These people proved to be Amen Oollah Khan, a warrior known as Zohrab Zubberdust (i.e., the overbearing), and others, who had that forenoon pursued Doctor Brydone almost to the gates of Jellalabad, and, on the way, murdered his hapless companion, Doctor Harper, whose horse had failed him within four miles of the city. They were richly accoutred; each had a gilded shield slung on his back, and wore a round steel cap, furnished with a flap of chain-mail covering the neck, and two upright points, like spear heads, that glittered in the starlight.
"Death to the Kaffir! death to the Feringhee!" they cried with one accord.
"I am no Kaffir," replied Walter (standing on the steps of the musjid, and ready to sell his life dearly), "but a Mussulman, like yourselves."
"Liar, and son of a liar! I see the dress of a red Feringhee under your poshsteen," said Amen Oollah, and in succession he, Zohrab, and two others, snapped their matchlocks at him; but they had become so foul by recent and incessant use, that the balls had been forced down with difficulty, the powder and matches were alike damp, and fortunately not one would explode.
"Hah!" said Waller, with great presence of mind, though fearing he might be recognised by Amen Oollah, who had frequently seen him in the streets of Cabul, "you see that the hand of the Prophet interposes, and does not permit you to kill me."
"We shall soon prove that," replied the Khan, unsheathing his sabre; but impressed, nevertheless, by what seemed the genuine belief in fatalism, which is a peculiarity of the Mohammedan faith; so he deliberately placed the edge on Waller's throat, and said—
"To the proof of what you assert. If you are a Mussulman, repeat the Kulma; if in one word, however small, you fail, your head and heels shall lie together on the snow."
Waller had his own sword drawn, and was prepared to run it through the heart of Amen Oollah if he felt himself failing. It was a critical moment; he knew that the edge of an Afghan sabre was sharp as a razor; he felt that he was never born to be a religious martyr; so thinking in his heart—as, perhaps, the great Galileo thought, when in the bonds of the Inquisition—"May God forgive me!" by a little stretch of memory he repeated the entire Kulma, or creed of Mohammed, on which Amen Oollah seemed satisfied, and sheathed his sword. But now Zohrab Zubberdust, a handsome and dashing Afghan gentleman, one of those soldiers of fortune who possessed only his sword and his horse, and thus served Ackbar Khan for three rupees per diem, said,—
"Khan Sahib, how comes a true believer to have a face and beard so fair?"
"A Persian taught me to dye my beard yellow; and as for my face, I am a Turk of Stamboul," replied Waller, boldly.
As not one of them had ever seen a Turk of Feringhistan, these answers seemed to perplex them.
"Then why here?" asked Zohrab, suspiciously.
"I served Shah Sujah, and have left him, for fate is against him, and he shall never reign in Afghanistan," said Waller, thinking in his heart, "How many falsehoods must I tell to deceive these artful savages?"
"You are right," said Amen Oollah, grimly; "but as we deem that in serving the Shah you have been guilty of a crime, I give you as a slave to Nouradeen Lai. You shall help him to plough the land."
"Salaam and thanks, Khan Sahib—I have need of a sturdy servant, as I shot one in a fit of passion lately," said a horseman, a powerfully built and venerable looking Afghan, to whose horse-girth Waller speedily found himself attached by a rope which was passed round his waist. To resist, would be simply to court death; and he was thus conducted, a prisoner, into a valley of the mountains. In fact, his captors were probably too glutted with slaughter to kill him, and so spared him for the time. But he felt that his existence would be at the caprice of his owner, Nouradeen Lai, whose first act of power was to take away his regimental sword and belt, after another acquisitive Afghan had possessed himself of his gold repeater, his purse and rings.
"What fools, and sons of burnt fathers, you Feringhees were to come among us here in Afghanistan, to put upon our throne a king we loathed, in lieu of Dost Mohammed," said Nouradeen, as they proceeded; "you will now know how true it is, that though two Dervishes may sleep on one carpet, two kings cannot reign in one kingdom. But the will of God be cdone! The whole world depends upon fate and fortune. It is one man's destiny to be depressed—the other's to be exalted."
"Canting old humbug!" thought Waller, who learned ere long that his agricultural owner was especially a man of proverbs, like Sancho Panza.
The farmer, and two other horsemen, with much ceremony bade adieu to Amen Oollah Khan; but the latter only waved his hand and said—
"Adieu till we meet again—most likely before Jellalabad," and, with his armed followers, galloped into that terrible pass, where an entire army, with all its debris, strewed the way for miles upon miles, back even into the gates of the burned cantonments.
"So those rascals think of beating up Sale's garrison," thought Waller, with reference to the parting words of the Khan.
As Nouradeen entered the hedgerows which bordered the compounds of his farm-house and yard, he unslung his juzail, which seemed in somewhat better order than those of his companions, and, wheeling half round in his saddle, fired a shot rearward, Parthian-wise, and brought down a large eagle that was soaring high in mid air.
"Steel commands everything, and now in addition to the steel—the swords and lances of our forefathers—we have bullets, praised be God!" he exclaimed, flourishing his clumsy old matchlock, exactly such a weapon as might have figured at Marston Moor, or the field of Kilsythe.
Perceiving that the shot excited Waller's admiration, he drew a long brass pistol from his girdle, urged his horse to full speed, and a picturesque figure he seemed, with his flowing robes and magnificent beard floating on the wind. He then threw a lemon over his head, and, twisting his body completely round to the left, fired at it from the off flank of his horse, and pierced it as it was in the act of falling.
"Now," said he, with a grim smile, "should you attempt to escape without ransom, my ball will follow you thus surely—yea, did go far as the arrow of Arish, which was shot at sunrise, and did not fall till sunset. A soldier, you should remember, that even were you to conquer all the world, death at last will conquer you."
"It is unlawful to make a slave of a true believer," said Waller.
"One may repeat the Kulma, and not be a very true believer after all," replied the shrewd old Afghan, with a gleam of intense cunning in his glittering eyes; "nay, nor even a Turk of Roum," he added, meaning Constantinople; and hence Waller knew that he was suspected.
The farmer's wife—Nouradeen Lai had but one helpmate—saw how pale and wan their prisoner looked, and speedily set some food before him; a pillau of rice, dhye (or sour curds), odious stuff, which he ate with his fingers in the fashion of the country. One or two of "Malcolm's plums" (as the Persians and Afghans call the potato), with a little ghee or clarified butter, completed his simple repast. As he ate, falling to without uttering "Bismillah!" an omission which his captors did not fail to remark, he thought that cookery must be a sublime science at home—a veritable branch of the fine arts; but hunger is ever an excellent seasoning to any meal.
The snow had now begun to melt fast, and for four days Waller was kept a close prisoner, without a chance of escape, though he brooded over it incessantly, and writhed in spirit to be thus detained from his duty in Jellalabad, where doubtless the task of vengeance—it might be the deliverance of the unhappy hostages—had already begun. Besides, he was intensely bored by the hypocrisy of having to enact the part of Mussulman, by the pretended prayers and genuflexions, upon a piece of coarse felt, for the old man Nouradeen watched him closely. In all this Waller salved his conscience by the conviction that one is scarcely answerable for an act committed under a power one cannot resist.
On the morning of the fifth day the hills appeared in all their greenery; the sunshine was bright, and the atmosphere was clear and calm.
"The snow is gone," said Nouradeen; "when spring comes, the bones of your people will be whitening like ivory among the long green grass in the passes of the Khyber and Khoord Cabul."
