Kripá Dé looked astonished at the question. “Perfectly impossible,” was his reply. “I have no power in a matter like this.”
Alicia felt provoked at a brother’s tamely acquiescing in what she thought tyranny and injustice. “Harold or Robin would not stand with folded hands,” thought she, “were a sister treated as a slave.” Then she added aloud, “Are you content that poor Premi’s whole life is to be passed in nothing but sorrow?”
“She had a happy childhood, Mem Sahiba,” replied the Kashmiri. “Often we played together. She made my kites, and proudly watched them rising higher than those of my companions. Often she laughed for joy when I gave her a share of my sweetmeats. Her life was very different then from what it was after her marriage.”
“Did Premi’s marriage grieve you?” asked Robin; “or were you too young to care about it?”
“Did I not care!” exclaimed Kripá Dé—“did I not care to have my little playmate taken away, to be given to an old profligate who had had half-a-dozen wives already! Mere boy as I was, I felt that the marriage was something cruel and wicked. When every one else was rejoicing—except the poor child who was crying—my soul was full of anger. I did not care for the fireworks; I would not touch the sweetmeats; I turned away my head, that I might not see the old bridegroom in his glittering dress, mounted on his white horse.”
“And did the marriage, mere ceremony as it was, quite separate you from Premi?” asked Robin.
“I was never able to play with her again, though I often saw her in the zenana,” replied Kripá Dé; “for she continued to live in the fort. She was kept a great deal more strictly, and it was as if a high wall had been raised between us. I hoped that the child was happy; the women said that she was so, for she had plenty of jewels; but I never heard her laugh again as she did in the days that were gone. I do not think that Premi cared as much for jewels as our women usually do; she preferred chaplets of jasmine flowers. Premi was unlike any one else in the zenana.”
“She looks very much unlike the rest, there is so much more soul in her expression,” observed Alicia when Harold had translated to her the words of Kripá Dé.
“One night,” pursued the Kashmiri, “terrible news arrived. The bridegroom had had a fit, and fallen down dead. It was not he but his corpse that came back to Talwandi. I heard the wailing and the beating of the breasts in concert which are the signs of Hindu mourning. Darobti wept loudest and beat hardest. She rushed at Premi; she abused her; she struck her; she dragged the bracelets from the widow’s arms; she tore the rings from her ears;—she thought that she best honoured a dead father by heaping disgrace on his widow!”
“Did you see this and not protect the innocent girl?” exclaimed Robin fiercely.