CHAPTER VIITHE POWER OF THE FLAME
After his arrangement with Churi, and the delivery of the ruby, the remaining hours of daylight passed for Fidá in swift chaos. Ahmed woke before he could leave the room; and he sat beside the boy trying to talk to him for a few minutes, though he had little notion of what he was saying. Then he returned to his duties beside the Rajah, and for the next three hours was fully occupied, though his mind wandered far from his hands, and he drifted through mists of thought. It was not till later that there came an idea that filled him with terror. Might not the King himself guard the zenana to-night? Happily this dread was of short duration. The King sat late over his wine with Manava; and Fidá himself saw him in bed and beyond apprehension. Then, at last alone, Fidá betook himself to his diminutive room, and there prepared to wait through two eternal hours.
How long the time was; and how short! He would not look back; he dared not look forward. He existed only in a consciousness that she, she, the one, was waiting for him; that to-night, at last, he should be alone with her, fearing no intrusion. This unexpressed thoughthe had lived with all day; and it became keener, now, till he could not be still. It grew late. The palace was quiet; but Fidá was beyond passiveness. He rose, walked swiftly through the maze of rooms and passages, and entered the silent courtyard. The moon, a little past the full, had come up from the east, and swung, like a great, yellow lantern, above the dark outlines of the palace roof. The world shone softly in the mellow light. The night air from the hills was cold; but the earth was sweet. Fidá loitered near a doorway, wrapped in his cloak. The great courtyard was empty save for the two motionless soldiers that guarded its entrance. Apparently not another soul was abroad in the palace to-night. Fidá moved languidly across and looked into the temple room of Vishnu. Darkness and silence here. The gods also slept. A great excitement, a great terror, a high ecstasy were drawing over him. Surely now it was time—time to claim the price of the ruby. Surely by this time Churi stood on guard in the antechamber. Yet nothing must be risked. If he were too early?—The thought was impossible. He waited, therefore, till the moon was halfway to mid-heaven, and then, when he could endure no more, left the outer world. A moment later he stood at the door of the antechamber.
“Is it thou?” came, in the faintest breath, from Churi, within.
In an instant Fidá was at his side, and had seized him by the arm. “Now! Now!” said he, gazing fiercely, eagerly, into the eunuch’s unmatched eyes.
“Enter then, and turn to the left hand. The way is short. It is not to be missed.”
Fidá grasped Churi by the shoulders, clasped him for a second like a madman, and then ran across the forbidden threshold—where man not of the royal house of Mandu had never set foot before. Swiftly he traversed the short, dark passage opening on his left, and presently found himself in an oblong room, lighted by a single crimson lamp that glowed through a mist of incense smoke pouring up from a metal jar on a stand, near by. Dazed by the overpowering sweetness, he shut his eyes for an instant. When he opened them again, he had a swift impression of rich tapestries, thick rugs, many cushions, and then—and then he beheld, lying on a divan at the end of the room, a slight figure, all clad in red and gold, lying asleep in the heavy air.
His heart pounded against his sides. His throat tightened till he could have uttered no sound; and he went to her, softly, and knelt at her side, and gazed at her. She was here—waiting for him. Her white lids were shut over her eyes, and the long, silky lashes curved outward a little from her cheek. Her heavy hair was pushed back from her brows; and one of her little hands lay in a mass of it above her head. Fidá studied her, hungrily, eagerly, silently. He had never seen her like this before—had, indeed, never dreamed of seeing her so. She was his, for his eyes to feast on. And oh—how fair! how fair! In that moment he dreaded to have her wake; for then she would surelysend him from her. It seemed to him impossible that she could love him, could suffer him to kneel beside her. Yet, with an effort, after two attempts, he whispered her name, hoarsely: “Ahalya!” Then again, after a moment, “Ahalya!”
She sighed, and her eyes opened. Shivering slightly, she stared, and sat up, crying: “Thou art come! Ah, thou art come at last!”
That was all. It was more than mortal flesh could bear. He had touched, he had clasped her. She was lying in his arms.
