Part 57

He gloomed. Oblivious of his displeasure, she went on: “There were no vessels for water, or utensils of any kind. They had no soap, or towels, or Hospital clothing. The sick were lying in their uniforms, stiff with filth, upon the dreadful pallets. Unwashed--untended--covered with vermin--”

She could not go on. He said between his teeth:

“I have said from the first that women have no business in War-Hospitals. They’re the necessary complement of the camp and the battle-field, and they’ll be horrible and ghastly as long as the world lasts. The things that are seen in them are too grim to be talked about! But why need we talk? We can’t better things by talking!”

“I agree with you perfectly,” she said, with a fine smile of sarcasm. “But the condition of things I have described is, since yesterday, astonishingly improved.... To begin with, those Augean floors have been thoroughly scrubbed!”

“Surely not by--ladies?”

“By the Sisters of Charity, aided by the Hospital orderlies who had told them--‘_It cannot be done!_’ They said: ‘_It must_’--and set the example forthwith!”

He commented:

“That’s the pace that kills. They’ll never be able to hold on at it!”

“Wait and prove! I credit Ada and her nuns with immense reserves of energy. They waste no words. But, oh! Lord Cardillon, when I think that all this abomination and misery lay close at our doors--here in Constantinople--and that I and others never knew of it--never dreamed of it!--I burn with shame and sicken with disgust. No! I do not exaggerate!”

Her sewing had fallen to the deck. Her white hands wrung themselves in her lap. Her matronly calm face was contracted and quivering. She continued:

“I sent from our kitchen at the Embassy quantities of broth and jelly and other articles of invalid diet. Wine from the cellars and so on. But neither I nor Stratclyffe ever went there--to our shame never thought of going there! And but for those articles in the English papers we never should have known----”

He ground his spurred heel into the deck, and something very like an oath escaped from him.

“Confound the London newspapers! As for the men who came out here to cater for news--paid Paul Prys and chiels in butcher-boots and traveling-caps, taking notes--they go too far. It is unbearable espionage--presumption!--insolence! I’d hang up every one of them, if I had the authority and the privileges the Provost-Marshal enjoys! Why, one of those rags of papers actually published information as to where we’d stored our powder! What business have Fleet Street journalists nosing about at the Seat of War?”

She said with spirit:

“They make mistakes occasionally, like the rest of us. But nearly all of them are gentlemen of education, good sense, and good feeling. Could anything but honest, fearless indignation have penned those articles in the _Times_? And--if there is maladministration--lack of organization--are they not right in pointing where the fault lies? The British Public, who give their fathers, husbands, sons and brothers to the service of the country--surely have a right to know how they fare!... Lord Cardillon!--could not much of this horrible suffering and waste of life have been prevented by a little forethought?”

He frowned, but answered:

“Since you will have it--yes!” He added, as she thanked him with a look for the truth, seeing that it had galled in the utterance:

“Please, no more now on that subject. Here’s Miss Delavayle!” And their conversation ended with the rustling arrival of a tall, elegant woman, who hurried up and sank down into a chair between them, saying with an affectation of breathlessness:

“I’m dead, hearing people sing your praises, and telling them that you don’t deserve any!”

She was a blonde of rather hard and brilliant coloring, dressed as brilliantly as a tropical bird. Her cheeks and eyes were burning with suppressed, none the less evident, excitement; her nerves seemed tense and strung. As she looked at the man, her glance was feverishly bright and hungrily possessive. He moved uneasily as though he felt it so.

“Rest; why don’t you rest?” he said to her. “But you never rest. I wonder when you will?”

Lady Stratclyffe had risen and joined the Ambassador’s circle. The answer was given:

“When your wife dies, and we’re married; then I shall rest--not before!”

He moved restlessly and bit his lip. She went on:

“Do you think I didn’t see you playing the gallant with Madame de Roux? Don’t protest! I’ve eyes in the middle of my back,” she said, quivering, “for every petticoat that comes near you. Don’t I know your charming ways with women, poor idiots that we are!”

