1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

176
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
her daughter alone, and always left her agitated or else depressed and
low spirited. Mohamed Jan was evidently watching all that concerned
the girl he claimed as his wife most actively, and his only object could
be revenge. He could want nothing else from her now. She could bring
him no dowry, and her father could help him to nothing in the way of
position in these days of his adversity. Sometimes after her mother had
gone, however, a sort of reaction would set in, and the girl would be
unusually gay. It occurred to her at times that the old lady took
extraordinar y pains to harrow her feelings, and the idea would come to
her that perhaps she did it to try and incite her to make more effort to
secure her own safet y by obtaining the protection that would
necessarily be enjo yed by the legally married wife of so high an
official as was the Chief Secretary, and this idea tended to calm and
comfort her, by shutting out from her mind the reports and messages
that were brought. But on the occasion of her mother’s next visit, she
would again feel upset and miserable.
“She does not understand, poor mother,” the girl say to herself. “She
does not realise what my Agha is, how far above an ordinary girl like
me.” By which it will be seen that Gul Begum had learnt true love’s
first most invariable and most remarkable lesson. She had learnt
humilit y.
“She thinks he is just like any other everyday man, given to pleasures
and luxuries and money earning. She knows nothing of his plans for the
education and general amelioration of the condition of the people –
nothing of his schemes for this poor, wretched country. She does not
even know, as m y Agha does, that it is a wretched country. She does
not know that he never thinks of himself, is alwa ys arranging and
thinking for others, planning to get this man out of some difficult y, or
that one some better post or pay; that he is, indeed, a living saint who
has eschewed all earthly desires, and lives only for his God and to
benefit the human race.”
Thus mused this wild mountain girl, idealising the object of her
dreams, of her deep, undying self sacrificing love, as many another,
and far shallower nature, idealises ever y da y, not appreciating in the
least, in the case of her belo ved, the ver y mixed motives by which even
the best of us are influenced. Nor could she in the least have
understood the ambition, the actual craving for popularity and fame,
that formed so prominent a feature of the Chief Secretary’s character.
What did she know of the wide world, and the reputation that it is
possible for the very few to gain it, or of the intoxicating joy of being
the idol of the hour? Neither did she understand the exact cause of his
constant restlessness and uneasiness – though sometimes when he came
home irritable and dissatisfied, instead of bright and gay as he had
done when she first knew him, he would tell her he was in trouble, and
that he had many enemies.