CHAPTER XII

Oh! fearful tearful lover! Cease to sigh,Passion's worst pangs thou knowest not--as I.Leave pining, leave lamenting and be bolderWoman yields readiest to those who hold her.

So, swallowing a perfumed pill of opium all sugar coated and silvered, she, too, slept in her balcony.

Live in the living hour,Fortune is fickle.To thy lips, laughing flower,Let good wine trickle.Who hoardeth wealth to leaveHe is a ne'er-do-well.Who lives to rail and grieveHe is an infidel.Rest in thy cypress shade,Fill the cup higher,Drink to each merry maid,Drink to desire.So saith the cup bearer,So sings the lyre.--Hafiz.

--Hafiz.

The Hall of Labour lay deserted as if the artificers who worked in its surrounding arcades had taken profit by the wisdom of Hafiz which came trilling from the furthermost, sun-saturated end of the long parallelogram of roof in which Akbar's especial artificers laboured at especial tasks.

It was a quaint place this Hall or rather Roof of Labour, for it was set high between the higher palaces which rose around it on three sides. The fourth was arcaded as were the others, but in dummy fashion, that is to say with the shallow archways filled in with brick work--and gave on the wide plains of India, which were, however, invisible because of the height of the wall. Most things, indeed of the outside world were invisible from the Hall of Labour; you had to go through the sentry-guarded door opposite the hidden plains before you could get rid of a certain sense of imprisonment, of absorption in duty. The artificers in the cell-like workshops on the left hand of the doorway, were, however, better off in this case than those on the right, since the superstructure above these was but cell wide, and so from their farther ends, high, unattainable windows, partially bricked up, let in a cross light on lathes and crucibles, paint-brushes, and even inkpots; for in one of them near the door Budaoni, the historian, used to sit most days engaged on his uncongenial task of translating the Hindu scriptures, and glaring at another writer over the way who was copying the translation of the Gospels for which Akbar had paid the Jesuits a round sum of money. Money not quite honestly earned, since the text was deftly doctored to suit Jesuit dogma! But even if this had been known it would have mattered little to the jealousies of the rival writers.

Farther down this left hand side worked a chemist employed in testing atomic weights, an engraver busy over a ruby intaglio, an experimentalist attempting to prove the properties of quicksilver in the transmutation of metals, a worker in gold on crystal, and so on; till at the end came an empty arcade with shut door, then William Leedes's workshop, and on the other side the studio of Diswunt the crippled painter. He was especially favoured, for in addition to the high window which, like those in the other cells gave on the Court of Dreams--on the opposite side of which stood the King's Sleeping Palace--he had a corbeilled balcony overlooking the Indian plain; at least so much of it as could be seen by reason of the towering Arch of Victory which thrust itself skyward from its great plinth of steps. Looking downward, one could see them receding in sharp angles almost to the bottom of the rocky ridge. No place here, therefore, for escape or entry, so Diswunt was allowed the luxury of light, even when his great wide door was shut. He kept it so constantly; for he was morose by birth, embittered by the accident of it.

And yet the idle rhymes of Hafiz came to his lips as he sate irresolute, thinking of the paradise one woman had promised him if he did something--a mere trifle!--for her; of the hell with which another woman had threatened him should he fail to do the same thing. It was too bad to have duty and pleasure on the same side; and against them--what? Only loyalty to the man who seeing him--then a mere beast of burden--as he paused in the bazaar to make, with a bit of the charcoal he was carrying and a white-washed wall, a spirited sketch of a dog gnawing a bone, had sent him for training to the Court School of Painting. That, after all, had been but a sorry action! Diswunt looked distastefully at his work--a portrait of Akbar small enough to go into a ring--and his whole soul went out to charcoal and a white wall.

For the misshapen lad whose face had the brilliant, bizarre beauty of strongly marked feature which so often goes with physical deformity, was without doubt part of the sixteenth century crop of genius, of which so much has remained to the world, so much more has passed out of it, unwitting even of itself.

His eyes, as he sate listlessly, were dull with the hemp he drank habitually to deaden the depth of his discontent.

For Akbar had not been able to uphold, against the whole artistic verdict of his court, his own opinion that the "portrayal of real life gave special facilities for true education since every touch that went toward the likeness of reality must make the painter feel his own impotence to bestow life, and so lead him to a right appreciation of the immeasurable dignity of the Creator."

They had been brave words, but they had ended in stipplings and blobs of white paint to imitate pearls!

