King Errant Part 20

"Lo! I feel a new man. I am ready for anything--for everything!"

So, as he stood there, the memory--never very far distant from his mind in his moments of exaltation--of the Crystal Bowl of Life came back to him and he sang the last verse, his full voice rolling away among the hills:

"Clear Crystal Bowl, I laugh as I quaff.

Bring me Life's whole! I won't take the half!

Crystal Bowl, I bid thee bring to me Joy, Grief, Life, Death."

"Where didst learn that song, sonling?" said his mother, fondly. "And how well thou singest now! Thou hast learnt much of late, Babar."

"I learnt it," replied her son, his face sobering, "from my cousin Gharib. Dost know, motherling," he added swiftly, the light coming back to his eyes, "I learnt more of him than I wist at the time.

Sometimes I think I owe all to him."

"All?" echoed the Khanum, hurt. "Dost owe nothing to me--or at least to thy grandmother?"

Babar's face showed whimsically reverent. "Oh, yea! Oh, yea!" he a.s.sented readily; "I owe much to my revered grandparent; yet at this present it shows but little."

And he pointed to the two ragged tents, the two hundred tatterdemalions. "I would I were a tulip at times," he added irrelevantly, as he flung himself down on the gra.s.s that was all starred with the blood-red blossoms. "Think of it, motherling! To lie cosy all winter at your own heart, and when the sun has warmed the world to unfurl your banner and flaunt it independent--disobedient, if you choose!"--he rolled over on his stomach to look clear into one ruby cup--"Yea! little one!" he said patronisingly. "Rightly art thou called '_na farman_.'[2] Thou holdest thine own treasure secure, caring for none--yet will I touch it with my hand," and the tip of his long finger dived into the chalice to touch the stiff stamens, and come out all covered with pale, yellow pollen. "An augury!" he said gravely, as he smeared his forehead with the powder of life. "Lo! I am marked like a Hindu--I shall conquer Hind yet."

[Footnote 2: Contempt.]

"G.o.d forgive thee, child," exclaimed his mother hastily. "Say not such things--they tempt Providence. Even not thyself to an idolater."

Babar looked contrite. "Yet if I conquer Hind, I cannot kill all my subjects," he replied thoughtfully. "There is a puzzle for thee, motherling--how to be true Mussulman and yet not a fool?"

His mother looked at him and shook her head. Dear son as he was, always loving, always affectionate, he had a bad habit of getting away from her ken mentally and bodily. It all came of leading such a wandering life. If only he would marry and settle down. But there seemed no chance of either.

Yet Fate held the latter to close quarters. It almost seemed as if that shaving of his beard, that setting aside once and for all of his boyish aspirations had had a magical effect on Babar's environments; for within two months, seated at his ease in a splendid tent, he was writing in his diary:

"The Lord is wonderful in His might! That a man, master of twenty or thirty thousand retainers, should, in the s.p.a.ce of half-a-day, without battle, without contest, be reduced to give up all to a needy fugitive like myself, who had only two hundred tatterdemalions at his back (and they, all in the greatest want); that he should no longer have any power over his own servants, nor over his own wealth, nor even his own life, was a wonderful disposition of the Omnipotent!"

Undoubtedly! And as the enemy who was thus discomfited was no less a person that Khosrau-Shah, the man who had so treacherously caused Prince Baisanghar to be strangled, it is certain that his lack of power over his own life was a sore temptation to Babar. The man undoubtedly deserved death: it was indeed conformable to every law, human and divine, that such should meet with condign punishment. But an agreement had been entered into, so he must be left free and unmolested, and allowed to carry off as much of his personal property as he could.

For Babar was no promise-breaker. Perhaps also the memory of poor, miserable Khosrau's appearance when this pompous man (who for years had wanted nothing of royalty save that he had not actually proclaimed himself King) presented himself for audience and bent himself twenty-five or twenty-six times successively, and went and came back, and went and came back, till he was so tired that he nearly fell forward in his last genuflection, may have weighed with the keen young observer. The man was getting old; let him go with his sins upon his head.

So he went. And Babar with the thirty thousand retainers at _his_ back set out promptly for Kabul.

His paternal uncle, its King, had died leaving a young son. A perfidious minister had ousted this boy from the throne, but had himself been a.s.sa.s.sinated at a grand festival. Thereinafter all was disorder and tumult. Fitting opportunity then for a _coup d'etat_.

So, over the peaks and pa.s.ses, Babar at the head of a movable column pa.s.sed swiftly. Still more swiftly--since surprise is the essence of success--when news came that the usurper for the time being had left Kabul at the head of his army to intercept another adversary. The instant this information was received, the young leader gave his orders; within an hour the force was on the march. A hill pa.s.s lay before them; it must be mastered ere dawn; they must go up and up all the night through, the laden mules stumbling over the stones, dismounted troopers hauling their horses up rock ladders. A troublous time, indeed; but at last the crest of the hill was reached, and there, bright to the South, showed a star.

