A Prince of Dreamers. Flora Annie Webster Steel
quaint old triplet seemed afloat in the air and Âtma's voice to come from beyond something that was eternally unchanged, inevitable.
"Has the seedling no need of the root; does the flower not nurture the fruit?" she chanted, her eyes still upon the rebeck player.
Birbal looked at her, caught in the great World-Wisdom which poets see sometimes in the simplest words.
"She says truth," he murmured to himself. "She says truth!" Then with a light laugh he turned to Abulfazl. "Shall we let her pass? At least she can do no harm."
"Nor any good," broke in Mân Singh hotly; "and it will but strengthen her madness! What! a woman to claim a Châran's[5] place--to give her body to the sword?--her honour to the dust for the King's? Psha! Bid her go back to her spinning wheel!"
Abulfazl smiled largely. "Lo! even Râjpût manhood lives in the woman for nine long months--none can escape from the dark life before birth. Yea! let her pass in, Birbal--she can do no harm."
"Nor good," persisted Mân Singh stoutly.
Birbal's shoulders moved once more. "I would not swear," he answered airily, "since Akbar is not of the common herd. Go then, good mad soul, and sing thy pedigrees, and you,"----he paused pointing at the quaint green stone. "What call you that, musician?"
The rebeck player paused also, keeping his eyes downward submissively.
"They call it smagdarite, Excellence. It comes from Sinde."
"Sinned or no sin," echoed Birbal gaily, "the devil is in it. But 'tis a good name. Pass on Smagdarite! Stay"--here the old man half-hidden by his drum essayed to follow--"whom have we here? Old Deena the drum-banger! In what vile stew of Satanstown didst spend the night, villain?"
Thus apostrophised, Deena's comically wicked, leering, old face hid itself completely in a salaam behind the drum, and came up again puckered with pure mischief.
"That is a question for the virtuous Lord Chamberlain, Mirza Ibrahîm," he replied, demurely.
The sally was greeted with a boisterous laugh, and Mirza Ibrahîm--whose fine clothes dispersed a perfect atmosphere of musk--scowled fiercely. For Satanstown, as ultimate exile of all the bad characters of the city was in his charge, and report had it that he pursued his duty of inspection with more than usual assiduity.
"Sit thou here then, by Smagdarite," continued Birbal, recovering from his laugh, "and drum from a distance, lest thou be utterly damned for deserting honourable company. Hark! she begins!"
Âtma had by this time sunk to the ground beside the King. Her flimsy scarlet skirts curved about her like overblown poppy petals. Her dark eyes, full of fire, were fixed on the unconscious figure so close beside her, and, under the slow circling of her lissome forefinger the little drum held in her left hand was beginning to give out an indescribably mysterious sound like the first faint sobbing of air before an organ pipe breaks into a note.
From the distance, almost unheard, came the muffled throbbing of old Deena's drum, and the thin thread of the rebeck, light yet insistent like a summer gnat; both kept to the same stern delicacy of rhythm.
The singer's voice, high and clear, rose on it almost aggressively--
Hark! and hist!
To the list
Of the kings who have died
In their pride,
To the wide,
wide,
world.
MÎRUN-KHÂN!
Lo! He dreamt he was King!
But he died
In his pride
To the wide,
wide,
world.
SO HIS SON SULÎMÂN
Dreamt the dreamings of kings
Till he died
In his pride
To the wide,
wide,
world.
SO THE DREAM WAS JEHÂN'S!
And he dreamt he was king
Till he died
In his pride
To the wide,
wide,
world.
The rhythmic background broke with the singing voice into troubled triplets, and the King's slack hands gripped in on themselves. Was he listening?
Now the tale of the Kings who have died
In their pride
Is many, and many beside.
But the dream is the same,
So it came----
The pliant forefinger's whirling gave out a continuous boom like distant thunder amongst hills. Deena's drum throbbed a réveillé, the rebeck thrilled like a cicala--
TO KUMÂN
And he dreamt he was King
In the wide,
wide,
world----
"Enough!" The word came swiftly as Akbar turned with a frown. "The end, woman? The end?"
There was a pause; then from the very dust of his feet rose her reply:
"There is none to the dreaming of kings!"
"There is none--to the dreaming--of kings," he echoed slowly, and his eyes scanned her face curiously as he raised her from the ground. "Who art thou, woman?" he asked suddenly; then as suddenly dropped the hands he held, and said coldly: "Give her gold for her song." But once more a fresh feeling came to make him add: "Nay! not gold--let her choose her own reward--what wouldst thou, sister?"
His face, grown soft as a woman's, looked sympathetically into hers; she stood before him abashed by the quick tie that seemed to have sprung up between them, unable to realise the chance that was hers.
"Quick step!" cried Mân Singh brutally. "See you not the Most-Gracious waits? What shall it be? Gold, fal-lals, dresses--the things for which women sell their souls?"
She turned on him like a queen.
"The women who nurture such heroes as Râjah Mân Singh mayhap so sell them; but I----" here her recognition of opportunity swept trivialities before it, she drew herself up to her full height and faced both King and court, her voice ringing like a clarion.
"I claim my father's office!" she cried. "Listen, O King-of-Kings! He gave you faithful service when you came to take the crown of India. What to him was Hindu or Mahommedan? He was the King's herald! Akbar was the King! His eldest son--my brother--died to save the honour of the Râjpût chief he served before you came! And little Heera--son of his old age, begot for you, died ere his baby tongue had ceased to trip in challenging the world--for you! Lo! I have kissed the words to steadiness upon his childish lips when father grew impatient! Why was I not the son? Hid in this dustlike body lies the spirit of my race. Is it my fault that in the dark months of my mother's womb, Fate made me woman, as she made you man? Give me my father's office, O my King, and if my tongue forgets one word of all my father's lore, or if I fail in guarding the King's honour, treat me as woman then--but not till then."
The dying fall of her words left the court amazed, almost affronted. Here was a claim indeed! A claim foreign to the whole conservative fabric of Eastern society--which heaven knows had already suffered shock enough at the King's reforming hands!
But Akbar took no heed of the looks around him; he was deep in that problem of Sex which was one of the many to claim his quick interest at all times.
"The