He was not sorry however, when, various other visits paid, he found himself in the house assigned to him. And sure, no better place could have been discovered in the whole habitable world! For it was the garden palace which the great Master-of-all-Arts, Messer Ali-Shîr--dead this while back, God rest his soul!--had designed and built for himself. Babar spent hours wandering through its cool corridors, sitting awhile in cunning alcoves whence the enchanting view, framed in gilt filigree arch, showed like a picture indeed. He sampled the rose-water baths, all mosaicked like a garden with buds, and leaves, and blossoms; he sat stroking the soft silk pile of carpets, green and set with flowers as thick as Andijân meadows in spring. And there was one, deeply darkly verdant and almost covered with the softest, fleeciest white furry blobs, on which he could have lain down and cried, so keenly did it bring back the mantle of clover lambskin into which he had poured the first grief that had come to his young life.
He read round the walls of the central marble hall, veined and mosaicked with precious stones, the boast that in after years one of his descendants was to use in the Court-of-Private-Audience at Delhi.
"If Earth holds a Paradise--it is this, it is this, it is this."
Yes! it was true! Not only in the hall, but in every niche and corner--in the ivory carven bedstead, in the crystal goblets inlaid with coral, in the curiously beaten metal-work, in the very shading of the coloured tiles, here was perfection of Beauty. Even with their shoes doffed in respectful Oriental fashion, Babar could hardly endure to see servants, whose minds he knew were not attuned to that high level, passing backwards and forwards in what he felt to be a Shrine. He dismissed them all and sat, pillowed by the softest down, looking out from the colonnade which gave on the garden. It, also, must be beautiful beyond compare. He would see that to-morrow. To-night it was sufficient to revel in the burnished dusk of the orange trees, seen in the soft moonlight, to watch the glittering radiance of the fountain drops against that background of distant hills--purple--aye! positively purple even in this light. Lo! it was beauty concentrated almost to pain. Beauty, unearthly, beyond the senses. Something not to be seen, or heard, or tasted, or touched, or even felt. Beauty that brought an utter abnegation of Self.
"This slave has a letter for the Most High," came a clear sweet voice. "It is from his Cousin Gharîb. It was to be given--if occasion came--in private, and in person if possible. So I have brought it."
Babar turned quickly. At first to see nothing. Then several paces away faintly outlined against one of the square white pilasters he caught the silhouette of a white, curiously shadowless figure. A woman's figure surely; slim, elegant, despite the enshrouding veil.
He rose swiftly; his heart beating. His dead cousin! Could it be--No! Impossible--And yet--
"With deepest reverence--mother," he said almost mechanically, as the figure remaining quiescent he stepped forward to take what it held out. He could see the hand--a marble hand in the moonlight--beyond the line of the pilaster.
A pretty hand too, with fingers pointed and delicate.
"May God reward you," came his mechanical thanks, as instinctively he stepped back again.