but premi was not dying. she had been severely, mercilessly kicked and beaten, but no vital part was injured. what she needed was kindness and care, and that she found in the home of her cousin.
the result of her case, which filled many columns in local papers and was the sensation of the day in england when the account of it reached that land, may be summed up here in few words. premi, or miranda, as we may now call her, could never be persuaded to tell at whose hands she had received her terrible beating. some feeling, perhaps of delicacy, perhaps of pity for her old female companions, prevented her from letting out the secret. from the impossibility of knowing who was the actual offender, no inmate of the zenana received the due reward of her barbarous conduct. alicia suspected darobti; but neither her name nor that of any other bibi escaped the lips of miranda. she seemed to wish to draw a thick purdah over the past.
thákar dás narrowly escaped very severe punishment by being able to prove that it was not he, but a brother since dead, who had brought miranda macfinnis into the fort. the hindu declared that he did not know that she was english; that he had taken her in from motives of pure compassion; and though few believed his vehement assertions, the contrary could not be proved. but the chief could not so easily meet the second charge—that of having directed two attacks on the mission bungalow, in the first of which an englishman had been wounded and a hindu youth violently carried away. the attempt to poison kripá dé aggravated the offence: though it was not proved that thákar dás actually committed the crime, there was strong suspicion against him. a very heavy fine was inflicted, with long imprisonment in default of payment. thákar dás was a disgraced and ruined man. unable otherwise to pay the heavy penalty imposed, the hindu had to give up his fort and the land held for centuries by his forefathers, and, accompanied by the female portion of his family, quit for ever that part of the country.
mr. thole had expressed his opinion that chand kor should be compelled to return to mrs. hartley the gold bracelet which she had tried to win from her by meanly bartering for it a bauble not worth a tenth part of its value, and not even legally her own. but harold declined such reparation in behalf of his wife. “mrs. hartley threw the bracelet to the women of her own free will,” he said, “and, i am sure, would not desire such restitution.”
“was i right, darling?” he said to alicia, after his return from an interview with mr. thole.
“quite right,” answered his wife. “i would never wish to take back anything given for the lord or his work.”
alicia never knew the fate of that jewel. it was sold ere long with other valuables to purchase the bare necessaries of life for chand kor and darobti, who had to pound their own rice and grind their own corn for themselves.
the evening after the conclusion of the trial, which lasted for some days, alicia said joyfully to her husband, “now one sheaf at least is gathered home. premi—i mean miranda—is our own, quite our own. she has almost recovered now, and will soon, i think, lose all trace of her bruises, and look lovelier than ever.”
“you say that premi is quite our own, my love,” observed harold; “but are you her nearest relative? i think that you have more than once mentioned that she has a brother in england.”
“oh! cousin gilbert, who was at home preparing to go to college in the mutiny year, and so escaped the fate of his poor parents.”
“he is then premi—miranda’s natural protector and guardian.”
“i should be sorry to trust her to his care,” cried alicia. “gilbert is a gay, thoughtless sort of fellow, and has been lately married to a foolish fashionable girl. i should be most unwilling to send our rescued cousin to them. it would not be mercy to her.”
“we must think of justice as well as of mercy, my alicia. a brother has a right to be consulted about the future of an orphan sister. the english mail goes to-day; will you write to your cousin, or would you wish me to do so?”
alicia felt and looked disappointed. she had encountered much difficulty in finding a jewel, and then in drawing it from the dark mine in which it had been buried; and now, was she contentedly to hand it over to one who had given nothing, suffered nothing, and who might place no value on what had cost her so much? it was with rather an ill grace that alicia sat down to her desk. everything seemed to combine to make the task distasteful. the wood of the desk was warped by the heat, the ink in the bottle half dried up. alicia had to throw away one quill pen after another, and her own heated, languid hand moved wearily over the paper, which the pankah (for robin had contrived a pankah in the new house) was perpetually trying to blow away to the other side of the room. the hot season was beginning, alicia’s first hot season, and everything that she did was done with an effort.
alicia had other little troubles connected with her newly-found cousin, troubles which she poured forth to robin in the evening, when sunset had brought some slight relief from the heat. the brother and sister were slowly pacing up and down the veranda, alicia with rather a melancholy air.
