CHRISTMAS AT CABUL.
The state of suspense endured by our whole force in Cabul, especially
those men who had wives and families, was fully shared by Waller,
whose chief anxiety was Mabel Trecarrel; yet it could not repress his
great flow of animal spirits, and thus his bungalow was always the
resort of a few happy heedless fellows, who had no particular care
but to kill time when not killing the Afghans, a resource that was
yet to come.
Somehow the world reproduces itself everywhere, and though provisions
were scant and short, and shot and shell were in plenty and to spare,
in the crowded cantonments of Cabul, there were yet space and leisure
for fun and flirtation--even scandal and gossip.
It was Christmas-time there too, but, save the blasts of snow that
came from the hills of Kohistan, how unlike our Christmas-time at
home!
There was no Christmas cheer, to begin with: plum-pudding and roast
goose were thought of and remembered, certainly; but no such things
were to be found in that fortified camp between the Black Rocks and
the Hills of Beymaru; neither were there dark green holly with
scarlet berries and mistletoe to dance under, nor Christmas bells to
usher in the morn, for even our humble mission-house had been fired
by the Afghans; no Christmas gifts, or boxes, or trees full of
shining toys to make happy the hearts of those little ones whose
parents looked forward with intense dread to the future, and thought
regretfully of Christmas in happy England--the merry meetings of
parents and home-returning boys. Christmas, we say, was remembered
with all its happy and hearty associations of yule, festivity, and
wassail, the pledge old as the days when Hengist's Saxon daughter
drank _Waes Hael_ to Vortigern; but now, on the anniversary of that
day when the star shone over Bethlehem, and a Babe was born to die
for all mankind, our half-starved troops were giving shot and shell,
grape and canister, with right good will, and the sombre night closed
down upon red flames in the towering city, and its silence was
broken, not by music, or carols, or chimes, but the voice of many a
jackal and hyæna as they preyed on the corpses that lay unburied by
the Cabul river.
Waller's bungalow had several visitors on the following evening;
among others, Jack Polwhele and Denzil, who had returned from the
village of Beymaru, where they had partly purchased and partly
looted, and most successfully brought into camp at the point of the
bayonet, a vast quantity of ground wheat and dhal or split peas, from
the stores of a bunneah or corn-contractor. With these they also
brought in several head of cattle for the use of the troops.
"Supplies but for which," as Waller said, "the morrow might have
found us starving, or having only the resort of the Polar bears, who,
in time of scarcity, find a pleasure in licking their paws. You'll
come to my bungalow," he added, as the foraging party came in double
quick through the Kohistan gate. "Trevelyan's coming--he and
Polwhele; Trevelyan is one of ours now, so we four Cornishmen shall
make a night of it. I have a round of beef that is getting small by
degrees and beautifully less, a gallant jar of Cabul wine that I
looted in the house of a kussilbash, and no end of cheroots. Deuce!
I'll take no excuse," said Waller, on seeing how flushed and sombre
Denzil became on hearing Audley's name.
"I shall take care to bring him, Waller," said Polwhele, as he went
off to his quarters, full of excitement with his recent success, and
singing the refrain of the old song,--
"And will Trelawney die?
And will Trelawney die?
Then thirty thousand Cornishmen
Shall know the reason why?"
"I wish we had but the third of those thirty thousand here to help us
out of this beastly place where it has pleased her Majesty we should
set up our tent-poles," said Waller. "I expect Burgoyne also
to-night, and he will be sure to bring us the last news from the
city, as he has accompanied Brigadier Shelton to another conference
with those children of the prophet."
"Another conference?" said Denzil.
"Yes, by Jove! risky and plucky, is it not?"
"Awfully so, after what has happened to poor Burnes, Macnaghten, and
the rest."
"But needs must, for we cannot choose now."
For on this evening fresh and, as the event proved, nearly final
negotiations had been opened between the General and Ackbar Khan, to
whom he had sent Brigadier Shelton, Major Pottinger, and Burgoyne.
Thus the ladies in camp and all the white women, whose persons had
been demanded as _hostages_, were in no ordinary state of anxiety to
learn the result.
Polwhele and Denzil were betimes in Waller's quarters, where two
officers of the 37th and two of the 54th had dropped in. Trevelyan
had not arrived, and Denzil in fancy saw him hanging over the chair
of Rose, as he had seen him last. He was nervously jealous, somewhat
afraid of his own temper, and hoped the night should pass without an
unseemly quarrel. He was in wretched spirits, for Sybil's letter and
her future weighed upon his mind. This air of gloom was unheeded by
his companions. What was the demise, so far away, too, of one whose
face they never saw, to them, who were daily and hourly front to
front with death himself? Yet he strove to join in their
conversation, while cigars were lit and Waller's jar of wine passed
briskly to and fro, and the cold round, with flour chupatties, was in
great request.
