A Prince of Dreamers Part 13

His voice sank in silence; then yet once again, he roused himself.

"Farewell, friend, for the night--the night that will bring to-morrow--Ye G.o.ds! How will it be when the Night of Death closes in--on one of us?"

Birbal sank to his knees and touched his master's feet with his forehead. He had no other answer; so silently he pa.s.sed through the great wadded curtains of gold tissue which separated the alcove from the rest of the room, leaving the King alone, lost in thought.

The problem of a future life had pressed on him all his days, and yet, he told himself as he sate thinking, the fact had not interfered with his enjoyment of the present one. Verily he had drunk of the cup of life to the dregs. His vitality had spared neither himself nor his world.

The memory of man is curiously creative. Out of the welter of remembrance it chooses this and that in obedience to no law, but arbitrarily, whimsically. It pa.s.ses by unseen the peaks of past pa.s.sion, and makes mountains of the merest mole-hill of caprice.

So, as Akbar looked back over his life, he found many a triviality standing out as clear, as untouched by Time, as many a tragedy, many a palpable turning point in his career.

The first snow he ever saw? The sight came back to him as if he had seen it yesterday, though five-and-forty years had pa.s.sed since that perilous journey from Kandahar to Kabul in charge of his foster-nurse Anagah. Dear Anagah! How he had loved her! More, in a way, than he had loved his absent, stately mother; but he had vague recollections of that quaint meeting with the latter after three long years of separation, when his father, as a joke, had brought him--a little lad-ling of six--into a great circle of unveiled women and bidden him to choose a mother for himself.

He had chosen right, but the very recollection of his choice had gone.

All he remembered was quick clasping arms and a kiss--surely the sweetest kiss of his life.

The sweetest? No!

That (even after five-and-twenty years the horror, the despair of it seemed to overwhelm him again) had been the last pa.s.sion-fraught kiss he had given to--to a murderer--to Adham! Adham his foster brother--his playmate Adham, whom he loved, whom he trusted.

Oh! G.o.d! the tragedy of it! Why did such things come into this little trivial life?

Yet it was inevitable. If Adham were to come to him now as he had done that day; reckless, defiant, presuming on his position, boasting of the foul murder of an old man whom he conceived to be his enemy, the same swift justice must follow.

The beads of sweat started to Akbar's brow as he remembered the sudden grip of his own strong young arms, the relentless forcing backward to the parapet's edge, and then--before the final fling--that kiss!

And thereinafter silence. No! not silence--tears! Anagah--dear Anagah's tears. She had died of a broken heart because of her son's death--died without one word of forgiveness for the doer of justice.

Yet he did not regret the deed, though he had always, even as a boy, been tender of life.

"I will fight a whole enemy, I will not slay a wounded one."

The very words of his refusal when his tutor had bidden him whet his maiden sword on the rebel Hemu came back to him, and led him on to remembrance of the day when this feeling for the sanct.i.ty of life had risen in him not toward man only but toward all creatures. That was a later memory, and the scene reproduced itself before his mind's eye complete in every detail.

The long laborious encircling of game drawing to its close--the opposing ends of the great arc of thousands upon thousands of men who for two days had been sweeping across the country driving all wild things before them, were narrowing, closing in--and he, the man called King, was watching, luxuriously posted, his court about him, for his first shot.

And then? Then close beside him a _c.h.i.n.kara_ fawn, looking at him with great soft dim eyes, startled, but not afraid!

"His Majesty was seized suddenly with an extraordinary access of rage such as none had ever seen the like in him before, and the _battue_ was given up; nor has he since, so pursued game, but prefers to go out alone and spend hours in arduous chase."

That is how his quick, almost despairing remorse, regret, pity, anger with himself had appeared to the outside mult.i.tude. To him it had been a crisis in his life; one of the few things which had left an indelible mark on his mind.

Aye! few things. For love had not touched him as, for instance, it had touched his grandfather.

"To-night at midnight after three long years, I met Maham again."

Babar had set that down in his memoirs, after--according to Aunt Rosebody's tale--he had run out on foot from the palace on hearing of the near approach of the long expected caravan from Kabul and met his dearest dear six miles out along the road. Even his father's more pa.s.sionate love for the fourteen year old Hamida, seen when Humayon was five and thirty, had not been his. If it had been, perhaps his sons might have been different!

