1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

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A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
corpse to the fury of my young and active limbs. Come, are you
willing? Come now and try.” She laughed and almost yelled exultingly.
“See, I throw the stick aside,” and as she spoke she flung it on the
floor in front of him. “I would not frighten you over much. Now clasp
me to your wizened, vile old bosom. Why not? You see I am unarmed.
But beware, beware, I say. I have given you full warning. Let the old
man come and try. See, I stand waiting to receive him.”
But the old man, thus adjured, did not rise. He turned round to the
Chief Secretar y, and smiling quietly as though he had made some great
discovery. “I see that the girl is mad,” he whispered, sufficiently
audibly for every one in the room to hear. “She is not accountable for
these strange threats and actions. That is the secret of her having
remained so long unchosen in spite of her fine appearance; she is
possessed. What shall you do with her? Send her back to the prison? I
advise you to, it is hardly safe to keep a raving lunatic here among
other women and children. She might frighten your wife too, and who
can tell what the result of that might not be, especially at the present
time. Take m y ad vice, send her awa y at once. It is the only thing to be
done. She is not safe.”
But the Chief Secretary only smiled and asked the Mir Sahib if he were
satisfied now to let her alone and let her go.
“Let her alone? Do you think I want a tigress in m y house, a mad
woman for my wife? Of course I’ll let her go. I would not have her at
any price, not even as a free gift to be my lowliest slave. There, go,
girl,” he said, turning round and addressing her. “You are not a woman,
but a beast, a savage. Do you hear me, go!”
“Am I to go?” she said, addressing the only master she seemed inclined
to acknowledge, in a voice the y had not heard before, the soft gentle
tones in which she had been wont to soothe her father, and as though
no storm had just been surging and swelling within her, arousing her
fiercest and most unruly passions.
“Yes, go,” he said sternly, “and set yourself to work, and see that I
hear no further complaints. Remember you have hitherto disgraced
yourself. You are here only on trial.” But he was only human after all,
and though far too much impressed with his own dignit y to allow
himself to show any gratification, a careful observer would have
detected something a little artificial in his well-assumed indifference.
That fierce, strong, magnificent creature could be gentle as a dove, and
he was the man who could tame her.