THE SUBJECT RACE
I
"I cannot do it, mother, I cannot! The very shame of it would kill me!"
Laurence van Rycke sat on a low chair in front of the fire, his elbow propped on his knee, his chin buried in his hand. His mother gave a little shiver, and drew her woollen shawl closer round her shoulders.
"You cannot go against your father's will," she said tonelessly, like one who has even lost the power to suffer acutely. "God alone knows what would become of us all if you did."
"He can only kill me," retorted Laurence, with fierce, passionate resentment.
"And how should I survive if he did?"
"Would you not rather see me dead, mother dear, than wedded to a woman whose every thought, every aspiration must tend toward the further destruction of our country--she the daughter of the most hideous tyrant that has ever defamed this earth--more hideous even than that execrable Alva himself..."
He paused abruptly in the midst of this passionate outburst, for the old house--which had been so solemn and silent awhile ago, suddenly echoed from end to end with loud and hilarious sounds, laughter and shouts, heavy footsteps, jingle of spurs and snatches of song, immediately followed by one or two piteous cries uttered in a woman's piercing voice. Laurence van Rycke jumped to his feet.
"What was that?" he cried, and made a dash for the door. His mother's imploring cry called him back.
"No, no, Laurence! don't go!" she begged. "It is only the soldiers! They tease Jeanne, and she gets very cross! ... We have six men and a sergeant quartered here now, besides the commandant..."
"Eight Spanish soldiers in the house of the High-Bailiff of Ghent!" exclaimed Laurence, and a prolonged laugh of intense bitterness came from his overburdened heart. "Oh God!" he added, as he stretched out his arms with a gesture of miserable longing and impotence, "to endure all this outrage and all this infamy!--to know as we do, what has happened in Mons and Mechlin and to be powerless to do anything--anything against such hideous, appalling, detestable tyranny--to feel every wrong and every injustice against the country one loves, against one's own kith and kin, eating like the plague into one's very bones and to remain powerless, inert, an insentient log in the face of it all. And all the while to be fawning--always fawning and cringing, kissing the master's hand that wields the flail.... Ugh! And now this new tyranny, this abominable marriage.... Ye Heavens above me! but mine own cowardice in accepting it would fill me with unspeakable loathing!"
"Laurence, for pity's sake!" implored the mother.
At her call he ran to her and knelt at her feet: then burying his head in his hands he sobbed like a child.
"I cannot do it, mother!" he reiterated piteously, "I cannot do it. I would far rather die!"
With gentle, mechanical touch she stroked his unruly fair hair, and heavy tears rolled down her wan cheeks upon her thin, white hands.
"Just think of it, mother dear," resumed Laurence a little more calmly after a while, "would it not be introducing a spy into our very home? ... and just now ... at the time when we all have so much at stake ... the Prince..."
"Hush, Laurence!" implored the mother; and this time she placed an authoritative hand upon his arm and gave it a warning pressure; but her wan cheeks had become a shade paler than before, and the look of terror became more marked in her sunken eyes.
"Even these walls have ears these days," she added feebly.
"There is no danger here, mother darling ... nobody can hear," he said reassuringly. But nevertheless he, too, cast a quick look of terror into the remote corners of the room and dropped his voice to a whisper when he spoke again.
"Juan de Vargas' daughter," he said with passionate earnestness, "what hath she in common with us? She hates every Netherlander; she despises us all, as every Spaniard does: she would wish to see our beautiful country devastated, our cities destroyed, our liberties and ancient privileges wrested from us, and every one of us made into an abject vassal of her beloved Spain. Every moment of my life I should feel that she was watching me, spying on me, making plans for the undoing of our cause, and betraying our secrets to her abominable father. Mother dear, such a life would be hell upon earth. I could not do it. I would far rather die."
"But what can you do, Laurence?" asked Clémence van Rycke, with a sigh of infinite misery.
Laurence rose and dried his tears. He felt that they had been unmanly, and was half ashamed of them. Fortunately it was only his mother who had seen them, and ... how well she understood!
