THE WOOD OF THE HONEY TREE.
The noon of the following day saw Charlie Balgonie--after an anxious
and almost sleepless night--proceeding on foot along the road that
leads southward to Tosna, a little town which stands on a stream of
the same name, a tributary of the Neva, but some thirty versts
distant from Schlusselburg.
His military ardour was already fading, so far as the Russian service
was concerned, amid his pressing anxiety for the dangers that menaced
Natalie; and he felt himself only a species of serf in an imperial
uniform. Unlike the Admirals Douglas, Mackenzie, Count Balmaine, and
hundreds of other Scotsmen who served the Empress by sea and land, he
had thoughtlessly omitted to stipulate, as they had more warily done,
that he was to be at perfect liberty, as a British subject, to return
to his native land whenever he felt disposed to do so. The poor
friendless boy--the kidnapped palatine, who had been rescued from the
burning wreck of the _Piscatona_, while floating adrift in the North
Sea--could know little how necessary such stipulations were when he
joined the Regiment of Smolensko as a cadet; and now he felt himself
literally a military slave of the ambitious and lascivious Catharine
II.
Before him rose the tall fir trees of the forest where he was to meet
Olga--the Wood of the Honey Tree, as it was named from an episode
(related by Demetrius, the ambassador, in his History of Muscovy)
which occurred to a serf of Bernikoff's, Alexis Jagouski, father of
the same man whom he slew so wickedly and ungratefully in the flight
from Zorndorf; and the whole anecdote reads so very like one of the
adventures of Baron Munchausen, or Sir Jonah Barrington's "bounces,"
that we may be pardoned translating it here.
"This man," says Demetrius, "when seeking honey, got into a hollow
tree, where the bees had concealed such a quantity thereof, that it
sucked him up to the breast, and being unable to extricate himself,
he subsisted for two day upon honey alone, and finding that his
shouts were answered only by the echoes of the vast forest, he began
to despair of being freed from his sweet captivity. At last, to his
terror, there came a large brown bear from the Neva, to eat of the
honey which the old tree contained, and of which these animals are
greedily fond. As the bear was descending with hinder part foremost,
the poor serf caught hold of his loins. This sudden grasp among his
fur so terrified the bear, that he started and fled, and in doing so,
drew the peasant from that sweet prison, which otherwise had proved
his grave: hence was the forest named, the Wood of the Honey Tree."
There, as Balgonie approached, all was still save the voice of the
valdchnep, or woodcock, and the hum of insects; he lingered for a few
minutes on the outskirts, just where the highway to Tosna dipped down
into a deep and gloomy dingle of intertwisted branches, which formed
a species of leafy tunnel overhead.
Three miles distant to the northward, he could see the place he had
left, the gloomy Castle of Schlusselburg, moated round by the Neva
and Lake of Ladoga, jutting into the latter on its rock, its towers
wearing a sombre brown tint even in the noonday sunshine, as if no
light could brighten them; and the white flag of Russia was
fluttering on the summit of the keep, where Ivan was pining away the
years of youth in silence and seclusion.
Balgonie heard a voice waking the echoes of the dingle; three notes
were struck on a tambourine, as a signal to him, and Olga approached
singing a verse of that prophetic song, which is so soothing to
Russian military and religious vanity:--
"But when the hundredth year
Shall three times doubled be;
Then shall the end appear
Of all our slavery.
Then shall the warlike powers
From distant climes return,
Egypt again be ours,
While the Turkish domes shall burn!"
"I have kept my appointment, Olga," said he.
"And I mine," she replied gaily, while tripping towards him in a
playful manner; "now follow me, Hospodeen, and I shall take you to
those who will be right glad to see you."
"First let us be sure that we are unwatched."
"Right," said she; and stooping in her earnestness, her keen, dark,
and glittering eyes swept the whole landscape that lay between the
wood and Schlusselburg, and glanced keenly beyond the stems of the
trees into the dingles and vistas; but, save the birds on the
branches and the gnats revolving in the sunshine, no living thing was
visible.
"Follow me, Hospodeen," said the gipsy; "we have not far to go."
