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54<br />
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR<br />
CHAPTER XI<br />
THWARTED<br />
IT was nothing of a journey on which Gul Begum set out that bright<br />
spring morning, and she needed no horse to take her the ni<strong>net</strong>een short<br />
miles that lay between her village and Mohamed Jan’s, but custom<br />
demanded that she should ride. She was a bride on her wa y to her<br />
affianced husband’s house, and the old lady, her grandmother, rode<br />
too. It was de rigueur that she should do so. Then there were two pack<br />
animals laden with bedding and clothes, besides rice, raisins, almo nds,<br />
and other dried fruits, a herd who drove three fine fat sheep, and two<br />
servants to take care of all.<br />
But the girl’s heart was heavy, and her grandmother was not<br />
encouraging. “I don’t approve of this way of doing things,” the old<br />
lad y kept saying. “I never heard of such an arrangement. A young girl<br />
of your position being named on a common man like Mohamed Jan,<br />
with no ulterior intentions as to matrimony either. It’s against all<br />
custom and all precedent, and it seems to me against all decenc y. I<br />
don’t believe that any good can come of it. No one ever gains anything<br />
b y breaking through the rules made b y their forefathers. It is not likely<br />
that we can judge as wisely as the y did , still less likely are we to<br />
improve on what they laid down as fitting and proper. I don’t<br />
understand your father.”<br />
“I think m y father quite as capable of judging of what is right and wise<br />
as any man who ever lived,” his <strong>daughter</strong> replied testily; “but it seems<br />
to me awful that such a scheme should have had to be devised . Who is<br />
this t yrant that he should dare to send for other men’s <strong>daughter</strong>s and<br />
command wives where he should ask for them ?”<br />
“Oh, I agree with your father in not sending you to Ferad Shah. God<br />
only knows what that man’s heart is made of.” Then, sinking her voice,<br />
“Sometimes I think he is no man at all, but a devil in human guise.<br />
Your father did well not to send you there . Nothing short of a curse<br />
could have resulted from that. However, what must be, must be, and<br />
since it has been decided that you are to go to Mohamed Jan’s, well, go<br />
you must, but you mark what your old grandmother has to tell you.
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