Part 29 (1/2)
”But my Yenkam, thy mother, will be here--” protested Babar.
Ma'asuma shook her head. ”It is _now_, dear heart! And foster-sister will not come unless thou askest her. She said so. Couldst not write to her, Babar?”
”But I know not foster-sister, nor aught of her, save that she was good to my Ma'asuma, for which, may Heaven reward her!”
Ma'asuma sat up, her charming face happy in thought. ”Oh! so good, my lord! Not a real foster-sister, either; but we sat under one veil and drank milk out of one cup. That was when we first came to Khorasan, thy Yenkam and I. And since then she--Babar!--Be not angry but I will tell thee--I meant to have told thee--I should have told thee before--”
The violet eyes showed trouble once more and Babar kissed them deliberately. ”What, sweetheart?” he asked carelessly. He knew the gentle kindly heart too well to fear any revelation.
”Only it was she, not I, who wrote the verses--the verses I sent--I was too stupid. And she is clever--oh! so clever!”
Despite his cert.i.tude the young man looked startled. ”So,” he said at last, ”Fortune hath not given me the grace of a poetess to wife. So be it. But who is this paragon?”
Ma'asuma, however, was too delighted at having got over her confession so happily to refrain from autocratic dignity.
”That I have said. She is foster-sister and of the circle of distinction. Thy Yenkam can tell thee of genealogies; they tire my head. So write! Dost hear?”
Babar laughed. He loved to take orders from those sweet lips; besides a certain zest came with the idea of writing to an unknown poetess.
”Yea! I will write,” he said meekly, ”but I will have to regard _zals_ and _zes_; for more elegant _nastalik_ saw I never than hers.”
So the letter was written and despatched express to the care of his Yenkam at Khorasan, and six weeks later little Ma'asuma sat beside her foster-sister in the summer house of the new Garden of Fidelity which Babar was laying out at Adinahpore, and whither he had taken his young wife whose daily increasing delicacy filled him with concern. Of all the gardens that Babar planted and watered, this was the one nearest his heart. In a most romantic situation, on the south side of, and overlooking the river, its groves of oranges and citrons grew untouched by hard winter frosts, while every flower, every tree of his beloved hill country flourished side by side with those of warm climates. Above it towered the White-Mountain and the Almond-Spring Pa.s.s, below it the valley debouched into wide fertility.
And Babar was hard at work, delving away himself like any Adam; making a four-square cross of marble reservoirs, through which the clear, hill stream might run, planting new flowers from here, there, everywhere. The tan of his sunburnt face and hands contrasted sadly with the sallowing skin of the girl-wife, who, despite his care, was sinking under her task of son-bearing.
”Then he knows not who I am,” said the tall, slender woman on whose knee Ma'asuma was resting her pretty, weary head. ”I deemed thou hadst told him, as we agreed.” She spoke gravely and her level black brows were faintly knit. The rest of the face was richly beautiful in strong sweeping curves, but those level brows and the dark, thoughtful eyes beneath them held the attention. ”Not that it matters,” she added quickly, seeing tears ready to brim over the violets upturned to her.
”After all, 'tis nothing to thy lord--or to any other man--whether I be widow to Mirza Gharib Beg or no, so long as I be honourable woman.
Therefore tell him not, now that I am here.” And Babar coming in to see his wife found the veiled new-comer courteous in speech, charming in manner. Found also such favourable change in his darling's spirits, that a glow of comrades.h.i.+p for his _aide_ rose up in his soft heart at once.
So they were very happy together, those three, and by degrees foster-sister's thick enshrouding veil was changed for a more filmy one and Babar could get a glimpse of those glorious eyes and see the little satirical smile about the strong curves of the mouth.
They reminded him vaguely, why he knew not, of his dead Cousin Gharib; but he never spoke of this to Ma'asuma. With her burden of coming life it would be unlucky to speak of the dead. Thus a week or two went by, and all insensibly the man learnt to rely on the woman who shared with him the charge of the girl.
”The Most-Benevolent one is very good to my wife,” he said suddenly one day, ”and my grat.i.tude can only lie in words.”
The Most-Benevolent bowed gravely. ”Thanks are not needed.
Ma'asuma-Begum came into this dust-like one's life, when it was unhappy. She hath been G.o.d's best boon to me.”
”And to me also,” answered the young husband sadly. Do what he would he could not escape from fear, the shadow of impending evil seemed to darken his life. He had to brisk and hearken himself up to face the future; for perilous times were at hand. The fateful seventh month, so much dreaded by Indian midwives was beginning; but his Yenkam would be with her daughter in a day or two, they would together take Ma'asuma back in her litter to Kabul by easy stages, and all would, all _must_, go well.
It was one glorious morning in early August when this feeling of ill to come, made him catch up his lute to chase away thought by song. He had carried little Ma'asuma himself down to the tank half surrounded by burnished orange trees which was the very eye of the beauty of the garden. They had dismissed all attendants, bidding them leave behind them their trays of sherbet and sweetmeats. But not even the perfect loveliness of hill, and sky, and garden, not even the faint flush, as of returning health, on the invalid's face could charm the splendour of Life into Babar's soul. The Crystal Bowl seemed dull, opaque.
This must not be.
He set the strings of his lute a-tw.a.n.ging and began--
”Clear crystal bowl. Thy wine bubbles laugh--”
The figure seated by the tank side, its reflection in the water, rose suddenly as if startled, gathered its draperies round it, so, with face averted, strolled off into the garden.