The laugh went round. Men said there was thoroughly fine stuff in that
fellow. Women wanted to know what he was like? Lady Stratclyffe hoped
he had a mother to be proud of him. Cardillon was tugging at his auburn
whiskers and, thinking of the missing head and tail-pieces of the
bedsteads destined for the Hospital, wondered how many of them lay at
the bottom of the holds under the munitions? Two or three hundred, he
guessed, knowing the Jowellian methods. Damn the man! You came across
him everywhere. He really went a bit too far!
The Ambassador’s wife went on to tell him of the four miles of
mattresses already laid upon the pavement in default of bedsteads, and
ranged in double rows down the sides of the Barrack Hospital corridors.
She was afraid the stones would strike cold, and that the long passages
would be draughty in the winter.
“The men won’t complain,” Cardillon told her. “But are all the wards so
full?”
“Four large wards,” she answered him, “and half-a-dozen small
rooms were found available. But there are sixteen hundred sick and
wounded--including cholera patients--already within the walls. And
nearly six hundred in the General Hospital, of which Ada also has
superintendence.... And if the patients there, lie in filth and misery
such as I saw yesterday....”
Her brows contracted and her fine lips quivered. He asked:
“You went through the wards yesterday?”
“Yesterday morning, with Ada and the Sisters of Charity. And the
horrors of them were like nothing of which I ever heard or read. To
start with, the condition of the floors was indescribable. Luckily we
thought of Turkish clogs. And mounted on them we followed Ada through
the Inferno----”
He gloomed. Oblivious of his displeasure, she went on: “There
were no vessels for water, or utensils of any kind. They had no
soap, or towels, or Hospital clothing. The sick were lying in
their uniforms, stiff with filth, upon the dreadful pallets.
Unwashed--untended--covered with vermin--”
She could not go on. He said between his teeth:
“I have said from the first that women have no business in
War-Hospitals. They’re the necessary complement of the camp and the
battle-field, and they’ll be horrible and ghastly as long as the world
lasts. The things that are seen in them are too grim to be talked
about! But why need we talk? We can’t better things by talking!”
“I agree with you perfectly,” she said, with a fine smile of sarcasm.
“But the condition of things I have described is, since yesterday,
astonishingly improved.... To begin with, those Augean floors have been
thoroughly scrubbed!”
“Surely not by--ladies?”
“By the Sisters of Charity, aided by the Hospital orderlies who had
told them--‘_It cannot be done!_’ They said: ‘_It must_’--and
set the example forthwith!”
He commented:
“That’s the pace that kills. They’ll never be able to hold on at it!”
“Wait and prove! I credit Ada and her nuns with immense reserves of
energy. They waste no words. But, oh! Lord Cardillon, when I think
that all this abomination and misery lay close at our doors--here in
Constantinople--and that I and others never knew of it--never dreamed
of it!--I burn with shame and sicken with disgust. No! I do not
exaggerate!”
Her sewing had fallen to the deck. Her white hands wrung themselves
in her lap. Her matronly calm face was contracted and quivering. She
continued:
“I sent from our kitchen at the Embassy quantities of broth and jelly
and other articles of invalid diet. Wine from the cellars and so on.
But neither I nor Stratclyffe ever went there--to our shame never
thought of going there! And but for those articles in the English
papers we never should have known----”
He ground his spurred heel into the deck, and something very like an
oath escaped from him.
“Confound the London newspapers! As for the men who came out here
to cater for news--paid Paul Prys and chiels in butcher-boots and
traveling-caps, taking notes--they go too far. It is unbearable
espionage--presumption!--insolence! I’d hang up every one of them, if I
had the authority and the privileges the Provost-Marshal enjoys! Why,
one of those rags of papers actually published information as to where
we’d stored our powder! What business have Fleet Street journalists
nosing about at the Seat of War?”
