CHAPTER XII.
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.