These words came fearfully and literally true, as the Afghans never interred one of the slain.
"But sit not there so moodily," he added to Waller; "grieve not over that which is broken, lost or burnt; after prayer we go to plough; come with me."
"Willingly," replied Waller, and his breast filled with a hope that was soon extinguished; for when he found himself between the stilts of the Afghan plough, which was of the most primitive construction, and drawn by two oxen—a machine of the mode of working which he was utterly ignorant—he perceived a little old humpbacked fellow, armed with a loaded juzail, watching all his movements, and with an expression of face which showed how much he longed for some sign of an attempt to escape, and Waller, remembering the skill of the farmer with his firearms, resolved not to risk it.
He managed to direct the team, and for a few hours it occupied his mind. Waller ploughing!—Waller, the crack man, the pattern officer, the best round-dancer in the Cornish Light Infantry—he felt the situation to be intensely ludicrous, and he could have laughed but for the circumstances the situation represented—and the dreadful doubt that hung over the fate of Mabel, of Rose, and others; and frequently he paused and looked wistfully towards the hills, as he thought that, but for yonder old Mohammedan beast, with his cocked matchlock, he should make a clean pair of heels and be off. Anyway, through his ignorance of the task in hand, and the pre-occupation of his thoughts, Bob's furrows had all the curved line of beauty, and would have made a Scottish ploughman, so vain of his straight lines, faint on the spot.
So the fifth day passed and he had but one thought, the yearning to see Mabel, with the haunting terror of all she might be enduring, and that he might never see her more!
Learning by chance that he was to be secured to the plough by an iron chain the next day, he determined that, come what might, he should escape in the night. Unarmed, he had but his courage and strategy to rely upon, in a country where all men's hands were against the European, where the laws have little force, and where whatever morality there is among the people, it depends entirely upon their religious sentiments and their attachment to their khans or chiefs. Two hundred years ago, an Englishman might have found himself in pretty much the same predicament in some parts of the Scottish Highlands.
On examining the chimney of the apartment in which he was confined, he found that although the barred windows defied egress and ingress alike, he might achieve a passage to the external air by removing the bricks of unburnt clay, of which the wall was composed. He proceeded to pick out the lime with a nail softly, after darkness had set in, and after removing one, the cold night breeze from the Khyber hills blew gratefully upon his flushed face.
Another and another were speedily removed now, and in less than half an hour—during which he frequently paused with a palpitating heart, lest he might make some unlucky sound or be discovered by old Lai—he had achieved an aperture wide enough by which to creep out. He did so, and drew a long breath, as if he respired more freely now. All was still, and the darkness was profound as the silence, and a prayer of thankfulness rose to the lips of Waller, as he quitted the compound around the farmer's establishment and hastened towards the hills, with the full knowledge that in whatever direction he went, some hours must elapse before his flight could be discovered, and there was no snow by which to track his footsteps.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHANCE BETTER THAN DESIGN.
He was unarmed, but he never thought of the wild animals which abound on the hills and in the forests of Afghanistan. Lions are rare; but tigers, hyænas, bears, and wolves are plentiful enough, and the terrible passes of the Khyber mountains had peculiar attractions for the latter now. Yet Waller's sole anxiety was to avoid, not these, but their rivals in cruelty, the natives.
He had no guide; but he knew, by the way the range of mountains rose between him and the sky, that the great plain or vale, wherein Jellalabad is situated, and which has an average breadth of ten miles, must, when he quitted the farm-gate, lie on his right hand and not on his left. Other indication he had none, and he set out in the hope of being within sight of its walls by daybreak, or at least soon after.
The improved appearance of the highway as he proceeded, afforded proof that it led to some large city, and he pressed on with a confident and hopeful heart, sometimes between orchards containing a profusion of apple, plum, quince, and pomegranate trees, which the coming summer should see in full bloom and bearing. Now and then, softly, almost breathlessly, he would pass the skirts, but never through the straggling street, of a village, such being usually closed at each end by gates; and occasionally he crossed a little brawling stream, a tributary of the Cabul, spanned by pretty bridges of stone, ornamented with tiny towers at each end.
Anon some pariah dog, prowling out of doors—for the poor dog is in great disrepute among Mohammedans—would bay out upon the night breeze, causing him to pause and shrink for concealment close to the nearest tree or hedgerow. And now, with growing hope and heartiness, he had proceeded from the mountain-farm fully five coss, or ten English miles, on the Jellalabad road when day began to dawn on the mighty peaks of the Khyber range, and the ruddy sunlight stole gradually down their slopes into the gloomy passes and rocky ravines which intersect and separate them.
When day was fairly in, Waller began to think of seeking a place of concealment till night again fell, when he felt certain that a few miles more along that open highway must eventually bring him to some gate of Jellalabad; but an abrupt turn of the road brought him suddenly upon a village, the gates of which stood open. There in the little street some armed horsemen were grouped around a well, and many people were astir previous to departing to their work in the fields; for all the country there is beautifully cultivated, and ever covered by a profusion of the richest vegetation.
He was seen; there was a shout—spurs were applied to the horses, flight was impossible, and in half a minute he was again a prisoner, the lances levelled at his throat menacing him with death.
"A Kaffir—a Feringhee! kill him, kill him!" cried the villagers, male and female, as they crowded in wild tumult around him; even the tawny children raised their little hands against the weary wanderer, for the place was the abode of Ghazees, the wildest of Mohammedan fanatics.
"Bismillah! there is one yet alive!" exclaimed a horseman.
"But what said Ackbar Khan?—may the sun be his star, the new moon his stirrup-iron—one was to be left to tell the tale," exclaimed another, mercifully interposing his lance between Waller and the others; "and this is he."
"Nay, one Kaffir has already got into Jellalabad—it is enough; let us have this one's head," was the general cry which rose to a mingled yell, and dark eyes flashed, and white teeth were ground around him. So poor Waller began to fear that he was the 'last man' after all, and worse off than when ploughing for old Nouradeen Lai. However, he kept close to the young chief who seemed disposed to protect him, and who was accoutred with a steel cap and shield.
"The Prophet wrote at birth on each man's brow the day he was to die, and your time is to-day, O Kaffir!" exclaimed one, making a vicious thrust with his gaily tasselled lance, which, had it not been struck up by his protector's hand, had ended Waller's career there and then.
"What business has a dog of a Feringhee with such a beard as that?" cried a woman; "it is unendurable."
"I didn't make it," said Waller, simply.
"Oho. This is the Toorkoman of Roum!" said the young horseman with the steel cap, in whom Waller now recognised Zohrab Zubberdust; "he has escaped from old Nouradeen Lai; well—he shall not escape from me. These Feringhees are excellent grooms, and I want one. Bismillah! it is written—let us go—I shall protect you."
Like many a Christian, Zubberdust the Mussulman had the spirit of avarice and treachery in his heart; but as an Afghan mountaineer it was tempered with something of honour; for, strange to say, honour may exist among Mohammedans, as well as among Christians, without an atom of morality.
So Waller found himself marched off in a direction precisely opposite to that which he had been pursuing; and he had the additional tantalisation of seeing, about six miles distant, the picturesque Bala Hissar, or citadel of Jellalabad, which he could recognise from an engraving he had once seen; and ere midday he was conveyed by Zubberdust and his people to one of the numerous little castles or fortlets called kotes, that stud all the country in the neighbourhood of the city, which has always been the winter residence of the kings of Cabul; and there he was set at once to groom the horses, with a distinct notice that if he attempted to quit the fort, which was a square edifice furnished with a round loopholed tower at each angle, and surrounded by a wet ditch, wherein innumerable pink and white water lilies floated, he would be shot without mercy.
