I stumbled as I spoke over a broken shaft of a waggon, and in a moment half a dozen strong arms closed round me. I was down and up again and again down. I fought savagely, passionately, at the last desperately, having that cold, sneering face before me, and knowing that it was for my life. But they were many to one. They crushed me down and knelt on me, and presently I lay panting and quiet. One of the men who held me had unsheathed his dagger and stood looking to the general for a signal. I closed my eyes expecting the blow, and involuntarily drew in my breast, as if that poor effort might avert the stroke.
But the general did not give the signal. He sat gazing down at me with a ruthless smile on his face. ‘Tie him up,’ he said slowly, when he had enjoyed his triumph to the full. ‘Tie him up tightly. When we get back to the camp we will have a shooting-match, and he shall find us sport. You knave!’ he continued, riding up to me in a paroxysm of anger, and slashing me across the face with his riding-whip so cruelly that the flesh rose in great wheals, and I fell back into the men’s arms blind and shuddering with pain, ‘I have had my eye on you! But you will work me no more mischief. Throw him into the waggon there,’ he continued. ‘Tie up his mouth if he makes a noise. Has any one seen Ludwig?’
CHAPTER XX.
MORE HASTE, LESS SPEED.
The dawn came slowly. Night, loth to unveil what the valley had to show, hung there long after the wooded knobs that rose along the ridge had begun to appear, looking like grey and misty islands in a sea of vapour. Many cried for the light — what night passes that some do not? — but none more impatiently than a woman, whose unquiet figure began with the first glimmer to pace the top of the hill. Sometimes she walked to and fro with her face to the sky; sometimes she stood and peered into the depths where the fires still glowed fitfully; or again listened with shrinking ears to the wailing that rose out of the darkness.
It was the Countess. She had lain down, because they had bidden her do so, and told her that nothing could be done while night lasted. But with the first dawn she was on foot, so impatient that her own people dared not come near her, so imperious that the general’s troopers crept away abashed.
The fight in the valley and the dreadful things she had seen and heard at nightfall had shaken her nerves. The absence of her friends had finished the work. She was almost distraught this morning. If this was war — this merciless butchery, this infliction of horrible pain on man and beast — their screams still rang in her ears — she had seen enough. Only let her get her friends back, and escape to some place where these things would not happen, and she asked no more.
The light, as it grew stronger, the sun, as it rose, filling the sky with glory, failed to comfort her; for the one disclosed the dead, lying white and stripped in the valley below, like a flock of sheep grazing, the other seemed by its very cheerfulness to mock her. She was raging like a lioness, when the general at last appeared, and came towards her, his hat in his hand.
His eye had still the brightness, his cheek the flush of victory. He had lain much of the night, thinking his own thoughts, until he had become so wrapped in himself and his plans that his shrewdness was for once at fault, and he failed to read the signs in her face which his own soldiers had interpreted. He was all fire and triumph; she, sick of bloodshed and ambition. For the first time since they had come together, she was likely to see him as he was.
‘Countess,’ he said, as he stopped before her, ‘you will do yourself harm, I fear. You were on foot, I am told, before it was light.’
‘It is true,’ she said, shuddering and restraining herself by an effort.
‘It was foolish,’ he replied. ‘You may be sure that as soon as anything is heard the news will be brought to you. And to be missing is not to be dead — necessarily.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered, her lip quivering. She flashed a look of scorn at him, but he did not see it. Her hands opened and closed convulsively.
‘He was last seen in the pursuit,’ the general continued smoothly, flattering himself that in suppressing his own triumphant thoughts and purposes and talking her talk he was doing much. ‘A score or more, of them got away together. It is quite possible that they carried him off a prisoner.’
‘And Martin?’ she said in a choking voice. She could not stand still, and had begun already to pace up and down again. He walked beside her.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know nothing about him,’ he said, scarcely concealing a sneer. ‘The man went where he was not sent. I hope for the best, but — —’ He spread out his hands and shook his head.
