Part 25

"Yes; the face of a lady, young, and very gentle. It is pale; her eyes are dark, her hair thick and jetty--it seems almost blue in this purple shell. Her eyebrows and lashes are thick," he continued, speaking very fast. "She has an expression of intense sadness--ban Dieu!--she is like a sorrowing angel."

"Her nose is aquiline?" I suggested.

"On the contrary, it is neat and small, but not quite _retrousse_. She moves--_merveilleuse!_--tears--she is weeping! On her breast there is a silver crescent; and now--now--the whole thing fades away!"

I was springing forward, when the hakim waved me imperiously back with his bronze rod, and instantly poured the contents of the shell on the tiled floor, from which a strange mephitic odour rose.

This was not the case on the previous unsuccessful occasion. Jules, who had become quite grave, now turned eagerly, and full of interest, to me.

"Is this the lady whose face you saw?" I asked, showing him the miniature of Louisa.

"No, monsieur; there is not the least resemblance."

"Indeed!"

"I am somewhat of an artist, and know."

"You are sure?"

"Sure as I now address you, monsieur."

I began to smile.

"I have said that her eyes seemed dark, nearly as these. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy, but her nose and features were all smaller--more (pardon me, monsieur) feminine, perhaps--less decided in character, certainly; and on her breast she had a crescent of silver."

"A crescent!"

"Yes, monsieur, with a lion above it. The ornament seemed to fasten or adorn the dress, and I saw it distinctly till she placed her hand upon it, and then the water in the shell rippled. It is positively miraculous," he added, turning to Captain Baudeuf, who was twirling his moustache and smiling with obstinate incredulity.

The latter details petrified me.

Jolicoeur's description was completely that of my cousin, Cora Calderwood. The crescent and lion was a gift I had sent her from India--a double ornament I had picked up in the great pagoda at Rangoon, and which she always wore, preferring it to her father's crest and every other brooch.

"Are you satisfied, effendi?" asked the hakim, quietly, for he seemed used to astonishment on such occasions.

"I am bewildered, at all events, hakim," said I.

"Why so?"

"It was not she I asked for or whom I named."

"How do you know? You did not see. Another looked with your eyes."

"True--but what does the vision portend?"

"You asked to see her----"

"I loved, hakim," said I, emphatically.

"Nay, she who--if Allah and the Muscovite dogs spare you--is to be your wife, your _hanoum_. Do you not remember? Go! _Allah Kerim_! it is _kismet_--your destiny. The destinies of all, and the hour in which we are to die--yea, the very moment--are written by the finger of Azrael on our foreheads at our birth--on yours also, although you believe neither in Azrael[*] nor the Prophet. Go! the mark is there, although we see it not."

[*] The Mahommedan Angel of Death.

With those rather solemn words ringing in my ears, bewildered and thoroughly startled, I found myself traversing the streets of Varna with Studhome, while the French drummers were beating _la retraite_ as the sun went down beyond those mountains that were then echoing with the cannon of Silistria, and while the shrill voices of the muezzins proclaimed the hour of evening prayer from the minarets of the mosques, into which the Moslems were pouring, with bowed heads and bare feet, to count their beads.

*CHAPTER XXXII.*

Sleep by evil spirits troubled, Fleeing at the matin bell; Fears that start to eyes scarce waking, Sighs that will not quit her cell.

As from a dream I was roused at last by Jack Studhome proffering his cigar-case, and saying, with a smile--

"How about the year's pay, Norcliff, eh? I owe you that, I suppose?"

"Don't jest, for Heaven's sake, Jack," said I; "for I feel faint, queer, and ill."

All that night we talked over the affair, through the medium of sundry flasks of iced champagne, without being able to come to any conclusion about it.

As a piece of trickery, it beat all that we had ever seen performed at Cawnpore, Delhi, or Benares, by Indian jugglers, though at mess we had seen those worthies swallow a sword to the hilt, or run it through a basket, in which was concealed a child, whose blood and screams came forth together, till the room door opened, and the little one ran in joyously, unhurt, and without a wound; or the orange seed, which one placed in my tumbler, where it took root, and in three minutes became a little tree in full bearing, from which the mess plucked the oranges as it was handed round. All such performances were beaten by that of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig!

