Upon the rise beyant the sthrame that ran red, where yet other Tartar
peasants’ huts were charring and smoking, brass-bound firelocks were
mingled with the scattered Miniés and the broken Brown Besses; and the
Highland plaids, and the red coats were infinitely outnumbered by the
gray.
Up above on the hills, scored with rifle-pits, bristling with
batteries, these gray coats lay in swaths and mounds as though the
Divil had been makin’ hay there. And the wearers of the gray coats
were pale, flat-faced men in black leather metal-spiked helmets, or
white linen forage-caps. Clane-shaven men, wid sizable mouths on
them, and little noses, as like wan anodher as pays out av the same
pod. Catholics, too, sorrow a doubt on it! The open shirts beneath
their unbuttoned coats showed, strung round their thick white necks,
medals of the Mother and Child, and Crosses with the Image of the
Crucified. The dead had died, grasping these. The dying strove to kiss
these--making the Sign with fumbling, groping fingers--gasping out
broken sentences of prayer.
And then it flashed on Moggy that this was the Inimy--could be nobody
but the Inimy. The Barbarian, with teeth like prongs of hay-rakes--who
dressed in sheepskins, relished tallow-candles and soap, and worshiped
devil-gods--had never existed at all.
This was a shock, but nothing to the revelation of some seven hours
later, when--as Moggy squatted over a fire of dried weeds and
Commissariat cask-staves, toasting her man’s supper of salt pork on the
end of a broken ramrod--under the black canopy of a starless night,
came down the sickly, tainted wind the mournful cry:
“_Oi-oi-oi!_”
Even as Rachel, Russia mourned for her sons and would not be comforted.
The huge, beaten army of Menschikoff, retreating down the great trunk
road towards Sivernaia, had left a shattered brigade of Imperial Guards
and a regiment or two of cavalry encamped upon the Belbek. And that
piercing “_Oi-oi_” is the wail of the mujik, who, soldier though
he be, is always a peasant at heart. It was the Cossack of the Eastern
Caucasus who cried: “_Ai-ai-ai-dalalai!_”
“Mary be about us! What’s that?”
The woman rose up from her task, dropping the frizzling meat upon the
dull red embers. She plucked back the shawl that hooded her, listened
intently, and said, with her hollowed hand yet cupping the cocked ear:
“_Musha yarra!_ Is it savigees they do be callin’ thim?... May I
never break a pratie more av they’re not keening their dead like dacent
Irish. Do ye not hear thim? Och! och! your souls to glory!” she cried.
“What are we fighting yees for at all, at all? For a dirty baste of a
Turk that spit on the Holy Crucifix, an’ shaves his skull as naked as
me hand!”
* * * * *
They grew to like the snub-nosed, flat faced Ivan or Piotr in the
coarse gray overcoat. The man of dogged imperturbable endurance, who
lived on thin kvas and black bread. Who stood up in blocks as big
as Trafalgar Square to be shot at. Who advanced on the bayonets or
faced the batteries with the bravery of unquestioning obedience; and
regarded his Little Father, the Tsar, as the Vicar upon earth of the
Great Father in Heaven.
The Ivans and Piotrs, aware of their Tsar’s weakness for lightning
journeys and anonymous visits of inspection, believed him to be
constantly with their Army, though unseen. Over many a bivouac-fire
they whispered of a huge officer who sometimes rode with the
Headquarters Staff, but oftenest marched with their battalions; a
man whose impassive stolid face, with the stony blue, prominent eyes
bulging under the spiked black leather helmet, was reproduced in the
official colored print that hung in every barrack-room. He had captured
the imagination of his people in the Cholera year of ’46, when he
thrust his way through the panic-stricken people surging round the
Church of Our Lady of Kasan.
You know the story.... Reports had been spread that all sufferers
taken to the hospitals were poisoned there. Panic reigned. Revolution
was imminent. And Tsar Nicholas drove into the square in his little
one-horse droschky--leaped out and mounted the church steps with those
long, quick strides of his--turned, and threw open the gray great-coat,
showing the glitter of the Orders he wore. Beneath the rim of the
spiked helmet his sullen eyes blazed at his people.... His puffy cheeks
had lost their crimson and were deadly pale.... He bellowed at the full
pitch of that extraordinary voice of his: “Russians, to your knees!”
and down they went.... No wonder they believed in their Tsar, those
Ivans and Piotrs.
