The scene which met Marrion's eyes when soon after daybreak she went over to the hospital tents beggars description. The wounded, many of them as yet untended, lay almost in heaps, stretcher-bearers were hurrying along, slipping on the clotted blood from many wounds, carrying those who had been seen to and could be moved to the boats for removal to Scutari. There was a low inarticulate wail of moaning in the air, broken by sudden screams of pain. Two or three women were busy giving water, trying to soothe pain, and now and again a doctor with bare arms incarnadined with blood passed hurriedly to more work.
"It is worse than I expected," said Dr. Forsyth over his shoulder to Marrion. "Do what you can, will you?"
And she did, wondering vaguely that she had not noticed that curious face when she had first seen it; the eyes alone were so unlike any she had ever seen before--greeny gold, with a dark rim round the iris. A hawk's eye, surely!
"Mrs. Marsden, I want you," came an imperative voice half an hour later, "follow me."
He was there again, and she followed him blindly into a small tent.
"The ambulance and stores have been left behind somewhere," he said bitterly. "God damn them! We have no chloroform left--they only served us out a thimbleful, though Simpson demonstrated its absolute necessity seven years ago--curse the lot--and now a case has just come in. It's life or death and the others won't touch it, but I will. See here, I was with Esdaile in India and I know it can be done. If only I haven't the seats of the scornful by me--I think you'll believe--you haven't your face for nothing, and I must have help. Give it me?"
He held out his thin nervous hands, so strangely full of grip, as he spoke; his eyes found hers and held them.
"I will give you what I can," she said at once.
"That's right!" he replied, his buoyancy back in an instant. "But you will need all your nerve, I tell you. Now help me to get the poor fellow into position."
"Let me die, doctor," moaned the patient, who lay on the doctor's truckle bed. "It is agony to move."
"No, it isn't!" replied Dr. Forsyth firmly. "You are making a mistake. You have no pain, at least not much, and you are going to lose it altogether soon. There! That's more comfortable, isn't it?"
He was busy now arranging knives and instruments on a clean towel.
"I've put them in the order I shall want them," he whispered, "and don't be in a hurry--I shall want time. Now I'm going to mesmerise him. You'll see he will pass into a deep sleep and feel no pain--none at all."
It was almost as if he were assuring himself that it would be so. An atmosphere of quiet confidence seemed to emanate from him.
Marrion found herself watching his passes with absolute faith, listening to the quiet monotonous voice with absolute belief.
"Now you are really feeling better--you are inclined to sleep--if you close your eyes you will go to sleep."
On and on went the voice insistently. The breathing grew slower, less convulsive; the eyelids closed, and all the time the doctor's face was as the face of the Angel of Death--kind, but relentless.
"Now we can begin," he said at last, resuming his quick decision. "You won't faint, will you?" he added doubtfully, with a glance at Marrion's pale cheek.
"I don't think so," she replied; "butthatseemed to hurt here." She swept her hand across her forehead.
He scanned her narrowly.
"Umph!" he said, half to himself. "You'll make an excellentaide, I expect. So now to business."
It was an awful operation. One impossible while consciousness remained; but possible enough with the absolute stillness and lack of hurry that unconsciousness brings.
And so far it was successful.
"He will sleep for some hours yet," said Dr. Forsyth, as he sorted his implements. "You needn't stay with him all the time. Make yourself useful elsewhere, but look in and bring me word when he wakes."
There was not one word of thanks; only as he left the tent he paused to say--
"The lad was a great favourite of the colonel's. I'm glad we saved him."
All that day Marrion lived in a dream of death; but those words went with her. Yes, she was glad she had helped to save the lad, but how much had she helped?
Three full days passed before she could get an answer to that question. Days of grim determination to keep her head--not to give way as some, even of the men, gave way. It was like living in a shambles. She thought, amazed at the poverty of her own imagination, on the dread with which she had first viewed the heights of Alma. But this--this was inconceivable, unutterably beastly! Vaguely she felt glad that Duke had been spared it, and with the thought of the singing bird that had sung its little heart out in joy as he lay dying, the first tears she had shed for him came to her eyes. And she worked on with a lighter heart, until the first press and rush was over, till the dead had been buried, the less severe cases shipped off, and tents found for the others.
Then Dr. Forsyth sent for her. She found him in his tent. The lad whom they had saved had been removed to a larger one and was doing well. Though the flap was open, the tent was shadowy and the doctor's eyes looked curiously light as he sat on the bed and motioned her to a seat beside him.
"You have done very well, Mrs. Marsden," he said shortly, "and I think you will do better. Now I am going to teach you some of the tricks of the trade, and in the next action you will be able to work on your own. Only don't talk about it. I believe all the doctors and most of the men would rather die than be mesmerised; but then they never saw Esdaile's hospital. I have."