Nearly two hours went by; and then Neila appeared from an inner room. Ahalya was still upon the divan, her head pillowed on the breast of Fidá, who sat upright. It seemed almost as if they slept, so motionless they were. Neila halted in the doorway, staring at them, till she encountered the glittering eyes of the Asra.
“Oh, thou must go! It is time,” she murmured.
“No!” Ahalya, feeling the intruding presence, roused herself, and convulsively tightened the clasp of her arms about Fidá’s neck.
“Krishna!” mourned Neila, “we shall all be killed!”
Fidá, however, conquered himself, and loosened the Ranee’s arms. “Beloved, I must go—that I may return,” he whispered.
Trembling, Ahalya submitted; and, as Fidá rose, she sank upon the divan, face downward, nor could any intreaty induce her to lift her head again. So theyparted, without a word; and, at the zenana door, Fidá found Churi, excited and uneasy. He hailed the Asra’s appearance with infinite relief.
“Mahendra will be here in a breath. I had nearly come for thee.”
Fidá smiled at him out of shining eyes. “Ah, Churi, had I a thousand rubies, they should all be thine!”
“Thou fool!” rose to Churi’s lips. But he only said: “Verily, the danger is worth rubies, even of the value of thine. Is this thing to be done again?”
“Again and yet again! until—” Fidá’s face darkened, “until I pay my price—of death.”
But Fidá as yet was far from death. Overcome with weariness he returned to his bed, and slept for nearly six hours before he woke to the new joy of light and living. That day he was as a man drunk. His exhilaration was boundless. He walked upon air. His eyes shone, his voice rang triumphant with love. The world was at its climax. She was his. What mattered dishonor? What mattered treachery, slavery, or the old, forgotten curse? Love, youth, the world, were his. Should he ask more?
With the evening came his answer. With all this, he had still little enough; for the King ruled in his zenana, and Fidá began to know something of the sinner’s suffering. She was beyond the protection of him to whom by right of soul she belonged. She was beyond him; and yet, second by second, he must suffer for and with her. He wept and raved and clenched hisshaking hands in the madness of jealousy at this retribution of the wrong he had done. In the new day, as he came to gaze upon the tranquil face of his conqueror, his whole being was stirred with wonder that such things as were in his heart could lie there unsuspected. But Rai-Khizar-Pál could not know the heart of his slave, nor how, with night, hope came again.
As soon as Churi went on guard at midnight, Fidá appeared in the antechamber, unstrung and reckless. He would have rushed past the eunuch without a word, but that he was forcibly restrained. This action, on the part of his one ally, goaded Fidá fairly to madness; and, without speaking, he flung himself into a fierce struggle with the eunuch, whose strength, however, he presently discovered to be very great. When both of them were all but exhausted, the Asra, coming to himself, fell back, staring hopelessly at his opponent, and murmuring, more to himself than to Churi:
“Thou traitor! Oh, miserable! Have I sold my birthright for this!”
“Madman!” retorted Churi, “thinkest thou there is no reason in what I do? I serve our lady. She bade me deny thee entrance.”
“It is not true!”
“By Krishna, I swear it.”
“Ahalya!” Fidá’s face grew deathlike.
“Neila came to me at dusk. The Ranee is sick and shaken with grief and fear. Thou canst not see her—yet.”
“Yet!”
Churi smiled cynically. “Thou boy! Verily thou knowest little of women. Wait in patience, Asra. I think thou shalt see her again. I will not prevent thee. But now, leave this place, if you court not death.”
Without further words, Fidá turned and left the room. When he reached his bed again, he flung himself upon it, and lay for a long time staring into the dark. Then, gradually, he fell to weeping; and while he wept, Allah had pity on his weakness, and sent him sleep.
