Marmaduke

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

END OF BOOK I.

[BOOK II]

[CHAPTER I]

"Mr. Peter Muir wishes to know if he can see you, ma'am," said the servant.

The woman seated at a table by the window in the small drawing-room of a tiny house in one of the back streets of Belgravia laid down her work and rose. It was Marrion Paul; but she was seven years older and neither face nor figure had quite the same buoyant youthfulness. Indeed, as she crossed to the fireplace a distinct limp was apparent. Still her face had gained in beauty, and the masses of her red bronze hair glinted bright as ever. Those seven years of life had been hard in some ways; but they had been happy in others--happy most of all in that Marmaduke Muir was well and content.

Marrion drew an easy-chair to the fire and closed the window, knowing her visitor to be chilly. She did the latter with reluctance, for the late November sunshine shone golden in the narrow street, and the somewhat mews-laden atmosphere of those back purlieus of fashionable houses was sweetened as it filtered through the wide boxes of trailing musk which made the little house with the brass plate bearing its legend,

Mrs. Marsden
Layettes

look quite countrified and summerlike.

Peter Muir, coming in languidly, complaining of the cold, slipped into the easy-chair as one accustomed to it. He also was older, his weak face showed signs of recent ill-health; but he was otherwise the loose knit, errant, yet dandified figure he had been. Dressed in the height of the fashion, his blue-and-white bird's eye bow and stiff stand up collar seemed the most striking parts of his personality.

"This place is the only peaceful spot in all the town," he sighed. "I often wish I were back in the little room upstairs where you nursed me so patiently."

"And your brother, Major Marmaduke," she put in kindly, "don't forget him, Mr. Peter. If it hadn't been for him, I don't believe you would have lived."

Peter Muir fingered his nails nervously.

"No, I don't suppose I should. You see, it was all Vienna. It's the devil of a place for a young fellow, especially if he has got no money--and we never have any, have we? But that is really the reason why I've dropped in to have a quiet talk with you, so I thought I would come in the morning, in case Marmaduke----"

"I haven't seen your brother for ten days," she interrupted quietly. "I believe he has been away hunting in Hampshire, hasn't he?"

Peter Muir went on fingering his nails.

"Yes," he said at last, "part of the time." Then he suddenly burst out--"I don't know why we should beat about the bush, you and I. You were a perfect Providence to me, Marmie; I used to call you that, you know, when I was so ill and the doctors swore that D.T. must end in an asylum. Duke means a lot to both of us, doesn't he? And it's about him I want to speak. You've noticed, of course, that he is hipped and out of spirits, haven't you?"

"No one could help noticing that," she replied coldly.

"And he says it is because the old man of the sea at the Castle won't give him the money to purchase the colonel's step, I suppose?" asked the young man tentatively.

"That is the case, I believe," she replied, even more coldly. "There was the same difficulty about the majority."

Peter Muir laughed and looked at her quizzically.

"I've often wondered how that was done," he said. "But this time it isn't quite fair on the baron. To give the devil his due, I believe he is quite ready to fork out the money if Marmaduke will only promise to marry within the year. You see the question of succession is becoming acute. There is no chance of an heir to the barony from Pitt. And I--I--well, let's out with it! I've dished myself with the peer as well as with Providence. It's my damned own fault, of course, but there it is. And it isn't as if there was not a real picture man in the family whose sons should do credit to the Castle."

He had run on rapidly, and now paused to look at his companion.

"And does the Major refuse to accept the conditions?" she asked quietly. "I wonder why?"

Peter Muir felt distinctly injured by her calm.

"So do I, and I was wondering if----"

She stopped him with a gesture of her hand, which sent all his conventional decorum to the right-about, and left him, a man, before her a woman--left him, instead of an elaborate detective, a reluctant admirer.

"Mr. Peter," she said, smiling, "don't wonder! It is very kind of you to come and tell me the truth--kind also to try and find me out; but, believe me, I do not stand in your brother's way. It is two years since Major Muir first brought you here to me, a milliner living by her work only. All that while he and I have been good friends--nothing more. I had no claim to be anything else. Does that satisfy you?"

Peter Muir held out a hot, damp, but enthusiastic hand to meet her cool, wholesome one.

"I'm not quite sure if it does," he said, in a manner suddenly and to her painfully reminiscent of Marmaduke. "You've been a good sight more to him than any friend has been to me, worse luck! Perhaps if I had had someone like you in a peaceful little room like this--but Marmaduke always had the devil's own luck. However, you are not angry, are you? Only I thought it right to put you up to the ropes in case----"

"There is no in case about it," she interrupted quickly. "I--I make no claim." She rose, passed to the window, and looked out. "Has Lord Drummuir any--any special selection for his future daughter-in-law?" she asked, and the young man at the fireplace jiggled the seals in his pocket amusedly.

He knew a thing or two, he imagined, about women.

"Not so far as I am aware of, at present," he replied, negligently; "but the consent is a trifle urgent, for the colonelcy will be going ere long. He ought to make up his mind soon and come with me to a roaring New Year at the Castle--it's always a bachelor party--and it may be his last chance. So, if you could say a word or two--you have more influence over Marmaduke----"

She flashed round suddenly.

"I used to have some," she corrected. "However, thanks very many. Now let us talk of something else."

After her visitor had gone Marrion Paul, who called herself Mrs. Marsden on the door-plate, threw the window wide with an air of relief and sat down once more to her work. It was an infant's cap of almost incredibly fine stitchings and embroideries; the kind of cap which, perched on slender, white, much-beringed hands would give tremors of delightful anticipation to rich young wives awaiting motherhood. On the table were strewn other tiny habiliments dainty and delicate beyond compare; for Mrs. Marsden's layettes were renowned. Nothing crude, nothing out of place came from her skilful hands; all things bore the indefinable stamp of absorbing care and almost divine hope that the little unknown atom of life to come should have garments worthy of its mission.

The truth being that, as she worked, her mind always held at the back of it the memory of a certain box upstairs in which lay the first baby clothes she had ever made--clothes laboured at day by day in a perfect heaven of happiness for her child and Duke's, the poor little dear which had lost its life in the effort to save hers after that terrible accident.

It had not been Duke's fault, though he had reproached himself bitterly at first; but that had been more because of her consequent lameness. For to a man a dead baby does not count for much--not even if no other follows it--at least not to a man like Marmaduke, so light-hearted, so affectionate, so free from all carping cares and thoughts.

No, it had been her fault from the beginning. She should have held her own as she had done for his good in so many other ways before and since. And now, after these years of freedom, was the tie between them--the unreal tie which ought never to have existed--to hold him back from taking his rightful place in life?

Suddenly she folded up the tiny cap, putting it by with a wistful little smile and a pat against happier thoughts, went upstairs, put on her bonnet, and, leaving word she would not be back till late, passed out into the street. One thing was certain, she must avoid seeing Marmaduke until her mind was indelibly fixed, and there was always a chance he might drop in to see her.

London in those days was a dreary spot for anyone requiring a quiet place wherein to look Fate in the face; but Marrion knew her way to two places where she could secure peace and quiet--the National Gallery and the reading-room of the British Museum. She had often spent long hours in the former, not moving from place to place, but seated before some masterpiece, scarce seeing it, yet vaguely learning something from it which had been missing in her life; but to-day she chose the latter, as being farther away, and it was time she wished to kill--time in which it was possible to hear the familiar step on the stairs, perhaps to be greeted by some affectionate jest that stockings were not mended or that new handkerchiefs required marking. She smiled as she thought of those seven long years during which she had kept this man as comfortable and as tidy as she could, during which she had managed for him as well as any woman could have managed, and tried to imagine the estimation in which such devotion would be held by the wives and mothers for whose infants she worked. She was a constant reader at the Museum, having, when she came to London, set herself deliberately to gain what she had perforce missed in her life, so she found a place, sent in her slip for a book, and was soon apparently studying it. But she was not even thinking. In the great crises of life one does not weigh pros and cons; decision comes from outside to those who recognise that there is something beyond one's own individual life. It is those who do not see, who fail to recognise the spiritual plane, who cannot distinguish good from evil, evil from good, who err past forgiveness. And from the moment Marrion Paul had heard of the condition on which old Lord Drummuir would buy the colonelcy she had known she must face him again. The only question was when, and how.

The sooner the better. She would inquire about the journey on her way home.

It was dark ere she arrived there with a long list of startings and arrivals in her hand, and a new sense of elation in her heart--the elation of the born fighter at yet another chance of battle.

"The Major was here asking for you, ma'am, about five o'clock," said the maidservant, "and he said if you could let him have two or three white ties to-night he would be obliged, as he is going into the country early to-morrow."

Marrion laughed. So much the better for her plans.

"Take a hot iron to the dining-room," she said, "and set the lace-board. You can take the ties round to his lodgings after supper."

[CHAPTER II]

Seven years had not improved old Lord Drummuir's temper, neither had it softened the arrogance of his sway over the household. Marrion realised this in a second, as, entering the study under the name of Mrs. Marsden--a lady who, according to the footman, was--"Oh, yes, sir, quite young, and yes, sir, quite good-looking!" and who had private business with his lordship, she found herself instantly recognised by three pairs of eyes. One the occupant of the familiar wheel-chair, the others those of my lady and Penelope. The sight of the latter was unexpected, for though Marrion knew her grandfather had died the previous year she had not heard of Penelope's reinstallation as confidential attendant to my lady. It was not an arrangement likely to occur to anyone out of Drummuir Castle; but there all things were possible.

In the instant's pause which followed on her entrance Marrion had time to note that the old man had changed but little. His face had lost somewhat of its colour, but the look of absolute domineering power was strong as ever. My lady had grown stout--the very idea of a fandango was far from her now--and the colour had come to her face in unbecoming fashion. Penelope, on the other hand, had grown thinner, and in her black dress looked prim propriety.

"Well, young woman?" began his lordship.

It was a signal for indignant protest from those two.

"Drummuir," shrilled the lady, "if you speak to that creature I must leave the room!"

Penelope's answering assent was audible in a snort.

The old man fixed them with a stony stare.

"I was just about to ask you to do so, my dear," he said, with suave politeness. "Penelope, open the door for your mistress."

Marrion, as mechanically she stepped aside towards the window to let them pass out, felt that nothing was altered. The spider was master of his web still, every stick and stone of the old place existed by this old man's wicked will. And it was this heritage she had set herself to gain for the man she loved! A spasm of repugnance shot through her.

Yet surely the place itself was glorious. Her glance speeding northwards took in the same old familiar view that had been visible from her window in the keep-house; the grey northern sea trending away, round promontory and point, the cliffs looking so strangely red compared with the white hills, the white moors--for snow lay thick everywhere. In those long years of London life she seemed to have forgotten that snow could be so white. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." The words recurred to her irrelevantly.

The old man's voice roused her.

"You are not so good-looking as you were; and you limp. How's that?"

"I had an accident," she replied briefly.

"And why do you call yourself Mrs. Marsden?"

"Because it is the name I have gone by for some years."

"Ever since I last saw you--eh?"

"Ever since you last saw me--nearly," she corrected. Then there was silence.

"Well," he said at length, "what is it all about? You have come for money, I suppose--women always do. Tell the truth solidly please, I've no time to waste."

The sneer in his words was intolerable.

"Yes, I have come for money," she replied, "because your son, Major Marmaduke Muir, married me six years ago. I've brought proofs with me."

If he wanted the truth he had got it. Bitter as she was, however, the sudden whiteness of the old man's face made her sorry for him. There was something more than anger here. That turned him purple; yet his words were resentful, nothing more.

"Then he is a damned fool!"

"You didn't write so to him seven years ago, Lord Drummuir," she began.

"H'm, so he showed you the letter, did he? No, you behaved well then--and, by God, I made them dance!" The recollection seemed to please; then a sudden thought evidently struck him. "Any children?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"One--a boy--died. Major Muir had an accident in the tilbury. The child," she paused, her eyes on the far stretches of dazzling white snow, "it--it ransomed my life. I shall never have another." Then with a rush all she had come to say sprang to mind and lips, she held out her hands appealingly. "Lord Drummuir, I wish you would let me tell my story!"

"Eh, what?" he replied peevishly. "Well, curse it all, I've been plagued by the gout and those two virtuous frumps for seven months, for Jack Jardine has the jaundice, and you were deuced amusing last time. But, don't stop over there--makes me cold to think of you. Sit there, by the fire, and take off your bonnet; you look better without it. Women with good hair shouldn't wear bonnets."

She sat down as he bade her, feeling inclined to cry, he reminded her so much of Marmaduke.

He would not spare her any details; it seemed an amusement to him to hear of her doubts, her scruples, and he laughed aloud when she told him how two years ago she had dismissed her lover.

"Why?" he sneered. "Come, out with it!"

His hard clear eyes peered into hers.

"Because I didn't want to injure him, and I don't want to injure him now," she replied. "I haven't come to claim my rights as his wife."

"Then what the devil do you want, my lady?"

"I want you to do as you did before and give him the money to buy his colonelcy. If you will do this I will never claim to be his wife. He shall be as free, as far as I am concerned, to marry whom you choose."

Lord Drummuir sat looking at her with hard clear eyes.

"And if I don't," he said at last, "are you going to threaten me with this bogus marriage, for it may be bogus for all I know--eh, what?"

Marrion felt that the supreme moment had come; she must stake her all.

"No," she answered quietly. "To show you I threaten nothing, there are my marriage lines. Burn them if you will!"

She sat quite still while the old man, with fingers that trembled visibly, unfolded the paper she gave him. There was no mistaking its worth. In Marmaduke's bold black writing were the words--

"I, Marmaduke Muir, second son of Baron Drummuir, of Drummuir Castle, hereby acknowledge Marrion Paul as my lawful wife." Underneath in her finer writing was her own acknowledgment of her tie to Marmaduke.

The old man, for all he had had no hopes of escape, was wary.

"You give this up because you know he, my fool of a son, has a counterpart, eh? That's about it, I expect?"

Marrion flushed to the very roots of her hair, but she spoke calmly.

"Yes, your son has the counterpart----" she began.

The old man burst into one of his sudden rude guffaws.

"Ha, ha, ha! And you thought you'd take in the old fox, my fine madam!" he said, then paused before the passion of her face.

"If you will listen you will believe me. I could claim to be his wife now if I chose. I do not choose. I prefer that he should lead the life he loved, that he should marry and bring you the heir for which--for which you would sell your soul, you poor old man! But Marmaduke is a soldier born; if he misses this chance he will be a disappointed man. As like as not he will never marry, even though he knows I've set him free. But send him this money, and I swear to you the counterpart shall be destroyed. What shall I swear by? I swear by the poor dead baby!" She paused. "Marmaduke said he was so like you. I never saw him. I was too near death."

Her voice trailed away to monotony. The old man sat staring at her, an odd tremor in his face.

"I swear it shall be destroyed," she continued. "I--I have very great influence over your son; he--he will do what I ask."

"Then why the devil are you giving him up, and your prospects here? They're not to be sneezed at by a woman like you!"

The phrase nettled her. She rose and stood beside him strong and steady.

"Lord Drummuir," she said sarcastically, "I know you to be clever and I thought, being a gentleman, that you might have seen the truth and spared me the pain of that question. I will answer it, however. It is cause your son never loved me. He is very, very fond of me. He has been so ever since we were boy and girl together. And I have been of great use to him. But I could not bring love into his life, and I could not bring him a child. So it did not seem worth while; I could only stand aside."

There was a pause. The old man's face had grown sharp and paler; there was uncertainty even in the cruel lines about the mouth.

"You're rather an extraordinary young woman," he remarked coolly; "might have made your fortune on the stage. Wish I'd met you there!" He grinned. "But now to business. You have the whip hand, of course--I admit that. Now, if I give you--or that fool, my son, it's the same thing--the money for this paper, you promise to make him destroy his counterpart."

"I promise," she replied eagerly. "I can make him do most things----"

"Except love you," interrupted the old man, with a horrible sneer; but the next instant his gouty hand, trembling a little, was outstretched to her in deprecation. "Excuse me, that should not have been said. Well, you know as well as I do that this game is a real confidence trick. You must have heaps of evidence up your sleeve if you chose to bring it forward. But I'll chance that. I haven't seen many of your sort in my life. If I had, I mightn't have been the cursed cripple I am; but I've had a rattlin' good life of it and I don't regret anything--except having begot Pitt. So we will come to terms. I will send the colonelcy money to Marmaduke on condition that he consents to marry within the year. Is that agreed?"

"Agreed," she said firmly.

"In that case perhaps you'll oblige me by ringing the bell."

She did so, but when the valet appeared, instead of the curt order to show her out Marrion had expected, the old man commanded the instant production of cake and wine.

"Nonsense!" he growled decisively to her protestations. "It is devilish cold. You haven't on warm enough clothes, and you don't leave this house without bite or sup, if only because your father Paul was a deuced good servant to my poor brother. Good fellow was Paul--always suspicioned he was a gentleman--think now he must have been. Here"--the valet had come and gone, leaving the tray on the table--"pour yourself out a glass of port. Won't get better anywhere, I'll go bail. Only half a binn left, so I shall finish that before I die, thank God! Now," he eyed her narrowly, "drink to the health of Marmaduke Muir's son, the heir to Drummuir!"

The room seemed to spin round for a moment. Then without a quiver she drank the health, put down her glass and turned to the door. Just as she reached it the old man said--

"Good-bye. I'm damned sorry that little chap of yours died; he would have been game, anyhow."

She gave back one sudden grateful look, and the memory of what she saw remained with her till the day of her death. The pearly whiteness of the snow outside showing behind the mountain of diseased flesh swathed in scarlet flannel, the gouty hands in the act of tearing up the paper they had been holding, a cruel smile in the old grey eyes, despite the words which had just fallen from the cruel lips.

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow."

The phrase recurred and recurred as she tramped her way down the beech avenue. There were many gaps in it now. How many trees would be left when Marmaduke's heir came to his own?

[ III]

The swing doors leading to the smoking-room of the fashionable club in London fell back with a slightly louder thud than usual, and more than one occupant of the room looked up--looked up, however, to smile, for the newcomer was a universal favourite. It was Marmaduke Muir, fresh from one of his many disappearances, for he was quartered at the new camp of Aldershot and his London visits were generally but a passing flash on his way to find sport in the counties. At seven-and-thirty he showed almost more youthful than he had done at seven-and-twenty, for he was thinner, more alert, and the laughter in his face seemed to belong to him more absolutely. For the rest he was handsome beyond compare, and dressed faultlessly in a taste that had sobered itself from those early days in England when Marrion Paul had found him flamboyant. There was still a slight exuberance in the carnation in his buttonhole and the immense size of the cigar he drew out of his case; but the case itself was simple, and there was a simplicity about his whole bearing which disarmed criticism.

