On the Face of the Waters Part 13

"And now, _Pir_-sahib," continued the Queen, with a look of loving anxiety at her lord, "for this strange ailment of which I spoke to you----"

The King's face lost its self-importance as if he had been suddenly recalled to unpleasant memory. "'Tis naught of import," he said hastily. "The Queen will have it I start and sweat of nights. But this is but the timorous dread of one in her condition. I am well enough."

"My lord, _Pir_-sahib, hath indeed renewed his youth through thy pious breathing of thy own life into his mouth--as time will show," murmured the Queen with modest, downcast look. "But last night he muttered in his sleep of enemies----"

Bahadur Shah gave a gasp of dismay. "Of enemies! Nay!--did I truly?

Thou didst not tell me this."

"I would not distress my lord, till fear was over. Now that the pious priest, who hath the ear of the Almighty----"

Hussan Askuri, who had stepped forward to gaze at the King, began to mutter prayers. "'Tis that cooling draught of Ahsan-Oolah's stands in the way," he gasped, his hands and face working as if he were in deadly conflict with an unseen foe. "No carnal remedy--Ah! G.o.d be praised! I see, I see! The eye of faith opens--_Hai!_ venomous beast, I have you!" With these words he rushed to the King's couch, and, scattering its cushions, held up at arm's length a lizard. Held by the tail, it seemed in semi-darkness to writhe and wriggle.

"_Ouee! Umma!_" yelled the Great Moghul, shrinking to nothing in his seat, and using after his wont the woman's cry--sure sign of his habits.

"Fear not!" cried the priest. "The mutterings are stilled, the sweats dried! And thus will I deal also with those who sent it." He flung his captive on the ground and stamped it under foot.

"Was it--was it a bis-cobra, think you?" faltered the King. He had hold of Zeenut Maihl's hand like a frightened child. The priest shook his head. "It was no carnal creature," he said in a hollow, chanting voice. "It was an emissary of evil made helpless by prayer. Give Heaven the praise." Bahadur Shah began on his creed promptly, but the priest frowned.

"Through his servant," he went on. "For day and night, night and day, I pray for the King. And I see visions, I dream dreams. Last night, while my lord muttered of enemies, Hussan Askuri saw a flood coming from the West, and on its topmost wave, upon a raft of faithful swords, as on a throne, sate----"

"With due respect," came voices from the curtained door. "The disciples await initiation in the Hall of Audience."

Hussan Askuri and the Queen exchanged looks. The interruption was unwelcome, though strangely germane to the subject.

"I will hear thee finish the dream afterward," fussed the King, rising in a bustle; for he prized his saintship next to his poetry. "I must not keep my pupils from grace. Hast the kerchiefs ready, Zeenut?"

There was something almost touching in the confidence of his appeal to her. It was that of a child to its mother, certain of what it demanded.

"All things are ready," she replied tartly, with a meaning and vexed look at the miracle-monger; for they had meant to finish the dream before the initiation.

"A goodly choice," said the royal saint, as he looked over the tiny silk squares, each embroidered with a text from the _Koran_, which she took out of a basket. "But I need many, _Pir_-sahib. Folk come fast, of late, to have the way of virtue pointed by this poor hand. And thou hast more in the basket, I see, Zeenut, ready against----"

"They are but begun," put in the Queen, hastily covering the basket.

"Nor will they, likely, be needed, since the leave season pa.s.ses, and 'tis the soldiers who come most to be disciples to the defender of their faith."

"I am the better pleased," replied the King with edifying humility.

"This summer hath too many pupils as it is. Come! _Pir_-sahib, and support me through mine office with real saintship."

As the curtain fell behind them Zeenut Maihl crossed swiftly to the crushed lizard and raised it gingerly.

"No carnal creature," she repeated. It was not; only a deft piece of patchwork. Yet it, or something else, made her shiver as she dropped the tell-tale remains into the basket. This man Hussan Askuri sometimes seemed to her own superst.i.tion a saint, sometimes to her clear head a mere sinner. She was not quite certain of anything about him save that his delusions, his dreams, his miracles, suited her purpose equally, whether they were false or true.

