Like Another Helen

by Sydney C. Grier

“Fairest Clarissa, welcome to Muxadavad!” said Mr George in French, and throwing back his mantle, disclosed—oh, my dearest Amelia, pity me, imagine the agony of the moment—the features of the hateful Unknown, of the more hateful Sinzaun! I had fled from the Nabob to place myself in the power of this execrable, this odious and abandoned man.

The wretch had the assurance to try to touch me, and I fancy I remember endeavouring to push away his hands as I fell in a fit at his feet. The treacherous Misery succeeded in restoring me, but as soon as my eyes fell on Sinzaun I fainted again, and went from one fit into another as long as he remained near me. He departed at last, leaving a message for me with Misery to the effect that the alarm which seized me at the sight of him had caused him the most poignant anguish, that he desired nothing but my honour and happiness, and that he would make no attempt to force his presence upon me until I should choose to express a wish to see him. “If this be true,” thought I, “I am safe from him for ever,” but I could not bring myself to believe in the wretch’s departure until, accepting with reluctance the support of my perjured attendant, I had tottered into all the rooms and varandas of the garden-house to assure myself that he was not there. Misery expressed the most excessive concern for my disorder, and would fain have piled oath upon oath to induce me to believe in her innocency of the wicked device by which I had been duped, but I cut her short very sharply. I could not suffer the creature to please herself with the notion that she had hoodwinked me a second time, and the assurance of this made the wicked old woman bewail herself most sadly, even while she entreated me to drink a syrup of fruits which she offered me, and lie down to sleep. I am almost certain, Amelia, that the foolish creature had mixed with the syrup some narcotic drug, I hope with no worse design than to make me sleep and perhaps ward off the attack of fever she foresaw, but if this was so, she compounded her dose badly, for instead of sleeping I was never so wide awake in my life. At last I could lie down no longer, and feeling a prodigious desire to walk in the open air, I slipped on my gown again, and stepping over Misery, who lay on the floor wrapped in her cloth, went out into the garden. There was dark clouds gathering, for this was the season of the rains, when excessive wet alternates with burning sunshine, but the moon was shining almost as bright as day, and as I walked about among the untidy beds of flowers, all as variegated and confused as possible, and no symmetry anywhere, I considered of my situation.

Now that I was at length undeceived, it seemed to me incredible that I could ever have been taken in by so complicated a plot. I remembered that only the night before I had remarked to Misery that the boatmen appeared still to be rowing against the stream, and not drifting with it, as she had assured me would be the case, and that she had answered this showed we were now close to Dacca, which stood upon a third branch of the river. Not knowing the situation of Dacca, I had accepted her explication easily, and the reward of my credulity was to find that the palanqueen which had carried me from the river at Santipore had brought me back to the same stream higher up, so that I was arrived cheerfully at the spot I most dreaded in all the world. The wicked art of the whole design, and the pains taken to make me imagine myself acting altogether on my own motion, amazed me the more I thought of them, but I perceived quickly that I owed the cruel deception to the necessity of deceiving not only the Jemmautdar (if indeed he was deceived at all), but the Nabob and his people, and also my own nation. Should that poor country-born clerk that had cried out in English on seeing me carried forth have speech with any European on the way to his captivity, he would inform him of my death, and all enquiry concerning the miserable Sylvia Freyne would be at an end.

This consideration awoke in me the resolve to undo the injury I had done myself in consenting to appear dead. If I was ever to be saved, or even if my friends were ever to know my true fate, I must needs discover some means of opening communication with them. But how was this to be? I was a prisoner in Muxadavad, in the power of the wicked Sinzaun so long as I remained where I was, at the mercy of the Nabob or any of his abandoned soldiery if I left the house. Our factory at Cossimbuzar was destroyed and the gentlemen there dispersed, and the foreign factories had shown themselves too friendly to the Nabob to give me any hope that they would help me. The only expedient that I could devise was to throw out into the street pieces of paper containing some account of my situation, confiding in that superstitious reverence of the Moors for handwriting which I have mentioned before, and trusting that Heaven would guide these frail messengers to a suitable destination. I was the more encouraged in this last hope because there was nothing in any way deceitful or untrue about this plan, and I was now ashamed to think that I had anticipated and claimed the Divine assistance in a design so full of falsehood and deceits as that by which Misery had secured my escape from the custody of the Jemmautdar.

