“This is true. Go first, wife, and I follow. Let not the door swing to
behind thee. But oh, to see thy beauty once more that is the very speech
of Gods with men! Wilt thou surely come again to me and again be fair?”
And for all answer she smiled upon him, and at his feet performed the
obeisance of the Rajput wife when she departs upon a journey; and they
went out together, the Queen unveiled.
As she passed through the Princes, they lowered their eyes so that none
saw her; but when she stood on the steps of the palace, the women all
turned eagerly toward her like stars about the moon, and lifting their
arms, they began to sing the dirge of the Rajput women.
So they marched, and in great companies they marched, company behind
company, young and old, past the Queen, saluting her and drawing courage
from the loveliness and kindness of her unveiled face.
In the rocks beneath the palaces of Chitor are very great caves--league
long and terrible, with ways of darkness no eyes have seen; and it
is believed that in times past spirits have haunted them with strange
wailings. In these was prepared great store of wood and oils and
fragrant matters for burning. So to these caves they marched and,
company by company, disappeared into the darkness; and the voice of
their singing grew faint and hollow, and died away, as the men stood
watching their women go.
Now, when this was done and the last had gone, the Rani descended the
steps, and the Rana, taking a torch dipped in fragrant oils, followed
her, and the Princes walked after, clad like bridegrooms but with no
faces of bridal joy. At the entrance of the caves, having lit the torch,
he gave it into her hand, and she, receiving it and smiling, turned once
upon the threshold, and for the first time those Princes beheld the face
of the Queen, but they hid their eyes with their hands when they had
seen. So she departed within, and the Rana shut to the door and barred
and bolted it, and the men with him flung down great rocks before it so
that none should know the way, nor indeed is it known to this day; and
with their hands on their swords they waited there, not speaking, until
a great smoke rose between the crevices of the rocks, but no sound at
all.
(Ashes of roses--ashes of roses!--Ahi! for beauty that is but touched
and remitted!)
The sun was high when those men with their horses and on foot marched
down the winding causeway beneath the seven gates, and so forth into the
plains, and charging unarmed upon the Moslems, they perished every man.
After, it was asked of one who had seen the great slaughter,--
“Say how my King bore himself.”