1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

175
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
“Ah, silly girl, who says it makes any difference to the river? There’s
where you are all wrong. Say, rather, is not a man’s heart more like the
sea; the great black water into which the bounteous rivers flow so
ungrudgingly, the sea which receives them all but gives nothing in
return, nay, hardly designs to notice them?”
“Aye, so it is, mother,” the girl said sadly, “so it is. That is Kismet,
that is God’s law. We have but to obey, as do the rivers, and flow on
and on for ever.”
The elder woman turned away impatiently. “You are beyond all sense
and reason,” she said. “You have the whole chances of the game in
your hand, and sheer carelessness and folly rather than ignorance make
you throw your luck on to another’s lap. It was a wretched day for me
when you were born.”
Gul Begum made no answer, she seemed to be watching the flight of
some pigeons overhead, directed and governed by a hand – she could
not see, felt, but invisible, that guided them first here, then there, now
far up into the deep blue sky, then down, down out of sight below the
line that bordered her horizon, the roof of the other side of the harem
serai.
CHAPTER XXXII
WITH THE TIDE
AFTER that, for a time, Halima’s visit became much more frequent
than they had been. S he sought more opportunities for speaking with