I re-entered the château feeling sad, irresolute, and crushed in spirit. I had lost that on which I had set my heart, and at the hands of Tolstoff, my rival, I might yet lose more, if his threats meant anything--liberty, perhaps life itself.
What, then, was to be done? I was without money, without arms, or a horse. All these Valerie might procure for me; but how or where was I to address her again? After the result of our last interview she would be certain to avoid me more sedulously than ever. As I passed through the magnificent vestibule, which was hung with rose-coloured lamps, the light of which fell softly on the green malachite pedestals and white marble Venuses, Dianas, and Psyches, which had no part of them dressed but their hair, which was done to perfection, I met Ivan Yourivitch, who made me understand that the officer whom the Pulkovnick expected with certain papers from Sebastopol had arrived, and was now in the dining-room; but the Pulkovnick had smoked himself off to sleep, and must not, under certain pains and penalties, be disturbed. Would I see him? And so, before I knew what to say, or had made up my mind whether to avoid or meet the visitor, I was ushered into the stately room, when I found myself once more face to face with Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle!
The ex-cornet of wagoners was clad now in the gray Russian military capote, with a sword and revolver at his girdle. His beard had grown prodigiously; but his hair--once so well cared for--was now very thin indeed, and he did not appear altogether to have thriven in the new service to which he had betaken himself. His aspect was undoubtedly haggard. Suspected by his new friends (who urged him on duties for which he had not the smallest taste), and in perpetual dread of falling into the hands of the old, by whom he would be certainly hanged or shot, his life could not be a pleasant one; so he had evidently betaken himself to drink, as his face was blotched and his eyes inflamed in an unusual degree.
He was very busy with a decanter of sparkling Crimskoi and other good things which the dvornick had placed before him, and on looking up he failed to recognise me, clad as I was in a suit of Volhonski's plain clothes, which were "a world too wide" for me; and no doubt I was the last person in the world whom he wished or expected to see in such a place and under such circumstances--being neither guest nor prisoner, and yet somewhat of both characters. He bowed politely, however, and said something in Russian, of which he had picked up a few words, and then smiled blandly.
"You smile, sir," said I, sternly; "but remember the adage, a man may smile and smile, and be----"
"Stay, sir!" he exclaimed, starting up; "this is intolerable! Who the devil are you, and what do you mean?"
"Simply that you are a villain, and of the deepest die!"
His hand went from the neck of the decanter towards his revolver; then he reseated himself, and with his old peculiar laugh said, while inserting his glass in his right eye,
"O, this beats cock-fighting! Hardinge of the Welsh Fusileers! Now, where on earth did you come from?"
"Not from the ranks of the enemy, at all events," I replied.
His whole character--the wrongs he had tried to do me and had done to many others; the artful trick he had played me at Walcot Park his pitiless cruelty to Georgette Franklin; his base conduct to me when helpless on the field of Inkermann; his guiding a sortie in the night; his entire career of unvarying cunning and treachery--caused me to regard the man with something of wonder, mingled with loathing and contempt, but contempt without anger. He was beneath that.
"So you are a prisoner of war?" said he, after a brief pause, during which he had drained a great goblet of the Crimskoi--a kind of imitation champagne.
"What I am is nothing to you--my position, mind, and character are the same."
"Perhaps so," he continued; "but I think that the most contemptible mule on earth is a fellow in whom no experience or time can effect a change of mind, or cure of those narrow opinions in which he is first brought up, as the phrase is, in that little island of ours."
"So you have quite adopted the Russian idea of Britain?" said I, with a scornful smile.
"Yes; and hope to have more scope for my talents on the Continent than I ever had there. I should not have left the army of my good friend Raglan----"
"Who presented you with that ring, eh?"
"Had there not been the prospect of a row about a rooking one night in camp, and a bill which some meddling fellow called a forgery. Bah! a bad bill may be a very useful thing at times; it is like a gun warranted to burst; but, as Lever says, you must always have it in the right man's hands, when it comes for explosion. If you are a prisoner, I am afraid that your chances of early seeing our dear mutual friends in Taffyland--by the way, howisold Sir Taffy?--are very slender, if once you are sent towards the Ukraine," he went on mockingly, as he lit a papirosse. "And so the fair Estelle threw you over, eh? Good joke that! Preferred old Potter's company to yours, for the term of his natural life? What a deuced sell! But what a touching picture of love they must present--quite equal to Paul and Virginia, to Pyramus and Thisbe!"
