The Interpreter Part 26

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

"MESSIRIE'S"

A narrow street, paved with the roughest and sharpest of flints, debouching into three other streets even less commodious than itself; a Turkish sentry dozing torpid at his post--half-a-dozen _hamauls_[#] clad in rough frieze jackets, and wide pantaloons of the same material, gathered in at the knee, scratching their brown herculean legs, and examining their broad flat feet, as they recline against a dirty dead wall, and interchange their jests with a degree of humour foreign to our English ideas of Turkish gravity--a rascally-looking dragoman in a black frock-coat and a fez, rolling a cigarette, prepared to cheat, rob, swindle, or lie at the shortest notice, a slave to every sensual vice except drunkenness, and speaking all the languages on earth in bad Italian--a brace of English Jack-tars, afire with raki, trolling out "Cheer, boys, cheer," and a stray Zouave, equally exhilarated, joining in chorus; a T.G., or travelling gent, with nascent beard, and towel wound turban-wise around his straw-hat, wis.h.i.+ng himself in Pall Mall, and indignant at the natives, who call him "_Johnny_."

[#] Porters.

The REAL thing from the Crimea, in a curiously worn-out sh.e.l.l jacket, patched and darned, stained and tarnished, with a bronzed face, a bushy beard of two years' growth, and a slight limp that for the rest of his life will bid him "remember the fifth of November," and the turning of the tide upon the declivity of Inkermann.

Two or three English merchants, like crows, to be seen all over the world, and everywhere in the same dress, with white s.h.i.+rts, and honest broad-cloth coats, that remind one of home; a Queen's messenger, with tweed shooting-jacket and official forage-cap, clean shaved and clear-looking, after the bad pa.s.sage and gale of wind he is sure at all seasons to encounter in the Mediterranean, a miracle to us _habitues_ of the place, being actually as fresh from London as yonder copy of _The Times_ newspaper, which came with him by the same mail, the only unfeathered biped in creation that thoroughly carries out the idea of "Here to-day, gone to-morrow." Such are the concomitants of the scene upon which I enter at the door of Messirie's hotel, that well-known rendezvous in Pera where congregate all that have any connection with the mother country; a place where every rumour is to be heard with its latest embellishments, and where, for the sum of seventeen francs a day, I can command a moderate breakfast, a dinner into the components of which it is better not to inquire, and a murky bedroom, where the fierce mosquito shall drain my life-blood all the weary night.

"Is Major Manners in the hotel?" I inquire, as I throw myself off the Pasha's horse, and, glancing at a face in the street very like that of the man I knocked down some three-quarters of an hour ago, reflect what a family resemblance reigns amongst the wretched sons of Ham. Bold is in his worst of humours, and growls ominously. "Is Major Manners here?" I repeat, and three Greek servants, with an abortive attempt to p.r.o.nounce the Frankish name, shrug their shoulders and open their hands to express the hopeless imbecility in which they rejoice. I perceive a stout man in a white hat, picking his teeth unconcernedly in the pa.s.sage, and, recognising him for the master, I apply at once for the information I require. He looks contemptuously at me in reply, and, turning his broad back upon me, walks off without deigning to take any further notice of a customer; but I have been here before, and I know there is balm in Gilead. I know that in a certain little room on the left I shall find the hostess, and that she, the mainstay and prop of the establishment, will spare no pains to a.s.sist a countryman. Kindly Madame Messirie!

always ready to aid one in a difficulty, always busy, always good-humoured, always so thoroughly English, it was quite refres.h.i.+ng to hear the tones of your homely voice, and fancy oneself in the "White Lion," or the "Blue Bear," or some other pleasant hostelry, with post-horses and a bar, and an ostler's bell, far away in merry England.

"Vere Egerton! can that be you?" said a voice that I thought I recognised, as I entered the sanctum in which the hostess reigned supreme. "Little Egerton, as I'm alive, growed out of knowledge, and doubtless by this time a Pasha with three tails, and a true believer.

Tell me all about the process of conversion and the tenets of your faith."

