Chapter II

On that day thy cheek sparkled under thy veil, and all this beautiful
imagery appeared on the mirror of our fancies.

HAFIZ.

“It grieves me,” said the pale Circassian to one of her companions, while they were engaged in watering a bed of Cashmere roses, “to behold the indifference with which our mistress still meets the looks, beaming all over with love, that light the noble countenance of the subah, whenever he finds her walking alone on this terrace. He takes her hand in his, kisses it, gazes upon her eyes with ardour as warm as if she had just dropped down to him from heaven; but she--has finished her walk, or is weary of the heat, or, negligent of his attentions, turns away to a tulip or an anemone, about which she seems to care much more than any thing that he can address to her!”

“It is but too true! How changed, Kanun, she appears from her former self! You remember the night of the Vishnu dance,--when Selim, now the emperor, was present,--what a goddess she looked on that night!”

“Ah, never can I forget it. You know how beautiful we always thought her,--but she was then divine! How changed indeed! She will sit for hours at the foot of a water-fall, which tumbles from those lofty mountains above us with a roar that is to me sometimes terrible. But Nourmahal likes it. It hushes to repose, she says, the feelings that trouble her bosom when she thinks of her delicious home upon the banks of the Jumna!”

“Why does she still call her father’s palace, which she has quitted for ever, her home?”

“If that palace had not been in Agra, had she not remembered that from its towers and gardens she could behold the golden domes of the seraglio, those domes upon which she gazed with so many tears when we left the capital for Cashmere, think you that her heart would still yearn for that home, when she possesses such a princely residence as this?”

“I understand you too well.”

“Look, what a prospect of marvellous beauty those lines of houses at Cashmere exhibit, their flat roofs planted according to the beauteous fashion of this enchanting country, with flowering shrubs, geraniums, campanulas, and roses of every colour under heaven! Standing thus in the valley beneath us, with that ample lake like a sheet of burnished gold around them, in which they appear again as if imitated by some magician of the skies, do they not justify the tradition that here the true paradise was planted in the elder days? Oh is it not rapture to breathe the perfume which they send us upon the wings of the evening breeze, when the fire-flies are sparkling all over them like some lost stars that know not where to be at rest? It was but yesterday evening that I asked our lady to sketch for us, with her matchless pencil, that bewitching scene; but she held in her hand a faded, withered lily of the valley, which she seemed to think more attractive than the whole collection of living charms I had pointed out to her attention.”

“There she now moves yonder, towards those cedars, more like a queen than the daughter of a shepherdess.”

“Ah! I see she is going to her favourite haunt. When wandering alone in that dark grove she feels that she is shut out from all the world; that she can read, or write, or sketch, or give herself up to those long reveries,--those tears,--which she has of late exchanged for the buoyant spirits she had always known on the banks of the Jumna. She loves to listen to those ancient trees waving solemnly above her head, as if they were communing with each other in their plaintive voices about the remembered happiness of other days. The Galun, fed by a thousand streams that descend from the mountains, do you not hear how it contributes its sweet murmurs to the music of the grove, while that unceasing cataract, now deepened to thunder by a rush of waters which had been blown back for a while by opposing winds on the mountain’s top, now modulated to the song of the bulbul, forms the bass for a concert of which her ear never tires.”

Nourmahal was, indeed, much attached to the cedar grove from the earliest moment of her residence in Cashmere. She loved to escape thither, especially at noon, from the train of her attendants, and from the importunities of the other ladies of the subah’s harem, who entreated her to teach them those arts of embroidery, painting, music, and dancing, in which she had attained, almost without exertion, unrivalled excellence. She willingly abandoned to them the opportunities which those hours afforded, for winning the attentions and courting the smiles of him whose slaves they were, while she wandered alone through the cedar grove, or sometimes, accompanied by Kanun, if the cooler temperature of the season permitted, extended her excursions to a rising ground whence she could catch favourable views of the scenery around the castle. Her taste for drawing had furnished her with a solace that never lost its zest, even when thoughts of the past, anticipations of the future, pressed upon her with a weight that to other minds would have been all but intolerable.

It was a landscape worthy of her happiest skill--one upon which, notwithstanding Kanun’s remark to the contrary, she had often pondered with delight, so different did it appear from any scene she had ever known in Hindostan. The capital lay beneath her, at the distance of three leagues, in a valley, through which flowed the Galun, a wide, full, yet placid river, ever bearing to an extensive lake beyond the town, the contributions of innumerable streams that rushed down from the surrounding mountains. The lower circle of those mountains, broken only at one point, where the surplus waters of the lake found an outlet, towards the Indus, between two stupendous rocks, exhibited a perpetual spring. It was interspersed by many villages and hamlets, by rice-fields, saffron-meadows, gardens, lemon and orange-groves, clusters of trees that yield the custard-apple, the guava, the mango, the tamarind, the citron, almond, peach, nectarine, apricot, pomegranate, fig, and mulberry. Upon the pastures sheep were browsing, attended by myriads of lambs, white as snow. The lowing of cows was occasionally heard from all parts of the declivities; while among the rocks that jutted out here and there, were seen troops of goats, whose hair furnished the materials for those splendid shawls that are held in such esteem by all nations.

