The Tiger of Mysore Part 42

"Well, Mother," he said, after the first embrace and greetings were over, "I have left Tippoo's service, you see, and am no longer a colonel, or an officer of the Palace. I have come down to spend a fortnight with you, before I set out again on my travels."

"Has Surajah come back with you, d.i.c.k?" the Rajah asked.

"Yes. He will be here in a few minutes, with a cart. That is one of the reasons why I came down here. I found, among the slaves of the harem, a white girl about fourteen years old. She is the daughter of a British officer named Mansfield, and was carried away from her parents, eight years ago. She was the only white captive left in the Palace. There have been other girls, in a similar position, but they have all, at about fourteen or fifteen, been given by Tippoo to his officers; as would have been her fate, before long, so I determined to carry her off with me, and bring her to you, until we could find her parents. She is a very plucky girl, and, although she had never been on a horse before, rode all the way down, until we got this side of Kistnagherry. But as you may imagine, the poor little thing is completely knocked up, so we brought her down from there in a cart.

"It is something, Mother, to have saved one captive from Tippoo's grasp, even though it is not the dear one that I was looking for; and I promised that you would be a mother to her, until we could restore her to her friends."

"Certainly I will, d.i.c.k," Mrs. Holland said warmly.

"Will you tell the girls, Gholla," she said to her sister-in-law, "to have a bed made up for her, in my room?"

"I will do so at once," the ranee said. "Poor little thing, she must have had a journey, indeed."

"She will be here directly, Mother," d.i.c.k said, as his aunt gave the necessary directions for the bed to be prepared, and a dish of rice and strong gravy. "She is very nervous, and I am sure it will be best if you will meet her, when she arrives, and take her straight to her room."

"That is what I was going to do, d.i.c.k," his mother said, with a smile.

"Well, I will go down with you, at once."

Two or three minutes later, the cart entered the courtyard. Mrs.

Holland was on the steps. d.i.c.k ran down, and helped Annie from the cart. The girl was trembling violently.

"Don't be afraid, Annie," d.i.c.k whispered, as he lifted her down. "Here is my mother, waiting to receive you.

"This is the young lady," he went on cheerfully, as he turned to his mother. "I promised her a warm welcome, in your name."

Mrs. Holland had already come down the steps, and as the girl turned towards her, she took her in her arms, and kissed her in motherly fashion.

"Welcome, indeed," she said. "I will be a mother to you, poor child, till I can hand you over to your own. I thank G.o.d for sending you to me. It will be a comfort to me to know that, even if my son should never bring my husband back to me, he has at least succeeded in rescuing one victim from Tippoo, and in making one family happy."

The girl clung to her, crying softly.

"Oh, how good you all are!" she sobbed. "It seems too much happiness to be true."

"It is quite true, dear. Come with me. We will go up the private stairs, and I will put you straight to bed in my room, and no one else shall see you, or question you, until you are quite recovered from your fatigue."

"I am afraid," Annie began faintly.

She did not need to say more. Mrs. Holland interrupted her.

"d.i.c.k, you must lift her up, and carry her into my room. Poor child, she is utterly exhausted, and no wonder."

A couple of minutes later, d.i.c.k returned to the dining room. He had run down, first, to tell Surajah to come up with him, but found that he had already gone to his father's apartments.

"Well, d.i.c.k," the Rajah said, as he entered, "I was prepared, after hearing of that tiger adventure, and of you and Surajah being colonels in Tippoo's household, for almost anything; but I certainly never dreamt of your returning here with an English girl."

"I suppose not, Uncle. Such a thing certainly never entered into my calculations. I did not even know there was a white girl in the Palace, until one day she stopped me, as I was pa.s.sing along the corridor near the harem, to thank me for saving her life--for it was this girl that the tiger had struck down, and was standing upon, when I fired at him. Of course, she had no idea that I was English. We only said a few words then, for if I had been seen talking to a slave girl belonging to the harem, I might have got into a sc.r.a.pe. However, I saw her afterwards, and she told me about herself, and how she was afraid that she would be given away to one of Tippoo's officers. Of course, I could not leave her to such a fate as that.

"There was really no difficulty in getting her away. She was dressed as a boy, and only had to ride, with our servant, after us. We had arranged so that our absence would not be noticed, until we had been away for at least twenty-four hours, and of course, as officers of the Palace, no one questioned us on the journey, so that it is a very simple affair altogether, and the only difficulty there was, rose from her being completely tired out and exhausted by the journey, as she was utterly unaccustomed to travelling. I had to carry her one night, in front of me on my saddle, for she was scarce able to stand."

