A Prince of Dreamers Part 39

Deena made a grimace of apology, pursed his face up, looked at the sleeper, shook his head with elaborate regret, and then hitching his drum round to equalise his balance, squatted with his elbows resting on it, ready for a calm whispered recital of what he had come prepared to tell.

"There is no need to begin at the beginning," he said tentatively and was rewarded by atma's curt "Tell all, slave! I have been held here by the child all night and know nothing."

"Thank G.o.d for ignorance!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old gossip piously, and went on to recount the events of the past night.

atma listened quietly. She started and clasped her hands tighter when she heard how the King and Prince Salim had exchanged turbans, but her long night's vigil had brought so many visions of what Birbal's wit might compa.s.s that she scarcely felt surprised. The story of the bursting of the reservoir and, the miraculous escape of the father and son, however, told as it was from the outside (for old Deena naturally knew nothing of the extraordinary import of the incident he was describing) roused her instant alarm.

"Prate not about their bareheadedness!" she broke in on his tale of how the two had stood before the mult.i.tude shorn of honourable headgear but mighty in monarchy--"the turbans man! the turbans! what of them?"

Deena's wicked old eyes lost their sparkle, his tone grew peevish.

"Lo! mistress! wouldst spoil the picture. Doubtless they drowned. Who thinks of turbans when----"

atma was on her feet. "Bide thou here! I must go," she said hurriedly.

She felt she could no longer stand inaction. All this had came about--if, indeed, it had come about "Yea! I must go to Siyah Yamin,"

she repeated blindly.

Old Deena laid a detaining hand on her red skirt. "Not there!

mistress! Not there. Lo! thou hast not heard what I come to tell. Thou didst bid me begin at the beginning and I began; but 'tis not only scorpions' tails that end in a sting, and this one hath venom in it I swear. If thou hadst heard--Nay listen! mistress! 'Twas Meean Khodadad and Mirza Ibrahim who came raging to Siyah Yamin's half an hour agone.

I had gone back thither after the show was over to have speech with Yasmeen and the hussy was virtuous and would not let me in. So, standing there I heard----"

"What?" asked atma fiercely, "Canst not speak without twists and turns?"

"Lo! Mistress! let my tongue follow my brain as the potter's donkey follows muddy breeches thinking them his master," replied Deena mildly. "I am at the very p.r.i.c.k o' the point. They swore vengeance on thee for what I know not, protesting that thou and thou only couldst be the cause; and then they swore at Siyah Yamin for telling thee; but gingerly, for look you Siyala is not one to threaten lightly--but she said--doubtless with that smile which makes a body feel like a camel without legs----"

"What said she, fool?" interrupted atma exasperated.

"That without the seeing of thee she could not tell; whereupon they said that if they saw thee----"

atma caught up a white cloth and wrapped it round her. "Stay thou here!" she said imperatively, "the child sleeps and I will be back in half an hour."

She was well down the stairs ere Deena ceased to call feebly! "Not so!

oh mistress most chaste, not so!" and resigning himself to circ.u.mstances closed the door, hasping it lightly by the bottom hook and chain, then sate down beside the sleeping child.

"Even as a Peri," he murmured to himself as he looked at the face showing more clearly now in the coming light. "Truly G.o.d knows His own work--yet is there no mortal sense in sending such a countenance of beauty with no body to match it fit for hugging."

So he dozed off into the sleep which pure vice had taught him to take in s.n.a.t.c.hes.

Meanwhile atma hurrying through the still deserted alleys felt her mind too much in a tumult for concentration; thus, as she almost ran past the high unarched doorways, the blank walls shutting out all things, the constant burr of the unseen hand-mills busy over their daily task of grinding flour came to join the unceasing burr of thought that whirled in her brain. Doubt as to her own wisdom had a.s.sailed her the night long, and now with this uncert.i.tude concerning the fate of the diamond, she felt she could have killed herself for the part she had played in its theft. Why had she played it? Why? Why?

The futility of fighting against Fate came home to her, as from a closed courtyard rose shrilly the voice of a woman chanting the song of the Grinding Stone and the Grounden Wheat:

Red Sandstone and red-husked wheat Whirl in your dancing, part and meet My right hand is your master, What if the stone be rushed?

