In several other houses in the same street similar scenes were met with; and in one an Armenian family consisting of a father, mother, and three children were unconcernedly eating their dinner--a bowl of grain boiled into a kind of sticky porridge--while the corpse of a Russian soldier who had just died lay on the floor in the next room.
Captain Pizareff was petrified with astonishment, and reported the circumstances to General Melikoff at once. I sent word to the Russian Red Cross doctors, and they despatched a party of ambulance men to collect their sick and bring them into the hospitals. How it was possible for the absence of the men from roll call to remain unnoticed I cannot understand; but I heard afterwards that the colonel of the regiment to which these unfortunates belonged got into serious trouble over it.
Denniston, Stoker, and myself found plenty of work to do among the Russian sick as well as among our own men, and were glad to lend the Russian doctors our assistance. We found our Russian _confreres_ capital fellows, and also excellent surgeons. They had worked on bravely while their army was outside Erzeroum and afterwards at Kars, though their resources were severely taxed by the number of the wounded at Devoi Boyun, as well as by the fevers and frostbite that decimated the troops during the long intervals between the different engagements.
They spoke of General Melikoff in terms of the highest admiration, praising his administrative ability as well as his military capacity; and I felt that their opinions were well founded, when I reflected upon the difficulties under which he had laboured, especially in the transport and commissariat department. On one occasion General Melikoff said to me himself, "I am prouder of having been able to feed my army than I am of any of my victories." When it is remembered that everything in the shape of supplies, including provisions and medical stores, had to be brought over the snow from Tiflis, four hundred miles away, it will be conceded that the general's pride in his achievement was justified. General Melikoff was most appreciative of our medical services on behalf of his troops, and told us on one occasion that he would recommend us for decorations at the hands of the Russian Government. However, during the anxious political times which ensued the Russian Government had something else to think about besides the services of three unknown English doctors in far away Erzeroum, and the decorations never came.
Gladly and willingly as I gave my services in the cause of humanity, it was nevertheless a real pleasure to find that they were appreciated by the Russian troops as well as by the Stafford House Committee, and also the Turkish Government. Captain Morisot, who returned to Erzeroum from Constantinople, brought me up, not only fresh supplies of money, but also the news that the Stafford House Committee had passed a special vote of thanks to myself and the other doctors of the Erzeroum section.
The document setting forth this vote of thanks, signed by the Duke of Sutherland as chairman of the committee, is couched in most complimentary terms; and, needless to say, it forms one of my most cherished mementoes of the war. Similar special votes of thanks were accorded to Dr. Stiven and Dr. Beresford for their great bravery during the fighting at Rustchuk. I had already received the fourth order of the Medjidie, and to this the Turkish Government were afterwards pleased to add the fourth order of the Osmanli and also the Turkish war medal.
We were reinforced during March by the arrival of Dr. Roy and a party of doctors sent out by the Red Cross Society. They had undergone a good deal of hardship since they left Constantinople, and one of their number, a Dane named Price, had died. I shall always remember Roy through a remarkable incident of which I was informed by him some time after I had left Erzeroum. In my quarters I was accustomed to sleep on the floor on a mat, and even in a besieged town I had kept up the early habit of reading in bed. The usual military candlestick was a bayonet, which was stuck in the floor, with the candle jammed into the socket; but I found a more convenient receptacle in a Turkish conical shell, which I had picked up somewhere, and which made a capital candlestick when the brass cap at the end was unscrewed. Into the orifice of the shell I stuck my candle every night, and read _Vanity Fair_--which I got out of Mr. Zohrab's capital library--for the first time. I never can think of Becky Sharp to this day without a shudder, not on account of her treatment of Rawdon Crawley or her dubious relationship with the Marquis of Steyne, but simply owing to the circumstances under which I first met her. She was certainly a risky acquaintance for me. A week or two after I left Erzeroum my candlestick fell into other hands, and one night it exploded, fortunately in an empty room, which it wrecked without damaging any one in the house. My first introduction to Becky Sharp was effected by the light of a candle stuck in the mouth of a live shell!
