Flora Annie Webster Steel

“ Fool! There is no such love for us womenkind!"
"There thou tellest truth, Siyâl," said Âtma coldly. "It is not love. Did I not tell thee so? But I came not here for this. We must speak and speak quickly."
So the two women, half seen in the suffused light of the empty roof, sate talking while the little lamplets twinkled like stars, and every here and there one, growing short of oil, flickered and went out leaving a gap of darkness.
"Three!" counted the courtesan with a yawn as the mellow echoing notes of the city gongs chimed through the night. "'Tis time I were gone!" ”

“ To her also, for dimly she saw ahead. "Silence is best," she said obstinately. "It does not injure Truth, whose hiding place is immortality, whose shadow, death."
The well-worn quotation fell from her lips like the juice of poppy, restful, soothing, opiate; but Akbar was in no mood of acquiescence. He bent hastily and seized her by the wrist, fiercely, tenderly. All his blood was stirring in him as it had not stirred for years.
"I tell thee thou shalt answer! I, the King, command thee, Châran. Nay I, Jalâl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar, as man, command thee as woman. ”

“ The King was the first to speak. "Thou art not hurt, Shaikie?" he gasped, the breath well-nigh pommelled from him by the Prince's weighty body.
"Not I!" gasped Salîm in his turn, beginning to realise what his father had done for him--"but--thou--thou art bleeding."
"From the nose only," replied Akbar cheerfully, as a crowding posse helped him to rise, "it was thy foot did it--God sent as much strength to thine arm. Nay gentlemen! we are unhurt!"
The assurance was needed, for already on all sides the cry had risen: "The King is down--the King is killed!" ”

“ There was a faint scream, the mere cry, as it were, of a wounded bird. "Nay beauty! thou shalt kiss me! What! Scent of roses and no love? Pâh! how the perfume gets into my brain. Never but once before--but this is no time for the past! Nay! struggle not. Such beauty needs no veiling."
The little murmuring wail died to silence, and the half jibing voice was silent also. So, horror-struck, Khodadâd stood for one instant before the deformity he had unshrouded. Then with a curse he turned and fled.
Deena, still dazed with the blow, crept over to the bed and covered crippledom again. ”

“ But Akbar was past reproach; passion had mastered him and his hands instinct mobile with fierce life, met and parted again and again until the death-warrant torn to shreds lay in his clasp a mere handful of waste paper. "Lo!" he cried joyfully, "Let Kingship go! Jalâl-ud-din is man--he will reap man's harvest of love."
He flung what he held from him with the action of a sower who sows. The light scraps of paper hung in the air for a second then fell steadily, softly, like seed grains. Some of them fell on Âtma's white star-sewn skirts. ”

“ It became breathless, palpitating--the seven lamped cresset--the chiming gong--even the long-drawn kisses----
Akbar's cheek paled--this was more than womanhood--this was his dream of it----!
"Die dog! Die for thine untruth!"
Her passion had risen to its height; she staggered, for it was Akbar whom she found within her clasp.
But it was Akbar who held her close, as men hold women whom they love, who strained her to his breast, murmuring, "Nay! thou shalt live, live for thine uttermost Truth." ”

“ He had been feeling in his breast and now held forth the Luck of the King "here it is, sire."
In the light of the cressets, the gem glowed familiarly like soft moonshine; but Akbar peremptorily set it aside.
"Thou art under oath to deliver it to none but the jeweller. Traitor! are women to be more faithful than men?"
Birbal grovelled at the King's feet, but Akbar did not notice him.
He was dully trying to piece the parts into a whole, telling himself he would hear the truth when Âtma Devi should be brought to him at dawn. ”

“ Thou art that which seeks not--which gives and takes nothing in return. Thou art salvation. Yet thou canst not save--the Woman is too strong for thee. Thou lovest the King!"
The blood flew to Âtma's face. "Thou liest!" she cried hotly.
Siyah Yamin's laugh filled the emptiness of the roof. "Thy denial proves it, sister! Were it not wiser to accept thy womanhood? Ohé! Âtma! there is joy in drawing the strength of a man through his lips!--in making him forget high thoughts--in dragging him down, down to the very depths of--of Nothingness!" ”

“ Âtma roused herself and stood listening. A faint sound of slumbering breath drawn evenly met her ear as she paused at the door of the slip of a room where Zarîfa lay hidden. The child was asleep and could be left for an hour or two at any rate.
Hastily discarding her Châran's dress she put on the poppy-petalled red skirt and veil of the mad singer, so catching up her hourglass drum passed into the street. Her cry,
"May the Gods pity us, dreamers who dream of their Godhead"
echoing out into the closed courtyards as she hurried down the narrow alley. ”

“ That self-same dawn Akbar the King sate alone, as he so often did, upon a large flat stone which lay in a lonely spot beside the Anup tank. He was dressed in the saffron sheet of an ascetic, and a fold of it, drawn across the lower part of the face, completely disguised him; though the few persons abroad at this early hour were not of the class from whom he could fear detection or even interruption--except perhaps a petition for a blessing. For this was the widows' hour; that strange hour in India, while the world still sleeps, when sorrowful womanhood works out the salvation of mankind. ”

“ He thought ever as he spoke of that Arch of Victory standing deserted on the Sikri Ridge.
"But there might have been," interrupted Aunt Rosebody, hotly. "Take not penitence from my soul, nephew. 'Tis good to have sins to repent when one grows old and there are no more to commit. So, having been in the tale at the beginning----"
Akbar looked pathetically at Umm Kulsum, who had sunk to her knees in contrition.
"It is because, Highness," she answered as if to a question, "the jeweller is arrived, and is even now on his way hither."
Akbar sprang to his feet, light as a boy. ”