Yet there were some who thought as he, Diswunt the King's crippled painter thought. He shivered as he remembered the day but a week ago, when the infidel jeweller next door, with whom he had scraped up an acquaintance, had replied to a question he had asked in the lingua franca of mixed Portuguese and Arabic which served as court jargon for strangers.

"Nay friend! such missals, such pictures as these Jesuits bring are but monkish work. There be other painters over the black water. Lo! I studied for a while under one in Italia. Stay! I bethink me to have backed yonder chart on the wall with a copy. Turn it round and see!"

See! Diswunt had seen little else since! It was only a bad copy in red chalk of a torso by Michael Angelo, all blurred and half effaced, but it had been a master key, opening the door of real art to the lad, driven half crazy by dreams and drugs. Since then he had closed his door, and the stippled face of Akbar had not received a single touch; but the back of that closed door, which was made after Indian fashion, of plain whitewashed wood nailed to a strong outside frame-work, showed the cloudy smearings of much charcoal.

Should he, or should he not? It was close on noon. The silence told that the artificers were putting by their tools. Stay, they were beginning again! How was that?

He set the door wide open and carefully fastened it back, then looked out. The reason of this brisking up to business was evident, for the King, followed as usual by Birbal and Abulfazl, was crossing the court. Not that he noticed the general activity; his objective was William Leedes's workshop; for it having been notified that the first facet of the diamond had been duly cut, he was keen to see it. But the sight of his protégé Diswunt at his door made him forget his hurry, to pause and say kindly:

"Come thou, with the artist's eye, and help Akbar hold his own with these ignorant ones who have it that dulness equals God's luck." He flashed round half-contemptuous raillery even at Birbal.

"Nay sire!" retorted the latter, "If the Light of the World will pardon his slave, we do but hold that the King's Luck equals Brightness."

But Akbar's quick imagination was already caught by the angular speck of clear dark sheen which showed like a shadow on the dull radiance of the uncut diamond, as it lay matrixed in the cutter's lathe. So dark, but so clear.

"It is like a door," he cried exultantly. "Look! Diswunt, is it not as a door through which one might pass and see what other folks see not."

"And therefore desire not!" put in Birbal quickly. "My liege it is not yet too late. Let yonder flaw made of man remain as an outlet or inlet for Akbar's dreams; but let the remainder be, as it has always been, a sign of sovereignty to the people. Ask Abulfazl here. What thinkest thou Diwan-jee, is there danger in this thing or no?"

"There is the chance of it," replied the King's Prime Minister, slowly. "I can say no more, no less."

But Birbal was more vehement. "It is more than chance; it is certainty. I have my finger on the pulse of the people. Already it beats irregularly. Had I but the power----"

"Peace! Birbal," said the King, sternly. "Thou hast it not!" Then turning to William Leedes he continued as if nothing had been said. "And the next?"

The jeweller pointed to the mathematical diagrams at which he had been working.

"That is as fate and figures will have it, my liege. I labour to lose as little as may be."

Akbar's eyes twinkled, he gave a boyish laugh. "For fear of cutting out the King's luck? Lo! that should satisfy thee, Birbal."

"Not one whit, sire," replied the latter stanchly. "Birbal knows his own mind; and by all the gods in Indra's heaven, had I not been put in charge of ill-luck by the King's order--I--I would have stolen luck for him."

He laughed lightly giving his usual slight shrug of the shoulder; but Diswunt turned away suddenly and stood looking out on the sunlight.

Should he, should he not? It meant paradise, it meant escape from hell according to two women; butthiswas a man; and the King's best friend, the keenest intellect in the court.

"I stay!" he said curtly to the sentry who came to keep watch and ward while William Leedes went out for the mid-day recess.

"Best not!" remarked the latter casually. "Art needs rest, and thou has been at it ever since thou didst see Michael Angelo. Lo! were I to work unceasing at my problem I should grow crazy with angles and take a month where a week would suffice."

"Take the month an thou willst" retorted the cripple ill-humouredly as he banged to his door.

So there was no hurry! He had a week wherein to do the little thing that was asked of him. Only to wile the jeweller from his cell for one brief minute.

It was, however, but two days afterward, that he stood at the lintel of William Leedes's workshop. Something had gone wrong with the latter's calculations and he had lingered after the Hall of Labour had emptied. The lad's eyes were bloodshot, his hands were trembling with the hemp he had drunken. And then suddenly he walked over to the diamond. "Truly, as the King said, it is like a door" he murmured, "a door through which men could see--but these men can see naught. Though every line is true--they cannot see it."

"Cannot see what?" asked William Leedes abstractedly from his compasses.

For answer Diswunt gave a wild jeering laugh and clutched the jeweller by the wrist.