"What you b'in after, old chap?" said an occupant of an armchair, laying down the "Illustrated London News," in which he had been reading the pros and cons of beard and moustachios as against clean shaving. He felt his own chin doubtfully as he looked at Marmaduke's upper lip; but then he, of course, was a soldier.

"Killin' somethin', I bet," yawned another. "What was it, Duke?"

"Not ladies, anyhow," put in a third. "Our Adonis is a regular misogynist; and yet, just look at his letters--faugh! they make the place smell like Truefitt's."

"Better than your fags, anyhow, Mac!" laughed Marmaduke, as he took the pile of notes and letters which the attendant had brought in on a salver. Then, as he threw himself into the most comfortable chair vacant, he held up half the bundle with a gay--"Anyone like them? They're all invitations, I expect, and I have to go back to-night!"

"And moneylenders, Muir! Don't forget Moses!" put in the man he had called Mac.

"Not so many of them either," retorted Marmaduke, "as you know Jack Jardine keeps us going. God bless him!" he added cheerfully.

"Here, hand us over a few, Major!" said a callow youth who lived to envy the more fashionable habitués.

"No go, Smithers!" remarked another youth less sallow; "even Nathan couldn't make you up to his form."

But Marmaduke, after a hasty glance at the superscriptions, had dexterously flung a dozen or so of letters into the applicant's tall hat, which was obstructing the way between his chair and the next. One smaller than the rest which Marmaduke had overlooked flew over it and lay on the carpet. It was directed in an uneducated hand.

"Hullo, pretty milliner, eh, Duke?" said Mac, taking it up and opening it. "No, no, fair play, you gave it----"

Marmaduke, standing over him, blushed like a girl as he glanced at the writing.

"It's nothing, Mac," he began.

But Mac was not to be put off in a moment.

"'Respekted and Honerd Sir'--can't spell, anyhow," he read out. "'The money as you scent save my wife an' children from blank starvayshion"'--he turned round and looked at Marmaduke reproachfully. "And you owe me five pounds, you d----d Christian philanthropist."

Marmaduke Muir gave an apologetic laugh.

"The poor devil was in my regiment once--and as for the five pounds, here you are. I had a stroke of luck down in Norfolk at loo----"

"Save you from 'blank starvayshion,' eh, Mac?" growled a man who also owed money in the same quarter, whereat there was a general laugh, for Major Macdonald was known to be near.

Marmaduke, opening his letters rapidly, put most of them into the waste-paper basket. Invitations from people he scarcely knew to balls and dances, others to festivities past and gone. Some few he put in his pocket, and one he sat and stared at as he smoked his cigar. Luncheon--one o'clock--there was plenty of time; and Louisa Marchioness of Broadway was the most amusing old lady in town. An old friend of his father's, too, though that wasn't in her favour. Still she was interested in the family, and had always been particularly kind to him.

An hour later, therefore, he sat waiting his hostess' appearance in the tiny drawing-room of one of that row of tiny houses which, till a very few years ago, stood back from Knightsbridge Road, separated from it by a tiny secluded carriage-drive of their own and opening out with little narrow strips of back gardens to the park. He was seated at the window, but it seemed to him as if he were close to the roaring fire; indeed, all things were close to each other in the small room where the big, central, mid-Victorian table, with its broidered tablecloth, solitary vase of flowers, and besprinkling books of beauty seemed to monopolise all space. One of these same books of beauty lay open at a simpering bottlenecked portrait subscribed in a fine feminine hand, "Louisa Broadway." It always did; the servant had orders to that effect.

"À la bonheur, monsieur!" came a voice from the door. It was the most ancient thing about Louisa Marchioness of Broadway. All else was open to manipulation and the manipulation was good. She did not, however, dye her hair. Spiteful folk said it was because powder had been the fashion when she was in the heyday of her beauty; but she was a very clever lady, and doubtless she realised how much more real a make-up seems when toned to white hair than to dark. As it was, the effect was still charming, and her figure was that of a girl of eighteen.

"A moi l'honneur," quoth Marmaduke gallantly, as he advanced to kiss the old lady's outstretched hand and lead her to a chair.

In a certain set at that time there was a fashion for interpolating French into English--one of the signs of the coming war which was darkening the horizon of Europe.

So they sat and talked lightly of it, and of the Prince Consort's unpopularity, and the coming opening of the King's new Royal Palace of Westminster, which are now, forgetfully and conveniently, called the Houses of Parliament, until luncheon was announced, and Marmaduke had to pilot his hostess down the narrow stairs--a difficult task which he felt would have been far easier had he carried her. And with the thought came in a rush that delight in freedom, that fresh enjoyment of the unconventional, which always made him remember Marrion Paul. It sobered him a little and he talked with more effort. Not that it mattered, since his hostess was all sparkle and wit. And the luncheon itself was everything that could be desired. Marmaduke, a bit of an epicure in personal matters, found the snug little horse-shoe table, with its curve to the fire so that you could feel the warmth while you looked out of the window, very conducive to comfort, for you sat undisturbed by servings behind you. All that went on in front, and you could see what was handed to you without fear of ricking your neck or getting the gravy spilt over your clothes. The menu, too, if sparse, was super-excellent. In her youth Louisa Broadway had been Ambassadress at various European Courts; she was a gourmet of distinction, so it was quite a complacent Marmaduke who at her invitation, after the servant left the room, turned his chair to the fire and joined his hostess in a glass of Madeira.

"And now for business," she said, while her face took on a new expression which obscured the paint and the prettiness, and left it wise yet kindly--wise with the wisdom of a worldly old age. "Now, you don't suppose, do you, young man, that I asked you here to give you a good lunch--you'll admit you have had one, I presume--and talk to you about things that don't really matter a brass farthing to either of us? For what do you care about the Houses of Parliament, and what do I care about scandals--I have had plenty--de trop, in fact! No, I brought you here to introduce you to my grand-niece--Sibthorpe's youngest daughter. She will be here immediately, and I want you to marry her."

"Really, Lady Broadway!" flustered Marmaduke.

"Rather crude, I admit," continued his hostess, "but I object to beating about the bush, especially when I want to get inside. The fact is, Marmaduke, I have heard from your father----"

"It is good of you to read his letters; they are not----" began the son stiffly.

"Don't be silly, my dear lad," went on the old woman, "your father has his faults, but he was quite as good-looking as a young man as you are--at any rate, I thought so. Now, he wants you to marry, and he has every reason to wish it. It is the only chance of an heir to the title, for Peter's last escapade has about finished his hopes in that quarter."

"I can't discuss----" began Marmaduke very stiff.

"Oh, yes, you can!" went on the old lady imperturbably. "We are en petit comité, and I'll confess to being old, very old, old enough to be your great-grandmother. Now, Marmaduke, a great-great-grandmother--did I put in the two greats the first time?--can talk over things more sensibly than even a great-great-grandfather. You see, my dear, she has passed through it all and left it all behind her. And so, my dear child--I nursed you as a baby, remember--why don't you marry? Or perhaps you are married already?"

There was an exquisite lightness of raillery in the suggestion which absolutely barred offence, and there was kindness in the keen old eyes. Nevertheless, Marmaduke was uncomfortably aware that they took in his sudden flush. She gave him no time for interruption, however, and went on airily--

"For all I know the heir may already be in existence!" Here Marmaduke asserted himself with great dignity. "My dear madam, if I had any children I should acknowledge them!"

Louisa Lady Broadway smiled gently. She had gained one piece of knowledge, anyhow. The obstruction, if there was one, was a childless wife.

"I am glad to hear it, my dear, but I knew you had a good heart, or I wouldn't have risked speaking to you. I wouldn't do as much for one in a thousand. Now, my dear, I am nearly eighty years old, and I understand things as perhaps few women do understand them. I don't expect many men have lived to be your age without forming ties of some kind, especially if they live in Scotland, Marmaduke"--the thrust went home again, she thought--"but money does a lot, especially when there are no children. A good round annuity means much when a man is not well off, as you are, and has probably to wait for many years ere he falls into money--as you have, for Pitt is the heir, of course. But your father would find the cash----"

"If he would find the money to pay for my colonelcy," burst in Marmaduke, "it would be better than setting people to find out mare's nests! I don't mean to be rude, Lady Broadway; you are very kind, but I really can't discuss----"

"I think you can," interrupted Louisa Broadway in her turn, "especially if it is not a question of mere money, and money is, I believe, a very small matter to some people--to you, for instance, Marmaduke! You never think of it, do you, so long as you've got it?--ha, ha! But there are other considerations. To begin with, I believe that when there are no children a marriage should automatically become null and void. And apart from that I don't believe that any woman who really loves a man would ever stand in his light or prevent him from doing his duty. I am sure if I had had no children, and Broadway----" The illustration, however, was beyond even her powers of fiction, and the opening of the door brought relief. "Oh, here is the young lady! Amabel, let me introduce Major Marmaduke Muir. Major Muir, Lady Amabel Sibthorpe. I expect you are kindred spirits, as you are both such outdoor people."

The girl, who had rushed in somewhat unceremoniously, looked up frankly into Marmaduke's blue eyes. There was undisguised admiration in her glance.

"Oh, yes," she said, "I've always wanted to know Major Muir since I saw him punish a horrid little boy in the park for bullying his dog!"

Marmaduke, as he made his bow, felt that the clever old lady with the painted face was very clever indeed. She had gauged her man completely. Most people on the task would have supplied him with a befrilled fashionable beauty; the sort of woman with whom he flirted, who amused him, attracted him, tempted him. But this joyous, buoyant girl, with good-breeding in every line and feature----

No, Louisa Lady Broadway had made a mistake; she had reminded him of Marrion Paul.

So, after the shortest interval compatible with his rôle of charming young man, he took his leave and went fuming back to his lodgings in Duke Street, which he kept as a pied-à-terre for himself and Peter. The latter was out, so Marmaduke went straight up to his bedroom to change his London things for his uniform, since he had to report himself on arrival at Aldershot. There was plenty of time, but he meant to go round by Marrion's first. He had not seen her for over ten days, and----

Despite an anger at interference which had grown instead of diminishing, old Lady Broadway's words, "a woman who loves a man will never stand in his light or prevent him from doing his duty," would keep recurring to his mind. It was exactly what Marrion had said to him scores and scores of times. Curious, two such different women having precisely the same views. Not that they mattered. He had his own. Still, half-mechanically when he was dressed he took out of his despatch-box a small packet of papers, and, opening one of the envelopes, began to read the contents. One sheet was the excerpt from the visitors' book at the Cross-keys Inn where he had written "Captain the Honourable Marmaduke and Mrs. Muir." He smiled at it bitterly, wondering whether, if he had relied on that, as Marrion had begged him, he should have felt as bound as he did now. With a shrug of his shoulders he folded it again and thrust it back into the envelope. The other sheet was a counterpart of the paper which Marrion Paul had, unknown to him, given to his father. He sat staring at it almost stupidly until a knock came to the door, when he hastily replaced it and put the bundle in his breast-pocket. The new-comer was Andrew Fraser, and he carried a letter.

"I was roond tae the club, sir," he said, with a salute, "as I thocht it might be o' importance seein' it was frae the castle; but you was awa."

The man's face was as ever, full of devotion and duty. The past seven years had brought him many an anxiety, many an agony, but he had stuck by the two beings he loved best on earth with a steadfastness beyond all praise.

"All right, Andrew," replied his master cheerily, "pack up, will you, and take the things to the station. I'm going round by Mrs. Marsden's."

"Very well, sir," replied the servant quietly.

He had been discretion itself all these years, ever since Marrion had come to him one day and told him the truth, that she was married. If she had not so told him, what would he have done? His simple soul could never answer the question.

Meanwhile, Marmaduke in a cab was reading his father's epistle, which ran thus--

"My Dear Marmaduke,--I believe you are my son, so I expect you to give this letter your earnest consideration. As you are aware there is no heir to the title or estate. I had the misfortune to beget a creature who calls himself the Master of Drummuir and is not the master of anything. Then there is Peter, a promising boy whom you have ruined by providing him with an attachéship at Vienna, a place which did for his uncle whom he greatly resembles. The accounts of the physician concerning his health are simply disastrous. He has narrowly escaped an asylum for life. This being so, it is imperative that you shall marry and produce an heir for the estate. I see by various letters of yours (unanswered) that you are again in want of money to purchase your promotion to colonel. It is a nefarious, a reprehensible swindle which should be abolished, and to which I should never yield were it not that I wish to strike a bargain with you--namely, I will purchase your colonelcy, if you will consent at once to seek out a suitable wife and marry her within the year. If you accede to this most reasonable request I will send a cheque to your bankers and I shall expect to see you--and Peter also if he is really sane--here for Christmas.

"Yours truly,

"Drummuir.

"P.S.--Let me tell you, sir, that it is deuced dull here with those two virtuous frumps, my Lady and Penelope. They were more amusing when they were young. But if you come--and why shouldn't you?--we'll have a regular rouser."

Marmaduke read this letter over twice. It was the kindest, most reasonable one he had ever had from his father. And the postscript touched him. Its very frankness made him realise what life must now be to one who in his youth had been "quite as good-looking as you are."

Old Lady Broadway's words recurred to him as he stood at the little door with its brass name-plate waiting for admission. And if he got his colonelcy and the command of the regiment? If there was going to be war?

But was there going to be war? He felt a little as if he had to face an enemy as he ran upstairs two steps at a time.

[IV]

But upstairs all was peace, and Marrion, the light of the lamp on her bronze hair, beautiful as ever, looked up from her work, her face bright with pleasure.

"Ah, there you are! I was expecting you, for Andrew was round this afternoon and told me you were in town."

He did not go up to her or greet her; only smiled content and sank into the easy-chair placed between where she sat and the fire. The big table wheeled cosily into the corner was littered with lace and muslin. He took up a small pinafore and looked at it distastefully.

"I wish you wouldn't work so hard," he said suddenly, "and I hate to see you busy over those things; it reminds me----" he broke off.

She laid down the little frock she was embroidering on the instant, and went to kneel beside him; for her insight into this man's moods was complete, and she felt what was coming.

"And it reminds me too, Duke. That is why I love it. I have told you so often it was nobody's fault; if anybody's, mine."

He shook his head.

"You can't make me believe that."

"But it is true. See here, Duke, I ought never to have allowed you to bind yourself. It put me in a false position. I was too anxious to please, too anxious to pay you back the gift, as it were, so I did what I ought not to have done. I thought of you, not of the child. But what is the use of going over it all again? It is past and done with."

He sat with his hands between his knees for a minute, looking at the fire.

"Well, I am sorry the poor little chap died."

It gave her the opening she needed.

"That is what your father said when I told him," she said quietly.

He stared at her.

"My father!"

"Yes, Duke, I have been to see him again. He was quite kind. Sit still and I will tell you everything."

And she told him though she saw his face grow stern and angry.

"You had no business to do it," he said, when she finished. "Can't you even leave me to manage my own affairs? I didn't interfere with yours when you broke away and set up on your own, did I?"

"You have been very good to me, Marmaduke," she replied, with a catch in her voice, "and I've tried to be as good to you."

The memory of many a helping hand, of long years in which this woman's companionship had been an anchor to him, came to appease his easy nature.

"Well, it is no use being angry," he said at last; "the thing's done. And you really destroyed your lines?"

"Your father tore them up. He quite agreed with me that as I had no children, and there was no chance of one--at any rate, of a living one--that I was bound to release you. And I am bound. I refuse to be your wife."

"And if I claim you?" he said swiftly, resentment in his voice. She smiled.

"I shall still refuse you, then in three years we shall be automatically divorced."

"In Scotland only. You are very clever, my dear, but you forget some things."

His deft diversion, however, had done its work, the subject was no longer personal.

"It is impossible," he continued. "I can't leave you in the lurch."

"You don't. Look at it clearly, please. Since we agreed to separate----"

"I never agreed," he put in angrily. "I was quite ready to fulfil----"

"The bond," she interrupted a trifle bitterly, "and I wasn't or couldn't. But ever since then--and before then, too--before you came home, I kept myself. And I'm quite rich, Duke. I have money in the bank. There is no fear for me."

"Is it all money?" he said tragically, gloomily.

She laid her hand lightly on his knee; the touch thrilled her through and through, but he sat unmoved, looking at the fire.

"You can give me all you have ever given me still, dear," she said; "there is no reason why we should not continue to be friends."

There was a long pause. Then she began again--

"I promised your father you would destroy the counterpart. Duke, it is far better done. You will feel free, and you don't, somehow, now, though I hoped you would. And I shall be glad. A woman who loves a man cannot bear to stand in the way of his doing his duty--and this is your duty----"

He turned to her.

"Just what that old harridan said. Curious you two should agree--and you're so different!"

"What old harridan?"

"Lady Broadway. She has been at me, too. Why can't you women leave a man alone? She wants me to marry her niece, Lady Amabel."

Marrion felt a sudden spasm of elemental jealousy. Self-sacrifice was exhilarating in the abstract, in the concrete it was painful.

"Did--did you see her?" she asked.

"Yes--nice little girl. But--but if this is to be, how will you manage about Andrew? You had to tell him, if you remember."

She remembered right well; remembered how even the man's fidelity to his master, his devotion to her, would not stand the strain of what he thought wrong-doing. The difficulty had occurred to her before, but she set it aside now as of small importance in comparison with the destruction of the paper.

"Ill manage Andrew," she replied, "if you will only----"

He stood up tall and strong and curiously antagonistic.

"You are always managing, Marmie. Some day you'll find you've made a mistake. But if you will have it so, I happen to have the paper with me." He took out his pocket-book and handed her an envelope. "You can do as you like with it. Oh, it is the right one!" he added impatiently. "I was looking at it just now. I am not always a fool!"

She paused in a half-unconscious search induced by her knowledge of Marmaduke's careless habits. The contents of the envelope, half-pulled out, showed her the printed heading "Cross-keys Inn." She thrust them back hurriedly and dropped the whole into the fire. It flamed up showing his face full of irritation, hers of decision. They watched it flame, fade, sparkle out. Then he turned away.

"You've made me feel a scoundrel somehow," he said, "but I suppose I shall get over it in time."

