Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way.
_Omar Khayyam_.
Those first few days of despair were as a dream. The world and all
that is in it showed to Babar's eyes like a phantasy of sleep. He lay
and rested at a friendly village, passing from the extreme of famine
to plenty; from an estate of danger and calamity to peace and ease.
The nice fat flesh, the bread of fine flour well baked, the sweet
melons and excellent grapes in great abundance, all these made him
feel sensibly the pleasures of peace and plenty; for enjoyment after
suffering, abundance after want, come with an increased relish and
afford a more exquisite delight. It was the first time in his life
that he had passed from the injuries of his enemies and the pressure
of actual hunger to the ease of security, and he revelled in it like
the wholesome-hearted, and, for the time, mindless creature that he
was.
But memory of a sort came back to him after a few days and he grew
restless; so they marched on. And as he rode over the hills or walked,
leading his mother's pony, discontent began once more to leaven his
glad content. The world in these lower lying districts was beautiful
in the early springtide, but there was something more in life than
mere beauty. There was something else needed to make it splendid.
"I will go back to where we were in the White Mountains," he said one
day. "I was happy there and so was Dearest-One."
It was the first time he had mentioned his sister's name, and his
mother looked at him anxiously. But he said no more. Nature was
dealing in kindly fashion with him and bringing memory back by slow
degrees.
But at Bishagher, where they halted a few days, it was like to have
been otherwise, for there they came across an old duenna of Babar's
mother who having been left behind in Samarkand because of the
scarcity of horses, had, nothing daunted, trudged after her mistress
on foot. The two women sobbed on each other's necks, while the one
told and the other listened to the piteous tale of a marriage, which
after all had not been so bad as it might have been, because of old
Isan-daulet's masterful spirit. But they said nothing to the menfolk
about it all. It was as well that their boy should hear as few details
as possible.
And here--the first possible place for news since those long months of
siege--tidings came of family deaths at Tashkend. It was fourteen
years since Babar's mother had been there and seen her people, and
now, when they were hopeless, homeless, and when, moreover, she had
her old governess to serve her once more, the time seemed fitting for
a visit.
So she went, and for the first time for many years Babar was left
alone without any hostages to fortune.
And one of the first things he did with his liberty was to climb a
certain hill all set with flowers, which he and his sister had climbed
one spring day in the past. The gentians were as blue, the primulas as
pink as ever, and the mosaic of forget-me-nots and yellow crowsfoot
lay almost inconceivably bright as ever. The blue sky, grazing ground
for fleecy white flocks of clouds, stretched away beyond the hills to
that faint bluer line of distant Samarkand.
All was as it had been. And the green enamel frame set with jewels,
like flowers, lay on the transparent ice where she had put it. He had
not noticed that before; one could see through the slab--see green
grass-blades, and a half opened flower bud that had been held in chill
prison for years and years and years--It was quaint, utterly, when her
face, her portrait had gone! The rain had washed it away. The vellum
on which it had been painted lay white as snow.
Yes! quaint utterly. The icy grip had kept its hold, the warm sunshine
had let slip its prize. He sat down idly, his head resting in his
hands.
Yes! her face had gone! What matter now if there was place or grace
beside it for another? Poor Baisanghar! and poor--infinitely poorer
Dearest-One! For the first time the full meaning of what had happened
came over him; he turned round passionately, hid his face among the
flowers and cried like a child.
_Ishk_ and _ashk!_ Love and tears. How little divided them. So the
thought of his dead, crippled cousin came to him and the memory of
that vivid, fate-defying face stood between him and despair. The
Crystal Bowl! Yes! he would laugh as he quaffed: life had brought him
strange adventures; let her bring more! He was ready for them--quite
ready, in his manhood, to take what the years might hold. For boyhood
had gone. That had capitulated with Samarkand.
He did not formulate all this clearly; he simply felt it. Felt the
keen joy in life come back to him as he sat up once more and looked
out over God's beauties with still swimming eyes; and the tears were
magnifying glasses!