"Come and see it;thoucanst see! Come, I say--nay! thou must come and tell me if I be fool utterly."

His door, set wide, almost elbowed that of the jeweller's, and, overborne by Diswunt's wild appeal, William Leedes found himself on its threshold.

"Not that! not that!" almost yelled the lad, his half insane, reckless laughter echoing loudly through the arches. "Didst think I brought thee to see the pattering of flies-paws. Stand forward a bit--so forward----"

The wide door, as he set it aswing, enforced his demand; and what it brought to view as it swung, astonished William Leedes to forgetfulness and left him silent with admiration.

It was a hunting piece in rough charcoal. A buck standing at bay amid a herd of hyenas; but there was something more in it than that and William Leedes involuntarily crossed himself.

"Thou hast a devil, Diswunt," he said at last, and once more the half-mad painter's high, reckless laugh filled the arches.

"So! thou canst see! Dost mark the Tarkhân's sneer, the Chamberlain's cold glare?"

It was true. Something in the noble poise of the stag's head was reminiscent of the King, and each one of the savage beasts surrounding it recalled by some witchery of touch or line the foremost of the King's enemies.

"Lo! yonder is the stupidity of the Makhdûm," went on Diswunt punctuating his words by that high laugh; "yonder the self-satisfaction of Budaoni, the fat foolishness of Ghiâss Beg." He paused, almost as if listening to the faint echo of his laughter in the roof. Then sudden seriousness came to him.

"But he will escape them,now. Dost see the javelin to the right yonder--that shall save him and his Luck."

The last word came curiously clear as if intended to awake remembrance. It did so.

"By'r Lady!" cried William Leedes, "I had a'most forgot." He was back in his workshop in a moment to find the diamond matrixed as ever in its place, with the darker sheen of the first facet showing full of promise.

But Diswunt stood at the lintel and looked out, not at the sunshine but at the door of the empty workshop next to William Leedes. It quivered slightly as if wind were behind it, or as if someone were gently closing a bolt.

Whirr spindles on my rushing reelLeap thread from out my fingers feel.Time dwindles! Fate will cut the threadSleep dead! Before her grinding wheelKindles life's spark again for woe or weal.

Birbal paused on Âtma's threshold listening to her deep voice backed by the burring hum of her spinning wheel, and as he listened he shivered. This thought of unending life aroused from death or ever the tired eyes were fast closed appalled him. Not for him such slight slumber!

Then he knocked. There was a sound of quick uprising from within, a swift echo of footsteps and then Âtma's voice at the door said with a breathlessness in it:

"What is't? Hast brought news--is all well?"

"Well or ill matters naught" he replied cavalierly. "Open! I come from the King."

But the phrase had lost its charm, "Go thy way, Chamberlain of Princes!" came the mocking answer. "Once bit, twice shy."

"Thou mistakest, sister" urged Birbal, who knowing Mirza Ibrahîm's reputation, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of Âtma Devi's refusal. "I am Maheshwar Rao, disciple by birth of thy dead father."

The reassurance was deft, and the door held ajar upon the chain showed Âtma's figure, tall, low-browed, defiant.

"What wants my lord?" she asked, and her voice trembled as if from some secret perturbation. "A kiss like my Lord Ibrahîm, ere I turned him out, close clipped in an embrace for which he cared not? Yet enter--in the King's name enter to the house of his Châran."

Something there was of strain, of anxiety, in face and manner, that made Birbal's keen eyes seek round the roof for its cause. Then he laughed. "Nay! I seek no kisses, widow, where a lover has just left his lips."

She stared at him haughtily. "What means my lord?"

He pointed easily to a pair of man's shoes which stood in a corner beside the door. "Smagdarite's, sister! Ah I have your secret. He is here, for yonder are his shoes!"

Âtma's eyes following his, grew puzzled in their anger.

"Shoes!" she echoed superbly. "I see them not, my lord."

This time the laugh came more coarsely. "None so blind as the blind beggar! Bah! woman, do I not know what woman is? He is here I say--hath been here always, and thou didst delude me last time with the child's voice."

He paused, for suddenly a tremulous sweet song as of some mating bird rose on the air.

My singing soul has its nestNear the great white ThroneWhere the roses of Paradise restOn its Corner Stone,And the scent of those roses seemsTo bring idle dreamsOf Life and Love and the Endless Quest.Oh bird! ariseLift up thine eyesTo the Heaven that liesBeyond Paradise.

Oh bird! ariseLift up thine eyesTo the Heaven that liesBeyond Paradise.