Powder was unnecessarily burnt more than once during our last month in Erzeroum. One night I was awakened by a terrific explosion, and almost before I could collect my senses a frantic knocking at the door showed that somebody wanted the doctor in a hurry. We all jumped into our clothes, and followed the guide to a place where an Armenian house had stood a few minutes before, but which when we reached the spot was a mere heap of wreckage. One of the few survivors explained what had happened. He told us that a lot of Armenians had got hold of some Turkish cartridges, and were endeavouring to convert the powder to their own use. Sixteen men were sitting in a circle on their haunches in the middle of a big room, busily pulling the bullets out of the cartridges and emptying the powder into a heap, which was gradually increasing in size in the centre, when the desire for a cigarette came upon one of them, and he struck a match. The next instant the house was in the air, and ten of the Armenians were in paradise--or somewhere else. There was a good deal of confusion in the darkness; but I recollect finding myself down on my knees in a stable at the back of the house examining two of the sufferers who were still alive. One of them lay between the legs of a cow, and while he was in that position I dressed his injuries. The crowd had been very troublesome, and I had locked the door of the stable on the inside to keep them away, when I heard a tremendous hammering and some one demanding admittance. I called out that there was strictly no admittance; but in a very few minutes a file of soldiers burst the door in, and General Duhoffskoy, very angry at being kept out in the cold, stood before me. He was good enough to accept my apologies when I explained why I had locked the door, and also to thank me for attending to the sufferers. General Duhoffskoy was appointed to act as a kind of chief commissioner of police at Erzeroum in addition to his military duties, and whenever there was any excitement in the town he was always on the spot. One night we had a very big fire; in fact, half the street seemed to be burning. There was plenty of water, however; and if it had not been for the crowd, there would have been no difficulty in extinguishing the flames. An Armenian crowd at a fire is very much like any other crowd, and the people indulged in sudden stampedes and all sorts of "alarums and excursions" to such a degree that the work of the soldier firemen was greatly hindered. General Duhoffskoy took in the situation at a glance, and at once announced that if the crowd did not disperse it would be blown to pieces, as one of the burning houses contained an enormous quantity of powder and other explosives. The effect was instantaneous, and the miscellaneous mass of Turks and Armenians melted away as if by magic.
Soon after the return of Captain Morisot, I received a telegram from the Stafford House Committee saying that we had done enough for honour and glory, and that we had better go back to Constantinople, as the Turkish administration was able to cope with all the hospital work that remained to be done in Erzeroum. I was instructed to place the balance of our medical stores at the disposal of the Turks before leaving, and accordingly I handed everything over to Hakki Bey, receiving a receipt, and also a grateful acknowledgment of our services to the Turkish troops, together with a special letter for presentation to the Seraskierat.
My last week in Erzeroum was a busy one, as we had to make extensive preparations for the journey to Trebizond, which was quite a formidable undertaking. I had collected a great deal of personal baggage during my travels, and our equipment was considerable; so I arranged with a Persian caravan which was going down to Trebizond for the conveyance of the heaviest of our impedimenta, retaining only my valuables and the curios which I had got together to take down under my own supervision with the caravan. There were many Persians in Erzeroum, and as a rule they got on very well with the Turks, though occasionally racial antipathy was responsible for those minor persecutions known as practical jokes, of which the Turks were very fond. One day in the hammam, or Turkish bath, I met an old Persian, who was in a deplorable state of grief in consequence of the treatment which he had received from two young Turks. The Persians all grew very long beards, of which they were inordinately proud, and they were accustomed, after coming out of the bath, to dye them a fine rich brickdust colour with henna. One never saw a Persian with a white beard. Now this particular old Persian had carefully rubbed his beard with henna, in blissful ignorance of the fact that two mischievous young Turks had been to his henna-pot and had mixed a quantity of corrosive acid with the dye. The consequence was that when the Persian applied the dye the beard came away in pieces, and left the poor man beardless in his old age and disgraced.
