THE RECONNAISSANCE.
Young soldier though he was in some respects, Cecil knew well the
importance of the duty assigned to him, and the great circumspection
requisite in the mode of executing it; all the more as Circassian and
Egyptian cavalry had been but recently heard of in the vicinity of
Rajouz, a village about five miles from Deligrad.
Whatever Cecil did, he usually gave his heart to; and he was doubly
anxious to prove himself worthy of the renewed trust and faith
reposed in him by Tchernaieff, and to stifle the qualms of disgust he
had begun to feel for the Servian service, and which usually rise,
sooner or later, in the heart of every Briton at any foreign service,
and which was the more likely to influence Cecil by the memory of
late events.
As his party rode on at a leisurely walk, after quitting the vicinity
of the camp, the hoofs tramping out the rich odours of the fallen
leaves and aromatic plants, he gave strict orders that there was to
be no smoking (lest lights, even so small, were seen), and that there
must be no talking or singing--that utter silence must pervade every
movement.
His party had food for three days; thus he halted and fed the horses
at every two leagues, so that they should always be fresh and fit for
duty, taking care to halt in thickets, or at a distance from all
roads, and using every precaution to preclude surprise while the
feeding was in process, and the horses consequently unbitted.
He was furnished with a guide, whom, however, he kept ignorant of the
route indicated to him by Tchernaieff--the line of country towards
the Timok river.
He knew, too, that an officer, be his rank what it may, can never,
with honour, decline the perilous duty of a reconnaissance, as the
honour is amply made up by the importance of the expedition, which
frequently proves of the utmost consequence in the operations of the
future.
Thus, when day began to dawn, and he found himself traversing the
fields and forest lands on the eastern slopes of Mount Mezlanie,
while moving with the utmost care and circumspection, with two
advanced troopers some distance in front, riding each with loaded
carbine on thigh, he began his notes and task of surveying, by
minutely examining the face of the country, the hollows and vales,
whether stony or swampy; the grass and the watercourses; the line of
the principal roads, their turnings, breadth, and capability for the
passage of artillery; the situation of farmhouses or villages, and
their capabilities for defence; the bridges, etc.--and all the
memoranda thereon he extended and corrected during the halts for
refreshing the men and horses.
Particularly had he to note where grass, hay, and corn could be
procured, in case of an advance in that direction; with the proper
ground for camps, with fuel and water in the vicinity, and so forth,
omitting nothing that might prove of value to his leaders. And in
this new species of employment the first day passed without event,
and the approach of evening found his party preparing to halt for the
night in a thicket of oaks and pines, under the shadow of some lofty
and impending precipices, the fronts of which glared redly in the
western light, above the deep green of the forest trees.
A line of silvery haze, exhaled by the evening sun, winding among
them, indicated the course of the Timok river, which descends from
the south side of Mount Haiduchki, of the Balkan chain in Servia, and
flows along the confines of Bulgaria till it reaches the Danube. So
the river was almost in sight, and as yet neither Cecil nor his
troopers had 'felt' the Circassian or Egyptian cavalry; and
everywhere the country seemed quiet, the peasantry attending in peace
to their agricultural avocations.
Near the halting-place lay a deep pool surrounded by cedars and
pines; rich boughs drooped into its water, on which the snow-white
lilies floated, and there the horses were unbitted, and they and
their riders drank thirstily.
By dawn next day all were in their saddles again, and the
reconnaissance was resumed.
Sharply observant, though naturally unsuspicious, Cecil had, ere
this, begun to remark that an armed peasant, with a large black
beard--but all men were armed there, and then especially--who had
questioned the advanced file of men and obtained from them a light
for his pipe--appeared to dodge or watch his party, which rode at an
easy pace, and from time to time he saw this peasant appearing on the
crest of one slope, as they began to descend another.
Disliking this, he sent a corporal back at a trot to question this
fellow and demand his object or purpose; but the latter eluded this
by disappearing in a thicket, only, as it eventually proved, to
follow still, but unseen and more warily.