Before the gate were two brass six-pounder guns, taken from Elphinstone's unfortunate army.
Waller acquiesced with a groan in his breast. Well, thought he, working as a groom and rubbing down Zubberdust's beautiful horse, which had come from the land of the Usbec Tartars, was more congenial than ploughing; and hope suggested that the very animal he tended might gain him liberty; but his new master seemed to be merely a visitor at the fort, which belonged to an old Hazir Bashi of the King's Guards, and after remaining there for ten days, he departed to rejoin Amen Oollali Khan. Prior to doing so, with great liberality he presented Waller, as an excellent groom, to a wealthy grazier of camels, named Jubar Khan, who was passing that way with several of these solemn-looking quadrupeds and some yaboos or Cabul ponies, which he meant to dispose of in Bhokara.
Seeing that Waller appeared crushed by the prospect before him, Zohrab said, ere he went,
"Think yourself happy, for if Ackbar Khan were to get you, he might do as he has done to others, chain you to a stone in a vault, dark and cheerless as the tomb of a miser. Dogs!" he added, true to his overbearing nature: "you came hither thinking to make us crumb-eaters of Shah Sujah! Bah! the cup of the covetous, saith the proverb, is filled with the dust of the grave. And where lie the covetous now? in the passes of Khoord Cabul!"
With something of despair gathering in his heart, Waller set forth in company with the grazier and others whom the latter employed as syces, and who were all well armed.
To dissemble he felt was his best plan, and he affected such perfect cheerfulness, made himself so useful in tending, watering, and grooming the camels and ponies, that he quickly won the entire goodwill and confidence of Jubar Khan, so much so that, after journeying for three days towards the hills of Hindoo Kush, on a valuable camel falling quite lame, he actually left Waller in care of it, at a species of camp formed by some Afghan shepherds and their families, whose tents of coarse black camlet were pitched in a sheltered spot by the bank of a beautiful stream.
Jubar Khan passed on his way, desiring Waller, in whose skill he trusted much, to rejoin him with the camel on a certain day at a khan or caravanserai among the mountains,—one of those one-storied, quadrangular edifices, full of bare rooms, built by the wayside for the accommodation of travellers, and the erection of which is considered one of the most meritorious acts that a Hindoo or Mussulman can perform.
Waller gladly saw the dark figures of Jubar Khan, his people and property, vanish into a pass of the mountains, where they seemed to go right into the setting sun, which shed through it a blaze of crimson light; and then he set himself zealously to tend the ailing camel, in the hope that when well he should depart therewith on a journey of his own. In three days the camel was quite restored; but on the morning of the fourth, when Waller went as usual to groom it, the animal was gone!
It had been stolen in the night, by whom, all pretended ignorance; and Waller, who immediately affected great anxiety to rejoin his master the grazier, was told that he must remain where he was, "as a hostage for the missing camel, and that as so excellent a groom could not be an indifferent shepherd, he would be useful in tending the sheep."
A crook was put in his hand, a brass lotah for drinking, a few chupatties for food were given him, and he was set to watch a flock of dhoombas, or those Persian sheep that have tails nearly a foot broad, are almost entirely composed of fat, and form the most valuable stock of those nomadic dwellers in tents among whom he now found himself. By the poor agriculturists he was however treated with great kindness.
Farther than ever from Jellalabad now, without money, arms, or a horse, his clothes in rags, his boots almost worn away, Bob Waller sat like one in a stupor by the side of a rivulet that trickled through the pasture where the sheep were grazing; and as he looked from the green mountains to the black tents that dotted their slope, he asked of himself, whether his present existence or his past was the dream.
"So here have fate and the fortune of war cast me! a Turk, a ploughman, a groom, a shepherd," he sighed; "by Jove! what the deuce shall I be next? The ancient sceptics doubted the reality of everything—and I begin to think they were right."
All was still, save when a stork or crow alighted on the granite rocks that overhung the mountain rivulet, or a fleet antelope shot like a spirit across the valley; and so would pass the weary day, Bob Waller not watching the sheep, but the mountain shadows, changing from the eastward to the westward, while he sighed for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit, a glass of pale ale and a "quiet weed," and thought of the old time of tiffin in the jolly mess-bungalow, and the faces of those he should never see there again.
At night, crouching on a piece of xummal (or coarse blanket) and covered with sheepskins, Waller would dream at times of Mabel's bright face and merry laugh; but more often, perhaps, of those terrible seven days and seven nights of the retreat through the snowy passes, where the living trod sullenly, doggedly, on over the dead, till they too fell, to be trod on in turn. Horrid phantoms haunted him. Had he outlived, out-trodden all? Alas, it almost seemed so. Shots would seem to ring in his drowsy ear, and he fancied it was the Afghan juzailchees again; anon he would think himself at home in pleasant Cornwall; that he was after the brown pheasants within sight of the sounding sea, or among the quails on wild and rugged Lundy Isle; and then he would start to wakefulness and lie for hours, revolving in his mind the means, the chances of reaching Jellalabad; but, alas! so much time had elapsed, that he might only reach it to find that the garrison had abandoned it to save the hostages from death, or that the city was besieged by the victorious Afghans!
But now he was to have a proof of how often chance was better than the deepest laid design.
Joharah, the wife of the shepherd with whom Jubar Khan had left him, and whose name when translated signifies "a jewel," was a woman of singular kindness of heart, sweetness of disposition, and not without moderate pretensions to beauty. She was unusually kind to Waller, and did all in her power to alleviate the wretched condition to which fate had reduced him. Her husband was wont to boast that "she knew the language of the birds," and hence that they would inform her if Waller attempted to escape, for to understand the language of the feathered tribe was peculiarly one of the boasted sciences of the Arabians. The art is frequently referred to in the "Thousand and One Nights," and tradition records that Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had a lapwing which conveyed all her messages verbally to King Solomon. Waller could have smiled on being told all this; and he wished in his soul he had no other informants to dread than the birds that twittered about the valley.
Joharah, the Afghan woman, had remarked the growing depression that seemed to prey upon the spirit of Waller, and she was not without some interest in him, for the fairness of the European complexion contrasted in her eye pleasantly and favourably with the extreme darkness of the people around her. She had more than once detected him with a lock of Mahel Trecarrel's bright brown hair in his fingers, and with a woman's acuteness she speedily divined that thereby hung "a tale." One day she surprised him thus occupied when he was seated moodily and alone under a pistachio tree that grew near where their tents were pitched. Approaching softly, she laid a hand timidly on his shoulder, and after glancing hastily about to see if they were observed, she bent her dark bright eyes on his, and said—
"I dreamt of you last night."
"Of me?"
"Yes; even by the side of my husband," she added, with a smile, that was not without a dash of coquetry in it.
"Indeed!" replied Waller, perplexed, and fearing that if this was the prelude to a flirtation, his troubles would be thereby seriously increased.
"I saw you clad in green, our holy colour, and accept that as a sign that I must befriend you, and send you to her you love."
"I thank you; 'to her I love,' repeated Waller tremulously, while a flush suffused his cheek.
"You are very sad and gentle," said Joharah.
"The thoughts of her make me so," said Waller.
