ONLY AN ENSIGN
A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE,"
"LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH," ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
"Come what come may,
Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day."--_Macbeth._
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1871.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--PAR NOBILE FRATRUM!
II.--DOWNIE'S REFLECTIONS
III.--MR. W. S. SHARKLEY'S PLOT
IV.--THE HOPE OF THE DEAD
V.--RETRIBUTION
VI.--AT JELLALABAD
VII.--THE SCHEME OF ZOHRAB
VIII.--MABEL DELUDED
IX.--BY THE HILLS OF BEYMAROO
X.--AGAIN IN CABUL
XI.--THE ABODE OF THE KHOND
XII.--THE SHADE WITHIN THE SHADOW
XIII.--ROSE IN A NEW CHARACTER
XIV.--WITH SALE'S BRIGADE
XV.--THE BATTLE OF TIZEEN
XVI.--TO TOORKISTAN!
XVII.--MABEL'S PRESENTIMENT
XVIII.--THE GOVERNOR OF BAMEEAN
XIX.--THE ALARM
XX.--TOO LATE!
XXI.--THE PURSUIT
XXII.--THE HOSTAGES
XXIII.--THE DURBAR
XXIV.--THE LAMP OF LOVE
XXV.--CONCLUSION
ONLY AN ENSIGN.
CHAPTER I.
PAR NOBILE FRATRUM!
"So, fellow, I am expected by you to swallow this 'tale of a tub,'
which has been invented or revived solely for the purposes of
monetary extortion!" exclaimed Downie Trevelyan, with the most
intense and crushing hauteur, as he lay back in the same luxurious
easy chair in which his uncle died, and played with his rich gold
eye-glass and watered silk riband.
"It ain't a tale of a tub, my lord; but of the wreck of a
_steamer_--the steamer _Admiral_ of Montreal," replied Sharkley,
meekly and sententiously.
Downie surveyed him through his double eyeglass, thinking that
Sharkley was laughing covertly at him; but no such thought was
hovering in the mind of that personage, who was not much of a laugher
at any time, save when he had successfully outwitted or jockeyed any
one. He seemed very ill at ease, and sat on the extreme edge of a
handsome brass-nailed morocco chair, with his tall shiny hat placed
upon his knees, and his long, bare, dirty-looking fingers played the
while somewhat nervously on the crown thereof, as he glanced
alternately and irresolutely from the speaker to the titular Lady
Lamorna, who was also eyeing him, as a species of natural curiosity,
through her glass, and whose absence he devoutly wished, but feared
to hint that she might withdraw.
She was reclining languidly on a sofa, with her fan, her lace
handkerchief, her agate scent-bottle, and her everlasting half-cut
novel--she was never known to read one quite through--lying beside
her; and she had only relinquished her chief employment of toying
with Bijou, her waspish Maltese spaniel (which nestled in a little
basket of mother-of-pearl, lined with white satin), when an
aiguletted valet had ushered in "Mr. W. S. Sharkley, Solicitor."
"Leave us, Gartha, please," said her husband; "I must speak with this
person alone."
Curiosity was never a prominent feature in the character of Downie's
wife, who was too languid, lazy, or aristocratically indifferent to
care about anything; so, with a proud sweep of her ample dress, she
at once withdrew, followed by the gaze of the relieved Sharkley, who
had a professional dislike for speaking before witnesses.
Mr. Sharkley's present surroundings were not calculated to add to his
personal ease. The library at Rhoscadzhel--the same room in which
poor Constance and Sybil had undergone, in presence of the pitying
General Trecarrel, that humiliating interview, the bitterness of
which the wife had never forgotten even to her dying hour, and in
which Richard had, some time previously, found Downie by their dead
uncle's side, with that suspicious-looking document in his hand, the
history of which the former was too brotherly, too gentlemanly, and
delicate ever to inquire about--the library, we say, was stately,
spacious, and elegant enough, with its shelves of dark oak, filled by
rare works in gay bindings, glittering in the sunlight; with the
white marble busts of the great and learned of other days, looking
stolidly down from the florid cornice that crowned the cases; with
its massive and splendid furniture, gay with bright morocco and gilt
nails; with the stained coats of arms, the koithgath and the seahorse
of the Trevelyans, repeated again and again on the row of oriels that
opened on one side, showing the far extent of field and chace, green
upland and greener woodland, the present owner of which now sat
eyeing him coldly, hostilely, and with that undoubted air and bearing
which mark the high-bred and well-born gentleman--all combined to
make the mean visitor feel very ill at ease.
