'To where?'
'Listen. I know a skipper whose ship is now in the Maese, and almost ready to sail for the coast of France. She is anchored off Maesluis now; let us once get her on board and the Hoek van Holland will soon be left astern, and the girl your own, unless you are a greater fool than I think you.'
Morganstjern made no immediate reply, so his tempter spoke again.
'Once on board that ship, her honour will be compromised, and marriage alone can restore it. Let her be once on board that ship with you, I say, and she cannot be so blind as not to see that she will have gone a great deal too far to draw back.'
'Right!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as a glance of triumph came into his eyes. 'I have a political mission to France, and it will be supposed that she has eloped with me, and befooled the Scot Baronald. With all her contempt and scorn of me, she little knows that her fate is to become my wife—my wife—mine! Once that, and then let her look to herself!' he added as a savage expression mingled with the triumph that sparkled in his shifty eyes, and he smote the table with his clenched hand.
'The distance from the Hague to Maesluis is only eleven miles—a few pipes, as the people say,' resumed Schrekhorn; 'my friend shall have a boat waiting us at a quiet spot among the willows that fringe the shore, near a deserted windmill on the river-bank; and then we shall take her on board. Once under hatches, her fate will soon be sealed.'
'How can I thank you?'
'By refunding what you owe me out of the guilders of Dolores,' replied the Heer, as he and Morganstjern shook hands again; but the latter became silent for a time.
He knew the Heer van Schrekhorn to be a rascal capable of committing any outrage, and also that he had personally a special grudge at Lewie Baronald. Dolores was beautiful. What if this scheme so speciously arranged, was one for his own behoof, to carry her off, leaving the onus of the abduction on the shoulders of him—Morganstjern—after passing a sword through his body among the willows near the old mill on the Maese.
But this grave suspicion was only a passing thought, and he thrust it aside.
'This may preclude your return for some time, and compromise you with the authorities,' said the Heer.
'Their reign will soon be over; and when a French army comes to the assistance of the Dutch patriots, the Prince of Orange may find himself a fugitive in England.'
'But we must be wary; not for all the gold and silver bars in the Bank of Amsterdam would I be in your shoes if we fail. The Burgomasters are worse than the devil to face, and we may find ourselves behind the grilles of the Gevangepoort or the Rasp-haus, as brawlers.'
'A thousand duyvels!—fail? don't think of it.'
Had Maurice Morganstjern known the intentions of General Kinloch towards his nephew, and the plans he had formed to separate him from Dolores, he might have patiently awaited the events of the next few days; but as he was ignorant of them, he and the malevolent Heer van Schrekhorn laid all their plans for the abduction of the girl with caution, confidence, and extreme deliberation, before they quitted the Golden Sun that night.
Next day, when Lewie Baronald, apparelled in all his regimental bravery, was setting forth to visit Dolores, he was summoned by General Kinloch, who, after working himself up to a certain degree of sternness or firmness, real or assumed, for the occasion, said:
'Stay, young man, I pray you, as we must have some conversation together.'
Lewie took off his Khevenhüller hat, and fearing that some animadversions were coming, played a little irresolutely with its upright scarlet feather.
'Your name has gone in for foreign service, Lewie,' said the General.
'To whom, sir?'
'The Director-General of Infantry.'
'Sent by you, uncle?'
'Yes, sir, by me.'
'You might at least have consulted with me in this matter. How cruel of you, uncle, under all the circumstances!' exclaimed Lewie, with sudden bitterness and intense anger.
'You will come to think it kindness in time, boy; I seek but to save you from what I, in my time, underwent.'
'If I refuse to go?'
'Refuse, and compromise your honour and mine—yea, the honour of the Brigade itself! My dear Lewie, when you have lived in this world as long as I——'
'Why, uncle, you are only forty!'
'Not yet twice your age, certainly—well?'
'If detailed for the Colonies, anywhere, separation from Dolores will be the death of me!' exclaimed the young man passionately.
'No, it won't; nor of Dolores either. So you are very much in love with her?' asked the General with a scornful grin.
'God only knows how purely I love her!' exclaimed the nephew in a low concentrated voice.
'Nature is full of freaks, certainly!'
'How?'
'She has varied the annals of the old fighting line of the Baronalds of that Ilk, by having them varied by something else.'
'By what?'
'A moonstruck fool!'
'This is eccentricity combined with unwarrantable interference and military tyranny,' cried Lewie, as he stuck his hat on his head and drew himself haughtily up; then in a moment his mood changed, for he loved this kinsman to whom he owed so much, and he said with an air of dejection, 'How shall I ever tell Dolores of what you have done to us both? I cannot sail for the Cape or the Caribbean Isles, and leave her bound to me! I must release her from her promise, though I know that she would wait a lifetime for me.'
'Poor fool that you are, Lewie! Do you forget the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind"? You think that, like Penelope, she will wait your return in hope, in love, and all the rest of it? You may be like Ulysses, but never was there a Penelope among women.'
The General indulged in many more doubting and slighting remarks upon women, particularly on their faith and constancy; and while he was running on thus, grief struggled with rage and indignation for mastery in the heart of Lewie, which seemed to stand still at this sudden wrench, and the prospect of an abrupt and protracted separation from Dolores—a separation that might be for years—every moment of which would be an agonised heart-throb, it seemed to him then!
How hard, how cruel, that they should be thus separated, and forced to drink, as it were, of the bitter waters of Marah, because this stern soldier hated all women so grotesquely, as the Countess had said, viewing them all through the medium of one; while Lewie and Dolores were so young that all the world seemed too small to contain the measure of their joy, and now—now, thought was maddening!
He would resign, 'throw up his pair of colours,' as the phrase was then; but his uncle had compromised him, by sending in his name to the Director-General of Infantry!
Already in anticipation he imagined and rehearsed their parting; already he saw her tears, her blanched face, and heard himself entreating her not to forget him, while vowing himself to be true to her—each regarding the other mournfully and yearningly, hand clasped in hand, lip clinging to lip; then came the void of the departure; the seas to plough, and the years that were to come with all their doubts and longing.
It was too bad—too bad; he owed his uncle much—all in the world indeed; but this stroke—this harsh interference, ended all between them for ever!
Overwhelmed with dejection he cast himself into a chair; there the General regarded him wistfully, and placing a hand kindly on his shoulder, said:
'Lewie, shall I tell you of what once happened to me?'
But, full of his own terrible thoughts, Lewie made no reply.
'It may have been that evil followed me,' said the General, looking down, with a hand placed in the breast of his coat.
'Evil?' repeated Lewie.
