Kitabı oku: «My Lady Rotha: A Romance», sayfa 13

He fell on his knees and seized her hand. 'You are killing me!' he cried in a choking voice, his face pale, his breath coming quickly. 'For I love you, Rotha, I love you! And every word of reproach you utter is death to me.'

'Hush, Rupert!' she said quickly. And she tried to withdraw her hand. He had taken her by surprise.

But he was not to be silenced; he kept her hand, though he rose to his feet. 'It is true,' he answered. 'I have waited long enough. I must speak now, or it may be too late. I tell you, I love you!'

The Countess's face was crimson, her brow dark with vexation. 'Hush!' she said again, and more imperatively. 'I have heard enough. It is useless.'

'You have not heard me!' he answered. 'Don't say so until you have heard me.' And he sat down suddenly on the tree beside her, and looked into her face with pleading eyes. 'You are letting last night weigh against me,' he went on. 'If that be all, I will never drink more than three cups of wine at a time as long as I live. I swear it.'

She shook her head rather sadly. 'That is not all, Rupert,' she said.

'Then what will you have?' he answered eagerly. He saw the change in her, and his eyes began to burn with hope as he looked. Her milder tone, her downcast head, her altered aspect, all encouraged him. 'I love you, Rotha!' he cried, raising her hand to his lips. 'What more will you have? Tell me. All I have, and all I ever shall have-and I am young and may do great things-are yours. I have been riding behind you day by day, until I know every turn of your head, and every note of your voice. I know your step when you walk, and the rustle of your skirt among a hundred! And there is no other woman in the world for me! What if I am the youngest cadet of my house?' he continued, leaning towards her; 'this war will last many a year yet, and I will carve you a second county with my sword. Wallenstein did. Who was he? A simple gentleman. Now he is Duke of Friedland. And that Englishman who married a king's sister? They succeeded, why should not I? Only give me your love, Rotha! Trust me; trust me once more and always, and I will not fail you.'

He tried to draw her nearer to him, but the Countess shook her head, and looked at him with tears in her eyes. 'Poor boy,' she said slowly. 'Poor boy! I am sorry, but it cannot be. It can never be.'

'Why?' he cried, starting as if she had stung him.

'Because I do not love you,' she said.

He dropped her hand and sat glaring at her. 'You are thinking of last night!' he muttered.

She shook her head. 'I am not,' she said simply. 'I suppose that if I loved you, that and worse would go for nothing. But I do not.'

Her calmness, her even tone went to his heart and chilled it. He winced, and uttering a low cry turned from her and hid his face in his hands.

'Why not?' he said thickly, after an interval. 'Why can you not love me?'

'Why does the swallow nest here and not there?' the Countess answered gently. 'I do not know. Why did my father love a foreigner and not one of his own people? I do not know. Neither do I know why I do not love you. Unless,' she added, with rising colour, 'it is that you are young, younger than I am; and a woman turns naturally to one older than herself.'

Her words seemed to point so surely to General Tzerclas that the young man ground his teeth together. But he had not spirit to turn and reproach her then; and after remaining silent for some minutes, he rose.

'Good-bye,' he said in a broken voice. And he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

The Countess started. The words, the action impressed her disagreeably. 'You are not going-away I mean?' she said.

'No,' he answered slowly. 'But things are-changed. When we meet again it will be as-'

'Friends!' she cried, her voice tender almost to yearning. 'Say it shall be so. Let it be so always. You will not leave me alone here?'

'No,' he said simply, and with dignity. 'I shall not.'

Then he went away, quite quietly; and if the beginning of the interview had shown him to small advantage, the same could not be said of the end. He went down the street and through the camp with his head on his breast and a mist before his eyes. The light was gone out of the sunshine, the greenness from the trees. The day was grey and dreary and miserable. The blight was on all he saw. So it is with men. When they cannot have that which seems to them the best and fairest and most desirable thing in the world, nothing is good or pleasant or to be desired any longer.

