Old mines may seem somehow to have a certain connection with the story or destiny of Sybil Devereaux, if not of her brother Denzil, and the betrayer of both their interests, who now found himself swinging by the branch of a frail gorsebush, over the mouth of the ancient shaft of an abandoned one—a shaft, the depth of which he knew not, and dared not to contemplate! He only knew that in Cornwall they were usually the deepest in the known world.
If few persons who are uninitiated, descend the shaft of an ordinary coal-pit, amid all the careful appliances of engineering, without a keen sense of vague danger, what must have been the emotions of the wretch who, with arms perpendicularly above his head, and legs outspread, wildly and vainly seeking to catch some footing, swung pendent over the black profundity that vanished away into the bowels of the earth below, perhaps, for all he knew, nearly a mile in depth!
It was beneath him he knew; the quiet stars were above; no aid was near; there was no sound in the air, and none near him, save the dreadful beating of his heart, and a roaring, hissing sound in his ears.
In this awful situation, after his first exclamation of deadly and palsied fear, not a word, not a whisper—only sighs—escaped him. He had never prayed in his life, and knew not how to do so now. The blessed name of God had been often on his cruel lips, in many a matter-of-fact affidavit, and in many an affirmation, made falsely, but never in his heart; so now, he never thought of God or devil, of heaven nor hell, his only fear was death—extinction!
And there he swung, every respiration a gasping, sobbing sigh, every pulsation a sharp pang; he had not the power to groan; as yet his long, lean, bony hands were not weary; but the branch might rend, the gorse bush uproot, andthen——
Nevertheless he made wild and desperate efforts to escape the dreadful peril, by writhing his body upward, as his head was only some four feet below the edge of the upper rim or course of crumbling brickwork, which lined the circular shaft, and often he felt his toes scratch the wall, and heard the fragments detached thereby pass whizzing downwards; but he never heard the ascending sound of the fall below—because below was far, far down indeed!
The silence was dreary—awful: he dared not look beneath, for nothing was to be seen there but the blackness of utter profundity; he could only gaze upward to where the placid stars that sparkled in the blue dome of heaven, seemed to be winking at him. He dared not cry, lest he should waste his breath and failing strength; and had he attempted to do so the sound would have died on his parched and quivering lips.
In every pulsation he lived his lifetime over again, and all the secret crimes of that lifetime were, perhaps, being atoned for now.
The widows who, without avail or winning pity, had wept, (in that inquisitorial camera de los tormentos, his "office,"), for the loss of the hard-won savings of dead husbands, their children's bread; wretches from under whose emaciated forms he had dragged the bare pallet, leaving them to die on a bed of cinders, and all in form and process of law; the strong and brave spirited men, who had lifted up their hard hands and hoarsely cursed him, ere they betook them to the parish union or worse; the starvelings who had perhaps gained their suits, but only in their last coats; the crimes that some had committed through the poverty and despair he had brought upon them; the unsuspecting, into whose private and monetary matters he had wormed himself by specious offers of gratuitous assistance and advice—a special legal snare—by the open and too often secret appropriation of valuable papers; and by the thousand wiles and crooks of policy known only to that curse of society, the low legal practitioner, seemed all to rise before him like a black cloud now; and out of that cloud, the faces of his pale victims seemed to mock, jibe, and jabber at him.
And there, too, were the handwritings he had imitated, the signatures he had forged, the sham accounts he had fabricated against the wealthy or the needy, the ignorant and the wary alike; but Sharkley felt no real penitence, for he knew not that he had committed any sin. Had he not always kept the shady side of the law? and, if rescued, would he not return to his sharp practice thereof as usual? Yet he felt, as the moments sped on, a strange agony creeping into his soul:
"So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,Darkness above, despair beneath,Around it flame, within it death!"
The bush bending under his weight, hung more perpendicularly now, and thus Sharkley's knees, for the first time, grazed till they were skinned and bloody against the rough brickwork. Was the root yielding? Oh no, no; forbid it fate! He must live—live—live; he was not fit to die—and thus, too! The cold, salt perspiration, wrung by agony, flowed from the roots of his hair, till it well nigh blinded him, and tears, for even a creature such as he can weep, began to mingle with them. They were perfectly genuine, however, as Master William S. Sharkley wept the probabilities of his own untimely demise.
He had once been on a coroner's inquest. It sat in the principal room of a village inn, upon some human bones—nearly an entire skeleton—found in an old, disused, and partially filled-up pit. He remembered their aspect, so like a few white, bleached winter branches, as they lay on a sheet on the dining-table. He could recall the surmises of the jurors. Did the person fall? Had he, or she—for even sex was doubtful then—been murdered? or had it been a case of suicide? None might say.
The poor bones of the dead alone could have told, and they were voiceless. All was mystery, and yet the story of some forgotten life, of some unknown crime, or hidden sorrow, lay there; the story that man could never, never know.
This episode had long since been forgotten by Sharkley; and now, in an instant, it flashed vividly before him, adding poignancy to the keen horrors of his situation. Was such a fate to be his?
He could distinctly see the upper ledge of bricks, as he looked upward from where, though he had not swung above three minutes, he seemed to have been for an eternity now; and though he knew not how to pray, he thought that he could spend the remainder of his life happily there, if but permitted to rest his toes upon that narrow ledge, as a place for footing, as now his arms seemed about to be rent from his shoulders. His eyes were closed for a time, and he scarcely dared to breathe—still less to think.
Sharkley was not a dreamer; he had too little imagination, and had only intense cunning and the instincts that accompany it; so he had never known what a nightmare is; yet the few minutes of his present existence seemed to be only such. He had still sense enough to perceive, that the wild and frenzied efforts he made at intervals to writhe his body up, were loosening the root of the gorse-bush, and he strove in the dusky light, but strove in vain, to seehow muchhe had yet to depend upon; and then he hung quite still and pendant, with a glare in his starting eyeballs, and a sensation as if of palsy in his heart.
His arms were stiffening fast, his fingers were relaxing, and his spine felt as if a sharply pointed knife was traversing it; he knew that the end was nigh—most fearfully nigh—and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, though it was dry as a parched pea.
Oh for one grasp of a human hand; the sound of any voice; the sight of a human face ere he passed away for ever!
There was a sudden sound of tearing as the gorse-root parted from the soil; he felt himself slipping through space, the cold air rushed whistling upward, and he vanished, prayerless, breathless, and despairing, from the light of the blessed stars, and then the black mouth of the shaft seemed vacant.
Downie Trevelyan's applications to the War Office, the Horse Guards, to the Military Secretary for the Home Department of the East India Company, and even questions asked in his place in the House of Lords, were unremitting for a time, on the affairs of Afghanistan, as he wished to elicit some information concerning the safety of his son, and the probablenon-safety of Lieutenant Devereaux, more particularly; but he totally failed in extracting more than vague generalities, or that one was believed to be safe with Sir Robert Sale's garrison in Jellalabad; and that the other was supposed to be a prisoner of war with many others. How long he might remain so, if surviving, or how long he had remained so, if dead, no one could tell; but dark rumours had reached Peshawur, that the male hostages had been beheaded in the Char Chowk of Cabul, while the females had been sold to the Tartars.
On the assassination of the Shah Sujah, whose ally we had so foolishly become by the mistaken policy of the Earl of Auckland, the prince, his son, had gained possession of the Bala Hissar, the guns and garrison of which gave him for a time full sway over the city of Cabul, when he made the cunning, plotting, and ambitious Ackbar Khan his Vizier.
