The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie

CHAPTER VII.

THE SOLDIER OF THE CZARINA.

"You can never know, Ivanovitch Balgonie, how much I pitied you—"

"You, lady?" was the joyous response.

"That is, I and Mariolizza," said Natalie Mierowna, slightly blushing (the Russians always speak thus, putting the personal pronoun first), "when we found you sunk on a fever-bed, in a foreign land, so far from your country, your friends, your mother, perhaps; for you are young enough, I think, to miss her still, at such a time, although a soldier."

"Far indeed, in many ways!" replied Balgonie, with a bitter smile, as he thought of Uncle Gam and the Palatine ship, or perhaps it was illness that had weakened him. "I have a country to which more than probably I shall never return; but father, mother, or friends, I have none there: all who loved me once, have gone to the silent grave before me."

"All?"

"Yes, lady."

"But you are making many friends in Russia," said Mariolizza, cheerfully: "there are my cousin, Basil Mierowitz and my brother Apollo Usakoff, who both, I know, love you as a brother."

"True; and most grateful am I to them for their regard, for both are polished gentlemen. I have old General Weymarn, too, though I know not what he will think of this delay in delivering the Imperial dispatch."

"Alas, that most tiresome dispatch!" exclaimed Natalie; "but I forget," she added, with a curl of her short upper lip, "those who proceed on the errands of the Empress Catharine, would need seven-league boots, or the carpet of the prince in the fairy tale, which transported the owner at a wish."

"Hush, cousin," said Mariolizza, glancing timidly round: but no one was near save Corporal Podatchkine, who was stolidly smoking a huge pipe at a little distance on the terrace, when this conversation took place two days after Balgonie became convalescent, and fully a week since the night of peril on which he swam the Louga.

"I cannot describe to you, ladies, the relief that came to my mind on discovering that it had neither been lost nor stolen, but was safe—"

"In Natalie's bosom!" said Mariolizza, laughing.

"Certainly the last place, where, for her own sake, I would place a dispatch of the widow of Peter III.," responded the other, haughtily; but Balgonie felt his heart beat quicker as she spoke. Her voice was sweet and low, and had a wonderful chord in it.

The day was mild and beautiful, and truly an April one. The last of the ice had disappeared from the river; not a flake of snow was visible among the woods or on the distant hills; and the bright sun of noon shone clearly and brilliantly from a deep-blue sky flecked by floating masses of white cloud, and cast across the bosom of the Louga the shadows of the great fir trees that spread like a sea of solemn cones for miles along its banks; and amid that woody sea, the most striking feature was a white-walled monastery with its "golden-headed church" and all its metal cupolas glittering in the sunshine.

As they promenaded on the gravelled terrace that lay before the Count's residence, Balgonie could see the domains of Mierowitz that lay for miles around: the patrimonial village of the Count, nestling among the coppice, containing a dozen or so of stone houses, and double that number of quaint tumble-down edifices of wood, and a church with a little gilt cupola, where his serfs said their prayers, and thanked God and him for permission to live and breathe, and to hoard their roubles in secret—for wealth in a serf was a sure source of misery, extortion, and perhaps of torture, if discovered.

In the immediate foreground were wharves, where the wood for masts and spars from his forests were launched, and formed into great rafts for conveyance to the Gulf of Finland. The din of axes and the crash of falling timber, with the cheerful voices of the woodmen and labourers, were heard rising from the echoing woods, as they lopped and trimmed the giant pines for conveyance to the Baltic coast; for his forest trees were one of the chief sources of revenue to Count Mierowitz.

"Your father's mansion is indeed a noble one!" said Balgonie, who after surveying the landscape from the terrace, ran his eyes over the façade of the castle, as it was named, though by no means so well fortified as his patrimonial tower in Strathearn, which dated from the days of the Sixth James.

"So noble that the first Count of our name who built it, when Ivan Basilovitch—Ivan the Terrible—was Czar, put out the eyes of the architect, who was, of course, one of his serfs," said Natalie.

"For what reason?" asked Balgonie, starting.

"Lest he should repeat the work for another," replied Natalie; "but then the Count was a fierce soldier, who had served under Yermack in the conquest of Siberia. I fear you think us very barbarous, Captain Balgonie; but I can assure you, that even in the remote forests of Yakoutsk, on the banks of the Lena, there is more regard for human life and divine laws now, than existed when my father was a boy. He has, indeed, seen terrible things!"

Balgonie did not see much of the Count, who was generally occupied among his people, to whom he was alternately a source of reverence and of terror.

Though infinitely more civilised than the old Russian noble as described by Clarke, "unwashed, unshaven, eating raw turnip and drinking quass" (for according to the Doctor, in 1799, "raw turnips were handed about in slices in the first houses, on a silver salver, with brandy as a whet before dinner"), he was a fair average specimen of a fine old Muscovite gentleman "all of the olden time," who had a cat-o'-nine-tails always at hand; who generally unbuttoned his vest when the gold cup was brought, in which he drank his pink champagne or rare Hungarian wine, which he always had in equal plenty with his fiery vodka and bitter quass; who reckoned his silver roubles by sacksful, and his Sclavonian souls by thousands; and who, though by no means a bad fellow, as his imperious and outrageous class go in Russia, had still the somewhat czarish notion, that true nobility "means the privilege of being treated like a human being of intelligence and feeling, and of treating others as if they were nothing of the kind."

Scandal said that in his wild youth he had flogged his serfs to fight with his favourite bear, and flogged them again if they maltreated or bit Bruin too much: Balgonie certainly saw two or three old serfs who had lost an ear in these combats. And when the Count took his afternoon nap, if a cock crowed in the village, a dog barked, or a cat mewed, the whole community were wont to tremble, when the stout dvornick, or house-porter, was seen to issue forth with his cat-o'-nine-tails in search of the proprietor.

