One of the Six Hundred 10One of the Six Hundred (part 10)
18
Literature · Romance
One of the Six Hundred 10
One of the Six Hundred (part 10)
GrantEnglish
Under a salute of cannon from the Castle of Europe, and still preceded by our Turkish friend, the astrologer with three tails, we hauled up for Varna, giving a wide berth to the dangerous Cyanean rocks, between which Jason steered the Argonauts in equally troublesome, but more classic, times.
From thence a run of about one hundred and fifty miles brought us to the low flat shore of Varna, where, on the 28th of May, we were all landed without accident or adventure, and placed under canvas among the rest of the troops. The aspect of Varna from the bay was somewhat depressing. Rising from a bank of yellow sand, a time-worn rampart of stone, ten feet high, loop-holed and painted white, encloses the town on its four sides, each of which measures somewhat more than a mile. This old wall had witnessed the defeat and death of Uladislaus of Hungary, by the troops of the Padishah Amurath II., and it yet bore traces of the cannon-shot of the Scoto-Russian Admiral Greig, who bombarded Varna in 1828.
Before the walls lies a ditch, twelve feet deep, and over both frown a number of heavy guns, which I found to be chiefly sixty-eight pounders; and over all rose the countless red-tiled roofs of the houses, with the slender white minarets and round leaden domes of the mosques, looking like wax-candles by the side of inverted sugar basins. Beyond, in the distance, stretched far away to the base of wooded hills the flat Bulgarian shore.
Painted with various colours, the tumble-down and rickety houses were all of wood, and exhibited a rapid state of dilapidation and decay. Prior to our arrival, the silence must have been oppressive. Save when a swallow twittered under the broad eaves, when a saka (or water-carrier), with his buckets suspended from a leather belt, shambled along, slipshod or barefoot, with water for sale, a hamal (or porter), laden with his burden, or when the wild dog that lay panting on a heap of festering offal uttered a hoarse growl, no sight or sound of life was there, when the fierce sun of unclouded noon blazed down into the narrow and tortuous streets. The place exhibited only Turkish filth, inactivity, and stupidity, till the arrival of the Allies, when its wooden jetties opposite the principal gate became piled up with munitions of war--bales, tents, tumbrils, and cannon; its roadstead crowded with war-ships, transports, and gunboats, under sail or steam; its bazaar filled by regimental quartermasters, cooks, and caterers, or soldiers' wives in search of food, &c.; its five gates held by military guards--the merry Zouave, the grave and stern Scottish Highlander, the showy Coldstream, or the sombre rifleman.
Then its streets became literally alive, and crowded with the British, who came by sea, and the French, who came pouring over the Balkan. Their silence was broken by the sharp beat of the brass drum, and the sound of the ringing bugle every hour or more, and by the measured tramp of feet, as detachments on every imaginable duty marched to and fro between the camps, the town, and harbour, scaring the wild dogs from the streets, and the kites from the roofs and mosque domes, who were alike unused to such unwonted bustle and activity.
Crowds of Turks and Bulgarians, wearing caps of brown sheepskin, short jackets of undyed wool, and wide white trousers, with vacant wonder surveyed us, as brigade after brigade came on shore, our horse, foot, and artillery; while the little dark Arabs of the Egyptian contingent viewed with something akin to awe our brigade of Foot Guards, whose personal bulk and stature, with their white epaulettes and black bearskin caps, made them seem the veritable sons of Anak to those shrivelled children of the desert.
Amid the crash of military music, the glitter of arms, and the waving of silken colours, as regiment after regiment marched to its camping-ground, were to be seen the woebegone, helpless, miserable, and, in some instances, still seasick wives of our soldiers, hurrying wearily after their husbands' battalions, carrying bundles or children, sometimes both, while other scared little ones were trotting by their side, and holding by their ragged and tattered skirts; but there was one soldier's wife who appeared to European and Oriental eyes under very different auspices.
"All these marvels reached a climax," says a writer, "when a boat from the Henri IV., rowed by six dashing French sailors, in snow-white shirts and coquettish little glazed hats, stuck with a knowing air on the side of their heads, shot up alongside the landing-place, and in the stern appeared the Earl and Countess of Errol--the former an officer in the rifles, and the latter intent upon sharing the campaign with her husband. I think the old civil pasha (mussellem of the city?), who was seated on a chair at a little distance, scarcely knew whether he was on his head or his heels when the lady was handed up out of the boat, and made her appearance at the town gate, with a brace of pistols in a holster at her waist, and followed by a Bulgarian porter, with a shoal of reticules, carpet-bags, and books, and taking everything as coolly as if she were an old soldier. The whole party followed the rifles to the field, and the countess is at the present moment living under canvas."
In the Daily News.
This lady, who excited so much attention was Eliza, Countess of Errol, and her husband--as my uncle would have reminded me--was hereditary high constable of Scotland; as such, first subject in the kingdom, and of old leader of the feudal cavalry. Now he was a simply major in the Rifle Brigade, and was after severely wounded at the Alma. Undeterred by the miseries which he saw the soldiers' wives enduring, Sergeant Stapylton, of my troop, had the courage to take unto himself a wife in this land of the Prophet; but the fate which threw her in his way was somewhat remarkable, and made some noise at the time. It came about thus:--The wife of a soldier of the 28th Regiment, when proceeding through the corn-fields from our camp to market in Varna, and perhaps considering how far her little stock of money might go in the purchase of dainty soochook sausages and cabaubs of herbs, for the delectation of herself and Private John Smith, was surprised to find herself addressed in tolerable English by a Greek female slave, who was at work among the corn, weeding it of the brilliant poppies.
Though fairer skinned than the women of that country, she had the appearance of a woman of Bulgaria. On her head a cylindrical bonnet, of harlequin pattern, was tied by a white handkerchief under her chin. She wore a short black gown, with a deep scarlet flounce, on which were sewn ornamental pieces of variously-coloured stuffs: a broad scarlet sash, elaborately needleworked, girt her waist; a few coins, of small value, were woven into her hair, which was of a rich brown hue, and hung in profusion over her shoulders, and on her wrists were bracelets of crystal. She wore the costume of a peasant girl, and her features were soft and pleasing--even pretty, though very much sunburnt.
