Marmaduke Part 30

What had he done?

The sharp rattle of musketry roused her. Again, again! The Last Post had been set. The last honour paid.

A minute's pause. Then the bands struck up their regimental marches, orders followed sharp and incisive. So with a swing the men stepped out, only a little knot of officers remaining to see the grave filled in. She must wait till they had gone. Shifting her position to one of greater ease, she rested her aching head upon a tussock of sweet thyme that was shaded by a rugged scarp of rock.

And so, wearied out with her sleepless night, with utter despair and misery she dozed off, sinking deeper and deeper into slumber, all grief forgotten, peaceful as a child. The long hours pa.s.sed, yet still she slept.

When she awoke it was almost sun-setting. Over the far sea, shadowy outlines and still more shadowy trails of smoke told that the argosy of an army had started for the Crimea. Not a tent was to be seen. They had folded their white wings and gone. Already the populace had cleared away all that had been left behind. The hill-sides showed bare without a trace of humanity. His very hut had disappeared, the arbour was broken down, its scarlet fruits rifled. Only on the mossy plateau below the scarp at her feet lay a heap of stones.

Her heart gave a great throb. She had not thought of that, but a cairn was meet and fitting. And how many men of his regiment had gone there, even amid their busy-ness, to throw one stone for the sake of their love and respect!

She must throw one, too; at least, she could do that!

Her composure was almost terrible. She picked up a little moss-grown quartz pebble, and, going down, laid it where she judged those folded hands of his must rest.

"That's my heart, Duke!" she said. "It's cold--cold as a stone."

Steps behind her made her turn. It was Andrew Fraser, his lean face all blistered with the tears he had shed.

"My puir lammie!" he said. "I thocht I might find you here when you werna at the hoose, and the woman was wae to know what had become o'

you."

The very warmth of his sympathy roused antagonism.

"I was just going back. Do you want me?"

He looked at her almost pitifully.

"It'll be no comfort tae you to ken that I'm as fu o' grief as you, Marrion. But I had tae see ye before we left. I got leave till the last. Oh, my la.s.sie, is there naethin' I can do for you?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing, Andrew, except hold your tongue. The past is gone for ever!"

And as she walked down the hill with him her clasped hands bit into each other with bitter strength. Was it for this she had planned and protected? But, thank G.o.d, she had made him happy at the last!

CHAPTER VIII

In after years the next four days appeared to Marrion as a blank. She went on with her work, she shed no tears except when she was asleep.

She did not even think. In the late evenings, when work was over, she would ride or drive to where the Highlanders' camp had stood and sit silent for an hour or two on the cairn about Marmaduke's grave, doing nothing. She brought no flowers, the sight of his grave gave her no more poignant grief. Indeed, often as she looked out eastwards over the sea, with all the glorious trending of sunlit, sun-shadowed hills and dales towards it, she would feel calmly that he would have admired it as much as she did.

Yet underneath all her calm lurked a regret that grew with the days.

He had been left behind, and he had been so eager to go. Even those last words of his--"I have done it"--were poor comfort.

So, confusedly, out of this regret and the memory of those other words of his--"I have found you, or rather I have found myself, for ever and ever and ever"--arose the idea of getting to the Crimea herself, if she could. She could at least follow the fortunes of the regiment of which he had been so fond, so proud. Besides, home had no call for her. She had no ties there and the prospect of a long life without them was appalling. Far better to die out here as he had died. But the interest of Varna had pa.s.sed. The tragedy of the fire had ousted the tragedy of disease and starvation. The cholera had ceased, the city was almost depopulated, so the problem of many mouths and no food had disappeared.

Once the idea of following the regiment presented itself to her it became an obsession. She made up her mind that if it could be compa.s.sed she would do what she could for its brave men; then if death did not intervene--which she hoped it might--she could come back to where Duke lay and tell him she had carried him in her heart all the way. So she set to work to think out the means. Her shaven and shorn head--as he had called it--might facilitate matters; for she might pose as a youth of one of the many uncouth peoples gathered round by greed of gain. Varna was a polyglot place, and she knew enough Turkish now to render English unnecessary.

