The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

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Her mouth was open to intercede with his desire, but his forehead became
black as night, and he shouted in the thunder of his lion-voice, 'Do
this!'

She took the Jewel from its warm bed in her bosom, and held it, and got
together a band of green weeds, and set it in the middle of the band, and
tied the band on her brow, and lifted her countenance to the Chief. Ruark
stood back from her and gazed on her; and he would have veiled his sight
from her, but his hand fell. Then the might of her loveliness seized
Bhanavar likewise, and the full orbs of her eyes glowed on the Chief as
on a mirror, and she moved her serpent figure scornfully, and smiled,
saying, 'Is it well?'

And he, when he could speak, replied, ''Tis well! I have seen thee! for
now can I die this day, if it be that I am to die. And well it is! for
now know I there is truly no place but the tomb can hold me from thee!'

Bhanavar put the Jewel from her brow into her bosom, and questioned him,
'What is thy dread this day, O my Chief?'

He answered her gravely, 'I have seen Rukrooth my mother while I slept;
and she was weeping, weeping by a stream, yea, a stream of blood; and it
was a stream that flowed in a hundred gushes from her own veins. The sun
of this dawn now, seest thou not? 'tis overcrimson; the vulture hangeth
low down yonder valley.' And he cried to her, 'Haste! mount with me; for
I have told Rukrooth a thing; and I know that woman crafty in the
thwarting of schemes; such a fox is she where aught accordeth not with
her forecastings, and the judgment of her love for me! By Allah! 'twere
well we clash not; for that I will do I do, and that she will do doth
she.'

So the twain mounted their steeds, and Ruark gathered his Arabs and
placed them, some in advance, some on either side of Bhanavar; and they
rode forward to the head of the valley, and across the meadows, through
the blushing crowds of flowers, baths of freshest scents, cool breezes
that awoke in the nostrils of the mares neighings of delight; and these
pranced and curvetted and swung their tails, and gave expression to their
joy in many graceful fashions; but a gloom was on Ruark, and a quick fire
in his falcon-eye, and he rode with heels alert on the flanks of his
mare, dashing onward to right and left, as do they that beat the jungle
for the crouching tiger. Once, when he was well-nigh half a league in
front, he wheeled his mare, and raced back full on Bhanavar, grasping her
bridle, and hissing between his teeth, 'Not a soul shall have thee save
I: by the tomb of my fathers, never, while life is with us!'

And he taunted her with bitter names, and was as one in the madness of
intoxication, drunken with the aspect of her matchless beauty and with
exceeding love for her. And Bhanavar knew that the dread of a mishap was
on the mind of the Chief.

Now, the space of pasture was behind them a broad lake of gold and
jasper, and they entered a region of hills, heights, and fastnesses,
robed in forests that rose in rounded swells of leafage, each over
each--above all points of snow that were as flickering silver flames in
the farthest blue. This was the country of Bhanavar, and she gazed
mournfully on the glades of golden green and the glens of iron blackness,
and the wild flowers, wild blossoms, and weeds well known to her that
would not let her memory rest, and were wistful of what had been. And she
thought, 'My sisters tend the flocks, my mother spinneth with the maidens
of the tribe, my father hunteth; how shall I come among them but strange?
Coldly will they regard me; I shall feel them shudder when they take me
to their bosoms.'

She looked on Ruark to speak with him, but the mouth of the Chief was set
and white; and even while she looked, cries of treason and battle arose
from the Arabs that were ahead, hidden by a branching wind of the way
round a mountain slant. Then the eyes of the Chief reddened, his nostrils
grew wide, and the darkness of his face was as flame mixed with smoke,
and he seized Bhanavar and hastened onward, and lo! yonder were his men
overmatched, and warriors of the mountains bursting on them from an
ambush on all sides. Ruark leapt in his seat, and the light of combat was
on him, and he dug his knees into his mare, and shouted the war-cry of
his tribe, lifting his hands as it were to draw down wrath from the very
heavens, and rushed to the encounter. Says the poet:

Hast thou seen the wild herd by the jungle galloping close?
With a thunder of hooves they trample what heads may oppose:
Terribly, crushingly, tempest-like, onward they sweep:
But a spring from the reeds, and the panther is sprawling in air,
And with muzzle to dust and black beards foam-lash'd, here and there,
Scatter'd they fly, crimson-eyed, track'd with blood to the deep.