In English she begged the soldier's wife to give her a mouthful of water from a vessel she carried, saying that she "was sorely athirst, and weary with her work in the field."
Now, Mrs. John Smith, of the 28th Foot, was greatly surprised on hearing this humble and gentle request made in the language of her native England, by one who seemed to all intents and purposes a Bulgarian. She entered into conversation with the stranger, and discovered that she was actually English by birth and blood, and a native of Essex!
She related that her father had been a merchant captain of London, who, after her mother's death, had taken her with him in a vessel on a voyage to the Levant, where they were captured by a Greek pirate. She was then a mere child. Her father and his crew were put to death, their vessel plundered, and then set on fire, in the Gulf of Sidra, and destroyed. Her captor, a thoroughpaced old rascal, had now settled, with all his ill-gotten gains, as a small landowner, on the shore of the Bay of Varna, where she was still his bondswoman--his slave.
The soldier's wife begged the girl to follow her, and take refuge in the British camp, and she was about to comply, when the appearance of her master or owner, a fierce-looking old fellow, clad in a jacket and cap, both of brown sheepskin, his sash bristling with knives, yataghans, and pistols, altered her feeble resolution; and though the wife of Private Smith shook her gingham umbrella with vigour, and threatened him with the "p'leece," and the main-guard to boot, he, nothing daunted, replied only by a contemptuous scowl, and dragging the slave girl into his house, secured the door.
It chanced luckily, however, that Sergeant Stapylton, of ours, with a mounted party of ten lancers, was returning along the Silistria road--where he had been sent in search of forage--and to him the soldier's wife appealed, and detailed what had taken place. He at once surrounded the house, and demanded the girl, in what fashion or language I know not; but he made the proprietor aware that fire or sword hung over him if she was not surrendered instantly.
Armed to the teeth, the Greek appeared at the door, and threatened him with the vaivode of the district, and the kaimakan, or deputy of the Pasha of Roumelia, and of various other dignitaries; but Stapylton put the point of his lance to the throat of the old pirate, who found in it an argument so irresistible, that he at once gave up the girl, whom our fellows brought with them in triumph to the camp, where a subscription was made for her, and she was a nine days' wonder; and that this little bit of romance might not be without its finale, she ultimately became the wife of Sergeant Stapylton.
Our regiment was encamped eighteen miles distant from Varna, in the lovely vale of Aladyn, surrounded by forests of the finest timber, where the springs of water were numerous and pure, and where the grass and verdure were of the richest description; yet there it was that disease--the fell cholera and dysentery--broke out among us, and decimated our ranks more surely and more severely than the Russian bullets could have done. But amid their horrors folly ever found its way; and several of our people, French and British, got into scrapes with the Bulgarian and Turkish damsels, especially the latter, who are rather prone to intrigue, notwithstanding the dangers attendant on it, in such a land of jealousy and the prompt use of arms. Perhaps the yashmac, and the mystery it gave to their faces, of which the ever brilliant eyes alone were visible, and the mouth--usually its worst feature--was hidden, had much to do with this.
By the Koran, aged women alone are permitted to "lay aside their outer garments, and go unveiled." A very old history of Constantinople--Delamay's, I think--relates that a pasha, remarkable for the size and ugliness of his nose, married, before the kadi, a lady who, on being unveiled, proved to his great disgust to be exceedingly plain.
"To whom, of all your friends," she asked, with her most winning smile, "am I to show my face?"
"To all the world," said he; "but hide it from me!"
"My lord, patience," she whispered, humbly.
"Patience have I none!" he exclaimed, wrathfully.
"Allah kerim! you must have a great deal of it to have borne that great nose so long about you," she retorted, as she hurled her slipper at his head.
A pair of dark and brilliant eyes, sparkling through the folds of a fine white muslin yashmac, were very nearly the means of ridding me of Berkeley, and the impending duel, while we lay at Varna.
He and Frank Jocelyn, of my troop, a smart and handsome young fellow, whilom the prime bowler and stroke oar at Oxford, as good-hearted and open-handed a lad as any in the service, began an intrigue with two Turkish damsels, whom they found at prayer before an aekie, or Mahommedan wayside chapel, and whom they followed home to a kiosk in the vale of Aladyn.
Their love affair did not make much progress, being simply maintained by tossing oranges in the dusk over a high wall, which was furnished with a row of vicious-looking iron spikes. The oranges of Jocelyn and Berkeley contained notes written in French and Italian, of which the girls could make nothing, of course, the language of the educated Turks being a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, the former being spoken by the peasantry alone; so the ladies responded by oranges, in which flowers were stuck, till on the fourth or fifth night, in reply to a very amatory epistle, souse came over the garden wall an iron six-inch shell, with its fuse burning!
Our Lotharios had only time to throw themselves flat on the ground, when it exploded in the dark with a dreadful crash; but without hurting either of them, and they retired, somewhat crestfallen, while hearing much loud laughter and clapping of hands within the garden wall. After this rough hint, they went no more near the ladies, who proved to be the wife of a yuse bashi, or captain of Turkish artillery, and her female slave.
While the months we wasted so fruitlessly at Varna crept slowly away, there occurred to me a singular adventure--in fact, one so remarkable in its import, and in reference to the future, that it still makes a deep impression upon me; and this episode I shall detail in the following chapter.
*CHAPTER XXXI.*
So gaze met gaze,
And heart saw heart, translucid through the rays,
One same harmonious universal law,
Atom to atom, star to star can draw,
And heart to heart. Swift darts, as from the sun,
The strong attraction, and the charm is done.
THE NEW TIMON.
To the letter I wrote Louisa from Gallipoli no answer was ever returned.
Had it reached her, or been intercepted, and by whom?
I began to associate Berkeley--groundlessly, certainly--with her singular silence. All my former animosity to him returned; but, for the personal safety of the survivor, our strangely deferred meeting could not take place till we found ourselves in the vicinity of the enemy. I feared, too, that he might discover how completely she had ignored--or, to all appearance, forgotten--my existence. To me there was pure gall in the idea that he should have cause for triumph in suspecting it.
