IN THE FORTIFIED CAMP.
The place of Sir William Macnaghten as Envoy of the Queen was
supplied by Major Pottinger, C.B., who, together with Brigadier
Shelton, renewed negotiations with Ackbar Khan, and strove to effect
a peaceful retreat of our troops from Cabul. After the recent
assassinations and many other outrages,--after the reoccupation by
the natives of the eleven square Afghan forts that stood around the
cantonments, thus almost entirely enclosing and secluding our slender
European force,--after all hope of Sir Robert Sale's gallant brigade
returning from Jellalabad to their aid, and other hope of succour
from our troops in Candahar passed away, matters began to look gloomy
indeed; but none could foresee, though many feared, the end.
No attempt was made by General Elphinstone, who, though once a
gallant officer, was aged and ailing now, to avenge the deaths of
Macnaghten, Trevor, Burnes, and others; to uphold the Shah, then all
but besieged in his citadel by rebels under Ackbar; or to assert the
dignity of Britain in that remote quarter of the world. Many
officers murmured and remonstrated on the necessity for immediate
action; but such is the force of discipline and of military
etiquette, that not one had the moral courage to assume the serious
responsibility of appealing to the troops and usurping the command.
Councils of war were held; but it is well known that such councils
seldom urge fighting; and all these ended in mere vacillation,
indecision, and inanity.
The greatest force of the insurgent Afghans was in Mahommed Khan's
fort, which stood nine hundred yards distant from the cantonment
guns; but these, being only nine-pounders, were useless for breaching
purposes; and as this fort commands the road that leads to the city
and the Bala Hissar, supplies from that quarter were completely cut
off; and so were they from every other point save the village of
Beymaru, where they were procured at vast cost; and when that source
failed--our troops, who with their camp-followers, the necessity and
the curse of every Indo-British army, made up six and twenty thousand
souls penned within the cantonments--the threat of Ackbar, that our
horses would yet gnaw each other's tails and the tent-pegs, would
become terribly true, unless a successful retreat through the passes
were achieved; but for that movement, who now could trust to the
promises, the honour, or the humanity of the hostile and exulting
Afghans?
Though formed into innumerable petty septs, like the clans of the
Scottish Highlands, these people are attached more to the community
than the chief of it; and though divided by many bitter quarrels
among themselves, they were united enough in their hatred of all
Kaffirs and Feringhees, and in the hope of getting all their women
and property as spoil. Like a Scottish clan of old, an Afghan tribe
never refuses the rights of hospitality to a native suppliant. The
fugitive who flies from his clan, even though stained with blood, is
protected by the tribe upon whose mercy he casts himself, and war to
the death would ensue rather than surrender him. All these little
republics were now amalgamated for two purposes--the destruction of
Shah Sujah and his family, and the expulsion or destruction of our
little army that had enthroned him.
No one ever ventured beyond the secure walls of the cantonment now,
and every other day shots were exchanged between the sentinels and
scouting-parties of Afghan horsemen who rode between the forts,
brandishing their sabres or matchlocks in angry bravado; and now and
then the artillery tried a little practice with their nine-pounders
on Mahommed Khan's fort. Nor were the Shah's Gholandazees, under his
Topshee Bashee, or General of the Ordnance, in the Bala Hissar quite
idle; thus almost nightly there floated above the city a red light,
that brought forth tower and dome in dark relief, as the gleam of
musketry and cannon fell on the atmosphere; the smoke of gunpowder at
night is always somewhat of a red tint.
The ladies had got over much of their squeamishness about the
discharge of firearms. Poor things, they were learning fast to look,
almost without shrinking, on the fall of friend and foe, nor to wink
at the flash of a musket, even those who had once shared the old
dame's idea with regard to such implements, that, "whether loaded or
unloaded, they were apt to go off."
The music of the bands was heard no more, promenades, rides, and
drives were at an end now, and General Trecarrel's handsome
London-made carriage, with its crimson-lined tiger-skin, the spoil of
a splendid animal potted by Waller in the Siah Sung, had become, by
the simple law of appropriation, the property of Ameen Oollah Khan
for the use of his four wives.
