'But, Falconer, old fellow, though a genuine Scot, brave as a lion and obstinate as a mule, he nearly proved too much for you,' said Stanley, proffering his cigar-case, 'and would have done so in the end, but for your fair auxiliary. By Jove! that girl must be a regular brick!'
'You gave the Turks analerteat Alexinatz after I left the camp?' said Cecil, to change the subject.
'Your branch of the service, the cavalry, did,' replied Pelham; 'we came on with the infantry supports, and, as we had to keep our faces quite as often to our men, in leading them on, as to the enemy (you know what cowardly beggars the Servians are!), I nearly had my dorsal fin carried away by a carbine bullet. But here comes our turkey, done to time; and now to dinner with what appetite we may.'
'We have had no fighting since Alexinatz,' said Stanley, 'and our camp-life seems tame after what has gone before it.'
'Like claret on the top of champagne.'
'Man alive! for days we have had nothing better to drink than German beer, and Pelham consoles himself by expatiating on Moselle as if he had been weaned on it.'
It was as music to Cecil, hearing once again the pleasantly modulated and frank English voices of Pelham and Stanley, who made him so welcome to share their humble repast—humble in its mode of production and appurtenances—but both declared themselves sick of Servia and its army, and after another battle or two, as the novelty had worn off, they had resolved to resign and return home.
Cecil thought that he would gladly do the same; but he had no home that he knew of to return to.
He knew nothing of the round sum so kindly offered and paid by Stanley and Pelham for accounts of his safety, and the generous fellows, of course, never mentioned it to him; but neither of them knew that it eventually led to Guebhard—acting on the information of the wood-cutters—tracking him as he did to Palenka, and from thence through the forest.
It was the evening of an autumn day, late in the year. A golden light lingered on the mountain-slopes, and a soft, silvery mist rose from the oak and pine forests that clothed them. The salmon were leaping from rock to rock in a tributary of the Morava, that flowed through the camp, and cattle were herding peacefully in the valleys under the shadow of Mount Mezlanie; and the fields of Indian corn, rice and maze were being reaped in places where the wild Turkish Timariots had many a time in the days of old swept in furious bands from Thrace to Belgrade, slaying the stalwart and young, the aged and helpless; sparing the lovely alone as their spoil; and where, in later times, the standard of Black George had led so often to victory, but never to defeat.
It was a glorious autumnal evening, and, seated there by the camp fire with pleasant English comrades, and enjoying what had long been a rarity to him, a good cigar, Cecil felt all the joyous impulses of the time—a change or relaxation of mind, after all he had so lately undergone.
'Here,' said Pelham, as he lounged on the grass at full length, a tawny beard of imposing aspect flowing over the breast of his brown infantry tunic, and smoking his briar-root with the marked laziness that follows a day of hard work and excitement, for he had been foraging in the vicinity of the enemy—'here we have to do without the thousand and one trifles that seem so necessary to one's existence in the atmosphere of Tyburnia and Belgravia; and yet, somehow, we don't seem to miss them.'
'Your rescue of Tchernaieff and Palenka in the cavalry charge, and your decoration with the Takova cross, and so forth, have all been duly chronicled in the London papers,' said the dapper little correspondent (before mentioned) to Cecil; 'and doubtless they have been the means of sending a thrill through the breasts of the listless,nil admirariand languid snobs of society.'
Has she heard of all this? was Cecil's only thought; and the dear old Cameronians, too?
As these heedless spirits had got hold of Margarita's name, and knew—but not how far, exactly—she had been woven up in the network of Cecil's late adventures, he had to undergo some raillery on the subject, and somewhat to his annoyance.
'It is an established fact in fiction and in real life—in history and in poesy,' said Stanley, twirling his long moustache and adopting a sententious tone, 'that a fellow must inevitably fall in love with the pretty girl who nurses him after a spill in the hunting-field, after a wound received in action, and more especially if she actually saves his life; and this girl did yours, and she is downright lovely! I saw her in the iron church, on the day that Tchernaieff distributed so many crosses and medals to the troops. And you know, as Sancho Panza says, "as days go and come, and straw makes medlars ripe," in the fulness of time we may expect to see——'
'Stanley, how your idle tongue wags!'
'If it wags, it cannot be idle, Cecil; and if you are destined to marry this fair Servian, and found a race of heyducs, or whatever the deuce they are called, I suppose it is no use attempting to run away from her.'
Cecil, who knew more of what had passed between himself and Margarita than the heedless speaker had the least idea of, felt his secret annoyance increased by this banter. Owing her the most profound gratitude, as he did, and painfully aware of her rash, wild, and ill-concealed but ill-considered regard for himself—a regard by which he felt himself imperilled, rather than charmed or flattered—he could not, with patience, hear her name mentioned in this way by these thoughtless fellows—blasé waifs from the society of 'the West End.'
'By Jove, how pink he grows!' exclaimed Pelham; 'but no doubt she hopes to finish her maidenly career with you, Cecil.'
'Hush!' said the latter, with open irritation, yet laughing to conceal it if possible; 'here comes her brother.'
Wearing a very handsome Russian uniform—a green tunic faced with black velvet and laced with gold, and with several decorations glittering on his breast, the count, on foot, with his sword under his arm, approached the camp fire, and touched his flat round forage cap in salute.
'Herr Lieutenant,' said he to Cecil, 'I knew that I should find you here. I have a message to you from the general, which I know you will receive with pleasure.'
Cecil started to his feet and bowed.
'To reward you for all you have undergone, his excellency means to give you a new opportunity for distinguishing yourself,' continued Palenka, smiling. 'You are to reconnoitre, about dawn, the country between Mount Mezlanie and the Timok river, about twenty miles from this; observe its features, what you may see, and report thereon. The picked men of your troop—your own, as yet without a captain—to the number of twenty sabres, will parade at midnight, in front of the general's quarters.'
Cecil was still on the staff, but he accepted the duty assigned with pleasure, and felt the hint conveyed, that his troop was as yet without a captain, as the latter had been killed at Alexinatz.
'I can stay with you but a few minutes, gentlemen,' said the count; 'and meantime will join you in a glass of some wine my servants have brought, in honour of the Herr Lieutenant and his victory over the jade Fortune.'
'Tokay!' exclaimed Stanley, in a low voice, as he saw with interest a Cossack extracting the tiny cobwebbed bottles: 'Tokay, by all the gods!—such wine as can't be got for money, I have no doubt.'
'You are right, Herr,' said the count, who overheard him; 'they are the last of a present the Emperor gave my father—and I have just begged Tchernaieff to accept, from me, a dozen—they are all of the first brand, and from the grapes of Hegyallya.'
Other officers now came to share the count's Hungarian wine—Russian Hussars in sky-blue dolmans, Servian dragoons with queer forage caps, like Scotch glengarries, and baggy red breeches; and a picturesque group the whole made, Palenka being the most striking figure there. He was very handsome, and would have formed a fine study for a painter. He had a visage naturally pale, but embrowned by exposure, a dark, martial, eagle-eye, and black moustache, with a general daring, undaunted and fiery air about him—in aspect, curiously between a man of fashion and a reckless Free Lance; a man who in thought and habit had much of the old heyduc in him, and was perhaps a little behind this unromantic, unmoved, and unheroic age.
