On the Face of the Waters

BOOK II
CHAPTER I

IN THE PALACE.

It was a day in late September. Nearly six months, therefore, had gone by since Jim Douglas had passed the Bailey-guard at gunfire, and the English flag had risen behind the trees to float over Lucknow. It floated there now, serenely, securely, with an air of finality in its folds; for folk were becoming accustomed to it. At least so said the official reports, and even Jim Douglas himself could trace no waxing in the tide of discontent. It neither ebbed nor flowed, but beat placidly against the rocks of offense.

But at Delhi there was one corner of the city over which the English flag did not float. It lay upon the eastern side above the river where four rose-red fortress walls hemmed in a few acres of earth from the march of Time himself, and safe-guarded a strange survival of sovereignty in the person of Bahâdur Shâh, last of the Moghuls. An old man past eighty years of age, who dreamed a dream of power among the golden domes, marble colonnades, and green gardens with which his ancestors had crowned the eastern wall.

The sun shone hotly, steamily, within those four inclosing walls, save on that eastern edge, where the cool breezes from the plains beyond blew through open arches and latticed balconies. For the rest, the palace-fort—shut in from all outside influence—was like some tepid, teeming breeding-place for strange forms of life unknown to purer, clearer atmospheres.

It was at the Lahore gate of this Delhi palace that on this late September day a tawdry palanquin, followed by a few tawdry retainers, paused before a cavernous arch, ending the quaint, lofty vaulted tunnel which led inward for some fifty yards or more to another barrier. Here an old man in spectacles sat writing hurriedly.

"Quick, fool, quick! Read, and let me sign," called the huge unwieldy figure in the palanquin, as the bearers, panting under their gross burden, shifted shoulders. Mahboob Ali, Chief Eunuch and Prime Minister, groaned under the jolt; it was a foretaste of many to be endured ere he reached the Resident's house, miles away on the northern edge of the river. Yet he had to endure them, for important negotiations were on foot between the Survival and Civilization. The heir-apparent to those few acres where the sun stood still had died, had been poisoned some said; and another had to be recognized. There was no lack of claimants; there never was a lack of claimants to anything within those walls, where everyone strove to have the first and last word with the Civilization which supported the Survival. And here was he, Mahboob, Prime Minister, being delayed by a miserable scrivener.

"Read, pig! read," he reiterated, laying his puffy hand on his jeweled sword-hilt; for he was still within the gate, therefore a despot. A few yards further he would be a dropsical old man; no more.

"Your slave reads!" faltered the editor of the Court Journal. "Mussamât Hâfzan's record of the women's apartments being late to-day, hath delayed——"

"'Twas in time enough, uncle, if thou wouldst make fewer flourishes," retorted a woman's voice; it was nothing but a voice by reason of the voluminous Pathan veil covering the small speaker.

"Curse thee for a misbegotten hound!" bawled Mahboob. "Am I to lose the entrance fee I paid Gâmu, the Huzoor's orderly, for first interview—when money is so scarce too! Read as it stands, idiot—'tis but an idle tale at best."

The last was an aside to himself as he lay back in his cushions; for, idle though the tale was undoubtedly, it suited him to be its Prime Minister. The editor laid down his pen hurriedly, and the polished Persian polysyllables began to trip over one another, while their murmurous echo—as if eager to escape the familiar monotony—sped from arch to arch of the long tunnel, which was lit about the middle by side arches on the guards' quarters, and through which the sunlight streamed in a broad band of gold across the red stone causeway.

The attributes of the Almighty having come to an end the reader began on those of Bahâdur Shâh, Father of Victory, Light of Religion, Polestar and Defender of the Faith——

"Faster, fool, faster," came the fat voice.

The spectacled old man swallowed his breath, as it were, and went on at full gallop through the uprisal and bathing of Majesty, through feelings of pulses and reception of visitors, then slowed down a bit over the recital of dinner; for he was a gourmet, and his tongue loved the very sound of dainty dishes.

"May your grave be spat upon!" shouted the Chief Eunuch. "So none were poisoned by it what matters the food? Pass on——"

"The Most Exalted then said his appointed prayers," gasped the reader. "The Light-of-the-World then slept his usual sleep. On awakening, the physician Ahsan-Oolah——"

Mahboob sat up among his cushions. "Ahsan-Oolah! he felt the Royal pulse at dawn also——"

"The Most Noble forgets," interrupted a voice with the veiled venom of a partisan in its suavity. "The King—may his enemies die!—took a cooling draught yesterday and requires all the care we can give him."

