AN ASSIGNATION.
The lock yielded. The door opened. But the walk was bare as far as the
fitful moonlight showed. He strode forward almost as if he feared an
ambush, though at this part of the garden the short bare trees and
standards made but the cover of a spider's-web tracery, through which
one sees what is beyond. Only towards the middle of the orchard was
there a spot where several walks met, and this was nearly surrounded by
evergreen bushes and laurel and holly. This alone loomed blackly in
front of him. Towards this he strode. And even as he gained the entrance
a tall figure of a woman, cloaked and hooded, emerged from the
encompassing dusk, and coming nearer, revealed itself as that of the
Archduchess.
Dimly Nigel divined that she wore the deep blue velvet and sable furs
which he had seen aforetime. More clearly he distinguished in the depths
of the hood the dancing of those lustrous eyes, the pouting red lips of
that royal mouth, the pallor of the cheeks.
He took her hand to kiss, but she bent forward with a look of
enticement.
"Nay! tall captain!" she said. "We need not use the fashion of the
courts. It was not so you kissed Ottilie, or so she told me."
But nevertheless she tendered but her cheek, in token, as he understood
it, that she had but surrendered the furthest outworks. That vain
imagining of his, that to be within arm's length of her was to throw the
reins upon the neck of passion and let it gallop, had vanished when he
put the key in the lock.
Woman the queen, woman the giver and the withholder, leaned graciously
towards him by reason of the love that had descended upon her, abasing
her to him, exalting him to her, banishing all thrusting rebellious
swashbuckling imaginations from the presence. Tumultuous his thoughts
sprang towards speech, but little could he find but an almost
breathless--
"Stephanie! Of all living men to choose me for your lover?"
"Nay! tall captain!" Craftily she had ranged herself beside him and
rested her hand upon his shoulder, looking up into his eyes with her
face of roguish wooer. "Nay! tall captain! You had already taken my
sister-half, Ottilie, by assault, and it is not seeming that an
Archduchess should be bussed by more than one bold fellow, so I even
proffer my cheek to the same smiter for honour's sake."
The tone of raillery set him at his ease. He felt that beneath it beat
the true womanly heart. And over him stole a great, a measureless
content.
He took her left hand in his, and holding so much of her closely to his
side, they began to walk here and there about the orchard by first one
and then another of its many paths.
"It is amazing that I did not guess your riddle before, my love," he
said.
"Count Tilly guessed it at Magdeburg!" she said. "But he feigned not to,
thinking doubtless it would be as well my madcap freaks should not come
to the Emperor through him."
"But you put on a different seeming! The voice was like, but the
language of Ottilie was different, smacked of the country lady. The face
of Ottilie was like that of the Archduchess, but the manner and bearing
were less haughty and less assured."
"But the truth was that you saw me in distant places and in changed
circumstances, so that you were prone to think of me as two distinct
women."
"And now tell me the meaning of this masquerade! It was for Wallenstein!
I am sure of that! You were in love with Wallenstein?"
"Never! You are going to be my first lover and my last!" Her tone was
deep and serious. There was something of presage, of mystery, a hint of
doom.
"I was taken, as a girl will be, with the glamour that glowed about his
name, as he rose from step to step by great leaps of success. It was the
star of Wallenstein that I followed. I dreamed of being caught up into
its orbit, and, moving, throned above the nations in its company,
sharing and contributing to its brightness."
"And Wallenstein? Did he know?"
"Wallenstein knew that I was favouring his party and his plans. He knew
that I was willing to run terrible risks, as I have done, to forward his
aims. But Wallenstein is a merchant, not a prince, a politician, not a
man! The glamour became more transparent as time went on, and when I met
you, Nigel, it was as if a wind from the hills swept over the plain,
sweeping away the mists of morning and leaving everything clear and
visible. For you showed yourself a man. You were not old and full of
wiles like Father Lamormain or Maximilian. You were not like a mere
courtier, as so many that I have known are, ready to agree to this and
that and everything. You withstood me, thwarted me, outplayed me."
"Not always, Stephanie! There was a castle called the Wartburg!"
At this reminiscence the Archduchess flushed beneath her hood, which
Nigel did not see. But he felt the sly pinch that accompanied her cry.
"Speak not of it! You took more away with you than you brought!" The
hood was turned up towards him now, and he could look down into the
depths of those translucent womanly eyes, brimming with the tenderness
of first love, more magical than which is nothing of human tenderness.