A rich sash usually girt the waist of his old-fashioned tunic, which was of fine cloth, and trimmed with fur, broad or narrow according to the season; a square cap of crimson velvet, tasselled with gold and edged with ermine as white as his beard, was placed diagonally on his head, when he went abroad; and then he carried a long gold-headed cane, with the exact weight of which most of the shoulders in the neighbourhood were perfectly familiar. On holy festivals the breast of his best velvet coat was always covered by orders of the empire; a dozen of servants usually hovered about him when he dined; and he always went to church and confession in a clumsy old coach drawn by six white horses, three abreast, in honour of the Holy Trinity.

He was proud of being one of the old hereditary nobles, who are distinguished from the personal nobility by their right to possess serfs, and to whose earthly tyranny there was no limit, save the tomb. All the wretched serf possessed, even his wife, was the property of his lord. Fear of secret murder alone protected the latter species of property; hence no wonder is it that the land is without a middle class. Even in the present century, Heber, in his Journal, mentions an instance of a Russian noble who, in his profane cruelty and lust of power, nailed a servant on a cross, for which he was only imprisoned in a monastery.

But in the character of Count Mierowitz, there was something of the rough and hardy country gentleman. He it was who caught with his own hands, and in his own forests by the Louga, the famous team of brown bears which, in the marriage procession of the late Empress Elizabeth's jester, drew that jocular personage and his bride, when the newly-wedded couple proceeded to the wonderful palace of ice (which was built on the frozen Neva), all the ornaments of which were icicles, and the appurtenances of which were also ice, even to the cannon which were fired, and did not burst.

"When Peter the Great came to the throne," said he, one day, "he found only two lawyers in all Russia; so, Captain Balgonie, he hung one as an example to the other. Ah, he was a truly great man, Peter! The English admire him solely because he tried to imitate them; but, for that very reason, we don't approve of many of his innovations. We look from the north and south sides of the same hedge."

It is not surprising that Charlie Balgonie preferred the society of two beautiful young girls to that of a testy old boyar. To enhance their natural attractions and winning manners, they were always dressed in the most fashionable French mode, and wore the rich stuffs which came from Moscow, and even from China.

They and he had many topics in common, on which they could converse, after old Count Mierowitz had dined and dozed off to sleep—such as the theatre erected some years before at Yaroslaff, by Volkoff, whose troupe were now performing the tragedies of Soumorokoff at St. Petersburg, where a government theatre had just been erected by a ukase; while another ennobled the manager, Volkoff, who had died last year, after appearing at Moscow in Zelmira. Their knowledge of French and German opened up the best literature of Europe to the two cousins, which was fortunate; for at the period of our narrative, Russia had almost none, save some barbarous national songs, fabulous ecclesiastical records, and ferocious traditions: nor is she now much advanced in letters, though certainly, two months after publication, Charles Dickens may be read at Tobolsk—that terrible Tobolsk—where, as we have all read in our youth, Elizabeth wept such grateful tears on the bosom of her Smoloff.

Exiled from court, and secluded amid these forests by the Louga, a Russian lady had few resources for amusement then; so the unexpected visit of Captain Balgonie, with whose name and courage they were quite familiar, proved a most welcome and fortunate circumstance to those two handsome girls, who were merely enduring life, or simply vegetating, in the great old mansion of Count Mierowitz.

But there was one topic in which our soldier of fortune could by no means agree with Natalie Mierowna—her bitter and most unwise hostility to the strongly-established power of the Empress, or, as she styled her, "the woman who now occupied the throne of Ivan;" a prince whom she viewed exactly as the Scottish Jacobites did "the Young Chevalier," and a few old Frenchmen do at the present hour, "Henry V.," the descendant of St. Louis. These sentiments, however, she had to utter in secret, or when none were by them; and when he gazed into her dark and beautiful eyes, so full of romantic enthusiasm and of dangerous light, he felt thankful that one so peerless and so perilous was not, at all events, his enemy.

She had accompanied the Empress on her celebrated pilgrimage to the ancient cathedral of Rostov, by the Lake of Nero, where the last of the Princes of Jaroslav was murdered in cold blood by Ivan the Terrible. Her expedition had taken place in the May of the preceding year. Catharine and her ladies walked ten versts afoot daily, and it was at the conclusion of this devotional journey that the final quarrel had taken place concerning the mazurka with the Aide-de-camp Vlasfief.

"That insult shall never be forgotten here!" said she, stamping a little foot, in a prettily-embroidered scarlet shoe, on the carpet of the drawing-room where, fortunately for herself, she was alone with Balgonie: "an insult to me—to us, who have the blood of Ruric the Varangian in our veins; and from her—this woman of Anhalt-Zerbst!"

Balgonie laughed; for the Ruric blood is to Russians what Captain John Smith's is to the Virginians, and the Norman element to the English.

"Yes," she continued, "'tis something novel, an insult to us, from this Catharine, misnamed the Great, who has enslaved all the Ukraine, and given men and women away by thousands, like herds of cattle, to her courtiers and her lovers!"

"Oh, be wary; I pray you, be wary, or speak in French!" said Balgonie imploringly, while laying his hand impressively—rather too impressively, we fear—upon hers, which was so delicately smooth and white, and was placed very temptingly within his reach, as they sat near each other for the purpose of conversing in low and confidential tones.

"The people are mere slaves under her rule," continued Natalie, lowering her voice but without withdrawing that coveted hand; perhaps she forgot it in her energy; but the omission made poor Charlie Balgonie's honest heart beat very fast indeed, and his colour came and went painfully while her dark and glorious eyes were bent on his: "in her I behold only a usurper, who wields a knout in lieu of a sceptre, and who seats herself on a throne of human skulls; but the time is coming when all these things shall be altered!"

"And this time, Natalie Microwna—what do you mean?" asked Balgonie, who had been long enough in Russia to feel a thrill of terror at words so wild and dangerous.