Beside him sat Pelham, a brave and reckless fellow, but of a very different mould—under the middle size, yet a winning and aristocratic-looking Englishman, about thirty years of age, with blue eyes, and a general and genial sunshiny smile in his face.
'And where, now, is she to whom I owe so much—Mademoiselle Palenka?' asked Cecil in a low voice, when occasion served, and feeling the necessity, in common politeness at least, to remember the fact of her existence.
'She has left the camp,' was the curt response of the count, over whose face a shade fell for a moment; for some rumours—some suspicions of his sister's interest in the questioner—must have reached him, and he knew that the impulsive Margarita was difficult to control; so Cecil said no more on the subject, and, changing his place to another part of the noisy and laughing group, became somewhat silent.
He had ample food for reflection, certainly.
It was impossible for him not to think with positive wonder on all the strange complications that must have arisen had the count, and those who accompanied him, been but a very little later in coming to announce that he—Cecil—was free; and that if he had availed himself of the disguise brought by Ottilie, and reached the appointed spot where Theodore awaited him with the horses, and too probably Margarita too (indeed he could not doubt she was there), and had he taken, with her, that flight which the detection of the deserter's forgery rendered unnecessary, the whole future of both their lives must have been changed from that hour; for it was evident that she had meant to cast her lot with him, and for all she knew or could foresee, her one life against a censorious world.
'We must never meet again—I must see her no more!' was his thought again and again, and he was conscious that the count was looking at him scrutinisingly from time to time. The usually heedless and unobservant Pelham detected this, and said to Palenka inquiringly:
'Why do you look so gravely—so sadly at our friend, with whom you were laughing but a few minutes ago?'
'Sadly—do I? Well, sooth to say, I feel somewhat sorry for him.'
'Why—what the deuce is up now?'
'I am rather an acute physiognomist,' replied the count, looking down and affecting to select and manipulate a cigar, 'and think I can see—can read in his face, by a certain gravity of expression there, that he will—after all he has escaped—die a violent death.'
'A violent death!' repeated Pelham, with an expression of surprise in his face; 'from what do you gather this?'
'I cannot say—a kind of prescience—an intuition of destiny—that I have no control over; but I have rarely been mistaken.'
'Well,' replied Pelham, 'I might predict as much about many of us; we may perhaps be engaged to-morrow, and some that are above the turf just now, may be under it soon enough.'
The count gave an inscrutable smile, and began to smoke; and Pelham was glad only that Cecil—going, as he was so soon to do, on a duty of some peril—had not overheard a prediction so strange and gloomy concerning himself.
'Destiny—prescience—bosh!' thought Pelham; but the count's face and manner impressed the volatile Englishman, who had only come to fight in Servia as the means to a 'new sensation.' He became perplexed, silent, and when Cecil spoke, his voice seemed somehow to stir a painful chord in the breast of Pelham.
'A violent death!'
This strange prophecy gave him some cause to think. Did the count refer to the chances of war, or that Cecil was fore-doomed prematurely, and had his destiny—his kismet, like an Osmanlie—written on his brow? Or was it that he resented, with all his apparent candour and generosity, some love-passages between his sister and the late prisoner, and meant to have the latter cut off?—a matter easily achieved in that lawless land.
Pelham was restlessly uneasy on the subject, and sat reflectively sucking at his briar-root in silence, till the bugles sounded for lights and fires out—for silence in camp, and all retired to their tents or huts.
At midnight, punctually, Cecil, cloaked and armed, rode to the headquarters of Tchernaieff, in front of which he found his troop mounted, and a sergeant calling the roll by lantern-light, the rays of which fell feebly on the dark faces and darker uniforms of the Servian troopers, who were all in light marching order, without valises or other encumbrance, save forage-nets, sponge-bags and spare shoes. By lantern-light he opened the ranks and inspected them; the pistols and carbines were loaded. From Palenka he got a written memorandum of the path or route he was to pursue, though much was left to his own discretion.
The party, consisting of twenty sabres, broke into sections of fours.
'Shagoum-marche!' (walk-march) was the first command, and they got into motion.
'Rishu!' (trot) cried Cecil, and away they went, and quickly left the camp behind them, looking somewhat ghost-like amid the starless gloom, as they glided noiselessly over the soft turf, on which, as yet, the hoofs of their horses made no sound.
Young soldier though he was in some respects, Cecil knew well the importance of the duty assigned to him, and the great circumspection requisite in the mode of executing it; all the more as Circassian and Egyptian cavalry had been but recently heard of in the vicinity of Rajouz, a village about five miles from Deligrad.
Whatever Cecil did, he usually gave his heart to; and he was doubly anxious to prove himself worthy of the renewed trust and faith reposed in him by Tchernaieff, and to stifle the qualms of disgust he had begun to feel for the Servian service, and which usually rise, sooner or later, in the heart of every Briton at any foreign service, and which was the more likely to influence Cecil by the memory of late events.
As his party rode on at a leisurely walk, after quitting the vicinity of the camp, the hoofs tramping out the rich odours of the fallen leaves and aromatic plants, he gave strict orders that there was to be no smoking (lest lights, even so small, were seen), and that there must be no talking or singing—that utter silence must pervade every movement.
His party had food for three days; thus he halted and fed the horses at every two leagues, so that they should always be fresh and fit for duty, taking care to halt in thickets, or at a distance from all roads, and using every precaution to preclude surprise while the feeding was in process, and the horses consequently unbitted.
He was furnished with a guide, whom, however, he kept ignorant of the route indicated to him by Tchernaieff—the line of country towards the Timok river.
He knew, too, that an officer, be his rank what it may, can never, with honour, decline the perilous duty of a reconnaissance, as the honour is amply made up by the importance of the expedition, which frequently proves of the utmost consequence in the operations of the future.
Thus, when day began to dawn, and he found himself traversing the fields and forest lands on the eastern slopes of Mount Mezlanie, while moving with the utmost care and circumspection, with two advanced troopers some distance in front, riding each with loaded carbine on thigh, he began his notes and task of surveying, by minutely examining the face of the country, the hollows and vales, whether stony or swampy; the grass and the watercourses; the line of the principal roads, their turnings, breadth, and capability for the passage of artillery; the situation of farmhouses or villages, and their capabilities for defence; the bridges, etc.—and all the memoranda thereon he extended and corrected during the halts for refreshing the men and horses.
Particularly had he to note where grass, hay, and corn could be procured, in case of an advance in that direction; with the proper ground for camps, with fuel and water in the vicinity, and so forth, omitting nothing that might prove of value to his leaders. And in this new species of employment the first day passed without event, and the approach of evening found his party preparing to halt for the night in a thicket of oaks and pines, under the shadow of some lofty and impending precipices, the fronts of which glared redly in the western light, above the deep green of the forest trees.
A line of silvery haze, exhaled by the evening sun, winding among them, indicated the course of the Timok river, which descends from the south side of Mount Haiduchki, of the Balkan chain in Servia, and flows along the confines of Bulgaria till it reaches the Danube. So the river was almost in sight, and as yet neither Cecil nor his troopers had 'felt' the Circassian or Egyptian cavalry; and everywhere the country seemed quiet, the peasantry attending in peace to their agricultural avocations.
