My Lady Rotha: A Romance

'I am obliged to you for your patience, sir,' she said, trembling but composed. 'I had expected one to aid me in my prayer, who is not here. And I can say no more. On his head be it. Only-I trust that you may never plead with as good a cause-and be refused.'

They rose and stood while she turned from them; and the two court ushers with their wands went before her as she walked down the hall. The silence, the formality, the creaking shoes, the very gules and purpure that lay in pools on the floor-I think that they stifled her as they stifled me; for when she reached the open air at last and I saw her face, I saw that she was white to the lips.

But she bore herself bravely; the surly crowd, that filled the Market Square and hailed our appearance with a harsh murmur, grew silent under her scornful eye, and partly out of respect, partly out of complaisance, because they now felt sure of their victim, doffed their caps to her and made room for us to pass. Every moment I expected her to break down: to weep or cover her face. But she passed through all proudly, and walked, unfaltering, back to our lodging.

There on the threshold she did pause at last, just when I wished her to go on. She stood and turned her head, listening.

'What is that?' she said.

'Cannon,' I answered hastily. 'In the trenches, my lady.'

'No,' she said quietly. 'It is shouting. They have read the sentence.'

She said no more, not another word; and went in quietly and upstairs to her room. But I wondered and feared. Such composure as this seemed to be unnatural, almost cruel. I could not think of the Waldgrave myself without a lump coming in my throat. I could not face the sunshine. And Steve and the men, when they heard, were no better. We stood inside the doorway in a little knot, and looked at one another mournfully. A man who passed-and did not know the house or who we were-stopped to tell us that the sentence would be carried out at sunset; and, pleased to have given us the news, went whistling down the stale, sunny street.

Steve growled out an oath. 'Who are these people,' he said savagely, 'that they should say my lady nay? When the Countess stoops to ask a life-Himmel! – is she not to have it?'

'Not here,' I said, shaking my head.

'And why not?'

'Because we are not at Heritzburg now,' I answered sadly.

'But-are we nobody here?' he growled in a rage. 'Are we going to sit still and let them kill my lady's own cousin?'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'We have done all we can,' I said.

'But there is some one can say nay to these curs!' he cried. And he spat contemptuously into the street. He had a countryman's scorn of townsfolk. 'Why don't we take the law into our own hands, Master Martin?'

'It is likely,' I said. 'One against ten thousand! And for the matter of that, if the people are angry, it is not without cause. Did you see the man under the archway?'

Steve nodded. 'Dead,' he muttered.

'Starved,' I said. 'He was a cripple. First the cripples. Then the sound men. Life is cheap here.'

Steve swore another oath. 'Those are curs. But our man-why don't we go to the King of Sweden? I suppose he is a sort of cousin to my lady?'

'We have as good as gone to him,' I answered. At another time I might have smiled at Steve's notion of my lady's importance. 'We have been to one equally able to help us. And he has done us no good. And for the matter of that, there is not time to go to the camp and back.'

Steve began to fume and fret. The minutes went like lead. We were all miserable together. Outside, the kennel simmered in the sun, the low rumble of the cannon filled the air. I hated Nuremberg, the streets, the people, the heat. I wished that I had never seen a stone of it.

Presently one of the women came down stairs to us. 'Do you know if there has been any fighting in the trenches to-day?' she asked.

'Nothing to speak of,' I answered. 'As far as I have heard. Why?'

'The Countess wishes to know,' she said. 'You have not heard of any one being killed?'

'No.'

'Nor wounded?'

'No.'

She nodded and turned away. I called after her to know the reason of her questions, but she flitted upstairs without giving me an answer, and left us looking at one another. In a second, however, she was down again.

'My lady will see no one,' she said, with a face of mystery. 'You understand, Master Martin? But-if any come of importance, you can take her will.'

I nodded. The woman cast a lingering look into the street and went upstairs again.

CHAPTER XXXII.

A POOR GUERDON

I had slept scantily the night before, and the excitement of the last twenty-four hours had worn me out. I was grieved for the gallant life so swiftly ebbing, and miserable on my lady's account; but sorrow of this kind is a sleepy thing, and the day was hot. I did not feel about the Waldgrave as I had about Marie; and gradually my head nodded, and nodded again, until I fell fast asleep, on the seat within the door.