That Jules Jolicoeur had seen a female face--a pretty one, too--in the clam-shell was certain, by whatever art or legerdemain that circumstance was achieved. His astonishment was too genuine and too palpable to be acted. The detail of the crescent brooch was a coincidence, perhaps; but then his description of the wearer accorded so well with that of Cora!

I resolved to seek him next day; but he was despatched on duty along the road towards the Balkan; and, as the event proved, I became too ill to follow him.

As we rode home from the Restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, I was sensible of extreme giddiness; but attributed it to the champagne. I could scarcely guide my horse along the road that led to our camp in the vale of Aladyn, and felt Studhome repeatedly place his hand upon my bridle to guide me. I felt delirious, too, and next day found myself in the pangs of that foul pest, the cholera.

It seized me at the distance of some ten miles or so from the camp, from which I had ridden in search of Lieutenant Jolicoeur. I became so ill that I had to dismount, and was conveyed to the kiosk of a wealthy Armenian merchant, and there I remained in great peril for several days, before my circumstances or my whereabouts became known to my friends or the regiment.

I endured a severe pain or burning heat in the pit of my stomach, accompanied by the other symptoms of cholera--cramps in the limbs, and spasms of the intestines and muscles of the abdomen.

The pulses became faint, and at times scarcely perceptible; my skin grew cold, and suffused by a clammy perspiration. It was an undoubted case of spasmodic cholera.

I felt resigned and almost careless of life. There were times, however, when I reflected sorrowfully, almost bitterly, that it was not thus I had wished to die, unnoticed and unknown, among strangers in a foreign land; but, luckily for myself, I could not have fallen into more worthy hands.

The proprietor of the kiosk I have mentioned was a wealthy Armenian merchant, a native of Kars. Whether he was animated by that inordinate love of gain which is peculiar to his race, I know not; but he treated me with extreme kindness and hospitality, yet I never saw either him or any of his family. The dangerous nature of my disease was a sufficient excuse for my being carefully secluded from his entire household, which was numerous, as it consisted of several sons with their wives and children, all living together as one great family, but under his own rule, somewhat in the patriarchal mode of a Scottish clan under its chief.

In a little airy apartment, which opened upon a high-walled and spacious garden, I lay for many days, hovering between life and death. My medical attendant was an Italian surgeon, attached to the Bashi Bazooks, and wore a bright green frock-coat, long riding-boots, and a crimson fez, with a long blue tassel and broad military button. He looked like a reckless foreign cut-throat, with a fierce moustache, vast black beard, and close shorn head; but his exterior belied his character and skill.

In the old Sangrado fashion he bled me, taking twenty-five ounces of blood from my left arm, and gave me, I remember, from eighty to a hundred drops of laudanum, together with a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, in a glass of stiff brandy-and-water, steaming hot, ordering me to drain it almost at a draught.

"Oh, Signor Dottore," said I, "whence come those dreadful spasms?"

"They are rarely accounted for satisfactorily," he replied, with professional nonchalance; "but, if I were to venture an opinion, I should say that the _convulsioni_ arise from distended vessels, in the neighbourhood of the spine, on the origin of the nerves--you understand, Signor Capitano?"

I was soon past understanding anything; but, after the hot dose, I was wrapped in hot blankets, friction, with strong stimulating liniments, being applied along the spine by the hard hands of two black slaves, and heated bricks were placed to my feet and hands; and under all this process I fainted away.

For days I was as one who is in a dream, passive in the hands of those sable assistants, who, doubtless, thought a bowstring would have proved a "perfect cure," and a saving of considerable trouble. The green frogged coat, the crimson fez, and the dark face of the Italian doctor, as he came from time to time, seemed all a portion of the phantasmagoria which surrounded me; but there came anon a sweeter, a softer, and more feminine face, with a lighter and a smaller hand, that seemed to touch me and smooth my pillow; and with this vision came thoughts of Louisa, of Cora, of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig and his magic spells, and then I would close my eyes, wondering whether I was asleep or awake, or if in a dream, from which I would waken, to find myself in my cool bell-tent in the green breezy vale of Aladyn, in my familiar quarters at Canterbury, or it might be in the dear old room of my boyhood, where my mother had so often hung over me and watched, in Calderwood Glen, and then I seemed to hear the cawing of the hoodiecrows among the ancient trees that rustled their green leaves in the summer wind.

