Still speaking of the horses, Cardillon ended:
“It sounds brutal to say it, perhaps, but they’re better dead. Even
if forage could have been got up to the camps in time to save them,
they haven’t a chance--with the Russian winter coming upon them, and
no shelter of any kind. Take my word for it, we shall fight no more
Cavalry actions on the soil of Crim Tartary--as sure as I’m a Brigadier
on my way home to be heckled by a Government Commission of Inquiry for
obeying a written order of Her Majesty’s Commander-in-Chief!”
He tugged at his sandy bush of whisker and frowned. Lady Stratclyffe
returned mellifluously:
“Granted that the order was an error, scrawled in a moment of
perplexity or confusion--the loyal obedience and high discipline of the
commanding officers and the men, have turned a blunder into a blaze of
glory.”
He took her hand and touched it lightly with his lips:
“Never believe, though, that my fellows cheered as they rode down the
Valley under the plunging fire of all those Ruski batteries. They
cursed and swore. Jove! how they did just swear!” He chuckled like a
schoolboy.
“But they rode on, nevertheless,” said Lady Stratclyffe; “and knowing
what they are, I burn with indignation to think how they have been
wronged! For it is a grievous wrong, to have cast them out upon an
unfriendly foreign shore and denied them their rights of food and fuel
and shelter. Without which, I quote your own words in reference to
the horses, ‘with the Russian winter coming upon them, they haven’t a
chance!’”
He begged her not to pelt him with his own rash words to his undoing.
Winter clothing--stores of all kinds, huts for the troops, were even
then on their way up the Bosphorus _en route_ for the Black Sea.
“And,” he went on, dexterously changing the topic of conversation,
“you spoke of ‘flurry and confusion’ just now, in connection with
the Commander-in-Chief. He was cool enough to perpetrate a clever
epigram at the very moment when he must have realized that the order
was disastrous. After all was over, it appears--a French _chef
d’escadron_ attached to his Staff got down from horseback, and--not
to put too nice a point upon it! was violently sick. When he had
somewhat recovered, he said to Lord Dalgan: ‘Monseigneur, I entreat
your pardon for my weakness. I have been in action many times, but this
is the first massacre I ever saw!’ And _he_ raised his eyebrows
and said in his charming French: ‘Really, Major? I had imagined that
you, with your regiment, played rather a prominent part in clearing the
streets of Paris at the time of the _coup d’État_!’ Not bad for a
‘flurried’ man, was it? And he was cool enough two hours later, when he
rode up to me, and said, almost in the words he had used to the Chief
of the Division: ‘_Do you know what you have done, Lord Cardillon?
You have thrown away the Light Brigade!_’”
“If Lord Dalgan be sometimes guilty of an injustice,” she said, looking
full at him with her clear gray eyes, “he has never shirked his share
of privation and hardship.”
The hit told. For the Brigadier had clung to the comforts of his yacht
in Varna Bay and Balaklava Harbor. He had never tasted the discomforts,
and knew nothing of the hardships, of the campaign.
“You are in pain?” she asked, for he had winced and thrown up his hand
with the gesture of a hit fencer, and the hot color had mounted to his
reddish hair.
“No, no!” He stooped to pick up her forgotten work, without concealing
the twinge that the bullet gave him, for Fate had bestowed the title of
the bravest upon one of the vainest of men. He added, as he laid the
mass of coarse white calico back upon her knee; “Do say what this is
you have been sewing at? It looks like--dare I say?--a nightshirt?”
“It looks as it ought,” she answered, placidly threading a gold-eyed
needle. “And Ada will applaud me. Your recognition of the garment
should lend it value in her eyes.”
“It is for the Hospital?” He added as she signified assent:
“How is Miss Merling, by the way? She got in yesterday morning, I
understand, with her staff of nursing ladies--of all denominations,
according to the newspapers.... One hopes they exaggerate?”
She answered:
“Of the thirty-eight trained nurses who have arrived with Ada, fourteen
are Church of England Sisters, three or four are Congregationalists,
there are a certain number of Presbyterians; and ten are Catholic
Sisters of Charity from the London East End.”
He screwed his mouth into the shape of a whistle, and elevated his
eyebrows dubiously:
“By George! I fancy I hear the whoops of the ultra Low Church Party
against Popish proselytizers and priestesses of the Romish Mysteries.
The gale will break, though there is calm at present. And then--there
will be a heckling of the Minister at War!”
