“CAMP NEAR VARNA,
“_June_.
“MY DEAREST MOTHER,
“We arrived Here all Safe, and are Incampt with the Division on a
Scrubby Plane by a Lake full of Leaches about 2 milse inland of Varna,
Which is the Beastliest Town you ever Saw. It is Full of English,
French, Turks, Bulgarians, Jews, Infadels, and Herraticks. Every
now and Then a Fire brakes out which Marshal St. Arnod the French
Commander-in-Chief says is Dew to insendiary Greekse. Yesterday it Was
the House next our Powder Maggazine, but luckily the Wind Changed, and
we Lost neerly all our Stores of Barly, Biskits, Tea, Suggar, Coffy,
Flower and so on. N.B.--How does He know it was insendiary Greekse?
“Tell my Father that the Army is short of Otse and Forridge. Though
we have Not quite 4,000 Beests of Transport to move an Army of 27,000
Men!!! We Have Hardly Annything to Give them, And the Noise they make
is something Friteful, and every day Lotts of them die. The Cavalry
Horses are Fed at preasent, that is all One can Say. I am quite Well,
so you must not be Fritened when you Read in the Paperse that Colera
has broken out among the Troops.”
Young Morty Jowell, seated on the end of the tent-cot before
his folding trestle-table, laid down the pen at this point, and
dispiritedly rubbed his nose. Looking from where he sat, he could see
under the lifted canvas of the hospital-marquees the rigid shapes of
smitten soldiers lying in rows on the cut rushes that covered the bare
ground.... For Spring and Summer had conspired with Sire my Friend to
the undoing of his Allies of England. Spring had spread beds for the
soldiers of the deep wet moss, starred with purple iris and the blue
bead hyacinth. Summer had woven her nets of wild sweet roses, filled
her deep vineyards with deadly bait of grapes, peaches, and figs. The
bees had made for them of the yellow azalea-blossoms, the fragrant,
poisonous green honey that breeds fever and delirium. They had eaten of
this, and of the tempting fruit, and sickened; and Pestilence had risen
up and breathed her blue miasma upon them, and gripped them in her iron
cramps, and they had died. The dead were being buried as Morty wrote on:
“Odly enuf, the French on the Hites have got it Though their Camps are
better Plaiced than what ours Are. They have sent 3 Divisions into
the Dobrudja, where 90 thowsand Russians are being held in Chek by
Omar Pasha. They are putting Whole Regiments on their Transports and
sending Them out to Sea.
“Yesterday I saw the loveliest Girl I ever saw in my Life out Riding
on the Road to Aladyn on the Finest Brown Horse I ever Saw in my life.
She comes from the Bashi’s Camp. None of the Officers know her Naim,
but all of them call her Golden Cloak, bicause of her Hair, which
is the most Wonderful I ever Saw in my Life. A man of Ours told me
Her Father is a Colonel of Bashis and that her mother was a Georgian
Princess. I Never saw such Hair or such Eyes in All my life.
“I am your loving son,
“MORTIMER.
“P.S.--I forgot to tell my Father that the Trooper who saved my life
in the Reck of _The British Queen_ is my Cousin Sarah’s Son, Joshua
Horrotian. When I thanked him and asked him to Shake Hands he Rifused.
I Think it is bicause of Something My Father Has Done about his
Mother’s Propperty. Tell my Father I do Not want a Hunting Box and
that I had rather die a Beggar than That enny man should be Wronged
for me. Mind you tell that to my Father. And tell him I have Not yet
Had His Anser to a Certain Letter he knose of. And that I Mean it
Every Word.
“M. J.
“P.P.S.--You must Not supose that Bicause she Comes from the Bashis’
Camp she is Not a Lady. If she is Not One I never Saw one in my Life.
“M. J.
“P.P.P.S.--Love and Thanks for the Caises of Good Things which were
Hily apreciated.
“M.”
That is, by the rank-and-file. For Morty, mentally burdened by the
paternal confidences as to cabbaging, declined to partake of the
luxuries sent out to him in huge consignments by special deliveries,
week and week about. You saw the Ensign turning these over to the men
of his company, and living on Service rations of fresh or salt pork,
biscuit, rice, and rum. To those who asked why, he explained that he
preferred this Spartan form of nourishment; at those who chaffed he
grinned or scowled. And presently the big tin-lined cases from Fortnum
and Mason’s, or Goodey and Cates, left off coming, as did those that
had been dispatched from the emporiums of these purveyors to hundreds
of other wealthy young officers, and to the caterers of countless
Regimental messes. Entombed at the bottoms of holds, beneath shot and
empty shell; piled up in warehouses with mountains of other good and
useful things, doomed never to be drunk or eaten, worn or used, they
lay until the ending of the War brought about their exhumation. And
long before then, flinty biscuit had become a luxury, and salt pork
was not to be had every day.
