CHAPTER LI.--FLIGHT.

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, when you have not a moment to lose?" she asked, almost with irritation. "But hush--O, hush! here is some one."

At that moment Ivan Yourivitch, with excitement on his usually stolid Russian visage, entered the room almost on tiptoe, and whispered something to her in haste, while his eyes were fixed the while on me.

"Ah!--thank you, Ivan, thank you--that is well!" she said, and turning to me, she added, hurriedly and energetically, "If you would be free, and choose, it may be, between liberty or death, you have not another instant to lose! Ivan tells me that the crew of an English man-of-war boat is at this moment filling casks with water at the well of St. Basil on the beach yonder. Thrice has that ship been there for the same purpose; and I was watching for her when you came to me on the terrace, as I heard of her being off Alupka this morning."

"Your thoughts, then, were of me?" said I, tenderly.

"For you, rather; but away, and God be with you, sir!"

I lifted the window softly, and across the moonlit park that stretched away towards the seashore she pointed to where four tall cypresses rose like dark giants against the clear and starry sky, and where, at the distance of a mile or little more, the white marble dome of the well could be distinctly seen between them, its polished surface shining like a star above a sombre belt of shrubbery.

"There is the sound of hoofs! The Cossacks, your escort, are coming Away, sir; you cannot miss the well, though you may the boat!" said Valerie, with her hands clasped and her dark eyes dilated; and as she spoke the clank of galloping horses coming up the valley (and, as I fancied, the cracking of the whips carried by the Cossacks at their bridles) could be heard distinctly in the clear frosty air.

"If I had but my sword and pistols!" said I, with my teeth clenched.

"You do not require them. Farewell!

"Adieu, Valerie--adieu!"

I passionately kissed her lips and her cheek, too, ere she could prevent me, waved my hand to old Yourivitch, vaulted over the window, dropped from the balustrade of the terrace into the park, and at the risk of being seen by some of the household crossed it with all the speed I could exert in the direction that led to where I knew that the well--a structure erected by Prince Woronzow--stood on a lonely part of the shore. More than once did I look back at the lofty façade of the beautiful château, with its four towers and onion-shaped domes of shining copper, and all its stately windows that glittered in the light of a cloudless moon; and just as I drew near the belt of shrubbery, I could see the dark figures of mounted men encircling the terrace! A fugitive, in danger of losing honour and life together! Was this the end of my daydreams in Yalta? Once more I turned, and hastened to where the four cypress-trees towered skyward.

"Ahoy! who comes there?" cried a somewhat gruff voice, in English, accompanied by the sound of a slap on the butt of a musket; and then the squat sturdy figure of a seaman, posted as sentinel, appeared among the bushes, with an infantry pouch, belts, and bayonet worn above his short pea-jacket.

"A friend!" I replied, mechanically, yet not without a glow of sincere pleasure.

"Stand there, till I have a squint at you," replied Jack, cocking his musket and giving a glance at the cap; but I was too much excited to parley with him, and continued to advance, saying,

"I am an officer--Captain Hardinge, of the 23rd, a prisoner escaping from the enemy."

"All right, sir--glad to see you; heave ahead," he replied, half cocking his piece again.

"Who commands your party?"

"Lieutenant Jekyll, sir," said the seaman, saluting now, when he saw me fully in the moonlight.

"Of what ship?"

"The Southesk, sir, of twenty guns."

"Let me pass to your rear. He must instantly shove off his boat, as the Cossacks are within a mile of us--at yonder house."

In a minute more I reached the party at the well, twelve seamen and as many marines under an officer, who had a brace of pistols in his belt, and carried his sword drawn. They were in the act of carrying the last cask of water into a ship's cutter, which lay alongside a ridge of rock that ran into the sea, forming a species of natural pier or jetty, close by the white marble fountain.

I soon made myself known, and ere long found myself seated among new friends, and out on the shining water, which bubbled up at the bow and foamed under the counter as the oarsmen bent to their task, and their steadily and regularly feathered blades flashed in the silver sheen. The shore receded fast; the belt of shrubs grew lower and lower; and then the glittering domes of the distant mansion, which was ever in my mind and memory to be associated with Valerie Volhonski, rose gradually on our view, with the snow-clad range of Yaila in the background. But all were blended in haze and distance by the time we came sheering alongside H.M.S. Southesk, the water-tank of which had, fortunately for me, been empty, thus forcing her crew to have recourse to the well of St. Basil, by which circumstance I more than probably escaped the fate that ultimately overtook, but deservedly, the luckless Hawkesby Guilfoyle.

In the morning, under easy sail and half steam, the ship was off Balaclava, where I saw the old Genoese fort that commands its entrance, the white houses of the Arnaouts shaded by tall poplars, and the sea breaking in foam upon its marble bluffs; and there the captain kindly put me ashore in the first boat that left the ship.

It was not until long after the Crimean war, that by the merest chance, through an exchanged prisoner--a private of our 68th Foot--when having occasion to employ him as a commissionnaire in London, I learned what the fate of Guilfoyle was. En route to Kharkoff, he was run through the heart and killed by the lance of a Cossack of his escort, who alleged that he was attempting to escape; but my informant more shrewdly suspected that it was to obtain quiet possession of his ring--the paste diamond which had figured so often in his adventures, real and fictitious.