My Lady Rotha Part 22

But I felt so certain that every word I said against him would in her present mood only set him higher in her favour that I was resolved not to answer. At last, being pressed, I told her that I distrusted him as a soldier of fortune--a cla.s.s the country folk everywhere hold in abhorrence; and that nothing I had seen in his camp had tended to lessen the feeling.

'A soldier of fortune!' she replied, with a slight tinge of wonder and scorn. 'What of that? My uncle was one. Lord Craven, the Englishman, the truest knight-errant that ever followed banished queen--if all I hear be true--he is one; and his comrade, the Lord Horace Vere. And Count Leslie, the Scotchman, who commands in Stralsund for the Swede, I never heard aught but good of him. And Count Thurn of Bohemia--him I know. He is a brave man and honourable. A soldier of fortune!' she continued thoughtfully, tapping the table with her fingers. 'And why not? Why not?'

My choler rose at her words. 'He has the sweepings of Germany in his train,' I muttered. 'Look at his camp, my lady.'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'A camp is not a nunnery,' she said. 'And at any rate, he is on the right side.'

'His own!' I exclaimed.

I could have bitten my tongue the next moment, but it was too late. My lady looked at me sternly. 'You grow too quick-witted,' she said. 'I have talked too much to you, I see. I am no longer in Heritzburg, but I will be respected, Martin. Go! go at once, and to-morrow be more careful.'

Result--that I had offended her and done no good. I wondered what the Waldgrave would say, and I went to bed with a heart full of fancies and forebodings, that, battening on themselves, grew stronger and more formidable the longer I lay awake. The night was well advanced and the immediate neighbourhood of our quarters was quiet. The sentry's footsteps echoed monotonously as he tramped up and down the wooden platform before them. I could almost hear the breathing of the sleepers in the other rooms, the creak of the floor as one rose or another turned. There was nothing to keep me from sleep.

But my thoughts would not be confined to the four walls or the neighbourhood; my ears lent themselves to every sound that came from the encircling camp, the coa.r.s.e song chanted by drunken revellers, the oath of anger, the shrill taunt, the cry of surprise. And once, a little before midnight, I heard something more than these: a sudden roar of voices that swelled up and up, louder and fiercer, and then died in a moment into silence--to be followed an instant later by fierce screams of pain--shriek upon shriek of such mortal agony and writhing that I sat up on my pallet, trembling all over and bathed in perspiration; and even the sleepers turned and moaned in their dreams.

The cries grew fainter. Then, thank Heaven! silence.

But the incident left me in no better mood for sleep, and with every nerve on the stretch I was turning on the other side for the twentieth time when I fancied I heard whispering outside; a faint muttering as of some one talking to the sentinel. The sentry's step still kept time, however, and I was beginning to think that my imagination had played me a trick, when the creak of a door in the house, followed by a rustling sound, confirmed my suspicions. I rose to my feet. The next instant a low scream and the harsh voice of the watchman told me that something had happened.

I pa.s.sed out of the house, without alarming any one, and was not surprised to find Jacob pinning a captive against the wall with one hand, while he threatened him with his pike. There was just light enough to see this, and no more, the wide eaves casting a black shadow on the prisoner's face.

'What is it, Jacob?' I said, going to his a.s.sistance. 'Whom have you got?'

'I do not know,' he answered st.u.r.dily, 'but I'll keep him. He was trying to get in or out. Steady now,' he added gruffly to his captive, 'or I will spoil your beauty for you!'

'In or out?' I said.

'Ay, I think he was coming out.'

There was a fire burning in the road a score of paces away. I ran to it and fetched a brand, and blowing the smouldering wood into a blaze, threw the light on the fellow's face. Jacob dropped his hand with a cry of surprise, and I recoiled. His prisoner was a woman--Marie Wort.

She hung down her head, trembling violently. Jacob had thrust back the hood from her face, and her loosened hair covered her shoulders.

'What does it mean?' I cried, struggling with my bewilderment. 'Why are you here, girl?'

Instead of answering she cowered nearer the wall, and I saw that she was trying to hide something behind her under cover of her cloak.

'What have you got there?' I said quickly, laying my hand on her wrist.

She flashed a look at me, her small teeth showing, a mutinous glare on her little pale face. 'Not my chain!' she snapped.

I dropped her arm and recoiled as if she had struck me; though the words did not so much hurt as surprise me. And I was quick to recover myself. 'What is it, then?' I said, returning to the attack. 'I must know, Marie, and what you are doing here at this time of night.'

As she did not answer I put her cloak aside, and discovered, to my great astonishment, that she was holding a platter full of food. It shook in her hand. She began to cry.

'Heavens, girl!' I exclaimed in my wonder, 'have you not had enough to eat?'

She lifted her head and looked at me through her tears, her eyes sparkling with indignation. 'I have!' she said almost fiercely. 'But what of these?'--and she flung her disengaged hand abroad, with a gesture I did not at once comprehend. 'Can you sleep in their beds, and lie in their houses, and eat from their meal-tubs, and think of them starving, and not get up and help them? Can you hear them whining for food like dogs, and starve them as you would not starve a dog? I cannot. I cannot!' she repeated wildly. 'But you, you others, you of the north, you have no hearts! You lie soft and care nothing!'

'But what--who are starving?' I said in amazement. Her words outran my wits. 'And where is the man in whose bed I am lying?'

'Under the sky! In the ditch!' she answered pa.s.sionately. 'Are you blind?' she continued, speaking more quietly and drawing nearer. 'Do you think your general built this village? If not, where are the people who lived in it a month ago? Whining for a crust at the camp gate. Living on offal, or starving. Fighting with the dogs for bones.

