“And probably be absent for several weeks,” added he.
Still she never spoke, but seemed busily examining the embroidered coronet on the corner of her handkerchief.
“And as circumstances require – I mean, as I shall be obliged to go alone, and as it would be highly inconvenient, not to say unusual, for a young married woman, more especially in the rank you occupy, to remain in an hotel alone, without friends or relatives, we have thought – that is, Georgy and I have considered – that you should stay with her.”
Lizzy only smiled; but what that strange smile might signify it was far beyond Beecher’s skill to read.
“There is only one difficulty in the matter,” resumed he; “and as it is a difficulty almost entirely created by yourself, you will naturally be the more ready to rectify it.” He waited long enough to provoke a question from her, but she seemed to have no curiosity on the subject, and did not speak.
“I mean,” added he, more boldly, “that before accepting my sister’s hospitality, you must necessarily make some amende for the manner in which you have just treated her.”
“In which I treated her!” said Lizzy, after him, her utterance being slow and totally passionless.
“Yes, these were my words,” said he.
“Have you forgotten how she treated me?” asked Lizzy, in the same calm tone.
“As to that,” said he, with a sort of fidgety confusion, – “as to that, you ought to bear in mind who she is – what she is – and then it’s Georgy’s way; even among her equals – those well born as herself – she has always been permitted to exercise a certain sort of sway; in fact, the world of fashion has decreed her a sort of eminence. You cannot understand these things yet, though you may do so, one day or other. In a word, she can do what you cannot, and must not, and the sooner you know it the better.”
“And what is it you propose that I should do?” asked she, with seeming innocence.
“Write her a note, – brief if you like, but very civil, – full of excuses for anything that may have given her offence; say all about your ignorance of life, newness to the world, and so on; declare your readiness to accept any suggestions she will kindly give you for future conduct, – for she knows society like a book, – and conclude by assuring her – Well!” cried he, suddenly, for she had started from him so abruptly that he forgot his dictation.
“Go on, – go on,” said she, resuming her calm tone.
“You ‘ve put me out,” cried he; “I can’t remember where I was. Stay – I was saying – What was it? it was something like – ”
“Something like ‘I ‘ll not do it any more,’” said Lizzy, with a low laugh; while, at the same instant, she opened her writing-desk and sat down to write.
Now, although Beecher would have preferred seeing her accept this lesson with more show of humility, he was, on the whole, well satisfied with her submission. He watched her as her pen moved across the paper, and saw that she wrote in a way that indicated calm composure and not passion. The note was quickly finished; and as she was folding it, she stopped, and said, “But perhaps you might like to read it?”
“Of course I ‘d like to read it,” said he, eagerly, taking it op and reading aloud: —
“‘The Viscountess Lackington having received Lord Lackington’s orders to apologize to Georgina, Viscountess Lackington, for certain expressions which may have offended her, willingly accepts the task as one likely to indicate to her Ladyship the propriety of excusing her own conduct to one who had come to claim her kindness and protection.’
“And would you presume to send her such a note as this?” cried he, as he crushed it up and flung it into the fire.
“Not now,” said she, with a quiet smile.
“Sit down, and then write – ”
“I’ll not write another,” said she, rising. She moved slowly across the room; and as she gained the door, she turned and said, “If you don’t want Kuffner, I ‘d be glad to have him here;” and without awaiting his reply, she was gone.
“Haven’t I made a precious mess of it?” cried Beecher, as he buried his head between his hands, and sat down before the fire.
CHAPTER XXX. MRS. SEACOLE’S
In a dense fog, and under a thin cold rain, the “Tigris” steamed slowly into the harbor of Balaklava. She had been chartered by the Government, and sent out with some seventy thousand pair of shoes, and other like indispensables for an army much in want, but destined to be ultimately re-despatched to Constantinople, – some grave omissions in red tapery having been discovered, – whereby she and the shoes remained till the conclusion of the war, when the shoes were sold to the Russians, and the ship returned to England.
