My Lady Rotha Part 14

So, while my lord talked gaily, my lady, I think, wept; doing that under cover of darkness and her mask, which she would never have done in the light. He talked on, planning and proposing; and where a true lover would have been quick to divine the woman's weakness, he felt no misgiving, thrilled with no sympathy. Then I knew that he lacked the subtle instinct which real love creates; which teaches the strong what it is the feeble dread, and gives a woman the daring of a man.

As we drew near the ford, I dropped back to see that all crossed safely. Pushka, I knew, would carry my lady over, but some of the others were worse mounted. This brought me abreast of the Catholic girl, though the darkness was such that I recognized her only by the dark ma.s.s before her, which I knew to be the child. We had had some difficulty in separating her from Steve, and persuading her that the man ran no risk where he lay; otherwise she had behaved admirably. I did not speak to her, but when I saw the gleam of water before us, and heard the horses of the leaders begin to splash through the shallows, I leant over and took hold of the boy.

'You had better give him to me,' I said gruffly. 'You will have both hands free then. Keep your feet high, and hold by the pommel. If your horse begins to swim leave its head loose.'

I expected her to make a to-do about giving up the child; but she did not, and I lifted it to the withers of my horse. She muttered something in a tone which sounded grateful, and then we splashed on in silence, the horses putting one foot gingerly before the other; some sniffing the air with loud snorts and outstretched necks, and some stopping outright.

I rode on the upstream side of the girl, to break the force of the water. Not that the ford is dangerous in the daytime (it has been bridged these five years), but at night, and with so many horses, it was possible one or another might stray from the track; for the ford is not straight, but slants across the stream. However, we all pa.s.sed safely; and yet the crossing remains in my memory.

As I held the child before me--it was a gallant little thing, and clung to me without cry or word--I felt something rough round its neck. At the moment I was deep in the water, and I had no hand to spare. But by-and-by, as we rode out and began to clamber up the farther bank, I laid my hand on its neck, suspecting already what I should find.

I was not mistaken. Under my fingers lay the very necklace which Peter had described to me with so much care! I could trace the shape and roughness of the walnuts. I could almost count them. Even of the length of the chain I could fairly judge. It was long enough to go twice round the child's neck.

As soon as I had made certain, I let it be, lest the child should cry out; and I rode on, thinking hard. What, I wondered, had induced the girl to put the chain round its neck at that juncture? She had hidden it so carefully hitherto, that no eye but Peter's, so far as I could judge, had seen it. Why this carelessness now, then? Certainly it was dark, and, as far as eyes went, the chain was safe. But round her own neck, under her kerchief, where it had lain before, it was still safer. Why had she removed it?

We had topped the farther bank by this time, and were riding slowly along the right-hand side of the river; but I was still turning this over in my mind, when I heard her on a sudden give a little gasp. I knew in a moment what it was. She had bethought her where the necklace was. I was not a whit surprised when she asked me in a tremulous tone to give her back the child.

'It is very well here,' I said, to try her.

'It will trouble you,' she muttered faintly.

'I will say when it does,' I answered.

She did not answer anything to that, but I heard her breathing hard, and knew that she was racking her brains for some excuse to get the child from me. For what if daylight came and I still rode with it, the necklace in full view? Or what if we stopped at some house and lights were brought? Or what, again, if I perceived the necklace and took possession of it!

This last idea so charmed me--I was in a grim humour--that my hand was on the necklace, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I was feeling for the clasp which fastened it. Some fiend brought the thing under my fingers in a twinkling. The necklace seemed to fall loose of its own accord. In a moment it was swinging and swaying in my hand. In another I had gathered it up and slid it into my pouch.

The trick was done so easily and so quickly that I think some devil must have helped me; the child neither moving nor crying out, though it was old enough to take notice, and could even speak, as children of that age can speak--intelligibly to those who know them, gibberish to strangers.

I need not say that I never meant to steal a link of the thing. The temptation which moved me was the temptation to tease the girl. I thought this a good way of punis.h.i.+ng her. I thought, first to torment her by making her think the necklace gone; and then to shame her by producing it, and giving it back to her with a dry word that should show her I understood her deceit.

