son having disguised his master and himself in the garb of travelling
traders, alighted and pitched his little tent upon a clear bit of ground
in one of the suburbs. He then proceeded to inquire for a wise woman,
wanting, he said, to have his fortune told. When the prince asked
him what this meant, he replied that elderly dames who professionally
predict the future are never above ministering to the present, and
therefore that, in such circumstances, they are the properest persons to
be consulted.
“Is this a treatise upon the subject of immorality, devil?” demanded the
King Vikram ferociously. The Baital declared that it was not, but that
he must tell his story.
The person addressed pointed to an old woman who, seated before the door
of her hut, was spinning at her wheel. Then the young men went up to her
with polite salutations and said, “Mother, we are travelling traders,
and our stock is coming after us; we have come on in advance for the
purpose of finding a place to live in. If you will give us a house, we
will remain there and pay you highly.”
The old woman, who was a physiognomist as well as a fortune-teller,
looked at the faces of the young men and liked them, because their brows
were wide, and their mouths denoted generosity. Having listened to their
words, she took pity upon them and said kindly, “This hovel is yours, my
masters, remain here as long as you please.” Then she led them into an
inner room, again welcomed them, lamented the poorness of her abode, and
begged them to lie down and rest themselves.
After some interval of time the old woman came to them once more, and
sitting down began to gossip. The minister’s son upon this asked her,
“How is it with thy family, thy relatives, and connections; and what are
thy means of subsistence?” She replied, “My son is a favourite servant
in the household of our great king Dantawat, and your slave is the
wet-nurse of the Princess Padmavati, his eldest child. From the coming
on of old age,” she added, “I dwell in this house, but the king provides
for my eating and drinking. I go once a day to see the girl, who is a
miracle of beauty and goodness, wit and accomplishments, and returning
thence, I bear my own griefs at home. [57]”
In a few days the young Vajramukut had, by his liberality, soft speech,
and good looks, made such progress in nurse Lakshmi’s affections that,
by the advice of his companion, he ventured to broach the subject ever
nearest his heart. He begged his hostess, when she went on the morrow
to visit the charming Padmavati, that she would be kind enough to slip a
bit of paper into the princess’s hand.
“Son,” she replied, delighted with the proposal--and what old woman
would not be?--“there is no need for putting off so urgent an affair
till the morrow. Get your paper ready, and I will immediately give it.”
Trembling with pleasure, the prince ran to find his friend, who was
seated in the garden reading, as usual, and told him what the old nurse
had engaged to do. He then began to debate about how he should write
his letter, to cull sentences and to weigh phrases; whether “light of my
eyes” was not too trite, and “blood of my liver” rather too forcible. At
this the minister’s son smiled, and bade the prince not trouble his head
with composition. He then drew his inkstand from his waist shawl, nibbed
a reed pen, and choosing a piece of pink and flowered paper, he wrote
upon it a few lines. He then folded it, gummed it, sketched a lotus
flower upon the outside, and handing it to the young prince, told him to
give it to their hostess, and that all would be well.
The old woman took her staff in her hand and hobbled straight to the
palace. Arrived there, she found the Raja’s daughter sitting alone in
her apartment. The maiden, seeing her nurse, immediately arose,
and making a respectful bow, led her to a seat and began the most
affectionate inquiries. After giving her blessing and sitting for
some time and chatting about indifferent matters, the nurse said,
“O daughter! in infancy I reared and nourished thee, now the Bhagwan
(Deity) has rewarded me by giving thee stature, beauty, health, and
goodness. My heart only longs to see the happiness of thy womanhood,
[58] after which I shall depart in peace. I implore thee read this
paper, given to me by the handsomest and the properest young man that my
eyes have ever seen.”
The princess, glancing at the lotus on the outside of the note, slowly
unfolded it and perused its contents, which were as follows:
1.
She was to me the pearl that clings
To sands all hid from mortal sight
Yet fit for diadems of kings,
The pure and lovely light.
2.
She was to me the gleam of sun
That breaks the gloom of wintry day
One moment shone my soul upon,
Then passed--how soon!--away.
3.