Above the pastures and villages, Nourmahal’s eye wandered among forests of mahogany, pine, and oak and juniper, mingled with the palm, the walnut, and the noble plane-tree, the saul, whose wreaths of foliage and flowers seemed all silver, the graceful festoons of the azure convolvolus, and the golden tassels of the laburnum. From branch to branch, those busy birds, the fly-catchers, pursued their delicate game, arrayed in deep glossy black, or in brilliant crimson, or in that beautiful verditer blue which gives out tints of green when touched by the light. Hundreds of humming-birds flitted about, looking for insects in the centre of expanded flowers, whose purple, or yellow, or roseate hues they seemed to borrow, as they chased each other through the woods. Here the peacock compensated for his dissonant screams, by the display of that wondrous assemblage of colours with which his long plumage is illumined, challenging all the other birds of Cashmere, and casting into the shade even its peculiar pheasant, whose wings are so resplendent with tints of burnished green and purple. The notes of the blue thrush, the blackbird, and the cuckoo; the lively song of the skylark and the blackcap; and the tender murmurs of the nightingale, came from different parts of the surrounding forests to add their charms to that enchanting valley.

The zone of forests with which the lower range of mountains was belted vanished, apparently, into the clouds; but, beyond them, Nourmahal discerned a still higher circle of ridges, covered with perpetual snow, whose summits were as bright and serene as the face of the summer moon, when all the world beneath was overshadowed by the tempest and shaken by the thunder. Sadi justly exclaimed, when he first beheld Cashmere, that it was a triple diadem, composed of a band of emerald, and then of opal, reflecting every colour, and then of diamond, glowing like the star of morning.

The fountains that burst forth on all sides from those aërial heights, formed numerous cascades, as they sought their way, like veins of liquid silver, down the naked rocks and green declivities, until they mingled with the Galun, yielding, as they descended, a combination of melodies that lulled the soul into an Elysian sleep. The green or saffron soft carpets spread over the plains of the valley, animated by thousands of azure-winged butterflies, enamelled by the yellow anemone, the brilliant pink, the proud geranium, whole fields of roses, whose essence the Hindoo goddesses steal to perfume their golden hair, the dictamnus, whose petals are arranged like the strings of a lute, the mimosa, and those sun-like flowers that dazzle the eye, seemed the work of some magician, especially when the changing shadows of the mountain tops, or the passing clouds, now spread a mantle over the bosom of the valley, now left it rejoicing in the sunbeams, breathing the incense, and robed in the radiant garments of Paradise.

No bird or beast of prey, or poisonous reptile, disturbed the repose of that unrivalled scene. The eagle looked upon it with delight from his habitation amidst the snow-crowned rocks, but sought his food in Thibet, or among the Himalayan mountains. The tiger, scared by its resplendent beauty, turned back, when the antelope, of which he was in pursuit, fled for sanctuary to the woods of Cashmere.

Nourmahal might well have been excused, if she often out-stayed the sun, while endeavouring to retain on her canvass the prospects which attracted her eye at every step, whether she gazed upon the works of nature, or upon the picturesque dwellings raised by man on the banks of the lake and the river, surmounted as those dwellings were by gardens carefully cultivated, and filled with violets, roses, narcissuses, and rose-scented tulips, vines, melons, and quinces, the yellow broom, the splendid rhododendron, and oleander, and with hives for bees, whose pleasing hum was heard through the stillness of noon as they wandered from flower to flower.

Often, in the evening, when the heat of the day was spent, and the haze of the air cleared away, leaving the sky a transparent blue, and the refreshing breeze came down from the higher ranges of the mountains, did she watch from the summit of her own tower in the castle, the crowds of gaily decorated boats with which the lake near the capital, and the beautiful Galun, were covered, some engaged in hawking and fishing, some in bearing to the islands in the lake parties bent on pleasure, some apparently abandoned to the gentle motions of the current, as if the persons within them yielded their whole existence to delicious visions of tranquil joy that knows no care.

