Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch by H. Rider Haggard (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

Another minute, and Foy was wringing him by the hand, saying in his loud voice, “How are you, old fellow? You look as well as possible, what are you lying in this bed for and being fed with pap by the women?”

“For the love of Heaven, Foy,” interrupted Adrian, “stop crushing my fingers and shaking me as though I were a rat. You mean it kindly, I know, but—” and Adrian dropped back upon the pillow, coughed and looked hectic and interesting.

Then both the women fell upon Foy, upbraiding him for his roughness, begging him to remember that if he were not careful he might kill his brother, whose arteries were understood to be in a most precarious condition, till the poor man covered his ears with his hands and waited till he saw their lips stop moving.

“I apologise,” he said. “I won’t touch him, I won’t speak loud near him. Adrian, do you hear?”

“Who could help it?” moaned the prostrate Adrian.

“Cousin Foy,” interrupted Elsa, clasping her hands and looking up into his face with her big brown eyes, “forgive me, but I can wait no longer. Tell me, did you see or hear anything of my father yonder at The Hague?”

“Yes, cousin, I saw him,” answered Foy presently.

“And how was he—oh! and all the rest of them?”

“He was well.”

“And free and in no danger?”

“And free, but I cannot say in no danger. We are all of us in danger nowadays, cousin,” replied Foy in the same quiet voice.

“Oh! thank God for that,” said Elsa.

“Little enough to thank God for,” muttered Martin, who had entered the room and was standing behind Foy looking like a giant at a show. Elsa had turned her face away, so Foy struck backwards with all his force, hitting Martin in the pit of the stomach with the point of his elbow. Martin doubled himself up, recoiled a step and took the hint.

“Well, son, what news?” said Dirk, speaking for the first time.

“News!” answered Foy, escaping joyfully from this treacherous ground. “Oh! lots of it. Look here,” and plunging his hands into his pockets he produced first the half of the broken dagger and secondly a long skinny finger of unwholesome hue with a gold ring on it.

“Bah!” said Adrian. “Take that horrid thing away.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon,” answered Foy, shuffling the finger back into his pocket, “you don’t mind the dagger, do you? No? Well, then, mother, that mail shirt of yours is the best that was ever made; this knife broke on it like a carrot, though, by the way, it’s uncommonly sticky wear when you haven’t changed it for three days, and I shall be glad enough to get it off.”

“Evidently Foy has a story to tell,” said Adrian wearily, “and the sooner he rids his mind of it the sooner he will be able to wash. I suggest, Foy, that you should begin at the beginning.”

So Foy began at the beginning, and his tale proved sufficiently moving to interest even the soul-worn Adrian. Some portions of it he softened down, and some of it he suppressed for the sake of Elsa—not very successfully, indeed, for Foy was no diplomatist, and her quick imagination filled the gaps. Another part—that which concerned her future and his own—of necessity he omitted altogether. He told them very briefly, however, of the flight from The Hague, of the sinking of the Government boat, of the run through the gale to the Haarlem Mere with the dead pilot on board and the Spanish ship behind, and of the secret midnight burying of the treasure.

“Where did you bury it?” asked Adrian.

“I have not the slightest idea,” said Foy. “I believe there are about three hundred islets in that part of the Mere, and all I know is that we dug a hole in one of them and stuck it in. However,” he went on in a burst of confidence, “we made a map of the place, that is—” Here he broke off with a howl of pain, for an accident had happened.

While this narrative was proceeding, Martin, who was standing by him saying “Ja” and “Neen” at intervals, as Adrian foresaw he would, had unbuckled the great sword Silence, and in an abstracted manner was amusing himself by throwing it towards the ceiling hilt downwards, and as it fell catching it in his hand. Now, most unaccountably, he looked the other way and missed his catch, with the result that the handle of the heavy weapon fell exactly upon Foy’s left foot and then clattered to the ground.

“You awkward beast!” roared Foy, “you have crushed my toes,” and he hopped towards a chair upon one leg.

“Your pardon, master,” said Martin. “I know it was careless; my mother always told me that I was careless, but so was my father before me.”

Adrian, overcome by the fearful crash, closed his eyes and sighed.

