A Prince of Dreamers Part 60

Many-tinted Morn! Th' immortal daughter of heaven Young, white-robed, come with thy purple steeds Follow the path of the dawning the world has been given Follow the path of the dawn the world still needs.

From behind came quaint interludes that sounded like the carolling of birds, the whisperings of wind among the corn, the lowing of cattle--all the sounds of waking life upon the earth; and three of the taper holders advancing placed a taper, one on each side of the dais, one in the middle; so stood beside it still singing:

Darkly shining Dusk, thy sister has sought her abiding, Fear not to trouble her dreams! Daughters ye twain of the Sun, Dusk and Dawn bringing Birth. Oh! Sisters your path is unending!

Dead are the first who have watched. When shall our watching be done?

Once again three taper bearers bore their burdens to the appointed places.

Bright luminous Dawn; rose-red, radiant, rejoicing, Show the traveller his road; the cattle their pastures new, Rouse the beasts of the earth to their truthful myriad voicing, Leader of Lightful days, softening the soil with dew.

The semicircle round the dais was almost complete now. It needed but three more tapers, and once again the voices rose exultant!

Wide expanded Dawn: Open the gates of the Morning Waken the singing birds. Guide thou the truthful light To uttermost shade of the Shadow, for see you! the dawning Is born white-shining out of the gloom of the night!

As one, the twelve camphor candles flashed into white light, that shone for a second, then grew pale and cold, as the sun, heaving his mighty shoulder out of the dust haze that hung on the horizon, flooded the wide earth with his shine.

There was a pause. Akbar was about to rise, so ending the ceremony, when down the wide centre, betwixt the serried ranks of the soldiers, showed a man.

He walked slowly, his head was bent, and on his right arm was knotted a blue handkerchief.

"News of death!" commented the soldiers, quickly recognising the emblem--"Whose?"

"Whose?" asked the courtiers rapidly, while Akbar stood arrested.

"Whose?" queried Birbal quickly. He had been busy all night; had heard nothing.

"His half-brother of Kabul," said Abulfazl sadly. "The runner came in but half an hour agone; and this seemed the best way of breaking it; the shock will help----"

"Now heaven be thanked!" cried Birbal. "Not that I do not grieve--for the King; but this may make his decision less final. He _must_ go now for the sake of Kingship--but His Dream in Red Sandstone may see him yet once again!"

L'ENVOI

_O Gardener wide open the gate of the garden.

Let in the rose from her long winter sleep; Bid the tall cypress stand sentinel-warden, Spreading soft shade where the narcissus keep Heads drooping down in their slumbering deep.

Bid the shoot harden, Bid the sap leap!_

_Gardener! array all with manifold flowers.

Figure the garden like damask of old, Tell of its hues in the turtledove's bowers, Gild the bare ground with the pansies of gold Pomegranate lips, stained with wine have you told "These are the rose hours Nightingale bold!"

Lo! she returns with bud-cradle of birth Rose of the wine-house she brings to the earth, Drink to the Spring time, to Love, and to Mirth_.

--Nizami.

Four years had pa.s.sed away and the Dream in Red Sandstone still waited for the Dreamer: waited, as it still waits, deserted but not ruined, the Great Arch of Victory remaining as Birbal had prophesied, that which no man having once seen, can ever forget.

But Birbal himself had pa.s.sed into the unknown; almost into the forgotten save for his master's undying affection which, even after two years, still scanned the earthly horizon eagerly looking for news, at any rate, of his lost friend; since Birbal's actual death is one of those things of which neither past or present hold any knowledge. He disappeared in the mountains of Swat whither he had gone in the vain effort to translate one of Akbar's dreams into terms of reality.

For the Great Mogul, Emperor of India, had dreams of conquest, not by sword, not even by religion, as his great forerunner the Emperor Asoka had had in the years before Christ--but by common sense; that is the voluntary submission of the individual to a collective policy which makes for peace and prosperity to the ma.s.s of the people.

Deprived of latter-day delusions, modern foolishnesses, Akbar's dream was Socialism. Not the Socialism which proclaims the right of the individual, which presses that home against all other considerations, but the Socialism which sweeps all things, individual poverty as well as individual wealth into the Great Mill of G.o.d for the good of the race; which holds personal comfort unworthy of consideration.

