The Mercenary Part 38

"It is no trifling joy, Stephanie! This, save the mark, is heaven to hold you to my heart."

"Oh! Nigel! Nigel!" she sighed. "Your love is the love of a man that comes and goes in gusts, roaring like the wind, gentle as the breeze, and then it is gone till it awakens again. I say not you are inconstant, but you do not fear, as woman does, the hour of emptiness when there is no lover, no husband."

"By Heaven! I am no inconstant, Stephanie! I can bide my time, and if I lose not my life in these wars, surely there shall be a roof-tree in bonnie Scotland waiting us."

"To-morrow, all being well, the Archd.u.c.h.ess shall send for Colonel Charteris to the Long Gallery, but for a brief talk of the affairs of state. The following evening I shall try to meet you here at the same time to say farewell. But remember how we may be beset, and use a double caution. Look for a way into the gardens by another avenue than the palace. Now I leave you! Do not follow! Wait a full half-hour! Make sure you are not spied upon! Make a wide circuit to the orangery and have a glib excuse if you are met. Good-night."

For a brief half-hour Nigel waited, exploring the orchard close. There were two other gates, by one of which the Archd.u.c.h.ess had beaten her retreat. No sign of any lurking spy made itself apparent. This time Caesar's daughter had escaped suspicion, and the lovers had their precious hour of interlude.

Nigel's mind was more at rest after he had made the circuit of the place and sounded every shadow by the aid of the fitful moon. More than ever alive to the privilege of her love, he was equally alive to the danger that she ran. Histories and mysteries of the courts of Italy, of Spain, of France, sprang to life in his mind, things read, or heard in the guard-room, or handed down in fearsome stories of the hearth at home.

The fairy princess had been folded in his arms, had breathed kisses of mortal joy upon his lips, had gone. If she were not a fairy princess, then a thousand unknown dangers threatened them. He could guess Maximilian as one very possible architect of evil; only Maximilian was just then preparing to defend Bavaria, and could know nothing if the very wind shouted "Nigel and Stephanie." Father Lamormain was another, nearer home, absolutely inexorable in working out his plans. At present in ignorance of this princely indiscretion he was friendly towards Nigel, but let him gain an inkling and Nigel felt that their projects of happiness would be thwarted by means impossible for himself and her to foresee and to avoid.

As he turned the key in the lock and took one farewell look of that wintry orchard before closing the gate behind him his mind was full of joy; and as the gate closed joy fled before foreboding.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

PASTOR RAD AGAIN.

After the victory of the Lutheran faith at Breitenfeld, Pastor Rad had found himself without a definite mission. In his enthusiasm he had made his way to the camp of Gustavus at Werben and marched with the Swedes to that field of triumph, using such opportunities as occurred to labour by way of exhortation and of prayer. So that his sonorous voice was lifted up, it mattered little who listened or regarded. At first the Swedes, drafted into whose ranks were many Brandenburgers, Pomeranians, and Saxons, listened to, if they only imperfectly understood, his vociferous ministrations. But after Breitenfeld the jealousy of the Swedish native ministers, who had at the beginning, while the issue was uncertain, held out the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p, manifested itself, and he was made to understand that his presence with the Swedish portion of Gustavus' army was superfluous. That army speedily moved onwards towards the west, and Pastor Rad, having reached Erfurt along with it, considered it a suitable opportunity for making his way back to Eisenach, where his flock, and his livelihood, lay peacefully enfolded in the forest.

His reception did not savour of fervency. The interest of utterly rural communities in external events happening a hundred miles away is hard to kindle, and, when kindled, needs much application of the bellows to keep it at a red heat. Magdeburg had fired them. His own narratives and sermons had blown up their sparks to a blaze, but, with the marching of a small body of their young men to join Gustavus, the countryside had returned to its arduous agricultural pursuits, to its wood chopping and charcoal burning, to its smithies and its inns.

"Here comes Pastor Rad!" said Jacob Putkammer, the tailor. "Now we shall hear!"

"About Breitenfeld?" was the pastor's eager question. "It was glorious."

"Yes! Yes! The Swede beat Tilly till there was not a whole suit of clothes in his army! We know all that."

"What we want to know," said Marx Englehart, the smith, "is what has become of Elspeth Reinheit?"

"Elspeth Reinheit?" queried the pastor in astonishment.

"You remember, pastor, how you set about driving the devil out of her!

Over yonder at Ruhla!"

The pastor flushed at the remembrance.

