"Circumstances—title!—explain, in Heaven's name, Sybil."
She then told him that his father had died suddenly—died, as the Morning Post announced, in the same library at Rhoscadzhel, and somewhat in the same manner, as his late uncle, when he was in the act of composing a long and elaborate paper legally reviewing the merits of the Afghan war; another grave had been opened and closed in the family tomb; another escutcheon hung on the porte-cochère of the princely old manor-house; and that he, Audley Trevelyan, was now Lord Lamorna, as the Governor-General would doubtless announce to him on the morrow.
And in his lonely tomb beside the Kuzzilbash fort lay one who could never dispute the family honours with him, and whose sorrows and repinings were past for evermore.
Audley was overwhelmed for a few minutes by this unexpected intelligence. There had been no great love, no strong tie, no fine yet unseen ligament, between father and son; yet the dead man was his father, and he knew had ever been proud of him. He was shocked, but not deeply grieved; and "some natural tears he shed:" no more.
His father, however, prudential and unscrupulous in his children's interests, had always been cold, prosaic, undemonstrative, and unloveable to them and to all. Hence he passed away, having so little individuality that the blank made by his absence left no craving, and required no filling up; but, nevertheless, for a time, his cold, pale eyes and equally cold, glittering spectacle-glasses came vividly back to his son's memory.
Audley was, however, to say the least of it, so much disconcerted by the news Sybil had given him, that he lacked sufficient energy to retain her when she was swept from his side by the officer of the Irregulars, on a theatrical flourish of the vice-regal trumpets announcing that the supper-rooms were open.
The course of balls and other entertainments that followed the durbar and the news from Cabul were attended by neither Sybil nor Audley, now recognised and congratulated by all the European society at Simla as Lord Lamorna, and by the Viceroy, who offered him all the leave he might require to settle his affairs at home. Sybil had her brother's recent death to plead; and she looked forward with intense interest to seeing Waller, and to the returning army, though Denzil was no longer in its ranks.
They heard at Simla, how General Pollock had dismounted or destroyed every cannon in the Balla Hissar and in the city, and given to the flames the Mosque of the Feringhees, an edifice built by the vanity of Ackbar to consecrate and commemorate the sanguinary destruction of Elphinstone's army; the great bazaar also, once the emporium of the Eastern world; and how all the castles and forts of the khans and chiefs had likewise been given to the flames; how the sky was reddened for days and nights, and that the fiery gleam of the burning city was still visible on the close of the fourth day, when our rear guard was defiling through the mountains of Bhootkak on their homeward route to the Sutledge. Thus was the massacre of Khoord Cabul finally avenged; but, as Sybil thought in her heart, "would it restore the dead!"
Their graves, unmarked and unconsecrated, and the ruined city alone remained to tell of the strife that had been. A touching address, signed by all the ladies whom his energy and activity had done so much to rescue, was delivered to Sir Richmond Shakespere; and with Taj Mohammed Khan, the discarded Wuzeer of Cabul, a beggared fugitive and exile, as the sole friend who accompanied them, our troops came down on their homeward way, laden with spoil, and among it the great gates of Somnath, an object of adoration to the Hindoos; and thus ended the fatal war in Afghanistan.
Audley had been duly informed by letters, that his brother-officer, Waller, and the Trecarrels were also coming down country, and should ere long be at Ferozpore or Simla; and Sybil, who had now heard all the story of Rose and Denzil, longed, with a longing that no words can describe, to see her.