THE END OF THE DAY.
Ludwig was found dead in the hall, slain on the spot by the explosion
of the petard which had driven in the door. His two comrades, less
fortunate, were taken alive, and, with the hag who kept the house,
were hanged within the hour on the elms in St. Austin's churchyard.
The Waldgrave and Neumann, both wounded, the former by the explosion
and the latter in his desperate resistance, were captured and held for
trial. But Tzerclas, the chief of all, arch-tempter and arch-traitor,
vanished in the confusion of the assault, and made his escape, no one
knew how. Some said that he went by way of a secret passage known only
to himself; some, that he had a compact with the devil, and vanished
by his aid; some, that he had friends in the crowd who sheltered him.
For my part, I set down his disappearance to his own cool wits and
iron nerves, and asked no further explanation.
For an hour the little dark court behind the ill-omened house seethed
with a furious mob. No sooner were one party satisfied than another
swept in with links and torches and ransacked the house, tore down the
panels, groped through the cellars, and probed the chimneys; all with
so much rage, and with gestures so wild and extravagant, that an
indifferent spectator might have thought them mad. Nor were those who
did these things of the lowest class; on the contrary, they were
mostly burghers and traders, solid townsfolk and their apprentices,
men who, with wives and daughters and sweethearts, could not sleep at
night for thoughts of storm and sack, and in whom the bare idea that
they had amongst them wretches ready to open the gates, was enough to
kindle every fierce and cruel passion.
I stood for a time unnoticed, gazing at the scene in a kind of stupor,
which the noise and tumult aggravated. Little by little, however, the
cool air did its work; memory and reason began to return, and, with
anxiety awaking in my breast, I looked round for Herr Krapp. Presently
I saw him coming towards me with a leather flask in his hand.
'Drink some of this,' he said, looking at me keenly. 'Why so wild,
man?'
'The girl?' I stammered. I had not spoken before since my release, and
my voice sounded strange and unnatural.
'She is safe,' he answered, nodding kindly. 'I was at my window when
she swung herself on to the roof by the rope which you left hanging.
Donner! you may be proud of her! But she was distraught, or she would
not have tried such a feat. She must inevitably have fallen if I had
not seen her. I called out to her to stand still and hold fast; and my
son, who had come upstairs, ran down for a twelve-foot pike. We thrust
that out to her, and, holding it, she tottered along the pike to my
window, where I caught her skirts, and we dragged her in in a moment.'
I shuddered, remembering how I had suffered, hanging above the yawning
street. 'I suppose that it was she who warned you and sent you here?'
I said.
'No,' he answered. 'This house had been watched for two days, though I
did not tell you so. We had been suspicious of it for a week or more,
or I should not have helped you into a neighbour's house as I did.
However, all is well that ends well; and though we have not got that
bloodthirsty villain to hang, we have stopped his plans for this
time.'
He was just proposing that, if I now felt able, I should return to my
lady's, when a rush of people from the house almost carried me off my
feet. In a moment we were pushed aside and squeezed against the wall.
A hoarse yell, like the cry of a wild beast, rose from the crowd, a
hundred hands were brandished in the air, weapons appeared as if by
magic. The glare of torches, falling on the raging sea of men, picked
out here and there a scared face, a wandering eye; but for the most
part the mob seemed to feel only one passion--the thirst for blood.
'What is it?' I shouted in Herr Krapp's ear.
'The prisoners,' he answered. 'They are bringing them out. Your friend
the Waldgrave, and the other. They will need a guard.'
And truly it was a grim thing to see men make at them, striking over
the shoulders of the guard, leaping at them wolf-like, with burning
eyes and gnashing teeth, striving to tear them with naked hands. Down
the narrow passage to the churchyard the soldiers had an easy task;
but in the open graveyard, whither Herr Krapp and I followed slowly,
the party were flung this way and that, and tossed to and fro--though
they were strong men, armed, and numbered three or four score--like a
cork floating on rapids. Their way lay through the Ritter Strasse, and
I went with them so far. Though it was midnight, the town, easily
roused from its feverish sleep, was up and waking. Scared faces looked
from windows, from eaves, from the very roofs. Men who had snatched up
their arms and left their clothes peered from doorways. The roar of
the mob, as it swayed through narrow ways, rose and fell by turns, now
loud as the booming of cavern-waves, now so low that it left the air
quivering.
When it died away at last towards the Burg, I took leave of Herr
Krapp, and hurried to my lady's, passing the threshold in a tumult of
memories, of emotions, and thankfulness. I could fancy that I had
lived an age since I last crossed it--eight hours before. The house,
like every other house, was up. Herr Krapp had sent the news of my
escape before me, and I looked forward with a tremulous, foolish
expectation that was not far from tears to the first words two women
would say to me.
But though men and women met me with hearty greetings on the
threshold, on the stairs, on the landing, and Steve clapped me on the
back until I coughed again, _they_ did not appear. It was after
midnight, but the house was still lighted as if the sun had just set,
and I went up to the long parlour that looked on the street. My heart
beat, and my face grew hot as I entered; but I might have spared
myself. There was only Fraulein Max in the room.
