A SUDDEN EXPEDITION.
I did not after that suffer the grass to grow under my feet. I went
out, and with my own eyes searched the fields at the back, and every
ditch and water-hole. I had the loss cried in the camp, my lady on her
return offered a reward, we sent even to the nearer villages, we
patrolled the roads, we omitted nothing that could by any chance avail
us. Yet evening fell, and night, and found us still searching; and no
nearer, as far as we could see, to success. The child was gone
mysteriously. Left to play alone for two minutes in the stillness of
the afternoon, he had vanished as completely as if the earth had
opened and swallowed him.
Baffled, we began to ask, while Marie sat pale and brooding in a
corner, or now and again stole to the door to listen, who could have
taken him and with what motive? There were men and women in the camp
capable of anything. It seemed probable to some that these had stolen
the child for the sake of his clothes. Others suggested witchcraft.
But in my own mind, I leaned to neither of these theories. I
suspected, though I dared not utter the thought, that the general had
done it. Without knowing how much of the story Count Hugo had confided
to him, I took it as certain that the father had said enough to
apprise him of the boy's value. And this being so, what more probable
than that the general, whom I was prepared to credit with any
atrocity, had taken instant steps to possess himself of the child?
My lady said and did all that was kind on the occasion, and for a few
hours it occupied all our thoughts. At the end of that time, however,
about sunset, General Tzerclas rode to the door, and with him, to my
surprise, the Waldgrave. They would see her, and detained her so long
that when she sent for me on their departure, I was sore on Marie's,
account, and inclined to blame her as indifferent to our loss. But a
single glance at her face put another colour on the matter. I saw that
something had occurred to excite and disturb her.
'Martin,' she said earnestly, 'I am going to employ you on an errand
of importance. Listen to me and do not interrupt me. General Tzerclas
starts to-morrow with the larger part of his forces to intercept one
of Wallenstein's convoys, which is expected to pass twelve leagues to
the south of this. There will be sharp fighting, I am told, and my
cousin, the Waldgrave Rupert, is going. He is not at present--I mean,
I am afraid he may do something rash. He is young,' my lady continued
with dignity and a heightened colour, 'and I wish he would stay here.
But he will not.'
I guessed at once that this affair of the convoy was the business
which had brought Count Hugo to the camp. And I was beginning to
consider what advantage we might make of it, and whether the general's
absence might not afford us both a pretext for departure and the
opportunity, when my lady's next words dispelled my visions.
'I want you,' she said slowly, 'to go with him. He has a high opinion
of you, and will listen to you.'
'The general?' I cried in amazement.
'Who spoke of him?' she exclaimed angrily. 'I said the Waldgrave
Rupert. I wish you to go with him to see that he does not run any
unnecessary risk.'
I coughed dryly, and stood silent.
'Well?' my lady said with a frown. 'Do you understand?'
'I understand, my lady,' I answered firmly; 'but I cannot go.'
'_You cannot go!_ when I send you!' she murmured, unable, I think, to
believe her ears. 'Why not, sirrah? Why not, if you please?'
'Because my first duty is to your excellency,' I stammered. 'And as
long as you are here, I dare not--and will not leave you!'
'As long as I am here!' she retorted, red with anger and surprise.
'You have still that maggot in your head, then? By my soul, Master
Martin, if we were at home I would find means to drive it out! But I
know what it is! What you really want is to stay by the side of that
puling girl! Oh, I am not blind,' my lady continued viciously, seeing
that she had found at last the way to hurt me. 'I know what has been
going on.'
'But Count Leuchtenstein----' I muttered.
'Don't bring him in!' my lady cried, in such a voice that I dared go
no farther. 'General Tzerclas has told me of him. I understand what is
between them, and you do not. Presumptuous booby!' she continued,
flashing at me a glance of scorn, which made me tremble. 'But I will
thwart you! Since you will not leave me, I will go myself. I will go,
but Mistress Marie shall stay here till we return.'
'But if there is to be fighting?' I said humbly.
'Ah! So you have changed your note, have you!' she cried triumphantly.
I had seldom seen her more moved. 'If there is to be fighting'--she
mocked my tone. 'Well, there is to be, but I shall go. And now do you
go, and have all ready for a start at daybreak, or it will be the
worse for you! One of my women will accompany me. Fraulein Anna will
stay here with your--other mistress!'
