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