NEAR THE EDGE.
'Will you give me back my--my chain, if you please?' she said timidly.
And she stood with clasped hands and blushing cheeks, as if she were
the culprit. Her eyes looked anywhere to avoid mine. Her voice
trembled, and she seemed ready to sink into the earth with shame. She
was small, weak, helpless. But her words! Had they come from the judge
sitting on his bench, with axe and branding-iron by his side, they
could not have cowed me more completely, or deprived me more quickly
of wit and courage.
'Your chain?' I stammered, stricken almost voiceless. 'What do you
mean?'
'If you please,' she whispered, her face flushing more and more, her
eyes filling. 'My chain.'
'But how--what makes you think that I have got it?' I muttered
hoarsely. 'What makes you come to me?'
To confess, of my own motive and unsuspected, had been bad enough and
shameful enough; but to be accused, unmasked, convicted--and by her!
This was too much. My face burned, my eyes were hot as fire.
She twisted the fingers of one hand tightly round the other, but she
did not look up. 'You took it from the child's neck as we passed
through the ford,' she said in a low voice, 'that night I lost it.'
'I did!' I exclaimed. 'I did, girl?'
She nodded firmly, her lip trembling. But she never looked up; nor
into my face!
Yet her insistence angered me. How did she know, how could she know? I
put the question into words. 'How do you know?' I said harshly. 'Who
told you so? Who told you this--this lie, woman?'
'The child,' she answered, shivering under my words.
I opened my mouth and drew in my breath. I had never thought of that.
I had never thought, save once for a brief moment, of the child
talking, and, on the instant, I stood speechless; convicted and
confounded! Then I found my voice again.
'The child told you!' I muttered incredulously. 'The child? Why, it
cannot talk!'
'It can,' she said, her voice breaking. 'It can talk to me, and I can
understand it. Oh, I am so sorry!' And with that she broke down. She
turned away and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob
bitterly. Her shoulders heaved, and her slender frame shook with the
storm.
A thief, and a liar! That was what I had made myself. I stood glaring
at her, my breast full of sullen passion. I hated her and her
necklace. I wished that it had been buried a thousand fathoms deep in
the sea! That moment in the ford, one moment only, a moment of folly,
had wrecked me. I raged against her and against myself. I could have
struck her. If she had only left me alone, if she had not come to
question me and accuse me, I should not have lied; and then, perhaps,
I might have recovered the necklace, somehow and some day, and, giving
it back to her, told her the story and kept my honesty. Now I had
lied, and she knew it. And I hated her. I hated her, sobbing and
shaking and shivering before me.
And then a ray of sunlight, passing through the branches, fell on her
bowed head. A hundred paces away, little more, they were striking the
camp. The men's voices, their harsh jests and rude laughter, reached
us. I heard one man called, and another, and orders given, and the
jingle of the bits and bridles. All was unchanged, everything was
proceeding in its usual course. One thing only in the world was
altered--Martin Schwartz, the steward.
I found no words to lie to her farther, to deny or protest; and when
we had stood thus for a short time, she turned. She began to move
slowly away from me, though the passion of her tears seemed to
increase rather than slacken as she went, and shook her frame with
such vehemence that she could scarcely walk.
For a time I stood looking after her in sullen shame, doing and saying
nothing to stay her. Then, suddenly, a change came over me. She looked
so friendless, so frail, and gentle and helpless, that, in the middle
of my selfish shame, my heart smote me. I felt a sudden welling up of
pity and repentance, which worked so quickly and wonderfully in me,
that before she had gone a score of paces from me, my hand was on her
shoulder.
'Stop! Stay a moment!' I muttered hoarsely. 'I have been lying to you.
I took the necklace--from the child's neck. It is all true.'
She ceased crying, but she did not turn or look at me. She seemed to
be struggling for composure, and presently, with her face still
averted, she murmured--
'Why did you take it? Will you please to tell me?'
As well as I could, I did tell her; how and why I had taken it, what I
had done with it, and how I had lost it. She listened, but she made no
sign, she said nothing; and her silence hurt me at last so keenly that
I added with bitterness--
'I lied before, and you need not believe what I say now. Still, it is
true.'
She turned her face quickly to me, and I saw that her cheeks were hot
and her eyes shining. 'I believe it--every word,' she said.
'I will not lie to you again.'
'You never did,' she answered. And she stole a glance at me, a faint
smile flickering about her lips. 'Your face never did, Master Martin.'
'Yet you wept sore enough for your chain,' I said.
She looked at me for a moment with something like anger in her gentle
eyes, so that for that instant she seemed transformed. And she drew
away from me.
'Did you think that I wept for that?' she said in a tone of offence.
'I did not.'
'Then for what?' I asked clumsily.
She looked two or three ways before she answered, and in the distance
some one called me.
