With the better weather things quickened somewhat--the things of Nature, to life; the things of Man, to death. Man strove with all his might to end his fellow man, and drenched the earth with blood: and the spring flowers pushed valiantly through the blood-soaked sods and seemed to wonder what it was all about.
The boys learned from Greski that the chief bones of contention now were the rifle-pits.
The lines and burrows of attack and defence had by this time run so close to one another that in places you could almost throw a stone from one to the other. No smallest chance of harassing the enemy was lost on either side. Both sides had learnt by experience what damage and annoyance to the working parties could be effected by small bodies of picked marksmen hidden in sunken pits in advance of the lines, and the struggles over and round and in these tiny strongholds were endless, and furious beyond description.
He told them how sixty Russians had held their pits near what he called the Korniloff Bastion, but which Jack and Jim knew more familiarly as the Malakoff, against five thousand Frenchmen, until reserves came up and the Frenchmen had to retire. And how some crack shot in one of the English pits was potting their men even in the streets of the town, twelve hundred yards away, so that passage that way was no longer permitted.
He told them that the Allies were mounting more and more big guns, and prophesied hot work again before long, and feared that this time "he"--by which simple comprehensive pronoun the Russian soldiers always referred to the hundred thousand men out there on the hill-side--the enemy--just as Jack and Jim had always used the term to designate Sir Denzil in their early days--Greski feared that "he," out of patience with the long delay and the sufferings it had entailed, would no longer confine his efforts to battering the forts, but would probably try to make an end of the town itself.
"In which case," he said, "we may have to move over to the other side of the water. He can knock down the bastions to his heart's content; we can build them again faster than he can knock them down. But the town--that would be another matter."
All the streets leading in from the hill-sides were barricaded, and a new line of huge entrenchments sprang up among the houses inside the town, half-way up the slope on which it was built.
From their chosen look-out on that eastward slope the boy watched all that went on, inside and outside, with hungry anxious eyes. They noted the immense activities on both sides, and it seemed to them, as it had done before to Jim that things might go on like this for ever.
"If we are really going to try another bombardment," said Jack slowly--he always spoke slowly and quietly now, a way he had got into through fear of straining his chest--"and if they keep it to the earthworks, it is all wasted time. The only way to end it is to smash the town and rush it over the pieces. It is doubtful kindness to spare it. Far better end the matter for all concerned. Then we could all go home and become human beings again. I've no fight left in me, Jim."
"A couple of months on the flats will make you as sound as a bell," said Jim cheerfully. "The air here is full of gunpowder and dead men. What you want is Carne."
"I've thought a good deal about it all while I lay there and couldn't talk," said Jack. "You'll have to take it all on, Jim. I shall be a broken man all my life--I feel it inside me; and Carron of Carne must be a whole man. You must take it on, Jim."
"Don't let's talk about it, old man. We're not home yet. Time enough to go into all that when we get there. I wish to goodness Raglan would come right in and make an end of it."
"It would be an awful business. But I don't see how we're going to end it any other way. And truly I wish it were ended, for I long to get home. All I want is to get home."
Their friend Greski had so far escaped the dangers of his unpalatable duties in a manner little short of marvellous. He shirked nothing, and took his fair turns with the rest. And, though he hated Russia with all his heart, he laughingly confessed that when he was in the thick of things he forgot it all in his eagerness to win the fight.
But such phenomenal luck was too good to last. He went out one night to join in a sortie, and the morning came without him, and found his mother and Tatia in woeful depths, certain he was dead.
Jim went off at once for news, and found him at last in the hospital, with a bullet in the thigh and a bayonet wound in the shoulder.
"It is nothing, it is nothing," said the hurrying surgeon. At which Greski made a grimace at Jim, and said:
"All the same, if it was only himself now! And the way he hacked that bullet out! We are getting callous to other folk's sufferings."
"Why, you hardly felt it," said the surgeon. "You said so."
"When one's helpless under another man's knife one says what he wants. It hurt like the deuce."
"When can I take him home?" asked Jim, in stumbling French.
"After two days, if he behaves and goes on well."
So Jim went home and comforted madame and Tatia; and two days later they were happier in their minds than they had been since the siege began, in that they had him there all the time and safe from further harm.
He grizzled somewhat at being shelved "just when the fun was going to begin," for he felt assured in his own mind that "he," outside, was preparing for a general assault, and he would have liked to see it. And so the boys did their best to keep him posted in all that went on.
