“Your servant, gentlemen,” said I.
“Your servant, sir,” says Captain Labaume. “I think you en’t acquainted with my friend? Mr Warren Hastings, late of the Cossimbuzar factory—Lieutenant Fraser of the Tyger. Mr Hastings is possessed of certain news that concerns you, sir, which it is his painful duty to communicate.”
“Perhaps, sir,” says Mr Hastings, as the Frenchman bowed and left us, “you would prefer to turn aside into the gardens here, rather than learn in this public place what I have to tell you?”
I bowed, for when I tried to speak the words were wanting, and we turned into the Dutch Governor’s gardens, where I stopped short and looked at the young gentleman, a person of very pleasing appearance. Sure no more agreeable messenger ever carried such heavy news as that which I read in his eyes before he told it. “You need not speak, sir,” I said. “You’re come to advise me of the death of the loveliest of her sex?”
“Sir,” said Mr Hastings, “I can but pass on to you a message delivered to me. Near six months ago I was lounging one evening with my friend Mr Chambers on the gott belonging to the French house at Sydabad,[03] where we had refuged after the fall of our own factory. We were watching the boats that passed, too many of them, alas! laden with the spoils of Calcutta, and guarded by others with flags and music and all imaginable pomp. Suddenly, from the deck of one of these there rose up a man, almost naked but for a piece of a gunny bag that was wrapped round him, and with his limbs covered with the most frightful boils and sores. ‘Sure, sirs, you must be English?’ he cried, gesticulating towards us with his chained hands, and hearing a British voice, we hastened to the water’s edge. The Jemmautdar in charge of the boat was come up when we reached it, and ordered the poor wretch, with blows and curses, to be silent, but we appeased him with a rupee or two, and obtained leave for the prisoner to speak. He informed us that he was a sergeant of our garrison here, and had suffered the torments of the Black Hole in company with his captain and a lady whom the Captain respected very highly. The lady being found alive on the morrow after the tragedy, was ordered to be sent to Muxidavad to the Nabob’s seraglio, and this poor fellow, desirous of serving one whom his late commander had so much esteemed, accepted an offer to enter the Soubah’s service in the hope of being permitted to attend upon her. In this pious wish, however, he was disappointed, for though on board the same boat, he saw nothing of her until—until—pray, sir, prepare your mind for grievous tidings—he beheld her corpse carried on shore for burial at Santipore. The fever that seized all those who survived the night of torment had proved too strong for her delicate frame, finding its work aided, questionless, by the anguish of spirit natural in such a situation as hers. The pious care of a poor Moorwoman, her attendant, procured the unhappy lady a grave in the garden belonging to the Armenians of the place—this, said our wretched informant, he was assured of by one of his keepers, more humane or less brutal than the rest, and he was desirous that the lady’s friends should know it also. Mr Chambers and I divided the little money we had upon us between the poor fellow and the Jemmautdar, whom we sought to engage in his favour, and since then I fear the matter had almost slipped my memory, after I had once learnt from Mr Holwell in his captivity at Muxidavad that both the lady’s father, and also Captain Colquhoun, whom he believed to be her humble servant, were dead. I did send word of what I had heard to Mrs Freyne, whom I understood to be at Fulta, but receiving no answer of any kind, my mind was soon busied again with the secret negotiations I was engaged in on the Company’s behalf, and ’twas not until I fled hither when my dealings with the Seats were threatened with discovery, and learned by chance from Captain Labaume your melancholy history, sir, that I knew I could resolve any doubt of yours as to the unhappy fate of the lady in whom you claim so deep an interest.”
I had listened to Mr Hastings’s tale without any interruption but that of sighs and unconquerable groans, but now I could contain myself no longer. “And can there be,” I cried, “a God above, when so transcendent a creature is permitted to expire miserably, without a friend at hand to close her eyes?”
“There’s worse things than death, sir,” says Mr Hastings, with a modest hesitation. “Perhaps we should rather give thanks that the amiable lady you adored was suffered to expire peacefully before ever reaching Muxidavad.”
“I accept the just rebuke, sir, but—oh, sir, you never knew Miss Freyne. Had you enjoyed her acquaintance, though but for an hour, you would have thought the world bare without her. What, then, can you imagine to be that man’s state of mind who was honoured with her particular regard?”
“Why, sir,” cried the warm-hearted young gentleman, “I would have him thank Heaven continually for the happiness with which he has been blessed, and live to prove himself not unworthy of his dear mistress’s favour.”
“Your hand, sir!” said I, moved by his honest ardour; but, madam, ’tis cold comfort to pay to the memory of the dead those honours you had hoped to bestow on the living, and how much more when the fault is your own.