They descended into the dark dingle, or hollow, and then quitted the
highway; Olga gathering up her skirts that she might tread with
greater facility among the thick gorse and long rank grass,
displaying, as she did so, two very handsome and taper ankles cased
in scarlet stockings with elaborate clocks of yellow braid.
She explained to Balgonie that, as there was no path to guide them,
her chief clues were a set of notches, cut to all appearance
carelessly, as if with a woodman's axe, on the bark of the great pine
trees.
"These marks seem fresh, and recently cut--who made them?" asked
Balgonie.
"The Hospodeen, Basil Mierowitz," she whispered.
"Poor Basil!" responded Charlie, in a low tone.
After toiling through the dense forest for more than half an hour,
pausing ever and anon to listen and watch whether they were observed,
they arrived at the foot of a grey granite cliff, the face of which
was screened, or nearly covered, by masses of depending ivy,
creepers, and green lichens, forming a background which, at a little
distance, blended with the greenery of the woods.
"We have arrived," said she, turning, with a flush on her dark face
which made it radiantly beautiful. She struck three strokes on her
tambourine, and shook its bells.
Charlie thought of her kinsman, Nicholas Paulovitch, and
instinctively grasped one of the pistols at his girdle, on seeing the
dark and bearded face of a man appear among the ivy leaves some
twenty feet above him. A rope ladder was lowered, and whatever
doubts or misgivings were in his mind, he felt himself constrained
now to go through the adventure to its end.
He clambered up, and on the great screen of ivy being lifted aside,
found himself face to face with his old friend Basil Mierowitz, the
subaltern of his company, who, grasping both his hands with kindly
warmth of manner, led him into a cavern or grotto, one of a series of
many, into which the granite rocks had there been hollowed by some
long past convulsion of nature.
Another hand was instantly laid on his,--a smaller and softer
one,--and two beautiful dark eyes were bending tenderly on his face.
"Natalie!" he exclaimed, in a tremulous voice, and would have pressed
her to his breast, but for the presence of Basil and several other
men.
Amid the twilight of the cavern, he could perceive its rough natural
walls and arch, with hazy but sunny rays that streamed faintly in the
background, athwart the obscurity, as if the vault communicated with
other galleries in the rock, through which the upper light of day
stole in by the crannies and chasms. He was also enabled to see,
that with Natalie, her brother Basil, and her cousin Usakoff, who had
been a Lieutenant of the Valikolutz Grenadiers, there were about
twenty men in the place, all clad in sheepskin shoubahs, canvas
doublets, or the caftan, the invariable dress of the Russian peasant,
and nearly all had red serge breeches, rough boots, and girdles of
rope or untanned leather.
Though attired like woodmen or labouring serfs, all these men had
unmistakably the bearing of well-trained soldiers: all were strong,
active, and resolute in aspect; and Balgonie had no doubt that they
were those natives of the Ukraine, the deserters from the Livonian
frontier, of whom Bernikoff had spoken; for against the walls of the
cavern were ranged a number of muskets and bayonets, with sets of
accoutrements, sabres, and pistols. There, too, stood a regimental
drum, decorated with the imperial arms, and the forbidden name of the
Emperor _Ivan_!
Every moment seemed to increase the perils that surrounded the
luckless Balgonie, for now he was in the very den of the conspirators.
All carried in their girdles a dagger or knife and double brace of
pistols. They seemed to be chiefly soldiers of the Regiment of
Valikolutz: and his sudden appearance among them, in the full uniform
of the Smolensko Infantry, evidently excited, if it did not alarm
them; for discipline becomes so completely a habit--a second nature;
and, as if the presence of an epaulette rendered them uneasy, they
all withdrew into the back or more obscure portion of the cavern,
leaving him and their two leaders together.
"Oh! Basil--Usakoff--my friends, if indeed I may yet dare to call
you so, and live," said Balgonie, in a voice that was broken by
emotion, "for what rash and dreadful purpose do I find you and these
unfortunate fellows here?"
"You, and all Russia too, shall learn ere long," replied Mierowitz
calmly and sternly, yet with a grave and noble air, with which his
coarse canvas caftan assorted oddly.
"And poor Natalie!" exclaimed Balgonie, in a tone of grief and
reproach; "have you no pity for her?"
