Kitabı oku: «My Lady Rotha: A Romance», sayfa 9

The mind once roused to activity works, whether a man will or no. When I had thought that matter threadbare, I fell, in my own despite and to my great torment, on another; the gold necklace. Through the day, and pending some opportunity of restoring the chain by stealth, I had shunned its owner. Her dejection, her silence, the way in which she drooped in the saddle, all had reproached me. To avoid that reproach, still more to avoid the meekness of her eyes, I had ridden at a distance from her, sometimes at the head of our company, sometimes at the tail, but never where she rode. And all day I had had a dozen things to consider.

Yet, in spite of this care and preoccupation, I had not succeeded in keeping her out of my mind. At fords and broken bits of the road, or at steep places where the track wound above the Werra, the thought, 'How will she cross this?' had occurred to me, so that I had found it hard to hold off from her at such places. And, then, there was the necklace. It burned in my pocket. It made me feel, whenever my hand lighted on it, like a thief, and as mean as the meanest. For a time, it is true, after our meeting with Tzerclas, I had managed to forget it; but now, in the watches of the night, I was consumed with longing to be rid of the thing, to see it back in her possession, to close the matter before some inconceivable trick of spiteful fortune put it out of my power to do so. For, what if an accident happened to me and the chain were found in my pocket? What would she think of me then? Or if the last accident of all befell me, and she never got her own?

These imaginations, working in a mind already fevered, spurred me so painfully that I felt I could hardly wait till morning. Two or three times in the night I rose on my elbow and looked round the sleeping camp, and wished that I could return the chain to her then and there.

I could not. And at last, not long before daybreak, I fell asleep. But even then the chain did not leave me at peace. It haunted my dreams. It slid through my fingers and fell away into unfathomable depths. Or a man with his face hidden dangled it before my eyes, and went away, away, away, while I stood unable to move hand or foot. Or I was digging in a pit for it, digging with nails and bleeding fingers, believing it to be another inch, always another inch below, yet never able to reach it however hard I worked.

I awoke at last, bathed in perspiration and unrefreshed, to find the sun an hour up and the camp beginning to stir itself. Here and there a man was renewing the fires, while his fellows sat up yawning, or, crouching chin and knees together, looked on drowsily. The chill morning air, the curling smoke, the song of the lark as it soared into the blue heaven, the snort and neigh of the tethered horses, the sounds of waking life and reality seemed to bless me. I thanked Heaven it was a dream.

Young Jacob was tending our fire, and I sat awhile, watching him sleepily. 'It will be a fine day,' I said at last, preparing to get to my feet.

'For certain,' he answered. Then he looked at me shyly. 'You were in the wars, last night, Master Martin?' he said.

'In the wars?' I exclaimed. 'What do you mean?' And I stared at him; waiting, with one knee and one foot on the ground for his answer.

He pointed to my cloak. I looked down, and saw to my surprise a great slit in it-a clean cut in the stuff, a foot long. For a moment I looked at the slit, wondering stupidly and trying to remember how I could have done it. Then a sudden flash, of intelligence entered my mind, and with a dreadful pang of terror, I thrust my hand into my pouch. The chain was gone!

I sprang to my feet. I tore off the pouch and peered into it. I shook my clothes like one possessed. I stooped and searched the ground where I had lain. But all fruitlessly. The chain was gone!

As soon as I knew this for certain, I turned on Jacob, and seizing him by the throat, shook him to and fro. 'Wretch!' I said. 'You have slept! You have slept and let us be robbed! You have ruined me!'

He gurgled out a startled denial, and the others came round us and got him from me. But my outcry had roused all our part of the camp; even my lady put her head out of the tent and asked what was the matter. Some one told her.

'That is bad,' she said kindly. 'What is it you have lost, Martin?'

Over her shoulder I saw a pale face peer out-Marie Wort's; and on the instant I felt my rage die down into a miserable chill, the chill of despair.

'Seven ducats,' I said sullenly, looking down at the ground, for the truth, at sight of her, crushed me. I was a thief! This had made me one. Who was I to cry out that I was robbed?

'It must be one of the strangers,' my lady said in a low voice and with an air of disturbance. 'Do you-'

I sprang away without waiting to hear more-they must have thought me mad. I tore to the spot where I had diced the night before. Three or four men sat round the fire, swearing and grumbling, as is the manner of their kind in the morning; but the man I wanted was not among them.

'Where is Ludwig?' I panted. 'Where is he?'

A form, wrapped head and all in a cloak, struggled for a moment with its coverings, and freeing itself at last, rose to a sitting posture. It was Captain Ludwig.

