THE NOVELS OF

L. ADAMS BECK

The Key of Dreams

The Perfume of the Rainbow

The Treasure of Ho

The Ninth Vibration

The Way of Stars

The Splendour of Asia

Dreams and Delights

DREAMS

AND DELIGHTS

BY

L. ADAMS BECK

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1926

Copyright, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926

BY DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY, INC.

Printed in U. S. A.

THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

PREFACE

These stories of dreams and delights in breathless jungles of Ceylon, among Himalayan mountains, by Chinese seas, in ancientries beneath dead suns and withered moons, are in truth the soul’s longing to behold the White Swan of the World when in dim twilights of dawn and evening she spreads her wings for flight. And because to such wings time and distance are nothing I have gathered one feather dropped on Dartmoor as she soared to Gaurisankar where on the highest peak of earth, circled by great stars, the Mystic Mother of India dreams her divine dream as the ages unroll beneath her feet. The Snowy Goddess, She who is Very Woman of very woman, knows that whether by Thames or Ganges, Mississippi, Yang-tze, or rolling Nile, Her daughters are the same, yesterday, to-day and for ever, and holding in their hands the hearts of men, so fulfil Her purpose. And because no true story can be told without this knowledge, I set Her name at the beginning of these dreams and delights, invoking devoutly the protection and inspiration of Her who is at once Eve and Lilith, Athene and Aphrodite, Parwati and Kali, Virgin, Mother, and Destroyer, but in all forms and incarnations, Enchantress and Conqueror of men.

L. Adams Beck.

Canada.

“V. LYDIAT”

“V. LYDIAT”

She sat and looked at the signature written under the name of the story in readiness for typing.

“THE NINEFOLD FLOWER.”

It was a fine story, she knew, and the signature satisfied her also as it always did. V. is the most beautiful letter in the alphabet to write and look at, the ends curving over from the slender base like the uprush of a fountain from its tense spring. When she “commenced author,” as the eighteenth century puts it, she devoted days and days to the consideration of that pen-name. For several reasons it must not reveal identity. Most women prefer the highwayman’s mask when they ride abroad to hold up the public. It gives a freedom impossible when one is tethered to the responsibilities of name and family. One becomes a foundling in the great city of Literature and the pebble-cold eye of human relationship passes unaware over what would have stung it into anger or jealousy if it had held the key of the mystery. That is, if the secret is guarded as carefully as V. Lydiat’s.

But, for all I know, her strange reason for secrecy may never in this world have swayed man or woman before.

In reality she was Beatrice Veronica Law Leslie.

A mouthful indeed! You can make as many combinations with that as with the trick lock of a safe, and it will be as difficult to pick the secret. She had a strong superstition about keeping to her own initials, anagrammed or reversed and twisted. It seemed to her that this was part of a bond of honour of which another held the pledge. With this pen-name a most astonishing thing had befallen Beatrice Veronica Law Leslie, for she won a literary success so sudden and singular that the very management of it required a statesmanship she never before knew she possessed.

A little must here be said of her life that this strange thing may be understood. She was the only child of a well-known Oxford don and a somewhat remarkable mystically-minded mother who died when the girl was fourteen. Her father, after that loss, “tried life a little, liked it not, and died” four years later, and Beatrice Veronica who was known in her family as B. V. then betook herself to the guardianship of an aunt in Montreal. Here, she also tried life a little, on the society side, and certainly liked it not. There was an urge within her that cried aloud for adventure, for the sight of the dissolving glories of the Orient and contact with strange lives that called to her dumbly in books. They peeped and mocked and vanished to their unknown countries taking her longing with them, and life lay about her vapid, flat, dominated by an Aunt of Fashion.

She floated on a duck pond and sighed for the ocean. What is a young woman of spirit, not too beautiful to be dangerous, of small but sufficient means, to do in such a case? Beatrice Veronica knew very well.

She waited until she was twenty-one, meanwhile securing the allegiance of a girl, Sidney Verrier, in like case, an enthusiast like herself, and on a May morning of dreamy sweetness they got themselves into a C.P.R. train for Victoria, B. C., leaving two ill-auguring aunts on the platform, and away with them on a trip to the Orient via Japan. They were under bond to return in a year.

It was a wonderful, a heavenly experience—that wander-year of theirs. The things they saw, the men and women they met, the marvels which appealed to every sense! But I must not dwell on these for they are but the pedestal to the story of V. Lydiat.

A year! Impossible. Four, six, eight years went by and still unheeded aunts clamoured, and the pavements of Montreal lacked their footsteps.

And then, in Agra, Sidney Verrier married, and apologetically, doubtfully, dissolved the fair companionship, and Beatrice Veronica was left to solitude.

When the bridal car rolled off to the station and the honeymoon at Mussoori, she sat down and considered. She had not realized it until then. The ways of the world were open, for experience had made them plain. She had acquaintances, go where she would. There was no material reason why she should not continue this delightful nomad existence delightfully. But she was lonely, and suddenly it became clear to her that she wanted quiet, time, recollection. She had assisted at a great feast of the senses and had eaten to satiety.

Now—imperatively—something in her heart cried “Enough.”

Afterwards she wondered if that had been the voice of V. Lydiat crying in the wilderness. The note of preparation.

But where to go? Her aunt was still treading the daily round of bridge and luncheon parties in Montreal and the soul of Beatrice Veronica shuddered in the remembrance. No, no. The bird set free does not re-enter its gilded cage, however temptingly the little dish of seed is set forth. But she loved Canada for all that. She remembered, as she and Sidney Verrier had passed through the glorious giant-land of the Rockies, how broadly uplifted and vast had been the heights and spaces, how enormous the glee of the rivers tumbling from hidden sources, and they called her across far waters and beneath strange stars.

But could one live in such colossal companionship? Is it possible to dine and sleep and yawn in the presence of Gods and Emperors? There was the doubt. And then she remembered a shining city laving her feet in shining seas, with quiet gardens where the roses blush and bloom in a calm so deep that you may count the fall of every petal in the drowsy summer afternoons. A city of pines and oaks, of happy homes great and small,—a city above all, bearing the keys of the Orient at her golden girdle,—for it is but to step aboard a boat, swift almost as the Magic Carpet, and you wake one happy morning with all the dear remembered scents and sights before you once more. And her heart said “Victoria,”—where Westernmost West leans forward to kiss Easternmost East across the Pacific.

So she went there—now a woman of twenty-nine, self-possessed, and capable, and settled herself in a great hostelry to choose and build her home. Her home, mark you!—not her prison. It was not to be so large as to hamper flight when the inevitable call came—

Take down your golden wings now

From the hook behind the door,

The wind is calling from the East

And you must fly once more.

I wish I might write of the building of Beatrice Veronica’s home for it developed into one of the immense joys of her life. But more important things are ahead, so it must suffice to say that it was long, low and brown with sunny verandas and windows avid of sunshine, and that all the plunder of travel, and books, books, books found happy place in it and grew there as inevitably as leaves on a tree.

But it was while all this was in embryo that the thought of writing impressed itself on Beatrice Veronica. Partly because the house adventure was expensive and she wanted a larger margin, partly because she had seen with delighted interest and intelligence all the splendid spectacle of men and cities. Her sound knowledge of history and cultivated taste in literature should count for pebbles in the writer’s sling who goes forth to conquer the great Goliath of the public. She revolved this thought often as she walked by murmurous seas or nested in a niche of rock to watch the mountains opposite reflecting every change of sunlight as a soul in adoration reflects its deity. It really seemed a waste not to turn all this to some sort of account. And success would be sweet. But how to begin!

She bought an armful of the magazines which make gay the streets of Victoria. “I ought to be able to do this kind of thing,” she reflected. “I have a good vocabulary. Father always thought about eight thousand words, and that should go a long way. Besides I’ve seen nearly all there is to see. Let’s try.”

She did, and ended with more respect for the average author. The eight thousand were as unmanageable as mutineers or idiots. They marched doggedly in heavy columns, they right-about-faced and deployed; but there was no life in them. The veriest man-handler of a grizzly or a cow-boy could do better. Being a young person of quick insight and decision she decided to waste no more time in that direction. She laid away the magazines and decided to be a spectator with memory and hope for companions. She burned her manuscripts and turned her attention to planning her garden.

And it was then that V. Lydiat dawned on the horizon.

Dawned. That is the only word, for it came and the sun came after. It happened in this way.

One night, in the usual way Beatrice Veronica fell asleep and dreamed, but not in the usual way. She was standing by a temple she remembered very well in Southern India, the Temple of Govindhar. It stood there, under its palms wonderful as a giant rock of majolica, coloured lavishly in the hard fierce sunshine, monstrously sculptured with gods and goddesses, and mythical creatures of land and water in all the acts of their supernal life, writhing and tapering upwards to the great architectural crown supported by tigers and monkeys which finished the building,—a crown gemmed with worshipping spirits for jewels, a nightmare conception of violence in form and colour; the last barbaric touch to the misbegotten splendour. Vaguely the whole thing reminded Beatrice Veronica of her literary efforts and she stood among the palms looking up to the blaze against the blue and smiling a little.

Suddenly she became aware that a man was standing near the great gate which no unbeliever’s foot may pass, looking up also, shading his eyes with his hand from the intolerable sunlight. His face was sensitive and strong, an unusual blending, his eyes grey and noticeable. She liked his figure in the light tropical clothing. He had the air of birth and breeding. But he seemed wearied, as if the climate had been too much for him, a look one knows very well where the Peninsula runs down to Cape Cormorin, and the sun beats on the head like a mighty man of valour.

Then, as dream-people will, he came towards her as if they had known each other all their lives, and said, slowly, meditatively:

“I have tried and tried. I can’t do it.”

With a sense that she knew what he meant though she could not drag it to the surface, she found herself saying earnestly:

“But have you tried hard enough? Really tried?”

He put his hands to his forehead with a tired gesture:

“I’m always trying. But you could do it.”

She said, “Could I?” in great astonishment.

They stood a moment side by side, looking at each other and then as if from a blurred distance she heard his voice again.

“It was said long ago that if any creatures united their psychic forces they could conquer the world, though singly they could do nothing.”

Temple and palms dissolved into coloured mist; they swam away on another wave of dream and vanished. She floated up to the surface of consciousness again, awake, with the pale morning gold streaming in through the east window.

She knew she had dreamed, for a sense of something lost haunted her all day, yet could not remember anything, and things went on in their usual course.

That evening sitting in a corner of the hotel lounge, with the babble of music and talk about her, she had the irresistible impulse to write,—to write something; she did not in the least know what. It was so urgent that she walked quickly to the elevator and so to her sitting room, and there she snatched pen and paper and wrote the beginning of a story of modern life in India, but strangely influenced by and centring about the Temple of Govindhar. As she wrote the name she remembered that she had seen it among the palm trees in its hideous beauty, and now, like a human personality, it forced itself upon her and compelled her to be its mouthpiece.

How it happened she could not in the least tell. Certainly she had travelled, kept her ears and eyes open and learned as much as any woman can do who keeps on the beaten track in the Orient and consorts with her own kind in preference to the natives. The two worlds are very far apart—so far that nothing from below the surface can pass over the well-defined limits. Moreover she was not a learned woman,—Indian thought of the mystic order had never come her way, and Indian history except at the point where it touches European was a closed book. Therefore this story astonished her very much. She read it over breathlessly when it was finished. If she had had that knowledge when she was there how all the mysteries of the temple would have leaped to light—what drama, what strange suspense would have lurked in its monstrous form and colour! The critic in her brain who, standing aside, watched the posturing and mouthing of the characters, told her austerely that the work was good—excellent. But something behind her brain had told her that already. She read it over ardently, lingeringly, with an astonishing sense of ownership yet of doubt. How had it come? And the writing? No longer did the eight thousand of her vocabulary march in dull squadrons, heavy-footed, languid. They sped, ran, flew, with perfect grace, like the dancers of princes. They were beautiful exceedingly. They bore the tale like a garland. She read it again and again, with bewildered delight.

She tapped it out herself on the keys of her Corona and sent it to the editor of a very famous magazine, with the signature of “V. Lydiat.” As I have said, that matter took long thought, prompted from behind by instincts.

It was done and V. Lydiat, a climbing star, shed a faint beam over the world. For the editor wrote back eagerly. He knew he had found a new flavour. “Your work impresses me as extremely original. I am anxious to see more of it. I need hardly say I accept it for the magazine and I shall hope to hear from you again before long.” A cheque followed.

No need to dwell on Beatrice Veronica’s feelings, mixed beyond disentanglement. She was not astonished that the work should be recognized as good, but—V. Lydiat! What had happened to her and how? Strange tales are told to-day of sudden brain-stimulations and complexes. Was she the happy victim of such an adventure, and if so, would it be recurrent? How should she know? What should she do? She felt herself moving in worlds not realized, and could not in the least decide the simple question of whether it was honest to accept commendation for a thing she felt in her very soul she had not done and could not do.

But then, who? What was V. Lydiat?

He, she, or it, came from starrier spheres than hers. Wings plumed its shoulders, while hers were merely becomingly draped in seasonable materials. She knew that the visitor was a subtler spirit, dwelling beyond the mysteries, saturated with the colour and desire of dead ages which can never die—an authentic voice, hailed at once by the few, to be blown at last on the winds of the soul which, wandering the world, let fall here and there the seeds of amaranth and asphodel.

Yes—V. Lydiat was entirely beyond her.

But you will understand that, though Beatrice Veronica could not enter into the secret places, it was a most wonderful thing to be amanuensis and business manager. To her fell the letters from editors and publishers, the correspondence which rained in from the ends of the earth, protesting gratitude, praise, entreaties for counsel in all things from routes to religions. These latter were the most difficult, for it would have taken V. Lydiat to answer them adequately. But Beatrice Veronica did the best she could, and her life moved onward aureoled and haloed.

She learned at last the rules of the game. V. Lydiat’s ethereal approach could only be secured by the wand of a fountain pen. She must sit thus armed with a fair sheet before her and wait, fixing her mind on some idle point of light or persistent trembling of leaves, and suddenly the world would pass miraculously from her and she would awake in another—an amazing world, most beautiful, brimming with romance, lit by suns of gallant men and moons of loveliest women. The great jewels of the Orient shed starry splendours, and ghostly creeping figures pursued them through jungles and mountain passes. Strange magics lurked in the dark and drew the soul along the Way of Wonder.

The strangest experience. It began always in the same way. The blue Canadian sky, the hyacinth gleam of the sea through oak and pine dissolved in unrealities of mist, and sultry Oriental skies, yellow as a lion’s eyes or the brazen boom of a gong, beat their fierce sunlight downward as from an inverted bowl. And then—then, she knew V. Lydiat was at hand. But never with companionship. It was a despot and entered in, with flags flying, to the annihilation of Beatrice Veronica. She wrote like a thing driven on a wind, and woke to find it done. The possession obliterated her, and when she could collect her routed forces it was gone.

So time went on and V. Lydiat’s fame was established and Beatrice Veronica wore it as a woman too poor to appear at Court with fitting magnificence shines in borrowed jewels and trembles to wear them.

One night in the moonlit warmth, with the vast Princesses of the Dark hidden in the ambush of breathless trees, she sat in the high veranda of her little house with the broad vista through pines to the sea.

It was a heavenly night; if the baby waves broke in the little bay they must break in diamonds,—the wet stones must shine like crystals.

That day V. Lydiat had transported her to a great and silent jungle in Cambodia and they went up together through the crowding whispering trees to the ruined palaces where once great kings dwelt, and passed together through sounding halls sculptured with dead myths to the chambers, once secret, whence queens looked forth languidly from wildly-carved casements into the wilderness of sweets in the gardens.

V. Lydiat had led her to a great tank of crystal water in the knotted shade, paved with strange stones inlaid with human figures in wrought metal,—a place where women with gold-embraced heads once idly bathed their slender limbs in the warm lymph—a secret place then, but now open to cruel sunlight and cold incurious stars.

So far she knew it all. She had photographed that tank with its stony cobras while Sidney Verrier timed the exposure. But of the story told to-day she knew nothing.

A wonderful story, old as time, new as to-morrow, for the figures in it were of to-day, people who had gone there, as she herself had done, only to see, and were captured, subjugated by the old alarming magic which lurks in the jungle and behind the carven walls and eyeless windows. A dangerous place, and she had not known it then—had thought of it only as a sight to be seen, a memory to be treasured. But V. Lydiat knew better—knew it was alive and terrible still.

She leaned her arms on the sill and looked out to the sea that led towards the hidden Orient and in her heart she spoke to the strange visitor.

“I wish I knew you,” she whispered. “You come and go and I can’t touch you even while you are within and about me. You interpret. You make life wonderful, but perhaps you are more wonderful still. If I could only lay hold of you, touch you, have one glimpse of you! What are you? Where do you come from? Where do you go? I hear. O, let me see!”

It was like a prayer, and the more intense because the dead stillness of the night presented it as its own cry and entreaty.

Dead silence. Not even the voice of the sea.

She laid her head on her folded arms.

“I’ve been obedient. I’ve laid myself down on the threshold that you might walk over me and take possession. Have you no reward for me? Are you just some strange cell of my own brain suddenly awake and working, or are you some other—what?—but nearer to me than breathing, as near as my own soul?”

The longing grew inarticulate and stronger, like the dumb yearning instincts which move the world of unspeaking creatures. It seemed to her that she sent her soul through the night pleading, pleading. Then very slowly she relaxed into sleep as she lay in the moonlight—deep, soul-satisfying sleep. And so dreamed.

She stood in the Shalimar Garden of the dead Mogul Empresses in Kashmir. How well she knew it, how passionately she loved it! She and Sidney Verrier had moored their houseboat on the Dal Lake not far away one happy summer and had wandered almost daily to the Shalimar, glorying in the beauty of its fountains and rushing cascades, and the roses—roses everywhere in a most bewildering sweetness. How often she had gone up the long garden ways to the foot of the hills that rise into mountains and catch the snows and stars upon their heights. It was no wonder she should dream of it. So in her dream she walked up to the great pavilion supported on noble pillars of black marble from Pampoor, and the moon swam in a wavering circle in the water before it, and she held back a moment to see it break into a thousand reflections, and then became aware of a man leaning with folded arms by the steps: his face clear in the moonlight.

Instantly she knew him, as he did her—the man of her dream of the Temple of Govindhar.

As before he turned and came toward her.

“I have waited for you by the temple and here and in many other places. I wait every night. How is it you come so seldom?” he said. His voice was stronger, his bearing more alert and eager than at Govindhar. He spoke with a kind of assurance of welcome which she responded to instantly.

“I would have come. I didn’t know. How can I tell?”

He looked at her smiling.

“There is only one way. Why didn’t you learn it in India? It was all round you and you didn’t even notice. You don’t know your powers. Listen.”

Beatrice Veronica drew towards him, eyes rapt on his face, scarcely breathing. Yes—in India she had felt there were mighty stirrings about her, thrills of an unknown spiritual life, crisping the surface like a breeze, and passing—passing before ever you could say it was there. But it did not touch her with so much as an outermost ripple. She was too ignorant. Now—she could learn.

“You see—this is the way of it,” he said, leaning against the black pillar. “The soul is sheer thought and knowledge, but, prisoned in the body, it is the slave of the senses and all its powers are limited by these. And they lead it into acts which in their consequences are fetters of iron. Still, at a certain point of attainment one can be freer than most men believe possible. When this is so, you use the Eight Means of Mental Concentration and are free. You step into a new dimension.”

“Is this true? Do you know it?” she said earnestly. “Because, if there is any way which can be taken, I have a quest—something—someone——”

She stammered, and could not finish.

“I know. Someone you want to find in the dark. Well, it can be done. You would not believe the possibilities of that freed state of consciousness. Here, in the Shalimar you think you see nothing but moonlight and water—nothing in fact but what your senses tell you. But that is nonsense. Your eyes are shut. You are asleep in Canada and yet you see them by the inner light of memory even now and the help I am giving you! Well—use the Eight Means, and you will see them waking and as clearly as you do in sleep. But I, who am instructed, see more. This garden to me is peopled with those who made it—the dead kings and queens who rejoiced in its beauty. See—” he laid his hand on hers and suddenly she saw. Amazing—amazing! They were alone no longer.

Sitting on the floor of the pavilion, looking down into the moon-mirroring water was a woman in the ancient dress of Persia, golden and jewelled,—she flung her head up magnificently as if at the words, and looked at them, the moon full in her eyes. 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?

It seemed to Beatrice Veronica that she had never beheld beauty before. It was beyond all pictures, all images in its sultry passionate loveliness,—it was——

But as she watched spellbound, the man lifted his hand from hers and the garden was empty of all but moonlight and roses once more, and he and she alone. She could have wept for utter loss.

“Was it a ghost?” she asked trembling.

“No, no,—an essential something that remains in certain places, not a ghost. There is nothing of what you mean by that word. Don’t be frightened! You’ll often see them.”

She stared at him perplexed, and he added:

“You see? One has only to put oneself in the receptive state and time is no more. One sees—one hears. You are only a beginner so I cannot show you much. But you are a beginner or you would not be here in the Shalimar with me now. There is a bond between us which goes back—” He paused, looking keenly at her, and said quickly “Centuries, and further.”

She was stunned, dazed by the revelations. They meant so much more that it is possible to record. Also the sensation was beginning in her which we all know before waking. The dream wavers on its foundation, loosens, becomes misty, makes ready to disappear. It would be gone—gone before she could know. She caught his hand as if to steady it.

“Are you V. Lydiat?” she cried.—“You must be. You are. You come to me every day—a voice. O let me come to you like this, and teach me, teach me, that I may know and see. I am a blind creature in a universe of wonders. Let me come every night.”

His face was receding, palpitating, collapsing, but his voice came as if from something beyond it.

“That is what you call me. Names are nothing. Yes, come every night.”

It was gone. She was in the Shalimar alone, and somewhere in the distance she heard Sidney Verrier’s voice calling clear as a bird. Beatrice Veronica woke that morning with the sun glorying through the eastern arch of her veranda. She was still dressed. She had slept there all night. Of the dream she remembered snatches, hints, which left new hopes and impulses germinating in her soul. The unknown flowers were sown in spring. They would blossom in summer in unimaginable beauty.