"You've no right to say that," she flared out. "You've no right to put that thought into my life. We have done our duty."

"Well, don't let's part in anger, anyhow," he said kindly. "I shan't see you for some time. I'm on duty, and then I shall go north for Christmas, and then----"

"And you will get your colonelcy," she added.

He smiled.

"Yes, I shall get it, thanks to you again. Ah, Marmie, Marmie, it's no use your trying to unbind Tristram Shandy and the Shorter Catechism! We were mixed up together right away in the beginning of things, and we shall be mixed up in the end, you'll see. Now I must be off. Good-bye!"

He held out his hand. She took it and gripped it fast, every fibre of her athrill with the dear touch. Her whole soul seemed for the second to crave for him, for his presence always. And he was going away, out of her life for ever. For she was wiser than he was. She knew that her talk of continued friendship was a sham; one of the many baits she laid so often to get her own way. Ah, how weary she was of cutting and contriving Dame Nature's plain, honest web! Well, she would have to do it no longer; it would be another's task. But there was one thing he had said which was not to be endured, which could not be allowed to pass.

"Good-bye," she said, "and don't please feel like a scoundrel. You never did a better deed in your life. You have done your duty like an honest gentleman, and--and I'm proud of you!"

"That's something, anyhow," he said, and was gone.

She sat down and began stitching away at a little gown she was making. It had to be finished that night, for the christening of the infant for whom it had been bespoken was on the morrow. And the task soothed her. For the more ordinary parts she had apprentices during the day who worked downstairs, but all the distinctive features of the marvellously delicate little garments came from her own clever fingers. That evening, as she worked away at a tiny wreath of snowdrops for another woman's child, every atom of her went out in unavailing regret for the little life that had gone to save her own. She was not worth it--nothing was worth it. Those men--father and son--might say "I am sorry the little chap died!" but did they, could they, would they, realise what it meant to a woman that something very precious, something which she was bound to protect, for which she ought to have given her heart's blood, had given her its own instead?

Well, she had paid for it since to the uttermost farthing. She had no illusions. Marmaduke had gone out of her life for ever.

Not entirely, however, for at Christmas time one of his long breezy letters came to her--for Marmaduke was a great letter-writer--telling her about all her old friends in the neighbourhood; a charming, cheerful epistle, full of awed wonder at the extreme stoutness and sanctity of "stepmamma" and the rigorous respectability of Penelope.

"For the first time in my life," he wrote, "I feel sorry for the old man, and I begin to think we did right, Marmie. In fact, I'm sure we did."

Her lip hardened as she read. Undoubtedly they had done right, but----

She sewed harder than ever, wishing that the whole thing was settled and done with. Then there would be no more letters to bring pain.

Fate, however, had other things in store for her, for just after the New Year Andrew Fraser appeared in her small drawing-room. He came in, tall, gaunt, hard-featured as ever, stood at the door and saluted, as he had done ever since Marrion in self-defence had told him that she and his master were fast married.

"Back so soon!" she cried. "I thought the major was to be longer at the castle."

"He is the colonel now," returned Andrew gloomily, "an' we are awa tae Portsmouth the day. But I cam', Marrion, tae tell ye that the domed fowk in the ha' at Drummuir were sayin' 'he was tae get marriet tae Lady Amabel.' An' that canna be.'

"Lady Amabel," echoed Marrion, glad in a way of a surprise which enabled her to make a diversion, at any rate, for a time. "He didn't say anything. I thought it was to be a bachelor party."

Andrew snorted a vexed denial.

"Sma' count o' that! The auld peer had gotten Lady Penrigg, the railway man's wife, tae gi' him countenance wi' the gentry, and there was the Marchioness o' Broadway and the young leddy--a nice, straight-speakin' girlie. An' it was a' decent and God-fearin' with curlin' and skatin' and sleighin' an' songs an' forfeits in the evenin'. Dewar, my lord's valet, tell't me he had never heard the Baron swear sae awfie as he did when he got tae his own room o' nichts. It jest turned him cauld. But it was lying on the poor falla's stummick a' day. Hoo'ever I didna come for that."

"And the major--I mean the colonel," interrupted Marrion hastily, "did he enjoy himself?"

It was an unwise remark, for it hastened what she wished to avoid.

"Ower much, mayhap," put in Andrew, taking a step nearer her, his little grey eyes looking at her with pathetic earnestness. "Marrion, my dear," he went on, "I've helt ma tongue a' these years, relying on your word that ye had your lines safe. Not that they matter sae much, since I can swear to yer bein' man and wife--aye, and mayhap bring ithers tae swear it, too. But I'm no satisfied, an' that's God's truth. Ye ken fine that by a' the laws o' God and man ye're bound together, an' surely ye're no seekin' to get past the responsibility that ye took upon yersels?"

There was something merciless in the stern solid figure before her; but Marrion had courage, and faced her task.

"Sit down, Andrew, and let me explain," she began, but he stood to attention more rigidly, and with a forecast of failure in her mind she went through the whole set of arguments she had used with success on Marmaduke. But here she had different metal to weld.

"Ye took it upon yersels," he reiterated. "It was the Lord's doin' that the poor wee bairnie didna live. It's ill tryin' tae get the better o' Providence."

The hopelessness of influencing him made her at last try an appeal to his personal devotion to her; but his reply sent her crimson to her very heart-strings.

"That's neither here nor there, Marrion. If ye was twenty times free by yere ain makin', I wadna take yer love at a gift."

The most she could get out of him was a promise to wait and say nothing till there was more than mere servants'-hall gossip to go by. He left her wearied and vexed, sorry that she had not been able to get him to hear reason, yet knowing that she was sure of her own ground, since, if she and Duke both refused to acknowledge marriage there could be no possible claim by anyone else. Only to take up this ground would, she foresaw, make Andrew into an enemy. Besides, it would be a confession of failure on her part, and the years had brought so much success to her in all her managements that the idea of defeat, even in a small thing, was irksome.

So for a day or two more she sat and worked while all the noise of London was deadened by the snow which defied man's effort to remove. In her quiet little street she felt as if she were wrapped away in a white winding sheet from all the interests of the world--waiting, waiting, waiting. It would come at last, of course. The Court Journal would have the announcement of an impending marriage in high life. Then, if Andrew were still inflexible, she must tell him he had no power. And then--and then--and then?

Her mind busied itself in plans, in conjectures, more from habit than from any hope of action; for in her heart of hearts she knew, and she was always telling herself, that she had said good-bye to Duke for ever.

Yet, as has been said, Fate had willed otherwise. Less than a week after Andrew's visit, she stood up, her heart beating, at a well-known step coming up two stairs at a time, and there was Duke! A Duke such as she had always dreamt he should be--radiant, rejoicing--a perfect specimen of manly beauty. He was in the full-dress uniform of his Highland regiment, and he flung his bonnet in among the laces and muslins, as if the whole world were his.

"We're off to Constantinople to-morrow," he said joyously, "and I had to come and say good-bye. Oh, my dear, my dear, what a relief it is--every way!"

She gasped.

"But war--war hasn't been declared yet!"

"And won't be for another two months," he interrupted, "but for all that we are sending our troops. It's kept secret, of course, but my regiment is in it. It seems too good to be true!"

"And--and Lady Amabel?" asked Marrion, a grip at her heart.

He laughed joyously.

"No harm done. You see the War Office told me when I got the colonelcy this was up, and it wouldn't have been fair. So we were very good friends. She is a dear little girl, and if I come home--but that's to be seen. Now, ah, how glad I am to be free!"

The words cut deep, spoiling the relief at Marrion's heart; but, after all, why should he not be glad? He was going to do a man's work.

"I'm glad you have the colonelcy," she said soberly; it was the only consolation she could find for herself.

"Glad!" he echoed. "I should think I was! It's been the dream of my life. And do you know the old man was really quite reasonable about it. We talked the thing over, and I told him what we had done, and were prepared to do--or rather not to do. Of course he was in a fury about the foreign service, but he saw I couldn't shirk, so I've promised and vowed everything he wanted. And now"--his eyes shone, content seemed to radiate from him--"I feel, Marmie, as if I were beginning a new life. I've only had to obey orders hitherto, and deuced stupid many of them have seemed to me; but now I am head and the men are splendid--they'd follow me anywhere. So--so we are going to do something, I expect."

The light in his eyes had steadied, he took up his bonnet, then stood for a moment looking at her, the embodiment of a soldier of fortune going out, careless, to seek adventure.

"And you, my dear," he said doubtfully, "are you sure you can manage?"

"Quite sure," she replied cheerfully. "Perhaps I shan't stop here. I may want to see the world, too."

He laughed.

"I believe you'd like to don boy's clothes like Rosalind and follow me to the wars! By Jove, what a Rosalind you'd make!"

His happy carelessness hurt.

"You forget I am lame," she said, a trifle bitterly.

His face fell.

"That isn't kind," he protested, "not at the last! Don't send me away feeling that I have been a ruffian to you."

Her composure gave way then. With a little cry she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"You have nothing to reproach yourself with, my dear, my dear! Go!--forget all about women! Go! You've done your best, so fight your best!"

He gave her back her kiss as he might have given it to his sister.

"Yes, Marmie," he said, "I'm beginning to think we really did the right thing, for we can be friends all the same; for the present, at any rate."

His mixture of wisdom and foolishness made her smile at him, as some mothers might smile at a high-spirited boy, and she watched his martial figure go swinging down the street, its flamboyance admissible, admirable, and told herself it was good that he was free both of herself and Lady Amabel.

[V]

He sent her a letter from Malta, a very long letter crossed and recrossed. Evidently time had hung heavy on hand once the wonders of being on a steamship had passed. "It will revolutionise war," he wrote, "if we can rely on getting reinforcements regularly. It was different when we had to count on hurricanes and doldrums." And he had a quick eye for weak points in the armour. "Here we are after eleven days' hard steam, and here, so far as any one knows, we are likely to remain. Nothing seems to have been arranged for a forward movement; neither has any provision been made for the hunger of fifteen thousand troops plumped down on a practically desert island. However, they say a cattle transport is immediately expected from Alexandria, so we should have enough beef. Meanwhile, the recent order that neither officers nor men should appear out of uniform gives colour and variety to the streets of Valetta; notably when they are tramped by Yours affectionately."

It was not till late in April that he could send her his impressions of Gallipoli.

"Take the dilapidated out-houses of a real old English farmyard, add to them every seedy, cracked, ricketty, wooden structure to be found in our slums, with a sprinkling of Thames-side huts, and tumble them all down higgledy-piggledy on a bare round hill sloping to the sea, scatter about a few slender white minarets, and you have the town--a place without shade, without water, without food. We can, of course, do the Kilkenny cat trick, but is it not astounding, is it not incredible, that such mistakes should be made? However, an enterprising entrepreneur from Smyrna (Jew, of course) is transforming a battered old ruin into a 'Restaurant de l'Armée Auxiliare' as the legend runs, done with a thumb in lamp-black!"

Already "considerable difference of opinion" existed as to the choice of Gallipoli as the headquarters of the army, and the mere watering "of thirty-five thousand troops" presented difficulty.

And always and always came the same refrain of chafed patience at being enmeshed in the mistakes of others. "The stores sent for the commissariat are beneath contempt. I let out at the quartermaster for the filthy stuff he was serving out, and he assured me it was the best he could get. Conningsby of the Hussars tells me half the bales of hay sent out as forage have centres of wood shavings. Why isn't someone hanged?"

Marrion Paul, as she read these two effusions, felt vaguely that the gilt was wearing off the gingerbread. The man's buoyant hopes were being dashed by the ineptitude of those above him. It was a pity, for she knew, none better, that underneath all his boyish lightheartedness Marmaduke Muir had the knack of making men obey him and follow him. She pictured him leading his regiment into fight and she could see it, mastered, dominated, held in hand by that cheerful voice, that merry face.

She waited some time for the next bulletin and when it came it was short. "The devil's own snowstorm greeted our arrival here--Scutari. I've seldom seen it worse in Aberdeenshire. The north wind blew big guns, we were unable to disembark, and half of us--including yours truly--were sea-sick. Doing nothing, even without enough to eat, doesn't suit Marmaduke Muir. The barracks here are huge; they will hold eighteen thousand troops, they say. I know one unit of a thousand--only about seven hundred and fifty I fear now--that would be right glad to go anywhere else; anywhere where there was something to be done. Nigh four months since we left Portsmouth, and, for all the use I've been, I might as well have enjoyed the trout-fishing on the Don."

That was the third of the slender envelopes marked "From the British Army in the East" which reached her.

The next was sealed with a black seal and was full of pious reflections upon death; for the news of his elder brother Pitt's demise had just reached Marmaduke and roused his sense of responsibilities. "In times like these," he wrote, "one feels the impotence of man--and woman also," he added, "though you, my dear Marrion, had a wonderful knack of clarifying the muddles. Andrew does not darn my stockings half so well as you did."

But the beauties of Varna got the better of his reflections and he drew a picture of it that filled Marrion with doubts and delight. "It is as beautiful as Scotland--the lakes stretching away into the scarped woody hills, the sea--so calm that the clouds reflected seem to sail on it--almost motionless on the shore. The green sward down to the very edge of the lakes, carpeted with flowers, especially with irises. They call it the flower of death in India, and I noticed an evening mist, thick enough almost to be called a fog, rising at sunset from the low levels and enveloping the town. It did not augur well for health. As for the town itself, words fail. It is Gallipoli over again with fewer drains and more filth. Yet to look at it in the clear sunlight, it is the new Jerusalem. And there are angels in it, Marmie; the sort of angels you love. I really think these little Turks and Turkesses are the prettiest children I ever saw. Their little yellow faces and big brown eyes make one think of Rubens' cherubs seen through smoked glasses like an eclipse! And an eclipse of most things it is often for the poor little beggars. At Kustendji, the other day, Hyde Parker found a couple of pure babies on the battlefield where the Russians had been bombarding. They're the pets of his frigate now; but there are dozens of them who have no such luck, and dozens more, I expect, who die of sheer hunger because we locusts of war eat up everything. There will be ninety thousand of us here before long, and for how long? God knows! Five months and nothing done! I wonder how you would stand it? But it wouldn't happen if you were at the head of affairs. You'd manage somehow. I feel it in my bones. And, joking apart, women would be very useful out here. We are going to have a lot of sick to begin with, and then the misery of the poor folk in town and village is appalling. However, I suppose England must have time to turn round and yawn before she wakes up to anything."

Marrion Paul got that letter early one June morning. She laid it down among the muslins and laces and went to the window. The street was empty, but she saw, as clearly as if he had really been there, Marmaduke Muir's buoyant figure going forth to war, full of hope and confidence.

She never took long making up her mind; and, absolutely without ties as she was, there were few factors to be considered. Her business was such a personal one that she had only herself to consult. She had money and to spare in the bank. Finally, within her heart was the same spirit of adventure, the same disregard of conventionalities which had always attracted her in Marmaduke.

Last of all his stockings were not adequately mended.

She laughed aloud at the whimsical thought, for she had no intention of thrusting herself upon him. But she could be near at hand, and she, at any rate, need not turn round and yawn before she realised that women could help.

So quietly, methodically, she set matters in train to get all the work she had in hand speedily finished. She wrote declining a few orders that had come in, and then set off with one of her daintiest little creations to see the wife of the Turkish ambassador, who happened to be one of her customers.

But, indeed, as Mrs. Marsden, of the "Layettes," she could command plenty of backstairs influence.

The result being that in less than a week she was stepping into the Dover boat on her way to Marseilles, that being the quickest route to Constantinople. She carried with her credentials from the ambassador's family, which she meant to use, if necessary, though she hoped to be able to do without them, as anything in the nature of publicity might prevent her carrying out her plan of reaching Varna without Marmaduke being aware of the fact. As a precaution she wrote to him the day she left, telling him not to expect further news from her for a few weeks as she had decided on attempting a cure for her lameness, which a clever young hospital doctor had advised, but which involved a long rest.

She had engaged her passage to Constantinople by a small Turkish mailboat which sailed between Marseilles and the Black Sea. She did this partly from desire to avoid her fellow-countrymen and the possibility of recognition or notice, but more because the voyage would give her an opportunity of learning a few words of Turkish and of becoming acquainted at least with the husk of Turkish ways. She had brought a grammar with her, and was laboriously learning perfectly useless phrases, when something occurred which sent books to the right-about and plunged her at once into the work she had hoped almost beyond hope to be able to reach. Cholera, at that time sweeping erratically through Europe, broke out among the steerage passengers. A mother died, leaving her month-old baby to be cared for as best it could. Marrion claimed it, thus became acquainted with the ship's surgeon and was his right hand in the sharp, decisive epidemic that followed. It was one of those shipboard epidemics when every hour brings a new case, until suddenly, with some change of wind or course, the sickness ceases as it came, mysteriously. They were off the coast of Candia when the little Turk doctor, who had passed at a French medical school, made an elaborate bow, laid his hand on his heart, and said, "Madame, je suis votre serviteur." The few convalescents lying about in the scuppers murmured the same thing in Turkish, making Marrion realise that what she had set herself to do was possible, if only she could get footing amongst the people. She decided finally on consulting her new friend, the little surgeon.

"Varna!" he echoed. "So madame desires Varna! That is strange, since, being in quarantine, we shall not be allowed to stop at Constantinople. We must go on straight to Varna, where the disease already is."

She caught in her breath.

"Not bad, I hope?"

"Of the troops I know little," he said, "but the townsfolk have suffered terribly. It is semi-starvation. Hein!" lie interrupted himself hastily, and slapped his baggy trousers, "there is an old man there--a cripple--one of the old school of medicine that knows nothing. He has a sort of hospital where folk die decently. If I were to tell him the use you were, and that you had your own stores of Europe medicines"--for Marrion had spent a considerable sum in fitting herself out for the part she hoped to play--"he might like your help. You have plenty of money?"

His little sharp eyes were alight with interest.

"I have plenty of money," replied Marrion promptly, "and I mean to spend it."

"Then you may consider it settled," said the surgeon. "Old Achmet is a sort of relation of mine. I come of a physician family; but I warn you the presence of an English lady in Varna will not pass unnoticed."

"I shall dress as a Turkish lady," remarked Marrion, with a smile. "I had thought of that. The yashmak is very convenient."

The little Turk laughed in high good humour.

"The dress will become madame. She will have many admirers; but I will be the first."

So it was settled lightly, but, as the little steamer puffed and panted over the blue Archipelago where the blue islands lay scattered like so many shadows, Marrion Paul felt somehow as if the net of Fate were closing in on her. There was the scent of Death in the air.

