My Lady Rotha: A Romance

'And you think that I should marry him?' my lady persisted mercilessly. 'Answer me, if you please, Count Leuchtenstein, or you are a poor ambassador.'

'I am not an ambassador,' he replied, thus goaded. 'But I thought-'

'That I ought to marry him?'

'If you love him,' the Count muttered.

My lady took a turn to the window, looked out, and came back. When she spoke at last, I could not tell whether the harshness in her voice was real or assumed.

'I see how it is,' she said, 'very clearly, Count Leuchtenstein. I have confessed, and I have been punished; but I am not forgiven. I must do something more, it seems. Wait!'

He was going to protest, to remonstrate, to deny; but she was gone, out through the door, to return on the instant with something in her arms. She took it to the Count and held it out to him.

'See!' she said, her voice broken by sobs; 'it is your child. God has given it back again. God has given it to you, because you trusted in Him. It is your child.'

He stood as if turned to stone. 'Is it?' he said at last, in a low, strained voice. 'Is it? Then thank God for His mercy to my house. But how-shall I know it?'

'The girl knows it. Marie knows it,' my lady cried; 'and the child knows her. And Martin-Martin will tell you how it was found-how the Waldgrave found it.'

'The Waldgrave?' the Count cried.

'Yes, the Waldgrave,' she answered; 'and he sent it to me to give to you.'

Then I went to him and told him all I knew; and Marie, who, like my lady, was laughing through her tears, took the child, and showed him how it knew her, and remembered my name and my lady's, and had this mark and that mark, and so forth, until he was convinced; and while in that hour all Nuremberg outside our house mourned and lamented, within, I think, there were as thankful hearts as anywhere in the world, so that even Steve, when he came peeping through the door to see what was the matter, went blubbering down again.

Presently Count Leuchtenstein said something handsome to Marie about her care of the child, and slipping off a gold chain that he was wearing, threw it round her neck, with a pleasant word to me. Marie, covered with blushes, took this as a signal to go, and would have left the child with his father; but the boy objected strongly, and the Count, with a laugh, bade her take him.

'If he were a little older!' he said. 'But I have not much accommodation for a child in my quarters. Next week I am going to Cassel, and then-'

'You will take him with you?' my lady said.

The Count looked at the closing door, as it fell to behind Marie, and when the latch dropped, he spoke. 'Countess,' he said bluntly, 'have I misunderstood you?'

My lady's eyes fell. 'I do not know,' she said softly. 'I should think not. I have spoken very plainly.'

'I am almost an old man,' he said, looking at her kindly, 'and you are a young woman. Have you been amusing yourself at my expense?'

The Countess shook her head. 'No,' she said, with a gleam of laughter in her eyes; 'I have done with that. I began to amuse myself with General Tzerclas, and I found it so perilous a pleasure that I determined to forswear it. Though,' she added, looking down and playing with her bracelet, 'why I should tell you this, I do not know.'

'Because-henceforth I hope that you will tell me everything,' the Count said suddenly.

'Very well,' my lady answered, colouring deeply.

'And will be my wife?'

'I will-if you desire it.'

The Count walked to the window and returned. 'That is not enough,' he said, looking at her with a smile of infinite tenderness. 'It must not be unless you desire it; for I have all to gain, you little or nothing. Consider, child,' he went on, laying his hand gently on her shoulder as she sat, but not now looking at her. 'Consider; I am a man past middle age. I have been married already, and the portrait of my child's mother stands always on my table. Even of the life left to me-a soldier's life-I can offer you only a part; the rest I owe to my country, to the poor and the peasant who cry for peace, to my master, than whom God has given no State a better ruler, to God Himself, who places power in my hands. All these I cannot and will not desert. Countess, I love you, and men can still love when youth is past. But I would far rather never feel the touch of your hand or of your lips than I would give up these things. Do you understand?'

'Perfectly,' my lady said, looking steadfastly before her, though her heaving breast betrayed her emotion. 'And I desire to be your wife, and to help you in these things as the greatest happiness God can give me.'

The Count stooped gently and kissed her forehead. 'Thank you,' he said.

* * * * *

I have very little to add. All the world knows that the King of Sweden, unable to entice Wallenstein from his lines, remained in his camp before Nuremberg for fifteen days longer, during which period the city and the army suffered all the extremities of famine and plague. After that, satisfied that he had so far reduced the Duke of Friedland's strength that it no longer menaced the city, he marched away with his army into Thuringia; and there, two months later, on the immortal field of Lutzen, defeated his enemy, and fell, some say by a traitor's hand, in the moment of victory; leaving to all who ever looked upon his face the memory of a sovereign and soldier without a rival, modest in sunshine and undaunted in storm. I saw him seven times and I say this.

And all the world knows in what a welter of war and battles and sieges and famines we have since lain, so that no man foresees the end, and many suppose that happiness has quite fled from the earth, or at least from German soil. Yet this is not so. It is true in comparison with the old days, when my lady kept her maiden Court at Heritzburg, and our greatest excitement was a visit from Count Tilly, we lead a troubled life. My lady's eyes are often grave, and the days when she goes with her two brave boys to the summit of the Schloss and looks southward with a wistful face, are many; many, for the Count, though he verges on seventy, still keeps the field and is a tower in the councils of the north. But with all that, the life is a full one-full of worthy things and help given to others, and a great example greatly set, and peace honestly if vainly pursued. And for this and for other reasons, I believe that my lady, doing her duty, hoping and praying and training her children, is happy; perhaps as happy as in the old days when Fraulein Anna prosed of virtue and felicity and Voetius.

The Waldgrave Rupert, still the handsomest of men, but sobered by the stress of war, comes to see us in the intervals of battles and sieges. On these occasions the children flock round him, and he tells tales-of Nordlingen, and Leipzig, and the leaguer of Breysach; and blue eyes grow stern, and chubby faces grim, and shell-white teeth are ground together, while Marie sits pale and quaking, devouring her boys with hungry mother's eyes. But they do not laugh at her now; they have not since the day when the Waldgrave bade them guess who was the bravest person he had ever known.

'Father!' my lady's sons cried. And Marie's, not to be outdone, cried the same.

But the Waldgrave shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'try again.'

My youngest guessed the King of Sweden.

'No,' the Waldgrave answered him. 'Your mother.'

THE END