"And these—bless them, say I!—these were——"
"That my brother, dear Denzil, was here—here then, at least."
"And I—too?"
"I do not say so—least of all must I say so now; and then Lady ——'s offers were most advantageous to a penniless girl like me. You and, more than all, your father, deemed me no suitable match for you, when we were in England—when I was an inmate of my parent's house at Porthellick. You see, I speak quite plainly, Audley, and as one who is quite alone in the world; now, when by death and—and misfortune, I am reduced to eat the bread of dependence, the matter is worse than ever."
"But you love me still, Sybil—do you not!"
She was silent and trembling now.
"Speak," he urged; "you do love me still?"
"Yes, Audley."
"And will marry me, Sybil!"
"No."
"You love another then—another in secret?"
"No—one may not, cannot, love two."
But Audley thought of Stapylton and that devilish Irregular Horseman, and struck the heel of his glazed boot viciously into the gravel of the path.
After a panse he resumed—
"There is something in your tone, Sybil, that I do not understand. Doubtless your heart has much to accuse me of; but I have been the victim of circumstances, of my father's odd whimsical views—his selfishness, in fact; but here I can cast all such at defiance," he added, gathering courage as he perceived that she still wore on her hand—and what a pretty plump little hand it was!—his diamond betrothal ring—the diamond that whilom had figured as an eye of Vishnu, till Sergeant Treherne poked it out with his bayonet at Agra. "Listen, dearest Sybil; we are far away from England with all its insular and provincial prejudices—away from those local influences which my family exercised over me—my father's hostility, my mother's sneers, and so forth. I am secure of staff appointments—better these than casual loot or batta, I can tell you. I am independent of home allowances; and, to talk solidly and plainly, can think now in earnest of matrimony. Listen to me, Sybil;" and glancing hastily about, he tried to slip an arm round her, but she nimbly eluded him, and said—
"Then you have not heard the news we brought up country with us!"
"News!"
"Yes—my poor Audley."
"About what?"
"Your change of circumstances."
"Mine!—dearest Sybil, what can you mean?"
"Your succession to the title."
"Circumstances—title!—explain, in Heaven's name, Sybil."
She then told him that his father had died suddenly—died, as theMorning Postannounced, in the same library at Rhoscadzhel, and somewhat in the same manner, as his late uncle, when he was in the act of composing a long and elaborate paper legally reviewing the merits of the Afghan war; another grave had been opened and closed in the family tomb; another escutcheon hung on the porte-cochère of the princely old manor-house; and that he, Audley Trevelyan, was now Lord Lamorna, as the Governor-General would doubtless announce to him on the morrow.
And in his lonely tomb beside the Kuzzilbash fort lay one who could never dispute the family honours with him, and whose sorrows and repinings were past for evermore.
Audley was overwhelmed for a few minutes by this unexpected intelligence. There had been no great love, no strong tie, no fine yet unseen ligament, between father and son; yet the dead manwashis father, and he knew had ever been proud of him. He was shocked, but not deeply grieved; and "some natural tears he shed:" no more.
His father, however, prudential and unscrupulous in his children's interests, had always been cold, prosaic, undemonstrative, and unloveable to them and to all. Hence he passed away, having so little individuality that the blank made by his absence left no craving, and required no filling up; but, nevertheless, for a time, his cold, pale eyes and equally cold, glittering spectacle-glasses came vividly back to his son's memory.
Audley was, however, to say the least of it, so much disconcerted by the news Sybil had given him, that he lacked sufficient energy to retain her when she was swept from his side by the officer of the Irregulars, on a theatrical flourish of the vice-regal trumpets announcing that the supper-rooms were open.
The course of balls and other entertainments that followed the durbar and the news from Cabul were attended by neither Sybil nor Audley, now recognised and congratulated by all the European society at Simla as Lord Lamorna, and by the Viceroy, who offered him all the leave he might require to settle his affairs at home. Sybil had her brother's recent death to plead; and she looked forward with intense interest to seeing Waller, and to the returning army, though Denzil was no longer in its ranks.
They heard at Simla, how General Pollock had dismounted or destroyed every cannon in the Balla Hissar and in the city, and given to the flames the Mosque of the Feringhees, an edifice built by the vanity of Ackbar to consecrate and commemorate the sanguinary destruction of Elphinstone's army; the great bazaar also, once the emporium of the Eastern world; and how all the castles and forts of the khans and chiefs had likewise been given to the flames; how the sky was reddened for days and nights, and that the fiery gleam of the burning city was still visible on the close of the fourth day, when our rear guard was defiling through the mountains of Bhootkak on their homeward route to the Sutledge. Thus was the massacre of Khoord Cabul finally avenged; but, as Sybil thought in her heart, "would it restore the dead!"