'Yes. When a boy I shot in the wood of Thomineau the last crane that was ever seen in Scotland, and my old nurse predicted that a curse would follow me therefor; thus, I never see a crane on a house-top here that I don't remember her words. Now listen to what happened to me when I was on detachment in the Dutch West India Islands. I belonged then to the battalion of Charles Halkett Craigie, who six years ago died Lieutenant-Governor of Namur, and we garrisoned Fort Nassau, or New Amsterdam as it is called now. There,' continued the General, alternately and nervously toying with his sword-knot and shirt-frill, 'I was silly enough to fall in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a Dutch girl, like your Dolores, with some of the old Castilian blood in her, though a lineal descendant of the great Dutch family of Van Peere, to whom, in 1678, Berbice was granted by the States-General as a perpetual and hereditary fief. She possessed great beauty, and what proved more attractive still, a hundred sweet and winning ways, with the art of saying pretty and even daring little things, that endeared her to all—to none more than me. I was a great ass, of course; but, heavens, what a coquette she was!'
'What was her name?' asked Lewie, with just the smallest amount of interest.
'Excuse me telling, as I have sworn never to utter it again; nor do I wish it to go down in the annals of our family. She wound herself round my heart; my soul, my existence, seemed to be hers. My love for her became a species of idolatry; but poverty tied my tongue, and I dared not speak of it, till one evening, which I shall never forget, the secret left me abruptly, drawn from me byherself. We were lingering in the garden of her father's villa near the Berbice river, and the stars were coming out, one by one, in the deep blue sky above us. The hour was beautiful—all that a lover could wish; and around us the atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of flowers—among those wonders of the vegetable world—the gigantic water-lilies, each leaf of which is six feet in diameter. I was soon to leave for Holland on duty, and my heart was wrung at the prospect of a separation.
'I had her hand in mine: my secret was trembling on my lips; and gazing into her eyes which were of a golden-brown colour, like that of her hair, I said very softly:
'"If your eyes have at all times an expression so sweet, so beautiful and winning, what must they seem to the man who reads love in them—love for himself!"
'"Can you not read it now?" she asked in a low voice, as she cast her long lashes down.
'I uttered her name and drew her close to me, my heart beating wildly the while, in doubt whether this was one of the daring little speeches I spoke of.
'Taking her sweet little face between my hands, I kissed her eyes and forehead, on which she said, in her low cooing voice:
'"I wonder if you will ever think of me after you are gone?"
'"Darling, do you think there will ever be a day of my life when I will not think you! Oh, the thought of our parting is worse than death to me!"
('A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' thought Lewie, becoming fully interested now.)
'"We are jesting," said she; "do not say this."
'"There is no need to tell you that I love you," said I, "for you know that I do—dearly, fondly: that this love will last with life, end with death;" and much more rubbish I said to the same purpose, adding, "And you, if quite free, could you love me?"
'"I love you now; have I not admitted as much?"
'So it all came about in that way,' said the General; 'umph—what an ass I was! May you never live to be deceived as that girl deceived me! I thought our passion was mutual; and then perhaps she thought so too—all perfidious though she was!
'But how happy—how radiantly happy I was for a time, till a Dutch squadron came to anchor off the bar of the Berbice river, and in one of the lieutenants thereof she discovered, or said she discovered, a kinsman; and from that moment a blight fell upon me, and I discovered that she was variable as the wind. Her attentions seemed divided for a time; at last they were no longer given to me. Her smiles were for the stranger; she sang to him, played to him, and talked to him only. At home or abroad, riding or driving, or boating on the river, he was ever by her side when not on board his ship.
'What rage and mortification were in my heart! The rules of the service alone prevented me calling him to a terrible account, though indeed he was not to blame.
'When I attempted to reason or remonstrate with her, she laughed; then after a time became indignant. We parted in anger, and I felt fury and death in my heart when she tossed my engagement-ring at my feet.
'Once again we met, alone, and by the merest chance. How my pulses throbbed as our eyes met, and she coyly presented her hand, which I was craven enough, and fool enough, to fondle!
'"Oh, what have I done," said I, "that you should treat me thus? that you should tread my heart under your feet, and leave me to long years of sorrow and repining?"
'Then she laughed, and snatched her hand away, while once again my soul seemed to die within me.
'"Do you love this kinsman?" I asked her fiercely; and never till my last hour shall I forget her reply, or the almost cruel expression of her face.
'"Yes; I love him—love him with my whole heart, and as I never loved you!"
'Turning away, she left me—left me rooted to the spot. Yet she had some shame, or compunction, left in her after all; for next day came a would-be piteous letter of explanation, that she had given this lieutenant a promise to please her father when he was dying—her father who was his guardian; how she had never had the courage to tell me so at first; that she did not dream I loved her so much; that I must learn to forget her, though she would never forget me; and so—a thousand devils!—there was an end of it.
'A few weeks after I saw her marriage in the papers, to the Lieutenant—d—n his name—to her and her fortune of ever so many thousand guilders.
'I tore her farewell letter into minute fragments, and set to work to adopt her advice.'
'What was that?' asked Lewie.
'To forget her; and to do so I threw myself into my profession. I never looked upon her face again, and I thanked God when I heard our drums beating as we marched out of Fort Nassau, and when the accursed shore of the Berbice river faded into the evening sea! Now, Lewie, have I not the best of reasons for mistrusting women, and seeking to save you from the fangs of this little ogress—this Dolores?'
'Ah, you know not her of whom you speak thus!' exclaimed Lewie.
'Nor am I likely to do so. Shun her, nephew! a girl, doubtless, with a fair face, and a heart as black as Gehenna! Be firm, Lewie Baronald!—firmness is a great thing, as you will find when you come to be a general officer and as old as I am.'
Lewie had done his duty like a man and a soldier—like one worthy of the glorious old Brigade—among the savages in the old Cape War; but it was cruel, absurd, and, to use the Countess van Renslaer's phrase, 'grotesque,' that he should now be treated like a child, and in the most momentous matter of his life and happiness too!
'I was weak enough—idiot enough, to wish I might die, then and there, when that girl deceived me,' resumed his uncle bitterly; 'but I knew that I must live on and on; I was very young, and thought I might live for forty years with that pain in my heart at night and in the morning. It is twenty years since then, and though the pain is dead, I suppose, I cannot laugh at it yet, or the memory of Mercedes.'
'Mercedes! was that her name—Mercedes?'
'The devil—it has escaped me!'
'So that is the name which is not to go down in the annals of the family?'
'Precisely so.'
'But surely, dear uncle, after all these years, you must have forgiven her? Besides, she may be dead.'
'Dead to me, certainly! Forgiven her—well, perhaps I may have forgiven her; but what can make a mere mortal forget a wrong, a cruelty, or an injury?'