"Until Natalie informed me, I knew not, my friend, Carl Ivanovitch,
that _you_ were the bearer of that secret dispatch, which might have
cost you limb or life, when it was too late to arrest those I had set
upon your track."
"Well, certainly, I was not much indebted to the good offices of your
rogue, Podatchkine."
"The Corporal's orders were simply to abstract the document, and
bring it to me; not to slay its bearer, unless such a catastrophe
became unavoidable."
"He fell into his own snare--a dark and deadly one."
"Happily you escaped it; and I have saved two hundred silver roubles,
for the service of the Emperor."
"Who do you mean?" asked Balgonie, in a whisper.
"Ivan--the Prisoner of Schlusselburg!" exclaimed Usakoff, with
enthusiasm.
"Alas!" added Balgonie, "you court but your own destruction."
"Think not so; but join us, and share our perils and our glory,"
replied the other.
"I am bound by allegiance to the Empress."
"You are but a tool in her hands, Carl Balgonie."
"Perhaps so; but one with a devilish sharp edge, I hope," replied
Balgonie, who felt only genuine sorrow; and a silence of nearly a
minute ensued.
The manner and voice of Basil Mierowitz were singularly soft and
winning, yet he was bold and resolute; and though a young man, he had
all the free and easy bearing of a courtly soldier, blended with
something of the calm severity of a priest--a manner that was very
impressive.
The Polish and Cossack blood that mingled in the veins of Apollo
Usakoff gave a freer and bolder, perhaps a wilder, bearing and style
of language; his nose was aquiline, and expressed fierceness of
disposition; yet his features otherwise were essentially delicate and
noble, and his eyes were strangely beautiful in colour and variety of
expression. They were dark grey, encircled by a ring of light, clear
brown; and when he spoke, or became excited, the iris contracted and
expanded, as the blood flowed and ebbed in his fiery and enthusiastic
heart, for he was a grandson of the Hetman Mazeppa--that Pole, whose
story is so well known, and who, after being bound naked on a wild
and maddened horse, to punish him for having an intrigue with a noble
lady of his own country, was carried by his steed through woods and
wastes, and herds of wolves and bears, into the heart of the Ukraine,
where he lived to become the prince and leader of those wild Cossacks
who dwell upon the banks of the Dnieper.
Sleeping in a cavern, among rough soldiers, on a bed of dried leaves
and moss, had not improved either the costume or the appearance of
Natalie Mierowna. With pain and sorrow,--almost with agony,--Charlie
Balgonie could perceive how her once rich dress of yellow silk, with
its trimmings of narrow ermine, was faded and soiled--even tattered
and worn; her laces and her soft hair alike dishevelled and uncared
for; and that already had a hunted and haggard expression been
imparted to her beautiful eyes, and soft, pale, delicate face. Anger
and pride alone remained; but both were for a time subdued by the
sudden presence of Balgonie, and the love she was compelled to
repress outwardly, at least, when before so many eyes.
Katinka, the sturdy Polish attendant, who loved Natalie dearly, alone
seemed unimpaired by the hardships of a forest life.
"Concerning the secret dispatch of the woman, Catharine
Christianowna, to the Governor of Schlusselburg," said Usakoff,
resuming the subject of conversation, "you, Carl, are perhaps aware
of its contents?"
"Yes," replied Balgonie, and then paused.
"Say on, my friend," said Usakoff; "we can hear anything now."
"They were to the effect, that a scheme had been formed to free the
Unknown Person in Schlusselburg, and that he was not to be permitted
to fall _alive into the hands of any one who came to seek him_."
"Savage orders, which there can be no mistaking."
"Orders which Bernikoff is quite capable of fulfilling," added
Mierowitz in a sad and stern voice, while their listening followers
burst into low and whispered, but fierce imprecations against the
Empress.
"Bernikoff is a man without one human sympathy," said Basil.
"And no marvel is it?" exclaimed Usakoff, while the strange light
already described gleamed in his dark grey eyes; "his mother, like a
true Tartar woman, is said to have anointed her breasts daily with
blood, as she suckled him, even as Dion tells us the mother of
Caligula did, that her child might, in manhood, be merciless."
