L. Adams Beck

“ Two nights ago as I lay and slept, it seemed to me that the moonlit air grew sweet with a sweetness more than all my lilies—nay, than all the flowers of earth—and I knew that the gates of paradise were opened and that the immortal flowers exhaled their souls, and that to breathe them was purification. Then, far off on a cloud so white that it resembled the mystic petals of the lotus, stood a lady with veiled face, and in one hand a chalice and in the other a willow spray, and even through the veil her beauty rayed as the moon behind a fleece of cloud. ”

“ O my dearest Greville, don’t think on my past follies, think on my good, little as it has been. O Greville, when I think on your goodness, your tender kindness, my heart is so full of gratitude that I want words to express it. But I have one happiness in view, which I am determined to practice, and that is evenness of temper. For endead I have thought so much of your amiable goodness when you have been tried to the utmost that I will, endead I will manege myself and try to be like Greville. There is nothing like bying expearance. O Greville, think on me with kindness. ”

“ For when a man dies who owns a son, it is as a man with two eyes—one sleeps yet the other watches,—but a man without a son is blind in death’s darkness.”
And the ascetic, seeing his grief, answered swiftly:
“Sir, have no fear. Good and better than good are the portents. I wept for myself. This child shall rule the world, but I, by reason of my age, shall not live to see it. Deep and full and wide is the river of his Law. Like a great lake is the calm of his Yoga; like the sun at the zenith his wisdom. ”

“ At noon, blue in the radiant unveiled blue of the sky they are the blue Lotus of Vishnu the Preserver, the Pillar of Cosmic Law. At night, when all the earth is rapt in samadhi, the mystic ecstasy, they are the snowy Lotus, throne of Siva, Maheshwara the Great God, the Supreme Yogi when he dreams worlds beneath the dreaming moon upon his brow.
And India is herself a petal of the World Lotus of Asia as the Asiatic mind conceives it. Look at Asia of the maps and reverence the Flower which thrones all the Gods of Asia. ”

“ But the moon was passing on her way—I folded the coat I carried into a pillow and lay down at the feet of the goddess and her nymph. Then a moonlit quiet I slept in a dream of peace.
Sleep annihilates time. Was it long or short when I woke like a man floating up to the surface from tranquil deeps? That I cannot tell, but once more I possessed myself and every sense was on guard.
My hearing first. Bare feet were coming, falling softly as leaves, but unmistakable. There was a dim whispering but I could hear no word. I rose on my elbow and looked down the long hall. Nothing. ”

“ I wanted to come out and get cool. It smelt of wine. This smells of flowers. Nelson—how pale you are! What is it? Come out of this glare!”
She gave him her hand, and drew him up, and they wandered from the lurid patch of light flung by the windows out under the cool green boughs, moonlight-silvered, with gulfs of dark and light beneath them along the garden paths, and the first faint rustle of a bird disturbed in the boughs by their passage. Quiet, cool quiet and a great peace, and sweetness like the breath of a goddess about them in dark night. ”

“ Possibly the charm might be her own loving heart exprest through those clear mirrors of her violet eyes. ’Tis much to be beautiful, but goodness and beauty together, must sure be a love philtre irresistible, and if genius be added—the lady, like another Helen, fires another Troy.
With the morning my Lady Fanny’s chair, lined with puckered satin like a jewel-case to hold its jewel, stopped at the door of Queensbury House, and dainty as a newly burnished bird of paradise she alit, leaning her arm on the footman’s, and went tripping up the great steps in the early sunshine. ”

“ And above these swayed the bells of the columbines on their slender stems, ranging from purest white, through a faint, misty blue, to a deep, glooming purple. We could hardly go on for joy of the flowers. It was a marvel to see all these lovely things growing wild and uncared for, flinging their sweetness on the pure air, and clothing the ways with beauty. And at each turn fresh snow-peaks emerged against the infinite blue of the sky—some with frail wisps of white cloud caught in the spires, and some bold and clear as giants ranged for battle—the lotus petals of the Infinite Flower. ”

“ Veiled had that loveliness been in the shadow of the palace; but now the sun should rise upon it and turn its ivory to gold, should set upon it and flush its snow with rose. The moon should lie upon it like the pearls upon her bosom, the visible grace of her presence breathe about it, the music of her voice hover in the birds and trees of the garden. Times there were when Ustad Isa despaired lest even these mighty servants of beauty should miss perfection. Yet it grew and grew, rising like the growth of a flower. ”

“ In the rising of the moon was peace and her light shed tenderer dreams like the soft falling of snow, and the strong leap of the sun at dawn in the first of his three strides, was the outrush of hope—hope unfulfilled but ever on before. And the breeze was good to him, laying a cool hand on weary temples, and the singing of the river overflowed from the very heart of quiet.
And as the tapestry of life unrolled its pictures before his eyes he read its lesson. Happiness is a dream and sorrow a truth and individual life a misfortune from which impersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement. ”