You may gather that from the very outset of the Eastern Campaign the
names of Cowell, Sewell, Powell, and many others of the fraternity had
not infrequently reached Morty’s ears in conjunction with expressions
of disapprobation. Nor, despite all the consideration shown him by his
comrades, could references to Thompson Jowell, couched in terms the
reverse of admiring, fail to find utterance in the presence of the
great man’s son. For when he was not present as a Forage and Supply
Contractor, you met him as an Auxiliary Transport Agent. He was here,
there, and everywhere.... He had a finger in every pie.... Before
very long, it seemed to his son, that whenever men talked together in
lowered tones, with angry faces, the name of Jowell was certain to be
the burden of their discourse.
“S’sh!” someone would say hastily, as Morty’s tall shadow fell
across the threshold of the mess-tent, or drew near over the sandy
parading-ground.
“Why?... Who?...” the man who had been holding forth would ask,
without looking up.
“_His_ son!”... the man who had “S’sh’ed!” would say:
“Oh!”
Morty grew to hate that branding interjection. And that prophecy of
Jowell’s, that he would never be ashamed of his old Governor, was
falsified every day.
Sometimes he would begin to fear that he hated the man who had
begotten him. This acute stage of his complaint was reached when it
began to be known that the Allies would winter on the Black Sea. For
forage, and clothing, and provisions, and all that the Army needed, it
was said, was being sent out in the great Government transport, _The
Realm_, from Portsmouth Dockyard.... What wonder that the boy,
unwilling sharer in the grisly secret that made the stiff gray hair of
Thompson Jowell bristle on his head o’ nights, was galled and
tortured! His apprehension had ridden him as though he had been
another Sindbad, throttled by the hairy incubus of the immortal story.
Then he had hit on a plan for getting rid of this dreadful Old Man of
the Sea.
He had taken his courage in both hands and written boldly to his
father, maintaining at the same time a caution that made him shudder
at himself. For lest Jowell’s murderous secret should leave bloody
finger-marks on every page, it was necessary to be ambiguous. Yet he
had conveyed his meaning clearly, and the final sentence, with all its
crudity, had the ring of steel on stone.
“Sinse I Caim out Here I Have Bigun to understand Better than I did
Bifore What you Meant by What you Said that Night at Dinner. And if
you Do this Thing that you have Planned to do, I will never come Home
Agane or call myself by your Naim, or take another Six-pens of your
Money. As God lives, I won’t, so now you Know! My mother shall hear
the Truth and Chuse between us! It is Hard on a Fellow To have to
rite like this to His Father, but You Have Brought it on yourself!”
There was a postscript:
“Remember I will never come Home or Call myself by your Naim, or Take
another Peny of your Monney. Don’t do it, Gov.! Don’t do it for God’s
saik. He might Forgive you. I Never shold, I Know!
“M.”
You are to imagine Thompson Jowell perusing this composition with eyes
that whirled in their shallow round orbits, and a complexion that
underwent strange changes, deepening from fiery red to muddy purple,
and from muddy purple to pale sea-green.
The letter had been directed to his place of business in the City. When
he blundered up out of his office-chair, crumpling it in his shaking
hand, he was dizzy, and there was a singing in his ears. That his boy
should even dream of turning against his old Governor was preposterous
and absurd, if appalling. The letter was a bit of high-flown nonsense.
Nothing would ever come of it! But yet he shook in every limb, and his
shirt was damp upon his back.
It was his Fate, that, priding himself as he did upon the doggedness of
will and tenacity of purpose that had combined with unscrupulousness
in the making of his fortune, he could not recognize in his son the
first-named qualities. He had begotten his own judge. Though he blinked
the fact, it was presently to come to him, after a method unexpected,
terrible, and strange.
The dizziness passed off; Jowell waddled on his thick short legs to the
rusty fireplace, thrust the letter deep into the heart of the handful
of coal that burned there, and held it down with the poker until it
blazed up and was reduced to a grayish crisp of thin ash. Then he got
a glass of water from the yellow washstand, went to his cupboard, and
deliberately swallowed two Cockle’s pills.