Near the halting-place lay a deep pool surrounded by cedars and pines; rich boughs drooped into its water, on which the snow-white lilies floated, and there the horses were unbitted, and they and their riders drank thirstily.
By dawn next day all were in their saddles again, and the reconnaissance was resumed.
Sharply observant, though naturally unsuspicious, Cecil had, ere this, begun to remark that an armed peasant, with a large black beard—but all men were armed there, and then especially—who had questioned the advanced file of men and obtained from them a light for his pipe—appeared to dodge or watch his party, which rode at an easy pace, and from time to time he saw this peasant appearing on the crest of one slope, as they began to descend another.
Disliking this, he sent a corporal back at a trot to question this fellow and demand his object or purpose; but the latter eluded this by disappearing in a thicket, only, as it eventually proved, to follow still, but unseen and more warily.
As the road traversed one of those warm valleys where, in Servia, the cotton-plant is raised in great quantities, and where the plantations present so pleasing an appearance, the glossy dark green leaves contrasting so finely with the white globular flowers scattered over the tree, Cecil's party overtook three mounted persons—a man and two females—who, after a consultation among themselves apparently, checked their horses to let his troopers come up with them.
As they drew near them, Cecil felt his pulse quicken. There was no mistaking the brown habit faced with scarlet, the smart hat and white ostrich feather, and the graceful figure of the wearer, or the old-dragoon seat of her male attendant. For here was Margarita, accompanied by old Theodore, and the third mounted personage was the pretty Ottilie.
'Margarita again—and here! By Jove! thereissome fatality in all this!' thought Cecil; and he spurred in advance of his party, and joined the trio, two of whom at once reined their horses back; and one of them, Ottilie, coloured very deeply, for she was not ignorant of the grotesque rumours that had been current concerning the disguise in which she had been found.
'You here, Herr Lieutenant!' exclaimed Margarita, with genuine surprise, while placing her whip in her bridle-hand, she presented the other to Cecil; 'here northward of Mount Mezlanie?'
'I am reconnoitring—and you?'
'Amen routefor Palenka; then via Belgrade for Vienna.'
If she thought to interest him by this intelligence she failed, for he said:
'I am glad to hear that you are leaving this district, for we know not which way the tide of war may roll: and the fact of your being here without an escort is most rash, as patrols of Circassian and Egyptian horse have been seen between the Timok and the Morava!'
'We are now within ten miles of Palenka, and have seen nothing as yet to alarm us,' she replied.
Palenka was in a safe district; but who could count on what might lie between? Why should he not escort her so far, when he was free to do so, as his command was a roving one? and Palenka lay on the west side of the Timok, and in the district he was to examine.
Her eyes sparkled and her colour heightened as he announced his intention; and they rode slowly on together, he the while, with all the interest that he could not help feeling in her, wishing in his heart that she was safe in Belgrade, Vienna, or anywhere else than by his side.
She thanked him for the proffered escort.
'Say nothing of that,' said he; 'I owe you so much more than I can ever repay.'
'You owe me a debt, I know; yet it might be best adjusted by our forgetting—as if we had never known—each other.'
'Margarita, who that has seen and known you will ever forget you?' he asked, with truth in his voice and eye.
'Many, I have no doubt.'
Her manner was somewhat bitter and weary, and from under her long dark eyelashes she looked at him, from time to time, with a kind of passionate pain.
'One fact I shall never forget, at least—that you saved me from great and deadly peril, by your acumen and superior intelligence.'
'By my suspicion of Guebhard and general knowledge of his character, and of what he is capable—say, rather.'
'And thus you rendered my flight from Deligrad unnecessary.'
'Yes,' she replied curtly.
On that point he said no more. She coloured for a moment at his reference to it, and then became pale again; but paleness was the normal condition of her face.
This brilliant woman loved him, and had not cared much to conceal that she did so. What was he to say to her—what to tell—how to explain all? It was impossible for him to put in clear, cold words before her the mortifying fear that he could not—should not love her in return, because he was affianced—so hopelessly, as he supposed—to another.
Could he ask her to take back a heart he certainly had never sought? It was in every way a perplexing and grotesque situation.
'You have become very silent,' said she, in a tone of pique, while switching, and then checking her horse. 'Of what are you thinking?'
'That if some of those wild Circassians, of whom I have been told, were only to appear now——'
'Heaven forbid! why?'
'That I might empty a saddle or two, and risk in your service the life you saved, and thus make an atonement——'
'I want no such risk run; and what,' she asked a little sharply, 'do you mean by atonement?'
'Only this, that you saved my life, Margarita, and may claim its whole future, if you will,' said he, while Mary's face came reproachfully to memory, for the speech was disloyalty to her, however gallantly meant to Margarita, whom the peculiarity of its tenor irritated rather than flattered.
'This is an idle speech, and I know its value. I thank you for your escort, but we shall part at Palenka, and as another day will see me on the road for Vienna, we shall never meet again; and you may become to me, what I shall never be to you—a dream, without pain perhaps.'
This was one of her many strange and passionate speeches, his general or vague replies to which always piqued her.
'Youth and pleasure are a dream,' said he.
'And life itself, say some.'
'But these metaphysicians do not tell us where or how we shall wake to find it so—unless in death.'
'Enough of a subject so gloomy and abstruse,' said she sharply, for Cecil's strange indifference galled and piqued her keenly.
Though a fashionably-bred woman, and as a girl accustomed to the best society in Vienna, in wild Servia she was certainly rather untrammelled by the bonds of conventionality. Her life from young girlhood had been full of gaiety, variety, vivid colour, and very rational pleasure. She had been the object of much adulation, admiration, and love, too; she had been amused or bored by all, but won by none till now, when Cecil, the wanderer, the soldier of fortune, with no inheritance but his sword, had won her regard without seeking it.
She was assured now—bitterly so—that he would never kneel to her as a lover; yet she was loth that he should ever free himself from the power of her fascinations, if she could make him feel it. Fain would she have won that heart which seemed so fresh and guileless, so unlike any she had yet met—so unworn and prone to have good faith in all men.
There was a certain languor and then occasional fiery carelessness in Margarita that must have come to her with the blood of the old heyduc of Palenka, and his bride—some odalisque, perhaps, won by the edge of his sabre amid the plunder of a pasha's household, and hers was the disposition, the passion and the situation, that so often lead to blind and bitter hatred, ending in crime and sorrow.
She knew the power of her beauty over all men, and she knew also the claim for special gratitude over this loyal, dauntless, and grateful heart, and hoped that she knew how to use both; thus many a time she looked at him with her bright, languid eyes, the colour of which was often difficult to define, with an expression which seemed to say:
'I saved your life and honour—therefore you ought to belong to me, and to no one else!'
And Cecil found it impossible to deny, even to himself, the knowledge and certainty that this woman, so dazzlingly fair that few women ever saw her without jealousy, and fewer men without admiration or passion, had been ready—and was now ready—to risk shame, suffering or danger, and fly with him, seeking obscurity and exile in Bulgaria or anywhere else.
'Was ever man more tempted!' thought he, as he saw—with satisfaction—the gilded vanes and cupolas of Palenka glittering in the sunshine above the green-wooded bank of the Morava, and he reined up his horse to bid her farewell.
