Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

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I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier
announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written credentials.
He asked the conditions on which I could enter into negotiations with
Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could only accept a
convention with the honours of war, not to include the fortress of Metz.
These are the only conditions which military honour permits me to accept.

Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when Count
Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing more until
Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the matter must
imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that his Excellency
hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with honour, and that soon.

So Regnier quitted Ferrieres in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully to
the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of the
Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took him
for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of October he
found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had telegraphed in
advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had instructed General Bourbaki
to pass under until the true Regnier should reach England. But Bourbaki
had cast away the false name at the instigation of a brother officer while
passing through Belgium. On arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the
Empress that he had been made the victim of a mystification on the part of
Regnier, and that she had never expressed the desire to have with her
either Marshal Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the
newspapers had given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although
covered by his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he
wrote to the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good
offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An
assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to
Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz. Some
delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this effect and
although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would shortly reach him,
he became impatient, went into France, and placed himself at the
disposition of the Provisional Government. But thenceforth he was a soured
and dispirited man. The _ci-devant_ aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed
under the harrow of Gambetta and Freycinet.

As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted
Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in
expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell
him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but that
she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung on, and
the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly into a room
in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose from a couch
and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face with the Empress.
"Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in wishing to speak
with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?" Then Regnier, by his
own account, harangued that august and unfortunate lady in a manner which
in print seems extremely trenchant and dictatorial. It was all in vain, he
confesses; he could not alter the convictions of the Empress. He says that
"she feared that posterity, if she yielded, would only see in the act a
proof of dynastic selfishness; and that dishonour would be attached to the
name of whoever should sign a treaty based on a cession of territory."
Probably Her Majesty spoke from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was
able to comprehend or appreciate.

Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both curious
and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October he found
Regnier _tete-a-tete_ with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later he went to
Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in political
machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there. Presently we
find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of the _Moniteur
Prussien_, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation of that city, in
which journal he published a series of articles under the title of _Jean
Bonhomme_. During the armistice after the surrender of Paris he betook
himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer that he had gone to
Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations tending towards an
Imperial restoration. He showed the general the original safe-conduct
which Bismarck had given him at Ferrieres, and a letter of Count Hatzfeld
authorising him to visit Versailles. The last item during this period
recorded of this strange personage--and that item one so significant as to
justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion "that Regnier played a double
game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he chose, could clear up the mystery
which hangs over Regnier's curious negotiations"--is found in a page of
the _Proces Bazaine_. This is the gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he
was in Versailles, where he met a person of his acquaintance, to whom he
uttered the characteristic words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck
will allow me to leave him this evening.'" He is said to have later been
connected with the Paris police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether
Regnier was more knave or fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will
probably be never known.

RAILWAY LIZZ

BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON

We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick in
the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask worn by
the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they are, and
while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our estimate of human
nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which stand out from the
mass of shadow. There are curious opinions entertained in the outer world
as to the internal economy of hospitals, not a few "laymen" imagining that
the main end of such establishments is that the doctors may have something
to experiment upon for the advancement of their professional theories--
something which, while it is human, is not very valuable in the social
scale and therefore open to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a
freedom begotten of the knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.

Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital nurse
is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous selfishness.
Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are believed to be
purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee her or who have
friends able and willing to buy her services, may purchase civil treatment
and careful nursing while the poor wretch who has neither money nor
friends may languish unheeded. There is no greater mistake than this. Year
by year the character of hospital nursing has improved. It is not to be
denied that in times gone by there were nurses the mainsprings of whose
actions may be said to have been money and gin; but these have long since
been driven forth with contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a
discharged soldier without a single copper to bless himself with, nursed
with as much tender assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position
to pay his nurses handsomely.

Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents is
altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of railway
porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a dead
letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any grasping after
a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident no guerdon is to
be expected. There is an hospital I could name in which the nurses are
prohibited from accepting from patients any more substantial recognition
of their services than a nosegay of flowers. The wards of this hospital
are always gay with bright, fragrant posies, most of them the
contributions of those who, having been carefully tended in their need,
retain a grateful recollection of the kindness and now that they are in
health again take this simple, pretty way of showing their gratitude. It
is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's labourer got mended in the
accident ward of this hospital of some curiously complicated injuries he
had received by tumbling from the top of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon
has there been since the house-surgeon told him one morning that he might
go out, that he has not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought
his thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.

Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often
curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them.
It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries
of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation.
We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious
to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to
devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety
was aimless and of no utility to humanity. There was a concentrated
selfishness in it which detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in
the modern nuns of our hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating
with equal solicitude the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a
more philanthropic opening for their exertions in their retirement than in
sleeping on hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.

It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of character
were ample and of a very high order but they did not enlighten me with any
great freedom as to her past history, and she for her part appeared by no
means eager to supplement the meagre information furnished by them.
However, people have a right to keep their own counsel if they please, and
there was no sin in the woman's reticence. We happened to be very short of
efficient nurses at the time and she was at once taken upon trial; her
somewhat strange stipulation, which she made absolute, being agreed to--
that she should not be compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely
come in to perform her turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to
leave the precincts when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange
one, because attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice
as well as a necessity for entering a lower grade.

She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she was
not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she was in
the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within the walls
except on subjects connected with the performance of her duties. Then,
too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty in the accident
ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this ward--the work is very
heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights are more than usually
repulsive. But she specially made application to be placed in it, and the
more terrible the nature of the accident the more eager was her zeal to
minister to the poor victim. It seemed almost a morbid fondness which she
developed for waiting, in particular, upon people injured by railway
accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed
almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an
empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a
seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and
ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot"
with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount to
a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to the
reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed, nobody
ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I confess to
have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to have several
times given her an opening which she might have availed herself of for
narrating something of her past life; but she always retired within
herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a little, satisfied as I
was that there was nothing in her antecedents of a character which would
not bear the light.

There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to be
mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened by
jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside our
walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the accident
ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down and passed
over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of humanity.
Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the pain-parched lips
and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious sufferer. The house-surgeon
came and went with that silent shake of the head we know too surely how to
interpret, and the mangled railway-porter was left in the care of his
assiduous nurse. It was almost midnight when I again entered the accident
ward. The night-lamp was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over
the great room and throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and
the walls. I glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale
screen placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had
gone out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and when I
stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping as if her
heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress her emotion
and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it was her wont to
wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst out in almost
convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them. I put my arm
round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down kissed her wet
cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse weeping. The
evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she buried her head
in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child. When the acuteness of
the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently raised her up, and asked of
her what was the cause of a grief so poignant. I found that I was now at
last within the intrenchments of her reserve; with a deep sigh she said,
in her Scottish accent, that it was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared
to hear it she would tell it. So sitting there, we two together in the dim
twilight of the night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the
railway-porter lying there "streekit" decently before us, she told the
following pathetic tale:--

"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a factory, a
very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright, God-fearing man.
When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a railway-guard, a
winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye had kent my Alick,
ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was a proud man, and he
couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said wasna my equal in
station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade Alick from coming about
the house, and me from seeing him. It was a sair trial, and I dinna think
ony father has a right to put doon his foot and mar the happiness of twa
young folks in the way mine did. The struggle was a bitter ane, between a
father's commands and the bidding of true luve; and at last, ae night
coming home from a friend's house, Alick and I forgathered again, and he
swore he would not gang till I had promised I would marry him afore the
week was out.

"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever think
of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the van with
him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we went flashing
by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we used to take a walk
out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld brig o' Balgownie, and
then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I put down the kebbuck and
the bannocks. My father keepit hard and unforgiving; they tellt me he had
sworn an oath I should never darken his door again, and at times I felt
very sairly the bitterness of his feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up
waiting for Alick's hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he
wad come in with his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought
but joy at his presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I
had kent when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we
used sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year
time came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's
Eve at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and made
enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late mail
train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time to get
up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I was to
spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.

