Chapter VII · SCUTARI.

In the reference to Cyril's letters, we have somewhat anticipated a portion of his story.

The steam frigate on board of which he had been conveyed, ran straight for Scutari with her freight of sufferers, whose number lessened every hour, as the mortally wounded, or those who were totally exhausted by loss of blood, expired, and were shot over to leeward, tied up in a blanket, or, more simply still, in their grey great-coats. Cyril endured great agony from his principal wound, together with an extreme difficulty of respiration, and even when awake he lay as one in a kind of dream, in the cabin generously resigned to his use by an officer of the ship. At times, he seemed still to hear the din of battle in his cars; the sharp roar of the musketry, the booming of the artillery, the crash of exploding shells and rockets, the demon-like yells of the Russians, and the tumultuous cheering of our own troops as they closed in upon them, and the cries of the wounded, as they rolled, in their agony, and tore up the grass with their fingers. But this was only the result of an overheated fancy, for the only sound he heard was the rush of the shining waves as they passed the open gun-port while the frigate sped on her way.

On the third day after the battle he was very languid and weak, yet his listless eyes could see, through the gun-port, that land was in sight. Beautiful green hills were there, tall minarets of snowy whiteness, great round leaden domes; and, recognising Scutari as they neared it, he closed his eyes wearily.

After a time, he was sensible of being lifted on a stretcher tenderly and kindly, by the hands of sailors, and found himself in the open air and on a quay, with many more of the wounded, surrounded by a staring crowd of picturesque-looking Greeks, in scarlet fezzes, blue breeches, and laced jackets; stolid looking Turks, with great turbans; swarthy Arabs, Negro slaves, and filthy Jews, with their sly, gleaming eyes and long gaberdines; all of whom the Marine escort put back with their bayonets, and without much ceremony. Through this motley mob he was conveyed, past the magnificent pile of buildings which an Italian architect constructed as a barrack for the Turkish troops (but which was then full of our own convalescents), to the hospital, which was filling fast with wounded, as ship after ship arrived from the shore of the Alma with her human cargo, in the shape of mangled, emaciated, moaning, and quivering unfortunates, in uniforms that became rags, sodden and saturated with mud and gore; and they were laid side by side in the wards, pell mell, many of them on the bare floor, where, through want of sufficient attendance, the atmosphere soon became tainted with the horrid odour of undried blood; causing the shocked onlooker to long for the day—if it will ever come—when the shedding of it should cease, and "when war shall be no more."

The name and rank of each man, together with the number of his regiment, were asked, as the patients were borne in. Some could reply to all that was required of them; but many a poor fellow was past utterance, and could only gaze with listless and lack-lustre eyes at the questioner, who would enter him in the hospital books as "a private of the Seventh Foot," "corporal, Twenty-third Fusileers," or the "Guards," or "Cameron Highlanders," and so forth.

Thus they were carried in, in too many instances to die unnamed and unknown, by their fate recalling the touching lines that appeared in a periodical:—

Cyril's room was in a lofty portion of the hospital, and, from a window which was near his bed, he could see the blue Bosphorus sweeping by the base of the dark-green mountains of Scutari, and all the far-famed Golden Horn—seeming such indeed, for the waters round, it were tinted with all the splendour of the Eastern sun. And, while thinking sadly of the slaughter that had fallen upon his regiment, and of the faces he never more should see, his eyes gazed with a species of vacant wonder on Constantinople, which seemed like a cluster of fairy cities beside the strait, each a very wilderness of shining domes, painted cupolas, gilded and red-tiled kiosks, tall minarets, and marble fountains, the snow-white palace of the Sultan towering over all; the background, dark cypresses and hills, and, in the middle distance, a forest of masts, each bearing a flag, for the waters of the Bosphorus were full of merchant ships, war-steamers, swift caiques that cleft them as if instinct with life, and shoals of glittering dolphins surging past from wave to wave.

For a time he was tormented by the groans and cries of an unfortunate young Chasseur d'Afrique, who, by some mistake, had been brought away with our wounded, and who shared his room. The left shoulder of this unhappy creature had been shattered by a large grape-shot, and the wound was perfectly incurable; but life was wonderfully tenacious within him. On the second day his ravings ceased, and turned to prayer:—

"Sainte Vièrge, priez pour moi—pour moi!" he would say imploringly, and then murmur softly, with quivering lips and tearful eyes, "Ma Mère—O, ma Mère!" in that touching and childlike spirit of devotion which the French soldier has peculiarly for his mother.

