Akbar Part 16

"How can the name of that woman affect you?" asked Parviz, astonished at Siddha's strange bearing. "You have not, I trust, fallen in love with Gulbadan at first sight? I would scarcely advise you to do so; although Faizi is goodness itself, he is not always quite gentle where his wife is concerned, with whom he is desperately in love."

"It was a pa.s.sing remembrance," replied Siddha, recovering himself as well as possible, "awakened by that name, but which has nothing to do with Faizi's wife."

"So much the better," rejoined the other; and they silently proceeded on their way.

To be alone, to escape from Parviz as soon as possible,--no other thought occupied his companion, and seeing one of his men walking up and down, "Excuse me," he said, "but I have to speak with that man, and, thanking you for your pleasant company, I must for the moment say farewell." And hastily greeting his friend, and beckoning to the horseman to approach, he was soon in conversation with him on subjects connected with the service, but as suddenly broke it off directly Parviz was out of sight. He then hurried on, not minding where his steps carried him, only on and on, thinking and dreaming, as though bewildered with drink. "Gulbadan, Faizi's wife!" Treachery again, then, though this time involuntary, yet of the worst description, against the man by whom when a stranger he had been received with the utmost kindness, and in whom he had always found the truest of friends, and to whom he owed privileges and favours that no one in his place could have obtained without such protection. Treachery, too, against the Emperor, who had laden him with unexpected and undeserved favours; treachery and shameless faithlessness against her to whom once he had given his heart and pledged his word; and all for the sake of one who had deceived him,--and whom he must despise,--and yet love above everything and for ever. What should he do? Honour and duty spoke loudly,--flight, instant flight, alone could save him. He knew and felt that delay would only again place him on the brink of a bottomless abyss. But to leave her so suddenly, without any preparation, any explanation--she, who, though weak, still loved him; and if she had led him astray, she, too, had sacrificed honour and duty;--would that be acting rightly? would it be fair? was it possible that he could do it?

For a long time Siddha wandered on, not knowing where he went. At last he looked round, and found he was not far from the city, and near the habitation of Rezia--the Rezia of happy days now gone by--and which, as now he remembered, was situated close to Faizi's villa. Evening began to close in; it was the hour that he was wont to approach the garden wall, and, at a well known signal, to be admitted by the servant. A few moments later he again stood by the wall, gave the signal, and, as the door was opened, hurried in.

Rezia, or rather Gulbadan, was reposing comfortably on a divan by the verandah, little thinking of Siddha, who she imagined was on his way to join the army, when suddenly the man she thought miles away rushed into her apartments.

"How, Siddha!" she cried, starting in alarm to her feet. "I thought you were gone."

"Rezia, Gulbadan!" said Siddha, with a.s.sumed calm, "I know you now; you have deceived me, and the man to whom I owe so much, if not everything. I come to bid you farewell; honour commands me to go, but without flight I know that I could not. To-morrow or to-day I leave Agra, never to see it again, nor you."

In a second, and before Siddha had finished, Faizi's wife had comprehended all. She had, convinced that her lover had left in command of his detachment, seen no reason why she should not openly show herself at the great festival, nor for keeping herself veiled. Then he must have seen and recognised her, and have heard her real name; the affair was too plain to require any explanation, nor were questions and explanations among her tactics. She looked at him entreatingly with her soft blue eyes, raising her clasped hands towards him, then tottered, and without one word sank back on the divan, hiding her face in the cushions.

For some time Siddha gazed silently at her; so beautiful, so irresistibly lovely had she never appeared to him as just in that moment when he had determined never again to see her; and he felt that this last look would be imprinted on his mind for ever.

"Go, go at once," whispered a voice to him; "no words more, nor farewells, or it will be too late to escape the enchantment, that already begins to work."

Then she slowly raised her head, thrusting back the luxurious locks that fell in waves around her, and pa.s.sed her hand over her face, as one that awakes from a deep sleep or swoon.

"Rezia," said Siddha, "let me call you so once more; I thought to leave you without one word of preparation would not have been honourable; but do not make this parting still harder to me. You, I trust, will agree that to part is unavoidable. Unknowingly, I have sinned against hospitality, and repaid the truest friendship with the grossest ingrat.i.tude. To continue doing so would be the worst of crimes."

"You are right, my friend," said Rezia, gently. "To part, I feel, must to you appear unavoidable. I have long feared it, and for that reason dissembled my name; but hear me for a few moments before you leave me for ever, for I would not that you should remember me with contempt. Listen to what I have to say, not in defence, but in excuse of my conduct. I deceived you, it is true, and more than once. I began by deceiving you the first time we met. I had seen you shortly after your arrival at Agra, though you did not see me, and that first sight of you awoke an interest that was not diminished by what I heard in answer to my inquiries, and then rashly I determined to make your acquaintance, making use of that letter to Kashmir as my pretence. To what that acquaintance led, aided by my weakness and love, alas! you know too well; but then, indeed, I did not know that there was any bond of friendship between Faizi and you. And when later on, to my horror, I discovered it, I should have had the courage to break off all that we were to each other by confessing who I was. But, ah! I was weak, Siddha; weak as only a woman who loves can be, who loves the man of her choice with pa.s.sionate fondness. I feared the parting that your sense of honour would p.r.o.nounce to be necessary, and I was silent. Can you forgive me, Siddha, before we bid each other good-bye for ever?" And timidly, as though afraid of his anger, she stretched out her hand to him, and sank back, slowly and wearily, on the cushions, her eyes filled with tears.