'You will surely ride up to Palenka, and bid mamma adieu?' she said, her eyes dilating with reproach.
'To visit Palenka, or anywhere else, is inconsistent with my duty; and the count your brother viewed my sojourn there with unconcealed displeasure.'
'As you please,' said she, coldly. Then, after a pause, she added, 'We have resolved to leave Servia, mamma and I, for a time—my brother wishes us to do so.'
'I would fain see you once again,' said he, with an access of tenderness, suited, however, to the occasion; 'but it may not be. To-night I shall halt in the wood near Tjuprija, and to-morrow go back on the spur to Deligrad.'
'The wood near Tjuprija—that is close at hand; so if we who have been so strangely thrown together are parted to meet no more in the future, and you would care to see me once again—just once—at noon to-morrow be by the wayside chapel on the rocks above the ruin—the chapel of Lazar—and—' she paused, as a spasm of pain made her proud and beautiful face quiver, 'and I shall be there.'
'At noon, then, to-morrow,' said he, bending over her gauntleted hand and kissing it, after which she rode off at a quick pace, followed by her two attendants, while Cecil fell back and rejoined his troopers, who made all haste to put out and hide the pipes in which they had—in defiance of orders—been indulging during his recent preoccupation in front of them.
At the same time a man—the bearded peasant before-mentioned—who had been concealed among some laurel-bushes, and had overheard the parting, crept stealthily away, with an expression on his face that would have startled Cecil had he seen it.
'To what end, or to what useful or wise purpose, under all the circumstances, can this assignation be? and in such a lonely place?' he thought. 'But what could I say—how decline the last request of one to whom I owe so much?'
Yet he wished it all well over, and anticipated, with genuine British dismay, something of a painful scene.
The night was passed by his troopers peacefully in the solitude of the wood referred to, under the stars. Morning came in bright with ruddy sunshine, and after such a humble repast as soldiers prepare under such circumstances, Cecil ordered them to unbit and unsaddle their horses, groom them, and re-examine all their ammunition—not all at once, but by fours at a time—and after patrolling the woods in the vicinity, and finding all quiet, he halted them again in the wood, and set forth to keep his appointment at the chapel, which was on a rocky steep about a mile from it.
He crossed the Morava by an ancient bridge, supposed to be the work of Roman hands, and began to ascend the steep and rocky bank that overhung it, till he overlooked the windings of the river and the woods that half-concealed them, and attained the summit of a species of pass in which stood the wayside chapel—merely a rough species of altar, whereon was painted a rude and half-defaced effigy, surmounted by a projecting pediment or roof of red tiles.
Masses of wild vines flourished in luxuriance all around it, with other creepers, and from amid these there peered grotesquely forth—with its metal halo sorely faded—the effigy, which was supposed to represent the ServianKrall, Lazar, who was taken prisoner in the last great battle on the plains of Kossava (which ended in the subjugation of Servia), and whose relics, after his murder in the camp of the Sultan Amurath, have wrought so many miracles, according to the superstition of his country, and now lie in the monastery of Ravenitza, which he founded; but Cecil thought nothing of all this, and probably knew nothing about it, as he looked about him anxiously and in haste for Margarita.
It was past the time of noon now; but she was not there. A sheer cliff of vast height, the base of which could not be seen, descended on one side; on the other was the narrow walk by which he had mounted to the wayside chapel.
He heard no sound but the voices of the birds, and he looked in vain for her figure—her drapery floating between the stems of the trees.
Why had she failed to keep her tryst? a kind of keen disappointment occurred to him now; he looked at his watch again. Time was long past now, and he thought of his troopers and the homeward march to Deligrad!
Then, as he looked about him, his eye fell on two objects that gave him a shock, a bracelet and a handkerchief. The former lay imbedded in the turf, as if trod upon; the other fluttered on the stem of a wild vine.
He took up the former, a Turkish rose-pearl bracelet, which he remembered to have seen Margarita wear; so she must have come to the meeting-place and lost it. But why had she come and gone so soon?
The handkerchief, a white silk one, he examined, and on a corner thereof saw the name of 'Mattei Guebhard.'
Guebhard—then he too had been there; had in some way anticipated him! And now he saw that all the turf about the narrow path bore the indentations of feet, as if a struggle had taken place, and a great horror of—he knew not what—fell upon the heart of Cecil.
He thought of the Circassian and Egyptian patrols, who were said to be scouting between the Morava and the Timok, but he thought not of the peasant who had dogged his party yesterday.
Had Guebhard succeeded in carrying her off—in abducting her beyond the Turkish lines? If so, in these days of Bulgarian atrocities, Cecil could but fear the worst, and his heart died within him as he returned, slowly and reluctantly, and with many a backward glance, to the road, where his troopers awaited him.
There was no time given him for inquiry, no time for further delay, and at a rapid trot the homeward march began.
On the morning of the same day, Margarita was surprised to receive a note, purporting to be from Cecil, whose handwriting she had never seen, requesting her to be at the wayside chapel of Krall Lazar two hours before noon, as the exigencies of the service required his presence elsewhere at the time formerly appointed.
This note had been give to Theodore by a man attired like a peasant, who promptly disappeared.
'Sooner than noon!' thought Margarita; 'perhaps he is impatient to see me. He does love me—he must love me. But perhaps some dread of Palenka fetters his tongue; or can it be—but let me not thinkthat!'
Never had Ottilie found her mistress more difficult to please in the mode of dressing her beautiful hair, than on the morning of this day, in the selection of a costume and the choice of colours; but at last she was attired to her own satisfaction, and when the time came, left Palenka by a garden-gate, and took the path that led to the wayside chapel, or altar, for, though named the former, it had rather the character of being the latter only.
Like Cecil, she, with all her hopes and wishes, had more than once questioned herself as to the end or utility of this meeting which it had been—she felt it—so unwomanly in her to invite.
She could not yet bear the idea that he should pass out of her life, or he out of hers. She dreaded an unknown rival, as she had never been baffled before; and over that rival, if such existed, she hoped in the end to triumph by the power of her beauty and fascination of manner, and to win him, without pity, to herself; and, full of such thoughts, she trod lightly the steep and winding way that led to the shrine of Krall Lazar, and softly sang to herself the little Servian song of 'The Wishes,' which elsewhere she had sung to Cecil.
The morning was a glorious one, and in the poetry of her nature Margarita felt all the softening and exhilarating influences of it. The heavy fragrance of the great fir forest, on which the night-dew lingered, loaded the air, and the rays of the sun fell aslant them here and there, through the flat and fan-like boughs, from which the great, over-ripe cones, brown and full of seed, were dropping ever and anon.
A sea of pines, dark-green and sombre, seemed to spread in spiky conical peaks up the steep mountain-slopes, as she proceeded by the narrow pathway to the appointed place, her heart beating hopefully and happily in anticipation.
At last she reached the vine-covered shrine; it stood alone; no one was there.
'Cecil!' she said softly, and listened.
Then came a sound as of branches crackling, and a man clad like a Servian peasant started from behind the edifice and stood before her; but through the disguise, now minus the beard, and with close-shaven chin and well-trimmed black moustache, she knew the pale face of—Mattei Guebhard!