The latter, however, always on the watch, and by nature suspicious, intercepted a letter written by his young master to General Nott, who commanded our troops in Candahar. This contained some amicable proposals, quite at variance with the inborn hate and rancour which Ackbar bore the English; and hence a quarrel ensued at the new court.
The prince demanded that the hostages, male and female—the fair Saxon beauty of some of the latter was supposed to have some influence in the request—left by the deceased General Elphinstone, should be delivered up to him, without question or delay.
Ackbar sternly refused to comply, and it was on this that the young Shah wrote to General Nott, urging him to march at once on Cabul to release the captives; and, moreover, to free the city from the interference and overweening tyranny of Sirdir, who thereupon resolved to take strong measures, and, with the aid of Amen Oollah Khan, Zohrab Zubberdust, and some others, made his new Sovereign captive. The latter escaped by making a hole in the roof of his prison; a purse of mohurs, a sharp sword, and a fleet horse, enabled him to reach in safety the cantonments of the British General, to whom he gave a sad detail of the miseries to which the prisoners, especially the delicate ladies, were subjected.
This movement was nearly the means of causing the destruction of all who were left at Ackbar's mercy. All communication between them and the troops in Jellalabad was cut off more strictly and hopelessly than ever; and Ackbar Khan swore by the Black Stone of Mecca, and by many a solemn and fearful oath, that "the moment he should hear of the approach of British troops again towards Cabul, the hostages should, each and all, man, woman, and child alike, be sold as slaves to the Usbec Tartars! And remember," he added, with clenched teeth and flashing eyes, to Zohrab the Overbearing, and others who heard him; "that my word is precious to me, even as theMohur Solimani—the seal of Solomon Jared was to him!"
This was the signet of the fifth monarch of the world after Adam; and the holder thereof had, for the time, the entire command of the elements, of all demons, and all created things.
"Now," he exclaimed, with fierce vehemence, "I cannot violate my oath, for as the sixteenth chapter of the Koran says, 'I have made God a witness over me!'"
Hence, perhaps, the rumour that came to Peshawur, and thus any attempt to save or succour them, would, it seemed, but accelerate their ruin, for if once removed to Khoordistan, they should never, never be heard of more, nor could they be traced among the nomadic tribes who dwell in that vast region of Western Asia, known as the "country of the Khoords."
The last that, as yet, was known of them, was that they were all in charge of an old Khan, named Saleh Mohammed, and shut up in a fortress three miles from Cabul. There they were kept in horrible suspense as to their future fate; and to them now were added nine of our officers who had fallen into Ackbar's hands, when, in the month of August, he recaptured the city of Ghuznee.
How many Christian companions in misfortune were with the Ladies Sale and Macnaghten, the garrisons in Jellalabad and Candahar knew not; neither did they know who, out of the original number taken in the passes, were surviving now those sufferings of mind and body which they all had to undergo. Among them was one poor lady, the widow of an officer, who had the care of eight young children, to add to her mental misery.
The steady and unexpected refusal of Sir Robert Sale to evacuate Jellalabad, completely baulked all the plans of Ackbar Khan, who supplemented his threatening messages by investing the city in person at the head of two thousand five hundred horse and six thousand five hundred juzailchees; but fortunately Sir Robert had collected provisions for three months, and made a vigorous defence, though the lives or liberties of the hostages, among whom were his own wife and daughter, were held in the balance, and he trusted only to his artillery, the bayonets and the stout hearts of his little garrison, who, in addition to the assaults and missiles of the Afghans, had to contend with earthquakes; for in one month more than a hundred of those throes of nature shook the city, crumbling beneath their feet the old walls they were defending.
In daily expectation of being relieved, Sale's stout English heart never failed him, for he had learned through our faithful friend, Taj Mohammed, the ex-vizier, that Colonel Wild, with a force, was marching to his aid from one quarter, while General Pollock was crossing the Punjaub from another. Yet a long time, he knew, must elapse before the latter could traverse six hundred miles; and ere long came the tidings that Wild had totally failed, either by force of arms or dint of bribery, to achieve a march through the now doubly terrible Khyber Pass.
General Nott, however, held out in Candahar, and, on receiving some supplies and reinforcements; he was ready to co-operate with Sale and Pollock in a joint advance upon Cabul, to rescue the hostages at all hazards, or, if too late for that, to avenge their fate and the fate of our slaughtered army by a terrible retribution.
A severe defeat sustained by Ackbar Khan, when Sale, on the 7th of August, made a resolute sortie and cut his army to pieces, taking two standards, four of our guns lost at Cabul, all his stores and tents, relieved Jellalabad of his presence; and in this state were matters while Waller and Audley Trevelyan were serving there, doing any duty on which they might be ordered, foraging, trenching, and skirmishing, for they were unattached to any regiment; and the former was still ignorant as to the fate of hisfiancée, the bright-faced and auburn-haired Mabel Trecarrel, and equally so as to that of her sister and his friend Denzil. He had long since reckoned the two latter as with the dead, and mourned for them as such; for he knew nothing of their being retained as special "loot" by Shereen Khan, who now kept himself aloof from Ackbar, of whom he had conceived a truly Oriental jealousy and mistrust.
Though so near them, Waller knew no more concerning the number, treatment, or the safety of the hostages held for the evacuation of the city he had assisted to defend, than those to whom Downie Trevelyan was applying in London—perhaps less.
To the original number of captives were now added thirty more, from the following circumstance, which in some of its details is curiously illustrative of the cunning and avaricious nature of the Afghan mountaineers. A pretended friendlycossid, or messenger, arrived at Jellalabad, bearer of a letter from Captain Souter, of Her Majesty's 44th Regiment, dated from a village near the hill of Gundamuck, detailing the last stand made there by the few unhappy survivors of Elphinstone's army, and adding that he and Major Griffiths, of the 37th Regiment, were the prisoners of a chief who, on a sufficient ransom being paid—a thousand rupees for each—would send them to Jellalabad with their heads on their shoulders. The brave fellows of the 13th Light Infantry instantly subscribed a thousand rupees at the drum-head; a thousand more were collected with difficulty by their now-impoverished officers; and then came a proposal to ransom twenty-eight privates of the 13th and 44th Regiments, who were in the hands of the same chief, for alacof rupees. By incredible efforts, and by encroachment on the military chest, this sum was sent with certain messengers, who, by a previously concerted scheme, were waylaid and robbed of it by men sent by Ackbar Khan, who, seizing the thirty Europeans, added them to the other hostages whose lives or liberties were to pay for the surrender of Jellalabad!
The poor soldiers had given all they possessed in the world, save their kits and ammunition, to save their comrades from perilous bondage, and had given it in vain. They had but the consolation of having done for the best.
Amid even the exciting bustle of military duty, the reflections of Waller were sometimes intolerable. He could never for a moment forget. Though he was not, as a matter-of-fact young English officer, prone to flights of romantic fancy, imagination would force upon him with poignant horror all that Mabel might be forced to endure at the hands of those on whose mercy she and her companions were cast by a fate that none could have foreseen, especially during the pleasant days of the year that was passed at Cabul, when the race-course, the band-stand, picnics, hunting-parties, morning drives, and rides to see Sinclair's boat upon the lake, tiffin parties at noon, others for whist or music in the evening, made up the round of European social life there, ere Mohammed Ackbar Khan came to the surface again with his deep-laid plots for aggrandisement and revenge.
