_Fling back thy veil, Beloved! Lo! how long
Shall it avail
To hide thy womanish nature, and so wrong
Thy beauty frail_.
"Is it thou, Siyala?"
Atma holding the cresset high peered out into the darkness of the
stair.
A tinkle of soft laughter came from the shadows. "So! thou hast not
forgotten the old signal, Ato! yet it was years agone that I gave thee
the bracelet, and thou gavest me thine. Still have I come for the sake
of it! That is enough, Yasmeen! I stay here till an hour ere dawn;
then fetch me."
The last was called in a low voice down the darkness and thereinafter
followed the sound of retreating steps; yet still no figure showed in
the circle of cresset light.
"Wilt not come in Siyal?" said Atma impatiently, "if by chance someone
came and found us women----"
Another tinkle of laughter rose from the shadows and out of them
stepped swaggering a slender youth, the very print and spit of
fashion, made taller by a high-wound turban, his hand on the jewelled
scimitar stuck in his tight-wound girdle.
"They would say that Atma Devi had found a proper lover," laughed the
masquerader. "La! Atma, on my soul I do love thee!--thou art so
monstrous serious, and thy large eyes have a fire in them. Be mine,
sweet widow!"
"Peace, Siyal! This is not time for jesting. Come in and let me shut
the door. I have matters of privacy to say."
"Say on," retorted the other gaily, "but not here. And call me not
Siyal! I am thy true lover Sher-Khan. In truth, Atma," here the voice
changed to seriousness, "this disguise was necessary, seeing where I
bide! In God's truth we bazaar women have to go for trickery to the
chaste zenanas. I had but to tell Yasmeen I wished to go out and
this"--she touched her costume--"was forthcoming _instanter_. Lo! I
shall doubt every likely lad I see for the future as myself
disguised!--who knows, indeed, but what I was born to be a man! Come
sweetheart, I cannot talk here! Come with thy Sher-Khan."
She stepped forward and laid her hand on Atma's wrist.
"Whither?" asked the latter, feeling as she looked at the feminine
face set in masculine clothes the nameless charm of the woman in the
man, the man in the woman. "And wherefore?"
The answer came short and sharp. "Because if I am missed they will
seek me here first. Mihr-un-nissa knows, and she--she has no mercy
when she feels power! We will go to my paradise. I have the key still.
Lord! How I shall love it after this past fortnight of a virtuous
cage! Lo! the dew of heaven is not a satisfying drink! So"--she
snatched at the cresset, "follow me, sister--sweetheart--widow if thou
wilt--woman any way! Bah! how dark it is--truly they say 'the
torchbearer sees not his own steps.'"
Thus chattering in shrill whispers, she led the way. A key rattled in
a lock; there were more stairs, then another door opened and they
stood in Siyah Yamin's paradise.
A deserted paradise indeed! Dark, almost dreadful in its unseenness,
with only a rustle as of dead, dried flowers and leaves coming to them
with the faint breeze which blew in their faces from the darkness. A
faint scent, as of withered blossoms came with it.
Siyah Yamin closed the door with a bang, burst into a perfect cascade
of laughter, and then, out of sheer delight and devilry pirouetted and
postured down the central walk singing as she danced a _ghazal_ from
Hafiz:
Love! Love! It is Spring
Be thou of joyous heart
Truly the birds will sing
Roses be blossoming
Though we depart!
This is our little day!
This is the hour of play
Ere you and I be clay
Kiss me, my heart!
Kiss me alway.
With the cresset in her hand, its lights and shades falling on the
high turban with its waving green ends, on the effeminate embroideries
of her dandified dress, and bringing out into filmy clouds the long
floating coatee of gold-spangled white muslin worn as a loose overall,
she seemed like the very Spirit of Sex, neither male nor female,
careless of everything save reckless sensual pleasure.
So, suddenly, the lithe body stooped and from the cresset in her hand
one of the many little oil lamplets edging the paths and encircling
what had been flower beds ere neglect and noonday suns had left them
shrivelled, flickered into flame; then another, and another, and
another, as swaying, posturing, singing she danced on into the shadows
leaving behind her a pathway as of stars.
Ere she reached the pavilion at the further end and sank breathless
amongst its silken cushions, a dim radiance was suffused over the roof
showing the withered roses, the trailing dead tendrils of the scented
jasmine, the litter of spent blossoms, all the lees and dregs of a
past pleasure. The very table, low to the ground, its mother-o'-pearl
inlaying all dust-covered, still held a half emptied wine cup or two,
a leaf plate of half-rotten fruit.
