THE PAROLE OF HONOUR.
The Russian troops in the Crimea were always being changed, with what
object it is impossible to say; but those who were once engaged with
the Allies seldom saw them again. Thus the Heavy Dragoon force of
Prince Galitzin wheeled off towards Simpheropol, _en route_ for the
Isthmus of Perecop, while he, accompanied by his aide-de-camp and a
few Cossacks, proceeded direct to Yaila, carrying with him one of the
few trophies lately secured by the Russians--Horace Ramornie.
The repugnance the latter had of his captor was intense, yet he was
compelled by policy to dissemble to an extent that made him almost
despise himself; for he had to smile and bow his thanks whenever that
personage proffered--as he not unfrequently did--his cigar-case, with
a bland yet cunning glitter in his eyes. With all his bad points of
character--and Horace knew not the half of them--he sorrowed for the
sudden and terrible fate of the hapless Chesters, and justly deemed
his death, and more than all, the mode of it, an outrage on humanity,
on the laws of war and of nations; for whatever their private quarrel
may have been, Galitzin should have respected the rights of a
prisoner.
But the butchery of our wounded in the Valley of Inkerman, the
massacre of a boat's crew under a flag of truce at Hango, and the
cannonading of our ships that were perishing amid the terrible storm
that swept the shore of the Euxine, go far to prove that the Russians
are not particular in their mode of dealing with an enemy, or
remarkable for their nice notions of chivalry.
So the close of the second day, after some forty miles march, saw
Horace Ramornie a prisoner in the Castle of Yaila. Along the route
he had noted every path and defile, every Tartar village, every wall
and tree, that might guide him if he succeeded in escaping. That
project, if put in execution, had with it many perils; for he might
be shot, or shut up among the rank and file and sent inland he knew
not where! He writhed under the restraint of the present, and
anticipated the future with doubt and dread.
However, once within the gates of Yaila, his parole of honour was
accepted by Galitzin, as commandant of the place, to the effect that
he should not go more than one mile beyond its walls, reporting
himself every night at gunfire to the parooschick (a lieutenant) of
the main-guard; that he would be made a close prisoner if he failed
in these conditions, and eventually shot if he attempted to escape.
Horace was fain to accept of these hard terms, stipulating, on the
other hand, that his life should be safe, and that he might write to
his friends at the camp by a Tartar messenger.
This was peremptorily refused by Galitzin, lest he should in some
hidden terms describe the locality of Yaila and strength of the
garrison; for distrust of everything and everybody was a second
nature with this impoverished Prince. Moreover, he had been more
than once a spy himself; so hence came much of the mystery that
involved the disappearance of Horace Ramornie.
When he found himself isolated thus in that sequestered fort, amid
the mountains of Crim Tartary, at times a stunned sensation came over
him. He felt like one who wanders in the unknown places of
dreamland, or under a species of nightmare! Was he the same Horace
Ramornie who had lately so many friends, a position and rank as
Captain in the Line--who had been riding between a file of filthy
snub-nosed Cossack Lancers, in coarse uniforms and mangy-looking fur
shoubahs, with his hands tied to the shaggy mane of a stolen Tartar
pony; and was he actually to pine there, under the shadows of the
Tchatr-Dagh and Dimirdji Mountains, for some unnamed period of time?
If this was reality, was Gwenny a myth?
The longing to escape was intense; but then he had given his parole;
and to ask it back, would be to announce the intention of flight, and
cause him to be made a close prisoner, who would be well watched in
one of those cells or dungeons of the place, the bare thought of
which made him shudder. He could but hope that some body of the
Allies might by chance assault Yaila, and effect his rescue; if the
Ruskies did not bayonet him, to prevent him from falling safe into
friendly hands; and _that_ he knew they were quite capable of doing.
Rising from the slope of the hill, on rocks of red and white marble,
the Castle of Yaila consisted of four towers of very picturesque
aspect, connected by an embattled curtain, or wall, before which lay
a deep ditch of recent construction; and, in its time it had
witnessed many changes, and had many masters.
The basement was originally part of a citadel erected by the Emperor
Justinian against the barbarians. The family of a Khan of the house
of Zingis, leader of the Golden Horde, who came from the deserts of
Tartary to conquer Russia, had occupied it for several generations.
It had been demolished by the Genoese, when the Superb City was
mistress of Lesbos, Cyprus, and "Scio's rocky isle;" and it had been
restored, to undergo a cannonading by Mohammed the Second, when he
swept her industrious colonies from the shores of the Black Sea.
Now, each of those sorely-patched round towers, was surmounted by a
Russian cupola, the copper of which was of a brilliant green colour.
Two were shaped and striped like water-melons, and two like
pine-apples, being cut into knobby points to make the resemblance
more complete. Each terminated in a great cross, and over all, on
the mast of a ship brought from the Euxine, waved the white standard
of the Empire, charged with the blue saltire of its patron, the
Fisherman of Bethsaida.