Mabel Trecarrel, his affianced wife, so gently soft and lady-like—her image was ever before him, her voice ever in his ear, and the varying expressions of her clear grey eyes, with all her winning ways, came keenly and vividly to memory, more especially in the lonely watches of the night, when muffled in his poshteen, with only a Chinsurrah cheroot to soothe his nerves and keep him warm, he trod from post to post visiting his sentinels, or listened for the sounds that might precede an Afghan assault, or perhaps an earthquake; for the troops had both to encounter, though often nothing came but the melancholy howl of the jackal on the night wind, as it sighed over the vast plain around the city of Jellalabad—the Zarang of the historians of Alexander.
He had frequent thoughts of returning to Cabul in disguise as an Afghan. He had already been pretty successful in his Protean attempts to conceal his identity; but Sir Robert Sale would by no means accord him permission to risk his life again in a manner so perilous; so, as partial inactivity was maddening to him, after Ackbar Khan's defeat had left all the avenues from the city open, he volunteered, if furnished with a suitable escort, to ride to Candahar, and urge on General Nott the policy of instantly advancing. Sir Robert Sale agreed to this, and furnished him with a despatch and a guard of twenty Native Cavalry; so Bob Waller departed, actually in high spirits, thankful that even in this small way he was doing something that might ultimately lead to the recapture of Cabul, and, more than all, the rescue of her he loved.
At a quick pace he crossed the arid desert that surrounds the city, and ascended into the well-wooded and magnificent mountain ranges that rise all around it, but more especially to the westward, whither his route lay, and his spirits rose as his party spurred onward. "What pleasure there is in a gallop!" says Paul Ferroll; "the object is before one, at which to arrive quickly; the still air becomes a wind marking the swiftness of one's pace—the fleet horse is his own master, yet one's slave; the bodily employment leaves care, thought, and time behind. One feels the pleasure of danger, because there might be danger, and yet there may be none."
So thought Waller, as he careered at the head of his party, with a cigar between his teeth, the which to keep alight while riding at full speed, he had previously dipped in saltpetre, a camp-fashion peculiar to India.
Candahar is distant from Jellalabad two hundred and seventy British miles, and, considering the state of the whole country, the undertaking, at the head of twenty horse, was a brave and arduous one; but Waller confidently set out on his expedition, after having carefully inspected his escort of picked men, and personally examined their arms, ammunition, and saddlery, as he knew not whom they might meet, or have to encounter.
By a curious coincidence, on the very day he bade adieu to his brother-officer, Audley Trevelyan, and other friends, to urge and effect a junction of the forces, a fresh and loud burst of indignation against the now-desponding Indian Executive was excited in the minds of Sale's troops by the arrival of a messenger with a startling proposal from the Governor-General, Auckland, to the effect that Jellalabad wasnota place to retain any longer; that a retreat was to be made from there to Peshawur; that, in effect, the whole of Afghanistan was to be—as Ackbar Khan wished it—abandoned by our forces, and that the helpless women and children, wounded and sick, at Cabul, were to be left at the mercy of irresponsible barbarians until rescued by quiet negotiations or a judicious distribution of money; and thus to have peace at any price, leaving our disgraces without remedy, our revenge unaccomplished, and our prestige destroyed—in that quarter of the world at least!
Even the English women who were captives in Afghanistan knew better than this; for, amid the earnest prayers which they put up for their liberation, they ever seemed to know that it was "not to be obtained by negotiation and ransom,but by hard fighting," and they had more trust in the bayonets of Sale's Brigade than in all the diplomatists in London or Calcutta.
Fortunately, ere all these disastrous arrangements could be made, a new Governor-General in the person of Lord Ellenborough arrived, and to him Sir Robert Sale despatched Audley Trevelyan with a letter descriptive of his plans, and giving details of his force; and on this mission, with a few attendants, our young staff officer and his companion departed by the way of Peshawur, the gate of Western India, on a long and arduous journey of nearly five hundred miles, by Rawul Pindee and Umritsur, to Simla, on the slopes of the Himalayas—a journey to be performed by horse and elephant, as the occasion might suit; for the railway to Lahore had not as yet sent up its whistle in the realms of Runjeet Sing.
Meanwhile Waller was proceeding in precisely an opposite direction. Compelled to avoid Ghuznee, which was now in the hands of the Afghans under Ameen Oollah Khan, he and his escort, the half-Rissallah of Native Horse, travelled among the mountains, unnoticed and uncared for by the nomadic dwellers in black tents, whose temporary settlements dotted the green slopes. His sowars all wore turbans in lieu of light-cavalry helmets; and as he too had one, with it, his poshteen, and now weather-beaten visage, he passed as a native chief of some kind; and the route they traversed was sometimes as beautiful as picturesque villages, long shady lanes overarched by mulberry-trees, orchards of plums, apples, pomegranates, and those great cherries which were introduced by the Emperor Baber, could make it. And so on they rode, by Kurraba and Killaut, till they reached Candahar in safety; and thankful indeed was honest Bob Waller when from the hills, amid the plain, he beheld the city, with its fortress crowning a precipitous rock, its long low walls of sun-dried brick, and the gilded cupola that shrines the tomb of Ahmed Shah, once "the Pearl of his age," the object of many a Dooranee's prayer, and around which so many recluses spend the remainder of their lives in repeating the Koran over and over again without end.
There Waller was welcomed by the gallant General Nott, whom he found full of stern resolution and high in hope for the future, for he was on the very eve of marching with seven thousand well-tried and well-trained troops to the aid of his friend Sale; and on the 15th of August the movement was made,en routerecapturing Ghuznee. It was stormed, and the Afghans again driven out at the point of the bayonet. The whole place was dismantled; and, among others, Waller had the pleasure of standing where no "unbeliever" ever stood before, in the tomb of the Sultan Mahmud, which is entirely of white marble and sculptured over with Arabic verses from the Koran. Around it, beneath the mighty cupola stand thrones of mother-of-pearl; and upon the slab that covers his grave lies the mace he used in battle, with a head of iron, so heavy that few men now-a-days can use it. The gates of this tomb were miracles of carving and beauty; they were of that hard yellow timber known as sandal-wood, which grows on the coast of Malabar and in the Indian Archipelago, and is highly esteemed for its fragrant perfume and as a material for cabinet work. Those gates had been brought as trophies from the famous Hindoo temple of Somnath in Goojerat, when sacked by Mahmud in his last expedition during the tenth century; and after hanging on his tomb for eight hundred years, they were now torn down by order of General Nott, and carried off by our victorious troops, for restoration on their original site.
Prior to all this, General Pollock with his army had reached Jellalabad, which he entered under a joyful salute of sixteen pieces of cannon, and then "forward!" was the word heard on all sides, "forward to Cabul!"
Then it was seen how the weather-beaten and hollow faces of our jaded soldiers brightened with joy and ardour, with a flush for vengeance too; for certain tidings came that, prior to this long-delayed* junction having been effected, the relentless Ackbar, true to his oath, had hurried off all his captives, male and female, in charge of Saleh Mohammed towards the confines of savage Toorkistan—tidings heard by many a husband, father, and lover with despair and rage!.....
* It was with something of waggery, perhaps, that the band of the 13th Light Infantry, on this occasion, welcomed Pollock, by playing the old Scottish melody,
"Oh, but you've been lang o' comin',Lang, lang, lang o' comin'."
Time, to the young, seems but a slow and cold comforter (alas! how different it must appear to the old); so Denzil knew that, though sluggish, time must eventually bring about some change in the captivity he was enduring in the hands of Shireen Khan—a mode of life that, but for the sweet companionship of Rose, would have been simply so intolerable that he should certainly have attempted to escape even at the risk of death.