“is anything vexing my fair sister?” asked robin in that cheerful and kindly tone which invited confidence and usually obtained it.
“i do not like to trouble harold with all my small perplexities,” replied alicia, wearily fanning herself as she spoke.
“first let me relieve you of your fan, and then do you relieve yourself of your perplexities,” said robin, taking from alicia her little hand-pankah. he swayed it to and fro with an even, measured movement, far more effectual and soothing than alicia’s fitful, fluttering shake.
“i thought that it would be so easy to make premi happy and comfortable in my paradise,” said alicia (the coming of the guest had hastened the removal to the newly-built house). “i thought that the poor girl would find kindness and love so delicious after her miserable life in the fort. but in trying to make her well and happy, i find a difficulty at every step.”
“you know the definition of a difficulty—‘a thing to be overcome,’” remarked robin. “let us look steadily at yours; perhaps it will vanish as we look.”
“of course premi needs nourishment,” said alicia; “but it is hard to know what to give her, especially as the hurt on her hand makes her unable to cook for herself. we all know that for invalids doctors always prescribe beef-tea, so i was determined that premi should have it. with no small trouble i procured some beef from chuanwál; i boiled it myself, for i could not trust mangal to cook it—he always fails in the soup.”
“heroic alicia!” exclaimed robin; “did you really stand fire in such weather as this?”
“cooking certainly was no pleasure,” replied alicia; “but i managed to do something, for i was so anxious to give my poor cousin what might help to make her well soon. i thought that she would enjoy anything prepared by my hands.”
“and the result?” asked robin smiling, for he guessed what it was likely to have been.
“the poor foolish thing rejected my beef-tea almost with horror, as if i had been offering her boiled toads or snakes, or something equally disgusting. premi clenched her teeth tightly, turned away her head, and would not touch nor even look at my soup.”
“you must remember, sister dear, that poor premi has been brought up from childhood to regard beef-eating with utter disgust. she is now free from hindu slavery, but the chains of its superstition are hanging on her still. we must have patience, dear alicia, and try to remove them so gently that we shall not gall the poor wrists that have worn them so long.”
“another difficulty is about dress,” said alicia. “premi—miranda—came clad in little better than rags, blood-stained, too, from her terrible beating. i felt that miranda should dress like an english lady, as she really is one by birth. i made the effort of rummaging through one of my big boxes—everything now is an effort—and selected a parcel of clothes. i thought that miranda macfinnis would look so nice in one of my neat-fitting costumes.”
robin playfully inquired how miranda macfinnis had appreciated the costume.
“not at all,” replied alicia, smiling notwithstanding her disappointment. “miranda made not the slightest attempt to help me to perform her toilet, though she offered no actual resistance. i had to dress her as i would have dressed a large doll. i held the sleeve ready, but the passive arm had to be guided into its place. i had to put every little hook into its corresponding eye, and after all my trouble saw that the clothes sat ill on one who had never donned a tight-fitting garment before. however, i was glad that a tiresome task had been accomplished, and led premi—i mean miranda—in front of my mirror to let her see the effect.”
“what did she think of her own reflection?”
“miranda just caught up her own soiled chaddar, and drew it closely around her—head, blue dress, and all.”
robin laughed at alicia’s vain attempt to make her cousin look like an english lady.
“the worst was when i tried to make my cousin put boots on,” continued alicia, unable to resist joining in robin’s mirthful laugh. “her feet are certainly not larger than mine, and i had chosen an easy pair of boots. but all my persuasions and attempts to draw on the obnoxious articles ended in a burst of crying and sobbing on premi’s part, and something like despair on mine.”