"Ah! the perfume of her presence is about you still," said the Afghan woman in her figurative language; "she has been unto you what the rose was to the piece of clay in the little story of Sadee."
"I do not understand you."
"'One day,' says Sadee, 'when I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of sweetly scented clay. I took it between my fingers, and said,
"'Art thou musk or ambergris, for thy perfume charms me?'
"'I was but a humble piece of clay,' it replied; 'but I was some time in the society of a rose; the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me, otherwise I should be only a bit of clay, as I appear to be.' So has it been with you."
"Perhaps so," replied Waller, smiling at this strange anecdote.
"It is Jellalabad you would reach?"
"Yes; how far are we from it?"
"Fifty cosses."
"A hundred of our miles!" thought Waller, and his spirit sank.
"Undisguised, you can never escape my husband's people, or hope to reach it safely; but I shall provide for all that."
"You will not deceive me?" said Waller anxiously, as he feared some snared
"No, I swear it; be of good courage and you shall soon be safe."
The following day, when most of the shepherds had gone to prayer at a musjid among the mountains, leaving the women and female children behind, as the sexes never pray together in the mosques, she conducted Waller into the inner portion of their tent—her own apartment—where discovery would have ensured him instant death. With scissors she clipped off closely his long fair beard and mustaches; she stained his face, ears, and neck with walnut juice and wood ashes; his hair she disguised by smearing it with more ashes and ghee—a process under which Waller, usually so dainty in his toilet, rather winced. She took away and buried his poshteen and tattered uniform, and made him, in its place, put on the red dress of a Hindoo Fakir. She slung a brass drinking lotah to his girdle of cord, gave him some chupatties and other food, and, placing a staff in his hand, showed him the route to pursue, a narrow path among the mountains, by which he could avoid a rencontre with the returning shepherds, and strike on the direct road for Jellalabad.
Waller's heart was filled with genuine gratitude; but he had only his earnest thanks to bestow on this good woman, who hastened his departure; and in less than two hours after she had thus transformed him, he had left the black tents of the shepherds several miles behind him.
In no other disguise than this could he have been so safe from discovery. In the character of a Fakir he might beg with impunity, revile and anathematise with a vociferation that inspired terror, or he might remain obstinately silent, according to the pretended humour or real emergency of the moment. Thus, as none might dare to question his motives, his supposed sacred calling rendered him safe alike from interruption, inquiry, or suspicion, and he went on his way rejoicing.
He had many strange and quaint adventures, but encountered no more perils by the way he had to pursue on foot. His great stature and sturdy figure won him the special favour of the women, particularly of those with whom he conversed at the wayside wells; and in many instances he discovered that pleasant little perquisites must often fall to the share of Fakirs and Dervishes; for ladies contended for the honour of feeding him, and pressed upon him tillas, and even mohurs of gold, to have refused which would have been totally untrue to his clerical character. Once he had a narrow escape from encountering Osman Abdallah the Arab Hadji, the same fanatic whom he had run through the body on the day the Envoy was assassinated, and whom he saw asleep, too probably intoxicated with bhang, on a piece of mat, at the door of a village khan. On another occasion he had to endure for several miles the society of a rival Fakir—a Pandarom enthusiast, who wore an iron garden-gate, of considerable weight and size, riveted round his neck as a penance, which excited the charity and fear of all who beheld him; but on the fortieth day after the retreat from Cabul began, Waller, to his joy, saw once more before him the vast and fertile plain of Jellalabad, the stately city with all its white wails and round towers, and its green background of magnificent mountains, many of them being wooded to the summit; but, to his eye, the most pleasing features in the scene were the scarlet coats of the sentinels on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar, on which the union-jack was waving in the morning wind.
Waller was, perhaps, not much given to prayer, but his emotions of gratitude to Heaven were great and keen when at last he found himself passing between the Piper's Hill and the old Mosque that stands south of the city, round the walls of which he had to proceed between the Shah's garden and the great citadel to reach the Peshawur Gate, where a guard of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry (Prince Albert's own) was posted; and the astonishment of the soldiers, when they heard themselves accosted in pure English by a Hindoo Fakir, was intense; but the officer in command, Lieutenant Sinclair—the same ingenious fellow who had built the pleasure boat during the previous and happier winter at Cabul—now came hastily forward.
"Waller—Bob Waller, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed, recognising an old friend in spite of his filthy disguise; "so you, too, have escaped, after all?"
"Yes, I—but poor Jack Polwhele, Devereaux, Burgoyne, and all the rest, have perished—all—all!" replied Waller, with deep emotion, as the men of the 13th crowded about him. "The bravest and the best are always cut off first; but, save me, all who came through the Khyber passes have gone to God!"
"Trevelyan of yours, and Dr. Brydone, of the Shah's army, are safe with us; so three have escaped that terrible carnage."
"And what of the hostages?"
The face of Sinclair—a Scot from the banks of the Thurso, and, like all his surname, tall, grey-eyed, and fair-haired—grew dark as he replied,
"Elphinstone, the general, is dead—he expired in the hands of the enemy, who insulted his body, and beat the head with stones. The tribes are all in arms now—a regular 'gathering of the clans,' we should call it in Scotland. Ackbar Khan has fulfilled his threat, we are told, by sending the ladies for sale to the chiefs in Toorkistan; but nothing is certain save that, by a combined movement on Cabul, we are about to take a terrible vengeance."
Waller groaned, and ground his teeth in silence, for he was too much of an Englishman to make a scene, or give vent to the emotions that maddened him as he thought of Mabel, of her helpless companions, and the awful mystery that overhung the fate of Rose.
The hostages, to the number of eighty-eight officers and soldiers, with thirty-three females (three being wives of soldiers) and children, were at the mercy of barbarians, and what might have happened to them by that period? How many of them, husband and wife, parent and child, must have caressed and embraced each other despairingly from time to time, with only one idea in their minds,—that the lips they touched, the eyes they looked into with tenderness and love, the form they held, that was warm and living, might all belong to a dead and mangled corpse ere the dawn opened or the night closed!
CHAPTER XXIII.
DENZIL A NAWAB.
When consciousness came back to Denzil he found himself alone—alone with the dead. He knew not what time had elapsed since he had been struck down by the treacherous wretch whose life he had sought to save; and no vestige of the retreating troops remained, save those whose bodies dotted all the wintry waste. Angrily and sadly the rising wind howled from the mountain pass, blowing before it over the frozen snow the long leaves of the coss, or dead grass, the fir cones and pistachio nuts from the thickets close by; and some of these cones, that fall from the jelgoozeh, or mountain pine, are larger than artichokes. The dark and tortuous pass had apparently swallowed all his comrades; yet through it now his way must lie, and, staggering up, he strove to follow the blood-stained track; but the landscape, the mountains, the abandoned cannon, dead horses, camels, and bodies of soldiers, of the Hindoo dhooley-wallahs, and of many women, seemed all to whirl round him, and he nearly fell on the snow once more. Benumbed as he was, stiff and cold in every limb, with a dull crushing sense of pain in the back region of his head, from which the blood, now crusted and frozen, had flowed freely, he felt that he could only remain there and wait for death or succour, the former too surely, for already the gloom of evening seemed to be setting over the mountains, and he looked about him wildly and despairingly.
He had been in love, and had lost hope; but he was in love yet, and had lost his mistress, which was sadder still, and was now likely to lose his life.