"When it comes you will learn; if the blow fails, woe unto those on whom it recoils! You may escape as a stranger; but I fear me, she will punish the whole Regiment of Smolensko—"

"My regiment—mine, say you?"

"Yes, yours, Hospodeen, even as Peter the Great did the Battalion of Strelitz, for adherence to his sister Sophia; and that we know to be one of the most sanguinary sacrifices on record, even in Russia."

"Heaven knows that is admitting a great deal; but you say either too much or too little to satisfy my curiosity: explain this coming peril—this mystery—to which you refer."

In her growing energy, Natalie's other hand was now clasped above his, and truly "the situation had its charm."

"Let us speak of it no more," said she, recollecting herself, and with a strange smile; "ere long you shall know all; but not now—not now. Alas! the best I can wish you, Ivanovitch Balgonie, is, that your chance visit here may not also compromise you with Catharine."

They pressed each other's hands: it was done, perhaps, merely in the energy of conversation; but, to be brief, Balgonie found himself now hopelessly and helplessly in love with Natalie Mierowna.

Though both cousins were remarkable for their beauty—one blonde, the other dark—he had never for a moment wavered between them; for he had been, from the first moment he beheld her, irresistibly attracted by the brilliant and black-eyed Natalie. Besides, he knew well that Mariolizza was betrothed, or, as the Russians might justly phrase it, assigned away, to his friend and brother-officer, Basil Mierowitz.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN LOVE.

It was scarcely possible that the result of his visit could be otherwise than it had proved; for Natalie was no common-place beauty, but one who had subdued the hearts of many more men than Charlie Balgonie—men, who now at Moscow and St. Petersburg were counting the days of her exile from the Court of Catharine: and when Charlie thought of her in after years, the calm repose of his days of convalescence, the aspect and furniture of his chamber in the old Castle of Louga, the genial glow of the peitchka, the double window sashes with their bright false flowers between, the Byzantine picture of the Holy Virgin with its shining metal halo, and the varnished panels of the walls, were all associated, as in a pleasant dream, with the dark and beautiful eyes, the round taper arms, the white and delicate hands on which so many diamonds glittered, the jetty hair that was twisted in massive braids (yet fell in ringlets too) round the superb head,—the graceful, floating, and statuesque figure of Natalie Mierowna, always so richly, even coquettishly attired. Natalie, so soft, so tender, and so true, in all the relations of life and the amenities of society; and yet who could be so keen in her hate, so fiery in her political rancour, when thinking of her own injuries, and the terrible wrongs of the captive Ivan, whose adherent she had become.

Charlie Balgonie blessed the exile and choice of circumstances, all so sudden and unforeseen, which had cast him in her path. He loved her with all the passionate adoration so beautiful and winning a woman could inspire in a young and ardent heart; nor was it long before Natalie became aware of this, and was affected by the same emotion. There was one glance given, by which "each read and understood each other's soul." Lovers soon find means to comprehend each other, and Mariolizza, who speedily guessed their secret, which she certainly thought a dangerous one, found many excuses to leave them often together.

The long, long dream of his youth and early manhood,—the waking dream of many a lonely hour of reverie in the summer woods, by the seashore, or in the still hours of military duty, in camp and bivouac—a fair face that would smile on him,—a girl to love, and worship, and trust,—one who would trust and love him in return, was embodied at last; and in Natalie he saw this hitherto imaginary sphinx of whom he had been thinking, and for whom he had been waiting so long.

Her voice, her smile, her presence, seemed to fill the air he breathed with a new charm, that made every nerve thrill, investing the most simple and common wants of every-day life with sudden delights and joys; in short, and in common phraseology, the poor young man was "over head and ears in love."

The declaration of his passion, and Natalie's acceptance of it, came about just as others have done; and for three days after,—without looking the future confidently or inquiringly in the face,—Balgonie abandoned himself to the delight of his new and successful passion, and forgot all about the troublesome Empress, her pressing dispatch, and the terrors of Lieutenant-General Weymarn.

How could he think of such, when seated in the half-curtained alcove which opened off the drawing-room, on those calm April evenings; when the soft breeze that floated over the vast forests came laden with the odour of the spruce and fir boughs? Seated, with Natalie—in all the glory of her youth, her beauty, and the flush of her first love—by his side, often deftly and with rapid fingers weaving up the coils of her heavy black hair (which would come down, somehow, on these occasions); as she did so, displaying to greater advantage than ever the magnificent contour of her bust, her white shoulders, and taper arms, and adding even to the coquettish side glance of the half-veiled eye, the most splendid of all her natural ornaments were those great, heavy loose braids on which the sunlight shone.

What was to be the future of all this?

On the strong friendship of Basil Mierowitz he could fully rely; but then Natalie was on bad terms with the vindictive Empress, and he, Balgonie, was a soldier, and, according to the rules of the Russian service, could not marry without permission from his colonel, who, at present, would not dare to accord it, circumstanced as the bride would be.

Marry? What would the proud old Russian boyar say, or do, or think, when he heard that the penniless Scot—the mere adventurer—the soldier of fortune, was the accepted lover of his daughter, and that he had dared to lift his eyes to her otherwise than in the way of solemn and awful respect?

If his High Excellency could have but peeped into the aforesaid alcove on some of the occasions referred to! The mere fact of being a Scot would not have conveyed much to the mind of the Count. If to any unlettered Englishman of the present day, the names of Moldavia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Servia, Pomerania, Grodno, Mingrelia, and so forth, give but a vague idea of their whereabouts or history, it was perhaps worse in the Count's instance; for so far as he, worthy man, was concerned, or for all he knew to the contrary, the Land of Cakes might have been in the flying island of Laputa.

