“That isn’t all,” went on Adrian, taking no heed. “Whom do I find at this table? The worthy Heer Arentz, a minister of the New Religion. Well, I protest. I belong to the New Religion myself, having been brought up in that faith, but it must be well known that the presence of a pastor here in our house exposes everybody to the risk of death. If my stepfather and Foy choose to take that risk, well and good, but I maintain that they have no right to lay its consequences upon my mother, whose eldest son I am, nor even upon myself.”
Now Dirk rose and tapped Adrian on the shoulder. “Young man,” he said coldly and with glittering eyes, “listen to me. The risks which I and my son, Foy, and my wife, your mother, take, we run for conscience sake. You have nothing to do with them, it is our affair. But since you have raised the question, if your faith is not strong enough to support you I acknowledge that I have no right to bring you into danger. Look you, Adrian, you are no son of mine; in you I have neither part nor lot, yet I have cared for you and supported you since you were born under very strange and unhappy circumstances. Yes, you have shared whatever I had to give with my own son, without preference or favour, and should have shared it even after my death. And now, if these are your opinions, I am tempted to say to you that the world is wide and that, instead of idling here upon my bounty, you would do well to win your own way through it as far from Leyden as may please you.”
“You throw your benefits in my teeth, and reproach me with my birth,” broke in Adrian, who by now was almost raving with passion, “as though it were a crime in me to have other blood running in my veins than that of Netherlander tradesfolk. Well, if so, it would seem that the crime was my mother’s, and not mine, who——”
“Adrian, Adrian!” cried Foy, in warning, but the madman heeded not.
“Who,” he went on furiously, “was content to be the companion, for I understand that she was never really married to him, of some noble Spaniard before she became the wife of a Leyden artisan.”
He ceased, and at this moment there broke from Lysbeth’s lips a low wail of such bitter anguish that it chilled even his mad rage to silence.
“Shame on thee, my son,” said the wail, “who art not ashamed to speak thus of the mother that bore thee.”
“Ay,” echoed Dirk, in the stillness that followed, “shame on thee! Once thou wast warned, but now I warn no more.”
Then he stepped to the door, opened it, and called, “Martin, come hither.”
Presently, still in that heavy silence, which was broken only by the quick breath of Adrian panting like some wild beast in a net, was heard the sound of heavy feet shuffling down the passage. Then Martin entered the room, and stood there gazing about him with his large blue eyes, that were like the eyes of a wondering child.