Chapter XVII · GALITZIN AS A LOVER.

Galitzin was well educated and knew all the little that existed then of Russian literature; thus he made many an excuse of translating to Gwenny the tender passages which he had marked off in the poems of the Countess Rostopchin (which being secret literature, circulate in MS. only) or the verses of Puschkin, who has sung so sweetly of the Fountain of Tears in the palace of the Crimean Khans, or in the story of Voinaroffski, the lover of Aurora of Konigsmark; but she listened vacantly or with ill-disguised impatience, and would irritate him by ever and anon addressing Ramornie.

"And so, dear Horace, you are a captain now?" said she, in the middle of one of Voinaroffski's most passionate appeals.

"Yes, Gwenny; but I got my promotion through the death of the very man who would have been the first to congratulate me on it—yes; to have ordered a fresh cooper of port at the mess to wet the new commission—poor Jack Probyn! But it was no fault of mine; it was the fortune of war; yet I would rather have remained a lieutenant still, and had jolly Jack to make fun with."

"We shall have peace soon, Mademoiselle," said the Prince, adding the same in Russian to Madame Tegoborski; and Horace shivered, for he knew what idea was associated in the mind of Galitzin with peace.

"But peace always ends in war," said Madame Tegoborski, "just as war must end in peace. What you say reminds me of a passage in Kriloff, the Fabulist, about the friendship of two dogs."

"And what says your Kriloff?" asked Galitzin, knitting his brow.

"It is a fable only."

"Well, go on with your fable."

"Two dogs in a court-yard become affectionate friends; how they fawn and love each other, and will never fight again. It is charming; but suddenly a bone is thrown from a window, and they straightway proceed to tear each other to pieces."

"Yes; and Kriloff has another fable of a sleeping peasant, who is about to be stung by a serpent; but a friendly fly bites him on the nose and awakes him. The shepherd kills the serpent, but he also destroys the fly. A warning to the meddlesome, or the jealous, not to be too officious in opening the eyes of any one," added Galitzin with considerable significance of meaning, after which Madame coloured, lapsed again into silence and took a cigarette, but she had to twist it up for herself that evening.

Monseigneur le Prince was otherwise occupied, he forgot all about the little duty which had been a pleasure yesterday; and now desiring Kaminski to open the piano, he begged Gwenny to favour them with a little music.

With a horrid memory of the events of the morning hovering in her mind Gwenny was about to decline, when a glance from Horace decided her, and she seated herself at the instrument—a very indifferent one, and not at all improved in its recent transmission from Alushta, by Cossacks, on the limber of a brass field-piece.

All the music placed before her was Russian, but Gwenny's fingers and ears were clever, and after a few efforts she was able to read off and play in very tolerable style—"The Red Sarafan," (so called from the old Muscovite dress worn by ladies at evening parties), Vielgorski's Buivala, and even the "Nightingale," a traditional song and air of the Russian gipsies, to the great enchantment of Galitzin, who was flattering himself what a creditable little wife she would be; and even of old Togoborski, whose grizzled and closely shorn caput and grim visage (seamed by the edge of more than one Osmanli sabre), appeared approvingly above the columns of the Zeitung, as he waved his meerschaum and beat time with his lame foot; but more than all were they pleased when her rapid little fingers dashed over in quick succession all the melodies of the inevitable and inimitable Trovatore.

And Horace listened like one in a dream. Was it reality, or was it a madness that had come upon him, that he seemed to be sitting in Crimean Yaila, and under the shadow of the Tchatr Dagh, listening to Gwenny Wedderburn playing the self-same airs which she had played to him in the early days of their loverhood, and on many a delicious and half-dreamy evening in the beautiful drawing-room at Willowdean.

"I have been tired of my own company," said he in a low voice, as he bent over her, "and have longed—with all the longing of a desperate and a loving heart—to be beside you again, but not here. Oh, no, not here; in my wildest imaginings, no such idea or wish could have occurred to me, and yet it has come to pass. Oh! what madness tempted Lady Wedderburn and Lady Ernescleugh to venture here?"

"To see their sons. Besides, Lord Cardigan's yacht, and ever so many more, have come out. And you mentioned having seen the Countess of Errol with her husband in the camp of the Rifles."

"True; but what of that? This barbarous land is no place for delicate English ladies; and I would to heaven that I saw you safe on the watery high road for home."

Much more they rashly succeeded in whispering to each other, for Galitzin was at that moment in conference with Kaminski. How tender and delicious to themselves—but themselves only—are the little nothings that make up the conversation of lovers!

