Nanda

“ Around the maidan, but white Kantaka
Left even the fleetest far behind--so swift,
That ere the foam fell from his mouth to earth
Twenty spear-lengths he flew; but Nanda said,
"We too might win with such as Kantaka;
Bring an unbroken horse, and let men see
Who best can back him." So the syces brought
A stallion dark as night, led by three chains,
Fierce-eyed, with nostrils wide and tossing mane,
Unshod, unsaddled, for no rider yet
Had crossed him. ”

“ But in this direction too, unable to say what it showed, she had again broken down, and again could only hold herself and let her companion sit there. "Ah, Nanda, Nanda!" he deeply murmured; and the depth of the pity was, vainly and blindly, as the depth of a reproach.
"It's I—it's I, therefore," she said as if she must then so look at it with him; "it's I who am the horrible impossible and who have covered everything else with my own impossibility. For some different person you could have done what you speak of, and for some different person you can do it still." ”

“ Mrs. Brook asked, “all the advantages?”
“Well yes,” said Nanda, who had now begun dimly to smile—“call them advantages.”
Mrs. Brook had a pause. “One would be quite ready to do that if one only knew a little more exactly what they’re to consist of.”
“Oh the great advantage, I feel, is doing something for HIM.”
Nanda’s companion, at this, hesitated afresh. “But doesn’t that, my dear, put the extravagance of your surrender to him on rather an odd footing? Charity, love, begins at home, and if it’s a question of merely GIVING, you’ve objects enough for your bounty without going so far.” ”

“ The spirit of the tree under which he rests brings to him the cowherd Nanda, bearing a dead maiden, an infant just borne by his wife Yaçodā, who, fallen in a faint, does not know whether the child is a boy or a girl. Nanda gives aid reluctantly, but in memory of past favours. He seeks first to purify himself from contact with the dead, but a spring of water shoots forth and renders labour needless. ”

“ Nanda completed the simple history. “To-day it’s Mitchy who bundles, and I believe that really he bundled only yesterday. He turned in his people and here we are.”
“Here we are, here we are!” her friend more gravely echoed. “Well, it’s splendid!”
As if at a note in his voice her eyes, while his own still strayed away, just fixed him. “Don’t you think it’s really rather exciting? Everything’s ready, the feast all spread, and with nothing to blunt our curiosity but the general knowledge that there will be people and things—with nothing but that we comfortably take our places.” ”

“ He had an extraordinary smile. “His mother.”
She exclaimed, colouring, on her mistake, and he added: “I’m not so bad as that. But you’re none of you like them.”
“Wasn’t she pretty?” Nanda asked.
“Very handsome. But it makes no difference. She herself to-day wouldn’t know him.”
She gave a small gasp. “His own mother wouldn’t—?”
His headshake just failed of sharpness. “No, nor he her. There’s a link missing.” Then as if after all she might take him too seriously, “Of course it’s I,” he more gently moralised, “who have lost the link in my sleep. ”

“ Nanda seemed an instant to weigh the advice, and the whole thing would have been striking as another touch in the picture of the old want, on the part of each, of any sense of levity in the other. Whatever escape, when together, mother or daughter might ever seek would never be the humorous one—a circumstance, however, that might by no means, on occasion, have failed to make their interviews droll for a third person. It would always indeed, for such a person, have produced an impression of tension beneath the surface. ”

“ But when the Prince saw sweet Yasodhara, Brightly he smiled, and drew his silken rein, Leaped to the earth from Kantaka's broad back, And cried, "He is not worthy of this pearl Who is not worthiest; let my rivals prove If I have dared too much in seeking her." Then Nanda challenged for the arrow-test And set a brazen drum six gows away, Ardjuna six and Devadatta eight; But Prince Siddartha bade them set his drum Ten gows from off the line, until it seemed A cowry-shell for target. ”

“ Nanda seemed to wonder. “What will he do to me? Anything dreadful?”
“He’ll tell you what I meant just now.”
“Oh,” said Nanda, “if he’s a person who can tell me sometimes what you mean—!” With which she went quickly off.
“And can’t I hear?” Mitchy asked of his host while they looked after her.
“Yes, but only from me.” Vanderbank had pushed him to a seat again and was casting about for cigarettes. “Be quiet and smoke, and I’ll tell you.”
Mitchy, on the sofa, received with meditation a light. “Will she understand? She has everything in the world but one,” he added. “But that’s half.” ”