So she crossed over again to a marble lattice and peered through a convenient peephole toward the Audience Hall, which rose across an intervening stretch of platform in white shadow, and whiter light. She could not see or hear much; but enough to show her that everything was going on the same as usual. The disciples, most of them in full uniform, went up and down the steps calmly, and the wordy exordium on the cardinal virtues went on and on. How different it might be, she thought, if she had the voice. She would rouse more than those faint "_Wah! Wahs_." She would make the fire come to men's eyes. In a sort of pet with her own helplessness, she moved away and so, through another room, went to stand at another lattice. It looked south over a strip of garden, and there was an open square left in the tracery through which a face might look, a hand might pa.s.s. And as she stood she counted the remaining kerchiefs in the basket she still held. They were all of bright green silk and bore the same lettering. It was the Great Cry: "_Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!_" As dangerous a woman this, as Hussan Askuri was a man; as dangerous, both of them, to peaceful life, as the fabled bis-cobra, at the idea of which the foolish old King had cried, "_Ouee, Umma!_" like any woman.

And now at last that wordy exordium must be over, for, along the garden path, came the clank of accouterments. Zeenut Maihl's listless figure seem galvanized to sudden life, there was a flutter of green at the open square, and her voice followed the shower of silk.

"These banners from the Defender to his soldiers."

But as she spoke, a stir of excitement, a subdued murmur of expectation reached her ear from outside, and, leaning forward, she caught a glimpse of a swinging litter coming along the path.

Mahb.o.o.b returned already! Vexatious, indeed, when she had turned and planned everything so as to be sure of having the King in her apartments when the answer arrived. None others would know it before she did--unless!--the thought obliterated all others, and she flew back to the further lattice. The King, returning from the initiation, had paused in the middle of the platform at the sight of the approaching litter, and his courtiers, as if by instinct, had grouped themselves round him, leaving him the central figure. The cruel sunlight streamed down on the tawdry court, on the worn-out old man.

It seemed interminable to the woman behind the lattice, that pause while the fat eunuch was helped from his litter. She could have screamed to him for the answer, could have had at his fat carca.s.s with her hands for its slowness. But the old King had better blood in his veins. He stood quietly, his tawdry court around him; behind him the marble, and gold, and mosaics of his ancestors.

"What news, slave?" he asked boldly.

"None, Light of the Faithful," replied the Chief Eunuch.

"None!" The semi-circle closed in a little, every face full of disappointed curiosity.

"I have a letter for the Lord of the World with me. Its substance is this. The _Sirkar_ will recognize no heir. During the lifetime of our Great Master, whose life be prolonged forever, the _Sirkar_ will make no promise of any kind, either to his majesty, or to any other member of the royal family. It is to remain as if there were no succession."

No succession! Above the sudden murmur of universal surprise and dissent, a woman's cry of inarticulate rage came from behind the lattice. The King turned toward the sound instinctively. "I must to the Queen," he murmured helplessly, "I must to the Queen."

CHAPTER II.

IN THE CITY.

"Come, beauty, rare, divine, Thy lover like a vine With tendril arms entwine; Lay rose red lips to mine, Bewildering as wine."

The song came in little insistent trills and quaverings, and quaint recurring cadences, which matched the insistency of the rhymes. The singer was a young man of about three-and-twenty, and as he sang, seated on a Persian rug on the top of a roof, he played an elaborate symphony of trills and cadences to match upon a tinkling _saringi_. He was small, slight, with a bright, vivacious face, smooth shaven, save for a thin mustache trimmed into a faint fine fringe. His costume marked him as a dandy of the first water, and he smelled horribly of musk.

The roof on which he sat was a secluded roof, protected from view, even from other roofs, by high latticed walls; its only connection with the world below it being by a dizzy brick ladder of a stair climbing down fearlessly from one corner. Across the further end stretched a sort of veranda, inclosed by lattice and screens. But the middle arch being open showed a blue and white striped carpet, and a low reed stool. Nothing more. But a sweet voice came from its unseen corner.

"Art not ashamed, Abool, to come to my discreet house among G.o.dly folk and sing lewd songs? Will they not think ill of me? And if thou comest drunken horribly with wine, as thou didst last week, claiming audience of me, thine aunt, not all that t.i.tle will save me from aspersion. And if I lose this calm retreat, whither shall poor Newasi go?"

"Nay, kind one!" cried Prince Abool-Bukr, "that shall never be." So saying, he cast away the tinkling _saringi_ and from the litter of musical instruments around him laid impulsive hands on a long-necked fiddle with a 'cello tone in it. "I would sing psalms to please mine aunt," he went on in reckless gayety, "but that I know none. Will pious Saadi suit your sober neighbors, since lovelorn Hafiz shocks them? But no! I can never stomach his sentimental sanct.i.ty, so back we go to the wisest of all poets."

The high, thin tenor ran on without a break into a minor key, and a stanza of the Great Tentmakers. And as it quivered and quavered over the illusion of life, a woman's figure came to lean against the central arch, and look down on the singer with kindly eyes.