A man's voice, clear and penetrating, awoke me. 'Let him be,' it said. 'Hark you, fellow, let him be. He was up last night; I will announce myself.'

I was drowsy and understood only half of what I heard; and I should have taken the speaker at his word, and turning over dropped off again, if Steve had not kicked me and brought me to my feet with a cry of pain. I stood an instant, bewildered, dazzled by the sunlight, nursing my ankle in my hand. Then I made out where I was, and saw through the arch of the entrance Count Leuchtenstein dismounting in the street. As I looked, he threw the reins to a trooper who accompanied him, and turned to come in.

'Ah, my friend,' he said, nodding pleasantly, 'you are awake. I will see your mistress.'

I was not quite myself, and his presence took me aback. I stood looking at him awkwardly. 'If your excellency will wait a moment,' I faltered at last, 'I will take her pleasure.'

He glanced at me a moment, as if surprised. Then he laughed. 'Go,' he said. 'I am not often kept waiting.'

I was glad to get away, and I ran upstairs; and knocking hurriedly at the parlour door, went in. My lady, pale and frowning, with a little book in her hand, got up hastily-from her knees, I thought. Marie Wort, with tears on her cheeks, and Fraulein Max, looking scared, stood behind her.

The Countess looked at me, her eyes flashing. 'What is it?' she asked sharply.

'Count Leuchtenstein is below,' I said.

'Well?'

'He wishes to see your excellency.'

'Did I not say that I would see no one?'

'But Count Leuchtenstein?'

She laughed a shrill laugh full of pain-a laugh that had something hysterical in it. 'You thought that I would see him?' she cried. 'Him, I suppose, of all people? Go down, fool, and tell him that even here, in this poor house, my doors are open to my friends and to them only! Not to those who profess much and do nothing! Or to those who bark and do not bite! Count Leuchtenstein? Pah, tell him- Silence, woman!' This to Marie, who would have interrupted her. 'Tell him what I have told you, man, word for word. Or no'-and she caught herself up with a mocking smile, such as I had never seen on her face before. 'Tell him this instead-that the Countess Rotha is engaged with the Waldgrave Rupert, and wants no other company! Yes, tell him that-it will bite home, if he has a conscience! He might have saved him, and he would not! Now, when I would pray, which is all women can do, he comes here! Oh, I am sick! I am sick!'

I saw that she was almost beside herself with grief; and I stood irresolute, my heart aching for her. What I dared not do, Marie did. She sprang forward, and seizing the Countess's hand, knelt beside her, covering it with kisses.

'Oh, my lady!' she cried through her tears. 'Don't be so hard. See him. See him. Even at this last moment.'

With an inarticulate cry the Countess flung her off so forcibly that the girl fell to the ground. 'Be silent!' my lady cried, her eyes on fire. 'Or go to your prayers, wench. To your prayers! And do you begone! Begone, and on your peril give my message, word for word!'

I saw nothing for it but to obey; and I went down full of dismay. I could understand my lady's grief, and that I had come upon her at an inopportune moment. But the self-control which she had exhibited before the Court rendered the violence of her rage now the more surprising. I had never seen her in this mood, and her hardness shocked me. I felt myself equally bewildered and grieved.

I found Count Leuchtenstein waiting on the step, with his face to the street. He turned as I descended. 'Well?' he said, smiling. 'Am I to go up, my friend?'

I saw that he had not the slightest doubt of my answer, and his cheerfulness kindled a sort of resentment in my breast. He seemed to be so well content, so certain of his reception, so calm and strong-and, at this very moment-for the sunshine had left the street and was creeping up the tiles-they might be leading out the Waldgrave! I had liked my lady's message very little when she gave it to me; now I rejoiced that I could sting him with it.

'My lady is not very well,' I said. 'The sentence on the Waldgrave has upset her.'

He smiled. 'But she will receive me?' he said.

'Craving your excellency's indulgence, I do not think that she will receive any one.'

'You told her that I was here?'

'Yes, your excellency. And she said-'

His face fell. 'Tut! tut!' he exclaimed. 'But I come on purpose to- What did she say, man?'

The smile was gone from his lips, but I caught it lurking in his eyes; and it hardened me to do her bidding. 'I was to tell your excellency that she could not receive you,' I said, 'that she was engaged with the Waldgrave.'

