XC
For days the dark malodorous blue fog had hung over Stamboul. Now the southwest wind had rolled it up like a curtain and carried it away into Syria, and the great imperial city of marble domes and snowy minarets tipped with golden crescents, cypress-groves, and fountains, bagnios and beggars, sylvan vistas and screeching stinks, lay basking in golden November sunshine under a sky of purest turquoise. The scarlet and yellow tinting of the vines and creepers that draped the walls and the balconies of the black and red and white and yellow houses, alone told of winter, like the deepened crimson of the robin’sbreast, and the pale purple of the crocus-like colchicum starring the meadows by the Sweet Waters. For those who chose, it would be summer. And all the vices of the Old World and the New came out to bask in the warmth and the beauty. And the roar of traffic and the confusion of tongues in the offal-ridden, stinking thoroughfares and on the filthy quays, above the broad belt of discarded straw slippers, rusty tin kettles, and wooden basins, and decomposing cats and dogs, that rose and fell upon the margin of the crystal-blue Bosphorus—deafened the ears and dazed the brain.
The roadsteads of Beshiktash were packed with French and English battleships and transports. The vessels of the Turkish Fleet, with the great golden lions sprawling on their prows, were anchored lower down. Innumerable gilded caïques, richly draped and cushioned, propelled by rowers in gay liveries and crowded—not only by Turkish ladies veiled in the yashmak, and swathed in the feridjeh, but by English and French women of Society—dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, and accompanied by uniformed officers and civilian friends in correct afternoon attire—shot to and fro over the surface of the harbor; seeming to avoid, yet encircling and following a large galley, gorgeous as a dying dolphin in colors of crimson and silver and green, and closely attended by one or two vessels of magnificence only inferior to the first, which had been waiting all the morning at the Dolma Bâghchi Palace Stairs.
His Sublime Majesty, the Padishah, a sallow, black-bearded, impassive personage—suggestive, in his tightly-buttoned frock coat and plain fez, of a dark blue glass medicine-bottle with a red seal—attended by one or two privileged Ministers, corpulent and spectacled dignitaries with gray beards, was pleased to take the air of the harbor instead of seeking the refreshment of the Sweet Waters; and it was etiquette to follow, at a respectful distance, the galley containing the Luminary of the World. Thus, the gilded caïques containing the veiled inmates of the harems of Stamboul and Pera and Therapia, or the well-dressed ladies of the Legations and Consulates with their male companions, followed the turns and windings of the monster dolphin, like a flock of variegated Pacific parrot-fish, while the fervid sunshine poured down upon the glory andthe loveliness, the filth and the degradation of the ancient seat of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and all the vices of the East and of the West mingled in the olla-podrida of nations and of tongues.
Veiled and muffled Turkish ladies, elevated above the mud upon wooden clogs, went by, with chattering Nubian women in attendance on them. Old men in green turbans hawkedcocoand sweetmeats; gypsy-girls, brazen of glance and bold of tongue, trafficked in fortunes and did business in smiles. Turkish soldiers of the Reserve, garrisoning the capital—the fine flower of the Ottoman Army being with Omar Pasha at Eupatoria—shambled by, smoking cigarettes, or munching lumps of coarse ration-bread. And Jews, Armenians, Germans of the Legion, Styrians, Levantines, Africans, Bulgarians, Wallachs, Czechs, rubbed shoulders with men of every rank and branch of the Sister Services of Britain and her Ally of France.
And amongst the English officers who thronged the European Clubs, and crowded the hotels, and strolled upon the public places, were well-groomed, dandified, curled and whiskered Adonises who had been the spoiled and petted beauty-men of their regiments at Home, and were going out to Balaklava under the impression that they were heroes. But when they encountered the men who had come down invalided from the Front, the luster fled from their Macassared whiskers, and the assurance of their manners underwent alteration. For these were the Real Thing—the genuine article—and only for the genuine article were the ladies, English and French, Greek or Italian—possessed of ears and eyes.