At that moment, and while indulging in a loud and mocking laugh, his countenance suddenly changed; he grew very pale, the glass fell from his pea-green eye, and the lighted papirosse from his lips; all his natural assurance and insouciance deserted him, and he looked as startled and bewildered as if a cannon-shot had just grazed his nose. I turned with surprise at this sudden change, and saw the face and figure of Colonel Tolstoff, who had limped into the room and been regarding us for half a minute unperceived. He stood behind me, grim and stern as Ajax, and was gazing at Guilfoyle with eyes that, under their bristling brows, glittered like those of a basilisk, and seemed to fascinate him.
"We have not met since that night at Dunamunde!" exclaimed Tolstoff, in a voice of concentrated fury; "but, I thank God and St. Sergius, we have met at last--yes, at last! And so you know each other--you two?" he added, in German, while bestowing a withering glance on me.
"Dunamunde!" said I, sternly, as the name of that place recalled something of a strange story concerning Tolstoff told by Guilfoyle to Lord Pottersleigh at Craigaderyn; "and you two would seem to have known each other and been friends of old, that is, if you are the same Count Tolstoff whom he saved from the machinations of a certain Colonel Nicolaevitch, then commanding the Marine Infantry at Riga."
"What rubbish is this you speak?" demanded the other, with angry surprise; "there never was aCountTolstoff; and I am the Pulkovnick Nicolaevitch Tolstoff who commanded in Dunamunde, and was custodian of eighty thousand silver roubles, all government money. This ruffian was my friend--my chief friend then, though of the gaming table; but he joined in a plot, with others like himself, among whom was the Head of the Police, to rob me. He admitted them masked into my rooms, when they shot me down with my own pistols, and left me, with a broken thigh, bound hand and foot and cruelly gagged, while they escaped in safety across the Prussian frontier and got to Berlin, where they started a gaming-house. But he is here--here in my power at last; and sweetly and surely, I shall have such vengeance as that power gives me. Ha! look at him, the speechless coward; he has no bones in his tongue now!" he added, using a favourite Russian taunt.
"All over--run to earth, by Jove!" muttered Guilfoyle, with trembling lips, forgetting about the papers he had brought, his new character of a Russian officer, and forgetting even to deny his identity; "I have thrown the dice for the last time, and d--nation, they have turned up aces!"
Ivan Yourivitch and other Cossack servants, who had heard the loud voice of Tolstoff raised in undisguised anger, now appeared, and received some orders from him in Russian. In a moment they threw themselves upon Guilfoyle, disarmed, stripped him of his uniform, and bound him with a silken cord torn from the window-curtains. At first I was not without fears that they meant to strangle him with it, so prompt and fierce was their manner; but they merely tied his hands behind him, and thrust him into a closet, the door of which was locked, and the key given to the Pulkovnick.
The latter, without deigning to take farther notice of me, turned on his heel and limped away, muttering anathemas in Russian; and I felt very thankful that he had not made me a close prisoner also, after the humiliating fashion to which he had subjected the wretched Guilfoyle. But he was not without secret and serious ulterior views regarding me. All remained still now in the great mansion after this noisy and sudden episode; and I heard no sound save once--the clatter of a horse's hoofs, which seemed to leave the adjoining stable-yard and die away, as I thought, in the direction of the Baidar Valley, where the Cossacks lay encamped; and somehow my heart naturally connected these circumstances and foreboded coming evil, as I sat alone in the recess of a window overlooking the terrace, and the same moonlighted scenery which Valerie had viewed from it so lately.
I was full of gloomy, perplexing, and irritating thoughts.
"If I am to drag on my life for years perhaps as a Russian prisoner, better would it have been, O Lord, that a friendly shot had finished my career for ever. What have I now to live for?" I exclaimed, in the bitterness of my heart, as I struck my hands together.
"You speak thus--you so young?" said Valerie, reproachfully yet softly, as she suddenly laid a hand on my shoulder, while her bright eyes beamed into mine--eyes that could excite emotion by emitting it.
"Life seems so worthless."
"Why?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Can you ask me after what passed between us the other evening, and more especially on yonder terrace, less than an hour ago?"
"But why is existence worthless?"
"Because I have lost you!"
(Had I not thought the same thing about Estelle, and deemed that "he who has most of heart has most of sorrow"?)
"This is folly, dear friend," said she, looking down; "I never was yours to lose."
"But you lured me to love you, Valerie; and now--now you would cast--nay, you have cast--my poor heart back upon itself!"
"I lured you?" asked the gentle voice; "O unjust! How could I help your loving me?"
"Perhaps not; nor could I help it myself."
"Tell me truly--has this--this misplaced passion for me lured you from one who loves you well at home perhaps?"
"From no one," said I, bitterly.
"Thank Heaven for that; and we shall part as friends any way."
"As friends only?"
"Yes."
"But you will ever be more to me, Valerie."
She shook her head and smiled.