'You here?' exclaimed Margarita, shrinking back.
'Yes, I,' said he, grimly; 'you got a note——'
'From—from the Herr Lieutenant.'
'No; fromme.'
'You?'
'In his name,' said Guebhard, laughing softly; 'could I have lured you here, else?'
'Decidedly not,' she replied, with perplexity and anger. 'But how knew you that I was to be here?'
'Every movement of yours is known to me.'
'And your purpose?' asked Margarita.
'I scarcely know—punishment—revenge!' he replied, incoherently and a a little wildly.
As he surveyed her now he saw not a vestige of her soft, persuasive, and caressing manner, or the witchery of her sovereign smile. Her face expressed only deep anger, profound disdain, and utter indifference by turns; yet he attempted to take her hand, but she wrenched it away and waved him back, with a grandeur of gesture that compelled him to obey, while her eyes flashed with unspoken indignation.
It was at this moment that the rose-pearl bracelet fell from her wrist, but both were too preoccupied to observe it.
'You visited the English cur in his prison?' said he, after a pause.
'Who told you so?'
'Heed not who told me so—suffice it that I know you did.'
'What then? Am I accountable to you for my actions?'
'This morning you are.'
'Fool—you forget yourself!'
Guebhard looked into her cool and defiant face, and read but too plainly an expression of hatred in her beautiful eyes. He saw the curl of careless scorn on her sweet red lips, and a sigh of rage escaped him, though for a moment—but a moment only—his eyes sought hers with an anguish of entreaty.
'Perjurer and deserter!' said she defiantly and bitterly; 'the soldier who is false to his colours—the man who is false to his country—is beneath rebuke; but not beneath vengeance.'
'You saved the man's life on one hand,' said he, hoarsely; 'on the other, you exposed me, compelling me to anticipate an old intention of joining the Turkish standard, which must prevail here and elsewhere. You saved his life and won his gratitude and love; but neither will avail, for by the God who hears us, you shall never see him more!'
'Who will separate us?'
'I shall!'
'Stand aside, Captain Guebhard!' said she haughtily, and now dreading every moment to hear the step of Cecil ascending the path; 'stand aside—from this day you and I must be to each other as the dead.'
'As the dead—yes—be it so. I know you hate me now—though once you did not do so.'
'I never even valued you as a friend, though you flattered yourself that you stood even higher than a friend in my estimation; and now as a deserter from the Servian cause——'
'I am more Bulgarian than Servian in my blood, perhaps more Italian than either,' said he, hotly. 'Milano omitted to give me the cross, though I had won it in our first battle, so I have assumed the crescent in its place; that is all—and the crescent will prevail in the end.'
'Never! we shall live to see the crescent thrust into Asia or the sea; but as I did not come here to talk politics, I have the honour to wish you good-morning, Captain Guebhard, and trust that our comedietta is over.'
'It is a tragedy, as you may find,' was the grim and menacing response.
'What do you mean, sir?'
'Simply what I say.'
'Insolent! But I fear you will never make your fortune as a Romeo.'
Oaths never rose to the lips of Guebhard; he was—though a finished villain—too polished a man to indulge in such: but terrible was the hatred that baffled passion was now raising in his lawless breast. A dark and angry red shot for a moment across his usually pallid face, and his eyes gleamed with a vindictiveness of expression that made the heart of Margarita throb wildly, and with sudden apprehension; but she could not pass him.
Behind her was a precipice, and before her—barred by him—lay the path which she must descend to elude him.
Like a heroine, who is described in a recent novel, 'she knew well enough that forgetfulness was a treasure for evermore beyond the reach of those who once loved her.' Guebhard had loved her, she knew, and this love had well-nigh maddened him—and now Guebhard, in his tiger-like nature, was beginning to hate her—nay, hated her already!
He grasped her delicate wrist with a force she could not withstand.
'Listen to me,' said he, with calm yet sad ferocity in his tone and eyes; 'I am not the first, among many, whom your beauty and your wiles have fooled and beguiled—for few women have had such Circe-like power as you—but I shall be the last on whose face you will look.'
'What do you mean?' she asked, in a low and agitated voice.
'That you will soon learn—come here,' he continued, hoarsely; 'here—and look down,' he added, dragging her to the giddy verge of the beetling cliff, at the base of which, spread out like a map, was the woody landscape stretching away towards Katadar, with the Morava winding through it like a silver snake.
'Have pity, Guebhard!' exclaimed Margarita, shrinking back, while a mortal terror seized her now, for the expression of his eyes froze her heart.
'Pity—it is too late—too late!' he replied, yet with something like a sob in his throat.
'Forgiveness is saint-like, Guebhard,' she urged piteously.
'But I am no saint, Margarita—I am only a humble mortal.'
'Mortal or not—man or devil—why have I to seek forgiveness ofyou?' she exclaimed, as a gust of indignation and pride came to her aid, and she strove to break away from him; but finding that all her efforts were vain, and that he was too strong for her, she shrieked out wildly, 'Cecil! Cecil!'
The name seemed to madden him. Stung to frenzy, he drew a pistol from his belt; but replaced it, and grasped his yataghan; that, too, he declined to use, lest it might elicit a shriek again and bring succour, for with all his frenzy, there was a method in his madness, and his next thought was—strangulation!
The proud and lovely neck she would not have permitted him to kiss was now to feel the tiger-like clutch of his long, lean and felon fingers, as they closed round her snow-white throat.
'Mercy, Guebhard—mercy!' she gasped; 'I am too young—too young—perhaps too wicked—to die!'
Fate was upon her, and Guebhard was no longer a reasoning being. There were tears in her starting and bloodshot eyes, and clamorous fury gathered in Guebhard's heart, while his infernal gripe grew closer; her arms fell powerless by her side—he felt the tumultuous heavings of her bosom against his own. Sense had not left her; she could not doubt the desperate character of his attack, and though she ceased to struggle, her eyes spoke, and with such a language that Guebhard dared not look on them again—they seemed so mournfully to implore his mercy—but his heart, blazing with the insensate hate that springs from baffled love, knew none!
In vain; his gripe grew tighter upon her delicate throat, that was all symmetry and whiteness: a terrible spasm convulsed her frame; then he knew that all was over, that she was dead in his hands, and daring no more to look upon her, he flung her over the awful cliff close by; and that he might not hear the sound, if any, that came from below, he sank on his knees, and covered his ears with his hot tremulous hands. So perished Margarita!
Her death was not the first that lay on Guebhard's soul, no doubt; but, for a minute, he scarcely seemed to breathe, and his wild glaring eyes seemed to wander stealthily in the air, in the woods, and on the ground beneath him, as if to avoid the last glance of appealing despair, that seemed to confront him everywhere now.
The leaves of the trees seemed to become eyes—then tongues that whispered, he knew not what.
'Margarita!' said he involuntarily, and, to his overstrained fancy, a thousand echoes seemed to give back the name of the dead—the dead girl that, though mangled and lying far down below, was not yet cold.
'Margarita!' he said again, but in a lower voice, the name breaking from him in the instinct of the awful time, rather than in conscious utterance.
