My Lady Rotha Part 3

Under such circ.u.mstances I did not linger behind the screen, but advanced at once, and interrupting Fraulein Max, who had just begun to read aloud, while my lady worked, said that the Burgomaster desired the honour of an interview with the Countess.

The latter pa.s.sed her needle once through the stuff, and then looked up. 'Do you know what he wants, Martin?' she said in a quiet tone.

I said I did not.

She bent her head and worked for a moment in silence. Then she sighed gently, and without looking up, nodded to me. 'Very well, I will see him here,' she said. 'But first send Grissel and Gretchen to wait on me. Let Franz bring two stools and place them, and bid him and Ernst keep the door. My footstool also. And let the two Jacobs wait in the hall.'

I gave the orders and took on myself to place two extra lackeys in the hall that we might not seem to be short of men. Then I went to the Burgomaster, and attended him and Master Dietz to the parlour.

They bowed three times according to custom as they advanced, and my lady, taking one step forward, gave her hand to the Burgomaster to kiss. Then she stepped back and sat down, looking with a pleasant face at the Minister. 'I would fain apologise for troubling your excellency,' the Mayor began slowly and heavily. 'But the times are trying.'

'Your presence needs no apology, Master Hofman,' my lady answered, smiling frankly. 'It is your right to see me on behalf of the town at all times. It would grieve me much, if you did not sometimes exercise the privilege. And for Master Dietz, who may be able to a.s.sist us, I am glad to see him also.'

The Minister bowed low. The Burgomaster only puffed out his cheeks.

Doubtless he felt that courage at the Red Hart and courage in my lady's parlour were two different things. But it was too late to retreat, for the Minister was there to report what pa.s.sed; and after a glance at Dietz's face he proceeded. 'I am not here in a private capacity, if it please your excellency,' he said. 'And I beg your excellency to bear this in mind. I am here as Burgomaster, having on my mind the peace of the town; which at present is endangered--very greatly, endangered,' he repeated pompously.

'I am sorry to hear that,' my lady answered.

'Nevertheless it is so,' he replied with a kind of obstinacy.

'Endangered by the presence of certain persons in the town, whose manners are not conformable. These persons are Papists, and the town, your excellency remembers, is a Protestant town.'

'Certainly I remember that,' my lady said gravely.

'Hence of this combination, your excellency will understand, comes a likelihood of evil,' he continued. 'On which, hearing you took an interest in these persons, however little deserved, it seemed to be my duty to lay the matter before you.'

'You have done very rightly,' the Countess answered quietly. 'Do I understand then, Master Hofman, that the Papists you complain of are conspiring to break the peace of the town?'

The Burgomaster gasped. He was too obtuse to see at once that my lady was playing with him. He only wondered how he had managed to convey so strange a notion to her mind. He hastened to set her right. 'No--oh, no,' he said. 'There is no fear of that. There are but three of them.'

'Are they presuming to perform their rites in public then?' my lady rejoined. 'If so, of course it cannot be permitted. It is against the law of the town.'

'No,' he answered, more slowly and more reluctantly as the drift of her questions began to dawn upon him. 'I do not know that that is so.

I have not heard that it is so. But they are Papists.'

'Well, but with their consciences we have nothing to do!' she said more sharply. 'I confess, I fail as yet to see, Master Hofman, how they threaten the peace of the town.'

The Burgomaster stared. 'I do not know that they threaten it themselves,' he said slowly. 'But their presence stirs up the people, if your excellency understands; and may lead, if the matter goes on, to a riot or worse.'

'Ha! Now I comprehend!' my lady cried in a hearty tone. 'You fear your constables may fail to cope with the rabble?'

He admitted that that was so.

'And you desire such a.s.sistance as I can offer towards maintaining the law and protecting these persons; who have of course a right to protection?'

Master Hofman began to see whither he had been led, and glared at the Countess with his mouth wide open. But for the moment he could not find a word to say. Never did I see a man look more at a loss.

'Well, I must consider,' my lady resumed, her finger to her cheek.

'Rest a.s.sured, you shall be supported. Martin,' she continued, turning to me, 'let word be sent to the four foresters at Gatz to come down to the castle this evening. And send also to the charcoal-burners' camp.

How many men should there be in it?'

'Some half-score, my lady,' I answered, adding two-thirds to the truth.

'Ah? And let the huntsman come down and bring a couple of feeders.

Doubtless with our own men, we shall be able to place a score or thirty at your disposal, Master Hofman, and stout fellows. These, with your constables and such of the peaceful burghers as you see fit to call to your a.s.sistance, should be sufficient to quell the disorderly.'

I could have laughed aloud, Master Hofman looked so confounded. Never man had an air of being more completely taken aback. By offering her help to put down any mob, the Countess had deprived him of the plea he had come to prefer; that he was afraid he could not answer for the safety of the Papists, and that therefore they must withdraw or be expelled. This he could no longer put forward, and consequently he was driven either to adopt my lady's line, or side openly with the party of disorder. I saw his heavy face turn a deep red, and his jaw fall, as he grasped the situation. His wits worked slowly; and had he been left to himself, I do not doubt that he would have allowed things to remain as they were, and taken the part a.s.signed to him.

