The First of the English: A Novel
“A—ah,” sighs Guy, passing over the money, “I’d give everything I have
for another tête-à-tête with my—my promised wife,” he struggles with a
tear as he thinks of the beautiful being whose love he has captured by
a coup de main.
“Your promised wife!” gasps Oliver. “Morbleu! you have been making
hay,” next shortly says: “By heaven, if Alva ever puts hand on you and
knows this, dread the reckoning, my audacious Englishman. Besides,
you’ll have to be quick about this matter if you ever get her!”
“Why so?”
“Alva will not remain in the Netherlands much longer. The country is
crushed (pacified he calls it), though the embers are smouldering. He’s
collecting the tenth penny tax, but not paying the troops. Some of the
money he sends to Spain—just enough to keep Philip quiet, but the
balance—God knows what he does with it, though I guess it is for
transmission to Italy or to Spain, to make him equal in wealth to many
a king.”
“By St. George, if I could get my hands on it,” answers the Englishman,
the instinct of the sea rover coming up in him. “That would be a
fitting dower for his fair daughter.”
“As far as my information goes,” says Oliver, “no living man has put
his eyes on where he keeps this treasure, though I have a suspicion.
The great statue that he is erecting, the one that will be undraped
next week, in the enceinte of the Citadel here, has something peculiar
in its dimensions. Its pedestal is enormous. The workmen employed upon
its base have been brought from Italy, and are under the direct
personal supervision of Paciotto, his engineer. These having finished
the pedestal, have all been reshipped, bountifully rewarded, to their
native country. Not one has been permitted to remain in the
Netherlands. There’s a secret in that statue!”
Further consideration of this is suddenly broken in upon by the
entrance of the ex-burgomaster and his daughter. The old gentleman
seems pleased.
“You’ll stay and sup with me, gentlemen, I hope,” he remarks. “I am
happy to announce that my daughter Mina has been an obedient little
girl this afternoon, and sold goods for me in my shop—four hundred
guilders worth, to the Countess de Pariza, two hundred paid in cash,
something that never happened to me before in my dealings with the
nobility. But then,” he chucks Mina under the chin, “my little girl is
a very sharp business woman. Some day she’ll be as valuable as her poor
mother was.”
“Father,” says the young lady, taking advantage of the circumstances,
“can I go to the Duchess of Aerschot’s?”
“Humph! Well, you’re young, you shall be happy; but don’t keep the
horses out all night; you know I use them in the goods van in the
morning. Gentlemen, remain, and I’ll show you my little girl is not
only a good saleswoman, but a cook and housewife.”
“Father!” ejaculates the young lady very sternly, “Remember that we
have a Frenchman-cook in the house!”
But Guy does not stay to test the cuisine of the Bodé Volcker mansion.
Having had his tête-à-tête with brunette, he gives Oliver a chance of
interview with blonde, and goes off to the Painted Inn, where Antony
promises to join him early in the evening.
It is now dark, and seating himself in the wine room, which is
illuminated by oil lamps and flickering candles, the Englishman orders
a bounteous supper, knowing that he may be up all the night returning
to his ship. Success has given him appetite, though he scarce knows
what he is eating, for his whole meal is a succession of recollections,
each one a rapture. These rhapsodies are suddenly and disagreeably
broken in upon.
A man, apparently from his dress and demeanor the captain of some
trading vessel, strides into the room followed by a burgher, and with a
muttered oath slaps himself into a chair at the table next to Chester.
“Voor den duivel!” he growls, “not permitted to pass the city gates to
go to my own ship. What’ll become of my cargo, half landed. The mate
and drunken crew will be having a fine time!”
“Calm yourself, Captain,” says his consignee in soothing tone. “The
regulation is very unusual. You will doubtless be permitted to pass
through the gates to the quay at daylight.”
“Yes, giving me the expense of a berth at an inn, and my comfortable
cabin unoccupied. Another guilder wrung out of me in this port of
Antwerp. If this thing goes on, the commerce of this place will be
damned forever.”
“But it will probably never occur again,” says the merchant. “Such a
thing has not been heard of before for a year.” And the two go into
conversation discussing the why’s and wherefore’s of this unusual
vigilance at the gates.
Guy gets to meditating upon this also. He had noticed before, during
the early part of his meal, this same captain, apparently the guest of
the same merchant at supper at one of the tables. Half an hour before
this they had gone out; they have now returned, the captain having
evidently been unable to pass the guards. If such orders have been
issued the word of the night is probably useless. What can have caused
it? Can it be some suspicion of his presence in the town?
Even as he meditates, Oliver enters, a very serious look on his face.
Stepping up to Guy’s table he seats himself by him and whispers: “Come
with me.”
“Why?” This is a whisper also.
“Orders have been given for nobody to pass out of the gates of Antwerp
to-night.”
“The reason?”
“I don’t know, unless they suspect your presence in the town. Come to
my lodgings with me.”
“No, I shall remain here,” replies the Englishman firmly.
“Why?”
“For two reasons. First, I won’t put further jeopardy upon you. Second,
if orders are given for no one to pass the gates, I expect they will
very shortly come to the quick ears of a young lady who is interested
in one Major Guido Amati de Medina, an officer of Romero’s foot, absent
from his post without leave. Incidentally to-day I mentioned to her
that I stopped at the Painted Inn. This is the place where she would
send to find me. But don’t stay with me, Oliver. My seizure in your
company might bring suspicion on you—sit at another table!”