Upon the deck of a large, luxurious steam-yacht, anchored with other private vessels in the roadstead below Beshiktash, and flying the Ensign ofSt.George, with the white, red-crossed, gold-crowned burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron, were gathered so many men and women representative of Society in Paris or London, that the background might have been Cowes, or Ryde, or Henley at the height of the season, instead of the European shore of the Bosphorus in November drear. And though many brilliant uniforms were present, with handsome men inside some of them, the loveliest ladies, icily ignoring these, vied with each other in attentions to certain hairy, ragged, bandaged, and limping tatterdemalions, who sported their rags with insufferablearrogance, or the profound reposeful pride of old Egyptian kings. For they were officers of Infantry and Artillery who had been wounded at the Alma, or they were Cavalrymen whose stained red jackets, striped overalls, and battered brass helmets, proclaimed them to be of Redlett’s Heavy Brigade.... And he who lolled under the green-and-white after-deck awning in a big Indian cane chair, with a little court of admiring beauties gathered round him, and the wife of the English Ambassador sitting upon his right hand—the man whose astrakhan-trimmed Hussar jacket, stiff with tarnished gold lace, was slashed to ribbons; whose busby had been shorn by a sword-cut of its red plume and gilded cord—whose crimson overalls were stained like the tights of a street tumbler—who had lost his sabretasche and half a spur, and whose boots—once the pride of a Pall Mall maker’s heart—were slit in places and had burst in others, was the most cosseted, complimented, caressed and waited-on of all those who basked in the light of admiring glances and the warmth of approving smiles.
As Houris in rustling silks, marvelous lace mantles, and bonnets of the latest Parisian mode hovered about him, ministering with champagne-cup, Russian tea, caviar-sandwiches, little Turkish pastries, and large Turkish cigarettes to his imperial needs, you saw him as a man of forty-nine or thereabouts, tall and lean in figure, sinewy of muscle, long of bone. His features were boldly aquiline and not unhandsome; his eyes were of keen, sparkling yellowish hazel, his reddish curling hair and bushy, untrimmed whiskers of the same shade were just sprinkled with gray. The outline of his jaw had the sharp salient line that distinguished the bows of the brand-new pivot-gun screw-steamer that lay anchored with the French and British line-of-battleships in the roads at Beshiktash; his smile revealed a magnificent unbroken row of shining white teeth, and his left arm was bandaged and slung. Also, he had a Russian saber-cut on his sharp cheekbone, and a Russian bullet in the muscles of his ribs made him catch his breath and grimace occasionally. For this egregious dandy, the owner of the luxurious steam-yacht and many things more desirable; who said “aw” for “are” and “wheiah” for “where,” and “Bay Jove!” with the drawl one has heard Bancroft use in Robertson comedies,was Lord Cardillon, the Brigadier who had led the famous Light Cavalry Charge at Balaklava, on the white-legged, big brown horse—who was even then being pampered with cakes and sugar in his loose-box in the ’tween decks—and whose tail the hero-worshiping crowd were to pluck bare when he got back to London.
Now, as the gold-and-crimson twenty-six-oared State caïque with the gilded whorl and the preening peacock at the prow, shot up-stream towards Therapia, Cardillon laughed, and said to the middle-aged handsome woman who sat near, the diamonds on her white hands flashing in the sunlight as she stitched at a masculine garment of coarse white calico....
“You haven’t asked how my audience went off, Lady Stratclyffe?”
“I had forgotten,” she answered, “but I presume nothing new or original was said or done, and that you were dismissed with the customary compliments?”
His laugh, rather sharp and hard, rang out again clearly. People were listening, and his white teeth gleamed in rather a self-conscious smile.
After the usual stage-wait—filled up with coffee andchibuks—we found his Sublimity at the top of a long crystal staircase, illuminated with red glass lusters. The Shadow of Omnipotence took exception to the condition of my toggery. He said to Prince Galamaki, who presented me: “Mâshallah!but the infidel’s clothes are torn and filthy! Does the Queen of England pay her Pashas so badly that they cannot afford to buy new uniforms?”
There was a burst of laughter, masculine and feminine. He went on, in the dandified drawl, pulling at his bushy whiskers with the free unbandaged hand:
“Galamaki—who had the honor of meeting you at Petersburg, Lady Stratclyffe—and who had attended to make his bow prior to leaving for the Embassy at Vienna, looked civilly agonized, not having mentioned to the Padishah that I understand Turkish pretty well. So I said, in that language, that in England we considered that the uniform of a soldier who had seen Service was his robe of honor. And that I had dressed to wait upon the Sultan as I should dress to wait upon the Queen!”