Such was the onset of Ruark, his stroke the stroke of death; and ere the
echoes had ceased rolling from that cry of his, the mountain-warriors
were scattered before him on the narrow way, hurled down the scrub of the
mountain, even as dead leaves and loosened stones; so like an arm of
lightning was the Chief!

Now Ruark pursued them, and was lost to Bhanavar round a slope of the
mountain. She quickened her pace to mark him in the glory of the battle,
and behold! a sudden darkness enveloped her, and she felt herself in the
swathe of tightened folds, clasped in an arm, and borne rapidly she knew
not whither, for she could hear and see nothing. It was to her as were
she speeding constantly downward in darkness to the lower realms of the
Genii of the Caucasus, and every sense, and even that of fear, was
stunned in her. How long an interval had elapsed she knew not, when the
folds were unwound; but it was light of day, and the faces of men, and
they were warriors that were about her, warriors of the mountain; but of
Ruark and his Arabs no voice. So she said to them, 'What do ye with me?'

And one among them, that was a youth of dignity and grace, and a
countenance like morning on the mountains, answered, 'The will of
Rukrooth, O lady! and it is the plight of him we bow to with Rukrooth,
mother of the Desert-Chief.'

She cried, 'Is he here, the Prince, that I may speak with him?'

The same young warrior made answer, 'Not so; forewarned was he, and well
for him!'

Bhanavar drew her robe about her and was mute. Ere the setting of the
moon they journeyed on with her; and continued so three days and nights
through the defiles and ravines and matted growths of the mountains. On
the fourth dawn they were on the summit of a lofty mountain-rise; below
them the sun, shooting a current of gold across leagues of sea. Then he
that had spoken with Bhanavar said, 'A sail will come,' and a sail came
from under the sun. Scarce had the ship grated shore when the warriors
lifted Bhanavar, and waded through the water with her, and placed her
unwetted in the ship, and one, the fair youth among the warriors, sprang
on board with her, remaining by her. So the captain pushed off, and the
wind filled the sails, and Bhanavar was borne over the lustre of the sea,
that was as a changing opal in its lustre, even as a melted jewel flowing
from the fingers of the maker, the Almighty One. The ship ceased not
sailing till they came to a narrow strait, where the sea was but a river
between fair sloping hills alight with towers and palaces, opening a way
to a great city that was in its radiance over the waters of the sea as
the aspect of myriad sheeny white doves breasting the wave. Hitherto the
young warrior had held aloof in coldness of courtesy from Bhanavar; but
now he sat by her, and said, 'The bond between my prince and Rukrooth is
accomplished, and it was to snatch thee from the Chief of the Beni-Asser
and bring thee even to this city.'

Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Allah be praised in all things, and his will be
done!'

The youth continued, 'Thou art alone here, O lady, exposed to the perils
of loneliness; surely it were well if I linger with thee awhile, and see
to thy welfare in this city, even as a brother with a sister; and I will
deal honourably by thee.'

Bhanavar looked on the young warrior and blushed at his exceeding
sweetness with her; the soft freshness of his voice was to her as the
blossom-laden breeze in the valleys of the mountains, and she breathed
low the words of her gratitude, saying, 'If I am not a burden, let this
be so.'

Then said he, 'Know me by my name, which is Almeryl; and that we seem
indeed of one kin, make known unto me thine.'

She replied, 'Ill-omened is it, this name of Bhanavar!'

The youth among warriors gazed on her a moment with the fluttering eye of
bashfulness, and said, 'Can they that have marked thee call thee other
than Bhanavar the Beautiful?'

She remembered that Ruark had spoken in like manner, and the curse of her
beauty smote her, and she thought, 'This fair youth, he hath not a mother
to watch over him and ward off souls of evil. I dread there will come a
mishap to him through me; Allah shield him from it!' And she sought to
dissuade him from resting by her, but he cried, ''Tis but a choice to
dwell with thee or with the dogs in the street outside thy door, O
Bhanavar!'

Now, the ship sailed close up to the quay, and cast anchor there in the
midst of other ships of merchandise. Almeryl then threw a robe over his
mountain dress and spoke with the captain apart, and he and Bhanavar took
leave of the captain, and landed on the quay among the porters, and of
these one stepped forward to them and shouted cheerily, 'Where be the
burdens and the bales, O ye, fair couple fashioned in the eye of elegant
proportions? Ye twin palm-trees, male and female! Wullahy! broad is the
back of your servant.'