A desire for vengeance on Tolstoff, for his insulting bearing on one hand, with, the love and admiration I had of herself on the other, and the pictured triumph of taking her away from him, and by her aid and presence with me reaching our camp in safety, all prompted me to urge an elopement; nor could I also forget the coquettish admission that she "might" love me; but just as I was about to renew my suit and had taken possession of her hands, she withdrew them, and while glancing nervously about her, informed me that the Pulkovnick had sent a mounted messenger to the Baidar Valley for Cossacks, to escort me and Guilfoyle to Kharkoff in the Ukraine; and when I remembered his threats of probable ulterior measures, I felt quite certain that his report would include usboth, and thus be framed in terms alike dangerous and injurious to me.
"What is to be done, Valerie?" I asked, in greater perplexity.
"If I cannot love, I can still serve you," said she, smiling with a brightness that was cruel; "it is but just, in gratitude for the regard you have borne me."
"That I still bear you and ever shall, beloved Valerie!" said I, with tremulous energy; "but to serve me--how?"
"You must leave this place instantly, for in less than an hour the Cossacks will be here, and Tolstoff may have you killed on the march; the escort may be but a snare."
"Then come--come with me--let us escape together!"
"Impossible--you do but waste time in speaking thus."
"Why--O why, Valerie, when you know that I love you?"
"Race, religion, ties, all forbid such a step, even were I inclined for it, which fortunately I am not," she replied, lifting for a moment, as if for coolness, the rippling masses of her golden hair from her white temples, and letting them fall again; "you might andmustspare me more of this! Have I not told you it is useless to speak of love to me, and wrong in me to listen to you?"
"And since when have you been engaged to this" (bear, I was about to say)--"to this man Tolstoff? And by what magic or devilry has he taught you to love him?"
"In what can either concern you, at such a time as this especially, when you have not a moment to lose?" she asked, almost with irritation. "But hush--O, hush! here is some one."
At that moment Ivan Yourivitch, with excitement on his usually stolid Russian visage, entered the room almost on tiptoe, and whispered something to her in haste, while his eyes were fixed the while on me.
"Ah!--thank you, Ivan, thank you--that is well!" she said, and turning to me, she added, hurriedly and energetically, "If you would be free, and choose, it may be, between liberty or death, you have not another instant to lose! Ivan tells me that the crew of an English man-of-war boat is at this moment filling casks with water at the well of St. Basil on the beach yonder. Thrice has that ship been there for the same purpose; and I was watching for her when you came to me on the terrace, as I heard of her being off Alupka this morning."
"Your thoughts, then, were of me?" said I, tenderly.
"For you, rather; but away, and God be with you, sir!"
I lifted the window softly, and across the moonlit park that stretched away towards the seashore she pointed to where four tall cypresses rose like dark giants against the clear and starry sky, and where, at the distance of a mile or little more, the white marble dome of the well could be distinctly seen between them, its polished surface shining like a star above a sombre belt of shrubbery.
"There is the sound of hoofs! The Cossacks, your escort, are coming Away, sir; you cannot miss the well, though you may the boat!" said Valerie, with her hands clasped and her dark eyes dilated; and as she spoke the clank of galloping horses coming up the valley (and, as I fancied, the cracking of the whips carried by the Cossacks at their bridles) could be heard distinctly in the clear frosty air.
"If I had but my sword and pistols!" said I, with my teeth clenched.
"You do not require them. Farewell!
"Adieu, Valerie--adieu!"
I passionately kissed her lips and her cheek, too, ere she could prevent me, waved my hand to old Yourivitch, vaulted over the window, dropped from the balustrade of the terrace into the park, and at the risk of being seen by some of the household crossed it with all the speed I could exert in the direction that led to where I knew that the well--a structure erected by Prince Woronzow--stood on a lonely part of the shore. More than once did I look back at the lofty façade of the beautiful château, with its four towers and onion-shaped domes of shining copper, and all its stately windows that glittered in the light of a cloudless moon; and just as I drew near the belt of shrubbery, I could see the dark figures of mounted men encircling the terrace! A fugitive, in danger of losing honour and life together! Was this the end of my daydreams in Yalta? Once more I turned, and hastened to where the four cypress-trees towered skyward.
"Ahoy! who comes there?" cried a somewhat gruff voice, in English, accompanied by the sound of a slap on the butt of a musket; and then the squat sturdy figure of a seaman, posted as sentinel, appeared among the bushes, with an infantry pouch, belts, and bayonet worn above his short pea-jacket.
"A friend!" I replied, mechanically, yet not without a glow of sincere pleasure.
"Stand there, till I have a squint at you," replied Jack, cocking his musket and giving a glance at the cap; but I was too much excited to parley with him, and continued to advance, saying,
"I am an officer--Captain Hardinge, of the 23rd, a prisoner escaping from the enemy."