"The King, Meean-sahib, needs nothing save the prayers of the holy priest, who has piously made over long years of his own life to prolong his Majesty's," retorted Mahboob, scowling at the speaker, who wore the Moghul dress, proclaiming him a member of the royal family. There was no lack of such in the palace-fort, for though Bahâdur Shâh himself, being more or less of a saint, had contented himself with some sixty children, his ancestors had sometimes run to six hundred.

The Meean-sahib laughed scornfully as he passed inward, and muttered that those who went forth with the dog's trot might return with the cat's slink, since the great question had yet to be settled. Mahboob's scowl deepened; the very audacity of the interruption rousing a fear lest the king's eldest son, Mirza Moghul, whose partisan the speaker was, might have some secret understanding with Civilization. All the more need for haste.

"Read on, fool! Who told thee to stop?"

"The Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni entered by the Delhi gate."

Mahboob gave a scornful laugh in his turn. "To visit the Mirza's house, no doubt. Let her come—a pretty fool! Yet she had wiser stay where she hath chosen to live, instead of being princess one day and plain Newâsi the next. There are enough women without her in the palace!"

So it seemed, to judge by the stream of female names and titles belonging to the curtained dhoolies, which had passed and repassed the barriers, upon which the editor launched his tongue. But Mahboob, as Chief Eunuch, knew the value of such information and cut it short with a sneer.

"If that be all! quick! the pen, and I will sign."

A bystander, also in the Moghul dress, laughed broadly at the well-worn inuendo on the possibilities of curtained dhoolies in intrigue. "Thou art right, Mahboob," he said, "God only knows."

"His own work," chuckled the Keeper of Virtue. "And the Devil made most of the women here. Now pigs! Canst not start? Am I to be kept here all day?"

As the litter went swaying out between the presented arms of the sentries, the white chrysalis of a Pathan veil stepped lamely down into the causeway. "That, seeing there is no news, will be something to amuse the Queen withal," came the sharp voice.

"There may be news enough, when that fat pig returns, to make it hard to amuse thy mistress, Mussamât Hâfzan," suggested another bystander.

The chrysalis paused. "My mistress! Nay, sahib! Hâfzan is that to herself only. I am for no one save myself. I carry news, and the more the better for my trade. Yet I have not had a real good day for gifts of gratitude from my hearers, since Prince Fukrud-deen, the heir-apparent, died." There was a reckless cynicism in her voice, and he of the Moghul dress broke in hotly.

"Was poisoned, thou meanest, by——"

Hâfzan's shrill laugh rang through the arches.

"No names, Mirza sahib, no names! And 'tis no news surely to have folk poisoned in the fort; as thou wouldst know ere long, may be, if Hâfzan were spiteful. But I name no names—not I! I carry news, that is all."

So, with a limp, showing that the woman within was a cripple, the formless figure passed along the tunnel through the inner barrier, and so across the wide courtyard where the public hall of audience stood blocking the eastern end. It was a massive, square, one-storied building, with a remorseless look in its plain expanse of dull red stone, pierced by toothed arches which yawned darkly into a redder gloom, like monstrous mouths agape for victims. Past this, with its high-set fretted marble baldequin showing dimly against the end wall—whence a locked wicket gave sole entrance from the palace to this seat of justice or injustice—the Pathan veil flitted like a ghost; so, through a narrow passage guarded by the King's own body-guard, into a different world; a cool breezy world of white and gold and blue, clasping a garden set with flowers and fruit. Blue sky, white marble colonnades, and golden domes vaulting and zoning the burnished leaves of the orange trees, where the green fruit hung like emeralds above a tangle of roses and marigolds, chrysanthemums and crimson amaranth. Hâfzan paused among them for a second; then, all unchallenged by any, passed on up the steps of the marble platform, which lies between the Baths and the Private Hall of Audience. That marvelous building where the legend, Cunningly circled into the decorations, still tells the visitor again and again that, "If earth holds a haven of bliss, It is this, it is this, it is this."

Here, on the platform, Hâfzan paused again to look over the low parapet. The wide eastern plains stretched away to the pale blue horizon before her, and the curving river lay at her feet edging the high bank, faced with stone, which forms the eastern defense of the palace-fort. Thus the levels within touch the very top of the wall; so that the domes, and colonnades, and green gardens, when seen from the opposite side of the streams cut clear upon the sky, like a castle in the air at all times; but in the sunsettings, when they show in shades of pale lilac, with the huge dome of the great mosque bulging like a big bubble into the golden light behind them as a veritable Palace of Dreams.