They were wakened at daybreak one morning by an uproar altogether out of the common--one vast, unbroken, terrific roll of thunder, so deep, so ominous, so far beyond anything they had ever heard in their lives before that it sounded as though the whole of heaven's artillery had been mounted on the hill-sides, and brought to bear on the devoted town, and was bent on battering it to pieces.
Greski called them from his room, and they went in.
"Hurry, hurry, or you'll miss it all! We knew it must be soon, but could not learn the day. They will come in on top of this, I think. Keep under cover, and come back and tell me all about it. Oh, ---- this leg!"
It was a bad morning for any conscious possessor of a chest--heavy with mist and thick with drizzling rain; a black funereal day, sobbing gustily, and drenching the earth with showers of bitter tears. The chill discomfort of it told even on Jim.
"Jack, old man, I wish you'd go back," he said, before they had gone a hundred yards. "I'll bring you word as soon as I can. They're not likely to come in at once, and you'll have plenty of time to see all that's going on. They'll probably hang away at the forts for the whole day. Do go back."
"Get on!--get on!" coughed Jack. "I want to see." And they pushed on through the gloomy twilight.
The streets were alive with all the others who wanted to see, and long compact lines of gray-coats were pressing stolidly towards the front, to strengthen the lines against the expected onslaught.
Jim was doubtful how far they should venture, but Jack was intent on seeing. This was history. This was the consummation of all the hopes, and the weary days and nights, that had gone into those mighty zigzags up on the hill there. This was his own arm striking as it had never struck before since time began, and he must see it at its best.
But, though they could hear enough, they could not see much, because of the mist and the rain and the dense clouds of smoke rolling down the hill-sides.
The Russian batteries were only beginning to reply, by the time the boys reached their usual look-out on the eastern slope near the cathedral, and then the uproar doubled, and the very ground beneath them seemed to shudder under it.
Jim helped his brother to his usual seat in a niche in the broken wall of a garden, and tucked his cloak carefully about him, for between his boiling excitement and the rawness of the morning, he was all ashake and his teeth were chattering.
"Every gun we have," gasped Jack . . . "hard at it!"
"If they can't see more than we can, they're going it blind," growled Jim, as he strode about to get warm.
And then, like a bolt from the sky, without an instant's warning, out of the chill white mist in front came a great round black ball, which dropped with a thud into the ground almost at Jack's feet. It lay there, hissing and spitting like a venomous devil gloating over its anticipated villainy, and Jim rushed at it with an unaccustomed oath of dismay. It was sheer instinct. He had no time for thought. The devilish thing was close to Jack, and Jack could not move.
He got his right hand under it to hurl it down the slope. His feet slipped from under him as he heaved. Then with a splintering crash the thing burst. . . .
And the Coil of Carne, cut by a stray British shell, lay shattered about the eastern slope of Sebastopol.
Jim came to himself in purgatory. It seemed to him that he came slowly out of a dead black sleep into a horrible wakening dream.
He was in a vast room, low-roofed, with massive arches which obstructed his view and lay like weights on his brain. Small, heavy windows let in a murky light. All about him were dismal groanings, and mutterings, and curses, and a most evil atmosphere, which turned his stomach.
He tried to move, and was seized with grinding pains up his right side and arm and shoulder.
He tried to grope back into the meaning of it all, and suddenly he remembered the shell.
It must have burst and wounded him. His right hand shot suddenly with burning pangs.
He wondered how Jack had fared. He could not remember whether he had succeeded in pitching it down the slope or not. He had done his best; but he remembered that the fuse was very short. . . .
Was he really alive? . . . or was he dead, and this hell? . . . The groans and curses . . . that awful smell of blood and dead men! . . .
He came to himself again, and it was all black about him--thick, heavy, chill darkness, full of groans and curses and the smell of blood and dead men.
The heavy little windows came slowly out of the black void first, then the massive pillars, and after a long, long time he saw dim figures moving slowly about in the twilight.
One passed close to him, and he wanted to call to him to ask him about Jack, but when he tried to speak he found he could not.
Then two more men came and dragged away the bodies of the two who lay in the straw on each side of him. Their clothes rubbed his as they went. He had not thought about them because they had lain so quiet.
The men came back with another man, who groaned as they laid him down, and then with another on the other side who groaned also, and Jim wished they had left him the quieter ones.
