King Errant Part 29

"But my Yenkam, thy mother, will be here--" protested Babar.

Ma'asuma shook her head. "It is _now_, dear heart! And foster-sister will not come unless thou askest her. She said so. Couldst not write to her, Babar?"

"But I know not foster-sister, nor aught of her, save that she was good to my Ma'asuma, for which, may Heaven reward her!"

Ma'asuma sat up, her charming face happy in thought. "Oh! so good, my lord! Not a real foster-sister, either; but we sat under one veil and drank milk out of one cup. That was when we first came to Khorasan, thy Yenkam and I. And since then she--Babar!--Be not angry but I will tell thee--I meant to have told thee--I should have told thee before--"

The violet eyes showed trouble once more and Babar kissed them deliberately. "What, sweetheart?" he asked carelessly. He knew the gentle kindly heart too well to fear any revelation.

"Only it was she, not I, who wrote the verses--the verses I sent--I was too stupid. And she is clever--oh! so clever!"

Despite his cert.i.tude the young man looked startled. "So," he said at last, "Fortune hath not given me the grace of a poetess to wife. So be it. But who is this paragon?"

Ma'asuma, however, was too delighted at having got over her confession so happily to refrain from autocratic dignity.

"That I have said. She is foster-sister and of the circle of distinction. Thy Yenkam can tell thee of genealogies; they tire my head. So write! Dost hear?"

Babar laughed. He loved to take orders from those sweet lips; besides a certain zest came with the idea of writing to an unknown poetess.

"Yea! I will write," he said meekly, "but I will have to regard _zals_ and _zes_; for more elegant _nastalik_ saw I never than hers."

So the letter was written and despatched express to the care of his Yenkam at Khorasan, and six weeks later little Ma'asuma sat beside her foster-sister in the summer house of the new Garden of Fidelity which Babar was laying out at Adinahpore, and whither he had taken his young wife whose daily increasing delicacy filled him with concern. Of all the gardens that Babar planted and watered, this was the one nearest his heart. In a most romantic situation, on the south side of, and overlooking the river, its groves of oranges and citrons grew untouched by hard winter frosts, while every flower, every tree of his beloved hill country flourished side by side with those of warm climates. Above it towered the White-Mountain and the Almond-Spring Pa.s.s, below it the valley debouched into wide fertility.

And Babar was hard at work, delving away himself like any Adam; making a four-square cross of marble reservoirs, through which the clear, hill stream might run, planting new flowers from here, there, everywhere. The tan of his sunburnt face and hands contrasted sadly with the sallowing skin of the girl-wife, who, despite his care, was sinking under her task of son-bearing.

"Then he knows not who I am," said the tall, slender woman on whose knee Ma'asuma was resting her pretty, weary head. "I deemed thou hadst told him, as we agreed." She spoke gravely and her level black brows were faintly knit. The rest of the face was richly beautiful in strong sweeping curves, but those level brows and the dark, thoughtful eyes beneath them held the attention. "Not that it matters," she added quickly, seeing tears ready to brim over the violets upturned to her.

"After all, 'tis nothing to thy lord--or to any other man--whether I be widow to Mirza Gharib Beg or no, so long as I be honourable woman.

Therefore tell him not, now that I am here." And Babar coming in to see his wife found the veiled new-comer courteous in speech, charming in manner. Found also such favourable change in his darling's spirits, that a glow of comradeship for his _aide_ rose up in his soft heart at once.

So they were very happy together, those three, and by degrees foster-sister's thick enshrouding veil was changed for a more filmy one and Babar could get a glimpse of those glorious eyes and see the little satirical smile about the strong curves of the mouth.

They reminded him vaguely, why he knew not, of his dead Cousin Gharib; but he never spoke of this to Ma'asuma. With her burden of coming life it would be unlucky to speak of the dead. Thus a week or two went by, and all insensibly the man learnt to rely on the woman who shared with him the charge of the girl.

"The Most-Benevolent one is very good to my wife," he said suddenly one day, "and my grat.i.tude can only lie in words."

The Most-Benevolent bowed gravely. "Thanks are not needed.

Ma'asuma-Begum came into this dust-like one's life, when it was unhappy. She hath been G.o.d's best boon to me."

"And to me also," answered the young husband sadly. Do what he would he could not escape from fear, the shadow of impending evil seemed to darken his life. He had to brisk and hearken himself up to face the future; for perilous times were at hand. The fateful seventh month, so much dreaded by Indian midwives was beginning; but his Yenkam would be with her daughter in a day or two, they would together take Ma'asuma back in her litter to Kabul by easy stages, and all would, all _must_, go well.

