Читать книгу A Prince of Dreamers - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 11

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Beauty is no bond maiden; Lot it holds The veil which hides it from all earthly lovers But to holy-hearted noble-souled Unveils and all its loveliness discovers.

There was another, and very different tinkle of soft laughter, a rustle of silks and satins which in their stirring gave out multi-scented perfumes of orange and rose, musk, and ambergris; for Auntie Rosebody was in full swing of one of her recitals, and all the harem knew that they were as good as cornelian-water for raising the spirits.

Not that spirits required raising on this day of days, on which the accession of the Most Auspicious, the Most Excellent, the King-of-Kings was commemorated! Pleasurable excitement simmered through the whole women's apartments. For weeks past, preparations for the feast had been going on, and to-day would bring full fruition to all their labours. Dressed in their best, the harem waited for the ceremonials to begin.

"Ha! la! la!" went on Aunt Rosebody, enjoying her own tale of past glories. "That was a feasting, for sure A Mystic Palace, and three Houses; one of dominion, one of good fortune, one of pleasure. So my brother Jahânbâni-jinat Ashyâni--on whom be peace--chose pleasure. And he took three plates full of gold coins. 'There is no need to count,' said he, 'let each lady take a fistful.' So we scattered them in the empty tank, and the guests scrambled for them.

"Then the King, my brother, seeing this, said to our Dearest Lady"--here the little speaker's little hands fluttered faintly as if in blessing--"on whom be God's uttermost peace for ever, 'If you permit, why not let the water in?' At first 'Dearest Lady,' out of the gentleness of her heart said no, but afterward she climbed out and sate on the top steps! Ha! la! la! la! It was like the Day of Resurrection! When the water came, everyone tumbled about and got so excited, but the King called 'No harm done! Come out and eat aniseed candy!' So to end my story everyone came out, everyone ate candy, and none got cold! Bis-millah!"

The little lady hitched her veil straight--it had fallen from her abundant gray hair during her vivacious gesticulations--and beamed round on the audience seated about her on cushions.

"Bis-millah!" echoed their laughing voices. To look at Aunt Rosebody was enough for laughter. Despite her years, nothing damped the keen enjoyment of life which was hers by right of descent. Her nephew Akbar had it at times also; but the cares of life crept in at others. Not so with Aunt Rosebody. Even her recent pilgrimage to Mekka had not aged her, though Salîma Begum her daughter looked years older, and her daughter the little "Mother of Plumpness" had come out of the five years journeying quite thin.

But one thing disturbed Auntie Rosebody's equanimity, and that was the misdeeds of her darling grand-nephew, the Heir Apparent. These she would weep over, scold over, and finally condone.

So the smiles died from her puckered face as Lady Hamida Begum, the boy's grandmother, swept into the arcade her face pale with proud vexation.

"Say not so! sister-in-law!" exclaimed the little lady, tears in her voice already. "Say not he hath been drunk again? Oh! my life! What is to be done?"

Lady Hamida set her lips. "It is true," she replied, "and my son--his father--is deeply angered. And what wonder, though in truth"--she sighed--"this setting aside of all loose livers in Satanstown----"

"Oh! 'tis a premium on discovery," moaned Aunt Rosebody. "Why cannot my nephew let folk go to the devil discreetly, and none be the wiser save Providence? Oh! my life! what is to be done?"

"Pray for him," suggested Salîma Begum nervously.

"Yes! Pray for him!" assented an older Salîma who, being related in cross-road fashion to half the harem had lost all individuality.

"Prayers!" whimpered the little lady wrathfully. "Have I not already given up my pilgrimage to the scapegrace, and if that avails not, what are prayers? How was it, know you, Hamida?"

"The tale is not for virtuous ears," replied the Lady Hamida icily. "It is sufficient that my grandson has once more been brought home in a state unbecoming the heir to my son."

"Tra-a-a!" said an elderly woman dryly, as she looked up from the tarikh or numerical hemstitch she was laboriously composing in a corner. Then she took a pinch of scented snuff and removed her spectacles; for Râkiya Begum, as the political wife of Akbar's boyhood, was titular head of the Mahommedan harem as the mother of the Heir-Apparent was head of the Hindu.

"With due deference," she went on composedly, "it is in the blood. His great-grandfather----"

Aunt Rosebody caught her up fiercely. "But never clown-drunk like this boy! When my father of blessed memory was drunk, he was as the Archangel Gabriel,--of the most entertaining--the most exhilarating--And he gave it up! Does he not say in his blessed book of memoirs: 'Being now thirty-nine and having vowed to abandon wine in my fortieth year, I therefore drank to excess.' What would you more? And his recantation! 'Gentlemen of the army! Those who sit down to the feast of life must end by drinking the cup of death!' It stirs one like the Day of Resurrection! But this boy--'tis all his Hindu mother's fault."

