SCUTARI.
In the reference to Cyril's letters, we have somewhat anticipated a
portion of his story.
The steam frigate on board of which he had been conveyed, ran
straight for Scutari with her freight of sufferers, whose number
lessened every hour, as the mortally wounded, or those who were
totally exhausted by loss of blood, expired, and were shot over to
leeward, tied up in a blanket, or, more simply still, in their grey
great-coats. Cyril endured great agony from his principal wound,
together with an extreme difficulty of respiration, and even when
awake he lay as one in a kind of dream, in the cabin generously
resigned to his use by an officer of the ship. At times, he seemed
still to hear the din of battle in his cars; the sharp roar of the
musketry, the booming of the artillery, the crash of exploding shells
and rockets, the demon-like yells of the Russians, and the tumultuous
cheering of our own troops as they closed in upon them, and the cries
of the wounded, as they rolled, in their agony, and tore up the grass
with their fingers. But this was only the result of an overheated
fancy, for the only sound he heard was the rush of the shining waves
as they passed the open gun-port while the frigate sped on her way.
On the third day after the battle he was very languid and weak, yet
his listless eyes could see, through the gun-port, that land was in
sight. Beautiful green hills were there, tall minarets of snowy
whiteness, great round leaden domes; and, recognising Scutari as they
neared it, he closed his eyes wearily.
After a time, he was sensible of being lifted on a stretcher tenderly
and kindly, by the hands of sailors, and found himself in the open
air and on a quay, with many more of the wounded, surrounded by a
staring crowd of picturesque-looking Greeks, in scarlet fezzes, blue
breeches, and laced jackets; stolid looking Turks, with great
turbans; swarthy Arabs, Negro slaves, and filthy Jews, with their
sly, gleaming eyes and long gaberdines; all of whom the Marine escort
put back with their bayonets, and without much ceremony. Through
this motley mob he was conveyed, past the magnificent pile of
buildings which an Italian architect constructed as a barrack for the
Turkish troops (but which was then full of our own convalescents), to
the hospital, which was filling fast with wounded, as ship after ship
arrived from the shore of the Alma with her human cargo, in the shape
of mangled, emaciated, moaning, and quivering unfortunates, in
uniforms that became rags, sodden and saturated with mud and gore;
and they were laid side by side in the wards, pell mell, many of them
on the bare floor, where, through want of sufficient attendance, the
atmosphere soon became tainted with the horrid odour of undried
blood; causing the shocked onlooker to long for the day--if it will
ever come--when the shedding of it should cease, and "when war shall
be no more."
The name and rank of each man, together with the number of his
regiment, were asked, as the patients were borne in. Some could
reply to all that was required of them; but many a poor fellow was
past utterance, and could only gaze with listless and lack-lustre
eyes at the questioner, who would enter him in the hospital books as
"a private of the Seventh Foot," "corporal, Twenty-third Fusileers,"
or the "Guards," or "Cameron Highlanders," and so forth.
Thus they were carried in, in too many instances to die unnamed and
unknown, by their fate recalling the touching lines that appeared in
a periodical:--
"Into a ward of unwhitewashed walls,
Where the dead and the dying lay--
Wounded by bayonets, shells and balls--
Somebody's Darling was borne one day.
"Somebody's Darling! so young and so brave,
Wearing still on his pale, sweet face,
So soon to be hid by the dust of the grave,
The ling'ring light of his boyhood's grace.
"Somebody wept when he marched away,
Looking so handsome, brave and grand;
Somebody's kiss on his forehead lay;
Somebody clung to his parting hand."
Cyril's room was in a lofty portion of the hospital, and, from a
window which was near his bed, he could see the blue Bosphorus
sweeping by the base of the dark-green mountains of Scutari, and all
the far-famed Golden Horn--seeming such indeed, for the waters round,
it were tinted with all the splendour of the Eastern sun. And, while
thinking sadly of the slaughter that had fallen upon his regiment,
and of the faces he never more should see, his eyes gazed with a
species of vacant wonder on Constantinople, which seemed like a
cluster of fairy cities beside the strait, each a very wilderness of
shining domes, painted cupolas, gilded and red-tiled kiosks, tall
minarets, and marble fountains, the snow-white palace of the Sultan
towering over all; the background, dark cypresses and hills, and, in
the middle distance, a forest of masts, each bearing a flag, for the
waters of the Bosphorus were full of merchant ships, war-steamers,
swift caiques that cleft them as if instinct with life, and shoals of
glittering dolphins surging past from wave to wave.
For a time he was tormented by the groans and cries of an unfortunate
young Chasseur d'Afrique, who, by some mistake, had been brought away
with our wounded, and who shared his room. The left shoulder of this
unhappy creature had been shattered by a large grape-shot, and the
wound was perfectly incurable; but life was wonderfully tenacious
within him. On the second day his ravings ceased, and turned to
prayer:--
"_Sainte Vièrge, priez pour moi--pour moi!_" he would say
imploringly, and then murmur softly, with quivering lips and tearful
eyes, "_Ma Mère--O, ma Mère!_" in that touching and childlike spirit
of devotion which the French soldier has peculiarly for his mother.