Vlasfief they stigmatised as "the son of a goat," being originally a
boy of the great foundling Hospital at Moscow, where, when the
increase of children became so great that nurses could not be found,
the lacteal food of animals was introduced, and a herd of goats
adopted as wet-nurses for the establishment.
"Carl," said Basil, taking the hand of Balgonie, "Natalie has told me
all."
"All!"
"Yes--all that passed in Louga. Dear Natalie has never had a secret
from me."
"And you forgive me?" said Balgonie earnestly.
"I do--but on this condition."
"Oh name it, Basil!"
"That if you do not join us, you will, at least, not actively oppose
our scheme."
"I scarcely know what it is."
"Know this then," replied the other emphatically, yet softly, "that
on its success depends the success of your love; for if it fails,
then all our lives are lost!"
"You say that you love my cousin Natalie?" said young Usakoff, in a
somewhat loftier tone.
"With all my heart--with all my soul, I do!" replied Balgonie,
pressing a hand of Natalie between his own.
"Yet, Carl, if you valued generosity and loved pity--if you loved
glory and honour, as a soldier should, you would risk the loss even
of _her_,--yea, give her up, if necessary,--and join us!"
"What would either life or glory be after such a sacrifice? Ah, my
friend, you never loved as I do!" replied Charlie, with some
irritation of manner.
"Perhaps; but I have always thought how grandly terrible a figure was
made by Mohammed the Great, when, on a stage, before his discontented
army, he struck off the head of a favourite Sultana to convince his
soldiers that he preferred glory to love."
"Cousin, cousin," said Natalie, who felt all the peril and delicacy
of her lover's position, "you talk thus to-day, when last night you
shed tears--yes, bitter tears for the loss of your sister. We were
all taken prisoners together, Carl--my poor father, Mariolizza, and
I. Bound with cords,--see, the marks are on me still," she added,
showing her white wrists, while her dark eyes filled with a dusky
fire,--"we were conveyed in a covered kabitka towards St. Petersburg,
on the way to which it broke down, in a wood near Paulovsk, not far
from the outer walls of the imperial gardens. There, in the
confusion, I was enabled to escape, by the aid of the gipsy girl
Olga, who, hoping some such chance might occur, had followed us afoot
from Louga; and through her further knowledge and assistance, I was
enabled to join my brother Basil here."
"My dear old father--and my soft and tender Mariolizza--a blow must
be rapidly struck, if we would save them from greater horrors than
those they now endure!" exclaimed Basil: "the die has been cast now;
and if I cannot save them and our legitimate Emperor, we can at least
all perish together."
"Dangers menace you closely; the roads around the fortress are
patrolled, and gun-boats watch the shores of the lake. A coin of
Ivan found in a tea-house----"
"Malediction--yes! 'twas I, Carl, who dropped it there," exclaimed
Basil: "well, and this coin?"
"Has roused all the suspicions of Bernikoff; and he knows that you
and your cousin have deserted from your posts in Livonia."
"Already, does he know of this?"
"Yes, with many other details."
"Then," replied Basil Mierowitz, with growing sternness, "we have not
an hour to lose. Who informed him?"
"Lieutenant-General Weymarn, by a special messenger, while I was
loitering at Louga."
"So, so! By our Lady of Kazan, we must be prompt in action. I have
cruised thrice round Schlusselburg disguised as a fisherman, and know
well all the approaches."
"Basil, Usakoff, I implore you by all you hold dear on earth and
sacred in Heaven to pause while there is yet time--to abandon your
wild scheme, and make your peace, if possible, with the Empress."
"You were right to add 'if possible,' my friend," replied the other
calmly but bitterly. "Already compromised by desertion, my father
and betrothed wife chained in a fortress by the Neva, what terms
would Catharine offer us? Carl Ivanovitch," he added, with a lofty
smile, "I do not press you to join us, or seek to lure you into the
dangers of an enterprise the enthusiasm of which you cannot share. I
do not seek even to turn your presence as a trusted staff officer in
Schlusselburg to account, though it might further our objects, and be
the means, perhaps, by strategy, of saving many a valuable life.
Still less do I desire to turn to account your intimacy with the
young Emperor Ivan, though I envy you that great privilege. Even in
the love I bear my sister (though it might tempt you to cast your lot
with us--_with her_ shall I say?), I leave you unquestioned and free."