Suddenly the sound of approaching footsteps met his ear. A man was ascending the pathway to the shrine, and Guebhard, who, in the agony and frenzy of the time, had forgotten all about Cecil—for it was he who was coming—dashed into the copse-wood and fled from the spot like a hunted hare, seeking the gloomiest spots with that loathing of the light which it has been averred some murderers feel.
'How misfortune seems to dog me, and all in whom I have ever had a passing interest or regard!' thought Cecil, as he rode on in rear of his returning party, and recalled the words of Antonio:
'I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;A stage, where every man must play a part,And mine asad one.'
His thoughts went backward over the few but ever-varying years of his own life; his wanderings with his mother in Italy and elsewhere; his service in India, so full of adventure, change, peril and vivid colour; marches over dusty and arid plains, and through desert jungles, where luxuriant vegetation had run riot for ages; the pleasures of cities; the careless times in camp and barrack, with Leslie Fotheringhame, Dick Freeport, Acharn and others; pig-sticking and fighting wild hill tribes; of long balmy nights on the starlit Indian or Arabian seas, while the crowded transport ploughed on with her living freight; the good fellowship of the splendid mess; the love of his men, and though remembered last, perhaps, not least, honest Tommy Atkins, with the proffer of his savings; of all that had been, and never could be again; of gay nights and balls; and, last of all, the ball that ruined him; of Mary Montgomerie, and all the loss of her meant to him; and again his thoughts would revert to Margarita, and to what had been—what could be now, her fate!
Into that fate—if, as it seemed too probable, some tragedy or catastrophe had happened—he had neither time nor opportunity given him to inquire.
What could have come over her? was his ever-recurring thought. Surely—even in that land of atrocities—Heaven would be too merciful to let a hair of her head be injured, she was so good and pure, so proud and true to herself and all.
Betimes he rode into Deligrad, where the tricolour waved on the armed rampart, and the busy camp, with its streets of tents and huts, still covered all the ground beside the Morava.
He proceeded straight to the winter quarters of the staff, circular huts formed of logs, planked and plastered with mud externally, and thatched with straw and reeds, and in one of these miserable abodes, before which two sentinels paced, he found Tchernaieff and a couple of officers, in rich Russian uniforms, smoking cigars, and making themselves as comfortable as they could under the circumstances.
He presented his papers, sketches and memoranda, and made his report as to finding all the country quiet, and seeing nothing of the enemy's scouting or patrol parties; and was warmly complimented by the grim old Muscovite, who shook him by the hand and presented him with an acceptable bumper of wine, saying the while, 'Deo Gratios!' and signing the cross in the Russian fashion, with three fingers from right to left.
'I sent you again on a perilous and important duty into a strange country,' said Tchernaieff, 'and you accepted the hazard as readily as you have performed that duty.'
'I am not used to weigh hazards or danger, excellency,' replied Cecil; 'I am the native of a country that never nurtured fools or cowards, and now have my home here.'
'In every land brave men find a home; and for these memoranda I thank you, for I have to send troops through that very district towards Zaitchar. But you have run greater risks than you are aware of, for Circassian troops were concealed in some of the woods through which you passed.'
Cecil thought of the disappearance of Margarita, and the evidence of the deserter Guebhard's presence at the Krall Lazar; but he only replied:
'I have not set much store on my life, since I came to Servia, at least. Besides, general—of what need was thought—I had your orders to obey—the King to serve.'
'Right; and now, good-morning, Captain Falconer.'
It was so; Cecil found that he had been made captain of his troop, and was warmly congratulated on this unexpected promotion by his English comrades Pelham and Stanley, whose society he preferred to all others in camp, and the former said laughingly to the latter, whom he had taken into his confidence:
'Either the count is—as I hope—a false prophet, or Falconer's fated time is not come yet; he has returned scatheless from this duty, at all events.'
The field was soon to be taken by a portion, if not by all the army; more fighting was to be seen, and Cecil, in the overcharged state of his mind, welcomed the chance of new excitement with a strange species of grim joy.
But now came tidings that, when returning for the headquarters of General Dochtouroff, Count Palenka had fallen into the hands of a Circassian patrol, been made prisoner, and carried, whether to death or captivity, none knew; so that he, anyway, was ignorant of the crime, or catastrophe, that had darkened his home.
At this time, some twelve battalions of Turks occupied the town of Zaitchar, which lies seventy miles north-eastward of Deligrad, on the river Timok, and in the attack on which, on the 18th of the preceding July, Colonel Kireef, one of the bravest officers of the Russian army, fell, after receiving four wounds in succession.
This position was now watched by only a brigade of Servians, under Colonel Medvidovski, a young officer concerning whose movements and rashness Tchernaieff became apprehensive; thus he desired General Dochtouroff to repair to that place for the purpose of aiding the colonel with his advice and experience, and soon after he reinforced him by a few Servians, among whom was Cecil's troop of cavalry, which was ordered to proceed by the Bovan Pass, up which his troopers toiled slowly in an autumn evening, and from the summit of which a vast expanse of woody country could be seen, wearing all the varied tints of the season. A twelve miles march brought him to Banja, where he halted for a time, and then resumed his route over the mountains, by a path sometimes so narrow that he had to reduce his sections of fours to files, but all pushed on unwearyingly and full of enthusiasm, as a battle in the vicinity of Zaitchar was confidently anticipated.
In the ranks of the army against which they were marching now was, no doubt, his bitter enemy, Mattei Guebhard, commissioned and with rank, probably, because of his defection, and Cecil knew that in close quarters the rascal, if possible, would be sure to seek him out.
'Well,' thought he, 'he is right welcome to do so;' aware that if once he got Mattei Guebhard covered by his pistol or within reach of his sword it would go hard with him if one red fez was not struck to the dust.
The smoke of burning hamlets, which had fallen a prey to bands of Bashi Bazouks, curled up here and there through the russet, green and yellow of the woods, on either side of the line of march, indicating the close approach to the vicinity of the enemy, whose troops were mustering near the Timok, after crossing which, by a wooden bridge, Cecil could see the white-walled houses of Zaitchar shining in the sun; but from thence he had to proceed, by marching in the night, into the valley of Krivovirski Timok, where he overtook the troops under General Dochtouroff, to whom he instantly reported himself, and Colonel Medvidovski, pushing on for the great business of the day.
The cavalry cloaks were rolled up and buckled to the saddles, girths and bridle reins carefully inspected, the edges of the swords tested, and the loading of all revolvers and carbines looked to.
A drizzling rain had fallen overnight, and a dim, silvery haze was floating up from the dark woodlands and the deep valley through which the Timok was rolling away to meet the Danube, and the occasional boom of a heavy gun pealing through the murky morning air, followed now and then by a sharp rattle of rifle-muskets, indicated that the column of Count Keller, who was acting in concert with Dochtouroff, and had already got into action, had been partially repulsed, and was retiring.
'Push on!' was the cry on every hand.
'Rishu(trot),galloppe!(gallop)' were the orders for the cavalry, and in sections of fours that arm of the service went quickly to the front, and with loud cheers, though to the infantry was assigned most of the grim work to be done that day.
Cecil, in India, and more recently in Servia, had been too often under fire to feel any novelty in the situation now. Rather reckless, he had no particular anxiety so far as concerned his own safety or ultimate escape. He had but one distinct idea: that rather than be disabled by a wound, and thus rendered helpless, homeless, and penniless, he would prefer death outright!