But Ahalya! Poor Ahalya! While her lover’s heart accused her of all faithlessness, she suffered not one whit less than he. She loved Fidá, indeed, wholly. Their meeting had been of her own desire and arrangement. But she was young in intrigue, new to dishonor. And when solitude brought her face to face with what she had done, she was plunged into despair. Her mind distorted all things. Fidá seemed infinitely remote from her. Their love had been a thing of such magical growth that, having been half the time unconscious of the workings of her own senses, she, in the first reaction, began to disbelieve altogether in her love. She was in a labyrinth of warped emotion, shame, and remorse; and, till she found herself again, the very name of Fidá was abhorrent to her.
All through the day that followed their first meeting the Ranee lay on her bed, wide-eyed, tearless, and unapproachable. Neila wondered and watched, but dared not intrude upon her. On the evening of thatday came Rai-Khizar-Pál, all unconsciously bringing her punishment for her sin. For two days after this she remained in seclusion, while Neila and Churi vainly took counsel together on behalf of the slave, for whom each felt some sort of unselfish concern. But, though Fidá was on the verge of madness, not a word could be got out of Ahalya concerning him: not one message would she send. Churi began to doubt his theory of the fallibility of women; and Neila would not have been surprised at a full confession of everything to Rai-Khizar-Pál. But at last, miraculously, came an incident from an unexpected quarter that did what no amount of pleading and persuasion could have accomplished.
In the hidden drama that had, in the past few days, been enacted in Mandu, there was a certain personage, long since accustomed to play an important rôle in every game of intrigue, who had had no part at all. Nevertheless, Lord Ragunáth was not going to be discounted forever; and it was at this stage of events that he appeared upon the scene. Perhaps a scent of hidden things was in the air. Perhaps his sensibilities, attuned to all that was secret, caught some vibration of treachery; though the nature of that treachery remained undreamed-of. At any rate, it was just at the time when the object of his furtive desires was torn and riven with a struggle in which he was not concerned, that Ragunáth suffered one of his periodic fits of madness, and hit upon a new and, at last, successful method of gaining one of his ends.
The two eunuchs who had recently died of fever in the palace had been men of experience and importance in their station; and they had been replaced by two others, supposedly responsible, from Bágh. Kasya had satisfied himself that both were trustworthy; but Kanava, sounding them from another quarter, found in one of them a long-sought weakness. On the afternoon of the fourth day of Fidá’s misery, when the Rajah was attending ceremonial in the village at the other end of the plateau, one of these men, Kripa by name, stood on guard in the zenana antechamber. Kripa was tired, and Kripa was bored with the prospect of two stifling hours of solitary watching. He was, then, undisposed to be short with any one that came to break his dull thoughts. And when Lord Ragunáth unexpectedly appeared before him, he greeted the minister with a mixture of curiosity and reverence that Ragunáth found propitious to his purpose. He had come well prepared and fortified with the corrupter of prudence, the breaker of faith, the power of the evil-minded—a goodly sum of money. For a few moments he applied himself to his task with all his considerable mind and tact; and, at the end of that time, Kripa stood before him a newly enlisted mercenary. It had been arranged between them that Ragunáth was to stay in the anteroom and there have a brief interview with the Lady of his Desire; provided of course that, what he did not for a moment doubt, she would see him.
Quite tremulous with eagerness, Ragunáth pushedhis minion into the zenana, bearing a blind message to the Lady Ahalya to come at once, if it were her pleasure, to the antechamber. Kripa reappeared in a very short space of time, smiling the word that the Ranee would follow him. And Ragunáth, drunk with high success, commanded the fallen one to remain away for at least an hour. Promising nothing, but very well satisfied to be free for a little while, though he dared not join his companions, Kripa, drowsy with the dusk and quiet of his watch, wandered off into the maze of rooms around the audience hall, lay down upon a convenient divan, and was shortly sound asleep.
Ragunáth, meantime, had grown as nervous and eager as a youth while he waited the coming of the Ranee. She did not keep him long. As he stood watching the curtained doorway, she appeared, her young face pale and strained, but with expectation in it; her form all swathed in crimson silks. At sight of her, Ragunáth gave a low cry of emotion; but, in the same instant, Ahalya’s face changed utterly.
