My Lady Rotha: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  MISSING!

  We lay in the osier bed two whole days and a night, during which timetwo at least of us were not unhappy, in spite of peril and hardship.We left it at last, only because our meagre provision gave out, and wemust move or starve. We felt far from sure that the danger was over,for Steve, who spent the second day in a thick bush near the road, sawtwo troops of horse go by; and others, we believed, passed in thenight. But we had no choice. The neighbourhood was bleak and bare.Such small homesteads as existed had been eaten up, and lay abandoned.If we had felt inclined to venture out for food, none was to be had.And, in fine, though we trembled at the thought of the open road, andmy heart for one grew sick as I looked from Marie to my lady, andreckoned the long tale of leagues which lay between us and Cassel, therisk had to be run.

  Steve had discovered a more easy though longer way out of thewillow-bed, and two hours before midnight on the second night, he andI mounted the women and prepared to set out. He arranged that weshould go in the same order in which we had come: that he should leadthe march, and I bring up the rear, while the Waldgrave, who was stillfar from well, and whose continued lack of vigour troubled us the moreas we said little about it, should ride with my lady.

  The night seemed likely to be fine, but the darkness, the sough of thewind as it swept over the plain, and the melancholy plashing of thewater as our horses plodded through it, were not things of a kind toallay our fears. When we at last left our covert, and reaching theroad stood to listen, the fall of a leaf made us start. Though nosounds but those of the night came to our ears--and some of these wereof a kind to reassure us--we said 'Hush!' again and again, and onlymoved on after a hundred alarums and assurances.

  I walked by Marie, with my hand on the withers of her horse, but wedid not talk. The two waiting-women riding double were before us, andtheir muttered fears alone broke the silence which prevailed at theend of the train. We went at the rate of about two leagues an hour,Steve and I and the men running where the roads were good, andeverywhere and at all times urging the horses to do their best. Thehaste of our movements, the darkness, our constant alarm, and theoccasional confusion when the rear pressed on the van at an awkwardplace, had the effect of upsetting the balance of our minds; sothat the most common impulse of flight--to press forward withever-increasing recklessness--began presently to possess us. Once ortwice I had to check the foremost, or they would have outrun the rear;and this kind of race brought us gradually into such a state of alarm,that by-and-by, when the line came to a sudden stop on the brow of agentle descent, I could hardly restrain my impatience.

  'What is it?' I asked eagerly. 'Why are we stopping?' Surely the roadis good enough here.'

  No one answered, but it was significant that on the instant one of thewomen began to cry.

  'Stop that folly!' I said. 'What is in front there? Cannot some onespeak?'

  'The Waldgrave thinks that he hears horsemen before us,' Fraulein Maxanswered.

  In another moment the Waldgrave's figure loomed out of the darkness.'Martin,' he said--I noticed that his voice shook--'go forward. Theyare in front. Man alive, be quick!' he continued fiercely. 'Do youwant to have them into us?'

  I left my girl's rein, and pushing past the women and Fraulein, joinedSteve, who was standing by my lady's rein. 'What is it?' I said.

  'Nothing, I think,' he answered in an uncertain tone.

  I stood a moment listening, but I too could hear nothing. I began toargue with him. 'Who heard it?' I asked impatiently.

  'The Waldgrave,' he answered.

  I did not like to say before my lady what I thought--that theWaldgrave was not quite himself, nor to be depended upon; and insteadI proposed to go forward on foot and learn if anything was amiss. Theroad ran straight down the hill, and the party could scarcely pass me,even in the gloom. If I found all well, I would whistle, and theycould come on.

  My lady agreed, and, leaving them halted, I started cautiously downthe hill. The darkness was not extreme; the cloud drift was brokenhere and there, and showed light patches of sky between; I could makeout the shapes of things, and more than once took a clump of bushesfor a lurking ambush. But halfway down, a line of poplars began toshadow the road on our side, and from that point I might have walkedinto a regiment and never seen a man. This, the being suddenly alone,and the constant rustling of the leaves overhead, which moved with theslightest air, shook my nerves, and I went very warily, with my heartin my mouth and a cry trembling on my lips.

