CHAPTER X.

AGAIN IN CABUL.

A change had now come over him; he had grown sullen and thoughtful; but even this mood of mind she preferred to his obnoxious and intrusive tenderness. He stood silently and gloomily eyeing her for a time.

Will it be believed that, too probably, he was actually pondering whether or not policy and his own future safety required that he should pistol or sabre this helpless creature, whom a minute before he had been professing so ardently to love? He could not help speculating on what _might_ have been the sequel, regarding himself, had her wild and despairing cry, instead of bringing up a stupid old mountain farmer, like Nouradeen Lal, summoned to the spot the ferocious Dooranee horsemen of Saleh Mohammed, who was bound to account for the prisoners, dead or alive, body for body, to Ackbar Khan. He knew that by this time all the roads diverging from Cabul would be beset in every direction by the horsemen of Saleh Mohammed and the Sirdir; that, sooner or later, some of these would meet and question the farmer returning to his home among the hills, and the information he and the Hazir-bashi must give, would soon bring a mounted Rissallah round by Beymaru in search and pursuit; so his own bold measures were instantly taken.

In Cabul would he and his prize alone be safe, and, as he hoped, unsought for a time at least; and there he resolved to convey her, ere day broke, and to conceal her in the house of one who he knew would be faithful to him--a man named Ferishta Lodi, who had been sutler to the Shah's Goorka Regiment, and whose life he had spared, and whose escape he had connived at, when the whole of that luckless battalion was massacred in cold blood, by the Afghans at Charekar.

Sternly he commanded her again to mount before him, and, aware that resistance and entreaty were alike futile, the unhappy girl, crushed in spirit, weeping heavily, and feeling utterly lost and helpless, obeyed; and once more their progress was resumed, but at a slower pace, as Zohrab was evidently husbanding the strength of his wearied horse. Day was breaking as they passed, unquestioned, through the Kohistan Gate of Cabul; but its light was yet grey and dim jis they traversed the narrow, dark, and high-walled tortuous streets, to some obscure quarter perfectly unknown to Mabel.

A few persons passed them, some going to market in the Char-chowk, others afield to tend the trellised vines; but she dared neither speak nor show her pallid face. She might find mercy at the hands of Zohrab, but none among the rabble of Cabul, where the miserable remains of the Queen's Envoy yet hung unburied in the great bazaar.

Mabel knew but too well, by observation and experience, the nature of the nation among whom she now found herself--alone. Nearly forty years had made no change on the people, since a Scottish traveller described them; and his pithy account may be summed up in the following quotation:--

"If a man could be transported to Afghanistan without passing through the dominions of Turkey, Persia, or Tartary, he would be amazed by the wide and unfrequented deserts and the mountains covered with perennial snow. Even in the cultivated part of the country he would discover a wild assemblage of hills and wastes, unmarked by enclosures, not embellished by trees, and destitute of navigable canals, public roads, and all the great and elaborate productions of human refinement and industry. He would find the towns few and far distant from each other; he would look in vain for inns and other conveniences, which a traveller would meet with in the wildest parts of Great Britain. Yet he would sometimes be delighted with the fertility and population of particular plains and valleys, where he would see the productions of Europe mingled in profusion with those of the torrid zone, and the land tilled with an industry and judgment nowhere surpassed. He would see the inhabitants accompanying their flocks in tents or villages, to which the terraced roofs and mud walls give an appearance entirely novel. He would be struck with their high and harsh features, their sun-burnt countenances, their long beards, loose garments, and shaggy cloaks of skins. When he entered into society, he would notice the absence of all courts of justice, and of everything like an organised police. He would be surprised at the fluctuation and utter instability of every civil institution. He would find it difficult to comprehend how a nation could subsist in such disorder, and pity those who were compelled to pass their days amid such scenes, and whose minds were trained by their unhappy situation to fraud and violence, to rapine, deceit, and cruel revenge. Yet he could not fail to admire their lofty and martial spirit, their hospitality, their bold and simple manners, equally removed from the suppleness of the citizen and the rusticity of the clown. In short," he adds, a stormy independence of spirit, which leads them to declare, "'We are content with fierce discord; we are content with alarm; we are content with bloodshed; but we shall _never be content_ with a master!'"