She was to me the dreams of bliss
That float the dying eyes before,
For one short hour shed happiness,
And fly to bless no more.
4.
O light, again upon me shine;
O pearl, again delight my eyes;
O dreams of bliss, again be mine!--
No! earth may not be Paradise.
I must not forget to remark, parenthetically, that the minister’s son,
in order to make these lines generally useful, had provided them with a
last stanza in triplicate. “For lovers,” he said sagely, “are either in
the optative mood, the desperative, or the exultative.” This time he had
used the optative. For the desperative he would substitute:
4.
The joys of life lie dead, lie dead,
The light of day is quenched in gloom
The spark of hope my heart hath fled
What now witholds me from the tomb
And this was the termination exultative, as he called it:
4.
O joy I the pearl is mine again,
Once more the day is bright and clear
And now ‘tis real, then ‘twas vain,
My dream of bliss--O heaven is here!
The Princess Padmavati having perused this doggrel with a contemptuous
look, tore off the first word of the last line, and said to the nurse,
angrily, “Get thee gone, O mother of Yama, [59] O unfortunate creature,
and take back this answer”--giving her the scrap of paper--“to the fool
who writes such bad verses. I wonder where he studied the humanities.
Begone, and never do such an action again!”
The old nurse, distressed at being so treated, rose up and returned
home. Vajramukut was too agitated to await her arrival, so he went to
meet her on the way. Imagine his disappointment when she gave him the
fatal word and repeated to him exactly what happened, not forgetting
to describe a single look! He felt tempted to plunge his sword into his
bosom; but Fortune interfered, and sent him to consult his confidant.
“Be not so hasty and desperate, my prince,” said the pradhan’s son,
seeing his wild grief; “you have not understood her meaning. Later in
life you will be aware of the fact that, in nine cases out of ten, a
woman’s ‘no’ is a distinct ‘yes.’ This morning’s work has been good; the
maiden asked where you learnt the humanities, which being interpreted
signifies ‘Who are you?”’
On the next day the prince disclosed his rank to old Lakshmi, who
naturally declared that she had always known it. The trust they reposed
in her made her ready to address Padmavati once more on the forbidden
subject. So she again went to the palace, and having lovingly greeted
her nursling, said to her, “The Raja’s son, whose heart thou didst
fascinate on the brim of the tank, on the fifth day of the moon, in
the light half of the month Yeth, has come to my house, and sends this
message to thee: ‘Perform what you promised;’ we have now come; and
I also tell thee that this prince is worthy of thee: just as thou art
beautiful, so is he endowed with all good qualities of mind and body.”
When Padmavati heard this speech she showed great anger, and, rubbing
sandal on her beautiful hands, she slapped the old woman’s cheeks, and
cried, “Wretch, Daina (witch)! get out of my house; did I not forbid
thee to talk such folly in my presence?”
The lover and the nurse were equally distressed at having taken the
advice of the young minister, till he explained what the crafty damsel
meant. “When she smeared the sandal on her ten fingers,” he explained,
“and struck the old woman on the face, she signified that when the
remaining ten moonlight nights shall have passed away she will meet
you in the dark.” At the same time he warned his master that to all
appearances the lady Padmavati was far too clever to make a comfortable
wife. The minister’s son especially hated talented, intellectual, and
strong-minded women; he had been heard to describe the torments of
Naglok [60] as the compulsory companionship of a polemical divine and a
learned authoress, well stricken in years and of forbidding aspect, as
such persons mostly are. Amongst womankind he admired--theoretically,
as became a philosopher--the small, plump, laughing, chattering,
unintellectual, and material-minded. And therefore--excuse the
digression, Raja Vikram--he married an old maid, tall, thin, yellow,
strictly proper, cold-mannered, a conversationist, and who prided
herself upon spirituality. But more wonderful still, after he did marry
her, he actually loved her--what an incomprehensible being is man in
these matters!
To return, however. The pradhan’s son, who detected certain symptoms of
strong-mindedness in the Princess Padmavati, advised his lord to be wise
whilst wisdom availed him. This sage counsel was, as might be guessed,
most ungraciously rejected by him for whose benefit it was intended.