It was a very long time before a surgeon came round to look at the new-comers, and Jim had had plenty of time to think as well as he was able to.
If he lay there much longer he would die. He must get them to take him away. How?
His dulled wits, roaming for possibilities, came on thought of the Grand Duke's doctor who had pulled Jack through. If he could get them to send for him. . . . Though why he should come was quite beyond him. . . . Still it was a chance.
The surgeon took off his right-hand neighbour's leg where he lay, by the light of a lamp. The man gave a sudden gasp and a choke, the surgeon said "Ach!" and they carried the body away.
He took off the left-hand man's arm and strapped it up.
Jim with a mighty effort said, "Monsieur!" And the rumpled surgeon looked down at him and wiped his fingers on a piece of dirty rag.
"I beg you," said Jim, and the surgeon bent down to him.
"Well?" he said brusquely, for loads of broken men lay waiting for him, and he had cut and carved till his hands and arms were tired and his back stiff with bending.
"I want . . . the Grand Duke's doctor," murmured Jim.
"The deuce you do? Anything else?" And he was going.
"The Grand Duke's own orders. . . He will tell you." And then he went out into the darkness again.
But the feeble words had caused the surgeon to look more closely, and then to make inquiries, and when Jim came back to life he was in bed at Mme Greski's, and Tatia was sitting by the bedside. And to Jim it was like a sudden leap from hell to heaven.
Tatia nodded cheerfully to him.
"Where's Jack?" he asked in a whisper.
"They've not found him yet. They're searching for him," said Tatia, after a moment's hesitation. "You're not to talk, or to think, or do anything but what I tell you. Drink this." And he drank, and fell asleep again.
It was not until many days afterwards, when he had grown accustomed to the fact that he would have to go through life with one sleeve looped up to a button--though he still complained at times of pains in that hand--that Tatia gently broke the news to him that Jack was gone. The shell had killed him on the spot, had literally blown him to pieces.
And she broke down at sight of his face; and when he turned it over to the pillow and sobbed silently, she crept quietly out of the room and left him to his sorrow.
Jack gone!Jack!He felt stupid and newly broken. Dear old Jack! . . . smashed by that cursed shell! A British shell, too, unless he was very much mistaken. That was hard lines, after coming through so much. Hard lines! Hard lines!
He was very weak yet, and the tears welled out again and again, as he lay thinking dreamily of all the old times on the flats, and how close they had been to one another all through their lives. And Jack was gone . . . killed by a British shell! And he was so much the better man of the two. And now, if he himself lived, he would have to go home--some time--if this wretched war ever came to an end--and break all their hearts with the news. In his weakness and sorrow he wished that cursed shell had made an end of them both.
It was early summer before he was about again, for the bursting shell had ripped open his side and shoulder, in addition to shattering his arm beyond repair, and had given a shock to his system from which it recovered but slowly.
And still the siege dragged on. Early in June came the third bombardment. All the southern portion of the town had long been a heap of grass-grown ruins. Now, even the northern slopes became almost untenable.
The theatre was shattered out of all knowledge; in every barricaded street the roadway was furrowed like a ploughed field by the shot and shell which came raining in, and these were collected each day and piled into pyramids ten feet high. Not a house but was damaged, many were in ruins; the vertical shells from the mortars came down like bolts from heaven and spread destruction where they fell.
It was death to walk the streets, and no safer to stop indoors. Many crossed the harbour to the northern heights. The Greskis and Jim fitted up their cellars and lived there as in a bomb-proof.
Greski himself had made but a slow recovery. The bullet-wound in his thigh took long to heal, and left him limping still and quite unfit for service--at which nis mother and Tatia rejoiced greatly, and he did not greatly repine.
"As a soldier," he said, "I would shirk nothing; but all the same Russia is not my country, but my oppressor, and it makes a difference. For Poland I would die ten deaths. For Russia I grudge a finger."
When the bombardment slackened again, he limped out on Jim's sound arm to gather news, and managed to keep a portentously long face as his fellows in the café told them of the taking of the Mamelon and Sapoune by the French, and the closing of the harbour road leading out to Inkerman.
But alone with Jim and his own people, he let his feelings have play.
"Now we're getting on a bit. I mean you are. The Mamelon is one of the keys to the door. I see the end in sight But your people are strangely, dilatory or overcareful. From what they were saying down there you could have got in more than once if you'd only come on."
"I wish they had come on," said Jim heartily. "Maybe there are too many cooks at the pie."
