These things considered, one strange act of his extreme youth must also be recorded. When, after three or four days of expectancy and dread, the bodies of those two who had drowned themselves together were washed ashore, by Narmáda waters, many miles to the west, Manava, following the old Hindoo superstition, prepared to burn the body of the Ranee there on the shore, and to erect over her a fitting tomb, where, on the anniversary of her death, a sacrifice might take place for the salvation of her soul. Young Bhavani, then under the close supervision of instructors, heard, in some way, of this plan of the regent, went to him in the council hall, and commanded, by the blood of his father that flowed in his veins, that the body of Fidá should be burned with that of Ahalya, and their ashes buried together. Manava heard him in shocked silence; and then explained that a Ranee might not be so dishonored. Useless objection. Bhavani insisted. And, after a time, he won his way. Thus, now, for thirty years, the two had slept in a little stone temple, by the bank of the river which still chanted in their dead ears its plashing song.
Since the death of Rai-Khizar there had been no war in Mandu. After the battle on the plain of Dhár, in which, in spite of the fall of one of the Indian leaders, the Mohammedans had sustained a heavy defeat, the invaders had not again penetrated so far into Malwa. They were still within their northern strongholds; and the Dekkhan, hearing naught of the crossing of the Gunga, nor of Agra, nor Benares, the merciless conquest of the holy of holies, went its way placidly, catching not so much as an echo of the far-ringing warcry of the men of Yemen with their Prophet’s sword. The relations between Dhár and Mandu, always of the friendliest, had been further cemented by the marriage of Bhavani with a daughter of the neighboring province. But, happily for Bhavani’s views, the brother state had no enemy against whom Mandu was supposed to take part.
The years passed in peace and well-doing until the Rajah attained his five and thirtieth year. Then came an event which, for a long time, seemed to have turned the severely upright ruler quite out of his course, and to have made him a man of men, erring and weak. From some distant land, none knew where, there came to Mandu one of those purely Indian characters, known long before the time of the great Buddha: a religious courtesan, a woman of supreme beauty and magnetic power, by name Zenaide. How, by what means, she got her first audience of Bhavani, no one knew. But within a month after that, she was installed in the long empty water-palace, where she dwelt as a queen among men, or, as men whispered, the Queen of a King. That whisper was an ugly one, but it found ear for a long time. Bhavani, immovable by wiles, impervious to temptation, adamant against force, seemed voluntarily to have fallen to this woman; and it was not till after his death that his people perceived how their Rajah, unconquered by her, had been her conqueror, ruling her beauty and her will by the inviolable purity of his mind. But, at the time when Oman came to Mandu, in the Rajah’s forty-second year, no one understood what were the relations between the mistress of the beautiful little palace, and the King of the great building near by. They were much together. Zenaide, indeed, was with no one else. How, then, should men not wonder, and watch, and whisper together?
It was March, and the half-dead world had been undergoing its annual rejuvenescence. In the late afternoon, when the shadows are long, and bird-calls are beginning again, Bhavani, the day’s state at an end, went walking slowly down the open garden that bordered the road between the two palaces, and finally halted at the stone parapet built along the edge of the plateau. Two slaves followed the King, but halted at a respectful distance as he paused, gazing down over the green plain and its shining river. After a few seconds he noticed that another than he stood near by, also leaning upon the parapet:— a man, tall and gaunt, clad in a much-worn garment, his head and feet bare. Something about the figure drew Bhavani’s attention, and, looking farther, he suddenly caught the man’s eyes—great, limpid eyes, laden with the sorrow of the world. A significant look passed between the two. Oman had also swept the figure before him, upward, from the embroidered shoes, over the rich dress, to the face, finely chiselled, but cast in a mould of melancholy. There he who had won purity through the flames of hell, gazed upon him to whom birth had given all good, and who had taken upon his slender shoulders some of the burden of the world. In the first instant of the meeting eyes, each found kinship in the other.
Bhavani moved a little toward the stranger, and asked, in a suppressed voice:
“Thou art newly come to Mandu?”
“I crossed the causeway two days since.”
“Whence art thou come?”
“Out of the hills.”
“And whither—art thou going?”