CHAPTER IX.

BY THE HILLS OF BEYMARU.

As they proceeded, past groves of drooping willows, past rows of leafy poplars, rice-fields where pools of water glittered in the starlight, and past where clumps of the flowering oleaster filled the air with delicious perfume, Mabel began to recognise the features of the landscape, and knew by the familiar locality that she was once more within a very short distance of Cabul. Again, in the light of the rising moon, as she sailed, white and silvery, above the black jagged crests of the Siah Sung, Mabel Trecarrel could recognise the burned and devastated cantonments, where in flame and ruin the fragile bungalows, the compounds of once-trim hedgerows, and all, had passed away,--the bare boundary walls and angular bastions alone remaining. She saw the site of her father's pretty villa, a place of so many pleasant and happy memories--the daily lounge of all the young officers of the garrison; and there, too, were the remains of the Residency, where Sir William Macnaghten, as the Queen's representative, dispensed hospitality to all. Yonder were the hills and village of Beymaru; and further off a few red lights that twinkled high in air announced the Bala Hissar, the present residence of Ackbar Khan; but to take her in that direction formed then no part of the plans of Zohrab Zubberdust.

He rode straight towards a lonely place which lay between the Beymaru Hills and the Lake of Istaliff; and as the locality grew more and more sequestered he slackened the speed of his horse, now weary and foam-flaked. After a time he drew up, and, requesting her to alight, lifted her to the ground, and politely and gently urged her to rest herself for a little space.

"My sister?" said Mabel, tremulously.

"Is not here," replied he.

"But where, then?"

"Patience yet a while," said he with a smile, which she could not perceive; while he, to be prepared for any emergency, proceeded at once to shift his saddle, rub down his horse with a handful of dry grass, give it a mouthful or two from a certain kind of cake which he carried in his girdle; and then he looked to his bridle, stirrup-leather, and the charges of his pistols. Accustomed to arms and strife of late, Mabel looked quietly on, taking all the preparations for uncertain contingencies as mere matters of course.

Breathless and weary with her strange mode of progression, she had seated herself on a stone close by; and while the careful rider was grooming his steed and making him drink a little of the shining waters of the long narrow lake, she looked anxiously around her, surmising when or in what manner of habitation she should find her sister. Not a house or homestead, not even the black tent of a mountain shepherd, was in sight. On all sides the lonely green and silent hills towered up in the quiet moonlight, and the still, calm lake reflected their undulating outlines downward in its starry depth.

The holly-oak, the wild almond, and the khinjuck tree, which distils myrrh, and in that warlike land of cuts and slashes is in great repute for healing sabre wounds, the homely dog-rose, the sweet-briar, the juniper bush, and the wild geranium, all grew among the clefts of the rocks in luxuriant masses; while sheets of wild tulips waved their gorgeous cups among the green sedges by the lake.

Not far from where she sat was a grove, which she remembered to have been the scene of a once-happy picnic party, of which Bob Waller was one. She recognised the place now. She knew it was a lonely solitude, that in summer was ever full of the perfume of dewy branches, fresh leaves, and opening flowers; but the immediate spot where they had halted had been anciently used as a burying-ground. A portion of an old temple, covered by luxuriant creepers, lay there, and two magnificent cypresses still towered skyward amid the half-flattened mounds and sinking grave-stones of the long-forgotten dead. The remains of a little musjid, or place for prayer, long since ruined by some savage and idolatrous Khonds, who came down from the hills, lay there among the débris, which included a shattered well, built by some pious Moslem of old. The water from it gurgled past her feet towards the lake, and she remembered how Waller had placed the bottles of champagne and red Cabul wine in the runnel to cool them.

And now, as if contrasting the joyous past with the bitter present, a shudder came over Mabel. She held out her pale hand, which looked like ivory in the moonlight, and said to Zohrab, as he approached her--

"It is a gloomy place, this. Is my sister far from here?"

"About five coss," said he, confidently; and he spoke the truth, and charmed by seeing her outstretched hand, an action which betokened reliance or trust--he flattered himself, perhaps, regard--he took a seat by her side, and then Mabel began to view him with positive distrust and uneasiness. She said--

"Five coss--ten miles yet! Let us go at once, then!"

"Stay," said he, "let us rest a little. You are--nay, must be weary;" and arresting her attempt to rise with a hand upon her arm, he drew nearer her; and sooth to say, though he was confident in bearing, bravely embroidered in apparel, and had a handsome exterior, Zohrab Zubberdust was but an indifferent love-maker, and knew not how to go about it, with a "Feringhee mem sahib" least of all. He was puzzled, and made a pause, during which Mabel's large, clear, grey eyes regarded him curiously, warily, and half sternly.

As the mistress of her father's late extensive household, with its great retinue of native servants (each of whom had half a dozen others to perform his or her work), and, as such, coming hourly in contact with the dealers and others in the bazaars and elsewhere, Mabel Trecarrel had, of necessity, picked up a knowledge of the Hindostanee and the Afghan, far beyond her heedless sister Rose, who, as these were neither the languages of flirtation or the flowers, scarcely made any attempt to do so; hence Mabel could converse with Zohrab with considerable fluency.

Her beauty was as soft and as bright as that of Rose, but it was less girlish and of a much higher and more statuesque character; so "Zohrab the Overbearing" now felt himself rather at a loss to account for the emotion of awe--we have no other name for it--with which she inspired him. The point, the time, and the place when he should have her all to himself had arrived, true to all his calculations and beyond his hopes; and yet his tongue and spirit failed him, as if a spell were upon him.

In his lawless roving life, now serving the Khan of Khiva, on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, now the Emir of Bhokara, far away beyond the waters of the Oxus, and lastly Ackbar Khan, he had, in predatory war, carried off many a girl with all her wealth of bracelets and bangles, the spoil of his spear and sabre, trussing her up behind him like the fodder or oats for his Tartar nag; but never had he felt before as he did now, for, unlike the maids of the desert, the Feringhee failed to accept the situation. He felt perplexed--secretly enraged, and yet he murmured half to himself and half to her, as his dark face and darker gleaming eyes drew nearer hers--

"The whiteness of her bosom surpasses the egg of the ostrich or the leaf of the lily, and her breath is sweet as the roses of Irem--yea, as those of Zulistan! Listen to me," he added abruptly, in a louder and sharper tone, and in his figurative language; "fair daughter of love, give ear. You have won my heart, my love, my soul, subduing me--even Zohrab! Learn in turn to be subdued, submissive, and obedient. Happy is he who shall call you wife; and that happy man--is Zohrab!"

The intense bewilderment of poor Mabel increased to extreme fear at those words, so absurdly inflated, yet so blunt in import, and she shrunk back, but could not turn from the dark, glittering eyes that gleamed with a serpent-like fascination into hers.

So she _had_ been deluded after all, and her worst anticipations were about to be realised at last! Zohrab grasped her left hand with his right, and planting his left cheek on the other hand, with an elbow on his knee, began to take courage, and, surveying her steadily, to speak more distinctly and with an admiring smile; for the silence of the night was around them, and no sound came on the wind that moaned past the grove or the great cypresses close by; so from the silence, perhaps, he gathered confidence, if, indeed, he really required it.

"Allah has been good to us," said he, "exceedingly good, in creating such beautiful beings as women to please us. You are more beautiful than any I have seen--too much so to be left to gladden a Kaffir's heart; so you shall remain with me, and be the light of my eyes."

"Wretch!--fool that I have been! Rose, Rose!" gasped Mabel, scarcely knowing what she said.

"I love you," he resumed softly, while his hot clasp tightened on her hand, and his lips approached her ear; "you hear--and understand me?"

"You love me!" exclaimed Mabel rashly, with proud scorn in her tone, despite the deadly fear that gathered in her heart, and while her eyes flashed with an expression to which the Oriental was quite unaccustomed in a captive woman.

"Yes, I love you--I, Zohrab," was the somewhat egotistical response.

"You know not what love is; but, even if you did, you shall not dare to talk of it to me. That you may have a fancy, I can quite well understand; but a fancy, or a passion, and love are very different things. What do you, or what can you, know of me?"

"That you are beautiful: what more is required?"

"Enough of this--I am weary. Take me instantly to my sister, or back to my friends who are with Saleh Mohammed; for if I were to denounce you to Ackbar Khan, how much think you your head would be worth?"

"Much less than yours, certainly."

"And at what does he--this _other_ barbarian--value me?"

"At the price of six Toorkoman horses, perhaps," was the half-angry response; "while to me you are priceless, beyond life itself. Denounce me to Ackbar Khan--would you?"

"Yes."

His teeth glistened under his jet moustache as he replied--

"Those stones and trees alone hear us; so now let me tell you, Kaffir girl, that you weary me; by the five blessed Keys of Knowledge, you do!" and, as he spoke, he started to his feet, and by an angry twist of his embroidered girdle threw his jewelled sabre behind him.

"Oh, this is becoming frightful!" moaned Mabel, clasping her hands and looking wildly round her; "what will become of me now? Papa, Rose, are we never to meet again?"

Oh, if big, burly Bob Waller, with his six feet and odd inches of stature, were only there! Could he but know of her misery of mind--her dire extremity! but would he ever know? God alone could tell!

There is much that is touching in the helplessness of any woman, but more than all a beautiful one, though we, whose lines are cast in pleasant places, and in a land of well-organized police, may seldom see it--a clinging, imploring expression of eye, when all is soul and depth of heart, and strength avails not. But Zohrab Zubberdust felt nothing of this. She on whom he looked might be pure as Diana, "chaste as Eve on the morning of her innocence," yet, as a Mohammedan, he had a secret contempt for her--perhaps a doubt of her--as a Kaffir woman. He was only inspired by the emotions of triumph and passion, by the sure conviction that this fair Feringhee, this daughter of a vanquished tribe, this outcast unbeliever, so lovely in her whiteness of skin, her purity of complexion, and wondrous colour of hair, in her roundness of limb, and in stature so far surpassing all the maids of the twenty-one Afghan clans or races, was his--_his_ property--to become the slave of his will or his cruelty, as it pleased him!