"But perhaps I shan't be able," began Marrion.
"Yes, you will," he interrupted steadily, "and to begin with I am going to call you by your right name, please. Marrion Paul."
She flushed.
"Did Andrew----"
"Nothing of the sort. My dear woman, I'm an Aberdeenshire man. Long years ago, when I was a lad, I was at Drummuir and I saw your father--possibly you also. No?--His was a face and figure you can't easily forget. And I know the story. I heard Andrew, the Drummuir's henchman, call you Marrion; your extraordinary likeness to your father supplied the cues. And I was right, you see." His face was all smiles at his own perspicacity. "Now, my mother was a Pole and I believe your father was one. And that admixture seems favourable to a certain force of character. You've always managed people--at least, I guess so--and it is just that trick of suggestion that you require for management--at least, so I think--that I want. Anyhow, we will try. For the present the tyranny is overpast. We have wormed our way throughsanseverything; but the next action will be as bad, perhaps worse. I think the letters we have written home about the scandalous state of affairs may have had some effect--God knows! We British sleep through a lot of bad dreams, but help can't be here in time. And the stores they are landing! My God, if you could see them! Rotten biscuits, putrid meat, drugs unusable! How the devils in hell will kow-tow to the contractors when they get them as past-masters of damnation. Anyhow, in the immediate future we have to depend on ourselves, and if I can depend on you----" he looked at her and once more stretched out those thin capable hands of his. "Come, is it a bargain?"
She could not but say "Yes," and from that day he treated her as a professor might treat his pupil--kindly, but autocratically.
"You are the only person who ever made me obey orders," she said, half-resentfully one afternoon when he had driven her to rest in his tent.
"Better for you if it had happened before," he replied curtly. "You strike me as a woman who has managed too much. Do you know how old I am?" he asked suddenly.
Seated as he was just outside the hut so that he could talk to her within, he looked strangely young, but the grey hair and bronzed wrinkles about his clean shaven face made her venture rather against her own judgment--
"Fifty."
"Sixty-five," he replied.
"You don't look forty-five," she put in.
"No. That is because I never look ahead. I take what comes. If you believe, as I do, in a Divinity that shapes our ends, it's waste of time to hew. I learnt that early in life. You haven't learnt it yet. Well, now I've got to go and cut a man's leg off."
And he went, leaving her wondering if he was right. All her life had been spent in keeping Duke for the heirship of Drummuir, and now he lay in his solitary grave at Varna. The pity of it was coming home to her.
So after a few days, with a tent provided for her, she rode in a baggage waggon towards Sebastopol. Cholera had begun again badly. The fillip which the idea of campaigning and free fighting had given to men jaded by hot weather and the discomforts of Varna was passing off. As they neared the Russian town supplies were less easily obtainable, and the commissariat was conspicuous by its inefficiency. The army, meanwhile, starting on the 23rd, had found itself brought up seriously at the next river. The enemy had established a work at the entrance which made it impossible to use the bay, as had been hoped, for a base. There was nothing for it but to change plans and act promptly. And here, mercifully, was no delay, no mistakes. Forsaking the seacoast the whole force plunged boldly into the mountains, marching by compass, without road, without guides. Much of the way lay through dense forest--there was no water; but, heartened up by a small brush with a wandering division of the enemy, the men struggled on cheerful as ever, up hill, down dale, during a long and toilsome march from dawn till after nightfall on the 25th. But then came solace. On the sea-coast below them--secure, unprepared--lay the town and harbour of Balaklava, seven miles to the east of Sebastopol. They had circumvented the enemy, they had taken him round the corner! But there must be no cheering. Quiet as mice they lay among the barberry scrub, waiting for the dawn of the 26th. And then there was nothing to be done save to walk down and take possession--take possession of both sea and land, for, punctual to the moment, her Majesty's shipAgamemnonsailed into the harbour, decks clear, guns ready for action--a stroke of luck due to young Maxse who, arriving at the Commander-in-Chief's with despatches the evening before, volunteered to brave the forest again by night and tell his Admiral to come round as sharp as he could.
So when the hospital tents and such medical stores as there were arrived from Kalamita Beach they found the troops elated and pleased with their new quarters. As is generally the way after a move, cholera abated, almost disappeared, and for a time the weather was good.
Trench work began at once, yet progressed but slowly. Whether, as some say, from lack of implements or from slackness in command, the French had placed thirty-three siege guns before the English had finished their fifteenth; and the doctor, coming in from a long round, would shake his head and say that the business would be a longer one than people thought.