They were the most beautiful eyes in the world. Such is the consensus of opinion among all who ever saw them. Judged, indeed, by this standard, the Princess Farkhoonda Zamani, alias Newasi Begum, the widow of one of the King's younger sons, must have had that mysterious charm which is beyond beauty. But she was beautiful also, though smallpox had left its marks upon her. Chiefly, however, by a thickening of the skin, which brought an opaque pallor, giving her oval face a look of carved ivory. In truth, this memento of the past tragedy, which at the age of thirteen had brought her, the half-wedded bride, to death's door, and sent her fifteen-year-old bridegroom from the festival to the grave, enhanced, rather than detracted from her beauty. Her lips were reddened after the fashion of court women, her short-sighted hazel eyes were heavily blackened with antimony; but she wore no jewels, and her graceful, sweeping Delhi dress was of deadest, purest white, embroidered in finest needlework round hems and seams, and relieved only by the lighter folds of her white, lace-like veil.

For she had forsworn colors when she fled from court-life and its many intrigues for an alliance with the charming widow; and, on the plea of a call to a religious and celibate life, had taken up her abode in the Mufti's Alley. This was a secluded little lane off the bazaar, which lies to the south of the Jumma Mosque, where a score or two of the Mohammedan families connected with the late chief magistrate of the city lived, decently, respectably, respectedly. To do this, having sometimes to close the gate at the entrance of the alley, and so shut out the wicked world around them. But that whole quarter of the city held many such learned, well-born, well-doing folk. Hussan Askari's house lay within a stone's throw of the Mufti's Alley; Ahsan-Oolah's not far off, and, all about, rose tall, windowless buildings, standing sentinel blindly over the naughtiness around them; but they had eyes within, and ears also. So the hands belonging to them were held up in horror over the doings of the survival, and--despite race and religion--an inevitably reluctant, yet inevitably firm adherence was given to civilization. Even the womenfolk on the high roofs knew something of the mysterious woman across the sea, who reigned over the Huzoors and made them pitiful to women. And Farkhoonda Zamani read the London news, with great interest, in the newspaper which Abool-Bukr used to bring her regularly. Hers was the highest roof of all, save one at the back Of her veranda room; so close to it indeed that the same _neem_ tree touched both.

It was not a quarter, therefore, in which the leader of the fastest set in the palace might have been expected to be a constant visitor.

But he was. And the decorous alley put up with his songs patiently.

Partly, no doubt, for his aunt's sake; more for his own charm of manner, which always gained him a consideration better men might have lacked. Being the late heir-apparent's eldest son, he was certain of succeeding to the throne if he outlived all his uncles; for the claims of the elder generation are, by Moghul law, paramount over those of the younger. Now, the inevitable harking back to the eldest branch, after years of power enjoyed by the junior ones, which this plan necessitates, being responsible for half the wars and murders which mark an Indian succession, some of these learned progressive folk admitted tentatively that the Western plan was better; and that if Prince Abool-Bukr were only other than he was, he might as well succeed now as later on.

The idea roused a like ambition in the young idler, now and again, but as a rule he was content to be the best musician in Delhi, the boldest gambler, the fastest liver. Yet through all, he kept his hold on one kind woman's hand; and those who knew the prince and princess have never a word to say against the friendship which led to that singing of Omar Khayyam upon the latticed roof.

"Life could be better than that for thee, nephew, didst thou but choose," said her soft voice, interrupting the cynicism, while her delicate fingers, touching the singer's shoulder as if in reproof, lingered there tenderly. He bent his smooth cheek impulsively to caress the hand so close to it, with a frank, boyish action. The next moment, however, he had started to his feet; the minor tone changed to a dance measure, then ended in a wild discord, and a wilder laugh. Her use of the word nephew was apt to rouse his recklessness, for she was but a month or two older than he.

"Thou canst not make me other than I was born----" he began; but she interrupted him quickly.

"Thou wast born of good parts enough, G.o.d knows."

"But my father deemed me fool, therefore I was brought up in a stable, mine aunt; and sang in brothels ere I knew what the word meant. So 'tis sheer waste time to interview my scandalized relations as thou dost, and beg them to take me serious. By all the courtesans in the Thunbi Bazaar, Newasi, I take not myself so. Nor am I worse than the holy, pious aunt: I take paradise now, and leave h.e.l.l to the last.

They choose the other way. And make a better bargain for pleasure than I, seeing that the astrologers give me a short life, a b.l.o.o.d.y death."