“Thou!” she said, half wondering, half sobbing.
“I, rose of heaven! I, star among women, whose hair holds the fragrance of the jessamine, whose breath is perfumed like the almond blossom. I, I, Ragunáth, have sought thee, and beseech thy favor; for, indeed, I am gone mad for love of thee!” And, throwing himself before her, Ragunáth lifted the filmy hem of her garment to his lips.
Ahalya still stood in the doorway, clinging to the curtains on either side of her, her face expressing amixture of repulsion and disappointment. As Ragunáth would have clasped her feet, she drew back, sharply:
“Away from me, dishonorable one!” she said, in a low, angry voice. “If you would not have me expose this treachery to Rai-Khizar-Pál,—begone!”
Ragunáth did not rise. Rather, he lay writhing at her feet, like one possessed of a frenzy—as indeed he was. But it was a resolving frenzy. After the period of madness, he was coming to himself again. Pride returned to him, and, with it, something of his usual cunning, as he remembered how willing Ahalya had been to come before him. It was then that he got to his feet; then that he turned on the woman, asking, softly, through shame of the display he had made:
“O, Ranee, it was not I, then, that you came to greet? It was not for Ragunáth that you are decked out in crimson and gold? And for whom? for whom? Not Rai-Khizar. He waits not in antechambers for thy greeting. Ah, will it be wise, Ranee, to ‘expose’ me to thy lord? There are things—”
“Be still! thou shameless, treacherous, hateful one! I hate you! Know that. I hate—I hate—I hate you!” And, her voice on the last word rising to a shrill cry, the young woman, white faced and burning eyed, turned from him and fled into the inaccessible rooms beyond. There, panting, sobbing, angry, and, in her heart of hearts, greatly terrified, she flung herself upon a couch and gave herself up unreservedly to acknowledgment of her hidden love and woe.
Now, during the few moments of this interview, Neila, astonished and frightened at what she, like Ahalya, believed to be Fidá’s appearance at this hour, had, as soon as her mistress left her, run to seek out Churi, whom she brought back more disturbed than she, just as the Ranee returned to her rooms. Churi did not enter there, but proceeded at once to the antechamber. Parting the curtains that hung before the door, he started, and stood stock-still to find himself face to face with the one man he had had no thought of. Ragunáth was still standing where Ahalya had left him, and, at this new appearance, he was too much taken aback to note the newcomer’s discomposure.
“Churi!” he muttered, half in alarm, half angrily.
“Even so, Lord Ragunáth.” At once Churi was himself again.
“Dog! who sent thee here?”
“The Puissant One speaks the same words that had lain on my humble lips.”
“Strangely indeed is the King’s zenana conducted! I pass the antechamber and see no guard therein. I enter the antechamber that I may see if the guard be perhaps concealed from view; and, as I look, there appears a pariah, who sees fit to insult me. By Indra, thou doctor of dogs, thou shalt be whipped for it!”
There came a little pause, during which Churi, with his disturbing eyes, gazed steadily, smoothly, quietly upon the man that faced him, till Ragunáth fairly writhed under the look. Then Churi said: “It pleases the high lord to speak these words. Since itpleases him, it is well. But,” and the tone changed, “let him take care that he act not as he speaks. There are things more strange than unguarded antechambers that may come to the ears of the Rajah.” Churi’s eyes menaced now.
Ragunáth gave some sort of hoarse ejaculation; and then, after wavering for a moment, he turned and walked swiftly away, nor halted till he was safe in his own rooms, with a personal slave or two on whom to wreak his wrath and his double mortification.
Churi, left alone, was well pleased with himself. Luckily the self-satisfaction was not too great to prevent his having his wits still about him. He knew that this was Kripa’s watch, and in three minutes he had hunted out the deserter’s retreat, kicked him awake, and despatched him to his post thoroughly frightened. Yet Kripa was allowed to remain in possession of his gold; for Churi was in no position to expose the acts of the man he hated.