She said with spirit:
“They make mistakes occasionally, like the rest of us. But nearly all
of them are gentlemen of education, good sense, and good feeling. Could
anything but honest, fearless indignation have penned those articles
in the _Times_? And--if there is maladministration--lack of
organization--are they not right in pointing where the fault lies? The
British Public, who give their fathers, husbands, sons and brothers
to the service of the country--surely have a right to know how they
fare!... Lord Cardillon!--could not much of this horrible suffering and
waste of life have been prevented by a little forethought?”
He frowned, but answered:
“Since you will have it--yes!” He added, as she thanked him with a look
for the truth, seeing that it had galled in the utterance:
“Please, no more now on that subject. Here’s Miss Delavayle!” And their
conversation ended with the rustling arrival of a tall, elegant woman,
who hurried up and sank down into a chair between them, saying with an
affectation of breathlessness:
“I’m dead, hearing people sing your praises, and telling them that you
don’t deserve any!”
She was a blonde of rather hard and brilliant coloring, dressed as
brilliantly as a tropical bird. Her cheeks and eyes were burning with
suppressed, none the less evident, excitement; her nerves seemed tense
and strung. As she looked at the man, her glance was feverishly bright
and hungrily possessive. He moved uneasily as though he felt it so.
“Rest; why don’t you rest?” he said to her. “But you never rest. I
wonder when you will?”
Lady Stratclyffe had risen and joined the Ambassador’s circle. The
answer was given:
“When your wife dies, and we’re married; then I shall rest--not before!”
He moved restlessly and bit his lip. She went on:
“Do you think I didn’t see you playing the gallant with Madame de
Roux? Don’t protest! I’ve eyes in the middle of my back,” she said,
quivering, “for every petticoat that comes near you. Don’t I know your
charming ways with women, poor idiots that we are!”
“Laura!” he muttered, as her ringed hand clenched upon his chair-arm,
and her fever-bright eyes shot challenges at him. “For Heaven’s sake
don’t make me a scene of jealousy!”
“All right! Tell me what you thought when the Brigade got fairly in
movement. Was it anything about me?”
“By Gad! no!” he said, wounding her unintentionally. “What I thought to
myself was: ‘Here goes the last of the Paradynes!’”
“Trot! Canter! Gallop! Charge!” She imitated the staccato tones of
the officer commanding. “Why wasn’t I born a man, so that I might
have followed you--and fought for you--and died for you when I got my
chance! There! Lady Granbyson is beckoning to me.... I’m compromising
myself hopelessly, sitting here with you like Darby and Joan....”
She flashed a disdainful eye-dart at Lady Granbyson, a portly dowager
in voluminous cinnamon satin, fluttering in distress afar off, like a
large maternal hen. Then she rose, and stooped over him, clasping the
wrist of the unwounded arm that he had thrown across the chair-back,
and whispered, with her blazing eyes looking into his, as her
burning breath beat upon his cheek, and a long, snaky ringlet of her
hot-colored golden hair trailed across the tarnished Brandenbourgs of
his Hussar jacket:
“Do you know what I would have done if the last of the Paradynes
_had_ gone that way? Drowned myself in the Bosphorus when the news
came from the Front!”...
He flushed crimson to the temples and caught his breath.
“Laura!”
But she was gone--and the attendant ladies, who had melted into the
background when she drew near, were bearing down on him. He cursed
women, in his heart, for the mulls they dragged one into. Compunction,
pity, strove in him with anger and resentment. Poor Laura! Yet how
the clasp of her hand had burned, and how green her eyes had gleamed
with jealousy! He foresaw hideous complications with her family--more
terrible with his wife’s people. Confound it! And just now when one’s
Sovereign--always down like bricks upon conjugal offenders--notoriously
strict in matters of morals--might be expected to smile on a popular
Brigadier....
“No, Lady Hathermore, no iced lemonade, thank you. You’re too kind,
Madame de Mirecourt, but I’ve three cushions and a footstool now!”