'There! you are wanted,' she said hurriedly.
'But you have not answered my question,' I said.
She took a step from me and paused, with her head half turned. 'I
wept--I wept because I thought that I had lost a friend,' she said in
a low voice. 'And I have few, Master Martin.'
She was gone, before I could answer, through the trees and back to the
camp. And I had to follow. Half a dozen voices in half a dozen places
were calling my name. The general's trumpet was sounding. I slipped
aside and joined the camp from another quarter, and in a moment was in
the middle of the hubbub, beset by restive horses and swaying poles,
clanging kettles and swearing riders, and all the hurry and confusion
of the start. My lady called to me sharply to know where I had been,
and why I was late. The Waldgrave wanted this, Fraulein Max that. The
general frowned at me from afar. It would have been no great wonder if
I had lost my temper.
But I did not; I was in no risk of doing so. I had gone near the edge
and had been plucked back. Late, and when all seemed over, I had been
given a place for repentance; and gratitude and relief so filled my
breast that I had a smile for every one. The sun seemed to shine more
brightly, the wind to blow more softly--the wind which blew from Marie
Wort to me. Thank God!
As I fell in behind my lady--the general riding alone some way in the
rear--the Waldgrave came up and took his place at her side; greeting
her with an awkward air which seemed to prove that this was his first
appearance in her neighbourhood. He made a show of hiding his
uneasiness under a face of careless gaiety, such as was his natural
wear; and for awhile he rattled on gallantly. But my lady's cool tone
and short answers soon stripped him, and left him with no other
resource but to take offence. He took it, and for a mile or so rode on
in gloomy silence, brooding over his wrongs. Then, anger giving way to
self-reproach, he grew tired of this.
With a sudden gesture he leaned over and laid his hand on the withers
of my lady's horse. 'Tell me, what is the matter, fair cousin?' he
said in a softened tone. 'What have I done?'
'You should know,' she answered, giving him one keen glance, but
speaking more gently than before.
'I know?' he replied hardily. 'I am sure I don't.'
My lady shook her head. 'I think you do,' she said.
'I suppose you are angry with me for--for standing up for Germany last
night?' he muttered, withdrawing his hand and speaking coldly in his
turn.
'No, not for that,' my lady rejoined. 'Certainly not for that. But for
being too German in one of your habits, Rupert. Which do you think
made the better figure last night--you who were flushed with wine, or
General Tzerclas who kept his head cool? You who bragged like a boy,
or General Tzerclas who said less than he meant? You who were rude to
your host; or he who made every allowance for his guest?'
'Allowance!' my lord cried, firing up at the word. And I could see
that he reddened to the nape of his neck with anger. 'There was no
need!'
'Yes, allowance,' my lady answered firmly. 'There was every need.'
'You would have me drink nothing, I suppose?' he said fretting and
fuming.
'I would rather you drank nothing than too much,' she replied.
'Because a German and a drunkard have come to mean the same thing, is
that a reason for deepening the reproach? For shame, Rupert!'
'You treat me like a boy!' he cried bitterly. And I thought that she
was hard on him.
'Well, you have only yourself to thank,' she retorted cruelly, 'if I
do. You behave like a boy. And I do not like to have to blush for my
friends.'
That cut him deeply. He uttered a half-stifled cry of anger and reined
in his horse. 'You have said enough,' he said, speaking thickly. 'You
shall have no farther cause to blush in my case. I will relieve you.'
And on the instant, with a low bow, he turned his horse's head and
rode down the column towards the rear, leaving my lady to go on alone.
I confess I thought that she had been hard on him; perhaps she thought
so too, now he was gone. And here were the beginnings of a pretty
quarrel. But I did not guess the direction it was likely to take,
until a horseman spurred quickly by me, and in a moment General
Tzerclas, his velvet cloak hanging at his shoulder, had taken the
Waldgrave's place, and with his head bent low over his horse's neck
was talking to my lady. I saw him indicate this and that quarter with
his gauntleted hand. I could fancy that this was Cassel, and that
Frankfort, and another his camp, and that he was proposing plans and
routes. But what he said I could not hear. He had a low, quiet way of
talking, very characteristic of him, which flattered those to whom he
addressed himself and baffled others.
And this, I suppose, it was that made me suspicious. For the longer I
rode behind him and the more I considered him, the less I liked both
him and the prospect. He was in the prime of his age and strength,
inferior to the Waldgrave in height and the air of youth, but superior
in that which the other lacked--the bearing of a man of the world,
tried by good and evil fortune, and versed in many perils. Cool and
resolute, handsome in a hard-bitten fashion, gifted, as I guessed,
with infinite address, he possessed much to take the fancy of a woman;
particularly of such a one as my lady, long used to comfort, and now
learning in ill-fortune the value of a strong arm.
