CHAPTER XX.

TOO LATE!

When Doctor C----, though the anxious and watchful eyes of Rose Trecarrel were bent upon him, had shaken his head so despondingly, and thereby gratified the professional spleen of the long-bearded Abu Malec, he had done so involuntarily, and from sincere medical misgivings that his aid had been summoned when too late; and with tears in her eyes, did Rose needlessly assure him that, until she had seen him enter the sick room, she knew not of his existence, or that he had been permitted to survive.

To this he replied by taking both her hands kindly within his own, for he was a warm-hearted Scottish Highlander, and in turn assuring her that, "until brought to the fort of Shireen Khan by the Hakeem, he also had been ignorant of the vicinity of her and her companion; but without proper medicines," he added, "little could be done--now especially."

Yet she hoped much. He gave her valuable advice, and the Khanum, too, and promised to return without delay, and with certain prescriptions, made up from his little store kept in Cabul for the few wounded soldiers who were hostages there. He rode off, and Rose's blessings and gratitude went with him. No curiosity as to the relations of the nurse and patient--peculiar though their circumstances--prompted a question from the doctor. That Rose should attend the sick officer seemed only humane and natural. Who other so suitable was nigh? And to find one more European--a friend especially--surviving, was source of pleasure enough!

The doctor retired; but, instead of hours, days went by, and he returned no more; for on the very evening of his visit he was seized and despatched, with all the rest, under Saleh Mohammed, to Toorkistan. In another place the doctor was thus enabled to be of much value to Mabel Trecarrel, and _en route_ towards the desert did much to alleviate her sufferings, and restore her health; but the assurance he gave her that he had seen her sister and Denzil Devereaux too, and that they were safe--perfectly safe--in the powerful protection of Shireen Khan, did more to this end than all his prescriptions.

But his advice ultimately availed but little the patient he left behind, for Denzil grew worse--sank more and more daily; he had but the superstition and follies or quackery of Abu Malec to interpose between him and eternity.

Terribly was Rose sensible of all this, as she sat and watched by the young man's bedside in that desolate room of the fort; for it was intensely desolate and comfortless, an Afghan noble's ideas of luxury and splendour being inferior to those possessed by an English groom. Save the bed on which he lay, two European chairs and a trunk brought from the plunder of the cantonments, it was as destitute of furniture as the cell of a prison; and, as if in such a cell, daily the square outline of the window was seen to fall with the yellow sunshine on the same part of the wall, and thence pass upward obliquely as the sun went round, till it faded away at the corner, and then next day it appeared again, without change.

And there sat the once-gay, bright, and heedless Rose Trecarrel, the belle of the ball, of the hunting-meet, of the race-course, and the garrison, with a choking sensation in her throat, and a clamorous fear in her heart, Denzil's hot, throbbing hand often clasped in one of hers, while the other strayed caressingly over his once-thick hair, or what remained of it, for by order of Doctor C----, she had shorn it short--shorter even than the regimental pattern; and so would she sit, watching the winning young fellow, who loved her so well--he, whose figure might have served a sculptor for an Antinous in its perfection of form, wasting away before her, with a terrible certainty that God's hand could alone stay the event; and whom she had but lately seen in all the full roundness of youth and health, with a face animated by a very different expression from that now shown by the hollow, wan, and hectic-like mask which lay listlessly on the pillow--listlessly save when his eyes met hers, and then they filled or grew moist with tenderness and gratitude, emotions that were not unmixed by a fear that the pest, if such it was, that preyed on him might fasten next on her. Then _who_ should watch over Rose, as she had watched over him, like a sister or a mother?

His head, in consequence of the blow he had received from the pistol-butt of the fallen Afghan--the wretch he had sought to succour in the Khyber Pass--was doubtless the seat of some secret injury; for not unfrequently he placed his hand thereon and sighed heavily, while a dimness would overspread his sight, and there came over him a faintness from which Rose, by the use of a fan and some cooling essences--the Khanum had plenty of them--would seek to revive him, and again his loving eyes would look into hers.

"Ah, you know me again," she would say, in a low soft voice, and with a smile of affected cheerfulness; "you are to be spared to me, after all, Denzil--we shall live and die together."

"Nay--not die together, Rose: don't say die together, darling."

"Why?"

"That would be too early--for you, at least."

"You deem me less prepared than yourself, Denzil. Perhaps I am; yet what have I to live for now?"

"Do not talk so, Rose."

"God will take pity on us, Denzil, and will make you well and whole yet," she would reply, and kiss the aching head that rested on her kind and tender bosom; and with all the young girl's love, something of the emotion almost of maternal care and protection stole into her heart, as she watched him thus; he clung to her so, and was so gentle and so helpless.

