.dt Harold’s Bride, by 	A. L. O. E. (A Lady of England)--A\
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<xxl>HAROLD’S BRIDE</xxl>
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<sc>Alicia’s Escape.</sc>
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[Illustration: <sc>Alicia’s Escape.</sc>]
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<fs=3em><I><c=#FF0000>Harold’s Bride</c></I></fs>

<l>A TALE</l>

BY

<xl>A. L. O. E.,</xl>

<s>Author of “Driven into Exile,” “Pictures of St. Peter,”
“The Shepherd of Bethlehem,”
“Exiles in Babylon,”</s>
&c. &c.
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<l>THOMAS NELSON AND SONS</l>
<i>London, Edinburgh, and New York</i>
——
<c=#FF0000>1902</c>
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<fs=3em><sc>Harold’s Bride</sc></fs>
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“Then He <i>did</i> hear me!”
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<sc>T. Nelson and Sons</sc>

<s>London, Edinburgh, and New York</s>
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Preface.
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<sc>Many</sc> years ago a huge panorama of a vast extent of
country was exhibited in London. Of what country it
was memory retains no clear impression; but I recollect
a remark made by the exhibiting artist. Referring to
the tints of some hills pictured in the panorama, he
observed, “They ought to be natural, for I took my
materials from the hills themselves.”
.pi
The artist’s remark had slight weight, for the fact
that he had used pigments taken from the actual soil
was no warrant for the accuracy of his delineation; but
I am reminded of that remark by the circumstances
under which the following tale has been written. It
was not penned in some study in London, nor in some
rural home in an English county; the authoress was
living, as it were, surrounded by the materials needed
for her picture. The old missionary came in heated and
tired from the daily round in zenanas to dip her pen
and write of a zenana. The materials for her touches
of natural history lay, as it were, at her elbow. She
might feelingly picture little inconveniences which she
herself had experienced.
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Such of A. L. O. E.’s readers as are already, from
former volumes, acquainted with the Hartley brothers,
may perhaps like to hear how they fared when they had
crossed the ocean, and had entered on the mission life
which they had contemplated from boyhood. It may
be that the tale will be thought suitable for reading
aloud at working parties in aid of missions, and that it
may help to give a more vivid idea of life in some of
the more isolated stations in India. But not mere
amusement is in view. A. L. O. E. would fain hope
that some enthusiasts, who would undertake the work of
carrying the gospel to the heathen more in a spirit of
romance than that of earnest self-consecration, may be
led by her book to reflect on what a solemn thing it is
to be “allowed of God to be put in trust with the
gospel” (1 Thess. ii. 4). Some maiden, ere linking her
lot to that of a missionary, may be induced to consider
the responsibility attending the position of an evangelist’s
wife. Something far more onerous is before her
than the pleasant duty of making a cheerful home for a
good man; she must share the burden, she must aid in
the labour, or she is likely to prove a hindrance instead
of a helpmeet. By some women, even amiable ones, this
responsibility is almost ignored; but by being ignored it
is not avoided. May some lesson be learned from the
little weaknesses and mistakes of
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<sc>Harold’s Bride</sc>.
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Contents.
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.ta r:8 l:40 r:6
I. | HOUSE-BUILDING,      | #11:ch01#

II. |  AN EXOTIC,      | #21:ch02#

III. |  HAPPY DAYS,      | #26:ch03#

IV. |  INDIAN TRAVELLING,      | #33:ch04#

V. |  FIRST IMPRESSIONS,      | #42:ch05#

VI. |  LITTLE FOES,      | #52:ch06#

VII. |  DIGGING DEEP,      | #62:ch07#

VIII. |  FIRST VISIT TO A ZENANA,      | #71:ch08#

IX. |  TRY AGAIN,      | #81:ch09#

X. |  MARRIAGE AND WIDOWHOOD,      | #95:ch10#

XI. |  WHAT A SONG DID,      | #107:ch11#

XII. |  A STARTLING SUSPICION,      | #116:ch12#

XIII. |  OUT IN CAMP,      | #132:ch13#

XIV. |  THE BLACK CHARM,      | #143:ch14#

XV. |  A STRUGGLE,      | #161:ch15#

XVI. |  WATER! WATER!      | #170:ch16#

XVII. |  THE COMMISSIONER,      | #182:ch17#

XVIII. |  WAITING TIME,      | #191:ch18#

XIX. |  THE WHITE BROTHER,      | #206:ch19#

XX. |  THE WELCOME RAIN      | #212:ch20#

XXI. |  A LETTER FOR HOME,      | #219:ch21#

XXII. |  YOKED TWAIN AND TWAIN,      | #223:ch22#
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<xxl>HAROLD’S BRIDE</xxl>.
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CHAPTER I||<s>HOUSE-BUILDING.</s>
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“<sc>What’s</sc> this?—not a coolie at work; the place a litter
of bricks and dust; the pillars of the veranda not a foot
high! Instead of growing upwards, they seem to grow
downwards, like lighted candles. The bricks also are
good for nothing—chipped, broken, katcha [only sun-dried],
when I gave strict orders for pakka [baked].
Cannot a fellow be absent for a week without finding
everything neglected, everything at a standstill?—Nabi
Bakhsh! Nabi Bakhsh!”
.pi
The call was rather angrily given, and was obeyed by
a dusky, bearded man in a large dirty turban, who made
an obsequious salám to Robin Hartley, after emerging
from some corner where this overseer of the building
works had been placidly smoking his hookah.

“What has become of the coolies? have they all gone
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to sleep?” cried young Hartley, in Urdu more fluent
than correct. “The work seems at a deadlock, and you
promised that I should find the veranda finished by my
return. Do you think that we are to pay you for
merely looking at rubbish like this?” Robin struck
one of the bricks with his heel, and broke it to pieces.

The excuses of Nabi Bakhsh need not be detailed,—how
there had been a religious feast, and of course the
men could not work; then the grandmother of Karim had
died, and of course every one had gone to the funeral.

“I believe that she was the fourth grandmother that
has died!” exclaimed Robin, half angrily, yet half playfully,
for his wrath seldom lasted for more than a
minute. “Feasts, fasts, and funerals, delays and excuses,
one coolie doing nothing and another helping him to do
it,—it’s hard to get work finished in India. But call the
men now, and let them make up for lost time. My
brother and the Mem [lady] will be here in a few days,
and what will they say to a mass of confusion like
this?”

Nabi Bakhsh went off to call the workmen. Robin,
though just off a twenty-miles walk, pulled off his jacket,
and set to work himself with all the vigour which youth,
health, and light spirits can give. The youth talked to
himself as he laboured, being fond of soliloquizing when
no one was near with whom to converse.

“Only a month to build a house in, and only one
thousand rupees [less than a hundred pounds] with
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which to pay for bricks, mortar, and work! It’s well
that the place is a small one; but big or small it won’t
be ready for Harold’s bride. It’s hard on a delicately-nurtured
young lady to be brought to such a bungalow
as ours—two bed-rooms, one sitting-room, and a place
for lumber, with three missionaries to share with her
the limited accommodation. Besides, Alicia has no end
of luggage. I cannot imagine where we shall stow it
away. I suppose that Harold was right in marrying so
soon—dear old fellow, he’s always right—but I cannot
help wishing that Colonel Graham had not been starting
for England till April, so that his daughter’s wedding
could have been delayed till we had some corner to put
her up in.”

Robin paused, wiped his heated brow, and looked up
at the tiny house on which he had expended a great
deal of personal labour, as well as that of urging on the
coolies and bricklayers, who, whenever his back was
turned, would sit down for a smoke. Robin had with
his own hands made all the doors, inserting in each the
four panes of glass which made it serve as a window.
Robin had constructed the wooden eye-lids, as he called
them, to keep off the sun from the roshandáns (upper
windows), which to a novice standing outside might give
the false impression that the bungalow had an upper
story. Robin had trampled down into something like
solidity the layer of mud on the roof, which was intended
to moderate heat and keep out rain. Tiles and slates
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were things unknown at Talwandi. The youth was a
little proud of his work, yet, as he looked up at the
uncompleted dwelling, an expression of doubt, almost of
dissatisfaction, came over Robin’s bright young face.

“Bricks and mud have no natural affinity to beauty,”
he said, “not even to picturesqueness. As for comfort,
even if we could get the veranda up and the mats down,
the place would be too damp to be lived in. Poor
Alicia must be content to squeeze herself into our nutshell—father
and I in one room, she in the other, whilst
the one sitting-room, backed, or rather fronted, by the
veranda, must serve as drawing-room, dining-room, study,
reception and school room, and whatever else be required.
Well, happily we are not likely to quarrel any more
than do double kernels in one nut.”

Robin glanced down the dusty road, bordered with
ragged cactus, which led to the small native town of
Talwandi, which was the head-quarters of this branch of
the mission. A town it was with some dignity of its
own, as it boasted not only two little mosques with
domes, and a big Hindu temple with stumpy spire, but
one house of some height and pretensions, domineering
over some hundreds of low houses built of mud.

“I wish that father would come home,” said Robin to
himself. “But he did not expect to have me back so soon,
with the appetite of half-a-dozen jackals. Father had
ordered nothing for himself but dál [a kind of dried
pease] and chapatties [flat baked cakes of flour]; but I
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wanted better fare. As soon as I arrived I pronounced
the death-warrant on the fattest hen in the compound,
so there will be something fit for dinner.” Robin resumed
his work, still soliloquizing. “Dear father is not
fit to have charge of his own comfort; he is always
thinking about people’s souls, and has little regard for
bodies. Harold and I had agreed together never to
leave him without a son beside him, for thirty years of
hard work are telling upon him; but how could we help
being absent on such an occasion as this? Father himself
would not hear of my not attending Harold’s wedding, and
Harold—” Robin interrupted himself in the midst of his
sentence with the exclamation, “Here’s father at last!”

Mr. Hartley was coming along the cactus-bordered
way, a heavy bag in one hand, an open umbrella held
up by the other, and a thick hat made of pith on his
head. The missionary was pale, thin, and somewhat
bent, with many a line on his face; but his mild
countenance lighted up with pleasure as he caught sight
of his son. Robin flung down his mattock, and bounding
forward the youth greeted his parent with a most
unconventional hug, which was as warmly though more
quietly returned. Robin’s impetuous affection was more
that of the child than that of a youth with down on his
lip. It had often been said that Robin, with his rough
curly head, his joyous spirit, and his absolute freedom
from guile, would never, should he live to a patriarch’s
age, be anything more than a boy.
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Whilst, laughing and chatting, Robin is accompanying
his father into the little house, the position of the
Hartley family at the time when my story begins may
be briefly described. The circle consisted of the veteran
missionary and his two sons. Harold, the elder, on
receiving deacons’ orders, had started to join his father
on the mission-field in the Panjab. Robin, who was
several years younger than his brother, had accompanied
Harold, as the youth himself said, “as a kind of general
helper, a Jack-of-all-trades—carpenter, blacksmith,
builder, tailor, cobbler, and what not besides;” an unpaid
but valuable servant to the mission. In vain the lad
had been urged to complete his education in college.
Robin perhaps under-estimated his own powers as a
student. He compared himself to a rough knotted
branch that might do well enough for a bludgeon, but
could by no skill be shaped and planed into a library
table. He would be a stick in Harold’s hand, and
perhaps help him over rough bits of the road, or assist
him to knock down some difficulty in his way. Mr.
Hartley made no objection to Robin’s plans, for he
yearned to have both his sons under his roof; and Harold
secretly rejoiced that his own advice had not been taken,
and that he should not be obliged to leave behind him a
brother whom he would so greatly have missed.

After about a year of earnest preparatory work at
Talwandi, Harold had gone to the city of Lahore to pass
a double examination—that which mission-agents must
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undergo, and that which precedes admission into priests’
orders. Both examinations had been passed by the
young clergyman with the highest credit. The effect of
Harold’s success was immediately seen in his being
urgently pressed to act as temporary chaplain to a large
English congregation during the very severe illness of
him to whom the office belonged. Harold had hesitated
about accepting the post, being unwilling, even for a few
weeks, to give up his own missionary work; but he
knew that for those few weeks’ service he would be
handsomely paid by Government, and money was
urgently needed to start a school at Talwandi. “Not
one piece shall be appropriated to my own use,” Harold
had reflected. “My time belongs to the mission; but in
procuring help for the school I may be serving my
society even more effectually than by my personal efforts.”
So Harold consented to act as chaplain.

The Rev. Mr. Cunningham’s illness lasted longer than
had been expected; the weeks were prolonged into months.
During this period Harold’s clerical duties brought him
into close and friendly intercourse with those over whose
spiritual interests he had temporary charge. The young
missionary was welcomed almost everywhere, but specially
in the house of Colonel Graham, an officer on the
point of retiring from the Indian service. The colonel
had a fair daughter, and Harold, at first almost unconsciously,
found that his visits to Graham Lodge were
rendering his residence in the city to him very delightful.
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There is no need to describe how these visits became
more frequent, and how Harold increasingly felt that
life would be a blank without Alicia. The young
maiden, on her part, thought that she saw in Harold
Hartley everything required to make her future life
perfectly happy. Alicia, under a playful manner, had
deep religious convictions. She loved Harold chiefly
because she thought him the highest type of a Christian
whom she ever had met with. His sermons refreshed
her soul, and seemed to lift her into a higher, purer
atmosphere than that which she had hitherto breathed.
Alicia was not a worldly girl. She felt that she would
rather share the humblest lot with Harold than rank
and wealth with any one else.

Mr. Hartley and Robin were not a little startled one
day by a letter from Harold asking his fathers consent
to his suing for the hand of Alicia Graham. He had,
as he wrote, already made the lady fully aware that his
means were slender. Her father knew his position;
there had been no concealment of his circumstances, no
attempt to hide the fact that not only toil but something
of hardship might be a part of missionary life.
Miss Graham had said that she feared neither toil nor
hardship.

“I think that Harold must have done the wooing
already,” observed Robin, “before asking your consent
to the suing.”

There was something like a smile on the lad’s lips as
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he spoke, but nothing of the usual mirth in his eyes.
Robin was taken by surprise. He had never contemplated
Harold’s seeking a wife. Perhaps there was a
touch of pain in the idea of any one standing in a closer,
dearer relationship to his almost worshipped brother
than he did himself. But Robin’s frank, generous nature
was not one to harbour mean jealousy.

“Because I was satisfied with his companionship, there
was no reason to suppose that Harold would be satisfied
with mine,” thought Robin. “I ought to rejoice that a
true-hearted girl values my brother as he ought to be
valued.”

Mr. Hartley did not speak for several minutes. As
was usual with him, any emotion that stirred him deeply
took the form of silent prayer. He then slowly reread
Harold’s letter, pausing at every sentence as if to weigh
its meaning. The old missionary then folded his thin
hands, and said, rather as if speaking to himself than
addressing Robin,—

“If He who chose Rebekah for His servant Isaac,
and made her willing to share his tent, have chosen this
maiden for my son, the union must and will be blessed.”

So the suing followed the wooing, and both being
successful, the engagement was duly announced to the
world. An early day was fixed for the wedding, on
account of Colonel Graham’s approaching departure.
Mr. Hartley and Robin were, of course, requested to be
present at the marriage. The elder missionary not only
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was unwilling to leave his station without a worker, but
he felt his own strength and spirits unequal to such a
sudden plunge into society after years of seclusion.
Robin, he said, should be his representative upon the
joyful occasion.

The weeks that passed before Robin went to Lahore
were very busy ones indeed to the youth. It was
evident that a separate residence would be absolutely
needful for Harold and his bride. Colonel Graham had
given a cheque of £100 as a small contribution to the
building fund, little thinking how far the trifling sum
would be made to go. Mr. Hartley was generous almost
to a fault, and at this time had left himself with scarcely
a rupee in hand. The first weight of the pecuniary
difficulty fell upon Robin, who worked early and late,
but who could not, with all his energy, make one rupee
do the work of five. Robin, however, worked cheerily,
and marvels were performed as long as he remained on
the spot; but his absence, as we have seen, caused a
sudden suspension of labour. The young amateur architect
returned to find that nothing whatever had been
accomplished while he had been away, except in the
way of a blunder or two, the effects of which he would
have to repair.
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CHAPTER II||<s>AN EXOTIC.</s>
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<sc>As</sc> Robin and his father sat at the small dining-table
(which the youth himself had made out of a packing-case,
painting the rough wood which would not take a
polish), conversation flowed freely. Robin, as usual,
engrossed the larger share.
.pi
“This fowl, if somewhat tough since it was running
about an hour ago, is to my mind as good as the turkey,
with legs tied up with white satin ribbon, which figured
at the wedding breakfast. What a display we had
there!—potted tongues, potted beef, hams, creams and
jellies, and a huge cake, of course, iced and covered all
over with fancy designs; it was such a work of art
that it seemed a shame to eat it. The bride’s health
was drunk in sparkling champagne. I think that her
health would have had a better chance if all the rupees
gulped down to do honour to the toast had been kept
to give her a better house.”

Mr. Hartley smiled and nodded assent.

“I own that I did grudge the expense,” said Robin,
“when I heard the popping of so many corks. I wondered,
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also, what the bride would do with her elegant
white satin dress in a jungle like this, with only the
kites and crows to see it! If there had been simpler
dressing and plainer feeding, we might have had a good
third room to the little dwelling, and had the bricks
pakka throughout!”

“You seem to have been pleased with your new
sister,” observed Mr. Hartley; “I care less to hear of the
dress than of the wearer.”

“I am more than pleased with Alicia. She has one
of the sweetest faces that ever I saw, with eyes soft and
large like those of a gazelle, yet sometimes sparkling
with fun. Alicia’s complexion is fair, but a little too
pale, except when she flushes, as she did with fright on
the first evening after my arrival. She certainly has
uncommonly weak nerves.”

“What caused her alarm?” asked the father.

“Oh, merely a poor little bat that, attracted by the
lights, went noiselessly wheeling and circling around the
room. Alicia started, trembled, put up her hands, almost
screamed when the creature’s shadowy flight brought it
within a foot of her head! It was difficult to keep from
laughing. Then when the intruder had been expelled,
Alicia asked me anxiously whether she would find many
snakes at Talwandi. ‘Not till the weather is warmer,’
said I; ‘at present they keep snug in their holes.’
Alicia did not look reassured. ‘Can you not kill them?’
she asked. ‘I always do when they come within reach
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of my arm,’ I replied. ‘I’ll cut a stick for you to have
handy if ever a snake pay you a visit.’ You should
have seen her look!” continued Robin, laughing at the
recollection. “I think that the snakes are in little danger
from Alicia’s prowess; I doubt whether she would
be a match for a baby scorpion.”

“I am sorry my new daughter is so timid,” observed
Mr. Hartley: “such nervousness may cause her distress
in a wild place like this—twenty miles from civilized
life, and these twenty miles of the roughest of roads.”

“I wonder how much of the lady’s luggage will survive
the jolting and bumping?” said Robin. “Alicia
has a number of wedding presents, enough to half furnish
a shop. They were all put out to be admired, and
they covered three tables and, I think, two chairs besides.”

“Where shall we put them?” asked Mr. Hartley.

“A question I’ve asked myself twenty times, but I
have never succeeded in finding an answer. There is a
piano, too, which Alicia is to play on, and I am to tune,
though I have never tuned one in my life! Some of the
presents seemed to me funny. There were three silver
fish-knives in satin-lined cases; but where, oh where
shall we find the fish?” Robin burst into a merry laugh
as he added, “If any one had consulted me as to what
would be an acceptable gift, I should have suggested
a big kitchen kettle or a dozen good iron spoons.”

“You must try the jhil [lake] for fish,” said Mr. Hartley.

“One clock (there were two) took my fancy,” continued
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Robin. “The design on the top was evidently
taken from Moore’s song about the love-lorn mermaid
who was in pity transformed into a harp. There was
the siren as the poet described her:—

.pm verse-start
‘Her hair, dropping tears from all its bright rings,
 Fell over her white arm to make the gold strings.’
.pm verse-end

I thought, if her lover had been true, and had married
the mermaid, how would the lady have enjoyed her new
strange life on shore? After floating about serenely on
summer seas, how would the mermaid have enjoyed
being jolted along in an ekká [a very rough country
conveyance], or even being swung from a camel? It
would have been a sad change for the poor siren, who
would have felt like a fish out of water.”

Mr. Hartley saw that his son was not thinking alone
of the fabled siren, and he observed with his quiet
smile,—“Sad indeed for her to exchange her native
element for another quite uncongenial, unless she were
gifted with wings to raise her to one higher and purer
than either water or earth.”

“I think that Alicia has such wings,” said Robin more
gravely: “she seems to be truly, earnestly pious. Had
she not been so, she would never have been Harold’s
choice. Alicia spoke to me so nicely about helping in
mission work. She has begun to read the Bible to her
ayah, and has learned by heart all the first part of the
parable of the Prodigal Son—in Urdu.”

“Good!” was Mr. Hartley’s laconic comment.
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“Alicia speaks the language like—well, of course <i>not</i>
like a native, nor very grammatically neither, but very
fairly indeed for a lady who has been but one cold
season in India, and has had only servants on whom to
practise. I daresay that in time she will make herself
understood even by zamindars’ bibis [wives]. Only I’m
afraid she’ll have—”

“What?” inquired Mr. Hartley as his son stopped short.

“Headaches,” responded Robin.

“Many missionaries have headaches,” observed his
father, who was now seldom without one.

“Yes; but some can take headaches, and other aches
too, as a hunter takes a hedge: it lies in his way; he
goes over it or scrambles through it, spurs on, and is in
at the death. But not every one is a hunter.”

“You think, in short, that our bride has been too
delicately nurtured, is of too soft a nature, too sensitive
a frame, to bear the rough life which is before her?”
said Mr. Hartley.

“I think that we’re transplanting an exotic which
requires a glass frame,” replied Robin; “and we’ve
nothing for it but a hard, rough wall, exposed to rude
blasts. But I forget,” the youth continued, resuming
the cheerful tone which was natural to him, “our sweet
exotic will have a fine strong pillar to lean on and cling
to; and with the sunshine above and the pure air
around her she may—yes, and will—rise higher and
higher, till she may smile down on us all.”
// 026.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III||<s>HAPPY DAYS.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Harold</sc> allowed himself but a brief honeymoon; but it
was as bright as it was brief, especially to the young
wife. The happiness of Alicia was undisturbed by the
petty cares which, like musquitoes in the sunniest hours,
occasionally buzzed about her husband. The very
anxiety which Harold felt to shield his bride from the
slightest annoyance or even inconvenience added considerably
to his cares. It was he who had to think
about ways and means. The young husband had believed
that by economy on himself he had saved enough
of rupees to supply every probable want; but expenses
came on which he had not sufficiently reckoned. Both
at Colonel Graham’s house, after the marriage, and at
the bungalow lent by a friend of Alicia, there seemed to
be no end to demands for bakhshish (tips). Khitmatgars,
khansamars, chankidars, “all the others that end in <i>ar</i>,”
and a great many others that do not, came smiling and
saláming, and hailing the young bridegroom as father
and mother, and nourisher of the poor, even as flies
// 027.png
.pn +1
gather round honey. It was not in Harold’s nature to
be stingy, especially at so joyful a time. His stock of
money appeared to melt like snow; he would have
barely enough, he saw, to cover travelling expenses.
.pi
Yet, after all, what were such cares when Alicia was
beside him? Sometimes he forgot them altogether.
When their conversation was on spiritual subjects, then,
most of all, Harold realized what a treasure he had in
his wife. At other times the expression of innocent joy
and pleasant hopes flowed like a rippling stream from
the lips of Alicia.

“We shall have a girls’ school, dearest,” she said to
her husband as she sat with her hand clasped in his;
“I have been taken to such nice ones by missionary
ladies. I was charmed to see the rows of little girls
with shining black eyes, gay chaddars, and such a
quantity of glittering jewels. When I have such schools
of my own I shall feel like a hen in the midst of her
brood of chickens. How delightful, too, it will be to
carry happiness into zenanas, to go like a welcome messenger
proclaiming to captives that they are free! I do
long to see the delight pictured on the dark faces of
those who have never before heard the glad tidings!
Oh, what a blessed lot is mine!”

Harold met with a smile the smile on the fair young
face upturned towards his, yet felt that he must put
some sober tints into Alicia’s bright picture.

“You must remember, my love,” he observed, “that
// 028.png
.pn +1
the work in Talwandi is rather that of clearing and
breaking up ground than that of reaping a harvest.
You must be prepared for some difficulties in a new
station like ours, which has been worked for scarcely a
year. When my father was moved to the Panjab he
had a new language to learn, and not one of his native
helpers beside him. He has had at Talwandi very uphill
and rather discouraging work.”

“Was not your father grieved to leave his old station
and friends?” asked Alicia.

“Much grieved; for there were many converts, most
of whom he himself had baptized. But there were
circumstances which made the move advisable; and my
father, without a murmur, though not without a sigh,
gave up his long-cherished hope of spending his last
days in his old home and amongst his own people, and
being buried in the same grave as my mother.”

“I think that it was very hard to send your father
away against his will!” exclaimed Alicia.

“Missionaries must have submissive wills, my love,
and think nothing hard that is right.”

“Oh, it will take me a long time to learn that lesson,”
cried Alicia. “Papa always let me have my own way—perhaps
more than was quite good for me. Do you
know,” Alicia added in a more lively tone, “when I
asked Robin—playfully of course—whether I should
not make a capital missionary, he was bear enough to
shrug his broad shoulders and say, ‘Time will show’?”
// 029.png
.pn +1

“Robin could not flatter to save his life,” remarked
Harold; “but with all his bluntness you will like him,
Alicia. He has the kindest, the truest of hearts.”

“Oh, I like him amazingly!” cried the bride. “We
were hand and glove from the first—only the glove is
not a kid one. Robin will help to make our house the
daintiest little home to be found in all the Panjab. I
have quantities of pretty things, you know—pictures and
beautifully-bound books. We will have a flower-garden
too, and creepers all over the house. I mean it to look
like a bower.”

Harold did not like to speak again of difficulties; he
only remarked with a smile, “Missionaries cannot always
contrive to have very elegant homes, my Alicia.”

“But I know that they have, for I have seen them.
Some of the bungalows are quite charming,” said the
bride.

“Probably in older stations, my love, when it is easier
to gather little comforts around one.”

“Perhaps one can do without some of the little comforts,
darling,” said Alicia, “when one has the greatest
comfort of all!” Very tender was the bride’s tone as
she added, “With you every place will be Eden
to me.”

Harold fondly stroked the small clasped hands which
rested so confidingly on his knee.

“I do so want to be a help to you—never a hindrance.
Do you not think that missionaries’ wives, as
// 030.png
.pn +1
well as their husbands, should have the missionary
spirit?”

“So strongly do I feel it, my love, that I should
think a worker for God a traitor to the good cause if he
united himself to one in whom such a spirit is wanting.”

“Ah, you think better of your poor little wifie than
does Master Robin,” said Alicia. “He copied out for
me a song all about the duties of Mission Miss Sahibas.
So, like a dutiful little sister, I learned it by heart, and
set it to a capital old tune. Would you like to hear it?
I wish that my piano were here; but it has been sent
on with the heavy luggage.”

“Your voice needs no accompaniment, my love,” said
Harold; “the nightingale requires no piano.”

Alicia smiled and began, in a very musical tone, a
song set to the air of “The Fine Old English Gentleman.”
After the first stanza Harold’s manly voice joined in the
chorus, as he beat time with his foot.
.sp 2
.nf c
MISSION RULES AND REGULATIONS.
.nf-

.pm verse-start
The Mission Miss Sahibas must never complain;
The Mission Miss Sahibas must temper restrain
When sust [lazy] pankahwalas won’t pull at the cane;
Must never be fanciful, foolish, or vain.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!

The Mission Miss Sahibas must furnish the brain,
Of two or three languages knowledge obtain,
When weary and puzzled must “try, try again,”—
We cannot learn grammar by legerdemain.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!
// 031.png
.pn +1

The Mission Miss Sahibas should know every lane,
Climb ladder-like stairs without fearing a sprain;
Must rebuke and encourage, exhort and explain;
Dark babies should fondle, dark bibis should train.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!

Let Mission Miss Sahibas from late hours refrain,
For they must rise early, and bear a hard strain,
Like vigorous cart-horses drawing a wain,
That pull well together when yoked twain and twain.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
“Just as you and I are yoked together, Harold,” said
Alicia, pausing for a merry little laugh.

“<i>I</i> may be a cart-horse, but you are rather like a
white fawn,” was Harold’s rejoinder. “Pray go on with
your song; we have not yet discovered the whole range
of the ladies’ duties.”
.sp 2
“The next verse is a funny one,” observed Alicia: “I
hope that the formidable warning with which it closes
is not needed by me.”
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
The Mission Miss Sahibas in dress must be plain;
The Mission Miss Sahibas must work might and main,
And therefore good nourishment should not disdain,
Or danger is great of their going insane!
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!

The Mission Miss Sahibas must topis [sun-hats] retain
To guard against sunstroke, to health such a bane;
‘Midst flies and musquitoes must patient remain;
By Mission Miss Sahibas snakes should be slain.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!
// 032.png
.pn +1

The Mission Miss Sahibas should sow well the grain,
To bibis and begums [princesses] should love entertain;
Should smile and should soothe, but not flatter or feign,
And to usefulness thus they may hope to attain.
      Oh, listen ye, Miss Sahibas;
        These are the Mission rules!
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
“Bravo!” cried Harold, as the chorus was concluded;
“that is no bad lesson for Miss Sahibas to learn.”

“Or <i>Mem</i> Sahibas either,” said Alicia laughing. “I
suppose that the duties of married and unmarried are
much alike, only the Mems may leave the snake-slaying
to their lord and masters.”
// 033.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV||<s>INDIAN TRAVELLING.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>The</sc> Hartleys soon left their pleasant place of sojourn,
and started on their journey towards Talwandi. The
piano and large packing-cases had been sent on before
by a luggage train; and Harold had arranged that a big
bullock-cart should meet them at the station where the
railway-line must be quitted. Nothing could be pleasanter
to the young couple than the journey as long as
it could be made by train, though, for economy’s sake,
the carriage which they occupied was second class. The
travellers were to descend at the station of Chuanwál,
twenty miles from Talwandi. Harold had made every
possible arrangement beforehand for the comfort of his
young bride. He had secured a dák-gári (the Indian
substitute for a post-chaise) in which she should accomplish
the last part of the journey.
.pi
Chuanwál was reached. After helping Alicia down
to the platform, and rapidly emptying the carriage of
two big rolls of bedding, umbrellas, a hamper, and six
or seven other articles which must on no account be left
behind, Harold looked for the station-master.
// 034.png
.pn +1

“You have been good enough to lay our dák; a
carriage is ready, I hope?” said Harold.

“Here is the munshi, sir; he will explain,” said the
station-master, as a stout, dark, sensuous-looking man
came forward, book in hand and pencil behind his thick
ear, proud of an opportunity of airing his stock of
English.

“Dák no lay—can’t lay. No station Talwandi way—dusri
ráh [other way]. How Sahib change horses where
no horses be found?” said the munshi.

“Well, suppose that we cannot change horses on the
journey, one pair of stout animals can easily accomplish
twenty miles.” The last part of Harold’s sentence was
half drowned in the shrill scream of the departing train.

The fat munshi seemed to see mountains of difficulty
in the way. “If horses go Talwandi, must come back
Chuanwál,” at last he sagely observed.

“Of course; they will return here to-morrow. The
question is, Have you the gári [carriage] and horses
which I ordered three days ago?”

After a good deal of beating about the bush and cross-questioning,
Harold elicited the fact that there was a
gári, and moreover a pair of horses.

“Then have the horses put in at once. Why were
they not ready? The lady is tired of waiting,” said
Harold, glancing towards Alicia, who was sitting on one
of the bundles of bedding.