It was one glorious morning in early August when this feeling of ill to come, made him catch up his lute to chase away thought by song. He had carried little Ma'asuma himself down to the tank half surrounded by burnished orange trees which was the very eye of the beauty of the garden. They had dismissed all attendants, bidding them leave behind them their trays of sherbet and sweetmeats. But not even the perfect loveliness of hill, and sky, and garden, not even the faint flush, as of returning health, on the invalid's face could charm the splendour of Life into Babar's soul. The Crystal Bowl seemed dull, opaque.

This must not be.

He set the strings of his lute a-tw.a.n.ging and began--

"Clear crystal bowl. Thy wine bubbles laugh--"

The figure seated by the tank side, its reflection in the water, rose suddenly as if startled, gathered its draperies round it, so, with face averted, strolled off into the garden.

"There!" came Ma'asuma's reproachful voice, "thou hast driven her away, stupid!"

The young man arrested in his song looked hurt. "But wherefore? 'Tis a good song."

"Good mayhap," came the thoughtless answer, "but, see you! It reminds her of Gharib-Beg who wrote it."

"And wherefore not?" asked Babar swiftly.

Little Ma'asuma looked scared. "Lo! There I have told thee! and I said I would hold my tongue! Because, see you, Gharib-Beg married and left her in the old days; whether rightly as some say, or foolishly, as others, I know not; but 'twas so. She was religious for long years and when I went to the school to learn the Holy Book, we became friends.

And oh! Babar, thou wilt never know how good she was to me when I fell in love with my lord--and he with me." The roguish face, looking more like itself than he had seen it for months, nestled on to his shoulder.

He put his arm round the slender figure and drew it to him mechanically, grateful that her words had given him time to pull himself together.

Gharib-Beg's wife! The woman he had called "Maham--his moon!"

"So." he said with an effort, "she was my cousin's wife; but wherefore ... was I not told?"

Ma'asuma pouted. "Because I did not at first. And then when she came, she would not have it--why I know not--save that mayhap, before the son was coming, I wanted thy praise for--for such things as verses.

And now, my lord must say naught. Promise me he will not, or she will be vexed."

"I will not vex her," he said diplomatically, and changed the subject adroitly by picking up a tiny red-silk cap half embroidered with seed pearls on which his wife had been working, and which had fallen on the path.

"Lo!" he laughed, "is that the way to treat my son's head-dress!" And he held the ridiculous little object out on his forefinger and twirled it round. So the question pa.s.sed. But he was of too frank a nature to palliate concealment and that night when the moon had risen, he found himself once more confronting a tall, slender figure that stood, aggressively this time, against a marble pillar. But there was no swinging lamp to cast a rose reflection between them.

"Yea! Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar," said the proud voice. "It is even as my lord hath divined. I knew. I was the lad who brought my lord his mistress's message--which _I_ had written. It was to me that my lord gave his 'I love thee, ever, ever!' This being so, what else was there left to do, save what was done?"

The finality of her words struck Babar like a blow. He never minced matters even with himself.

"Naught," he said gloomily. "Naught." Then he added, "But now?"

The veiled figure caught him up quickly. "Now? She must not know; she must never know."

Babar stood still and leaning his head on his arm against the pilaster, looked out into the garden. It lay silvern, peaceful, a thing of perfect beauty, a place wherein no sinful man should walk or set foot. "Lo!" came the sweet voice. "I have kept--I will keep my lord's ring. It was not he who broke faith, but I."

"The Most-n.o.ble is very good," he said simply and left her. There was no more to say.

Had there been more, there would have been little time for it.

A hasty twinkling light showed ere long adown the palace colonnade.

Voices came in excited whispers. Her Highness, the Begum, was not well. G.o.d send it might be nothing; but 'twas the fateful month.

Fateful, indeed! All that night long Babar waited in a fever of anxiety, listening to the fitful wails, the thousand and one slight sounds of sudden, direful sickness. What were they doing to his Ma'asuma? his little Ma'asuma, his love, his heart's darling, his little one? Would he ever see her again?

The dawn came, and still he watched, still he waited. The birds in the bushes began to sing--to sing forsooth! while she lay in the shadow of death! Heartless! cruel! For she must die! so small, so slender, how could she stand out against those long hours of agony. Noon pa.s.sed and still he waited, every nerve in his strong young body wearied by imagined pain.

It was not till sun-setting that a voice roused him as he sat crouched in on himself: