The Rose of Sebastopol Read Online Free PDF

“What a lovely brick,” I said, using an expression learnt from Father. “And look, there’s even a turret. We might almost be at Stukeley.”
    The house had two wings extending at a slight angle on either side of a gabled porch. Henry was waiting at the open door, with a maid behind him ready to take our cloaks. “My dear aunt. Mariella. You are brave to venture out in such foul weather. I was sure you wouldn’t come.”
    He took Mother’s arm and led her into a near-empty room where a fire had been lit and four chairs were drawn up round a little table. The miniature of Henry’s mother stood in solitary splendor on the mantelpiece. “How proud poor Eppie would be to see you here,” said Mother.
    “I hope so.” We were all silent a moment. “We will have tea and then I will show you the rest of the house. You mustn’t mind our very primitive arrangements.”
    I unfastened the five pearl buttons of my right glove and peeled it from my fingers. Despite the fire the room was gloomy because beyond the French doors rain was drumming on the roof of a conservatory. But that was all I noticed; the shock of being in Henry’s presence made me blind and deaf to anything else. He was dressed very formally in a frock coat and cravat. When I was absent from him, what I remembered most vividly was the way his abundant hair sprang from his forehead, the horizontal crease above his confident chin, and the surprising gentleness of his voice. In the flesh he was always a little taller, broader, altogether more a man of the world than I expected.
    Father, who was late for every engagement, did not appear, so the three of us had a cozy tea. Mother poured and Henry passed me a cup with a formality that made us laugh. “It’s the first time of thousands that we shall all drink tea in this house,” he said, “and you are my first guests, so I must start as I mean to go on.”
    “This is a beautiful tea service,” said Mother. “I’ve not seen it before.”
    “It was Mother’s. I’ve had it packed away all these years. This seemed the right moment to unearth it.”
    My hand shook as I held the shell of pink porcelain. “So, Constantinople,” I said. “You’ve told us nothing.”
    “What would you like to know?”
    “Everything. What you saw. Whom you spoke to. Your mission was even mentioned in the paper. Father read it out to us. We were very proud.”
    “Yes, I gather The Times got hold of the story. There are no secrets from the press anymore. As you can imagine, Mariella, I felt a considerable burden of responsibility. At one point I even wondered whether I was the right man for the job but they wanted a surgeon of my experience, I had met Herbert at a dinner, so there it was. We have established that there is provision for a large hospital in Constantinople and we have ordered massive stocks of lint and plaster and so on to be sent out there. It’s the best we can do. But I wish your father could have been with us. The main hospital, should it be required, will be a vast old barracks and I have reservations about the state of its floors and drains. Uncle Philip would have been the ideal person to advise us.”
    “Were the army doctors satisfied? ”
    “We all were, in a way. The accommodation is certainly adequate in terms of space. But of course so little can be done until we know more about where or even if the fighting will begin. And the army doctors are entirely optimistic because they say the military is used to building something out of nothing. Certainly I was impressed by the speed and efficiency of the steamships. A wounded man could reach hospital in a matter of hours.”
    “And what about Constantinople? Was it as you’d expected?”
    “Colder than I’d expected; a different type of cold from here, more dense and penetrating altogether. I stressed in my report that we were planning for a summer campaign, and that if the war were to be delayed until winter things could be quite different. With