CHAPTER XVII.
STALHANSKE'S FINNS

It was my ill luck, on that day which began so inauspiciously, to see two shadows: one on a man's face, the Waldgrave's, and of that I need say no more; the other, the shadow of a man's body, an odd, sinister outline, crooked and strange and tremulous, that I came upon in a remote corner of the camp, to which I had wandered in my perplexity; a place where a few stunted trees ran down a steep bank to the river. I had never been to this place before, and, after a glance which showed me that it was the common sink and rubbish-bed of the camp, I was turning moodily away, when first this shadow and then the body which cast it caught my eye. The latter hung from the branch of an old gnarled thorn, the feet a few inches from the ground. A shuddering kind of curiosity led me to go up and look at the dead man's face, which was doubled up on his breast; and then the desire to test the nerves, which is common to most men, induced me to stand staring at him.

The time was two hours after noon, and there were few persons moving. The camp was half asleep. Heat, and flies, and dust were everywhere-and this gruesome thing. The body was stripped, and the features were swollen and disfigured; but, after a moment's thought, I recognized them, and saw that I had before me the poor wretch who had appealed to my lady's compassion after the shooting-match, and to whom the general had opened his hand so freely. The grim remarks I had then heard recurred now, and set me shuddering. If any doubt still remained in my mind, it was dissipated a moment later by a placard which had once hung round the dead man's neck, but now lay in the dust at his feet. I turned it over. Chalked on it in large letters were the words 'Beggars, beware!'

I felt at first, on making the discovery, only horror and indignation, and a violent loathing of the camp. But these feelings soon passed, and left me free to consider how the deed touched us. Could I prove it? Could I bring it home to the general to my lady's satisfaction, beyond denial or escape, and so open her eyes? And if I could, would it be wise, by doing so, to rouse his anger while she remained in the camp and in General Tzerclas' power? I might only hasten the catastrophe.

I found this a hard nut to crack, and was still puzzling over it, with my eyes on the senseless form which was already so far out of my thoughts, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and a harsh voice grated on my ear.

'Well, Master Steward, a penny for your thoughts! They should be worth having, to judge by the way you rub your chin.'

I started and looked round. The speaker was Captain Ludwig, who, with two of his fellows, had come up behind me while I mused. Something in his tone rather than his words-a note of menace-warned me to be careful; while the glum looks of his companions, as they glanced from me to the dead man, added point to the hint, and filled my mind with a sudden sense of danger. I had learned more than I had been intended to learn; I had found out something I had not been intended to find out. The very quietness and sunshine and the solitude of the place added horror to the moment. It was all I could do to hide my discomfiture and face them without flinching.

'My thoughts?' I said, forcing a grin. 'They were not very difficult to guess. A sharp shrift, and a short rope? What else should a man think here?'

'Ay?' Ludwig said, watching me closely with his eyes half closed and his lips parted.

He would say no more, and I was forced to go on. 'It is not the first time I have seen a man dancing on nothing!' I said recklessly; 'but it gave me a turn.'

He kicked the placard. 'You are a scholar,' he said. 'What is this?'

My face grew hot. I dared not deny my learning, for I did not know how much he knew; but, for the nonce, I wished heartily that I had never been taught to read.

'That?' I said, affecting a jovial tone to cover my momentary hesitation. 'A seasonable warning. They are as thick here as nuts in autumn. We could spare a few more, for the matter of that.'

'Ay, but this one?' he retorted, coolly tapping the dead man with a little stick he carried, and then turning to look me in the face. 'You have seen him before.'

I made a great show of staring at the body, but I suppose I played my part ill, for before I could speak Ludwig broke in with a brutal laugh.

'Chut, man!' he said, with a sneer of contempt; 'you know him; I see you do. And knew him all along. Well, if fools will poke their noses into things that do not concern them, it is not my affair. I must trouble you for your company awhile.'

'Whither?' I said, setting my teeth together and frowning at him.