And what was to be done with winter coming on--blankets wearing out, a shortage of drugs, and the very ambulance-waggons still lying forgotten on Kalamita Beach?
He used to watch the ships sailing in so gaily to the harbour and say calmly, "I wonder what filth, what fraud, they bring?"
Still, even he grunted satisfaction over the news that Britain was beginning to discover that all was not well with the Crimean expedition--that there was talk of sending out nurses and more doctors. So for nigh three weeks comparative peace reigned. There were no shambles, and Marrion had time to pick up many wrinkles of nursing from her patron; he taught her how to bring sleep for one thing, the first duty of those who tend the sick. She had time also for regret. Nothing had been heard of Andrew Fraser, though Captain Grant's body had been duly found. It seemed to her as if the last link with the old life had gone, and one day in sudden confidence she said as much to the doctor. Again he shook his head.
"My dear good woman," he remarked, "no one ever gets away from their past. It is what the Easterns call 'karma.' You have to dree your weird for it always."
"Even if it is not bad?" asked Marrion, feeling hurt at the very idea that a life in which she was conscious of no self-seeking should be a curse to her.
"I don't know," he replied, half-closing his strange eyes, "you may have done something shocking. It is quite possible."
She wondered, afterwards, what had induced her to tell him what she had done; but these strange fits of confidence are one of the psychological puzzles of humanity. Tell him she did, however, while he sat looking out over the sea with his veiled eyes, for they were sitting on the heights and the whole panorama of Sebastopol, the Allied Fleets, and the investing forces lay before them.
"What would you have done if Colonel Muir had lived?" he asked briefly when she had finished.
She blushed a little.
"I have often wondered," she began.
"People who play Providence ought not to wonder. Well, I am glad he died happy. That, at any rate, is to your credit." So he rose and left her.
The days passed rapidly, full to the brim of work, and every day brought her more and more admiration for the courage and cheeriness of the men, more and more resentment at the ghastly way in which they were treated by the authorities at home. Boots had already given out, none were available in store, and in a whole officers' mess only one subaltern had a holeless pair. And he was the son of a widow who had half-ruined herself by sending her darling the two separate boots of a pair by letter post. She would have held it worth more, could she have seen his face of pride among his comrades.
On the night of the 18th of October a diversion arose which, when it was over, caused much amusement.
A party of sappers and miners, losing their way, fell into a Russian picket, which, possessed by the idea of a general assault, incontinently skedaddled into the town and raised the alarm, thereby causing much beating of drums and bugle calls. The Allied armies, alarmed in their turn, instantly stood to arms, while gun after gun boomed from the city forts, echoing and re-echoing among the reverberating rocks. After an hour or two, however, the gunners seemed to recognise that they were only, so to speak, shooting at their own shadows or echoes, and gradually peace reigned, broken by roars of laughter round many a camp fire.
But on the 25th something serious happened which brought the shambles close once more. To the Turkish contingent had been assigned the redoubts which protected the heights behind the entrenchments. On the morning of the 25th the Russians, numbering some twenty thousand troops, after following the same route by which the Allies had reached Balaklava, appeared unexpectedly before these redoubts. The Turks abandoned them without striking a blow and fled down the valley to the plain in sheer panic. Nor did a volley from the 93rd Highlanders, hastily formed up, stop them. For a short while confusion and courage were conspicuous. The British, taken unawares, fought like heroes. Finally there followed the famous Light Cavalry Charge of which the French general, watching it, said "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." By whose fault the order was given for a deed which will stir the blood at every English heart even at the day of doom, Heaven only knows. The man who brought it was the first to fall. Briefly told--it needs no grand words--it amounted to this. Six hundred men and horses charged uselessly, desperately, defiantly,because they were told to do so, down an open valley exposed to a cross fire from guns posted on either side of them, and to a frontal fire from the evacuated and abandoned forts. The charge commenced at 11.10. It was barely 11.35 when a hundred and sixty men, many of them wounded, rode back, having done what they were told to do. The rest lay on the held.
But it was a victory for all that, and when night came, bringing an hour or two of rest to Marrion, she spent it in going round with a revolver she borrowed from Dr. Forsyth and putting wounded horses out of their pain.
"Don't forget to give them their password," he said, as he gave the weapon to her.
She looked at him uncomprehending. "I forgot you hadn't lived in the East," he went on, with a smile. "Say 'In the name of the Most Merciful God' before you shoot."
Once again there were tears in her eyes. She was learning much of this strange man who looked on death so lightly, yet spent himself in striving to evade it.
It was a busy time again after Balaklava; she had barely time to think, scarcely time to rest. Yet ever and always, when her mind travelled beyond the immediate present, those words with which Dr. Forsyth had replied to her story came back to remembrance--
"People who play Providence ought not to wonder."
