The American missionary, Mr. Cole, used to come and sit with me sometimes. I had known him before I was ill, and admired his character greatly. He seemed to me to be a very fine type of man and a true Christian. In Erzeroum at that time the healing of souls was attended with as much danger as the healing of bodies, and there were martyrs in both causes. Mr. Cole lost one of his children from typhus, and the bright, winning, and enthusiastic young American lady who was working as a missionary in conjunction with him and Mrs. Cole also laid down her life in the noble service in which she had engaged.
During the day, while Denniston was away at the hospital fighting a desperate single-handed battle against wounds and disease of every kind, we patients at home had many kindly visitors. Morisot and Williams got over the worst of the illness sooner than I did; but for some time we all required watching.
I am sorry to say that during my illness I grievously erred against good taste, and quite forgot the esteem and regard which I venture to believe I had always hitherto shown towards ladies. The fact of the matter was that I had seen so few ladies in the past eighteen months that the sight of them irritated and annoyed my disordered brain exceedingly. So it came about that, when two sweet-faced French nuns, who had heard from Dr. Denniston of his desperate need for nurses, called in and visited me, I viewed their presence with the profoundest suspicion and distrust. I had been working for so long among great, strong, hairy-faced Turks that my delirious imagination failed to recognize these two young nuns, with their rustling skirts and their soft white hands, as fellow creatures at all, and I expressed such terror and alarm at their appearance that the poor things were obliged to fly. In the Ingoldsby Legends there is a picture of François Xavier Auguste, the gay mousquetaire, sitting up in bed in an attitude of horror, while on chairs at each side of his pillow sit duplicate images of Sister Thérèse. I must have looked very much like that when the well meaning nuns came in to sit by me, and found my language and demeanour so terrifying that they had to decamp at once, leaving me to the less exciting ministrations of a dear old Capuchin monk called Father Basilio, who was sent to take their place. He used to sit up with me in the long night watches and humour all my fancies, kindly old soul that he was; but I think he never expected that I would pull through.
Though young in years, I was a veteran as far as horrors were concerned, and I can truthfully say that I was absolutely without fear of death. Possibly it was this that saved me, for I remember telling Denniston at the worst period of my illness that he need have no fear on my account, for I had not the slightest intention of "pegging out."
I was very bad for about twelve days, and the events of that time of illness impressed themselves on my brain in the vaguest and most indistinct manner. Still, it is interesting from the scientific point of view to note that impressions can be made even upon a semi-comatose brain which are sufficiently strong to be of subsequent use. The negatives on the convolutions of the brain were not very sharply outlined; but the will, like a skilful photographer, could retouch them afterwards until they made a perfect picture. This scientific fact I was able to demonstrate myself, to the great confusion of our Armenian dragoman Vachin.
It happened this way. When I recovered from the fever, I was helping Denniston to make an inventory of poor Pinkerton's personal effects, so that we could send them to his relatives, when we made the unpleasant discovery that a sum of £20 which he had in his possession was missing. Pinkerton used to carry the money in Turkish liras in the pocket of his trousers; and as I had been shifted into his room after his death because it was larger and airier than my own, his trousers were hanging on a nail on the wall right opposite my bed. We examined the pockets, but they were empty.
Then I began to think back and to think hard. Gradually there appeared before the eye of my mind the picture of a shadowy, misty, unsubstantial figure, that wobbled grievously from side to side as it walked, and seemed to turn round and round with the room, the bed, the chair, and the window, which all swung and oscillated like the engines of the little Messageries steamer that brought us up to Trebizond. What on earth was the captain of the Messageries steamer going to do! and how the little tub was rolling, to be sure! Was it the captain, though, or some one else? I fastened all the will power of my brain, healthy once more, upon the misty shadow cast upon its disordered surface during illness. I saw the scene again, more distinctly now, and noted that the wobbling figure approached the wall exactly at the spot where the trousers hung on the nail opposite my bed. The engines seemed to be slowing down, little by little the room ceased to revolve, and at last the figure turned round towards my bed, and I saw the face. It was not the captain of the steamer, but it was Vachin, our dragoman, and he was deliberately counting out money from poor Pinkerton's trousers pocket.
All this came back to me with greater clearness the longer I thought over it; and at last I felt morally certain that Vachin was the thief, and that he had cynically taken the money before my eyes, knowing that I was delirious, and confident that I would never recover to bear witness against him.
We taxed the Armenian with the theft; and when I told him that it was no use denying it, for I had seen him take the money, he confessed his guilt. A short consultation between Denniston and myself was followed by the despatch of a note to Hakki Bey, the civil governor; and as a punishment for misdeeds in the past and an incentive to virtue in the future, Vachin was consigned to the Erzeroum general prison pending the pleasure of the governor. We got back the £20 from him before he went, and for three weeks we left him in a place, from which the Black Hole of Calcutta would have been a pleasant change, to meditate upon the instability of human happiness. We sent him some blankets and also food at intervals, besides going up occasionally to see how he was getting on and whether he was truly repentant. The condition of the unfortunate wretch, however, was so deplorable, and the interior of that prison, with its gangs of half-frozen, half-starved prisoners fighting fiercely among themselves for the scanty dole of raw grain and old rags that were thrown among them by the gaolers, was so distressing, that we relented, and procured a release for our thievish dragoman from Hakki Bey. On the night that he was discharged from prison he deserted to the Russians, and we never saw him again. And so farewell to Vachin.