CHAPTER XVII.

FAREWELL TO THE ARCHDUCHESS.

As Nigel thought he owed that great windfall of fortune, the restoration of his cherished wallet of despatches, to the Archduchess Stephanie, insomuch as it was a direct outcome of her mysterious association with Wallenstein, so he was inclined, without evidence, to attribute to her this second shaking of the tree, which had brought to his feet the still riper fruit of the command of the regiment of horse. Perhaps the joking of Hildebrand had left behind in his mind some traces of its passing. It certainly was not due to any conceit that he had made any impression on the heart of the Archduchess. But it was just possible that her sympathy with the mind and destiny of Wallenstein might have displayed itself in an endeavour to promote the fortunes of one who had been, and might some day be again, with Wallenstein.

An unquenchable desire pursued him. It had no effect upon his military duties, for at those he worked as one possessed. The horses, a motley but on the whole a useful collection, were allotted to their riders, the riders distributed into troops and half troops, the old soldiers converted into troop sergeants and corporals, and all kept busy at their exercising. Hildebrand and all the other officers grumbled at this intolerable, but undoubtedly affable, Scot, who let no man rest nor rested himself. But as daylight fell, and with it the last bulwarks of human patience, and the quarters and the taverns once more welcomed the "Rough Riders," as some wit of the canteens christened them, Nigel was fain to seek rest and refresh himself. It was then, in the moments of relaxation, that the desire came upon him to seek out the Archduchess.

The strange likeness that she bore to the fugitive Ottilie intrigued him. Ottilie in the cathedral of Erfurt had seemed, if his ears had not belied him, to pray for Wallenstein. Half an hour afterwards she had breathed scorn of Wallenstein. The Archduchess had named him in a way that gave a hint of an amiable alliance between them. Had she any influence with Lothar, or General von Falck, or the redoubtable Camp-Master, and exercised it to gain him this commission? If not, to what circumstances did he owe it? Could the Emperor be so lacking in tried cavalry officers that he, who was not a cavalryman, should be selected? Self-pride urged that his experience in the wars was his real recommendation for what must prove a perilous and delicate work. The Scots have always been said to have a "gude conceit" of themselves; and Nigel was not without it. But his Scots caution tempered it. He gave self-pride its due weight and no more, and looked outside for the real reasons.

But to approach the Archduchess was not easy. He had been allotted other quarters in the part of the palace devoted to the officers of the guard. He could not without remark place himself in her way in the gallery of portraits. Nor could he make an assignation to meet her, as the officers of the guard did, with the ladies-in-waiting, whom among themselves they called in their familiar German fashion Gretchen, Bette, or Lotta. They might boast contemptuously of favours behind their charmers' backs, while professing a most poetical admiration to their faces. He could do neither. There was a gulf not easy to bridge between a lady-in-waiting and an Archduchess.

Nigel had acquired a certain distrust of messages verbal or written, for his short intercourse with courtiers had engendered the belief that one half of the denizens of the palace, high and low, were spies upon the other half, and that Father Lamormain heard everything. But as write he must, he bethought him of certain poetical exercises of his which he had practised lamely enough while at the University of St Andrews, in fond imitation of the poets of the court of Queen Elizabeth, where every one rhymed that could hold a quill. He drew with great pains the circle, the oval, and the curve of Pietro Bramante at the head, and, after many attempts in the long unaccustomed art, involving one hundred and four elisions and at least four separate drafts, he wrote beneath the figure the following lines, hoping that the whole might excite her curiosity if not her admiration, and lead to the audience so much desired:--

By Eastern mage this secret figure limned Is symbol that my barque of Life, outbound From ports forgot for shores by mist bedimmed, Should fetch the centre of this perfect round; Nor should one miss to see the focus 'tis Of a consummate oval: beacon light That points a haven to all argosies. Imperial Eyes, that do illume my night, My barque sets sail. Suffer that she clear Her harbour dues, and from her cargazon Proffer these petalled blushes of the year, Which, tho' they fade, as must my Argus soon Into the dim horizon, still implore But access, and a smile; they dare no more!

--N. C.

