STALHANSKE'S FINNS.
It was my ill luck, on that day which began so inauspiciously, to see
two shadows: one on a man's face, the Waldgrave's, and of that I need
say no more; the other, the shadow of a man's body, an odd, sinister
outline, crooked and strange and tremulous, that I came upon in a
remote corner of the camp, to which I had wandered in my perplexity; a
place where a few stunted trees ran down a steep bank to the river. I
had never been to this place before, and, after a glance which showed
me that it was the common sink and rubbish-bed of the camp, I was
turning moodily away, when first this shadow and then the body which
cast it caught my eye. The latter hung from the branch of an old
gnarled thorn, the feet a few inches from the ground. A shuddering
kind of curiosity led me to go up and look at the dead man's face,
which was doubled up on his breast; and then the desire to test the
nerves, which is common to most men, induced me to stand staring at
him.
The time was two hours after noon, and there were few persons
moving. The camp was half asleep. Heat, and flies, and dust were
everywhere--and this gruesome thing. The body was stripped, and the
features were swollen and disfigured; but, after a moment's thought, I
recognized them, and saw that I had before me the poor wretch who had
appealed to my lady's compassion after the shooting-match, and to whom
the general had opened his hand so freely. The grim remarks I had then
heard recurred now, and set me shuddering. If any doubt still remained
in my mind, it was dissipated a moment later by a placard which had
once hung round the dead man's neck, but now lay in the dust at his
feet. I turned it over. Chalked on it in large letters were the words
'Beggars, beware!'
I felt at first, on making the discovery, only horror and indignation,
and a violent loathing of the camp. But these feelings soon passed,
and left me free to consider how the deed touched us. Could I prove
it? Could I bring it home to the general to my lady's satisfaction,
beyond denial or escape, and so open her eyes? And if I could, would
it be wise, by doing so, to rouse his anger while she remained in the
camp and in General Tzerclas' power? I might only hasten the
catastrophe.
I found this a hard nut to crack, and was still puzzling over it, with
my eyes on the senseless form which was already so far out of my
thoughts, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and a harsh voice
grated on my ear.
'Well, Master Steward, a penny for your thoughts! They should be worth
having, to judge by the way you rub your chin.'
I started and looked round. The speaker was Captain Ludwig, who, with
two of his fellows, had come up behind me while I mused. Something in
his tone rather than his words--a note of menace--warned me to be
careful; while the glum looks of his companions, as they glanced from
me to the dead man, added point to the hint, and filled my mind with a
sudden sense of danger. I had learned more than I had been intended to
learn; I had found out something I had not been intended to find out.
The very quietness and sunshine and the solitude of the place added
horror to the moment. It was all I could do to hide my discomfiture
and face them without flinching.
'My thoughts?' I said, forcing a grin. 'They were not very difficult
to guess. A sharp shrift, and a short rope? What else should a man
think here?'
'Ay?' Ludwig said, watching me closely with his eyes half closed and
his lips parted.
He would say no more, and I was forced to go on. 'It is not the first
time I have seen a man dancing on nothing!' I said recklessly; 'but it
gave me a turn.'
He kicked the placard. 'You are a scholar,' he said. 'What is this?'
My face grew hot. I dared not deny my learning, for I did not know how
much he knew; but, for the nonce, I wished heartily that I had never
been taught to read.
'That?' I said, affecting a jovial tone to cover my momentary
hesitation. 'A seasonable warning. They are as thick here as nuts in
autumn. We could spare a few more, for the matter of that.'
'Ay, but this one?' he retorted, coolly tapping the dead man with a
little stick he carried, and then turning to look me in the face. 'You
have seen him before.'
I made a great show of staring at the body, but I suppose I played my
part ill, for before I could speak Ludwig broke in with a brutal
laugh.
'Chut, man!' he said, with a sneer of contempt; 'you know him; I see
you do. And knew him all along. Well, if fools will poke their noses
into things that do not concern them, it is not my affair. I must
trouble you for your company awhile.'
'Whither?' I said, setting my teeth together and frowning at him.