Once again the man who doubted all things felt a thrill almost of fear; but Fate promptly gave him back his self-confidence, for a voice behind him said as the song ceased.

"If my lord seeks me, I seek my lord."

He turned to find therebeckplayer on the threshold; but with bare feet. So the cynical laughter rang out this time in frank amusement. "Well designed, musician! But the shoes lie yonder." And then he hummed gaily the refrain of a popular song.

Love to her mindCame like the wind,All stealthy as the cat is.But those not blindNext morn will findFootsteps beneath her lattice.

A flickering smile showed on therebeckplayer's lips. "My lord has learnt that of lust in the bazaar. If he desires to learn of love he should go--to Bayazîd!"

The faintly inflected play of words was out of keeping with the man who made it; but the vague questionings concerning him which for days past had been in Birbal's mind seemed to have vanished with his first look at the miserable, almost squalid figure, the dull eyes, the deathlike mask of the face. What could the fellow be but street musician? Except--since women were incomprehensible--the widow's lover!

Something of curiosity, however, remained.

"Bayazîd?" he echoed haughtily. "What knowest thou of the drunkard who calls himself King of Malwa?"

"That he is King of Musicians, my lord, and this slave's master. He could tell my lord all concerning love. Aye! even as well as the Sufi from Isphahân."

Those dull eyes seemed to take on a leer and Birbal stared at them, startled back into questionings.

"The Sufi? What dost know of him?" he asked quickly.

"Naught!" replied the musician evasively. "Save that the servants said he sups at the river palace this night; he and another king--Payandâr of Sinde mayhap."

He looked up again with that leer in his eyes, and the wonder died out of Birbal's. The man was palpably a trickster; palpably trying to play on credulity--credulity in Birbal, prince of doubters!

"Then will they sup in hell, slave," he said curtly "since Payandâr hath been dead these fifteen years. So farewell, Smagdarite, lest I disturb love. Stay--let me see thy talisman once more."

"This dustborn atom in a beam of light resigns it," came the reply, and for an instant Birbal stood paralysed by dim remembrance. But the green stone on its greasy skein lay in his hands, all inert, without perfume, without, charm.

It was like nothing so much, he told himself, as half chewed cud, and he tossed it back contemptuously, a gold piece following it.

"That for thy pains. Farewell, widow! Luck to thy love!"

He turned to go, but therebeckplayer who had stooped to pick up the coin, still stood in the doorway, and the sun flashing on the gold he held betwixt finger and thumb seemed for a second to blind Birbal's eyes to everything else.

"If the Most Excellent desires to hear of love," came the musician's voice softly, "he might go to the King Bayazîd's river palace--this night--when the moon is waning. The river palace, my lord, when the moon is waning."

The words echoed down the stairs after Birbal who seemed not to hear them. They had, however, the opposite effect on Âtma Devi; who all this time had stood silent, apparently engrossed in listening. Now she roused herself and turned accusingly to her companion.

"So thou has been here all the time, and it was to thee the child talked in gray dawn and gray dusk! Wherefore did I not see thee?"

"Because thou wouldst not, sister! Because thy mind has been elsewhere--whither God knows." She started and looked at him half-fearfully but he went on unregarding. "It is what the will wishes to see that is seen. To all else we are blind."

Something in the words seemed to strike a new note in her, and the half savage, half anxious look on her face vanished. "Yes! mayhap I have been blind," she muttered to herself despondently. "But wherefore--Oh ye dear Gods! wherefore am I blind!"

She turned to lean over the parapet, as if to rest her eyes, her very heart, upon the dim blue distant haze betwixt earth and sky.

"Because thou wilt not see the Truth, sister"--the voice seemed to her to belong to that dim earth and sky--"because thou hast denied love. Yet naught else will save the King."

She gave a startled cry but, looking round, saw that the Wayfarer had gone. "May Shiv-jee protect me" she murmured to herself. "He is magician for sure. Yet is he wrong. I am no woman, but the King's Châran, I have done my duty!" So, clenching her hands she sate and dreamed for him of safety, honour, empire.

