* So admirable are the performances of these watches, which
will stand in any climate, that I repeatedly heard poor
Macgillicuddy relate the following fact. The hours, as it
is known, count in Italy from one to twenty-four: the day
Mac landed at Naples his repeater rung the Italian hours,
from one to twenty-four; as soon as he crossed the Alps it
only sounded as usual.--G. O'G. G.
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 rumors
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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