W. J. Eccott

“ Nigel! Nigel!" she sighed. "Your love is the love of a man that comes and goes in gusts, roaring like the wind, gentle as the breeze, and then it is gone till it awakens again. I say not you are inconstant, but you do not fear, as woman does, the hour of emptiness when there is no lover, no husband."
"By Heaven! I am no inconstant, Stephanie! I can bide my time, and if I lose not my life in these wars, surely there shall be a roof-tree in bonnie Scotland waiting us." ”

“ But Wallenstein is a merchant, not a prince, a politician, not a man! The glamour became more transparent as time went on, and when I met you, Nigel, it was as if a wind from the hills swept over the plain, sweeping away the mists of morning and leaving everything clear and visible. For you showed yourself a man. You were not old and full of wiles like Father Lamormain or Maximilian. ”

“ Wallenstein had made no demur, raised no standard of rebellion, had gone into retirement. The army mouldered away regiment by regiment. Some had joined Tilly, like Nigel. More had become idlers in the great cities. It had been Wallenstein's army. Without him to command even the Emperor could not keep the snows from melting.
And now came this mysterious message that Wallenstein would be summoned again. His old officers would be flocking back. Nigel felt it in his bones. Loyalty to a great leader is one of the strongest engines in the world, least visible to the eye, most potent in effect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Blick's thirst found relief in time, for Nigel halted at the first convenient inn which promised passable entertainment in the town of Straubing, eight and a half leagues from the city of Ratisbon. He knew that no hostelry on the road to Znaim could in the nature of things produce a meal fit to set before this rare daughter of the Habsburgs. For her nothing could be too kingly, but as the best that could be got was coarse, he had perforce to trust to her love and a traveller's appetite. ”

“ Nigel could not tell from the dry passionless utterance of the speaker whether irony lay at the root of his tongue: but he was at least as eager as Wallenstein appeared to be indifferent as to the outcome. It was the difference between youth and maturity. If it had been permitted to look into the mind of that inscrutable man, one might have expected to find that on a stage where strode so many principal and, in their several parts, renowned actors, where war and high policy and ambition were the themes, Wallenstein should count as nothing the staying or speeding of his actions by any woman. ”

“ As Nigel had bent to kiss the long slender fingers that were so like the Emperor's, he seemed to see again those of Ottilie von Thüringen binding up the wound of Elspeth Reinheit. He answered her—
"The journey was not so perilous, your Highness, as the reward is great in your Highness's gracious welcome!" And greatly daring he gazed for a moment with unfeigned admiration at the eyes of the Archduchess.
"Count Tilly's captains are swift to learn, Father?" she said, smiling.
"They are more teachable than princesses!" ”

“ Just now the sight of a casque or a gorget would madden the peasantry till not one trooper of your regiment would remain to ride his horse."
Nigel was not ungrateful to the Abbot for his warning, though he suspected the dignitary of an inclination to exaggerate. He was no coward, but he had seen enough of the Forest to know its solitudes of trees, the deep beds of leaves that lay in the hollows, undisturbed from year to year, till those of ten years ago had become thick black soft earth in which a man's body might lie and moulder silently and surely till the bones parted company. ”

“ The fire of Gustavus' ordnance continued, relentlessly pounding away upon all the batteries of Tilly within range, and being light, their position was changed from one half-hour to another as the Swedish officers thought fit.
"A bold swimmer might spy it out!" was the suggestion of one aide-de-camp.
Nigel had thought of it; but for a man to go into that icy and turbulent water was to meet certain death, even were he roped. He would be numbed before he could see anything, or shot by some of the Swedes, who doubtless lay securely along their higher bank. ”

“ From the Emperor he passed to Maximilian, the prince who should have been a Jesuit, as he was the foster-child of Jesuitism. Of a lineage as proud as that of the Habsburgs, of a renown for policy as for valour, ruler of some of the fairest provinces and greatest cities of the Empire, he would of a surety in his love be as relentless an adversary as fate. Men of his dark complexion take the malady of love not lightly. Least of all men, being who he was, would he be pitiful. Brook a rival, once disclosed to him, in a Scots mercenary, were he Wallace Wight himself? ”

“ The chamberlain of the household now came in, and bowing low said, "The learned Pietro Bramante bids me to acquaint you, my lord, that the constellations are in a favourable aspect for you to enter the House of Knowledge, but that the stranger must enter also, for the orbit of his star conjoins with your lordship's."
"Come!" said Wallenstein, his eyes lighting up into a curious eagerness, curious that is, in a man of his years, and more so to a Scot such as Nigel Charteris was, for the Scots are not given to appearing eager,—even of good fortune. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the present state of Thüringia, stirred from end to end as it evidently had been, Nigel was bent on keeping as much as possible to the open road, and not allowing his force to be entangled in any tumult in the towns.
At first the pathway led gently downwards through a wide undulating area of forest, which gradually contracted to a long sinuous ravine flanked by steep walls of rock. The sound of voices carried far along this rock-bound way in the stillness, that was broken by nothing but the light splashing of the brook and the "pink-pink" call of the birds. ”

“ It was for Wallenstein! I am sure of that! You were in love with Wallenstein?"
"Never! You are going to be my first lover and my last!" Her tone was deep and serious. There was something of presage, of mystery, a hint of doom.
"I was taken, as a girl will be, with the glamour that glowed about his name, as he rose from step to step by great leaps of success. It was the star of Wallenstein that I followed. I dreamed of being caught up into its orbit, and, moving, throned above the nations in its company, sharing and contributing to its brightness." ”

“ The Lady Ottilie of Thüringen was in a restless mood, in that mood when a woman wants everything and nothing, when she is eager to reveal and careful to hide everything but her eagerness. To an older man perhaps there would have been no puzzle, but to Nigel Charteris, who had never known the spell of woman, she was a mysterious child following her own phantasies. ”

