"And what is that?"
"That you married me without love and without wooing--bought me like a bundle of goods just because my father is powerful and yours ambitious.
A week ago we were betrothed, Messire. Since then how hath your time been pa.s.sed?"
"In wild, ecstatic half-hours spent in the presence of your duenna and sitting opposite to the chilliest bride in Christendom," he said whimsically.
"And the rest of the time in the taverns of Ghent," she retorted hotly, "and places of ill-repute."
"Who told you that?" he asked quietly.
"Oh! your reputation is well known: how could it fail to reach mine ears."
"Evil tongues always make themselves heard, Madonna," he said, still speaking very quietly, although now he sat quite apart from her, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands clasped between his knees. "I would you had not listened."
"I would I had not heard," she a.s.sented, "for then I should not have added one more humiliation to all those which I have had to endure."
"And I another regret," he said with a short sigh. "But even if evil tongues spoke true, Madonna," he continued more lightly, "the shame of my conduct would sit on me and not on you. They call me a ne"er-do-well in the city--and have it seems done so in your hearing! Well! let me plead guilty for the past and lay my contrition at your feet."
Once more the more gentle mood overcame him. The house was so still and there was something quite unaccountably sweet in this sentimental dalliance with this exquisitely beautiful woman who was his wife--sentimental indeed, for though she appeared cold and even cruelly sarcastic, he felt the strength of a fine nature in her. Here was no mere doll, mere puppet and slave of man content to take her lot as her family or her husband chose to shape it--content to endure or accept a husband"s love without more return than pa.s.sive obedience and meaningless kisses. At the back of his mind he still thought Laurence a fool, and felt how well suited two such warm natures would have been to one another, but for the moment a strange desire seized him, to win a kind look from this beautiful woman on his own account, to see her smile on him, willingly and confidingly, to win her friendship and her trust, even though no warmer feeling should ever crop up between him and her.
"Madonna," he said, and once again he dropped his knee to the ground and leaned toward her so that her warm breath touched his hand, which he placed upon hers, "there are many men in the world who ne"er do well because they have been left to the companionship of those who do equally badly. Will you deign to believe that all the evil that is in me lies very much on the surface? They call me wild and extravagant--even my mother calls me careless and shallow--but if you smiled on me, Madonna, methinks that something which lies buried deep down in my heart would stir me to an effort to become worthy of you."
His voice--habitually somewhat rough and always slightly ironical--was wonderfully gentle now. Instinctively, perhaps even against her will, Lenora turned her head slowly round and looked at him. He had never before looked so straight and closely into her eyes; and, as she bore his scrutinising glance, the warm blood slowly mounted to her cheeks.
Her face was partly in shadow, only the outline of her small head was outlined by the ruddy glow of the fire, and the tiny ear shone, transparent and crimson, like a sh.e.l.l, with the golden tendrils of her fair hair gently stirring in the draught from the wide, open hearth.
As she was excited and perhaps a little frightened, her breath came and went rapidly, and her lips were slightly parted showing a faint glimmer of pearly teeth beyond. Mark felt a sudden rush of blood to his head; to be alone with this adorable woman so close to him, to feel her panting like a young creature full of life and pa.s.sion, slightly leaning against his arm, to look into those wonderful, dark eyes and know that she was his, was indeed more than man could endure in cold blood.
The next moment he had caught her with irresistible masterfulness in both his arms and drawn her down to him as he knelt, whilst his eager lips sought hers with a mad longing for a kiss. But with an agonised cry of horror, she pushed him away with all her feeble might. For a moment she struggled in his arms like a wild creature panting for liberty and murmuring mad, incoherent words: "Let me go! Let me go! I hate you!"--the next, she was already free, and he had struggled to his feet. Now he stood at some little distance from her, looking down on her with a scared gaze and pa.s.sing his hand mechanically backwards and forwards across his brow.
"Your pardon, Madonna," he murmured, "I did not understand that you could hate me so."
The fire was burning low, and the two candles in tall sconces at the further end of the room threw but a fitful light upon that hunched up young figure in the big, high-backed chair, cowering there half frightened at her own violence, tired out with emotion, her nerves quivering after the final, tense moment which had left her exhausted and almost unconscious.
Mark could only see her dimly; the stiff folds of her wedding gown and the high starched collar were alone visible in the gloom; she had hidden her face in the cushion of the chair. Presently a sob rose to her throat, and then another, and soon she was crying just like a tired child. Mark felt that he had been a brute and was seized with an infinite pity for her.
"Madonna," he said gently, "I think I can hear Jeanne"s footstep in the corridor. May I call to her to come and attend on you?"
"I thank you, Messire," murmured Lenora, who was making a great effort to swallow her tears.
"Then I pray you dry your eyes," he pleaded, "I would be so ashamed if Jeanne saw that I had made you cry."
She looked up and even in the gloom he thought that he could see a swift smile pa.s.s across her face.
"To-morrow an you desire," he continued more lightly, "your old dragon Inez shall be here to wait on you, until then I trust that you will not feel too lonely, away from those you care for. My mother is an angel.
You will love her, I think, and my brother Laurence is learned and well-read ... my father too is kind. We will all strive, Madonna, to make you somewhat more contented with your lot."
"You mistake, Messire," she stammered, "I..."
But already he had bowed before her and bidden her a formal good-night.
She had meant to give him her hand and to ask his forgiveness, for indeed she had behaved like an ill-tempered child--a bad beginning for the role which she had sworn to play--but he had gone, and before she could call him back he was speeding down the corridor and anon she heard him loudly calling to Jeanne.