On waking one morning, Cyril found that he was alone; for the poor
Chasseur had been taken to his last home, near those solemn cypresses
which cast their shadows on that city of tombs, outside the walls of
Scutari--the seven miles of cemetery where the followers of the
Prophet lie.
For many days Cyril Wedderburn hovered between life and death, while
patients poured into the hospital so fast, that the surgeons and
nurses had more work on their hands than they could attend to. There
was a perpetual and offensive odour of poultices, bouillon,
preserved-meats, and jellies about the place, as they were carried to
and fro; while the rending of the shirts and sheets of the dead into
bandages for the living, together with the manufacture of cushions
and pillows for limbs that had undergone amputation, went briskly
forward in the passages and yard without.
A night of restlessness and weariness--with its occasional waking
fits, during which, to the eye of the sick or ailing, a kind of
phantasmagoria peoples the darkness, strange faces come of it, and
fancy fills the air with odd sounds--was passing slowly away. Dawn
stole into Cyril's room. The Bosphorus and all the domes and windows
of Constantinople were beginning to glitter in light, as the sun rose
above the hills of Scutari; and like many others in that abode of
suffering, Cyril woke with a sigh, to think that another weary day of
pain and inertia was before him. So faint and weak had he become,
that there were times when he wished to die, and would mutter, as he
lay with closed eyes--
"If I have not done much good in the world, I have not done much
harm, and now I could pass peacefully away."
He was too dimsighted by the loss of blood to be able to read, even
had he been supplied with books, and thus his days were days of utter
weariness.
On this morning his throat was parched, and he called feebly to the
soldier who usually attended him for water; but the soldier--one of
the Black Watch, whose left hand had been shattered by a
canister-shot--did not reply, so Cyril sighed and wearily closed his
eyes again.
Something like a tear fell on his face, and starting, he looked up,
but only to shrink back with emotions of alarm and fear, so he
covered his pale face with his thin hands.
"Cyril," said a voice, and a sob mingled with his name. Then he
trembled, for it sounded like a voice that once had power to thrill
his heart to its inmost core.
Was it all a dream, or was he going mad? Had the excitement of the
battle, or the crash of the bullet as it traversed his body, given
his brain a shock so rude, that sense and imagination wandered now?
No! she on whose shoulder his aching head reclined, whose hand
caressed his now tangled hair, whose tear had fallen on his cheek,
and whose loving, yet deep and thoughtful eyes seemed to speak of a
strange future, and of a sorrowful, it might be awful, past,
was--Mary Lennox.
Cyril had been dreaming of his mother, and it had seemed as if her
voice--the one he loved most and best in boyhood--was murmuring in
his ear, calling him back to life; and now it was the voice of Mary,
and her soft earnest face, with a mingled expression of tenderness
and agony, was turned towards his own.
She was very pale, rather emaciated, and dressed in a plain black
costume, somewhat like that of a Sister of Charity, but without a
hood.
"You here, Mary--here in Scutari--in this frightful hospital, and
attending me? Oh, explain this riddle, or I shall go mad--speak to
me--place your hands in mine!" said he, huskily, in a low and
imploring voice, as if he feared she would melt into thin air. But
she answered, calmly--
"I arrived here, Cyril, three days ago from London, with Miss
Nightingale and the staff of ladies who have come to nurse the
wounded. Oh, Cyril Wedderburn, what was my emotion--my horror--when
I learned that you were here!"
"Mary, it is frightful this, such work--such scenes--you will perish.
Scenes of utter horror and affright! What madness brought you here?"
"It was no madness, but the prompting of my own heart, Cyril--a light
that came to me from Heaven above, and the hope that I might be
nearer--you; and now, now, oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed, while
placing her interlaced fingers on her forehead, and looking wildly
upward; "after all the sufferings, the terrors, and sorrow I have
undergone; after all the most unmerited shame that was put upon me;
after enduring all the emotions of love, desertion, and despair, have
I met you, but to see you thus--dying perhaps?"
That Mary should have accompanied Miss Florence Nightingale--a young
lady of good family, whose benevolent occupations fully qualified her
for that remarkable and romantic undertaking, which made her and her
trained nurses the idols of our soldiers, whose sick-beds they
soothed, and whose pains and anxieties they did so much to
console--fully explained to Cyril the reason of her sudden and most
unexpected appearance in the Hospital of Scutari; but we leave their
subsequent conversation to explain how she escaped the death to
which, when last we saw her, she was hastening.
Miss Nightingale and her ladies were as ministering angels in the
terrible wards of that hospital; and to the death-drowsy ear of many
a wounded and sinking soldier there, how sweetly came the prayers and
words of comfort they uttered in his native tongue.