"All right, sir--glad to see you; heave ahead," he replied, half cocking his piece again.
"Who commands your party?"
"Lieutenant Jekyll, sir," said the seaman, saluting now, when he saw me fully in the moonlight.
"Of what ship?"
"The Southesk, sir, of twenty guns."
"Let me pass to your rear. He must instantly shove off his boat, as the Cossacks are within a mile of us--at yonder house."
In a minute more I reached the party at the well, twelve seamen and as many marines under an officer, who had a brace of pistols in his belt, and carried his sword drawn. They were in the act of carrying the last cask of water into a ship's cutter, which lay alongside a ridge of rock that ran into the sea, forming a species of natural pier or jetty, close by the white marble fountain.
I soon made myself known, and ere long found myself seated among new friends, and out on the shining water, which bubbled up at the bow and foamed under the counter as the oarsmen bent to their task, and their steadily and regularly feathered blades flashed in the silver sheen. The shore receded fast; the belt of shrubs grew lower and lower; and then the glittering domes of the distant mansion, which was ever in my mind and memory to be associated with Valerie Volhonski, rose gradually on our view, with the snow-clad range of Yaila in the background. But all were blended in haze and distance by the time we came sheering alongside H.M.S. Southesk, the water-tank of which had, fortunately for me, been empty, thus forcing her crew to have recourse to the well of St. Basil, by which circumstance I more than probably escaped the fate that ultimately overtook, but deservedly, the luckless Hawkesby Guilfoyle.
In the morning, under easy sail and half steam, the ship was off Balaclava, where I saw the old Genoese fort that commands its entrance, the white houses of the Arnaouts shaded by tall poplars, and the sea breaking in foam upon its marble bluffs; and there the captain kindly put me ashore in the first boat that left the ship.
It was not until long after the Crimean war, that by the merest chance, through an exchanged prisoner--a private of our 68th Foot--when having occasion to employ him as a commissionnaire in London, I learned what the fate of Guilfoyle was. En route to Kharkoff, he was run through the heart and killed by the lance of a Cossack of his escort, who alleged that he was attempting to escape; but my informant more shrewdly suspected that it was to obtain quiet possession of his ring--the paste diamond which had figured so often in his adventures, real and fictitious.
On the 28th of March, I found myself once more in my old tent, and seeking hard to keep myself warm at the impromptu stove, constructed by my faithful old servant, poor Jack Evans. I was received with astonishment, and, I am pleased to say, with genuine satisfaction by the regiment, even by those who had flattered themselves that they had gained promotion by my supposed demise. I was welcomed by all, from the Lieutenant-colonel down to little Dicky Roll, the junior drummer, and for the first day my tent was besieged by old friends.
I had come back among them as from the dead; but more than one man, whose name figured in the lists as missing, turned up in a similar fashion during the war. My baggage had all been sent to Balaclava, the railway to which was now partly in operation; my letters and papers had been carefully sealed up in black wax by Philip Caradoc, and with other private and personal mementos of me, packed for transmission to Sir Madoc Lloyd, as my chief friend of whom he knew. Many came, I have said, to welcome me; but I missed many a familiar face, especially from among my own company, as the Fusileers had more than once been severely engaged in the trenches.
Caradoc had been wounded in the left hand by a rifle-ball; Charley Gywnne greeted me with his head in bandages, the result of a Cossack sabre-cut; Dynely, the adjutant, had also been wounded; so had Mostyn, of the Rifles, and Tom Clavell, of the 19th, when passing through "the Valley of Death." Sergeant Rhuddlan, of my company, had just rejoined, after having a ball in the chest (even Carneydd Llewellyn had lost a horn): all who came to see me had something to tell of dangers dared and sufferings undergone. All were in uniforms that were worn to rags; but all were hearty as crickets, though sick of the protracted siege, and longing to carry Sebastopol with the cold steel.
"How odd, my dear old fellow, that we should all think you drowned, and might have been wearing crape on our sleeves, but for the lack thereof in camp, and the fact that mourning has gone out of fashion since death is so common among us; while all the time you have been mewed up (by the Cossacks in the Baidar Valley) within some forty miles of us; and so stupidly, too!" said Caradoc, as we sat late in the night over our grog and tobacco in his hut.
"Not so stupidly, after all," I replied, while freely assisting myself to his cavendish.
"How?"
"There wassucha girl there, Phil!" I added, with a sigh.
"Oho! where?"
"At Yalta."
"Woronzow's palace, or château?"
"Yes; but why wink so knowingly?"
"So, after all, you found there was balm in Gilead?" said he, laughing. "You must admit then, if she impressed you so much, that all your bitter regrets about a certain newspaper paragraph were a little overdone, and that I was a wise prophet? And what was this girl--Russian, Tartar, Greek, a Karaite Jewess, or what?"
