Love and Life

I

As thought elusive on a summer’s day,
As fall-choired music in the murmuring pine, As rainbow’d beauty in the sunset ray,
As Love imprisoned in a heart like thine!

The women sate in the rose garden. It was at the zenana end of the palace, and bounded by high walls bristling with the spiky anger of the gaoler against all intruders. Not that walls of any kind were necessary; for those within would have died rather than creep outside their shelter: and those without?—Why, there were none, save serfs, who knew better their duty to their lord and the soil than to attempt to steal his roses, either through or over the wicket!

Well! but the women. There were two of them. Spring, and late Summer, in apparent age. Spring sat on a broad wooden swing, under a leafy mango tree. Garbed was she in silken raiment of tenderest green, wrought upon with some quaint workmanship of gold and silver. There was the elusive attractiveness of budding womanhood in her face and figure; and the sign unmistakable of budding love about the curve of sweet lip and droop of long-lashed eye. She sat contemplative, one little bare foot moving to and fro across the sward—sufficient pendulum.

Summer—a study in discontent and dyspepsia—had but just finished a game of cards with her serving-women, and was quarrelling on a point of social ethics, suggested thereby.

“Four queens to a king is the scriptural limit; ’tis much wiser to run to your full allowance, or revolt with a single favourite,” said she. “You get them more companionable so. Now look at us. There sits the child, thinking her fool’s thoughts, as if she were the wife of some peasant. She won’t even quarrel as to whose jewels are the nicer! Of what use is she to me? Indoors her nose seeks her lesson-books; out of doors she is making garlands of her thoughts, to lay at, who knows, what dead shrine! Thinking to set the household a-wrangle for our diversion, I abused her waiting-women. But she smiled at me, and said she would gladly get rid of whichever I might name. Look at her, Moushi! What a child she is! And lovable too! Such a child might I have borne, an the gods so willed it!”

“Piari!” she called.

“Ay, Sandal Kuar,” said the little swinger, tripping lightly to the group. “I was but just coming of mine own accord, to beg a story. Send these women away and let me rest my head against you, so. . . while you tell me of my mother. You knew her. Moushi says you did. And I want her to-day very, very much.”

“Your mother, child? I never saw her, but I know of her, certainly. It is many years since she died, and you were such a child: ’tis impossible you should feel the mother-hunger. But I’ll tell you. Know, then, that he whom we may not name, loved above all things the mother who bore him, and there was nothing he would have deemed beyond accomplishment had she but asked it. When we knew her she had renounced all earthly desires, and divided her time between entreaties for a grandson and thanksgivings for the single male who would so shortly light her funeral pyre. But on her son’s ‘name-day’ she would lay aside the devotee, and come among us apparelled in garments befitting the queen she was. And she would tell us wondrous stories of her youth, of the lands she had seen, and the darbars of the olden days; of kings who were gods, and women whose friendship was victorious over every accident. One such friend, she said, had been hers, and she still lived, but at so great a distance that nothing but a great joy or a great sorrow could now unite them. Well, just eighteen years ago—and yes! it’s strange, this very day, we sate, the three wives of us, of whom I then was the last and youngest—we sate, those two who have died, I say, and I, in this same garden quarrelling or gossiping—who can tell which at this date?—but certainly bored with the monotony of life, and longing for diversion—when over that wall there—see!—beyond the white-starred jasmine bush, was thrown—a small ball! How we trembled! What enemy was working ruin to us? seeking to speak through closed doors! The two elder women looked at me. ‘What means this?’ said they, for once united in their anger. I, terrified, flew to the mother-in-law. ‘Come,’ said I, ‘leave thy puja; balls thrown over the zenana wall, and a scratching, as with a sword upon the stone without. The gods defend us!’ The old woman came at once, the prayer-wreath of marigolds still in her hand, and the mystic ‘asking’ look still in the faded eyes. She found the ball; it was a wood-apple scooped clean, and inside the red fruit-stripped cup lay a quaint-shaped amulet. The mystic look gave way to one of eager surprise now, and she could scarce speak for agitation. ‘Summon Ranjit!’ she ordered (he was the zenana steward), ‘and bid him pray my son to come to me without delay.’ He came, straight from the council chamber; and we three covered our heads, and stood respectfully aside, though near enough to miss nothing. I jeered at the other two, behind my veil, and would have had them believe that it was my secret; but they knew better, and silenced me promptly. ‘Son,’ said the old woman, ‘thou hast never denied me aught.’ ‘Thou knowest, my mother!’ was his reply.