"I thank you, Basil," said Balgonie sadly, and with a heightened
colour, caused by irrepressible annoyance at the last remark of
Mierowitz.
"But we have all sworn before the altar of our Lady of Kazan, and the
image of St. Sergius, to devote our lives to the matter in hand; so
retreat is impossible--advice and entreaty alike unavailing."
Balgonie felt an acute pang on hearing this; for he knew that in
Russia no place was esteemed as more holy than the church of our Lady
of Kazan in St. Petersburg. Around its shrine--the _sanctum
sanctorum_ of which no woman has ever entered--are the keys of
conquered cities, the banners of a thousand slaughtered armies, and
the batons and sabres of their leaders, the Frenchman, the Turk, the
Pole, the Persian, and the Dane, the Swede and the German; and he
knew, too, that no image, to the Muscovite mind, is more sacred than
that of St. Sergius--the same absurd idol which the Kazan column bore
with them at the battle of the Alma, and displayed in vain to the
advancing bayonets of old Sir Colin's Highland Brigade.
"The blow once struck," resumed Basil, "we shall be joined by the
Cossacks of the Ukraine and the Don, among whom we have many
impatient adherents, and by all who hold of the Houses of
Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, of Holstein Grottorp, and of all who hate
Anhalt Zerbst; all Russia will soon follow, from the shores of the
Black Sea to those of the White--from Revel to the Ural Mountains.
We have not forgotten the reign of Elizabeth: how many noses were
slit, how many foreheads were branded, how many ears cropped, and
tongues shortened, and how many eyes were darkened for ever during
that time of tyranny; how many backs flayed by the knout; how many
nobles banished to Siberia, or drowned in prison vaults by the
swollen waters of the Neva. Pure nationality is dying now; but we
must revive Russia--not as it is ruled by a lascivious woman and her
jealous lovers, but Holy Russia of Peter the Great--strong,
invincible, and the terror alike of the Eastern and Western world.
Let us save our country from those who oppress it, and replace upon
its throne the Grand Duke, the Czar--the Emperor Ivan; for the right
given by God and by inheritance can never be destroyed!"
A murmur of applause from his followers succeeded this outburst
(which we can render but feebly in English), and they clashed their
weapons in approval, while, fired by her brother's energy, Natalie
sung a verse of a well known Russian song:--
"Now, as of old, the sabre's ready,
And its might they'll feel afar,
When but three short words are utter'd,
God, our Country, and the Czar!"
"Without cannon, you cannot mean to assault a place so strong as
Schlusselburg, fortified as it has been by all the skill of
Todleben?" said Balgonie, after a pause.
"Ask me not what we mean to do, Carl: for your own sake, my dear
friend, the less you know of us, and of our plans, the better. We
shall come upon you all when you least expect us, and in that hour
take no heed of what you see or hear. Mix yourself up with it as
little as you can: if we fail, we perish in our failure; if we
triumph, and Ivan is replaced upon his throne, be assured that Basil
Mierowitz will not forget the lover of his sister--the comrade of
many a brave and happy day with the Regiment of Smolensko. Now
adieu--and come hither no more, lest your steps be watched."
Balgonie pressed the hands of his two friends, whom he viewed as
fated and foredoomed men; he kissed Natalie with a tenderness that
was alike sorrowful and despairing, for he trembled in his heart lest
he should never see her more; and, in another moment or so, like one
in a bewildering dream, he had descended the rope ladder, and was
traversing the forest--the Wood of the Honey Tree--forgetful or
oblivious of whether he was watched or not.
He foresaw but woe and ruin now; and proceeded slowly back to
Schlusselburg, with his mind a prey to doubt, anxiety, and dread of
what might be the sequel to the impending catastrophe. He felt
assured of one thing only--that a deed, bold, reckless, and
desperate, would be the result of his friend's desertion from
Livonia, their political rancour, and personal desire for vengeance
on the Empress and her favourites.
In that deed, and its too probable failure, he foresaw the
destruction of his love; and he felt bitterly that rather than have
known and lost Natalie, it would have been better had fate drowned
him when the Palatine ship was burned, or shot him when warring in
Silesia!