The Laughing Cavalier

If the snow had come down again or the weather been colder, or wetter, or other than it was⁠ ⁠…

If one of the three men had been more thirsty, or the other more insistent.⁠ ⁠…

If it had been any other day of the year, or any other hour of any other day.⁠ ⁠…

If the three philosophers had taken their walk abroad in any other portion of the city of Haarlem.⁠ ⁠…

If.⁠ ⁠…

Nay! but there’s no end to the Ifs which I might adduce in order to prove to you beyond a doubt that but for an extraordinary conglomeration of minor circumstances, the events which I am about to relate neither would nor could ever have taken place.

For indeed you must admit that had the snow come down again or the weather been colder, or wetter, the three philosophers would mayhap all have felt that priceless thirst and desire for comfort which the interior of a well-administered tavern doth so marvellously assuage. And had it been any other day of the year or any other hour of that same last day of the year 1623, those three philosophers would never have thought of whiling away the penultimate hour of the dying year by hanging round the Grootemarkt in order to see the respectable mynheer burghers and the mevrouws their wives, filing into the cathedral in a sober and orderly procession, with large silver-clasped Bibles under their arms, and that air of satisfied unctuousness upon their faces which is best suited to the solemn occasion of watch-night service, and the desire to put oneself right with Heaven before commencing a New Year of commercial and industrial activity.

“Papists! Spanish spies!” roared the crowd in unison.

“Shall we bait the Papists too, O Diogenes?” came in dulcet tones from out the shadow of the stuccoed wall.

“Bah! women and old men, and only twenty of these,” said his companion with a laugh and a shrug of his broad shoulders, “whilst there are at least an hundred of the others.”

“More amusing certainly,” growled Socrates under the brim of his hat.

“For the love of Christ,” wailed the woman piteously, as her bare feet buried in the snow finally slid away from the protecting threshold, and she appeared in the full light of the resin torches, with black unkempt hair, ragged shift and kirtle and a wild terror-stricken look in her black eyes.

“Black eyes! I guessed as much!” shouted one of the men excitedly. “Spaniards I tell you, friends! Spanish spies all of them! Out you come, wench! out you come!”

“Out you come!” yelled the crowd. “Papists! Spanish spies!”

The woman gave a scream of wild terror as half a dozen stones hurled from the rear of the crowd over the heads of the ringleaders came crashing against the wall and the gate all around her.

One of these stones was caught in mid air.

“I thank thee, friend,” cried a loud, mocking voice that rang clearly above the din, “my nose was itching and thou didst strive to tickle it most effectually. Tell me does thine itch too? Here’s a good cloth wherewith to wipe it.”

“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.

“Who spoke of hurting her, man?” queried Nicolaes haughtily.

“This abduction⁠—the State secret⁠—the matter of life and death⁠—the faithful dependent⁠—how do I know, sir, that all this is true?”

“On the word of honour of a gentleman!” retorted Beresteyn hotly.

“A gentleman’s honour is easily attenuated where a woman is concerned.”

“The lady is my own sister, sir.”

Diogenes gave a long, low whistle.

“Your sister!” he exclaimed.

“My only sister and one who is dearly loved. You see, sir, that her safety and her honour are dearer to me than mine own.”

“Yet you propose entrusting both to me,” said Diogenes with a mocking laugh, “to me, a nameless adventurer, a penniless wastrel whose trade lies in his sword and his wits.”

“Which must prove to you, sir, firstly how true are my instincts, and secondly how hardly I am pressed. My instinct last night told me that in this transaction I could trust you. Today I have realized more fully than I did last night that my sister is a deadly danger to many, to our country and to our Faith. She surprised a secret, the knowledge of which had she been a man would have meant death then and there in the chapel of the cathedral. Had it been a brother of mine instead of a sister who surprised our secret, my friends would have killed him without compunction and I would not have raised a finger to save him.

It opened outwards, and the passage beyond was pitch dark, but there in front of him now, white as a ghost, white as the garment which she wore, white as the marble statue of the Madonna which he had seen in the cathedral at Prague, stood the jongejuffrouw.

The candle which she carried flickered in the draught, and thus flickering it lit up her large blue eyes which she kept fixed upon him with an expression half defiant yet wholly terrified.

Frankly he thought at first that this was an apparition, a vivid embodiment of the fevered fancies which had been haunting him. No wonder therefore that he made no movement toward her, or expressed the slightest astonishment at seeing her there, all alone, in the middle of the night, not five paces away from him.

Thus they stood looking at one another for some time in absolute silence; she obviously very frightened, hesitating betwixt audacity and immediate flight, and he puzzled and with a vague sense of unreality upon him, a sense as of a dream which yet had in it the pulsating vividness of life.

She was the first to break this silence which was beginning to be oppressive. Gilda Beresteyn was not a timid woman nor was hers a character which ever vacillated once her mind was made up.