While still nebulous, however, her plans were suddenly settled for her by the arrival in port of the very Turkish mail steamer in which she had sailed from Ma.r.s.eilles. The little doctor naturally enough called on his _protegee_, full of the fine reports he had heard of her from old Achmet. The ship had been requisitioned and he was on his way to Eupatoria with medical stores for the Turkish contingent, which expected to land there. The opportunity seemed too good to be lost.

She begged him to arrange for her to go so far, pointing out that she had proved her capacity for usefulness. After a few demurs he consented. She left everything standing in Varna and three days afterwards found herself surveying the beach at Kalamita Bay, a few miles south of Eupatoria, which had been taken the night before by the expedition without the exchange of a shot. It was a shingly beach or bar but a few feet wide, behind which lay a long, narrow, sedge-set lake of salt water. From this rose, with deafening clamour, thousands upon thousands of wild fowl alarmed by the unaccustomed presence of man, their wailing cries almost drowning the long surge of the sea upon the shingly beach and the oaths and confusion inseparable from the disembarkation of so many troops. Beyond this salt lake rose a high bank of red clay serrated by many small ravines, while over this again the wide plain, dotted with cattle, corn-ricks, and farmhouses, showed a land where supplies should be plentiful. In the far distance could be seen, dimly blue, the hills behind Sebastopol, which lay some seven and twenty miles to the south. In deference to the little doctor's recommendation she remained on board and was thus free to watch the humour and difficulties of the disembarkation. Both were numerous. The heavy surf made the pa.s.sage of boats to the sh.o.r.e dangerous, but the blue-jackets were over the sides almost before they could foot bottom, and, aided by those landed before--who, naked as the day they were born, rushed into the sea to help--generally succeeded in beaching their cargo high and dry. To little purpose, so far as the men were concerned, since it was "off uniform" in a second, and into the water to help the next arrivals. Luckily the day was sultry and warm. The landing of the cavalry horses presented the greatest difficulty, for even after confinement on shipboard the dry shingle was not sufficient bait to induce them to walk the plank alone; so that they had to be ridden, and as three out of six went souse into the sea it was provocative of much merriment--for even in those days the British soldier was light-hearted. The men, therefore, wrung their wet clothes out cheerfully, and the horses dried themselves by rolling in the patches of sun-baked sand, for the day was glorious. Yet the discomfort was hard, the work harder; but, despite it all, Thomas Atkins found time to nickname the Crim-Tartar population who came down, curious but friendly, to view the scene, by the strangely inappropriate and colourless appellation of "Joey," one which nevertheless stuck firm all through the Crimean War.

So the day pa.s.sed; but the afternoon promised a storm, and Marrion was anxious to get on sh.o.r.e and make arrangements, if she could, for stopping there. As she was watching she saw a gig going ash.o.r.e to the Old Fort with a woman in it--a woman who was received with plaudits by the whole army. At the time she could not conceive who it could be, though she afterwards found out it was the Countess of Erroll. The incident, however, gave her courage; she persuaded the little doctor to allow her to land, and, accompanied by him and in her Turkish dress, she found a night's lodging in one of the nearest farm-houses.

Nor had she to pay for it overmuch, for the Crim-Tartarians were kindly, honest folk ready to welcome brothers and sisters of Islam.

Indeed, they looked upon the new-comers as a possible deliverance from Russian rule. It was lucky this was so, thought Marrion, as with the sinking of day a violent storm of wind and rain swept the beach, drenching the fifty thousand men who were without tents. They dug holes for themselves in the shingle, spread their greatcoats atop, and joked away discomfort even though death stalked among them and the terrible scourge, cholera, they hoped they had left behind them, claimed not a few victims before morning.

They were cheerful as ever, nevertheless, next day while the work of disembarkation went on. Marrion watched it from afar, finding a Varna friend or two in the Turkish contingent, but sheering off from the regiment for fear of recognition--especially by Andrew Fraser. She was not ready for that yet. So three days pa.s.sed and it was not till the nineteenth that the army of some fifty thousand men moved on towards Sebastopol. About a third of the way thither the enemy was said to be strongly entrenched on the banks of the Alma river. Why he had not attacked during the confusion of disembarkation was a subject of much comment, and all agreed it must be because the position they held on the river was supposed to be impregnable. Why, therefore, leave it?