Then the sensible young statesman rated himself soundly for having
broken his father’s rule touching advice, and atoned for it by blindly
forwarding the views of his master.
After the ten nights of moonlight had passed, the old nurse was again
sent to the palace with the usual message. This time Padmavati put
saffron on three of her fingers, and again left their marks on the
nurse’s cheek. The minister’s son explained that this was to crave delay
for three days, and that on the fourth the lover would have access to
her.
When the time had passed the old woman again went and inquired after her
health and well-being. The princess was as usual very wroth, and having
personally taken her nurse to the western gate, she called her “Mother
of the elephant’s trunk, [61]” and drove her out with threats of
the bastinado if she ever came back. This was reported to the young
statesman, who, after a few minutes’ consideration, said, “The
explanation of this matter is, that she has invited you to-morrow, at
nighttime, to meet her at this very gate.
“When brown shadows fell upon the face of earth, and here and there a
star spangled the pale heavens, the minister’s son called Vajramukut,
who had been engaged in adorning himself at least half that day. He
had carefully shaved his cheeks and chin; his mustachio was trimmed and
curled; he had arched his eyebrows by plucking out with tweezers
the fine hairs around them; he had trained his curly musk-coloured
love-locks to hang gracefully down his face; he had drawn broad lines of
antimony along his eyelids, a most brilliant sectarian mark was affixed
to his forehead, the colour of his lips had been heightened by chewing
betel-nut--
“One would imagine that you are talking of a silly girl, not of a
prince, fiend!” interrupted Vikram, who did not wish his son to hear
what he called these fopperies and frivolities.
--and whitened his neck by having it shaved (continued the Baital,
speaking quickly, as if determined not to be interrupted), and reddened
the tips of his ears by squeezing them, and made his teeth shine by
rubbing copper powder into the roots, and set off the delicacy of his
fingers by staining the tips with henna. He had not been less careful
with his dress: he wore a well-arranged turband, which had taken him at
least two hours to bind, and a rich suit of brown stuff chosen for the
adventure he was about to attempt, and he hung about his person a number
of various weapons, so as to appear a hero--which young damsels admire.
Vajramukut asked his friend how he looked, and smiled happily when the
other replied “Admirable!” His happiness was so great that he feared
it might not last, and he asked the minister’s son how best to conduct
himself?
“As a conqueror, my prince!” answered that astute young man, “if it so
be that you would be one. When you wish to win a woman, always impose
upon her. Tell her that you are her master, and she will forthwith
believe herself to be your servant. Inform her that she loves you, and
forthwith she will adore you. Show her that you care nothing for her,
and she will think of nothing but you. Prove to her by your demeanour
that you consider her a slave, and she will become your pariah. But
above all things--excuse me if I repeat myself too often--beware of the
fatal virtue which men call modesty and women sheepishness. Recollect
the trouble it has given us, and the danger which we have incurred:
all this might have been managed at a tank within fifteen miles of your
royal father’s palace. And allow me to say that you may still thank your
stars: in love a lost opportunity is seldom if ever recovered. The time
to woo a woman is the moment you meet her, before she has had time to
think; allow her the use of reflection and she may escape the net. And
after avoiding the rock of Modesty, fall not, I conjure you, into the
gulf of Security. I fear the lady Padmavati, she is too clever and too
prudent. When damsels of her age draw the sword of Love, they throw away
the scabbard of Precaution. But you yawn--I weary you--it is time for us
to move.”
Two watches of the night had passed, and there was profound stillness on
earth. The young men then walked quietly through the shadows, till they
reached the western gate of the palace, and found the wicket ajar. The
minister’s son peeped in and saw the porter dozing, stately as a Brahman
deep in the Vedas, and behind him stood a veiled woman seemingly waiting
for somebody. He then returned on tiptoe to the place where he had left
his master, and with a parting caution against modesty and security,
bade him fearlessly glide through the wicket. Then having stayed a short
time at the gate listening with anxious ear, he went back to the old
woman’s house.
Vajramukut penetrating to the staircase, felt his hand grasped by the
veiled figure, who motioning him to tread lightly, led him quickly
forwards. They passed under several arches, through dim passages and
dark doorways, till at last running up a flight of stone steps they
reached the apartments of the princess.
