GALITZIN AS A LOVER.
Galitzin was well educated and knew all the little that existed then
of Russian literature; thus he made many an excuse of translating to
Gwenny the tender passages which he had marked off in the poems of
the Countess Rostopchin (which being secret literature, circulate in
MS. only) or the verses of Puschkin, who has sung so sweetly of the
Fountain of Tears in the palace of the Crimean Khans, or in the story
of Voinaroffski, the lover of Aurora of Konigsmark; but she listened
vacantly or with ill-disguised impatience, and would irritate him by
ever and anon addressing Ramornie.
"And so, dear Horace, you are a captain now?" said she, in the middle
of one of Voinaroffski's most passionate appeals.
"Yes, Gwenny; but I got my promotion through the death of the very
man who would have been the first to congratulate me on it--yes; to
have ordered a fresh cooper of port at the mess to wet the new
commission--poor Jack Probyn! But it was no fault of mine; it was
the fortune of war; yet I would rather have remained a lieutenant
still, and had jolly Jack to make fun with."
"We shall have peace soon, Mademoiselle," said the Prince, adding the
same in Russian to Madame Tegoborski; and Horace shivered, for he
knew what idea was associated in the mind of Galitzin with peace.
"But peace always ends in war," said Madame Tegoborski, "just as war
must end in peace. What you say reminds me of a passage in Kriloff,
the Fabulist, about the friendship of two dogs."
"And what says your Kriloff?" asked Galitzin, knitting his brow.
"It is a fable only."
"Well, go on with your fable."
"Two dogs in a court-yard become affectionate friends; how they fawn
and love each other, and will never fight again. It is charming; but
suddenly a bone is thrown from a window, and they straightway proceed
to tear each other to pieces."
"Yes; and Kriloff has another fable of a sleeping peasant, who is
about to be stung by a serpent; but a friendly fly bites him on the
nose and awakes him. The shepherd kills the serpent, but he also
destroys the fly. A warning to the meddlesome, or the jealous, not
to be too officious in _opening the eyes_ of any one," added Galitzin
with considerable significance of meaning, after which Madame
coloured, lapsed again into silence and took a cigarette, but she had
to twist it up for herself that evening.
Monseigneur le Prince was otherwise occupied, he forgot all about the
little duty which had been a pleasure yesterday; and now desiring
Kaminski to open the piano, he begged Gwenny to favour them with a
little music.
With a horrid memory of the events of the morning hovering in her
mind Gwenny was about to decline, when a glance from Horace decided
her, and she seated herself at the instrument--a very indifferent
one, and not at all improved in its recent transmission from Alushta,
by Cossacks, on the limber of a brass field-piece.
All the music placed before her was Russian, but Gwenny's fingers and
ears were clever, and after a few efforts she was able to read off
and play in very tolerable style--"_The Red Sarafan_," (so called
from the old Muscovite dress worn by ladies at evening parties),
Vielgorski's _Buivala_, and even the "Nightingale," a traditional
song and air of the Russian gipsies, to the great enchantment of
Galitzin, who was flattering himself what a creditable little wife
she would be; and even of old Togoborski, whose grizzled and closely
shorn caput and grim visage (seamed by the edge of more than one
Osmanli sabre), appeared approvingly above the columns of the
_Zeitung_, as he waved his meerschaum and beat time with his lame
foot; but more than all were they pleased when her rapid little
fingers dashed over in quick succession all the melodies of the
inevitable and inimitable _Trovatore_.
And Horace listened like one in a dream. Was it reality, or was it a
madness that had come upon him, that he seemed to be sitting in
Crimean Yaila, and under the shadow of the Tchatr Dagh, listening to
Gwenny Wedderburn playing the self-same airs which she had played to
him in the early days of their loverhood, and on many a delicious and
half-dreamy evening in the beautiful drawing-room at Willowdean.
"I have been tired of my own company," said he in a low voice, as he
bent over her, "and have longed--with all the longing of a desperate
and a loving heart--to be beside you again, but not here. Oh, no,
not here; in my wildest imaginings, no such idea or wish could have
occurred to me, and yet it has come to pass. Oh! what madness
tempted Lady Wedderburn and Lady Ernescleugh to venture here?"
"To see their sons. Besides, Lord Cardigan's yacht, and ever so many
more, have come out. And you mentioned having seen the Countess of
Errol with her husband in the camp of the Rifles."
"True; but what of that? This barbarous land is no place for
delicate English ladies; and I would to heaven that I saw you safe on
the watery high road for home."
Much more they rashly succeeded in whispering to each other, for
Galitzin was at that moment in conference with Kaminski. How tender
and delicious to themselves--but themselves only--are the little
nothings that make up the conversation of lovers!