As the road traversed one of those warm valleys where, in Servia, the
cotton-plant is raised in great quantities, and where the plantations
present so pleasing an appearance, the glossy dark green leaves
contrasting so finely with the white globular flowers scattered over
the tree, Cecil's party overtook three mounted persons--a man and two
females--who, after a consultation among themselves apparently,
checked their horses to let his troopers come up with them.
As they drew near them, Cecil felt his pulse quicken. There was no
mistaking the brown habit faced with scarlet, the smart hat and white
ostrich feather, and the graceful figure of the wearer, or the
old-dragoon seat of her male attendant. For here was Margarita,
accompanied by old Theodore, and the third mounted personage was the
pretty Ottilie.
'Margarita again--and here! By Jove! there _is_ some fatality in all
this!' thought Cecil; and he spurred in advance of his party, and
joined the trio, two of whom at once reined their horses back; and
one of them, Ottilie, coloured very deeply, for she was not ignorant
of the grotesque rumours that had been current concerning the
disguise in which she had been found.
'You here, Herr Lieutenant!' exclaimed Margarita, with genuine
surprise, while placing her whip in her bridle-hand, she presented
the other to Cecil; 'here northward of Mount Mezlanie?'
'I am reconnoitring--and you?'
'Am _en route_ for Palenka; then via Belgrade for Vienna.'
If she thought to interest him by this intelligence she failed, for
he said:
'I am glad to hear that you are leaving this district, for we know
not which way the tide of war may roll: and the fact of your being
here without an escort is most rash, as patrols of Circassian and
Egyptian horse have been seen between the Timok and the Morava!'
'We are now within ten miles of Palenka, and have seen nothing as yet
to alarm us,' she replied.
Palenka was in a safe district; but who could count on what might lie
between? Why should he not escort her so far, when he was free to do
so, as his command was a roving one? and Palenka lay on the west side
of the Timok, and in the district he was to examine.
Her eyes sparkled and her colour heightened as he announced his
intention; and they rode slowly on together, he the while, with all
the interest that he could not help feeling in her, wishing in his
heart that she was safe in Belgrade, Vienna, or anywhere else than by
his side.
She thanked him for the proffered escort.
'Say nothing of that,' said he; 'I owe you so much more than I can
ever repay.'
'You owe me a debt, I know; yet it might be best adjusted by our
forgetting--as if we had never known--each other.'
'Margarita, who that has seen and known you will ever forget you?' he
asked, with truth in his voice and eye.
'Many, I have no doubt.'
Her manner was somewhat bitter and weary, and from under her long
dark eyelashes she looked at him, from time to time, with a kind of
passionate pain.
'One fact I shall never forget, at least--that you saved me from
great and deadly peril, by your acumen and superior intelligence.'
'By my suspicion of Guebhard and general knowledge of his character,
and of what he is capable--say, rather.'
'And thus you rendered my flight from Deligrad unnecessary.'
'Yes,' she replied curtly.
On that point he said no more. She coloured for a moment at his
reference to it, and then became pale again; but paleness was the
normal condition of her face.
This brilliant woman loved him, and had not cared much to conceal
that she did so. What was he to say to her--what to tell--how to
explain all? It was impossible for him to put in clear, cold words
before her the mortifying fear that he could not--should not love her
in return, because he was affianced--so hopelessly, as he
supposed--to another.
Could he ask her to take back a heart he certainly had never sought?
It was in every way a perplexing and grotesque situation.
'You have become very silent,' said she, in a tone of pique, while
switching, and then checking her horse. 'Of what are you thinking?'
'That if some of those wild Circassians, of whom I have been told,
were only to appear now----'
'Heaven forbid! why?'
'That I might empty a saddle or two, and risk in your service the
life you saved, and thus make an atonement----'
'I want no such risk run; and what,' she asked a little sharply, 'do
you mean by atonement?'
