O fondest memories! come and go, Shine on sad times which are no more, As sunbeams gladden waters of snow, As wavelets kiss a barren shore: And light with love and tenderness The happy days which still are ours; Whose influence, rich in April showers, Casts round us love and tenderness.
The clatter of spurs and scabbards, and the firmer tread of feet than one usually hears among the slipshod or slippered Moslems, next forenoon, announced the arrival of my friends, and most welcome to me was the appearance of Colonel Beverley, Studhome, Wilford, and Jocelyn of ours, all fearless of cholera, as they came through the verandah of the kiosk where I lay; and there, too, lingering without, I saw my faithful follower, Pitblado.
They were all in full uniform and accoutred, for it was the day of a great review; and all bowed with politeness to the sister of charity, who immediately withdrew to the shadow of the verandah.
"I rejoice to see you, my dear boy," said the colonel; "we had all given you up as lost to us and to the regiment."
"Lost, colonel?" I repeated.
"Faith, did we, Newton," said Studhome. "We concluded that you had been waylaid—cut off in the flower of your youth and day-dawn of ambition, as the novels have it—by some Bulgarian footpads or rascally Bashi Bazooks, for I presume you know that no one can go beyond the advanced posts with safety without a revolver."
"A rumour reached us of a British cavalry officer being conveyed seriously ill to the house of an Armenian gentleman," resumed Beverley. "We strongly suspected that you were the person, and the presumption became a certainty when yesterday this young lady brought your card to my tent at the cavalry camp."
"She is a good little saint," said I, with enthusiasm.
"And so, Norcliff, you have actually had cholera—that foul pest which is destroying our noble army piece-meal?"
"I am recovering, as you see; but pray don't linger here, colonel. There is danger by my side."
"Norcliff, the air we breathe is full of cholera," said Beverley, impatiently twisting his grizzled moustache; "our poor fellows are dying of it like sheep with the rot!"
"If the Emperor of Russia had planned the whole affair himself, he could not have taken better measures to weaken and decimate us than this useless camp at Varna."
"You are right, Studhome—to decimate us before the war begins," added Jocelyn.
"When do we take the field, colonel?"
"No one knows."
"Then how long are we to remain here?"
"No one can tell. Satisfactory, isn't it? In fact, no one knows anything."
"Except," said Studhome, "that we are giving the Russians plenty of time to prepare a hot reception for us, if we venture to seek 'the bubble reputation' in the Crimea—or military fame, which, as some one says, consists of 'a few orders on a tight uniform.'"
"How far am I from the camp, colonel?"
"About five miles."
"Five miles!" I exclaimed, "Then you, my poor friend, Sister Archange, actually walked for me ten miles under a broiling sun yesterday?"
"Yes, monsieur le capitaine," she replied; "and happy would I have been could I have returned with what you wished for."
"How sorry I am! How can I ever repay, ever apologize, for the amount of trouble I have given you?"
"Apologies are not to be thought of," said she, quietly; "and as for repayment, we do not look for that—here, at least."
She smiled, and looked very beautiful. Twirling his carefully-bandolined moustache, Jocelyn, who had been observing her admiringly, was about to address her in, perhaps, rather a heedless way, when Beverley said to him pointedly—
"Those French sisters of charity are the admiration of all the troops. Even the stupid Turks adore them, and are bewildered by a devotion and purity of purpose which their sensual souls cannot understand. Mademoiselle, we have no language to describe what we owe to your order."
The sister of charity gave the colonel a pleasant smile, and a bow full of grace and good humour.
"Our visit," said he, "is necessarily a hurried one. We are all in full puff, as you may see, Norcliff, for this afternoon the cavalry division is to be reviewed before Omar Pasha and Marshal St. Arnaud."
"Hence my Lord Lucan is most anxious that each and all should appear in his best bib and tucker," added Studhome.
After they were gone, I turned again to thank the gentle sister of charity for the journey she had made, on a hot and breathless day, through a camp of more than eighty thousand foreign troops, to serve me.
She only gave me one of her pleasant smiles, and; taking the miniature of Louisa from the tripod table, said in a low voice, "Is this the lady from whom you expect letters?"
"Yes."