'Who wants me?' he muttered sleepily.

'I!' I cried, stooping and seizing him by the shoulder. I was trembling with excitement. 'I have been robbed! Do you hear, man? I have been robbed! In the night!'

He shook me off impatiently. 'Well, what is that to me?' he grunted. And he turned to warm himself.

'Where is the Saxon who sat by me last night?' I demanded, almost beside myself with fury.

'How do I know?' he answered, shrugging his shoulders peevishly. 'Robbed? Well, you are not the first person that has been robbed. You need not make such an outcry about it. There is more than one thief about, eh, Taddeo?' And he winked cunningly at his comrade.

The man's indifference maddened me. I could scarcely keep my hands off him. Fortunately, Taddeo's answer put an end to my doubts.

'There is one less, at any rate, captain,' he said carelessly, stooping forward to stir the embers. 'The Saxon is gone.'

'Himmel! He has, has he? Without leave?' Ludwig answered. 'The worse for him if we catch him, that is all!'

'He went off with the German and his servants an hour before sunrise,' Taddeo said with a yawn.

'He had better not let our noble general overtake him!' Ludwig answered grimly, while I stood still, stricken dumb by the news. 'But enough of that. Where is my cap?'

Taddeo pushed it towards him with his foot, and he took it up and put it on. He had no sooner done so, however, than a thought seemed to strike him. He snatched the cap off again, and, plunging his hand into it, groped in the lining. The next instant he sprang to his feet with a howl of rage.

Taddeo looked at him in astonishment. 'What is it?' he asked.

For answer, Ludwig ran at him and dealt him a tremendous kick. 'There, pig, that is for you!' he cried vengefully, his eyes almost starting from his head. 'You will not ask what it is next time! That Saxon hound has robbed me-that is what it is. But he shall pay for it. He shall hang before night! Every ducat I had he has taken, pig, dog, vermin that he is! But I'll be even with him. I'll lash-'

And Master Ludwig, all his indifference cast to the winds, continued to stamp and scream so loudly that in the end Tzerclas overheard him, and appeared.

'What is this?' the general said harshly. 'Is that man mad?'

Ludwig grew a little calmer at sight of him. 'The Saxon, Heller,' he answered, scowling. 'He has deserted with fifty ducats of mine, general; good honest money!'

'The worse for you,' Tzerclas answered cynically. 'And the worse for him, if I catch him. He will hang.'

'He has taken a gold chain of mine also,' I said, thrusting myself forward.

The general looked hard at me. 'Umph!' he said. 'Which way has he gone?'

'He left with the German gentleman and his two servants at daybreak,' Taddeo answered, rubbing himself. 'I thought that he had orders to go with them.'

'He has gone north, then?'

'North they started,' Taddeo whimpered.

The general turned to Ludwig. 'Take two men,' he said curtly, 'and follow him. But, whether you catch him or not, see that you are back two hours before noon. And let me have no more noise.'

Ludwig saluted hastily, and, it will be believed, lost no time in obeying his orders. In two minutes he was in the saddle, and dashed out of camp, followed by two of his men and one of my lady's, whom I took leave to add to the party for the better care of my property, should it be recovered. I looked after them with longing eyes, and listened to the last beat of the hoofs as they passed through the forest. And then for three hours I had to wait in a dreadful state of suspense and inaction. At the end of that time the party rode in again, the horses bloody with spurring, the riders gloomy and chapfallen. They had galloped four leagues without coming on the slightest trace of the fugitive or his companions.

'The German never went north,' Ludwig said, looking darkly at his chief.

Tzerclas smoothed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. 'Are you sure of that?' he asked.

'Quite, general. They have all gone south together,' Ludwig answered, 'and are far enough away by this time.'

'Umph! Well, we start in an hour.'

And that was all! I wandered away and stood staring at the ground. I remembered that Peter the locksmith had valued the chain at two hundred ducats, a sum exceeding any I could pay. But that was not the worst. What was I to say to the girl? How was I to explain a piece of folly, mischief, call it what you will, that had turned out so badly? If I told her the truth, would she believe me?

At that thought I started. Why tell her the truth at all? Why not leave her in ignorance? She would be none the worse, for the chain was gone. And I, who had never meant to steal it, should be the better, seeing that I should escape the humiliation of confessing what I had done. Confession could do no good to her. And in what a position it would place me!

Leaning against a tree and driving my heel moodily into the soil, I was still battling with this temptation-for a temptation I knew it was, even then-when a light touch fell on my sleeve. I turned, and there was the girl herself, waiting to speak to me!