The murmuring breeze that came so pleasantly to my dreaming ear passed over wooded mountains; but, alas! they were those of Bulgaria, and not my native land.

Amid all the wild ideas induced by my condition was the overpowering sense of weakness, with intense prostration and lassitude; but now, thanks to Heaven, to human skill, to my own youth and strength, the terrible disease was passing away.

While, by a stupidity or treachery closely akin to treason, our army, during the hot, breathless months of a Bulgarian summer, lay rotting and inactive at Varna, as if merely waiting the approach of winter to open a campaign with Russia--hardy Russia, the land of ice and snows, whose rash emperor boasted that her two most terrible generals were January and February--the fell disease which prostrated me was making sad havoc among my brave and patient comrades.

The 7th, 23rd, and 88th regiments, and all the infantry generally--the Highlanders almost excepted, their Celtic costume being an admirable safeguard by its warmth about the loins--were decimated by cholera. The Inniskillings and 5th Dragoon Guards were reduced to mere skeletons, and few cavalry colonels could bring more than two hundred and fifty sabres into the field.

So much was my own corps reduced, that on one parade Beverley only mustered two hundred lances; but many convalescents joined after. It was remarked that many of the ambulance corps, after what was termed "the great thunder-storm," died within five hours of being assailed by the plague.

Thus, "hundreds of brave men, who had left the British shores, full of high hope and manly strength, died in the valley of Aladyn, or on the hills overlooking Varna! The army grew discontented. Though no act unbecoming British soldiers was committed--though no breach of discipline could be charged--it was impossible to refrain from discontent. Murmurs, not loud but deep, made themselves heard. No man there but burned to meet the enemy. The entire army was prepared cheerfully to face death in the service of the country to which it had sworn allegiance; but to remain in inactivity, exposed to pestilence, which struck down its victims as surely, and nearly as speedily, as the rifle-bullet, beneath a burning sun, with no power of resistance, and no possibility of evasion, was a fate which might quell the stoutest courage, and raise discontent in the most loyal bosom."

Seven thousand Russians, who had perished of cholera some time before, were buried in the vicinity of our camp; and thus the green, smiling spot which the Bulgarians named the vale of Aladyn, the bearded Muscovites anathematized as the Valley of the Plague!

While such was the state of our inactive army at Varna, our fleet in the Black Sea was vainly seeking to lure the Russian vessels from their secure anchorage under the formidable batteries of Sebastopol; and the Turkish army was exhibiting a courage which astonished all Europe.

At Giurgevo, a city on the left bank of the Danube, on the 7th of July, a mere handful of Turks, chiefly led by a gallant Scot, styled Behram Pasha,[*] defeated a large force of Russians, after a desperate conflict. At Kalafat the latter sought in vain to force the passage of the river, and drive the Osmanlees from their stronghold; and at Citate and Oltenitza they were routed with disgrace. For neither their own native prowess, the prayers of the Bishop of Moscow, nor the miraculous image of St. Sergius, availed them--the blue cross of St. Andrew and the Eagle of Muscovy fled alike before the crescent and star of Mahommed. And now Silistria, on the Danube--"the thundering river"--became the base of operations; and there Moussa Pasha, Butler, an Irish officer, and my countryman, Naysmith, covered themselves with glory, while the Hungarian exile, Omar Pasha, opposed the foe with all his available troops.

[*] Lieutenant-Colonel Cannon.

During this time the French continued pouring into Varna, by marching across the Balkan, the great mountain barrier of Turkey, the rocky passes and deep defiles of which are almost impassable in winter.

On the 28th of July the Russians were driven from Wallachia; but the Turks were utterly defeated by them at Bayazid, on the slopes of Western Armenia, and again at Kuyukdere. Our fleets bombarded Kola, on the White Sea, and the 4th of September saw the eagle of victory hovering over the armies of the Czar at Petropaulovski; but thus the summer passed with us ingloriously away, and still our army lay inactive amid a hotbed of fever and suffering at hated Varna.