"He would be furious, no doubt," thought Balgonie; "but he might soothe his troubled mind by flogging a few serfs, shooting a few brown bears, and draining sundry horns of quass."

Charlie had been present at more than one Russian marriage and betrothal, and the coolness of the ceremony had excited his astonishment and repugnance; for, in that country, those life-enduring arrangements are concluded by a mere match-maker, who makes the proposal, not to the girl, but to her father. He remembered particularly the case of Lieutenant Tschekin's espousal with the daughter of General Weymarn, who, having stated her dower to the go-between,—a thousand peasants or so,—the gallant subaltern was satisfied, and thus, as usual, the whole affair was settled without the taste or inclination of the young lady being consulted or considered. In Russia, the papa consents, and, according to some old custom, mamma pretends to object and weep.

"My daughter," said the General, "I have given you away in presence of my aide-de-camp."

"To one I know, father?" she asked.

"No."

"To whom, then?" she continued, perfectly undisturbed.

"One you shall soon know—here he comes; and this is thy bridegroom, daughter: art satisfied?"

The young lady, of course, declared she was satisfied. She and the Lieutenant placed their hands behind them, stretched out their necks, pouting their lips for a very frigid kiss, and the matter was soon concluded by a priest.

When Balgonie thought of the delicacy and gentleness of Natalie, and remembered the marriage of the Lieutenant Tschekin, he shrunk alike from the idea of seeing her subjected to the mummery of a Greek espousal and the vulgar horrors of a wedding feast and drinking bout à la Russe.

At last he began to wake from his dream, to find the stern necessity of departing; and, indeed, the snub-nosed Podatchkine, who was always hovering about, seemed as a perpetual reminder of the duty he was neglecting. The lovers were solemnly betrothed in secret,—Mariolizza was their only confidant,—and at present they could but arrange to wait until they could mutually confide in Basil Mierowitz, whom Natalie, ere long, expected to see. To write to each other, save by special messenger, was deemed at present unwise; but Balgonie would visit her as he returned again to Novgorod.

So the last evening they were to spend together came; and they were seated, wreathed in each other's arms, with Natalie's cheek resting on Balgonie's shoulder, in an embowered rustic seat, not far from the very place where he had so boldly crossed the swollen river on that eventful night.

Charlie's heart was full of sadness and bewilderment; he could but mutter and whisper of his love and their hopes, and again and again kiss Natalie on the cheek, on the lips and snowy neck, her hands and arms, while her tears flowed fast; for she had all the cooing tenderness of a ringdove now, and could only murmur from time to time:—

"Oh, Carl, Carl—my own Carl!" and so forth; and, like other young ladies similarly circumstanced on the eve of separation, believed herself to be the most miserable being in the world. But amid all this, she suddenly started and grew pale, on seeing a figure approach.

"See, Carl, see!" she exclaimed: "that horrible woman must be ominous of evil at such a time. Why has she been permitted to approach?"

Balgonie saw, at a little distance, only a Russian gipsy girl, possessed evidently of considerable personal attractions. She stood timidly, and irresolute whether to advance or retire; and bowed her head with great humility, while crossing her fine but dusky hands and arms upon her breast. In old age the Russian female gipsies are as remarkable for their extreme hideousness, as in youth they are famous for personal beauty; so this young girl was full of picturesque loveliness, and instead of being clothed in rags, as the wanderers of her race are elsewhere, her costume was brilliant in colours and rich in material. She had large glittering ear-rings; a gaudy kerchief bound her black tresses; and her rounded cheeks being freely rouged, added to the wonderful lustre of her dark and dusky eyes, and to the generally theatrical character of her singular beauty and bearing.

"Oh!" resumed Natalie, with something of a shudder, "'tis Olga Paulowna: don't let her speak to us in our parting hour, Carl, lest we be compelled to hear her sing, and that may perhaps bode evil. The dvornick, I understand, has thrice by dog and whip driven away this gipsy girl, who has come to the house again and again, ostensibly to seek alms, but doubtless only to steal or work mischief by her cunning; for though our Russian gipsies are not allowed to pitch their tents on any land without the express consent of the owner, this girl's brother, Nicholas Paulovitch (as he calls himself), a half-blood, has permanently settled on our estate, somewhere in the forests, though he is despised and loathed by the peasantry, whom, doubtless, he loathes and hates most cordially in turn. I do wish she would go away without being ordered to do so."

Little did Natalie know that those ill-requited visits of the poor gipsy girl had direct reference to the life and safety of him whose hand clasped hers so tenderly and confidingly.

"Faugh!" said Natalie, with increasing annoyance; "she is about to sing,—something naughty no doubt,—but her voice will soon summon the dvornick."

Many of those female wanderers in Russia can sing divinely; and it is on record that even the great Catalani was so enchanted by the melodious voice of a gipsy girl at Moscow, that she took from her own shoulders a superb shawl, which had been given to her by the Empress, and placed it on those of the nomadic singer, "as a tribute from art to nature."

And Olga now began to sing with great sweetness one of those Russian songs, by which the gipsies, to flatter the people, sought to foretell the downfall of the Crescent; and many such prophetic strains were current even during the war in the Crimea, as foreshadowing the fate of the "sick man" at Constantinople.

"Years after years shall roll,
    Ages o'er ages glide.
Before the world's control
    Shall check the Crescent's pride.
Banished from place to place,
    Where'er the ocean's roar,
The mighty gipsy race,
    Shall visit every shore.

"But when the hundredth year
    Shall three times doubled be,
Then shall the end appear
    Of all their slavery.
Then shall the warlike powers
    From distant climes return,
Egypt again be ours,
    While the Turkish domes shall burn!

"Again the Christian's cross
    Shall over Stamboul wave,
And ruin, weeds, and moss,
    Mark the last Sooltan's grave!
Again shall Christian bells
    Ring where the Muezzins cry,
When across the Dardanelles
    The Moslem hordes shall fly!

