“Your organ is sufficiently far advanced to put up and play on, is it not?”
“It will be in six months.”
“Then six months hence you shall transfer your workshop to the chapel tribune,” said Brederode confidently.
Nicholas said nothing, but the other was used to that. The famous musician grew more silent every day; things got complicated in his mind, and he was always puzzling himself. His brain was clear only for his work; at all other times he walked in a dream of expectation, conjecture, and dread. Each day the seemingly light burden weighed more upon him; the horror of being entangled in conspiracies of which he was ignorant, and concerned in wrongs which he could neither prevent nor reconcile to himself, haunted him; and yet in actual facts there was nothing to complain of, nothing even to describe. It seemed incomprehensible to him that Lemoinne should have made so solemn an appeal and promise for so little reward, and should have used his power so sparingly. The very blandness of the passing years made him fear some awful test towards the last. Meanwhile, Brederode’s generous, boyish friendship cheered and soothed him. But a year after he first knew him, and two months after Count Stromwael had yielded to his nephew-in-law’s vehement pleading for the Verkloep organ, Nicholas, at work in the chapel, saw him enter with an unusually serious face. The young man began to make dark confidences on political subjects, which Nicholas instinctively repelled, and, without knowing why, he said:
“I entreat you, Count Brederode, do not make me the repository of plans and intentions that may end dangerously for you. I wish to know nothing of anything which is likely to make the state rake up all your habits and intimacies, and use them as the Philistines did Delilah.”
“I would sooner trust you than my own wife,” laughed the young man, “and no one will suspect such a maniac as you are, you know!”
“If you insist upon it,” said Nicholas sadly, “let me at least solemnly swear to you, by my hope of salvation, that nothing shall make me betray you in the slightest thing.”
“I would trust you without an oath,” cried Brederode.
“Then you are not of the stuff of which conspirators are made,” said Nicholas, “and I wish you would retire from a position unsuited to you. You have no interest even in it.”
“None but the fun of secrecy and excitement—except this,” he added more seriously: “that having once promised to give others the shield of my name and the support of my money, I am bound in honor not to run away.”