Whenever Conscience woke up, and clamored behind the gorgeous waistcoat
of the great Contractor, he was accustomed to silence her by the
administration of a bumping dose. Purged of repentance and relieved,
we may suppose, of scruples, his reply to Morty’s letter was a
masterpiece in its way.
For it reminded the son, indirectly, of all that the father had done
for him, and temptingly enlarged upon all that he meant to do.... At
the end came the pregnant intimation that Mortimer was not to flurry
himself about affairs that were no concern of his. And that--in a
particular instance not more definitely specified, Sturdy Stephen
Standfast was the name of his old Gov.
“For he don’t mean that letter! Not a word of it!” snorted Thompson
Jowell, quite himself as he blotted the reply to Morty’s letter on
the morning after the two Cockle’s pills. He added: “Throw his old
Gov. over!... By Gosh! he ain’t capable of it. By Gosh! if an Angel
came down from Heaven”--one would like to hear Jowell’s conception of
Heaven--“and told me he was, I wouldn’t take its word.”
When it comes to a tussle between Old Standfast and Young Standfast,
one may be pretty certain as to which is going to win.... Having marked
out, in his blundering boyish way, a line of conduct, Mortimer Jowell
meant to follow it unswervingly. Hence the answer to the letter was a
blow to all his hopes. He wrote no more to his father, though the dowdy
woman regularly received his ill-spelt letters! And being of a kindly,
affectionate disposition, he was profoundly wretched, in anticipation
of the coming hour when he must keep his word.
Gnawing suspense and mental anxiety, combined with the effects of a
deadly climate, might have hurried the Ensign to the grave on the
heels of many another brave young officer, had not Love, with all its
distractions, fears, and longings, acted as a tonic, and braced the
patient up.
The Mounted Irregulars whom Morty had learned to refer to as the
Bashis, were encamped in what had been a vineyard by the roadside
on the way to Aladyn. Their chief, reported to be the father of
Golden Cloak, Morty knew by sight as a bronzed, fiercely-mustached,
soldierly man of perhaps forty-five. Splendidly mounted, dressed in
the dark blue single-breasted tunic with green facings, light blue
red-striped pantaloons, long spurred boots, black sheepskin kalpak
and gray cloak, you would have taken him for an Osmanli commander of
regular horse--had it not been for the blue, silver striped shawl worn
round his kalpak, in combination with his unstudied off-hand manner
of administering chastisement to his ragged, strangely bedizened,
variously-weaponed troopers, with the flat of the naked sword.
It was torture to know that the bright cynosure hailed from that
rowdy camp of brigands.... Morty, who had never previously known
concern as to the reputation of any young woman, was uneasy upon this
score. He found the cool, cynical attitude of his brother officers
intolerable. For Golden Cloak had flashed by, a shining meteor borne on
a brown-black storm-cloud--and left behind a champion and a slave.
She had ridden her magnificent Kabarda, with its costly shabrack of
blue cloth, gold-embroidered, and gold and scarlet bridle, astride,
after the graceful fashion of Peruvian ladies. She was small, pale,
slight in stature as a child.... Her tiny features, pure as pearl,
illuminated with black Oriental eyes, flashing and melting under the
arches of meeting eyebrows, were crowned by a little black lambskin
kalpak, in which was set an aigrette of flashing diamonds. The
miraculous cloak of shining curls covered her to mid-thigh.... But he
could see that she wore a Hussar tunic of dark blue, with golden frogs,
green welts, and trimmings of black lambskin, and that her girdle was
of gold lace, crimson-striped. Also, that her ample trousers of light
blue cloth ended in high boots of scarlet leather, golden-spurred.
There was a sand-wind blowing under a blistering sun that day, and at
first young Mortimer had cursed it heartily. With equal heartiness
he was to bless it, presently. For as she galloped past, it had
snatched the lambskin kalpak from her head, and dropped it in a puff
of scorching dust at his feet. He had pounced on it greedily. Golden
Cloak had reined up her splendid beast, and wheeled, and ridden towards
him....
“Beg pardon! You dropped this!”
Young Mortimer had held up the dainty headgear towards her, saluting
with the best grace he knew how to muster. She had answered in
English.... Heavens! what lisping, quaintly-flavored English!...
“It is mine.”
“Please!... Won’t you take it?”