Vajramukut was nearly fainting as the flood of splendour broke upon him.
Recovering himself he gazed around the rooms, and presently a tumult of
delight invaded his soul, and his body bristled with joy. [62] The scene
was that of fairyland. Golden censers exhaled the most costly perfumes,
and gemmed vases bore the most beautiful flowers; silver lamps
containing fragrant oil illuminated doors whose panels were wonderfully
decorated, and walls adorned with pictures in which such figures were
formed that on seeing them the beholder was enchanted. On one side of
the room stood a bed of flowers and a couch covered with brocade of
gold, and strewed with freshly-culled jasmine flowers. On the other
side, arranged in proper order, were attar holders, betel-boxes,
rose-water bottles, trays, and silver cases with four partitions for
essences compounded of rose leaves, sugar, and spices, prepared sandal
wood, saffron, and pods of musk. Scattered about a stuccoed floor white
as crystal, were coloured caddies of exquisite confections, and in
others sweetmeats of various kinds.[63] Female attendants clothed in
dresses of various colours were standing each according to her rank,
with hands respectfully joined. Some were reading plays and beautiful
poems, others danced and others performed with glittering fingers and
flashing arms on various instruments--the ivory lute, the ebony pipe
and the silver kettledrum. In short, all the means and appliances of
pleasure and enjoyment were there; and any description of the appearance
of the apartments, which were the wonder of the age, is impossible.
Then another veiled figure, the beautiful Princess Padmavati, came up
and disclosed herself, and dazzled the eyes of her delighted Vajramukut.
She led him into an alcove, made him sit down, rubbed sandal powder upon
his body, hung a garland of jasmine flowers round his neck, sprinkled
rose-water over his dress, and began to wave over his head a fan of
peacock feathers with a golden handle.
Said the prince, who despite all efforts could not entirely shake off
his unhappy habit of being modest, “Those very delicate hands of yours
are not fit to ply the pankha.[64] Why do you take so much trouble? I
am cool and refreshed by the sight of you. Do give the fan to me and sit
down.”
“Nay, great king!” replied Padmavati, with the most fascinating of
smiles, “you have taken so much trouble for my sake in coming here, it
is right that I perform service for you.”
Upon which her favourite slave, taking the pankha from the hand of the
princess, exclaimed, “This is my duty. I will perform the service; do
you two enjoy yourselves!”
The lovers then began to chew betel, which, by the bye, they disposed of
in little agate boxes which they drew from their pockets, and they were
soon engaged in the tenderest conversation.
Here the Baital paused for a while, probably to take breath. Then he
resumed his tale as follows:
In the meantime, it became dawn; the princess concealed him; and when
night returned they again engaged in the same innocent pleasures.
Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can, the youth’s
felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply enamoured, barely
a score of years old, and he had been strictly brought up by serious
parents. He therefore resigned himself entirely to the siren for whom he
willingly forgot the world, and he wondered at his good fortune, which
had thrown in his way a conquest richer than all the mines of Meru.[65]
He could not sufficiently admire his Padmavati’s grace, beauty, bright
wit, and numberless accomplishments. Every morning, for vanity’s sake,
he learned from her a little useless knowledge in verse as well as
prose, for instance, the saying of the poet--
Enjoy the present hour, ‘tis thine; be this, O man, thy law;
Who e’er resew the yester? Who the morrow e’er foresaw?
And this highly philosophical axiom--
Eat, drink, and love--the rest’s not worth a fillip.
“By means of which he hoped, Raja Vikram!” said the demon, not heeding
his royal carrier’s “ughs” and “poohs,” “to become in course of time
almost as clever as his mistress.”
Padmavati, being, as you have seen, a maiden of superior mind, was
naturally more smitten by her lover’s dulness than by any other of his
qualities; she adored it, it was such a contrast to herself.[66] At
first she did what many clever women do--she invested him with the
brightness of her own imagination. Still water, she pondered, runs deep;
certainly under this disguise must lurk a brilliant fancy, a penetrating
but a mature and ready judgment--are they not written by nature’s hand
on that broad high brow? With such lovely mustachios can he be aught but
generous, noble-minded, magnanimous? Can such eyes belong to any but a
hero? And she fed the delusion. She would smile upon him with intense
fondness, when, after wasting hours over a few lines of poetry, he
would misplace all the adjectives and barbarously entreat the metre.