Orders were given to a man waiting near, who went
// 035.png
.pn +1
off to see about the gári; and the munshi took his pencil
from behind his ear. “Sahib must pay beforehand,”
said the munshi.

“All right. How much have I to pay?” asked young
Hartley, drawing from his pocket his bag of rupees.

The munshi surveyed the bag, perhaps making a calculation
as to its probable contents, then named a sum that
was an exorbitant charge for so short a journey. To
pay it would more than drain Harold’s bag. The
missionary remonstrated, but in vain. The munshi
knew that the travellers were in his power. They
must pay what he chose to demand, or no dák-gári
should start.

“I shall inform the Government official of the extortion,”
began Harold; but he was not allowed to conclude
the sentence.

“No Government dák—private affair,” said the munshi,
showing a row of white teeth in a smile of triumph.
“If Sahib no like pay, Sahib try find ekká.”

Harold’s first thought was, “So I will;” but when
he glanced again at his simply but elegantly dressed
wife, he could not bear the idea of her having to climb
up into a vehicle so rude, to be jolted over twenty miles
of rough road, seated Oriental fashion, and holding the
ropes at the side to prevent herself from being jerked
out on the road. No, no; Harold would not take his
bride home in an ekká.

“Harold, what is all this delay and discussion
// 036.png
.pn +1
about?” asked Alicia, who, weary of waiting, had
sauntered up to the side of her husband.

“This fellow is making an unreasonable demand: he
asks for more than I have with me,” said Harold, looking
slightly annoyed.

“Oh, is that all? I’ll be your banker,” cried Alicia.
“Just help me to open my box, and I’ll get out the
money.”

In a few minutes Alicia’s pretty purse was in the
hand of her husband. The lady was rather amused at
the idea of lending to Harold; but he was by no means
pleased at having to borrow from his bride. The money
was paid, the amount registered in the munshi’s greasy
book, and in due time the gári appeared.

“Is it not like an old bathing-machine?” said Alicia.
“It looks hardly as luxurious as one would expect from
the cost of its hire.”

A dák-gári is by no means luxurious, especially on a
rough country road. It has neither springs nor windows,
and cushions must be improvised from the rugs
which travellers carry with them. However, Alicia was
perfectly satisfied. “Mission Mem Sahibas must not
care for luxury,” thought she.

When nearly half the journey had been accomplished,
the travellers passed a heavily-laden bullock-cart, slowly
jolting on its way.

“There, see! there’s our piano and our big cases!”
exclaimed Alicia. “I thought that we should find them
// 037.png
.pn +1
all ready unpacked on our arrival at home. We sent
on the luggage ages ago.”

“There was probably some hitch at the station,” said
Harold; “and bullocks travel very slowly indeed. But
the cart will be in before morning; we shall arrive some
hours before it.”

Harold was calculating without his host, or rather
without his horses. A brief pause was made half-way
to Talwandi for the driver to quench his own thirst and
that of his horses, and to indulge himself with a pull at
his hookah. The pause was unfortunate, for it gave
one of the animals time to consider that he had not been
taken out of harness and relieved by another horse, as
he had a right to expect. The creature resolutely determined—and
some Indian horses have resolute wills—not
to go a single step further. The driver had resumed
his seat on the box, and cracked his whip as a sign to
move on; but in vain was whip-cracking or urging or
beating. The horse reared and plunged and kicked, and
turned almost right round, after the fashion of nat-kat
(naughty) horses in India.

“O Harold! Harold! what is that dreadful creature
doing?” exclaimed Alicia, in terror grasping her husband’s
arm.

“It is only that we have a nat-kat in the shafts,”
replied Harold. “There will be a regular battle between
the will of man and horse, as shown in the picture which
we were looking at in the clever book ‘Curry and Rice.’”
// 038.png
.pn +1

“Oh, this is terrible!” cried Alicia, as the horse’s iron
hoofs beat a tattoo against the gári. “There—oh, look!—he
has turned round—his head will be in the carriage;
he’s as fierce as a tiger! What a frightful noise he
makes—between a neigh and a scream!”

“I will get out and help the driver,” said Harold,
with his hand on the sliding panel of the gári, which
was but half pushed back.

“Oh no; the horse will kick you or bite you—nat-kat
horses bite!” cried Alicia, almost frantic with
terror. Stronger nerves than hers have been tried by
a nat-kat brute.

Neither could the driver master the furious beast,
nor Harold soothe the terrified lady. A quarter of an
hour passed—a half-hour; mindless of rein, only
irritated by blows, kicking, snorting, backing, now to
the right side of the road, then to the left, doing his
utmost to overturn the heavy gári, the nat-kat would
go any way but forward.

“O Harold, I can bear this no longer; help me out!”
gasped Alicia, looking so pale that her husband feared
that she was going to faint. Catching his opportunity,
Harold sprang from the gári, lifted his wife down on
the side nearest the quieter horse, and placed the trembling
lady at a safe distance from the heels of the
plunging nat-kat.

“Harold, I feel so nervous; I will not attempt to get
into that carriage again,” faltered Alicia Hartley.
// 039.png
.pn +1

“But we <i>must</i> go on, my love; the driver will at last
get the better in the struggle.”

“There is the bullock-cart coming along the road;
we will go in that, the oxen are so quiet. Oh, mercy!”

The nat-kat, half-maddened by the punishment which
he was receiving, with distended nostrils and flashing
eyes, was indeed attempting to bite as well as to kick.
Harold in vain urged that the bullocks would take
hours to accomplish the journey, and that the sun was
about to set. Alicia declared that to go home slowly
was better than not getting home at all. Harold was
constrained to let the timid creature have her own way,
and the furious horse had his; for while Alicia was with
difficulty squeezing herself behind the piano, and Harold
trying to arrange the luggage taken from the gári, the
nat-kat and his companion were tearing away at the
utmost speed that the weight of the gári permitted on
their way back to Chuanwál station. Mightily amused
was the fat munshi when he heard of the adventure,
and with great satisfaction he stroked his beard and
jingled his bag of rupees.

It was some time before the nervous Alicia, in her
most uncomfortable niche in the bullock-cart, could recover
her wonted composure. Harold tried to make the
best that he could of circumstances, but thought with
regret of the despised ekká, in which he might so much
more quickly and cheaply, and perhaps more comfortably
too, have accomplished a tiresome journey. Poor Alicia
// 040.png
.pn +1
had been so much frightened, and was now so much
shaken and tired, that she had difficulty in keeping in
her tears. She had a fear that she had displeased, or at
least had annoyed, Harold, and that Robin would laugh
at her for making so poor a beginning of missionary life.
The slow pace of the bullocks made the journey terribly
tedious, and dark night closed in long before they had
accomplished five miles.

Travelling adventures were not over. A bit of
specially bad and boggy road was encountered. First
the cart stuck fast in the mud. Harold sprang down,
and his exertions, combined with those of the driver and
the struggles of the belaboured oxen, at last succeeded
in setting the clumsy conveyance in motion again. A
few yards further on there was a sudden shock and a
crash. One of the big wheels had come off. A great
deal of the luggage was precipitated on the miry road.

“Quite a night of adventures!” cried Harold cheerfully,
to reassure his young wife and prevent her noticing
that a falling box had inflicted on his arm a very severe
contusion. He bit his lip with pain, and then added in
the same playful tone, “We shall laugh over our little
troubles when we reach our destination.”

“But when shall we reach it?” exclaimed Alicia;
“how far are we now from Talwandi?”

“I should say four miles,” replied Harold; “but it is
difficult to guess in the darkness, when one can see no
landmarks. How we are to proceed with a wheel off is
// 041.png
.pn +1
a difficult problem to solve. If you permit, I will press
forward and bring back a lantern and my fathers tattu
[pony], on which you will ride.”

“Oh no; you must not leave me!” cried Alicia, clinging
like a terrified child to her husband’s strong arm.
“I can walk—I would far rather walk.”

And walk she did, all the long weary way over a
rough road; for the four miles proved to be five, and to
the young traveller seemed to be ten. Mr. Hartley,
after staying up till midnight to welcome the pair, had
given them up and retired to rest, when Harold and his
tired—almost exhausted—bride reached the little bungalow
at last.
// 042.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V||<s>FIRST IMPRESSIONS.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Alicia’s</sc> was rather a cheerless arrival at home. Her
old father-in-law was asleep on his charpai (small bedstead),
and Robin, overcome by slumber on his arm-chair,
was in the midst of a dream, when both were
roused by the sound of Harold’s familiar voice. Up in
a moment sprang Robin, ready to give a warm welcome.
After kindly greetings were over, the lad turned hastily
away to see what could be done for the comfort of
those who had arrived in the middle of a cold February
night.
.pi
“Oh, this is too bad—the fire out, and the lamp all
but burned down!” cried Robin. “That lazy dog Mangal
asleep, of course. But I set him the example.—Mangal!
Mangal! bring more logs; fill the kettle—no, I’ll do
that myself.—There is plenty of food in the doli [meat-safe];
we’ll have it warmed up in ten minutes. I am
so provoked at having gone to sleep; but who would
have dreamed of your coming on foot, and at such a
late hour?”
// 043.png
.pn +1

The bride was too weary to wait till a fire could be
lighted and food prepared. “I will go to my room,
please,” she faintly said, “and the ayah will bring me
my tea.” The poor girl forgot at the moment that an
ayah’s services was one of the luxuries which she was to
forego at Talwandi.

“I will act as your ayah,” said Harold. “As soon as
Robin can coax fire to burn and water to boil, I will
bring you your tea.”

As he spoke, Mr. Hartley, looking, as Alicia thought,
haggard and pale as a ghost, came wrapped in his
dressing-gown to welcome his daughter. It was an
effort to Alicia to look pleased and happy on her first
introduction to her new father; she felt something of
awe not unmixed with pity, and wondered whether she
could ever venture to be lively in the presence of such
a man.

While the servant was preparing the food, Mr. Hartley
proposed united thanksgiving and prayer. Alicia
expressed her wish to join in it, though she was hardly
able to keep her eyes open during the service, brief as
it was. She then retired—if it could be called retiring
in a place where the accommodation was so cramped that
every sound could be heard over the house—and Alicia
felt as if she must not only be uncomfortable herself, but
make every one else so. The last sound which fell on
her drowsy ear was that of Robin starting off with all
the coolies whom he could manage to muster at that hour
// 044.png
.pn +1
of the night, to go with him to the place where the bullock-cart
had broken down, in order to bring home the luggage.

Alicia did not awake till very late on the following
morning—so late that Mr. Hartley had gone to his
work hours before; and Harold, who had a crowd of
native visitors to welcome him back, was only waiting
to give his wife breakfast before going the round of his
station. After his months of absence, the young missionary’s
work was much in arrears.

“Harold, dear Harold, can we not have a little quiet?”
murmured Alicia. “It is very embarrassing to have
such a number of black eyes staring curiously at the
new Mem, as if I were some kind of white bear just
imported from the North Pole.”

“I will carry them all off with me to the mango
grove; but I must introduce a few of my boys to you
first.—Kripá Dé, Bál Singh, make your saláms to the
lady.”

They did so respectfully and with natural grace. Alicia
was puzzled how to return the politeness, for she had
had no intercourse with natives, except her servants.

“I see that your breakfast is just ready, my love,”
said Harold. “Call for anything that you want; Mangal
acts as khitmatgar [table-servant] as well as cook.”

“But surely you are going to take breakfast with
me!” cried Alicia. “I am not to eat alone, and on the
first morning here!”

“Forgive me, darling, for hurrying away. I do not
// 045.png
.pn +1
know when I shall be able to overtake all the work
which I find before me.”

“But you must eat breakfast,” began Alicia.

“I took mine hours ago with my father. I only
waited to see you, and look after your little comforts.
Indeed I must go,” continued Harold, vexed to see
moisture rising to the eyes of his wife. “I have left
my burden too long on the shoulders of others. You
know that a missionary’s time is not his own;” and in
another minute he was off.

“So I am not to have the society of my own husband,
or have him always surrounded by natives!”
murmured Alicia, as she sat down disconsolately to her
solitary meal. “It is rather hard—but no! I must
remember Harold’s words, that nothing is hard which is
right. And missionaries should have submissive wills.”

Alicia gave a little sigh. Her eyes were opening to
the fact that to be a good wife to a devoted worker like
Harold would require some amount of self-denial. Time
was already beginning to show to the bride that she
needed a great deal of training to be fit for the position
which she had lately thought the most enviable in the
world. The conclusion at which Alicia arrived, as she
rather pensively ate her suji, was that she must in
future make her appearance a good deal earlier than
ten o’clock in the morning.

“Already my folly and self-will have involved Harold
in trouble,” Alicia said to herself. “If I had taken his
// 046.png
.pn +1
advice, I should have waited patiently in the gári till
the nat-kat’s temper was subdued, and should not have
added the weight of ourselves and our luggage to an
already overladen cart. Had I behaved like a sensible
woman and not like a silly child, the cart might never
have stuck in the mud nor the wheel come off.”

Alicia glanced around her and above, surveying her
new habitation. “Very bare it looks, I must own; no
ceiling to hide the rafters; nothing pretty to adorn the
walls. This clearly has never been the residence of a
woman. I will soon make mine look brighter than
this. I am glad that Harold has promised to leave all
the decorations to me. Ah, here come our goods at
last!” exclaimed Alicia, springing up joyfully from her
chair as Robin, himself carrying a large portmanteau,
appeared at the head of a band of coolies, who, after
the curious native fashion, bore their heavy loads on
their heads instead of their backs. “O Robin, I am so
glad to see you. Let the men set down their burdens
here in the veranda. You will help me, I know, to
open the boxes.”

Robin was hungry, and would far rather have taken
his place at the breakfast table after a night of toil;
but without a word he put down the portmanteau and
went off for his tools. Alicia was very eager to have
the cases opened, to ascertain that her goods had sustained
no injury from the jolting or the fall from the
cart. But when the wooden cover of the first large
// 047.png
.pn +1
box was raised, and the tin beneath unsoldered (rather
a tedious operation), the examination of the contents,
slowly extricated from the hay in which they had been
packed, was not very satisfactory to their owner.

“Oh, my clock—my beautiful clock! The siren
broken to pieces! I daresay that the works are useless!”
exclaimed Alicia.

“I hope not,” said Robin cheerily. “I am a bit of a
watchmaker, you know. I hope to set the clock going
again, though I cannot undertake to patch up the siren.
Here, let me help you. That box is too heavy for your
little hands.”

“It is my medicine-chest, and full of bottles,” said
Alicia. “Oh,” she added in a different tone, “what can
have happened? Something inside must have been
broken; my hands are all covered with castor-oil!
Ugh!”

Not only the fingers of the lady, but a good many
things besides, were moistened with oil and full of its
odour. Scarcely a bottle had survived the shocks of
that journey. Alicia looked aghast when she became
aware of the extent of the mischief done.

“Don’t worry about it, dear,” said her brother-in-law,
with rough sympathy. “To have nice things spoilt is
a very common experience with us missionaries, so I
have often congratulated myself on having so few
things to be ruined.” Seeing the cloud still on Alicia’s
face, Robin added more seriously, “You know there is
// 048.png
.pn +1
something in the Bible about taking joyfully the spoiling
of goods.”

“It is difficult to take it joyfully, but I must try to
take it patiently,” said Harold’s bride. “But where is
my beautiful piano? Surely you have not left it behind!”

“One of the oxen is loaded with—with what remains
of it,” said Robin slowly.

“Oh, surely the piano is not broken! My father’s
gift! Don’t say that it too has come to grief!” cried
Alicia.

“Then what am I to say?” replied Robin. “I am
sure that I would far rather tell you something pleasant,
but one of the big packing-cases fell on the poor
piano.”

“And smashed it—quite smashed it?” cried Alicia.

Robin gravely nodded his head, then turned a little
aside to avoid seeing the tears gathering in Alicia’s
lovely eyes.

“Perhaps the piano is not past mending,” were the
first words which she uttered, after a silence of several
minutes.

Robin knew that the instrument was quite past
repairing; his silence was sufficient reply.

“I suppose that missionaries must not let their hearts
cling to anything earthly,” thought poor Alicia. “I
must gradually learn <i>to endure hardness like a good
soldier of Jesus Christ</i>. After all,” she said aloud, “one
// 049.png
.pn +1
might have worse losses than even that of a new
piano.”

So the sad face cleared up a little, and Alicia, with a
resolution of making the best of what remained to her,
turned to the second of her large packing-cases.

“That chiefly contains clothes and linen,” she observed,
“and a very large roll of wall-paper. Nothing
there is likely to have been spoiled. But I can examine
nothing in it until I have washed these oily fingers.”

“May I suggest your waiting a little before doing
any more unpacking,” said Robin. “You look tired
already, and the first case is not fully explored. From
what you say, it appears that there is little or nothing
liable to be broken in this second box, so you can leave
it for a while. Let these fellows carry both boxes into
the bungalow.”

“Not into your bungalow, Robin; they would not
leave us standing room,” said Alicia with decision.
“Let everything be put into our empty house”—the
lady glanced at the yet scarcely finished bungalow
which adjoined the one in whose veranda she now was
standing,—“there is space for everything there, and in
it I shall gradually unpack all my things.”

“That house, newly built, is damp,” expostulated
Robin; “you must put nothing into it yet.”

“Indeed, but I will,” was Alicia’s playful retort. “I
want my own property in my own home, and it only
gives useless trouble to carry it backwards and forwards.
// 050.png
.pn +1
I suspect, Master Robin, that you wish to see the contents,
and so you shall, but not till I have arranged
them and put them into right order.”

“You have been in India so short a time,” began
Robin; but the wilful girl cut him short with a laugh.

“And so you favour me with the results of your long
experience. Oh, grave and reverend signor!” she cried,
“I have been a little longer in the world than you have,
and won’t stand like a meek little girl to hear how,
when, and where I should open my boxes. So go to
your breakfast, dear Robin. I have been very selfish
to keep you from it so long. I am sure that I am
much obliged to you for all the trouble which you have
taken about my luckless luggage.”

As Robin sat at the breakfast-table drinking cold tea
and eating colder suji, he heard Alicia, as she stood in
her yet uncompleted veranda, ordering the coolies to
take away or bring (she constantly confused the two
verbs), eking out her slender amount of Urdu with
English, and more comprehensible signs, and evidently
rather pleased at finding herself in the position of
mistress in her own dwelling.

“What father said yesterday was quite right,” reflected
Robin. “He and I had better go out with our
tent for some days itinerating in the district, and leave
Harold and Alicia to settle down quietly here. It is
quite natural that they should like to be a little together,
with no one else near. Of course, the bride,
// 051.png
.pn +1
accustomed to live in a handsome house in a city,
finds our quarters uncomfortably small when we are
all together. Let her and her husband have the
bungalow for a while all to themselves.”

So in the course of the day this little matter was
settled. Soon after dawn on the following morning,
Mr. Hartley and his younger son started on an itinerating
tour amongst the surrounding villages. A camel
carried their tiny tent, a few wraps, and cooking-vessels.
The old missionary rode his pony, and Robin walked.
The weather was delightful, as it usually is at that time
of the year. Harold and his bride were left in sole
possession of the bungalow at Talwandi.
// 052.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI||<s>LITTLE FOES.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Alicia</sc> was up in time to see the travellers off; with
her own hands she filled the provision-basket, and helped
Robin to pack her father’s portmanteau. She was
resolved to show herself to be a capable, energetic missionary
Mem. All her idle days were over: Alicia had
grand designs in her head. She looked so bright, animated,
and happy as she bade the travellers good-bye,
that Robin, as he walked beside his father’s tattu, laughingly
observed, “I think that our pretty exotic is taking
root already, and promises to climb up bravely. To get
so soon over the loss of a piano, the breaking of bottles,
and the smashing of porcelain, shows a spirit worthy of
Harold’s bride.”
.pi
What was one of the principal causes of Alicia’s
cheerfulness on that Friday morning may be seen from
a letter which she wrote to a sister in England on the
following Monday.

.pm letter-start
.rj
<s>“<i>February 28, 1868.</i></s>
“<sc>Dearest Lizzie</sc>,—I promised to give you a full
and particular description of my new home at Talwandi;
// 053.png
.pn +1
but I would rather delay so doing till I have brought
some order out of chaos, some beauty out of confusion.
Everything is now in the rough. I am going to be so
busy, so desperately busy, that I am not at all sorry
that my father-in-law and Robin are away on a preaching
tour. I want to give them a grand surprise on
their return, and a surprise also to my Harold, who is
so dreadfully busy all day long with his native boys or
his translations that he has no time to consider whether
he lives in a palace or a wigwam.

“But first I must tell you what I think of Harold’s
father, though I have seen but little of him as yet.
Mr. Hartley is tall, but stoops slightly, as if from weakness.
He is pale and thin and somewhat wrinkled—less
from age, I think, than from toil. Harold has certainly
a likeness to his parent; but, oh! I trust that my noble-looking
husband, whose form is so erect, whose step so
elastic, may never have such a worn-out appearance,
such a faint voice, as the veteran worker. I feel a very
great respect, almost reverence, for my new father; but
he inspires me with something a little like awe. Mr.
Hartley is almost too polite, for in the courtesy which
he shows to me as a lady he seems half to forget that I
am his daughter. I should like him to clap me on the
shoulder and call me ‘Pussy,’ as dear papa used to do.
Mr. Hartley <i>will</i> rise when I enter the room, nor resume
his chair until I am seated, though I would often prefer
standing or running about. The dear man listens
// 054.png
.pn +1
with such courtesy to what I say that I dare hardly
open my lips lest I should utter something silly. Then
I feel that Mr. Hartley lives in a sphere so very much
higher than my own, that I am humbled and a little
constrained by his presence. Perhaps when I know him
better this feeling may wear away. At present, my
father appears to me something too high and spiritual
for earth—like the rainbow which we admire but cannot
touch. Yet Robin is as playful as a kitten with his
father, who evidently enjoys his fun. Harold regards
his parent with much veneration and love. It is beautiful
to see the confidence and affection existing between
father and sons.

“To quit this subject, I must tell you of the grand
work which I started last Friday, almost as soon as the
travellers had left us. My Harold knows nothing about
it; I only said to him as he went off to the school which
he holds (in a mango grove, I believe), ‘Please give
Nabi Bakhsh and Mangal strict orders to obey me in
whatever I tell them to do.’ ‘I am sure that I may
trust my little queen with despotic power,’ replied
Harold, smiling. ‘Your subjects shall obey your commands,
if you can make them understand them.’

“No sooner had my husband left me than I ordered
a big bowl, or rather my basin, full of paste, and flew
off to my work in my own little home. Foreseeing,
like a prudent housewife, that nothing elegant could be
procured at Talwandi, I have brought a quantity of the
// 055.png
.pn +1
loveliest wall-paper that ever I saw—pale lilac ground, as
smooth as satin, with a pattern of roses twining over a
trellis of gold. Nothing can be more tasteful, or more
suited to make ‘Paradise’ (as I have named our little
bungalow) a sort of fairy bower. I had Nabi Bakhsh
and Mangal to help me in the work of papering my
room; for though I have brought a huge brush, I could
not do all the pasting myself. I could, however, trust
nothing that required common sense to my assistants:
for I found Mangal putting my roses upside down; and
when I bade Nabi Bakhsh hang my pictures on some
brass nails which Robin had fixed in the wall, I saw the
drawing representing our church so placed that the tower
and trees hung downwards, suspended, as it seemed, from
the sky! Of course, it was absurd to begin to hang up
pictures before I had papered the room; but I did so
because it gave me such pleasure to see them whenever
I glanced up from my work. Nor could I resist the
pleasure of filling the book-shelves (also Robin’s kind
thought) with my very prettiest books.

“How I laboured that day! how I swung my big
brush, and dashed the paste over the brick-work! You
would have laughed, Lizzie, to have seen your Ailie
perched on a ladder, now stopping to look down to
direct or scold her assistants, now dabbing paste on the
ugly bare wall, which was not graced with even a
coating of whitewash. I worked and worked till hands
were tired and head was throbbing and eyes aching
// 056.png
.pn +1
from looking up. Then I stopped to admire my rosy
bower, and went on again with fresh vigour. I pasted
away as long as the light lasted, and then, not wishing
Harold to see the work incomplete, I left my huge roll
of paper (a good deal lessened in size) on the floor, sent
Mangal to look after cooking the dinner, quitted the
house, and locked the door behind me. No one should
enter ‘Paradise’ as long as one brick remained uncovered
in its bare ugliness in that room.

“I was at first—though dreadfully tired—in high
glee when Harold returned. He was tired too, and
needed his meal, which Mangal took ages to prepare.
It had never occurred to me that the khansamar could
not cook while he was pasting. When the food came
at last, I took to shivering instead of eating, and my
looks awakened alarm in the mind of my tender husband.
Harold took my hand; it burned with fever, and I was
obliged to confess to a pain in my head. It appeared
that I had taken a chill. Harold was uneasy at my
having even a touch of Indian fever so soon after my
arrival. I was condemned to imprisonment and a
strong dose of bitter quinine. Do not be alarmed, dear
Lizzie; mine was only a passing attack, and it gave me
the luxury (was it selfish to enjoy it?) of more of the
company of my beloved. I believe that the school-lads
had a holiday on Saturday, for Harold scarcely quitted
my side. I was very much better on Sunday; but my
dear jailer would not let me quit my room, and gave me
// 057.png
.pn +1
a little English service there. It was a happy, peaceful
Sabbath to me. The time when Harold was away
holding religious converse with a young Hindu who
reads the gospel, I spent in learning a good many verses
from the Urdu Bible, which, when I repeated them in the
evening, won for me the prized reward of my husband’s
praise. To-day (Monday) I had hoped to go on with
my papering work; but as there happened to be a rough
wind, and the fever had left a cold on my chest, Harold
bade me keep one day more in the house.

“‘I forgot to ask you for the key of our new bungalow,’
said he; ‘pray give it to me now, for we must keep
all the doors open during the daytime, and have a large
fire burning within. I had a tree cut down on purpose to
have plenty of wood to burn. I ought to have seen to this
matter before; but give me the key now, please, my love.’

“Now, for Harold to have had the key would have
spoilt the charming surprise which I was preparing for
him. This would never do; so I begged my husband
not to wait for the key, and I promised to send Nabi
Bakhsh to throw open all the doors and pile up roaring
fires. Harold went off to his inquirers, and I—shall I
confess it to you, Lizzie?—I became so much interested
in my studies that I quite forgot my promise. There
was no feeling of cold to remind me that fires may be
needed, for the days are quite warm, to me even hot,
though at night the air becomes fresh. It is now too
late to have the doors opened, so I am spending the
// 058.png
.pn +1
twilight, before Harold returns, in writing to you. I
shall be too busy to-morrow pasting and papering to do
more than add a line to tell of the success of my work.

“Harold is later than usual; he is probably having
a religious conversation with Kripá Dé, whom he thinks
almost, if not quite, a Christian in heart. I have only
seen the lad once or twice, but I am exceedingly struck
with his appearance. Kripá is as fair as an Englishwoman,
only the complexion has in it no tinge of colour;
it is, I hear, one not uncommon among Kashmiris.
Kripá Dé has a delicacy of feature and grace of—There
is the step of my Harold! no more writing to-day.

“<i>Tuesday.</i>—O Lizzie, I little thought how this long
letter was to end,—how my bright fancies, my eagerly
pursued occupation, were to bring nothing but disappointment!
I have only too much leisure for writing
to-day, and must relieve my mortified spirit by telling
my troubles to you.

“I was almost impatient for Harold to go out to his
work, so eager was I to resume mine. I hurried off to
my little house, after calling to Mangal to prepare a
fresh supply of paste, and asking Nabi Bakhsh to get
some one to bring plenty of logs for a fire (coals are
unknown in Talwandi). I knew that I had been
imprudent in not having had a fire lighted on Friday,
and that I had brought fever on myself and trouble on
my husband by neglecting this simple precaution. I
will not be so foolish again.
// 059.png
.pn +1

“Well, to go on with my story. I turned the key in
the lock of my door, pushed it open, and entered the
room where I had left my fancy paper, some on the
wall, some on the floor. Yes, I entered with eager step,
and then—stood simply aghast. Ugly dark damp-marks
had completely marred what I, with such labour, had
put up but three days ago; and worse still, my pictures,
my choice pictures, were almost completely spoilt. I
felt inclined to sit down and cry; but to have given
such way to my vexation would have been unworthy of
Harold’s wife. It was a comfort, I thought, that the
larger portion of the beautiful wall-paper had not yet
been put up; <i>that</i>, at least, should be kept to be used
after the house should have become quite dry. I went
up to my large roll (which, you remember, I had left on
the brick floor), and saw—oh, how shall I describe
what I saw with mingled astonishment and disgust!
The paper, with its roses and golden trellis, was, as it
were, <i>alive</i> with odious little white maggots. It almost
sickened me to see them; I could not touch one of the
horrid things. I called loudly for Nabi Bakhsh, and
when he appeared I could only point to the disgusting
mass on the floor. ‘Dimak,’ he said calmly, as if there
were nothing astonishing in the sight. Then Nabi
Bakhsh walked leisurely to the wall, and knocked down
a quantity of branching excrescences of something like
mud, in shape a little resembling coral, but of the colour
of mire. This, too, was alive with grubs, and again the
// 060.png
.pn +1
Moslem said, ‘Dimak.’ There is no danger of my ever
forgetting that hateful word.

“As I stood almost petrified with this my first introduction
to white ants, one of the plagues of India, I
was startled by the unexpected entrance of Harold. He
had returned for some book, and seeing the door open
had walked in.

“Harold asked no questions; he saw at a glance what
had happened. ‘Call the mihtar [sweeper], and have
all this cleared away at once,’ he said to Nabi Bakhsh.
Then gently taking my hand, my husband led me out
into the open veranda. I was too much agitated to
be able to speak. I attempted to smile, but failed.

“‘I am very sorry to find the white ants in possession
already,’ said Harold. ‘We must fight them in this
bungalow, as we have fought them in my father’s.
Happily a good supply of tar is left; some shall immediately
be put round the lower part of the walls, and
below the rafters, or the wood-work will become the
prey of greedy little foes.’

“‘The rafters!’ I murmured faintly; ‘would the dimak
bring down our very roof over our heads?’

“‘If we gave them time and opportunity they would
do so,’ was the not consolatory reply. ‘But be assured,
my Alicia, that active measures shall be taken at once.’

“And what was the result of these active measures,
Lizzie? I have just come in from looking at my poor,
certainly misnamed, Paradise. All my pretty paper has
// 061.png
.pn +1
been pulled down and cleared away, and men are
putting a funeral band of hideous black all round the
upper part of the walls, along the rafters, and a few
inches above the floor. There is a bespattering of the
tar in unsightly spots even where it is not supposed to
be needed. The whole effect is horrible, and my new
bungalow smells like an old steamer. I do not know
whether to laugh or to cry.”
.pm letter-end
// 062.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII||<s>DIGGING DEEP.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>At</sc> sunset Mr. Hartley and Robin unexpectedly returned
to Talwandi, the strength of the former having proved
unequal to the fatigues of camp-life. The old missionary
had hardly been able to keep the saddle.
.pi
“Why, Alicia, you must have been ill! what have you
been doing while we were away?” was Robins first exclamation,
as he took the hand of his sister and looked
with affectionate concern at her pale face and drooping
appearance.

“Alicia has been a little imprudent,” said Harold.

“And has paid dearly for her imprudence,” added
Alicia with a rather forced smile.

Then followed the story of the invasion of the white
ants, and an account of the means taken to prevent its
repetition.

“Tar is not enough to keep out the dimaks,” said
Robin; “they are the most persevering little workers in
the world. Hunt them from one corner, and presently
you see their brown tunnels in another; chase them
// 063.png
.pn +1
from the floor, and they are up in the beams. There is
no weapon for fighting the white ants to be compared
to a good stout spade. I’ll take mine, and go out early
to-morrow morning, and see if I cannot find the trace
of a colony somewhere near. If I do, then will come
the work of sapping and mining. We must follow the
enemy to his underground fort, and if possible capture
his queen.”

