A DARK PREDICTION.
It is perhaps impossible to describe adequately all that passed with
the speed of thought through Cecil's mind when the group of Servian
officials approached the room in which he was confined.
He had heard the drums beaten at sunset, and somehow deemed the
falling in of the pickets--though a usual circumstance--a prelude,
perhaps, to his own execution, or a hopeless and degrading
transmission to some fortress, he knew not where; and where, too
probably, he would never be heard of again, but pass through life
chained to a heavy shot, with a number painted on his canvas caftan.
Well, death, however sudden, was better than such a fate!
For a moment or two his blood had stood still as the comers drew
near, and the noise of their swords and spurs was heard on the stair.
The unlocking of the door found an echo in his heart.
He nerved himself, with a prayer on his lips, to hear the worst they
had to tell him--desperation and resignation curiously mingling in
his mind.
'Oh why,' he muttered, 'are we born--why do we live only to endure,
to suffer, and to die?'
Then he thought of the poor girl who shrunk close to him in her
disguise, and a great fear for her was added to his own agony of soul.
Thus, he was rather surprised to find himself politely saluted by the
minister of police, by Count Palenka, and the provost-marshal, both
of whom had been so severe and sharp with him when last he saw them.
'Herr Lieutenant,' said the deputy minister of police, 'we have the
pleasure of announcing to you that you are a free man--free without a
stain upon your honour, and may, when you choose, return to your
post.'
'His Excellency General Tchernaieff has commissioned me personally to
restore to you your sword, which I do with profound pleasure,' said
Count Palenka, advancing in turn, and handing to the bewildered Cecil
his sword and waist-belt.
'To what do I owe this change in my affairs?' he asked in an unsteady
voice, as if unable to realise the situation.
'The discovery of the true character of that villain, Mattei
Guebhard!' replied Palenka.
'Guebhard--who has now deserted to the Turks, and for whose head the
King now offers a reward of a thousand ducats,' added the police
official.
'And when was this discovery made?'
'At noon to-day, Herr Lieutenant.'
'By whom?'
'By my sister, Margarita, who has more legal acumen than all of us
put together,' replied Count Palenka; 'she asked to see the
commission found upon your person, and old Tchernaieff bluntly
refused to show it even to her. But you know how lovely she is, and
the spell of her power and presence--her polished _insouciance_ and
cultured as well as natural fascination, and how she unites the
witchery of a girl to that of a woman of the world. All this proved
too much for our old Cossack,' continued the count, laughing; 'he
yielded--put the document in her hand, and almost immediately her
quick eye detected the forgery.'
'Forgery?'
'Yes, the partial--for it was only partial--erasure of his name and
substitution of yours. A touch of some chemical acid, applied by the
Herr Deputy of Police, proved the truth beyond a doubt; and a rumour
of this reaching Guebhard in his tent, he fled, and is now safe in
the Turkish lines. So Margarita has saved you!'
'Margarita?' repeated Cecil, almost mechanically. Why, after all
this discovery and removal of all suspicion of his honour, did she
still mean to carry out the intended scheme of flight--even to the
last moment, sending him the disguise by her maid Ottilie? To secure
him to herself--could he doubt it? It was a strange and wayward
idea; but any way, as matters stood now, she had loaded him with a
debt of gratitude which he never could repay.
'You saved my life, as well as the life of Tchernaieff, Herr
Lieutenant,' said the count, taking his hand; 'I must never forget
that, and henceforward you may command me as you will.'
Cecil could not help remembering that the count's mind had been a
little oblivious of the circumstance at their last interview; but, to
do him and Tchernaieff justice, they were both generous and profuse
in their apologies.
The minister of police was not long in detecting the sex of the
terrified Ottilie as she attempted to leave the apartment, wherein
her presence and disguise led to the immediate suggestion of an
intrigue--which was so natural with a girl so pretty--and after some
laughter and quizzing, she was glad to let them all adopt the idea
and make her escape.
So ended this somewhat melodramatic situation, of which, like
Margarita, Cecil had seen many with lime-light and orchestral
accompaniments, but he never thought to undergo the horror and
bitterness of heart consequent to being an actor therein on the stage
of real life.
So, with an emotion of gladness all the greater and more keen from
the revulsion that took place in his mind, he buckled on his sword
and once more went forth a soldier and a free man; his gratitude to
Margarita mingling with a fierce and most unholy longing to be once
again face to face with Guebhard, a chance not unlikely to be soon
afforded to him by the fortunes of war.