Beyond the great lake others presented themselves to her eye, whose surface was almost wholly veiled by the nelumbium, that gorgeous, poppy-like flower, whose seeds and stalks yield a grateful food to the peasant. Nor did the torch of the glow-worm fail to prolong the twilight, until the moon, rising in her majesty, flung her path of silver along the surface of the waters, deepened the azure vestment of the heavens, and hushed to repose the forests and all their winged inhabitants, the bulbul alone excepted, whose song is most musical, most bewitching, when every other sound is at rest.

There was a vacancy in Nourmahal’s heart, which compelled her to seek occupation out of the ordinary routine of her duties. She could not, she did not, frequently attempt to conceal from herself, that she had been hurried by circumstances, over which she had no control, into her union with Afkun. She was sensible of his entire devotion to her--of the unquestionable preference with which he treated her beyond the other inmates of his harem--of the liberty of action which he allowed her, and of the indefatigable affection with which he provided for her every sort of luxury and enjoyment which she could possibly desire. For his character she entertained the utmost respect--she esteemed him as the friend of her father--she adhered to him as her sworn protector through life. But in none of these sentiments, or feelings, did she discover those diviner impulses which spiritualise the heart, and enable it to identify itself with the thoughts, the griefs, the joys of another heart, as if the two were one.

The endeavour would have been useless, had she made it, to persuade herself that she was not an exile from scenes which she very much preferred even to the paradise around her. One circumstance alone might have reversed her convictions upon that point--a circumstance which she dared not prefigure to her fancy, during those moments when she was most alone. The victorious banner of the emperor--could she but behold it planted on the towers of the castle--Bochari overthrown from his pedestal of power--Chusero restored to filial obedience--Afkun at peace with his imperial master, and in the enjoyment of his confidence--her beloved parents near her--and herself permitted now and then (it was all that she desired) to behold those glowing eyes which once looked up at her, and confessed her to be their mistress, alone, and without the chance of rivalry!--ah! these were indeed visions, which she could never expect to see realised.

Afkun could not but perceive that Nourmahal, in her new situation, was far from being happy. Fearless, however, as he was in all the other relations of his life, he had not the courage to open the page which would have disclosed to him the full measure of despair that would have filled his mind, had he known the real state of her feelings. He won from her, at times, one of those smiles of loveliness, which made her for the moment look like a being from some higher world. Upon that smile he lived for a season, deluding himself with the hope that it might return--return frequently, and at length prove that she was all his own. But it was the flash of the lightning. During long days, and weeks, and months, it returned not. It became unfamiliar to his eye, though never lost to his recollection. When the thought occasionally came home to his heart, that he was thus to spend his life with the woman, whom, above all others, he loved--the woman, upon whose steps he waited, as if they bore the magnet of his existence--when he first began to apprehend that, with all his devotion, he had not succeeded in winning his way to that sacred tabernacle in her bosom, which was either pre-occupied, or reserved for some other object, he wept like an infant.

Nevertheless, he was of a disposition too noble to permit the slightest trace of his secret agony to be visible to any other person--especially to her who caused it. He resorted to no petty resources of revenge to assuage his mortified pride--he planned no schemes for exciting her to jealousy, though his harem yielded abundant means for operations of that description. His sense of honour taught him, that to all the females whom he had pledged himself to guard and respect, even when he could not love, he owed obligations of the most inviolable nature. They were happy in his presence, and grateful for the solicitude with which he uniformly provided for their health and convenience, and for those gratifications of personal ornament and dress, which engage so much of woman’s attention. But although he might have easily induced any of them to aid him in experiments upon the princess Nourmahal, with a view to awaken her pride, and to affect her acknowledged rank as his principal consort, he disdained all courses of that kind, resolved, that if he could not gain her affections by the simple appeal of his own manly heart, and by the unchangeable tenor of his love, he would submit to the destiny that awaited him.

Afkun found even in time a solace in reflecting that he suffered for Nourmahal. It was a martyrdom known only to that intense love which survives even the hope of return. His constant meditation was, how he could best consult her wishes in all things, without seeming to press beyond the point which her feelings towards him could permit him to go. This generous delicacy would have conquered the indifference of any woman, in whose heart the affections lived alone unkindled by ambition. Nourmahal could not but be conscious of her power over Afkun, of his unbounded devotion to her, and of the tenderness with which he treated her apathy. She confessed to herself the ingratitude with which she returned all his idolatry,--accused herself even of criminality, in not confining her hopes of happiness within the sphere in which she was now bound to move; but she could not, strive as she might, shut out from her view the brilliant prospects which had once, though only for a moment, shone upon her path; prospects, upon the recollection of which, however visionary, she would rather continue to live, than, by abandoning them, to get back that peace and innocence of mind which they had for ever dispelled.