“ For the final attack on Magdeburg, which had let loose into its streets and places thousands of soldiery on plunder intent, careless of violence to women and to babes, had also opened its gates for the egress of fugitives. Those who had friends or relatives in the country made such haste as was possible in the deadly hubbub of the sack to steal out with their bare lives on to the roads and walk fast and far.
Many were the glances of hate at the troopers, and of wonder at Elspeth Reinheit, who was known to many as the "pastor's niece." ”

“ Then, framed in a pause, came a clink of metal, of a sword against a spur, then silence.
Through a hundred little chinks the dawn began to steal and make of the darkness merely a misty gloom. Nigel had risen to his feet, and there across the unfloored space loomed the figure of another man, in cloak and headpiece like himself, standing stark against the roof.
With a grim quick motion Nigel ripped open his hatch, and with an answering jerk the stranger opened his. The wind rushed across with a roar and a whistle, and the dawn poured in till it made a twilight. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ But Nigel's straightforwardness would not let him budge from his self-appointed path.
"Wallenstein is not loyal to the Emperor!"
"Loyalty!" she exclaimed in a fine note of scorn. "Loyalty in German lands! In Europe! To what? To one's faith? That does not hinder father slaying son or brother brother. To one's pacts? It is as it suits one's interests! Feudalism is dead. The Emperor's vassals rise against him. And Albrecht von Waldstein is no vassal of the Emperor. He is a Bohemian noble. True, our house of Habsburg conquered Bohemia, and our brother is in name their king. ”

“ He expected that some military penalty would be his lot, confinement perhaps for a time, the loss of his rank as captain. The worst would be dismissal from the Emperor's service; for like a true Scot he had learned to love his profession, and the service he had chosen had become that which commanded all his loyalty. As a soldier of fortune, who had fought with Wallenstein, he could make his way in any of the armies of Europe, but he was not by nature a mercenary. Dismissal would be the heaviest punishment of all. ”

“ To you Saxony is Saxony, Bavaria, Bavaria, but they mean nothing. You have taken service with the Emperor, and him only will you serve. So long as you serve the Emperor with a single eye you will succeed. The blessing of Heaven will follow you. The higher you climb, the more difficult the path will be. But only obey!"
The openness of the priest's avowal and his fatherly manner, almost a benediction in itself, won upon Nigel to a great degree, so that his suspicions of the Jesuits and their ways were almost, if not quite, laid to rest.
"To obey comes easy to the soldier, Father! ”

“ He is too great to rust. Can you not see that now, even now, when your armies have crumbled before Gustavus, while Tilly, the pride of Ferdinand, and Pappenheim, the pillar of Maximilian, have been broken in two like straws, that the supreme moment has come, the moment when the Emperor must and shall recall him, beg him as a suppliant to raise the fallen standards and gather yet again one of his mysterious and invincible armies, which shall drive Saxon and Brandenburger whimpering to their kennels, and Gustavus and his pastors scattering to their ships! ”

“ In the morning he was awakened by Sergeant Blick bringing him his holiday suit, or court suit, if it could be called so, for one who had never been at court before, with its freshly laundered lace collar and cuffs, its handsome doublet and breeches of dark-blue and silver, its fine Spanish leathern boots with tiny gold spurs, its plumed hat to carry out the vain conceit of one having come off a journey. Beneath the collar he wore a silver gorget and his sword, with its silver-tipped sheath burnished to the utmost, hung at his side. ”

“ What a fiery soul beneath how noble a surface of manhood! She pictured him again and again with something of admiration, and admiration led her on, Archduchess as she was, to ask which was the more commendable, the spirit of loyalty which was Nigel's, or the spirit of entirely personal ambition which she herself was fanning in Wallenstein. ”

“ 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 constituted 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. ”

“ There are men who, from their cradle to their grave, are attended and companioned by women, and shrink from the rough and, on the whole, kindly and bracing contact with their kind. Nigel had thrust himself into the world of man at the dawn of manhood, and in the fellowship of arms he had found as mixed a chance-medley as the world of men could show, free from the namby-pamby of the courts, free from the court's petty chicane, free from the emulous avarice of the mart; not in some corners destitute of scholarship, though scholarship was rare ”

“ Let us see what this diviner has to say!"
Nigel was in truth by no means pleased. For he was a devout Catholic, and hated alike Jews and witchcraft, and thought little of horoscopes. The stars were a good guide on a clear night crossing a moor or in a strange country. That was all. But Wallenstein had once held all the German lands in his hands, and might again. It was a waste of opportunity not to second his whimsies: and if there was nothing in divination but hocus-pocus, why, there was no harm could come of it. ”

“ His orderlies carried him out, and two days afterwards Tilly died, the sound of Gustavus' cannon, without the walls of Ingolstadt, ringing in his ears.
Nigel reached Ratisbon in the train of the troops sent on to defend it. Every day he was under the ministrations of the Jesuit, who combined the art of the healer with that of spiritual director, as if he had never, sword in hand, hewn down Swedish pikemen on the bridge at the Lech. Every day made him gain something of ease. And once lodged in a comfortable upper room at Ratisbon he began to recover the usage of his legs. ”

“ As to the Archduchess Stephanie, no sooner was Nigel set out than she began to feel a great restlessness, which manifested itself in very desultory marches, to the wearying of her ladies, up and down in the palace, with occasional forays out into the city and along the ramparts, in the course of which she pursued the officers of high rank with puzzling questions as to the possible course of the war.
"But it is impossible, your Highness, to give a guess!" said a grave and stout general officer. "When we know what force we have to dispose of——"
"Yes! Yes!" ”