That was the beginning of a time of strange and enchanting happiness. Thus one may imagine the joy of a man born blind who by some miraculous means is made to see, and wakes in a world of wonders. It is impossible that anyone should know greater bliss. The very weight of it made her methodical and practical lest a grain of heavenly gold should escape her in its transmutation to earthly terms.

The morning was V. Lydiat’s. At ten o’clock she betook herself to her high veranda, and folding her hands and composing her mind looked out to sea through the wide way of pines which terminated in its azure beauty. Then, as has been told before, it would blow softly away on a dream-wind, and the story begin.

And at night there was now invariably the meeting. At first that was always in some place she knew—somewhere she recognized from memory, haunts of her own with Sidney Verrier. But one night a new thing happened—she woke into dream by the Ganges at Cawnpore, at the terrible Massacre Ghaut, a place she had always avoided because of the horrible memories of the Indian mutiny which sicken the soul of every European who stands there.

Now she stood at the top of the beautiful broken steps under the dense shade of the very trees where the mutineers ambushed, and he was below, beckoning her.

“Well done, well done!” he said, as she came slowly down to where holy Ganges lips the lowest step. “This was a great experiment. You could never have come here alone,—I could not have brought you until now, and I had to fight the repugnance in you, but here you are. You see? We have been putting stepping-stones, you and I, each from our own side, and now the bridge is made and we hold hands in the middle. You can come anywhere now. And listen—I too am learning to go where I have never been. The world will be open to us soon.”

He looked at her with glowing eyes—the eyes of the explorer, the discoverer, on the edge of triumph.

“But why here—in this horrible place?” She shrank a little even from him as she looked about her. He laughed:

“That is no more now than a last year’s winter storm. They know. They were not afraid even then. They laugh now as they go on their way. Be happy, beloved. They are beyond the mysteries.”

Of that dream, she carried back to earth the word “beloved.” Who had said it, she could not tell, but in the dark—the warm friendly dark—there was someone who loved her, whom she loved with a perfect union. Was it—could it be V. Lydiat? She did not know. Also she remembered that she had dreamed the Massacre Ghaut at Cawnpore, and took pains to search for pictures and stories of the place to verify her dream. Yes—it was true. Things were becoming clearer.

Also, her power in writing increased very noticeably about this time. V. Lydiat was recognized as holding a unique place amongst writers of the Orient. On the one side were the scholars, the learned men who wrote in terms of ancient Oriental thought, terms no ordinary reader could understand, and on the other, the writers of the many-faceted surface, the adventurers, toying with the titillating life of zenana and veiled dangerous love-affairs,—a tissue of coloured crime. V. Lydiat recorded all, and with a method of his own which approached perfect loveliness in word and phrase. The faiths of the East were his,—in India and China alike his soul sheltered under the Divine Wings, at home in strange heavens, and hells which one day would blossom into heavens. As he and Beatrice Veronica had posed stepping-stones until they met in the middle, so he built a splendid bridge across the wide seas of misunderstanding between east and west, and many souls passed across it going and coming and were glad.

“I’m only a pioneer,” he said to Beatrice Veronica one day (she could dream the day as well as the night) sitting in the gardens of the Taj. “You too. It will be done much better soon. See how we are out-growing our limitations and feeling out after the wonders of the sub-conscious self, the essential that hands on the torch when we die. Die? No, I hate that word. Let’s say, climb a step higher on the ladder of existence. Every inch gives us a wider view of the country. You see?”

She liked that “You see?” which came so often. It was so eager—so fraternal in a way. Yes, they were good comrades, she and V. Lydiat.

“Do you know I write for you?” she ventured to ask. “I have often wondered if you speak as unconsciously as I write.”

“No, no. I know. I always know. Longer ago than you would believe you used to work for me. We are in the same whirl-pool, you and I. Our atoms must always be whirled together again. You can’t escape me, Beatrice Veronica.”

“Do you think I want to?” she asked.

But in daily life she clung to her secret like grim death. She would not have been burdened with V. Lydiat’s laurels for the world. The dishonesty of it! And yet one could never explain. Hopeless! Who would believe? And apart from that, she had a kind of growing certainty that V. Lydiat would enter upon his own one day. Not that she remembered him as any more than a vague dream influence; she did not, but yet the realization of a Presence was growing, and she herself developing daily.

There is not much space here to tell the wondrous sights she saw with V. Lydiat, and holding by his hand. That would be a book in itself—and a beautiful one. And though she could only remember them in drifts like a waft of far-off music on a breeze, it was incomparable food for the sub-conscious self, and strengthened every latent faculty of memory and experience. Beatrice Veronica promised to be a very remarkable woman if some day the inner and outer faculties should unite.

But what was to be the solvent? That, this story can only indicate faintly for the end is not yet.

She went out a little less into her small world of daily life—not shunning it certainly, but her inner life was so crowded, so blissful that the outer seemed insipid enough. Why figure at teas and bridge parties, and struggle with the boredom of mah jong when the veranda was waiting with the green way before it that led to the silence of the sea, and the lover beyond? For it had come to that—the lover. All joy summed up in that word, joy unmeasurable as the oceans of sunlight—a perfect union. She walked as one carefully bearing a brimmed cup,—not a drop, not a drop must spill,—so she carried herself a little stiffly as it might seem to the outer world which could not guess the reason.

People liked her—but she moved on her own orbit, and it only intersected theirs at certain well-defined points. Her soft abstracted air won but eluded;—it put an atmosphere of strangeness about her, of thoughts she could not share with anyone.

“She must have rather a lonely life of it!” they said. But she never had.

One day came a letter from Sidney Verrier, now Sidney Mourilyan, from her husband’s coffee plantation in the Shevaroy Hills in southern India. She wrote from the settlement of Yercaud— “Not a town,” she wrote, “but dear little scattered houses in the trees. We have even a club, think of it!—after the wilds where you and I have been!—and there are pleasant people, and Tony expects to do well with coffee here. I wish half the day that you could come. You would like it, B. V.— You would like it! And you would like my boy—two years old now, and a sheer delight. Not to mention my garden. The growth here! The heliotropes are almost trees. The jasmines have giant stars. The house is stormed with flowers—almost too sweet. Couldn’t you come? Don’t you hear the east calling? At all events you hear me calling, for I want you. And you must be having very idle lazy days, for I remember I never could imagine what you would find to do if you stopped travelling. Your whole soul was in that. It’s a cold country you’re in—frigid pines, and stark mountains and icy seas. Do come out into the sunshine again.”

She laid down the letter there and looked at the beloved pines almost glittering in the sunshine as it slid off their smooth needles. And idle?—her life, her wonderful secret life! Little indeed did Sidney know if she could write like that. She took up the letter again, smiling.

“And listen, B. V.—there’s a man going round by Japan to Canada, a man called Martin Welland. I should like you to know him for two reasons. First, he can tell you all about this place. Second, I think he is interesting. If you don’t find him so, shunt him. My love, my dear B. V., and do come. Think of all you might do with this as a starting point.”

There was more, but that is the essential. You may think at this point that you know exactly how this story must inevitably end. But no.

It was about four months after this that Beatrice Veronica was rung up on the telephone in her veranda as she sat reading. The imperative interruption annoyed her;—she put down her book. A man’s voice.

“Miss Leslie? I think your friend Mrs. Mourilyan told you I was coming to Victoria. My name is Welland.”

Polite assurances from the veranda.

“Yes, I am staying at the Empress. May I come out and see you this afternoon? I have a small parcel for you from Mrs. Mourilyan.”

So it was settled, and with her Chinese servant she made the little black oak table beautiful with silver and long-stemmed flowers in beautiful old English glass bowls. If he went back to Yercaud he should at least tell Sidney that her home in “that cold country” was desirable.

He came at four and she could hear his voice in the little hall as Wing admitted him.

She liked it. The words were clear, well-cut, neither blurred nor bungled. Then he came in. A tall man, broad-shouldered, with grey eyes and hair that sprang strongly from a broad forehead, clean-shaven, a sensitive mouth, possibly thirty-eight, or so. All these things flashed together in an impression of something to be liked and trusted. On his side he saw a young woman in a blue-grey gown with hazel eyes and hair to match—a harmony of delicate browns enhancing an almond-pale face with faintly coloured lips and a look of fragility which belied the nervous strength beneath.

The parcel was given and received; a chain of Indian moonstones in silver, very lovely in its shifting lights, and then came news, much news, of the home at Yercaud.

“I heard of you so much there that you are no stranger to me,” he said, watching with curious interest while she filled the Chinese cups of pink and jade porcelain with jasmine tea from a hidden valley in Anhui. It fascinated him—the white hands flitting like little quick birds on their quick errands, the girl, so calm and self-possessed, mistress of herself and her house. Many years of wandering had opened his heart to the feminine charm of it all, the quiet, the rose-leaf scent in the air, the things which group by instinct about a refined woman.

“You have a delightful home!” he said at last, rather abruptly.

“Yes— When you return do try to convince Mrs. Mourilyan that I don’t live in a hut on an iceberg. You agree with me, I am sure, that only Kashmir and perhaps one or two other places can be more beautiful than this.”

“Yes. I fully agree. Yet it misses something which permeates India in places far less beautiful. It lacks atmosphere. Just as the fallen leaves of a forest make up a rich soil in which all growth is luxuriant, so the dead ancientry of India makes earth and air rich with memory and tradition—and more. You can’t get it in these new countries.”

“I know,” she said eagerly. “Here it’s just a beautiful child with all her complexities before her. It rests one, you know. I felt it an amazing rest when I came here.”

“I can understand that. And they tell me the climate is delightful. I wish I could stay here. I may come back some day. But I must return to India in four months.”

“You have work?”

“Yes and no. I have collected an immense quantity of notes for several books, but—now you will laugh!—I shall never write them.”

“But why—why? I know there’s an immense opening for true books about the Orient.”

“I think so too. But you allow it’s a drawback that I am entirely devoid of the writing gift. I have my knowledge. I have the thing flame-clear in my mind. But let me put it on paper and it evaporates. Dull as ditchwater! You see?”

That last little phrase sent a blush flying up her cheek. It recalled many things.

“Yes, I see. But couldn’t you put it in skilful hands?”

He laid down his cup and turned suddenly on her.

“Could you do it?”

“I? I wish I could, but I am doing work at present——”

“Literary?”

“Of a sort. Secretarial. I write from dictation.”

“May I ask what sort of things?”

With a curious reluctance she answered.

“Indian,” and said no more.

He seemed to meditate a moment on that; then said slowly:

“It appears you have experience of the very things that interest me. Tell me—for I have been so long in the wilds— Is there any writer nowadays taking the place with regard to things Indian that Lafcadio Hearn did with things Japanese? A man who gets at the soul of it as well as the beautiful surface?”

With her eyes on the ground and a sense of something startling in the air, she answered with a question.

“Have you ever heard of V. Lydiat’s books?”

There was a puzzled furrow between his eyebrows.

“Not that I know of. Up in Kulu and beyond, the new books don’t penetrate. A man or a woman?”

“People are not certain. The initial might mean either. But the critics all say a man. The last is called the ‘The Unstruck Music,’ the one before ‘The Dream of Stars.’ The first, ‘The Ninefold Flower.’ ”

“Beautiful names,” he said. “Can I get them here?”

“I can lend them to you.”

They talked long after that, in a curiously intimate way that gave her secret but intense happiness. It was almost in fear that she asked when he was going on and where.

When he went off he carried the three books under his arm.

“I shall read ‘The Ninefold Flower,’ first. It interests me to see how a writer’s mind develops.”

That night she had no dream and next day she tried even more eagerly than usual to get in touch with V. Lydiat, but in vain. The oracle was dumb. It frightened her, for the whole thing was so strange that she had never felt sure it might not vanish as suddenly as it came. She sat patiently all that morning, hoping and sorely disturbed, but the Pacific hung a relentless azure curtain before her fairyland and the pines dreamed their own sunshine-fragrance and made no way for palms.

At one o’clock the telephone rang sharply,

“Welland speaking. May I come and see you this afternoon?”

It was impossible for she had an engagement, but she named the evening at eight. He caught at it—his voice was evidence of that eagerness.

He came a minute or two before the time, and a book was in his hand. She knew the cover with a drift of stars across it before he spoke.

It broke out the moment he was in the room.

“A most amazing thing. I hardly know how to tell you. You’ll think I’m mad. It’s my book—mine, yet I never wrote it.”

They stared at each other in a kind of consternation and the little colour in her face fell away and left her lily-pale. She could feel but not control the trembling of her hands.

“You mean——”

“I mean—there are my notes one after another, but expressed in a way I never could hope for, exquisitely expressed. But it’s mine all the same. A cruel, enchanting robbery! You don’t believe me. How could you? But I can prove it. See here.”

With passionate haste he pulled a roll of paper from his pocket, and pushed the typed sheets before her. The first story in “The Ninefold Flower,” was called “The Lady of Beauty.” The notes began, “The Queen of Beauty,” and went on seriatim with the scaffolding of the story.

“The way it’s done here, in this book, is the very way I used to see it in my dreams, but it was utterly beyond me. For God’s sake, tell me what you think.”

She laid it down.

“Of course it’s yours. No doubt of that. But his too. You blocked out the marble. He made the statue. The very judgment of Solomon could not decide between you.”

“That’s true,” he said hopelessly. “But the mystery of it. The appalling hopeless mystery. No eye but mine has ever seen that paper till now.”

Silence. A grey moth flew in from the garden and circled about the lamp. The little flutter of its wings was the only sound. Then in a shaken voice very unlike its usual sedate sweetness, she asked.

“Mr. Welland, do you ever dream?”

“Awake? Constantly.”

“Asleep?”

She saw caution steal into his frank eyes and drop a curtain before them.

“Why do you ask? Everyone dreams.”

She gathered up all her courage for the next question.

“Were you ever in the Shalimar?”

“Certainly. Does anyone ever go to Kashmir and miss it?”

He was fencing, that was palpable. It gave her hope for a golden gleam through her fear. She clasped her shaking hands tightly in each other.

“I have the strangest dreams. I can only bring back snatches. Yet I know there is a wonderful connected story behind them. I dreamt the Shalimar not long ago,—I brought back one image. A woman in an old Persian dress sitting by the black Pampoor pillars and looking down into the water where the moon dipped and swam all gold.”

“Yes, yes, go on!” he breathed.

“There were flowers—white flowers. I never saw them there in the daylight.”

“Unbearably sweet,” he interjected. “The scent is like the thrust of a lance. I know, I know. But there was another woman. I can’t remember her face.”

“How did she stand?” asked Beatrice Veronica.

“Near me—but she could see nothing. The day still blinded her, until——”

“Until you laid your hand on hers. Then she saw.”

Another long silence. Only the beating of the moth’s wings. He leaned forward from his chair and laid his hands on the clasp of hers. Their eyes met, absorbing each other; the way for the electric current was clear.

“I remember now,” he said, very softly. “It was you. It was you at the Temple of Govindhar. At the Massacre Ghaut of Cawnpore. Ah, I dragged you there against your will to show I was the stronger. It is you—always you.”

What was she to say? With his hands on hers it was a union of strength which put the past before both like an open book. She remembered all the dreams now. Impossible to tell them here—they were so many, like and unlike, shaken shifting jewels in a kaleidoscope held in some unseen hand. But jewels. They sat a long time in this way, rapt in wordless memories, their eyes absorbing each other—the strangest reunion. When speech came it brought rapture which needed little explanation. They bathed in wonder as in clear water, they flung the sparkle of it over their heads and glittered to each other in its radiance. When had such a miracle been wrought for any two people in all the world? The dreams of the visionary were actual for them and heaven and earth instinct with miracle.

“When we are married—when we pass our lives utterly together the bond will be stronger,” he said, kissing her hand passionately two hours later. “We shall be awake with reason and intellect as well as vision to help our work, we shall do such things as the world has never dreamed, prove that miracle is the daily bread of those who know. Two halves of a perfect whole made one forever and ever. You see?”

He looked at her a moment with shining eyes and added, “The wise will come to us for wisdom, the poets for beauty, and we shall make our meeting-places the shrines of a new worship.”

Beatrice Veronica agreed with every pulse of her blood. The Great Adventure, and together!—what bliss could equal that marvel?

They were together perpetually, and surely human happiness was never greater than that of these two adventurers with the blue capes of Wonderland in sight at last over leagues of perilous seas. In another image, their caravan halted outside the gates of Paradise, and in a short few weeks those gates would swing open for them and, closing, shut out Fate.

But she did not dream of Martin Welland now, nor he of her. The discovery and all it involved was so thrilling that it brought every emotion to the surface as blood flushes the face when the heart beats violently. The inner centres were depleted.

They were married and Paradise was at hand, but for a while the happy business of settling their life engrossed them. It would be better to live in Canada and make long delightful visits to the Orient to refill the cisterns of marvel, they thought. A room for mutual work must be plotted in the bungalow; then there was the anxious question of a southern aspect. Then it was built, and it became a debatable decision whether some of the pines must fall to enlarge the vista to the sea. Friends rallied about her on the news of the marriage, and rejoiced to see the irradiation of Beatrice Veronica’s pale face. Then they must be entertained.

Then the endless joyful discussions as to whether the author should still be V. Lydiat or whether collaboration should be admitted. These things and many more filled the happy world they dwelt in.

Can the end be foreseen? They never foresaw it.

The hungry claim of human bliss fixed its roots in the inner soil where the Rosa Mystica had blossomed, and exhausted it for all else. That, at least, is the way in which one endeavours to state the mysterious enervation of the sub-conscious self which had built the stepping-stones between them to the meeting-point.

She went hopefully to her table when they had settled down, and he sat beside her doing his utmost to force the impulse across inches which had made nothing of oceans. It was dead. He could think of nothing but the sweet mist of brown tendrils in the nape of her neck, the pure line from ear to chin, the delights of the day to be. She sat with the poor remnant of his notes before her—for nearly all had been exhausted in the three books—and tried to shape them into V. Lydiat’s clear and sensitive beauty of words. It could not be done. Her eight thousand words marched and deployed heavy-footed as before. They were as unmanageable as mutineers or idiots. There was no life in them.

So it all descended to calmer levels. They slept in each other’s arms, but they never dreamed of each other now. They had really been nearer in their ghostly meeting by the Taj Mahal or in the evil splendours of Govindhar—far nearer, when she wrote and could not cease for joy, than when Martin Welland sat beside her and struggled to find what had flashed like light in the old days. They had to face it at last—V. Lydiat was dead.

It troubled them much for a while, but troubled the world more. The publishers were besieged with questions and entreaties. Finally those also slackened and died off.

V. Lydiat was buried.

They thought that perhaps if they returned to India the dead fire would re-kindle under that ardent sun. But no.

One day, at Benares, standing near the great Monkey Temple of Durga, Martin stopped suddenly, and a light came into his eyes.

“B. V. I’ve just remembered that one of the wisest of the pandits lives near here—a wonderful old fellow called Jadrup Gosein. Let’s go and state the case to him. The wisest man I know.”

They went, Beatrice Veronica ashamed to feel a little uprush of regret at the sacrifice of a part of the wonderful day. Martin knew so much. It was heavenly to go to these places with him, and have them illumined by his research. But they went to the pandit.

The holy man was seated under the shadow of a great image of Ganesha the Elephant-Headed One, the Giver of Counsel, and when they sat themselves before him at a measured distance the case was stated.

There was a long pause—a deep silence filled with hot sunshine smelling of marigolds, and the patter of bare feet on sun-baked floors, as curious quick eyes watched the conclave from afar.

Jadrup Gosein meditated deeply, then raised his serene dark face upon them with the dim look that peers from the very recesses of being. His words, incomprehensible to Beatrice Veronica, had the hollow resonance of a bell, near at hand but softened.

“There was a man long since,” he began, “to whom the high Gods offered in reward of merit, a rose-tree—very small and weak,—a suckling, as it were, among trees, with feeble fibrous root, accessible to all the dangers of drought and sun, and as he stretched his hand doubting, they offered him for choice a rose from the trees of Paradise, crimson and perfumed, its hidden bosom pearled with dew and wafting divine odours. And they said ‘Choose.’ So he said within his soul, ‘The tree may die—who knows the management of its frail roots? But the rose is here, sweeter than sweet, immortal since it grew in Paradise! I choose the rose.’

“And they put it in his hand. And the wise Elephant-Headed One said:

“ ‘O fool! What is a rose compared to a rose-tree that bears myriads of roses? Also the rose dies in the heat of human hands. The tree lives; a gathered rose is dead.’

“My children, you have chosen the rose. Be content. Yet in another life remember and cling to that which unsevered from the parent tree sends roots into the Now, the Then, and the Future, and blossoms immortally.”

So he dismissed them kindly.

“He means,” said Martin with troubled brow, “that ordinary household happiness shuts a man in from the stars. Do you remember the flute of Pan, B. V.? He tore the reed from the river and massacred it as a reed to make it a music-bearer for the Gods.

“The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,

For the reed that grows never more again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.”

“But we are so happy!” she whispered, clinging against him to feel the warmth of his love. “The outer spaces are cold, cold. I don’t regret V. Lydiat. I have you. The reeds were happier in the river.”

Martin Welland sighed.

“You had both,” he said. “You have only me now.”

But that regret also slipped away. They forgot. It all faded into the light of common day and they were extremely happy.

The two could never account for the way in which they had come together in that dream-land of theirs. They had lost the clue of the mystery once and for all.

Jadrup Gosein could have told them, but it never occurred to them to ask him. There are however many lives and the Gods have a long patience.

THE SEA OF LILIES

A STORY OF CHINA

THE SEA OF LILIES
A STORY OF CHINA

I had come down from the mountain fastnesses of my home in Kashmir on pilgrimage to a certain island off the coast of China. A long, long pilgrimage, but necessary; for, with a Buddhist monk attached to the monastery of Kan-lu-ssu in the hills of North China, I was to collect certain information from the libraries and scholars of two famous monasteries on the island of Puto. I, Lancelot Dunbar, am known to the monks of the northern monastery of Kan-lu-ssu by the friendly title of “Brother of the Pen,” and it is my delightful lot to labour abundantly among the strange and wonderful stores of ancient Buddhist and historic knowledge contained in some of the many monastic libraries scattered up and down India, China and Ceylon. It follows that my wife and I own two homes.

One is a little deserted monastery in the Western Hills, in China, known as “First Gate of Heaven,” and so beautiful that the name might have grown about it like the moss on its tiled roofs. Following the bigger monasteries, it has its quiet courtyard, its lotus-pool and the peaked roofs with their outward, upturned sweep. The pines crowd upon us, and the cloud-dragons of rain and wind play in their uncouth sport among the peaks and fill our streams with singing, glittering water.