CHAPTER XII.
NEAR THE EDGE

'Will you give me back my-my chain, if you please?' she said timidly.

And she stood with clasped hands and blushing cheeks, as if she were the culprit. Her eyes looked anywhere to avoid mine. Her voice trembled, and she seemed ready to sink into the earth with shame. She was small, weak, helpless. But her words! Had they come from the judge sitting on his bench, with axe and branding-iron by his side, they could not have cowed me more completely, or deprived me more quickly of wit and courage.

'Your chain?' I stammered, stricken almost voiceless. 'What do you mean?'

'If you please,' she whispered, her face flushing more and more, her eyes filling. 'My chain.'

'But how-what makes you think that I have got it?' I muttered hoarsely. 'What makes you come to me?'

To confess, of my own motive and unsuspected, had been bad enough and shameful enough; but to be accused, unmasked, convicted-and by her! This was too much. My face burned, my eyes were hot as fire.

She twisted the fingers of one hand tightly round the other, but she did not look up. 'You took it from the child's neck as we passed through the ford,' she said in a low voice, 'that night I lost it.'

'I did!' I exclaimed. 'I did, girl?'

She nodded firmly, her lip trembling. But she never looked up; nor into my face!

Yet her insistence angered me. How did she know, how could she know? I put the question into words. 'How do you know?' I said harshly. 'Who told you so? Who told you this-this lie, woman?'

'The child,' she answered, shivering under my words.

I opened my mouth and drew in my breath. I had never thought of that. I had never thought, save once for a brief moment, of the child talking, and, on the instant, I stood speechless; convicted and confounded! Then I found my voice again.

'The child told you!' I muttered incredulously. 'The child? Why, it cannot talk!'

'It can,' she said, her voice breaking. 'It can talk to me, and I can understand it. Oh, I am so sorry!' And with that she broke down. She turned away and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob bitterly. Her shoulders heaved, and her slender frame shook with the storm.

A thief, and a liar! That was what I had made myself. I stood glaring at her, my breast full of sullen passion. I hated her and her necklace. I wished that it had been buried a thousand fathoms deep in the sea! That moment in the ford, one moment only, a moment of folly, had wrecked me. I raged against her and against myself. I could have struck her. If she had only left me alone, if she had not come to question me and accuse me, I should not have lied; and then, perhaps, I might have recovered the necklace, somehow and some day, and, giving it back to her, told her the story and kept my honesty. Now I had lied, and she knew it. And I hated her. I hated her, sobbing and shaking and shivering before me.

And then a ray of sunlight, passing through the branches, fell on her bowed head. A hundred paces away, little more, they were striking the camp. The men's voices, their harsh jests and rude laughter, reached us. I heard one man called, and another, and orders given, and the jingle of the bits and bridles. All was unchanged, everything was proceeding in its usual course. One thing only in the world was altered-Martin Schwartz, the steward.

I found no words to lie to her farther, to deny or protest; and when we had stood thus for a short time, she turned. She began to move slowly away from me, though the passion of her tears seemed to increase rather than slacken as she went, and shook her frame with such vehemence that she could scarcely walk.

For a time I stood looking after her in sullen shame, doing and saying nothing to stay her. Then, suddenly, a change came over me. She looked so friendless, so frail, and gentle and helpless, that, in the middle of my selfish shame, my heart smote me. I felt a sudden welling up of pity and repentance, which worked so quickly and wonderfully in me, that before she had gone a score of paces from me, my hand was on her shoulder.

'Stop! Stay a moment!' I muttered hoarsely. 'I have been lying to you. I took the necklace-from the child's neck. It is all true.'

She ceased crying, but she did not turn or look at me. She seemed to be struggling for composure, and presently, with her face still averted, she murmured-

'Why did you take it? Will you please to tell me?'

As well as I could, I did tell her; how and why I had taken it, what I had done with it, and how I had lost it. She listened, but she made no sign, she said nothing; and her silence hurt me at last so keenly that I added with bitterness-

'I lied before, and you need not believe what I say now. Still, it is true.'

She turned her face quickly to me, and I saw that her cheeks were hot and her eyes shining. 'I believe it-every word,' she said.

'I will not lie to you again.'

'You never did,' she answered. And she stole a glance at me, a faint smile flickering about her lips. 'Your face never did, Master Martin.'

'Yet you wept sore enough for your chain,' I said.

She looked at me for a moment with something like anger in her gentle eyes, so that for that instant she seemed transformed. And she drew away from me.

'Did you think that I wept for that?' she said in a tone of offence. 'I did not.'

'Then for what?' I asked clumsily.

She looked two or three ways before she answered, and in the distance some one called me.