But now there faced me this new difficulty; how was I to obtain writing-implements? If I had anticipated my misfortunes I should questionless have had the prudence, like Pamela, to conceal some pens and paper about me, but as it was, I had lost even my tablets and pencil. The only piece of paper I possessed was Mr Fraser’s letter, which I had carried in my bosom ever since receiving it, and I had nothing at all with which to write. But the dreadful necessity of my case proved to be the mother of invention, for remembering some old story I had read of prisoners that wrote to their friends in their own blood, I drew my hussy[04] from my pocket, and plunged a blade of the scissors into my arm (I could not do such a thing now, Amelia, but that night I seemed to be raised above myself). Then with a bodkin dipped in this horrid ink I wrote twice over on the back of the letter:—

“I am not dead, but in the power of the wretch Sinzaun, at Muxadavad. Help me, any Christian that may read this, for the love of God, or at least tell those escaped from Calcutta where they may find the unhappy Sylvia Freyne.”

When this was wrote, and dry, I turned to the letter and read it through again, as though I had not long known it by heart, then tore off the post-scriptum, which I could not let go. To tear the dear sheet seemed to be to tear my own heart, but I forced myself to do it, and folding each piece small, wrote on it in the best Moors I could manage: “Take this to any hat-wearer (so they call Europeans), and he will give you ten rupees,” only, as I can’t write the Indian character, I was compelled to do it in ours, and I don’t know whether a Moor would be able to read it. After securing the precious post-scriptum again in my bosom, I hastened through the garden to a set of stairs that I had noticed led to the house-roof on the side by which we had entered, and found to my delight that from this roof I could look into a street. Here I threw my two missives, one from one end of the roof and one from t’other, and returned with failing steps towards the garden-house. Whether the effect of the drug was passing off, or my fever was coming on, I don’t know, but I was sensible of nothing but a supreme melancholy and listlessness and a most devouring thirst. My eyes failed me, so that I could not find my way back to the garden-house, and as I crept along, feeling my path with my two hands, I seemed to be no longer in the garden, but once again in the black hole at Fort William. “Water! water!” I cried in a voice of despair, as I had done there, and as at that time the words appeared to be echoed by voices of agony all around. I felt sure there was water to be had, if I might only reach it, and I was fighting my way, as I believed, through the struggling crowd, when I found my progress suddenly stopped. It was in vain that I struggled, for Misery was holding me fast, having pounced out upon me just as I reached the edge of a great tank or artificial pond of water, and was rating me like a slave that had run away.

“I saw you try to stab yourself, Beebee,” she cried, “and when you was frightened at the sight of the blood, I saw you go to the roof and try to throw yourself over twice. I was close behind you. I knew you would come here next, and I hid and waited. Do you think I don’t know that you want to kill yourself, and bring down Meer Sinzaun’s wrath on your slave, because you hope to punish me? I fear you’ll get your wicked will by dying of fever from this night air, but I’ll see at least that you don’t drown.”

I struggled with her again, but in vain, for I could not recall the word for drink in Moors, and all I could utter was an entreaty to be allowed to reach the water, which she was resolved I should not do. Thus, still struggling, she forced me back to the garden-house, where, seeing me try to reach the water-jar, she perceived at last what I wanted, and pouring me out a draught, induced me to return to the bed which I did not leave again for two months, as near as I can tell. I have quite lost count of days since the beginning of this sickness, but by noting the time when the rains ended, I am come to believe that this is now the month of September, the month in which, a year ago, I landed at the Calcutta Gott. Ah, my dear, what crowds of recollections rise in my mind when I make this calculation! Sure there never was a poor creature that in so short a space of time endured such complete vicissitudes, nor found herself, after them, in so helpless and cruel a situation. And all these misfortunes I have lived through, if I may say so, several times over, since, while my fever lasted, my disordered brain continued to present me now with pictures of my life in Calcutta, and now with visions of the days (ah, blessed time!) when, with my Amelia, I passed my hours contentedly in alternate tasks and simple pleasures, and dreamed as little of my brief exaltation as of my subsequent fall from being Queen of Calcutta to being Sinzaun’s captive. But always when I was enjoying a moment’s pleasure in these charming visions, the sight of Misery, or her voice speaking in Moors, or even a glimpse of the strange devices on the walls of my abode, would carry me in a moment to the trials of the siege, the horrors of the prison, or the dread that seized me when I heard Sinzaun’s greeting, and so I must live over again all my adversities.

It was when I was somewhat recovered, the fever only gaining the mastery of my intellects for a part of the day, that Misery came one evening to say that Meer Sinzaun desired to wait upon me. Words fail to describe the horror that seized me at the sound of that dreadful name. I would have sought to flee and hide myself, but wanted the strength to move, and even with holding up my hands to ward off the sight of the wretch I fell back upon my bed fit to expire. Misery scolded me very heartily for what she called roundly my silly foolishness, but brought word at last that Meer Sinzaun would speak with me through the curtain that hung over the door, and would not attempt to penetrate behind it. It was some time before I could succeed in calming my apprehensions sufficiently to listen to the wretch, but when I began to understand him he was passing from compliments and condolences to tell me that he was about to attend the Nabob on his campaign against the Phousdar of Purranea,[05] and that he trusted to find me restored to health on his return.