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Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch

by H. Rider Haggard · English · Gutenberg #5754 · 872,102 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch

Author: H. Rider Haggard


        
Release date: April 22, 2006 [eBook #5754]
                Most recently updated: June 4, 2021

Language: English

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[Illustration]




Lysbeth

A Tale Of The Dutch

by H. Rider Haggard

1901


Contents

 DEDICATION
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

 BOOK THE FIRST THE SOWING
 CHAPTER I. THE WOLF AND THE BADGER
 CHAPTER II. SHE WHO BUYS—PAYS
 CHAPTER III. MONTALVO WINS A TRICK
 CHAPTER IV. THREE WAKINGS
 CHAPTER V. THE DREAM OF DIRK
 CHAPTER VI. THE BETROTHAL OF LYSBETH
 CHAPTER VII. HENDRIK BRANT HAS A VISITOR
 CHAPTER VIII. THE MARE’S STABLE

 BOOK THE SECOND THE RIPENING
 CHAPTER IX. ADRIAN, FOY, AND MARTIN THE RED
 CHAPTER X. ADRIAN GOES OUT HAWKING
 CHAPTER XI. ADRIAN RESCUES BEAUTY IN DISTRESS
 CHAPTER XII. THE SUMMONS
 CHAPTER XIII. MOTHER’S GIFTS ARE GOOD GIFTS
 CHAPTER XIV. SWORD SILENCE RECEIVES THE SECRET
 CHAPTER XV. SEÑOR RAMIRO
 CHAPTER XVI. THE MASTER
 CHAPTER XVII. BETROTHED
 CHAPTER XVIII. FOY SEES A VISION
 CHAPTER XIX. THE FRAY IN THE SHOT TOWER
 CHAPTER XX. IN THE GEVANGENHUIS
 CHAPTER XXI. HOW MARTIN TURNED COWARD
 CHAPTER XXII. A MEETING AND A PARTING

 BOOK THE THIRD THE HARVESTING
 CHAPTER XXIII. FATHER AND SON
 CHAPTER XXIV. MARTHA PREACHES A SERMON AND TELLS A SECRET
 CHAPTER XXV. THE RED MILL
 CHAPTER XXVI. THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDE
 CHAPTER XXVII. WHAT ELSA SAW IN THE MOONLIGHT
 CHAPTER XXVIII. ATONEMENT
 CHAPTER XXIX. ADRIAN COMES HOME AGAIN
 CHAPTER XXX. TWO SCENES




DEDICATION


_In token of the earnest reverence of a man of a later generation for
his character, and for that life work whereof we inherit the fruits
to-day, this tale of the times he shaped is dedicated to the memory of
one of the greatest and most noble-hearted beings that the world has
known; the immortal William, called the Silent, of Nassau._




AUTHOR’S NOTE


There are, roughly, two ways of writing an historical romance—the first
to choose some notable and leading characters of the time to be
treated, and by the help of history attempt to picture them as they
were; the other, to make a study of that time and history with the
country in which it was enacted, and from it to deduce the necessary
characters.

In the case of “Lysbeth” the author has attempted this second method.
By an example of the trials, adventures, and victories of a burgher
family of the generation of Philip II. and William the Silent, he
strives to set before readers of to-day something of the life of those
who lived through perhaps the most fearful tyranny that the western
world has known. How did they live, one wonders; how is it that they
did not die of very terror, those of them who escaped the scaffold, the
famine and the pestilence?

This and another—Why were such things suffered to be?—seem problems
worth consideration, especially by the young, who are so apt to take
everything for granted, including their own religious freedom and
personal security. How often, indeed, do any living folk give a
grateful thought to the forefathers who won for us these advantages,
and many others with them?

The writer has sometimes heard travellers in the Netherlands express
surprise that even in an age of almost universal decoration its noble
churches are suffered to remain smeared with melancholy whitewash.
Could they look backward through the centuries and behold with the
mind’s eye certain scenes that have taken place within these very
temples and about their walls, they would marvel no longer. Here we are
beginning to forget the smart at the price of which we bought
deliverance from the bitter yoke of priest and king, but yonder the
sword bit deeper and smote more often. Perhaps that is why in Holland
they still love whitewash, which to them may be a symbol, a perpetual
protest; and remembering stories that have been handed down as
heirlooms to this day, frown at the sight of even the most modest
sacerdotal vestment. Those who are acquainted with the facts of their
history and deliverance will scarcely wonder at the prejudice.




LYSBETH
A TALE OF THE DUTCH




BOOK THE FIRST
THE SOWING




CHAPTER I
THE WOLF AND THE BADGER


The time was in or about the year 1544, when the Emperor Charles V.
ruled the Netherlands, and our scene the city of Leyden.

Any one who has visited this pleasant town knows that it lies in the
midst of wide, flat meadows, and is intersected by many canals filled
with Rhine water. But now, as it was winter, near to Christmas indeed,
the meadows and the quaint gabled roofs of the city lay buried beneath
a dazzling sheet of snow, while, instead of boats and barges, skaters
glided up and down the frozen surface of the canals, which were swept
for their convenience. Outside the walls of the town, not far from the
Morsch poort, or gate, the surface of the broad moat which surrounded
them presented a sight as gay as it was charming. Just here one of the
branches of the Rhine ran into this moat, and down it came the
pleasure-seekers in sledges, on skates, or afoot. They were dressed,
most of them, in their best attire, for the day was a holiday set apart
for a kind of skating carnival, with sleighing matches, such games as
curling, and other amusements.

Among these merry folk might have been seen a young lady of two or
three and twenty years of age, dressed in a coat of dark green cloth
trimmed with fur, and close-fitting at the waist. This coat opened in
front, showing a broidered woollen skirt, but over the bust it was
tightly buttoned and surmounted by a stiff ruff of Brussels lace. Upon
her head she wore a high-crowned beaver hat, to which the nodding
ostrich feather was fastened by a jewelled ornament of sufficient value
to show that she was a person of some means. In fact, this lady was the
only child of a sea captain and shipowner named Carolus van Hout, who,
whilst still a middle-aged man, had died about a year before, leaving
her heiress to a very considerable fortune. This circumstance, with the
added advantages of a very pretty face, in which were set two deep and
thoughtful grey eyes, and a figure more graceful than was common among
the Netherlander women, caused Lysbeth van Hout to be much sought after
and admired, especially by the marriageable bachelors of Leyden.

On this occasion, however, she was unescorted except by a serving woman
somewhat older than herself, a native of Brussels, Greta by name, who
in appearance was as attractive as in manner she was suspiciously
discreet.

As Lysbeth skated down the canal towards the moat many of the good
burghers of Leyden took off their caps to her, especially the young
burghers, one or two of whom had hopes that she would choose them to be
her cavalier for this day’s fete. Some of the elders, also, asked her
if she would care to join their parties, thinking that, as she was an
orphan without near male relations, she might be glad of their
protection in times when it was wise for beautiful young women to be
protected. With this excuse and that, however, she escaped from them
all, for Lysbeth had already made her own arrangements.

At that date there was living in Leyden a young man of four or five and
twenty, named Dirk van Goorl, a distant cousin of her own. Dirk was a
native of the little town of Alkmaar, and the second son of one of its
leading citizens, a brass founder by trade. As in the natural course of
events the Alkmaar business would descend to his elder brother, their
father appointed him to a Leyden firm, in which, after eight or nine
years of hard work, he had become a junior partner. While he was still
living, Lysbeth’s father had taken a liking to the lad, with the result
that he grew intimate at the house which, from the first, was open to
him as a kinsman. After the death of Carolus van Hout, Dirk had
continued to visit there, especially on Sundays, when he was duly and
ceremoniously received by Lysbeth’s aunt, a childless widow named Clara
van Ziel, who acted as her guardian. Thus, by degrees, favoured with
such ample opportunity, a strong affection had sprung up between these
two young people, although as yet they were not affianced, nor indeed
had either of them said a word of open love to the other.

This abstinence may seem strange, but some explanation of their
self-restraint was to be found in Dirk’s character. In mind he was
patient, very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in
carrying them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not give
way to them. For two years or more he had loved Lysbeth, but being
somewhat slow at reading the ways of women he was not quite certain
that she loved him, and above everything on earth he dreaded a rebuff.
Moreover he knew her to be an heiress, and as his own means were still
humble, and his expectations from his father small, he did not feel
justified in asking her in marriage until his position was more
assured. Had the Captain Carolus still been living the case would have
been different, for then he could have gone to him. But he was dead,
and Dirk’s fine and sensitive nature recoiled from the thought that it
might be said of him that he had taken advantage of the inexperience of
a kinswoman in order to win her fortune. Also deep down in his mind he
had a sincerer and quite secret reason for reticence, whereof more in
its proper place.

Thus matters stood between these two. To-day, however, though only with
diffidence and after some encouragement from the lady, he had asked
leave to be his cousin’s cavalier at the ice fete, and when she
consented, readily enough, appointed the moat as their place of
meeting. This was somewhat less than Lysbeth expected, for she wished
his escort through the town. But, when she hinted as much, Dirk
explained that he would not be able to leave the works before three
o’clock, as the metal for a large bell had been run into the casting,
and he must watch it while it cooled.

So, followed only by her maid, Greta, Lysbeth glided lightly as a bird
down the ice path on to the moat, and across it, through the narrow
cut, to the frozen mere beyond, where the sports were to be held and
the races run. There the scene was very beautiful.

Behind her lay the roofs of Leyden, pointed, picturesque, and covered
with sheets of snow, while above them towered the bulk of the two great
churches of St. Peter and St. Pancras, and standing on a mound known as
the Burg, the round tower which is supposed to have been built by the
Romans. In front stretched the flat expanse of white meadows, broken
here and there by windmills with narrow waists and thin tall sails, and
in the distance, by the church towers of other towns and villages.

Immediately before her, in strange contrast to this lifeless landscape,
lay the peopled mere, fringed around with dead reeds standing so still
in the frosty air that they might have been painted things. On this
mere half the population of Leyden seemed to be gathered; at least
there were thousands of them, shouting, laughing, and skimming to and
fro in their bright garments like flocks of gay-plumaged birds. Among
them, drawn by horses with bells tied to their harness, glided many
sledges of wickerwork and wood mounted upon iron runners, their
fore-ends fashioned to quaint shapes, such as the heads of dogs or
bulls, or Tritons. Then there were vendors of cakes and sweetmeats,
vendors of spirits also, who did a good trade on this cold day. Beggars
too were numerous, and among them deformities, who, nowadays, would be
hidden in charitable homes, slid about in wooden boxes, which they
pushed along with crutches. Lastly many loafers had gathered there with
stools for fine ladies to sit on while the skates were bound to their
pretty feet, and chapmen with these articles for sale and straps
wherewith to fasten them. To complete the picture the huge red ball of
the sun was sinking to the west, and opposite to it the pale full moon
began already to gather light and life.

The scene seemed so charming and so happy that Lysbeth, who was young,
and now that she had recovered from the shock of her beloved father’s
death, light-hearted, ceased her forward movement and poised herself
upon her skates to watch it for a space. While she stood thus a little
apart, a woman came towards her from the throng, not as though she were
seeking her, but aimlessly, much as a child’s toy-boat is driven by
light, contrary winds upon the summer surface of a pond.

She was a remarkable-looking woman of about thirty-five years of age,
tall and bony in make, with deep-set eyes, light grey of colour, that
seemed now to flash fiercely and now to waver, as though in memory of
some great dread. From beneath a coarse woollen cap a wisp of grizzled
hair fell across the forehead, where it lay like the forelock of a
horse. Indeed, the high cheekbones, scarred as though by burns,
wide-spread nostrils and prominent white teeth, whence the lips had
strangely sunk away, gave the whole countenance a more or less equine
look which this falling lock seemed to heighten. For the rest the woman
was poorly and not too plentifully clad in a gown of black woollen,
torn and stained as though with long use and journeys, while on her
feet she wore wooden clogs, to which were strapped skates that were not
fellows, one being much longer than the other.

Opposite to Lysbeth this strange, gaunt person stopped, contemplating
her with a dreamy eye. Presently she seemed to recognise her, for she
said in a quick, low voice, the voice of one who lives in terror of
being overheard:—

“That’s a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout’s daughter. Oh, yes, I know
you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he
kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this. Think of it! Kissed
me, Martha the Mare,” and she laughed hoarsely, and went on: “Yes,
well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to
kiss you”; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people—“all
well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and children
to kiss. But I tell you, Van Hout’s daughter, as I have dared to creep
from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who will
listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day shall come
when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger behind those
walls. Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard and his
Inquisition. Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make me carry
my own husband to the stake upon my back? And have you heard why, Van
Hout’s daughter? Because what I had suffered in their torture-dens had
made my face—yes, mine that once was so beautiful—like the face of a
horse, and they said that ‘a horse ought to be ridden.’”

Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such
people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the
Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only for
revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified, shrank
back before her. As she shrank the other followed, till presently
Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror. In
another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which she
did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled away as
fast as her skates would carry her—which was very fast indeed.

Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on
the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word,
but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-looking
woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which apparently she
was offering for sale. These caps she began to slowly fold up and place
one by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her shoulders. All
this while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black eyes, except
when from time to time she took them off her to follow the flight of
that person who had called herself the Mare.

“You keep ill company, lady,” said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.

“It was none of my seeking,” answered Lysbeth, astonished into making a
reply.

“So much the better for you, lady, although she seemed to know you and
to know also that you would listen to her song. Unless my eyes deceived
me, which is not often, that woman is an evil-doer and a worker of
magic like her dead husband Van Muyden; a heretic, a blasphemer of the
Holy Church, a traitor to our Lord the Emperor, and one,” she added
with a snarl, “with a price upon her head that before night will, I
hope, be in Black Meg’s pocket.” Then, walking with long firm steps
towards a fat man who seemed to be waiting for her, the tall,
black-eyed pedlar passed with him into the throng, where Lysbeth lost
sight of them.

Lysbeth watched them go, and shivered. To her knowledge she had never
seen this woman before, but she knew enough of the times they lived in
to be sure that she was a spy of the priests. Already there were such
creatures moving about in every gathering, yes, and in many a private
place, who were paid to obtain evidence against suspected heretics.
Whether they won it by fair means or by foul mattered not, provided
they could find something, and it need be little indeed, to justify the
Inquisition in getting to its work.

As for the other woman, the Mare, doubtless she was one of those wicked
outcasts, accursed by God and man, who were called heretics; people who
said dreadful things about the Pope and the Church and God’s priests,
having been misled and stirred up thereto by a certain fiend in human
form named Luther. Lysbeth shuddered at the thought and crossed
herself, for in those days she was an excellent Catholic. Yet the
wanderer said that she had known her father, so that she must be as
well born as herself—and then that dreadful story—no, she could not
bear to think of it. But of course heretics deserved all these things;
of that there could be no doubt whatever, for had not her father
confessor told her that thus alone might their souls be saved from the
grasp of the Evil One?

The thought was comforting, still Lysbeth felt upset, and not a little
rejoiced when she saw Dirk van Goorl skating towards her accompanied by
another young man, also a cousin of her own on her mother’s side who
was destined in days to come to earn himself an immortal renown—young
Pieter van de Werff. The two took off their bonnets to her, Dirk van
Goorl revealing in the act a head of fair hair beneath which his steady
blue eyes shone in a rather thick-set, self-contained face. Lysbeth’s
temper, always somewhat quick, was ruffled, and she showed it in her
manner.

“I thought, cousins, that we were to meet at three, and the kirk clock
yonder has just chimed half-past,” she said, addressing them both, but
looking—not too sweetly—at Dirk van Goorl.

“That’s right, cousin,” answered Pieter, a pleasant-faced and alert
young man, “look at _him_, scold _him_, for he is to blame. Ever since
a quarter past two have I—I who must drive a sledge in the great race
and am backed to win—been waiting outside that factory in the snow,
but, upon my honour, he did not appear until seven minutes since. Yes,
we have done the whole distance in seven minutes, and I call that very
good skating.”

“I thought as much,” said Lysbeth. “Dirk can only keep an appointment
with a church bell or a stadhuis chandelier.”

“It was not my fault,” broke in Dirk in his slow voice; “I have my
business to attend. I promised to wait until the metal had cooled
sufficiently, and hot bronze takes no account of ice-parties and sledge
races.”

“So I suppose that you stopped to blow on it, cousin. Well, the result
is that, being quite unescorted, I have been obliged to listen to
things which I did not wish to hear.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dirk, taking fire at once.

Then she told them something of what the woman who called herself the
Mare had said to her, adding, “Doubtless the poor creature is a heretic
and deserves all that has happened to her. But it is dreadfully sad,
and I came here to enjoy myself, not to be sad.”

Between the two young men there passed a glance which was full of
meaning. But it was Dirk who spoke. The other, more cautious, remained
silent.

“Why do you say that, Cousin Lysbeth?” he asked in a new voice, a voice
thick and eager. “Why do you say that she deserves all that can happen
to her? I have heard of this poor creature who is called Mother Martha,
or the Mare, although I have never seen her myself. She was noble-born,
much better born than any of us three, and very fair—once they called
her the Lily of Brussels—when she was the Vrouw van Muyden, and she has
suffered dreadfully, for one reason only, because she and hers did not
worship God as you worship Him.”

“As we worship Him,” broke in Van de Werff with a cough.

“No,” answered Dirk sullenly, “as our Cousin Lysbeth van Hout worships
Him. For that reason only they killed her husband and her little son,
and drove her mad, so that she lives among the reeds of the Haarlemer
Meer like a beast in its den; yes, they, the Spaniards and their
Spanish priests, as I daresay that they will kill us also.”

“Don’t you think that it is getting rather cold standing here?”
interrupted Pieter van de Werff before she could answer. “Look, the
sledge races are just beginning. Come, cousin, give me your hand,” and,
taking Lysbeth by the arm, he skated off into the throng, followed at a
distance by Dirk and the serving-maid, Greta.

“Cousin,” he whispered as he went, “this is not my place, it is Dirk’s
place, but I pray you as you love him—I beg your pardon—as you esteem a
worthy relative—do not enter into a religious argument with him here in
public, where even the ice and sky are two great ears. It is not safe,
little cousin, I swear to you that it is not safe.”

In the centre of the mere the great event of the day, the sledge races,
were now in progress. As the competitors were many these must be run in
heats, the winners of each heat standing on one side to compete in the
final contest. Now these victors had a pretty prerogative not unlike
that accorded to certain dancers in the cotillion of modern days. Each
driver of a sledge was bound to carry a passenger in the little car in
front of him, his own place being on the seat behind, whence he
directed the horse by means of reins supported upon a guide-rod so
fashioned that it lifted them above the head of the traveller in the
car. This passenger he could select from among the number of ladies who
were present at the games; unless, indeed, the gentleman in charge of
her chose to deny him in set form; namely, by stepping forward and
saying in the appointed phrase, “No, for this happy hour she is mine.”

Among the winners of these heats was a certain Spanish officer, the
Count Don Juan de Montalvo, who, as it chanced, in the absence on leave
of his captain, was at that date the commander of the garrison at
Leyden. He was a man still young, only about thirty indeed, reported to
be of noble birth, and handsome in the usual Castilian fashion. That is
to say, he was tall, of a graceful figure, dark-eyed, strong-featured,
with a somewhat humorous expression, and of very good if exaggerated
address. As he had but recently come to Leyden, very little was known
about this attractive cavalier beyond that he was well spoken of by the
priests and, according to report, a favourite with the Emperor. Also
the ladies admired him much.

For the rest everything about him was handsome like his person, as
might be expected in the case of a man reputed to be as rich as he was
noble. Thus his sledge was shaped and coloured to resemble a great
black wolf rearing itself up to charge. The wooden head was covered in
wolf skin and adorned by eyes of yellow glass and great fangs of ivory.
Round the neck also ran a gilded collar hung with a silver shield,
whereon were painted the arms of its owner, a knight striking the
chains from off a captive Christian saint, and the motto of the
Montalvos, “Trust to God and me.” His black horse, too, of the best
breed, imported from Spain, glittered in harness decorated with
gilding, and bore a splendid plume of dyed feathers rising from the
head-band.

Lysbeth happened to be standing near to the spot where this gallant had
halted after his first victory. She was in the company of Dirk van
Goorl alone—for as he was the driver of one of the competing sledges,
her other cousin, Pieter van de Werff, had now been summoned away.
Having nothing else to do at the moment, she approached and not
unnaturally admired this brilliant equipage, although in truth it was
the sledge and the horse rather than their driver which attracted her
attention. As for the Count himself she knew him slightly, having been
introduced to and danced a measure with him at a festival given by a
grandee of the town. On that occasion he was courteous to her in the
Spanish fashion, rather too courteous, she thought, but as this was the
manner of Castilian dons when dealing with burgher maidens she paid no
more attention to the matter.