Our concern is not, however, with the ship or the shoes, or the patent, barley, the potted meats, or the “printed instructions” with which she was copiously provided, but with two passengers who had come up in her from Constantinople, and had, in a manner, struck up a sort of intimacy by the way. They were each of them men rather advanced in life; somewhat ordinary in appearance, of that commonplace turn in look, dress, and bearing that rarely possesses attraction for the better-off class of travellers, but, by the force of a grand law of compensations, as certainly disposes them to fraternize with each other. There are, unquestionably, some very powerful affinities which draw together men past the prime of life, when they wear bad hats, seedy black coats very wide in the skirt, and Berlin gloves. It is not alone that if they smoke the tobacco is of the same coarse kind, and that brandy-and-water is a fountain where they frequently meet, but there are mysterious points of agreement about them which develop rapidly into close intimacy, and would even rise to friendship if either of them was capable of such a weakness.
They had met, casually, at “Miseri’s” at Constantinople, and agreed to go up the Black Sea together. Now, though assuredly any common observer passing them might not readily be able to distinguish one from the other again, both being fat, broad-shouldered, vulgar-looking men of about fifty-four or more, yet each was a sort of puzzle to the other; and in the curiosity thus inspired, there grew up a bond between them that actually served to unite them.
If we forbore any attempt at mystification with our valued reader in an early stage of this history, it is not now, that we draw to its close, we would affect any secrecy. Let us, therefore, at once announce the travellers by their names; one being Terry Driscoll, the other the Reverend Paul Classon.
Driscoll had dropped hints – vague hints only – that he had come out to look after a nephew of his, a kind of scapegrace who was always in trouble; but in what regiment he served, or where, or whether he was yet alive, or had been broke and sent home, were all little casualties which he contemplated and discussed with a strange amount of composure. As for Paul, without ever entering directly upon the personal question, he suffered his ministerial character to ooze slowly out, and left it to be surmised that he was a gentleman of the press, unengaged, and a Christian minister, unattached.
Not that these personal facts were declared in the abrupt manner they are here given to the reader. Far from it; they merely loomed through the haze of their discourse as, walking the deck for hours, they canvassed the war and its objects, and its probable results. Upon all these themes they agreed wonderfully, each being fully satisfied that the whole campaign was only a well-concerted roguery, – a scheme for the dismemberment of Turkey, when she had been sufficiently debilitated by the burden of an expensive contest to make all resistance impossible. Heaven knows if either of them seriously believed this. At all events, they said it to each other, and so often, so circumstantially, and so energetically that it would be very rash in us to entertain a doubt of their sincerity.
“I have been recommended to a house kept by a Mrs. Seacole,” said Classon, as they landed on the busy quay, where soldiers and sailors and land-transport men, with Turks, Wallachs, Tartars, and Greeks, were performing a small Babel of their own.
“God help me!” exclaimed Terry, plaintively, “I ‘m like a new-born child here; I know nobody, nor how to ask for anything.”
“Come along with me, then. There are worse couriers than Paul Classon.” And bustling his way through the crowd, his Reverence shouldered his carpet-bag, and pushed forward.
It was, indeed, a rare good fortune for Terry to have fallen upon a fellow-traveller so gifted and so accomplished; for not only did Paul seem a perfect polyglot, but he possessed that peculiar bustling activity your regular traveller acquires, by which, on his very entrance into an inn, he assumes the position less of guest than of one in authority and in administration. And so now Paul had speedily investigated the resources of the establishment, and ordered an excellent supper, while poor Driscoll was still pottering about his room, or vainly endeavoring to uncord a portmanteau which a sailor had fastened more ingeniously than necessary.
“I wish I knew what he was,” muttered Terry to himself. “He ‘d be the very man to help me in this business, if I could trust him.”
Was it a strange coincidence that at the same moment Paul Classon should be saying to himself, “That fellow’s simplicity would be invaluable if I could only enlist him in our cause; he is a fool well worth two wise men at this conjuncture”?
The sort of coffee-room where they supped was densely crowded by soldiers, sailors, and civilians of every imaginable class and condition. Bronzed, weather-beaten captains, come off duty for a good dinner and a bottle of real wine at Mother Seacole’s, now mingled with freshly arrived subs, who had never even seen their regiments; surgeons, commissaries, naval lieutenants, Queen’s messengers, and army chaplains were all there, talking away, without previous acquaintance with each other, in all the frankness of men who felt absolved from the rule of ordinary etiquette; and thus, amid discussions of the campaign and its chances, were mingled personal adventures, and even private narratives, all told without the slightest reserve or hesitation: how such a one had got up from his sick-bed, and reported himself well and fit for duty, and how such another had pleaded urgent private affairs to get leave to go home; what a capital pony Watkins had bought for a sovereign, what execrable bitter beer Jones was paying six shillings the bottle for; sailors canvassing the slow advances of landsmen, soldiers wondering why the blue-jackets would n’t “go in” and blow the whole mock fortifications into the air; some boasting, some grumbling, many ridiculing the French, and all cursing the Commissariat.