She pointed to the door as she spoke, and once more charged me to be
ready; and I went away dazed. Everything seemed on a sudden to be
turned upside down--the child lost, my lady offended, the Waldgrave
desperate, the general in favour. It was hard to see which way my duty
lay. I would fain have stayed in the camp a day to make farther search
for the child, but I must go. I would gladly have got clear of the
camp, but we were to travel in the general's company. As to leaving
Marie, my lady wronged me. I knew of no special danger which
threatened the girl, nor any reason why she should not be safe where
she was. If the child were found she would be here to receive it.
On the other hand, there was my discovery of the beggar's fate, from
the immediate consequences of which Count Hugo's arrival had saved me.
This sudden expedition should favour me there; the general would have
his hands full of other things, and Ludwig be hard put to it to gain
his ear. I might now, if I pleased, discover the matter to my lady,
and open her eyes. But I had no proof; even if time permitted, and I
could take the Countess to that part of the camp, I could not be sure
that the body was still there. And to accuse General Tzerclas of such
a thing without proof would be to court my own ruin.
While I was puzzling over this, I saw the Waldgrave outside, and,
thinking to profit by his advice, I went to meet him. But I found him
in a peculiar mood, talking, laughing, and breaking into snatches of
song; all with a wildness and _abandon_ that frightened while they
puzzled me. He laughed at my doubts, and walking up and down, while
his servants scoured his breast-piece and cleaned his harness by the
light of a lantern, he persisted in talking of nothing but the
expedition before us and the pleasure of striking a blow or two.
'We are rusting, man!' he cried feverishly, clapping me on the back.
'You have the rust on you yet, Martin But--
"Clink, clink, clink!
Sword and stirrup and spur!
Ride, ride, ride,
Fast as feather or fur!"
To-morrow or the next day we will have it off.'
'You have heard about the child, my lord,' I said gravely, trying to
bring him back to the present.
'I have heard that Von Werder, the dullest man at a board I ever met,
turns out to be Hugo of Leuchtenstein, whom God preserve!' he answered
recklessly. 'And that your girl's brat of a brother turns out to be
his brat! And no sooner is the father found than the son is lost; and
that both have gone as mysteriously as they came. But Himmel! man,
what's the odds when we are going to fight to-morrow! What compares
with that? Ca! ca! steady and the point!'
I thought of Marie; and it seemed to me that there were other things
in the world besides fighting. For love makes a man both brave and a
coward. But the argument would scarcely have been to the Waldgrave's
mind, and, seeing that he would neither talk nor hear reason, I left
him and went away to make my preparations.
But on the road next day I noticed that though now and then he flashed
into the same wild merriment, he was on the whole as dull as he had
been gay. Our party rode at the head of the column, that we might
escape the dust and have the best of the road, the general and his
principal officers accompanying us and leaving the guidance of the
march to inferiors. Our force consisted of about six hundred horse and
four hundred foot; and as we were to return to the camp, we took with
us neither sutlers nor ordinary baggage, while camp followers were
interdicted under pain of death. Yet the amount of our impedimenta
astonished me. Half a dozen sumpter horses were needed to carry the
general's tent and equipage; his officers required a score more. The
ammunition for the foot soldiers, who were sufficiently burdened with
their heavy matchlocks, provided farther loads; and in fine, while
supposed to be marching in light fighting order, we had something like
a hundred packhorses in our train. Then there were men to lead them,
and cooks and pages and foot-boys and the general's band, and but that
our way lay through woodland tracks and by-routes, I verily believe
that we should have had his coach and dwarf also.
The sight of all these men and horses in motion was so novel and
exhilarating, and the morning air so brisk, that I soon recovered from
my parting with Marie, and began to take a more cheerful view of the
position. I came near to sympathizing with my lady, whose pleasure and
delight knew no bounds. The long lines of horsemen winding through the
wood, the trailing pikes and waving pennons, gratified her youthful
fancy for war; while as our march lay through the forest, she was
shocked by none of those traces of its ravages which had appalled us
on first leaving Heritzburg. The general waited on her with the utmost
attention, riding by her bridle-rein and talking with her by the hour
together. Whenever I looked at them I noticed that her eye was bright
and her colour high, and I guessed that he was unfolding the plan of
ambition which I was sure he masked under a cold and reserved
demeanour. Alas! I could think of nothing more likely to take my
lady's fancy, no course more sure to enlist her sympathy and interest.
But I was helpless; I could do nothing. And for the Waldgrave, if he
still had any power he would not use it.