“why distress the poor girl by compelling her to adopt english dress when she would look so much more beautiful in her own?” cried robin. “would you compare an ugly stiff hat—i beg your pardon, alicia—with a chaddar falling in graceful folds round a slight, youthful form?”
“but suppose that gilbert should send for his sister,” cried alicia, with something between playfulness and impatience, “would you have her create a sensation by tripping barefoot up a london staircase, or introduce her to a fashionable sister-in-law wrapped up in a chaddar?”
“wait till you know what gilbert decides on, and at least wait till cooler weather comes, before you inflict the torture of the boot on poor little feet accustomed to freedom. and as regards chaddars, could you not contrive to manufacture one out of your odd pieces of muslin?”
“but miranda will never be able to appear as a lady in england if we let her continue to dress like a hindu,” observed alicia smiling.
“i do not think it likely that she will ever go to england,” said robin; “and if she remain at talwandi, surely it is better that premi should remain as a kind of silver link between european and native. she will be far more useful in mission work if we do not quite separate her in dress and habits from those whom she once deemed to be her own people.”
“in mission work!” exclaimed harold, who had just joined his wife and brother in the veranda. “robin, do you forget that the poor girl is as yet not even a christian?”
“she will be one,” cried robin the hopeful. “we shall see premi a christian—yes, and a worker. alicia will rejoice over her sheaf.”
“god grant it!” said harold fervently. “were premi, who is so conversant with everything regarding hindu zenanas, to be able to assist my dear wife in her work there, she would be an untold blessing to us all. thákar dás will be compelled to quit the fort, and i hope to be able to purchase it. i have been writing by this mail to clarence, ida, and other friends, to collect means for making the purchase.”
“and what would you do with the large building if you had it?” asked alicia.
“i should find abundant use for it, my love. there would be space not only for a boys’ school, a prayer-room, and library, but for a place where converts might sleep. and—what think you, my alicia?—might there not, in the women’s apartments, which are, as you know, in a separate quarter, be collected little hindu girls from the town to form a small school, a little centre of light, to be presided over by my dear wife?”
“with premi to teach under her!” exclaimed robin.
“i think this is rather like building in cloudland,” observed alicia, but she smiled as she spoke.
“if premi is to be a teacher, she must be a learner first,” said robin; “anyways, miss miranda macfinnis should know how to read.”
“i will begin to teach her to-morrow,” said alicia.
the task proved harder than that of persuading miranda to adopt english costume. robin made an alphabet in large roman letters, to master which was to be miss macfinnis’s first step on the ladder of learning.
“i will teach her four or five letters each day,” alicia had remarked, “and the alphabet will be mastered in a week.”
but a week passed, and all the young teacher’s efforts had not enabled her pupil to see clearly the difference between an a and an o.
“miranda is dreadfully dull at learning, though quick at everything else,” sighed alicia, when confiding her new trouble to robin. “she, an english-born woman nearly sixteen years old, will not master the english alphabet.”
“why not try the gurmuki?”[10] suggested robin; “it will be easier for one who knows no language but panjabi to learn the familiar sounds.”
10. gurmuki is the character in which panjabi is usually written.
“i do not know the gurmuki alphabet myself,” observed alicia, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
“oh! i’ll teach you both, if you will be my pupils,” cried robin. “kripá dé would have taught you better, no doubt; but as we’ve sent him off to lahore for safety and further education, you must accept me as a master in default of a better. premi is too shy of harold to learn from him.”
it was true that premi was less painfully bashful with robin than with either his father or brother. mr. hartley was to her the buzurg (elder)—reverenced but feared; harold was the padre sahib, in whose presence the shy young creature always drew her chaddar over her face; but robin was a privileged person with premi as with every one else. she knew that he, like herself, had risked life to save kripá dé; she looked on him as her old playmate’s bhai, or brother, and even spoke of him by that name. robin once laughingly observed that miss miranda macfinnis did not regard him as one of the lords of creation at all, but as a big, good-natured, shaggy dog, whom she did not expect to bite her.
so, under his tuition, gurmuki lessons were begun, and alicia was surprised to find that premi learned more rapidly than herself, and with keener enjoyment.