Our other home is a red-pine hut near the Liderwat in Kashmir. The beauty of it, the warm homeliness set amid the cold magnificence of the hills and immeasurable forests, no tongue can tell. The hut is very large and low, divided into our own rooms and the guest-rooms, with hospitable fireplaces for fragrant pine-logs and floors strewn with rugs brought by yak and pony down the wild tracks from Yarkand and Leh. Beautiful rooms, as I think—the windows looking out into the pines and the endless ways that lead to romance and vision.

Which home is the more beautiful I cannot say. We have never known, and our friends give no help; for some choose one and some the other. One day I shall write of our life in Kashmir, the clean, beautiful enchantment of it, the journeyings into the mountains—but to-day I must recall myself to the pilgrimage to Puto.

It is an island off the coast of China, as I said before, most holy to the Buddhists of the Far East, dear to all who know it in its beauty and religious peace and the lovely legends that cling about it, a place of purification of the heart and of a serenity that the true pilgrim may hope to carry away with him as the crowning of his toil and prayer. It is one of the Chusan Archipelago and is separated from the large island of Chusan by a stretch of water known as the “Sea of Lilies.” And it is not very far distant from the hybrid dissipations of Shanghai and the swarming streets of Ningpo and can be reached from either. Yet it is as far removed from their hard realities as if it were built on floating clouds and lit by other dawns than ours.

Shanghai concerns itself, I am told, with that ancient and universally respected Trinity of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I know little of it myself and accept the testimony of friends, and especially of one who knew it well. “I just think,” he said with conviction, “that if nothing happens to Shanghai, Sodom and Gomorrah were very unfairly dealt with.”

So I met my friend Shan Tao in Ningpo, and we set sail together. The island of Puto, at all events, concerns itself with a very different Trinity from that of Shanghai. For the deity of Puto is the Supreme, enthroned in eternal light, and on his right hand stands Wisdom and on his left, Love. The patron saint of this island is Kwan-yin (the Kwannon of Japan), the incarnation of divine love and pity, she who has refused to enter paradise, so that, remaining on this sad earth, she may be attentive to the tears and prayers of humanity and depart from it only when the Starry Gates have closed behind the last sinner and sorrow and sighing have fled away like clouds melting into the golden calms of sunset. Yet when I say “she,” I limit the power of this mighty Bodhisattva, or Pusa, as Buddhas-to-be are called in India and China. For that pure essence is far above all limitations of sex and, uniting in itself the perfection of both, may be manifested as either, according to need and opportunity. Be that as it may, Puto is the holiest, most immediate home of Kwan-yin, and her influence spreads far beyond its shores and makes the very sea that surrounds it sacred. Therefore it is to this day the Sea of Lilies.

For when the Dwarf-men, the Japanese, came storming down on the island from Hangchow long ago and carried off a part of the sacred relics, they woke in the dawn to find their ship moving slower and slower and finally rocking like a ship asleep in what seemed a vast meadow of lilies. Thick as snow about them lay the ivory chalices with golden stamens; thick as the coiling of snakes innumerable were the long piped and knotted stems, with the great prone leaves. Neither oar nor sail could move the ship; for the mysterious lilies, white and silent, that had sprung up from the depths in a night held it as if with chains. And then comprehension entered the hearts of the Dwarfs, and, taking hurried counsel, they put the ship about and headed for the sacred island once more. As they did so, a soft wind like the waft of a passing garment breathed on the surface of the sea, the ivory chalices closed and the crystal lymph flowed over them, and, where the leagues of blossom had spread, were now only the foam-flowers of the waste ocean. So the treasures were restored to Puto, and, when the story was told to the monks, they adored the Heavenly Lady who guards her own.

Lest it be said that the burdened consciences of the Dwarfs misled them into a dream, let the story be told of Wang Kuei, a haughty official who was sent on his Emperor’s behalf to do reverence at the shrines of Puto and did it grudgingly and with a pride that ill became him. So, when his ship set sail from the island and he sat in glory on deck, glad at heart that his service was over, suddenly her swift course was stayed. Behold, in the moonlight, the meadows of ocean had bloomed into innumerable lilies, and there was no sea-track between them, no glimmer of water in the interstices of the paving-leaves, and the ship was a prisoner of beauty! Then the story of the Dwarfs rushed into his soul. In haste he prostrated himself on the deck with his face toward the island and prayed for pardon as he had never yet prayed, and the Heavenly Lady heard him and the lilies were resumed into her pure being. The man of pride returned to Puto and, doing homage of the humblest, went back in security to his Emperor.

But who can tell the beauty of Puto, looking forth on its little sisters of the archipelago with the serenity of an elder who has attained? We put up in one of the cells allotted to pilgrims in a monastery among the hills overlooking the Sea of Lilies. Surely, I think, a lovelier place could not be. The little ways wind about the island, past great rocks sculptured with holy figures and groves of trees that climb the hills to the tiled roofs of the many temples and monasteries. And wild and sweet on the hills grows the gardenia, whence the island has its name of “White Flower.” The sunny sweetness of its perfume recalled to me the far-away, wild daphne bushes of Mount Abu in Rajputana, near the marvellous white temples of Dilwara, temples of another, yet not unallied, faith. It is easy to tell when the gods go by—it can never be common air again, but sweet, sweet unutterably.

All day I trod the bays on sand fine as powdered gold or wandered among the flowers, taking notes for my book at the various temples and talking with the monks and such hermits as are not under the vow of silence. When they found I was at work for Kan-lu-ssu in the hills, they opened their hearts and told me many things.

I suppose it is difficult for the western mind to comprehend the impulses that send a man to dwell in the solitudes of Puto, girdled with its miraculous sea, there to let the years slip from him like a vesture, unheeded, unregretted—but to me it is easy. Let me tell the story of one of these monks, gathered from his own lips and told where a ravine breaks down to the sands of a little bay; where the small waves fall in a lulling monotone, a fitting burden to quiet words softly spoken as the shadows lengthened to the hour of rest. He was named in religion “High Illumination.” His name in the world I cannot tell.

His father had been a farmer in Anhui, a well-to-do man for his class. There were two sons, and my friend was the younger. His father, of whom he spoke with deep reverence, had the utmost confidence in the elder brother. In dying, he expressed only the desire that the elder brother would make a just division with the younger of all the possessions he was leaving, and so departed.

“And I was content,” said High Illumination, “knowing my father’s wisdom and believing that his wish, uttered in the presence of us both, would be as binding upon my honoured brother as an imperial command. Therefore, when all observances of departure had been completed and the proper time came, I expected my share in peace, and the more so since my good father had provided for my marriage with a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a lifelong friend. But that was not to be.

“And still my brother said nothing; all the duties of the seasons proceeded and I worked and helped him, expecting daily that he would speak.

“Then at last in great astonishment I ventured this: ‘Honoured Elder Brother, the will of our just father is still unfulfilled. Should we not proceed in this matter?’

“And he, with anger and a reddened face: ‘What is this discontent? Do you not share the land where you labour upon it? What more would you have?’

“So, very temperately and courteously, I said: ‘Honoured Elder Brother, I work but as a hired man who has no hire. I have not so much as a cash in my pocket to buy me the least of pleasures or needs. I have but my food, and that, as I think, my elder sister [the brother’s wife] grudges me. Such certainly was not the intention of our just father.’

“Then, his face distorted with rage, he replied, ‘Have your way, and if it bring bitterness and disturbance of spirit, then thank yourself for your greed!’ ”

High Illumination paused a moment as if in memory.

“Greed!” I said indignantly. “My friend, you were wronged and cruelly. You could in a court of law have compelled him to do you justice.”

“Yet he was right: for me it was greed,” said High Illumination, with a smile of quiet humour. “I had thought of it night and day, till it had soured my soul. But the next day at dawn my brother called to me with anger in his voice and said: ‘The division is now made. Come and see.’

“So we passed along through the dewy dawn-gold in silence, past his fields of budding rice and millet prosperously green, and at last we came to a great stretch of pebbles and water-springs where nothing would grow, no, not even a blade of grass. The place had come to my father from many ancestors, and none could either use or sell its barrenness.

“And there it lay, grey and hard in the morning gold, and my brother, pointing, said: ‘Take it; the division is made. And when you store your plentiful rice, thank my generosity.’ And, turning, he left me and went back to his prosperity, laughing.”

“It was a devil’s deed,” I said. “Surely he laid up for himself a black karma in so doing.”

High Illumination shook his head slowly. “Who can judge the karma of another? Daily did I pray that my brother’s feet might be set in the way of peace, and I had assurance that thus and no otherwise it should be. But hear the story and its loveliness.

“So I sat nearly all day, staring at the pebbles. There was not even a yard of the ground that spade and hoe could conquer, and I knew myself vanquished. Then in the evening I rose and went to a neighbour and said, ‘I beseech you to find me work; for I must eat or die.’ He gave me work and the wage was my food only; for he was bone-poor. So I lived for two years, and, if I passed my brother, he would jeer at my rags and leanness.

“Now, as I went by my desolate heritage one day, I saw that between the pebbles were pushing little bright green shoots, strong and hardy, thrusting the small stones aside to make room for their impatience. The tender greenness pleased me. It was like warmth and sunshine to see the life of it, and I wondered what manner of growth could find food among the stones. For a while I could not go that way, but, when I went again, behold a thing most beautiful, for all the plants were covered with buds like pearls!

“My brother, hear a marvel. One day, before ever I came in sight of it, a sweet perfume, warm with the sun, exhaling the very breath of paradise, surrounded me. When I approached, the desert had blossomed abundantly. I could not see the stones; they were covered with lilies, white lilies, each with a gold cup, set in ivory, to hold the incense-offering to the sun. What could I say, what think in beholding this miracle of loveliness? I sat beside them to watch what they would do, and a light breeze moved the flowers like bells upon the stems, and there was a going in the leaves of them as though the hem of an unseen garment trailed among them. And they were mine.”

“They had never grown there before?” I asked.

“No man of those parts had seen the like; nor I myself. Every day, when my work was done, I went to look at them and sat to see their beauty of ivory and gold. And once, as I sat, the rich official, Chung Ching-yu, rode by. Pausing in astonishment, he bought a handful of the flowers, giving me the first money I had seen for a year, and he told me to gather the bulbs in due season and receive from him in return their weight in silver. And what he said ran on to other rich men and to men not rich, in the city of Ningpo, and they came bidding against one another for the bulbs to sell to the great and to send in ships to strange countries, until I who had been poor scarce knew how to store my riches. And I saw what my lilies loved and put for them more stones and water, and the next year they were a wilderness of sweets, where all the bees of the world came to gather nectar.

“But I knew indeed whence they came, since such beauty could not be of earth, and I withdrew myself to a lonely place and addressed my prayer to Kwan-yin, who had thus blessed my poverty, and I said: ‘O Adorable, whose ears are open ever to the cry of the oppressed, whose beautiful eyes are pitiful to sorrow, I bless thee for this compassion. And because I dread the love of riches, and the flowers and not money, are to me my soul, give me grace so to receive the mercy of thy gift that it may befit thy greatness and my littleness.’ Even as I said the words, a thought came to me, and I went to find my brother, whom I had not seen for long days.

“Now, when he saw me come, his face darkened with rage, and he said: ‘Are you come to taunt me because of my folly, in that I gave the best of all the land to your idleness, or to thank me for the gold it has heaped upon you? Speak out; for the lucky man may speak.’

“Then, standing at the door, I said this: ‘Elder Brother, your action was unjust, and certainly the Divine does not sleep, but awaits its hour in peace. As for me, the Spirit of Compassion has seen my poverty and had pity upon me, and now I will tell you my heart. 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. My Brother, need I say her name?’

“And, as I spoke, the hard face softened; for who is there that knows not the Pity of the Lord? I continued: ‘In a voice sweeter than sleep, she augustly addressed me, saying: ‘The Divine on its hidden throne knows no repose while the sigh of the oppressed is heard before it. And because this injustice was borne with patience, the armies of the flowers of paradise were marshaled. Say, now, whether justice was done.’ ”

“And I said, ‘It was done.’ And, as a cloud slips off the moon as she glides upward to the zenith, so fell the veil—but what I saw I may not tell, nor could, for I weep in remembering that Beauty.”

His voice faltered even in recollection; nor could I speak myself. We sat in silence awhile, looking over the Sea of Lilies with the twilight settling softly upon it.

Then he resumed: “So I said: ‘Elder Brother, having seen this, I have all riches and need no more. Take the land; for I depart into the life of peace, where is no need of gold or gain, having beheld the ineffable Treasure of the Nirvana and the very Soul of Quiet.’

“And his eyes kindling, he said, ‘What, is it mine—all mine?’

“ ‘Yours. Yet remember that these lilies are of heaven. It is in my mind that these will have not only pure water and clean rock but also a clean heart to tend them.’

“Then, very doubtfully, he took my hand and held it awhile in his and, dropping it at last, turned, weeping, away. Thus we parted, and I came to Puto.”

“And you never saw him again?”

High Illumination smiled, looking to where the star of evening blossomed above us. “Four years passed,” he replied. “Then, among the pilgrims who came to the holy shrines, I saw my brother, and yet could scarcely think it he, so reverently and with such humility he knelt where the Divine Lady waits in gold at the left side of the Infinite One.

“Need I recount the rest, O Brother of the Pen? He came to my cell and, seated at my feet, he told me all. When I was gone, the lilies withered, and at first he thought he lacked my skill and spent much money on digging and trenching, but still the lilies died, and at last he saw that the air that clung about his garments withered them. So, as he sat musing on this strange thing, he resolved in his soul that he would no more sell the Divine in the streets nor market his peace for gold, but that he would set aside these stones and pure springs for almsgiving to the poorest of the poor. Looking up, he said this: ‘Spirit of Compassion, have pity on my soul, bound and crippled by the love of gain. For I too am not beyond the bounds of thy pity, and, if there is hope of it for me in this life as the fruit of some solitary good deed in former existences, grant that the flowers of heaven may blossom once more and the souls of many rejoice in their loveliness.’

“And, as the words were said, he knew that the prayer was heard. The lilies returned in a beauty beyond telling, and it seemed that half the world desired them. He who had not known the joy of giving became now, as it were, the very source of charity and gave not only of his lilies but of his rice and millet and all his gains, that the heart of the poor might be gladdened with plenty. So, as he told, we sat together, hand in hand, with tongues that could not be satisfied in telling and eyes that beheld the greatness of the Divine. And for many years he came, and the monks watched and watched for his coming and I most of all. And at last he did not come, but his son in his place, who told me that the bond of life had been gently loosed, and it was believed that High Presences stood about his death-bed while the villages mourned.

“O Brother of the Pen, write this true story, that all may know there is none like unto the Hearer of Prayer!”

The evening star hung like a steadfast lamp over the dim ocean, and the air was so still that, when at last a faint stirring came in the grasses and leaves, it was as if some listening influence were passing softly away, as indeed I believe.

Skeptics may say that the wish was father to the thought. But I know better. And as for the flowers themselves, there is a strange susceptibility in the plant life we call “lower.” Of that truth I know many stories which I shall tell one day.

But how shall I tell the beauty of Puto looking forth on its little sisters of the Archipelago with the serenity of a saint who has attained? I sat alone next day by the carved Rock of Meditation pondering these things, and bathing my soul in the peace of them as in deep water. The mystery of the place was about me, for Puto is a home of the mystic order of Buddhist monasticism which in India is called Jhana, in Japan Zen, and there were men at hand to whom the bond of the flesh is a thing easily unloosed. One sat on the height above me now in profound meditation.

I analyzed my own heart. Is it because all this with the atmosphere it creates, is so beautiful that I love it? Or is it because it presents a truth forgotten, lost, in our hurrying day of fevered unrest?

Because it is of the truth. That is the answer. None can doubt it who understands and loves these people and their teachings.

None—who is admitted to the quiet of their secret places and thoughts.

It is a truth which is a part of nature itself. Consider the lilies of the field. They breathe it, the soft breezes whisper it among the leaves of the maiden-hair trees, the measured cadence of the sea chimes it eternally on the golden shores of Puto.

They have the secret of peace, which we have immeasurably and to our ruin lost.

So my friend Shan Tao and I paced along the pilgrim’s path past the sea-cave where visions of the holy Kwan-yin are said to have been seen in the sun ray that strikes through the rent roof with something of the same effect as the light contrived to fall from above in the temple of Mendoet in Java on the white and beautiful face of the Bodhisattva who sits in ecstasy below. And wandering on, beguiling the way with legends and tales of the Excellent Law to reach the southern monastery, pausing to look at the half ruined pagoda adorned on its four faces with carvings of Kwan-yin, and her brother saints, P’uhsien, Wen-shu and Ti-tsang, the last known in Japan as Jizo the beloved protector of dead children, we reached the southern monastery and the courtyard with its noble incense burners and candle holders, shaded by trees. Here it was a part of my purpose to search for references in the library on the upper story where the treasures are guarded by a serene Buddha in alabaster. And let me say that if ever the libraries of the many Chinese monasteries are searched with care and patience great additions will be made not only to the science of the soul but also to the world’s wisdom. Many lost treasures thus await their day of resurrection—treasures brought back in the early days of our era by Chinese monks who made the terrible pilgrimage through the cruel deserts and mountains to India that they might return loaded with the spiritual treasures of illumination and wisdom, and learned comments and digressions on these written by mighty Chinese patriarchs whose gilded and lacquered bodies are still preserved in the remote abodes of faith.

And when that day of revelation comes it will be found how much of the religious thought of the divided faiths can be traced to common sources in an antiquity so vast that it strikes the soul with awe. May that knowledge bring union and surcease to the petty wranglings and contempts which cloud the living waters of Truth.

There are few scenes more serenely beautiful than the lotus pond of this monastery and its still waters doubling the old arched bridge and the sailing clouds, and the sunshine, unbearably delicious, brooding, brooding upon it like a soul in ecstasy. A soft collegiate calm was about us, the monks coming and going at intervals with kindly glances at my pen and note book, and the reverence for the written character and for what it represents that contact with our civilization will most certainly kill. A harmless snake was basking in the sun not far away, and a deer taught tameness by fellowship wandered about under the trees, as they do on the island of Miyajima in Japan.

How beautiful the confidence of the creatures in these Buddhist resorts, how much we lose in losing their companionship! The gentleness of heaven was on Puto that day, and the words of a poet-monk who wrote of the beloved island floated through my mind like little golden clouds.

“Who tells you that there is no road to heaven? This is heaven’s own gateway, and through it you may pass direct to the very Throne of the Divine.”

I left it on a lovely day of summer—no foam-flowers blossoming on the Sea of Lilies, a drowsy golden haze veiling the neighbouring islands. I could scarcely have borne to leave it, especially its unrifled stores of wisdom, had I not known that I was free of it henceforward and might count on my welcome, come when I would. Almost, as we crossed the sea, I could dream that the miraculous ship of Kwan-yin floated before us, its sails filled with no earthly breeze, bearing the happy souls to the golden Paradise of the West where the very perfume of the flowers is audible in song. We who in Dante read the story of another Boat of Souls may well recognize the inmost truth of this legend. And certainly in Puto the soul may at least enter the heavenly Boat of Beauty that the poets have sung in all tongues and ages, and pass in it to the blue horizon of dreams and delights.

THE BRIDE OF A GOD

THE BRIDE OF A GOD

I

Two hundred years ago in India, many happy people dwelt in the little town of Krishnapur—happy because their belief was fixed and immutable and it brought them gladness; for in all innocence and devotion they worshipped Krishna the Beloved, the Herdsman of Brindaban, Lord of Love, whose name their little town carried like a jewel of price.

And certainly the God had gifted it with beauty. The terraced houses climbed the ways of a hill deeply wooded with tamarind and pippala trees, and down a deep ravine ran the little Bhadra River, falling from great heights to feed the blue lake below. The place lay in the sunshine, clear and bright as a painting on crystal brought by the Chinese merchants, and by the favour of the God a delicate coolness spread upward from the lake among the clustered houses. In its midst was a very small island with a little temple lifting its shining gilded roof and spires among the palms. In this he was worshipped as the Flute-Player, an image of black basalt, very beautiful—a youth with the Flute forever at his lips; and there were devout men and women who declared that, in the midnight silence, sounds of music comparable only to the music of Indra’s heaven had been heard among the palm trees and mingled with the eternal song of the river. This report and the beauty and quiet of the fair little town brought a few pilgrims to bathe in the lake, crowding the broad low ghats that led down to its pure waters with their flower-hued garments and the strong chanting of their prayers.

Many legends haunted the town of Krishnapur.

Now the Pandit Anand Das was a man learned in the Vedas and all the sacred books, and his heart glowed with a great devotion. Since his son, who should have inherited his learning, was dead, and it could not flow in that beloved channel, he resolved that, slight and frail as a woman’s intellect must needs be, he would instruct his daughter Radha in the mysteries of the Holy Ones, as far as possible. He had named her Radha from his devotion to Sri Krishna; for Radha is the heart’s love of the God; and in bestowing this name he had made offering and prayed that he might live to see her as beautiful, as true in devotion as the Crowned Lady. The prayer was answered.

Beautiful indeed was Radha, an image of golden ivory, with lips like a pomegranate bud before its sweetness is tasted, and great eyes dark as the midnight and lit by her stars. Beautiful the soft moulding of her rounded chin, and the shaping of the flower-face poised on its stem like a champak blossom that all the bees of love must seek, and the silk-soft brows and the heavy sweep of shadowy lashes. Flawless from head to rosy heel as the work of a mighty craftsman who wills not that his name shall perish, so was Radha; and when the people saw her as she passed along the little street, they gave thanks to the Beautiful for her beauty. Fairer than fair, wiser than wise in all the matters of the Gods, she lived her quiet days among the palms and temples, and each day laid its gift at her feet.

Now the Brahman, her father, having, as it were, devoted her to the God, rejoiced to see that bhakti—which is faith, love, and worship in a perfect unity—was a steadfast flame in her heart; nor was there any word to utter her burning devotion. As a child she would leave all play to sit before his feet and hear as he read of the divine Krishna,—

The story of the Lord of All

Beginneth with a Pastoral,—

and her child’s heart lived among the meadows of Brindaban with the marvellous Child whose very name is ‘He who draws or attracts.’

