CHAPTER XXX.

LOVE AND A LOCKSMITH.

The utter hopelessness of the affair was the first sane reflection that approached the gate of Nigel's mind as he journeyed on to Prague after the Archduchess had set out for Vienna. They would meet again. Yes, it was in the minds of both. They were only at the beginning. They would both go on. They had made no pledge to go on; but having exchanged looks, clasped hands no more, he had gone northward and she southward, and Nigel's first sane reflection, after the first glow of the supreme exaltation of spirit we call love had passed, was that in some way or other that journeying apart would be symbolical of their lives. He asked himself what would happen if some stranger from over seas, not being a prince of the blood, should in the Court of King Charles fall into a like passion for an English princess, were any old enough. He had no doubts upon the subject. The amorous fool would be despatched in haste to his native land. The princess would be dealt with by appointing a company of noble gaolers and a residence from which egress would be difficult, until a husband of the right hue of blood could be purchased for her, and there would be an end of youthful escapades. And Nigel knew that he in his own country would have approved. The Habsburgs were, if anything, prouder than the Stuarts. What then could he, a Scot, a plain gentleman, who by a series of strokes of fortune had risen in the Imperial service to be a major-general, expect? Dismissal! And the Archduchess? The Elector or a convent. As yet, Nigel reflected, and this was after the first sane reflection set out above, as yet the secret, that secret that was more delicious, more thrilling than any in the world to them, lay in their own hearts.

He would cherish it. She would cherish it. In time to come they would make plans, wild hazardous resolutions. Would they find the courage to carry them out? He could answer for himself. Her history, as far as he knew it, answered for her. She had an equal courage, a haughty daring, a mind full of resource, and eyes that could stir him to any deed.

So he rode on to Prague and disposed his troops in the garrison and went round the defences with the commander of the garrison, making suggestions, sage and otherwise, and incidentally learned how unpopular the Emperor was: how he had quartered troops on Protestant hamlets, and enforced mass, torn lands from Protestant hands and handed them to Catholics, or those who said they were. The commandant was not hopeful as to the front they would present to Saxony. All Nigel could offer was vague encouragement that something was in the wind that would put a different complexion on the affairs of the Empire.

Then having accomplished his errand he returned to Vienna and found Father Lamormain eager to hear the result of the interview with Wallenstein.

This Nigel reported in a very few words, which Father Lamormain summed up by saying--

"You inferred, Colonel Charteris, that the Duke is willing to treat on conditions!"

"On conditions which he will impose himself!"

"And these are?"

"That the war is to be waged or not, as the necessity to redress the balance of power dictates, and that the settlement shall be on the basis of entire religious freedom for the Empire."

"That is the hardest condition! But we must needs bow to the tempest. Time will bring its own opportunities afterwards. And the next?"

"That all appointments of officers, from the highest downwards, shall be in the Duke's gift without the need of reference to Vienna."

"The Duke would be the fountain of honour, and every captain his sworn vassal. That is also a hard condition and smacks of Cæsarism!" the Jesuit commented. "Freedom he asks and power absolute while he exercises his functions, but for reward, what reward does he crave?"

"None that he spoke of to me!"

"Ah!" said the Jesuit reflectively. "We are bidden to distrust the Greeks and people bearing gifts. I am also inclined to look a little further when a man is willing to undergo great toil and asks nothing."

"There will be the spoil of the cities and the ransom of the prisoners!" said Nigel.

"The spoil of Stockholm?" the Jesuit inquired with a smile. "Now as to yourself, General. Will you stay here and take your chance of a command under Wallenstein, or join Tilly?"

"I would be where there is work to do!" said Nigel. "And Wallenstein may not name me!"

"You would have made a good regular had you been trained early," said the Father approvingly. "But some day woman will come into your life and divide it into the camps of love and duty."

For an instant a flush came into Nigel's cheeks and passed. Had she not come sooner than the Jesuit expected?

The interview ended, Nigel proffered a formal request to the War Department to be allowed to join General Tilly. As the permission did not depend upon the War Department so much as upon the Emperor, not upon the Emperor so much as Father Lamormain, still a few days elapsed before he could set out. Couriers were expected. Negotiations had been begun with Wallenstein with as much ceremony as if he had been a crowned head.

To any man less genuinely a man of action, this compulsory and to himself excusable dawdling in the very neighbourhood of the Archduchess, would have been a delightful interlude between the stern acts of war. Such a man would have had the capacity for idleness in some measure, and some knowledge how to enjoy it rather than employ it. He would, far more quickly than Nigel, have found a way to enjoy it, and to enjoy it in company with some beloved fair, or perhaps with several.