'Only this, that you saved my life, Margarita, and may claim its
whole future, if you will,' said he, while Mary's face came
reproachfully to memory, for the speech was disloyalty to her,
however gallantly meant to Margarita, whom the peculiarity of its
tenor irritated rather than flattered.
'This is an idle speech, and I know its value. I thank you for your
escort, but we shall part at Palenka, and as another day will see me
on the road for Vienna, we shall never meet again; and you may become
to me, what I shall never be to you--a dream, without pain perhaps.'
This was one of her many strange and passionate speeches, his general
or vague replies to which always piqued her.
'Youth and pleasure are a dream,' said he.
'And life itself, say some.'
'But these metaphysicians do not tell us where or how we shall wake
to find it so--unless in death.'
'Enough of a subject so gloomy and abstruse,' said she sharply, for
Cecil's strange indifference galled and piqued her keenly.
Though a fashionably-bred woman, and as a girl accustomed to the best
society in Vienna, in wild Servia she was certainly rather
untrammelled by the bonds of conventionality. Her life from young
girlhood had been full of gaiety, variety, vivid colour, and very
rational pleasure. She had been the object of much adulation,
admiration, and love, too; she had been amused or bored by all, but
won by none till now, when Cecil, the wanderer, the soldier of
fortune, with no inheritance but his sword, had won her regard
without seeking it.
She was assured now--bitterly so--that he would never kneel to her as
a lover; yet she was loth that he should ever free himself from the
power of her fascinations, if she could make him feel it. Fain would
she have won that heart which seemed so fresh and guileless, so
unlike any she had yet met--so unworn and prone to have good faith in
all men.
There was a certain languor and then occasional fiery carelessness in
Margarita that must have come to her with the blood of the old heyduc
of Palenka, and his bride--some odalisque, perhaps, won by the edge
of his sabre amid the plunder of a pasha's household, and hers was
the disposition, the passion and the situation, that so often lead to
blind and bitter hatred, ending in crime and sorrow.
She knew the power of her beauty over all men, and she knew also the
claim for special gratitude over this loyal, dauntless, and grateful
heart, and hoped that she knew how to use both; thus many a time she
looked at him with her bright, languid eyes, the colour of which was
often difficult to define, with an expression which seemed to say:
'I saved your life and honour--therefore you ought to belong to me,
and to no one else!'
And Cecil found it impossible to deny, even to himself, the knowledge
and certainty that this woman, so dazzlingly fair that few women ever
saw her without jealousy, and fewer men without admiration or
passion, had been ready--and was now ready--to risk shame, suffering
or danger, and fly with him, seeking obscurity and exile in Bulgaria
or anywhere else.
'Was ever man more tempted!' thought he, as he saw--with
satisfaction--the gilded vanes and cupolas of Palenka glittering in
the sunshine above the green-wooded bank of the Morava, and he reined
up his horse to bid her farewell.
'You will surely ride up to Palenka, and bid mamma adieu?' she said,
her eyes dilating with reproach.
'To visit Palenka, or anywhere else, is inconsistent with my duty;
and the count your brother viewed my sojourn there with unconcealed
displeasure.'
'As you please,' said she, coldly. Then, after a pause, she added,
'We have resolved to leave Servia, mamma and I, for a time--my
brother wishes us to do so.'
'I would fain see you once again,' said he, with an access of
tenderness, suited, however, to the occasion; 'but it may not be.
To-night I shall halt in the wood near Tjuprija, and to-morrow go
back on the spur to Deligrad.'
'The wood near Tjuprija--that is close at hand; so if we who have
been so strangely thrown together are parted to meet no more in the
future, and you would care to see me once again--just once--at noon
to-morrow be by the wayside chapel on the rocks above the ruin--the
chapel of Lazar--and--' she paused, as a spasm of pain made her proud
and beautiful face quiver, 'and I shall be there.'