He had tendered the kalpak, wondering why she stretched forth no hand
to receive it. Instead she had blushed and frowned, shaking her head.
And as the boy had faltered, abashed by her loveliness, downcast by
what seemed her disdain, a gust of the dusty wind had lifted the golden
mantle, shedding it on either side of her slim young body like a pair
of glittering wings; and Mortimer Jowell, standing in the soft black
dust of the road between the vineyards, had known an overwhelming shock
of grief, surprise, and horror; for Beauty had no hands.
The Lancer tunic had wide short, braided sleeves that ended well above
the elbow. From these two slender white arms projected, ending in the
stumps of little wrists.... The reins of her fiery horse were buckled
to a leathern strap that went about her middle. She guided him by the
sway of her slender body to right or left; stopped him by leaning back,
maintained her seat by the clasp of her supple limbs about his shining
barrel. There was perfect accord, complete sympathy, between the rider
and the steed.
But oh! the pity of it! Young Morty had not been able to speak, lest
he should stammer, and choke, and blubber. He had stood in the middle
of the road, gaping stupidly, holding the dainty headgear, which he
made no effort to restore.... She had flushed red. Perhaps she had
thought--who knows what she thought of the dull young English officer?
But the horse had drawn nearer, trotting through the thick black dust,
with dainty mincing steps, whisking its superb tail and tossing its
mane, spreading its scarlet nostrils, cocking its wild eye backwards at
its rider, less in mischief than in play.
It had moved abreast of Morty, almost touching him with its glossy
shoulder, and stopped. The rider had bent low, shedding a torrent of
curls over the holsters at the saddle-bow, covering even her dainty
boot with the hem of her golden cloak. Evidently she expected the
Englishman to replace the kalpak on her head. But he did not. She gave
him a furious glance, caught the cap in her little teeth, snatched it
from his hand, rose in the saddle, and was gone like the wind itself.
“Gaw!” cried Mortimer in stupefaction, for it was the darting flight of
the swallow rather than the gallop of a horse. And then the thick red
blood had rushed from his heart and dyed his healthy round face to the
forehead.... She was afflicted, this lovely girl, and he had stared
at her! Smarting, he went back to camp, more out of conceit with Morty
Jowell than he had even been before, and yet supremely, idiotically
happy. For her hair had swept over him, bathed him, drowned him for one
divine moment in fragrance and beauty. And he could never forget that
moment, not if he lived to be an old, old man, he knew.
Now he finished his letter to his mother, addressed and stamped it,
took sword and revolver from the tent-rack, and went for another walk
upon the road to Aladyn. Not with the idea of meeting her. You are not
to imagine it. He was merely looking for a native wagon-driver who
would take his letter to the post. Presently one came along, straddling
with unclean bare feet upon the foot-board of his creaking wagon,
scratching the populous head under his sheepskin cap with one hand, the
other being engaged in goading his ill-fed bullocks with the end of a
sharpened stick. And to him Morty said in his brand-new Turkish, not
being up to the Bulgarian:
“Ohay _arabaji_! How much casho will you aski to carry a
_mektub_ to the _Posta Khanê_ in Varna? Understandi?
_Yok?_”
But the native shook his shaggy head, scowling upon his interlocutor in
a manner the reverse of friendly, and upon Morty’s drawing anew upon
his stores of Turkish, responded with a Rabelaisian gesture of contempt
which brought the wrathful blood to the rim of the Ensign’s forage-cap.
“You uncivil beast. Ain’t we here to fight for you?” he demanded; but
the _arabaji_ only prodded his lean bullocks and creaked upon his
way. Morty would have dearly liked to follow him, and punch his shaggy
head, but that a long way off he saw her coming, and his heart thudded
against his scarlet coat, and his stock was suffocating.... Because she
must not pass him by, believing that he had been a boor, coarse and
unfeeling. She must stay--she must hear what had to be said. And he had
no words, but intensity of feeling lent gesture eloquence. He stretched
his hands, palm upwards, towards her, then brought them to his lips,
and folded them upon his breast.
“You who are so stricken, yet so beautiful--you to whom my heart has
gone out--whom I loved at sight--pardon me!--pity me! Oh! do not pass
me by without one word!”
The gesture said all this, though he did not know it. She checked her
fiery Kabarda in mid-canter, and rode slowly up to him. He grew dizzy
as the breeze brought him the remembered perfume of her hair. And
she said, slowly, fixing her great dark eyes upon the simple face of
Mortimer Jowell:
“You wish to speak to me?” She added, as he looked away, stroking the
delicate withers of the thoroughbred: “You wish to tell me that you did
not know, I think, and that now you do know, you are sorry--yes?”
