My Lady Rotha Part 28

'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 suns.h.i.+ne--how I hated it! It seemed an age I had lived in its dusty brightness, an age of vague fears and anxieties. I pa.s.sed 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Ca.s.sel 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 G.o.d, 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, pus.h.i.+ng me before him.

The princ.i.p.al room was empty, and I judged my lady was out. I cried 'Marie! Marie!' softly; and then he and I stood listening. The suns.h.i.+ne 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 gra.s.s. 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?'