'Then you will not yield, but insist that I shall go abroad?'
'I will not yield an inch, and march you shall!' replied the General, as he turned on his heel and left him.
'My darling Dolores—the first and only love of my life!' exclaimed the young man passionately; 'how can he—howdarehe—act thus towards us? But that I love him, I think, I may soon come to hate him!'
He rushed away in search of Dolores; but she and the Countess were from home. He was on duty at the Palace next day, and Dolores was to be at the ridotto; thus, ere they could meet, events were to transpire which were altogether beyond the conception of both.
The 'ridotto,' the Italian word then fashionable for an entertainment of music and dancing, at the huge old red-brick villa of the Heer van Otterbeck, Minister of State, in the vicinity of the Hague, was one of the gayest affairs of the season.
The Prince of Orange (whose son afterwards became King of the Netherlands) was not present, but all the rank, the wealth, and beauty of the Hague were represented; and among those present were many officers of the Scots Brigade, including the Earl of Drumlanrig, General Dundas, in after years the captor of the Cape of Good Hope; and there too was the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere, John Home, then the celebrated author of the nearly forgotten tragedy of 'Douglas.'
A band of the Dutch Guards furnished music on the lawn, and there dancing was in progress in the bright sunshine of the summer afternoon; and, in the fashion of the time, many of the guests were arrayed in what they deemed the costume of Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses.
People danced early in the evenings of the eighteenth century, and were abed about the time their descendants now begin to dress for a ball. Ices were unknown; no wine was dispensed, but the liveried servants of the Heervan Otterbeck regaled his guests on coffee, green tea, orange tea, and many kinds of cakes and confectionery in the intervals of the dancing, in which Dolores (all innocent and unaware of the plots in progress against her peace, even her honour and liberty—one of them born of avarice, wounded vanity, and foiled desire) indulged joyously and with all her heart.
For the information of the ladies of the present day we shall detail the dress worn by Dolores on that evening as described in theHague Gazette, and they may imagine how charming she looked:
'Her body and train were silver tissue, with a broad silver fringe; her petticoat was white satin covered with the richest crape, embroidered with silver, fastened up with bunches of silver roses, tassels, and cords. Her pocket-holes were blonde, her stockings were blue, clocked with silver, and her hair was twisted and plaited in the most beautiful manner around a diamond comb.'
Seated under a tree, flushed with a recent dance, she was alternately playing with her fan and silver pomander ball, with a crowd of admirers about her, and looking alike pure and bright, with 'a skin as though she had been dieted on milk and roses.'
'No wonder it is, perhaps, that Lewie loves me,' thought the girl, as she looked at the reflection of her own sweet face in a little bit of oval mirror in the back of her huge Dutch fan; 'Iampretty!'
She might have said 'lovely,' and more than lovely; and then she smiled consciously at her own vanity.
Under the genial influence of her surroundings the heart of the girl was full of happiness, and had but one regret that Lewie Baronald was not there. Yet, she thought, 'to-morrow I shall see him—to-morrow be with my darling, who at this moment is thinking of me.'
And amid the brilliance of the scene, so rich in the variety of colour and costume, the strains of the music and beauty of the old Dutch pleasure-grounds, she almost longed to be alone, with the grass, the birds, the insects, and the flowers—alone in the sweet summer evening with the perfume of the roses, the jasmine, and the glorious honeysuckle around her.
On one hand, about a mile distant, was the Hague, with all its Gothic spires and pointed gables; on the other spread the landscape so usual in that country of cheese and butter—church-towers and wind-mills, bright farmhouses, long rows of willow-trees, their green foliage ruffling up white in the passing breeze; the grassy dykes and embankments, a long continuity of horizontal lines, which seemed so tame and insipid to the mountaineers of the Scots Brigade, and to all but the Dutch themselves.
Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a settled thing—a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.
How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.
The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.
'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.
'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.
'Three?'
'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'
'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl, shaking his powdered head.
'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.
'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness——' the Earl paused.
'Your Scottish eyes cannot forgive that,' said Dolores laughing, as she recalled some of Lewie Baronald's complaints on the same subject; 'but people cannot live on scenery.'
'So the great Samuel Johnson has written.'
'Who is he?' asked Dolores.
'A great lexicographer—a wonderful English savant—who believes in a ghost in London, yet discredited the late earthquake at Lisbon. I think I have seen you at the Vyverberg with Lewis Baronald of my battalion; he has the honour of being known to you.'
'He visits us,' replied Dolores, the flower-like tints of her sweet face growing brighter as the Earl spoke.
'He is a fine and handsome fellow, young Baronald; but it is strange that he should wish to quit the Hague when it possesses such peculiar attractions,' said the Earl markedly, and with a courteous bow.
'Quit the Hague!' repeated Dolores, as if she had not heard him aright.
'I do not know whether the desire to do so, has any connection with his uncle's scheme for the recapture or restitution to Holland of the Island of Goree, off the coast of Senegal, in defiance of the old Treaty of Nimeguen, which gave it to France, a scheme which will win him the favour of their Mightinesses; but young Baronald's name was sent, through me this morning, to the Director-General of Infantry, for instant foreign service.'
'Foreign service!' whispered Dolores, in an almost breathless voice, while her white throat gave a sharp nervous gasp, and her long lashes drooped over her beautiful eyes. 'Surely, my lord, this must be some mistake. Lewie—he had no desire to leave Holland, in any way—he dreaded nothing so much as the departure of the Brigade to Britain; and this—this——'
'No mistake, I assure you,' interrupted the Earl, all unaware of the astonishment he was exciting and the pain he was inflicting, and both of which he must have perceived had not the Heer van Otterbeck, fortunately for Dolores, approached at that moment, and tapping and proffering his Sèvres china snuff-box, 'buttonholed' him on the inevitable subjects, the quarrel between Britain and Holland, Paul Jones in the Texel, and Commodore Fielding's conduct in firing on the Dutch fleet in the Channel, which the Commodore did with hearty goodwill.
But for Dolores, the charms of the ridotto had vanished now; and in sore perturbation of spirit and anxiety of heart, she bade her host and hostess a hurried farewell, summoned her sedan, and took her departure homeward.
The lights, the music—the music of Lulli; theminuet de la cour, and the gaiety of the ridotto, faded away behind her as the heiress took the somewhat lonely road that led to the villa of her mother.
She was escorted to her sedan by an officer of the Brigade, a friend of Lewie's, who, as he closed the roof of it over her, thought that she looked like—as he vowed to some others—'a lovely queen in wax-work done up in a glass-case.'
What was this mystery concerning the movements and intentions of Lewie Baronald, on which the Earl of Drumlanrig had so abruptly but unconsciously thrown a light?