The bodies of several men of his company lay near, all mostly in attitudes expressive of the agony in which they had expired, with their wan and ghastly faces turned to the winter sky; but the body of General Trecarrel was gone; at least, he could nowhere see it. Had Polwhele and Sergeant Treherne succeeded in removing it? If so, why was he left to his wretched fate? Or had a wolf—but that idea was too repugnant, and he shrunk from it.
An European woman, young and pretty, in her night-dress (as many ladies were who left the cantonments in litters), lay half in and half out of a dhooley, from the bed within which she had apparently been escaping when overtaken, and the snow was falling alike on her white bare breast and the pale face of the little babe she had been in the act of nourishing when the bullet of some relentless Ghilzie had slain her; so her child must have soon followed. It was a piteous sight; and let those who have seen death amid all the hushed solemnity of a sick chamber in a land of peace imagine such a scene as this, and death under auspices so horrible and revolting.
Though sick and feeble, Denzil contrived to draw the dhooley a little way from the body of its late occupant, and crept within it for warmth. Prior to doing so, on seeing near him the Queen's colour of the 44th, or East Essex Regiment, lying in the hands of a dead ensign, he tore it from the staff and wrapped it over his poshteen, as an additional garment, and with a soldier's natural desire to save so important a trophy from the enemy. To this trifling circumstance, as it eventually proved, he owed his life; and there he lay in a species of stupor, neither quite asleep nor quite awake.
Ere long the hungry vultures began to alight upon the bodies in the snow, and one, after flapping its dusky wings on the roof of the dhooley, actually perched upon his breast; but on receiving a blow from his hand, it fled with an angry croak. Denzil was now thoroughly aroused, and his action would seem to have been observed, for twelve Afghan horsemen who had been scouting near, each with a juzailchee riding en croupe behind him, came cantering up, accompanied by, or rather escorting, Shireen Khan of the Kuzzilbashes, who was mounted, as usual, on a great solemn-looking camel, and armed, among many other weapons, with a formidable lance.
Seeing that Denzil was alive, one of the Kuzzilbashes (a pale-faced and black-bearded fellow, who wore a prodigious red cap, and had dangling at his neck the watch presented to General Trecarrel by Sir John Keane, after Ghuzni) made a thrust with his lance that must have killed him on the spot had not the Khan interposed, and commanded all to spare his life. Instinctively Denzil had drawn his sword, but Shireen said, with a grim smile,
"Sheath your weapon, Kaffir; I, too, wear a sword, but I am an old man now, old by more than thrice your years, and I have learned to know that the sword is but the sickle of death—it destroys much and reaps little."
Denzil thought this moral reflection came somewhat late, but the Khan added—
"Your life shall be spared—pesh" (i.e., forward), and stroked his beard, which is the silent form of an oath with the Afghans.
The singularity of his costume, the regimental colour of bright yellow silk with its massive gold embroidery, amid which the sphynx was conspicuous, with the mottoes "Badajoz, Salamanca, Bladensburg, Waterloo," and so forth, appeared so remarkable, that the old Kuzzilbash chief conceived, in his simplicity, that he had captured at least a great Nawab or Bahadur of Feringhistan, whose ransom or value as a hostage could not fail to be of importance. Hence, resolving to say nothing of his prize to Mohammed Ackbar Khan, of whose power he had already become jealous, Shireen ordered four juzailchees to alight, sling their rifles, and carry the dhooley with its inmate to the rear, naming some place to which the prisoner was to be conveyed, and they obeyed, but grumbling under their beards that they were only "carrying that which ought to be killed." Moreover, they were not without serious fears that, instead of being a Nawab or lord, Denzil might be a sorcerer, for these sphynxes and gold letters looked necromantic in their sight, and he might possess the power by a word to turn his bearers into yaboos or four black stones.
He remained perfectly passive and, perhaps, indifferent in their hands. His wound had bled profusely, and he was now in that state of extreme prostration which usually succeeds a great loss of blood, when the senses wander, and wild dreams, tangled and incoherent visions, disturb the brain of the sufferer. He felt very heedless of life; but there are times when death seems to avoid those who are so, and who fear him not. In all the misery of his condition he had but one consolation—that Sybil knew nothing of it. As his bearers trod on, he heard them, when occasionally they stumbled against a dead body, burst out into anathemas against the Feringhees, whom they stigmatised as "dogs, devils, sons of Shytan, sons of burnt fathers, and base-born Kaffirs," all of which gave him little hope for his ultimate safety.
The dusk of the January eve was closing in, when, after passing for some miles through a sheltered and well-wooded valley, the sides of which were studded by several castles or bourges, the strongholds of Nawabs and Khans of military tribes, the dhooley-bearers arrived at the arched gateway of the great country residence of the chief of the Kuzzilbashes.
It was, as usual with the Afghans, whose state of society is pretty much what it was among the Scots in the feudal days, a square fort, measuring about a hundred yards each way, with solid wa;ls twenty-five feet in height, and flanked at each corner by a strong half-circular bastion. A fausse-bray and deep ditch surrounded it, the latter being filled by a canal cut from the Cabul river.
The zunah-khaneh, or private dwelling of Shireen and his family, occupied the centre of the great square, and was surrounded by an inner wall or barbican, all loopholed for musketry, while traverses mounted with cannon, guarded the entrances. The devan-kaneh, or hall of audience, through which Denzil was borne, was literally crammed with the plunder gleaned up from the retreating army—bullock trunks filled with wearing apparel, barrack furniture, tents, arm-chests, musical instruments, and utensils of all kinds. It was decorated with much of barbaric splendour, and had its wall on one side composed of carved and gilded wood, wherein were six great panels inscribed with passages from the Koran, amid green and gold arabesques. These opened into apartments beyond, and could be slid up and down at pleasure (like windows in Britain) for the free circulation of air in summer.
Into one of these apartments Denzil was borne, placed on a couch made up chiefly from the bedding that was in the dhooley, and then a hakim came to examine his wound.
Amid all his deep grief, and mortification for past events, he felt himself thankful for a cup of golden coloured mellow Derehnur wine, which the hakim gave to restore his wasted strength; "for it is the law of human nature, that the claims of the living must become a counterpoise to the memory of the dead."
As loss of blood was the chief ailment of Denzil, on his wound being dressed he recovered rapidly, and in three days was able to sit on a kind of divan—for chairs were unknown in that part of the world—at a window, which overlooked a garden and the long wooded valley, at the extreme end of which, and in the dim distance, rose a high, green, conical hill which he recognised, and knew to look down on the plain and city of Cabul. His hakim was experienced enough in the art of dressing bullet holes and sword cuts; but his ideas of physic, beyond a charm written on paper, and washed into a draught, were somewhat perplexing and peculiar; thus he prescribed and proffered various kinds of pills, powders, and potions, from the medicine chests of Doctor Brydone and other medical officers, in the belief that if one thing failed to insure perfect recovery, another might do so.
Denzil knew that he had been spared in the belief that he was a Nawab, and he feared to undeceive his captors as to that circumstance, lest they might kill him after all; while he feared also that if he left them in error, they might detain him for years, or seek to extort some enormous ransom. He knew nothing of the total destruction of the army, or of the existence and retention of other European hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Thus he resolved, as he had no resort but patience, to await the pleasure of Shireen Khan, who was still absent, and hoped that he might find a more powerful, and less avaricious protector in the person of the Shah, of whom our Queen was the friend and ally. Moreover, through his wuzeer Taj Mohammed, some light might yet be thrown upon the fate of the lost Rose Trecarrel.