But Master Dietz, who had listened with a lengthening face, at this moment interposed. 'Will your excellency permit me to say a few words?' he said.

'I think the Burgomaster has made the matter clear,' my lady answered.

'Not in one respect,' the Minister rejoined. 'He has not informed your excellency that in the opinion of the majority of the burghers and inhabitants of this town the presence of these people is an offence and an eyesore.'

'It is legal,' my lady answered icily. 'I do not know what opinion has to do with it.'

'The opinion of the majority.'

'Sir!' my lady said, speaking abruptly and with heightened colour, 'in Heritzburg I am the majority, by your leave.'

He frowned and set his face hard, but his eyes sank before hers.

'Nevertheless your excellency will allow,' he said in a lower tone, 'that the opinion of grave and orderly men deserves consideration?'

'When it is on the side of law, every consideration,' the Countess answered, her eyes sparkling. 'But when it is ranged against three defenceless people in violation of the law, none. And more, Master Dietz,' she continued, her voice ringing with indignation, 'it is to check such opinion, and defend against it those who otherwise would have no defence, that I conceive I sit here. And by my faith I will do it!'

She uttered the last words with so much fire and with her beautiful face so full of feeling, that I started forward where I stood; and for a farthing would have flung Dietz through the window. The little Minister was of a stern and hard nature, however. The n.o.bility of my lady's position was lost upon him. He feared her less than he would have feared a man under the same circ.u.mstances; and though he stood cowed, and silenced for the moment, he presently returned to the attack.

'Your excellency perhaps forgets,' he said with a dry cough, 'that the times are full of bloodshed and strife, though we at Heritzburg have hitherto enjoyed peace. I suggest with respect therefore, is it prudent to run the risk of bringing these evils into the town for the sake of one or two Papists, whom it is only proposed to send elsewhere?'

My lady rose suddenly from her chair, and pointed with a finger, which trembled slightly, to the great window beside her. 'Step up here!' she said curtly.

Master Dietz, wondering greatly, stepped on to the das. Thence the red roofs of the town, some new and smart, and some stained and grey with lichens, and all the green valley stretching away to the dark line of wood, were visible, bathed in suns.h.i.+ne. The day was fine, the air clear, the smoke from the chimneys rose straight upward.

'Do you see?' she said.

The Minister bowed.

'Then take this for answer,' she replied. 'All that you see is mine to rule. It came to me by inheritance, and I prize the possession of it, though I am a woman, more highly than my life; for it came to me from Heaven and my fathers. But were it a hundred times as large, Master Dietz--were there a house for every brick that now stands there, and an acre for every furrow, and sheep as many as birds in the air, even then I would risk all, and double and treble all, rather than desert those whom my law defends, be they three, or thirty, or three hundred!

Let that be your answer! And for the peace you speak of,' she continued, turning on a sudden and confronting us, her face aglow with anger, 'the peace, I mean, which you have hitherto enjoyed, it should shame you to hear it mentioned! Have the Papists harried you? Have you suffered in life or limb, or property? No. And why? Because of my honoured uncle, a Papist! For shame!--for shame, I say! As it has been dealt out to you, go and do to others!'

But for the respect which held me in her presence, I could have cried 'Huzza!' to her speech; and I can tell you, it made Master Minister look as small as a mouse. He stepped down from the das with his face dark and his head trembling; and after that I never doubted that he was at the bottom of the movement against the Worts, though the ruffianly deserters I have mentioned supplied him with the tools, wanting which he might not have taken up the work. He stood a moment on the floor looking very black and grim, and with not a word to say, but I doubted he was not beaten. What line he would have taken, however, I cannot tell, for he had scarcely descended--my lady had not resumed her seat--when there rose from the court below a sudden babel of noise, the trampling of hoofs and feet on the pavement, and a confused murmur of voices. For a moment I looked at my lady and she at me. It struck me that that at which the Burgomaster had hinted was come to pa.s.s: that some of the town ragam.u.f.fins had dared to invade the castle. The same idea doubtless occurred to her, for she stepped, though without any appearance of alarm, to the window, which commanded a side view of the terrace. She looked out.

I, a little to her right, saw her smile: then in a moment she turned.

'This could not be better,' she said, resuming in an instant her ordinary manner. I think she was a little ashamed, as people of quality are wont to be, of the feeling she had betrayed. 'I see some one below who will advise me, and who, if I am doing wrong, as you seem to fear, Master Burgomaster, will tell me of it. My cousin, the Waldgrave Rupert, whom I expected to-morrow, has arrived to-day. Be good enough to wait while I receive him, and I will then return to you.'

Bidding me have the two served with some refreshment, she stepped down from the das, and withdrew with Fraulein Max and her women, leaving the townsmen to discuss the new arrival with what appet.i.te they might.

They liked it little, I fancy. In a moment their importance was gone, their consequence at an end. The name of the Waldgrave Rupert made them feel how small they were, despite their boasting, beside the youngest member of the family. The very swish of my lady's robe as she swept through the doorway flouted them, her departure was an offence; and this, following on the scolding they had received, produced a soreness and irritation in their minds, which ill-prepared them, I think, for the sequel.