She came towards me, blinking. 'So Sancho Panza has turned
knight-errant,' she said with a sneer, 'as well as Governor?'
I did not understand her, and I asked gently where my lady was.
She laughed in her gibing way. 'You beg for a stone and expect bread,'
she said. 'You care no more where my lady is than where I am! You
mean, where is your Romanist chit, with her white face and wheedling
ways.'
I saw that she was bursting with spite; that Marie's return and the
stir made about it had been too much for her small, jealous nature,
and I was not for answering her. She was out of favour; let her spit,
her venom would be gone the sooner. But she had not done yet.
'Of course she has had some wonderful adventures!' she continued, her
face working with malice and ill-nature. 'And we are all to admire
her. But to a lover does she not seem somewhat _blandula, vagula?_
Here to-day and gone to-morrow. _Dolus latet in generalibus_, the
Countess says'--and here the Dutch girl mimicked my lady, her eyes
gleaming with scorn. 'But _dolus latet in virginibus_, too, Master
Martin, as you will find some day! Oh, a great escape, a heroic
escape,--but from her friends!'
'If you mean to infer, Fraulein----' I said hotly.
'Oh, I infer nothing. I leave you to do that!' she replied, smirking.
'But pigs go back to the dirt, I read. You know where you found her
and the brat!'
'I know where we should all be to-day,' I cried, trembling with
indignation, 'if it had not been for her!'
'Perhaps not worse off than we are now,' she snapped. 'However, keep
your eyes shut, if it pleases you.'
My raised voice had reached the Countess's chamber, and as Fraulein
Max, giggling spitefully, went out through one door the other opened
and stood open. My anger melted away. I stood trembling, and looking,
and waiting.
They came in together, my lady with her arm round Marie, the two women
I loved best in the world. I have heard it said that evil runs to evil
as drops of water to one another. But the saying is equally true of
good. Little had I thought, a few weeks back, that my lady would come
to treat the outcast girl from Klink's as a friend; nor I believe were
there ever two people less alike, and yet both good, than these two.
But that one quality--which is so quick to see its face mirrored in
another's heart--had brought them close together, and made each to
recognise the other; so that, as they came in to me, there was not a
line of my lady's figure, not a curve of her head, not a glance of
her proud eyes, that was not in sympathy with the girl who clung to
her--Romanist stranger, low born as she was. I looked and worshipped,
and would have changed nothing. I found the dignity of the one as
beautiful as the dependence of the other.
Not a word was spoken. I had wondered what they would say to me--and
they said nothing. But my lady put her into my arms, and she clung to
me, hiding her face.
The Countess laughed, yet there were tears in her voice. 'Be happy,'
she said. 'Child, from the day you were lost he never forgave me.
Martin, see where the rope has cut her wrist. She did it to save you.'
'And myself!' Marie whispered on my breast.
'No!' my lady said. 'I will not have it so! You will spoil both him
and my love-story. _Per tecta, per terram_, you have sought one
another. You have gone down _sub orco_. You have bought one another
back from death, as Alcestis bought her husband Admetus. At the first
it was a gold chain that linked you together, soon----'
I felt Marie start in my arms. She freed herself gently, and looked at
my lady with trouble in her eyes. 'Oh,' she said, 'I had forgotten!'
'What?' the Countess said. 'What have you forgotten?'
'The child!' Marie replied, clasping her hands. 'I should have told
you before!'
'You have had no time to tell us much!' my lady answered smiling. 'And
you are trembling like an aspen now. Sit down, girl. Sit down at
once!' she continued imperatively. 'Or, no! You shall go to your bed,
and we will hear it in the morning.'
But Marie seemed so much distressed by this that my lady did not
insist; and in a few minutes the girl had told us a tale so remarkable
that consideration of her fatigue was swallowed up in wonder.
'It was the night I was lost,' she said; 'the night when the alarm was
given on the hill, and we rode down it. I clung to my saddle--it was
all I could do--and remember only a dreadful shock, from which I
recovered to find myself lying in the road, shaken and bruised. Fear
of those whom I believed to be behind us was still in my mind, and I
rose, giddy and confused, my one thought to get off the road. As I
staggered towards the bank, however, I stumbled over something. To my
horror I found that it was a woman. She was dead or senseless, but she
had a child in her arms; it cried as I felt her face. I dared not
stay, but, on the impulse of the moment--I could not move the woman,
and I expected our pursuers to ride down the hill each instant--I
snatched the child up and ran into the brushwood. After that I only
remember stumbling blindly on through bog and fern, often falling in
my haste, but always rising and pushing on. I heard cries behind me,
but they only spurred me to greater exertions. At last I reached a
little wood, and there, unable to go farther, I sank down, exhausted,
and, I suppose, lost my senses, for I awoke, chilled and aching, in
the first grey dawn. The leaves were black overhead, but the white
birch trunks round me glimmered like pale ghosts. Something stirred in
my arms. I looked down, and saw the face of my child--the child I
found in the wood by Vach.'
