The First Sir Percy - Baroness Orczy (fastest ebook reader .txt) 📗

her cheek. Away! Across the ocean to that stately home in England, where the spring air was soft with the scent of violets and of fruit blossom, and where beside the river the reeds murmured a soft accompaniment to songs of passion and hymns of love. Away from all save the shrine which he had set up for her in his heart; from all save the haven of his arms.

To feel that, and then be forced to sit and discuss plans for the undoing of the Spanish commander or for the relief of Arnheim, was, in fact, more than Diogenes’ restive temperament could stand. His attention began to wander, his answers became evasive; so much so that, after a while, the Stadtholder, eyeing him closely, remarked with the pale ghost of a smile:

“ ’Tis no use fretting and fuming, my friend. Your English blood is too mutinous for this sober country and its multitude of stodgy conventions. One of these demands that your bride shall sit here till the last of the guests has departed, and only a few fussy and interfering old tantes are left to unrobe her and commiserate with her over her future lot⁠—a slave to a bullying husband, a handmaid to her exacting lord. Every middle-aged frump in the Netherlands hath some story to tell that will bring tears to a young bride’s eyes or a blush to her cheeks.”

“Please God,” Diogenes ejaculated fervently. “Gilda will be spared that.”

“Impossible, you rogue!” the Stadtholder retorted, amused despite his moodiness by the soldier’s fretful temper. “The conventions⁠—”

“Verfloekt will be the conventions as far as we are concerned,” Diogenes rejoined hotly. “And if your Highness would but help⁠—” he added impulsively.

“I? What can I do?”

“Give the signal for dispersal,” Diogenes entreated; “and graciously promise to forgive me if, for the first time in my life, I act with disrespect toward your Highness.”

“But, man, how will that help you?” the Stadtholder demurred.

“I must get away from all this wearying bombast, this jabbering and scraping and all these puppy-tricks!” Diogenes exclaimed with comical fierceness. “I must get away ere my wife becomes a doll and a puppet, tossed into my arms by a lot of irresponsible monkeys! If I have to stay here much longer, your Highness,” he added earnestly “I vow that I shall flee from it all, leave an angel to weep for my abominable desertion of what I hold more priceless than all the world, and an outraged father to curse the day when so reckless an adventurer crossed his daughter’s path. But stand this any longer I cannot!” he concluded, and, with a quick sweep of the arm, he pointed to the chattering, buzzing crowd below. “And if your Highness will not help me⁠—”

“Who said I would not help you, you hotheaded rashling?” the Stadtholder broke in composedly. “You know very well that I can refuse you nothing, not even the furtherance of one of your madcap schemes. And as for disrespect⁠—why, as you say, in the midst of so much bowing and scraping some of us are eager for disrespect as an aging spinster for amorous overtures. By way of a change, you know.”

He spoke quite simply and with an undercurrent of genuine sympathy in his tone, as a man towards his friend. Something of the old Maurice of Nassau seemed for the moment to have swept aside the arbitrary tyrant whom men had learned to hate as well as to obey. Diogenes’ irascible mood melted suddenly in the sunshine of the Stadtholder’s indulgent smile, the mocking glance faded out of his eyes, and he said with unwonted earnestness:

“No wonder that men have gone to death or to glory under your leadership.”

“Would you follow me again if I called?” the prince retorted.

“Your Highness hath no need of me. The United Provinces are free, her burghers are free men. ’Tis time to sheathe the sword, and a man might be allowed, methinks, to dream of happiness.”

“Is your happiness bound up with the mad scheme for which you want my help?”

“Ay, my dear lord!” Diogenes replied. “And, secure in your gracious promise, I swear that naught can keep me from the scheme now save mine own demise.”

“There are more arbitrary things than death, my friend,” the Stadtholder mused.

“Possibly, your Highness,” the soldier answered lightly; “but not for me tonight.”

VI

More than one chronicler of the time hath averred that Maurice of Nassau had in truth a soft corner in his heart for the man who had saved him from the bomb prepared by the Lord of Stoutenburg, and would yield to the “Laughing Cavalier” when others, less privileged, were made to feel the weight of his arbitrary temper. Be that as it may, he certainly on this occasion was as good as his word. Wearied with all these endless ceremonials, he was no doubt glad enough to take his departure, and anon he gave the signal for a general breaking up of the party by rising, and, in a loud voice, thanking Mynheer Beresteyn for his lavish hospitality.

“An you will pardon this abrupt departure,” he concluded with unwonted graciousness, “I would fain get to horse. By starting within the hour, I could reach Utrecht before dark.”

All the guests had risen, too, and there was the usual hubbub and noise attendant on the dispersal of so large a party. That Stadtholder stepped down from the dais, Mynheer Beresteyn and the English physician remaining by his side, while the bridal party brought up the rear. Room was made for his Highness to walk down the room, the men standing bareheaded and the women curtseying as he passed. But he did not speak to anyone, only nodded perfunctorily to those whom he knew personally. Obviously he felt ill and tired, and his moodiness was, for the most part, commented on with sympathy.

The brides and bridegrooms, on the other hand, had to withstand a veritable fusillade of banter, which Nicolaes Beresteyn received sulkily, and the solid