Marmaduke Part 26

But the beauties of Varna got the better of his reflections and he drew a picture of it that filled Marrion with doubts and delight. "It is as beautiful as Scotland--the lakes stretching away into the scarped woody hills, the sea--so calm that the clouds reflected seem to sail on it--almost motionless on the sh.o.r.e. The green sward down to the very edge of the lakes, carpeted with flowers, especially with irises. They call it the flower of death in India, and I noticed an evening mist, thick enough almost to be called a fog, rising at sunset from the low levels and enveloping the town. It did not augur well for health. As for the town itself, words fail. It is Gallipoli over again with fewer drains and more filth. Yet to look at it in the clear sunlight, it is the new Jerusalem. And there are angels in it, Marmie; the sort of angels you love. I really think these little Turks and Turkesses are the prettiest children I ever saw. Their little yellow faces and big brown eyes make one think of Rubens' cherubs seen through smoked gla.s.ses like an eclipse! And an eclipse of most things it is often for the poor little beggars. At Kustendji, the other day, Hyde Parker found a couple of pure babies on the battlefield where the Russians had been bombarding. They're the pets of his frigate now; but there are dozens of them who have no such luck, and dozens more, I expect, who die of sheer hunger because we locusts of war eat up everything. There will be ninety thousand of us here before long, and for how long? G.o.d knows! Five months and nothing done! I wonder how you would stand it? But it wouldn't happen if you were at the head of affairs. You'd manage somehow. I feel it in my bones. And, joking apart, women would be very useful out here. We are going to have a lot of sick to begin with, and then the misery of the poor folk in town and village is appalling. However, I suppose England must have time to turn round and yawn before she wakes up to anything."

Marrion Paul got that letter early one June morning. She laid it down among the muslins and laces and went to the window. The street was empty, but she saw, as clearly as if he had really been there, Marmaduke Muir's buoyant figure going forth to war, full of hope and confidence.

She never took long making up her mind; and, absolutely without ties as she was, there were few factors to be considered. Her business was such a personal one that she had only herself to consult. She had money and to spare in the bank. Finally, within her heart was the same spirit of adventure, the same disregard of conventionalities which had always attracted her in Marmaduke.

Last of all his stockings were not adequately mended.

She laughed aloud at the whimsical thought, for she had no intention of thrusting herself upon him. But she could be near at hand, and she, at any rate, need not turn round and yawn before she realised that women could help.

So quietly, methodically, she set matters in train to get all the work she had in hand speedily finished. She wrote declining a few orders that had come in, and then set off with one of her daintiest little creations to see the wife of the Turkish amba.s.sador, who happened to be one of her customers.

But, indeed, as Mrs. Marsden, of the "_Layettes_," she could command plenty of backstairs influence.

The result being that in less than a week she was stepping into the Dover boat on her way to Ma.r.s.eilles, that being the quickest route to Constantinople. She carried with her credentials from the amba.s.sador's family, which she meant to use, if necessary, though she hoped to be able to do without them, as anything in the nature of publicity might prevent her carrying out her plan of reaching Varna without Marmaduke being aware of the fact. As a precaution she wrote to him the day she left, telling him not to expect further news from her for a few weeks as she had decided on attempting a cure for her lameness, which a clever young hospital doctor had advised, but which involved a long rest.

She had engaged her pa.s.sage to Constantinople by a small Turkish mailboat which sailed between Ma.r.s.eilles and the Black Sea. She did this partly from desire to avoid her fellow-countrymen and the possibility of recognition or notice, but more because the voyage would give her an opportunity of learning a few words of Turkish and of becoming acquainted at least with the husk of Turkish ways. She had brought a grammar with her, and was laboriously learning perfectly useless phrases, when something occurred which sent books to the right-about and plunged her at once into the work she had hoped almost beyond hope to be able to reach. Cholera, at that time sweeping erratically through Europe, broke out among the steerage pa.s.sengers. A mother died, leaving her month-old baby to be cared for as best it could. Marrion claimed it, thus became acquainted with the s.h.i.+p's surgeon and was his right hand in the sharp, decisive epidemic that followed. It was one of those s.h.i.+pboard epidemics when every hour brings a new case, until suddenly, with some change of wind or course, the sickness ceases as it came, mysteriously. They were off the coast of Candia when the little Turk doctor, who had pa.s.sed at a French medical school, made an elaborate bow, laid his hand on his heart, and said, "Madame, _je suis votre serviteur_." The few convalescents lying about in the scuppers murmured the same thing in Turkish, making Marrion realise that what she had set herself to do was possible, if only she could get footing amongst the people. She decided finally on consulting her new friend, the little surgeon.