When last they met and parted, Lewie had given no hint of any desire for foreign service, and certainly, with the relations then existing between himself and her, it was the last thing to be thought of.
'Oh,' thought Dolores, 'that I were at home to consult mamma on this amazing subject!'
Her bearers seemed to crawl; she narrowly opened and shut her fan again and again in her impatience, and stamped her little foot on the floor of the sedan in her irritation and anxiety.
Yes! that horrid General—that odious uncle, the eccentric woman-hater, was no doubt at the bottom of it, and had thus resolved to separate Lewie from her, and hot tears started to her eyes at the thought.
Though in the immediate vicinity of the Hague, the road was as lonely as those who awaited her thereon could have wished. The blue dome of heaven, a dome studded with diamonds—each itself a world—was overhead; and steady and silvery was the light of the uprisen moon, above the far expanse of the level landscape.
Suddenly Dolores heard the sound of voices; there were threats on one hand and expostulation on the other. The sedan, with a violent jolt, was suddenly deposited on the ground, and its bearers were dashed aside, as she supposed, by foot-pads. Then a shriek of dismay escaped Dolores, when a man, whose face was half-concealed by a crape mask, threw up the roof of the sedan, opened the door and attempted to drag her out by the hand.
She saw another similarly masked, and a caleche, with a pair of horses, close by.
Never dreaming of outrage for a moment, she thought that she must be the victim of some extraordinary mistake, till she recognised the voice of Maurice Morganstjern, when her alarm and astonishment instantly changed to indignation.
'Maurice,' she exclaimed, 'for whom do you mistake me? What outrage is this?'
'No mistake at all, my pretty cousin; will you please to take your seat in this caleche?' he replied deliberately.
'For what purpose?'
'Time will show, beloved Dolores.'
'Loose my hand. I wish none of your fair words; they are ever hateful and unwelcome to my ear: more so than ever when you come thus—as you must be—intoxicated,' she added, believing this to be the case.
'Beware, cousin—beware! You know how I love you, and yet you spurn me. Come, Schrekhorn, and help me to lift her into the caleche. For all the past bitterness I shall have a sweet revenge; and, Dolores, you will learn to love me, when you will have none else in this world to cling to.'
On seeing the Heer van Schrekhorn, of whose character she had heard something, approach her, the girl looked wildly round in terror: the road was lonely; her home was at some distance, yet the lights in its windows were visible; but no help was nigh. She now perceived that nothing less than her forcible abduction was daringly intended; but what lay in the future beyond that, she could scarcely realise.
Her first fears returned with double force, for she knew the recklessness of the two men at whose mercy she found herself. How lovely and helpless she looked!
Ruffian and coward though he was, Maurice Morganstjern was a consummate egotist, and her continued indifference and contempt of him had deeply wounded hisamour propre, and roused a spirit of revenge.
'It is useless to fight against Fate, Cousin Dolores; and Fate decrees that you are to be mine!' said he, firmly grasping her hand.
'Oh that I were a man!' exclaimed Dolores.
'For what purpose?'
'To strike you to the earth for your insolence and daring.'
'In that case I would not seek to carry you off; so, I thank Heaven that you are not a man, sweet cousin!' He placed his face close to hers, and lowering his voice, said through his clenched teeth: 'Listen to me, Dolores; you have, I fear, plighted yourself to the Scotsman Baronald in ignorance of yourself, and now I am here to rescue you from the death in life to which your girlish folly would doom you. I will soon teach you to forget that artful interloper, if you ever thought seriously about him, which I cannot believe, and our marriage will alter all your ideas.'
These references to her lover infuriated Dolores, who was a high-spirited girl; but he wound his arms round her despite all her efforts. With all her strength she kept him, however, at arms' length, exclaiming:
'I hate you—oh, how I hate you!'
'Cease this nonsense, cousin; a day is coming when you will love me as much as you may think you hate me now!'
'And what will cause the change?' she asked scornfully.
'Marriage.'
'Why waste time thus?' asked the Heer van Schrekhorn, who had not yet spoken, and who listened to all this with manifest impatience and uneasiness; 'we know not who may come upon us; so into the caleche with her at once!' he added with an oath.
''Sdeath, but she is as strong as I am!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as he strove to drag her from the sedan.
Her slender figure stood very erect, and with tiny hands she strove to free herself from his odious grasp; but the scorn, indignation, and passionate resentment that flashed in her dark eyes and curled her tender lips, now gave place to much of genuine fear of her assailants and how far their daring might carry them, especially when the Heer laid his brutal hands upon her; and uttering a wild cry she clung to the sedan, and without a resort to extreme violence would not be torn from it.
Meanwhile the driver of the caleche, who was in ignorance of the purpose his employers had in view, looked on somewhat scared, and was thinking of how he might, in the future, be handled by the Burgomaster or other authorities.
Dolores suddenly found her strength give way, and felt about to faint, when she heard a loud and wrathful exclamation as Morganstjern was dashed aside on one hand, Schrekhorn knocked down in a heap on the other, and there towered between her and them a tall military-looking man, wearing a Khevenhüller hat, and having a scarlet roquelaure wrapped round him.
The latter he instantly threw off, and drew his sword, on which the driver of the caleche whipped up his horses, and fled at full speed towards the Hague, leaving his employers to get out of the affair as they best could.
The first impulse of the two conspirators was to unsheath their swords also; but their second was to pause ere attempting to use them, as they recognised in their assailant an officer of the Scots Brigade, and one of high rank apparently by his gold aiguilette.
'Protect me, sir—save me!' implored Dolores.
'Scoundrels!' exclaimed the new-comer, waving in a circle round her his long straight sword, the blade of which glittered in the moonlight, and at sight of which Morganstjern fairly shrunk back; 'scoundrels, come on if you dare!'
'Accursed fool that I have been to delay as I did!' said Morganstjern.
'An accursed fool indeed!' rejoined the Heer furiously.
'Defend yourselves!' exclaimed the officer, attacking them both at once, and in a moment Morganstjern found his sword twisted out of his hand and flung high in the air by a circular parry, while the Heer was rendered defenceless by a thrust between the bones of his sword-arm, on which they both turned and fled, muttering curses loud and deep.
'Heaven sent you to my aid, sir, just in time,' said Dolores, bursting into tears now; 'another moment, and I should have fainted helplessly in their clutches.'
'These seemed no common brawlers—can you name them?' asked General Kinloch, for he it was, as he sheathed his sword, and lifted his Khevenhüller respectfully.
'I can name them; but would, as yet, rather be excused, sir.'
'Henckers! I should like to see both tied to theGesteel Paul' (i.e., the whipping-post).
