The Black Tulip

“I did not know what to answer, as you had so strictly enjoined me never to allow any one to guess the interest which you are taking in the bulb. Fortunately, my father saved me from the difficulty by chiming in, —

“‘What did he say? Didn’t he fume and fret?’

“I interrupted him, saying, ‘Was it not natural that he should be furious, you were so unjust and brutal, father?’

“‘Well, now, are you mad?’ cried my father; ‘what immense misfortune is it to crush a tulip bulb? You may buy a hundred of them in the market of Gorcum.’

“‘Perhaps some less precious one than that was!’ I quite incautiously replied.”

“And what did Jacob say or do at these words?” asked Cornelius.

“At these words, if I must say it, his eyes seemed to flash like lightning.”

“But,” said Cornelius, “that was not all; I am sure he said something in his turn.”

“‘So, then, my pretty Rosa,’ he said, with a voice as sweet a honey, – ‘so you think that bulb to have been a precious one?’

“I saw that I had made a blunder.

“‘What do I know?’ I said, negligently; ‘do I understand anything of tulips? I only know – as unfortunately it is our lot to live with prisoners – that for them any pastime is of value. This poor Mynheer van Baerle amused himself with this bulb. Well, I think it very cruel to take from him the only thing that he could have amused himself with.’

“‘But, first of all,’ said my father, ‘we ought to know how he has contrived to procure this bulb.’

“I turned my eyes away to avoid my father’s look; but I met those of Jacob.

“It was as if he had tried to read my thoughts at the bottom of my heart.

“Some little show of anger sometimes saves an answer. I shrugged my shoulders, turned my back, and advanced towards the door.

“But I was kept by something which I heard, although it was uttered in a very low voice only.

“Jacob said to my father, —

“‘It would not be so difficult to ascertain that.’

“‘How so?’

“‘You need only search his person: and if he has the other bulbs, we shall find them, as there usually are three suckers!’”

“Three suckers!” cried Cornelius. “Did you say that I have three?”

“The word certainly struck me just as much as it does you. I turned round. They were both of them so deeply engaged in their conversation that they did not observe my movement.

“‘But,’ said my father, ‘perhaps he has not got his bulbs about him?’

“‘Then take him down, under some pretext or other and I will search his cell in the meanwhile.’”

“Halloa, halloa!” said Cornelius. “But this Mr. Jacob of yours is a villain, it seems.”

“I am afraid he is.”

“Tell me, Rosa,” continued Cornelius, with a pensive air.

“What?”

“Did you not tell me that on the day when you prepared your borders this man followed you?”

“So he did.”

“That he glided like a shadow behind the elder trees?”

“Certainly.”

“That not one of your movements escaped him?”

“Not one, indeed.”

“Rosa,” said Cornelius, growing quite pale.

“Well?”

“It was not you he was after.”

“Who else, then?”

“It is not you that he was in love with!”

“But with whom else?”

“He was after my bulb, and is in love with my tulip!”

“You don’t say so! And yet it is very possible,” said Rosa.

“Will you make sure of it?”

“In what manner?”

“Oh, it would be very easy!”

“Tell me.”

“Go to-morrow into the garden; manage matters so that Jacob may know, as he did the first time, that you are going there, and that he may follow you. Feign to put the bulb into the ground; leave the garden, but look through the keyhole of the door and watch him.”

“Well, and what then?”

“What then? We shall do as he does.”

“Oh!” said Rosa, with a sigh, “you are very fond of your bulbs.”