Almeryl beckoned to him that he should follow them, and he followed them,
blessing the wind that had brought them to that city and the day. So they
passed through the streets and lanes of the city, and the porter pointed
out this house and that house wanting an occupant, and Almeryl fixed on
one in an open thoroughfare that had before it a grass-plot, and behind a
garden with fountains and flowers, and grass-knolls shaded by trees; and
he paid down the half of its price, and had it furnished before nightfall
sumptuously, and women in it to wait on Bhanavar, and stuffs and goods,
and scents for the bath,--all luxuries whatsoever that tradesmen and
merchants there could give in exchange for gold. Then Almeryl dismissed
the porter in Allah's name, and gladdened his spirit with a gift over the
due of his hire that exalted him in the eyes of the porter, and the
porter went from him, exclaiming, 'In extremity Ukleet is thy slave!' and
he sang:

Shouldst thou see a slim youth with a damsel arriving,
Be sure 'tis the hour when thy fortune is thriving;
A generous fee makes the members so supple
That over the world they could carry this couple.

Now so it was that the youth Almeryl and the damsel Bhanavar abode in the
city they had come to weeks and months, and life to either of them as the
flowing of a gentle stream, even as brother and sister lived they,
chastely, and with temperate feasting. Surely the youth loved her with a
great love, and the heart of Bhanavar turned not from him, and was won
utterly by his gentleness and nobleness and devotion; and they relied on
each other's presence for any joy, and were desolate in absence, as the
poet says:

When we must part, love,
Such is my smart, love,
Sweetness is savourless,
Fairness is favourless!
But when in sight, love,
We two unite, love,
Earth has no sour to me;
Life is a flower to me!

And with the increase of every day their passion increased, and the
revealing light in their eyes brightened and was humid, as is sung by him
that luted to the rage of hearts:

Evens star yonder
Comes like a crown on us,
Larger and fonder
Grows its orb down on us;
So, love, my love for thee
Blossoms increasingly;
So sinks it in the sea,
Waxing unceasingly.

On a night, when the singing-girls had left them, the youth could contain
himself no more, and caught the two hands of Bhanavar in his, saying,
'This that is in my soul for thee thou knowest, O Bhanavar! and 'tis
spoken when I move and when I breathe, O my loved one! Tell me then the
cause of thy shunning me whenever I would speak of it, and be plain with
thee.'

For a moment Bhanavar sought to release herself from his hold, but the
love in his eyes entangled her soul as in a net, and she sank forward to
him, and sighed under his chin, ''Twas indeed my very love of thee that
made me.'

The twain embraced and kissed a long kiss, and leaned sideways together,
and Bhanavar said, 'Hear me, what I am.'

Then she related the story of the Serpent and the Jewel, and of the death
of her betrothed. When it was ended, Almeryl cried, 'And was this
all?--this that severed us?' And he said, 'Hear what I am.'

So he told Bhanavar how Rukrooth, the mother of Ruark, had sent
messengers to the Prince his father, warning him of the passage of Ruark
through the mountains with one a Queen of Serpents, a sorceress, that had
bewitched him and enthralled him in a mighty love for her, to the ruin of
Ruark; and how the Chief was on his way with her to demand her in
marriage at the hands of her parents; and the words of Rukrooth were, 'By
the service that was between thee and my husband, and by the death he
died, O Prince, rescue the Chief my son from this damsel, and entrap her
from him, and have her sent even to the city of the inland sea, for no
less a distance than that keepeth Ruark from her.'

And Almeryl continued, 'I questioned the messengers myself, and they told
me the marvel of thy loveliness and the peril to him that looked on it,
so I swore there was no power should keep me from a sight of thee, O my
loved one! my prize! my life! my sleek antelope of the hills! Surely when
my father appointed the warriors to lie in wait for thy coming, I slipped
among them, so that they thought it ordered by him I should head them.
The rest is known to thee, O my fountain of blissfulness! but the
treachery to Ruark was the treachery of Ebn Asrac, not of such warriors
as we; and I would have fallen on Ebn Asrac, had not Ruark so routed that
man without faith. 'Twas all as I have said, blessed be Allah and his
decrees!'

