A POOR GUERDON.
I had slept scantily the night before, and the excitement of the last
twenty-four hours had worn me out. I was grieved for the gallant life
so swiftly ebbing, and miserable on my lady's account; but sorrow of
this kind is a sleepy thing, and the day was hot. I did not feel about
the Waldgrave as I had about Marie; and gradually my head nodded, and
nodded again, until I fell fast asleep, on the seat within the door.
A man's voice, clear and penetrating, awoke me. 'Let him be,' it said.
'Hark you, fellow, let him be. He was up last night; I will announce
myself.'
I was drowsy and understood only half of what I heard; and I should
have taken the speaker at his word, and turning over dropped off
again, if Steve had not kicked me and brought me to my feet with a cry
of pain. I stood an instant, bewildered, dazzled by the sunlight,
nursing my ankle in my hand. Then I made out where I was, and saw
through the arch of the entrance Count Leuchtenstein dismounting in
the street. As I looked, he threw the reins to a trooper who
accompanied him, and turned to come in.
'Ah, my friend,' he said, nodding pleasantly, 'you are awake. I will
see your mistress.'
I was not quite myself, and his presence took me aback. I stood
looking at him awkwardly. 'If your excellency will wait a moment,' I
faltered at last, 'I will take her pleasure.'
He glanced at me a moment, as if surprised. Then he laughed. 'Go,' he
said. 'I am not often kept waiting.'
I was glad to get away, and I ran upstairs; and knocking hurriedly at
the parlour door, went in. My lady, pale and frowning, with a little
book in her hand, got up hastily--from her knees, I thought. Marie
Wort, with tears on her cheeks, and Fraulein Max, looking scared,
stood behind her.
The Countess looked at me, her eyes flashing. 'What is it?' she asked
sharply.
'Count Leuchtenstein is below,' I said.
'Well?'
'He wishes to see your excellency.'
'Did I not say that I would see no one?'
'But Count Leuchtenstein?'
She laughed a shrill laugh full of pain--a laugh that had something
hysterical in it. 'You thought that I would see _him?_' she cried.
'Him, I suppose, of all people? Go down, fool, and tell him that even
here, in this poor house, my doors are open to my friends and to them
only! Not to those who profess much and do nothing! Or to those who
bark and do not bite! Count Leuchtenstein? Pah, tell him---- Silence,
woman!' This to Marie, who would have interrupted her. 'Tell him what
I have told you, man, word for word. Or no'--and she caught herself up
with a mocking smile, such as I had never seen on her face before.
'Tell him this instead--that the Countess Rotha is engaged with the
Waldgrave Rupert, and wants no other company! Yes, tell him that--it
will bite home, if he has a conscience! He might have saved him, and
he would not! Now, when I would pray, which is all women can do, he
comes here! Oh, I am sick! I am sick!'
I saw that she was almost beside herself with grief; and I stood
irresolute, my heart aching for her. What I dared not do, Marie did.
She sprang forward, and seizing the Countess's hand, knelt beside her,
covering it with kisses.
'Oh, my lady!' she cried through her tears. 'Don't be so hard. See
him. See him. Even at this last moment.'
With an inarticulate cry the Countess flung her off so forcibly that
the girl fell to the ground. 'Be silent!' my lady cried, her eyes on
fire. 'Or go to your prayers, wench. To your prayers! And do you
begone! Begone, and on your peril give my message, word for word!'
I saw nothing for it but to obey; and I went down full of dismay. I
could understand my lady's grief, and that I had come upon her at an
inopportune moment. But the self-control which she had exhibited
before the Court rendered the violence of her rage now the more
surprising. I had never seen her in this mood, and her hardness
shocked me. I felt myself equally bewildered and grieved.
I found Count Leuchtenstein waiting on the step, with his face to the
street. He turned as I descended. 'Well?' he said, smiling. 'Am I to
go up, my friend?'
I saw that he had not the slightest doubt of my answer, and his
cheerfulness kindled a sort of resentment in my breast. He seemed to
be so well content, so certain of his reception, so calm and
strong--and, at this very moment--for the sunshine had left the street
and was creeping up the tiles--they might be leading out the
Waldgrave! I had liked my lady's message very little when she gave it
to me; now I rejoiced that I could sting him with it.
'My lady is not very well,' I said. 'The sentence on the Waldgrave has
upset her.'
He smiled. 'But she will receive me?' he said.
'Craving your excellency's indulgence, I do not think that she will
receive any one.'
'You told her that I was here?'
'Yes, your excellency. And she said----'
His face fell. 'Tut! tut!' he exclaimed. 'But I come on purpose
to---- What did she say, man?'