Mabel gave herself up more than ever for lost on finding herself within the fatal walls of Cabul; a benumbed and despairing emotion crept over her heart, and all her energies seemed away from her. She found herself lifted from horseback in a paved court that was dark, damp, and gloomy, and in the centre of which a fountain was plashing monotonously. She felt herself borne indoors somewhere, she knew not by whom, and then she fainted for a little time.

She had been carried into one of those apartments which open by a large sliding panel off the dewan-khaneh, the principal hall or receiving-room of a Cabul house. She had been there deposited at length on a soft mattrass, which was simply spread on the floor, as in that country bedsteads and sofas are unlike unknown. So people there both sleep and sit on the floor, unless in the case of persons of rank, who may seat themselves cross-legged on a divan.

Though prettily ornamented with carving, stucco, and painting, in this room there was a total absence of those invariable sentences from the Koran, woven among arabesques, which mark an Oriental mansion; but in lieu thereof were some in a language of which Mabel's weary eyes could make nothing. These were lines from the Vedas of the Hindoos; and in three little niches, most elaborately carved, were the three monstrous statuettes of the god who is worshipped by so many millions under the names of Vishnu, Siva, and Brama; for the house to which she had been conveyed belonged partly to Ferishta Lodi, the ex-Sutler, who now kept a shop in the great bazaar, and to a Hindoo, one of those same schroffs, or bankers, through whom the luckless General Elphinstone and his staff had negotiated the enormous sum which was paid to procure our peaceful march through the Passes--and paid for our slaughtered troops--in vain.

The Hindoo banker and the Khond were alike absent; but the wife of the former, a soft-eyed and gentle little woman, with massive golden bangles on her wrists and glittering anklets round her ankles, assisted the somewhat awkward and decidedly bewildered Zohrab in the task of recovering Mabel, by plentifully besprinkling her face, neck, and hands with cool and delightfully perfumed water from a large flask covered with elaborate silver filagree work. The Hindoo woman, who knew that the visitor was a helpless Feringhee captive, worked at her humane duty in silence, and without venturing to ask any questions.

A quivering of the long eyelashes, a spasmodic twitching of the handsomely cut mouth, as she heaved a long and deep sigh, showed that animation was returning. Slowly, indeed, did Mabel--though a girl with naturally a good physique and splendid constitution--struggle back to life and consciousness. Her beautiful face was pale as marble now; all complexion, save that of alabaster, was gone; cold and white she was, and her brilliant auburn hair in silky masses rolled over her shoulders and bosom, which heaved painfully, for every respiration was a sigh.

To the admiring and undoubtedly appreciative eyes of the enterprising Zohrab she presented a powerful contrast to the dusky little Hindoo woman, on whose ridgy shoulder her head was drooping, and whose fingers, of bronze-like hue, seemed absolutely black when placed upon the pure snowy arm of the English girl; for in aspect, race, and costume (a shapeless and indescribable garment of red cotton) the wife of the schroff was unchanged from what her ancestors had been in the days of Menon the Lawgiver.

As Mabel gradually became conscious, she sat up and gently repelled the services of the Hindoo woman. Then she burst into tears. This relieved her; and then she began to look around her, and to remember where she was--in fatal Cabul; and in whose hands--those of the lying, treacherous, and unscrupulous Zohrab Zubberdust!

For what was she yet reserved? This was her first thought. The slender chances of escape were the next; but escape from walled and guarded Cabul! and to where or to whom could she go for succour? To the bones of the dead, who lay in the passes of the Khyber mountains!

Thirst--intense thirst, the result of over-wrought emotions, of deep and bitter anxiety, and of all she had undergone mentally and bodily, made her ask Zohrab imploringly for something to quench it; and in a few moments the Hindoo woman brought her, on a scarlet Burmese salver, a china cup filled with deliciously iced water and white Cabul wine, which is not unlike full-bodied Madeira; with this refreshing beverage was a cake of Cabul apricots, folded in rice paper, the most luscious of all dried fruit, and which the Afghans have no less than fourteen distinct modes of conserving. To these she added a small slice of sweet Bokhara melon--the true melon of Toorkistan--we say a small slice, as they are of such enormous bulk, that two are sometimes a sufficient load for a donkey.