For a time he struggled with himself a bitter and terrible battle, but, alas! of too short duration.

"Rezia," he cried, clasping in his arms the woman who not only ruled him but forced him to forget all that honour bade him to hold dear,--"Rezia, without you there is neither life nor existence, and with you no crime and no shame."

He had indeed spoken the truth, and made use of no exaggeration when he told her that she was dearer to him than life, and dearer than honour. And so the evening pa.s.sed on. Siddha was partly disturbed, partly overwhelmed with an indescribable happiness; sometimes despising himself, and then again rejoicing in his fatal pa.s.sion. It was late before he pa.s.sed down the well-known path, and was about to open the little door in the garden wall, when, to his astonishment, it opened, and the figure of a man pa.s.sed through, who, without remarking him, attempted to close it after him. But a sudden exclamation from Siddha made him turn round. Who could it be? Faizi himself perhaps. Siddha could have bitten out his tongue for his foolish imprudence, but it was too late.

"What, in the name of Shaitan, are you doing here?" cried the new comer; and Siddha at once recognised the voice of Prince Salim, whose figure was scarcely visible in the dimness of night.

"With an equal or a better right, I might ask that of you," was the bold reply. The clatter of arms told Siddha that the Prince had laid his hand on his sword, and he on his side did the same. Salim approached a step or two, and recognising his opponent, let his sword fall back into its sheath.

"Ha! my friend Siddha Rama," he cried, in no little astonishment, "so we catch you in one of your nightly adventures! Still, there is not much harm in that for a young man like you. Do not fear that I shall betray you, nor need you be jealous. You must know that the chosen one of your heart is, to a certain degree, mixed up in our plans, and I come occasionally to talk them over with her in secrecy and under cover of night; but perhaps at this moment she will be hardly inclined to discuss such dry subjects, and it will be as well for me to put off my visit."

And Salim turned towards the doorway, and, having let Siddha through, carefully shut it.

"I suppose you are now returning to your lodging? My path lies in the opposite direction," said he; "but," he added, to Siddha, who, not knowing what to say, stood silently listening to him, "let this meeting remain a secret between us, it will be our wisest course." And so saying, Salim disappeared in the darkness.

"He has accidentally rendered me a great service," muttered the Prince to himself, as he hurried on; "he has put me in possession of a secret that can be of inestimable worth. In all this I recognise that snake."

The next day one of Salim's most trusted men was wandering round the country house, and before long found an opportunity of talking with Gulbadan's servant. The bargain he proposed was quickly concluded, the servant betraying her mistress's secrets willingly, for the Prince, naturally, could pay more than she and Siddha together. On the evening of the same day the servant presented herself at the palace, and was received by Salim's confidant, to whom she gave two papers folded in the form of letters, and hurried back to her mistress's abode with the price she had received for them. The following day Salim was on his road back to Allahabad with a small escort.

There sojourned one solitary and sad. For a long time Iravati had heard nothing of her betrothed. In the beginning, shortly after his arrival in Agra, he had, as she well remembered, written her two letters, as overflowing as his earlier ones had been with a.s.surances of his love that could never be shaken; since then she had received no letter from him, though she heard from others that he was well and rising in favour with the Emperor. What, then, could be the reason of his continued silence? A terrible doubt began more and more to make itself master of her, but she strove against it, drawing fresh strength from her faith in the word and honour of her Siddha. Once as she sat lost in musings, idly turning over the leaves of a book that in earlier days she had read in Kashmir with her lover, she was disturbed by the appearance of the faithful Nipunika, who approached her with a troubled face, first hastily and then hesitatingly, as though she doubted whether to speak or keep silence.

"What have you to tell me?" said Iravati. "You seem to be the bearer of bad news."

"Alas!" answered the servant, "I would that my mouth were gagged; yet I cannot leave you in ignorance of what I have heard. It concerns you too nearly for me to dare to keep it from you."

"Speak at once, without further preface," said Iravati. "I am ready to hear what you have to tell."

Then she recounted her meeting with a soldier from Agra, and what he had told her of Siddha. At first she spoke guardedly, but ended in repeating all that Salim had discovered about Faizi's wife.

The consequence of this tale was as Nipunika had feared. As though lifeless, Iravati sat there, gazing before her; and some minutes of silence ensued before she spoke. Then she sprang to her feet, asking, with a pa.s.sion unwonted to her, "Who told you all this? Was it a soldier? Speak the truth, with no shifts or excuses."

"n.o.ble lady," answered Nipunika, "how should I dare to deceive you, and what reason could I have for doing so? The man from whom I heard what I have now repeated to you is a servant of the Prince."