"A pure Russian."
"Handsome?"
"Beyond any I have ever seen, beautiful!"
"Whew! even beyondla belle--"
"There, don't mention her at present, please," said I, with a little irritation, which only made him laugh the more.
"If you were love-making at Yalta, with three lance-prods in you, there was no malingering anyhow."
"I should think not."
"And so she was engaged to be married to that Russian bear, Tolstoff," he added, after I had told him the whole of my affair with Valerie.
"Yes," said I, with an unmistakable sigh.
"I think we are both destined to live and die bachelors," he resumed, in a bantering way; for though Phil had in these matters undergone, at Craigaderyn and elsewhere, "the baptism of fire" himself, he was not the less inclined to laugh at me; for of all sorrows, those of love alone excite the risible propensities.
"And so, Phil, the world's a kaleidoscope--always shifting."
"Not alwayscouleur de rose, though?"
"And I am here again!"
"Thank God!" said he, as we again shook hands, "Faith, Harry, you must have as many lives as a cat, and so you may well have as many loves as Don Juan; but,entre nous, and excuse me, she seems to have been a bit of a flirt, your charming Valerie."
"How--why do you think so?"
"From all you have told me; moreover every woman to be attractive, should be a little so," replied Caradoc, curling his heavy brown moustache.
"I don't think she was; indeed, I am certain she was not. But if this be true, how then about Miss Lloyd; and she is attractive enough?"
At the tenor of this retort Phil's face flushed from his Crimean beard to his temples.
"There you are wrong," said he, with the slightest asperity possible; "she has not in her character a grain of coquetry, or of that which Horace calls 'the art that is not to be taught by art.' She is a pure-minded and warm-hearted English girl, and is as perfect as all those wives and daughters of England, who figure in the volumes of Mrs. Ellis; and in saying this I am genuine, for I feel that I am praising some other fellow's bride--not mine, God help me!" he added, with much of real feeling.
"You have heard nothing of the Lloyds since I left you?"
"Nothing."
"Well, take courage, Phil; we may be at Craigaderyn one day yet," said I; and he, as if ashamed of his momentary sentimental outburst, exclaimed, with a laugh,
"By Jove, now that I have heard all your amours and amourettes, they surpass even those of Hugh Price."
"Poor Hugh! his lieutenancy is filled up, I suppose?"
"Yes--as another week would have seen your company, for we could not conceive that you were a prisoner at Yalta. Awkward that would have been."
"Deucedly so."
"But now you must console yourself, old fellow, by seeing what Madame la Colonelle Tolstoff----"
"Don't call her by that name, Phil--I hate to hear it!"
"By what, then?"
"Valerie--anything but the other."
"Then what, as Mrs. Henry Hardinge, she might become, if all this author (whose book I have been reading) says of the Russian ladies be true." And drawing from his pocket a small volume, he gave me the following paragraph to read, and I own it consoled me--alittle:--
"The domestic virtues are little known or cultivated in Russia, and marriage is a mere matter of convenience. There is little of romance in the character or conduct of the Russian lady. Intrigue and sensuality, rather than sentiment or passion, guide her in her amours, and these in after-life are followed by other inclinations. She becomes a greedy gamester, and a greatgourmande, gross in person, masculine in views, a shrewd observer of events, an oracle at court, and a tyrant over her dependents. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule."
"Ah, Valerie would be one of these!"
"Perhaps--but as likely not," said Phil; "and on the whole, if this traveller Maxwell is right, I have reason to congratulate you on your escape. But we must turn in now, as we relieve the trenches an hour before daybreak to-morrow; and by a recent order every man, without distinction, carries one round shot to the front, so a constant supply is kept up for the batteries."
Soon after this, on the 2nd of April, a working party of ours suffered severely in the trenches, and Major Bell, who commanded, was thanked in general orders for his distinguished conduct on that occasion. As yet it seemed to me that no very apparent progress had been made with the siege. The cold was still intense. Mustard froze the moment it was made, and half-and-half grog nearly did so, too. The hospital tents and huts were filled with emaciated patients suffering under the many diseases incident to camp life; and the terrible hospital at Scutari was so full, that though the deaths there averaged fifty daily in February, our last batch of wounded had to be kept on board-ship.
Phil and I burned charcoal in our hut, using old tin mess-kettles with holes punched in them. We, like all the officers, wore long Crimean boots; but our poor soldiers had only their wretched ankle bluchers, which afforded them no protection when the snow was heavy, or when in thaws the mud became literally knee-deep; and they suffered so much, that in more than one instance privates dropped down dead without a wound after leaving the trenches. So great were the disasters of one regiment--the 63rd, I think--that only seven privates and four officers were able to march to Balaclava on the 1st of February; by the 12th the effective strength of the brigade of Guards was returned at 350 men; and all corps--the Highland, perhaps, excepted--were in a similarly dilapidated state.