"As things go now," said the host, who lounged on a couple of
bullock-trunks, "we are thankful to get even the leg of a wild
sheep--a regular Persian doomba, with a tail a foot broad, and can
only think regretfully of choice entrées, of pâtés de foie gras from
beautiful Strasburg, of boned larks and truffled turkeys of
Paris--croquettes, côtelettes, and kidneys stewed in Madeira, caviare
from the Don, and ortolans from Lombardy, and a thousand other nice
little things we shall never see, till the cold white cliffs of the
South Foreland are rising on our lee bow. Oh! soul of Lucullus and
of the noble science of gastronomy!"
"Waller, you are irrepressible," said Polwhele. "Devereaux, how is
the General? have you heard?"
"Trecarrel?" asked Denzil, colouring.
"No. You think, perhaps, there is no other General in the world. I
mean poor Elphinstone."
"The old man is going fast."
"And the evening of his life is full of dark clouds, without a single
star," added Waller.
"You grow quite poetic, Bob."
"Then it is amid the veriest prose of life."
"I had a narrow escape from a juzail ball," said Denzil, rather
pensively. "It passed through my forage-cap, and I have no wish to
be killed as a subaltern."
"A bullet won't feel a bit the more pleasant if it hits you as a
captain," said a 37th man, laughing.
Would Rose regret him? had been Denzil's secret thought; and now amid
the gay clatter of tongues around him, the speculations as to the
treaty on the tapis, the chances of a peaceful retreat, the pros and
cons of why Sale did not cut his way back from Jellalabad, and some
of that banter about women which seems inseparable from the
conversation of young men--more than all, of military men--he was
startled by some of the things that were said of Rose Trecarrel, and
which, though bitter to hear, served to divert his grief. His
self-esteem--his _amour propre_ had been severely wounded, and he had
to conceal these emotions from Waller and Polwhele; yet they
suspected that "something was up," by his ceasing to go near the
Trecarrels, at whose villa near the Residency he had been almost a
daily visitor.
Could the young man have foreseen it, in his bitterness he might have
rejoiced that the Afghan sabre was ere long to cut the Gordian knot
of all his difficulties.
Jack Polwhele, who had been eyeing him silently with a comical
twinkle in his black eyes, said, in a low voice--
"So, Devereaux, the mistress of your destiny has proved slippery
after all! Laugh at the whole affair, and you'll soon forget all
about it. Were I in your place, she might--as the song has it--go to
Hong Kong for me."
Denzil knit his brow and reddened with irritation; but, tipping the
ashes of his cigar and watching the smoke thereof as it ascended to
the straw-roof of the bungalow, Jack resumed, in a voice so low as to
be unheard by Waller--
"With a vast amount of _espièglerie_, Rose, I must admit, has many
physical attractions; and, Denzil, you were her pet flirtation for
the nonce--every fellow saw that--nothing more. It is a fine thing
to talk to a handsome girl about 'elective affinities and the union
of souls,' that 'marriages are made in heaven, and not in the
money-market' or the shop of some sharping lawyer; but it often grows
perilous work for a griff, with a girl like Rose, who cannot care
very much for any one."
Denzil still sat smoking in silence, and felt somewhat perplexed by
the extreme candour of his brother-officer. In short, he knew not
quite how to take it.
"Could she only have been flirting with me?" thought he, and we fear
Rose would have answered in the affirmative. "No two persons, I have
heard, have exactly the same or correct idea of what flirting is (he
had not): talking a deal to a pretty girl, or laughing much with her,
are called so; but surely there may be deeper flirting, at times, in
silence. Oh! we were not flirting: I loved her--I love her yet--and
thought she loved me, when glance met glance, and eye answered to eye
the unasked question!"
"I know her style perfectly," resumed Polwhele, oddly enough
proceeding to crush the unuttered thought; "so does Burgoyne; so do
Grahame and Ravelstoke, of the 37th, and ever so many more. She
asked you tenderly about animal magnetism--showed you the whiteness
of her ungloved hand, and asked you, no doubt, about the trimming of
her dress; but you were to be friends--the dearest friends only, and
all that sort of thing."
Poor Denzil was petrified; but these words were partly effecting a
cure, and he strove to laugh.