'To my master,' he replied, with a curt nod. 'Don't say you won't,' he continued with meaning, 'for he is not one to be denied.'

I looked from one to another of the three men, and for a moment the desperate clinging to liberty, which makes even the craven bold, set my hands tingling and sent the blood surging to my head. But reason spoke in time. I saw that the contest was too unequal, the advantage of a few minutes' freedom too trivial, since the general must sooner or later lay his hand on me; and I crushed down the impulse to resist.

'What scares you, comrades?' I said, laughing savagely. They had recoiled a foot. 'Do you see a ghost or a Swede, that you look so pale? Your general wants me? Then let him have me. Lead on! I won't run away, I warrant you.'

Ludwig nodded as he placed himself by my side. 'That is the right way to take it,' he said. 'I thought that you might be going to be a fool, comrade.'

'Like our friend there,' I said dryly, pointing to the senseless form we were leaving. 'He made a fuss, I suppose?'

Ludwig shrugged his shoulders. 'No,' he answered, 'not he so much; but his wife. Donner! I think I hear her screams now. And she cursed us! Ah!'

I shuddered, and after that was silent. But more than once before we reached the general's quarters the frantic desire to escape seized me, and had to be repressed. I felt that this was the beginning of the end, the first proof of the strong grasp which held us all helpless. I thought of my lady, I thought of Marie Wort, and I could have shrieked like a woman; for I was powerless like a woman-gripped in a hand I could not resist.

The camp grilling and festering in the sunshine-how I hated it! It seemed an age I had lived in its dusty brightness, an age of vague fears and anxieties. I passed through it now in a feverish dream, until an exclamation, uttered by my companion as we turned into the street, aroused me. The street was full of loiterers, all standing in groups, and all staring at a little band of horsemen who sat motionless in their saddles in front of the general's quarters. For a moment I took these to be the general's staff. Then I saw that they were dressed all alike, that their broad, ruddy faces were alike, that they held themselves with the same unbending precision, and seemed, in a word, to be ten copies of one stalwart man. Near them, a servant on foot was leading two horses up and down, and they and he had the air of being on show.

Captain Ludwig, holding me fast by the arm, stopped at the first group of starers we came to. 'Who are these?' he asked gruffly.

The man he addressed turned round, eager to impart his knowledge. 'Finns!' he said; 'from head-quarters-Stalhanske's Finns. No less, captain.'

My companion whistled. 'What are they doing here?' he asked.

The other shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Their leader is with the general. What do you think of them, Master Ludwig?'

But Ludwig only grunted, looking with disparaging eyes at the motionless riders, whose air betrayed a certain consciousness of their fame and the notice which they were exciting. From steel cap to spurred boot, they showed all metal and leather. Nothing gay, nothing gaudy; not a chain or a sash differenced one from another. Grim, stern, and silent, they stared before them. Had no one named the King of Sweden's great regiment, I had known that I was looking no longer on brigands, but on soldiers-on part of the iron line that at Breitenfeld broke the long repute of years, and swept Pappenheim from the hillside like chaff before the storm.

After hesitating a moment, Ludwig went forward a few paces, as if to enter the house, taking me with him. Then he paused. At the same instant the man who was leading the two horses turned. His eye lit on me, and I saw an extraordinary change come over the fellow's face. He stopped short and, pulling up his horses, stared at me. It seemed to me, too, that I had seen him before, and I returned his look; but while I was trying to remember where, the door of the general's quarters opened. Two or three men who were loitering before it, stepped quickly aside, and a tall, stalwart man came out, followed by General Tzerclas himself.

I looked at the foremost, and in a twinkling recognized him. It was Von Werder. But an extraordinary change had come over the traveller. He was still plainly dressed, in a buff coat, with untanned boots, a leather sword-belt, and a grey hat with a red feather; and in all of these there was nothing to catch the eye. But his air and manner as he spoke to his companion were no longer those of an inferior, while his stern eye, as it travelled over the crowd in the street, expressed cold and steady contempt.