Was he right, she wondered, and then was ashamed of her own wondering.
"You will have to rest a little more," said the doctor to her one day when she had been helping him. "You were quite wobbly just now. You will be of no use, you know, unless you pull yourself together." And he narrowed his eyes perplexedly. "You are not living in the present somehow--you're reaching out to the future. Why?"
She laughed.
"Why should I--what can the future hold for me! I will take a blue pill."
He grunted dissatisfaction, but was too busy to say more. Yet what he said was true. She began to catch herself wondering, wondering. The present was all-engrossing, of course; how could it be anything else when she could do what she could do for the poor lads?--his poor lads, who were so brave, so cheery. And then her mind would become vagrant, and she would wake up from dreams with a start.
It was one day just before Inkerman, the 10th of November, that Dr. Forsyth came to her and said:
"I want you. It's over at the cavalry hospital."
His eyes seemed to her stranger than ever, and when she came out of her tent to join him he glanced at her, then said brusquely:
"You've forgotten to put on that diamond brooch of yours--the P.P. one. Don't you remember when the sun glints on it, it's useful?"
It was true. Often and often the eyes that had been asked to fix their gaze on it had become full of dreams, and then slept.
"Stupid of me," she replied lightly. "I'll put it on!"
The Cavalry Hospital was a little way out of the town, a quaint old place with oleanders and orange trees set in tubs outside its white verandahs. As they drove thither Dr. Forsyth told her something of the case in which he wanted her help. It was a prisoner, presumably an officer, but he refused name or rank. He had been found two days after the battle, lying, with one leg smashed to bits, under his dead horse in a little ravine. How he had lived was a marvel, for he was quite an old man; but, not only had he done so, he had also retained consciousness, and had addressed those who found him in perfect English, congratulating them courteously on their marvellous exploit, and saying he was proud to have crossed swords with them.
A game old fellow, worthy of his hospital nickname "The General." He had actually begged, before they moved him, that someone would be good enough to search in the holster of the dead horse beside him for a gold snuffbox which he had been unable to reach, and the lack of which had, he asserted, been his greatest discomfort.
"He has been snuffing away ever since," added the doctor, "so perhaps he was right, for his leg was almost too crushed to belong to him. We took it off at once; but now gangrene is setting in and if he is to be saved we must have it off higher up. And the others won't risk it. He is old--heart weak--and they say won't stand chloroform. I am going to try. I've told him and he will take the risk. A good old chap, worth saving. I don't believe he is a Russian. I think he is a Pole, and blood is thicker than water."
Marrion's first look at the patient as he lay propped up by pillows in the small room whither he had been carried made her agree with the doctor.
It was a fine old face, curiously reminiscent of someone she had seen somewhere, with its hint of ruddiness beneath the grey of the hair and its bold bright daring look. And he was very tall; his long length almost outstretched the trestle bed.
"Good morning, doctor!" he said, with a courteous salute which included Marrion, and with a perfect English accent. "You have brought your nurse, I see. Are we to begin at once?"
There was no anxiety in his voice; only gentle raillery.
"Not quite yet, General," replied Dr. Forsyth. "I want you to have a rest and sleep first. You are looking a bit tired; and your pulse"--he stopped to feel it--"is tired, too. So I've brought Nurse Paul to sit with you. She is a curiously soporific person. I shall be back before very long," he added, more to her than to the patient.
Left alone, Marrion went up to the bed, smoothed the rough pillows, straightened the coarse blanket, which was all the bedding Balaklava could produce, and said quietly--
"Now, if you will close your eyes I believe you would sleep."
But those sea-blue eyes--whose did they resemble?--someone she had seen somewhere--remained wide, and watched her narrowly as she returned to seat herself in the only chair. It was set full in the sunlight, which showed her tall, slender, yet strong in her dark stuff dress, a white handkerchief almost hiding her bright hair and pinned to place by the little brilliant brooch beneath her chin. Truly those keen eyes were over-watchful, and she was about again to suggest sleep when his voice, full of insistent command, startled her.
"Where did you get that brooch?"
She replied at once with the truth.
"It belonged to my father."
"Indeed--who was he?"
"He was a valet; but if you would only close your eyes I think you would go to sleep."
"Do you think so? I don't."
His eyes showed more awake than ever; there was a hint of a smile on the handsome old face.
Still there was silence for full five minutes, and Marrion was just about to make further suggestion of sleep when once more the voice rose--
"Will you please give me my snuff-box?--it is under my pillow somewhere."
