And I listened, so utterly confounded by the very simplicity of her
apology, which overturned all my accusations, and put me in the wrong,
that I stood in silence, unable to find anything to say. And in my
stupefaction, I began to laugh. And I said: Ha! Nectar when she turns
towards thee: poison when she turns away! Hast thou never heard the
Queen's verse? And she said: What! wilt thou actually lay on me the
burden of refuting the silly slander of a rhyme, circulated by little
rascals merely for want of something else to say? Can I help what they
say, or shall I even stoop to listen when they say it, who will say
anything of queens, without shame for the envious venom of their own
base insignificance, knowing all the time absolutely nothing, but
making mere noise, like frogs all croaking together in a marsh? Or if
I must absolutely answer, in spite of my disdain, how can I prevent
any lover, such as thyself, from persuading himself of what he wishes
to believe? For all of them resemble thee, behaving like unreasonable
bulls, the very moment that they see me, and pestering me like flies,
to my torment, and yet would blame me for driving them away. And every
one of them, exactly like thee, imagines me his own, for no reason
that I am ever able to discover, although I tell them all, exactly as
I told thee, that I belong to Narasinha.
And I said in wrath: I will slice off the head of Narasinha, by and
by, as I have done already for some of his tools. And I will not be
the plaything of a moment, to be cast aside the next. I have lost a
kingdom for thy sake, and will have thee to repay me, whether thou
wilt or no. And she said with a smile: Thou art angry, and talking
nonsense in thy anger, as angry men will. Dost thou not see that thou
art bereft of thy senses? For, kingdom or no kingdom, how canst thou
be so silly as to propose to force me, willy nilly, to love thee when
I do not love? If I loved thee, I should say so, and all force would
be superfluous: if not, it would be not only useless, but injurious to
thy own cause, seeing that the more thou forcest, the less wilt thou
obtain: nay, whereas now thou art indifferent, thou wilt bring it
about that I shall hate thee in the end, as I am beginning to do a
very little even now. And then it will be worse for thee in every way.
For thou dost not seem ever to remember that I am, after all, not only
a woman, but a queen.
And I looked at her as she spoke, saying to myself: She is wrong, for
nobody looking at her ever could forget it, even for a moment, just
because, like the grace of a lily, it is forgotten by herself, and she
would still be a queen, even if she were not a queen at all. And she
looks at me, notwithstanding the biting reproof in her words, with
exactly the same intoxicating and caressing sweetness, as if I were
still a dear friend with whom she were unwilling to quarrel. And I
gazed at her, yearning towards her with every fibre of my soul, and
yet exasperated almost beyond endurance at the thought that she was
keeping me like a stranger at a distance from her heart, in order to
preserve it for another. And after a while, I said slowly: If thy
affection is not to be given to me, it shall never be given to anybody
else. And she said, as if with curiosity: Thou art surely mad. For how
canst thou prevent any other from following thy own example, and doing
just what thou hast done thyself, losing thy reason at the sight of
me, as all men always do? Dost thou not see that my power to excite
affection is far greater than thine to prevent it? And I said: It
would be very very easy for me to prevent all others from ever loving
thee again.
And she looked at me with eyes, in whose unruffled calm there was not
even the faintest shadow of any fear. And she said quietly: I
understand thee very well, and yet for all that I tell thee thou art
raving, and thou art, without knowing it, very like the very man thou
hatest most, Narasinha. For often he has said to me the very same
thing that thou art saying now: and yet, though according to thee, the
thing is very easy, he finds it so difficult as to be utterly
impossible. For he cannot endure to do without me, even in a dream,
and cannot therefore bring himself to slay me, as he is constantly
threatening to do, knowing very well that he might rather slay
himself, since once I am gone, he will never find another me, to put
in my place. And this is true, even though I cannot understand it:
just as I cannot understand what it is that makes me indispensable to
thee or to anybody else. For I know it only by its effect. And so I am
my own protection, against all his threats, or thine. And if I had
thought otherwise, what could have been easier, since thou talkest of
easy things, than to have summoned my attendants and bade them put
thee out, when it may be, thy life would have paid for thy marvellous
impertinence, in intruding unbidden, as perhaps it still may, without
any instigation of my own at all? Thou dost not seem to understand
that all this while thy own life is in far greater danger than mine;
since thou hast done a thing that will not be forgiven thee by others,
though I myself have not only forgiven thee, but well understanding
the fiery goad that drove thee into my presence, have treated thee,
for yet once more, with kindness and condescension far beyond any
deserts of thine. And for all return, thou art threatening even to
slay me. But I am destitute of fear.