Their graves, unmarked and unconsecrated, and the ruined city alone remained to tell of the strife that had been. A touching address, signed by all the ladies whom his energy and activity had done so much to rescue, was delivered to Sir Richmond Shakespere; and with Taj Mohammed Khan, the discarded Wuzeer of Cabul, a beggared fugitive and exile, as the sole friend who accompanied them, our troops came down on their homeward way, laden with spoil, and among it the great gates of Somnath, an object of adoration to the Hindoos; and thus ended the fatal war in Afghanistan.
Audley had been duly informed by letters, that his brother-officer, Waller, and the Trecarrels were also coming down country, and should ere long be at Ferozpore or Simla; and Sybil, who had now heard all the story of Rose and Denzil, longed, with a longing that no words can describe, to see her.
There is no emotion in this world more delightful, and nothing perhaps more beautiful, than a young girl's first dream of love; for a young man's first affair of the heart is even different in some respects. It is so full of innocence, of simplicity and truth, if the girl is pure and ingenuous; it is so full, also, of a new-born mystery, a charm, and a world of thought, of chance and risk, where there may be triumph or defeat, victory or failure, sorrow perhaps, and joy perhaps—but still she hopes, above all, a delight and happiness hitherto unknown. Hence it becomes absorbing; and such had been Sybil's love for Audley at home when she had the shelter of her mother's breast, and such for a time it had been after they were to all appearance so hopelessly separated; and now, after a lull, or being for a space, as it were, suppressed and crushed well-nigh out, by change, by distance, time, and travel,—now the love-lamp shone again.
And Audley, ere he had heard of his succession to that title which should have been Denzil's, had fated Denzil lived, had made her an abrupt but formal proposal of his hand. Would he renew it now?
She was not left long in doubt; for under the cognizance and with the express approbation of the wife of the Viceroy, who deemed herself in the place of mother and protectress to Sybil, he renewed his offer, and then the lady judiciously left the cousins—for such he had told her they were—to settle the matter between them.
"Ah, Audley," said Sybil, "too well do you know how I am situated; what or whom have I to cling to in this world—but you, perhaps?" she added, with a low voice, while her breast heaved, and her half-averted face was full of passionate tenderness. "Now that my poor Denzil is gone, nor kith, nor kin, nor inheritance—what can I offer you in return!"
"Yourself, darling; what more do I ask in this world!" he said, in a low and earnest voice, as he gradually drew her nearer him; and as her hand went caressingly on his neck, it seemed to him a dearer collar than either the Bath or Garter could be, for "what is all the glory of the world compared with the joy of thus meeting—thus having those we love?"
"Now, Sybil," said he, "you find how difficult it is to forget that one has loved——"
"And been beloved," murmured the girl.
"More than all by such a pure-souled heart as yours. You remember our first meeting by the tarn?"
"Could I ever forget it?"
"And our learned disquisition on flirtation, too. How odd it seems now, darling."
"And dear old Rajah—you have not our rough, shaggyintroducteurwith you," said Sybil, smiling.
"Poor dog, no. I left him at home in Rhoscadzhel, and, somehow, he is dead; that is all I know about it—so Gartha told me in a letter."
"All who love me die—even the poor dog. Surely they would be kind to your pet, for your sake."
"They—well, I don't know—doubtless."
Audley cared not to say that, by his lady-mother's orders, the dog had been destroyed as a nuisance—the last legacy of his comrade, poor Delamere, who died in the jungle.
"Ah, if my dear Denzil had lived to see this day!" said the happy girl, after a pause that was full of thought.
"Sybil, God knows how for your sake, even at the time when I never, never, hoped to see you more, I sought to protect and love your brother; but he repelled, avoided, and seemed to loathe me. Yet he saved my life in the Khyber Pass. It was through sorrow for his mother—and—and, perhaps, love for Rose Trecarrel; for he would be jealous of me, among other things, poor lad!"
"And she—she?"
"Rose was very heedless, Sybil; but, after all Bob Waller has written, let us not talk of the past now. You will learn to love her well, I know."
"I hope so: I must—I shall, for Denzil's sake."
"My sweet little love!—my Sybil, so tender and so true!" exclaimed Audley, pressing her with ardour to his breast.
But a short time ago, Sybil had been hoping that she would forget him; hoping, while journeying towards the land where he was—the land of the Sun—she who long since should have been his wife. She had striven for forgetfulness, hopelessly, yet with something of earnestness in the desire; and now that she had heard his voice again, the old spell was upon her—the spell of past hours, of remembered days—the spell of her lover's presence; and to be with him, the girl acknowledged in her heart, was to be in heaven again!
But now, we fear that we have intruded upon them quite long enough.
