LXXXIII
“Camp near Varna,“June.“My dearest Mother,“We arrived Here all Safe, and are Incampt with the Division on a Scrubby Plane by a Lake full of Leaches about 2 milse inland of Varna, Which is the Beastliest Town you ever Saw. It is Full of English, French, Turks, Bulgarians, Jews, Infadels, and Herraticks. Every now and Then a Fire brakes out which MarshalSt.Arnod the French Commander-in-Chief says is Dew to insendiary Greekse. Yesterday it Was the House next our Powder Maggazine, but luckily the Wind Changed, and we Lost neerly all our Stores of Barly, Biskits, Tea, Suggar, Coffy, Flower and so on. N.B.—How does He know it was insendiary Greekse?“Tell my Father that the Army is short of Otse and Forridge. Though we have Not quite 4,000 Beests of Transport to move an Army of 27,000 Men!!! We Have Hardly Annything to Give them, And the Noise they make is something Friteful, and every day Lotts of them die. The Cavalry Horses are Fed at preasent, that is all One can Say. I am quite Well, so you must not be Fritened when you Read in the Paperse that Colera has broken out among the Troops.”
“Camp near Varna,
“June.
“My dearest Mother,
“We arrived Here all Safe, and are Incampt with the Division on a Scrubby Plane by a Lake full of Leaches about 2 milse inland of Varna, Which is the Beastliest Town you ever Saw. It is Full of English, French, Turks, Bulgarians, Jews, Infadels, and Herraticks. Every now and Then a Fire brakes out which MarshalSt.Arnod the French Commander-in-Chief says is Dew to insendiary Greekse. Yesterday it Was the House next our Powder Maggazine, but luckily the Wind Changed, and we Lost neerly all our Stores of Barly, Biskits, Tea, Suggar, Coffy, Flower and so on. N.B.—How does He know it was insendiary Greekse?
“Tell my Father that the Army is short of Otse and Forridge. Though we have Not quite 4,000 Beests of Transport to move an Army of 27,000 Men!!! We Have Hardly Annything to Give them, And the Noise they make is something Friteful, and every day Lotts of them die. The Cavalry Horses are Fed at preasent, that is all One can Say. I am quite Well, so you must not be Fritened when you Read in the Paperse that Colera has broken out among the Troops.”
Young Morty Jowell, seated on the end of the tent-cot before his folding trestle-table, laid down the pen at this point, and dispiritedly rubbed his nose. Looking from where he sat, he could see under the lifted canvas of thehospital-marquees the rigid shapes of smitten soldiers lying in rows on the cut rushes that covered the bare ground.... For Spring and Summer had conspired with Sire my Friend to the undoing of his Allies of England. Spring had spread beds for the soldiers of the deep wet moss, starred with purple iris and the blue bead hyacinth. Summer had woven her nets of wild sweet roses, filled her deep vineyards with deadly bait of grapes, peaches, and figs. The bees had made for them of the yellow azalea-blossoms, the fragrant, poisonous green honey that breeds fever and delirium. They had eaten of this, and of the tempting fruit, and sickened; and Pestilence had risen up and breathed her blue miasma upon them, and gripped them in her iron cramps, and they had died. The dead were being buried as Morty wrote on:
“Odly enuf, the French on the Hites have got it Though their Camps are better Plaiced than what ours Are. They have sent 3 Divisions into the Dobrudja, where 90 thowsand Russians are being held in Chek by Omar Pasha. They are putting Whole Regiments on their Transports and sending Them out to Sea.“Yesterday I saw the loveliest Girl I ever saw in my Life out Riding on the Road to Aladyn on the Finest Brown Horse I ever Saw in my life. She comes from the Bashi’s Camp. None of the Officers know her Naim, but all of them call her Golden Cloak, bicause of her Hair, which is the most Wonderful I ever Saw in my Life. A man of Ours told me Her Father is a Colonel of Bashis and that her mother was a Georgian Princess. I Never saw such Hair or such Eyes in All my life.“I am your loving son,“Mortimer.“P.S.—I forgot to tell my Father that the Trooper who saved my life in the Reck ofThe British Queenis my Cousin Sarah’s Son, Joshua Horrotian. When I thanked him and asked him to Shake Hands he Rifused. I Think it is bicause of Something My Father Has Done about his Mother’s Propperty. Tell my Father I do Not want a Hunting Box and that I had rather die a Beggar than That enny man should be Wronged for me. Mind you tell that to my Father. And tell him I have Not yet Had HisAnser to a Certain Letter he knose of. And that I Mean it Every Word.“M. J.“P.P.S.—You must Not supose that Bicause she Comes from the Bashis’ Camp she is Not a Lady. If she is Not One I never Saw one in my Life.“M. J.“P.P.P.S.—Love and Thanks for the Caises of Good Things which were Hily apreciated.“M.”
