Leatherface

"Disdain, Messire ... surely I..."

"Surely," he broke in gently, "you have every right to despise a worthless fellow whom an evil Chance hath given you for husband, but have I not been punished enough for daring to accept what the kind G.o.ddess did offer me?"

"I had no thought of punishing you, Messire," she said earnestly. "When I stood beside you at the altar, I was a broken-hearted woman to whom Fate in the person of a miserable a.s.sa.s.sin had dealt a cruel blow. I loved my cousin, Messire ... oh! I know," she broke in quietly, "I ought not to speak of this ... it is unseemly and perhaps unkind ... but I did love him and he was murdered ... foully, abominably, wickedly murdered ... not killed in fair fight--not openly--but in a dark pa.s.sage--waylaid by a brigand ... killed! he! the only man who had ever spoken tenderly to me! ... and killed by one of your own people ... a friend of the Prince of Orange ... a man whom popular talk hath nicknamed Leatherface.... Oh! I know," she added hastily, seeing that instinctively he had drawn away from her and was now staring straight into the fire, with a hard expression on his face which she could not fathom, "I know that you have no hand in these conspiracies ... that from indifference rather than loyalty, I believe you have never taken up the cause of rebellion against our Sovereign Lord; but tell me, Messire, could I--a young, inexperienced girl--could I dissociate you and yours in my mind from that faction who had sent my kinsman to his death? could I come to you with a whole heart, and a soul freed from all thoughts of hatred and revenge? I meant to do my duty by you and had you but helped me I might have succeeded--instead of which your coldness repelled me.

I am of the south, Messire, I am not one of your cold, unemotional Netherlanders who can go through life without one thrill of the heart brought on by a tender word or a caress. I was in your house but a few hours and already my soul was starving--my heart craved for that which you were not able to give."

"G.o.d forgive me, Madonna," he murmured, "for a blind, insensate fool!"

But he did not look at her as he said this, and there was a curious dreary tone in his voice so unlike his usual light-hearted gaiety. "How you must hate us all!" he added with a sigh.

"I would not hate you, Messire," she said so softly that he scarcely could hear; "your brother Laurence hath been kind to me and I know that you take no part in those miserable plots that have treachery and a.s.sa.s.sination for their ultimate goal. As for the Prince of Orange and his friends! Yes! I do hate them as I do all pestilential creatures that turn on the hand that feeds them!"

"Madonna," he exclaimed hotly--and suddenly he was quite close to her once again, both her little hands held tightly in his own: his eyes had lost all their merriment: they were full of a glowing ardour which seemed to penetrate into her very soul. "Madonna," he continued, "may G.o.d forgive you, for indeed you know not what you say. Child! child!

will you think a moment--are we not human creatures like yourself? do we not live and breathe, and eat and love just like you do in Spain? Have we no hearts to feel, no eyes to see the misery which our people suffer through the presence of a stranger in our land? Would you see a Teuton place his iron heel on Spain and on her people? Would you see the Emperor enforce his laws, his faith, his ideals upon your kith and kin?

Would you stand by whilst foreign soldiery swaggered about your cities, outraged your women and plundered your homes? Would you rest content if the faith which G.o.d hath given you was made akin to treachery and to rebellion? The hand that feeds the Netherlands, Madonna!" he added whilst a bitter, mirthless laugh escaped his lips, "nay! the hand against which the valiant Prince of Orange hath raised his in vengeance, is the hand that hath devastated our land, pillaged our cities and sent our people naked and starving out into the world!"

Gradually while he spoke she had drawn herself away from him, and she would have disengaged her hands too, only that he held them so tightly imprisoned.

"But Ramon was murdered, Messire," she said slowly, "can you expect me to forget that?--and even now--I would dare swear--there are men who would murder the Duke of Alva if they could ... or my father."

He made no answer to that--perhaps had she not mentioned her father he might have tried to tell her that killing was not always murder, but, at times, the work of a justiciary. Ramon--like the noisome brute that he was--deserved death as no mere ordinary criminal ever had deserved it.

But how could he tell her that, when in her heart she had evidently kept a picture of the man so totally unlike the vile and execrable reality?

