CHAPTER V.
In her own apartments.
On entering her apartments, Luthfunnisha called out to Peshman who helped in undressing her. She got out of her immensely rich gold-braided garment wrought with pearls, diamonds and rubies and said to Peshman "Take this dress."
Peshman wondered not a little. The dress was recently made to order at an enormous cost.
"Why this dress to me?" asked Peshman "What is to-day's report?"
"It is re-assuring news, indeed!"
"This is but too evident. Are you relieved of Meherunnisha incubus?
"Yes, now I have no more anxiety in that quarter."
Peshman made an exhibition of great delight and said "Then I count a maid to the Begum."
"If you want to be the Begum's maid then I shall speak to Meherunnisha about that."
"Why? You say that Meherunnisha is out of the running for the Badsha's Begumship."
"I never spoke that sort of stuff. What I said is I have no more anxiety on that head."
"Why no more anxiety?" snarled Peshman crossly "Everything is thrown overboard if you fail to be the Delhi mistress."
"I must cut off all connections with Agra."
"Why? Alack! I am too much a goose to grasp the situation. Let me have a full significance of to-day's happy tidings."
"The joyful news is that I leave Agra for good."
"Where do you go then?"
"I shall move down and settle in Bengal. If I can, I shall marry a gentleman."
"What a huge joke! I simply shudder at the idea."
"I don't jest. But I am, in all earnest, quitting Agra and have said an revoir to the Badshah."
"What an evil idea has possessed you?"
"Not an evil idea, to be sure! I sauntered through the prime of my life in Agra but what is the result? The thirst for pleasure grew into a passion with me since my childhood. To slake the thirst I left Bengal and came up here. What treasures did I not sacrifice to purchase the trash?—what dark and shady tricks did I stick at?—what ends I strove for were not encompassed? I had a surfeit of all these—wealth, power, glory, fame. But what did these lead to? Sitting, this day here, I can make a mental reckoning of every day as it passed out but I can make bold to say that I neither felt happy for a single day nor enjoyed unalloyed happiness for a single moment. The thirst was never quenched rather it grew and quickened. I can add to my hordes that are reckoned in millions and amass greater fortunes for the mere striving for it. But what for? If the true happiness lay in these, I could have been happy even for a day in all this long weary period! The yearning for pleasure is like a thin mountain stream. The clear slender rivulet at first issues out from the secret spring, lies hidden in its own bowels and no body knows about it. It bubbles and gurgles and no body hears it. On it courses down, the volume increases and the muddier it grows. This does not exhaust the whole story. Sometimes, again, the wind blows, lashes angry waves, and, sharks, crocodiles and other sea-monsters make their home therein. Farther the size grows, the water becomes all the more muddy and it tastes brine. Myriads of desolate dreary islets spring into existence in the river channel, the movement becomes sluggish and then the body of the river with all the mud and dirt loses itself into the wide deep ocean where who can say?"
"This too passes my wit. What makes the reason that all this palls upon your senses?
This puzzle why I have grown up blase has been solved at last. The pleasure I experienced though for a single night on my way back from Orissa, by far and away, out-measures the giddy round of pleasures, I tasted at a three year's stretch, under the shadow of the palace. This is the key to the problem."
"What is the explanation?"
"I looked so long like the Hindu idol. The get-up is of gold and jewel though the interior is hewn out of the hard stone. For the sake of my sense-pleasures I sported with fire though I touched not the flame. Now let me see if I can seek out a full-blooded vein in the heart of the granite."
"This, too, is all an unintelligible jargon to me."
"Have I ever loved any one in Agra?
(In an undertone) "None?"
"Then what am I if not a stone?"
"If you now be pleased to bestow your heart on any one why don't you do so?"
"This, too, is in my mind. That is why I am bent upon quitting Agra."
"What necessity is there of doing things like that? Is there none to woo in Agra that you will go down into the land of savages? Why not set your heart on the man who now loves you? What a greater lord is there on the earth than the Delhi Emperor in grace, in wealth, in power and all else besides?"
"Why does water run down the lower incline despite the sun and moon's gravitation?"
"Why?"
"It is the scroll of fate!"
Luthfunnisha did not open out her whole mind. The fire entered into the marble soul and was dissolving it into fluid.