"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.