CHAPTER II: ALLYGHUR AND LASWAREE
CHAPTER III: A PEEP INTO SPAIN—ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND SERVICES OF THE AHMEDNUGGAR IRREGULARS
CHAPTER IV: THE INDIAN CAMP—THE SORTIE FROM THE FORT
CHAPTER V: THE ISSUE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH MY WIFE
CHAPTER VI: FAMINE IN THE GARRISON
CHAPTER VII: THE ESCAPE
CHAPTER VIII: THE CAPTIVE
CHAPTER IX: SURPRISE OF FUTTYGHUR
Footnotes:
CHAPTER I
“Truth is strange, Stranger than fiction.”
I think it but right that in making my appearance before the public I
should at once acquaint them with my titles and name. My card, as I
leave it at the houses of the nobility, my friends, is as follows:—
MAJOR GOLIAH O’GRADY GAHAGAN, H.E.I.C.S.,
_Commanding Battalion of
Irregular Horse_,
AHMEDNUGGAR.
Seeing, I say, this simple visiting ticket, the world will avoid any of
those awkward mistakes as to my person, which have been so frequent of
late. There has been no end to the blunders regarding this humble title
of mine, and the confusion thereby created. When I published my volume
of poems, for instance, the _Morning Post_ newspaper remarked “that the
Lyrics of the Heart, by Miss Gahagan, may be ranked among the sweetest
flowrets of the present spring season.” The _Quarterly Review_,
commenting upon my “Observations on the Pons Asinorum” (4to, London,
1836), called me “Doctor Gahagan,” and so on. It was time to put an end
to these mistakes, and I have taken the above simple remedy.
I was urged to it by a very exalted personage. Dining in August last at
the palace of the T-l-r-es at Paris, the lovely young Duch-ss of Orl-ns
(who, though she does not speak English, understands it as well as I
do), said to me in the softest Teutonic, “Lieber Herr Major, haben sie
den Ahmednuggarischen-jager-battalion gelassen?” “Warum denn?” said I,
quite astonished at her R—l H—ss’s question. The P-cess then spoke of
some trifle from my pen, which was simply signed Goliah Gahagan.
There was, unluckily, a dead silence as H.R.H. put this question.
“Comment donc?” said H.M. Lo-is Ph-l-ppe, looking gravely at Count
Molé; “le cher Major a quitté l’armée! Nicolas donc sera maître de
l’Inde!” H. M- and the Pr. M-n-ster pursued their conversation in a low
tone, and left me, as may be imagined, in a dreadful state of
confusion. I blushed and stuttered, and murmured out a few incoherent
words to explain—but it would not do—I could not recover my equanimity
during the course of the dinner; and while endeavouring to help an
English duke, my neighbour, to _poulet à l’Austerlitz_, fairly sent
seven mushrooms and three large greasy _croûtes_ over his whiskers and
shirt-frill. Another laugh at my expense. “Ah! M. le Major,” said the
Q— of the B-lg—ns, archly, “vous n’aurez jamais votre brevet de
Colonel.” Her M-y’s joke will be better understood when I state that
his Grace is the brother of a Minister.
I am not at liberty to violate the sanctity of private life, by
mentioning the names of the parties concerned in this little anecdote.
I only wish to have it understood that I am a gentleman, and live at
least in _decent_ society. _Verbum sat_.
But to be serious. I am obliged always to write the name of Goliah in
full, to distinguish me from my brother, Gregory Gahagan, who was also
a Major (in the King’s service), and whom I killed in a duel, as the
public most likely knows. Poor Greg! a very trivial dispute was the
cause of our quarrel, which never would have originated but for the
similarity of our names. The circumstance was this: I had been lucky
enough to render the Nawaub of Lucknow some trifling service (in the
notorious affair of Choprasjee Muckjee), and his Highness sent down a
gold toothpick-case directed to Captain G. Gahagan, which I of course
thought was for me: my brother madly claimed it; we fought, and the
consequence was, that in about three minutes he received a slash in the
right side (cut 6), which effectually did his business:- he was a good
swordsman enough—I was THE BEST in the universe. The most ridiculous
part of the affair is, that the toothpick-case was his, after all—he
had left it on the Nawaub’s table at tiffin. I can’t conceive what
madness prompted him to fight about such a paltry bauble; he had much
better have yielded it at once, when he saw I was determined to have
it. From this slight specimen of my adventures, the reader will
perceive that my life has been one of no ordinary interest; and, in
fact, I may say that I have led a more remarkable life than any man in
the service—I have been at more pitched battles, led more forlorn
hopes, had more success among the fair sex, drunk harder, read more,
been a handsomer man than any officer now serving Her Majesty.