'Welcome again, my dear fellow! glad indeed to see you!'
'By Jove! we feared it was all up with you in that cursed affair!'
Such were the greetings, with a warm shake of the hand, which Cecil
received from Pelham and Stanley when he visited them in the infantry
camp, which was chiefly in a wood near Deligrad, and where he found
them with some other officers seated near a fire, whereat a suddenly
improvised meal was in process of being cooked by their Servian
servants, and which consisted simply of a turkey, coated with clay
and roasted in a hole covered with hot ashes; which, together with
potatoes and tomatoes, was to be washed down with German beer.
'Life here is not exactly the life of flies in amber, or that of
lotus-eaters,' said Pelham, laughing, after he heard the story of
Cecil's misadventure; 'but even here, where we have Montenegrins and
Bashi Bazouks in plenty, we don't often come across so accomplished a
scoundrel as this Mattei Guebhard.'
'But, Falconer, old fellow, though a genuine Scot, brave as a lion
and obstinate as a mule, he nearly proved too much for you,' said
Stanley, proffering his cigar-case, 'and would have done so in the
end, but for your fair auxiliary. By Jove! that girl must be a
regular brick!'
'You gave the Turks an _alerte_ at Alexinatz after I left the camp?'
said Cecil, to change the subject.
'Your branch of the service, the cavalry, did,' replied Pelham; 'we
came on with the infantry supports, and, as we had to keep our faces
quite as often to our men, in leading them on, as to the enemy (you
know what cowardly beggars the Servians are!), I nearly had my dorsal
fin carried away by a carbine bullet. But here comes our turkey,
done to time; and now to dinner with what appetite we may.'
'We have had no fighting since Alexinatz,' said Stanley, 'and our
camp-life seems tame after what has gone before it.'
'Like claret on the top of champagne.'
'Man alive! for days we have had nothing better to drink than German
beer, and Pelham consoles himself by expatiating on Moselle as if he
had been weaned on it.'
It was as music to Cecil, hearing once again the pleasantly modulated
and frank English voices of Pelham and Stanley, who made him so
welcome to share their humble repast--humble in its mode of
production and appurtenances--but both declared themselves sick of
Servia and its army, and after another battle or two, as the novelty
had worn off, they had resolved to resign and return home.
Cecil thought that he would gladly do the same; but he had no home
that he knew of to return to.
He knew nothing of the round sum so kindly offered and paid by
Stanley and Pelham for accounts of his safety, and the generous
fellows, of course, never mentioned it to him; but neither of them
knew that it eventually led to Guebhard--acting on the information of
the wood-cutters--tracking him as he did to Palenka, and from thence
through the forest.
It was the evening of an autumn day, late in the year. A golden
light lingered on the mountain-slopes, and a soft, silvery mist rose
from the oak and pine forests that clothed them. The salmon were
leaping from rock to rock in a tributary of the Morava, that flowed
through the camp, and cattle were herding peacefully in the valleys
under the shadow of Mount Mezlanie; and the fields of Indian corn,
rice and maze were being reaped in places where the wild Turkish
Timariots had many a time in the days of old swept in furious bands
from Thrace to Belgrade, slaying the stalwart and young, the aged and
helpless; sparing the lovely alone as their spoil; and where, in
later times, the standard of Black George had led so often to
victory, but never to defeat.
It was a glorious autumnal evening, and, seated there by the camp
fire with pleasant English comrades, and enjoying what had long been
a rarity to him, a good cigar, Cecil felt all the joyous impulses of
the time--a change or relaxation of mind, after all he had so lately
undergone.
'Here,' said Pelham, as he lounged on the grass at full length, a
tawny beard of imposing aspect flowing over the breast of his brown
infantry tunic, and smoking his briar-root with the marked laziness
that follows a day of hard work and excitement, for he had been
foraging in the vicinity of the enemy--'here we have to do without
the thousand and one trifles that seem so necessary to one's
existence in the atmosphere of Tyburnia and Belgravia; and yet,
somehow, we don't seem to miss them.'
'Your rescue of Tchernaieff and Palenka in the cavalry charge, and
your decoration with the Takova cross, and so forth, have all been
duly chronicled in the London papers,' said the dapper little
correspondent (before mentioned) to Cecil; 'and doubtless they have
been the means of sending a thrill through the breasts of the
listless, _nil admirari_ and languid snobs of society.'
