My Lady Rotha Part 19

Tzerclas smoothed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. 'Are you sure of that?' he asked.

'Quite, general. They have all gone south together,' Ludwig answered, 'and are far enough away by this time.'

'Umph! Well, we start in an hour.'

And that was all! I wandered away and stood staring at the ground. I remembered that Peter the locksmith had valued the chain at two hundred ducats, a sum exceeding any I could pay. But that was not the worst. What was I to say to the girl? How was I to explain a piece of folly, mischief, call it what you will, that had turned out so badly?

If I told her the truth, would she believe me?

At that thought I started. Why tell her the truth at all? Why not leave her in ignorance? She would be none the worse, for the chain was gone. And I, who had never meant to steal it, should be the better, seeing that I should escape the humiliation of confessing what I had done. Confession could do no good to her. And in what a position it would place me!

Leaning against a tree and driving my heel moodily into the soil, I was still battling with this temptation--for a temptation I knew it was, even then--when a light touch fell on my sleeve. I turned, and there was the girl herself, waiting to speak to me!

CHAPTER XII.

NEAR THE EDGE.

'Will you give me back my--my chain, if you please?' she said timidly.

And she stood with clasped hands and blus.h.i.+ng cheeks, as if she were the culprit. Her eyes looked anywhere to avoid mine. Her voice trembled, and she seemed ready to sink into the earth with shame. She was small, weak, helpless. But her words! Had they come from the judge sitting on his bench, with axe and branding-iron by his side, they could not have cowed me more completely, or deprived me more quickly of wit and courage.

'Your chain?' I stammered, stricken almost voiceless. 'What do you mean?'

'If you please,' she whispered, her face flus.h.i.+ng more and more, her eyes filling. 'My chain.'

'But how--what makes you think that I have got it?' I muttered hoa.r.s.ely. 'What makes you come to me?'

To confess, of my own motive and unsuspected, had been bad enough and shameful enough; but to be accused, unmasked, convicted--and by her!

This was too much. My face burned, my eyes were hot as fire.

She twisted the fingers of one hand tightly round the other, but she did not look up. 'You took it from the child's neck as we pa.s.sed through the ford,' she said in a low voice, 'that night I lost it.'

'I did!' I exclaimed. 'I did, girl?'

She nodded firmly, her lip trembling. But she never looked up; nor into my face!

Yet her insistence angered me. How did she know, how could she know? I put the question into words. 'How do you know?' I said harshly. 'Who told you so? Who told you this--this lie, woman?'

'The child,' she answered, s.h.i.+vering under my words.

I opened my mouth and drew in my breath. I had never thought of that.

I had never thought, save once for a brief moment, of the child talking, and, on the instant, I stood speechless; convicted and confounded! Then I found my voice again.

'The child told you!' I muttered incredulously. 'The child? Why, it cannot talk!'

'It can,' she said, her voice breaking. 'It can talk to me, and I can understand it. Oh, I am so sorry!' And with that she broke down. She turned away and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob bitterly. Her shoulders heaved, and her slender frame shook with the storm.

A thief, and a liar! That was what I had made myself. I stood glaring at her, my breast full of sullen pa.s.sion. I hated her and her necklace. I wished that it had been buried a thousand fathoms deep in the sea! That moment in the ford, one moment only, a moment of folly, had wrecked me. I raged against her and against myself. I could have struck her. If she had only left me alone, if she had not come to question me and accuse me, I should not have lied; and then, perhaps, I might have recovered the necklace, somehow and some day, and, giving it back to her, told her the story and kept my honesty. Now I had lied, and she knew it. And I hated her. I hated her, sobbing and shaking and s.h.i.+vering before me.

And then a ray of sunlight, pa.s.sing through the branches, fell on her bowed head. A hundred paces away, little more, they were striking the camp. The men's voices, their harsh jests and rude laughter, reached us. I heard one man called, and another, and orders given, and the jingle of the bits and bridles. All was unchanged, everything was proceeding in its usual course. One thing only in the world was altered--Martin Schwartz, the steward.

I found no words to lie to her farther, to deny or protest; and when we had stood thus for a short time, she turned. She began to move slowly away from me, though the pa.s.sion of her tears seemed to increase rather than slacken as she went, and shook her frame with such vehemence that she could scarcely walk.

For a time I stood looking after her in sullen shame, doing and saying nothing to stay her. Then, suddenly, a change came over me. She looked so friendless, so frail, and gentle and helpless, that, in the middle of my selfish shame, my heart smote me. I felt a sudden welling up of pity and repentance, which worked so quickly and wonderfully in me, that before she had gone a score of paces from me, my hand was on her shoulder.

'Stop! Stay a moment!' I muttered hoa.r.s.ely. 'I have been lying to you.

I took the necklace--from the child's neck. It is all true.'

She ceased crying, but she did not turn or look at me. She seemed to be struggling for composure, and presently, with her face still averted, she murmured--

'Why did you take it? Will you please to tell me?'

As well as I could, I did tell her; how and why I had taken it, what I had done with it, and how I had lost it. She listened, but she made no sign, she said nothing; and her silence hurt me at last so keenly that I added with bitterness--

'I lied before, and you need not believe what I say now. Still, it is true.'

She turned her face quickly to me, and I saw that her cheeks were hot and her eyes s.h.i.+ning. 'I believe it--every word,' she said.

'I will not lie to you again.'

'You never did,' she answered. And she stole a glance at me, a faint smile flickering about her lips. 'Your face never did, Master Martin.'

'Yet you wept sore enough for your chain,' I said.

She looked at me for a moment with something like anger in her gentle eyes, so that for that instant she seemed transformed. And she drew away from me.

'Did you think that I wept for that?' she said in a tone of offence.

'I did not.'

'Then for what?' I asked clumsily.

She looked two or three ways before she answered, and in the distance some one called me.

'There! you are wanted,' she said hurriedly.

'But you have not answered my question,' I said.

She took a step from me and paused, with her head half turned. 'I wept--I wept because I thought that I had lost a friend,' she said in a low voice. 'And I have few, Master Martin.'

She was gone, before I could answer, through the trees and back to the camp. And I had to follow. Half a dozen voices in half a dozen places were calling my name. The general's trumpet was sounding. I slipped aside and joined the camp from another quarter, and in a moment was in the middle of the hubbub, beset by restive horses and swaying poles, clanging kettles and swearing riders, and all the hurry and confusion of the start. My lady called to me sharply to know where I had been, and why I was late. The Waldgrave wanted this, Fraulein Max that. The general frowned at me from afar. It would have been no great wonder if I had lost my temper.

But I did not; I was in no risk of doing so. I had gone near the edge and had been plucked back. Late, and when all seemed over, I had been given a place for repentance; and grat.i.tude and relief so filled my breast that I had a smile for every one. The sun seemed to s.h.i.+ne more brightly, the wind to blow more softly--the wind which blew from Marie Wort to me. Thank G.o.d!

As I fell in behind my lady--the general riding alone some way in the rear--the Waldgrave came up and took his place at her side; greeting her with an awkward air which seemed to prove that this was his first appearance in her neighbourhood. He made a show of hiding his uneasiness under a face of careless gaiety, such as was his natural wear; and for awhile he rattled on gallantly. But my lady's cool tone and short answers soon stripped him, and left him with no other resource but to take offence. He took it, and for a mile or so rode on in gloomy silence, brooding over his wrongs. Then, anger giving way to self-reproach, he grew tired of this.