Unlucky as it had already proved to its two principal actors, the little drama of the afternoon had further results. Ahalya, even in the anger of revulsion against Ragunáth, knew that there was another feeling in her heart: dared, after a time, admit to herself her disappointment that it had not been Fidá who thus boldly summoned her to him; for indeed she had gone to the anteroom, on Kripa’s summons, thinking to find her lover there. Before nightfall she knew that she longed to see Fidá again; and the more she repudiated the thought, the more insistent it became, until she yieldedto it. In the early darkness Churi was despatched to bid him come to her that night.
When Churi managed to waylay the slave, Fidá was on his way to the rooms where wine was stored, to fill a jar for his lord’s evening meal. It needed only a look between the two for the eunuch’s errand to be understood. Fidá laid a hand on Churi’s arm, and said, softly: “In the name of Allah, Churi, speak to me!”
“There is no need,” answered the other, looking at him in a quizzical but not unkindly manner.
“She will see me? I shall go to her again?”
“To-night. As before.”
In a single instant the accumulated anger and anguish of the past four days melted and ran away from the youth’s heart. His load of unhappiness was lifted. Once more he walked on air. It seemed to him that he radiated life. But the few hours that still separated them brought him much that was new in the way of thought. Since she had forgiven him, he perceived that his banishment had been, in large measure, brought on by himself. He had not sufficiently considered her, her woman’s delicacy and hesitation. He had acted as his youth and his manhood prompted him. But he resolved that there should be no such mistake again. The thought of her now brought a deep tenderness, which, indeed, might have surprised Ahalya could she have read it. Nor were the six hours of the evening long or heavy. He had a foundation on which to build his castle of dreams; and his heart was full of thankfulness and relief. It was five minutes aftermidnight when he entered the little room where Churi stood.
“All is well?” asked Fidá, his mouth dry.
“All is well. No one is stirring. Enter.”
Fidá’s bright eyes grew brighter still; and he ran boyishly through the doorway into the little passage where, this time, Neila awaited him. He followed her, in silence, down the short hall, through the memorable room at the end of it, which was empty to-night, and across the next one, that he had never seen, to a door at which Neila knocked. A moment’s suspense, and then a muffled voice said, “Open!” The maid pushed it, and motioned to Fidá, who passed swiftly within. The door closed behind him. He was gazing upon the figure of Ahalya, who stood a few feet away, looking at him, doubtfully, longingly, half sadly. His heart throbbed with many emotions. He took a hesitating step or two toward her, pleading with his eyes. Then, all at once, there was a quick, low cry, and Ahalya had flung herself into his arms.
What passed between them now were difficult to relate. Afterwards they themselves had but a confused idea. It was very certain that Ahalya loved him; for she delivered herself up entirely to his will. Yet, with each of them, passion was mingled with something better: a deep tenderness, a high companionship, the mutual compassion of the unhappy. She laid upon him a great responsibility, telling him over and over again that without him she should not try to live; explaining the torture of her self-hatred: the shame that,loving him, she must still submit to another; wetting his eyes with her tears while she demanded from him a solution of her miserable problem. Pitying while he loved, Fidá read what her warped life had been, and all the history of her loneliness. Nor did he fail her in a certain sort of comfort, of a philosophical nature, for which she cared little, save that it came from his lips. But she listened eagerly to all that he told her of himself, of his country and his life; though he withheld the story of the curse, of which, at their first meeting, he had given her a suggestion that she seemed to have forgotten. They talked long, but the talk was finally hushed. Fidá extinguished the single lamp that burned. And later, Neila, come to warn them of the time, found them there in the darkness, Ahalya weeping in his arms.
This time it was the woman that bade her lover leave her; for Fidá had not the strength to put her from him. When at last he reached the anteroom, only three or four minutes before the appearance of Churi’s relief, the latter’s heart was in his throat, and he was ready to declare that he would never again run the risk of disaster and discovery through the slave’s rashness. Later in the night he sought Fidá in his own room, and the two had a long talk together. The eunuch had come with the purpose of protesting against the present arrangement, with which he was in a high state of dissatisfaction. But he ended by allowing himself to be, to some extent, overpowered by the earnestness and the logic of love; though after he had departed, Fidá layawake for a long time, anxiously considering the risks that he ran in placing all his dependence on this one person, whom he knew very well to be in some ways entirely unreliable.
