Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch by H. Rider Haggard (fantasy books to read txt) 📕
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- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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“Cease, I pray you,” said Lysbeth in a low voice; “I am faint, I am ill.”
Ill she was indeed, and before morning there, in that lonely hovel on the island of the mere, a son was born to her.
When she was strong enough her nurse spoke:
“Will you keep the brat, or shall I kill it?” she asked.
“How can I kill my child?” said Lysbeth.
“It is the Spaniard’s child also, and remember the curse you told me of, your own curse uttered on this thing before ever you were married? If it lives that curse shall cling to it, and through it you, too, shall be accursed. Best let me kill it and have done.”
“How can I kill my own child? Touch it not,” answered Lysbeth sullenly.
So the black-eyed boy lived and throve.
Somewhat slowly, lying there in the island hut, Lysbeth won back her strength. The Mare, or Mother Martha, as Lysbeth had now learned to call her, tended her as few midwives would have done. Food, too, she had in plenty, for Martha snared the fowl and caught the fish, or she made visits to the mainland, and thence brought eggs and milk and flesh, which, so she said, the boors of that country gave her as much as she wanted of them. Also, to while away the hours, she would read to her out of the Testament, and from that reading Lysbeth learnt many things which until then she had not known. Indeed, before it was done with—Catholic though she was—she began to wonder in what lay the wickedness of these heretics, and how it came about that they were worthy of death and torment, since, sooth to say, in this Book she could find no law to which their lives and doctrine seemed to give offence.
Thus it happened that Martha, the fierce, half-crazy water-dweller, sowed the seed in Lysbeth’s heart that was to bear fruit in due season.
When three weeks had gone by and Lysbeth was on her feet again, though as yet scarcely strong enough to travel, Martha told her that she had business which would keep her from home a night, but what the business was she refused to say. Accordingly on a certain afternoon, having left good store of all things to Lysbeth’s hand, the Mare departed in her skiff, nor did she return till after midday on the morrow. Now Lysbeth talked of leaving the island, but Martha would not suffer it, saying that if she desired to go she must swim, and indeed when Lysbeth went to look she found that the boat had been hidden elsewhere. So, nothing loth, she stayed on, and in the crisp autumn air her health and beauty came back to her, till she was once more much as she had been before the day when she went sledging with Juan de Montalvo.
On a November morning, leaving her infant in the hut with Martha, who had sworn to her on the Bible that she would not harm it, Lysbeth walked to the extremity of the island. During the night the first sharp frost of late autumn had fallen, making a thin film of ice upon the surface of the lake, which melted rapidly as the sun grew high. The air too was very clear and calm, and among the reeds, now turning golden at their tips, the finches flew and chirped, forgetful that winter was at hand. So sweet and peaceful was the scene that Lysbeth, also forgetful of many things, surveyed it with a kind of rapture. She knew not why, but her heart was happy that morning; it was as though a dark cloud had passed from her life; as though the blue skies of peace and joy were spread about her. Doubtless other clouds might appear upon the horizon; doubtless in their season they would appear, but she felt that this horizon was as yet a long way off, and meanwhile above her bent the tender sky, serene and sweet and happy.
Upon the crisp grass behind her suddenly she heard a footfall, a new footfall, not that of the long, stealthy stride of Martha, who was called the Mare, and swung round upon her heel to meet it.
Oh, God! Who was this? Oh, God! there before her stood Dirk van Goorl. Dirk, and no other than Dirk, unless she dreamed, Dirk with his kind face wreathed in a happy smile, Dirk with his arms outstretched towards her. Lysbeth said nothing, she could not speak, only she stood still gazing, gazing, gazing, and always he came on, till now his arms were round her. Then she sprang back.
“Do not touch me,” she cried, “remember what I am and why I stay here.”
“I know well what you are, Lysbeth,” he answered slowly; “you are the holiest and purest woman who ever walked this earth; you are an angel upon this earth; you are the woman who gave her honour to save the man she loved. Oh! be silent, be silent, I have heard the story; I know it every word, and here I kneel before you, and, next to my God, I worship you, Lysbeth, I worship you.”
“But the child,” she murmured, “it lives, and it is mine and the man’s.”
Dirk’s face hardened a little, but he only answered:
“We must bear our burdens; you have borne yours, I must bear mine,” and he seized her hands and kissed them, yes, and the hem of her garment and kissed it also.
So these two plighted their troth.
Afterwards Lysbeth heard all the story. Montalvo had been put upon his trial, and, as it chanced, things went hard with him. Among his judges one was a great Netherlander lord, who desired to uphold the rights of his countrymen; one was a high ecclesiastic, who was furious because of the fraud that had been played upon the Church, which had been trapped into celebrating a bigamous marriage; and a third was a Spanish grandee, who, as it happened, knew the family of the first wife who had been deserted.
