Live in the living hour,
Fortune is fickle.
To thy lips, laughing flower,
Let good wine trickle.
Who hoardeth wealth to leave
He is a ne'er-do-well.
Who lives to rail and grieve
He is an infidel.
Rest in thy cypress shade,
Fill the cup higher,
Drink to each merry maid,
Drink to desire.
So saith the cup bearer,
So sings the lyre.
--Hafiz.
The Hall of Labour lay deserted as if the artificers who worked in its
surrounding arcades had taken profit by the wisdom of Hafiz which came
trilling from the furthermost, sun-saturated end of the long
parallelogram of roof in which Akbar's especial artificers laboured at
especial tasks.
It was a quaint place this Hall or rather Roof of Labour, for it was
set high between the higher palaces which rose around it on three
sides. The fourth was arcaded as were the others, but in dummy
fashion, that is to say with the shallow archways filled in with brick
work--and gave on the wide plains of India, which were, however,
invisible because of the height of the wall. Most things, indeed of
the outside world were invisible from the Hall of Labour; you had to
go through the sentry-guarded door opposite the hidden plains before
you could get rid of a certain sense of imprisonment, of absorption in
duty. The artificers in the cell-like workshops on the left hand of
the doorway, were, however, better off in this case than those on the
right, since the superstructure above these was but cell wide, and so
from their farther ends, high, unattainable windows, partially bricked
up, let in a cross light on lathes and crucibles, paint-brushes, and
even inkpots; for in one of them near the door Budaoni, the historian,
used to sit most days engaged on his uncongenial task of translating
the Hindu scriptures, and glaring at another writer over the way who
was copying the translation of the Gospels for which Akbar had paid
the Jesuits a round sum of money. Money not quite honestly earned,
since the text was deftly doctored to suit Jesuit dogma! But even if
this had been known it would have mattered little to the jealousies of
the rival writers.
Farther down this left hand side worked a chemist employed in testing
atomic weights, an engraver busy over a ruby intaglio, an
experimentalist attempting to prove the properties of quicksilver in
the transmutation of metals, a worker in gold on crystal, and so on;
till at the end came an empty arcade with shut door, then William
Leedes's workshop, and on the other side the studio of Diswunt the
crippled painter. He was especially favoured, for in addition to the
high window which, like those in the other cells gave on the Court of
Dreams--on the opposite side of which stood the King's Sleeping
Palace--he had a corbeilled balcony overlooking the Indian plain; at
least so much of it as could be seen by reason of the towering Arch of
Victory which thrust itself skyward from its great plinth of steps.
Looking downward, one could see them receding in sharp angles almost
to the bottom of the rocky ridge. No place here, therefore, for escape
or entry, so Diswunt was allowed the luxury of light, even when his
great wide door was shut. He kept it so constantly; for he was morose
by birth, embittered by the accident of it.
And yet the idle rhymes of Hafiz came to his lips as he sate
irresolute, thinking of the paradise one woman had promised him if he
did something--a mere trifle!--for her; of the hell with which another
woman had threatened him should he fail to do the same thing. It was
too bad to have duty and pleasure on the same side; and against
them--what? Only loyalty to the man who seeing him--then a mere beast
of burden--as he paused in the bazaar to make, with a bit of the
charcoal he was carrying and a white-washed wall, a spirited sketch of
a dog gnawing a bone, had sent him for training to the Court School of
Painting. That, after all, had been but a sorry action! Diswunt looked
distastefully at his work--a portrait of Akbar small enough to go into
a ring--and his whole soul went out to charcoal and a white wall.
For the misshapen lad whose face had the brilliant, bizarre beauty of
strongly marked feature which so often goes with physical deformity,
was without doubt part of the sixteenth century crop of genius, of
which so much has remained to the world, so much more has passed out
of it, unwitting even of itself.
His eyes, as he sate listlessly, were dull with the hemp he drank
habitually to deaden the depth of his discontent.
For Akbar had not been able to uphold, against the whole artistic
verdict of his court, his own opinion that the "portrayal of real life
gave special facilities for true education since every touch that went
toward the likeness of reality must make the painter feel his own
impotence to bestow life, and so lead him to a right appreciation of
the immeasurable dignity of the Creator."
They had been brave words, but they had ended in stipplings and blobs
of white paint to imitate pearls!
Yet there were some who thought as he, Diswunt the King's crippled
painter thought. He shivered as he remembered the day but a week ago,
when the infidel jeweller next door, with whom he had scraped up an
acquaintance, had replied to a question he had asked in the lingua
franca of mixed Portuguese and Arabic which served as court jargon for
strangers.
"Nay friend! such missals, such pictures as these Jesuits bring are
but monkish work. There be other painters over the black water. Lo! I
studied for a while under one in Italia. Stay! I bethink me to have
backed yonder chart on the wall with a copy. Turn it round and see!"
See! Diswunt had seen little else since! It was only a bad copy in red
chalk of a torso by Michael Angelo, all blurred and half effaced, but
it had been a master key, opening the door of real art to the lad,
driven half crazy by dreams and drugs. Since then he had closed his
door, and the stippled face of Akbar had not received a single touch;
but the back of that closed door, which was made after Indian fashion,
of plain whitewashed wood nailed to a strong outside frame-work,
showed the cloudy smearings of much charcoal.
Should he, or should he not? It was close on noon. The silence told
that the artificers were putting by their tools. Stay, they were
beginning again! How was that?
