'Friends!' she cried, her voice tender almost to yearning. 'Say it shall be so. Let it be so always. You will not leave me alone here?'
'No,' he said simply, and with dignity. 'I shall not.'
Then he went away, quite quietly; and if the beginning of the interview had shown him to small advantage, the same could not be said of the end. He went down the street and through the camp with his head on his breast and a mist before his eyes. The light was gone out of the sunshine, the greenness from the trees. The day was grey and dreary and miserable. The blight was on all he saw. So it is with men. When they cannot have that which seems to them the best and fairest and most desirable thing in the world, nothing is good or pleasant or to be desired any longer.
CHAPTER XVII.
[STALHANSKE'S FINNS.]
It was my ill luck, on that day which began so inauspiciously, to see two shadows: one on a man's face, the Waldgrave's, and of that I need say no more; the other, the shadow of a man's body, an odd, sinister outline, crooked and strange and tremulous, that I came upon in a remote corner of the camp, to which I had wandered in my perplexity; a place where a few stunted trees ran down a steep bank to the river. I had never been to this place before, and, after a glance which showed me that it was the common sink and rubbish-bed of the camp, I was turning moodily away, when first this shadow and then the body which cast it caught my eye. The latter hung from the branch of an old gnarled thorn, the feet a few inches from the ground. A shuddering kind of curiosity led me to go up and look at the dead man's face, which was doubled up on his breast; and then the desire to test the nerves, which is common to most men, induced me to stand staring at him.
The time was two hours after noon, and there were few persons moving. The camp was half asleep. Heat, and flies, and dust were everywhere--and this gruesome thing. The body was stripped, and the features were swollen and disfigured; but, after a moment's thought, I recognized them, and saw that I had before me the poor wretch who had appealed to my lady's compassion after the shooting-match, and to whom the general had opened his hand so freely. The grim remarks I had then heard recurred now, and set me shuddering. If any doubt still remained in my mind, it was dissipated a moment later by a placard which had once hung round the dead man's neck, but now lay in the dust at his feet. I turned it over. Chalked on it in large letters were the words 'Beggars, beware!'
I felt at first, on making the discovery, only horror and indignation, and a violent loathing of the camp. But these feelings soon passed, and left me free to consider how the deed touched us. Could I prove it? Could I bring it home to the general to my lady's satisfaction, beyond denial or escape, and so open her eyes? And if I could, would it be wise, by doing so, to rouse his anger while she remained in the camp and in General Tzerclas' power? I might only hasten the catastrophe.
I found this a hard nut to crack, and was still puzzling over it, with my eyes on the senseless form which was already so far out of my thoughts, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and a harsh voice grated on my ear.
'Well, Master Steward, a penny for your thoughts! They should be worth having, to judge by the way you rub your chin.'