And thus her learned father taught her.

“This Krishna is the true incarnation of the Preserver who upholds the universe. ‘For in him,’ says the Mahabharata Santeparva, ‘the worlds flutter like birds in water’; and of him did not Maheshwara the Destroyer say: ‘The divine and radiant Krishna must be beheld by him who desires to behold Me.’ Thus in Sri Krishna is all Deity sheathed in flesh, that the soul of man may dimly apprehend his glory. A Child—yet thus in the Holy Song does the Prince Arjun cry to him:—

“ ‘God, in thy body I see all the Gods,

And all the varied hosts of living things,

The undivided Thou, the highest point

Of human thought.’

“Can such a Being be approached by mere humanity? No, he is too far away—the ear of man may not hear, and the eye of man may not see. How if he were born among us, if we might touch his feet, and show him in simple human ways our devotion? How if he would turn the common earth to beauty by breathing the air we breathe?

“And because it is so desired, it is done and Krishna is born, the Herdsman of Brindaban, the Beloved of India.”

So reading day by day, he instructed her in the lovely story of the Childhood, and, with the ancient Pastoral, took her to the forests and rich cattle pastures where Jumna River flows wide and still to the sea. The people are kind and simple, the sacred cows are driven out at dawn to feed, and brought back in the brief glow of evening by the fair women who tend the gentle beasts; and this is Brindaban, the home on earth of the Lord of All, the utterly Adored.

So much a child! But when floods of rain threatened to sweep away the herds and their keepers, he raised the hill Govardhan on the palm of his small soft hand, and sheltered them from the torrents and the fighting winds. And, as she sat at his feet, the Pandit showed his child Radha pictures of that other Child, darkly beautiful, who could poise the world on his shoulder.

II

As she grew older, the story widened and deepened with her years. But as she came to girlhood, her anxious mother, Sita Bai, ventured with trembling to doubt if it were well to draw her heart yet closer to the radiant manhood of the young God; for now the story is to be mystically interpreted and read by the light of the wisdom of the old and learned.

“Was there not Mira Bai, who went mad for the love of him and could not leave his image or his temple, and dreamed of his sweetness night and day until she wasted to a shadow and died? And, my lord, is not his great temple as Jagannath, Lord of the World, but ten miles from us at the great town of Chaki; and is it not filled with bands of devidasis—the dancing girls? Would you have your daughter as one of them—sacred but—vile?”

She caught the word back on her lips and looked about her in terror. Then added passionately:—

“O my lord, is it well to kindle such a passion in her heart, and she little more than a child?”

“Better be possessed by that love than by the follies and wickednesses that haunt the hearts of women to their ruin and ours. Woman, I know what I do. Be silent!” was all his answer.

So she was silent, and daily the story went onward and filled the soul of the girl. For now, as Krishna grew to manhood, beauty came upon him, irresistible, heart-compelling, the world’s Desire, and on the banks of Jumna was sung the Song of Songs—the Lover, dark and glorious, to whom the souls of all the women of Brindaban, whether wife or maid, cling passionately, forgetful of self and of all but him. And the deepest symbol of the adoration of Krishna is the passion of man for woman and woman for man.

“Walk warily here, my child, if you would understand,” said the Pandit; “for we move among pitfalls made by the mind of man fettered to his senses—the mind of man, that coin bearing the double superscription of spirit and flesh. Yet the story is plain for him who has ears to hear!”

And Radha, speechless, with dark eyes filled with adoring love, listened—listened, with no heart for aught else.

“Tell me more, more!” she said.

And he, seeing the Divine Passion, the trembling of her lips, the uttering of her heart, told on, imparting the desire of the God.

And when, as at this time, a marriage was spoken of for her with the son of the rich Brahman Narayan, she shrank from it with such shuddering horror that for very pity her father put it by for a while. But her mother watched in great fear.

And every evening, when the light was calm and golden and her father laid his books aside, she would sit before him, putting all else aside that she might drink in the sweet nectar of his words.

And now he told of the Herd-maidens bathing in the clear ripple of the river where the trees hang in green shadow over the deep pools.

Their garments lie on the bank, forgotten in the joy of youth and life, as they sing the praises of the Beloved, until at length one remembers and looks, and lo! some thief has stolen the vesture, and they stand ashamed in the crystal lymph, their long locks gathered about them.

Who has so bereft them? For no man or woman should bathe uncovered; and they have sinned—they know it!

And then a voice calls from the world of leaves above their heads, and there sits the Desired, shining like a star caught in the topmost boughs, and before him are rolled the stolen garments, and when, all shamefaced, they entreat for their restoration, the Voice exhorts them:—

“And if it is for My sake you have bathed and purified yourselves, then come forth fearless, and receive your vesture from my hands.”

And he laid in her hand the picture of the Gopis fearing and adoring as they leave the lustral water, some shrinking in humility, to receive their vesture from the Beautiful, who sits smiling far above them.

“And this, my daughter, is a very great mystery!” he said gravely. “And its meaning is this: ‘Thy Thou is still with thee; if thou wilt attain unto me, quit thyself, and come.’ ”

And she said,—

“Father, surely the Self is withered into nothing when this dearworthy One calls. What were life, death—anything in the Three Worlds, compared with beholding his blissful countenance?”

And he replied,—

“Even so it is”; and laid aside his book and fell into a deep musing on the Perfections of the Lord; and Radha sat beside him.

So that night her mother said timidly,—

“Lord of my life, the girl is possessed by the God. I fear for her life. In her sleep she speaks aloud of him and stretches empty arms to the air, moaning. The colour fades in her lips, her eyes are fixed on dreams. She has no peace. Should we not seek an earthly lover for her own, that she may forget this Divine that is all the world’s?”

And he replied sternly,—

“Woman, lift up a grateful heart to the God that this girl is not as the rest but consumed by the love of the Highest. I have a thought unknown to you. All will be better than well.”

And she desisted in great fear and obedience; but the very next evening was the story told of Radha—heart of the God’s heart, the Beautiful whose name she herself bore! And the girl listened in an ecstasy.

It was a very still evening, the stars shining large and near the earth, the moon a mere crescent, such as when Maheshwara wears it in his hair and dreams on the mountain-peaks of Himalaya. They sat in the wide veranda, supported on wooden pillars bowered in the blossoms of the purple bougainvillæa and the white and scented constellations of jasmine. The wide transparent blinds of split cane were raised to admit the faintly perfumed breath of the garden; and by the Pandit’s elbow, as he sat on his raised seat, burned a little oil lamp, that he might read the sacred pages.

Radha sat on her low cushion beside him, the sari of Dakka muslin threaded with gold fallen back from her head as she looked up.

“ ‘In the passion of their worship, the women of Brindaban are drawn out into the forest, each grieving if he do but turn his calm immortal eyes upon any other than herself. Therefore, only in the secret places of the forest is there now any joy. It has left the little houses and gone out to dwell by the river. They must follow, for they bear the world’s wound in their heart, and he is its Balm.

“ ‘For a time his eyes rest on Radha the Beautiful, and she, transported with the pride of love, entreats that he will carry her in his arms. He stretches them to her with his mystic smile, and even as they touch her, he vanishes, and she is alone in a great darkness.’

“Here again, my daughter, is the parable clear,” the Pandit interrupted the reading to say. “Here is no room for spiritual pride and exclusive desire. Learn your place, proud soul! It is at his feet until he, unasked, shall raise you to the level of his heart.”

“ ‘So at the last she falters and falls, stunned with grief, the Herd-maidens weeping beside her, and—suddenly the Light shines. He has returned. He speaks:—

“ ‘Now I have tried you. You have remembered and thought upon me.

“ ‘You have increased your affection like beggars made newly rich.

“ ‘You have chosen my service, abandoning the world and the Scriptures.

“ ‘How can I do you honour? I cannot reward you enough.

“ ‘Though I should live for a hundred of Brahma’s years, yet I could not be free of my debt.’ ”

III

She sat in silence; and breaking upon it, they heard the soft tread of a man stop by their gate, and voices, and the servant who guarded the gate came in haste.

“Great Sir, here is the holy Brahman who is chief at the altar of great Jagannath in Chaki, and he would speak with you.”

“Bring him instantly hither. Stay! I go myself!” cried the Pandit, rising. He had forgotten his daughter.

“Father, have I your leave to go?” She drew the sari about her face.

“Daughter, no. This is a wise man and great. Be reverent and humble, and stay.”

She stood, trembling with fear to see one so holy. Surely it was a portent that the servant of the God should come on their reading. Yet she quieted her heart, and when her father, attending the great guest, placed him on his own seat, with the image of the wise Elephant-Headed One wreathing his trunk behind him, she bowed before him and touched his feet, for to her he was as Brahman and priest, an earthly God.

He was a man in middle life, tall and dignified in spite of a corpulence which gained upon him, and his features clear-cut in the proud lines that denoted his unstained ancestry. He knew himself the superior of kings. He would have spurned with his foot a jewel touched by the Mogul Emperor of India. Yet more. Had the Rajput Rana, a king of his own faith, sun-descended, royal, cast his shadow on his food in passing, he had cast it, polluted, away. So great is the pride of the Brahmans.

“Namaskar, Maharaj! What is your honoured pleasure?” asked the Pandit.

“I am on my way to Dilapur on the divine business,” he answered, with a voice like the lowest throbbing notes of the bronze temple gong. “But I would have a word with you, Brother, as I go.”

“Has my daughter your leave to depart, Maharaj?”

“Certainly, friend, though it is of her I come to speak. May I behold the face of the maiden? A Brahmani has no need to veil it. They are not secluded like the Toorki women.”

“Unveil before the Presence, my daughter, Radha.”

The guest started at the name so familiar to him in his devotions.

“It is singular, in view of my errand, that you should have given her this holy name, Pandit-ji.”

“She deserves it for the devoted love that she bears to Sri Krishna,” returned her father. “Of her face I say nothing, but her heart is flawless.”

“It is well!” said the priest Nilkant Rai, and turned gravely to Radha.

Many were the devidasis, the nautch girls of the God, in the Temple of Jagannath. His eyes, deep and glowing, were no strangers to beauty, for the fairest were gathered like flowers to adorn the altars of the God, to dance and sing before his divine dreams, in all things to abide his will.

Six thousand priests serve Sri Krishna as Jagannath, Lord of the Universe, at Chaki, for great is his splendour. The Raja of Dulai, royal though he be, is the sweeper of his house. More than twenty thousand men and women do his pleasure, and of the glories of his temple who can speak?

But never had Nilkant Rai beheld such beauty as trembled before him then—darkly lovely, whitely fair, the very arrows of desire shooting from the bow of her sweet lips, half-child, half-woman, wholly desirable.

His eyes roved from the wonder of her face to the delicate rounding of her young breasts and the limbs exquisitely expressed, yet hidden, by the sari.

He looked in silence, then turned to the Pandit.

“Surely she is an incarnation of Radha in face as in name. Brother, she has my leave to go.”

Yet, when she had fled like a shadow, Nilkant Rai did not hasten. The other waited respectfully. Pañ—the betel for chewing—was offered in a silver casket. A garland of flowers perfumed with attar of roses was placed about the guest’s neck. Refreshments were served and refused.

At length he spoke, looking on the ground.

“Brother, it is known to you that the God makes choice when he will of a bride, favoured above all earthly women. Beautiful must she be, pure as a dewdrop to reflect his glory and return it in broken radiance, young, devout— Surely, even in this land of devotion, it is not easy to find such a one!”

“It is not easy, holy one!” returned the Pandit, trembling as he foreknew the end.

The other continued calmly.

“Now it so chanced that the priest Balaram passed lately through this town, and going by the tank to the temple, beheld your daughter, and returning, he came to me and said: ‘The God has shown the way. I have seen the Desire of his eyes.’ ”

“Great is the unlooked-for honour,” said the Pandit trembling violently; “so great that her father and mother bend and break beneath it. But consider, Holy One—she is an only child. Have pity and spare us! The desolate house—the empty days!” His voice trailed broken into silence.

“If this hides reluctance!” Nilkant Rai began sternly. “If you have given a foul belief to any tale of the Temple——”

“I, holy Sir! I have heard nothing. What should I hear?” The old man’s voice was feeble with fear. “Do I disparage the honour? Sri Krishna forbid! No, it is but the dread of losing her—the empty, empty house!”

“And is she not at the age when marriage becomes a duty, and would she not leave you then? Unreasonable old man!”

“Holy Sir—Maharaj, I tremble before the honour. But if the girl married, she would bring her babe and make her boast and gladden our hearts. But thus she is lost to us. Have pity! There are other Brahmans rich in daughters. Take not the one from my poverty.”

Nilkant Rai rose to his feet with majesty.

“I go. Never shall the God be rejected and ask twice. But when your daughter, old and haggard, looks up at you, answer that it was her unworthy father who kept her as a drudge on earth, when he might have raised her to a throne in heaven.”

As the old man stood with clasped hands, Radha broke from the shadows and threw herself before him.

“My father, would you hold me back? What joy, what glory in all the world can befall your child like this? The bride of the God! O Father!”

The tears were running down her face like rain. They glittered in the lamplight. He could not meet her eyes. Nilkant Rai stood by, silent.

“She is beautiful as a nymph of Indra’s heaven!” he thought. “Not Urvasi and Menaka, the temptresses of sages, were more lovely!” He said aloud;

“The maiden is right. She is worthy of the God’s embrace. Is there more to say?”

“Maharaj, I worship you!” said the old man submissively (and still he had not looked at his child). “It is well. What orders?”

“Let her be perfumed and anointed daily. Let her food and drink be purer than the pure. Let her worship daily at the temple of Sri Krishna. The bridal shall be held in a month from this, that time being auspicious. The Car of her Lord shall come for her as the Queen she is, and all envy the Chosen.”

He turned to Radha, still at her father’s feet.

“Farewell, happiest Lady. Joys earthly and celestial await you. Rest in the knowledge of the favour of Sri Krishna. Hear of him, dream of him, until the glad truth slays all dream.”

He moved slowly toward the steps. Her father pursued him.

“Maharaj. Forgive, forgive! I neglect my manners. Thanks a thousandfold for the honour you have condescended to bring us this happy day. Your commands are ever before me.”

The words poured forth. He could not say enough.

“It is well, Pandit-ji. It is well. Say no more!” said the great guest, striding onward to the gate where two other Brahmans and his palki awaited him.

She stood in the shadows as the Pandit returned.

“Father, beloved, did I do wrong? Have you not taught me all my life that there is none like him—none?”

“My pearl, what is done is done. He cannot be resisted. It is well your heart goes with your feet. Now sleep.”

She passed in silently, and sat all night by the small cotton mattress laid on the floor. How could she sleep?

Nor was there sleep for the Pandit. Sita Bai needed little telling, for she had listened behind the curtains; and now, with a livid pallor upon her, she confronted him.

“Lord of my life, what is there to say? You know—you know!”

“I know,” he answered heavily.

Sita Bai was too dutiful a wife to reproach her husband with anything done; but his own thoughts returned to the long evenings spent in contemplating the Perfections of the God. He replied to his thought.

“Yet had she never heard his name, it had been the same. Nothing could have saved her from the temple of Jagannath.”

“Saved.” He caught the word back from his own lips in deadly fear, and added in haste: “Whom the God honours cannot set his grace aside, and there is none who would. None in heaven or earth.”

“None,” echoed the woman faintly. Then, in a whisper scarcely to be heard, “Whom Nilkant Rai chooses”—and steadily averted her eyes.

They dared say no more of this even in whispers to each other; for if this were reported, grief, ruin, death were the sure end.

One word more did Anand Pandit breathe:—

“She must keep her joy. It is the God’s. If he love her, he yet may save her. Let no word be said.”

She touched his feet in token of submission. All night they sat in a bitter silence.

IV

Next day, all through the little holy town, bathing in its glad sunshine beneath the swaying palms, had run the news of this honour. Sita Bai, with a mask of gladness fixed on her face, visited the wife of the goldsmith, and begged her sympathy with the divine event. The gold bangles rang as she joined her hands; for she had come clad in splendour, and her sari was of purple silk of Paitan woven with strands of gold.

When Radha went with her mother to the temple, crowds of the simple people had gathered by the lake beneath the neems and tamarinds to behold the beauty beloved of the God. True, they had seen it before, but to-day it was strange and new. Her throat rose like the stem of the lotus above the snowy folds of her sari, and like the purity of the lotus was her face with its downward eyes hidden in heavy lashes. She moved already like a bride, a little apart from her mother, to whom she had clung hitherto.

A voice shouted, “Jai Krishna!” (Victory to Krishna), and many voices took up the cry. A woman, quivering with eagerness, flung a garland of wet marigolds about her neck. Flowers were strewn before her happy feet. Never before had a Bride been chosen from Krishnapur. It might well seem the benediction of the God.

A beautiful woman, in a sari of jade-green and silver, pressed up close to her and whispered,—

“Pray for me, O Beautiful, when you lie in the arms of the God, for me Ramu, wife of Narayan the Sahoukhar, that I may bear a son. Surely he will grant it for a wedding gift!” She stooped to the feet of Radha to worship her.

“I will pray,” the bride answered, pacing gently onward.

Petitions poured in upon her as she moved through the dappled light and shadow of the trees, beside the melted jewels of the lake. A great gladness possessed her. It was as if the air upbore her light feet; and the people followed in crowding joy until she made the ashtanga—the great prostration before the Flute-Player, the Alone, the Beautiful, who moves through the world scattering joy and love with the far music of his Flute—He to whom all and none may draw near.

When the people were gone and the sun had set, and quiet breathed from the grey garments of evening, she entreated her father to read to her from the Song of Songs, written by the sweet-voiced singer Jayadeva, who has sounded all the secrets of love.

At first he hesitated, then with a strange look upward, he read.

“ ‘This is the story of the anguish of Radha.

“ ‘For Radha, jasmine-bosomed, beautiful, waited in vain for her immortal Lover, by the banks of Jumna. This is the Dark Night of the Soul, for the face of the Beloved is averted in eclipse. In her sight, joyous and joy-giving, he lingers on the banks of Jumna with the happy herd-maids, while the koels flute their soft koo-hoo-oo in the deep green shade. And the poet makes the invocation:—

“ ‘ “Krishna, Lord of Love, stoop from thy throne to aid us. Deign to lift up our hearts for the sake of this song that is the cry of all who shed the tears of desertion as Radha shed them.”

“ ‘And Radha cries aloud in her despair:—

“ ‘ “Wind of the Indian stream,

A little, O a little, breathe once more

The fragrance of his mouth. Blow from thy store

One last word, as he fades into a dream.”

“ ‘But he, far away in his Heaven, is lost in the Infinite Bliss; while she, deceived, beholds him playing by the river. Yet, because the soul, fevered with illusion, cannot soar to him, he forsakes his throne, sending his messenger before him, thus to plead with her:—

“ ‘ “The lesson that thy faithful love has taught him

He has heard.

The wind of spring, obeying thee has brought him

At thy word.

What joy in all the Three Worlds was so precious

To thy mind?

Ma kuru manini manamayè,[^[1]]

O be kind!”

[1] My proud one, do not indulge in scorn.

“ ‘He pleads, as it were, for forgiveness, the Divine reasoning with the soul and justifying his ways. And all is well, and joy leaps over the horizon like the sun that drives the dark with arrows of victory. For he comes.

“ ‘So then, Jayadeva writes of the high close, the mystic nuptials of the soul and her Bridegroom.’ ”

The old Pandit paused, his voice trembling, with the dark eyes of his Radha fixed upon him. Then read on:—

“ ‘Enter the House of Love, O Loveliest!

Enter the marriage bower, most Beautiful,

And take and give the joy that Krishna grants.’ ”

And again he paused, the words choking in his throat, and she laid a soft hand on his.

“ ‘Then she, no more delaying, entered straight;

Shame, which had lingered in her downcast eyes,

Departed shamed. And like the mighty deep

Which sees the moon and rises, all his life

Uprose to drink her beams.’ ”

He laid the book aside and extinguished the little lamp, so that only the moonlight was about them.

After a while, he said,—

“My daughter, the God leads you in strange ways. Yet, whatever the hearts of men, he is true. Offer him your heart in all purity, and in the end it shall be well with you. We will speak of this no more.”

“But, Father beloved, do you not share my joy?” she said tremulously.

He was silent.

V

The days went by very swiftly to the time of the divine marriage. Messengers came and went between the mighty temple of Jagannath and little Krishnapur, bearing gifts and jewels. Casting half-contemptuous glances, they passed by the little shrine where the Bride worshipped daily; but all contempt died when they were admitted to see her face.

“The God has chosen well!” they said, and looked at one another with meaning.

So the great day dawned in a passion of sunlight, and with flutes and drums and shouting the great Car of Jagannath waited for the Bride; and as she came forth, the pomegranate-blossom flush of joy rising in her golden cheek, her parents bowed before her and touched her feet in worship—no longer their daughter, but a goddess.

Ankleted and zoned with gold, clothed in woven gold so supple that it yielded to every breath, the sun-rays dazzled back from her upon the adoring crowd until they put up their hands to veil the splendour. And so she sat, a Radiance, for all the world to see, high on the Car wreathed and hung with flowers, the image of the Bridegroom beside her.

Oh, wonderful, terrible greatness for a woman! And so, with songs and triumph they bore her to her bridal.

Mighty is the Temple of Jagannath, where by the eternal sea the people crowd all day to worship the Lord of the Universe. In little Krishnapur, he is the Beloved, the Herdsman, the Beautiful. Here, he is far removed—too great for love or fear. Human thought quails before his Vastness.

The temple is in itself a city, and no feet but those of worshippers may pass even the strong outward walls. Very glorious are the carvings that adorn it. Terrible figures of Gods, many-headed, many-armed, bending giant bows, trampling giant enemies, brandishing awful weapons, dandling on their knees great Goddesses with slender loins and full breasts that overweight their swaying grace. Very awful are these figures, with clustering hair and crowns above their long eyes, and suns and moons rising and setting on their brows, and the symbols of their might scattered about them.

