My Lady Rotha Part 35

'Yes,' I replied in the same tone. 'Are you alone?'

'For the moment,' he answered hoa.r.s.ely. 'Not for long. So speak quickly. What is to be done?'

Alas! that was more than I could say. 'What of my lady?' I replied vaguely. 'Is she here? In the camp?'

'To be sure.'

'And Marie Wort? The Papist girl?'

'Yes, yes.'

'Then you must see Marie,' I answered. 'She will know my lady's mind.

Until we know that, we can do nothing. Do not tell her where I am--it may hurt the girl; or of the Waldgrave, but learn how they are. If things are bad with my lady, bid them gain time. You understand?'

'Yes, yes,' he grunted. 'And that is to be all, is it? You will have nothing done to-night?'

'What, here?'

'To be sure.'

'No, no,' I replied, trembling for the man's rashness. 'We can do nothing here until horses are got and placed for us, and the pa.s.s-word learned, and provisions gathered, and half a dozen other things.'

'Donner! I don't know how all that is to be done,' he muttered despondently.

'Nor I,' I said with a s.h.i.+ver. 'You have not heard anything of a--a shooting-match, have you?'

'It is for Sunday,' he answered.

'And to-day is Tuesday,' I said. 'Steve! you will not lose time?'

'No, no.'

'You will see her in the morning? In the morning, lad,' I continued feverishly, clinging to the bars and peering out at him. 'I must get out of this before Sunday! And this is Tuesday! Steve!'

'Hus.h.!.+' he answered. 'They are coming back.'

CHAPTER XXII.

GREEK AND GREEK.

What my lady's thoughts were during her long ride back to the camp, I do not know. But I have heard her say that when she rode into the village, a day and a half in advance of the dusty, lumbering convoy, she could scarcely believe that it was the place she had left, the place in which she had lived for a fortnight. And this, though all remained the same. So much does the point from which we look at things alter their aspect.

The general had sent on the news of the Waldgrave's loss by messenger, that she might be spared the pain of telling it; and Fraulein Max and Marie Wort were waiting on the wooden platform before the house when she rode wearily in. The sight of those two gave her a certain sense of relief and home coming, merely because they were women and wore petticoats. But that was all. The village, the reeking camp, the squalid soldiery, the whining beggars filled her--now that her eyes were opened and she saw this ugly face of war stripped of the glamour with which her fancy had invested it--with fear and repulsion. She wondered that she could ever have liked the place and been gay in it, or drawn pleasure from the amus.e.m.e.nts which now seemed poor and tawdry.

Fraulein Max ran down into the road to meet her, and when she had dismounted, covered her with tearful caresses. But the Countess, after receiving her greetings, still looked round wistfully as if she missed some one; and then in a moment moved from her, and mounting the steps went swiftly to the dark corner by the porch whither Marie Wort had run, and where she now stood leaning against the house with her face to the wall.

My lady, whom few had ever seen unbend, took the girl in her arms, and laid her head on her shoulder and stroked her hair pitifully.

'Hush, hush, child!' she murmured, her eyes wet with tears. 'Poor child, poor child! Is it so very bad?'

But Marie could only sob.

They went into the house in a moment after that, those three, with the waiting-women. And then a change came over the Countess. Fraulein Max blinked to see it. My lady who, outside, had been so tender, began, before her riding cloak was off, to walk up and down like a caged wolf, with hard eyes and cheeks burning with indignation. Fraulein Max spoke to her timidly--said that the meal was ready, that my lady's woman was waiting, that my lady must be tired. But the Countess put her by almost with an oath. For hours she had been playing a part, a thing her proud soul loathed. For hours she had hidden, not her sorrow only and her anger, but her anxieties, her fears, her terrors. Now she must be herself or die.

Besides, the thing pressed! She had her woman's wits, and might stave off the general's offer for a few days, for a week. But a week--what was that? No wonder that she looked on the four helpless women round her, and realised that these were her only helpers now, her only protection; no wonder that she cried out.

'I have been a fool!' she said, looking at them with burning eyes. 'A fool! When Martin warned me, I would not listen; when the Waldgrave hinted, I laughed at him. I was bewitched, like a silly fool in her teens! Don't contradict me!' And she stamped her foot impatiently.

Fraulein Max had raised her hand.

'I don't,' the Fraulein answered. 'I don't understand you.'

'Do you understand that empty, chair?' my lady answered bitterly. 'Or that empty stool?'

Fraulein Anna blinked more and more. 'But war,' she said mildly--'a necessary evil, Voetius calls it--war, Countess----'

'Oh!' my lady cried in a fury. 'As carried on by these, it is a horror, a fiendish thing! I did not know before. Now I have seen it.

Wait, wait, girl, until it takes those you love, and threatens your own safety, and then talk to me of war!'

But Fraulein Anna set her face mutinously. 'Still, I do not understand,' she said slowly, winking her short-sighted eyes like an owl in the daylight. 'You talk as if we had cause not only to grieve--as we have, indeed--but to fear. Are we not safe here? General Tzerclas----'

'Bah!' the Countess cried, trembling with emotion. 'Don't let me hear his name! I hate him. He is false. False, girl. I do not trust him; I do not believe him; and I would to Heaven we were out of his hands!'

Even Marie Wort, sitting white and quiet in a corner, looked up at that. As for Fraulein Max, she pa.s.sed her tongue slowly over her lips, but did not answer; and for a moment there was silence in the room.

Then Marie said very softly, 'Thank G.o.d!'

My lady turned to her roughly. 'Why do you say that?' she said.

'Because of what I have learned since you left us,' the girl answered, in a frightened whisper. 'There was a man who lived in this house, my lady.'

'Yes, yes,' the Countess muttered eagerly. 'I remember he begged of me, and General Tzerclas gave him money. That was one of the things that blinded me.'

'He hung him afterwards,' the girl whispered in a shaking voice. 'By the river, in the south-east corner of the camp.'

The Countess stared at her incredulously, rage and horror in her face.

'That man whom I saw?' she cried. 'It is not possible! You have been deceived.'

But Marie Wort shook her head. 'It is true,' she said simply.

'Then Heaven help us all!' the Countess whispered in a thrilling tone.

'For we are in that man's power!'

There was a stricken silence after that, which lasted some minutes.

The room seemed to grow darker, the house more silent, the road on which they looked through the unglazed window more dusty, squalid, dreary--dreary with the summer dreariness of drought. One of the waiting-women began to cry. The other stood bolt upright, looking out with startled eyes, and lips half open.

'Yes, all,' the Countess presently went on, her voice hard and composed. 'He has asked me to be his wife. He has honoured me so far.'