Part 104 (1/2)
”If you breath a word of my folly, it will be your last.”
”Think not so poorly of me. You are my benefactress once more. Is it for me to slander you?”
”Go! I will send you the means. I know myself; if you cross my path again, I shall kill you. Addio; my heart is broken.”
She touched her bell. ”Floretta,” she said, in a choked voice, ”take him safe out of the house through my chamber and by the side poster.”
He turned at the door; she was leaning with one hand on a chair, crying, with averted head. Then he thought only of her kindness, and ran back and kissed her robe. She never moved.
Once clear of the house he darted home, thanking Heaven for his escape, soul and body.
”Landlady,” said he, ”there is one would pick a quarrel with me. What is to be done?”
”Strike him first, and at vantage! Get behind him; and then draw.”
”Alas, I lack your Italian courage. To be serious, 'tis a n.o.ble.”
”Oh, holy saints, that is another matter. Change thy lodging awhile, and keep snug; and alter the fas.h.i.+on of thy habits.”
She then took him to her own niece, who let lodgings at some little distance, and installed him there.
He had little to do now, and no princess to draw, so he set himself resolutely to read that deed of Floris Brandt, from which he had hitherto been driven by the abominably bad writing. He mastered it, and saw at once that the loan on this land must have been paid over and over again by the rents, and that Ghysbrecht was keeping Peter Brandt out of his own.
”Fool! not to have read this before,” he cried. He hired a horse and rode down to the nearest port. A vessel was to sail for Amsterdam in four days.
He took a pa.s.sage; and paid a small sum to secure it.
”The land is too full of cut-throats for me,” said he; ”and 'tis lovely fair weather for the sea. Our Dutch skippers are not s.h.i.+pwrecked like these bungling Italians.”
When he returned home there sat his old landlady with her eyes sparkling.
”You are in luck, my young master,” said she. ”All the fish run to your net this day methinks. See what a lacquey hath brought to our house!
This bill and this bag.”
Gerard broke the seals, and found it full of silver crowns. The letter contained a mere slip of paper with this line, cut out of some MS.--”La lingua non ha osso, ma fa rompere il dosso.”
”Fear me not!” said Gerard, aloud. ”I'll keep mine between my teeth.”
”What is that?”
”Oh, nothing. Am I not happy, dame? I am going back to my sweetheart with money in one pocket, and land in the other.” And he fell to dancing around her.
”Well,” said she, ”I trow nothing could make you happier.”
”Nothing, except to be there.”
”Well, that is a pity, for I thought to make you a little happier with a letter from Holland.”
”A letter? for me? where? how? who brought it? Oh, dame!”
”A stranger; a painter, with a reddish face and an outlandish name; Anselmin, I trow.”