He gulped the lump in his throat and nodded, finding courage to look at
her. She said--and an Asiatic lisping of the consonants and lengthening
of the vowels lent charm and strangeness to the words--
“You are an _agha_ in the Army of the Ingiliz?”
He answered at a venture that he was. She said, and the small pale face
had a delicate vivacity:
“I like the Ingiliz. I have their blood through my father! He is
Kaimakam of the Bashi of the Brigade of Adrianople, and comes of a
noble family of London. He is of the Jones.”
“Beg pardon!” stuttered Morty, thinking that he had not heard clearly,
“but would you mind saying that again?”
Golden Cloak repeated, folding her slender arms proudly upon her round
young bosom:
“He is a Jones of London, my father. That is a name of honor in your
country--yes?”
“Gaw!” said Morty, forcing enthusiasm, “I should rather think it was!”
The diamond aigrette of her cap sparkled in the hot sunshine as she
bent her golden head royally. A smile played about her little lips,
scarlet as pomegranate-buds.
“There are many of my father’s name in London?”
Morty said truthfully:
“Bless you! there are thousands of ’em in the Post-Office Directory!”
“Some day I will go,” she said, “to Ingiland, and make acquaintance of
my relatives. For now, I am with my father.... He has no one but me....
I could not bear to leave him.... I have been with him always, since my
beautiful mother died.” She added, and the tiny nostrils quivered:
“I know that she was beautiful because my father has her portrait.
She was a Christian Princess of Georgia, daughter of the Eristav of
Kakhetia. He was a noble Prince of the Bagratides, descended from the
Great Sarbad. The price paid by that family in expiation of murder is
double the blood-fine of the lower class!”
She showed her little gleaming teeth in so proud a smile as she made
this statement that Morty stammered out:
“Uncommon gratifying, and--and jolly for them, I’m sure, Miss!”
She did not look at Mortimer Jowell. Her great gazelle eyes were fixed
upon a heron that was fishing in a little river that wound through the
deep green vineyards beside the dusty road. The bird rose with a loud,
melancholy _honk_, clapped its wings, and flew away diagonally,
its long legs stuck out straight behind it, its crop thrust forwards,
its slender neck curved back between its wings. A shaggy dog rushed out
of a little hut that was only a reed-mat thrown over two poles, barking
at the heron--a gypsy-girl thrust her tangled head out and nodded to
Golden Cloak, showing grinning white teeth in a face burned black by
the Bulgarian sun. The nightingales were jug-jugging in the poplars
that edged the rivulet, the walnut and apricot-trees seemed full of
lesser warblers, the frogs kept up a subdued bass of croakings, the
black-backed, white-bellied swifts wheeled screaming through the pure,
clear burning air. And it was to the boy as if he had never before seen
these things, or guessed their beauty and significance. And they, and
the hot blue sky that roofed them, and the thick black dust his boots
and the delicate feet of her horse were bedded in, were of Golden Cloak
and belonged to her, as the setting belongs to the gem. And, clear and
plaintive as some shepherd’s flute, her small, sweet voice went on
speaking of the dead mother:
“She died when I was born. Her family were angry when she ran away to
be always with my father. They held him accursed because he had abjured
Christianity and embraced the faith of Islâm. But it was her fate. Can
a woman resist her fate? And besides, my father is not a good Mussulman
at all!”
The great blue-black eyes were on Mortimer’s. They drew and drew him....
“Not long afterwards my father was sent upon an expedition into
Mingrelia. It was the month of _Nissân_--the time when the people
make strong wine of green honey and _jundari_--what you call,
I think, the millet? The Bashi stole much of this, and became more
than ever ‘lost heads.’ They entered the villages of Christians, they
plundered, burned, and killed men, women, and children without mercy.
And my mother rode up with my father, as one of his _chawushes_
cut off the hands of a young girl.... To my father she said that night:
‘_The child of our love will be born handless_.’ And it was so.
And when they brought me to her, she lifted the shawl that covered me,
and died!”