‘Oh!’ she said. She was bursting with indignation. The sight of the dead lying below had stirred her nature to its depths. She felt intuitively the shallowness of his sympathy, the selfishness of his thoughts. She knew that he had it on his lips to talk to her of his triumph, and hated him for it. The horror which the day-old battlefield sometimes inspires in the veteran was on her. She was trembling all over, and only by a great effort kept herself from tears and fainting.
‘The man is useful to you?’ he said after a pause. He felt that he had gone wrong.
She bowed in silence.
‘Almost necessary, I suppose?’
She bowed again. She could not speak. It was wonderful. Yesterday she had liked this man, to-day she almost hated him.
But he knew nothing of that, as he looked round with pride. Below, in the valley, parties of men were going to and fro with a sparkle and sheen of pikes. Now and again a trumpet spoke, giving an order. On the hill, not far from where they walked, a group of officers who had ascended with him sat round a fire watching the preparation of breakfast. And of all he was the lord. He had only to raise a finger to be obeyed. He saw before him a vista of such battles and victories, ending — God knows in what. The Emperor’s throne was not above the dreams of such a man. And it moved him to speak.
The flush on his cheek was deeper when he turned to her again. ‘Yes, I suppose he was necessary to you,’ he said, ‘but it should not be so. The Countess of Heritzburg should look elsewhere for help than to a servant. Let me speak plainly, Countess,’ he continued earnestly. ‘It is becoming I should so speak, for I am a plain man. I am neither Baron, Count, nor Prince, Margrave, nor Waldgrave. I have no title but my sword, and no heritage save these who follow me. Yet, if I cannot with the help of the one and the other carve out a principality as long and as wide as Heritzburg, I am not John Tzerclas!’
‘Poor Germany!’ the Countess said with a faint smile.
He interpreted the words in his own favour, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Vœ victis!’ he said proudly. ‘There was a time when your ancestors took Heritzburg with the strong hand. Such another time is coming. The future is for those who dare, for those who can raise themselves above an old and sinking system, and on its ruins build their fortunes. Of these men I intend to be one.’
The Countess was an ambitious woman. At another time she might have heard his tale with sympathy. But at this moment her heart was full of anxiety for others, and she saw with perfect clearness the selfishness, the narrowness, the hardness of his aims. She was angry, too, that he should speak to her now — with the dead lying unburied, and the lost unfound, and strewn all round them the ghastly relics of the fight. She looked at him hardly, but she did not say a word; and he, following the exultant march of his own thoughts, went on.
‘Albert of Wallenstein, starting from far less than I stand here, has become the first man in Germany,’ he said, heedless of her silence— ‘Emperor in all but the name. Your uncle and mine, from a country squire, became Marshal and Count of the Empire, and saw the greatest quail before him. Ernest of Mansfeld, he was base-born and crook-backed too, but he lay softly and ruled men all his days, and left a name to tremble at. Countess,’ the general continued, speaking more hurriedly, and addressing himself, though he did not know it, to the feeling which was uppermost in her mind, ‘you may think that in saying what I am going to say, I am choosing an untimely moment; that with this round us, and
the air scarce free from powder, I am a fool to talk of love. But’ — he hesitated, yet waved his hand abroad with a proud gesture, as if to show that the pause was intentional— ‘I think I am right. For I offer you no palace, no bed of down, but only myself and my sword. I ask you to share a soldier’s fortunes, and be the wife and follow the fate of John Tzerclas. May it be?’
His form seemed to swell as he spoke. He had an air half savage, half triumphant as he turned to her with that question. The joy of battle was still in his veins; he seemed but half sober, though he had drunk nothing. A timid woman might have succumbed to him, one of lesser soul might have shrunk before him; but the Countess faced him with a pride as great as his own.
‘You have spoken plainly,’ she said, undaunted. ‘Perhaps you will pardon me if I speak plainly too.’
‘I ask no more, sweet cousin,’ he answered.
