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.