Ten days later came the fourth bombardment, and in the comparative safety of their cellars they heard the neighbours' houses crumbling and falling, and the upper part of their own came down with a crash which blanched the women's faces, till the ruins settled into position and left them still alive.
Then one day, in an appalling cessation of the thunders to which their ears were accustomed, Jim and Greski, stealing out to the south slope, heard on the hill-side the solemn wail of the Dead March, and presently a great salute of unshotted guns, and learned later that Lord Raglan was dead, and, according to Greski, was succeeded by one Sampson, whom Jim failed to recognise under so large a name.
Sebastopol was becoming one great hospital, one might almost say charnel-house, for the wounded were beyond their capacity for tending, and the dead lay for days in the streets unburied. And over it all the summer sun shone brightly, and flowers bloomed gaily among the shattered columns and fallen walls of houses which had once made this one of the fairest cities of the East.
The siege lapsed again into dullness, in spite of Greski's prophecy. The thinned ranks behind the bastions were replenished from the northern camps. All day long the harbour was alive with the boats that brought them across. And the bastions themselves grew stronger and stronger, with the myriads of men working on them and the tons of shot rained into them from the outside.
Working parties streamed up to the front all day long, carrying great stakes and poles for the abattis, and fascines and gabions for the ramparts, and in this work every English and French prisoner they had taken was employed.
Jim found it refreshing to hear the hearty British oaths which rattled about such fatigue parties, and he generally hailed the speakers and got a hearty word in reply.
"God bless you, sir, but this ain't no work for British sailormen, an' it does one a sight o' good to cuss 'em high an' low, even if they doesn't understand it."
"Perhaps just as well," said Jim. "Can you use any money?"
"Try me, sor! God bless your honour! This night I'll be as drunk as a lord, an' so will all me mates. 'Twill lighten the day an' the weight of these ---- stakes. ----- ----- all Rooshians! They don't know how to treat a sailorman."
And so, at last, we come to the end of that titanic struggle in the East--so far, that is, as we are directly concerned in it.
It was in the first days of September, just twelve months after the Modern Armada sailed from Varna in hopes of settling matters out of hand, that the great bombardment opened; the earth shook and the heavens shuddered, and men grown used to the sound of big guns were amazed at the hideous uproar. Fifteen hundred of the heaviest guns in existence thundered back and forth in concert, and the hot hail of more than half of them rained ceaselessly on the stricken town. The sky was hidden by the smoke, and through the smoke, along with the bursting shells, shot flights of fiery rockets to add to the inferno inside.
Within that fiery pale no soul ventured forth. Jim and Greski paced their gloomy quarters like restless animals--hopeful of the end, doubtful what it might entail. The women sat in corners in momentary expectation of death.
All who could go had crossed the harbour to the safety of the northern heights. Greski, as the result of many discussions with Jim, had resolved to stay where he was and trust to luck and the Allies.
For four days and nights the doomed city suffered that most awful scourging, and then there came a lull, and the taut-strung men in the cellar looked meaningly at one another. And presently they crept cautiously out into the sulphurous upper air, just as day was breaking.
"It is ended," said Greski, for the low thick clouds of smoke rolling over the town were all aglow with the flames of burning buildings. Wherever they turned, fresh fires were bursting out. And as they stood looking, a mighty explosion shook the earth and half a dozen shattered houses near at hand came crashing into the street.
Another tremendous explosion, and another and another.
"It is all over," said Greski quietly again. "They are blowing up the bastions and burning the town. That, I know, was decided on long since, if it came to the point. Moscow over again."
From where they were they could not see the explosions and they did not dare to venture far. But presently all the harbour was red with the blaze of burning ships, and they could see the new bridge of boats, leading across to the north side, black with crowds of hurrying fugitives. Then Fort Nicholas below them burst into flame, and the smoke from Fort Paul, just across from it, rolled along the roadstead. It was a most amazing scene, beyond description, almost beyond imagination.
The firing had ceased with the blowing up of the bastions. Up on the heights the besiegers clustered thick as bees, watching with awe the results of their long and arduous labours. Below them a thin trickle of creeping looters was already making its way through the ruined suburbs into the burning city.
Jim and Greski returned to their cellar; Jim to fig himself out in the remains of his uniform, Greski to collect such of the family valuables as could be easily carried; and then, with madame and Tatia on their arms, they set off, by devious ways which avoided burning and tottering buildings, crossed the black desolation of the southern suburbs, and came out on this side of the Quarantine Ravine, nearly opposite the cemetery.
