Marmaduke Part 32

"Let me die, doctor," moaned the patient, who lay on the doctor's truckle bed. "It is agony to move."

"No, it isn't!" replied Dr. Forsyth firmly. "You are making a mistake.

You have no pain, at least not much, and you are going to lose it altogether soon. There! That's more comfortable, isn't it?"

He was busy now arranging knives and instruments on a clean towel.

"I've put them in the order I shall want them," he whispered, "and don't be in a hurry--I shall want time. Now I'm going to mesmerise him. You'll see he will pa.s.s into a deep sleep and feel no pain--none at all."

It was almost as if he were a.s.suring himself that it would be so. An atmosphere of quiet confidence seemed to emanate from him.

Marrion found herself watching his pa.s.ses with absolute faith, listening to the quiet monotonous voice with absolute belief.

"Now you are really feeling better--you are inclined to sleep--if you close your eyes you will go to sleep."

On and on went the voice insistently. The breathing grew slower, less convulsive; the eyelids closed, and all the time the doctor's face was as the face of the Angel of Death--kind, but relentless.

"Now we can begin," he said at last, resuming his quick decision. "You won't faint, will you?" he added doubtfully, with a glance at Marrion's pale cheek.

"I don't think so," she replied; "but _that_ seemed to hurt here." She swept her hand across her forehead.

He scanned her narrowly.

"Umph!" he said, half to himself. "You'll make an excellent _aide_, I expect. So now to business."

It was an awful operation. One impossible while consciousness remained; but possible enough with the absolute stillness and lack of hurry that unconsciousness brings.

And so far it was successful.

"He will sleep for some hours yet," said Dr. Forsyth, as he sorted his implements. "You needn't stay with him all the time. Make yourself useful elsewhere, but look in and bring me word when he wakes."

There was not one word of thanks; only as he left the tent he paused to say--

"The lad was a great favourite of the colonel's. I'm glad we saved him."

All that day Marrion lived in a dream of death; but those words went with her. Yes, she was glad she had helped to save the lad, but how much had she helped?

Three full days pa.s.sed before she could get an answer to that question. Days of grim determination to keep her head--not to give way as some, even of the men, gave way. It was like living in a shambles.

She thought, amazed at the poverty of her own imagination, on the dread with which she had first viewed the heights of Alma. But this--this was inconceivable, unutterably beastly! Vaguely she felt glad that Duke had been spared it, and with the thought of the singing bird that had sung its little heart out in joy as he lay dying, the first tears she had shed for him came to her eyes. And she worked on with a lighter heart, until the first press and rush was over, till the dead had been buried, the less severe cases shipped off, and tents found for the others.

Then Dr. Forsyth sent for her. She found him in his tent. The lad whom they had saved had been removed to a larger one and was doing well.

Though the flap was open, the tent was shadowy and the doctor's eyes looked curiously light as he sat on the bed and motioned her to a seat beside him.

"You have done very well, Mrs. Marsden," he said shortly, "and I think you will do better. Now I am going to teach you some of the tricks of the trade, and in the next action you will be able to work on your own. Only don't talk about it. I believe all the doctors and most of the men would rather die than be mesmerised; but then they never saw Esdaile's hospital. I have."

"But perhaps I shan't be able," began Marrion.

"Yes, you will," he interrupted steadily, "and to begin with I am going to call you by your right name, please. Marrion Paul."

She flushed.

"Did Andrew----"

"Nothing of the sort. My dear woman, I'm an Aberdeenshire man. Long years ago, when I was a lad, I was at Drummuir and I saw your father--possibly you also. No?--His was a face and figure you can't easily forget. And I know the story. I heard Andrew, the Drummuir's henchman, call you Marrion; your extraordinary likeness to your father supplied the cues. And I was right, you see." His face was all smiles at his own perspicacity. "Now, my mother was a Pole and I believe your father was one. And that admixture seems favourable to a certain force of character. You've always managed people--at least, I guess so--and it is just that trick of suggestion that you require for management--at least, so I think--that I want. Anyhow, we will try.

For the present the tyranny is overpast. We have wormed our way through _sans_ everything; but the next action will be as bad, perhaps worse. I think the letters we have written home about the scandalous state of affairs may have had some effect--G.o.d knows! We British sleep through a lot of bad dreams, but help can't be here in time. And the stores they are landing! My G.o.d, if you could see them! Rotten biscuits, putrid meat, drugs unusable! How the devils in h.e.l.l will kow-tow to the contractors when they get them as past-masters of d.a.m.nation. Anyhow, in the immediate future we have to depend on ourselves, and if I can depend on you----" he looked at her and once more stretched out those thin capable hands of his. "Come, is it a bargain?"