“Odly enuf, the French on the Hites have got it Though their Camps are better Plaiced than what ours Are. They have sent 3 Divisions into the Dobrudja, where 90 thowsand Russians are being held in Chek by Omar Pasha. They are putting Whole Regiments on their Transports and sending Them out to Sea.
“Yesterday I saw the loveliest Girl I ever saw in my Life out Riding on the Road to Aladyn on the Finest Brown Horse I ever Saw in my life. She comes from the Bashi’s Camp. None of the Officers know her Naim, but all of them call her Golden Cloak, bicause of her Hair, which is the most Wonderful I ever Saw in my Life. A man of Ours told me Her Father is a Colonel of Bashis and that her mother was a Georgian Princess. I Never saw such Hair or such Eyes in All my life.
“I am your loving son,“Mortimer.
“P.S.—I forgot to tell my Father that the Trooper who saved my life in the Reck ofThe British Queenis my Cousin Sarah’s Son, Joshua Horrotian. When I thanked him and asked him to Shake Hands he Rifused. I Think it is bicause of Something My Father Has Done about his Mother’s Propperty. Tell my Father I do Not want a Hunting Box and that I had rather die a Beggar than That enny man should be Wronged for me. Mind you tell that to my Father. And tell him I have Not yet Had HisAnser to a Certain Letter he knose of. And that I Mean it Every Word.
“M. J.
“P.P.S.—You must Not supose that Bicause she Comes from the Bashis’ Camp she is Not a Lady. If she is Not One I never Saw one in my Life.
“M. J.
“P.P.P.S.—Love and Thanks for the Caises of Good Things which were Hily apreciated.
“M.”
That is, by the rank-and-file. For Morty, mentally burdened by the paternal confidences as to cabbaging, declined to partake of the luxuries sent out to him in huge consignments by special deliveries, week and week about. You saw the Ensign turning these over to the men of his company, and living on Service rations of fresh or salt pork, biscuit, rice, and rum. To those who asked why, he explained that he preferred this Spartan form of nourishment; at those who chaffed he grinned or scowled. And presently the big tin-lined cases from Fortnum and Mason’s, or Goodey and Cates, left off coming, as did those that had been dispatched from the emporiums of these purveyors to hundreds of other wealthy young officers, and to the caterers of countless Regimental messes. Entombed at the bottoms of holds, beneath shot and empty shell; piled up in warehouses with mountains of other good and useful things, doomed never to be drunk or eaten, worn or used, they lay until the ending of the War brought about their exhumation. And long before then, flinty biscuit had become a luxury, and salt pork was not to be had every day.
You may gather that from the very outset of the Eastern Campaign the names of Cowell, Sewell, Powell, and many others of the fraternity had not infrequently reached Morty’s ears in conjunction with expressions of disapprobation. Nor, despite all the consideration shown him by his comrades, could references to Thompson Jowell, couched in terms the reverse of admiring, fail to find utterance in the presence of the great man’s son. For when he was not present as a Forage and Supply Contractor, you met him as an Auxiliary Transport Agent. He was here, there, and everywhere.... He had a finger in every pie....Before very long, it seemed to his son, that whenever men talked together in lowered tones, with angry faces, the name of Jowell was certain to be the burden of their discourse.
