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

love with you,” he said sternly to Diogenes, “and endowed you with her father’s wealth and influence.”

“That’s just my complaint,” said Pythagoras, “but no! what else do you think he said earlier in the evening?”

“Well?”

“Tonight we’ll behave like gentlemen,” quoted the other with ever-growing disgust, “and not like common thieves.”

“Why tonight?” queried Gutter-rat in amazement. “Why more especially tonight?”

Pythagoras and Socrates both shrugged their shoulders and suggested no explanation. After which there was more vigorous clapping of mugs against the tabletop and Diogenes was loudly summoned to explain.

“Why tonight? why tonight?” was shouted at him from every side.

Diogenes’ face became for one brief moment quite grave⁠—quite grave be it said, but for his eyes which believe me could not have looked grave had they tried.

“Because,” he said at last when the shouts around him had somewhat subsided, “I had three guilders in my wallet, because my night’s lodging is assured for the next three nights and because my chief creditor has died like a hero. Therefore, O comrades all! I could afford the luxury.”

“What luxury?” sneered Gutter-rat in disgust, “to refuse the patronage of an influential burgher of this city, backed by the enthusiasm of the beauteous damsel, his daughter?”

“To refuse all patronage, good comrade,” assented Diogenes with emphasis.

“Bah! for twenty-four hours!⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes! for twenty-four hours, friend Gutter-rat, while those three florins last and I have a roof over my head for which I have already paid⁠ ⁠… I can for those four and twenty hours afford the luxury of doing exactly and only what it pleases me to do.”

He threw up his head and stretched out his massive limbs with a gesture of infinite satisfaction, his merry mocking glance sweeping over the company of watch-night revellers, out-at-elbows ragamuffins, and sober burghers with their respectable vrouws, all of whom were gaping on him open-mouthed.

“For four and twenty hours, my dear Gutter-rat,” he continued after a long sigh of contentment, “that is during this day which has just dawned and the night which must inevitably follow it, I am going to give myself the luxury of speaking only when I choose and of being dumb if the fancy so takes me⁠ ⁠… while my three florins last and I know that I need not sleep under the stars, I shall owe my fealty only to my whim⁠—I shall dream when and what I like, sing what I like, walk in company or alone. For four and twenty hours I need not be the ivy that clings nor the hose that is ragged at the knee. I shall be at liberty to wear my sash awry, my shoes unbuckled, my hat tilted at an angle which pleases me best. Above all, O worthy rat of the gutter, I need not stoop for four and twenty hours one inch lower than I choose, or render aught to Caesar for Caesar will have rendered naught to me. On this the first day of the New Year there is no man or woman living who can dictate to me what I shall do, and tonight in the lodgings for which I have paid, when I am asleep I can dream that I am climbing up the heights toward a mountain top which mayhap doth not quite stretch as far as the clouds, but which I can reach alone. Today and tonight I am a man and not a bit of ribbon that flutters at the breath of man or woman who has paid for the fluttering with patronage.”

Gradually as he spoke and his fresh young voice, sonorous with enthusiasm rang clearly from end to end of the raftered room, conversation, laughter, bibulous songs were stilled and everyone turned to look at the speaker, wondering who he could be. The good burghers of Haarlem had no liking for the foreign mercenaries for whom they professed vast contempt because of their calling, and because of the excesses which they committed at the storming of these very walls, which event was within the memory of most. Therefore, though they were attracted by the speaker, they were disgusted to find that he belonged to that rabble; but the women thought that he was goodly to look upon, with those merry, twinkling eyes of his, and that atmosphere of lightheartedness and a gaiety which he diffused around him. Some of the men who were there and who professed knowledge in such matters, declared that this man’s speech betrayed him for an Englishman.

“I like not the race,” said a pompous man who sat with wife and kindred round a table loaded with good things. “I remember the English Leicester and his crowd, men of loose morals and doubtful piety; braggarts and roisterers we all thought them. This man is very like some of them in appearance.”

“Thou speakest truly, O wise citizen of this worthy republic,” said Diogenes, boldly answering the man’s low-spoken words, “my father was one of the roisterers who came in English Leicester’s train. An Englishman he, of loose morals and doubtful piety no doubt, but your sound Dutch example and my mother’s Dutch blood⁠—Heaven rest her soul⁠—have both sobered me since then.”

He looked round at the crowd of faces, all of which were now turned toward him, kindly faces and angry ones, contemptuous eyes and good-natured ones, and some that expressed both compassion and reproof.

“By the Lord,” he said, and as he spoke he threw back his head and burst into a loud and prolonged fit of laughter, “but I have never in my life seen so many ugly faces before.”

There was a murmur and many angry words among the assembly. One or two of the men half rose from their seats, scowling viciously and clenching their fists. Master Beek perspiring with anxiety saw these signs of a possible fray. The thought drove him well-nigh frantic. An affray in his establishment on New Year’s morning! it was unthinkable! He rushed round to his customers with a veritable dictionary of soothing words upon his tongue.

“Gentlemen! gentlemen,” he entreated, “I beg