In perfect ignorance of all that was passing in the outer world of far-away Europe, of India, and even Afghanistan, they and the other hostages, from whom they were, happily for themselves, kept apart, knew nothing of all that was passing elsewhere, or of the plans that were forming and the hopes that grew for their rescue or release.
We say, happily they were sequestered from those who were in the hands of Ackbar Khan: thus they were not harassed by dreadful and incessant doubts of their future fate, especially the vague and terrible one of transmission to Toorkistan; for the old Kuzzilbash lord treated them kindly, and, to the best of his resources, hospitably, confidently believing that it was his personal interest to do so, as the gaily embroidered regimental colour of the 44th, or East Essex, in which Denzil purposely aired his figure occasionally in the garden of the fort, still impressed him with the idea that he had secured a great Feringhee Nawab whom the Queen or Company might ransom, or who might prove a powerful friend to him if reverses came upon Cabul, and not a poor Ensign, or Lieutenant, as Denzil was now; though he knew not that, consequent to slaughter, death by disease, and so forth, he had now been promoted in the corps.
Chess-playing was the great bond between old Shireen and the bright laughing Rose, whom he treated with infinitely more care and tenderness than either of his own daughters; but to Denzil he would frequently say in his hoarse, guttural, and most unmusical language, between the whiffs of his silk-bound and silver-cupped hubble-bubble—
"I am thy friend; yet remember that friendship with unbelievers is forbidden by the Koran, especially with Jews or Christians; for saith the fifth chapter, 'Are they not friends one with another?' and they will corrupt us, their alms being like the icy winds which blow on the fields of the perverse, and blast their corn in the ear."
Denzil could not repress an impatient grimace under a smile, for it was the Koran—always and ever the Koran—among these Afghans; every casual remark or idea suggested a quotation from or a reference to it, so that the Khanum could not dye her nails, adjust her veil, put pepper in the kabobs, or chillis among the pillau of rice, without a reference to something that was said or done on a similar occasion by the Holy Camel-driver of Mecca,—their whole conversation being interlarded with pious sayings, like that of the Scottish Covenanters or English Puritans of old.
Isolated as they were in that lonely Afghan fort, surrounded by towering green hills, the interest that Denzil and Rose had in each other grew daily and hourly deeper; so that at last she learned to love him—yes, actually to love him—as fondly as he had ever loved her, and to feel little emotions of pique and jealousy when he strove to address the daughters of the house and teach them a very strange kind of broken English.
Propinquity and a just appreciation of his sterling character achieved this for him, and he felt supremely happy in the conviction of this returned love, though the end of it yet was difficult to foresee.
But it was such a divine happiness to dream softly on for the present, shut in there as they were alone for themselves apparently, and, as it seemed, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." Denzil's doubts of her were gone now; yet Rose had the power to conceal for a long time the gradual change in her own sentiments and secret thoughts from him who had inspired them; for the coquette was loth to admit that she had succumbed at last.
Denzil had contrived, after innumerable essays, in the most remarkable species of polyglot language, to make old Shireen comprehend that they had not, as yet, been married before a Cadi (or Moollah, as the Christians are), and had to wait the permission of others. On this he stroked his vast beard in token of assent, and thrice muttered "Shabash!" with great solemnity, meaning, "Well-done—agreed."
Rose had lost much of her heedlessness of manner now; her latest flirtation, which had been with Audley Trevelyan, was utterly forgotten, as many others had been; and the quaint Afghan dress she was compelled by the exigencies of her scanty wardrobe to wear—to wit, a yellow chemise of silk embroidered with black, trousers of fine white muslin, which revealed through its thin texture the roundness of each tapered ankle, with her veil floating loose, in token of her being unmarried, did not afford her much room for coquetry, although it afforded scope for her old waggery, and her long unbound auburn tresses, that spread over her shoulders in brilliant ripples, she was wont to ridicule as acoiffure à la sauvage, though one with which Denzil's fingers—when unobserved by the Afghan household, he and she could ramble among the parterres, rosaries, and shrubberies of the Khan's garden—were never weary of toying.
"You will tire of this life, as I do, and more soon of waiting too," said she one day.
"I shall wait and be faithful to you, Rose, even as I was taught at school Jacob was to Rachel," he replied, fondly caressing her hands in his.
"Oh! that is much more solemn than Paul and Virginia," said she laughing; "but, for Heaven's sake, don't imitate our dingy friends here in pious quotations."
When Rose Trecarrel calmly learned to know herself, she found upon consideration, and came to the conclusion, that it was not mere admiration for Denzil's handsome person and earnest winning manner; it was not gratitude for his steady faith to herself, it was not the charm of propinquity, nor the emotion of self-flattery at his passion,—that it was not any of these singly, but all put together, that made her love him so dearly now, and wonder at her heedless blindness in the time that was past.
Save Zohrab Zubberdust, that handsome, reckless, and wandering Mohammedan soldier of fortune, no visitor at this time came to the fort; and he was openly permitted to see Rose with the other ladies of the family, and occasionally to converse and smoke a cherry-stick pipe with Denzil, who deemed it rash on the part of Shireen to permit them—Rose and himself—to be seen so freely by one who was a paid follower of Ackbar Khan; but the leader of five thousand mounted Kuzzilbash spearmen doubtless felt himself pretty independent in action now. Moreover, since Ackbar's signal defeat before the walls of Jellalabad, his influence had been lessening in Cabul and all the surrounding country; and Zohrab, like many other "khans," who had only their swords and pistols, and, like many other Afghan snobs, that title to maintain, was beginning to wax cool in his service, even as the funds ebbed in his treasury; for Ackbar now had but one hope of replenishing these—the ransom or sale of the captives left in his hands, and each head of these he reckoned at so many mohurs of gold.
It was from some casual remarks of Zohrab that Rose and Denzil first learned, with mingled emotions of satisfaction and fear, compassion and hope, that so many more hostages, male and female, were in the hands of Ackbar, and that their own hopes of rescue or ransom were thereby increased.
Rose, through the medium of the Khan and of Denzil, overwhelmed Zubberdust with questions as to who these prisoners were. Was her father among them? No description he gave her answered to that of the burly, bronzed, and grizzle-haired "Sirdir Trecarrel;" but there wasone"mem sahib," whose appearance tallied so closely in stature, face, eyes, and colour of hair with her own, that knowing as she did all the ladies who had been in the cantonments, Rose could not doubt but that she was Mabel—Mabel, her dear and only sister, who must have been within a few miles of her all those weary, anxious months, and yet neither could know of the other's existence; for Mabel, like all who were with Elphinstone's ill-fated host, had now learned to number all who had loved her with the dead.
Now it happened that Zohrab Zubberdust had frequently seen Mabel Trecarrel among the hostages, and been struck by her beauty. Indeed, Ackbar Khan, who cared not for such personal attributes as she possessed, and was long since past all soft emotions now, or, indeed, any save those of ferocity, ambition, and avarice, had frequently indicated her to Ameen Oollah Khan and others as the one upon whom he put most value, and for whom he expected the largest sum from a certain Toorkoman chief whom he named, and who was in the habit of purchasing or exchanging horses for such pleasant commodities; for at that precise time, or in that year of Queen Victoria's reign, Mohammed Ackbar could scarcely realise as a probability the fact that the year 1871 would see a descendant of the Great Mogul—he who was lord of Persia, Transoxana, and Hindostan—one of the royal race of Delhi, sentenced in a Feringhee court of law, by a cadi in a tow wig, to four years' imprisonment with hard labour "for burying a slave-girl" in the city of Benares! So,
"Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,Tenets with books, and principles with times!"