On the day before we left Erzeroum I called on General Duhoffskoy, as the military governor of the town, in order to obtain from him a pass through the Russian lines and the necessary papers authorizing my departure. The general was a distinguished-looking man of about forty years of age, and he received me very courteously, expressing polite regret at my departure, and promising to facilitate my journey as far as possible. It struck me that I had never seen him in such good spirits before, and that there was a beam of sunshiny contentment in his face, which was an agreeable change from the rigid military look of his usually stern features. As I was inwardly wondering what could have happened to effect this change, the door opened, and a lady entered the room. "Permit me to present you to my wife, Dr. Ryan," said the general; and turning I bowed, there in remote, snow-clad, devastated Erzeroum, to one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.
Princess Duhoffskoy, _nee_ Princess Galitzin, was then about twenty years of age, and to my youthful imagination, with her beautifully chiselled features, complexion of exquisite fairness, and large blue eyes that looked me frankly in the face, she seemed like a visitant from another world. For a year and a half almost the only specimens of womanhood that I had seen were squat and swarthy Bulgarian girls, frowsy Armenians, or Turkish women closely veiled in their yashmaks. It was no wonder that this lovely Russian, with her delicate, refined beauty and her frank and gracious manner, made a profound impression upon me, and set my heart beating quickly with mingled surprise and delight.
The general returned to his writing-table, and I was left to talk to this beauteous vision alone. I stammered a few remarks in execrable German; for though I spoke that language fairly fluently on ordinary occasions, my sensations drove my vocabulary out of my head, and I felt that for one in my position at any rate the resources of that grave and elephantine tongue were exasperatingly inadequate.
"Oh, Doctor Ryan, would you not prefer to speak English?" said the Princess, to my intense astonishment, without the least trace of a foreign accent. Like many cultured Russians, she had learnt to speak English as well as French and German when a child; and she soon showed me that she could not only talk, but talk interestingly, in my own language. In her lips the Doric harshness of sound in spoken English disappeared, and the well known words took on something of the smooth, musical cadence of the softer Italian. She told me that she had only reached Erzeroum on the previous day, after travelling four hundred miles across the snow from Tiflis to join her husband, and she chatted away pleasantly of the incidents which occurred on the way as if there was nothing unusual in a delicately nurtured lady going through the hardships necessitated by such a journey in a sleigh. She expressed great interest in my work among the wounded, and listened attentively while I spoke of the bravery of the Turkish troops and their fortitude under pain. When I told her of an Anatolian Turk who died in my hospital at Plevna with his wife's name on his lips, the beautiful eyes of this Russian princess filled with tears. "Poor fellow," she whispered softly; "I hope it is not wrong for us to pity the sufferings of the enemy."
Coffee was brought in, and I sat there for about two hours chatting with the princess, while the general continued writing at his table. Every now and then he looked up with a glance which seemed to say, "Not gone yet? I wonder how much longer this confounded Englishman is going to stay." At last I managed to tear myself away, and I said good-bye to this beautiful Russian lady, with many regrets that I had to leave Erzeroum next day. I never saw her again; but when I got back to the consulate, I selected about fifty standard English books from Mr.
Zohrab's excellent library, packed them on a little sleigh, and despatched them to Princess Duhoffskoy with my card, presenting my compliments, and hoping that the books would lessen the tedium of her stay in such a dull place as Erzeroum. General Duhoffskoy is now the governor of a province in Siberia, where he resides with his beautiful wife, whose visit to Erzeroum was the one gleam of real sunshine that I had seen throughout that terrible winter.
Before we started for Trebizond, a slight difference of opinion arose between myself and my comrades, Denniston and Stoker, upon a matter affecting our joint interest. It did not in the least disturb the friendly relations existing between us, and I only mention the matter now because it was all my fault that my companions were induced to assent to incurring the responsibility and inconvenience of escorting another traveller to Trebizond--and that traveller a lady.
M. Jardin, the French consul, was a true Frenchman of the best type, agreeable, polite, and above all things always anxious to oblige a lady.
