King Errant Part 16

But memory of a sort came back to him after a few days and he grew restless; so they marched on. And as he rode over the hills or walked, leading his mother's pony, discontent began once more to leaven his glad content. The world in these lower lying districts was beautiful in the early springtide, but there was something more in life than mere beauty. There was something else needed to make it splendid.

"I will go back to where we were in the White Mountains," he said one day. "I was happy there and so was Dearest-One."

It was the first time he had mentioned his sister's name, and his mother looked at him anxiously. But he said no more. Nature was dealing in kindly fas.h.i.+on with him and bringing memory back by slow degrees.

But at Bis.h.a.gher, where they halted a few days, it was like to have been otherwise, for there they came across an old duenna of Babar's mother who having been left behind in Samarkand because of the scarcity of horses, had, nothing daunted, trudged after her mistress on foot. The two women sobbed on each other's necks, while the one told and the other listened to the piteous tale of a marriage, which after all had not been so bad as it might have been, because of old Isan-daulet's masterful spirit. But they said nothing to the menfolk about it all. It was as well that their boy should hear as few details as possible.

And here--the first possible place for news since those long months of siege--tidings came of family deaths at Tashkend. It was fourteen years since Babar's mother had been there and seen her people, and now, when they were hopeless, homeless, and when, moreover, she had her old governess to serve her once more, the time seemed fitting for a visit.

So she went, and for the first time for many years Babar was left alone without any hostages to fortune.

And one of the first things he did with his liberty was to climb a certain hill all set with flowers, which he and his sister had climbed one spring day in the past. The gentians were as blue, the primulas as pink as ever, and the mosaic of forget-me-nots and yellow crowsfoot lay almost inconceivably bright as ever. The blue sky, grazing ground for fleecy white flocks of clouds, stretched away beyond the hills to that faint bluer line of distant Samarkand.

All was as it had been. And the green enamel frame set with jewels, like flowers, lay on the transparent ice where she had put it. He had not noticed that before; one could see through the slab--see green gra.s.s-blades, and a half opened flower bud that had been held in chill prison for years and years and years--It was quaint, utterly, when her face, her portrait had gone! The rain had washed it away. The vellum on which it had been painted lay white as snow.

Yes! quaint utterly. The icy grip had kept its hold, the warm suns.h.i.+ne had let slip its prize. He sat down idly, his head resting in his hands.

Yes! her face had gone! What matter now if there was place or grace beside it for another? Poor Baisanghar! and poor--infinitely poorer Dearest-One! For the first time the full meaning of what had happened came over him; he turned round pa.s.sionately, hid his face among the flowers and cried like a child.

_Ishk_ and _ashk!_ Love and tears. How little divided them. So the thought of his dead, crippled cousin came to him and the memory of that vivid, fate-defying face stood between him and despair. The Crystal Bowl! Yes! he would laugh as he quaffed: life had brought him strange adventures; let her bring more! He was ready for them--quite ready, in his manhood, to take what the years might hold. For boyhood had gone. That had capitulated with Samarkand.

He did not formulate all this clearly; he simply felt it. Felt the keen joy in life come back to him as he sat up once more and looked out over G.o.d's beauties with still swimming eyes; and the tears were magnifying gla.s.ses!

A quaint conceit that might be worked up into a couplet or perchance a quatrain. Baisanghar would have done it finely: he worked well on such finniken fancies. But he had been wrong in the verses he had written on the back of the enamel frame. Were they there still? Aye! they had been protected from the tears of rain.

He read the lines over, feeling as he read them that there was something in them that lacked. So, as he felt, words came to him; for he was born with that artistic temperament which cannot help trading on its own most sacred emotions; perhaps because such natures see vaguely that individualism is a snare to the soul, that all things worth recording are part of a Greater Personality than their own. And the outcome of feeling and words ran thus:--

"Seven thrones, seven sins, seven stars, But not one thing that bars Life's love, Life's tears.

The crushed grape fills the bowl With wine for the sad soul Beyond these years."

He jumped up feeling quite pleased with himself, for they were the first verses in that measure he had ever composed!

After this when he was wandering barefoot over hill and dale, he would sit down when he found some pleasant spot and string rhymes together; for he was in a backwater, mentally and bodily. For twenty years he had battled with Fate over trivialities; since what, after all, were Ferghana and Samarkand and Hissar? Only tiny little bits of G.o.d's earth. He was beginning to be a trifle weary of it all, to long for a larger horizon. So he sent off on the pretext of getting news, the few followers who had remained with him while he, Nevian-Gokultash, and another wandered farther and farther, higher and higher up the White Mountains until they reached the Roof-of-the-World. And there they lodged awhile in the felt tents of a shepherd and lived on sheeps'-milk, cheese and buckwheat-cakes. Their host was a man of some eighty years; but his mother was still alive, and of extreme age, being at this time no less than one hundred and eleven years old, and in full possession of her faculties. Indeed, the circ.u.mstances of the great Timur's invasion of India remained fresh in her memory owing, doubtless, to her having been in her youth greatly interested in one who had been in his army.

