MARGARITA.
Though named the castle of Palenka, the abode of the count of that
name partook more of the character of a fortified house, as it had
been built by his grandfather, an old heyduc, on the basement of a
Roman or other ancient fortress, and had a legend connected with it,
similar to that told of the castle of Skadra, that to propitiate the
_vilas_, a beautiful young girl had been built up alive in the
foundation of one of the towers; and Margarita, one day, showed Cecil
the identical place in question.
All the rooms had parqueted floors, polished like a coach-panel. In
the dining-room, or hall, was a large round table of massive form and
baronial aspect, and a lofty oak buffet, full of shining plate,
quaint crystal goblets, and quainter china.
The drawing-room was fitted up somewhat in the Turkish style or
taste, for though it had a grand piano and orthodox European chairs,
a low divan of yellow satin ran all round it, and many of the most
beautiful objects of art that Vienna could produce adorned it.
Trophies of arms hung everywhere, many of them very old, many of them
collected perhaps by the veteran heyduc, who fought often in battle
under Kara George, and who was impaled at Belgrade; for here we may
mention that these heyducs were outlawed and deemed robbers by the
Turks, and like the Scottish caterans, imagined that in setting law
at defiance they were only combating for a principle of independence,
and not acting dishonourably; and most of them, like old Michail, the
Heyduc of Palenka, made it their boast that they robbed only the rich
Moslem invaders, but were generous to the Servian poor; and for
military services to the House of Austria, his son was created a
count by Francis I., the ally of Britain against Napoleon.
Cecil's mind was made comparatively easy by the fact that Margarita
had written to her brother the count, detailing the mishap which
detained him at Palenka; but the letter was never received, so he
knew nothing of the mystery that enveloped his disappearance at
headquarters: and day followed day very quietly in that sequestered
abode among the forests, and so far from any town.
The old countess, who had a truly Servian and holy horror of all
strangers, thawed speedily to Cecil, and declared him one of the most
delightful companions she had ever met, even in Vienna.
A thorough Servian of the old school, she was full alike of religion
and superstition, and observed most scrupulously the numerous fasts
of the Greek Church--the four annual terms of abstinence, and every
Wednesday and Friday, and never uttered a holy name without crossing
herself.
She was never tired of telling her beads, and if she awoke in the
night when the wind was high, she trembled as she thought of the
traditional vampire--a body which the Serbs supposed to be possessed
by an evil spirit, which comes forth from the tomb of death to suck
the blood of the living, till traced, taken, and burned to ashes.
She believed in the existence of old Servian witches, who could steal
away men's hearts, and close the wounds through which they had drawn
them.
'I fear there are young witches in Servia who steal away men's hearts
and leave the wound an open one,' said Cecil, who, but for the
presence of Margarita, would soon have become intensely bored at
Palenka, as the chief, if not only, visitor there was the pope or
priest of the nearest village, a blue-eyed and long-bearded old man,
who could only speak Serb, and whose demigod was the Archbishop of
Belgrade.
Accustomed for months past to the misery and wretchedness of the
Servian camp, to Cecil, the dinner-table with shining white cloth,
plate, crystal and ivory knives, under a flood of light from a
rose-coloured chandelier, seemed the luxury of Sybaris; and for
several days he had his food cut for him by old Theodore, or by the
pretty hands of the girl Ottilie.
Both mother and daughter were intensely loyal in the cause of Milano
and Servia, and hated the Turks as bitterly as ever the old heyduc
himself could have done.
'It was my brother Michail who recaptured the cross at Belina last
year, as no doubt you know?' said Margarita.
'I was not in Servia then--what was the episode?' asked Cecil.
'It was in the famous battle of July. When the Turks ravaged Belina
in Servia, they carried off a great cross from the altar of the
church, and came on to the assault of our Servian troops, bearing it
in front, and shouting, "You cannot fire on your God--you dare not
fire upon your Prophet!"'