She felt it almost overwhelmingly when, on the first night of her arrival at Varna, she stood on the ricketty wooden verandah of the half-ruined house which had been found for her, looking out over the long line of inland lakes that in the past month had gained from the intruders whose white tents showed everywhere the dismal name of "Lake of Death." A white miasma rose from it, hiding the level green fields which in the sunset had glowed purple-red with the meadow saffron. Everything had gone smoothly. The old hakim Achmet had gripped on the hope of money, and Marrion Paul, who had remained on board the steamer until all negotiations had been made, had simply stepped into the dinghy in her Turkish dress and been carried with due privacy to the house chosen for her. Mercifully, the ship's surgeon--who was delighted at his importance as entrepreneur--had been impressed by Marrion's appearance, and, arguing therefrom the length of her purse, had fixed on a villa which had once belonged to a pasha of some sort. It stood high among cypresses on the Devna road, but, by a steep descent, was close to the worse slums of the town.

So, as Marrion stood, trying to realise her position, it seemed impossible, unreal that she should be within touch of Marmaduke--if he were still there--if he were not dead. An indefinable sense of tragedy impending--tragedy that was not all grief, but which, by very excess of joy, of glory, of intensity, transcended the normal and so became almost fearful, seemed to hang round her. She ate the Turkish supper provided for her by the large fat shrill-voiced woman she found in charge; she lay down in the Turkish quilt arranged for her on a wooden bed and tried to leave all questionings for the morrow; but she could not sleep. The cry of the muezzin from a minaret hard by divided the night into set portions. She lay and listened to it.

"Al-sul-lah to khair un mun nun nu."

She knew what it meant--"Prayer is better than sleep." But she seemed unable to do either the one or the other.

Mercifully, again, the night was not long. Far away over the sea in the east the dawn began to break golden. It lit up the scarped hills above the woody slopes and slowly, like a white curtain, the mists of the valley lifted, showing the shiny levels of the inland lakes. Below her, at her feet, beyond the vine pergola set with purpling bunches of grapes that jutted against the blue distance, lay the town, a packed mass of red-tiled roofs and shingled outhouses, incoherent, barely cognisable. There lay her work; not over yonder where, like little heaps of lime, the white bell-tents outlined every hill.

Hark, the world was waking! From every side sounded the réveillé, echoing and re-echoing among the hills.

How many men had died that night whose ears would never more hear the call to duty! Was Marmaduke one of them?

Yes, the shadow of death lay on everything; but at least they were together in it.

[VI]

But even that poignant question as to whether Marmaduke lived or did not live lost its arresting power before what she saw when, guided by the hakim Achmet, she threaded the maze of lanes and alleys which still formed the real Varna. The quays, it is true, had been widened and glorified. Along them gay restaurants and cafés chantants were to be found, filled with reckless soldiers and still more reckless courtesans. A wide street had been hacked through tenement houses and lined with tawdry shops which catered for all and every luxury that can give a moment's pleasure to idle men. And there were plenty of them here, waiting, waiting still for that expedition of one hundred thousand soldiers to the Crimea, of which for months past the English papers had been full. Outwardly, therefore, so far as a fringe of welcome and a passage through it to the hills beyond went, Varna was what folk boasted it had become, a cosmopolitan town; but within, down by the back wharves and the sodden sea-alleys, round by the crushed-in closes and stifling courts, it was old, rotten, kept from utter putrefaction by the hot sun which, while it bred flies, dried up the muck of many men. The hakim's hospital was in the wide courtyard of a mosque, one of the few air-holes left to the seething city; and Marrion Paul never forgot her first sight of the sunlit square set round with the dead and dying. The stench was unspeakable, and as she stooped over the first patient she saw that the sheet which covered him was alive with vermin. Achmet himself, a hunchback with a high-featured, intolerant face, seemed to think that sitting in the middle of the courtyard reciting his beads and exhorting the inmates to have patience and trust in God, was the best treatment he could offer. Mayhap it was, since half the forms that lay moaning on the stones were doomed to death. That night, when Marrion returned to her cypress-set villa, the first thing she did was to cut off her beautiful hair close to her head, and as she laid the great tresses away she thought once more of Marmaduke. She must find out about him when she had time, but that day and the next she had her work cut out for her. "Maryam Effendi" they had already learnt to call her, and old Achmet, with a daily stipend of so many piastres, was content to let her have her way. But there were other places besides the mosque hospital where some fifty men groaned and died, or groaned and got better, that were surcharged with misery and death. Hovels where babies tugged vainly at their dead mother's breasts and old women sat starving silently. It was among these that after a day or two Maryam Effendi was busiest. She settled to her work bravely, increasing her stock of Turkish rapidly and gaining for herself sufficient friends and aid to enable her to enlarge her sphere of usefulness. One of these was big fat "Heart's Darling," as her solitary servant was called, who, transferring domestic duties to an unspeakable drudge she produced, took up the duties of interpreter on the strength of some slight knowledge of French.

And Fate was so far kind to Marrion that she had little trouble in finding out the news she desired to hear. A sort of local rag in French and English was published in which, for equivalent of a penny, she learnt that Marmaduke's regiment was still camped six miles out among the hills and that he was still in command. From her verandah she could actually see the very place where he must be. Once, indeed, as she was hurrying along the quay in the ordinary dress of the Turkish gad-about woman she caught a sight of Andrew Fraser, tall, gaunt, serious as usual, looking on distastefully at one of the many drunken rows that occurred every day. The temptation to go up and speak to him was great, but she stuck to her plan and passed on. When she had really done something she would write and tell Marmaduke she was at hand, but not till then. Possibly, had she seen him instead of Andrew Fraser she might not have been so firm; for a glance would have shown her that she could have been of use. In truth, the inaction, the constant fret of feeling that all initiative is of no avail, was beginning to tell on Marmaduke Muir. He also looked down of an evening on the white pall that covered the Lake of Death, and wondered--without one shadow of fear, but from simple curiosity--whether the levels of life would meet his eyes again. And they seemed such low levels now! Yes, he had missed something in his life! What was it? These, however, were very secret thoughts. To the little coterie of careless men of which he was the centre, he was, as ever, the mainspring of everything. Even the divisional commander sought his sympathy as day after day the orders for the front tarried, and day after day the regimental chaplain grew busier and busier. For cholera was rampant in the camps as in the town, and every evening the "Dead March in Saul" echoed out through the hills and over the purple crocuses.

"Nothing will stop it, sir," said the young colonel quietly, "except orders for Sebastopol. The men are dead sick of waiting and so am I; that is the truth."

And still the orders lingered on the way. The waiting army did its best to pass the time. Marmaduke took to tying flies, and thereinafter thrashed the hill streams with ill success. And he played cricket with the men, though it was ill finding a proper pitch on the steep hill-side where they were encamped; and he had to keep his men from those low levels as much as he could, being rewarded for his care by the fact that his battalion suffered less from the scourge than any other. Though this was not to be wondered at, seeing that it was commanded by one whose cheery youth and strength seemed to defy Fate.

"The Cornel's face is mair tae the purpose nor your pills, doctor," said a young recruit fighting his best for life. "I'll just tak a sup o' it, if ye please, and leave tither alane for fowk as likes them."

Yet that same face often showed a touch of weariness in it when, after his wont, Marmaduke would climb the hill behind his hut in order to smoke his solitary after-breakfast cigar at the foot of a scarp whence the most astounding view of God's world was to be had. Hills and still more hills. Seas and still more seas; lakes and still more lakes. Flowers and still more flowers.

"It is the inaction, Mac," he said to his old friend of the regimental club one day after mess dinner. They had been perforce laughing at the plight of a braw Hielandman who had been brought up to orderly-rooms that day from the general guard, clad in Zouave trousers and jacket, kepi and all complete; only the chequered hose of his own uniform remaining to betray the drunken bout on which he had been engaged.

"I noo 'im by 'is legs, sir," said the sergeant solemnly, "so I brought 'im along."

"Ton my soul, I can't help sympathising with the poor beggars," he went on. "Why the devil can't they give the men something to do besides getting drunk? Here is the tenth of August and, so far as I can see, I might be off grouse-shooting on the twelfth. Good Lord, what wouldn't I give to be on Braemore with my dogs! They're the best----"

And he began, in true sportsman style, over the virtues of his setters; whereat others joined in with tales of their own. So, heartened up, they all repaired to Marmaduke's favourite vantage ground to finish their cigars.

It was a perfect evening. The day had been hot, but with the sun setting a little cool sea-breeze had sprung up which seemed to freshen even the very flowers that had flagged with the sun's heat. They sat, growing more and more silent as the day died down; and, indeed, what lay before their eyes was sufficient to make most men hold their peace; for it was beautiful exceedingly. The far Euxine fading grey into a pearl-grey sky. Overhead and behind them the rose-pink pennons of the departing sun floating on the unfathomable clearness of space. Within the bay great ships of war showed, half-hidden in the evening haze which turned the squalid city into dreamland.

Close at hand lay innumerable little hills and ravines thrown in sharp shade and shine that trended away on all sides to the long line of lakes over whose purpling levels a fine veil of vapour was rising softly, swiftly.

Truly a dream-picture, unreal in its absolute beauty, its perfect peace.

"That's the Agamemnon, I expect," said one pointing with his cigar to a big vessel that, rounding the promontory to the south, began to cross the bay, leaving a great trail of smoke behind her. "I wonder if she is coming in?"

"Looks like it," said another, "only they weren't sure. Anyhow, we've company to-night. Look down there by the second wharf. There's another trail--some steamer is making fast!"

All eyes turned to where a thin column of smoke showed, rising high then drifting westwards over the town.

"Burning bad coal whatever," assented Mac. "Why, it's getting bigger!"

Marmaduke, watching intently, suddenly started up.

"By George, it is odd! I believe--by heavens, gentlemen, it is a fire!"

They all followed his example. And now there could be no doubt. With amazing rapidity the cloud darkened, deepened, then in the departing daylight showed dusky red. And there--flashing up suddenly came a great fork of flame. Marmaduke looked round on the others.

"The town is tinder," he said briefly, "and the magazines---- We had best be off!"

There was no need for more. In truth there was danger. The wind blew westwards. There were no fire-engines, so every man might be wanted.

And now the sound of fire alarms on the men-of-war echoed out stridently, and boatload after boatload of blue-jackets, armed with pumps and pipes, shot from every ship. Almost before Marmaduke was on his horse, after ordering fatigue parties to come on at the double, streams of water were pouring on the burning houses. To no purpose. The fire had originated in a wine and oil shop and both burnt fiercely. By the time he reached the town but one word was on the lips of every responsible officer--"The magazines!" They were full up. On them depended the possibility of the attack on Sebastopol; on them therefore hung the fortunes of war. They stood still far from the blazing town, but it burnt like the matchwood it was, and between them and it lay, as it were, nothing but fresh tinder ready to take fire at a spark.

"Those houses should come down, sir," suggested Marmaduke to a general, and almost before assent answered him, had sprung to organise the work. But ramshackle, tumbledown though the wooden piers and pilasters seemed, they were curiously strong, needing time for destruction. Hawsers were brought ashore to facilitate the job and parties told off to each house. Three hundred soldiers--mostly French--lay to manfully on one of the ropes, pulling for all they were worth, when just as the house they were tackling began to totter a loud explosion came from within. And, lo! the only two men left on that rope were Marmaduke and a young French officer who clicked his heels together and stood to the salute with a merry "Mes compliments, mon Colonel!"

"À vous, Monsieur le Capitaine!" returned Marmaduke laughing, as he rallied the men.

"It's not the magazines, boys!" he called. "We've to save that yet. Yo-ho--heave ahoy!"

They set to again with a will; but the flames gained ground every instant and the densely dark cloud of smoke drifting over the magazines showed alive with ominous shoals of sparks.

"Mac!" shouted Marmaduke, as he worked like a demon, when his major came hurrying past with another fatigue party. "Get hold of someone and suggest the commissariat blankets; there are bales and bales of them somewhere. Put them on the magazine roofs, soak 'em with water. Tell the blue-jackets----"

"All right, sir!" shouted back the major.

And thereon came blankets, bales on bales of them, and blue-jackets swarming up and over everything, and jets of water turned from their useless work on houses that would burn, to keep those blankets sodden.

The din was deafening. The inhabitants, swept out of their houses, stood huddled in the streets and kept up a constant wail. The bugle calls rang out here, there, and everywhere, and above the roar and crackle could be heard voices in urgent exhortation--"All together, men! The blue-jackets are laughing at you!" "Heave away, I say, boys, show the land-lubbers how to do it!" Or shriller, more passionate--"A moi, mes enfants! Les Anglais nous regardent!"

Once there came a sudden pause. The red flare of the conflagration changed to brilliant blue.

"Milles tonnerres!" cried the French soldiers sadly, as they recommenced work. "Ahé, le bon eau-de-vie!" Their commissariat canteen store had gone.

So through the long night they worked, fighting the flames with their hands for the most part. Fatigue party after fatigue party poured into the town and one strong man after another lay down exhausted on the quays and begged someone to cool him with water.

It was just as a faint lightening over the sea in the east showed dawn was nigh that Marmaduke, wiping the sweat from his blackened forehead, said--

"I think that's done with. The magazines are safe now!"

"Yes," said a man near him, "up here it's almost over. But they've got it still down there, by the dock wharves, poor devils!"

Marmaduke, whose every thought and look had hitherto been for the magazines, turned to the lower part of the town.

"By Jove, they have!" he cried. "Here, men, follow me!"

"Let me go, sir," put in a subaltern. "You must be done--and they should all be out of their houses by now."

He might as well have saved his breath. Marmaduke, careless of fatigue, was racing to danger again. And here it was greater. The two or three story ramshackle houses almost closed in upon each other, and in one burnt-out street he had to pass through, a charred beam almost finished him. But he raced on; and here there was evidence that the fire had been faced with some method. Houses had been pulled down, the inhabitants ordered to certain open spaces, and as he neared the spot where the tenements almost overhung the water's edge, a double line of men were passing buckets. There were only two houses left in the street; one was in flames, the other, overhanging the water, must soon go. Seeing the hopelessness of saving it, or indeed the use, since evidently those were the occupants who, with shrill cries and excited gestures, were watching the destruction of their property, he was about to seek work elsewhere when a big fat woman almost overset him in her eagerness to find his feet. To these she clung, shrieking at the top of her voice--

"Maryam Effendi! Maryam Effendi! Elle est là, elle est là! Sauvez le--Sauvez le----"

He would have been at a loss even to grasp the last words had not a figure shown at that moment on the roof of the burning house. It was the figure of a tall woman in white and the flare of the flames showed that she carried a baby in her arms.

"My God!" he muttered under his breath, for there seemed no possibility of escape.

"Maryam Effendi! Maryam Effendi!" wailed the crowd, adding in mixed French and Turkish--"She has the child! Ah, the brave woman! She has the child!"

Aye, she had it, and she meant to hold it, too! A brave woman indeed! Pausing for a second in her perilous effort to pass from one roof to the other, she pulled off her veil, wrapped it round the child, and knotted it high above her shoulders. Then, hands and knees, set herself to her task. But the flames were almost too quick for her. And forked tongues licked at her feet; the next instant she was beyond them and, straightening herself, walked rapidly over a level strip. And now from below, where even Marmaduke stood arrested, helpless, watching another's fight for life, came a soft wail of horror. The last house had caught fire from below, the flames were surging upwards, the thin shingle roof might be gone any moment.

"Jump, for God's sake, jump!" cried Marmaduke, his voice vibrant with awful dread. "Jump, we'll catch you, somehow!"

Even as he spoke he felt the uselessness of his appeal to one who could not understand.

"Tell her to jump--we'll catch her!" he added dully, knowing there was no time, for already ominous crackings rose from the flames that mounted higher and higher.

But that familiar voice had reached the ears of the woman clinging her way for dear life, and tightened her hold upon the ridge-pole that was her only hope. No, she would not die yet! She would not die with that voice in her ears!

A faint shudder came from the crowd below as, with a crash, the roof fell in. A fainter moan of relief followed, as the woman with her pack still showed standing on the crossway beam of a balcony that overhung the water. A great tongue of flame shot out at her, but at the instant she raised her joined hands above her head and dived--a flash of white lit up by the red flare--into deep water.

"By heaven, what pluck!" muttered Marmaduke as, without a second's delay, he plunged from the wharf and swam, with quick overhand strokes, to where the woman had disappeared. He was just preparing to dive after her when she came up close beside him.

One look was sufficient.

"Marmie!" he cried. "God in heaven, am I dreaming? Marmie!"

"Yes--yes," she gasped impatiently, for owing to the weight she carried her dive had been prolonged. "The child's head--see that it is out of water!"

In a second he was cool, self-reliant.

"Your hands on my shoulders, please. That will raise you--I must swim round--the burning wood."

In truth every instant a fierce hiss, a cloud of steam close to them showed where some blazing fragment had fallen to be extinguished.

"Are you all right?" he called over his shoulder, as with powerful strokes he made for a further wharf.

"All right; but please be quick--the child----"

How like Marmie--always the child--the child. He swam on, feeling bewildered but, he knew not why, desperately happy.

"I don't understand," he began, when at last they stood dripping side by side, and the baby, being unloosed from its wrappings, was found to be none the worse.

"I will tell you directly," she said. "I must just give the child back to its mother; it is quite a tiny thing. Then you can walk up to my house over yonder and get your clothes dried."

But the stifling air of the streets soon scorched up the moisture, and Marmaduke protested against anything but a cup of hot coffee--which fat "Heart's Delight" bustled away to prepare--while those two stood and talked on the verandah. Below them lay the town, still smoking; still--as a puff of dawn wind blew the embers to redness--sending out a shower of sparks, or even a forked tongue of flame. The smell of burning filled their nostrils, the memory of a great escape filled their minds. And beyond that, under and deeper than that, stretched the atmosphere of death and disease, of constant danger, in which they had both been living for so long. It is an atmosphere which invariably brings with it, to the wholesome mind and body, a feeling of revolt against such limitations, a distaste of all things that pertain to decay: a keen appetite for those that belong to life.

And the dawn-light grew as they stood talking. She had bidden him begone, had urged as a reason that he must remember his health. Cholera might be bad on the hills, but it was deadly in the city. And he had laughed back that caution was a bit late to a man who had seen six strong men die that very morning. The poor devils seemed to like his being there. Now he----

"I should only want you, Marmie," he said. And she had looked at him in sudden wonder.

