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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.
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