The Captain Montalvo saw Lysbeth among the throng and recognised her,
for he lifted his plumed hat and bowed to her with just that touch of
condescension which in those days a Spaniard showed when greeting one
whom he considered his inferior. In the sixteenth century it was
understood that all the world were the inferiors to those whom God had
granted to be born in Spain, the English who rated themselves at a
valuation of their own—and were careful to announce the fact—alone
excepted.

An hour or so later, after the last heat had been run, a steward of the
ceremonies called aloud to the remaining competitors to select their
passengers and prepare for the final contest. Accordingly each Jehu,
leaving his horse in charge of an attendant, stepped up to some young
lady who evidently was waiting for him, and led her by the hand to his
sledge. While Lysbeth was watching this ceremony with amusement—for
these selections were always understood to show a strong preference on
behalf of the chooser for the chosen—she was astonished to hear a
well-trained voice addressing her, and on looking up to see Don Juan de
Montalvo bowing almost to the ice.

“Señora,” he said in Castilian, a tongue which Lysbeth understood well
enough, although she only spoke it when obliged, “unless my ears
deceived me, I heard you admiring my horse and sledge. Now, with the
permission of your cavalier,” and he bowed courteously to Dirk, “I name
you as my passenger for the great race, knowing that you will bring me
fortune. Have I your leave, Señor?”

Now if there was a people on earth whom Dirk van Goorl hated, the
Spaniards were that people, and if there lived a cavalier who he would
prefer should not take his cousin Lysbeth for a lonely drive, that
cavalier was the Count Juan de Montalvo. But as a young man, Dirk was
singularly diffident and so easily confused that on the spur of the
moment it was quite possible for a person of address to make him say
what he did not mean. Thus, on the present occasion, when he saw this
courtly Spaniard bowing low to him, a humble Dutch tradesman, he was
overwhelmed, and mumbled in reply, “Certainly, certainly.”

If a glance could have withered him, without doubt Dirk would
immediately have been shrivelled to nothing. To say that Lysbeth was
angry is too little, for in truth she was absolutely furious. She did
not like this Spaniard, and hated the idea of a long interview with him
alone. Moreover, she knew that among her fellow townspeople there was a
great desire that the Count should not win this race, which in its own
fashion was the event of the year, whereas, if she appeared as his
companion it would be supposed that she was anxious for his success.
Lastly—and this was the chiefest sore—although in theory the
competitors had a right to ask any one to whom they took a fancy to
travel in their sledges, in practise they only sought the company of
young women with whom they were on the best of terms, and who were
already warned of their intention.

In an instant these thoughts flashed through her mind, but all she did
was to murmur something about the Heer van Goorl——

“Has already given his consent, like an unselfish gentleman,” broke in
Captain Juan tendering her his hand.

Now, without absolutely making a scene, which then, as to-day, ladies
considered an ill-bred thing to do, there was no escape, since half
Leyden gathered at these “sledge choosings,” and many eyes were on her
and the Count. Therefore, because she must, Lysbeth took the proferred
hand, and was led to the sledge, catching, as she passed to it through
the throng, more than one sour look from the men and more than one
exclamation of surprise, real or affected, on the lips of the ladies of
her acquaintance. These manifestations, however, put her upon her
mettle. So determining that at least she would not look sullen or
ridiculous, she began to enter into the spirit of the adventure, and
smiled graciously while the Captain Montalvo wrapped a magnificent
apron of wolf skins about her knees.

When all was ready her charioteer took the reins and settled himself
upon the little seat behind the sleigh, which was then led into line by
a soldier servant.

“Where is the course, Señor?” Lysbeth asked, hoping that it would be a
short one.

But in this she was to be disappointed, for he answered:

“Up to the little Quarkel Mere, round the island in the middle of it,
and back to this spot, something over a league in all. Now, Señora,
speak to me no more at present, but hold fast and have no fear, for at
least I drive well, and my horse is sure-footed and roughed for ice.
This is a race that I would give a hundred gold pieces to win, since
your countrymen, who contend against me, have sworn that I shall lose
it, and I tell you at once, Señora, that grey horse will press me
hard.”

Following the direction of his glance, Lysbeth’s eye lit upon the next
sledge. It was small, fashioned and painted to resemble a grey badger,
that silent, stubborn, and, if molested, savage brute, which will not
loose its grip until the head is hacked from off its body. The horse,
which matched it well in colour, was of Flemish breed; rather a
raw-boned animal, with strong quarters and an ugly head, but renowned
in Leyden for its courage and staying power. What interested Lysbeth
most, however, was to discover that the charioteer was none other than
Pieter van de Werff, though now when she thought of it, she remembered
he had told her that his sledge was named the Badger. In his choice of
passenger she noted, too, not without a smile, that he showed his
cautious character, disdainful of any immediate glory, so long as the
end in view could be attained. For there in the sleigh sat no fine
young lady, decked out in brave attire, who might be supposed to look
at him with tender eyes, but a little fair-haired mate aged nine, who
was in fact his sister. As he explained afterwards, the rules provided
that a lady passenger must be carried, but said nothing of her age and
weight.

Now the competitors, eight of them, were in a line, and coming forward,
the master of the course, in a voice that every one might hear, called
out the conditions of the race and the prize for which it was to be
run, a splendid glass goblet engraved with the cross-keys, the Arms of
Leyden. This done, after asking if all were ready, he dropped a little
flag, whereon the horses were loosed and away they went.

Before a minute had passed, forgetting all her doubts and annoyances,
Lysbeth was lost in the glorious excitement of the moment. Like birds
in the heavens, cleaving the keen, crisp air, they sped forward over
the smooth ice. The gay throng vanished, the dead reeds and stark
bushes seemed to fly away from them. The only sounds in their ears were
the rushing of the wind, the swish of the iron runners, and the hollow
tapping of the hooves of their galloping horses. Certain sledges drew
ahead in the first burst, but the Wolf and the Badger were not among
these. The Count de Montalvo was holding in his black stallion, and as
yet the grey Flemish gelding looped along with a constrained and
awkward stride. When, passing from the little mere, they entered the
straight of the canal, these two were respectively fourth and fifth. Up
the course they sped, through a deserted snow-clad country, past the
church of the village of Alkemaade. Now, half a mile or more away
appeared the Quarkel Mere, and in the centre of it the island which
they must turn. They reached it, they were round it, and when their
faces were once more set homewards, Lysbeth noted that the Wolf and the
Badger were third and fourth in the race, some one having dropped
behind. Half a mile more and they were second and third; another half
mile and they were first and second with perhaps a mile to go. Then the
fight began.

Yard by yard the speed increased, and yard by yard the black stallion
drew ahead. Now in front of them lay a furlong or more of bad ice
encumbered with lumps of frozen snow that had not been cleared away,
which caused the sleigh to shake and jump as it struck. Lysbeth looked
round.

“The Badger is coming up,” she said.

Montalvo heard, and for the first time laid his whip upon the haunches
of his horse, which answered gallantly. But still the Badger came up.
The grey was the stronger beast, and had begun to put out his strength.
Presently his ugly head was behind them, for Lysbeth felt the breath
from his nostrils blowing on her, and saw their steam. Then it was
past, for the steam blew back into her face; yes, and she could see the
eager eyes of the child in the grey sledge. Now they were neck and
neck, and the rough ice was done with. Six hundred yards away, not
more, lay the goal, and all about them, outside the line of the course,
were swift skaters travelling so fast that their heads were bent
forward and down to within three feet of the ice.

Van de Werff called to his horse, and the grey began to gain. Montalvo
lashed the stallion, and once more they passed him. But the black was
failing, and he saw it, for Lysbeth heard him curse in Spanish. Then of
a sudden, after a cunning glance at his adversary, the Count pulled
upon the right rein, and a shrill voice rose upon the air, the voice of
the little girl in the other sledge.

“Take care, brother,” it cried, “he will overthrow us.”

True enough, in another moment the black would have struck the grey
sideways. Lysbeth saw Van de Werff rise from his seat and throw his
weight backward, dragging the grey on to his haunches. By an inch—not
more—the Wolf sleigh missed the gelding. Indeed, one runner of it
struck his hoof, and the high wood work of the side brushed and cut his
nostril.

“A foul, a foul!” yelled the skaters, and it was over. Once more they
were speeding forward, but now the black had a lead of at least ten
yards, for the grey must find his stride again. They were in the
straight; the course was lined with hundreds of witnesses, and from the
throats of every one of them arose a great cry, or rather two cries.

“The Spaniard, the Spaniard wins!” said the first cry that was answered
by another and a deeper roar.

“No, Hollander, the Hollander! The Hollander comes up!”

Then in the midst of the fierce excitement—bred of the excitement
perhaps—some curious spell fell upon the mind of Lysbeth. The race, its
details, its objects, its surroundings faded away; these physical
things were gone, and in place of them was present a dream, a spiritual
interpretation such as the omens and influences of the times she lived
in might well inspire. What did she seem to see?

She saw the Spaniard and the Hollander striving for victory, but not a
victory of horses. She saw the black Spanish Wolf, at first triumphant,
outmatch the Netherland Badger. Still, the Badger, the dogged Dutch
badger, held on.

Who would win? The fierce beast or the patient beast? Who would be the
master in this fight? There was death in it. Look, the whole snow was
red, the roofs of Leyden were red, and red the heavens; in the deep
hues of the sunset they seemed bathed in blood, while about her the
shouts of the backers and factions transformed themselves into a fierce
cry as of battling peoples. All voices mingled in that cry—voices of
hope, of agony, and of despair; but she could not interpret them.
Something told her that the interpretation and the issue were in the
mind of God alone.

Perhaps she swooned, perhaps she slept and dreamed this dream; perhaps
the sharp rushing air overcame her. At the least Lysbeth’s eyes closed
and her mind gave way. When they opened and it returned again their
sledge was rushing past the winning post. But in front of it travelled
another sledge, drawn by a gaunt grey horse, which galloped so hard
that its belly seemed to lie upon the ice, a horse driven by a young
man whose face was set like steel and whose lips were as the lips of a
trap.

Could that be the face of her cousin Pieter van de Werff, and, if so,
what passion had stamped that strange seal thereon? She turned herself
in her seat and looked at him who drove her.

Was this a man, or was it a spirit escaped from doom? Blessed Mother of
Christ! what a countenance! The eyeballs starting and upturned, nothing
but the white of them to be seen; the lips curled, and, between, two
lines of shining fangs; the lifted points of the mustachios touching
the high cheekbones. No—no, it was neither a spirit nor a man, she knew
now what it was; it was the very type and incarnation of the Spanish
Wolf.

Once more she seemed to faint, while in her ears there rang the
cry—“The Hollander! Outstayed! Outstayed! Conquered is the accursed
Spaniard!”

Then Lysbeth knew that it was over, and again the faintness overpowered
her.




CHAPTER II
SHE WHO BUYS—PAYS


When Lysbeth’s mind recovered from its confusion she found herself
still in the sledge and beyond the borders of the crowd that was
engaged in rapturously congratulating the winner. Drawn up alongside of
the Wolf was another sleigh of plain make, and harnessed to it a heavy
Flemish horse. This vehicle was driven by a Spanish soldier, with whom
sat a second soldier apparently of the rank of sergeant. There was no
one else near; already people in the Netherlands had learnt to keep
their distance from Spanish soldiers.

“If your Excellency would come now,” the sergeant was saying, “this
little matter can be settled without any further trouble.”

“Where is she?” asked Montalvo.

“Not more than a mile or so away, near the place called Steene Veld.”

“Tie her up in the snow to wait till to-morrow morning. My horse is
tired and it may save us trouble,” he began, then added, after glancing
back at the crowd behind him and next at Lysbeth, “no, I will come.”

Perhaps the Count did not wish to listen to condolences on his defeat,
or perhaps he desired to prolong the _tête-à-tête_ with his fair
passenger. At any rate, without further hesitation, he struck his weary
horse with the whip, causing it to amble forward somewhat stiffly but
at a good pace.

“Where are we going, Señor?” asked Lysbeth anxiously. “The race is over
and I must seek my friends.”

“Your friends are engaged in congratulating the victor, lady,” he
answered in his suave and courteous voice, “and I cannot leave you
alone upon the ice. Do not trouble; this is only a little matter of
business which will scarcely take a quarter of an hour,” and once more
he struck the horse urging it to a better speed.

Lysbeth thought of remonstrating, she thought even of springing from
the sledge, but in the end she did neither. To seem to continue the
drive with her cavalier would, she determined, look more natural and
less absurd than to attempt a violent escape from him. She was certain
that he would not put her down merely at her request; something in his
manner told her so, and though she had no longing for his company it
was better than being made ridiculous before half the inhabitants of
Leyden. Moreover, the position was no fault of hers; it was the fault
of Dirk van Goorl, who should have been present to take her from the
sledge.

As they drove along the frozen moat Montalvo leant forward and began to
chat about the race, expressing regret at having lost it, but using no
angry or bitter words. Could this be the man, wondered Lysbeth as she
listened, whom she had seen deliberately attempt to overthrow his
adversary in a foul heedless of dishonour or of who might be killed by
the shock? Could this be the man whose face just now had looked like
the face of a devil? Had these things happened, indeed, or was it not
possible that her fancy, confused with the excitement and the speed at
which they were travelling, had deceived her? Certainly it seemed to
have been overcome at last, for she could not remember the actual
finish of the race, or how they got clear of the shouting crowd.

While she was still wondering thus, replying from time to time to
Montalvo in monosyllables, the sledge in front of them turned the
corner of one of the eastern bastions and came to a halt. The place
where it stopped was desolate and lonely, for the town being in a state
of peace no guard was mounted on the wall, nor could any living soul be
found upon the snowy waste that lay beyond the moat. At first, indeed,
Lysbeth was able to see nobody at all, for by now the sun had gone down
and her eyes were not accustomed to the increasing light of the moon.
Presently, however, she caught sight of a knot of people standing on
the ice in a recess or little bay of the moat, and half hidden by a
fringe of dead reeds.

Montalvo saw also, and halted his horse within three paces of them. The
people were five in number, three Spanish soldiers and two women.
Lysbeth looked, and with difficulty stifled a cry of surprise and fear,
for she knew the women. The tall, dark person, with lowering eyes, was
none other than the cap-seller and Spanish spy, Black Meg. And she who
crouched there upon the ice, her arms bound behind her, her grizzled
locks, torn loose by some rough hand, trailing on the snow—surely it
was the woman who called herself the Mare, and who that very afternoon
spoke to her, saying that she had known her father, and cursing the
Spaniards and their Inquisition. What were they doing here? Instantly
an answer leapt into her mind, for she remembered Black Meg’s
words—that there was a price upon this heretic’s head which before
nightfall would be in her pocket. And why was there a square hole cut
in the ice immediately in front of the captive? Could it be—no, that
was too horrible.

“Well, officer,” broke in Montalvo, addressing the sergeant in a quiet,
wearied voice, “what is all this about? Set out your case.”

“Excellency,” replied the man, “it is a very simple matter. This
creature here, so that woman is ready to take oath,” and he pointed to
Black Meg, “is a notorious heretic who has already been condemned to
death by the Holy Office, and whose husband, a learned man who painted
pictures and studied the stars, was burnt on a charge of witchcraft and
heresy, two years ago at Brussels. But she managed to escape the stake,
and since then has lived as a vagrant, hiding in the islands of the
Haarlemer Meer, and, it is suspected, working murder and robbery on any
of Spanish blood whom she can catch. Now she has been caught herself
and identified, and, of course, the sentence being in full force
against her, can be dealt with at once on your Excellency’s command.
Indeed, it would not have been necessary that you should be troubled
about the thing at all had it not been that this worthy woman,” and
again he pointed to Black Meg, “who was the one who waylaid her, pulled
her down and held her till we came, requires your certificate in order
that she may claim the reward from the Treasurer of the Holy
Inquisition. Therefore, you will be asked to certify that this is,
indeed, the notorious heretic commonly known as Martha the Mare, but
whose other name I forget, after which, if you will please to withdraw,
we will see to the rest.”

“You mean that she will be taken to the prison to be dealt with by the
Holy Office?” queried Montalvo.

“Not exactly, Excellency,” answered the sergeant with a discreet smile
and a cough. “The prison, I am told, is quite full, but she may start
for the prison and—there seems to be a hole in the ice into which,
since Satan leads the footsteps of such people astray, this heretic
might chance to fall—or throw herself.”

“What is the evidence?” asked Montalvo.

Then Black Meg stood forward, and, with the rapidity and unction of a
spy, poured out her tale. She identified the woman with one whom she
had known who was sentenced to death by the Inquisition and escaped,
and, after giving other evidence, ended by repeating the conversation
which she had overheard between the accused and Lysbeth that afternoon.

“You accompanied me in a fortunate hour, Señora van Hout,” said the
captain gaily, “for now, to satisfy myself, as I wish to be just, and
do not trust these paid hags,” and he nodded towards Black Meg, “I must
ask you upon your oath before God whether or no you confirm that
woman’s tale, and whether or no this very ugly person named the Mare
called down curses upon my people and the Holy Office? Answer, and
quickly, if you please, Señora, for it grows cold here and my horse is
beginning to shiver.”

Then, for the first time, the Mare raised her head, dragging at her
hair, which had become frozen to the ice, until she tore it free.

“Lysbeth van Hout,” she cried in shrill, piercing tones, “would you, to
please your Spanish lover, bring your father’s playmate to her death?
The Spanish horse is cold and cannot stay, but the poor Netherland
Mare—ah! she may be thrust beneath the blue ice and bide there till her
bones rot at the bottom of the moat. You have sought the Spaniards,
you, whose blood should have warned you against them, and I tell you
that it shall cost you dear; but if you say this word they seek, then
it shall cost you everything, not only the body, but the spirit also.
Woe to you, Lysbeth van Hout, if you cut me off before my work is done.
I fear not death, nay I welcome it, but I tell you I have work to do
before I die.”

Now, in an agony of mind, Lysbeth turned and looked at Montalvo.

The Count was a man of keen perceptions, and understood it all. Leaning
forward, his arm resting on the back of the sledge, as though to
contemplate the prisoner, he whispered into Lysbeth’s ear, so low that
no one else could hear his words.

“Señora,” he said, “I have no wishes in this matter. I do not desire to
drown that poor mad woman, but if you confirm the spy’s story, drown
she must. At present I am not satisfied, so everything turns upon your
evidence. I do not know what passed between you this afternoon, and
personally I do not care, only, if you should chance to have no clear
recollection of the matter alleged, I must make one or two little
stipulations—very little ones. Let me see, they are—that you will spend
the rest of this evening’s fete in my company. Further, that whenever I
choose to call upon you, your door will be open to me, though I must
remind you that, on three occasions already, when I have wished to pay
my respects, it has been shut.”

Lysbeth heard and understood. If she would save this woman’s life she
must expose herself to the attentions of the Spaniard, which she
desired least of anything in the world. More, speaking upon her oath in
the presence of God, she must utter a dreadful lie, she who as yet had
never lied. For thirty seconds or more she thought, staring round her
with anguished eyes, while the scene they fell on sank into her soul in
such fashion that never till her death’s day did she forget its aspect.

The Mare spoke no more, she only knelt searching her face with a stern
and wondering glance. A little to the right stood Black Meg, glaring at
her sullenly, for the blood-money was in danger. Behind the prisoner
were two of the soldiers, one patting his hand to his face to hide a
yawn, while the other beat his breast to warm himself. The third
soldier, who was placed somewhat in front, stirred the surface of the
hole with the shaft of his halbert to break up the thin film of ice
which was forming over it, while Montalvo himself, still leaning
sideways and forwards, watched her eyes with an amused and cynical
expression. And over all, over the desolate snows and gabled roofs of
the town behind; over the smooth blue ice, the martyr and the
murderers; over the gay sledge and the fur-wrapped girl who sat within
it, fell the calm light of the moon through a silence broken only by
the beating of her heart, and now and again by the sigh of a frost-wind
breathing among the rushes.

“Well, Señora,” asked Montalvo, “if you have sufficiently reflected
shall I administer the oath in the form provided?”

“Administer it,” she said hoarsely.

So, descending from the sledge, he stood in front of Lysbeth, and,
lifting his cap, repeated the oath to her, an oath strong enough to
blast her soul if she swore to it with false intent.

“In the name of God the Son and of His Blessed Mother, you swear?” he
asked.

“I swear,” she answered.

“Good, Señora. Now listen to me. Did you meet that woman this
afternoon?”