"Don't quiz me, Jack," said he; "but, upon my soul, I could be guilty
of any folly for that girl--yet it would be madness, you know. What
would the General say, and the mess think and say, too?"
"I don't precisely catch your meaning,--folly and madness are pretty
synonymous in a matrimonial sense; but what did you think of
committing yourself to? a proposal--eh?"
Denzil did not reply; he could only sigh and smoke viciously.
"Take your wine, old fellow, and don't bother about it," said Waller,
who had just begun to listen. "I nearly went mad for love myself in
my first red coat; but the Colonel saved me by detachment duty; and
when last I saw my inamorata, after seven years of matrimony, her
figure quite spoiled for waltzing, and a squad of little squalling
infantry about her, I laughed at my escape."
Denzil remembered the bantering remarks of the cavalry officer at the
band-stand; and their estimate of Rose seemed to tally unpleasantly
with that of Polwhele.
"Fool that I have been!--yet could I help it?" he thought. "Could I
help doing so again--though she is one that makes of love a jest and
a scoff?"
He felt that she had lured him into a passionate declaration merely
to cast him off wantonly and laugh at him, perhaps, with Audley
Trevelyan. She might not care for him, and yet dislike to see him,
care for _another_. Hence rage prompted him one moment to try and
fall in love with some other girl (there was not much choice in the
cantonment, certainly), and the next he felt cynically disposed to
hate her and all womankind. Anon that emotion would pass away, and
he felt himself still her very slave, who would plead for a word, a
glance, or smile.
To abstain from visiting as before would soon excite remark; and yet
to resume his visits would be to see, with bitterness and
humiliation, another too palpably preferred, where he had deemed
himself the chosen favourite.
"And is it actually true that Waller is booked at last?" said
Polwhele.
"Deuce! how can I tell?" replied Denzil, curtly, blowing away a ring
of smoke.
"It may be all gossip--for he is one whom hitherto the female world
have found impossible to entrap; but here comes Trevelyan," he added,
as the Hindoo servant placed lighted wax candles on the table, and
Audley entered, looking, as Denzil thought, provokingly handsome,
cool, self-possessed, and fashionable in bearing.
The first questions asked were, whether any tidings had come from the
city, for after late events, the risk of death and decapitation run
by those who ventured to confer with Ackbar and the insurgent Khans
was indeed a painful and terrible one. Neither Brigadier Shelton,
Major Pottinger, nor Burgoyne had returned as yet; so the
conversation speedily fell back into its channel of light-heartedness.
"So, Trevelyan," said Waller, quite forgetting the presence of
Denzil, and blundering on a most unlucky topic, "I heard that you
have been flirting furiously all day with Rose Trecarrel; but then,
as the aide-de-camp, you are quite a friend of the family."
"Oh! ours is an old affair," replied Audley, laughing heartily, as he
selected a cheroot; "like the 'Belle of the Ball,'" he added,
profoundly ignorant of Denzil's regard for her, "Miss Rose
'Has smiled on many, just for fun--
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the FIRST, the ONLY one,
Her heart had thought of for a minute;
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase that was divinely moulded;
She wrote a charming hand, and oh!
How sweetly all her notes were folded!'
We were old friends at home in Cornwall; besides, she is so lady-like
and pretty--almost beautiful."
"That I grant you," said Polwhele, who saw--that which Denzil did
not--that Audley's tone and manner had nothing of the lover in them;
"but Rose has always more strings than one to her bow."
"Or, more beaux than one to her string," said Waller, laughing.
"Never puts all her money on one horse anyway. Bagging a sub. is to
her like snipe-shooting in an Irish bog; poor sport after all; but a
power sight better than none," said Ravelstoke, of the 37th Native
Infantry, at whose freedom of speech Waller frowned.
And this was the consolation to which Denzil was treated.
How little he knew that at that very time, Audley Trevelyan, in his
heart, was contrasting Sybil's pure and loving prattle, her genuine
enthusiasm in poetry, art, and all that was beautiful in nature, with
the occasional rantipole of this garrison belle.
"What is that?" said Waller, suddenly, as a drum was beaten hurriedly
outside.
"The guard of ours, at the Kohistan gate, getting under arms,"
replied Ravelstoke; "Brigadier Shelton has come with tidings, and his
head on his shoulders--we shall soon know our fate now!"
The sound of hoofs trotting fast through the Cantonments was heard,
as the gate was closed and secured; and in a minute or less,
Burgoyne, of the 37th, came in with his sword under his arm, and a
brace of loaded pistols in his waistbelt.