"If--if--after this" (he did not say, "after I am gone," lest he should pain her even by words)--"if, Rose, after all this, you should ever meet my sister--my dear little Sybil--you will tell her of me--talk to her about me, talk of all I endured, and be a sister to her, for my sake--won't you, Rose?"

"I will, Denzil--I shall, please God."

"Oh yes--yes; one who has been so good to me, could not fail to be good to her, and to love her for her own sake--for mine perhaps."

And then Denzil would look half vacantly, half wildly up to the ceiling, and marvel hopefully yet apprehensively in his heart where was now that homeless sister, so loved and petted at Porthellick, and whom we last saw crouching by the old cottage door near the stone avenue, on that morning when her mother died, and when the cold grey mist was rolling from the purple moorland along the green slopes of the Row Tor and Bron Welli.

Alas! her story Denzil knew not, and might never, never, know it.

But he was beginning now to know and to feel that "the God who was but a dim and awful abstraction before" seemed very close and nigh. No fear was in his heart, however: he was very calm and courageous, save when he thought of Rose's future, and how lonely and lost she should be when he was gone. This reflection alone brought tears from him; it wrung his heart, and made him the more keenly desire to live.

No Bible or Book of Common Prayer had Rose wherewith to console either the sufferer or herself; all such had gone at the plunder of the cantonments and the baggage, and had likely figured as cartridge paper at Jugdulluck and Tizeen; but no printed or hackneyed formulæ could equal in depth or earnestness the silent yet heartfelt prayers she put up for Denzil and herself.

"My poor Denzil--poor boy! I never deserved that you should love me so much: I have thought so a thousand times!" Rose would whisper fervently, and, heedless of any danger from fever, and perhaps courting it, place his brow caressingly in her neck, and kiss his temples, as if he were a child, telling him to "take courage, and have no fear."

"Fear! why should I fear death, Rose?" he would respond, speaking quickly, yet with difficulty--speaking thus perhaps to accustom himself to the topic, or to accustom her, we know not which; "why should I fear death, since I know not what it is? Why fear that which no human being can avert or avoid, and which so many better, braver, and nobler than I have so lately proved and tested in yonder Passes?--aye, Rose, my mother too, at home--my father on the sea--Sybil perhaps--all!"

Then his utterance became incoherent, his voice broken, and Rose felt as if her heart were broken too; for when he spoke thus, there spread over his young face a wondrous brightness, a great calm; and the girl held her breath, in fear, if not awe, for she read there an expression of peace that denoted the end was near.

All was very still in the great square Afghan fort and in the Khan's garden without.

The summer sun shone brightly, and the birds, but chiefly the melodious pagoda-thrush--the king of the Indian feathered choristers--was there; and the flowers, the wondrous roses of Cabul, were exhaling their sweetest perfume. There the world, nature at least, looked gay and bright and beautiful; but here, a young life, that no human skill, prayer, or affection could detain, was ebbing away so surely as the sea ebbs from its shore, but not like the sea to return.

If Denzil died, what had she to live for? So thought the heedless belle, the half coquette, the whole flirt, of a few months past; but such were "the uses" or the results of adversity. Was not the end of all things nigh? Without Denzil Devereaux and his love, so tender, passionate, and true, what would the world be? and her world, of late, had been so small and sad! This love had been all in all to her; and now all seemed nearly over, and nothing could be left to her but forlorn exile and the gloom of despair.

As there is in memory "a species of mental long-sightedness, which, though blind to the object close beside you, can reach the blue mountains and the starry skies which lie full many a league away," so it was with Denzil; and now far from that bare and desolate vaulted room in the Afghan fort, from the mountains of black rock that overshadowed it, and all their harassing associations, even from the presence of the bright-haired and pale-faced girl who so lovingly watched and soothed his pillow, the mind of the young officer flashed back, as if touched by an electric wire, to his once-happy home. Again his manly father's smile approved of some task or feat of skill performed by bridle, gun, or rod; again his mother's dark eyes seemed to look softly into his; the willowed valley (that opened between steep and ruin-crowned cliffs towards the billowy Cornish sea), the little world of all his childhood's cares and joys, was with him now, and with that world he was mingling over again in fancy, though death and distress had been there as elsewhere; the hearth was desolate, or strangers sat around it; their household gods were scattered, and home was home no longer, save in the heart, the memory, of the dying exile.

And so, for a time, his thoughts were far away even from Rose and the present scene. Far from the images that were full of the warlike and perilous present, he was revelling in the past, and talked fluently, confidently, and smilingly with the absent, the lost, and the dead. Often he said--

"Lift my head, dearest mother; place your kind arm round my neck and kiss me once again."

And Rose obeyed him, and he seemed to smile upward into her face; and yet he knew her not, or saw another there.