So now he only sighed and remained silent.

The time had not yet come when this exquisite, tender-hearted girl must see the riddles of life solved before her one by one--when she would realise that there is a wider horizon in this world than that which she perceived above a convent wall. She had been brought up with ideals, thoughts and aspirations that had nothing to do with the great and bitter truths which were proclaimed in every corner of this downtrodden land. Her ideas of King and country, of duty, of loyalty, must all be shattered by the crude realities of life ere upon their ruins she built for herself a purer, holier edifice of faith and hope and infinite charity.

A tender pity for her innocence and her ignorance filled Mark"s heart and soul, A maddening desire seized him to fold her in his arms and carry her away somewhere into a dream-world far away where there were no intrigues and no cruelties, no oppression and misery: and yet again he would have loved to go with her there where sorrow and poverty were keenest, for he knew that her soul--unbeknown even to herself--was full of that gentle compa.s.sion which knows how to alleviate pain just by a look from tear-dimmed eyes, or a touch from a gentle hand.

All that and more his look conveyed to her although he remained silent, and she--by a curious intuition--knew just what was in his mind. The impa.s.sioned appeal which he had made to her just now, told her that he was not the indifferent ne"er-do-well that every one supposed. He felt deeply and keenly--more deeply and keenly mayhap than those men who plotted murders at dead of night. He was not a blind follower of the Lieutenant-Governor or of her father: he saw the misery under which his people groaned, and his careless, detached air obviously hid intense bitterness and resentment.

But strangely enough, she did not blame him for this. Suddenly she seemed to see the whole aspect of this strange country under a new light: the cause of the Netherlanders had--in one instant--appeared to her from a wholly different point of view. Because Mark was their defender and their champion she felt that they could not be wholly vile.

This, mayhap, was not logic, but it was something more potent, more real than logic--the soft insinuating voice of Sentiment which whispered: "Would he champion that cause if it were base? Would that fiery ardour fill his soul for a cause that was unworthy?"

And Lenora suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to confide in this one man; to place before him all the perplexities which were tearing her soul. Somehow she felt that he would help her out of that tangled labyrinth wherein she had been groping all night and all day; but shyness held her back. She did not know how to broach the subject, how to tell him all about her oath, her obedience to her father, what she had done last night, what she thought it her duty to do in the future.

It was all very difficult and Lenora sighed wearily:

"There is so much in what you said just now, Messire," she began timidly, "that I would like to understand more clearly. I am so ignorant ... my life has been so restricted ... I know so little of the world...."

"Will you let me give you a few lessons?" he queried softly. "There are so many mazes in life through which it is only possible to find the way by going hand in hand."

"Hand in hand?" she sighed. "I am a stranger in this strange land, Messire ... all that I know of it hath been taught me by those who have no love for it...."

"You are a stranger in this whole world, dear heart," he said with a smile. "This little bit of Netherlands is but a tiny corner of it: its sorrows, its joys, its pain and happiness are but the sorrows and happiness of the rest of the world. One day perhaps you will let me take your little hand in mine, and then we would go and explore the whole of this strange world together."

"I wonder what we would find?" she mused.

"We would find that despite intrigues and cruelty and hatred there is much in it that is still beautiful and pure. If we went hand in hand, you and I, we would not wander with eyes downcast and seeking in the mud for the noxious things which foul G.o.d"s creation by their presence--we would look upwards, sweet, and see the soft blue of our northern skies, veiled as it so often is with silvery mists that hold the entire gamut of exquisite colours in their fairy bosoms; we would see the green leaves of the trees turn to russet and gold in the autumn, we would see the linnets nesting in the bay trees in the spring. There are many beautiful things in this dreary world of ours, dear heart, but they can only be seen if two pairs of eyes look on them at one and the same time and two pairs of lips whisper together in thankfulness to G.o.d."

How strange it was to hear him talking like this--Mark van Rycke, the haunter of taverns and careless profligate. Lenora"s eyes, dark, luminous, enquiring, were fixed upon him--and gradually as he spoke his arm stole closer and closer round her shoulders as it had done two nights ago in Ghent when she had so wantonly turned on him in hatred.

