TOO LATE!
When Doctor C----, though the anxious and watchful eyes of Rose
Trecarrel were bent upon him, had shaken his head so despondingly,
and thereby gratified the professional spleen of the long-bearded Abu
Malec, he had done so involuntarily, and from sincere medical
misgivings that his aid had been summoned when too late; and with
tears in her eyes, did Rose needlessly assure him that, until she had
seen him enter the sick room, she knew not of his existence, or that
he had been permitted to survive.
To this he replied by taking both her hands kindly within his own,
for he was a warm-hearted Scottish Highlander, and in turn assuring
her that, "until brought to the fort of Shireen Khan by the Hakeem,
he also had been ignorant of the vicinity of her and her companion;
but without proper medicines," he added, "little could be done--now
especially."
Yet she hoped much. He gave her valuable advice, and the Khanum,
too, and promised to return without delay, and with certain
prescriptions, made up from his little store kept in Cabul for the
few wounded soldiers who were hostages there. He rode off, and
Rose's blessings and gratitude went with him. No curiosity as to the
relations of the nurse and patient--peculiar though their
circumstances--prompted a question from the doctor. That Rose should
attend the sick officer seemed only humane and natural. Who other so
suitable was nigh? And to find one more European--a friend
especially--surviving, was source of pleasure enough!
The doctor retired; but, instead of hours, days went by, and he
returned no more; for on the very evening of his visit he was seized
and despatched, with all the rest, under Saleh Mohammed, to
Toorkistan. In another place the doctor was thus enabled to be of
much value to Mabel Trecarrel, and _en route_ towards the desert did
much to alleviate her sufferings, and restore her health; but the
assurance he gave her that he had seen her sister and Denzil
Devereaux too, and that they were safe--perfectly safe--in the
powerful protection of Shireen Khan, did more to this end than all
his prescriptions.
But his advice ultimately availed but little the patient he left
behind, for Denzil grew worse--sank more and more daily; he had but
the superstition and follies or quackery of Abu Malec to interpose
between him and eternity.
Terribly was Rose sensible of all this, as she sat and watched by the
young man's bedside in that desolate room of the fort; for it was
intensely desolate and comfortless, an Afghan noble's ideas of luxury
and splendour being inferior to those possessed by an English groom.
Save the bed on which he lay, two European chairs and a trunk brought
from the plunder of the cantonments, it was as destitute of furniture
as the cell of a prison; and, as if in such a cell, daily the square
outline of the window was seen to fall with the yellow sunshine on
the same part of the wall, and thence pass upward obliquely as the
sun went round, till it faded away at the corner, and then next day
it appeared again, without change.
And there sat the once-gay, bright, and heedless Rose Trecarrel, the
belle of the ball, of the hunting-meet, of the race-course, and the
garrison, with a choking sensation in her throat, and a clamorous
fear in her heart, Denzil's hot, throbbing hand often clasped in one
of hers, while the other strayed caressingly over his once-thick
hair, or what remained of it, for by order of Doctor C----, she had
shorn it short--shorter even than the regimental pattern; and so
would she sit, watching the winning young fellow, who loved her so
well--he, whose figure might have served a sculptor for an Antinous
in its perfection of form, wasting away before her, with a terrible
certainty that God's hand could alone stay the event; and whom she
had but lately seen in all the full roundness of youth and health,
with a face animated by a very different expression from that now
shown by the hollow, wan, and hectic-like mask which lay listlessly
on the pillow--listlessly save when his eyes met hers, and then they
filled or grew moist with tenderness and gratitude, emotions that
were not unmixed by a fear that the pest, if such it was, that preyed
on him might fasten next on her. Then _who_ should watch over Rose,
as she had watched over him, like a sister or a mother?
His head, in consequence of the blow he had received from the
pistol-butt of the fallen Afghan--the wretch he had sought to succour
in the Khyber Pass--was doubtless the seat of some secret injury; for
not unfrequently he placed his hand thereon and sighed heavily, while
a dimness would overspread his sight, and there came over him a
faintness from which Rose, by the use of a fan and some cooling
essences--the Khanum had plenty of them--would seek to revive him,
and again his loving eyes would look into hers.
"Ah, you know me again," she would say, in a low soft voice, and with
a smile of affected cheerfulness; "you are to be spared to me, after
all, Denzil--we shall live and die together."
"Nay--not die together, Rose: don't say die together, darling."
"Why?"
"That would be too early--for you, at least."
"You deem me less prepared than yourself, Denzil. Perhaps I am; yet
what have I to live for now?"
"Do not talk so, Rose."
"God will take pity on us, Denzil, and will make you well and whole
yet," she would reply, and kiss the aching head that rested on her
kind and tender bosom; and with all the young girl's love, something
of the emotion almost of maternal care and protection stole into her
heart, as she watched him thus; he clung to her so, and was so gentle
and so helpless.