"So Egypt shall be freed,
    Her tribes return once more,
Their flocks and herds to feed
    Where their fathers dwelt of yore:
When all our warlike powers
    From distant climes return,
Then Egypt shall be ours,
    While the Turkish turrets burn!"

The last line ended in a shriek, with which a cry from Natalie mingled; for the cruel dvornick had been stealing through the thicket unperceived, and now bestowed a heavy lash across the tender shoulders of the cowering and shrinking girl; but ere he could repeat it, Balgonie sprang forward, arrested the descending whip, and then, placing in the hand of the singer a few Livonian groschen, bade her hasten away, on which she departed, with tears of pain and gratitude, after pressing his fingers to her lips; and, in her terror and confusion, leaving her task undone—her warning of coming treachery untold.

"Oh, Carl!" said Natalie, laying her head again on Balgonie's breast, "dearest Carl, I am so glad she has gone without anathematizing us—or, or weaving some mischievous spell; for, smile as you may, I can't help fearing those people! I am a true Russian, and dread the evil eye!"

Richer by a lock of dark and silky hair and a diamond ring (both the objects of many a secret kiss), but leaving his heart behind him, in one swift hour after this little episode, Balgonie had departed to meet, and, for greater security, to travel in consort with, a caravan of a hundred and fifty boors, who were conveying sugar from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

He was guided again by the sly Podatchkine, who had resolved to take especial good care that the said caravan should be avoided.

"God be with you, Hospodeen—God be with you—adieu," said the old Count, lifting his square velvet cap courteously, as he bade farewell to his guest at the porte-cochère.

Balgonie so respectfully kissed the hands of Natalie and Mariolizza, that none could have detected a difference in his manner to either; and certainly none could have suspected that the tears of the former were yet wet upon his cheek—her kisses lingering on his lip, that he seemed to leave his soul upon her hand, and that the wrung hearts of both were swollen with concealed emotion.

"Uich!" thought Corporal Michail Podatchkine as he rode after the officer into the deep forest, "I'd as soon think of kissing the foot as the hand; who knows among what carrion either may have been stuck? By St. Nicholas, I would rather eat a sheep's tail or a rump steak from an old troop mare than kiss either."

Some hours after Balgonie's departure, and when Natalie in the solitude of her own room was abandoned to tears and unavailing regrets, a trusted messenger from her brother arrived with a brief note, written so enigmatically that none save herself could have understood or deciphered it; but the spirit of it was briefly this:—

"All is arranged for freeing the prisoner of S. (chlusselburg) by a stratagem. A dispatch that may counteract, if not baffle our plans, and fatally compromise us all, has been sent by old Weymarn to St. Petersburg. I know not who the bearer is; but be assured of this, he will never reach it alive. We have set Podatchkine on his track, and he, worthy Livonian, for two hundred roubles, would skin his own father alive."

After reading this pleasant epistle, little wonder is it that Natalie was found by Mariolizza, as the twilight deepened, half senseless upon her bed, cold, in tears, and utterly miserable.

CHAPTER IX.

DELUDED.

A lover has occasionally been likened to a fool, as being a man possessed by one idea, his mistress. This was certainly somewhat of poor Charlie Balgonie's state of mind. He saw only the dark eyes, the half drooped lids, and the farewell glance of Natalie; so full of hidden and tender meaning; and while thinking of her and of her last words and promises, their mutual hopes of the future, based almost entirely on Basil, he fell an easy prey to the plans and schemes of the wily Corporal Podatchkine, who saw only his anticipated two hundred silver roubles; and who, knowing the country as well as if it had been every acre, rood, and verst his own property, led him on and on he knew not where; but, at all events, two hours after they should have met the caravan, they found themselves, to all appearance, lost in a dense forest of dark pine trees.

Failing the caravan, having now proceeded, as he believed, some twenty miles or so, Balgonie had thoughts of passing the night at the house of a friend of Count Mierowitz, a duornin, of whom he had been told by Mariolizza, who laughingly assured him, that this personage was "a fine Russian gentleman of the old school, who beat his wife regularly every Thursday and Saturday with a whip of thongs," and was seldom sober.

Those duornins were country gentlemen, who held their lands by knights' service, and were bound to attend the Czar on horseback in time of war. Formerly it was sufficient to send a man well armed and mounted; but Peter the Great first compelled them or their sons to serve in person, if they could not pay for a substitute.

In short, though he knew it not, Balgonie had been for the last two hours riding merely in a wide circle, and, by the careful guidance of Podatchkine, was now not many miles from the hut of the gipsy woodman, Nicholas Paulovitch; and, consequently, he was much nearer the Castle of Louga than he had the least idea of.

On this night there was a glorious Aurora in the north, and full of his love, his own tender thoughts, and inspired by the beauty of the scene, it seemed to the somewhat provoked Podatchkine, that the dreaming Captain was quite disposed to pass the night where he was.

When the dense wood of stupendous pines opened into long vistas, the whole northern quarter of the sky could be seen, illuminated from the horizon to the zenith. Gloriously bright as the most brilliant phosphorus, masses of fire arose in the form of columns that waved, towered, and shot into the air, with streaks of fainter light between. Anon they all blended and merged into each other with renewed grandeur, aslant, or radiating from a centre, like the sticks of a mighty fan. All that portion of the heavens seemed a mass of shining gold, rubies, and sapphires, with a wondrous light streaming over them, broadening, brightening, and deepening, then fading away, to flash forth again in greater beauty and glory, while, as if to enhance the magnificence of this illumination, many falling stars shot across it, leaving in their train sparkles of light, more brilliant even than the glory that blazed beyond. In black outline between, and in the immediate foreground, towered the dark and solemn pines, in solitude and silence.

Not a sound was heard but the occasional snort of their horses, or the cry of a distant wolf.

