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.