III
Lenora did not see her husband during the whole of the next day, and on the one occasion when she ventured to ask after him--with well-feigned indifference lest any one guessed that all was not well between them--Clemence van Rycke sighed, Messire the High-Bailiff gave a forced laugh and Laurence van Rycke frowned with obvious anger. And in the evening--when she retired to her room and felt strangely irritable and hurt at being left in such solitude--she questioned Inez, who had been allowed to come and wait on her and who had a marvellous faculty for gleaning all the gossip that was going about the town.
"They do say, my angel," said the old woman with that complacency which characterises your true gossip, "that Messire Mark van Rycke hath spent his whole day in the tavern opposite. It is known as the "Three Weavers," and many Spanish officers are quartered in there now."
"Heaven protect us!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lenora involuntarily, "I trust they did not quarrel."
"Quarrel, my saint?" retorted Inez with a spiteful little laugh, for she had no liking for these Netherlanders. "Nay! Messire van Rycke would not dare quarrel with a Spanish officer. No! no! it seems that the _tapperij_ of the "Three Weavers" was most convivial all the day. It is always frequented by Spanish officers, although the inn-keeper is said to be an abominable heretic: there was much gambling and heavy drinking there, so they say, and even now..."
And as if to confirm the old woman"s say, there came from the house opposite and through the open windows loud noise of gay laughter and hilarious song. A deep flush rose to Lenora"s face.
"Close that window, Inez," she said peremptorily, "the night hath turned chilly."
She went to sit by the fire, and curtly dismissed the gossiping old woman. She knew all that she had wanted to know, and the flush of shame deepened on her cheek. There had been times during the past week when a vague hope had stirred in her heart that mayhap life did hold a small measure of happiness for her. There were times when she did not altogether dislike Mark van Rycke, when that winning merriment and good-humour which always lurked in his eyes provoked a response in her own ... and others, when certain notes of gentleness in his voice caused a strange thrill in her heart and brought tears into her eyes, which were not altogether tears of sorrow. She had also felt deeply remorseful at her conduct last night at the cruel words: "I hate you!"
which she had flung so roughly in his face: indeed she could scarcely sleep all night, for she was persistently haunted by the dazed look in those merry, grey eyes of his which had just for one brief moment flashed tender reproach on her.
But now she felt nothing but shame--shame that she should ever have thought tenderly of a man who could so wrong her, who had so little thought of her that he could spend his whole day in a tavern whilst his young girl-bride was left to loneliness and boredom in a house where she was a total stranger. She thought him vindictive and cruel: already she had thought so last night when he went away hurriedly without waiting for the apology which was hovering on her lips. Now she was quite sure that she hated him, and the next time she told him so, she certainly would not regret it.
But somehow she felt more forlorn than she had been before that dotard Inez had filled her ears with gossip. The house as usual was very still, but Lenora knew that the family had not yet gone to rest. Awhile ago she thought that she had heard footsteps and a murmur of voices in the hall below. A desire for company seized the young girl, and she racked her brain for an excuse to go down to her mother-in-law, who she knew was kind and who perhaps would cheer and comfort her a little and give her kind pity in her loneliness.
CHAPTER VII
THE REBELS
I
At this same hour in the small withdrawing-room which adjoined the dining-hall in Messire van Rycke"s house, five men were sitting round the gate-legged table in the centre of the room. At the top of the table sat Clemence van Rycke, in a tall chair covered with crimson velvet; opposite to her sat a man who was dressed in rough clothes of dark-coloured buffle, and whose ruff was of plain, coa.r.s.e linen; he wore a leather belt to which was fastened a heavy wallet, and high, tough boots that reached above his knee. His black hat and mantle lay on a chair close by. In fact, his clothes--more than ordinarily sombre and plain--were such as the serving man of a poor burgher might wear; nevertheless this man had round his neck a crimson ribbon to which was attached a gold pendant in the shape of a dead wether--which is the badge worn by the Knights of the Golden Fleece.
When this man spoke the others listened to him with marked deference, and Laurence van Rycke stood all the time beside his chair and served him with wine. In appearance he was spare of build and tall, he wore full beard and moustache and hair brushed away from an unusually high forehead. His eyes were prominent and very keen and astute as well as frank and kindly in expression, and his eyebrows were fully and markedly arched.
Clemence van Rycke was the only woman present. The other three men were all dressed in dark clothes, and their black mantles hung over the backs of their chairs. The room in which these half-dozen people were a.s.sembled was narrow and oak-panelled; at the end of it there was a low and very wide window recess, across which heavy curtains of crimson velvet had been drawn; at the side a door gave on the dining-hall; this door was open and the hall beyond was in complete darkness.
The whole room was only dimly lighted by one thick wax candle which burned in a tall sconce that stood on a bracket in an angle of the room, and threw a fitful light on the grave faces of the men sitting around the table.
"The High-Bailiff hath business at the Town House," Clemence van Rycke was saying in reply to the stranger who sat opposite to her. "He will not be home until midnight. My son Mark, too, is from home," she added more curtly. "Your Highness can discuss your plans with these gentlemen in all security. And if you wish me to retire..."
She half rose as if she meant to go, but a word from the stranger kept her in her place.
"I entreat you to stay with us, mevrouw," he said; "we would wish you to hear all that we have to say. Of a truth we have no more loyal adherents than mevrouw van Rycke and her son, and what we should have done in this city without their help I do not know."