Churi, indeed, was playing a part very different from the one he had imagined for himself. He had entered upon the affair rather blindly, and with the belief that a few weeks, perhaps days even, would convert his ruby into money; upon which his freedom would quickly follow. A little time had shown him his mistake. The ruby was not a gem easily to be sold; for the simple reason that no one in Mandu save the Rajah himself was wealthy enough to buy it; and Rai-Khizar-Pál knew the stone, and to whom it belonged. Questions were not to be risked. Churi soon realized that he must wait until the spring, when the travelling merchants from Rajputana would come down from the north with the rich wares that made their arduous journeys profitable. One of these, the eunuch knew very well, would take his stone, without questions. Meantime, what was his course to be? It was true that he was genuinely attached to Ahalya, and had some feeling for Fidá. Moreover, his natural talent for intrigue rejoiced at the risk of the present affair. Nevertheless, that risk, as matters stood at present, was too great. Soon, then, he found his mind at work reconstructing, building up new safeguards against that bombshell which, one day, no caution could keep from an explosion that must betray its existence to Mandu in ruin and destruction.
Churi, evil-thinking, evil-doing, was nevertheless faithful to his better instincts. It was not for his own gain that he set his mind to work at new plans of entrance to the zenana; and at finding therefrom new exits, to be used in case of need. These plans materialized well; and, by the bedside of the now almost recovered Ahmed, he expounded his ideas to Fidá. The Asra was already aware that the zenana was accessible by other ways than the central portion of the palace. The passage from the north wing to the little court was left unguarded for the simple reason that, by day, no one could enter there without risk of being seen by half a hundred eyes; and by night the face of the zenana itself was made, by means of chains and locks, a perfectly impenetrable wall, by which the high Lord Ragunáth himself had more than once been baffled. For Fidá, however, this difficulty did not exist. On the other side of that wall there were willing hands to work for him; for Churi himself had the task of fastening doors and wooden window-screens at nightfall. Who was there to discover that one of these, in the inner room of the Ranee Ahalya, was left unlocked? Who was there to note the tiny hinge which deft-handed Churi substituted for a bolt? Rai-Khizar-Pál never perceived these things; and, beside him, Neila was the only soul that entered the Ranee’s bedroom. Shortly, then, Fidá had ceased to be dependent on the antechamber for access to his lady; and he and Churi both wondered how so obvious a means had slipped their first consideration. But passion soonbegan to get the better of the Arabian. His gracelessness no longer stopped with the night. Hairbrained were the risks he ran, wild the chances that he took, though all the time it seemed that he was protected by a scandalous providence. Churi and Neila spent days and nights of dread; but Ahalya was as blind to caution as the Asra; and together they overran advice or pleadings; and recklessly they laughed with Fate.
Two months—a little more—went by: to the lovers, months of ecstasy and despair, of joy inexpressible, and keenest agony; for love like theirs carries constantly its own punishment. But the man and the woman were young, of Oriental blood, the desire for affection in each rendered abnormal by the restraint to which both had been subject. Fidá went without sleep and without food, and yet seemed to suffer no untoward effects from his nerve-destroying existence. Indeed, so remarkable was his vitality, so strong his power of recuperation after the longest service and watchfulness, that he, and Churi also, began in their minds to scoff at the Asra curse, and wonder whence the quaint legend had originated. Ahalya, who had little to do, save in so far as Rai-Khizar-Pál demanded her companionship, spent all the hours in which she and Fidá were apart, in dreaming of their next meeting. Never had she been so beautiful as now. Every line of weariness and discontent had disappeared from her face. Her eyes, under the light of their new knowledge, shone like stars. Her face took on a new glow of color, moreclear, more pure, more rose-and-white than ever. Her voice had gained a new and tender richness; and, as she dreamed over the Persian harp that she loved to play, Neila used to listen in amazement to the beauty of her singing. Her increased charm had its penalty, however; for the Rajah was not slow in perception, and seemed more and more to delight in her, keeping her at his side oftener than of old. And the suffering entailed by this was nearly enough to drive the loveliness away.