Accordingly, when he came to me with a pathetic appeal on behalf of a charming Spanish widow, whose husband had been an apothecary attached to the medical staff I found the greatest difficulty in turning a deaf ear to him. He explained to me that the beautiful Spaniard was most anxious to get to Constantinople, where she had friends who would arrange for her passage back to her own country, and that he would take it as a personal favour to him if we would allow the lady to join our party.
I foresaw the inconvenience of taking a lady on an extremely rough journey, which had to be accomplished entirely on horseback, over mountain tracks and passes deep in snow; so at first I gave a polite refusal to the French consul's request. But M. Jardin would not be denied. He minimized the difficulties of the journey, which he assured us would be nothing to such courageous and experienced men as ourselves.
He extolled us for the services which we had already rendered in the cause of humanity, and he urged us not to decline at the last moment to still further add to our laurels in this direction. Finally he dwelt at great length upon the grace and beauty of this dark-eyed Spanish lady, whom none of us had ever seen, and he painted the despair with which she looked forward to the prospect of remaining widowed and alone in Erzeroum, perhaps to die, far from her country and from her own people.
What could I say in answer to such an appeal? What could I do? There was nothing for it but to submit with some misgiving to the inevitable; and accordingly I informed M. Jardin that I would withdraw my own objections, and would consent to the arrangement if he could prevail upon Denniston and Stoker to agree also.
If M. Jardin had not been an exceedingly decorous as well as polite Frenchman, I feel sure he would have jumped with joy when I capitulated, and he went off forthwith to interview Denniston and Stoker. What occurred at that interview I cannot precisely say, because both my comrades were strangely reticent upon the subject. I conjecture, however, that M. Jardin praised their courage and their chivalry in a truly generous spirit, and I am convinced that he dwelt with all his astonishing eloquence upon the grace and loveliness of this poor Spanish beauty in distress. At any rate, Denniston and Stoker agreed to let her travel with us.
Just before we started, and when the pack-horses upon which we were to ride to Erzeroum were at the door, M. Jardin brought up his beautiful Spaniard and introduced her to us. I hope I shall not be considered impolite when I confess that our jaws all dropped simultaneously. No doubt the lady had been beautiful in her youth; but her particular style of beauty had not been proof against the devastating power of years, and I doubt whether any man in Erzeroum, except that very polite French consul, would have seen extraordinary loveliness in the lady who was handed over to our care at the very last moment. However, there was nothing for it but to hoist her upon a pack-saddle, to mount ourselves upon similar uncomfortable seats, and to start the melancholy procession. We said good-bye with real regret to Pizareff, who had been a capital friend and a most charming and genial companion. Fully thirty or forty other Russian officers came to see us off, and we parted on the very best of terms. They told us laughingly that they intended to drop in upon the British army in India some day, and we assured them that we would be there to meet them when they came. Then we waved our last adieux, and turned the heads of those long-suffering pack-horses towards Trebizond.
Our party consisted of Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, myself, and Williams our trusty dragoman, while last, but not least, came the lady. We had hired twelve horses to carry ourselves and our baggage, contracting to pay the headman of the caravan four pounds per horse for the journey to Trebizond; and accordingly when we started we formed an important section of the whole caravan of about fifty horses which set out from Erzeroum. Besides the headman, who was a most forbidding-looking Persian, there were fifteen drivers who accompanied us; each, I think, dirtier, hungrier, and more truculent-looking than the other. We guessed when we started that the journey would not be exactly a pleasure excursion; but the reality far exceeded our anticipations, and the next time that any one asks me to make an overland journey with a widow, a still small voice within will whisper, "Beware! Remember Erzeroum and the Spanish dona."
Riding on a pack-saddle, which consists of two plates of hard wood joined by hinges at the apex where it fits over the horse's spine, is not the most agreeable way of taking horse exercise; and the dona, who was necessarily riding _en cavalier_, began to give tongue before she had gone a hundred yards. We made a cushion out of an old sack filled with hay, and our incubus heaved a sigh of relief when we placed it between her ill used anatomy and the bare boards which she bestrode.