“I never saw white ants in Lahore,” said Alicia.

“They have rural tastes like myself: they prefer
country to town, like those gentry whose music now
breaks on the ear.”

“Oh, what is that frightful yelling and howling?”
exclaimed Alicia in alarm. “I hope, I trust, that this
jungly place is not infested by wolves!”

“Merely jackals,” said Harold quietly.

“But don’t jackals hunt in packs? might they not
attack one?” asked Alicia anxiously, as the wild yells
came nearer and nearer.

“Jackals are the most cowardly brutes in the world,”
exclaimed Robin; “they have none of the boldness of
the dimak. I doubt whether jackals would attack any
human being, except, of course, a baby. Even you,
Alicia, might face a jackal.”

“I should rather not meet one in the dark, to say
nothing of a pack!” cried the lady. “I never before
heard such a horrible sound as their yells.”

“You will grow accustomed to it,” observed Harold.
// 064.png
.pn +1

On the following morning Robin started off with his
spade, and did not return for hours. Harold went to
his work, and Alicia was left with her father-in-law,
who was too poorly to leave the house. Mr. Hartley
was for some time occupied with translating, whilst Alicia,
seated near him, removed from some of her choice books,
as far as she could, traces of the ravages of damp and of
white ants. The two were making a study of the veranda,
the single sitting-room in the mission bungalow
being uncomfortably crowded by Alicia’s luggage, which
had been removed for the present from her damp house.

After writing for some time, Mr. Hartley glanced up
from his desk, and his eyes met those of Alicia, who had
also paused in her occupation, after laying down a sadly
marred volume of poems.

“I wonder why white ants were created?” she murmured;
“they do nothing but mischief in the world.”

“They are probably, like briers and thorns, a part of
the curse,” observed Mr. Hartley, putting away his pen.
“But as all things work for good to the servants of the
Lord, even white ants may have their mission.”

“I cannot imagine what it possibly can be,” said
Alicia.

“Our small worries, in this life of probation, my
child, may be as effectual as great troubles in disciplining
the mind, and keeping the soul from resting too
much on things of earth. Have you yourself learned
nothing from yesterday’s disappointment?”
// 065.png
.pn +1

Alicia did not answer the question directly, but, after
a pause, said a little bitterly,—

“Was it wrong in me to wish to make my husband’s
home look pretty?”

“No, my daughter,” said the missionary very gently;
“your object was not in itself wrong, but it was, perhaps,
not pursued in quite a right way.”

“I do not understand,” said Alicia.

“I will try to explain myself better. Was my
daughter not aware that she was risking the loss of her
health by working for many hours in a place exceedingly
damp?”

“One cannot be always thinking about health,” said
Alicia, with the slightest touch of impatience in her
tone.

“Do you not think that our mortal frames belong to
the Lord as well as our intellectual powers? Have we
a right to injure the instrument given us to be employed
in this work?”

“Oh, dear Mr. Hartley, I think that you are hardly
the one to give reproof on this subject!” cried Alicia,
looking at the wasted form beside her.

“It is because my conscience reproves me as being a
defaulter that I am the more able to point out to others
the places where my own foot has slipped,” was the
meek rejoinder. “I came to India, Alicia, a vigorous,
agile man, quite as strong as your Harold is now; you
see me, at the age of little more than fifty, an old man,
// 066.png
.pn +1
compassed with infirmities, which, alas! hinder my
work.”

“But you have worn out your health in the Lord’s
service, dear father,” said Alicia.

“By no means altogether so, my child. I was proud
of my agility and strength; I liked to show my powers
and my daring; I scorned what I thought womanish
precautions; what you said just now was often on my
lips—‘One cannot always be thinking about health.’
Now with something like repentance I look back on
useless, perhaps vainglorious exertions, by which I
wasted God-given strength. That strength, if <i>only</i> employed
on God’s work, might have made me a vigorous
labourer still.”

“It is said, <i>Better wear out than rust out</i>,” observed
Alicia.

“That proverb is perfectly true, but it does not quite
bear on the subject before us,” was the quiet reply.
“The choice is not between wearing and rusting, but
between careless, wilful neglect of common precautions
(perhaps in the pursuit of amusement), and a conscientious
reserving of one’s strength for daily duties. I
have known a missionary bring on sunstroke, because
she could not resist the pleasure of gathering flowers in
the heat of the day, and could not hold up an umbrella
whilst wielding the garden-scissors. Another felt that
society did her good by refreshing her spirits after hard
work. ‘Sitting up late does not mean rising late,’ she
// 067.png
.pn +1
observed. So my friend sat up night after night till
past eleven, then bravely went to her work at six.
Nature could not bear the double strain, and the result
was that a valuable missionary had to rest for six months
in the Hills, leaving her important station without a
single worker.”

“Yes, I see that one should attend to the care of
health for the sake of others,” said Alicia, remembering
the anxiety which her own little attack of fever had cost
her husband.

“And if you are not weary of an old man’s talk,”
continued her father, “might I ask whether, when pursuing
your work so eagerly, you had no idea that you
were doing what Harold, had he known of it, would
have forbidden?”

Alicia coloured, and assented by silence. After a while,
however, she observed, “My husband had never spoken
on the subject.”

“Affection needs not the spoken command; it divines
the will, and obeys it.”

“You are rather hard on me, father,” said Alicia.
“I fear that you will often blame me, if you notice such
little things.”

“These little things seem to me symbolized by the
dimak,” observed Mr. Hartley. “Small errors do not
startle conscience as do more evident sins, that, like the
jackals, give loud warning of their approach. We may
be in little danger of defrauding, or lying, or hating;
// 068.png
.pn +1
but the small faults creep noiselessly on us, working, as
it were, under ground, yet gradually marring beauty of
character and injuring peace of mind.”

“To what special faults do you allude?” asked Alicia.

“Want of consideration for others, foolish talking,
exaggeration, and discontent; to which I must add another,
to which, I grieve to say, I too often give place.
This is irritability of temper,—most unbecoming in a
Christian.”

“I have never seen you show irritability, dear father,
except, perhaps, once or twice with the servants.”

“Sometimes in the bazaars the blasphemy of the infidel
or the insolence of the Moslem makes me speak
with unguarded heat.”

“Surely such anger is lawful in a missionary defending
his Master’s cause,” said Alicia.

“My daughter, no cause is gained by its advocate
losing his temper. I have bitterly repented of words
spoken in a moment of irritation.”

Here the conversation was suddenly interrupted by
Robin’s bursting into the veranda, a spade in one hand,
and in the other an earthen saucer, which he triumphantly
waved aloft.

“After four hours of work, behold the spoils of victory!”
he cried, and he handed the saucer to Alicia.

“What are these hideous fat white creatures?” she
exclaimed, looking with disgust at three huge grubs,
each of the size of her little finger.
// 069.png
.pn +1

“These are the mother-queens of the dimak,” said
Robin gaily, “which the natives, with a sublime contempt
for grammatical rules about gender, call badshahs (kings).
Whether kings or queens, they are the source of all the
mischief done by white ants; and since these are ‘in
captive held,’ we may get rid of their troublesome subjects.”

“What am I to do with the horrid creatures?” said
Alicia.

“Put them in spirits, and keep them as curiosities, or
trophies, if you like the word better. Now, I must be
off, for I have other work to do besides digging;” and
with quick step Robin quitted the veranda.

“Robin dug deep,” observed Mr. Hartley after a pause;
“so he came to the root of the mischief.”

“I am sure that you are thinking of something besides
white ants,” said Alicia. “Perhaps you would
suggest that if we dig down deep enough in our consciences
we may find out the source of our so-called
little sins.”

“Can you not divine them?” said Mr. Hartley. “There
are many; but to preserve our analogy, let us unearth
but three—selfishness, self-righteousness, and self-will.
I have traced most of my own errors to one or other of
these.”

The conversation was not continued. Alicia took
away the unsightly creatures, and her father resumed
his translation. Mr. Hartley paused, however, ere he
// 070.png
.pn +1
had written half a page. “Was I too hard on the dear
child?” he said to himself.

Alicia flung away the queen-ants; she did not care
to preserve them. She felt humbled and a little distressed
by the conversation which had just taken place.
It was a new thing for her to have her faults so closely
dealt with, for her good-natured, easy-going father had
never been aware that she had any; and Harold, though
less blind, was just as indulgent. The brief talk with
an experienced Christian had opened Alicia’s eyes to the
fact that she had a great deal to learn, and a good deal
of discipline perhaps to undergo, before her self-will
should be dug up, and she should become worthy to be
called a missionary’s wife.
// 071.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII||<s>FIRST VISIT TO A ZENANA.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Robin</sc> was very busy during the rest of the week, but
the nature of his occupation was kept a profound secret,
into which no one was allowed to enter but Harold. On
the Monday morning, when the family was partaking of
their warm daliya and milk, Harold turned to his wife
and said, “You have often told me, my love, that you
would like to take a part in mission work here.”
.pi
“I should like it of all things!” exclaimed Alicia. “You
know that I have seen something of the kind of thing
already, as I have been with mission ladies into four or
five zenanas, and I learned a lesson for future use. You
know, darling, that I can read the Bible fairly in Roman
Urdu; I have also learned some texts, and I have a
famous book of pictures. I have practised my stock of
bhajans [native songs] till I begin really to like them,
though I thought them so frightful at first.”

“How many bhajans can you manage?” asked Robin.

“Why, to tell the truth, only two; but many musical-boxes
play no greater number of tunes, and, like a musicalbox,
// 072.png
.pn +1
I’ll go over and over again. I think that I am ready,
at least to make a beginning;” and Alicia glanced with
a shy smile at her husband.

Harold met that look with one of affectionate encouragement;
he was pleased with the spirit shown by his
bride. “I could not let you go to any doubtful place,”
he observed, “or let you do any really rough work; but
I think that I have found an opening for you into a
respectable house, where my young wifie is not likely to
be exposed to any annoyance. Kripá Dé tells me that
you would be welcomed by his aunt, a Kashmiri like
himself, who would feel honoured by a visit from an
English Mem Sahiba. She lives in a kind of fort on
the other side of Talwandi.”

“I think that I know the place,” said Alicia, “for there
is only one house that looks in the least like a fort. It
is high, and surrounded by walls. I have often longed
to pass them and have a peep at the ladies within.”

“The ladies within wish to have a peep of you, my
love. The family is of high caste. I have made careful
inquiries, and I think that in that house you may make
your first attempt to begin mission work in Talwandi.”

“But how am I to go? We have no gári like the
ladies in Lahore and Amritsar, who visited no end of
zenanas. Am I to go on foot, or ride father’s tattu,
with no proper saddle?”

“Robin will, I believe, answer that question for you,”
replied Harold, with a glance at his brother.
// 073.png
.pn +1

“It is time for me to let my cat out of the bag,” said
Robin gaily. “I have given you no wedding present
yet, Alicia, for I could not get it ready before. It is
bigger than your clock, and is to have its siren—<i>inside</i>.
It is made to go, and faster than ever a chimney-piece
clock could go. It is not intended to strike, and yet
strike it may if awkward urchins come in the way. In
short—”

“Behold it!” said Harold, as two men, supporting
either end of a long pole on their swarthy shoulders,
carried a doli into the veranda and set it down.

The party went out to see it.

“This is the Mission Miss Sahiba’s special conveyance,”
observed Mr. Hartley. “In places like this where a gári
is not to be found, or, if available, could hardly be used
in the narrow, crowded streets, a doli is a most convenient
vehicle.”

Alicia praised her doli as much as she could, though
thinking that a big square box had not much of grace or
elegance to recommend it. She admired the pink print
with which it was covered, and the neat green blinds
at the sides. Alicia did not utter aloud the question in
her mind, “I wonder how I shall pack myself into my
box?”

However, this is an art easily learned, and Alicia soon
felt fairly at home in her doli. The men lifted the pole
on their shoulders; and Robin, delighted with the success
of his work and the thanks which it brought, paced with
// 074.png
.pn +1
long strides beside it as it made its first trial trip. Mr.
Hartley and Harold re-entered the bungalow and went
to their several occupations.

“Why should I not go at once to the fort, and give
Harold a surprise by my promptness in obeying his
wishes?” said Alicia to Robin from her doli. “Just
bring me my picture-book and Urdu Bible. You will
see them on my table. I will make my first call this
morning.” Alicia had never forgotten Robin’s answer to
her question, “Shall I not make a capital missionary?”
and was impatient to show him that his implied doubts
were quite unjust.

Robin ran back for the required books. He was
highly amused at his pretty sister’s energy, and regarded
Alicia’s first essay at zenana-visiting much as he would
have regarded a first attempt at skating. To him it was
rather a matter for fun.

The lady and Robin proceeded, chatting cheerfully as
the doli jogged along, as far as the outer gate of the fort,
which was encompassed by a mud wall. The tall building
itself was of brick, quite devoid of windows, but with
squares of open brick-work so let into the upper part
of the house as to give the appearance of perforations,
through which the inmates of the zenana, themselves
unseen, could peep at the world below.

“It looks rather like a prison,” observed Alicia, “and
I see no bell at the gate.”

“We must rattle the chain to give notice of our coming,”
// 075.png
.pn +1
said Robin, who had just helped to extricate Alicia
from her square box.

The rattling was repeated twice, and then the door
was opened just widely enough to let two dogs, furiously
barking, rush out. The doli-men, called kahars, threatened
the animals with their staves; one threw a stone at the
fiercer dog, and made him go limping and howling away.

“I don’t like this,” said Alicia timidly. “Perhaps the
dogs may come back, or there may be others inside.
Robin, please go in first.”

“Go in!” repeated Robin in affected horror. “I
would rather venture into a bear’s den than into a
zenana. It is only open to lady visitors, you know.”

“But can’t I send in the kahars to see that the way is
clear?”

“No; the kahars, being men, must remain outside.
See, there are girls within the court-yard peeping curiously
at you. They will show you the way to the
ladies. You have really nothing to fear.”

Alicia, a good deal against her will, had to enter the
court-yard alone. The kahars remained outside with the
doli, and Robin went back to the bungalow. Brown
girls, with a profusion of metal ornaments on their heads
and a wondrous number of rings in their ears, called to
the English lady to come on. They stood in a doorway
at the other side of the court-yard,—a doorway
which evidently led to the interior of the large building.
As Alicia hesitated, the Hindu girls called more loudly,
// 076.png
.pn +1
giggled and laughed, but did not attempt to approach the
lonely stranger.

“How can I possibly cross the yard with that horrible
cow and calf and two hideous black buffaloes right in
my way?” thought the frightened girl. “I have always
been warned not to go near a cow with a calf. I see
that the creature is tied, but she looks fierce, and I doubt
that there is safe room for me to pass her. What shall
I do! what on earth shall I do!”

At last Alicia called out in her best Urdu to the girls,
“Send man animals take away,” enforcing her demand
by signs; but neither words nor signs had the slightest
effect. Whether the Hindus understood the lady is a
matter of doubt. They certainly took no measures to
obey her; they merely saw that she looked frightened,
and her misery rather amused them.

Alicia saw that she must either go back or go on; the
latter course she deemed dangerous, the former dreadfully
disgraceful.

“I think that there is just room to pass the cow; and
as the buffaloes are resting on the ground, I am not so
much afraid of them: besides, buffaloes’ horns bend backwards—they
do not look made for goring.”

Thus reassured, but anxiously watching the cow, Alicia,
carrying her bag of books and white-covered umbrella,
made a few steps forward. She was only a little afraid
of the recumbent buffaloes, but had never calculated on
the great clumsy beasts being afraid of her. It was so,
// 077.png
.pn +1
however. The animals, who had never seen a European
before, started simultaneously to their feet.[#] The terrified
girl thought that they were going to make a rush at
her, but she gave them no time to make it. Trembling
with fright, Alicia fled to the entrance doorway, and
through it hurried into her doli, and in an excited voice
bade the kahars carry her home. The buffaloes recovered
from their unreasonable fright sooner than did the
lady.

Alicia, extremely mortified at her failure, left her doli
a short distance from her home, hoping to be able to
retire into the bungalow unobserved. But, as it happened,
all the three missionaries were in the veranda,
a consultation on some difficult case having drawn
them together.

“Why, Alicia, where have you been?” exclaimed
Harold, who thought his bride too young to be wandering
about without escort.

“What brings you back so soon?” cried Robin. “I
ran home almost all the way, yet have only won the race
by a neck. You must have paid the fair, or brown,
ladies a very short visit indeed.”

“What visit has been paid?” asked Harold.

“I just tried to do what you wished,” said Alicia,
// 078.png
.pn +1
colouring with shame; “but I found a cow and two big
buffaloes in the court-yard, and so—”

.pm fn-start // A
The writer herself so alarmed two yoked oxen by her appearance that,
with a violent plunge, they freed themselves from their yoke. At another
time, passing on the road a large beast led by a man, its restive appearance
made her call out to him, “Is it <i>nat-kat</i>?” “No; it is <i>frightened</i>!” was
the reply.
.pm fn-end

“You concluded that ‘She who fights and runs away
may live to fight another day,’” cried Robin, mirth dancing
in his eyes. “Well, Alicia, I don’t think that you’re
quite made for a missionary Mem. When I marry I’ll
have a bride who goes to church in good strong boots
instead of white satin slippers.”

“Keep your ill-timed jests to yourself,” said Harold
sternly, for he saw that his wife was distressed.

Robin’s mirth collapsed in a moment. He was not
accustomed to receive so sharp a rebuke from his brother.
It was his turn to flush very red. “Alicia, forgive my
foolish nonsense,” he said. “I am always speaking when
I should be silent.”

Alicia did not reject Robin’s offered hand, but, deeply
hurt, she made her way in tears into the house.

“How did this happen?” inquired Mr. Hartley.

“Alicia was eager to begin her mission work,” was
Robin’s reply, “and so, walking beside her doli, I took
her to the fort. Of course I could not go in.”

“I should have preferred having been consulted, and
having had prayer with her first,” said Harold gravely,
and he followed Alicia into the house.

“How wrong in me to forget that!” exclaimed Robin.
“Alicia and I were like two foolish, impatient children:
neither of us thought of beginning by prayer.”

“Can you wonder, my son, that no blessing followed?”
// 079.png
.pn +1
said Mr. Hartley. “Should we ever undertake the Lord’s
work in a spirit of mere playful adventure? It is
possible, even in these days, to lay a presumptuous hand
on the holy ark of God.”

Later in the day, when Mr. Hartley and Alicia were
alone together, the missionary entered on the subject of
consecrating all labours for the good of others by prayer.

“If you try zenana-visiting again, my daughter, as I
doubt not that you will, I would recommend the habit
of prayer both before and after your work. You will
need courage, you will need wisdom; love and patience
will be required. All are in the treasury of the Lord,
and to be had for the asking. Well said the poet, addressing
the Giver of all good,—
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
              ‘With us is prayer,
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee.’
.pm verse-end
.sp 2
.ni
And as you speed on your way, my child, it will make
your steps lighter and your path brighter if you offer up
‘psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart,’ though the Master alone
may hear. It has been well said that hymns are as
wings to the soul.”

“It was very wrong in forgetting to pray for help,”
said Alicia; “but was I so very wrong in not exposing
myself to danger? You have spoken to me yourself
about the duty of taking care of the bodily frames which
God has given us.”
// 080.png
.pn +1

“As regards not sacrificing health to gratify self-will,”
was Mr. Hartley’s reply; “but to serve God faithfully a
missionary must encounter some risks.”

“Even that of being gored?” said Alicia.

Mr. Hartley could not repress a gentle smile. “The
chance of being gored is so very, very small,” he observed,
“that it may fearlessly be encountered. In all my thirty
years’ experience I never knew of one European being
gored, and scarcely more than four—no, five—that have
even been run at by buffalo or bull.”

“I might be a sixth,” observed Alicia. “What protection
have I against such an accident, going about, as
I must sometimes go, all alone, in a country that seems
to swarm with horned cattle?”

“I think that my daughter should find her safeguard
in the words, ‘Fear not, for I am with thee.’ God’s
grace enables us to reply, ‘I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me.’ It should be a missionary’s privilege to
fear nothing but sin.”

“I am afraid that I shall never be a good missionary,”
sighed Alicia. “Harold should have chosen a stout-hearted,
strong-minded wife.”

“Harold is very well contented with his choice,” cried
a familiar voice behind her, and a kiss followed the words.
“Do not be discouraged, my love, at a little difficulty at
the first start. With patience, pains, and prayer you will
be a capital missionary yet.”
// 081.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX||<s>TRY AGAIN.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>The</sc> following morning, Alicia timidly said to her husband,
“If you approve, Harold, I think that I will try
again to enter the fort. I have been praying about it.”
.pi
“That’s my brave little bride!” said Harold. “I will
make arrangements to prevent your being exposed to
any unnecessary alarm or annoyance. Kripá Dé shall
meet you at the outer gate, pilot you across the court-yard,
and usher you into the presence of the purdah-nishins”
(women secluded in their zenanas).

“Is Kripá, who is almost if not quite grown up,
allowed to enter the ladies’ apartments?”

“Oh yes,” was Harold’s reply: “lads brought up in
zenanas are allowed the freedom of them, even when no
longer mere boys. I have heard lady missionaries say
that they find their best listeners amongst such youths,
especially in those who have received some light from
attending a mission school. Kripá Dé’s aunt is, I understand,
the wife of the principal sircar of the fort; she
is, in fact, the greatest lady in Talwandi. If the way
// 082.png
.pn +1
were not made thus straight before you, I should hardly
sanction your going at all, young as you are, and inexperienced.
Now my great, I may say my sole, hope
of reaching the women of Talwandi is through my
Alicia.”

Mr. Hartley, when leading the family devotions, did
not omit offering a special petition for the young wife
thus about to commence mission work. He prayed
earnestly that her mouth might be opened, and that the
Lord might be her strength in weakness, and her stronghold
in trouble. Especially did the venerable man pray
that being emptied of all self-seeking and self-will, his
daughter might be a chosen and sanctified vessel, meet
for the Master’s use. Alicia felt solemnized as well as
strengthened by the prayer.

Both Harold and Robin accompanied the doli as far
as the gate of the fort, and lingered near till at the
summons of the rattled chain the door was opened by
Kripá Dé. His fair, bright young face spoke welcome,
and with native courtesy the Kashmiri youth relieved
the lady of the weight of her bag. At Kripá’s sign the
dogs ceased to bark, and the nervous buffaloes that were
still in the court-yard showed stolid indifference to everything
but their food. The cow was so quietly ruminating
that Alicia was ashamed of having ever been afraid of
so harmless a creature. Passing through the second
doorway, where the Hindu girls had stood, Alicia, with
her guide, entered another but smaller yard, where were
// 083.png
.pn +1
a good many noisy, curious children in scanty apparel.
This being also passed, Alicia through a third doorway
entered the building itself. As the fort was high, the
visitor had an idea that she would have to mount a
staircase; but entering suddenly almost complete darkness,
Alicia was unable at first to see the least indication
of steps. In this part of the country staircase-windows
were luxuries quite unknown.

“Where is the stair? I can see nothing. Must I
turn to the right or the left?” said the young lady,
stretching out her hand to feel the brick wall.

“This way,” cried Kripá Dé in front; and Alicia
could now dimly trace the steps before her. They
were steep, narrow, and not in particularly good condition.
Alicia had a vague consciousness of plenty of
dust below and cobwebs above.

“How strange it is,” thought the lady, as she groped
her upward way, “that people of high caste and easy
means, living in a large, lofty house, should not care for
comfort, cleanliness or light. What a marvellous difference
Christianity makes even in what only belongs to
this world!”

The train of dirty, eager children followed the lady up
the stair. Alicia emerged into light, and entered what
might be called a gallery, raised above three sides of the
smaller yard, with a low parapet over which there was
a clear view of all that passed below. Behind this
gallery were wooden pillars, some of them prettily
// 084.png
.pn +1
carved, but rather dark with age, and in by no means
perfect repair. Behind these pillars were women’s
apartments, and above them a flat roof. On this roof,
and another higher still, women, mostly wearing
chaddars (veils), and almost all wearing ornaments, were
peeping down at the strangers. The effect was picturesque;
for the bibis on the highest perch stood out in
bold relief against the background of a clear sky. Alicia
found herself the object of a good deal of curiosity
amongst the female denizens of the fort. They had
never seen an English visitor before.

A native lady, with gold-bordered chaddar, and bedizened
with a good many jewels, courteously received
the missionary’s wife. Chand Kor was fairer than most
of the bibis, but not so fair as her nephew young Kripá
Dé. A charpai was dragged out for the lady’s accommodation,
and in order to show her honour a white
cloth was spread upon it. Alicia did not quite know
how to dispose of herself on the bedstead, so she sat on
it English fashion, with her feet resting on the earthen
floor. But from various quarters the cry, “Sit nicely,”
made her draw up her feet and assume the position
which with Orientals is <i>à la mode</i>. There is etiquette
in zenanas.

Alicia was assailed with a number of questions: a
few she understood, a few she guessed at, a few were
as utterly unintelligible as if uttered in the Hottentot
tongue. The visitor was asked about her father and
// 085.png
.pn +1
mother, the number of her brothers and sisters, how long
she had been married, and what salary she received. In
the meantime dirty hands were fingering her dress, and
curious eyes examining the few ornaments which she
wore. Alicia felt puzzled and confused. She looked
around for her ally, Kripá Dé; but he was no longer
present—he had gone away to his school.

To stop the babel of sounds and the stream of
questions, Alicia began to sing one of the two bhajans
which she had learned. The effect of this was magical:
the hubbub was hushed, the most talkative of the Hindus
was for a few minutes silenced.

Alicia then opened her picture-book to give more
direct instruction. She had carefully, with her husband’s
help, prepared her first lesson, which was on the
lost sheep. Alicia had learned the parable by heart,
and had brought with her three good coloured prints to
illustrate it. As a preliminary Alicia said, “What is
this?” pointing to the picture of a sheep.

Heads were bent forward, and the picture examined.

“What is this?” repeated Alicia.

“Sher” (tiger), said the first woman who ventured on
a reply.

“Hathi” (elephant), suggested another.

A third, equally discriminating, guessed that the
picture was that of a <i>fish</i>.[#]

“How will it be possible to get any spiritual ideas
into the minds of those who cannot distinguish the
commonest objects?” thought Alicia. She forgot that
this was probably the first time that the women had
looked on the picture of a sheep: their eyes were
untrained as well as their minds.

At the exclamations uttered, a young girl, quite as
fair as Kripá Dé, turned to have a distant view of the
wonderful book round which the bibis were crowding.
It was but distant, for the girl did not rise from her
place on the floor, near what looked like a round hole.
Into this hole the fair creature, and a darker and
stronger-looking woman beside her, were pounding
away with alternate blows of what appeared to be short
wooden clubs. The natives in this manner separate
rice from the husk. The laborious occupation had made
the young girl’s chaddar fall back on her shoulders,
revealing a pale but to Alicia singularly interesting
face.

.pm fn-start // A
Such guesses were actually made when A. L. O. E. showed such a print.
.pm fn-end
// 086.png
.pn +1

“Is not such work too hard for one so young?” said
Alicia; for the slight, delicately-formed frame of the girl
strongly contrasted with the stout figure and strong
thick arms of her companion in labour.

“Premi always beats rice,” said Chand Kor, as if that
were sufficient reply; and in a sharp tone she bade
Premi go on with her work. The pounding, which had
been suspended for two minutes, perhaps to rest weary
arms, perhaps to give the woman the opportunity of
giving a glance at the pictures, was instantly resumed.
// 087.png
.pn +1

“I suppose that Premi is Kripá Dé’s sister—she is
white also,” observed Alicia. The observation met with
no denial, though it was evident, from the contrast
between the girl’s coarse dress and the youth’s very
elegant attire, that they occupied very different stations
in Chand Kor’s zenana.

“Why does Premi wear no jewels?” asked Alicia.

“She’s a widow,” said a rough-featured middle-aged
woman, whose fat brown arms were encircled with at
least half-a-dozen bracelets.

“A widow—and so young!” exclaimed Alicia. She
had often heard of child-marriages; but seeing is a very
different thing from hearing. It shocked her to think
of the fairest inmate of the zenana being doomed to
life-long labour and degradation. The dejected, hopeless
expression in eyes which looked as if they might sparkle
so brightly under their long dark lashes, awoke in
Alicia a sense of compassion. “Is she a relation of
yours?” asked Harold’s wife of the middle-aged woman.

“She is my father’s widow,” was the reply.

“You mean your son’s!” exclaimed Alicia.

This set the Hindu women laughing; Premi alone
looked almost sternly grave. Several of the bibis
assured the lady that what Darobti had said was true.
Alicia could not doubt that Premi had been married to
a man old enough to have been her grandfather, and his
death at so ripe an age was visited on his poor young
widow as a crime!
// 088.png
.pn +1

“Before the English annexed the Panjab,” reflected
Alicia, “this helpless victim would probably have been
burned alive on the old mans funeral pile. And now she
is a drudge—a slave!” The sound of the heavy thuds
of the club wielded by Premi’s slender hands was painful
to the English lady. It was with an effort that Alicia
opened her Urdu Bible and attempted to read.

Attempted; for Harold’s wife did not, on that first
visit, succeed in gaining one attentive listener. She
was interrupted ere she had finished two verses by an
attendant, who, by Chand Kor’s orders, brought her a
rupee, and something that looked rather like an ill-shaped
cannon-ball made of coarse and very brown
sugar.

Alicia had been told beforehand simply to touch the
money, should any be offered. Had she put the coin
into her pocket, sadly would she have disappointed the
offerer of the silver. But the big ball was something
different; it was intended to be retained, and Alicia had
received no instructions regarding the presentation of
gur. She was afraid of giving offence by rejecting the
clumsy gift. Alicia wondered whether she were expected
to eat the huge lump of brown sugar; but its
size and shape made this an impossible feat. All that
the lady could do was to take the sticky mass into her
hand (thereby sacrificing her glove), and to express her
thanks as well as she could by smiles and saláms.

Alicia then having come quite to the end of her
// 089.png
.pn +1
Urdu, and feeling that it would be impossible to read,
rose from her charpai. Noisy expostulations made her
only the more anxious to depart. Again followed by
her juvenile escort, the young lady made her way down
the dark stair, and was glad when she reached the place
outside the fort where her doli was resting on the
ground. She was rather encumbered by the gur, in
addition to her large bag and umbrella.

“Oh! here is a poor famished wretch, just the person
to prize my brown cannon-ball,” said Alicia to herself,
as her eyes fell on a disgusting-looking being just about
to enter the court-yard—a thin, gaunt man, scantily
clothed, his matted hair daubed like his face with ashes,
which gave him a ghastly appearance. The man held
aloft a pole from which hung a variety of rags, bones,
and other unsightly pendants. Half averting her face,
with a feeling of mingled repulsion and pity, Alicia held
out the gur to the beggar. The man muttered she
knew not what, but did not deign to touch what she
offered.

On returning home, Alicia did not fail to give to the
little missionary party a full account of her visit, ending
by telling of the poor wretch disfigured with ashes and
clothed in rags.

“Oh, how I wish that we had work-houses or alms-houses
here, to which to send such miserable objects!”
cried the kind-hearted girl.

“The jogi would not thank you for imprisoning him
// 090.png
.pn +1
in the most comfortable alms-house that ever was built,”
observed Harold. “The beggar likes his wandering life,
and the honour—I may say worship—which he gains
from the people, who regard him, as the poor wretch
regards himself, almost as a god upon earth.”

“O Harold, you are jesting,” exclaimed Alicia.

“You have little idea, my daughter, of the length to
which superstition can go,” observed Mr. Hartley.

“The dirty jogi would have thought himself defiled
by taking food from your clean white fingers!” cried
Robin. “You thought him a scarecrow; he sets up for
a saint.”

