The Laughing Cavalier by Baroness Orczy (best 7 inch ereader .TXT) 📕

sledge turned in under the gateway, you had not been offended by mine unworthy presence.”

“I would in that case have searched the length and breadth of this land to find you, sir,” rejoined Cornelius Beresteyn earnestly, “for half an hour later my son had told me the whole circumstances of his association with you.”

“An association of which Mynheer Nicolaes will never be overproud, I’ll warrant,” came in slightly less flippant accents than usual from the foreigner. “Do I not stand self-confessed as a liar, a forger and abductor of helpless women? A fine record forsooth: and ere he ordered me to be hanged my Lord of Stoutenburg did loudly proclaim me as such before his friends and before his followers.”

“His friends, sir, are the sons of my friends. I will loudly proclaim you what you truly are: a brave man, a loyal soldier, a noble gentleman! Nicolaes has told me every phase of his association with you, from his shameful proposal to you in regard to his own sister, down to this moment when you still desired that Gilda and I should remain in ignorance of his guilt.”

“What is the good, mynheer, of raking up all this past?” said the philosopher lightly, “I would that Mynheer Nicolaes had known how to hold his tongue.”

“Thank God that he did not,” retorted Cornelius Beresteyn hotly, “had he done so I stood in peril of failing⁠—for the first time in my life⁠—in an important business obligation.”

“Not towards me, mynheer, at any rate.”

“Yes, sir, towards you,” affirmed Beresteyn decisively. “I promised you five hundred thousand guilders if you brought my daughter safely back to me. I know from mine own son, sir, that I owe her safety to no one but to you.”

“Ours was an ignoble bargain, mynheer,” said Diogenes with his wonted gaiety, and though she could not see him, Gilda could picture his face now alive with merriment and suppressed laughter. “The humour of the situation appealed to me⁠—it proved irresistible⁠—but the bargain in no way binds you seeing that it was I who had been impious enough to lay hands upon your daughter.”

“At my son’s suggestion I know,” rejoined Beresteyn quietly, “and from your subsequent acts, sir, I must infer that you only did it because you felt that she was safer under your charge than at the mercy of her own brother and his friends⁠ ⁠… Nay! do not protest,” he added earnestly, “Nicolaes, as you see, is of the same opinion.”

“May Heaven reward you, sir, for that kindly thought of me,” said Diogenes more seriously, “it will cheer me in the future, when I and all my doings will have faded from your ken.”

“You are not leaving Holland, sir?”

“Not just now, mynheer, while there is so much fighting to be done. The Stadtholder hath need of soldiers⁠ ⁠…”

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

“Speak not of that, mynheer,” he said firmly, “I could not take your money. If I did I should never know a happy hour again.”

“Oh!”

“I am quite serious, sir, though indeed you might not think that I can ever be serious. For six days now I have had a paymaster: Mynheer Nicolaes’ money has burned a hole in my good humour, it has scorched my hands, wounded my shoulder and lacerated my hip, it has brought on me all the unpleasant sensations which I have so carefully avoided hitherto, remorse, humiliation, and one or two other sensations which will never leave me until my death. It changed temporarily the shiftless, penniless soldier of fortune into a responsible human being, with obligations and duties. I had to order horses, bespeak lodgings, keep accounts. Ye gods, it made a slave of me! Keep your money, sir, it is more fit for you to handle than for me. Let me go back to my shiftlessness, my penury, my freedom, eat my fill today, starve tomorrow, and one day look up at the stars from the lowly earth, with a kindly bullet in my chest that does not mean to blunder. And if in the days to come your thoughts ever do revert to me, I pray you think of me as happy or nearly so, owning no master save my whim, bending my back to none, keeping my hat on my head when I choose, and ending my days in a ditch or in a palace, the carver of mine own destiny, the sole arbiter of my will. And now I pray you seek that rest of which you must be sorely in need. I start at daybreak tomorrow: mayhap we shall never meet again, save in Heaven, if indeed, there be room there for such a thriftless adventurer as I.”

“But whither do you mean to go, sir?”

“To the mountains of the moon, sir,” rejoined the philosopher lightly, “or along the Milky Way to the land of the Might-Have-Been.”

“Before we part, sir, may I shake you by the hand?”

There was silence down below after that. Gilda listened in vain, no further words reached her ears just then. She tiptoed as quietly as she could across the room, finding her way with difficulty in the dark. At last her fumbling fingers encountered the latch of the door of the inner room where Maria lay snoring lustily.

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

“Are you ill, mejuffrouw?” queried Maria anxiously even though she was but half awake.

“No,” replied Gilda curtly, “but I want my dress⁠—quick now,” she added, for Maria showed signs of desiring to protest.

The jongejuffrouw was in one of those former imperious moods of hers when she exacted implicit obedience from her servants. Alas! the last few days had seen that mood submerged into an ocean of sorrow and humiliation, and Maria⁠—though angered at having been