She was a hale old woman, smoke-dried yet apple-cheeked, who loved to hear herself talk, especially when the tall good-looking young stranger sat at her feet, fixing his hazel eyes that were at once so sad and so merry on her whirling pirn as she twisted the brown wool for the blankets.

How it whirled, and leaped, and spun, as the withered old hand jerked the thread! So the Hand of Fate jerked men's lives, setting them spinning like tops into the shadows, out into the firelight again; always, always spinning!

"So the Great Khan was feeding his dogs, being in those days infidel, when Shaikh Jumal-ud-din the divine came to him. 'Am I better than this dog?' quoth Timur, 'or is he better than I?' And the Shaikh smiled. 'If the King has faith he is better than his dog; but if he has no faith, then is his dog better than he, since the dog believes in a master.' So the Great Khan said the Creed immediately."

"Wah!" murmured the circle of shepherds; but Babar would press for tales of the Great Invasion. And sometimes the old lady would begin at the very beginning, and tell how Timur's soldiers, imitating their leader, would make their left arms straight as the letter "I" and their right arms crooked as a "K" and so write death in the blood of their enemies. How they let fly their arrows as the moon lets fly shooting stars so that the blood-sodden hillsides showed like a drift of red tulips. Or she would drone on--it was a long story--over the "Battle of the Mire," where the enemy not having strength to fight, sought help from the magic rain-stone, so that though the sun was in the Warrior, a host of dark clouds suddenly filled the sky. The thunder resounded, the lightnings flashed, the water descended from the eyes of the stars until the voice of Noah was heard praying a second time for deliverance from the Deluge. Then the beasts of the field swam like fishes, the skin of the horses' bellies adhered to the crust of the earth. The feathers of the arrows damped off, their notches came out, neither men nor horses could move by reason of the rain ...

So she would maunder on until Babar would say impatiently:

"Get on to India, mother! I would fain be there myself."

And he would hardly listen as she, once more beginning at the very beginning, would detail the eight-hundred-thousand men, provided with rations for seven years and each accompanied with two milch-kine and ten milch-goats, so that when stores were exhausted they might live on milk, and when milk dried up they could convert the animals themselves into provisions.

It was all doubtless very wise of Timur--G.o.d rest his soul!--who was ever great on the commissariat; but he, Babar, preferred the laconic remark in his great ancestor's autobiography, "The princes of India were at variance with one another. Resolved to make myself master of the Indian empire. Did so."

It was however the more intimate personal experiences which the old woman held by virtue of that dead "interest" of hers, which fired Babar's imagination; but these fragments of a half-forgotten past were not always to be got at. The long years of common round and daily task had overlaid them; it needed a subtle touch upon the instrument to make it vibrate once more. But Babar found a key. There was a certain Turkhoman ballad called "The Maid-of-the-Spring," which invariably unlocked the old woman's memory. So, often, as they sat over the camp fire at night, Babar, smiling to himself, would say, "A song, a song!

Let us sing 'The Maid-of-the-Spring' together once more, grandmother!

There is none sings it as thou dost."

Which was true! Still the toneless treble of the old voice whining away like the fine whing of a mosquito did not sound so bad against the rich baritone. And the youngest maiden could not have nodded and becked more, or looked more arch. And perhaps the old heart beat as quickly as a young one; such things do not go by age.

And this is what they sang in somewhat monotonous antiphon:

He.

Maid of the Spring! I'm thirsty! I pray A drop of water! I must away.

G.o.d bless you, my girl! And don't be slow!

Give me a drink and let me go.

She.

I don't give drinks to strange young men Who come a-swaggering down the glen; Naught you'll get from my pitcher to-day, Drink for yourself and go your way.

He.

Maid of the Spring! I cannot alight, I'm far too tired! I'm wearied quite!

I haven't time! G.o.d bless you, my dear!

Give me a drink--I _can't_ stay here.

She.

The birds sing sweet in the spring, they say, It's sweeter still when _I_ tune my lay, But tired man should sleep in his bed-- Farewell! G.o.d's blessing be on your head.

He.

Give me some water, you pretty dear!

If I'd only time, you need not fear.

My darling! a drink from that stoup of thine, Be it water or be it wine.

She.

Many men travel along this way, All are thirsty but none can stay.

Take my pitcher and drink if you will, A thirsty man must have his fill.

He.

Your brows are arched by a pen, I swear, Your teeth are pearls--I will treat you fair, Get down from my horse and wait an hour.

Give me your lips, my sweet, my flower.

She.

Roses and violets grow our groves, No one may pluck them but he who loves.

My brother has slaves, and sticks a-main; Drink and be off--it soon will rain!

He.

Darlingest dear! let it storm or rain, My wide felt cloak shall shelter us twain.

Pitcher and all, leap up and ride, We'll find a kiss at the water's side.

She.