Of the paradox that woman's weakness is her strength, with the Christian man, Zohrab knew nothing, and felt less; yet he tried to act the lover in a melodramatic fashion, by making high-flown speeches, and assuring her, again and again, that he loved her "as the only Prophet of God loved Ayesha, his favourite wife, the mother of all the Faithful," and much more to the same purpose, till amid the wind that sighed through the trees, and shook the wild tulips and lilies by the lake, the quickened ear of Mabel caught a distant sound; and then one of those shrill cries of despair, that women alone can give, escaped her.

A fierce malediction from the lips of Zohrab mingled with it, for he dreaded Saleh Mohammed; and in a few moments more the clink of hoofs was heard; then Zohrab sternly drew a pistol from his girdle, and unsheathed his sabre like a flash of fire in the moonlight. The blade glittered like his own eyes, as he glared alternately from Mabel to where the sounds came; and by his keen, wild expression and fierce quivering nostrils, she saw with terror, that a very slight matter might turn his wrath and his weapons against herself.

"Here comes aid--Saleh Mohammed perhaps! Help, help, in the name of God!" she cried, recklessly.

Zohrab uttered a sound like a hiss, and placed the cold back of his sabre across her throat, implying thereby, "Silence, or death;" and at that instant, four Afghan horsemen came galloping up, and reined in their nags.

"Bismillah," said the leader, a venerable, burly, and silver-bearded man, in a huge turban.

"Bismillah," responded Zohrab, using also the expression of salutation customary to the country (and which means no more than "good evening" or "good e'en" may do with us), yet regarding the stranger with a somewhat resentful and tiger-like expression of eye for his unwelcome interruption.

"What, Zohrab Zubberdust, is this thou?" exclaimed the other.

"Shabash--it is I; and you--are Nouradeen Lal!" said the would-be lover, as he recognised his acquaintance, the hill-farmer, whose ploughman, perforce, Waller had been; "whence come you?"

"From Cabul, where I have been with many an arroba of corn for the Sirdir, who expects to be besieged by the Kaffirs from Jellalabad. Oh! and so you are at your old tricks again," continued the farmer, with a somewhat unoriental burst of laughter; "you are not content to wait for the spouses of musk and amber in their couches of pearl--the black-eyed girls with their scarfs of green!"

"Allah Keerem, but he is fortunate," said another, looking admiringly on Mabel; "most fortunate! She is fair and white as the virgins of paradise can be."

"But her cry sounded like the bay of a goorg to the rising moon; and we thought you were an afreet--the Ghoul Babian, or some such horror; for here are graves close by!"

"Nouradeen Lal is not complimentary," said the other speaker, who, by his steel cap, spear, and shield of rhinoceros hide, seemed to be a Hazir-bashi, or one of Ackbar's body-guard, "if he compare the damsel's voice to the cry of a wolf."

"But why did she cry? You were not ill-using her, I hope," said the old farmer, peering down at Mabel's face from under his broad circular turban.

"For the love of God--your God as well as mine--save me from this man!" said Mabel, clinging to the stirrup-leather of the farmer, whose venerable appearance encouraged her, and who placed his strong brown hand on her head encouragingly and protectingly.

"I dare you to interfere!" exclaimed Zohrab, hoarse with passion, as he drew from his girdle the long brass pistol he had just half cocked and replaced there.

"And why so?" asked the Hazir-bashi, who seemed quite ready for a brawl, and perhaps the appropriation of the girl.

"Because she is--my wife."

"Your wife!" exclaimed Nouradeen, withdrawing his hand abruptly, and swerving round his horse, so that Mabel nearly fell to the ground.

"Yes; we were married before the Cadi: and now she would seek to repudiate me, and return to her own accursed people," said the artful Zohrab; for marriage among the Mohammedans is exclusively a civil ceremony, performed before a Cadi, or magistrate, and not by an Imaum or any other minister of religion, with which it has nothing to do.

"Oh, believe not a word of this; it is false--false!" implored Mabel, with desperation in her tone.

"It is true; and thou, Kaffir, liest! Silence, silence, or I will kill thee!" hissed Zohrab in her ear; and she felt that he was but too capable of putting his threat into execution. "Interfere not with us, I charge you; but leave us, and remember what the fourth chapter of the Koran says, 'If a woman fear ill-usage or aversion from her husband, it shall be no crime in them if they settle the matter amicably between themselves; for a reconciliation is better than a separation;' therefore leave us to agree amicably, as the Prophet hath advised."

"And the same chapter, good Zohrab, tells us how we may chastise such wives as are contumacious, and those captives, too, whom our right hand may possess," said the farmer; "so farewell, and may the steps of you both be fortunate," he added, as he and his three companions galloped laughingly away, and with a wail, as if from her heart, Mabel found herself alone once more in the moonlight solitude--alone with her unscrupulous companion.