'To my master,' he replied, with a curt nod. 'Don't say you won't,' he
continued with meaning, 'for he is not one to be denied.'
I looked from one to another of the three men, and for a moment the
desperate clinging to liberty, which makes even the craven bold, set
my hands tingling and sent the blood surging to my head. But reason
spoke in time. I saw that the contest was too unequal, the advantage
of a few minutes' freedom too trivial, since the general must sooner
or later lay his hand on me; and I crushed down the impulse to resist.
'What scares you, comrades?' I said, laughing savagely. They had
recoiled a foot. 'Do you see a ghost or a Swede, that you look so
pale? Your general wants me? Then let him have me. Lead on! I won't
run away, I warrant you.'
Ludwig nodded as he placed himself by my side. 'That is the right way
to take it,' he said. 'I thought that you might be going to be a fool,
comrade.'
'Like our friend there,' I said dryly, pointing to the senseless form
we were leaving. 'He made a fuss, I suppose?'
Ludwig shrugged his shoulders. 'No,' he answered, 'not he so much; but
his wife. Donner! I think I hear her screams now. And she cursed us!
Ah!'
I shuddered, and after that was silent. But more than once before we
reached the general's quarters the frantic desire to escape seized me,
and had to be repressed. I felt that this was the beginning of the
end, the first proof of the strong grasp which held us all helpless. I
thought of my lady, I thought of Marie Wort, and I could have shrieked
like a woman; for I was powerless like a woman--gripped in a hand I
could not resist.
The camp grilling and festering in the sunshine--how I hated it! It
seemed an age I had lived in its dusty brightness, an age of vague
fears and anxieties. I passed through it now in a feverish dream,
until an exclamation, uttered by my companion as we turned into the
street, aroused me. The street was full of loiterers, all standing in
groups, and all staring at a little band of horsemen who sat
motionless in their saddles in front of the general's quarters. For a
moment I took these to be the general's staff. Then I saw that they
were dressed all alike, that their broad, ruddy faces were alike, that
they held themselves with the same unbending precision, and seemed, in
a word, to be ten copies of one stalwart man. Near them, a servant on
foot was leading two horses up and down, and they and he had the air
of being on show.
Captain Ludwig, holding me fast by the arm, stopped at the first group
of starers we came to. 'Who are these?' he asked gruffly.
The man he addressed turned round, eager to impart his knowledge.
'Finns!' he said; 'from head-quarters--Stalhanske's Finns. No less,
captain.'
My companion whistled. 'What are they doing here?' he asked.
The other shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Their leader is
with the general. What do you think of them, Master Ludwig?'
But Ludwig only grunted, looking with disparaging eyes at the
motionless riders, whose air betrayed a certain consciousness of their
fame and the notice which they were exciting. From steel cap to
spurred boot, they showed all metal and leather. Nothing gay, nothing
gaudy; not a chain or a sash differenced one from another. Grim,
stern, and silent, they stared before them. Had no one named the King
of Sweden's great regiment, I had known that I was looking no longer
on brigands, but on soldiers--on part of the iron line that at
Breitenfeld broke the long repute of years, and swept Pappenheim from
the hillside like chaff before the storm.
After hesitating a moment, Ludwig went forward a few paces, as if to
enter the house, taking me with him. Then he paused. At the same
instant the man who was leading the two horses turned. His eye lit on
me, and I saw an extraordinary change come over the fellow's face. He
stopped short and, pulling up his horses, stared at me. It seemed to
me, too, that I had seen him before, and I returned his look; but
while I was trying to remember where, the door of the general's
quarters opened. Two or three men who were loitering before it,
stepped quickly aside, and a tall, stalwart man came out, followed by
General Tzerclas himself.
I looked at the foremost, and in a twinkling recognized him. It was
Von Werder. But an extraordinary change had come over the traveller.
He was still plainly dressed, in a buff coat, with untanned boots, a
leather sword-belt, and a grey hat with a red feather; and in all of
these there was nothing to catch the eye. But his air and manner as he
spoke to his companion were no longer those of an inferior, while his
stern eye, as it travelled over the crowd in the street, expressed
cold and steady contempt.
As the servant brought up his horse, he spoke to his companion. 'You
are sure that you can do it--with these?' he said, flicking his
riding-whip towards the silent throng.
'You may consider it done,' the general answered rather grimly.
'Good! I am glad. Well, man, what is it?'
He spoke the last words to his servant. The man pointed to me and said
something. Von Werder looked at me. In a moment every one looked at
me. Then Von Werder swung himself into his saddle, and turned to
General Tzerclas.
'That is the man, I am told,' he said, pointing suddenly to me with
his whip.
'He is at your service,' the general answered with a shrug of
indifference.'
In an instant Von Werder's horse was at my side. 'A word with you, my
man,' he said sharply. 'Come with me.'
Ludwig had hold of my arm still. He had not loosed me, and at this he
interposed. 'My lord,' he cried to the general, 'this man--I have
something to----'
'Silence, fool!' Tzerclas growled. 'And stand aside, if you value your
skin!'
Ludwig let me go; immediately, as if an angel had descended to speak
for me, the crowd parted, and I was free--free and walking away down
the street by the side of the stranger, who continued to look at me
from time to time, but still kept silence. When we had gone in this
fashion a couple of hundred paces or more, and were clear of the
crowd, he seemed no longer able to control himself, though he looked
like a man apt at self-command. He waved his escort back and reined in
his horse.
'You are the man to whom I talked the other night,' he said, fixing me
with his eyes--'the Countess of Heritzburg's steward?'
I replied that I was. His face as he looked down at me, with his back
to his following, betrayed so much agitation that I wondered more and
more. Was he going to save us? Could he save us? Who was he? What did
it all mean? Then his next question scattered all these thoughts and
doubled my surprise.
'You had a chain stolen from you,' he said harshly, 'the night I lay
in your camp?'
I stared at him with my mouth open. 'A chain?' I stammered.
'Ay, fool, a chain!' he replied, his eyes glaring, his cheeks swelling
with impatience. 'A gold chain--with links like walnuts.'
'It is true,' I said stupidly. 'I had. But----'
'Where did you get it?'
I looked away. To answer was easy; to refrain from answering, with his
eye upon me, hard. But I thought of Marie Wort. I did not know how the
chain had come into her hands, and I asked him a question in return.
'Have you the chain?' I said.
'I have!' he snarled. And then in a sudden outburst of wrath he cried,
'Listen, fool! And then perhaps you will answer me more quickly. I am
Hugo of Leuchtenstein, Governor of Cassel and Marburg, and President
of the Landgrave's Council. The chain was mine and came back to me.
The rogue who stole it from you, and joined himself to my company,
blabbed of it, and where he got it. He let my men see it. He would not
give it up, and they killed him. Will that satisfy you?' he continued,
his face on fire with impatience. 'Then tell me all--all, man, or it
will be the worse for you! My time is precious, and I cannot stay!'
I uncovered myself. 'Your excellency,' I stammered, 'the chain was
entrusted to me by a--a woman.'
'A woman?' he exclaimed, his eyes lightening. 'Man, you are wringing
my heart. A woman with a child?'
I nodded.
'A child three years old?'
'About that, your excellency.' On which, to my astonishment, he
covered his face with both his hands, and I saw the strong man's frame
heave with ill-suppressed emotion. 'My God, I thank thee!' I heard him
whisper; and if ever words came from the heart, those did. It was a
minute or more before he dared to uncover his face, and then his eyes
were moist and his features worked with emotion.
'You shall be rewarded!' he said unsteadily. 'Do not fear. And now
take me to him--to her.'
I was in a maze of astonishment, but I had sense enough to understand
the order. We had halted scarcely more than a hundred yards from my
lady's quarters, and I led the way thither, comprehending little more
than that something advantageous had happened to us. At the door he
sprang from his horse, and taking me by the arm, as if he were afraid
to suffer me out of his reach, he entered, pushing me before him.