"I must go now if I'm to be in time for parade," he admitted at last. "Good-night--no, good-morrow, my heart's delight!"

For an instant she held he was joking with the fat coffee-bringer's name; then she gave a quick tremulous cry--

"Duke! what--what do you mean?"

He laughed a little low, happy laugh, sank on his knees beside her, and clasped her tight in his arms.

"Only that I love you--only that I've found you--no, I've found myself for ever and ever and ever!"

He buried his face in the loose folds of her dress and so they remained for a second. Then she slipped through his hold to her knees also, and they knelt looking into each other's eyes.

The sun rising slowly, majestically, out of the sea shone upon their shining faces. Vaguely, as in a glass, darkly the twain had passed to one; they were nearer the Great Unity.

"Duke," whispered Marmie, with a faint shiver, "I think I'm afraid!"

"And I," he said joyously, finding her lips, "feel as if I never could be afraid again--never--never--never!"

[VII]

"Duke," she said, for at least the twentieth time, "I keep wondering how it came about."

He spent all his spare time now--it was not much--in the vine pergola, and he was picking out the ripe grapes from a bunch as he answered her.

"I don't. I had been thinking about you a lot; and then I was tired--really done!"

"What an excuse for falling in love," she protested half-vexedly; "but I should like to know."

He came over to her and put his arm round her waist.

"How can I tell, sweetest? I had been thinking, as I said, a lot about you--and missing a lot--stockings, and all that"--his smile was charm itself; "then, when I saw your dear old head bob up all shaven and shorn!" he kissed it deliberately, and she laughed.

"For all that," she persisted, "I should like to understand."

"My dearest dear," he replied, "you are such a beggar for wanting to know and understand. Now I, my dear Marmie--I'm too happy to want to know anything! I'm content with what I have--and you are content, too, you know you are!"

There was no denying the fact. Content, indeed, was no word for the feeling that you were rapt away from the very possibility of care. There, in the very shadow of the grave, overlooking the Lake of Death, those two lovers found their joy enhanced by the uncertainty of life.

"I was chief mourner at six funerals this morning," Marmaduke would say sadly. "As fine fellows as ever stepped. Sometimes I wonder, darlingest, if I ought to come to you----"

"You can bring no more harm to me than I am in already," she would reply. "I am in the thick of it here. Indeed, I was wondering if I ought to let you come."

"Let me!" he would echo derisively. "As if you could stop me."

And in truth there was no gainsaying him, for Marmaduke, easy-going as a friend, was an imperious lover.

After he left her in the dawnings Marrion would take out the pocket Shakespeare she had brought with her and, sitting out under the purpling vines, read how the immortal lovers parted.

"I am content so thou wouldst have it so."

She had never before realised that so lay the very essence of love. No plannings, no cuttings, no contrivings. All things simplified, clarified.

It was a wonderful fortnight. The fire, after a brief recrudescence, died down, leaving the slums of the city in ruins, but purified. So cholera, most mysterious of diseases, abated, disappeared from the town; and even in the camps, exposed to the miasma of the Lake of Death, was shorn of half its terrors. And there was a stir as of coming life in the military backwaters. Marmaduke, his face alight, would say that the one thing needful to perfect happiness must be close at hand; for that was the curious thing about finding yourself in love--you wanted to be up and doing all the time.

And so one day when, instead of Marmaduke, Andrew Fraser--long since let into the secret of Maryam Effendi--appeared with a note, Marrion tried to echo Romeo's words without any reservations, and to be content if he would have it so. For the note ran as follows:

"Heart's Delight,

"The news has come! We are off to the Crimea. I feel that for the first time in my life I am going to have my chance--or, rather, we are going to have our chance, for I shall take you with me, never fear. I wish, dear, your real body were, small enough to go into my knapsack, but the heart that beats under this uniform coat is large enough to hold your love. I must be very busy, but I will find time in a day or two for perfect happiness.

"Yours ever,

"Marmaduke.

"P.S.--I must get you to box my ears before I go. It will keep me straight and make me what England expects.--M. M.

"P.P.S.--Andrew says he is taking my stockings for you to mend. Forgive us poor men bodies.--M."

So she sat darning the stockings and trying to prevent a sinking at the heart.

From her verandah she could see the bustle and stir in the camp. The next day one of the meadow stretches lay bare of tents. So the work of embarkation must be close at hand. Aye, the bay was thronged with transports! There was a sound of drums and fifes in the air. What room for love and peace when war and strife were afoot? But any moment now might bring Marmaduke, and that was enough for the present.

It was on the fourth day, when she was beginning to wonder if possibly he had not found time, that an orderly appeared with a note. It was not from Duke; it was from Andrew.

"Dear Madam,

"Please come. I have sent the Colonel's charger. He will carry a lady. He is very ill."

She turned soul-sick as she read.

"Is he--is the Colonel very ill?" she asked.

"Verra ill indeed, m'm. It's the co-lira, and they're sayin' he's like to dee--God forbid it!"

"Like to die!"

Well, it was best to know the truth. She put on her European dress and started, remembering as she rode through the flower-set meadows how they had planned this visit to his hut. How she should spend the day there and be introduced to his friends. For though they never spoke of the future or the past, living only in the present heaven, Marmaduke had evidently never considered the possibility of separation and she had been content to let such possibilities slide.

And now? She bit her lip to keep it from quivering as Andrew met her.

"He's lying in the arbour, m'm. And he's no worse, anyway."

Yes, there he was, lying--such a long length--on his camp-bed covered with his plaid. Lying under the arbour of Jonah's gourd, about which he had chattered so gaily as being a laughing-stock to the other officers, though they dearly loved to sit in its shade. The ripe fruit hung scarlet amid the yellowing leaves. It seemed to throw the blue pallor of his face into louder warning that Death was in grips with Life.

She knelt beside the bed and took his hand without one word. She had seen too many cholera cases to hope for speech, but the eyelids quivered and the fingers closed on hers.

"How long?" she asked.

"Since yesterday morning. He would not give in--we were to move to-night, ye see----"

"Why didn't you----?" Words failed her for reproach.

"He wouldna let me send. I'm thinking he was afraid for ye."

There was a long pause. Her heart was full of regret, of bitterness. Afraid for her--oh, Duke, Duke!

"And he has everything?"

"Aye, everything! The doctor will be here again the now."

He came and found his patient better. He opened his eyes and smiled. Collapse had gone, the following fever had laid hold on him. Would his heart stand it? All that day he lay in something like sleep--quiet, so long as his hand could find that other hand. Once or twice she caught a whispered word of command and once, urgent, came a call for reinforcements. His mind was at battle--far, far from her. About an hour before sunset he turned his head and looked at her.

"I've done it," he said faintly; "I've done it!"

The doctor came in many a time and oft. The orderlies were always doing something; but her part was to hold his hand until the last. She saw it coming clearly; she knew that it must be so.

Someone in the arbour suggested a clergyman, and they sent to fetch one.

"He will be too late," half-whispered a voice.

Was it hers? Too late! As if it mattered? As if He who made----

Hark! A bird singing. It had come in after the fruit--perhaps he had fed it, for he loved God's creatures--and now not five yards from where he lay it was giving its heart out in full-throated song.

Hush! Listen! Listen!--it seemed to say.

The still figure was growing more still.

The slow breathing grew slower.

The touch of these cold fingers on hers grew colder.

Then their feeble clasp had gone, but the bird sang on.

She rose unsteadily, drew the plaid over his face, and left the tent. She did not seem to realise the presence of others.

Andrew ran after her.

"Marrion, Marrion, whaur are ye gaun? Ye poor, poor thing!" he whispered hoarsely in the extremity of his bewildered grief. "Bide a wee, and I'll see ye haim."

"I am going to walk home," she said dully. "It will do me good. I must--I must do something--and I must be alone."

So she walked over the meadows, crushing the drifts of purple colchicum under her feet. What had he called the flower of death? Ah, the iris! That would come in the spring. It would flower on his grave perhaps. And all the time she felt his cold hand on hers, she heard the bird's full song. How he would have loved to hear it! Perhaps he had.

It was dark ere she reached the vine pergola where they had been so happy, and she started when a tall officer in Highland costume came towards her. Was it all a bad dream? Was she waking to find him still her own? But he was only the bearer of a kindly message from the regiment to say that the colonel was to be buried at dawn, and that if Mrs. Marsden----

"Who told you I was Mrs. Marsden?" she asked sharply. "Andrew Fraser?"

The officer bowed and went on.

"As one of the colonel's oldest friends, would care----"

She shook her head. She was grateful. It was a kind thought. But Colonel Muir was Colonel Muir and everybody loved him--he would have enough friends.

"Madam," said the young officer, with a break in his voice, "when we lower him into his solitary grave--he is to be buried on the hill above his tent where he sat so often--we shall all know that the finest fellow in the regiment, nay, in the whole army, has gone from us."

She lay that night, her face crushed into the pillow without a sob. Only once or twice she whispered to herself.

"Ah, Duke, Duke, I'm glad I made you happy--so glad--so glad!"

She was up betimes to take her stand on a neighbouring hill, where, unobserved, she could watch him laid to his rest. Not a tent was to be seen; the battalion had shifted quarters during the night; the forward march to which he had looked with such longing had begun, and he----

Close by the belt of forest trees she could see his dismantled hut; a heap of packed baggage piled close by with a sentry on guard beside it. But the arbour hid what it held. So, as the sun rose, the leaden beat of the Dead March rose, as the regiment, followed by detachments from all and every regiment in Varna, drew up in a lane to let the artillery with a gun-carriage draped with the colours pass up.

Just his coat, his plaid, his sword, his bonnet, that was all. And after him his grey Arab--the one she had ridden--fully dressed. That was Andrew on the one side, and the other three? Generals, she supposed, by their uniforms.

What a crowd of officers! And the men, marching so slowly to the muffled beat! Would they never reach the grave?

At last. Now there were some words of command--heard vaguely as inarticulate cries--the long procession formed up, massed itself into a hollow square.

They must be reading the service now.

"Being dead yet liveth--yet liveth--yet liveth----"

She held fast to that, as her eyes travelled where his had so often rested in content--thank God for that--in sheer content.

So, as she looked at the wide expanse of hill and valley, lake and sea, those half-heard words of his came back to memory--"I've done it--I have done it!"

What had he done?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The very warmth of his sympathy roused antagonism.

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

He looked at her almost pitifully.

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

She shook her head.

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

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

[VIII]

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the day passed; but the afternoon promised a storm, and Marrion was anxious to get on shore and make arrangements, if she could, for stopping there. As she was watching she saw a gig going ashore to the Old Fort with a woman in it--a woman who was received with plaudits by the whole army. At the time she could not conceive who it could be, though she afterwards found out it was the Countess of Erroll. The incident, however, gave her courage; she persuaded the little doctor to allow her to land, and, accompanied by him and in her Turkish dress, she found a night's lodging in one of the nearest farm-houses. Nor had she to pay for it overmuch, for the Crim-Tartarians were kindly, honest folk ready to welcome brothers and sisters of Islam. Indeed, they looked upon the new-comers as a possible deliverance from Russian rule. It was lucky this was so, thought Marrion, as with the sinking of day a violent storm of wind and rain swept the beach, drenching the fifty thousand men who were without tents. They dug holes for themselves in the shingle, spread their greatcoats atop, and joked away discomfort even though death stalked among them and the terrible scourge, cholera, they hoped they had left behind them, claimed not a few victims before morning.

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

"We shall see," said Lord Raglan succinctly.

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

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

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

It was grey dawn when she rose, slipped on a youth's dress she had brought with her, and, packing a few necessaries in a small bundle, waited for the réveillé. But none came. On that fateful morning of the 20th September, 1854, the whole force of twenty thousand British bayonets and sabres assembled in silence. For a watchful enemy awaited them beyond the sluggish tortuous river that wound its way to the sea amid sparse vineyards. Far away to the right the horizon of open sea showed a massing of grey hulks and twinkling lights. That was the Fleet ready to aid as it could. Further afield, beyond the debouching of the cliffs, seven thousand Turkish troops prevented a flank attack. Then came the French twenty thousand face to face with the most formidable part of the cliff nearest the sea. After that the British. Marrion, through her spy-glass, could see the Highlanders standing, their faces set and determined. This was to be their first brush with the enemy, and many of them had waited for it so long. Eight months since Duke had brought her news of battle in the little London house! And now he lay in his solitary grave while his men fought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And hark! A disconnected rattle of rifle shots! The skirmishers are out among the rocks; and now, like goats up invisible paths, their full red pantaloons redder than the red clay, the Zouaves show in single file--here, there, everywhere like streamlets of blood. Incredible pluck! Astounding agility! But they are up. The first vantage ground is gained; they pause to collect the skirmishers and sound the pas de charge--that muffled pulse beat that, throbbing destruction, grows louder and louder and louder, drowning all but sheer lust of blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Give the order for general advance," he said, staking all, rashly enough, on the hazard of brave troops; but if he staked rashly he staked wisely. The serried masses of men rose with ringing cheers, dashing on through a belt of fire from the opposite heights, floundered somehow through the river, and paused for a second to take breath in the vineyards below the steeps. But formation had been lost. It was sheer onslaught. At the head of the advance rode Lord Raglan himself, regardless of the gaps in his Staff. Sir George Brown, leading the Light Division, goes down in a cloud of dust before a Russian battery. "Go on, 23rd," he shouts; "I'm all right, but be sure I'll remember this day, boys!"

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

A faint call came from a man who lay, his head half-resting on the breast of a dead comrade. She turned to him at once, throwing her lamp-light on his face. Extraordinarily good-looking, so young, so near death. She saw these things at a glance, guessing he was shot through the lungs as his breath came in soft pitiful gasps. She knelt to offer him a drink, but he shook his head. Evidently his eyes were already dim, for he whispered in broken English: "Good--gentlemens--take--take--my heart." She leaned closer to catch his words, thinking bitterly as she did so that he took her for his enemy--his enemy--while her whole heart was going out in pity for such as he.

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

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

A sudden comprehension came to her.

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

His dim eyes smiled faintly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You had better go on, Mac," said the voice that had advised caution, finally breaking the stillness. "I will use this young fool's lantern and that will make two search parties. We have little time to spare. I'll see him safe. You'd better take the orderlies with you. They have appliances and will know what to do. I can manage."

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

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

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

"Mrs. Marsden!" she echoed faintly.

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

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

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

Marrion bent to the light.

"A name and an address."

The doctor jumped up lightly.

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

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

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

[IX]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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 pass into a deep sleep and feel no pain--none at all."

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

Marrion found herself watching his passes 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 passed 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--God 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 God, if you could see them! Rotten biscuits, putrid meat, drugs unusable! How the devils in hell will kow-tow to the contractors when they get them as past-masters of damnation. 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 passing 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 compass, 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 circumvented 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.

She blushed a little.

"I have often wondered," she began.

"People who play Providence ought not to wonder. Well, I am glad he died happy. That, at any rate, is to your credit." So he rose and left her.

The days passed rapidly, full to the brim of work, and every day brought her more and more admiration for the courage and cheeriness of the men, more and more resentment at the ghastly way in which they were treated by the authorities at home. Boots had already given out, none were available in store, and in a whole officers' mess only one subaltern had a holeless pair. And he was the son of a widow who had half-ruined herself by sending her darling the two separate boots of a pair by letter post. She would have held it worth more, could she have seen his face of pride among his comrades.

On the night of the 18th of October a diversion arose which, when it was over, caused much amusement.

A party of sappers and miners, losing their way, fell into a Russian picket, which, possessed by the idea of a general assault, incontinently skedaddled into the town and raised the alarm, thereby causing much beating of drums and bugle calls. The Allied armies, alarmed in their turn, instantly stood to arms, while gun after gun boomed from the city forts, echoing and re-echoing among the reverberating rocks. After an hour or two, however, the gunners seemed to recognise that they were only, so to speak, shooting at their own shadows or echoes, and gradually peace reigned, broken by roars of laughter round many a camp fire.

But on the 25th something serious happened which brought the shambles close once more. To the Turkish contingent had been assigned the redoubts which protected the heights behind the entrenchments. On the morning of the 25th the Russians, numbering some twenty thousand troops, after following the same route by which the Allies had reached Balaklava, appeared unexpectedly before these redoubts. The Turks abandoned them without striking a blow and fled down the valley to the plain in sheer panic. Nor did a volley from the 93rd Highlanders, hastily formed up, stop them. For a short while confusion and courage were conspicuous. The British, taken unawares, fought like heroes. Finally there followed the famous Light Cavalry Charge of which the French general, watching it, said "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." By whose fault the order was given for a deed which will stir the blood at every English heart even at the day of doom, Heaven only knows. The man who brought it was the first to fall. Briefly told--it needs no grand words--it amounted to this. Six hundred men and horses charged uselessly, desperately, defiantly, because they were told to do so, down an open valley exposed to a cross fire from guns posted on either side of them, and to a frontal fire from the evacuated and abandoned forts. The charge commenced at 11.10. It was barely 11.35 when a hundred and sixty men, many of them wounded, rode back, having done what they were told to do. The rest lay on the held.

But it was a victory for all that, and when night came, bringing an hour or two of rest to Marrion, she spent it in going round with a revolver she borrowed from Dr. Forsyth and putting wounded horses out of their pain.

"Don't forget to give them their password," he said, as he gave the weapon to her.

She looked at him uncomprehending. "I forgot you hadn't lived in the East," he went on, with a smile. "Say 'In the name of the Most Merciful God' before you shoot."

Once again there were tears in her eyes. She was learning much of this strange man who looked on death so lightly, yet spent himself in striving to evade it.

It was a busy time again after Balaklava; she had barely time to think, scarcely time to rest. Yet ever and always, when her mind travelled beyond the immediate present, those words with which Dr. Forsyth had replied to her story came back to remembrance--

"People who play Providence ought not to wonder."

Was he right, she wondered, and then was ashamed of her own wondering.

"You will have to rest a little more," said the doctor to her one day when she had been helping him. "You were quite wobbly just now. You will be of no use, you know, unless you pull yourself together." And he narrowed his eyes perplexedly. "You are not living in the present somehow--you're reaching out to the future. Why?"

She laughed.

"Why should I--what can the future hold for me! I will take a blue pill."