“S’sh!” someone would say hastily, as Morty’s tall shadow fell across the threshold of the mess-tent, or drew near over the sandy parading-ground.
“Why?... Who?...” the man who had been holding forth would ask, without looking up.
“Hisson!”... the man who had “S’sh’ed!” would say:
“Oh!”
Morty grew to hate that branding interjection. And that prophecy of Jowell’s, that he would never be ashamed of his old Governor, was falsified every day.
Sometimes he would begin to fear that he hated the man who had begotten him. This acute stage of his complaint was reached when it began to be known that the Allies would winter on the Black Sea. For forage, and clothing, and provisions, and all that the Army needed, it was said, was being sent out in the great Government transport,The Realm, from Portsmouth Dockyard.... What wonder that the boy, unwilling sharer in the grisly secret that made the stiff gray hair of Thompson Jowell bristle on his head o’ nights, was galled and tortured! His apprehension had ridden him as though he had been another Sindbad, throttled by the hairy incubus of the immortal story. Then he had hit on a plan for getting rid of this dreadful Old Man of the Sea.
He had taken his courage in both hands and written boldly to his father, maintaining at the same time a caution that made him shudder at himself. For lest Jowell’s murderous secret should leave bloody finger-marks on every page, it was necessary to be ambiguous. Yet he had conveyed his meaning clearly, and the final sentence, with all its crudity, had the ring of steel on stone.
“Sinse I Caim out Here I Have Bigun to understand Better than I did Bifore What you Meant by What you Said that Night at Dinner. And if you Do this Thing that you have Planned to do, I will never come Home Agane or call myself by your Naim, or take another Six-pens of your Money. As God lives, I won’t, so now youKnow! My mother shall hear the Truth and Chuse between us! It is Hard on a Fellow To have to rite like this to His Father, but You Have Brought it on yourself!”
“Sinse I Caim out Here I Have Bigun to understand Better than I did Bifore What you Meant by What you Said that Night at Dinner. And if you Do this Thing that you have Planned to do, I will never come Home Agane or call myself by your Naim, or take another Six-pens of your Money. As God lives, I won’t, so now youKnow! My mother shall hear the Truth and Chuse between us! It is Hard on a Fellow To have to rite like this to His Father, but You Have Brought it on yourself!”
There was a postscript:
“Remember I will never come Home or Call myself by your Naim, or Take another Peny of your Monney. Don’t do it, Gov.! Don’t do it for God’s saik. He might Forgive you. I Never shold, I Know!“M.”
“Remember I will never come Home or Call myself by your Naim, or Take another Peny of your Monney. Don’t do it, Gov.! Don’t do it for God’s saik. He might Forgive you. I Never shold, I Know!
“M.”
You are to imagine Thompson Jowell perusing this composition with eyes that whirled in their shallow round orbits, and a complexion that underwent strange changes, deepening from fiery red to muddy purple, and from muddy purple to pale sea-green.
The letter had been directed to his place of business in the City. When he blundered up out of his office-chair, crumpling it in his shaking hand, he was dizzy, and there was a singing in his ears. That his boy should even dream of turning against his old Governor was preposterous and absurd, if appalling. The letter was a bit of high-flown nonsense. Nothing would ever come of it! But yet he shook in every limb, and his shirt was damp upon his back.
It was his Fate, that, priding himself as he did upon the doggedness of will and tenacity of purpose that had combined with unscrupulousness in the making of his fortune, he could not recognize in his son the first-named qualities. He had begotten his own judge. Though he blinked the fact, it was presently to come to him, after a method unexpected, terrible, and strange.