  Still I had reached the hillfoot before anything happened. Then Istopped abruptly, hearing quite distinctly in front of me the sound offootsteps. It was impossible that this could be the sound that theWaldgrave had heard, for only one man seemed to be stirring, and hemoved stealthily; but I crouched down and listened, and in a moment Iwas rewarded. A dark figure came out of the densest of the shadow andstood in the middle of the road. I sank lower, noiselessly. The manseemed to be listening.

  It flashed into my head that he was a sentry; and I thought howfortunate it was that I had come on alone.

  Presently he moved again. He stole along the track towards me,stooping, as I fancied, and more than once standing to listen, as ifhe were not satisfied. I sank down still lower, and he passed mewithout notice, and went on, and I heard his footsteps slowlyretreating until they quite died away.

  But in a moment, before I had risen to my full height, I heard themagain. He came back, and passed me, breathing quickly and loudly. Iwondered if he had detected our party and was going to give the alarm;and I stood up, anxious and uncertain, at a loss whether I shouldfollow him or run back.

  At that instant a fierce yell broke the silence, and rent the darknessas a flash of lightning might rend it. It came from behind me, fromthe brow of the hill; and I started as if I had been struck. Hard onit a volley of shouts and screams flared up in the same direction, andwhile my heart stood still with terror and fear of what had happened,I heard the thunder of hoofs come down the road, with a clatter ofblows and whips. They were coming headlong--my lady and the rest. Thedanger was behind them, then. I had just time to turn and get to theside of the road before they were on me at a gallop.

  I could not see who was who in the darkness, but I caught at thenearest stirrup, and, narrowly escaping being ridden down, ran onbeside the rider. The horses, spurred down the slope, had gained suchan impetus that it was all I could do to keep up. I had no breath toask questions, nor state my fear that there was danger ahead also. Ihad to stride like a giant to keep my legs and run.

  Some one else was less lucky. We had not swept fifty yards from whereI joined them, when a dark figure showed for a moment in the roadbefore us. I saw it; it seemed to hang and hesitate. The next instantit was among us. I heard a shrill scream, a heavy fall, and we wereover it, and charging on and on and on through the darkness.

  To the foot of the hill and across the bottom, and up the oppositeslope. I do not know how far we had sped, when Steve's voice washeard, calling on us to halt.

  'Pull up! pull up!' he cried, with an angry oath. 'It is a falsealarm! What fool set it going? There is no one behind us. Donner undBlitzen! where is Martin?'

  The horses were beginning to flag, and gladly came to a trot, and thento a walk.

  'Here! I panted.

  'Himmel! I thought we had ridden you down!' he said, leaving my lady'sside. His voice shook with passion and loss of breath. 'Who was it? Wemight all have broken our necks, and for nothing!'

  The Waldgrave--it was his stirrup I had caught--turned his horseround. 'I heard them--close behind us!' he panted. There was a note ofwildness in his voice. My elbow was against his knee, and I felt himtremble.

  'A bird in the hedge,' Steve said rudely. 'It has cost some one dear.Whose horse was it struck him?'

  No one answered. I left the Waldgrave's side and went back a fewpaces. The women were sobbing. Ernst and Jacob stood by them,breathing hard after their run. I thought the
men's silence strange. Ilooked again. There was a figure missing; a horse missing.

  'Where is Marie?' I cried.

  She did not answer. No one answered; and I knew. Steve swore again. Ithink he had known from the beginning. I began to tremble. On a suddenmy lady lifted up her voice and cried shrilly--

  'Marie! Marie!'

