The woman met his jeering smile with a peremptory gesture. "Let my lord sit silent yonder on the parapet," she said, in a voice of command, "and from the darkness he shall hear."
So, closing the door behind her, she called softly, "Sing to me, my bird," and stood listening.
Birbal, idly kicking his heels as he sate, looked over the wall down the sheer drop of a hundred feet or more which ended in the red rock. Just below him, brimming up to the very wall lay the tank which Akbar had lately made as a reservoir for the lower part of the town. Half-hidden in morning mist it reflected the morning sky here and there as the vapour, parting, left its surface clear. And behind the rising mist? Did it reflect nothing but the shifting gray curves above it, or did the cool depths of rock below have their chance to shine mirrored on the water?
Bah! who could tell!
The little roof lay still in the first sunlight. A few pigeons wheeling about overhead sent shifting shadows to chase each other on the purple bricks of wall and floor, and in the topmost branch of the peepul tree whose roots throve beside the tank below, a white-throat was singing its little limited song. So, suddenly, there rose on the cool air of dawn another limited little voice.
Rose leaves wither away so fast?
Is the sun's kiss cold? Is the summer past?
Whither away like shallops at sea
With torn pink sails and never a mast
Whither away so fast?
Sun kisses are warm, and the summers last
But the shadows are calling us dim and vast
So we set our sails like shallops at sea
And drift away without rudder or mast
To the dark that will last
For eternity!
Birbal, artist to his finger tips shivered slightly; Âtma, standing, her hands clasped over the old silver-hilted sword, gave a soft sigh. To both of them the creeping step of the Dark that will last for Eternity, seemed to invade the present, claiming all things.
All things save Love, that essence of the Rose of Life.