As the servant brought up his horse, he spoke to his companion. 'You are sure that you can do it-with these?' he said, flicking his riding-whip towards the silent throng.

'You may consider it done,' the general answered rather grimly.

'Good! I am glad. Well, man, what is it?'

He spoke the last words to his servant. The man pointed to me and said something. Von Werder looked at me. In a moment every one looked at me. Then Von Werder swung himself into his saddle, and turned to General Tzerclas.

'That is the man, I am told,' he said, pointing suddenly to me with his whip.

'He is at your service,' the general answered with a shrug of indifference.'

In an instant Von Werder's horse was at my side. 'A word with you, my man,' he said sharply. 'Come with me.'

Ludwig had hold of my arm still. He had not loosed me, and at this he interposed. 'My lord,' he cried to the general, 'this man-I have something to-'

'Silence, fool!' Tzerclas growled. 'And stand aside, if you value your skin!'

Ludwig let me go; immediately, as if an angel had descended to speak for me, the crowd parted, and I was free-free and walking away down the street by the side of the stranger, who continued to look at me from time to time, but still kept silence. When we had gone in this fashion a couple of hundred paces or more, and were clear of the crowd, he seemed no longer able to control himself, though he looked like a man apt at self-command. He waved his escort back and reined in his horse.

'You are the man to whom I talked the other night,' he said, fixing me with his eyes-'the Countess of Heritzburg's steward?'

I replied that I was. His face as he looked down at me, with his back to his following, betrayed so much agitation that I wondered more and more. Was he going to save us? Could he save us? Who was he? What did it all mean? Then his next question scattered all these thoughts and doubled my surprise.

'You had a chain stolen from you,' he said harshly, 'the night I lay in your camp?'

I stared at him with my mouth open. 'A chain?' I stammered.

'Ay, fool, a chain!' he replied, his eyes glaring, his cheeks swelling with impatience. 'A gold chain-with links like walnuts.'

'It is true,' I said stupidly. 'I had. But-'

'Where did you get it?'

I looked away. To answer was easy; to refrain from answering, with his eye upon me, hard. But I thought of Marie Wort. I did not know how the chain had come into her hands, and I asked him a question in return.

'Have you the chain?' I said.

'I have!' he snarled. And then in a sudden outburst of wrath he cried, 'Listen, fool! And then perhaps you will answer me more quickly. I am Hugo of Leuchtenstein, Governor of Cassel and Marburg, and President of the Landgrave's Council. The chain was mine and came back to me. The rogue who stole it from you, and joined himself to my company, blabbed of it, and where he got it. He let my men see it. He would not give it up, and they killed him. Will that satisfy you?' he continued, his face on fire with impatience. 'Then tell me all-all, man, or it will be the worse for you! My time is precious, and I cannot stay!'

I uncovered myself. 'Your excellency,' I stammered, 'the chain was entrusted to me by a-a woman.'

'A woman?' he exclaimed, his eyes lightening. 'Man, you are wringing my heart. A woman with a child?'

I nodded.

'A child three years old?'

'About that, your excellency.' On which, to my astonishment, he covered his face with both his hands, and I saw the strong man's frame heave with ill-suppressed emotion. 'My God, I thank thee!' I heard him whisper; and if ever words came from the heart, those did. It was a minute or more before he dared to uncover his face, and then his eyes were moist and his features worked with emotion.

'You shall be rewarded!' he said unsteadily. 'Do not fear. And now take me to him-to her.'

I was in a maze of astonishment, but I had sense enough to understand the order. We had halted scarcely more than a hundred yards from my lady's quarters, and I led the way thither, comprehending little more than that something advantageous had happened to us. At the door he sprang from his horse, and taking me by the arm, as if he were afraid to suffer me out of his reach, he entered, pushing me before him.