She looked northward, first; along the sheer face of the rosy retaining wall to its trend westward at the Queen's favorite bastion, which was crowned by a balconied summer-house overhanging the moat between the fort itself and the isolated citadel of Selimgurh; which, jutting out into the river, partially hid the bridge of boats spanning the stream beyond. Then she looked southward. Here was the sheer face of rosy wall again, but it was crowned, close at hand, by the colonnade and projecting eaves of the Private Hall of Audience. Further on it was broken by the carved corbeilles of the King's balcony, and it ended abruptly at a sudden eastward turn of the river, so giving a view of rolling rocky hillocks sweeping up to the horizon where, faint and far like a spear-point, the column of the Kutb showed on a clear day. The Kutb! that splendid promise, never fulfilled,—that first minaret of the great mosque that never was, and never will be built; symbol of the undying dream of Mohammedan supremacy that never came, that never can come to pass.

As she paused, a troop of women laden with cosmetics and combs and quaint baskets containing endless aids to beauty, came shuffling out of the baths, gossiping and chattering shrilly, and clanking heavy anklets as they came. And with them, a heavy perfumed steam suggestive of warm indolence, luxury, sensuality, passed out into the garden.

"What! done already?" called Hâfzan in surprise.

"Already!" echoed a bold-faced trollop pertly, "Ari, sister. Art grown a loose-liver? Sure this is Friday, and the King, good man, bathes apart, religiously! So we be religious too, matching his humor. That is the way with us women."

An answering giggle met the sally.

"Thou art an impudent hussy, Goloo!" said Hâfzan angrily. "And the Queen—where is she?"

"In the mosque praying for patience—in the summer-house playing games—in the King's room coaxing him to belief—in the vestibule feeding her son with lollipops—he likes them big, and sweet, and lively, and of his own choosing, does the prince, as I know to my cost." Here a general titter broke in on the unabashed recital.

"Loh! leave Hâfzan to find out what the Queen does elsewhere," suggested another voice. "We speak not of such things."

"Then speak lower of others," retorted Hâfzan. "Walls have echoes, sister, and thy mistress would fare no better than others if thy talk reached Zeenut Maihl's ears."

"Tell her, spy! if thou wilt," replied the woman carelessly. "We have friends on our side now, as thou mayst understand mayhap ere nightfall, when the answer comes."

Hâfzan laughed. "Thou hast more faith in friends than I. Loh! I trust none within these four walls. And out of them but few."

So saying she limped back into the garden, giving a glance as she passed it into the Pearl Mosque, which showed like a carven snowdrift against the blue of the sky, the green of the trees. Finding none there, she went straight to the Queen's favorite summer-house on the northern bastion.

It was a curious fatality which made Zeenut Maihl choose it, since all her arts, all her cunning, could scarcely have told her that it would ere long be a watch-tower, whence the chance of success or failure could be counted. For the white road beyond the bridge of boats, and trending eastward to the packed population of Oude, to Lucknow, to all that remained of the vitality in the Mohammedan dream, was to be ere long like a living, growing branch to which she, the spider, hung by an invisible thread, spinning her cobwebs, seemingly in mid-air.

"Hush!" The whispered monition made Hâfzan pause in the screened archway till the game was over. It was a sort of dumb-crambo, and a most outrageous double entendre had just brought a smile to the broad heavy face of a woman who lay among cushions in the alcoved balcony. This was Zeenut Maihl, who for nearly twenty years had kept her hold upon the King, despite endless rivals. She was dark-complexioned, small-eyed, with a curious lack of eyebrows which took from her even vivacity of expression. But it was a man with experience in many wives who remarked that favor is deceitful and beauty is vain; he knew, no doubt, that in polygamy, the victory must go to the most unscrupulous fighter. Zeenut Maihl, at any rate, secured hers by ever-recurring promises of another heir to her octogenarian husband; a flattery to which his other wives either could not or would not stoop. But the trick served the Queen's purpose in more ways than one. Her oft-recurring disappointments could have but one cause: witchcraft. So on such occasions, with her paid priest, Hussan Askuri, saying prayers for those in extremis at her bedside, Zeenut Maihl's enemies went down like nine-pins, and she rose from her bed of sickness with a board cleared of dangerous rivalry. For none in the hot-bed of shams felt secure enough to get into grips with her. Ahsan-Oolah, the physician, might have; she had cried quarter from his keen fence before now; but he did not care to take the trouble. For he was a philosopher, content to let his world go to the devil its own way, so long as it did not interfere with his passionate greed of gold. And this master-passion being shared by Zeenut Maihl they hoisted the flag of truce for the most part against mutual spoliations. So the Queen played her game unmolested, as she played dumb-crambo; at which her servants, separated like their betters into cliques, tried to outdo each other.