But it was night, and it was among the wildly tossing lights that the Bride approached the home of her Lord; and the temple was dreadful, for it was dark and all the intricate ways lit with flickering points of light like the eyes of beasts; and, lost among strangers, her heart turned to water; for it resembled a great cave of blackness, and she could see but the naked bodies of worshippers and giant images of the holy Gods hovering through thick air laden with incense fumes and burning ghi and the dung of the sacred animals and the pungent smell of rotting marigolds. And there were cauldrons with flames fed by wild worshippers from the hills, and these crowded about the palki wherein they brought her through the temple, and touched it with hands that made her tremble, imploring her prayers as she lay in the breast of the God. Bats hung from the roof or swooped in the gloom. Their sourness tainted the air, and men, dim as ghosts, slunk about the fearful ways.

Thus dwell the Gods.

And suddenly terror submerged her like an ocean wave, and she sank back and the world left her.

When sense and memory returned, she lay in her palki in the great Hall of Dancing—a mighty hall supported on many pillars; and around her stood in motionless bands the devidasis, the dancers of the God, chosen to delight his senses for their grace and beauty.

And, seeing her stretch her hands for help, the wild and flying dance began. They lifted her from the palki and she stood among them, shimmering in gold, and about her they wheeled, advancing and retiring, linking and unlinking like dancers in a dream. And they sang the marriage song she had heard in the quiet of her home; but now it was terrible as it burst from hundreds of throats, gonged and cymbaled, with clashing and a thunder-beat of drums.

“Enter, thrice-Happy, enter, thrice-Desired,

And let the gates of Hari shut thee in.

Tremble not. Lay thy lovely shame aside

And love him with the love that knows not fear.

Give him the drink of amrit from thy lips.”

She stood like one clinging to a surf-beaten rock as they tossed about her with wild hands and eyes, the whole world mad with noise and dance and colour; then, dropping on her knees, she covered her eyes in terror.

And thus the servants of the God welcomed her to his arms.

VI

Night, and a great quiet. A chamber of gold set with jewels glittering in the moonlight that came down some secret way, borne on a cool breath from the sea.

She lay alone in the golden place, and the jewels watched her like eyes. Was it terror, was it love that possessed her? A thousand images blurred her closed eyes—He, the Beautiful, with peacock crown, with eyes that draw the soul, with lips of indescribable sweetness. It could not be that she should lie close to the heart of the God. How dare flesh and blood aspire to that mystic marriage? Must they not perish in the awful contact? And, if it could be, how return to earth after that ecstasy?

“May I know and die!” she prayed. “Oh, let me not pass unknowing! Let me know and die!”

And as the minutes dropped by, this prayer was all her thought, and it possessed her being.

Then, dividing the darkness, she heard the voice of a Flute very far off. Like a silver mist, it spread vaporous, a small fine music, but growing, drawing nearer, and, as it strengthened, clear drops of music fell through this mist like honey from the black bees’ comb. It crept about her brain and steeped her eyes as if in poppy juice, so sweet, so gliding, most infinitely wooing as it grew and filled the air with peace.

And in this high marvel was a blissful safety beyond all words, more sweet and delectable than any man may tell. The grace of his Childhood, of the dearworthy passage of his blessed Feet among men, returned to her with a joy that melted her heart with love. And so she rose and stood upon her feet, as one called, trembling with blissful longing.

Far down the long ways, passing through pools of moonlight and dark, came One whom the music followed. His face could not at first be seen; about him was a leopard skin. Naked but for this, beautiful and slender, his silent feet moved onward. Like one utterly alone in a great forest, he came,—slowly,—lost in some unutterable thought, made audible in sweet sound.

The Bride, the Lover, and between them, the music and the moonlight only. She would have knelt, but her feet were fixed; and he drew near with unseeing eyes—O Beautiful, O wholly desirable, to draw the hearts of men! And still the Face Divine was hidden.

But as he drew near and would have passed, she cried aloud with a passionate glad cry, “My Lord indeed!” rejoicing suddenly.

And he turned and looked upon his Bride with heavens in his eyes. And as she saw what no words can utter, she fell upon his feet and lay, slain sweetly with a bliss more keen than any pain.

But the Brahman, Nilkant Rai, waiting behind the pillar to seize his prey, had heard and seen nothing of the Glory.

As she fell, he sprang like a tiger on a fawn, and lifted the fair dead body, and stumbled in the trailing hair, and knew his vileness conquered. And in that moment the Eye of Destruction opened upon him the beam that withers worlds and hurls them like shriveled leaves into the Abyss.

And he dropped her and stumbled screaming into the dark, a leper white as snow.

But when they came in the dawn to implore the will of the God from the happy lips that his had blessed, the Bride lay at rest on the dim straight golden bed, and between her breasts was a Flute set with strange jewels that no man could name. Nor shall they ever; for when they laid her body on the pyre they left this Flute in her bosom.

And when Anand Das heard what had befallen, he said this:—

“When did the Herdsman sleep on his guard or the Beloved fail the heart that loved Him? It is well, and better than well.”

And he who tells this story ends it thus:—

“Meditates the Herdsman ever,

Seated by the sacred river,

The mystic stream that o’er His feet

Glides slow with murmurs low and sweet—”

and breast to breast with God, the soul that adores Him.

THE BELOVED OF THE GODS

A STORY FROM THE MAHABHARATA

THE BELOVED OF THE GODS

A STORY FROM THE MAHABHARATA

Reverence to Ganesha, Lord of the Elephant Trunk, that, in a day found fortunate, he aid me to tell this tale, which whoso heareth shall receive prosperity in this world and in that other.

In the age of the ancestors there dwelt a great King in Vidarbha, with a Queen of the highest grace and beauty, and these did all things pleasing to the gods, making rich gifts to Brahmans and honouring kine, and in reward for these things the gods gave to them three sons and a daughter, and this was Damayanti, the loveliest of earthly women. And she was known throughout the universe as the “Consumer of Hearts”; for the very report of her beauty agitated the hearts of thousands who might never hope to see it. Slender-waisted was she and stately as a young palm-tree, and though she was a mortal, Sri, the wife of Narayana, had dowered her with her own eyes, black and soft and so long-lidded that they all but touched the silken hair upon her temples. The very gods in the Paradise of Indra heard the report of this marvel and coveted it.

Now as Damayanti, like a crescent moon, rounded into maidenhood, it so befell that her maidens in talk together praised none but that Tiger among Men, Nala the Prince. For they said: “This Prince overpasses all men, and what shall be said of him? Surely he is laughing, bold and handsome as Kama, the God of Love—he whose bow is strung with honey-bees, sweet and stinging. The arrows of his eyes are pointed with five-tongued flame. All hearts burn in his glances.”

And Damayanti silently heard and pondered.

But the report of her had in like manner reached Nala, and sweet thoughts grew up in him for the slender-waisted maid. And he dreamed of her.

Now it chanced that one day, wandering in the great woods that surrounded his palace, he saw a flock of swans, white and beautiful as though washed in the waters of Lake Manasarovar, that cold jewel of the Himalaya, and indeed they were of that royal race of swans who, dwelling there, feed only on unpierced seed-pearls, and therefore are they so white. So, as they drew together, the Prince, stealing noiseless as a snake through the jungle, seized one, for love of its whiteness, and held the long throat clutched in his hands and the plumed wings beneath his knees.

But in those days royal men had understanding of the lesser creatures of the gods, and that king-swan spoke and Nala heard his speech: “O Tiger among Men, slay me not. To me also is my life dear and precious! Have pity, for I will do good service. I will fly through many leagues of air, and in the ear of the Princess Damayanti will I say that of all men you are the noblest and stateliest. And having heard this, she will greatly desire you.”

And by the favour of Kama, the Prince withdrew his hands, saying, “Swan, observe your promise; for this is the duty of the honourable.”

And the swan, inclining his head, flew away with his companions, having instructed them as to the course they should pursue on alighting in the gardens of Vidarbha.

Now in the garden-close the Princess and her maidens played, and she excelled them all, though each was fair. And the swans, seeing these lovely ones among the flowers, fluttered to earth and stood near them, arching their necks and preening their feathers, and their whiteness delighted the Princess and she said, laughing: “Chase these swans, each one a swan; for it appears that they desire captivity at our hands.”

And every maiden pursued a swan, with laughter and sweet cries, and as each all but seized her swan, the swan eluded her and fluttered a little farther. Most lovely of all sights was it to behold the maidens and the swans, as, equal in beauty, they fluttered hither and thither among the flowers and the trees. And Damayanti, laughing with her voice of music, pursued her swan, she also, that lovely lady of the long eyes, not knowing that her heart was the destined prey of the swan she sought to capture.

For, when her hands were even upon the snow of his plumage, that king-swan eluded her again and spoke in the speech of man, and in amazement she stood to hear what he would say, as he inclined his head before her feet. “Lady, O Most Beautiful, Damayanti, Consumer of Hearts, there is a Prince in Nishada, and his name—oh, mark it well—is Nala. As the Twin Stars shine in the sky, so he shines among men. Surely we swans, flying in the pure air, see all men and divine beings and the great gods. But we have seen none like unto Nala. Pearl among Women, if you should wed this Prince of Princes, were it not better than well?”

And when Damayanti heard this, she looked sidelong through her lashes like a maid, for she was young and tender, and she said this, very softly: “Dear swan—white swan! Fly and tell this thing to the Prince.”

And that white beauty, the feeder on pearls, said, “Hearing and obeying, I go.”

And with strong strokes of his pinions he rose into the sky, followed by his mates, and clove the air to Nishada and told the Prince her word, being the destined messenger of love.

But he carried the heart of the maid upon his wings; for Damayanti sat her down upon the flowers and, when her ladies returned from chasing the swans, they found her with her hand pressed upon her empty bosom and tears welling like jewels from the dark deeps of her eyes. And though they entreated her to speak and reveal the cause of her grief, she would say nothing but this one thing: “All is well—and ill! Trouble me no further.”

And they returned, sighing, to the palace, with Care among them for a companion.

For Damayanti wanned and paled. Like a caged jungle-dweller would she pace up and down, unresting, her eyes upon the ground. Food lost its savour, and what was sleep but a weariness? And in the garden-close she sat in her gold gown and watched the peacocks displaying their splendour to the sun as they danced before the rains, and she only prayed for wings that she might fly to Nishada. Very full of mischief were the words of that swan!

So her royal mother, instructed by the maidens that the Princess pined away daily, went to her lord, the King, and said: “Such and such is the case of our daughter. Do then according to your wisdom.”

And the King pondered the thing deeply; for he loved his daughter, and he answered: “I perceive she is no longer a child. Youth and maidenhood are waxing in her, and who can gainsay them? It is now fitting that she make her choice among princes and kings.”

So the careful King, having considered, sent forth this message to the courts of kings: “Lords of the Earth, it is with us an ancient and honourable custom that the daughters of kings make choice of a husband suitable to their degree and royalty; nor do we force them to unchosen marriages. And this is known as the swayamvara of a king’s daughter. My Princess is now of due age to choose her lord. Come therefore to the swayamvara of Damayanti, receiving honourable welcome.”

And the news flew like gongs and drums over the land; for there was no man but knew of the loveliness of the Consumer of Hearts, and each one thought within himself, “She will choose me, and yet if not, still shall I see that face of faces.”

So from every country came processions to the court of Vidarbha: trains of elephants walking slowly beneath the weight of the gold and silver castles upon their backs, where sat the kings of men; horses with jewelled saddles and bridles, the very stirrups glittering with clarified gems that the feet of kings might tread upon them; glorious companies of fighting-men, bearing their pennons; archers with bows tipped with ivory, strung until they sang like the strings of the sitar in the wind. So in armies they came until the earth groaned beneath their feet, and the great camps were set about Vidarbha.

Also came Nala the Prince, gallantly accompanied, riding to Vidarbha, and thoughts of love were thick as honey-bees in his heart.

But who shall discern the thoughts of the Gods?

For it chanced that two great saints, Narada and Parvata, mighty in their austerities, pure and high of thought, ascended the heavens at that time, to make a visit and obeisance to Indra the God, in his own Paradise. And he, the King of the Clouds, rising to them, did them honour and welcomed them; for the presence of the saints is as a rich perfume in the nostrils of the gods. Therefore he saluted the two, asking tidings of the world.

And Narada replied: “High God, it is well with the world. It is well with the kings. There is no complaint.”

And Indra spoke again: “But where are my fighters—the kings of men? Do they not love—do they not fight as of old? I see no souls of haughty warriors entering my heaven. Is it all peace? Where are my fighting-men?”

So Narada made reply: “O Cloudy God, all is peace upon the earth, and there is no thought but of beauty: the King of Vidarbha makes the choosing for his daughter and the kings and princes dream of naught else; for she is the very Lotus of the World and the Pearl of Women. And the kings flock as one man to Vidarbha.”

And while Narada said this, the Immortals gathered to hear, and when he spoke of the maid Damayanti, their eyes shot forth peculiar radiance and they said: “To this maid’s choosing we four will go. She is worthy to choose among the deathless rather than the kings, and she shall reign in the Paradise of Indra and sit beside that divinity whose bride she wills to be.”

And Indra, the Cloudy God, said, “I will go.”

And Agni, the Lord of Fire, said, “I also.”

And Varuna, the King of Waters, said, “And I.”

And the Dark Presence that is Yama, the Lord of Death, said, “I go.”

So their winged chariots that are self-directed, flying like thought where they will, awaited them, and the gods ascended them and, thinking of Vidarbha, were presently beside its walls.

But Nala the Prince, approaching with his company of great men and soldiers, elated with love and hope, looked up and beheld the Gods, seated in their golden chariots. And these, the Protectors of the World, saw him and hesitation in their purpose seized them, because he shone like the sun and was a man indeed, and their divine hearts adjudged him worthy even of Damayanti—so straight and tall he stood and like a king’s lance, and in the beauty of his brows and strength of his person was there no blemish from head to foot. Even like their own brother, Kama, the God of Love, so he seemed to them.

But, descending through the clouds and softening their divine voices that human ears might abide them, they accosted him: “Aho! Prince of Nishada—Prince Royal! We have an errand. We have need of a noble messenger. Who will go for us?”

And he did homage, pressing his palms together, answering: “I see Four Shining Ones. I will go. What is your errand, that I may do it?”

So Indra, leaning from his chariot, said this: “The Gods stand before you, Prince of Nishada. I am Indra, the King of the Clouds, and he beside me is Agni, the Lord of Fire, and here, Varuna, the King of Waters, and he behind me is Yama, the Lord of Death. Go now to Damayanti the Princess, and say this to her: ‘The Protectors of the World, the Four Great Gods, desiring your beauty, are come to the swayamvara. Make choice then to which of these Great Ones your heart inclines; for that dignity whom you shall choose is yours, O maiden of excelling fortune.’ ”

But Nala, joining his hands in prayer, said to Indra: “O Mighty, how can I do this? O Mightinesses, anything but this! I, too, have journeyed to Vidarbha, desiring the maid. How should I entreat for another, even for a god? Being divine, have pity.”

But these divinities replied: “Have you not said, ‘I go’? Is it possible that a royal man should break his word? It is not possible. The great forswear themselves in nothing. Depart.”

So he said: “Her gates are guarded; for she is a king’s daughter. A man may have no secret speech with her.”

And Indra answered: “But that may you! Fear not. Depart.”

And as the divine voice ceased, the Prince stood in the inmost chamber of Damayanti. He knew not how; yet he was there.

And his eyes swam and his heart fluttered within him; for she sat with her maids like a goddess and his heart knew her. Beautiful was she and yet more than beautiful; for all grace, all love shone about her as the light surrounds the moon in her interlunar caves. So a mild radiance filled the air about the Princess and moved as she moved, going with her.

Now, when these ladies beheld a man standing in their presence, they sprang up like frightened deer, each grasping the other for protection and gathering about the Princess to shield her, so great was their fear. Then, seeing the kindliness of his beauty and the nobility of his brows, these lovely ones gathered courage and they saluted him with timidity, murmuring: “Aho, his grace! Aho, his beauty! What is he? Who?”

But the Princess, her heart fluttering like a leaf in the wind, stood higher than the rest and spoke thus: “Noble Prince—for by a faultless body I judge you royal—how have you come thus suddenly like a God? Surely this would anger my father. Have you no fear of his wrath?”

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.”

So Damayanti bowed her fair head in reverence, hearing the gods named, and having done obeisance, she raised her head and spoke: “Yet, O Prince, is my heart set on you and I am faithful. The white swan was my messenger and to you he bore my love. It is for your sake only that the kings are bidden to my swayamvara, but I have already chosen. Even now the maidens make ready the garland that I would hang about your neck. O Prince of Men, O Flame of Strength and Knightliness, what says your heart? For me, I choose your arms or death. There is no other way.”

And he, sighing bitterly, said: “With the very Gods awaiting you, how, Princess, should you choose a man? And what am I but dust beneath their feet? But you, O lady, choosing one of these excelling Gods, shall escape all death and mortality and reign shining beside him throughout the ages; for immortal flowers do not wither, and death and time are unknown to such as these. Sit therefore enthroned above us. Choose and, choosing, be divine.”

But she replied in haste and weeping: “Before these mighty Gods I bow. To them I address my prayers, but you I choose—you only will I take for my husband. You only. What to me is immortal life if I have not you?”

And her body trembled like a bamboo in the wind, while he replied: “Here being their messenger, I may not speak for myself. Duty and reverence hold the door of my lips. Yet if the time come when in honour I may speak, then will I utter what lies in my heart. May that time come!”

“May it come!” said the Princess and dashed the tears from her eyes, and like a queen she stood and said: “In full presence of my father and of the kings let these Divine Ones enter, and, O Prince, who are the light of my sad eyes, enter you, too, and I, a free maiden, will choose freely. And to you, what blame? For it is I who choose and the gods know all.”

So he returned to the Gods and, sighing, told what had befallen, bidding them to the swayamvara of Damayanti, the Consumer of Hearts. So the Shining Ones knew that her heart was set upon Nala of Nishada.

Now, on an auspicious day and in the right quarter of the moon, the swayamvara was held in a mighty court surrounded by golden pillars bound with garlands, and with royal seats set for the suitors. And closing it in was a great gatehouse with guards.

Through the gates passed the kings to their places, and what a sight was there as these noblest of the earth approached! How should a woman choose among them? Crowned were they with odorous blossoms pressed down upon their dark locks. Lordly jewels swung in their ears. Some were rough in majesty, great-thewed, and the muscles stood out upon them like cords. Some were delicate in strength like bows of the archer Gods, but splendid kings were all, proud and fierce of aspect, fit spouses for such beauty; and in a ring they sat, their eyes glittering and fixed upon the way that Damayanti should enter, desiring that loveliness as the very crown jewel of their state. But none saw the Gods.

And into that ring of set faces entered the Princess, unveiled and pacing like a deer, and on her right hand her brother Danta, and the garland of choosing on her arm, and when she entered all held their breath, so more than mortal fair she seemed, and they knew that the half was not told them.

So, with her soul set on Nala of Nishada, the Princess Damayanti went by the kings, and, as she passed each one, his face darkened as when a cloud crosses the sun and the world is grey. So at last she stood before Nala and raised her eyes under the cloud of her beautifully bent lashes, and fear and pain shot through her tender heart like an arrow, for lo, the Four Shining Ones had condescended to take the earthly shape of Nala as they stood beside him, so that they might try the maid and she not know her love. There were five Nalas, and which was her own she could in no way tell, for each one bore his very face, his very form. So the Gods walk disguised, and who shall know them?

Then, sore perplexed, trembling in her great fear and reverence, she sought, meditating, to recall the signs by which the Gods may be discerned when they assume flesh. But of these none could she see, and the five remained immovable as she stood before them and in silence the kings watched what would be.

So, seeing no help in herself or anywhere on earth, that lovely lady joined her palms and, raising her lotus-eyes, spoke thus: “O Divine Ones, I heard the swan and chose my lord, and by that sincerity which I have kept in all faith and honour, I call upon your greatness, O Mighty, who for a while have blinded my eyes, to show my King to me! Appear, O Protectors of the World, in your proper shape, that I may do such reverence as mortals owe to Gods; and reveal him, mortal, but mine own.”

Being thus called upon in the strength of a pure woman, straightway the Gods, dropping all disguise, disclosed their beauty. And immediately she knew them; for their sacred feet touched not the earth but hung a span’s length above it in the air, and their forms of crystal essence cast no shadow. No sweat was beaded on their pure, eternal brows, and their crowns of flowers in radiance cast back the sun’s beams nor drooped in the heat. And neither wavered their shining eyes, fixed upon the Princess, nor did the lids flicker, and in motionless majesty the Immortal Gods stood there.

And beside them stood Nala, very weary and foredone with grief and pain. His shadow lay black before him in the fierce sun, the sweat hung thick upon his brows where the faded flowers drooped. Beautiful, wearied and mortal, he stood beside the Immortal Gods.

So Damayanti looked upon those unchanging faces, in which was neither sorrow nor anger, for they sit above the thunder; and they regarded her, as it were unseeing, yet seeing all things, as do the holy images, and in their divine hearts was no love at all. So she passed them by and hung the perfumed garland round the bowed neck of her love, and in her voice of music took him to be her lord.

And he said this: “O Lovely—O Faithful, since before Gods and men you have chosen me, unworthy, true man will I be and faith and honour will I keep while the breath is in my nostrils.”

So together they worshipped the Four, while all the kings and princes cried aloud: “Sadhu!”—“Well done!” For there was none but rejoiced in the beauty and faithfulness of these two.

So the Immortal Gods, standing in that presence, gave lordly gifts to the pair. And Indra, the Cloudy God, gave this: that, when Nala should perform sacrifice, he should with mortal eyes see the visible God and behold him unafraid. And Agni, the Lord of Fire, gave this: that at all times he would come at the call of Nala. And this is a great gift. And Varuna, the King of Waters, gave this: that at the word of Nala of Nishada the waters should rise and fall, obedient. But Yama, the Lord of Death, gave two gifts; and of these the first was to walk steadfastly in the ways of righteousness; and the second (let it not be despised!) was to be skilful in preparing food. And in after times by strange chance did this prove a great and goodly gift.

Thus was the marrying of Nala, King of Men, with Damayanti, Pearl of Women.

Reverence to that Lord of Elephant Trunk to whom obstacles are as nothing, and to those Four Shining Ones who showed compassion, their ears being open to the prayer of purity.

