Chapter XIX · HORACE'S PLEASANT TASK.

Soon after the last interview we have narrated, Galitzin went in search of Horace Ramornie. He had not to seek for him long, as the nearest sentinel pointed to where he lay on the grassy slope of the glacis outside the fortress, listlessly, to all appearance, though sunk in sad and exciting thoughts.

However, he started up and, as policy required, saluted courteously the person who now approached him, but whom he loathed with an intensity that words cannot pourtray.

"Still contemplating the road towards Sebastopol, and the sea?" said Galitzin, with a smiling countenance, and in French. "Ma foi! you'll not require to make a sketch of it, as it must be graven pretty well in your mind by this time. Will you have a cigar?" he added, proffering a handsome silver case, which had been found in the pocket of one of our Guards' officers on the field of Inkerman.

Cigars were luxuries of which Horace had long been deprived, and as declining might have savoured of insult or open dislike, he accepted one and lit it at that of the Prince, the two looking into each other's eyes pretty much as we have all seen John Mildmay and Captain Hawkesly do in the latter's "Office in the City."

"So you are anxious to be free, eh?" said the Prince.

"Why taunt me by a question so tantalizing?"

"I do not taunt you; far from it. Well, I don't care if I afford you an opportunity for being so."

"How?" asked Horace, whose heart, while longing for liberty, revolted at the idea of having it without that of Gwenny Wedderburn also being secured. "I have given my parole, and your Government——"

"Know nothing about you as yet. I have troubled Mentschicoff with no reports for some time back. I can make you a close prisoner and yet afford you a chance of escaping. A horse—yes; even a Tartar pony, would soon take you to Balaclava."

"But what means this sudden change in your views, and where are your fears that I might detail the strength, the defences, and so forth, of Yaila. What am I expected to do in return for this favour?" asked Horace, suspiciously.

"You are right to ask, for, as I always say, it is a nothing for nothing world ours. Well, you may do much for me."

"Explain, Monseigneur le Prince—pray?"

There was a pause; the usual detestable glitter came into the cold and half-closed eyes of Galitzin, and Horace rightly surmised, that if he were once out of Yaila with the aforesaid Tartar horse, he should find—whatever favour he granted or service he performed—the road beset a few versts from the place, and that then he would be shot down without mercy or despatched as a close prisoner to Yekaterinoslav; for he knew that his present companion was capable of any act of treachery, however dark, or base, or cruel.

"As your friend Chesters would have said——"

"Excuse me; he was no friend of mine," said Horace.

"Your brother officer then?"

"Nor that either," replied Ramornie, haughtily. "The unfortunate fellow had only local rank in the Turkish Contingent, and had to quit Her Britannic Majesty's service for malpractice with cards."

"Well, your fair friend Mademoiselle Wedderburn and I have had one or two long conversations together, and as Chesters would have said, in his sporting parlance, she is a stake I mean to enter for. You understand me?"

"You mean to make her a proposal of marriage?" said Horace, with a smile that in spite of himself was somewhat ghastly.

"Precisely; and I wish you to use your influence—that is, if you possess any, with her, for me. Tell her that if she will marry me without any fuss or absurd resistance, I shall open up to her a life of wealth and brilliance at St. Petersburg or Moscow—she can have her choice—at Baden-Baden, and elsewhere, such as she cannot conceive and could not have in England—that land of fog, of exclusiveness, and insular prejudices, where everything foreign is deemed ridiculous and judged by the standard of Pall-Mall or the Old Bailey—your Times and your Punch. I know all about it; I have been in London, and was there too long for my own profit."

He certainly had not been there for the profit of others, as "this interesting foreigner" had been required more than once at Bow Street, and was not forthcoming.

"Have you not already proposed?" asked Horace, quietly tipping the ashes off his cigar.

"Yes; but she can't make up her mind. It will after all be, at best, a poor style of ingrafting, as the gardeners say; yet the blood of the Tegoborskis may be perpetuated through my pretty one for all that."

Ramornie made a violent effort to control his rising rage, an exhibition of which would have been useless, and only serving to spoil all, so he said, simply—

"You are unfortunately older than the lady, Monseigneur le Prince."

"Yes—perhaps—somewhat."

"Old enough indeed to be——"

"Don't say, her father—that would sound unpleasant. I know that with a disparity of some twenty years between us, I shall have all the ordinary commonplaces of well-bred life said of me on that score, and perhaps to me, for the girl seems wonderfully cool and self-possessed. She will talk to you, no doubt, of the brevity of our acquaintance, our partial ignorance of each other's tastes and dispositions—perhaps also ask whether I have not already a Princess elsewhere," he continued, with his ugly smile. "Seek to explain all this away, and to assure her that, save with me, she has no hope of ever returning to England. But though there be a difference in our years, as I am a Russian Prince, it is not necessary that I should sue for this girl in a tone of humility."

"I do not quite comprehend all this," said Horace, bewildered by stifled rage.

"Well, I mean that my renewed offer is not to be blended with an apology—by you at least."