Thus Zohrab, perceiving that the power and influence of Ackbar had been daily growing less in Cabul, especially since the flight of the young Shah to the British General, had begun to dream of possessing himself of this rare European beauty, and departing with her, his horse and lance, in search of "fresh fields and pastures new," and, if possible, of another paymaster; perchance to the court of the Emir of Bokhara, the Shah of Persia, or some one else, alike beyond the ken of Ackbar and the influence of the Feringhees and their queen. In this intention, Zohrab felt the less compunction, that Ackbar had of late permitted his pay to be in arrears severaltillasof gold.
But how to get her quietly out of his power, still more how to get her out of the immediate care and wardship of such a wary old soldier and chief as Saleh Mohammed, to whom the especial keeping of the hostages had been confided by the Sirdir, were the two principal difficulties of Zohrab.
He hoped to achieve much through the real or supposed relationship to Rose, with whom he conversed freely, at times, on this and other subjects (Denzil acting as their interpreter), and from him she gradually learned much of which Shireen and his household had, perhaps, kept her in ignorance—the state of affairs before Jellalabad and in the Passes.
"Are not the poor dead creatures buried there?" Rose once asked, while many a face and voice came back to memory.
"Buried? a few—but not deep," replied Zohrab, evasively.
"How—what mean you?"
"Because, as I rode through the Pass but yesterday, my horse's hoofs turned up great pieces of human flesh, while the jackals and hyaenas have been busy with the rest; they are dry bones now."
Rose tremulously clasped her white hands and shuddered.
"And those bones," was the sententious remark of Shireen, who was listening, "not even the voice of Ezekiel could, as we are told it once did, call back to life, as it called the dead Israelites of old."
"A fortunate thing for us, Khan," said the irreverent Zohrab, laughingly.
"Why?"
"I mean, if the result was to be the same; for all arose and lived for years after; and is it not written that they moved among living men with a stench and colour of corpses, and had to wear garments blackened with pitch?"
"That weary Koran again!" murmured Rose; while the Khan frowned, and, to change the subject, said,
"Tell us, Zohrab, more about the Feringhee damsel whom this lady deems must be her sister, and your plans regarding her."
"I fear she could not be prevailed upon to trust herself to me under any pretext, or to leave the companionship of her friends in misfortune without some assurance that she who is with you, Khan Shireen, is indeed her sister in blood."
"Most true," said Shireen, running his brown fingers through his dense beard with an air of perplexity.
"Oh, that may be easily arranged," said Denzil, full of hope at the prospect of seeing Mabel, of the joy it would afford Rose, and the wish to learn from her own lips all that had happened to so many dear friends since that terrible day when so many thousands perished, and so many were separated never to meet more. Thus, he suggested that Rose should entrust Zohrab with a note to be delivered, on the first convenient opportunity, to Mabel, or the lady who was supposed to be she. Zohrab did not care about her identity the value of a cowrie-shell, provided his own plans succeeded.
"And you shall bring her here without delay?" said Shireen, while he knit his bushy and impending eyebrows.
"Where else would she be safe, Khan?"
"Not with you, at all events," was the dubious response.
Zohrab coloured perceptibly, and a covert gleam flashed in his glossy black eyes, as he said,
"My head may answer for this project, Khan, if I am taken."
"Taken—how? Do you mean to fly?" asked Shireen, with another keen glance.
"Nay—nay; not if I can help it," stammered Zohrab, who saw that the Khan's sunken eyes were full of strange light.
"If it becomes known that she is here, the fact will embroil me with Ackbar; but, bah! what matter is it?" said Shireen, proudly. "The city is divided against him, and he knows I can bring five thousand red caps into the field; and she will be one more prisoner for Shireen of the Kuzzilbashes!" he muttered under his beard. "Go then, Zohrab; go and prosper."
"May I not accompany him?" asked Denzil, eagerly, as for months he had never been beyond the wall and ditch of the fort, and he longed to make a reconnaissance with a future eye to escape.
"Nay," said Zohrab, "you know not what you propose, Sahib. Your presence would but encumber me, and add to the lady's peril: it is not to be thought of."
Rose added her entreaties that he would not think of it either; for she might lose her lover, and not regain her sister, so suddenly, so recently, heard of; and then an emphatic and brief command from the Khan ended the matter, so far as poor Denzil was concerned, and he felt himself compelled to succumb.
Writing materials, such as the Afghans use, the strong fibrous paper, a reed split for a pen, with deep black and perfumed Indian ink, were soon brought; and Rose, with a prayerful emotion in her fluttering heart, and a hand that more than once almost failed in its office, so great was her excitement, wrote a single line assuring Mabel that she, herself, was safe, and to "confide in the bearer of this, who would bring her to where she was residing;" and with this tiny missive—which he placed to his lips and then to his forehead in token of faith, while his black eyes flashed with an expression which Rose saw, but failed to analyse—safely deposited in the folds of his turban, Zohrab took his departure; and with a heartfelt invocation for his success on her lips, Rose heard the sound of the hoofs of his swift Tartar horse die away on the road that led towards the dark rocky hills of Siah Sung.
"Shabash! such children of burnt fathers those Feringhees are!" said Zohrab, laughing as he galloped along. "Well, well, let me enjoy the world ere I become the prey of the world!"
Zohrab had promised to return with the lady, or, if without her, to bring some sure tidings, not later than the evening of the second day; but the evening sun of the third had reddened and died out on the mountain peaks, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and a whole week passed away, yet there came no word or sign from Zohrab, and never more did he cross the threshold of Shireen's dwelling!
Had he been discovered and slain by Saleh Mohammed, or what had happened?
Rose wept, for the tender hope, so suddenly lighted in her impulsive heart, only to be as suddenly extinguished; but as yet no suspicion of treachery on the part of Zohrab Zubberdust had entered the minds of her or Denzil, whatever Shireen Khan, as an Afghan naturally prone to suspicion, may have thought.
On receiving the note from Rose Trecarrel, the cunning Zohrab, full of his own nefarious plans, had ridden straight from the white-walled fort of Shireen Khan to that commanded by Saleh Mohammed, which is situated exactly three miles from Cabul, amid a well-cultivated country; and there, knowing well the time when, after hearing morning prayers read according to the service of the Church of England by one lady who had preserved her "Book of Common Prayer," the poor captives, with the children who were among them, were wont to take an airing in the garden, he chose the occasion; for, as he was aware, Saleh Mohammed, kneeling upon a piece of black xummul, under the shadow of a great cypress, would be also athisorisons, and telling over his string of ninety-nine sandal-wood beads, with his face bowed towards thewest, as is the custom in India and Persia. The precept of the Koran is, that when men pray they shall turn towards the Kaaba, or holy house of Mecca; and, consequently, throughout the whole Moslem world, indicators are put up to enable the faithful to fulfil this stringent injunction. So selecting, we say, a time when the grim old commandant of the fort was deep in his orisons, with his head bowed, and his silver beard floating over the weapons with which his Cashmere girdle bristled—for the modern Afghan (like the Scottish Highlander of old) is never found unarmed, even by his own fireside—he made a sign to Mabel that he wished to speak with her; but he had to repeat this salaam more than once ere she understood him, as she was intently toying with and caressing a little boy, whose parents had perished in the late disasters, and who clung specially to her alone.
Mabel, pale and colourless now more than was her wont, though she never had possessed a complexion so brilliant as her sister Rose, bowed to Zohrab, whom she little more than knew by sight, and by the force of local custom was lowering her veil (for she, too, like all the rest, now wore the Afghan female dress) and turning away, when Zohrab placed a hand on his lips, and, making a motion indicative of entreaty, silence, and haste, held up the tiny note of Rose.
