DINSHAH

Perizade, the shades of Iran were not so cool and sweet as these in our city of Mazinderan. The gardens that bloom on the banks of the river of peace are carpeted with lovelier and sweeter-scented flowers; and the birds that sing upon every tree and make the day melodious with the unearthly delight of their clamorous harmonies, are of so various a plumage and hue that one is content to satiate the eye with the softness and splendour without caring to know name and kind. Here for two thousand years we have tasted the bliss of the angels; but, I know not why, it seems to me that memories of Iran come back to my heart. The waters of the Jihun and the tents of the Tartars where the tribes of Afrasiab wander, Damascus the opulent, and our own cities, where the houses of our parents adjoined and we leaned from the balcony and talked in soft whispers, seem to me again desirable.

PERIZADE

I too would not mind returning to our old haunts. It is not that I am weary of Mazinderan, but something calls to me to have joy again that is mortal and fleeting, but not without its poignant sense of a swiftly-snatched and perfect bliss. Yet Dinshah, two thousand years have passed and shall we not consider, before we go, what has come to the places we loved? Other men, other tongues, other manners may now possess them, and we should come as strangers into a world for which we are no longer fit.

DINSHAH

I will go and see. Wait for me, Perizade.

2

DINSHAH

Perizade, Perizade, let us not return to earth, but remain for ever in Mazinderan. I have seen the earth and it is changed.How wise wert thou, my angel!

PERIZADE

What didst thou see or hear, beloved?

DINSHAH

I saw a world stripped of beauty. Mean and clumsy were the buildings, or pretentious and aimed at a false elegance. Miles of brick, with hardly a bit of green here and there, these are the cities. Ever a raucous roar goes up from them, the glint of furnaces and the clang of metal; a dull, vicious smoke clouds the sky; the gardens are blasted and there is no beauty in them. Men wear a hideous dress uglier than their joyless faces and awkward limbs. It is a world of barbarians; the gnomes have come up from under the earth to work in the sunlight.

PERIZADE

Dinshah, this is sorrowful news, for go we must. Do you not know that these urgings are the signal?

DINSHAH

Yes, my Perizade, but not to this hideousness did our hearts move us to resort, but to the towers and gardens of Iran.

PERIZADE

It may be, Dinshah, that we go down to make the world once more what it was, a place of beauty, song and delight. Surely, if we enter into the world you describe, we shall not be content to leave it till it is utterly changed into the likeness of our desire.

DINSHAH

I think you are right, Perizade, as you always are. Let us then arise and go.

TURIU

Goddess Leda who from heaven descendest, how beautiful are thy feet as they gild the morning. The roses of Earth are red, but the touch of vermilion with which thy feet stain the heavens, is redder,—it is the crimson of love, the glory of passion. Goddess Leda, look down upon menwith gracious eyes. The clang of war is stilled, silent the hiss of the shafts and the shields clamour no more against each other in the shock of the onset. We have hung up our swords on the walls of our mansions. The young men have returned unhurt, the girls of Asilon cry through the corn sweet and high to the hearts of their lovers. Goddess Leda, lady of laughter, lady of bliss! in the chambers of love, in the song of the bridal, in the gardens and by the delightful streams where boy and girl look into each other’s eyes, speak low to the heart, enter in. Drive out hatred, drive out wrath. Let love embrace the world and silence the eager soul of strife with kisses.

URIU

The song of Turiu is beautiful, but the chant of Uriu is mighty. Listen to the Hymn of Tanyth. Tanyth, terrible Mother! laced with a garland of skulls, thou that drinkest the blood of the victim upon the altar loud with the death-shriek, mighty and merciless Mother! Tanyth, thou in the shock of the fighting, with the raucous cry that rises high and drowns the crash of the car and the roar of the battle,—blood-stained, eager and terrible, pitiless, huge and swift,—wonderful, adorable Mother! Hear me! I who fear thee not, I who love thee, ask of thee, art thou weary, art thou satiate now with the blood of the foe and the flesh of the victims?Why has it sunk to rest, the thunder of war in Asilon, land of the mighty?

