 | CHAP. IV. Romance of travel |  |
4. CHAP. IV.
Spite of remonstrance on my part, the imperative
countess, who had asserted her authority more than
once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the company
of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an
evening walk around the town. Fearing that Percie's
masculine stride would betray him, and objecting
to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I
opposed the freak as long as it was courteous—but
it was not the first time I had learned that a spoiled
woman would have her own way, and, too vexed
to laugh, I soberly promenaded the broad avenue of
the capital of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and
a dame en valet.
It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and Iminild,
waited on Percie to the carriage the following
morning, and in a few hours we drove up to the
rural inn of this small town of Littorale.
I had been too much out of humour to ask the
countess, a second time, what errand she could have
in so rustic a neighbourhood. She had made a
mystery of it, merely requiring of me that I should
defer all arrangements for the future, as far as she
was concerned, till we had visited a spot in Littorale,
upon which her fate in many respects depended.
After twenty fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself
to the course of circumstances, reserving only
the determination, if it should prove a haunt of
Yvain's troop, to separate at once from her company
and await her at Trieste.
Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of
the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence,
I walked out and seated myself under an immense
linden, that every traveller will remember, standing
in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters
of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and blacksmith
of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and
outhouses. The tree seems the father of the village.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to
dispute the shade with a congregation of cows and
double-jointed posthorses; but finding a seat high up
on the root, at last I busied myself with gazing down
might contain, which, in an opposite direction from
that which we had come, was slowly creeping
onward to the inn.
Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared,
with their traces tied over their backs—one
of them ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They
struck me at first as fine specimens of the German
breed of draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks
and long manes; but while they drank at the trough
which stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone
in which the man checked their greedy thirst, and the
instant obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened
at once my suspicions that we were to become
better acquainted. A more narrow examination
convinced me that, covered with dust and disguised
with coarse harness as they were, they were four
horses of such bone and condition, as were never
seen in a farmer's stables. The rider dismounted
at the inn door, and very much to the embarrassment
of my suppositions, the landlord, a stupid and heavy
Boniface, greeted him with the familiarity of an old
acquaintance, and in answer, apparently to an inquiry,
pointed to my carriage, and led him into the
house.
“Monsieur Tyrell,” said Iminild, coming out to
me a moment after, “a servant whom I had expected
has arrived with my horses, and with your
“To take us where?”
“To our place of destination.”
“Too indefinite, by half, Countess! Listen to me!
I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving
the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of
honest men. You and your `minions of the moon'
may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe
companions; and having really a wish to die quietly
in my bed—”
The countess burst into a laugh.
“If you will have the character of the gentleman
you are about to visit from the landlord here—”
“Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be
sworn!”
“No, on my honour! A more innocent old beer-guzzler
lives not on the road. But I will tell you
thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles
to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who,
the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his
gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He
lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers
occasionally from all countries, for he has been a
traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day
or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate, (who, by the
way, has no objection to pass for father of the young
lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach,)
to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was
a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly
and play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly
to fear in accompanying me thither. And now will
you wait and eat the greasy meal you have ordered,
or will you save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer Krakenpate's, and get presently on the
road!”
I yielded rather to the seducing smile and captivating
beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any
confidence in the honesty of Myneer Krakenpate;
and Percie being once more ceremoniously handed
in, we left the village at the sober trot becoming
the fat steeds of a landholder. A quarter of a
mile of this was quite sufficient for Iminild, and
a word to the postillion changed, like a metamorphosis,
both horse and rider. From a heavy unelastic
figure, he rose into a gallant and withy horseman,
and, with one of his low-spoken words, away flew
the four compact animals, treading lightly as cats,
and, with the greatest apparent ease, putting us over
the ground at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour.
The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was
created by the motion, and when at last we turned
from the main road, and sped off to the right at the
same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch
look of remonstrace with my best-humoured smile
I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight
pressure of the countess's arm, looking very innocently
out of the window all the while.
A couple oi miles, soon done, brought us round
the face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of
a hill, and with a continuation of the turn, we drew
up at the gate of a substantial-looking building,
something between a villa and a farm-house, built
against the rock, as if for the purpose of shelter from
the north winds. Two beautiful Angora hounds
sprang out at the noise, and recognized Iminild
through all her disguise, and presently, with a look of
forced courtesy, as if not quite sure whether he
might throw off the mask, a stout man of about fifty,
hardly a gentleman, yet above a common peasant
in his manners, stepped forward from the garden to
give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in alighting.
“Dinner in half an hour!” was Iminild's brief
greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant
and Percie, she led the way into the house.
I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce
above the common style of a German inn, where I
made a hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended
at once to the parlour. The doors were all
open upon the ground floor, and, finding myself quite
alone, I sauntered from room to room, wondering
at the scantiness of the furniture and general air of
mistress presided over this and the singular paradise
in which I had first found her at Vienna. After visiting
every corner of the ground floor with a freedom
which I assumed in my character as guardian, it
occurred to me that I had not yet found the dining-room,
and I was making a new search, when Iminild
entered.
I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was
dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the additional
gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which
might distinguish the favourite child of a chief of
Suli. It was the male attire, with a snowy white
juktanilla reaching to the knee, a short jacket of
crimson velvet, and a close-buttoned vest of silver
cloth, fitting admirably to her girlish bust, and leaving
her slender and pearly neck to rise bare and
swan-like into the masses of her clustering hair.
Her slight waist was defined by the girdle of fine
linen edged with fringe of gold, which was tied coquettishly
over her left side and fell to her ankle
and below the embroidered leggin appeared the
fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this long
train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper
with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A feronière
of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back
from her temples, and this was the only confinement
to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and
only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush
about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to
her memory.
“I am about to disclose to you secrets,” said she,
laying her hand on my arm, “which have never
been revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates.