“ They were such simple, straightforward Beneficent Ladies with their high features, high courage, high sense of duty, of family, of tradition, all swathed and hidden away in scent-sodden silks and satins. They formed as it were a masked battery of pure benevolence behind the throne, unseen, but felt; for Akbar gave a glance round to where he knew his mother must be sitting ere, facing his empire for a second or two in silence, he rose and stepped forward to the great silver-gilt steel-yard which stood in front of the dais. ”

“ So it came to pass that just as the sun was setting, its last rays sparkled on Mihr-un-nissa's jewelled hair, as she sate on the Châran's roof waiting for the drop of ink to fall into her palm. She was more woman than child now, since she had watched the birth of desire, and of something more than desire, in Prince Salîm's eyes. So that was love! A queer thing, at best, it must be to feel as he must have felt, before he could look so poor a slave. If that was love, she could not give it back. What! give homage to a lout of a lad? ”

“ In the blind tortuous alleys where the hot May sun struggled in vain to shine, shut out on every side by the high tenement houses hiving swarms of men, women and children, rumour spread like mushroom spawn in the dark; spread aimlessly, idly, sending its filaments at random, here, there, everywhere, ready at a moment's notice to shoot up into some fantastic mushroom growth. Even in Agra itself, connected with Fatehpur Sikri by that twenty-mile-long ribbon of shop-edged road, the talk was all of what was about to happen in Akbar's City of Victory. ”

“ A cuirass of steel chains hanging below the corselet covered the muslins of her woman's drapery, and her shapely arms, strenuous under the weight of the huge straight sword, held hilt downward, balanced it straight as a die, steady as a rock, point skyward.
In truth, the whole scene was magnificent beyond compare. The ordinary reception was over, but there was to follow one of the great episodes of the gorgeous yearly round of splendid yet curiously imaginative festivals, which marked Akbar's court. ”

“ Come to the Great Durbar in thy Châran's dress, and, for once, a woman shall challenge the whole world for Akbar. Lo! it will make some of the durbaries see Shaítan," he interpolated for himself light-heartedly. "But come and fear not--I will warn the Chamberlain to give thee place. So once more farewell, widow----"
Thus far he had spoken with a smile; now his face grew grave. "Lo! despite Akbar, methinks thou wilt die for some man yet; thou art of that quality. Heaven send he be worth the sacrifice!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ A low moaning surge of sound came from the packed humanity for an instant. The next it was lost in the wild shrieking bellow which seemed to crack the skies as two thousand elephants threw up their trunks head-high and let loose their leviathan throats.
An imperial salute indeed! One that never grows stale, and the thrill of it paled Akbar's cheek as, with the shining sun, standard of the Râjpûts on one hand, the glorious green banner of Islâm on the other, he rode forward to take the throne which he had wrung alike from Hindus and Mahommedans. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But Akbar took no heed of the looks around him; he was deep in that problem of Sex which was one of the many to claim his quick interest at all times.
"The spirit of thy race is in thee, sure enough, O sister," he said slowly. "Manhood is in the woman, as womanhood is in the man--do I not know the latter to my cost? So take thy gift. Thou art the King's Châran from this day. But hearken! If thou failest in thy task, I treat thee not as woman--but as man." ”

“ I, Heera, I
I take the lie!
Ye Bright-Ones see me die!
Avenge the lie!
And thus by his death force upon the conspirators a full inquiry. So she knelt dreaming, her chin upon her hand while the glow of the set sun faded from the sky.
Yet with all her dreaming she was very woman, and in every fibre of her being she still felt the touch of the King's hands upon hers.
Such hungry hands! Dimly, in her sexless soul, she recognised that quality in them. What did they want? Not womanhood certainly. But who wanted that? No one. ”

“ A glimmer of gray dawn--for it had taken time to persuade Aunt Rosebody to action--showed faintly the courtesan's face set in the white folds of the burka she had thrown upward for more air. Perhaps it was a memory of the portrait thus framed which made Âtma repeat herself. "I wonder thou canst be so unkind to a poor lad who loves thee."
"Unkind?" echoed the courtesan with the zest of a child who kills flies. "Death is no unkindness, and they will give it him, doubtless, if he hath been unwise. For he will not blab--that I know--he loves too much!" ”

“ Akbar laughed out loud, then grew grave. "Of a truth Mistress Quick-wit, women are beyond men's comprehension! But we have been playing with words hitherto. Now let us be serious--let me see thy mind. Why dost not like my son?"
Instant, clear, decisive, came the reply.
"Because he doth not love his father."
"Wherefore does he not love him? What proof hast thou?" asked Akbar hotly.
Mihr-un-nissa's face had no pity, even in its deep unfathomable eyes.
"Because, Great King, he seeks ever to betray Jalâl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar. ”

“ The pliant forefinger's whirling gave out a continuous boom like distant thunder amongst hills. Deena's drum throbbed a réveillé, the rebeck thrilled like a cicala--
TO KUMÂN
And he dreamt he was King
In the wide,
wide,
world----
"Enough!" The word came swiftly as Akbar turned with a frown. "The end, woman? The end?"
There was a pause; then from the very dust of his feet rose her reply:
"There is none to the dreaming of kings!"
"There is none--to the dreaming--of kings," he echoed slowly, and his eyes scanned her face curiously as he raised her from the ground. "Who art thou, woman?" ”

“ Every atom of womanhood in her, all tangled and torn apart by the plucking fingers of natural instinct and inherited ethics, rose up in revolt against herself, against everybody, everything in the world save that one thing--the King's honour, the King's Luck.
She stood surging in uttermost rebellion, and Birbal realised that a deftless word, almost a deftless look, would send the dagger of her race to her woman's heart. ”

“ 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. ”