"Wâh!" said the set, jubilant over the double entendre. "That is the best to-day."

"If you like it, a clod is a betel nut," retorted the leader of another set. "I'll wager to beat it easily."

The Queen frowned. There was too much freedom in this speech of Fâtma's to suit her.

"And I will be the judge," she said with a cruel smile. "Fâtma must be taught better manners."

Fâtma—a woman older than the rest—salaamed calmly; and the fact made the other clique look at each other uneasily. What certainty gave her such confidence as she plucked a gray hair from her own head and placed it on the black velvet cushion which lay at the Queen's feet?

"That is my riddle," she said. "Let the world guess it, and honor the real giver of it."

What could it be? Even the Queen raised herself in curiosity; a sign in itself of commendation.

"Sure I know not," she began musingly, when Fâtma sprang to her feet in theatrical appeal.

"Not so! Ornament of Palaces," she cried. "This may puzzle the herd; it is plain to the mother of Princes. It lies too lowly now for recognition, but in its proper place——" She snatched the hair from the cushion, and, with a flourish, laid it on the head of a figure which appeared as if by magic behind her. A figure dressed as a young Moghul Prince, and wearing all the crown jewels.

"My son, Jewun!" cried the Queen, starting angrily. And the adverse clique, taking their cue from her tone, shrieked modestly, and scrambled for their veils.

Fâtma salaamed to the very ground.

"No! Mother of Princes, 'tis but my riddle—the heir-apparent."

Zeenut Maihl paused, bewildered for an instant; then in the figure recognized the features of a favorite dancing girl, saw the pun, and laughed uproariously, delightedly. The English sentry on the drawbridge leading to Selimgurh might have heard her had there been one; but within the last month the right to use the citadel as a private entry to the palace had been given to the King. It enabled him to cross the bridge of boats without the long circuit by the Calcutta gate of the city.

"A gold mohur for that to Fâtma!" she cried, "and a post nearer my person. I need such wits sorely." As she spoke she rose to her feet, the smiles fading from her face as she looked out along that white eastward streak; for the jest had brought her back to earnest, to that mixture of personal ambition for her son and real patriotism for her country which kept her a restless intriguer. "I need men, too," she muttered. "Not dissolute, idle weathercocks or doting old pantaloons! There are plenty of them yonder." So she stood for a second, then turned like lightning on her attendants. "What time——" she began, then seeing Hâfzan, who had unveiled at the door, she gave a cry of pleasure. "'Tis well thou hast come," she said, beckoning to her, "for thou must know God! if I were free to come and go, what could I not compass? But here, in this smothering veil——" She flung even the gauze apology for one which she wore from her, and stood with smooth, bare head, and fat, bare arms, her quaint little pigtail dangling down her broad back. Not a romantic figure truly, but one in its savage temper, strength, obstinacy, to be reckoned with. "What time"—she went on rapidly—"does the King receive his initiates?"

"At five," replied Hâfzan. Seen without its veil, also, her figure showed more shrunk than ill-formed, and her pale, thin face would have been beautiful but for its look of permanent ill-health. "The ceremony of saintship begins then."

"Saints!" echoed the Queen, with a hard laugh. "I would make them saints and martyrs, too, were I free. Quick, woman! pen and ink! And stay! Fâtma's puzzle hath driven all else from my head. What time was't that Hussan Askuri was bidden to come?"

"The saintborn comes at four," replied Hâfzan ceremoniously, "so as to leave leisure ere the Chief Eunuch's return with the answer."

Zeenut Maihl's face was a study. "The answer! My answer lies there in Fâtma's riddle; take two gold mohurs for it, woman, it hath given me new life. Write, Hâfzan, to the chamberlain, that the disciples must pass the southern window of the King's private room ere they leave the palace. And call my litter; I must see Hussan Askuri ere I meet him at the King's."