When I first went to India in 1802, I was a raw cornet of seventeen,
with blazing red hair, six feet four in height, athletic at all kinds
of exercises, owing money to my tailor and everybody else who would
trust me, possessing an Irish brogue, and my full pay of £120 a year. I
need not say that with all these advantages I did that which a number
of clever fellows have done before me—I fell in love, and proposed to
marry immediately.
But how to overcome the difficulty?—It is true that I loved Julia
Jowler—loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a Member
of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign. It was,
however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the “Samuel
Snob” East Indiaman, Captain Duffy) with this lovely creature, and my
misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with her. We were not out of
the Channel before I adored her, worshipped the deck which she trod
upon, kissed a thousand times the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit.
The same madness fell on every man in the ship. The two mates fought
about her at the Cape; the surgeon, a sober pious Scotchman, from
disappointed affection, took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten
spontaneous combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife
and seven daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from
Mrs. L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me,
with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs. Duffy,
although he had had nineteen children by her.
We used to call her the witch—there was magic in her beauty and in her
voice. I was spell-bound when I looked at her, and stark staring mad
when she looked at me! O lustrous black eyes!—O glossy night-black
ringlets!—O lips!—O dainty frocks of white muslin!—O tiny kid
slippers!—though old and gouty, Gahagan sees you still! I recollect,
off Ascension, she looked at me in her particular way one day at
dinner, just as I happened to be blowing on a piece of scalding hot
green fat. I was stupefied at once—I thrust the entire morsel (about
half a pound) into my mouth. I made no attempt to swallow, or to
masticate it, but left it there for many minutes, burning, burning! I
had no skin to my palate for seven weeks after, and lived on rice-water
during the rest of the voyage. The anecdote is trivial, but it shows
the power of Julia Jowler over me.
The writers of marine novels have so exhausted the subject of storms,
shipwrecks, mutinies, engagements, sea-sickness, and so forth, that
(although I have experienced each of these in many varieties) I think
it quite unnecessary to recount such trifling adventures; suffice it to
say, that during our five months’ _trajet_, my mad passion for Julia
daily increased; so did the captain’s and the surgeon’s; so did Colonel
Lilywhite’s; so did the doctor’s, the mate’s—that of most part of the
passengers, and a considerable number of the crew. For myself, I
swore—ensign as I was—I would win her for my wife; I vowed that I would
make her glorious with my sword—that as soon as I had made a favourable
impression on my commanding officer (which I did not doubt to create),
I would lay open to him the state of my affections, and demand his
daughter’s hand. With such sentimental outpourings did our voyage
continue and conclude.
We landed at the Sunderbunds on a grilling hot day in December 1802,
and then for the moment Julia and I separated. She was carried off to
her papa’s arms in a palankeen, surrounded by at least forty
hookahbadars; whilst the poor cornet, attended but by two dandies and a
solitary beasty (by which unnatural name these blackamoors are called),
made his way humbly to join the regiment at headquarters.
The —th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry, then under the command of
Lieut.-Colonel Julius Jowler, C.B., was known throughout Asia and
Europe by the proud title of the Bundelcund Invincibles—so great was
its character for bravery, so remarkable were its services in that
delightful district of India. Major Sir George Gutch was next in
command, and Tom Thrupp, as kind a fellow as ever ran a Mahratta
through the body, was second Major. We were on the eve of that
remarkable war which was speedily to spread throughout the whole of
India, to call forth the valour of a Wellesley, and the indomitable
gallantry of a Gahagan; which was illustrated by our victories at
Ahmednuggar (where I was the first over the barricade at the storming
of the Pettah); at Argaum, where I slew with my own sword twenty-three
matchlock-men, and cut a dromedary in two; and by that terrible day of
Assaye, where Wellesley would have been beaten but for me—me alone: I
headed nineteen charges of cavalry, took (aided by only four men of my
own troop) seventeen field-pieces, killing the scoundrelly French
artillerymen; on that day I had eleven elephants shot under me, and
carried away Scindiah’s nose- ring with a pistol-ball. Wellesley is a
Duke and a Marshal, I but a simple Major of Irregulars. Such is fortune
and war! But my feelings carry me away from my narrative, which had
better proceed with more order.
