The Laughing Cavalier Part 63

"No! not just yet!" was the other's calm reply.

"Stand aside!" reiterated Stoutenburg wildly.

He drew his sword and made a quick thrust at his enemy; he remembered the man's wounded shoulder and saw that his right hand was temporarily disabled.

"Ah, my lord!" quoth Diogenes lightly, as with his left he drew Bucephalus out of its scabbard, "you had forgotten or perhaps you never knew that during your follower's scramble for safety my sword remained unheeded in an easily accessible spot, and also that it is as much at home in my left hand as in my right."

Like a bull goaded to fury Stoutenburg made a second and more vigorous thrust at his opponent. But Diogenes was already on guard: calm, very quiet in his movements in the manner of the perfect swordsman.

Stoutenburg, hot with rage, impetuous and clumsy, was at once at a disadvantage whilst this foreign adventurer, entirely self-possessed and good-humoured, had the art of the sword at his finger-tips--the art of perfect self-control, the art of not rushing to the attack, the supreme art of waiting for an opportunity.

No feint or thrust at first, only on guard, quietly on guard, and Bucephalus seemed to be infinitely multiplied at times so quickly did the bright steel flash out in the grey light and then subside again.

Stoutenburg was at once conscious of his own disadvantage. He was no match for this brilliant sword play; his opponent did indeed appear to be only playing with him, but Stoutenburg felt all the time that the abominable knave might disarm him at any moment if he were so minded.

Nor could he see very clearly: the pa.s.sionate blood in him had rushed to his head and was beating furiously in his temples, whilst the other man with the additional advantage of a good position against the wall, kept up a perfect fusillade of good-humoured comments.

"Well attacked, my lord!" he cried gaily, "Dondersteen! were I as fat as your Magnificence supposes, your sword would ere now have made a hole in my side. Pity I am not broader, is it not? or more in the way of your sword. There," he added as with a quick and sudden turn of the wrist he knocked his opponent's weapon out of his hand, "allow me to return you this most useful sword."

He had already stooped and picked up Stoutenburg's sword, and now was holding it with slender finger tips by the point of its blade, and smiling, urbane and mocking, he held it out at arm's length, bowing the while with courtly, ironical grace.

"Shall we call Jan, my lord," he said airily, "or one of your friends to aid you? Some of them I noticed just now seemed somewhat in a hurry to quit this hospitable molens, but mayhap one or two are still lingering behind."

Stoutenburg, blind with rage, had s.n.a.t.c.hed his sword back out of the scoffer's hand. He knew that the man was only playing with him, only keeping him busy here to prevent his going to Gilda. This thought threw him into a frenzy of excitement and not heeding the other's jeers he cried out at the top of his voice:

"Jan! Jan! Nicolaes! What-ho!"

And the other man putting his hand up to his mouth also shouted l.u.s.tily:

"Jan! Nicolaes! What ho!"

Had Stoutenburg been less blind and deaf to aught save to his own hatred and his own fury, he would have heard not many paces away, the sound of horses' hoofs upon the hard ground, the champing of bits, the jingle of harness. But of this he did not think, not just yet. His thoughts were only of Gilda, and that man was holding the door of the hut because he meant to dispute with him the possession of Gilda. He cast aside all sense of pride and shame. He was no match with a foreign mercenary, whose profession was that of arms; there was no disgrace in his want of skill. But he would not yield the ground to this adventurer who meant to s.n.a.t.c.h Gilda away from him. After all the man had a wounded shoulder and a lacerated hip; with the aid of Jan and of Nicolaes he could soon be rendered helpless.

New hope rose in the Lord of Stoutenburg's heart, giving vigour to his arm. Now he heard the sound of running footsteps behind him; Jan was coming to his aid and there were others; Nicolaes no doubt and Heemskerk.

"My lord! my lord!" cried Jan, horrified at what he saw. He had heard the clang of steel against steel and had caught up the first sword that came to his hand. His calls and those of Stoutenburg as well as the more l.u.s.ty ones of Diogenes reached the ears of Beresteyn, who with his friend Heemskerk was making a final survey of the molens, to search for compromising papers that might have been left about. They too heard the cries and the clash of steel; they ran down the steps of the molens, only to meet Jan who was hurrying toward the hut with all his might.

"I think my lord is being attacked," shouted Jan as he flew past, "and the jongejuffrouw is still in the hut."

These last words dissipated Nicolaes Beresteyn's sudden thoughts of cowardice. He too s.n.a.t.c.hed up a sword and followed by Heemskerk he ran in Jan's wake.

The stranger, so lately a prisoner condemned to hang, was in the doorway of the hut, with his back to it, his sword in his left hand keeping my Lord of Stoutenburg at arm's length. Jan, Nicolaes and Heemskerk were on him in a trice.

"Two, three, how many of you?" queried Diogenes with a laugh, as with smart riposte he met the three blades which suddenly flashed out against him. "Ah, Mynheer Beresteyn, my good Jan, I little thought that I would see you again."

"Let me pa.s.s, man," cried Beresteyn, "I must to my sister."

"Not yet, friend," he replied, "till I know what your intentions are."