I constantly wore her engagement ring--the pearl with the blue enamel. Did she gaze on my Rangoon diamond as frequently as I did on the tiny gold hoop which once encircled her finger, and had hence become a holy thing to me? I was now beginning to fear that she did not.
The past had but one feature, one which every thought and memory seemed metaphorically to hinge; and the future but one object--the same--around which every hope was centred--Louisa. Via the Bosphorus, the mail steamers came puffing regularly into Varna Bay. They seemed to bring letters to all but me, and gradually my heart became filled by anxiety and fear.
Louisa might be ill--dead! I thrust aside that thought as impossible; I must have heard of so terrible a calamity from Cora, or from Wilford, who was in constant correspondence with his sister.
Her answer to my Gallipoli letter might have miscarried. Why her letter alone? Those of my uncle and of cousin Cora came at the requisite time, and in course of post. Could it actually be that Louisa was forgetting me? Her last look--her eyes so full of grief--her last kiss, so full of tremulous tenderness, forbade this fear, and yet it was passing strange that neither Cora nor Sir Nigel ever mentioned her in their correspondence with me.
I frequently prayed that her love might be as lasting in her as it proved agonizing to me.
Studhome knew my secret. To conceal from him that I was miserable was impossible, but honest Jack's advice "to take heart of grace--to remember that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, that--
"'There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,'"
and a great deal more to the same effect and purpose, proved but sorry comfort and counsel.
On a Saturday evening I had tiffed with him in his tent. We had no second parade or anything to do. He vowed that he was tired of his studies, which generally consisted of the Racing Calendar, Hart's "Annual Army List," "White's Farriery," and the "Field Exercise and Evolutions for the Cavalry," varied by Punch and Bell's Life, so we ordered our horses, and rode to Varna, the variety and unwonted bustle of which afforded the means of amusement and relief, after the quiet and monotony of our camp in the green wooded vale of Aladyn.
We put up our horses at an old rickety Turkish khan, which an enterprising French sutler had turned into a species of hotel, for over the door a gay signboard, painted in tricolour, informed us that it was "Le restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, pour messieurs les officiers et sous-officiers."
There we had a bottle of excellent Greek wine, in a large whitewashed room, full of French officers, of every branch of the service and of all ranks, who received us with great politeness. They were all smoking cigarettes, chatting, laughing, playing chess or dominoes, and reading the Moniteur or Charivari, which last caricatured the Russians as unmercifully as our good friend Punch ever did.
Their gaiety and etourdi fashion of quizzing the women who passed drew many a scowl of wonder and reprehension from the turbaned, shawled, and solemn Turks, for few of the believers took kindly to "the sons of perdition who had come to aid them and the Vicar of God--the refuge of the world--from the Muscovite dog," as one was heard to say; "and at the behest of a queen--a woman--Allah razolsum!" he added, with special reference to us.
"What a change all this is from our recent barrack life at Maidstone," said Studhome. "We see such strange scenes--a new world here."
"For our used-up guardsmen and hussars, who have been hitherto bored by the mere aimlessness and emptiness of their lives, our friend, the Emperor Nicholas, has certainly provided that which Sir Charles, in Used Up, would call a 'new sensation,' and a little healthy excitement."
A young sous-lieutenant of Zouaves was particularly vehement and droll in describing a certain Egyptian magician, who had shown some wonderful things to him and his friends. His words seemed to excite much laughter, and, on drawing nearer, I discovered him to be Jules Jolicoeur, the Zouave, who had now been promoted to the rank of second-lieutenant in his regiment, in the ranks of which the cholera had already made sad ravages.
"Monsieur Jolicoeur," said I; "a magician, do you say?"
"Peste! you know my name," said he, smiling, while he pirouetted about and twirled his moustache.
"I have to congratulate you on your promotion. Better this than poring over Lemartiniere, Ambrose Pare, and so forth, at the Ecole de Medecin, eh?"
"Parbleu, monsieur! how do you come to know all this?" he asked, with pardonable surprise.
"Perhaps I am a magician too," said I, laughing. "But this Egyptian of whom you tell us--he is a juggler, I presume?"
"Jouer--joueuse de gobelets, you mean? Oh, no. In a little water or ink, poured into the hollow of your hand, he will show you the face of any friend you most desire to see. It is miraculous."
"Diable!" exclaimed Victor Baudeuf, a well-decorated captain of a French line regiment; "then he shall show me Mogador."
The name of this well-known French dancer elicited a burst of laughter; but Jolicoeur said--
"Monsieur, you should call her Madame la Comtesse de Chabrillan!"
"And where the devil is monsieur le Comte?" asked Baudeuf, with a grimace.
"At the gold-fields, having spent his fortune twice on the girl."
"Well, to a wife in Paris a husband at the gold-fields is just as valuable as no husband at all. Tres bon! I shall see pretty Mogador, if your magician has any skill."
"And where does your magician hang out?" asked Studhome.
"Hang--hang--il merite la corde, you mean, monsieur?" asked the puzzled Frenchman.
"No, no; where is he to be found?"
"Monsieur le magicien holds a spiritual seance to-night," observed a French hussar, whose gorgeous dolman was almost sword-proof with silver lace.
"Tres bon!" exclaimed another; "there are twenty girls in Paris I want to see."
"What is his time, Jules?"
"Eight o'clock."
"'Tis but twenty minutes from that now."
"We shall go too," said Studhome, "and have our fortunes told; it will be as good a lark, monsieur, as any other."
"Lark--aloutte--oh, yes, tres bon!" replied Jolicoeur, with a good-natured smile, though quite at a loss to understand why the bird was referred to.
"My fortune has often been told me, Newton, by gipsies, at Maidstone and Canterbury. By no two alike; but it was magnificent, according to the fee I gave, and always droll. We shall see what this astrologer--a real magician--has to show us."
"If he shows us Louisa Loftus, Jack, I'll forfeit a year's pay!"