The General now found himself face to face, in the bright moonlight, with a young lady of more than ordinary beauty; but, when the expression of her eyes, her thick brown hair, defined eyelashes, and lovely lips reminded him, as he thought, of a face he had known long ago, and loved to look upon; and her voice, too, was so like the voice of that other, coming as it were out of the mists of memory, he grew cold and rigid in manner, as he said:
'I have no desire to penetrate your secret, young lady, if secret there is that leads you to conceal the names of these men.'
'I have no secrets, sir; but one of these assailants is my near kinsman—a cousin,' replied Dolores, a little haughtily.
'Then allow me to have the honour of escorting you home.'
'I thank you, sir; the gate is close by.'
Again the courteous officer lifted his hat, and held it in one hand, while he led Dolores to the iron gate, which led to the garden-path terminating at the door of the Countess's villa; and then bidding her farewell, he turned away, his good opinion of her by no means increased by her peculiar reticence as to the names of those from whose outrageous conduct he had saved her.
'Odd—very!' he muttered; 'but every woman is an enigma!'
As he was about to close the iron gate, something glittering on the gravelled path caught his eye, and it proved to be a bracelet of considerable value, which had become injured in the struggle between Dolores and her assailants, and thus no doubt dropped from her wrist.
'One of her vain gauds, of course,' muttered the General; 'yet why should she not wear such, as all other female tricksters do?—a pretty creature—a charming girl, in fact! But what the devil am I saying? with all her prettiness she is no doubt false as she is fair—Dead Sea fruit, in fact. I shall send her bauble by my servant to-morrow, and—but no—egad! I'll deliver it in person.'
Returning to the door of the villa, the General used the great knocker, with which—all unknown to him—the hand of his nephew Lewie Baronald was so familiar.
While waiting on the door-step he looked a little contemptuously at the female ornament, though it was suggestive of a slender and a pretty wrist; but suddenly the expression of his face changed. He had either seen that gold bracelet before, or one most strangely like it, with a similar circle of diamonds round a large emerald; it gave him some curious, angry and bitter thoughts.
'Mynheer, did you knock?' asked a servant, rousing him from his reverie; and the General then became aware that the door was open, and a flood of warm light was streaming from a chandelier through a stately entrance-hall beyond.
He made known his errand, asked for the young lady, and was ushered into the drawing-room, which at that moment was untenanted.
Then, as now, the Dutch drawing-room was deemed a kind of sanctum or state-room, entered but seldom, the chief glory of which is always its highly-polished floor; so much so, that in some parts of Holland the visitor is still obliged to take off his shoes, or be very careful how he cleans them before admittance is granted.
In the aspect of the mansion there was much that indicated a substantial account at the Bank of Amsterdam; but that was as nothing to General Kinloch: he never thought of it.
By the light of a large lamp, the General had only time to remark that on the walls hung some clever and brilliant flower-pieces by De Heem, Huysum, and others, when Dolores stood before him, still clad in the brilliant costume she had worn at the ridotto, and looking radiantly beautiful.
Though surprised by the visit, she was glad to see her preserver so soon again. Her heart was full of intense gratitude for the succour he had afforded her, and she felt conscious that in her confusion and perturbation of spirit she had not shown enough, or half enough, of gratitude to him; yet he had saved her from a fate that would have been worse than death.
With a low bow he tendered her the bracelet, with a few well-chosen words of explanation.
'Thank you, dear sir, a thousand times!' she exclaimed; 'it was mamma's, and its loss would have grieved me much. To whom am I indebted for all this kindness?'
'My name is Kinloch—General Kinloch, at your service, Colonel-Commandant of the Scots Brigade,' he replied with another profound old-fashioned bow.
Lewie's uncle—the terrible General—the ogre, as she had been wont to call and deem him! The breath of poor Dolores was quite taken away with surprise.
'Mamma is a widow,' said she after a pause; 'you must see her and receive her thanks. A widow and very beautiful,' she added in thought, with the hope that the Countess might win the favour of this grim soldier for Lewie and herself.
'A widow,' repeated the General, with an unmistakable grimace, and with ill-suppressed cynicism in his voice; 'oh, indeed!' and he thought with a writer who says, 'A widow smacks of the charnel-house; she either did love her husband, or she didn't; and in either case who would care to be his successor?'
The Countess at that moment entered the room and came forward with one of her brightest smiles; but suddenly she paused, and the smile faded out of her beautiful face. Kinloch returned her bow with a startled air, and to the acute eyes of Dolores it seemed that a recognition, that was no common one, took place between her mother and the General.
For a time—but a very little time—amid her terror and dismay at the attack made upon herself, Dolores had forgotten the Earl of Drumlanrig's startling intelligence about Lewie's departure for foreign service; but now the memory of it returned in full force, and she looked coldly and earnestly yet distrustfully upon the General as their mutual enemy.
'Mamma,' said she, 'this is the gentleman of whom I told you, and who saved me from my assailants.'
'My daughter is under the greatest of obligations to you—how can I thank you, General Kinloch?' added the Countess, presenting her hand, which he touched slightly, but with reluctance and hesitation.
'Mercedes,' said he; 'you recognise me, then!'
Both were agitated and pale; but the Countess was the first to recover herself.
'What—you know each other, and he even knows your name!' exclaimed Dolores with blank astonishment.
Finding a necessity for speaking, the Countess thanked him for the service so promptly and gallantly rendered to her daughter, and expressed no small indignation at the daring of Maurice Morganstjern and his abettor; but while she spoke the General listened to her as one in a dream, while the sorely puzzled Dolores looked wonderingly on.
The original of the miniature now concealed in a secret drawer of the Dutch cabinet before referred to, treasured for years through all his alleged misogyny, was again before him.
'It is long since we met,' said the Countess.
'And—parted,' replied the General, in a hard voice.
'You have attained high rank now.'
'I was but a lieutenant in Halkett-Craigie's Battalion,then,' said he pointedly.
'Sir, I pray you to be seated,' and he mechanically took the chair indicated by a motion of her pretty white hand; 'you are not much changed since—since——'
'And you are scarcely changed at all.'
In the lovely matron, in ripe and full womanhood, he had recognised her in a moment—the girl of the hidden miniature, the early love of his youth, Mercedes who had deceived him, who had well-nigh broken his heart and embittered his whole existence.
The golden-brown hair his hands had once loved to fondle and toy with, seemed now more golden than ever, as it was sprinkled a little with brownmarchale, in the fashion of the day; but Dolores, in advance of it, wore her rich hair without any such doubtful accessory, and simply brushed backward over a low toupee that showed the contour of her low, broad, and beautiful forehead.