"We shall see," said Lord Raglan succinctly.

He was an old man, as indeed were almost all the leaders in the Crimean War, but he was full of the fire of youth.

The march was a gay one despite the fact that it was over stony barren steppes; but the hares that started up so often seemed made to be chivied, when, confused, they got between the men's legs, and many a warrior strung one secretly under his knapsack against a savoury supper. And songs were sung, the "Tipperary" of the time, and jokes made with "Joey" who, all along the line, came out affably, ready to trade.

But the sight of the red Alma cliffs that had to be stormed on the morrow sobered some, and Marrion, from another farmhouse where she had obtained shelter, watched the evening sun redden them still more, and thought of the blood that would be shed on them tomorrow with sick loathing.

It was grey dawn when she rose, slipped on a youth's dress she had brought with her, and, packing a few necessaries in a small bundle, waited for the reveille. But none came. On that fateful morning of the 20th September, 1854, the whole force of twenty thousand British bayonets and sabres a.s.sembled in silence. For a watchful enemy awaited them beyond the sluggish tortuous river that wound its way to the sea amid spa.r.s.e vineyards. Far away to the right the horizon of open sea showed a ma.s.sing of grey hulks and twinkling lights. That was the Fleet ready to aid as it could. Further afield, beyond the debouching of the cliffs, seven thousand Turkish troops prevented a flank attack.

Then came the French twenty thousand face to face with the most formidable part of the cliff nearest the sea. After that the British.

Marrion, through her spy-gla.s.s, could see the Highlanders standing, their faces set and determined. This was to be their first brush with the enemy, and many of them had waited for it so long. Eight months since Duke had brought her news of battle in the little London house!

And now he lay in his solitary grave while his men fought.

Still silence. It was past nine o'clock now, and the troops stood motionless as if on parade. Here and there, in low scrub on the opposite bank, an enemy's battery showed, ready no doubt for instant action on the firing of the first shot. And, every now and then, bayonet-points and the heads of men seen for a second or two against the sky-line, told of infantry ready to receive attack. But there were no skirmishers, no attempt to force on strife.

"No possible advance there," said the Chief of the Staff at the war council that was being held in the open, as he pointed on the map to the cliffs facing the sea. "I wish there were, for, so far as I can see, Menschikoff has left it unguarded."

A Colonel of the Zouaves looked critically at the contours, then turned to the Marquis St. Arnaud--

"My children are good climbers, sir; may we not try?"

"They shall," replied the French Commander-in-Chief. So the attack was ordered. On the extreme right, the French were to throw out skirmishers, tackle the cliff, charge over the first narrow plateau, and so, up the next bank, reach the plain above. Then, when the attack in flank had really commenced, the British would deliver a frontal one.

As he rode back to his own lines the Marquis St. Arnaud paused to take the British salute with the words, "I hope you will fight well to-day." To which came rapid reply in a voice from the 56th Regiment--"Don't you know we will?"

Whereat in long rolling reverberations from company to company, from battalion to battalion, rose a deafening cheer. It was the first sound of the battle of the Alma.

And hark! A disconnected rattle of rifle shots! The skirmishers are out among the rocks; and now, like goats up invisible paths, their full red pantaloons redder than the red clay, the Zouaves show in single file--here, there, everywhere like streamlets of blood.

Incredible pluck! Astounding agility! But they are up. The first vantage ground is gained; they pause to collect the skirmishers and sound the _pas de charge_--that m.u.f.fled pulse beat that, throbbing destruction, grows louder and louder and louder, drowning all but sheer l.u.s.t of blood.

On they go, only to receive the fire from a Russian battery posted above.

So the advance goes on, but it goes slower. That salvo on the Zouaves opened the ball, and now, trundling among the ranks of the British, come round shot and shrapnel, dealing death and disablement.

The _pas de charge_ continues, but it is perforce slow. "Pa.s.s the order to lie down," says Lord Raglan; and, obedient, though straining at the leash, the British troops lie down while the enemy's shot fall among them still dealing death and disablement at every round.