CHAPTER XXI.

THE FAIR HAIR AND THE DARK HAIR.

The sun, as it shone upon my eyes next morning, awoke me. I started, gazed around, and sunk again, for I struggled with a dreamy sense of pain and oppression. I was not in a bivouac, lying on the hard earth with a sword for a pillow and a plaid for my covering, but on a bed of the softest down; and the glance I had given revealed to me a tapestried room, the hangings of which were old and dark, representing huntsmen in the antique German costume of the fourteenth century, antlered deer peeping from among the leaves, and large Danish hounds in the foreground. The warmth of the sunshine was playing on my cheek, and the fragrance of a thousand flowers, with the merry notes of the birds as they sang their summer songs, came through an open window, wafted on the breeze together--music and perfume. I heard the murmur of a distant cascade, and the foliage rustling on the old oaks, the yellow linden-trees, and copper beeches.

The furniture of the apartment was rich and luxurious; but, as all was confusion in my mind, for a time I forgot how it came to pass that I was there, and still imagined myself at the fort of Boitzenburg. I saw the stately forms of Ian Dhu and Phadrig Mhor, of Learmonth and Dunbar, as they hewed down the Imperial escalade. I still heard the din of the conflict, the war-cry of the Spaniards, the wild slogan of the Highlanders, and the wilder yells of the Croatian horsemen; and then I gave a convulsive start to find myself in a comfortable bed, which suggested ideas of Craigrollo, and the college of James IV. Thus, when again I dosed, the old familiar features of my home passed before me--those scenes whose solemn grandeur makes, on the mind of the young mountaineer, that lively and peculiar impression which the denizen of a flat country cannot conceive; and thus, on that feverish couch, many a face and many a dream of other days floated before me.

Near my father's house there flowed a linn--a deep, dark linn, where the wee burnie poured over a ledge of rock; it was crossed by a large stone, and I remember the time when that brigstane was quite a bridge to me. I seemed to hear the murmur of the linn and the rustle of my paternal woods, and saw the white blossoms of the sweet-scented hawthorn birks that grew beneath the old tower wall. I heard the bleat of the sheep that browsed upon my father's hills; the rich perfume of the purple heather, and of the bells of that beautiful broom, from which the sweetest honey is gathered by the mountain bee, were wafted towards me. I heard my mother's gentle voice, but it seemed to come from a vast distance on the drowsy hum of summer, and all my soul was stirred within me. I was a child again, and I wept in my sleep like the lonely boy I was. I wept, but I knew not why, unless it were that through these tender visions there came an oppressive sense of their unreality. The past conflicted with the present, and I felt that I was far away from those dear hills of Cromartie, from the shores of their blue Firth, and the dusky peaks of the Black Isle--sick, weary, and wounded--a stranger in the land of the stranger and foe. Oh! I may be pardoned in thinking, that no heart like the heart of the Scot and the Switzer feel that dire loneliness when so far from home; and none like they are haunted by the strange sad fear, of being buried far from the graves of their kindred. Yet how many of our brave Scottish hearts have mouldered into dust on the plains of Flanders and Germany; by the shores of the Elbe and the Oder, the Rhine and the Danube, the Zoom and the Zuiderzee!

When again I unclosed my eyes and gazed between the parted hangings of the bed, I perceived two young ladies at the foot of the apartment. They were conversing in a low tone, and placing flowers in a large vase. They were the daughters of the count; but as ladies have the privilege of giving the first recognition among us in Scotland, and as their presence in my apartment might be a mistake, I waited until they should address me.

I observed that one was a fair girl, clad in that pale bine silk which so well becomes persons of her complexion; but the elder and the taller of the two, a beautiful girl with jetty hair, was dressed in orange-coloured satin, a tint which so well consorted with her dark hair and fine complexion. You would have loved the youngest had you seen her face, there was such a sweet expression in its pretty mouth and dove-like eyes; but the eldest--her form was beautiful, her features irreproachable, her profile was noble, and the freshness and delicacy of her complexion were remarkable. Her fashion of dress, her air, her mode of holding up her head, had something more of gentle blood in them than her sister; and though it would have been difficult to find two more lovely girls, each after her own style--the eldest seemed to be the proudest pet of nature.

"He seems to be still asleep, Gabrielle," said the dark beauty; "but uneasily--for I have heard him moan."

"Hush--you will wake him--how loud you do talk, Ernestine!"

So, one is called Gabrielle, and the elder is Ernestine, thought I. Such pretty names these are--and they speak German, too! I would have sworn Ernestine was a Spaniard, but her black hair has come with her Scottish blood.

Having completed their arrangement of the vase, they approached, placed it on a little tripod table near me, and softly drew back one of the rich curtains of the bed. I felt very much inclined to laugh.

"Poor young man!" said Ernestine; "he is smiling in his sleep."

I endeavoured to assume a look of the most charming candour.

"His hair is dark and curly," said Gabrielle.

"He reminds me somewhat of poor Lerma, who was slain at Lütter."

I heard Gabrielle sigh.

