Part 20 (1/2)

”Lo! I feel a new man. I am ready for anything--for everything!”

So, as he stood there, the memory--never very far distant from his mind in his moments of exaltation--of the Crystal Bowl of Life came back to him and he sang the last verse, his full voice rolling away among the hills:

”Clear Crystal Bowl, I laugh as I quaff.

Bring me Life's whole! I won't take the half!

Crystal Bowl, I bid thee bring to me Joy, Grief, Life, Death.”

”Where didst learn that song, sonling?” said his mother, fondly. ”And how well thou singest now! Thou hast learnt much of late, Babar.”

”I learnt it,” replied her son, his face sobering, ”from my cousin Gharib. Dost know, motherling,” he added swiftly, the light coming back to his eyes, ”I learnt more of him than I wist at the time.

Sometimes I think I owe all to him.”

”All?” echoed the Khanum, hurt. ”Dost owe nothing to me--or at least to thy grandmother?”

Babar's face showed whimsically reverent. ”Oh, yea! Oh, yea!” he a.s.sented readily; ”I owe much to my revered grandparent; yet at this present it shows but little.”

And he pointed to the two ragged tents, the two hundred tatterdemalions. ”I would I were a tulip at times,” he added irrelevantly, as he flung himself down on the gra.s.s that was all starred with the blood-red blossoms. ”Think of it, motherling! To lie cosy all winter at your own heart, and when the sun has warmed the world to unfurl your banner and flaunt it independent--disobedient, if you choose!”--he rolled over on his stomach to look clear into one ruby cup--”Yea! little one!” he said patronisingly. ”Rightly art thou called '_na farman_.'[2] Thou holdest thine own treasure secure, caring for none--yet will I touch it with my hand,” and the tip of his long finger dived into the chalice to touch the stiff stamens, and come out all covered with pale, yellow pollen. ”An augury!” he said gravely, as he smeared his forehead with the powder of life. ”Lo! I am marked like a Hindu--I shall conquer Hind yet.”

[Footnote 2: Contempt.]

”G.o.d forgive thee, child,” exclaimed his mother hastily. ”Say not such things--they tempt Providence. Even not thyself to an idolater.”

Babar looked contrite. ”Yet if I conquer Hind, I cannot kill all my subjects,” he replied thoughtfully. ”There is a puzzle for thee, motherling--how to be true Mussulman and yet not a fool?”

His mother looked at him and shook her head. Dear son as he was, always loving, always affectionate, he had a bad habit of getting away from her ken mentally and bodily. It all came of leading such a wandering life. If only he would marry and settle down. But there seemed no chance of either.

Yet Fate held the latter to close quarters. It almost seemed as if that shaving of his beard, that setting aside once and for all of his boyish aspirations had had a magical effect on Babar's environments; for within two months, seated at his ease in a splendid tent, he was writing in his diary:

”The Lord is wonderful in His might! That a man, master of twenty or thirty thousand retainers, should, in the s.p.a.ce of half-a-day, without battle, without contest, be reduced to give up all to a needy fugitive like myself, who had only two hundred tatterdemalions at his back (and they, all in the greatest want); that he should no longer have any power over his own servants, nor over his own wealth, nor even his own life, was a wonderful disposition of the Omnipotent!”

Undoubtedly! And as the enemy who was thus discomfited was no less a person that Khosrau-Shah, the man who had so treacherously caused Prince Baisanghar to be strangled, it is certain that his lack of power over his own life was a sore temptation to Babar. The man undoubtedly deserved death: it was indeed conformable to every law, human and divine, that such should meet with condign punishment. But an agreement had been entered into, so he must be left free and unmolested, and allowed to carry off as much of his personal property as he could.

For Babar was no promise-breaker. Perhaps also the memory of poor, miserable Khosrau's appearance when this pompous man (who for years had wanted nothing of royalty save that he had not actually proclaimed himself King) presented himself for audience and bent himself twenty-five or twenty-six times successively, and went and came back, and went and came back, till he was so tired that he nearly fell forward in his last genuflection, may have weighed with the keen young observer. The man was getting old; let him go with his sins upon his head.

So he went. And Babar with the thirty thousand retainers at _his_ back set out promptly for Kabul.

His paternal uncle, its King, had died leaving a young son. A perfidious minister had ousted this boy from the throne, but had himself been a.s.sa.s.sinated at a grand festival. Thereinafter all was disorder and tumult. Fitting opportunity then for a _coup d'etat_.

So, over the peaks and pa.s.ses, Babar at the head of a movable column pa.s.sed swiftly. Still more swiftly--since surprise is the essence of success--when news came that the usurper for the time being had left Kabul at the head of his army to intercept another adversary. The instant this information was received, the young leader gave his orders; within an hour the force was on the march. A hill pa.s.s lay before them; it must be mastered ere dawn; they must go up and up all the night through, the laden mules stumbling over the stones, dismounted troopers hauling their horses up rock ladders. A troublous time, indeed; but at last the crest of the hill was reached, and there, bright to the South, showed a star.

The young leader's heart leapt to his mouth--Could it--could it be Canopus?--the lucky star of the conqueror? The star of which he had read--the star he had never seen before ...

”That--that cannot be _Soheil_,” he said almost timorously.