Bhanavar gazed on her beloved, and the bridal dew overflowed her
underlids, and she loosed her hair to let it flow, part over her
shoulders, part over his, and in sighs that were the measure of music she
sang:

I thought not to love again!
But now I love as I loved not before;
I love not; I adore!
O my beloved, kiss, kiss me! waste thy kisses like a rain.
Are not thy red lips fain?
Oh, and so softly they greet!
Am I not sweet?
Sweet must I be for thee, or sweet in vain:
Sweet to thee only, my dear love!
The lamps and censers sink, but cannot cheat
These eyes of thine that shoot above
Trembling lustres of the dove!
A darkness drowns all lustres: still I see
Thee, my love, thee!
Thee, my glory of gold, from head to feet!
Oh, how the lids of the world close quite when our lips meet!

Almeryl strained her to him, and responded:

My life was midnight on the mountain side;
Cold stars were on the heights:
There, in my darkness, I had lived and died,
Content with nameless lights.
Sudden I saw the heavens flush with a beam,
And I ascended soon,
And evermore over mankind supreme,
Stood silver in the moon.

And he fell playfully into a new metre, singing:

Who will paint my beloved
In musical word or colour?
Earth with an envy is moved:
Sea-shells and roses she brings,
Gems from the green ocean-springs,
Fruits with the fairy bloom-dews,
Feathers of Paradise hues,
Waters with jewel-bright falls,
Ore from the Genii-halls:
All in their splendour approved;
All; but, match'd with my beloved,
Darker, and denser, and duller.

Then she kissed him for that song, and sang:

Once to be beautiful was my pride,
And I blush'd in love with my own bright brow:
Once, when a wooer was by my side,
I worshipp'd the object that had his vow:
Different, different, different now,
Different now is my beauty to me:
Different, different, different now!
For I prize it alone because prized by thee.

Almeryl stretched his arm to the lattice, and drew it open, letting in
the soft night wind, and the sound of the fountain and the bulbul and the
beam of the stars, and versed to her in the languor of deep love:

Whether we die or we live,
Matters it now no more:
Life has nought further to give:
Love is its crown and its core.
Come to us either, we're rife,--
Death or life!

Death can take not away,
Darkness and light are the same:
We are beyond the pale ray,
Wrapt in a rosier flame:
Welcome which will to our breath;
Life or death!

So did these two lovers lute and sing in the stillness of the night,
pouring into each other's ears melodies from the new sea of fancy and
feeling that flowed through them.

Ere they ceased their sweet interchange of tenderness, which was but one
speech from one soul, a glow of light ran up the sky, and the edge of a
cloud was fired; and in the blooming of dawn Almeryl hung over Bhanavar,
and his heart ached to see the freshness of her wondrous loveliness; and
he sang, looking on her:

The rose is living in her cheeks,
The lily in her rounded chin;
She speaks but when her whole soul speaks,
And then the two flow out and in,
And mix their red and white to make
The hue for which I'd Paradise forsake.

Her brow from her black falling hair
Ascends like morn: her nose is clear
As morning hills, and finely fair
With pearly nostrils curving near
The red bow of her upper lip;
Her bosom's the white wave beneath the ship.

The fair full earth, the enraptured skies,
She images in constant play:
Night and the stars are in her eyes,
But her sweet face is beaming day,
A bounteous interblush of flowers:
A dewy brilliance in a dale of bowers.

Then he said, 'And this morning shall our contract of marriage be written
and witnessed?'

She answered, 'As my lord willeth; I am his.'

Said he, 'And it is thy desire?'

She nestled to him and dinted his bare arm with the pearls of her mouth
for a reply.

So that morning their contract of marriage was written, and witnessed by
the legal number of witnesses in the presence of the Cadi, with his
license on it endorsed; and Bhanavar was the bride of Almeryl, he her
husband. Never was youth blessed in a bride like that youth!

Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful
marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first
day. Little cared they, having each other, for the loneliness of their
dwelling in that city, where they knew none save the porter Ukleet, who
went about their commissions. Sometimes to amuse themselves with his
drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him
drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the
sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of
the city, and its little folk and great. When he was outrageously
extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Are such
things, now? can it be true?'

And he nodded in his conceit, and replied loftily, ''Tis certain, O my
Prince and Princess! ye be from the mountains, unused to the follies and
dissipations of men where they herd; and ye know them not, men!'