"If--if--after this" (he did not say, "after I am gone," lest he
should pain her even by words)--"if, Rose, after all this, you should
ever meet my sister--my dear little Sybil--you will tell her of
me--talk to her about me, talk of all I endured, and be a sister to
her, for my sake--won't you, Rose?"
"I will, Denzil--I shall, please God."
"Oh yes--yes; one who has been so good to me, could not fail to be
good to her, and to love her for her own sake--for mine perhaps."
And then Denzil would look half vacantly, half wildly up to the
ceiling, and marvel hopefully yet apprehensively in his heart where
was now that homeless sister, so loved and petted at Porthellick, and
whom we last saw crouching by the old cottage door near the stone
avenue, on that morning when her mother died, and when the cold grey
mist was rolling from the purple moorland along the green slopes of
the Row Tor and Bron Welli.
Alas! her story Denzil knew not, and might never, never, know it.
But he was beginning now to know and to feel that "the God who was
but a dim and awful abstraction before" seemed very close and nigh.
No fear was in his heart, however: he was very calm and courageous,
save when he thought of Rose's future, and how lonely and lost she
should be when he was gone. This reflection alone brought tears from
him; it wrung his heart, and made him the more keenly desire to live.
No Bible or Book of Common Prayer had Rose wherewith to console
either the sufferer or herself; all such had gone at the plunder of
the cantonments and the baggage, and had likely figured as cartridge
paper at Jugdulluck and Tizeen; but no printed or hackneyed formulæ
could equal in depth or earnestness the silent yet heartfelt prayers
she put up for Denzil and herself.
"My poor Denzil--poor boy! I never deserved that you should love me
so much: I have thought so a thousand times!" Rose would whisper
fervently, and, heedless of any danger from fever, and perhaps
courting it, place his brow caressingly in her neck, and kiss his
temples, as if he were a child, telling him to "take courage, and
have no fear."
"Fear! why should I fear death, Rose?" he would respond, speaking
quickly, yet with difficulty--speaking thus perhaps to accustom
himself to the topic, or to accustom her, we know not which; "why
should I fear death, since I know not what it is? Why fear that
which no human being can avert or avoid, and which so many better,
braver, and nobler than I have so lately proved and tested in yonder
Passes?--aye, Rose, my mother too, at home--my father on the
sea--Sybil perhaps--all!"
Then his utterance became incoherent, his voice broken, and Rose felt
as if her heart were broken too; for when he spoke thus, there spread
over his young face a wondrous brightness, a great calm; and the girl
held her breath, in fear, if not awe, for she read there an
expression of peace that denoted the end was near.
All was very still in the great square Afghan fort and in the Khan's
garden without.
The summer sun shone brightly, and the birds, but chiefly the
melodious pagoda-thrush--the king of the Indian feathered
choristers--was there; and the flowers, the wondrous roses of Cabul,
were exhaling their sweetest perfume. There the world, nature at
least, looked gay and bright and beautiful; but here, a young life,
that no human skill, prayer, or affection could detain, was ebbing
away so surely as the sea ebbs from its shore, but not like the sea
to return.
If Denzil died, what had she to live for? So thought the heedless
belle, the half coquette, the whole flirt, of a few months past; but
such were "the uses" or the results of adversity. Was not the end of
all things nigh? Without Denzil Devereaux and his love, so tender,
passionate, and true, what would the world be? and her world, of
late, had been so small and sad! This love had been all in all to
her; and now all seemed nearly over, and nothing could be left to her
but forlorn exile and the gloom of despair.
As there is in memory "a species of mental long-sightedness, which,
though blind to the object close beside you, can reach the blue
mountains and the starry skies which lie full many a league away," so
it was with Denzil; and now far from that bare and desolate vaulted
room in the Afghan fort, from the mountains of black rock that
overshadowed it, and all their harassing associations, even from the
presence of the bright-haired and pale-faced girl who so lovingly
watched and soothed his pillow, the mind of the young officer flashed
back, as if touched by an electric wire, to his once-happy home.
Again his manly father's smile approved of some task or feat of skill
performed by bridle, gun, or rod; again his mother's dark eyes seemed
to look softly into his; the willowed valley (that opened between
steep and ruin-crowned cliffs towards the billowy Cornish sea), the
little world of all his childhood's cares and joys, was with him now,
and with that world he was mingling over again in fancy, though death
and distress had been there as elsewhere; the hearth was desolate, or
strangers sat around it; their household gods were scattered, and
home was home no longer, save in the heart, the memory, of the dying
exile.
And so, for a time, his thoughts were far away even from Rose and the
present scene. Far from the images that were full of the warlike and
perilous present, he was revelling in the past, and talked fluently,
confidently, and smilingly with the absent, the lost, and the dead.
Often he said--
"Lift my head, dearest mother; place your kind arm round my neck and
kiss me once again."
And Rose obeyed him, and he seemed to smile upward into her face; and
yet he knew her not, or saw another there.