"And his grandfather took opium," continued Râkiya, relentlessly.

Lady Hamida looked up with chill dignity. "Let the earth of the grave cover the dead, daughter-in-law. What my husband did is known to me better than to you."

Râkiya Begum put the spectacles on her pinched nose once more.

"I offer excuse," she replied ceremoniously. "I was but going to remark that both blessed saints, despite these habits, were good enough kings. It is the unprecedented abstemiousness of the present Lord of the Universe, who looks neither at wine nor women, which throws the Prince's indiscretions into relief."

Her words brought solace. After all who could expect a boy of eighteen to be Akbar?--who, in truth, scarcely slept or ate. And this brought the remembrance that if Salîm was sick--as he invariably was after a drinking bout--the pile of good dishes which the Beneficent Ladies had been preparing these many days back against this feast might as well not have been made! The thought was depressing.

"I wonder," sighed Aunt Rosebody, "what 'Dearest Lady' would have advised."

A hush fell over the company. It seemed as though the sweet wise presence of a dead woman filled the room. A dead woman who even in life had earned for herself that title, who lives under it still in the pages of her niece's memoirs.

"She would have counselled patience as ever," answered the Lady Haimda. "Lo! Elder-Sister-Rose! Such tangled skeins can be but disentangled by Time. I remember when my marriage----" She broke off and was silent. Elder-Sister-Rose might know the story, might even remember for her memoirs the very words of the pitiful little tale of girlish refusal overborne; but these others? No! sufficient for them the fact that the unwelcome marriage had made her mother to the King-of-Kings.

"It must not spoil the day anyhow," summed up Aunt Rosebody at last, decisively drying her eyes, "and by and by, perhaps, when his mother hath done giving the boy Hindu medicines--in truth, though I admit my nephew is right in deeming the idolaters fellow mortals, their drugs are detestable--we may have a chance with a cooling sherbet such as my father--on whom be peace--ever loved after a carouse. Meanwhile is everything ready for the weighing?"

"All things," replied Lady Hamida proudly. "My son shall lack for nothing."

"Then the poor will at least benefit, God be praised!" said Râkiya Begum tartly as she rose. "Though this weighing of the Sacred Personality is a heathenish custom unsanctioned by our Holy Book; but what with his Majesty's divine faith, what with the shaving of beards, the keeping of dogs, and mixed marriages, a pious Musulmâni such as I, had best take off her spectacles lest she see too much."

She took them off with a flourish and a loud Sobhan-ullah! which echoed militantly through the wide arcaded room.

Then she prepared to put on her burka veil; for trumpets were sounding outside that it was time for the Beneficent Ladies to take up their secluded coign of vantage in order to see the coming show.

"There is no need for all-over-dresses," suggested Lady Hamida gently. "My son hath arranged seclusion in a new fashion."

"I offer excuse!" replied Râkiya with a sniff, "but my honourable veiling is of the old fashion."

With that she led the way in her ghostly goggle-eyed wrapper.

Such tinkling of jewels! Such perfume from stirred scent-sodden silks! Such hurried needless mufflings with diaphanous veilings! Such final eagerness of outlook, when they could peep through the latticing, see the throne almost within touch of them, and--curving from it in a vast semicircle of which it was the centre--see the packed rows on rows of nobles glittering with jewels awaiting the coming of the King. So entrancing was the sight that the due and stately greeting of the rival women who trooped to their places from the Hindu harem, lacked something of lengthy dignity, and there was a general sigh of content as every eye settled down to a peephole.

"Look!" chattered even silent Salîma. "Yonder is Sher Afkân new back from the Deccan war! A goodly man, and betrothed, they say, to Ghiâss Beg, the Treasurer's daughter--a little witch for beauty. They call her Queen of Women--Mihr-un-nissa--and she not twelve years old!"

"See, Amma-jân!" whispered little Umm Kulsum, the "Mother of Plumpness," "that is Budaoni beside the Makhdûm--O God of the Prophet, may the Holy One's blessing rest on me!"

"Yonder is Faiz, the poet--oh fie! He hath his dog with him--the unclean beast," giggled another.

"Aye! Abulfazl, his brother, will likely come with the King; they say his stomach grows bigger every day trying to swallow what his Majesty will not eat."

Râkiya Begum gave a cackling laugh. "Stomach or no stomach, he is the wonder of the age. He hath approved this concealed one's verses."