He set the door wide open and carefully fastened it back, then looked
out. The reason of this brisking up to business was evident, for the
King, followed as usual by Birbal and Abulfazl, was crossing the
court. Not that he noticed the general activity; his objective was
William Leedes's workshop; for it having been notified that the first
facet of the diamond had been duly cut, he was keen to see it. But the
sight of his protege Diswunt at his door made him forget his hurry, to
pause and say kindly:
"Come thou, with the artist's eye, and help Akbar hold his own with
these ignorant ones who have it that dulness equals God's luck." He
flashed round half-contemptuous raillery even at Birbal.
"Nay sire!" retorted the latter, "If the Light of the World will
pardon his slave, we do but hold that the King's Luck equals
Brightness."
But Akbar's quick imagination was already caught by the angular speck
of clear dark sheen which showed like a shadow on the dull radiance of
the uncut diamond, as it lay matrixed in the cutter's lathe. So dark,
but so clear.
"It is like a door," he cried exultantly. "Look! Diswunt, is it not as
a door through which one might pass and see what other folks see not."
"And therefore desire not!" put in Birbal quickly. "My liege it is not
yet too late. Let yonder flaw made of man remain as an outlet or inlet
for Akbar's dreams; but let the remainder be, as it has always been, a
sign of sovereignty to the people. Ask Abulfazl here. What thinkest
thou Diwan-jee, is there danger in this thing or no?"
"There is the chance of it," replied the King's Prime Minister,
slowly. "I can say no more, no less."
But Birbal was more vehement. "It is more than chance; it is
certainty. I have my finger on the pulse of the people. Already it
beats irregularly. Had I but the power----"
"Peace! Birbal," said the King, sternly. "Thou hast it not!" Then
turning to William Leedes he continued as if nothing had been said.
"And the next?"
The jeweller pointed to the mathematical diagrams at which he had been
working.
"That is as fate and figures will have it, my liege. I labour to lose
as little as may be."
Akbar's eyes twinkled, he gave a boyish laugh. "For fear of cutting
out the King's luck? Lo! that should satisfy thee, Birbal."
"Not one whit, sire," replied the latter stanchly. "Birbal knows his
own mind; and by all the gods in Indra's heaven, had I not been put in
charge of ill-luck by the King's order--I--I would have stolen luck
for him."
He laughed lightly giving his usual slight shrug of the shoulder; but
Diswunt turned away suddenly and stood looking out on the sunlight.
Should he, should he not? It meant paradise, it meant escape from hell
according to two women; but _this_ was a man; and the King's best
friend, the keenest intellect in the court.
"I stay!" he said curtly to the sentry who came to keep watch and ward
while William Leedes went out for the mid-day recess.
"Best not!" remarked the latter casually. "Art needs rest, and thou
has been at it ever since thou didst see Michael Angelo. Lo! were I to
work unceasing at my problem I should grow crazy with angles and take
a month where a week would suffice."
"Take the month an thou willst" retorted the cripple ill-humouredly as
he banged to his door.
So there was no hurry! He had a week wherein to do the little thing
that was asked of him. Only to wile the jeweller from his cell for one
brief minute.
It was, however, but two days afterward, that he stood at the lintel
of William Leedes's workshop. Something had gone wrong with the
latter's calculations and he had lingered after the Hall of Labour had
emptied. The lad's eyes were bloodshot, his hands were trembling with
the hemp he had drunken. And then suddenly he walked over to the
diamond. "Truly, as the King said, it is like a door" he murmured, "a
door through which men could see--but these men can see naught. Though
every line is true--they cannot see it."
"Cannot see what?" asked William Leedes abstractedly from his
compasses.
For answer Diswunt gave a wild jeering laugh and clutched the jeweller
by the wrist.
"Come and see it; _thou_ canst see! Come, I say--nay! thou must come
and tell me if I be fool utterly."
His door, set wide, almost elbowed that of the jeweller's, and,
overborne by Diswunt's wild appeal, William Leedes found himself on
its threshold.
"Not that! not that!" almost yelled the lad, his half insane, reckless
laughter echoing loudly through the arches. "Didst think I brought
thee to see the pattering of flies-paws. Stand forward a bit--so
forward----"
The wide door, as he set it aswing, enforced his demand; and what it
brought to view as it swung, astonished William Leedes to
forgetfulness and left him silent with admiration.
It was a hunting piece in rough charcoal. A buck standing at bay amid
a herd of hyenas; but there was something more in it than that and
William Leedes involuntarily crossed himself.
"Thou hast a devil, Diswunt," he said at last, and once more the
half-mad painter's high, reckless laugh filled the arches.
"So! thou canst see! Dost mark the Tarkhan's sneer, the Chamberlain's
cold glare?"
It was true. Something in the noble poise of the stag's head was
reminiscent of the King, and each one of the savage beasts surrounding
it recalled by some witchery of touch or line the foremost of the
King's enemies.
"Lo! yonder is the stupidity of the Makhdum," went on Diswunt
punctuating his words by that high laugh; "yonder the self-satisfaction
of Budaoni, the fat foolishness of Ghiass Beg." He paused, almost as
if listening to the faint echo of his laughter in the roof. Then sudden
seriousness came to him.
"But he will escape them, _now_. Dost see the javelin to the right
yonder--that shall save him and his Luck."
The last word came curiously clear as if intended to awake
remembrance. It did so.
"By'r Lady!" cried William Leedes, "I had a'most forgot." He was back
in his workshop in a moment to find the diamond matrixed as ever in
its place, with the darker sheen of the first facet showing full of
promise.
But Diswunt stood at the lintel and looked out, not at the sunshine
but at the door of the empty workshop next to William Leedes. It
quivered slightly as if wind were behind it, or as if someone were
gently closing a bolt.