The Kuzzilbashes, in whose hands he was a prisoner, are a powerful military tribe, who formed exclusively the Royal Guard of Dost Mohammed, and can always, with ease, muster five thousand fighting men. Distinguished by their scarlet caps, they are of Persian descent and form a peculiarly Persian party in Afghanistan, where as being Sheeahs, they remain apart from the other Afghan people (who are bigoted Soonees), and are so exclusive that they have their own quarter of Cabul fortified against all the rest. Hence, though their chief was outwardly, and when it suited his own interest, actually an adherent of Ackbar Khan, he had been secretly and deeply implicated in political intrigues with the late Envoy, whose remains yet hung in the market place.
From the hakim, Denzil learned that one of our officers, named Colonel Palmer,* had been cruelly tortured in the city by having a rope tied round his bare leg, after which it was twisted tight by a tent-peg (like the old French boot), and this made him more than ever anxious to reach the presence of the Shah, who still held the Bala Hissar with a few adherents; the remnant of the Native army we had organised for him under British officers, all of whom, of course, had left him now. From his strange medical attendant he learned also of the old General's surrender, and subsequent death.
* Of the 27th Bengal Infantry.
"Bosh!" added the hakim; "your General Elphinstone, sahib, blew his trumpets and beat his drums before Cabul, like a hen that cackles when she has laid an egg. It was with him, as it is too often with the hen—premature exultation; for as little may become of the egg as has become of his army—for the former, instead of being in time a crowing cock, may become sauce, pillau, or pudding!"
The snow passed rapidly away; the weather became pleasant and warm, and though Denzil saw nothing of the Khan, from his window he could see the ladies of his household in the garden below, where as usual with the upper class of Afghans, they spent much of their time in chatting among the bowers, talking scandal and listening to the songs of an occasional wandering musician, who played the saringa, or native guitar. It was once, while sitting listlessly looking into this garden, that Denzil had his hopes of succour from the Shah, crushed for ever.
No ladies appeared that day, but he perceived Shireen Khan, to whom another Kuzzilbash was speaking, gesticulating violently, and as they drew nearer his window, which was on the third, or upper story of the zuna-khaneb, he could overhear their conversation.
The stranger, Zohrab Zubberdust, now a Hazirbash, in the Body Guard of Ackbar Khan, was a handsome but fierce looking young man, with a high aquiline nose, heavy black moustache, and a face of almost European fairness. He had a tall plume in his scarlet cap, which was braided with gold; but, as the hilt of his sword, and the right sleeve of his yellow camise of quilted silk, were thickly spotted with blood, it was evident that he had been concerned in some recent outrage. There was sternness on his brow, a sneering expression on his lips, and a wild glitter in his eyes, as he said in a mocking tone,
"Khan, what mean you by this indignation? Solomon had seven hundred wives, and old Shah Sujah, whom the queen of Feringhistan sought to befriend, had one hundred more, because he deemed himself wiser than Solomon; but with all his wisdom, where is he now?"
"In Cabul."
"No—on the road near Shah Shakeed—dead."
"Dead, say you?"
"Yes; dead as that Solomon of whom I spoke—dead as a dog!" he added savagely.
"What new horror is this?" asked Shireen, starting back.
"Bah," replied the other, adding in the true style of Afghan cant, "there has been nothing new since God put the sun in the firmament, and touched the stars with his fingers to send them through the sky. Everything that is now, has been before, and shall be again."
"Did not the Shah, according to agreement, leave the Bala Hissar to go to Jellalabad?"
"This morning he did so; but it chanced that last night, the son of Zamon Khan placed in ambush fifty of his juzailchees secretly among some wild tamarind trees, and when about the hour of morning prayer, the king's retinue reached the spot, a cry like that of a jackal was heard. It might have been a signal. I do not say it was; but oddly enough, the juzailchees rose as one man, and fired a volley. One ball, pierced the Shah's brain, and three his breast, while seven of his soldiers fell dead. Then we rushed on him, and took from his litter the crown, the royal girdle, his sword and dagger, his jewelled robe, and as they could be of no use to him now, we rode off, and laid them at the feet of Ackbar Khan."
"May he who planned this deed be stung by a scorpion of Cashan!" exclaimed Shireen, with great emotion, as he wreathed both hands in his venerable beard; "in all these affairs I ever meant that the life of the Shah should be sacred!"
"Whatever you meant, Khan," replied the other with a mocking smile, "the King of kings ordained otherwise, and Azrael, the angel of death, must be obeyed."
And significantly touching the hilt of his sword, the speaker made a low salaam, quitted the garden, and Denzil saw him no more. Shireen remained for some time sunk in thought.
"And this has been your morning's work, son of Zamon Khan, when I thought that you and your fifty juzailchees were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Lamech, in the vale of Lughmannee!" he muttered, as he walked slowly away, referring to a white temple which covers what is alleged to be the grave of Noah's father, and is a favourite place of pilgrimage among the Afghans.
Denzil felt alike saddened and depressed on hearing of this unforeseen event; but to it, in some respects, he owed his future safety, and the circumstance that Shireen Khan retained him in his own hands, and did not deliver him to the terrible Ackbar, as from the day of the unfortunate Shah's assassination, the Afghan chiefs were split into two factions—the Kuzzilbashes taking part with one, and the tribes of Cabul and the Kohistanees with another.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A MEETING.
Day after day had gone past in utter monotony till Denzil's heart began to ache in the great weariness of the life he led; it was so calm and seemed so still after the fierce and keen excitement he had undergone. Had he entered upon a new state of existence? he asked of himself; if so, it was an intensely stupid one.
One evening when seated as usual on the divan at his window, looking dreamily out upon the long vista of the green valley, and the conical hill that terminated it, dim and blue in distance, he was feeling the balmy breath of the spring breeze with pleasure, and with all an invalid's relish was watching the young buds expanding, and the first flowers of the season beginning to peep from the teeming soil, when the Nazir, or steward of the household, a tall man of venerable aspect, whose beard flowed to his girdle, and the middle of whose head was shaved, came with an invitation from the Khan, to join him and his family at their evening meal.
Denzil bowed his acceptance, and in his sorely worn uniform, made what toilette he hastily could, for a Khan like the head of the Kuzzilbashes, who could bring into the field five thousand well-armed men, chiefly splendidly mounted cavalry, was assuredly a man of considerable note and power in the land, and his favour or protection were of some value in that far-away corner of the world.
In an apartment, the walls of which were prettily decorated by painted and gilded arabesques, with passages from the Koran around it, in lieu of a cornice, he found the Khan sitting on a musnud, or species of cushioned seat, that is usually reserved for persons of distinction. A lady was seated by his side, and both were so intent upon a game of chess, that neither looked up when Denzil entered.
Seated on the floor, but on rich carpets, were the wife of the Khan, a woman of some forty years old, very sallow and passée, her long camise of green. Cabul silk, ornamented with golden crescents sewn on; her hair, as yet untinged with grey, arranged in countless plaits, her hands odiously reddened to the hue of coral, and her two daughters, passably pretty women, with their hair loose and their trousers white, in token of being unmarried, and all three wearing many chains of gold and strings of Venetian sequins.
Denzil bowed low, and paused irresolutely, waiting to be greeted by the Khan; but that personage was bending over the board deeply intent on the game, his long white beard floating above the ivory chessmen, his bushy brows and wrinkled forehead full of thought, his brown and thick-veined hands contrasting strongly with the slender snow-white fingers of his opponent, whose hand was indeed a delicate and lovely one; her face, however, was concealed by her position, and the mode in which she wore her veil; and Denzil knew the peril of seeming too curious.