The lamps being lit in the garden to the edges of the water, where they
lay one evening, Ukleet, who had been in his briskest mood, became grave,
and put his forefinger to the side of his nose and began, 'Hear ye aught
of the great tidings? Wullahy! no other than the departure of the wife of
Boolp, the broker, into darkness. 'Tis of Boolp ye hire this house, and
had ye a hundred houses in this city ye might have had them from Boolp
the broker, he that's rich; and glory to them whom Allah prospereth, say
I! And I mention this matter, for 'tis certain now Boolp will take
another wife to him to comfort him, for there be two things beloved of
Boolp, and therein manifesteth he taste and the discernment of
excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of
his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that
attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous;
even to them! So by this see ye not Boolp will yearn in his soul for
another spouse? Now, O ye well-matched pair! what a chance were this,
knew ye but a damsel of the mountains, exquisite in symmetry, a moon to
enrapture the imagination of Boolp, and in the nature of things herit his
possessions! for Boolp is an old man, even very old.'

They laughed, and cried, 'We know not of such a damsel, and the broker
must go unmarried for us.'

When next Ukleet sat before them, Almeryl took occasion to speak of Boolp
again, and said, 'This broker, O Ukleet, is he also a lender of money?'

Ukleet replied, 'O my Prince, he is or he is not: 'tis of the maybes. I
wot truly Boolp is one that baiteth the hook of an emergency.'

The brows of the Prince were downcast, and he said no more; but on the
following morning he left Bhanavar early under a pretext, and sallied
forth from the house of their abode alone.

Since their union in that city they had not been once apart, and Bhanavar
grieved and thought, 'Waneth his love for me?' and she called her women
to her, and dressed in this dress and that dress, and was satisfied with
none. The dews of the bath stood cold upon her, and she trembled, and
fled from mirror to mirror, and in each she was the same surpassing
vision of loveliness. Then her women held a glass to her, and she
examined herself closely, if there might be a fleck upon her anywhere,
and all was as the snow of the mountains on her round limbs sloping in
the curves of harmony, and the faint rose of the dawn on slants of snow
was their hue. Twining her fingers and sighing, she thought, 'It is not
that! he cannot but think me beautiful.' She smiled a melancholy smile at
her image in the glass, exclaiming, 'What availeth it, thy beauty? for he
is away and looketh not on thee, thou vain thing! And what of thy
loveliness if the light illumine it not, for he is the light to thee, and
it is darkness when he's away.'

Suddenly she thought, 'What's that which needeth to light it no other
light? I had well-nigh forgotten it in my bliss, the Jewel!' Then she
went to a case of ebony-wood, where she kept the Jewel, and drew it
forth, and shone in the beam of a pleasant imagination, thinking, ''Twill
surprise him!' And she robed herself in a robe of saffron, and set lesser
gems of the diamond and the emerald in the braid of her hair, and knotted
the Serpent Jewel firmly in a band of gold-threaded tissue, and had it
woven in her hair among the braids. In this array she awaited his coming,
and pleased her mind with picturing his astonishment and the joy that
would be his. Mute were the women who waited on her, for in their lives
they had seen no such sight as Bhanavar beneath the beams of the Jewel,
and the whole chamber was aglow with her.

Now, in her anxiety she sent them one and one repeatedly to look forth at
the window for the coming of the Prince. So, when he came not she went
herself to look forth, and stretched her white neck beyond the casement.
While her head was exposed, she heard a cry of some one from the house in
the street opposite, and Bhanavar beheld in the house of the broker an
old wrinkled fellow that gesticulated to her in a frenzy. She snatched
her veil down and drew in her head in anger at him, calling to her maids,
'What is yonder hideous old dotard?'

And they answered, laughing, ''Tis indeed Boolp the broker, O fair
mistress and mighty!'

To divert herself she made them tell her of Boolp, and they told her a
thousand anecdotes of the broker, and verses of him, and the constancy of
his amorous condition, and his greediness. And Bhanavar was beguiled of
her impatience till it was evening, and the Prince returned to her. So
they embraced, and she greeted him as usual, waiting what he would say,
searching his countenance for a token of wonderment; but the youth knew
not that aught was added to her beauty, for he looked nowhere save in her
eyes. Bhanavar was nigh weeping with vexation, and pushed him from her,
and chid him with lack of love and weariness of her; and the eye of the
Prince rose to her brow to read it, and he saw the Jewel. Almeryl clapped
his hands, crying, 'Wondrous! And this thy surprise for me, my fond one?
beloved of mine!' Then he gazed on her a space, and said, 'Knowest thou,
thou art terrible in thy beauty, Bhanavar, and hast the face of lightning
under that Jewel of the Serpent?'

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