On arriving, I say, at our barracks at Dum Dum, I for the first time
put on the beautiful uniform of the Invincibles: a light blue
swallow-tailed jacket with silver lace and wings, ornamented with about
3,000 sugar-loaf buttons, rhubarb-coloured leather inexpressibles
(tights), and red morocco boots with silver spurs and tassels, set off
to admiration the handsome persons of the officers of our corps. We
wore powder in those days; and a regulation pigtail of seventeen
inches, a brass helmet surrounded by leopard skin, with a bearskin top
and a horsetail feather, gave the head a fierce and chivalrous
appearance, which is far more easily imagined than described.
Attired in this magnificent costume, I first presented myself before
Colonel Jowler. He was habited in a manner precisely similar, but not
being more than five feet in height, and weighing at least fifteen
stone, the dress he wore did not become him quite so much as slimmer
and taller men. Flanked by his tall Majors, Thrupp and Gutch, he looked
like a stumpy skittle-ball between two attenuated skittles. The plump
little Colonel received me with vast cordiality, and I speedily became
a prime favourite with himself and the other officers of the corps.
Jowler was the most hospitable of men; and gratifying my appetite and
my love together, I continually partook of his dinners, and feasted on
the sweet presence of Julia.
I can see now, what I would not and could not perceive in those early
days, that this Miss Jowler—on whom I had lavished my first and warmest
love, whom I had endowed with all perfection and purity—was no better
than a little impudent flirt, who played with my feelings, because
during the monotony of a sea voyage she had no other toy to play with;
and who deserted others for me, and me for others, just as her whim or
her interest might guide her. She had not been three weeks at
headquarters when half the regiment was in love with her. Each and all
of the candidates had some favour to boast of, or some encouraging
hopes on which to build. It was the scene of the “Samuel Snob” over
again, only heightened in interest by a number of duels. The following
list will give the reader a notion of some of them:—
1. Cornet Gahagan . . . Ensign Hicks, of the Sappers and Miners. Hicks
received a ball in his jaw, and was half choked by a quantity of
carroty whisker forced down his throat with the ball.
2. Captain Macgillicuddy, B.N.I. Cornet Gahagan. I was run through the
body, but the sword passed between the ribs, and injured me very
slightly.
3. Captain Macgillicuddy, B.N.I. Mr. Mulligatawny, B.C.S., Deputy-
Assistant Vice Sub-Controller of the Boggleywollah Indigo grounds,
Ramgolly branch.
Macgillicuddy should have stuck to sword’s play, and he might have come
off in his second duel as well as in his first; as it was, the civilian
placed a ball and a part of Mac’s gold repeater in his stomach. A
remarkable circumstance attended this shot, an account of which I sent
home to the “Philosophical Transactions:” the surgeon had extracted the
ball, and was going off, thinking that all was well, when the gold
repeater struck thirteen in poor Macgillicuddy’s abdomen. I suppose
that the works must have been disarranged in some way by the bullet,
for the repeater was one of Barraud’s, never known to fail before, and
the circumstance occurred at _seven_ o’clock.[1]
I could continue, almost _ad infinitum_, an account of the wars which
this Helen occasioned, but the above three specimens will, I should
think, satisfy the peaceful reader. I delight not in scenes of blood,
Heaven knows, but I was compelled in the course of a few weeks, and for
the sake of this one woman, to fight nine duels myself, and I know that
four times as many more took place concerning her.
