OVER THEIR WINE.
Heavy and sad was the heart of Charlie Balgonie when, on the evening
of the 16th September, that which was subsequent to the episode at
Schlusselburg, he saw the domes and towers of St. Petersburg
glittering in gold and bronze, in green and fiery or fantastic
colours, amid the rich glow of a ruddy sunset; and where rising from
the haze of the vast city, the polished cupola of St. Isaac's
Cathedral, and the slender spire of the Admiralty, like a needle of
flame, seemed to float in mid air.
As he entered the first guarded barrier, he met a party of Lancers
riding at a trot, their tall fur caps having scarlet kalpecs and
large plumes, their lances, each with a long bannerole of the same
colour, waving in the wind. They escorted a covered kabitka, or
waggon, and were led by the Count de Balmain, a Scottish officer,
who, in after years, stormed Kaffa, in the Crimea.
"Whither go you, Count?" he asked.
"For Schlusselburg--the place of sorrow."
"With a prisoner, of course?"
"Yes, I regret to say, with the niece of Count Mierowitz, with
Mademoiselle Mariolizza. She is to be confined under a warrant from
the Grand Chancellor--poor girl!"
Sadder and heavier grew the honest heart of Balgonie, as the escort
and its hearse-like carriage passed on; and, as he looked after it,
the fair merry face, the full and voluptuous figure, the gay manner,
and remarkable _finesse d'esprit_ of the betrothed of poor Basil, as
he had last seen her at Louga, came back vividly to memory now.
Balgonie was at St. Petersburg when Mierowitz was executed, and when
other horrors followed. Moreover, he was closely and repeatedly
interrogated by the Grand Chancellor, the Privy Councillor, Count
Panim, by Count Orloff (the present lover of the Empress), and by
General Weymarn, as to all he knew and had seen of the
conspirators--so closely, that nothing surprised him so much as to
find that no suspicion was attached to himself. But being a soldier
of fortune, who possessed nothing in the world but his sword and his
epaulettes, he was not worth suspecting by the Imperial Government.
Ere long, the name of Natalie came before the Secret Chancery, as a
prisoner in Schlusselburg; and, like the rest, she was tried and
condemned in absence, undefended and unheard; and sentenced, too,
amid the solitude of her prison.
To Balgonie the charm of life seemed to have passed away; and, during
the week or two that followed his return to St. Petersburg, dreary,
weary, and unmeaning, indeed, seemed the routine of his duties as
aide-de-camp at the vast parades, the brilliant receptions, the
courts-martial, and other public affairs to which he followed his
_chef_, General Weymarn, at the palaces of Tsarsky Selo or
Oranienbaum, and elsewhere, while ignorant of the fate of
Natalie--while the very life of her he loved hung in the balance.
When compared with their fate, how happy seemed those lovers, who,
though separated for a period, could look confidently forward through
the long succession of hours, of days and nights, of weeks, and
months, or even years, and reckon with certainty on the time of
reunion! With him and Natalie, time stretched into a length that
seemed interminable: their future had no background; their separation
was one without hope.
Charlie, in his desperation, applied to the Marquis de Bausset and to
Sir George Macartney, then the Ambassadors from France and Britain;
and both received his verbal prayers--he dared not write on such a
subject--for mercy to the Count's family: but they were unheeded; and
the Ministers replied only by bows, grimaces, and shrugs of their
diplomatic shoulders. Their interference was impossible--quite; and,
unfortunately, his old patron, Admiral Thomas Mackenzie, was with the
fleet in the Black Sea.
The suspicions excited against his Regiment and the Grenadiers of
Valikolutz, might procure the banishment of both; he feared it in the
form of service in Siberia, or at the Crimean lines of Perecop. In
either case, unless Weymarn stood his friend, how could he hope to
succour Natalie!