"Mine also," bridled Aunt Rosebody. "He hath asked and used my memory in his history. But wherefore delays the King? The show is like a peacock's tail without an eye, and he away."

It was an apt simile. The almost inconceivable magnificence of the scene made the eye wander. The acres on acres of gorgeous pavilion flashing with silver-gilt columns, glowing with silken Khorasân carpetings, filled to the roofing with tier on tier of grandees of the empire ablaze with jewels, multi-coloured as a flowerful parterre--all this needed centralising, seemed incoherent without a figure on the throne. The very curve of waiting elephants--a solid wall of gold trappings encrusted with gems which stretched on and on beyond the pavilion on either side like some huge bow--seemed as if it might have gone over the horizon, but for the tight-packed bowstring of the populace blocking the distant view from sight with myriads of eager watching eyes.

Suddenly a great blare of sound!

At last--at last! The Royal nakarah at last! And see! sweeping round ahead of a scintillating knot of horsemen, banners, lances--one man!

The King! The King!

A low moaning surge of sound came from the packed humanity for an instant. The next it was lost in the wild shrieking bellow which seemed to crack the skies as two thousand elephants threw up their trunks head-high and let loose their leviathan throats.

An imperial salute indeed! One that never grows stale, and the thrill of it paled Akbar's cheek as, with the shining sun, standard of the Râjpûts on one hand, the glorious green banner of Islâm on the other, he rode forward to take the throne which he had wrung alike from Hindus and Mahommedans.

Of what was he thinking, as grave, courteous, he returned the obeisances of all? He was thinking with a passion of regret in his heart of a lad of eighteen found drunk in Siyah Yamin's Paradise.

And now, seated on the throne, his figure, clad in simple white muslin--with the milky sheen of a rope of pearls, and the dull white gleam of the diamond he always wore in his turban--its only ornament--seemed to centre the magificence in curious contrast.

"The King--may he live for ever!--looks well enough," commented Râkiya Begum, charily concealing her pride, "but why doth he not wear a gold coat like his fathers? These innovations will surely lead him to hell."

"Sobhan-ullah!" assented Salîma nervously.

They were such simple, straightforward Beneficent Ladies with their high features, high courage, high sense of duty, of family, of tradition, all swathed and hidden away in scent-sodden silks and satins. They formed as it were a masked battery of pure benevolence behind the throne, unseen, but felt; for Akbar gave a glance round to where he knew his mother must be sitting ere, facing his empire for a second or two in silence, he rose and stepped forward to the great silver-gilt steel-yard which stood in front of the dais.

A blare of nakarahs sounded the advance, and Aunt Rosebody from her peephole said in an agonised whisper: "God send everything be ready!"

"Even the Mystic Palace, O Khânzâda Gulbadan Khânum! was not more prepared!" replied Lady Hamida, "Eunuchs! take out the gold!"

Then, as the slaves staggered forth under their burden, she sate clasping little Umm Kulsum's hand murmuring softly, "He did not weigh so heavy--once!"

She was back in memory to the terrified travail of long years ago in the wilderness when, as a queen flying from her enemies, she had first wept at the rough looks of the hastily summoned village midwife, then hugged her for very joy when the boy-baby was put into her young arms.

The "Mother of Plumpness" nestled closer to her in the sheer sympathy which she had, and to spare, for all comers. Her round bright eyes, indeed, had already sought and found the posy of violets which the King wore half-hidden by the rope of pearls around his neck. She grew them in her garden, so that the Most Excellent might ever wear the flower he loved so well; that his grandfather Babar had loved so well also.

Akbar, meanwhile, seated in the scales awaited the great platter of gold, and a sigh of relief rose from behind the lattice as the steel-yard, recovering from the impact, oscillated, then settled to fair equipoise.

The gold, anyhow, was of the right weight!

"Give it to the poor!" said the King and the taut bowstring of the populace gave out a surging thrill.

"The ornaments next!" whispered Aunt Rosebody feverishly, and held her breath as with due decorum the second huge tray was hefted to the scale.

What had happened? Was there a faint unevenness in the swing? Would there be the least deficiency?

Ere the question, rising in ten thousand minds, could be formulated fairly, it was settled by one small hand which flashed through the latticing, and a scarce-heard chink told that a little gold bracelet had fallen just where it should fall.

Akbar holding to the gilded chains as the balance steadied to level rest, did not smile. He only threw back at the lattice one all-comprehending remark of superhuman gravity.

"Thanks! most reverend aunt!"