She shook her head sadly, as if her survey of the tiny portrait had not proved satisfactory.
"Why do you look thus, ma soeur? What do you see?"
"Much of dangerous beauty; but more of pride, of caution, tact, and cold decision. The eyebrows nearly meet—I don't like that. The eyes are lovely; but—but——"
"What?" I asked, almost imperiously.
"I dare not say it. I may be guilty of the sin of detraction."
"Nay, speak, I beg of you. The eyes are lovely, you say, but——"
"Have an untruthful expression."
"Ah, good heavens, don't say so!"
My heart sank as she spoke, and I sighed deeply.
"I have seen such eyes and brows once before, and I remember the sorrow they wrought."
The paragraph which I had read in the London morning paper, on board the Ganges, in the harbour of Valetta—that fulsome paragraph, at which Berkeley had smiled so complacently and covertly—came to my memory word for word now. Was it possible that the journal was true, and Louisa false? After an uncomfortable pause, I related to the sister the strange episode which occurred at the house of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig.
"Magique!" she exclaimed, while her large eyes became larger still, and she crossed herself three several times with great earnestness. "O Sainte Dame! you tried the art of the great fiend, did you?"
"Who—I? Not at all! How could I? Don't imagine anything so absurd. The man is only a trickster, like Houdin or Herr Frickel."
But she seemed so horrified at me, and "the art that none may name," that I was fain to explain that the whole affair originated in the suggestion of Studhome, and some of the officers of the 2nd Zouaves, in a moment of idleness.
"I can tell you many a tale of the wickedness of having recourse to magic, and the retribution which falls on those who do so," said she. "Have you ever read the writings of the fathers?"
"No, I regret exceedingly," I was beginning, when I could not help laughing at her conceiving such a course of reading palatable to a young cavalry officer. Even the pundits who "go in" for cramming, that they may have the magical letters "P.S.C."[*] after their names in the "Army List," do not go that length.
[*] Passed (final examination) at the Staff College,
"Have you ever heard of St. Jerome?" she asked, gravely.
"I think so, ma soeur."
"Well, I shall tell you a tale he records concerning magic, and one who resorted thereto. Once upon a time in France, your odious Abd-el-Rasig would have been burned alive, for there can be no doubt that, like those of the Egyptian magicians of old, his operations are conducted with infernal agency. Can the accounts we hear of those magicians from Moses admit of any other construction?"
"Of course not, though I can't for the life of me see what you are driving at."
"If ever you see him again, mon frère, make the sign of the cross, and then you will see how he will shrink and whine, like Mephistopheles in the opera, for it is a sign that always sends the thoughts heavenward. We are told that, if St. Ephrem saw a little bird fly, he always remembered that, with pinions outspread, it made the sign of the cross as it soared towards heaven; but that when it folded those wings the holy sign was marred, and the poor bird fell at once, grovelling and fluttering, on the earth."
"Well, ma soeur; but the story and St. Jerome?"
"Pardon me, I had forgotten. He tells, in his life of St. Hilarion the Hermit—ah, you never heard of him either—that a gay young man of the town of Gaza, in Syria, fell deeply in love with a young lady, whom he used to see occasionally in those beautiful gardens of tamarisks, figs, and olives for which the place is still so famous; but she was pious, devoted to Heaven and to religion, and, consequently, shunned him—a course which only added the stings of jealousy and attraction to the passion which she had inspired.
"His glances, his tender whispers, his presents, and professions she treated with coldness; his attempted caresses she repulsed with anger and disdain, till, finding all his attempts baffled and ineffectual, in a fit of rage and despair he went to Memphis, which was then the residence of many eminent magicians, all reputed to possess wonderful power.
"There he remained a whole year, studying the dark mysteries under the tutelage of the most learned, until he deemed himself sufficiently instructed; and, exulting in his unholy knowledge, acquired chiefly among the graves which still lie to the south and westward of Memphis, and where one may walk for miles and miles amid bones and fragments of crumbling mummies, he returned to Gaza, confident that now he could bend the inflexible beauty to his will.
