"What do you know about my great-grandfather?" he interrupted hotly.
"Nothing, except that the Protector of the Poor must have had one. That is all. Nevertheless, if the Presence's great-grandfather (Heaven cool his grave!) had been in Jodhnagar when he was young he might have heard Gulâbi[[28]] sing. I am Gulâbi, Huzoor."
The peacock's feather fan, with its scent of dead roses, swung backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, in that even rhythmical sweep which only those accustomed to the task from childhood can maintain for long without break or flaw. It was particularly soothing.
"I was singer to the great Mâharâni at the Pearl Palace," went on the voice, "I had to sing her to sleep whilst I fanned her as I am fanning the Pillar of Justice even now, I used to sing also before the Court in the evening, sitting in the screened room where only the great and the favoured had sight of my mistress. Sometimes the Presence's people came from over the sea; I have seen them. They came in those days for gold and jewels. Sometimes also for love; not for justice, as my Lord comes now. Nor did they wear blue spectacles; but then they were young, and I, who am so old now, I was young also."
The melancholy cadence of her words was quite lost on Smith-Jones, who was fast recovering himself, and beginning once more to take a rational view of life, and an interest in the situation, as a situation. Among other things he was a student of folk-lore, and the chance of acquiring information from this old woman, something that might even be construed into a sun-myth, was exceedingly tempting. "You must know a lot of old songs, mother," he said in superior tones. "Sing me one while we are waiting for Dittu. Or if you can't sing it, you know, just say it; I only want the words."
Was it a faint chuckle he heard, as he lay prone on his back, or only a louder gurgle of those ceaseless doves in the jhand tree? The old lady's voice, imperturbably toneless, arrested his wonder. "Why should I not sing, Huzoor, seeing I am of a family of bards? We sing both of the old and the new order. My father and my father's father sang of them before me; yet I have no son to sing them after me. So the songs I sing die with me. When I am dead no one will hear them any more."
All the more reason why he should hear them now, thought Smith-Jones, feeling surreptitiously in his pocket for a note-book.
"The Presence need not trouble himself. He must close his eyes or I shall forget my song. My singing is for sleep and dreams, and this song has been waiting to be sung so long that it is well-nigh forgotten already. Listen and dream, Huzoor!"
She began in the usual low chant, varied by occasional sudden turns modulating the tone into a higher or a lower key in accordance with the spirit of the story. From a musical point of view there was nothing remarkable in the performance, save the absolute want of vibration in the worn-out voice, whose even softness became all the more remarkable when contrasted by the passion in the words. Yet Smith-Jones felt at once that he was listening to a past mistress in her art. The art which in old times represented history, literature, and the drama, and made the desire for, or possession of, a really good bard a just cause for battle, murder, or sudden death among rival Courts. He could not, of course, recollect the exact words used, but, in telling me the tale years after, he declared that his memory clung close to the original, and that her song swept on untrammelled by more rhyme or rhythm than what seemed to come to it spontaneously through the chant. She sang, in fact, as the native bards sing, with every now and again an interlude of refrain or exclamation serving as a pause during which the singer grasps a fresh idea, a new measure. And this, according to Smith-Jones, was the song that she sang.
Listen, Pillar of Justice! Listen.