So, even when the thing was done, and the chain snug in my pocket, I did not for a while repent, but hugged myself on the jest and smiled under cover of the darkness. I carried the child a mile farther, and then handed it down to Marie, with an appearance of unconsciousness which it was not very hard to a.s.sume, since she could not see my face.

But doubtless every yard of that mile had been a torture to her. I heard her sigh with relief as her arms closed round the boy. Then, the next moment I knew that she had discovered her loss. She uttered a sobbing cry, and I heard her pa.s.sing her hands through the child's clothing, while her breath came and went in gasps.

She plucked at her bridle so suddenly that those who rode behind ran into us. I made way for them to pa.s.s.

'What is it?' I said roughly. 'What is the matter?'

She muttered under her breath, with her hands still searching the child, that she had lost something.

'If you have, it is gone,' I said bluntly. 'You would hardly find a hayrick to-night. You must have dropped it coming through the ford?'

She did not answer, but I heard her begin to sob, and then for the first time I felt uncomfortable. I repented of what I had done, and wished with all my heart that the chain was round the child's neck again. 'Come, come,' I said awkwardly, 'it was not of much value, I suppose. At any rate, it is no good crying over it.'

She did not answer; she was still searching. I could hear what she was doing, though I could not see; there were trees overhead, and it was as much as I could do to make out her figure. At last I grew angry, partly with myself, partly with her. 'Come,' I said roughly, 'we cannot stay here all night. We must be moving.'

She a.s.sented meekly, and we rode on. But still I heard her crying; and she seemed to be hugging the child to her, as if, now the necklace was gone, she had nothing but the boy left. I tried to see the humour in the joke as I had seen it a few minutes before, but the sparkle had gone out of it, I felt that I had been a brute. I began to reflect that this girl, a stranger and helpless, in a strange land, had nothing upon which she could depend but these few links of gold. What wonder, then, if she valued them; if, like all other women, she hid them away and fibbed about them; if she wept over them now they were gone?

Of course it was in my power in a moment to bring them back again; and nothing had seemed easier, a few minutes before, than to hand them back--with a little speech which should cover her with confusion and leave me unmoved. Now, though I wished them round her neck again with all the good-will in life, and though to effect my wish I had only to do what I had planned--only to stretch out my hand with that word or two--I sat in my saddle hot and tongue-tied, my fingers sticking to the chain.

Her grief had somehow put a new face on the matter. I could not bear to confess that I had caused it wantonly and for a jest. The right words would not come, while every moment which prolonged the silence between us made the attempt seem more hopeless, the task more difficult; till, like the short-sighted craven I was, I thrust back the chain into my pocket, and, determining to take some secret way of restoring it, put off the crisis.

In a degree I was hurried to this decision by our arrival at the place where we were to rest. This was an outlying farm belonging to Heritzburg and long used by the family, when journeying to Ca.s.sel.

Alas! when we came to it, cold, s.h.i.+vering, and hungry, we found it ruined and tenantless, with war's grim brand so deeply stamped upon the face of everything that even the darkness of night failed to hide the scars. I had not expected this, and for a while I forgot the necklace in anxiety for my lady's comfort. I had to get lights and see fires kindled, to order the disposal of the horses, to unpack the food: for we found no sc.r.a.p, even of fodder for the beasts, in the grimy, smoke-stained barn, which I had known so well stored. Nor was the house in better case. Bed and board were gone, and half the roof.

The door lay shattered on the threshold, the window-frames, smashed in wanton fury, covered the floor. The wind moaned through the empty rooms; here and there water stood in puddles. Round the hearth lay broken flasks, and rotting _debris_, and pewter plates bent double-- the relics of the ravager's debauch.

We walked about, with lights held above our heads, and looked at all this miserably enough. It was our first glimpse of war, and it silenced even the Waldgrave. As for my mistress, I well remember the look her face wore, when I left her standing with her women, who were already in tears, in the middle of the small chamber a.s.signed to her.

