LYSBETH by H. RIDER HAGGARD (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

"Come, come, son," said Dirk. "Martha, who knows every island on the great lake, must remember the spot."

"Oh! no, she doesn't," answered Foy. "The truth is that she didn't come with us when we buried the barrels. She stopped to watch the Spanish ship, and just told us to land on the first island we came to and dig a hole, which we did, making a map of the place before we left, the same that Martin dropped."

All this clumsy falsehood Foy uttered with a wooden face and in a voice which would not have convinced a three-year-old infant, priding himself the while upon his extraordinary cleverness.

"Martin," asked Dirk, suspiciously, "is this true?"

"Absolutely true, master," replied Martin; "it is wonderful how well he remembers."

"Son," said Dirk, turning white with suppressed anger, "you have always been a good lad, and now you have shown yourself a brave one, but I pray God that I may not be forced to add that you are false- tongued. Do you not see that this looks black? The treasure which you have hidden is the greatest in all the Netherlands. Will not folk say, it is not wonderful that you should have forgotten its secret until-- it suits you to remember?"

Foy took a step forward, his face crimson with indignation, but the heavy hand of Martin fell upon his shoulder and dragged him back as though he were but a little child.

"I think, Master Foy," he said, fixing his eyes upon Lysbeth, "that your lady mother wishes to say something."

"You are right, Martin; I do. Do you not think, husband, that in these days of ours a man might have other reasons for hiding the truth than a desire to enrich himself by theft?"

"What do you mean, wife?" asked Dirk. "Foy here says that he has buried this great hoard with Martin, but that he and Martin do not know where they buried it, and have lost the map they made. Whatever may be the exact wording of the will, that hoard belongs to my cousin here, subject to certain trusts which have not yet arisen, and may never arise, and I am her guardian while Hendrik Brant lives and his executor when he dies. Therefore, legally, it belongs to me also. By what right, then, do my son and my servant hide the truth from me, if, indeed, they are hiding the truth? Say what you have to say straight out, for I am a plain man and cannot read riddles."

"Then I will say it, husband, though it is but my guess, for I have had no words with Foy or Martin, and if I am wrong they can correct me. I know their faces, and I think with you that they are not speaking the truth. I think that they do not wish us to know it--not that they may keep the secret of this treasure for themselves, but because such a secret might well bring those who know of it to the torment and the stake. Is it not so, my son?"

"Mother," answered Foy, almost in a whisper, "it is so. The paper is not lost, but do not seek to learn its hiding-place, for there are wolves who would tear your bodies limb from limb to get the knowledge out of you; yes, even Elsa's, even Elsa's. If the trial must come let it fall on me and Martin, who are fitter to bear it. Oh! father, surely you know that, whatever we may be, neither of us is a thief."

Dirk advanced to his son, and kissed him on the forehead.

"My son," he said, "pardon me, and you, Red Martin, pardon me also. I spoke in my haste. I spoke as a fool, who, at my age, should have known better. But, oh! I tell you that I wish that this cursed treasure, these cases of precious gems and these kegs of hoarded gold, had been shivered to the winds of heaven with the timbers of the ship /Swallow/. For, mark you, Ramiro has escaped, and with him another man, and they will know well that having the night to hide it, you did not destroy those jewels with the ship. They will track you down, these Spanish sleuthhounds, filled with the lust of blood and gold, and it will be well if the lives of every one of us do not pay the price of the secret of the burying-place of the wealth of Hendrik Brant."

He ceased, pale and trembling, and a silence fell upon the room and all in it, a sad and heavy silence, for in his voice they caught the note of prophecy. Martin broke it.

"It may be so, master," he said; "but, your pardon, you should have thought of that before you undertook this duty. There was no call upon you to send the Heer Foy and myself to The Hague to bring away this trash, but you did it as would any other honest man. Well, now it is done, and we must take our chance, but I say this--if you are wise, my masters, yes, and you ladies also, before you leave this room you will swear upon the Bible, every one of you, never to whisper the word treasure, never to think of it except to believe that it is gone--lost beneath the waters of the Haarlemer Meer. Never to whisper it, no, mistress, not even to the Heer Adrian, your son who lies sick abed upstairs."

"You have learnt wisdom somewhere of late years, Martin, since you stopped drinking and fighting," said Dirk drily, "and for my part before God I swear it."