Gulbadan Begum fell from her peephole with a little shriek of outrage, and the remaining ten weighings, and the distribution of chicken, and sheep, and goats, one of each for each year of the Most Auspicious reign, had all been set aside for the poor ere she had recovered her composure.

"Now is there peace, as the squirrel said when he had pulled the sting out of the wasp," she remarked, hurriedly fanning herself with the plaited edge of her tinsel-set veil, "but 'twas like the Day of Resurrection!" This being her favourite standard for a disconcerting event.

"Who flings, finds as he flings!" remarked Râkiya Begum with much acerbity, "and if women learn men's tricks they must expect scandal. 'Tis the fault of ill-regulated youth!"

"Ill-regulated?" burst out Aunt Rosebody in instant wrath. "My father--on whom be peace--loved to see his girls--but there! No quarreling on this great day! Here come the elephants!"

They came, heading the review. Close on two thousand of them, three abreast, moving like a wall, only their slow shifting pads showing beneath their fringed war-armour. And as each trio passed, up went the snaky trunks, and from between curved tusks a bellowing trumpet shrieked out.

"Not to-day, Guj-muktar!" called the King appeasingly as one mighty beast paused; and the wise monster passed on shaking its huge head as if to rid himself of an unwelcome burden; for Guj-muktar was Akbar's favourite mount, and objected strongly to a strange driver.

Then came the camels all scarlet and gold, with swinging tassels, their riders bent almost double in sitting the long stilted stride. Then the horses neighing, prancing, curvetting, led by gorgeous grooms waving long yak's-tails. Next the hounds, lean, hungry-looking, pacing beside their keepers, followed by the hawks quaintly hooded and leashed, their bells jingling, looking like stuffed birds, so still were they upon the falconers' wrists.

Finally--quaintest sight of all to the three Englishmen who seated beside Pâdré Rudolfo the Jesuit, watched the scene with wide eyes--the hunting leopards, their cat-like faces shifting and peering, their dog-like limbs sinewy and sinuous, their long slender tails swaying at the tip with rhythmical feline regularity.

"Samand!"

The King's voice echoed softly through the hot air. There was a spotted, painted flash in the sunlight as a leash was slipped, and a great creature was purring at Akbar's feet like a huge cat and rubbing its back against the throne. The King's hand went down to it, and its head continued the rubbing with still louder purrs.

"Lo! It is not meet," remarked Râkiya Begum with dissatisfaction. "The Most Auspicious is no better than a mahout or a hunter."

"He cannot help the beasts loving him," spoke up little Umm Kulsum hotly.

"I offer excuse," snapped the head of the harem. "He need not love them in return. Come, ladies! All is over save the soldiery, and they are of no interest to virtuous women."

She gathered up her flock austerely, the Lady Hamida and Auntie Rosebody lingering to discuss Prince Salîm's absence from the assemblage.

"He was not there! I looked even in the backmost row," declared the little lady in a flutter. "What thinkest thou, Hamida? Can he be in prison!"

"More likely sick in his mother's hands," replied Hamida coldly. "She was not with us either, and, didst see? They were feeding Prince Danyâl with sweeties all the time!"

"Trash!" ejaculated Aunt Rosebody vehemently. "What can they do but drink with sugar in their mouth from morn till eve? If they would but give the lad over to me----"

Here she gave a little shriek of relief, for there, as she entered the arcaded reception room, was the scapegrace seated sulkily among cushions.

"Thou--thou evil one!" she began in shrill tones which yet suggested endless excuses. "So thou hast been overtaken again, and in a public place! Why canst thou not be as thy great-grandfather was in his cups--but that is not edifying for the young. Ah! Salîm! Salîm! How came it about, sweetheart?"

"'Twas the meddler Birbal--may God scorch him," growled Salîm sulkily. "He came after his cub--else Khodadâd had stuffed the guards full of gold."

"Khodadâd! Lo! Tarkhân though he be, he should die for high treason. And where was it?--What? thou wilt not say. Go! Umm Kulsum and thou also Khadîja--go to the threading the beads. Thou shalt tell me, boy. Whisper it--What! Siyah Yamin's! And thou new-betrothed! Oh! had but thy father settled thee with a true bride of my race she would have kept--or killed thee!" She gave a little shriek. "What! Jamâl-ud-din--the scorpion! saith he hath married her--the piece! Shame! Shame!"

Then she suddenly put her head on one side and regarded her grand-nephew distastefully. "Lo! Salîm thou growest too fat. Wine and women will kill thee, and 'tis well that Birbal--mind you I say naught for him or against him, though he hath made me laugh often enough."

