My Lady Rotha Part 45

'No, but something easily might!' he answered grimly. 'When I came here I found three as ugly looking rogues whispering and peering in your doorway as man could wish to see! Yes, Master Martin, and if I had not ridden up at that moment I will not answer for it, that they would not have been in! It is a pity a few more knaves are not where that one is,' he continued sourly, pointing through the open door. 'We could spare them. But do you see and have more care for the future.

Or, mein Gott, I will take other measures, my friend!'

So it had been a ruse after all! I went up sick at heart.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HOUSE IN THE CHURCHYARD.

The heat which Count Leuchtenstein had thrown into the matter surprised me somewhat when I came to think of it, but I was soon to be more surprised. I did not go to my lady at once on coming in, for on the landing the sound of voices and laughter met me, and I learned that there were still two or three young officers sitting with her who had outstayed Count Hugo. I waited until they were gone--clanking and jingling down the stairs; and then, about the hour at which I usually went to take orders before retiring, I knocked at the door.

Commonly one of the women opened to me. To-night the door remained closed. I waited, knocked again, and then went in. I could see no one, but the lamps were flickering, and I saw that the window was open.

At that moment, while I stood uncertain, she came in through it; and blinded, I suppose, by the lights, did not see me. For at the first chair she reached just within the window, she sat down suddenly and burst into tears!

'Mein Gott!' I cried clumsily. I should have known better; but the laughter of the young fellows as they trooped down the stairs was still in my ears, and I was dumfounded.

She sprang up on the instant, and glared at me through her tears. 'Who are--how dare you? How dare you come into the room without knocking?'

she cried violently.

'I did knock, my lady,' I stammered, 'asking your pardon.'

'Then now go! Go out, do you hear?' she cried, stamping her foot with pa.s.sion. 'I want nothing. Go!'

I turned and crept towards the door like a beaten hound. But I was not to go; when my hand was on the latch, her mood changed.

'No, stay,' she said in a different tone. 'You may come back. After all, Martin, I had rather it was you than any one else.'

She dried her tears as she spoke, standing up very straight and proud, and hiding nothing. I felt a pang as I looked at her. I had neglected her of late. I had been thinking more of others.

'It is nothing, Martin,' she said after a pause, and when she had quite composed her face. 'You need not be frightened. All women cry a little sometimes, as men swear,' she added, smiling.

'You have been looking at that thing outside,' I said, grumbling.

'Perhaps it did upset me,' she replied. 'But I think it was that I felt--a little lonely.'

That sounded so strange a complaint on her lips, seeing that the echo of the young sparks' laughter was barely dead in the room, that I stared. But I took it, on second thoughts, to refer to Fraulein Max, whom she had kept at a distance since our escape, never sitting down with her, or speaking to her except on formal occasions; and I said bluntly--

'You need a woman friend, my lady.'

She looked at me keenly, and I fancied her colour rose. But she only answered, 'Yes, Martin. But you see I have not one. I am alone.'

'And lonely, my lady?'

'Sometimes,' she answered, smiling sadly.

'But this evening?' I replied, feeling that there was still something I did not understand. 'I should not have thought you would be feeling that way. I have not been here, but when I came in, my lady----'

'Pshaw!' she answered with a laugh of disdain. 'Those boys, Martin?

They can laugh, fight, and ride; but for the rest, pouf! They are not company. However, it is bedtime, and you must go. I think you have done me good. Good night. I wish--I wish I could do you good,' she added kindly, almost timidly.

To some extent she had. I went away feeling that mine was not the only trouble in the world, nor my loneliness the only loneliness. She was a stranger in a besieged city, a woman among men, exposed, despite her rank, to many of a woman's perils; and doubtless she had felt Fraulein Max's defection and the Waldgrave's strange conduct more deeply than any one watching her daily bearing would have supposed. So much the greater reason was there that I should do my duty loyally, and putting her first to whom I owed so much, let no sorrow of my own taint my service.

But G.o.d knows there is one pa.s.sion that defies argument. The house next Herr Krapp's had a fascination for me which I could not resist; and though I did not again leave my lady unguarded, but arranged that Steve should stop at home and watch the door, four o'clock the next afternoon saw me sneaking away in search of St. Austin's. Of course I soon found it; but there I came to a check. Round the churchyard stood a number of quiet family houses, many-gabled and shaded by limes, and doubtless once occupied by reverend canons and prebendaries. But no one of these held such a position that it could shoulder Herr Krapp's, or be by any possibility the house I wanted. The churchyard lay too far from the street for that.