Balgonie was surmising whether Natalie would be surveying the beautiful natural illumination from her window, or from the terrace: he forgot that it was nothing new to her. Certainly it proved of little interest to Michail Podatchkine, who, under his thick beard, growled at the officer for loitering.

The Scottish islesmen call the streamers of the Aurora "the merry dancers;" but the Siberians name them "the raging host:" and Balgonie was reflecting what a relief their brilliance must prove to the lonely hunters, who at that very time were pursuing the white bear and the blue fox, far beyond the Lena, and along the shores of the Icy Sea, when his attendant disturbed his reverie.

"Well, Michail," said he, in reply to some remark in which the Corporal, who saw nothing wonderful in the matter, urged that they should proceed, "we have missed the sugar caravan, and cannot discover the residence of the duornin I spoke of, so I am rather provoked with you."

"Oh, Excellency, who can withstand God or the Great Novgorod?" whined the fellow, using an old Russian proverb.

Jean Paul Richter says, "the more weakness, the more lying; force goes straight, but any cannon-ball with cavities in it goes crooked." Some such thought as this occurred to Balgonie, as he checked his horse, and half turning round, with a stern expression in his face, which the light in the north made sufficiently plain, he said:—

"Rascal! I fear you are deceiving me again!"

Hustled up on his saddle, rather than in it, with his knees on his holsters and his lance slung behind him, Podatchkine made many signs of the cross, and called on St. Sergius and all the other moshtschi, or saints of Russia, to bear witness that he was as innocent as a young bear of any such foul idea; but only begged that his Excellency would proceed, and assured him that the track they were on must assuredly bring them, ere long, to some woodman's dwelling.

At this time, such is the slavish influence of superstition, that Podatchkine, for mere fellowship, kept close to the very man against whom he had formed the most fiendish schemes; for stories of the Wood Fairies,—of the Leechie, or Forest-demon, whose fangs tore the benighted asunder,—of the Domovoi, or mischievous Russian Brownie,—of the Vodianoi, or smiling River-spirit, who lured travellers to a watery doom,—of wolves and bears in ravening herds, came fast upon his memory; for the forest was growing denser, and the darkness deepened painfully after the Aurora faded away, and a few solitary stars alone glinted through the openings between the broad, flat, pendant branches of the intertwisted pines.

The silence of the night was now broken only by the whistling croak of the valdchnep, or great woodcock, as he darted from amid the black gloom of a pine tree, or the lighter shadow of the graceful, but, as yet, leafless birch; and the craven and clamorous anxiety that had been giving real pangs, and even qualms of conscience, to the superstitious Podatchkine began to subside, when the wood opened a little, a red light appeared, and they approached the cottage of Nicholas Paulovitch, the half-bred.

It was, as already stated, built of logs, squared by the hatchet outside and inside, and whitened by chalk: before it yawned a deep draw-well, with a bucket, handle, and winch.

"'Tis the cottage of a man I know. Here, Excellency, we can pass the night," said Podatchkine, leaping from his horse and dutifully taking Balgonie's bridle, as if to anticipate any proposition of proceeding further. "There is a shed behind where I shall stable our horses: Nicholas, I know, will make us welcome to his lodge."

In a few minutes more, Balgonie found himself seated in the cottage, the aspect of which struck him as being peculiarly comfortless, dingy, and squalid, as he viewed it by the light of a loutchin, or species of pine torch, which stood in a rusty iron holder on the rough deal table, whereon lay a pack of frayed and dog-eared cards.

On the walls were some rude images, stuck over with crumbs of black bread, which attracted the flies in summer and the dirt at all times. In a place of honour was a holy effigy, with some train oil flaring before it in a tin sconce, as a species of votive lamp; for the proprietor affected religion quite as much as Mr. Gamaliel Balgonie did in a more civilised part of the world.

The furniture consisted of a few plain stools, and some very dirty bearskins spread on the floor in the corners, as beds; and on the table was a pitcher of foaming and seething quass, with wooden bowls to drink it by.

Balgonie took in all these details at a glance.

How great would have been his surprise, if he had known that after riding so many miles, he was only a short distance from her, from Natalie, who was now weeping bitterly and sleeplessly on the bosom of her cousin for him, and for the fate she dreaded, and yet had not the power to avert, or from which to save him.

In addition to Podatchkine and the host, Nicholas Paulovitch, who stood respectfully at a little distance from Balgonie, and was appraising the exact value of his costume, arms, and ornaments, even to Natalie's diamond ring, there was present another ill-visaged fellow, with a powerful figure, square shoulders, and giant beard, like every Russian of the lower order; eyes that were small and piercing, like those of a mouse; a long, fierce nose and jagged teeth, hair shorn off close above the eyebrows and brushed all down straight from the crown of his head, which in form resembled a cone or a pine-apple.

This barbarian, who was dressed chiefly in a shoubah of sheepskin, and had a small, but sharp, hatchet and dagger in his girdle, was a Stepniak, from a district where nothing like a town was ever seen or known, but whose aid and strength Paulovitch thought might be useful and necessary in the work he and Podatchkine had cut out for themselves in the night.

CHAPTER X.

THE CORPORAL IN HIS OWN TRAP.

Balgonie was rather weary after his long and desultory ride by rough and unfrequented roads, chiefly devious forest paths; he felt thirsty, and looked at the pitcher of quass.

"Will his Excellency drink?" asked Nicholas Paulovitch, in his hoarse and husky voice.

Now as quass is simply a species of sour beer, made of rye and oatmeal, coloured by a red berry, and is generally the beverage by which the Russians wash down their coarse bread and salt, Balgonie declined: the Stepniak proposed to add thereto a dash of train oil; but the suggestion made the young officer shudder.

"I have fortunately one bottle of Rhine wine," said the woodman, with a rapid and furtive glance at his comrades; "his Excellency will doubtless honour us by taking it with his supper, at least with such fare as the forest produces, a stewed rabbit or so."