"He shall laugh on the wrong side ere long," cried Salîm savagely. "Aye! he shall learn not to jest at me."

The lively little face grew keen. "At thee? What said he? Come, sweetheart, let me hear. I will decide if there be wit in it."

"Wit!" echoed the Prince angrily. "No wit, but insult for which he shall pay. Look you, when the Hindu infidel interfered with sermons I bid him silence. 'Am I not King?' said I (as I shall be), 'and the Shadow-of-God?' 'No,' says he with that cursed bow of his, 'thou art drunk, boy, and the substance of a fool.'"

Aunt Rosebody attempted gravity; then her laughter brimmed over, and the whole room giggled in response, including the bead-threading girls.

"Oh! my life," the little lady was beginning when one of the women guards entered hurriedly, crying, "The King! honourable ladies, the King!"

He was amongst them almost before the circle of fond relatives about the young Prince had time to rise, so hiding him from view. For an instant Akbar stood to make his courtly greeting, then, seeing his mother's pale face light up, he flung his turban with its royal heron's plume aside--his shoes he had already left at the door--and so passing quickly to Hamida's side took both her hands and raised them to his head.

"Mother! I thank thee--for all!"

Her fingers even in his strong grip lingered there lovingly as if she felt the child's curls still; then she said with a quiver in her voice:

"It was nothing, son--the good wishes were more weighty than the gold."

He gave her hands a little squeeze ere he released them.

"Than the jewels, mayhap!"--here he turned with a mischievous smile to Aunt Rosebody who stood divided between joy at seeing him, and dread lest he should see Salîm. "For them I have to thank my aunt----"

"How dost know it was I?" she challenged furiously.

He looked at her with immense gravity.

"First," he said, "'twas the smallest hand in India! Next, no other woman could shy so straight. When one has played ball, polo, God knows what, in one's youth----"

"Calumnies! Calumnies!" interrupted Aunt Rosebody, her face puckering with amusement. "The Most Excellent's remark was truly scandalous!"

The word was unfortunate; it roused memories.

"There be worse scandals than that to the King's honour this day," he said, his face clouding. "Know then, Beneficent Ladies, that the son I have forgiven--how many times? sure it comes nigh to the Pâdré's seventy times seven--has been found drunk again in a common stew. And he is coward too; he hath not dared to face his father----"

He paused, his anger turning to ice, for Prince Salîm--to do him justice no coward--took heart of grace, and rose above the shelter of the women-folk, who seeing themselves no longer needed stood back, leaving the father and son face to face.

They were a great contrast. Both tall and strong; but the one all curves and softness, the other lean, sinewy.

"I was ill," began the Prince sullenly, when Akbar interrupted him with a contemptuous laugh.

"Ill? Hast not even a body for drunkenness? Go thy way, boy, if thou wilt. I have other strings to my bow."

"My son!" appealed Lady Hamida who, knowing the King's temper, knew that once lost it might carry much with it, "the boy has come to us----"

"And what does he here amongst virtuous women, madam, and how came they to admit him?" asked Akbar sternly. "Did I, son and nephew, even in the hottest hours of youth inure them to such insult? Go, boy! Go with Jamâl-ud-din, the exile, and his paramour. I have other sons!"

A blank horror settled down on the Beneficent Ladies. Never had things come to such a pitch before, and some of the younger women sobbed audibly. Only little Auntie Rosebody, with the courage of despair stood looking first at the father then at the son, regret, anger, irritation, showing in her small puckered face.

"Oh! my life! Oh! nephew Jalâl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar," she cried at last. "Look at him--oh! look at him! He is a fat-tailed sheep and thou art a hunting leopard! How can he race with thee? Give him time, nephew, give him time!"

Something in Salîm's sheepish attitude appealed to the King's sense of humour, a suspicion of a smile showed about his mouth.

"At his age, madam," he began sternly, the memory of his strenuous youth rushing in upon him. Why! at eighteen, dissatisfied with his agents of Empire he had dismissed them, and taken the whole conduct of affairs upon his own shoulders. At eighteen he had begun to dream. At eighteen his mind was busy with the problem of how to unite a conquered India; how to efface from it all memory of coercion, and make it look to him and his, not as to ephemeral conquerors but as God's viceregents, the upholders of justice, mercy, toleration, and freedom. At eighteen----

Suddenly he flung his right hand out in a hopeless gesture of finality. What use were dreams, even the dreaming of a King, if they were only to last for one poor mortal life?

"There is no end to the dreaming of Kings." Bah! The woman had lied. There was an end! An end to all things.

But the worst of his passion was over. He turned yet once more to his son and forgave him yet once again.