The principal room was empty, and I judged my lady was out. I cried
'Marie! Marie!' softly; and then he and I stood listening. The
sunshine poured in through the windows; the house was still with the
stillness of afternoon. A bird in a cage in the corner pecked at the
bars. Outside the bits jingled, and a horse pawed the road
impatiently.
'Marie!' I cried. 'Marie!'
She came in at last through a door which led to the back of the house,
and I stepped forward to speak to her. But the moment I saw her
clearly, the words died on my lips. The pallor of her face, the
disorder of her hair struck me dumb. I forgot our business, my
companion, all. 'What is it?' was all I could say. 'What is the
matter?'
'The child!' she cried, her dark eyes wild with anxiety. 'The child!
It is lost! It is lost and gone. I cannot find it!'
'The child? Gone?' I answered, my voice rising almost to a shout, in
my surprise. 'It is missing? Now?'
'I cannot find it,' she answered monotonously. 'I left it for a moment
at the back there. It was playing on the grass. Now it is gone.'
I looked at. Count Leuchtenstein. He was staring at the girl,
listening and watching, his brow contracted, his face pale. But I
suppose that this sudden alarm, this momentary disappearance did not
affect him, from whom the child had been so long absent, as it
affected us; for his first words referred to the past.
'This child, woman?' he said in his deep voice, which shook despite
all his efforts. 'When you found it, it had a chain round its neck?'
But Marie was so wrapped up in her sudden loss that she answered him
without thought, listening the while. 'Yes,' she said mechanically,
'it had.'
'Where did you find it, then--the child?' he asked eagerly.
'In the forest by Vach,' she replied, in the same indifferent tone.
'Was it alone?'
'It was with a dead woman,' she answered. She was listening still,
with a strained face--listening for the pattering of the little feet,
the shrill music of the piping voice. Only half of her mind was with
us. Her hands opened and closed continually with anxiety; she held her
head on one side, her ear to the door. When the Count went to put
another question, she turned upon him so fiercely, I hardly knew her.
'Hush!' she said, 'will you? They are here, but they have not found
him. They have not found him!' And she was right; though I, whose ears
were not sharpened by love, did not discern this until two men, who
had been left at home with her, and who had been out to search, came
in empty-handed and with scared looks. They had hunted on all sides
and found no trace of the child, and, certain that it could not have
strayed far itself, pronounced positively that it had been kidnapped.
Marie at that burst into weeping so pitiful, that I was glad to send
the men out, bidding them make a larger circuit and inquire in the
camp. When they were gone, I turned to Count Leuchtenstein to see how
he took it. I found him leaning against the wall, his face grave,
dark, and thoughtful.
'There seems a fatality in it!' he muttered, meeting my eyes, but
speaking to himself. 'That it should be lost again--at this moment!
Yet, God's will be done. He who sent the chain to my hands can still
take care of the child.'
He paused a moment in deep thought, and then, advancing to Marie Wort,
who had thrown herself into a chair and was sobbing passionately with
her face on the table, he touched her on the shoulder.
'Good girl!' he said kindly. 'Good girl! But doubtless the child is
safe. Before night it will be found.'
She sprang up and faced him, her cheeks flaming with anger. I suppose
the questions he had put to her had made no distinct impression on her
mind.
'Oh,' she cried, in the voice of a shrew, 'how you prate! By night it
will be found, will it? How do you know? But the child is nothing to
you--nothing!'
'Girl,' he said solemnly, yet gently, 'the child is my child--my only
child, and the hope of my house.'
She looked at him wildly. 'Who are you, then?' she said, her voice
sinking almost to a whisper.
'I am his father,' he answered; when I looked to hear him state his
name and titles. 'And as his father, I thank and bless you for all
that you have done for him.'
'His mother?' she whispered, open-eyed with awe.
'His mother is dead. She died three years ago,' he answered gravely.
'And now tell me your name, for I must go.'
'You must go!' she exclaimed. 'You will go--you can go--and your child
lost and wandering?'
