But we have struggled to hold our own,
Have tilled and laboured without a moan,
And God's great mercy a way has shown
To patient content as the seed was sown,
You in Life's garden God's harvest missed.
I gather it here in Hesht-Bishist."
Hesht-Bishist or the Eighth-Paradise being the name of his favourite garden in Agra.
In fact verses and gardens were his greatest amusement that hot weather, much of which he spent at Dholpur where he was busy laying out pleasure-grounds and building palaces. He had disbanded most of his troops until the rainy season was over, and sent his nobles to the several districts assigned to them. Thus he was left alone to fight out the temperance battle by himself. It did not agree with him evidently, for twice he nearly succumbed to sudden illness; but he brought religion to bear on the question with a grave simplicity all his own, and kept feasts and fasts with the strictest orthodoxy.
Even here, however, he could not be quite conventional; for, never since he was eleven, having held the Festival of Ramzän two years running in the same place--a fact which gives testimony to his unsettled life--he could not make up his mind to break through the usage. So he ordered a fine camp to be pitched at Sikri, and deserted his capital.
Thus the months sped by bringing disappointments and minor pleasures. The news which came to him that Humâyon--Humâyon the magnificent, the darling of his heart--had on his way through Delhi broken open the treasure-houses there and marched off Kâbul-wards with their contents, hurt him extremely. He had never expected such conduct from him, so he wrote him a letter containing the severest reprehensions, and thereinafter fell ill for seventeen days. It was not so bad a fever, however, as that which seized on him in October after he swam the Ganges at Sambal, in order to ride alone (having separated from his people by a finesse--for no reason at all) to Agra. He lay half-delirious then for nigh four weeks, his brain busy all the time with versifications.
He only recollected one of them, however, when at last, a mere skeleton of a man, he rose from his bed. He set it down, however, to show how bad he had been.
"My fever grows each day,
My slumber fades away,
My pains go on increasing--
My patience is decreasing."
He laughed over the doggerel, as he sat joyously eating fruit once more, and reading a letter which told him that in a month's time two of his paternal aunts would actually pay him a visit. They had come south with little Ma'asuma whom her husband was taking to Etawah.
He was full on the instant of preparations. An architect was sent for and orders given for a special palace to be decorated for their reception. He himself, passing rapidly through convalescence went out to meet them in a boat above Secunderabad. It was a most joyful meeting, and Babar hugged the old ladies as they had never been hugged before. It was almost unbelievable, this delight of family life once more. To hear their shrill voices, with the beloved Turkhi accent, prattling away about the dear loved ones in Kâbul was almost too much for him. But they bewailed his looks and chattered of old Chagatâi recipes for deer's broth and mares'-milk cheeses till he shut his eyes and tried to believe they were his dearest mother and his revered grandmother at Andijân and that he was still King of the valley at the extreme limit of the habitable world, and not Emperor of all India.
Then he opened them and took in and loved the quaint old-fashioned dresses and everything about them that was unlike the gorgeously ugly East which in his heart he loathed. But it was his, and it would be his son's and his son's son's; so there was no more to be said.