"I am not surprised at that. A journey of a hundred and fifty miles, to anyone who has never been on horseback, would be a terrible trial, especially to a young girl. I really wonder that she did not break down altogether. Why, you can remember how stiff you were, yourself, the first day or two you were here, and that after riding only an hour or two."

"I know, Uncle, and I should not have been in the least surprised, if she had collapsed. I talked it over with Surajah, and we agreed that, if she could not go on, we must hire a vehicle of some sort, and let her travel, every day, in front of us with Ibrahim, and that if it delayed us so much that there was any possibility of our being overtaken, we would have put on our peasant's dresses, got rid of our horses, and have gone forward on foot.

"However, she kept up wonderfully well, and always made the best of things."

"We won't ask you to tell us anything more, d.i.c.k, till your mother joins us, or you will have to go over the story twice."

"No, Uncle; and I can a.s.sure you I don't want to tell the story until I have had my supper, for our meals have not been very comfortable on the road, and I have not eaten anything since early this morning."

"What is Tippoo doing, d.i.c.k?"

"Well, as far as I can see, Uncle, he is preparing for war again. He is strengthening all his forts, building fresh defences to Seringapatam, and drilling numbers of fresh troops."

"The English general made a great mistake, in not finishing with him when he was there. We ought to have taken the city, sent Tippoo down a prisoner to Madras, and there tried him for the murder of scores of Englishmen, and hung him over the ramparts. We shall have all our work to do over again, in another four or five years. However, it will not be such a difficult business as it was last time, now that we have the pa.s.ses in our hands."

"There is no doubt, Uncle, that a considerable part of the population will be heartily glad when Tippoo's power is at an end. You see, he and Hyder were both usurpers, and had no more right to the throne than you had."

"Quite so, d.i.c.k, and that makes our letting him off, when we could have taken the capital easily, all the more foolish. If he had been the lawful ruler of Mysore, it might not have been good policy to push him too hard, for he would have had sympathy from all the native princes of India. But, as being only the son of an adventurer, who had deposed and ill-treated the lawful ruler of Mysore, it would seem to them but a mere act of justice, if the English had dethroned him and punished him--provided, of course, they put a native prince on the throne, and did not annex all his dominions.

"It has all got to come some day. I can see that, in time, the English will be the rulers of all India, but at present they are not strong enough to face a general coalition of the native states against them; and any very high-handed action, in Mysore, might well alarm the native princes, throughout India, into laying aside their quarrels with each other, and combining in an attempt to drive them out."

Just as they had finished their meal, Mrs. Holland entered.

"The poor child is asleep," she said. "She wanted to talk at first, and to tell me how grateful she was to you, d.i.c.k; but of course I insisted on her being quiet, and said that she should tell me all about it, in the morning. She ate a few mouthfuls of the rice, and not long after she lay down, she fell asleep. I have left Sundra sitting there, in case she should wake up again, but I don't think it is likely that she will do so.

"Now, d.i.c.k, you must tell us all about it."

d.i.c.k was not a great hand at writing letters, so he had not entered, with any fullness, into the details of what he was doing, the princ.i.p.al point being to let his mother know that he was alive and well.

"Before he begins," the Rajah said, "I will send for Rajbullub and Surajah. Master d.i.c.k is rather fond of cutting his stories short, and we must have Surajah here to fill up details."

Surajah and his father soon appeared. The former was warmly greeted by the Rajah, and when they had seated themselves on a divan, d.i.c.k proceeded to tell the story. He was not interrupted, until he came to the incident of the killing of the tiger, and here Surajah was called upon to supplement the story, which he did, doing full credit to the quickness with which d.i.c.k had, without a moment's loss of time, cut the netting and ascended to the window.

When d.i.c.k came to the incident of the ladies of the harem presenting them, in Tippoo's presence, with the two caskets, Mrs. Holland broke in:

"You did not say anything about that in your letter, d.i.c.k. Let me see your casket. Where is it?"

"It is in one of the saddlebags," d.i.c.k said.

"They are in my room," Rajbullub corrected. "Surajah brought them up at once."

"Then he had better get them," the Rajah said.

"What do they contain, d.i.c.k?" he asked, as Surajah left the room.

"All sorts of things--necklaces and rings. Some of them are stones, as if they had been taken out of their settings. Pertaub said they had done this because they thought, perhaps, that Tippoo would not allow the jewels they had worn to be sold, or worn by anyone else."

"Then I should think that they must be valuable," the ranee said.