F. W. Bain

“ And he woke, as if from a magic sleep, and on the instant, a sword ran as it were straight into his heart. And with a cry, he flung away his sobbing burden like a blade of grass, not caring where it fell: and ran towards the King's daughter. But she, when she saw him coming, shrieked, and started, and exclaimed: Away! Touch me not, save with the point of thy sharp true sword, to pierce me through the body as thy perfidy has my soul.
Then Aja tossed away his sword, with a shudder, over the edge of the wall. ”

“ See, thou art undecided, wavering between thy duty and my love, like a flower shaken by opposing breezes. A flower thou art, and a flower shall decide for thee. And this red lotus, which has lingered so long near thy heart that it must know it, and resembles it in colour, shall be the oracle of thy destiny. And he leaned over her, and took very gently, without touching her, the lotus on her breast, and drew it away, while she offered no resistance. And he said: One petal is for thee, and one for me. Now will I pluck the petals one by one, first for thee, and second for myself. ”

“ O thine eyes are full of wonder and my soul is full of joy. Dear child, see, yonder is the river, flowing as it has been flowing ever since it first began; and here am I, to thee the first and only man, for thou hast never seen another, and there art thou, for me the only woman, and her very type and soul. And like the ancient Soul of Man, [1] I have been wandering about, forlorn and wretched and lonely in the dark without thee, and now at last I have found in thee my Prakriti, since thou art the very spirit of the beauty of this wood, incarnate in a woman's lovely form. ”

“ Yashowatí, O daughter, what words are these? Is it any fault of thine that thou art beautiful? And wilt thou talk of abandoning the body? Then what will become of the family, of which thou art the only hope? But Aja laughed: and he said: O lovely lady, waste not thy grief on such a thing as I am: and O father-in-law, cease from bewailing calamities that are only the shadows of thy own fears cast upon the dark curtain of the future. For many are they that are doomed to die, yet never perish after all. And I have not escaped the sand to perish lightly in any other way. ”

“ Or if thou wilt, I will draw thee a picture in the air, and hold it up before thee, to show thee as in a mirror thy life as a queen, and give thee a foretaste of its nectar. Hast thou never watched the bubbles on the surface of the stream? Dost thou not know how every bubble is like a little heaven, and glows for a moment with every colour of the sky, and bursts: but the sky remains? So is it with my picture. For like a bubble, it will burst as soon as painted, being only words: but the heaven which it shows thee in its mirror shall be thine, as long as life endures. ”

“ See! am I becoming more fit to be thy queen? And he watched her, stupefied, like one in a dream, and all the while she bathed him with intoxicating side glances shot like arrows from the bow of her arching brows. And at last, she came slowly towards him, walking on tip-toe, and attitudinising, placing herself exactly in the posture in which he had seen her first among the poppies on the wall, with one hand on her hip. And she said, lifting her brow, with a smile that stole his reason: Now, then, the idol is ready for the devotee. ”

“ Aye! beyond a doubt, I am wandering still in the waste of sand, raving mad, and dying, and haunted by phantoms that are the premonitors of approaching death.
So as he stood, balancing in the swing of perplexity, and doubting his own reason, Natabhrúkutí looked at him fixedly, with concern and affection and curiosity in her eyes. And she said: Surely thou art ill. And why then dost thou shrink from me, as though I were a thing of terror: I, who ask for nothing but to tend thee all my life? For it was but now, as we spoke together in this wood, I looked up and saw thee suddenly close thy eyes. ”

“ And Aja started. And he said to himself: Another husband! How many husbands, then, has this strange King's daughter got already? Has she an insatiable thirst for husbands, whose number I am brought to swell? So as he stood reflecting, the King leaped from his throne, and came towards him. And as Aja looked at him, he was seized with amazement greater than before. For the King resembled a very incarnation of the essence of grief, yet such that it was difficult to behold him without laughter, as if the Creator had made him to exhibit skill in combining the two. ”

“ And she stood for a moment, changing colour, first red, and then white, as if the blood which had mantled in her face had like those huntsmen withdrawn again into the wood of her heart from modesty at the sight of him. And as he took her by the hand, she hid her face against his breast, laughing as she wept, and raining as it were nectar with her tears into the heart of the King. So they stood together in the silence, while the King stroked her dark hair gently with his left hand. And at last he said: Sweet little Queen, thou hast seen men enough now, for one day. ”

“ Old fool, dost thou mock me? Dost thou promise, without performing? Beware! for thou art playing with a fire that will shrivel thee like a blade of grass.
Then said the old merchant, with laughter in his wrinkled eyes: O King, thou art a child, not recognising thy physician, and seeking a quarrel with the only one who can give thee a medicine suited to thy case. For I am a physician, not of the body, but of the soul. So now, tell me: wilt thou buy from me a dream, or not? ”

“ I am like a dark black night, that has suddenly been flooded with the rapture of a golden sun. O hail! O bright great God, in the form of that blue-eyed beautiful thing before me, that fills me with astonishment and laughter and supreme delight. And presently he said: O thou with the blue flowers in thy hair and the blue wonder in thy enormous eyes, that resemble those of a child, how can it be that in a world so full of them, thou shouldst never yet have set those eyes on either a man or a horse?
Then she started as if from a dream. ”

“ See, O thou who despisest a suitor, whether thou canst easily procure another. This shall be the condition of thy daughter's marriage. Whatever suitor shall lay claim to her, thou shalt send up to this terrace alone at night. And if he claims, and does not come, we will swallow thy city whole, houses and all. Then those two vultures disappeared. And not long afterwards, hearing that my daughter was to be given in marriage, suitors arrived like swarms of bees from every quarter of the world, attracted by her fame. For she is called Yashowatí, because the fame of her fills the world. ”

