A Prince of Dreamers Part 41

Meanwhile the jeweller's deft hands were busy. A few turns, a click or two, and William Leedes bent over the treasure joyfully.

"There it is, my master; with naught but a few days' delay in the cutting thereof! I must be all the quicker now, else the King will wonder. Yet have I lost as little time as may be, since the next facet is a.s.sured--it will run so."

The delicate steel point he held just touched the surface. Then it fell away from it, as the hand holding the instrument seemed to shrink back. The foot, too, left the treadle, and the spinning pivots slackened speed and sank to rest.

"What is't?" asked Birbal, turning hastily.

The jeweller's face was white, his very jaw had fallen.

"It--it scratches" he muttered faintly "there is some mistake."

There was no mistake about the scratch however. It showed distinct, and wrote the truth without a shadow of doubt. This was no diamond; it was a fraud, like the other!

For an instant Birbal's head whirled. Then helplessly he fingered his purse again. Could he by chance have made a mistake and sent back the wrong one? Impossible; and yet?

He sank on the jeweller's seat and covered his face with his hands.

For once his wit was not quick enough to grasp the situation, and-- clogging thought!--that dim suspicion recurred despite denial--Had he by chance made a mistake?

So atma as she sate apart on the roof watching the Mahommedan woman prepare Zarifa's body for the burial which was to take place at sunset had no monopoly in confusion and wonder. She could take no part in what was going on. She dare not, from fear of defilement, even touch the dead child with a kiss, but she sate jealously watching that every ceremonial was duly carried out.

"Lo! she is lovely as any houri _now!_" chattered the Dom women who had come in to perform the last offices, as they bound the corpse with gold tinsel to the string bedstead on which it was to be carried to the grave. "'Tis a sin, for sure, to have more body in death than in life; but what will you? Mayhap Munkir and Niker[13] seeing her look so, may not ask questions, but give her a decent body for Paradise--sure she needed one poor thing!"

[Footnote 13: The two Recording Angels.]

So they stood looking down on their handiwork. And in truth the crippled child looked very beautiful. The _rebeck_ player, saying it was the custom of his tribe, had hired from somewhere a low, oblong, lidless coffin, more like a deep picture frame than anything else; and in this, as it lay on the bed, these tirewomen of the dead, had so disposed draperies, and pillows, and whatnot, that all the curves of the budding womanhood showed beneath the face that remained more beautiful even in death than it had been in life. It was covered only with a fine network, for the veil was draped carefully on either side the slender neck. One corner of it, and a loop of jasmin chaplet fell over the dingy worn gilt of the coffin frame.

"Lo! many will envy Death his bride and send regrets after her as she pa.s.ses by," said the oldest of the Domni, nodding her head wisely. And it was so.

For as the two bearers--it needed but two for that bier--shuffled at sunset-tide with their light burden through the crowded bazaar, more than one careless eye grew to sudden interest. And one spectator, an idle reckless looking man who sate on a sherbet-seller's threshold joking with a light woman in an upper balcony, ceased his sarcasms to murmur a stanza from Hafiz; for he was rhymster too.

No more from poet's lips Shall love songs pa.s.s She who once garnered them Is dead--alas!

There were few mourners. Only the professional wailers, and the _rebeck_ player, who with bent head, followed the bier making mournful music as he went. atma, of another creed, still held aloof, walking veiled and stately some way behind. And all around them slipping aside to let the dead pa.s.s, for the most part careless almost unheeding, were the living; buying, selling, gossiping, chaffering.

atma drew breath more freely when they were through the city gates, and the bearers stepped out more quickly over hard stretches of sand and waste hillocks set with thorn and caper bushes toward the little cemetery which the musician had chosen. A few gnarled _jhand_ trees decked with coloured snippets of cloth tied there by many mourners, a few nameless roly-poly concrete graves, a sprinkling of tiny turrets showing where someone was laid--someone whose resting place was unknown to all save the women who came thither every week to mourn--marked the spot. A dreary lonesome spot, in truth. But the westering sun showed warm and red over the desert horizon, and the chipping notes of the seven-brother birds sounded cheerful as the family flitted from one tree to another.