THE HIDDEN ONE

THE HIDDEN ONE

(The heroine of this story was a Princess of the great Mogul dynasty of Emperors in India. She was granddaughter of Shah-Jahan and the lovely lady of the Taj Mahal, and daughter of the Emperor Aurungzib whose fanaticism was the ruin of the dynasty. The Princess’s title was Zeb-un-Nissa—Glory of Women. She was beautiful and was and is a famous poet in India, writing under the pen-name of Makhfi—the Hidden One. Her love adventures were such as I relate, though I have taken the liberty of transferring the fate of one lover to another.

For her poems, which I quote, I use the charming translations by J. Duncan Westbrook, who has written a brief memoir of this fascinating Princess. She was a mystic of the Sufi order and her verses “The Hunter of the Soul,” which I give, strangely anticipate Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”, in their imagery. The poems not specified as hers are a part of my story.)

The office of hakim (physician) to the Mogul Emperors being hereditary in my family from the days of Babar the conquering Emperor, I was appointed physician to the Padshah known as Shah-Jahan, and when his Majesty became a Resident in Paradise (may his tomb be sanctified!) my office was continued by his Majesty Aurungzib, the Shahinshah, and rooms were bestowed on me in his palace, and by his abundant favour the health of the Begams (queens) in the seclusion of his mahal was placed in the hands of this suppliant and I came and went freely in my duties and was enlightened by the rays of his magnanimity. And my name is Abul Qasim.

But of all that garden of flowers, the Begams and Princesses, there was one whom my soul loved as a father loves his child, for she resembled that loveliest of all sweet ladies, her father’s mother, she who lies buried by Jumna River in the divine white beauty of the Taj Mahal. (May it be sanctified to her rest!) In my Princess’s sisters, it is true I have seen a flash now and again of that lost beauty, but in her it abode steadfast as a moon that knows no change and at her birth she received the name of Arjemand after that beloved lady, whose death clouded the universe so that its chronogram gives the one word “Grief.” But the child also received the title of Zeb-un-Nissa—Glory of Women, and such this resplendent Princess most truly was.

And surely the prayer for resemblance was granted by the bounty of Allah, for she grew into womanhood dark, delicious as a damask rose, enfolding the hidden heart of its perfume in velvet leaves, a soft luxuriant beauty that stole upon the heart like a blossom-bearing breeze and conquered it insensibly. Of her might it be said:

“For the mole upon thy cheek would I give the cities of Samarkand and Bokhara,” and a poet of Persia, catching a glimpse of her as she walked in her garden, cried aloud in an ecstasy of verse:

“O golden zone that circles the Universe of Beauty,

It were little to give the earth itself for what thou circlest.”

Yet, this surprising loveliness was the least of her perfections.

But how shall this suppliant who is but a man describe the spell of her charm? Allah, when he made man and laid the world at his feet, resolved that one thing should be hidden from his understanding, that still for all his knowledge he should own there is but one Searcher of Secrets. And the heart of this mystery is woman, and if she be called the other half of man it is only as the moon reflects the glory of her lord the sun in brilliance, though (as a wise Hindu pandit told me for truth) she has a cold and dark side which is always unknown to him, where alone she revolves thoughts silent, cold, and dangerous. Therefore to sift her in her secrecies is a foolhardy thing, and not in vain is it written by Aflatoun (Plato), the wise man of Greece, that the unhappy man who surprised a goddess bathing in the forest was rent in pieces by his own hounds.

Yet this feat must be attempted for if there is a thing it concerns man to know it is the soul of this fair mystery who moves beside him and surrenders Heaven to him in a first kiss and the bitterness of the hells in a last embrace.

Therefore I essay the history of this Princess, the Glory of Women, who was an epitome of her sex in that she was beautiful, a dreamer, a poet, and on the surface sweet in gentleness as a summer river kissing its banks in flowing, but beneath——

I write.

Seeing her intelligence clear as a sword of Azerbajan, her exalted father resolved that his jewel should not be dulled by lack of polishing and cutting, and he appointed the wise lady Miyabai to be her first teacher. At the age of seven she knew the Koran by heart, and in her honour a mighty feast was made for the army and for the poor. As she grew, aged and saintly tutors were appointed, from whom she absorbed Arabic, mathematics and astronomy, as a rose drinks rain. No subject eluded her swift mind, no toil wearied her. Verses she wrote with careless ease in the foreign tongue of Arabia, but hearing from an Arab scholar that in a single line the exquisite skill betrayed an Indian idiom, she discarded it instantly because she would have perfection and wrote henceforward in her own tongue—Persian.

No pains were spared upon this jewel, for the Emperor desired that its radiance should be splendid throughout Asia, yet her limit was drawn, and sharply. For in her young pride of learning she began a commentary on the holy Koran, and hearing this, he sternly forbade it. A woman might do much in her own sphere, he wrote, but such a creature of dust may not handle the Divine.

I, Abul Qasim, was with her when the imperial order reached her and saw her take the fair manuscript and obediently tear it across, desiring that the rent leaves be offered to the Shadow of God in token of obedience. But those dark and dangerous eyes of hers were not obedient beneath the veiling of silken lashes, and turning to me, to whom she told her royal heart, she said;

“What the hand may not write the heart may think, and in the heart is no Emperor. It is free,” and leaning from the marble casement she looked down into the gliding river and said no more.

Yet the Emperor made amends, and noble, as far as his light led him. Not for a woman the mysteries of the faith of Islam that he held of all things the greatest, but, fired by the praises of her tutors, he sent throughout India, Persia and Kashmir for poets worthy of this poet-Princess and bid them come to Delhi and Agra and there dwell that a fitting company be made for her.

So, veiled like the moon in clouds, curtained and attended, the Princess Arjemand was permitted to be present at tournaments in the palace where the weapons were the wit and beauty of words, when quotations and questions were flung about as it might be handsful of stars, and a line given be capped with some perfect finish of the moment’s prompting and become a couplet unsurpassable, and very often it was the soft voice from behind the golden veil that capped the wisest and completed the most exquisite, and recited verses that brought exclamations from the assembled poets.

“Not even Saadi (may Allah enlighten him!) nor Jalalu’d-din Rumi (may his eyes be gladdened in Paradise) excelled this lady in the perfumed honey of their words.” So with one voice they cried.

And this was not homage to the daughter of the Protector of the Universe. No indeed! for death has not washed out her name with the cold waters of oblivion and now that she is no more beautiful nor daughter of the Emperor her verse is still repeated where the poets and saints meet in concourse.

It will be seen that her life in the Begam Mahal (the Palace of the Queens) must needs be lonely, for there was none among the princesses who shared her pleasures, and their recreation in languidly watching the dancers or buying jewels and embroideries and devouring sweetmeats wearied her as sorely. But she had one friend, Imami, daughter of Arshad Beg Khan, and this creature of mortality who writes these words was also accounted her friend though unworthy to be the ground whereon she set her little foot.

Day after day did the Lady Arjemand with Imami write and study, and the librarians of the Emperor had little peace because of the demand of these ladies for the glorious manuscripts and books collected by her ancestors from all parts of the earth.

They sat and the walls echoed to the low note of her voice as she read and recited and so beautiful were the tones of my Princess that I have seen the water stand in the eyes of those who heard her recite her own verses or those of the great Persians. It was a noble instrument ranging from the deepest notes of passion to the keen cry of despair, and I would listen unwearied while the day trod its blossomed way from dawn to sunset in the Palace gardens. Great and wonderful was this new palace of the Emperor with tall lilies inlaid in the pure marble in stones so precious that they might have been the bosom adornments of some lesser beauty. Palms in great vases brought by the merchants of Cathay made a green shade and coolness for two fountains—the one of the pure waters of the canal, the other of rose-water, and they plashed beside a miniature lake of fretted marble rocks sunk in the floor where white lotuses slept in the twilight of the calm retreat. Such was the chamber of the daughter of the Padshah.

But of all the jewels the Princess was the glory.

Surely with small pains may the Great Mogul’s daughter be a beauty, but had she been sold naked in the common market-place this lady had brought a royal price.

Toorki and Persian and Indian blood mingled in her and each gave of its best. The silken dark hair braided about her head was an imperial crown. From the well-beloved lady who lies in the Taj Mahal (may Allah make fragrant her memory), she had received eyes whose glance of slow sweetness no man, not even the men of her own blood (excepting only her stern father), could resist, and of her rose-red lips half sensuous, half child-like, might it be said

“Their honey was set as a snare and my heart a wandering bee,

Clung and could not be satisfied, tasted and returned home never more.”

The imperial Mogul women were indeed the jewels of the world, because the beauties of Asia were chosen to be their mothers. The net of the Emperors swept wide, and I, who in virtue of my age and faithful service have seen, testify that there was none like them, and the loveliest of all was fit but to serve my Princess kneeling. Shall not the truth be told? Of the soul within that delicious shrine her deeds must tell.

Now as I have written she sat with Imami by the little lake, and I in a marble recess by one of the great latticed windows that looks down on Jumna river and on the other side over the city of Shahjahanabad, new and luminous in magnificence. In all the world else are no such palace and city. At this moment she read aloud a letter from her father Aurungzib concerning the memoirs of her ancestor the Emperor Babar who founded their dynasty in India, a book written by his own hand and religiously preserved in the Mogul archives, and she read it with anger because when she demanded this book from the librarian, the Padshah hearing wrote thus:

“Happy Daughter of Sovereignty. There is one manner of life for men, who are the rulers, and for women, who are the slaves. It seems you go too far. What has a daughter of our House to do with our ancestor Zah-r-ud-din Muhammed Babar, the resident in Paradise? I have granted much already. Plant not the herb of regret in the garden of affection. He writes as a man for men. The request is refused. Recall the verse of the poet:

“ ‘Ride slowly and humbly, and not in hurrying pride

For o’er the dusty bones of men, the creature of dust must ride.’

“What an Emperor writes is not suitable for the Princesses of his House. His duty is rule; theirs, obedience.”

It was a discouragement but a command, and another had laid the finger of obedience on the lips of silence, but, taking counsel with her heart, this Princess did not so.

She called to me for her pen and wrote in answer:

“Exalted Emperor, Shahinshah, Shadow of God, King of the world, Refuge of the needy, father of the body of this creature of mortality, be pleased to hear this ignorant one’s supplication. Surely you have fed my mind on the bee’s-bread of wisdom, and from your own royal lips have I learnt that the words of our ancestor (upon whom be the Peace!) are full of flavour and laughter, generous and kind, shining with honour and the valour of our family. Now, since this is the root whence sprang your auspicious Majesty’s rule, should not a humble daughter triumph in it? True is it that I am your female slave, yet may this worthless body bear one day a son to transmit your likeness to the prostrate ages, and since we do not breed lions from lambs, his mother should carry the laughter and fire of her race like a jewel in the mine of her soul. I make my petition to the Padshah, the holiest of Emperors.”

“It will be granted me,” said the Princess reading these letters aloud to Imami and to me, “because of that last word—the holiest. He values that title more than to be called the Shahinshah. And with all my heart I would it were otherwise.”

“And why, high Lady?” cried Imami in sheer astonishment. “Surely the Padshah is a saint and his deeds and words will shine in Paradise. It is blessed to be devout.”

“I know little of Paradise, but I know, and my father might know if he studied the life of Akbar the Great, his great-grandfather, that to be so bitter a saint in our Mohammedan faith that he insults and persecutes every other is to break our dynasty to powder. Consider of it, Imami, as I do. Have you read the Acts of Akbar Padshah the greatest sovereign that ever reigned? Were I emperor in India thus and thus I would do.”

“Glory of Women, may your condescension increase! What did Akbar Padshah?” said Imami, joining her hands, but I said nothing because I knew.

“Though he was born Moslem yet he honoured all the Faiths, knowing in his wisdom that the music is One and the dogmas but the foolish words that man in his ignorance sets to it. All faiths are true, and none!”

The blood almost fell from my face as I heard her, because had these words been carried to the Emperor not even her rank, not even her daughterhood, could have saved the Princess. With Imami and me she was safe, but in a palace a bird of the air may carry the matter.

“Yes!” she went on, laughing coldly, “Akbar Padshah had in all ways the tastes of Solomon the Wise and his Begam Mahal (Palace of the Queens) was a garden of beauty. But observe! The Queens were chosen from every faith and each had the right to worship as she would. There were Indian princesses who adored Shiva the Great God and Krishna the Beloved. There was the Fair Persian who worshipped the Fire as Zoroaster taught, and there were ladies of the faith of our Prophet more than can be counted. Whereas in the zenana of my imperial father——”

She paused, and Imami continued with gravity that concealed a smile:

“The Begams recite the holy Koran all day, as becomes the ladies of the Emperor who says that he sighs for the life of a faquir.”

“And would he had it!” cried the Princess with passion, “for every day discontent grows among the Hindus that are taxed, beaten, and despised only because they hold the faith of their fathers. Is there one of them employed about the court or in the great offices? Not any. Whereas the Emperor Akbar in his deep wisdom made them as one with ourselves and thus built up a mighty Empire that my father with holy hands destroys daily.”

“O Brilliant Lady, for the sake of the Prophet, be silent!” I said, for indeed she terrified me by her insight. It is better for a woman that she should not know, or, knowing, keep silence. “If these words were carried to the Padshah——”

“I should at the least be imprisoned and never more see the light of day— Well, one may be a devotee out of the Faith as in it, and like Akbar Padshah, I am the devotee of Truth who shuts her fair eyes on no faith that men hold in humbleness of heart. And were it policy only, is it not madness to disgust and terrify the countless millions of the Hindus upon whom our throne is carried? The end is sure.”

“What is the end?” asked Imami in a whisper.

“Misery for himself—though that matters little, for he will take it as the robe of martyrdom from the hand of Allah, but ruin for the Mogul Empire in India. O that I were a man!”

Her face lit up into such pride and valour as she spoke that I wished it also, for I knew that her words were true as truth. But in India a woman can do nothing. It is little wonder I trembled for my Princess.

A picture of her Imperial father lay on the low table at her elbow, painted by a Persian artist of fame, and beautiful as a jewel in its small brilliant colours, and looking upon it one might see the Kismet of the Emperor in every feature. Eyes stern but sad, the narrow brows and close lips of the man who sees not life as it is but as his own thought of it, bounded by those high narrow brows that overweighted the lower part. The head of the Emperor was surrounded like that of a saint with a golden halo and his stern eyes were fixed on some vision invisible to others. The jaw was weak but fine, and of all dangerous things on earth beware the strength of a weak man in the grip of his belief. The Princess looked at it, and then at me:

“The Emperor (may Allah enlarge his reign) should have lived in the time of the Prophet and have been the Sword in his right hand. He is born centuries too late. It is policy now that carries all before it. O could I speak my mind to him, for my brothers dare not, but he and I are worlds apart and in his presence I am silent.”

I sighed. Not his throne, nor his children, nor his women, nor aught on earth weighed for one grain of sand against the Pearl of the Faith. True is it that the Emperor Akbar followed the Vision also but with eyes how wide and clear!—knowing this for certain, that mortal man cannot know, that Truth is a bird flying in the skies and lets fall but a feather to earth here and there. So he made for himself a faith that held the quintessence of all the faiths, and had his sons been like to him—but past is past. They were not, and they broke his great heart.

So I said, bowing very low:

“Princess, when the happy day comes that you must wed you shall make your lord Lord of the World with your wisdom.”

She laughed, but bitterly.

“O, I have lovers! For one, Suleiman, my cousin, son of the brother whom the Emperor slew because he stood too near the throne. By report I knew what he was, but I saw him and spoke with him——”

“My Princess, and how?” I asked in great surprise, knowing that his presence in the Begam Mahal would have been death.

She looked at me with large calm eyes.

“My faithful servant, have you come and gone so long about the Begam Mahal and have not known that all things are possible? Prince Suleiman was veiled like a woman, and like a woman he stood where you sit, and I saw his face and we spoke together. Should not cousins meet who may be man and wife? And I have loved his father, Prince Dara, very much, who was learned and good.”

I trembled again when I heard, for had the Emperor guessed that she had done this thing what hope for her? His three brothers had he slaughtered, and the Prince Suleiman was doomed.

“And he saw your face, O Brilliant Lady?”

“No, and not for fear’s sake but because I liked him not at all. He said ‘O Envy of the Moon, lift up your veil that I may enjoy the marvel of your beauty’ and I sang this verse I had made to my lute.”

She caught up her lute that lay beside her and sang,

“I will not lift my Veil,

For if I did, who knows?

The bulbul might forget the rose,

The Brahman worshipper

Adoring Lakshmi’s grace

Might turn, forsaking her,

To see my face;

My beauty might prevail.

Think how within the flower

Hidden as in a bower

Her fragrant soul must be,

And none can look on it.

So me the world shall see

Only within the verses I have writ.

I will not lift the Veil.

“And the fool caught me and would have torn it,” she added, “but Imami restrained him, and he flung from us like a woman in temper as in dress. A contemptible creature!”

“But Lady of Beauty, what had you against him?”

“Do I not know all that goes on in this city? Do I not know that Prince Suleiman spends his days and nights in Shaitanpur (Devilsville, the quarter of pleasure) and was I to show my face to a man reeking from the embraces of the bazaar? No, I am Makhfi (the Hidden One) and hidden I will remain for such as he. I will be no rival to Peri Mahal the dancer and her like.”

And even as she ended a low voice at the curtain that veiled the entrance asked for admission and when she granted it, the heavy silk was drawn aside and a tall veiled woman entered. The Princess did not look up but I saw Imami’s eyes fix as if startled.

“Her slave prays for a word with the Marvel of the Age whose mind is so lovely that it outshines even her fair face and her face so beautiful, that it is the lamp that permits the light of her soul to shine through.”

“Warm for a woman!” said the Princess, and looked straight at the new-comer who stood salaaming with the utmost humility. She added impatiently:

“There is no need of this ceremony, lady. Remove your veil. The good physician Abul Qasim is privileged to see the faces of all in the Begam Mahal.”

In a flash the veil was torn off and a man’s face appeared beneath it—young, bold, and handsome with the high features of the Imperial House, a splendid dissolute young man with the down black on his upper lip like the black astride the young swan’s bill. Prince Suleiman, the son of Dara the Emperor’s brother.

“Ha, daughter of my uncle!” he cried,— “Did I not wager, did I not swear, that I would see that hidden beauty and now I see it face to face. Poets have sung it and painters praised it, but their words and their colours were lies for they could not utter the truth. And having seen I entreat for my father’s sake, for love’s sake, that it may be mine.”

He made towards her eagerly, wholly disregarding Imami and me. I looked to see her confused or angry, but she spoke with a most misleading calm.

“Exalted cousin, you have won your wager and your bride. If her embrace is cold it is at least constant and——”

“Cold, with those burning lips of rose, those glowing eyes? O Loveliest, Divinest, grant me one kiss for earnest if you would not have me die at your feet.”

I saw her sign with her hand to Imami who glided away, flattening herself against the wall as if terrified, then she spoke serenely.

“Exalted cousin, when were you last in Shaitanpur?”

It stopped him like a lightning flash. He stood arrested on the marble before her face.

“I know nothing of Shaitanpur,” he said, breathless.

“No? Nor of the dancer Peri Mahal and her house with the courtyard of roses, nor of the song she sings?”

Again she caught up her lute and sang in a low voice,

“Black bee, strong bee, the honey-eater,

Plunder my perfume, seek my heart

Cling to me, ravage me, make me sweeter,

Tear the leaves of the rose apart.”

He stared, his eyes slowly dilating. That the daughter of the Emperor should sing the song of the bazaar—the song of the light women—! Then it emboldened him. He threw himself forward to seize her hand.

“Maker of verses, this is a rose of your own garden. Till now I never heard it, but it speaks of love. You shall not ask me twice. My rose, my pearl, my star!—” He caught the hem of her veil. Now I knew well from her eyes that he rushed on his fate, but it was written in the book of his destiny and what is written who can avert?

She drew back a little and looked at him with soft eyes—wells of delicious darkness, the swelling curves of her lovely form a temptation for true believers, and her lips smiling a little as if from delight at their own sweetness. And indeed her voice was gentle as moonbeams and as caressing, as though she could sacrifice all to please the man whom she exalted with the sight of her.

“Fortunate cousin, I am a weak woman. How dare I face the wrath of the Emperor? He did not love your father. He does not love your father’s son, yet if he did——”

She drooped her head a little as if with a soft shame that overwhelmed her in the depths of modesty. O very woman, divine yet a child!— She had turned wisdom into folly with a glance. And he trembling, and with eyes fixed, stammered out:

“Alas, I have dreamed of your sweetness and what is the dream to the truth? I am drowned in it. O give it to me; make it mine that in life and death it may enfold me and that I may never again behold a lesser light, having seen the ineffable.”

And he caught her hand passionately and drew her towards him, she yielding gently and slowly, resisting a very little, and looking at him as if with compassion.

And very softly in a voice like the breathing of a flute she said:

“O my cousin, how should we face the wrath of the Emperor?” as though all her soul were in that question.

And he, kissing her hands with frenzy, said in broken words:

“Ah, Moon of my delight that knows no wane, let me but watch with you through the starry hours of one night, and then, then if the Padshah’s will be to slay me, I shall at least have lived.”

“And I also,” she said, looking down like the feminine incarnation of modesty, so that enraptured he flung his arms about the yielding softness of her most exquisite form and kissed her on the lips as a thirsty man in the desert grasps the cup nor can sever his mouth from it. And when he would permit her to speak she leaned her head backward to gain space, and she said:

“What is my lord’s will with his slave? And in what shall I obey him?”

Now I, standing in the recess would have warned him, if I could, that not thus—O not thus, does the proudest and wisest of women abandon herself to such as he! For I had pity on his youth and the manly beauty of him, and the Imperial blood that he shared with her. But who was this creature of dust to obstruct the design of the Imperial Princess? And indeed even I wavered and was uncertain that I guessed her meaning, with such veiled submissive sweetness did she hold his hand in hers and touch it to her lovely brows.

And trembling like a man in a fever, he replied.

“O darling little slave, since you give me the right to command what is wholly mine, I say this— Let my slave, whose slave I am, expect me to-night when the moonlight touches the western corner of the Divan-i-Am, and I will come to this chamber of bliss, and my life, my soul, are in the hand of my slave whose feet I kiss.”

And throwing himself on the marble like a worshipper he kissed the flower-soft feet that showed like bare gold beneath the hem of her robe, and so rising to his knee, looked up at her as an idolater at the goddess vouchsafed to his eyes.

