My Lady Rotha Part 61

After that I had no doubt left. 'Then bring it to the Countess, my girl,' I said. 'He is here. And it is she who should give it to him.'

'Who is here?' she cried sharply.

'Count Leuchtenstein.'

She stared at me for a moment, and then suddenly quailed and broke down, as it were. She blushed crimson; her eyes looked at me piteously, like those of a beaten dog.

'Oh,' she said, 'I forgot that it was you!'

'Never mind that,' I said. 'Take the child to my lady.'

She nodded, in quick comprehension. As the Count crossed the threshold below, she sped up the stairs, and I after her. My lady was in the parlour, walking the length of it impatiently, with a set face; but whether the impatience was on my account, because I had delayed below so long, or on the Count's, whose arrival she had probably seen from the window, I will not say, for as I entered and before she could speak, Marie ran to her with the child and placed it in her arms.

My lady turned for a moment quite pale. 'What is it?' she said faintly, holding it from her awkwardly.

Marie cried out between laughing and crying, 'The child! The child, my lady.'

'And Count Leuchtenstein is on the stairs,' I said.

The colour swept back into the Countess's face in a flood and covered it from brow to neck. For a moment, taken by surprise, she forgot her pride and looked at us shyly, timidly. 'Where--where did you recover it?' she murmured.

'The Waldgrave recovered it,' I answered hurriedly, 'and sent it to your excellency, that you might give it to Count Leuchtenstein.'

'The Waldgrave!' she cried.

'Yes, my lady, with that message,' I answered strenuously.

The Countess looked to Marie for help. I could hear steps on the stairs--at the door; and I suppose that the two women settled it with their eyes. For no words pa.s.sed, but in a twinkling Marie s.n.a.t.c.hed the child, which was just beginning to cry, from the Countess and ran away with it through an inner door. As that door fell to, the other opened, and Ernst announced Count Leuchtenstein.

He came in, looking embarra.s.sed, and a little stiff. His buff coat showed marks of the corselet--he had not changed it--and his boots were dusty. It seemed to me that he brought in a faint reek of powder with him, but I forgot this the next moment in the look of melancholy kindness I espied in his eyes--a look that enabled me for the first time to see him as my lady saw him.

She met him very quietly, with a heightened colour, but the most perfect self-possession. I marvelled to see how in a moment she was herself again.

'I rejoice to see you safe, Count Leuchtenstein,' she said. 'I heard early this morning that you were unhurt.'

'Yes,' he answered. 'I have not a scratch, where so many younger men have fallen.'

'Alas! there will be tears on many hearths,' my lady said.

'Yes. Poor Germany!' he answered. 'Poor Germany! It is a fearful thing. G.o.d forgive us who have to do with the making of war. Yet we may hope, as long as our young men show such valour and courage as some showed yesterday; and none more conspicuously than the Waldgrave Rupert.'

'I am glad,' my lady said, colouring, 'that he justified your interference on his behalf, Count Leuchtenstein. It was right that he should; and right that I should do more--ask your pardon for the miserable ingrat.i.tude of which my pa.s.sion made me guilty a while ago.'

'Countess!' he cried.

'No,' she said, stopping him with a gesture full of dignity. 'You must hear me out, for now that I have confessed, we are quits. I behaved ill--so ill that I deserved a heavy punishment. You thought so--and inflicted it!'

Her voice dropped with the last words. He turned very red, and looked at her wistfully; but I suppose that he dared not draw conclusions.

For he remained silent, and she resumed, more lightly.

'So Rupert did well yesterday?' she said. 'I am glad, for he will be pleased.'

'He did more than well!' Count Leuchtenstein answered, with awkward warmth. 'He distinguished himself in the face of the whole army. His courage and coolness were above praise. As we have----' The Count paused, then blundered on hastily--'quarrelled, dare I say, Countess, over him, I am anxious to make him the ground of our reconciliation also. I have formed the highest opinion of him; and I hope to advance his interests in every way.'

My lady raised her eyebrows. 'With me?' she said quaintly.

The Count fidgeted, and looked very ill at ease. 'May I speak quite plainly?' he said at last.

'Surely,' the Countess answered.

'Then it can be no secret to you that he has--formed an attachment to you. It would be strange if he had not,' the Count added gallantly.

'And he has asked you to speak for him?' my lady exclaimed, in an odd tone.

'No, not exactly. But----'

'You think that it--it would be a good match for me,' she said, her voice trembling, but whether with tears or laughter, I could not tell.

'You think that, being a woman, and for the present houseless, and almost friendless, I should do well to marry him?'

'He is a brave and honest man,' the Count muttered, looking all ways--and looking very miserable. 'And he loves you!' he added with an effort.

'And you think that I should marry him?' my lady persisted mercilessly. 'Answer me, if you please, Count Leuchtenstein, or you are a poor amba.s.sador.'

'I am not an amba.s.sador,' he replied, thus goaded. 'But I thought----'

'That I ought to marry him?'

'If you love him,' the Count muttered.

My lady took a turn to the window, looked out, and came back. When she spoke at last, I could not tell whether the harshness in her voice was real or a.s.sumed.

'I see how it is,' she said, 'very clearly, Count Leuchtenstein. I have confessed, and I have been punished; but I am not forgiven. I must do something more, it seems. Wait!'

He was going to protest, to remonstrate, to deny; but she was gone, out through the door, to return on the instant with something in her arms. She took it to the Count and held it out to him.

'See!' she said, her voice broken by sobs; 'it is your child. G.o.d has given it back again. G.o.d has given it to you, because you trusted in Him. It is your child.'

He stood as if turned to stone. 'Is it?' he said at last, in a low, strained voice. 'Is it? Then thank G.o.d for His mercy to my house. But how--shall I know it?'

'The girl knows it. Marie knows it,' my lady cried; 'and the child knows her. And Martin--Martin will tell you how it was found--how the Waldgrave found it.'

'The Waldgrave?' the Count cried.

'Yes, the Waldgrave,' she answered; 'and he sent it to me to give to you.'

Then I went to him and told him all I knew; and Marie, who, like my lady, was laughing through her tears, took the child, and showed him how it knew her, and remembered my name and my lady's, and had this mark and that mark, and so forth, until he was convinced; and while in that hour all Nuremberg outside our house mourned and lamented, within, I think, there were as thankful hearts as anywhere in the world, so that even Steve, when he came peeping through the door to see what was the matter, went blubbering down again.

Presently Count Leuchtenstein said something handsome to Marie about her care of the child, and slipping off a gold chain that he was wearing, threw it round her neck, with a pleasant word to me. Marie, covered with blushes, took this as a signal to go, and would have left the child with his father; but the boy objected strongly, and the Count, with a laugh, bade her take him.