“ Vanderbank said on this, “if you understood to the full how I keep on admiring you. Only what stupefies me a little,” he continued, “is the extraordinary critical freedom—or we may call it if we like the high intellectual detachment—with which we discuss a question touching you, dear Mrs. Brook, so nearly and engaging so your private and most sacred sentiments. What are we playing with, after all, but the idea of Nanda’s happiness?” ”

“ Why, in other words—if it was to know so little about her and to get no nearer to her—did you secure Nanda's return?"
There was a clear reason, her face said, if she could only remember it. "Why did I—?" Then as catching a light: "Fancy your asking me—at this time of day!"
"Ah, you have noticed that I haven't asked before? However," Van promptly added, "I know well enough what you notice. Nanda hasn't mentioned to you whether or no she has heard?"
"Absolutely not. But you don't suppose, I take it, that it was to pry into her affairs that I called her in." ”

“ Nanda explained. “If I want particularly to talk to you—!”
“He has got out of the way to give me a chance? Well then he’s as usual simply magnificent. How can I express the bliss of finding myself enclosed with you in this sweet old security, this really unimagined sanctity? Nothing’s more charming than suddenly to come across something sharp and fresh after we’ve thought there was nothing more that could draw from us a groan. We’ve supposed we’ve had it all, have squeezed the last impression out of the last disappointment, penetrated to the last familiarity in the last surprise ”

“ She says that to be with some nice girl is really the best thing for her."
Poor Mitchy's face, hereupon, would have been interesting, would have been distinctly touching, to other eyes; but Nanda's were not heedful of it. "Oh," he returned after an instant and without profane mirth, "that seems to me the best thing for any one."
Vanderbank, however, might have caught his expression, for Vanderbank now reappeared, smiling on the pair as if struck by their intimacy. "How you are keeping it up!" Then to Nanda, persuasively: "Do you mind going to him in there? I want him so really to see you. ”

“ Brook's part was only a question so off-hand that it might already often have been asked. The mother's eyes, to ask it, we may none the less add, attached themselves closely to the daughter's and her own face just glowed. "You like him so very awfully?"
It was as if the next instant Nanda felt herself on her guard. Yet she spoke with a certain surrender. "Well, it's rather intoxicating to be one's self—" She had only a drop over the choice of her term. ”

“ Nanda's visitor looked so far about as to take the neighborhood in general into the confidence of his surprise. "To neglect me?"
"Well, others too, I believe—with whom we're not concerned. He has been so taken up. But you above all."
Mr. Longdon showed, on this, a coldness that somehow spoke for itself as the greatest with which he had ever in his life met an act of reparation, and that was infinitely confirmed by his sustained immobility. ”

“ But it's just that," said Vanderbank, "that makes one feel so base. I've been ferociously busy."
"He knows that—he likes it," Nanda returned. "He delights in your work. And I've done what I can for him."
"Ah," said her companion, "you've evidently brought him round. I mean to this lady."
"To Tishy? Oh, of course I can't leave her—with nobody."
"No"—Vanderbank became jocose again—"that's a London necessity. You can't leave anybody with nobody—exposed to everybody."
Mild as it was, however, Nanda missed the pleasantry. "Mr. Grendon's not here." ”

“ The time came for payment of the year's dues to Kansa. So Nanda left Gokula ( i.e. Vraja ) in charge of the Gopas and himself went with the dues to Mathurâ. Vâsudeva learned of Nanda's arrival and went to meet him. Nanda stood up to receive him and embraced him heartily. Said Vâsudeva: —
"Brother, you grew old and gave up all hopes of having a child. Luckily a son is now born unto you. It is indeed a new birth to you, that you are blessed with the sight of a lovely son. Friends cannot live pleasantly together as their manifold Karma, like a strong wind, forces them asunder. ”

“ Isn't it precisely just a little to keep Nanda herself from becoming that kind of appendage— say to poor Harold, say, one of these days, to her yonnger brother and sister—that friends like you and me feel the importance of bestirring ourselves in time? Of course she's supposedly young, but she's really any age you like: your London world so fearfully batters and bruises them."
She had gone fast and far, but it had given Mr. Longdon time to feel himself well afloat. ”