Then he talked deliriously of his father's rights, of his mother's wrongs, and of his cousin, Audley Trevelyan, till his voice sank into whispers and anon ceased.

This was what Shakspeare describes as the

"Vanity of sickness! fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Death having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now Against the mind, which he pricks and wounds With many legions of strange fantasies, Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, Confound themselves."

He fell asleep; and, without prolonging our description further, suffice it that poor Denzil never woke again, but passed peacefully away...

Rose sat for a time in a stupor, like one in a dream. Summoned by her first wild cry, the Khanum was by her side now.

Denzil, so long her care, her soul, her all, lay there, it would seem, as usual--lay there as she had seen him for many days; yet why was it that his presence, and that rigid angularity and stillness of outline, so appalled her now?

As the crisis so evidently had drawn near, strongly and wildly in the girl's heart came the crave for medical, for religious, for any Christian aid or advice; but there none could be had, any more than if she had stood by the savage shores of the Albert Nyanza; and now the dread crisis was past!

So, from time to time the pale girl found herself gazing on the paler face of the dead--of him who had so loved her--gazing with that mingled emotion of incredulity, wonder, and terror, awe and sorrow, which passeth all experience or description.

There was no change in the air; there was no change in the light: one was still and calm, and laden with perfume; the other as bright and clear as ever: and the blaze of yellow sunshine poured into the room precisely as it did an hour ago; but now it fell on the face of the dead!

And the clear voice of the pagoda-thrush sang on; but how monotonously now!

Rose was stunned, and sat crouching on the floor, with her face covered by her hands, her head between her knees, and her bright dishevelled hair falling forward in silky volume well nigh to her feet. Ignorant of what to say, or how to soothe grief so passionate, the Khanum, unveiled, hung over her in kindness of heart, but with one prevailing idea--that the death of an idolater must be very terrible; that already the fiends must be contesting for the possession of his soul; that the prescribed portion of the Koran had not been read to him; and even if it had been, what would it avail now, till that day when the solid mountains and the soft white clouds should be rolled away together by the blast of the trumpet of Azrael?

So his last thoughts had been of his dead mother, as Rose remembered, and not of her. Her father was dead; Mabel was gone to Toorkistan, too surely beyond ransom or redemption: oh, why was _she_ left to live?

If the _sense of exile_ is so strong in the heart of the Anglo-Indian, even amid all the luxuries and splendours of Calcutta, the city of palaces--amid the gaieties and frivolities of Chowringhee,--what must that sense have been to the heart of this lonely English girl, far away beyond Peshawur, the gate of Western India, beyond the Indus, fifteen hundred English miles, as the crow flies, "up-country," from the mouth of the Hooghley and the shore of Bengal--where the railway whistle will long be unheard, and where Murray, Cook, and Bradshaw may never yet be known!

Notwithstanding all that Rose had undergone of late, and all that she had schooled herself to anticipate as but too probable, she was still unable fully to realise the actual extent of the misfortunes that threatened her. Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's door, came over Rose's spirit now. Henceforward, she felt that life must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream, hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the pagoda-thrush.

Suddenly another sound seemed to mingle with the notes of the birds; it came on the air from a great distance. She started and looked wildly up--her once-clear hazel eyes all bloodshot and tearless now.

What was it? what _is_ it? for the sound was there, and she seemed to hear it still, and the Khanum heard it too!

Nearer it came, and nearer.

It was the sound of drums--drums beaten in regular marching cadence, coming on the wind of evening down from the rocky pass in the hills of Siah Sung.

Oh, there could be no mistake in the measure--British troops were coming on; and how welcome once would that sound have been to the young soldier who lay on his pallet there, and whose ear could hear the English drum no more!

She started to the window, and looked forth to the black mountains, which, though distant from it, towered high above the Kuzzilbashes' fort. The dark Pass lay there, its shadows seeming blue rather than any other tint, as the receding rays of the setting sun left it behind; but her eyes were dim with weeping and with watching now, so Rose, with all her pulseless eagerness, failed to see the serried bayonets, the shot-riven colours tossing in the breeze, or the moving ranks in scarlet, that showed where the victorious brigades of Pollock, Sale, and Nott were once more defiling down into the plain that led to humbled Cabul.

Welcome though their sound, they had come, alas, _too late_!

The drums were still ringing in her ears; and this familiar sound, like the voices of old friends, caused her now to weep plentifully. Once again she turned to the bed where Denzil lay so pale and still, his sharpened features acutely defined in the last light of the sun; and she felt in her heart as she pressed her interlaced hands on her lips, seeking to crush down emotion--

"So the dream it is fled, and the day it is done, And my lips still murmur the name of one Who will never come back to me!"