stood looking at her for a moment, and then he said: Sweet Blue-eyes,
and art thou not afraid of me? And she looked at him enquiringly, with
no shadow of suspicion, and said: Of what should I be afraid? For art
thou not a man, and which of the Creator's creatures injures its own
kind? And the King gazed into her soul, through the window of her
clear and smiling eyes, and again he laughed aloud for sheer delight.
And he said to himself: Ha! exquisite is her intoxicating simplicity,
in that she does not know, that man alone is the exception to her rule.
And then he said: Sweet forest flower, what if I were tempted to pluck
thee, and carry thee away with me on my horse? And yet, fear nothing:
for thou art very right, and I am, of all the Creator's creatures, the
one who would be most loth to do thee harm. And men were made strong
by the Creator for this very reason, to guard such wonderful weak
things as thee. And he said to himself: Now, let my followers only not
find me till the evening, and by the favour of the Deity, I will win
the trust of this bewitching maiden, and get her to come away with me.
Or if not, I will stay in the wood with her for ever, becoming for her
sake like one of these forest trees, rooted to the spot.
And then he took his horse, and tied him to the tree. And then they
went together and sat down upon the moss-grown steps that ran down into
the river: he on one, and she on another, just below.
[1] The Hindoo Aphrodite.
[2] The Kámalátá is commonly described as red: this was perhaps some
kind of Ipomæa, allied to the great white moon-flower of Ceylon.
[3] An "old _shikarri_" told me, that he saw on one occasion a panther
stalking a goat. As soon as they saw each other, they both stood
stock-still, so long, that at last the goat concluded his panther was a
mere illusion, and recommenced his dinner, browsing with unruffled
mind. He would have paid dear for his simplicity, had not his crafty
stalker been this time stalked himself.
[4] These ancient forest hermits, who lived alone in jungle, doing
penance and eating nothing, are one of the conventions of Hindoo fairy
stories. Such a one, like the mediæval saint, _a bundle of bones whose
breath corrupts the world before his death_, generally has a daughter,
to whose rare beauty he forms the contrast: that sharp, fierce
contrast, which is the essence of the East, like life and death.
[5] _Abalá_, "_weak_," "_without strength_," is a common Sanskrit word
for a woman, _Vas infirmius_.
[6] Indra is represented as jealous of all ascetics, lest they should
reach his total of _a century of sacrifices_ (_Shatahratu_). But his
battle with Raghu on this head ended in a compromise (_vide
Raghuwanshä_, canto iii.).
III
PURUSHA AND PRAKRITI
And then, for a little while, he sat in silence, looking now at the
river, and now at her. But she gazed at him with great eyes that never
left him for a moment, and saw nothing but himself. And suddenly he
said to her: Blue-eyes, Blue-eyes, how long is it, since I met thee in
the wood? Then she said: It is but a single moment. Then he said:
Thou art utterly mistaken: it is more than many thousand years. And as
she looked at him in wonder, he exclaimed: Ha! there it is again, and O
how beautiful thou art! O thine eyes are full of wonder and my soul is
full of joy. Dear child, see, yonder is the river, flowing as it has
been flowing ever since it first began; and here am I, to thee the
first and only man, for thou hast never seen another, and there art
thou, for me the only woman, and her very type and soul. And like the
ancient Soul of Man,[1] I have been wandering about, forlorn and
wretched and lonely in the dark without thee, and now at last I have
found in thee my Prakriti, since thou art the very spirit of the beauty
of this wood, incarnate in a woman's lovely form. And as I look at
thee, laughter seems to fill my soul, for joy that I have found thee,
and I feel as if, like thee, I had suddenly become a child, whereas
before I was a man. And all this has come about in the moment since we
met, a moment which is like a door, opening on one life, and closing on
another, and it resembles the beginning and the end.
Then she said: I do not understand thee: yet speak on, without
stopping: for I could look at thee and listen to thy voice, for ever.
And the King said: Blue-eyes, if thou dost not understand, no matter:
and possibly I am speaking at random words without a meaning, for thy
great eyes deprive me of my reason, and I know not very well what I
say. But now it is thy turn. And tell me, what dost thou do with
thyself alone in this empty wood? Hast thou companions other than
myself? Then she said: I have for companions the deer of the forest,
and the parrots that live in this great tree, and the peacock that thou
seest yonder on the temple wall, and the crows that come to eat the
daily offering, and the flowers which I water and wear woven in my
hair. And I have many things to do. For sometimes I ramble in the
wood, and hunt for flowers, and watch the monkeys and the squirrels
that play in the trees: and when I am tired, I sit still, playing with
my hair, and rolling and unrolling it, for it is longer than I am
myself and a trouble and a hindrance to me, till I knot it up thus out
of the way on the top of my head, like my father's.[2] And sometimes I
go and see my father, but I am afraid of him, for though his body is
there, his soul is almost always absent from the body. And sometimes I
sit by the river, when the wind is still, and watch in its mirror the
clouds that float in the blue sky far below, like the swans upon its
wave. And the river itself is a friend to me, for every day I bathe in
it, and I often sit and wonder whence it comes and where it goes, and
look to see what it carries down: and in the rainy season it changes,
and grows red and angry, and murmurs and chafes, and swells till it
reaches to the very foot of the tree. And sometimes when the moon is
full, I hide in the hollow trees at night;, and peep out at the
elephants as they wander down to drink. And the King said: But do the
other animals not molest thee? Then she said: Nay, for they dare not:
for they all know my father well, who understands their language, and
has warned them. And they fear him, lest he should curse them if they
harmed me, and keep them from ever rising up into humanity, being
prisoned for ever by the power of his curse in the dungeon of their
creeping[3] bodies. And the King said, with emphasis: Aye! they who
should injure thee would indeed deserve to be immured for all eternity
in the lowest of all living forms. And I thank thy excellent old
father for preserving thee under the shadow of his awful curse. And
yet, for all this, surely thy life was lonely? Didst thou never long
for a companion of thine own kind, such a playfellow, for instance, as
myself?
Then she said: Though I knew it not before, yet now that thou art come,
I see that I was lonely. For often I used to watch myself reflected in
the water, and talk to my image, and wish that it could answer me. And
sometimes in the moonlight I would play with my shadow, and wish, oh!
so much, that it could come to life. And often I used to long, not
knowing what I wanted; but now I am very sure that it was thou. And
when I look at thee, and hear thy voice, I cannot understand how I
could have lived without thee. For thou art like another self, made
visible in a human form: and yet thou art other, and more than that
first self, which is I.
And the King gazed at her, with fire in his veins. And he said to
himself: She is innocence itself, in a virgin form of matchless and
incomparable beauty, and speaks without understanding the meaning of
her own words. For love lies hiding, lurking in her soul, and yet she
does not know it. And yet, though she does not, I know well, and only
too well, now, what it is to be in love: for she burns my heart like a
flame, all the more, that she is utterly unconscious of the power of
her own beauty. And then he said: Blue-eyes, canst thou tell me this?
Say, wouldst thou rather that I were in very truth the double of
thyself, like thy image in the water, a woman, and not a man? And she
answered, without hesitation: Nay, it is better as it is. And the King
trembled with joy. And he said: Yet why? Then she pondered for a
while, and then she said: I cannot tell. And yet I feel, that I would
rather have thee different from myself than the same; and yet I know
not why. But what does it matter, why? since it is better as it is.
And the King said with emotion: Sweet, thou art right. Aye! it is far
better, and it does not matter why.
And as he spoke, there came a murmur, and a rushing sound in the air.
And he looked up in terror, and listened, and exclaimed: Ah! what is
that? Then she said: It is nothing but the sighing of the wind in the
hollows of the young bamboos.
[1] Purusha and Prakriti answer, in a sense, to our Adam and Eve: as
the Germans would say, the _Ur-mensch_ and _Ur-weib_ of the world.
[2] Ascetics wear their hair twisted in a knot, in imitation of the
prince of them all, Maheshwara.
[3] When Ovid contrasted the _os sublime_ of man with that of the
animals, he gave expression to the idea that underlies the curious
Sanskrit term for the brute-creation, the horizontal-goers
(_tiryag-játi_).
