CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP.

The place of Sir William Macnaghten as Envoy of the Queen was supplied by Major Pottinger, C.B., who, together with Brigadier Shelton, renewed negotiations with Ackbar Khan, and strove to effect a peaceful retreat of our troops from Cabul. After the recent assassinations and many other outrages,--after the reoccupation by the natives of the eleven square Afghan forts that stood around the cantonments, thus almost entirely enclosing and secluding our slender European force,--after all hope of Sir Robert Sale's gallant brigade returning from Jellalabad to their aid, and other hope of succour from our troops in Candahar passed away, matters began to look gloomy indeed; but none could foresee, though many feared, the end.

No attempt was made by General Elphinstone, who, though once a gallant officer, was aged and ailing now, to avenge the deaths of Macnaghten, Trevor, Burnes, and others; to uphold the Shah, then all but besieged in his citadel by rebels under Ackbar; or to assert the dignity of Britain in that remote quarter of the world. Many officers murmured and remonstrated on the necessity for immediate action; but such is the force of discipline and of military etiquette, that not one had the moral courage to assume the serious responsibility of appealing to the troops and usurping the command. Councils of war were held; but it is well known that such councils seldom urge fighting; and all these ended in mere vacillation, indecision, and inanity.

The greatest force of the insurgent Afghans was in Mahommed Khan's fort, which stood nine hundred yards distant from the cantonment guns; but these, being only nine-pounders, were useless for breaching purposes; and as this fort commands the road that leads to the city and the Bala Hissar, supplies from that quarter were completely cut off; and so were they from every other point save the village of Beymaru, where they were procured at vast cost; and when that source failed--our troops, who with their camp-followers, the necessity and the curse of every Indo-British army, made up six and twenty thousand souls penned within the cantonments--the threat of Ackbar, that our horses would yet gnaw each other's tails and the tent-pegs, would become terribly true, unless a successful retreat through the passes were achieved; but for that movement, who now could trust to the promises, the honour, or the humanity of the hostile and exulting Afghans?

Though formed into innumerable petty septs, like the clans of the Scottish Highlands, these people are attached more to the community than the chief of it; and though divided by many bitter quarrels among themselves, they were united enough in their hatred of all Kaffirs and Feringhees, and in the hope of getting all their women and property as spoil. Like a Scottish clan of old, an Afghan tribe never refuses the rights of hospitality to a native suppliant. The fugitive who flies from his clan, even though stained with blood, is protected by the tribe upon whose mercy he casts himself, and war to the death would ensue rather than surrender him. All these little republics were now amalgamated for two purposes--the destruction of Shah Sujah and his family, and the expulsion or destruction of our little army that had enthroned him.

No one ever ventured beyond the secure walls of the cantonment now, and every other day shots were exchanged between the sentinels and scouting-parties of Afghan horsemen who rode between the forts, brandishing their sabres or matchlocks in angry bravado; and now and then the artillery tried a little practice with their nine-pounders on Mahommed Khan's fort. Nor were the Shah's Gholandazees, under his Topshee Bashee, or General of the Ordnance, in the Bala Hissar quite idle; thus almost nightly there floated above the city a red light, that brought forth tower and dome in dark relief, as the gleam of musketry and cannon fell on the atmosphere; the smoke of gunpowder at night is always somewhat of a red tint.

The ladies had got over much of their squeamishness about the discharge of firearms. Poor things, they were learning fast to look, almost without shrinking, on the fall of friend and foe, nor to wink at the flash of a musket, even those who had once shared the old dame's idea with regard to such implements, that, "whether loaded or unloaded, they were apt to go off."

The music of the bands was heard no more, promenades, rides, and drives were at an end now, and General Trecarrel's handsome London-made carriage, with its crimson-lined tiger-skin, the spoil of a splendid animal potted by Waller in the Siah Sung, had become, by the simple law of appropriation, the property of Ameen Oollah Khan for the use of his four wives.

Denzil and Audley Trevelyan did not meet much on duty, as the latter was on the Staff, had little to do with parades, and nothing whatever with guards, pickets, or working parties. Puzzled by the Lamorna peerage story (as Sybil called it), a story so strange and unsupported by proper evidence, Denzil deemed that as yet perfect silence in the matter was his proper plan; thus he was coolly courteous to Audley, whose advances, made in consequence of the secret interest felt in Sybil, he rather repelled.

Audley was sometimes in the mess-bungalow of the battalion to which the company of Denzil was attached; but his staff duties kept him much about the quarters of General Trecarrel, and consequently more in the society of Rose than Denzil quite relished. Since the day of the conference he had never once visited her, and thus he felt with intense bitterness that he had been quietly supplanted there by the son of one who had supplanted him at home in rank and title, and hence more than ever did he loathe the obligation--the debt of gratitude he owed to Audley for the service he had done to Sybil; and under all the circumstances in which he was placed, he felt the sense of it most oppressive.

"And where is Sybil now?" thought Denzil, despondingly; "in what country, and with whom?"

Who was the lady of rank she had referred to? No more letters could reach Cabul now, and months must elapse ere he heard from her again or learned her fate.

No confidences passed between him and Audley; yet the latter, had he known of it, would have risked much to have perused her last epistle, with the single mention of his own name therein, and the current of thoughts it seemed to open up--thoughts to which he alone had the key.

Denzil had a longing desire to do something brilliant, that he might shine in the estimation of Rose Trecarrel. With the combined vanity and diffidence natural to a young man, he sometimes flattered himself that his handsome uniform might regain him favour in her eyes, if no other merit, mental or physical, did so; but in that he reckoned without his host, for Rose was too much accustomed to see regimentals about her--the scarlet of the Queen's troops, the silver grey of the Indian cavalry, the blue and gold of the artillery, and the quaint, half-oriental splendour of the irregular horse. As a flirt she preferred the scarlet, and, perhaps, as one with an eye to a good marriage, the sombre black swallow-tail of the C.S.

With all her constitutional coquetry, she was not without a certain emotion, of compunction at times for the part she had played with Denzil. Of all the admirers she possessed, he had seemed the most earnest, the most bewildered by her beauty, and the most true; but then, as she said to Mabel, "he was so young, and, poor fellow, only a subaltern, so what did it matter in the long run, a little trifling with him, when it amused her, and Cabul had been so dull."

"Going to India to be married," said Mabel, "of course means going there to be married well. Trevelyan is only a subaltern, too."

"But the son and heir of Lord Lamorna; so one may cast one's hawks at him."

"And Polwhele is only a subaltern."

"But with a place that spreads from Cornwall into Devonshire. I shall not make a fool of myself, Mab--yet I shall marry for love, and love only, if I marry at all," said Rose, as her white fingers wreathed up the shining ripples of her hair before retiring for the night.

"Going out" was then one of the matrimonial institutions of Anglo-Indian society; but the P. and O. liners, with the Overland Route, have knocked that institution on the head, or nearly so.

"I told you how it would be, old fellow," said Polwhele to Denzil, who was sad and sombre; "she affects Trevelyan now, and we are all at a discount now, even the cavalry men."

"But Trevelyan has come back to India a lord's son, and is on papa's staff. A deuced fine thing it must be to wake up some morning and find oneself famous in that fashion," said Burgoyne of the 37th, ignorant of how galling his remarks were to Denzil.

And so several days of constant excitement were passed in the cantonments, yet no definite plan as to the future was formed, whether to risk a retreat through Khyber Pass, or throw the whole force into the Bala Hissar, and defend it to the last gasp, as more than once General Trecarrel had urged at the council of war, but urged in vain.