‘Then let me remind you,’ she replied, ‘that you have said much about John Tzerclas, and little about the Countess of Heritzburg. You have given excellent reasons why you should speak here, but none why I should answer. For shame, sir,’ the Countess continued tremulously, letting her indignation appear. ‘I lost last night my nearest relative and my old servant. I am still distracted with anxiety on their account. Yet, because I stand alone, unprotected, and with none of my kin by my side, you choose this time to press your suit. For shame, General Tzerclas!’
‘Himmel!’ he exclaimed, forgetting himself in his annoyance — the fever of excitement was still in his blood— ‘do you think the presence of that dandified silken scarf would have kept me silent? No, my lady!’
She looked at him for a moment, astonished. The contemptuous reference to the Waldgrave, the change of tone, opened her eyes still wider.
‘I think you do not understand me,’ she said coldly.
‘I do more; I love you,’ he answered hotly. And his eyes burned as he looked at her. ‘You are fit to be a queen, my queen! And if I live, sweet cousin, I will make you one!’
‘Let that go by,’ she said contemptuously, bearing up against his look of admiration as well as she could and continuing to move, so that he had to walk also. ‘What you do not understand is my nature — which is, not to desert my friends when they are in trouble, nor to play when those who have served me faithfully are missing.’
‘I can help neither the one nor the other,’ he answered. But his brow began to darken, and he stood silent a moment. Then he broke out in a different tone. ‘By Heaven!’ he said, ‘I am in no mood for play. And I think that you are playing with me!’
‘I do not understand you!’ she said. Her tone should have frozen him.
‘I have asked a question. Will you answer me yes or no,’ he persisted. ‘Will you be my wife, or will you not?’
She did not blench. ‘This is rather rough wooing, is it not?’ she said with fine scorn.
‘This is a camp, and I am a soldier.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I do not think I like rough ways,’ she said.
He controlled himself by a mighty effort. ‘Pardon me,’ he said with a sickly smile, which sat ill on his flushed and angry face. ‘Perhaps I am somewhat spoiled, and forget myself. But, like the man in the Bible, I am accustomed to say to some, “Go,” and they go, and to others, “Do it,” and it is done. And woe to those who disobey me. Possibly this makes me a rough wooer. But, Countess, the ways of the world are rough; the times are rough. We do not know what to-morrow will bring forth, and whatever we want we want quickly. More, sweetheart,’ he continued, drawing a step nearer to her and speaking in a voice he vainly strove to modulate, ‘a little roughness before marriage is better than ill-treatment afterwards. I have known men who wooed on their knees bring their wives to theirs very quickly after the knot was tied. I am not of that kind.’
My lady’s heart sickened. Despite the assurance of his last words, she saw the man as he was; she read his will in his eyes; and though his sudden frankness was in reality the result of overmastering excitement, she had the added horror of supposing it to be dictated by her friendless position and the absence of the last men who might have protected her. She knew that her only hope lay in her courage, and, though her heart leapt under her bodice, she faced him boldly.
‘You wish for an answer?’ she asked.
‘I have said so,’ he answered.
‘Then I shall not give you one now,’ she replied with a quiet smile. ‘You see, general, I am not one of those to whom you can say “Go,” and they go, and “Do,” and it is done. I must choose my own time for saying yes or no. And this time’ — she continued, looking round, and suffering a little shudder to escape her, as she pointed to the valley below— ‘I do not like. I am no coward, but I do not love the smell of blood. I will take time to consider your offer, if you please; and, meanwhile, I think you gallant gentleman enough not to press me against my will.’
She had a fan in her hand, and she began to walk again; she held it up, between her face and the sun, which was still low. He walked by her side, his brow as black as thunder. He read her thoughts so far correctly that he felt the evasion boded him no good; but the influence of her courage and pride was such that he shrank from throwing down the mask altogether, or using words which only force could make good. True, it wanted only a little to urge him over the edge, but her lucky star and bold demeanour prevailed for the time, and perhaps the cool, fresh air had sobered him.