"Beneath the marble peristyle of her father's house he contrived to lodge at midnight a plate of brass, whereon he had engraved a potent spell. Hence, the first time she passed over it a wondrous illness seized her! She became furious, says St. Jerome; she tore her glorious hair, she gnashed her teeth, and raved over the name and image of the very youth whom she had so repeatedly driven from her presence in despair by her coldness and hauteur.
"In sorrow and terror her parents conducted her to the hermitage of St. Hilarion; and then, when the holy hands of the old man crossed her, the devil that was within her began to howl, and to confess the truth.
"'I have suffered violence!' he exclaimed, speaking with her tongue, to the fear of all.
"St. Hilarion took a branch of blessed palm, and, having dipped it in holy water as an esperges, threw the sparkling drops profusely over her, on which the devil exclaimed again—
"'I have been forced here against my inclination! Alas! these drops are as freezing ice! Oh, how happy I was at Memphis among the tombs of the dead! Oh! the pains, the tortures I suffer!'
"Then the hermit commanded him to come forth; but the devil told him that he was detained by a brazen spell beneath the peristyle of the maiden's house.
"So cautious was the saint, however, that he would not permit the magic figures to be searched for till he had released the virgin, for fear he should seem to have intercourse with incantations for the performance of a cure, or to have believed that a devil could ever speak truth. He observed that demons are always liars, and cunning only to deceive."
"So the damsel was released?" said I, who had listened with some amusement to the story, which was told me with implicit faith in its veracity.
"Yes; but the devil, ere he went back to Memphis, paid a terrible visit to his first summoner; for the young man was found in the garden of olives, strangled, with the marks of talons in his throat. So, mon ami, never again have recourse to such persons as Abd-el-Rasig. Promise this to your little sister, Archange!"
"I may well promise you that, or anything else you ask," said I, charmed by her winning manner. "How sweetly your name sounds when pronounced by yourself."
"Do you really think so?" she asked, while her dark eyebrows arched up. "My godfather named me Archange, that I might be under the protection of the archangels. You comprehend me, monsieur? When I joined the order of the soeurs de la charité for my noviciate in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, to share with the Sisters of St. Martha the care of the sick in the hospitals of Paris, they saw no reason to change it; and hence I am still, as I was before—before I thought of being a sister of charity—Archange."
To a sick man's ear, there was a soothing charm in the girl's voice and its intonation. Then her broken English, her earnestness, truthfulness, and intense faith in all the little religious legends and anecdotes with which she amused us, were all fascinating, and there came a time when I missed her, and then sorely. Add to all these that, in the girl's beautiful but colourless face, there was an expression singularly pure, noble, and frank, lofty, and at times sublime. I was very curious to know her surname, and the reason why she had adopted a life of such privation and peril as that of a Sister of Charity—an order so severe, and whose duties were a ceaseless round of privation and peril. Without being uncourteously curious, I knew not how to approach the subject; but next day, after Jack Studhome and Fred Wilford (who rode over from the camp) had retired, she imparted the little story of her past life of her own accord, and the circumstance came about very simply, through a mere remark of mine. The mail steamer had come in from Constantinople, but Studhome had no letter for me.
"Ah, ma soeur Archange, I begin to be torn by jealousy," said I.
"Why?" she asked, gently.
"I cannot say why, as the only man in England I have reason to fear is a creature so contemptible."
"Then wherefore give way to a weakness so odious and so tempting?"
"Tempting?" I repeated.
"Yes; I mean tempting to crime."
"How strangely you speak!"
"But truly," she replied, sadly.
"I do not understand——"
"I can tell you a horrible episode," she began, impetuously; "but no, 'tis better forgotten—forgotten, if possible, than to recollect it now, in all its sad details," she added, after a pause.
"Why?"
"You have unbosomed yourself to me, and have told to me your only sorrow; why should I conceal mine? or why be less communicative to you? Well, I shall tell you why I—for the sake of others, rather than even for my own soul's welfare—dedicated myself to God and the order of charity. By jealousy, and the revenge it inspired, I lost a brother whom I idolized, and two friends whom I loved dearly; and, monsieur, it all happened thus."