Was it Ennemoser's theory of polarity, or what? But it seemed that
in the same mysterious fashion as that on which the learned doctor
expatiates, through spirituality, or may it be the force of a strong
love, a kind of magnetic current had passed between these two at
times, for on comparison they found that they had simultaneously
thought of, or dreamt each of the other, and imagined the same things
at the same identical moment.
It might be all nonsense, or a mistake; but anyway it was a delicious
theme to talk about, till the eyes of Galitzin were upon them, and he
had begun to feel first piqued, and then jealous of Horace as an
_Anglais_; but luckily, he was equally so of the aide-de-camp
Kaminski, who having discovered a pair of glazed boots and some kid
gloves in a chest that came ashore from the shattered yacht--some of
poor Newnham's holiday finery, perhaps--had appeared in them as for
special service this evening.
Giving the obsequious Kaminski a hint to draw off Horace and engage
him in conversation, Galitzin bent over Gwenny's chair.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, your singing enchants me; that _Miserere_ was
indeed divine!" he whispered, in what he deemed his most seductive
tone, as he proceeded to turn over the leaves really like a well-bred
man of the world rather than the savage he was in heart. "But," he
added, as the cruel glitter came into his dark eyes, "excuse me--I
have begun to dislike your friend."
"Who?" asked Gwenny, impetuously.
"He in the tattered red coat."
"What--poor Horace?" she exclaimed, and then blushed with confusion
and irritation.
"Orace--what you mean the Hospodeen Ramhornoff?"
"He is indeed an old _friend_," replied Gwenny, in alarm, for ere
this she had read the pencilled note, and could think of no safer
term for him.
"Bah! I hate such old, or rather such young friends." Then after a
pause, he added with a loftiness that made her smile, "I am the
Prince Galitzin, Major-General under the Emperor, Knight of the
Imperial Orders, and Colonel of the Tambroy Regiment of Infantry."
She only gave an acquiescent bow; had he been that worthy grocer and
self-righteous elder of the kirk who officiated as Baron-Bailie of
Willowdean, she could not have seemed less awed.
Now Galitzin knew enough of the world, of Europe, of that isle of it
named Britain, and of the "snobbery" thereof, to believe that she
would be greatly impressed by his announcement, as well as by his
stars, medals, and enormous epaulettes; but she had come from a land
where Rajahs, Maharajahs, Begums, Nanas, and Princes were thick as
leaves in Vallombrosa, and where she had seen them trotting about on
white elephants with all their half-naked _suwarri_ yelling at their
heels, so she "saw nothing in it."
But as the evening wore on, an eventful one in the life of her and
Horace, Madame Tegoborski strove, but in vain, to open a flirtation
first with him and then, as he was too _triste_, with the
staff-officer, Kaminski, and to turn the tables on the heedless
Prince. The latter was, however, too fully occupied with Gwenny to
perceive this, or to care one jot about it; and certainly, the grim
old Pulkovnick, Alexis Tegoborski, appeared to care quite as little;
he seemed entirely occupied with the pot-hooks and endless lines of
consonants which seemed to make up the letter-press of the _Moskauer
Zeitung_; and for the remainder of the evening, Horace discreetly
kept apart from Gwenny.
With the views of Galitzin so openly stated and now attempted to be
put in force, they felt that to observe a distant reserve to each
other was absolutely necessary; for if the gallant commander of the
Tambroy Infantry had suspected that his prisoner was a secret--and
still more, an accepted--lover, he would have no more compunction for
telling off a file of Cossacks to take him into the nearest wood, and
there despatch him with their carbines, than for taking an extra
glass of kimmel, or spoonful of caviare before saying his prayer at
dinner time.
However, after that evening Horace was invited no more to
tea-drinkings or other entertainments at the apartments of Madame
Tegoborski; not that the latter was to blame there, for the wishes of
the Prince came to her through her husband, and they were law, for
the Russian wife must not forget the symbolical whip which her
husband receives from her father on the bridal day.
Long, long were the watches of the night in which he thought, and
thought, and considered of what was to be done, till it seemed as if
his brain would turn. Then came sleep, full of nervous starts and
dreams, and then came the morning.
It was a horror to wake with the first thought that rushed upon him,
like a black and overwhelming flood, the knowledge that by an
extraordinary turn in the wheel of fortune--a cast of evil
destiny--Gwendoleyne Wedderburn was in Yaila, at the mercy of that
lawless Russian officer, and in the care, custody and apartments, of
one whom he had too much reason to deem alike unscrupulous and
jealously hateful of her--Madame Tegoborski.
Of what vengeance might not such a woman be capable!
And if Gwenny, a helpless being, a stranger and prisoner of war,
escaped the bold designs of the Prince, might she not, by poison
perhaps, fall a victim to the vengeance of the forgotten mistress!
_Galignani_ and the _Times_ record such vengeances every day. So
what might not occur in the sequestered fort of Yaila?