What would it--what might it not--what ought it not to make manifest?
So once more as he sate holding his luck in his hands, holding it between him and the river-damascened shield of the wide Panjab plain, the Self that is behind Self found eyes and saw.
What did he see? Did he see the Shield of India stand in the forefront of battle for the principles he preached, as it did in Mutiny time? Or did sight pass beyond that, and did he see the East, intoxicated by the errors of the West, aping the horrors of a civilisation which has missed its way, which has forgotten that Socialism is Despotism--the Despotism of Fate whose eye is fixed, not on the equality of the individual, but the ultimate outcome of Race?
Who knows?
For as the morning sun rose to power, vapoury mist-clouds gathered on the damp mountain sides below, and crept up and up, hiding all things, obscuring all things.
The wide shield of the Land of the Five Rivers went first. Bit by bit the hurrying mists obscured it, the damascening disappeared until high upon the sky only a clear blue curved rim remained--an arch of victory that stretched over the visible world.
Then the mist claimed Akbar's outstretched hand; so, rising, rolling over on itself, almost playing with the short flower-set turf, patched here and there with melting snow, and nestling into the crannies of the rock, it shrouded the King from his Kingdom, the Man from his World--and the Dreamer was alone with his Dream.
He was asleep, his head resting on a tuft of those tiny blue poppies which grow on the peaks of Holy Himâlya--poppies of heavenly rest whose petals look as if they had been cut from the sky--when Aunt Rosebody's voice roused him. The sun, having overcome the mists, was shining brightly.
"Lo!" she exclaimed, "the King hath been delayed no doubt, but high up where we were seeking rhubarb it was like the Day of Resurrection to see the mists tear themselves to shreds in rage as the Sun caught them. So goes Ignorance before Wisdom. And little Fair-face hath found his granddad a nârgiz--present it, child, though 'tis late for a New Year offering. Lo! he is the spit of my father--on whom be peace--no flower escapes him."
"And I have found violets for the King," smiled Umm Kulsum, comfortably. She was more than ever a Mother of Plumpness in her stuffed Mogul costume.