"She has lost a lover at that unlucky battle," thought I, and was in some degree correct; for these fair girls had many lovers, but they had never distinguished any, save one, the gallant young Conde de Lerma, son of the Spanish duke of that name, to whom Gabrielle had been betrothed at an age which was too tender to possess any other love than such as a brother might have for a sister; and like a brother the boy count had loved his little wife; but a cannon-ball had decapitated him at Lütter in the moment of victory, and there was an end of it. Gabrielle had wept for the loss of her young friend--Lerma had been nothing more--and she still retained his betrothal ring on the fourth finger of her right hand.

"Oh yes!" said she; "he is just like Lerma."

"With the same amount of mustache," added Ernestine.

"Lerma had less--but he was so young."

My hand lay upon the coverlet, and, with her soft warm hand, Ernestine touched it gently by chance.

"He is hot and feverish--we must be very kind to him, Gabrielle. Poor boy!"

The touch of Ernestine's hand made my heart vibrate; but I remembered Prudentia, and resolved to steel my heart against all soft impressions and nonsense for the future.

She is very beautiful and charming, of course, thought I; but let me beware how I fall lightly into that troublesome trap again.

Now, reflecting that it was unfair, by a seeming sleep, to impose upon them thus, I made preparations to awake, on which they let the hangings drop, and glided noiselessly to some distance.

On my drawing back the curtain, they both approached me again, and Gabrielle, who possessed either less pride or more frankness than Ernestine, asked me, with the most winning kindness, "How I was," and bade me "good-morning."

I replied that the pain of my bruise was gone, that a little giddiness remained; but that I suffered greatly from thirst.

On hearing this they hurried to a side table, and in a minute returned with a silver salver, bearing some warm refreshment, of which I partook because it was offered by the white jewelled hand of Gabrielle, though I would have given the world for a cup of pure cold water.

"I am too much honoured by such attendance--I beseech you to retire, and send to me the soldier, my fellow prisoner. I recognise in you the daughters of the count, who so kindly saved me, when our wounded--poor souls!--were so mercilessly slaughtered at Boitzenburg yesterday."

"Our father has desired us alone to attend you, and, as his countryman, we quite love you already," said the frank Gabrielle, with one of her delightful smiles; "you can have no other attendants save us, or Corporal Spürrledter, and perhaps the soldier who accompanies you."

"Honest Dandy Dreghorn?"

"But both you and he," added the graver and statelier Ernestine, "must remain concealed closely; for, as Count Tilly will be here in the course of to-morrow, to explain reasons for our request were a needless task."

"Tilly!" I reiterated, giving a convulsive start, and glancing about for my claymore and biodag, on hearing the name of that terrible leader of the great crusade against the Protestants of Germany and the liberties of Northern Europe. "If Tilly is to pass this way, then Dandy and I have been too long here, for to the Protestant soldiers of Christian IV. he shews such mercy as a cat shews to mice. Ah! he is a merciless old savage, and will shoot us as a mere matter of course."

"John of Tserclä, the Count Tilly, is general of all the armies of the Empire!" said Ernestine proudly, and with an air of pique.

"Ah! sister, but he is very cruel," urged Gabrielle, gently.

"Yet fear nothing, sir; my father's influence will protect, and our care conceal you. Simply, he thinks it better or safer, that Tilly should not know you are here."

"But take the nice little breakfast we have prepared for you," said the childlike Gabrielle; "to-morrow you will be stronger, and we shall all talk more together."

Ernestine stood, for she seemed all unused to stoop; but Gabrielle knelt down by the side of the low bed, and, holding before me the silver salver, gave me a green crystal cup containing a certain alimentary infusion named coffee, which was to be taken warm and sweetened with Canary sugar, which, like the beverage itself, was then a luxury unknown among us in Scotland. I have since been told, by those cavaliers of our army who were taken prisoners at Worcester, that this coffee has been introduced into England by a person named Pasqua, a Greek, who came to London in 1650, with a Turkish merchant named Edwardes, and who sold it at his shop in Lombard-street, as a medicated restorative for the sick. Never having tasted any thing of this kind before, I felt so wonderfully refreshed and invigorated by one cup, that I was easily prevailed on to take a second, with a little biscuit of honey and flour.

I thanked these two beautiful girls politely and sincerely, and, after the hardships endured by us since leaving Itzhoe, could not help expressing my sense of the luxuries with which they had surrounded me.

"You owe us no thanks for that, sir," said the proud Ernestine; "this house is as much yours as ours, being so by the right which the chance of war gives us over every thing that comes in our way. We accompany our father's column of the Imperial army, and, as he always selects a pretty house for us, I hope you approve of his taste. This mansion belongs to the Baron of Klosterfiord, an officer of Danish pistoliers."

"He is my good friend, and a brave soldier!"

"But a Protestant," said Gabrielle, quietly.

"And consequently a foe of ours," said the other beautiful Imperialist, shaking back her dark curls.

"Never mind, sister," added Gabrielle, laughing; "a month hence our dear father may select apartments for us in the castle of Copenhagen."

"Your father never will, lady," said I, piqued at her words; "for there are too many of our tough Scottish blades to keep the passes of the Elbe against both the pride and the power of the Empire."

"Here our father comes, and he will best tell you the chances of that," replied Ernestine.

At that moment I heard a horse ridden rapidly into the quadrangle; then the clank of spurs and the jarring of a long sword, as a cavalier dismounted, entered the vestibule, and approached the room where I lay, and from whence the two young ladies hurried to meet him.

Book the Fourth