She laughed with gratification, when, excited by the bright sayings that
fell from her lips, the youth put forth some platitude, dim as the lamp
in the expiring fire-fly. When he slipped in grammar she saw malice
under it, when he retailed a borrowed jest she called it a good one, and
when he used--as princes sometimes will--bad language, she discovered in
it a charming simplicity.
At first she suspected that the stratagems which had won her heart were
the results of a deep-laid plot proceeding from her lover. But clever
women are apt to be rarely sharp-sighted in every matter which concerns
themselves. She frequently determined that a third was in the secret.
She therefore made no allusion to it. Before long the enamoured
Vajramukut had told her everything, beginning with the diatribe against
love pronounced by the minister’s son, and ending with the solemn
warning that she, the pretty princess, would some day or other play her
husband a foul trick.
“If I do not revenge myself upon him,” thought the beautiful Padmavati,
smiling like an angel as she listened to the youth’s confidence, “may I
become a gardener’s ass in the next birth!”
Having thus registered a vow, she broke silence, and praised to the
skies the young pradhan’s wisdom and sagacity; professed herself ready
from gratitude to become his slave, and only hoped that one day or
other she might meet that true friend by whose skill her soul had been
gratified in its dearest desire. “Only,” she concluded, “I am convinced
that now my Vajramukut knows every corner of his little Padmavati’s
heart, he will never expect her to do anything but love, admire, adore
and kiss him!” Then suiting the action to the word, she convinced him
that the young minister had for once been too crabbed and cynic in his
philosophy.
But after the lapse of a month Vajramukut, who had eaten and drunk and
slept a great deal too much, and who had not once hunted, became bilious
in body and in mind melancholic. His face turned yellow, and so did
the whites of his eyes; he yawned, as liver patients generally do,
complained occasionally of sick headaches, and lost his appetite:
he became restless and anxious, and once when alone at night he thus
thought aloud: “I have given up country, throne, home, and everything
else, but the friend by means of whom this happiness was obtained I
have not seen for the long length of thirty days. What will he say to
himself, and how can I know what has happened to him?”
In this state of things he was sitting, and in the meantime the
beautiful princess arrived. She saw through the matter, and lost not a
moment in entering upon it. She began by expressing her astonishment at
her lover’s fickleness and fondness for change, and when he was ready
to wax wroth, and quoted the words of the sage, “A barren wife may be
superseded by another in the eighth year; she whose children all die, in
the tenth; she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh; she
who scolds, without delay,” thinking that she alluded to his love, she
smoothed his temper by explaining that she referred to his forgetting
his friend. “How is it possible, O my soul,” she asked with the softest
of voices, that thou canst happiness here whilst thy heart is wandering
there? Why didst thou conceal this from me, O astute one? Was it for
fear of distressing me? Think better of thy wife than to suppose that
she would ever separate thee from one to whom we both owe so much!
After this Padmavati advised, nay ordered, her lover to go forth that
night, and not to return till his mind was quite at ease, and she begged
him to take a few sweetmeats and other trifles as a little token of her
admiration and regard for the clever young man of whom she had heard so
much.
Vajramukut embraced her with a transport of gratitude, which so inflamed
her anger, that fearing lest the cloak of concealment might fall from
her countenance, she went away hurriedly to find the greatest delicacies
which her comfit boxes contained. Presently she returned, carrying a bag
of sweetmeats of every kind for her lover, and as he rose up to depart,
she put into his hand a little parcel of sugar-plums especially intended
for the friend; they were made up with her own delicate fingers, and
they would please, she flattered herself, even his discriminating
palate.
The young prince, after enduring a number of farewell embraces and
hopings for a speedy return, and last words ever beginning again,
passed safely through the palace gate, and with a relieved aspect walked
briskly to the house of the old nurse. Although it was midnight his
friend was still sitting on his mat.