One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
"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 frere_, 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 charite_ 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