At every tea-house, hotel, and café, his uniform of the Smolensko
Infantry, and the knowledge that he was the staff officer who had
been in Schlusselburg, and who brought the first tidings of the late
affair, made him an object of special interest; but the subject was
alike a perilous and painful one. Walls have many ears in Russia; so
he was compelled to be silent, or discreet, even to rudeness, though
the following declaration, which was issued by the Empress, might
have allayed his fears:--
"We, Catharine the Second, by the Grace of God, Empress and Sovereign
of all the Russias, &c., &c., make known to our Regiment of Smolensko
Infantry that, according to the equity which we exert towards our
faithful subjects, we cannot represent to ourselves, without profound
grief, how much that regiment must be afflicted, for having among its
officers a wretch in the person of Mierowitz: nevertheless, as the
crime of one man cannot affect those who had no part in it, and that,
besides, we know the bravery with which the regiment has
distinguished itself upon all occasions, its attachment to strict
discipline, and its exactness in the military duty of our empire;
therefore we grant it, through our imperial good-will, the same
assurances of protection which it has in all times deserved. In
consequence, we forbid all and every one, to reproach or upbraid the
said regiment concerning the treason of Mierowitz, under pain of
incurring our indignation, and drawing on themselves the effects of
our just resentment.
(_Signed_) "CATHARINE."
Hope seemed to revive a little after the issue of this conciliatory
oukaz; but it was speedily dashed, when Balgonie, on returning from
Cronstadt, whither he had been sent by General Weymarn, suddenly met
Captain Vlasfief face to face, near the palace of the favourite
Lanskoi.
This personage he would have avoided like a toad or a leper; but from
him only might he learn something of her he loved in Schlusselburg,
that hateful place to which the Captain was returning; so,
overcoming, or rather concealing, his repugnance, he adjourned with
him to a café, and ordered wine.
"I dare say you have heard," said Vlasfief, with a strange leer in
his eyes, as he tossed his hat and sabre on one sofa and deposited
his jack-booted limbs on another, "how the estates of the Count and
those of Usakoff have been sold or gifted away; pillaged and ravaged
by Lanskoi with a party of Tchernemoski Cossacks; and that the
plunder has been stored up in Schlusselburg?"
"Something of all this I have heard," replied Balgonie, when the
waiter had filled their glasses and withdrawn, "and--and--but you
have there two ladies of the Count's family?"
"True--Mademoiselle Mariolizza, who was engaged to Mierowitz, and the
Count's daughter: one beautifully fair, the other black-haired like a
Pole. Poor girls!" he continued, while leisurely filling the large
china bowl of a tasselled pipe, which suspiciously resembled one
Charlie had often seen the old Count smoking, "I remember them both
in happier and brighter times; but those who play with fire will, you
know, be burned. The sentences on all have been found, recorded,
and, in two instances, executed; and they are truly terrible!"
"Executed--the sentence!" repeated Balgonie, in a faint voice.
"Yes; you have been four days at Cronstadt: well, in those four days
many things have been done--a light; thank you. The Count is now
travelling towards Tobolsk under an escort of Balmain's Lancers.
There he will have to hunt the ermine, cultivate asafœtida, or dig
in the mines, with a collar at his neck, for the remainder of his
days; but for the ladies of his family, a more severe punishment was
reserved: ah! he is a stern fellow, old Panim!"
"How--what? Vlasfief, you jest?"
"'Tis no jest: we don't jest on such matters in Russia," replied
Vlasfief, who was too thorough a _roué_--too "used up," in fact--to
care for what any woman might suffer or undergo; for every human
emotion and sympathy were dead in this man now.
"What new horrors am I to hear?" exclaimed Balgonie, with passionate
vehemence, as he dashed his heavy Turkish sabre on the table.
Vlasfief smiled sourly, and his cunning eyes twinkled.
"You are a Scot, like Balmain," said he disdainfully; "and as the
Turks--those accursed unbelievers--say, but truly, 'Those who have
never seen the world think it is all like their father's house.'
