She entered the palace, and Morad retraced his steps. As he pursued his journey towards his father’s tents, he could not help reflecting on the sublime beauty of Chan Lody’s daughter. She was evidently a woman of a lofty and indomitable spirit. Her parent’s dauntless soul beamed in her full black eyes, and her small budding mouth, the lips of which met each other with a firm compression that seemed to mock the tenderness of a more gentle contact, showed there was a high resolve within her which nothing short of death could subdue. Morad was young and ardent. His whole soul quivered like a sunbeam at the bare thought of an enterprise that should cast a halo of glory around it and his bosom glowed with germane sympathy, where he beheld any symptom of feeling congenial with his own. The stern refusal of Chan Lody had roused his indignation; the proud spirit of his daughter had won him to a gentler mood, and her beauty ratified what her lofty bearing had expressed.
When he entered his father’s presence, he reported the Omrah’s refusal, but withheld the indignities with which it had been accompanied. Shah Jehan was mortified and indignant at this issue of his embassy to the haughty noble of Burhampoor; and, breaking up his camp, he proceeded to the capital by another route.
CHAPTER II.
Within a few weeks after the events related in the preceding chapter, Chan Lody was apprised of Shah Jehan’s accession to the imperial throne. He was too powerful an Omrah not to be conciliated; the Emperor, therefore, despatched his son Morad with a message to invite Lody to visit the capital, promising him oblivion of all past indignities, with assurances of future favour. The Chan, trusting to the dignity of his own character, and his influence among the nobles, who honoured him as a man of lofty courage and impregnable integrity, consented at once to repair to Agra with his family, considering that his presence at the seat of government might be of some advantage to the state, as he was determined to watch with jealous scrutiny the motions of the reigning sovereign, to whose accession he had always been vehemently hostile. He, however, received Morad with courteous hospitality, as the saviour of his daughter’s life; and the young prince, remembering the impression which the lovely Jahanira had made upon him, offered himself to the father as her suitor. This was an alliance not at all coveted by Chan Lody, who, though he was by no means wanting in ambition, bore nevertheless too great an antipathy to the reigning Emperor to be desirous of a family connexion with him.
“My daughter,” said he to Morad, “is the person most concerned in this matter. You must consult her. She knows my wishes and her own. Whatever her choice may be, I shall not obstruct it. When you have gained her consent, I shall not withhold mine.”
Morad obtained an interview, and made his proposals. Jahanira paused, and surveyed him with a calm countenance, yet every feature radiant with that mind of which they were all most eloquent interpreters. After an earnest, but still respectful, scrutiny, she replied, “Prince, you are of noble birth, and therefore an alliance with you could not dishonour me; you are of a manly and agreeable person; you have the reputation of being brave, generous, just, and, in short, of possessing all the best qualities that belong to great and good men; personally, therefore, I cannot object to you as the disposer of my future life. Moreover, you have saved that life; gratitude, consequently, would induce me to accede to any honourable proposal which you could make me: but my father and yours bear a deep enmity against each other, and this is an impassable bar to such an alliance as you seek between the house of Timour and that of Lody.”
Morad was mortified at this rejection, and returned to Agra with the poison of disappointment rankling in his bosom. He kept the matter secret from his royal parent, who, he knew, would have felt the greatest indignation at his having made such a proposal to the daughter of a man who had treated him with offensive indignity.
Shortly after this, Chan Lody arrived with his family at Agra, and took up his abode in a large house surrounded by strong and lofty walls, not far from the palace. A few days after his arrival, he appeared at court, attended by his two sons. He was received by the Emperor with constrained courtesy, which satisfied him that the royal forgiveness so solemnly pledged to him was hollow and unsound. He was obliged to perform certain ceremonies which he considered not consistent with his rank and influence in the state; but seeing the impolicy of resistance at that moment, he patiently submitted to the indignity, though he clearly perceived that it was meant as a tacit retaliation. His son Azmut, a fine spirited youth of sixteen, followed his father into the hall of audience. The usher Perist, keeping him prostrate before the sovereign longer than the customary ceremony required, Azmut started up from the ground, sprang upon his feet, and was about to turn his back upon the royal presence when Perist struck him smartly upon the head with his rod, and ordered him in a peremptory tone, again to prostrate himself. The boy’s spirit was kindled; with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks he drew his sword, and made a stroke at the usher’s head, which would have proved fatal, had not his weapon been struck down by some of the guards, who, on state occasions, were always in attendance in the courts of Mogul potentates.
Lody, suspecting that his life was aimed at, drew his dagger; and his two sons, placing themselves on either side of their father, with their weapons bared, produced a scene of general consternation. Many of the Omrahs unsheathed their swords, but the known valour of Chan Lody kept them in awe. The Emperor leaped from his throne, and ordered the refractory noble to be seized, together with his sons. One of the mace-bearers, who happened to be near Azmut, laid hold of him, but the youth instantly buried a crease in his throat. The confusion increased. Two Omrahs fell beneath the arm of Chan Lody, who, rushing from the presence, followed by his sons, sought refuge in his own house, and ordered the gates to be instantly closed. He was proclaimed a rebel, and orders issued for his immediate apprehension; but the house to which he had repaired was so strongly fortified, that the fulfilment of the royal mandate was anything but an easy matter.
The Emperor’s rage was now at its height; all his former hostility revived in full force, and he determined that the refractory Omrah should pay the extreme penalty of his rashness. He commanded Morad to besiege him in his castle. The latter, though he had scarcely recovered from the mortification to which he had been subjected by the beautiful but haughty daughter of the refractory noble, nevertheless undertook the command with some reluctance, respecting the virtues of the man whom, though he certainly did not love, he nevertheless could not despise.