Was it Ennemoser's theory of polarity, or what? But it seemed that in the same mysterious fashion as that on which the learned doctor expatiates, through spirituality, or may it be the force of a strong love, a kind of magnetic current had passed between these two at times, for on comparison they found that they had simultaneously thought of, or dreamt each of the other, and imagined the same things at the same identical moment.

It might be all nonsense, or a mistake; but anyway it was a delicious theme to talk about, till the eyes of Galitzin were upon them, and he had begun to feel first piqued, and then jealous of Horace as an Anglais; but luckily, he was equally so of the aide-de-camp Kaminski, who having discovered a pair of glazed boots and some kid gloves in a chest that came ashore from the shattered yacht—some of poor Newnham's holiday finery, perhaps—had appeared in them as for special service this evening.

Giving the obsequious Kaminski a hint to draw off Horace and engage him in conversation, Galitzin bent over Gwenny's chair.

"Ah, Mademoiselle, your singing enchants me; that Miserere was indeed divine!" he whispered, in what he deemed his most seductive tone, as he proceeded to turn over the leaves really like a well-bred man of the world rather than the savage he was in heart. "But," he added, as the cruel glitter came into his dark eyes, "excuse me—I have begun to dislike your friend."

"Who?" asked Gwenny, impetuously.

"He in the tattered red coat."

"What—poor Horace?" she exclaimed, and then blushed with confusion and irritation.

"Orace—what you mean the Hospodeen Ramhornoff?"

"He is indeed an old friend," replied Gwenny, in alarm, for ere this she had read the pencilled note, and could think of no safer term for him.

"Bah! I hate such old, or rather such young friends." Then after a pause, he added with a loftiness that made her smile, "I am the Prince Galitzin, Major-General under the Emperor, Knight of the Imperial Orders, and Colonel of the Tambroy Regiment of Infantry."

She only gave an acquiescent bow; had he been that worthy grocer and self-righteous elder of the kirk who officiated as Baron-Bailie of Willowdean, she could not have seemed less awed.

Now Galitzin knew enough of the world, of Europe, of that isle of it named Britain, and of the "snobbery" thereof, to believe that she would be greatly impressed by his announcement, as well as by his stars, medals, and enormous epaulettes; but she had come from a land where Rajahs, Maharajahs, Begums, Nanas, and Princes were thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, and where she had seen them trotting about on white elephants with all their half-naked suwarri yelling at their heels, so she "saw nothing in it."

But as the evening wore on, an eventful one in the life of her and Horace, Madame Tegoborski strove, but in vain, to open a flirtation first with him and then, as he was too triste, with the staff-officer, Kaminski, and to turn the tables on the heedless Prince. The latter was, however, too fully occupied with Gwenny to perceive this, or to care one jot about it; and certainly, the grim old Pulkovnick, Alexis Tegoborski, appeared to care quite as little; he seemed entirely occupied with the pot-hooks and endless lines of consonants which seemed to make up the letter-press of the Moskauer Zeitung; and for the remainder of the evening, Horace discreetly kept apart from Gwenny.

With the views of Galitzin so openly stated and now attempted to be put in force, they felt that to observe a distant reserve to each other was absolutely necessary; for if the gallant commander of the Tambroy Infantry had suspected that his prisoner was a secret—and still more, an accepted—lover, he would have no more compunction for telling off a file of Cossacks to take him into the nearest wood, and there despatch him with their carbines, than for taking an extra glass of kimmel, or spoonful of caviare before saying his prayer at dinner time.

However, after that evening Horace was invited no more to tea-drinkings or other entertainments at the apartments of Madame Tegoborski; not that the latter was to blame there, for the wishes of the Prince came to her through her husband, and they were law, for the Russian wife must not forget the symbolical whip which her husband receives from her father on the bridal day.

Long, long were the watches of the night in which he thought, and thought, and considered of what was to be done, till it seemed as if his brain would turn. Then came sleep, full of nervous starts and dreams, and then came the morning.

It was a horror to wake with the first thought that rushed upon him, like a black and overwhelming flood, the knowledge that by an extraordinary turn in the wheel of fortune—a cast of evil destiny—Gwendoleyne Wedderburn was in Yaila, at the mercy of that lawless Russian officer, and in the care, custody and apartments, of one whom he had too much reason to deem alike unscrupulous and jealously hateful of her—Madame Tegoborski.

Of what vengeance might not such a woman be capable!

And if Gwenny, a helpless being, a stranger and prisoner of war, escaped the bold designs of the Prince, might she not, by poison perhaps, fall a victim to the vengeance of the forgotten mistress!

Galignani and the Times record such vengeances every day. So what might not occur in the sequestered fort of Yaila?