“Yes, I met her on the ice.”

“And did she in your hearing utter curses upon the Government and the
Holy Church, and call upon you to assist in driving the Spaniards from
the land, as this spy, whom I believe is called Black Meg, has borne
witness?”

“No,” said Lysbeth.

“I am afraid that is not quite enough, Señora; I may have misquoted the
exact words. Did the woman say anything of the sort?”

For one second Lysbeth hesitated. Then she caught sight of the victim’s
watching, speculative eyes, and remembered that this crazed and broken
creature once had been a child whom her father had kissed and played
with, and that the crime of which she was accused was that she had
escaped from death at the stake.

“The water is cold to die in!” the Mare said, in a meditative voice, as
though she were thinking aloud.

“Then why did you run away from the warm fire, heretic witch?” jeered
Black Meg.

Now Lysbeth hesitated no longer, but again answered in a monosyllable,
“No.”

“Then what did she do or say, Señora?”

“She said she had known my father who used to play with her when she
was a child, and begged for alms, that is all. Then that woman came up,
and she ran away, whereon the woman said there was a price upon her
head, and that she meant to have the money.”

“It is a lie,” screamed Black Meg in fierce, strident tones.

“If that person will not be silent, silence her,” said Montalvo,
addressing the sergeant. “I am satisfied,” he went on, “that there is
no evidence at all against the prisoner except the story of a spy, who
says she believes her to be a vagrant heretic of bad character who
escaped from the stake several years ago in the neighbourhood of
Brussels, whither it is scarcely worth while to send to inquire about
the matter. So that charge may drop. There remains the question as to
whether or no the prisoner uttered certain words this afternoon, which,
if she did utter them, are undoubtedly worthy of the death that, under
my authority as acting commandant of this town, I have power to
inflict. This question I foresaw, and that is why I asked the Señora,
to whom the woman is alleged to have spoken the words, to accompany me
here to give evidence. She has done so, and her evidence on oath as
against the statement of a spy woman not on oath, is that no such words
were spoken. This being so, as the Señora is a good Catholic whom I
have no reason to disbelieve, I order the release of the prisoner, whom
for my part I take for nothing more than a crazy and harmless
wanderer.”

“At least you will detain her till I can prove that she is the heretic
who escaped from the stake near Brussels,” shouted Black Meg.

“I will do nothing of the sort; the prison here is over-full already.
Untie her arms and let her go.”

The soldiers obeyed, wondering somewhat, and the Mare scrambled to her
feet. For a moment she stood looking at her deliverer. Then crying, “We
shall meet again, Lysbeth van Hout!” suddenly she turned and sped up a
dyke at extraordinary speed. In a few seconds there was nothing to be
seen of her but a black spot upon the white landscape, and presently
she had vanished altogether.

“Gallop as you will, Mare, I shall catch you yet,” screamed Black Meg
after her. “And you too, my pretty little liar, who have cheated me out
of a dozen florins. Wait till you are up before the Inquisition as a
heretic—for that’s where you’ll end. No fine Spanish lover will save
you then. So you have gone to the Spanish, have you, and thrown over
your fat-faced burgher; well, you will have enough of Spaniards before
you have done with them, I can tell you.”

Twice had Montalvo tried to stop this flood of furious eloquence, which
had become personal and might prove prejudicial to his interests, but
without avail. Now he adopted other measures.

“Seize her,” he shouted to two of the soldiers; “that’s it; now hold
her under water in that hole till I tell you to let her up again.”

They obeyed, but it took all three of them to carry out the order, for
Black Meg fought and bit like a wild cat, until at last she was thrust
into the icy moat head downwards. When at length she was released,
soaked and shivering, she crept off silently enough, but the look of
fury which she cast at Montalvo and Lysbeth drew from the captain a
remark that perhaps it would have been as well to have kept her under
water two minutes longer.

“Now, sergeant,” he added, in a genial voice, “it is a cold night, and
this has been a troublesome business for a feast-day, so here’s
something for you and your watch to warm yourselves with when you go
off duty,” and he handed him what in those days was a very handsome
present. “By the way,” he said, as the men saluted him gratefully,
“perhaps you will do me a favour. It is only to take this black horse
of mine to his stable and harness that grey trooper nag to the sledge
instead, as I wish to go the round of the moat, and my beast is tired.”

Again the men saluted and set to work to change the horses, whereon
Lysbeth, guessing her cavalier’s purpose, turned as though to fly away,
for her skates were still upon her feet. But he was watching.

“Señora,” he said in a quiet voice, “I think that you gave me the
promise of your company for the rest of this evening, and I am
certain,” he added with a slight bow, “that you are a lady whom nothing
would induce to tell an untruth. Had I not been sure of that I should
scarcely have accepted your evidence so readily just now.”

Lysbeth winced visibly. “I thought, Señor, that you were going to
return to the fete.”

“I do not remember saying so, Señora, and as a matter of fact I have
pickets to visit. Do not be afraid, the drive is charming in this
moonlight, and afterwards perhaps you will extend your hospitality so
far as to ask me to supper at your house.”

Still she hesitated, dismay written on her face.

“Jufvrouw Lysbeth,” he said in an altered voice, “in my country we have
a homely proverb which says, ‘she who buys, pays.’ You have bought
and—the goods have been delivered. Do you understand? Ah! allow me to
have the pleasure of arranging those furs. I knew that you were the
soul of honour, and were but—shall we say teasing me? Otherwise, had
you really wished to go, of course you would have skated away just now
while you had the opportunity. That is why I gave it you, as naturally
I should not desire to detain you against your will.”

Lysbeth heard and was aghast, for this man’s cleverness overwhelmed
her. At every step he contrived to put her in the wrong; moreover she
was crushed by the sense that he had justice on his side. She _had_
bought and she _must_ pay. Why had she bought? Not for any advantage of
her own, but from an impulse of human pity—to save a fellow creature’s
life. And why should she have perjured herself so deeply in order to
save that life? She was a Catholic and had no sympathy with such
people. Probably this person was an Anabaptist, one of that dreadful
sect which practised nameless immoralities, and ran stripped through
the streets crying that they were “the naked Truth.” Was it then
because the creature had declared that she had known her father in her
childhood? To some extent yes, but was not there more behind? Had she
not been influenced by the woman’s invocation about the Spaniards, of
which the true meaning came home to her during that dreadful sledge
race; at the moment, indeed, when she saw the Satanic look upon the
face of Montalvo? It seemed to her that this was so, though at the time
she had not understood it; it seemed to her that she was not a free
agent; that some force pushed her forward which she could neither
control nor understand.

Moreover—and this was the worst of it—she felt that little good could
come of her sacrifice, or that if good came, at least it would not be
to her or hers. Now she was as a fish in a net, though why it was worth
this brilliant Spaniard’s while to snare her she could not understand,
for she forgot that she was beautiful and a woman of property. Well, to
save the blood of another she had bought, and in her own blood and
happiness, or in that of those dear to her, assuredly she must pay,
however cruel and unjust might be the price.

Such were the thoughts that passed through Lysbeth’s mind as the strong
Flemish gelding lumbered forward, dragging the sledge at the same
steady pace over rough ice and smooth. And all the while Montalvo
behind her was chatting pleasantly about this matter and that; telling
her of the orange groves in Spain, of the Court of the Emperor Charles,
of adventures in the French wars, and many other things, to which
conversation she made such answer as courtesy demanded and no more.
What would Dirk think, she was wondering, and her cousin, Pieter van de
Werff, whose good opinion she valued, and all the gossips of Leyden?
She only prayed that they might not have missed her, or at least that
they took it for granted that she had gone home.

On this point, however, she was soon destined to be undeceived, for
presently, trudging over the snow-covered ice and carrying his useless
skates in his hand, they met a young man whom she knew as Dirk’s fellow
apprentice. On seeing them he stopped in front of the sledge in such a
position that the horse, a steady and a patient animal, pulled up of
its own accord.

“Is the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout there?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes,” she replied, but before she could say more Montalvo broke in,
inquiring what might be the matter.

“Nothing,” he answered, “except that she was lost and Dirk van Goorl,
my friend, send me to look for her this way while he took the other.”

“Indeed. Then, noble sir, perhaps you will find the Heer Dirk van Goorl
and tell him that the Señora, his cousin, is merely enjoying an evening
drive, and that if he comes to her house in an hour’s time he will find
her safe and sound, and with her myself, the Count Juan de Montalvo,
whom she has honoured with an invitation to supper.”

Then, before the astonished messenger could answer; before, indeed,
Lysbeth could offer any explanation of his words, Montalvo lashed up
the horse and left him standing on the moat bewildered, his cap off and
scratching his head.

After this they proceeded on a journey which seemed to Lysbeth almost
interminable. When the circuit of the walls was finished, Montalvo
halted at one of the shut gates, and, calling to the guard within,
summoned them to open. This caused delay and investigation, for at
first the sergeant of the guard would not believe that it was his
acting commandant who spoke without.

“Pardon, Excellency,” he said when he had inspected him with a lantern,
“but I did not think that you would be going the rounds with a lady in
your sledge,” and holding up the light the man took a long look at
Lysbeth, grinning visibly as he recognised her.

“Ah, he is a gay bird, the captain, a very gay bird, and it’s a pretty
Dutch dickey he is teaching to pipe now,” she heard him call to a
comrade as he closed the heavy gates behind their sleigh.

Then followed more visits to other military posts in the town, and with
each visit a further explanation. All this while the Count Montalvo
uttered no word beyond those of ordinary compliment, and ventured on no
act of familiarity; his conversation and demeanour indeed remaining
perfectly courteous and respectful. So far as it went this was
satisfactory, but at length there came a moment when Lysbeth felt that
she could bear the position no longer.

“Señor,” she said briefly, “take me home; I grow faint.”

“With hunger doubtless,” he interrupted; “well, by heaven! so do I.
But, my dear lady, as you are aware, duty must be attended to, and,
after all, you may have found some interest in accompanying me on a
tour of the pickets at night. I know your people speak roughly of us
Spanish soldiers, but I hope that after this you will be able to bear
testimony to their discipline. Although it is a fete day you will be my
witness that we have not found a man off duty or the worse for drink.
Here, you,” he called to a soldier who stood up to salute him, “follow
me to the house of the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, where I sup, and lead
this sledge back to my quarters.”




CHAPTER III
MONTALVO WINS A TRICK


Turning up the Bree Straat, then as now perhaps the finest in the town
of Leyden, Montalvo halted his horse before a substantial house fronted
with three round-headed gables, of which the largest—that over the
entrance in the middle—was shaped into two windows with balconies. This
was Lysbeth’s house which had been left to her by her father, where,
until such time as she should please to marry, she dwelt with her aunt,
Clara van Ziel. The soldier whom he had summoned having run to the
horse’s head, Montalvo leapt from his driver’s seat to assist the lady
to alight. At the moment Lysbeth was occupied with wild ideas of swift
escape, but even if she could make up her mind to try it there was an
obstacle which her thoughtful cavalier had foreseen.

“Jufvrouw van Hout,” he said as he pulled up, “do you remember that you
are still wearing skates?”

It was true, though in her agitation she had forgotten all about them,
and the fact put sudden flight out of the question. She could not
struggle into her own house walking on the sides of her feet like the
tame seal which old fisherman Hans had brought from northern seas. It
would be too ridiculous, and the servants would certainly tell the
story all about the town. Better for a while longer to put up with the
company of this odious Spaniard than to become a laughing stock in an
attempt to fly. Besides, even if she found herself on the other side of
it, could she shut the door in his face? Would her promise let her, and
would he consent?

“Yes,” she answered briefly, “I will call my servant.”

Then for the first time the Count became complimentary in a dignified
Spanish manner.

“Let no base-born menial hold the foot which it is an honour for an
hidalgo of Spain to touch. I am your servant,” he said, and resting one
knee on the snow-covered step he waited.

Again there was nothing to be done, so Lysbeth must needs thrust out
her foot from which very delicately and carefully he unstrapped the
skate.

“What Jack can bear Jill must put up with,” muttered Lysbeth to herself
as she advanced the other foot. Just at that moment, however, the door
behind them began to open.

“She who buys,” murmured Montalvo as he commenced on the second set of
straps. Then the door swung wide, and the voice of Dirk van Goorl was
heard saying in a tone of relief:

“Yes, sure enough it is she, Tante Clara, and some one is taking off
her boots.”

“Skates, Señor, skates,” interrupted Montalvo, glancing backward over
his shoulder, then added in a whisper as he bent once more to his task,
“ahem—_pays_. You will introduce me, is it not so? I think it will be
less awkward for you.”

So, as flight was impossible, for he held her by the foot, and an
instinct told her that, especially to the man she loved, the only thing
to do was to make light of the affair, Lysbeth said—

“Dirk, Cousin Dirk, I think you know—this is—the Honourable Captain the
Count Juan de Montalvo.”

“Ah! it is the Señor van Goorl,” said Montalvo, pulling off the skate
and rising from his knee, which, from his excess of courtesy, was now
wet through. “Señor, allow me to return to you, safe and sound, the
fair lady of whom I have robbed you for a while.”

“For a while, captain,” blurted Dirk; “why, from first to last, she has
been gone nearly four hours, and a fine state we have been in about
her.”

“That will all be explained presently, Señor—at supper, to which the
Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me,” then, aside and below his
breath, again the ominous word of reminder—“_pays_.” “Most happily,
your cousin’s presence was the means of saving a fellow-creature’s
life. But, as I have said, the tale is long. Señor—permit,” and in
another second Lysbeth found herself walking down her own hall upon the
arm of the Spaniard, while Dirk, her aunt, and some guests followed
obediently behind.

Now Montalvo knew that his difficulties were over for that evening at
any rate, since he had crossed the threshold and was a guest.

Half unconsciously Lysbeth guided him to the balconied _sit-kamer_ on
the first floor, which in our day would answer to the drawing-room.
Here several other of her friends were gathered, for it had been
arranged that the ice-festival should end with a supper as rich as the
house could give. To these, too, she must introduce her cavalier, who
bowed courteously to each in turn. Then she escaped, but, as she passed
him, distinctly, she could swear, did she see his lips shape themselves
to the hateful word—“_pays_.”

When she reached her chamber, so great was Lysbeth’s wrath and
indignation that almost she choked with it, till again reason came to
her aid, and with reason a desire to carry the thing off as well as
might be. So she told her maid Greta to robe her in her best garment,
and to hang about her neck the famous collar of pearls which her father
had brought from the East, that was the talk and envy of half the women
in Leyden. On her head, too, she placed the cap of lovely lace which
had been a wedding gift to her mother by her grandmother, the old dame
who wove it. Then she added such golden ornaments as it was customary
for women of her class to wear, and descended to the gathering room.

Meanwhile Montalvo had not been idle. Taking Dirk aside, and pleading
his travel-worn condition, he had prayed him to lead him to some room
where he might order his dress and person. Dirk complied, though with
an ill grace, but so pleasant did Montalvo make himself during those
few minutes, that before he ushered him back to the company in some way
Dirk found himself convinced that this particular Spaniard was not, as
the saying went, “as black as his mustachios.” He felt almost sure too,
although he had not yet found time to tell him the details of it, that
there was some excellent reason to account for his having carried off
the adorable Lysbeth during an entire afternoon and evening.

It is true that there still remained the strange circumstance of the
attempted foul of his cousin Van de Werff’s sledge in the great race,
but, after all, why should there not be some explanation of this also?
It had happened, if it did happen, at quite a distance from the winning
post, when there were few people to see what passed. Indeed, now that
he came to think of it, the only real evidence on the matter was that
of his cousin, the little girl passenger, since Van de Werff himself
had brought no actual accusation against his opponent.

Shortly after they returned to the company it was announced that supper
had been served, whereon ensued a pause. It was broken by Montalvo,
who, stepping forward, offered his hand to Lysbeth, saying in a voice
that all could hear:

“Lady, my companion of the race, permit the humblest representative of
the greatest monarch in the world to have an honour which doubtless
that monarch would be glad to claim.”

That settled the matter, for as the acting commandant of the Spanish
garrison of Leyden had chosen to refer to his official position, it was
impossible to question his right of precedence over a number of folk,
who, although prominent in their way, were but unennobled Netherlander
burghers.

Lysbeth, indeed, did find courage to point to a rather flurried and
spasmodic lady with grey hair who was fanning herself as though the
season were July, and wondering whether the cook would come up to the
grand Spaniard’s expectations, and to murmur “My aunt.” But she got no
further, for the Count instantly added in a low voice—

“Doubtless comes next in the direct line, but unless my education has
been neglected, the heiress of the house who is of age goes before the
collateral—however aged.”

By this time they were through the door, so it was useless to argue the
point further, and again Lysbeth felt herself overmatched and
submitted. In another minute they had passed down the stairs, entered
the dining hall, and were seated side by side at the head of the long
table, of which the foot was occupied presently by Dirk van Goorl and
her aunt, who was also his cousin, the widow Clara van Ziel.

There was a silence while the domestics began their service, of which
Montalvo took opportunity to study the room, the table and the guests.
It was a fine room panelled with German oak, and lighted sufficiently,
if not brilliantly, by two hanging brass chandeliers of the famous
Flemish workmanship, in each of which were fixed eighteen of the best
candles, while on the sideboards were branch candlesticks, also of
worked brass. The light thus provided was supplemented by that from the
great fire of peat and old ships’ timber which burned in a wide
blue-tiled fire-place, half way down the chamber, throwing its
reflections upon many a flagon and bowl of cunningly hammered silver
that adorned the table and the sideboards.

The company was of the same character as the furniture, handsome and
solid; people of means, every man and woman of them, accumulated by
themselves or their fathers, in the exercise of the honest and
profitable trade whereof at this time the Netherlands had a practical
monopoly.

“I have made no mistake,” thought Montalvo to himself, as he surveyed
the room and its occupants. “My little neighbour’s necklace alone is
worth more cash than ever I had the handling of, and the plate would
add up handsomely. Well, before very long I hope to be in a position to
make its inventory.” Then, having first crossed himself devoutly, he
fell to upon a supper that was well worth his attention, even in a land
noted for the luxury of its food and wines and the superb appetites of
those who consumed them.

It must not be supposed, however, that the gallant captain allowed
eating to strangle conversation. On the contrary, finding that his
hostess was in no talkative mood, he addressed himself to his fellow
guests, chatting with them pleasantly upon every convenient subject.
Among these guests was none other than Pieter van de Werff, his
conqueror in that afternoon’s conquest, upon whose watchful and
suspicious reserve he brought all his batteries to bear.

First he congratulated Pieter and lamented his own ill-luck, and this
with great earnestness, for as a matter of fact he had lost much more
money on the event than he could afford to pay. Then he praised the
grey horse and asked if he was for sale, offering his own black in part
exchange.

“A good nag,” he said, “but one that I do not wish to conceal has his
faults, which must be taken into consideration if it comes to the point
of putting a price upon him. For instance, Mynheer van de Werff, you
may have noticed the dreadful position in which the brute put me
towards the end of the race. There are certain things that this horse
always shies at, and one of them is a red cloak. Now I don’t know if
you saw that a girl in a red cloak suddenly appeared on the bank. In an
instant the beast was round and you may imagine what my feelings were,
being in charge of your fair kinswoman, for I thought to a certainty
that we should be over. What is more, it quite spoilt my chance of the
race, for after he has shied like that, the black turns sulky, and
won’t let himself go.”

When Lysbeth heard this amazing explanation, remembering the facts, she
gasped. And yet now that she came to think of it, a girl in a red cloak
did appear near them at the moment, and the horse _did_ whip round as
though it had shied violently. Was it possible, she wondered, that the
captain had not really intended to foul the Badger sledge?

Meanwhile Van de Werff was answering in his slow voice. Apparently he
accepted Montalvo’s explanation; at least he said that he, too, saw the
red-cloaked girl, and was glad that nothing serious had come of the
mischance. As regarded the proposed deal, he should be most happy to go
into it upon the lines mentioned, as the grey, although a very good
horse, was aged, and he thought the barb one of the most beautiful
animals that he had ever seen. At this point, as he had not the
slightest intention of parting with his valuable charger, at any rate
on such terms, Montalvo changed the subject.

At length, when men, and, for the matter of that, women, too, had well
eaten, and the beautiful tall Flemish glasses not for the first time
were replenished with the best Rhenish or Spanish wines, Montalvo,
taking advantage of a pause in the conversation, rose and said that he
wished to claim the privilege of a stranger among them and propose a
toast, namely, the health of his late adversary, Pieter van de Werff.