“I won’t leave you, when perchance I can aid you,” says the generous
artist. Then he mutters suddenly: “By heaven, perhaps it has come now!”
And it has, though not as Antony fears, for little Ensign de Busaco,
swinging through the door, takes one glance about the room and strides
up to the Englishman.
“I want you,” he says, while Guy’s hand quietly seeks the dirk in his
bosom. “I want you to take one of the state barges down to Sandvliet
to-night.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, I was unable to obtain leave to remain out of barracks to-night
at the provost marshal’s office, and went to the Citadel to get it.
While there I was summoned to Doña de Alva. She remarked to me that
Captain Amati, who had brought her barge up so successfully last night,
was just the man to take it down this evening. It goes on some errand
of the young lady. She charged me to give this note to you, and to
conduct you through the Citadel to the place of landing the night
before, where the rowers and a new crew will be ready—I believe the
Beggars of the Sea killed the last.”
With this he presents a sealed letter to the Englishman in the
handwriting that he loves.
Breaking the seal of Alva, Guy hastily reads:
My Dearest Guido.
I can’t help calling you that. It is, perhaps, rash, but that is
how I think of you.
It is just now known to me that the gates of the city are closed to
egress to-night, information of some daring pirate or outlaw being
concealed in Antwerp having reached headquarters. Knowing the
necessity of an officer absent without leave reaching Middelburg
before his commission, I am despatching my galley to my country
house at Sandvliet to bring up some articles left behind in the
hasty retreat of last night. Will you not be kind enough to steer
the boat down the Schelde as successfully as you steered it up?
Ensign de Busaco will pass you through the Citadel.
Praying that God will watch over you and bring you back to me with
as much love in your heart as I have for you in mine, I am, as I
ever shall be, your
Hermoine.
“You look happy,” laughs De Busaco, “at an order for a long night boat
journey?”
“I am always at the orders of Doña de Alva,” remarks Guy. “Come!”
“Quick,” replies the little Ensign. “I’ve got my leave to stay out of
barracks this night. The sooner we get through with this the sooner I
am free for my affair.”
So, Guy hastily settling his score, the three leave the Painted Inn and
making their way to Beguin street, stride rapidly along that
thoroughfare to the Esplanade, where Oliver, in low tones, and with
hearty grasp, says: “Good-bye.”
“God bless you!” mutters Guy.
And though they speak it not, as their hands clasp they mean friendship
and brotherhood.
A few minutes after Chester and De Busaco are at the Citadel, where,
passing over the drawbridge and through the great gateway, Guy learns
that the word of the night has been changed and is now “San Sebastian,”
countersign “Corpus Christi.”
From here they pass through the enceinte right by the statue of Alva,
De Busaco remarking parenthetically: “They’ve got his arm up to-day.
They’ll be all ready to show him off next week. Caramba! that means the
trouble of a dress parade. And no pay day yet. Some day we may dig out
our arrears from this hollow pedestal. Alva is cunning, but his troops
have their eyes open also!”
Going across this great fortification, they come out at the little
sally-port in the moat where Guy had landed the night before. Here they
have no difficulty of exit. The same galley that the Englishman brought
up is waiting for them; the rowers in place with a new crew, to whom De
Busaco introduces him as the officer who will take charge of the boat
to Sandvliet; then goes on his way with a hasty “Adios, Señor!” for the
little ensign is behind in his appointment with some young lady of the
city.
Just as the boat is casting off, for Guy does not waste much time about
this matter, a waiting maid, one of the Moorish handmaidens of the
night before, comes running over the little drawbridge crying:
“Stay!—one moment—stay!”
Then, as Guy stands up in the barge, she whispers to him, holding out a
belt of heavy leather: “Buckle this round your waist, Señor Capitan, my
mistress charges me to tell you to be careful of it. It is the one you
left in the boat so carelessly last night.”
“Oh—ah, yes,” says the Englishman, to whom lies this day have become
easy. “I was looking for it. I didn’t know where I’d left it,” and
buckling it about him, wonders what the deuce is in it.
“Egad, it’s not a life preserver,” he thinks. “It would send me to the
bottom like a shot.”
Anyway, whatever it is, he is enraptured to get it from the hands of
Hermoine de Alva.
But he has not much time to think of this; he has called to the rowers
and the boat is now under way and gliding through the moat that
surrounds the great bastions of the Spaniard.
Five minutes after they are in the open river, and, though the tide is
against them, they are en route toward Sandvliet and safety. Keeping
well across by the further bank of the river they pass unchallenged,
though Guy can see the lights of several guard and patrol boats moving
among the shipping on the city’s edge.
“Give way, my lads,” cries the Englishman enthusiastically, “and I’ll
stand a cask of wine when we reach Sandvliet.”
Thus adjured the men bend to their oars, while the cockswain of the
barge gets into quite friendly chat with Chester, telling him that this
place they are going to is a beautiful summer chateau used sometimes by
Alva himself, but mostly by his daughter, to enjoy the fresh sea