Here too—hearing these memory-echoes whenever the shadows of evening draw in on the quaint old city—I had a dream. I saw him just as he lived, three hundred years ago. He had stepped out of the canvas in London, had crossed the sea and was walking the streets of Haarlem just as he had done then, filling them with his swagger, with his engaging personality, above all with his laughter. And sitting beside me in the old tavern of the Lame Cow, in that selfsame taproom where he was wont to make merry, he told me the history of his life.
Since then kind friends at Haarlem have placed documents in my hands which confirmed the story told me by the Laughing Cavalier. To them do I tender my heartfelt and grateful thanks. But it is to the man himself—to the memory of him which is so alive here in Haarlem—that I am indebted for the true history of his life, and therefore I feel that but little apology is needed for placing the true facts before all those who have known him hitherto only by his picture, who have loved him only for what they guessed.
The monograph which I now present with but few additions of minor details, goes to prove what I myself had known long ago, namely, that the Laughing Cavalier who sat to Frans Hals for his portrait in 1624 was the direct ancestor of Sir Percy Blakeney, known to history as the Scarlet Pimpernel.
The Laughing Cavalier
The Prologue
Haarlem—March 29th, 1623
The day had been springlike—even hot; a very unusual occurrence in Holland at this time of year.
Gilda Beresteyn had retired early to her room. She had dismissed Maria, whose chatterings grated upon her nerves, with the promise that she would call her later. Maria had arranged a tray of dainties on the table, a jug of milk, some fresh white bread and a little roast meat on a plate, for Gilda had eaten very little supper and it might happen that she would feel hungry later on.
It would have been useless to argue with the old woman about this matter. She considered Gilda’s health to be under her own special charge, ever since good Mevrouw Beresteyn had placed her baby girl in Maria’s strong, devoted arms ere she closed her eyes in the last long sleep.
Gilda Beresteyn, glad to be alone, threw open the casement of the window and peered out into the night.
The shadow of the terrible tragedy—the concluding acts of which were being enacted day by day in the Gevangen Poort of ’S Graven Hage—had even touched the distant city of Haarlem with its gloom. The eldest son of John of Barneveld was awaiting final trial and inevitable condemnation, his brother Stoutenburg was a fugitive, and their accomplices Korenwinder, van Dyk, the redoubtable Slatius and others, were giving away under torture the details of the aborted conspiracy against the life of Maurice of Nassau, Stadtholder of Holland, Gelderland, Utrecht and Overyssel, Captain and Admiral-General of the State, Prince of Orange, and virtual ruler of Protestant and republican Netherlands.
Traitors all of them—would-be assassins—the Stadtholder whom they had planned to murder was showing them no mercy. As he had sent John of Barneveld to the scaffold to assuage his own thirst for supreme power and satisfy his own ambitions, so he was ready to send John of Barneveld’s sons to death and John of Barneveld’s widow to sorrow and loneliness.
The sons of John of Barneveld had planned to avenge their father’s death by the committal of a cruel and dastardly murder: fate and the treachery of mercenary accomplices had intervened, and now Groeneveld was on the eve of condemnation, and Stoutenburg was a wanderer on the face of the earth with a price put upon his head.
Gilda Beresteyn could not endure the thought of it all. All the memories of her childhood were linked with the Barnevelds. Stoutenburg had been her brother Nicolaes’ most intimate friend, and had been the first man to whisper words of love in her ears, ere his boundless ambition and his unscrupulous egoism drove him into another more profitable marriage.
Gilda’s face flamed up with shame even now at recollection of his treachery, and the deep humiliation which she had felt when she saw the first budding blossom of her girlish love so carelessly tossed aside by the man whom she had trusted.
A sense of oppression weighed her spirits down tonight. It almost seemed as if the tragedy which had encompassed the entire Barneveld family was even now hovering over the peaceful house of Mynheer Beresteyn, deputy burgomaster and chief civic magistrate of the town of Haarlem. The air itself felt heavy as if with the weight of impending doom.
The little city lay quiet and at peace; a soft breeze from the south lightly fanned the girl’s cheeks. She leaned her elbows on the windowsill and rested her chin in her hands. The moon was not up and yet it was not dark; a mysterious light still lingered on the horizon far away where earth and sea met in a haze of purple and indigo.
From the little garden down below there rose the subtle fragrance of early spring—of wet earth and budding trees, and the dim veiled distance was full of strange sweet sounds, the call of night-birds, the shriek of seagulls astray from their usual haunts.
Gilda looked out and listened—unable to understand this vague sense of oppression and of foreboding: when she put her finger up to her eyes, she found them wet with tears.
Memories rose from out the past, sad phantoms that hovered in the scent of the spring. Gilda had never wholly forgotten the man who had once filled her heart with his personality, much less could she chase away his image from her mind now that a future of misery and disgrace was all that was