I heard a man outside this house cry that it was all his, and that he was starving. You drove him off. I heard his wife and babes wailing outside a while ago, and I came out. I could not bear it.'

I looked at Jacob. He nodded gravely. 'There was a woman here, with a child,' he said.

'Heaven forgive us!' I cried. Then--'Go in, girl,' I continued. 'I will see the food put where they will get it; but do you go to bed.'

She obeyed meekly, leaving me wondering at the strange mixture of courage and fearfulness which makes up some women, and those the best; who fly from a rat, yet face every extremity of pain without flinching. A Romanist? And what of that? It seemed to me a small thing, as I watched her gliding in. If she knew little and that awry, she loved much.

I looked at Jacob and he at me. 'Is it true, do you think?' I said.

'I doubt it is,' he answered stolidly, dropping the smouldering brand on the ground and treading, it out with his heel. 'I have seen soldiers and sutlers and women since I came into camp; and beggars.

But peasants not one. I doubt we have eaten them out, Master Martin.

But soldiers must live.'

The little heap of red embers glowed dully in the road and gave no light. The darkness shut us in on every side, even as the camp shut us in. I looked out into it and shuddered. It seemed to my eyes peopled with horrors: with gaping mouths that cursed us as they set in death, with lean hands that threatened us, and tortured faces of maids and children; with the despair of the poor. Ghosts of starving men and women glared at us out of spectral eyes. And the night seemed full of omens.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OPENING OF A DUEL.

I never knew where the Waldgrave spent that night, but I think it must have been with the fairies. For when he showed himself early next morning, before my lady appeared, I noticed at once a change in him; and though at first I was at a loss to explain it, I presently saw that that had happened which might have been expected. The appearance of a rival had laid the spark to his heart, and while the love-light was in his eyes, a new gravity, a new gentleness added grace to his bearing. The temper and pettiness of yesterday were gone. Other things, too, I saw--that his face flushed when my lady's voice was heard at the door, that his eyes shone when she entered. He had a nosegay of flowers for her--wild flowers he had gathered in the early morning, with the dew upon them--which he offered her with a little touch of humility.

Doubtless the fret and pa.s.sion of yesterday had not been thrown away on him. He had learned in the night both that he loved, and the lowliness that comes of love. It wanted but that, it seemed to me, to make him perfect in a woman's eyes; and I saw my lady's dwell very kindly on him as he turned away. A little, I think, she wondered; his tone was so different, his desire to please so transparent, his avoidance of everything that might offend so ready. But such service wins its way; and my lady's own kindness and gaiety disposing her to meet his advances, she seemed in a few moments to have forgotten whatever cause of complaint he had given her.

The general's band came early, to play while she ate, but I noticed with satisfaction that the music moved her little this morning, either because she was taken up with talking to her companion, or because the romantic circ.u.mstances of the evening, darkness and vague surroundings, and the la.s.situde of fatigue, were lacking. With the suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air pouring in through the open windows, the strains which yesterday awoke a hundred a.s.sociations and stirred mysterious impulses fell almost flat.

The Waldgrave made no attempt to resume the conversation he had held with me by the fallen tree. Either love, or respect for his mistress, made him reticent, or he was practising self-control. And I said nothing. But I understood, and set myself keenly to watch this duel between the two men. If I read the general's intentions aright, the young lord's influence with the Countess could scarcely grow except at the general's expense; his suit, if successful, must oust that which the elder man, I was sure, meditated. And this being so, all my wishes were on one side. My fear of the general had so grown in the night, that I suspected him of a hundred things; and could only think of him as an antagonist to be defeated--a foe from whom we must expect the worst that force or fraud could effect.

He came soon after breakfast to pay his respects to my lady, and alighted at the door with great attendance and endless jingling of bits and spurs. He brought with him several of his officers, and these he presented to the Countess with so much respect and politeness that even I could find no fault with the action. One or two of the men, rough Silesians, were uncouth enough; but he covered their mistakes so cleverly that they served only to set off his own good breeding.

He had not been in the room five minutes, however, before I saw that he remarked the change which had come over the Waldgrave, and perhaps some corresponding change in my lady's manner; and I saw that it chafed him. He did not lose his air of composure, but he grew less talkative and more watchful. Presently he let drop something aimed at the young man; a light word, inoffensive, yet likely to draw the other into a debate. But the Waldgrave refrained, and the general soon afterwards rose to take leave.

He had come, it seemed, to invite my lady's presence at a shooting-match which was to take place outside the camp at noon. He spoke of the match as a thing arranged before our arrival, but I have no doubt that the plan had its origin in a desire to please my lady and fill the day. He spoke, besides, of a hunting-party to take place next morning, with a banquet at his quarters to follow; of a review fixed for the day after that; and, in the still remoter distance, of races and a trip to a neighboring waterfall, with other diversions.

I heard the arrangements made, and my lady's frank acceptance, with a sinking heart; for under the perfect courtesy of his manner, behind the frank desire to give her pleasure which he professed, I felt his power. While he spoke, though I could find no fault with him, I felt the steel hand inside the silk glove. And these plans? Even my lady, though her eyes sparkled with antic.i.p.ation--she loved pleasure with a healthy, honest love--looked a little startled.

'But I thought that you were marching southwards, General Tzerclas,'

she said. 'At once I mean?'

'I am,' he answered, bowing easily--he had already risen. 'But an army, Countess, marches more slowly than a travelling party. And I am expecting despatches which may vary my route.'

'From the King of Sweden?'

'Yes,' he answered. 'The King has arrived at Nuremberg, and expects shortly to be attacked by Wallenstein, who is on the march from Egra.'