The garrison (Horace, intent on rescue if he could not escape, took
note of everything) consisted of two four-company battalions of
Finland Infantry, under the _Pulkovnich_, or senior Colonel, Alexis
Tegoborski, a kinsman of the Prince--a grim old soldier, who had lost
the half of his left hand by a Turkish sabre, at the siege of Varna,
and wore a gold medal for the war in Transylvania. As each Russian
company is supposed to be two hundred strong, this garrison should
have consisted of at least sixteen hundred bayonets; but as Galitzin
was one of those good old-fashioned Muscovite officers who peculated
whenever he could do so, he had barely two-thirds of that number in
his ranks; but when the (obliging) General of the District inspected
them, the rest were borrowed from the next officer of the same school
at Simpheropol, Kertch, or elsewhere; and the General, pocketing a
share of the pay, said nothing about it.
In general vulgarity of appearance, as well as in coarseness of face,
it was difficult to distinguish the officers from the men on parade.
All wore the same long grey coat, that hid everything, to their
gaiters; but under this, each had a dark-green coatee, faced with red
and trimmed with yellow, like their flat, round forage-caps.
Heavy cannon, all painted green, with white crosses on the breech,
commanded the approaches to the place on every side, and Horace saw
with a sigh, that even if some General of the Allies suggested a
sudden expedition of the troops to Yaila, as Campbell did to
Tchorgoun, that the Castle would not be taken without a terrible loss
of life; yet, he was fond of imagining the joy with which he would
see the Red-coats, or the active Zouaves, in their baggy madder
breeches, crossing the ditch under grape and musketry, and swarming
up the rocky glacis at the bayonet's point. And then his heart would
leap within him, only to sink lower in hope than ever. For when was
it to be?
Though a Russian Prince, and, consequently, we may suppose, a
gentleman, Galitzin had but vague ideas of the position held in
English society by an officer of any rank: and though the
superannuated nurse of the Emperor, and even his coachman, have the
nominal rank of Colonel--for everything is judged by the standard of
the sword and epaulette in Russia--he was disposed to treat the
"Hospodeen Kamhornoff," as he called him, rather coldly, and all the
more so when reverses came thick and fast upon the garrison of
Sebastopol.
So February passed into April, and wistfully and yearningly did the
prisoner gaze upon the blue waters of the Euxine (piquancy being
given to that glimpse by the sails and smoke of our war-steamers,
cruising between the Straits of Yeni Kale and Sebastopol), "the
highroad to Old England," which lay about two miles from his place of
detention. And his soul sickened of the same eternal view. Yet that
view was not without its charms.
There were the stupendous peaks of the Dimirdji and Tchatr Dagh; the
picturesque little Tartar villages with white walls and green roofs;
a peep of the wooded valley of the Salghir--the silver rivulets
stealing between the slopes of emerald green towards it and the sea.
Groups of passing natives; the Asiatic women, with loose trousers and
flowing headdresses--the Russian, with high-waisted petticoats; the
turbaned and slippered Turk, with a bundle of weapons in his sash; a
mounted Tartar, in a red striped jacket with blue trousers and
scarlet sash; a Russian Mujik, in jackboots and sheepskin jacket; and
troops of all arms, perpetually pouring forward to or from
Sebastopol; and high over head the black eagles soaring in the blue
sky. But Horace sighed for his little tent in the British camp; for
his perilous tour of duty in the trenches; for creeping towards the
rifle-pits in rear of a sap-roller; and to hear once more the
ding-dong of the great guns, night and day, in and around the
beleaguered city!
The greatest terror of Horace was a snowy or, as the season opened, a
wet day, for then he was of a necessity confined within the walls.
Minus umbrella and wrappers, he could not even enjoy his paroled
mile, but was compelled to keep within a dingy whitewashed room,
heated by a _peitchka_ or wall stove, with a tattered copy of the
_Times_ or _Galignani_ three months old, which somehow found their
way there, and from which the censor of the press had carefully
obliterated everything of the slightest interest; otherwise he would
encounter General Prince Galitzin, who was most exacting of salutes,
at every other turn of the old tumbledown Tartar stronghold, every
stone of which he loathed.
The weeks were marked only by a bearded Greek priest, who performed
service on Sunday in the armoury, clad in white, with gorgeous
vestments of cloth of gold, bordered by the richest lace.
Sometimes he had the honour of dining with the Prince, and the
pleasure of having his usual meal of beef, black bread, and beer,
especially after wrecks in the Black Sea, varied by a repast _à la
Russe_, where everything was excellent, from the preliminary kimmel
and caviare, to the coffee that closed it. There would be turbot
from the Euxine, wild boar from Khutor Mackenzie, potatoes garnished
with parsley and butter, salted beef and green _borsch_, plenty of
fruit from Achmetchet, and _crimskoi_ or Crimean wine, and that of
the Don, which so often passes for champagne in Russia.
Galitzin, to Horace, seemed then a kind of Belshazzar in a green coat
and epaulettes, but discontented, and sighing for the beauties of St.
