The First Sir Percy Baroness Orczy (fb2 epub reader .TXT) 📖

the last man,” Mynheer Beresteyn added, “if they knew that succor would come in due course.”

“ ’Tis only uncertainty that paralyses the endurance of a garrison,” Diogenes went on with firm emphasis. “Send to Arnheim and to Nijmegen, your Highness! Bid them hold out against any attack until you come with ten thousand troops to their aid. In the meanwhile, send orders to Marquet and to De Keysere to advance forthwith with reinforcements for these two garrisons. Then raise your standard once more in Friesland, Drenthe, and Groningen. I’ll warrant you will have twenty thousand men there ready to fight once more for liberty and for you!”

His sonorous voice rang clear and metallic in the small, panelled room. His enthusiasm appeared almost like a living thing, a tangible force that touched the hearts and minds of all the solemn burghers here, causing their eyes to glow and their fists, not yet wholly unskilled in the use of the sword, to clench with inward excitement. The Stadtholder looked up at him with undisguised admiration.

“Is it the English blood in you, man,” he said with a smile, “that makes you valorous in war and wise in counsel?”

Diogenes shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I fought for your Highness before now,” he rejoined, with a quaint, self-deprecating laugh, “when I had nothing to lose save my skin, and still less to gain. The English blood in me dearly loves a fight, and all doth hate the Spaniard and all his tyrannies.”

“Then I can reckon on you?” the prince riposted quickly.

“On me, your Highness?” the other exclaimed.

“On you, of course. With your mother’s blood in your veins, the United Provinces have a double claim on you. You have fought for us before, as you say, unknown to us then, an obscure soldier of fortune with nothing to lose and but little to gain. Join us now, man, in the field and under the council tent. Get to horse tonight. You will find Marquet at Vorden, on his way south from Overijssel. Tell him to push on at once to Arnheim with all the troops he hath at his command. From thence I would bid you go straightway to De Keysere, who is at Wageningen, and order him to reinforce Nijmegen forthwith with three thousand men, if we have them. Tell both Marquet and De Keysere to fight and hold the towns. I’ll to their aid as soon as may be. Then, man, join my brother Frederick, and help him to raise my standard in Gelderland and in Overijssel, and rally ten thousand men to our cause. I feel that success will attend our arms if we keep you by our side.”

Maurice of Nassau had spoken with more vigor and verve than he had shown for the past three months. Indeed, his deeply anxious friends could not help but feel that the old fighting spirit of this peerless commander had not wholly been undermined by disease. Five pairs of eager eyes had scanned his features while he spoke; five hearts beat in response to his enthusiasm. Now, when he had finished speaking, Mynheer Beresteyn and the others turned their expectant gaze upon the stranger who had been so signally honoured; but he looked uncertain, gravely perturbed. In the flickering light of the wax candles his face appeared haggard and drawn, and a set line had crept around his ever-laughing lips.

“You seem to hesitate, my friend,” the Stadtholder remarked, with that tone of bitterness which had become habitual to him. “Methought you said that the English blood in you dearly loved a fight. But in truth, I had forgotten! You have other claims upon you now⁠—one, at least, which is paramount. An easy, untroubled life awaits you. No wonder you hesitate to embark on so perilous an adventure!” Then, as if loth to give up the thought that was foremost in his mind, he added, with persuasive insistence; “If you followed me, you’d have everything to gain⁠—nothing to lose save a sentimental pastime.”

Just then Diogenes caught Mynheer Beresteyn’s eyes fixed steadily upon him. The old man who knew well enough what was going on in that wayward, turbulent mind⁠—the doubts, the fears, the hideous, horrible disappointment.

Nothing to lose! Ye gods, at the hour when a whole life’s happiness not only beckoned insistently, but was actually there to hand, like a bunch of ripe and luscious fruit, ready to drop into a yearning hand! Here was the end of a vagabond life, here was love and home and peace, and all to be given up as soon as found to the equally insistent call of honour and of duty!

The others did not speak; perhaps they, too, understood. Men in those days were used to stern sacrifices. They and their forebears had given up their all so that their children’s children might live in freedom and security. They only marvelled if this stranger, with the combative English blood in him, would give up what was so infinitely dear to him⁠—the exquisite wife to whom he had plighted his troth but a few hours ago⁠—and if he would fight for them again as he had done in the past.

The Stadtholder remained moody and silent, and the close atmosphere of the heavily curtained room seemed to become suddenly still, hushed, as if expectant of the grave decision to come. The wax candles burned quite steadily, with just a tiny fillet of smoke rising up towards the low-raftered ceiling, almost like the incense of silent prayer rising unwaveringly to God.

To many the silence appeared absolute, but not to the man who stood in the midst of them all beside a table littered with papers and documents, his slender hand⁠—the hand of an idealist, rendered firm and hard by action⁠—resting lightly upon the board. A tense look in his eyes. Through the silence he could hear his beloved in the little room behind the heavy tapestry. He could hear the soft, insidious sound of the quaint-toned virginal, and her voice, tender and melancholy as the call