The principal room was empty, and I judged my lady was out. I cried 'Marie! Marie!' softly; and then he and I stood listening. The sunshine poured in through the windows; the house was still with the stillness of afternoon. A bird in a cage in the corner pecked at the bars. Outside the bits jingled, and a horse pawed the road impatiently.

'Marie!' I cried. 'Marie!'

She came in at last through a door which led to the back of the house, and I stepped forward to speak to her. But the moment I saw her clearly, the words died on my lips. The pallor of her face, the disorder of her hair struck me dumb. I forgot our business, my companion, all. 'What is it?' was all I could say. 'What is the matter?'

'The child!' she cried, her dark eyes wild with anxiety. 'The child! It is lost! It is lost and gone. I cannot find it!'

'The child? Gone?' I answered, my voice rising almost to a shout, in my surprise. 'It is missing? Now?'

'I cannot find it,' she answered monotonously. 'I left it for a moment at the back there. It was playing on the grass. Now it is gone.'

I looked at. Count Leuchtenstein. He was staring at the girl, listening and watching, his brow contracted, his face pale. But I suppose that this sudden alarm, this momentary disappearance did not affect him, from whom the child had been so long absent, as it affected us; for his first words referred to the past.

'This child, woman?' he said in his deep voice, which shook despite all his efforts. 'When you found it, it had a chain round its neck?'

But Marie was so wrapped up in her sudden loss that she answered him without thought, listening the while. 'Yes,' she said mechanically, 'it had.'

'Where did you find it, then-the child?' he asked eagerly.

'In the forest by Vach,' she replied, in the same indifferent tone.

'Was it alone?'

'It was with a dead woman,' she answered. She was listening still, with a strained face-listening for the pattering of the little feet, the shrill music of the piping voice. Only half of her mind was with us. Her hands opened and closed continually with anxiety; she held her head on one side, her ear to the door. When the Count went to put another question, she turned upon him so fiercely, I hardly knew her. 'Hush!' she said, 'will you? They are here, but they have not found him. They have not found him!' And she was right; though I, whose ears were not sharpened by love, did not discern this until two men, who had been left at home with her, and who had been out to search, came in empty-handed and with scared looks. They had hunted on all sides and found no trace of the child, and, certain that it could not have strayed far itself, pronounced positively that it had been kidnapped.

Marie at that burst into weeping so pitiful, that I was glad to send the men out, bidding them make a larger circuit and inquire in the camp. When they were gone, I turned to Count Leuchtenstein to see how he took it. I found him leaning against the wall, his face grave, dark, and thoughtful.

'There seems a fatality in it!' he muttered, meeting my eyes, but speaking to himself. 'That it should be lost again-at this moment! Yet, God's will be done. He who sent the chain to my hands can still take care of the child.'

He paused a moment in deep thought, and then, advancing to Marie Wort, who had thrown herself into a chair and was sobbing passionately with her face on the table, he touched her on the shoulder.

'Good girl!' he said kindly. 'Good girl! But doubtless the child is safe. Before night it will be found.'

She sprang up and faced him, her cheeks flaming with anger. I suppose the questions he had put to her had made no distinct impression on her mind.

'Oh,' she cried, in the voice of a shrew, 'how you prate! By night it will be found, will it? How do you know? But the child is nothing to you-nothing!'

'Girl,' he said solemnly, yet gently, 'the child is my child-my only child, and the hope of my house.'

She looked at him wildly. 'Who are you, then?' she said, her voice sinking almost to a whisper.

'I am his father,' he answered; when I looked to hear him state his name and titles. 'And as his father, I thank and bless you for all that you have done for him.'

'His mother?' she whispered, open-eyed with awe.

'His mother is dead. She died three years ago,' he answered gravely. 'And now tell me your name, for I must go.'

'You must go!' she exclaimed. 'You will go-you can go-and your child lost and wandering?'

