My present host was too well-bred to tell all he had just heard, whether he believed it or not. After a pause, "If another sortie is made," said I, "the slaughter will be frightful."
"Bah!" replied he, cynically, while tipping the white ashes from his cigar, "a few thousands are not missed among the millions of Russia; I presume we only get rid of those who are unnecessary in the general scheme of creation."
"Peasants and serfs, I suppose?"
"Well, perhaps so--peasants and serfs, as you islanders suppose all our people to be."
"Nay, as you Russians deem them."
"We shall not dispute the matter, please," said he, coldly; and now, as I sat looking at him, a memory of his face and voice came over me.
"Count Volhonski!" I exclaimed, "have you quite forgotten me and the duel with the Prussian at Altona?"
He started and took his cigar from his mouth.
"The Hospodeen Hardinge!" said he, grasping my hand with honest warmth; "I must have been blind not to recognise you; but I never before saw you in your scarlet uniform."
"It is more purple than scarlet now, Count."
"Well, our own finery is not much to boast of, though we are in a city, and you are under canvas. But how does the atmosphere of Crim Tartary agree with you?" he asked, laughing.
"A little too much gunpowder in it, perhaps."
"I am sorry, indeed, to find that you and I are enemies, after those pleasant days spent in Hamburg and Altona; but when we last parted in Denmark--you remember our mutual flight across the frontier--you were but a subaltern, a praperchick, a sub-lieutenant, I think."
"I am a captain now."
"Ah--the Alma did that, I presume."
"Exactly."
"You will have plenty of promotion in your army, I expect, ere this war is ended. You shall all be promoted in heaven, I hope, ere holy Russia is vanquished."
"Well, Count, and you--"
"I am now Pulkovnick of the Vladimir Infantry."
"Did the Alma do that?"
"No; the Grand-Duchess Olga, to whom the regiment belongs, promoted me from the Guards, as a reward for restoring her glove, which she dropped one evening at a masked ball given in the hall of St. Vladimir by the Emperor; so my rank was easily won."
A knock rang on the door; spurs and a steel scabbard clattered on the floor, and then entered a stately old officer in the splendid uniform of the Infantry of the Guard, the gilded plate on his high and peculiarly-shaped cap bearing the perforation of more than one bullet, and his breast being scarcely broad enough for all the orders that covered it. He bowed to Volhonski, and saluted me with his right hand, in which he carried a bundle of documents like lists. The Count introduced him as "the Pulkovnick Ochterlony, commanding the Ochterlony Battalion of the Imperial Guard." He was not at all like a Russian, having clear gray eyes and a straight nose, and still less like one did he seem when he addressed me in almost pure English.
"I have," said he, "gone over all the lists of officers of the Allies now prisoners in Sebastopol, or taken since the siege and sent towards Yekaterinoslav, and can find among them no such name as that of Major MacG--, of the 93rd Regiment of Scottish Highlanders. If traces of him are found, dead or alive, a message to that effect shall at once be sent to my Lord Raglan."
"I thank you, sir," said I, rising and regarding him curiously; "you speak very pure English for a Russian!"
"I am a Russian by birth and breeding only; in blood and race I am a countryman of your own."
"Indeed!" said I, coldly and haughtily, "how comes it to pass that an Englishman--"
"Excuse me, sir," said he, with a manner quite as haughty as my own, "I did not say that I was an Englishman; but as we have no time to make explanations on the subject, let us have together a glass of Crimskoi, and part, for the time, friends."
His manner was so suave, his bearing so stately, and his tone so conciliating--moreover his age seemed so great--that I clinked my glass with his, and withdrew with Volhonski, who, sooth to say, seemed exceedingly loath to part with me.
"Who the deuce is that officer?" I asked.
"I introduced him to you by name. He is the colonel of the Ochterlony Battalion of the Guard, which was raised by his father, one of the many Scottish soldiers of fortune who served the Empress Catharine; and the man is Russian to the core in all save blood, which he cannot help; but here is the gate, and you must be again blinded by Tolstoff. Adieu! May our next meeting be equally pleasant and propitious!"