Revived by these delicate viands, and feeling a necessity for action, Mabel began in plaintive and piteous accents to urge upon Zohrab the chances of pecuniary reward, if he would set her at liberty near Jellalabad, or if he would even restore her to the perilous guardianship of Saleh Mohammed; for to be once more among the English hostages, his prisoners, was to be, at least, among dear friends.

But Zohrab listened in sullen and tantalising silence, gnawing the curled ends of his long moustaches the while. Now that he had her in Cabul, he saw but slender chances of getting her out of it for a time. Gossips might speak of her presence there (was it not already known to the Hindoo woman?), and so inculpate him with Ackbar Khan, whose vengeance would be swift, sharp, and sure. And now he was beginning to revolve in his own mind, whether or not his best policy would be to take his horse and quit the country for Khiva, Cashmere, or Beloochistan--all were many miles away, the latter three hundred and more--leaving Mabel in the hands of the banker and merchant, to keep or deliver up, as they chose. Yet when he thought of the peculiar _creed_ of the Khond he shuddered; and she looked so beautiful, so gentle, and was withal so helpless, that he wavered in his selfish purpose, and the temptation of hoping to win her made him pause in forming any decided resolution; so the noon of the first day passed slowly and uneventfully on.

He knew that Mabel, as an European woman, dared make no attempt to escape, or even to show her face at a window; so he had no necessity either to watch or to warn her when he left her.

In tears and silence she lay on her pallet, her head propped upon pillows; near her the Hindoo woman had kindly placed a vase of fresh flowers, a feather fan, and a flask of essences; and then, left to herself for hours, she could but wait, and weep, and pray at intervals, dreading the coming night.

Some of the sounds without in Cabul were not unfamiliar to her; she had often heard them before, when driving through the central street in the carriage, or when riding with the other ladies of the garrison. Again, at stated times, she heard the shrill cries from the minarets and summits of the mosques proclaim that the hour for prayer had arrived; for the Moslems observe this frequently daily. "Glorify God," says the Koran, "when the evening overtaketh you, and when you rise in the morning; and unto Him be praise in heaven and on earth: and at sunset, and when you rest at noon, for prayer is the pillar of religion, and key of paradise."

Once she peeped forth between the parted shutters and blinds, shrinking back timidly as she did so, lest her pale white face should catch a casual passer's eye, and elicit a yell of recognition and of thirst for Christian blood. There the street below was dark and narrow; the clumsy wooden pipes projected far over, to carry off the rain from the roofs, which were flat and terraced; the walls were high, black, and almost windowless. Such was her view on one side. The other opened to a paved court, overlooked by houses built of sun-dried brick, rough stones, and red clay. Four mulberry-trees grew there, with a white marble fountain in the midst; and near it were some grizzly-bearded Afghans of mature years, in long, flowing garments, smoking and playing marbles, exactly as children do in Europe. Another party, also of full-grown men, were hopping against each other, on their right legs, grasping their left feet with their right hands. They seemed all pleasant fellows, hilarious and in high good humour; yet she dared neither to seek their aid, nor to trust to their compassion. In her eyes, they were but as so many tigers at play!

The circumstance of her being deemed the prisoner, the slave, or peculiar property of such a formidable soldier as Zohrab Zubberdust secured her from all interruption on the part of his male friends, the Khond and the Hindoo schroff, who jointly occupied the house in which he had placed her, and which was situated at the bottom of a narrow alley (opening off the main street that led to the Char Chowk, or great bazaar), a regular cul-de-sac, where many Khonds lived together, congregating precisely as the Irish do in the towns of England and Scotland; but this was deemed no peculiarity in Cabul, where the city was apportioned in quarters, to the different tribes of the Afghan people, the most formidably fortified being that of the Kuzzilbashes.

As evening drew on, Mabel became aware of a conversation that was proceeding in the next room; and, as she could from time to time detect the voice of Zohrab, she thought herself fully excusable in listening, which she could do with ease, as the partitions of the apartments which opened off the dewan-khaneh were all of them boarding panelled.

In one place a knot had dropped out, and to the convenient orifice made thereby, as she breathlessly applied her ear and eye alternately, she heard and saw all that was passing, and in some respects more than she cared to know, as much that she did hear only added to her repugnance and terror of those on whose mercy she found herself cast by an unhappy fate.