Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
capote, with a sword and revolver at his girdle. His beard had grown
prodigiously; but his hair--once so well cared for--was now very thin
indeed, and he did not appear altogether to have thriven in the new
service to which he had betaken himself. His aspect was undoubtedly
haggard. Suspected by his new friends (who urged him on duties for
which he had not the smallest taste), and in perpetual dread of
falling into the hands of the old, by whom he would be certainly
hanged or shot, his life could not be a pleasant one; so he had
evidently betaken himself to drink, as his face was blotched and his
eyes inflamed in an unusual degree.
He was very busy with a decanter of sparkling Crimskoi and other good
things which the dvornick had placed before him, and on looking up he
failed to recognise me, clad as I was in a suit of Volhonski's plain
clothes, which were "a world too wide" for me; and no doubt I was the
last person in the world whom he wished or expected to see in such a
place and under such circumstances--being neither guest nor prisoner,
and yet somewhat of both characters. He bowed politely, however, and
said something in Russian, of which he had picked up a few words, and
then smiled blandly.
"You smile, sir," said I, sternly; "but remember the adage, a man may
smile and smile, and be----"
"Stay, sir!" he exclaimed, starting up; "this is intolerable! Who the
devil are you, and what do you mean?"
"Simply that you are a villain, and of the deepest die!"
His hand went from the neck of the decanter towards his revolver; then
he reseated himself, and with his old peculiar laugh said, while
inserting his glass in his right eye,
"O, this beats cock-fighting! Hardinge of the Welsh Fusileers! Now,
where on earth did you come from?"
"Not from the ranks of the enemy, at all events," I replied.
His whole character--the wrongs he had tried to do me and had done to
many others; the artful trick he had played me at Walcot Park his
pitiless cruelty to Georgette Franklin; his base conduct to me when
helpless on the field of Inkermann; his guiding a sortie in the night;
his entire career of unvarying cunning and treachery--caused me to
regard the man with something of wonder, mingled with loathing and
contempt, but contempt without anger. He was beneath that.
"So you are a prisoner of war?" said he, after a brief pause, during
which he had drained a great goblet of the Crimskoi--a kind of
imitation champagne.
"What I am is nothing to you--my position, mind, and character are the
same."
"Perhaps so," he continued; "but I think that the most contemptible
mule on earth is a fellow in whom no experience or time can effect a
change of mind, or cure of those narrow opinions in which he is first
brought up, as the phrase is, in that little island of ours."
"So you have quite adopted the Russian idea of Britain?" said I, with
a scornful smile.
"Yes; and hope to have more scope for my talents on the Continent than
I ever had there. I should not have left the army of my good friend
Raglan----"
"Who presented you with that ring, eh?"
"Had there not been the prospect of a row about a rooking one night in
camp, and a bill which some meddling fellow called a forgery. Bah! a
bad bill may be a very useful thing at times; it is like a gun
warranted to burst; but, as Lever says, you must always have it in the
right man's hands, when it comes for explosion. If you are a prisoner,
I am afraid that your chances of early seeing our dear mutual friends
in Taffyland--by the way, how _is_ old Sir Taffy?--are very slender,
if once you are sent towards the Ukraine," he went on mockingly, as he
lit a papirosse. "And so the fair Estelle threw you over, eh? Good
joke that! Preferred old Potter's company to yours, for the term of
his natural life? What a deuced sell! But what a touching picture of
love they must present--quite equal to Paul and Virginia, to Pyramus
and Thisbe!"
At that moment, and while indulging in a loud and mocking laugh, his
countenance suddenly changed; he grew very pale, the glass fell from
his pea-green eye, and the lighted papirosse from his lips; all his
natural assurance and insouciance deserted him, and he looked as
startled and bewildered as if a cannon-shot had just grazed his nose.
I turned with surprise at this sudden change, and saw the face and
figure of Colonel Tolstoff, who had limped into the room and been
regarding us for half a minute unperceived. He stood behind me, grim
and stern as Ajax, and was gazing at Guilfoyle with eyes that, under
their bristling brows, glittered like those of a basilisk, and seemed
to fascinate him.
"We have not met since that night at Dunamunde!" exclaimed Tolstoff,
in a voice of concentrated fury; "but, I thank God and St. Sergius, we
have met at last--yes, at last! And so you know each other--_you
two?_" he added, in German, while bestowing a withering glance on me.
"Dunamunde!" said I, sternly, as the name of that place recalled
something of a strange story concerning Tolstoff told by Guilfoyle to
Lord Pottersleigh at Craigaderyn; "and you two would seem to have
known each other and been friends of old, that is, if you are the same
Count Tolstoff whom he saved from the machinations of a certain
Colonel Nicolaevitch, then commanding the Marine Infantry at Riga."
"What rubbish is this you speak?" demanded the other, with angry
surprise; "there never was a _Count_ Tolstoff; and I am the Pulkovnick
Nicolaevitch Tolstoff who commanded in Dunamunde, and was custodian of
eighty thousand silver roubles, all government money. This ruffian was
my friend--my chief friend then, though of the gaming table; but he
joined in a plot, with others like himself, among whom was the Head of
the Police, to rob me. He admitted them masked into my rooms, when
they shot me down with my own pistols, and left me, with a broken
thigh, bound hand and foot and cruelly gagged, while they escaped in
safety across the Prussian frontier and got to Berlin, where they
started a gaming-house. But he is here--here in my power at last; and
sweetly and surely, I shall have such vengeance as that power gives
me. Ha! look at him, the speechless coward; he has no bones in his
tongue now!" he added, using a favourite Russian taunt.