He grunted dissatisfaction, but was too busy to say more. Yet what he said was true. She began to catch herself wondering, wondering. The present was all-engrossing, of course; how could it be anything else when she could do what she could do for the poor lads?--his poor lads, who were so brave, so cheery. And then her mind would become vagrant, and she would wake up from dreams with a start.

It was one day just before Inkerman, the 10th of November, that Dr. Forsyth came to her and said:

"I want you. It's over at the cavalry hospital."

His eyes seemed to her stranger than ever, and when she came out of her tent to join him he glanced at her, then said brusquely:

"You've forgotten to put on that diamond brooch of yours--the P.P. one. Don't you remember when the sun glints on it, it's useful?"

It was true. Often and often the eyes that had been asked to fix their gaze on it had become full of dreams, and then slept.

"Stupid of me," she replied lightly. "I'll put it on!"

[X]

The Cavalry Hospital was a little way out of the town, a quaint old place with oleanders and orange trees set in tubs outside its white verandahs. As they drove thither Dr. Forsyth told her something of the case in which he wanted her help. It was a prisoner, presumably an officer, but he refused name or rank. He had been found two days after the battle, lying, with one leg smashed to bits, under his dead horse in a little ravine. How he had lived was a marvel, for he was quite an old man; but, not only had he done so, he had also retained consciousness, and had addressed those who found him in perfect English, congratulating them courteously on their marvellous exploit, and saying he was proud to have crossed swords with them.

A game old fellow, worthy of his hospital nickname "The General." He had actually begged, before they moved him, that someone would be good enough to search in the holster of the dead horse beside him for a gold snuffbox which he had been unable to reach, and the lack of which had, he asserted, been his greatest discomfort.

"He has been snuffing away ever since," added the doctor, "so perhaps he was right, for his leg was almost too crushed to belong to him. We took it off at once; but now gangrene is setting in and if he is to be saved we must have it off higher up. And the others won't risk it. He is old--heart weak--and they say won't stand chloroform. I am going to try. I've told him and he will take the risk. A good old chap, worth saving. I don't believe he is a Russian. I think he is a Pole, and blood is thicker than water."

Marrion's first look at the patient as he lay propped up by pillows in the small room whither he had been carried made her agree with the doctor.

It was a fine old face, curiously reminiscent of someone she had seen somewhere, with its hint of ruddiness beneath the grey of the hair and its bold bright daring look. And he was very tall; his long length almost outstretched the trestle bed.

"Good morning, doctor!" he said, with a courteous salute which included Marrion, and with a perfect English accent. "You have brought your nurse, I see. Are we to begin at once?"

There was no anxiety in his voice; only gentle raillery.

"Not quite yet, General," replied Dr. Forsyth. "I want you to have a rest and sleep first. You are looking a bit tired; and your pulse"--he stopped to feel it--"is tired, too. So I've brought Nurse Paul to sit with you. She is a curiously soporific person. I shall be back before very long," he added, more to her than to the patient.

Left alone, Marrion went up to the bed, smoothed the rough pillows, straightened the coarse blanket, which was all the bedding Balaklava could produce, and said quietly--

"Now, if you will close your eyes I believe you would sleep."

But those sea-blue eyes--whose did they resemble?--someone she had seen somewhere--remained wide, and watched her narrowly as she returned to seat herself in the only chair. It was set full in the sunlight, which showed her tall, slender, yet strong in her dark stuff dress, a white handkerchief almost hiding her bright hair and pinned to place by the little brilliant brooch beneath her chin. Truly those keen eyes were over-watchful, and she was about again to suggest sleep when his voice, full of insistent command, startled her.

"Where did you get that brooch?"

She replied at once with the truth.

"It belonged to my father."

"Indeed--who was he?"

"He was a valet; but if you would only close your eyes I think you would go to sleep."

"Do you think so? I don't."

His eyes showed more awake than ever; there was a hint of a smile on the handsome old face.

Still there was silence for full five minutes, and Marrion was just about to make further suggestion of sleep when once more the voice rose--

"Will you please give me my snuff-box?--it is under my pillow somewhere."

She drew it out. A plain gold box with--her startled eyes caught the old face--

"Yes!" he said, and his voice had a jeer in it. "'P.P.,' as you see. That is my name. So you are Marrion Sim's child--and I suppose mine. Queer, isn't it, how these old stories crop up when one had almost forgotten them?" He scanned her face narrowly. "Now you are angry. Why should you be? Your mother was my wife, I suppose. At least, I hadn't any other then. I have sons now"--his voice softened as he spoke--"yes, sons to come after me when I am gone, as I shall be soon, for that gay doctor of yours can't conquer Fate; and it is Fate that has brought me here!"

He lay looking at her with a certain kindly curiosity, while she, startled out of herself, tried to realise that this was her father--the father she had condemned and despised all her life.

It seemed almost as if he saw into her thoughts, for his next words touched them.

"Perhaps it was cruel to leave her as I did; but I had no choice. If you have anything belonging to us in you, you'll understand what the call of the master means. And young Muir was never my master. He befriended me, helped me to escape Siberia; but the other---- There's a perfect passion of loyalty in our family which you may or may not understand." He paused and a shiver of assent ran through Marrion.

"I--I think I do understand," she said, in a low voice.

Yes, from the very beginning, as a small child, this passion of protection, of loyalty, had been hers. Strange legacy from an unknown father! He smiled content.

"Glad to hear it. You're not a bit like your mother--you're like me, and your brothers--half-brothers, I mean. So I had to go. It was just after the break up of Europe and Napoleon, when half the political refugees came to their own again--and he did amongst others. So I had to go." Again he paused, and for the first time Marrion felt the touch of kinship between them. He had to go; that was just it! She had had to be loyal to Duke. "You are not in the least like your mother," he said again suddenly, "you are like us." Yet again he paused. "Have you anything you can give me to drink?" he asked. "I have something to say to you, and I feel--limp."

She gave him a restorative and he brisked up. Time was passing, but she had learnt many things during the last month and knew that physical rest would be impossible until the mental rest was assured.

"Don't talk too much," she said. "I think I shall understand--what is it?"

"This box," he said. "It holds--my credentials. There is a false top--see, you press this spring--so."

As he spoke the lid appeared to part in two, disclosing a folded piece of paper.

"Don't read it now--but it will tell you everything. I was on secret service and it was of importance no one should know. It is of importance still. If I hadn't met you I should have said nothing. But now--you'll do me this good turn, I expect--for, after all, I am your father."

A cynical smile curved his lips, his blue eyes met hers in a challenge.

Almost staggered by the strangeness of what was happening, Marrion was yet aware of something deep down in her which gave instant response to this claim upon her.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I will do what you wish--father."

"I am obliged--daughter," he replied lightly. "Of course it is for your eye alone. And now for heaven's sake give me some more of that drink. I feel quite exhausted." He lay back smiling at her. "It is better here," he remarked, "than in the north of Scotland." Then after a pause, "I suppose I ought not to have married your mother; but she was charming and it was very dull." After that he closed his eyes and slept. The doctor, coming in after an hour, found him still sleeping, while Marrion sat beside the bed holding the gold snuffbox in her hand.

He bent over the slumbering face.

"I don't think there will be any operation," he said quietly. "The others were right. His mind has ceased to insist upon his body surviving and so there is rest. It is well."

Marrion looked up into his wise face.

"How did you guess?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There was no guess," he replied; "you remember I had seen your father. Then your extraordinary likeness. When by chance I saw the famous snuff-box yesterday it became a certainty. For a day I decided to say nothing. Then I saw the old chap was fighting death--putting a strain on himself about something, and I thought you had better have your innings."

He did not ask any questions and she was grateful.

"Perhaps you would like to stay," he added gently. "I don't think he will wake again."

And he did not. As the sunlight faded from the room the old man's breathing became slower and ceased.

Marrion stood looking down on him for a moment before she called for aid. All the time she had been watching she had been thinking, thinking; but she had arrived at nothing. Only deep down in her was a glad feeling of inheritance--a consciousness that the dead man had given her something, something that she held in trust.

Was it only the gold snuff-box, she wondered vaguely, as, back in her own tent, she touched the spring.

"The bearer of this, Prince Paul Pauloffski----" She sat staring at the words.

Prince Paul Pauloffski was her father. Then she was gentle born. Then she need not--

With a rush all the things she need not have done crushed in on her. She buried her face in the pillow as she sat on the edge of her bed and muttered--

"People who play Providence!"

Of a truth the wise man with the strange eyes was right. Your past was karma. You could not escape from it.

After a time she sat up and began to decipher the rest. It was in French, the lingua franca of Eastern diplomacy. Noble-born, poor, devoted, daring. That was the essence of the credentials. The other paper simply gave the address of the ancestral home and that of two sons in the army. A memorandum as to keys and papers filled up the back of the latter. She replaced them, shut down the spring again, then, remembering she could show no right to the snuff-box for which inquiry was sure to be made, took them out again. Nothing, somehow, seemed to matter now. She had made her mistake, she must suffer.

"You have all you want?" asked Doctor Forsyth, as she handed him the box, and she flushed scarlet. Sometimes he seemed to her too clever--he found out everything, everything!

"Thank you," she replied frigidly.

"Because--well, if you would like to possess it, I could buy it in for you at the auction. The poor old general is--is unidentified, remember."

"Yes, he is unidentified," she assented, remembering her father's wishes, "but I should like to have it all the same."

He brought it to her a day or two after. "That's your fee," he said lightly, "you've earned it well."

And he would take no refusal; so she replaced the papers in the secret compartment and put the box away in her satchel against--what? That future which was now always filling her mind. The present seemed hardly to touch her at all. The doctor looked at her critically more than once, but he said nothing.

Then came Inkerman. It was on the 5th of November--almost three months, Marrion told herself, since that wonderful day when Duke's love had come to her amid flame and fire.

It had been a disturbed night. A noise as of tumbrils had been heard about the city. Was it possible that the enemy was taking advantage of the dense night fog to run in commissariat or even ammunition? Nothing could be done, however, save wait. So as the laggard day broke, the advanced pickets looked keenly ahead. To no purpose. An impenetrable wall of grey mist shut out all beyond a yard or two. Their very comrades looked like shadows of men.

"London partickler," remarked one sentry, stamping his feet to keep out the chill, for it had been raining all night.

"Not yeller enough, save down Chelsea way. My Gawd! I wish I was ther," replied the next.

"I wish I wurr anywhere but eight thousand strong on the heights of Inkerman," put in an Irishman. "Begorra, I've bin dhrier in a bog!"

"An' I've been wetter in the watter after the trooties on Don side," evened an Aberdeenshire man sturdily. "Mush me, it's weary wark!"

"An' thim ringing joy-bells for to spite us!" joked the Irishman, as on the cold night air a carillon from every church in the city rang out, echoing amongst the little scrub and wood-set ravines that went to make up the valley of Inkerman. "Will it be a weddin', likely? Begorra, I'd loose off me rifle as a salute if the powdther was dry!"

So through the early dawn the pickets, outwearied, wet through, beguiled the time. And though the dawn brought light, the mist lay thicker than ever. Thick and grey the colour of a Russian's coat.

"Dods, mon!" cried the Aberdeenshire man suddenly, "what's yon?"

Yon was indeed a Russian coat, not one but many, emerging out of the fog not ten yards away.

A sharp volley of musketry followed on the instant. The pickets may have been sodden, but they were no cowards. They fought desperately, retreating inch by inch, the alarm of their rifles telling that sixty thousand Russians were on them surging through the newly awakened camp of eight thousand. It was everyone to the rescue. Not one regiment or two, but every available man. Then followed eight long hours of such desperate fighting as, till then, had never been seen. It was not a battle--it was a hundred battles in one; for every little ravine had its opposing armies, cut off from the rest by the enveloping mist. Again and again the grey line would advance a yard or two, covered by its superior fire; again and again a ringing British cheer and the point of the bayonet would drive it back a yard or two. Sometimes the fight became a mêlée in which the British officers, dealing havoc with their revolvers or swords, cut their way through the dense masses of the enemy. No generalship was possible, each man fought for himself, his Queen, his country, and wrote on the page of history a record of undying pluck and almost incredible personal courage. But the battle of Inkerman is, truly, beyond description. It was a day of countless deeds of daring, of despairing rallies and desperate assaults in the glens, the brushwood glades, the torrent beds of the valley of the Tchernaya river. None knew how the balance swayed and shifted. But a few were aware of the aid given in the nick of time by the six thousand French troops who arrived at the double. None knew whose was the victory till from the Russian ranks came the bugles of retreat. And then, as the mist lifted, the whole hillside showed strewn with corpses. But the eight thousand had kept at bay the sixty thousand. Round Sandbag battery, from which the Guards were driven, and which they retook four separate times, lay fifteen thousand Russian dead, mute evidence of the hand to hand, back to back, relentless tenacity with which the Household Brigade eventually fought their way out of the surrounding masses of the foe. A little further, where a single regiment held at bay over nine thousand Russians, the broken stocks of the rifles showed how, when ammunition was gone, the fight still continued.

"Will anyone be kind enough to lift me off my horse?" said old General Strangways, when riding to an exposed position in the hope of being able to see something of what his men were doing, a shell literally blew off his leg. And someone lifted him down doubtless; but there were eight generals to be seen to, and close on a hundred and fifty officers.

As the official despatches read--

"It does not do to dwell upon the aspect of the battlefield." True, indeed, when out of the eight thousand some two thousand six hundred lay dead or wounded among the fourteen thousand Russians for whom they had accounted.

Even Doctor Forsyth's pale, composed face grew paler, less composed, and Marrion acting as his aide could scarcely get through the awful days. She could not work as she wished to work, but neither could she rest. Her whole being seemed to go out in one vast pity for the world, a vast desire to protect, to recreate.

"I am sorry my hand shook," she said, almost pitifully to the doctor, when she held she had failed to give him all the help she should have done over a young lad who had been brought in badly hurt. "But he seemed so very young. It made me think of the time when all these poor boys were babies in their mothers' arms, warm, secure, sheltered."

He looked at her gravely.

"You did very well," he said. "Not quite so well as usual, perhaps; but better than others. For all that, I am going to send you for a rest--only a week or two," he added hastily, seeing her face set in denial. "And it's as useful as anything else. You know there are quite a lot of soldiers' wives down in the town. There ought not to be, of course, but there are---- Why, there is one, at least, in the camp! And one, an Irishwoman, has just died with her third baby--shock--husband killed. And there is no one to see to them and others. You'd better go--you--you like children."

To tell the truth Marrion felt a strange gladness at the thought of them, and the very idea of holding the newborn scrap of humanity in her arms was enthralling.

"For a week," she demurred. "You see I haven't been sleeping well."

So down by the sea in a house built on the very rocks of the harbour she went back to woman's normal life and rested for a while.

For the first time she had leisure to notice the beauties of the cliff-set coast, of which the bay was a mere shallow curve. The vessels lying at the roads bobbed and swayed when the wind ruffled the water, almost as if they had been at sea. But it was fine to see them there; ships of the line, merchantmen, gun-boats, mail-steamers, all coming and going. When the two elder children were asleep, Marrion would wrap the infant in a blanket and go and sit on the rocks in the sunshine, watching the boats go backwards and forwards to the shore, and thinking of the far-off Aberdeenshire days when she could pull an oar with any man. The harbour itself, a mere inlet, was crammed with vessels of all descriptions; you could scarcely distinguish one from the other, but the thirty outside showed bravely.

"They say the anchorage is very treacherous," remarked Doctor Forsyth, when he came to see how she was getting on, one evening. "I hear that a captain of one of the transports has reported it dangerous; and has been reprimanded for his trouble. He may have a chance of proving himself right, for the barometer is going down steadily, I'm told; and there is an uncanny feel in the air."

That was about six o'clock in the evening. But the night was calm, warm for the time of the year. It was in the small hours of the 14th that someone relieving watch on one of the ships looked again at the barometer.

"My God!" he exclaimed, "it has fallen two inches in the watch."

Something was astir and the something came with appalling suddenness, almost before the light spars could be shipped and things made taut. And then? What was it? No storm ever seen equalled this boiling cauldron of a sea, this furious blast of bitter wind that lashed the waves of foam and sent them in driving clouds far over the heights. The hawsers, the anchor chains, the cables strained and wrenched and strained, while brave men, looking at the wicked rocks seen dimly by the breaking dawn, knew that their only chance of life lay in the holding of their anchors. An American ship was the first to go. She drifted swiftly to the cliffs and disappeared, timbers and crew. The next to follow was the ship whose captain had given the warning. It made a brief fight for life. The port anchor held--masts, rigging, were cut away. To no purpose. The cable parted, she drifted broadside to the cliff, crashed against it once, twice. A few men were carried by the breakers up the rocks, bruised, mangled. The captain himself was crushed between the rocks and the ship, as he hung from a life-line thrown by those on shore. Another and another and another ship followed in quick succession. The roar of the tempest, the crashing of timbers, the howling of the wind, the noise of the engines straining full speed ahead to hold their anchorage against the storm, drowned all outcry; the terror, the dismay, the despair of it passed as it were in silence. Within the inlet harbour one vessel crashed against the next and so, huddled in heaps, they drifted to pile themselves in shivered hulks upon the shore. Helpless to help, powerless to save, the spectators clinging like limpets to stone walls and stanchions looked on while one after another the brave ships which but the day before had seemed to spurn the waves in their pride were beaten, buffeted, engulfed, submerged in the seething cauldron of surf and spray and mad, infuriated billows, answering to the challenge of the wind. The Prince, the finest vessel in the bay, new built, powerfully engined, held out the longest. There were hopes for her, but the sea willed otherwise. Slowly, slowly the anchor dragged, and five minutes after she struck not a vestige of the good ship remained. Meanwhile on shore the hurricane had brought disaster untold. Houses were roofless, tents swept bodily into the deep ravines with their occupants. It was noon ere the wind abated somewhat, allowing stock to be taken of the damage. Far out at sea could be seen the hulls of the vessels that had weathered the storm, mostly disabled, mastless; but it was known that five-and-twenty vessels had gone down with practically all on board.

As the tempest subsided the bodies of the drowned were dashed by the breakers against the rocks or cast up in tiny creeks upon the beach.

Marrion had taken her charges to a place of safety, the house she was in being too exposed; and then, thinking she might help, went down to the harbour. The waves still ran dangerously high, and over on the farther side Englishmen were busy with lifeboats, rescuing some of the crews of the smaller ships which, having held their anchors so far, were still in imminent danger of going down. As she passed a knot of local fishermen on her way to where apparently help might be required, her eyes followed theirs and she realised to her horror that they were calmly looking at a man--a mere boy--who about sixty yards from the shore was clinging to a stationary spar, part doubtless of some submerged craft. His face was clearly visible, the agonised appeal vitalising its exhaustion, its pallor. Only for a few minutes more could that grip hold! She was alert in an instant.

