II
At first the two men spoke little. The air was still cold and very humid, and the thaw was persisting. The horses stepped out briskly on the soft, sandy earth.
The distance between Amersfoort and Barneveld is but a couple of leagues. Within the hour the lights of the little city could be seen gleaming ahead. After a while Nicolaes Beresteyn became more loquacious, talked quite freely of the past.
“My father no longer trusts me,” he said, with ill-concealed bitterness. “Did you see how he shut me out of the council-chamber?”
“Yet the Stadtholder himself told you everything that occurred subsequently,” Diogenes retorted kindly, “including his own plans and mine errand at this hour. I think that your conscience troubles you unnecessarily, and you see a deliberate intention in every simple act.”
“If I thought that my father still suspected me—” Nicolaes mumbled under his breath.
“And if he did, you could scarce blame him. ’Tis only in the future you can prove your true worth. And methinks,” he added, more seriously than he was usually wont to speak, “that you will have occasion to do this very soon.”
“In the meanwhile, here’s Barneveld ahead of us,” Nicolaes rejoined, with a quick, indefinable sigh, and giving a sudden turn to the conversation. “I’ll see you across the city, then return to the bosom of my family, there to live in uxorious idleness, whilst you, a stranger, are entrusted with the destinies of our land. A poor outlook for a man who is young and a patriot, you’ll own.”
To this Diogenes thought it best to make no reply. He knew well enough that the mistrust of which Nicolaes accused his father was a very real thing, and that it was indeed only time that would soften the proud burgher’s heart toward his only son. It was not likely that one who but a brief while ago had conspired against the Stadtholder’s life with that abominable Stoutenburg could be admitted readily into the councils of the very man whom he had plotted to assassinate. With every desire to forgive, it was but natural that Mynheer Beresteyn should fail entirely to forget.
No more, however, was said upon the subject now, and Nicolaes soon relapsed into that sullen mood which had of late become habitual to him. Thus Diogenes was glad enough to be rid of his company. At Barneveld he obtained a fresh horse, left his own in charge of a man known to him, with orders to ride it quietly on the morrow as far as Wageningen, where he himself would pick it up a couple of days later. His journey would now lie due east to Zutphen. There he meant to make a halt of a few hours, and thence proceed to Vorden, where Marquet was in camp, with four thousand seasoned troops, trained under Mansfeld, and rested now since the campaign in Groningen.
The Stadtholder’s orders were that the general proceed, at once to Arnheim, ere the forces of the Archduchess had time to cross the Ijssel, and to cut off all access to so important a city.
From Vorden to Wageningen, which lies due south form Barneveld, the journey would be a long one, and, with De Berg’s army so near, might even prove perilous. But De Keysere was at Wageningen, with three thousand troops and some artillery. His help would be of immense service to Nijmegen if the latter city, too, were to be attacked.
“How will you journey from Vorden to Wageningen?” Nicolaes asked Diogenes in the end. “You will have to avoid the Ijssel.”
“I’ll cut across to Lang Soeren,” the other replied; “and thence go to Ede.”
“There’s scarce a track on the Veluwe just there,” the other urged.
“Such as there is, I know,” Diogenes retorted curtly. “And I must trust to luck.”
They had brought their horses to a halt about a quarter of a league outside Barneveld, where the two men decided to part. The stretch of the great waste, with its undulating, barren hills, and narrow, scarce visible tracks, lay straight out before them. Diogenes was sniffing the frosty air out toward the east, where lay Vorden, and whence there came to his nostrils the sharp tang of the breeze, that cut like a knife. The thaw which had held sway in the cities and on the low-lying lands had been vanquished ere it reached the arid upland. The snow upon the Veluwe lay as even and as pure as before. Above, a canopy of stars seemed but a diamond-studded veil of mysterious indigo, stretched over a world of light, which it failed altogether to dim. The silence and desolation were absolute; but not so the darkness. To the keen eye of the adventurer, accustomed to loneliness, the vast stretches of open country and limitless horizons, there was no such thing as absolute darkness. He could perceive the slightest accidental upon the smooth carpet of snow, noted every tiny mound that marked a clump of rough shrub or grass, and every footmark of beast or bird, mere flecks of blue upon the virgin pall.
“Such track as there is, I know,” he had carelessly asserted awhile ago, in response to a warning from Nicolaes. And now, without an instant’s hesitation, and tossing to the other a last curt word of farewell, he gave his horse a slight taste of the spur, and soon became a mere speck upon the illimitable waste.