“I could tell you an extraordinary story,” said Mr.
Hartley, “and a true one, which I had from my good
friend Andrew Gordon of the American Mission. It
will show you in a striking manner how pretenders to
sanctity impose on the ignorant natives of India.[#]

“In a large village called Jandran, not long ago, lived
twenty-five families of Megs, a caste of weavers. These
poor people had begun to feel dissatisfied with their old
religion, and to desire clearer light. Whilst in this
inquiring state they were visited by a fagir [religious
beggar], who resolved to offer himself to them as a guru,
or religious teacher.

“‘Have you people ever found God?’ inquired Maston
Singh (such was the fagir’s name).

.pm fn-start // A
For this story at fuller length, and many other curious anecdotes, see
the late Rev. A. Gordon’s interesting work, “Our Indian Mission.”
.pm fn-end
// 091.png
.pn +1

“‘No, we have not found God,’ was the honest reply
of the simple weavers.

““I am quite sure that you have not,’ said Maston
Singh; ‘for God is not to be found in the religion of
either Hindus or Mohammedans. But I can reveal him
to you; and if I can bring him near to you, even causing
your eyes to see him, will you receive and follow me as
your guru?’

“‘Most certainly,’ replied Rama, a leader amongst
the Megs. ‘It is this very thing that we are all earnestly
seeking; this is the great desire of our hearts.’”

“I wish that a Christian missionary had gone to these
honest inquirers, instead of a deceitful fagir,” said Alicia.

“The Megs were to hear the truth afterwards,” observed
Mr. Hartley; “but not until they had found out
that it was not to be learned from a lying fagir.”

“Pray go on with your story, dear father.”

“The poor Megs found that it was no trifling expense
to have to support such a guru as Maston Singh. He
required daily a pound of meal, two pounds of milk,
besides spices, tobacco, and ghee [a kind of preserved
butter]. Nay, the greedy guru must fain have a servant
besides. However difficult it might be to the poor
peasants to supply his numerous wants, they resolved to
make such efforts in order to be taught by him true
religion.”

“How could the man teach others what he did not
know himself?” observed Robin.
// 092.png
.pn +1

“For eighteen long months this guru went on eating
and drinking at the weavers’ expense,” continued the
narrator, “teaching them to despise both Mohammedanism
and the religion of the Hindus.”

“No harm in that,” said Alicia.

“No harm, if Maston Singh had given the true in the
place of the false religions,” rejoined her father; “but
the wretched deceiver summed up his teaching at last
with the blasphemous declaration, ‘Greater than man
there is none; whatever there is, therefore, is now before
your eyes!’”

“Oh, the wretch!” exclaimed Robin: “did he mean
his own miserable self?”

“He did mean himself,” replied Mr. Hartley. “The
atheist, not content with the honour accorded to a guru,
claimed to be regarded as a being divine.”

“Surely this opened the eyes of the Megs,” said
Alicia.

“These poor weavers showed more intelligence than
superstitious Hindus usually do,” observed Mr. Hartley.
“They did not at once fall down at Maston Singh’s feet
and worship him as a god. They said to the impostor,
‘You have indeed dug up Hinduism and Mohammedanism
by the roots, but you have not given us one ray of
light.’ The honest people thereupon consulted together,
and after three days of warm discussion they thus gave
Maston Singh their decision in regard to his blasphemous
claim:—
// 093.png
.pn +1

“‘We ask you to satisfy us just on one point. You
say that there is no being in the universe greater than
yourself. Now, if you will give us some proof of your
power <i>to create and give life</i>, we will be content to
follow your teaching. We do not ask you to make a
camel, or buffalo, or an elephant, but only a little worm.
You can make this of clay; but make one, be it ever so
small, and give it <i>life</i>, so that it shall go, and we will
believe.’”

“Well done, weaver philosophers!” laughed Robin.
“Your proposition was a poser indeed. One would
have liked to see the atheist’s face when he was asked
to create a worm.”

“The poor weavers’ test was a good one,” remarked
Harold,—“the Almighty having reserved the power of
giving life to Himself.”

“I hope that the wretched Maston Singh was kicked
out of the village by the Megs!” exclaimed Robin.

“No,” replied his father: “deceived and robbed as
they had been, the weavers behaved as Christians might
have done. Their spokesman thus rebuked the deceiver,
who had betrayed their trust and fattened on their
bounty: ‘You have said there is no God; we can never
receive this. There is a Creator who made the earth and
the heavens.’ Then the weavers, without injuring him,
sent the false guru away; and Maston Singh departed—I
hope with sorrow and shame—from those whose
simple faith he had vainly tried to destroy.”
// 094.png
.pn +1

“And did no Christian come to tell these dear people
the true way to salvation?” exclaimed Alicia.

“The messenger of Satan was followed by the messenger
from God,” replied Mr. Hartley. “The gospel
was preached with success to the weavers. They
learned not only to revere the divine Creator, but to
adore the blessed Redeemer, who from the fallen worm—man—could
raise the renewed man, indued with life,
and that life everlasting.”

“Oh, it is a grand thing to be a missionary, a <i>real</i>
missionary!” cried Alicia Hartley.
// 095.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X||<s>MARRIAGE AND WIDOWHOOD.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
“<sc>I heard</sc> the ‘Click, click’ of the hot-weather bird to-day,”
observed Robin; “the warm season will burst on
us soon.”
.pi
“Soon indeed!” exclaimed Alicia, fanning herself as
she spoke. “You need not speak of the future; have we
not grilling days already? Are you not all driven into
this little room because the morning sun makes the
veranda like a furnace?—O Harold, surely the heat
without and the fires within have made our bungalow
habitable now!”

“Scarcely yet, my love,” was Harold’s reply.

Alicia would have laughed at petty discomforts in
cooler weather; but with the thermometer making a
sudden rise to ninety, with no intention of resting at
that point, and with a host of flies and musquitoes coming
out to enjoy the warmth, she felt her power of endurance
rather severely tried.

“Oh, these hateful musquitoes!” exclaimed the young
wife, trying, but with indifferent success, to ward off
their attacks with her fan.
// 096.png
.pn +1

“I prefer the musquito to the fly,” observed Robin,
whose face showed numerous signs that the former had
not left him in peace. “The vulgar fly comes buzzing
about you with apparently no definite object, settles on
your pen and drinks the ink, and then makes a dash at
your eye. The musquito is a more chivalrous foe: he
blows his trumpet as a challenge, and defies you to
single combat. He is vigilant and active; so must you
be if you wish to bring him down with a blow. You
see my hand is now resting perfectly still on my knee:
this is a <i>ruse</i> to invite an attack. The enemy sees it,
and—<i>there</i>!” A sharp slap on that hand given by the
right one resounded through the room; but the musquito
had been too quick even for Robin, and soared aloft unhurt,
blowing its horn in triumph. “I’ll have him yet,”
said Robin gaily.

“You make a joke of everything,” remarked Alicia.

“It is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles,”
was Robin’s cheerful reply. “We missionaries should
not want to roll along life’s road in an easy carriage,
bolstered up, and enclosed in a musquito-net.”

“The weather makes my head ache,” said Alicia.
“Robin, why do you smile?”

It would not have been easy for Robin to have
explained the cause of that smile. It was the remembrance
of his own prognostications. Alicia, made a little
irritable by the heat and insect tormentors, felt somewhat
annoyed.
// 097.png
.pn +1

“I will go to the fort,” she said, as she rose from her
seat; “I have not been there for a week.”

“Is not the weather too hot for you?” asked Harold,
glancing up from his desk; “the sun has now a good
deal of power.”

“The sun is hot, but there is at least breathing-space
in the fort,” said Alicia, who disliked the cramped accommodation
of the crowded bungalow.

“I am sorry that I cannot procure for you Kripá Dé’s
escort to-day,” observed Harold.

“I do not want it; I know the way now; I can go
by myself,” said Alicia. She did not choose to set Robin
smiling again at any weakness of hers.

When once in her doli, Alicia repented of the passing
peevishness into which she feared that she had been
betrayed. “It is a wrong, a mean thing,” thought the
young wife, “to feel cross because others take small
worries more patiently than I do. Robin is right: it is
better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles. A poor
missionary I must be, indeed, if my fortitude cannot
stand a hot room or the stinging of a musquito. Oh
for a calm, firm, quiet spirit!”

Alicia had almost forgotten her headache before she
reached the fort. For once the court-yard was clear of
cattle, and the dogs seemed to understand that the white
visitor was not a bear to be baited; they did not even
growl. Alicia, not unmarked but unmolested, made her
way up the dark stair to the women’s apartments.
// 098.png
.pn +1

Again there was the interchange of saláms, again was
the charpai dragged out and spread, again Alicia attempted
to read, and again had the young missionary
the vexation of being interrupted by irrelevant questions.
As a resource from such tiresome and often puzzling
inquiries, Alicia again sang that bhajan of which native
women never seem to be weary, a chord in their hearts
being touched by that verse which may be thus rendered,
though its melody suffers by the translation,—

.pm verse-start
“In this world happiness never can be found;
It is as water-drops spilt on the ground.”
.pm verse-end

“These women have hearts, if one could but reach
them,” thought Alicia, as she saw tears rise to the eyes
of a bibi. “They feel that the world is fleeting and
vain. Oh, when shall we persuade them to raise their
eyes to another, whose joys will never pass away! I
am like one trying to open an iron door which is locked,
and of which I have not the key. Oh, my Lord, do for
me what I am unable to do! Make a clear way for
thy feeble, unworthy child, and give her courage to
enter and patience to persevere.”

The young widow Premi approached with a fat
heavy boy of some two years old sitting astride on her
hip, after the Indian fashion of carrying children. The
slight frame of the girl seemed unsuited for supporting
the weight; she was looking weary and ill.

“Is Premi, young as she is, the mother of that big
// 099.png
.pn +1
boy?” asked Alicia. The bibis laughed, as they were
wont to do on suitable or unsuitable occasions. Several
answered at once, and it was with some difficulty that
Alicia made out that the fat boy was a grandson of
Premi’s deceased husband, and the fifth child of Darobti.
Indian relationships are extremely puzzling to strangers,
not only from the numerous words used to express them
(there are at least five species of aunts), but from the
custom of disregarding accuracy, and calling those indiscriminately
“brothers” and “sisters” who may be cousins
in a distant degree.

The fat infant was deposited in the arms of the fat
mother, and forthwith began to torture her by dragging
at her huge ear-rings—a favourite amusement of native
babies, who appear to consider these glittering ornaments
as made for their own special diversion. Poor Premi
was sent off again to pound rice with the club which
she was almost too feeble to wield.

The sound of the thud, thud of that club went to the
gentle heart of Alicia. “Premi looks so ill,” she observed.

“Only because yesterday was her fast-day,” said Jai
Dé, an old woman who had but one eye, the other having
been lost in small-pox, and who possessed but two
teeth, which seemed by their extra size to try to make
up for the absence of all the rest.

Alicia did not understand the word for “fast,” and it
took her some time to make out, partly by means of
// 100.png
.pn +1
signs, that on the preceding day Premi had touched no
food, and that she was fasting still.

“What bad thing has she done that you should starve
her?” exclaimed the indignant lady.

The Hindus looked surprised at the question, which
betrayed such ignorance of what they thought that
every one knew or ought to know.

“Premi is a widow: of course she fasts every fortnight,”
said Chand Kor; and so, as if tired with conversation
on so insignificant a subject, she asked Alicia to
sing.

Alicia was in no mood for singing; she rose and made
her excuses as well as she could for not lingering longer
in the zenana. “The sun is hot; my head pains me,”
she said, in reply to the women’s expostulations. The
words were true; but it was rather pain in the heart
than pain in the head which so shortened Alicia’s visit.
Amidst the sound of the jabber of many voices, and a
child’s loud roar which reached her as she groped her
way down the stair, there came to the lady’s ear that
hateful thud, thud which told of the hopeless toil of a
weak and helpless slave. Alicia’s soul was full of indignant
pity.

“Oh, this cruel, wicked system!” exclaimed Alicia.
“How long shall the cry of innocent young victims,
doomed to life-long misery, go up to Heaven? Before
the English took possession of the Panjab, the probable
fate of this fair girl-widow would have been to be
// 101.png
.pn +1
burned alive with the corpse of an old man whom
she could never have loved; but was such a fate worse
than that which the young creature must endure for
perhaps forty—fifty years,—even more? It is shameful—it
is horrible! But this one victim may be rescued.
I have a plan in my head, and I will speak of it to my
husband. I think that the merciful Being who breaks
the captives’ chains may have sent me to this dark spot
to set one prisoner free.”

Alicia’s mind was absorbed in forming projects as she
was carried home in her doli. She found Harold and
his father sitting in the veranda, as the sun was no
longer pouring his beams from the eastern quarter, and
the veranda did not face the south. The season had
not yet arrived when it might be needful to close doors
and windows to exclude the hot air, and to live in a
kind of twilight; because light is connected with heat.
Before fiery June should arrive the new bungalow might
be pronounced dry enough to be used by its owners,
who would not, however, sleep in it, but aloft on the
roof.

“O Harold, I must tell you of what I have seen, and
what I have been thinking, and consult you as to what
I must do,” cried Alicia, as, heated and flushed, she threw
herself on the chair which her husband had vacated on
her entrance.

Alicia in a hurried way described what she had seen
in the fort, Mr. Hartley and Harold listening to her
// 102.png
.pn +1
story with silent attention. Neither of the missionaries
was wont to give violent expression to his feelings; nor
was the sad subject of a Hindu widow’s wrongs at all
a new one to them.

“And now I will tell you what I am set on doing,”
continued Alicia; “I mean, of course, if my husband
humour his little wife, as he always does. When our
Paradise is ready (this sun must have made it as dry as
a bone), I mean to bring Premi to live in that nice little
convenient room behind my own, which Robin calls my
box-room. I do not intend to call her my ayah [a servant],
but I will teach her to keep all my things neat,
and in her leisure time she shall learn to sew and knit
and sing. If Premi turn out in the least bit clever—and
there is intelligence in her fine dark eyes—I will teach
her to read the Bible. Premi will be sure to become a
Christian, and she will be the first woman baptized in
Talwandi!” Alicia’s face beamed with pleasure as she
added, “Is not mine a capital plan?”

“It would be, were it practicable,” said Harold
Hartley. He was sorry to throw any shadow of disappointment
on the sweet countenance now so bright
with hope.

“But where is the difficulty?” cried Alicia; “I can
see none. Premi has nothing to make her wish to remain
in that fort, where probably nobody wishes to keep
her.”

“And yet,” said Mr. Hartley very gravely, “were we
// 103.png
.pn +1
to bring Premi here, we might bring on a serious riot in
the district. She, being Kripá Dé’s sister, must like
himself be of Brahmin caste. The Hindus would combine
as one man against us, declaring that the sanctity
of their homes was invaded. The Government so shrinks
from interfering with social matters, that it would probably
afford the poor widow no protection. Premi would
be dragged back to the fort, probably be never again
seen by a European, and possibly be poisoned by her
family on suspicion of having broken her caste.”

Alicia turned inquiringly towards her husband, but
could gain no hope from his looks.

“I have known three innocent persons arrested and
brought into a European court of justice, on the bare
charge of having abetted a Hindu widow’s attempt to
escape from the bondage of which she was tired.”[#]

“Then can nothing be done for poor Premi?” exclaimed
Alicia.

“You may do much, my love,” replied Harold; “not
by freeing the captive, but by giving her that knowledge
which is better even than freedom. You can tell Premi
of a home beyond the grave, of a place at the Saviour’s
feet, of the joy which far outweighs even the heaviest
afflictions of earth.”

Alicia sighed deeply, for she was sorely disappointed
by the collapse of her scheme. She could not dispute
the opinions of those whose benevolence equalled her
// 104.png
.pn +1
own, and whose experience was so much greater. “I
will do what I can,” she said submissively; “and as a
beginning I will learn the translation of ‘Joyful, joyful!’
to sing to poor Premi.”

.pm fn-start // A
A fact.
.pm fn-end

The entrance of Kripá Dé, the Kashmiri convert, with
Robin gave a new form to the hopes of Alicia.

“If we cannot free Premi, surely her own brother
can,” cried the young wife. “As Premi seems to be an
orphan, he is her natural protector; if Kripá Dé place
her under our care, who has a right to object?”

Harold in a few sentences explained to the convert
the lady’s anxiety to rescue Premi from her present
wretched condition. “Would it be impossible for you
to bring her here?” he asked in conclusion.

Kripá Dé looked astonished at the question. “Perfectly
impossible,” was his reply. “I have no power in
a matter like this.”

Alicia felt provoked at a brother’s tamely acquiescing
in what she thought tyranny and injustice. “Harold
or Robin would not stand with folded hands,” thought
she, “were a sister treated as a slave.” Then she added
aloud, “Are you content that poor Premi’s whole life is
to be passed in nothing but sorrow?”

“She had a happy childhood, Mem Sahiba,” replied
the Kashmiri. “Often we played together. She made
my kites, and proudly watched them rising higher than
those of my companions. Often she laughed for joy
when I gave her a share of my sweetmeats. Her life
// 105.png
.pn +1
was very different then from what it was after her
marriage.”

“Did Premi’s marriage grieve you?” asked Robin;
“or were you too young to care about it?”

“Did I not care!” exclaimed Kripá Dé—“did I not
care to have my little playmate taken away, to be given
to an old profligate who had had half-a-dozen wives
already! Mere boy as I was, I felt that the marriage
was something cruel and wicked. When every one else
was rejoicing—except the poor child who was crying—my
soul was full of anger. I did not care for the fireworks;
I would not touch the sweetmeats; I turned
away my head, that I might not see the old bridegroom
in his glittering dress, mounted on his white horse.”

“And did the marriage, mere ceremony as it was,
quite separate you from Premi?” asked Robin.

“I was never able to play with her again, though I
often saw her in the zenana,” replied Kripá Dé; “for she
continued to live in the fort. She was kept a great
deal more strictly, and it was as if a high wall had been
raised between us. I hoped that the child was happy;
the women said that she was so, for she had plenty of
jewels; but I never heard her laugh again as she did in
the days that were gone. I do not think that Premi
cared as much for jewels as our women usually do; she
preferred chaplets of jasmine flowers. Premi was unlike
any one else in the zenana.”

“She looks very much unlike the rest, there is so
// 106.png
.pn +1
much more soul in her expression,” observed Alicia
when Harold had translated to her the words of Kripá
Dé.

“One night,” pursued the Kashmiri, “terrible news
arrived. The bridegroom had had a fit, and fallen down
dead. It was not he but his corpse that came back to
Talwandi. I heard the wailing and the beating of the
breasts in concert which are the signs of Hindu mourning.
Darobti wept loudest and beat hardest. She
rushed at Premi; she abused her; she struck her; she
dragged the bracelets from the widow’s arms; she tore
the rings from her ears;—she thought that she best
honoured a dead father by heaping disgrace on his
widow!”

“Did you see this and not protect the innocent girl?”
exclaimed Robin fiercely.

“I could do nothing,” said Kripá Dé sadly. “Was it
not dastur [custom]? Oh that the good God of whom
you have told me would sweep all such customs away!”

Mr. Hartley rose from his seat and paced the veranda,
with hands clasped and lips moving in scarcely audible
prayer: “O Lord, overthrow this Jaggernath of cruel
custom which is crushing under its iron wheels hundreds
of thousands of innocent victims. Let the lightning of
Thy power, or rather let the light of Thy truth, burst
forth. Save India’s enslaved daughters—the poor child-widows—from
bondage worse than death!”
// 107.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI||<s>WHAT A SONG DID.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Harold</sc> came in late to breakfast on the following
morning. He was not unaccompanied, for his hand was
resting on the shoulder of Kripá Dé. Whilst the young
Kashmiri looked pale and excited, his missionary friend’s
face wore an expression of thoughtful satisfaction which
told of prayers granted and efforts crowned with success.
.pi
“We have a guest to share our breakfast to-day,
Alicia,” he said; “so prepare for him a place and a welcome.—Robin,
I am sure that you will make room for
our new brother, both at the board and in your heart.
Kripá Dé has asked to be baptized, and comes to-day to
take the preliminary step of breaking his caste by eating
for the first time with Christians.”

Mr. Hartley, who had long watched the gradual
growth of conviction in the mind of the young Brahmin,
held out his hand to the convert. “God bless you, my
son,” he said; “the day will never come in which you
will repent having cast in your lot with the followers
of Christ.”
// 108.png
.pn +1

Robin heartily embraced the Kashmiri; and Alicia,
obeying a glance from Harold, held out to Kripá Dé her
small fair hand. The youth kissed it with timid reverence,
and then shyly took his place at the table beside
Robin Hartley.

The English reader can hardly estimate the significance
of so simple an act. The first spoonful of suji
which the convert ate at a Christian’s table was to him
a passing of the Rubicon, a renunciation of all that he
had looked upon as the high privileges of his birth;
it was a cutting himself off from home and family, a
taking up of the cross, the sign of suffering and
shame.

“Kripá Dé will remain here to-day,” observed Harold,
“and at night will sleep on the roof, for we must keep
him concealed. After his baptism, which will take place
early to-morrow, he must depart at once for Lahore till
the first burst of the storm is over. When once it is
known in the fort that Kripá Dé has taken the decisive
step of baptism, it will be hardly safe for him to remain
at Talwandi.”

“But Kripá Dé is of an age at which the law lets
him choose his own religion,” said Robin.

“True, he would not be given up in a court of law,
but his age would not protect him from the violence of
a mob in a remote corner of a district. Kripá Dé’s
baptism is sure to cause great excitement amongst the
Hindus.—Until that excitement subside,” continued
// 109.png
.pn +1
Harold, addressing himself to his wife, “you will have,
I fear, to suspend your visits to the fort.”

“Give up my only zenana!” exclaimed Alicia, “and
just when I have become so much interested in one of its
inmates, and have learned ‘Joyful, joyful!’ in Urdu, on
purpose to give her comfort!”

“The poor little widow could hardly receive comfort
from that Christian hymn,” observed Harold. “If her
present existence be like one in a prison, over the future
to her hangs a heavy curtain of darkness.”

“I might lift it, just a little,” said Alicia, “to let one
little ray come in.”

“To-morrow the news of a baptism will probably
cause the door to be closed against you.”

“Then let me go to-day,” cried Alicia with animation,
rising from her seat as she spoke. “I must, I really
must, see that sweet fair young Kashmiri again.”

“Let her go, Harold, let my brave little sister go!”
exclaimed Robin.

Kripá Dé had been watching the discussion with
eager eyes, as if he could drink in its import through
them. Harold briefly explained to him the lady’s wishes,
and asked him whether she could safely visit the zenana.

“To-day, not to-morrow,” was the reply; “no one in
the fort knows that I am here.”

“But if the women should question you?” said Harold
in English, addressing himself to his wife.

“I am not a bit bound to answer them, even if I
// 110.png
.pn +1
could do so,” said Alicia playfully; “for my conversational
powers in Urdu will not carry me far into any
dangerous subject. I do not know the words for <i>conversion,
baptism</i>, or <i>breaking caste</i>. If the women ask
me a thousand questions, talking together after <i>their</i>
fashion, I shall merely look puzzled after <i>my</i> fashion,
and get out of any difficulty by beginning to sing.”

“Let her go!” repeated Robin, laughing. “I only
wish that I were small enough to be packed into her
bag, that I might see the fun.”

Harold, after consulting his father, gave a rather
reluctant consent. Utterly fearless regarding himself,
he was anxious regarding his wife.

Alicia again, armed with her bag of books, her fan,
and her white-covered umbrella, took her seat in her doli,
and started for the fort. She really ran but little risk
of annoyance, for, as Kripá Dé had said, his relatives
did not know whither he had gone. The Kashmiri’s
determination to declare himself openly a Christian was
as yet a secret known but to himself and the Hartleys.
It would not be at once noised abroad in Talwandi that
he had broken his caste; for Mangal, a Mohammedan, and
faithful to his salt, was the only native aware of the fact.

Alicia proceeded towards the fort without anything
occurring to cause her the slightest alarm. She saw in
the narrow streets the people engaged in their usual
occupations. The mochi glanced up for a moment as
the doli was carried along, then went on with his
// 111.png
.pn +1
delicate work of making slippers adorned with thread
of gold. The clang of the blacksmith’s hammer was
not interrupted, and the sweetmeat-seller, behind his
little pile of metai, looked as unconcerned as if the
passing of a doli were a thing too ordinary to be noticed.
Alicia, to her comfort, saw no sign of any approaching
tempest; nor did the lady meet with any inconvenience
save from the troops of thin, overladen donkeys which
sometimes obstructed the way, notwithstanding the loud
warning “Bach!” (Save thyself!) with which the kahars
tried to clear a passage for the doli.

The fort was soon reached. There, also, the first
feeling of curiosity had passed away. A smaller crowd
of dirty, bare-footed children greeted Alicia with loud,
shrill cries of “Mem! Mem!” and when the upper
terrace was reached, only two or three bibis made their
appearance. To Alicia’s disappointment Premi was not
amongst them. So little interest was shown in the lady,
that Alicia resolved not to visit a zenana again on consecutive
days. The bibis’ stock of questions had been
exhausted, half of them had been misunderstood or
unanswered; the white lady’s dress was the same which
she had worn on preceding days, and she was not likely
to have anything to communicate but what the Hindus
did not care to hear. Sometimes disappointment is
experienced by workers when the hearers who crowded
round them on their first appearance dwindle away as
visits are repeated.
// 112.png
.pn +1

“How different is zenana-visiting from what I had
pictured it to be!” thought Alicia, as she saw the women
eagerly examining some new purchase which had cost
a few coppers, as if it were an object of interest too
absorbing to leave any room for care about the soul.
“I feel as if I were trying with a small penknife to
carve a statue out of granite. It seems hopeless to try
to make an impression. Is it possible to make these
poor heathen think of anything beyond the trifles of the
day?” Alicia showed a few pictures to the children,
who were somewhat more attentive than their elders,
and she tried to betray no impatience when little brown
fingers, just taken from a mouth half-stuffed with metai
(sweets), scrabbled dirty marks on her book.

Then Alicia bethought herself of her new song—<i>that</i>
might help her to gain some attention. Clear rose her
voice in the translation of “Here we suffer grief and
pain,” in which the cheerful tone of the melody belies
the sadness of the first line. But when Alicia had begun
the well-known refrain, which was, of course, in Urdu,
to her astonishment a clear “Joyful, joyful, joyful!”
in unmistakable English, rang from the upper roof.
Alicia, startled, raised her eyes, and saw for a moment,
clear against the blue sky, the unveiled head of Premi
in the act of eager listening. A most un-Oriental flush
was on her cheeks, a bright but bewildered expression
in her eyes, as if she listened to some song from dreamland
and joined in it by some irresistible impulse. In
// 113.png
.pn +1
a moment the voice was silent, the head withdrawn, and
Alicia remained gazing upwards, listening and wondering,
asking herself whether both her senses could have at
once deceived her. Then she turned to the nearest
Hindu, who chanced to be Darobti, standing with her
fat little boy on her hip.

“Does Premi know English?” asked Alicia eagerly.

Darobti at first did not appear to hear the question,
nor to understand it when she did hear. When Alicia
had repeated her inquiry five or six times, it only
elicited the reply, “Premi knows nothing; Premi grinds
corn.” Saying this, Darobti turned away, and sauntered
off to another part of the building.

Was it to teach that song to the children that Alicia
sang it again and again, until little lips began to catch the
refrain? If such were her only object, why were the
Englishwoman’s eyes so constantly wandering from her
auditors in the direction of that lofty terraced roof?
Alicia sang in English as well as Urdu. She lingered
in the fort longer than she would otherwise have done,
in hopes of catching a sight of Premi’s face, with the
rosy blush upon it. Alicia was disappointed in her
hope, and at last quitted the gallery over the court,
where she had now no auditors but the children. As
she descended the dark staircase, Alicia almost expected
to hear Premi’s step behind her. As Harold’s wife was
crossing the inner court-yard she again paused to look up
and listen for that “Joyful, joyful!” from above. She
// 114.png
.pn +1
heard only the laugh of the children and the snort of
a buffalo in the outer yard.

All the way back to the bungalow Alicia could think
of nothing but the incident which had occurred. She
was so eager to tell of it that it was a real disappointment
to her to find nobody in the veranda, and the
bungalow empty. It is one of the trials of the first
year of mission life to feel idle when others are busy,
lonely because companions are out at work. There is
the uncomfortable sensation of being like a drone in the
hive. The remedy is study of the language; but Alicia
felt too unsettled and impatient to sit down to grammar,
and struggle with strange idioms and incomprehensible
combinations of verbs. She sat fanning herself, glancing
up at the clock every two minutes, and wishing for
Harold’s return. The striking of that clock—for Robin
had succeeded in setting it going—was the first thing to
rouse Alicia from her dreamy, indolent mood.

“It would be far better if, instead of wasting my time
thus, I spent more of it on my knees,” thought Alicia.
“A baptism is to take place to-morrow, the first baptism
in Talwandi, and I have never yet in my private prayers
remembered the youth over whom my Harold is rejoicing
with trembling. I have not prayed earnestly,
and as one who believes in the power of prayer, for poor
Premi. I am neglecting one of the best means of helping
those who toil in the mission field, whilst grieving that
I can do in it next to nothing. I am thinking what I
// 115.png
.pn +1
may accomplish when I can speak to natives in their
Urdu tongue, and care too little to pour out to God my
hearts desires in my own. Lord, forgive my selfish
neglect, and shed on Thy feeble child more of the spirit
of prayer, specially of intercessory prayer!”

The tediousness of Alicia’s waiting-time was over;
one by one there rose before her mind the names of
those for whom she ought to plead. Not only did she
pray for her nearest and dearest—they had not been
forgotten in her early prayer—but for servants, kahars,
all who came within reach of her own or her husband’s
influence. With Kripá Dé’s name came that of his
youthful widowed sister; then Alicia pleaded for the
poor ignorant bibis of Talwandi, and the little ignorant
children. Harold’s young wife was surprised to find
how large a circle might be enclosed by the prayer of
one who was but standing, as it were, at the open gate
of the harvest-field which she as yet felt herself scarcely
worthy to enter.
// 116.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII||<s>A STARTLING SUSPICION.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Mr. Hartley</sc> and Robin returned soon after Alicia,
with a spirit refreshed and strengthened, had risen from
her knees. The elder missionary looked so much heated
and wearied that his daughter’s first care was to bring
him a cool, refreshing draught. Then Alicia told of her
visit to Chand Kor’s zenana, and of the strange effect of
a little hymn.
.pi
“And Premi looked a different being,” continued
Alicia, “with that colour on her cheek and that light in
her eyes. It almost seemed as if the English word
‘joyful’ had transformed her into one of ourselves.
She was not like a Hindu at all.”

“You probably mistook the word sung by the young
Kashmiri,” observed Mr. Hartley, who knew how easily
the ear is deceived when something is spoken in a
foreign tongue. He tried to recall some Urdu or Kashmiri
word which might be mistaken for “joyful,” but
none such came to his mind.

Robin looked full of animation; his eyes told, before
// 117.png
.pn +1
his lips spoke, that a new thought had flashed on his
brain. “Is it not possible,” he cried, “that some European
child, whom all supposed to have been murdered
at the Mutiny time, may have been spared to endure
the worse fate of being buried in a zenana?”

“Oh, what an idea!” exclaimed Alicia, clasping her
hands and turning sparkling eyes on Robin. “My own
uncle and aunt and their two little girls were killed in
the Mutiny, more than eleven years ago—at least we
always thought so.”

“At what place?” inquired Mr. Hartley.

Alicia mentioned a distant city.

“That is very far away—not in the limits of the
Panjab. And one thing is evident,” continued the missionary—“Kripá
Dé is undoubtedly a Kashmiri Brahmin,
so no sister of his could be English.”

Alicia looked disappointed; but Robin said quickly,
“Are you sure that the widow <i>is</i> Kripá Dé’s sister?”