"All over--run to earth, by Jove!" muttered Guilfoyle, with trembling
lips, forgetting about the papers he had brought, his new character of
a Russian officer, and forgetting even to deny his identity; "I have
thrown the dice for the last time, and d--nation, they have turned up
aces!"
Ivan Yourivitch and other Cossack servants, who had heard the loud
voice of Tolstoff raised in undisguised anger, now appeared, and
received some orders from him in Russian. In a moment they threw
themselves upon Guilfoyle, disarmed, stripped him of his uniform, and
bound him with a silken cord torn from the window-curtains. At first I
was not without fears that they meant to strangle him with it, so
prompt and fierce was their manner; but they merely tied his hands
behind him, and thrust him into a closet, the door of which was
locked, and the key given to the Pulkovnick.
The latter, without deigning to take farther notice of me, turned on
his heel and limped away, muttering anathemas in Russian; and I felt
very thankful that he had not made me a close prisoner also, after the
humiliating fashion to which he had subjected the wretched Guilfoyle.
But he was not without secret and serious ulterior views regarding me.
All remained still now in the great mansion after this noisy and
sudden episode; and I heard no sound save once--the clatter of a
horse's hoofs, which seemed to leave the adjoining stable-yard and die
away, as I thought, in the direction of the Baidar Valley, where the
Cossacks lay encamped; and somehow my heart naturally connected these
circumstances and foreboded coming evil, as I sat alone in the recess
of a window overlooking the terrace, and the same moonlighted scenery
which Valerie had viewed from it so lately.
CHAPTER LI.--FLIGHT.
I was full of gloomy, perplexing, and irritating thoughts.
"If I am to drag on my life for years perhaps as a Russian prisoner,
better would it have been, O Lord, that a friendly shot had finished
my career for ever. What have I now to live for?" I exclaimed, in the
bitterness of my heart, as I struck my hands together.
"You speak thus--you so young?" said Valerie, reproachfully yet
softly, as she suddenly laid a hand on my shoulder, while her bright
eyes beamed into mine--eyes that could excite emotion by emitting it.
"Life seems so worthless."
"Why?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Can you ask me after what passed between us the other evening, and
more especially on yonder terrace, less than an hour ago?"
"But why is existence worthless?"
"Because I have lost you!"
(Had I not thought the same thing about Estelle, and deemed that "he
who has most of heart has most of sorrow"?)
"This is folly, dear friend," said she, looking down; "I never was
yours to lose."
"But you lured me to love you, Valerie; and now--now you would
cast--nay, you have cast--my poor heart back upon itself!"
"I lured you?" asked the gentle voice; "O unjust! How could I help
your loving me?"
"Perhaps not; nor could I help it myself."
"Tell me truly--has this--this misplaced passion for me lured you from
one who loves you well at home perhaps?"
"From no one," said I, bitterly.
"Thank Heaven for that; and we shall part as friends any way."
"As friends only?"
"Yes."
"But you will ever be more to me, Valerie."
She shook her head and smiled.
A desire for vengeance on Tolstoff, for his insulting bearing on one
hand, with, the love and admiration I had of herself on the other, and
the pictured triumph of taking her away from him, and by her aid and
presence with me reaching our camp in safety, all prompted me to urge
an elopement; nor could I also forget the coquettish admission that
she "might" love me; but just as I was about to renew my suit and had
taken possession of her hands, she withdrew them, and while glancing
nervously about her, informed me that the Pulkovnick had sent a
mounted messenger to the Baidar Valley for Cossacks, to escort me and
Guilfoyle to Kharkoff in the Ukraine; and when I remembered his
threats of probable ulterior measures, I felt quite certain that his
report would include us _both_, and thus be framed in terms alike
dangerous and injurious to me.
"What is to be done, Valerie?" I asked, in greater perplexity.
"If I cannot love, I can still serve you," said she, smiling with a
brightness that was cruel; "it is but just, in gratitude for the
regard you have borne me."
"That I still bear you and ever shall, beloved Valerie!" said I, with
tremulous energy; "but to serve me--how?"
"You must leave this place instantly, for in less than an hour the
Cossacks will be here, and Tolstoff may have you killed on the march;
the escort may be but a snare."
"Then come--come with me--let us escape together!"
"Impossible--you do but waste time in speaking thus."
"Why--O why, Valerie, when you know that I love you?"
"Race, religion, ties, all forbid such a step, even were I inclined
for it, which fortunately I am not," she replied, lifting for a
moment, as if for coolness, the rippling masses of her golden hair
from her white temples, and letting them fall again; "you might and
_must_ spare me more of this! Have I not told you it is useless to
speak of love to me, and wrong in me to listen to you?"
"And since when have you been engaged to this" (bear, I was about to
say)--"to this man Tolstoff? And by what magic or devilry has he
taught you to love him?"
"In what can either concern you, at such a time as this especially,