An hour afterward, with bister marks below her eyes, and delicate hints of causeful, becoming languor in face and figure, she was waiting the King's return from the latticed balcony overhanging the river, where he always spent the heats of the day; waiting in the cluster of small, dark rooms which lie behind it, on the other side of the marble fountain-set aqueduct which flows under a lace-like marble screen to the very steps of the Hall of Audience.

"Is all prepared?" she asked anxiously, as a glint of light from a lifted curtain warned her of the King's approach.

"All is prepared," echoed a hollow, artificial voice. The speaker was a tall, heavily built man with long gray beard, big bushy gray eyebrows, and narrow forehead. A dangerous man, to judge by the mixed spirituality and sensuality in his face; a man who could imagine evil, and make himself believe it good. It was Hussan Askuri, the priest and miracle-monger, who led the last of the Moghuls by the nose. It was not a difficult task, for Bahâdur Shâh, who came tottering across the intervening sunlit space, was but a poor creature. The first impression he gave was of extreme old age. It was evident in the sparse hair, the high, hollow cheeks, the waxy skin, the purple glaze over the eyes. The next was of a feebleness beyond even his apparent years. He seemed fiberless, mind and body. Yet released at the door of privacy, from the eunuch's supporting hands, he ambled gayly enough to a seat, and exclaimed vivaciously:

"A moment! A moment! good priest and physician. My mind first; my body after. The gift is on me. I feel it working, and the historian must write of me more as poet than king."

"As the king of poets, sire," suggested Hussan Askuri pompously.

Bahâdur Shâh smiled fatuously. "Good! Good! I will weave that thought with mine into perfumed poesy." He raised one slender hand for silence, and with the fingers of the other continued counting feet laboriously, until with a sigh of relief, he declaimed:

Zeenut Maihl gave a cry of admiration. "Quick! Pir-sahib, quick!" she exclaimed. "Such a gem must not be lost."

"But 'tis yet co be polished," began the King complacently.

"That is the office of the scribe," replied Hussan Askuri, as he drew out his ink-horn. He was by profession an ornamental writer, and gained great influence with the old poetaster by gathering up the royal fragments and hiding their lameness amid magnificent curves and flourishes.

"And now, Pir-sahib," continued the Queen, with a look of loving anxiety at her lord, "for this strange ailment of which I spoke to you——"

The King's face lost its self-importance as if he had been suddenly recalled to unpleasant memory. "'Tis naught of import," he said hastily. "The Queen will have it I start and sweat of nights. But this is but the timorous dread of one in her condition. I am well enough."

"My lord, Pir-sahib, hath indeed renewed his youth through thy pious breathing of thy own life into his mouth—as time will show," murmured the Queen with modest, downcast look. "But last night he muttered in his sleep of enemies——"

Bahâdur Shâh gave a gasp of dismay. "Of enemies! Nay!—did I truly? Thou didst not tell me this."

"I would not distress my lord, till fear was over. Now that the pious priest, who hath the ear of the Almighty——"

Hussan Askuri, who had stepped forward to gaze at the King, began to mutter prayers. "'Tis that cooling draught of Ahsan-Oolah's stands in the way," he gasped, his hands and face working as if he were in deadly conflict with an unseen foe. "No carnal remedy—Ah! God be praised! I see, I see! The eye of faith opens—Hai! venomous beast, I have you!" With these words he rushed to the King's couch, and, scattering its cushions, held up at arm's length a lizard. Held by the tail, it seemed in semi-darkness to writhe and wriggle.

"Ouée! Umma!" yelled the Great Moghul, shrinking to nothing in his seat, and using after his wont the woman's cry—sure sign of his habits.

"Fear not!" cried the priest. "The mutterings are stilled, the sweats dried! And thus will I deal also with those who sent it." He flung his captive on the ground and stamped it under foot.

"Was it—was it a bis-cobra, think you?" faltered the King. He had hold of Zeenut Maihl's hand like a frightened child. The priest shook his head. "It was no carnal creature," he said in a hollow, chanting voice. "It was an emissary of evil made helpless by prayer. Give Heaven the praise." Bahâdur Shâh began on his creed promptly, but the priest frowned.

"Through his servant," he went on. "For day and night, night and day, I pray for the King. And I see visions, I dream dreams. Last night, while my lord muttered of enemies, Hussan Askuri saw a flood coming from the West, and on its topmost wave, upon a raft of faithful swords, as on a throne, sate——"

"With due respect," came voices from the curtained door. "The disciples await initiation in the Hall of Audience."

Hussan Askuri and the Queen exchanged looks. The interruption was unwelcome, though strangely germane to the subject.