He started and stared at me, his expression slowly passing from amazement to anger. 'What!' he exclaimed at last, in a cutting tone. 'Already?' And his lip curled with a kind of disgust. 'You have given me the message exactly, have you?'

'Yes, your excellency,' I said, quailing a little. But servants know when to be stupid, and I affected stupidity, fixing my eyes on his breast and pretending to see nothing. He turned, and for a moment I thought that he was going without a word. Then on the steps he turned again. 'You have heard the news, then?' he said sourly. He had already regained his self-control.

'Yes, my lord.'

'Ah! Well, you lose no time in your house,' he replied grimly. 'Call my horse!'

I called the man, who had wandered a little way up the street, and he brought it. As I held the Count's stirrup for him to mount, I noticed how heavily he climbed to his saddle, and that he settled himself into it with a sigh; but the next moment he laughed, as at himself. I stood back expecting him to say something more, or to leave some message, but he did not even look at me again; he touched his horse with the spur, and walked away steadily. I stood and watched him until he reached the end of the street-until he turned the corner and disappeared.

Even then I still stood looking after him, partly sorry and partly puzzled, for quite a long time. It was only when I turned to go in that I missed Steve and the men, and began to wonder what had become of them. I had left them with the Count at the door-they were gone now. I looked up and down, I could see them nowhere. I went in and asked the women; but they were not with them. The sunset gun had just gone off, and one of the girls was crying hysterically, while the others sat round her, white and frightened. This did not cheer me, nor enliven the house. I came out again, vowing vengeance on the truants; and there in the entrance, facing me, standing where the Count had stood a few minutes before, I saw the last man I looked to see!

I gasped and gave back a step. The sun was gone, the evening light was behind the man, and his face was in the shadow. His figure showed dark against the street. 'Ach Gott!' I cried, and stood still, stricken. It was the Waldgrave!

'Martin!' he said.

I gave back another step. The street was quiet, the house like the grave. For a moment the figure did not move, but stood there gazing at me. Then-

'Why, Martin!' he cried. 'Don't you know me?'

Then, not until then, I did-for a man and not a ghost; and I caught his hand with a cry of joy. 'Welcome, my lord, welcome!' I said, grown hot all over. 'Thank God that you have escaped!'

'Yes,' he said, and his tone was his own old tone, 'thank God; Him first, and then my friends. Steve and Ernst I have seen already; they heard the news from the Count's man, and came to meet me, and I have sent them on an errand, by your leave. And now, where is my cousin?'

'Above,' I answered. 'But-'

'But what?' he said quickly.

'I think that I had better prepare her.'

'She does not know?'

'No, your excellency. Nor did I, until I saw you.'

'But Count Leuchtenstein has been here. Did he not tell you?' he asked in surprise.

'Not a word!' I answered. And then I stopped, conscience-stricken. 'Himmel! I remember now,' I said. 'He asked me if we had heard the news; and I, like a dullard, dreaming that he meant other news, and the worst, said yes!'

The Waldgrave shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, go to her now, and tell her,' he said. 'I want to see her; I want to thank her. I have a hundred things to say to her. Quick, Martin, for I am laden with debts, and I choke to pay some of them.'

I ran upstairs, marvelling. On the lobby I met Fraulein Max coming down. 'What is it?' she asked impatiently.

'The Waldgrave! He has been released! He is here!' I cried in a breath.

She stared at me while a man might count ten. Then to my astonishment she laughed aloud. 'Who released him?' she asked.

'The magistrates,' I said. 'I suppose so. I don't know.' I had not given the matter a thought.

'Not Count Leuchtenstein?'

I started. 'So!' I muttered, staring at her in my turn. 'It must have been he. The Waldgrave said something about him. And he must have come here to tell us.'

'And you gave him my lady's message?'

'Alas! yes.'

Fraulein Max laughed again, and kept on laughing, until I grew hot all over, and could have struck her for her malice. She saw at last that I was angry, and she stopped. 'Tut! tut!' she said, 'it is nothing. But that disposes of the old man. Now for the young one. He is here?'

'Yes.'

'Then why do you not show him up?'

'She must be prepared,' I muttered.