A quaint conceit that might be worked up into a couplet or perchance a
quatrain. Baisanghar would have done it finely: he worked well on such
finniken fancies. But he had been wrong in the verses he had written
on the back of the enamel frame. Were they there still? Aye! they had
been protected from the tears of rain.
He read the lines over, feeling as he read them that there was
something in them that lacked. So, as he felt, words came to him; for
he was born with that artistic temperament which cannot help trading
on its own most sacred emotions; perhaps because such natures see
vaguely that individualism is a snare to the soul, that all things
worth recording are part of a Greater Personality than their own. And
the outcome of feeling and words ran thus:--
"Seven thrones, seven sins, seven stars,
But not one thing that bars
Life's love, Life's tears.
The crushed grape fills the bowl
With wine for the sad soul
Beyond these years."
He jumped up feeling quite pleased with himself, for they were the
first verses in that measure he had ever composed!
After this when he was wandering barefoot over hill and dale, he would
sit down when he found some pleasant spot and string rhymes together;
for he was in a backwater, mentally and bodily. For twenty years he
had battled with Fate over trivialities; since what, after all, were
Ferghana and Samarkand and Hissar? Only tiny little bits of God's
earth. He was beginning to be a trifle weary of it all, to long for a
larger horizon. So he sent off on the pretext of getting news, the few
followers who had remained with him while he, Nevian-Gokultash,
and another wandered farther and farther, higher and higher up the
White Mountains until they reached the Roof-of-the-World. And there
they lodged awhile in the felt tents of a shepherd and lived on
sheeps'-milk, cheese and buckwheat-cakes. Their host was a man of some
eighty years; but his mother was still alive, and of extreme age,
being at this time no less than one hundred and eleven years old, and
in full possession of her faculties. Indeed, the circumstances of the
great Timur's invasion of India remained fresh in her memory owing,
doubtless, to her having been in her youth greatly interested in one
who had been in his army.
She was a hale old woman, smoke-dried yet apple-cheeked, who loved to
hear herself talk, especially when the tall good-looking young
stranger sat at her feet, fixing his hazel eyes that were at once so
sad and so merry on her whirling pirn as she twisted the brown wool
for the blankets.
How it whirled, and leaped, and spun, as the withered old hand jerked
the thread! So the Hand of Fate jerked men's lives, setting them
spinning like tops into the shadows, out into the firelight again;
always, always spinning!
"So the Great Khan was feeding his dogs, being in those days infidel,
when Shaikh Jumal-ud-din the divine came to him. 'Am I better than
this dog?' quoth Timur, 'or is he better than I?' And the Shaikh
smiled. 'If the King has faith he is better than his dog; but if he
has no faith, then is his dog better than he, since the dog believes
in a master.' So the Great Khan said the Creed immediately."
"Wah!" murmured the circle of shepherds; but Babar would press for
tales of the Great Invasion. And sometimes the old lady would begin at
the very beginning, and tell how Timur's soldiers, imitating their
leader, would make their left arms straight as the letter "I" and
their right arms crooked as a "K" and so write death in the blood of
their enemies. How they let fly their arrows as the moon lets fly
shooting stars so that the blood-sodden hillsides showed like a drift
of red tulips. Or she would drone on--it was a long story--over the
"Battle of the Mire," where the enemy not having strength to fight,
sought help from the magic rain-stone, so that though the sun was in
the Warrior, a host of dark clouds suddenly filled the sky. The
thunder resounded, the lightnings flashed, the water descended from
the eyes of the stars until the voice of Noah was heard praying a
second time for deliverance from the Deluge. Then the beasts of the
field swam like fishes, the skin of the horses' bellies adhered to the
crust of the earth. The feathers of the arrows damped off, their
notches came out, neither men nor horses could move by reason of the
rain ...
So she would maunder on until Babar would say impatiently:
"Get on to India, mother! I would fain be there myself."