"Now," said Nigel to himself, "if I do but send Sergeant Blick to her waiting-maid with this sonnet ensconced in a basket of roses it is odds but her Highness gets it, and if any one intercept it beshrew me if he make anything of it, for I can make little of it myself."

The plan, clumsy or not, was successful. Sergeant Blick could be very stupid on occasions, till he knew he had what he wanted, and it cost him some pains before he could arrive at the personal attendant of the Archduchess. Then a handsome bribe for herself and the direct and not super-refined flatteries of the sergeant procured the faithful delivery of the gift.

Nigel had sent the drawing of the figure to meet either fortune. If she had not seen it before, it at all events assisted to explain the allusions of the sonnet; and if she had, by the hand of Wallenstein, it would justify his request as showing that he himself understood the linking of the three destinies.

As he sat with Hildebrand at his evening meal the day following, he was summoned and bidden to attend in the garden of the palace at the hour of nine, when he would be met at the nearest gate.

This involved some explanation to Hildebrand, who, receiving the other's assent to his own hint of an assignation, merely laughed and asked no more.

Nigel was punctual, and the same page who had introduced him to the Archduchess in the gallery met him, and bowing, led the way by a path little difficult to remember through the garden, where he had met Father Lamormain, to a little orchard close, which was separated from the garden by a thick hedge, within which was a wall. The page unlocked the gate of this with a key, which he then handed to Nigel, bowed again, and turned as if to go. Nigel entered the orchard close, and following a little path between two rows of trees came to an open bower, which had a carpet of thick sward, an old stone seat, a screen of yews and laurels all about save for the entrance and the exit opposite.

The night was matchless with moonlight. The trees shone whitely. Deep shadows fell from trees and bushes which were full of foliage. Out of a shadow stepped the Archduchess Stephanie, a dark-hued velvet cloak dependent from her shoulders and open, displaying her milk-white neck and bosom, and a robe of some sheeny tissue of gold thread and silk that glittered here and there as she moved, whose texture caught the moonbeams. Upon her head she wore a little golden fillet of antique work, which seemed to confine her profusion of black curls that for the rest framed in her glorious face and danced in the night breeze upon her shoulders. The dark eyebrows and the long lashes, like thickets half concealing twin lakes, made her complexion look paler than usual. But her red full lips parted in a smile.

Her beauty, intensified by the moonlight, and suffused with something more of air and sky, her ever astonishing resemblance to the strange Ottilie von Thüringen, together took Nigel by storm. The shock of it thrilled him. No Wallenstein of forty-eight, wrapped securely in the husk of his own fortunes, but a living man with all the ripe vintage of twenty-five surging in his veins, was Nigel. What would the world of men of forty-eight not give to have the glorious energy, the unconquerable vigour, the joyous ardour for love of twenty-five, of twenty-five that can quaff and quaff again and still hold out the bowl for more? Give? Another world!

Was it perchance precisely fair? The law of Archduchesses is sure their own, and no man can gainsay it.

Nigel, bewildered for a moment, stammered out--

"The Queen of Night!" and knelt to kiss her long slender fingers.

As he rose to his feet again she laid a hand lightly on his arm and said with a twinkle of merriment in her rich voice--

"Strange and inconsequent mixture are you, man! You face sword and fire, and lose not a heart-beat, nor a patch of colour. You meet a woman in the moonlight, and straightway your knees must knock, and you must tremble like a steeple in the wind."

"I crave pardon, your Highness!" said Nigel, recovering his boldness. "Great supreme beauty such as yours, if there be any like it anywhere, must needs give a man more than a feeling of awe!"

"Now you talk like a bold wooer and a poet. Faith! you have more than a touch of the poet, though my skill in the English tongue is not great enough for me to put a right value on your verses. 'Tis seven years since my cousin, the Infanta, thought to wed England. We all learned English in those days."

"But your Highness understood!" said Nigel eagerly. "It is but a day or two at most and I must ride into the very teeth of Gustavus. I burned to see your Highness, to thank you for my fortunes, and say that if your Highness has need of me at any time--"

"You will drop your regiment of Rough-riders like a hot iron and ride for me? And this is loyalty to the House of Habsburg!" Her smile blunted the edge of her ridicule.

