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.