The most of these stirring events I learned after my recovery from that illness which so nearly carried me off. I knew nothing of them while in the house of the Armenian, and equally little did I know that Mr. De Warr Berkeley, in the hope that I might never rejoin, was doing all he could to blot my military reputation in the brigade to which we belonged.

It was on a morning in June--the 23rd, I think--the same day on which the Russians raised the siege of Silistria, leaving twelve thousand dead before its walls--that I seemed to wake from a long and refreshing slumber.

The vague, drowsy sense of having been surrounded by phantasms and unrealities, and that it was not Newton Norcliff, but some one else, who was lying there, sick and weary, had passed away with sleep. I was conscious and coherent now, but weak with past suffering.

Through the lattices of a pretty kiosk (for that word signifies alike a room or a house), I could see the great rose trees, covered with their fragrant glories, standing in rows, or trained over gilded iron bowers or arches. The leaves of the apricot, the purple plum and greengage trees, rustled pleasantly in the passing breeze, and pleasantly, too, there came to my ear the plashing of a marble fountain that stood in the shaded verandah without.

Around that white marble fountain grew the great scarlet pumpkin and the golden-coloured water-melon, their gaudy brilliance contrasting with the green leaves amid which they nestled. The garden was an epitome of Turkey, for there the blood-red ilex of Italy, the rose tree of Persia, the palm of Egypt, the Indian fig, and the African aloe, with the tall, solemn cypress, all grew side by side in the lovely parterres, through which the sunshine fell aslant in golden flakes.

The kiosk in which I lay was floored with marble slabs. Its walls were painted gaily with a panoramic view of Constantinople. I could recognise the heights of Pera, and all the Propontis, from the Seraglia point to the Seven Towers, with all the glories of the Golden Horn, Sophia's shining cupola, the Serai Bournou, and the cypress groves, where the dead of ages lie.

I was reposing in a pretty bed, with spotless white hangings, and lace all so charmingly arranged, that it reminded me of a baby's cradle. A divan of yellow silk cushions surrounded the apartment on three sides. On the fourth it was entirely open to the verandah and garden. On this divan I saw my undress uniform, neatly folded, with my forage-cap, sword, and cartridge-box placed above it.

My watch and purse, Louisa's miniature and ring--I felt for the latter involuntarily--were all lying on a little white marble tripod table by my side, together with a beautiful china drinking vessel, which seemed familiar to me.

A sigh of thankfulness that I was conscious, free of pain, and at comparative ease, escaped me, and I turned to survey again the other side of my chamber, when a remarkable female figure met my eye.

She was seated on the low divan, quite motionless. She was reading intently, and by her costume I knew at once that she was a French sister of charity--one of those pure in heart, great in soul, and unflinching in purpose, who, on their saint-like mission of mercy and humanity, had followed the allies from France.

Her dress was a plain black serge gown, with a spotless white coif, which fell in soft folds upon her shoulders, pure as the feathers of a dove. In her gentle face, which seemed familiar--for doubtless it had often been before me in the intervals of suffering and delirium--there was a kind, a peaceful, and divine expression, that underlay the lines of premature care, suffering, and privation.

She was young; but among the dark brown hair that was braided smoothly and modestly over her pale, serene brow, I could detect already a silver thread or two.

So perfectly regular were her features, so straight the lines of eyebrow and nose, that the dark, speaking eyes, and that drooping form of eyelid peculiar to the south of Europe, alone relieved them from tameness, for I had seen more sparkling beauty in a somewhat irregular face; but in those dark eyes there ever shone the steady light of a soul devoted to one great purpose; and yet at times, as I afterwards found, her manner could become merry, almost playful.

Slight though the motion of simply turning my head, she heard it, arose anxiously, and, coming forward, handed to me a cooling drink.

"Mademoiselle, I thank you!" said I, gratefully.

"You must not thank me, monsieur. I am simply your nurse."

"And I have disturbed you----"

"At my office--merely, monsieur, at my office, which I can read at any time within the twenty-four hours."

"And how often do you do this?"