Therefore, for the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved to the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the letter, of the wife’s letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now found an opportunity of paying back “hot water for cold,” there was little mercy. His character was bad, and it was said, moreover, that because of his cruelties and the shame she had suffered at his hands, Lysbeth van Hout had committed suicide. At least, this was certain, that she was seen running at night towards the Haarlemer Meer, and that after this, search as her friends would, nothing more could be heard of her.
So, that an example might be made, although he writhed and fenced his best, the noble captain, Count Juan de Montalvo, was sent to serve for fourteen years in the galleys as a common slave. And there, for the while, was an end of him.
There also was an end of the strange and tragic courtship of Dirk van Goorl and Lysbeth van Hout.
Six months afterwards they were married, and by Dirk’s wish took the child, who was christened Adrian, to live with them. A few months later Lysbeth entered the community of the New Religion, and less than two years after her marriage a son was born to her, the hero of this story, who was named Foy.
As it happened, she bore no other children.
THE RIPENING
ADRIAN, FOY, AND MARTIN THE RED
Many years had gone by since Lysbeth found her love again upon the island in the Haarlemer Meer. The son that she bore there was now a grown man, as was her second son, Foy, and her own hair showed grey beneath the lappets of her cap.
Fast, fast wove the loom of God during those fateful years, and the web thereof was the story of a people’s agony and its woof was dyed red with their blood. Edict had followed edict, crime had been heaped upon crime. Alva, like some inhuman and incarnate vengeance, had marched his army, quiet and harmless as is the tiger when he stalks his prey, across the fields of France. Now he was at Brussels, and already the heads of the Counts Egmont and Hoorn had fallen; already the Blood Council was established and at its work. In the Low Countries law had ceased to exist, and there anything might happen however monstrous or inhuman. Indeed, with one decree of the Holy Office, confirmed by a proclamation of Philip of Spain, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, three millions of them, had been condemned to death. Men’s minds were full of terror, for on every side were burnings and hangings and torturings. Without were fightings, within were fears, and none knew whom they could trust, since the friend of to-day might be the informer or judge of to-morrow. All this because they chose to worship God in their own fashion unaided by images and priests.
Although so long a time had passed, as it chanced those personages with whom we have already made acquaintance in this history were still alive. Let us begin with two of them, one of whom we know and one of whom, although we have heard of him before, will require some introduction—Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy.
Scene—an upper room above a warehouse overlooking the market-place of Leyden, a room with small windows and approached by two staircases; time, a summer twilight. The faint light which penetrated into this chamber through the unshuttered windows, for to curtain them would have been to excite suspicion, showed that about twenty people were gathered there, among whom were one or two women. For the most part they were men of the better class, middle-aged burghers of sober mien, some of whom stood about in knots, while others were seated upon stools and benches. At the end of the room addressing them was a man well on in middle life, with grizzled hair and beard, small and somewhat mean of stature, yet one through whose poor exterior goodness seemed to flow like light through some rough casement of horn. This was Jan Arentz, the famous preacher, by trade a basket-maker, a man who showed himself steadfast to the New Religion through all afflictions, and who was gifted with a spirit which could remain unmoved amidst the horrors of perhaps the most terrible persecution that Christians have suffered since the days of the Roman Emperors. He was preaching now and these people were his congregation.
“I come not to bring peace but a sword,” was his text, and certainly this night it was most appropriate and one easy of illustration. For there, on the very market-place beneath them, guarded by soldiers and surrounded with the rabble of the city, two members of his flock, men who a fortnight before had worshipped in that same room, at this moment were undergoing martyrdom by fire!
Arentz preached patience and fortitude. He went back into recent history and told his hearers how he himself had passed a hundred dangers; how he had been hunted like a wolf, how he had been tried, how he had escaped from prisons and from the swords of soldiers, even as St. Paul had done before him, and how yet he lived to minister to them this night. He told them that they must have no fear, that they must go on quite happy, quite confident, taking what it pleased God to send them, feeling that it would all be for the best; yes, that even the worst would be for the best. What was the worst? Some hours of torment and death. And what lay beyond the death? Ah! let them think of that. The whole world was but a brief and varying shadow, what did it matter how or when they walked out of that shadow into the perfect light? The sky was very black, but behind it the sun shone. They must look forward with the eye of faith; perhaps the sufferings of the present generation were part of the scheme of things; perhaps from the earth which they watered with their blood would spring the flower of freedom, that glorious freedom in whose day all men would be able to worship their Creator responsible only to the Bible law and their own conscience, not to the dogmas or doctrines of other men.
As Arentz spoke thus, eloquently, sweetly, spoke like one inspired, the twilight deepened and the flare of those sacrificial fires flickered on the window pane, and the mixed murmurs of the crowd of witnesses broke upon his listeners’ ears. The preacher paused and looked down upon the dreadful scene below, for
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