LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1837, 12 January 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE BLACK FL\o ; 08, TEDS UNTO DEATH. (Concluded.) I did feel ill. My head throbbed painfully, and colored lights danced atraigely before my eyes, bo that, long before the boat touched the quay, the fear, the certainty that the viewless contagion had marked me for a victim, forced itself upon me, and before evening T lay on a bed in the crowded hospital, with just enough consciousness to be aware that I was strict en down by plague. And then de’irium set in, and I rem-mber no more. It was a strange scene which presented itself before _ my bewildered eyes when first, semi conscious, but with the dolled and patient curio.-ity of a si k man, I looked out upon the crowded ward of the great hospital in which I lay. The khana itself, like most public edifices built by the Ottoman Government, was of noble dimensions, vast, massive, and spacious. But the great rooms were gaunt and bare, and the bedding, furniture, and skilled attendance were le f t to chance or to destiny. Thus, beside a neat brass bedstead would be placed a rough litter of boards, propped upon empty oil-jars, end, just beyond, a heap of barley st r aw, whereon lay, grand in its uncomplaining paasiveness, some helpless form with turbaned head and pallid face that looked the whiter by contrast with the jetty beard and sable brow. A few overwoked doctors of various nationalities glided at intervals through the throng of prostrate sufferers, while the nurses all important duty suemed to be left to such female relatives of the sick as had dared to run the risk of contagion, or, in the case of Christian patients who had no wife or mother to tend them in the awfnl hour, to certain nuns, some Romish, some Greek, in their heavy woollen draperies of white or dark blue. And here and there from without the well known melancholy dirge of the hired singers at funerals, as some corpse, flower-decked, and laid on an improvised bier, was hurried away towards the cemetery that almost crowns the hill to which Smyrna clings. . Hut presently I thought that my brain had reeled, and the de’irinns dream ret in again, for to my surprise I saw a slender female figure draw nigh to the bed on which I lay with throbbing temple and powerkss limbs, and take what was evidently its accustomed seat beside it. 'Annie I ’ I ex claimed, my parched lips almost refusing to utter the faint sound, 'Annie!’ And then the beautiful girlish face was bent over me with a sort of joyful wonder in the large eyes, and Annie Li-le fell on her knees beside the bed, and thanked God, in her sweet childish accents, for my recovery. ‘ I have watched so 1 mg,’ she said, as she settled the pillow beneath my aching head, ' but you did not know me ; hut now you will get well, dear, so very soon.' And her tears rained on ray face, while 1, remembering her terror of the plague, could fca r dly believe the evidence of my senses ‘ Y m have been nursing me, dearest. Annie—you,! said I ; 1 and were you not afraid? ’ Wit ha quick, soft touch, and a glorious smile on her pale month, she interupted me 'Not afraid,’ she answered; ‘once I knew that yon were ill, Hodney, I forgot few * But for Annie’s gentle ministrations I have no doubt I should have died. There was no Bed ross Society in those days in ambulance or hospital, and who would have cared to tend the English Protestant, as he lay tossing on his bed of pain ; yet, when I saw how white and tired the dear girl looked, my heart em-do me, and I looked around with repugnance and apprehension at the hideous scenes of suffering, death, and wailing by which we were surrounded. ‘ Annie, Annie ! ’ T exclaimed halt reproach dly, * how could you, so

tenderly nurtured, so sheltered from the ill* of life, coir.e to so dreadful a place ; and how could Mr and Mrs Lisle ’ She put her white hand gently across my lips, and signed to me to bo silent, while she poured out a glass of cooling sherb-.t ar.d offered it to me, supporting my languid ticad with the strength that love lends ; and it wai till la'.er that I learned how fruitless and how urgent had been the efforts of Annie’s parent-1 to overrule her resolvs to nurse me t>ack to life and health when she heard that I lay alone in the Plague Hospital of Smyrna, I recovered rapidly, ar.d was soon pronounced out of immediate danger and fit to he removed far from the hideous sights and rounds of the khana to fno of th se cottages, clean and airy, and snrronnden by o ives and figtrees, in which respectable Levantines, during the sultry heats of midsummer, find an escape from the oppressive atmosphere of t'c town; I was very weak, but convalescent; and Annie parted from me sorrowfully, regretting that wo were not married, so that she might have gono with mo into the country, but bidding me bo a good boy, and soon come to Bournabat —as soon as the doctor would allow ; so we separated, Annie Lisle going home, and I being conveyed in a hired Turkish araha to the liny house I was to inhabit, where the goodnatured Greek gardener and his old wife did their best to take care of me ; the pure air and the blessed calm of that peaceful spot brought back my health; but I was still very weak when I decided on quitting the quiet retreat which had been my temporarary home, and returning to 'Smyrna and my duty. With some difficulty I mounted my horse, which an orderly had brought from barracks in compliance with a message from me, and bidding a kind farewell to my late hosts, rode off towards the city ; my spirits rose as I felt the sea wind fan my cheek, pale and thir. from the results of recent illness; my intention

was to report myself to the commanding officer, and request an extension of my sick leave, which no doubt would be granted ; then I should be free to spend my leisure hours at bournabat, in the society of Annie Lisle ; dear, sweet Annie ; short was the time—a few brief weeks, perhaps—which intervened between that moment and the happy day when I could claim her as my wife and ha 1 what is that crowd that blocks the road from Bournabat. so that I draw rein, while Mustapha, my orderly, spurs on to clear the way for hia officer’s passage ; the soldier rides back ; *itis a funeral, eff-ndi—a Frankish funeral boned for the Christians’ burying ground ; the daughter of a rich Ingliz, they say ’ A shudder, I knew not why, ran through me, and dashing my spurs into my horse’s sides, I darted forward, and mingled with the crowd of spectators ; yes ; there was the coffi >, draped with black and strewed with flower—white flowers, in memory of the maiden dead—borne on men’s shoulders ; while behind it, heading the precession of moarners. walked with slow step, and stern, sorrowful faces. Mr Lisle and his wife, Annie’s mother; they saw me, but they made n > sign of recognition, but passed on. And then the dreadful conviction that this was Annie’s funeral, that Anri a was dead, forced itself upon me as if some fiend had shrieked the horrid tidings in my ears, and I fell fainting from my horse The next thing which I remember is that I was lying on my bed in my own lodgings at Smyrna, Mustapha the soldier standing immovable by the do r, the Italian doctor feeling my pulse, and two Englishmen, one of whom was the consul, looking down at me with pitying faces. From them 1 learned the trnth Annie Lisle was dead, and dead of the plsgne, the Infection of which would probably (since there were no other cases among the members of the foreign colony in Bournabat) never have reached her bat for the daiing devotion of her conduct in nursing me as I lay helpless in the Smyrna hospital. While my convalescence had progressed she had sickened of the mortal disorder, and in spite of all that care and skill could do she died, mingling, as I learnt afterwards, my name with her dying prayer. I have little more to tell. I wise ill, I know, after the cruel shock which had bl ghted all my dearest hopes ; and when, a mouth later, I applied for admission at the door of Annie’s forlorn home, it was as a broken man, with haggard face and hair streaked with grey, that I entered Bcurnabat. But Annie’s parents refused to see me All their old enmity to me had been revived, and tr ey regarded me but as the cause of their d ughter’s death. I resigned my post and left Smyrna for ever; but, waking or sleeping the memory of my lout Annie has never long been absent from my thoughts thr mgh all these weary years that I have walked the world alone. —“AU the Year Bound.”