At this the audience applauded, for they were all very proud of the
young man’s success, and some of them had won money over him. Still
more did they applaud, being great judges of culinary matters, when the
Spaniard began his speech by an elegant tribute to the surpassing
excellence of the supper. Rarely, he assured them, and especially did
he assure the honourable widow Van Ziel (who blushed all over with
pleasure at his compliments, and fanned herself with such vigour that
she upset Dirk’s wine over his new tunic, cut in the Brussels style),
the fame of whose skill in such matters had travelled so far as The
Hague, for he had heard of it there himself—rarely even in the Courts
of Kings and Emperors, or at the tables of Popes and Archbishops, had
he eaten food so exquisitely cooked, or drunk wines of a better
vintage.

Then, passing on to the subject of his speech, Van de Werff, he toasted
him and his horse and his little sister and his sledge, in really
well-chosen and appropriate terms, not by any means overdoing it, for
he confessed frankly that his defeat was a bitter disappointment to
him, especially as every solder in the camp had expected him to win
and—he was afraid—backed him for more than they could afford. Also,
incidentally, so that every one might be well acquainted with it, he
retold the story of the girl with the red cloak. Next, suddenly
dropping his voice and adopting a quieter manner, he addressed himself
to the Aunt Clara and the “well-beloved Heer Dirk,” saying that he owed
them both an apology, which he must take this opportunity to make, for
having detained the lady at his right during so unreasonable a time
that afternoon. When, however, they had heard the facts they would, he
was sure, blame him no longer, especially if he told them that this
breach of good manners had been the means of saving a human life.

Immediately after the race, he explained, one of his sergeants had
found him out to tell him that a woman, suspected of certain crimes
against life and property and believed to be a notorious escaped witch
or heretic, had been captured, asking for reasons which he need not
trouble them with, that he would deal with the case at once. This woman
also, so said the man, had been heard that very afternoon to make use
of the most horrible, the most traitorous and blaspheming language to a
lady of Leyden, the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, indeed; as was deposed
by a certain spy named Black Meg, who had overheard the conversation.

Now, went on Montalvo, as he knew well, every man and woman in that
room would share his horror of traitorous and blasphemous heretics—here
most of the company crossed themselves, especially those who were
already secret adherents of the New Religion. Still, even heretics had
a right to a fair trial; at least he, who although a soldier by
profession, was a man who honestly detested unnecessary bloodshed, held
that opinion. Also long experience taught him great mistrust of the
evidence of informers, who had a money interest in the conviction of
the accused. Lastly, it did not seem well to him that the name of a
young and noble lady should be mixed up in such a business. As they
knew under the recent edicts, his powers in these cases were absolute;
indeed, in his official capacity he was ordered at once to consign any
suspected of Anabaptism or other forms of heresy to be dealt with by
the appointed courts, and in the case of people who had escaped, to
cause them, on satisfactory proof of their identity, to be executed
instantly without further trial. Under these circumstances, fearing
that did the lady knew his purpose she might take fright, he had, he
confessed, resorted to artifice, as he was very anxious both for her
sake and in the interest of justice that she should bear testimony in
the matter. So he asked her to accompany him on a short drive while he
attended to a business affair; a request to which she had graciously
assented.

“Friends,” he went on in a still more solemn voice, “the rest of my
story is short. Indeed I do congratulate myself on the decision that I
took, for when confronted with the prisoner our young and honourable
hostess was able upon oath to refute the story of the spy with the
result that I in my turn was to save an unfortunate, and, as I believe,
a half-crazed creature from an immediate and a cruel death. Is it not
so, lady?” and helpless in the net of circumstance, not knowing indeed
what else to do, Lysbeth bowed her head in assent.

“I think,” concluded Montalvo, “that after this explanation, what may
have appeared to be a breach of manners will be forgiven. I have only
one other word to add. My position is peculiar; I am an official here,
and I speak boldly among friends taking the risk that any of you
present will use what I say against me, which for my part I do not
believe. Although there is no better Catholic and no truer Spaniard in
the Netherlands, I have been accused of showing too great a sympathy
with your people, and of dealing too leniently with those who have
incurred the displeasure of our Holy Church. In the cause of right and
justice I am willing to bear such aspersions; still this is a
slanderous world, a world in which truth does not always prevail.
Therefore, although I have told you nothing but the bare facts, I do
suggest in the interests of your hostess—in my own humble interest who
might be misrepresented, and I may add in the interest of every one
present at this board—that it will perhaps be well that the details of
the story which I have had the honour of telling you should not be
spread about—that they should in fact find a grave within these walls.
Friends, do you agree?”

Then moved by a common impulse, and by a common if a secret fear, with
the single exception of Lysbeth, every person present, yes, even the
cautious and far-seeing young Van de Werff, echoed “We agree.”

“Friends,” said Montalvo, “those simple words carry to my mind
conviction deep as any vow however solemn; deep, if that were possible,
as did the oath of your hostess, upon the faith of which I felt myself
justified in acquitting the poor creature who was alleged to be an
escaped heretic.” Then with a courteous and all-embracing bow Montalvo
sat down.

“What a good man! What a delightful man!” murmured Aunt Clara to Dirk
in the buzz of conversation which ensued.

“Yes, yes, cousin, but——”

“And what discrimination he has, what taste! Did you notice what he
said about the cooking?”

“I heard something, but——”

“It is true that folk have told me that my capon stewed in milk, such
as we had to-night—Why, lad, what is the matter with your doublet? You
fidget me by continually rubbing at it.”

“You have upset the red wine over it, that is all,” answered Dirk,
sulkily. “It is spoiled.”

“And little loss either; to tell you the truth, Dirk, I never saw a
coat worse cut. You young men should learn in the matter of clothes
from the Spanish gentlemen. Look at his Excellency, the Count Montalvo,
for instance——”

“See here, aunt,” broke in Dirk with suppressed fury, “I think I have
heard enough about Spaniards and the Captain Montalvo for one night.
First of all he spirits off Lysbeth and is absent with her for four
hours; then he invites himself to supper and places himself at the head
of the table with her, setting me down to the dullest meal I ever ate
at the other end——”

“Cousin Dirk,” said Aunt Clara with dignity, “your temper has got the
better of your manners. Certainly you might learn courtesy as well as
dress, even from so humble a person as a Spanish hidalgo and
commander.” Then she rose from the table, adding—“Come, Lysbeth, if you
are ready, let us leave these gentlemen to their wine.”

After the ladies had gone the supper went on merrily. In those days,
nearly everybody drank too much liquor, at any rate at feasts, and this
company was no exception. Even Montalvo, his game being won and the
strain on his nerves relaxed, partook pretty freely, and began to talk
in proportion to his potations. Still, so clever was the man that in
his cups he yet showed a method, for his conversation revealed a
sympathy with Netherlander grievances and a tolerance of view in
religious matters rarely displayed by a Spaniard.

From such questions they drifted into a military discussion, and
Montalvo, challenged by Van de Werff, who, as it happened, had not
drunk too much wine, explained how, were he officer in command, he
would defend Leyden from attack by an overwhelming force. Very soon Van
de Werff saw that he was a capable soldier who had studied his
profession, and being himself a capable civilian with a thirst for
knowledge pressed the argument from point to point.

“And suppose,” he asked at length, “that the city were starving and
still untaken, so that its inhabitants must either fall into the hands
of the enemy or burn the place over their heads, what would you do
then?”

“Then, Mynheer, if I were a small man I should yield to the clamour of
the starving folk and surrender——”

“And if you were a big man, captain?”

“If I were a big man—ah! if I were a big man, why then—I should cut the
dykes and let the sea beat once more against the walls of Leyden. An
army cannot live in salt water, Mynheer.”

“That would drown out the farmers and ruin the land for twenty years.”

“Quite so, Mynheer, but when the corn has to be saved, who thinks of
spoiling the straw?”

“I follow you, Señor, your proverb is good, although I have never heard
it.”

“Many good things come from Spain, Mynheer, including this red wine.
One more glass with you, for, if you will allow me to say it, you are a
man worth meeting over a beaker—or a blade.”

“I hope that you will always retain the same opinion of me,” answered
Van de Werff as he drank, “at the trencher or in the trenches.”

Then Pieter went home, and before he slept that night made careful
notes of all the Spaniard’s suggested military dispositions, both of
attackers and attacked, writing underneath them the proverb about the
corn and the straw. There existed no real reason why he should have
done so, as he was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van
de Werff chanced to be a provident young man who knew many things might
happen which could not precisely be foreseen. As it fell out in after
years, a time came when he was able to put Montalvo’s advice to good
use. All readers of the history of the Netherlands know how the
Burgomaster Pieter van de Werff saved Leyden from the Spanish.

As for Dirk van Goorl, he sought his lodging rather tipsy, and
arm-in-arm with none other than Captain the Count Don Juan de Montalvo.




CHAPTER IV
THREE WAKINGS


There were three persons in Leyden whose reflections when they awoke on
the morning after the sledge race are not without interest, at any rate
to the student of their history. First there was Dirk van Goorl, whose
work made an early riser of him—to say nothing of a splitting headache
which on this morning called him into consciousness just as the clock
in the bell tower was chiming half-past four. Now there are few things
more depressing than to be awakened by a bad headache at half-past four
in the black frost of a winter dawn. Yet as Dirk lay and thought a
conviction took hold of him that his depression was not due entirely to
the headache or to the cold.

One by one he recalled the events of yesterday. First he had been late
for his appointment with Lysbeth, which evidently vexed her. Then the
Captain Montalvo had swooped down and carried her away, as a hawk bears
off a chicken under the very eyes of the hen-wife, while he—donkey that
he was—could find no words in which to protest. Next, thinking it his
duty to back the sledge wherein Lysbeth rode, although it was driven by
a Spaniard, he had lost ten florins on that event, which, being a
thrifty young man, did not at all please him. The rest of the fete he
had spent hunting for Lysbeth, who mysteriously vanished with the
Spaniard, an unentertaining and even an anxious pastime. Then came the
supper, when once more the Count swooped down on Lysbeth, leaving him
to escort his Cousin Clara, whom he considered an old fool and
disliked, and who, having spoilt his new jacket by spilling wine over
it, ended by abusing his taste in dress. Nor was that all—he had drunk
a great deal more strong wine than was wise, for to this his head
certified. Lastly he had walked home arm in arm with his lady-snatching
Spaniard, and by Heaven! yes, he had sworn eternal friendship with him
on the doorstep.

Well, there was no doubt that the Count was an uncommonly good
fellow—for a Spaniard. As for that story of the foul he had explained
it quite satisfactorily, and he had taken his beating like a gentleman.
Could anything be nicer or in better feeling than his allusions to
Cousin Pieter in his after-supper speech? Also, and this was a graver
matter, the man had shown that he was tolerant and kindly by the way in
which he dealt with the poor creature called the Mare, a woman whose
history Dirk knew well; one whose sufferings had made of her a crazy
and rash-tongued wanderer, who, so it was rumoured, could use a knife.

In fact, for the truth may as well be told at once, Dirk was a
Lutheran, having been admitted to that community two years before. To
be a Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it need
scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter round
your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your eyes;
circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and serious
thing than most people find it in this century. Still even at that date
the dreadful penalties attaching to the crime did not prevent many of
the burgher and lower classes from worshipping God in their own
fashion. Indeed, if the truth had been known, of those who were present
at Lysbeth’s supper on the previous night more than half, including
Pieter van de Werff, were adherents of the New Faith.

To dismiss religious considerations, however, Dirk could have wished
that this kindly natured Spaniard was not quite so good-looking or
quite so appreciative of the excellent points of the young Leyden
ladies, and especially of Lysbeth’s, with whose sterling character, he
now remembered, Montalvo had assured him he was much impressed. What he
feared was that this regard might be reciprocal. After all a Spanish
hidalgo in command of the garrison was a distinguished person, and,
alas! Lysbeth also was a Catholic. Dirk loved Lysbeth; he loved her
with that patient sincerity which was characteristic of his race and
his own temperament, but in addition to and above the reasons that have
been given already it was this fact of the difference of religion which
hitherto had built a wall between them. Of course she was unaware of
anything of the sort. She did not know even that he belonged to the New
Faith, and without the permission of the elders of his sect, he would
not dare to tell her, for the lives of men and of their families could
not be confided lightly to the hazard of a girl’s discretion.

Herein lay the real reason why, although Dirk was so devoted to
Lysbeth, and although he imagined that she was not indifferent to him,
as yet no word had passed between them of love or marriage. How could
he who was a Lutheran ask a Catholic to become his wife without telling
her the truth? And if he told her the truth, and she consented to take
the risk, how could he drag her into that dreadful net? Supposing even
that she kept to her own faith, which of course she would be at liberty
to do, although equally, of course, he was bound to try to convert her,
their children, if they had any, must be brought up in his beliefs.
Then, sooner or later, might come the informer, that dreadful informer
whose shadow already lay heavy upon thousands of homes in the
Netherlands, and after the informer the officer, and after the officer
the priest, and after the priest the judge, and after the judge—the
executioner and the stake.

In this case, what would happen to Lysbeth? She might prove herself
innocent of the horrible crime of heresy, if by that time she was
innocent, but what would life become to the loving young woman whose
husband and children, perhaps, had been haled off to the slaughter
chambers of the Papal Inquisition? This was the true first cause why
Dirk had remained silent, even when he was sorely tempted to speak;
yes, although his instinct told him that his silence had been
misinterpreted and set down to over-caution, or indifference, or to
unnecessary scruples.

The next to wake up that morning was Lysbeth, who, if she was not
troubled with headache resulting from indulgence—and in that day women
of her class sometimes suffered from it—had pains of her own to
overcome. When sifted and classified these pains resolved themselves
into a sense of fiery indignation against Dirk van Goorl. Dirk had been
late for his appointment, alleging some ridiculous excuse about the
cooling of a bell, as though she cared whether the bell were hot or
cold, with the result that she had been thrown into the company of that
dreadful Martha the Mare. After the Mare—aggravated by Black Meg—came
the Spaniard. Here again Dirk had shown contemptible indifference and
insufficiency, for he allowed her to be forced into the Wolf sledge
against her will. Nay, he had actually consented to the thing. Next, in
a fateful sequence followed all the other incidents of that hideous
carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare
vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo’s face; the trial
of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely
drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself
before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which
he appeared as her cavalier, and was accepted of the simple company
almost as an angel entertained by chance.

What did he mean? Doubtless, for on that point she could scarcely be
mistaken, he meant to make love to her, for had he not in practice said
as much? And now—this was the terrible thing—she was in his power,
since if he chose to do so, without doubt he could prove that she had
sworn a false oath for her own purposes. Also that lie weighed upon her
mind, although it had been spoken in a good cause; if it was good to
save a wretched fanatic from the fate which, were the truth known,
without doubt her crime deserved.

Of course, the Spaniard was a bad man, if an attractive one, and he had
behaved wickedly, if with grace and breeding; but who expected anything
else from a Spaniard, who only acted after his kind and for his own
ends? It was Dirk—Dirk—that was to blame, not so much—and here again
came the rub—for his awkwardness and mistakes of yesterday, as for his
general conduct. Why had he not spoken to her before, and put her
beyond the reach of such accidents as these to which a woman of her
position and substance must necessarily be exposed? The saints knew
that she had given him opportunity enough. She had gone as far as a
maiden might, and not for all the Dirks on earth would she go one inch
further. Why had she ever come to care for his foolish face? Why had
she refused So-and-so, and So-and-so and So-and-so—all of them
honourable men—with the result that now no other bachelor ever came
near her, comprehending that she was under bond to her cousin? In the
past she had persuaded herself that it was because of something she
felt but could not see, of a hidden nobility of character which after
all was not very evident upon the surface, that she loved Dirk van
Goorl. But where was this something, this nobility? Surely a man who
was a man ought to play his part, and not leave her in this false
position, especially as there could be no question of means. She would
not have come to him empty-handed, very far from it, indeed. Oh! were
it not for the unlucky fact that she still happened to care about
him—to her sorrow—never, never would she speak to him again.

The last of our three friends to awake on this particular morning,
between nine and ten o’clock, indeed, when Dirk had been already two
hours at his factory and Lysbeth was buying provisions in the market
place, was that accomplished and excellent officer, Captain the Count
Juan de Montalvo. For a few seconds after his dark eyes opened he
stared at the ceiling collecting his thoughts. Then, sitting up in bed,
he burst into a prolonged roar of laughter. Really the whole thing was
too funny for any man of humour to contemplate without being moved to
merriment. That gaby, Dirk van Goorl; the furiously indignant but
helpless Lysbeth; the solemn, fat-headed fools of Netherlanders at the
supper, and the fashion in which he had played his own tune on the
whole pack of them as though they were the strings of a fiddle—oh! it
was delicious.

As the reader by this time may have guessed, Montalvo was not the
typical Spaniard of romance, and, indeed, of history. He was not gloomy
and stern; he was not even particularly vengeful or bloodthirsty. On
the contrary, he was a clever and utterly unprincipled man with a sense
of humour and a gift of _bonhomie_ which made him popular in all
places. Moreover, he was brave, a good soldier; in a certain sense
sympathetic, and, strange to say, no bigot. Indeed, which seems to have
been a rare thing in those days, his religious views were so enlarged
that he had none at all. His conduct, therefore, if from time to time
it was affected by passing spasms of acute superstition, was totally
uninfluenced by any settled spiritual hopes or fears, a condition
which, he found, gave him great advantages in life. In fact, had it
suited his purpose, Montalvo was prepared, at a moment’s notice, to
become Lutheran or Calvinist, or Mahomedan, or Mystic, or even
Anabaptist; on the principle, he would explain, that it is easy for the
artist to paint any picture he likes upon a blank canvas.

And yet this curious pliancy of mind, this lack of conviction, this
absolute want of moral sense, which ought to have given the Count such
great advantages in his conflict with the world, were, in reality, the
main source of his weakness. Fortune had made a soldier of the man, and
he filled the part as he would have filled any part. But nature
intended him for a play-actor, and from day to day he posed and mimed
and mouthed through life in this character or in that, though never in
his own character, principally because he had none. Still, far down in
Montalvo’s being there was something solid and genuine, and that
something not good but bad. It was very rarely on view; the hand of
circumstance must plunge deep to find it, but it dwelt there; the
strong, cruel Spanish spirit which would sacrifice anything to save, or
even to advance, itself. It was this spirit that Lysbeth had seen
looking out of his eyes on the yesterday, which, when he knew that the
race was lost, had prompted him to try to kill his adversary, although
he killed himself and her in the attempt. Nor did she see it then for
the last time, for twice more at least in her life she was destined to
meet and tremble at its power.

In short, although Montalvo was a man who really disliked cruelty, he
could upon occasion be cruel to the last degree; although he
appreciated friends, and desired to have them, he could be the foulest
of traitors. Although without a cause he would do no hurt to a living
thing, yet if that cause were sufficient he would cheerfully consign a
whole cityful to death. No, not cheerfully, he would have regretted
their end very much, and often afterwards might have thought of it with
sympathy and even sorrow. This was where he differed from the majority
of his countrymen in that age, who would have done the same thing, and
more brutally, from honest principle, and for the rest of their lives
rejoiced at the memory of the deed.

Montalvo had his ruling passion; it was not war, it was not women; it
was money. But here again he did not care about the money for itself,
since he was no miser, and being the most inveterate of gamblers never
saved a single stiver. He wanted it to spend and to stake upon the
dice. Thus again, in variance to the taste of most of his countrymen,
he cared little for the other sex; he did not even like their society,
and as for their passion and the rest he thought it something of a
bore. But he did care intensely for their admiration, so much so that
if no better game were at hand, he would take enormous trouble to
fascinate even a serving maid or a fish girl. Wherever he went it was
his ambition to be reported the man the most admired of the fair in
that city, and to attain this end he offered himself upon the altar of
numerous love affairs which did not amuse him in the least. Of course,
the indulgence of this vanity meant expense, since the fair require
money and presents, and he who pursues them should be well dressed and
horsed and able to do things in the very finest style. Also their
relatives must be entertained, and when they were entertained impressed
with the sense that they had the honour to be guests of a grandee of
Spain.

Now that of a grandee has never been a cheap profession; indeed, as
many a pauper peer knows to-day, rank without resources is a terrific
burden. Montalvo had the rank, for he was a well-born man, whose sole
heritage was an ancient tower built by some warlike ancestor in a
position admirably suited to the purpose of the said ancestor, namely,
the pillage of travellers through a neighbouring mountain pass. When,
however, travellers ceased to use that pass, or for other reasons
robbery became no longer productive, the revenues of the Montalvo
family declined till at the present date they were practically nil.
Thus it came about that the status of the last representative of this
ancient stock was that of a soldier of fortune of the common type,
endowed, unfortunately for himself, with grand ideas, a gambler’s fatal
fire, expensive tastes, and more than the usual pride of race.