She drew it out. A plain gold box with--her startled eyes caught the old face--
"Yes!" he said, and his voice had a jeer in it. "'P.P.,' as you see. That is my name. So you are Marrion Sim's child--and I suppose mine. Queer, isn't it, how these old stories crop up when one had almost forgotten them?" He scanned her face narrowly. "Now you are angry. Why should you be? Your mother was my wife, I suppose. At least, I hadn't any other then. I have sons now"--his voice softened as he spoke--"yes, sons to come after me when I am gone, as I shall be soon, for that gay doctor of yours can't conquer Fate; and it is Fate that has brought me here!"
He lay looking at her with a certain kindly curiosity, while she, startled out of herself, tried to realise that this was her father--the father she had condemned and despised all her life.
It seemed almost as if he saw into her thoughts, for his next words touched them.
"Perhaps it was cruel to leave her as I did; but I had no choice. If you have anything belonging to us in you, you'll understand what the call of the master means. And young Muir was never my master. He befriended me, helped me to escape Siberia; but the other---- There's a perfect passion of loyalty in our family which you may or may not understand." He paused and a shiver of assent ran through Marrion.
"I--I think I do understand," she said, in a low voice.
Yes, from the very beginning, as a small child, this passion of protection, of loyalty, had been hers. Strange legacy from an unknown father! He smiled content.
"Glad to hear it. You're not a bit like your mother--you're like me, and your brothers--half-brothers, I mean. So I had to go. It was just after the break up of Europe and Napoleon, when half the political refugees came to their own again--and he did amongst others. So I had to go." Again he paused, and for the first time Marrion felt the touch of kinship between them. He had to go; that was just it! She had had to be loyal to Duke. "You are not in the least like your mother," he said again suddenly, "you are like us." Yet again he paused. "Have you anything you can give me to drink?" he asked. "I have something to say to you, and I feel--limp."
She gave him a restorative and he brisked up. Time was passing, but she had learnt many things during the last month and knew that physical rest would be impossible until the mental rest was assured.
"Don't talk too much," she said. "I think I shall understand--what is it?"
"This box," he said. "It holds--my credentials. There is a false top--see, you press this spring--so."
As he spoke the lid appeared to part in two, disclosing a folded piece of paper.
"Don't read it now--but it will tell you everything. I was on secret service and it was of importance no one should know. It is of importance still. If I hadn't met you I should have said nothing. But now--you'll do me this good turn, I expect--for, after all, I am your father."
A cynical smile curved his lips, his blue eyes met hers in a challenge.
Almost staggered by the strangeness of what was happening, Marrion was yet aware of something deep down in her which gave instant response to this claim upon her.
"Yes," she said quietly, "I will do what you wish--father."
"I am obliged--daughter," he replied lightly. "Of course it is for your eye alone. And now for heaven's sake give me some more of that drink. I feel quite exhausted." He lay back smiling at her. "It is better here," he remarked, "than in the north of Scotland." Then after a pause, "I suppose I ought not to have married your mother; but she was charming and it was very dull." After that he closed his eyes and slept. The doctor, coming in after an hour, found him still sleeping, while Marrion sat beside the bed holding the gold snuffbox in her hand.
He bent over the slumbering face.
"I don't think there will be any operation," he said quietly. "The others were right. His mind has ceased to insist upon his body surviving and so there is rest. It is well."
Marrion looked up into his wise face.
"How did you guess?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"There was no guess," he replied; "you remember I had seen your father. Then your extraordinary likeness. When by chance I saw the famous snuff-box yesterday it became a certainty. For a day I decided to say nothing. Then I saw the old chap was fighting death--putting a strain on himself about something, and I thought you had better have your innings."
He did not ask any questions and she was grateful.
"Perhaps you would like to stay," he added gently. "I don't think he will wake again."
And he did not. As the sunlight faded from the room the old man's breathing became slower and ceased.
Marrion stood looking down on him for a moment before she called for aid. All the time she had been watching she had been thinking, thinking; but she had arrived at nothing. Only deep down in her was a glad feeling of inheritance--a consciousness that the dead man had given her something, something that she held in trust.
Was it only the gold snuff-box, she wondered vaguely, as, back in her own tent, she touched the spring.
"The bearer of this, Prince Paul Pauloffski----" She sat staring at the words.
Prince Paul Pauloffski was her father. Then she was gentle born. Then she need not--
With a rush all the things she need not have done crushed in on her. She buried her face in the pillow as she sat on the edge of her bed and muttered--
"People who play Providence!"
Of a truth the wise man with the strange eyes was right. Your past waskarma. You could not escape from it.