My lady gave him opportunities. Several times I saw her try to draw
him into conversation, and whenever General Tzerclas left her for a
while she turned to the younger man and would have talked to him. But
he seemed unable to respond. When he was not noisily gay, he rode like
a mute. He seemed half sullen, half afraid; and she presently gave him
up, but not before her efforts had caught Tzerclas' eye. The general
had been called for some purpose to the rear of the column, and on his
return found the two talking, my lady's attitude such that it was very
evident she was the provocant. He did not try to resume his place, but
fell in behind them; and riding there, almost, if not quite, within
earshot, cast such ugly glances at them as more than confirmed me in
the belief that in his own secret way he loved my mistress; and that,
after a more dangerous fashion than the Waldgrave.
[Illustration: The general waited on her with the utmost attention,
riding by her bridle-rein ...]
This was late in the afternoon, and another hour brought us who
marched at the head of the column to our camping-ground for the night.
We lay in a rugged, wooded valley, not very commodious, but chosen
because only one high ridge divided it from a second valley, through
which the main road and the river had their course. Our instructions
were that the convoy, which was bound for Wallenstein's army then
marching on Nuremberg, would pass through this second valley some time
during the following day; but until the hour came for making the
proper dispositions, all persons in our force were forbidden to mount
the intervening ridge under pain of death. We had even to do without
fires--lest the smoke should betray our presence--and for this one
night lay under something like the strict discipline which I had
expected to find prevailing in a military camp. The only fire that was
permitted cooked the general's meal, which he shared with my lady and
the Waldgrave and the principal officers.
Even so the order caused trouble. The pikemen and musketeers did not
come in till an hour before midnight, when they trudged into camp
dusty and footsore and murmuring at their leaders. When, in this
state, they learned that fires were not to be lighted, disgust grew
rapidly into open disobedience. On a sudden, in half a dozen quarters
at once, flames flickered up, and the camp, dark before, became
peopled in a moment with strange forms, whose eighteen-foot weapons
and cumbrous headpieces flung long shadows across the valley.
We had lain down to rest, but at the sound of the altercation and the
various cries of 'Pikes! Pikes!' and 'Mutiny!' which broke out, we
came out of our lairs in the bracken to learn what was happening.
Calling young Jacob and three or four of the Heritzburg men to my
side, I ran to my lady to see that nothing befell her in the
confusion. The noise had roused her, and we found her at the door of
her tent looking out. The newly-kindled fires, flaming and crackling
on the sloping sides of the valley, lit up a strange scene of
disorder--of hurrying men and plunging horses, for the alarm had
extended to the horse lines--and for a moment I thought that the
mutiny might spread and cut the knot of our difficulties, or whelm us
all in the same ruin.
I had scarcely conceived the thought, when the general passed near us
on his way from his tent, whence he had just been called; and at the
sight my new-born hopes vanished. He was bare-headed; he carried no
arms, and had nothing in his hand but a riding-switch. But the stern,
grim aspect of his face, in which was no mercy and no quailing, was
worth a thousand pikes. The firelight shone on his pale, olive cheek
and brooding eyes, as he went by us, not seeing us; and after that I
did not doubt what would happen, although for a moment the tumult of
oaths and cries seemed to swell rather than sink, and I saw more than
one pale-lipped officer climbing into his saddle that he might be able
to fly, if necessary.
The issue agreed with my expectations. The heart of the disorder lay
in a part of the camp separated from our quarters by a brook, but near
enough in point of distance; so that we saw, my lady and all, pretty
clearly what followed. For a moment, for a few seconds, during which
you could hear a pin drop through the camp, the general stood, his
life in the balance, unarmed in the midst of armed men. But he had
that set courage which seems to daunt the common sort and paralyse the
finger on the trigger; and he prevailed. The knaves lowered their
weapons and shrank back cowering before him. In a twinkling the fires
were beaten out by a hundred eager feet, and the general strode back
to us through the silent, obsequious camp.
He distinguished my lady standing at the door of her tent, and stepped
aside. 'I am sorry that you have been disturbed, Countess,' he said
politely. 'It shall not occur again. I will hang up a dozen of those
hounds to-morrow, and we shall have less barking.'
'You are not hurt?' my lady asked, in a voice unlike her own.
He laughed, deigning no answer in words. Then he said, 'You have no
fire? Camp rules are not for you. Pray have one lit.' And he went on
to his tent.
I had the curiosity to pass near it when my lady retired. I found a
dozen men, cuirassiers of his privileged troop, peeping and squinting
under the canvas which had been hung round the fire. I joined them and
looked; and saw him lying at length, wrapped in his cloak, reading
'Caesar's Campaigns' by the light of the blaze, as if nothing had
happened.