CHAPTER VII.

THE SCHEME OF ZOHRAB.

Time, to the young, seems but a slow and cold comforter (alas! how different it must appear to the old); so Denzil knew that, though sluggish, time must eventually bring about some change in the captivity he was enduring in the hands of Shireen Khan--a mode of life that, but for the sweet companionship of Rose, would have been simply so intolerable that he should certainly have attempted to escape even at the risk of death.

In perfect ignorance of all that was passing in the outer world of far-away Europe, of India, and even Afghanistan, they and the other hostages, from whom they were, happily for themselves, kept apart, knew nothing of all that was passing elsewhere, or of the plans that were forming and the hopes that grew for their rescue or release.

We say, happily they were sequestered from those who were in the hands of Ackbar Khan: thus they were not harassed by dreadful and incessant doubts of their future fate, especially the vague and terrible one of transmission to Toorkistan; for the old Kuzzilbash lord treated them kindly, and, to the best of his resources, hospitably, confidently believing that it was his personal interest to do so, as the gaily embroidered regimental colour of the 44th, or East Essex, in which Denzil purposely aired his figure occasionally in the garden of the fort, still impressed him with the idea that he had secured a great Feringhee Nawab whom the Queen or Company might ransom, or who might prove a powerful friend to him if reverses came upon Cabul, and not a poor Ensign, or Lieutenant, as Denzil was now; though he knew not that, consequent to slaughter, death by disease, and so forth, he had now been promoted in the corps.

Chess-playing was the great bond between old Shireen and the bright laughing Rose, whom he treated with infinitely more care and tenderness than either of his own daughters; but to Denzil he would frequently say in his hoarse, guttural, and most unmusical language, between the whiffs of his silk-bound and silver-cupped hubble-bubble--

"I am thy friend; yet remember that friendship with unbelievers is forbidden by the Koran, especially with Jews or Christians; for saith the fifth chapter, 'Are they not friends one with another?' and they will corrupt us, their alms being like the icy winds which blow on the fields of the perverse, and blast their corn in the ear."

Denzil could not repress an impatient grimace under a smile, for it was the Koran--always and ever the Koran--among these Afghans; every casual remark or idea suggested a quotation from or a reference to it, so that the Khanum could not dye her nails, adjust her veil, put pepper in the kabobs, or chillis among the pillau of rice, without a reference to something that was said or done on a similar occasion by the Holy Camel-driver of Mecca,--their whole conversation being interlarded with pious sayings, like that of the Scottish Covenanters or English Puritans of old.

Isolated as they were in that lonely Afghan fort, surrounded by towering green hills, the interest that Denzil and Rose had in each other grew daily and hourly deeper; so that at last she learned to love him--yes, actually to love him--as fondly as he had ever loved her, and to feel little emotions of pique and jealousy when he strove to address the daughters of the house and teach them a very strange kind of broken English.

Propinquity and a just appreciation of his sterling character achieved this for him, and he felt supremely happy in the conviction of this returned love, though the end of it yet was difficult to foresee.

But it was such a divine happiness to dream softly on for the present, shut in there as they were alone for themselves apparently, and, as it seemed, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." Denzil's doubts of her were gone now; yet Rose had the power to conceal for a long time the gradual change in her own sentiments and secret thoughts from him who had inspired them; for the coquette was loth to admit that she had succumbed at last.

Denzil had contrived, after innumerable essays, in the most remarkable species of polyglot language, to make old Shireen comprehend that they had not, as yet, been married before a Cadi (or Moollah, as the Christians are), and had to wait the permission of others. On this he stroked his vast beard in token of assent, and thrice muttered "Shabash!" with great solemnity, meaning, "Well-done--agreed."

Rose had lost much of her heedlessness of manner now; her latest flirtation, which had been with Audley Trevelyan, was utterly forgotten, as many others had been; and the quaint Afghan dress she was compelled by the exigencies of her scanty wardrobe to wear--to wit, a yellow chemise of silk embroidered with black, trousers of fine white muslin, which revealed through its thin texture the roundness of each tapered ankle, with her veil floating loose, in token of her being unmarried, did not afford her much room for coquetry, although it afforded scope for her old waggery, and her long unbound auburn tresses, that spread over her shoulders in brilliant ripples, she was wont to ridicule as a _coiffure à la sauvage_, though one with which Denzil's fingers--when unobserved by the Afghan household, he and she could ramble among the parterres, rosaries, and shrubberies of the Khan's garden--were never weary of toying.

"You will tire of this life, as I do, and more soon of waiting too," said she one day.

"I shall wait and be faithful to you, Rose, even as I was taught at school Jacob was to Rachel," he replied, fondly caressing her hands in his.