The looters, mostly red-trousered Zouaves, looked askant at Jim's uniform and slipped past quietly. All they wanted was plunder, and they feared to be stopped. How this young English Hussar officer had managed to get in so quickly puzzled them, but he had evidently got all he wanted. So--allons, mes enfants!and let us lay hands on all we can, before the rest of our brave allies arrive!
Jim knew his way as soon as they had been passed through the lower trenches, and made straight for his father's tent. The camps were almost empty. Everyone was down at the front staring at the burning town. Outside the well-known tent in the hollow, however, an orderly was hard at work scraping the mud off his master's overcoat.
"Where is Colonel Carron?" asked Jim expectantly.
But the man looked back at him stolidly and said, "I do not know, monsieur."
"But this is his tent."
"Monsieur is mistaken. This is the tent of M. the Colonel Gerome--if he is still alive,man Dieu!He went into Malakoff yesterday and we have not seen him since."
"And where is Colonel Carron, then?"
"I do not know, monsieur. It is only three months since I came out. Is it all over, as they say?"
"We have Sebastopol," said Jim, "or part of it." And he quickly pushed on along the road to French Head-quarters.
A squadron of lancers came down the road at a fast trot, gleaming in the sun and jingling bravely. Their leader looked curiously at the odd little company, for ladies were refreshingly rare in camp. Then he suddenly drew rein and saluted, and Jim knew him. They had met many times in the tent in the hollow.
"You, M. Carron? Why, we gave you up for dead long ago!"
"Where is my father, du Bourg? I've been to his tent----"
"Mon Dieu!--and you have not heard? I am sorry to have to tell it, but you would have to hear. Colonel Carron was killed six months ago, repulsing a sortie." And, as he saw Jim's face fall, he added: "If you have had no news for six months,mon ami, be prepared for the worst. You will find very few of your friends left. Where have you been?"
"Prisoner inside since December."
"Mon Dieu!you've had hard luck! Weil, I must get on or our lively red-legs won't leave a stick in Sebastopol. We've been doing all we could to get in, and now my orders are to let no one in on any account. Adieu!" And they went off at a clanking gallop to make up for lost time.
Jim set off again in gloomy spirits for British Head-quarters on the other side of the Balaclava road.
Jack gone! His father gone! George Herapath and Ralph Harben gone. His little world seemed devastated. He wondered if any of the home folk were left.
Gracie--Good God!--suppose Gracie were dead! And Charles Eager, and Sir Denzil! In six months anything might have happened to any or all of them.
Tatia was the only fairly cheerful member of the party. To her it was like heaven to be out of that dreadful prison-house below. She had grown so used to the smell of gunpowder that the keen sweet air intoxicated her with delight. Her mother was very weary with the long walk; and as for Greski, his thigh was giving him pain, and the only thing he wanted now was to sit down and rest it.
Except for the sentries and a few underlings, British Head-quarters was deserted like the rest of the camp. All the world was down at the front, watching the end of Sebastopol. So they sat on a bench in the sunshine, and waited for some one to turn up.
The first to come was McLean, the young doctor with whom Jim had crossed to Constantinople on theCarnbrea. He was looking older, but well and cheerful.
"Hello!" he cried, as soon as his eyes lighted on Jim. "It's good to set eyes on some one alive that one knew six months ago. Where have you been all this time? I see you've suffered too"--with a glance at the empty sleeve.
"Been in Sebastopol for last nine months. Glad to get out."
"About as glad as we are to get in. Going home, I suppose?"
"Just as quick as I can. Come to report myself, but there's no one to report to."
"All at the front, I suppose. It's a great day this. We're shipping off loads of sick men as fast as we can fit them for the voyage. Our old friend Jolly's in Balaclava Bay. He'd be delighted to take you, I know, if you can fix matters up quickly here."
"Things any better than they used to be?"
"Oh, we're all learning by experience. Even the red-tape isn't as red as it used to be; it's not much more than pink now. We've got everything we need for the sick, anyway, and that's something. By the way, there was a man here inquiring for you a short time ago--came out on purpose, I believe, and brought a shipload of just the things we were needing most."
"Oh? Who was that?"
"A lean-faced chap--a parson, and better than most. What was his name now?--Earnest--Eager? that was it--Charles Eager."