'And our poor Servians, rather than commit sacrilege, dared not fire,
and stood perishing in their ranks!' said the countess.
'Till our Michail, at the head of a chosen band, burst, sword in
hand, among the dense mass of red fezzes, recaptured the cross, and
brought it into the lines of Milano, over heaps of dead and dying;
and then--but not till then--did the Servians pour in a dreadful fire
of shot, shell and rockets, beneath which the columns of the infidels
melted away.'
When Margarita spoke, even with energy, as she often did, there was
always something sweet and innocent about her, with a certain quiet
dignity, and a touch of softness in her expression, which, when taken
with the bright and lofty character of her beauty, rendered her
wonderfully attractive.
She soon discovered that he was musical, and they sang frequently
together, while she played the accompaniment; and when he gave forth
the notes of the Master of Ravenswood's farewell to his lost love,
and gave it with a power and pathos that, though she had heard many
of the best tenors at Vienna sing the same air, yet none had seemed
to do so with such tenderness and heart-broken despair--and when
their eyes met, her heart began to thrill beneath the ardour of his
gaze, for Cecil, when he sung thus, gave his whole soul to it, and
thought of Mary--Mary Montgomerie only, or it might be the memory of
the mother that taught him; but to the ear of Margarita every note
seemed, as she once said, 'to be a lover's wail over a lost love.'
On one of these occasions, Cecil saw some pieces of dance music lying
about, inscribed with the name of Captain Mattei Guebhard.
'The captain--he is a friend of yours?' he remarked.
'He was here on a visit to Michail once--yes,' she replied, with a
shrug of her shoulders, and dismissed the subject. 'I grew weary of
him; he was jealous as Jelitza!'
But Cecil observed next day, that all those particular pieces of
music had disappeared.
Always fond of female society, Cecil found the daily association with
this accomplished girl a source of the purest pleasure, and he
strove, but in vain, to find traces and resemblances in her to Mary
Montgomerie; for Margarita was larger, darker, more brilliant and
colossal in her beauty, if we may use such a term.
She had quite a repertory of Servian legends, to which she recurred
from time to time, and told with a piquancy which her foreign accent
and foreign graces of manner enhanced; and one day she took him to a
little lake--a dark and stagnant tarn, overshadowed by great trees,
and near the Morava, which she affirmed to mark the grave of the
jealous Jelitza, so famed in Servian song.
Remembering her reference to this personage when she spoke of
Guebhard, he asked who she was.
'Oh, the very incarnation of jealousy!' said Margarita; 'she could
not bear even the brotherly tenderness of her husband Paul for his
young sister, and in order to alienate him, slew his favourite
courser, and charged her with the act. But Paul gave credit to his
sister's denial. Then she slew his falcon, and blamed his sister
therefor; but Paul would not believe her. And at last she killed her
little baby, and left in its tender body a knife which Paul had given
his sister, whom he now slew in the wildness of his fury, by having
her torn asunder by wild horses. But in the end, the jealous Jelitza
perished by the same fate; and then we are told, "that wheresoever a
drop of blood fell from her, there sprang up the rankest thorns and
nettles. Where her body fell, when dead, the waters rushed and
formed this lake so still and stagnant. O'er the lake there swam a
small black courser; by his side a golden cradle floated; on the
cradle sat a grey young falcon. In the cradle, slumbering, lay an
infant: on its throat the white hand of its mother; and that hand a
golden knife was holding." All these apparitions were visible here,
once yearly, on this stagnant lake, till the days of my father, who
had it blessed by the Archbishop of Belgrade, since when they have
been seen no more.'
All the legends Margarita told him were wild and gloomy; yet the
Servians seemed to Cecil a lively people, and together they often
watched the reapers singing merrily in the fields, and dancing, to
the fiddle and native bagpipe, when work was over, the _kolo_, the
national dance of the people.
