A Prince of Dreamers. Flora Annie Webster Steel
was eloquent of sudden personal distress, the clear dreaming eyes clouded and there was silence. Then hurriedly, disconnectedly, the voice took up its tale.
"What was the thought which racked me to the soul? Something I have forgotten utterly."
So once more came silence while those two watchers waited.
"Hush!" whispered the Wayfarer, signing back the fresh questioning which trembled on Birbal's lips, "he speaks again!"
The King's head had drooped as if to deeper sleep, for his voice lost its resonance and seemed to come from very far away.
"And they too--in the years they shall forget. Their dream of empire shall die as mine; and so we Twain, soul-welded into soul, shall pass, shall live forgetting, unforgotten ('the dreaming of a King can never die'). And all their faults shall fall from them. Ah God! The cry of little children, the wail of murdered women in my palace walls--do ye not hear them, aliens! Lo! I swear, such were not raised while Akbar reigned as King. Yet even this shall pass to peace, to rest--to greater ease--more gold--more luxury.
"Oh! subjects of Akbar! arouse ye! Wake! Life is not comfort! there is that beyond which India always sought, for which she seeks. This is no land of golden sunsetting--it is the land of coming dawn, of light in which to search for Truth unceasingly.
"What do they say arousing me from sleep? 'They wait me in the House of Argument?'
"Ah! well! I go, though it avails us not! India is Akbar's to the end of Time--like him it knows not and it fain would know, the secret of its birth and of its death. What are the words thou soughtest for in the years--Akbar? His son? I see them not! I only see the Self that knows, that sees, that hears, the everlasting Truth behind Life's lie.
"The rest I have forgotten."
The voice sank in silence, the head to deeper sleep, and the left hand slacking its grip dropped nerveless on the knee, so that the shining orb it had held rolled from it like a giant dewdrop until it found a resting place at Akbar's feet.
Birbal with a little cry caught at the King's Luck.
"Take it back! Oh, Master, take it back!" he whispered, laying it once more softly in the King's empty palm. "Hold fast to thyself. Lo! the whole world equals not Jalâl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar."
Then in a perfect passion of resentment he turned to the Wayfarer. But in those few seconds the latter's hold upon the balustrade had been withdrawn, the counterpoise had reasserted itself, and Birbal peering out over the balcony could see the dome of the dhooli disappearing in its downward course of darkness.
To slip through the wadded curtain and make his way to the swinging station at the foot of the wall was but the work of a minute or so. Yet he was too late. The newly arrived Sufi from Ispahân, the yawning attendants declared, had had his interview and gone--none knew whither.
The east was all flushed with rose-leaf clouds when Akbar awoke and smiled to find Birbal wrapped in his shawl watching him with curious, doubtful eyes.
Would the King remember? That was the question.
"Lo! friend," he said affectionately. "So may I wake in Paradise after a dreamless sleep and find thee there."
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