'Yes,' he replied, with a dignity which silenced her, 'I can, for I have other and greater interests to guard than those of my house, and I dare not be negligent. He may be found to-morrow, but what I have to do to-day cannot be done to-morrow. See, take that,' he continued more gently, laying a heavy purse on the table before her. 'It is for you, for your own use-for your dowry, if you have a lover. And remember always that, in the house of Hugo of Leuchtenstein, at Cassel, or Marburg, or at the Schloss by Leuchtenstein, you will find a home and shelter, and stout friends whenever you need them. Now give me your name.'

She stared at him dumfounded and was silent. I told him Marie Wort of Munich, at present in attendance on the Countess of Heritzburg; and he set it down in his tablets.

'Good,' he said. And then in his stern, grave fashion he turned to me. 'Master Steward,' he said, in a measured tone which nevertheless stirred my blood, 'are you an ambitious man? If so, search for my child, and bring him to Cassel or Marburg, or my house, and I will fulfil your ambition. Would you have a command, I will see to it; or a farm, it shall be yours. You can do for me, my friend' he continued strenuously, laying his hand on my arm, 'what in this stress of war and statecraft I cannot do for myself. I have a hundred at my call, but they are not here; and by to-night I must be ten leagues hence, by to-morrow night beyond the Main. Yet God, I believe,' he went on, uncovering himself and speaking with reverent earnestness, 'who brought me to this place, and permitted me to hear again of my son, will not let His purpose fail because He calls me elsewhere.'

And he maintained this grave composure to the last. A man more worthy of his high repute, not in Hesse only, but in the Swedish camp, at Dresden, and Vienna, I thought that I had never seen. Yet still under the mask I discerned the workings of a human heart. His eye, as he turned to go, wandered round the room; I knew that it was seeking some trace of his boy's presence. On the threshold he halted suddenly; I knew that he was listening. But no sound rewarded him. He nodded sternly to me and went out.

I followed to hold his stirrup. The Finland riders, sitting upright in their saddles, looked as if they had not moved an eyelash in our absence. As I had left them so I found them. He gave a short, sharp word of command; a sudden jingling of bridles followed; the troop walked forward, broke into a trot, and in a twinkling disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust.

Then, and not till then, I remembered that I had not said a word to him about my lady's position. His personality and the loss of the child had driven it from my mind. Now it recurred to me; but it was too late, and after stamping up and down in vexation for a while, I turned and went into the house.

Marie Wort had fallen back into the old position at the table, and was sitting with her face on her arms, sobbing bitterly. I went up to her and saw the purse lying by her side.

'Come,' I said, trying awkwardly to cheer her, 'the child will be found, never fear. When my lady returns she will send to the general, and he will have it cried through the camp. It is sure to be found. And you have made a powerful friend.'

But she took no heed of me. She continued to weep; and her sobs hurt me. She seemed so small and lonely and helpless that I had not the heart to leave her by herself in the house and go out into the sunshine to search. And so-I scarcely know how it came about-in a moment she was sobbing out her grief on my shoulder and I was whispering in her ear.

Of love? of our love? No, for to have spoken of that while she wept for the child, would have seemed to me no better than sacrilege. And, besides, I think that we took it for granted. For when her sobs presently ceased, and she lay quiet, listening, and I found her soft dark hair on my shoulder, I kissed it a hundred times; and still she lay silent, her cheek against my rough coat. Our eyes had spoken morning and evening, at dawn when we met, and at night when we parted; and now that this matter of the chain was settled, it seemed fitting that she should come to me for comfort-without words.

At length she drew herself away from me, her cheek dark and her eyes downcast. 'Not now,' she said, gently stopping me-for then I think I should have spoken. 'Will you please to go out and search? No, I will not grieve.'

'But your purse!' I reminded her. She was leaving it on the table, and it was not safe there. 'You should put it in a place of safety, Marie.'

She took it up and very simply placed it in my hands. 'He said it was for my-dowry,' she whispered, blushing. And then she fled away shamefaced to her room.