Petersburg and the hells of Paris and Baden-Baden. He never asked
Horace to play, however, as he knew well that the industrious
Cossacks had stripped him of everything, even to half the buttons on
his uniform.
On these occasions, when under the influence of the wine, Galitzin
would relax a little of his stiffness, and Horace would strive to
forget that he was the guest of a spy and assassin--yea, a double one
(for by this time Cyril might be dead at Scutari); and once he begged
"that his parole might be extended to two miles," as he had an
intense longing to stand by the shore of the free rolling sea--but
dared not to hint that.
Galitzin bent his keen dark Tartar eyes inquiringly upon him, and
said significantly:--
"Are you ill-treated here?"
"Monsieur le Prince, do not misunderstand me; I simply wish to wander
out to see----"
"What, Monsieur le Capitaine, if the Tchatr Dagh, the Trapezus of the
Greeks and the Palata Gora of the Russians, together with the
mountains of Yaila, are where they were yesterday?"
"Well, life has come down pretty much to that sort of thing with me.
To find that any of them had vanished like the Palace of Aladdin,
would cause a new sensation--a surprise at least."
"An _alerte_ from Balaclava would be more acceptable?"
"Decidedly, Monsieur le Prince," said Horace, smiling.
"You weary of your imprisonment and of our Tauric scenery?"
"How much I weary, heaven alone knows!"
"Well, empty that bottle of Donskoi; your exchange or release is only
a matter of time."
And Horace thought sadly in his heart--
"Patience, patience yet awhile. What is there on the land or sea
that is _not_ a matter of _time_?"
How regretfully, yet proudly, he thought of his regiment, the Royal
Fusileers--of that splendid group of English officers, who gathered
round the farewell mess-table at Chatham--the table that is at once
the model of aristocracy, democracy, and dinner society--men so
high-hearted, noble, and generous, of all those who drew their swords
that morning beside the Alma; of Jack Probyn, of old Conyers
Singleton whose blighted life was closed by a Russian bullet; of
Pomfret, Bingham, and Joyce, and all who had fallen; of Sir Edward,
Ned Elton, Pat Beamish, and others, who, he hoped, were surviving
still. His heart turned to them with affectionate longing. He felt
himself so much alone among all those hostile foreigners, with whom
he had no community of feeling; alone with his sorrows, doubts, and
harrowing fears of liberty, promotion, and more than all perhaps--a
love lost!
The yearning for letters that could never come, and for news of those
at home, became keen and poignant. How drearily the round of each
day passed! The utter sameness of place and view and occupation, or
rather lack of the latter; so that each night he thanked heaven that
another day of his life had gone, and he was twenty-four hours nearer
the end of his captivity.
But the _end_--when might it be?
Surmises of how the war was going on were incessantly in his mind,
with thoughts of Gwenny, of Lady Wedderburn, and of their health, or
where they might be, whether at Willowdean or in London, where Gwenny
would certainly be the object of so much attention! Poor girl! he
flattered himself that her sorrow for him would be great indeed--all
the greater that she had still perhaps to keep the secret of their
engagement in the recesses of her own heart.
And so while he pined thus within the narrow limits defined by his
_parole d'honneur_, the soft Crimean spring stole on towards summer,
and the soldiers of the garrison were changed many times. Then came
the hum of the mountain bee as it floated over the little caper
bushes or the purple heather of Yaila; the plash of the brown scaly
fish in the stream that bubbled towards the Salghir or the sea, and
these were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the lonely
hours Horace spent on slopes outside the fortress (for he loathed the
in), while the fertile soil around began to teem with mint and thyme.
wild parsley and aromatic herbs; the great dahlias, sweet-briar, and
whitethorn flourished amid the marble rocks and the crumbling walls
of the days of Justinian and the Genoese, and every breeze of summer
as it swept past was laden with delicious perfumes.
Meanwhile, the Czar Nicholas had died; the great sortie of the 4th of
April had been repulsed; the rifle-pits had been captured; the
terrible conflict took place in the cemetery; Sebastopol still held
out desperately, but the Russians were hemmed on all hands within it.
Galitzin was a great tyrant. Seldom did a day pass without finding
an officer under arrest for some petty fault; or a soldier mulcted of
his miserable pay for the Prince's behoof, flogged, tied neck and
heels to a musket, or sent to shot drill; and these punishments
generally took place in the evening, after Galitzin had imbibed his
full share of crimskoi; and after witnessing them, and saying prayers
before a gaudy print of his patron, St. Ivan Veliki, he generally
retired to smoke a cigar in the apartments of his kinsman, the
Pulkovnick Alexis Tegoborski, with whose florid and fair-haired wife,
Norina Paulovna, he seemed on remarkably intimate terms.
So thus the spring wore into summer, and Horace Ramornie was still a
lonely prisoner, pining in the Castle of Yaila; but new, strange, and
terrible interests were to grow up around him ere he saw the last of
its four green-domed towers and heavy gun batteries.