So forbidding was his frown, that they rustled away in search of more
accessible divinities. Then--lovely eyes--greenish hazel with golden
lights and dusky shadows playing in them--looked down into his and a
lovely mouth smiled bewilderingly. A small white hand with clusters of
rubies and diamonds like drops of blood mingled with tears sparkling on
its slender, pink-tipped fingers, held under his nose a little bunch of
violets....
Henriette had charmed--she must charm again--she had been asked for a
single flower--she must give the whole bunch in her lavishness. You
remember that she could never say No! to a man?...
“I was unkind just now.... You asked--and I denied you. See--I will
make amends! Smell them--are they not sweet?”
“Divinely sweet!--both the gift and the giver!” He forgot his new-born
prejudice against her sex, as she sank with a whispering rustle of
silken draperies into the vacant chair at his side. Suave enchantress!
Exquisite witch! How these ivory-white, supple, small-boned creatures
vulgarized high-colored, big-boned women! Laura, who would presently
have to lead her own forlorn hope down into the Valley of Death under
the plunging fire of the eyes of Society, was high-colored and big of
bone.
“You were angry with me, and for good cause.... I offended, and I have
been punished....”
She said, delighting him with her voice, with her smile, with the play
of her mobile features:
“The fault lay not in your words, Milord, or in your actions, but
in your eyes. Men with such blue eyes are inimical to me. I believe
‘unlucky’ is your English word? Ah, no! Do not suppose I do not like
the color.... Unhappily, I liked it but too well!”
Her glance was enchantment. Her voice was a song. She allured and drew
and provoked him. Laura, under cover of her chaperon’s parasol, glared
at him tigerishly from the other side of the deck. But he had forgotten
Laura. He wondered, noting the delicate spider-lines about Henriette’s
lovely eyes, and on her ivory temples, where the blue veins melted
in the bluish shadows of her jetty, silken hair, how old she was?
Thirty-four or five. Worth a dozen of younger women. He thought this as
he asked whether she was not staying at the Embassy?
“No, not at the French Legation.... I am engaged to visit there when
I return from the Crimea. For the present I share, with Madame de
Bessarine, some rooms at the Hotel of Missiri.” She added, as he asked
if he might not call? “Alas! I leave for the Crimea so soon--it will
not be possible to receive visitors!”
But Cardillon pressed for an appointment and she yielded.
“You are an angel of kindness!” he declared.
She returned, with lovely gravity:
“You are of those who have faith in Angels and Heaven? You believe in
the existence of another world beyond this earth of ours?”
“Certainly. But you could make this earth so sweet for a man that he
wouldn’t barter it for Mahomet’s Paradise.”
She said, ignoring the compliment:
“When you were near to death--not long ago, did you feel more sure of
the existence of that other world than your tone now indicates?”
He answered with reluctance:
“I cannot say. To be sure, one would have to die, and come back to life
again.”
* * * * *
She rose up with her supple exquisite grace, and moved to the yacht’s
side, and stood with one jeweled hand upon the taffrail looking over
at the opposite shore of Asia, as from the thousand minarets of
Stamboul came clear musical voices calling the Faithful to the prayer
of afternoon.
“I am sure, because I once died, and returned to life again. And I came
back out of that dim, strange country that lies beyond this world, with
a secret to tell, and a gift to bestow. And he to whom I would tell my
secret, and give my gift, had departed--where I know not! It may be we
shall never meet on earth any more! And well for him if it were so! For
I have come to believe that if he is ever to know peace or happiness,
his path and mine must never cross again!”
What strange impulse of confidence moved her? One cannot answer. She
went on, not looking at the Brigadier:
“This seems strange to you--will seem stranger when I tell you that I
go to the East to marry another.... But Love and Marriage--are they not
different things, Milord? Does not your experience teach you so?”
He was silent. Her voice sighed on:
“The gift I spoke of but now, is Love--perhaps you have guessed it?