“I think that the bibis said so,” answered Alicia.

“Oh, but you might not have understood the bibis;
or the bibis might not have understood you; or—but
here comes Kripá Dé himself with Harold. Let’s have
the real truth from his lips.—Kripá Dé,” he continued,
addressing the convert, “are you and Premi the children
of one mother?”

“No,” replied the youth. “Premi was only my little
playmate when she was a child.”

The negative reply made Alicia’s heart beat fast with
// 118.png
.pn +1
excitement. “Oh, question him more closely!” she
exclaimed, feeling more distressed than she had ever
done before at her knowledge of Urdu being so imperfect.

Mr. Hartley’s interest was thoroughly aroused. “Was
Premi always in the fort?” he inquired of Kripá Dé;
“or can you remember her first arrival?”

“I remember Premi being brought in one night,” said
Kripá Dé; he spoke slowly, like one trying to recall
impressions of the distant past. “She was then quite a
little girl, some years younger than myself. I recollect
that the bibis crowded around her, and that Darobti
jested me about the child’s skin being as white as my
own.”

“She said that you were like brother and sister?”
suggested Robin.

Kripá Dé shook his head and looked embarrassed;
which made the questioner shrewdly guess that Darobti
had joked the boy on the coming of a little white bride
for a little white bridegroom. Marriage, even of infants,
forms a large subject of interest in the Indian
zenana.

Harold, who had been briefly informed by Alicia of
what had occurred, now took the place of catechiser.

“How many years have elapsed since the child was
brought to Talwandi?” he asked.

“Who knows?” was the reply. Native children
keep little count of time.
// 119.png
.pn +1

“Have you no sort of idea? Think again.”

“I was just tall enough then to see over the wall.
It seems a great many years ago.”

“Perhaps ten or twelve?” suggested Robin. “You
know that you are now eighteen. Have you no sort of
guess how old you were then?”

“Perhaps seven or eight,” replied Kripá Dé.

Harold translated each question and answer to his
eager young wife.

“Did those who brought the child not explain how
she came to be in their hands?” inquired Mr. Hartley.

“I cannot recollect; I never heard. It has sometimes
been said in the zenana that Premi was brought from
Kabul; that she is white as being the child of Pathans.
I never considered the matter at all.”

“Ask how the little one was dressed when she arrived,”
said Alicia eagerly.

Kripá raised his hand to his brow and reflected. “I
think that the child had a shawl wrapped round her,
and—yes—yes—one white thing like what the English
wear on their feet!” cried Kripá Dé. “I remember
that; for the bibis laughed, and fitted it on their hands.
We had never seen such a thing before. But why do
you question me thus?” the young Brahmin suddenly
asked.

“Because we suspect it to be possible that Premi is
neither Kashmiri nor Pathan,” said Harold, “but the
child of English parents.”
// 120.png
.pn +1

Kripá Dé’s countenance, with various expressions
flitting rapidly across it, was a study to those who
watched it. Surprise, perplexity, now pleasure, now
pain, succeeded each other on it, leaving at the end one
look of anxious hope as he asked, “If Premi were
English, would she be <i>free</i>?”

“Certainly,” replied every voice; and Harold added,
“No English girl could be kept in confinement; the
Government would claim her, and heavy punishment
would fall on any one who dared to attempt to detain
her.”

“But the difficulty would be to prove that she is
English,” observed Mr. Hartley. Addressing himself to
Kripá Dé, he inquired whether the zenana child had
ever talked of other scenes or of other people.

“Never,” was the Kashmiri s reply—“at least I never
heard of her doing so.”

“There was nothing to awake a suspicion in your
mind that Premi was connected with Europeans? Did
she talk just like those around her?”

Kripá Dé, pressing his hand over his forehead, made
strong efforts to revive any faint impression left on the
sands of his memory, but could not at first discover any.
“If Premi’s language had at first been strange,” he observed,
“I would only have thought that she was speaking
in Pushtoo” (the language of the Afghans).

“My father, are you aware that the commissioner is
now on circuit?” said Harold. “I accidentally heard
// 121.png
.pn +1
to-day that Mr. Thole is encamped at Patwal, only six
miles from this place; but he may possibly have moved
on. Would it not be well to lay the whole matter
before him, and procure from him a warrant for the production
in court of a young widow suspected to be of
English birth? If our suspicions be correct, other proofs
would probably come out if the matter were thoroughly
sifted by a Government official.”

It was now Kripá Dé’s turn to need an interpreter,
and his eyes were anxiously turned towards Robin.

“I think that we should not lose a day in consulting
Mr. Thole,” was Mr. Hartley’s reply. “I have a slight,
a very slight, acquaintance with the commissioner; he
knows who I am, and he will, I hope, give me audience
at once.—Robin, give orders for the tattu to be saddled
without delay.”

“Not, I trust, before you have taken your meal,” said
Alicia pleadingly. “O father, you need rest and refreshment
so much!”

“Why not let Robin and myself go, and you remain
here?” suggested Harold. “You have already exerted
yourself beyond your strength.”

Mr. Hartley would not hear of this arrangement.
He knew the character of Mr. Thole, and that he would
be far more likely to listen to an elderly man, of whom
he had seen something, than to two young missionaries
who were to him utter strangers. Mr. Hartley felt that
the matter might need delicate handling. Mr. Thole was
// 122.png
.pn +1
one of those Government officers who pride themselves
on being strictly just. The commissioner could not
endure the imputation of favouring a countryman,
above all if that countryman happened to be engaged
in mission work, with which Mr. Thole had not the
slightest sympathy. The official’s justice, like ambition,
thus sometimes overleaped itself, and fell on the other
side; and Mr. Thole actually showed no small tendency
to partiality, from the very dread of being considered
partial. Mr. Thole looked upon evangelistic efforts as
a waste of money, if not an actual means of disturbing
the public peace. To the commissioner it was a matter
of indifference whether India were Hindu, Mohammedan,
or Christian; but he was very anxious to do his duty
to Government, very desirous that his district should be
regarded as the most quiet and prosperous in the land.
Mr. Hartley knew that to bring his frank, impetuous,
and not always discreet Robin into contact with a calm,
cold man of the world might utterly defeat his own
desire to make Mr. Thole act in a delicate, difficult
matter. The missionary therefore decided that Harold
and himself should go in search of Mr. Thole, and lay
before him the case of Premi. The only point conceded
was that the expedition should be postponed to a later
hour in the day. Six miles was a short distance, and
Patwal could easily be reached before sunset. After a
brief rest, Mr. Hartley on his tattu and Harold on foot
were on their way to the commissioner’s encampment,
// 123.png
.pn +1
to seek his aid in instituting inquiries regarding the
nationality of Premi. Without the weight of his
authority, it would be impossible to make inquiries at all.

After watching from the veranda the departure of
Mr. Hartley and her husband, Alicia, accompanied by
Robin, returned to the room in which they had left the
Kashmiri. Kripá Dé was not to venture out of the
house, lest he should be seen by any one who might
betray to his family the secret of his being amongst
Christians. Alicia was struck by the anxious, thoughtful
expression on the convert’s fair young face. He
was seated on the floor, with his hand pressed over his
eyes.

“What are you thinking of, Kripá Dé?” asked Robin,
taking his place on the mat beside him, so as to be on
a friendly level with his companion.

“I am trying to recollect more about Premi and the
days that are past,” was the reply. “I remember that
the little child cried and called for her mother, and that
I tried to quiet her with bits of sugar-cane; but I supposed
that the dead mother was a Pathan. There is a
woman in the fort who could, I feel sure, tell a great
deal more about Premi than I am able to do. Has the
Mem noticed an old bibi with one eye who goes about
in the zenana?”

Robin translated the question to Alicia, who replied,
“I remember well an old woman with one blind eye: she
is always talking; she interrupted me every minute.”
// 124.png
.pn +1

“That bibi was the first to carry in the white little
girl,” observed Kripá Dé. “That Jai Dé has said strange
things about Premi; they are coming back to my mind.
Were she questioned, I am certain that she could tell a
good deal more.”

“What things has she said?” asked Robin.

“I have heard her remark, more than once, that it
was unlucky to bring into the fort a child of blood. I
supposed from that word that Premi’s father had been
probably killed in some feud; but with the Pathans
that is a thing too common to attract much notice. Jai
Dé has also said that it must have been to keep off some
bhut [demon] that a black charm had been hung round
the little girl’s neck.”

“A black charm!” exclaimed Alicia eagerly, after the
words had been translated. “Can she have meant a
black locket?”

“Likely enough. But what makes this strike you so
much?”

“After my grandmother’s death,” said Alicia, “her
husband gave a black memorial locket to each of her
female descendants. There were seven purchased; two
went to my cousins in India, and I have another. The
seven were exactly of the same pattern, with a little
inscription, initials, and a date. If Premi had a locket
like mine, I should feel perfectly certain that she is my
cousin.”

Robin, eager as Alicia herself, closely questioned the
// 125.png
.pn +1
Kashmiri. But the youth could only reply on the
authority of Jai Dé that the charm worn by Premi was
black; he had never himself seen it. “But I will try
to see it, if it has not been thrown away,” he cried,
rising hastily from the ground. “I will get from Jai
Dé all that she knows; I will go back at once to the
fort.”

“Stop, madman!” cried Robin, who had sprung to
his feet, and who now laid a strong grasp on the convert’s
shoulder. “If you go back now, we shall never
set eyes on you again. Where does your family suppose
you to be at this moment?”

“On a pilgrimage to the shrine of Máta Devi at
Rangipur,” replied the Kashmiri. “I am not expected
back at the fort till to-morrow at sunset.”

“I hope that you did not tell your people that you
were going on pilgrimage?” observed Robin gravely.

“Of course I did, or I could not have got away,”
replied the convert, without any appearance of shame.

“It was a lie,” said Robin bluntly. “I am sure that
my brother did not know that you had told one, or he
would never have consented to your being baptized
to-morrow.”

Then indeed a flush rose to the Kashmiri’s pale cheek,
and he looked perplexed and troubled. Kripá Dé had
indeed received the Christian faith in all sincerity; but
brought up as he had been in an atmosphere of falsehood,
he could hardly be expected to have that abhorrence
// 126.png
.pn +1
of a sin which he, hardly recognized to be one
which was a characteristic of the English youth. Robin
translated Kripá Dé’s words to Alicia, who was more
indulgent to the weakness of the convert.

“Do you not think,” she observed, “that in some
cases it may be pardonable to deceive, such as this, for
instance, where life itself may be at stake, or the safety
of a soul?”

“Surely such deceit comes from want of faith,” replied
Robin. “Can we believe that He who created the
universe, and called the dead from their graves, cannot
save bodies or souls without our trying to help Him by
breaking His laws?”

“But what is to be done now?” cried Alicia, looking
distressed. “It is of such importance for us to gain
information regarding Premi, and only Kripá Dé can
procure it. What is to be done?” she repeated more
earnestly, as Robin gave no immediate reply.

“Kripá Dé must <i>not</i> go back to the fort,” replied
Robin with decision. “If he go, he will assuredly be
questioned; he may even be asked whether he has eaten
with us and broken his caste. Caste is all nonsense to
us; but to Hindus, and specially Brahmins, to eat with
Christians is a far worse crime than slandering or stealing.
If Kripá Dé be thus questioned, he will be tempted
to lie; and if he do not lie—”

“He will be imprisoned, perhaps murdered,” cried
Alicia.
// 127.png
.pn +1

“Likely enough,” was the rejoinder. “So we must
keep him under our eye.”

“And poor Premi, what is to become of her?”

“Do you not think that the Lord cares for the poor
young widow at least as much as we do?” said Robin.
“My father has gone to try to procure a Government
warrant for Premi to be produced in court. All that
we can do, at least so it seems to me now, is for us to
pray that he may succeed.”

Very earnest prayer was offered, both in English and
in Urdu—in the latter for the sake of Kripá Dé, who
could not otherwise have joined in or have understood
the petitions offered up.

In the evening, when alone with the convert, Robin
tried to impress on Kripá Dé the necessity under which
every real Christian lies to speak the truth always, and
to fear nothing but sin.

“If you do not hate falsehood,” said the young evangelist,
“where is the proof that you love Him who is
the Truth as well as the Life?”

“Did I not give proof of my love for Christ,” replied
the Kashmiri, “when for His sake I threw away my
Brahminical thread?”

Robin was not yet sufficiently versed in Hindu customs
to understand the full force of this simple appeal.
“Was it then such an overwhelming trial to part with
a thread?” he inquired.

Kripá Dé looked as much surprised at the question
// 128.png
.pn +1
as a king might be if asked whether it would be a trial
to part with his crown. Then the young Brahmin told
the strange story of his own early life. He described
the mysterious ceremony with which he had been invested
with the Brahminical thread, revealing to his
listener some of the strange force of that superstition
which helps to choke spiritual life among the Hindus.

“Immediately after the solemn act of putting the
Brahminical sign round my neck,” said the youthful
convert, “I was confined for three days in a closed
room, and was not allowed to have intercourse with
any one but my grandmother. She has since died, and
her ashes, collected from the funeral pile, have been
carried hundreds of miles to be thrown into the
Ganges.”

“Tell me more about your three days of seclusion,”
said Robin.

“During those three days in which I remained shut
up my grandmother was my teacher. She reminded
me of my new duties, and told me what honour I must
claim from the lower orders simply on account of my
being a Brahmin. Through her teaching my vanity
increased: I thought in my pride that I was in possession
of divine power, and could destroy any one who
should dare to stand against me simply by the breath
of my mouth.”

“Could you believe such a tremendous falsehood?”
exclaimed Robin Hartley.
// 129.png
.pn +1

“I did believe it,” was the reply, “and I resolved to
use my power. Immediately after my release, I thought
of trying an experiment on one of my playmates who
belonged to the Kayasta caste, a boy with whom I was
not always on good terms. So after I was set free to
walk about the village and join my former companions,
one of the first things which I did was to pick a quarrel
with the boy whom I wanted to destroy.”

“Kripá Dé, were you ever such a fiend?” burst from
the lips of the astonished listener.[#]

“I was a Brahmin,” said Kripá Dé, as if that were
sufficient reply.

“Pray go on with your story,” said Robin.

“In the quarrel I gave the boy two or three severe
blows, and then warned him not to touch me, as I had
now the power of reducing him to ashes. Notwithstanding
my warning, he gave back as many hard
knocks as he had received. I tried in vain to destroy
him by the breath of my mouth; and at last threw my
sacred thread at his feet, expecting to see him consumed
by fire.”

“And you were disappointed to find that your thread
had no power to work such a horrible miracle!” observed
Robin.

“I was so bitterly disappointed that I ran crying to
// 130.png
.pn +1
my grandmother to tell her what had happened. The
result was a great quarrel between her and my playmate’s
mother, who resented my attempt to burn up her
son. Other women joined in the dispute, and the noise
and wrangling lasted for more than an hour. All that
I had at last was a rebuke, not for wishing to kill my
companion, but for parting with my Brahminical thread,
which was soon replaced by another.”

.pm fn-start // A
This strange story is no invention of my own imagination; it is the
relation of what he himself did, copied almost verbatim from an address by
T. K. Chatterji, a talented Christian native gentleman, who had once been
a Brahmin. Here indeed truth is stranger than fiction!
.pm fn-end

This extraordinary revelation of what the spirit of
Brahminism is made a strong impression on Robin. It
was a glimpse of the features of the demon with whom
the young knight of the Cross was to combat till death
should end the struggle. Robin repeated the story of
Kripá Dé to Alicia that evening.

“I can hardly believe that one who looks so gentle,
so mild, could ever have been possessed by such demons
of pride, hatred, and malice,” she exclaimed.

“The Master has cast out the demons,” observed
Robin, “and the convert is now sitting at the Lord’s
feet, clothed and in his right mind. What a miracle of
grace is a proud Brahmin’s conversion!”

The return of Mr. Hartley and Harold was watched
for eagerly by the little group in the mission home.
Many a time Robin quitted the bungalow to look down
the road and watch for his father’s return. The last
gleam of light faded from the sky, the stars shone out,
but the missionaries had not returned. Kripá Dé was
sent to sleep on the roof; but Alicia and Robin sat up
// 131.png
.pn +1
watching, growing more and more impatient as hour
after hour passed on. At last their uncertainty was
ended by the return of the sais (groom) who had accompanied
Mr. Hartley. The man brought a note from
Harold. What information it contained will be given
in the following chapter.
// 132.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII||<s>OUT IN CAMP.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Mr. Hartley</sc> and his son proceeded on their way towards
Patwal, the slow pace of the tattu allowing them
to converse together, as Harold walked beside his father,
the sais following behind on foot. The conversation was
chiefly on subjects connected with mission work.
.pi
After a while Patwal was reached. Between the stems
of trees in a thick mango tope white tents were seen, on
which the golden rays of the sun about to set cast a rich
warm glow. At a short distance the camels which had
carried tents and luggage were tethered, some crouching
on the ground, some browsing on the lower branches
of trees. Turbaned servants were moving hither and
thither. Extemporized fire-places in the open air, from
whose neighbourhood sundry savoury scents proceeded,
showed that the Sahib’s dinner was in course of preparation.
Mr. Hartley dismounted and gave his card to one
of the attendants, to be taken to the Commissioner Sahib.
After a short delay the servant returned with his master’s
saláms, the Oriental formula of admitting a guest.
// 133.png
.pn +1
As the Hartleys approached the large, square, flat-roofed
tent of Mr. Thole, they heard the commissioner’s voice
from within give the order to lay dinner for three.
India is the land of hospitality; even had Mr. Thole
never before met either of his visitors, he would have
welcomed them to his well-spread board.

For no one need associate the idea of discomfort, far
less that of hardship, with the life of a commissioner going
the round of his district in the cooler months of the year.
A good double tent holds all that even luxury may require.
The great Sahib has his numerous satellites,—munshi
to write, khansamar to cook, and masalchi to
wash up the dishes. He has his bearer to anticipate every
want, khitmatgars to wait at his well-furnished table;
sweeper, water-bearer, camel-drivers, and two servants to
attend on each of his horses—one to groom him, the other
to cut grass. Besides this troop of attendants, from each
town and village near the halting-place come obsequious
natives—those of the higher rank on gaily-caparisoned
horses, the more lowly peasants on foot. Some come to
offer petitions, some to seek employment, some, as it appears,
only to pay their homage to one of the lords of
creation. What lies under all this outward respect we
need not now inquire. The government of our Empress-Queen’s
vast possessions in India may be described as a
kind of oligarchy, the English officials forming an aristocracy
to which all pay at least the semblance of honour.
Low are the saláms, fulsome the compliments paid to one
// 134.png
.pn +1
of the higher grade, the official’s rank rising, it appears,
in due proportion to the shortening of his titles. An
assistant deputy commissioner is a chhotá Sahib (little
gentleman); cut off the first word, and he rises, we may
say, to the rank of a baron; cut off the second, and you
may regard him as an earl at the least. Strange must it
seem to our Anglo-Indians, on going home for good, to
find themselves lost in a crowd, none to follow them,
flatter and fawn, meat dear and chickens expensive.
Some doubtless heave a sigh at the remembrance of the
old days passed in India, when in the pleasant cold
weather they went camping out in the district.

Mr. Thole received the missionaries with courtesy flavoured
with condescension. Even tent-life had not
shaken out of this bara Sahib (great gentleman) all his
starch. Unlike some of his equals, he was in his nature
rather pompous, and did not carry his dignity with the
easy grace which distinguishes those who seem born to
rule.

“I fear that we have come at an inconvenient time,”
began Mr. Hartley; for already the servants were making
preparations for serving in dinner. “A little matter of
business—”

“Oh! we’ll waive the business for the present,” said
the commissioner, with an expressive movement of the
hand. “I’ve been at it since daybreak, settling disputes,
listening to the jabber of villagers, each with a separate
jargon; and now the first duty before me is to do justice
// 135.png
.pn +1
to what comes before me—on the table. Take your
seat, Mr. Hartley; you look as if you needed dinner and
a good cigar after it even more than I do. What! dined
already, you say? Forget the past; let bygones be bygones.”
And with a little chuckle at his own mild joke,
the commissioner sat down to his steaming plateful of
rich mullagatawny. It was evident that to him dinner
was an important business, to which all else must for the
time be postponed.

In vain Mr. Hartley urged that the sun was setting,
and that he was anxious to return to Talwandi before
night should be far advanced. The commissioner must
have his dinner before he could listen to anything which
he called “shop.” The repast was a somewhat lengthy
one, being made more so by conversation; for the commissioner
enjoyed his own good stories as well as his soup.
He told of hunting adventure, and adventure with a
snake; then, as his servant filled and refilled his master’s
glass, there came anecdotes of his horses, and a dissertation
on camels.

“Apropos to camels,” said the commissioner, passing
his damask napkin over his thick grizzled mustache, “I
met with a curious instance of superstition the other day
in regard to the slow-paced brute. An urchin had a fall
from one of the baggage-camels—rather a tall one—and
expecting at least a dislocation to be the result, I was
surprised to see the boy sitting composedly on the ground
as if nothing had happened. ‘Is the fellow not hurt?’
// 136.png
.pn +1
I inquired of a servant. ‘No, Sahib,’ was the careless
reply; ‘it was only a fall from a camel—that is nothing;
it would have been worse had it been from a donkey.’”

“How did he make out that?” asked Mr. Hartley.

“The man was a devout Mussulman, and he explained
the matter in true Mohammedan fashion: ‘You see,
Sahib, that the camel goes slowly on, as if saying “Bismillah”
[in the name of God] at every step; whilst
the donkey shambles on as if repeating, “Naddi tuti,
naddi tuti” [Broken bone], as he jogs on his way.’—Nizam,
bring in the lights.—I think that the Mohammedan
is the most religious of men,” laughed Mr. Thole,
“since his piety extends even to his camels.”

“The ‘Bismillah’ on his lips,” observed Mr. Hartley.
“has often as little to do with his thoughts as the camel’s
pace has to do with his religion.”

The conversation then took a different turn, as the
dessert appeared on the table, and dates on the dish
reminded the commissioner of dates on the tree.

“I think that the tallest date-palms that I ever saw
were by the temple of Máta Devi,” said he. “Of course
you have been to the place,” he continued, addressing
himself to Harold. “There is a most curious idol, of
great antiquity, with jewels for eyes.”

“I have been to the place on a preaching tour,” replied
the young missionary; “but I did not see the idol, for I
did not enter the temple.”

“Would not the Hindus admit you?” said the Sahib.
// 137.png
.pn +1

“Not unless I took off my shoes.”

“And why not take off your shoes?” said the commissioner,
who held what he considered to be very liberal
views. “It is a mere matter of form.”

“Neither as missionary nor as Englishman could I
pay any mark of respect to an idol,” was Harold’s reply.

“Oh! I suppose that missionaries have a code of
their own,” observed Mr. Thole, with the slightest possible
shrug of his broad shoulders; “but I may be supposed to
know as well as even the youngest of them what befits
an Englishman. We Government servants, whilst we are
bound to pay no respect to persons, are also pledged to
pay due respect to all religions. I should think no more
of taking off my shoes in a temple than I should of
taking off my hat in a church. Had we lived in the
days when the goddess Yoyyathal was said to be wedded
to the Indian Government, I might have been bound
to carry the bridal gift; and being an official, the act
would have done me as little harm as receiving the
Kashmir shawl did good to the idol. Do you not see
that?” added the commissioner, still addressing himself
to Harold.

“I do not see it, sir,” said the young clergyman, a
flush rising to his cheek. “There are many officials,
both civilians and military officers, who do not think
that duty to Government supersedes duty to God.”

The commissioner looked somewhat offended, and turning
towards the elder missionary, directed his speech to
// 138.png
.pn +1
him, as if Harold, for presuming to give an independent
opinion, had forfeited any claim to further notice. “Do
you know, Mr. Hartley, any well-authenticated instance
of an official going straight against Government orders
on account of some religious scruple of his own?”

“The most striking instance which occurs to me is
that of a man who resigned ten thousand pounds per
annum rather than violate conscience,” was the quiet
reply.

The commissioner elevated his bushy brows to express
surprise not unmixed with incredulity. “Who might
this man be?” he inquired.

“Sir Peregrine Maitland,” replied Mr. Hartley. “His
story may have perhaps escaped your memory, as so
many stirring events have occurred in India since. This
officer, at that time a leading man, was offered the command
of the Madras army and a seat in Council.”

“He was a lucky fellow,” remarked the commissioner,
leaning back on his chair; “such big prizes don’t fall
often to the lot of a man. Pray go on, Mr. Hartley.”

“Sir Peregrine accepted the high offices on the express
condition that they should not involve him in any connection
with Hindu idolatry.”

Mr. Thole’s muttered “Humph!” and slight smile expressed
no great admiration for Sir Peregrine Maitland’s
superfluous caution. The commissioner helped himself to
a cigar from a case brought by a servant, after the missionaries
had declined one, lighted it, and raised it to his
// 139.png
.pn +1
lip. He smoked it, whilst Mr. Hartley proceeded with
his tale.

“Not many days after the commander had arrived in
Madras, in the first despatch-box which he received as
a member of Council, came a document to sanction the
appointment and payment of dancing-girls in a certain
Hindu temple. Sir Peregrine was expected to sign this
paper.”

“A mere matter of form,” observed Mr. Thole, removing
the cigar from his mouth for a minute. “Whether
the member of Council signed or not, the thing would
be done. It was simply making a dash with his pen.”

“Rather than make that dash with his pen,” said Mr.
Hartley, “Sir Peregrine was ready to resign his high
offices. After looking at the paper the commander called
out to his wife, Lady Sarah, who was superintending the
unpacking of their lately-arrived luggage, ‘Sarah, don’t
open these boxes; I am going back to England.’ And,
after sending home a fruitless appeal to Government, <i>go
back he did</i>, resigning his lucrative offices.”

“And I daresay that he repented so doing to the end
of his life,” cried Mr. Thole.

“Certainly not at the end of his life,” said Harold
Hartley: “no man ever on a death-bed repented of a sacrifice
made for conscience’ sake.”

Mr. Thole did not relish the conversation, and broke it
off abruptly. Throwing away his cigar, he pushed his
chair back from the table, and said in rather a dictatorial
// 140.png
.pn +1
tone to Mr. Hartley, “Now, sir, I am ready to hear about
the business which brought you hither.”

Mr. Hartley felt that the preceding conversation had
been an unfortunate introduction to what was coming,
for Mr. Thole had resumed all his official stiffness. However,
there was nothing to be done but to make a clear,
concise statement of all that had led him to suspect that
Miranda Macfinnis, daughter of a merchant, supposed to
have been murdered with her parents about twelve years
before in the Mutiny, was at present shut up in a zenana
at Talwandi, and, as a widow, treated with cruel harshness
and neglect.

Mr. Thole listened with stern gravity, neither stirring
a muscle nor interrupting by a single question until the
missionary had produced all the slender information that
he possibly could give on the subject. When Mr. Hartley
stopped, the commissioner coldly asked, after a brief
pause, “Have you anything more to communicate, sir?”

“Nothing more at present,” was the reply.

“Then allow me to say that Mr. Hartley has not
shown all the discrimination and judgment which might
have been expected from one of his experience in bringing
before me a case which has not a leg to stand on,”
said the commissioner, with a touch of impatience.
“Your daughter-in-law, a young lady who, as you own,
possesses slight knowledge of Urdu, hears a woman in a
zenana shout out thrice what she is pleased to consider
an English word. It was probably the praise of some of
// 141.png
.pn +1
her myriad gods, <i>jai</i> (victory) being easily mistaken for
‘joy,’ The girl is white; but that is not the slightest
proof of European origin—some Kashmiris and Pathans,
as every one knows, having complexions perfectly fair.
You would have me give weight to the evidence of a
youth who owns that he always considered the girl an
Afghan, and who would never have thought of her as
anything else, had it not been put into his head that
the widow may be a European. And on such cobweb
evidence as this you would have me to do what would
justly make me the most unpopular man in the Panjab,
cause probably a serious tumult, and expose me to Government
censure!” Mr. Thole’s voice rose to a more
indignant pitch at each clause in his speech till it
reached a climax in the peroration: “No, sir; I have
too much regard for the interests of Government and my
own honour to violate the sacred privacy of a Hindu
zenana by a demand for the production of one of its
inmates on an absurd suspicion confirmed by not even
the shadow of truth!” Mr. Thole pushed back his
chair and angrily rose from the table.

“I see the force of what you say, sir,” observed Mr.
Hartley; “but should further evidence be brought forward—”

“Of course, of course, if there be documents or proofs
such as would justify a demand for the girl’s examination,
I would do my duty, whatever opposition might be
aroused,” interrupted the commissioner in a haughty
// 142.png
.pn +1
manner: “at present there seems to be nothing of the
kind; and I can only regret, sir, that you have put
yourself” (“and me” was understood though not expressed)
“to such unnecessary trouble.”

“Then we have only to wish you good-night, sir,”
said Mr. Hartley, attempting to rise; but weary, and
overcome by a sudden attack of giddiness, he was unable
to do so, and sank back on his chair.

“You must not think of returning to Talwandi to-night,
Mr. Hartley,” said the commissioner; “you are
evidently unequal to riding, even if the road were a
smooth one. You and your son can occupy the tent of
my munshi.”

The Hartleys were unwilling to avail themselves of
hospitality offered as a matter of course rather than of
kindness; but Mr. Hartley was too unwell to keep the
saddle, therefore they were constrained to stay till
morning. Harold penned a short letter to his wife,
recounting what had occurred, and ending thus: “If my
father be better, we shall join you to-morrow; but do
not expect us early, as I would not break his morning
sleep. The baptism must be delayed till sunset. If
possible, gain more information regarding the widow;
you may find it advisable to visit the zenana again.”
// 143.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV||<s>THE BLACK CHARM.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
“<sc>How</sc> is it possible that I should gain more information
regarding Premi?” asked Alicia sadly, as she sat alone with
Robin at the breakfast table, Kripá Dé preferring to eat
his food sitting cross-legged on the floor. “I am certain
that I should not be admitted into the fort were I to
attempt to go there this morning. The women paid me
little attention yesterday, and Darobti was offended at
my question regarding Premi. I do not like to visit
where I am not welcome; I cannot go to the fort
to-day.”
.pi
“Yet to-day seems our last chance,” observed Robin,
“as to-morrow the zenana is sure to be closed. Could
you not ‘screw up your courage to the sticking-point’
once more, dear Alicia, and attack the fort like a gallant
missionary lady?”

“It would be of no use,” said Alicia; “I am not
suited for capturing forts. I should only meet with
repulse and defeat. If there were a shadow of hope—”

“I have it!” exclaimed Robin suddenly, clapping his
// 144.png
.pn +1
hand to his forehead as if to prevent the escape of a
thought. “I beg your pardon for interrupting you,
Alicia, but an idea has just come into my head. I can
insure you a welcome, I can insure you an audience, if—”

“If what? I am curious to know,” said Alicia.

“If you will only go to the zenana in your wedding
dress, decked out with your jewels.”

“You are joking, Robin,” said Alicia.

“I was never more earnest in my life,” exclaimed
Robin, and his bright, earnest eyes showed that he meant
what he said. “The bibis might resist you in your
fawn-coloured print; but donning your gleaming white
satin, with the pretty little slippers to match—”

“You absurd boy!” interrupted Alicia, “do you think
that I would cross that dirty court-yard in white satin
slippers?”

“Yes, if it were a very slough!” exclaimed Robin;
“if that were the only way of getting into the house.
Do you not see,” he added more quietly, “that if you
display your jewels you may very well ask the Hindu
ladies to show you theirs? And should a black locket
appear amongst them, why, you would pounce down upon
it like a cat on a mouse!”

“Robins scheme is not so very wild as it seemed at
first,” thought Alicia.

“What say you to my plan?” asked the lad.