"Eager? The dear old chap! Just like him! How long since?"
"Oh, months--four or five at least. Here's the Chief!"--as a thin, quiet-looking man with a tired face rode up with a couple of aides, saluted the little party, and went inside.
"Sick men first," said Jim; and McLean nodded, and went in.
He was back again in five minutes. "Come down to me at Balaclava as soon as you're ready," he said, "and I'll help you on. I'll have a word with Jolly too." And he sped away.
General Simpson greeted Jim, when at last he was admitted, with simple kindliness but evident preoccupation. His hands and mind were very full at the moment, and Jim's only desire was to get on towards home. All his requests were granted without hesitation, the necessary papers were promised him before night, and they set off again, first to the cavalry camp, whose location he had learned from one of the aides, and then to the railway which lay a little beyond.
At the camp he came across his own orderly, who greeted him with a mixture of jovial delight at meeting again an openhanded friend and master, and of deferential awe at encountering one returned from the dead.
"Quite thought you was dead, sir," said he, with a big shy smile.
"I've been next door to it once or twice, Jones. Where's my horse?"
"Ah, then! Dear knows, sir! The French gentleman took him to's own quarters an' I never set eyes on him since."
"Ah! Anybody left here that I know? Denham?"
"Lord Charles Denham, he died six, seven months ago the fever, sir."
"Mr. Kingsnorth?
"Invalided home in the winter, sir."
"Captain Warren?"
"Killed in the rifle-pits while he was potting the Russians. There's hardly anybody left that was here when you was here sir, 'cept some of us men. You going home, sir?"
"As quick as I can, Jones. Here's a guinea for old times' sake. Good-bye!" And he went soberly on, feeling himself a stranger in a strange place and as one risen from the dead.
They got a lift on the railway, and Jim hardly knew Balaclava, so little of the old was left--just as in the camp up above. But he tumbled up against Captain Jolly almost at once, and then his difficulties were over.
"Take you?" cried the jovial master. "Take you all the way home if you like. My charter's up and I'm to get back as quick as the weather'll let me. Taking a cargo of broken pieces to Scutari, and then straight for Liverpool. Right! We'll find room for you all if we have to sleep in the bilge. Your servant, madam, and yours, miss! Glad to get away from all the noise and nastiness, I'll be bound. Come on board any time you like, Mr. Carron. Shipboard's a sight cleaner and more comfortable than any place you'll find ashore." And Jim felt happier than he had done for very many months back.
D. McLean snatched half an hour to say good-bye as they were weighing anchor. And among other things he happened to ask Jim:
"Have you sent word home that you're coming? I don't believe in surprises."
"No, I haven't. I'm only learning to write, you see."
"Tell me what you want to say and I'll telegraph it from here."
"Can you?" said Jim, with a look of surprise, for this too was all new since he went into captivity. "I wish you would. Just say 'Coming home--Jim,' and send it to Sir Denzil Carron, Carne, Sandshire."
"Right! I'll see to it."
And he duly saw to it, but in the mighty pressure on the wires, consequent on the great events of those latter days, the private dispatch got mislaid, or was lost on the road--somewhere under the Black Sea, maybe, or in the wilds of Turkey; anyway, it never reached its destination.
And so it came about that Jim, satisfied that they knew of his coming, walked up to the door of Mrs. Jex's cottage, three weeks later, and found it occupied by young John Braddle, the carpenter's son, and his newly married wife.
"My gosh!" said young John at sight of him. "But yo' did give me a turn, Mester Jim! An' yo've lost an arm! Was that i' th' big charge?"
"No; I left it inside Sebastopol, John. But where's everybody? Mr. Eager and----"
"They're all up at Vicarage, Mester Jim. He's vicar now, and Mrs. Jex she keeps house for him. An' so Molly and me----"
But Jim was off, with a wave of the workable arm. He had not come home to hear about John and Molly Braddle.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Eager had just got back from their honeymoon. Mrs. Jex had been in residence for a month past, getting things into shape for them, with Gracie's very active assistance. And--"Bless her 'art! She couldn' do no more if 'twas her own house she was a-fittin' up. And may I live to see that day!" said Mrs. Jex with fervour.
Gracie had been living at Knoyle, for the comfort and consolation of Sir George, who found his great house very lonely, and talked of selling it and coming to live with them at the cosy old ivy-covered Vicarage.