On waking one morning, Cyril found that he was alone; for the poor Chasseur had been taken to his last home, near those solemn cypresses which cast their shadows on that city of tombs, outside the walls of Scutari—the seven miles of cemetery where the followers of the Prophet lie.

For many days Cyril Wedderburn hovered between life and death, while patients poured into the hospital so fast, that the surgeons and nurses had more work on their hands than they could attend to. There was a perpetual and offensive odour of poultices, bouillon, preserved-meats, and jellies about the place, as they were carried to and fro; while the rending of the shirts and sheets of the dead into bandages for the living, together with the manufacture of cushions and pillows for limbs that had undergone amputation, went briskly forward in the passages and yard without.

A night of restlessness and weariness—with its occasional waking fits, during which, to the eye of the sick or ailing, a kind of phantasmagoria peoples the darkness, strange faces come of it, and fancy fills the air with odd sounds—was passing slowly away. Dawn stole into Cyril's room. The Bosphorus and all the domes and windows of Constantinople were beginning to glitter in light, as the sun rose above the hills of Scutari; and like many others in that abode of suffering, Cyril woke with a sigh, to think that another weary day of pain and inertia was before him. So faint and weak had he become, that there were times when he wished to die, and would mutter, as he lay with closed eyes—

"If I have not done much good in the world, I have not done much harm, and now I could pass peacefully away."

He was too dimsighted by the loss of blood to be able to read, even had he been supplied with books, and thus his days were days of utter weariness.

On this morning his throat was parched, and he called feebly to the soldier who usually attended him for water; but the soldier—one of the Black Watch, whose left hand had been shattered by a canister-shot—did not reply, so Cyril sighed and wearily closed his eyes again.

Something like a tear fell on his face, and starting, he looked up, but only to shrink back with emotions of alarm and fear, so he covered his pale face with his thin hands.

"Cyril," said a voice, and a sob mingled with his name. Then he trembled, for it sounded like a voice that once had power to thrill his heart to its inmost core.

Was it all a dream, or was he going mad? Had the excitement of the battle, or the crash of the bullet as it traversed his body, given his brain a shock so rude, that sense and imagination wandered now?

No! she on whose shoulder his aching head reclined, whose hand caressed his now tangled hair, whose tear had fallen on his cheek, and whose loving, yet deep and thoughtful eyes seemed to speak of a strange future, and of a sorrowful, it might be awful, past, was—Mary Lennox.

Cyril had been dreaming of his mother, and it had seemed as if her voice—the one he loved most and best in boyhood—was murmuring in his ear, calling him back to life; and now it was the voice of Mary, and her soft earnest face, with a mingled expression of tenderness and agony, was turned towards his own.

She was very pale, rather emaciated, and dressed in a plain black costume, somewhat like that of a Sister of Charity, but without a hood.

"You here, Mary—here in Scutari—in this frightful hospital, and attending me? Oh, explain this riddle, or I shall go mad—speak to me—place your hands in mine!" said he, huskily, in a low and imploring voice, as if he feared she would melt into thin air. But she answered, calmly—

"I arrived here, Cyril, three days ago from London, with Miss Nightingale and the staff of ladies who have come to nurse the wounded. Oh, Cyril Wedderburn, what was my emotion—my horror—when I learned that you were here!"

"Mary, it is frightful this, such work—such scenes—you will perish. Scenes of utter horror and affright! What madness brought you here?"

"It was no madness, but the prompting of my own heart, Cyril—a light that came to me from Heaven above, and the hope that I might be nearer—you; and now, now, oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed, while placing her interlaced fingers on her forehead, and looking wildly upward; "after all the sufferings, the terrors, and sorrow I have undergone; after all the most unmerited shame that was put upon me; after enduring all the emotions of love, desertion, and despair, have I met you, but to see you thus—dying perhaps?"

That Mary should have accompanied Miss Florence Nightingale—a young lady of good family, whose benevolent occupations fully qualified her for that remarkable and romantic undertaking, which made her and her trained nurses the idols of our soldiers, whose sick-beds they soothed, and whose pains and anxieties they did so much to console—fully explained to Cyril the reason of her sudden and most unexpected appearance in the Hospital of Scutari; but we leave their subsequent conversation to explain how she escaped the death to which, when last we saw her, she was hastening.

Miss Nightingale and her ladies were as ministering angels in the terrible wards of that hospital; and to the death-drowsy ear of many a wounded and sinking soldier there, how sweetly came the prayers and words of comfort they uttered in his native tongue.