"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could be,
and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and lively.
I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but I was
luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The time wore
on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be expectit. I
kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and anxious for his
coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my heart gave a jump at
the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came closer, I kent it wasna
Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear and doubt caught me at the
heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our old friend, was called out,
and I overheard the sound of a whispered conversation in the passage. Then
he put his head in and called out his wife; I could see his face was as
white as a sheet, and his voice shook in spite of himself. The boding of
misfortune came upon me with a force it was in vain to strive against, and
I rose up and gaed out into the passage amang them. The auld man was
shakin' like an aspen leaf; the gudewife had her apron ower her face and
was greeting like a bairn, and in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a
railway-porter frae the station. I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to
you, leddy. I steppit up to Tarn and charged him simple and straught.

"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'

"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer, Lizzie,
my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu' ane.'

"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me oot
o' my pain!'

"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--

"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'

"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to stop
me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He is
mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'

"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon through
the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him oot frae my
sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's nae law that can
keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was lying in a
waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was sair, sair
mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the winsome, manly
face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane spoiled; and lang,
lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his cauld forehead,
playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there, in their
considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's morning
began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But I wadna
gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was abune the
mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he had left sae
brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four of the
railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its hame-look
for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa' frae me and
laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."

She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and I
wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her have
recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the narrative
of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her voice, and
briefly concluded the little history.

"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used to
pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of my
dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would do
anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in prayerful
hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was born into this
weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping under the tree in
the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened him Alick, and the
bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God gifted me with him. I
found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower muckle for me, sae I came
up to London here, and ye ken the rest about me. It was because of being
with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live in the hospital here like the
rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame noo to my little garret, he will
waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy and fresh, and hold up his bonnie
mou', sae like his father's, for 'mammie's kiss.'"

MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER

None of the greater rivers of Scotland makes so much haste to reach the
ocean as does the turbulent and impatient Spey. From its parent lochlet in
the bosom of the Grampians it speeds through Badenoch, the country of
Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan Chattan, a region to this day redolent
of memories of the '45. It abates its hurry as its current skirts the
grave of the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, who raised the
92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the King's shilling to every
recruit, and who now since many long years

Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow.

But after this salaam of courtesy the river roars and bickers down the
long stretch of shaggy glen which intervenes between the upper and lower
Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the Clan Grant, whose habitation is this
ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its slogan of "Stand fast,
Craigellachie," till it finally sends its headlong torrent shooting miles
out through the salt water of the Moray Firth. In its course of over a
hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and again it
spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when wearied
momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and contorted bed;
or when a great rock, jutting out into its course, causes a deep black
sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with masses of yellow foam.
Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey from its source to
its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a fisherman extends
over the five-and-twenty miles of its lower course, from the confluence of
the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch to the bridge of Fochabers, the native
village of the Captain Wilson who died so gallantly in the recent fighting
in Matabeleland. My first Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of
the cherry orchard below the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first
grilse I hooked and played with trout tackle in "Dalmunach" on the Laggan
water, a pool that is the rival of "Dellagyl" and the "Holly Bush" for the
proud title of the best pool of lower Spey. My first salmon I brought to
the gaff with a beating heart in that fine swift stretch of water known as
"The Dip," which connects the pools of the "Heathery Isle" and the "Red
Craig," and which is now leased by that good fisherman, Mr. Justice North.
I think the Dundurcas water then belonged to the late Mr. Little Gilmour,
the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after
season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as he
was over the Leicestershire pastures. A servant of Mr. Little Gilmour was
drowned in the "Two Stones" pool, the next below the "Holly Bush;" and the
next pool below the "Two Stones" is called the "Beaufort" to this day--
named after the present Duke, who took many a big fish out of it in the
days when he used to come to Speyside with his friend Mr. Little Gilmour.

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