"I thank you, good fellow. Where is this cottage situated?"

"Situated," repeated Nicholas, with a quick and uneasy glance at the Corporal, fearing there might be some discrepancy in their information.

"Yes, in what part of the country?" said Podatchkine; "for we naturally wish to know."

"Near Velie."

"Then I am somewhere about forty versts from the Louga?"

"Yes, Excellency, precisely," replied the rascal.

"Hence, if my horse is fresh, I may reach Schlusselburg to-morrow?"

"Scarcely, as it lies fully a hundred versts beyond Velie," said Nicholas.

"Is the distance so great?" exclaimed Balgonie, little knowing that it was even more, and all unsuspicious of how these wretches were deluding him.*

* The cottage of those assassins is said to have been situated ten versts, or about eight miles distant from Louga on the road to Velie. Vide dispatch from General Weymarn to the Empress, dated 8th August, "concerning Carl Ivanovitoh Balgonie, a Scottish Captain in the Regiment of Smolensko."—Utrecht Gazette.

"But, Excellency, we may prove more able guides than Michail Podatchkine," said the gipsy woodman; "for we—that is the Stepniak and I—must proceed to St. Petersburg to-morrow, on a little piece of business we shall have to perform together."

"Poor devils!" thought Podatchkine, "if you take his body to St. Petersburg, you will both be accused of murder and knouted, as sure as my name is Michail; so I shall save my fifty silver roubles."

Even at the present day in Russia, few will venture to receive or meddle with a dead body, or attempt to succour a dying or a drowning person, in dread of the dangerous accusations and extortions of the police.

A sound, as of footsteps, and of something like a drinking vessel falling on the floor of an upper apartment, made the woodman start up with an oath of astonishment and alarm. He hurriedly applied a ladder to the trap which gave admission to this place, and ascended into it; but returned almost immediately to say, "there was no one there." The evident surprise and alarm of the three men at this trivial occurrence, is said to have been the first cause of exciting Balgonie's suspicion.

He glanced at the Stepniak, who sat silently observant in a corner, drinking his quass, with his feet resting against the rude peitchka, or stone stove, which was built into the log wall of the cottage, and when surveying his vast bulk and colossal stature, together with his singularly ferocious aspect, the reflection occurred to him, that he should have placed his pistols in his girdle instead of leaving them in the holsters of the saddle.

He was the reverse of timid; he was "brave even to rashness, and had faced death many times" (to quote General Weymarn) since his career of wandering began; but the idea certainly did flash upon his mind, that his situation in that lonely forest had its perils, and that two men more repulsive in aspect and in bearing than the gipsy and Stepniak, he had never seen, even in Russia.

Was it some mysterious and intuitive sense of danger drawing near that made such thoughts pass through the steady mind of Balgonie?

He and Podatchkine were both armed, and even were these men outlaws, they would scarcely, he believed, dare to assault an officer on military duty; besides, the very name of Schlusselburg, whither he was proceeding, carried a wholesome terror with it; so dismissing his casual suspicions, Charlie unbuckled his sword, and seated himself at the table, on which a cold supper of stewed rabbits and coarse rye bread was laid for the four who were present.

A platter was placed for a fifth person whom Nicholas remarked to Podatchkine in a growling tone was still abroad in the forest, or had not returned from some place which was named in a whisper.

With an affectation of extreme respect and courtesy, none of the three worthies would seat themselves at the table, until Balgonie specially invited and urged them in succession to do so.

The bottle of Rhine wine was produced from the apartment above and opened. The length of the cork and the dust on the bottle (wherever it came from originally) argued well of the contents, and two horns, one of which, had a handsome silver rim, were placed for the Captain and the Corporal.

The former was rather surprised to find such a drinking vessel as this silver mounted cup in a place so squalid, and he was about to lift and examine it, when Nicholas Paulovitch, with almost nervous haste, filled it, and also that of the Corporal, to the brim.

To the surprise of Balgonie, the latter exhibited some undisguised alarm on seeing wine placed before him; it was an attention under all the circumstances he neither wished nor expected; and so he declined to drink of it, saying that he was "a true Russ, and would adhere to the quass."

"Nay, fear not, friend Michail," said the woodman, "'tis the best of Rhine wine. The cup with the silver mounting is of course for his Excellency the Hospodeen," he added with a quiet but grim significance, which the wily Cossack quite understood, so he drained the wine horn without further objection.

Soon after having supped, and imbibed his full share of the wine bottle, Balgonie expressed a desire for repose, as he wished to depart by daybreak; but he had other reasons for retiring so early. He did not much relish the society of the gipsy, the Stepniak, and the Corporal of Cossacks; and he wished to indulge in reverie, to commune with himself, and let the current of his thoughts run undisturbed on Natalie and their adieus.

"This way, Excellency," said Nicholas, with alacrity, lifting the pine torch in its iron loutchin, and ushering him up the stair, a mere common ladder, and through the trap-door into the little apartment above, where his couch, composed merely of skins of the bear and sheep awaited him, and where he could see the dark forest and the occasional stars through a small window that gave light and air to the place, which was so limited in size, that it somewhat resembled a little cabin in a ship.

Left in this miserable den to his own reflections and to darkness—when Nicholas descended with the pine torch, carefully closed the trap-door and secured it on the lower side by a wooden bolt, moreover, softly removing the ladder—Charlie Balgonie placed his sword conveniently at hand, and cast himself upon the pile of skins that were to form his bed, and thought he had often fared worse in the bivouacs of Silesia and Bavaria.

"So—he is safe," said Nicholas Paulovitch, looking upward with a grin of savage satisfaction at the closed trap, as he replaced the loutchin on the table, and then closely scrutinised the Corporal, whose eyes had already become red and inflamed.

