The Mercenary Part 41

"To take her back to her father, and if she be indeed yet a true maid, to marry her!"

"She would scarcely have suffered loss in company of a great lady?"

"I do not know anything of great ladies! But I have many reasons to think this foreign officer may have wronged her--even in Magdeburg."

"'Judge not, that ye be not judged,' Pastor Rad. I promise that, if she be in Vienna, she shall be handed over to you. See to it that you deal tenderly with your lamb in return for our gentle dealing with you."

"I was robbed of my money!" Pastor Rad complained.

"It shall be repaid to you twice over," said the Jesuit. "How much was it?"

The pastor told him, and the Jesuit noted it on his tablets.

"Now get to your lodgings and wait there a day. A servant shall go with you."

On the same day Nigel Charteris was summoned by the Emperor's Military Council, and bidden make his way through Bavaria to join his old commander Count Tilly. There and not in Austria or Bohemia it was thought that a period might be put to the King of Sweden's progress.

Tilly had men enough in conjunction with the Elector Maximilian's, but lacked officers. The Council feared the Saxons less, who were at Prague, and so in a manner at their doors, than the foreigner Gustavus, who had so signally shown his mastery alike upon the Elbe and upon the Rhine.

Asking what forces he was to conduct, he was told that a mere escort would be sufficient. The road was open, and speed alone was necessary.

Nigel was more flattered than if three regiments had been confided to him, for the Council made it appear that it was he, Nigel, and not regiments, that was wanted. He knew that at the moment there was no superfluity of troops in and around Vienna to defend it should the Saxons decide to move southward, but his experience of the behaviour of the Saxon troops at Breitenfeld had left him with a poor opinion of their courage, their initiative, and their leadership.

Father Lamormain saw him after he had received his orders. He made no reference to Pastor Rad, of whose nearness Nigel was unaware, nor to the orchard close, nor to Stephanie. That some prowler or other had been about the trysting-place Nigel was aware, and, on account of the Archd.u.c.h.ess, he had refrained from encountering him. Having seen nothing himself, he imagined that his own and his mistress's persons had enjoyed a like invisibility. Unaccustomed to fear himself, he had not understood why Stephanie in her concluding embrace had trembled and clung to him with the mingled weakness, tenderness, and pa.s.sionate strength of which woman is capable at supreme moments of danger. It had touched his heart. It had left him determined that nothing at the last should separate them but the hand of death itself. So he looked upon this expected summons to resume duty at the front with the confidence of youth, that nothing but a few short weeks lay between him and her he loved,--weeks perhaps in which he might compa.s.s more of that military glory he coveted, and so lessen the distance that yawned between them.

What if he should find the opportunity to wrest from the pretendedly reluctant and chaffering Wallenstein the laurels of the Empire to lay at her feet?

So Nigel met Father Lamormain with no suspicion at the back of his mind, but rather with brave hopes and the supreme joy that a man feels who knows that he is beloved by her whom he conceives to be the star of womanhood.

Father Lamormain bade him exert himself to the utmost. He told him that the armies of Tilly and Maximilian const.i.tuted the final barrier that prevented the Swedish hosts, reinforced by Germans from every Protestant state, from rolling through Bavaria, resistless as the Danube in flood, and finally reaching Vienna. He made him feel, as the clumsy brief remarks and explanations of the Army Council had not, though they had borne some suggestion, that on his own personal devotion and intelligence depended the whole fortune of the Empire. The appeal was the more sure that it was in the first place an appeal to his simple loyalty as a mercenary soldier, and not to his nationality. In the second place, Father Lamormain appealed to his faith. He spoke in no uncertain way of the fate of those heretics who should fall, striving against the Emperor and Holy Church. He touched slightly on the indifference of the Holy Father, Urban the Eighth, to the calls of the Emperor for succour, and the apparent hostility of the fervently Catholic King of France and his Cardinal Minister. He deplored them, but did not gloss them over. He was evidently, so Nigel thought, working towards producing in Nigel a proper state of mind from which might spring the spiritual flower of a heroic death. It was the rule of the order. For the individual, sacrifice; for the cause of the order, everything that might enhance its progress.

It was as if the Jesuit strove to wean him from earthly aims, to instil into him something of the essence of his own self-lessness: and, for the brief while that the audience lasted, Nigel's soul and mind took some impress in its wax of youth of the deep and hard graven die that was the Jesuit's.

More than before Nigel felt that an active benevolence in regard to him ran like a golden thread through the tissue of Father Lamormain's talk, that, while urging self-immolation on the altar of the Empire, he urged it only as a means of spiritual safety from pitfalls that otherwise yawned for him in this world and the next.

To the hidden meaning Nigel possessed no clue. The one all-obliterating fact of his love for the Archd.u.c.h.ess and her love for him prevented the die of the Jesuit making more than a faint permanent impression upon his mind, sufficient only to be memorable.