Birbal, meanwhile, dreamt the same dream as he plunged into the increasing intricacy of cabal which centred round his master. So he gave no thought at all to so contemptible a person as the opium-drugged, song-besotted Bayazîd who still styled himself the King of Malwa, though he had fled from royalty for the sake of a dead dancing girl; as if any woman were worth such a sacrifice! True, the tragic tale of Rupmati, the poetess, musician, singer, ultimate artist, who had made her King forget even statesmanship for seven long happy years, had its æsthetic beauty. One could picture the consternation of the dove-cot when Adham Khân, Akbar's general and foster-brother put the royal lover to flight; picture still more easily, knowing Adham Khân's nature, his defiance of orders, and the proposals he made to Rupmati. While the rest was pure poetry! The beautiful woman dressing herself as a bride is dressed for the conqueror's assignation, and then leaving nothing but dead flesh awaiting him on the couch strewn with flowers. That was fine! But Bayazîd? Even though Akbar's own hand had brought retribution on libertine Adham's head for this and other offences, he, Birbal, would never have come cringing to the Emperor's court, to spend his time in singing loveghazals. That was contemptible.

And yet as the day wore on, the memory of therebeckplayer's words returned inconsequently, almost annoyingly. What was it to him, Birbal, if Bayazîd had a supper party or no? He had other corn to parch. And he parched it consistently until, late on in the evening, having excused himself, he knew not why, from an entertainment at the palace, he fell asleep peacefully.

The gongs were sounding eleven when he woke suddenly to a new resolve, which admitted of no reconsideration.

He would go to the river palace. After all, there might be something in what therebeckplayer had said--he might be in the right. At any rate there was no harm in seeing. He clapped his hands and ordered his fast trotting bullocks. But the river palace lay some miles away in an orange garden down by the sliding yellow stream which flows past Agra and it was nigh on midnight ere he reached its wide open gateway. Bidding his râth await him outside, he passed inward. A sentry slept in the scented shadow of the archway, so he went on unchallenged into the scented garden where the faint shadows of the waning moonlight slept also across the broad paved walks, and on the conduits of running water that was hastening to slake the nightly thirst of the sun-wearied plots of pomegranate and orange trees on which the ripe fruit hung obscure. The dim clearness seemed to show the darkness; above all the utter darkness of the great pile of the palace.

No signs here of a supper party! The fact whetted his curiosity, and he went on, feeling himself the only live thing in a world of drugs and dreams.

In the hallway another drowsy servant showed, curled up half asleep upon the floor.

"Your master?" asked Birbal.

"Roofways," came the answer with a yawn.

The whole place seemed opium-soddened; there was a cloying savour of poppy and dead roses in the narrow turret stairs which led upward; so narrow that the stone wall on either side was polished by the elbows of the passers up and down.

The first floor was dark save for the fading moonlight seen through the open window archways, so he went up again, until the wide roof set amid the encircling shadowy trees through which the pale gleam of the river showed, lay beneath his feet.

And overhead were the stars beginning their watch of the night.

One seemed to have fallen from heaven to burn in a silver filagree shrine, in shape like a domed mausoleum, which was the only thing dimly visible in the darkness; that, and still more dimly the lute with broken strings which lay before it illumined by the twinkling light.

"Bayazîd!"

He stood and called; till from the night beyond the light came a chanting, drowsy, half coherent voice--

None knows the Secret! Therefore take the cupLightly with laughing lip and drink it up.Though it be heart's blood!--just one little supSo ... That is good!... Now die!

"True wisdom, Hafiz, prince of poets," murmured Birbal as he went forward and called again.

This time the answer came from near, "Yea! I am Bayazîd. Welcome friend!"

He was resting on cushions behind the shrine and the light from its little lamp showed him, long, lank, listless. But the wide eyes in which burnt the dull fires of the Dreamgiver, recognised the visitor, and the man who had been King of Malwa roused himself to give salutation with stately ceremonial courtesy, and motioned Birbal to a seat beside him. As the latter sank into the cushions they gave out a scent of roses, and swift memory--swiftest of all for perfumes--made him look round hastily; but the roof showed no sign of other living soul.

"It is good of my lord to come so far and so late," murmured Bayazîd. "In what can I help my Lord?" The words came drowsily. He seemed in danger of falling asleep once and for all.

"I came to see Payandâr, King of Sinde," said Birbal sharply. If that did not rouse the besotted fool nothing else would. The result was, in its way, excellent. Bayazîd sate up instantly and laid his hand on Birbal's arm.

"What of Payandâr?" he queried, his face working. "What of the Master of Love? Does he indeed live, as some folk say?"

"That Bayazîd should know, better than some folk," replied Birbal dryly, "since he was to have supped here to-night."

"To-night" echoed Bayazîd. "Nay, not to-night, or she would have told me. She knows the Secret now!"

Birbal laughed lightly. "As we shall all know it--or not know it some day! As Payandâr knows it also, since he died in the desert."

A sudden bitter exaltation came to the half-seen haggardness of the face, the voice rang almost militantly.

