A Prince of Dreamers Part 19

Both women looked round with a start to see, holding back the wadded curtain, such a vision of youth and perfect loveliness as the world shows but seldom; yet once having shown does not let men forget. For this small slender Eastern maid, comparable at her eleven years to Western fourteen, was to take her place amongst the beauty which has swayed the destiny of empires.

As she stood backed by the soft embroideries of the curtain, the delicate outline of her still childish figure barely concealed by the silver tinsel veil Umm Kulsum had thrown over her in laughter at her utter nakedness as she had scrambled out of the bath, she showed at once innocent, yet full of guile. There was not one false note in the harmony of her beauty. The cupid's bow of her mouth was curved into a mischievous smile as she looked at her mother half-jibingly, and at Aunt Rosebody half-defiantly.

"Oh! my heart! Oh! what words!" gasped the former, having recourse to her vinaigrette, while the latter looked at her nodding her moonshiny head.

"So!" she said; "So, Azizan! That lets the cat out of the cupboard!"

But there was no time for more, since through the upheld curtain trooped the bevy of bathers followed by their maids. Then arose such a chatter as to places and pillows, such giggles, such laughter, waxing loudest round Umm Kulsum who, ready dressed, caught the silver tissued maid-ling about the waist, and danced round with her, whirling through the room, feet flying, hair floating, until--quite breathless--she pulled her partner down right on Aunt Rosebody's rug.

The little old lady looked at the perfectly bewitching face, and a smile quivered about her mouth.

"What about the Prince Salim, child?" she asked accusingly. "What about him?"

Mihr-un-nissa looked arch in return and positively made a _moue_ of uncontrollable high spirits before she put on an air of immense and demure propriety.

"Nothing, gracious lady! Am I not betrothed to Sher Afkan Khan?"

Bibi Azizan let loose an absolute shriek.

"Oh! my liver! Ah! ladies! Heard one ever the like? Mihr-un-nissa how darest thou?--it is not true--it is a lie!"

A curious expression of untamed obstinacy came to the girlish face and gave it a character beyond its years.

"Lo! Marmita!" she said lightly; "when thou and Afkan's mother have settled whether I be betrothed or no, there may be talk of truth. Till then I marry no one."

Bibi Azizan subsided helplessly, limply, amongst her cushions. To say more might only induce the _enfant terrible_, of malicious intent, still further to reveal the family strife; so there was room for Umm Kulsum's tactful raillery.

"What! thou wilt be an old maid like me! And without even a pilgrimage to thy credit! Fie! Thou art too pretty for Jehannum!"

Mihr-un-nissa laughed scornfully. "I would rather Jehannum on my own feet than Paradise on a man's coat-tails. La! la! I hate men folk!"

There was a general gurgle of laughter. The girl's face grew crimson-dark; her eyes filled with tears, yet flashed also and she held her ground.

"'Tis true," she cried, stamping her bare foot with an almost soundless yet curiously imperative smack on the marble floor. "I hate them--they think of nothing but themselves--and--and women! And I hate women too--I want to be a Queen, and I _will_ be one!"

"Come hither, child, and let me look at thee," said Auntie Rosebody, suddenly holding out her hand. The supple young thing crossed to her proudly, and crouching low touched the small fine old fingers with her forehead.

"Thine eyes, child--thine eyes!" said the old woman. "Let me see thy fate in them."

So for an instant's s.p.a.ce the great l.u.s.trous soft depths of Mihr-un-nissa's fathomless eyes were appraised.

"She might keep him--as he should be kept," murmured Auntie Rosebody to herself; but Mihr-un-nissa was thinking of the queenship.

"What does the Most Beneficent see?" she asked eagerly. "Shall I be Queen?--Queen myself I mean--real Queen?"

There was an instant's pause and in the silence which hung over the whole room the imperious young voice seemed to linger. Then Umm Kulsum, seeing a look of sudden recoil in Aunt Rosebody's face, laughed cheerfully.

"Ask the witch wives, Mihro, not us! Or stay! Lo Auntie! dost remember the red woman with her curious cry whom we saw at the tank steps but now, and bade come hither, since she claimed to be the royal bard? She is Brahmin and tells the stars, she said. Let us have her in if she is here and then Mihro can hear fortunes."

"La!" cried Bibi Azizan catching at any side escape from what had gone before, "I can tell the ladies who the woman is. She is mad--quite mad--and----"

"The more suitable for this subject of Queenship," remarked Aunt Rosebody dryly, twisting her hair deftly to a topknot which greatly enhanced her dignity. "Ooma! see if one atma, singer of pedigrees, soothsayer, heaven knows what, waits without. If so, bid her enter.