"I must think it all over, mother dear," he said calmly. "It is early yet. Father will not want me to be at the Town-house before eight o'clock. Oh! how could he ever have been so mean, so obsequious as to agree to this selling of his son in such a shameful market."
"How could he help it?" retorted the mother with a fretful little sigh. "The Duke of Alva commanded in the name of the King, and threatened us all with the Inquisition if we disobeyed. You know what that means," she added, whilst that pitiable look of horror and fear once more crept into her eyes.
"Sometimes I think," said Laurence sombrely--he was standing in front of the fire and staring into the crackling logs with a deep frown right across his brow--"sometimes I think that the worst tortures which those devils could inflict on us would be more endurable than this life of constant misery and humiliation."
The mother made no reply. Her wan cheeks had become the colour of ashes, her thin hands which were resting in her lap were seized with a nervous tremour. From below came still the sound of loud laughter intermixed now with a bibulous song. A smothered cry of rage escaped Laurence's lips: it seemed as if he could not stay still, as if he must run and stop this insult in his mother's house, silence those brawling soldiers, force their own obscene songs down their throats, regardless of the terrible reprisals which might ensue. Only his mother's thin, trembling hand upon his arm forced him to remain, and to swallow his resentment as best he could.
"It is no use, Laurence," she murmured, "and I would be the first to suffer."
This argument had the effect of forcing Laurence van Rycke to control his raging temper. Common sense came momentarily to the rescue and told him that his mother was right. He started pacing up and down the narrow room with a view to calming his nerves.
II
"Have you seen Mark this morning?" asked Clémence van Rycke suddenly.
"No," he replied, "have you?"
"Only for a moment."
"What had he to say?"
"Oh! you know Mark's way," she replied evasively. "It seems that he caught sight of donna Lenora de Vargas when she passed through the Waalpoort yesterday. He made a flippant joke or two about your good luck and the girl's beauty."
Laurence suppressed an angry oath.
"Don't blame Mark," interposed Clémence van Rycke gently, "he is as God made him--shallow, careless..."
"Not careless where his own pleasures are concerned," said Laurence, with a laugh of bitter contempt. "Last night at the 'Three Weavers' a lot of Spanish officers held carouse. Mark was with them till far into the night. There was heavy drinking and high play, and Mark..."
"I know, I know," broke in the mother fretfully, "do not let us speak of Mark. He is his father's son ... and you are mine," she added, as with a wistful little gesture she stretched out her arms to the son whom she loved. Once more he was at her feet kissing her hands.
"Do not fret, mother dear," he said, "I'll think things out quietly, and then do what I think is right."
"You'll do nothing rash, Laurence," she pleaded, "nothing without consulting me?"
"I must consult my conscience first, dear," he said firmly, "and then I must speak with the Prince.... Yes! yes! I know," he added somewhat impatiently, as once again he felt that warning pressure on his arm. "Next to God my every thought is for him; nor did he think of himself when he refused to acknowledge the autocracy of Alva. Our time is at hand, mother dear, I feel it in my bones. The last response has been splendid: we have promises of close on two thousand ducats already, and two hundred men are ready to take up arms in the city at any moment. Yes! yes! I know! and I am careful--I am as wary as the fox! But how can I at such a moment think of matrimony? How can I think of bending the knee to such abominable tyranny? I bend the knee only to the Prince of Orange, and by him I swear that I will not wed the daughter of Juan de Vargas! I will not bring to this hearth and to my home one of that gang of execrable tyrants who have ravaged our country and crushed the spirit of our people. I have work to do for Orange and for my country. I will not be hindered by bonds which are abhorrent to me."
