Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double life so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an active man might climb.
After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You may take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed and discussed by a man's own race but by some hundred and fifty natives as well.
In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station; wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little Bisesa.
And the Arcadia did so gallantly all that day, in the teeth of the hurricane, which blew with unabated fury for many more hours, and in spite of the tempest-torn sea, which now ran mountains high. All through that anxious day Trejago kept the deck, watching the sky and the storm. It was late in the afternoon when he said, with a sigh of relief
Trejago tried to explain, and to show her that she did not understand these things from a Western standpoint. Bisesa drew herself up, and said simply "I do not. I know only this it is not good that I should have made you dearer than my own heart to me, Sahib. You are an Englishman. I am only a black girl" she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint, "and the widow of a black man."
The first syllable was always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures with her roseleaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then, kneeling before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do, if he were sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more than any one else in the world. Which was true.
The message ran then: "A widow dhak flower and bhusa at eleven o'clock." The pinch of bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw this kind of letter leaves much to instinctive knowledge that the bhusa referred to the big heap of cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
What the tragedy was whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and what became of Bisesa Trejago does not know to this day.
My father's wife is old and harsh with years, And drudge of all my father's house am I. My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, Come back to me, Beloved, or I die! As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and whispered: "I am here." Bisesa was good to look upon.
It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins: Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun; or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
Word Of The Day
Others Looking