Although, perhaps, he had never defined them very clearly, even to
himself, Juan de Montalvo had two aims in life: first to indulge his
every freak and fancy to the full, and next—but this was secondary and
somewhat nebulous—to re-establish the fortunes of his family. In
themselves they were quite legitimate aims, and in those times, when
fishers of troubled waters generally caught something, and when men of
ability and character might force their way to splendid positions,
there was no reason why they should not have led him to success. Yet so
far, at any rate, in spite of many opportunities, he had not succeeded
although he was now a man of more than thirty. The causes of his
failures were various, but at the bottom of them lay his lack of
stability and genuineness.

A man who is always playing a part amuses every one but convinces
nobody. Montalvo convinced nobody. When he discoursed on the mysteries
of religion with priests, even priests who in those days for the most
part were stupid, felt that they assisted in a mere intellectual
exercise. When his theme was war his audience guessed that his object
was probably love. When love was his song an inconvenient instinct was
apt to assure the lady immediately concerned that it was love of self
and not of her. They were all more or less mistaken, but, as usual, the
women went nearest to the mark. Montalvo’s real aim was self, but he
spelt it, Money. Money in large sums was what he wanted, and what in
this way or that he meant to win.

Now even in the sixteenth century fortunes did not lie to the hand of
every adventurer. Military pay was small, and not easily recoverable;
loot was hard to come by, and quickly spent. Even the ransom of a rich
prisoner or two soon disappeared in the payment of such debts of honour
as could not be avoided. Of course there remained the possibility of
wealthy marriage, which in a country like the Netherlands, that was
full of rich heiresses, was not difficult to a high-born, handsome, and
agreeable man of the ruling Spanish caste. Indeed, after many chances
and changes the time had come at length when Montalvo must either marry
or be ruined. For his station his debts, especially his gaming debts,
were enormous, and creditors met him at every turn. Unfortunately for
him, also, some of these creditors were persons who had the ear of
people in authority. So at last it came about that an intimation
reached him that this scandal must be abated, or he must go back to
Spain, a country which, as it happened, he did not in the least wish to
visit. In short, the sorry hour of reckoning, that hour which overtakes
all procrastinators, had arrived, and marriage, wealthy marriage, was
the only way wherewith it could be defied. It was a sad alternative to
a man who for his own very excellent reasons did not wish to marry, but
this had to be faced.

Thus it came about that, as the only suitable _partie_ in Leyden, the
Count Montalvo had sought out the well-favoured and well-endowed
Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout to be his companion in the great sledge race,
and taken so much trouble to ensure to himself a friendly reception at
her house.

So far, things went well, and, what was more, the opening of the chase
had proved distinctly entertaining. Also, the society of the place,
after his appropriation of her at a public festival and their long
moonlight _tête-à-tête_, which by now must be common gossip’s talk,
would be quite prepared for any amount of attention which he might see
fit to pay to Lysbeth. Indeed, why should he not pay attention to an
unaffianced woman whose rank was lower if her means were greater than
his own? Of course, he knew that her name had been coupled with that of
Dirk van Goorl. He was perfectly aware also that these two young people
were attached to each other, for as they walked home together on the
previous night Dirk, possibly for motives of his own, had favoured him
with a semi-intoxicated confidence to that effect. But as they were not
affianced what did that matter? Indeed, had they been affianced, what
would it matter? Still, Dirk van Goorl was an obstacle, and, therefore,
although he seemed to be a good fellow, and he was sorry for him, Dirk
van Goorl must be got out of the way, since he was convinced that
Lysbeth was one of those stubborn-natured creatures who would probably
decline to marry himself until this young Leyden lout had vanished. And
yet he did not wish to be mixed up with duels, if for no other reason
because in a duel the unexpected may always happen, and that would be a
poor end. Certainly also he did not wish to be mixed up with murder;
first, because he intensely disliked the idea of killing anybody,
unless he was driven to it; and secondly, because murder has a nasty
way of coming out. One could never be quite sure in what light the
despatching of a young Netherlander of respectable family and fortune
would be looked at by those in authority.

Also, there was another thing to be considered. If this young man died
it was impossible to know exactly how Lysbeth would take his death.
Thus she might elect to refuse to marry or decide to mourn him for four
or five years, which for all practical purposes would be just as bad.
And yet while Dirk lived how could he possibly persuade her to transfer
her affections to himself? It seemed, therefore, that Dirk ought to
decease. For quite a quarter of an hour Montalvo thought the matter
over, and then, just as he had given it up and determined to leave
things to chance, for a while at least, inspiration came, a splendid, a
heaven-sent inspiration.

Dirk must not die, Dirk must live, but his continued existence must be
the price of the hand of Lysbeth van Hout. If she was half as fond of
the man as he believed, it was probable that she would be delighted to
marry anybody else in order to save his precious neck, for that was
just the kind of sentimental idiocy of which nine women out of ten
really enjoyed the indulgence. Moreover, this scheme had other merits;
it did every one a good turn. Dirk would be saved from extinction for
which he should be grateful: Lysbeth, besides earning the honour of an
alliance, perhaps only temporary, with himself, would be able to go
through life wrapped in a heavenly glow of virtue arising from the
impression that she had really done something very fine and tragic,
while he, Montalvo, under Providence, the humble purveyor of these
blessings, would also benefit to some small extent.

The difficulty was: How could the situation be created? How could the
interesting Dirk be brought to a pass that would give the lady an
opportunity of exercising her finer feelings on his behalf? If only he
were a heretic now! Well, by the Pope why shouldn’t he be a heretic? If
ever a fellow had the heretical cut this fellow had; flat-faced,
sanctimonious-looking, and with a fancy for dark-coloured stockings—he
had observed that all heretics, male and female, wore dark-coloured
stockings, perhaps by way of mortifying the flesh. He could think of
only one thing against it, the young man had drunk too much last night.
But there were certain breeds of heretics who did not mind drinking too
much. Also the best could slip sometimes, for, as he had learned from
the old Castilian priest who taught him Latin, _humanum est_, etc.

This, then, was the summary of his reflections. (1) That to save the
situation, within three months or so he must be united in holy
matrimony with Lysbeth van Hout. (2) That if it proved impossible to
remove the young man, Dirk van Goorl, from his path by overmatching him
in the lady’s affections, or by playing on her jealousy (Query: Could a
woman be egged into becoming jealous of that flounder of a fellow and
into marrying some one else out of pique?), stronger measures must be
adopted. (3) That such stronger measures should consist of inducing the
lady to save her lover from death by uniting herself in marriage with
one who for her sake would do violence to his conscience and manipulate
the business. (4) That this plan would be best put into execution by
proving the lover to be a heretic, but if unhappily this could not be
proved because he was not, still he must figure in that capacity for
this occasion only. (5) That meanwhile it would be well to cultivate
the society of Mynheer van Goorl as much as possible, first because he
was a person with whom, under the circumstances, he, Montalvo, would
naturally wish to become intimate, and secondly, because he was quite
certain to be an individual with cash to lend.

Now, these researches after heretics invariably cost money, for they
involved the services of spies. Obviously, therefore, friend Dirk, the
Dutch Flounder, was a man to provide the butter in which he was going
to be fried. Why, if any Hollander had a spark of humour he would see
the joke of it himself—and Montalvo ended his reflections as he had
begun them, with a merry peal of laughter, after which he rose and ate
a most excellent breakfast.

It was about half-past five o’clock that afternoon before the Captain
and Acting-Commandant Montalvo returned from some duty to which he had
been attending, for it may be explained that he was a zealous officer
and a master of detail. As he entered his lodgings the soldier who
acted as his servant, a man selected for silence and discretion,
saluted and stood at attention.

“Is the woman here?” he asked.

“Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading
her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour.”

“Peace to your difficulties. Where is she?”

“In the small inner room, Excellency.”

“Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and—stay, when she goes out
follow her and note her movements till you trace her home.”

The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room,
carefully shutting both doors behind him. The place was unlighted, but
through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full moon
poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair,
Montalvo saw a draped form. There was something forbidding, something
almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon a
chair in expectant silence. It reminded him—for he had a touch of
inconvenient imagination—of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of a
dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some
appointed prey.

“Is that you, Mother Meg?” he asked in tones from which most of the
jocosity had vanished. “Quite like old times at The Hague—isn’t it?”

The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine
upon the whites of the eyes.

“Who else, Excellency,” said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a
voice like the croak of a crow, “though it is little thanks to your
Excellency. Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through a
hole in the ice and take no hurt.”

“Don’t scold, woman,” he answered, “I have no time for it. If you were
ducked yesterday, it served you right for losing your cursed temper.
Could you not see that I had my own game to play, and you were spoiling
it? Must I be flouted before my men, and listen while you warn a lady
with whom I wish to stand well against me?”

“You generally have a game to play, Excellency, but when it ends in my
being first robbed and then nearly drowned beneath the ice—well, that
is a game which Black Meg does not forget.”

“Hush, mother, you are not the only person with a memory. What was the
reward? Twelve florins? Well, you shall have them, and five more;
that’s good pay for a lick of cold water. Are you satisfied?”

“No, Excellency. I wanted the life, that heretic’s life. I wanted to
baste her while she burned, or to tread her down while she was buried.
I have a grudge against the woman because I know, yes, because I know,”
she repeated fiercely, “that if I do not kill her she will try to kill
me. Her husband and her young son were burnt, upon my evidence mostly,
but this is the third time she has escaped me.”

“Patience, mother, patience, and I dare say that everything will come
right in the end. You have bagged two of the family—Papa heretic and
Young Hopeful. Really you should not grumble if the third takes a
little hunting, or wonder that in the meanwhile you are not popular
with Mama. Now, listen. You know the young woman whom it was necessary
that I should humour yesterday. She is rich, is she not?”

“Yes, I know her, and I knew her father. He left her house, furniture,
jewellery, and thirty thousand crowns, which are placed out at good
interest. A nice fortune for a gallant who wants money, but it will be
Dirk van Goorl’s, not yours.”

“Ah! that is just the point. Now what do you know about Dirk van
Goorl?”

“A respectable, hard-working burgher, son of well-to-do parents,
brass-workers who live at Alkmaar. Honest, but not very clever; the
kind of man who grows rich, becomes a Burgomaster, founds a hospital
for the poor, and has a fine monument put up to his memory.”

“Mother, the cold water has dulled your wits. When I ask you about a
man I want to learn what you know _against_ him.”

“Naturally, Excellency, naturally, but against this one I can tell you
nothing. He has no lovers, he does not gamble, he does not drink except
a glass after dinner. He works in his factory all day, goes to bed
early, rises early, and calls on the Jufvrouw van Hout on Sundays; that
is all.”

“Where does he attend Mass?”

“At the Groote Kerke once a week, but he does not take the Sacrament or
go to confession.”

“That sounds bad, mother, very bad. You don’t mean to say that he is a
heretic?”

“Probably he is, Excellency; most of them are about here.”

“Dear me, how very shocking. Do you know, I should not like that
excellent young woman, a good Catholic too, like you and me, mother, to
become mixed up with one of these dreadful heretics, who might expose
her to all sorts of dangers. For, mother, who can touch pitch and not
be defiled?”

“You waste time, Excellency,” replied his visitor with a snort. “What
do you want?”

“Well, in the interests of this young lady, I want to prove that this
man _is_ a heretic, and it has struck me that—as one accustomed to this
sort of thing—you might be able to find the evidence.”

“Indeed, Excellency, and has it struck you what my face would look like
after I had thrust my head into a wasp’s nest for your amusement? Do
you know what it means to me if I go peering about among the heretics
of Leyden? Well, I will tell you; it means that I should be killed.
They are a strong lot, and a determined lot, and so long as you leave
them alone they will leave you alone, but if you interfere with them,
why then it is good night. Oh! yes, I know all about the law and the
priests and the edicts and the Emperor. But the Emperor cannot burn a
whole people, and though I hate them, I tell you,” she added, standing
up suddenly and speaking in a fierce, convinced voice, “that in the end
the law and the edicts and the priests will get the worst of this
fight. Yes, these Hollanders will beat them all and cut the throats of
you Spaniards, and thrust those of you who are left alive out of their
country, and spit upon your memories and worship God in their own
fashion, and be proud and free, when you are dogs gnawing the bones of
your greatness; dogs kicked back into your kennels to rot there. Those
are not my own words,” said Meg in a changed voice as she sat down
again. “They are the words of that devil, Martha the Mare, which she
spoke in my hearing when we had her on the rack, but somehow I think
that they will come true, and that is why I always remember them.”

“Indeed, her ladyship the Mare is a more interesting person than I
thought, though if she can talk like that, perhaps, after all, it would
have been as well to drown her. And now, dropping prophecy and leaving
posterity to arrange for itself, let us come to business. How much? For
evidence which would suffice to procure his conviction, mind.”

“Five hundred florins, not a stiver less, so, Excellency, you need not
waste your time trying to beat me down. You want good evidence,
evidence on which the Council, or whoever they may appoint, will
convict, and that means the unshaken testimony of two witnesses. Well,
I tell you, it isn’t easy to come by; there is great danger to the
honest folk who seek it, for these heretics are desperate people, and
if they find a spy while they are engaged in devil-worship at one of
their conventicles, why—they kill him.”

“I know all that, mother. What are you trying to cover up that you are
so talkative? It isn’t your usual way of doing business. Well, it is a
bargain—you shall have your money when you produce the evidence. And
now really if we stop here much longer people will begin to make
remarks, for who shall escape aspersion in this censorious world? So
good-night, mother, good-night,” and he turned to leave the room.

“No, Excellency,” she croaked with a snort of indignation, “no pay, no
play; I don’t work on the faith of your Excellency’s word alone.”

“How much?” he asked again.

“A hundred florins down.”

Then for a while they wrangled hideously, their heads held close
together in the patch of moonlight, and so loathsome did their faces
look, so plainly was the wicked purpose of their hearts written upon
them, that in that faint luminous glow they might have been mistaken
for emissaries from the under-world chaffering over the price of a
human soul. At last the bargain was struck for fifty florins, and
having received it into her hand Black Meg departed.

“Sixty-seven in all,” she muttered to herself as she regained the
street. “Well, it was no use holding out for any more, for he hasn’t
got the cash. The man’s as poor as Lazarus, but he wants to live like
Dives, and, what is more, he gambles, as I learned at The Hague. Also,
there’s something queer about his past; I have heard as much as that.
It must be looked into, and perhaps the bundle of papers which I helped
myself to out of his desk while I was waiting”—and she touched the
bosom of her dress to make sure that they were safe—“may tell me a
thing or two, though likely enough they are only unpaid bills. Ah! most
noble cheat and captain, before you have done with her you may find
that Black Meg knows how to pay back hot water for cold!”




CHAPTER V
THE DREAM OF DIRK


On the day following Montalvo’s interview with Black Meg Dirk received
a message from that gentleman, sent to his lodging by an orderly, which
reminded him that he had promised to dine with him this very night. Now
he had no recollection of any such engagement. Remembering with shame,
however, that there were various incidents of the evening of the supper
whereof his memory was most imperfect, he concluded that this must be
one of them. So much against his own wishes Dirk sent back an answer to
say that he would appear at the time and place appointed.

This was the third thing that had happened to annoy him that day. First
he had met Pieter van de Werff, who informed him that all Leyden was
talking about Lysbeth and the Captain Montalvo, to whom she was said to
have taken a great fancy. Next when he went to call at the house in the
Bree Straat he was told that both Lysbeth and his cousin Clara had gone
out sleighing, which he did not believe, for as a thaw had set in the
snow was no longer in a condition suitable to that amusement. Moreover,
he could almost have sworn that, as he crossed the street, he caught
sight of Cousin Clara’s red face peeping at him from between the
curtains of the upstairs sitting-room. Indeed he said as much to Greta,
who, contrary to custom, had opened the door to him.

“I am sorry if Mynheer sees visions,” answered that young woman
imperturbably. “I told Mynheer that the ladies had gone out sleighing.”

“I know you did, Greta; but why should they go out sleighing in a wet
thaw?”

“I don’t know, Mynheer. Ladies do those things that please them. It is
not my place to ask their reasons.”

Dirk looked at Greta, and was convinced that she was lying. He put his
hand in his pocket, to find to his disgust that he had forgotten his
purse. Then he thought of giving her a kiss and trying to melt the
truth out of her in this fashion, but remembering that if he did, she
might tell Lysbeth, which would make matters worse than ever,
refrained. So the end of it was that he merely said “Oh! indeed,” and
went away.

“Great soft-head,” reflected Greta, as she watched his retreating form,
“he knew I was telling lies, why didn’t he push past me, or—do
anything. Ah! Mynheer Dirk, if you are not careful that Spaniard will
take your wind. Well, he is more amusing, that’s certain. I am tired of
these duck-footed Leydeners, who daren’t wink at a donkey lest he
should bray, and among such holy folk somebody a little wicked is
rather a change.” Then Greta, who, it may be remembered, came from
Brussels, and had French blood in her veins, went upstairs to make a
report to her mistress, telling her all that passed.

“I did not ask you to speak falsehoods as to my being out sleighing and
the rest. I told you to answer that I was not at home, and mind you say
the same to the Captain Montalvo if he calls,” said Lysbeth with some
acerbity as she dismissed her.

In truth she was very sore and angry, and yet ashamed of herself
because it was so. But things had gone so horribly wrong, and as for
Dirk, he was the most exasperating person in the world. It was owing to
his bad management and lack of readiness that her name was coupled with
Montalvo’s at every table in Leyden. And now what did she hear in a
note from the Captain himself, sent to make excuses for not having
called upon her after the supper party, but that Dirk was going to dine
with him that night? Very well, let him do it; she would know how to
pay him back, and if necessary was ready to act up to any situation
which he had chosen to create.

Thus thought Lysbeth, stamping her foot with vexation, but all the time
her heart was sore. All the time she knew well enough that she loved
Dirk, and, however strange might be his backwardness in speaking out
his mind, that he loved her. And yet she felt as though a river was
running between them. In the beginning it had been a streamlet, but now
it was growing to a torrent. Worse still the Spaniard was upon her bank
of the river.

After he had to some extent conquered his shyness and irritation Dirk
became aware that he was really enjoying his dinner at Montalvo’s
quarters. There were three guests besides himself, two Spanish officers
and a young Netherlander of his own class and age, Brant by name. He
was the only son of a noted and very wealthy goldsmith at The Hague,
who had sent him to study certain mysteries of the metal worker’s art
under a Leyden jeweller famous for the exquisite beauty of his designs.
The dinner and the service were both of them perfect in style, but
better than either proved the conversation, which was of a character
that Dirk had never heard at the tables of his own class and people.
Not that there was anything even broad about it, as might perhaps have
been expected. No, it was the talk of highly accomplished and travelled
men of the world, who had seen much and been actors in many moving
events; men who were not overtrammelled by prejudices, religious or
other, and who were above all things desirous of making themselves
agreeable and instructive to the stranger within their gates. The Heer
Brant also, who had but just arrived in Leyden, showed himself an able
and polished man, one that had been educated more thoroughly than was
usual among his class, and who, at the table of his father, the opulent
Burgomaster of The Hague, from his youth had associated with all
classes and conditions of men. Indeed it was there that he made the
acquaintance of Montalvo, who recognising him in the street had asked
him to dinner.

After the dishes were cleared, one of the Spanish officers rose and
begged to be excused, pleading some military duty. When he had saluted
his commandant and gone, Montalvo suggested that they should play a
game of cards. This was an invitation which Dirk would have liked to
decline, but when it came to the point he did not, for fear of seeming
peculiar in the eyes of these brilliant men of the world.

So they began to play, and as the game was simple very soon he picked
up the points of it, and what is more, found them amusing. At first the
stakes were not high, but they doubled themselves in some automatic
fashion, till Dirk was astonished to find that he was gambling for
considerable sums and winning them. Towards the last his luck changed a
little, but when the game came to an end he found himself the richer by
about three hundred and fifty florins.

“What am I do to with this?” he asked colouring up, as with sighs,
which in one instance were genuine enough, the losers pushed the money
across to him.

“Do with it?” laughed Montalvo, “did anybody ever hear such an
innocent! Why, buy your lady-love, or somebody else’s lady-love, a
present. No, I’ll tell you a better use than this, you give us
to-morrow night at your lodging the best dinner that Leyden can
produce, and a chance of winning some of this coin back again. Is it
agreed?”

“If the other gentlemen wish it,” said Dirk, modestly, “though my
apartment is but a poor place for such company.”