And so, till the time came when they should be joined by Waller and the Trecarrels (for companionship, it had been arranged that they should all take the journey by dawk and river-steamer, and then the overland route home together), the days passed pleasantly and swiftly at delightful Simla, in rides and drives among its wonderful scenery; where the netted bramble, the great strawberry, and giant fern covered all the rocks; the soft peach, the dark plum, the rosy apple, and the golden pear grew wild; and the dark-green pines, vast in proportion as the stupendous Himalayas, from whence they sprang, cast a solemn shadow over all, making deep and leafy recesses where the monkey swung by his tail, the buffalo browsed at noon, the leopard and the wild hog lurked for their food; by mountain villages that clustered near the fortified dwelling of the chieftain whose tower was built like the cone of an English glass house; by hill and vale, rock and stream, where flocks were grazing, watched by shepherds, quaint and savage-looking as their rural god, the son of Mercury, and by Thibet mastiffs, that reminded Sybil of her lover's four-footed friend, the Rajah of past days; and ever and anon, as they drove, or rode, or rambled, they talked, as lovers will do, of their future home in Cornwall, with all its associations so dear to them, and now so far away, and so they would marvel
"What feet trod paths that now no moreTheir feet together tread?How in the twilight looked the shore?Was still the sea outspreadBeneath the sky, a silent plain,Of silver lamps that wax and wane?What ships went sailing by the strandOf that fair consecrated land?"
Waller arrived at Simla to find himself gazetted in theBengal Hurkaruas major, and to get, like Audley, his glittering Order of the Dooranee Empire from the hands of the Viceroy; therefore he hung it round the white neck of Mabel, while Rose fell heiress to that which should, had he survived, have been her father's decoration.
So the schemes, the plotting with the wretched solicitor, Sharkley, and all the avarice of Downie Trevelyan availed him nothing in one sense; for now the daughter of that Constance Devereaux he had so cruelly wronged was coming home to Rhoscadzhel as the bride of his son, and in her own hereditary place as the Lady of Lamorna.
It is but justice to his memory, however, to record, that having some premonition or presentiment that death was near, or might come on him as it came on his older kinsman, something of the spirit of the Christian and the gentleman got the better of the more cold-blooded and sordid training of the lawyer; and Downie wrote out, sealed up, and left a confession concerning the two papers he had obtained and destroyed; and this document was found tied up with his will, in the library of Rhoscadzhel, by Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, his astounded solicitors. Not that any act of roguery surprised them, but only the folly of any man ever committing the admission thereof to ink and paper.
Audley and Sybil were but one couple out of several especially among the rescuers and the rescued, who were seized with matrimonial fancies to make Simla gay, after the retreat from Cabul—the result of propinquity, perhaps, and the system of chances. We may briefly state that they were married by the chaplain of the Governor-General, who gave the bride away; and not long after, Waller gave Mabel's marriage-ring a guard, wherein was set a jewel, the envy of all the ladies there—the sapphire which he had plucked from the steel cap of Amen Oolah Khan at the Battle of Tizeen.
At Simla Rose was thus twice a bridesmaid, and a lovely one she looked.
But was Rose ever married in the end? some may ask; for such a girl could not be without offers, especially in India. We have only to add, that the once-gay and heedless Rose Trecarrel is unwedded still.
On many a grey earn and lofty and rugged headland in Cornwall were fires, lighted by the miners and peasantry but chiefly about Rhoscadzhel—beacons so bright in honour of the new lord and lady, that they shone far over land and sea, and in such numbers that the Guebres and fire-worshippers of old, could they have seen them, might have deemed that the adoration of the Fire-god was again in its glory, as when the Scilly Isles were consecrated to the sun; and Derrick Braddon, who, on the strength of recent changes, had installed himself as a species of deputy-governor or major-domo at Rhoscadzhel, had a deep carouse, in which he was fully assisted by Messrs. Jasper Funnel, old Boxer, and others of the plush-breeched and aiguilletted fraternity.
Meanwhile, those whose fortunes we have followed throughout the campaign of Western India and the retreat from Cabul were speeding homeward, and when from the coast of Orissa they saw the steamer awaiting them in the rough and dangerous roadstead of Balasore, where usually the Calcutta pilots leave the home-bound ships, they hailed the bright blue world of waters as an old friend; for, to our island-born, "the sea, the sea," is what it was to the returning Greeks of old Xenophon!
"Now, Mabel," said Waller, as with, a lorgnette in her pretty hand, she surveyed the roadstead—the plain gold hoop on that hand being in Bob Waller's eyes the most charming trinket there, "a few weeks more, and all these foreign seas and shores will be left far behind; we shall be home at our little place that looks from Cornwall on the apple-bowers of Devon. Ha! Trevelyan, you and I shall then each sit down under his own vine and fig-tree in peace, and enjoy a quiet weed, like the patriarch of old—if the said patriarch ever possessed one. What say you, my Lady Lamorna?" he added, as he assisted Sybil's light figure to spring from the handsome and well-hung carriage in which they had travelled from Calcutta.
Sybil only smiled, and looked joyously at the sea, as she threw up the white lace veil of her bridal bonnet; and Audley, too, was gazing on the sea.
"Waller, we have undergone much," said he—"days of danger, and nights of anguish, yet we have survived them all, and been true to the end, and in the past have fully realised the force of the maxim that—
'Come what come may,Time and the Hourruns through the roughest day.'"
THE END.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS