CHAPTER VIII.

MABEL DELUDED.

On receiving the note from Rose Trecarrel, the cunning Zohrab, full of his own nefarious plans, had ridden straight from the white-walled fort of Shireen Khan to that commanded by Saleh Mohammed, which is situated exactly three miles from Cabul, amid a well-cultivated country; and there, knowing well the time when, after hearing morning prayers read according to the service of the Church of England by one lady who had preserved her "Book of Common Prayer," the poor captives, with the children who were among them, were wont to take an airing in the garden, he chose the occasion; for, as he was aware, Saleh Mohammed, kneeling upon a piece of black xummul, under the shadow of a great cypress, would be also at _his_ orisons, and telling over his string of ninety-nine sandal-wood beads, with his face bowed towards the _west_, as is the custom in India and Persia. The precept of the Koran is, that when men pray they shall turn towards the Kaaba, or holy house of Mecca; and, consequently, throughout the whole Moslem world, indicators are put up to enable the faithful to fulfil this stringent injunction. So selecting, we say, a time when the grim old commandant of the fort was deep in his orisons, with his head bowed, and his silver beard floating over the weapons with which his Cashmere girdle bristled--for the modern Afghan (like the Scottish Highlander of old) is never found unarmed, even by his own fireside--he made a sign to Mabel that he wished to speak with her; but he had to repeat this salaam more than once ere she understood him, as she was intently toying with and caressing a little boy, whose parents had perished in the late disasters, and who clung specially to her alone.

Mabel, pale and colourless now more than was her wont, though she never had possessed a complexion so brilliant as her sister Rose, bowed to Zohrab, whom she little more than knew by sight, and by the force of local custom was lowering her veil (for she, too, like all the rest, now wore the Afghan female dress) and turning away, when Zohrab placed a hand on his lips, and, making a motion indicative of entreaty, silence, and haste, held up the tiny note of Rose.

On this Mabel's pale cheek flushed; she hesitated, and many ideas shot swiftly through her mind, while she glanced hastily about her, to see who observed them. Was this note some plot for her release and the release of her friends--some political or military stratagem? Had it tidings of her father's burial--for she knew that he had fallen in the Pass--of the army, of those who were in Jellalabad? Was it a love-letter? Zohrab Zubberdust was certainly very handsome; her woman's eye admitted that. This idea occurred last of all; yet the note might be from Waller--dear Bob Waller, with his fair honest face and ample whiskers. All these thoughts passed like lightning through her mind as she took the missive, which was written on a small piece of paper, folded triangularly and without an address.

Then, as she opened it, a half-stifled cry of mingled astonishment and rapture escaped her.

"Rose, it is from Rose; she yet lives! Oh, my God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee!--she yet lives, but where?" she exclaimed, in a voice rendered low by excess of emotion, as she burst into tears, and read again and again the few words her sister had written.

Zohrab was attentively observing her. He saw how pure and beautiful she was; how unlike aught that he had ever looked upon before--even the fairest, softest, and most languishing maids of Iraun; for Mabel was an English girl, above the middle height, and fully rounded in all her proportions. All that he had heard of houris, of those black-eyed girls of paradise, the special care of the Angel Zamiyad, seemed to be embodied in her who was before him. Her quiet eyes seemed wondrously soft, clear, and pleading in expression, to one accustomed ever to the black, beady orbs of the Orientals; and as he gazed, he felt bewildered, bewitched by the idea that in a little time, if he was wary, all this fair beauty might be his--his as completely as his horse and sabre!

"My sister! my dear, dear sister!" exclaimed Mabel, impulsively, kissing the note and pressing it to her breast. "Oh, I must tell of this. Lady Sale, Lady Sale!" she exclaimed, looking around her; but Zohrab laid a hand on her arm, and a finger on his lip significantly.

"Lady Sahib," said he, in a low guttural voice, "you will go with me?"

"Yes, yes--oh yes; but how? to where?--and I must confer with my friends and the Khan, Saleh Mohammed."

"Nay; to do so would ruin all."

"With my friends, surely?"

"Nay; that too would be unwise: to none."

"None?"

"I repeat, none," said Zohrab, whose habit of mind, like that of all Orientals, was inclined to suspicion, secresy, and mistrust.

"Why?" asked Mabel.

"Does not your letter tell you?"

"No--but can I--ought I to--to----" she paused and glanced irresolutely towards the group of her companions in misfortune, who were generally clustered round the chief matrons of their party, Lady Sale and the widowed Lady Macnaghten; and the idea flashed upon her mind that she might be unwise to leave the shelter of their presence and society, and trust herself to this Afghan warrior. But, then, had not Rose bade her confide in him?