“That it would be all very well—if you could only
carry it out yourself.”
// 145.png
.pn +1

“I!” exclaimed Robin, with a burst of uncontrollable
mirth. “Fancy me in white satin, attempting to force
my great splay-foot into one of your delicate slippers!”

“This is too serious a matter for mirth,” said Alicia,
who for once could resist the infection of Robin’s laugh.
“Of course if any one goes, I must go. But it would
be so very strange to put on finery here—in this
jungle!”

“It would be making the very best use of finery,”
cried Robin, who was grave enough now. “It would
be consecrating it to the cause of humanity. I never
thought when I saw you arrayed in your wedding attire,
and considered you almost too fine to be my sister, that
you might make it a means of delivering a zenana prisoner,
and perhaps of bringing her under Christian influence.”

Alicia sighed, reflected a few moments, then said—“Robin,
we must have a prayer together before I venture,
I feel so weak and nervous. I never engaged in
anything so strange and difficult before.”

The brother and sister knelt down together, and
Kripá Dé prostrated himself on the floor, though he
could only guess the import of the prayer. After its
conclusion Alicia went to her own room, unlocked and
opened one of her large boxes, and from its envelopment
of silver paper took out the dress which she had
worn at her bridal.

Some quarter of an hour afterwards Alicia, blushing
// 146.png
.pn +1
under her long white veil, returned to the place where
she had left Robin.

“How absurd I must look in this dress!” she observed,
glancing shyly at her brother.

“Lovely as an angel,” thought Robin, “and going on
the errand of an angel;” but he only said aloud, “I
admire you more in that white satin now than I did on
the first day that you wore it. Come, Alicia; your doli
is ready in the veranda.”

“I hate being seen, even by the kahars; and how can
I pass through the city so strangely attired?”

“We will draw down the blind on either side; no one
shall see you.”

“My satin will be utterly crushed in that box,” cried
Alicia, lifting up the rich folds which swept the veranda.

“I’ll help to pack in the satin; and if the worst
comes to the worst, a crushed dress is better than a
crushed life like Premi’s.”

“Robin, you must go with me; I feel myself in such
an absurd position,” said Alicia, as she with difficulty
settled herself in the cramped space of the doli.

“I will go as far as I may, and wait outside as long
as I can,” was Robin’s reply.

Robin walked by the side of the doli, playfully
prompting, encouraging, supplying his sister with Urdu
words, throwing the light of his own joyous spirit over
the little expedition, till Alicia caught his own love of
// 147.png
.pn +1
adventure. There was nothing so terrible to encounter,
nothing so extravagant to do, nothing so difficult to
accomplish. Alicia was certainly going beyond missionary
rules and regulations, but so peculiar a case had
never been contemplated by those who had framed
them. Alicia was full of brightness and hope by the
time that she arrived at the outer door of the fort.

The kahar knocked with the rattling chain. He
knocked twice, thrice, and yet again; only the bark of
a dog gave reply.

“There is some one within; I hear moving and talking,”
said Robin, and he himself energetically repeated
the summons at the door, which brought a shrill reply
from inside, “Fursat nahim” (No leisure), which is the
Panjabi form of saying, “Not at home.”

“Show yourself,” said Robin to Alicia; “I see a child’s
face peeping over the wall.” As he spoke he threw up
the blind of the doli on the side nearest to the fort, and
then himself rapidly retreated out of sight.

Alicia put one slippered foot out of the doli, and
extended one arm, with its satin sleeve and golden
bracelet,[#] to extricate herself and her voluminous dress.
The effect was magical. Almost a scream of astonishment
// 148.png
.pn +1
came from the top of the wall; then there was
the sound of a rapid rush within; the door was thrown
open, and amidst children’s shrill cries of “Mem! Mem!
devi [goddess], devi!” Alicia entered the court-yard, to
be almost mobbed by a crowd of little urchins of both
sexes, who came staring and shouting to welcome her in.

.pm fn-start // A
It need hardly be said that the lady’s example is <i>not</i> given for imitation.
A missionary’s dress can scarcely be too quiet and unostentatious. It would
be worse than foolish for one to draw on herself the attention which should
be given to the message which she bears. When the lantern throws a Scripture
picture on the sheet, the exhibiter carefully avoids standing in front of
it, lest he should himself hide what he seeks to display.
.pm fn-end

Alicia, a little bewildered and half deafened by the
noise, picked her way as carefully as she could along the
yard, which seemed to be even more dirty than usual.
She was cumbered by the necessity of holding up her
long dress, while at the same time protecting her head
with her white-covered umbrella. It was disagreeable
to be jostled by children whose every touch must leave
a mark on her white satin; but Alicia went on till the
second court was reached, and then the dark stair. Beyond
this there were great pushing and scrambling;
Alicia was almost thrown down the steps by her noisy,
excited young escort. Presently she emerged into daylight,
flushed and heated, with her beautiful dress by no
means improved by the crush.

There was now no difficulty in collecting women;
they came from every likely and unlikely place to stare
on an English lady, or rather on the bridal dress which
she wore. Premi alone stood on the roof above, with
Darobti’s fat baby astride on her hip.

“Sit down, sit down!” cried Chand Kor. “Sit down,
sit down!” echoed the one-eyed Jai Dé. The bibis
were evidently determined to indulge their curiosity to
// 149.png
.pn +1
the full. “Keep back; bad zát” (low caste), shouted
Darobti to the children who were pressing around Alicia
to stroke her smooth satin and finger her jewels.

When a little order was restored, Alicia had to play
show-woman to the various parts of her dress and the
ornaments which she wore. Her satin slippers, her silk
stockings extorted many a “Wah! wah!” the women
feasted on the sight of such pretty novelties. Alicia
had to take even the silver ear-rings from her ears, to
be passed round and admired. The lady’s patience was
almost exhausted before she had any opportunity of
pursuing the object for which she had come. Alicia
seized that of the first lull in the noise and excitement.

“Now show me your jewels—all, all!” she cried,
repeating the lesson learned from Robin.

The bibis were by no means loath to display their
ornaments: chains and head-jewels of marvellous make,
rings for thumbs and sheaths for toes, nose-gems and
ear-gems, and jingling anklets, bracelets of gold, silver,
and glass, were eagerly thrust on the visitor’s notice.
But in vain did Alicia’s anxious eyes search for a black
locket amongst them.

“All, all,” she repeated—“show me all.”

At length the bibis were tired of displaying their
treasures; the Mem Sahiba seemed to have an unreasonable
avidity for seeing jewels. Alicia, heated and tired,
began to despair of ever finding what she had come
expressly to see. Some of the women had gone away,
// 150.png
.pn +1
Chanel Kor had taken to her hookah, and Alicia was
about to rise and depart, when Darobti opened a curious
old box to take out betel to chew—a very common custom
amongst Eastern bibis. At the bottom of the box
lay what looked like a dirty bit of rag, but Alicia’s
quick eye detected in that rag something of European
manufacture.

“What’s that?” asked the lady, pointing to the rag.

The question did not appear to be understood; at
any rate it received no reply. Alicia put out her own
jewelled hand, and to Darobti’s surprise pulled the dirty
thing out of the box. It was part of a child’s sock, and
out of it something dropped on the floor. Alicia could
not repress an exclamation of surprise and delight: it
was indeed a black locket in the shape of a heart!

Darobti stooped to pick it up; but the eager lady was
quicker than she. Alicia was breathless with excitement;
she actually held in her hand the two things
that might prove to others the fact of which she had
now not the slightest doubt—that Premi was her own
cousin. “I have you, and I’ll keep you,” thought Alicia,
after hastily ascertaining that there was an inscription on
the locket, and initials marked in red thread on the sock.

“Give that back!” cried Darobti.

Alicia clenched her prize tightly in her left hand,
then with her right unfastened her own silver brooch,
and held it out to Darobti. “Exchange, exchange,” said
the lady.
// 151.png
.pn +1

Alicia’s very eagerness was the thing to defeat her
own object. Her anxiety awoke in the Hindus both
suspicion and that spirit of covetousness which has such
power over the Oriental. Why should the Mem desire
that little black charm? There must be witchcraft.

“It’s a spell to make us all Karanis” (Christians)
said Darobti. “I’d rather throw the black thing down
the well than let it get into the hands of a Feringhi”
(European).[#]

“It brought no luck when the girl had it,” cried the
one-eyed Jai Dé. “It may have had something to do
with the death of Premi’s husband. Let the black
charm be taken away!”

“Daughter of an owl, you know nothing!” screamed
// 152.png
.pn +1
out Darobti; and an abuse-match began between the
two women, carried on in voices so shrill and loud that
Alicia would fain have stopped her ears. A Hindu bibi
in a passion could probably, in noisy volubility, hold her
own amongst women of any other nationality in the world.

.pm fn-start // A
To show how strong this fear of witchcraft is amongst Hindu women,
I will give another extract, almost as curious as the first, from the public
address of the Christian gentleman and converted Brahmin, T. K. Chatterji.
Speaking of his mother he says,—

“She was very much afraid of the witches, and to protect me from their
evil influences she used to fast often, and make vows to gods and goddesses.
If any devotee happened to visit our village, one of the first things that she
would ask him was, whether he knew anything that would keep me from the
evil influence of the witches. She would pay him money with which to make
puja [worship], and would not mind undergoing any amount of penances for
my good. She was not content doing this only, but procured a costly gold
chain, and enclosed in its links little pieces of the roots of some wild trees
which she thought had the virtue of driving away witches and evil spirits,
and she took great care to hang this chain round my neck. She used to spit
on my forehead whenever I went out to play with other boys or to the village
school, and would not eat anything until I returned home safe.”

Oh, what a picture is here presented to us of maternal love, strong though
blind, and of slavish, misery-making fear! Such superstition, met with in
various forms, is one of the galling chains from which, in God’s strength,
missionaries desire to free their poor native sisters.
.pm fn-end

Chand Kor being of a less irascible nature, and perhaps
less superstitious than the others, was more inclined
to drive a good bargain with the ignorant Mem Sahiba,
who had taken an evident fancy to a black ornament,
old, damaged, and of little intrinsic value. Alicia, confused
and half-frightened, yet resolved, cost what it
might, to keep the locket. Chand Kor perceived this,
and saw her advantage. The lady, willing to exchange
one jewel for another, was driven to bid higher and
higher, till even the contentious women stopped their
quarrelling to see how far the English lady would go.

Alicia s brooch had been rejected; she was ready to add
the ear-rings to match, then the silver buckle which fastened
her band; but her offers were of no avail. Darobti
and Jai Dé kept repeating the word <i>jadugari</i> (witchcraft).
Alicia knew not the meaning of the word, but
she saw that the bibis connected it with the locket, and
thought it probably the name by which lockets are called.

“Give me the little jadugari,” said she, “and take
this,” and she held out her silver chain.

“It is jadugari; she confesses it, the witch!” cried
Darobti, shrinking back as if the chain were a snake
that could bite her.
// 153.png
.pn +1

But the covetous eyes of Chand Kor, the ruler of the
zenana, were fixed on a golden bracelet in the form of
a serpent with diamond eyes, which was the most expensive
trinket which Alicia possessed, and a bridal gift
sent from England.

“Give that, <i>that</i>,” said the Hindu bibi, “and keep the
black thing which you have in your hand.”

Alicia, thoroughly disgusted at the woman’s mean
covetousness, shook her head and rose from the charpai
on which she had been seated.

“Give the charm back!” cried Darobti, becoming
suddenly aware that whilst she was quarrelling with Jai
Dé the cause of the dispute might be carried away.

“Give the charm back!” echoed more than one
voice.

Alicia grasped the locket more tightly. It was the
property of her cousin, not theirs; she would never give
it up except to its rightful owner. A cry for help from
above burst from the Englishwoman’s heart as she made
one step forward.

Strong brown hands were laid on the lady’s arm;
she had no strength to cast them off—helpless as a dove
in the claws of the falcon.

“Give the bracelet!” cried Chand Kor.

With a quick, sudden movement, Alicia drew off the
jewel, and flung it from her in the direction farthest
from the door by which she had entered. It was a
bait, and it took. Every one made a rush in that
// 154.png
.pn +1
direction. Alicia was free—released from the grasping
hands which had held her as in a vice. She
took advantage of the moment, and rushed to the
door which opened on the stair without stopping to
say salám. She would have forgotten to snatch up
her umbrella had she not intuitively seized on it
as a weapon of defence. Alicia rushed so hurriedly
down the stair that she nearly fell in her haste. She
could hear the bibis above quarrelling over the jewel
which she had flung away, which all coveted, but only
one could possess. As Alicia, panting with excitement
and heat, sped first across the inner then the outer
court-yard, she thrust her prize—black locket and dirty
rag—within the body of her bridal dress above her
heart, she was so much afraid that in her haste she
should drop that which had cost her so dear.

Alicia’s troubles were not ended even when with a
sense of relief she passed through the second door and
found herself outside the fort. There was her little doli
indeed in the place where she had left it, but to her
utter dismay Alicia could see neither Robin nor the
kahars. Where could they be? In vain the lady
called aloud, in vain she gazed from side to side; no
one replied, and no one appeared.

“What on earth shall I do!” exclaimed the poor
girl. “I cannot possibly return home with no one to
carry me.”

There stood Alicia, trembling and perplexed, in her
// 155.png
.pn +1
bridal satin, utterly alone, whilst noisy voices, both from
within the fort and the adjacent native town, made her
equally afraid to return to the first, or to attempt to
pass through the other. The sun, now very powerful,
was blazing above her, and fears of <i>coup-de-soleil</i> were
added to other alarms. It was the most miserable
moment that Alicia had ever yet known in the course
of her life; never before had she experienced such a
sense of helplessness and desolation.

“I must get home somehow,” she murmured, after
looking again and again in every direction for her faithless
kahars; “some one may attack me for the sake of
my jewels, and I am so utterly unprotected! O Robin,
Robin! why did you thus desert me? I must try to
make my way back on foot, but not through the town,
oh, not through the town, though I suppose that must
be the shortest way. I must go by the road, but I am
not sure in what direction our bungalow lies. How
dreadful it would be should I take the wrong turn! I
cannot stand still under this fiery sun. I have heard
that when exposed to its heat it is safer to walk, still
safer to run; but if I run I shall attract more attention,
and may be but going faster away from my home. Oh,
if I had only any one to protect and guide me!” exclaimed
the poor young wife.

The sound of her own words seemed to reproach her
for want of faith. Alicia felt that she was only craving
the support of an earthly arm, and was forgetting in her
// 156.png
.pn +1
terror that arm which is ever stretched out to help the
servants of God. “O thou of little faith, wherefore
didst thou doubt?” flashed on the memory of Alicia.
Her exclamations of distress now took the form of
prayer. “Lord, save me, help me, guide me!” she repeated
again and again as she sped on her way, the
rough road marring her slippers, hurting and almost
burning her feet. There was comfort in uttering that
incoherent prayer, solace in realizing that wherever she
might go there was a protecting wing above her. Alicia
did not look much around her; she dreaded meeting the
wondering stare of natives whom she might pass on the
road. But very few people were abroad—here a wandering
fakir, there two or three peasants weeding the fields
on which the crops were almost ripe for the harvest,
which is usually gathered in April. No one molested
the poor young wanderer.

At length Alicia reached a place where the road
divided. There were two paths before her, both equally
dusty and glaring, and she knew not which to take.
Alicia stood still, utterly perplexed. Again the prayer
for guidance burst from her lips, and then she turned to
the right. Before her stretched a long straight road,
white with dust and glare, and bordered with cactus.
On that road, to Alicia’s inexpressible joy and relief, she
saw forms which she instantly recognized. Their backs
were turned towards her, and they were at a considerable
distance; but well did Alicia know the brown tattu
// 157.png
.pn +1
on which her father-in-law was mounted; familiar and
dear to her eyes was the tall form in a sun-helmet
which walked at his side.

Alicia eagerly ran forward, attempting to call out as
she ran; but voice and breath failed her, and she was
only able to gasp out, “Harold, Harold!” in tones too
feeble to reach the ear of her husband. Alicia ran on,
then paused to call again, her heart beating so violently
that she pressed her hand over it to still its throbbing.
A third call, which rose into a cry, burst from her
parched lips. At the distance which separated husband
from wife it was inaudible to any but Harold; but love’s
quick ear caught the sound of the dear familiar voice.
Harold turned round, saw his wife, and hurried back to
meet her, with an expression of surprise, anxiety, and
almost terror on his pale face. Seeing Alicia alone,
strangely attired and greatly excited, a horrible suspicion
flashed across the young man’s mind that the
effect of sunstroke had turned his poor bride’s brain.
In no other way could Harold account for finding her
thus—at some distance from home, unattended, arrayed
in white satin, and running as if for her life. Harold
hastened to meet her, and the poor frightened dove
threw herself into his arms, and burst into a passionate
flood of tears. This still further alarmed her husband,
who mistook the expression of joy and relief for one of
distress. Alicia’s face was crimson with the exertion of
running in the heat, her slight frame trembled violently;
// 158.png
.pn +1
but even at that moment there was a tone of triumph in
her sobbed-out words, “I have it—I have it—safe in
my bosom!”

“What have you, my love, my life?” asked Harold;
but he did not press for a reply. His only thought was
how to get his afflicted wife safe home. Mr. Hartley,
who had turned to see the cause of Harold’s suddenly
quitting his side, had ridden back to the spot where his
son and Alicia were standing, and shared the surprise
and alarm of young Hartley. The missionary threw
himself off his pony with all the energy of youth, and
bade Harold place Alicia upon it. The agitated girl
was lifted to the saddle and supported on it by her husband,
who spoke to her gentle words of soothing, as he
might have done to a frightened child. Very slowly
the party proceeded homewards, Harold holding a white
umbrella over the head of his wife. He did not ask
any questions; but as soon as the short burst of crying
was over, and Alicia had recovered her breath, she was
eager to recount her adventures.

“You wonder at seeing me in such a strange dress;
but Robin said that my best chance of getting into the
fort was to go in my wedding attire. How absurd it
must look!”

“So it is Robin whom I have to thank for this!”
exclaimed Harold angrily. “I shall take care not to
leave you under the care of such a hare-brained mad-cap
again.”
// 159.png
.pn +1

“But Robin was right, quite right!” laughed Alicia.
“I did get into the fort, and I <i>did</i> get the locket out of
the hands of the Hindu bibis!”

“What locket? you speak in riddles, my love.”

“Oh, I forgot that you have heard nothing about the
black heart-shaped locket, just like the one which you
saw hung round my neck on the first day that we met.
Premi had its fac-simile on the day when she was
brought to the fort; Robin and I thought that if we
could only get possession of it, we could identify my
cousin by its means.”

Harold’s face brightened: an intolerable weight was
lifted from his heart; his fears for his wife’s loss of
reason were gone. Mr. Hartley listened as eagerly as
did his son to the full and graphic account which Alicia
now gave of her visit to the fort. Harold laughed at
the bargaining over the locket, and when told of the
flinging away of the bracelet which had had such a
happy effect, the husband exclaimed with proud delight,
“My noble girl, my spirited wife! you deserve to wear
the Koh-i-nur itself on your arm!”

Mr. Hartley’s praise was almost as warm as that of
his son. “It was bravely done,” he said. “Our Alicia
had asked for wisdom and courage, and they were given
in the moment of need.”

“Yes,” said Alicia earnestly; “I feel that I was helped
all through, or I should never have succeeded. Was it
not a mercy that at the very moment when I knew not
// 160.png
.pn +1
whither to turn, you should have been passing along
the road?”

“Had not our departure from the encampment been
delayed by my oversleeping myself,” observed Mr. Hartley,
“we should have been at the bungalow hours before
this.”

“You were so weary—you have been ill!” cried
Alicia. “I cannot bear to ride while you walk; I would
rather, far rather be on foot.”

“My child, I have boots; your little slippers have
been fairly worn out in honourable service,” was the
playful reply.

“Robin must never twit me about them again,” said
Alicia.

“What to me is incomprehensible is Robin’s conduct
to-day!” exclaimed Harold, with a touch of indignation
in his tone. “It is so unlike him to bring a sister into
a difficult situation, and then to desert her, after promising
to keep near.”

“And why did the kahars too run away?” cried
Alicia; “something very strange must have occurred.”

“The mystery will soon be cleared up,” observed Mr.
Hartley, “for we have come in sight of the bungalow
at last.”

The reader will find the solution of the mystery in
the following chapter.
// 161.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV||<s>A STRUGGLE.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>When</sc> Alicia went into the fort in her quest after the
black locket, Robin, keeping the doli in sight, removed
to a place at a short distance where he would be less
liable to observation. There, under a peepul tree was a
well to supply the inmates of the fort with water, and
this water, as is very commonly the case in India, was
drawn up by means of a Persian wheel. This contrivance,
which is never seen in England, is familiar to
dwellers in the East. Two oxen, yoked to a shaft which
is attached to a large wheel, by going round and round
the well make the wheel revolve. Its circumference is
completely encircled with a garland of small earthen pots.
As the big wheel turns round, its lower half in the well,
such of the pots as are lowest dip under the water,
and thus necessarily become filled. The revolution of
the wheel raises these full vessels higher and higher, till
each in turn reaches a point where the turn of the circle
empties out all the water contained in the pot into a
wooden trough. By the water flowing through this
// 162.png
.pn +1
channel, a tiny streamlet is fed to irrigate the fields or
supply the personal wants of the people. To Robin this
manner of raising water by a Persian wheel was nothing
new, but as he now stood waiting he had plenty of time
to watch the simple contrivance, and the revolving wheel,
with its filling and emptying jars, formed itself into a
parable in his mind.
.pi
“These oxen go round and round on a wearisome
course of work, perhaps themselves suffering from thirst
whilst raising water for others. They are like our
home societies, our secretaries and committees, labouring
in dear old England to turn the mission wheel. All
these little jars are emblems of the missionaries themselves;
that one broken at the rim I’ll take as a type of
myself. Here you go down, down, little jar—there’s a
need of humility; keep aloft, and not a drop of water
can reach you. You must descend before you can mount.
There! my jar has disappeared in the well—it is, as it
were, lost in its work; this is the filling time for the little
vessel. There! I see it again, dripping and glistening
and rising! Up it goes to empty itself of its treasure,
to send fertility into the fields, and comfort into the
home, to make the dry furrows laugh with a future
harvest. The jar is but a poor, mean thing of clay, yet
it has its use in the world,—emblem of weak men and
weaker women, of whom God deigns to make use to
carry to the thirsty heathen that water of life—the
knowledge of a Saviour.”
// 163.png
.pn +1

Robin, who of late had not only thought a good deal,
but written a good deal—his pen taking, as he said to
himself, the place of a wife—was so full of his little allegory,
which he thought that he might turn into a poem,
that he did not take notice of the approach of a party
of men, till one of them suddenly addressed him. Turning
his eyes from the Persian wheel, Robin recognized in
the handsomely-attired native near him Thákar Dás, the
chief who ruled in the fort. The Hindu did not give
the Englishman the salám which courtesy demands,
and there was something of insolence in the chief’s tone
and manner as he abruptly said, “Where is Kripá Dé?”

“Why do you ask me?” said Robin, perplexed by
the sudden question.

“Because you are certain to know. You and your
brother have misguided the lad—you have bewitched
him; have you baptized him too?”

“No,” was the curt reply.

“Have you made him break his caste? has he eaten
with you?” demanded the angry Hindu.

“What right have you to inquire?” asked Robin.

“Am I not his father?” cried Thákar Dás.

“Kripá Dé has no father, nor mother neither,” said
Robin, “and he is of an age to choose for himself.”

“He is under fourteen years of age!” cried the Hindu.

“Kripá Dé is full eighteen years old; no one knows
that better than yourself,” said the indignant Robin.
“Happily his janam-patri [horoscope] is with us.”
// 164.png
.pn +1

“You have seen it!” exclaimed Thákar Dás. “Then
the boy is in hiding with you?”

Robin was silent; he could not deny the fact.

The chief gave a signal both with voice and with uplifted
arm to a body of men whom he had stationed at
some fifty yards distance on the road which led to the
mission bungalow. “Off—seize Kripá Dé!” shouted
Thákar Dás; and in an instant the band of Hindus were
rushing in the direction of Mr. Hartley’s house, to execute
the command of their chief, and carry off the disgraced
and degraded Brahmin. Some of these Hindus
were armed with sticks and clubs; but had they borne
swords and guns it would have been all the same to
Robin Hartley. He had but one thought—“Kripá Dé
is in danger; I must warn him. These Hindus have
the start of me; but I’ll be at the bungalow before
them.” And off darted Robin at speed.

Alicia’s kahars, eager, like all natives of India, to see a
tamasha (which might be Anglicized “to be present at
the fun”), deserted the doli, and hurried off in the same
direction.

The other Hindus ran fast; but “with heart of fire
and foot of wind,” the active Robin overtook them mid-way
and passed them, narrowly missing a heavy blow
from a club. Victor in the race, panting and streaming
with perspiration, the English youth came near enough to
the bungalow for his shout to be heard by one within it.
“Up to the roof, Kripá Dé!” He had no breath to say
// 165.png
.pn +1
more. It was too late for the convert to fly with any
hope of escaping; but if he could mount to the roof,
Robin had resolved to take his own stand on the steep
narrow outside stair which led to it, and make good its
defence against the attacking force. “I think that I
can keep the wolves at bay, at least until the arrival
of my father and Harold shall reduce the odds against
me,” muttered Robin Hartley.

Kripá Dé, as commanded, fled to the roof; Robin
shouted to him to lie down flat, so as not to offer a mark
to the shower of bricks with which the pursuers were
likely to assail him. Robin himself caught up a hatchet
which had been left on a heap of rough timber which a
servant had been chopping up for firewood. This was
a formidable weapon wielded by a strong, vigorous English
arm. Robin mounted the steep stair, took his stand
on one of the upper steps, and in an attitude of defiance
awaited the expected rush of men from below.

The Hindus looked up, but did not attempt to come
within reach of the swing of the hatchet. No one
chose to be the first to encounter the fearless boy. A
brief consultation appeared to be held below. Robin
could not hear the words spoken, but he was soon to see
their effect. About half the number of Hindus moved
off. Young Hartley knew that there was no inner staircase
to the bungalow, and therefore considered that the
only way of reaching the convert on the roof was by
passing over his own body. But Robin had forgotten
// 166.png
.pn +1
that Alicia’s “paradise” had a separate outer staircase,
and that the dwellings were so close to each other that
they virtually formed but one. Young Hartley was reminded
of his oversight by seeing dark figures running
over the flat roof of his brother’s house. Robin could
not guard two staircases at once, so springing upon his
own roof with intent to defend Kripá Dé to the last,
he saw the poor young convert struggling in the grasp
of a dozen dark hands. Robin beheld no more, for
he was himself struck down by a bludgeon which laid
him senseless on the flat roof. There he lay, bleeding
and unconscious of all that was passing around him.
When the poor youth recovered his senses, he found the
place deserted; the convert had evidently been carried
off, and all that he had himself gained from the brief
struggle to save Kripá Dé was an aching head, from
which blood flowed freely over his face and dress.
Robin raised himself, first to a sitting posture, then to his
feet, looked around, and then, though feeling sick, dizzy,
and faint, made his way to the stair. He descended the
steps much more slowly than he had mounted them, and
just as he reached the platform below his father and the
rest of the party arrived. Alicia gave a cry of horror
when she saw the state of her poor young brother.

“My boy! what has happened?” exclaimed Mr. Hartley
in alarm.

“Kripá Dé has been carried off,” was the reply. Robin
had no thought for anything else.
// 167.png
.pn +1

“And you?”

“Oh! never mind me. What a blockhead I was to
forget the second stair!”

“Your hurt must be dressed at once,” cried Alicia.

“It’s nothing—a mere knock; the thing to be done
is to rescue poor Kripá Dé!”

Robin was in such an impatient mood that he would
hardly submit to have his wound washed, dressed, and
bound up. Harold played the surgeon, and Alicia the
nurse, wrapping round her brother’s head a delicate white
scarf which had formed part of her own apparel.

“O Alicia, your satin is stained with blood; it will
never be worth anything again!” cried Robin.

“My satin has done its work,” was Alicia’s reply: “I
have through it secured the black locket.”

“Secured the black locket!” exclaimed Robin, springing
from his seat, and clapping his hands for joy like a
child.

“I will now at once write to Mr. Thole a full account
of this cruel, cowardly attack on my son,” said Mr. Hartley,
“and of the carrying away by violence one of her
Majesty’s subjects.”

“And you will add that the proof of Premi’s identity
with Miranda Macfinnis, my wife’s cousin, is in our
hands,” observed Harold; “that Alicia has secured the
black locket, which is exactly similar to the one in her
own possession.”

“And tell of the fragment of a child’s sock,” added
// 168.png
.pn +1
Alicia, “and that it has the initials ‘M. M.’ marked
upon it.”

“Oh, show me these things!” exclaimed Robin.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Harold: “we must not
have the end of the scarf hanging down like a streamer,
instead of binding up your poor broken head. If you
will be quiet, like a sensible fellow, Alicia will show us
her trophies of war.”

With very great interest were the black locket and
piece of old sock examined and handed around. Both
had suffered from time and rough usage, but on the
locket the inscription in minute letters, “E. T., 1856,”
was legible still, as well as the mark on the sock. Mr.
Hartley, after examining these relics, sat down to his desk
and wrote as concise and forcible an account as possible
of the attack on Kripá Dé, the injury received by Robin,
and the manner in which the proofs of Miss Miranda
Macfinnis’s identity had come into the missionaries’
possession. “Doubtless due investigation will bring out
other and yet more convincing evidence,” Mr. Hartley
wrote in conclusion. He then sent off his letter at
once.

“Alicia, you have managed your part of the affair
much better than I have done mine,” said poor Robin,
whose head was aching sorely under its improvised picturesque
turban.

“It was you who put me in the way of doing anything,”
was Alicia’s reply. “I am a coward, and should
// 169.png
.pn +1
never to-day have ventured into the fort at all had you
not given me courage, and helped by your counsels and
prayers.”

“Our exotic has climbed bravely,” said Robin, glancing
at his father. “Did I not foretell that it would soon
smile down on us all?”
// 170.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI||<s>WATER! WATER!</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Kripá Dé</sc>, in the hands of his enemies, at first struggling
madly, then yielding to a force which he had no power
to resist, was dragged away toward the fort. As the
shorter route through the town was taken, the crowd
of excited Hindus around him grew larger as the party
hurried on with their prey. Wild cries and howlings
resounded on every side. Now and then a blow was
given to the helpless captive, which made him feel sensibly
how utterly he was at the mercy of superstitious
fanatics, to whom breaking of caste, especially by a
Brahmin, appeared a horrible crime. Kripá Dé had become
an object of contempt to those who, a day before,
might have fallen prostrate at his feet. The persecuted
youth made no attempt to address the crowd—his voice
would have been lost in the uproar; but he lifted up
his heart in silent prayer. It was less a prayer for
deliverance than for strength to keep faithful unto
death. Kripá Dé knew that a terrible ordeal might be
before him—that, once within the walls of the fort, he
// 171.png
.pn +1
might have to suffer what nature shrank from, and he
mistrusted his own power to endure; but the poor lad
in his misery cast himself on a power greater than his
own. “O Lord, let me not deny Thee! let me rather
die than deny Thee!” was the converts silent but fervent
supplication. It was at once the cry of fear and
the prayer of faith.
.pi
Not all of the excited crowd were permitted to enter
the court-yard of the fort; and of those who pressed
in, but few were suffered to pass the second door, which
led to the women’s apartments, which formed the most
private part of the building. To this part Thákar Dás
resolved to take his prisoner, woman’s entreaties, reproaches,
and curses being, he thought, more likely to be
effectual in shaking the convert’s resolution than the
threats and even the violence of man.

Kripá Dé, after being rudely pushed up the steep
dark stair, had on the upper platform to face the
anger and the insults of the women, as well as to
answer the stern interrogations of the chief of the
fort.