"Varna!" he echoed. "So madame desires Varna! That is strange, since, being in quarantine, we shall not be allowed to stop at Constantinople. We must go on straight to Varna, where the disease already is."

She caught in her breath.

"Not bad, I hope?"

"Of the troops I know little," he said, "but the townsfolk have suffered terribly. It is semi-starvation. Hein!" lie interrupted himself hastily, and slapped his baggy trousers, "there is an old man there--a cripple--one of the old school of medicine that knows nothing. He has a sort of hospital where folk die decently. If I were to tell him the use you were, and that you had your own stores of Europe medicines"--for Marrion had spent a considerable sum in fitting herself out for the part she hoped to play--"he might like your help.

You have plenty of money?"

His little sharp eyes were alight with interest.

"I have plenty of money," replied Marrion promptly, "and I mean to spend it."

"Then you may consider it settled," said the surgeon. "Old Achmet is a sort of relation of mine. I come of a physician family; but I warn you the presence of an English lady in Varna will not pa.s.s unnoticed."

"I shall dress as a Turkish lady," remarked Marrion, with a smile. "I had thought of that. The _yashmak_ is very convenient."

The little Turk laughed in high good humour.

"The dress will become madame. She will have many admirers; but I will be the first."

So it was settled lightly, but, as the little steamer puffed and panted over the blue Archipelago where the blue islands lay scattered like so many shadows, Marrion Paul felt somehow as if the net of Fate were closing in on her. There was the scent of Death in the air.

She felt it almost overwhelmingly when, on the first night of her arrival at Varna, she stood on the ricketty wooden verandah of the half-ruined house which had been found for her, looking out over the long line of inland lakes that in the past month had gained from the intruders whose white tents showed everywhere the dismal name of "Lake of Death." A white miasma rose from it, hiding the level green fields which in the sunset had glowed purple-red with the meadow saffron.

Everything had gone smoothly. The old _hakim_ Achmet had gripped on the hope of money, and Marrion Paul, who had remained on board the steamer until all negotiations had been made, had simply stepped into the dinghy in her Turkish dress and been carried with due privacy to the house chosen for her. Mercifully, the s.h.i.+p's surgeon--who was delighted at his importance as entrepreneur--had been impressed by Marrion's appearance, and, arguing therefrom the length of her purse, had fixed on a villa which had once belonged to a pasha of some sort.

It stood high among cypresses on the Devna road, but, by a steep descent, was close to the worse slums of the town.

So, as Marrion stood, trying to realise her position, it seemed impossible, unreal that she should be within touch of Marmaduke--if he were still there--if he were not dead. An indefinable sense of tragedy impending--tragedy that was not all grief, but which, by very excess of joy, of glory, of intensity, transcended the normal and so became almost fearful, seemed to hang round her. She ate the Turkish supper provided for her by the large fat shrill-voiced woman she found in charge; she lay down in the Turkish quilt arranged for her on a wooden bed and tried to leave all questionings for the morrow; but she could not sleep. The cry of the _muezzin_ from a minaret hard by divided the night into set portions. She lay and listened to it.

"_Al-sul-lah to khair un mun nun nu_."

She knew what it meant--"Prayer is better than sleep." But she seemed unable to do either the one or the other.