"Saving my duty as a soldier, your Highness is _my_ House of Habsburg!" he rejoined with such an earnestness that broke down her fence of raillery.

"You Scots! Full of conceit! Sensitive! Brave to the degree that you do not even know you are brave! Kindly, so that you would die and not grudge the gift!... I shall not tempt you from your duty; but if I call you by this sign"--she drew out the figure from its hiding-place--"come what may ... I look to you. It will be no little matter."

Nigel's eyes were full upon her, for there was a solemnity in her voice, a note of strong appeal as from one high spirit calling to another and conscious of the other's attuning. He drew his sword and pressed the hilt to his lips in token of his fealty.

Then it pleased the Archduchess to pace to and fro for a while beneath the trees in silence. She was in truth full of emotion, which was all but too strong for her. The nearness of Nigel, who walked beside her, was one cause of trouble. She had told herself that she loved Wallenstein, the dark, inscrutable organiser of armies, that she had always loved him. But did she sway the spirit of Wallenstein, the heart of Wallenstein, so that it vibrated, if heart or spirit can vibrate, to her touch? She did not seek to answer it. She knew that this stranger Scot with the eagle eyes and bearing was nearer to her in the spring of his years and of his intelligence, albeit one of her father's mercenaries, who might perchance become another Tilly, never a Wallenstein. "And why not?" she asked herself. Then she answered it. "Too much heart!"

Of a sudden she broke the silence again--

"I like you, Colonel Nigel! I trust you! I am perhaps going into a nunnery for a season; perhaps for always!"

"Your Highness! Into a nunnery!" Nigel's astonishment and his sorrow were racing for the mastery.

"They wish me to marry Maximilian of Bavaria!"

"The Jesuits? Your Highness will not?"

"I have told them that asked, 'Sooner a nunnery, or to wed a private gentleman who is not of the blood royal.'"

The blood coursed like a river through the young officer's veins. If---- He put the thought away sternly.

"Many things may happen. I must gain time. Some other league or bond may be formed and other interests may thwart it! I tell you so that if I be not here when you return, after you have driven Gustavus back to the Baltic, you will know. 'Tis the fate of princesses who cannot control their own destinies." She had stopped in her walk as if to say a word or two before dismissing him.

"I would I were to be nearer Vienna than Magdeburg!" said Nigel. "But I have promised. And your Highness is not an Infanta of Spain to be bartered here or there for an article in a treaty."

"So you think!" she said, evidently pleased. "But we women are all alike in one thing, we are all fatalists, like the Grand Turk."

"I have been very desirous of asking your Highness a question," said Nigel, drawing the little dagger from his belt and holding it so that she could see the hilt. "Whose arms are those?"

"Habsburg," she said. "How came you by it?"

"In Magdeburg a lady tried to stab me with it."

As her fingers closed round the hilt Nigel seemed to see the hand again just as he saw it and grasped it at Magdeburg.

* * * * *

"I wonder whether it was my cousin Ottilie von Thüringen," she said. "She is suspected of strong sympathies for the Lutherans."

"Does she resemble your Highness in person?"

"Yes! She did as a girl! There is a coldness between the families and we do not meet as we used. Some say she is singularly like me. Her mother was sister to mine! I remember myself giving her this dagger for a gift. 'Tis very strange it should come into your hands and your eyes say that you wish it back in your own keeping. Colonel Nigel! I shall be jealous if you love my cousin Ottilie! It is the way of princesses!"

Her eyes fastened upon Nigel's: and his, fighting this uneven battle, drooped.

"I do not know if I love her! But I love none other! And then she is not a princess!"

"And one does not love the stars!" she interposed, rather with a touch of malice. "So you can worship but not love me, Colonel Nigel!"

"What can I say, your Highness? I must be true at all costs!"

A mist came over her fine eyes. She gave him her hand. This time he bowed and kissed it.

With a quick movement she turned, walked into the shadows, and he saw no more of her that night nor till he departed for his journey.