Has she heard of all this? was Cecil's only thought; and the dear old
Cameronians, too?
As these heedless spirits had got hold of Margarita's name, and
knew--but not how far, exactly--she had been woven up in the network
of Cecil's late adventures, he had to undergo some raillery on the
subject, and somewhat to his annoyance.
'It is an established fact in fiction and in real life--in history
and in poesy,' said Stanley, twirling his long moustache and adopting
a sententious tone, 'that a fellow must inevitably fall in love with
the pretty girl who nurses him after a spill in the hunting-field,
after a wound received in action, and more especially if she actually
saves his life; and this girl did yours, and she is downright lovely!
I saw her in the iron church, on the day that Tchernaieff distributed
so many crosses and medals to the troops. And you know, as Sancho
Panza says, "as days go and come, and straw makes medlars ripe," in
the fulness of time we may expect to see----'
'Stanley, how your idle tongue wags!'
'If it wags, it cannot be idle, Cecil; and if you are destined to
marry this fair Servian, and found a race of heyducs, or whatever the
deuce they are called, I suppose it is no use attempting to run away
from her.'
Cecil, who knew more of what had passed between himself and Margarita
than the heedless speaker had the least idea of, felt his secret
annoyance increased by this banter. Owing her the most profound
gratitude, as he did, and painfully aware of her rash, wild, and
ill-concealed but ill-considered regard for himself--a regard by
which he felt himself imperilled, rather than charmed or
flattered--he could not, with patience, hear her name mentioned in
this way by these thoughtless fellows--blasé waifs from the society
of 'the West End.'
'By Jove, how pink he grows!' exclaimed Pelham; 'but no doubt she
hopes to finish her maidenly career with you, Cecil.'
'Hush!' said the latter, with open irritation, yet laughing to
conceal it if possible; 'here comes her brother.'
Wearing a very handsome Russian uniform--a green tunic faced with
black velvet and laced with gold, and with several decorations
glittering on his breast, the count, on foot, with his sword under
his arm, approached the camp fire, and touched his flat round forage
cap in salute.
'Herr Lieutenant,' said he to Cecil, 'I knew that I should find you
here. I have a message to you from the general, which I know you
will receive with pleasure.'
Cecil started to his feet and bowed.
'To reward you for all you have undergone, his excellency means to
give you a new opportunity for distinguishing yourself,' continued
Palenka, smiling. 'You are to reconnoitre, about dawn, the country
between Mount Mezlanie and the Timok river, about twenty miles from
this; observe its features, what you may see, and report thereon.
The picked men of your troop--your own, as yet without a captain--to
the number of twenty sabres, will parade at midnight, in front of the
general's quarters.'
Cecil was still on the staff, but he accepted the duty assigned with
pleasure, and felt the hint conveyed, that his troop was as yet
without a captain, as the latter had been killed at Alexinatz.
'I can stay with you but a few minutes, gentlemen,' said the count;
'and meantime will join you in a glass of some wine my servants have
brought, in honour of the Herr Lieutenant and his victory over the
jade Fortune.'
'Tokay!' exclaimed Stanley, in a low voice, as he saw with interest a
Cossack extracting the tiny cobwebbed bottles: 'Tokay, by all the
gods!--such wine as can't be got for money, I have no doubt.'
'You are right, Herr,' said the count, who overheard him; 'they are
the last of a present the Emperor gave my father--and I have just
begged Tchernaieff to accept, from me, a dozen--they are all of the
first brand, and from the grapes of Hegyallya.'
Other officers now came to share the count's Hungarian wine--Russian
Hussars in sky-blue dolmans, Servian dragoons with queer forage caps,
like Scotch glengarries, and baggy red breeches; and a picturesque
group the whole made, Palenka being the most striking figure there.
He was very handsome, and would have formed a fine study for a
painter. He had a visage naturally pale, but embrowned by exposure,
a dark, martial, eagle-eye, and black moustache, with a general
daring, undaunted and fiery air about him--in aspect, curiously
between a man of fashion and a reckless Free Lance; a man who in
thought and habit had much of the old heyduc in him, and was perhaps
a little behind this unromantic, unmoved, and unheroic age.