"Come, messieurs, to the seance," shouted Jolicoeur, as he buckled on his sabre. "I wish to see Mademoiselle Sophie of ours, who has gone to Constantinople."
"And I Mogador," said Captain Baudeuf, "the delicious little dancer at the Mabille."
"And I Rose Pompon!" exclaimed the hussar, tying the cords of his silver dolman. "Rose, the heroine of a thousand flirtations."
"Mogador, the empress of ten thousand hearts," added the captain.
"Hearts such as thine, mon camarade," said the hussar, laughing.
"And Fleur d'Amour," added another heedless fellow, "the Queen of the Tourlurous!"
Camp phrase for the French linesmen.
"Ah, mon capitaine," said Jules. "Peste! what a roue it is. He has made as many conquests as our good friend Don Juan, in the delightful opera which bears his name."
"Beware!" said the other, with a mock frown; "I'm an ace of diamonds man with the pistol, Jules."
"Bah! Your pistol will never be levelled at me. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille, and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles----"
"Cordieu, mon ami! we haven't a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she'll appear in Baudeuf's hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!" said Jolicoeur.
These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.
"By Jove, Newton," whispered Studhome, "our fair friends will be conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious lorettes in Paris!"
With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy's contingent with the Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview, as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he produced, and was faithfully believed.
After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan described by Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians."
If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums, and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends, their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.
It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the modern Athens--that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless Solons--was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying, however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that "he possessed a peculiar medium," of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant, seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a visit to one of Her Majesty's ships in the West Indies, where she pryed into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen's berth; and, not content with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter of the masses; but one night the fair medium, "being hot with the Tuscan grape, and high in blood," or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting to play her assumed character.
"Allons, mes camarades!" said Jules, placing his arm through mine and Studhome's; "we shall all face this Cagliostro together--one for all, and all for one, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires.'"
It was impossible not to be pleased with the gaity and winning manner of this young Frenchman. His bearing and uniform, half Parisian and half Oriental, gave him somewhat of the aspect of a dandy brigand; but that bearing is peculiar to all the officers and men of the regiments of Zouaves.
Evening was approaching, and the shadows were falling eastward. Those of the tall minarets, and the rows of cypress-trees that guard "the City of the Dead," were cast to a great distance, over the flat ground on which Varna stands. Many "true believers" were awaiting the shrill, boyish voice of the muezzin to call them to prayer; and the tambours of the French troops were gathering at their places of arms, and bracing up their drums, preparatory to beating the evening retreat, as we passed along the strangely-crowded streets, towards the Armenian church.
At a coffee-house, the whole front of which was open, we passed several of the Colonel Hadjee Mehmet's soldiers, all drowsy with tobacco or bang, and seated like so many tailors, each on a scrap of tattered carpet. Some were idling over the chequers of a chess-board, and others were listening to the wild fairy tale of an itinerant dervish, to whom, from time to time, they tossed a quarter piastre (about a halfpenny) as it waxed more and more exciting.
Passing through a street which had just been named the Rue des Portes Franchises--a corporal of sappers being in the act of nailing up that title on the rickety mansion of a wondering and indignant emir--we reached the temporary residence of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, near which several Turkish women in long caftans, a few hawk-nosed Greeks, and squalid Jews were loitering, as if pondering whether they dared tempt his skill by unwisely seeking to probe the future.
To the street the house presented nothing but a small door, having a curved arch, like a horseshoe, and a low, whitewashed wall.
Passing through, we found ourselves in a cool, shady courtyard, surrounded, as usual, by those inexplicable Turkish sheds, a well in the centre, a few rose-trees in tubs, and a few flowers and tiny shrubs forcing their way up between the slabs of pavement.
The mansion was almost entirely built of wood, and painted saffron and blue. We were ushered in by a little tawny Egyptian servant-boy, clad in baggy blue breeches and a scarlet tarboosh, and whom, to our disgust, we discovered to be tongueless--a mute!--and found ourselves in the divan hanee, or principal apartment; and now the hitherto ceaseless gabble and merriment of our French friends became hushed into comparative silence, as the hakim, who had been smoking his chibouque, with its long cherry-stick, rose from a luxurious pile of silken cushions to welcome us.
He was a little man, with Arab features, and a complexion of mahogany. His bushy beard was of a great amplitude. Time had long since dyed that appendage white, but the proprietor had turned it to a rich brown. He wore a green turban, a long, flowing coat, fashioned like a dressing-gown, of bright blue cloth, elaborately braided on the breast and seams with scarlet cord; his vest and trousers were of white linen, girt by a sash of green silk. Round his neck hung a comboloio, or Mahommedan rosary, of ninety-nine sandalwood beads.
Save that his intensely black eyes had under their impending brows a keen and hawk-like expression, his appearance was neither unpleasing nor undignified. His cheekbones were somewhat prominent; he had the organs of locality largely defined, and his forehead was high, but receding.
A Turkish soldier, an onbashi, or corporal of the Hadjee Mehmet's corps, had just preferred some request as we entered; and on learning that we had come to see a trial of his power at the seance, or whatever else he was pleased to call it, he invited us all into an inner apartment which opened off the divan hanee.
It was lighted by four lamps, suspended from the ceiling, each with a large tassel below it. From these lamps flickered four flames, which emitted a strange mephitic odour. The chamber had been recently whitewashed; the doors and windows were all bordered by arabesques in black and red, and with elaborate sentences from the Koran, which I afterwards learned to be the following:--
"If they accuse thee of imposture, the apostles before thee have also been accounted impostors, who brought evident demonstrations, and the book which enlighteneth the understanding."
"They will ask thee concerning the spirit; answer, the spirit was created at the command of my Lord; but ye have no knowledge given unto you, except a little."
"This is light added unto light. God will direct His light unto whom He pleaseth."
Al Koran, chapters iii., xvii., and xxiv.
In the centre was a table covered by a crimson cloth, on which stood a species of altar, formed of brass, about two feet high, supported by four monstrous figures, the description of which is beyond the power of language, and before it lay the Koran, open, and from its leaves depended fifty-four flesh-coloured ribbons, with leaden seals attached to them, being one for every two of the chapters of that remarkable book.
