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And the spacious abode of Lehna Singh had loveliness enough to veil the sordid character of the life that was lived within its walls. Atmâ had not been ignorant of his kinsman's wealth and importance; but it is one thing to hear of wealth and to ponder in critical mood the fleeting nature of this world's [Pg 21]weal, and quite another to gaze with the eye on the marvellous results of human thrift. He wandered through lofty and spacious apartments, whose marble arches seemed ever to reveal a fairer scene than had yet met his view. A mimic rivulet ran from room to room in an alabaster channel, and the spray of perfumed fountains cooled the air. Flowers bloomed, leafy vines trailed over priceless screens, and countless mirrors repeated the joyous beauty of the place. He beheld with admiration the gilded and fretted walls and stately domes, the new delights of a palace charmed every sense, and, appealing to poetic fancy, awoke a rapture whose fervency was due less to the entrancement of his present life than to the contemplative habit of one who had first known harmony whilst gazing on the stars, and awaked to the consciousness of beauty among the eternal hills. The ripple of the streamlet in these palace halls revived a half-forgotten music of the heart that had once responded to the gurgle of a brook.
The sympathies that had once been in unison with the rustling thicket stirred into more definite life [Pg 22]when an artificial breeze swept by and stirred the heavy foliage of rare plants. He had caught in other days notes of Nature's vast melody. Stray notes were here made to beat to a smaller measure. Thus Art interprets Nature. It was not The Song, but a light and pleasant carol, which pleased the sense of many, and to the ear of the few brought a haunting pain of which they did not know the meaning. Such a one only sighed and said: "In a former birth I was great and good, and my life was sublime. The ghost of its memory has touched me." O melody divine, of fantasy
And frenzied mem'ry wrought, advance
From out the shades; O spectral utterance,
Untwine thy chains, thy fair autocracy
Unveil, have being, declare
Thy state and tuneful sovereignty. Ye gifted ears,
To whom this burdened, sad creation
Sings, now in tones of exultation
Abruptly broken,
Anon in direst lamentation
Obscurely spoken,
Possess your souls in hope, the time [Pg 23]
Is coming when th' harmonic chime
Of circling spheres in chant sublime
Will lead the music of the seas,
And call the echoes of the breeze
To one triumphal lay
Whose harmony, whose heavenly harmony
Sounding for aye
In loud and solemn benedicite,
Voices the glory of the Central Day,
And through th' illimitable realms of air
Is borne afar
In wafted echoes that the strain prolong
Through boundless space, and countless worlds among,
Meas'ring the pulsing of each lonely star,
And sounding ceaselessly from sphere to sphere
That note of immortality
That whispers in the sorrow of the sea,
And in the sunrise, and the noonday's rest,
And triumphs in the wild wind's meek surcease,
And in the sad soul's yearning unexpressed,
And unexpressive for perpetual peace. But the loveliest of Lehna Singh's possessions was Moti, his daughter and only child, the fame of whose beauty had even reached Atmâ in his mountain home. Of her he had dreamt through boyhood's [Pg 24]years, and a happy consciousness of her proximity foreshadowed the enchanted hour when he was to behold her and own that his fondest fancies were to her loveliness as darkness to noonday. Her name he had heard whispered in the gay throng of her father's guests, on the memorable first evening of his arrival there; but, strange to tell, next day, when these first hours in a palace seemed to his excited imagination a dream in which mingled in wildest confusion the glitter of diamonds, the perfume of a thousand flowers, the revel of dazzling colors, the bewildering music of unknown instruments, and the intoxication of wonder and bliss, there rang through all only one articulate voice, sounding as if from some leafy ambush amid vague laughter and murmurs of speech, saying: "But I tell you that Rajah Lal Singh means to pluck the rose of Lehna Singh's garden!"
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