I forgot to say that Jowler’s wife was a half-caste woman, who had been
born and bred entirely in India, and whom the Colonel had married from
the house of her mother, a native. There were some singular rumours
abroad regarding this latter lady’s history: it was reported that she
was the daughter of a native Rajah, and had been carried off by a poor
English subaltern in Lord Clive’s time. The young man was killed very
soon after, and left his child with its mother. The black Prince
forgave his daughter and bequeathed to her a handsome sum of money. I
suppose that it was on this account that Jowler married Mrs. J., a
creature who had not, I do believe, a Christian name, or a single
Christian quality: she was a hideous, bloated, yellow creature, with a
beard, black teeth, and red eyes: she was fat, lying, ugly, and
stingy—she hated and was hated by all the world, and by her jolly
husband as devoutly as by any other. She did not pass a month in the
year with him, but spent most of her time with her native friends. I
wonder how she could have given birth to so lovely a creature as her
daughter. This woman was of course with the Colonel when Julia arrived,
and the spice of the devil in her daughter’s composition was most
carefully nourished and fed by her. If Julia had been a flirt before,
she was a downright jilt now; she set the whole cantonment by the ears;
she made wives jealous and husbands miserable; she caused all those
duels of which I have discoursed already, and yet such was the
fascination of THE WITCH that I still thought her an angel. I made
court to the nasty mother in order to be near the daughter; and I
listened untiringly to Jowler’s interminable dull stories, because I
was occupied all the time in watching the graceful movements of Miss
Julia.
But the trumpet of war was soon ringing in our ears; and on the
battle-field Gahagan is a man! The Bundelcund Invincibles received
orders to march, and Jowler, Hector-like, donned his helmet and
prepared to part from his Andromache. And now arose his perplexity:
what must be done with his daughter, his Julia? He knew his wife’s
peculiarities of living, and did not much care to trust his daughter to
her keeping; but in vain he tried to find her an asylum among the
respectable ladies of his regiment. Lady Gutch offered to receive her,
but would have nothing to do with Mrs. Jowler; the surgeon’s wife, Mrs.
Sawbone, would have neither mother nor daughter: there was no help for
it, Julia and her mother must have a house together, and Jowler knew
that his wife would fill it with her odious blackamoor friends.
I could not, however, go forth satisfied to the campaign until I
learned from Julia my fate. I watched twenty opportunities to see her
alone, and wandered about the Colonel’s bungalow as an informer does
about a public-house, marking the incomings and the outgoings of the
family, and longing to seize the moment when Miss Jowler, unbiassed by
her mother or her papa, might listen, perhaps, to my eloquence, and
melt at the tale of my love.
But it would not do—old Jowler seemed to have taken all of a sudden to
such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him out of doors,
and his rhubarb-coloured wife (I believe that her skin gave the first
idea of our regimental breeches), who before had been gadding
ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose into every _ménage_ in
the cantonment, stopped faithfully at home with her spouse. My only
chance was to beard the old couple in their den, and ask them at once
for their _cub_.
So I called one day at tiffin:- old Jowler was always happy to have my
company at this meal; it amused him, he said, to see me drink Hodgson’s
pale ale (I drank two hundred and thirty-four dozen the first year I
was in Bengal)—and it was no small piece of fun, certainly, to see old
Mrs. Jowler attack the currie-bhaut;—she was exactly the colour of it,
as I have had already the honour to remark, and she swallowed the
mixture with a gusto which was never equalled, except by my poor friend
Dando _à propos d’huîtres_. She consumed the first three platefuls with
a fork and spoon, like a Christian; but as she warmed to her work, the
old hag would throw away her silver implements, and dragging the dishes
towards her, go to work with her hands, flip the rice into her mouth
with her fingers, and stow away a quantity of eatables sufficient for a
sepoy company. But why do I diverge from the main point of my story?
Julia, then, Jowler, and Mrs. J., were at luncheon; the dear girl was
in the act to _sabler_ a glass of Hodgson as I entered. “How do you do,
Mr. Gagin?” said the old hag, leeringly. “Eat a bit o’
currie-bhaut,”—and she thrust the dish towards me, securing a heap as
it passed. “What! Gagy my boy, how do, how do?” said the fat Colonel.
“What! run through the body?—got well again—have some Hodgson—run
through your body too!”—and at this, I may say, coarse joke (alluding
to the fact that in these hot climates the ale oozes out as it were
from the pores of the skin) old Jowler laughed: a host of swarthy
chobdars, kitmatgars, sices, consomahs, and bobbychies laughed too, as
they provided me, unasked, with the grateful fluid. Swallowing six
tumblers of it, I paused nervously for a moment, and then said -
“Bobbachy, consomah, ballybaloo hoga.”
The black ruffians took the hint, and retired.