'At noon, then, to-morrow,' said he, bending over her gauntleted hand
and kissing it, after which she rode off at a quick pace, followed by
her two attendants, while Cecil fell back and rejoined his troopers,
who made all haste to put out and hide the pipes in which they
had--in defiance of orders--been indulging during his recent
preoccupation in front of them.
At the same time a man--the bearded peasant before-mentioned--who had
been concealed among some laurel-bushes, and had overheard the
parting, crept stealthily away, with an expression on his face that
would have startled Cecil had he seen it.
'To what end, or to what useful or wise purpose, under all the
circumstances, can this assignation be? and in such a lonely place?'
he thought. 'But what could I say--how decline the last request of
one to whom I owe so much?'
Yet he wished it all well over, and anticipated, with genuine British
dismay, something of a painful scene.
The night was passed by his troopers peacefully in the solitude of
the wood referred to, under the stars. Morning came in bright with
ruddy sunshine, and after such a humble repast as soldiers prepare
under such circumstances, Cecil ordered them to unbit and unsaddle
their horses, groom them, and re-examine all their ammunition--not
all at once, but by fours at a time--and after patrolling the woods
in the vicinity, and finding all quiet, he halted them again in the
wood, and set forth to keep his appointment at the chapel, which was
on a rocky steep about a mile from it.
He crossed the Morava by an ancient bridge, supposed to be the work
of Roman hands, and began to ascend the steep and rocky bank that
overhung it, till he overlooked the windings of the river and the
woods that half-concealed them, and attained the summit of a species
of pass in which stood the wayside chapel--merely a rough species of
altar, whereon was painted a rude and half-defaced effigy, surmounted
by a projecting pediment or roof of red tiles.
Masses of wild vines flourished in luxuriance all around it, with
other creepers, and from amid these there peered grotesquely
forth--with its metal halo sorely faded--the effigy, which was
supposed to represent the Servian _Krall_, Lazar, who was taken
prisoner in the last great battle on the plains of Kossava (which
ended in the subjugation of Servia), and whose relics, after his
murder in the camp of the Sultan Amurath, have wrought so many
miracles, according to the superstition of his country, and now lie
in the monastery of Ravenitza, which he founded; but Cecil thought
nothing of all this, and probably knew nothing about it, as he looked
about him anxiously and in haste for Margarita.
It was past the time of noon now; but she was not there. A sheer
cliff of vast height, the base of which could not be seen, descended
on one side; on the other was the narrow walk by which he had mounted
to the wayside chapel.
He heard no sound but the voices of the birds, and he looked in vain
for her figure--her drapery floating between the stems of the trees.
Why had she failed to keep her tryst? a kind of keen disappointment
occurred to him now; he looked at his watch again. Time was long
past now, and he thought of his troopers and the homeward march to
Deligrad!
Then, as he looked about him, his eye fell on two objects that gave
him a shock, a bracelet and a handkerchief. The former lay imbedded
in the turf, as if trod upon; the other fluttered on the stem of a
wild vine.
He took up the former, a Turkish rose-pearl bracelet, which he
remembered to have seen Margarita wear; so she must have come to the
meeting-place and lost it. But why had she come and gone so soon?
The handkerchief, a white silk one, he examined, and on a corner
thereof saw the name of 'Mattei Guebhard.'
Guebhard--then he too had been there; had in some way anticipated
him! And now he saw that all the turf about the narrow path bore the
indentations of feet, as if a struggle had taken place, and a great
horror of--he knew not what--fell upon the heart of Cecil.
He thought of the Circassian and Egyptian patrols, who were said to
be scouting between the Morava and the Timok, but he thought not of
the peasant who had dogged his party yesterday.
Had Guebhard succeeded in carrying her off--in abducting her beyond
the Turkish lines? If so, in these days of Bulgarian atrocities,
Cecil could but fear the worst, and his heart died within him as he
returned, slowly and reluctantly, and with many a backward glance, to
the road, where his troopers awaited him.
There was no time given him for inquiry, no time for further delay,
and at a rapid trot the homeward march began.