They were all sitting round the dinner-table still; Meg--Mrs. Charles--and Gracie cracking a surreptitious walnut now and again, Sir George sipping his own excellent port, and smoking one of his own extra-specials with a relish he had not experienced for months past; while the Rev. Charles--the vicar, if you please--recalled some of the delightful humours of their travel. For never since the world began had there been a month so packed with wonder and delight.
The drift-logs on the hearth crackled and spurted, and the many-coloured flames laughed merrily at their own reflections in the Jex-polished mahogany and old walnut panelling. And Rosa, the little maid, had tapped three times on the door and peeped in, and gone back to Mrs. Jex with word that he was a-talking and a-talking as if he'd go on all night, and they all looked so happy that she hadn't the heart to disturb them. To which Mrs. Jex had replied, "All the same, my gel, we've got to wash up, and so we'll begin on these."
"I'm so glad," said Gracie, during a brief pause, and she knitted her fingers in front of her on the table and gazed happily on them all. "You two make me happy just to look at you----"
"Then is the object of our wedding attained," said Charles, with a smile and a bow.
"Almost quite happy," continued the Little Lady. "If only the boys were here, now----"
"We ought to hear something soon," said Sir George. "I was hoping the dispatches might bring some news of them. You don't suppose the Russians would carry them across with them?"
"I wouldn't like to say what the Russians might or might not do," said Eager thoughtfully. "They're a queer lot, from all accounts. I didn't tell you we called on Lord Deseret as we came through London. He was very friendly and as nice as could be. Among other things he told us that, as the result of all his inquiries, he learned from St. Petersburg that the boys were being kept in Sebastopol of set purpose."
"That's odd! Why?" asked Sir George.
"For the still odder reason, as it was reported to him, that they were safer inside than outside."
"And who was it was playing Providence to them like that?"
"He could only surmise, but I am not at all sure that he told us all he knew. He is an old diplomat, you know."
"And to whom did his surmises point?"
"I gathered it was towards Mme Beteta, the Spanish dancer. You remember she made something of a furore in London when she was over here."
"But what on earth has she got to do with our boys?" asked Gracie, kindling.
"She seemed to take a fancy to them. You remember how Jim used to write about her."
"But how could a woman such as that exercise any influence in such a matter?" asked Sir George.
"Ah!----"
Then there came a knock on the front door, and they heard Rosa trip along to answer it.
And the next moment Rosa's white face appeared at the dining-room door, and Rosa's pale lips gasped:
"Oh mum, miss, 't's 'is ghost--Master Jim!"
And Jim pushed past her into the room, and they all sprang up to meet him.
Gracie was nearest, and she just flung her arms round his neck crying, "Oh Jim!Jim!"; And he put his left arm round her and kissed her, and put her back into her chair.
It was many minutes before they could settle to rational talk, for Mrs. Jex must come hurrying in, and Jim kissed her too, and seemed inclined to go round the whole company. But then they came to soberness with the inevitable question:
"And Jack?"
And an expressive gesture of Jim's left hand prepared them for the worst.
"The shell that took this," he said, glancing down at his empty sleeve, "took Jack too. I did my best"--and he looked anxiously at Gracie and Eager--"I tried to fling it away, but it burst, and--and-- that was the end. It was days before I knew."
By degrees he told them all the story; and saddened as they were by the loss of one, they could not but soberly rejoice that one at all events had been spared to them.
He told them of the Greskis and all their kindnesses, and how he had brought them hone with him, since Greski was set on ending his servitude with Russia, and now it would be supposed that they had perished in the bombardment, and so no consequences could be visited on their friends in Poland because of his desertion. He had settled them for the time being in a quiet hotel in Liverpool, and later on they would decide further as to their future.
Eager had been very thoughtful while Jim talked. Now he said:
"Do you feel able to come along with me to Caine, my boy? Mrs. Jex was telling me that old Mrs. Lee is lying at the point of death. It is just possible--But I don't know," he said musingly, with a tumult of thoughts behind his fixed gaze at Jim "It does not matter now. . . . Still, I imagine your grandfather. . . . Yes, I think we must go."
"I'm ready," said Jim, and they two set off at once for Carne, and the others gathered round the fire and talked by snatches of it all, and Gracie mopped her eyes at thought of all those two boys had suffered, and of Jack, and of Jim's poor arm--and everything.
"He has become a very fine man," said Sir George. "A man to be proud of, my dear."
And Meg kissed her warmly and whispered, "Make him happy, dear!"