"Go!" she cried vehemently in Russian. "Quick! A boat is there! Quick--save--for Christ's sake, save!"

Urged more by her actions than her words, the men fell in with them. Ready hands, besides her practised ones, ran down the boat.

But then, no one stirred! It was not an impossible task, it was only dangerous. That, however, was enough. Why should they risk their lives to save an unknown lad--a mere boy? But it was that very youth which appealed to the woman, who stood for an instant with bitter anger at her heart.

"Curse you for cowards!" she cried as she sprang in and seized the oars. The boat, already afloat, shot out from the shore by her weight. The next instant she had the oars in and was fighting for her life--and his. For his--yes, fighting, fighting, fighting for life to something unknown. She set her teeth and dreamed with the appalling swiftness of dreams of the far Northern sea. Yes, she was afloat on it with Duke--no! it was Duke she had to save. It was Duke, or someone belonging to Duke, who clung to that spar now so close, so close----

On shore, a man passing along a quay hard by saw her, and ran down with an oath.

Almost there--almost! She glanced behind her, saw the young face; but only for a second. The hold of the clenched hands relaxed, the head fell back, the body slid into the water. Too late!

No, not too late! Without one instant's hesitation Marrion was over the side, keeping the oar in her left hand as she leapt.

Now she had gripped something floating for a second and was on the surface again, rising within arm's grip of the oar.

In her ears a thousand voices seemed whispering--Safe, safe, safe! You are the saviour, the creator, the protectress.--She struck out boldly. Then a huge breaker took her to its breast and held her fast.

When she came to herself she was lying on a bed and looking round she realised that she was in the very room of the cavalry hospital where her father had died. It had been the nearest place, she supposed. The sunlight was streaming in. She was quite alone. Doubtless everyone was busy--they always were.

Then on a table within reach she saw a cup of milk and a glass. A paper lay beside them. Scrawled on it, very large, was this advice--

"Take these and go to sleep again!"

It was Doctor Forsyth's writing and with a sense of safety she obeyed.

When she roused again it was evening; the room was almost dark, but a figure stood at the window. In an instant remembrance came back to her and raised a curiosity which had doubtless been lying dormant, as she had been, for nigh six-and-thirty-hours.

"Did I save the boy?" she asked suddenly in a loud strong voice.

Doctor Forsyth, for it was he, smiled as he walked up to the bed.

"I really cannot say, my dear lady, whether you saved him or not. You did your best, anyhow, and the same wave washed you both ashore." He had been feeling her pulse as he spoke. "All right," he continued, "I fancy you can get up if you choose. And you will be a bit busy, for the mail steamer goes to-morrow and you should take the first opportunity of getting home."

She stared at him.

"Home!" she echoed. "I am not going home. I want to work--and I should like to die out here. What is there for me to do at home?"

Doctor Forsyth hesitated a moment. He was ciphering out conclusions. The reason he had to give her was one which must, despite its joy, give pain. Better therefore to speak out while her mind was still too confused to grasp the immensity of either.

"My dear lady," he said, and his voice was gentleness itself, "I must deny all your statements. You are going home. You do not want to die out here, and you will have plenty to do at home looking after"--he paused--"the colonel's child."

He turned and left her voiceless, but athrill to her finger-tips, wondering why she had not guessed it before.

Then with a rush came remembrance. "People who play Providence----"

She gave a moan and turned her face to the wall.

[XI]

When Marrion arrived in England just before Christmas she found a white world of snow. But it seemed to her not so white, so pure, so chill as that soft pall which had lain on Marmaduke Muir's grave on the Balkan heights, when, stopping at Varna on her way home on purpose to visit it, she had found it unrecognisable under the heavy snow. For the winter of '54-'55 was the severest on record, even in those southern mountains.

There had seemed no room there for her tears, her remorse, her pitiful plaint to be forgiven for trying to play Providence. So she had come away more stunned than ever.

After all her long years of self-sacrifice to find that every step she had taken was a mistake was bitter indeed; but to realise that if the child lived--and this time she meant to ensure that there should be no ransom of her life--she would have deprived Marmaduke's child of its birthright was agony.

Yet there was no escape. Even if Andrew Fraser had been forthcoming--and no news of him had come since Alma's heights were won--she still would not have made a claim. That was over and done with. She had promised the old man none should be made, she had persuaded Duke to do the same, and they must stand by their word.

She brooded and brooded over this until once more self-sacrifice became an obsession with her. Not even for the sake of his child should Duke's honour be smirched. Besides it might be a girl, and then it would not matter so much. Besides, and this clinched the question, even with Andrew it would be hard to prove a marriage; for during those few short years she had not troubled to act as a wife. The knowledge that she was married had been enough for both her and Duke; she had always been known as Mrs. Marsden. A lawsuit would be dreadful--was unthinkable.

No, she could do nothing to rectify her past mistakes. She must dree her weird--she could not get away from her past. In that, as in all things else, the doctor had been right. When the time came nearer she would follow his advice and go to Edinburgh to the man who had invented chloroform. Doctor Forsyth had said he was kind. She would tell him her story and beg him to let her die and save the child.

Meanwhile, there was the gold snuff-box, and it meant more to her now than when it was given. It meant that there would be someone kin to the child--someone who, perhaps, if her life was taken as toll, would look after it. She must try while there was yet time; that was her first charge.

She set to work at once, therefore, to arrange for a visit to Poland. The extraordinary likeness to her father of which he himself had spoken, which Doctor Forsyth had noticed, and which she also had seen, was too valuable an asset to be wasted. Yes, she would go over to the ancestral house, give the gold snuff-box into safe keeping, and ask, even beg, for recognition. Even if her father had been a widower, one of the sons might be married, there might be a woman with a pitiful heart to listen and sympathise. But ere she went she must write to Peter Muir. To begin with, she could assure him that his brother had been well looked after. And then she had nothing, positively nothing, of Marmaduke's; and Peter, knowing the care she had lavished on him all those years, might give her something. The ring he had always worn was what she craved most. In those long ago days, though there was not so very much difference in their heights, what he wore on his little finger had fitted her second. It had been too large for her third when he had wanted her to wear it in place of a plain gold band; so she had bidden him wear it instead--little tender memory which seemed so precious now.

So she wrote in the fine slanting caligraphy of the day a somewhat stilted little letter asking for what she wanted as a favour, not a demand, since "though I have a claim, I have no right."

In reply she received a friendly note.

"Dear Marrion,

"If you will come and see me I will give you the ring, and something else."

She had sent her letter to Peter's club, but this was dated from a house in Palace Yard. So she went there. It was a fine old house. A footman opened the door, a butler advanced to meet her, a majordomo out of livery stood half-way up the stairs. Very different this from the old days when the two brothers had been more or less out at elbows all the time; but now, of course, Peter was heir to the estates.

She found him, looking wretchedly ill, in a most luxurious study, and his weak face lit up at the sight of her in the friendliest of fashions.

"Sit down in a comfortable chair," he said, and there was a querulous note in his voice. "Really, in times like these, when, as the paraphrase runs, 'days are dark and friends are few,' and 'gathering clouds' are the normal outlook, it is a duty to be comfortable and bring up the average. When Marmaduke was--was here--he was for ever at me for extravagance. Hated the Jews and used to borrow from old Jack Jardine instead. Paid off something, but not all, I'm afraid; and Pitt, the virtuous Pitt--he owed him thousands. However, as I was saying, it's a duty nowadays to be comfortable, so I've any amount of post-obits out--to say nothing of kites. They're always coming back wanting a longer string or a new tail. But I don't care. The old man may outlast me, and anyhow I can't live long; so it's a short life and a merry one."

Looking at his hectic flush and with a damp cold of his hands fresh on the touch of hers Marrion did not feel inclined to combat his easy philosophy.

"And your father?" she asked.

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

"As usual, only more so." He paused and spoke more seriously. "Of course Marmaduke's death cut him to the quick. But I won't speak of that--I can't. He was the only one--and I believe it was the same with the Baron. He showed it in anger. Won't see or hear of me, yet I'd do my best for him. 'Pon my soul, that old man has been the curse of all our lives."

Marrion sat silent. In a way it was true. The old spider had enticed more flies than he knew of into his net. But for her desire that Marmaduke should not fall foul of his father----

But that way lay madness. She was beginning to learn that she could scarcely trust her own judgment. The whole thing was so pitiful that reason seemed impossible.

"And may I have the ring?" she asked, in order to change the venue.

"You can have that, and a good deal more besides," replied Peter Muir, giving her a queer look as he rose to go to a despatch-box that lay on the table and which Marrion recognised as Marmaduke's.

"When this thing came home," he continued, searching in it. "Oh, here is the ring!" (He handed it to her, and she thrilled at the touch of it, as she would have thrilled to the touch of the man who had worn it.) "I did not look over the papers very carefully--I hadn't the heart; but when I was looking for that ring yesterday, I found--something--which interests you."

He held out an envelope and she took it indifferently; few things really interested her nowadays. It was addressed to Major Muir at his club, and a vague wonder as to what it could contain crossed her mind as she took out the paper it contained.

Then she sat silent staring at it helplessly, for it was Duke's counterpart of their marriage bond which she thought she had seen burnt to ashes on that night when Marmaduke had said, "You have made me feel like a scoundrel!"

How idle, how unreal this world was! Could one be sure of anything? Could one be certain that everything was not a dream?

Peter's voice roused her.

"Of course it doesn't make much difference to us now. Marmaduke left a very few pounds, and your third as wife wouldn't amount to anything. But there is his portion when the peer dies, and I can't see why my young oaf of a cousin who will come in eventually should have it; for even if I outlive my father I shall have enough for my time. And you were--well, you were a brick to Marmaduke--and to me, too. You always denied this marriage: but I had a notion it was only denial. There is no reason, therefore, why you shouldn't use this--it is proof positive of marriage, and if I were you I would. You are the only survivor and therefore have the action; besides, it would annoy the old man extremely, and, upon my soul, he deserves all he can get."

He had struck the wrong chord. To Marrion, absorbed in the one enthralling question as to whether Marmaduke had known of this survival or whether he had not, the suggestion that she was the sole arbiter came as a shock.

"We agreed," she said slowly, "to annul the marriage. He thought--I know he thought--this paper had been burnt; and it doesn't make any difference to our intention that it wasn't. And then we promised, we both promised your father no claim should ever be made. Because Duke is dead is that any reason----"

She rose suddenly, walked to the fireplace, and threw the envelope and its contents on the fire.

"That is what Duke meant," she muttered to herself helplessly.

Peter Muir watched her with a half-cynical, half-admiring smile.

"Well, you know best, my dear. And, of course, I personally would never let you come to want." The capable woman looked at him, the incapable man, with wondering tolerance. "Still, I must say I am disappointed. I should like to have seen the governor's face when you sprang it upon him. Remember he is the villain of the piece and, as I said, deserves everything he can get."

"That may be," replied Marrion, "but can't you see we were all at fault? And we have to pay for it. We must--you can't get rid of the past."

She said the words over and over to herself, and it was not till she reached her lodgings that she realised fully that the past had claimed the future. Yet what else could she have done? If she had only known what Duke would have said! Had he found out the paper, or had he not? Was that the reason why in those short ten days of heaven he had never, never, never alluded to the past? And yet that heavenly present had become the past too, and had stretched out into the future. Had she been taken by surprise? Had she made another mistake?

She threw herself on her bed and cried quite foolishly, until perforce, being physically unable to cry any more, her mind reasserted itself and thought came again.

One thing seemed clear. She could not possibly tell what Duke knew or did not know; she could not be sure what he would have thought; and she would have no more of trying to impose her views on him.

That being so, the only person who had any say in the matter was Lord Drummuir. For the sake of the heir he might absolve her of the promise. But the child might be a girl, it might not live. Finally she began to cry again softly, silently; the tears that count for utter soul-weariness. And in truth she was weary--the one thing that seemed clear being that she had failed; that she had mismanaged everything, that everything seemed in a hopeless tangle. She was, in sober truth, very near the limit of perfect sanity when, with a passport secured through Peter Muir's Vienna influence, she started for Krakowitz, the village on the Russian side of the Carpathians, near which the Pauloffski estates lay. It was a difficult journey--one which she had judged rightly had better be undertaken at once; but the change did her good, and she was almost herself again before it came to a conclusion; yet as the sledge with its tinkling bells and four horses toiled up the last hill or two she felt depression come upon her again. The outlook, supremely beautiful, was still melancholy to a degree. Snow, snow everywhere. The towering peaks, the valleys, the pine forests all burdened with it, like Marmaduke's grave had been. A light burden, but so cold--so deathly cold!

As the sledge dashed up the steep narrow drive and the pine trees that swept their snow layered branches overhead some of their burden fell in soft masses on Marrion's furs.

The driver turned round with a smile and said in Russian:

"That is absolution from sin, Excellency."

Curious answer to her thoughts, and with the answer came a remembrance, "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

And the remembrance brought confidence. Perhaps, after all, the tangle consequent on her playing Providence might be going to be straightened out.

The front door of the unpretentious tower, with a building like a barn built on to it, that stood magnificently on a little plateau overlooking the valley with a faint glimpse of plain beyond, was wide open, and at it, standing against, but not leaning upon the pilaster, was the most striking figure of a woman Marrion thought she had ever seen. Extreme old age had set its mark on the lined face, with thin white hair drawn under a lace lappet; but the figure was that of a girl of twenty. Extraordinarily tall, massive in proportion, but upright as a dart and with activity in every curve and line.

The lady gave a dignified bow as Marrion, still closely veiled as protection from the bitter cold, came up the steps.

"Princess Pauloffski?" she asked tentatively in French, for it was impossible to think the figure that of a servant.

"I am Princess Pauloffski," was the dignified reply in slightly guttural French.

"Might I speak with you for a few minutes?" continued Marrion nervously.

The Princess smiled.

"Ah, you are English! My son Paul was a long time in England or Scotland," she replied in better English than her French. "You must be cold; come in and take off your wraps."

A few rapid words in the country dialect sent driver and sledge round to the stables while Marrion, with an unforeseen thrill of pleasure, recognised that this beautiful old princess must be her grandmother.

"I was looking for my sons and daughters who are dead," said her hostess quietly as she led the way into the house. "The dead always come back with the snow--and I have so many."

Despite the warmth of the wide passage heated by a huge stove Marrion felt a slight shiver run through her. How had her grandmother learnt to speak of the dead as if they were alive?

As she passed on to a sitting-room where a great fire of pine logs was burning on an open hearth Marrion removed her veil and threw off her heavy fur cloak.

So, as she came out of the dark passage into the sunlight that streamed through the sitting-room windows, she stood revealed. The effect was not nearly as startling as she had anticipated, but it was far more overwhelming.

The old face lit up with sudden pleasure, the thin old hands were stretched out--

"Sacha!" she said. "Darling, after all these years! And you never came before. Paul did--and he was your twin--though he has only just gone, Sacha! I have wanted you so often."

The tears sprang to Marrion's eyes.

"Dear lady," she said, taking the outstretched hands and holding their chilliness of age in her warm clasp, "I am not Sacha. I am Paul's daughter!"

Princess Pauloffski drew back and passed her hand over her eyes.

"Excuse me. I forget. I live so much alone and my dead come to see me so often when there is snow. But if you are not Sacha----" She took a step forward and scanned her visitor narrowly. "You say you are Paul's daughter--an English daughter--did he then marry over there? For it is true you are his daughter--even his twin was not more like. Come, sit down, child, and tell me how you come by Paul Pauloffski's face?"

It was almost incredible! Marrion as she obeyed her grandmother's gesture felt inexpressible relief. Here there was no haggling, no questioning. She was taken literally on her face value. It was a haven of rest.

Together they sat on the quaint old settle as if they had known each other for years, while Marrion told her tale. She produced the golden snuff-box, with its glittering monogram, and laid it in the old Princess's lap; but she merely glanced at it. Her chilly old hands were busy detaining the hand that had laid it there--the hand that was still alive.

"Yes, Paul is dead," she murmured, half to herself. "Sacha died first when she was so beautiful, like you. And Paul's wife died, and now his two sons are gone; there is none left but me, and I am very old. And now you come--tell me more, child!"

And Marrion went on with the story. It was like a dream to be sitting there in the streaming sunlight heart to heart as it were with someone of whose very existence she had been unaware but one short half-hour before.

"Was he a commoner or noble?" asked the old princess quickly, when Marrion mentioned her marriage.

"He had no title then," began the latter.

The old fingers tightened their curiously protecting clasp.

"Then you are still Princess Pauloffski! I am glad," was interrupted with satisfaction. "We of this house do not change our names when we marry beneath us, as I did; for, my dear, this, the soil"--she waved her other hand in an all-embracing gesture--"was my father's, and my father's father's. My husband was a good kind man. I loved him--but---- Go on, child."

And Marrion went on.

"Now, God be praised!--God in His High Heaven be praised!" cried the old Princess exultantly. "And you here--braving the cold, spending your life!" She seized a little brazen bell that lay on the table beside her and rang it violently. A very old maid-servant appeared, and was addressed volubly in patois. But that many orders were given Marrion judged by the frequent bob curtsey of the domestic who finally trotted out in great haste.

"Not one word more, darling!" cried the old woman, forgetful of everything save abounding sympathy. "Quick, to the fire! Toast your feet--so! Lean back on the cushions! Make yourself quite comfortable. Remember you have to think of someone besides yourself." She dragged an armchair closer to the hearth with all the strength of youth. She bustled the cushions to shape; she removed Marrion's hat and finally kissed her softly on the forehead with a murmured, "God bless you both!"

It was too much. Marrion dissolved into slow quiet tears. For the first time since Doctor Forsyth had told her why she must go home she felt really that she was blessed amongst women--yea, amongst women like this one!

"But you don't know!" she half sobbed. "You haven't looked to see. I may be an impostor."

"Not with that face, dearie," beamed the old Princess. "Cry on! The tears will warm your heart. It has been cold, I expect, and little ones don't thrive when the heart above them is cold. Ah, here comes Magda with the posset!"

And Marrion drank something hot and spicy and delicious while the mistress discoursed to the old serving-maid and the old serving-maid finally fell at Marrion's feet and positively worshipped her.