I walked up the row twice before I would admit this; but at last I made it certain. Still Herr Krapp must know his own premises, and not much cast down, I was going to knock at a chance door and put the question, when my eyes fell on a man who sat at work in the churchyard. He wore a mason's ap.r.o.n, and was busily deepening the inscription on a tablet let into the church wall. He seemed to be the very man to know, and I went to him.

'I want a house which looks into the Neu Stra.s.se,' I said. 'It is the next house to Herr Krapp's. Can you direct me to the door?'

He looked at me for a moment, his hammer suspended. Then he pointed to the farther end of the row. 'There is an alley,' he said in a hoa.r.s.e, croaking voice. 'The door is at the end.'

I thought his occupation an odd one, considering the state of the city; but I had other things to dwell on, and hastened off to the place he indicated. Here, sure enough, I found the mouth of a very narrow pa.s.sage which, starting between the last house and a blind wall, ran in the required direction. It was a queer place, scarcely wider than my shoulders, and with two turns so sharp that I remember wondering how they brought their dead out. In one part it wound under the timbers of a house; it was dark and somewhat foul, and altogether so ill-favoured a path that I was glad I had brought my arms.

In the end it ran into a small, paved court, damp but clean, and by comparison light. Here I saw the door I wanted facing me. Above it the house, with its narrow front of one window on each floor, and every floor jutting out a little, gave a strange impression of gloomy height. The windows were barred and dusty, the plaster was mildewed, the beams were dark with age. Whatever secrets, innocent or the reverse, lay within, one thing was plain--this front gave the lie to the other.

I liked the aspect of things so little that it was with a secret tremor I knocked, and heard the hollow sound go echoing through the house. So certain did I feel that something was wrong, that I wondered what the inmates would do, and whether they would lie quiet and refuse to answer, or show force and baffle me that way. No foreign windows looked into the little court in which I stood; three of the walls were blind. The longer I gazed about me, the more I mis...o...b..ed the place.

Yet I turned to knock again; but did not, being antic.i.p.ated. The door slid open under my hand, slowly wide open, and brought me face to face with an old toothless hag, whose bleared eyes winked at me like a bat's in suns.h.i.+ne. I was so surprised both by her appearance and the opening of the door, that I stood tongue-tied, staring at her and at the bare, dusty, unswept hall behind her.

'Who lives here?' I blurted out at last.

If I had stopped to choose my words I had done no better. She shook her head and pointed first to her ears, and then to her lips. The woman was deaf and dumb!

I would not believe it at the first blush. I tried her again. 'Who lives here, mother?' I cried more loudly.

She smiled vacuously, showing her toothless gums. And that was all.

Still I tried again, shouting and making signs to her to fetch whoever was in the house. The sign she seemed to understand, for she shook her head violently. But that helped me no farther.

All the time the door stood wide open. I could see the hall, and that it contained no furniture or traces of habitation. The woman was alone, therefore a mere caretaker. Why should I not enter and satisfy myself?

I made as if I would do so. But the moment I set my foot across the threshold the old crone began to mow and gibber so horribly, putting herself in my way, that I fell back cowed. I had not the heart to use force to her, alone as she was, and in her duty. Besides, what right had I to thrust myself in? I should be putting myself in the wrong if I did. I retired.

She did not at once shut the door, but continued to tremble and make faces at me awhile as if she were cursing me. Then with her old hand pressed to her side, she slowly but with evident pa.s.sion clanged the door home.

I stood a moment outside, and then I retreated. I had been driven to believe Herr Krapp. Why should I not believe this old creature? Here was an empty house, and so an end. And yet--and yet I was puzzled.

As I went through the churchyard, I pa.s.sed my friend the mason, and saw he had a companion. If he had looked up I should have asked him a question or two. But he did not, and the other's back was towards me.

I walked on.

In the silent street, however, three minutes later, a sudden thought brought me to a stand. An empty house? Was there not something odd in this empty house, when quarters were so scarce in Nuremberg, and even my lady had got lodgings a.s.signed to her as a favour and at a price?

The town swarmed with people who had taken refuge behind its walls.

Where one had lain two lay now. Yet here was an empty house!

In a twinkling I was walking briskly towards the Neu Stra.s.se, determined to look farther into the matter. It was again the hour of evening drill; the ways were crowded, the bells of the churches were ringing. Using some little care as I approached Herr Krapp's, I slipped into a doorway, which commanded it from a distance, and thence began to watch the fatal window.