And bring me a violet sherbet such as my father--may peace be his always!--loved when he was aweary of fools; then Bibi Azizan can have her say in peace!"

After which Parthian shot she sipped her sherbet in silence. She was inwardly amused at the cat which Mihr-un-nissa--an enchanting piece truly!--had so wilfully and deftly let out of the cupboard. In truth there was some excuse for such vaulting ambition in the child's extraordinary beauty. Pity she had not been a few years older--pity nephew Akbar would not put pleasure first and politics second in Salim's marriage--pity! Ah! pity in so many things.

"_May the G.o.ds pity us, dreamers who dream of their G.o.dhead!_"

The old lady started at the quaintly apposite cry which seemed indeed to force the whole vestibule into a second's silence.

atma Devi stood at the far arches, her poppy-petal dress showing for an instant brilliant in the glimpse of sunlight let in by the upraisal of the curtain.

In truth her entry brought a new note to the chord of womanhood which vibrated in the atmosphere; a note that was foreign to its harmony. A quick sense of tragedy came to the comedy of laughing ladies.

Something in atma's womanly face and figure that was in them also, disguised, tucked away, hidden out of sight but still recognisable made them recoil to silence. Perhaps it was the "Not womanhood" of the dark days before s.e.x shows itself--the Not-womanhood which, with the "Not-manhood," go to make up the Paradise Life in which there shall be neither male nor female.

atma felt the recoil herself as her dark eyes questioned the scene before them, challenging it in swift antagonism. For the past two days her thoughts had been concentrated on her search for some clue of Siyah Yamin. She had drifted about the bazaars, giving her curious cry, she had watched at street corners, and listened patiently through the hurly-burly of pa.s.sing voices for some hint, some sound. Without avail; and time was running short; she would not have wasted one minute of it in obeying Aunt Rosebody's order to attend at the palace but for a dazed sense of duty. She, the King's Charan, must not neglect royal commands; even Siyah Yamin must give way to them.

Siyah Yamin! Siyah Yamin! Ye G.o.ds! why had either of those two children who had played together, grown up to be women? Why should any woman-child grow up to be hampered by her s.e.x, left helpless?

atma's thoughts as she stood mechanically shaking the hour-gla.s.s drum, paused; her eyes in the darkness to which they were becoming accustomed had found something which brought answer to her questioning.

It was Mihr-un-nissa, who, barely veiled by silver tissue, sate a little way apart from the others on a yellow silken rug; her slender arms were around her knees, her head was tilted back against the wall on which a flower garland of the inlaid mosaic seemed to frame her delicate face, as through half-closed lids she returned the singer's stare.

"Art thou a witch-wife?" asked the little maid suddenly, as if none but they two were in the room. "Lo! I am Mihr-un-nissa, Queen of Women. Tell me--shall I indeed be Queen not of them only, but of men also?"

The brushers and dressers paused in their avocations to look and listen. Something insistent, compellent, seemed to have come into the atmosphere. Even Auntie Rosebody paused in the sipping of her sherbet and waited for the answer to that still-childish voice.

And those two stared at each other, feeling vaguely akin; the woman who strove to forget her s.e.x in a man's work, the girl who cherished it as a means of gaining a like power.

"I offer excuse for interference," came Rakiya Begum's rasping voice, "but soothsaying except by reference to the Holy Book----"

"'Tis but for fun, Most n.o.ble," pleaded Umm Kulsum, who was invariably the smoother of difficulties, "and they did it at the Holy City, for I paid seven golden _ashrafees_ to a woman with a crystal who told me naught that I did not know before."

The little ripple of surrounding laughter did not soften Rakiya Begum's sternness.

"A crystal," she said severely, taking a pinch of snuff, "is different. That hath, as all know, its gift of G.o.d in certain hands; but the looking at grains of rice and the counting of pease-pods is irreligious, and most derogatory to true believers. Therefore in the absence of our Lady Hamida----"

The acerbity of this allusion to an occasionally divided headship in the harem was interrupted hastily by a twitter from the elder Salima who addressed her daughter nervously.

"In truth dear heart, Ummu, 'twere better not mayhap--the woman is Hindu."

Mihr-un-nissa, her head still tilted back against the garlanded wall, looked through her lashes, and her cupid's bow of a mouth smiled bewilderingly.

"I mind not that one fly's weight," she remarked cheerfully, casually, as if her likings or dislikings were the only question at issue, "Come good red woman, begin! My fortune, please!"

atma hesitated. Here was a household divided against itself, and beyond Auntie Rosebody and Umm Kulsum, whose status she knew, she was unaware of the position of the scented, languidly laughing ladies around her. Yet a false step might be fatal to future right of entry.