And so in an instant, overwhelmingly, Akbar was back in the old dreary disappointment; the old defiance of fate following fast on its heels.

The boy would do well enough! Even if some things pa.s.sed, even if ideals had to go, what then? The dynasty would remain. He and his and the City of Victory he had built with such high hopes should endure for ever, even if churlish Nature denied them a cup of cold water.

For ever! For ever! With the words came back the old puzzle. Oh! If he could only see, only know!

He sate staring fixedly, abstractedly, at the clear translucence of the diamond which he still held in the palm of his left hand, while his right rested on the marble bal.u.s.trade close to the summoning string which dived into the depths below.

So after a while he seemed to sleep, for his muscles relaxed and the right hand slipped, to hang over into the darkness, whence a faint sound as of metal on metal rose waveringly, followed almost immediately by the monotonous burr of a rope pa.s.sing over pulleys.

It did not rouse the King, though it sent Birbal, who was lingering beyond the wadded curtain, to peer through it stealthily, curious to see what antagonist in argument the King had summoned.

Beyond the arched openings of the balcony, the domed roof of the swinging dhooli rose into sight, and a moment afterward its occupant laid a thin hand on the bal.u.s.trade steadying himself to arrest.

Despite the high-peaked, white, woollen cap, the white, woollen robe of a Sufi ecstatic which the figure wore, Birbal's recognition of the face was instant, complete.

"Smagdarite!" he exclaimed.

The newcomer held his finger to his lip, but his eyes were on the King. "Hus.h.!.+" he whispered, "See, he dreams. The diamond hath found him, and he knows himself."

Something in the man's tone sent a thrill through his hearer, and his eyes followed the lead given them swiftly.

Akbar did not move. He leant amongst the cus.h.i.+ons, gazing at the diamond, but seeing it not; for the veil had fallen from the Unknown and lay hiding the Known.

"What doest thou mean--mountebank!" whispered Birbal in return, his own voice sounding strange to his ears as he stepped closer, bending over the King. "He doth but doze. Wake, my liege, wake!"

The other's fine fingers were on his wrist, gripping it hard.

"At thy peril! though, mayhap, thou couldst not wake him if thou wouldst. Lo! Birbal! Philosopher! learned beyond most! seest thou not that the man sleeps indeed! Hast thou not heard, hast thou not read of the death in life whereby the soul, set free, wanders at will, not in Time, but in Eternity? So wanders Akbar now! He is not here--he is in the future."

Birbal paled despite his disbelief.

"Who art thou, man of many faces," he gasped, "and how earnest thou here?"

"He summoned me," replied the Sufi solemnly. "Wherefore G.o.d knows. As for me, I am the Wayfarer of Life. What I have learned I have learned.

And this"--he pointed to the dreaming figure--"I know, that if my lord desires to hear the future he has but to ask this sleeping soul. The Self which lurks ever behind these trivial selves of ours will tell him."

For an instant Birbal hesitated. Beset by curiosity as he was, something in him cried aloud not to know; for, agnostic at heart, doubter to the very core, he knew already. Knew that all his master's dreams were but dreams; that like all other things in heaven and earth they must pa.s.s. Then came the thought that the forewarned are forearmed, and he knelt at that master's feet.

"Great King," he whispered, "tell us what is seen?"

There was no answer, and on the silence the Sufi's voice rose quiet, but compelling.

"Oh! Self-behind-the-Self, speak! What of the future? Is Jalal-ud-din Mahomed Akbar there, as King?"

There was no pause; the reply rang immediate, resonant.

"He is not there and yet his work remains, to run, a glittering warp among the woof. See! how the westering sun turns all to gold--gilt that is pinchbeck of all baser metals.

"The land is thick with little crooked lines, but Akbar's roads were measured straight to give an evening rest to tired travellers. He is not there, but I--who lived in him--I linger still in Justice, Mercy, Truth. Sons of his soul are these, sons of his love, not of his mortal body--Oh! Salim! Salim----!"