What if the grain be crushed?

Men and women must eat, The cry of the child be hushed.

Whirl faster and faster, G.o.d's right hand is our master!

What though Love mates with l.u.s.t, Though Just yield to Unjust, What care the Stone and the Wheat, For men and women must eat, The cry of the child be hushed, So Dust grind Dust!

Dust grind dust! She smote her hands together and sped on. She could at least challenge these men for the truth, and tell them that they lied. She had told no tales!

And as she made her breathless way toward Satanstown, Mirza Ibrahim and Meean Khodadad were making their way back from it. They had gained nothing from Siyah Yamin save biting words and contemptuous gibes. She had done her part and there would be time to hold her fool when it was proved that atma had betrayed her. For herself, she did not believe it; and in so saying she for once spoke her real thought. She knew, briefly, that treachery was out of the question with her sister of the veil.

But the two men held, manlike, to what was on the surface.

"Fret not, Khodadad," said Mirza Ibrahim with a sinister smile, as they pa.s.sed out from the courtesan's house, "there is no hurry to settle scores with the madwoman. I, being Chamberlain, claim her as the King's woman, and then----"

"Then may I go shares with thee, or take thy leavings!" muttered Khodadad fiercely. "That may be thy revenge; but I am Tarkhan."

"Tarkhan or no, it grows too light for us now, Meean Sahib, so fare thee well for the time," remarked Ibrahim significantly. And in truth the sky was beginning to show pearly over the pile of the city.

"Tarkhans need no darkness for their deeds," retorted Khodadad recklessly. His temper, as ever, had overmastered him, he was literally beside himself with rage and disappointment. These two confederates were fools! What man could succeed, bound hand and foot by chicken-hearted cowards like Ibrahim, and the rest of them? But he--aye! he would take revenge, dawn though it was! for he was Tarkhan, accredited to evil deeds.

"To Siyah Yamin's Paradise," he said flinging himself into the palanquin which followed behind him. The madwoman lived in the same tenement. So much he knew, and the rest would come; if he had luck. If not there was no harm done. Pure devilry possessed him; he could not rest without some attempt at retaliation.

And so old Deena woke from his s.n.a.t.c.hed snooze at whispering voices outside, followed by a steady calculated shouldering of the door, a slip of the ill-hasped chain, and the sudden consequent sprawl of half a dozen stalwart Abyssinians on to the roof.

"Back slaves!" said Khodadad, his voice low and hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion that leapt up with the chance of satisfaction. "And close the door behind you."

Old Deena scrambled to his feet. "My lord! my lord!" he expostulated, every atom of virtue in him rising up scandalised at the intrusion, all the more so perhaps, because of his loose life. "This roof is the abode of chast.i.ty."

"Fool!" said the Tarkhan seizing him easily by the throat. "The woman--where is she? Speak low or I strangle thee."

"She--is--not here," gasped the old man--"Mercy lord! mercy!"

"Not here!--thou liest!"

Still holding Deena fast pinned against the wall Khodadad's eyes flashed round the roof. There were no shadows now; the morning light clear and fresh filled every corner.

"Ye G.o.ds! and devils!"

The words came low, almost soft, with the sudden inrush of admiration, as Khodadad's hands fell away from the old man's throat, and he took one step toward the bed.

"My lord! My lord!" cried Deena starting forward. "She is ill, she is a child--she is----"

He staggered back from the blow dealt him recklessly.

"She is beautiful--that is enough!" came with a chuckling laugh.

"Wake, my houri! Wake up my peri of Paradise."

There was a faint scream, the mere cry, as it were, of a wounded bird.

"Nay beauty! thou shalt kiss me! What! Scent of roses and no love?

Pah! how the perfume gets into my brain. Never but once before--but this is no time for the past! Nay! struggle not. Such beauty needs no veiling."

The little murmuring wail died to silence, and the half jibing voice was silent also. So, horror-struck, Khodadad stood for one instant before the deformity he had unshrouded. Then with a curse he turned and fled.

Deena, still dazed with the blow, crept over to the bed and covered crippledom again.

"Little one," he crooned, "there is no fear--he will not come back."