My Lady Rotha Part 33

She looked at him for a moment, astonished. The contemptuous reference to the Waldgrave, the change of tone, opened her eyes still wider.

'I think you do not understand me,' she said coldly.

'I do more; I love you,' he answered hotly. And his eyes burned as he looked at her. 'You are fit to be a queen, my queen! And if I live, sweet cousin, I will make you one!'

'Let that go by,' she said contemptuously, bearing up against his look of admiration as well as she could and continuing to move, so that he had to walk also. 'What you do not understand is my nature--which is, not to desert my friends when they are in trouble, nor to play when those who have served me faithfully are missing.'

'I can help neither the one nor the other,' he answered. But his brow began to darken, and he stood silent a moment. Then he broke out in a different tone. 'By Heaven!' he said, 'I am in no mood for play. And I think that you are playing with me!'

'I do not understand you!' she said. Her tone should have frozen him.

'I have asked a question. Will you answer me yes or no,' he persisted.

'Will you be my wife, or will you not?'

She did not blench. 'This is rather rough wooing, is it not?' she said with fine scorn.

'This is a camp, and I am a soldier.'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I do not think I like rough ways,' she said.

He controlled himself by a mighty effort. 'Pardon me,' he said with a sickly smile, which sat ill on his flushed and angry face. 'Perhaps I am somewhat spoiled, and forget myself. But, like the man in the Bible, I am accustomed to say to some, "Go," and they go, and to others, "Do it," and it is done. And woe to those who disobey me.

Possibly this makes me a rough wooer. But, Countess, the ways of the world are rough; the times are rough. We do not know what to-morrow will bring forth, and whatever we want we want quickly. More, sweetheart,' he continued, drawing a step nearer to her and speaking in a voice he vainly strove to modulate, 'a little roughness before marriage is better than ill-treatment afterwards. I have known men who wooed on their knees bring their wives to theirs very quickly after the knot was tied. I am not of that kind.'

My lady's heart sickened. Despite the a.s.surance of his last words, she saw the man as he was; she read his will in his eyes; and though his sudden frankness was in reality the result of overmastering excitement, she had the added horror of supposing it to be dictated by her friendless position and the absence of the last men who might have protected her. She knew that her only hope lay in her courage, and, though her heart leapt under her bodice, she faced him boldly.

'You wish for an answer?' she asked.

'I have said so,' he answered.

'Then I shall not give you one now,' she replied with a quiet smile.

'You see, general, I am not one of those to whom you can say "Go," and they go, and "Do," and it is done. I must choose my own time for saying yes or no. And this time'--she continued, looking round, and suffering a little shudder to escape her, as she pointed to the valley below--'I do not like. I am no coward, but I do not love the smell of blood. I will take time to consider your offer, if you please; and, meanwhile, I think you gallant gentleman enough not to press me against my will.'

She had a fan in her hand, and she began to walk again; she held it up, between her face and the sun, which was still low. He walked by her side, his brow as black as thunder. He read her thoughts so far correctly that he felt the evasion boded him no good; but the influence of her courage and pride was such that he shrank from throwing down the mask altogether, or using words which only force could make good. True, it wanted only a little to urge him over the edge, but her lucky star and bold demeanour prevailed for the time, and perhaps the cool, fresh air had sobered him.

'I suppose a lady's wish must be law,' he muttered, though still he scowled. 'But I hope that you will not make a long demand on my patience.'

'That, too, you must leave to me,' she replied with a flash of coquetry, which it cost her much to a.s.sume. 'This morning I am so full of anxiety, that I scarcely know what I am saying. Surely your people must know by this time if they--they are among the dead?'

'They are not,' he answered sulkily.

'Then they must have been captured?' she said, a tremor in her voice.

He nodded. At that moment a man came up to say that breakfast was ready. The general repeated the message to her.

'With your leave I will take it with my women,' she answered with presence of mind. 'I slept ill, and I am poor company this morning,'

she added, smiling faintly.

The ordeal over, she could scarcely keep her feet. She longed to weep.

She felt herself within an inch of swooning.

He saw that she had turned pale, and he a.s.sented with a tolerable grace. 'Let me give you my hand to your fire,' he said anxiously.

'Willingly,' she answered.

It was the last effort of her diplomacy, and she hated herself for it.

Still, it won her what she wanted--peace, a respite, a little time to think.