"Then the whole story is a lie!" cried Iravati. "I understand it all now. What a contemptible plot!" she added to herself; and then turning to her servant,--"It is well, my good Nipunika, and I thank you for your report, which you brought, I doubt not, prompted by the real interest you take in me. But now that I know where it comes from I care not for it. Leave me now for the moment, and in future do not have to do with the man who told you these tales."

Still the arrow had been better aimed than Iravati would allow, either to herself or to her servant; and left alone, she sat for a long time, her head leaning on her hand, thinking over the possibilities and probabilities of what she had heard. But she felt her courage rise again when, some time after, leaving her apartment, she met Prince Salim in one of the galleries, whose return had not been announced to her. It was all plain to her. No one else had invented the whole slander in order to estrange her from Siddha; and she bent her head coolly and half contemptuously in acknowledgment of her visitor's respectful greeting.

"Iravati," he said, "you would have reason for surprise at my return here after our last, and for me discouraging interview, if the explanation had not been given you by what has come to your ears through your servant, and which I could not personally tell you."

"I understand well," said Iravati, without anger, but without circ.u.mlocution, "that you think scandal may aid you where persecution has failed; but this I had not expected, and, above all, from you."

"Scandal!" repeated Salim; "that would indeed be a contemptible manner of attaining the goal of my pa.s.sionate, and for you not injurious, wishes, and a very vain one. Of what avail would such tales and empty gossip be? But it is different when truth is supported by proofs."

"How? Proofs! What do you mean?"

"I mean the kind of proofs that the strictest judge cannot condemn. You know Siddha's handwriting, do you not?"

"Certainly."

"Well, look at these letters." And Salim handed to her two papers folded as letters, which Guldbadan's trusted servant had stolen from her mistress and sold to him. They were hastily and pa.s.sionately written, full of every expression of love, and contained one or two verses, written by Siddha, in which the name of the adored Rezia was repeated several times.

Iravati hastily read them through, and then read and re-read them, turning the letters round and round, looking at them from every side; then suddenly she let them fall from her hand, and would have sunk senseless to the ground if Salim had not supported her and placed her on a seat.

However deeply Iravati loved, she was no weak, nervous girl. In her veins ran the blood of an ancient and heroic race; and quickly recovering herself, she stood before the Prince, looking him firmly in the eyes.

"My fate," she said, "is decided; for I must confess that what I have heard is really true. Another has taken possession of the heart that until now was mine, and mine alone. But do not think, Prince, you who rule over everything except a woman's heart, that the way to it that was closed is now opened by your discovery; do not think that my promise is now vain because the word that was pledged to me in return is broken. As long as mine is not returned to me it is sacred."

"How?" cried Salim in astonishment. "The lover whose faithlessness is known to you, forsakes and abandons you for another, and yet you are not free, and may not listen--I do not say at once, but some time hence, when other memories fade at last and disappear--to him who loves you above everything, and can lay at your feet power and honour, such as no one else can offer?"

"Salim," answered Iravati, gently, as she strove to collect her thoughts; "you do not understand me, and perhaps you cannot do so. You do not understand us Hindu women, so different from those to whom you are accustomed. You think that the highest happiness for a woman is to be the favoured Sultana of some mighty ruler, and for many it does appear so; and you think it is enough to convince a Hindu woman of the faithlessness of her lover, to cause her to say farewell to all thoughts of the unworthy one."

"And is it not so?"

"Our women," was the answer, "know nothing of the temptations of greatness, where either duty or honour are concerned, and to their husband, or, which is the same thing, their betrothed, they remain faithful, even if their love is repaid by treachery. There are no bounds to the loyalty of a woman to her husband; and you know, though you may consider it only the consequence of superst.i.tion or exaggerated feeling, with what willing enthusiasm they will throw themselves on the burning pile that consumes the body of their dead husbands. You must have heard of our holy legends and heroic traditions, which describe the devotion of a wife to one unworthy of her. Doubtless the touching adventure of Damayanti must have come to your ears. Well, as far as in me lies, I will be another Damayanti. [95] Siddha has deserted me, but that is because the wicked Kali [96] has got possession of him, and tempted him to evil; not he himself that has brought this bitter sorrow to me. And when he awakes from this enchantment he will return, another Nala, and find me pure from any spot, and acknowledge that I knew better than he, how to watch over the honour of his name."

"I willingly leave you," said Salim, after a moment's silence, "the happy hope of his return, however much it grieves me. But do not flatter yourself with such expectations. Believe me, I know the woman into whose snares he has fallen. I loved her till I saw you, and know that she is irresistible until a purer love conquers the pa.s.sion one feels for her. Believe me, I know no more fascinating woman, as I know none purer or n.o.bler than you."

"Prince," said Iravati, in answer to this declaration, "I implore you to grant me a favour, although it may sound uncourteous. Leave me for the present. After all that has pa.s.sed, I feel that it is necessary to be alone. A prince, a n.o.bleman as you are, will not refuse me this."

"I should be," replied Salim, "unworthy of the name, if for a moment longer I misused your goodness; also I feel but too well that further persistence is now not only useless but prejudicial to my cause, therefore I obey your request." And turning, he left the gallery with slow footsteps.