“Of course we wish it,” replied the three as with one voice, and the
hour for meeting having been fixed they parted, the Heer Brant walking
with Dirk to the door of his lodging.

“I was going to call on you to-morrow,” he said, “to bring to you a
letter of introduction from my father, though that should scarcely be
needed as, in fact, we are cousins—second cousins only, our mothers
having been first cousins.”

“Oh! yes, Brant of The Hague, of whom my mother used to speak, saying
that they were kinsmen to be proud of, although she had met them but
little. Well, welcome, cousin; I trust that we shall be friends.”

“I am sure of it,” answered Brant, and putting his arm through Dirk’s
he pressed it in a peculiar fashion that caused him to start and look
round. “Hush!” muttered Brant, “not here,” and they began to talk of
their late companions and the game of cards which they had played, an
amusement as to the propriety of which Dirk intimated that he had
doubts.

Young Brant shrugged his shoulders. “Cousin,” he said, “we live in the
world, so it is as well to understand the world. If the risking of a
few pieces at play, which it will not ruin us to lose, helps us to
understand it, well, for my part I am ready to risk them, especially as
it puts us on good terms with those who, as things are, it is wise we
should cultivate. Only, cousin, if I may venture to say it, be careful
not to take more wine than you can carry with discretion. Better lose a
thousand florins than let drop one word that you cannot remember.”

“I know, I know,” answered Dirk, thinking of Lysbeth’s supper, and at
the door of his lodgings they parted.

Like most Netherlanders, when Dirk made up his mind to do anything he
did it thoroughly. Thus, having undertaken to give a dinner party, he
determined to give a good dinner. In ordinary circumstances his first
idea would have been to consult his cousins, Clara and Lysbeth. After
that monstrous story about the sleighing, however, which by inquiry
from the coachman of the house, whom he happened to meet, he
ascertained to be perfectly false, this, for the young man had some
pride, he did not feel inclined to do. So in place of it he talked
first to his landlady, a worthy dame, and by her advice afterwards with
the first innkeeper of Leyden, a man of resource and experience. The
innkeeper, well knowing that this customer would pay for anything which
he ordered, threw himself into the affair heartily, with the result
that by five o’clock relays of cooks and other attendants were to be
seen streaming up Dirk’s staircase, carrying every variety of dish that
could be supposed to tempt the appetite of high-class cavaliers.

Dirk’s apartment consisted of two rooms situated upon the first floor
of an old house in a street that had ceased to be fashionable. Once,
however, it had been a fine house, and, according to the ideas of the
time, the rooms themselves were fine, especially the sitting chamber,
which was oak-panelled, low, and spacious, with a handsome fireplace
carrying the arms of its builder. Out of it opened his sleeping
room—which had no other doorway—likewise oak-panelled, with tall
cupboards, not unlike the canopy of a tomb in shape and general
appearance.

The hour came, and with it the guests. The feast began, the cooks
streamed up and down bearing relays of dishes from the inn. Above the
table hung a six-armed brass chandelier, and in each of its sockets
guttered a tallow candle furnishing light to the company beneath,
although outside of its bright ring there was shadow more or less
dense. Towards the end of dinner a portion of the rush wick of one of
these candles fell into the brass saucer beneath, causing the molten
grease to burn up fiercely. As it chanced, by the light of this sudden
flare, Montalvo, who was sitting opposite to the door, thought that he
caught sight of a tall, dark figure gliding along the wall towards the
bedroom. For one instant he saw it, then it was gone.

“_Caramba_, my friend,” he said, addressing Dirk, whose back was turned
towards the figure, “have you any ghosts in this gloomy old room of
yours? Because, if so, I think I have just seen one.”

“Ghosts!” answered Dirk, “no, I never heard of any; I do not believe in
ghosts. Take some more of that pasty.”

Montalvo took some more pasty, and washed it down with a glass of wine.
But he said no more about ghosts—perhaps an explanation of the
phenomenon had occurred to him; at any rate he decided to leave the
subject alone.

After the dinner they gambled, and this evening the stakes began where
those of the previous night left off. For the first hour Dirk lost,
then the luck turned and he won heavily, but always from Montalvo.

“My friend,” said the captain at last, throwing down his cards,
“certainly you are fated to be unfortunate in your matrimonial
adventures, for the devil lives in your dice-box, and his highness does
not give everything. I pass,” and he rose from the table.

“I pass also,” said Dirk following him into the window place, for he
wished to take no more money. “You have been very unlucky, Count,” he
said.

“Very, indeed, my young friend,” answered Montalvo, yawning, “in fact,
for the next six months I must live on—well—well, nothing, except the
recollection of your excellent dinner.”

“I am sorry,” muttered Dirk, confusedly, “I did not wish to take your
money; it was the turn of those accursed dice. See here, let us say no
more about it.”

“Sir,” said Montalvo, with a sudden sternness, “an officer and a
gentleman cannot treat a debt of honour thus; but,” he added with a
little laugh, “if another gentleman chances to be good enough to charge
a debt of honour for a debt of honour, the affair is different. If, for
instance, it would suit you to lend me four hundred florins, which,
added to the six hundred which I have lost to-night, would make a
thousand in all, well, it will be a convenience to me, though should it
be any inconvenience to you, pray do not think of such a thing.”

“Certainly,” answered Dirk, “I have won nearly as much as that, and
here at my own table. Take them, I beg of you, captain,” and emptying a
roll of gold into his hand, he counted it with the skill of a merchant,
and held it towards him.

Montalvo hesitated. Then he took the money, pouring it carelessly into
his pocket.

“You have not checked the sum,” said Dirk.

“My friend, it is needless,” answered his guest, “your word is rather
better than any bond,” and again he yawned, remarking that it was
getting late.

Dirk waited a few moments, thinking in his coarse, business-like way
that the noble Spaniard might wish to say something about a written
acknowledgment. As, however, this did not seem to occur to him, and the
matter was not one of ordinary affairs, he led the way back to the
table, where the other two were now showing their skill in card tricks.

A few minutes later the two Spaniards took their departure, leaving
Dirk and his cousin Brant alone.

“A very successful evening,” said Brant, “and, cousin, you won a great
deal.”

“Yes,” answered Dirk, “but all the same I am a poorer man than I was
yesterday.”

Brant laughed. “Did he borrow of you?” he asked. “Well, I thought he
would, and what’s more, don’t you count on that money. Montalvo is a
good sort of fellow in his own fashion, but he is an extravagant man
and a desperate gambler, with a queer history, I fancy—at least, nobody
knows much about him, not even his brother officers. If you ask them
they shrug their shoulders and say that Spain is a big kettle full of
all sorts of fish. One thing I do know, however, that he is over head
and ears in debt; indeed, there was trouble about it down at The Hague.
So, cousin, don’t you play with him more than you can help, and don’t
reckon on that thousand florins to pay your bills with. It is a mystery
to me how the man gets on, but I am told that a foolish old vrouw in
Amsterdam lent him a lot till she discovered—but there, I don’t talk
scandal. And now,” he added, changing his voice, “is this place
private?”

“Let’s see,” said Dirk, “they have cleared the things away, and the old
housekeeper has tidied up my bedroom. Yes, I think so. Nobody ever
comes up here after ten o’clock. What is it?”

Brant touched his arm, and, understanding the truth, Dirk led the way
into the window-place. There, standing with his back to the room, and
his hands crossed in a peculiar fashion, he uttered the word,
“_Jesus_,” and paused. Brant also crossed his hands and answered, or,
rather, continued, “_wept_.” It was the password of those of the New
Religion.

“You are one of us, cousin?” said Dirk.

“I and all my house, my father, my mother, my sister, and the maiden
whom I am to marry. They told me at The Hague that I must seek of you
or the young Heer Pieter van de Werff, knowledge of those things which
we of the Faith need to know; who are to be trusted, and who are not to
be trusted; where prayer is held, and where we may partake of the pure
Sacrament of God the Son.”

Dirk took his cousin’s hand and pressed it. The pressure was returned,
and thenceforward brother could not have trusted brother more
completely, for now between them was the bond of a common and burning
faith.

Such bonds the reader may say, tie ninety out of every hundred people
to each other in the present year of grace, but it is not to be
observed that a like mutual confidence results. No, because the
circumstances have changed. Thanks very largely to Dirk van Goorl and
his fellows of that day, especially to one William of Orange, it is no
longer necessary for devout and God-fearing people to creep into holes
and corners, like felons hiding from the law, that they may worship the
Almighty after some fashion as pure as it is simple, knowing the while
that if they are found so doing their lot and the lot of their wives
and children will be the torment and the stake. Now the thumbscrew and
the rack as instruments for the discomfiture of heretics are relegated
to the dusty cases of museums. But some short generations since all
this was different, for then a man who dared to disagree with certain
doctrines was treated with far less mercy than is shown to a dog on the
vivisector’s table.

Little wonder, therefore, that those who lay under such a ban, those
who were continually walking in the cold shadow of this dreadful doom,
clung to each other, loved each other, and comforted each other to the
last, passing often enough hand-in-hand through the fiery gates to that
country in which there is no more pain. To be a member of the New
Religion in the Netherlands under the awful rule of Charles the Emperor
and Philip the King was to be one of a vast family. It was not “sir” or
“mistress” or “madame,” it was “my father” and “my mother,” or “my
sister” and “my brother;” yes, and between people who were of very
different status and almost strangers in the flesh; strangers in the
flesh but brethren in spirit.

It will be understood that in these circumstances Dirk and Brant,
already liking each other, and being already connected by blood, were
not slow in coming to a complete understanding and fellowship.

There they sat in the window-place telling each other of their
families, their hopes and fears, and even of their lady-loves. In this,
as in every other respect, Hendrik Brant’s story was one of simple
prosperity. He was betrothed to a lady of The Hague, the only daughter
of a wealthy wine-merchant, who, according to his account, seemed to be
as beautiful as she was good and rich, and they were to be married in
the spring. But when Dirk told him of his affair, he shook his wise
young head.

“You say that both she and her aunt are Catholics?” he asked.

“Yes, cousin, this is the trouble. I think that she is fond of me, or,
at any rate, she was until a few days since,” he added ruefully, “but
how can I, being a ‘heretic,’ ask her to plight her troth to me unless
I tell her? And that, you know, is against the rule; indeed, I scarcely
dare to do so.”

“Had you not best consult with some godly elder who by prayer and words
may move your lady’s heart till the light shines on her?” asked Brant.

“Cousin, it has been done, but always there is the other in the way,
that red-nosed Aunt Clara, who is a mad idolator; also there is the
serving-woman, Greta, whom I take for little better than a spy.
Therefore, between the two of them I see little chance that Lysbeth
will ever hear the truth this side of marriage. And yet how dare I
marry her? Is it right that I should marry her and therefore, perhaps,
bring her too to some dreadful fate such as may wait for you or me?
Moreover, now since this man Montalvo has crossed my path, all things
seem to have gone wrong between me and Lysbeth; indeed but yesterday
her door was shut on me.”

“Women have their fancies,” answered Brant, slowly; “perhaps he has
taken hers; she would not be the first who walked that plank. Or,
perhaps, she is vexed with you for not speaking out ere this; for, man,
not knowing what you are, how can she read your mind?”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Dirk, “but I know not what to do,” and in his
perplexity he struck his forehead with his hand.

“Then, brother, in that case what hinders that we should ask Him Who
can tell you?” said Brant, calmly.

Dirk understood what he meant at once. “It is a wise thought, and a
good one, cousin. I have the Holy Book; first let us pray, and then we
can seek wisdom there.”

“You are rich, indeed,” answered Brant; “sometime you must tell me how
and where you came by it.”

“Here in Leyden, if one can afford to pay for them, such goods are not
hard to get,” said Dirk; “what _is_ hard is to keep them safely, for to
be found with a Bible in your pocket is to carry your own
death-warrant.”

Brant nodded. “Is it safe to show it here?” he asked.

“As safe as anywhere, cousin; the window is shuttered, the door is, or
will be, locked, but who can say that he is safe this side of the stake
in a land where the rats and mice carry news and the wind bears
witness? Come, I will show you where I keep it,” and going to the
mantelpiece he took down a candle-stick, a quaint brass, ornamented on
its massive oblong base with two copper snails, and lit the candle. “Do
you like the piece?” he asked; “it is my own design, which I cast and
filed out in my spare hours,” and he gazed at the holder with the
affection of an artist. Then without waiting for an answer, he led the
way to the door of his sitting-room and paused.

“What is it?” asked Brant.

“I thought I heard a sound, that is all, but doubtless the old vrouw
moves upon the stairs. Turn the key, cousin, so, now come on.”

They entered the sleeping chamber, and having glanced round and made
sure that it was empty, and the window shut, Dirk went to the head of
the bed, which was formed of oak-panels, the centre one carved with a
magnificent coat-of-arms, fellow to that in the fireplace of the
sitting-room. At this panel Dirk began to work, till presently it slid
aside, revealing a hollow, out of which he took a book bound in boards
covered with leather. Then, having closed the panel, the two young men
returned to the sitting-room, and placed the volume upon the oak table
beneath the chandelier.

“First let us pray,” said Brant.

It seems curious, does it not, that two young men as a _finale_ to a
dinner party, and a gambling match at which the stakes had not been
low; young men who like others had their weaknesses, for one of them,
at any rate, could drink too much wine at times, and both being human
doubtless had further sins to bear, should suggest kneeling side by
side to offer prayers to their Maker before they studied the
Scriptures? But then in those strange days prayer, now so common (and
so neglected) an exercise, was an actual luxury. To these poor hunted
men and women it was a joy to be able to kneel and offer thanks and
petitions to God, believing themselves to be safe from the sword of
those who worshipped otherwise. Thus it came about that, religion being
forbidden, was to them a very real and earnest thing, a thing to be
indulged in at every opportunity with solemn and grateful hearts. So
there, beneath the light of the guttering candles, they knelt side by
side while Brant, speaking for both of them, offered up a prayer—a
sight touching enough and in its way beautiful.

The words of his petition do not matter. He prayed for their Church; he
prayed for their country that it might be made strong and free; he even
prayed for the Emperor, the carnal, hare-lipped, guzzling, able
Hapsburg self-seeker. Then he prayed for themselves and all who were
dear to them, and lastly, that light might be vouchsafed to Dirk in his
present difficulty. No, not quite lastly, for he ended with a petition
that their enemies might be forgiven, yes, even those who tortured them
and burnt them at the stake, since they knew not what they did. It may
be wondered whether any human aspirations could have been more
thoroughly steeped in the true spirit of Christianity.

When at length he had finished they rose from their knees.

“Shall I open the Book at a hazard,” asked Dirk, “and read what my eye
falls on?”

“No,” answered Brant, “for it savours of superstition; thus did the
ancients with the writings of the poet Virgilius, and it is not fitting
that we who hold the light should follow the example of those blind
heathen. What work of the Book, brother, are you studying now?”

“The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, which I have never read
before,” he answered.

“Then begin where you left off, brother, and read your chapter. Perhaps
we may find instruction in it; if not, no answer is vouchsafed to us
to-night.”

So from the black-letter volume before him Dirk began to read the
seventh chapter, in which, as it chances, the great Apostle deals with
the marriage state. On he read, in a quiet even voice, till he came to
the twelfth and four following verses, of which the last three run:
“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the
unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children
unclean; but now they are holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him
depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases; but
God has called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou
shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt
save thy wife?” Dirk’s voice trembled, and he paused.

“Continue to the end of the chapter,” said Brant, so the reader went
on.

There is a sound. They do not hear it, but the door of the bedchamber
behind them opens ever so little. They do not see it, but between door
and lintel something white thrusts itself, a woman’s white face crowned
with black hair, and set in it two evil, staring eyes. Surely, when
first he raised his head in Eden, Satan might have worn such a
countenance as this. It cranes itself forward till the long, thin neck
seems to stretch; then suddenly a stir or a movement alarms it, and
back the face draws like the crest of a startled snake. Back it draws,
and the door closes again.

The chapter is read, the prayer is prayed, and strange may seem the
answer to that prayer, an answer to shake out faith from the hearts of
men; men who are impatient, who do not know that as the light takes
long in travelling from a distant star, so the answer from the Throne
to the supplication of trust may be long in coming. It may not come
to-day or to-morrow. It may not come in this generation or this
century; the prayer of to-day may receive its crown when the children’s
children of the lips that uttered it have in their turn vanished in the
dust. And yet that Divine reply may in no wise be delayed; even as our
liberty of this hour may be the fruit of those who died when Dirk van
Goorl and Hendrik Brant walked upon the earth; even as the vengeance
that but now is falling on the Spaniard may be the reward of the deeds
of shame that he worked upon them and upon their kin long generations
gone. For the Throne is still the Throne, and the star is still the
star; from the one flows justice and from the other light, and to them
time and space are naught.

Dirk finished the chapter and closed the Book.

“It seems that you have your answer, Brother,” said Brant quietly.

“Yes,” replied Dirk, “it is written large enough:—‘The unbelieving wife
is sanctified by the husband . . . how knowest thou, O man, whether
thou shalt save thy wife?’ Had the Apostle foreseen my case he could
not have set the matter forth more clearly.”

“He, or the Spirit in him, knew all cases, and wrote for every man that
ever shall be born,” answered Brant. “This is a lesson to us. Had you
looked sooner you would have learned sooner, and mayhap much trouble
might have been spared. As it is, without doubt you must make haste and
speak to her at once, leaving the rest with God.”

“Yes,” said Dirk, “as soon as may be, but there is one thing more;
ought I tell her all the truth?”

“I should not be careful to hide it, friend, and now, good night. No,
do not come to the door with me. Who can tell, there may be watchers
without, and it is not wise that we should be seen together so late.”

When his cousin and new-found friend had gone Dirk sat for a while,
till the guttering tallow lights overhead burned to the sockets indeed.
Then, taking the candle from the snail-adorned holder, he lit it, and,
having extinguished those in the chandeliers, went into his bedroom and
undressed himself. The Bible he returned to its hiding-place and closed
the panel, after which he blew out the light and climbed into the tall
bed.

As a rule Dirk was a most excellent sleeper; when he laid his head on
the pillow his eyes closed nor did they open again until the appointed
and accustomed hour. But this night he could not sleep. Whether it was
the dinner or the wine, or the gambling, or the prayer and the
searching of the Scriptures with his cousin Brant, the result remained
the same; he was very wakeful, which annoyed him the more as a man of
his race and phlegm found it hard to attribute this unrest to any of
these trivial causes. Still, as vexation would not make him sleep, he
lay awake watching the moonlight flood the chamber in broad bars and
thinking.

Somehow as Dirk thought thus he grew afraid; it seemed to him as though
he shared that place with another presence, an evil and malignant
presence. Never in his life before had he troubled over or been
troubled by tales of spirits, yet now he remembered Montalvo’s remark
about a ghost, and of a surety he felt as though one were with him
there. In this strange and new alarm he sought for comfort and could
think of none save that which an old and simple pastor had recommended
to him in all hours of doubt and danger, namely, if it could be had, to
clasp a Bible to his heart and pray.

Well, both things were easy. Raising himself in bed, in a moment he had
taken the book from its hiding-place and closed the panel. Then
pressing it against his breast between himself and the mattress he lay
down again, and it would seem that the charm worked, for presently he
was asleep.

Yet Dirk dreamed a very evil dream. He dreamed that a tall black figure
leaned over him, and that a long white hand was stretched out to his
bed-head where it wandered to and fro, till at last he heard the panel
slide home with a rattling noise.

Then it seemed to him that he woke, and that his eyes met two eyes bent
down over him, eyes which searched him as though they would read the
very secrets of his heart. He did not stir, he could not, but lo! in
this dream of his the figure straightened itself and glided away,
appearing and disappearing as it crossed the bars of moonlight until it
vanished by the door.

A while later and Dirk woke up in truth, to find that although the
night was cold enough the sweat ran in big drops from his brow and
body. But now strangely enough his fear was gone, and, knowing that he
had but dreamed a dream, he turned over, touched the Bible on his
breast, and fell sleeping like a child, to be awakened only by the
light of the rising winter sun pouring on his face.

Then Dirk remembered that dream of the bygone night, and his heart grew
heavy, for it seemed to him that this vision of a dark woman searching
his face with those dreadful eyes was a portent of evil not far away.




CHAPTER VI
THE BETROTHAL OF LYSBETH


On the following morning when Montalvo entered his private room after
breakfast, he found a lady awaiting him, in whom, notwithstanding the
long cloak and veil she wore, he had little difficulty in recognising
Black Meg. In fact Black Meg had been waiting some while, and being a
person of industrious habits she had not neglected to use her time to
the best advantage.