He looked pale, excited, and weary indeed!
"Now, Burgoyne, for your news?" said Waller; "but take a pull at that
wine-jar first."
Burgoyne did so, with an air of thirst and lassitude, though the
atmosphere was intensely cold.
"Is the Brigadier safe?" said Polwhele.
"Yes."
"And Pottinger, too?"
"Yes; we have come back unharmed."
"And no attempt was made to assassinate or detain you?"
"None; but what think you is the proposal now--nearly the same as
before--for we are checkmated here, and these insurgent scoundrels
know it. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Conolly, and some other Europeans are
still alive in their hands, and kept as hostages. These they offer
to exchange, if the General will leave in their place all our married
officers and their families; the entire treasure in the military
chest; all our cannon, except six; and that we depart at once; our
rear to be covered by four hundred armed Kohistanees, who, if
handsomely paid, will march with us so far as Jellalabad, where,
according to the news brought by a cossid, Sir Robert Sale is so
closely besieged that those among us who survive to reach the plains,
will have to cut their way in with the cold steel."
Mingled expressions of rage and indignation were uttered by all save
Waller, who looked singularly pale and calm.
"And what was the reply to these degrading proposals?" he asked,
while quietly selecting and lighting a cigar.
"It was answered that a British General might, if he chose, leave or
give certain officers as hostages, but that he had no power over
their wives and families. That without the full consent of husbands
and parents, the ladies and children would not be left behind."
"I should think not--left, d--n it, to certain destruction!"
exclaimed Polwhele, his dark eyes flashing fire. Burgoyne resumed:
"It was then that Ackbar said to us, mockingly, 'If you save your
lives, what do the lives or honour, as you call it, of your wives or
sisters matter? They are only women, and, as women, are spoil, like
your horses and camels, yaboos, shawls, pipes, and gunpowder. Allah!
you Kaffirs are strange dogs.' And there, for to-night, the matter
rests. News came, however, that the Queen's 16th Lancers, the 9th,
and 31st Regiments have come up country, as far as Peshawur; but that
is fully two hundred miles distant; the defiles are full of snow, and
they cannot be here in time either to assist or save us."
These details, which are matters of history, now filled all in that
isolated camp with extreme dismay. Every hour provisions were
growing more scarce; every hour the snow was falling more heavily,
and thus the tremendous mountain gorges through which the route lies
to Jellalabad or Peshawur, were hourly becoming more and more
impassable.
To move or quit the fortified Cantonments without the solemn promise
of safe conduct from the vast hordes in arms, was perilous in the
extreme. To remain was but to die by slow starvation or the sword.
So the question asked by the Khan of Khelat, was likely to have a
terrible answer.
"Major Thain," writes Lady Sale, "was now sent round to ask all the
married officers if they would consent to their wives staying,
offering those who did so a salary of 2000 rupees a month!
Lieutenant Eyre said, that if it was to be productive of good, he
would stay with his wife and child. The others all refused to risk
the safety of their families. Captain Anderson said that he would
rather put a pistol to his wife's head and shoot her; and Sturt
declared that his wife and mother should only be taken from him at
the point of the bayonet; for himself, he was ready to perform any
duty imposed upon him."*
* "Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan." Major Thain belonged to
H.M. 21st Foot, but was then on the Staff.
Sturdy old General Trecarrel swore that he would take his Company of
the Cornish Light Infantry, put Mabel and Rose in the centre, and
force a way through the Passes at all hazards, rather than leave them
to a fate which none could foresee. At the worst, they could all die
there together, and there could be little doubt of the event if we
marched without terms, for tidings came from Taj Mahommed, the
Wuzeer, that Aziz Khan, with 10,000 Kohistanees, had beset the road
at Tezeen; and that the warriors of the Ghilzie tribe (which numbers
600,000 souls) were in possession of all the heights overlooking it.
Tears and distress were visible on all hands now; sickness and
suffering increased rapidly, while every night the bugles sounded to
arms, and cannon and musketry were discharged at the armed bands of
horse and foot which menaced the front and rear gates, or sought
plunder in the now abandoned Residency, and the villas previously
occupied by General Trecarrel, Captain Trevor, and others.
Pale women clasped their children to their breasts, and men their
wives, as if the parting hour of all was already come. The eyes of
the soldiers filled and flashed with honest pity and manly
indignation at the idea of yielding up civilized women, tender
English ladies and helpless little children, to such barbarians as
these; while the sick and wounded in hospital were full of horror and
dismay at their own helplessness.