Her hard voice ceased; there was no sound in the room save that strange hum from the gardens outside, which at this hour of the day were generally wrapped in sun-drugged slumbers.
But the world beyond, toward which the old King's lusterless eyes looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as ever. Through the tracery-set archs showed yellow stretches of sand and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-grass hiding the slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer sunlight. A row of _saringhi_ players squatted in the room behind the balcony, thrumming softly, so as to hide that strange hum of life which reached even here. For the King was writing a couplet and was in difficulties with a rhyme for _cartouche_ (cartridge); since he was a stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other side of the _saringhies_. _Cartouche? Cartouche?_ Suddenly he sat up. "Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!" he hesitated for an instant. Hussan Askuri would be with the Queen, and no one ever admired his couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just meed of praise? "Stay," he repeated, "I will go myself." It was a relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his treasure, imagining her face when she heard it.
"Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahin Jo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne."
A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people, warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and--dog-anglicized--runs thus:
"Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy, The only weapon was a cartridge greasy."
"The Queen? Where is the Queen?" fumed the old man, when he found an empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the Great Moghul.
"She prays for the King's recovery," said Fâtma readily. "I will inform her that her prayer is granted." But as she passed on her errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest son behind decorous screens, and that she was thanking Heaven piously for having sent him back to her apron-string in the very nick of time. Sent him, and Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within reach of her quick wit.