After a short pause, with her long dark lashes cast down, and her little white hands folded on her knees, she told me the following story:—"My father, M. Marie Anatole Chaverondier, resided in a little antique château among the mountains of Beaujolais, where we had a property which, though small, is fertile, and in some places is covered with fine old wood. Our château is very ancient, for it had anciently been a hunting-seat of the illustrious family of Beaujeu, who gave their name to all that district; and thus we have rooms that many a time were honoured by the presence of the Great Constable and the Dukes of Bourbon.
"I can, in fancy, see that dear old château now, with its round turrets, its gilded vanes, and white façade, rising above the green woodlands, with the blue Saône flowing in front under an ancient bridge, the central arch of which had been blown up in the wars of the old revolution, but was now partly repaired by logs of oak, that were half-hidden by luxuriant ivy, and beautiful red and white roses. Ah!" she exclaimed, while her splendid eyes became suffused with tears, "shall I ever again see the old Château de Chaverondier?
"My mother was dead. My father—a gentleman of the ancien régime, a strict legitimist, or adherent of the old monarchy, and a worshipper in secret of Henri V.—resided there in seclusion with his family, which consisted of myself, my brother Claude, and three or four servants; and, save our tutor, who was the old curé of the neighbouring village, or monsieur le maire of Beaujeu, we had few or no visitors; and our time glided away amid quiet pleasures, but with no sorrow, till Claude, a tall and handsome youth, left us for the military school of St. Cyr.
"There he soon received the commission of sous-lieutenant in the 3rd Light Infantry of the line, then commanded by Colonel François-Certain de Canrobert, now marshal of our army in the East.
"I sorrowed for my brother, my lost companion, long and earnestly. We had no more rambles now by the Sacine, in search of flowers and ferns, or in the deep dark woodland dells around the old château. There was a sad emptiness and loneliness in and around it, too. I no longer heard my brother's clear voice singing merrily as he prepared his flies and fishing-rod, or the report of his gun waking the echoes of the forest; and I went to mass, to confession, and to communion alone, for my father had become too feeble now to leave his apartment, and my chief solace was in attending him; so, monsieur, you see that I served an early apprenticeship in the sick chamber.
"But there were others who sorrowed for the absent Claude—the two daughters of Montallé, the maire of Beaujeu, a wealthy proprietor of several forges and furnaces, whose alliance my father would have opposed with disdain and wrath; but that did not prevent us from being great friends with Lucrece and Cecile, whom we had been in the habit of meeting so regularly at mass, and with whom we worked in common to decorate the altar of monsieur le curé on holidays.
"Both were remarkably handsome and sprightly girls. Cecile was fair and gentle, and Claude, I knew, loved her, and sighed for her, even as a boy; but Lucrece, the elder, I also knew, loved him in her secret heart, for she had frequently told me so after his departure for St. Cyr, and more than once I had seen a dangerous expression in her pale face and dark eyes when Cecile spoke of him with regret or affection. Dark as night were the eyes of Lucrece. Her nose was aquiline, and over it her eyebrows nearly met; and she had a general expression not unlike that which I saw in your miniature. Letters came at times to our old château among the mountains of Beaujolais from the absent Claude; but it was soon too evident that Cecile Montallé was in correspondence with him as well as I; for she knew quite as soon as we did of Claude's movements, and those of the 3rd Light Infantry, with which he was serving in Africa; and she knew before we did of how he had distinguished himself in Canrobert's famous expedition against Ahmed-Sghir, when that chief rallied the tribes of the Bouaoun in revolt against France.
"In 1850, Claude wrote us that he had been wounded in Canrobert's expedition against Narah, that Colonel Canrobert had granted him leave of absence, and that he was coming home. No hearts were so happy as ours at the old château, on learning that Claude was returning, and covered with honour, too—save, perhaps, the fair-haired Cecile Montallé. There was a radiance in her pink cheek, a sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes, when we met at church in Beaujeu, which showed that she, too, was mistress of the same joyous tidings; and, in the fulness of her heart, she confessed to me that she and Claude had corresponded long, had exchanged rings, and were mutually attached and engaged. I loved my brother. Could I wonder that Cecile Montallé did so too? Lucrece, who stood by us, heard all this with a lowering brow, and there was the old and strange expression in her face which had terrified me before as I kissed her, and got into our old-fashioned carriage to return to the château, which stands some five leagues or so from Beaujeu.