"Where is my sister, and with whom?" she asked.

"I can only tell you that she is in perfect safety," replied Zubberdust, unwilling in that locality to compromise himself by mentioning the name of Shireen Khan.

"I shall be silent, and go with you," said Mabel, making an effort to master her deep and varied emotions.

"When?"

"Now--this instant, if you choose."

"That is impossible. At dusk, when the sun is set, I shall be here again on this spot, and take you to her. Till then, be silent, and confide in none: to talk may ruin all!" said Zubberdust, whose active mind had already conceived a plan for outwitting Saleh Mohammed and his guard of Dooranees, who watched the walls of the fort from the four round towers which terminated each angle, and on each of which was mounted a nine-pounder gun taken from our old cantonments.

Too wary to remain needlessly in her company, with all her allurements, now that his pretended mission was partly performed, and thereby draw the eyes of the observant or suspicious upon them, and more particularly upon himself, he at once withdrew, leaving poor Mabel, who naturally was intensely anxious to question him further, overwhelmed by emotions which she longed eagerly to share by confidence with her friends; for news of any European, especially of one who belonged to the little circle of English society at Cabul, must prove dear and of deepest interest to them all. Yet had not this mysterious messenger impressed upon her, that if she was to see her sister, to rejoin her, and hear the story of her wonderful disappearance at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, if she would soothe, console, it might be protect her, she must be silent?

Slowly passed the day in the fort of Saleh Mohammed. The tall and leafy poplars, the slender white minars, the four towers of the fort, which was a perfect parallelogram, and the wooded and rocky hills that overlooked them all, cast their shadows across the plain (through which the Cabul winds towards the Indus) gradually in a circle, and then, when stretching far due westward, they gradually faded away; the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush, the mighty Indian Caucasus, rose cold and pale against the clear blue sky, where the stars were twinkling out in succession; and with a nervous anxiety, which she found it almost impossible to control, Mabel Trecarrel stole away, with mingled emotions, from the apartments assigned to the lady hostages--emotions of sorrow, half of shame for her silence concerning the project she had in hand, and her enforced reticence to those who loved her, and had ever been so kind to her amid their own heavy afflictions--compunction for the honest alarm her absence would certainty occasion them on the morrow; but hope and joy in the anticipated reunion with her sister soon swept all such minor thoughts away, and she longed and thirsted for the embrace and companionship of Rose, to whom, though the difference in their years was but small, she had ever been a species of mother and monitress--never so much as when in their happy English home in Cornwall, far away!

Since their strange separation on that fatal morning, when their poor father, in his despair and sorrow, galloped rearward to perish in the skirmish, how much must the pretty, the once-playful, and coquettish Rose have to tell; and how much had she, herself, to impart in return!

Her heart beat almost painfully, when, on approaching the appointed spot for the last time, she saw the figure of Zohrab Zubberdust standing quite motionless under the shadow of the great cypress, where in the morning Saleh Mohammed had knelt at prayer. He wore his steel cap (with its neck-flap of mail), on which the starlight glinted; he had a small round gilded shield slung on his back by a leather belt; his poshteen was buttoned up close to his throat, and he was, as usual, fully armed; but in one hand he carried a large, loose chogah, or man's cloak, of dull-coloured red cloth; and now Mabel felt that the decisive moment had, indeed, all but arrived: beyond that, her ideas were vague in the extreme, and her breathing became but a series of hurried and thick respirations.

"Is all safe? is all ready--prepared?" she asked, in a broken voice.

"Inshallah--all," replied the taciturn Mahommedan, who, like all of his race and religion, had few words to spare.

The idea of escaping by ladders of rope or wood had never seemed to him as possible. The walls of the fort were twenty-five feet high, and surrounded by a deep wet ditch, the water of which came by a canal, through a rice-field, from the Cabul river. Its only gate was guarded by a party of Saleh Mohammed's men, under a Naick (or subaltern), with whom Zohrab was very intimate; and beyond or outside these barriers he had left his horse haltered (in sight of the sentinels), and so that it could not stir from the place, as the only portion of the gate which the Naick was permitted to open was the _kikree_, or wicket, through which but one at a time could pass.

Zohrab Zubberdust, scarcely daring to trust himself to look on Mabel's fair, anxious, and imploring face, lest it might bewilder him from his fixed purpose, took from his steel cap the white turban cloth he wore twisted round it, and, speedily forming it into a single turban with a falling end, placed it on her head. He enveloped her in the ample chogah, hiding half her face, gave her his sabre to place under her arm, and the simple disguise was complete; for, in the dusk now, none could perceive that she wore slippers in lieu of the brown leather jorabs or ankle-boots of the Afghans; and looking every inch a taller and perhaps a manlier Osmanlie than himself, Mabel walked leisurely by his side towards the gate, where, as watch-words, parole, and countersign were alike unknown to the guard, fortunately none were required of them; but her emotions almost stifled her, when she saw the black, keen, and glossy eyes of the Dooranees surveying her, as they leaned leisurely on their long juzails, which were furnished with socket bayonets nearly a yard in length.