If opinions were boldly stated, and sentiments declared with very little regard for any opposition they might create, there was, throughout, a tone of hearty good-fellowship that could not be mistaken. The jests and the merriment seemed to partake of the same hardy character that marked each day’s existence; and many a story was told with a laugh, that could not be repeated at the “Rag,” or reported at the Horse Guards. Classon and Driscoll listened eagerly to all that went on around them. They were under the potent spell that affects all men who feel themselves for the first time in a scene of which they have heard much. They were actually in the Crimea. The men around them had actually just come off duty in the trenches: that little dark-bearded fellow had lost his arm in the attack of the Mamelon; that blue-eyed youth, yonder, had led a party in assault on the Cemetery; the jovial knot of fellows near the stove had been “plotting” all night at the Russians from a rifle-pit. There was a reality in all these things that imparted a marvellous degree of interest to individuals that might otherwise have seemed commonplace and ordinary.
Amidst the noisy narratives and noisier commentaries of the moment, there seemed one discussion carried on with more than usual warmth. It was as to the precise species of reward that could be accorded to one whose military rank could not entitle him to the “Bath.”
“I tell you, Chidley,” cried one of the speakers, “if he had been a Frenchman there would have been no end of boasting amongst our amiable allies, and he ‘d have had Heaven knows what grade of the Legion and a pension, besides! Show me the fellow amongst them could have done the feat! I don’t speak of the pluck of it, – they have plenty of pluck; but where’s the rider could have sat his horse over it?”
“What height was it?” asked another, as he leisurely puffed his cigar.
“Some say six feet, – call it five, call it four, anything you please: it was to go at a breastwork with two nine-pounders inside, that was the feat; and I say, again, I don’t know another fellow in the army that would have thought of it but himself!”
“Dick Churchill once jumped into a square and out again!”
A hearty roar of laughter announced the amount of credit vouchsafed to the story; but the speaker most circumstantially gave time and place, and cited the names of those who had witnessed the fact.
“Be it all as you say,” interposed the first speaker, “Churchill did a foolhardy thing, without any object or any result; but Conway sabred three gunners with his own hand.”
If the story, up to this moment, had only interested our two travellers by its heroic claims, no sooner was the name of Conway uttered than each started with astonishment. As for Classon, he arose at once, and, drawing near the narrator, politely begged to know if the Conway mentioned was a one-armed man.
“The same, sir, – Charley the Smasher, as they used to call him long ago; and, by George, he has earned some right to the title!”
“And he escaped unhurt after all this?” asked Classon.
“No, I never said that; he was almost hacked to pieces, and his horse had four bullets in him and fell dead, after carrying him half-way back to our lines.”
“And Conway, is he alive? Is he likely to recover?” asked Paul, eagerly.
“The doctors say it is impossible; but Charley himself declares that he has not the slightest intention of dying, and the chances are, he ‘ll keep his word.”
“Dear me! only think of that!” muttered Driscoll, as, with a look of intense simplicity, he listened to this discourse. “And where is he now, sir, if I might make so bould?”
“He’s up at the Monastery of St George, about eight miles off.”
“The Lord give him health and strength to go and fight the Russians again!” said Terry; and the speech, uttered in a tone so natural and so simple, was heard with a general laugh.
“Come over to this table, my old buck, and we ‘ll drink that toast in a bumper!” cried one of the officers; and with many a bashful expression of pleasure Mr. Driscoll accepted the invitation.
“Won’t your friend join us?” asked another, looking towards Classon.
“I must, however reluctantly, decline, gentlemen,” said Paul, blandly. “I cannot indulge like my respected friend here; I stand in need of rest and repose.”
“He doesn’t look a very delicate subject, notwithstanding,” said a subaltern, as Classon retired.
“There ‘s no judging from appearances,” observed Driscoll. “You ‘d think me a strong man, but I ‘m weak as a child. There’s nothing left of me since I had the ‘faver,’ and I ‘ll tell you how it happened.”