Pass the bottle--'tis Cracow wine this, and not worth four ducats the
flask. In short, the--the two ladies of the Count's family, in the
wildness of their grief,--Mariolizza especially,--on hearing of the
death of Mierowitz, permitted their tongues to run riot, and to say
such things of Her Imperial Majesty and some of her favourites, such
as Count Orloff, Lanskoi, the Grenadier, and so forth, as no woman
would pardon, you understand; so they are to be given in succession
to _le maître d'entre les épaules_--the master of the shoulders,"
added Vlasfief, with a species of laugh at the strange expression
which he saw gathering in Balgonie's face.
"Explain, I implore you, explain!" asked the latter, with quivering
lips, as he set down a crystal goblet of Hungarian wine untasted on
the table.
"Mademoiselle Mariolizza--but you don't drink fairly, Ivanovitch--has
received six blows of the knout. The torturer is a new man, and
mangled her cruelly. She has had her tongue cut out, and her
forehead branded with the executioner's mark;* and she goes to
Siberia as soon as she recovers: but she will never reach it alive,
even if she escapes the fever that has now seized her; for as the
whole family has been degraded,--declared infamous and without
protection,--being tongueless, she will become the prey of the
Cossacks en route. Once beyond the Volga, we never know what
happens. The Count's daughter will undergo exactly similar
punishment; and, if she survives it, they will be mercifully
permitted to travel together: and there ends the House of Mierowitz,
which boasts of its descent from Ruric of Kiev--Ruric the Varagian of
Old Ladoga!"
* The latter punishment is abolished now.
With wonderful coolness of manner, over his wine and pipe, almost
with an occasional jest, the cruel and snakelike Vlasfief--who, as a
parvenu of the foundling hospital (the son of a goat), hated the
hereditary aristocracy--detailed these matters; and Balgonie felt as
if a black cloud enveloped him. He heard the Captain talking; but
his mind and thoughts were far, far away; and, after a time, he found
himself alone.
Vlasfief had mounted and ridden off; and mechanically, like an
automaton, Balgonie had bidden him adieu at the portico of the café,
and returned to finish his wine, as one in a waking dream: nor was it
until the bell of St. Isaac's tolled midnight, when the lights were
burned low, the fire in the peitchka had died away, the decanters
were empty, and he saw a drowsy waiter hovering near him, that he
rose to depart; for to him, now, all places seemed alike.
In the street a shower of tears revived him; and he wept unseen, like
a great boy, while grinding his teeth and twisting his mustaches like
a furious and desperate man. Russia, her laws, her rulers, her very
air, he loathed and detested. But what was he to do?--which way was
he to turn?--was he to permit these horrors, and live?
He had been present when the Regiment of Smolensko guarded the
punishment of Madame Lapouchin, one of the most beautiful women of
the Imperial Court, where she shone like a planet, was loved,
admired, and more than once was fought for. An alleged conspiracy
brought her to the knout in all her nude loveliness, in the light of
open day; and Charlie remembered that sickening scene, before the
eyes of assembled thousands, and how, as the Abbé d'Anterroche
records, "in a few moments all the skin of her tender back was cut
away in small slips, most of which remained hanging on her shift.
Her tongue was cut out immediately after; and she was banished into
Siberia."
"Oh Natalie, Natalie!" he could but repeat, while he wrung his hands;
and thus the dawn of day found him.
After mature consideration of his position, his powerlessness, and
the difficulties that beset him, with the horrors impending over
Natalie, poor Charlie Balgonie felt maddened, crushed, and
heart-broken. Could he see her perish without a struggle, an effort,
however reckless, fruitless, and futile, on her behalf, even if he
pistoled the executioner? Could he know that she too, probably,
would die, in agony and mutilation, a horrible and ignominious
death,--she, so gentle, delicate, and pure,--and would he survive it?
"Hearts will break in this life," says a recent writer; "it is the
nature of them; but if God wills it, and it were possible, it is
honester, braver, and nobler to live than to die." Most true; but to
live is to hope. Balgonie vaguely, but sternly, resolved that he
would do something, or--like the hero of a melodrama--"die in the
attempt;" but being a poor, bewildered, loving young fellow, he could
in no way practically see what that something might be.