The dizziness passed off; Jowell waddled on his thick short legs to the rusty fireplace, thrust the letter deep into the heart of the handful of coal that burned there, and held it down with the poker until it blazed up and was reduced to a grayish crisp of thin ash. Then he got a glass of water from the yellow washstand, went to his cupboard, and deliberately swallowed two Cockle’s pills.
Whenever Conscience woke up, and clamored behind the gorgeous waistcoat of the great Contractor, he was accustomed to silence her by the administration of a bumpingdose. Purged of repentance and relieved, we may suppose, of scruples, his reply to Morty’s letter was a masterpiece in its way.
For it reminded the son, indirectly, of all that the father had done for him, and temptingly enlarged upon all that he meant to do.... At the end came the pregnant intimation that Mortimer was not to flurry himself about affairs that were no concern of his. And that—in a particular instance not more definitely specified, Sturdy Stephen Standfast was the name of his old Gov.
“For he don’t mean that letter! Not a word of it!” snorted Thompson Jowell, quite himself as he blotted the reply to Morty’s letter on the morning after the two Cockle’s pills. He added: “Throw his old Gov. over!... By Gosh! he ain’t capable of it. By Gosh! if an Angel came down from Heaven”—one would like to hear Jowell’s conception of Heaven—“and told me he was, I wouldn’t take its word.”
When it comes to a tussle between Old Standfast and Young Standfast, one may be pretty certain as to which is going to win.... Having marked out, in his blundering boyish way, a line of conduct, Mortimer Jowell meant to follow it unswervingly. Hence the answer to the letter was a blow to all his hopes. He wrote no more to his father, though the dowdy woman regularly received his ill-spelt letters! And being of a kindly, affectionate disposition, he was profoundly wretched, in anticipation of the coming hour when he must keep his word.
Gnawing suspense and mental anxiety, combined with the effects of a deadly climate, might have hurried the Ensign to the grave on the heels of many another brave young officer, had not Love, with all its distractions, fears, and longings, acted as a tonic, and braced the patient up.
The Mounted Irregulars whom Morty had learned to refer to as the Bashis, were encamped in what had been a vineyard by the roadside on the way to Aladyn. Their chief, reported to be the father of Golden Cloak, Morty knew by sight as a bronzed, fiercely-mustached, soldierly man of perhaps forty-five. Splendidly mounted, dressed in the dark blue single-breasted tunic with green facings, light blue red-striped pantaloons, long spurred boots, black sheepskin kalpak and gray cloak, you would have taken him for an Osmanli commander of regular horse—hadit not been for the blue, silver striped shawl worn round his kalpak, in combination with his unstudied off-hand manner of administering chastisement to his ragged, strangely bedizened, variously-weaponed troopers, with the flat of the naked sword.
It was torture to know that the bright cynosure hailed from that rowdy camp of brigands.... Morty, who had never previously known concern as to the reputation of any young woman, was uneasy upon this score. He found the cool, cynical attitude of his brother officers intolerable. For Golden Cloak had flashed by, a shining meteor borne on a brown-black storm-cloud—and left behind a champion and a slave.
She had ridden her magnificent Kabarda, with its costly shabrack of blue cloth, gold-embroidered, and gold and scarlet bridle, astride, after the graceful fashion of Peruvian ladies. She was small, pale, slight in stature as a child.... Her tiny features, pure as pearl, illuminated with black Oriental eyes, flashing and melting under the arches of meeting eyebrows, were crowned by a little black lambskin kalpak, in which was set an aigrette of flashing diamonds. The miraculous cloak of shining curls covered her to mid-thigh.... But he could see that she wore a Hussar tunic of dark blue, with golden frogs, green welts, and trimmings of black lambskin, and that her girdle was of gold lace, crimson-striped. Also, that her ample trousers of light blue cloth ended in high boots of scarlet leather, golden-spurred.
