King-Errant

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Babar could not tear himself away from his uncle's camp. He lingered on and on, watching the military operations with a more or less critical eye, but absorbing culture wholesale.

It was a revelation to him, meeting men to whom fighting was not the end and aim of life; and these Begs and nobles of his uncle's court, though they were all supposed to be engaged in warfare with Khosrau Shâh who was holding Hissâr over the river, for his nominee the nincompoop, had yet time for other things.

Ali-Shîr, for instance, was wise beyond belief in all ways. Incomparable man! So kind, so courteous. Babar profited by his guidance and encouragement in his efforts to civilise himself. Thus becoming--since there is not in history any man who was greater patron of talent than Ali-Shîr--one of that great company of poets, painters, professors, and musicians who owe everything to him, who, passing through this world single and unencumbered by wife or child, gave himself and his time up to the instruction of others.

So far, therefore, as the clash of intellect went, young Babar was satisfied. In regard to the clash of arms it was different. How such a mighty body of Mirzas, Begs, and chiefs, who, with their followers, if they were not double the number of the enemy over the water were at least one-and-a-half times that number, could content themselves with practical inaction passed his understanding.

When, too, they had such battering rams and catapults as positively made his mouth water! There was one of the latter which threw such a quantity of stones and with such accuracy that in half an hour--just before bedtime prayers--the enemy's fort was beautifully breached. But the night being deemed rather dark for assault and the troops preferring the safety and comfort of their trenches, no immediate attack was made; the result being that before morning the breach was repaired.

There was absolutely no real fine fighting, and at this rate his uncle, the Sultan, would doubtless spend the whole winter on the banks of the Amu river, and when spring came, patch up some sort of a peace from fear of the floods which always came down with the melting snow.

"That is his way," asserted Kâsim with a shrug of his shoulders. "He leads his army forth with pomp and state, and in himself is no mean general; but ever it comes to naught. It is so, always, when folk take to rhyming couplets, and putting spices to their food. Give me orders that hang together, and plain roast venison."

But all the while the honest man was stuffing his mouth full of lamb and pistachio nuts, and Babar smiled. Still he felt that, so far as the art of war went, he might go back to little Andijân without fear of leaving behind him any knowledge worth the learning. It was otherwise with the culture, and he flung himself with characteristic vitality into music lessons, and dancing lessons, elocution lessons and deportment lessons, until as he entered the court audience no one could have told that but a few weeks before, he had been as rough and as uncouth as old Kâsim, who stoutly refused veneer.

"What I am, God made me," he would say, "and if folk like it not let them leave. I budge not."

To which uncompromising independence, one pair of hands--delicate, long-fingered, ivory hands--gave fluttering applause. They belonged to a young man who, almost at first sight, impressed young Babar more than anyone he had seen in all his life. He was a helpless cripple who yet took his part in life like any other man. Every evening his spangled litter would be brought into the big audience tent and set down just below the King's. For Mirza Gharib-Beg (who styled himself Poverty-prince in allusion to the meaning of his name--poor) was the King's son by a low-born woman who had been passionately loved. So, despite the fact that he had been born misshapen, ugly, and that ill-health had always been his, Poverty-prince still had a hold on his father's affection. And no wonder; since, though his form was not prepossessing he had a fine genius, and though his constitution was feeble, he had a powerful mind. There was nothing, it seemed to Babar, that he could not do. He could rhyme with Ali-Shîr, play the guitar with Abdulla-Marwârid and paint with Bahzâd. What is more, he could talk mysticism far better than Kamâl-ud-din, with his wagging black beard, who pretended to raptures and ecstasies and had written a portentously dull book about Sufism which he called "The Assembly of Lovers"--portentously dull and also profane--which was inexcusable.