After a time she sat up and began to decipher the rest. It was in French, thelingua francaof Eastern diplomacy. Noble-born, poor, devoted, daring. That was the essence of the credentials. The other paper simply gave the address of the ancestral home and that of two sons in the army. A memorandum as to keys and papers filled up the back of the latter. She replaced them, shut down the spring again, then, remembering she could show no right to the snuff-box for which inquiry was sure to be made, took them out again. Nothing, somehow, seemed to matter now. She had made her mistake, she must suffer.
"You have all you want?" asked Doctor Forsyth, as she handed him the box, and she flushed scarlet. Sometimes he seemed to her too clever--he found out everything, everything!
"Thank you," she replied frigidly.
"Because--well, if you would like to possess it, I could buy it in for you at the auction. The poor old general is--is unidentified, remember."
"Yes, he is unidentified," she assented, remembering her father's wishes, "but I should like to have it all the same."
He brought it to her a day or two after. "That's your fee," he said lightly, "you've earned it well."
And he would take no refusal; so she replaced the papers in the secret compartment and put the box away in her satchel against--what? That future which was now always filling her mind. The present seemed hardly to touch her at all. The doctor looked at her critically more than once, but he said nothing.
Then came Inkerman. It was on the 5th of November--almost three months, Marrion told herself, since that wonderful day when Duke's love had come to her amid flame and fire.
It had been a disturbed night. A noise as of tumbrils had been heard about the city. Was it possible that the enemy was taking advantage of the dense night fog to run in commissariat or even ammunition? Nothing could be done, however, save wait. So as the laggard day broke, the advanced pickets looked keenly ahead. To no purpose. An impenetrable wall of grey mist shut out all beyond a yard or two. Their very comrades looked like shadows of men.
"London partickler," remarked one sentry, stamping his feet to keep out the chill, for it had been raining all night.
"Not yeller enough, save down Chelsea way. My Gawd! I wish I was ther," replied the next.
"I wish I wurr anywhere but eight thousand strong on the heights of Inkerman," put in an Irishman. "Begorra, I've bin dhrier in a bog!"
"An' I've been wetter in the watter after the trooties on Don side," evened an Aberdeenshire man sturdily. "Mush me, it's weary wark!"
"An' thim ringing joy-bells for to spite us!" joked the Irishman, as on the cold night air a carillon from every church in the city rang out, echoing amongst the little scrub and wood-set ravines that went to make up the valley of Inkerman. "Will it be a weddin', likely? Begorra, I'd loose off me rifle as a salute if the powdther was dry!"
So through the early dawn the pickets, outwearied, wet through, beguiled the time. And though the dawn brought light, the mist lay thicker than ever. Thick and grey the colour of a Russian's coat.
"Dods, mon!" cried the Aberdeenshire man suddenly, "what's yon?"
Yon was indeed a Russian coat, not one but many, emerging out of the fog not ten yards away.
A sharp volley of musketry followed on the instant. The pickets may have been sodden, but they were no cowards. They fought desperately, retreating inch by inch, the alarm of their rifles telling that sixty thousand Russians were on them surging through the newly awakened camp of eight thousand. It was everyone to the rescue. Not one regiment or two, but every available man. Then followed eight long hours of such desperate fighting as, till then, had never been seen. It was not a battle--it was a hundred battles in one; for every little ravine had its opposing armies, cut off from the rest by the enveloping mist. Again and again the grey line would advance a yard or two, covered by its superior fire; again and again a ringing British cheer and the point of the bayonet would drive it back a yard or two. Sometimes the fight became amêléein which the British officers, dealing havoc with their revolvers or swords, cut their way through the dense masses of the enemy. No generalship was possible, each man fought for himself, his Queen, his country, and wrote on the page of history a record of undying pluck and almost incredible personal courage. But the battle of Inkerman is, truly, beyond description. It was a day of countless deeds of daring, of despairing rallies and desperate assaults in the glens, the brushwood glades, the torrent beds of the valley of the Tchernaya river. None knew how the balance swayed and shifted. But a few were aware of the aid given in the nick of time by the six thousand French troops who arrived at the double. None knew whose was the victory till from the Russian ranks came the bugles of retreat. And then, as the mist lifted, the whole hillside showed strewn with corpses. But the eight thousand had kept at bay the sixty thousand. Round Sandbag battery, from which the Guards were driven, and which they retook four separate times, lay fifteen thousand Russian dead, mute evidence of the hand to hand, back to back, relentless tenacity with which the Household Brigade eventually fought their way out of the surrounding masses of the foe. A little further, where a single regiment held at bay over nine thousand Russians, the broken stocks of the rifles showed how, when ammunition was gone, the fight still continued.
