‘But, alas! not quite two months had passed, when both Miss Tucker and my wife were laid up with fever. The chief cause of this, as the Doctor afterwards explained, seemed to be the stagnant water almost all around the house; and he ordered them both away as quickly as possible. Consequently we all returned to Amritsar by the end of May 1877, and settled again in our old quarters.
‘As soon as the hot season was over, we all went back to Batala, a second time. The condition of the house was as bad as before; but Miss Tucker immediately offered her help, and I set about fifty people to work. The ground near the house was soon raised about two feet or more; and consequently the place became more healthy, so that this time we could stay there all the winter, doing our work as before.’
After a few months, however, came a renewed check. Mr. Beutel was required for work in Amritsar; and when he and his wife left Batala, Miss Tucker had to leave also. Once more she was obliged to settle down for a term of patient waiting and study at Amritsar.
Not till the spring of 1878 was any really permanent arrangement made. Then a school of Panjabi boys was removed from Amritsar to the old palace, under the presidency of the Rev. Francis Baring; and Miss Tucker went to live under the same roof, to carry on the work among women of Batala. Thenceforward her home was at Batala to the end. Throughout the year 1877 she had much of doubt and disappointment to endure; but her brave trustfulness never broke down under the strain. Charlotte Tucker was a thoroughly loyal soldier of the Cross,—willing to go, or willing to stay, as her Master might dictate. Her heart’s desire was to live and toil in Batala; but a yet deeper desire of her whole being was to carry out His Will, whatever that Will might be. The Centurion’s words, ‘I am a man under authority,’ may be cited as peculiarly applicable to her. If God’s Will for her were Amritsar, not Batala, she would be content.
For a short time, seemingly, things were so; but not for long. Fresh plans in 1878 would make all clear. Meanwhile some months of change and uncertainty did no harm. They were but part of the polishing of the golden staff of her Will,—to revert to her own allegory of earlier days.
The history of these months, beginning with the time when she was first at Batala with Miss Swainson, will best be told by occasional extracts from the abundance of letters remaining.
TO MISS ‘LEILA’ HAMILTON.
‘Batala, Jan. 4, 1877.
‘Here we are in a regular “fix,” as the boys would say,—no bread nor butter in the house, and with the probability of a grand lady, a Commissioner’s wife, coming to-day, perhaps to stop the night. Pity the sorrows of—of ladies twenty miles from civilised life. I’m not housekeeper, so I can laugh; but poor dear Florrie!! You can feel for her. This is how we got into the fix.