Later they arrived at the pitch of interchanging civilities with the
British invader. Sentries who were posted within hailing-distance on
the banks of the Tchernaya, would swop pipes or lumps of black bread
for bits of biscuit--exchange confidences oddly couched in a jargon of
their own. They agreed that the Frantsos were bono, the Ruskies were
bono, the Anglichanin were bono; but that the Turk was no bono at all.
Referring to the Child of Islâm, the Piotrs or Ivans would expectorate,
and hold their noses, as though those organs were afflicted with an
unpleasant odor; while Thomas Atkins or William Brown would affect to
run away in terror, squalling: “Ship, Johnny! Ship!”
This inevitable climax never failed to provoke laughter. It recalled
how--briskly as some colony of whistling marmot-rats into whose rows
of tenanted holes an Army naturalist had poured water--the nimble
Asiatic had evacuated the Northern redoubts on the day of the Balaklava
Attack.
Hopped out at the rare av the earthworks like flays, they did, whin
the Inimy turraned the guns upon thim.... You might have knocked Moggy
Geogehagan down with a feather when she saw the blaggyards lep....
Purty as a picther the battle was, with the green hills set round it
like a frame, and the blue sea lyin’ on your right hand, so calm you
saw the white clouds sailin’ in it.... Nothing Moggy had ever clapped
her two eyes on would aiqual it, barrin’ the glimpse they had had of
the place they called Sevastopol--a wondrous city, with great quays and
populous docks edging the bright blue bay-water, white marble palaces,
and yellow churches with green domes, glittering blue and green and
silver ridgimints paradin’ in the public squares, and sparkling
fountains springing in the sunshine--as the Red Snake and the two Blue
Snakes, turning inland, crawled up the rugged heights that tower beyond
the Farm of Mackenzie, and streamed down the steep defile in an endless
river of dusty, dry-throated, weary, sore-footed beasts and men.
* * * * *
The Red Snake had led the way that day, Moggy remembered.... Riding
without scouts, or advance-patrols, quite like a knightly Crusader of
ancient story, the “bould ould gintleman,” with his Headquarters Staff
and escort about him, had butted into the tail-end of the great Army
of Russia as it ebbed away, like a great gray wounded python, towards
Simferopol.
Faix an’ troth! an’ a battle there would have been to bate
Banagher!--supposin’ the bould ould gintleman to have starruted two
hours airlier, as the Frinch Commandher-in-Chief had coaxed him to do.
As it was, there was a bit av a skirmish between the throops that did
be convoyin’ the baggage-wagons av the Inimy, and our Cavalry.... When
the said wagons were delivered to the sturdy hands that had captured
them, Jems tasted the joys of loot.
True, his share was only a marbled paper bandbox containing some
elderly field-officer’s auburn wig, and a daguerreotype of Mdlle Pasbas
of the Imperial Opera, Petersburg. But as plunder, these things were
prized above rubies by Corporal Geogehagan.
Often and often.... But at this point the listener would urge Moggy
to speed on to the great keening-match in which the wife of Jems so
grandly maintained her own against the overweening pretensions of the
Woman that hailed from Clare.
You must know that on the inland side of the Valley, bottomed with
coarse grass, where the Light Brigade were encamped, rose a hill that
had served as a signaling-station for the Russian coastguard; and
from its summit the squadron-women watched the battle throughout the
livelong day.
It was when these watching women saw a cloud of men in blue and
crimson and gold and scarlet--mounted on black and brown and bay
horses--sweeping down the Valley towards the Cossack squadrons that
had clumped in a dusk mass behind their guns on the banks of the
green Tchernaya--crushing down the vines and the tamarisk-bushes and
oak-scrub, falling under the plowing fire from the Russian batteries
posted on the Woronzoff Ridge and the Fedioukkine Heights, vanishing
in the smoke to wheel and return upon their own bloody path--that the
Woman from Clare screeched out, and clapped her hands, and dropped as
though she had been shot.
She had long been a thorn in Moggy’s side, by rayson of the gabbin’ an’
blather she made, claiming to be descinded from the Seven Champions of
Gortgorla in Ballynahinch Knockmalone.... Wild as an aigle and brown as
the say-weed, she was; and eyes like two blazing yellow torches under
the red thatch of hair she had. Her man was a young color-sergeant in
Lord Cloneen’s famous Hussar Regiment, and she knew him to be end-file
rider on the right of the single squadron that brought up the rear.
