For six days now I have had a paymaster: Mynheer Nicolaes' money has burned a hole in my good humour, it has scorched my hands, wounded my shoulder and lacerated my hip, it has brought on me all the unpleasant sensations which I have so carefully avoided hitherto, remorse, humiliation, and one or two other sensations which will never leave me until my death. It changed temporarily the shiftless, 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, it is more fit for you to handle than for me. Let me go back to my shiftlessness, my penury, my freedom, eat my fill to-day, starve to-morrow, and one day look up at the stars from the lowly earth, with a kindly bullet in my chest that does not mean to blunder. And if in the days to come your thoughts ever do revert to me, I pray you think of me as happy or nearly so, owning no master save my whim, bending my back to none, keeping my hat on my head when I choose, and ending my days in a ditch or in a palace, the carver of mine own destiny, the sole arbiter of my will. And now I pray you seek that rest of which you must be sorely in need. I start at daybreak to-morrow: mayhap we shall never meet again, save in Heaven, if indeed, there be room there for such a thriftless 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, no further words reached her ears just then. She tiptoed as quietly as she could across the room, finding her way with difficulty in the dark. At last her fumbling fingers encountered the latch of the door of the inner room where Maria lay snoring lustily.

It took Gilda some little time to wake the old woman, but at last she succeeded, and then ordered her, very peremptorily, to strike a light.

"Are you ill, mejuffrouw?" queried Maria anxiously even though she was but 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 hers when she exacted implicit obedience from her servants. Alas! the last few days had seen that mood submerged into an ocean of sorrow and humiliation, and Maria – though angered at having been wakened out of a first sleep – was very glad to see her darling looking so alert and so brisk.

Indeed – the light being very dim – Maria could not see the brilliant glow that lit up the jongejuffrouw's cheeks as with somewhat febrile gestures she put on her dress and smoothed her hair.

"Now put on your dress too, Maria," she said when she was ready, "and tell my father, who is either in the tap-room down below or hath already retired to his room, that I desire to speak with him."

And Maria, bewildered and flustered, had no option but to obey.

CHAPTER XLIV

BLAKE OF BLAKENEY

While Maria completed a hasty toilet, Gilda's instinct had drawn her back once more to the open window. The light from the room below was still reflected on the opposite wall, and from the tap-room the buzz of voices had not altogether ceased.

Cornelius Beresteyn was speaking now:

"Indeed," he said, "it will be the one consolation left to me, since you do reject my friendship, sir."

"Not your friendship, sir – only your money," interposed Diogenes.

"Well! you do speak of lifelong parting. But your two friends have indeed deserved well of me. Without their help no doubt you, sir, first and then my dearly loved daughter would have fallen victims to that infamous Stoutenburg. Will a present of twenty thousand guilders each gratify them, do you think?"

A ringing laugh roused the echoes of the sleeping hostelry.

"Twenty thousand guilders! ye gods!" exclaimed Diogenes merrily. "Pythagoras, dost hear, old bladder-face? Socrates, my robin, dost realize it? Twenty thousand guilders each in your pockets, old compeers. Lord! how drunk you will both be to-morrow."

Out of the confused hubbub that ensued Gilda could disentangle nothing definite; there was a good deal of shouting and clapping of pewter mugs against a table, and through it all that irresponsible, infectious laughter which – strangely enough – had to Gilda's ears at this moment a curious tone, almost of bitterness, as if its merriment was only forced.

Then when the outburst of gaiety had somewhat subsided she once more heard her father's voice. Maria was dressed by this time, and now at a word from Gilda was ready to go downstairs and to deliver the jongejuffrouw's message to her father.

"You spoke so lightly just now, sir, of dying in a ditch or palace," Cornelius Beresteyn was saying, "but you did tell me that day in Haarlem that you had kith and kindred in England. Where is that father of whom you spoke, and your mother who is a saint? Your irresponsible vagabondage will leave her in perpetual loneliness."

"My mother is dead, sir," said Diogenes quietly, "my father broke her heart."