"And so do I." "And I." "And I." "And I," echoed the others, Martin, who spoke last, adding, "Yes, I swear that I will never speak of it; no, /not even to my young master, Adrian, who lies sick abed upstairs./"

Adrian made a good, though not a very quick recovery. He had lost a great deal of blood, but the vessel closed without further complications, so that it remained only to renew his strength by rest and ample food. For ten days or so after the return of Foy and Martin, he was kept in bed and nursed by the women of the house. Elsa's share in this treatment was to read to him from the Spanish romances which he admired. Very soon, however, he found that he admired Elsa herself even more than the romances, and would ask her to shut the book that he might talk to her. So long as his conversation was about himself, his dreams, plans and ambitions, she fell into it readily enough; but when he began to turn it upon /herself/, and to lard it with compliment and amorous innuendo, then she demurred, and fled to the romances for refuge.

Handsome as he might be, Adrian had no attractions for Elsa. About him there was something too exaggerated for her taste; moreover he was Spanish, Spanish in his beauty, Spanish in the cast of his mind, and all Spaniards were hateful to her. Deep down in her heart also lay a second reason for this repugnance; the man reminded her of another man who for months had been a nightmare to her soul, the Hague spy, Ramiro. This Ramiro she had observed closely. Though she had not seen him very often his terrible reputation was familiar to her. She knew also, for her father had told her as much, that it was he who was drawing the nets about him at The Hague, and who plotted day and night to rob him of his wealth.

At first sight there was no great resemblance between the pair. How could there be indeed between a man on the wrong side of middle age, one-eyed, grizzled, battered, and bearing about with him an atmosphere of iniquity, and a young gentleman, handsome, distinguished, and wayward, but assuredly no criminal? Yet the likeness existed. She had seen it first when Adrian was pointing out to her how, were he a general, he would dispose his forces for the capture of Leyden, and from that moment her nature rose in arms against him. Also it came out in other ways, in little tricks of voice and pomposities of manner which Elsa caught at unexpected moments, perhaps, as she told herself, because she had trained her mind to seek these similarities. Yet all the while she knew that the fancy was ridiculous, for what could these two men have in common with each other?

In those days, however, Elsa did not think much of Adrian, or of anybody except her beloved father, whose only child she was, and whom she adored with all the passion of her heart. She knew the terrible danger in which he stood, and guessed that she had been sent away that she should not share his perils. Now she had but one desire and one prayer--that he might escape in safety, and that she might return to him again. Once only a message came from him, sent through a woman she had never seen, the wife of a fisherman, who delivered it by word of mouth. This was the message:

"Give my love and blessing to my daughter Elsa, and tell her that so far I am unharmed. To Foy van Goorl say, I have heard the news. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Let him remember what I told him, and be sure that he will not strive in vain, and that he shall not lack for his reward here or hereafter."

That was all. Tidings reached them that the destruction of so many men by the blowing up of the /Swallow/, and by her sinking of the Government boat as she escaped, had caused much excitement and fury among the Spaniards. But, as those who had been blown up were free- lances, and as the boat was sunk while the /Swallow/ was flying from them, nothing had been done in the matter. Indeed, nothing could be done, for it was not known who manned the /Swallow/, and, as Ramiro had foreseen, her crew were supposed to have been destroyed with her in the Haarlemer Meer.

Then, after a while, came other news that filled Elsa's heart with a wild hope, for it was reported that Hendrik Brant had disappeared, and was believed to have escaped from The Hague. Nothing more was heard of him, however, which is scarcely strange, for the doomed man had gone down the path of rich heretics into the silent vaults of the Inquisition. The net had closed at last, and through the net fell the sword.

But if Elsa thought seldom of Adrian, except in gusts of spasmodic dislike, Adrian thought of Elsa, and little besides. So earnestly did he lash his romantic temperament, and so deeply did her beauty and charm appeal to him, that very soon he was truly in love with her. Nor did the fact that, as he believed, she was, potentially, the greatest heiress in the Netherlands, cool Adrian's amorous devotion. What could suit him better in his condition, than to marry this rich and lovely lady?

So Adrian made up his mind that he would marry her, for, in his vanity, it never occurred to him that she might object. Indeed, the only thought that gave him trouble was the difficulty of reducing her wealth into possession. Foy and Martin had buried it somewhere in the Haarlemer Meer. But they said, for this he had ascertained by repeated inquiries, although the information was given grudgingly enough, that the map of the hiding-place had been destroyed in the explosion on the /Swallow/. Adrian did not believe this story for a moment. He was convinced that they were keeping the truth from him, and as the prospective master of that treasure he resented this reticence