"For days I busied myself, preparing for the reception of Claude. His old room was put in order by my own hands. Alas! I could little foresee that he was never to tread its floor again! In fact, the unhappy Lucrece was the victim of an absorbing and corroding jealousy; and in her heart she was beginning to hate and to loathe her guileless and unsuspecting sister. To add to this evil feature in our mutual relations, when I ventured timidly to speak of Claude's engagement to my father, he became inflamed with sudden fury. All the buried pride of the old days of the monarchy—the days of periwigs and pasteboard skirts, of shoe-buckles and rapiers—with the memory of past greatness, and the time when the Constable and Dukes of Bourbon had joined our forefathers in the chase, and shared their hospitality in Chaverondier—all this I saw blazed up within him! His eyes flashed with fire, and his thin bent form became erect. He had been proud of his son's brilliant career under Canrobert; he had pictured for him a brilliant future; he already saw him ranked among the marshals of France, reviving the past glories of ancestors who had left their bones at Pavia, Rocroi and Ramilies.
"But now he thought all those ancient triumphs and those revived hopes would be blighted and blotted by a disgraceful marriage with a mere bourgeoise—a vulgar smelter of iron—a man who had begun life with a hammer and bellows; a grimy manufacturer of spades, ploughs, and pickaxes for the markets of Beaujeu, Belleville, and Chalieu!
"My father thought of his sixteen heraldic quarters, among which were the arms of Cressi, Sante-Croix, and Segonzoe, the three noblest families in Beaujolais, and swore by the souls of his fathers that such a marriage could never be. He did more. He wrote a severe and sarcastic letter to the maire of Beaujeu, warning him of his most severe displeasure, if the correspondence between his daughter and 'Monsieur my son, the Captain Chaverondier,' was not at once and for ever ended. To have read that letter might have made one think that the Grand Monarque was still flirting at the Trianon, and that the fleur-de-lis still waved above the Bastille of St. Antoine. On the other hand the maire Montallé was a sturdy and purse-proud republican; one who in his youth had fought at the barricades, had sacked the Tuileries, and had actually beaten on his drum, by order of Santerre, to drown the dying words of the son of St. Louis! So he retorted in a manner which I do not choose to repeat; but therewith ended all the hopes of the sweet and gentle Cecile, and of my brave brother, who was travelling, as fast as the railway trains could fly, through the provinces from Marseilles, to see us all, and his own happy home again.
"At those malignant letters, the dark Lucrece laughed bitterly. At Beaujeu poor Claude learned the state of affairs between the families, and, weak as he had become by hard service in Africa, and the wound he had received at Narah, he could barely withstand the shock. It filled him with despair; but he loved Cecile too well to relinquish her. They had many interviews, contrived I know not how, and a secret marriage was arranged and concluded before even the watchful and jealous Lucrece could discover them, or interrupt it; so nothing remained now but for Claude to carry off his bride, to reach the old château among the mountains of Beaujolais, and trust to his father's old parental love and pride in his recent bravery for forgiveness.
"A powerful Arab horse, with which Canrobert had presented him (and which had borne a warrior of the Kabyles in many a bloody conflict) was accoutred with a market saddle and pillion to bear the lovers, who were to be disguised as a farmer and his wife, lest monsieur le maire and his workmen might assume arms and fire on them; for the Revolution of two years before had left much bad feeling between the aristocrats and the canaille (as the former most unwisely termed the latter), and thus in the provinces many a lawless act was done that never reached Paris, or figured in the pages of the Moniteur.
"So Claude wore a blue blouse over his uniform, a straw hat, in lieu of the smart scarlet kepi; and Cecile was disguised as a paysanne of Beaujolais. All this was achieved with the assistance of Lucrece. Dull despair had settled on her heart now, and, finding that Cecile was irrevocably the wife of Claude Chaverondier, she could only endeavour to be resigned, and to complete the happiness she had failed to mar or interrupt, and could never hope to enjoy.
