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

to it. Moreover, you gave your evidence fully and freely, for I have read it, and supported it with the severed finger of the woman Meg which you stole from Foy's room. You are the murderer of your benefactor and of your mother's heart, and the would-be murderer of your brother and of Martin Roos. When you were born, the mad wife, Martha, who nursed me, counselled that you should be put to death, lest you should live to bring evil upon me and mine. I refused, and you have brought the evil upon us all, but most, I think, upon your own soul. I do not curse you, I call down no ill upon you; Adrian, I give you over into the hands of God to deal with as He sees fit. Here is money"--and, going to her desk, she took from it a heavy purse of gold which had been prepared for their flight, and thrust it into the pocket of his doublet, wiping her fingers upon her kerchief after she had touched him. "Go hence and never let me see your face again. You were born of my body, you are my flesh and blood, but for this world and the next I renounce you, Adrian. Bastard, I know you not. Murderer, get you gone."

Adrian fell upon the ground; he grovelled before his mother trying to kiss the hem of her dress, while Elsa sobbed aloud hysterically. But Lysbeth spurned him in the face with her foot, saying,

"Get you gone before I call up such servants as are left to me to thrust you to the street."

Then Adrian rose and with great gasps of agony, like some sore-wounded thing, crept from that awful and majestic presence of outraged motherhood, crept down the stairs and away into the city.

When he had gone Lysbeth took pen and paper and wrote in large letters these words:--

"Notice to all the good citizens of Leyden. Adrian, called van Goorl, upon whose written evidence his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl, his half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and the serving-man, Martin Roos, have been condemned to death in the Gevangenhuis by torment, starvation, water, fire, and sword, is known here no longer. Lysbeth van Goorl."

Then she called a servant and gave orders that this paper should be nailed upon the front door of the house where every passer-by might read it.

"It is done," she said. "Cease weeping, Elsa, and lead me to my bed, whence I pray God that I may never rise again."

 

Two days went by, and a fugitive rode into the city, a worn and wounded man of Leyden, with horror stamped upon his face.

"What news?" cried the people in the market-place, recognising him.

"Mechlin! Mechlin!" he gasped. "I come from Mechlin."

"What of Mechlin and its citizens?" asked Pieter van de Werff, stepping forward.

"Don Frederic has taken it; the Spaniards have butchered them; everyone, old and young, men, women, and children, they are all butchered. I escaped, but for two leagues and more I heard the sound of the death-wail of Mechlin. Give me wine."

They gave him wine, and by slow degrees, in broken sentences, he told the tale of one of the most awful crimes ever committed in the name of Christ by cruel man against God and his own fellows. It was written large in history: we need not repeat it here.

Then, when they knew the truth, up from that multitude of the men of Leyden went a roar of wrath, and a cry to vengeance for their slaughtered kin. They took arms, each what he had, the burgher his sword, the fisherman his fish-spear, the boor his ox-goad or his pick; leaders sprang up to command them, and there arose a shout of "To the gates! To the Gevangenhuis! Free the prisoners!"

They surged round the hateful place, thousands of them. The drawbridge was up, but they bridged the moat. Some shots were fired at them, then the defence ceased. They battered in the massive doors, and, when these fell, rushed to the dens and loosed those who remained alive within them.

But they found no Spaniards, for by now Ramiro and his garrison had vanished away, whither they knew not. A voice cried, "Dirk van Goorl, seek for Dirk van Goorl," and they came to the chamber overlooking the courtyard, shouting, "Van Goorl, we are here!"

They broke in the door, and there they found him, lying upon his pallet, his hands clasped, his face upturned, smitten suddenly dead, not by man, but by the poison of the plague.

Unfed and untended, the end had overtaken him very swiftly.

CHAPTER XXIII(FATHER AND SON)

 

When Adrian left his mother's house in the Bree Straat he wandered away at hazard, for so utterly miserable was he that he could form no plans as to what he was to do or whither he should go. Presently he found himself at the foot of that great mound which in Leyden is still known as the Burg, a strange place with a circular wall upon the top of it, said to have been constructed by the Romans. Up this mound he climbed, and throwing himself upon the grass under an oak which grew in one of the little recesses of those ancient walls, he buried his face in his hands and tried to think.