“Where have you been since you left us on pretence
of making a pilgrimage?”

“With friends,” replied Kripá Dé, as soon as he was
able to speak.

“Friends! beef-eaters! slayers of the sacred cow!
Hast thou eaten with them, vile wretch? Hast thou
blackened the faces of thy family, hast thou disgraced
// 172.png
.pn +1
thy dead mother, and cast dust on the grave of thy
father, by eating with the impure?”

Kripá Dé did not deny the charge, and his silence
brought on him a furious volley of abuse from Darobti
and the other women, who assailed the convert with
epithets too vile for repetition here. At a pause, however,
Thákar Dás commanded silence by a wave of his
hand. The chief had loved and been proud of the beautiful
boy whom his wife had adopted, and the Hindu
had not given up all hope of winning Kripá Dé back
to the faith of his fathers. The path of return is not
so much blocked up now as it was once against the return
of those who have forsaken the Hindu religion.

“Hear me, O son of Shiv Prasád!” exclaimed Thákar
Dás. “Thou hast been bewitched by English sorceries,
and hast cast away like a madman the privileges of thy
high birth. But the gods may yet be propitiated and
the Brahmins appeased. The holy waters of the Ganges,
the swallowing the five sacred products of the cow,
with large offerings which I will make for thee at many
temples, thine own pilgrimages, fastings, and ablutions,
may yet restore thee to the high position from which
thou hast fallen, if thou swear by the holy gods to abjure
the faith of the Christians.”

“I would rather part with my life than my faith!”
cried the young Kashmiri, his fair cheek flushing and
his lip quivering as he made the reply.

This declaration renewed the pelting of the pitiless
// 173.png
.pn +1
storm of abuse and invectives. Darobti pulled off her
slipper, and with it struck the youth on the face.

“Why do you treat me thus?” exclaimed Kripá
Dé. “I have done wrong to no man, I have injured
none, I am of an age to choose my own religion. The
English Sircar [Government] will protect me.”

“You are a child; you are under fourteen,” cried
Chand Kor, with the unblushing effrontery often shown
in such cases. “I can swear that ten years ago thou
wert an infant in arms.”

“We can bring a dozen witnesses!” exclaimed Thákar
Dás. “We will do so if the case be brought into
court.”

“The Sahib has my janam-patri,” said the young
Brahmin.

This renewed the tempest of abuse.

“Has the Sahib your sacred thread also?” almost
shrieked out the aunt of the convert.

Kripá Dé was about to say “No;” for to have given
his thread to an eater of beef would have been in the
eyes of the family a crime like parricide in enormity.
But the lad remembered what Robin had said about
falsehood; so he pressed his lips together to keep in the
word, and by silence signified assent. Again Darobti
struck him on the face, and Jai Dé spat at the Brahmin.

About an hour passed thus, a terrible hour, during
which Kripá Dé was the butt of the coarsest abuse.
Then Thákar Dás and his few attendants withdrew from
// 174.png
.pn +1
the women’s part of the building, carefully fastening
behind them the door on the upper part of the stair—the
door of communication between the zenana and the
lower part of the fort, and the two courts which have
been repeatedly mentioned. The weather being warm,
most of the women then went by an outer stair to
the upper terrace, which was also comprised in their
allotted quarters. There, sitting in the sunshine, the
bibis span at their wheels, or prepared vegetables for the
evening meal, which they had not yet begun to cook.
Chand Kor alone remained near Kripá Dé, big tears of
mingled anger and sorrow now and then dropping from
her eyes, and such words as these from her mouth:—“Hac!
hac! would that thou hadst died ere thy lips
could speak! would that the destroyer had strangled
thee in thy infancy! Thou art dead now, cut off!
Thou art like a dead dog, a crushed worm; thou art
lower than the dust of the earth!”

“O my Lord, Thou didst bear shame and reproach
for me!” thought the poor convert; “shall the disciple
not suffer like the Master?”

Hours passed, miserable hours; the heat was oppressive;
Kripá Dé’s mouth was parched with feverish excitement,
and he longed intensely to quench his thirst.
The youth moved towards a brass vessel which he knew
contained water, and was about to pour some into his
hand, when Chand Kor, starting up angrily, overturned
the vessel and emptied it of its contents.
// 175.png
.pn +1

“Who would drink anything out of a vessel polluted
by thy vile touch?” she exclaimed.

“O mother, mother! have you no compassion?” exclaimed
Kripá Dé, addressing Chand Kor by that most
tender of names, in order to touch her heart. “Do you
mean to let the only child of the sister whom you loved
die of thirst in the midst of abundance?”[#] Kripá
knew that the time for the evening meal had arrived.

Chand Kor looked at her nephew sternly and steadily
for some moments, and then said: “No! Mihtab Kor’s
son shall not die of hunger or thirst. I will send thee
food and water, but by the hand of a mitráni [sweeper,
one of very low caste]. Eat, drink, and be doubly defiled!”

“Not by the hand of a mitráni!” exclaimed the
Brahmin, as his aunt went away to mount the stair to
the upper gallery, from which a savoury scent of curry
was now proceeding.

“By a mitráni,” repeated Chand Kor, turning round
to give a look of contempt. “Thou art only fit to herd
with mihtars.”

The English reader will hardly understand the utter
disgust with which the high-caste Hindu looks down
on the mihtar. Forced to make use of his services—for
the mihtar is the scavenger of the house—he is
deemed unclean like the vulture. Food touched by the
// 176.png
.pn +1
mihtar would be thrown away; some Brahmins would
rather die than eat it. Kripá Dé had not yet lost all
the prejudices of his caste; like some native Christians
even of some standing in the Church, he shrank with
repulsion from any contact with one of the mihtar class.

.pm fn-start // A
It was believed that a convert who <i>disappeared</i> had been quietly starved
to death in his home.
.pm fn-end

“But is it Christ-like to despise any human being
whom God has made?” reflected Kripá Dé when left
alone. “Did not the Sahib tell me that Peter was forbidden
to call any one common or unclean? Is it not
true that the Lord died for mihtars as well as for Brahmins?
It cannot really pollute me to take water from
a mitráni when I am dying of thirst. I will drink it,
and thank God for the draught.”

It seemed to poor Kripá Dé that the longed-for water
never would come, he had to wait so long, whilst eating
and drinking were going on above; and now and then
women and girls looked down on the prisoner, and
laughingly asked him if he were ready for food.

The sun had by this time set, and one faint little
star after another appeared in the sky. Then a low-caste
woman, as Chand Kor had threatened, holding in
one dirty hand a chapattie (unleavened cake), and in
the other an earthen vessel, came down the outer steps,
and without speaking put down what she had brought,
then instantly quitted the spot. The mitráni was never
suffered to sleep in the town, far less in the fort; but
Thákar Dás having shut up the only door of communication
with the lower stair, the sweeper had been thus
// 177.png
.pn +1
accidentally detained a kind of prisoner in a place
where she would not be allowed to cook her food, far
less to eat it.

“I could not touch that chapattie—I am too miserable
to be hungry,” thought Kripá Dé; “but, oh, the water!
the water!”

The thirsty captive eagerly caught up the earthen
vessel, and was about to drain it, when he caught sight
of a face, pale with terror, the eyes dilated with fear, on
the terrace above him, and heard a voice, the voice of
Premi, exclaiming in a loud warning tone, “Do not
drink! the water is poisoned!”

Kripá Dé sprang to his feet, and flung the vessel and
its contents over the low parapet beside him into the
court below. He did not doubt for an instant the truth
of the warning; the playmate of his childhood would
never deceive him, and it was only too probable that his
family would prevent the disgrace of his baptism by a
deed of secret murder.[#] But how was Kripá Dé to
escape the double danger of dying of thirst or by poison?
The poor youth rushed to the door at the head of the
inner stairs, with a wild hope to find it unfastened, or
to break it open by a desperate effort. Alas! it was
fast shut, and its strength defied any human effort to
force it. Only one desperate course remained, and the
// 178.png
.pn +1
convert took it. He sprang over the parapet down
into the court—a formidable leap, which no one had
calculated on his attempting. It seemed to Kripá Dé
that it was by miracle that he alighted on the ground
unhurt, but he had not a moment for reflection. In an
instant he dashed into the outer court. He made no
attempt to open the door which led out of the fort;
young, active, and desperate, Kripá Dé took a shorter
way of escape by springing over the wall. He knew
well that he would be pursued; he could hear the shrill
call of the women on the roof who had seen his escape,
and who gave an instant alarm. From the part of the
building where men were eating and smoking rushed
forth fierce pursuers. But Kripá Dé was fleeing for his
life, terror lent him speed, and, unlike Alicia, the convert
knew well the way to the mission bungalow; he
could have reached it blindfold.

.pm fn-start // A
The authoress has had personal acquaintance with three natives on
whom (two of them after recent baptism) such attempts have been made to
destroy intellect, if not life.
.pm fn-end

The family in the bungalow, tired out by a day of
such unusual excitement, Robin feverish from his wound,
and Alicia from the fatigue and exposure which she had
so lately undergone had resolved to retire very early to
rest. Previous to so doing, they met to unite in evening
devotions.

“We will not forget to pray for our poor Kripá Dé,”
said Robin, as he was about to kneel down. The name
was yet on his lips when the convert himself, pale and
panting, rushed into the room and sank down at his
feet.
// 179.png
.pn +1

“Lock the door! bar it! he is sure to be pursued!”
exclaimed Mr. Hartley; and in two seconds Harold had
closed the door and locked it.

“Water!” cried the convert faintly. The hand of
Alicia quickly supplied the fugitive’s need.

“They are after me!” cried Kripá Dé, when he had
drained the glass. “They tried to poison me; Premi
saved me. I fear that she will have to pay dear for
giving me warning.”

“She will not be long in the enemy’s hands, I trust,”
said Harold.

As he spoke, loud angry voices from without and
violent shaking of the door, followed by furious blows,
showed that the pursuers had arrived.

“The door is not strong enough to stand much of
this!” cried Robin; and snatching up a stick which was
at hand, he looked ready for another battle with the foe.

Harold went up to the closed door, and his voice rang
out in clear tones, which were heard above the battering
and the furious demands for admittance.

“Back with you all!” he cried.—“Thákar Dás,
it is no light matter to break into an Englishman’s
home!”

“Give up Kripá Dé! give up the wretch, the apostate!”
yelled the Hindus. Then a brief lull of silence
ensued, that the reply might be heard.

“We will never give him up but with our lives,” said
Harold firmly. “If you think that you have a right
// 180.png
.pn +1
to imprison and poison him, bring your case into court;
we expect the commissioner here to-morrow.”

This announcement was startling to the Hindus, who
had a wholesome dread of bringing on themselves the
wrath of the Sircar. Thákar Dás and his followers
knew that the two attacks on the dwelling of one of the
ruling race would be likely to expose them to serious
consequences, which they had no wish to meet. Heartily
glad were the Hartleys that the letter to Mr. Thole had
been so promptly penned, so quickly despatched.

“Will you not tell them, my Harold,” said Alicia,
“that we have proofs that Premi is of English birth?”

“No!” cried both the brothers almost in a breath;
and the elder added: “If the Hindus knew that this
second charge—that of imprisoning our countrywoman—could
be brought against them, poor Premi would be
only too likely to disappear mysteriously before we
could claim her.”

“Can the Hindus have gone away?” cried Alicia;
“a wonderful stillness has succeeded to that terrible
noise.”

“They are going away like baffled hounds,” said
Robin, who was making a survey.

“We were about to kneel down to pray,” observed
Mr. Hartley; “let us do so now, and join our praises to
our prayers. This has been a day of wonderful mercies.”

Very fervent were the thanksgivings which rose from
the missionaries’ home.
// 181.png
.pn +1

After all had risen from their knees, Robin observed,
“I will sit up to-night; these jackals may return for
their prey.”

“<i>You</i> sit up, looking like a ghost as you do!” exclaimed
Harold. “You have played your part bravely to-day,
old boy, and have left your elder brother nothing but
the office of a chankidar [watchman]. We must all remain
in the house to-night; but to prevent semi-suffocation
the doors must be open. I give you my word that
I will not sleep on my post.”

Harold kept his word, watching till morning; but the
attack on the bungalow was not repeated.
// 182.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII||<s>THE COMMISSIONER.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>The</sc> bara Sahib had proposed to move on his camp to
a distant part of the district. Mr. Thole’s plans were
laid, and he was not a man lightly to change them.
The commissioner’s tents were struck, and put on the
backs of camels; his servants had gone forward in
advance with the cooking utensils—for the great man
must have his dinner ready for him on his arrival at
Dhaul. In order to have it ready, chickens would have
to be captured, killed, and cooked, mutton procured,
vegetables boiled, curry prepared, and of course tents
pitched for the Sahib’s accommodation.
.pi
But plans, however well laid, cannot always be
carried out, and troubles and inconveniences come sometimes
even to Commissioner Sahibs.

First appears the dark sais to inform his master that
his riding horse has cast a shoe, and that no one can
quickly be found to replace it. The blacksmith has
gone to a wedding.

“If I can’t ride, I can drive,” said the Sahib with a
// 183.png
.pn +1
frown. “Order the buggy [gig] to be got ready at
once.”

Accordingly, the buggy-horse is put into harness; but
even as John Gilpin, when on the point of starting, saw
“three customers come in” to detain him, so is the not
very patient commissioner detained by three headmen
from three villages, each with a separate petition to
make. The commissioner mutters something not very
complimentary to his visitors, but stands resolutely to
listen with as good a grace as he can to fulsome compliments
on his wisdom, justice, and generosity, and
then to expressions of that kind of gratitude which has
been well defined as “expectation of favours to come.”
The commissioner is an able man, but there are two
things which he has never quite succeeded in performing,—to
make tedious petitioners study conciseness,
and to keep his own temper under the infliction of
their harangues.

At length the three lambardars are dismissed. Mr.
Thole gets into his buggy, and takes the rein into his
hand. The pawing horse is on the point of starting on
his journey, when another unforeseen annoyance occurs.
A brown urchin has been pelting with bits of hard mud
a large tree near, to bring down the sour fruit which he
sees on its branches. On that same tree wild bees have
been making a kind of nest, larger than the head of a
man. One of the pellets hits the nest, and brings down
the vengeance of its warlike inmates, not on the boy
// 184.png
.pn +1
who has disturbed them, but on the unoffending sais and
horse. The air is full of buzzing, and half-a-dozen bees
presume to attack the Commissioner Sahib himself.
Maddened by the pain caused by a hundred stings, the
poor horse, with bees clustering over his nostrils and
eyes, rushes forward at speed, dashes the buggy against
the stump of a tree, breaks the harness, and smashes the
wheel.

Such an incident as this may scarcely merit the name
of an adventure, but is fraught, as the writer has seen,
with consequences very unpleasant. The sais, rolling
on the ground and yelling, with a black cap of bees on
his head, the horse frantically struggling, the great
man only able to rid himself of his despicable foes by
rushing to a small tank or pond happily at hand, form
together a scene of discomfiture and disaster. At the
close of an hour, behold the horse, freed indeed from his
tormentors, but trembling as if with ague; the sais,
groaning aloud in his pain; and the commissioner, with
both cheeks swollen to an unnatural size, and one eye
partially closed.

Here comes another man with a paper; making a
salám, he presents it to Mr. Thole.

“Where does this come from?” asks the commissioner
with a frown.

“From the Padre Sahib,” is the messenger’s reply.

“Oh! I had enough of these missionaries last evening,”
mutters Mr. Thole; and he is inclined to fling the despatch
// 185.png
.pn +1
aside, when the word “Urgent” on the envelope catches
his eye. In no mild mood he tears it open to glance at
the contents, which are written in a clear, even handwriting,
as if to invite perusal. Mr. Thole glances at
the signature at the end, “Robert Hartley,” and sits
down on the stump against which the wheel of his buggy
was smashed, to read whilst awaiting the coming of his
riding-horse, for which a smith has at last been found.

Mr. Thole begins to read with that sour expression on
his damaged face which denotes an inclination to dispute
or deny whatever may be written in the paper before
him. But, not gradually but almost suddenly, that
expression changes to one of interest, mingled with
surprise.

“This <i>is</i> a strange case, a very extraordinary case,”
he mutters. “A locket found in a zenana—a locket
the very counterpart of a family memorial possessed by
young Mrs. Hartley, with a legible inscription too. And
part of a child’s sock, marked with initials. This is
strong, decidedly strong corroboration that these rascally
natives have really abducted an English child, Miranda
Macfinnis, cousin by the maternal side of a lady now
in Talwandi!” The commissioner rose from his seat;
his national pride was roused. “If this crime can be
proved—this offence against the ruling power—these
villanous Hindus shall rue it. The case must be investigated
without delay. Ho! Mir Sahib!” (a servant
answers the call), “send off at once after my servants
// 186.png
.pn +1
and tents; call them back. I must be to-morrow at
Talwandi.”

“Talwandi!” exclaims the astonished man.

“I am not accustomed to repeat my orders twice,” is
the irritable reply.

It had shown knowledge of the character of the man
with whom he had to deal when Mr. Hartley in his
letter had put the case of Premi first; had he begun
with a complaint regarding the violent carrying off of
the Brahmin convert, Mr. Thole would have felt no
sympathy, and have put the case aside for a while,
muttering some abuse of missionaries as weak, meddling,
mischievous men. But “What will they say in England?”
rose to Mr. Thole’s mind, to quicken his interest in the
romantic story of the long-lost Miranda. The commissioners
indignation was also roused by the personal
attack made on an English youth by the Hindus; he
admired the young man’s courage, while undervaluing
the missionary’s zeal.

Talwandi was in a state of great excitement on the
following morning when the news that the Commissioner
Sahib had arrived spread like wild-fire through the
town. Thákar Dás naturally connected the great man’s
coming with the attack on the mission bungalow, and
the blow received by Robin Hartley from the hand of
one of the chief’s attendants. Thákar Dás determined
utterly to disclaim having had anything to do with such
a breach of the law; he would declare that he had never
// 187.png
.pn +1
approved of violence, that the attack had been made
without his sanction, and even without his knowledge.
The Hindu was wily as a fox; but whilst avoiding the
trap, he found himself in an unsuspected pit.

Numbers of the inhabitants of Talwandi crowded the
court, which was held in a tent. Mr. Hartley and his
sons were present, and Kripá Dé in their midst, the
object of fierce, angry invectives from the people, who
were restrained from more violent persecution only by
the august presence of Mr. Thole.

The commissioner opened the sitting in a way utterly
unexpected by the Hindus. It was as if a bomb-shell
had fallen amongst them when Mr. Hartley, coming
forward, in a clear voice requested the production in
court of a widow, known by the name of Premi, whom
he could prove to be an Englishwoman, Miranda Macfinnis,
detained unlawfully in the fort.

Mr. Thole sternly demanded of the chief, Thákar Dás,
whether he knew anything of such a person.

Thákar Dás was utterly taken aback. At first he
stammered forth a flat denial that such an individual
had ever been seen at Talwandi.

“Can any witnesses be produced?” asked the commissioner.

“There are two present,” was Mr. Hartley’s reply:
“one, this young Brahmin, who saw the English child
when she was first brought into the fort, and has had
frequent opportunities of conversing with her since;
// 188.png
.pn +1
the other, this lady.” He turned towards Alicia, who with
a thick veil down was standing beside her husband.
“Mrs. Hartley has not only seen the widow more than
once, but has heard from her lips a fragment of an
English hymn which could not have been learned from
her Hindu companions.”

“Let this Premi be produced at once,” the commissioner
said in a tone of command.

Then the wily Hindu changed his tactics, showing as
little regard for consistency as he had done for truth.
He declared—shedding tears to confirm his words—that
the widow was to him as a daughter; she
had been brought up in purdah; she would die of
shame, she would kill herself, if forced to leave her
seclusion.

The commissioner’s only reply to this pathetic appeal
was a reiterated command to produce her. If she were
not brought into court, an order to search the fort would
be given.

There were murmurs of anger and looks of indignation
amongst the bystanders, even low threats might
be heard; but Mr. Thole was determined to carry his
point, and he did so.

After tedious delay, a form, supported between two
old women—for it seemed almost ready to fall—appeared
in the court. The form was so entirely muffled from
head to foot in a large white sheet that its shape could
scarcely be defined. A silence prevailed which was broken
// 189.png
.pn +1
by the commissioner’s voice: “Remove the sheet; the
woman must be identified, or the case cannot proceed.”

Thákar Dás fell on his knees, and flung his turban on
the ground in a passion of distress. Shedding plenteous
tears, he exclaimed, “My daughter! my daughter! she
will never survive the shame of being uncovered before
the eyes of strangers. O your highness! O dispenser
of justice! spare me and my house this terrible disgrace.”

The Hartleys felt pity for the humbled chief. Harold
stepped forward, and addressing the commissioner said:
“Might it not be sufficient, sir, for my wife to see and
identify this lady?”

“Let Mrs. Hartley ascertain that the person in court,
who from her feebleness appears to be of great age, is
really identical with the young widow in question,” said
Mr. Thole.

Alicia approached the drooping figure before her, encountering
as she did so a look of mingled anger and
terror from Jai Dé, who was one of the women acting
the part of supporter. Gently the lady drew back a
part of the shrouding sheet, and then started back with
an exclamation of horror. “They have been murdering
her!” cried Alicia. The old women, relaxing their hold,
retreated backwards, and the veiled form sank on the
ground.

“Water! bring water!” cried Robin, and he rushed
out to procure some.
// 190.png
.pn +1

The sheet was at once and entirely removed from the
slight form of the senseless sufferer. With unutterable
indignation the Europeans beheld the young girl’s
bleeding and bruised face, still bearing tokens of delicate
beauty, and the white arms on which the marks of
violence showed how cruelly the fair creature had been
treated. Harold, kneeling, supported poor Premi in his
arms, whilst his wife bent over her with all the tenderness
of a sister.

“A European, without the shadow of a doubt!” muttered
Mr. Thole with indignation. “If my poor young
countrywoman die, there is some one here who shall
swing for it.”

Perhaps the keenest feeling was shown by Kripá Dé
as he gazed on the ghastly features of the playmate of
his childhood and exclaimed, “They have punished her
for saving my life; she is dying for me.”
// 191.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch18
CHAPTER XVIII||<s>WAITING TIME.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>But</sc> Premi was not dying. She had been severely,
mercilessly kicked and beaten, but no vital part was
injured. What she needed was kindness and care, and
that she found in the home of her cousin.
.pi
The result of her case, which filled many columns in
local papers and was the sensation of the day in England
when the account of it reached that land, may be
summed up here in few words. Premi, or Miranda, as
we may now call her, could never be persuaded to tell
at whose hands she had received her terrible beating.
Some feeling, perhaps of delicacy, perhaps of pity for
her old female companions, prevented her from letting out
the secret. From the impossibility of knowing who was
the actual offender, no inmate of the zenana received the
due reward of her barbarous conduct. Alicia suspected
Darobti; but neither her name nor that of any other
bibi escaped the lips of Miranda. She seemed to wish
to draw a thick purdah over the past.

Thákar Dás narrowly escaped very severe punishment
// 192.png
.pn +1
by being able to prove that it was not he, but a brother
since dead, who had brought Miranda Macfinnis into the
fort. The Hindu declared that he did not know that
she was English; that he had taken her in from motives
of pure compassion; and though few believed his vehement
assertions, the contrary could not be proved. But
the chief could not so easily meet the second charge—that
of having directed two attacks on the mission
bungalow, in the first of which an Englishman had been
wounded and a Hindu youth violently carried away.
The attempt to poison Kripá Dé aggravated the offence:
though it was not proved that Thákar Dás actually
committed the crime, there was strong suspicion against
him. A very heavy fine was inflicted, with long imprisonment
in default of payment. Thákar Dás was a
disgraced and ruined man. Unable otherwise to pay
the heavy penalty imposed, the Hindu had to give up
his fort and the land held for centuries by his forefathers,
and, accompanied by the female portion of his
family, quit for ever that part of the country.

Mr. Thole had expressed his opinion that Chand Kor
should be compelled to return to Mrs. Hartley the gold
bracelet which she had tried to win from her by meanly
bartering for it a bauble not worth a tenth part of its
value, and not even legally her own. But Harold declined
such reparation in behalf of his wife. “Mrs. Hartley
threw the bracelet to the women of her own free will,” he
said, “and, I am sure, would not desire such restitution.”
// 193.png
.pn +1

“Was I right, darling?” he said to Alicia, after his
return from an interview with Mr. Thole.

“Quite right,” answered his wife. “I would never
wish to take back anything given for the Lord or His
work.”

Alicia never knew the fate of that jewel. It was
sold ere long with other valuables to purchase the bare
necessaries of life for Chand Kor and Darobti, who had
to pound their own rice and grind their own corn for
themselves.

The evening after the conclusion of the trial, which
lasted for some days, Alicia said joyfully to her husband,
“Now one sheaf at least is gathered home. Premi—I
mean Miranda—is our own, quite our own. She has
almost recovered now, and will soon, I think, lose all
trace of her bruises, and look lovelier than ever.”

“You say that Premi is quite our own, my love,”
observed Harold; “but are you her nearest relative? I
think that you have more than once mentioned that she
has a brother in England.”

“Oh! Cousin Gilbert, who was at home preparing
to go to college in the Mutiny year, and so escaped the
fate of his poor parents.”

“He is then Premi—Miranda’s natural protector and
guardian.”

“I should be sorry to trust her to his care,” cried
Alicia. “Gilbert is a gay, thoughtless sort of fellow,
and has been lately married to a foolish fashionable girl.
// 194.png
.pn +1
I should be most unwilling to send our rescued cousin
to them. It would not be mercy to her.”

“We must think of justice as well as of mercy, my
Alicia. A brother has a right to be consulted about the
future of an orphan sister. The English mail goes
to-day; will you write to your cousin, or would you wish
me to do so?”

Alicia felt and looked disappointed. She had encountered
much difficulty in finding a jewel, and then
in drawing it from the dark mine in which it had been
buried; and now, was she contentedly to hand it over
to one who had given nothing, suffered nothing, and who
might place no value on what had cost her so much? It
was with rather an ill grace that Alicia sat down to her
desk. Everything seemed to combine to make the task
distasteful. The wood of the desk was warped by the
heat, the ink in the bottle half dried up. Alicia had to
throw away one quill pen after another, and her own
heated, languid hand moved wearily over the paper,
which the pankah (for Robin had contrived a pankah in
the new house) was perpetually trying to blow away to
the other side of the room. The hot season was beginning,
Alicia’s first hot season, and everything that she
did was done with an effort.

Alicia had other little troubles connected with her
newly-found cousin, troubles which she poured forth to
Robin in the evening, when sunset had brought some
slight relief from the heat. The brother and sister were
// 195.png
.pn +1
slowly pacing up and down the veranda, Alicia with
rather a melancholy air.

“Is anything vexing my fair sister?” asked Robin
in that cheerful and kindly tone which invited confidence
and usually obtained it.

“I do not like to trouble Harold with all my small
perplexities,” replied Alicia, wearily fanning herself as
she spoke.

“First let me relieve you of your fan, and then do
you relieve yourself of your perplexities,” said Robin,
taking from Alicia her little hand-pankah. He swayed
it to and fro with an even, measured movement, far more
effectual and soothing than Alicia’s fitful, fluttering shake.

“I thought that it would be so easy to make Premi
happy and comfortable in my Paradise,” said Alicia (the
coming of the guest had hastened the removal to the
newly-built house). “I thought that the poor girl
would find kindness and love so delicious after her
miserable life in the fort. But in trying to make her
well and happy, I find a difficulty at every step.”

“You know the definition of a difficulty—‘a thing to
be overcome,’” remarked Robin. “Let us look steadily
at yours; perhaps it will vanish as we look.”

“Of course Premi needs nourishment,” said Alicia;
“but it is hard to know what to give her, especially as
the hurt on her hand makes her unable to cook for herself.
We all know that for invalids doctors always
prescribe beef-tea, so I was determined that Premi should
// 196.png
.pn +1
have it. With no small trouble I procured some beef
from Chuanwál; I boiled it myself, for I could not trust
Mangal to cook it—he always fails in the soup.”

“Heroic Alicia!” exclaimed Robin; “did you really
stand fire in such weather as this?”

“Cooking certainly was no pleasure,” replied Alicia;
“but I managed to do something, for I was so anxious
to give my poor cousin what might help to make her
well soon. I thought that she would enjoy anything
prepared by my hands.”

“And the result?” asked Robin smiling, for he guessed
what it was likely to have been.

“The poor foolish thing rejected my beef-tea almost
with horror, as if I had been offering her boiled toads
or snakes, or something equally disgusting. Premi
clenched her teeth tightly, turned away her head, and
would not touch nor even look at my soup.”

“You must remember, sister dear, that poor Premi
has been brought up from childhood to regard beef-eating
with utter disgust. She is now free from Hindu
slavery, but the chains of its superstition are hanging
on her still. We must have patience, dear Alicia, and
try to remove them so gently that we shall not gall the
poor wrists that have worn them so long.”

“Another difficulty is about dress,” said Alicia. “Premi—Miranda—came
clad in little better than rags, blood-stained,
too, from her terrible beating. I felt that
Miranda should dress like an English lady, as she really
// 197.png
.pn +1
is one by birth. I made the effort of rummaging through
one of my big boxes—everything now is an effort—and
selected a parcel of clothes. I thought that Miranda
Macfinnis would look so nice in one of my neat-fitting
costumes.”

Robin playfully inquired how Miranda Macfinnis had
appreciated the costume.

“Not at all,” replied Alicia, smiling notwithstanding
her disappointment. “Miranda made not the slightest
attempt to help me to perform her toilet, though she
offered no actual resistance. I had to dress her as I
would have dressed a large doll. I held the sleeve
ready, but the passive arm had to be guided into its
place. I had to put every little hook into its corresponding
eye, and after all my trouble saw that the
clothes sat ill on one who had never donned a tight-fitting
garment before. However, I was glad that a
tiresome task had been accomplished, and led Premi—I
mean Miranda—in front of my mirror to let her see the
effect.”

“What did she think of her own reflection?”

“Miranda just caught up her own soiled chaddar, and
drew it closely around her—head, blue dress, and all.”

Robin laughed at Alicia’s vain attempt to make her
cousin look like an English lady.

“The worst was when I tried to make my cousin put
boots on,” continued Alicia, unable to resist joining in
Robin’s mirthful laugh. “Her feet are certainly not
// 198.png
.pn +1
larger than mine, and I had chosen an easy pair of boots.
But all my persuasions and attempts to draw on the
obnoxious articles ended in a burst of crying and sobbing
on Premi’s part, and something like despair on
mine.”

“Why distress the poor girl by compelling her to
adopt English dress when she would look so much more
beautiful in her own?” cried Robin. “Would you
compare an ugly stiff hat—I beg your pardon, Alicia—with
a chaddar falling in graceful folds round a slight,
youthful form?”

“But suppose that Gilbert should send for his sister,”
cried Alicia, with something between playfulness and
impatience, “would you have her create a sensation by
tripping barefoot up a London staircase, or introduce
her to a fashionable sister-in-law wrapped up in a
chaddar?”

“Wait till you know what Gilbert decides on, and at
least wait till cooler weather comes, before you inflict
the torture of the boot on poor little feet accustomed to
freedom. And as regards chaddars, could you not contrive
to manufacture one out of your odd pieces of
muslin?”

“But Miranda will never be able to appear as a lady
in England if we let her continue to dress like a Hindu,”
observed Alicia smiling.

“I do not think it likely that she will ever go to
England,” said Robin; “and if she remain at Talwandi,
// 199.png
.pn +1
surely it is better that Premi should remain as a kind of
silver link between European and native. She will be
far more useful in mission work if we do not quite separate
her in dress and habits from those whom she once
deemed to be her own people.”

“In mission work!” exclaimed Harold, who had
just joined his wife and brother in the veranda. “Robin,
do you forget that the poor girl is as yet not even a
Christian?”