She moved mechanically, like one in a dream, and the circumstance of striking her head as she failed to stoop low enough in passing through the wicket added to her confusion; nor was she quite aware that they had been permitted to pass free and unquestioned, as two men, by the Naick, to whom Zohrab made some jesting remark about the "awkwardness of his friend," until she saw behind her the lofty white walls of the fort gleaming in the pale starlight, their loopholes and outline reflected downward, in the slimy wet ditch where water-lilies were floating in profusion.

Unhaltering his horse and mounting, her new companion desired her, with more impressiveness than tenderness of tone--for the former was his habit, and the moment was a perilous and exciting one--to walk on by his side a little way, as if they were conversing, and thereby to lull any suspicion in the minds of such Dooranees as might be observing them; for they were still within an unpleasant distance of the long rifles of those who were posted on the towers of the fort; and still more were they within range of those ginjauls which are still used in India, and are precisely similar to the swivel wall-pieces invented long ago by Marshal Vauban, and throw a pound ball to a vast distance.

On descending the other side of an intervening eminence, that was covered by wild sugar-canes and aromatic shrubs, the leaves of which were tossing in the evening breeze, he curtly desired her to place her right foot upon his left within the stirrup-iron, and then, with the aid of his hand, he readily placed her on the holsters of his saddle before him. He now applied the spurs with vigour to his strong, active, and long-bodied Tartar horse, and, with a speed which its double burden certainly served to diminish, it began quickly to leave behind the dreaded fort of Mohammed Saleh.

As the latter began to sink and lessen in the distance, Mabel Trecarrel felt as if there was a strange and dreamy unreality about all this episode. Many an officer and Indian Sowar had ridden into the Khoord Cabul Pass with his wife or his children before him, even as she was now borne by Zohrab; she had heard and seen many wild and terrible things since her father, with other officers of the Company's service, had come, in an evil hour, "up country," to command Shah Sujah's Native Contingent; she had read and heard of many such adventures, escapes, flights, and abductions in romance and reality; but what might be her fate now, if this should prove to be the latter--an abduction of herself--some trick of which she had permitted herself to become the too-ready victim?

She was in a land where the people were prone to wild and predatory habits, and, moreover, were masters in trickery, cunning, and cruelty. Had she been deceived? she asked of herself, when she felt the strong, sinewy, and bony arm of Zohrab tightening round her waist, while his wiry little horse, with its fierce nose and muscular neck outstretched, and its dancing mane streaming behind like a tiny smoke-wreath, sped on and on, she knew not whither!

Had she been deceived, was the ever-recurring dread, when the handwriting was that of Rose, beyond all doubt? But written when? or had Rose been deluded? Was this horseman the person in whom she had been desired "to confide," or had he stolen the note from another?--perhaps, after killing him! Those Afghans were such subtle tricksters that she felt her mistrust equalled only by her loathing of them all.

Mabel asked herself all these tormenting questions when, perhaps, too late; and she knew that, whether armed or unarmed, Heaven had never intended her to be a heroine, or to play the part of one: she felt a conviction that she was merely "an every-day young lady," and that if "much more of this kind of thing went, she must die of fright."

Just as she came to this conclusion an involuntary cry escaped her. The boom of a cannon--one of Her Majesty's nine-pounders, of which the Khan had possessed himself--pealed out on the calm still atmosphere of the Indian evening, now deepening into night. Another and another followed, waking the echoes of the woods and hills; and, though distant now, each red flash momentarily lit up the sky. They came from the fort of Saleh Mohammed to alarm the country; and still further to effect this and announce the escape of a prisoner, a vast quantity of those wonderful and beautiful crimson, blue, green, and golden lights, in the manufacture of which all Oriental pyrotechnists excel so particularly, were shot off in every direction from the walls, showering upward and downward like falling stars, describing brilliant arcs through the cloudless sky; and with an exclamation on his bearded mouth, expressive of mockery and malison with fierce exultation mingled, Zohrab Zubberdust looked back for a moment, while his black eyes flashed fire in the reflected light.

"Hah!" he muttered, "dog of a Dooranee, may the grave of the slave that bore thee be defiled!"

And while one hand tightened around his prize, with the other he urged his horse to greater speed than ever.