"I will hear thee finish the dream afterward," fussed the King, rising in a bustle; for he prized his saintship next to his poetry. "I must not keep my pupils from grace. Hast the kerchiefs ready, Zeenut?" There was something almost touching in the confidence of his appeal to her. It was that of a child to its mother, certain of what it demanded.

"All things are ready," she replied tartly, with a meaning and vexed look at the miracle-monger; for they had meant to finish the dream before the initiation.

"A goodly choice," said the royal saint, as he looked over the tiny silk squares, each embroidered with a text from the Koran, which she took out of a basket. "But I need many, Pir-sahib. Folk come fast, of late, to have the way of virtue pointed by this poor hand. And thou hast more in the basket, I see, Zeenut, ready against——"

"They are but begun," put in the Queen, hastily covering the basket. "Nor will they, likely, be needed, since the leave season passes, and 'tis the soldiers who come most to be disciples to the defender of their faith."

"I am the better pleased," replied the King with edifying humility. "This summer hath too many pupils as it is. Come! Pir-sahib, and support me through mine office with real saintship."

As the curtain fell behind them Zeenut Maihl crossed swiftly to the crushed lizard and raised it gingerly.

"No carnal creature," she repeated. It was not; only a deft piece of patchwork. Yet it, or something else, made her shiver as she dropped the tell-tale remains into the basket. This man Hussan Askuri sometimes seemed to her own superstition a saint, sometimes to her clear head a mere sinner. She was not quite certain of anything about him save that his delusions, his dreams, his miracles, suited her purpose equally, whether they were false or true.

So she crossed over again to a marble lattice and peered through a convenient peephole toward the Audience Hall, which rose across an intervening stretch of platform in white shadow, and whiter light. She could not see or hear much; but enough to show her that everything was going on the same as usual. The disciples, most of them in full uniform, went up and down the steps calmly, and the wordy exordium on the cardinal virtues went on and on. How different it might be, she thought, if she had the voice. She would rouse more than those faint "Wâh! Wâhs." She would make the fire come to men's eyes. In a sort of pet with her own helplessness, she moved away and so, through another room, went to stand at another lattice. It looked south over a strip of garden, and there was an open square left in the tracery through which a face might look, a hand might pass. And as she stood she counted the remaining kerchiefs in the basket she still held. They were all of bright green silk and bore the same lettering. It was the Great Cry: "Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!" As dangerous a woman this, as Hussan Askuri was a man; as dangerous, both of them, to peaceful life, as the fabled bis-cobra, at the idea of which the foolish old King had cried, "Ouée, Umma!" like any woman.

And now at last that wordy exordium must be over, for, along the garden path, came the clank of accouterments. Zeenut Maihl's listless figure seem galvanized to sudden life, there was a flutter of green at the open square, and her voice followed the shower of silk.

"These banners from the Defender to his soldiers."

But as she spoke, a stir of excitement, a subdued murmur of expectation reached her ear from outside, and, leaning forward, she caught a glimpse of a swinging litter coming along the path. Mahboob returned already! Vexatious, indeed, when she had turned and planned everything so as to be sure of having the King in her apartments when the answer arrived. None others would know it before she did—unless!—the thought obliterated all others, and she flew back to the further lattice. The King, returning from the initiation, had paused in the middle of the platform at the sight of the approaching litter, and his courtiers, as if by instinct, had grouped themselves round him, leaving him the central figure. The cruel sunlight streamed down on the tawdry court, on the worn-out old man.

It seemed interminable to the woman behind the lattice, that pause while the fat eunuch was helped from his litter. She could have screamed to him for the answer, could have had at his fat carcass with her hands for its slowness. But the old King had better blood in his veins. He stood quietly, his tawdry court around him; behind him the marble, and gold, and mosaics of his ancestors.

"What news, slave?" he asked boldly.

"None, Light of the Faithful," replied the Chief Eunuch.

"None!" The semi-circle closed in a little, every face full of disappointed curiosity.

"I have a letter for the Lord of the World with me. Its substance is this. The Sirkar will recognize no heir. During the lifetime of our Great Master, whose life be prolonged forever, the Sirkar will make no promise of any kind, either to his majesty, or to any other member of the royal family. It is to remain as if there were no succession."

No succession! Above the sudden murmur of universal surprise and dissent, a woman's cry of inarticulate rage came from behind the lattice. The King turned toward the sound instinctively. "I must to the Queen," he murmured helplessly, "I must to the Queen."

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