Twenty years had come and twenty years had gone since he last looked on them, yet in the eyes of Mercedes was the old subtle influence, in her voice the old subtle power; and he felt both so keenly—so intensely—that the thrill which passed through the heart of Kinloch amounted to—if we may use a paradox—a joyous pain!
Memories of the past time, by the Berbice river—memories sweet and sad and thrilling—were coming back with strange and curious force; the past returned, the present fled, and much that both had thought was long since dead, was reawakened within them.
'Mamma!' exclaimed Dolores, with irrepressible impatience and curiosity; 'you know General Kinloch! you have met before!'
'Yes, Dolores darling—my heart certainly tells me so,' replied the Countess, colouring deeply.
'Heart!' said the General; 'madame, the heart is an obsolete organ, in this our eighteenth century.'
'Perhaps it is too late in life to assume you can have any interest in me now; but if you will not, even once, take my hand kindly in yours, I shall think that it is not wounded love, but wounded pride, that inspires you still.'
The Countess spoke sweetly, and with one of her brightest and most caressing smiles.
He pressed her little hand for a moment; it was a mighty advance for the General to do so, but the touch sent a thrill to his heart, and he thought how absurdly young she looked to be the mother of Dolores!
'Good heavens!' that young lady was thinking, 'wonders will never cease.'
So the courteous gentleman, the brave Scottish soldier who had saved her—Lewie's terrible uncle—was her mother's early lover!
'The past is gone,' said the General gravely and sadly, and making an effort to withdraw, and yet staying nevertheless; 'so let us not tear open an old wound.'
'Pardon, and permit me to heal it, if I can,' said the Countess coquettishly, as she touched his bronzed hand with her lovely lips, and at this touch he trembled; so Dolores, saying something about taking off her ornaments, withdrew and left them, wonder and joy mingling in her heart together, while the General made an effort to appear indifferent, and to speak calmly, an effort in which he, eventually, signally failed.
'It is strange, madame,' said he; 'but I have lived so completely in camp and caserne, that I knew not that Mercedes—the Mercedes of other days, and the Countess van Renslaer, of whom my nephew speaks so much, were one and the same.'
'My husband, the Lieutenant——'
The General coughed, and said interrupting:
'Whom you preferred to poor John Kinloch of the Scots Brigade—well?'
'Died soon after succeeding to his title—a Flemish one—and I have been a widow since.'
'All these years?'
'All these years.'
Her long dark eyelashes flickered as she looked coyly at him, and then cast them down.
'I have never cared for another woman sincethattime,' said the General after a pause; 'and I never shall if I lived for—for—as long as the Brigade has been in Holland—and that is two hundred years.'
She laughed, but noiselessly; for she knew that when he began to talk thus, how his thoughts were wandering, and that he might, after all, begin to think that his future, for pleasure or pain, lay in the little white hands of the charming widow before him—of herself—the Mercedes of his early days by the Berbice river.
'As for the Count——' she began, but paused, for the General made a gesture of impatience, and playing with his sword-knot, said:
'Well, you married him, and not John Kinloch. You are a free woman now; would you like to take my heart in your toils again, Mercedes, to make sport of it after all these years?'
'Do not speak to me thus,' said she in her most seductive voice, as she touched his hand caressingly; 'I say too, after all these years, do not be so implacable. Ah! what must I think of you?'
'Think what you please.'
Again the long lashes flickered, and the snow-white eyelids drooped.
The General felt his position was becoming imperilled, that he 'was getting his flanks turned,' and so forth; and he rose to retire.
But the General resumed his seat, and began to look a little vacantly and helplessly about him.
'In the course of our lives it chances,' says a writer truly, 'that most of us influence directly or indirectly, in a greater or lesser degree, the lives of others; but, as a general rule, we do not recognise this influence untilafterthe effect has taken place.'
The Commandant of the Scots Brigade was yet to realise this.
There was a strange tremor in the usually stout heart of the general now, for though, after the sudden recognition of his first and, sooth to say, only love, he had begun to school himself to meet her with calmness or indifference, as a new friend, or old acquaintance, he felt himself as wax in her hands; and that it was impossible, even after the lapse of all these years, to meet her unmoved, and to sit eye to eye, and listening to her voice—the voice that had thrilled his heart in the old time, and was thrilling it now again.
He took her hand in his, and she permitted him to retain it; but for the life of him he knew not what to say, or how to take up the thread of the old story; so she took the initiative.
'You were but a young lieutenant,' said she softly, 'when last we met.'
'And parted, as I said before.'
His reply conveyed a species of reproach, as he had much to forgive; yet it seemed that there was an almost unconscious appeal in this reference to the old tie that bound them together once, and that now, did not seem to have been so completely severed after all.
'To my dying day, Mercedes, I thought I should remember your farewell glance at me,' said he.
'Forget it now,' she replied softly.
'Can I do otherwise?' he asked, as he read the shy light in downcast eyes. 'But oh, Mercedes, if—if——'
'What?'
'But I must not think it now—if your sweet lips should be but tricking me again!'
'Oh, think not so!'
Round hers his hand closed once again, and with its clasp came the earnest of a promise that each would never fail the other again; and then a great brightness seemed suddenly to fall upon the hearts and lives of both.
'Oh face so loved in the past time!' said Kinloch, as he drew her towards him and kissed her fondly, to the growing amazement of Dolores, who was about to enter the room, but withdrew softly, her heart tremulous with joy, though laughing, as a young girl is sure to do, at what she deemed a pair of elderly lovers; and yet the General was barely in his fortieth year.
It seemed to her that his resentment against her sex in general, and against widows in particular, had evaporated very quickly!
The General had felt the cold coquetry of Mercedes in the past—her desertion of him—too keenly, not to be deeply stirred and to feel her influence now.
The old love that in his heart had never died, but had been curiously woven up with a species of hate, came to the surface once more, and the assurance of it was flattering to the still beautiful Mercedes. 'Love,' it is said, 'cannot be measured by time; it springs up like fungus in the night. It flourishes apace, and, like the wind, none know whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.'
'Could you care still for such a fogey as I have become?' asked the General in a low voice; 'care for me again, I mean?'
'I am not now the thoughtless girl you loved in the past time.'
'But you are the woman I love now—the girl I never forgot and never ceased to love!' he exclaimed, while surprised at his own impetuosity and fluency. 'Once, at least, in our lives heaven seems to open to all of us: it opened to me when I first knew and loved Mercedes; and now heaven seems to have come to me again!'
And now, to the memory of both, there came back the murmur of the Berbice river, with its giant water-lilies; the glorious moon and stars of the tropics, looking down on the grassy ramparts of Fort Nassau, the palisades and spires of New Amsterdam, and the love-scenes of the past time; and when Kinloch rose to depart, it was with the promise that he would return betimes on the morrow.