There was a sand-wind blowing under a blistering sun that day, and at first young Mortimer had cursed it heartily. With equal heartiness he was to bless it, presently. For as she galloped past, it had snatched the lambskin kalpak from her head, and dropped it in a puff of scorching dust at his feet. He had pounced on it greedily. Golden Cloak had reined up her splendid beast, and wheeled, and ridden towards him....
“Beg pardon! You dropped this!”
Young Mortimer had held up the dainty headgear towards her, saluting with the best grace he knew how to muster. She had answered in English.... Heavens! what lisping, quaintly-flavored English!...
“It is mine.”
“Please!... Won’t you take it?”
He had tendered the kalpak, wondering why she stretched forth no hand to receive it. Instead she had blushed and frowned, shaking her head. And as the boy had faltered, abashed by her loveliness, downcast by what seemed her disdain, a gust of the dusty wind had lifted the golden mantle, shedding it on either side of her slim young body like a pair of glittering wings; and Mortimer Jowell, standing in the soft black dust of the road between the vineyards, had known an overwhelming shock of grief, surprise, and horror; for Beauty had no hands.
The Lancer tunic had wide short, braided sleeves that ended well above the elbow. From these two slender white arms projected, ending in the stumps of little wrists.... The reins of her fiery horse were buckled to a leathern strap that went about her middle. She guided him by the sway of her slender body to right or left; stopped him by leaning back, maintained her seat by the clasp of her supple limbs about his shining barrel. There was perfect accord, complete sympathy, between the rider and the steed.
But oh! the pity of it! Young Morty had not been able to speak, lest he should stammer, and choke, and blubber. He had stood in the middle of the road, gaping stupidly, holding the dainty headgear, which he made no effort to restore.... She had flushed red. Perhaps she had thought—who knows what she thought of the dull young English officer? But the horse had drawn nearer, trotting through the thick black dust, with dainty mincing steps, whisking its superb tail and tossing its mane, spreading its scarlet nostrils, cocking its wild eye backwards at its rider, less in mischief than in play.
It had moved abreast of Morty, almost touching him with its glossy shoulder, and stopped. The rider had bent low, shedding a torrent of curls over the holsters at the saddle-bow, covering even her dainty boot with the hem of her golden cloak. Evidently she expected the Englishman to replace the kalpak on her head. But he did not. She gave him a furious glance, caught the cap in her little teeth, snatched it from his hand, rose in the saddle, and was gone like the wind itself.
“Gaw!” cried Mortimer in stupefaction, for it was the darting flight of the swallow rather than the gallop of a horse. And then the thick red blood had rushed from his heart and dyed his healthy round face to the forehead....She was afflicted, this lovely girl, and he had stared at her! Smarting, he went back to camp, more out of conceit with Morty Jowell than he had even been before, and yet supremely, idiotically happy. For her hair had swept over him, bathed him, drowned him for one divine moment in fragrance and beauty. And he could never forget that moment, not if he lived to be an old, old man, he knew.
Now he finished his letter to his mother, addressed and stamped it, took sword and revolver from the tent-rack, and went for another walk upon the road to Aladyn. Not with the idea of meeting her. You are not to imagine it. He was merely looking for a native wagon-driver who would take his letter to the post. Presently one came along, straddling with unclean bare feet upon the foot-board of his creaking wagon, scratching the populous head under his sheepskin cap with one hand, the other being engaged in goading his ill-fed bullocks with the end of a sharpened stick. And to him Morty said in his brand-new Turkish, not being up to the Bulgarian:
“Ohayarabaji! How much casho will you aski to carry amektubto thePosta Khanêin Varna? Understandi?Yok?”
But the native shook his shaggy head, scowling upon his interlocutor in a manner the reverse of friendly, and upon Morty’s drawing anew upon his stores of Turkish, responded with a Rabelaisian gesture of contempt which brought the wrathful blood to the rim of the Ensign’s forage-cap.