She laughed again; this time after a different fashion. 'Oh you fools of men!' she said. 'She must be prepared? Do you think that women are made of glass and that a shock breaks them? That she will die of joy? Or would have died of grief? Send him up, gaby, and I will prepare her! Send him up.'

I supposed that she knew women's ways, and I gave in to her, and sent him up; and I do not know that any harm was done. But, as a result of this, I was not present when my lady and the Waldgrave met, and I only learned by hearsay what happened.

* * * * *

An hour or two later, when the bustle of shrieks and questions had subsided, and the excitement caused by his return had somewhat worn itself out, Marie slipped out to me on the stairs, and sat with me in the darkness, talking. The gate of curious ironwork which guarded the house entrance was closed for the night; but the moon was up, and its light, falling through the scrollwork, lay like a pale, reedy pool at our feet. The men were at supper, the house was quiet, the city was for a little while still. Not a foot sounded on the roadway; only sometimes a skulking dog came ghost-like to the bars and sniffed, and sneaked noiselessly away.

I have said that we talked, but in truth we sat long silent, as lovers have sat these thousand years, I suppose, in such intervals of calm. The peace of the night lapped us round; after the perils and hurry, the storm and stress of many days, we were together and at rest, and content to be silent. All round us, under the covert of darkness, under the moonlight, the city lay quaking; dreading the future, torn by pangs in the present; sleepless, or dreaming of death and outrage, ridden by the nightmare of Wallenstein. But for the moment we recked nothing of this, nothing of the great camp round us, nothing of the crash of nations. We were of none of these. We had one another, and it was enough; loved one another, and the rest went by. For the moment we tasted perfect peace; and in the midst of the besieged city, were as much alone, as if the moonlight at our feet had been, indeed, a forest pool high in the hills over Heritzburg.

Does some old man smile? Do I smile myself now, though sadly? A brief madness, was it? Nay; but what if then only we were sane, and for a moment saw things as they are-lost sight of the unreal and awoke to the real? I once heard a wise man from Basle say something like that at my lady's table. The men, I remember, stared; the women looked thoughtful.

For all that, it was Marie who on this occasion broke the trance. The town clock struck ten, and at the sound hundreds, I dare swear, turned on their pillows, thinking of the husbands and sons and lovers whom the next light must imperil. My girl stirred.

'Ah!' she murmured, 'the poor Countess! Can we do nothing?'

'Do?' I said. 'What should, we do? The Waldgrave is back, and in his right mind; which of all the things I have ever known, is the oddest. That a man should lose his senses under one blow, and recover them under another, and remember nothing that has happened in the interval-it almost passes belief.'

'Yet it is true.'

'I suppose so,' I answered. 'The Waldgrave was mad-I can bear witness to it-and now he is sane. There is no more to be said.'

'But the Countess, Martin?'

'Well, I do not know that she is the worse,' I answered stupidly. 'She sent off the Count with a flea in his ear, and a poor return it was. But she can explain it to him, and after all, she has got the Waldgrave back, safe and sound. That is the main thing.'

Marie sighed, and moved restlessly. 'Is it?' she said. 'I wish I knew.'

'What?' I asked, drawing her little head on to my shoulder.

'What my lady wishes?'

'Eh?'

'Which?'

My jaw fell. I stared into the darkness open-mouthed. 'Why,' I exclaimed at last, 'he is sixty-or fifty-five at least, girl!'

Marie laughed softly, with her face on my breast. 'If she loves him,' she murmured. 'If she loves him.' And she hung on me.

I sat amazed, confounded, thinking no more of Marie, though my arm was round her, than of a doll. 'But he is fifty five,' I said.

'And if you were fifty-five, do you think that I should not love you?' she whispered. 'When you are fifty-five, do you think that I shall not love you? Besides, he is strong, brave, famous-a man; and she is not a girl, but a woman. If the Count be too old, is not the Waldgrave too young?'

'Yes,' I said cunningly. 'But why either?'

'Because love is in the air,' Marie answered; and I knew that she smiled, though the gloom hid her face. 'Because there is a change in her. Because she knows things and sees things and feels things of which she was ignorant before. And because-because it is so, my lord.'

I whistled. This was beyond me. 'And yet you don't know which?' I said.

'No; I suspect.'

'Well-but the Waldgrave?' I exclaimed. 'Why, mädchen, he is one of the handsomest men I have ever seen. An Apollo! A Fairy Prince! It is not possible that she should prefer the other.'