The smile was gone from his lips, but I caught it lurking in his eyes;
and it hardened me to do her bidding. 'I was to tell your excellency
that she could not receive you,' I said, 'that she was engaged with
the Waldgrave.'
He started and stared at me, his expression slowly passing from
amazement to anger. 'What!' he exclaimed at last, in a cutting tone.
'Already?' And his lip curled with a kind of disgust. 'You have given
me the message exactly, have you?'
'Yes, your excellency,' I said, quailing a little. But servants know
when to be stupid, and I affected stupidity, fixing my eyes on his
breast and pretending to see nothing. He turned, and for a moment I
thought that he was going without a word. Then on the steps he turned
again. 'You have heard the news, then?' he said sourly. He had already
regained his self-control.
'Yes, my lord.'
'Ah! Well, you lose no time in your house,' he replied grimly. 'Call
my horse!'
I called the man, who had wandered a little way up the street, and he
brought it. As I held the Count's stirrup for him to mount, I noticed
how heavily he climbed to his saddle, and that he settled himself into
it with a sigh; but the next moment he laughed, as at himself. I stood
back expecting him to say something more, or to leave some message,
but he did not even look at me again; he touched his horse with the
spur, and walked away steadily. I stood and watched him until he
reached the end of the street--until he turned the corner and
disappeared.
Even then I still stood looking after him, partly sorry and partly
puzzled, for quite a long time. It was only when I turned to go in
that I missed Steve and the men, and began to wonder what had become
of them. I had left them with the Count at the door--they were gone
now. I looked up and down, I could see them nowhere. I went in and
asked the women; but they were not with them. The sunset gun had just
gone off, and one of the girls was crying hysterically, while the
others sat round her, white and frightened. This did not cheer me, nor
enliven the house. I came out again, vowing vengeance on the truants;
and there in the entrance, facing me, standing where the Count had
stood a few minutes before, I saw the last man I looked to see!
I gasped and gave back a step. The sun was gone, the evening light was
behind the man, and his face was in the shadow. His figure showed dark
against the street. 'Ach Gott!' I cried, and stood still, stricken. It
was the Waldgrave!
'Martin!' he said.
I gave back another step. The street was quiet, the house like the
grave. For a moment the figure did not move, but stood there gazing at
me. Then--
'Why, Martin!' he cried. 'Don't you know me?'
Then, not until then, I did--for a man and not a ghost; and I caught
his hand with a cry of joy. 'Welcome, my lord, welcome!' I said, grown
hot all over. 'Thank God that you have escaped!'
'Yes,' he said, and his tone was his own old tone, 'thank God; Him
first, and then my friends. Steve and Ernst I have seen already; they
heard the news from the Count's man, and came to meet me, and I have
sent them on an errand, by your leave. And now, where is my cousin?'
'Above,' I answered. 'But----'
'But what?' he said quickly.
'I think that I had better prepare her.'
'She does not know?'
'No, your excellency. Nor did I, until I saw you.'
'But Count Leuchtenstein has been here. Did he not tell you?' he asked
in surprise.
'Not a word!' I answered. And then I stopped, conscience-stricken.
'Himmel! I remember now,' I said. 'He asked me if we had heard the
news; and I, like a dullard, dreaming that he meant other news, and
the worst, said yes!'
The Waldgrave shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, go to her now, and tell
her,' he said. 'I want to see her; I want to thank her. I have a
hundred things to say to her. Quick, Martin, for I am laden with
debts, and I choke to pay some of them.'
I ran upstairs, marvelling. On the lobby I met Fraulein Max coming
down. 'What is it?' she asked impatiently.
'The Waldgrave! He has been released! He is here!' I cried in a
breath.
She stared at me while a man might count ten. Then to my astonishment
she laughed aloud. 'Who released him?' she asked.
'The magistrates,' I said. 'I suppose so. I don't know.' I had not
given the matter a thought.
'Not Count Leuchtenstein?'
I started. 'So!' I muttered, staring at her in my turn. 'It must have
been he. The Waldgrave said something about him. And he must have come
here to tell us.'
'And you gave him my lady's message?'
'Alas! yes.'
Fraulein Max laughed again, and kept on laughing, until I grew hot all
over, and could have struck her for her malice. She saw at last that I
was angry, and she stopped. 'Tut! tut!' she said, 'it is nothing. But
that disposes of the old man. Now for the young one. He is here?'
'Yes.'
'Then why do you not show him up?'
'She must be prepared,' I muttered.
She laughed again; this time after a different fashion. 'Oh you fools
of men!' she said. 'She must be prepared? Do you think that women are
made of glass and that a shock breaks them? That she will die of joy?