Near this lay a rod of strangely-sculptured bronze, which was known to have been found in one of the six great cavern tombs that stand in the pass of Bibou-el-Melek at Thebes, by the side of a mummy, which was alleged to be that of a royal magician, for in those tombs lie the Egyptian kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.
Several bright green chameleons from Alexandria, which were perpetually crawling about this altar, and turning from their natural colour to red, blue, and white, according to the hue of anything they approached, added to the diablerie of this scene, which soon became rather exciting.
My own share in this adventure was so remarkable, that I came away with but a slight recollection of the part borne in it by my companions.
Indeed, I was the second person on whom he attempted to impose, if his singular mode of summoning, or spirit rapping, could be termed an imposition.
The first to whom he addressed himself was the Turkish soldier with whom we had found him in conversation.
The onbashi wished to know if his mother, Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said, who dwelt at Adramyt, was well, and gave the hakim his fee--ten piastres--a large sum, no doubt, for the poor Osmanli warrior, who gazed about with considerable uneasiness, though the unabashed bearing of the Frenchmen might have reassured him; and I heard Jolicoeur whispering to Baudeuf that he had a dozen times seen just such a magical tableau at the Mabille and Porte St. Martin--diable--oui!--and had hissed it off, that he might have Mogador or Fleur d'Amour on with their dances.
"Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said," muttered the hakim. "A lucky name--it was borne by one of the four perfect women who are now in Paradise."
Opening a gilt door in his little cabinet or altar, the hakim brought forth a large clam-shell and two phials of a dark liquid.
He wrote that verse of the Koran which I have quoted from chapter xvii., concerning the spirit, on a strip of parchment; then, pouring pure water over it, he washed it into the hollow of the shell; thus its sentiment and spirit were supposed to become a component part of the charm about to be wrought.
He then desired the onbashi to turn to the east, and pray (for religion evidently bore a great part in all his mummery), and next he summoned me to look into the shell, which he held in his left hand, while waving over it his bronze rod seven times--the mystical number.
I steadily gazed into the liquid, which a few drops from the phial had turned to a pale purple tint, but saw--nothing.
She did not appear. Thrice she was summoned, but in vain.
The hakim tugged his beard, frowned, and reddened with vexation, and emptied his shell, pouring the liquid carefully through a hole in the floor.
"My poor mother, then, is dead?" said the corporal, sadly, crossing his hands on his breast.
"Stafferillah! nay, do not think so," said the hakim, kindly.
"Why, effendi?"
"Because, in that case, the liquid would become as black as the holy Kaaba."
"But she did not appear?"
"This is an unlucky day, my son."
"Why so for me, if not for others? I never omit to wash and pray; and yesterday, O hakim, you showed strange things to the Franks, filling all their khans and coffee-houses with wonder."
"True; but go. Thou art one of the faithful. To the infidels all days are alike," replied the hakim, with a very unmistakable scowl at Jolicoeur and Baudeuf. "Doth not the Prophet say, 'Their works are like unto vapour in a plain, which the traveller thinketh to be water, until when he cometh thereto he findeth it to be nothing?'"
"Allah kerim!" said the onbashi, putting his right hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his heart, and stalking solemnly away.
Jolicoeur was pressing forward to summon his friend Sophie, no doubt, or perhaps some other gay damsel, when the hakim, who evidently disliked his scoffing smile and general bearing, ignored his presence, and said to me--
"Effendi, in what can I serve you?"
I felt the blood rush to my head, and in a whisper I mentioned to him Louisa Loftus. I was loth that my fast companions should hear her name, and make, perhaps, a jest of it. The hakim's fee was, I have said, ten piastres; but as I gave him above a hundred--or equal to a guinea sterling--there were no words to express his thanks in Egyptian or Turkish; he could only mutter, again and again--
"Shookier Allah! May God reward you!"
Again he produced his clam-shell, the surface of which I carefully surveyed, while with great alacrity he wrote a verse from the Koran. The shell was clear and pure; no picture, line, or drawing could be detected on its pearly surface. Again he went through his mummery with the phials, and washed off the ink into the shell; again, as before, the liquid grew purple, and again he waved his rod of bronze.
"You wish to see her you love?" he whispered, with something of a licentious leer in his keen black eyes; "she who is to be your hanoum (wife or lady)?"
"Yes, effendi," said I, blushing like a great schoolboy, in spite of myself, all the more that I saw Jack Studhome's handkerchief at his mouth.
Fixing his keen eyes with something of sternness upon Jules Jolicoeur, whom he had suddenly detected in the act of mimicking him, the bearded hakim summoned him forward, and desired him to look into the shell, and tell us what he saw.
Abd-el-Rasig then turned to the east, and proceeded to pray and invoke in an inaudible voice.
I was four paces from the Zouave lieutenant, whose eyes, as he gazed into the shell, became dilated and fixed with astonishment, while his whole features, which were handsome, expressed something akin to fear.
"Merveilleuse! mon Dieu! merveilleuse!" he exclaimed.
"Do you see anything, monsieur?" I asked, with growing excitement.
"Yes--yes--oui, peste!"
"In heaven's name what do you see?"
"A lady!"
"A lady?"
"Yes; the face of a lady, young, and very gentle. It is pale; her eyes are dark, her hair thick and jetty--it seems almost blue in this purple shell. Her eyebrows and lashes are thick," he continued, speaking very fast. "She has an expression of intense sadness--ban Dieu!--she is like a sorrowing angel."
"Her nose is aquiline?" I suggested.
"On the contrary, it is neat and small, but not quite retrousse. She moves--merveilleuse!--tears--she is weeping! On her breast there is a silver crescent; and now--now--the whole thing fades away!"
I was springing forward, when the hakim waved me imperiously back with his bronze rod, and instantly poured the contents of the shell on the tiled floor, from which a strange mephitic odour rose.
This was not the case on the previous unsuccessful occasion. Jules, who had become quite grave, now turned eagerly, and full of interest, to me.
"Is this the lady whose face you saw?" I asked, showing him the miniature of Louisa.