I had known her long enough to be able to read the look, and to be sure that she was wondering whether it would always be so now. Had she exchanged Heritzburg, its peace and comfort, for such nights as these, divided between secret flittings and lodgings fit only for the homeless and wretched?

But neither by word nor sign did she betray her fears; and in the morning she showed a face that vied with the Waldgrave's in cheerfulness. Our horses had had little exercise of late and were in poor condition for travelling. We gave them, therefore, until noon to rest, and a little after that hour got away; one and all, I think--with the exception perhaps of Marie Wort--in better spirits.

The sun was high, the weather fine, the country on either side of us woodland, with fine wild prospects. Hence we saw few signs of the ravages which were sure to thrust themselves on the attention wherever man's hand appeared. We could forget for the moment war, and even our own troubles.

We proposed to reach the little village of Erbe by sunset, but darkness overtook us on the road. The track, overgrown and narrowed by spring shoots, was hard to follow in daylight; to attempt to pursue it after nightfall seemed hopeless. We had halted, therefore, and the Waldgrave and my lady were considering whether we should camp where we were, or pick our way to a more sheltered spot, when young Jacob, who was leading, cried out that he saw the glimmer of a camp-fire some way off among the trees. The news threw our party into the greatest doubt.

My lady was for stopping where we were, the Waldgrave for going on. In the end the latter had his way, and it was agreed that we should join the company before us, or at any rate parley with them and learn their intentions. Accordingly we shook up our tired horses and moved cautiously forward.

The distant gleam which had first caught Jacob's eye soon widened into a warm and ruddy glow, in which the polished beech-trunks stood up like the pillars of some great building. Still drawing nearer, we saw that there were two fires built a score of paces apart, in a slight hollow. Round the one a number of men were moving, whose black figures sometimes intervened between us and the blaze. Two or three dogs sprang up and barked at us, and a horse neighed out of the darkness beyond. The other fire seemed at first sight to be deserted; but as the dogs ran towards us, still barking, first one man, then another, rose beside it, and stood looking at us. The arrival of a second party in such a spot was no doubt unexpected.

Judging that these two were the leaders of the party, I went forward to announce my lady's rank. One of the men, the shorter and younger, a man of middle height and middle age and dark, stern complexion, came a few paces to meet me.

'Who are you?' he said bluntly, looking beyond me at those who followed.

'The Countess Rotha of Heritzburg, travelling this way to Ca.s.sel,' I answered; 'and with her, her excellency's kinsman, the n.o.ble Rupert, Waldgrave of Weimar.'

The stranger's face lightened strangely, and he laughed. 'Take me to her,' he said.

Properly I should have first asked him his name and condition; but he had the air, beyond all things, of a man not to be trifled with, and I turned with him.

My lady had halted with her company a score of paces from the fire. I led him to her bridle.

'This,' I said, wondering much who he was, 'is her excellency the Countess of Heritzburg.'

My lady looked at him. He had uncovered and stood before her, a smile that was almost a laugh in his eyes. 'And I,' he said, 'have the honour to be her excellency's humble and distant cousin, General John Tzerclas, sometimes called, of Tilly.'

CHAPTER X.

THE CAMP IN THE FOREST.

As the stranger made his announcement, I chanced to turn my eyes on the Waldgrave's face; and if there was one thing more noteworthy at the moment than the speaker's air of perfect and a.s.sured composure, it was my lord's look of chagrin. I could imagine that this sudden and unexpected discovery of a kinsman was little to his mind; while the stranger's manner was as little calculated to reconcile him to it. But there was something more than this. I fancy that from the moment he heard Tzerclas' name he scented a rival.

My lady, on the other hand, did not disguise her satisfaction. 'I am pleased to make your acquaintance,' she exclaimed, looking at the stranger with frank surprise. 'Your name, General Tzerclas, has long been known to me. But I was under the impression that you were at present in command of a body of Saxon troops in Bohemia.'

'My troops, such as they are, lie a little nearer,' he answered, smiling; 'so near that they and their leader are equally at your service, Countess.'

'For the present I shall be content to claim your hospitality only,'

my lady answered lightly. 'This is my cousin, the Waldgrave Rupert.'