There were “bravos” and the clapping of hands. Facesof both sexes turned towards the speaker; and though he hid his pride and exultation at the homage under an affectation of cynical indifference, it expanded his sharply-cut nostril and burned in his light hazel eyes. He went on:
“Though the look of some of these fellows we’re waiting for might scare her....”
“Oh no!” said Lady Stratclyffe, looking up from her work. “How could you possibly imagine that?”
“English ladies are all so brave, nowadays!” he returned, with an inflection of sarcasm.
Said a velvet voice behind him, with a sweet foreign accent that added honey to the implied compliment:
“Milord, the English ladies but follow the example of the English gentlemen!”
“Capital, Madame de Roux!” called out a handsome gray-haired man, rather formally and stiffly dressed for a yacht-party, who had been conversing with a French officer in Zouave uniform. “You scatter your sugar-plums broadcast!—even a diplomatist may hope to pick up one in the scramble.... Now, if you had said ‘The English Army,’—Lord Cardillon would have taken the compliment to himself!”
Cardillon returned, ignoring the prick of sarcasm:
“Madame de Roux, who is upon her way to the Crimea, to confer supreme happiness upon a gallant countryman, can afford to give English ladies due credit for bravery. When do you sail, Madame?”
She thought in two days’ time.... He said, with gallant regret:
“I wish I might have had the pleasure of carrying you there in theFoam Star. But I am compelled to return to England, worse luck!”
She said, with her lovely smile, as Lord Stratclyffe was buttonholed by a gray-whiskered bluff-faced Rear-Admiral:
“There are many who will rejoice at what you so much regret. For me, I have been granted a passage upon one of my country’s war-steamers—thanks to the influence of one who is soon to become far nearer than a friend....”
He said, with a certain sharp subtlety, understanding that she referred to her approaching marriage with one of the Generals of France’s Eastern Army:
“He should be grateful for whom you risk so much! But at Kamiesch you will not suffer the inconveniences of Balaklava. Your countrymen have already built a harbor and macadamized the principal roads. They have a railway to their Front—public conveyances—field and general hospitals—ambulances, and a corps of trained attendants, supplemented by Sisters of Charity. In fact, everything that we have not—and that we ought to have!”
“And whose is the fault,” she asked, “that you have not what you ought to have?”
His debonair face suddenly changed into a mask of stiff Officialism. His eyes hardened. His lips lost their jocund curve as they dropped out the formula:
“I am really not aware!”
He shrugged his shoulders, and turned the conversation to the beauty of the sables in which she was wrapped, leaning close as he spoke of them with the air of a connoisseur, and looking at the wearer. Some other women present there were younger and more brilliant. Not one, he thought, exhaled the charm that breathed from Madame de Roux. He noted the fine lines about her eyes and mouth, and on her forehead, and the thread or two of white that showed amidst the silken black hair. Its superb coils were crowned with a wide-brimmed hat of cavalier fashion, black with drooping plumes of mauve. The tone of half-mourning characterized the exquisite array of one who had been widowed a year previously; conveying the impression of sorrow that had mellowed into resignation, bereavement not unwilling to be consoled.... Bands of mauve velvet, fastened with clasps of cameos set in brilliants, closed her full lace sleeves at the wrists and encircled the lovely throat that rose above the chemisette. Ample skirts of blackgros de Naples, stamped with mauve velvet flowers, billowed about her; exquisite feet adorning little kid boots peeped from the expansive folds. With his eyes upon the perfect arch of the revealed instep, Cardillon sighed, envying this exquisite creature’s future husband, that noted fire-eater Leguerrier.
We remember Grandguerrier, formerly Governor-General of Algeria, whom the retirement of Boisrobert was soon to place in the chief command of France’s Expeditionary Forces. Thick-set, short, hot-tempered—burnt brown byAfrican suns, with a close cap of gray hair coming down low on the sagacious forehead—with bloodshot brown eyes, snub nose, deep-cut mouth pouting under the bristling black mustache, the middle-aged commander of Zouaves and Spahis appeared what he was, a gallant soldier.... How loyally he stood by England when the imperious hand at the Tuileries checked maddeningly at the electric bridle, we never should forget!