'Yes,' he replied, with a dignity which silenced her, 'I can, for I
have other and greater interests to guard than those of my house, and
I dare not be negligent. He may be found to-morrow, but what I have to
do to-day cannot be done to-morrow. See, take that,' he continued more
gently, laying a heavy purse on the table before her. 'It is for you,
for your own use--for your dowry, if you have a lover. And remember
always that, in the house of Hugo of Leuchtenstein, at Cassel, or
Marburg, or at the Schloss by Leuchtenstein, you will find a home and
shelter, and stout friends whenever you need them. Now give me your
name.'
She stared at him dumfounded and was silent. I told him Marie Wort of
Munich, at present in attendance on the Countess of Heritzburg; and he
set it down in his tablets.
'Good,' he said. And then in his stern, grave fashion he turned to me.
'Master Steward,' he said, in a measured tone which nevertheless
stirred my blood, 'are you an ambitious man? If so, search for my
child, and bring him to Cassel or Marburg, or my house, and I will
fulfil your ambition. Would you have a command, I will see to it; or a
farm, it shall be yours. You can do for me, my friend' he continued
strenuously, laying his hand on my arm, 'what in this stress of war
and statecraft I cannot do for myself. I have a hundred at my call,
but they are not here; and by to-night I must be ten leagues hence, by
to-morrow night beyond the Main. Yet God, I believe,' he went on,
uncovering himself and speaking with reverent earnestness, 'who
brought me to this place, and permitted me to hear again of my son,
will not let His purpose fail because He calls me elsewhere.'
And he maintained this grave composure to the last. A man more worthy
of his high repute, not in Hesse only, but in the Swedish camp, at
Dresden, and Vienna, I thought that I had never seen. Yet still under
the mask I discerned the workings of a human heart. His eye, as he
turned to go, wandered round the room; I knew that it was seeking some
trace of his boy's presence. On the threshold he halted suddenly; I
knew that he was listening. But no sound rewarded him. He nodded
sternly to me and went out.
I followed to hold his stirrup. The Finland riders, sitting upright in
their saddles, looked as if they had not moved an eyelash in our
absence. As I had left them so I found them. He gave a short, sharp
word of command; a sudden jingling of bridles followed; the troop
walked forward, broke into a trot, and in a twinkling disappeared down
the road in a cloud of dust.
Then, and not till then, I remembered that I had not said a word to
him about my lady's position. His personality and the loss of the
child had driven it from my mind. Now it recurred to me; but it was
too late, and after stamping up and down in vexation for a while, I
turned and went into the house.
Marie Wort had fallen back into the old position at the table, and was
sitting with her face on her arms, sobbing bitterly. I went up to her
and saw the purse lying by her side.
'Come,' I said, trying awkwardly to cheer her, 'the child will be
found, never fear. When my lady returns she will send to the general,
and he will have it cried through the camp. It is sure to be found.
And you have made a powerful friend.'
But she took no heed of me. She continued to weep; and her sobs hurt
me. She seemed so small and lonely and helpless that I had not the
heart to leave her by herself in the house and go out into the
sunshine to search. And so--I scarcely know how it came about--in a
moment she was sobbing out her grief on my shoulder and I was
whispering in her ear.
Of love? of our love? No, for to have spoken of that while she wept
for the child, would have seemed to me no better than sacrilege. And,
besides, I think that we took it for granted. For when her sobs
presently ceased, and she lay quiet, listening, and I found her soft
dark hair on my shoulder, I kissed it a hundred times; and still she
lay silent, her cheek against my rough coat. Our eyes had spoken
morning and evening, at dawn when we met, and at night when we parted;
and now that this matter of the chain was settled, it seemed fitting
that she should come to me for comfort--without words.
At length she drew herself away from me, her cheek dark and her eyes
downcast. 'Not now,' she said, gently stopping me--for then I think I
should have spoken. 'Will you please to go out and search? No, I will
not grieve.'
'But your purse!' I reminded her. She was leaving it on the table, and
it was not safe there. 'You should put it in a place of safety,
Marie.'
She took it up and very simply placed it in my hands. 'He said it was
for my--dowry,' she whispered, blushing. And then she fled away
shamefaced to her room.