He mentally contrasted these surroundings with those of his own dingy
office, with its docquets of papers, dirty in aspect as in their
contents; its old battered charter-boxes filled with the misfortunes
of half the adjacent villages--a room, to many a hob-nailed client
and grimy miner, more terrible than the torture chamber of the
Spanish Inquisition--and the comparison roused envy and covetousness
keenly in his heart, together with an emotion of malicious
satisfaction, that he had it in his power perhaps to deprive of all
this wealth, luxury, and rank, the cold, calm, and pale-faced
personage who eyed him from time to time with his false and haughty
smile--an expression that, ere long, passed away, and then his visage
became rigid and stony as that of the Comandatore in Don Giovanni,
for whatever he might feel, it was not a difficult thing for a man
who possessed such habitual habits of self-command as Downie
Trevelyan, to appear at ease when he was far from being so. Yet
Sharkley's mission tried him to the utmost, whatever real pride or
temper he possessed.
"My lord," resumed the solicitor, while the revengeful emotion was in
his heart--"if, indeed, you are entitled to be called 'my lord'----"
"Fellow, what _do_ you mean by this studied insolence?" demanded
Downie, putting his hand on a silver bell, which, however, he did not
ring, an indecision that caused a mocking smile to pass over the face
of Sharkley, while the iris of his eyes dilated and shrunk as usual.
"You are, I know, Sharkley the--aw, well I must say it--the low
practitioner who got up by forgery and otherwise--don't look round,
sir, we have no witnesses--the case of the adventuress Devereaux
against me and my family. So what brings you here now?"
"To tell you what I was beginning to state--the story of the wreck,
by which your brother Richard, Lord Lamorna, perished at sea; and to
prove that the certificate of his marriage with Miss Constance
Devereaux, daughter of a merchant trader in the city of Montreal, has
been discovered and safely preserved, and is here in Cornwall now,
together with his lordship's will."
Sharkley spoke with malicious bitterness, and Downie paused for a
moment ere he said,--
"You have seen them?"
"Yes."
"Well, when I see those documents I shall believe in their
existence--till then, you must hold me excused; but even their
existence does not prove either their legality or authenticity. This
is merely some new scheme to extort money," added Downie, almost
passionately; "but it shall not succeed! That unhappy woman is
dead--she died of paralysis I have heard--the victim, I doubt not, of
her own evil passions. Her son--"
"Your nephew, is with the army in India. Her daughter--"
"Has disappeared," said Downie, almost exultingly, "too probably
taking a leaf out of her charming mamma's book; and the army in
Afghanistan has been destroyed--my son Audley's letters and the
public papers assure me of that."
"Yet your lordship would like to see the documents?"
"Or what may seem to be the documents--certainly; in whose hands are
they--yours?"
"No--in those of one who may be less your lordship's friend--Derrick
Braddon."
"Braddon!" said Downie, growing if possible paler than usual;
"Braddon, my brother's favourite servant, who was in all his secrets,
and was with him in the Cornish regiment?"
"The same, my lord."
"D--n--but this looks ill!" stammered Downie, thrown off his guard.
"For your lordship--very," said Sharkley with a covert smile.
Downie felt that he had forgot himself, so he said,
"Of course, this Braddon will show--perhaps deliver them to me."
"You are the last man on earth to whom he will now either show or
deliver them. Be assured of that."