“ Nanda, in the same way, to the end of all her time, will simply remain exquisite, or genuine, or generous—whatever we choose to call it. It may make a difference to us, who are comparatively vulgar, but what difference will it make to her whether you do or you don't decide for her? You can't belong to her more, for herself, than you do already—and that's precisely so much that there's no room for any one else. ”

“ Vanderbank hesitated. "You mean I managed him so well?"
"I don't know how you managed him, but liking me has been for him a painful, gradual process. I think he does now," Nanda declared. "He accepts me at last as different—he's trying with me on that basis. He has ended by understanding that when he talks to me of Granny I can't even imagine her."
Vanderbank puffed away, "I can."
"That's what Mitchy says too. But you've both probably got her wrong."
"I don't know," said Vanderbank—"I've gone into it a good deal. But it's too late. We can't be Greeks if we would." ”

“ Nanda asked. “Has he been taken ill?”
“He IS ‘rum,’ my dear Van,” Mitchy said; “but you’re right—of a charm, a distinction! In short just the sort of thing we want.”
“The sort of thing we ‘want’—I dare say!” Vanderbank laughed. “But it’s not the sort of thing that’s to be had for the asking—it’s a sort we shall be mighty lucky if we can get!”
Mitchy turned with amusement to Nanda. “Van has invented him and, with the natural greed of the inventor, won’t let us have him cheap. Well,” he went on, “I’ll ‘stand’ my share.” ”

“ She’s quite by herself. When one sees her one feels her to be the real thing.”
Mrs. Brook, without harshness, wondered. “What do you mean by the real thing?”
Even Nanda, however, had to think a moment.
“Well, the real young one. That’s what Lord Petherton calls her,” she mildly joked—“‘the young ‘un’”
Her mother’s echo was not for the joke, but for something else. “I know what you mean. What’s the use of being good?”
“Oh I didn’t mean that,” said Nanda. “Besides, isn’t Aggie of a goodness—?”
“I wasn’t talking of her. I was asking myself what’s the use of MY being.” ”

“ Longdon considered this with visible intensity. "What you suggest is that the things you speak of depend upon other people?"
"Well, every one isn't so beautiful as you." Nanda had met him with promptitude, yet no sooner had she spoken than she appeared again to encounter a difficulty. ”

“ If he does it (and she shows how she values him by wanting it) it is still a way of getting and keeping near her—of making for her, to him, a tie of gratitude. She becomes, as it were, to him, responsible for his happiness—they can't (especially if the marriage goes ill) not be—given the girl that Nanda is—more, rather than less, together. And the finale of the picture justifies him: it leaves Nanda, precisely, with his case on her hands. Far-fetched? Well, I daresay: but so are diamonds and pearls and the beautiful Reubell turquoises! ”

“ While Vyáḍi remained in an empty temple to guard the body of Indradatta, I went to the king’s palace. I entered, and after making the usual salutation, I asked the supposed Nanda for ten million gold pieces as my instructor’s fee. Then he ordered a man named Śakatála, the minister of the real Nanda, to give me ten million of gold pieces. That minister, when he saw that the dead king had come to life, and that the petitioner immediately got what he asked, guessed the real state of the case. What is there that the wise cannot understand? ”

“ The next minute, none the less, she evidently found a fresh provocation in the sight of the pale and positively excessive rigor she had imposed, so that, though her friend was only accommodating himself to her wish, she had a sudden impulse of criticism. "You're proud about it—too proud!"
"Well, what if I am?" He looked at her with a complexity of communication that no words could have meddled with. "Pride's all right when it helps one to bear things."
"Ah," said Nanda, "but that's only when one wants to take least from them. ”

“ The image appeared really to have for Nanda a certain vividness, and she looked at it a space without a hint of a smile. “We shan’t need any pistols, whatever may be decided about the post-chaise; and any flight we may undertake together will need no cover of secrecy or night. Mother, as I’ve told you—”
“Won’t fling herself across your reckless path? I remember,” said Mitchy—“you alluded to her magnificent resignation. But father?” he oddly demanded.
Nanda thought for this a moment longer. “Well, Mr. Longdon has—off in the country—a good deal of shooting.” ”