Varied as were the duties of Fidá’s life, pleasant, or dull, or interesting as they might otherwise have been, he performed all save one apathetically, as so much dull labor to be got through willy-nilly. Everything in him, every thought, every wish, was under Ahalya’s sway. Body and heart and brain she ruled him, as, indeed, he ruled her. There was now scarcely a suggestion of remorse or regret in either of them. The lower natures of both were in the ascendant; and there were numberless hours when the flesh reigned supreme. In his saner moments Fidá sometimes paused to analyze himself, doubtfully, wondering if he could be the Fidá of Delhi and of Yemen. But during the last month he was not often sane; and when, with the glare of the day, other thoughts, truths, reproaches, came to him, he fought them off, refusing to consider, not daring to remember, his code.
El-Islam, life to the true Arabian, was, by degrees, deserting the captive. How should he maintain a religion that taught moderation in all things, duty to the master, forbearance from intoxication? Ahalya, whosemother, in her long captivity, had lost her own beautiful Magian religion, and who had herself been brought up a Hindoo, had, like many Indian women of station, taken the god Krishna, lord of beauty, romance, and love, for her special deity. And some of the pretty ceremony and graceful superstition of her half-doubtful beliefs had woven themselves like an evil web around Fidá’s brain. Often, during their quiet hours, Ahalya used to sing to her lover parts of the great Indian Song of Songs—the wooing of Krishna and Radha. And her voice, and the smooth-flowing poetry of the words, charmed him into new forgetfulness of the sterner western creed. The story was well fitted to their state. As Ahalya sang, he loved to call her Radha; and if she delighted in him as the incarnation of her too well worshipped god, her lover saw in it no sacrilege. But in this way his prayers grew strange to him; and he became in some sort a pagan, unworthy of any god.
There was but one pursuit left in which they found an honest pleasure. Both of them loved the boy, Bhavani, whom, in different ways, each was instructing in a primitive code of manhood and chivalry. The child had taken so strong a fancy to Fidá that his father, perfectly confident of the Asra’s fitness for the position, began more and more to surrender him as cup-bearer in order that he might attend his son. And Fidá, finding the child truthful, obedient, and affectionate, took a genuine pride in instructing him in all that he knew. There were times, indeed,when the man, brought into close contact with young innocence and instinctive honor, was drawn to a certain unavoidable sense of guilt; and this same thing Ahalya felt, when, in accordance with the young prince’s wishes, she rehearsed with him, in their old way, the dramatic epics of ancient Indian heroism and self-sacrifice. And so much alike had the minds of the lovers become, that the young Bhavani, imbibing from each the same often identically expressed principles, came by degrees to connect the two in his mind; perhaps even, with a child’s intuition, guessing something of their position, though unconscious of its sin.
The momentary and fleeting suggestions of remorse were very slight, however, even with Ahalya. Neila, who knew all, watched her mistress in perpetual wonder; for she had changed utterly. She was a gazelle transformed to a tigress; and the handmaid, who worshipped her with the worship of a slave for a queen, now feared her while she loved her, and because she loved her, also feared. Neila, never told anything in words, had known all from the first, and from that first had acted as go-between. In spite of the cynicism of Fidá, who, after the Mohammedan fashion, trusted no woman, she had proved faithful to both of them, and had held the interests of both at heart. For, if Ahalya were her princess, Fidá was a captive prince, a man rarely beautiful in form, and, moreover, the very first that, to her knowledge, had ever succeeded in doing what he had done. He had risen to great heights in her eyes; and if Ahalya sometimes called her lover bythe name of her wooden god, Neila carried the matter farther yet, and half believed that Fidá was really more than human.