'There! you are wanted,' she said hurriedly.

'But you have not answered my question,' I said.

She took a step from me and paused, with her head half turned. 'I wept-I wept because I thought that I had lost a friend,' she said in a low voice. 'And I have few, Master Martin.'

She was gone, before I could answer, through the trees and back to the camp. And I had to follow. Half a dozen voices in half a dozen places were calling my name. The general's trumpet was sounding. I slipped aside and joined the camp from another quarter, and in a moment was in the middle of the hubbub, beset by restive horses and swaying poles, clanging kettles and swearing riders, and all the hurry and confusion of the start. My lady called to me sharply to know where I had been, and why I was late. The Waldgrave wanted this, Fraulein Max that. The general frowned at me from afar. It would have been no great wonder if I had lost my temper.

But I did not; I was in no risk of doing so. I had gone near the edge and had been plucked back. Late, and when all seemed over, I had been given a place for repentance; and gratitude and relief so filled my breast that I had a smile for every one. The sun seemed to shine more brightly, the wind to blow more softly-the wind which blew from Marie Wort to me. Thank God!

As I fell in behind my lady-the general riding alone some way in the rear-the Waldgrave came up and took his place at her side; greeting her with an awkward air which seemed to prove that this was his first appearance in her neighbourhood. He made a show of hiding his uneasiness under a face of careless gaiety, such as was his natural wear; and for awhile he rattled on gallantly. But my lady's cool tone and short answers soon stripped him, and left him with no other resource but to take offence. He took it, and for a mile or so rode on in gloomy silence, brooding over his wrongs. Then, anger giving way to self-reproach, he grew tired of this.

With a sudden gesture he leaned over and laid his hand on the withers of my lady's horse. 'Tell me, what is the matter, fair cousin?' he said in a softened tone. 'What have I done?'

'You should know,' she answered, giving him one keen glance, but speaking more gently than before.

'I know?' he replied hardily. 'I am sure I don't.'

My lady shook her head. 'I think you do,' she said.

'I suppose you are angry with me for-for standing up for Germany last night?' he muttered, withdrawing his hand and speaking coldly in his turn.

'No, not for that,' my lady rejoined. 'Certainly not for that. But for being too German in one of your habits, Rupert. Which do you think made the better figure last night-you who were flushed with wine, or General Tzerclas who kept his head cool? You who bragged like a boy, or General Tzerclas who said less than he meant? You who were rude to your host; or he who made every allowance for his guest?'

'Allowance!' my lord cried, firing up at the word. And I could see that he reddened to the nape of his neck with anger. 'There was no need!'

'Yes, allowance,' my lady answered firmly. 'There was every need.'

'You would have me drink nothing, I suppose?' he said fretting and fuming.

'I would rather you drank nothing than too much,' she replied. 'Because a German and a drunkard have come to mean the same thing, is that a reason for deepening the reproach? For shame, Rupert!'

'You treat me like a boy!' he cried bitterly. And I thought that she was hard on him.

'Well, you have only yourself to thank,' she retorted cruelly, 'if I do. You behave like a boy. And I do not like to have to blush for my friends.'

That cut him deeply. He uttered a half-stifled cry of anger and reined in his horse. 'You have said enough,' he said, speaking thickly. 'You shall have no farther cause to blush in my case. I will relieve you.' And on the instant, with a low bow, he turned his horse's head and rode down the column towards the rear, leaving my lady to go on alone.

I confess I thought that she had been hard on him; perhaps she thought so too, now he was gone. And here were the beginnings of a pretty quarrel. But I did not guess the direction it was likely to take, until a horseman spurred quickly by me, and in a moment General Tzerclas, his velvet cloak hanging at his shoulder, had taken the Waldgrave's place, and with his head bent low over his horse's neck was talking to my lady. I saw him indicate this and that quarter with his gauntleted hand. I could fancy that this was Cassel, and that Frankfort, and another his camp, and that he was proposing plans and routes. But what he said I could not hear. He had a low, quiet way of talking, very characteristic of him, which flattered those to whom he addressed himself and baffled others.

And this, I suppose, it was that made me suspicious. For the longer I rode behind him and the more I considered him, the less I liked both him and the prospect. He was in the prime of his age and strength, inferior to the Waldgrave in height and the air of youth, but superior in that which the other lacked-the bearing of a man of the world, tried by good and evil fortune, and versed in many perils. Cool and resolute, handsome in a hard-bitten fashion, gifted, as I guessed, with infinite address, he possessed much to take the fancy of a woman; particularly of such a one as my lady, long used to comfort, and now learning in ill-fortune the value of a strong arm.