"Lo! Siyala!" said Atma, suddenly looking almost tenderly at her
companion, as she lay, bathed in the rosy light of the hanging lamp
she had lit, "what art thou in very truth? Sometimes thou seemest to
me of the stars; at times thou art very earth."
The courtesan laughed. "I am Woman," she replied, flinging her high
turban aside and drawing the loose fallen tresses of her hair through
her fingers lazily, settling them in dainty fashion on her shoulders,
"I wait as I have waited all the long ages for the Man! Lo! I am ready
for his desire. I am the uttermost Nothingness which tempts Form. I am
Maya, illusion and delusion!"
Her voice full of music and charm fell on the ear drowsily.
"And thou, Atma," she went on, "shall I tell thee what thou art? 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 Atma'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? Ohe!
Atma! 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!"
Her small bejewelled hand closed on the empty air; yet Atma shivered:
that emptiness seemed to hold so much. She sate down on the steps and
resting her chin on her hand remained crouched in on herself, silent,
looking out over the dead roses.
"Lo! here is wine!" came the gay voice. "Pledge me in it, Atma! Does
not Hafiz say 'the cloister and the wine shop are not far apart?' No
more is thy woman's love from my woman's love. Why shouldst thou try
to make it man's love?"
My love is a burning fire,
And aloe-wood is my heart,
The censer is my desire,
Oh me! how I shrivel and smart!
Yet the flame mounts higher and higher:
Oh! love depart!
Make not a funeral pyre
Of censer and heart.
The trivial song ceased. Siyala slipping from her cushions had slidden
toward Atma, and now, her chin resting on the latter's broad shoulder,
was looking up at the brave steady face with cajoling menace in her
eyes.
"Why, and what willst thou, Ato? There is no third way. Woman must be
as I--the eternal Nothingness which Something sought in the beginning;
sought, tempted by the desire for Form; which men seek now tempted by
the Woman Form they have made! Tempted by me, the courtesan, who
drains the good from them and flings it sterile on the dust heap of
the world! Or they must be as thou art not: instinct with Motherhood,
draining the soul of man to hand it on in ceaseless conflict of sex,
of Form and Matter through the ages. But thou, Ato? Thou wouldst be
neither! Thou art mother of the past, not of the future. Thou wouldst
stand aside and give the man part of thee--'tis in all women even in
Siyah Yamin--thou wouldst give this man part which has come to thee
through thy fathers, back all untouched by thy womanhood to the man
thou lovest! Fool! There is no such love for us womenkind!"
"There thou tellest truth, Siyal," said Atma 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!"
She caught up her turban, coiled her long hair beneath it, thus stood
transformed at once into effeminate manhood. "And Sher-Khan," she
continued swaggering, "hath not had even one kiss--sweet widow!--the
perfume of thy hair is wrapped round my living soul----"
"Peace, Siyal," said Atma, who risen, stood sombre, thoughtful. "Then
I can do no more. I have warned thee. If thou swearest, I will speak."
"And I will deny--what then?"
"Then is my death----"
Siyah Yamin burst into a peal of laughter.
"Death! Trust the men folk--aye!--Trust the King to put a spoke in
that wheel! A woman is a woman, and thou art too good looking! Lord! I
shall laugh to see it, and thou so serious. Come! let us drink to our
success before we go."
She seized an empty wine cup, then stood looking at it for a second,
checked by the sight of it. It was a blown glass goblet damascened
with gold. She held it to the light, her small child's face grown
suddenly soft. "The cup of pleasure," she murmured to herself. "How
long is it since _he_ gave it!" So, with a laugh, she filled it to the
brim from a flagon that stood near.
"Thy health, Ato, and thy lover's!" she cried lightly. "Lo! he who
gave the cup was mine once; but Siyah Yamin will never lack for men,
since she is woman!"
She raised the cup to her lips but did not touch it, then, with a
sudden gesture flung it far into the shadows. It fell with a crash
beside a withered rose bush, and the red wine trickled through the dry
earth to moisten the roots below.
"Come, Atma." she continued. "Nay! leave the lights as they are. They
will outlast the stars anyhow!"
A minute later Siyah Yamin's paradise held nothing but the twinkling
lights flickering out one by one. Yet she was right. The rising sun
found some of them burning bravely and the rose-shaded lamp in the
pavilion shone persistently on the silken cushions as if seeking for
some one; perhaps for her.
* * * * *
The palace was early astir that morning, and little knots of men
waited gossiping in corridor and vestibule.
"It is not politic," sighed Abulfazl, "the common folk well ask who is
God's vice-regent on earth if a King's order is no order."