“ As a wretch, climbed from the quicksands dimpling and quivering beneath him, knows their horrors, their slow unfolding of the doomed man body and soul, where another who has never struggled in them sees but the glassy pools on the surface and fears to wet his feet, so it was with Emma. A kiss! A word! She knew what dumb horrors might lie beneath a light approach, and trembled. But it could not help her. When the quicksands have the man by the foot, and a kiss a woman by the heart, what safety?
The day before the Fleet left, the lovers, for so indeed they were, met alone in the room of mirrors. ”

“ At last she came, brilliant and beautiful,—my Lady Fanny, dressed as a Fair Persian in a sultana’s robe of pale lutestring and a short velvet bodice so hung with jewels as almost to dazzle the eyes. She had a small gold cap with a veil of gold gauze dependent and my Lord thought he had never seen her so beautiful as he stood watching her charming face all smiles and gaiety and never a look of care to tarnish it. He longed to read her thoughts beneath that fair mask, to know if there were hope of forgiveness—of friendship, for his own wound was so recent that he scarce aspired to more. ”

“ But there was love in her voice and with love the Prince answered: “O Most Lovely, I am Nala of Nishada, and I am the herald of the gods. For to your choosing come the Four, almighty, heaven-shining—Indra the King of the Clouds, Agni of the Fire, Varuna of the Waters, and he whom to name is fear, Yama, the Lord of Death. And these will that you choose one among them to be your immortal lord, and it is by their power that I stand before you. Who am I to be the messenger of the Great Ones? Now judge what is well; for this is an honour to shake the soul of a woman.” ”

“ And these rose high into the infinite until they could be seen but as a point of fire against the moon. With this golden multitude beyond all numbering was He.
Then, as His Majesty had seen in the dream of the night, the wood-cutter’s daughter, moving through the flowers like one blind that gropes his way, advanced before the Blessed Feet, and uplifting her hands, did adoration, and her face he could not see, but his heart went with her, adoring also the infinite Buddha seated in the calms of boundless Light. ”

“ And at such times the Bodhisattva felt the endless turning of the Wheel within his own soul, and a vertigo of perception seized him as the Infinities gazed over his head in untroubled calm, and only the Wheel turned and turned in merciless revolution.
Then were it not better to submit to passive ignorance and fight no more? To sink into wearied submission, accepting the lash and fetter for doom? For each life is built up of millions, and where is the redemption for its infinite littleness? Let all pass for all is nothing. ”

“ A true and sweet companion for a man. All these things he knew and acknowledged gladly—his sword was at her service. What man could stand by and leave unprotected one so friendless with all her renown? But that there should be more beneath it—Love the conqueror, had not as yet crossed his thoughts. He knew much of women, nothing of love. ’Tis to be remembered that the first knowledge often obscures the last. Its dazzle is as the sun flashed in a mirror that hides the sun itself. But this keen-eyed lady in a swift-darted word revealed him to himself. ”

“ THE HIDDEN HEART OF CEYLON The Island of Pearls, shaped like a dewdrop hanging from the lotus petal of India, is loveliest of the Oceanides, a Nereid floating on blue tropic seas. She is a voluptuous beauty, jewelled, languid, fanned by spiced airs, crowned with flowers, dusky, sultry, with strange romances in her past as she went from lover to lover, faithful only to one, the eternal sea. Colombo flames on you in the sun, hidden in trees so deep, so green that if you climb a hill the town is lost like a bird’s nest in the tangle of vegetation. ”

“ His son moved before him, beautiful exceedingly, perfect in duty not only to his father and his foster-mother, Prajapati the fair and noble, but also to all with whom he had to do, quick to smile and reply, glad in a boy’s sports and games, and yet—apart. As a man, looking down through the clear crystal of a lake, may behold beneath it groves of strange leafage where silver fish dart and disappear in a life unknown to him, so the Maharaja, looking through the translucence of his son’s eyes uplifted to his, knew that they revealed yet hid a world in which he had no part. ”

“ On the further bank a young man in a strange diadem or miter of jewels, bare-breasted and beautiful, stood among the flowering oleanders, one foot lightly crossed over the other as he stood. He was like an image of pale radiant gold, and I could have sworn that the light came from within rather than fell upon him, for the night was very dark. He held the flute to his lips, and as I looked, I became aware that the noise of the rushing water was tapering off into a murmur scarcely louder than that of a summer bee in the heart of a rose. ”

“ To be rescued from all her perplexities and griefs, and carried off thus suddenly into what appeared to be a heaven of gentle voices and kind looks and beauty, was more like a dream than any waking occurrence in her short and somewhat sad life.
“I have no words—no none—with which to thank you, Madam, but indeed I vow that my conduct shall be answerable to my gratitude and that your Grace shall have no cause to regret your condescension.” ”

“ The garden was peopled now not only with roses but white blossoms sending out fierce hot shafts of perfume. They struck Beatrice Veronica like something tangible, and half dazed her as she stared at the startling beauty of the unveiled woman revealed like a flaming jewel in the black and white glory of the night.
With his hand on hers, she knew without words. Nourmahal the Empress, ruler of the Emperor who made the Shalimar for her pleasure, who put India with all its glories at her feet. Who else should be the soul of the garden? ”