The camp was ever full of conflicting rumours concerning combined assaults, expected sorties, the probabilities of peace, or a continuance of the war; alleged treasons among certain French officers, who were at one time alleged to have given the Russians plans of their own batteries; that Menschikoff was dead from a wound, and also Yermiloff the admiral; thatGeneralTolstoff was now in command of the left towards Inkermann. (If so, was Valerie now in Sebastopol? How I longed for the united attack--the storm and capture that might enable me to see her once again!) And amid all these varied rumours there came one--carried swiftly by horsemen through Bucharest and Varna--which reached us on the 7th of April, to the effect that Nicholas the mighty Czar of All the Russias, had gone to his last account; and I do not think it was a demise we mourned much. We sent intelligence of it by a flag of truce to the Russians; but they received it with scorn, as a "weak invention of the enemy."
And now the snow began to wear away; the clouds that floated over the blue Euxine and the green spires of Sebastopol became light and fleecy; the young grass began to sprout, and the wild hyacinths, the purple crocuses, and tender snowdrops, the violet and the primrose, were blooming in the Valley of Death, and on the fresh mould that marked where the graves of our comrades lay.
It was impossible for me not to feel lingering in my heart a deep and tender interest for Valerie. She had not deceived or ill-used me; we had simply been separated by the force of circumstances; by her previous troth to Tolstoff, whom I flattered myself she could not love, even if she respected or esteemed him.
That they were married by this time I could scarcely doubt, as she had assured me that she was on "the very eve" of her nuptials (one of those "marriages of convenience," according to Caradoc's book); and if he held a command so high in Sebastopol, there was every reason to conclude she must be with him. In the event of a general assault, I was fully resolved to send my card to headquarters as a volunteer for the storming column, though I knew right well that I dare not allow myself to fall alive, intohishands, at all events; thus the whole situation gave me an additional and more personal interest in the fall and capture of that place than, perhaps, inspired any other man in the whole allied army. What if Tolstoff should be killed? This surmise opened up a wide field for speculation.
Any of those balls that were incessantly poured against the city might send that amiable commander to kingdom come, and if Valerie were left a widow--well, I did not somehow like to think of her as a widow, Tolstoff's especially, yet I was exasperated to think of her, so brilliant, so gentle, and so highly cultured, as the wife of one so coarse and even brutal in bearing, and if he did happen to stand in the way of a bullet, why should he not be killed as well as another; and so I reasoned, so true it is, that "with all our veneering and French polish, the tiger is only half dead in any of us."
If I were again unluckily sent with a flag of truce into Sebastopol, on any mission such as the burial of the dead and removal of the wounded, or so forth, it would, I knew, be certainly violated by Tolstoff, and myself be made prisoner for the affairs at Yalta. Then if such a duty were again offered me, on what plea could I, with honour, decline it? I could but devoutly hope that no such contingency might happen for me again.
Times there were when, brooding over the past, and recalling the strange magnetism of the smile of Valerie, and in the touch of her hand, the contour of her face, her wonderful hair, and pleading winning dark eyes, there came into my heart the tiger feeling referred to, the jealousy that makes men feel mad, wild, fit for homicide or anything; and as hourly "human lives were lavished everywhere, as the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves," I had--heroics apart--a terrible longing to have my left hand upon the throat of Tolstoff, with her Majesty's Sheffield regulation blade in the other, to help him on his way to a better world.
In these, or similar visions and surmises, I ceased to indulge when with Caradoc, as he was wont to quiz me, and say that if I got a wife out of Sebastopol, I should be the only man who gained anything by the war, and even my gain might be a loss; that, like himself, I had twice burned my fingers at the torch of Hymen, and that I should laugh at the Russian episode or loving interlude, as he called it, as there were girls in England whose shoe-strings he was sure she was not fit to tie. Though she had rightly told me that my passion was but a passing fancy, she knew not that it was one fed by revenge and disappointment.
"Lady Estelle may perhaps have destroyed your faith in women," added Phil, "but any way she has not destroyedmine."
"Have you still the locket with the likeness of Winifred Lloyd?" said I.
"Yes--God bless her--she left it with me," he replied, with a kindling eye. How true Phil was to her! and yet she knew it not, and as far as we knew, recked but little of the faith he bore her.
On a Saturday night--the night of that 21st of April, on which we captured the rifle-pits--as we sat in our hut talking over the affair, weary with toil of that incessant firing to which the cannonading at Shoeburyness is a joke, Phil said,
"Let us drink 'sweethearts and wives,' as we used to do in the transport."