'"Tis the devil's own foolery," spoke up Birbal roughly, bitterly,
"the long beards wag loosely already, and if Akbar gives them a field
they will take a barn."
And in truth a certain ill-defined smirk sate on the concealed lips of
the learned doctors of the law who stood in a bevy near the door. To
them even consideration of the vexed question was a distinct score. It
was a confession that the usurper of their office did not know his
business.
To the general public assembling in force it was an occasion for
curiosity; for something new which might pave the way to almost
anything. Only the Syeds, their hawk faces clustering close together,
their hands clutching at their sword belts, seemed certain of the
future.
A burst of the royal kettledrums in the distance echoed finally over a
dense crowd, packing the wide arches of the huge Hall-of-Audience, and
stretching beyond them into the paved courtyard.
"If he wear the Luck still, it will be something to go by," muttered
a weak-looking courtier, who by his very dress--curiously
nondescript--his shaven chin and high green turban showed a desire to
run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
There were many such in Akbar's empire; men whose imaginations went so
far with the King, yet whose hearts failed them before the strangeness
of his dreams.
Another long, loud burst of wild music, and the King showed alone on
the high raised dais, canopied and latticed at the sides with fretted
marble, which opened at the back into the private passage reserved for
Royal use only. By reason of the limited space in which he stood--the
central archway rising but a few inches above his head--he looked
larger, taller, broader than his wont, and as he glanced keenly over
the packed multitude before him, he showed every inch a king. Yet he
was conscious that he, alone of all his empire, saw strength, not
weakness, in his readiness for reconsideration; that he, only, felt
that the revocation of his order would be a greater display of kingly
power than the original order itself.
Standing as he did in shadow, it took the crowd a silent second or two
before it realised--what to it was a stupendous fact--that in this
critical new departure of their King's he was prepared to defy Fate.
He had deserted his luck. The tight wound turban of royalty did not
show the dull glow of the great diamond.
A sort of shiver ran through the Hall, checked by the King's voice.
"Are the suitors and the witnesses in the case present?" he asked.
Abulfazl, stepping into the wide open square kept clear before the
railed dais, replied in the affirmative.
"Then proceed."
The sing-song voice of the court reader filled the hushed air, but
from outside, beyond the red-toothed arches, came the morning song of
many birds. The sunlight filtered in with the song, making Akbar's
attention wander. How trivial these petty questions of rights and
wrongs seemed beside the great questions of Life in itself.
"Bring forward the woman. Let her swear that she is true and lawful
wife."
The crowd swayed at the back. A domed red dhooli showed forcing its
way to the front.
"Room! Room!" cried the ushers. "Room! Room! for the virtuous."
If it was virtuous, there was still something in the very fall of the
swinging silk curtains, in the lift of the liveried bearers, which set
men's pulses a-bounding. For it was Siyah Yamin's dhooli and she was
inside. Would she unveil? Would they see her again, uttermost mistress
of art, absolute owner of guile? A faint sigh of disappointment seemed
to shudder through the crowd as, in obedience to order, the bearers
set down the dhooli and removed the red domed cover, thus disclosing a
muffled figure which rose and salaamed low toward Akbar. Something
there was of ultimate grace in the salutation, which made remembrance
still more clear, and sent a pang of resentment through many of those
present that this perfection should no longer be public property. A
cupola of chastity indeed! screened and guarded by veiled duennas! Not
one in faith, but two! It was preposterous!--Siyah Yamin! the darling
of the town!
"Woman!" came Akbar's voice, "wilt thou swear that thou art lawfully
wedded to the exiled Jamal-ud-din, Syed of Barha?"
There was an instant's pause, then a gay clear voice with a bubble of
laughter in it replied:
"Yea! I swear! even though Atma---- Where art thou, sister? Disguised
as yon duenna, I'll go bail!"
At her first word there was a faint scuffle, a flinging aside of a
_burka_, a silver flash, and almost ere she ended the Charan's cry
rang out
It is a lie
I, Atma, I
Give it the lie
Ye Bright Ones see me die
Avenge the lie!
The death-dagger of Atma Devi's race rose high in the air above the
silver fillet on her loosened hair, and the next moment it would have
been buried in the heart beneath the silver hauberk had not a man's
voice--not kingly at all in its hurried command--cried quickly:
"Hold her!"
As she staggered back, her balance gone by Birbal's swift arrest of
the blow, a mocking voice fell on her ear.
"Did I not tell thee so, sister! Thou art too good-looking for death!"