"No, monsieur; there is not the least resemblance."
"Indeed!"
"I am somewhat of an artist, and know."
"You are sure?"
"Sure as I now address you, monsieur."
I began to smile.
"I have said that her eyes seemed dark, nearly as these. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy, but her nose and features were all smaller--more (pardon me, monsieur) feminine, perhaps--less decided in character, certainly; and on her breast she had a crescent of silver."
"A crescent!"
"Yes, monsieur, with a lion above it. The ornament seemed to fasten or adorn the dress, and I saw it distinctly till she placed her hand upon it, and then the water in the shell rippled. It is positively miraculous," he added, turning to Captain Baudeuf, who was twirling his moustache and smiling with obstinate incredulity.
The latter details petrified me.
Jolicoeur's description was completely that of my cousin, Cora Calderwood. The crescent and lion was a gift I had sent her from India--a double ornament I had picked up in the great pagoda at Rangoon, and which she always wore, preferring it to her father's crest and every other brooch.
"Are you satisfied, effendi?" asked the hakim, quietly, for he seemed used to astonishment on such occasions.
"I am bewildered, at all events, hakim," said I.
"Why so?"
"It was not she I asked for or whom I named."
"How do you know? You did not see. Another looked with your eyes."
"True--but what does the vision portend?"
"You asked to see her----"
"I loved, hakim," said I, emphatically.
"Nay, she who--if Allah and the Muscovite dogs spare you--is to be your wife, your hanoum. Do you not remember? Go! Allah Kerim! it is kismet--your destiny. The destinies of all, and the hour in which we are to die--yea, the very moment--are written by the finger of Azrael on our foreheads at our birth--on yours also, although you believe neither in Azrael nor the Prophet. Go! the mark is there, although we see it not."
The Mahommedan Angel of Death.
With those rather solemn words ringing in my ears, bewildered and thoroughly startled, I found myself traversing the streets of Varna with Studhome, while the French drummers were beating la retraite as the sun went down beyond those mountains that were then echoing with the cannon of Silistria, and while the shrill voices of the muezzins proclaimed the hour of evening prayer from the minarets of the mosques, into which the Moslems were pouring, with bowed heads and bare feet, to count their beads.
*CHAPTER XXXII.*
Sleep by evil spirits troubled,
Fleeing at the matin bell;
Fears that start to eyes scarce waking,
Sighs that will not quit her cell.
As from a dream I was roused at last by Jack Studhome proffering his cigar-case, and saying, with a smile--
"How about the year's pay, Norcliff, eh? I owe you that, I suppose?"
"Don't jest, for Heaven's sake, Jack," said I; "for I feel faint, queer, and ill."
All that night we talked over the affair, through the medium of sundry flasks of iced champagne, without being able to come to any conclusion about it.
As a piece of trickery, it beat all that we had ever seen performed at Cawnpore, Delhi, or Benares, by Indian jugglers, though at mess we had seen those worthies swallow a sword to the hilt, or run it through a basket, in which was concealed a child, whose blood and screams came forth together, till the room door opened, and the little one ran in joyously, unhurt, and without a wound; or the orange seed, which one placed in my tumbler, where it took root, and in three minutes became a little tree in full bearing, from which the mess plucked the oranges as it was handed round. All such performances were beaten by that of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig!
That Jules Jolicoeur had seen a female face--a pretty one, too--in the clam-shell was certain, by whatever art or legerdemain that circumstance was achieved. His astonishment was too genuine and too palpable to be acted. The detail of the crescent brooch was a coincidence, perhaps; but then his description of the wearer accorded so well with that of Cora!
I resolved to seek him next day; but he was despatched on duty along the road towards the Balkan; and, as the event proved, I became too ill to follow him.
As we rode home from the Restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, I was sensible of extreme giddiness; but attributed it to the champagne. I could scarcely guide my horse along the road that led to our camp in the vale of Aladyn, and felt Studhome repeatedly place his hand upon my bridle to guide me. I felt delirious, too, and next day found myself in the pangs of that foul pest, the cholera.
It seized me at the distance of some ten miles or so from the camp, from which I had ridden in search of Lieutenant Jolicoeur. I became so ill that I had to dismount, and was conveyed to the kiosk of a wealthy Armenian merchant, and there I remained in great peril for several days, before my circumstances or my whereabouts became known to my friends or the regiment.
I endured a severe pain or burning heat in the pit of my stomach, accompanied by the other symptoms of cholera--cramps in the limbs, and spasms of the intestines and muscles of the abdomen.
The pulses became faint, and at times scarcely perceptible; my skin grew cold, and suffused by a clammy perspiration. It was an undoubted case of spasmodic cholera.
I felt resigned and almost careless of life. There were times, however, when I reflected sorrowfully, almost bitterly, that it was not thus I had wished to die, unnoticed and unknown, among strangers in a foreign land; but, luckily for myself, I could not have fallen into more worthy hands.
The proprietor of the kiosk I have mentioned was a wealthy Armenian merchant, a native of Kars. Whether he was animated by that inordinate love of gain which is peculiar to his race, I know not; but he treated me with extreme kindness and hospitality, yet I never saw either him or any of his family. The dangerous nature of my disease was a sufficient excuse for my being carefully secluded from his entire household, which was numerous, as it consisted of several sons with their wives and children, all living together as one great family, but under his own rule, somewhat in the patriarchal mode of a Scottish clan under its chief.
In a little airy apartment, which opened upon a high-walled and spacious garden, I lay for many days, hovering between life and death. My medical attendant was an Italian surgeon, attached to the Bashi Bazooks, and wore a bright green frock-coat, long riding-boots, and a crimson fez, with a long blue tassel and broad military button. He looked like a reckless foreign cut-throat, with a fierce moustache, vast black beard, and close shorn head; but his exterior belied his character and skill.
In the old Sangrado fashion he bled me, taking twenty-five ounces of blood from my left arm, and gave me, I remember, from eighty to a hundred drops of laudanum, together with a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, in a glass of stiff brandy-and-water, steaming hot, ordering me to drain it almost at a draught.