“ And a shudder ran through him, as she turned, and looked at him as if in ecstasy, with eyes that saw nothing, murmuring in an eager voice that chanted and charmed his ear like the rushing of a stream: Dost thou hear the voices, calling thee over to the other shore? For the sea is the sea of separation, and the other shore is our former birth. Far away over the setting sun hides the red land [1] of our old sweet love. And I can take thee back to it, out of this dim and dingy wood. Only I can carry thee back to the land beyond the sunset hill, where love is lying dead. ”

“ And she came up close to him, so that the warmth and fragrance of her beauty enveloped him like an atmosphere of intoxication. And she joined her hands, looking up into his face, as it were compelling his reluctant admiration by her humble submission to his will. And she said: Hast thou, hast thou indeed forgotten all? And as he gazed at her, two huge drops of crystal welled into her eyes, and hung poised before they fell on the net of her long dark lashes. And she said: Thou sayest, I am seeking to deceive thee. I love thee, and where is the deception? ”

“ And Aja bounded, as if bitten by a snake. And he exclaimed: Thy husband! What! Am I then thy husband also? Does thy whole sex want to get me for a husband? But O thou beauty of bending brows, how can he be thy husband, that never saw thee in his life before? And only this morning, I was still wifeless, and a day has not elapsed, since I became another's husband. And he stopped short, again confounded at the effect of his own words. For hardly had they passed his lips, when Natabhrúkutí started up, swelling with rage and convulsed with fury, with eyes that blazed like fiery stars. ”

“ How can mortals disobey, when destiny decrees? It was from necessity that I left thee, and not from choice. But let us quickly make the most of a little time, granted only by the favour of the God who has the moon in his hair, and destined to end and disappear almost as soon as it has begun. Dost thou remember how we met, and saw each other first of all, away in the wood below? Come back now once more with me, and let us live and love again, and taste the nectar of repetition, before we part to meet no more.
And instantly the King lost his senses, and lay in a dream within a dream. ”

“ Sweet, I cannot tell thee: and yet it is a difference far greater than all the others put together. For all things that are tame are, as it were, an incarnation and embodiment of the littleness of men: but all things that are wild, as thou art, are, as it were, a portion of the Deity. For thy behaviour differs from that of other women, as does a wild vine gadding at its will from the trained flowers in a king's garden, and thy great blue eyes are utterly without hypocrisy, and resemble those of a falcon or a child. ”

“ Come, we will marry him, and then no doubt he will settle down and become clear, like strong wine after fermentation, and turn into a pillar of his family and the state. But as soon as they proposed it, Rudrálaka laughed in their faces. And he exclaimed: Who carries a flower, when it is faded, and what are women but flowers, fit only to be gathered, in the moment of their bloom, and worn for an hour and thrown away? And he is wise, who knows how to get from the bee its honey, and yet elude its sting. Now a maiden is all honey, but a wife is a buzzing sting. ”

“ Does it become a high caste maiden outwardly to exhibit her inward feelings, and abandon the straight line of virgin modesty by behaviour that betrays her heart?
And then, Yashowatí sighed deeply. And she looked for a while in silence, first at her father, and then at Aja: and all at once, she stood erect, like one seized by sudden resolution, and she clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, in a voice that shook and quivered with emotion: Ha! who can hide a forest fire by covering it over with a little straw, or what does maiden conduct matter, in the ruin of the three worlds! ”

“ And cursing his destiny, he went out of the burning ground in the early morning: and as he went along, suddenly he saw Kasháyiní, who was waiting for him, sitting weeping by the wayside, under a great ashwattha tree: beautifully dressed, blazing with jewels, and adorned with saffron and antimony, betel, indigo, and spangles, flowers, minium, and henna, bangles on ankle and comb in her hair. And she said to that Rajpoot, who was as utterly astounded by the sight of her as if she had been water in the desert: O son of a king, succour one who is utterly without resource. ”

“ And elephants shall carry thee about, or thou shall ride on horses, or float on silent pools starred like the sky with a multitude of lotuses, or lie on couches softer than a flower, fanned in the heat of noon with scented leaves, or listening at midnight to the moonstones, oozing as they swing in the window's trellised frames. Ah! Blue-eyes, come and be my Queen, for I cannot do without thee, and all that I have said is nothing, for it is only the casket for thy soul. ”

“ For she stood absolutely still, save that the lotus on her breast was lifted quickly up and down by the flutter of the maiden-wave on which it swam.
So they two stood, still as death, each thunderstruck by the other's vision, like a panther and its prey. [3] And then at last, after a time that seemed to each in spite of its length but a single instant, for each was lost in the other, standing on the threshold of Love's dream-bower where years are moments and time lies dead, she spoke, and broke the spell. And she said, softly: It is a man. Surely, thou art a man? ”

“ It may be that the soul grows to its atmosphere as well as the body, and living in a land where dreams are realities, and all things are credible, and history is only a fairy tale—the land of the moon and the lotus and the snake, old gods and old ruins, former births, second sight, and idealism—it falls back, unconsciously mesmerised, under the spell of forgotten creeds. ”

“ I will take thy soul, and steep it in elixir, and drown it in the perfume and the fragrance of stories and of dreams, and dye it with the colour strained from the subtle essences of far-off lakes of passion and emotion, lying in the distant land beyond the blue horizon where the earth and heaven meet. Aye! I would turn the three worlds upside down, only to be near thee, and watch the shadow of the pleasures I would find there reflected in thine eyes, O thou naïvest and most exquisite of queens. ”