A Prince of Dreamers. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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just caught up my veil, and ran downstairs (for we have many entrances see you, and this tenement of yours is one of them) to offer thee congratulations--since if the King cast even the wink of an eye on a woman that is something! And they say he raised thee by the hands!"
The hot blood surged into Âtma's face. "And if he did, what then?" she asked.
Siyah Yamin rose, and yawning took up her veil. "Touching comes before tasting," she replied airily, "even with Kings. And so, having offered my gratulations on good luck--farewell."
Âtma stood frowning at her. "Thou playest a dangerous game, Siyâla; if the King discovers that thou--the darling of the town--hast set his rule at naught----"
Siyah Yamin burst into a perfect cascade of laughter. "Fie on thee, Âtma! and me a married woman, veiled, secluded, a perfect cupola of chastity!" Wrapped in her white burka, all one could see of the devilry within, was two eyes brimming over with malignant mischief.
"Married!" gasped Âtma, "what man has dared----?"
"Aye! He is brave," assented the courtesan, "and I love him--as much as I love most! And he is the best-looking of them all--is Jamâl-ud-din."
"Syed Jamâl-ud-din of Bârha?" echoed Âtma incredulously.
The veiled head nodded. "Yea! He is Syed, and set on his religion. So I said the Creed and he gave me one of the eight marriages--I forget which. These Mahommedan ceremonials are not awe-inspiring like the Seven Steps and the Sacrificial Fire; lo! even with no man, but a dagger, that gave me shivers. Thou wilt come and see me, Âtma. It is pleasant up there. We have joined four roofs. Ask for the Persian bibi from Khorasân and if needful give the password--'Kings-town.' Rage not, virtuous beloved! 'Tis better anyhow to live under Akbar than under Satan!"
So with a tinkling of silver and pearl fringes she passed upward.
Âtma stood for a while lost in thought, then rousing herself in quick impatience, put aside the sword in its appointed corner, removed her hauberk, laid it on the ground in front of the sword and on it set the two lamps which all night long kept watch and ward over the weapon, placed between them the death-dagger of her race, and so, her new-come evening task finished, went toward the parapet of the roof and, leaning her arms on it, looked out over the fast-fading horizon of India.
In her dark eyes still lay some of the unrest, the resentment which, since her father's death, had made the townsfolk call her mad: for those words with which the King had gifted to her the Châranship, "I'll treat thee not as woman, but as man," had curiously enough brought home to her all the limitations of that womanhood.
How little she could do--except die--for the King's honour. Still the roof was no longer voiceless. The challenge had rung out from it once more, obliterating the sad echoes of that last dying effort of the old man. She looked round as if listening for that feeble whisper.
No! It had gone. She was the Châran now! and the edge of the death-dagger was keen enough for woman's flesh; she might yet join the great and noble company of the self-immolated.
Her heart stirred in her at the thought of their deeds enshrined in old bardic verses that had been handed down from father to son from generation to generation.
They were in her keeping now at any rate, and she must not forget them.
So, half-kneeling by the low parapet, her chin resting upon her crossed arms, she said them over to herself rough, rude, almost unintelligible, yet still instinct with fire, with courage, with defiance.
She lingered lovingly over one: that tale of how the young ten-year-old Heera when his father was treacherously slain and his master falsely accused of high treason to his suzerain, was sent forth by his mother to seek his father's body in the wilds, and having found it, to take the death-dagger from the bleeding corpse, and so, all travel-stained and weary, his young face blistered with tears, to appear before the hasty tribunal and give the champion's cry--
It is a lie!
I, Heera, I
I take the lie!
Ye Bright-Ones see me die!
Avenge the lie!
And thus by his death force upon the conspirators a full inquiry. So she knelt dreaming, her chin upon her hand while the glow of the set sun faded from the sky.
Yet with all her dreaming she was very woman, and in every fibre of her being she still felt the touch of the King's hands upon hers.
Such hungry hands! Dimly, in her sexless soul, she recognised that quality in them. What did they want? Not womanhood certainly. But who wanted that? No one. Motherhood was one thing and widowhood was another, but sexual womanhood was nescience.
With a sigh she rose to fetch her Dharm-shastra and read her nightly portion from its pages, choosing it at random, so many slokas this way or that way from the one on which her eye fell first. Yet despite this superstitious selection, she was learned beyond the learning of most women, beyond even that of many learned men, for her father had taught her as he taught his sons--all save the Sacred Text, that privilege of Brahmanhood. The limitation, however, left Âtma smiling, since her widowhood outweighed for her the repetition of many gayatris.
By it she gained a privilege greater than her brothers. By its very virginity she became their ancestress, the ancestress of all her race. That voluntary yielding up of sex brought her eternal motherhood, because through her renunciation those heroes had found life everlasting.
Her barren breasts--sucked of no child's lips--had nurtured them--nurtured them all!
Shiv-jee, Râjindar, half a hundred others, were all her children. Aye, it was her hands which had sent little Heera into the wilderness to do his duty. His childish face full of tears of courage was hers!--was hers!
There was no death; nothing but unending life that "cannot slay that is not slain." So to her, as she sate reading the Sacred Book came spirits innumerable, until in the vast multitude of men, her own womanhood was lost.
A low knock came to the door. Holding the light by which she had been reading in her hand, she rose and went toward it.
"Who enters?" she asked, and started at the reply.
"It is I, Birbal. Open, my sister. I come from the King."
He stood within the threshold unfolding the shawl with which he was enveloped, and disclosing his keen face lit by a satirical smile.
"A good password, by all that's holy," he said airily. "Nay! frown not, sister, I am of thy tribe."
"True," she replied gravely. "My father spoke often of Maheshwar Rao"--she gave Birbal's tribal name with intent--"and said that could he but learn not to jest----"
The faint laugh, the little shrug of the shoulders came, unfailing as ever.
"Were the world less amusing, sister," he said, "Birbal might have more chance!" He passed lightly to the parapet, and sate on it dangling his legs "Padré Rudolfo, the Jesuit, hath it," he continued, "that I am the fool who saith 'There is no God'; but Birbal propounds no such proposition. He hath an open mind. His very errand here this night, my sister, shows--shall we say credulity? I come, sister, for thy rebeck player. I need him."
"Wherefore?" asked Âtma quickly.
Birbal's mouth quivered cynically. "Shall I say the King desires him, sister? Nay! I will not lie. I want him, because of a talisman stone he wears around his neck. He called it smagdarite. I wish to see it again."
"A stone?" echoed Âtma surprised, "what stone? He wears no talisman, for sure."
Birbal's feet came down the roof in sudden excitement. "He wears none! Better and better! Tell me where he lives, sister. I would see for myself. Come! quick, the night goes on, and it is time the King's Châran was abed."
He looked at her in frank mockery and she flushed slowly.
"If it be not for harm," she began, "he is but a poor