And he would hardly listen as she, once more beginning at the very
beginning, would detail the eight-hundred-thousand men, provided with
rations for seven years and each accompanied with two milch-kine and
ten milch-goats, so that when stores were exhausted they might live on
milk, and when milk dried up they could convert the animals themselves
into provisions.
It was all doubtless very wise of Timur--God rest his soul!--who was
ever great on the commissariat; but he, Babar, preferred the laconic
remark in his great ancestor's autobiography, "The princes of India
were at variance with one another. Resolved to make myself master of
the Indian empire. Did so."
It was however the more intimate personal experiences which the old
woman held by virtue of that dead "interest" of hers, which fired
Babar's imagination; but these fragments of a half-forgotten past were
not always to be got at. The long years of common round and daily task
had overlaid them; it needed a subtle touch upon the instrument to
make it vibrate once more. But Babar found a key. There was a certain
Turkhoman ballad called "The Maid-of-the-Spring," which invariably
unlocked the old woman's memory. So, often, as they sat over the camp
fire at night, Babar, smiling to himself, would say, "A song, a song!
Let us sing 'The Maid-of-the-Spring' together once more, grandmother!
There is none sings it as thou dost."
Which was true! Still the toneless treble of the old voice whining
away like the fine whing of a mosquito did not sound so bad against
the rich baritone. And the youngest maiden could not have nodded and
becked more, or looked more arch. And perhaps the old heart beat as
quickly as a young one; such things do not go by age.
And this is what they sang in somewhat monotonous antiphon:
He.
Maid of the Spring! I'm thirsty! I pray
A drop of water! I must away.
God bless you, my girl! And don't be slow!
Give me a drink and let me go.
She.
I don't give drinks to strange young men
Who come a-swaggering down the glen;
Naught you'll get from my pitcher to-day,
Drink for yourself and go your way.
He.
Maid of the Spring! I cannot alight,
I'm far too tired! I'm wearied quite!
I haven't time! God bless you, my dear!
Give me a drink--I _can't_ stay here.
She.
The birds sing sweet in the spring, they say,
It's sweeter still when _I_ tune my lay,
But tired man should sleep in his bed--
Farewell! God's blessing be on your head.
He.
Give me some water, you pretty dear!
If I'd only time, you need not fear.
My darling! a drink from that stoup of thine,
Be it water or be it wine.
She.
Many men travel along this way,
All are thirsty but none can stay.
Take my pitcher and drink if you will,
A thirsty man must have his fill.
He.
Your brows are arched by a pen, I swear,
Your teeth are pearls--I will treat you fair,
Get down from my horse and wait an hour.
Give me your lips, my sweet, my flower.
She.
Roses and violets grow our groves,
No one may pluck them but he who loves.
My brother has slaves, and sticks a-main;
Drink and be off--it soon will rain!
He.
Darlingest dear! let it storm or rain,
My wide felt cloak shall shelter us twain.
Pitcher and all, leap up and ride,
We'll find a kiss at the water's side.
She.
My love! my love! have you come at last?
Drop the pitcher and hold me fast!
There are my lips before we fly
Out to a new world--you and I.
"And now for India!" Babar would cry when the applause was over. "I
want to hear about the size of it, and the fruit and flowers of it,
and all about it. See you, grandmother, begin and tell me of the young
woman thy man met at Lahore--then thou wilt remember to a nicety!"
So the summer passed, until old Isan-daulet arriving from Samarkand
with news of Dearest-One, set Babar's mind a-jogging once more over
his enemy Shaibani. But there was nothing to be done in winter time:
such a bitter cold winter, too. More than one man died of it, and even
Babar himself admitted that, after diving sixteen times in swift
succession into a river that was only unfrozen in the middle by reason
of its swift current, the extreme chilliness of the water quite
penetrated his bones; as well it might.
Then early spring brought a great grief which gave pause to energy.