He felt for a time a little tightening of the chest as the hollow boom of the cannon on the left front became louder and louder; but even that sensation passed away, and he rode on with much of indifference, varied at times by that emotion which a true soldier—especially a soldier of fortune—can never be without—a desire for distinction and honour.
The whole scene around him was inspiriting and full of the highest excitement. Heavily laboured the horses of the artillery to get the guns and ponderous waggons up the steep ascents that overhung the river. At each recurring rise the drivers flogged and spurred, and the gunners pushed behind, or with sinewy hands urged round the spokes of the wheels; horses stumbled, and traces strained to the verge of breaking, till the hill crests were won, and the downward progress began.
Fifteen thousand Servians and Russians were forming in columns for the attack, and the bright sheen of bayonets and swords flashing in the morning sun came out of their sombre masses of brown, grey, and dark screen. Over the former waved the tricolours of Milano Obrenovitch; but the black eagle and tricolour of the 'Monarch of the Snows' were displayed by the latter.
Zaitchar was to be the centre of the operations, and to maintain that position were sixteen thousand Turks or more, who had covered it with earthworks and batteries for three miles in front of the town, defending it in the form of an arc.
Many of the Servian regiments were armed with old muzzle-loaders and smooth-bores, while the blue-clad Turks, whose fezzes in long scarlet lines dotted out the position, had breechloading Snider rifles and Krupp cannon; so the two armies were far from being equally matched, either in appointments or valour.
Count Keller's column, descending from the mountains on the south coast, was to co-operate with Dochtouroff against Zaitchar; Medvidovski's column formed the centre, and other brigades and columns, led by leaders who have no connection with our story, and whose barbarous names would only puzzle the reader, made up the force which menaced the little town of Zaitchar in the form of a semicircle, at an average radius of seven miles.
The cracking of rifles and the white spurts of smoke starting up from fields, green hedges, and other enclosures, indicated the commencement of the attack, as some companies in skirmishing order were thrown out on right and left, and then came the thunder of the Krupp guns from Veliki Izvor, the chief point of the Turkish position.
In their brown tunics and blue, glengarry-like caps, the Servian columns were closing steadily up, with loud hoarse cheers and cries; but louder and higher above them rang the 'Allah-Allah Hu!' of the more confident and resolute Turkish infantry.
From a five gun-battery on the right, Herzberg, a skilful officer, was throwing shells with great precision among the latter, and Cecil viewed with growing interest a column of Servian infantry deploying from that point with greater skill and order than he had seen in Servia before, as it was led by two brave and well-trained British officers, Pelham and Stanley. Down the hill this column came at a rush under the fire of the Turkish gunners, who from amid the dim smoke on Veliki Izvor threw shells thick and fast among them; but the column was under the shelter of a wood, amid the russet and yellow foliage of which it disappeared, until it emerged again to open fire upon the enemy's lines, now almost completely enveloped in smoke, while the roar of rifle-musketry made the welkin ring. But the column which had deployed and advanced so well was repulsed by the Turks, and fell back, disputing every inch of ground; nor could any effort on the part of Pelham, Stanley, and other officers induce the soldiers of it to reform and advance again: for the Servians are but timid men at best.
Over dead and wounded men and horses, over ground torn, furrowed, and cut up by bursting shells and artillery wheels, over gouts of blood and pools of water, the Servians were now falling confusedly back, after terrible losses, when Dochtouroff gave the order for the reserve to advance.
'Up they jumped, without waiting for any second order,' says a British officer in his narrative, 'and ran with great speed, firing off their guns and cheering loudly. There was only one fault to be found with them, and that was that they unfortunately ran and fired in the wrong direction! In vain Dochtouroff shouted; in vain he swore, but they only ran the faster. I asked him to allow me to try and compel them, with the aid of my sword and revolver, to halt, front, and charge the enemy. "No, no," said he; "they are not worth wasting powder on. Nothing can stop them, and the day is lost."'
On all sides now were heard the shrieks and half-stifled groans of the wounded, the last sobs of the dying, and piteous entreaties for water or for aid. Faces paled by death and smeared with blood were everywhere; the green grass, the purple violets of autumn that grew wild, like the white cups of the arum lilies, were all splashed and empurpled with the same ghastly tint. The bodies in some places lay across each other in piles, the swarthy, brown-clad Servian soldier and the more swarthy Turk, with his red fez and his shining military buttons, the badge worn by all ranks, from the Sultan to the drummer-boy.
By some mistake the Servian artillery were prematurely ordered to retire, and thus, as the supports had failed, the retreat became general, and by three in the afternoon the action was over; but ere this Cecil had been in one or two cavalry charges to check pursuit, and to do him justice, General Dochtouroff left nothing undone by personal example and by brief harangues in Servian and Russian to prevent the retreat from becoming a headlong rout along the Lukova road.
Outstripping theAssakiri Mansurei Mohamediges, as the regular infantry of the Turkish army boast themselves to be, some of their cavalry came on with wonderfulélan. At one point Cecil got his squadron to form a front by going threes about, as a corps of Turkish lancers came on, with swords jangling, accoutrements rattling, and their green pennons—the holy colour—streaming straight out over their scarlet fezzes. A sharp, short word of command in Turkish, a sharper note from a trumpet, the lance-points flashed in the air as they came down to the charge, and the horses from a rapid trot rushed on in a wild gallop, and in a moment there was a shock, a crash, and a wild and terriblemêlée.
Saddles were emptied, and steeds and riders went down on every side; but Cecil's Servians, despite his fiery example, could make no impression on the Turks. Resolute in aspect, beetle-browed, keen-eyed, and hawk-nosed, they come on with heads stooped in full career, their cries of 'Allah, Allah!' rending the air; and whenever a Servian, sword in hand, attempted to close, their couched lances bristled against his arm or his horse's breast; so the former pressed on, in an invulnerable line, till Cecil's troopers fairly gave way, and quitted the field on the spur with bridles loose, sweeping him away with them, for Servian courage and Servian honour were sorely tarnished on that day in front of Zaitchar; nor did the cavalry and other fugitives fairly stop till they reached a place called Balgivac, some thirteen miles from the field of battle, where Medvidovski and his staff had halted.
Dispirited and disgusted with the result of the day—not that he had any vital interest in it—but, wet, cold, weary and exhausted, Cecil flung himself on the bare earth, like nearly all around him, without food or rations of any kind; and thus he was found by Stanley, Pelham and another English volunteer, who shared his brandy-flask with them all, and they spent the remainder of the night in comparing notes of the past day's heartless work, reviling the Servians, their want of mettle and discipline, and drawing comparisons between them and 'our own fellows,' that were far from flattering to the troops of His Majesty King Milano Obrenovitch.