“Laura!” he muttered, as her ringed hand clenched upon his chair-arm, and her fever-bright eyes shot challenges at him. “For Heaven’s sake don’t make me a scene of jealousy!”

“All right! Tell me what you thought when the Brigade got fairly in movement. Was it anything about me?”

“By Gad! no!” he said, wounding her unintentionally. “What I thought to myself was: ‘Here goes the last of the Paradynes!’”

“Trot! Canter! Gallop! Charge!” She imitated the staccato tones of the officer commanding. “Why wasn’t I born a man, so that I might have followed you--and fought for you--and died for you when I got my chance! There! Lady Granbyson is beckoning to me.... I’m compromising myself hopelessly, sitting here with you like Darby and Joan....”

She flashed a disdainful eye-dart at Lady Granbyson, a portly dowager in voluminous cinnamon satin, fluttering in distress afar off, like a large maternal hen. Then she rose, and stooped over him, clasping the wrist of the unwounded arm that he had thrown across the chair-back, and whispered, with her blazing eyes looking into his, as her burning breath beat upon his cheek, and a long, snaky ringlet of her hot-colored golden hair trailed across the tarnished Brandenbourgs of his Hussar jacket:

“Do you know what I would have done if the last of the Paradynes _had_ gone that way? Drowned myself in the Bosphorus when the news came from the Front!”...

He flushed crimson to the temples and caught his breath.

“Laura!”

But she was gone--and the attendant ladies, who had melted into the background when she drew near, were bearing down on him. He cursed women, in his heart, for the mulls they dragged one into. Compunction, pity, strove in him with anger and resentment. Poor Laura! Yet how the clasp of her hand had burned, and how green her eyes had gleamed with jealousy! He foresaw hideous complications with her family--more terrible with his wife’s people. Confound it! And just now when one’s Sovereign--always down like bricks upon conjugal offenders--notoriously strict in matters of morals--might be expected to smile on a popular Brigadier....

“No, Lady Hathermore, no iced lemonade, thank you. You’re too kind, Madame de Mirecourt, but I’ve three cushions and a footstool now!”

So forbidding was his frown, that they rustled away in search of more accessible divinities. Then--lovely eyes--greenish hazel with golden lights and dusky shadows playing in them--looked down into his and a lovely mouth smiled bewilderingly. A small white hand with clusters of rubies and diamonds like drops of blood mingled with tears sparkling on its slender, pink-tipped fingers, held under his nose a little bunch of violets....

Henriette had charmed--she must charm again--she had been asked for a single flower--she must give the whole bunch in her lavishness. You remember that she could never say No! to a man?...

“I was unkind just now.... You asked--and I denied you. See--I will make amends! Smell them--are they not sweet?”

“Divinely sweet!--both the gift and the giver!” He forgot his new-born prejudice against her sex, as she sank with a whispering rustle of silken draperies into the vacant chair at his side. Suave enchantress! Exquisite witch! How these ivory-white, supple, small-boned creatures vulgarized high-colored, big-boned women! Laura, who would presently have to lead her own forlorn hope down into the Valley of Death under the plunging fire of the eyes of Society, was high-colored and big of bone.

“You were angry with me, and for good cause.... I offended, and I have been punished....”

She said, delighting him with her voice, with her smile, with the play of her mobile features:

“The fault lay not in your words, Milord, or in your actions, but in your eyes. Men with such blue eyes are inimical to me. I believe ‘unlucky’ is your English word? Ah, no! Do not suppose I do not like the color.... Unhappily, I liked it but too well!”

Her glance was enchantment. Her voice was a song. She allured and drew and provoked him. Laura, under cover of her chaperon’s parasol, glared at him tigerishly from the other side of the deck. But he had forgotten Laura. He wondered, noting the delicate spider-lines about Henriette’s lovely eyes, and on her ivory temples, where the blue veins melted in the bluish shadows of her jetty, silken hair, how old she was? Thirty-four or five. Worth a dozen of younger women. He thought this as he asked whether she was not staying at the Embassy?

“No, not at the French Legation.... I am engaged to visit there when I return from the Crimea. For the present I share, with Madame de Bessarine, some rooms at the Hotel of Missiri.” She added, as he asked if he might not call? “Alas! I leave for the Crimea so soon--it will not be possible to receive visitors!”