She could not but say "Yes," and from that day he treated her as a professor might treat his pupil--kindly, but autocratically.

"You are the only person who ever made me obey orders," she said, half-resentfully one afternoon when he had driven her to rest in his tent.

"Better for you if it had happened before," he replied curtly. "You strike me as a woman who has managed too much. Do you know how old I am?" he asked suddenly.

Seated as he was just outside the hut so that he could talk to her within, he looked strangely young, but the grey hair and bronzed wrinkles about his clean shaven face made her venture rather against her own judgment--

"Fifty."

"Sixty-five," he replied.

"You don't look forty-five," she put in.

"No. That is because I never look ahead. I take what comes. If you believe, as I do, in a Divinity that shapes our ends, it's waste of time to hew. I learnt that early in life. You haven't learnt it yet.

Well, now I've got to go and cut a man's leg off."

And he went, leaving her wondering if he was right. All her life had been spent in keeping Duke for the heirship of Drummuir, and now he lay in his solitary grave at Varna. The pity of it was coming home to her.

So after a few days, with a tent provided for her, she rode in a baggage waggon towards Sebastopol. Cholera had begun again badly. The fillip which the idea of campaigning and free fighting had given to men jaded by hot weather and the discomforts of Varna was pa.s.sing off.

As they neared the Russian town supplies were less easily obtainable, and the commissariat was conspicuous by its inefficiency. The army, meanwhile, starting on the 23rd, had found itself brought up seriously at the next river. The enemy had established a work at the entrance which made it impossible to use the bay, as had been hoped, for a base. There was nothing for it but to change plans and act promptly.

And here, mercifully, was no delay, no mistakes. Forsaking the seacoast the whole force plunged boldly into the mountains, marching by compa.s.s, without road, without guides. Much of the way lay through dense forest--there was no water; but, heartened up by a small brush with a wandering division of the enemy, the men struggled on cheerful as ever, up hill, down dale, during a long and toilsome march from dawn till after nightfall on the 25th. But then came solace. On the sea-coast below them--secure, unprepared--lay the town and harbour of Balaklava, seven miles to the east of Sebastopol. They had circ.u.mvented the enemy, they had taken him round the corner! But there must be no cheering. Quiet as mice they lay among the barberry scrub, waiting for the dawn of the 26th. And then there was nothing to be done save to walk down and take possession--take possession of both sea and land, for, punctual to the moment, her Majesty's ship _Agamemnon_ sailed into the harbour, decks clear, guns ready for action--a stroke of luck due to young Maxse who, arriving at the Commander-in-Chief's with despatches the evening before, volunteered to brave the forest again by night and tell his Admiral to come round as sharp as he could.

So when the hospital tents and such medical stores as there were arrived from Kalamita Beach they found the troops elated and pleased with their new quarters. As is generally the way after a move, cholera abated, almost disappeared, and for a time the weather was good.

Trench work began at once, yet progressed but slowly. Whether, as some say, from lack of implements or from slackness in command, the French had placed thirty-three siege guns before the English had finished their fifteenth; and the doctor, coming in from a long round, would shake his head and say that the business would be a longer one than people thought.

And what was to be done with winter coming on--blankets wearing out, a shortage of drugs, and the very ambulance-waggons still lying forgotten on Kalamita Beach?

He used to watch the ships sailing in so gaily to the harbour and say calmly, "I wonder what filth, what fraud, they bring?"

Still, even he grunted satisfaction over the news that Britain was beginning to discover that all was not well with the Crimean expedition--that there was talk of sending out nurses and more doctors. So for nigh three weeks comparative peace reigned. There were no shambles, and Marrion had time to pick up many wrinkles of nursing from her patron; he taught her how to bring sleep for one thing, the first duty of those who tend the sick. She had time also for regret.

Nothing had been heard of Andrew Fraser, though Captain Grant's body had been duly found. It seemed to her as if the last link with the old life had gone, and one day in sudden confidence she said as much to the doctor. Again he shook his head.

"My dear good woman," he remarked, "no one ever gets away from their past. It is what the Easterns call '_karma_.' You have to dree your weird for it always."

"Even if it is not bad?" asked Marrion, feeling hurt at the very idea that a life in which she was conscious of no self-seeking should be a curse to her.

"I don't know," he replied, half-closing his strange eyes, "you may have done something shocking. It is quite possible."

She wondered, afterwards, what had induced her to tell him what she had done; but these strange fits of confidence are one of the psychological puzzles of humanity. Tell him she did, however, while he sat looking out over the sea with his veiled eyes, for they were sitting on the heights and the whole panorama of Sebastopol, the Allied Fleets, and the investing forces lay before them.

"What would you have done if Colonel Muir had lived?" he asked briefly when she had finished.