"Aye! in the desert, driven thither as we dreamers of love are driven ever, by lust--man's lust! Lo! thou knowest of my own seven happy years--of my songstress who sang of love--of the viper who slew her and slew the King in me. Ohí Rupmati, Rupmati! Were it not that thou comest to me ever in the song of birds, in the breeze of the night, in God's sunshine and in his flowers, I too would seek the desert and save myself from the deadly companionship of my kind. So I wait for thee and thy broken lute." He sank back into his cushions stilled by the very violence of his emotions; but after a while his voice went on more and more drowsily. "That the world knows. All know the tale of Bayazîd and Rupmati. But who knows the story of Payandâr? Shall I tell it as she told it me? How he loved a Rose in a garden of roses; naught but a gardener's daughter--and he a Prince of the Tarkhâns. What do the Tarkhâns know of Love? But he knew. He loved her--aye! though he was Heir. So, vile utterly, his father betrayed him. A bastard younger brother did the deed one night in the Garden of Roses, and when dawn came the Rosebud had been plucked, despoiled! He left Kingship, and died mad in the desert--so they say! But Love cannot die. Even in the Wilderness there is a Rose Garden ready for it. So he took the Rosebud thither, plucked, despoiled, soiled, bruised, and broken. And out of Death came Life. Out of Lust came Love, though the child was a crippled thing, despoiled, spoiled, bruised, and broken by its birth. But Death came also to the Rosebud in the Rose Garden of Love, amidst the perfume of roses. Is it not even now in the air? Is not the darkness full of the Essence of Love. Ohí, Ohí Rupmati! let me hearken to thy broken lute."

Was it fancy, or mingled with the faint sighing of the night wind amongst many leaves, and the fainter rush of the sliding river was there a sound as of jangled music?

Birbal sate arrested for a second, then, seeing from the supineness of the figure beside him, that all hope of further speech with the drug-eater was over, rose impatiently and made his way downstairs, asking himself why he had come.

He paused astonished, however, to find the lower story no longer dark. It was, on the contrary, brilliantly lit, servants were flitting about, and in the central room, whose twelve arches gave on surrounding arched aisles, which in their turn gave on overshadowing trees and river gleam, a supper cloth was laid for two.

And by all the Gods! The figure which sate there holding a cup of wine in its raised right hand was the Sufi from Isphahân!

Bring wine and I will readThe riddle of this life of mine;The old stars' wizardry, the shineOf new moons wandering overhead:All this, I'll read with wine.--Hafiz.

Bring wine and I will readThe riddle of this life of mine;The old stars' wizardry, the shineOf new moons wandering overhead:All this, I'll read with wine.

--Hafiz.

For an instant Birbal was speechless, then he recovered himself.

"Who art thou, man of many faces?"

The question came peremptorily, the answer suavely.

"Thine host; for the rest, as thou art, a mere wayfarer on the limited path of life. Combining the two, this slave ventures to offer refreshment. Cupbearer! Wine of Shirâz, and scent the goblet's edge with rose.

Mechanically Birbal drained the beaker, and the good liquor tingling to his finger tips, he faced his familiar world again, incredulous as ever.

"So," he said, as following the Sufi's sign he seated himself among the cushions at the other side of the supper cloth. "It is, as I thought, the Wayfarer. How many disguises hast thou O Bairupiya?[12]Musician? Envoy? Sufi?" then a thought struck him and he gave his little contemptuous jeering laugh, "mayhap King Payandâr also--but that he is dead."

"Aye, dead!" assented the Sufi gravely, "and the dead being but the cast-off garments of the living, count not in disguise."

"But wherefore----" began Birbal.

His host smiled. "Let me quote the King of Poets to my lord--

"Ah, soul of a man live freeOf the Wherefore, the How,For the passing moments flee.Drink deep of the wine cup now,Drink deep, for He who is WiseHe hath the Seeing Eyes,He knows the Secret that liesIn the Hows and the Whys.

"Cupbearer, yet another wine of Shirâz and scent the goblet's edge with the roses that grow beneath the vine."

The echo of the chanted song died away; then suddenly he reached out his thin brown hand--the index finger wore a ring set with a marvellous emerald, the surface of which was close covered with fine flowing hieroglyphics--and laid it on Birbal's in familiar grip.

The latter started, turned pale. "Thou art the devil,--juggler, with thy tricks!" he muttered faintly. "How didst learn the sign-manual of my race, secret, inviolate?"

