"I must leave it! One does not keep Waldstein waiting! I bequeath it to you. See that you give a good account of it."
"That I can promise you!" said the still hungry lieutenant. "At dawn, you said?"
"At dawn! And give a good look at the horses before you turn in!"
Then casting his cloak about him Nigel went out into the deepening twilight.
Nigel Charteris had once, and only once, spoken to Wallenstein face to face. For although Nigel served as a subaltern all through the great campaign, the large armies commanded by the great general operated over tracts of country often miles apart, and months elapsed between one glimpse of him and the next. Little by little, as the great game of war had come to mean something to Nigel's mind, for at the first it had seemed but a sadly confused business, it came to him that Albrecht von Waldstein was a great player. Since his experience with Count Tilly, Nigel had been able to agree that he also was no mean antagonist, but not the equal of Wallenstein. In that curious welter of the Thirty Years' War it wanted but little shaking of the dice-box for Tilly and Wallenstein to have been pitted against one another. As the dice fell, they never were so pitted, and by consequence what then might have happened is left to those skilful in conjecture, and not for us the chroniclers of what did happen.
Nigel, ushered by one servant to another, and finally by some great one to the presence of the great man, felt the awe that one does in meeting the supremely great in one's own profession; but as to his being a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, which the Emperor had made him, a Duke of Friedland, which by comparison was a mere proclamation of landed nobility, Nigel Charteris of Pencaitland in the Lothians cared little. The man was gentle by birth as he himself was. Whether he was a degree higher or lower was naught to a gentle Scot, for the Scot yields to no man in the pride of race.
The house was a great house, rather deep than wide, with gardens full of trees behind. At some time it had belonged to the King of Bohemia, but had been bestowed on one of the great nobles, and in the general disturbance of things ensuing upon the Winter King's invasion of Bohemia, Albrecht von Waldstein had bought it for a small part of its value. It was not the only instance of that faculty the exercise of which by the Jews has gained them the contemptuous names of brokers and Lombarders. In other words, Wallenstein became rich, had become rich, not because he was a great and successful general, but because the same talents which enabled him to plan and organise his armies, enabled him also to plan his own fortunes in matters of estate.
Wallenstein received Nigel in a spacious chamber, which had been an audience-chamber in older days. It was panelled with wood all round the walls, and the flat ceiling was also of wood, but painted with the royal arms of Bohemia and those of the chief vassals, much of them faded and blackened. There was a great open fireplace with a goodly fire of logs blazing in it, and at a convenient distance from it was a small table, curiously carved as to the legs, a couple of flagons of wine, and two tall goblets of fine glass curiously wrought.
In a great chair sat Wallenstein, and at the door by which Nigel entered stood two serving-men.