"The night on which they were to set forth was dark and tempestuous. Near Beaujeu there rolls a mountain torrent, a tributary of the Saône. It was crossed by a narrow wooden bridge, at a place where, between two high and impending banks, on this night, it was foaming white and furiously, as snows were melting in the mountains, and every tiny rivulet was full to overflowing.
"Lucrece had secured the key of the private gate which closed the end of this bridge, and she was to lock it after the lovers had passed through, and thus bar pursuit in that direction. With a sad heart she issued forth to undo the barrier. So wild was the tempestuous wind that she could barely keep afoot, and she felt her aching heart tremble when she saw the blackness of the fast-flying clouds, between which the pale stars shone coldly forth at intervals; and now she came to where the black and hideous chasm yawned in the rocks, and she could see, far down below, the snow-white flood boiling hoarsely over its stony bed, deep, fierce, and swollen, as it rushed to join the Saône, hurling rocks and trees together to the sea.
"The wild winter flood and the stormy night were both in accordance with the tempestuous spirit that writhed in her bosom. She heard the hoofs of Claude's Arab horse, as their clatter was swept past on the wind, that blew her black, dishevelled hair in disorder about her pallid face; and as she unlocked the gate, a sob of astonishment and terror escaped her.
"The wooden bridge had fallen, or been torn by the tempest from its posts, and the gulf was impassable.
"To warn the lovers was her first good impulse; to be silent was the second.
"As they rode up to thank and bid her adieu, she saw their mutual endearments; she saw the strong arm of Claude caressingly round the waist of Cecile, and her head reposing trustfully on his shoulder, as she sat on the saddle before him. Then a madness seemed to sting the heart of Lucrece! She felt herself to the fullest extent the neglected, the discarded, the unloved one, and revenge and hatred filled her soul with a dreadful fury.
"'Adieu, dear, dear Lucrece!' cried Cecile; 'adieu! and pray for us.'
"'Ride on; the way is clear,' she replied, in a breathless voice.
"And Claude gave the spur to his Arab. Like an arrow it shot past her. In another instant a scream rang upward on the stormy wind, as the horse and its double burden went headlong into the wild abyss of rushing water far below, and disappeared for ever!
"So perished my dear brother Claude, and with him my friend Cecile.
"Lucrece stood there for a time like one bewildered and aghast, for the whole episode resembled a sudden and ghastly dream, from which she might yet awaken. She saw only the river foaming past like a white flood amid the blackening gloom, and its roar seemed deafening and stunning, and she placed her hands on her ears to shut out the sound, as she went slowly home, and for days and nights the roar of the river seemed never to leave her. From that hour she was quite insane, and, if still alive, is an inmate of the lunatic asylum at Beaujeu.
"This double catastrophe had such an effect upon my spirits that, after the death of my father, by the advice of monsieur le curé, I quitted the Château de Chaverondier, joined the order to which I now belong, and was soon after sent hither with the army of the East."
Such, as nearly as I can remember, was the sad story of her early life told me by Mademoiselle Chaverondier.
It was not until I began to recover that I became fully aware of the vast debt of gratitude I owed to this good sister of charity, and that I completely knew how much I owed to her sisterly and motherly care of me during that perilous and loathsome disease.
But there were no means of repaying her. Gratitude of the heart was all she would accept, and that I gave her to the full, but now daily, as I became convalescent, and as my brother officers cantered over from the vale of Aladyn to visit me, she left me more and more alone, and there were three whole days during which she never came at all.
I rather think she was scared by Studhome, who had ridden over with a couple of champagne bottles in his holsters, and whom she found smoking in my kiosk, with his shell-jacket open, and his stock off, and singing a song, the first verse of which was something in this style—
My father cared little for shot or shell, He laughed at death and dangers; He'd have stormed the very gates of hell, At the head of the Connaught Rangers.
How much I missed her!
When she did return it was to bid me adieu, and to say that she had been ordered to attach herself to the 45th regiment of the French line, where severe duties awaited her, and that in all human probability I should never see her more.
Those farewell words sounded sadly. We shook hands kindly, affectionately, and parted with tears in our eyes. In my heart I felt the love of a brother for that self-devoted French girl, and at that time she could but little foresee the sad offices I was to render her in the hour of suffering that was to come.