The Sufi laughed. "There is no devilry to the Hindu in being the outcome of many incarnations. Mayhap in my past I have been Bhât-Bandi and my lord----" he paused. "What matters it? 'Tis but the trick of memory. Birbal forgets, this slave remembers. Aye, friend! 'tis but a trick indeed! I juggle with men's eyes, and they with their own senses."

He clapped his hands, gave a swift order in some unknown tongue, and as if by magic the servants disappeared, extinguishing the lights as they vanished, leaving those two alone in the rosy radiance of a lamp that swung above the supper table. Its downward light left their two faces in shadow.

"Listen, my lord!" said the Sufi rapidly. "I will waste no time in words. I am here at Akbar's court, a spy. Wherefore, or who my master is, seek not to know. Mayhap time will show. I spy on Prince Dalîl of Sinde--dost know him? Khodadâd Tarkhân, boon companion of the Heir-to-Empire. Start not! I watch him, I wait for him, not for myself only, but for Sinde--for that unhappy country which counts on Akbar's aid, aid which will not come if the assassin's dagger--if conspiracy--succeeds. Dost see? Dost understand? Lo! I am Sinde incarnate--waiting, watching."

He paused again and in the brief silence Birbal could hear a long sobbing breath. The lamp had grown dimmer, and to his half startled eyes its radiance seemed to leave the white-robed figure to chill shadow. He too caught in his breath as a thought came to him.

"But that Payandâr is dead," he began whisperingly, "I should deem----"

"Aye, he is dead!" echoed the other, almost menacingly. "But though he died in the Desert--as thou hast heard from Bayazîd--Love, Unconditioned, Ineffable----"

A sudden distaste to the man who spoke, to the whole tenor of his talk, boastful, as it were, of some hold on the Unseen not known of commoner clay, seized on Birbal.

"Keep that for the King, holy man!" he said decisively. "Birbal talks not till dawn of Wine-cups and Roses and the Beloved."

"Perhaps 'twere better if he did," replied the Sufi boldly. "Nathless I did not bring thee hither to talk of love, but to tell thee by my arts that the King's Luck is stolen."

The impulse to start, to rise, was strong for an instant; then memory came to calm the man of the world.

"Impossible" he said quietly. "I saw it to-day. It is in safe keeping--the worse luck perhaps."

A jibing laugh echoed through the arches.

"So even Birbal hath superstition! But listen! Stay, I will tell thee common truth. I go nightly to swing up the palace wall to Akbar's balcony. Wherefore? Because, my lord, I pass not far from a certain window where Mirza Ibrahîm and Khodadâd Khân hatch conspiracies; and there is an iron stanchion by the side of it with which even a swinging dhooli may find rest--and listen! Dost understand? So I hear all, even their hours of meeting; and I am spy, a man of many faces--as thou knowst. I was there but now--and the diamond is stolen. I meant when I bid thee come hither, simply to warn thee, since to thy charge----"

Birbal rose then, his eyes full of impatient disregard for the trickster, the juggler--the man who pretended to supernatural knowledge, and found it--or said he found it--by common spying!

"Why dost thou tell me?" he asked quickly. "Thou sayest thou art friend to Akbar. Thou art no friend of mine."

There was a pause; a faint hesitancy came to the shadowed face before him, as of one who, playing many different parts, finds them mixed up in general confusion. Suddenly he seemed to grip himself, the real man behind so many disguises of the unreal.

"Yet are we both friends of Akbar's aim, that is Unity. Thy hand, Birbal! let us swear troth for that!"

That slender, brown, outstretched hand with the green glint of the emerald on its index finger seemed to have a compelling power. Birbal's sought it and the result was startling. The man whose whole life was one long claim for individuality, realised in a second that so far as his impact on that clasping hand was concerned, he had lost all sense of personal touch. Flesh seemed made one with Flesh, with all things.

"Tat twam asi" ("Thou art that!")

The fundamental creed of the East overwhelmed him as he stood. Then suddenly he was alone again.

Alone in the darkness, save for the faint glimmer of the toothed arches that gave on the shadowy gloom of overhanging trees and sliding river.

"Wayfarer!" he called. "Wayfarer!" "Juggler! Where art thou? Sufi! Spy!"

But there was no answer. He stood for a moment dazed; then he felt his way for the stair, and called again. A steady snore came in return. The drowsy servant he had questioned on entering was evidently now fast asleep.

No wonder! he told himself as he made his way outward to his waiting râth. The whole place was full of dreams; the very roses in the garden had lost their scent through slumber. As he passed down the garden path, he caught himself yawning, though his mind was broad awake.

