Hope was all but dead in the woman, when upon a sultry summer evening, the white gate clashed behind a tall, thin, ragged, red-haired and bearded man—and a shabby woman carrying a baby—wrapped in the folds of a faded plaid shawl. As they stood faltering, doubtful of their reception, the heart of Sarah leapt within her faded wincey bodice, and the ice of her frozen nature broke up.
Always of formal gait and scanty gesture, there was now something eloquent, free, and almost noble in the woman’s action. She had no words—she was bankrupt of a single text to fit the occasion. But she set back the half-doors, and knelt down upon the worn stone threshold. Bowing her head, she crossed her thin arms upon her aching bosom, then spread them open wide, and waited so.
“Oh! my dear son, whom I have ill-used; and cast out and denied the right of heritage. Come, take your own, and forgive me, my son!—my son! Oh! my dear daughter, whom I have wronged so cruelly—try—try to pardon me! Teach your child to think of me forgivingly. For I have sinned, and the Lord has punished me with rods and scourges. Yet He must have relented towards me—for He has sent you home!”
In words like these the silent action and the mute gesture spoke to the returned wanderers. So they lifted Sarah up, and kissed her; and she wept and kissed them and their child, and was comforted. And they went into the house together. And with them Happiness, and in the end Prosperity, came back to dwell at Upper Clays Farm.
C
The three hospital-ships slowly rounded the promontory. Their anchors fell with a sudden plunge. The bugles sounded, the gangways opened, the ladders fell—the barges of the Turkish hospital-hulk below the Point of the Seraglio, hurried, with a host of other craft, to receive their load of wretchedness. No surf beat on the rotten planks and shifting stones of the landing-place, and yet the process of disembarkation was lengthy and slow.
Day waned, the sickly haze fell dead, and the atmosphere grew denser. A round, red sun, hanging over Constantinople, stared through the dark blue fog malevolently, like some ogre’s solitary eye. Presently by the light of flaming torches the endless procession of litters—carried by English and French sailors, Turkish gendarmerie, porters of the markets, and soldiers of the militia regiments of Artillery that had been recalled from Tripoli to man the batteries and garrison the forts of the Bosphorus—moved over the crazy planks of the landing-quay, and climbed the steep paved road that led to the great yellow stone Barrack Hospital, between the crowds of sightseers of all nations that walled them in on either side.
For men and women could not tear themselves away from the awful fascination of the spectacle, as scourged and thorn-crowned England staggered, bleeding, up her Hill of Calvary—even as it had been prophesied to Prince Gortschakoff by the Tsar, his master—who was so soon to lie a-dying on his sack of leather stuffed with hay.
There was one woman among the many who held to blackened hands that hung over the sides of litters, or staggered upwards, aiding some tottering cripple’s steps with the little strength they had.... You saw her as a lean, tanned, big-boned creature, with ropes of coarse black hair tumbling down over the tatters of a cavalryman’s cloak. Passionately she resisted some sailors who shouted at her—gesticulating and crying herrings on them.... All the litters were in use, they said. Her man was no worse off than hundreds! Let him bide by the roadside with the others, dead and living, who lay there waiting for bearers! What call had a common soger to be treated any better than the rest?