1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

146
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
though you may take other wives, and though they ma y serve you well,
perhaps, yet I shall not be forgotten.”
The Chief Secretary’s head was bowed. He had not anticipated this. He
had said his midnight prayers that ver y night, and had besought the
God in whom he trusted that He would not only preserve his wife, but
would restore her speedily to health and strength, and her usual place
in his establishment, and he had believed that these prayers had been
accepted, and, in anticipation, he already enjoyed the usual comforts of
his home. And now she told him that there was no hope of any such
thing, she had seen the dead man’s face. She would not get well. The
very saint on whose name he had constantly repeated portions of the
Koran, and to whom he looked to make special intercessions at the
Throne of Grace, that ver y saint had visited her in her dreams, and had,
so to speak, beckoned her to his side, and had shown her where she
would be buried.
“Nay, wife,” he said. “It was but a dream. I myself will go to this ver y
saint’s grave to-day, and will see what inspirations come to me there.*
I cannot believe that God will reject m y prayers. One of the slaves
woke me last night at twelve, and I stood before him a whole hour in
wrapt contemplation and adoration.”
But the sick wife turned on her side, and as she turned, she smiled. She
knew her work was done, and that she was going thence on the last
long journey that man is called upon to make. Next day her spirit had
fled, and on the day following that she was laid, as she had said,
behind the saint’s grave, a little to the left – in the last empty spot
within the enclosure.
The Chief Secretary was, in his own way, a domesticated being. He was
overwhelmed with grief. He had not loved his wife passionately, had
indeed at times taken but very little notice of her, but anything outside
the ordinar y routine of daily life disturbed him, and he almost
preferred a bad thing he was accustomed to, to a new article he was not
in the habit of using. His home was his home, no other pleased him so
well, no other was so welt arranged to suit his convenience. His
walking stick was his stick, no other fitted so comfortably into his
head. So his wife had been his wife. Others might be more attractive,
more capable, more highly educated, but no other woman knew his
ways so well, so no other could suit him so well.
This loss made him inconsolable; he was a very busy man, and had had
but little time to devote to domestic affairs and enjo yments; but now
that she was dead, had gone awa y and left him, he knew what he had
lost, he realised, alas! too late, how all his little wishes had been
anticipated, his little comforts looked after and considered, and he
would have given all he possessed, even his hardly won and much
coveted positio n, to have been able to recall the unrecallable, to bring
back the past. The quick, unassuming creature whose life had been