On this Mabel's pale cheek flushed; she hesitated, and many ideas shot swiftly through her mind, while she glanced hastily about her, to see who observed them. Was this note some plot for her release and the release of her friends—some political or military stratagem? Had it tidings of her father's burial—for she knew that he had fallen in the Pass—of the army, of those who were in Jellalabad? Was it a love-letter? Zohrab Zubberdust was certainly very handsome; her woman's eye admitted that. This idea occurred last of all; yet the note might be from Waller—dear Bob Waller, with his fair honest face and ample whiskers. All these thoughts passed like lightning through her mind as she took the missive, which was written on a small piece of paper, folded triangularly and without an address.
Then, as she opened it, a half-stifled cry of mingled astonishment and rapture escaped her.
"Rose, it is from Rose; she yet lives! Oh, my God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee!—she yet lives, but where?" she exclaimed, in a voice rendered low by excess of emotion, as she burst into tears, and read again and again the few words her sister had written.
Zohrab was attentively observing her. He saw how pure and beautiful she was; how unlike aught that he had ever looked upon before—even the fairest, softest, and most languishing maids of Iraun; for Mabel was an English girl, above the middle height, and fully rounded in all her proportions. All that he had heard of houris, of those black-eyed girls of paradise, the special care of the Angel Zamiyad, seemed to be embodied in her who was before him. Her quiet eyes seemed wondrously soft, clear, and pleading in expression, to one accustomed ever to the black, beady orbs of the Orientals; and as he gazed, he felt bewildered, bewitched by the idea that in a little time, if he was wary, all this fair beauty might be his—his as completely as his horse and sabre!
"My sister! my dear, dear sister!" exclaimed Mabel, impulsively, kissing the note and pressing it to her breast. "Oh, I must tell of this. Lady Sale, Lady Sale!" she exclaimed, looking around her; but Zohrab laid a hand on her arm, and a finger on his lip significantly.
"Lady Sahib," said he, in a low guttural voice, "you will go with me?"
"Yes, yes—oh yes; but how? to where?—and I must confer with my friends and the Khan, Saleh Mohammed."
"Nay; to do so would ruin all."
"With my friends, surely?"
"Nay; that too would be unwise: to none."
"None?"
"I repeat, none," said Zohrab, whose habit of mind, like that of all Orientals, was inclined to suspicion, secresy, and mistrust.
"Why?" asked Mabel.
"Does not your letter tell you?"
"No—but can I—ought I to—to——" she paused and glanced irresolutely towards the group of her companions in misfortune, who were generally clustered round the chief matrons of their party, Lady Sale and the widowed Lady Macnaghten; and the idea flashed upon her mind that she might be unwise to leave the shelter of their presence and society, and trust herself to this Afghan warrior. But, then, had not Rose bade her confide in him?
"Where is my sister, and with whom?" she asked.
"I can only tell you that she is in perfect safety," replied Zubberdust, unwilling in that locality to compromise himself by mentioning the name of Shireen Khan.
"I shall be silent, and go with you," said Mabel, making an effort to master her deep and varied emotions.
"When?"
"Now—this instant, if you choose."
"That is impossible. At dusk, when the sun is set, I shall be here again on this spot, and take you to her. Till then, be silent, and confide in none: to talk may ruin all!" said Zubberdust, whose active mind had already conceived a plan for outwitting Saleh Mohammed and his guard of Dooranees, who watched the walls of the fort from the four round towers which terminated each angle, and on each of which was mounted a nine-pounder gun taken from our old cantonments.
Too wary to remain needlessly in her company, with all her allurements, now that his pretended mission was partly performed, and thereby draw the eyes of the observant or suspicious upon them, and more particularly upon himself, he at once withdrew, leaving poor Mabel, who naturally was intensely anxious to question him further, overwhelmed by emotions which she longed eagerly to share by confidence with her friends; for news of any European, especially of one who belonged to the little circle of English society at Cabul, must prove dear and of deepest interest to them all. Yet had not this mysterious messenger impressed upon her, that if she was to see her sister, to rejoin her, and hear the story of her wonderful disappearance at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, if she would soothe, console, it might be protect her, she must be silent?
Slowly passed the day in the fort of Saleh Mohammed. The tall and leafy poplars, the slender white minars, the four towers of the fort, which was a perfect parallelogram, and the wooded and rocky hills that overlooked them all, cast their shadows across the plain (through which the Cabul winds towards the Indus) gradually in a circle, and then, when stretching far due westward, they gradually faded away; the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush, the mighty Indian Caucasus, rose cold and pale against the clear blue sky, where the stars were twinkling out in succession; and with a nervous anxiety, which she found it almost impossible to control, Mabel Trecarrel stole away, with mingled emotions, from the apartments assigned to the lady hostages—emotions of sorrow, half of shame for her silence concerning the project she had in hand, and her enforced reticence to those who loved her, and had ever been so kind to her amid their own heavy afflictions—compunction for the honest alarm her absence would certainty occasion them on the morrow; but hope and joy in the anticipated reunion with her sister soon swept all such minor thoughts away, and she longed and thirsted for the embrace and companionship of Rose, to whom, though the difference in their years was but small, she had ever been a species of mother and monitress—never so much as when in their happy English home in Cornwall, far away!
Since their strange separation on that fatal morning, when their poor father, in his despair and sorrow, galloped rearward to perish in the skirmish, how much must the pretty, the once-playful, and coquettish Rose have to tell; and how much had she, herself, to impart in return!
Her heart beat almost painfully, when, on approaching the appointed spot for the last time, she saw the figure of Zohrab Zubberdust standing quite motionless under the shadow of the great cypress, where in the morning Saleh Mohammed had knelt at prayer. He wore his steel cap (with its neck-flap of mail), on which the starlight glinted; he had a small round gilded shield slung on his back by a leather belt; his poshteen was buttoned up close to his throat, and he was, as usual, fully armed; but in one hand he carried a large, loose chogah, or man's cloak, of dull-coloured red cloth; and now Mabel felt that the decisive moment had, indeed, all but arrived: beyond that, her ideas were vague in the extreme, and her breathing became but a series of hurried and thick respirations.
"Is all safe? is all ready—prepared?" she asked, in a broken voice.
"Inshallah—all," replied the taciturn Mahommedan, who, like all of his race and religion, had few words to spare.
The idea of escaping by ladders of rope or wood had never seemed to him as possible. The walls of the fort were twenty-five feet high, and surrounded by a deep wet ditch, the water of which came by a canal, through a rice-field, from the Cabul river. Its only gate was guarded by a party of Saleh Mohammed's men, under a Naick (or subaltern), with whom Zohrab was very intimate; and beyond or outside these barriers he had left his horse haltered (in sight of the sentinels), and so that it could not stir from the place, as the only portion of the gate which the Naick was permitted to open was thekikree, or wicket, through which but one at a time could pass.
Zohrab Zubberdust, scarcely daring to trust himself to look on Mabel's fair, anxious, and imploring face, lest it might bewilder him from his fixed purpose, took from his steel cap the white turban cloth he wore twisted round it, and, speedily forming it into a single turban with a falling end, placed it on her head. He enveloped her in the ample chogah, hiding half her face, gave her his sabre to place under her arm, and the simple disguise was complete; for, in the dusk now, none could perceive that she wore slippers in lieu of the brown leather jorabs or ankle-boots of the Afghans; and looking every inch a taller and perhaps a manlier Osmanlie than himself, Mabel walked leisurely by his side towards the gate, where, as watch-words, parole, and countersign were alike unknown to the guard, fortunately none were required of them; but her emotions almost stifled her, when she saw the black, keen, and glossy eyes of the Dooranees surveying her, as they leaned leisurely on their long juzails, which were furnished with socket bayonets nearly a yard in length.