It was indeed Ropsley,--Ropsley the Guardsman--Ropsley the dandy, but how altered! The attenuated _roue_ of former days had grown large and muscular, his face was brown and healthy, his forehead frank and open, the clear grey eye was brighter and quicker than it used to be; it had caught the ready, eager glance of those who look death habitually in the face, but had lost much of the cruel, calculating, leaden expression I remembered so well. Despite his worn-out uniform, the rents in which showed here and there a red flannel s.h.i.+rt,--despite his close-cropped hair and flowing beard,--I could not but confess to myself, as I grasped his hand, that Ropsley looked ten years younger and ten times handsomer than when I saw him last.

Yes, I met him cordially, and as an old friend. 'Tis true he had been my greatest enemy, 'tis true he had inflicted on me a wound, the scar of which I felt I should carry to my grave; but months had pa.s.sed away since then; months which, crowding events upon events, had seemed like years; months of danger, labour, hards.h.i.+p, and tribulation. Of what avail is suffering if it does not soften and purify the heart? Why are those that mourn blessed, if it is not that they learn the bitter lesson grief alone can teach? My task had been a hard one--how hard none knew save the poor humbled scholar who conned it day by day, and blistered the page with his tears; but I had conquered it at last, and so I freely forgave Ropsley, and clasped him by the hand.

"You dine here, of course," he said, in his old half-humorous, half-sarcastic voice. "Madame Messirie, princess of Pera, and queen of my soul, order a place to be set for my friend the Pasha, and lots of champagne to be put in ice. I have only just come down from the front; I have scarcely had a decent dinner, or seen a silver fork, for a year and a half. It's an endless business, this, Egerton; hammer, hammer, hammer, yet nothing comes of it, and the old place looks whiter and more inviting than ever, but we _can't get in_!"

"And the Mamelon?" said I, eager for the last news from the spot to which millions of hearts were reaching, all athirst for hope.

"Got it at last," was his reply, "at least, our neighbours have; I hope they'll keep it. We made a sad mess last week, Egerton; lost no end of men, and half our best officers. Whew! I say nothing, only mark my words, if ever--but there's the bell! Never mind the siege now. War's a mistake, but dinner (if you can get it) never deceives you." And so saying, the _ci-devant_ dandy patted me on the back, and pushed me before him into the well-lighted and now crowded _salon_.

In that strange country, so thoroughly Asiatic, which we call Turkey in Europe, there were so few links to connect us with the life of civilisation which seemed to have pa.s.sed from us like a dream, that it was no wonder we clung to Messirie's hotel and thronged its _table d'hote_ with a constancy and devotion less to be attributed to its own intrinsic merits than to the a.s.sociations and reminiscences it called forth. Here were to be met all the gallant fellows who were going to, or coming from, the front. Heroes, whose names were destined to gild the page of history, might here be seen drinking bad tea and complaining of the b.u.t.ter like ordinary mortals; but always in the highest spirits, as men seem invariably to be during the short lulls of a campaign. When you are likely to be shot next Monday week, if you have small hopes, you have few anxieties. Here, too, you might sit opposite a diplomatist, who was supposed to know the innermost secrets of the court at Vienna, and to be advised of what "the Austrians meant to do," whilst rubbing shoulders with you as he helped himself to fish; and confronting the man of ciphers, some heroic refugee, Pole, Croat, or Hungarian, whose name was in every journal in Europe, as it was inscribed on every military post in Austria or Russia, munched away with a capital appet.i.te, and appeared only conspicuous for the extreme modesty and gentleness of his demeanour. Contractors of every nation jabbered in every language, nor was the supple Armenian, grafting the bold spirit of European speculation on his own Oriental duplicity, wanting to grasp his share of the plunder, which John Bull was so magnanimously offering as a premium to every description of fraud. Even the softer s.e.x was not without its representatives. Two or three high-born English ladies, whose loving hearts had brought them hovering as near the seat of war as it was possible for a non-combatant to venture, daily shed the light of their presence at the dinner-table, and were silently welcomed by many a bold spirit with a degree of chivalrous enthusiasm, of which, anxious and pre-occupied, they were but little aware. A man must have been living for months among men, must have felt his nature gradually brutalising amidst the hards.h.i.+ps, the sufferings, and the horrors of war, thoroughly to appreciate the softening influence of a woman's, and especially of a _countrywoman's_, society. Even to look on those waving white dresses, those gentle English faces, with their blooming cheeks and rich brown hair, was like a draught of water to a pilgrim in a weary land. It reminded us of home--of those we loved--and we went our way back into the desert a thought saddened, perhaps, yet, for all that, kindlier and happier men.