Then the procession went forward again, the horses stepping out in single file on the first stage of the long journey of one hundred and eighty miles that lay between us and the sea.
We left Erzeroum on March 31, intending to catch the Messageries steamer _Simois_, which was due to leave Trebizond on April 10, and fancying that by giving ourselves ample time we would have three or four days in Trebizond to recruit before going on board. However, we reckoned without our host, or on this occasion, to speak more accurately, without our guest--the lady. She spoke every continental language except English with equal facility, and her vocabulary in each was surprisingly extensive. Day and night for one consecutive fortnight her shrill falsetto voice poured forth a never failing stream of complaint and invective, abuse and lamentation in half a dozen languages. What she suffered no one knew except herself, although this was not her fault, to be sure, for she lost no opportunity of imparting the information, sometimes in Spanish, and when she had exhausted the resources of that noble language in the slang of half the capitals of Europe. We found too late that our dona had not been cast in the heroic mould. She had never learnt how beautiful it is to suffer--and be silent.
A few miles from Erzeroum we came to the village of Ilidja, which was occupied by the Russians; and there we halted for half an hour, and had a glass of wine with a party of jovial officers, who were keeping up their spirits as well as they could in the lonely, God-forsaken place.
On a dunghill in the village we counted eleven dead Russians; so we guessed that the typhus was not confined to Erzeroum.
When we got to Purnekapan, we camped for the night in the town, intending to make an early start, so as to negotiate the Kopdagh Pass before the sun spoiled the road. An unexpected difficulty, however, presented itself, for our Persian headman refused to go on, declaring that it was necessary to rest his horses for a day. In vain did we cojole, threaten, or bully him. He had come under the spell of a fixed idea, and nothing that we could say seemed to have the slightest effect upon his diseased intelligence. But at last I found a way to move him.
There was a Turkish regiment in the village, and I sought an interview with the colonel, who had heard something about our work, and was very well disposed towards us. Tapping the butt of his revolver significantly, he suggested to the Persian that it was high time to start, and the hint was accepted with alacrity. However, all this had taken time, and before we left the foot of the mountain and began the ascent it was eleven o'clock, and the sun's rays were ruining the track.
It was as exciting a bit of mountaineering as I have ever gone through, and we had to strain every nerve to climb the pass. In many places the track was only a couple of feet wide, a winding path cut round the side of the mountain, with a cliff on one side and a precipice on the other.
As we mounted slowly and cautiously up the path, every nerve was at tension and every sense on the alert. Now and then, as the Persian drivers shouted and urged the frightened horses with voice and whip to face the slippery rising ground, one of the animals would slip, and for a second or two one's heart was in one's mouth. In spite of every effort we lost three pack-horses before we won the summit. A slip on the glassy surface, a couple of frightened plunges in the loose snow near the edge, and then the unfortunate creatures disappeared over the side, falling upon a lower spur four hundred feet beneath us. One of the horses that we lost in this way was loaded with my personal effects. The presents that I was taking back to my friends, some beautiful turquoises from the Tiflis mines, as well as the Russian furs, the Russian leather cigar-cases, and the other keepsakes that the warm-hearted officers in Erzeroum had given me, all vanished with that hapless pack-horse into some inaccessible ravine far below the Kopdagh peak. However, all the Persian drivers came through safely, and there were no missing faces in our party when we reached the summit, nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. The widow was still with us, numbed with the cold, exhausted with fatigue, and half shaken to death on her pack-saddle, but voluble as ever, and, like the person in the Greek play, "full of groans and not devoid of tears."
Just as we neared the summit I saw a Turkish woman climbing slowly and painfully up the track; but when we got to the shelter-house erected on the crest of the mountain, I lost sight of her. As we resumed our march, I noticed tracks in the snow in front of us, and drew the attention of Williams the dragoman to the impressions which had evidently been made by a woman. The dragoman disappeared for ten minutes on a tour of exploration, and when he returned he brought back a strange piece of intelligence. A Turkish baby had been born in a shed near the shelter-house while we were there, and the mother, whom we had seen climbing the pass, was already walking off with her newborn infant to her own village five miles away across the snow. Surely the cares of maternity lie lightly on those hardy Turkish mothers in the mountains of Asia Minor.
