Читать книгу The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 7

Table of Contents

There comes a time in all biographies when dull facts must be recorded to appreciate to the full the life and works of the principal figure. A legendary hero may act upon the world’s stage isolated from the rest of the chorus or the minor roles. He is permitted to pirouette and prance in a pas seul, and people do not require rhyme or reason for his dance. But an historic personage needs a background of ancestry from which his hereditary characteristics, both virtues and vices, may be accurately deduced; for the man or woman cannot escape from environment and upbringing, nor be separated from them. A man’s actions are too complex, his thoughts too tangled to be analyzed simply. He cannot be detached from the foundation rock of family; he cannot be impaled on the point of a pin like a winkle and relished without seasoning. The necessary details must be touched upon — those details which describe the real man, however briefly.

The exploits which gained for the unacknowledged son of John Blake the hand of Gilda Beresteyn, the beautiful daughter of the richest burgher in Haarlem and the honours which the Stadholder showered upon his broad shoulders, have been handed down from father to son in the families of two countries. The daughters of the Blakeneys of Sussex are still married in the lace veil worn by Gilda Beresteyn on her wedding day; the sons of the Blakes of Haarlem show pridefully the sword of Bucephalus with the petals of blood-rust upon its blade. Diogenes emerges against his will from the obscurity of his vagabondage and, in a few months, appears in the limelight of the historical stage. And his cue was the face of a beautiful maiden who whispered a few frightened words into his ear on New Year’s Eve, 1625.

So much of the history is now legendary that it has been difficult to disentangle truth from fiction. History, however, provides the evidence which goes to prove that Diogenes, on New Year’s Eve, 1625, fell in with a group of hooligans and rescued a Spanish girl from death at their hands. His two companions, vagabonds like himself, were wounded during the affray and Diogenes carried them into the precincts of St. Peter’s Church in order to render them first aid. There it was that he encountered Gilda Beresteyn for the first time.

That much of the story is quite clear. The remainder of the tale is to be found in a little brochure written, some fifty years later, by Hans Beresteyn, a cousin of this same Gilda. Unfortunately the author, in his endeavour to sing the praises of Percy Blake—Diogenes—whom he seems to have greatly admired, has slurred over the true facts, and in certain chapters he is undoubtedly guilty of deliberate romancing. Nevertheless, even allowing for considerable bias, a fairly accurate outline of the story may be gleaned from Hans’ book, so long as the reader is careful to discount—at any rate, in part—the eulogistic phrases concerning Diogenes and to reject certain quotations of conversation for which the author must have drawn upon his imagination.

“Lord Stoutenberg,” he writes, “that arch villain, was nursing his hatred against the Stadholder. On New Year’s Eve, 1625, he, together with Nikolaes Beresteyn and a few others, was plotting to murder Maurice of Nassau. Fearful of some eavesdropper overhearing their nefarious plans, those abominable traitors had chosen the chancel of the church for their council chamber. And Gilda, who had entered the church to pray to the Almighty, unhappily overheard the treachery through the lips of her own dearly beloved brother.

“She was discovered. Horrified at the dastardly plot, she threatened to reveal it to her father; whereupon Stoutenberg demanded of Nikolaes the removal of Gilda to a place of safety where she could be kept prisoner until such a time as the deed was accomplished, lest she put her threat into execution. Nikolaes, unwilling personally to put this outrage upon his sister, searched the town for a man who would be unscrupulous enough to do it for a consideration. Everybody in Haarlem knew that Diogenes, the vagabond, was always ready for adventure, and that he suffered from a chronic lack of money. To him did Nikolaes unfold his story and succeeded in bribing him to abduct Gilda.”

According to Hans Beresteyn, Diogenes accepted the bribe and consented to carry out this shameful plan because he deemed that the girl would be safer in his hands than in those of a pack of assassins and conspirators headed by her own brother.

He carried out the instructions given him by Nikolaes Beresteyn. Those were that he should convey Gilda, by a roundabout route, to Rotterdam, and there place her under the care of one Ben Isaye, with whom Nikolaes and his family often had business dealings. It seems that once there, the girl did attempt to win Diogenes over to her side and revealed to him the truth surrounding her abduction. Thus he learnt for the first time of the conspiracy to murder the Stadholder.

Percy Blake was now in a quandary. The adventure which had begun as a lighthearted affair, had turned into an undertaking of a grave and dangerous nature. He felt that he must try to warn the Stadholder of the peril which threatened him and, at the same time, keep watch over Gilda in order to protect her from the machinations of Stoutenberg.

With this double object in view, he hastened to Delft, where the Stadholder was staying, and was thus able, that same night, to warn Maurice of Nassau of the plot against his life. On his return to Rotterdam early the next morning, he found that Stoutenberg, no doubt aware that Gilda was likely to betray her knowledge of the conspiracy, had taken steps to keep her in durance under his own eye and, to Percy Blake’s dismay, he saw Gilda being borne off in a sleigh, whither he knew not, surrounded by Stoutenberg’s men.

To make matters worse, whilst endeavouring to keep Gilda in sight, he himself was set upon by a band of ruffians and overpowered. He was taken across country to a deserted Molen where the conspirators had their headquarters, and here he was kept a helpless prisoner. He had apparently failed in his second undertaking. He certainly had succeeded in warning the Stadholder, but he was now powerless to help Gilda, who was trapped in the snares of the plotters; both she and he were at Stoutenberg’s mercy.

“Gilda,” Hans Beresteyn tells us, “proud and disdainful, still smarting under the humiliation of her abduction at the hands of the vagabond, believed the plausible stories which her brother and Stoutenberg now told her. She believed that Diogenes had abducted her solely for the sake of the ransom which her father would be willing to pay — she believed that Stoutenberg had renounced his plan of murdering Maurice of Nassau and had, in fact, freed her from the hands of an unscrupulous and venal adventurer.”

And here the author’s admiration for Diogenes becomes very marked, for he declares that Diogenes actually confessed to the truth of these calumnies, because his one wish was to spare Gilda the pain of learning the full extent of her brother’s turpitude. He denied nothing and calmly awaited death at the hands of his tormentors.

“Indeed,” says Hans Beresteyn, “the brave man was on the point of suffering a shameful death when rumour spread like wildfire among Stoutenberg’s followers that the plot had been discovered and that the Stadholder was advancing upon the Molen with a large body of troops. During the sauve qui peut which ensued, Diogenes succeeded in getting Gilda out of Stoutenberg’s hands and forcing Nikolaes to confess to his father the ignoble part that he had played in the plot against his own sister.”

That same evening, Percy Blake was betrothed to Gilda.