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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
199 A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR course, as the y ought to do, because he was but one man in a place that twent y should have filled if the work were really to be brought to perfection. There was a sound of clanking chains on the path outside. He looked out. A prisoner led by two soldiers was being taken before the Ameer for trial. Ah, poor wretch, what was to be his fate? The very thought of such a thing stirred the Chief Secretary to activit y. This was but another warning sent b y the God whose aid he had invoked to show him what his fate would be, if he did not at once act on the message that had been sent him. He straightened his coat as he had done in the old days when he had thought a good deal of his appearance, smoothed his hair under his fur cap, and without saying a word to any one, was on his horse and off in the direction of his house. He had salaamed no one, not even the Ameer. CHAPTER XXXVIII WANTED AT LAST
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