As may be guessed, we found a good deal of difficulty in replenishing our commissariat during this eventful journey. The Turkish troops had pretty well swept the board; and if the villagers had not hidden away some of their scanty stock from the foraging parties, we should have come off very badly. We managed to get eggs occasionally _en route_, and onions were also obtainable. I used to stuff my pockets with these delicacies and munch them raw. I found them very sustaining, and I have no doubt that my companions when they ventured near me could testify that my diet was strong. When we reached the village at the foot of the Kopdagh where we were to camp for the night, we were all ravenously hungry, and as I shot a keen glance round the village in search of supplies I espied a kid. It was a very nice-looking kid, and it frisked and gambolled most alluringly. I slipped off my pack-horse, and approached the kid in a friendly manner that disarmed suspicion. Then I grabbed it by the ear, drew my big clasp knife, and cut its throat on the spot. I skinned it and cleaned it with my own experienced hands, and Williams the dragoman made an excellent _ragout_. I gave the owner of the kid a Turkish lira as compensation for his loss, which was truly our gain, for the kid was a succulent little creature, and tasted very much like venison.
We could not have travelled fast under the most favourable conditions, and hampered as we were by the Spanish widow our progress became very slow indeed. It was not an easy task, even for one accustomed to riding, to remain on the wooden pack-saddle when a rough horse was plunging about in the snow; but for the Spanish widow it was literally impossible--a fact which she demonstrated by falling off five times during the journey over the Kop. It always happened in the same way. The hind legs of her pack-horse would slip down in the loose snow up to the hocks, while the fore feet remained steady for just one second on a harder patch, so that the animal's back described an angle of forty-five degrees with the surface of the ground. During that one second the widow seized the opportunity of slipping off backwards over the horse's tail; and so quickly did she accomplish the feat that the watchful Williams, whom I specially told off, much to his disgust, to look after her, only arrived in time to pick her up. The sight of that middle-aged, sallow-faced Spanish person, in short skirts and blue goggles, sitting helplessly in the snow while Williams patiently collected her once more, would have made us laugh heartily were it not for the "damnable iteration" of the occurrence.
The presence of the widow caused us much annoyance whenever we camped for the night, because sleeping accommodation was usually scanty, and we always had to find a room for the lady before we turned in ourselves.
Once, when we reached the village where we were going to camp for the night, we found that there were only two sleeping-rooms available for the whole party, so that we had to give one to the widow, and camp--all five of us--in the other. First we showed the lady to her apartment, and then we went to look at our own. It was not a cosy bedroom, with French bedsteads, dimity curtains on the windows, and roses creeping up the walls outside. On the contrary, it was a small, square room, that would have made an excellent dog-kennel. The floor was of mud, and in a corner there was a heap of dirty straw, on which lay two dead Turkish soldiers who had died of confluent small-pox. We put the bodies outside the house, and Denniston, Stoker, Morisot, and myself, with Williams the dragoman, all went to sleep on the straw.
As we travelled along day after day the glare on the snow was very trying to the eyes; and though we all wore blue goggles, we suffered a good deal of inconvenience, while our faces were dreadfully blistered by the sun. The Persian headman was always wanting to stop and rest his horses; so that what with perpetually working at him to keep him up to the mark, pacifying the Spanish widow, and foraging for our daily bread, we had plenty of occupation _en route_. All our drivers of course were eager to rob us whenever the opportunity offered; and in addition to the furs and turquoises which I had already lost through a pack-horse going over the precipice, I was also deprived of two very fine cats from the province of Van. I had purchased these creatures, which were very much like Persian cats, in Erzeroum, and I had hired a pack-horse specially to carry them. They were transported in a wooden box fixed to the pack-saddle, and Williams fed them with milk whenever we halted at a village. A couple of days before we reached Trebizond, however, my beautiful cats disappeared; and the only consolation that was vouchsafed me for my bereavement was the vague lie of a Persian driver, who averred that they had escaped from their box during the night. Of course he had planted them somewhere for subsequent conversion into ill gotten piastres.
