“Mrs. Earl and her two little children, and poor young Clarke, who had been wounded in the church. I was among the last; I had fainted, and they thought I was dead, I believe, and threw me into a ditch. Presently I crawled out, and crept into the sugar-cane; but a sowar discovered me; he saw my white dress, and he came with a bloody, upraised tulwar; but something arrested his arm—my beauty, I suppose. I was the belle of the station—and he offered me my life, and I took it. Oh”—and she sobbed hysterically—“remember that I was but twenty! I had seen the dead. Oh, don’t think so hardly of me as I think of myself! He came at sundown and brought me a native woman’s dark cloth to throw over my dress; and when the stars came out he swung me up on the crupper of his troop horse, and I rode behind him into Lucknow. In Lucknow we went afoot, to escape notice, and in a crowd I eluded him and, turning down a narrow lane, fled. I stood inside a doorway as he ran by, and I breathed freely; but, alas! an old man suddenly opened the postern door, stared hard at me—a Feringhee, on his very threshold—and drew me within. Of what avail to cry out! I was in a veritable den of lions.
“The old man kept me concealed, dressed me in native clothes, called me his kinswoman, and gave me to his son as a wife—a half-witted, feeble creature, who died, and I was left a widow—a native widow. Oh, I know native life! The fierce tyranny of the old women, of the old mother-in-law, their tongues, their spite, their pitiless cruelty! How many vengeances were wreaked on me! In those days I was stupefied and half crazy. No, I had no feeling; I was in the midst of a strange people; those of my own land I never saw—no, not when Lucknow was captured. The very news of its fall took three years to reach my ears. I never once crossed that fatal postern. I was, as my kinsfolk believed—in my grave.
“My mother-in-law died at last, and then the old man, who had ever been my friend, relaxed. I had more liberty, my wits seemed to revive, I spoke Hindustani as a native. I went forth as a Mahommedan woman—veiled. Little did the bazaar folk guess that a Mem Sahib was among them; they believed that I was a Persian—Persian women are very fair—only one old woman and her daughter knew the truth. Now and then they smuggled me an English paper, or a book, or otherwise I must have forgotten my own tongue. I lived this life for fifteen years, and then my father-in-law, Naim Khan, died. He had no near kin, and he was rich, and left me all his money.
“I came away with the two servants and an old man. I remembered Shirani, and I found a little hut in the hills where I live. These hills are to me heaven, as the plains were hell. Think—no, do not think—of the stifling life in a tiny courtyard in the densest city quarter, the putrid water, the flies, the atmosphere. I ought to have died long ago, but it is those who are good and beloved who die. Even death scorned me! I have a considerable income, and once a year I am obliged to appear, and draw it in person. I am returning from a short journey now, and this is the first time I have ever met a soul. This lonely little bungalow is generally quite empty.”
“Where do you live?” asked Honor, eagerly.
“In these hills, miles away, I have my books, flowers, poultry, and the poor. I work among the lepers.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, for ever alone; and my story is for your ears alone.”
“And your own people?”
“Believe me dead; and so I am. Did I not die thirty-four years ago? Is there not a very handsome window to my memory in the church where we were first attacked? I saw a description of it in the paper—‘the beloved wife of So-and-so, aged twenty years.’ My husband is married.”