I am not weary, I am not satiate. I charge thee, awake and give me again delight of the slaughter, trampling the face of the fallen foe as I scatter with shafts the ranks that boasted and shouted, forgetting that Uriu fought in the van of the battle. Mother, arise! leave to Leda her gardens and delicate places, the faces lovely and smooth of Asilon’s boys and the joyous beauty of women. l am old and grey in the council and battle.

She has nothing for me; what shall I do with her boon of peace and her promptings of love and beauty?

Mother, arise, Tanyth the terrible! shake the world with thy whisper, loom in the heavens, madden men’s hearts with the thirst of blood, the rapture of death and the joy of the killing. We will give thee thy choice of the captives, women and men to fall and to bleed on thy altar.

Tanyth, lady of death, queen of the battle! there is a joy in the clash of death that is more than woman’s sweet embrace, a pleasure in pain that the touch of her lips cannot give us; lovelier far is the body torn by the spears than her white limbs covered with shining gems. Tanyth’s skulls are more than the garland upon thy breasts, O Leda.

TURIU

It is great, Uriu, master of war and song, but mine too is beautiful. It is long since we met in the temples and marketplaces of Asilon. Ages have rolled by and the earth is changed, Prince of the Asa.

URIU

I have lived in the heavens of the great where we fight all day and meet to feast in the evening.

TURIU

And I in gardens of love and song where the sea murmurs low on flower-skirted beaches. But the time comes when I must go down and take up again the song and the sweetness in mortal places of pleasure.

URIU

I also go down, for the warrior too is needed and not only the poet and lover.

TURIU

The world is changed, Uriu, Prince of the Asa. Thou wilt not get again the joy of slaughter and pitilessness. Men have grown merciful, full of tenderness and shrinking.

URIU

I know not. What Tanyth gives me to do, that I will do. If there were no sternness, no grimness in the world that she creates, I should not be called.

TURIU

We will go down together and see what this world is in which after so many millions of years we are again wanted.

JAYSINGH

Neither of us has prevailed. A third force has entered into the land and taken the fruits of your work, and as for mine, it is broken; the ideal I cherished has gone down into the dust.

SHIVAJI

For the fruit I did not work and by the failure I am not amazed nor discouraged.

JAYSINGH

Neither did I work for a reward, but to uphold the ideal of the Rajput. Unflinching courage in honourable warfare, chivalry to friend and foe, a noble loyalty to the sovereign of my choice, this seemed to me the true Indian tradition, preferable even to the unity and predominance of the Hindu races. Therefore I could not accept your overtures. But I gave you the opportunity to accept my own tradition and, when faith was not kept with either of us, I saved my honour and assisted your escape.

SHIVAJI

God extended to me His protection and moved the heart of a woman to give me love and aid. Traditions change. The ideal of the Rajput has its future, but the mould had to be broken in order that what was temporary in it might pass. Loyalty to the sovereign of my choice, that is good; but loyalty to the sovereign of my nation’s choice, that is better. The monarch is divine by the power of God expressed within him, but he has the power because he is the incarnation of the people. God in the nation is the deity of which the monarch must be the servant and the devotee. Vithoba, Virat of the Mahrattas,—Bhavani, incarnate as India,—in that strength I conquered.

JAYSINGH

Your political ideal was great, but your standard of means was abhorrent to our morality. Ruse, treachery, pillage, assassination were never excluded from your activity.

SHIVAJI

Not for myself I fought and ruled, but for God and the Maharashtra dharma, the religion ofHindu nationality which Ramdas enunciated. I offered my head to Bhavani and She bade me keep it to scheme and plot for the greatness of the nation. I gave my kingdom to Ramdas and he bade me take it back as a gift from God and the Mahrattas. I obeyed their commands. I slew when God commanded me, plundered because it was the means He pointed out to me. Treacherous I was not, but I helped my weakness in resource and numbers by ruse and stratagem, I conquered physical force by keenness of wit and brain-power. The world has accepted ruse in war and politics, and the chivalrous openness of the Rajput is not practiced either by the European or the Asiatic nations.

JAYSINGH

I hold the dharma as supreme and even the voice of God could not persuade me to abandon it.

SHIVAJI

I gave up all to Him and did not keep even the dharma. His will was my religion; for He was my captain and I his soldier. That was my loyalty,—not to Aurangzebe, not to a code of morals, but to God who sent me.