"Agreed," said I; and as we clinked our glasses together and exchanged glances, I knew that his thoughts went back to Craigaderyn, even as mine recurred to that moonlight night on the terrace at Yalta.
"You remained with the burial party," said he, after a pause.
"Yes, and I saw something which convinced me that the fewer tender ties we fighting men have, the better for our own peace. An officer of the 19th lay among the dead, a man past forty apparently. A paper was peeping from the breast of his coat; I pulled it out, and it proved to be a letter, received perhaps that morning--a letter from his wife, thrust hastily into his breast, as we marched to the front. A little golden curl was in it, and there was written in a child's hand, 'Cecil's love to dearest papa.' I must own that the incident, at such a time and place, affected me; so I replaced the letter in the poor fellow's breast, and we buried it with him. So papa lies in a rifle-pit, with mamma's letter and little Cecil's lock of hair; but, after all, king Death did not get much of him--the poor man had been nearly torn to pieces by a cannon shot."
"I saw you in advance of the whole line of skirmishers to-day, Harry, far beyond the zigzags."
"I was actually at the foot of the glacis."
"The glacis--was not that madness?" exclaimed Phil.
"The truth is, I did so neither through enthusiastic courage nor in a spirit of bravado. I was only anxious to see if from behind the sap-roller that protected me, my field-glass could enable me to detect among the gray-coated figures at the embrasures, the tall person and grim visage of old Tolstoff."
"By Jove, I thought as much!"
"But I looked in vain, and retired in crab-fashion, the bullets falling in a shower about me the while."
At that moment a knock rung on the door of the hut, and Sergeant Rhuddlan, who acted as our regimental postman, handed a small packet to me.
"The second battalion of the Scots Royals, the 48th, and the 72nd Highlanders have just come in, sir, from Balaclava, and have brought a mail with them," said he, in explanation; and while he was speaking, we heard the sound of drums and bagpipes, half drowned by cheers in the dark, as those in camp welcomed the new arrivals from home, and helped to get them tented and hutted.
"From Craigaderyn!" said I, on seeing the seal--Sir Madoc's antique oval--with the lion's headerased, as the heralds have it.
I had written instantly to the kind old man on my return to camp, and this proved to be the answer by the first mail. On opening the packet I found a letter, and a cigar-case beautifully worked in beads of the regimental colours, red, blue, and gold, withmyinitials on one side, and those of Winifred Lloyd on theother. Poor Phil Caradoc looked wistfully at the work her delicate hands had so evidently wrought--so wistfully that, but for the ungallantry of the proceeding, I should have presented the case to him. However, he had the simple gratification of holding it, while I read the letter of Sir Madoc, and did so aloud, as being of equal interest to us both. It was full of such warm expressions of joy for my safety and of regard for me personally, that I own they moved me; but some passages proved a little mysterious and perplexing.
"Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your letter caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny especially? She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I have now learnedwhythe poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I understand, another."
"That is me," said Phil, parenthetically.
"But of that unexpected refusal of Sir Watkins Vaughan nothing can be said here."
"What on earth can he mean!" said I, looking up; "perhaps she has some lingering compunction about you, Phil."
"If so, she might have sent the cigar-case to me--or something else; just to square matters, as it were."
Remembering my old suspicions and fears--they were fearsthen--as I drove away from Craigaderyn for Chester, I read the letter in haste, and with dread of what it might contain or reveal; as I would not for worlds have inflicted a mortification, however slight, on my dear friend Caradoc, who gnawed the ends of his moustache at the following:
"Young Sir Watkins had been most attentive to Winny during the past season in town--that gay London season, which, notwithstanding the war, was quite as brilliant as usual; when every one had come back from the Scotch moors, from Ben Nevis, Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and everywhere else that the roving Englishman is wont to frequent, to kill game, or time, or himself, as it sometimes happens. But Winny won't listen to him, and I think he is turning his attention to Dora, though whether or not the girl--who has another adorer, in the shape of a long-legged Plunger with parted hair and a lisp--only laughs at him, I can't make out.
"Tell Caradoc, Gwynne, and other true-hearted Cymri in the Welsh Fusileers, that when in London I attended more than one meeting, inaugurating a movement to secure for Wales judges and counsel who shall speak Welsh, and Welsh only. The meetings were failures, and the d--d Sassenachs only laughed at us; but from such injustice,Gwared ni Argylywd daionus![5]say I.
"And so poor Hugh Price of yours is gone. A good-hearted fellow, who could do anything, from crossing the stiffest hunting country to making a champagne cup, singing a love song or mixing a salad--one of the old line of the Rhys of Geeler in Denbighshire. My God, how many other fine fellows lie in that hecatomb in the Valley of Inkermann! Sebastopol seems to be left quite open on one side, so that the Russians may pour in stores and fresh troops, and go and come at their pleasure? It is pleasant for tax-payers at home and the troops abroad to think that things are so arranged in Downing-street, by my Lords Aberdeen, Aberconway, and suchlike Whig incapables and incurables.