"Oh! that is much more solemn than Paul and Virginia," said she laughing; "but, for Heaven's sake, don't imitate our dingy friends here in pious quotations."

When Rose Trecarrel calmly learned to know herself, she found upon consideration, and came to the conclusion, that it was not mere admiration for Denzil's handsome person and earnest winning manner; it was not gratitude for his steady faith to herself, it was not the charm of propinquity, nor the emotion of self-flattery at his passion,--that it was not any of these singly, but all put together, that made her love him so dearly now, and wonder at her heedless blindness in the time that was past.

Save Zohrab Zubberdust, that handsome, reckless, and wandering Mohammedan soldier of fortune, no visitor at this time came to the fort; and he was openly permitted to see Rose with the other ladies of the family, and occasionally to converse and smoke a cherry-stick pipe with Denzil, who deemed it rash on the part of Shireen to permit them--Rose and himself--to be seen so freely by one who was a paid follower of Ackbar Khan; but the leader of five thousand mounted Kuzzilbash spearmen doubtless felt himself pretty independent in action now. Moreover, since Ackbar's signal defeat before the walls of Jellalabad, his influence had been lessening in Cabul and all the surrounding country; and Zohrab, like many other "khans," who had only their swords and pistols, and, like many other Afghan snobs, that title to maintain, was beginning to wax cool in his service, even as the funds ebbed in his treasury; for Ackbar now had but one hope of replenishing these--the ransom or sale of the captives left in his hands, and each head of these he reckoned at so many mohurs of gold.

It was from some casual remarks of Zohrab that Rose and Denzil first learned, with mingled emotions of satisfaction and fear, compassion and hope, that so many more hostages, male and female, were in the hands of Ackbar, and that their own hopes of rescue or ransom were thereby increased.

Rose, through the medium of the Khan and of Denzil, overwhelmed Zubberdust with questions as to who these prisoners were. Was her father among them? No description he gave her answered to that of the burly, bronzed, and grizzle-haired "Sirdir Trecarrel;" but there was _one_ "mem sahib," whose appearance tallied so closely in stature, face, eyes, and colour of hair with her own, that knowing as she did all the ladies who had been in the cantonments, Rose could not doubt but that she was Mabel--Mabel, her dear and only sister, who must have been within a few miles of her all those weary, anxious months, and yet neither could know of the other's existence; for Mabel, like all who were with Elphinstone's ill-fated host, had now learned to number all who had loved her with the dead.

Now it happened that Zohrab Zubberdust had frequently seen Mabel Trecarrel among the hostages, and been struck by her beauty. Indeed, Ackbar Khan, who cared not for such personal attributes as she possessed, and was long since past all soft emotions now, or, indeed, any save those of ferocity, ambition, and avarice, had frequently indicated her to Ameen Oollah Khan and others as the one upon whom he put most value, and for whom he expected the largest sum from a certain Toorkoman chief whom he named, and who was in the habit of purchasing or exchanging horses for such pleasant commodities; for at that precise time, or in that year of Queen Victoria's reign, Mohammed Ackbar could scarcely realise as a probability the fact that the year 1871 would see a descendant of the Great Mogul--he who was lord of Persia, Transoxana, and Hindostan--one of the royal race of Delhi, sentenced in a Feringhee court of law, by a cadi in a tow wig, to four years' imprisonment with hard labour "for burying a slave-girl" in the city of Benares! So,

"Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times!"

Thus Zohrab, perceiving that the power and influence of Ackbar had been daily growing less in Cabul, especially since the flight of the young Shah to the British General, had begun to dream of possessing himself of this rare European beauty, and departing with her, his horse and lance, in search of "fresh fields and pastures new," and, if possible, of another paymaster; perchance to the court of the Emir of Bokhara, the Shah of Persia, or some one else, alike beyond the ken of Ackbar and the influence of the Feringhees and their queen. In this intention, Zohrab felt the less compunction, that Ackbar had of late permitted his pay to be in arrears several _tillas_ of gold.

But how to get her quietly out of his power, still more how to get her out of the immediate care and wardship of such a wary old soldier and chief as Saleh Mohammed, to whom the especial keeping of the hostages had been confided by the Sirdir, were the two principal difficulties of Zohrab.

He hoped to achieve much through the real or supposed relationship to Rose, with whom he conversed freely, at times, on this and other subjects (Denzil acting as their interpreter), and from him she gradually learned much of which Shireen and his household had, perhaps, kept her in ignorance--the state of affairs before Jellalabad and in the Passes.

"Are not the poor dead creatures buried there?" Rose once asked, while many a face and voice came back to memory.

"Buried? a few--but not deep," replied Zohrab, evasively.