"Even then he hath a right to know that his son is a brave and loyal gentleman."

"He will only know that when his son is dead."

"That was a cruel dictum, sir."

"Not so cruel as that which left my mother to starve in the streets of Haarlem."

"Aye! ten thousand times more cruel, since your dear mother, sir, had not to bear the awful burden of lifelong remorse."

"Bah!" rejoined the philosopher with a careless shrug of the shoulders, "a man seldom feels remorse for wrongs committed against a woman."

"But he doth for those committed against his flesh and blood – his son – "

"I have no means of finding out, sir, if my father hath or hath not remorse for his wilful desertion of wife and child – England is a far-off country – I would not care to undertake so unprofitable a pilgrimage."

"Then why not let me do so, sir?" queried Cornelius Beresteyn calmly.

"You?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"Why should you trouble, mynheer, to seek out the father of such a vagabond as I?"

"Because I would like to give a man – an old man your father must be now – the happiness of calling you his son. You say he lives in England. I often go to England on business. Will you not at least tell me your father's name?"

"I have no cause to conceal it, mynheer," rejoined Diogenes carelessly. "In England they call him Blake of Blakeney; his home is in Sussex and I believe that it is a stately home."

"But I know the Squire of Blakeney well," said Cornelius Beresteyn eagerly, "my bankers at Amsterdam also do business for him. I know that just now he is in Antwerp on a mission from King James of England to the Archduchess. He hath oft told Mynheer Beuselaar, our mutual banker, that he was moving heaven and earth to find the son whom he had lost."

"Heaven and earth take a good deal of moving," quoth Diogenes lightly, "once a wife and son have been forsaken and left to starve in a foreign land. Mine English father wedded my mother in the church of St. Pieter at Haarlem. My friend Frans Hals – God bless him – knew my mother and cared for me after she died. He has all the papers in his charge relating to the marriage. It has long ago been arranged between us that if I die with ordinary worthiness, he will seek out my father in England and tell him that mayhap – after all – even though I have been a vagabond all my life – I have never done anything that should cause him to blush for his son."

Apparently at this juncture, Maria must have knocked at the door of the tapperij, for Gilda, whose heart was beating more furiously than ever, heard presently the well-known firm footsteps of her father as he rapidly ascended the stairs.

Two minutes later Gilda lay against her father's heart, and her hand resting in his she told him from beginning to end everything that she had suffered from the moment when after watch-night service in the Groote Kerk she first became aware of the murmur of voices, to that when she first realized that the man whom she should have hated, the knave whom she should have despised, filled her heart and soul to the exclusion of all other happiness in the world, and that he was about to pass out of her life for ever.

It took a long time to tell – for she had suffered more, felt more, lived more in the past five days than would fill an ordinary life – nor did she disguise anything from her father, not even the conversation which she had had at Rotterdam in the dead of night with the man who had remained nameless until now, and in consequence of which he had gone at once to warn the Stadtholder and had thus averted the hideous conspiracy which would have darkened for ever the destinies of many Dutch homes.

Of Nicolaes she did not speak; she knew that he had confessed his guilt to his father, who would know how to forgive in the fullness of time.

When she had finished speaking her father said somewhat roughly:

"But for that vervloekte adventurer down there, you would never have suffered, Gilda, as you did. Nicolaes…"

"Nicolaes, father dear," she broke in quietly, "is very dear to us both. I think that his momentary weakness will endear him to us even more. But he was a tool in the hands of that unscrupulous Stoutenburg – and but for that nameless and penniless soldier whose hand you were proud to grasp just now, I would not be here in your arms at this moment."

"Ah!" said Cornelius Beresteyn dryly, "is this the way that the wind blows, my girl? Did you not know then that the rascal – the day after he dared to lay hands upon you – was back again in Haarlem bargaining with me to restore you to my arms in exchange for a fortune?"

"And two days later, father dear," she retorted, "he endured insults, injuries, cruelties from Stoutenburg, rather than betray Nicolaes' guilt before me."

