Tales of Destiny | Page 3

and his name is blessed."
The speaker dropped his eyes, folded his hands across his breast, and for a full minute remained in silent meditation. When at last he looked up again, there had come over the usually stern and haughty face a wonderful glow of kindliness, and his voice took a softer modulation.
"However, know this, my friends, that in my zenana at Jhalnagor there are little girls--three, and more will be welcome should the divine Krishna send them. Three little daughters have I, all born of my wife Lakmibai, the jewel of Jhalnagor. With sons also am I blessed--two brave little boys, of whom I may well be proud. But I love them not more than my daughters, nor would I change any one daughter for a son. This do I say out of the truth of my heart, and in no wise because fortune has been kind to me and mine, and has given us such prosperity that there is a fit dower for each daughter without my treasury knowing the loss.
"So when the learned mullah from Stamboul denounced infanticide, I was one with him in sympathy, for my inclination is to cherish with love and care every female child the gods send.
"Now would you hear how a Rajput came to this manner of thinking? My story is that of a little maid. Listen. It happened just five years gone by.
* * * * *
"Under the firm and just rule of our master Akbar there has been peace for many years in our part of the world. Except when, as now, I come to Fathpur-Sikri for my yearly month of service in providing part of the Emperor's bodyguard, I live quietly among my own people. The soil around our villages is tilled, our shopkeepers buy and sell, we worship in our temples, and we are happy, for no enemy comes to disturb the peace of our beautiful little valley of Jhalnagor embosomed among the hills.
"One day it befell that I had gone on a hunting trip with a party of my friends. In the early dawn we had descended from the fort on the hill top which is my home and the rallying-place for my clan--a small clan, numbering but a few thousands, but nobly born as any tribe in Rajputana, brave and of honour unsullied, men who have never yet given a daughter to the harem of a Moslem."
The features of the Rajput flashed with pride. His brother-at-arms, the Afghan, met the defiant look, and said, with a quiet smile:
"There are many Rajput women wed to Moslem lords."
"Yes, but not Rajput women of Jhalnagor. They would have died first--many of them did so prefer to die when the Moslem host first swept over our land. In the hour of defeat, against overwhelming numbers, within the citadel of Jhalnagor the women of my race, refusing to accept dishonour, bared their bosoms to the spears of those they loved, husbands, brothers, and fathers, and so they died."
With hands outstretched and eyes upraised in rapt pride and reverence for the deeds of his ancestors, again the Rajput fell into momentary silence.
"The story of the little maid." It was the voice of the physician recalling the narrator to his task.
"Yes, the story of the little maid," resumed the Rajput. "As I have said, we had gone to the hunt one morning--a party of twelve, riding on three elephants. For we were in pursuit of a tiger, a destroyer of men, which the villagers had marked down in a patch of jungle by the river side. Of the hunt I need say nothing; we killed the tiger, and, with the huge, striped body slung across the neck of my elephant, we were returning home. It was toward evening, for we had rested in the forest during the heat of the day.
"We were just entering the narrow gorge that leads to the fort on the hill, when, right on the pathway before me, I saw the prone figure of a child. Almost my elephant's feet were upon it before the sage brute himself stopped and trumpeted a warning to us in the howdah, for, the tiger's body occupying the place where the mahout was wont to ride, the latter was walking, and he, too, had not noticed the tiny bundle of bright yellow clothing lying on the road.
"Glancing down, I beheld a little girl with her forehead touching the dust. At my calling she arose, and spread her hands across her breast.
"'Listen, O chief, to my warning, listen, O my lord,' she called out in a shrill tone of supplication. Already had I observed that her face was one of great beauty, although that of just a little child, but six or seven years old.
"The other two elephants had halted behind mine, and some