"What a meeting!" exclaimed Manners, as, gorgeously arrayed in the splendours of a full-dress uniform, he took his seat by my side and shook hands with Ropsley, who returned his greeting with a cordial pressure and a look of quiet amus.e.m.e.nt in his eye that almost upset my gravity: "Everdon at Constantinople!" continued our former usher; "we only want De Rohan to make our gathering quite perfect!"

I winced, and for the first time in my life I saw Ropsley colour, but Manners was too much occupied to notice the emotion of either of us; for, during his many visits to Constantinople, the das.h.i.+ng officer of Bas.h.i.+-Bazouks had made such numerous acquaintances, and become so necessary an ingredient in the society of Pera, that there seemed to be hardly an individual at table, from the _attache_ of the Emba.s.sy down to the last-joined officer of the Commissariat, with whom he was not on terms of intimate familiarity. He had scarcely taken his seat and unfolded his dinner-napkin, ere the cross-fire of greetings and inquiries began. Manners, too, in the suns.h.i.+ne of all his popularity, had expanded into a wag; and although his witticisms were of a somewhat profound order, and not always very apparent to the superficial observer, they were generally well received; for a wag was a scarcer article in Constantinople than at the front.

So Manners proceeds with his dinner in great satisfaction and glory.

After a couple of gla.s.ses of champagne he becomes overpoweringly brilliant. He is good enough, too, to take upon himself the onerous task of drilling the waiters, which he affects in bad French, and of abusing the deficiencies of the _cuisine_; a topic affording, indeed, ample scope for declamation. The waiters, especially a cunning old Greek, with a most villainous expression of countenance, betray an immense respect for Manners, tinged with an amused sort of amazement, and always help him first.

They bring him a dish of hare, large of limb and venerable in point of years. Our Bas.h.i.+-Bazouk exclaims indignantly, "_Qu'est que ca?_"

"_C'est un lievre, M'sieur_," replies the waiter, with a forced smile, as of one who expects a jest he will not comprehend.

"_C'est un chat!_" gasps out Manners, glaring indignantly on the official.

"_Pardon, M'sieur,_" says the waiter, "_c'est trop gros pour un chat._"

"_Chat_," repeats Manners; "_Chat_ THOMAS!" he adds, in a sepulchral voice, and with a frowning brow. The waiter shrinks abashed, the company laugh, and Manners's observation counts for a joke.

By this time conversation begins to buzz pretty freely around.

Everybody drinks champagne, and tongues soon become loosened by the exhilarating fluid. Various topics are discussed, including a new beauty that has just arrived from Smyrna, of French extraction, and supposed to possess a fortune that sounds perfectly fabulous when calculated in francs. Manners listens attentively, for he has not totally abandoned the idea of combining the excitement of war with the pursuit of beauty--properly gilded, of course--and his maxim is that "None but the brave deserve the fair." Her praises, however, as also her name and address, are intercepted by the voluble comments of two stout gentlemen, his neighbours, on the utter incapacity of the Turkish Government, and the hopeless imbecility of "the people of this unhappy country, Sir,--a people without a notion of progress---destined to decay, Sir, from the face of the earth," as the stouter of the two, a British merchant, who is about investing in land here, remarks to his neighbour, a jovial Frenchman, who has already bought many a fertile acre in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, under the new Hatti-Sheriff;[#] and who replies, fixing his napkin securely in his b.u.t.ton-hole--

[#] An act empowering foreigners to hold land in Turkey.