‘I suppose a lady’s wish must be law,’ he muttered, though still he scowled. ‘But I hope that you will not make a long demand on my patience.’
‘That, too, you must leave to me,’ she replied with a flash of coquetry, which it cost her much to assume. ‘This morning I am so full of anxiety, that I scarcely know what I am saying. Surely your people must know by this time if they — they are among the dead?’
‘They are not,’ he answered sulkily.
‘Then they must have been captured?’ she said, a tremor in her voice.
He nodded. At that moment a man came up to say that breakfast was ready. The general repeated the message to her.
‘With your leave I will take it with my women,’ she answered with presence of mind. ‘I slept ill, and I am poor company this morning,’ she added, smiling faintly.
The ordeal over, she could scarcely keep her feet. She longed to weep. She felt herself within an inch of swooning.
He saw that she had turned pale, and he assented with a tolerable grace. ‘Let me give you my hand to your fire,’ he said anxiously.
‘Willingly,’ she answered.
It was the last effort of her diplomacy, and she hated herself for it. Still, it won her what she wanted — peace, a respite, a little time to think.
Yet as she sat and shivered in the sunshine, and made believe to eat, and tried to hide her thoughts, even from her women, a crushing sense of her loneliness took possession of her. She had read often and often, with scarce a quickening of the pulse, of men and women in tragic straits — of men and women brought face to face with death, nay, choosing it. But she had never pictured their feelings till now — their despair, their shrinkings, their bitter lookings back, as the iron doors closed upon them. She had never considered that such facts might enter into her own life.
Now, on a sudden, she found herself face to face with inexorable things, with the grim realities that have closed, like the narrowing walls of the Inquisition dungeons, on many a gay life. In the valley below they were burying men like rotten sheep. The Waldgrave was gone, captured or killed. Martin was gone. She was alone. Life seemed a cheap and uncertain thing, death very near. Pleasure — folly — a dancing on the grave.
Of her own free will she had placed herself in the power of a man who loved her, and whom she now hated with an untimely hatred, that was half fear and half loathing. In his power! Her heart stood still, and then beat faster, as she framed the thought. The sunshine, though it was summer, seemed to fall grey and pale on the hill sward; the morning air, though the day was warm, made her
shiver. The trumpet call, the sharp command, the glitter of weapons, that had so often charmed her imagination, startled her now. The food was like ashes in her mouth; she could not swallow it. She had been blind, and now she must pay for her folly.
She bad passed the night in the lee of one of the wooded knolls that studded the ridge, and her fire had been kindled there. The nearest group of soldiers — Tzerclas’ staff, whose harsh voices and reckless laughter came to her ears at intervals — had their fire full a hundred paces away. For a moment she entertained the desperate idea that she might slip away, alone, or with her women, and, passing from clump to clump, might gain the valley from which she had ascended, and, hiding in the woods, get somehow to Cassel. The smallest reflection showed her that the plan was not possible, and it was rejected as soon as formed. But a moment later she was tempted to wish that she had put it into effect. An officer made his appearance, with his hat in his hand and an air of haste, and wished to know, with the general’s service, whether she could be ready in an hour.
‘For what?’ she asked, rising. She had been sitting on the grass.
‘To start, your excellency,’ he replied politely.
‘To start!’ she exclaimed, taken by surprise. ‘Whither, sir?’
‘On the return journey. To the camp.’
The blood rushed to her face. ‘To the camp?’ she repeated. ‘But is the general going to start this morning? Now?’
‘In an hour, madam.’
‘And leave the Waldgrave Rupert — and my servant?’ she cried, in a voice of burning indignation. ‘Are they to be abandoned? It is impossible! I will see the general. Where is he?’ she continued impetuously.
‘He is in the valley,’ the man answered.
‘Then take me to him,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘I will speak to him. He cannot know. He has not thought.’
But the officer stood silent, without offering to move. The Countess’s eyes flashed. ‘Do you hear, sir?’ she cried. ‘Lead on, if you please. I asked you to take me to him.’
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 147