IV
BUBBLES
And the King sighed also, with relief: for he feared that his followers
had found him in the wood. And then he said: Blue-eyes, hast thou a
name? Then she said: I have only the name which was my mother's. And
the King said: What was that? Then she said: Long ago, when my father
first saw my mother in the wood, she was standing by a bush, which had
just burst into blossom all over, as if by the touch of her foot.[1]
And the bees were humming and bustling eagerly all about it and her, as
if they wished to kiss her, and my father saw it, and he called her by
a name of his own, that has come by inheritance also to me. For my
father has never called me anything else. And the King said: And what
then was the name? And she said: Alichumbitá.[2] And the King clapped
his hands, and exclaimed: Certainly, thy father is admirable, and thy
name appropriate. And sure I am, that there must be more than the name
of relationship between that happy bush and thee. And I am tempted to
believe that thy story of an Apsaras was false, and that thou hadst for
a mother no other than the very indwelling spirit of that
sweetly-scented, bee-haunted bush. Then she said: Nay, my mother was
an Apsaras. And the King exclaimed: How shall I believe thee? For
already I am beginning to doubt whether thou ever hadst either mother
or father, and wert not rather directly compounded by the Deity himself
in the form of a bee, going from flower to flower, and culling thy
composition out of every flower's fragrant essence and every blossom's
painted bloom. And she said laughing: And what then was thy
composition? And the King looked at her joyously, and said: The Deity
was thy creator, and thou art mine. For I never lived until this
moment, and this is all thy doing. Thou hast found me like an empty
shell, and filled me with colour and emotion and the salt of beauty and
the sound of laughter and the tossing to and fro of the waves of
pleasure and delight. Now put me to thy ear, and I shall echo like the
sea. Then she said: Once more, I do not understand. And the King
said: O ocean, no matter. But thy shell must murmur, being full of
thee, whether it will or no. And yet, this at least now thou dost
surely understand, that I was right, and that ages have elapsed, since
we met each other a little while ago in the wood. For I have utterly
forgotten every fragment of my life that went before, and as I said, I
have begun to live, only since I saw thy face. And thou hast
discovered that thy life in the wood was very lonely till I came. And
it is as though we had both been sleeping, and had just waked up. And
now we are playfellows, and I will be King, and thou shall be Queen.
Or hast thou never heard of kings and queens? Then she said: Nay, I
have heard. For formerly, before my father became so utterly devoted
to asceticism, he used to tell me stories. And in almost every story,
there was a king and queen. Then the King said: And if then I were
king, wouldst thou come away with me and be my queen? And she laughed,
and said: But what sort of queen should I be, that know nothing of the
duties and behaviour of a queen?
Then he said: Sweet little Queen, although thou dost not know it, thy
qualifications for the post of queen are such that they could not be
surpassed. And the duties are easy to be learned, and the pleasures
more than thou couldst dream. Only come with me, and I will show thee
what they are. Or if thou wilt, I will draw thee a picture in the air,
and hold it up before thee, to show thee as in a mirror thy life as a
queen, and give thee a foretaste of its nectar. Hast thou never
watched the bubbles on the surface of the stream? Dost thou not know
how every bubble is like a little heaven, and glows for a moment with
every colour of the sky, and bursts: but the sky remains? So is it
with my picture. For like a bubble, it will burst as soon as painted,
being only words: but the heaven which it shows thee in its mirror
shall be thine, as long as life endures.
Then she said: Draw, then, thy picture, and let me see thy heaven. And
she settled herself to listen, leaning her cheek upon her hand, and
looking at the King so sagely that he shook with agitation, so intense
was his desire to take her in his arms. And he exclaimed: Blue eyes,
come and be my Queen, and I will put thee in a palace, and build it for
thee seven stories high, of ebony and sandalwood, and of silver and of
gold. O come and be my Queen, and thou shalt walk on pavements more
worthy of thy little feet than this rough ground, on marble of many
colours, and on floors of precious stones. Only be my Queen, and I
will strip thee of thy bark, and wrap thee in silky webs and tissues
coloured like the rainbow, till like the moon behind a filmy cloud, thy
symmetry shall borrow beauty from tell-tale veils of gossamer and
envelopes of woven gauze. Ah! come with me and be my little Queen, and
I will load thy neck and arms with jewels, and thou shall play with
heaps of pearl, and coral, and all the riches of the sea. Aye,
shouldst thou prick thy finger, I will mend it with a ruby, and
shouldst thou drop a tear, I will redeem it with a diamond, and try in
vain to match, with turquoise or lapis-lazuli or opal, the colour of
thine eyes. Ah! come, and slaves shall serve my dainty Queen with food
on golden plates, and snow cold drinks in crystal cups, and when thou
wilt, pour music in thy little ear. And elephants shall carry thee
about, or thou shall ride on horses, or float on silent pools starred
like the sky with a multitude of lotuses, or lie on couches softer than
a flower, fanned in the heat of noon with scented leaves, or listening
at midnight to the moonstones, oozing as they swing in the window's
trellised frames. Ah! Blue-eyes, come and be my Queen, for I cannot
do without thee, and all that I have said is nothing, for it is only
the casket for thy soul. For I will be there, and serve thee all day
long upon my knees. Ah! I will take thy soul, and steep it in elixir,
and drown it in the perfume and the fragrance of stories and of dreams,
and dye it with the colour strained from the subtle essences of far-off
lakes of passion and emotion, lying in the distant land beyond the blue
horizon where the earth and heaven meet. Aye! I would turn the three
worlds upside down, only to be near thee, and watch the shadow of the
pleasures I would find there reflected in thine eyes, O thou naïvest
and most exquisite of queens.