It was all so bewildering, so unexpected, that Marrion just lay back and let the slow tears trickle down her cheeks in quiet orderly fashion. The puzzledom, the regrets of the last few months, seemed to vanish. For a while, in stress of these new emotions, she forgot even her grief for Duke.

But as the two women, the old and the young one, sat and talked after the sledge had been sent away, and Marrion had been simply commanded to remain for at least a week to rest, there was enough of grief and to spare in their conversation, besides Marmaduke's death--over which the Princess was vaguely sympathetic--since, though he had been a British soldier, he had, by the decree of Providence, not drawn his sword as an enemy. And Marrion had been as an angel of mercy healing Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics without distinction. Had she not closed the eyes of her own father?

"I knew that he was dead," said the firm old voice, "though he was only reported as missing; for he came back as the children of this old house always do come back to see it once more. Alexis and Danish both came also--they were fine young fellows, and I wept when the news came; but they died as Pauloffskis should die, fighting for the master. And I have wept--dear heart! how I have wept to think that never again would a real son of the real race rule over the barren acres; for, see you, there are no near collaterals. The Pauloffski men die young, fighting, as my sons and grandsons died. But now"--she clasped her hands ecstatically--"now there will be an heir."

"Supposing it is a girl," suggested Marrion, half laughing, half crying.

The old woman swept her hands out in an indignant unconcern.

"What matters it? A child is ever a child! Ever a chip of the old block, ever a fresh root of an old race. We have no Salic law here in Russia. A princess is as a prince; mayhap better for the old acres, as she does not spend so much money!"

Marrion, accustomed to the rigid rules made by men, listened amazed and interested; but indeed every word that fell from Princess Pauloffski's lips seemed to tighten the bond between them.

She had often wondered when she found herself--as she had done so often--at loggerheads with her milieu whether she was like her father. Now she knew that she had inherited even her faults from this strange weird old woman who lived a lonely life amongst the pine forests, who saw dead people and yet ruled her domains with absolute despotism. Marrion had never had a really intimate woman friend before. She found one here, and, as if by magic, all her doubts and fears vanished. There was but one thing she kept to herself, and that was the possible difficulty which might arise in proving the future little Prince or Princess Pauloffski's title, if legal proof of his or her parents' marriage was not forthcoming. But it was only a possible difficulty. For all she knew in this land where women seemed to stand equal with men, a right coming to a child through its mother might be inalienable. She did not know. She did not care to ask. For the time being, she was happy as never before in all her life she had been happy. The ten days' paradise with Duke had not been of this world. But even so it had been restless. The happiness had been felt. Here one did not think, did not feel. One was content.

So she wandered with the old Princess, her grandmother--who, though she was past eighty, still walked like a girl--through the pine woods. She visited the peasants' cottages where, after voluble discoursings, the women always fell at her feet and worshipped her. She came back to frugal meals and quiet evenings, when the Princess would discourse over every subject under the sun; for she was a great reader and brought a shrewd feminine wit to bear on most problems. And the most startling thing about it was that never for one instant did she admit the slightest inferiority due to her sex.

"Men think so," she would say, "but they are wrong. By nature they are hunters and fighters and thinkers. It is the women who manage the affairs. It will be better for the world when this is recognised."

In those days this was rank heresy, and even Marrion hesitated to admit its truth. But the most remarkable thing about her grandmother was the stable youthfulness of her outlook. Nothing seemed to affect it. Death itself made way for her strong personality.

So the days passed to weeks, the weeks to more than a month, and Marrion still lingered. A very different heritage this from the storm-set cliffs, the rich fields of Aberdeenshire. And a different ancestress this from the wild, wicked old man, spinning his spider's-web round his very children.

Should she, after all, go and ask him to let her break her promise for the sake of the heir? Would it not be better to let the heirship of evil slip, and choose the heirship of good?

The question was still undecided when, after many delays, she set foot on English ground again. And then the first thing to meet her eyes in the newspaper was the death of Marmaduke, sixteenth Baron Drummuir. There was a whole column about his many virtues; a vague reference to "sprightly youth" summing up his vices. The article ended thus: "The title descends to the late peer's third son Peter, who, we regret to learn, is in a very delicate state of health. None of the late lord's sons having any issue, the heir presumptive is a distant cousin, etc."

Marrion felt vaguely relieved. Unless Andrew Fraser turned up--and he, she knew, if he saw Marmaduke's child, would move heaven and earth to establish his claim to the title--she was quit of Drummuir. But had she any right to be quit of it? The old arguments for and against came back; she began to worry over them once more, especially when the verdict of the Edinburgh specialist to whom she told her tale with passionate assurances that a child's life was always more valuable than a woman's, came succinctly and to the point.

"In this case, my dear lady, the question does not appear to me to enter. With care I see no reason why both should not survive."

It was something of a shock, for it materialised many doubts, many difficulties.

[XII]

The spring had passed to early summer when Marrion, with her little son in her arms, sat in a sheltered nook among the cliffs on the Aberdeenshire coast, looking northwards over the curved sea-line towards the promontory some fifteen miles away, on which she knew the old castle of Drummuir stood as it had stood for centuries. But she could not see it with her physical eyes, and even in her mental ones it bulked but little.

For the great protective possession of motherhood had overwhelmed her, and her very regret and remembrance of Marmaduke only made her hug her child closer--as his, and hers.

At first when she realised that life spread before both her and the little Marmaduke she had agonised over the thought that by her own act she had deprived him of his birthright; but by degrees she became more content as she persuaded herself that that fateful envelope could scarcely have remained in Marmaduke's despatch-box without his knowledge. Yet he had never mentioned it. If he had repented of the action which at the time he had said made him feel like a scoundrel he could have amended it. And he had not done so. Never, never had he breathed one word to show that he held her, whom he had so tardily learnt to love, as his wife.

And here in her chain of reasoning she always stopped; for she knew--how could she help knowing?--that if he had lived--if--if---- Always that if, and if life had to be lived, it must be set aside. And life had to be lived.

This brought her back to the child in her arms, and she dreamt happily enough of the future.

It was not as if the boy had no home. As long as Princess Pauloffski ruled over the pine woods, the quaint homely farmhouses, and the devoted peasants, little Marmaduke would have more than welcome; for every week brought ecstatic letters from that entrancing personality which had already made such a mark on Marrion's character. In a way she felt that she had never understood her own womanhood until she had met with the all-embracing femininity of the brave, wise, old mind which seemed to hold a grip of the whole world in its very isolation and solitude.

Yes, the child could have no better home; and even when the commanding, lovable figure passed, it might be that he would remain as heir.

So Marrion was in a fever to have the child there, yet at the back of her mind was a vague regret; and she had chosen the little Aberdeenshire fishing village as the place for her convalescence because from it she could see the view of her childhood and girlhood--see right away to Rattray Head and beyond it----? The North Pole!

She was not afraid of being recognised. Fifteen miles in the country effaces all familiarity, and she kept much to herself, taking the child down with her day after day, to some sheltered sandy nook, where in the hot June weather she could sit and dream--rather idly, it must be confessed, for the sheer delight of living to have a living child had absorbed her mind. So the days passed, until for the last time she carried it down to her favourite beach.

The dry warm sand was a perfect cradle for the child. She scraped a little hollow in it at her feet, laid her treasure down, and sat on a boulder beside it, in absolute worship. The waves, always restless on the North Sea, tinkled a lullaby on the rocks hard by.

She was roused by the sound of a footstep. So few folk ever passed that she looked up surprised. Then she gave a glad cry and stood up holding out both hands; for it was Andrew Fraser. He also held out a hand, for one empty sleeve of his coat was pinned to his breast. He came rapidly towards her, seemingly unobservant of the child, till within a few feet of her. Then he stopped dead and stared at what lay at her feet.

"I didna know," he said, brokenly at last. "They didna say---- God, but I'm glad, Marrion! Oh, Marrion, I'm glad!"

Then without waiting to greet her he knelt down for a closer look. "He's a real Drummuir," he went on ecstatically, "and he is Drummuir! Ah," he added, a trifle irrationally, "that the colonel could ha' lived to see little Lord Drummuir!"

Something gripped at Marrion's heart.

"Don't let us speak of that now, Andrew," she said hastily. "I want to know--everything--your poor arm----"

But Andrew for the time being was entranced.

"It's me," he said, "is wanting to know! And how old will he be? And why did the doctor fellow no tell me when he tauld me aboot you?"

It was not easy to beguile him from the subject, but bit by bit Marrion got from him a sparse account of how, he had been a Russian prisoner, how he had lost his arm, had been exchanged as disabled, and in Balaklava had come across Doctor Forsyth, who had given him an address in Edinburgh where he would be sure to hear of Marrion. How it was a doctor fellow who had been too busy to do more than supply him with the name of the village, whither he had come to find----

Here Marrion, recognising that all roads must lead to the one point, took heart of grace and said gently--

"Me and my child. It has made me very happy, Andrew. And I am so glad you found me to-day, for I am going away to-morrow."

Andrew stood up.

"Goin' whaur?" he asked sharply. "Tae Drummuir? An' why are ye not there the now?"

"Because I have no right there, Andrew," she replied, feeling herself tremble, despite the boldness of her words.

"Ye may have nane, woman," he broke in sternly, "but your child has the right to all! Are ye gain' tae steal it frae him? An' it's foolishness tae talk your way; ye ken fine that before God and man ye're the colonel's wife!"

"That may be," she retorted, "but as I told you long ago there is no legal proof of it--and I do not choose--I have settled what I think right, and I can have no interference."

"An' is it what you wish that is tae take the birthright from an innocent wean that canna speak for himself?" burst in Andrew passionately. "I tell ye, Marrion, that neither you nor the colonel--God rest him for a brave gentleman--have any right tae order yon poor scrap o' God's makin'. I tell ye he was born to be Drummuir o' Drummuir, an' Drummuir o' Drummuir he'll be till the last trump!"

He paused, breathless with anger and resentment while Marrion stood speechless, the babe between them lying placidly asleep.

"But Andrew----" she began helplessly.

"But I'll no thole it," he continued, his whole ugly face aflame with an emotion which made it almost beautiful. "See here, Marrion Muir--for that you are--I've lived my life thinkin' ye were abune me, but ye'll be beneath me if ye steal the very name from that poor bairn. But ye sall not do it. I'll awa to Peter Muir and tell him----"

The threat roused her and she turned on him.

"You can do as you like, Andrew; but it will be no use. You can't do anything without me. I wish you would be reasonable and listen! We promised--the colonel and I promised--we both promised--and we promised each other----"

"Ye had na the right tae promise!" he interrupted fiercely. "An' I'll hear nae mair o' your woman's clatter. Yon babe's my master's son an' Lord Drummuir, sae I doff ma cap to him."

Which he did in the stateliest fashion, and then stalked away without another word, leaving Marrion confronted with a host of new difficulties.

She lifted the child up and carried him back to her lodgings, feeling she could do nothing to save the situation. There was little hope of getting Andrew to listen to--no, not to reason, that had long ceased to have any part in the strange catalogue of mistakes--but to listen to what she had to say.

And what had she to say? Her mind began laboriously on the past, counting her own mistakes. Why had she done this? Why had she done that? It was fear that had made her do everything--fear of the old man who sat like a spider in his web, the old man whom his own son had wished her to anger, because he had been throughout the villain of the piece! But would he have been so if she had given him the chance?

"I am sorry the little chap died; he would have been game."

The memory of those parting words stung her to the quick. What a fool she had been I Why had she not gone at once to Lord Drummuir and told him the truth? She had meant to do so, but she had been too late--too late! Well, there was no use crying over spilt milk.

So she sat going over and over the whole thing again, and yet again, until late in the evening the little lassie of the lodgings brought her a message that a man who was lying at Mistress McMurdo's was feelin' ill and would like to see her just for a little. The child being asleep she slipped over to the cottage to find Andrew Fraser once more a prey to his old enemy, tropical fever--a quaint, insistent enemy which, after lying low for years, will seize advantage of any disturbance of mind or body to reassert itself.

So there he was, as she had seen him before, trembling and shaking, with a glitter in his eyes and a flush on his face, lying huddled up under his military cloak on the sofa. Once again he slipped his feet apologetically to the ground as he saw her and essayed to stand straight--a pathetic sight, his body weak, his mind strong--so strong!

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, with studied ceremony, "if I, was over-heated the day, for you're my master's wife. But it's no oorsels, ye see. It's just Providence, an' we daurna play Providence. It's dangerous work. Sae I couldna help it, ma'am. The wean's Drummuir o' Drummuir----"

And there he was going over the old ground again and again.

She could but try to soothe him and leave him, knowing in her heart of hearts that nothing she could say would ever move him one hair's-breadth from what he thought right.

She spent a restless night; she could scarcely do otherwise.

"Are you gaun to steal the very name frae the puir bairn?" was sufficient to keep her awake. Once more she found herself in a maelstrom of doubt. Wearied out, the first blink of dawn rising clear and lucent over the dark sea seemed to her a godsend. She crept out of her bed leaving the child asleep, and, dressing herself, wrapped a cloak about her, and so seating herself on a rock at the very edge of the cliff within earshot of the cottage where she lodged, set herself once more to watch the peaceful coming of light, which had so often brought her wisdom.

So had it looked that dawning when she and Duke--ah! always, always she and Duke! How curiously Fate had joined them. Yet she had disregarded Fate's handiwork even while she had told herself she had been aiding it.

Far over in the east the light was growing. So it had grown that morning when she and Duke swam----

She seemed to feel his arm on her shoulders, the touch of her arm on his neck, the cold kiss of the bitter sea stinging soul and body to new joyous life. She saw his happy face alight with laughter.

"Look! Isn't it worth it?"

Yes, it had been worth it, well worth it! And even as on that distant June morning while she looked, the restless dark horizon of the sea seemed to melt and soften, and the path of radiant gold sent by the first ray of the rising sun seemed to touch her feet and bring her answer--

Yes, life was well worth it indeed!

Who was she to cavil at what Fate had done? Who was she to worry over what she thought she had done? Comprehension came to her, she saw a clear and ordered sequence in which even her mistakes bore their fitting fruit. Life seemed to hold no cares, no errors, no animosities.

What was it Duke had said about taking too much wine that night?

"I shan't do it again, but I shouldn't have had this perfectly stunning time if I hadn't, should I?"

So it was in her life. She had had joy through her mistakes. She and her Love had been alone in the Great Sea of Time battling with the waves as best they could.

Nothing else mattered. They might be waifs on that sea, but they were together.

She slipped to her knees and watched the sun rise. Over how many mistakes, how many wasted minutes and opportunities and lives!

Wasted? No--not wasted. Even mistakes had their appointed place. Even the old man who had made the castle over yonder a spider's-web of evil was part of the Great Plan.

Slowly the light grew. The cottages below in the tiny fishing village began to send up thin blue threads of smoke. The figure of a man or a woman began to pass along the narrow causeway. And someone came up the steps towards her cottage, then paused, seeing her.

"Ye'll be Mistress Marsden likely," he said, "for I've no seen ye before. There's a saxpence tae pay, but ye can gie it to the lassie for me till I come back."

The postman handed her a letter as he spoke and went on his way, for his round was a long one.

She looked at the envelope curiously. The original address was almost undecipherable, being defaced with innumerable new ones, or brief notices, "Gone away;" "Try so and so."

Still the name was hers. A bill likely, sent to her old London address and forwarded to the Crimea and back again. Twice, so it seemed to her as she tried to decipher the postmarks.

Then she opened it, noting with a vague spasm of memory that a curious embossed presentment of foxhounds in full cry ran right across the flap. Where had she seen that device before?

Surely on some envelope that Marmaduke--

The writing too was vaguely familiar. The writing of a person with brains, but strangely shaky and irregular:

"Dear Madam,

"Since my son Marmaduke has chosen to deprive me of the possibility of an heir by dying--not even on the field of battle--out at Varna, I return the enclosed. I don't know why I kept it. To have a hold over the young man at bottom, I expect. Perhaps for other reasons. One doesn't often meet women of your description. Anyhow, I haven't.

"You can now claim your position and dowry, which my d----d cousin can very well afford to pay.

"Besides, you are worth providing for; more, at any rate than my Lady and Penelope, and I have done that. So I die quits; except for my son Peter. Why didn't he get cholera instead of Marmaduke? I could have spared him.

"Yours,

"Drummuir."

The enclosure was the copy of the marriage lines which she thought she had seen the old lord in the act of destroying as she had left the room.

Yes, across the middle fold the beginning of a tear slit the paper.

She sat with the letter in her hand until the cry of a child made her rise hastily and go to her task of motherhood.

[L'ENVOI]

"And you mean to say," said Peter Muir, when he had heard her tale, "that knowing this imp," he looked at the child she carried, "who is to turn me out, was on the way you burnt that paper found in Marmaduke's despatch-box? I give up. Thank God one does not often meet women of your description!"

But as he spoke he was looking in the child's face.

"He will be the image of his father," he remarked at last, "and, dash it all! but I am glad, yes, glad he's here!" Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he turned away. "It will be a sell for the Jews, I'm afraid, though it serves the horse-leeches very well right!"

"It need not be a sell at all," replied Marrion. "The child shall have the title--he must have that--but not one penny of the money shall he take till the debts are paid, Mr. Peter! I know the law. I have studied it to find out where I stand; and you are the boy's natural guardian. I"--she spoke bitterly--"am only the mother. I have no say. But I am going to buy freedom from you. Live here--promise me that--use the monies as your own. Keep the old place up for the child; but I will take him for myself. I will bring him up away from the evil traditions of this old house, and when he comes back to it, a man grown, he will be different--even from his father--even, I hope, from me!"

So she said then, but as the years passed little Lord Drummuir came more than once to visit his invalid uncle, for Peter, away from the excitements of town life, defied the doctors for a time. And from the Carpathian pine woods the little lad travelled more than once to a solitary cairn on the Balkan hills by the side of which Andrew Fraser--who never ceased rejoicing that his plain speaking had shown Marrion the wickedness of stealing the bairn's name--would tell him marvellous tales of the dead colonel, his father, and of his prowess in every way.

The honest fellow had but one care. The double title was the fly in the honey-pot, and when the old Princess would ask, "Where is Prince Pauloffski?" Andrew would invariably reply: "Lord Drummuir is waiting on his mother."

Thus the game of life went on and it was well worth it.

But perhaps, as Marrion often told herself, the honours lay with one who in that life had been the curse of his family.

---

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD ENGLAND