“‘See!’ she continued, ‘this amulet—it belongs to the friend of my youth. On it we swore eternal friendship, and she promised me that if ever she were in need she would send me this. Her messenger should even now be without the gate. Tell me, my son, that which she might ask—hast thou granted it?’

“‘Without doubt,’ said the king, and the rusty little wicket in the gate yonder was forthwith opened, while Ranjit dragged in a travel-stained old woman, with a bundle in her arms! She walked straight to the mother, and did the salutation to queens—you know—the end of her cloth in her hand as she bent her forehead to the earth, once, twice, thrice; and then she went to the king, and at his feet did place confidingly her little bundle. It cried, and he laughed oddly, and lifted it off the ground—pulling aside the covering to disclose the sweetest little baby that gods ever sent to kings’ palaces!

“We crowded round, forgetful of all etiquette, we four lone women; and the serving-women came too—talking, the host of us, with hand, and voice, and lifted eyebrow. Then the old mother seized the little thing and crooned over it, and—such petting as it got! ’Twas a marvel we rent it no in equal parts amongst us! That was you, child! The gods, great in mysterious working, had sent you to your mother late in life, beyond the time when women’s bosoms are wont to heave with hope; and she, fearing the jealousy of her co-wives, had sent you straightway by stealth to this friend of her youth. These walls have heard your earliest prattle; and as the years marched forward, what was there to be done with you but the one thing? Of course it was irregular; no dower, no contract: but the king’s mother wished it, and he loved you. Phew! as a child—’tis not the love women covet; but none of us know even that so rest content.”

The little Rani hid her eyes against her co-wife’s shoulder. “I like that story, Sandal,” she said. “And, what said you? He loved me ‘as a child.’ I . . . like—that kind of love!”

The woman turned sharply to look at her; the voice thrilled even fleshless ribs! But the child had been quicker, and the tell-tale face was bent over her jasmine wreath-making, while she talked fast of other things.

“Oh, Sandal Kuar, I am getting so clever. I can read the Fourth Book in the vernacular, and—He—is so pleased. He is going to teach me English, and yes! also to keep accounts, and to read newspapers. And soon he says, I shall be quite as clever as the memsahibs, whom he sees in England, and sometimes here, and who talk to him as if—as if their brains were men’s brains! Dost remember, the big state dinner, when the Lāt sahib came with all his retinue? I peeped at the gay banquet through the carelessly closed folding doors. It was wonderful! But I told him about it afterwards, and when I said I should never care to sit beside him at a meal, I far preferred waiting on him, he laughed, and pinched my cheek. ‘And what of the game?’ he asked. But I said, ‘Oh, Presence, is that a thing to ask such as me? How could we ever run and beat balls with uplifted hand, in the sight of—the crown of our lives?’ And he laughed again and said, ‘I like you as you are, little one.’ But I was so afraid that he would think I wanted not lessons either, and so I begged again about that; and he said, ‘Yes! yes! have I not promised? You shall help me with my work, as did the wives of the kings of old!’ Oh, shall I ever be clever enough, think you, Sandal?”

“Nonsense!” said her senior. “Life is only a play, we tire of first one toy and then another. Have I not wearied of my concertinas? ‘Buy what you will,’ said His Highness, and I bought near a hundred concertinas. How we played on them every hour, at first, my women and I! And now they lie broken and forgotten. So, you have bought books; they still amuse you. So the king has bought—you!”

“Oh no!” said the girl quickly. “He never bought me. Did you not but just now tell me how I came through the little-used wicket in the zenana garden?”

“What a child it is!” said the woman impatiently. “We are all toys, toys of time and space; some battered rather more than others, but all toys, and soon to give place to newer ones!”

But in her heart the child said, “No! no! I know. She cannot know. What is written is written. In the ears of a few does God whisper His secret. Shall they know who have never heard the whisper? Oh, I know! Thanks to the greatest of all gods, I know!”