"_Pourri, voyez-vous, mon cher. Crac! ca ne durera pas trois ans._"

Opposite these worthies, an ensign in the Guards, and the Queen's messenger, who is of a theatrical turn, are busy with the character, private as well as professional, of a certain star of the Opera, whom the latter has already criticised in the execution of his duty at Vienna, and an ardent desire to hear whom haunts the former enthusiast to such a degree, even in the very trenches, that he longs to attack and take Sebastopol single-handed, in order to get home again before she leaves London for the winter. The Turkish Ministry, changing as it does about once a week; the policy of Austria; the Emperor Napoleon's energy; the inefficiency of our own Commissariat; the ludicrous blunders of the War Office, and the last retort courteous of Lord Stratford, all come in for their share of remark from prejudiced observers of every party and every opinion; but by degrees one voice rises louder than the rest, one individual attracts the notice of the whole dinner-table, and nowise abashed, but rather encouraged by the attention he commands, details volubly his own account of the capture of the Mamelon. He is a Frenchman, and a civilian, but somehow he has a red ribbon on his breast, and belongs to the Legion of Honour, so he "a.s.sisted," as he calls it, at the attack; and if he speaks truth, it must indeed have been an awful sight, and one in which his countrymen outdid themselves for valour, and that quality peculiar to the soldiers of France which they term _elan_, a word it is hopeless to think of translating. His opinions are decided, if not satisfactory; his plan of storming the place an excellent one, if it could only be carried out.

"We have taken the Mamelon!" says he, "and what remains? Bah! The Malakhoff Tower is the key to the whole position. What would you have?

Every simple soldier in the army knows it as well as you and I do. I tell you I 'a.s.sisted' at the capture of the _Mamelon Vert_. They received us with a fire, well sustained, of grape and small arms. Our ammunition failed us at the critical moment. I was in the ditch--_me!_--when the Zouaves came on with their yell--the 152nd of the line were in front of them. It must be carried with the bayonet!--_Pflan!_--our little red pantaloons were swarming up the work and over the parapet ere you could count ten--the tricolor was hoisted and the guns spiked in a twinkling--that is the only way to arrange these affairs. Now, see here--you have your Redan, you others--you have sapped up to it, as near as you can get. There must be a combined attack. You cannot hold it till we have silenced that little rogue of a Malakhoff. What to do? One of these '_four mornings_,' as it was with the Mamelon so will it be with the Malakhoff! Give me a thick column, with the Zouaves in front and rear. These are not follies. I advance my column under cover--I pour in a volley!--I rush on with the bayonet!

At the same moment the Redan falls. Your Guards and Scotchmen run in with their heads, a thousand cannon support you with their fire, the Allies hold the two most important defences, the Garden Batteries are silenced. Chut! the place is ours! France and England are looking on.

I do not say that this will be done; but this is how it ought to be done. If your generals are fools, what is that to me? I am not a general--I!--but a simple civilian!--Waiter, a cigar! _Qui vivra, verra_."

It is all _pipe-clay_, as the soldiers call it, now. The one engrossing topic silences every other. Alma, Inkermann, Lord Raglan's flank march, and the earlier incidents of the siege, are related by the very men who took an active share in those deeds of glory. Two cavalry officers, both wounded on the fatal day, recapitulate once more the _pros_ and _cons_ of the immortal charge at Balaklava--a question that has been vexed and argued till the very actors themselves in that most brilliant of disasters scarcely know how they got in, and still less how they ever got out. Though struck down by the same sh.e.l.l, and within ten yards of one another, each takes a diametrically opposite view of the whole transaction from his comrade. They differ materially as to time, position, pace, and results; above all, as to the merits of the leader whose wreath of laurels faded as undeservedly as it bloomed prematurely.

"I was close behind him the whole way," says the one; "I never saw a fellow so cool in my life, or so well 'got up.' He regulated every stride of that good chestnut horse like clock-work. When we came into fire, our line was dressed as if on parade. I know it by my own squadron. Will you tell me _that_ man lost his head?"

"But where was he after we rode through the guns?" replied the other.

"Answer me that! I grant you he took us in like a _brick_. But why didn't he bring us out? I never saw him after I was. .h.i.t, and I _must_ have seen him if he had rallied the first line, and been in his proper place to look out for his support. You were close to me, old fellow! I never knew before that bob-tailed Irish horse of yours could gallop a mile and a half. You were sickish, my boy, for I saw your face; but your eyesight was unimpaired. Tell me, did _you_ see him, and what was he doing?"