“You uncivil beast. Ain’t we here to fight for you?” he demanded; but thearabajionly prodded his lean bullocks and creaked upon his way. Morty would have dearly liked to follow him, and punch his shaggy head, but that a long way off he saw her coming, and his heart thudded against his scarlet coat, and his stock was suffocating.... Because she must not pass him by, believing that he had been a boor, coarse and unfeeling. She must stay—she must hear what had to be said. And he had no words, but intensity of feeling lent gesture eloquence. He stretched his hands, palm upwards, towards her, then brought them to his lips, and folded them upon his breast.
“You who are so stricken, yet so beautiful—you to whom my heart has gone out—whom I loved at sight—pardon me!—pity me! Oh! do not pass me by without one word!”
The gesture said all this, though he did not know it.She checked her fiery Kabarda in mid-canter, and rode slowly up to him. He grew dizzy as the breeze brought him the remembered perfume of her hair. And she said, slowly, fixing her great dark eyes upon the simple face of Mortimer Jowell:
“You wish to speak to me?” She added, as he looked away, stroking the delicate withers of the thoroughbred: “You wish to tell me that you did not know, I think, and that now you do know, you are sorry—yes?”
He gulped the lump in his throat and nodded, finding courage to look at her. She said—and an Asiatic lisping of the consonants and lengthening of the vowels lent charm and strangeness to the words—
“You are anaghain the Army of the Ingiliz?”
He answered at a venture that he was. She said, and the small pale face had a delicate vivacity:
“I like the Ingiliz. I have their blood through my father! He is Kaimakam of the Bashi of the Brigade of Adrianople, and comes of a noble family of London. He is of the Jones.”
“Beg pardon!” stuttered Morty, thinking that he had not heard clearly, “but would you mind saying that again?”
Golden Cloak repeated, folding her slender arms proudly upon her round young bosom:
“He is a Jones of London, my father. That is a name of honor in your country—yes?”
“Gaw!” said Morty, forcing enthusiasm, “I should rather think it was!”
The diamond aigrette of her cap sparkled in the hot sunshine as she bent her golden head royally. A smile played about her little lips, scarlet as pomegranate-buds.
“There are many of my father’s name in London?”
Morty said truthfully:
“Bless you! there are thousands of ’em in the Post-Office Directory!”
“Some day I will go,” she said, “to Ingiland, and make acquaintance of my relatives. For now, I am with my father.... He has no one but me.... I could not bear to leave him.... I have been with him always, since my beautiful mother died.” She added, and the tiny nostrils quivered:
“I know that she was beautiful because my father hasher portrait. She was a Christian Princess of Georgia, daughter of the Eristav of Kakhetia. He was a noble Prince of the Bagratides, descended from the Great Sarbad. The price paid by that family in expiation of murder is double the blood-fine of the lower class!”
She showed her little gleaming teeth in so proud a smile as she made this statement that Morty stammered out:
“Uncommon gratifying, and—and jolly for them, I’m sure, Miss!”
She did not look at Mortimer Jowell. Her great gazelle eyes were fixed upon a heron that was fishing in a little river that wound through the deep green vineyards beside the dusty road. The bird rose with a loud, melancholyhonk, clapped its wings, and flew away diagonally, its long legs stuck out straight behind it, its crop thrust forwards, its slender neck curved back between its wings. A shaggy dog rushed out of a little hut that was only a reed-mat thrown over two poles, barking at the heron—a gypsy-girl thrust her tangled head out and nodded to Golden Cloak, showing grinning white teeth in a face burned black by the Bulgarian sun. The nightingales were jug-jugging in the poplars that edged the rivulet, the walnut and apricot-trees seemed full of lesser warblers, the frogs kept up a subdued bass of croakings, the black-backed, white-bellied swifts wheeled screaming through the pure, clear burning air. And it was to the boy as if he had never before seen these things, or guessed their beauty and significance. And they, and the hot blue sky that roofed them, and the thick black dust his boots and the delicate feet of her horse were bedded in, were of Golden Cloak and belonged to her, as the setting belongs to the gem. And, clear and plaintive as some shepherd’s flute, her small, sweet voice went on speaking of the dead mother:
“She died when I was born. Her family were angry when she ran away to be always with my father. They held him accursed because he had abjured Christianity and embraced the faith of Islâm. But it was her fate. Can a woman resist her fate? And besides, my father is not a good Mussulman at all!”