CHAPTER XXXI. THE CONVENT OF ST. GEORGE
Day broke heavily and dull through the massively barred windows of the Convent of St George, and dimly discovered a vast crowd assembled in the great hall of waiting: officers – sailor and soldier – come to inquire news of wounded comrades, camp-followers, sutlers, surgeons, araba-drivers, Tartar-guides, hospital nurses, newspaper correspondents, Jew money-changers, being only some of the varieties in that great and motley crowd.
Two immense fireplaces threw a ruddy glare over two wide semicircles of human faces before them; but here and there throughout the hall, knots and groups were gathered, engaged in deep and earnest converse. Occasionally, one speaker occupied the attention of a listening group; but, more generally, there was a sort of discussion in which parties suggested this or that explanation, and so supplied some piece of omitted intelligence.
It is to this dropping and broken discourse of one of these small gatherings that I would now draw my reader’s attention. The group consisted of nigh a dozen persons, of whom a staff-officer and a naval captain were the principal speakers.
“My own opinion is,” said the former, “that if the personal episodes of this war come ever to be written, they will be found infinitely more strange and interesting than all the great achievements of the campaign. I ask you, for instance, where is there anything like this very case? A wounded soldier, half cut to pieces by the enemy, is carried to the rear to hear that his claim to a peerage has just been established, and that he has only to get well again to enjoy fifteen thousand a year.”
“The way the tidings reach him is yet stranger,” broke in another.
“What is your version of that?”
“It is the correct one, I promise you,” rejoined he; “I had it from Colthorpe, who was present When the London lawyer – I don’t know his name – reached Balaklava, he discovered, to his horror, that Conway was in the front; and when the fellow summons pluck enough to move on to head-quarters, he learns that Charley has just gone out with a party of eight, openly declaring they mean to do something before they come back. Up to this, the man of parchment has studiously kept his secret; in fact, the general belief about him was that he was charged with a writ, or some such confounded thing, against the poor Smasher, and, of course, the impression contributed little to secure him a polite reception. Now, however, all his calm and prudential reserve is gone, and he rushes madly into the General’s tent, where the General is at breakfast with all the staff and several guests, and, with the air of a man secure of his position, he flings down upon the table a letter to the General Commanding-in-chief from a Minister of State, saying, ‘There, sir! may I reckon upon your assistance?’ It was some time before the General could quite persuade himself that the man was in his senses, he talked away so wildly and incoherently, repeatedly saying, ‘I throw it all upon you, sir. Remember, sir, I take none of the responsibility, – none!’
“‘I wish you would kindly inform me as to the precise service you expect at my hands, sir,’ said the General, somewhat haughtily.
“‘To have this document deposited in the hands of Lieutenant Charles Conway, sir,’ said he, pompously, laying down a heavily sealed package; ‘to convey to him the news that his claim to the title and estates of his family has been declared perfect; that before he can reach England he will be Lord Viscount Cackington and Conway.’
“‘Bad news from the front, sir,9 said an aide-de-camp, breaking in. ‘After a successful attack on a small redoubt near the Cemetery; two squadrons of the – th have been surprised, and nearly all cut up. Conway, they say, killed.’
“‘No, not killed,’ broke in another; ‘badly wounded, and left behind.’
“There was, as you may imagine, very little thought bestowed on the lawyer after this. Indeed, the party was scattered almost immediately, and Colthorpe was just going out, when one of Miss Nightingale’s ladies said to him, ‘Will you do me a great favor, Major Colthorpe, – a very great favor? It is to let me have my saddle put on your gray charger for half an hour.’ Colly says, if she had n’t been the very prettiest girl he had ever seen since they left England, he ‘d have shirked it, but he could not; and in less than ten minutes, there she was, cantering away through the tents and heading straight for the front. It was not, however, only the gray Arab she carried off, but the great letter of the lawyer was gone too; and so now every one knew at once she was away to the front.”
“And after that, – after that?” asked three or four together, as the narrator paused.
“After that,” resumed he, “there is little to be told. Colthorpe’s Arab galloped back with a ball in his counter, and the saddle torn to rags with shot. The girl has not been heard of.”