Nevian-Gokultash was done to death, by a scoundrel who was jealous of
Babar's affection for him, and who had the temerity to say that
faithful creature had fallen over a precipice when he was drunk.
Nevian, who adhered so strictly to the law of Islam! Nevian, who had
always sided for sobriety, who had been to the full as urgent as old
Kasim Beg against a King giving himself up to wine. Babar, helpless to
follow the murderer, felt deeply the death of his playmate in
childhood, the companion of his boyhood. There were few persons for
whose loss he would have grieved so much or so long. For a week or ten
days, he thought of nothing else and the unbidden tears were ever in
his eyes.
After this, a great restlessness set in, fostered by old Isan-daulet,
whose whole life had been one long succession of battles and murders
and sudden deaths, and whose belief in Moghul troops never wavered.
Why, she suggested, not go to his uncles the Khans at Tashkend? His
mother had been ill; she would like to see him once more. And if his
tongue was sufficiently careful amongst his thirty-two teeth, he might
get substantial help.
"For what?" gloomed Babar--"to get back Akshi and lose Andijan or get
Andijan and lose Akshi? 'Tis all one in the end."
"Not the fine fighting, child!" replied the old lady craftily. "That
is the same, be it in _Gehannum_ or _Bihisht_." (Hell or Heaven.)
That was undoubtedly true; and there was no good to be gained by
rambling from hill to hill as he had been doing.
So, once more, the young adventurer gathered together a very scanty
band of followers; for old Kasim Beg, who till then had never left
him, had come to words with Isan-daulet over these same Moghuls, and
refused to accompany him.
"I say not, sire," remonstrated the wise old soldier, "that these men
are bad soldiers for me; but they are for the Most Exalted, who has
ideas of discipline. Besides, I care not to risk my own neck for a
chance. In obedience to the Most Exalted's commands I beheaded quite a
number of these men in the last campaign, for marauding. Wherefore,
therefore, should I go amongst their mourning relatives? I will come
if there be fighting. Then there is no leisure and little desire for
private revenge; blood can be let anywhere and one corpse is as good
as another."
So Kasim went with his immediate adherents towards Hissar; and Babar
set off to Tashkend with rather a heavy heart. In a somewhat didactic
mood also, for resting for a day or two beside a spring in the lower
hills, he caused a verse to be inscribed on a stone slab which formed
one side of the well where the water gushed in from the hill above, to
disappear into the earth when it had run through a masonry trough.
"Many a man has rested and has drunk
Thy water, and like thee, O spring, has sunk
Swift to a grave where he lies all forgot,
Conqueror or vanquished, libertine or monk."
He was not, however, at home in the _rubai_, as he had not, at that
time, studied with much attention the style and phraseology of poetry.
Indeed, one of his first actions on reaching Tashkend was to submit
some of his compositions to the Khan who had pretensions to taste, and
who, moreover, wrote verses himself; though his odes, to be sure, were
rather deficient in manner and substance. The younger poetaster,
however, did not get either explicit or satisfactory criticism, and
came to the conclusion that his uncle had no great skill in poetic
diction. He did not know, for instance, that in the Turkhi language it
was allowable, by poetic licence, to interchange certain letters for
the sake of the rhyme.
"He will think thee a nincompoop," stormed Isan-daulet. "Why did'st
not show him thy sword play?"
"He may see that ere long," quoth Babar, grimly, and went straight
away to write the first _ghazel_ of six Couplets he ever composed.
"I have found no faithful friend
In the world save my own sad soul.
Dear heart! thou must give and spend
On thyself thy confidence whole.
Nightingale sings to the rose,
Roses give scent to the bird,
Dreams one of the thorny foes?
The other of passion deferred?
The exile must live apart,
To his coffers none give or lend.
The banished one holds his heart
To his soul as lover and friend."
He was quite pleased with this effusion and sang it at a festive party
soon after with great gusto; but the next morning he found that the
golden clasp of his girdle had been stolen by one of the appreciative
audience!
Moghuls again!