JAYSINGH

He sends us all, but for different purposes, and according to the purpose He moulds the ideal and the character. I am not grieved that theMogul has fallen. Had he deserved to retain sovereignty, he could not have lost it; but even when he ceased to deserve, I kept my faith, my service, my loyalty. It was not for me to dispute the will of my emperor. God who appointed him might judge him; it was not my office.

SHIVAJI

God also appoints the man who rebels and refuses to prolong unjust authority by acquiescence. He is not always on the side of power; sometimes He manifests as the deliverer.

JAYSINGH

Let Him come down Himself, then, as He promised. Then alone would rebellion be justified.

SHIVAJI

From whence will He come down who is here already in our hearts? Because I saw Him there, therefore I was strong to carry out my mission.

JAYSINGH

Where is the seal upon your work, the pledge of His authority?

SHIVAJI

I undermined an empire, and it has not been rebuilt. I created a nation, and it has not yet perished.

LITTLETON

After so long a time, Percival, we meet. It is strange that our ways, upon earth associated and parallel, should in this other world be so entirely divergent.

PERCIVAL

Why is it strange to you, Littleton? The world in which we find ourselves, is made, as we have both discovered, of the stuff of our earthly dreams and the texture of our mortal character. Physically, our ways on earth were parallel.We walked together over Cumberland mountains or watched the whole sea leap and thunder Titanically against the Cornwall cliffs. You were stroke and I was cox in the same boat on the Isis.We bracketed always for College honours and took the same class in the same subject in the Tripos. Afterwards too, we entered Parliament side by side in the same party and by an august and noble silence helped to administer the affairs of our country. But what greater difference could divide men than that which existed between our bodilyframes and moral constitutions? You, the tall, fair, robust descendant of the Vikings; I, dark, spare and short from theWelsh mountains. You, the hardheaded, practical, successful lawyer; I, the dilettante and connoisseur, who knew something about everything except my own affairs and could deal successfully with every business that did not concern me.

LITTLETON

Yet we clung together; our tastes often lay in the same direction; our affections were similar, and even our sins connected us.

PERCIVAL

We completed each other, I think. Our tastes were very dissimilarly similar. We read the same book; but you tore the essence out of it briefly, masterfully, and then flung it aside, satisfied that you had made even the dead useful to you; I wound my way into the heart of its meaning like a serpent and lay there coiled till I had become one with it, then wound myself out again replete and affectionately reminiscent of the soul that had given me harbourage. As for our sins, let us not talk of them. We have been too tediously familiar with them after death to cherish their memory. But even there we differed. You sinned voraciously, robustly, with gusto but with very little of feeling; I stumbled in out of excess of emotion and could not recover myself because of the vibrant intensity of my memories.

LITTLETON

Let me know what worlds harboured you, since we parted.

PERCIVAL

Let me rather hear your experiences.

LITTLETON

The details fade in the retrospect and will not bear telling. Certain periods of mortal agony there were, each with its own physical surroundings, that I long to forget but cannot. Some of them recalled strangely, not in detail, but in kind, Greek Tartarus and Catholic Inferno. I was the prey of harpies, I was hunted and torn and devoured, I experienced the agonies of the men I had sent to the deliberate and brutal torture of our jails or beggared of their honour or their property. I renewed the successes of my life and sickened of their selfishness, boldness, hardness. Money became as redhot metal in my hands and luxury was a gnawing fire that embraced my body. I lingered in regions where love was not known and the souls of the inhabitants were hard and strong as bronze, dry and delightless as the Sahara. O Percival, Percival, when I go again upon earth, I shall know love and execute mercy.

PERCIVAL

Had you no hours of respite, entered no regions of happiness?

LITTLETON

That, I believe, is yet before me.

PERCIVAL

I too have had experiences similar to yours, though different in their nature and quality. I have sickened of the repeated weakness and selfishness of my life, I have experienced in my soul the sufferings of those I had injured. I can understand why the Christians believedHell to be eternal; it was amemory in the self of the moral endlessness of those torments. But I had my release. I have lived in Elysium, I have trod the fields of asphodel. And in those happy experiences l have deepened the strength and quality of my love, intensified the swiftness of my emotions, refined and purified my taste and intellect.

LITTLETON

What is this world in which we meet?

PERCIVAL

The heaven of comrades.