As we separated, there burst from the soldiery who thronged near the gates a roar of hatred and execration, excited doubtless by the bishop's harangue; and poor Dicky Roll shrunk close to my side as we passed out. The ancient Scoto-Muscovite, I afterwards learned, was styled Ochterlony of Guynde, the soldiers of whose regiment had enjoyed from his father's time the peculiar privilege of retaining and wearing their old cap-plates, so long as a scrap of the brass remained, if they had once been perforated by a shot in action; and it is known that this identical old officer--who had some three or four nephews in the Russian Guards--had been visiting his paternal place of Guynde, in Forfarshire, but a few months before the war broke out.
In a few minutes more, Dicky Roll and I found ourselves, with our eyes unbandaged, once more in that pleasant locality midway between the abattis and the trenches, towards which we made our way in all haste, that I might report the issue of my mission concerning the Scotch major, who, as events proved, was found alive and unhurt, luckily; and the moment my white flag disappeared among the gabions--where all crowded round me for news, and where I became the hero of an hour--again the firing was resumed on both sides with all its former fury, and the old game went on--shot and shell, dust, the crash of stones and fascines, thirst, hunger, slaughter, and mutilation. That the Russians had some great essay _in petto_, the words of Volhonski left us no doubt, nor were we long kept in ignorance of what was impending over us.
CHAPTER XXXIV.--GUILFOYLE REDIVIVUS.
Quietly and before day dawned the trench-guards were relieved, and we marched wearily back towards the camp. I had dismissed my company, and was betaking me to my tent, threading my way along the streets formed by those of each regiment, when an ambulance wagon, four-wheeled and covered by a canvas hood, drew near. It was drawn by four half-starved-looking horses; the drivers were in the saddles; and an escort rode behind, muffled in their blue cloaks. It was laden, no doubt, with boots warranted not to fit, and bags of green or unripe coffee for the troops, who had no means of grinding it or of cooking it, firewood being our scarcest commodity. An officer of the Land Transport Corps, in cloak and forage-cap, was riding leisurely in rear of the whole, and as he passed I heard him singing, for his own edification, apparently: the refrain of his ditty was,
"Ach nein! ach nein! ich darf es nich. Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!"
"Heavens!" thought I, pausing in my progress, "can this be my quondam acquaintance, the _attaché_ at the Court of Catzenelnbogen here--_here_, in the Crimea!"
"Can you direct me to the commissariat quarter of the Second Division?" asked the singer, a little pompously.
"By all the devils it is Guilfoyle!" I exclaimed.
"Oho--You are Hardinge of the 23rd--well met, Horatio!" said he, reining-in his horse, and with an air of perfect coolness.
"How came _you_ to be here, sir?" I asked, sternly.
"I question your right to ask, if I do not your tone," he replied; "however, if you feel interested in my movements, I may mention that I was going to the dogs or the devil, and thought I might as well take Sebastopol on the way."
"It is not taken yet--but you, I hope, may be."
"Thanks for your good wishes," was the unabashed reply; "however, I am wide enough awake, sir; be assured that I cut my eye-teeth some years ago."
To find that such a creature as he had crept into her Majesty's service, even into such an unaristocratic force as the Land Transport Corps, and actually wore a sword and epaulettes, bewildered me, excited my indignation and disgust; and I felt degraded that by a reflected light he was sharing our dangers, our horrors, and the honours of the war. I had never seen his name in the _Gazette_, as being appointed a cornet of the Transport Corps, and the surprise I felt was mingled with profound contempt, and something of amusement, too, at his _insouciance_ and cool effrontery. This made me partially forget the rage and hatred he had excited in me by the mischievous game he had played at Walcot Park, his plot to ruin me with Estelle Cressingham--a plot from which I had been so victoriously disentangled. Hence circumstance, change of position and place, induced me to talk to the fellow in a way that I should not have done at home or elsewhere.
"How came you to deprive England of the advantages of your society?" I asked, in a sneering tone, of which he was too well-bred not to be conscious; so he replied in the same manner,