Mercifully, again, the night was not long. Far away over the sea in the east the dawn began to break golden. It lit up the scarped hills above the woody slopes and slowly, like a white curtain, the mists of the valley lifted, showing the s.h.i.+ny levels of the inland lakes. Below her, at her feet, beyond the vine pergola set with purpling bunches of grapes that jutted against the blue distance, lay the town, a packed ma.s.s of red-tiled roofs and s.h.i.+ngled outhouses, incoherent, barely cognisable. There lay her work; not over yonder where, like little heaps of lime, the white bell-tents outlined every hill.

Hark, the world was waking! From every side sounded the reveille, echoing and re-echoing among the hills.

How many men had died that night whose ears would never more hear the call to duty! Was Marmaduke one of them?

Yes, the shadow of death lay on everything; but at least they were together in it.

CHAPTER VI

But even that poignant question as to whether Marmaduke lived or did not live lost its arresting power before what she saw when, guided by the _hakim_ Achmet, she threaded the maze of lanes and alleys which still formed the real Varna. The quays, it is true, had been widened and glorified. Along them gay restaurants and _cafes chantants_ were to be found, filled with reckless soldiers and still more reckless courtesans. A wide street had been hacked through tenement houses and lined with tawdry shops which catered for all and every luxury that can give a moment's pleasure to idle men. And there were plenty of them here, waiting, waiting still for that expedition of one hundred thousand soldiers to the Crimea, of which for months past the English papers had been full. Outwardly, therefore, so far as a fringe of welcome and a pa.s.sage through it to the hills beyond went, Varna was what folk boasted it had become, a cosmopolitan town; but within, down by the back wharves and the sodden sea-alleys, round by the crushed-in closes and stifling courts, it was old, rotten, kept from utter putrefaction by the hot sun which, while it bred flies, dried up the muck of many men. The _hakim's_ hospital was in the wide courtyard of a mosque, one of the few air-holes left to the seething city; and Marrion Paul never forgot her first sight of the sunlit square set round with the dead and dying. The stench was unspeakable, and as she stooped over the first patient she saw that the sheet which covered him was alive with vermin. Achmet himself, a hunchback with a high-featured, intolerant face, seemed to think that sitting in the middle of the courtyard reciting his beads and exhorting the inmates to have patience and trust in G.o.d, was the best treatment he could offer. Mayhap it was, since half the forms that lay moaning on the stones were doomed to death. That night, when Marrion returned to her cypress-set villa, the first thing she did was to cut off her beautiful hair close to her head, and as she laid the great tresses away she thought once more of Marmaduke. She must find out about him when she had time, but that day and the next she had her work cut out for her. "Maryam Effendi" they had already learnt to call her, and old Achmet, with a daily stipend of so many piastres, was content to let her have her way. But there were other places besides the mosque hospital where some fifty men groaned and died, or groaned and got better, that were surcharged with misery and death. Hovels where babies tugged vainly at their dead mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s and old women sat starving silently. It was among these that after a day or two Maryam Effendi was busiest. She settled to her work bravely, increasing her stock of Turkish rapidly and gaining for herself sufficient friends and aid to enable her to enlarge her sphere of usefulness. One of these was big fat "Heart's Darling," as her solitary servant was called, who, transferring domestic duties to an unspeakable drudge she produced, took up the duties of interpreter on the strength of some slight knowledge of French.

And Fate was so far kind to Marrion that she had little trouble in finding out the news she desired to hear. A sort of local rag in French and English was published in which, for equivalent of a penny, she learnt that Marmaduke's regiment was still camped six miles out among the hills and that he was still in command. From her verandah she could actually see the very place where he must be. Once, indeed, as she was hurrying along the quay in the ordinary dress of the Turkish gad-about woman she caught a sight of Andrew Fraser, tall, gaunt, serious as usual, looking on distastefully at one of the many drunken rows that occurred every day. The temptation to go up and speak to him was great, but she stuck to her plan and pa.s.sed on.