"For what reason, sir?"
"The account he received from his sister and old Mike Treherne of
your treatment of--well, I suppose we must call her yet--Mrs.
Devereaux."
Downie's steel-gray eyes stared coldly, glassily, and spitefully at
Sharkley. He longed for the power to pulverise, to annihilate him by
a glance. He loathed and hated, yet feared this low-bred legal
reptile, for he felt that he, and all his family, were somehow in his
power. Yet he could not quite abandon his first position of
indignant denial and proud incredulity.
He spread a sheet of foolscap paper before him, and making a broad
margin on the left side thereof, an old office habit that still
adhered to him, like many more that were less harmless, he dipped a
pen in the inkstand, as if to make memoranda, and balancing his gold
glasses on the bridge of his sharp slender nose, said, while looking
keenly over them,
"Attend to _me_, sir--please. When was this pretended discovery
made?"
"Some nine months ago."
"Where--I say, where?"
"At Montreal, in the chapel where this Latour, of whom we have heard
so much, was curate."
"A rascally scheme--a forgery in which you have a share."
"Take care, my lord--I'll file a bill against you."
"You forget, scoundrel, that we are without witnesses."
"Well--there are a pair of us," was the impudent rejoinder; "but what
good might such a scheme ever do an old pensioner like Derrick
Braddon?"
"I do not pretend to fathom--for who can?--the secret motives of
people of that class," said Downie, haughtily.
"Ay--or for that of it, any class," added Sharkley, as he shrugged
his high bony shoulders.
"Relate to me, succinctly and clearly, all that this man has told
you," said Downie Trevelyan, dipping his pen again in the silver
inkstand; and as Sharkley proceeded, he listened to the narrative of
his brother's sufferings and terrible death with impatience, and
without other interest than that it served to prove his non-existence
by a competent witness, who, were it necessary, might bring others of
the crew who were present on the wreck, and had escaped in a boat.
Ere the whole story was ended, Downie was ghastly pale, and tremulous
with the mingled emotions of rage and fear, doubt and mortification.
He felt certain that in all this there must lie something to be laid
further open, or be, if possible, crushed; and on being reassured by
Sharkley that Derrick Braddon would "surrender the documents only
with his life----"
"We must not think of violence, Mr. Sharkley," said he, coldly and
mildly.
"Well, it ain't much in my line, my lord--though I have more than
once got damages when a client struck me."
"We must have recourse to stratagem or bribery. For myself, I
cannot, and shall not, come in personal contact with any man who is
so insolent as to mistrust me, nor is it beseeming I should do so.
To you I shall entrust the task of securing and placing before me
those alleged papers, for legal investigation, at your earliest
convenience. For this, you shall receive the sum of two thousand
pounds; of this," he added, lowering his voice, "I shall give you, in
the first place, a cheque for five hundred."
The eyes of Sharkley flashed, dilated, shrunk, and dilated again,
when he heard the sum mentioned; and rubbing his gorilla-like hands
together, he said, with a chuckle peculiarly his own,--
"Never fear for me, my lord; I'll work a hole for him--this Derrick
Braddon. He spoke insultingly of _the_ profession last night--but
I'll work a hole for him."
With an emotion of angry contempt, which he strove in vain to
conceal, Downie gave him a cheque for the first instalment of his
bribe, taking care that it was a _crossed_ one, payable only at his
own bankers, so that if there was any trickery in this matter, he
might be able to recall or trace it.
Sharkley carefully placed it in the recesses of a greasy-looking
black pocket-book, tied with red tape, and saying something, with a
cringing smile, to the effect that he had "in his time, paid many a
fee to counsel, but never before received one in return," bowed
himself out, with slavish and reiterated promises of fealty,
discretion, and fulfilment of the task in hand; but he quitted the
stately porte-cochère, and long shady avenue of Rhoscadzhel, with
very vague ideas, as yet, of how he was to win the additional fifteen
hundred pounds.
So parted those brothers learned in the law.