Like those of the other three ladies, her dress was of the finest Cabul silk, but of a rose colour, and covered her whole figure, as a night-robe would have done; like the Khan's daughters, her trousers were also white, her slippers high-heeled and shod with iron. Crescents of silver were sewn over all her loose hanging sleeves, and the breast of her dress was literally a mass of them, so that it shone in the sunlight like a cuirass.
The wife of the Khan clapped her hands, the ordinary mode of summoning attendants in the East, as she wished the trays with refreshments introduced. This caused Shireen and his companion to look round, and an exclamation of profound astonishment, in which joy and something of deep anxiety mingled, echoed through the apartment, when Denzil and Rose—Rose Trecarrel—recognised each other!
On this, one of the Khan's daughters hastily assumed, but for a few minutes only, her bourkha or veil of white muslin, which had a space of open network for the eyes; and the other whispered to her mother some indignant remark concerning "the effrontery of a Kaffir coming into their presence with his jorabs (i.e., shoes) on."
If it be true that "among a crowd of total strangers an acquaintance ranks as a friend," how great must have been the emotions of the volatile Rose, on meeting her avowed lover among those odious and horrible Afghans!
"Rose!"
"Denzil!"
After all they had mutually undergone, the sound of their own names and their own language, had in them so much of home and the past, that both were deeply moved; and heedless of those who were present, forgetting all about them in fact, the impulsive girl flung herself into his arms, and he pressed her to his breast. So, to the undemonstrative Orientals, they formed a very unexpected tableau. She had undergone so much and her agitations were so complicated, that for some time she was quite incapable of speech and could only sob hysterically. She was very pale and worn, but he was so too.
"So you also are a prisoner—do you forgive me now, Denzil?" she asked in a low voice.
"Forgive you—oh Rose, I could die for you!" he responded, passionately.
How often in the visions of the night and in the reveries of the day—those trances of thought to which all at times abandon themselves—had Denzil pictured to himself Rose Trecarrel reclining in his arms, even as on that day by the lake, Rose so bright, so fair and beautiful, and now he held her in reality!
But though she had deceived him once and might do so again, no such fear occurred to him then, and forgotten too were all the bantering remarks of Polwhele and Burgoyne (now, alas, no more) which had excited so much pique, jealousy, and fury in his heart. She was, he knew, so lonely in the world, and she looked so lovely and so helpless. After a time, she said, anxiously,
"There has been great slaughter, I have heard; poor Papa, he has escaped I am sure, and dear Mab and Waller are safe, and all the rest?"
"All cannot have escaped!" was Denzil's vague response; "yet you have done so, and that is enough for me, darling."
She now poured upon him questions, some of which he dreaded to answer. When and where was he taken prisoner? Whom of those she loved had he seen last? Of her father, of Mabel and Waller Denzil professed total ignorance. He only knew that the body of the poor General had disappeared, and of subsequent events he knew nothing save that many ladies and officers of rank were retained in Cabul, held there by Ackbar Khan, as hostages for the future evacuation of Jellalabad; so hope and lightness of heart began to dawn on Rose, for neither she nor Denzil were aware of the exact state of matters, or of all the calamities that had befallen their friends.
"And Mabel—dear, dear, Mabel," she exclaimed in a touching voice, "how often do I dream of her, and fancy at times that I feel her cheek, wet with tears, against mine; for though but a little older than I, she has ever been as a mother to me, and these visions are passages of intense emotion, Denzil. Our mamma, who died so long ago, comes to me in my sleep and poor papa too, looking just as when I kissed him last, ere we went to rest, in that wretched tent in the snowy Pass; so my heart is wrung with suffering and I shed tears, Denzil—hot salt tears in my sleep—I, who used to be so merry and thoughtless!"
The Khan and his family were, for the time, utterly forgotten; so was his game of chess, and he gazed alternately from the rooks, pawns, and castles, to the lovers, in great and grave bewilderment, for in the empressement of their meeting, there seemed something more than the mere joy of two friends, or natives of the same country recognising each other. Were they brother and sister, or husband and wife, or what?
"But how came you to be here—what happened?" asked Denzil.
Her story, with all its apparent mystery, was both short and simple. She had heard shots in the night, and was peeping from the door of the tent, while her weary companions slept. A crowd of Afghans were passing,—the Shah's 6th Regiment were deserting en masse. A loonghee, or turban-cloth, was cast over her face by one of them, who twisted it across her mouth in such a manner as to stifle her cries completely; a havildar, mounted on a stolen horse, dragged her up beside him, and thus she was borne off, unseen in the dark, as they evidently believed that a white woman would be deemed the most valuable species of loot by some wealthy Khan or Nawab. When day broke they found themselves among the Black Rocks, near Cabul, and then a vehement dispute ensued between the havildar and her first captor as to to whom she should belong—whether they should keep, sell, or cast lots for her. Knives were promptly drawn; but some Kuzzilbash Horse came up and solved the difficulty by sabreing them both. They then carried her off to the fort of Shireen Khan, who had treated her with marked kindness and hospitality; and now she and Denzil turned towards him, and the latter expressed his extreme gratitude for all he had done for them both, adding, that he hoped they would be mercifully permitted to rejoin their friends and people.
But Khan Shireen shook his head, and replied, "Sahib, you know not what you ask, or how your friends are situated. Your army has been destroyed on its downward march to Jellalabad, and the hope of Ackbar is, that if the Sirdir Sale quits that city for Peshawur, the wild Khyberees and Ghilzies will soon annihilate his army too."
And such was indeed the hope of those in power at Cabul.
"Then our forces suffered severely, Khan?" said Denzil.
"So severely, that but one remained alive to tell the tale."
Denzil smiled at this, believing it to be mere Oriental hyperbole.
The entrance of servants with trays, on which were plums, peaches, and other fruit preserved in sugar, sweet chupatties, and a flask or two of yellow Derehnur wine (though forbidden by the Prophet), enabled Denzil to address some apologies to the ladies of the house, who invited him to seat himself on the edge of their carpet, an unwonted honour; and then the simple collation proceeded without the use of spoons or forks, which are alike unknown in that region.
Fresh southern-wood was thrown on the fire, and its fragrance filled all the apartment with a powerful perfume.
Rose felt herself constrained, but most unwillingly, to resume her part of chess-player, which she did in silence, as she scarcely knew a word of the Khan's language, but he had been delighted with her on first learning that she could play the knightly game, and play it well too, as chess is peculiarly an Oriental pastime, and was brought into Europe originally by the returned Crusaders.
"Shabash!" (Bravo) he exclaimed, and patted her kindly on the shoulder, as she again took her place near him; but her eyes ever wandered from the chess-board to the face of Denzil, whom the Kuzzilbash lady and her daughters overwhelmed with questions, many of which they had long since asked Rose. Among these were the three invariable queries, whether the East India Company was a man or a woman; if it was true that our ruler in Feringhistan was a Queen, and if the men in that region wore trousers, while the women did not. They conversed with him freely, and without constraint, for among the Afghans, unlike other races which profess the Moslem faith, intercourse between the sexes is somewhat on an European footing, and the home of the Afghan husband is one which deserves to be accounted such, as all his leisure hours are spent with his wife and children; and he leads his guest without fear or scruple into the family circle. Hence, with all their ferocity, the passion of love is neither unknown nor unhonoured among them.