"Will anyone be kind enough to lift me off my horse?" said old General Strangways, when riding to an exposed position in the hope of being able to see something of what his men were doing, a shell literally blew off his leg. And someone lifted him down doubtless; but there were eight generals to be seen to, and close on a hundred and fifty officers.
As the official despatches read--
"It does not do to dwell upon the aspect of the battlefield." True, indeed, when out of the eight thousand some two thousand six hundred lay dead or wounded among the fourteen thousand Russians for whom they had accounted.
Even Doctor Forsyth's pale, composed face grew paler, less composed, and Marrion acting as hisaidecould scarcely get through the awful days. She could not work as she wished to work, but neither could she rest. Her whole being seemed to go out in one vast pity for the world, a vast desire to protect, to recreate.
"I am sorry my hand shook," she said, almost pitifully to the doctor, when she held she had failed to give him all the help she should have done over a young lad who had been brought in badly hurt. "But he seemed so very young. It made me think of the time when all these poor boys were babies in their mothers' arms, warm, secure, sheltered."
He looked at her gravely.
"You did very well," he said. "Not quite so well as usual, perhaps; but better than others. For all that, I am going to send you for a rest--only a week or two," he added hastily, seeing her face set in denial. "And it's as useful as anything else. You know there are quite a lot of soldiers' wives down in the town. There ought not to be, of course, but there are---- Why, there is one, at least, in the camp! And one, an Irishwoman, has just died with her third baby--shock--husband killed. And there is no one to see to them and others. You'd better go--you--you like children."
To tell the truth Marrion felt a strange gladness at the thought of them, and the very idea of holding the newborn scrap of humanity in her arms was enthralling.
"For a week," she demurred. "You see I haven't been sleeping well."
So down by the sea in a house built on the very rocks of the harbour she went back to woman's normal life and rested for a while.
For the first time she had leisure to notice the beauties of the cliff-set coast, of which the bay was a mere shallow curve. The vessels lying at the roads bobbed and swayed when the wind ruffled the water, almost as if they had been at sea. But it was fine to see them there; ships of the line, merchantmen, gun-boats, mail-steamers, all coming and going. When the two elder children were asleep, Marrion would wrap the infant in a blanket and go and sit on the rocks in the sunshine, watching the boats go backwards and forwards to the shore, and thinking of the far-off Aberdeenshire days when she could pull an oar with any man. The harbour itself, a mere inlet, was crammed with vessels of all descriptions; you could scarcely distinguish one from the other, but the thirty outside showed bravely.
"They say the anchorage is very treacherous," remarked Doctor Forsyth, when he came to see how she was getting on, one evening. "I hear that a captain of one of the transports has reported it dangerous; and has been reprimanded for his trouble. He may have a chance of proving himself right, for the barometer is going down steadily, I'm told; and there is an uncanny feel in the air."
That was about six o'clock in the evening. But the night was calm, warm for the time of the year. It was in the small hours of the 14th that someone relieving watch on one of the ships looked again at the barometer.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "it has fallen two inches in the watch."
Something was astir and the something came with appalling suddenness, almost before the light spars could be shipped and things made taut. And then? What was it? No storm ever seen equalled this boiling cauldron of a sea, this furious blast of bitter wind that lashed the waves of foam and sent them in driving clouds far over the heights. The hawsers, the anchor chains, the cables strained and wrenched and strained, while brave men, looking at the wicked rocks seen dimly by the breaking dawn, knew that their only chance of life lay in the holding of their anchors. An American ship was the first to go. She drifted swiftly to the cliffs and disappeared, timbers and crew. The next to follow was the ship whose captain had given the warning. It made a brief fight for life. The port anchor held--masts, rigging, were cut away. To no purpose. The cable parted, she drifted broadside to the cliff, crashed against it once, twice. A few men were carried by the breakers up the rocks, bruised, mangled. The captain himself was crushed between the rocks and the ship, as he hung from a life-line thrown by those on shore. Another and another and another ship followed in quick succession. The roar of the tempest, the crashing of timbers, the howling of the wind, the noise of the engines straining full speed ahead to hold their anchorage against the storm, drowned all outcry; the terror, the dismay, the despair of it passed as it were in silence. Within the inlet harbour one vessel crashed against the next and so, huddled in heaps, they drifted to pile themselves in shivered hulks upon the shore. Helpless to help, powerless to save, the spectators clinging like limpets to stone walls and stanchions looked on while one after another the brave ships which but the day before had seemed to spurn the waves in their pride were beaten, buffeted, engulfed, submerged in the seething cauldron of surf and spray and mad, infuriated billows, answering to the challenge of the wind. ThePrince, the finest vessel in the bay, new built, powerfully engined, held out the longest. There were hopes for her, but the sea willed otherwise. Slowly, slowly the anchor dragged, and five minutes after she struck not a vestige of the good ship remained. Meanwhile on shore the hurricane had brought disaster untold. Houses were roofless, tents swept bodily into the deep ravines with their occupants. It was noon ere the wind abated somewhat, allowing stock to be taken of the damage. Far out at sea could be seen the hulls of the vessels that had weathered the storm, mostly disabled, mastless; but it was known that five-and-twenty vessels had gone down with practically all on board.
