The Shaving of Shagpat - George Meredith (bookreader TXT) 📗

she spake, new light seemed in her; and it was as if a splendid jewel were struggling to cast its beams through the sides of a crystal vase smeared with dust and old dirt and spinnings of the damp spider. He was amazed, and cried, “How’s this? What change is passing in thee?”

She said, “Joy in thy kiss, and that I have ’scaped Shagpat.”

Then he: “Shagpat? How? had that wretch claim over thee ere I came?”

But she looked fearfully at the corners of the room and exclaimed, “Hush, my betrothed! speak not of him in that fashion, ’tis dangerous; and my power cannot keep off his emissaries at all times.” Then she said, “O my betrothed, know me a sorceress ensorcelled; not that I seem, but that I shall be! Wait thou for the time and it will reward thee. What! thou think’st to have plucked a wrinkled o’erripe fruit⁠—a mouldy pomegranate under the branches, a sour tamarind? ’Tis well! I say nought, save that time will come, and be thou content. It is truly as I said, that I have thee between me and Shagpat; and that honoured one of this city thought fit in his presumption to demand me in marriage at the hands of my father, knowing me wise, and knowing the thing that transformed me to this, the abominable fellow! Surely my father entertained not his proposal save with scorn; but the King looked favourably on it, and it is even now matter of reproach to Feshnavat, my father, that he withholdeth me from Shagpat.”

Quoth Shibli Bagarag, “A clothier, O Noorna, control the Vizier! and demand of him his daughter in marriage! and a clothier influence the King against his Vizier!⁠—’tis, wullahy! a riddle.”

She replied, “ ’Tis even so, eyes of mine, my betrothed! but thou know’st not Shagpat, and that he is. Lo! the King, and all of this city save we three, are held in enchantment by him, and made foolish by one hair that’s in his head.”

Shibli Bagarag started in his seat like one that shineth with a discovery, and cried, “The Identical!”

Then she, sighing, “ ’Tis that indeed! but the Identical of Identicals, the chief and head of them, and I, woe’s me! I, the planter of it.”

So he said, “How so?”

But she cried, “I’ll tell thee not here, nor aught of myself and him, and the genie held in bondage by me, till thou art proved by adventure, and we float peacefully on the sea of the Bright Lily: there shalt thou see me as I am, and hear my story, and marvel at it; for ’tis wondrous, and a manifestation of the Power that dwelleth unseen.”

So Shibli Bagarag pondered awhile on the strange nature of the things she hinted, and laughter seized him as he reflected on Shagpat, and the whole city enchanted by one hair in his head; and he exclaimed, “O Noorna, knoweth he, Shagpat, of the might in him?”

She answered, “Enough for his vain soul that homage is paid to him, and he careth not for the wherefore!”

Shibli Bagarag fixed his eyes on the deep-flowered carpets of the floor, as if reading there a matter quaintly written, and smiled, saying, “What boldness was mine⁠—the making offer to shear Shagpat, the lion in his lair, he that holdeth a whole city in enchantment! Wah! ’twas an instance of daring!”

And Noorna said, “Not only an entire city, but other cities affected by him, as witness Oolb, whither thou wilt go; and there be governments and states, and conditions of men remote, that hang upon him, Shagpat. ’Tis even so; I swell not his size. When thou hast mastered the Event, and sent him forth shivering from thy blade like the shorn lamb, ’twill be known how great a thing has been achieved, and a record for the generations to come; choice is that historian destined to record it!”

Quoth he, looking eagerly at her, “O Noorna, what is it in thy speech affecteth me? Surely it infuseth the vigour of wine, old wine; and I shiver with desire to shave Shagpat, and spin threads for the historian to weave in order. I, wullahy! had but dry visions of the greatness destined for me till now, my betrothed! Shall I master an Event in shaving him, and be told of to future ages? By Allah and his Prophet (praise be to that name!), this is greatness! Say, Noorna, hadst thou foreknowledge of me and my coming to this city?”

So she said, “I was on the roofs one night among the stars ere moonrise, O my betrothed, and ’twas close on the rise of this very month’s moon. The star of our enemy, Shagpat, was large and red, mine as it were menaced by its proximity, nigh swallowed in its haughty beams and the steady overbearings of its effulgence. ’Twas so as it had long been, when suddenly, lo! a star from the upper heaven that shot down between them wildly, and my star took lustre from it; and the star of Shagpat trembled like a ring on a tightened rope, and waved and flickered, and seemed to come forward and to retire; and ’twas presently as a comet in the sky, bright⁠—a tadpole, with large head and lengthy tail, in the assembly of the planets. This I saw: and that the stranger star was stationed by my star, shielding it, and that it drew nearer to my star, and entered its circle, and that the two stars seemed mixing the splendour that was theirs. Now, that sight amazed me, and my heart in its beating quickened with the expectation of things approaching. Surely I rendered praise, and pressed both hands on my bosom, and watched, and behold! the comet, the illumined tadpole, was becoming restless beneath the joint rays of the twain that were dominating him; and he diminished, and lashed his tail uneasily, half madly, darting as do captured beasts from the fetters that constrain them. Then went