A Prince of Dreamers. Flora Annie Webster Steel
"Harm!" he echoed impatiently. "If what I think prove true, it is not likely Birbal would harm one possessed of--smagdarite! Out with it, sister. I have tramped from well to water, and water to well, these two hours seeking the Sinde envoy, but it comes ever from each clue that he has gone--disappeared beyond the city. So I bethought me of smagdarite and thee. Come! where lives he?"
"I will take my lord thither," she said evasively. "Nay! 'tis no trouble; he lives--he lives here in this very house."
She raised the light above her head and passed down the stairs. It was a many-storied tenement house, that circled round a central stair, and then broke away from it and wandered in labyrinthine passages to return once more to the same flight of steps; or was it another and she was purposely deluding him?
On and on they went through the dark silence, going down and down.
"He is in the cellars," she said, pausing at a corner to show with her lamp a flight of smaller, steeper steps. "He is so poor, he cannot pay. Have a care! the steps are broken!"
They stood before a small low door at which Âtma knocked. There was no answer. "Wayfarer!"[9] she cried softly. "O! Wayfarer!"
Still no answer.
"I have a key," she said, and drew one from her bosom. Birbal followed the light into the dark room. In that hot climate a cellar is no bad place wherein to live, and this one struck pleasantly cool, deliciously scented as by a thousand roses in blossom.
Birbal was conscious of a sudden elation. He was on the track assuredly! The next instant he was standing beside a string bed on which lay, wrapped in a white sheet, the figure of the rebeck player. The clear, fine profile turned upward almost as if he lay dead, and he did not stir when Âtma touched him on the shoulder.
She gave a vexed sigh. "It is the Dream-compeller," she said, "he takes it at times, and lies like a log, and then----"
But Birbal, eager in his quest, had drawn the sheet aside, and now started back with a swift exclamation. For, on the drugged man's breast was no talisman; but, upturned as his, there lay the most beautiful face surely in the whole wide world. It was that of a girl apparently not yet in her teens, yet still close on womanhood; perfect, delicate, pure, like some scented lily. Her breath coming and going regularly exhaled the perfume of a thousand flowers.
"'Tis Zarîfa--his daughter," explained Âtma softly. "She is a cripple utterly. Naught shows of her scarcely save her face, but when her eyes are open, one forgets." She gathered the sheet together so as to hide all that should be hidden. Only that perfect face remained asleep upon the Wayfarer's breast.
"Does he give the Dream-stuff to her also?" asked Birbal, feeling his voice unsteady. Poet, artist, to his finger-tips, the sight before him stirred him in every fibre, bringing with it a sense of half-remembered dreams.
She shook her head. "He sends her to sleep first with flower essences. She is like a deer for scent--a rose makes her unconscious, and then they sleep, and sleep, and sleep."
Slumber seemed in the air. They stood beside the low string bed, silent, almost drowsy. Âtma roused herself with an effort.
"He promised he would not; but they must have been given money to-day," she said regretfully. "There is no use waiting, my lord--they will sleep for hours--perhaps days."
"Days?" he echoed interrogatively.
She passed her hand over her forehead again. "It seems as if it were days. Then, when he goes out, I carry Zarîfa up to my roof. She is so light. There is nothing of her but the face. Yet she sings like a bird."
Birbal's hand went out to the lamp Âtma held and turned its light full on her face.
"You are but half-awake yourself, sister," he said gravely. "And it is all hours of the night. See, I will wait until I note your light pass on the uppermost stair, lest danger lurk for you in the dark."
He waited for her to lock the door, then standing in the dark archway watched her twinkling light circle the stairs, then disappear, circle again higher up and disappear, until he judged from the failure of the twinkle to return that she had reached her roof. And, as he watched his mind was busy.
Who was this man? And did he really possess the art which some deemed magic, but which he, keen rational thinker, found to be inextricably mixed up with the whole problem of life? What was it that all the great ones of the earth had possessed? What gave them their power, their influence? What was it, for instance, which made his own clear-seeing eyes fall at times before those dreams in Akbar's? What was it, what?
His whole life was one ceaseless questioning; and finding no answer, he jested at the very question itself. What was reality? Not surely the death-like profile he had just seen, the death-like form with that flower-face upon its breast.
He was turning to go when a burst of half-sober laughter rose close beside him and a voice answered tipsily.
"Ts'sh, Dhâri, thou art not safe yet in Siyah Yamin's paradise, so lurch not, fool, lest the watch seize thee! Take my arm, lo! I am steady."
A sound as of confused tumbling against the wall belied the assertion.
Every atom of blood in Birbal's body seemed to leap to his hands in anger, for he recognised the voice. It was that of his only son, his spendthrift son Lâlla--the son of so much promise, so many regrets. And the other was his boon companion Dhâri--another bad son of a good father--Tôdar Mull the man whose financial skill had saved the Empire from the oppression of bribery. Where then was the third of this precious trio of young rakes? Where was the Heir Apparent, Prince Salîm? Not far off, that he would warrant!
Slipping off his shoes, he followed up the stairs, keeping at a respectful distance to be beyond reach of the lurches, yet close enough to hear the password given at the closed door, not far he judged from Âtma's square of roof. Allowing a decent interval he knocked again and briefly saying "Kings-town" found himself admitted to an inner, scantily-lit staircase which, however, showed a brilliant light at its end.
A minute more and he stood looking with a curious amusement at Siyah Yamin's paradise. The jade had taste! Here on the highest roof in all the city she had set a terraced garden open only to the stars. The little coloured lights, edging the rose beds and the tiny splashing fountains, scarcely sent their diffused radiance higher than his knee. It did not reach the edge of the trellised walls, and above that was night; cool, quiet, night. A liveried servant salaamed to him profusely, then returned to his solitary game of cards. A white Persian cat rose, hunched up its back and clawed viciously on the Persian carpets laid along the paths, then yawned showing its needle. like teeth. From a confused heap of silks and satins under an awning came loud snores, but at the farther end of the far roof there was wakefulness; for a half-tipsy, wholly-discordant voice made itself heard singing a song--
Why am I drunken, fools? Because I sup
The wine of love from out the bosom's cup
And the soft scented tresses of dark hair trip up
My fuddled feet.
Because my wine-stained mouth has found her lips
Too close for kisses, so their nectar drips
To brain and heart, and body, in slow sips
Of passion sweet.
"His Royal Highness, the Heir Apparent," murmured Birbal, cynically as, looking half-mechanically to the sit of his turban, he went forward. Time was when love--but never wine--had tempted him also; this, however, was flagrant disobedience of the King's orders and he must see to it. Siyah Yamin was the town's darling, but even she had her limits and must confine herself to them.
He smiled sardonically, thinking of the torrent of words he was about to face, since she, likely, would be the only one with her wits about her.
And he was right!
As he set aside the silken curtains which hid the interior of her painted pavilion from sight, he found the place