"I _did_, I'll swear!" answers the partisan, as fine a specimen of a young hussar as ever drew a sword. "And I'll tell you what he was doing. Mind, I don't say it because I _like him_, for I don't.

Confound him! he put me under arrest once in Dublin, and I believe it was only because my boots weren't well blacked. But I saw him, with my own eyes, striking at three Cossacks, who were prodding him with their long lances; and if poor old Champion had not dropped under me just at that moment, I'd have gone in and had a shy to help him, if I lost my stick. No, no! he's game as a pebble, let them say what they will; and if it wasn't for those cursed papers, he'd have had all the credit he deserves. It was the quickest thing I ever rode to, my boy," adds the young one, rather flushed, and drinking off his champagne at a gulp in his excitement. "He had a _lead_, and he kept it right well, and I won't hear him run down."

"I don't care," replies his friend. "I maintain it's a general's duty to know everything that's going on. I maintain he ought to have stood still and looked about him (to be sure, we couldn't see much in that smoke); ay! and, if necessary, waited there for the Heavies to come up.

Now, I'll prove it to you in five minutes, if you'll only listen, you obstinate young beggar! Do you remember, just before we were both hit, your saying to me, 'What a go this is!' and my answering, 'Whatever we do, we must keep the men together, but half my horses are blown.' Do you remember that?"

"I _admit_ nothing," answers the young man, laughing, "but I do remember that. It was just before we saw that strong body of Russian cavalry in rear of the guns, and I don't make out now why they weren't down upon us."

"Never mind that," pursues his opponent. "They behaved very steadily, and retired in good order; but you remember the circ.u.mstance. Well, he was then about six horses' lengths from us on our fight."

"On our left," interposes the younger man--"on our left; for I remember poor Blades was knocked over between me and him."

"On our _right_," persists the other. "I am certain of it, my dear fellow, for I remarked at the time----"

"I am positive he was on our left! I remember it as well as if it was yesterday."

"I could take my oath he was on our right; for I recollect seeing his sabretasche swinging."

"Left!" says one, "Right!" says the other; and they never advance one step farther in the discussion, which will be prolonged far into the night, to the consumption of much brandy and water, together with countless cigars, but with no further result.

If no two men see any one action of common life in the same light, how hopeless must it be to endeavour to get at the true statement of an event which takes place in the presence of a crowd of witnesses, all excited, all in peril of their lives, all enveloped in the dense smoke of a hundred guns, all maddening with the fierce, blood-stirring turmoil of such a deed of arms as the death-ride at Balaklava.

The instant dinner is finished, and coffee served, cigars are lit. It is a signal for the ladies to retire, and our handsome countrywomen sail out of the room, with that stately walk that none but an English lady ever succeeds in effecting. Many a glance follows them as they disappear; many a stout heart tightens under its scarlet covering, to think of the ideal at home--her gloves, her dress, her fragrant hair, her graceful gestures, and the gentle smile that may never gladden him again. Men are strange mixtures! the roughest and the coldest exteriors sometimes hide the most sensitive feelings; and when I hear a man professing audacious libertinism, and a supreme contempt for women, I always mistrust the bravado that is but a covering for his weakness, and set him down at once as a puppet, that a pair of white hands--if one only knew where to find them--can turn and twist and set aside at will.

Ropsley was much softer in his manner than he used to be. Had he, too, experienced the common fate? Was the dandy Guardsman no longer impervious, _nulli penetrabilis astro_? Painful as was the subject, he talked much of the De Rohans. He had seen Constance married; he had heard repeatedly from Victor during the past year; and though he evidently knew my hopes and their disappointment, by the tenderness with which he handled the subject, he could not resist enlarging on the topic, and talking to me of that family, in which I could never cease to take the warmest interest. I winced, and yet I listened, for I longed to know and hear of her even now. I would have lain quietly on the rack only to be told of her welfare. It _was_ painful too. Perhaps there is no moment at which the heart feels so empty--at which the hopelessness of a loss is so completely realised, as when we hear the idol of our lives talked of in a matter-of-course way, as being totally unconnected with, and independent of, ourselves.