I tell you that a woman may yield to passion--may be much beloved,
without ever having learned that!... It was revealed to me when I lay
as one dead, and one whom I had despised and ill-used stood by what he
and another believed to be a dead body. And in the face of scandal,
dishonor--the mockery and contempt of the world!--he said--I shall
never forget the tone in which he said it: ‘_Because that other man
has left you, I stay beside you here!_’”
Cardillon said, possessed by a sudden, savage jealousy:
“Was that the man with the blue eyes?”
She shook her head. The pearly line of her white profile, as she turned
her face from him, seemed the subtlest thing he had ever looked on.
Her plume of herons’ feathers gleamed black-blue against the night of
her coiled and knotted hair. The little delicate shell-like ear had a
ruby hanging from it, like a blood-drop. She said, in that voice of
exquisite, sighing cadences, looking at a shabby caïque containing
a single passenger, that was being paddled from the steamer-quay of
Tophaneh across to the landing-place of Scutari,--and half-consciously
noting the struggles of the little craft as it battled against the
stiff rush of the current that sweeps past the promontory where
transformed Io landed....
“No, Milord. This man had black eyes. When they looked at you....
_Ayme!... Madre de Dios, misericordia! C’est lui!--c’est lui!_”
The final words were unheard; they had exhaled in a sigh from lips
suddenly bleached pale as poplar-leaves. As her head fell forwards on
her breast, and the tall, rounded, supple figure swayed as though about
to fall, Cardillon threw his strong unwounded arm about her; knowing
by the dead weight that the swoon was unfeigned--wondering what had
brought it about?
Nothing had happened to alarm her. Only the toiling rower had pulled
up-stream diagonally, as though making for the point above the
landing-place of Scutari, and had then let the head of the frail craft
swing round. And the pasenger, a white-haired, black-eyed man, in worn
gray traveling dress, had thus been brought plainly into view of those
on the steam-yacht’s after-deck.
The man had never glanced at the two people who leaned upon the rail,
talking. His eyes were for the green slope and the great quadrangle of
yellow stone masonry reared by Sultan Suleiman....
Madame de Roux recovered almost instantly. The caïque had shot out of
sight past the bend of the promontory. The traveler had landed and
passed on about his business--an accidental likeness had deceived her,
that was all. She lifted her head, smiled with lips still white, and
declared herself well again. And the Brigadier, whose keen light eyes
had the instant before seen a European lady--seated in a caïque with
others--start back and hide her face in horror, as something grim and
shapeless rose up at the boat’s side, said:
“Do not explain! I can guess what happened. You were looking at the
water.... One of those dead men!...”
She said, with a shadowy, troubled glance at the deep, rushing tide
that swept downwards round the promontory of Scutari:
“I do not fear the dead. The living can be more terrible sometimes!”
“Still,” he said, with an effort of unselfishness, “if certain sights
affect you so painfully, it would be well not to wait to see the
arrival of the Hospital-ships.”
“Are we not all assembled,” she asked, “to honor the brave
unfortunate? And, if I could not support tragic, or grim, or squalid
spectacles, should I be now upon my journey to the scene of war?”
“Must you go there? Is Grandguerrier so exigent? Have you really set
your hearts upon being married amidst the tragic spectacles to which
you refer?”
She told him, with her shadowy smile:
“I go, not because I desire to, but because I am destined to.... All
my life long I have done what I wished not to do, at the bidding of an
inexorable Fate....”
He did not know how true it was. But the sensual fever she had kindled
in his veins abated. He looked at her with more sympathy and less
desire. She went on:
“Besides, I must tell you that I have campaigned with my first
husband’s regiment in Algeria, and helped to nurse the wounded.
Recently at Toulon and Marseilles I visited the transports that had
brought in our invalided soldiers from the War-Hospitals of the Levant.
Now I would cry, ‘_Bravo, mes amis!_’ and wave my handkerchief
to your wounded heroes of Alma and Balaklava and Inkerman.... Listen,
Milord! Surely that was a salute of guns!”