But Cardillon pressed for an appointment and she yielded.

“You are an angel of kindness!” he declared.

She returned, with lovely gravity:

“You are of those who have faith in Angels and Heaven? You believe in the existence of another world beyond this earth of ours?”

“Certainly. But you could make this earth so sweet for a man that he wouldn’t barter it for Mahomet’s Paradise.”

She said, ignoring the compliment:

“When you were near to death--not long ago, did you feel more sure of the existence of that other world than your tone now indicates?”

He answered with reluctance:

“I cannot say. To be sure, one would have to die, and come back to life again.”

* * * * *

She rose up with her supple exquisite grace, and moved to the yacht’s side, and stood with one jeweled hand upon the taffrail looking over at the opposite shore of Asia, as from the thousand minarets of Stamboul came clear musical voices calling the Faithful to the prayer of afternoon.

“I am sure, because I once died, and returned to life again. And I came back out of that dim, strange country that lies beyond this world, with a secret to tell, and a gift to bestow. And he to whom I would tell my secret, and give my gift, had departed--where I know not! It may be we shall never meet on earth any more! And well for him if it were so! For I have come to believe that if he is ever to know peace or happiness, his path and mine must never cross again!”

What strange impulse of confidence moved her? One cannot answer. She went on, not looking at the Brigadier:

“This seems strange to you--will seem stranger when I tell you that I go to the East to marry another.... But Love and Marriage--are they not different things, Milord? Does not your experience teach you so?”

He was silent. Her voice sighed on:

“The gift I spoke of but now, is Love--perhaps you have guessed it? I tell you that a woman may yield to passion--may be much beloved, without ever having learned that!... It was revealed to me when I lay as one dead, and one whom I had despised and ill-used stood by what he and another believed to be a dead body. And in the face of scandal, dishonor--the mockery and contempt of the world!--he said--I shall never forget the tone in which he said it: ‘_Because that other man has left you, I stay beside you here!_’”

Cardillon said, possessed by a sudden, savage jealousy:

“Was that the man with the blue eyes?”

She shook her head. The pearly line of her white profile, as she turned her face from him, seemed the subtlest thing he had ever looked on. Her plume of herons’ feathers gleamed black-blue against the night of her coiled and knotted hair. The little delicate shell-like ear had a ruby hanging from it, like a blood-drop. She said, in that voice of exquisite, sighing cadences, looking at a shabby caïque containing a single passenger, that was being paddled from the steamer-quay of Tophaneh across to the landing-place of Scutari,--and half-consciously noting the struggles of the little craft as it battled against the stiff rush of the current that sweeps past the promontory where transformed Io landed....

“No, Milord. This man had black eyes. When they looked at you.... _Ayme!... Madre de Dios, misericordia! C’est lui!--c’est lui!_”

The final words were unheard; they had exhaled in a sigh from lips suddenly bleached pale as poplar-leaves. As her head fell forwards on her breast, and the tall, rounded, supple figure swayed as though about to fall, Cardillon threw his strong unwounded arm about her; knowing by the dead weight that the swoon was unfeigned--wondering what had brought it about?

Nothing had happened to alarm her. Only the toiling rower had pulled up-stream diagonally, as though making for the point above the landing-place of Scutari, and had then let the head of the frail craft swing round. And the pasenger, a white-haired, black-eyed man, in worn gray traveling dress, had thus been brought plainly into view of those on the steam-yacht’s after-deck.

The man had never glanced at the two people who leaned upon the rail, talking. His eyes were for the green slope and the great quadrangle of yellow stone masonry reared by Sultan Suleiman....

Madame de Roux recovered almost instantly. The caïque had shot out of sight past the bend of the promontory. The traveler had landed and passed on about his business--an accidental likeness had deceived her, that was all. She lifted her head, smiled with lips still white, and declared herself well again. And the Brigadier, whose keen light eyes had the instant before seen a European lady--seated in a caïque with others--start back and hide her face in horror, as something grim and shapeless rose up at the boat’s side, said:

“Do not explain! I can guess what happened. You were looking at the water.... One of those dead men!...”