It would be rather difficult to describe the emotions of the whilom misogynist, as he turned on his homeward way.
Joy at being restored to Mercedes, and gratified vanity that he could yet inspire love, conflicted curiously with a dread that he had compromised his own dignity and his long-vaunted opinions of the sex by this sudden surrender—this yielding to her great beauty and her old influence over him.
What would Drumlanrig, Dundas, and other old chums of the Brigade think of him? and what would Lewie Baronald say?—poor Lewie, whom he had doomed to foreign service to save him, as he had phrased it, 'from the fangs of Dolores'!
He felt his brown cheek blush hotly at the thought.
'That must be amended,' he muttered; 'to-morrow I shall see the Director-General of Infantry.'
It was impossible for him to shut his eyes to the fact that Dolores was every way a desirable bride for Lewie; and that, apart from her being the daughter of his own first and only love, she was thelionneof the Hague, who was fêted and courted, whose toilettes were copied, whose sallies were retailed, and who was the central figure in society there.
At last he stood in his old familiar room, where hung more than one old tattered colour of the Brigade, riven by Spanish bullets and Walloon pikes. How much had passed—how great was the change in his thoughts, hopes, and intentions, since he had left it, but a few hours ago!
He scarcely thought himself the same John Kinloch, as he drew forth the miniature from its secret drawer in the old cabinet, and sat down to contemplate it with loving and tender thoughts, and literally to 'feast' his eyes, as the phrase is, on the face of her who, before she went to sleep that night, pressed her ripe coral lips to her own hand; and they sought the exact place where the General, ere leaving, had pressedhis.
We have not much more to relate.
Maurice Morganstjern quitted the Hague suddenly, and betook him on his diplomatic mission, whatever it was, to Paris; and his compatriot the Heer van Schrekhorn thought it conducive to his personal safety to make himself scarce about the same time; so both were beyond the just vengeance of Lewie Baronald.
Great was the amazement of the latter when he found his uncle, the General, quiteen familleat the villa of the Countess, and learned from Dolores something of what had transpired on the night of the ridotto, and of her perilous adventure.
It seemed simply incredible!
'How now, uncle, about the name of Mercedes?' he asked him laughingly.
'What about it?' asked the General testily, yet reddening like a great schoolboy.
'Is it to go down in the annals of our family?'
'I hope so.'
"And how about all the Dead Sea fruit, the blackness of Gehenna, your firmness, and all that?'
'Silence, you young dog!'
And merrily laughed Dolores as she ran her white fingers over the piano, and sang a verse of the song that had now become so familiar to her:
'The love that I have chosenIs to my heart's content;The salt sea will be frozen,Before that I repent.Repent it will I never,Until the day I dee,Though the Lowlands o' HollandHave parted my love and me.'
'And your home is Scotland—the home to which you may take me, is it like this?' asked the Countess softly of the General, as they sat in the recess of a window; and from the question it may be safely gathered that events had progressed rapidly between them.
'Likethis!' exclaimed the General; 'you must see it for yourself to know the difference,' he added, as his eye swept the dull, dead flat of the Dutch landscape—flat as the flattest part of England.
Then he laughed as he thought of Thominean overshadowed by the majestic Ochills, the deep glens of which, with their solemn shadows and silence, are calculated to fill the soul at times with a species of poetic or melancholy ecstasy; the grey precipices past which the river rushes to Loch Leven, and the old mansion on its rock—half chateau and half fortress—of which Mercedes would some day be chatelaine.
But soon after all this, a shock awaited the General, when an orderly dragoon placed in his hand a large official packet addressed to himself, and sealed with the official seal of the Dutch Republic.
It announced that which had long been expected, that their High Mightinesses the States-General had dispensed with the services of the Scots Brigade, and a day was named when it would embark on board a squadron of British ships for Scotland, and be placed, as so many of its officers now desired, at the disposal of his Britannic Majesty.
The General's heart gave a throb. He had ruthlessly been on the point of separating his nephew from Dolores; and here, perhaps, he might eventually be separated from the old love he had so recently found again!
But Mercedes placed her hand in his, in token that they would never separate in life again.
So the old Brigade, of gallant memory, was going homeen masseat last—home to Scotland, with its mighty crop of laurels, gathered in the Lowlands of Holland, France, and Spain; home after two hundred years of foreign service, during which, as the Scottish commander-in-chief soon after told its soldiers in Edinburgh, they had captured in battle and siege many a standard, butnever lost one.
The brilliant sun of a July evening was shining on the broad blue waters of the Maese, and the pale-green willow groves that fringe its banks; on the tossing sails of many a windmill far afield; on the red mansions and spires of Rotterdam, the great brick tower of St. Laurence, and the high gables of the Hoeg Straat; on the long line of the Boompjies with all their stately elms, when the old Scots Brigade, with the drums of all its battalions waking Dutch echoes for the last time to 'The Lowlands of Holland,' marched to the landing-place for embarkation, accompanied by vast crowds of sympathising, admiring, regretful, and kindly-hearted Dutch folk; for a thousand old historical, warlike, and, better than all, friendly ties and associations were, on that evening, to be severed for ever!
Before that day of embarkation came, two marriages, which created the deepest interest in the departing Brigade (which the brides accompanied), had been celebrated at the Schotsche Kirk of the Hague, by its pastor, the Reverend Ichabod Crane: on which occasion there were present the Burgomaster; Heer van Otterbeck, the Minister of State; and two or three of their Mightinesses of the States-General.
Need we say whose marriages these were?
Chapter 2 headpiece
THE STORY
OF THE
CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR.
Chapter 2 tailpiece
It is in old Castile, and on the banks of the rapid Ebro, that our story opens, during the wonderful era of the Cid Campeador, when in Spain there were about twenty kings, some of whom were Christians, but more were Mohammedans; and in the land were many independent warlike lords, who roved about on horseback, completely armed, with trains of knights, offering their services to princes and princesses who were at war.
This custom, says Voltaire, had already spread over Europe, but nowhere to such an extent as in Spain; the Christian knights were dubbed as such, with many solemn ceremonies, 'and watched their arms before the altar of the Virgin Mary; but the Moslem paladins were content with simply girding on a scimitar. This was the origin of knights-errant and of such numbers of single combats.'
What with twenty kings all warring among themselves; lawless robbers in the Sierras to fight; Jews to capture, torture, and mulct; knights-errant besetting the highways and bridges with shield uplifted to meet all comers; Moors on every hand to slay without mercy, but more particularly at Seville, Granada, and Valencia, and the still more abhorred Morabathans, the restless spirits who wished to be up and doing, for good or for evil, amid the din of kettledrums and cymbals, the glitter of lances and banners and so forth, must have had plenty of work cut out for them in the sunny Spain of those days, long ere Cervantes had laughed her 'chivalry away.'