"Every day--all these pages--see!"

Her voice was so very silvery, her eyes so calm and lustrous, her hands so white and small, that it was impossible not to see that she had been highly bred, delicately nurtured, and came of some good French family.

"How long have I been here, mademoiselle?" I asked, after a pause.

"I do not know. Monsieur was here when I came."

"And who brought you to nurse me?"

"Lieutenant Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves, heard somehow that you were here, suffering under a perilous illness. An Italian surgeon chanced to mention it at the Restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, and they brought me here. We are in the house of a rich Armenian trader--a good Christian, after his own fashion; but, O Sacre Coeur! what an odd fashion it is!"

"Ah! mademoiselle----"

"I am Archange, of the Order of Charity."

"Well, Sister Archange, you are really an angel!"

"Oh, fie! don't say so! You must think very poorly, very meanly, of me to give me a title I dare not hope to merit, even by a thousand actions such as attending you."

"Pardon me; I did but--but say what I thought."

"You are a child, and thought wrong," she replied, with playful asperity. "But you have already spoken too much for one who is only beginning to recover; so try to sleep, _mon frere_."

And, waving her hand with a pretty gesture of authority, she resumed her missal, and read on in silence.

I slept for a time--I know not how long--it might have been an hour, or perhaps two: but, when I looked up, she was still seated, motionless and reading.

"_Ma soeur!_" said I, as our eyes met, and my heart swelled with gratitude for her generous watchfulness; and she came hastily towards me.

"_Mon frere_, what do you want?"

"You mistook my meaning when I called you an angel, and were angry with me."

"Angry?--I? Ah, no! no! Don't say so--I am never angry; it would not do for me to be so now."

"But I think you quite a saint to watch me thus."

"You must not say that either."

"You are so good, and I so unworthy."

"Good I may be thought, monsieur; but I shall never be a saint, like Father Vincent de Paul--I am too wicked for that," she added, laughing merrily; "but I try to be as good as I can."

"Have any letters come here for me?"

"Letters!" she said, with alarm in her fine eyes, and withdrawing a pace.

"Yes; I am so anxious for them."

"Ah! now you are beginning to rave again. In your pain and delirium you always raved about letters."

"There are, then, none?" said I, with a groan.

"I shall see, _mon frere_," and, in the kindness of her heart, after pretending to search for what she too well knew were not to be found, she came again to my bedside, and said there would, perhaps, be some to-morrow.

"Still no letter!" I exclaimed, sadly, with tears in my eyes.

She laid a soft hand caressingly on my brow.

I besought her, in the most moving terms, to inquire if there were any letters for me at our cantonments in the vale of Aladyn, heedless of the distance and of the trouble I gave her; for I thought only of Louisa Loftus, and that her answer to my Gallipoli missive might have reached the regiment during my illness and absence.

"Monsieur, then, belongs to the English service?"

"No."

"The Osmanli army, then?"

"No, mademoiselle; I belong to the British," said I.

"Ah! true. But your uniform is not red?"

"All our light cavalry wear blue. Ah, _ma soeur_, seek the quarters of the lancers serving in the Light Brigade, and see if there is a letter for me. It will do me more good than all the doses of our Italian doctor."

"Ah! you will be dosed by him no more."

"I am truly glad to hear it. Some of his messes were vile enough."

"Do not speak so ungratefully; but you know not what I mean or what has happened."

"How?"

"Poor _monsieur le docteur_ is dead."

"Dead!"

"He died of cholera in the cavalry camp yesterday. He had volunteered to attend the sick soldiers in the vale of Aladyn, and perished at his post among them."

I was greatly shocked by this intelligence, which perhaps, it was not wise in my little nurse to afford me at such a time.

When again I woke from sleep the shadows of evening were darkening the room; the trellis-work and Venetian lattices that had opened to the sunlit garden were closed now, and the sun had set. Sister Archange was seated in her usual place upon the low divan, but looking pale and exceedingly fatigued.

She had been at the British cavalry camp, and she had seen my friends, but no letters had arrived for me, of that she was assured, as she had taken one of my cards from its case to show the commanding officer.

"No letters?" I repeated, in a hollow tone.