The young leader's heart leapt to his mouth--Could it--could it be Canopus?--the lucky star of the conqueror? The star of which he had read--the star he had never seen before ...

"That--that cannot be _Soheil_," he said almost timorously.

"It is _Soheil_, Most High," replied Baki Cheghaniani in a courtier's voice; then repeated pompously the well known verse:

"How far dost thou shine, _Soheil?_ And where dost thou rise?

Who knows? But this cannot fail: Thy light brings luck to the eyes Who see it and cry, 'All hail!

_Soheil!_'"

"Gentlemen!" rang out Babar's jubilant young voice, cutting the clear night air like a knife. "Let us give it all we can...! All hail!--_Soheil!_"

"All hail! _Soheil!_" The cry clamoured round the rocks and surged up from the ravines where men were still striving upwards; while on that downward path to the pleasant valleys below where spear points were already beginning to cl.u.s.ter, the troopers paused to echo and re-echo:

"All hail! _Soheil!_"

And Babar's star was veritably in the ascendant. Within a month--yet once more without battle, without contest--he had gained complete possession of Kabul and Ghazni with the countries and provinces dependent thereon.

It had been almost unbelievable success ever since that day when on the uplands of Ilak, he had shaved off his beard and set aside, once and for all, his childish hopes and aims!

_Really_, it was rather quaint! The thought of it, with its hint of imagination, its something beyond the dull routine of the inevitable, added zest to the young King's almost rapturous appreciation of his new dominions.

To begin with Kabul was in the very midst of the habitable world. That was a great point in its favour. Then it was in the fourth climate; and so of course its gardens were perfection. Its warm and its cold districts were close together; in a single day you could go to a place where snow never falls, and in the s.p.a.ce of two astronomical hours you might reach a spot where snow lay always (except now and then when the summer happened to be peculiarly hot).

Then the fruits! Grapes, pomegranates, apricots, peaches, pears, apples, quinces, jujubes, damsons, walnuts, almonds, to say nothing of oranges and citrons! The wines, also, were strong and intoxicating; indeed, that produced on the skirts of one mountain was celebrated for its potency. This, however, was only a matter of hearsay since Babar was still a tee-totaler; and as the verse says:

"The drinker knows the virtue of wine Which those who are sober can't divine."

Then the honey was delicious, the number of beehives extraordinary, and the climate itself was so extremely delightful that in this respect there was no other such place in the known world.

But it was the gardens, after all, which made Kabul what it was, a place that filled the imagination with joy. Years and years afterwards the mere thought of them was to make Babar homesick almost to tears; now every moment of time he could spare was spent on the skirts of the Shah-Kabul hill where terraces rise one above the other to touch the Summer Palace of the New Year. It was early October; the plane trees were dropping their golden leaves, the peaches were crimson and pale red, the vines vied with each other in vivid colouring. It was all so much pure joy to the young King, and he pa.s.sed on his content to all.

His dearest mother was housed as she never had been before. And when old Isan-daulet came, just to have a peep at her grandson's success, he lodged her in the New Year's palace where the old lady could have her fill of the garden. Since, quaintly enough, it was from the ancient desert-born dame that Babar inherited his keen delight in flowers. Kasim-Beg was back too, and so was Dost-Ali, his oldest friend amongst the n.o.bles of Andijan; but Kambar-Ali had left; he was a thoughtless and rude talker and the more polished courtiers of Kabul could not put up with his manners. Not that he was a great loss, for besides talking idly--and those who talk persistently cannot avoid at times saying foolish things--his wits were but skin deep, and he had a muddy brain.

There was but one fly in the honey, and that was the desire of all Babar's female relations that he should marry. There was justice, he felt, in his mother's claim for grandchildren. Undoubtedly it was his duty; but ...

He was too good-natured, however, to resist making everyone as happy as he was himself, especially after old Isan-daulet arrived with a bride in her pocket; so, before he quite realised the magnitude of the affair, he was duly wedded to yet another cousin, a half-sister of dead Prince Baisanghar. She was some years older than her groom and very, very beautiful.

But Babar came out from the bridal-chamber with a stern, set mouth and went straight to his mother.

"Tell her to say no more of Dearest-One," he said briefly; "or there will be trouble. And 'twere as well if she left Baisanghar in peace also. She loved him, doubtless--but--but so did I." His voice softened over the last words.

Trouble, however, was not to be avoided. Babar made no more complaints; possibly because he gave few opportunities for fresh injury.

His mother wept and scolded in vain. That hurt him; but for his cousin-wife he cared not at all. He was proud; he could not understand a woman's petty spite, especially when shown to _him_, a good-looking young King in the zenith of success.

"We do not agree," he said gloomily. "Lo! it is true what Saadi saith: