1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

198
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
and visions of the ultimate fate of their chiefs, passed in review before
him as he sat rapt in thought.
Somebody opened the door and peeped in. It was only a slave boy – but
the reverie had been interrupted, the spell broken.
He rose quietly, composedly, sadly, and called to his servant to remove
his prayer carpet, and bring him his horse. He had finished his
business, he sad, was tired, and was going home. If the Ameer asked
for him some one must be good enough to make his excuses. He would
be at Court after the usual Friday pra yers next day. That was all he said
aloud, but another and a ver y difference sentence kept surging up in his
brain, and ringing in his ears. “I must escape – I must escape at once,
or I shall be caught like a rat in a ho le.” On that point he was
determined absolutely. On wa ys and means he had yet to decide. But
with that fixed purpose in his mind he looked round him with many and
mingled feelings swelling up in his heart and brain. He had been
longing to get awa y for months and even years, but now that the final
wrench had come he could hardly bear to tear himself away from this,
the country of his adoption.
Many links bound him to it. There was the grave on the hillside, where
the wife who had loved him and during whose lifetime he had been so
happ y, and in such favour, now slept – the little girl who called him
Agha and did the honours of his house so sweetly. Afghans were
treacherous, of course, but still he had some friends, men who at least
wished him well, even though they might not have the courage to stand
by him. The ver y buildings were familiar and therefore dear to him. He
had watched the house where he now sat being built from the
foundation when he was a mere bo y, and the Ameer had only just begun
to build the palatial villas, of which there were now so many. How
grand he had thought it in those days. How he had marvelled at his
master’s genius displayed at every turn, at his patience with the
workmen when he was teaching them, for they were all fresh to this
new st yle of work then, and every step had had to be explained. What
games he and the young Princes had had in the garden, before it had all
been laid out and cut into beds by the Scotch gardener who had come
up and revolutionised their old system of growing flowers. They had
all been mere bo ys then – he a little their senior, and therefore their
leader. Care had sat but lightly on their shoulders in those days. How
different it was to-day!
A sob almost escaped him when he thought of his master sitting now
but a few yards from him. His master who had practically brought him
up, aroused in him an enthusiasm for a country in whose welfare he had
ever since been so deeply interested, where his ambitions had been
satisfied, his love of power gratified. Never would he see that master
or that country more. Then there were the schools he himself had
suggested and designed. There were the factories he had established,
the workmen he had trained, all doing fairly well – not so well, of