“On the 7th of June the Mamelon Vert, the Ouvrages Blancs and the Quarries must be taken. Lord Dalgan and I have decided it. Ours is the responsibility.” And so broke up the Council of War. But when the stout little man on the white Arab rode through the English camps on the day after the successful attack, what roaring cheers went up from British throats at the sight of him.... And that he was tender-hearted as well as brave we know.
Cardillon had sighed, and his sighs were not generally wasted. Henriette turned upon him the eyes that had always reminded Dunoisse of moss-agates gleaming under running brook-water, and said with the subtle, half-mischievous smile that crinkled the corners of her eyelids, and hardly curved her mouth:
“Youshould have nothing left to sigh for at this hour!”
He said:
“But I have! I sigh for one of those violets you are wearing.”
She glanced down at the knot of pale purple blossoms pinned at the bosom of her lawn chemisette, revealed by the unfastened mantle of sables. Emboldened by her smile, he stretched a hand to them. But she leaned back, avoiding the contact of the sinewy, sunburned, covetous fingers. She had grown pale, her eyes and lips had shadows round them—she looked older, more worn. Then, as he hesitated whether to pursue his intent or withdraw his hand, she rose in a frou-frou of silken draperies, and was gone upon the arm of Lord Stratclyffe, leaving only a perfume and a desire behind her.... And Lady Stratclyffe, looking across her sewing, said quietly:
“Answerme, since even our exquisite ally must not be trusted with official secrets!... With whom does the blame rest? Need our Army of Invasion have suffered all these hardships and privations and miseries? How comesit that we are so lamentably deficient in Commissariat and Transport arrangement? Why—I quote your own words—have we ‘nothing that we ought to have’?”
He glanced about him before replying. But, seeing him engaged in talk with the Ambassadress, his guests had moved away, leaving an island of gleaming white planks about them. He said:
“Dear Lady Stratclyffe, the system of our Army Administrations has been, from first to last, a system of Contracts. One must own it has not been a success. Contractors are not, as a rule, trustworthy or conscientious.... Ours have not proved themselves exceptions to the rule!”
His shrug spoke volumes. She said, with hesitation:
“Surely the resources of the country——”
He answered harshly:
“The resources of the country, reported to be vast, were in our ease non-existent. We could get nothing! We were upon the soil of a nation for whose liberty we were about to fight, and they treated us from the first as enemies. There’s no question about it! The native Bulgarians refused to sell us grain, forage, fuel and provisions, nor would they supply us with wagons, and beasts of burden and draught, or serve us as drivers, guides or interpreters! They let us encamp where cholera and fever were rife—and so we invaded the Crimea with a weakly, invalidy, crippled army, two-thirds of ’em too weak to carry their packs and the rest horizontal—disabled or moribund! And Burgoyle rode up to the head of Varna Harbor when his Division was being put on board the transports. He shook his fist and howled—he was quite beside himself. ‘Sick men to fight the Russian Imperial Guards with! Better give me dead ones!’ But that we have achieved what we have, ma’am, we owe to the pith and pluck and endurance of these sick men.”
“They’re glorious!” she said. “They’re glorious....”! And the Brigadier went on:
“They were exhausted from exposure, dropping from want of sleep, half-starved from shortage of rations when they carried the Great Redoubt, and smashed two-thirds of Menschikoff’s army into gray lumps on the Alma. On the day of the Balaklava Attack neither men nor beasts had had bite or sup since the middle of the day before....How the Light Brigade charged I hardly know; their horses’ legs were tottering under ’em! And they lay down after the battle, round their smoky fires of green wood, with their baggage and camp equipment knocking about on board the transports, and nothing but a sopping wet blanket between half of ’em and the sky! And then they couldn’t sleep for the neighing of the horses, and the row made by the camels and mules and bullocks. For you can’t teach animals to starve in silence!—they’ve no pride like two-legged brutes! There’s a verse I’d liked at Eton, about the lions roaring and asking their meat from God. Well, the row made me think of that and wonder whether He heard them?... And—— But I suppose they’re quiet enough now!”