Now she felt as if she could go on listening to him for hours and hours--thus alone in this semi-darkness with the glow of dying embers upon his face, showing the strong outline of cheek and jaw, and the fine sweep of the forehead with the straight brows above those kind, grey eyes. She could have listened because she loved the sound of his voice, and the quaint, foreign intonation wherewith he spoke the Spanish tongue.

No! of a truth she did not dislike him: certainly she had no cause for hatred against him, for what had he to do with traitors or with a.s.sa.s.sins, he who spoke so gently of birds and skies and trees?

"If you will still let me hold this little hand, dear heart," he whispered now, speaking so low that in order to hear she had to lower her head until his lips were quite close to her ear, "we could learn one lesson together which G.o.d only teaches to His elect."

"And what lesson is that?" she asked, feigning not to understand, though she knew quite well what the answer would be.

"That which the nightingale teaches its mate when in May the hawthorn is in bloom and the west wind whispers among its leaves. The lesson of love."

"Love?" she said with a strange tremour in her voice, "the world no longer contains love for me...."

"The world perhaps not, dear sweet," he said more gaily, "but there is a heart beating close to yours now which holds I swear an infinity of love for you."

And once more as he spoke, the same magic spell of a while ago descended upon Lenora. It seemed as if for the moment life--the dreary, wretched life of the past few days--had ceased, and a kind of dream-existence had begun. And in this dream-existence she--Lenora--was all alone with this stranger--this man whom but a few days ago she had not even seen--who had had no part in her life in the peaceful past when she knew nothing of the world beyond the old convent walls at Segovia; yet now--in the dream-existence--she was alone with him and she was content. Ramon was not there--he had become the past--all the future for her seemed suddenly to be bound up with Mark, and she was content. He had spoken of beauty, of skies, of birds and of the gifts of G.o.d, and he still held her hand, and his arm now was right round her, so that she could feel him drawing her closer and closer to him, the while the magic spell worked upon her senses and she felt a delicious languor pervading her entire being.

"Give me your lips, sweetheart," he whispered in her ear, "and I"ll give you your first lesson even now."

And verily I do believe that Lenora would have yielded here and now--content to leave the great solution of her life"s riddle in the omnipotent hands of love--forgetting her oath to her father, the death of Ramon, the danger which threatened the Duke of Alva, conspiracies, treacheries, rebellion ... everything! What did it all matter? what did the world and its intrigues and its politics count beside the insistent, the wonderful call of Love?--the call of man to woman, of bird to bird, to mate and to nest and to be happy, to forget the universe in one embrace, to renounce the kingdoms of the world in the first blissful kiss.

For a few seconds Lenora remained quite still, while Happiness--the strange and mysterious elf--fluttered softly about the room. It hovered for awhile above that ingle-nook where two young hearts were mutely calling one to another, and it looked down on the beautiful girl with the glowing eyes and parted lips who with every fibre of her ardent being and the insistence of her youth was ready to capture it....

And Chance, Fate or its own elusive nature drove it relentlessly away.

III

How peaceful was the sleepy little town at this moment when dusk finally faded into night!

The tower bells of the Cloth Hall chimed the sixth hour: outside on the Grand" Place all had been still save for the occasional footstep of a pa.s.ser-by or the measured tramp of a company of halberdiers on duty.

And now suddenly that peace was broken, the quietude of the town disturbed by piercing woman"s shrieks, followed by shouts and curses uttered loudly by a rough, masculine voice.

Mark instinctively jumped to his feet; the cries had become pitiable and were multiplied by others which seemed to come from children"s throats, and the shouts and curses became more peremptory and more rough.

"What is it?" asked Lenora, not a little frightened.

"Oh! the usual thing," replied Mark hastily, "a woman insulted in the streets, vain protests, rough usage, outrage and probably murder. We are used to such incidents in Flanders," he added quietly.

Already he was half way across the _tapperij_.

"You are going?" she queried anxiously, "whither?"

"Out into the street," he said, "can you not hear that a woman is in distress?"

"But what can you do?" she urged, "the soldiers are there ... you cannot interfere ... you, a Netherlander...."