“Colonel and Mrs. Jowler,” said I solemnly, “we are alone; and you,
Miss Jowler, you are alone too; that is—I mean—I take this opportunity
to—(another glass of ale, if you please)—to express, once for all,
before departing on a dangerous campaign”—(Julia turned pale)—“before
entering, I say, upon a war which may stretch in the dust my
high-raised hopes and me, to express my hopes while life still remains
to me, and to declare in the face of heaven, earth, and Colonel Jowler,
that I love you, Julia!” The Colonel, astonished, let fall a steel
fork, which stuck quivering for some minutes in the calf of my leg; but
I heeded not the paltry interruption. “Yes, by yon bright heaven,”
continued I, “I love you, Julia! I respect my commander, I esteem your
excellent and beauteous mother: tell me, before I leave you, if I may
hope for a return of my affection. Say that you love me, and I will do
such deeds in this coming war, as shall make you proud of the name of
your Gahagan.”
The old woman, as I delivered these touching words, stared, snapped,
and ground her teeth, like an enraged monkey. Julia was now red, now
white; the Colonel stretched forward, took the fork out of the calf of
my leg, wiped it, and then seized a bundle of letters which I had
remarked by his side.
“A cornet!” said he, in a voice choking with emotion; “a pitiful
beggarly Irish cornet aspire to the hand of Julia Jowler! Gag— Gahagan,
are you mad, or laughing at us? Look at these letters, young man—at
these letters, I say—one hundred and twenty-four epistles from every
part of India (not including one from the Governor-General, and six
from his brother, Colonel Wellesley)—one hundred and twenty-four
proposals for the hand of Miss Jowler! Cornet Gahagan,” he continued,
“I wish to think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest,
and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a
single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an
anna!”—(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital
pun.)—“No, no,” said he, waxing good-natured; “Gagy my boy, it is
nonsense! Julia love, retire with your mamma; this silly young
gentleman will remain and smoke a pipe with me.”
I took one: it was the bitterest chillum I ever smoked in my life.
I am not going to give here an account of my military services; they
will appear in my great national autobiography, in forty volumes, which
I am now preparing for the press. I was with my regiment in all
Wellesley’s brilliant campaigns; then taking dawk, I travelled across
the country north-eastward, and had the honour of fighting by the side
of Lord Lake at Laswaree, Degg, Furruckabad, Futtyghur, and Bhurtpore:
but I will not boast of my actions—the military man knows them, MY
SOVEREIGN appreciates them. If asked who was the bravest man of the
Indian army, there is not an officer belonging to it who would not cry
at once, GAHAGAN. The fact is, I was desperate: I cared not for life,
deprived of Julia Jowler.
With Julia’s stony looks ever before my eyes, her father’s stern
refusal in my ears, I did not care, at the close of the campaign, again
to seek her company or to press my suit. We were eighteen months on
service, marching and counter-marching, and fighting almost every other
day: to the world I did not seem altered; but the world only saw the
face, and not the seared and blighted heart within me. My valour,
always desperate, now reached to a pitch of cruelty; I tortured my
grooms and grass-cutters for the most trifling offence or error,—I
never in action spared a man,—I sheared off three hundred and nine
heads in the course of that single campaign.
Some influence, equally melancholy, seemed to have fallen upon poor old
Jowler. About six months after we had left Dum Dum, he received a
parcel of letters from Benares (whither his wife had retired with her
daughter), and so deeply did they seem to weigh upon his spirits, that
he ordered eleven men of his regiment to be flogged within two days;
but it was against the blacks that he chiefly turned his wrath. Our
fellows, in the heat and hurry of the campaign, were in the habit of
dealing rather roughly with their prisoners, to extract treasure from
them: they used to pull their nails out by the root, to boil them in
kedgeree pots, to flog them and dress their wounds with cayenne pepper,
and so on. Jowler, when he heard of these proceedings, which before had
always justly exasperated him (he was a humane and kind little man),
used now to smile fiercely and say, “D- the black scoundrels! Serve
them right, serve them right!”