Near the right bank of the Ebro, about ten miles from Burgos, at the base of the Montanos de Santander, stood the Convent of Miraflores; and though many times repaired and renewed, it stands there still: but it was in the zenith of its fame when one day in the June of that year, while Sancho, the ambitious King of Castile, was preparing to besiege Zamora, an armed knight reined up his horse on its most sequestered side, where one solitary window overlooked the river and all the groves of olive and myrtle that grew thereby.
Though we write of a period so remote, strange to say the window is there still in the old wall, against which the Moors have more than once hurled their strength in vain, and it projects like a carved stone cage of three pointed arches, supported by the head and wings of a time-worn and gigantic figure of grotesque design; and thereat was a fair young face, that grew bright with joy when the young knight drew near.
The latter was a typical Spaniard, vigorous, tall, and well developed in figure; black haired, with eyes full of fire; dark, well-defined eyebrows, and features sharp and grave. Save that he wore a species of Moorish basinet, bright as silver, with a tippet of mail; he was clothed in chain armour to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet, for the land teemed with fighting and peril, and no man ventured abroad save completely equipped. His spurs were goads without rowels, and a cross-hilted sword hung in his glittering belt.
The girl who welcomed his approach was not areligieuse, for young ladies were boarded in convents then as now; but her costume declared her to be of rank, as it was of shiny, golden-yellow silk, trimmed with black of the same material, tightly sleeved to the wrist; and she wore her thick, dark hair plaited in several divisions, after the old Gothic custom that lingered still in Spain.
Her complexion was fair and bright; her features delicate and harmonious; she was bewitching rather than beautiful—quite enough so to be the heroine even of a romance! and theMadre Abadesaof Miraflores, who had very special instructions given her regarding the care of this young lady, had accorded her the secluded apartment with the projecting window—a circumstance which led to the young knight discovering and making her acquaintance, a fact that would have filled the good lady with intense dismay—for by flirting their falcons, the young pair had come to a flirtation, and rather more, between themselves.
In those days he who bore the hawk on his left wrist in the most graceful way, was deemed the most accomplished cavalier; and to please ladies, it was the fashion to play flirty tricks with the pinions of their hawks. Thus, more than once, when passing, had the strange knight's hawk flown upward to the full length of its silken jess to flirt with the merlin on the hand of the lady, and hence it came to pass that the owners met as we find them. In those days people seem to have fallen in love more suddenly and desperately than they do in our railway times, and their love seemed always to delight in struggling with difficulties.
There was much of the Romeo and Juliet passionate tenderness in the suddenly-developed regard of these two, but we cannot suppose that the lovers of those days spoke more 'on stilts' than those of the present time. The old story that was first told in Eden will have ever the tender trivialities and endearing epithets, so we shall imagine all these said, and come to prose at once.
'Your name, señor mio—dear love rather—in all your visits you have never yet told it to me?' she said softly.
'I have to win it yet,' he replied.
'Where?' she asked.
'Where does a hidalgo win his name save in battle against the Moorish curs? When so won, you shall know it. But yours, sweet lady?'
'May not, must not, be told to one who conceals his own.'
'But I must call you something, Estrella mia,' said he tenderly.
'Then your "star" be it,' said she, laughing and kissing her hand to him, 'and my love and my prayers go with you to battle.'
'Nay, I go not to battle just now.'
'Whither then, and armed thus?'
'To fulfil a vow of vengeance on a craven who smote my aged father on the beard with his mailed hand.'
'Is it not better to forgive?'
'Some things, perhaps, but not a deed like that! Ay de mi, is it not hard for you to be shut up in this solitary place, dependent on yourself for all joy and amusement?'
'Nay, señor mio, I am content; and is not contentment joy? I shall never be happier than I am, till I rejoin my dear old father.'
'Where?' asked the knight.
'To tell that would be to disclose myself.'
'Tie a ribbon to my lance-head, thou dear one, and I shall dip it in the blood of him I have vowed to slay.'
She did so, saying in the spirit of the age:
'Rival, if you can, the Cid Rodrigo, who has been known to meet ten knights in arms, and unhorse them all; who, with his sword, slew that giant Moor, the Caliph of Cordova, and released six Christian maidens.'
The knight laughed lightly.
'Dios guarde à ustéd, mi querida!' he exclaimed, gathering up his reins, and spurring his horse—the Babieca of so many ballads and romances—for sooth to say, he was the identical Cid Rodrigo of whom she spoke; and waving a farewell to 'the sweet face at the window,' he rode off with lance and helmet flashing in the sun, and she watched him till he disappeared in the direction of Miranda—watched him departing on his deadly mission with less anxiety, perhaps, than a girl of the present day would see her lover start by express train.
The Convent of Miraflores, with its garden and vineyard, formed a kind of oasis in the long sweeping plain at the foot of the rugged Sierra; shy bustards stalked about there in the loneliness amid the silent scenery, for silent it is in Spain, where there are no singing birds. A train of mules crossing the waste, where the wild mignonette grows still in sheets of green; a solitary horseman in mail, with lance-head glittering in the sun, or a friar jogging along on a mule, alone were seen from time to time from the convent windows.
Gentle and soft in disposition, the fairpensionariahad a deal of pent-up tenderness at her disposal. Hitherto it had been bestowed upon pet birds and flowers, mingled with many prayers in chapel and much musing and reverie at the projecting window, where she would sit for hours in that non-literary age, when there were no books, no Berlin wool-work, and no pianos, gazing at the sparkling stars of the summer night or at the morning sun, as he tipped the transparent foliage of the myrtle groves and lit up the current of the Ebro; till a day came when she was roused and excited by finding a gallant hawk, hooded and plumed, flirting with the merlin on her wrist, and saw its owner, the young mailed horseman, below the window regarding her with pleasure and admiration; and as he had some trouble in luring back his bird, a secret acquaintance, that ripened into love, began between these two. The girl—for she was but a girl, and very young too—loved with all her newly-awakened woman's heart and with a wild yearning, very different, perhaps, from that of a young woman of the present day, for her life was one of intense seclusion, and he rapidly became (like Romeo) 'the god of her idolatry' in the unreasoning enthusiasm of those days of romance and chivalry.
How little could she dream that her lover was the Cid Rodrigo of Bivar, with the fame of whose exploits all Spain resounded now!
He was born at Burgos, where his father, Don Diego Lainez, was a powerful noble, and his mother was Donna Teresa, 'daughter of the Conde Don Nuno Alvarez,' as the inscription on her tomb bears now in the church of San Pedro de Cordova, near Burgos.