As the tempest subsided the bodies of the drowned were dashed by the breakers against the rocks or cast up in tiny creeks upon the beach.
Marrion had taken her charges to a place of safety, the house she was in being too exposed; and then, thinking she might help, went down to the harbour. The waves still ran dangerously high, and over on the farther side Englishmen were busy with lifeboats, rescuing some of the crews of the smaller ships which, having held their anchors so far, were still in imminent danger of going down. As she passed a knot of local fishermen on her way to where apparently help might be required, her eyes followed theirs and she realised to her horror that they were calmly looking at a man--a mere boy--who about sixty yards from the shore was clinging to a stationary spar, part doubtless of some submerged craft. His face was clearly visible, the agonised appeal vitalising its exhaustion, its pallor. Only for a few minutes more could that grip hold! She was alert in an instant.
"Go!" she cried vehemently in Russian. "Quick! A boat is there! Quick--save--for Christ's sake, save!"
Urged more by her actions than her words, the men fell in with them. Ready hands, besides her practised ones, ran down the boat.
But then, no one stirred! It was not an impossible task, it was only dangerous. That, however, was enough. Why should they risk their lives to save an unknown lad--a mere boy? But it was that very youth which appealed to the woman, who stood for an instant with bitter anger at her heart.
"Curse you for cowards!" she cried as she sprang in and seized the oars. The boat, already afloat, shot out from the shore by her weight. The next instant she had the oars in and was fighting for her life--and his. For his--yes, fighting, fighting, fighting for life to something unknown. She set her teeth and dreamed with the appalling swiftness of dreams of the far Northern sea. Yes, she was afloat on it with Duke--no! it was Duke she had to save. It was Duke, or someone belonging to Duke, who clung to that spar now so close, so close----
On shore, a man passing along a quay hard by saw her, and ran down with an oath.
Almost there--almost! She glanced behind her, saw the young face; but only for a second. The hold of the clenched hands relaxed, the head fell back, the body slid into the water. Too late!
No, not too late! Without one instant's hesitation Marrion was over the side, keeping the oar in her left hand as she leapt.
Now she had gripped something floating for a second and was on the surface again, rising within arm's grip of the oar.
In her ears a thousand voices seemed whispering--Safe, safe, safe! You are the saviour, the creator, the protectress.--She struck out boldly. Then a huge breaker took her to its breast and held her fast.
When she came to herself she was lying on a bed and looking round she realised that she was in the very room of the cavalry hospital where her father had died. It had been the nearest place, she supposed. The sunlight was streaming in. She was quite alone. Doubtless everyone was busy--they always were.
Then on a table within reach she saw a cup of milk and a glass. A paper lay beside them. Scrawled on it, very large, was this advice--
"Take these and go to sleep again!"
It was Doctor Forsyth's writing and with a sense of safety she obeyed.
When she roused again it was evening; the room was almost dark, but a figure stood at the window. In an instant remembrance came back to her and raised a curiosity which had doubtless been lying dormant, as she had been, for nigh six-and-thirty-hours.
"Did I save the boy?" she asked suddenly in a loud strong voice.
Doctor Forsyth, for it was he, smiled as he walked up to the bed.
"I really cannot say, my dear lady, whether you saved him or not. You did your best, anyhow, and the same wave washed you both ashore." He had been feeling her pulse as he spoke. "All right," he continued, "I fancy you can get up if you choose. And you will be a bit busy, for the mail steamer goes to-morrow and you should take the first opportunity of getting home."
She stared at him.
"Home!" she echoed. "I am not going home. I want to work--and I should like to die out here. What is there for me to do at home?"
Doctor Forsyth hesitated a moment. He was ciphering out conclusions. The reason he had to give her was one which must, despite its joy, give pain. Better therefore to speak out while her mind was still too confused to grasp the immensity of either.
"My dear lady," he said, and his voice was gentleness itself, "I must deny all your statements. You are going home. You do not want to die out here, and you will have plenty to do at home looking after"--he paused--"the colonel's child."
He turned and left her voiceless, but athrill to her finger-tips, wondering why she had not guessed it before.
Then with a rush came remembrance. "People who play Providence----"
She gave a moan and turned her face to the wall.