And she stood before me in the moonlight, that turned her as it clung
to all her limbs into a thing beautiful beyond all earthly dreams,
absolutely fearless, and with a dignity whose royalty was not only
that of a queen, but of loveliness laughing to scorn all possible
comparison, seeming to say without the need of any words: Art thou
brave enough, and fool enough, to lay rude hands on such a thing as I
am, or even if thy folly were equal to thy courage, canst thou find it
in thy heart to think of violence offered to it, by thyself or any
other, even in a dream? And my heart burned, for sheer adoration, and
yet strange! it began to sink at the very same time, as I gazed at
her, looking at me quietly in return. For there was something
absolutely unanswerable, not only in herself, but in everything she
said, and yet her very simplicity that overwhelmed me with its soft
irrefutable sweetness increased the torture of my hopeless admiration
every time she spoke. And suddenly I struck my hands together in
despair. And I exclaimed: Ah! thou marvel of a woman and a queen, I am
conquered by thee, and I am on the very verge of falling at thy feet
in a passion of tears, craving thy forgiveness as a criminal, so
bewildering is the double spell of thy beauty and thy intelligence,
and the candour of thy strange soul, which drives me mad with its
inexplicable charm. But what does it matter to me, hate me or love me,
if I am never to see thee any more? Aye! Narasinha may not find it in
him to slay thee for thy wayward and beautiful independence, but then
he can see thee every day, exactly as he chooses: whereas I, once I go
away this night, am outcast: for well I understand that thou or he
will see to it that I never come again. Dost thou imagine I can bear
it? And again I struck my hands together with a cry. And I exclaimed:
Curse on my birth, and the crimes of the births that went before it,
that I was not born Narasinha! for he has cut me from my happiness,
and stolen from me the very fruit of being born at all!
And in my frenzy, I seized her in my arms once more, desperately
clutching, as it were, at the bliss escaping from my reach in her form.
And I said to her, as I held her tight: Tell me, had Narasinha never
lived, could I have been to thee what he is now? And she extricated
herself, very gently, from my arms, and stood back, looking at me with
meditative eyes; and after a while, she said doubtfully, yet with a
little smile on her lips: Perhaps. But I am not sure. Thou art a little
over-bearing. And yet I like thee, somehow, but I love thee not at all.
And yet again, it may be, that had I met thee sooner, I might have
looked at thee with other eyes. And I bear thee no malice, if indeed
thou art a criminal, for any of thy crimes, since I was their occasion.
But what after all is the use of supposition as to what might be were
Narasinha away, since as it is, he is here, an obstacle in the way, not
to be surmounted by any means whatever? And so, thy case is hopeless.
And I tried to make thee understand, in vain: since thou wilt not take
denial or listen to any reason. And I went to such a length, out of
kindness, as to give thee one single evening, packed as full as it could
hold with all the sweetness I could think of, giving myself up, so to
say, to the insatiable thirst of thy arms, and thy craving desire to be
caressed and kissed by only me, and embodying thy dream, and turning
myself into an instrument of that nectar of feminine intoxication for
which thou wert ready to die, and putting myself without reserve
absolutely at thy disposal, only to find my kindness miserably requited
by ingratitude and undeserved reproaches, and even menaces and threats.
And as I said, to-night, when by underhand contrivance thou didst force
thyself upon me, I never punished thee at all, as many another queen
might do, but took pity on thy desolation and forgave and overlooked all
thy insolence, without being in the very least deceived by thy fustian
beginning, which I easily discerned to be a _ruse_, to enable thee
perhaps to steal back into my favour, all founded on a misinterpretation
of the woman that I am. For had I really been what people say, and what,
listening to them, thou didst imagine me, thy foolish plan might perhaps
have been successful, but I am very different indeed. And yet, even so,
thy part was played so poorly, that it failed almost as soon as it
began, since it needed but a touch of my finger to make thee drop thy
mask, and reveal thyself to be, what all the time I knew thee, a lover
in the depths of despair. For love is very hard to hide, and thou
couldst scarcely hope to deceive even those who are very easy to
deceive, as I am not. And as I watched thy clumsy effort, sitting as it
did so ill on one so simple and direct as thou art, I could not prevent
my compassion from mixing with a very little laughter, remembering the
ass in the Panchatantra, who clothed him in a lion's skin, forgetting
that his ears betrayed him, to say nothing of his voice. And now for the
second time I have given thee something that I would have refused thee
altogether, had caresses of compassion been any argument of love. But
understand well, that there will be no third opportunity: for this is
thy farewell. Go as thou hast come, for I will not attempt to penetrate
thy secret, nor have thy footsteps dogged.