But she looked beyond him at the curtain that veiled the door. It lifted to a hidden hand, and Imami stood there, ash-pale, in her hand a dish of gold, and standing upon it a great goblet of jewelled glass with pomegranate sherbet brimming in it rose-red and rose-petals floating on the surface and beside it two cups of gold flashing with diamond sparks, and on her knee she offered it to the Princess, who took the goblet and a cup smiling.

“Fortunate cousin, since this is so, and I, my father’s best-beloved child, will petition him to grant me my heart’s desire, let us drink the cup of betrothal in the presence of the Hakim Abul Qasim and the lady Imami. Heart of my heart, I pledge you!” and setting the blossom of her lips to the jewelled rim she drank, and filled the other cup for him, and still kneeling before her breathless with adoration, he took the cup in both his hands, and I watched and could say no word because her purpose was clear to me and I knew well that of all women on earth she was the last to endure the insult of his presence. And Imami knelt by the door,—her face like ivory against the heavy gold curtain. Now, as he set his lips to the cup, suddenly Imami sprang to her feet and tottered back against the sculptured marble and with scarce breath to fill her voice——

“The Emperor comes,” she said, and fell again on her knees at the door, hiding her face in her hands.

I saw the sickening terror that struck the colour from the cheeks and lips of the lover. He knelt there with a glassy countenance like a man in the clutch of a nightmare who cannot flee from the advancing doom—his limbs weighted with lead, his heart with the pressure of an exceeding horror. But Glory of Women caught him by the hand.

“Exalted cousin, there is but one way from these rooms, and the Emperor closes it. Fly to the room beyond my bed-chamber, the room of the marble bath, and hide where you can while I hold him in talk. Allah hafiz! (God protect you!) Go!”

And she pushed him from her, and he fled. Then, most singular to see, she composed her veil, glancing in the mirror set in silver that was the gift of the Portuguese priests, and turned to the door, and as she did so the curtain was lifted and Aurungzib Padshah entered and Imami prostrated herself and I also, but the Princess Arjemand knelt.

Now I know not how this should be, but in a room where great events have just happened it is as if the waves of passion beat about the walls and waft the garments of those who have been present, and it seemed to my guilty heart as though the very flowers enamelled on the marble cried aloud,

“Majesty, there is a man—a man in hiding.”

And certainly the Padshah halted and looked with suspicion from one to the other of us. He was ever a man of suspicion, unlike the easy humour of his father Shah-Jahan, and the half drunken good-nature (shot with frightful angers) of his grandfather Jahangir. Aurungzib Padshah was a small man, dark exceedingly, with veiled eyes and shut lips, and never have I seen him warmed by any emotion of love, pity, fear, but always calm, cold, self-collected and austere. For it is well known that his only care was religion, and to this he sacrificed his all.

So looking hard at the kneeling Glory of Women he said coldly,

“In the name of the most beneficent and merciful God, what is this disturbance? Speak, exalted daughter, Princess of the family of chastity. It is revealed to this suppliant at the throne of Allah that there is a hidden thing in these chambers. Speak. What is it?”

And kneeling, my Princess answered.

“May joy attend my exalted father, the adorner of the gardens of happiness, the decorator of the rose-parterre of enjoyment! There is but one hidden thing in these chambers, and it is your unworthy daughter, who is known by your august favour as Makhfi, the Hidden One.”

I saw the eyes of the Padshah fix on the golden dish that lay on the marble with one cup emptied of the pomegranate sherbet and the other half emptied, the sherbet running in a red stream like blood along the marble.

“This was set down in haste!” he said through clipped lips.

“In haste, O Glory of Allah!” said the Princess with the wet beads clamming the silken tendrils on her forehead. “I drank and was about to drink the second when your auspicious feet blessed the threshold.”

“You are thirsty, happy daughter of sovereignty? Then drink the remainder. You have my permission.”

I saw the gleam in either black eye of him as he spoke, watching her sidelong. She lifted the cup to her lips with a hand that shook so that it rattled against her teeth, though she struggled to command herself.

“No, do not drink, royal daughter. It is stale,” he said, still standing and smiling coldly. And the Princess answered with quivering lips:

“Will not the Mirror of God be seated and partake of refreshment offered by the hand of his slave?”

“Not of that cup and not until I have observed your embroideries and manuscripts, daughter of high dignity,” the Padshah replied, and followed by my Princess, Imami still kneeling by the door, and I by the latticed marble window he walked about the hall and into the chambers beyond, talking pleasantly to the Princess at his shoulder, and so returning took his seat on the divan, and she served sherbets and fruits on a golden dish to his Majesty.

He was later to attend the Am-Khas, the Hall of Audience, and was attired kingly. His vest was of white and delicately flowered satin, with heavy silk and gold embroidery. His cloth-of-gold turban was aigretted with diamonds great as stars, with a topaz at the base that shone like the sun. A chain of great pearls hung to his knees, and above all these jewels was his cold repelling dignity as of a King too great to be approached even by the favourite child of his pride, and all the time he sat she knelt before him.

At length he spoke as if in meditation.

“Glory of Women, you have grown into beauty like that of the Maids of Paradise. Your long lashes need no antimony, your eyes are winter stars, and in that robe of gulnar (pomegranate blossom) you appear like that princess who bewildered the senses of the mighty Suleiman. [I saw a quiver pass over her features as she bowed her head beneath the weight of praise.] Does not the rose long for the nightingale? Does not your heart, exalted daughter, turn to love?”

And with her eyes on the ground, she answered.

“Exhibitor of Perfection, my heart is set on far other matters. If in this land of good fortune I be remembered as a poet, I ask no more of destiny save that the rank of the daughter of Emperors be attached to my name for ever.”

And he.

“It is well. Yet marriage must be considered. Fortunate daughter, have you bathed to-day?”

And she, deadly pale.

“Shadow of the benignity of the Creator, no.”

And with set lips he called to Imami by the door.

“Hasten, lady, and light the fire beneath the great vessel of water in the bathing room of the Begam, and I will remain in discourse with her until it is ready.”

And Imami casting a fearful glance on the kneeling Princess moved slowly to the inner chamber, and it is the truth that my soul sickened within me, for though I knew the young man worthless, and the son of a dangerous father, yet who could bear this without terror of spirit? And the Emperor, laying aside his awful Majesty, made his presence sweet as sunshine in the great chamber of marble, saying:

“Exalted daughter, it is but seldom we have leisure to relax, and yet the olfactory of my soul inhales with delight the ambergris-perfumed breezes of affection and concord, and daily if it were possible would I enjoy them. Yes, even when absent—

“ ‘I sit beside thee in thought, and my heart is at ease,

For that is a union not followed by separation’s pain.’

“It is in my mind to move with my ladies and the living family of dignity and glory to reside for a time at Lahore, and we shall then be more together, partaking of the irrigation of the rivers of affection.”

“Great father, you promise me a joy to increase health and exalt happiness.”

She swayed as she knelt, and leaned against the divan with closed eyes.

“Exalted father, the perfume of flowers and of the rose-water fountain have given me a faintness. May I retire for a moment with the hakim Abul Qasim to my inner chamber lest I fall at your feet?”

“It is granted, Glory of Women, and the lady Imami shall recite to me your latest verses until you return.”

I came forward making the salutation, and helped the Princess to rise, she leaning on my aged arm, and the lady Imami took her place unrolling a manuscript of verses splendid with Persian illuminations in blue and gold. The Emperor composed himself to listen with pleasure, for it is well known that all the sovereigns of that mighty line were skilled in versifying and just critics of ghazal and suja.

And as we moved forward, I supporting her, the Princess breathed in my ear:

“I meant his death, but Allah knowing my heart knows I am innocent of this hideous thing. O Abul Qasim, father of my soul, is there aid in earth or heaven?”

But what could I say? Only the Great Physician of the Hidden Dispensary could assist that unfortunate. And meanwhile the sweet voice of the lady Imami read aloud the verses of the Princess.

“O love, I am thy thrall.

As on the tulip’s burning petal glows

A spot yet more intense, of deeper dye,

So in my heart a flower of passion blows,

See the dark stain of its intensity

Deeper than all.”

And then we lost the words as we moved into the inner chamber.

Now this inner chamber was all of pearl-pure marble, and in the midst a deeply sunk bath of marble long and wide and with its walls decorated with lotuses and their leaves, and a silver pipe led the water to this from a mighty silver vessel six feet and more in height and of great capacity, supported on a tripod of sculptured silver, and below it a place for fire, enclosed and fed with sweet-scented woods and balls of perfume made of rare gums. And, O Allah most Merciful, there the lady Imami had kindled fire by command of the Emperor, and within might be seen the brilliant blue flame licking up the perfumes and crawling like snakes about the cedar wood below the vessel. And certainly I looked that the Princess should do some desperate deed for the enlargement of the man most miserable hidden within the vessel, and releasing her I stood like a graven image of terror, expecting what she would do.

She laid her hand on the silver, and amid the crackling of the flames she said in a clear small voice:

“You came unsought. You violated the secrecy of the Hidden One. What then is your duty, exalted cousin?”

And from within he spoke in a voice—O Allah, most compassionate, grant that I may never hear such again!—the one word:

“Silence.”

And she:

“It is true. Keep silence if you are my true lover, for the sake of my honour. For if your voice is heard I am a dead woman. But I too will be faithful to death.”

And he answered:

“On my head and eyes.”

And by her command I gave her water to drink and applied an essence to her nostrils, and we left the room, pulling the heavy curtains before it, and we returned to where the Padshah sat with the pale lady Imami reading aloud and he smiling in calm content. Seeing us return, he motioned my Princess to a seat on the divan saying:

“I would hear your verses of ‘The Lover.’

“What is the fate of a lover? It is to be crucified for the world’s pleasure.”

And taking the manuscript from the hands of Imami she read aloud:

“Dust falls within the cup of Kaikobad

And King Jamshid,

Nor recks the world if they were sad or glad,

Or what they did.

“How many hearts, O Love, thy sword hath slain

And yet will slay!

They bless thee, nor to Allah they complain

At Judgment Day.”

And so read on steadfastly for the space of an hour, until the Padshah, replete with the sweetness of the melody, rose from the divan, and said graciously:

“May the tree of hereditary affection watered by this hour of converse grow in leaf and fruit and overshadow us both in peace. Go now, exalted daughter, and bathe your angelic person and rest with a soul sunned in the favour of the Emperor.”

And he went, we attending him to the door of the secluded chambers, and when we returned, the Princess lay in a dead faint on the divan, and the fire beneath the great vessel of silver was red and silent, and within was silence also.

The courage of Babar the gallant and Akbar the greatly dreaming was not dead in their descendant and thus in a great self-sacrifice he became a traveller on the road of non-existence, and I wept for him.

So the Court moved to Lahore.

But after this on my Princess came a change hard to be told.

She had despised the Prince alive. For his death she loved him, and with a poet’s passion and tenderness mingled with a woman’s. Her sole relief was in solitude, pouring forth the burning thoughts wherein the phoenix of her soul was consumed in perfumed flame which will forever kindle the heart of man to like ecstasies.

Great Princes sought her, among them Akil Khan, a most beautiful young man, aglow with courage and splendour. He had seen her, dreaming on the roof of her pavilion in the dawn, pensive and lovely, clothed in dawn-colour, her long hair braided with pearls falling about her, and mad with love, he sent her this one line, awaiting completion:

“A vision in crimson appears on the roof of the Palace.”

Kneeling, I implored her to give him some solace,

“For O, Light of my soul,” said I, “the years drift by like leaves, and shall this miracle of beauty and of intelligence clear as diamonds lead its graces to the grave and leave the world no copy? My Princess, my Princess, have pity on your youth! True, the high Prince died a hero for the sake of a lady’s honour, yet remember that until then the soul of him was at home in Devilsville, and not in the rose-gardens of Allah. You have mourned him long enough: awake now to joy.”

But she put it gently aside, saying:

“The soul washed in the lustration of death is pure. What is Shaitanpur to him now? He has forgotten it. And shall I who accepted the sacrifice, forget? O, that I had not failed in courage—that I had died with him! Give me the paper of Akil Khan.”

And considering the line he had written—

“A vision in crimson appears on the roof of the Palace,” she wrote beneath it this line completing the couplet:

“Neither supplications nor force nor gold can win her.” And so returned it.

Yet, gallant man as he was, this did not stifle his hope, and knowing that in her garden at Lahore she was building a noble marble pavilion, he entered the garden one day disguising his princeliness under the garment of a mason, carrying his hod on his shoulder, and passed where she stood apart watching her girls who were playing at chausar.

And as he drew near he whispered,

“In my longing for thee I have become as dust wandering round the earth,” and she whose soul was fixed as a lonely star, responded immediately,

“If thou hadst become as the wind yet shouldst thou not touch a tress of my hair.”

So it was always. An embassage was sent from the Shah Abbas of Persia entreating her hand for Mirza Farukh his son, and the Prince came with it, a gallant wooer. She dared not at once refuse the insistence of her father Aurungzib Padshah, and consented that he should come to Delhi that she might judge of his worthiness. And with a glorious retinue resembling a galaxy of stars he came, and she feasted the prince in the pleasure-pavilion in her own garden, and in its marble colonnade with her own fair hand offered him wine and sweetmeats, but veiled in gold gauze, so that not one glimpse had he of the hidden eyes. And exalted with wine and folly he asked for a certain sweetmeat in words which by a laughing play on words signify—a kiss!

This, to the proudest of women! One moment she paused and then haughtily,

“Ask for what you desire from the slaves of our kitchen,” and so went straight to her royal father and told him that though face and jewels were well enough, the man had the soul of a groom under his turban of honour, and she would have none of him. She had her royal way.

Raging with foiled pride and desire he sent her this verse,

“I am determined never to leave this temple.

Here will I bow my head, here will I prostrate myself.

Here will I serve, and here alone is happiness.”

But he beat against marble, for she returned this answer only:

“Child, how lightly dost thou esteem this game of love!

Nothing dost thou know of the fever of longing and the fire of separation, and the burning flame of love!”

Alas, her heart knew them too well!

So he went away despairing and that was the last of her suitors.

Very sad grew my Princess. The dead have more power than the living, and the clutch of a dead hand chills the blood. She had the soul of a mystic and in her poems desire for the Eternal Beloved was mingled with love of him who was now also behind the Veil of non-existence, and I know not which was more in her thoughts when she wrote with tears that fall and falling gather,

“O idle arms,

Never the lost Beloved have ye caressed:

Better that ye were broken than like this

Empty and cold eternally to rest.

“O useless eyes,

Never the lost Beloved for all these years

Have ye beheld: better that ye were blind

Than dimmed thus by my unavailing tears.

“O fading rose,

Dying unseen as hidden thou wert born:

So my heart’s blossom fallen in the dust

Was ne’er ordained his turban to adorn.”

Very strange is the heart of a woman! I, remembering her scorn for this very Prince and her will to slay him with her own hand, could not at all commend nor comprehend her passion for him dead whom living she trod as the dust beneath her feet. She permitted my speech gently, but would reply only,

“He loved me and gave his life for me.” And I venturing to rejoin,

“But O exalted Lady, men will give their lives for a little thing, a jewel, a worthless intrigue, the slaying of a tiger, and is his sacrifice worth such a return as yours?” she replied with calm; “Greater love hath no man than in silence to lay down his life uncheered by commendation or the joy of battle, and to him I swore fidelity. Should I change? In his death was the high heart that in life would have grown to glory—and I broke it.”

And I said:

“It is greater love to live for a woman than to die for her and this he could never have done, for his profligacy and selfishness would have swept all love to ruin,”—and she, smiling, put this by, as one who has attained in her own heart to behold the innermost secrets of love. And which of us was right I cannot now tell.

But as love rose about her like a tide her thoughts turned more and more to the Supreme, the Self-Existent,—and this love also consumed her for He wounded her heart with the august secrets of His beauty, and perceiving in vision wafts of His sweetness she sank into a deep melancholy, desiring that to which no earthly passion may attain. So in this poem she beheld Him as the Hunter of the Soul:

“I have no peace, the quarry I, a Hunter chases me,

It is Thy memory.

I turn to flee but fall: for over me He casts His snare,

His perfumed hair,

Who can escape Thy chain? no heart is free

From love of Thee.”

So passioning for the Divine she spent her days in longing, and a great wisdom came upon her, for even as her mighty father narrowed in vision, persecuting the Hindus, and breaking the very Empire against the rock of their tortured faith, so she like the sun at setting illumined all beliefs, even the lowliest, with her level rays, declaring that where any prayer is made that place is the mosque and the Kiblah.

Had that lady been Emperor it is not too much to say she had saved the Empire. Would to Allah that she had been. But He knows all.

Yet a better fate was decreed for her for she lived, exhaling love as the lily its perfume, and departed in a white peace, a gently fading light like the cresset that for a little illumines the quiet of a tomb, and this she said in dying,

“I am the daughter of a King but I have taken the path of renunciation, and this shall be my glory, as my title signifies that I am the Glory of Women.”

This she is, for in India she is remembered by all who burn in the fire of love, human or divine.

Yet, since she was a woman and therefore a creature of unreason, must I condemn her passion for the worthless prince to whom her royal life was dedicate.

And here I set down the last words that Makhfi—the Hidden One—wrote with her dying hand, and they were these—

“Yet, Makhfi, unveiled is thy secret,

Abroad all thy passion be told,

Who saw not the beauty of Yusuf

When he in the market was sold.”

and as she lived she died, lamenting that too late she had known his hidden heart.

When she was departed a poet of Persia made these verses of her: concerning the serenity of her spirit:

“Love sings to himself of love and the worlds dance to that music,

As wise snakes dance to the Charmer playing upon his pipe,

Love gazes on deep waters for ever dreaming his face.

Slay all my senses but hearing that I may immortally listen.

Calm every wave of my soul that it may mirror the Dream.”

And her father the Emperor, grieving, made her a glorious tomb of marble domed and pinnacled with gold and the tower and minars roofed with turquoise tiles. Nay, the very sand of the paths was dust of turquoises, and about it a glorious garden where her sweet spirit might gladden to dream in the moonlight, her griefs forgotten, her joys completed in the ecstasy of union with the One, the Alone.

And yet—yet—thus wrote my Princess:

“If on the Day of Reckoning

God saith, ‘In due proportion I will pay

And recompense thee for thy suffering.’

“Lo, all the joys of heaven it would outweigh.

Were all God’s gladness poured upon me, yet

He would be in my debt.”

May the lights of Allah be her testimony and make bright her tomb.

For I loved her, and pray that her memory may be fragrant when I am dust.

And very strange and secret is the heart of a woman.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS

THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS

(Salutation to the Elephant-Headed God, who is the Remover of Obstacles and the Giver of discretion, and may he enable his worshipper the Pandit Gurdit Singh to relate this story with well-chosen words and harmonious periods that so it may enchain the hearts of all.)

Of all the lands that smile upon their lover the sun, surely the land of Kashmir is the loveliest. All round that Valley of Beauty the mountains stand like the guardians of a great Queen. No harsh winds may ruffle the lakes, darkly blue as the eyes of the goddess Shri, where the lotuses dream above their mirrored images in amazement at their own divinity, for the shields of the eternal snows piercing even the heavens turn aside all tempests and only a sweet and calm sunshine makes the air milk-warm.

And because the beauty that surrounds them is absorbed by the princesses of Kashmir until they become like the slender-waisted beauties of the ancient poems and stories of India, radiant as the sun, fair as the full moon mirrored in a lake dreaming of her own beauty, so are they eagerly sought by all the Kings from North to South, and great dowries are given for them with jewels piled high like grain in harvest, and elephants and garments with beaten gold laid on them such as would dazzle the eyes of the Queens of other countries. And nothing is too much to give for their seductive beauties.

Now, at one time the King of Kashmir had a daughter, his only one,—more exquisite than dawn blushing on the snows. She had stolen the hue of her eyes from the blue of the lotus of the hidden lakes, and the delicate shaping of her face was high craftsmanship of high Gods at the work they love best. And down to the ankle rolled her midnight hair, braided and jewelled, and Love’s own honey made her mouth a world’s wonder of rose and pearl,—and the curves of her sweet body were rounded as the snowdrifts of Mount Haramoukh and as pure. And even this was not all, for what is a flower without scent and beauty without charm? But grace went beside her like an attendant, and attraction that none could resist was in her glance, and whoso escaped the lure of her eyes would assuredly fall a victim to the seduction of her sweet laughter so that only in the protection of the Gods was there safety, and it is known that even the Gods cease their vigilance where a beautiful woman is concerned and forget their divinity.

Now this Princess Amra loved above all things the gardens of her royal father, and it was her custom, forsaking the Palace, to come for days with her women to the gardens by the lake, dwelling in the Pavilion of the Painted Flowers and passing the days in singing and feasting, wandering beneath the shade of the mighty chinar trees and breathing the perfume of flowers and the coolness of the high snows.

So on a certain day she and her ladies wandered through the roses in beauty so exquisite that the flowers swayed to behold them and the very waters of the cascades delayed to kiss their feet, and as they did this there came a message from the King her father that he had betrothed her to marry the King of Jamu, and the marriage would take place in the marriage month according to the auspicious calculations of the astrologers. And hearing this, the Princess stopped in terror beside the water that falls over the ripple of cut marble, and she said to her women:

“O sorrowful day! O fears that beset my heart! I who have never seen any man save my auspicious father and brothers and the old grey-beard, the Pundit Ram Lal,—what a fate is this! What do I know of men? How shall I learn? O, my misery!”—and she sat herself beneath the shade of a great chinar tree, and became inconsolable, weeping bitterly, and her women wept with her.

So passed an hour, and at last her confidante, Lailela, a girl from Bokhara, having dried her eyes began to look about her, and she saw that with the written command of the King had come a small object folded in rose silk and bound with threads of gold, and with the insatiable curiosity of a woman she said to the weeping Princess:

“Great Lady, here is a something—I do not know what, but I guess it to be a bridal gift from his Majesty.” And the Princess took it in her hands and her ladies gathered about her as stars surround the moon, and with her slender fingers and nails like little pearls she unthreaded the knots of gold and the inner treasure was disclosed, and it was a frame of gold filagreed and set with rubies and diamond sparks, and within it the portrait of a young man, and written on the back of it: “The King of Jamu.” The artist, whose skill resembled that of the Creator, had depicted him seated on his throne of ivory inlaid with gold, and in his turban blazed that great jewel known as the Sea of Splendour, but these did not for one moment detain the eye, for he was himself the jewel of Kings, young, noble, dark of hair and eyes, with amorous lips, proud yet gentle, and a throat like the column that upholds the world, and limbs shaped for height and strength and speed. And surely had he been a water-carrier, men had said, “This is the son of a King.”