"Hush!" said Podatchkine, "take care."

"Why?" asked Nicholas, in a hoarse whisper.

"Because all may not be yet as you wish it, and in Russia sometimes the tongue flays the shoulders and cuts off the head."

"True," said the hitherto taciturn Stepniak, who was carefully feeling the keen edge of his hatchet; "as the Tartars have it, 'when you have spoken the word, it rules over you; while it is yet unspoken, you rule over it.' But it seems to me, Michail Podatchkine, that you have taken a great deal of trouble, and wasted much time in the matter of this dispatch. As you passed through the forest together, why the devil did you not give him a good tzchick"—(which we can only render "prod")—"in the back with your lance?"

"Because, if a wound is found on him, folks might say he had been murdered; and he must bear not a scar."

"And neither shall you, friend Podatchkine," said Paulovitch with a cruel grin.

"Come—don't make unpleasant jests," growled the Corporal, with a yawn and a shudder; "wounds have not been fashionable since Orloff and Bernikoff supped with Peter III."

"You grow wary as you grow older, Corporal."

"I have no desire to travel with the next caravan to Siberia, with one side of my head and face shaved, and an iron rosary, some five pound weight, at my wrists."

"Fear not—you will never see Siberia."

"Then you have made all sure about this Ivanovitch Balgonie?" said Podatchkine, whose utterance was becoming somewhat inarticulate.

"Ay, sure enough; the cups were——"

"The cups!"

"The cup, I mean, was drugged with those black berries which grow in the forest hereabout; the same stuff used by fine ladies to whiten their hands."

"But why the cup and not the wine?"

"For this reason: I might have been constrained to drink with him; and I had no desire to fall, like some one else, into a trap of my own baiting."

Podatchkine, on whom the powerful soporific with which his cup had been drugged—the sleepy nightshade—had been rapidly taking effect, and whose small cunning eyes had been opening and shutting alternately, while a numbness stole with a weariness over all his faculties, seemed suddenly to grasp at the terrible meaning of the speaker. He gave a start—he essayed to rouse himself and shout, but in doing so, toppled off his stool, and sank on the clay floor in a profound slumber.

"At last!" said the half-breed, administering a kick to the prostrate figure; "at last he has gone to sleep; now to make sure that he shall never waken more. Ah! the Asiatic! he was just getting suspicious at the end."

"There are two kopecs in his pocket," said the Stepniak, after investigating the garments of the snorting Podatchkine, who was now breathing heavily through his red snub nose, which between his scrubby beard and his shock of hair, was almost the only feature of his face that was visible.

"Leave the kopecs where you found them!" said Nicholas, with a gipsy oath.

"Wherefore?" asked the Stepniak with surprise.

"It will seem all the more honest in thee, my good Stepniak, when you take the body—bodies, I should say—to the nearest military post. You have but to say you found them dead in the forest."

"And the wet clothing?"

"Dew or rain—what a head you have!"

"True—true; ah! what a man you are, Nicholas Paulovitch, so full of bright thoughts! That idea would never have occurred to me."

"Nor the other either. Quick, now; we have not a moment to lose!"

They extinguished the pine torch, and tying the Corporal's hands securely with a cord, carried him forth to the draw-well before the cottage. Then they substituted that worthy warrior's heels for the bucket which was usually appended to the rope, and permitting the winch to revolve softly and gently, lowered him down, snorting and gasping in his unnatural slumber, head foremost, into the deep dark water below!

The Stepniak turned the iron handle of the winch or windlass, while the gipsy guided the rope with its heavy burden. He was deliberately lowered down until only his heels remained above water, as the two wretches could see by the starlight when stooping and peering into the darkness below.

The snorting had ceased now!

The dying Corporal was heard to struggle with his hands, as if he sought to free them from the cords; a few babbles filled with air rose to the surface and burst. This continued for a minute, during which all was silent elsewhere, save the half-suppressed breathing of the two assassins, and the dreary sound of the night wind, as it shook the dark branches of the giant pines that towered in solemn gloom around them.

Nicholas Paulovitch listened intently, and kept his eyes fixed on the cottage where their other victim lay, as he doubted not, sunk in what was intended to be his last sleep.

Anon, all became still—deathly still—in the depths of the dark well; the rope ceased to vibrate, and the bubbles came no more.

"Let us leave him here for a few minutes, and now for the Captain and his dispatch! By the time that we return, the Corporal will be as stiff as if he stood for sale in the frozen market on the fête of St. Nicholas!" said the gipsy, with one of his diabolical grins; while the Stepniak, with a smile of satisfaction that showed all his huge yellow teeth, smoothed down to his eyebrows the thick coarse black hair that grew from the apex of his conical caput.

They now re-entered the cottage, and again lighted the torch in its iron loutchin. All remained just as they had left it; the quass pitcher, the wooden bowls, the two cups, and the empty wine bottle were on the table, and the platters, with the débris of their rustic supper; but the superstitious gipsy felt a species of shudder come over him, for when the torch flared up in the night wind and cast strange shadows on the dingy and discoloured walls of the log-hut, it seemed to his diseased imagination, for a moment, as if the outline of the drowned Corporal still occupied the stool on which he had been seated.

"Come," said he huskily, "the dispatch!—and then for the other!"

They listened intently, and placed the ladder against the trap-door. All was still—not even the breathing of Balgonie was heard. Ascending first, with a knife in his teeth, in case of unexpected resistance, the gipsy knocked thrice on the trap without receiving any response. He then withdrew the wooden bolt, pushed it up, and introducing his head and shoulders, held aloft the pine torch, and turned towards the bed of skins.

It was unoccupied; and in a moment he saw that the bare and desolate chamber was without a tenant!

"Malediction!" he shouted; "he has escaped us—but how? Search—search! He cannot be far off, after the dose I have given him; search—and we must use our hatchets now!"