"Hm!" murmured Cornelius, and there was a humorous twinkle in his eyes as he looked down upon his daughter's bowed head.

"And but for that same rascal, father," she continued softly, "you would at this moment be mourning a dead daughter and Holland a hideous act of treachery."

"Hush, my dear!" cried the old man impulsively, as he put his kind protecting arms round the child whom he loved so dearly.

"I would never have followed the Lord of Stoutenburg while I lived," she said simply.

"Please God," he said earnestly, "I would sooner have seen you in the crypt beside your mother."

"Then, father, hath not the rascal you speak of deserved well of us? Can we not guess that even originally he took me away from Haarlem, only because he knew that if he refused the bargain, proposed to him by mine own brother, Stoutenburg would have found some other means of ensuring my silence."

"You are a good advocate, my girl," rejoined Cornelius with a sly wink which brought the colour rushing up to Gilda's cheeks. "I think, by your leave, I'll go and shake that vervloekte Keerl once more by the hand… And … shall I tell him that you bear him no ill-will?" he added roguishly.

"Yes, father dear, tell him that," she said gently.

"Then will you go to bed, dear?" he asked, "you are overwrought and tired."

"I will sit by the window quietly for a quarter of an hour," she said, "after that I promise you that I will go peaceably to bed."

He kissed her tenderly, for she was very dear to him, but being a man of vast understanding and profound knowledge of men and things, the humorous twinkle did not altogether fade from his eyes as he finally bade his daughter "Good night," and then quietly went out of the room.

CHAPTER XLV

THE END

Diogenes sat beside the window in the tapperij listening with half an ear to the sounds in and about the hostelry which were dying out one by one. At first there had been a footfall in the room overhead which had seemed to him the sweetest music that man could hear. It had paced somewhat restlessly up and down and to the Laughing Cavalier, the gay and irresponsible soldier of fortune, it had seemed as if every creaking of a loose board beneath the featherweight of that footfall found its echo in his heart.

But anon Mynheer Cornelius Beresteyn was called away and then all was still in the room upstairs, and Diogenes burying his head in his hands evoked the picture of that room as he had seen it five days ago. The proud jongejuffrouw in her high-backed chair, looking on him with blue eyes which she vainly tried to render hard through their exquisite expression of appealing, childlike gentleness: and he groaned aloud with the misery of the inevitable which with stern finger bade him go and leave behind him all the illusions, all the dreams which he had dared to weave.

Had she not told him that she despised him, that his existence was as naught to her, that she looked on him as a menial and a knave, somewhat below the faithful henchmen who were in her father's service? Ye gods! he had endured much in his life of privations, of physical and mental pain, but was there aught on earth or in the outermost pits of hell to be compared with the agony of this ending to a dream.

The serving-wench came in just then. She scarcely dared approach the mynheer with the merry voice and the laughter-filled eyes who now looked so inexpressibly sad.

Yet she had a message for him. Mynheer Cornelius Beresteyn, she said, desired to speak with him once more. The wench had murmured the words shyly, for her heart was aching for the handsome soldier and the tears were very near her eyes. But hearing the message he had jumped up with alacrity and was immediately ready to follow her.

Mynheer Beresteyn had a room on the upper floor, she explained, as she led the way upstairs. The old man was standing on the narrow landing and as soon as Diogenes appeared upon the stairs, he said simply:

"There was something I did forget to say to you downstairs; may I trouble you, sir, to come into my room for a moment."

He threw open one of the doors that gave on the landing and politely stood aside that his visitor might pass through. Diogenes entered the room: he heard the door being closed behind him, and thought that Mynheer Beresteyn had followed him in.

The room was very dimly lighted by a couple of tallow candles that flickered in their sconces, and at first he could not see into the dark recesses of the room. But presently something moved, something ethereal and intangible, white and exquisite. It stirred from out the depths of the huge high-backed chair, and from out the gloom there came a little cry of surprise and of joy which was as the call of