"Oh, Signor Dottore," said I, "whence come those dreadful spasms?"
"They are rarely accounted for satisfactorily," he replied, with professional nonchalance; "but, if I were to venture an opinion, I should say that the convulsioni arise from distended vessels, in the neighbourhood of the spine, on the origin of the nerves--you understand, Signor Capitano?"
I was soon past understanding anything; but, after the hot dose, I was wrapped in hot blankets, friction, with strong stimulating liniments, being applied along the spine by the hard hands of two black slaves, and heated bricks were placed to my feet and hands; and under all this process I fainted away.
For days I was as one who is in a dream, passive in the hands of those sable assistants, who, doubtless, thought a bowstring would have proved a "perfect cure," and a saving of considerable trouble. The green frogged coat, the crimson fez, and the dark face of the Italian doctor, as he came from time to time, seemed all a portion of the phantasmagoria which surrounded me; but there came anon a sweeter, a softer, and more feminine face, with a lighter and a smaller hand, that seemed to touch me and smooth my pillow; and with this vision came thoughts of Louisa, of Cora, of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig and his magic spells, and then I would close my eyes, wondering whether I was asleep or awake, or if in a dream, from which I would waken, to find myself in my cool bell-tent in the green breezy vale of Aladyn, in my familiar quarters at Canterbury, or it might be in the dear old room of my boyhood, where my mother had so often hung over me and watched, in Calderwood Glen, and then I seemed to hear the cawing of the hoodiecrows among the ancient trees that rustled their green leaves in the summer wind.
The murmuring breeze that came so pleasantly to my dreaming ear passed over wooded mountains; but, alas! they were those of Bulgaria, and not my native land.
Amid all the wild ideas induced by my condition was the overpowering sense of weakness, with intense prostration and lassitude; but now, thanks to Heaven, to human skill, to my own youth and strength, the terrible disease was passing away.
While, by a stupidity or treachery closely akin to treason, our army, during the hot, breathless months of a Bulgarian summer, lay rotting and inactive at Varna, as if merely waiting the approach of winter to open a campaign with Russia--hardy Russia, the land of ice and snows, whose rash emperor boasted that her two most terrible generals were January and February--the fell disease which prostrated me was making sad havoc among my brave and patient comrades.
The 7th, 23rd, and 88th regiments, and all the infantry generally--the Highlanders almost excepted, their Celtic costume being an admirable safeguard by its warmth about the loins--were decimated by cholera. The Inniskillings and 5th Dragoon Guards were reduced to mere skeletons, and few cavalry colonels could bring more than two hundred and fifty sabres into the field.
So much was my own corps reduced, that on one parade Beverley only mustered two hundred lances; but many convalescents joined after. It was remarked that many of the ambulance corps, after what was termed "the great thunder-storm," died within five hours of being assailed by the plague.
Thus, "hundreds of brave men, who had left the British shores, full of high hope and manly strength, died in the valley of Aladyn, or on the hills overlooking Varna! The army grew discontented. Though no act unbecoming British soldiers was committed--though no breach of discipline could be charged--it was impossible to refrain from discontent. Murmurs, not loud but deep, made themselves heard. No man there but burned to meet the enemy. The entire army was prepared cheerfully to face death in the service of the country to which it had sworn allegiance; but to remain in inactivity, exposed to pestilence, which struck down its victims as surely, and nearly as speedily, as the rifle-bullet, beneath a burning sun, with no power of resistance, and no possibility of evasion, was a fate which might quell the stoutest courage, and raise discontent in the most loyal bosom."
Seven thousand Russians, who had perished of cholera some time before, were buried in the vicinity of our camp; and thus the green, smiling spot which the Bulgarians named the vale of Aladyn, the bearded Muscovites anathematized as the Valley of the Plague!
While such was the state of our inactive army at Varna, our fleet in the Black Sea was vainly seeking to lure the Russian vessels from their secure anchorage under the formidable batteries of Sebastopol; and the Turkish army was exhibiting a courage which astonished all Europe.
At Giurgevo, a city on the left bank of the Danube, on the 7th of July, a mere handful of Turks, chiefly led by a gallant Scot, styled Behram Pasha, defeated a large force of Russians, after a desperate conflict. At Kalafat the latter sought in vain to force the passage of the river, and drive the Osmanlees from their stronghold; and at Citate and Oltenitza they were routed with disgrace. For neither their own native prowess, the prayers of the Bishop of Moscow, nor the miraculous image of St. Sergius, availed them--the blue cross of St. Andrew and the Eagle of Muscovy fled alike before the crescent and star of Mahommed. And now Silistria, on the Danube--"the thundering river"--became the base of operations; and there Moussa Pasha, Butler, an Irish officer, and my countryman, Naysmith, covered themselves with glory, while the Hungarian exile, Omar Pasha, opposed the foe with all his available troops.
Lieutenant-Colonel Cannon.
During this time the French continued pouring into Varna, by marching across the Balkan, the great mountain barrier of Turkey, the rocky passes and deep defiles of which are almost impassable in winter.
On the 28th of July the Russians were driven from Wallachia; but the Turks were utterly defeated by them at Bayazid, on the slopes of Western Armenia, and again at Kuyukdere. Our fleets bombarded Kola, on the White Sea, and the 4th of September saw the eagle of victory hovering over the armies of the Czar at Petropaulovski; but thus the summer passed with us ingloriously away, and still our army lay inactive amid a hotbed of fever and suffering at hated Varna.
The most of these stirring events I learned after my recovery from that illness which so nearly carried me off. I knew nothing of them while in the house of the Armenian, and equally little did I know that Mr. De Warr Berkeley, in the hope that I might never rejoin, was doing all he could to blot my military reputation in the brigade to which we belonged.
It was on a morning in June--the 23rd, I think--the same day on which the Russians raised the siege of Silistria, leaving twelve thousand dead before its walls--that I seemed to wake from a long and refreshing slumber.
The vague, drowsy sense of having been surrounded by phantasms and unrealities, and that it was not Newton Norcliff, but some one else, who was lying there, sick and weary, had passed away with sleep. I was conscious and coherent now, but weak with past suffering.
