My Lady Rotha Part 27

'That some day you will forgive me.'

'I forgive you now,' she rejoined firmly. 'But I cannot forget. I do not think I ever can,' she went on. 'Last night I was in your charge among strangers. If danger had arisen, whose arm was to s.h.i.+eld me, if not yours? If any had insulted me, to whom was I to look, if not to you? Yes, you may well hide your face,' my lady continued, waxing bitter, despite herself. 'I am not at Heritzburg now, and you should have remembered that. I am here with scanty protection, with few means to exact respect, a refugee, if you like, a mark for scandal, and your kinswoman. And you? for shame, Rupert!'

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. 'Hus.h.!.+'

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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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.