Nigel's love was a possession. The Archduchess, mysterious combination of Stephanie and Ottilie, had the whole of his heart for her encampment. There was no little citadel or outward tower which her forces did not occupy. But as yet the exaltation of his love did not manifest itself in any outward signs. He neither talked more, as many lovers do, nor was more silent, as some are wont to be, nor manifested exceeding nor profuse gentleness, a manner unbecoming in a soldier. If any at Vienna had known him well, they might have thought him more self-contained than usual. He felt that he must needs keep a close-knitted grip upon himself, for he told himself that, if he should come within arm's length of the object of his worship, his will would be as the green withes that bound Samson, and his lips would incontinently profane the image of the goddess, as they had once before done when she had appeared under the humbler of her guises. That the Archduchess, on her side, might be as fully and completely woman as he was man, did not realise itself to him. It was not possible that it should. So that he did not picture her as beating her wings against the palace cage, whose wires were the servant spies, stifling or trying to stifle in her generous heart the desire to give of her womanhood with lavishness to him whom her imagination had crowned and enthroned in a vision of perfect man.

But where lover and beloved are within a bowshot length, and both are thirsty to gaze the one upon the other, both eager to exchange the story of their moods, surely the god Cupid will find a way to bring about their meeting.

And Love, who laughs at locksmiths, employed one. One noon, as he returned from some of his military duties, Nigel found an apprentice locksmith awaiting him in his quarters, whose grimy hand drew from his leathern apron a key bright from its new forging and chasing by the tools. Nigel, being asked by the lad if it pleased him, replied with the wonderful presence of mind Dan Cupid gives, that it pleased him well. It was the duplicate of the key of that orchard close within the gardens of the palace.

The place was no longer in doubt. Where Colonel Charteris had been received in jocund May by the Archduchess, Nigel would meet Stephanie in hoar December. And the hour? Love dictated that the first hour of dusk was the first possible, and the first possible was the one of which Love must avail himself.

To gain access to the gardens by night it was necessary to reach them by one of the doors which led from one of the lower corridors of the palace into the orangery, and by one of those of the orangery into the garden terrace.

That afternoon Nigel spent an hour not unprofitably in the orangery examining the trees, learning their history from the gardeners, and where the keys hung by which one might let one's self out into the terrace.

By this time his face and figure were too well known to the pages or the domestics of the palace to excite remark, and he easily contrived an errand to one of the officers on guard in the palace, which made it reasonable for him to be seen passing along the corridor in question and returning. But on his return he took the left hand into the orangery instead of the right into the courtyard, and an instant sufficed for him to find the key and let himself out on to the terrace.

By what means the other conspirator would reach the rendezvous he did not know, but from the rambling building of the palace many doors led into the gardens. Few of them showed any trace of usage, but one no doubt led to the private apartments of the Archduchess.

Once more the moon befriended him, but this time she seemed to Nigel to be like himself, or perhaps more justly like his mistress. For, fitfully gleaming, now wholly to be seen, now half in shadow, now again wholly lost, the moon seemed to scurry from one clot of cloud, ragged and grey and wintry, to another hiding-place still more opaque, and always scurrying. Nigel knew well it was the wind in the upper air that drove the clouds across her face, but the image pleased him as he went by purposely circuitous ways towards the orchard close, his key securely in his pocket, his cloak wrapped round him, his hat pulled down well across his brows, his sword in its place at his side.

There was nothing languorous about this night, nothing effeminate but the moon. But in chill December, as in soft breathing June, an assignation with a maid is as fruitful of lovers' walks and the exercise of lovers' patience.

So he drew near to the orchard close, and paused in the shadows before he set key to lock.

Now that he was so near he felt more of love's awe. He wondered if it had been some rustic maiden--Elspeth Reinheit, for example--he would have felt it. But of Elspeth Reinheit he had never felt in such a way. Many maidens in many places had cast questioning, subtly troubling, glances at him, and always till he had seen her, whom he had deemed Ottilie the mysterious, their glances had fallen from him like spent arrows from a buckler. She alone was above all different in kind, a creature of a lone world where he was a hardy adventurer. He was a new Pizarro penetrating a deserted temple of the Incas, and finding a solitary priestess whose lofty mien and more than human beauty forbade him to desecrate the sanctuary, while she chanted in an unknown tongue songs of infinite allurement.

He thrust the key into the lock.