The great blue-black eyes were on Mortimer’s. They drew and drew him....
“Not long afterwards my father was sent upon an expeditioninto Mingrelia. It was the month ofNissân—the time when the people make strong wine of green honey andjundari—what you call, I think, the millet? The Bashi stole much of this, and became more than ever ‘lost heads.’ They entered the villages of Christians, they plundered, burned, and killed men, women, and children without mercy. And my mother rode up with my father, as one of hischawushescut off the hands of a young girl.... To my father she said that night: ‘The child of our love will be born handless.’ And it was so. And when they brought me to her, she lifted the shawl that covered me, and died!”
The proud little face broke up. Great tears sprang from the beautiful eyes and ran down, splashing on the golden braidings of the Hussar tunic, falling like scattered pearls on her black sheepskin of the saddle-holsters. She shook her head, and jerked them off. Then, trembling at his own audacity, Mortimer Jowell produced from his cuff a spotless cambric handkerchief, and would have dried those sacred tears, had not the fiery Kabarda reared so suddenly, that the too-daring Ensign, catching the bridle in fear for Golden Cloak, was swung off his feet.
“Let him go,” she said, high in mid-air, unconcerned and now smiling. Adding, as Morty obeyed, and the horse came gently to the ground: “Do not be angry, Urvan, this is another friend!” Then: “Urvan is a little jealous, he sees me speak to so few people.... And next to my father and my nurse, Maryanka, a Tartar woman who has been with me since my birth, he is my protector.... My father trusts me with him.... He would be dangerous to anyone who tried to do me harm.... You cannot think how he loves me!... Even like this he loves me!”
And with a gesture that wrung the boy’s soft heart she showed her piteous stumps. And Morty blurted out, desperately:
“So do other people love you! Don’tIlove you? Gaw!—I’d lie down in the dust and let that beautiful beast of yours trample me to mash if it would give you what you want! I swear I would!”
“Ah! You are generous!” she said softly. “I saw it in your face. Tell me your name, that I may always remember it!”
He said, with a boldness that appalled him:
“When you have told me yours!”
“It is Zora. You do not like it?”
He blurted out: “I adore the name. I worship the girl it belongs to! I’m blest if I don’t, so there!”
She leaned from her saddle impulsively, and the golden cloak fell over him and covered him. He looked up, drowning in the light of her glorious eyes, and his boyhood fell away like a cast garment. He had come into his kingdom. He knew himself a man....