'What!' the Countess cried, rising and staring at her. 'Impossible!
Your wits were straying, girl. It was some other child.'
But Marie shook her head gently. 'No, my lady,' she said. 'It was my
child.'
'Count Leuchtenstein's?'
'Yes, if the child I found was his.'
'But how--did it come where you found it?' the Countess asked.
'I think that the woman whom I left in the road was the poor creature
who used to beg at our house in the camp,' Marie answered, hesitating
somewhat--'the wife of the man whom General Tzerclas hung, my lady. I
saw her face by a glimmer of light only, and, at the moment, I thought
nothing. Afterwards it flashed across me that she was that woman. If
so, I think that she stole the child to avenge herself. She thought
that we were General Tzerclas' friends.'
'But then where is the child?' my lady exclaimed, her eyes shining. I
was excited myself; but the delight, the pleasure which I saw in her
face took me by surprise. I stared at her, thinking that I had never
seen her look so beautiful.
Then, as Marie answered, her face fell. 'I do not know,' my girl said.
'After a time I found my way back to the road, but I had scarcely set
foot on it when General Tzerclas' troopers surprised me. I gave myself
up for lost; I thought that he would kill me. But he only gibed at me,
until I almost died of fear, and then he bade one of his men take me
up behind him. They carried me with them to the camp outside this
city, and three days ago brought me in and shut me up in that house.'
'But the child?' my lady cried. 'What of it?'
'He took it from me,' Marie said. 'I have never seen it since, but I
think that he has it in the camp.'
'Does he know whose child it is?'
'I told him,' Marie replied. 'Otherwise they might have let it die on
the road. It was a burden to them.'
The Countess shuddered, but in a moment recovered herself. '"While
there is life there is hope,"' she said. 'Martin, here is more work
for you. We will leave no stone unturned. Count Leuchtenstein must
know, of course, but I will tell him myself. If we could get the child
back and hand it safe and sound to its father, it would be---- Perhaps
the Waldgrave may be able to help us?'
'I think that he will need all his wits to help himself,' I said
bluntly.
'Why?' my lady questioned, looking at me in wonder.
'Why?' I cried in astonishment. 'Have you heard nothing about him, my
lady?'
'Nothing,' she said.
'Not that he was taken to-night, in Tzerclas' company,' I answered,
'and is a prisoner at this moment at the Burg, charged, along with the
villain Neumann, with a plot to admit the enemy into the city?'
My lady sat down, her face pale, her aspect changed, as the
countryside changes when the sun goes down. 'He was there' she
muttered--'with Tzerclas?'
I nodded.
'The Waldgrave Rupert--my cousin?' she murmured, as if the thing
passed the bounds of reason.
'Yes, my lady,' I said, as gently as I could. 'But he is mad. I am
assured that he is mad. He has been mad for weeks past. We know it. We
have known it. Besides, he knew nothing, I am sure, of Tzerclas'
plans.'
'But--he was _there!_' she cried. 'He was one of those two men they
carried by? One of those!'
'Yes,' I said.
She sat for a moment stricken and silent, the ghost of herself. Then,
in a voice little above a whisper, she asked what they would do to
him.
I shrugged my shoulders. To be candid, I had not given the Waldgrave
much thought, though in a way he had saved my life. Now, the longer I
considered the matter, the less room for comfort I found. Certainly he
was mad. We knew him to be mad. But how were we to persuade others?
For weeks his bodily health had been good; he had carried himself
indoors and out-of-doors like a sane man; he had done duty in the
trenches, and mixed, though grudgingly, with his fellows, and gone
about the ordinary business of life. How, in the face of all this,
could we prove him mad, or make his judges, stern men, fighting with
their backs to the wall, see the man as we saw him?
'I suppose that there will be a trial?' my lady said at last, breaking
the silence.
I told her yes--at once. 'The town is in a frenzy of rage,' I
continued. 'The guards had a hard task to save them to-night. Perhaps
Prince Bernard of Weimar----'
'Don't count on him,' my lady answered. 'He is as hard as he is
gallant. He would hang his brother if he thought him guilty of such a
thing as this. No; our only hope is in'--she hesitated an instant, and
then ended the sentence abruptly--'Count Leuchtenstein. You must go to
him, Martin, at seven, or as soon after as you can catch him. He is a
just man, and he has watched the Waldgrave and noticed him to be odd.
The court will hear him. If not, I know no better plan.'
Nor did I, and I said I would go; and shortly afterwards I took my
leave. But as I crept to my bed at last, the clocks striking two, and
my head athrob with excitement and gratitude, I wondered what was in
my lady's mind. Remembering the Waldgrave's gallant presence and manly
grace, recalling his hopes, his courage, and his overweening
confidence, as displayed in those last days at Heritzburg, I could
feel no surprise that so sad a downfall touched her heart. But--was
that all? Once I had deemed him the man to win her. Then I had seen
good cause to think otherwise. Now again I began to fancy that his
mishaps might be crowned with a happiness which fortune had denied to
him in his days of success.