It was not, perhaps, a policy suited to the most turbulent tribes upon the Indian Frontier. Still Kabul had been annexed almost without a blow, Kashmir brought into the Imperial net by a peaceful demonstration, and, but for Sinde, the Imperial armies would scarcely have struck a blow during these years of Imperial aggrandis.e.m.e.nt.

Anyhow, the experiment, one after Akbar's own heart, was tried; and Birbal went with the forces as a counterpoise to the old Commander in Chief (he was the Wellington of Akbar's reign) and his more antiquated methods of suasion. They drew lots, those two friends of the King, Abulfazl and Birbal, which should take the onerous post; and the lot fell on Birbal. It is said that the King hesitated to let him go; but behind friendship lay Kingship.

So he went, and disputes soon arising between the policy of pike and cannonade, as against a mere display of force, Birbal, left in the lurch, disappeared for ever with fifteen hundred picked men amid the peaks and pa.s.ses of the Alai Mountains.

It had been a great blow to Akbar; he had, indeed, refused to believe in his friend's death, and still looked for him to return--even if from the Other Side--in obedience to his promise.

But now, this 10th of May, 1590, he was pausing a little below the top of the Pir Panjal Pa.s.s on the way to Kashmir, awaiting the arrival of William Leedes, the English jeweller, who all these years had been engaged in cutting the Great Diamond of India.

It was ready now, and Akbar was eager to see it. But the little party escorting the jeweller and his charge had not arrived that morning, so Akbar had come out alone to a favourite vantage point below the actual snows, whence the whole Panjab plain rising an almost incredible height in the sky, could be seen.

It was like a shield, he thought suddenly, as he noted the palpable curve of the horizon; higher in the middle, lower at the sides. That was the curve of the world's surface, of course; still it reminded one of the curve of a great shield set between these holy snows of Himalya and the world beyond. Aye! for the blue of that distant plain was darker nowhere, was lighter nowhere; and everywhere alike it was damascened with threads--broader, narrower--of gold.

The land of the Five Rivers! A fair land indeed! A broad battle shield to the rest of India.

"Lo! there is gran'dad!" came a voice from behind him, and he turned at the sound of little pattering feet to see his grandson, a child of about two, stumbling swiftly over the broken ground toward him.

"Have a care Fair-face," (Khushru) he called, holding out his arms, and the child with a laughing crow, hurrying still harder, almost fell into their shelter.

"Truly! thou art as two peas in one pod," gasped a breathless voice, as Auntie Rosebody, completely done by hurrying up the hill, flung herself on the ground beside her nephew. She looked not a day older with her gray hair stuffed away into a Mogul cap, her petticoats tucked away into full Mogul trousers. So, had she roamed the hills, as a girl, with her father Babar, and now, in her old age, she set an example to all other ladies of the camp. Umm Kulsum, ever her close companion, followed on her heels, dressed in like manner, and stood looking down on the little family party.

"Lo! nephew! at times it takes me," said the old lady, nodding her head sagely, "to leave the scapegrace--who hath, nathless been behaving more reputably of late--out of the bargain altogether! The boy is more like Jalal-ud-din Mahomed Akbar than Salim ever was, and that is a fact! But"--seeing a frown come to Akbar's face--"I am not here to fashion likeness, but because," here she drew her face into a decent pucker of sorrow, "having been--G.o.d forgive me--Aye! and Umm Kulsum too--part responsible for its theft--truly, nephew, your old aunt feels ever about her neck the bowstring that should have been drawn, and was not, thanks to----"

Akbar interrupted her with patient gloom. "We have talked this out many times, oh! most reverend aunt. After all there was no mischief done." He thought ever as he spoke of that Arch of Victory standing deserted on the Sikri Ridge.

"But there might have been," interrupted Aunt Rosebody, hotly. "Take not penitence from my soul, nephew. 'Tis good to have sins to repent when one grows old and there are no more to commit. So, having been in the tale at the beginning----"

Akbar looked pathetically at Umm Kulsum, who had sunk to her knees in contrition.

"It is because, Highness," she answered as if to a question, "the jeweller is arrived, and is even now on his way hither."

Akbar sprang to his feet, light as a boy. Dressed in hunting leathers with the close Mogul cap crested with a heron's plume, he looked not a day older, though his short hair above his beardless face had grown almost white.

"Here!" he cried, and even as he spoke a party of three or four showed rounding the rocky path.

A few minutes later Akbar stood holding the diamond, half its original size, but brilliant exceedingly in the hollow of his right hand.

"For my part," sniffed Auntie Rosebody, "I liked it better as it was.