My Lady Rotha Part 32

'Yes, at present. But he will soon be dead if we do not go to him,' I retorted. 'This way! He lies yonder.'

'Lead on!' the general said.

I obeyed, and a moment brought our party to the spot, where the Waldgrave still lay insensible, his face pale and drawn, his eyes half open and disclosing the whites. Under the glare of the torches he looked so like a corpse and so far beyond aid, that it was not until I had again thrust my hand into his breast, and felt the movement of his heart that I was rea.s.sured.

As for the general, after looking down at him for awhile, he said quietly, 'He is dead.'

'Not so, your excellency,' I answered, rising briskly from my knees.

'He is stunned. That is all.'

'He is dead,' the general replied coldly. 'Leave him. We must help those first who need help.'

They were actually turning away. They had moved a couple of paces before I could believe it. Then I sprang to the general's rein.

'You mistake, your excellency!' I cried, my voice shrill with excitement. 'In Heaven's name, stop! He is alive! I can feel his breathing. I swear that he is alive!' I was trembling with emotion and terror.

'He is dead!' he said harshly. 'Stand back!'

Then I understood. In a flash his wicked purpose lay bared before me, and I knew that he was playing with me; I read in the cold, derisive menace of his eye that he knew the Waldgrave lived, that he knew he might live, might survive, might see the dawn, and that he was resolved that he should not. The perspiration sprang out on my brow. I choked with indignation.

'Mein Gott!' I cried breathless, 'and but for him you would have been beaten.'

'Stand back!' he muttered through his closed teeth; and his eyes flickered with rage. 'Are you tired of your life, man?'

'Ay, if you live!' I roared; and I shook his rein so that his horse reared and almost unseated him. But still I clung to it. 'Come back!

Come back!' I cried, mad with pa.s.sion, wild with indignation at treachery so vile, so cold-blooded, 'or I will heave you from your horse, you villain! I will----'

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, pa.s.sionately, 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 slas.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.bs 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 pa.s.ses 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--G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 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 princ.i.p.ality 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. '_V[oe] 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 succ.u.mbed 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!'