Let not the reader flatter himself or herself that their own beloved
country was entirely free from legal barbarism at this time; for in
the very year of Ivan's murder,--the fourth year of the reign of His
Majesty George III.,--a woman was burned at the stake in Ilchester
for poisoning her husband. During the reign of his son, more than
one head was chopped off for treason; and women were flogged by tap
of drum, for petty theft, at the Market Cross of Edinburgh. Neither
need the superstitions of the poor Muscovites excite surprise, when
we find, in 1867, Highlanders in Scotland putting clay figures into
running streams to bring consumption and wasting upon their enemies;
burying a living cock (as the Pagan sacrificed to Hermes) to cure
epilepsy; and a woman in Somersetshire* cooking toads in a pan,
exactly as the "black and midnight hags" did in the days of Macbeth,
for the amiable purpose of bewitching her neighbours. So truly does
the world reproduce itself, in spite of its boasted civilisation.
* Western Gazette, September, 1867.
The next day was not far advanced when Balgonie was summoned by
General Weymarn, whose staff he had been resolving to quit; but for
what purpose, or whither to go, he knew not. With something of a
shudder, he beheld the Stepniak--the comrade and confederate of the
late Nicholas Paulovitch--leaving the General's quarters.
Save that he wore the scarlet livery of his new trade,--torture and
death,--he was unchanged, and was the same hideous and ill-visaged
giant--with square shoulders, enormous beard, mouse-like eyes, hair
shorn off straight across the beetlebrows, and the pine-apple shaped
head--whom Balgonie had seen in the hut where the wretched
Podatchkine perished. He was now public executioner of St.
Petersburg: under his felon hands had poor Mierowitz and Mariolizza
been, and erelong would Natalie be!
Weymarn was a grave and stern, yet not unkind, old soldier; and, on
perceiving that his young aide-de-camp looked pale, he spoke to him
with unusual kindness, and added:--
"I am sorry to say, that I have a new duty of importance for you to
perform."
"Thanks, General; any excitement is better than--than idleness."
"True. You will have to ride to Schlusselburg with an escort,
composed of six Cossacks of the Imperial Guard, and bring hither in a
kabitka the sum of eighty thousand roubles, which are there in canvas
bags, _sealed_. They have been levied on the estates of the Count
Mierowitz. You will receive them from the officer commanding there:
give a signed receipt, and deliver them into the Imperial Treasury."
Balgonie bowed in silence.
The General, who, of course, knew well the corrupt venality of the
Russian service, added:--
"If the sum is brought entire to the Treasury, Carl Ivanovitch, a
reasonable gratuity will, of course, be paid you."
"Excellency, I require none for doing my duty, either in this or any
other matter," replied Balgonie coldly, even haughtily.
"As you please, sir,--as you please. Some among us might be less
particular," said the old General, tugging his grisly mustaches.
"And stay; by-the-bye, there is a prisoner in Schlusselburg, whose
sentence is to be executed to-morrow, in presence of the assembled
troops and people here----"
Balgonie thought of but _one_ prisoner there; and an icy chill came
over him, as Weymarn said--
"With the escort and the kabitka, Captain, you will, at the same
time, bring the culprit here."
"And--and this pris--on--oner, Excellency?" faltered the poor fellow.
"Is Jagouski, the Cossack, who so severely wounded Colonel Bernikoff
when in the execution of his duty."
Charlie breathed more freely.
"An order will be necessary for you--a special order: since the
affair of that wretched young fellow Mierowitz, we cannot be too
particular, so take this:--
"'_To the officer commanding in Schlusselburg._
"'You are hereby directed to deliver to Captain Carl Ivanovitch
Balgonie, of the Smolensko Regiment, the prisoner who is to be
executed to-morrow.
"'WEYMARN, _Lieutenant-General._'
"For the delivery of the money, here is a separate order from the
Treasurer--adieu."