Through the lattices of a pretty kiosk (for that word signifies alike a room or a house), I could see the great rose trees, covered with their fragrant glories, standing in rows, or trained over gilded iron bowers or arches. The leaves of the apricot, the purple plum and greengage trees, rustled pleasantly in the passing breeze, and pleasantly, too, there came to my ear the plashing of a marble fountain that stood in the shaded verandah without.
Around that white marble fountain grew the great scarlet pumpkin and the golden-coloured water-melon, their gaudy brilliance contrasting with the green leaves amid which they nestled. The garden was an epitome of Turkey, for there the blood-red ilex of Italy, the rose tree of Persia, the palm of Egypt, the Indian fig, and the African aloe, with the tall, solemn cypress, all grew side by side in the lovely parterres, through which the sunshine fell aslant in golden flakes.
The kiosk in which I lay was floored with marble slabs. Its walls were painted gaily with a panoramic view of Constantinople. I could recognise the heights of Pera, and all the Propontis, from the Seraglia point to the Seven Towers, with all the glories of the Golden Horn, Sophia's shining cupola, the Serai Bournou, and the cypress groves, where the dead of ages lie.
I was reposing in a pretty bed, with spotless white hangings, and lace all so charmingly arranged, that it reminded me of a baby's cradle. A divan of yellow silk cushions surrounded the apartment on three sides. On the fourth it was entirely open to the verandah and garden. On this divan I saw my undress uniform, neatly folded, with my forage-cap, sword, and cartridge-box placed above it.
My watch and purse, Louisa's miniature and ring--I felt for the latter involuntarily--were all lying on a little white marble tripod table by my side, together with a beautiful china drinking vessel, which seemed familiar to me.
A sigh of thankfulness that I was conscious, free of pain, and at comparative ease, escaped me, and I turned to survey again the other side of my chamber, when a remarkable female figure met my eye.
She was seated on the low divan, quite motionless. She was reading intently, and by her costume I knew at once that she was a French sister of charity--one of those pure in heart, great in soul, and unflinching in purpose, who, on their saint-like mission of mercy and humanity, had followed the allies from France.
Her dress was a plain black serge gown, with a spotless white coif, which fell in soft folds upon her shoulders, pure as the feathers of a dove. In her gentle face, which seemed familiar--for doubtless it had often been before me in the intervals of suffering and delirium--there was a kind, a peaceful, and divine expression, that underlay the lines of premature care, suffering, and privation.
She was young; but among the dark brown hair that was braided smoothly and modestly over her pale, serene brow, I could detect already a silver thread or two.
So perfectly regular were her features, so straight the lines of eyebrow and nose, that the dark, speaking eyes, and that drooping form of eyelid peculiar to the south of Europe, alone relieved them from tameness, for I had seen more sparkling beauty in a somewhat irregular face; but in those dark eyes there ever shone the steady light of a soul devoted to one great purpose; and yet at times, as I afterwards found, her manner could become merry, almost playful.
Slight though the motion of simply turning my head, she heard it, arose anxiously, and, coming forward, handed to me a cooling drink.
"Mademoiselle, I thank you!" said I, gratefully.
"You must not thank me, monsieur. I am simply your nurse."
"And I have disturbed you----"
"At my office--merely, monsieur, at my office, which I can read at any time within the twenty-four hours."
"And how often do you do this?"
"Every day--all these pages--see!"
Her voice was so very silvery, her eyes so calm and lustrous, her hands so white and small, that it was impossible not to see that she had been highly bred, delicately nurtured, and came of some good French family.
"How long have I been here, mademoiselle?" I asked, after a pause.
"I do not know. Monsieur was here when I came."
"And who brought you to nurse me?"
"Lieutenant Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves, heard somehow that you were here, suffering under a perilous illness. An Italian surgeon chanced to mention it at the Restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, and they brought me here. We are in the house of a rich Armenian trader--a good Christian, after his own fashion; but, O Sacre Coeur! what an odd fashion it is!"
"Ah! mademoiselle----"
"I am Archange, of the Order of Charity."
"Well, Sister Archange, you are really an angel!"
"Oh, fie! don't say so! You must think very poorly, very meanly, of me to give me a title I dare not hope to merit, even by a thousand actions such as attending you."
"Pardon me; I did but--but say what I thought."
"You are a child, and thought wrong," she replied, with playful asperity. "But you have already spoken too much for one who is only beginning to recover; so try to sleep, mon frere."
And, waving her hand with a pretty gesture of authority, she resumed her missal, and read on in silence.
I slept for a time--I know not how long--it might have been an hour, or perhaps two: but, when I looked up, she was still seated, motionless and reading.
"Ma soeur!" said I, as our eyes met, and my heart swelled with gratitude for her generous watchfulness; and she came hastily towards me.
"Mon frere, what do you want?"
"You mistook my meaning when I called you an angel, and were angry with me."
"Angry?--I? Ah, no! no! Don't say so--I am never angry; it would not do for me to be so now."
"But I think you quite a saint to watch me thus."
"You must not say that either."
"You are so good, and I so unworthy."
"Good I may be thought, monsieur; but I shall never be a saint, like Father Vincent de Paul--I am too wicked for that," she added, laughing merrily; "but I try to be as good as I can."
"Have any letters come here for me?"
"Letters!" she said, with alarm in her fine eyes, and withdrawing a pace.
"Yes; I am so anxious for them."
"Ah! now you are beginning to rave again. In your pain and delirium you always raved about letters."
"There are, then, none?" said I, with a groan.
"I shall see, mon frere," and, in the kindness of her heart, after pretending to search for what she too well knew were not to be found, she came again to my bedside, and said there would, perhaps, be some to-morrow.
"Still no letter!" I exclaimed, sadly, with tears in my eyes.
She laid a soft hand caressingly on my brow.
I besought her, in the most moving terms, to inquire if there were any letters for me at our cantonments in the vale of Aladyn, heedless of the distance and of the trouble I gave her; for I thought only of Louisa Loftus, and that her answer to my Gallipoli missive might have reached the regiment during my illness and absence.