They were to meet but once again upon the dusty road to Aladyn. The next letter of the yellowed bundle docketed “From my dearest son” is dated:
“British Camp,“Kalamita Bay,“September 14.“My dearest Mother,“The Hole Army has landed after a Saif and Prosperus Voyag across the Black Sea to the Crimea. We—I Mean the English—saled in 7 Collums each of 30 vessels every 2 or 3 Vessels being toad by a Steemer. The Fiteing Force that convoid us was 10 Line-of-Battle Ships besides 50 gun Frigats, 2 screw and 13 small steemers. I herd an Ngineer say to his mait the Smoak was for all the World like the Pit Country. The French and Turkish Fleats we overhawled shortly after saling, the French had 15 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War Steamers, the Turks 8 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War steemers. I did not count the transports. But the site of the Flotilla at Sea was tremenjus, and Must have made the Ruskies at Sevastopole shaik in their shose. At Nite with all the Red, Blue, and Green litse hung from the masts it was a good deal like Vauxhall Gardens. N.B. Without the Cold Ham and the Champain, there being Preshus little to Eat on Bord.“Day after Landing.“What do you think of the Froggeys having the Impudens to Move our Boy in the Night from the Plais where It had been ankered by the Admiral of the Flaggship and the Quartermaster-General, thus Bagging the Hole Bay for their Opperations. Nice I don’t Think! We were all Landid without our Tents and Lots of the men without their Napsacks being too week to carry them and lay downon the Beech in the Poaring Rane and you never heard a Grumball, and Colera bissy among them too. Me and my Captain Lord Leighminster and Lieutenant Ardenmore (Whisky) slep in a Cornfield near the Beech and Woak in a puddel 6 in. deep, and the Duke and his Staff past the nite under a Bullok Waggon and seamed rather to Injoy it than Not.“But if you had seen the jumball we were in, French and English all mixt up together! The Ruskies would have had an Easy Whack if they had made a Sortee.“4 Days after Landing.“We are Moving Against the Russian Position on the River Alma which means Apple, and now my darling Mother on what Perhaps may be the Eave of Axion I must tell you that I Love her with All my Hart. What I shall Do if she will Not Marry me I don’t Know, so perhaps it Wold be Best for Me to get Shott. N.B. It is the girl they called Golden Cloak at Varna. Her Father’s Regiment is with the Turkish Army 2 milse down the Cost. Her Christian name is Zora. She told me I might call her by it....“The Pity is——”Scratched out.“It is Sad to Think——”Scratched out.“Perhaps the Cheaf reason I Love her So is Because She has No Hands.”
“British Camp,
“Kalamita Bay,
“September 14.
“My dearest Mother,
“The Hole Army has landed after a Saif and Prosperus Voyag across the Black Sea to the Crimea. We—I Mean the English—saled in 7 Collums each of 30 vessels every 2 or 3 Vessels being toad by a Steemer. The Fiteing Force that convoid us was 10 Line-of-Battle Ships besides 50 gun Frigats, 2 screw and 13 small steemers. I herd an Ngineer say to his mait the Smoak was for all the World like the Pit Country. The French and Turkish Fleats we overhawled shortly after saling, the French had 15 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War Steamers, the Turks 8 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War steemers. I did not count the transports. But the site of the Flotilla at Sea was tremenjus, and Must have made the Ruskies at Sevastopole shaik in their shose. At Nite with all the Red, Blue, and Green litse hung from the masts it was a good deal like Vauxhall Gardens. N.B. Without the Cold Ham and the Champain, there being Preshus little to Eat on Bord.
“Day after Landing.
“What do you think of the Froggeys having the Impudens to Move our Boy in the Night from the Plais where It had been ankered by the Admiral of the Flaggship and the Quartermaster-General, thus Bagging the Hole Bay for their Opperations. Nice I don’t Think! We were all Landid without our Tents and Lots of the men without their Napsacks being too week to carry them and lay downon the Beech in the Poaring Rane and you never heard a Grumball, and Colera bissy among them too. Me and my Captain Lord Leighminster and Lieutenant Ardenmore (Whisky) slep in a Cornfield near the Beech and Woak in a puddel 6 in. deep, and the Duke and his Staff past the nite under a Bullok Waggon and seamed rather to Injoy it than Not.
“But if you had seen the jumball we were in, French and English all mixt up together! The Ruskies would have had an Easy Whack if they had made a Sortee.
“4 Days after Landing.
“We are Moving Against the Russian Position on the River Alma which means Apple, and now my darling Mother on what Perhaps may be the Eave of Axion I must tell you that I Love her with All my Hart. What I shall Do if she will Not Marry me I don’t Know, so perhaps it Wold be Best for Me to get Shott. N.B. It is the girl they called Golden Cloak at Varna. Her Father’s Regiment is with the Turkish Army 2 milse down the Cost. Her Christian name is Zora. She told me I might call her by it....
“The Pity is——”Scratched out.
“It is Sad to Think——”Scratched out.
“Perhaps the Cheaf reason I Love her So is Because She has No Hands.”