Think! How could he think? Whenever he shut his eyes there arose before them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its awesome and unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the outcast son, upon whom it had been turned like the stare of the Medusa's head, withering his very soul, could have seen it and still live. Why did he live? Why was he not dead, he who had a sword at his side? Was it because of his innocence? He was not guilty of this dreadful crime. He had never intended to hand over Dirk van Goorl and Foy and Martin to the Inquisition. He had only talked about them to a man whom he believed to be a professor of judicial astrology, and who said that he could compound draughts which would bend the wills of women. Could he help it if this fellow was really an officer of the Blood Council? Of course not. But, oh! why had he talked so much? Oh! why had he signed that paper, why did he not let them kill him first? He had signed, and explain as he would, he could never look an honest man in the face again, and less still a woman, if she knew the truth. So he was not still alive because he was innocent, since for all the good that this very doubtful innocence of his was likely to be even to his own conscience, he might almost as well have been guilty. Nor was he alive because he feared to die. He did fear to die horribly, but to the young and impressionable, at any rate, there are situations in which death seems the lesser of two evils. That situation had been well-nigh reached by him last night when he set the hilt of his sword against the floor and shrank back at the prick of its point. To-day it was overpast.

No, he lived on because before he died he had a hate to satisfy, a revenge to work. He would kill this dog, Ramiro, who had tricked him with his crystal gazing and his talk of friendship, who had frightened him with the threat of death until he became like some poor girl and for fear signed away his honour--oh, Heaven! for very fear, he who prided himself upon his noble Spanish blood, the blood of warriors-- this treacherous dog, who, having used him, had not hesitated to betray his shame to her from whom most of all it should have been hidden, and, for aught he knew, to the others also. Yes if ever he met him--his own brother--Foy would spit upon him in the street; Foy, who was so hatefully open and honest, who could not understand into what degradation a man's nerves may drag him. And Martin, who had always mistrusted and despised him, why, if he found the chance, he would tear him limb from limb as a kite tears a partridge. And, worse still, Dirk van Goorl, the man who had befriended him, who had bred him up although he was no son of his, but the child of some rival, he would sit there in his prison cell, and while his face fell in and his bones grew daily plainer, till at length his portly presence was as that of a living skeleton, he would sit there by the window, watching the dishes of savoury food pass in and out beneath him, and between the pangs of his long-drawn, hideous agony, put up his prayer to God to pay back to him, Adrian, all the woe that he had caused.

Oh! it was too much. Under the crushing weight of his suffering, his senses left him, and he found such peace as to-day is won by those who are about to pass beneath the surgeon's knife; the peace that but too often wakes to a livelier agony.

When Adrian came to himself again, he felt cold, for already the autumn evening had begun to fall, and there was a feel in the clear, still air as of approaching frost. Also he was hungry (Dirk van Goorl, too, must be growing hungry now, he remembered), for he had eaten nothing since the yesterday. He would go into the town, get food, and then make up his mind what he should do.

Accordingly, descending from the Burg, Adrian went to the best inn in Leyden, and, seating himself at a table under the trees that grew outside of it, bade the waiting-man bring him food and beer. Unconsciously, for he was thinking of other things, in speaking to him, Adrian had assumed the haughty, Spanish hidalgo manner that was customary with him when addressing his inferiors. Even then he noticed, with the indignation of one who dwells upon his dignity, that this server made him no bow, but merely called his order to someone in the house, and, turning his back upon him, began to speak to a man who was loitering near. Soon Adrian became aware that he was the subject of that conversation, for the two of them looked at him out of the corners of their eyes, and jerked their thumbs towards him. Moreover, first one, then two, then quite a number of passers-by stopped and joined in the conversation, which appeared to interest them very much. Boys came also, a dozen or more of them, and women of the fish-wife stamp, and all of these looked at him out of the corner of /their/ eyes, and from time to time jerked /their/ thumbs towards him. Adrian began to feel uneasy and angered, but, drawing down his bonnet, and folding his arms upon his breast, he took no notice. Presently the server thrust his meal and flagon of beer before him with such clattering clumsiness that some of the liquor splashed over upon the table.

"Be more careful and wipe that up," said Adrian.

"Wipe it yourself," answered