II

“There was the Door, to which I found no key;
There was the Veil, through which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee.
There was—and then no more of Thee and Me”

“What art thou singing, Piari? Be quiet, child! He comes along the corridor.” Piari hushed her voice, and made the customary obeisance with a pretty, shy bashfulness. “Come here, little one,” said the king, after having greeted the elder lady with the honour due to her seniority. “What was it thou didst sing? It sounded to me like the murmur of the wind in the pine trees.” “It was,” she said eagerly, “it was the mystery of the wind in the pines, and of the sea when it moans, and of—and of—the human heart in pain”—And there she stopped, ashamed of her temerity. “I am sorry,” she added; “it sounds not sense.”

“Nor is it,” said the elder lady. “My lord, these books are not good for her.”

But the king laid a gentle hand on the bowed head, as she sat beside him in the place of her baby days. “What knowest thou of pain, child?” said he.

“Oh, nothing!” she assured him. “Thoughts come to me—whence, I know not. I hear things crying: the rose bush when I pluck a flower. ‘Why did I bloom to die?’ it asks. And my little bird, which dashed itself dead against the window-pane, keeps crying questions at me; and I could weep for having nought to answer. And in the storm I hear the sobs of the dying . . . and oh! I hate all pain. I hate the shadows. Why cannot the sun shine always, my lord?”

“It does,” he answered gently, “for those who know you, little one. . . . Now come! our books, for I have to leave early this afternoon. The minister comes with accounts, and crop-reports, and, I doubt not, an armful of petitions, to worry me.” And in the mysteries of C A T with a C, and Rs and Ms for the creatures big and small that make sport for the purring favourite, she soon forgot all about veils and keyless doors!

Those tutoring times were the gladness of all the days to the much-harassed monarch. Sweet was it indeed to turn from the intrigues of courtiers and the battle with invisible foes to the women’s apartments and that apt, eager little pupil. Sometimes they would sit in the rose garden, the pink petals falling on to her book and little bare toes; oftener in the boudoir—the “Inglis-fassun room,” as the senior Rani was wont to call it.

In course of time Piari knew enough to help with some of His Highness’s vernacular correspondence, and was it not a proud moment when he praised her penmanship, and said she was of more use to him than many secretaries? The days seemed all too short for the things there were to read and learn. Newspapers and magazines were now littered about the “Inglis-room.” And Piari would explain the pictures to the gaping women, and enliven the double retinue with news of the world without—of war and adventure. “How Lord Roberts’ son won his V. C.” was a favourite story, to be told again and again; and how his mother received the boy’s decoration at the hand of “the greatest queen.” They wept afresh and enjoyably each time. “And he was dead,” they would say, “and never knew how he was honoured. But the mother, she knew; her heart would speak, even to his ashes.”

The tale of the family of sons, all given to the Queen and the war, was also in frequent request.

“So should I do!” said the little lady proudly, and blushed; for, was there not—her secret? “Oh, good gods, make it a boy—a boy!”

The elder lady was very kind and unenvious in those days. “I saw you as a baby yourself,” she would say; “I feel almost like a grandmother already.” And all the women petted her, and made much of the usual ceremonies, and fussed about her health, and bade the priests say extra prayers. For as yet had there come no heir to the house of the kind Maharajah.

And Piari sat often, dreamily, thinking of her dear lord the king, and humming her pine-tree verse.

“There was the Door to which I found no key.” This was it! The Door shut close, the Veil drawn tight. Would it be opened for her? Would it? Would the Veil be rent?

And one day, while the mystery was yet in the future, the king came in somewhat distraught. “Prepare,” said he, “to receive another lady; she comes with attendants—some fourteen women. Give her my mother’s rooms. The bride will be conducted to the palace to-morrow week at midday.”

“As my lord wills,” said the senior lady coldly. “We had heard nothing. It is a little hasty.”

“It is, it is,” admitted the king, “nor is it quite my wish: a political necessity.” He looked not at the child, but said, for her special benefit, “It is that Mussummat Kunti of whom I have spoken. She has been brought up somewhat on Western principles; has kept but casual purdah; is unbetrothed at eighteen; nor would any orthodox prince marry her. Her father and I had some political differences to adjust. I have been worried about them for some time; he suggested this, as a settlement. We were married at her father’s state, on my last visit. What matters it? She will have her own rooms. Our happy afternoons will be as of old. Nay, she will be a companion to you, my child,” he added, turning to her, “in the long hours when I must be away. And she will teach you far more than I can. She wanted to bring her English governess, but I have forbidden that, for the present. My mother was very orthodox; she would not have liked it. And now I must go; I have so many matters to arrange.” And he strode away, clearly ruffled.