He gave his mother a final kiss and then hurried out of the room. She would have detained him if she could, for she was terrified of what he might do; but she called after him in vain, and when presently she went to his room to look for him, he was not there. But on his desk there was a letter addressed to his father; Clémence van Rycke took it up: it was not sealed, only rolled, and tied with ribbon: this she undid and read the letter. There were only a few words, and when the unfortunate woman had grasped their full meaning she uttered a moan of pain and sank half-fainting on her knees. Here Jeanne found her half an hour later, sobbing and praying. The faithful creature comforted her mistress as best she could, then she half carried, half led her back to her room. The letter written to his father by Laurence van Rycke contained the following brief communication:
"Find fomeone elfe, My Father, to help you lick our Spanifh tyrants' boots. I cannot do it. I refufe to wed the Daughter of that Bloodhound de Vargas, but as I cannot live under Your roof and difobey You, I will not return until You bid Me come."
III
This had occurred early this morning; it was now late in the afternoon, and Laurence had not returned. The levie at the Town Hall was timed for eight o'clock, and the High-Bailiff had just come home in order to don his robes for the solemn occasion.
Clémence van Rycke had made an excuse not to see him yet: like all weak, indecisive natures she was hoping against hope that something would occur even now to break Laurence's obstinacy and induce him to bow to that will against which it was so useless to rebel.
But the minutes sped on, and Laurence did not return, and from a room close by came the sound of Messire van Rycke's heavy footstep and his gruff voice giving orders to the serving man who was helping him with his clothes. Another hour, or perhaps two at most, and she would have to tell her husband what had happened--and the awful catastrophe would have to be faced. As she sat in the high-backed chair, Clémence van Rycke felt as if an icy chill had crept into her bones.
"Put another log on the fire, Jeanne," she said, "this autumn weather hath chilled me to the marrow."
Jeanne, capable, buxom and busy, did as she was bid. She did more. She ran nimbly out of the room and in a trice had returned with Madame's chaufferette--well filled with glowing charcoal--and had put it to her mistress' feet: then she lit the candles in the tall candelabra which stood on a heavy sideboard at the further end of the room, and drew the heavy curtains across the window. The room certainly looked more cosy now: Madame only gave one slight, final shiver, and drew her shawl closer round her shoulders.
"Is Messire Mark dressed yet, Jeanne?" she asked wistfully.
"Messire came in about ten minutes ago," replied the woman.
"Let him know that I wish to speak with him as soon as he can come to me.'
"Yes, Madame."
"You have seen to the soldiers' supper?"
"They have had one supper, Madame. They are on duty at the Town Hall till eleven o'clock; then they are coming home for a second supper."
"Then will don Ramon de Linea sup with us, think you?"
"He didn't say."
"In any case lay his place ready in case he wants to sup. He'll be on duty quite late too, and it will anger him if his supper is not to his taste."
"Whatever I do will never be to the commandant's taste: he didn't like his room and he didn't like the dinner I had cooked for him. When he heard in whose house he was he swore and blasphemed, as I never heard any one blaspheme before. I worked my fingers to the bone last night and this morning to mend his linen and starch his ruff, but even then he was not satisfied."
There was a tone of bitter wrath in Jeanne's voice as she spoke. Madame drew a fretful little sigh, but she made no comment. What was the use? The Spanish soldiers and officers quartered in the houses of Flemish burghers had an unpleasant way of enforcing their wishes with regard to food and drink which it was not wise to combat these days. So Clémence van Rycke dismissed Jeanne, and remained brooding alone, staring into the fire, repeating in her mind all that Laurence had said, looking into the future with that same shiver of horror which was habitual to her, and into all the awful possibilities which must inevitably follow Laurence's hot-headed act of rebellion.
IV
And as she sat there huddled up in the high-backed chair it would be difficult to realise that Clémence van Rycke was still on the right side of fifty.
She had married when she had only just emerged out of childhood, and had been in her day one of the brightest, prettiest, gayest of all the maidens in the city of Ghent. But now her eyes had lost their sparkle, and her mouth its smile. Her shoulders were bent as if under a perpetual load of care and anxiety, and in her once so comely face there was a settled look of anxiety and of fear. Even now, when a firm footstep resounded along the tiled corridor, she lost nothing of that attitude of dejection which seemed to have become habitual to her.