The reader may remember that when Meg visited the gallant Captain
Montalvo upon a previous occasion, she had taken the liberty of helping
herself to certain papers which she found lying just inside an unlocked
desk. These papers on examination, as she feared might be the case, for
the most part proved to be quite unimportant—unpaid accounts, military
reports, a billet or two from ladies, and so forth. But in thinking the
matter over Black Meg remembered that this desk had another part to it,
which seemed to be locked, and, therefore, just in case they should
prove useful, she took with her a few skeleton keys and one or two
little instruments of steel and attended the pleasure of her noble
patron at an hour when she believed that he would be at breakfast in
another room. Things went well; he was at breakfast and she was left
alone in the chamber with the desk. The rest may be guessed. Replacing
the worthless bundle in the unlocked part, by the aid of her keys and
instruments she opened the inner half. There sure enough were letters
hidden, and in a little drawer two miniatures framed in gold, one of a
lady, young and pretty with dark eyes, and the other of two children, a
boy and a girl of five or six years of age. Also there was a curling
lock of hair labelled in Montalvo’s writing—“Juanita’s hair, which she
gave me as a keepsake.”

Here was treasure indeed whereof Black Meg did not fail to possess
herself. Thrusting the letters and other articles into the bosom of her
dress to be examined at leisure, she was clever enough, before closing
and re-locking the desk, to replace them with a dummy bundle, hastily
made up from some papers that lay about.

When everything had been satisfactorily arranged she went outside and
chattered for a while with the soldier on guard, only re-entering the
room by one door as Montalvo appeared in it through the other.

“Well, my friend,” he said, “have you the evidence?”

“I have some evidence, Excellency,” she answered. “I was present at the
dinner that you ate last night, although none of it came my way, and—I
was present afterwards.”

“Indeed. I thought I saw you slip in, and allow me to congratulate you
on that; it was very well thought out and done, just as folk were
moving up and down the stairs. Also, when I went home, I believe that I
recognised a gentleman in the street whom I have been given to
understand you honour with your friendship, a short, stout person with
a bald head; let me see, he was called the Butcher at The Hague, was he
not? No, do not pout, I have no wish to pry into the secrets of ladies,
but still in my position here it is my business to know a thing or two.
Well, what did you see?”

“Excellency, I saw the young man I was sent to watch and Hendrik Brant,
the son of the rich goldsmith at The Hague, praying side by side upon
their knees.”

“That is bad, very bad,” said Montalvo shaking his head, “but——”

“I saw,” she went on in her hoarse voice, “the pair of them read the
Bible.”

“How shocking!” replied Montalvo with a simulated shudder. “Think of
it, my orthodox friend, if you are to be believed, these two persons,
hitherto supposed to be respectable, have been discovered in the crime
of consulting that work upon which our Faith is founded. Well, those
who could read anything so dull must, indeed, as the edicts tell us, be
monsters unworthy to live. But, if you please, your proofs. Of course
you have this book?”

Then Black Meg poured forth all her tale—how she had watched and seen
something, how she had listened and heard little, how she had gone to
the secret panel, bending over the sleeping man, and found—nothing.

“You are a poor sort of spy, mother,” commented the captain when she
had done, “and, upon my soul, I do not believe that even a Papal
inquisitor could hang that young fellow on your evidence. You must go
back and get some more.”

“No,” answered Black Meg with decision, “if you want to force your way
into conventicles you had best do it yourself. As I wish to go on
living here is no job for me. I have proved to you that this young man
is a heretic, so now give me my reward.”

“Your reward? Ah! your reward. No, I think not at present, for a reward
presupposes services—and I see none.”

Black Meg began to storm.

“Be silent,” said Montalvo, dropping his bantering tone. “Look, I will
be frank with you. I do not want to burn anybody. I am sick of all this
nonsense about religion, and for aught I care every Netherlander in
Leyden may read the Bible until he grows tired. I seek to marry that
Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, and to do this I desire to prove that the
man whom she loves, Dirk van Goorl, is a heretic. What you have told me
may or may not be sufficient for my purpose. If it is sufficient you
shall be paid liberally after my marriage; if not—well, you have had
enough. As for your evidence, for my part I may say that I do not
believe a word of it, for were it true you would have brought the
Bible.”

As he spoke he rang a bell which stood upon a table, and before Meg
could answer the soldier appeared.

“Show this good woman out,” he said, adding, in a loud voice, “Mother,
I will do my best for you and forward your petition to the proper
quarter. Meanwhile, take this trifle in charity,” and he pressed a
florin into her hand. “Now, guard, the prisoners, the prisoners. I have
no time to waste—and listen—let me be troubled with no more beggars, or
you will hear of it.”

That afternoon Dirk, filled with a solemn purpose, and dressed in his
best suit, called at the house in the Bree Straat, where the door was
again opened by Greta, who looked at him expectantly.

“Is your mistress in?” he stammered. “I have come to see your
mistress.”

“Alas! Mynheer,” answered the young woman, “you are just too late. My
mistress and her aunt, the Vrouw Clara, have gone away to stay for a
week or ten days as the Vrouw Clara’s health required a change.”

“Indeed,” said Dirk aghast, “and where have they gone?”

“Oh! Mynheer, I do not know that, they did not tell me,” and no other
answer could he extract from her.

So Dirk went away discomfited and pondering. An hour later the Captain
Montalvo called, and strange to say proved more fortunate. By hook or
by crook he obtained the address of the ladies, who were visiting, it
appeared, at a seaside village within the limits of a ride. By a
curious coincidence that very afternoon Montalvo, also seeking rest and
change of air, appeared at the inn of this village, giving it out that
he proposed to lodge there for a while.

As he walked upon the beach next day, whom should he chance to meet but
the Vrouw Clara van Ziel, and never did the worthy Clara spend a more
pleasant morning. So at least she declared to Lysbeth when she brought
her cavalier back to dinner.

The reader may guess the rest. Montalvo paid his court, and in due
course Montalvo was refused. He bore the blow with a tender
resignation.

“Confess, dear lady,” he said, “that there is some other man more
fortunate.”

Lysbeth did not confess, but, on the other hand, neither did she deny.

“If he makes you happy I shall be more than satisfied,” the Count
murmured, “but, lady, loving you as I do, I do not wish to see you
married to a heretic.”

“What do you mean, Señor?” asked Lysbeth, bridling.

“Alas!” he answered, “I mean that, as I fear, the worthy Heer Dirk van
Goorl, a friend of mine for whom I have every respect, although he has
outstripped me in your regard, has fallen into that evil net.”

“Such accusations should not be made,” said Lysbeth sternly, “unless
they can be proved. Even then——” and she stopped.

“I will inquire further,” replied the swain. “For myself I accept the
position, that is until you learn to love me, if such should be my
fortune. Meanwhile I beg of you at least to look upon me as a friend, a
true friend who would lay down his life to serve you.”

Then, with many a sigh, Montalvo departed home to Leyden upon his
beautiful black horse, but not before he had enjoyed a few minutes’
earnest conversation with the worthy Tante Clara.

“Now, if only this old lady were concerned,” he reflected as he rode
away, “the matter might be easy enough, and the Saints know it would be
one to me, but unhappily that obstinate pig of a Hollander girl has all
the money in her own right. In what labours do not the necessities of
rank and station involve a man who by disposition requires only ease
and quiet! Well, my young friend Lysbeth, if I do not make you pay for
these exertions before you are two months older, my name is not Juan de
Montalvo.”

Three days later the ladies returned to Leyden. Within an hour of their
arrival the Count called, and was admitted.

“Stay with me,” said Lysbeth to her Aunt Clara as the visitor was
announced, and for a while she stayed. Then, making an excuse, she
vanished from the room, and Lysbeth was left face to face with her
tormentor.

“Why do you come here?” she asked; “I have given you my answer.”

“I come for your own sake,” he replied, “to give you my reasons for
conduct which you may think strange. You remember a certain
conversation?”

“Perfectly,” broke in Lysbeth.

“A slight mistake, I think, Jufvrouw, I mean a conversation about an
excellent friend of yours, whose spiritual affairs seem to interest
you.”

“What of it, Señor?”

“Only this; I have made inquiries and——”

Lysbeth looked up unable to conceal her anxiety.

“Oh! Jufvrouw, let me beg of you to learn to control your expression;
the open face of childhood is so dangerous in these days.”

“He is my cousin.”

“I know; were he anything more, I should be so grieved, but we can most
of us spare a cousin or two.”

“If you would cease amusing yourself, Señor——”

“And come to the point? Of course I will. Well, the result of my
inquiries has been to find out that this worthy person _is_ a heretic
of the most pernicious sort. I said inquiries, but there was no need
for me to make any. He has been——”

“Not denounced,” broke in Lysbeth.

“Oh! my dear lady, again that tell-tale emotion from which all sorts of
things might be concluded. Yes—denounced—but fortunately to myself as a
person appointed under the Edict. It will, I fear, be my duty to have
him arrested this evening—you wish to sit down, allow me to hand you a
chair—but I shall not deal with the case myself. Indeed, I propose to
pass him over to the worthy Ruard Tapper, the Papal Inquisitor, you
know—every one has heard of the unpleasant Tapper—who is to visit
Leyden next week, and who, no doubt, will make short work of him.”

“What has he done?” asked Lysbeth in a low voice, and bending down her
head to hide the working of her features.

“Done? My dear lady, it is almost too dreadful to tell you. This
misguided and unfortunate young man, with another person whom the
witnesses have not been able to identify, was seen at midnight reading
the Bible.”

“The Bible! Why should that be wrong?”

“Hush! Are you also a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy
springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very
strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when
read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by a
consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In
the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in
the Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the
moon. The difference between heresy and orthodoxy is, in short, the
difference between what can actually be found in the letter of this
remarkable work, and what is really there—according to their
holinesses.”

“Almost thou persuadest me——” began Lysbeth bitterly.

“Hush! lady—to be, what you are, an angel.”

There came a pause.

“What will happen to him?” asked Lysbeth.

“After—after the usual painful preliminaries to discover accomplices, I
presume the stake, but possibly, as he has the freedom of Leyden, he
might get off with hanging.”

“Is there no escape?”

Montalvo walked to the window, and looking out of it remarked that he
thought it was going to snow. Then suddenly he wheeled round, and
staring hard at Lysbeth asked,

“Are you really interested in this heretic, and do you desire to save
him?”

Lysbeth heard and knew at once that the buttons were off the foils. The
bantering, whimsical tone was gone. Now her tormentor’s voice was stern
and cold, the voice of a man who was playing for great stakes and meant
to win them.

She also gave up fencing.

“I am and I do,” she answered.

“Then it can be done—at a price.”

“What price?”

“Yourself in marriage within three weeks.”

Lysbeth quivered slightly, then sat still.

“Would not my fortune do instead?” she asked.

“Oh! what a poor substitute you offer me,” Montalvo said, with a return
to his hateful banter. Then he added, “That offer might be considered
were it not for the abominable laws which you have here. In practice it
would be almost impossible for you to hand over any large sum, much of
which is represented by real estate, to a man who is not your husband.
Therefore I am afraid I must stipulate that you and your possessions
shall not be separated.”

Again Lysbeth sat silent. Montalvo, watching her with genuine interest,
saw signs of rebellion, perchance of despair. He saw the woman’s mental
and physical loathing of himself conquering her fears for Dirk. Unless
he was much mistaken she was about to defy him, which, as a matter of
fact, would have proved exceedingly awkward, as his pecuniary resources
were exhausted. Also on the very insufficient evidence which he
possessed he would not have dared to touch Dirk, and thus to make
himself a thousand powerful enemies.

“It is strange,” he said, “that the irony of circumstances should
reduce me to pleading for a rival. But, Lysbeth van Hout, before you
answer I beg you to think. Upon the next movements of your lips it
depends whether that body you love shall be stretched upon the rack,
whether those eyes which you find pleasant shall grow blind with agony
in the darkness of a dungeon, and whether that flesh which you think
desirable shall scorch and wither in the furnace. Or, on the other
hand, whether none of these things shall happen, whether this young man
shall go free, to be for a month or two a little piqued—a little
bitter—about the inconstancy of women, and then to marry some opulent
and respected heretic. Surely you could scarcely hesitate. Oh! where is
the self-sacrificing spirit of the sex of which we hear so much?
Choose.”

Still there was no answer. Montalvo, playing his trump card, drew from
his vest an official-looking document, sealed and signed.

“This,” he said, “is the information to be given to the incorruptible
Ruard Trapper. Look, here written on it is your cousin’s name. My
servant waits for me in your kitchen. If you hesitate any longer, I
call him and in your presence charge him to hand that paper to the
messenger who starts this afternoon for Brussels. Once given it cannot
be recalled and the pious Dirk’s doom is sealed.”

Lysbeth’s spirit began to break. “How can I?” she asked. “It is true
that we are not affianced; perhaps for this very reason which I now
learn. But he cares for me and knows that I care for him. Must I then,
in addition to the loss of him, be remembered all his life as little
better than a light-of-love caught by the tricks and glitter of such a
man as you? I tell you that first I will kill myself.”

Again Montalvo went to the window, for this hint of suicide was most
disconcerting. No one can marry a dead woman, and Lysbeth was scarcely
likely to leave a will in his favour. It seemed that what troubled her
particularly was the fear lest the young man should think her conduct
light. Well, why should she not give him a reason which he would be the
first to acknowledge as excellent for breaking with him? Could she, a
Catholic, be expected to wed a heretic, and could he not be made to
tell her that he was a heretic?

Behold an answer to his question! The Saints themselves, desiring that
this pearl of price should continue to rest in the bosom of the true
Church, had interfered in his behalf, for there in the street below was
Dirk van Goorl approaching Lysbeth’s door. Yes, there he was dressed in
his best burgher’s suit, his brow knit with thought, his step
hesitating; a very picture of the timid, doubtful lover.

“Lysbeth van Hout,” said the Count, turning to her, “as it chances the
Heer Dirk van Goorl is at your door. You will admit him, and this
matter can be settled one way or the other. I wish to point out to you
how needless it is that the young man should be left believing that you
have treated him ill. All which is necessary is that you should ask
whether or no he is of your faith. If I know him, he will not lie to
you. Then it remains only for you to say—for doubtless the man comes
here to seek your hand—that however much it may grieve you to give such
an answer, you can take no heretic to husband. Do you understand?”

Lysbeth bowed her head.

“Then listen. You will admit your suitor; you will allow him to make
his offer to you now—if he is so inclined; you will, before giving any
answer, ask him of his faith. If he replies that he is a heretic, you
will dismiss him as kindly as you wish. If he replies that he is a true
servant of the Church, you will say that you have heard a different
tale and must have time to make inquiries. Remember also that if by one
jot you do otherwise than I have bid you, when Dirk van Goorl leaves
the room you see him for the last time, unless it pleases you—to attend
his execution. Whereas if you obey and dismiss him finally, as the door
shuts behind him I put this Information in the fire and satisfy you
that the evidence upon which it is based is for ever deprived of weight
and done with.”

Lysbeth looked a question.

“I see you are wondering how I should know what you do or do not do. It
is simple. I shall be the harmless but observant witness of your
interview. Over this doorway hangs a tapestry; you will grant me the
privilege—not a great one for a future husband—of stepping behind it.”

“Never, never,” said Lysbeth, “I cannot be put to such a shame. I defy
you.”

As she spoke came the sound of knocking at the street door. Glancing up
at Montalvo, for the second time she saw that look which he had worn at
the crisis of the sledge race. All its urbanity, its careless
_bonhomie_, had vanished. Instead of these appeared a reflection of the
last and innermost nature of the man, the rock foundation, as it were,
upon which was built the false and decorated superstructure that he
showed to the world. There were the glaring eyes, there the grinning
teeth of the Spanish wolf; a ravening brute ready to rend and tear, if
so he might satisfy himself with the meat his soul desired.

“Don’t play tricks with me,” he muttered, “and don’t argue, for there
is no time. Do as I bid you, girl, or on your head will be this
psalm-singing fellow’s blood. And, look you, don’t try setting him on
me, for I have my sword and he is unarmed. If need be a heretic may be
killed at sight, you know, that is by one clothed with authority. When
the servant announces him go to the door and order that he is to be
admitted,” and picking up his plumed hat, which might have betrayed
him, Montalvo stepped behind the arras.

For a moment Lysbeth stood thinking. Alas! she could see no possible
escape, she was in the toils, the rope was about her throat. Either she
must obey or, so she thought, she must give the man she loved to a
dreadful death. For his sake she would do it, for his sake and might
God forgive her! Might God avenge her and him!

Another instant and there came a knock upon the door. She opened it.

“The Heer van Goorl stands below,” said the voice of Greta, “wishing to
see you, madam.”

“Admit him,” answered Lysbeth, and going to a chair almost in the
centre of the room, she seated herself.

Presently Dirk’s step sounded on the stair, that known, beloved step
for which so often she had listened eagerly. Again the door opened and
Greta announced the Heer van Goorl. That she could not see the Captain
Montalvo evidently surprised the woman, for her eyes roamed round the
room wonderingly, but she was too well trained, or too well bribed, to
show her astonishment. Gentlemen of this kidney, as Greta had from time
to time remarked, have a faculty for vanishing upon occasion.

So Dirk walked into the fateful chamber as some innocent and
unsuspecting creature walks into a bitter snare, little knowing that
the lady whom he loved and whom he came to win was set as a bait to
ruin him.

“Be seated, cousin,” said Lysbeth, in a voice so forced and strained
that it caused him to look up. But he saw nothing, for her head was
turned away from him, and for the rest his mind was too preoccupied to
be observant. By nature simple and open, it would have taken much to
wake Dirk into suspicion in the home and presence of his love and
cousin, Lysbeth.

“Good day to you, Lysbeth,” he said awkwardly; “why, how cold your hand
is! I have been trying to find you for some time, but you have always
been out or away, leaving no address.”

“I have been to the sea with my Aunt Clara,” she answered.

Then for a while—five minutes or more—there followed a strained and
stilted conversation.

“Will the booby never come to the point?” reflected Montalvo, surveying
him through a join in the tapestry. “By the Saints, what a fool he
looks!”

“Lysbeth,” said Dirk at last, “I want to speak to you.”

“Speak on, cousin,” she answered.

“Lysbeth, I—I—have loved you for a long while, and I—have come to ask
you to marry me. I have put it off for a year or more for reasons which
I hope to tell you some day, but I can keep silent no longer,
especially now when I see that a much finer gentleman is trying to win
you—I mean the Spanish Count, Montalvo,” he added with a jerk.

She said nothing in reply. So Dirk went on pouring out all his honest
passion in words that momentarily gathered weight and strength, till at
length they were eloquent enough. He told her how since first they met
he had loved her and only her, and how his one desire in life was to
make her happy and be happy with her. Pausing at length he began to
speak of his prospects—then she stopped him.

“Your pardon, Dirk,” she said, “but I have a question to ask of you,”
and her voice died away in a kind of sob. “I have heard rumours about
you,” she went on presently, “which must be cleared up. I have heard,
Dirk, that by faith you are what is called a heretic. Is it true?”

He hesitated before answering, feeling that much depended on that
answer. But it was only for an instant, since Dirk was far too honest a
man to lie.

“Lysbeth,” he said, “I will tell to you what I would not tell to any
other living creature, not being one of my own brotherhood, for whether
you accept me or reject me, I know well that I am as safe in speaking
to you as when upon my knees I speak to the God I serve. I _am_ what
you call a heretic. I am a member of that true faith to which I hope to
draw you, but which if you do not wish it I should never press upon
you. It is chiefly because I am what I am that for so long I have hung
back from speaking to you, since I did not know whether it would be
right—things being thus—to ask you to mix your lot with mine, or
whether I ought to marry you, if you would marry me, keeping this
secret from you. Only the other night I sought counsel of—well, never
mind of whom—and we prayed together, and together searched the Word of
God. And there, Lysbeth, by some wonderful mercy, I found my prayer
answered and my doubts solved, for the great St. Paul had foreseen this
case, as in that Book all cases are foreseen, and I read how the
unbelieving wife may be sanctified by the husband, and the unbelieving
husband by the wife. Then everything grew clear to me, and I determined
to speak. And now, dear, I have spoken, and it is for you to answer.”

“Dirk, dear Dirk,” she replied almost with a cry, “alas! for the answer
which I must give you. Renounce the error of your ways, make
confession, and be reconciled to the Church and—I will marry you.
Otherwise I cannot, no, and although I love you, you and no other
man”—here she put an energy into her voice that was almost
dreadful—“with all my heart and soul and body; I cannot, I cannot, I
cannot!”