  Again no answer. But this time I did not wait to listen. I ran fromthem into the darkness the way we had come, my legs quivering underme, and my mouth full of broken prayers. I remembered a certainsolitary tree fronting the poplars, on the other side of the way,which I had marked mechanically at the moment of the fall--an ash,whose light upper boughs had come for an instant between my eyes andthe sky. It stood on a little mound, where the moorland began to riseon that side. I came to it now, and stopped and looked. At first Icould see nothing, and I trod forward fearfully. Then, a couple ofpaces on, I made out a dark figure, lying head and feet across theroad. I sprang to it, and kneeling, passed my hands over it. Alas! itwas a woman's.

  I raised the light form in my arms, crying passionately on her name,while the wind swayed the boughs overhead, and, besides that and myvoice, all the countryside was still. She did not answer. She hunglimp in my arms. Kneeling in the dust beside her, I felt blindly for apulse, a heart-beat. I found neither--neither; the woman was dead.

  And yet it was not that which made me lay the body down so quickly andstand up peering round me. No; something else. The blood drummed in myears, my heart beat wildly. The woman was dead; but she was not Marie.

  She was an old woman, sixty years old. When I stooped again, afterassuring myself that there was no other body near, and peered into herface, I saw that it was seamed and wrinkled. She was barefoot, and herclothes were foul and mean. She had the reek of one who slept inditches and washed seldom. Her toothless gums grinned at me. She was ahorrible mockery of all that men love in women.

  When I had marked so much, I stood up again, my head reeling. Wherewas the man I had seen scouting up and down? Where was Marie? For amoment the wild idea that she had become this thing, that death ormagic had transformed the fair young girl into this toothless hag, wasnot too wild for me. An owl hooted in the distance, and I started andshivered and stood looking round me fearfully. Such things were; andMarie was gone. In her place this woman, grim and dead and unsightly,lay at my feet. What was I to think?

  I got no answer. I raised my voice and called, trembling, on Marie. Iran to one side of the road and the other and called, and still got noanswer. I climbed the mound on which the ash-tree stood, and sent myvoice thrilling through the darkness of the bottom. But only the owlanswered. Then, knowing nothing else I could do, I went down wringingmy hands, and found my lady standing over the body in the road. Shehad come back with Steve and the others.

  I had to listen to their amazement, and a hundred guesses and fancies,which, God help me! had nothing certain in them, and gave me no help.The men searched both sides of the road, and beat the moor for adistance, and tried to track the horse--for that was missing too, andthere lay my only hope--but to no purpose. At last my lady came to meand said sorrowfully that nothing more could be done.

  'In the morning!' I cried jealously.

  No one spoke, and I looked from one to another. The men had returnedfrom the search, and stood in a dark group round the body, which theyhad drawn to the side of the road. It wanted an hour of daylight yet,and I could not see their faces, but I read in their silence theanswer that no one liked to put into words.

  'Be a man!' Steve muttered, after a long pause. 'God help the girl.But God help us too if we are found here!'

  Still my lady did not speak, and I knew her brave heart too well todoubt her, though she had been the first to talk of going. 'Get tohorse,' I said roughly.

  'No, no,' my lady cried at last. 'We will all stay, Martin.'

  'Ay, all stay or all go!' Steve muttered.

  'Then all go!' I said, choking down the sobs that would rise. And Iturned first from the place.

  I will not try to state what that cost me. I saw my girl's faceeverywhere--everywhere in the darkness, and the eyes reproached me.That she of all should suffer, who had never fainted, never faltered,whose patience and courage had been the women's stay from thefirst--that she should suffer! I thought of the tender, weak body, andof all the things that might happen to her, and I seemed, as I wentaway from her, the vilest thing that lived.

  But reason was against me. If I stayed there and waited on the roadby the old crone's body until morning, what could I do? Whither couldI turn? Marie was gone and already might be half a dozen miles away.So the bonds of custom and duty held me. Dazed and bewildered, Ilacked the strength that was needed to run counter to all. I was noknight-errant, but a plain man, and I reeled on through the last hourof the night and the first grey streaks of dawn, with my head on mybreast and sobs of despair in my throat.