The pause 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 pa.s.s, shall live forgetting, unforgotten ("the dreaming of a King can never die"). And all their faults shall fall from them. Ah G.o.d! 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 pa.s.s 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 Jalal-ud-din Mahomed Akbar."
Then in a perfect pa.s.sion of resentment he turned to the Wayfarer. But in those few seconds the latter"s hold upon the bal.u.s.trade had been withdrawn, the counterpoise had rea.s.serted itself, and Birbal peering out over the balcony could see the dome of the dhooli disappearing in its downward course of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 Ispahan, 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."
CHAPTER VI
_The current of a deed will work its way Through the wide world and cannot be resisted, "Twas seasonably done--the seed is sown And in due time will bear the fruit of discord_.
--Kalidasa.
The wide mosque lay empty save for a group of long-bearded doctors of the law, who, lingering after service was over, discussed as ever the unfailing topic of the King"s innovations. Such purposeless innovations too! Leading to nothing, to absolute nescience; for what else was all this talk of freedom, of equality, of universal brotherhood? Were not kings, kings, and n.o.bles, n.o.bles, since the very beginning?
These reverend seigneurs surcharged with pride of race, the pride of the conqueror, fiercely fanatical in faith, felt resentfully that in religion, in manners, in morals, Akbar, their King, stood absolutely aloof from them.
Yet they, in their turn, stood as absolutely aloof from the real heart of India which beat placidly in the simple lives of the husbandmen toiling in the ample fields which, seen through the great Arch of Victory receded into a dim blue distance that lost itself in a dim blue sky. So each, the conqueror, the conquered, went on his way, while a man dreamt of blending the two into one.
"Yes! it is true," murmured Budaoni the historian regretfully; "from his earliest childhood his Majesty hath collected everything in all religions that is worth remembering, with a talent of selection peculiar to him, and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every principle of our Faith."
"_Sobhan-ullah!_" a.s.sented the Makhdum-ul"-mulk, who had been the highest religious authority in the land until the King, with one sweep of his pen, had made himself the Head of the Church. A direful offence to the orthodox who refused a.s.sent to Akbar"s reasoning that since there was but one law, the law of G.o.d, there could be but one authority; therefore the intervention of a priesthood between the people and G.o.d"s vice-regent on earth was unnecessary, impolitic.
An old man, white-bearded, high-featured, murmured to himself, "Yet is he King indeed," then fell hurriedly to the telling of his beads; but Ghia.s.s Beg, the Lord High Treasurer--a stout, good-humoured looking man, whose fat paunch stood evidence for his love of good living--shook his head and sighed.
"It cometh of abstinence, see you," he mourned. "When the stomach is empty wind rises to the head. And, were it not for that d.a.m.ned sense of duty which leaveth the King neither by day nor by night, Akbar would give up food and sleep altogether. So far hath he wandered from the Sure Pivot of Life that the very question of dinner ariseth not in his mind; he eats but once a day, and leaveth off unsatisfied, nor is there even any fixed hour for this food. Sure! "tis the life of a very dog."
"So he keep it, and his dogs, and his uncirc.u.mcised friends to himself," muttered a sour-visaged elder, "I quarrel not with his starvations. Belike they may bring the Heir-Apparent to his rights sooner, and that would be a glad day for Islam."
The old man with the white beard who was telling his beads murmured once more under his breath: "Yet is he King indeed," and went on with his prayers still more hurriedly.
"Lo! mullah jee!" yawned another sour-visaged one, "Prince Salim will be in the idolaters" toils ere then. With a Rajput to wife there is small hope for a Ruler of the Faith."
In the hot sunshine where they sate whispering like sleepy snakes, ready, yet too lazy, to strike, a leisurely groan ran round the whole a.s.sembly. That the first wife--practically the only real wife--of the Heir-Apparent should be a Hindu was simply an outrage. It was bad enough that the King himself should have taken the Rajput daughters and sisters of his conquered foes into his harem, in order--heaven save the mark!--to cement friendship between the races; but he, at least, had been first married in orthodox fashion to a daughter of Islam. Could he not do even so much for his son?
Ghia.s.s Beg heaved another fat sigh and his face took on obstinacy.
"True," he a.s.sented, "and "tis not that as fair a bride could not be found----"
"In the House of the Lord High Treasurer," interrupted a sneering voice. It came from Mirza Ibrahim, who, at that moment, followed at a little distance by a posse of courtiers and others, came from the cloisters full upon the half-drowsy group of malcontents.
"G.o.d forbid!" gasped the horrified High Treasurer weakly. In his heart of hearts he had been thinking--and not for the first time--of his little daughter Mihrun-nissa, as a future Empress of India. But this was an outrage on decorum, an indignity! He began to splutter remonstrance.
"Prayers are over! Up with the carpet!" interrupted the Mirza irreverently. Whereupon the Makhdum interfered with pompous frowns and craved to know what my Lord High Chamberlain meant by the unseemly remark.
"Nothing, Most Holy," replied the latter cheerfully, "save that if the pious deliberations of the wise are ended the ignorant have a point of law which they would fain lay before authority. Is it not so, oh, sahiban?"
He turned as he spoke to a little knot of curiously distinctive-looking men who, having separated themselves from the remainder of his following, stood together in the full blaze of sunlight. They were singularly alike. Small, fine-drawn, with watchful eyes, and a little stoop forward of the head, reminding one irresistibly of a bird of prey. In truth the Syeds of Barha were wild hawks indeed; and to-day, still travel-stained with their quick march from their eyrie of a fortress far in the distant plains, they were ready to swoop fiercely on any cause of offence. For they were red-hot with anger at the exile of that ill-doing scion of their house Jamal-ud-din. Not that they defended his choice of a wife--it was one which sooner or later might necessitate a sack, and the nearest river--but, if Siyah Yamin was the lad"s wife, what right had even the Great Mogul to interfere?
They a.s.sented with a scowl; but Khodadad (he who called himself by another name when he wrote to Sinde) smiled urbanely. He was evidently prepared to play the indispensable Eastern part of applauder and general backer-up.
"Even so, Most Holy!" he replied effusively, "a point of law which can only be settled by G.o.d"s most chosen Judge, before whom even these lineal descendants of our Great Prophet bow humbly."[10]
[Footnote 10: The Syeds as lineal descendants of Mahommed.]
The speech was full of malicious intent, purposely provocative, and succeeded in its purpose.
"Then let them go to the King," began the Makhdum acrimoniously, when Ibrahim cut him short, concealing a yawn as he sought a comfortable place for himself where his feet could be in sunshine, his head in shadow.
"Who hath usurped the Judge"s seat? Nay! Most Holy! It is only time-servers and idolaters who yield such function to Akbar. We faithful ones and true----"