Both were young and both were handsome; the acquaintance so suddenly
begun ripened rapidly: but Cecil, unmoved by the brilliant
attractions of Margarita, and by the perilous influences of
propinquity, never for a moment felt his heart waver in its loyalty
to Mary, though he deemed her lost to him, and all other human love
was dead in him now.
When the September evenings closed in, and the old lady, clad in
costly velvet trimmed with beautiful fur from the Balkans, was
reading her missal in a corner, Cecil and Margarita, if not at the
piano, were generally seated close together--very close, an observer
might have thought--at a tripod table of green marble, playing chess,
he with his left hand, for the right was yet in a sling; and
watching, which he could not fail to do, her lovely little hand, so
white and delicate, a very model for a sculptor, pushing the pawns
and knights about, while all was still without, save the flow of the
Morava on its way to join the Danube.
Between these two, when the countess was not present, we are
compelled to admit that the conversation sometimes waxed perilous,
notwithstanding Cecil's resolute platonism, when the large liquid
eyes of Margarita, under their thick dark fringes, met his, and her
scarlet lips, which we have said were rather sensuous, quivered and
smiled, with an expression all their own; and one of those perilous
times was when, somehow, they fell on the subject of love--a natural
one enough between a handsome young fellow and a beautiful woman.
'There are times,' said Cecil, after a pause, in reply to something
Margarita had said, 'when men dare not love.'
'Dare not--when?' asked Margarita, as she made a false move, and had
to play her king.
'I mean when to love is rashness, or would be presumption,' said he,
thinking, as no doubt he was, of Mary and her vain old guardian.
'There may be rashness, but there is no presumption in any man
offering his true and honest love to any woman--even a princess.'
'But would the princess accept it?' said Cecil.
'Perhaps,' replied Margarita, looking at him with one of her smiles,
and then drooping her lashes; 'love is romance,' she added.
'Then I have lived the romance of my life,' said Cecil, a little
bitterly, and perhaps unwisely, 'and have only its grim realities
before me now.'
'Already--and you so young?' she asked, with dilated eyes.
'Already!'
'I trust you mistake, and that romance may come again,' said she,
softly.
'It is utterly past, so far as hope goes now.'
'Does the grass of the grave grow above it?' she asked after a pause.
'In one sense--for my hope is buried.'
'I do not think any grave is so deep that we can bury in it all hope
of another love and other happiness,' said Margarita, perhaps
misunderstanding him, and making a rather leading remark, which
Cecil--though not obtuse on such matters--failed, in his utter
preoccupation, to perceive. Margarita bit her lip, and shoved her
pawns about. She, accustomed to adulation and much admiration, was
rather piqued by Cecil's coldness.
'All the world is alike to me now,' said he, rather absently; but she
gathered the conviction that he was neither married nor engaged.
'Are you so much of a misogynist that you cannot even be the friend
of a woman?' she asked.
'I have not said so,' said he; 'nor am I in any degree a misogynist,'
he added, with animation.
'Then you can conceive a friendship?'
'Yes, and a most tender one--and go where I may,' he added, coming
rather to the point, as Margarita thought, 'I shall never forget the
friendship I have conceived for you.'
'That emotion is not always a lasting one.'
'Why--how?' he asked.
'Because it often ends where--love begins,' she replied, with a laugh
and a downcast smile.
Cecil felt his heart beat quicker.
'Oh, by Jove!' thought he, 'this sort of thing won't do--what must I
say next? This is making awful running, and I have only been a
fortnight here!'
But at that moment the countess, who had dropped asleep over her
missal, awoke, and the conversation changed.
Truth to tell, Cecil was beginning to be somewhat scared, rather than
flattered, by the brilliant œillades and rash speeches of
Margarita. He did not quite understand the romantic impulses that
came of her half-wild Servian blood, though partly tamed and tempered
by a fashionable European education. She was totally unlike any
other woman he had met before, and he could not determine to his own
satisfaction whether she had conceived a secret fancy for him, or was
only seeking to entangle him in a flirtation, for her own amusement,
as she had perhaps entangled Mattei Guebhard and others before him.