“She will be one,” cried Robin the hopeful. “We
shall see Premi a Christian—yes, and a worker. Alicia
will rejoice over her sheaf.”

“God grant it!” said Harold fervently. “Were
Premi, who is so conversant with everything regarding
Hindu zenanas, to be able to assist my dear wife in her
work there, she would be an untold blessing to us all.
Thákar Dás will be compelled to quit the fort, and I
hope to be able to purchase it. I have been writing
by this mail to Clarence, Ida, and other friends, to collect
means for making the purchase.”

“And what would you do with the large building if
you had it?” asked Alicia.

“I should find abundant use for it, my love. There
would be space not only for a boys’ school, a prayer-room,
and library, but for a place where converts might
sleep. And—what think you, my Alicia?—might there
not, in the women’s apartments, which are, as you know,
in a separate quarter, be collected little Hindu girls from
// 200.png
.pn +1
the town to form a small school, a little centre of light,
to be presided over by my dear wife?”

“With Premi to teach under her!” exclaimed Robin.

“I think this is rather like building in cloudland,”
observed Alicia, but she smiled as she spoke.

“If Premi is to be a teacher, she must be a learner
first,” said Robin; “anyways, Miss Miranda Macfinnis
should know how to read.”

“I will begin to teach her to-morrow,” said Alicia.

The task proved harder than that of persuading
Miranda to adopt English costume. Robin made an
alphabet in large Roman letters, to master which was to
be Miss Macfinnis’s first step on the ladder of learning.

“I will teach her four or five letters each day,” Alicia
had remarked, “and the alphabet will be mastered in a
week.”

But a week passed, and all the young teacher’s efforts
had not enabled her pupil to see clearly the difference
between an A and an O.

“Miranda is dreadfully dull at learning, though quick
at everything else,” sighed Alicia, when confiding her
new trouble to Robin. “She, an English-born woman
nearly sixteen years old, will not master the English
alphabet.”

“Why not try the Gurmuki?”[#] suggested Robin;
“it will be easier for one who knows no language but
Panjabi to learn the familiar sounds.”

.pm fn-start // A
Gurmuki is the character in which Panjabi is usually written.
.pm fn-end
// 201.png
.pn +1

“I do not know the Gurmuki alphabet myself,”
observed Alicia, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“Oh! I’ll teach you both, if you will be my pupils,”
cried Robin. “Kripá Dé would have taught you better,
no doubt; but as we’ve sent him off to Lahore for safety
and further education, you must accept me as a master
in default of a better. Premi is too shy of Harold to
learn from him.”

It was true that Premi was less painfully bashful
with Robin than with either his father or brother. Mr.
Hartley was to her the buzurg (elder)—reverenced but
feared; Harold was the Padre Sahib, in whose presence
the shy young creature always drew her chaddar over
her face; but Robin was a privileged person with Premi
as with every one else. She knew that he, like herself,
had risked life to save Kripá Dé; she looked on him as
her old playmate’s bhai, or brother, and even spoke of
him by that name. Robin once laughingly observed
that Miss Miranda Macfinnis did not regard him as one
of the lords of creation at all, but as a big, good-natured,
shaggy dog, whom she did not expect to bite her.

So, under his tuition, Gurmuki lessons were begun,
and Alicia was surprised to find that Premi learned more
rapidly than herself, and with keener enjoyment.

“Does Miranda know her own early history? is she
aware that she has relations in England?” Harold inquired
one day of his wife.

“She does not know much. You see, dearest, that I
// 202.png
.pn +1
am scarcely strong enough yet in Urdu to tell a long,
complicated story.”

“Robin had better tell her. Miranda does not seem
shy with him,” observed Harold.

So, on the following morning, before lessons were
begun, Robin gave Miranda a short, clear account of
those early days of her life which had left no impression
on memory. Miranda listened as she might have done
to the story of what had happened to some one else
many years ago. It was to her a thing of the past.

“But all this has to do with the present too,” observed
Robin. “Do you know, Premi, that you have a white
brother in England?”

“And a white sister too,” added Alicia, “the wife of
that brother.”

There was a soft pleading look of love in Miranda’s
dark eyes as she drew Alicia’s hand to her own bosom,
then pressed it to her own lips, and murmured, “Premi
wants no sister but you.”

“But you have a brother,” said Robin: “his name is
Gilbert Macfinnis; he is your nearest relation. He may
wish to have you beside him in England.”

“Across the black sea!” exclaimed Miranda, and such
a look of terror passed over her fair young face that in
pity the conversation was changed.

That it was not forgotten appeared by the thoughtful,
mournful expression which Miranda now often wore,
and the anxious look with which she watched the opening
// 203.png
.pn +1
of any letters. But never in conversation did Miranda
allude to her white brother. As for his name, it was
to her as yet unpronounceable, and more difficult to
remember than the English alphabet. The young girl
secretly regarded Robin as her white brother, and she
had no wish for any beside.

Alicia’s greatest anxiety regarding her young cousin
was in matters more important than her style of dress,
education, or family relations. Harold’s wife, when once
Miranda was safe under her roof, had calculated on her
conversion to Christianity as a sure and probably an
easy thing to be accomplished. Separated from all
heathen influences, placed under the daily instruction of
devoted and gifted spiritual pastors, constantly with a
friend like herself whose kindness the orphan repaid
with clinging affection, how could Miranda fail to become
a Christian? The once oppressed widow could not but
see the difference between a religion of love and one of
fear, the difference between loyalty to a Saviour and
dread of a demon, between freedom and bondage, darkness
and light. But those who, like the elder Hartley,
have laboured long amongst those who have been from
childhood brought up in superstition and error, know
how strangely, it seems unaccountably, the heart clings
to its idols. Spiritual work is not like a sum in arithmetic—given
so much time, so much labour, so much
prayer, and then a certain visible result. We must toil
and pray and seek to persuade, but the work of grace
// 204.png
.pn +1
is, like life which is its symbol, something beyond
the ken and the wisdom of man. In missionary work
we must reverently accept, as if addressed to ourselves,
the Saviour’s answer to His apostles, “It is not for you
to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath
put in His own power.” We can see, even with our
half-blind eyes, reasons why this should be. Our insufficiency
to do anything of ourselves throws us on the
power of Him who is all-sufficient. We are humbled,
God is exalted. We can but remove the swaddling
bands from the spiritually dead; the voice of Omnipotence
alone can say, “Come forth from the tomb!”
We preach as it were to dry bones; the Spirit of God
must breathe on them, or they will never revive and
stand up. It is grace that opened our lips; it is grace
that must wing our words, or they will fall short of the
mark.

It was with such reflections that Harold tried to cheer
his young wife, when with tears she spoke of the deadness
of Miranda’s soul. “She drops asleep even when
father is preaching in the native tongue. She only, I
fear, listens to the Bible in order to please me. Miranda
loves me, tenderly loves, but it seems as if she would
not love the Saviour.”

“Patience, my love,” said Harold. “Remember the
words, ‘Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious
fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until
he receive the early and latter rain.’ That blessed rain
// 205.png
.pn +1
may be coming now, like the little cloud no bigger than
the hand of a man which was seen rising above the sea,
in answer to the prayer of Elijah.”

Robin, laying his hand on Alicia’s, quoted, not quite
correctly, favourite lines,—

.pm verse-start
“Fret not for sheaves, but holy patience keep;
   Wait for the early and the latter rain;
 For all that faith hath scattered, love shall reap.
 <i>Gladness is sown</i>; the Lord may let thee weep,
   But know no tear of thine is shed in vain.”
.pm verse-end
// 206.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch19
CHAPTER XIX||<s>THE WHITE BROTHER.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>The</sc> heat continued to increase; to Alicia it seemed to
be terrific. The accommodation in the two bungalows
was small. Mr. Hartley and his daughter-in-law had
repeated attacks of fever, though not of an alarming
nature. Miranda was the most gentle and loving of
nurses, and became increasingly dear in the mission
circle. “If Gilbert send for his sister, I know not
how we shall bear to part with her,” said Alicia.
“Miranda is opening out like a flower, and such a
lovely sweet one!”
.pi
Robin Hartley was by far the merriest of the circle,
and during the trying season helped to keep every one’s
spirits alive. He was naturally of a joyous nature, and
he had now found a new fountain of pleasure. Little
cared Robin for the heat, even when it shut him up in
his little room in semi-darkness with the musquitoes, for
he had his pen and paper with him. Robin had taken
to composing, and found great delight in the occupation.
No one knew whether he was writing a Panjabi vocabulary,
// 207.png
.pn +1
a journal, or an epic poem; Robin kept his own
secret, like a child bent on giving some one a surprise.
He himself carried a thick roll of paper to the post, and
he watched as eagerly for a reply as did Alicia for an
answer to her letter to her cousin Gilbert.

The looked-for mail-day arrived. Harold brought in
to his wife three letters bearing the English post-mark.
Alicia singled out the one which was <i>not</i> in a familiar
hand; these sprawling characters she guessed to be
traced by her cousin, from whom she had never before
had a letter. Miranda—seated on the ground, her favourite
position still, though she had always a chair at
meals—watched with anxiety in her fine dark eyes the
face of her cousin. She seemed to know, as by instinct,
that the letter which Alicia was perusing related to her
own fate. The letter, which was read aloud, ran as
follows:—

.pm letter-start
“<sc>My dear Coz</sc>,—I am sure that you have shown
wonderful ingenuity in ferreting out this sister of mine.
I was never so astonished in my life as when I found
that I had one. The whole story is like a sensation
novel or a transformation scene in a pantomime. But
when the novel is closed, or the curtain falls on Columbine,
the whole thing is over, and nothing remains to be
done. This affair of Miranda is a different and much
more difficult matter. You ask me if I wish to have
my sister home to be educated in England; you give
// 208.png
.pn +1
me to understand that she is a kind of raw material
(silk in the cocoon, I suppose) which her friends are to
work up into satin. The girl can’t read, write, or spell,
cannot yet use a knife and fork, does not know a word
of English, and prefers squatting on the floor to lolling
on a sofa like a lady! What on earth could I do with
such a heathenish sister?”
.pm letter-end

“I should like to punch that fellows head!” exclaimed
Robin, his eyes flashing with indignation. “He
may have a head to be punched, but he certainly has
not a heart.”

Miranda looked at her angry bhai with alarm.
“There must be something very dreadful indeed in that
letter,” thought the poor girl. “I am afraid that I have
a cruel white brother in England.”

“Let’s hear the rest of the letter,” said Harold; and
Alicia resumed her reading:—

“I could not introduce to my wife and her acquaintance
a girl—a <i>widow</i>, you say—who might startle us
by plunging her hand into a fricassee, or whooping like
a Red Indian.”

“What does the fellow mean by that?” fiercely interrupted
Robin.

“Oh, I suppose that Gilbert classes all sorts of Indians
together,” laughed Alicia: “he was always a thoughtless
boy. I daresay that he thinks that our Premi wears a
coronet of feathers, and perhaps a chaplet of human
teeth.” Again the lady read on,—
// 209.png
.pn +1

“Then if any respectable school would admit this
wild widow, there are no funds to support her there.
Government has agreed to do something in consideration
of what was lost in the Mutiny; but what is fifteen
pounds per annum in England? hardly enough to pay
a dancing-master’s fees. No, no; the wild widow had
far better keep where she is. Perhaps you could find
another black husband to suit her.”

Robin struck his clenched fist on the table with such
violence that he threw over a tumbler, and smashed a
plate, and filled Miranda’s young heart with vague
apprehensions.

“Oh, have pity on my crockery, Robin!” exclaimed
Alicia; “I cannot replace it here.”

“I am very sorry that I have done mischief,” said
Robin, as he picked up the broken pieces. “It is not
your fault that you have such a cousin, nor Miranda’s
that she has such a brother.”

The sound of the name which she had been taught to
recognize as her own increased the uneasiness of poor
Premi. The letter which had made her bhai so very
angry certainly related to herself. A vague fear that
suttees might be thought the correct thing in England,
and that her white brother might wish to burn her
alive, flitted across the poor girl’s mind; however, she
was somewhat reassured by the smile on the lips of
Alicia.

“It seems as if we should never get to the end of
// 210.png
.pn +1
this letter,” said Harold, taking the paper from the hand
of his wife. “Where were we—oh, here;” and he
went on with the reading aloud:—

“Or you might make a missionary of her, perhaps.
I leave all arrangements to you; I am sure that the
best will be made for the poor little waif by you and
your husband.”

“He wants to wash his hands of the care of his own,
his only sister,” muttered Robin. “This Gilbert is unworthy
of the name of a brother!”

Alicia caught sight of the look of anxious, almost
agonizing inquiry in the eyes of Miranda, and hastened
to relieve her at once.

“We have heard from your brother in England,” she
said in reply to the mute appeal.

Miranda flushed and visibly trembled; her lips moved,
but uttered no sound.

“Your white brother wishes you to remain with us in
India.”

Miranda sprang to her feet with a cry of delight,
then sank sobbing into the arms of Alicia, clinging to
her as a frightened child might have done. “Then
He <i>did</i> hear me!” was her almost inaudible exclamation.

“Who heard you, dear Miranda?” asked Alicia.

“God,” was the reverently murmured reply. “I did
ask Him, I did beseech Him to save me from being sent
away from Talwandi.”
// 211.png
.pn +1

This was the first indication which Miranda had
given of understanding the nature of prayer.

“Then you are willing to stay with us, dear one?”
said Alicia.

Miranda’s reply was a fervent, passionate embrace;
then, ashamed of having given such outward expression
to her joy in the presence of men, Miranda retreated
hastily into the adjoining dwelling.
// 212.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch20
CHAPTER XX||<s>THE WELCOME RAIN.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>Fiery</sc> June had run more than half its course when it
came, the longed-for, the prayed-for blessing, the copious
welcome rain. The heavens were overshadowed with
clouds, veiling completely the dreaded sun. The sound
of the heavy, ceaseless downpour was to the almost exhausted
dwellers in the plains sweeter than music. It
was delightful to watch the brown water streaming
from each spout above, rushing along each gutter below.
It was pleasant to see the earth first dotted over with
big drops, then transformed into pools covered with
dancing bubbles, while frogs croaked their monotonous
song of joy, and a delicious coolness pervaded the air,
which had been like the breath of an oven. “The rain!
the blessed rain! God be thanked for the rain!” was
the exclamation intuitively uttered.
.pi
Robin came out into the veranda of “Paradise” to
enjoy the scent of the wet earth, the sight of Nature
reviving under the heavy rainfall, and the sound of
plashing water. Miranda was there; she had come
// 213.png
.pn +1
for the same purpose. The air had slightly blown back
the chaddar of the fair girl, and with the rose-tint
which the comparative coolness had brought to her
cheek, and the brightness which pleasure gave to her
eyes, Miranda looked beautiful in the mellowed light
from a cloudy sky. The young girl did not retreat
when Robin appeared; she was not shy with her bhai
and tutor, for during Alicia’s attacks of fever Robin had
adopted her pupil. Miranda had under his tuition made
great progress, being eager to surprise her beloved
sister with her acquirements in English as well as
Gurmuki. She could even put short English words together,
and read Panjabi with fluent ease.

The conversion of his fair pupil was the daily
subject of Robin’s prayers, as of those of the other
missionaries of Talwandi. As the youth looked now on
Miranda’s lovely form and face, his whole heart rose in
fervent supplication for her who had been so wonderfully
brought to share Alicia’s home. Robin then, advancing
towards Miranda, said, “What are you looking at, my
little sister?”

“The rain—the good rain. See how the thirsty
ground is drinking it in!”

“Who sends the good rain, little sister?”

Miranda folded her hands and looked upwards.

“Should we not thank God for the rain?” asked
Robin.

“All thank God—trees, birds, earth,” was the reply.
// 214.png
.pn +1

“But we have more reason to thank God than have
the trees, the birds, and the earth. Do you not
remember what you have heard so often about the best,
the greatest of gifts?”

Miranda looked down and did not reply.

Robin suddenly changed the conversation, while
keeping the one point at which he was aiming in view.

“Miranda, I heard from your Kashmiri bhai yesterday.”
A slight smile came to the girl’s lips, and she
raised her head to listen. “Kripá Dé asked me to tell
his sister that he never forgets that she saved his life
by her timely warning.”

“Premi is glad,” said Miranda softly.

“When you called out to Kripá Dé not to drink from
the poisoned cup, did you think that your giving such a
warning would bring you into trouble and danger?”

“I thought that I should be beaten, and I was so,”
Miranda replied.

“You did a brave and kind action,” said Robin, “and
I am sure that Kripá Dé is not ungrateful.” Miranda
blushed like a rose at the praise. “But suppose,” continued
Robin, “that you could only have saved your
bhai by drinking the poison yourself, Miranda, would
you have drunk it?”

A strange expression flitted over the lovely face.
Miranda did not reply at once; then she said, in a
hesitating tone, avoiding meeting the questioner’s gaze,
“I think that I should have drunk it.”
// 215.png
.pn +1

“And you would in dying have expected, and justly
expected, to be ever gratefully remembered by him for
whom you had sacrificed life?”

Miranda slightly inclined her graceful head in assent.

“And yet how coldly you seem to regard the greatest
sacrifice that ever was made! Many who thank God for
rain, which descends at His simple command, never thank
Him for the unspeakably greater gift of His only Son.
There are those who read, or hear without interest,
without love, that Christ tasted death for every man.
Do you understand what that means?”

“I suppose that it was like drinking poison,” said
the girl.

“Yes, like drinking poison, the deadliest poison, for
every believer. I should think that for each individual
there was a separate pang to be borne. I believe that
when Christ hung on the cross He was drinking the
deadly cup instead of me, instead of you, till the whole
terrible draught of poison was finished, the cup drained
of the last deadly drop.”

“And I have never loved Him, never thanked Him,”
murmured Miranda, the soft tears rising to her eyes.

“Do you love Him, do you thank Him now?” exclaimed
Robin.

The brimming eyes overflowed; Miranda covered her
face with both her hands, and Robin, with delight,
caught the whispered words, “I do! I do!”

Oh, blessed rain that comes at last! Thank God for the
// 216.png
.pn +1
blessed rain—that which maketh the heart to blossom
and bud, that which brings life to the dead in sin!
Thank God for the rain which drops from heaven—the
dew of His Holy Spirit!

Robin was too full of joyful hopes not to hurry into
“Paradise” to let Alicia share them. Harold’s young
wife was still a prisoner to her sofa after an attack of
fever, but she was rejoicing, like every one else, in the
beginning of the season of rain.

“Robin, is not this change delightful?” said Alicia.

“Most delightful!” echoed her brother; but he was
not thinking of the weather.

Robin was beginning to tell his deeply-sympathizing
listener of the impression which at last had been made
on the heart of Miranda, when Harold entered, with a
packet of letters in his hand which he had just taken
from the dripping postman.

“Two English letters for me, one Indian one for my
wife, and a registered despatch for you, Robin,” said
Harold, distributing his little budget. “The postman
is waiting in the veranda for your signature to the
paper.”

Robin sprang forward, in his eagerness almost snatched
the letter from the hand of his brother, and was out of
the room in a moment.

“A registered letter is a novelty to Robin,” observed
Alicia, smiling, as she broke open the envelope in her
hand; “I never knew him to receive one before.”
// 217.png
.pn +1

“Nor dart away in such a hurry when the English
mail was about to be opened,” said Harold. “This is
Clarence’s handwriting, this Ida’s neat little hand; their
letters will be interesting, as telling us what success they
have had in collecting money for the purchase of the fort.”

Harold and Alicia were engaged in reading their
letters, when Robin returned to the room, his face
radiant with pleasure.

“I hope, Robin, that your despatch has been as
cheering as ours,” said Harold.

“First, let me tell you of mine,” cried Alicia. “Here’s
a cheque for fifty rupees for our work; you will never
guess who sent it.”

“Tell me; I am in no mood for riddles,” said Robin
gaily.

“Would you think it? the cheque is from Mr. Thole,
with a nice little note besides.”

“And so much money has been collected by friends
in England,” said Harold, “that we have almost enough
to purchase the fort; only about a hundred rupees are
wanting.”

“Then take the fort at once, and plant on it the red-cross
banner,” cried Robin gaily: “here is the powder
and shot which is lacking,” and with the joyousness of
a boy he tossed to Harold a currency note for a hundred
rupees.

So Robin’s secret was out. He had entered the
literary arena, and with a success that surprised himself.
// 218.png
.pn +1

“I did but write a simple account of our adventures
in Arabia,” said he, in reply to a question from Harold.
“I thought that when it was too hot to dig in the
garden, go out to shoot a pheasant, or come home to
cook it, I might earn a trifle by my pen. I am
astonished to receive a hundred rupees, and mightily
pleased by the publisher’s note: ‘We shall be glad to
have further contributions from R. H.’”

“And do you wish to give the whole of this to the
mission?” asked Harold, glancing at the currency note
which he held in his hand.

“Of course,” replied Robin simply; “the first-fruits
are always the Lord’s.”
// 219.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch21
CHAPTER XXI||<s>A LETTER FOR HOME.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>We</sc> will now pass over a considerable space of time,
and look over Alicia’s shoulder as, on the third anniversary
of her wedding-day, she is penning a letter to
her sister.
.pi
“I can hardly believe, dear Lizzie, that I have really
been three years married, though that darling, golden-haired
Robin, who is trying at this moment to climb
upon my knee, serves as a charming reminder. He is
like—oh, so like!—his father, only his merry laugh is
Robin’s.

“You ask how the work in the fort goes on. Just
to our heart’s desire. We are full of gratitude to Him
from whom all goodness flows. The best room in the
fort has been fitted up as a church; we have service
there every day, and thrice on Sundays. A grand gift
for our wedding-day has arrived—a harmonium, on
which I shall play the hymns. There is a nice room
for the boys’ school, with a large veranda in which the
brown urchins squat at their lessons. To enter that
// 220.png
.pn +1
school is like going near a hive of bees, there is such a
humming of voices.

“We—Miranda and I—have a nice girls’ school of
our own in quite a different part of the fort. It is in
that very gallery where I first saw poor Premi pounding
away at the rice. I can scarcely recognize that
unhappy young Hindu widow in the tall, graceful, beautiful
Christian lady who is to me as the sweetest of
sisters. You write, ‘I suppose that Miss Macfinnis has
quite cast off all her old Hindu ways, and is quite the
English demoiselle now?’ No, not exactly. Miranda
is not, I think never will be, just like one who has
always trodden a drawing-room carpet; she is more like
Shakespeare’s Miranda—a beautiful blossom reared
under Indian skies, not in a conservatory at home.
Miranda always by preference wears the chaddar when
she is engaged in the mission work which she loves,
but when we are at home her luxuriant hair is braided
just like my own. She reads and converses well in
English, but with a slight accent which to our ears
makes her language more sweet. We all love her dearly,
and her native pupils are ready to kiss her feet. Miranda’s
influence over them is much greater than mine.

“We had an absurd little scene a few days ago; I
laugh at the recollection. The bara Sahib, Mr. Thole,
paid us a visit. I suspect that his curiosity drew him
here, for he had never seen Premi since that strange
day when, shrinking and trembling, bruised and bleeding,
// 221.png
.pn +1
a poor oppressed Hindu widow was brought before
the commissioner, whose verdict would decide her fate.
Miranda entered our sitting-room without knowing that
a guest was there; her chaddar was off, her hands filled
with flowers from the garden which Robin has made.
She looked herself like a rose. The commissioner rose,
with his stiff, formal politeness, and said, ‘This is, I presume,
Miss Miranda Macfinnis.’ Miranda started like
a frightened fawn, dropped her flowers, and vanished
out of the room. I could scarcely keep my countenance
when I apologized for my young cousin’s unintentional
rudeness. ‘A little jungly,’ said Mr. Thole, with a condescending
smile. ‘You should send her to a school in
the hills.’

“I must add that poor Miranda was very penitent
for having treated the commissioner thus. ‘I was so
startled,’ she said; ‘the unexpected sight of Mr. Thole
called back such strange and terrible recollections. But
I should have rather thanked him on my knees for
what he did; he was one means of delivering me from
bondage to freedom, of changing ignorance and misery
to this light and love and joy.’

“Miranda used at first to be a little afraid of Harold’s
father; but that feeling has long since passed away, and
she looks upon him with the deepest reverence, something,
I fancy, resembling that with which the Panjabis
regard their gurus (religious teachers). She would, I
am certain, think it a privilege to wash his feet. Our
// 222.png
.pn +1
father’s health is now so much broken that he cannot
itinerate at all, and we often fear that his day is drawing
near to its close. But what a calm, peaceful, glorious
sunset is his! I always think of him when I look
at the picture which hangs on our wall, representing a
weary reaper falling asleep with his head resting on one
of the golden sheaves around him. The rich warm light
is falling on his face, so full of peaceful repose. Death
to our father will be but sinking to sleep.

.pm verse-start
‘Oh, how calm will that rest appear!
  Oh, how sweet will the waking be!’
.pm verse-end

But I do not like to anticipate losing one so dear, so I
will turn to another subject.

“I have often told you of Robin, the brother of my
loved Harold, and his unfailing fund of good-humour
and fun. During the last few months Robin has greatly
altered: he is no longer the merry, boyish youth, but
seems, almost suddenly, to have developed into the
thoughtful man. Perhaps this comes of his having become
a now well-known author, whose brain must be
ever at work, as well as an evangelist, teacher, and general
aid in the mission. My brother often sits dreamily,
and scarcely hears a question when it is put to him;
sometimes the colour suddenly flushes his cheek without
any visible cause. Perhaps Robin overworks; sometimes
I fancy—Oh, what a blot! Mischievous baby has upset
my ink. I shall have to punish the little rogue by—putting
down my pen and having a romp.”
// 223.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch22
CHAPTER XXII||<s>YOKED TWAIN AND TWAIN.</s>
.sp 2
.ni
<sc>About</sc> an hour afterwards, when baby had been made
over to his grandfather’s care, to give his mother leisure
to prepare for her wedding-day feast, Robin came in
from village preaching. He had a very preoccupied
look, as if he were looking either far back into the past
or far forward into the future, and had no eyes for
anything near him.
.pi
“What are you dreaming of, Robin?” exclaimed
Alicia gaily. “You must not put your bag of books on
the top of my dough.”

“I beg pardon,” said Robin in an absent manner, and
he took a seat beside his sister.

Alicia went on with her kneading, and rather wondered
that Robin, usually so obliging, made no offer to
help her.

“Are you composing a poem in honour of the day?”
asked Alicia; “or is marriage, after three years, too
prosaic a subject?”

“It may be a life-long poem,” replied Robin.
// 224.png
.pn +1

“I suppose that I might take that for a compliment,”
said Alicia, smiling, “but for the qualifying <i>may</i>. Now
tell me the truth, Robin: did you not think three years
ago that there was more of poetry than of wisdom in
Harold’s engagement—in short, that he had made a
little mistake?”

Robin smiled. “I am not bound to confess what I
thought,” he replied.

“Silence often tells as much as speech. You did not
think that Harold had made a little, but perhaps a <i>great</i>
mistake,” suggested Alicia.

“Sister dear, I own that you looked to me too fine—too
much of a delicate drawing-room belle to be suited
for a mission Mem,” was the candid reply; “but I only
proved myself to be—a donkey.”

“No, Robin; you were perfectly right,” said Alicia
frankly. “My Harold <i>did</i> run a great risk, and <i>I</i>
showed—well—presumption. I was far too ignorant,
too weak, too self-willed, for a missionary’s wife. Had
I always remained as I was when my Harold put this
gold ring on my finger, I should have been utterly unfit
for my position; I should have been a clog instead of a
help. But I hope that I have learned something from
our father’s wisdom, your plain speaking, and my dear
husband’s patient love; I have also learned something
from seeing my own mistakes.”

“Most of all from the Book which is our guide in
every stage of our lives,” said Robin.
// 225.png
.pn +1

“But I am still a long way from being a good mission
Mem,” said Alicia. “I have now a much higher standard
than was mine three years ago, and I feel how very
far I fall short of it. Miranda, who was then a poor,
ignorant heathen, makes now a better worker than I do.”

“But do we not owe Miranda to <i>you</i>?” cried Robin,
in his old impetuous manner. “You pitied her, you
rescued her, you brought her amongst us, you have
taught her all that she knows.”

“No, Robin; the most precious knowledge of all was,
by God’s grace, imparted through you.”

Robin’s eyes glistened with inexpressible joy. He
thought, but his lips were silent, that such a privilege
might well repay the toil of a lifetime.

Alicia, who had paused a little in her occupation, now
resumed it with redoubled energy. She had not looked
so fair in Robin’s eyes in her wedding-dress of white
satin as she did now in her simple pink print, with her
sleeves tucked up and her slender hands all whitened
with flour. Robin watched his sister as she mixed and
stirred and kneaded.

“Harold is very happy,” he said at last in a dreamy
tone. “There is no doubt that ‘two pull together,
when yoked twain and twain,’ far better than a solitary
worker.”

“That line was written for mission maidens,” observed
Alicia; “they are usually placed two and two in their
stations.”
// 226.png
.pn +1

“Not only for mission maidens,” said Robin; “surely
it holds good with mission couples. What a helper you
are to Harold! You cheer him in trouble, you share
his joys, you work amongst the wives and daughters of
those whose worst hindrances are in their homes. You
break away the thorns that would wound your husband,
you strengthen his hands in the Lord, you sharpen his
weapons for fight. You make Harold realize the truth
of that word from Scripture—<i>A prudent wife is a gift
from the Lord</i>.”

“May you also prove its truth one day, dear Robin,”
said Alicia, with a smile of gratification.

Robin flushed till his very brow was suffused with
crimson. Had his sister guessed the secret which
he thought that he had so carefully concealed from
all?

“Alicia, I can speak on one subject more freely to
you than I can even to Harold,” said Robin with an
effort. “You know that I can earn something now—enough,
more than enough, for two with simple tastes,
who live out of the world as we do, who care not
for earthly show, who ask but for daily food and
raiment, and a humble place in God’s vineyard. Do
you think, dare I hope, that I could make Miranda
happy?”

“You had better ask that question of herself,” said
Alicia, smiling. “I see that the kahars are setting down
her doli in the veranda. Suppose that you help her
// 227.png
.pn +1
out, and leave me undisturbed to finish my wedding-day
cake.”

Robin went readily enough; and yet his heart beat
faster than it ever had done in a moment of danger,
and he experienced more of fear. He felt as if all his
earthly happiness were staked on the issue of one brief
interview with one around whom every fibre of his
loving heart was twined. We will not record the conversation
which passed in the veranda of “Paradise.”
Before it was ended, Mr. Hartley and Harold, with
baby Robin perched on his father’s shoulder, had come
through the connecting doorway which had been made
between the bungalows, and joined Alicia, who had just
completed her cake.

“Where is our good brother?” asked Harold. “Is he
at his composition at this holiday time?”

“Robin is beginning his life-poem, I think,” observed
the smiling Alicia, glancing towards the veranda.

The words were yet on her lips when Robin, his face
beaming with happiness, came in, leading one who was
indeed to him <i>a gift from the Lord</i>.

And here we leave the Hartleys, rich in the joy
which is multiplied tenfold by having God’s blessing
upon it.

Robin’s playful words came true: he <i>did</i> marry a
bride who went to church in good strong boots instead
of in satin slippers. Miranda proved a good and loving
wife, an active, devoted worker for God. Mr. Hartley
// 228.png
.pn +1
was a shrewd observer and a clever judge, but he never
was able to decide the question which often presented
itself to his mind: which was the better daughter,
worker, and wife—the young convert from heathen
darkness, or her fair sister,
.sp 2
.nf c
<sc>Harold’s Bride</sc>.
.nf-
.sp 2
.pb
\_ // this gets the sp 4 recognized.
.sp 2
.dv class=tnbox // TN box start
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a\
predominant form was found in this book.
.if t
.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-
.dv-      // TN box end
\_