"Yes! Didn't some soldier come interfering and carry her off?" said the smith. "I wasn't there. I had too much to do at the time to make a holiday."

"Holiday! Marx!" said the pastor sternly. "It was a solemn duty we had to perform, and we were shamefully interrupted."

The tailor's eyes glinted as he said--

"I can picture him now dusting your gown for you!"

The pastor looked, as he felt, very angry.

"I don't know what became of her."

"Well!" said the smith, "I shouldn't advise you to go too near old Reinheit, her father. He's in an awful fume against you, pastor. Of course at the time he thought it was all for her good, but he did not expect you would go to the length of whipping the poor girl."

"How else should one persuade the devil out of a woman?" asked Pastor Rad.

"Ah!" said the tailor. "We are not learned in these matters. Now if you had been married to her, no one would have complained. There is no better way."

"There was a good deal of talk before that that you were c.o.c.king your cap at her!" said the smith slowly.

"And might have done worse! Old Reinheit's got a fine stocking of gold somewhere, and look at his farm," said the tailor.

"Lay not up for yourselves----" began the pastor.

"That's all very well!" said the tailor. "But a good-looking wench, even if she has got a devil, is none the worse for having a rich father.

_She_ didn't lay up the treasure. Besides, I wouldn't give half a batz for a woman who hadn't got a bit of the devil in her."

"Come! come! Jacob!" said the pastor. "Your tongue speaketh of vanity as your trade does. As for Nicholas Reinheit, I shall even go up to his house and comfort him."

"Well!" said the smith. "It is only just and manly so to do, but look after your skin, for he is a man who can still use his hands if he is a bit over sixty."

A good many people met Pastor Rad as he went through the town to Nicholas Reinheit's farm, and every one of them asked him--

"Where is Elspeth Reinheit?"

And some careless people even put it in this way--

"What have you done with Elspeth Reinheit?"

It was bad enough to be asked where she was. It was iniquitous that he should be taxed with having put her away.

It was not very strange that Pastor Rad should not have known what had become of Elspeth. He had seen Nigel carry her off. That was all of a piece with his own unworthy suspicions of Elspeth's character. As to her after-fate Pastor Rad had very little doubt of that. She would have been abandoned in some city to her own wretchedness and shame, not daring to return home. All armies left a track of human litter that had once been spotless maidens and chaste wives. He felt himself aggrieved at his own personal loss. He had fully intended to wed Elspeth in due time and inherit as much as he could of Nicholas Reinheit's wealth. Nicholas the farmer had not been overmuch in favour of the idea, but old Pastor Reinheit, the girl's uncle, who had died at Magdeburg, was desirous that the wedding should come about. Altogether Pastor Rad was not very eager to meet the girl's father, but the tailor and the smith, who represented public opinion in Eisenach, had led him in his haste to declare that he would face Nicholas, and he would. Pastor Rad's consciousness of his own honesty of purpose upheld him.

Nicholas gave him a grudging "good-day!" He was a stoutly built, rather fat man, but anxiety had perceptibly thinned him, and his cheeks hung loose and baggy.

"The Lord comfort you in your affliction!" said Pastor Rad.

The old man turned on him with a snarl--

"It is easy to say. You took away my daughter. You set some silly tale going about her being possessed till the countryside demanded that she should suffer discipline. Fool! It was you that was possessed. And you set about giving her a public whipping, my daughter Elspeth, as good and true a maid as ever walked, and all those mawkish fools of elders and hugger-muggers sitting in a ring all about you mum and not lifting a finger."

"The discipline has been found efficacious in cases of possession!" said Pastor Rad.

"Very likely," retorted Nicholas, "where some servant girl has gone distraught and howled like a wolf up and down the village, or an old witch has given a man's horse the murrain. Whip 'em! Burn 'em! Drown 'em. But my daughter Elspeth! And then forsooth one of the Emperor's captains takes her out of your hands and rides away with her, and you with your three or four hundred men with muskets and pikes never move a finger. Where is she now? Tell me that! Is she alive or dead? You professed to have a liking for her at one time. Why, man, if you had had a spark of love in you, you would have followed that captain's troops till you dropped! Pastor! Pastor means shepherd, doesn't it? What manner of shepherd are you that lets the wolf s.n.a.t.c.h his lamb out of his very fingers?"

Nicholas spat solemnly on the hearth.

"You forget," expostulated Pastor Rad, "that there were above three hundred troopers, well armed and well horsed. We should have been cut in pieces."