In answer to a timid knock at the door, she called a fretful "Enter!" but she did not turn her head, as Mark--her younger son--came close up to her chair. He stooped to kiss the smooth white forehead which was not even lifted for his caress.
"Any news?" were the first words which Clémence van Rycke uttered, and this time she looked up more eagerly and a swift glimmer of hope shot through her tear-dimmed eyes.
"Nothing definite," replied Mark van Rycke. "He had food and drink at the hostelry of St. John just before midday, and at the tavern of 'The Silver Bell' later in the afternoon. Apparently he has not left the city as no one saw him pass through any of the gates--but if Laurence does not mean to be found, mother dear," he added with a light shrug of the shoulders, "I might as well look for a needle in a haystack as to seek him in the streets of Ghent."
The mother sighed dejectedly, and Mark threw himself into a chair and stretched his long legs out to the blaze: he felt his mother's eyes scanning his face and gradually a faint smile, half ironical, half impatient, played round the corners of his mouth.
To a superficial observer there was a great likeness between the two brothers, although Mark was the taller and more robust of the two. Most close observers would, however, assert that Laurence was the better-looking; Mark had not the same unruly fair hair, nor look of boyish enthusiasm; his face was more dour and furrowed, despite the merry twinkle which now and then lit up his grey eyes, and there were lines around his brow and mouth which in an older man would have suggested the cares and anxieties of an arduous life, but which to the mother's searching gaze at this moment only seemed to indicate traces of dissipation, of nights spent in taverns, and days frittered away in the pursuit of pleasure.
Clémence van Rycke sighed as she read these signs and a bitter word of reproach hovered on her lips; but this she checked and merely sighed--sighing and weeping were so habitual to her, poor soul!
"Have you seen your father?" she asked after a while.
"Not yet," he replied.
"You will have to tell him, Mark. I couldn't. I haven't the courage. He has always loved you better than Laurence or me--the blow would come best from you."
"Have you told him nothing, then?"
"Nothing."
"Good God!" he exclaimed, "and he has to meet señor de Vargas within the next two hours!"
"Oh! I hadn't the courage to tell him, Mark!" she moaned piteously, "I was always hoping that Laurence would think better of it all. I so dread even to think what he will say ... what he will do...."
"Laurence should have thought of that," rejoined Mark dryly, "before he embarked on this mad escapade."
"Escapade!" she exclaimed with sudden vehemence. "You can talk of escapade, when..."
"Easy, easy, mother dear," broke in Mark good-humouredly, "I know I deserve all your reproaches for taking this adventure so lightly. But you must confess, dear, that there is a comic side to the tragedy--there always is. Laurence, the happy bridegroom-elect, takes to his heels without even a glimpse at the bride offered to him, whilst her beauty, according to rumour, sets every masculine heart ablaze."
The mother gave a little sigh of weariness and resignation.
"You never will understand your brother, Mark," she said with deep earnestness, "not as long as you live. You never will understand your mother either. You are your father's son--Laurence is more wholly mine. You can look on with indifference--God help you! even with levity--on the awful tyranny which has well-nigh annihilated our beautiful land of Flanders. On you the weight of Spanish oppression sits over lightly.... Sometimes I think I ought to thank God that He has given you a shallow nature, and that I am not doomed to see both my sons suffer as Laurence--my eldest--does. To him, Mark, his country and her downtrodden liberties are almost a religion: every act of tyranny perpetrated by that odious Alva is a wrong which he swears to avenge. What he suffers in the innermost fibre of his being every time that your father lends a hand in the abominable work of persecution nobody but I--his mother--will ever know. Your father's abject submission to Alva has eaten into his very soul. From a gay, light-hearted lad he has become a stern and silent man. What schemes for the overthrow of tyrants go on within his mind, I dare not even think. That awful bloodhound de Vargas--murderer, desecrator, thief--he loathes with deadly abomination. When the order came forth from your father that he should forthwith prepare for his early marriage to the daughter of that execrable man, he even thought of death as preferable to a union against which his innermost soul rose in revolt."
