"Honour! ha, ha, you are a spy!"
"Rascal!" I exclaimed, feeling myself grow white with passion the while; "recall this injurious epithet, or--"
"Or what? Dare you threaten me? I can pick the ace of hearts off a card at twenty paces with a revolver, so beware; and yet I am not obliged to meet any one who is amenable to the laws of war, and is in a position so dubious as yours."
I was choking with rage; yet a conviction that he spoke with something of warrant, so far as appearances went, and of the absolute necessity for acting with policy, if I would leave myself a chance of winning Valerie and escape greater perils than any I had encountered, compelled me to assume a calmness of bearing I was far from feeling.
"Seek neither to threaten nor to trifle with me," said he, loftily and grimly; "you may certainly know the common laws of war regarding the retention of prisoners and the punishment of spies, but you know not those of Russia. If I do not treat you as one of the latter, it is because Volhonski is your friend; but I have it in my power, in treating you as one of the former, to have you transmitted farther than the Ukraine--to where you should never be heard of more. We are not particular to a shade here," he continued, with a sneering smile; "when the Emperor commanded a certain offender to be taken and punished, the minister of police could not find the right individual. What the deuce was to be done? Justice could not remain unsatisfied; so, instead, he seized a poor German, who had just arrived and was known to none. He slit his tongue, tore out his nostrils, sent him to Siberia to hunt the ermine, and reported to the Czar that his orders had been obeyed. So don't flatter yourself that any persons in office among us would be very particular in analysing any report that I may transmit with you, a mere English captain!"
And rising from the table with these ominous words, he bowed to the eikon, crossed himself after the Greek fashion, inserted a papirosse into his dense moustache, and limped away, leaving me in a very unenviable frame of mind. Already I saw Valerie lost to me! I beheld myself, in fancy, marched into the interior of Russia under armed escort, maltreated and degraded, with my hands tied to the mane of a Cossack pony, or a foot chained to a six-pound shot; a secret report transmitted with me--a tissue of malevolent lies--to be acted upon by some irresponsible official with a crackjaw name; to be never more heard of, my sufferings and my ultimate fate to be--God alone knew what!
I was weak enough to feel jealous of this ungainly Tolstoff--this Muscovite Caliban--in addition to being seriously alarmed by his threats, and enraged by his tone and bearing. Had Valerie ever viewed him with favour? The idea was too absurd! If not, what right had he to advise me concerning her? But then she was so beautiful, one could not wonder that he--coarse though he was--might love her in secret.
Full of these and other thoughts that were vague and bitter, I quitted the table just as Yourivitch was lighting the lamps, and wandered into the long and now gloomy picture-gallery, one of the great windows of which was open. Beyond it was a terrace, whereon I saw the figure of Valerie. She was alone, and in defiance of all prudence and the warning of Tolstoff, I followed her.
[CHAPTER XLIX.--BETROTHED.]
She seemed absorbed in thought as I drew near her, and did not perceive my approach. She was leaning on the carved balustrade of the terrace, and gazing at the sea and the scenery that lay below it, steeped in the brilliance of a clear and frosty moonlight. The snow had entirely departed from the vicinity of Yalta, though its white mantle still covered all the peaks of the Yaila range of mountains. About a mile distant on one side lay the town, its glaring white-walled houses gleaming coldly in the moonshine. A beach was there, with most civilised-looking bathing-machines upon it; for prior to the war, Yalta had been the fashionable watering-place for the ladies of Sebastopol, Bagtcheserai, and Odessa, who were wont there to disport themselves in fantastic costumes, and take headers in the Euxinus Pontus. On the other side were lovely valleys and hills, covered with timber--pine-groves dark and huge as those that overhang the fjords of Norway.