Then he talked deliriously of his father's rights, of his mother's
wrongs, and of his cousin, Audley Trevelyan, till his voice sank into
whispers and anon ceased.
This was what Shakspeare describes as the
"Vanity of sickness! fierce extremes,
In their continuance, will not feel themselves.
Death having preyed upon the outward parts,
Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now
Against the mind, which he pricks and wounds
With many legions of strange fantasies,
Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,
Confound themselves."
He fell asleep; and, without prolonging our description further,
suffice it that poor Denzil never woke again, but passed peacefully
away...
Rose sat for a time in a stupor, like one in a dream. Summoned by
her first wild cry, the Khanum was by her side now.
Denzil, so long her care, her soul, her all, lay there, it would
seem, as usual--lay there as she had seen him for many days; yet why
was it that his presence, and that rigid angularity and stillness of
outline, so appalled her now?
As the crisis so evidently had drawn near, strongly and wildly in the
girl's heart came the crave for medical, for religious, for any
Christian aid or advice; but there none could be had, any more than
if she had stood by the savage shores of the Albert Nyanza; and now
the dread crisis was past!
So, from time to time the pale girl found herself gazing on the paler
face of the dead--of him who had so loved her--gazing with that
mingled emotion of incredulity, wonder, and terror, awe and sorrow,
which passeth all experience or description.
There was no change in the air; there was no change in the light: one
was still and calm, and laden with perfume; the other as bright and
clear as ever: and the blaze of yellow sunshine poured into the room
precisely as it did an hour ago; but now it fell on the face of the
dead!
And the clear voice of the pagoda-thrush sang on; but how
monotonously now!
Rose was stunned, and sat crouching on the floor, with her face
covered by her hands, her head between her knees, and her bright
dishevelled hair falling forward in silky volume well nigh to her
feet. Ignorant of what to say, or how to soothe grief so passionate,
the Khanum, unveiled, hung over her in kindness of heart, but with
one prevailing idea--that the death of an idolater must be very
terrible; that already the fiends must be contesting for the
possession of his soul; that the prescribed portion of the Koran had
not been read to him; and even if it had been, what would it avail
now, till that day when the solid mountains and the soft white clouds
should be rolled away together by the blast of the trumpet of Azrael?
So his last thoughts had been of his dead mother, as Rose remembered,
and not of her. Her father was dead; Mabel was gone to Toorkistan,
too surely beyond ransom or redemption: oh, why was _she_ left to
live?
If the _sense of exile_ is so strong in the heart of the
Anglo-Indian, even amid all the luxuries and splendours of Calcutta,
the city of palaces--amid the gaieties and frivolities of
Chowringhee,--what must that sense have been to the heart of this
lonely English girl, far away beyond Peshawur, the gate of Western
India, beyond the Indus, fifteen hundred English miles, as the crow
flies, "up-country," from the mouth of the Hooghley and the shore of
Bengal--where the railway whistle will long be unheard, and where
Murray, Cook, and Bradshaw may never yet be known!
Notwithstanding all that Rose had undergone of late, and all that she
had schooled herself to anticipate as but too probable, she was still
unable fully to realise the actual extent of the misfortunes that
threatened her. Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured
elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's
door, came over Rose's spirit now. Henceforward, she felt that life
must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea
or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so
long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost
unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream,
hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the
pagoda-thrush.
Suddenly another sound seemed to mingle with the notes of the birds;
it came on the air from a great distance. She started and looked
wildly up--her once-clear hazel eyes all bloodshot and tearless now.
What was it? what _is_ it? for the sound was there, and she seemed to
hear it still, and the Khanum heard it too!
Nearer it came, and nearer.
It was the sound of drums--drums beaten in regular marching cadence,
coming on the wind of evening down from the rocky pass in the hills
of Siah Sung.
Oh, there could be no mistake in the measure--British troops were
coming on; and how welcome once would that sound have been to the
young soldier who lay on his pallet there, and whose ear could hear
the English drum no more!
She started to the window, and looked forth to the black mountains,
which, though distant from it, towered high above the Kuzzilbashes'
fort. The dark Pass lay there, its shadows seeming blue rather than
any other tint, as the receding rays of the setting sun left it
behind; but her eyes were dim with weeping and with watching now, so
Rose, with all her pulseless eagerness, failed to see the serried
bayonets, the shot-riven colours tossing in the breeze, or the moving
ranks in scarlet, that showed where the victorious brigades of
Pollock, Sale, and Nott were once more defiling down into the plain
that led to humbled Cabul.
Welcome though their sound, they had come, alas, _too late_!
The drums were still ringing in her ears; and this familiar sound,
like the voices of old friends, caused her now to weep plentifully.
Once again she turned to the bed where Denzil lay so pale and still,
his sharpened features acutely defined in the last light of the sun;
and she felt in her heart as she pressed her interlaced hands on her
lips, seeking to crush down emotion--
"So the dream it is fled, and the day it is done,
And my lips still murmur the name of one
Who will never come back to me!"