The proud little face broke up. Great tears sprang from the beautiful
eyes and ran down, splashing on the golden braidings of the Hussar
tunic, falling like scattered pearls on her black sheepskin of the
saddle-holsters. She shook her head, and jerked them off. Then,
trembling at his own audacity, Mortimer Jowell produced from his cuff a
spotless cambric handkerchief, and would have dried those sacred tears,
had not the fiery Kabarda reared so suddenly, that the too-daring
Ensign, catching the bridle in fear for Golden Cloak, was swung off his
feet.
“Let him go,” she said, high in mid-air, unconcerned and now smiling.
Adding, as Morty obeyed, and the horse came gently to the ground: “Do
not be angry, Urvan, this is another friend!” Then: “Urvan is a little
jealous, he sees me speak to so few people.... And next to my father
and my nurse, Maryanka, a Tartar woman who has been with me since my
birth, he is my protector.... My father trusts me with him.... He would
be dangerous to anyone who tried to do me harm.... You cannot think how
he loves me!... Even like this he loves me!”
And with a gesture that wrung the boy’s soft heart she showed her
piteous stumps. And Morty blurted out, desperately:
“So do other people love you! Don’t _I_ love you? Gaw!--I’d lie
down in the dust and let that beautiful beast of yours trample me to
mash if it would give you what you want! I swear I would!”
“Ah! You are generous!” she said softly. “I saw it in your face. Tell
me your name, that I may always remember it!”
He said, with a boldness that appalled him:
“When you have told me yours!”
“It is Zora. You do not like it?”
He blurted out: “I adore the name. I worship the girl it belongs to!
I’m blest if I don’t, so there!”
She leaned from her saddle impulsively, and the golden cloak fell
over him and covered him. He looked up, drowning in the light of her
glorious eyes, and his boyhood fell away like a cast garment. He had
come into his kingdom. He knew himself a man....
* * * * *
They were to meet but once again upon the dusty road to Aladyn. The
next letter of the yellowed bundle docketed “From my dearest son” is
dated:
“BRITISH CAMP,
“KALAMITA BAY,
“_September 14_.
“MY DEAREST MOTHER,
“The Hole Army has landed after a Saif and Prosperus Voyag across the
Black Sea to the Crimea. We--I Mean the English--saled in 7 Collums
each of 30 vessels every 2 or 3 Vessels being toad by a Steemer. The
Fiteing Force that convoid us was 10 Line-of-Battle Ships besides 50
gun Frigats, 2 screw and 13 small steemers. I herd an Ngineer say
to his mait the Smoak was for all the World like the Pit Country.
The French and Turkish Fleats we overhawled shortly after saling,
the French had 15 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War Steamers, the Turks
8 Line-of-Battle ships and 3 War steemers. I did not count the
transports. But the site of the Flotilla at Sea was tremenjus, and
Must have made the Ruskies at Sevastopole shaik in their shose. At
Nite with all the Red, Blue, and Green litse hung from the masts it
was a good deal like Vauxhall Gardens. N.B. Without the Cold Ham and
the Champain, there being Preshus little to Eat on Bord.
* * * * *
“_Day after Landing._
“What do you think of the Froggeys having the Impudens to Move our Boy
in the Night from the Plais where It had been ankered by the Admiral
of the Flaggship and the Quartermaster-General, thus Bagging the Hole
Bay for their Opperations. Nice I don’t Think! We were all Landid
without our Tents and Lots of the men without their Napsacks being too
week to carry them and lay down on the Beech in the Poaring Rane and
you never heard a Grumball, and Colera bissy among them too. Me and my
Captain Lord Leighminster and Lieutenant Ardenmore (Whisky) slep in a
Cornfield near the Beech and Woak in a puddel 6 in. deep, and the Duke
and his Staff past the nite under a Bullok Waggon and seamed rather to
Injoy it than Not.
“But if you had seen the jumball we were in, French and English all
mixt up together! The Ruskies would have had an Easy Whack if they had
made a Sortee.
* * * * *
“_4 Days after Landing._
“We are Moving Against the Russian Position on the River Alma which
means Apple, and now my darling Mother on what Perhaps may be the Eave
of Axion I must tell you that I Love her with All my Hart. What I
shall Do if she will Not Marry me I don’t Know, so perhaps it Wold be
Best for Me to get Shott. N.B. It is the girl they called Golden Cloak
at Varna. Her Father’s Regiment is with the Turkish Army 2 milse down
the Cost. Her Christian name is Zora. She told me I might call her by
it....
“The Pity is----” _Scratched out._
“It is Sad to Think----” _Scratched out._
“Perhaps the Cheaf reason I Love her So is Because She has No Hands.”