When she had really done something she would write and tell Marmaduke she was at hand, but not till then. Possibly, had she seen him instead of Andrew Fraser she might not have been so firm; for a glance would have shown her that she could have been of use. In truth, the inaction, the constant fret of feeling that all initiative is of no avail, was beginning to tell on Marmaduke Muir. He also looked down of an evening on the white pall that covered the Lake of Death, and wondered--without one shadow of fear, but from simple curiosity--whether the levels of life would meet his eyes again. And they seemed such low levels now! Yes, he had missed something in his life! What was it? These, however, were very secret thoughts. To the little coterie of careless men of which he was the centre, he was, as ever, the mainspring of everything. Even the divisional commander sought his sympathy as day after day the orders for the front tarried, and day after day the regimental chaplain grew busier and busier. For cholera was rampant in the camps as in the town, and every evening the "Dead March in Saul" echoed out through the hills and over the purple crocuses.

"Nothing will stop it, sir," said the young colonel quietly, "except orders for Sebastopol. The men are dead sick of waiting and so am I; that is the truth."

And still the orders lingered on the way. The waiting army did its best to pa.s.s the time. Marmaduke took to tying flies, and thereinafter thrashed the hill streams with ill success. And he played cricket with the men, though it was ill finding a proper pitch on the steep hill-side where they were encamped; and he had to keep his men from those low levels as much as he could, being rewarded for his care by the fact that his battalion suffered less from the scourge than any other. Though this was not to be wondered at, seeing that it was commanded by one whose cheery youth and strength seemed to defy Fate.

"The Cornel's face is mair tae the purpose nor your pills, doctor,"

said a young recruit fighting his best for life. "I'll just tak a sup o' it, if ye please, and leave t.i.ther alane for fowk as likes them."

Yet that same face often showed a touch of weariness in it when, after his wont, Marmaduke would climb the hill behind his hut in order to smoke his solitary after-breakfast cigar at the foot of a scarp whence the most astounding view of G.o.d's world was to be had. Hills and still more hills. Seas and still more seas; lakes and still more lakes.

Flowers and still more flowers.

"It is the inaction, Mac," he said to his old friend of the regimental club one day after mess dinner. They had been perforce laughing at the plight of a braw Hielandman who had been brought up to orderly-rooms that day from the general guard, clad in Zouave trousers and jacket, kepi and all complete; only the chequered hose of his own uniform remaining to betray the drunken bout on which he had been engaged.

"I noo 'im by 'is legs, sir," said the sergeant solemnly, "so I brought 'im along."

"Ton my soul, I can't help sympathising with the poor beggars," he went on. "Why the devil can't they give the men something to do besides getting drunk? Here is the tenth of August and, so far as I can see, I might be off grouse-shooting on the twelfth. Good Lord, what wouldn't I give to be on Braemore with my dogs! They're the best----"

And he began, in true sportsman style, over the virtues of his setters; whereat others joined in with tales of their own. So, heartened up, they all repaired to Marmaduke's favourite vantage ground to finish their cigars.

It was a perfect evening. The day had been hot, but with the sun setting a little cool sea-breeze had sprung up which seemed to freshen even the very flowers that had flagged with the sun's heat. They sat, growing more and more silent as the day died down; and, indeed, what lay before their eyes was sufficient to make most men hold their peace; for it was beautiful exceedingly. The far Euxine fading grey into a pearl-grey sky. Overhead and behind them the rose-pink pennons of the departing sun floating on the unfathomable clearness of s.p.a.ce.

Within the bay great s.h.i.+ps of war showed, half-hidden in the evening haze which turned the squalid city into dreamland.

Close at hand lay innumerable little hills and ravines thrown in sharp shade and s.h.i.+ne that trended away on all sides to the long line of lakes over whose purpling levels a fine veil of vapour was rising softly, swiftly.

Truly a dream-picture, unreal in its absolute beauty, its perfect peace.

"That's the _Agamemnon_, I expect," said one pointing with his cigar to a big vessel that, rounding the promontory to the south, began to cross the bay, leaving a great trail of smoke behind her. "I wonder if she is coming in?"

"Looks like it," said another, "only they weren't sure. Anyhow, we've company to-night. Look down there by the second wharf. There's another trail--some steamer is making fast!"

All eyes turned to where a thin column of smoke showed, rising high then drifting westwards over the town.