She said, with a shadowy, troubled glance at the deep, rushing tide that swept downwards round the promontory of Scutari:

“I do not fear the dead. The living can be more terrible sometimes!”

“Still,” he said, with an effort of unselfishness, “if certain sights affect you so painfully, it would be well not to wait to see the arrival of the Hospital-ships.”

“Are we not all assembled,” she asked, “to honor the brave unfortunate? And, if I could not support tragic, or grim, or squalid spectacles, should I be now upon my journey to the scene of war?”

“Must you go there? Is Grandguerrier so exigent? Have you really set your hearts upon being married amidst the tragic spectacles to which you refer?”

She told him, with her shadowy smile:

“I go, not because I desire to, but because I am destined to.... All my life long I have done what I wished not to do, at the bidding of an inexorable Fate....”

He did not know how true it was. But the sensual fever she had kindled in his veins abated. He looked at her with more sympathy and less desire. She went on:

“Besides, I must tell you that I have campaigned with my first husband’s regiment in Algeria, and helped to nurse the wounded. Recently at Toulon and Marseilles I visited the transports that had brought in our invalided soldiers from the War-Hospitals of the Levant. Now I would cry, ‘_Bravo, mes amis!_’ and wave my handkerchief to your wounded heroes of Alma and Balaklava and Inkerman.... Listen, Milord! Surely that was a salute of guns!”

XCIV

She did not err. The south-westerly breeze had shifted. Sky and water darkened, a cold north wind blew, scattering some sleety drops of rain. And as the squall broke, and the awnings tugged at their reevings, came the splitting crack of the old brass Turkish cannon from the batteries of Deli Talian, and the deeper, more sonorous boom of ships’ guns answering back again.

Eighteen guns. They were coming! they were coming! The quays of Pera and the landing-places of Tophaneh and Scutari were crowded with eager, many-colored sightseers. On the balconies and roofs of houses, on the gardenwalls bordering the Bosphorus, on the decks and in the rigging of the warships anchored in the roadsteads, human figures thronged and clustered. A _susurration_ of excitement--a hum of expectation, quickened into a clamor--broadened into a roar. For they were coming--they were coming! the men of Alma and Balaklava and Inkerman, whom their country and the nation they had fought for could never praise and honor enough.

They had passed Therapia, for from the nearer fortresses of Europe and Asia the salute crashed deafeningly. Columns of white smoke rose beyond the promontory, slanted and came down upon the wind. As nervous ladies stopped their ears, expectant of an answering salute, the gorgeous king-dolphin, followed by the flying cloud of variegated parrot-fish, darted round the promontory that as yet hid the first of the approaching ships from view, and fled downstream towards Seraglio Point.

* * * * *

What could have scattered the glittering flotilla? They had gone out, led by the Golden Peacock and the Sublime Umbrella to do honor to the brave. They had fled in panic before something unexpected and appalling; for the retreat was most palpably a flight.

Even as the spectators wondered and questioned, a dark blue mist came down like a lowered curtain upon the scene that had been instinct a moment before with light and movement, and color. The wooded hills, the palaces, and mosques, and shops, and kiosks, the thronged terraces and quays, the vessels, with their manned yards and decks crowded with gayly dressed sightseers, were seen dimly as through a thick gauze veil. And the cold breeze brought with it an appalling stench--a cold and deadly exhalation as of the battle-field, the charnel-house, and the plague-pit--as the first of the three great transports came gliding into view.

They came! and from the flagships of the English, French, and Turkish Admirals anchored at Beshiktash the guns boomed out their welcome--the Three Ensigns dipped as in a royal salute. But the cheers and acclamations died in the throats of the thousands whose eyes were nailed upon those mighty argosies, deep-laden, deck-piled, with Death’s blackening harvest.... The shouts went up, quavered, and broke, and died....