When we commenced to get down towards Trebizond, we left the snow behind us on the mountains, and entered a tract of well timbered country, which was looking its best in the first flush of the early spring. The sides of the hills were gorgeous with pink cyclamen, and with a beautiful blue bulb which I could not identify. At last we entered the avenue of pear trees which were laden with juicy fruit when I passed up to Erzeroum six months previously. When I retraced my steps to Trebizond with new companions, I found the pear trees in full bloom. Since I had seen them bending under the burden of the ripening fruitage, fire and sword and frost and fever had brought many hundreds of men to death before my eyes, and I myself had been down to the very borders of the Valley of the Shadow. But now the war was over, the winter was done, and the scent of the white pear blossoms that filled all the valley blended with the first faint fragrance of the breezes from the ever nearing waters of the Black Sea.
Trebizond at last!
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION.
We fly from the Widow--Arrival at Constantinople--English Philanthropy--The Baroness Burdett-Coutts--First Acquaintance with a well known Actress--Osman Pasha back again--The Turkish Skobeleff--A much perforated Paletot--Captain Morisot's Career--A Romantic Escape--On Board the _Gamboge_--We reach Smyrna--Mr. and Mrs. Zohrab--A Sympathetic Englishwoman--Zara Dilber Effendi--Back in London--Patriotic Ditties--An Incredulous Music-hall Proprietor--Non e Vero--Bowling out a Story-teller.
We had time to call on Mr. Biliotti again, and to thank him for all his kindness; and then we went on board the _Simois_, which was ready to cast off her moorings and head out for Constantinople. Our Spanish widow was consistent to the last. The real hardships of the journey had not improved her temper; and when we resolutely declined to pay her passage to Constantinople in the steamer, she cursed us up and down Trebizond, each and severally, with the comprehensive particularity that was devoted to the historic cursing of the Jackdaw of Rheims. She was indeed that rare--or somewhat rare--phenomenon, an ungrateful woman.
When we reached Constantinople the whole place was full of excitement, for the Russian army was at San Stefano, only a few miles away, and Pera was almost like a Russian town. Every day hundreds of Russians might be seen clanking up and down the streets in full uniform, when they came in on leave from San Stefano.
English philanthropy was displayed as generously at this stage as it had been throughout the entire course of the war, and English gold was freely spent on the relief of starving and fever-stricken refugees from the Turkish provinces as well as on the sick and wounded troops. We got into touch with the philanthropic scheme undertaken by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who had sent out a large sum of money for the relief of the refugees; and we also met Mr. William Ashmead-Bartlett, the administrator of the fund, who afterwards married the baroness. He was ill with typhoid fever contracted from some of the refugees, and was under treatment at the English hospital, where his brother (now Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett) was looking after him. Denniston, Stoker, and I paid a visit of inspection to the temporary hospitals established with the money supplied by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and furnished a report upon them.
It is to Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett that I owe my first introduction to a very charming American lady, who has since become known to a wide circle through her career on the stage. When I first met her she was an extraordinarily pretty woman, and she and her husband were on their honeymoon trip. He was a very gentlemanly man, with a rather retiring disposition; while she was about twenty years of age, and a perfect model of youthful womanhood. Every glance of her brightly flashing eyes and every line of her finely moulded figure told of bounding life and vivacity. Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and I saw a good deal of her and her husband for a week or two. We had lunch together often, and took part in several picnics up the Bosphorus, in that spring-time nineteen years ago, when the blue waters of the strait and the bright eyes of La belle Americaine laughed in harmony, while Europe was waiting with beating heart for the verdict--peace or war. I met the B---- P----s again on board the steamer which took me away from Constantinople. Then our paths in life divided, and I had almost forgotten the vivacious American lady, when one evening a year or two ago I dropped into the Princess's Theatre in Melbourne to see Sardou's great play _La Tosca_.