The possibility of such an alliance, thus suddenly thrust on my notice, chilled me. Anything, I said, rather than that. The Waldgrave had not left his post five minutes before I began to think of him with longing, before I began to invest him with all manner of virtues. At least, he was a German, of a great and noble family, tied to the soil, and fettered in his dealings by a hundred traditions; while this man riding before me possessed not one of these qualities!

Von Werder's warning, which the loss of Marie Wort's necklace had driven from my mind for a time, recurred with double force now, and did not tend to reassure me. I listened with all my might, trying to learn whether my lady was pledging herself to any course, for I knew that if she once promised I should find it hard to move her. But I could not catch a syllable, and presently there came an interruption which diverted my thoughts.

One of the two men who rode in front, and served for the advanced guard of our party, came galloping back with his hand raised and a grin on his dark face. He pulled up his horse a few paces short of General Tzerclas and my lady, and reported that he had found the Saxon.

'What! Heller?' the general exclaimed. 'Here, Ludwig! Where are you?'

Ludwig, and I, and two or three more, spurred forward, and passing by my lady, who reined in her horse, came a hundred paces farther on upon the other trooper. He had dismounted and was stooping over a man's body, which lay under a great tree that stood a few yards from the track.

'So, so? He is dead, is he?' the captain cried, leaping from his saddle.

'Ay, this hour or more,' the trooper answered with a grunt. 'And robbed!'

'Robbed?' Ludwig shrieked. 'Then you have done it, you scoundrel.'

'Not I!' the fellow said coolly. 'Who ever it was killed him, robbed him. You can see for yourself that he has been dead an hour or more.'

The sudden hope which had dawned in my breast sank again. The man lay on his back, with his one eye staring, and his mean, livid face turned up to the tree and the sunshine. His cap had fallen off, and a shock of hay-coloured hair added to the horror of his appearance. I tried in vain to hide a qualm as I watched the soldiers passing their practised hands over his clothes; but I was alone in this. No one else seemed to feel any emotion. The dead man lay and his comrades searched him, and I heard a hundred ribald and loose things said, but not one that smacked of pity or regret. So the man had lived, without love or mercy, and so he died.

Ludwig stood up at last. 'He has not the worth of his boots upon him!' he said, with a savage snarl. And he kicked the body.

'Look in his cap!' I said.

A man took it up, but only to hold it out to me. Some one had already ripped it up with a knife.

'His boots!' I suggested desperately.

In a moment they were drawn off, turned up, and shaken. But nothing fell out. The dead man had been stripped clean. There was not so much as a silver piece upon him.

We got to horse gloomily, one man the richer by his belt, another by his boots. His arms were gone already. And so we left him lying under the tree for the next traveller to bury, if he pleased. I know it has an ill sound now, but we were in an evil mood, and the times were rough.

'The dog is dead, let the dog lie!' one growled. And that was his epitaph.

With him disappeared, as it seemed to me, my last chance of recovering the necklace. Whoever had robbed him, that was gone. A week might see it pass through a score of hands, a day might see it broken up, and spent, a link here and a link there. It was gone, and I had to face the fact and make up my mind to its consequences.

I am bound to say that the reflection gave me less pain than I could have believed possible a few hours before. Then it would almost have maddened me. Now it troubled me, but not beyond endurance, leading me to go over with a jealous eye all the particulars of my interview with Marie, but renewing none of the shame which had attended the first discovery of my loss. By turning my head I could see the girl plodding patiently on, a little behind me in the ranks; and I turned often. It no longer pained me to meet her eyes.

An hour before sunset we crossed the brow of a low, furze-covered hill, and saw before us a shallow green valley or basin, through which the river wound in a hundred zigzags. The hovels of a small village, with one or two houses of a better size, stood dotted about the banks of the stream. Over the largest of the buildings a banner hung idly on a pole, and from this as from the centre of a circle ran out long rows of wattled huts, which in the distance looked like bee-hives. Endless ranks of horses stood hobbled in another place, with a forest of carts and sledges, and here a drove of oxen, and there a monstrous flock of sheep. One of the men with us blew a few notes on a trumpet; and the sound, being taken up at once and repeated, in a moment filled the mimic streets with a hurrying, buzzing crowd, that lent the scene all the animation possible.

'So, this is your camp?' my lady exclaimed, her eyes sparkling.

'This is my camp,' General Tzerclas answered quietly. 'And it and I are equally at your service. Presently we will bid you welcome after a more fitting fashion, Countess.'

'And how many men have you here?' she asked quickly.

'Two thousand,' he answered, with a faint smile.