After his father's death Atmâ betook himself to Lahore, where dwelt
Lehna Singh, only brother of the departed Sikh. A man of a totally
different cast of mind, he had early adopted a commercial life, and now,
in the enjoyment of a vast fortune, yet undiminished by the
contingencies of war, lived in luxury and opulence, his dwelling
thronged by Sikhs whose possessions, unlike his own, had melted away in
the national catastrophe. The fact of his house being the rendezvous of
a discontented faction did not escape British vigilance, the more so as
Lehna Singh was one of the eight sirdars appointed to sit in council
with the British Resident. But the confidence of his countrymen in him
remained unshaken by the appearance among them of British envoys in
military state, bearing despatches to the friend of the national foe,
and the questionable attitude of Lehna became to the Resident daily more
and more the subject of suspicious surmisings.
Indeed, a whisper was afloat of secret messages from Feragpore,
whither, before the war, had been removed the Ranee Junda Kovr, deposed
Queen of the Punjaub, as a consequence of a detected plot against the
life of the Resident, which, together with her sullied reputation,--for
she had many lovers,--had induced the council to pronounce her an unfit
guardian for the little Maharajah, her son. This clever woman, a
constant source of vexation to the Resident, had long forfeited the
respect of friend and foe; but her intrepidity, cunning, and
unscrupulous thirst for power conspired to render her formidable to the
one, and to the other a partisan to be courted and retained. Her
messages of insolent defiance to the Durbar are historic, but of the
countless schemes and intrigues in which she continued to play the part
of chief conspirator we have only heard a portion. Suffice it to say
that the faithlessness of her policy alike towards adversary, or ally,
and the scandal of her retinue of lovers, had gained for her an
ill-repute, that combined with the watch set upon her movements by the
British to render men chary of dealings with the little court at
Feragpore, where she held mimic state.
But of all these tales of craft and crime Atmâ knew nothing. To him all
men were valiant and all women fair and good, and the wife and child of
Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjaub, were invested in his fond
imaginings with ideal excellence. "To the pure all things are pure," or,
as a later genius has voiced it, "He who has been once good is forever
great," and Atmâ lived in the corrupt atmosphere of his uncle's house,
and took no hurt; nay, his spiritual life by its own dynamic force grew
and thrived, for, governed by other laws than those that control our
physical natures, the food of the soul is what it desires it to be, and
moral poison has often served for nutriment. It is death to souls that
desire death. In another sense than Bonaparte's, every man born unto the
world may say, "I make circumstances."
And the spacious abode of Lehna Singh had loveliness enough to veil the
sordid character of the life that was lived within its walls. Atmâ had
not been ignorant of his kinsman's wealth and importance; but it is one
thing to hear of wealth and to ponder in critical mood the fleeting
nature of this world's weal, and quite another to gaze with the eye on
the marvellous results of human thrift. He wandered through lofty and
spacious apartments, whose marble arches seemed ever to reveal a fairer
scene than had yet met his view. A mimic rivulet ran from room to room
in an alabaster channel, and the spray of perfumed fountains cooled the
air. Flowers bloomed, leafy vines trailed over priceless screens, and
countless mirrors repeated the joyous beauty of the place. He beheld
with admiration the gilded and fretted walls and stately domes, the new
delights of a palace charmed every sense, and, appealing to poetic
fancy, awoke a rapture whose fervency was due less to the entrancement
of his present life than to the contemplative habit of one who had first
known harmony whilst gazing on the stars, and awaked to the
consciousness of beauty among the eternal hills. The ripple of the
streamlet in these palace halls revived a half-forgotten music of the
heart that had once responded to the gurgle of a brook.
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."
The sympathies that had once been in unison with the rustling thicket
stirred into more definite life when an artificial breeze swept by and
stirred the heavy foliage of rare plants. He had caught in other days
notes of Nature's vast melody. Stray notes were here made to beat to a
smaller measure. Thus Art interprets Nature. It was not The Song, but a
light and pleasant carol, which pleased the sense of many, and to the
ear of the few brought a haunting pain of which they did not know the
meaning. Such a one only sighed and said:
"In a former birth I was great and good, and my life was sublime. The
ghost of its memory has touched me."
O melody divine, of fantasy
And frenzied mem'ry wrought, advance
From out the shades; O spectral utterance,
Untwine thy chains, thy fair autocracy
Unveil, have being, declare
Thy state and tuneful sovereignty.
Ye gifted ears,
To whom this burdened, sad creation
Sings, now in tones of exultation
Abruptly broken,
Anon in direst lamentation
Obscurely spoken,
Possess your souls in hope, the time
Is coming when th' harmonic chime
Of circling spheres in chant sublime
Will lead the music of the seas,
And call the echoes of the breeze
To one triumphal lay
Whose harmony, whose heavenly harmony
Sounding for aye
In loud and solemn benedicite,
Voices the glory of the Central Day,
And through th' illimitable realms of air
Is borne afar
In wafted echoes that the strain prolong
Through boundless space, and countless worlds among,
Meas'ring the pulsing of each lonely star,
And sounding ceaselessly from sphere to sphere
That note of immortality
That whispers in the sorrow of the sea,
And in the sunrise, and the noonday's rest,
And triumphs in the wild wind's meek surcease,
And in the sad soul's yearning unexpressed,
And unexpressive for perpetual peace.
But the loveliest of Lehna Singh's possessions was Moti, his daughter
and only child, the fame of whose beauty had even reached Atmâ in his
mountain home. Of her he had dreamt through boyhood's years, and a
happy consciousness of her proximity foreshadowed the enchanted hour
when he was to behold her and own that his fondest fancies were to her
loveliness as darkness to noonday. Her name he had heard whispered in
the gay throng of her father's guests, on the memorable first evening of
his arrival there; but, strange to tell, next day, when these first
hours in a palace seemed to his excited imagination a dream in which
mingled in wildest confusion the glitter of diamonds, the perfume of a
thousand flowers, the revel of dazzling colors, the bewildering music of
unknown instruments, and the intoxication of wonder and bliss, there
rang through all only one articulate voice, sounding as if from some
leafy ambush amid vague laughter and murmurs of speech, saying:
"But I tell you that Rajah Lal Singh means to pluck the rose of Lehna
Singh's garden!"