In the actress who was playing the name part I recognized my acquaintance of the stirring times of the war. It was Mrs. B---- P----.
Osman Pasha, who had been a prisoner of war in Russia, had been sent back into Turkey at the cessation of hostilities, and I went up to call on him at the Seraskierat. He was never a very communicative man, and the mental strain which the magnificent defence of Plevna and ultimately the tragic fall of the town imposed upon him seemed to have deepened his natural reserve. However, he gave me a hearty welcome, and appeared to be much interested in my account of our doings in Erzeroum. I told him that if war broke out again on a larger scale than before, I would return to my old comrades; and I said that if I ever came back to Constantinople, I would like to bring him a little present from England.
When I asked him what he would choose, he said that there was nothing which he would like so much as a real English saddle and bridle. Osman Pasha was a thorough soldier in his love for a first-class equipment, and I was sorry that I never had the opportunity of seeing him again to make him the present.
Dear old Hassib Bey, the principal medical officer in Plevna, was quite affected when he saw me again, and we had a great chat over old times.
Tewfik Pasha, who was the Skobeleff of the Turkish army, was living in a house at Galata, and I went to call on him there. When I entered the room, he was deeply moved, and embraced me warmly. Tewfik was always in the forefront of the battle while I was in Plevna; and when the memorable attack was delivered in which he recaptured the Krishin redoubts from Skobeleff, it was Tewfik who headed the column of assault and cheered the Turks on to victory. He seemed to bear a charmed life; for in spite of all the hot fighting that he had done, he had come through the campaign without a scratch. When I mentioned that he had been extraordinarily lucky in all his fighting, he motioned to his soldier servant who was in the room to take down a big military paletot which hung on the wall. The man took down the overcoat which was the garment that Tewfik Pasha had worn all through the siege. It was fastened down the front with frogs instead of buttons, and was provided with ample skirts that would blow about in the wind when the coat was not fastened securely. At Tewfik's request I examined it, and counted no fewer than eleven different bullet-holes through the cloth. In some cases no doubt one bullet had made two holes; but it was evident that on a good many different occasions the gallant soldier who wore the garment was literally within an inch of death.
Captain Morisot and I were invited to go to dinner one day at San Stefano with a party of Russian officers; but, much to my disappointment, something interfered with the engagement, and I missed the only chance I ever had of meeting the famous Skobeleff, who was then quartered at the little port on the Dardanelles. I found Morisot a delightful companion; and now that we were not oppressed with hospital duties, I had plenty of time to enjoy his society. His career indeed was a most romantic and interesting one. He had been shut up in Metz with Bazaine during the Franco-Prussian war, seven years earlier; and when the much criticised marshal capitulated, Morisot became a prisoner of war with the rest of the garrison, and was sent away to Stettin on the Baltic. Though the prisoners were carefully watched, Morisot, who spoke English like an Englishman, managed to arrange a plan of escape; and one dark night he and another French officer eluded the guards, and pulled out in a dingy to a small Scottish schooner, trading between Glasgow and Stettin. The skipper, who was a "braw mon fra Glasgie," and hated the Prooshians with a deep and deadly hatred, received Morisot and his companion with enthusiasm, and landed them after a fair passage at Copenhagen, where they were given quite an ovation. The Schleswig-Holstein affair was still fresh in the minds of the Danes, and they were delighted at the opportunity of doing honour to men who had drawn the sword against Germany. Morisot afterwards went to England; and when the Russo-Turkish campaign broke out, he hurried to Constantinople in search of further adventures. Animated as he was by the true spirit of a soldier of fortune, Morisot found a scope for his energies afterwards in the ideal field of military adventure. "Ex Africa semper aliquid novi," wrote an old historian; and the dashing young Frenchman, recognizing the truth of the remark even in these days, went to the Cape.