"I fear your regimental dinner would be a scanty one on St. David's-days." (On that day I had dined with Valerie, and forgot all about the yearly festival of the Fusileers!) "I thought of it and of you all--the more so, perhaps, that I had just seen the old colours of the Royal Welsh in St. Peter's Church at Carmarthen."
The old baronet, after a few Welsh words, of which I could make nothing, rambled away into such subjects as mangold-wurzels and subsoil, scab-and-foot rot, and food for pheasants, all of which I skipped; ditto about the close of the hunting-season, which he and Sir Watkins--Winny's admirer--had shared together; and how the rain had deluged Salop, throwing the scent breast-high, so that in many a run the fox and the hounds had it all to themselves, and that following them was as bad as going all round the Wrekin to Shrewsbury, mere brooks having become more than saddle-girth deep; moreover, the mischievous, execrable, and pestilent wire fences were playing the devil with the noble old sport of fox-hunting; then, with a few more expressions of regard, and a hint about Coutts & Co., if I wanted cash, his characteristic letter closed, and just when folding it, I detected Master Phil Caradoc surreptitiously placing Winny's cigar case very near his bushy moustache--about to kiss it, in fact. He grew very red, and looked a little provoked.
"So that is all Sir Madoc's news?" said he.
"All--a dear old fellow."
"To-morrow is Sunday, when we shall have the chaplain at the drum-head, and be confessing that we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done, while the whistling dicks are bursting and the shot booming, as the Ruskies seek to have a quiet shy at our hollow square, and the Naval Brigade, with their long 'Lancasters,' are making, as usual, the devil's own row against the Redan--so till then, adieu!" he added, adopting a bantering tone, as men will at times, when ashamed of having exhibited any emotion or weakness.
Not long after this, with my company, I had to escort to Balaclava, and to guard for some days, till embarked, some Russian prisoners, who had been taken by the Turks in an affair between Kamara and the Tchernaya, and who were afterwards transmitted to Lewes in Sussex; and I had a little opportunity afforded me for studying their character and composition; and brave though these men undoubtedly were, I felt something of pity and contempt for them; nor was I mistaken, though Prince Dolgorouki maintains, inLa Vérité sur la Russie, that a Muscovite alone can write on a Russian subject. A British soldier never forgets that he is a citizen and a free-born man; but to the Russian these terms are as untranslatable as that ofslaveinto the Celtic.
In the empire, when fresh levies are wanted, the chief of each village makes a selection; the wretched serfs have then one side of the head shaved, to prevent desertion, and, farther still, are manacled and marched like felons to the headquarters of their regiment. There they are stripped, bathed--rather a necessary ceremony--and deprived of all they may possess, save the brass crosses and medals which are chained round their neck--the holy amulet of the Russian soldier, and spared to him as the only consolation of his miserable existence. He is docile, submissive, and gallant, but supple, subservient, and cunning, though his gallantry and courage are the result of dull insensibility, tinged with ferocity rather than moral force.
The recruit bemoans the loss of his beard, and carefully preserves it that it may be buried with him, as an offering to St. Nicholas, who would not admit him into heaven without it. Once enrolled--we cannot sayenlisted--he makes a solemn vow never to desert the colours of his regiment, each of which has its ownartelor treasury, its own chaplain, sacred banners, and relics. The pay of these warriors averages about a halfpenny English per diem. Their food is of the most wretched description, and it is known that when the troops of Suwarrow served in the memorable campaign of Italy, they devoured with keen relish the soap and candles wherever they went; but many of the Russian battalions, and even the Cossack corps, have vocal companies that sing on the march, or at a halt, where they form themselves into a circle, in the centre of which stands the principal singer or leader. And thus I heard some of these poor fellows sing, when I halted them outside Balaclava, at a place where, as I remember, there lay a solitary grave--that probably of a Frenchman, as it was marked by a cross, had a wreath of immortelles upon it, and was inscribed--alas for the superstitions of the poor human heart!--"the last tribute of love."
The snow and the rain had frittered it nearly away.
Among my prisoners were four officers--dandies who actually wore glazed boots, and were vain of their little hands and feet. I was more than usually attentive to them for the sake of Valerie, and as they certainly seemed--whatever the rank and file might be--thorough gentlemen. One knew Volhonski, and all seemed to know Valerie, and had probably danced--perhaps flirted--with her, for they had met at balls in St. Petersburg. All knew Tolstoff, and laughed at him; but none could tell me whether or not she and that northern bear were as yet "one flesh," or married infacie ecclesia.