For one instant Beresteyn appeared to hesitate. The kindly sentiment which had prompted him awhile ago to speak sympathetic words to a condemned man who had taken so much guilt upon his shoulders, still fought in his heart against his hatred for the man himself. Since that tragic moment at the foot of the gallows which had softened his mood, Beresteyn had learnt that it was this man who had betrayed him and his friends to the Stadtholder, and guessed that it was Gilda who had instigated or bribed him into that betrayal. And now the present position seemed to bring vividly before his mind the picture of that afternoon in the "Lame Cow" at Haarlem, when the knave whom he had paid to keep Gilda safely out of the way was bargaining with his father to bring her back to him.

All the hatred of the past few days--momentarily lulled in the face of a tragedy--rose up once more with renewed intensity in his heart. Here was the man who had betrayed him, and who, triumphant, was about to take Gilda back to Haarlem and receive a fortune for his reward.

While Heemskerk, doubtful and hesitating, marvelled if 'twere wise to take up Stoutenburg's private quarrels rather than follow his other friends to Scheveningen where safety lay, Jan and Beresteyn vigorously aided by Stoutenburg made a concerted attack upon the knave.

But it seemed as easy for Bucephalus to deal with three blades as with one: now it appeared to have three tongues of pale grey flame that flashed hither and thither;--backwards, forwards, left, right, above, below, parry, riposte, an occasional thrust, and always quietly on guard.

Diogenes was in his greatest humour laughing and shouting with glee. To anyone less blind with excitement than were these men it would soon have been clear that he was shouting for the sole purpose of making a noise, a noise louder than the hammerings, the jinglings, the knocking that was going on at the back of the hut.

To right and left of the front of the small building a high wooden paling ran for a distance of an hundred paces or so enclosing a rough yard with a shed in the rear. It was impossible to see over the palings what was going on behind them and so loudly did the philosopher shout and laugh, and so vigorously did steel strike against steel that it was equally impossible to perceive the sounds that came from there.

But suddenly Stoutenburg was on the alert: something had caught his ear, a sound that rose above the din that was going on in the doorway ... a woman's piercing shriek. Even the clang of steel could not drown it, nor the l.u.s.ty shouts of the fighting philosopher.

For a second he strained his ear to listen. It seemed as if invisible hands were suddenly tearing down the wooden palisade that hid the rear of the small building from his view; before his mental vision a whole picture rose to sight. A window at the back of the hut broken in, Gilda carried away by the friends of this accursed adventurer--Jan had said that two came to his aid at the foot of the gallows--Maria screaming, the sledge in wait, the horses ready to start.

"My G.o.d, I had not thought of that," he cried, "Jan! Nicolaes! in Heaven's name! Gilda! After me! quick!"

And then he starts to run, skirting the palisade in the direction whence come now quite distinctly that ceaseless rattle, that jingle and stamping of the ground which proclaims the presence of horses on the point of departure.

"Jan, in Heaven's name, follow me!" cries Stoutenburg, pausing one instant ere he rounds the corner of the palisade. "Nicolaes, leave that abominable knave! Gilda, I tell you! Gilda! They are carrying her away!"

Jan already has obeyed, grasping his sword he does not pause to think.

My lord has called and 'tis my lord whom he follows. He runs after Stoutenburg as fast as his tired limbs will allow. Heemskerk, forgetting his own fears in the excitement of this hand-to-hand combat, follows in their wake.

Nicolaes, too, at Stoutenburg's call, is ready to follow him.

He turns to run when a grasp of iron falls upon his arm, holding it like a vice. He could have screamed with the pain, and the sword which he held falls out of his nerveless fingers. The next moment he feels himself dragged by that same iron grasp through the open door into the hut, and hears the door slammed to and locked behind him.

"Your pardon if I have been rough, mynheer," said Diogenes' pleasant voice, "but there was no time to argue outside that door and you seemed in such a mighty hurry to run straight into that yawning abyss of disgrace."

The grasp upon his arm had not relaxed, but it no longer hurt. Yet it was so firm and so absolute that Nicolaes felt powerless to wrench himself away.

"Let me go!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely.

"Not just yet, mynheer," rejoined Diogenes coolly, "not while this hot temper is upon you. Let the Lord of Stoutenburg and our friend Jan fight to their heart's content with a fat philosopher who is well able to hold his own against them, while the other who is lean and a moderately good coachman sees that a pair of horses do not rear and bolt during the fray."

"Let me go, man, I tell you," cried Beresteyn who was making frantic efforts to free himself from that slender white grapnel which held his arm as in a vice.

"One moment longer, mynheer, and you shall go. The horses of which I speak are harnessed to a sledge wherein is the jongejuffrouw your sister."

"Yes! verdommte Keerl! let me get to her or...."

"As soon as the fat philosopher has disposed of the Lord of Stoutenburg and of Jan he too will jump into the sledge and a minute later will be speeding on its way to Haarlem."

"And there will be three of us left here to hang you to that same gallows on which you should have dangled an hour ago," exclaimed Beresteyn savagely.

"Possibly," retorted Diogenes dryly, "but even so your sister will be on the way to Haarlem rather than to exile--whither the Lord of Stoutenburg and you--her brother--would drag her."