Marmaduke Part 31

"How goes the French attack?" he queries hastily, as an aide-de-camp dashes up at 1.50 p.m.

"They are across and up, sir, but not sufficiently established to warrant our starting."

Lord Raglan fumes. His blood was up, his men were being shot at without reply.

"Give the order for general advance," he said, staking all, rashly enough, on the hazard of brave troops; but if he staked rashly he staked wisely. The serried ma.s.ses of men rose with ringing cheers, dashing on through a belt of fire from the opposite heights, floundered somehow through the river, and paused for a second to take breath in the vineyards below the steeps. But formation had been lost.

It was sheer onslaught. At the head of the advance rode Lord Raglan himself, regardless of the gaps in his Staff. Sir George Brown, leading the Light Division, goes down in a cloud of dust before a Russian battery. "Go on, 23rd," he shouts; "I'm all right, but be sure I'll remember this day, boys!"

Further to the left Colin Campbell in front of the Highlanders calls back to them: "Keep yere fingers frae the triggers, men, till ye're within a yaird o' them." And they did. Colin Campbell's horse is down under him, but he is up again charging a battery on foot and calling to the Guards who came up in support, "We want nane but Hie'land bonnets here." But the Guards were firm. Steady, in even line, without a waver in the black bearskins, they came on resistless, making one man in the Light Division mutter under his breath, "D---- them, wasting time in dressing up as if they were on a parade ground!" For all that they had stormed the right end of the most powerful battery almost before the Highlanders had got in on the left. A few minutes later the 1st and 2nd divisions crowned the crest. The French, finding their objective, turned their own guns upon the flying enemy. There were a few faint struggles by the infantry, a few more rounds of artillery, and the Russians were in full flight, leaving over four thousand dead and wounded on the battlefield. So Alma's heights were won, but at a cost which saddened the victory; for out of a total of fourteen thousand British troops employed, one thousand four hundred, or one in ten, were dead or wounded. The French had suffered as much, so General Canrobert's face was grave as he rode up at the close of the day to exclaim: "I ask of Fortune but this! May I command an English corps for three short weeks, then could I die happy." And the English commander's voice was graver still as he replied: "I could not command a French corps. They would outpace me." And in truth the Zouaves' rapid, flame-like spread from crag to crag, their ceaseless fusillade meanwhile, had been all-astonishing and had paralysed the foe completely. But now the laurel wreath of victory was fading, the cypress garland of death was taking its place. It had been a three hours' hand to hand infantry battle, and the late September sun was sinking when the living turned to look after their fallen comrades, for in those days ambulance corps were in their infancy and Red Cross was not. The wounded soldier lay as he fell, dying, mayhap for want of care, even for a drink of water. There were hundreds such upon the heights they had won, as Marrion Paul, taking advantage of the fast coming darkness, began her round. She was provided with water, brandy, a few simple ligaments and bandages. At Varna she had had not a few wounded Turkish soldiers from the Danube in old Achmet's hospital; but this was different. There the wounds seemed a disease; here you felt the keen horror of cold steel and rifle bullet close at hand; you realised the futility, the wickedness of it. She avoided the salients where the dead and wounded lay thickest, for there help was already being given, and men were going to and fro with stretchers; but in one or two of the little gullies she found someone to tend until, darkness closing, she became more brave, and lighting the little lamp with which she had provided herself, she ventured more into the open. Here it was pitiful; the dead lay in cl.u.s.ters, their faces as a rule upturned to the stars. The stretcher-bearers had come and gone, leaving behind those to whom they were useless--as yet. She knelt beside one dead man and wiped away a blood stain from his forehead. He had been orderly once to Duke. Poor soul! Some woman would doubtless wish she had been in her, Marrion's, place. And now the whole hillside was lit up by wandering lights, the lights of men searching for their bosom friends, for their officers. But there were other lights, too, though she did not think of them as different--the lights of the pilferers, the carrion crows, who crept about to rifle dead men's pockets. There were more of them here on the level where the dead and wounded Russians lay in heaps; some, supported by the bodies of others, remained still in the att.i.tude of firing, their rifles still in their hands, their faces curiously peaceful. Well, they had died doing their duty.

A faint call came from a man who lay, his head half-resting on the breast of a dead comrade. She turned to him at once, throwing her lamp-light on his face. Extraordinarily good-looking, so young, so near death. She saw these things at a glance, guessing he was shot through the lungs as his breath came in soft pitiful gasps.

She knelt to offer him a drink, but he shook his head. Evidently his eyes were already dim, for he whispered in broken English: "Good--gentlemens--take--take--my heart." She leaned closer to catch his words, thinking bitterly as she did so that he took her for his enemy--his enemy--while her whole heart was going out in pity for such as he.

"I don't understand," she said tenderly. "Your heart--what do you mean?"

"My heart," he gasped painfully--"here!" And his limp arm, lying helplessly beside him, crooked itself in supreme effort, and the hand fell on his breast.

A sudden comprehension came to her.

"You want me to take something from your heart?"

His dim eyes smiled faintly.

"Yes--good gentlemens," he whispered; it was almost a sigh, but it held content. "Take--give!"

