CHAPTER XX.
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."