She moved mechanically, like one in a dream, and the circumstance of striking her head as she failed to stoop low enough in passing through the wicket added to her confusion; nor was she quite aware that they had been permitted to pass free and unquestioned, as two men, by the Naick, to whom Zohrab made some jesting remark about the "awkwardness of his friend," until she saw behind her the lofty white walls of the fort gleaming in the pale starlight, their loopholes and outline reflected downward, in the slimy wet ditch where water-lilies were floating in profusion.
Unhaltering his horse and mounting, her new companion desired her, with more impressiveness than tenderness of tone—for the former was his habit, and the moment was a perilous and exciting one—to walk on by his side a little way, as if they were conversing, and thereby to lull any suspicion in the minds of such Dooranees as might be observing them; for they were still within an unpleasant distance of the long rifles of those who were posted on the towers of the fort; and still more were they within range of those ginjauls which are still used in India, and are precisely similar to the swivel wall-pieces invented long ago by Marshal Vauban, and throw a pound ball to a vast distance.
On descending the other side of an intervening eminence, that was covered by wild sugar-canes and aromatic shrubs, the leaves of which were tossing in the evening breeze, he curtly desired her to place her right foot upon his left within the stirrup-iron, and then, with the aid of his hand, he readily placed her on the holsters of his saddle before him. He now applied the spurs with vigour to his strong, active, and long-bodied Tartar horse, and, with a speed which its double burden certainly served to diminish, it began quickly to leave behind the dreaded fort of Mohammed Saleh.
As the latter began to sink and lessen in the distance, Mabel Trecarrel felt as if there was a strange and dreamy unreality about all this episode. Many an officer and Indian Sowar had ridden into the Khoord Cabul Pass with his wife or his children before him, even as she was now borne by Zohrab; she had heard and seen many wild and terrible things since her father, with other officers of the Company's service, had come, in an evil hour, "up country," to command Shah Sujah's Native Contingent; she had read and heard of many such adventures, escapes, flights, and abductions in romance and reality; but what might be her fate now, if this should prove to be the latter—an abduction of herself—some trick of which she had permitted herself to become the too-ready victim?
She was in a land where the people were prone to wild and predatory habits, and, moreover, were masters in trickery, cunning, and cruelty. Had she been deceived? she asked of herself, when she felt the strong, sinewy, and bony arm of Zohrab tightening round her waist, while his wiry little horse, with its fierce nose and muscular neck outstretched, and its dancing mane streaming behind like a tiny smoke-wreath, sped on and on, she knew not whither!
Had she been deceived, was the ever-recurring dread, when the handwriting was that of Rose, beyond all doubt? But written when? or had Rose been deluded? Was this horseman the person in whom she had been desired "to confide," or had he stolen the note from another?—perhaps, after killing him! Those Afghans were such subtle tricksters that she felt her mistrust equalled only by her loathing of them all.
Mabel asked herself all these tormenting questions when, perhaps, too late; and she knew that, whether armed or unarmed, Heaven had never intended her to be a heroine, or to play the part of one: she felt a conviction that she was merely "an every-day young lady," and that if "much more of this kind of thing went, she must die of fright."
Just as she came to this conclusion an involuntary cry escaped her. The boom of a cannon—one of Her Majesty's nine-pounders, of which the Khan had possessed himself—pealed out on the calm still atmosphere of the Indian evening, now deepening into night. Another and another followed, waking the echoes of the woods and hills; and, though distant now, each red flash momentarily lit up the sky. They came from the fort of Saleh Mohammed to alarm the country; and still further to effect this and announce the escape of a prisoner, a vast quantity of those wonderful and beautiful crimson, blue, green, and golden lights, in the manufacture of which all Oriental pyrotechnists excel so particularly, were shot off in every direction from the walls, showering upward and downward like falling stars, describing brilliant arcs through the cloudless sky; and with an exclamation on his bearded mouth, expressive of mockery and malison with fierce exultation mingled, Zohrab Zubberdust looked back for a moment, while his black eyes flashed fire in the reflected light.
"Hah!" he muttered, "dog of a Dooranee, may the grave of the slave that bore thee be defiled!"
And while one hand tightened around his prize, with the other he urged his horse to greater speed than ever.
As they proceeded, past groves of drooping willows, past rows of leafy poplars, rice-fields where pools of water glittered in the starlight, and past where clumps of the flowering oleaster filled the air with delicious perfume, Mabel began to recognise the features of the landscape, and knew by the familiar locality that she was once more within a very short distance of Cabul. Again, in the light of the rising moon, as she sailed, white and silvery, above the black jagged crests of the Siah Sung, Mabel Trecarrel could recognise the burned and devastated cantonments, where in flame and ruin the fragile bungalows, the compounds of once-trim hedgerows, and all, had passed away,—the bare boundary walls and angular bastions alone remaining. She saw the site of her father's pretty villa, a place of so many pleasant and happy memories—the daily lounge of all the young officers of the garrison; and there, too, were the remains of the Residency, where Sir William Macnaghten, as the Queen's representative, dispensed hospitality to all. Yonder were the hills and village of Beymaru; and further off a few red lights that twinkled high in air announced the Bala Hissar, the present residence of Ackbar Khan; but to take her in that direction formed then no part of the plans of Zohrab Zubberdust.
He rode straight towards a lonely place which lay between the Beymaru Hills and the Lake of Istaliff; and as the locality grew more and more sequestered he slackened the speed of his horse, now weary and foam-flaked. After a time he drew up, and, requesting her to alight, lifted her to the ground, and politely and gently urged her to rest herself for a little space.
"My sister?" said Mabel, tremulously.
"Is not here," replied he.
"But where, then?"
"Patience yet a while," said he with a smile, which she could not perceive; while he, to be prepared for any emergency, proceeded at once to shift his saddle, rub down his horse with a handful of dry grass, give it a mouthful or two from a certain kind of cake which he carried in his girdle; and then he looked to his bridle, stirrup-leather, and the charges of his pistols. Accustomed to arms and strife of late, Mabel looked quietly on, taking all the preparations for uncertain contingencies as mere matters of course.
Breathless and weary with her strange mode of progression, she had seated herself on a stone close by; and while the careful rider was grooming his steed and making him drink a little of the shining waters of the long narrow lake, she looked anxiously around her, surmising when or in what manner of habitation she should find her sister. Not a house or homestead, not even the black tent of a mountain shepherd, was in sight. On all sides the lonely green and silent hills towered up in the quiet moonlight, and the still, calm lake reflected their undulating outlines downward in its starry depth.
The holly-oak, the wild almond, and the khinjuck tree, which distils myrrh, and in that warlike land of cuts and slashes is in great repute for healing sabre wounds, the homely dog-rose, the sweet-briar, the juniper bush, and the wild geranium, all grew among the clefts of the rocks in luxuriant masses; while sheets of wild tulips waved their gorgeous cups among the green sedges by the lake.