“I can supply this portion of the story,” said a young fellow, with his arm in a sling. “She had come up with Conway, whom they had placed on a horse, and were leading him back to the lines, when a Russian skirmishing-party swept past and carried the girl off, and she is now in Sebastopol, under the care of the Countess Woronzoff.”
“And Conway?”
“Conway’s here; and though he has, between shot and sabre-cuts, eight severe wounds, they say that, but for his anxiety about this girl’s fate, his chances of recovery are not so bad. Here comes Dr. Raikes, however, who could give us the latest tidings of him.”
The gentleman thus alluded to moved hastily down the hall, followed by a numerous train of assistants, to whom he gave his orders as he went He continued, at the same time, to open and run his eyes over various letters which an assistant handed to him, one by one.
“I will not be tormented with these requests, Parkes,” said he, peremptorily. “You are to refuse all applications to see patients who are not in the convalescent wards. These interviews have, invariably, one effect, – they double our labor here.”
By this time the doctor was hemmed closely in by a dense crowd, eagerly asking for news of some dear friend or kinsman. A brief “Badly,” “Better,” “Sinking,” “Won’t do,” were, in general, the extent of his replies; but in no case did he ever seem at a loss as to the name or circumstance of the individual alluded to.
And now, at last, the great hall began to thin. Wrapping themselves well in their warm cloaks, securing the hoods tightly over their heads, men set out in twos and threes, on foot, on horseback, or in arabas, some for the camp, some for Balaklava, and some for the far-away quarter at the extreme right, near the Tchernaya. A heavy snow was falling, and a cold and cutting wind came over the Black Sea, and howled drearily along the vaulted corridors of the old Convent.
Matter enough for story was there beneath that venerable roof! It was the week after the memorable fight of Inkermann, and some of the best blood of Britain was ebbing in those dimly lighted cells, whose echoes gave back heart-sick sighs for home from lips that were soon to be mute forever. There are unlucky days in the calendar of medicine, – days when the convalescent makes no progress, and the sick man grows worse; when medicaments seem mulcted of half their efficacy, and disastrous chances abound. Doctors rarely reject the influence of this superstition, but accept it with calm resignation.
Such, at least, seemed the spirit in which two army surgeons now discussed the events of the day, as they walked briskly for exercise along one of the corridors of the Convent.
“We shall have a gloomy report to send in to-morrow, Parkes,” said the elder. “Not one of these late operation cases will recover. Hopeton is sinking fast; Malcolm’s wound has put on a treacherous appearance; that compound fracture shows signs of gangrene; and there’s Conway, we all thought so well of last night, going rapidly, as though from some internal hemorrhage.”
“Poor fellow! it’s rather hard to die just when he has arrived at so much to live for. You know that he is to have a peerage.”
“So he told me himself. He said laughingly to me, ‘Becknell, my boy, be careful, you are cutting up no common sort of fellow; it’s all lordly flesh and blood here!’ We were afraid the news might over-excite him, but he took it as easily as possible, and only said, ‘How happy it will make my poor mother;’ and, after a moment, ‘If I only get back to tell it to her!’”
“A civilian below,” said an hospital sergeant, “wishes to see Mr. Conway.”
“Can’t be, – say so,” was the curt reply, as the doctor tore, without reading, the piece of paper on which a name was written.
“The lawyer, I have no doubt,” said the other; “as if the poor fellow could care to hear of title-deeds and rent-rolls now. He ‘d rather have twenty drops of morphine than know that his estate covered half a county.”
The sergeant waited for a second or two to see if the doctor should reconsider his reply, and then respectfully retired. The stranger, during the short interval of absence, had denuded himself of great-coat and snow-shoes, and was briskly chafing his hands before the fire.
“Well, Sergeant, may I see him?” asked he, eagerly.
“No. The doctors won’t permit it.”
“You did n’t tell them who I was, then, that’s the reason. You did n’t say I was the confidential agent of his family, charged with a most important communication?”
“If I didn’t, it was, perhaps, because I didn’t know it,” said the man, laughing.
“Well, then, go back at once, and say that I’ve come out special, – that I must see him, – that the ten minutes I ‘ll stay will save years and years of law and chancery, – and that” – here he dropped his voice – “there’s a hundred pounds here for the same minutes.”
“You’d better keep that secret to yourself, my good friend,” interposed the sergeant, stiffly.