The grave was already dug and the diggers stood by waiting for their day's pay. It was a wide deep grave, looking as if it had been cut out of yellow rock, so dry, so even were the sides. And the low arch of the long niche on one side in which the corpse was to be laid as in a coffin, was as regular as if built in with unburnt brick. To atma's surprise, the floor of this niche was set thick, as by a coverlet, with roses. She glanced hastily at the _rebeck_ player, but he was already immersed in the prayers with which an attendant priest had greeted the little procession. She listened gravely, repeating to herself meanwhile the formulas--so few, so simple--of her own creed.

And yet when, after saying aloud the prayer for benediction, the _rebeck_-player stood forward, raised the sad gracious figure from the coffin, and stepping into the grave laid it gently in the niche, she shivered as she saw him stoop to gather up a handful of earth.

"We created you of dust and we return you to dust, and we shall raise you out of the dust upon the day of resurrection."

The words seemed to her almost horrible. To be left lying alone in the desert, waiting, waiting, waiting!

For what? For yourself--the old mean self of which she was so tired.

Ah! better surely to find rest at once in the Great Self which pervaded all things!

"Wilt thou not throw earth also?" said a voice beside her, "then throw flowers. These are the roses of love."

The _rebeck_ player pulled aside the kerchief covering a flat basket which one of the Dom women had carried, and lo! there were roses red at their hearts, pale where the sun had kissed them. Their scent filled the air.

"Yea! lord," she said meekly, "I will throw them."

The priest, the bearers, the Dom women had disappeared, their task done. Only the grave-diggers chattered to one another as they filled in the grave.

"Lo! she would have been ripe for kisses soon and now the worms have got her," said one discontentedly.

"Ballah! friend!" quoth the other. "Lovers die, but love dies not--there be ever other food for l.u.s.t in the world!"

"Throw them into thy life also, sister," said the musician, suddenly.

"There is no fear or blame in love."

So as he stood watching the shovelsful of earth hide the roses which covered little Zarifa, he played softly on his _rebeck_, and sang a whispering song to its wailing music.

Love is a full red wine bowl Pa.s.sion the bubbles on its rim, Drink deep down to the dregs, soul, Heed not the froth on the brim.

Pa.s.sion has wings like an eagle Love needs none; she is at rest-- Flood tide full--as the seagull Drifts, the cold wave at her breast.

Love is the Lightless Ether Pa.s.sion the star-shine it lets through Building sense-worlds beneath her Love seeks not form, seeks not hue.

Pa.s.sion has myriad senses Love has not voice, eyes, nor ears, s.p.a.ce, Time, Life, Moods, and Tenses Chain not her Soul to the years.

Love is a sail, mid-ocean Losing itself in the Whole, Pa.s.sion the wavelets commotion Blurring the sh.o.r.es of the Soul.

He ceased suddenly, and his whole face changed. The grave was filled up, the diggers were already pa.s.sing stolidly back to the city. On the desert horizon the red sun had lost its warmth and was sinking coldly behind the gray verge.

"Lo! I have done with Love," came the musician's mocking voice. "So take this, sister, and may it bring thee more luck than it hath brought Payandar. For him only hate remains."

When she looked up from her hasty glance at what he had thrust into her hand, the _rebeck_ player was moving away rapidly after the grave-diggers and she was left alone, looking at the new-made grave, looking at the quaint green stone she had just been given.

CHAPTER XX

_A trembling fell on mountain and on plain, The earth, unstable as a juggler's ball, Became a rolling sphere. The dust rose up High to the collar of heaven. The clarion of the wind Roused shock on shock, and from the valley's streams The fish, out-cast, lay gasping. Lightning flash On lightning flash split the wide sky; the sinking rocks, Disjointed, filled with water, and the hills, Clasping each other, squeezed themselves to death_.