Dirk heard, and his ruddy face turned ashen grey.

“Cousin,” he replied, “you seek of me the one thing which I must not
give. Even for your sake I may not renounce my vows and my God as I
behold Him. Though it break my heart to bid you farewell and live
without you, here I pay you back in your own words—I cannot, I cannot,
I cannot!”

Lysbeth looked at him, and lo! his short, massive form and his
square-cut, honest countenance in that ardour of renunciation had
suffered a change to things almost divine. At that moment—to her sight
at least—this homely Hollander wore the aspect of an angel. She ground
her teeth and pressed her hands upon her heart. “For his sake—to save
him,” she muttered to herself—then she spoke.

“I respect you for it, I love you for it more than ever; but, Dirk, it
is over between us. One day, here or hereafter, you will understand and
you will forgive.”

“So be it,” said Dirk hastily, stretching out his hand to find his hat,
for he was too blind to see. “It is a strange answer to my prayer, a
very strange answer; but doubtless you are right to follow your lights
as I am sure that I am right to follow mine. We must carry our cross,
dear Lysbeth, each of us; you see that we must carry our cross. Only I
beg of you—I don’t speak as a jealous man, because the thing has gone
further than jealousy—I speak as a friend, and come what may while I
live you will always find me that—I beg of you, beware of the Spaniard,
Montalvo. I know that he followed you to the coast; I have heard too he
boasts that he will marry you. The man is wicked, although he took me
in at first. I feel it—his presence seems to poison the air, yes, this
very air I breathe. But oh! and I should like him to hear me say it,
because I am sure that he is at the bottom of all this, his hour will
come. For whatever he does he will be paid back; he will be paid back
here and hereafter. And now, good-bye. God bless you and protect you,
dear Lysbeth. If you think it wrong you are quite right not to marry
me, and I know that you will keep my secret. Good-bye, again,” and
lifting her hand Dirk kissed it. Then he stumbled from the room.

As for Lysbeth she cast herself at full length, and in the bitterness
of her heart beat her brow upon the boards.

When the front door had shut behind Dirk, but not before, Montalvo
emerged from his hiding place and stood over the prostrate Lysbeth. He
tried to adopt his airy and sarcastic manner, but he was shaken by the
scene which he had overheard, shaken and somewhat frightened also, for
he felt that he had called into being passions of which the force and
fruits could not be calculated.

“Bravo! my little actress,” he began, then gave it up and added in his
natural voice, “you had best rise and see me burn this paper.”

Lysbeth struggled to her knees and watched him thrust the document
between two glowing peats.

“I have fulfilled my promise,” he said, “and that evidence is done
with, but in case you should think of playing any tricks and not
fulfilling yours, please remember that I have fresh evidence infinitely
more valuable and convincing, to gain which, indeed, I condescended to
a stratagem not quite in keeping with my traditions. With my own ears I
heard this worthy gentleman, who is pleased to think so poorly of me,
admit that he is a heretic. That is enough to burn him any day, and I
swear that if within three weeks we are not man and wife, burn he
shall.”

While he was speaking Lysbeth had risen slowly to her feet. Now she
confronted him, no longer the Lysbeth whom he had known, but a new
being filled like a cup with fury that was the more awful because it
was so quiet.

“Juan de Montalvo,” she said in a low voice, “your wickedness has won
and for Dirk’s sake my person and my goods must pay its price. So be it
since so it must be, but listen. I make no prophecies about you; I do
not say that this or that shall happen to you, but I call down upon you
the curse of God and the execration of men.”

Then she threw up her hands and began to pray. “God, Whom it has
pleased that I should be given to a fate far worse than death; O God,
blast the mind and the soul of this monster. Let him henceforth never
know a peaceful hour; let misfortune come upon him through me and mine;
let fears haunt his sleep. Let him live in heavy labour and die in
blood and misery, and through me; and if I bear children to him, let
the evil be upon them also.”

She ceased. Montalvo looked at her and tried to speak. Again he looked
and again he tried to speak, but no words would come.

Then the fear of Lysbeth van Hout fell upon him, that fear which was to
haunt him all his life. He turned and crept from the room, and his face
was like the face of an old man, nor, notwithstanding the height of his
immediate success, could his heart have been more heavy if Lysbeth had
been an angel sent straight from Heaven to proclaim to him the
unalterable doom of God.




CHAPTER VII
HENDRIK BRANT HAS A VISITOR


Nine months had gone by, and for more then eight of them Lysbeth had
been known as the Countess Juan de Montalvo. Indeed of this there could
be no doubt, since she was married with some ceremony by the Bishop in
the Groote Kerk before the eyes of all men. Folk had wondered much at
these hurried nuptials, though some of the more ill-natured shrugged
their shoulders and said that when a young woman had compromised
herself by long and lonely drives with a Spanish cavalier, and was in
consequence dropped by her own admirer, why the best thing she could do
was to marry as soon as possible.

So the pair, who looked handsome enough before the altar, were wed, and
went to taste of such nuptial bliss as was reserved for them in
Lysbeth’s comfortable house in the Bree Straat. Here they lived almost
alone, for Lysbeth’s countrymen and women showed their disapproval of
her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own,
Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house.
Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl
Greta had also disappeared. Indeed, Lysbeth, finding out the false part
which they had played towards her, dismissed them both before her
marriage.

It will be guessed that after the events that led to their union
Lysbeth took little pleasure in her husband’s society. She was not one
of those women who can acquiesce in marriage by fraud or capture, and
even learn to love the hand which snared them. So it came about that to
Montalvo she spoke very seldom; indeed after the first week of marriage
she only saw him on rare occasions. Very soon he found out that his
presence was hateful to her, and turned her detestation to account with
his usual cleverness. In other words, Lysbeth bought freedom by parting
with her property—in fact, a regular tariff was established, so many
guilders for a week’s liberty, so many for a month’s.

This was an arrangement that suited Montalvo well enough, for in his
heart he was terrified of this woman, whose beautiful face had frozen
into a perpetual mask of watchful hatred. He could not forget that
frightful curse which had taken deep root in his superstitious mind,
and already seemed to flourish there, for it was true that since she
spoke it he had never known a quiet hour. How could he when he was
haunted night and day by the fear lest his wife should murder him?

Surely, if ever Death looked out of a woman’s eyes it looked out of
hers, and it seemed to him that such a deed might trouble her
conscience little; that she might consider it in the light of an
execution, and not as a murder. Bah! he could not bear to think of it.
What would it be to drink his wine one day and then feel a hand of fire
gripping at his vitals because poison had been set within the cup; or,
worse still, if anything could be worse, to wake at night and find a
stiletto point grating against his backbone? Little wonder that
Montalvo slept alone and was always careful to lock his door.

He need not have taken such precautions; whatever her eyes might say,
Lysbeth had no intention of killing this man. In that prayer of hers
she had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power,
and there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although
vengeance might tarry it would fall at last. As for her money, he could
have it. From the beginning her instinct told her that her husband’s
object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which she soon
had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was that when
the wealth was gone he would go too. An otter, says the Dutch proverb,
does not nest in a dry dyke.

But oh! what months those were, what dreadful months! From time to time
she saw her husband—when he wanted cash—and every night she heard him
returning home, often with unsteady steps. Twice or thrice a week also
she was commanded to prepare a luxurious meal for himself and some six
or eight companions, to be followed by a gambling party at which the
stakes ruled high. Then in the morning, before he was up, strange
people would arrive, Jews some of them, and wait till they could see
him, or catch him as he slipped from the house by a back way. These
men, Lysbeth discovered, were duns seeking payment of old debts. Under
such constant calls her fortune, which if substantial was not great,
melted rapidly. Soon the ready money was gone, then the shares in
certain ships were sold, then the land and the house itself were
mortgaged.

So the time went on.

Almost immediately after his refusal by Lysbeth, Dirk van Goorl had
left Leyden, and returned to Alkmaar, where his father lived. His
cousin and friend, however, Hendrik Brant, remained there studying the
jeweller’s art under the great master of filigree work, who was known
as Petrus. One morning, as Hendrik was sitting at breakfast in his
lodging, it was announced that a woman who would not give her name,
wished to see him. Moved more by curiosity than by any other reason, he
ordered her to be admitted. When she entered he was sorry, for in the
gaunt person and dark-eyed face he recognised one against whom he had
been warned by the elders of his church as a spy, a creature who was
employed by the papal inquisitors to get up cases against heretics, and
who was known as Black Meg.

“What is your business with me?” Brant asked sternly.

“Nothing to your hurt, worthy Heer, believe me, nothing to your hurt.
Oh! yes, I know that tales are told against me, who only earn an honest
living in an honest way, to keep my poor husband, who is an imbecile.
Once alas! he followed that mad Anabaptist fool, John of Leyden, the
fellow who set up as a king, and said that men might have as many wives
as they wished. That was what sent my husband silly, but, thanks be to
the Saints, he has repented of his errors and is reconciled to the
Church and Christian marriage, and now, I, who have a forgiving nature,
am obliged to support him.”

“Your business?” said Brant.

“Mynheer,” she answered, dropping her husky voice, “you are a friend of
the Countess Montalvo, she who was Lysbeth van Hout?”

“No, I am acquainted with her, that is all.”

“At least you are a friend of the Heer Dirk van Goorl who has left this
town for Alkmaar; he who was her lover?”

“Yes, I am his cousin, but he is not the lover of any married woman.”

“No, no, of course not; love cannot look through a bridal veil, can it?
Still, you are his friend, and, therefore, perhaps, her friend, and—she
isn’t happy.”

“Indeed? I know nothing of her present life: she must reap the field
which she has sown. That door is shut.”

“Not altogether perhaps. I thought it might interest Dirk van Goorl to
learn that it is still ajar.”

“I don’t see why it should. Fish merchants are not interested in rotten
herrings; they write off the loss and send out the smack for a fresh
cargo.”

“The first fish we catch is ever the finest, Mynheer, and if we haven’t
quite caught it, oh! what a fine fish is that.”

“I have no time to waste in chopping riddles. What is your errand? Tell
it, or leave it untold, but be quick.”

Black Meg leant forward, and the hoarse voice sank to a cavernous
whisper.

“What will you give me,” she asked, “if I prove to you that the Captain
Montalvo is not married at all to Lysbeth van Hout?”

“It does not much matter what I would give you, for I saw the thing
done in the Groote Kerk yonder.”

“Things are not always done that seem to be done.”

“Look here, woman, I have had enough of this,” and Brant pointed to the
door.

Black Meg did not stir, only she produced a packet from the bosom of
her dress and laid it on the table.

“A man can’t have two wives living at once, can he?”

“No, I suppose not—that is, legally.”

“Well, if I show you that Montalvo has two wives, how much?”

Brant became interested. He hated Montalvo; he guessed, indeed he knew
something of the part which the man had played in this infamous affair,
and knew also that it would be a true kindness to Lysbeth to rid her of
him.

“If you _proved_ it,” he said, “let us say two hundred florins.”

“It is not enough, Mynheer.”

“It is all I have to offer, and, mind you, what I promise to pay.”

“Ah! yes, the other promises and doesn’t pay—the rogue, the rogue,” she
added, striking a bony fist upon the table. “Well, I agree, and I ask
no bond, for you merchant folk are not like cavaliers, your word is as
good as your paper. Now read these,” and she opened the packet and
pushed its contents towards him.

With the exception of two miniatures, which he placed upon one side,
they were letters written in Spanish and in a very delicate hand. Brant
knew Spanish well, and in twenty minutes he had read them all. They
proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de
Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as
her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale that
need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the
writer’s sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband
and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live,
for they, his wife and family, were sunk in great poverty.

“All this is sad enough,” said Brant with a gesture of disgust as he
glanced at the miniature of the lady and her children, “but it proves
nothing. How are we to know that she is the man’s wife?”

Black Meg put her hand into the bosom of her dress and produced another
letter dated not more than three months ago. It was, or purported to
be, written by the priest of the village where the lady lived, and was
addressed to the Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo at Leyden. In
substance this epistle was an earnest appeal to the noble count from
one who had a right to speak, as the man who had christened him, taught
him, and married him to his wife, either to return to her or to forward
her the means to join him. “A dreadful rumour,” the letter ended, “has
reached us here in Spain that you have taken to wife a Dutch lady at
Leyden named Van Hout, but this I do not believe, since never could you
have committed such a crime before God and man. Write, write at once,
my son, and disperse this black cloud of scandal which is gathering on
your honoured and ancient name.”

“How did you come by these, woman?” asked Brant.

“The last I had from a priest who brought it from Spain. I met him at
The Hague, and offered to deliver the letter, as he had no safe means
of sending it to Leyden. The others and the pictures I stole out of
Montalvo’s room.”

“Indeed, most honest merchant, and what might you have been doing in
his Excellency’s room?”

“I will tell you,” she answered, “for, as he never gave me my pay, my
tongue is loosed. He wished for evidence that the Heer Dirk van Goorl
was a heretic, and employed me to find it.”

Brant’s face hardened, and he became more watchful.

“Why did he wish such evidence?”

“To use it to prevent the marriage of Jufvrouw Lysbeth with the Heer
Dirk van Goorl.”

“How?”

Meg shrugged her shoulders. “By telling his secret to her so that she
might dismiss him, I suppose, or more likely by threatening that, if
she did not, he would hand her lover over to the Inquisitors.”

“I see. And did you get the evidence?”

“Well, I hid in the Heer Dirk’s bedroom one night, and looking through
a door saw him and another young man, whom I do not know, reading the
Bible, and praying together.”

“Indeed; what a terrible risk you must have run, for had those young
men, or either of them, chanced to catch you, it is quite certain that
you would not have left that room alive. You know these heretics think
that they are justified in killing a spy at sight, and, upon my word, I
do not blame them. In fact, my good woman,” and he leaned forward and
looked her straight in the eyes, “were I in the same position I would
have knocked you on the head as readily as though you had been a rat.”

Black Meg shrank back, and turned a little blue about the lips.

“Of course, Mynheer, of course, it is a rough game, and the poor agents
of God must take their risks. Not that the other young man had any
cause to fear. I wasn’t paid to watch him, and—as I have said—I neither
know nor care who he is.”

“Well, who can say, that may be fortunate for you, especially if he
should ever come to know or to care who you are. But it is no affair of
ours, is it? Now, give me those letters. What, do you want your money
first? Very well,” and, rising, Brant went to a cupboard and produced a
small steel box, which he unlocked; and, having taken from it the
appointed sum, locked it again. “There you are,” he said; “oh, you
needn’t stare at the cupboard; the box won’t live there after to-day,
or anywhere in this house. By the way, I understand that Montalvo never
paid you.”

“Not a stiver,” she answered with a sudden access of rage; “the low
thief, he promised to pay me after his marriage, but instead of
rewarding her who put him in that warm nest, I tell you that already he
has squandered every florin of the noble lady’s money in gambling and
satisfying such debts as he was obliged to, so that to-day I believe
that she is almost a beggar.”

“I see,” said Brant, “and now good morning, and look you, if we should
chance to meet in the town, you will understand that I do not know
you.”

“I understand, Mynheer,” said Black Meg with a grin and vanished.

When she had gone Brant rose and opened the window. “Bah!” he said,
“the air is poisoned. But I think I frightened her, I think that I have
nothing to fear. Yet who can tell? My God! she saw me reading the
Bible, and Montalvo knows it! Well, it is some time ago now, and I must
take my chance.”

Ah! who could tell indeed?

Then, taking the miniatures and documents with him, Brant started to
call upon his friend and co-religionist, the Heer Pieter van de Werff,
Dirk van Goorl’s friend, and Lysbeth’s cousin, a young man for whose
judgment and abilities he had a great respect. As a result of this
visit, these two gentlemen left that afternoon for Brussels, the seat
of Government, where they had very influential friends.

It will be sufficient to tell the upshot of their visit. Just at that
time the Government of the Netherlands wished for its own reasons to
stand well with the citizen class, and when those in authority learned
of the dreadful fraud that had been played off upon a lady of note who
was known to be a good Catholic, for the sole object of robbing her of
her fortune, there was indignation in high places. Indeed, an order was
issued, signed by a hand which could not be resisted—so deeply was one
woman moved by the tale of another’s wrong—that the Count Montalvo
should be seized and put upon his trial, just as though he were any
common Netherland malefactor. Moreover, since he was a man with many
enemies, no one was found to stand between him and the Royal decree.

Three days later Montalvo made an announcement to Lysbeth. For a wonder
he was supping at home alone with his wife, whose presence he had
commanded. She obeyed and attended, sitting at the further end of the
table, whence she rose from time to time to wait upon him with her own
hands. Watching him the while with her quiet eyes, she noticed that he
was ill at ease.

“Cannot you speak?” he asked at last and savagely. “Do you think it is
pleasant for a man to sit opposite a woman who looks like a corpse in
her coffin till he wishes she were one?”

“So do I,” answered Lysbeth, and again there was silence.

Presently she broke it. “What do you want?” she asked. “More money?”

“Of course I want money,” he answered furiously.

“Then there is none; everything has gone, and the notary tells me that
no one will advance another stiver on the house. All my jewellery is
sold also.”

He glanced at her hand. “You have still that ring,” he said.

She looked at it. It was a hoop of gold set with emeralds of
considerable value which her husband had given her before marriage and
always insisted upon her wearing. In fact, it had been bought with the
money which he borrowed from Dirk van Goorl.

“Take it,” she said, smiling for the first time, and drawing off the
ring she passed it over to him. He turned his head aside as he
stretched his hand towards the trinket lest his face should betray the
shame which even he must feel.

“If your child should be a son,” he muttered, “tell him that his father
had nothing but a piece of advice to leave him; that he should never
touch a dice-box.”

“Are you going away then?” she asked.

“For a week or two I must. I have been warned that a difficulty has
arisen, about which I need not trouble you. Doubtless you will hear of
it soon enough, and though it is not true, I must leave Leyden until
the thing blows over. In fact I am going now.”

“You are about to desert me,” she answered; “having got all my money, I
say that you are going to desert me who am—thus! I see it in your
face.”

Montalvo turned away and pretended not to hear.

“Well, thank God for it,” Lysbeth added, “only I wish that you could
take your memory and everything else of yours with you.”

As these bitter words passed her lips the door opened, and there
entered one of his own subalterns, followed by four soldiers and a man
in a lawyer’s robe.

“What is this?” asked Montalvo furiously.

The subaltern saluted as he entered:

“My captain, forgive me, but I act under orders, and they are to arrest
you alive, or,” he added significantly, “dead.”

“Upon what charge?” asked Montalvo.

“Here, notary, you had best read the charge,” said the subaltern, “but
perhaps the lady would like to retire first,” he added awkwardly.

“No,” answered Lysbeth, “it might concern me.”

“Alas! Señora, I fear it does,” put in the notary. Then he began to
read the document, which was long and legal. But she was quick to
understand. Before ever it was done Lysbeth knew that she was not the
lawful wife of Count Juan de Montalvo, and that he was to be put upon
his trial for his betrayal of her and the trick he had played the
Church. So she was free—free, and overcome by that thought she
staggered, fell, and swooned away.

When her eyes opened again, Montalvo, officer, notary, and soldiers,
all had vanished.




CHAPTER VIII
THE MARE’S STABLE


When Lysbeth’s reason returned to her in that empty room, her first
sense was one of wild exultation. She was free, she was not Montalvo’s
wife, never again could she be obliged to see him, never again could
she be forced to endure the contamination of his touch—that was her
thought. She was sure that the story was true; were it not true who
could have moved the authorities to take action against him? Moreover,
now that she had the key, a thousand things were explained, trivial
enough in themselves, each of them, but in their sum amounting to proof
positive of his guilt. Had he not spoken of some entanglement in Spain
and of children? Had he not in his sleep—but it was needless to
remember all these things. She was free! She was free! and there on the
table still lay the symbol of her bondage, the emerald ring that was to
give him the means of flight, a flight from this charge which he knew
was hanging over him. She took it up, dashed it to the ground and
stamped upon it. Next she fell upon her knees, praising and blessing
God, and then, worn out, crept away to rest.

The morning came, the still and beautiful autumn morning, but now all
her exultation had left her, and Lysbeth was depressed and heavy
hearted. She rose and assisted the one servant who remained in the
house to prepare their breakfast, taking no heed of the sidelong
glances that the woman cast at her. Afterwards she went to the market
to spend some of her last florins in necessaries. Here and in the
streets she became aware that she was the object of remark, for people
nudged each other and stared at her. Moreover, as she hurried home
appalled, her quick ear caught the conversation of two coarse women
while they walked behind her.

“She’s got it now,” said one.

“Serve her right, too,” answered the 

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