Patroon van Volkenberg

by Henry Thew Stephenson

Without a cheer, without a sound save the rumble of their feet, the people flowed away like a deep and sullen river through its broken banks. I saw a bitter smile come into my lady’s face as she lifted her husband and carried him back into the house. Then of a sudden I cried out like a madman in the middle of the street. That hellish mob was bound for the manor-house and Miriam was there. For the first time I stopped to think how headless this mob was like to be. They would not stop to question when they were once before the house. The least they could do would be to burn it, even if the patroon could make good its defense. Then I set out at the top of my speed. It was little I could do, but if need be, I could die with her, and some chance might come that would help me to save her. In a moment I found myself mingling with the silent runners bent on destruction. The crowd swept on in that terrible stillness. It swirled out at the crossing of streets and jammed back resistlessly into the narrow ways. It poured through the Land Port like a flood and across the Kissing Bridge. Still we surged on.

Yet it was but a mob. A score of Lady Marmaduke’s retainers, armed to the teeth, had got to the front. The rest were without weapons. What could they do against the house of the patroon? As they spread out among the trees in the park a volley of shots were fired at them from the windows of the manor-house. Three of the foremost men fell dead or wounded. Then went up their first heartless yell of rage.

Lady Marmaduke’s men stationed themselves behind trees and aimed with such certainty that they soon silenced the fire from the house. If a face appeared at a window, a dozen muskets were immediately discharged at it. Meantime, under this protection, the mob began to attack the house with stones. The windows were all broken at the first volley. They fetched a long beam to use as a battering ram, and were getting ready to beat in the front door. In this crisis, I cast about me for some means of help. But I was powerless. Once I thought that I saw Miriam for a moment at one of the windows. She disappeared quickly. Had someone dragged her back, or had she been hit by one of the marksmen? Such a thought was torment worse than death. But she might be safe. For all that I could do nothing to save her.

But what I could not do was nobly done by another. I had drawn back somewhat so as to go around the edges of the crowd and come at the house from the rear. I hoped to find some way by which I could get in and help defend it. I had half accomplished the necessary detour, and had reached a point where the woods hid the yelling pack from my eyes, when a horseman came riding towards me like mad.

“Heavens!” I cried. “It is the patroon.”

My first impulse was to stop him. Then I remembered that he of all men would prevent me from entering the house. And from this meeting I took some hope. If there was an unwatched passage by which he could get out, I might enter by the same way.

Suddenly there leaped into my head a damning thought. He rode hard, like one mad with fear, looking neither to the right nor to the left. “What a coward,” thought I, “thus to leave his daughter to her fate.” Among all his crimes, he had ever clung to his one virtue, love of his daughter. Never, save when his infirmity was upon him, had he shown anything but the most loving tenderness to her. And now, at the great moment of peril, he had left her to ride like a coward for his own life.

He passed me so close I could have touched him. Perhaps his conscience stung him in spite of all, for I heard her name on his lips as he dashed by me.

“Miriam,” he was saying; “Miriam, I give you all.”

I turned to follow with my eyes this worthless coward who could think of his daughter and not stay and die with her. Two minutes later he was fleeing beyond the little patch of woods and within full sight of the mob. But they were so intent upon their attack that they did not see him at first.