The transports followed each other at an interval of a cable’s length. They moved slowly, laboriously, painfully, like living creatures enfeebled by famine and sick to death. Such canvas as they spread hung crookedly; their tangled cordage, hanging in neglected loops, gave to them a strange air of neglect and dishevelment. Their sails had proved useless; their auxiliary steam-power alone had proved available. For the wounded and the pestilence-smitten, the dead and the living, were herded and packed and crowded on those dreadful decks, as wantonly as though some giant child had been playing at soldiers with real men and real ships--and had wearied of the game half through, jumbled the men in anyhow--and given each ship a spiteful shake, and gone sulkily away.

* * * * *

Filth flowed from their scuppers and streaked their flanks as the three transports moved slowly towards their anchorage. Bevies of the pretty little Adriatic gull accompanied them, screaming and mewing as in derision; dropping upon the water that had become oily, dark, and malodorous, to feed eagerly; rising, wheeling, and dropping again. And flocks of the tiny blue-breasted gray shear-water that haunts the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles fluttered above them, twittering and piping: “See here! See here!”

Faces crowded at their ports, and beyond these you could see more and more faces.... The bulwarks were hedged with faces; the decks were heaped with them.... The bodies belonging to them were clad in discolored rags of uniforms, or thin, and torn, and tattered shreds of linen underwear, and shivered in the bitter wind unceasingly; with a chattering of the teeth that sounded like the rattle of hail upon wood or canvas--with a vibration that communicated itself to the timbers of the ship.

But you could think of nothing but those faces, haggard and worn with privation and suffering, gaunt and terrible with famine, disfigured with wounds, or hideous from the ravages of pestilence. There were faces lividly blue or greenish-yellow with the discoloration of cholera or dysentery, darkly spotted with typhus, fiercely flushed with rheumatic fever or pneumonia, black with the decomposition of gangrene. And, swathed in clotted rags of bandages; or nakedly exposed to the shuddering sight of men, were faces mutilated by loss of noses or lips; and blind faces, showing red, empty eye-sockets; or mere fragments of faces, shattered, and split, and mutilated by grape, and shrapnel, and shell-splinters; or cloven with great sword-strokes from the forehead to the chin. And among these were faces snow-white, or yellow as wax--upheld by the pressure of the living crowd about them--that showed in the glassy stare and the dropped jaw where Death had taken toll. For the Red Reaper was busy gathering in his harvest. Many of these men would not live to be carried up the hilly road that was to serve as England’s Calvary. They died even as you looked, inwardly crying.... What wanton wreck and waste of splendid life, what reckless spill of strength, and hope, and courage! Was it for this, O God! that Britain has sent forth her pride and flower?--her manly, gallant officers, her stark and sturdy men?

It is a sacred duty to fight for one’s country, a glorious fate to die for her, if need be. But to perish, gaunt with famine and rotten with gangrene, through the neglect and indifference of that same country; to become, living, the prey of flies and the food of maggots that little middlemen may grow fat and flourish--and great Contractors become multi-millionaires--and Nobs and Bigwigs build unto themselves palaces, and the secret animosities working in crowned heads be gratified and glutted--that is to be a martyr, not a hero! Surely the gulls and the little gray shearwaters were crying: “Betrayed! Betrayed! Betrayed!”

* * * * *

One day a great writer will rise up, who will tell this story as it should be told. You will burn and thrill, you will weep and laugh as you read.... Meanwhile, be patient with the feebler pen that stumbles and falters, lost amidst a wilderness of nameless, forgotten graves.

Not that they suffered and died for nought, these men who upheld the honor of England at Alma, and Balaklava, and Inkerman. With the odor of their filthy garments, the stench of their gangrened wounds, the exhalations of fever and pestilence, they brought with them the perfume of sublime obedience and the fragrance of great acts of heroism, forever buried in the silence of official reports.

And the sight of them, grotesque, and strange, and awful as the pipe-dream of an opium or hashish-smoker, fascinated and held those thousands that beheld. In silence, with suspended breath, the men and women of many nations looked, and could not cease from looking; while the gulls shrieked and wheeled, and the tiny gray shearwaters piped and twittered--and a stranger sound than either of these grew upon the ear and filled it, and presently drowned out every other sound:

“_A-a-a-a-a-a-a!_”