It had all passed so quickly that folks were still almost
incredulously craning to see, when sudden silence came to that group
on the clear square before the dais. To Siyah Yamin, muffled in her
chaste veil, to Atma Devi with her bare defiance, to Birbal's eager
acute face as he still held back that hand with the dagger.
"Speak! What hast thou to say?" said the King through the silence.
"This," came the reply, clear, resolute, as Atma Devi drew from out
her bosom a folded paper. "It was the death word of the King's
Charan."
"Take it and read," said the King, and Abulfazl stepping forward, took
the paper. His practised voice sounded sonorously through the wide
hall.
"Avenge the lie for which I die. Siyah Yamin is Siyala, daughter of
Gokal, Brahmin, of Chandankaura, Rajputana. We are sisters of the
veil. I saw her married with the Seven Steps and the Sacrificial Fire
to the death-dagger of my race which grants no divorce. She is Bride
of the Gods for ever and ever and ever. The Gods curse him who steals
her from them. Ye Bright Ones avenge the lie!"
"Is this true, woman?" asked the King, sternly.
From behind the veil came the gay mocking voice, "Let her prove it."
By this time the first shock of surprise was over, and men had begun
to turn to each other, questioning and appraising the validity of
Atma's plea.
"And even if she can prove it, Oh! Most-Illustrious," began Budaoni,
who from his translating work was cognisant of Hindu customs, "even if
this evil woman was dedicated to the Gods, what then? She has read the
creed, she hath become Musulman--she is duly married."
"If the Most-Illustrious will hear me," put in Birbal bowing
low--"hear me, Bhat, Brahmin, as one with knowledge and authority, I
will tell the Most-Just that this is no ordinary dedication of a girl
to the service of the Gods. _Deva-dasis_ there be--aye! even those
married to a dagger or a basil plant, on whom rests no life-long,
death-long tie. But this is not of those!--Married with the Seven
Steps to a Charan's death-dagger! Accursed be he----"
"Accursed be thou, Hindu!" cried a voice from the crowd, and in an
instant hands found sword-hilts and faces grew fierce.
"Sire! He is right," called Rajah Man Singh. "The woman belongs to the
Gods--who claims her, takes her through my body!"
"Idolater!" rose an answering sneer, "what Islam claims is God's!"
But behind these voices in the packed mass of the crowd, men looked at
each other dubiously; Hindu at Mahommedan, Mahommedan at Hindu. Should
they claim this woman or let her go?
"If this slave may offer opinion," came Abulfazl's sonorous voice
above the growing clamour, "the question must wait for proof."
"Enough!" said Akbar sternly. He had been standing with bent brows
staring at Atma, and at the veiled figure beside her, lost in thought.
Then he turned to Birbal. "On thee, Maheshwar Rao, called by me
Birbal, the burden of inquiry shall rest. Speak. As thou wilt answer
to thy Gods, if what yon woman"--he pointed to Atma Devi--"says be
true, would this marriage to the dagger hold against all others?"
Quick and sharp came the answer. "The marriage is inviolable, sacred
for Time and for Eternity."
"Then there must be proof. What proof hast thou?" His voice softened
slightly with the words.
Atma Devi standing tall and straight flung her left arm skyward. "I
have none! None; save my own word. I saw it--we were children and I
cried because she left me. Yea! I remember the bitterness of my
tears."
There was a sudden gay laugh from the veilings at her side, a sudden
wreathing and curving of draperies, and in an instant the woman within
them stood revealed; revealed, not as the late wedded bride, not even
as Siyah Yamin the courtesan, but as Siyala the dancing girl of the
Gods. Her nut-brown body, bare save for the tiny gold-encrusted bodice
following each swelling line of her bosom, rose, seductively supple,
from the innumerable fulnesses of the thin white muslin skirt which
after clinging close to the loveliness of curve from hip to knees,
fulled out like a bursting flower weighted by its heavy banding of
gold tissue. She wore no veil, but her loose flowing hair was wreathed
with jasmine chaplets, and round her neck, floating with each
exquisite movement of her arms, was a multi-coloured gossamer silk
scarf, rainbow hued, evanescent, ever-recurring, holding in its
loopings, its doublings, something of the absolute grace of a coiling
serpent.
And through the wide hall packed full of men instinct with anger,
malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, there ran, swiftly, at the
mere sight of her, a common admiration, a common tremor of fear and
hope.
Even the King stepped back from her pure womanhood.
"Lo! Weep not Ato! Wherefore should any weep; when all life is for
laughter!" she said, and her polished voice sounded mysteriously
sweet. "Great King! she says truth. I am Siyal beloved of the Gods,
beloved of the Godhead in the man. I am no man's wife. I am no man's
mistress. I am free to have and hold."