"And I," said Nigel, "had never loved woman till I saw you in the
Pastor's house at Magdeburg. It was as if a bee had stung me. I felt the
sharp prick, told myself it was naught. But the poison worked. At
Erfurt, when I knew it was you that had wept in the cathedral, and we
stood by the bridge looking at the rivers and the stars and heard you
speak of love, I recognised the pain again, I knew the longing that had
set in, but also, knowing that you spoke not of me, again I brushed the
thought aside. But never for long...." Something seemed to come into his
mind.... He paused awhile, the Archduchess hanging upon his next words,
savouring the essence of what had gone before....
"Who stole my despatches?"
"The same hand that restored them! Speak not of them!"
"I wondered if I had awakened what would have happened!"
"A woman's wit----"
"Would have been little proof against a man's sword-thrust in the dark,"
said Nigel sternly.
"I will not run such a risk again," she said with humility, "unless it
be to save you!"
"Foolish princess!" he rejoined, and held her suddenly in his arms.
"You are bewitched! And so am I." This time there was no pretence of
offering a cheek. It was a fortunate dark shadow in which they stood,
and lips levied toll of lips, and were not satisfied with the rate of
customs. Heart beat to heart and beat the more, but Nigel's reverence
for her, for all he held her so closely, was as high as her greatness of
soul.
"It is enough, tall captain, and yet not enough. But our plans! We have
already spent a foolish hour and made no plans."
Her warning tumbled Nigel headlong out of his tower to an ungrateful
earth. Plans to what end?
"Oh, Stephanie! My princess! To-morrow or the next day or the next I
must set out for Tilly's army. A plan to see you, to hold you, what need
I but this key and your sweet graciousness?"
"Once to meet you in my orchard close! Once was easy and possible. But
do you think we could meet twice and not be spied upon. I know the
palace of Vienna and its ways as you can never know them. Spies of
Father Lamormain, hirelings of Maximilian's, hirelings of France and
Spain."
"And your love is a great and precious jewel," said Nigel, "too great,
too precious to be jeopardised."
"If you would wear it and me forever," ... she murmured, "we must hide
it now, peeping at it now and then in secret, till the time is ripe to
run the great risk of our lives and proclaim it in the ears of the court
and of Europe. Whether it will be a convent or death for me, or death
for you and me, for I would die rather than wed Maximilian, or life for
both of us, is hidden behind the shadows as the dark encircles us now.
But we must not barter our chances for any trifling joy----"
"It is no trifling joy, Stephanie! This, save the mark, is heaven to
hold you to my heart."
"Oh! Nigel! Nigel!" she sighed. "Your love is the love of a man that
comes and goes in gusts, roaring like the wind, gentle as the breeze,
and then it is gone till it awakens again. I say not you are inconstant,
but you do not fear, as woman does, the hour of emptiness when there is
no lover, no husband."
"By Heaven! I am no inconstant, Stephanie! I can bide my time, and if I
lose not my life in these wars, surely there shall be a roof-tree in
bonnie Scotland waiting us."
"To-morrow, all being well, the Archduchess shall send for Colonel
Charteris to the Long Gallery, but for a brief talk of the affairs of
state. The following evening I shall try to meet you here at the same
time to say farewell. But remember how we may be beset, and use a double
caution. Look for a way into the gardens by another avenue than the
palace. Now I leave you! Do not follow! Wait a full half-hour! Make sure
you are not spied upon! Make a wide circuit to the orangery and have a
glib excuse if you are met. Good-night."
For a brief half-hour Nigel waited, exploring the orchard close. There
were two other gates, by one of which the Archduchess had beaten her
retreat. No sign of any lurking spy made itself apparent. This time
Cæsar's daughter had escaped suspicion, and the lovers had their
precious hour of interlude.
Nigel's mind was more at rest after he had made the circuit of the place
and sounded every shadow by the aid of the fitful moon. More than ever
alive to the privilege of her love, he was equally alive to the danger
that she ran. Histories and mysteries of the courts of Italy, of Spain,
of France, sprang to life in his mind, things read, or heard in the
guard-room, or handed down in fearsome stories of the hearth at home.
The fairy princess had been folded in his arms, had breathed kisses of
mortal joy upon his lips, had gone. If she were not a fairy princess,
then a thousand unknown dangers threatened them. He could guess
Maximilian as one very possible architect of evil; only Maximilian was
just then preparing to defend Bavaria, and could know nothing if the
very wind shouted "Nigel and Stephanie." Father Lamormain was another,
nearer home, absolutely inexorable in working out his plans. At present
in ignorance of this princely indiscretion he was friendly towards
Nigel, but let him gain an inkling and Nigel felt that their projects of
happiness would be thwarted by means impossible for himself and her to
foresee and to avoid.
As he turned the key in the lock and took one farewell look of that
wintry orchard before closing the gate behind him his mind was full of
joy; and as the gate closed joy fled before foreboding.