Marie laughed. 'Ah!' she said, 'if men chose all the husbands, there would be few wives.'

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIII.

TWO MEN

The Waldgrave's return to his old self, and to the frankness and gaiety that, when we first knew him at Heritzburg, had surrounded him with a halo of youth, was perhaps the most noteworthy event of all within my experience. For the return proved permanent, the transformation was perfect. The moodiness, the crookedness, the crafty humours that for weeks had darkened and distorted the man's nature-so that another and a worse man seemed to look out of his eyes and speak with his mouth-were gone, leaving no cloud or remembrance. He had been mad; he was now as sane as the best. Only one peculiarity remained-and for a few days a little pallor and weakness-of all the things that had befallen him between his first wound and his second, he could remember nothing, not a jot or tittle; nor could any amount of allusion or questioning bring these things back to him. After many attempts we desisted; but there were always some who, from this date, regarded him with a certain degree of awe-as a man who had been for a time in the flesh, and yet not of it.

With sanity returned also all the wholesome ambitions and desires that had formerly moved the man; and amongst these his passion for my lady. He lay at our house that night, and spent the next two days there, recovering his strength; and I had more than one opportunity of marking the assiduity with which he followed all the Countess's movements with his eyes, the change which his voice underwent when he spoke to her, and his manner when he came into her presence. In a word, he seemed to take up his love where he had dropped it-at the point it had reached when he rode down into the green valley and secured his rival's victory at so great a cost; at the point at which Tzerclas' admiration and my lady's rebuff had at once strengthened and purified it.

Now Tzerclas was gone from the field-magically, as it seemed to the Waldgrave. And, magically also-for he knew nothing of its flight-time had passed; days and weeks running into months-a sufficiency of time, he hoped, to remove unfavourable impressions from her mind, to obliterate the memory of that unhappy banquet, and replace him on the pinnacle he had occupied at Heritzburg.

But he soon found that, though Tzerclas was gone and the field seemed open, all was not to be had for the asking. My lady was kind; she had a smile for him, and pleasant words, and a ready ear. But before he had been in the house twenty-four hours, he came and confided to me that something was wrong. The Countess was changed; was pettish as he had never seen her before; absent and thoughtful, traits equally new; restless-and placid dignity had been one of her chief characteristics.

'What is it, Martin?' he said, knitting his brows and striding to and fro in frank perplexity. 'It cannot be that, after all that has passed, she is fretting for that villain Tzerclas?'

'After risking her life to escape from him?' I answered dryly. 'No, I think not, my lord.'

'If I ever set eyes on him again I will end him!' the Waldgrave cried, still clinging, I think, to his idea, and exasperated by it. He strode up and down a time or two, and did not grow cooler. 'If it is not that, what is it?' he said at last.

'There are not many light hearts in Nuremberg,' I suggested. 'And of those, few are women's. There must be an end of this soon.'

'You think it is that?' he said.

'Why not?' I answered. 'I am told that the horses are dying by hundreds in the camp. The men will die next. In the end the King will have to march away, or see his army perish piecemeal. In either case the city will pay for all. Wallenstein will swoop down on it, and make of it another and greater Magdeburg. That is a poor prospect for the weak and helpless.'

'It is those rascally Croats!' the Waldgrave groaned. 'They cover the country like flies-are here and there and nowhere all in the same minute, and burn and harry and leave us nothing. We have no troops of that kind.'

'There was plundering in the Wert suburb last night,' I said. 'The King blames the Germans.'

'Soldiers are bad to starve,' the Waldgrave answered.

'Yes; they will see the townsfolk suffer first,' I rejoined, with a touch of bitterness. 'But look whichever way you please, it is a gloomy outlook, my lord, and I do not wonder that my lady is down-hearted.'

He nodded, but presently he said something that showed that he was not satisfied. 'The Countess used to be of a bolder spirit,' he muttered. 'I don't understand it.'

I did not know how to answer him, and fortunately, at that moment, Marie came down to say that my lady proposed to visit Count Leuchtenstein, and that I was to go to her. The Waldgrave heard, and raced up before me, crying out that he would go too. I followed. When I reached the parlour I found them confronting one another, my lady standing in the oriel with her back to the street.