“does miranda know her own early history? is she aware that she has relations in england?” harold inquired one day of his wife.
“she does not know much. you see, dearest, that i am scarcely strong enough yet in urdu to tell a long, complicated story.”
“robin had better tell her. miranda does not seem shy with him,” observed harold.
so, on the following morning, before lessons were begun, robin gave miranda a short, clear account of those early days of her life which had left no impression on memory. miranda listened as she might have done to the story of what had happened to some one else many years ago. it was to her a thing of the past.
“but all this has to do with the present too,” observed robin. “do you know, premi, that you have a white brother in england?”
“and a white sister too,” added alicia, “the wife of that brother.”
there was a soft pleading look of love in miranda’s dark eyes as she drew alicia’s hand to her own bosom, then pressed it to her own lips, and murmured, “premi wants no sister but you.”
“but you have a brother,” said robin: “his name is gilbert macfinnis; he is your nearest relation. he may wish to have you beside him in england.”
“across the black sea!” exclaimed miranda, and such a look of terror passed over her fair young face that in pity the conversation was changed.
that it was not forgotten appeared by the thoughtful, mournful expression which miranda now often wore, and the anxious look with which she watched the opening of any letters. but never in conversation did miranda allude to her white brother. as for his name, it was to her as yet unpronounceable, and more difficult to remember than the english alphabet. the young girl secretly regarded robin as her white brother, and she had no wish for any beside.
alicia’s greatest anxiety regarding her young cousin was in matters more important than her style of dress, education, or family relations. harold’s wife, when once miranda was safe under her roof, had calculated on her conversion to christianity as a sure and probably an easy thing to be accomplished. separated from all heathen influences, placed under the daily instruction of devoted and gifted spiritual pastors, constantly with a friend like herself whose kindness the orphan repaid with clinging affection, how could miranda fail to become a christian? the once oppressed widow could not but see the difference between a religion of love and one of fear, the difference between loyalty to a saviour and dread of a demon, between freedom and bondage, darkness and light. but those who, like the elder hartley, have laboured long amongst those who have been from childhood brought up in superstition and error, know how strangely, it seems unaccountably, the heart clings to its idols. spiritual work is not like a sum in arithmetic—given so much time, so much labour, so much prayer, and then a certain visible result. we must toil and pray and seek to persuade, but the work of grace is, like life which is its symbol, something beyond the ken and the wisdom of man. in missionary work we must reverently accept, as if addressed to ourselves, the saviour’s answer to his apostles, “it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the father hath put in his own power.” we can see, even with our half-blind eyes, reasons why this should be. our insufficiency to do anything of ourselves throws us on the power of him who is all-sufficient. we are humbled, god is exalted. we can but remove the swaddling bands from the spiritually dead; the voice of omnipotence alone can say, “come forth from the tomb!” we preach as it were to dry bones; the spirit of god must breathe on them, or they will never revive and stand up. it is grace that opened our lips; it is grace that must wing our words, or they will fall short of the mark.
it was with such reflections that harold tried to cheer his young wife, when with tears she spoke of the deadness of miranda’s soul. “she drops asleep even when father is preaching in the native tongue. she only, i fear, listens to the bible in order to please me. miranda loves me, tenderly loves, but it seems as if she would not love the saviour.”
“patience, my love,” said harold. “remember the words, ‘behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.’ that blessed rain may be coming now, like the little cloud no bigger than the hand of a man which was seen rising above the sea, in answer to the prayer of elijah.”
robin, laying his hand on alicia’s, quoted, not quite correctly, favourite lines,—
“fret not for sheaves, but holy patience keep;
wait for the early and the latter rain;
for all that faith hath scattered, love shall reap.
gladness is sown; the lord may let thee weep,
but know no tear of thine is shed in vain.”