She said, displeased:
“The Sisters are strictly bound not to speak of religious matters to
any patient who is not of their Church.... I am sure that they can be
depended upon. So far as I can judge, their demeanor is perfect. It
struck me that they accorded a more prompt obedience to Ada’s orders
than the other nurses displayed. And when one remembers that they only
arrived yesterday morning, the changes that have already been wrought
are astonishing. I could not have believed it had I not seen!”
He asked:
“And the Lady-in-Chief. One hopes she is serenely confident in the
success of her great undertaking?”
Something in his tone stung. Lady Stratclyffe answered, with her eyes
upon her work:
“The undertaking is great, undoubtedly. As you must know, her letter
volunteering to assume its burden crossed that which Robert Bertham
had written entreating her to accept it. The Barrack Hospital here and
the General Hospital will be under her sole direction. She has also
the supervision of all other British Military Hospitals in the East.
But I can detect no ‘confidence’ in her bearing.... It would be more
appropriate to describe it as calm.”
“The Mediterranean is calm,” Cardillon said, smiling and shrugging.
“Yet I’ve been three times wrecked in it, and once in the Ionian Sea!”
“There is no storm behind Ada’s calm,” said Lady Stratclyffe, “though
when she found that the head and foot-pieces of two thousand iron
bedsteads sent out from England in our transport _The Realm_ for
use in the Barrack Hospital here, had been buried under mountains of
shot and empty shell, destined for the batteries of Balaklava, she was
certainly not complimentary to the contractor who supplied, and the
agent who undertook to pack and ship them! For the shot and shell must
be unloaded at Balaklava before Ada can receive the missing parts of
the beds. And that may mean a matter of weeks: From the windows of the
Embassy I saw the transport pass this morning--a magnificent vessel!”
He asked:
“You are speaking of _The Realm_?” Adding, as she signified
assent: “It was to her I referred just now when I said that all
stores and clothing needed by the Army were even now on their way up
the Bosphorus to the Black Sea. Your bungling agent is a well-known
middleman between Government and its purveyors. Has a son, by the way,
for whom he got a commission in the Guards, and who has good blood in
him--however he may have come by it! Was mentioned in Dispatches from
Headquarters after the Alma. Not bad for a callow Ensign, it appears to
me!”
“Do tell me what he has done!” she begged. “I have missed so much that
has been reported!”
“I’ll do better than tell you. You shall hear the story from his
company Captain, Caddisbroke!”
The hirsute and bandaged wearer of a superlatively shabby red coat
which had formed the center of a group gathered near the saloon-cabin
companion came limping on a crutch across the deck, followed by the
silken swish of feminine skirts and the creak of masculine boots.
“You called me, Lord Cardillon?”
“To tell Lady Stratclyffe what young Jowell said at Alma to the dandy
False Retreat in the Hussar jacket and red forage-cap.”
A pretty woman with an infantile lisp wanted firtht to know what wath a
Faith Retreat? The crutched newcomer answered, exchanging a glance with
the Brigadier:
“We’re beginning to get used to ’em, Madame de Bessarine, in moments of
crisis. In fact, they’re a feature of this campaign. They’re mounted
officers with airs of authority, and Staff epaulets and brassards as
correct as their English accent. Buglers with ’em too, up in all our
calls--particularly numbers Four and Seven.... And when the Light
Division were beginning to reckon with the six Vladimir battalions,
the ‘Retire’ was sounded, and down they came pell-mell, officers
and men, smack into the middle of the White Tufts, who were coming
on towards the river in first-class form.... They disordered their
center, and jumbled the Bearskins Plain, who were advancing a little
to the right of ’em. And in the confusion the Ruskis broke in on
their center and left--and tried to take the Colors, and there was
trouble. So Sir Bayard Baynes rode back to us--and you may guess we
were well in the background, having Royalty to keep in a bandbox!--and
suggested an onward movement. And the Duke of Bambridge gave in. And
we came up at the double, hurraying like mad to have got the chance
of a crack at ’em!--and formed on the left of the White Tufts; and
had no sooner begun to pound the two great columns of gray coats into
smithereens--the White Tufts file-firing while we poured volleys
in--than up comes a dandy False Retreat riding with an order. ‘_The
Duke requests the Cut Red Feathers to retire without delay!_’
And the bugler-blackguard blew--and our bugles sounded down the
line--and the men called out ‘No, no!’ And this young Jowell--acting
as Lieutenant for his half-company in place of Ardenmore killed--calls
out--and I heard him from the ditch I’d tumbled into when they shot me:
‘The Duke never gave that order--and I’m dam’ if I’ll obey it!--I’m
blest if I do, so there!’ And when His Royal Highness heard it, he was
uncommonly tickled--and said they should hear it at home!”