As the door closed behind him the women’s tongues were loosened, and they spake many truths, yet mostly in innuendo, restrained by the pained, drawn face of “the child.”

“Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—and then no more of Thee and Me.”

No more! No more! The lines beat themselves threadbare against the poor little brain. “She’s clever. She knows more, he says, than even he himself. Can it be? And she will help him. He will not need me now. ‘No more of Thee and Me!’” Was she pretty? “No!” said the serving-women. “We asked the king’s men, who have but just come from her state. Fat and coarse-lipped—walks so! thud, thud, bandy-legged”—(mimicked the wit of the group).

“Don’t fret, my heart’s desire. She who bears the king a son is always favourite; none can displace her!”

“Is that so, Moushi?” she would ask wistfully. But in her heart, “Ah! a son, a son! Who knows if ’twill be so? I will test it. I will put two marigolds before the idol at bedtime, and if but one remains at to-morrow’s earliest dawn ’twill mean a son! The pendulum of her little heart kept a-swing ’twixt hope and fear over her childish experiments. Sometimes the gods would say one thing, sometimes another. “Oh, they mock me!” she would weep—“the Veil through which I cannot see!” . . . And, at last, the week was past, and—the music in the courtyard meant the coming of the bride!

Piari fled to her room and hid her face in the pillows, sobbing, “No more of Thee and Me!”

III

Undoubtedly the first afternoon was the worst. The king was shy, and the women were frigid and silent; and—well! the simple question of manners made a difference. The new wife knew not apparently the etiquette of this zenana, and omitted the salutation so gracefully performed by her colleagues. She expected the king to greet her as the English Resident greeted his wife! True, she laughed good-humouredly, and tried a clumsy imitation, but the senior Rani was sadly shocked and prejudiced, and the serving-women were unanimously inimical.

“The child” was more concerned with her rival’s personal appearance. “Oh, she is ugly!” she was saying in her heart, “and she squints, she squints!”

The days dragged wearily now. Three was a number difficult to manage. The new lady had ways and occupations in which the other two could hardly sympathize; and the king, seeing she was the loneliest of the trio, unconsciously got to talking English to her—discussing men and books, and the places she had seen; for she too had travelled.

And though the child understood, and though his caresses were still for her alone, she fretted her baby heart to pieces, whispering into the darkness every night, “No more, no more of Thee and Me!”

Day by day, too, the fancies grew. She would sit still for hours looking with unseeing eyes at nothing.

“The pine trees are calling” was all the answer she made to the senior Rani’s motherly solicitations.

And one morning the good old creature violated all etiquette in her anxiety, bursting into the king’s bedchamber with the enigmatical message: “The pine trees have called her!”

He slept, as was customary, under the drawn swords of his bodyguard; and clink went the steel in a noisy clash, at the unwonted interruption.

The king rubbed two fat fists into a pair of sleepy royal eyes.

“To the inside” (zenana apartments) “at once, Sandal Kuar!” said he sternly. You forget yourself. I am coming!”

But, for all his bluster, a sad little voice kept sighing in his ear—

“There was the Door to which I found no key!
There was the Veil through which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—and then no more of Thee and Me!”

No more! “The Door to which I found no key!” Had she found it now?

They searched all that bright day, in village and hedgerow, looking, with the stupidity of men, in all the most public and unlikely places. It was the senior Rani, after all, who found her. Unable to bear any longer the strain of inaction, of listening for footsteps which came not, she hastened to the rose garden, and out to the pine wood at the far end of the palace grounds. A tiny wail gave her her first clue: she ran to it trembling in every limb, at what it could not but mean. And there, lying in a very blaze of western glory, among the wild flowers, and on the sweet fragrant bed of the brown pine-needles, she found the child—and beside her, another.

“The pine trees called me, dear Sandal Kuar,” she said, “and see! it is a boy! The gods heard me. Will my lord be pleased, think you? Oh, Sandal! I’ve found the key, and the Veil is . . . rent! But ‘no more of Thee and Me; no more! no more!’”

The kindly Sandal Kuar was not long in summoning aid and getting the poor child home to the long-prepared welcome; but from the swoon into which she sank under the pine trees she never recovered. She had spoken truth. Rent was the Veil, but “no more of Thee and Me.”

The “Pine-given” they called her little son. Since his coming no other has ruled in the palace near the pine grove.