Not far from where she sat was a grove, which she remembered to have been the scene of a once-happy picnic party, of which Bob Waller was one. She recognised the place now. She knew it was a lonely solitude, that in summer was ever full of the perfume of dewy branches, fresh leaves, and opening flowers; but the immediate spot where they had halted had been anciently used as a burying-ground. A portion of an old temple, covered by luxuriant creepers, lay there, and two magnificent cypresses still towered skyward amid the half-flattened mounds and sinking grave-stones of the long-forgotten dead. The remains of a little musjid, or place for prayer, long since ruined by some savage and idolatrous Khonds, who came down from the hills, lay there among the débris, which included a shattered well, built by some pious Moslem of old. The water from it gurgled past her feet towards the lake, and she remembered how Waller had placed the bottles of champagne and red Cabul wine in the runnel to cool them.
And now, as if contrasting the joyous past with the bitter present, a shudder came over Mabel. She held out her pale hand, which looked like ivory in the moonlight, and said to Zohrab, as he approached her—
"It is a gloomy place, this. Is my sister far from here?"
"About five coss," said he, confidently; and he spoke the truth, and charmed by seeing her outstretched hand, an action which betokened reliance or trust—he flattered himself, perhaps, regard—he took a seat by her side, and then Mabel began to view him with positive distrust and uneasiness. She said—
"Five coss—ten miles yet! Let us go at once, then!"
"Stay," said he, "let us rest a little. You are—nay, must be weary;" and arresting her attempt to rise with a hand upon her arm, he drew nearer her; and sooth to say, though he was confident in bearing, bravely embroidered in apparel, and had a handsome exterior, Zohrab Zubberdust was but an indifferent love-maker, and knew not how to go about it, with a "Feringhee mem sahib" least of all. He was puzzled, and made a pause, during which Mabel's large, clear, grey eyes regarded him curiously, warily, and half sternly.
As the mistress of her father's late extensive household, with its great retinue of native servants (each of whom had half a dozen others to perform his or her work), and, as such, coming hourly in contact with the dealers and others in the bazaars and elsewhere, Mabel Trecarrel had, of necessity, picked up a knowledge of the Hindostanee and the Afghan, far beyond her heedless sister Rose, who, as these were neither the languages of flirtation or the flowers, scarcely made any attempt to do so; hence Mabel could converse with Zohrab with considerable fluency.
Her beauty was as soft and as bright as that of Rose, but it was less girlish and of a much higher and more statuesque character; so "Zohrab the Overbearing" now felt himself rather at a loss to account for the emotion of awe—we have no other name for it—with which she inspired him. The point, the time, and the place when he should have her all to himself had arrived, true to all his calculations and beyond his hopes; and yet his tongue and spirit failed him, as if a spell were upon him.
In his lawless roving life, now serving the Khan of Khiva, on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, now the Emir of Bhokara, far away beyond the waters of the Oxus, and lastly Ackbar Khan, he had, in predatory war, carried off many a girl with all her wealth of bracelets and bangles, the spoil of his spear and sabre, trussing her up behind him like the fodder or oats for his Tartar nag; but never had he felt before as he did now, for, unlike the maids of the desert, the Feringhee failed to accept the situation. He felt perplexed—secretly enraged, and yet he murmured half to himself and half to her, as his dark face and darker gleaming eyes drew nearer hers—
"The whiteness of her bosom surpasses the egg of the ostrich or the leaf of the lily, and her breath is sweet as the roses of Irem—yea, as those of Zulistan! Listen to me," he added abruptly, in a louder and sharper tone, and in his figurative language; "fair daughter of love, give ear. You have won my heart, my love, my soul, subduing me—even Zohrab! Learn in turn to be subdued, submissive, and obedient. Happy is he who shall call you wife; and that happy man—is Zohrab!"
The intense bewilderment of poor Mabel increased to extreme fear at those words, so absurdly inflated, yet so blunt in import, and she shrunk back, but could not turn from the dark, glittering eyes that gleamed with a serpent-like fascination into hers.
So shehadbeen deluded after all, and her worst anticipations were about to be realised at last! Zohrab grasped her left hand with his right, and planting his left cheek on the other hand, with an elbow on his knee, began to take courage, and, surveying her steadily, to speak more distinctly and with an admiring smile; for the silence of the night was around them, and no sound came on the wind that moaned past the grove or the great cypresses close by; so from the silence, perhaps, he gathered confidence, if, indeed, he really required it.
"Allah has been good to us," said he, "exceedingly good, in creating such beautiful beings as women to please us. You are more beautiful than any I have seen—too much so to be left to gladden a Kaffir's heart; so you shall remain with me, and be the light of my eyes."
"Wretch!—fool that I have been! Rose, Rose!" gasped Mabel, scarcely knowing what she said.
"I love you," he resumed softly, while his hot clasp tightened on her hand, and his lips approached her ear; "you hear—and understand me?"
"You love me!" exclaimed Mabel rashly, with proud scorn in her tone, despite the deadly fear that gathered in her heart, and while her eyes flashed with an expression to which the Oriental was quite unaccustomed in a captive woman.
"Yes, I love you—I, Zohrab," was the somewhat egotistical response.
"You know not what love is; but, even if you did, you shall not dare to talk of it to me. That you may have a fancy, I can quite well understand; but a fancy, or a passion, and love are very different things. What do you, or what can you, know of me?"
"That you are beautiful: what more is required?"
"Enough of this—I am weary. Take me instantly to my sister, or back to my friends who are with Saleh Mohammed; for if I were to denounce you to Ackbar Khan, how much think you your head would be worth?"
"Much less than yours, certainly."
"And at what does he—thisotherbarbarian—value me?"
"At the price of six Toorkoman horses, perhaps," was the half-angry response; "while to me you are priceless, beyond life itself. Denounce me to Ackbar Khan—would you?"
"Yes."
His teeth glistened under his jet moustache as he replied—
"Those stones and trees alone hear us; so now let me tell you, Kaffir girl, that you weary me; by the five blessed Keys of Knowledge, you do!" and, as he spoke, he started to his feet, and by an angry twist of his embroidered girdle threw his jewelled sabre behind him.
"Oh, this is becoming frightful!" moaned Mabel, clasping her hands and looking wildly round her; "what will become of me now? Papa, Rose, are we never to meet again?"
Oh, if big, burly Bob Waller, with his six feet and odd inches of stature, were only there! Could he but know of her misery of mind—her dire extremity! but would he ever know? God alone could tell!
There is much that is touching in the helplessness of any woman, but more than all a beautiful one, though we, whose lines are cast in pleasant places, and in a land of well-organized police, may seldom see it—a clinging, imploring expression of eye, when all is soul and depth of heart, and strength avails not. But Zohrab Zubberdust felt nothing of this. She on whom he looked might be pure as Diana, "chaste as Eve on the morning of her innocence," yet, as a Mohammedan, he had a secret contempt for her—perhaps a doubt of her—as a Kaffir woman. He was only inspired by the emotions of triumph and passion, by the sure conviction that this fair Feringhee, this daughter of a vanquished tribe, this outcast unbeliever, so lovely in her whiteness of skin, her purity of complexion, and wondrous colour of hair, in her roundness of limb, and in stature so far surpassing all the maids of the twenty-one Afghan clans or races, was his—hisproperty—to become the slave of his will or his cruelty, as it pleased him!
Of the paradox that woman's weakness is her strength, with the Christian man, Zohrab knew nothing, and felt less; yet he tried to act the lover in a melodramatic fashion, by making high-flown speeches, and assuring her, again and again, that he loved her "as the only Prophet of God loved Ayesha, his favourite wife, the mother of all the Faithful," and much more to the same purpose, till amid the wind that sighed through the trees, and shook the wild tulips and lilies by the lake, the quickened ear of Mabel caught a distant sound; and then one of those shrill cries of despair, that women alone can give, escaped her.