“Look,” said Lysbeth in a fury, “he is fainting; I knew that would be the end of all your noise. If you are not careful we shall have him breaking another vessel. Go out of the room, all of you. You can finish telling the story downstairs,” and she drove them before her as a farmer’s wife drives fowls.

“Martin,” said Foy on the stairs, where they found themselves together for a minute, for at the first signs of the storm Dirk had preceded them, “why did you drop that accursed great sword of yours upon my foot?”

“Master,” countered Martin imperturbably, “why did you hit me in the pit of the stomach with your elbow?”

“To keep your tongue quiet.”

“And what is the name of my sword?”

“Silence.”

“Well, then, I dropped the sword ‘Silence’ for the same reason. I hope it hasn’t hurt you much, but if it did I can’t help it.”

Foy wheeled round. “What do you mean, Martin?”

“I mean,” answered the great man with energy, “that you have no right to tell what became of that paper which Mother Martha gave us.”

“Why not? I have faith in my brother.”

“Very likely, master, but that isn’t the point. We carry a great secret, and this secret is a trust, a dangerous trust; it would be wrong to lay its burden upon the shoulders of other folk. What people don’t know they can’t tell, master.”

Foy still stared at him, half in question, half in anger, but Martin made no further reply in words. Only he went through certain curious motions, motions as of a man winding slowly and laboriously at something like a pump wheel. Foy’s lips turned pale.

“The rack?” he whispered. Martin nodded, and answered beneath his breath,

“They may all of them be on it yet. You let the man in the boat escape, and that man was the Spanish spy, Ramiro; I am sure of it. If they don’t know they can’t tell, and though we know we shan’t tell; we shall die first, master.”

Now Foy trembled and leaned against the wall. “What would betray us?” he asked.

“Who knows, master? A woman’s torment, a man’s—” and he put a strange meaning into his voice, “a man’s—jealousy, or pride, or vengeance. Oh! bridle your tongue and trust no one, no, not your father or mother, or sweetheart, or—” and again that strange meaning came into Martin’s voice, “or brother.”

“Or you?” queried Foy, looking up.

“I am not sure. Yes, I think you may trust me, though there is no knowing how the rack might change a man’s mind.”

“If all this be so,” said Foy, with a flush of sudden passion, “I have said too much already.”

“A great deal too much, master. If I could have managed it I should have dropped the sword Silence on your toe long before. But I couldn’t, for the Heer Adrian was watching me, and I had to wait till he closed his eyes, which he did to hear the better without seeming to listen.”

“You are unjust to Adrian, Martin, as you always have been, and I am angry with you. Say, what is to be done now?”

“Now, master,” replied Martin cheerfully, “you must forget the teaching of the Pastor Arentz, and tell a lie. You must take up your tale where you left it off, and say that we made a map of the hiding-place, but that—I—being a fool—managed to drop it while we were lighting the fuses, so that it was blown away with the ship. I will tell the same story.”

“Am I to say this to my father and mother?”

“Certainly, and they will quite understand why you say it. My mistress was getting uneasy already, and that was why she drove us from the room. You will tell them that the treasure is buried but that the secret of its hiding-place was lost.”

“Even so, Martin, it is not lost; Mother Martha knows it, and they all will guess that she does know it.”

“Why, master, as it happened you were in such a hurry to get on with your story that I think you forgot to mention that she was present at the burying of the barrels. Her name was coming when I dropped the sword upon your foot.”

“But she boarded and fired the Spanish ship—so the man Ramiro and his companion would probably have seen her.”

“I doubt, master, that the only person who saw her was he whose gizzard she split, and he will tell no tales. Probably they think it was you or I who did that deed. But if she was seen, or if they know that she has the secret, then let them get it from Mother Martha. Oh! mares can gallop and ducks can dive and snakes can hide in the grass. When they can catch the wind and make it give up its secrets, when they can charm from sword Silence the tale of the blood which it has drunk throughout the generations, when they can call back the dead saints from heaven and stretch them anew within the torture-pit, then and not before, they will win knowledge of the hoard’s hiding-place from the lips of the witch of Haarlem Meer. Oh! master, fear not for her, the grave is not so safe.”

“Why did you not caution me before, Martin?”

“Because, master,” answered Martin stolidly, “I did not think that you would be such a fool. But I forgot that you are young—yes, I forget that you are young and good, too good for the days we live in. It is my fault. On my head be it.”