She flung both arms forward to the crowd and the rainbow scarf leaping
up formed a halo round her head.
"Come! Come!" she murmured deeply, almost drowsily, "but seek not to
bind. Or ever you were, I was. Yet I am yours!" Her eyes flashed down
upon those liveried bearers of her dhooli, servants of her
courtesanship. "Raise me shoulder high, slaves," she cried, "so that
all may see Siyal the Beloved of the Gods, the beloved by men."
So shoulder high she stood smiling while a hoarse passionate breath
surged through the vast assembly.
And then, suddenly, she set up the oldest chant in the world, the
golden jingles about her feet clashing to its rhythm, the heavy gold
bracelets sliding and clashing on her arms as she waved them in the
dance of the _devaad-asi_--
I am the dancer Prakrit,
The wanton of change and unrest,
And the sound of my dancing feet
Roused the Sleeper self-em-meshed,
And the eyes that were blind with peace
Looked out and saw I was sweet,
So the worlds whirled to my feet
And Life grew big with Increase.
Death danced in the arms of Birth
And Tears were coupled with Mirth
And Cold things hurried to Heat
And Heat to Flame and Fire,
Till the whole world, racked with desire,
Kept time to my dancing feet.
"Prakrit! Prakrit!"
She paused in her swift twirling and the long sinuous end of her
silken scarf which had floated round her undulating, almost alive in
its likeness to the clutching creeping arm of an octopus, hovered in
the air for a second then fell on her outstretched arm in delicate
desireful folds.
Something like a faint sigh breathed through the audience. There was
no other sound. Every man was spellbound, as swaying, posturing,
yielding, she went on, allure in her eyes, her voice--
I am the Woman Prakrit,
The Keeper and Wanton of Sex,
And the clash of my dancing feet
Is a lure that ruins and wrecks.
Men's lips touch mine and desire
The Nothingness that is sweet,
And their souls flock to my feet
To die in a kiss of fire.
And I give them Death for Life,
And I bring them Sorrow and Strife,
As I suck their senses away
As they follow and follow for aye
The fall of my dancing feet.
Prakrit! Prakrit!
"Prakriti!--Prakriti!--Prakriti!"
The answering cry came multitudinously. But on it came the voice of
the King.
"Syeds of Barha! Do you claim this woman or shall she go?"
There could be but one answer, with that unveiled, unabashed figure,
challenging every eye, flaunting before all men, making their very
bodies and souls thrill to the cadence of her dancing feet.
The Syeds' hands felt their sword hilts sullenly, but their spokesman
had no choice of words.
"Let her go. We of Barha harbour no harlots--no idolaters."
So through the audience, in obedience to her sign, the servants of her
courtesanship carried her, seated, discreetly smiling, decorously
salaaming. But once outside, the crowd which followed her to
Satanstown caught up the song she had sung and bellowed it to the
skies, filling the lanes and byways with the tale which, told so many
ways, brings the mind back at last to the beginning of all things--to
the "Sleeper sleeping self-em-meshed."
As the procession passed a narrow turn, two men dressed as natives,
almost of native complexion, yet of such curious dissimilarity of
features from the crowd around them that the eye picked them out
instinctively as strangers, stood back on a high piled doorstep to
escape the crush.
"_Vadre retro Satanas_" muttered the taller of the two, crossing
himself and thus giving a glimpse of a violet ribbon on his breast
hung with the Portuguese Order of Christ. Its white cross charged upon
a red one glistened for an instant in the sun like silver.
They were Jesuit missionaries, and the smaller of the two, as he
watched, crossed himself also and murmured under his breath, "God help
us! She is like a Madonna!"
And, in truth, Siyah Yamin silent, possibly fatigued by the
excitement, seated with her childish face upraised, her eyes seemingly
full of wistful thought fixed on vacancy, as if somewhere out of sight
lay something very precious, looked innocent enough to touch that
other pivot of feminine life, Motherhood.
And I give them Death for Life,
And I bring them Sorrow and Strife,
And I suck their senses away
As they follow and follow for aye
The fall of my dancing feet.
Prakrit! Prakrit!
The chorus bellowed out to the skies, as the procession swept on,
leaving Father Ricci and Father Rudolpho Acquaviva to continue their
way to the little mission chapel which Akbar had built for them.
So they went on their way, while in lessening sound came the chorus
which holds the Secret of the Sin for which all religions promise
forgiveness.
It brought a vague, throbbing restlessness to the hot air.