Denzil and Audley Trevelyan did not meet much on duty, as the latter
was on the Staff, had little to do with parades, and nothing whatever
with guards, pickets, or working parties. Puzzled by the Lamorna
peerage story (as Sybil called it), a story so strange and
unsupported by proper evidence, Denzil deemed that as yet perfect
silence in the matter was his proper plan; thus he was coolly
courteous to Audley, whose advances, made in consequence of the
secret interest felt in Sybil, he rather repelled.
Audley was sometimes in the mess-bungalow of the battalion to which
the company of Denzil was attached; but his staff duties kept him
much about the quarters of General Trecarrel, and consequently more
in the society of Rose than Denzil quite relished. Since the day of
the conference he had never once visited her, and thus he felt with
intense bitterness that he had been quietly supplanted there by the
son of one who had supplanted him at home in rank and title, and
hence more than ever did he loathe the obligation--the debt of
gratitude he owed to Audley for the service he had done to Sybil; and
under all the circumstances in which he was placed, he felt the sense
of it most oppressive.
"And where is Sybil now?" thought Denzil, despondingly; "in what
country, and with whom?"
Who was the lady of rank she had referred to? No more letters could
reach Cabul now, and months must elapse ere he heard from her again
or learned her fate.
No confidences passed between him and Audley; yet the latter, had he
known of it, would have risked much to have perused her last epistle,
with the single mention of his own name therein, and the current of
thoughts it seemed to open up--thoughts to which he alone had the key.
Denzil had a longing desire to do something brilliant, that he might
shine in the estimation of Rose Trecarrel. With the combined vanity
and diffidence natural to a young man, he sometimes flattered himself
that his handsome uniform might regain him favour in her eyes, if no
other merit, mental or physical, did so; but in that he reckoned
without his host, for Rose was too much accustomed to see regimentals
about her--the scarlet of the Queen's troops, the silver grey of the
Indian cavalry, the blue and gold of the artillery, and the quaint,
half-oriental splendour of the irregular horse. As a flirt she
preferred the scarlet, and, perhaps, as one with an eye to a good
marriage, the sombre black swallow-tail of the C.S.
With all her constitutional coquetry, she was not without a certain
emotion, of compunction at times for the part she had played with
Denzil. Of all the admirers she possessed, he had seemed the most
earnest, the most bewildered by her beauty, and the most true; but
then, as she said to Mabel, "he was so young, and, poor fellow, only
a subaltern, so what did it matter in the long run, a little trifling
with him, when it amused her, and Cabul had been so dull."
"Going to India to be married," said Mabel, "of course means going
there to be married well. Trevelyan is only a subaltern, too."
"But the son and heir of Lord Lamorna; so one may cast one's hawks at
him."
"And Polwhele is only a subaltern."
"But with a place that spreads from Cornwall into Devonshire. I
shall not make a fool of myself, Mab--yet I shall marry for love, and
love only, if I marry at all," said Rose, as her white fingers
wreathed up the shining ripples of her hair before retiring for the
night.
"Going out" was then one of the matrimonial institutions of
Anglo-Indian society; but the P. and O. liners, with the Overland
Route, have knocked that institution on the head, or nearly so.
"I told you how it would be, old fellow," said Polwhele to Denzil,
who was sad and sombre; "she affects Trevelyan now, and we are all at
a discount now, even the cavalry men."
"But Trevelyan has come back to India a lord's son, and is on papa's
staff. A deuced fine thing it must be to wake up some morning and
find oneself famous in that fashion," said Burgoyne of the 37th,
ignorant of how galling his remarks were to Denzil.
And so several days of constant excitement were passed in the
cantonments, yet no definite plan as to the future was formed,
whether to risk a retreat through Khyber Pass, or throw the whole
force into the Bala Hissar, and defend it to the last gasp, as more
than once General Trecarrel had urged at the council of war, but
urged in vain.