Watching from her eyrie with those piercing yellow eyes of hers, she
had seen the shell burst, and the plumed busby fly, and the little
gay-colored speck that was all her joy tumble out of the saddle, as
Houlahan’s riderless horse swept on, borne by the rest.
Fell wid a screech she did, an’ then riz up, an’ the eyes of her might
have been sewn in wid red worsted.... Her blue Galway cloak flapped
like wings as she cried, tossing up her lean freckled arms:
“Och! my grief for the sthrong men! the fine big sthrapping men that
do be lying dead below the hillside! Blood on the sod, an’ the yellow
fat laughing from the deep belly-wounds! Father av Heaven! Was it for
this that their fathers begot and their mothers suckled them? Christ
and Mary pity the wounded, comfort the dying, help for the souls av the
departed, even if they passed widout a prayer!”
She clapped her hands and swayed herself, gathering all her forces, and
not an Irishwoman there but clapped and rocked with her. She cried:
“Och vogh! my grief! for my own grand young husband Michael Houlahan!
For the hoofs of the horses are tangled in his bowels an’ his brains
are spilt like curd upon the ground! Man that I always knew you--why
did I turn from you--last night when we lay togedher undher the wet
tent av the sky? ‘Sleep,’ I said, ‘Sleep! that ye may be sthrong to
meet the morrow!’ An’ he turned from me an’ slept, wid the cowld
raindrops on his cheek.... Och! vogh, vogh! Ochone!--for my own man,
Michael Houlahan! Darlin’, darlin’, why did you die? Why did I deny
you, avourneen, jewel of my heart! that sought to lave a son of your
race behind you? A graft to bear, a seed to spring in the womb! Blessed
Saints, pray for the desolate widow of Michael Houlahan! Holy Souls!
pity----”
The strained voice of lamentation cracked--just in time. For Moggy
Geogehagan could bear no more. For all she knew Jems Geogehagan was
killed like the rest of them--and here was this unconscionable woman
monopolizing the good offices of every One of Thim Above.
She tore out a handful of her coarse black hair, cast it from her with
a superb gesture, clapped her hands, and took up the theme. Ordinary
language was far too poor to do justice to the merits of the departed.
She gave him all the grandest words she knew.
“Woman!” she began, with a clap of her hands and a toss of her head.
“Away wid you! I am extenuated wid your lamentations! What call have
you to be bragging of your Mike Houlahan? Sure, beside the man that
was Jems Geogehagan your Mike Houlahan showed no bigger than a flay!
Of a configuration that excogitated the behoulder wid revelations av
martial splindhour, where was his aiqual? What modher’s son iver got
the betther av him? Whilleleu! Och, och! whatever will I do at all?”
She shrieked like a locomotive, reveling in the glory of her
wretchedness, and drew her ten nails down the length of her face. The
woman from Clare had collapsed by this time into a blue rag-bundle. The
other women came crowding about Moggy--laying hands upon her--pointing,
vociferating.... With the power that was upon her in that great hour,
they fell off her elbows, she said, like a bundle av sthraws....
“Whoo! My bitther black curse upon the vagabone that kilt Jems
Geogehagan! May he die like a dog in a ditch, the big murdherin’ rogue!
May he----”
But every throat set up a cry and every finger pointed in one
direction, and a rush of the crowd swept her down the steep hillside.
You may conceive how the women greeted that straggling party of
unhorsed, dejected men, some of whom were wearing bloody head-bandages,
others of whom limped painfully, as, supported by their comrades,
they made their way back to the camp of the Light Brigade. And the
irrepressible cry broke from Moggy, as Jems ambled towards her,
grinning foolishly:
“The divil baste your hide! What call have you to be alive, and me
raising the widdy’s cry for you? Give me your ear, you sorrow o’ the
worruld!”
But when she saw that his round face was white and drawn, and that
his left arm dangled helplessly; and that a bright red stream was
running from the deep sword-thrust in his side, the woman’s heart
got the better of her. She uttered a great maternal cry of love, and
tenderness, and sorrow, and caught him, fainting, in her brawny arms.