In this different-wise ten weeks passed, and it came to be the third Ashtaka[4]of Magghar Poh (December). This sacrifice and festival, begun at noon, was wont to continue till midnight; and the Rajah, jealous of Brahman prerogatives, never failed to take a chief place in such rites. Fidá, an outcast according to Hindoo codes, was, during this holy ceremony, not allowed on sacred ground; and he therefore gave himself up to the propitious time, and spent eight of the twelve hours at Ahalya’s side. It wanted ten minutes to two when he left her, by the now usual means of the low window in her room. Wrapping himself closely in the long, white cloak of thin woollen stuff that made part of his winter clothing, he started across the little, dark courtyard.
[4]On every eighth day through December and January there is a special Brahman sacrifice called the “Ashtaka.” (See Grihya-Sutras, Vol. I, p. 203, M. Müller edit.)
[4]On every eighth day through December and January there is a special Brahman sacrifice called the “Ashtaka.” (See Grihya-Sutras, Vol. I, p. 203, M. Müller edit.)
The noise of the revellers in the great court had not yet died away; and Fidá debated whether he dared pass through them on his way to bed. For the first time in many weeks he was thoroughly exhausted; and the chilly night air swept over his parched and burning body with grateful effect. All at once he felt that he dreaded to be alone because of the thoughts that might come upon him. Entering the north wing, he rapidly traversed the narrow passageleading past Ragunáth’s rooms, turned instinctively in the usual direction, and presently emerged at the court, where the ceremonial was over, the fires burning low, and the soma revellers lying or standing about in various degrees of intoxication. Near the door of the audience hall stood a little group of priests and officials, among whom were the Rajah and Ragunáth. Not daring to approach these, and giving not more than a passing thought to the matter, gradually overcome by vague, chaotic ideas that were rising in his mind, Fidá went on, out into the road, and along it till he came to the water palace that stood on the edge of the plateau, overlooking the south plain, through which the great Narmáda rushed. Here, in the stillness, Fidá halted, looking around him. He was beside one of the smooth water-basins overhung with slender bamboos and tamarind shrubs, with tangles of lotus-plants floating, brown and dead, upon its mirror-like surface. Before him rose the low, level walls of this charming accident of Indian architecture. On high, overhead, hung a late moon, wreathed in a feathery mist of night clouds, and throwing a faint light over the plain and the distant river. To the right, in the distance, a long, black, irregular shadow, rose the giant barrier of the Vindhyas, beyond whose mystic recesses, far northward, lay distant Delhi, the city of the slow-conquering race, the people of the captive now standing here alone with the night. Gradually, as Fidá looked, a great awe stole upon him. His body had grown cold with the night chill; but hismind took no heed of the flesh. A change was upon him. His chaotic thoughts were shaping themselves. Gradually, before the vastness, the high dignity of nature, the ugliness of his last weeks became clear to him, and he trembled with horror of himself. Slow tears ran down his cold, set face. He locked his hands together, and rocked his stiffened body to and fro. A cry was welling up in the heart of him, standing there in the face of Allah’s creation: the high-reaching hills, the wide, moonlit plain. To his overstrained nerves it seemed that they judged him, in their immense incorruptibleness:—him, the corrupt. And presently the mountains lifted up their voices and spake. Plainly to his ears, out of the dim, black recesses, came low, deep tones, uttering first his name: “Fidá ibn-Mahmud ibn-Hassan el-Asra,” and then, after a long pause, the words, old and familiar to him since childhood, the tradition of his race:
“Cursed be the Asra by Osman: cursed this day and forevermore any man of them that loveth woman as I have loved Zenora. Let him die in the first year of his loving, though from east to west he seek a cure. And to him that taketh from another a promised wife, may the curse of Allah the Avenger seek him out till he be hidden in the depth of Hell. Thus I, Osman, curse thy race!”
Down from far generations rolled these words into the ears of the youngest of the Asra, who, hearing them, uttered a deep cry, and, swaying for a moment where he stood, presently fell, face down, into the dead grass beside the pool.