Father Lamormain seemed to be aware of this faintness of impression, for he sighed deeply as Nigel, having received his last benediction, took his final leave.

Nigel rode forth towards Bavaria fully determined to fight the Swede, but whether the eyes of Stephanie, or the heavenly crown pictured for him by Father Lamormain, glittered the more brightly to his thoughts, is a question each one must settle for himself.

One thing Father Lamormain had kept back, and that was the progress of the negotiations between the Emperor and Wallenstein, which were still at a delicate stage, and were yet shaping towards success.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

AN EMBa.s.sY FOR STEPHANIE.

Two months slipped past for Gustavus Adolphus, two months of strenuous nights and days, two months of petty hostilities and multifarious negotiations. Richelieu was attempting to isolate Austria, bargaining with the Princes of the League that they should stand aside as neutrals, bargaining with Gustavus that, if they did, he should respect their neutrality. Then there could be nothing to prevent Gustavus from crushing Austria, and Richelieu's cup of joy would be full. Maximilian had indeed made a secret treaty with France, hoping to save his dominions from the Swede. But Richelieu's plan for isolation fell through, for Gustavus found reason to suspect the intentions of Maximilian, and marched into Franconia, whence Count Tilly had driven out Gustavus's General, Horn. When Gustavus marched, he had with him Horn, and Banner, and Duke William of Weimar, and forty thousand men.

Count Tilly was forced to retreat to the very confines of Bavaria, while Gustavus made a triumphant entry into Nuremberg, which received him with immense ovations.

Two months had also slipped past for Ferdinand and much had happened in Austria. It was summed up in this that Wallenstein had been gathering an army. He had refused to consider the question of its command in the field. He had undertaken its muster, contented to show the Emperor once again how potent was the name of Wallenstein wherewith to conjure men from all the quarters of Germany and beyond.

But Ferdinand the Emperor and his Father Confessor, encouraged yet to hope, resting on the fact that an army was being mustered between Vienna and Prague, at Znaim, to which haven Wallenstein had returned, making it his headquarters, were nevertheless perturbed about the att.i.tude of the Elector Maximilian. Father Lamormain knew that the French Cardinal was endeavouring to detach him from the Emperor, knew also that Maximilian had much to gain from neutrality, immunity for his country, which had hitherto been spared the devastations of the war, and eventual aggrandis.e.m.e.nt for himself if the sun of Austria sank to its setting. On the other hand, both the Jesuit and the Emperor remembered oft-repeated proofs of Maximilian's fidelity to the Catholic faith and to the Emperor.

"Your Majesty must send an amba.s.sador!" said Father Lamormain. "Such an amba.s.sador as by his own n.o.bility and charm of person and of eloquence shall sway the mind of the Elector, nay, his very heart, so that it shall tend towards your Majesty and thereby abide. And that quickly!"

Ferdinand smiled that pallid half-sardonic smile of his which seemed to sum up the weariness of generations of Habsburgs, and to be in itself a satiric comment upon the futility of human endeavours to stem the progress of events. He put a question--

"Whom?"

"The Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie!"

The Emperor frowned the merest suspicion of a frown. Father Lamormain watched him peacefully, as if it had been an affair of shuttlec.o.c.ks and not a deep political design.

"Alone? Since when has Austria depended upon its women?"

"To the first question your Majesty, No! To the second, Always!"

"Ah!" said the Emperor. "My son Ferdinand."

"The Archduke Ferdinand! And with him the Archd.u.c.h.ess Stephanie."

"Is she likely to add such cogency to our arguments that Bavaria will steady itself to be our last b.u.t.tress?"

"The Elector Maximilian has sought her in marriage. The project has been deferred by the war, but the living princess, with pleading in her tones and promises in her eyes, should outweigh all the bribes of Richelieu."

"If Stephanie chose, she could bewitch him that he could not but choose to adhere to our side. But it has seemed to me that she was indifferent to his suit."

"Princesses can have no choice of their spouses!" said Father Lamormain.

"Your Majesty must be round with her, leave her no room for wavering, bid her to her duty."

"You have as much influence with her as I, Father. If I do my part, so must you."

"Your Majesty may count on my endeavour! It is a happy moment when the need of Austria must outbalance all personal whims."

"The roads are open? You can arrange for a sufficient and well-equipped retinue, for a small company of our goodliest dames and demoiselles?"

"We are still Austria, your Majesty!"

"The project is good, Father! Put it in hand at once. The more haste the better."

Ferdinand's face cleared perceptibly.

On further reflection Father Lamormain judged it the wiser plan to prepare the mind of the Archd.u.c.h.ess for the order of the Emperor. He knew perhaps better than any one, except Stephanie, how rebellious a Habsburger there was in her. It is even possible that the Archd.u.c.h.ess considered her own doings as fulfilling all the _reasonable_ demand of the parental laws. She would, however, have placed her own interpretation on the meaning of "_reasonable_."

He lost no time in seeking her out in her own apartments, and entreating a few moments' conversation.