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.