She had spoken thus lengthily, very slowly but with calm and dignified firmness. Mark was silent. There was a grandeur about the mother's defence of her beloved son which checked the word of levity upon his lips. Now Clémence van Rycke sank back in her chair exhausted by her sustained effort. She closed her eyes for a while, and Mark could not help but note how much his mother had aged in the past two years, how wearied she looked and how pathetic and above all how timid, like one on whom fear is a constant attendant. When he spoke again, it was more seriously and with great gentleness.
"I had no thought, mother dear," he said, "of belittling Laurence's earnestness, nor yet his devotion. I'll even admit, an you wish, that the present situation is tragic. It is now past six o'clock. Father must be at the Town Hall within the next two hours.... He must be told, and at once.... The question is, what can we tell him to ... to..."
"To soften the blow and to appease his fury," broke in Clémence van Rycke, and once more the look of terror crept into her eyes--a look which made her stooping figure look still more wizened and forlorn. "Mark," she added under her breath, "your father is frightened to death of the Duke of Alva. I believe that he would sacrifice Laurence and even me to save himself from the vengeance of those people."
"Hush, mother dear! now you are talking wildly. Father is perhaps a little weak. Most of us, I fear me, now are weak. We have been cowed and brow-beaten and threatened till we have lost all sense of our own manhood and our own dignity."
"You perhaps," protested the mother almost roughly, "but not Laurence. You and your father are ready to lick the dust before all these Spaniards--but I tell you that what you choose to call loyalty they call servility; they despise you for your fawning--men like Orange and Laurence they hate, but they give them grudging respect..."
"And hang them to the nearest gibbet when they get a chance," broke in Mark with a dry laugh.
Before Clémence van Rycke could say another word, the heavy footstep of the High-Bailiff was heard in the hall below. The poor woman felt as if her heart stood still with apprehension.
"Your father has finished dressing: go down to him, Mark," she implored. "I cannot bear to meet him with the news."
And Mark without another word went down to meet his father.
Charles van Rycke--a fine man of dignified presence and somewhat pompous of manner--was standing in the hall, arrayed ready for the reception, in the magnificent robes of his office. His first word on seeing Mark was to ask for Laurence, the bridegroom-elect and hero of the coming feast.
"He is a fine-looking lad," said the father complacently, "he cannot fail to find favour in donna Lenora's sight."
The news had to be told: Mark drew his father into the dining-hall and served him with wine.
"This marriage will mean a splendid future for us all, Mark," continued the High-Bailiff, as he pledged his son in a tankard of wine: "here's to the happy young people and to the coming prosperity of our house. No more humiliations, Mark; no more fears of that awful Inquisition. We shall belong to the ruling class now, tyranny can touch us no longer."
And the news had to be told. Clémence van Rycke had said nothing to her husband about Laurence's letter--so it all had to be told, quietly and without preambles.
"Laurence has gone out of the house, father, vowing that he would never marry donna Lenora de Vargas."
It took some time before the High-Bailiff realised that Mark was not jesting; the fact had to be dwelt upon, repeated over and over again, explained and insisted on before the father was made to understand that his son had played him false and had placed the family fortunes and the lives of its members in deadly jeopardy thereby.
"He has gone!" reiterated Mark for the tenth time, "gone with the intention not to return. At the reception to-night the bride will be waiting, and the bridegroom will not be there. The Duke of Alva will ask where is the bride-groom whom he hath chosen for the great honour, and echo will only answer 'Where?'"
Charles van Rycke was silent. He pushed away from him the tankard and bottle of wine. His face was the colour of lead.
"This means ruin for us all, Mark," he murmured, "black, hideous ruin; Alva will never forgive; de Vargas will hate us with the hatred born of humiliation.... A public affront to his daughter! ... O Holy Virgin protect us!" he continued half-incoherently, "it will mean the scaffold for me, the stake for your mother..."
He rose and said curtly, "I must speak with your mother."
He went to the door but his step was unsteady. Mark forestalled him and placed himself against the door with his hand on the latch.