"How--what mean you?"

"Because, as I rode through the Pass but yesterday, my horse's hoofs turned up great pieces of human flesh, while the jackals and hyaenas have been busy with the rest; they are dry bones now."

Rose tremulously clasped her white hands and shuddered.

"And those bones," was the sententious remark of Shireen, who was listening, "not even the voice of Ezekiel could, as we are told it once did, call back to life, as it called the dead Israelites of old."

"A fortunate thing for us, Khan," said the irreverent Zohrab, laughingly.

"Why?"

"I mean, if the result was to be the same; for all arose and lived for years after; and is it not written that they moved among living men with a stench and colour of corpses, and had to wear garments blackened with pitch?"

"That weary Koran again!" murmured Rose; while the Khan frowned, and, to change the subject, said,

"Tell us, Zohrab, more about the Feringhee damsel whom this lady deems must be her sister, and your plans regarding her."

"I fear she could not be prevailed upon to trust herself to me under any pretext, or to leave the companionship of her friends in misfortune without some assurance that she who is with you, Khan Shireen, is indeed her sister in blood."

"Most true," said Shireen, running his brown fingers through his dense beard with an air of perplexity.

"Oh, that may be easily arranged," said Denzil, full of hope at the prospect of seeing Mabel, of the joy it would afford Rose, and the wish to learn from her own lips all that had happened to so many dear friends since that terrible day when so many thousands perished, and so many were separated never to meet more. Thus, he suggested that Rose should entrust Zohrab with a note to be delivered, on the first convenient opportunity, to Mabel, or the lady who was supposed to be she. Zohrab did not care about her identity the value of a cowrie-shell, provided his own plans succeeded.

"And you shall bring her here without delay?" said Shireen, while he knit his bushy and impending eyebrows.

"Where else would she be safe, Khan?"

"Not with you, at all events," was the dubious response.

Zohrab coloured perceptibly, and a covert gleam flashed in his glossy black eyes, as he said,

"My head may answer for this project, Khan, if I am taken."

"Taken--how? Do you mean to fly?" asked Shireen, with another keen glance.

"Nay--nay; not if I can help it," stammered Zohrab, who saw that the Khan's sunken eyes were full of strange light.

"If it becomes known that she is here, the fact will embroil me with Ackbar; but, bah! what matter is it?" said Shireen, proudly. "The city is divided against him, and he knows I can bring five thousand red caps into the field; and she will be one more prisoner for Shireen of the Kuzzilbashes!" he muttered under his beard. "Go then, Zohrab; go and prosper."

"May I not accompany him?" asked Denzil, eagerly, as for months he had never been beyond the wall and ditch of the fort, and he longed to make a reconnaissance with a future eye to escape.

"Nay," said Zohrab, "you know not what you propose, Sahib. Your presence would but encumber me, and add to the lady's peril: it is not to be thought of."

Rose added her entreaties that he would not think of it either; for she might lose her lover, and not regain her sister, so suddenly, so recently, heard of; and then an emphatic and brief command from the Khan ended the matter, so far as poor Denzil was concerned, and he felt himself compelled to succumb.

Writing materials, such as the Afghans use, the strong fibrous paper, a reed split for a pen, with deep black and perfumed Indian ink, were soon brought; and Rose, with a prayerful emotion in her fluttering heart, and a hand that more than once almost failed in its office, so great was her excitement, wrote a single line assuring Mabel that she, herself, was safe, and to "confide in the bearer of this, who would bring her to where she was residing;" and with this tiny missive--which he placed to his lips and then to his forehead in token of faith, while his black eyes flashed with an expression which Rose saw, but failed to analyse--safely deposited in the folds of his turban, Zohrab took his departure; and with a heartfelt invocation for his success on her lips, Rose heard the sound of the hoofs of his swift Tartar horse die away on the road that led towards the dark rocky hills of Siah Sung.

"Shabash! such children of burnt fathers those Feringhees are!" said Zohrab, laughing as he galloped along. "Well, well, let me enjoy the world ere I become the prey of the world!"

Zohrab had promised to return with the lady, or, if without her, to bring some sure tidings, not later than the evening of the second day; but the evening sun of the third had reddened and died out on the mountain peaks, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and a whole week passed away, yet there came no word or sign from Zohrab, and never more did he cross the threshold of Shireen's dwelling!

Had he been discovered and slain by Saleh Mohammed, or what had happened?

Rose wept, for the tender hope, so suddenly lighted in her impulsive heart, only to be as suddenly extinguished; but as yet no suspicion of treachery on the part of Zohrab Zubberdust had entered the minds of her or Denzil, whatever Shireen Khan, as an Afghan naturally prone to suspicion, may have thought.