LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

hearing where we were. One of these ran and fetched what she called for; while we all waited and wondered what she meant. I took the hammer and nail from the man and went up again with them.

      'Give me my glove,' she said, turning abruptly to the Waldgrave.

      He had possessed himself of one in the course of the conversation I have partly detailed; and no doubt he did not give it up very willingly. But there was no refusing her under the circumstances.

      'Hold it against the door!' she said.

      He obeyed, and with her own hands she drove the nail through the glove, pinning it to the middle of the door. Then she turned with a little colour in her face.

      'That is my room!' she said, with a ring of menace in her tone. 'Let no one presume to enter it. And have a care, men! Whatever is wanted inside, place at the threshold and begone.'

      Then she came down, followed by the Waldgrave, and walked through the middle of us and went back to the terrace, with Fraulein Anna at her heels. The Waldgrave lingered a moment to look at a sick horse, and I to give an order. When we reached the terrace court a few minutes later, we found my lady walking up and down alone in the sunshine.

      'Why, where is the learned Anna?' the Waldgrave said.

      'She is gone to amuse herself,' my lady answered, laughing. 'Voetius is put aside for the moment in favour of Master Dietz!'

      'No?' the young lord exclaimed, in a tone of surprise. 'That yellow-faced atomy? She is not in love with him?'

      'No, sir, certainly not.'

      'Then what is it?'

      'Well, I think she is a little jealous,' my lady answered with a smile. 'We have been so long colloguing with a papist, Anna thinks some amends are due to the Church. And she is gone to make them. At any rate, she asked me a few minutes ago if she might pay a visit to Dietz. "For what purpose?" I said. "To discuss a point with him," she answered. So I told her to go, if she liked, and by this time I don't doubt that they are hard at it.'

      'Over Voetius?'

      'No, sir,' my lady answered gaily. 'Beza more probably, or Calvin. You know little of either, I expect. I do not wonder that Anna is driven to seek more improving company.'

      CHAPTER VIII.

      A CATASTROPHE

      All that day the town remained quiet, and all day the Waldgrave and my lady walked to and fro in the sunshine; or my lady sat working on one of the stone seats, while he built castles in the air, which she knocked down with a sly word or a merry glance. Fraulein Anna, always with the big book, flitted from door to door, like an unquiet spirit. The sentries dozed at their posts, old Jacob in his chair in the guard-room, the cannons under their breech-clouts. If this could be said to be a state of siege, it was the most gentle and joyous one paladin ever shared or mistress imagined.

      But no message reached us from the town, and that disturbed me. Half a dozen times I went to the wall and, leaning over it, listened. Each time I came away satisfied. All seemed quiet; the market-place rather fuller perhaps than on common days, the hum of life more steady and persistent; but neither to any great extent. Despite this I could not shake off a feeling of uneasiness. I remembered certain faces I had seen in the town, grim faces lurking in corners, seen over men's shoulders or through half-open doors; and a dog barking startled me, the shadow of a crow flying over the court made me jump a yard.

      Night only added to my nervousness. I doubled all the guards, stationing two men at the town-wicket and two at the stable-gate, which leads to the bridge. And not content with these precautions, though the Waldgrave laughed at them and me, I got out of bed three times in the night, and went the round to assure myself that the men were at their posts.

      When morning came without mishap, but also without bringing any overture from the town, the Waldgrave laughed still more loudly. But my lady looked grave. I did not dare to interfere or give advice-having been once admitted to say my say-but I felt that it would be a serious thing if the forty-eight hours elapsed and the town refused to make amends. My lady felt this too, I think; and by-and-by she held a council with the Waldgrave; and about midday my lord came to me, and with a somewhat wry face bade me have the prisoners conducted to the parlour.

      He sent 'me at the same time on an errand to another part of the castle, and so I cannot say what passed. I believe my lady dealt with the two very firmly; reiterating her judgment of the day before, and only adding that in clemency she had thought better of imprisoning them, and would now suffer them to go to their homes, in the hope that they would use their influence to save the town from worse trouble.

      I met the two crossing the terrace on their way to the gate and was struck by something peculiar in their aspect. Master Hofman was all of a tremble with excitement and eagerness to be gone. His fat, half-moon of a face shone with anxiety. He stuttered when he tried to give me good day as I passed; and he seemed to have eyes only for the gate, dragging his smaller companion along by the arm, and more than once whispering in his ear as if to adjure him not to waste a moment.

      The little Minister, on the other hand, hung back and marched slowly, his face wearing a look of triumph which showed very plainly-or so I construed it-that he regarded his release in the light of a victory. His sallow cheeks were flushed, and his eyes gleamed spitefully as he looked from side to side. He held himself bolt upright, with a square Bible clasped to his breast, and as he passed me he could not refrain from a characteristic outbreak. Doubtless to bridle himself before my lady had almost choked him. He laughed in my face. 'Dry bones!' he cackled. 'And mouths that speak not!'

      'Speak plainly yourself, Master Dietz,' I answered, for I have never thought ministers more than other men. 'Then perhaps I shall be able to understand you.'

      'Sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal!' he replied, cracking his fingers in my face and laughing triumphantly.

      He would have said more, I imagine; but at that moment the Burgomaster fell bodily upon him, and drove him by main force through the gate which had been opened. Outside even, he made some attempts to return and defy us, crying out 'Whited sepulchres!' and the like. But the steps were narrow and steep, and Hofman stood like a feather bed in the way, and presently he desisted. The two stumbled down together and we saw no more of them.

      The men about me laughed; but I had reason for thinking it far from a laughing matter, and I hastened into the house that I might tell my lady. When I entered the parlour, however, where I found her with the Waldgrave and Fraulein Anna, she held up her hand to check me. She and the Waldgrave were laughing, and Fraulein Anna, half shy and half sullen, was leaning against the table looking at the floor, with her cheeks red.

      'Come,' my lady was saying, 'you were with him half an hour, Anna. You can surely tell us what you talked about. Don't be afraid of Martin. He knows all our secrets.'

      'Or perhaps we are indiscreet,' the Waldgrave said gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye. 'When a young lady visits a gentleman in captivity, the conversation should be of a tender nature.'

      'Which shows, sir, that you know little about it,' Fraulein Anna answered indignantly. 'We talked of Voetius.'

      'Dear me!' my lord said. 'Then Master Dietz knows Voetius?'

      'He does not. He said he considered such pagan learning useless,' Fraulein Anna answered, warming with her subject. 'That it tended to pride, and puffed up instead of giving grace. I said that he only saw one side of the matter.'

      'In that resembling me,' my lord murmured.

      My lady repressed him with a look. 'Yes,' she said pleasantly. 'And what then, Anna?'

      'And that he might be wrong in this, as in other matters. He asked me what other matters,' Fraulein Max continued, growing voluble, and almost confident, as she reviewed the scene. 'I said, the inferiority of women to men. He said, yes, he maintained that, following Peter Martyr. Well, I said he was wrong, and so was Peter Martyr. "But you do not convince me," he answered. "You say that I am wrong on this as on other points. Cite a point, then, on which I am wrong." "You know no Greek, you know no Oriental tongue, you know no Hebrew!" I retorted. "All pagan learning," he said. "Cite a point on which I am wrong. I am not often wrong. Cite a point on which I am confessedly

Скачать книгу