To satisfy those whom you will meet
you must swear to me on the same cross which he
pressed to your lips when dying, that you will never
violate, while I live, the trust we repose in you.”
“I will take no oath,” I said; “for you are leading
me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the
assurance that I can betray no confidence which
honour would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet
dine in Planina.”
“Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman.
And now I have a favour, not to beg, but to insist
upon—that from this moment you consider Percie
as dismissed from your service, and treat him, while
here at least, as my equal and friend.”
“Willingly!” I said; and as the word left my
lips, enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild,
with a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the
blueish muzzles of a pair of Egg's hair-triggers
peeping from below his girdle. To do the rascal
justice, he was as handsome in his new toggery as
his mistress, and carried it as gallantly. They
Haidée.
“Is there any chance that these `persuaders' may
be necessary,” I asked, pointing to his pistols which
a woke in my mind a momentary suspicion.
“No—none that I can foresee—but they are
loaded. A favourite, among men whose passions
are professionally wild,” she continued with a meaning
glance at Percie; “should be ready to lay his
hand on them, even if stirred in his sleep!”
I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that
I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speaking,
that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a
niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon
hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to
admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it
had made its entire revolution, and in it stood with
a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate.
Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my
surprise.
“Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?” she
said at last, with a laugh.
“If we are to follow Myneer Von Krakenpate,”
I replied, “give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla,
rather, and let me follow! Do we dine in the
cellar?”
I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take
advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and followed
the position of the house, I saw must lead directly
into the face of the rock. Two or three descending
steps convinced me that it was a natural opening enlarged
by art; and after one or two sharp turns, and
a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door
which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer,
deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which
the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering
from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold
of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of
sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of inumerable
lamps flooding the air around, and a long
snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect
streching downward before me. Two ridges of
the calcareous stratta running almost parallel over
our heads, formed the cornices of the descending
corridor, and from these with a regularity that
seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as
alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped
nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting
on the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites,
which of a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed
designed as bases to a new order of architectural
columns. The reflection from the pure crystalline
rock gave to this singular gallery a splendor which
only the palace of Aladdin could have equalled. The
ranges, and in our descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed
his dazzled eyes in the desert of snow by
looking on the green wings of the spirit bird, I was
compelled to bend my eyes perpetually for relief upon
the soft, dark masses of hair which floated upon
the lovely shoulders of Iminild.
At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to
the right, and followed an irregular passage, sometimes
so low that we could scarce stand upright,
but all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and
formed of the same glittering and snow-white substance.
We had been rambling on thus far perhaps
ten minutes, when suddenly the air, which I had felt
uncomfortably chill, grew warm and soft, and the
low reverberation of running water fell delightfully
on our ears. Far a-head we could see two sparry
columns standing close together, and apparently
closing up the way.
“Courage! my venerable guardian!” cried Imnild,
laughing over her shoulder; “you will see your
dinner presently. Are you hungry, Percie?”
“Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse!”
answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive
tact at his new vocation.
We stood at the two pillars which formed the
extremity of the passage, and looked down upon a
scene of which all description must be faint and imperfect.
river, whose waters sparkling in the blaze
of a thousand torches, sprang into light from the
deepest darkness, crossed with foaming rapidity the
bosom of the vast illuminated cavern, and disappeared
again in the same inscrutable gloom. Whence it
it came or whither it fled was a mystery beyond the
reach of the eye. The deep recesses of the cavern
seemed darker for the intense light gathered about
the centre.
After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I endeavoured
to realize in detail the wondrous scene before
me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but
all studded above with the same sparry incrustation,
thousands upon thousands of pendant stalactites glittering
on the roof, and showering back light upon the
clusters of blazing torches fastened every where
upon the shelvy sides. Here and there vast
columns, alabaster white, with bases of gold colour,
fell from the roof to the floor, like pillars left standing
in the ruined nisle of a cathedral, and from corner
to corner ran their curtains of the same brilliant
calcareous spar, shaped like the sharp edge of a
snow-drift, and almost white. It was like laying
bare the palace of some king-wizard of the mine to
gaze down upon it.
“What think you of Myneer Krakenpate's taste
in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell?” asked the countess,
a hand on the shoulder of each.
I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the
artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the
question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad platform,
rising high above the river on its opposite
bank, the rear of which was closed in by perhaps
forty irregular columns, leaving between them and
the sharp precipice on the river-side, an area, in
height and extent of about the capacity of a ball-room.
A rude bridge, of very light construction,
rose in a single arch across the river, forming the
only possible access to the platform from the side
where we stood, and, following the path back with
my eye, I observed a narrow and spiral staircase,
partly of wood and partly cut in the rock, ascending
from the bridge to the gallery we had followed
hither. The platform was carpetted richly, and
flooded with intense light, and in its centre stood a
gorgeous array of smoking dishes, served after the
Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon the floor and surrounded
with cushions and ottomans of every shape
and colour. A troop of black slaves, whose silver
anklets, glittered as they moved, were busy bringing
wines and completing the arrangements for the
meal.
“Allons, mignon!” cried Iminild, getting impatient
and seizing Percie's arm, “let us get over the
us with his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you
will come with us! Suivez donc!”
An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed,
let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and
Myneer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key
behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow
staircase and reached the edge of the river, where
the warm air from the open sunshine came pouring
through the cavern with the current, bringing with
it a smell of green fields and flowers, and removing
entirely the chill of the cavernous and confined at
mosphere I had found so uncomfortable above
We crossed the bridge, and stepping upon the elastic
carpets piled thickly on the platform, arranged
ourselves about the smoking repast, Myneer Von
Krakenpate sitting down after permission from Iminild,
and Percie by order of the same imperative
dictatress, throwing his graceful length at her feet.
| CHAP. IV. Romance of travel | |