And as the Princess Amra looked she sighed and changed colour, and the last tear fell from her long lashes upon the portrait, and she dried it with her gold-bordered veil, and looked and sighed again, and lost in thought she fell into a deep silence.

And Lailela said with sympathy:

“Surely a terrible doom, O Princess! Now had the King been an old man, kind and paternal, it would but have been passing from the arms of one father to another. But a young man— O, there is much to fear, and who shall sound the deeps of their hearts?”

And the Princess slowly shook her head, not knowing what she did, still gazing at the portrait, and Lailela continued:

“Little do we all know men. But I have been told it is safer to adventure in a jungle of tigers than to take a husband knowing nothing of their wiles and tyrannies, and it is now my counsel that we should all declare before the Princess any small knowledge that has reached us, that she may not go forth utterly unarmed.”

And all the ladies looked doubtfully at one another, and the Princess smiled faintly as a moon in clouds, and said:

“Sisters, it is my command that you do as Lailela has said, for her counsel is good, and she herself shall begin, for I perceive there is knowledge behind her lips. Let all now prepare to listen, for we speak of love.”

And she laid the portrait on her knees, and Lailela with laughter in her long eyes but a great gravity of speech, told this story:

“Now, Princess, this is one of the parables that the Sheikh Ibrahim related to his daughter, the Lady Budoor, that she might be admonished. For the damsel was the temptation of the Age, with heavy hips, and brows like the new moon, and a mouth like the seal of Suleiman, so that the reason of whoso saw her was captivated by her elegance. But she spoke little, or of trivial matters, and smiled not at all, relying on her beauty, which, indeed, was the perfection of the Creator’s handiwork. May his name be exalted! And her father accosted her, saying:

“ ‘Know, O daughter, that Shah Salim had five thousand wives and concubines of perfect loveliness, with languishing looks, high-bosomed, and of equal age, a delight to beholders such as astonished the mind. But the King was wearied because of the dullness of their society and it so befell that he yawned repeatedly and his jaw became fixed with the violence of his yawns, nor could the art of the hakims unloose it. And the Queens and the concubines slapped their faces for grief, and the Emirs trembled because of the case of the King.

“ ‘Now it chanced that the King of Seljuk sent unto Shah Salim a slave girl from Tabriz, and the merchant who conducted her bore this message, written on ivory, bound with floss silk, and perfumed with ambergris: “Know, O King of the Age, that the perfume is not to be judged by the jar, nor the jewel by its weight, for the perfume is the soul of the rose, and the secret of the jewel is its fire. Receive, therefore this gift according to the measure of thy wisdom.”

“ ‘But the Shah-in-Shah, speaking with difficulty, for his jaw was held as in a vise, commanded, saying; “Enclose her with the Queens and the concubines, for they have brought me to this, and the sum of my wisdom and experience is that they are all alike, and whoso knows one, knows all. Yet, first let me behold her, since she is the gift of a King.”

“ ‘And they unveiled the damsel, and behold! she was slender as a willow branch, low-bosomed, green-eyed, and her hair was like beaten bronze, nor could she for beauty compare with the wives of the King, so that the beholders marvelled at the gift of the King of Seljuk.

“ ‘And she looked upon the King, and, seeing his case, she closed her eyes until they shone like slits of emerald and laughed aloud until the Hall of Requests echoed with her laughter, and her voice was like the flute and such as would bewilder the reason of the sages and cause the ascetic to stumble in his righteousness, and she could narrate stories like those of the Sultana Shahrazad (upon whom be the Peace!), and her effrontery was as the effrontery of the donkey-boys of Damascus. For there is none greater. Nor did she fear the Shah-in-Shah before whom all abased themselves.

“ ‘So she seated herself before the Wonder of the Age, and, casting down her eyes, the damsel related to him the true story of the Adventure of the Lady Amine and the Sage El Kooz. And the heart of the Shah was dilated and he laughed until there was no strength left in him, and the hakims thumped his back, fearing that life itself would depart from him in the violence of his laughter. And his jaw instantly relaxed. So being recovered, he commanded saying: “Bring hither the artificers of gold and let them make a chain that shall bind the waist of this slave to my wrist, for where I go she shall go, that my soul may be comforted by her narratives and the sweetness of her laughter. For this truly is a gift worthy of a king. But place guards at the doors of the others.”

“ ‘And after consideration and counsel with his Wazir he bestowed upon the Queens great gifts and returned them to their parents. And there was a great calm. And he became distracted with love for this slave and they continued in prosperity and affection until visited by the Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companions.

“ ‘Extolled be He whom the vicissitudes of time change not and who is alone distinguished by the attributes of Perfection!

“ ‘Now this is a parable, my daughter, of the secrets of the hearts of men, and I will relate others that thou mayest be admonished.’

“And the Lady Budoor answered modestly: ‘Speak on, my father, I listen.’ ”

And when Lailela had finished this story she resumed her seat, and the ladies reflected deeply, and the Princess said:

“This must undoubtedly be true. As a man no longer observes an object which he sees daily, so must it be with a man and the beauty of his wife. Clearly it is not enough to be beautiful even as a Dancer of Heaven. It is also needful to be a provoker of laughter. Would that I knew the stories of this slave . . . Sisters, have they been heard by any of you? What is beauty, when the beautiful are forsaken or die? But tell me.”

And now Vasuki, a lady of the Rajputs, stepped forward in all the insolence of beauty, swaying her hips, and rearing her head like a Queen as she came, and she began thus:

“Princess, of my heart, let none tempt you to undervalue the gift of loveliness by which even the greatest of the Gods are subjected as my story will declare. And let it be remembered that if even a man weary of his wife’s beauty—there are yet other men in the world, and what though our faith forbid marriage there are other faiths. And, if this be impossible, a woman can always be captured if so she will! And I would have you recall the story of the Rani of Mundore who being left a widow was captured by a great King and ruled him and his Kingdom. But hear my story of why Brahma, a high God of my people, has four faces in his temple.

“In the ancient days in India two evil and terrible brothers rose to kingly power. They were inseparable as the Twin Stars, the Aswins, and together they did evil mightily and in their union was their strength. Finally they formed plans to storm the lower heavens and expel the Gods and there was every reason to believe they would carry out this determination. So the Gods held a great Panchayet (council) and some said one thing, some another, and at last Brahma the Creator spoke as follows:

“ ‘Great Gods and Heavenly Ladies, in the union of these wretches is their power, because where two perfectly agree their wisdom is unconquerable. It is only because this has never been the case on earth that we are able to keep any sort of order. Now of all influences the most powerful is love. True it is their palaces are full to over-flowing with handsome women but we are still the Gods, the makers of men. Let us take for our model the Goddess of Beauty herself, and send some exquisite one on earth to distract and divide the evil kings.’

“So the flowers of heaven were brought, and the Goddess of Beauty stood unveiled and divine before them, and from the ivory of the lotus blossom they made a sweet body, and from the dark blue lotus they made two dreaming eyes, and they took the storm cloud for the glooms of her heavy lashes, and the midnight deeps for the lengths of her silken hair, and for her smile they took the sunshine and for her blush the dawn, and for her coquetry the playfulness of the kitten, and for her seductions the wiles of the serpent, and for her fidelity—but all their materials were exhausted before the necessity for this was remembered. And Lakshimi gave her instead what is invisible but omnipotent, her own charm which none has ever seen but all the Universe has felt. And when all was done great Brahma breathed life into the fair image and she arose and looked down upon her own beauty with astonishment and in a voice of crystal music she said:

“ ‘I am Tillotama.’

“And all the Gods stood confounded at their own handiwork but the Goddesses turned angrily away.

“So they commanded her to go to earth and instructed her, each mighty heart beating with agony that she should go. And she passed before the Throne of Brahma making a pradakshina, a reverential threefold circuit, about him keeping him always to the right. And he gazed passionately upon her and she made a turn to the left, and for pride he would not turn his head, but from the energy of his soul’s longing another face sprang out on the left side of his head and the eyes still followed her, and as she made her circuit this again happened at the back and still he regarded her, and at the right side also, so that wherever that loveliness went his eyes fed upon her with more passion than the moon-bird who steadfastly regards the moon all night. And, Princess, this is the undoubted reason why the image of Brahma has ever since had four faces. So she went to earth with ruin for her dower, and the two evil kings desired her and slew one another for her possession. And Saraswati, the wife of Brahma, immediately demanded that their work should be undone and the fair creature resolved again into the elements of nature lest the peace of heaven should be broken. So it was done, but Brahma retains forever his four faces.

“Therefore, Princess, if beauty thus subjugates the greatest of the Gods, what will be the effect of such beauty as your own upon the heart of the King of Jamu?”

And Amra clasping her hands, replied:

“But this is a terrible story! For if the greatest of the Gods, who has a glorious Goddess for his wife, be not faithful, what hope is in men? I grow so terrified that death itself seems preferable to marriage. Is there no comfort in any of you?”

And now, treading delicately on little bound feet, came Ying-ning, the fair Chinese maiden from Liang, who had been presented to the Princess because of her skill in embroidery and cosmetics. And she saluted humbly, and requested permission to speak:

“Princess, a great lady has last spoken and who am I? Yet because I tremble to hear her speak of any other than a husband in the love of a woman, hear me, for of all dangers the greatest is the jealousy of a husband. And this is a true story of my country.

“There was a very great artificer long, long years ago and he made an image exactly resembling a man. It was composed of wood and glue and leather, and sinews of catgut, and so great was his skill that he made even a heart that beat and set it in the breast, and the features were exquisitely painted and it resembled a great Chinese lord, noble and handsome and able to sing, move, and talk. Finally he showed it to the King of Liang who was struck dumb at such handiwork, for it was like the power of the Immortals. And he said; ‘My Household must certainly view this marvel, and there can be no objection to this course of conduct since I have satisfied myself it is but a thing of springs and leather.’

“So, on the following day, the artificer brought his image to the Pepper Chambers, being himself an aged man and in circumstances which permitted his entry. Being introduced to the presence of the King, the Queen and the ladies who rejoiced in the King’s favour, these ladies all stared with the utmost bewilderment at the handsome young man thus represented. The artificer touched its chin and it burst into a love-song most delicately sung in a mellow and manly voice. It recited a passage from the poets in praise of wine. It kow-towed before the King. But unluckily, encouraged by success, the artificer touched its heart, and with the utmost audacity it gazed upon the ladies and winking one eye, seized the hand of the loveliest, and placed a sacrilegious arm about her person, she smiling. A frenzy of passion swept over the King on seeing this. He shouted for the death of the artificer, and though the aged man in a terror instantly rent the image apart into a heap of wood and leather, he could not be appeased and the unfortunate was led out and beheaded. Furthermore, he ordered the lady who had been thus polluted to be instantly strangled because she had not shrieked on the instant as (he asserted) any virtuous woman, a stranger to such a contact, must have done. And in spite of her piteous entreaties she was slaughtered. Was this reasonable, O my Princess? But be it known to you that in love and in possession also there is no reason, and that this is the manner in which all men would act. And moreover it is their right, and it is entirely just that even the looks or dreams of a woman should be faithful to her husband and to him only.”

And Ying-ning retreated to the circle, and the Princess wrung her hands and cried:

“What then is to become of women if they are thus surrendered to the mercy of the merciless! I will entreat at my father’s feet that I may live and die a maid. And I will——”

But she could not continue for the beating of her heart, and now the little lovely gesang, Pak, from Phyong-yang in the Land of the Morning Calm, whence come all the fairest singing girls, moved trembling forward and spoke in a voice of silver, but so low that the Princess called upon her to stand at her feet that she might hear. Enclosed in a great lotus blossom she had been presented to the Princess that she might cheer her with strange dances from the Korean land, and she had clapped her hands for joy when the ivory petals fell apart disclosing the small dancer crouched within. But the women of the Morning Calm have few words and all now leaned forward to hear what this silent one might say.

“Great Lady, near my home by the Green Duck River lived long ago a Yang-ban (noble) who had a beautiful daughter named Ha. She had a slender throat on which was set a face most delicately painted and of exquisite charm, the lips resembling ripe cherries and the eyes of liquid brilliance. Many marriage enquiries were made, but her father finally made the choice of a young Yang-ban of good position named Won Kiun, and on a day of favourable omens she was borne to his house and became his wife. For five years they lived together in harmony nor did he spend his time without the screened apartments, for she could even play chess and he could converse with her. But alas! she bore no child and daily did her anguish increase, for she could hear his sighs because he had no son to perform the rites for him when his time should come. Still hoping, she delayed, but this could not last, and on a certain day she approached him saying:

“ ‘Lord of my Life, may your worthless wife speak?’

“He gave permission.

“ ‘Five years,’ said Ha, ‘have gone by and I have not fulfilled my duty. It is certainly the evil destiny of your worthless wife which has caused this. Therefore I say thus:—I will sell my pins of jade and buy a concubine for you. Accede to my humble request.’

“Won Kiun could scarcely hide his astonishment, for though this was but fulfilling a duty, still it is not common for a wife to make this offer. But he agreed instantly for he earnestly desired a son, and after so many years naturally desired also a change of companionship. Ha therefore made search and found a girl named A-pao of as much beauty as the price she could pay would fetch.

“It was then that Ha’s sorrows began. She was neglected by Won Kiun, tormented by A-pao, but enduring in silence as a wife should, she went about her work with a smile. But A-pao also failed in her duty for there was no child, and presently Won Kiun whose health had always been frail, departed to the ancestral spirits, A-pao shamelessly took her place in the house of a rich man, and Ha was left a desolate widow, and the more so because her parents and her husband’s justly despised her as a barren wife.

“But, Princess, mark what followed!

“She had placed her husband’s spirit tablet, which contained his third soul, beside her bed, and before this made her offerings of bread and wine and prayers for pardon, and one night when she had wept herself to sleep a strange thing happened. The tablet moved,—a human figure slowly emerged from it and stood on the floor, and Ha, with eyes distended with terror, saw her husband. In the well-remembered voice he said:

“ ‘I have permission from the Junior Board of the Gods of Hades to visit you as a reward for my filial merit on earth, and this in spite of your conduct in that very mistaken business of A-pao. Had I been consulted she was by no means the person I should have chosen. Yet I am come to visit you and shall do so nightly for a month.’

“The faithful Ha laid her head on his feet and sobbed for joy. What a reward! How small now did all her many sacrifices appear!

“For a month the spirit tablet nightly became her husband, and on the last day of the month he bid her an eternal farewell, and the tablet fell to the ground and broke into two pieces. With tender care she mended it, and set herself to await the birth of her son.

“In due time he was born and her cup of joy would have run over but that the most shocking rumours were spread by A-pao and her mother-in-law, and it was believed that she had grossly dishonoured the fragrant memory of her husband. Vainly she explained the facts. The only result was that the magistrate, fearing lest he might possibly destroy a child of miracle, would not himself put it to death, but commanded it should be flung to the swine. Marvellous to tell, the swine, instead of devouring it, kept the child alive by breathing warmth upon it, and it was then that, starving for food, and broken-hearted, Ha demanded a test before the assembled people. It is well known that the children of the spirits cast no shadow, and the child, before an immense crowd, with his miserable mother watching from behind a curtain, was brought into the full sunshine and held up. To the amazement and fear of all, no shadow was cast on the earth. To set the matter forever at rest the spirit tablet was then brought out and a little blood drawn from the tender arm of the child. This was spread on the tablet inhabited by the father’s spirit and it instantly sank in and disappeared, though when spread on another, it rolled off, leaving no mark. Amid loud shouts the child was pronounced the true heir of the family. Ha was immediately pardoned by the parents of Won Kiun and taken into their favour, being permitted to serve them to the end of their days, which she did with perfect devotion.

“My Princess will see from this true story the great reward that humility and patience bring to a good wife. It is not every husband who returns from the Land of the Dead to bring joy to one in such a lowly position. And though it is easy to be seen that it was his own transcendent merits which occasioned this joyful result, without the patience of Ha the nobility of her husband and his parents could scarcely have been rewarded. Therefore the duty of a woman is submission and where this exists all her follies and faults may be covered as a rich brocade covers a poor divan.”

The ladies were silent and the Princess again shook her head with tears in her eyes.

“This is a difficult case,” she said, “and in truth each seems more alarming than the last. It appears that marriage is a sea of perils great and terrible, and to escape shipwreck all but impossible. Possibly if Ha had not bought the concubine—but have none of my ladies a story of man’s fidelity? Is such a thing unknown?”

And even as she spoke a woman with a face like the dusk of the evening and eyes as its stars in clouds, broke in upon her words unmannerly but with such power that all turned to listen, forgetting even the Presence.

“My Princess, my beloved, hear now this last story, for these women have spoken of little things, but I will speak of great.

“It is known to you that when the King Rama ruled in Kosala and was thence driven for awhile into the wild woods, there went with him of her own choice and in utter devotion, his wife, young and lovely and noble, the Queen Sita. And when he entreated her to leave him because of the horror of the great woods and the wild beasts, and the evil spirits and hunger and poverty, she replied only: ‘How should I stay in the glorious city when my husband is gone? I count all evils as blessings when I am with him. Without him life is death. And if my prayer is refused I will enter the fire and await him in the Paradise to be.’

“So she followed Rama, clothed in poverty and in the wood she served him, unfaltering in piety and all wifely duty. And as the result of this nobility her beauty so grew that the very Gods, passing on their high errands would pause for joy to see her perfections.

“But on a certain day when the King was absent, the evil King of Lanka stole this Pearl, hoping to set it in his crown.

“Princess, it is not needful to tell the sorrows of Sita, the temptations she resisted nor the cruelties that could not break her pure will. Flawless in strength and brightness as the very spirit of the diamond was her faith. And when Rama at last, by the aid of the Gods, conquered the evil-doer, she sat beneath a tree, in poor array, trembling for joy to think that her head should lie once more upon her husband’s breast and her ear be gladdened with his praise for the fight she had fought alone in sorrow.

“So she stood before him and he sat upon his victorious throne and thus he spoke:

“ ‘Lady, my work is done. I have avenged my honour and the insult put upon me and my foe is broken. But mistake me not. It was for no love to you that I fought, but to uphold the dignity of my race. Your presence now hurts me as light hurts a diseased eye. Another man has seen your face unveiled. His hand has touched you. You have dwelt in his palace. You are no wife of mine. Go where you will. Do what you will. We are parted.’ ”

[And the Princess and all the ladies stared with great eyes to hear what the woman told.]

“And this before a great assembly. So, at first the Queen wept silently, because this shaft pierced her very heart. Then, drying her tears, she raised her fair head and answered:

“ ‘Is all my faithful love forgotten? It was hard for a weak woman to resist supernatural strength. Yet in all perils of death and shame I have been utterly chaste in soul and body, and no evil came near me, for in me there was none to meet it.’

“She paused and the King made no answer. And she said:

“ ‘If man deserts me the High Gods are faithful. Make ready the funeral pile. I will not live in this shame.’

“And it was done;—none daring to look in the King’s face, and he still silent. . . . So, circling her husband thrice in farewell reverence, the Queen entered the fire. And even as the flame lapped her feet, the Great Gods descended in radiant chariots plumed for the untrodden ways of the air, and the God of the Fire, who is the Purifier, took her by the hand and presented her to Rama, saying,

“ ‘Even as is my white flame purity, so is the purity of this Queen.’

“And he accepted her from the God’s hand.

“Princess, would not all the world believe that after this coming of the Gods this King would have honoured his Queen? Yet no.

“He knew her pure, but, since others whispered that another had seen her face, and who could tell?—again he dismissed her for in him as in all men, pride was mightier than love.

“And once more, Sita, standing before him and knowing this the end, made declaration of her chastity that all might hear. And suddenly transported beyond the weakness of a woman, she stood as one divine, perfect in high soul and nobility, and she said:

“ ‘Never has any thought that was not pure and chaste entered my heart, and as my heart so is my body. This have I said. And now, I beseech of the Earth, the Great Goddess, Mother of us all, that she will grant me a refuge, for I have none other.’

“And as she spoke these words, a very soft air, laden with coolness and sacred perfumes, stirred among them, and in the silence there arose from the earth a Throne and upon it the Mighty Mother of men and Gods, and she raised the Queen in her arms and set her upon the Throne that all might see her throned and glorious. And lo! for a moment she sat majestic, and the assembly hid their faces, and when they again raised them all was gone and only the common day was about them.

“But the King wept uncomforted knowing that never again by city or forest might he see that fair face, which being his own he had cast from him.”

And the woman paused, and all the ladies cried that this was the cruellest story of all, demanding that she be dismissed from the Presence as an offender. But the Princess sat submerged in thought, and the woman said softly:

“My Princess—my beloved,—the Gods rule. In all life is sorrow, whether in Kashmir or Jamu. But the Gods abide. In the hollow of Their hand lay this Queen, and in the darkness the King’s eyes could not pierce They smiled. Certainly she leaned on Their might and so walked content and what could man do to her? Fear not, my Princess. The Gods abide—whether in Kashmir or Jamu, and the earth is Their footstool. And this being so the life of a woman is her own, go where she will.”

And there fell a great silence and she who said this glided away and was gone. And presently the Princess rose in the midst of the women like a Queen, and she spoke:

“This is the truth. Fate is fate and love is love, and what we do is our own, and not the deeds of another. For that Queen I do not weep, but for the King who was blind to her glory. It is the valour of men that sends them forth to war, and it is the valour of women that puts their hearts in the hand of their husbands. And to me, since I have seen this portrait all other things are empty, and if he slay me still will I love him. For it is the High God, who is worshipped by many names, who has made the woman for the man and the man for the woman, and He abides unchanging in Unity and what He does is better than well.”

And as she spoke the colours faded on the mountains and on the lake the evening came with quiet feet.

THE WISDOM OF THE ORIENT

A DIALOGUE AND A STORY

THE WISDOM OF THE ORIENT
A DIALOGUE AND A STORY

I

“I believe you take as long to dress as I do,” she said pettishly; “I call it neither more nor less than poaching when a man looks so well turned out. And a Poet, too! Well—you can sit down; I have twenty minutes free.”