Therein lay the puzzle--the body slept, the soul----

He turned at the outer archway to give a last look at the palace. To his intense surprise it was ablaze with lights from basement to roof, and standing in a balcony of the second story which gave on the sliding river, he could see quite distinctly, a figure looking out over the gleam of the water. The face, melancholy beyond words, was deathly pale, and seen in profile only, looked like a cut cameo. Its drooping eyelid half hid the lustreless eye, the long black hair, escaping from the high green turban outlined the narrow contour of forehead and cheek, then fell in ringlets on the sloping shoulders, green clothed, and hung, as was the turban, with festoons on festoons of emeralds.

The light struck them; they shone coldly green, incomparably clear.

The emeralds of Sinde surely! No other regalia held----

As the thought flashed to Birbal's mind, the lights flashed out and he was left to the scentless darkness of the garden, to a half muttered curse at the untrustworthiness of his own senses when in the grip of-- of what?

As the trotting bullocks made their way back to Fatehpur Sikri, the puzzle of what had held him recurred again and again, even amid his turmoil of thought regarding the diamond. The tale he had heard could scarcely be true--he had seen the gem safe, but a few hours back; yet the fact that such a conspiracy was on foot was quite credible, and might necessitate still greater care, and at once.

The gray dawn was breaking into day, when, having roused William Leedes without ceremony and carried him to the Hall of Labour, they entered the sentinelled laboratory to find the diamond gleaming as ever on the lathe.

It was a relief. Birbal sate down on the jeweller's stool and breathed again. Despite his incredulity he felt that his whole being, mind and body, had been impressed by the mountebank's manner. He had actually allowed it to overcome his reason.

William Leedes, still but half awake, in utter ignorance of why he had been brought thither, stood for a while stupidly, awaiting a remark. Finally he ventured to ask what was required of him.

"What?" echoed Birbal lightly, recognising with his usual craft, that the less said about his fear the better. "Only that the King is eager to know somewhat of the second facet."

The jeweller's face fell. "Therein lies the puzzle," he said "and I have not yet solved it. The thickness of the stone is great--almost too great, and to cleave it would be to remove, mayhap, too much. Yet without it to find true axis--the sun as we call it in the trade--is a problem that defies at present my geometry."

"Hast tried Aljebr?" asked Birbal, roused instantly to interest. "Show me thy work, sir jeweller, mayhap I can help."

Passed master as he was in the Eastern science of Algebra, they were soon at work with signs and figures.

"That comes more nigh it," said William Leedes, hopefully taking up a small style and going to the lathe.

"Were I to make this point the axis and----" the lathe spun round, then stopped suddenly as he bent to look closer.

"It--it scratches," he murmured, too astonished for bewilderment.

Birbal was by his side in a second, had wrenched the gem from its holding and had it at the light.

A scratch indeed!

In an instant his subtle mind followed the trail unerringly. The trick of a false diamond which he and Abulfazl had urged upon Akbar had been played here. But how? Who was the culprit? His knowledge of humanity, of the world and its ways, instantly exculpated the Englishman from implication in the theft. But had he been careless? That was a point for inquiry; but now, this instant moment, what was to be done? what had best be done?

"Sit silent on yonder stool and work out thy problem, fool!" he said in a whisper to William Leedes, who stood gaping, ready to burst out into speech when it came back to him, "and leave me to work out mine. This is no diamond. 'Tis a false gem made, I swear by Pooru; but to whose order? And for what purpose?"

He paced the little workshop, every fibre of his keen wit vibrating to the tense pressure of his thought. Then he laid his hand suddenly on the amazed jeweller's shoulder.

"When didst thou leave it--only for a moment? Speak truth."

But William Leedes brain had already begun to work slowly.

"Diswunt!" he said mechanically, "he showed me."

The next minute they stood looking round the painter's empty studio. Through the corbeilled balcony they could see the miracle of dawn being enacted, but in the wide, cool, airy room was nothing.

"What did he show thee?" asked Birbal menacingly. For answer William Leedes threw back the door. It fell into its place with a clang of chain upon staple, leaving disclosed no hunting scene; that had been fiercely rubbed off, leaving gray clouds upon the whitewashed wood; but on this indefinite background, limned in with large lines and splashes of a curious scarlet was the figure of a woman. A woman standing, her feet moving in a rhythmic dance, her scarf floating in serpentine curves.

"Siyah Yamin!" cried Birbal under his breath, and stooped to read a legend, dashed in roughly--with the brush, apparently, that still stood half immersed in a bowl, where lingered dregs of the same curious ghastly crimson scarlet pigment with which the portrait was limned.

It was only a verse from Hafiz.

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