"Have you no humane or religious scruples in this matter?" asked the other, scarcely knowing what to say.

"Oh, as to religion," replied Galitzin, laughing heartily, "you don't think surely that I am particular to a shade about the tenets of the raskolniki," for so dissenters from the Russian Greek Church are named.

"But she, I hope, has some scruples."

"She has told you so?—perhaps you are more in her confidence than I am?" said Galitzin, with flashing eyes, for his suspicions were ever prompt to kindle.

"If I am less, why seek my aid or influence? Besides, you forget, Prince Galitzin, that we are almost cousins;" and as Horace spoke, he remembered again how Lady Wedderburn used to resent the term or idea; but there it proved most useful, for his hearer felt and knew from a Russian point of view that ties of blood barred both love and marriage within the fourth degree; and so his suspicion lulled again, and he said—"Monsieur le Capitaine, let us seek to understand each other."

"You are sure you love her?" asked Horace in desperation, to gain time and to think.

"I always dreaded a regular love fit as I dread the evil-eye or the devil; but how could any man escape with her, she is so perilously handsome? She has a lovely hand, and an irreproachable foot and ankle. What a ravishing peep I had of them yesterday as she stepped out of the pony-phaeton. Say to her, that I implore her to come to terms for her own sake, as she is perhaps far from safe where she is."

"Terms—safe," stammered Horace.

"I have put her in Norina's charge—under Madame Tegoborski's care, I should say. Now, Madame has been absurd enough to conceive a mad fancy for me. Of course, I am a Prince and Major-General, while Tegoborski is only a Pulkovnick, and has been a serf (though a relation of mine), who joined the army with one half his head shaved, for so we always mark our recruits to prevent them from running away. But she threatens me——"

"Who—Madame?"

"Yes," said Galitzin, lowering his voice, and glancing furtively about, as if he feared being overheard, "she threatens me, and might, for all I know, poison the poor girl; women are terribly vindictive, and that would never do, with such a fine fortune as she has. Will you expatiate on all these dangers as an old friend? and if your advice weighs well with her, you shall have a horse for Balaclava to-morrow."

"But if it does not weigh with her? For I may fail as an adviser, if you as a lover have failed already."

"Then I shall try other means. I shall take her away with me alone to Bagtche Serai or elsewhere for a few days, and that will compromise her honour in her own eyes and those of the world, if the world cares about the matter. She will then see the absolute necessity of a marriage with me. Beautiful as she is, I may frankly tell you that it is not her person I value so much as her purse. I have rank, but I must have roubles as well. I want money, and this war will soon be over now; yet in my time I have drunk and gambled away serfs enough to be the population of a moderate city."

"But even this last scheme may fail; and what will you do then?"

"Resort to force!" hissed the other through his teeth, and thinking that to say more might lessen the strength of his instructions, which did not seem very clear to Horace Ramornie, he lifted his forage cap, bowed, and withdrew, leaving his listener rooted to the spot in a storm of indignation, rage, and natural fear, though not for himself.

"Scoundrel!—open and confessed as such!" muttered Horace, as he watched the figure of Galitzin disappear through the arched gate of the fort; "you little know your man, or the task you have set him! Anyway, I will have an interview with my beloved Gwenny, and may concert something with her. But what can that something be? Have I not thought of all, in vain, before? Oh, God aid us!" he added, looking upward with clasped hands.

It was dreadful to contemplate the idea, or rather the fact of his idolized and highly-bred Gwenny being in the hands of a man who could conceive such schemes, and canvass them openly! In the course of a few minutes, what had he not hinted, suggested, or threatened; and now there was a new terror, in the jealousy of Madame Tegoborski!

He threw himself on the cool grass, to think; but how often had he thought in vain before! And there he lay scheming—considering this doubt and that probability, this plot and that plan, till his brain grew giddy with intense perplexity.

The Russians he knew to be corrupt and ready to take bribes: but he was not the master of a copper kopec. And in yonder Tartar village there was no one whom he could intrust with a message to Balaclava, or whose aid he could seek. He looked wistfully at its flat-roofed cottages, almost buried among the green leaves and golden apples of luxuriant fruit-trees, He turned to the fertile valley that led towards the Black Sea, which blended with the sky in sunny haze, and then to the dark pine forest, that clothed the southern slope of the Tchatr Dagh, the marble cliffs of which seemed to vibrate in the rays of light. But no shelter for her could be found there.

Did his parole bind him still, at a conjuncture so terrible? He feared that it did.

He felt powerless, and weaker by having Gwenny's fate linked there with his own; and he envied now the stupid and monotonous existence he had enjoyed before her peril, and anxiety for her safety, came to torture and agitate his mind.

Great was the horror of sitting there helplessly unarmed, penniless, and powerless; and not knowing what an hour—yea, a minute, might bring forth!

Anyway he would see Gwenny at once; and, with a prayer for inspiration and guidance in his heart and on his lips, he passed the tête du pont and entered the fortress.