When Sarah Horrotian heard of the strange and terrible ending of
Thompson Jowell, she found it hard to believe that she was never to see
his coarse red face again, never to be uprooted and ruined by him....
Even when weeks passed without foreclosure, she was still expectant of
his turning up suddenly, big and gross and greedy as ever.... When at
length she realized that he was dead, she forbade herself to hope.
For the man had a son, and the son would be no more pitiful than the
father, thought Sarah Horrotian. When the legal representatives of
Jowell’s widow wrote, saying that the interest and principal of her
debt would be remitted--when the deed of mortgage was returned to her
with “Canceled” written across it--the widow faintly wondered, having
gone too numb to be joyfully surprised.
Nothing now was needed to set the farm upon its legs again but a
little money and a certain amount of energy.... The money she might
have found, but the springs of vitality had dried up. Though there
were hours, when, sitting in the gaunt, bare farm-kitchen towards
nightfall, staring at the handful of coals that burned in the capacious
fire-grate, she knew that the desert of her heart might grow green
things again, if only Josh and his wife came home.
And, though she told herself they never would, something in her secret
heart gave the lie to her. She would have died rather than admit it to
herself--but for fear lest they should come, after all, and miss her,
and go away to return no more--she ceased to leave the house. Presently
the news spread that Widder Horrotian had come down in the world, and
gone crazy-like, and never even crept outdoors to look for eggs in the
tenantless sheds and empty pigsties--and that you could range over the
whole place wi’out coming athirt the woman at all.
Gangs of marauding boys ventured first, after ungathered apples and
unharvested turnips; and then their seniors began to take a fearful joy
in nocturnal visits from which they returned, bending under mysterious
loads.
The fowls disappeared--the wood-stack melted--the farm and garden tools
took to themselves wings, and the vegetable shed was broken into one
night, and gutted. Discovering this, the widow realized that when the
flour in the garret, and the potatoes in the cellar; the sides of bacon
hanging in the kitchen, and the cheese under the press in the dairy
should be eaten, Want would come knock at the door of Upper Clays Farm.
Yet when the threshold was approached by ragged tramps with mendacious
stories of misfortune, or lean and hairy men with scurvy-marked faces,
who said simply that they were invalided soldiers who had been sent
home from the Front--Sarah gave of what she had, without reproach or
girding. To these last, especially when they came limping on crutches,
or showed bandaged wounds, or sleeves empty of arms, she was almost
gentle. None of them could tell her anything of Joshua Horrotian,
except that two squadrons of the Hundredth Lancers had ridden in the
Charge of the Light Brigade.
Hope was all but dead in the woman, when upon a sultry summer evening,
the white gate clashed behind a tall, thin, ragged, red-haired and
bearded man--and a shabby woman carrying a baby--wrapped in the folds
of a faded plaid shawl. As they stood faltering, doubtful of their
reception, the heart of Sarah leapt within her faded wincey bodice, and
the ice of her frozen nature broke up.
Always of formal gait and scanty gesture, there was now something
eloquent, free, and almost noble in the woman’s action. She had no
words--she was bankrupt of a single text to fit the occasion. But she
set back the half-doors, and knelt down upon the worn stone threshold.
Bowing her head, she crossed her thin arms upon her aching bosom, then
spread them open wide, and waited so.
“Oh! my dear son, whom I have ill-used; and cast out and denied the
right of heritage. Come, take your own, and forgive me, my son!--my
son! Oh! my dear daughter, whom I have wronged so cruelly--try--try
to pardon me! Teach your child to think of me forgivingly. For I have
sinned, and the Lord has punished me with rods and scourges. Yet He
must have relented towards me--for He has sent you home!”
In words like these the silent action and the mute gesture spoke to
the returned wanderers. So they lifted Sarah up, and kissed her; and
she wept and kissed them and their child, and was comforted. And they
went into the house together. And with them Happiness, and in the end
Prosperity, came back to dwell at Upper Clays Farm.
C
The three hospital-ships slowly rounded the promontory. Their anchors
fell with a sudden plunge. The bugles sounded, the gangways opened,
the ladders fell--the barges of the Turkish hospital-hulk below
the Point of the Seraglio, hurried, with a host of other craft, to
receive their load of wretchedness. No surf beat on the rotten planks
and shifting stones of the landing-place, and yet the process of
disembarkation was lengthy and slow.
Day waned, the sickly haze fell dead, and the atmosphere grew denser.