Beside him sat Pelham, a brave and reckless fellow, but of a very
different mould--under the middle size, yet a winning and
aristocratic-looking Englishman, about thirty years of age, with blue
eyes, and a general and genial sunshiny smile in his face.
'And where, now, is she to whom I owe so much--Mademoiselle Palenka?'
asked Cecil in a low voice, when occasion served, and feeling the
necessity, in common politeness at least, to remember the fact of her
existence.
'She has left the camp,' was the curt response of the count, over
whose face a shade fell for a moment; for some rumours--some
suspicions of his sister's interest in the questioner--must have
reached him, and he knew that the impulsive Margarita was difficult
to control; so Cecil said no more on the subject, and, changing his
place to another part of the noisy and laughing group, became
somewhat silent.
He had ample food for reflection, certainly.
It was impossible for him not to think with positive wonder on all
the strange complications that must have arisen had the count, and
those who accompanied him, been but a very little later in coming to
announce that he--Cecil--was free; and that if he had availed himself
of the disguise brought by Ottilie, and reached the appointed spot
where Theodore awaited him with the horses, and too probably
Margarita too (indeed he could not doubt she was there), and had he
taken, with her, that flight which the detection of the deserter's
forgery rendered unnecessary, the whole future of both their lives
must have been changed from that hour; for it was evident that she
had meant to cast her lot with him, and for all she knew or could
foresee, her one life against a censorious world.
'We must never meet again--I must see her no more!' was his thought
again and again, and he was conscious that the count was looking at
him scrutinisingly from time to time. The usually heedless and
unobservant Pelham detected this, and said to Palenka inquiringly:
'Why do you look so gravely--so sadly at our friend, with whom you
were laughing but a few minutes ago?'
'Sadly--do I? Well, sooth to say, I feel somewhat sorry for him.'
'Why--what the deuce is up now?'
'I am rather an acute physiognomist,' replied the count, looking down
and affecting to select and manipulate a cigar, 'and think I can
see--can read in his face, by a certain gravity of expression there,
that he will--after all he has escaped--die a violent death.'
'_A violent death!_' repeated Pelham, with an expression of surprise
in his face; 'from what do you gather this?'
'I cannot say--a kind of prescience--an intuition of destiny--that I
have no control over; but I have rarely been mistaken.'
'Well,' replied Pelham, 'I might predict as much about many of us; we
may perhaps be engaged to-morrow, and some that are above the turf
just now, may be under it soon enough.'
The count gave an inscrutable smile, and began to smoke; and Pelham
was glad only that Cecil--going, as he was so soon to do, on a duty
of some peril--had not overheard a prediction so strange and gloomy
concerning himself.
'Destiny--prescience--bosh!' thought Pelham; but the count's face and
manner impressed the volatile Englishman, who had only come to fight
in Servia as the means to a 'new sensation.' He became perplexed,
silent, and when Cecil spoke, his voice seemed somehow to stir a
painful chord in the breast of Pelham.
'A violent death!'
This strange prophecy gave him some cause to think. Did the count
refer to the chances of war, or that Cecil was fore-doomed
prematurely, and had his destiny--his kismet, like an
Osmanlie--written on his brow? Or was it that he resented, with all
his apparent candour and generosity, some love-passages between his
sister and the late prisoner, and meant to have the latter cut
off?--a matter easily achieved in that lawless land.
Pelham was restlessly uneasy on the subject, and sat reflectively
sucking at his briar-root in silence, till the bugles sounded for
lights and fires out--for silence in camp, and all retired to their
tents or huts.
At midnight, punctually, Cecil, cloaked and armed, rode to the
headquarters of Tchernaieff, in front of which he found his troop
mounted, and a sergeant calling the roll by lantern-light, the rays
of which fell feebly on the dark faces and darker uniforms of the
Servian troopers, who were all in light marching order, without
valises or other encumbrance, save forage-nets, sponge-bags and spare
shoes. By lantern-light he opened the ranks and inspected them; the
pistols and carbines were loaded. From Palenka he got a written
memorandum of the path or route he was to pursue, though much was
left to his own discretion.
The party, consisting of twenty sabres, broke into sections of fours.
'_Shagoum-marche!_' (walk-march) was the first command, and they got
into motion.
'_Rishu!_' (trot) cried Cecil, and away they went, and quickly left
the camp behind them, looking somewhat ghost-like amid the starless
gloom, as they glided noiselessly over the soft turf, on which, as
yet, the hoofs of their horses made no sound.