Two or three days elapsed after their meeting before Denzil and Rose Trecarrel became aware that so many hostages were retained in the hands of Ackbar as pledges, to answer with their lives, or at least with their liberties, for the final withdrawal of all our troops from Afghanistan, including Sir Robert Sale's Brigade in Jellalabad and General Nott's division, 9000 strong, in Candahar; and now they found that, owing to a split in the enemy's camp, and a coolness between the Sirdir and the Khan Shireen, the latter was detaining them in secret as hostages on his own account.
"Set me free!" she had frequently implored of him.
"Not if you gave me all the lost riches of Khosroo," he replied, referring to the supposed buried treasure of Cyrus.
She had next besought aid of his wife, who shook her head, and said laughingly—
"Ere long, you will too probably be sold to a chief in Toorkistan, and live in a castle, or perhaps a tent, as his wife; if he chooses to make you such before the Cadi," added the Kuzzilbash lady, gazing with her great black eyes into the clear hazel orbs of the shocked and perplexed English girl, and feeling herself the while as much embarrassed in their difference of ideas as if her guest had come from Jupiter, Saturn, or any other of those planets which to her were but as lamps set in the sky by God or the Prophet, she knew not which, as the moollahs were somewhat uncertain on the subject.
But now the great event of having the society of Denzil made Rose, who had previously felt herself so friendless and forlorn, so desolate and lost, much more hopeful and contented; and something of her old coquetry came to the surface again, when daily he walked with her in the garden of the fort, as they were never permitted to go beyond its walls. They had both undergone much, and witnessed some frightful scenes; but it was with them there, as with those who dwell "in the countries where earthquakes are frequent, and where in almost every century some terrible convulsion has laid a whole city in ruins—the inhabitants acquire a strange indifference to peril till the very instant of its presence, and learn to forget calamities when once they have passed."
CHAPTER XXV.
MARRIED OR NOT?
Under the magic influence of Rose's presence, Denzil felt almost content for the time, and his heart swelled with mingled love and joy; then obstacles would seem to give way, fears to fade, and he felt his heart endued with a new strength. The hope of rescue or the chances of escape together, formed a fertile and endless source of conversation and surmise for these two isolated beings; but Rose had to humour the Khan by playing chess with him whenever he requested her to do so, while his wife and daughters quite as frequently compelled Denzil, who knew Hindostanee, to read for them an Oriental poem of which they never seemed to grow weary. It was a handsome volume of exquisite Eastern penmanship; all the pages were perfumed, and no two of them were alike, all the vignettes of birds, of gilded mosques, of black-bearded emirs and bayaderes, the elaborate borders and chapter heads being radiant in colours and gold. It described the petrifaction of the City of Ishmonie, a place alleged to be in Upper Egypt, where all that were once animated beings were by an enchanter changed in an instant to stone, and where they may still be seen, in all the various positions of sitting, or standing, eating, sleeping or caressing each other—a legend which obviously arose from the circumstance of the vast number of statues of men, women, and children that are, or were, in the place; but this poem so palled upon Denzil that he shivered with weariness whenever the subject was named to him.
And now as a certain assurance of safety came into the mind of Rose Trecarrel, she began to resume some of her old coquettish ways with him; thus one day as they were promenading in the garden of the Khan's fort, where the early flowers of Spring were maturing under the genial shelter of the high embattled walls, when he familiarly addressed her as "Rose," she said, with an assumed pout on her ruddy lips,
"I must really forbid you to call me Rose—even here."
"I called you so once, unchecked—by the lake, on that day which you must remember," he urged gently.
"That day is past."
"But its memory remains. What then am I to call you? To say, 'Miss Rose', or 'Miss Trecarrel,' after the events of that day would seem both strange and distant. You are always 'Rose' to me—in my heart, I mean."
"Fiddlestick! do be sensible. Call me—well, you need not call me anything that may compromise either the past, the present, or the future."
"Oh, how unkind of you," said he, eyeing her with a somewhat dubious expression.
"Poor Denzil," she replied, looking down; "I would to Heaven you were not so fond of me."
"Fond, is not the word, Rose—but why?"
"Because I was only flirting with you, as I have done with others," replied the laughing girl, with a cruelty that was perhaps unintentional, as she was indeed older than her years, for there are some women who in mind and body are more rapidly developed than others.
Denzil was only somewhat past twenty, and his love for her was fresh as the flowers that were springing up around them. It had been wasted on none yet, and Rose was the first who seemed to fill up all the soft illusions of the mind, as being the only one he could love, and the touch of whose hand or arm would send a thrill of ecstasy to his heart.
Could hers really be so elastic? he now asked of himself; did one passion really efface another in her breast, even as the waves efface the footmarks on the sandy shore? Could she love more than one, and perhaps more than one at a time?
She sat on a garden seat with her handsome white hands folded before her. A jet cross which had escaped the pillagers was on her snow-white neck, when it rose and fell with the undulations of her breathing. Her long lashes and delicate lids were drooped over the clear brown eyes, that could be so waggish, droll or cold and calm, as fun, or passion, or prudence, swayed her. The whole pose, her aspect, the contour of her head, the exquisite turn of the white and stately throat, so like that of Mabel, were not lost on Denzil as he gazed, and in gazing, worshipped her.
"A penny for your thoughts, friend Denzil," said she, looking up with a laughing face and breaking a silence of some minutes' duration.
"They are priceless, Rose, because they are of you."
"Well, like Paul, you may be most tender and full of truth—the latter a rare virtue in men; but I can never play the part of Virginia."
"Why?"
"Because I am too giddy, perhaps," replied Rose; yet with all her coquetry she was not without an emotion of genuine pride at the conviction of having inspired so handsome and earnest a young man with an attachment so devoted and pure.
But what was to be the sequel to all this?
As Artemus Ward says, "one is always inclined to give aid and comfort to the enemy, if he cums in the shape of a nice young gal;" and doubtless the old Khan of the Kuzzilbashes seemed to think so too; for to Rose he was unusually kind, and somewhat unwisely was wont at times to praise her to his wife. Once he said,
"The girl is beautiful as a bird of paradise."
"Yes; but quite as dumb and useless—there is nothing in her," replied the lady.
"She knows her own language, not ours. She has splendid eyes, at all events; they might get me six good horses among the Usbec Tartars."
"Yes, lovely eyes certainly; yet they seem out of place anywhere, save in a seraglio," was the sharp response of the Khanum, who evidently disapproved of the praise and the chess-playing; "send her to Ackbar Khan."
"Nay; that suits not my purpose, either for her or her friend," replied the Khan, on whose mind some remarks made from time to time by his wife were beginning to have an effect.
He had seen the open and free intercourse of the Feringhee sahibs, male and female, at the bandstand, at the race-course, in the Cantonments, in the gardens, and other places in and about Cabul, during the previous winter; he had also seen them together in Sinclair sahib's wonderful boat; but there was something in the footing of Rose and Denzil that sorely puzzled him. They were too familiar to be mere friends, and she was not tender enough apparently to be a lover; so, after closely observing them for some days, he came to the conclusion that they were married, and if not, that they ought to be.
Thus with the native suspicion of an Oriental, he began to think that they must be married, and concealed the fact from him for some reason or purpose of their own. He even spoke pretty pointedly on the subject to Denzil, and hinted that if she were his wife, it might prevent her from being sold to the Toorkomans; but the circumstance of her being married to an infidel would not have made much difference to those sons of the desert.