"It means black ruin for us all, Mark," reiterated the High-Bailiff with sombre despair, "I must go and speak of it with your mother."
"My mother is sick and anxious," said Mark quietly, "she cannot help what Laurence has done--you and I, father, can talk things over quietly without her."
"There is nothing that you can say, Mark ... there is nothing we can do ... save, perhaps, pack up a few belongings and clear out of the country as quickly as we can ... that is, if there is time!"
"Your imagination does not carry you very far, meseems," quoth Mark dryly. "Laurence's default is not irreparable."
"What do you mean?"
"Am I not here to put it right?"
"What?--you?"
"By your leave."
"You, Mark!"
VI
The transition from black despair to this sudden ray of hope was too much for the old man: he tottered and nearly measured his length on the floor. Mark had barely the time to save him from the fall. Now he passed his trembling hand across his eyes and forehead: his knees were shaking under him.
"You, Mark," he murmured again.
He managed to pour himself out a fresh mug of wine and drank it greedily: then he sat down, for his knees still refused him service.
"It would be salvation indeed," he said, somewhat more steadily.
Mark shrugged his shoulders with an air of complete indifference.
"Well! frankly, father dear," he said, "I think that there is not much salvation for us in introducing a Spaniard into our home. Mother--and Laurence when he comes back--will have to be very careful in their talk. But you seem to think the present danger imminent...."
"Imminent, ye gods!" exclaimed the High-Bailiff, unable to repress a shudder of terror at the thought. "I tell you, Mark, that de Vargas would never forgive what he would call a public insult--nor would Alva forgive what he would call open disobedience. Those two men--who are all-powerful and as cruel and cunning as fiends--would track us and hunt us down till they had brought you and me to the scaffold and your mother to the stake."
"I know that, father," interposed Mark with some impatience, "else I would not dream of standing in Laurence's shoes: the bride is very beautiful, but I have no liking for matrimony. The question is, will de Vargas guess the truth; he hath eyes like a lynx."
"No! no! he will not guess. He only saw Laurence twice--a fortnight ago when I took him up to Brussels and presented him to señor de Vargas and to the Duke: and then again the next evening: both times the lights were dim. No! no! I have no fear of that! de Vargas will not guess! You and your brother are at times so much alike, and donna Lenora hath not seen Laurence yet."
"And you did not speak of Laurence by name? I shouldn't care to change mine."
"No, I don't think so. I presented my son to the Duke and to señor de Vargas. It was at His Highness' lodgings: the room was small and dark; and señor de Vargas paid but little heed to us."
"We Netherlanders are of so little account in the sight of these grandees of Spain," quoth Mark with a light laugh, "and in any case, father, we must take some risk. So will you go and see my mother and calm her fears, whilst I go and don my best doublet and hose. Poor little mother! she hath put one foot into her grave through terror and anxiety on Laurence's account."
"As for Laurence..." exclaimed the High-Bailiff wrathfully.
"Don't worry about Laurence, father," broke in Mark quietly. "His marriage with a Spaniard would have been disastrous. He would have fallen violently in love with his beautiful wife, and she would have dragged sufficient information out of him to denounce us all to the Inquisition. Perhaps," he added with good-humoured indifference, "it is all for the best."
The High-Bailiff rose and placed a hand upon his son's shoulder.
"You are a true son to me, Mark," he said earnestly, "never shall I forget it. I am a wealthy man--more wealthy than many suppose. In virtue of your marriage with that Spanish wench you will be more free from taxation than we Netherlanders are: I'll make over the bulk of my fortune to you. You shall not regret what you have done for me and for your mother."
"It is time I went up to dress," was Mark's only comment on his father's kindly speech, and he quietly removed the paternal hand from off his shoulder.
"Hurry on," said the High-Bailiff cheerfully, "I'll wait until you are ready. I must just run up to your mother and tell her the good news. Nay! but I do believe if that hot-headed young rascal were to turn up now, I would forgive him his senseless escapade. As you say, my dear son, it is all for the best!"