The possibility of such an alliance, thus suddenly thrust on my
notice, chilled me. Anything, I said, rather than that. The Waldgrave
had not left his post five minutes before I began to think of him with
longing, before I began to invest him with all manner of virtues. At
least, he was a German, of a great and noble family, tied to the soil,
and fettered in his dealings by a hundred traditions; while this man
riding before me possessed not one of these qualities!
Von Werder's warning, which the loss of Marie Wort's necklace had
driven from my mind for a time, recurred with double force now, and
did not tend to reassure me. I listened with all my might, trying to
learn whether my lady was pledging herself to any course, for I knew
that if she once promised I should find it hard to move her. But I
could not catch a syllable, and presently there came an interruption
which diverted my thoughts.
One of the two men who rode in front, and served for the advanced
guard of our party, came galloping back with his hand raised and a
grin on his dark face. He pulled up his horse a few paces short of
General Tzerclas and my lady, and reported that he had found the
Saxon.
'What! Heller?' the general exclaimed. 'Here, Ludwig! Where are you?'
Ludwig, and I, and two or three more, spurred forward, and passing by
my lady, who reined in her horse, came a hundred paces farther on upon
the other trooper. He had dismounted and was stooping over a man's
body, which lay under a great tree that stood a few yards from the
track.
'So, so? He is dead, is he?' the captain cried, leaping from his
saddle.
'Ay, this hour or more,' the trooper answered with a grunt. 'And
robbed!'
'Robbed?' Ludwig shrieked. 'Then you have done it, you scoundrel.'
'Not I!' the fellow said coolly. 'Who ever it was killed him, robbed
him. You can see for yourself that he has been dead an hour or more.'
The sudden hope which had dawned in my breast sank again. The man lay
on his back, with his one eye staring, and his mean, livid face turned
up to the tree and the sunshine. His cap had fallen off, and a shock
of hay-coloured hair added to the horror of his appearance. I tried in
vain to hide a qualm as I watched the soldiers passing their practised
hands over his clothes; but I was alone in this. No one else seemed to
feel any emotion. The dead man lay and his comrades searched him, and
I heard a hundred ribald and loose things said, but not one that
smacked of pity or regret. So the man had lived, without love or
mercy, and so he died.
Ludwig stood up at last. 'He has not the worth of his boots upon him!'
he said, with a savage snarl. And he kicked the body.
'Look in his cap!' I said.
A man took it up, but only to hold it out to me. Some one had already
ripped it up with a knife.
'His boots!' I suggested desperately.
In a moment they were drawn off, turned up, and shaken. But nothing
fell out. The dead man had been stripped clean. There was not so much
as a silver piece upon him.
We got to horse gloomily, one man the richer by his belt, another by
his boots. His arms were gone already. And so we left him lying under
the tree for the next traveller to bury, if he pleased. I know it has
an ill sound now, but we were in an evil mood, and the times were
rough.
'The dog is dead, let the dog lie!' one growled. And that was his
epitaph.
With him disappeared, as it seemed to me, my last chance of recovering
the necklace. Whoever had robbed him, that was gone. A week might see
it pass through a score of hands, a day might see it broken up, and
spent, a link here and a link there. It was gone, and I had to face
the fact and make up my mind to its consequences.
I am bound to say that the reflection gave me less pain than I could
have believed possible a few hours before. Then it would almost have
maddened me. Now it troubled me, but not beyond endurance, leading me
to go over with a jealous eye all the particulars of my interview with
Marie, but renewing none of the shame which had attended the first
discovery of my loss. By turning my head I could see the girl plodding
patiently on, a little behind me in the ranks; and I turned often. It
no longer pained me to meet her eyes.
An hour before sunset we crossed the brow of a low, furze-covered
hill, and saw before us a shallow green valley or basin, through which
the river wound in a hundred zigzags. The hovels of a small village,
with one or two houses of a better size, stood dotted about the banks
of the stream. Over the largest of the buildings a banner hung idly on
a pole, and from this as from the centre of a circle ran out long rows
of wattled huts, which in the distance looked like bee-hives. Endless
ranks of horses stood hobbled in another place, with a forest of carts
and sledges, and here a drove of oxen, and there a monstrous flock of
sheep. One of the men with us blew a few notes on a trumpet; and the
sound, being taken up at once and repeated, in a moment filled the
mimic streets with a hurrying, buzzing crowd, that lent the scene all
the animation possible.
'So, this is your camp?' my lady exclaimed, her eyes sparkling.
'This is my camp,' General Tzerclas answered quietly. 'And it and I
are equally at your service. Presently we will bid you welcome after a
more fitting fashion, Countess.'
'And how many men have you here?' she asked quickly.
'Two thousand,' he answered, with a faint smile.