One day, about a couple of miles in advance of the column, I had been
on a foraging-party with a few dragoons, and was returning peaceably to
camp, when of a sudden a troop of Mahrattas burst on us from a
neighbouring mango-tope, in which they had been hidden: in an instant
three of my men’s saddles were empty, and I was left with but seven
more to make head against at least thirty of these vagabond black
horsemen. I never saw in my life a nobler figure than the leader of the
troop—mounted on a splendid black Arab; he was as tall, very nearly, as
myself; he wore a steel cap and a shirt of mail, and carried a
beautiful French carbine, which had already done execution upon two of
my men. I saw that our only chance of safety lay in the destruction of
this man. I shouted to him in a voice of thunder (in the Hindustanee
tongue of course), “Stop, dog, if you dare, and encounter a man!”
In reply his lance came whirling in the air over my head, and mortally
transfixed poor Foggarty of ours, who was behind me. Grinding my teeth
and swearing horribly, I drew that scimitar which never yet failed its
blow,[2] and rushed at the Indian. He came down at full gallop, his own
sword making ten thousand gleaming circles in the air, shrieking his
cry of battle.
The contest did not last an instant. With my first blow I cut off his
sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that
he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood
of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered “_St. George;_” my
sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut
crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby
which he wore in his back- plate. His head, cut clean in two between
the eyebrows and nostrils, even between the two front teeth, fell one
side on each shoulder, and he galloped on till his horse was stopped by
my men, who were not a little amused at the feat.
As I had expected, the remaining ruffians fled on seeing their leader’s
fate. I took home his helmet by way of curiosity, and we made a single
prisoner, who was instantly carried before old Jowler.
We asked the prisoner the name of the leader of the troop: he said it
was Chowder Loll.
“Chowder Loll!” shrieked Colonel Jowler. “O Fate! thy hand is here!” He
rushed wildly into his tent—the next day applied for leave of absence.
Gutch took the command of the regiment, and I saw him no more for some
time.
As I had distinguished myself not a little during the war, General Lake
sent me up with despatches to Calcutta, where Lord Wellesley received
me with the greatest distinction. Fancy my surprise, on going to a ball
at Government House, to meet my old friend Jowler; my trembling,
blushing, thrilling delight, when I saw Julia by his side!
Jowler seemed to blush too when he beheld me. I thought of my former
passages with his daughter. “Gagy my boy,” says he, shaking hands,
“glad to see you. Old friend, Julia—come to tiffin— Hodgson’s
pale—brave fellow Gagy.” Julia did not speak, but she turned ashy pale,
and fixed upon me her awful eyes! I fainted almost, and uttered some
incoherent words. Julia took my hand, gazed at me still, and said,
“Come!” Need I say I went?
I will not go over the pale ale and currie-bhaut again! but this I
know, that in half-an-hour I was as much in love as I ever had been:
and that in three weeks I—yes, I—was the accepted lover of Julia! I did
not pause to ask where were the one hundred and twenty-four offers? why
I, refused before, should be accepted now? I only felt that I loved
her, and was happy!
One night, one memorable night, I could not sleep, and, with a lover’s
pardonable passion, wandered solitary through the City of Palaces until
I came to the house which contained my Julia. I peeped into the
compound—all was still; I looked into the verandah—all was dark, except
a light—yes, one light—and it was in Julia’s chamber! My heart throbbed
almost to stifling. I would—I _would_ advance, if but to gaze upon her
for a moment, and to bless her as she slept. I _did_ look, I _did_
advance; and, O Heaven! I saw a lamp burning, Mrs. Jow. in a
night-dress, with a very dark baby in her arms, and Julia looking
tenderly at an ayah, who was nursing another.
“Oh, Mamma,” said Julia, “what would that fool Gahagan say if he knew
all?”
“_He does know all!_” shouted I, springing forward, and tearing down
the tatties from the window. Mrs. Jow. ran shrieking out of the room,
Julia fainted, the cursed black children squalled, and their d-d nurse
fell on her knees, gabbling some infernal jargon of Hindustanee. Old
Jowler at this juncture entered with a candle and a drawn sword.
“Liar! scoundrel! deceiver!” shouted I. “Turn, ruffian, and defend
yourself!” But old Jowler, when he saw me, only whistled, looked at his
lifeless daughter, and slowly left the room.
Why continue the tale? I need not now account for Jowler’s gloom on
receiving his letters from Benares—for his exclamation upon the death
of the Indian chief—for his desire to marry his daughter: the woman I
was wooing was no longer Miss Julia Jowler, she was Mrs. Chowder Loll!