Yet as she sat and s.h.i.+vered in the suns.h.i.+ne, and made believe to eat, and tried to hide her thoughts, even from her women, a crus.h.i.+ng sense of her loneliness took possession of her. She had read often and often, with scarce a quickening of the pulse, of men and women in tragic straits--of men and women brought face to face with death, nay, choosing it. But she had never pictured their feelings till now--their despair, their shrinkings, their bitter lookings back, as the iron doors closed upon them. She had never considered that such facts might enter into her own life.

Now, on a sudden, she found herself face to face with inexorable things, with the grim realities that have closed, like the narrowing walls of the Inquisition dungeons, on many a gay life. In the valley below they were burying men like rotten sheep. The Waldgrave was gone, captured or killed. Martin was gone. She was alone. Life seemed a cheap and uncertain thing, death very near. Pleasure--folly--a dancing on the grave.

Of her own free will she had placed herself in the power of a man who loved her, and whom she now hated with an untimely hatred, that was half fear and half loathing. In his power! Her heart stood still, and then beat faster, as she framed the thought. The suns.h.i.+ne, though it was summer, seemed to fall grey and pale on the hill sward; the morning air, though the day was warm, made her s.h.i.+ver. The trumpet call, the sharp command, the glitter of weapons, that had so often charmed her imagination, startled her now. The food was like ashes in her mouth; she could not swallow it. She had been blind, and now she must pay for her folly.

She bad pa.s.sed the night in the lee of one of the wooded knolls that studded the ridge, and her fire had been kindled there. The nearest group of soldiers--Tzerclas' staff, whose harsh voices and reckless laughter came to her ears at intervals--had their fire full a hundred paces away. For a moment she entertained the desperate idea that she might slip away, alone, or with her women, and, pa.s.sing from clump to clump, might gain the valley from which she had ascended, and, hiding in the woods, get somehow to Ca.s.sel. The smallest reflection showed her that the plan was not possible, and it was rejected as soon as formed. But a moment later she was tempted to wish that she had put it into effect. An officer made his appearance, with his hat in his hand and an air of haste, and wished to know, with the general's service, whether she could be ready in an hour.

'For what?' she asked, rising. She had been sitting on the gra.s.s.

'To start, your excellency,' he replied politely.

'To start!' she exclaimed, taken by surprise. 'Whither, sir?'

'On the return journey. To the camp.'

The blood rushed to her face. 'To the camp?' she repeated. 'But is the general going to start this morning? Now?'

'In an hour, madam.'

'And leave the Waldgrave Rupert--and my servant?' she cried, in a voice of burning indignation. 'Are they to be abandoned? It is impossible! I will see the general. Where is he?' she continued impetuously.

'He is in the valley,' the man answered.

'Then take me to him,' she said, stepping forward. 'I will speak to him. He cannot know. He has not thought.'

But the officer stood silent, without offering to move. The Countess's eyes flashed. 'Do you hear, sir?' she cried. 'Lead on, if you please.

I asked you to take me to him.'

'I heard, madam,' he replied in a low voice, 'and I crave your pardon.

But this is an army, and I am part of it. I can take orders only from General Tzerclas. I have received them, and I cannot go beyond them.'

For a moment the Countess stood glaring at him, her face on fire with wrath and indignation. She had been so long used to command, she was of a nature so frank and imperious, that she trembled on the verge of an outburst that could only have destroyed the little dignity it was still possible for her to retain. Fortunately in the nick of time her eyes met those of a group of officers who stood at a distance, watching her. She thought that she read amus.e.m.e.nt in their gaze, and a pride greater than that which had impelled her to anger came to her aid. She controlled herself by a mighty effort. The colour left her cheeks as quickly as it had flown to them. She looked at the man coldly and disdainfully.

'True,' she said, 'you do well to remind me. It is not easy to remember that in war many things must give way. You may go, sir. I shall be ready.'

But as she stood and saw her horses saddled, her heart sank like lead.

All the misery of her false position came home to her. She felt that now she was alone indeed, and powerless. She was leaving behind her the only chance that remained of regaining her friends. She was going back to put herself more completely, if that were possible, in the general's hands. Yet she dared not resist! She dared not court defeat!

As her only hope and reserve lay in her wits and in the prestige of her rank and beauty, to lower that prestige by an unavailing struggle, by an unwomanly display, would be to destroy at a blow half her defences.

The Countess saw this; and though her heart ached for her friends, and her eyes often turned back in unavailing hope, she mounted with a serene brow. Her horses had been brought to the top of the hill, and she rode down by a path which had been discovered. When she had gone a league on the backward road she came upon the foremost part of the captured convoy; which, was immediately halted and drawn aside, that she might pa.s.s more conveniently and escape the noise and dust it occasioned.