She understood now, though a faint shiver through the young body told her that the speaking soul had gone. Here again was Love transcending Death! Quietly she laid down the head she had been supporting, closed the eyes, and opening the grey tunic began her search, her mind rapt away from her surroundings by thoughts of Duke. Her hand had just found a thin chain, when a rough clutch was laid on her shoulder and she was wrenched to her feet with such force that the chain giving way left her standing with something hanging from her hand.

"Caught in the act!" said a rough voice. "Shoot the young devil, sergeant!"

Something cold touched her forehead. Her heart gave a great bound. Was this death--oh, Duke--Duke!

The flash of a bull's-eye lantern turned full on her showed her face deadly pale but firm.

"Hold hard!" cried another voice hastily. "The fellow carries a water-bottle--of our pattern, too! Give the devil his due, Mac."

She could see faintly now. They were Highlanders; a search party evidently, and the blood rushed back to heart and face.

"I'm doing no harm!" she cried hotly. "He asked me--to take and give--his heart."

At her first word the cold nozzle of the revolver had left her forehead.

"By G.o.d!" came in a murmur; but for the most part the little group of men were startled out of speech and stood staring at the figure before them, holding out in apology what it held.

It was only a pinchbeck locket with a woman's face in it--a pinchbeck locket in the form of a heart.

"What the devil are you doing here in that kit, you young oaf?" said an angry voice at last. "I as nearly shot you as a carrion crow as ever----" It paused; something in the situation seemed to bring silence. The stars overhead, the dead lover at their feet, the tall, slim mysterious figure holding out the symbol of something that had survived death.

"You had better go on, Mac," said the voice that had advised caution, finally breaking the stillness. "I will use this young fool's lantern and that will make two search parties. We have little time to spare.

I'll see him safe. You'd better take the orderlies with you. They have appliances and will know what to do. I can manage."

"As you please, doctor," came the reply.

When they had gone the man they had called doctor took up Marrion's lantern and seemed to examine its light, turning it finally full on his face; and suddenly he spoke.

"Mrs. Marsden----" Marrion could not avoid a start.

"Mrs. Marsden!" she echoed faintly.

"Yes. You don't recognise me evidently. Indeed, I doubt if you ever saw me, but I was with poor Muir when he died. Andrew Fraser had to tell me--something--before I would let you come, and your face and hair aren't easily forgotten. I guess why you are here; but it isn't safe--in fact, it's impossible; but if you will go back now and come to my hospital--Dr. Forsyth--in English dress, please--I think I can settle you to work--something that will prevent your being taken for a Crim-Tartar thief," he added grimly. "It's lucky I have a good memory for faces."

"I don't think I should have cared," said Marrion, but he took no notice of her defiance.

"As for this poor chap," he knelt down beside the Russian and laid his hand over the heart. "Dead as a door nail, ceased to beat--wonder where he wanted to send it. Is there a name at the back?"

Marrion bent to the light.

"A name and an address."

The doctor jumped up lightly.

"Being dead he yet speaketh," he remarked cheerfully. "Now if you will please go back I will go on. We have to find poor Grant; he was last seen on the crest leading his men, with Andrew Fraser--the colonel's servant, you remember--just behind him."

"Andrew!" exclaimed Marrion, with a sort of sob. "Is he killed, too?"

"Killed or missing," called Dr. Forsyth, as he turned away to rejoin his party.

CHAPTER IX

The scene which met Marrion's eyes when soon after daybreak she went over to the hospital tents beggars description. The wounded, many of them as yet untended, lay almost in heaps, stretcher-bearers were hurrying along, slipping on the clotted blood from many wounds, carrying those who had been seen to and could be moved to the boats for removal to Scutari. There was a low inarticulate wail of moaning in the air, broken by sudden screams of pain. Two or three women were busy giving water, trying to soothe pain, and now and again a doctor with bare arms incarnadined with blood pa.s.sed hurriedly to more work.

"It is worse than I expected," said Dr. Forsyth over his shoulder to Marrion. "Do what you can, will you?"

And she did, wondering vaguely that she had not noticed that curious face when she had first seen it; the eyes alone were so unlike any she had ever seen before--greeny gold, with a dark rim round the iris. A hawk's eye, surely!

"Mrs. Marsden, I want you," came an imperative voice half an hour later, "follow me."

He was there again, and she followed him blindly into a small tent.

"The ambulance and stores have been left behind somewhere," he said bitterly. "G.o.d d.a.m.n them! We have no chloroform left--they only served us out a thimbleful, though Simpson demonstrated its absolute necessity seven years ago--curse the lot--and now a case has just come in. It's life or death and the others won't touch it, but I will. See here, I was with Esdaile in India and I know it can be done. If only I haven't the seats of the scornful by me--I think you'll believe--you haven't your face for nothing, and I must have help. Give it me?"

He held out his thin nervous hands, so strangely full of grip, as he spoke; his eyes found hers and held them.

"I will give you what I can," she said at once.

"That's right!" he replied, his buoyancy back in an instant. "But you will need all your nerve, I tell you. Now help me to get the poor fellow into position."