“Well, so I will, if you recommend it,” said the other, submissively; “but surely, a ten-pound note would do you no harm yourself, Sergeant.”
An insolent laugh was the only answer the other vouchsafed, as he lighted his cigar and sat down before the fire.
“They won’t let me see him for the mischief it might do him,” resumed the other, “and little they know that what I have to tell him might be the saving of his life.”
“How so?”
“Just that I ‘ve news for him here that would make a man a’most get out of his coffin, – news that would do more to cure him than all the doctors in Europe. There’s paper in that bag there that only wants his name to them’ to be worth thousands and thousands of pounds, and if he dies without signing them there’s nothing but ruin to come of it; and when I said a ten-pound note awhile ago to you, it was a hundred gold sovereigns I meant, counted into the hollow of your fist, just as you sat there. See now, show me your hand.”
As if in a sort of Jocular pantomime, the man held out his hand, and the other, taking a strong leather purse from his pocket, proceeded to untie the string, fastened with many a cunning device. At length it was opened, and, emptying out a quantity of its contents into one hand, he began to deposit the pieces, one by one, in the other’s palm. “One, two, three, four,” went he on, leisurely, till the last sovereign dropped from his fingers with the words “one hundred!”
Secret and safe as the bargain seemed, a pair of keen eyes peering through the half-snowed-up window had watched the whole negotiation, following the sergeant’s fingers as they closed upon the gold and deposited it within his pocket.
“Wait here, and I’ll see what can be done by and by,” said the sergeant, as he moved away.
Scarcely was the stranger left alone than the door opened, and a man entered, shaking the snow from his heavy boots and his long capote.
“So, my worthy friend,” cried he, in a rich, soft voice, “you stole a march on me, – moved off without beat of drum, and took up a position before I was stirring!”
“Ah, my reverend friend, you here!” said the other, in evident confusion. “I never so much as suspected you were coming in this direction.”
Paul Classon and Terry Driscoll stared long and significantly at each other. Of all those silences, which are more eloquent than words, none can equal that interval in which two consummate knaves exchange glances of recognition, so complete an appreciation is there of each other’s gifts, such an honest, unaffected, frank interchange of admiration.
“You are a clever fellow, Driscoll, you are!” said Paul, admiringly.
“No, no. The Lord help me, I’m a poor crayture,” said Terry, shaking his head despondingly.
“Don’t believe it, man, – don’t believe it,” said Paul, clapping him on the shoulder; “you have great natural gifts. Your face alone is worth a thousand a year, and you have a shuffling, shambling way of coming into a room that’s better than an account at Coutts’s. Joe Norris used to say that a slight palsy he had in one hand was worth twelve hundred a year to him at billiards alone.”
“What a droll man you are, Mr. Classon!” said Terry, wiping his eyes as he laughed. And again they looked at each other long and curiously.
“Driscoll,” said Paul, after a considerable pause, “on which side do you hold your brief?”
“My brief! God knows it’s little I know about brief and parchments,” sighed Terry, heavily.
“Come, come, man, what’s the use of fencing? I see your hand; I know every trump in it.”
Driscoll shook his head, and muttered something about the “faver that destroyed him entirely.”
“Ah!” sighed Classon, “I cannot well picture to my mind what you might have been anterior to that calamity, but what remains is still remarkable, – very remarkable. And now I ask again, on which side are you engaged?”
“Dear me, – dear me!” groaned out Terry; “it’s a terrible world we live in!”
“Truly and well observed, Driscoll. Life is nothing but a long and harassing journey, with accidents at every stage, and mischances at every halt; meanwhile, for whom do you act?”
The door at the end of the long gallery was slightly and noiselessly opened at this instant, and a signal with a hand caught Driscoll’s attention. Rapid and stealthy as was the motion, Classon turned hastily round and detected it.
“Sit still, Driscoll,” said he, smiling, “and let us talk this matter over like men of sense and business. It’s clear enough, my worthy friend, that neither you nor I are rich men.”
Driscoll sighed an assent.
“That, on the contrary, we are poor, struggling, hard-toiling fellows, mortgaging the good talents Fortune has blessed us with to men who have been born to inferior gifts but better opportunities.”
Another sigh from Terry.
“You and I, as I have observed, have been deputed out here to play a certain game. Let us be, therefore, not opponents, but partners. One side only can win, let us both be at that side.”