Or would have died of grief? Send him up, gaby, and I will prepare
her! Send him up.'
I supposed that she knew women's ways, and I gave in to her, and sent
him up; and I do not know that any harm was done. But, as a result of
this, I was not present when my lady and the Waldgrave met, and I only
learned by hearsay what happened.
* * * * *
An hour or two later, when the bustle of shrieks and questions had
subsided, and the excitement caused by his return had somewhat worn
itself out, Marie slipped out to me on the stairs, and sat with me in
the darkness, talking. The gate of curious ironwork which guarded the
house entrance was closed for the night; but the moon was up, and its
light, falling through the scrollwork, lay like a pale, reedy pool at
our feet. The men were at supper, the house was quiet, the city was
for a little while still. Not a foot sounded on the roadway; only
sometimes a skulking dog came ghost-like to the bars and sniffed, and
sneaked noiselessly away.
I have said that we talked, but in truth we sat long silent, as lovers
have sat these thousand years, I suppose, in such intervals of calm.
The peace of the night lapped us round; after the perils and hurry,
the storm and stress of many days, we were together and at rest, and
content to be silent. All round us, under the covert of darkness,
under the moonlight, the city lay quaking; dreading the future, torn
by pangs in the present; sleepless, or dreaming of death and outrage,
ridden by the nightmare of Wallenstein. But for the moment we recked
nothing of this, nothing of the great camp round us, nothing of the
crash of nations. We were of none of these. We had one another, and it
was enough; loved one another, and the rest went by. For the moment we
tasted perfect peace; and in the midst of the besieged city, were as
much alone, as if the moonlight at our feet had been, indeed, a forest
pool high in the hills over Heritzburg.
Does some old man smile? Do I smile myself now, though sadly? A brief
madness, was it? Nay; but what if then only we were sane, and for a
moment saw things as they are--lost sight of the unreal and awoke to
the real? I once heard a wise man from Basle say something like that
at my lady's table. The men, I remember, stared; the women looked
thoughtful.
For all that, it was Marie who on this occasion broke the trance. The
town clock struck ten, and at the sound hundreds, I dare swear, turned
on their pillows, thinking of the husbands and sons and lovers whom
the next light must imperil. My girl stirred.
'Ah!' she murmured, 'the poor Countess! Can we do nothing?'
'Do?' I said. 'What should, we do? The Waldgrave is back, and in his
right mind; which of all the things I have ever known, is the oddest.
That a man should lose his senses under one blow, and recover them
under another, and remember nothing that has happened in the
interval--it almost passes belief.'
'Yet it is true.'
'I suppose so,' I answered. 'The Waldgrave was mad--I can bear witness
to it--and now he is sane. There is no more to be said.'
'But the Countess, Martin?'
'Well, I do not know that she is the worse,' I answered stupidly. 'She
sent off the Count with a flea in his ear, and a poor return it was.
But she can explain it to him, and after all, she has got the
Waldgrave back, safe and sound. That is the main thing.'
Marie sighed, and moved restlessly. 'Is it?' she said. 'I wish I
knew.'
'What?' I asked, drawing her little head on to my shoulder.
'What my lady wishes?'
'Eh?'
'Which?'
My jaw fell. I stared into the darkness open-mouthed. 'Why,' I
exclaimed at last, 'he is sixty--or fifty-five at least, girl!'
Marie laughed softly, with her face on my breast. 'If she loves him,'
she murmured. 'If she loves him.' And she hung on me.
I sat amazed, confounded, thinking no more of Marie, though my arm was
round her, than of a doll. 'But he is fifty five,' I said.
'And if you were fifty-five, do you think that I should not love you?'
she whispered. 'When you are fifty-five, do you think that I shall not
love you? Besides, he is strong, brave, famous--a man; and she is not
a girl, but a woman. If the Count be too old, is not the Waldgrave too
young?'
'Yes,' I said cunningly. 'But why either?'
'Because love is in the air,' Marie answered; and I knew that she
smiled, though the gloom hid her face. 'Because there is a change in
her. Because she knows things and sees things and feels things of
which she was ignorant before. And because--because it is so, my
lord.'
I whistled. This was beyond me. 'And yet you don't know which?' I
said.
'No; I suspect.'
'Well--but the Waldgrave?' I exclaimed. 'Why, maedchen, he is one of
the handsomest men I have ever seen. An Apollo! A Fairy Prince! It is
not possible that she should prefer the other.'
Marie laughed. 'Ah!' she said, 'if men chose all the husbands, there
would be few wives.'
* * * * *