A round, red sun, hanging over Constantinople, stared through the dark
blue fog malevolently, like some ogre’s solitary eye. Presently by the
light of flaming torches the endless procession of litters--carried
by English and French sailors, Turkish gendarmerie, porters of the
markets, and soldiers of the militia regiments of Artillery that had
been recalled from Tripoli to man the batteries and garrison the forts
of the Bosphorus--moved over the crazy planks of the landing-quay, and
climbed the steep paved road that led to the great yellow stone Barrack
Hospital, between the crowds of sightseers of all nations that walled
them in on either side.
For men and women could not tear themselves away from the awful
fascination of the spectacle, as scourged and thorn-crowned England
staggered, bleeding, up her Hill of Calvary--even as it had been
prophesied to Prince Gortschakoff by the Tsar, his master--who was so
soon to lie a-dying on his sack of leather stuffed with hay.
* * * * *
There was one woman among the many who held to blackened hands that
hung over the sides of litters, or staggered upwards, aiding some
tottering cripple’s steps with the little strength they had....
You saw her as a lean, tanned, big-boned creature, with ropes of
coarse black hair tumbling down over the tatters of a cavalryman’s
cloak. Passionately she resisted some sailors who shouted at
her--gesticulating and crying herrings on them.... All the litters were
in use, they said. Her man was no worse off than hundreds! Let him bide
by the roadside with the others, dead and living, who lay there waiting
for bearers! What call had a common soger to be treated any better than
the rest?
What call? But that the blaggyardly rapscallions would not stop and
listen to her, Moggy Geogehagan would have let them hear a thing or
two.... As it was, with her Jems drawing every breath like a bucketful
of stones, there was no time to waste in arguing with the likes of
them....
So she bowed herself, and hoisted the yellow parchment-covered skeleton
that had been her man upon the shoulders that had carried many a
brimming creel of herrings, and, leaning on a knotted staff she had,
began to make the ascent.
A few steps, and the woman tottered. But that a black-eyed,
white-haired and bearded man, in worn gray traveling clothes, broke
through the hedge of spectators, and lent his wasted strength to eke
out hers, she would have fallen with her precious load.
So together they carried Jems Geogehagan up the stone-paved road that
led to England’s Calvary. As long as Moggy lived--and she did not die
for many years--she remembered that stranger’s face.
The man was Hector Dunoisse. Nor did he ever forget how--as they
reached the summit of the toilsome ascent, and the great archway of the
Barrack Hospital gaped before them--he saw at last the woman he had
come so far to find.
* * * * *
She stood upon a rising knoll of ground, upon the right of the entrance
to the Hospital. As in his dream of her, she wore a plain black dress,
and a black silk kerchief was tied over the frilled white cap. She was
very pale; her eyes burned gray-blue fire beneath her leveled brows,
and her lips were colorless and closely set.
Officials of various grades, in mufti and in uniform, were grouped
behind her. Nurses in gray, or brown holland dresses and white
caps gathered about her: the black habits and white guimpes of the
Sisters of Mercy were actively conspicuous among the rest. And as her
keen, observant eyes glanced hither and thither--and swift orders
dropped from her lips--one nun after another would dart from her
side and vanish; to return and speed forth again--diligent as little
black-and-white humble-bees obeying the orders of their Queen.
It is upon record that all through the day, all through the night of
fog-bleared moonlight and far into the morning that followed, Ada
Merling stood while the sick and wounded were being carried into the
Hospital.
Strong men grew weary, and went away in search of rest and
refreshment. Nurses collapsed, and were succeeded by other nurses.
Relays of bearers were replaced by fresh relays. But the Lady-in-Chief
remained at her post unflinchingly, and the white-haired man toiled
on, and never stopped. For the strength and endurance that breathed
from the still composure of Ada Merling seemed, despite his weakness,
to communicate itself to Dunoisse. He was giddy, and faint, and
breathless--his shoulders were galled, his hands were raw--his boots
were in rags upon his blistered feet, when a rose-red dawn suffused
the sky behind the wooded slopes of Bûlgurlû, and the last burden of
wretchedness was carried in.
Then, and not until then, Ada Merling quitted her post, and followed.
He who watched saw the tall, slight figure pass under the deep archway,
saw the sentries present arms, saw the heavy gates shut. The last
sightseers straggled away, and Dunoisse went down the hill-path, weary,
and faint, and limping, yet happier and more at peace than he had been
for many years. A tumbledown wooden eating-house, kept by a Greek
named Demetrios, stood in those days near the landing-quay of Scutari.
Dunoisse obtained a miserable room with a poor bed in it, slept for an
hour or two, ate what they put before him, and returned to the Hospital.