Cecil's troop, which had lost heavily in the encounter with the Turkish lancers, escorted some of the wounded and sick to the camp at Deligrad, passing through a beautiful valley, and skirting the slopes of Mount Urtanj, one of the greatest hills in Servia. The way was of the roughest and steepest kind; his progress was slow, with a convoy of blood-stained, tattered and dying creatures. It was a march he never forgot, and from one circumstance, perhaps, more than all. He meten routethe old village pope (or priest) of Palenka, mounted on one of the shaggy, hardy little ponies, and from him—amid many an exclamation of lamentation, sorrow and anathema—he learned distinct tidings of the fate of Margarita, and that her remains had been found by some woodcutters at the base of the cliff below the Krall Lazar chapel, and a storm of terrible emotion swelled up in Cecil's heart, as he listened to the broken accents of the priest. Great was his horror and great his pity! He forgot all the vengeance he personally owed Guebhard in this new, unthought-of and more terrible debt, and sadly and touchingly the rare beauty of the dead girl and her devotion to himself came back to memory now!
Full of thought that could take no coherent form in words, he rode on as one in a dream, and almost oblivious now of all around him; of the sufferings of those who formed his miserable convoy; of the dark blood dripping through the straw, from half-dressed wounds, that burst out afresh; of the groans and cries elicited by every jolt of the clumsy ambulance waggons; of the monotonous rumbling of the wheels that shook and jarred against ruts and stones; even of the deaths that were occurring from time to time, leaving the dead and the living side by side, while the forest birds of prey hovered over his sorrowful line of march, and followed it, in anticipation of a banquet.
He thought of Margarita, who, he felt assured, had perished thus awfully through her love for himself, and through the assignation made at the way-side chapel—an assignation of which Guebhard must—by some unaccountable means—have become cognisant; and then he thought of Guebhard, the half Bulgarian, and sighed in fury through his clenched teeth—'Oh, to be near Guebhard, but for a minute!'
But the latter was nearer him then he could well have imagined.
For food and rest, and to have his wounded attended to, and the dead taken from amid the living to a place of interment, he halted at a village which was indicated in his 'route,' on the slope of Mount Mezlani, just as darkness was closing in, and through the net work of the forest branches the western sky glowed vivid with lurid light, though darkness had fallen on the valleys far below the mountain slopes, and a busy time he had of it, with a couple of surgeons, a staff of soldier-nurses and orderlies, going from waggon to waggon, and hearing but one reiterated story of suffering, one repeated chorus of cries, moans and often curses.
Seeking the onlycafanein the place, he dismounted at the door, had a dish of hotpoprikashand black coffee, dashed well with brandy—of which, as his duty was not yet over, he partook standing, and was in the act of lighting a cigarette, when a man, dressed like a Servian peasant, but marvellously well mounted for such, approached the door, and without quitting his saddle, asked in a low and timid, or somewhat uncertain voice, for some refreshment.
The voice of the stranger gave Cecil a species of electric shock, for 'there is no instinct so rapid and so unerring as the instinct of a foe;' and despite the voluminous dark beard and peasant garb, he recognised the clearly cut features, the hawk-like nose with delicate nostrils, and the black beady eyes of Guebhard!
The voice, the sight, the presence of this man after the awful narrative of the village pope so recently told, and now acting suspiciously as a spy in the interests of the enemy, roused Cecil's blood to fever heat. As a deserter, spy and assassin, this man's life was trebly forfeited, and Cecil left his seat, slowly and deliberately to avoid giving alarm, and feeling in his heart a grim sweetness in the idea that the destroyer of Margarita was to perish byhishand!
But, as he moved towards the door of thecafane, the light of a lamp fell upon him, and he was instantly recognised by the renegade, who remained in his saddle outside an open window.
Guebhard started violently; a ferocious vindictiveness sparkled in his eyes; his face grew paler with rage and alarm that were evidently mingled with a panther-like desire to rush at Cecil. He ground his teeth; he quivered in every limb; and then, suddenly seized by a panic of fear, fired three shots from a revolver at Cecil, wheeled round his horse and galloped away.
Every shot went wide of its mark, and another moment saw Cecil in his saddle, in hot pursuit, guided for a time only by the sound of the flying hoofs. Careless of whither he rode, even if right into the Turkish lines, he dashed on, goring his horse with sharp rowels at every bound.
'Halt, dog and scoundrel!—halt, or die!' he cried again and again.
Guebhard was now about a hundred yards ahead, but that distance lessened fast as Cecil tore after him, his pistol levelled twenty times ere he would risk a shot, as there was no time for reloading, and the night-clouds were deepening fast.
They were in full race—pursuer and pursued. Cecil fired two chambers; but both must have missed, as Guebhard neither winced nor fell, but fired at random in return.
'The fiend take him!' was the latter's thought; 'he baulked my night's work once, and slew my Montenegrin comrade, and I have already missed him, shot after shot!'
Without other thought than flight, Guebhard, aware that he was unable to defend himself now that his pistols were empty, and knowing that his personal strength and skill with the sword were inferior to those of Cecil's, spurred wildly on and on, with every respiration tasting all the bitterness of anticipated death in his coward heart, expecting every instant to feel a shot pierce his back like a red-hot bolt and stretch him there to feed the wolves and carrion crows.
Guebhard, perhaps, was not quite a coward by nature; but somehow the panic of an utter poltroon possessed him now. Was it the terrible deed he had done at the chapel of Krall Lazar that unnerved his heart and unstrung his sinews? It must have been so. The last glance he had seen in the eyes of Margarita haunted him; and he thought of that delicate and faultless form lying mangled at the foot of the cliff to become the prey of vultures and wild animals now, when his own end seemed so terribly close and nigh, at the hands of her avenger—the man he had so often wantonly wronged, and who, he knew, would be pitiless as a famished tiger.
If he had remorse, it was curiously mingled with an emotion of jealous triumph, that to this man Margarita was lost for ever—wrested from him by his hands, as we have said, and that Death alone was her possessor now!
'Coward, rein up!—your sword—your sword to mine!' cried Cecil, more than once; but neither taunt, sneer, nor threat availed him then.
At this time he felt in his heart much of that emotion which a writer calls 'the religion of revenge, which had been sacred to his forefathers, in the age when murderers were proven by bier-right, and for wrong, the Fiery Cross of war was borne alight over moor and mountain.'
Fiercely, high and tumultuously, coursed the blood through his veins. Every muscle was strained, like those of a race-horse in the field, for he had an awful penalty to exact, and Guebhard knew well that he had a terrible debt to pay—one for which not even his life and the last drop of his blood would atone.
Yet Guebhard, perhaps, could not have told whether he most loved or hated the memory of the girl he had destroyed.
He knew that too probably, if steel and lead failed, if once in the grasp of Cecil, the latter would trample him to death, choke him like a viper with a heel upon his throat; and, sooth to say, such was the terrible idea that occurred to the pursuer at times while, with fiery exultation, he found himself gaining upon his prey.
The sweat of a great mortal agony gathered on the temples of Guebhard; his mouth was parched; his breath came short and fast; and, half-turning in his saddle, he could see, in the starlight, the white set face of his pursuer almost within arm's length of him, and the outstretched head of his horse more than once actually in a line with his crupper.
The black beard had fallen off now.
'How,' thought Cecil; 'how came it to pass that this man, so full of the common vulgar terror of mere physical peril, ever turned soldier—even in name!'
He next thought it was fortunate that, owing to the slowness of the past day's march, and the short length of it, his horse was tolerably fresh; but that of Guebhard seemed to be in the same condition.