1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

188
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
her brain was active. She was reviewing her past, and wondering
wherein lay the failure of her life. In herself, or in her fate?
Was there not, perhaps, after all, something in the stars that shed a
blessing or a curse on those born under them? Her father had taught her
that man makes his own destiny. Had her father, her splendid, her
heroic father, made his destiny? – he, now a fugitive, a wanderer,
deprived of home, and wife, and child, or had some cruel star put an
irremediable curse on him in the hour of his birth, and was he merely
working out the destiny imposed upon him – a destiny over which he
had no power?
She knew nothing of the offers that had been made him – offers that
would probably have given him the position of governor in his own
beloved country, that would have put within his reach such a home as
had not been seen in Hazara for centuries, at any rate. She knew
nothing of the hour of his temptation – nothing of what might have
been – and if she had, she would still have wondered.
She knew all about Paradise, and what it offered. Her father had often
spoken of that land of bliss, but to be quite truthful it attracted her but
little, she looked forward to it with no eager longing. She was young,
and strong, and bold, and daring, and the women of her father’s
Paradise had but little in common with her. It seemed a placid but a
poor end to a life such as hers had been, though she had never ventured
to even whisper such thoughts as these to any one.
No one had ever suggested to her, and her intuition had not taught her,
that her life had been worth living, and that she was being disciplined
in a hard school, taught b y an unrelenting master, just because she was
strong and brave, and could bear it; and that beyond, somewhere,
somehow – God only knows – she would reap the results of her pain.
Quite unbidden, the tears stared into her eyes, flooded them, and then
fell upon the hands that la y in her lap. Miriam’s words came back to
her as she sat there, “Rejected – a prisoner – a slave.” It had all turned
out true, though she had despised the cursing old gipsy, and had not
believed a word she had said, but it had been true, ever y word of it.
And what had she said that day in the harem when the old hag had
come round with the monke ys and the bears – she could hardly
remember, for she had fainted, but surely there had been something
about a shot – a knife. Again she shivered as she had done years
before, when she had heard the first curse, and again she placed her
hand upon her heart, as though to still its beating. Why had she been
called into existence it this was to be her all – this crippled life, where
even her ver y offers of services were rejected? No one wanted her, no
one but her father, and he, poor darling, could not have her.
And then her thoughts turned towards her home again, her old peaceful,
happ y home among the hills, and the days when she had spent her time