And she watched him as he spoke, and when he stopped, she continued to
look at him in silence. And then to his amazement, she dropped her
eyes, and the colour rose a very little in her cheek, that was
overshadowed by her long soft lashes, and she said: Nay, thou art only
laughing at me, knowing my inexperience. And as thou saidst, thy words
are only bubbles, beautiful, and bursting as they jostle one another,
and delusive. Nor is this the kind of queen that I would be. And the
King said, with curiosity: And what then, O maiden difficult to please,
is thy conception of a queen? And she waited for a moment, and she
said, keeping her eyes fixed upon the ground: Once my father told me of
a queen very different from thine. And I cannot tell thee the story as
he told it, for I am not a _pundit_, as is he. But he told me of a
king, who was set upon by enemies and driven from his throne. And when
all the world abandoned him, a single friend remained to him, and that
one was his queen: who followed him in exile, and lived with him in
poverty, and wandered through the world behind him like his shadow,
enjoying never one of the pleasures thou hast mentioned, but sharing
all his evil fortune, a pleasure infinitely greater than them all. And
when he died, she would not stay behind him, but followed him through
the fire, into the other world.
[1] There is a beautiful Indian idea, that the foot of a pretty woman
will cause a particular tree (I cannot recollect which) to break into
blossom.
[2] "_Kissed by the bees._" (Note, that the third syllable rhymes, not
with crumb, but with room, pronounced rather short.)
V
A PAINTED LADY
And the King listened with amazement, and when she ended, he looked at
her with eyes that glistened, and a heart that swelled towards her as
she sat with downcast eyes, as if ashamed of her words, before him on
the ground. And he struck his hands together, and exclaimed to
himself: Ha! very wonderful is the way of the Creator, who teaches all
his creatures the law of their behaviour, without the means of any
master. For this mud-born[1] pure white lotus of a maiden has
understood without assistance and as it were by native instinct, the
whole duty of a faithful wife, even before she has so much as seen a
man. And then he said: Sweet little ascetic, apt pupil of a wise old
father, whom thou dost resemble not only in thy hair, thou hast
administered reproof to me, deservedly. And whereas I thought, in my
folly, to instruct thee, it was I that received a lesson, in this
matter of the way of queens. And now I see, that I spoke more truly
than I knew, when I said that thou wert admirably fitted to be a queen.
Now, therefore, thou art my _guru_, and I am thy disciple, and thou
shalt teach me all that I do not know. Begin then, my pretty little
_guru_: give me lessons, for I need them. And she laughed, and
blushed, and said: Again thou art laughing at me: for how could a
simple forest maiden teach anything to one, who like thyself, had lived
in cities, and mixed with other men and women? And the King said
quickly: Ah! dear Blue-eyes, just for that very reason is it that thou
hast already taught me many things that I never knew before. For they
who live in cities have their souls tainted as it were and poisoned by
bad associations, whereas thine is as pure as the flowers in thy hair.
And therefore, as thou hast taught me about queens, teach me also about
kings. What should he be like, whom thou wouldst be willing to follow
through the world?
And she looked at him for a moment, and then she dropped her eyes, and
turned away her head, and was silent. And as he watched her, the King
saw the colour rising on her neck, till it reached the roots of her
dark hair, like the flush of eve climbing the snowy summit of Himalaya,
when day is dead. And he said to himself in ecstasy: Ha! so this pure
digit of the ice-cold moon, even in the solitary darkness of the night,
before the dawn of love, has dreamed of a sun which she has never seen.
And O that I could dare to think myself the sunny lover corresponding
to her dream, destined to touch her soul, as my question did her body,
into red! But let me beware, lest I scare my timid fawn by a too
abrupt approach. And then he said: Dear little blue-eyed Queen,
forgive me, if I roused thy maiden shame by a rash and ill-mannered
curiosity. It is enough for me to know, that the king of thy pure
fancy must be worthy of his queen: and as much above all other men, as
thou art different and above all other women.
And then, with her eyes still fixed upon the ground, she began to draw
upon the step with her foot. And she said softly: And in what do I
differ from all other women? And the King said: Blue-eyes, ask me
rather in what respect thou art the same. For thy points of difference
are so many, that it would take long to tell them all. But
notwithstanding, if thou wilt, I will try, and paint thy portrait for
thee in contrast to the others, and hold thy image up before thee,
reflected on the mirror of my soul. And she said: Try: for I desire to
learn how I differ from the others. Then he said: Look, then, at me,
that I may see thee before I begin. And she raised her eyes, and
looked straight at him, blushing a very little, and then smiled, and
looked down, and waited as he spoke.
Then the King said: Blue-eyes, every woman is a woman, and so art thou:
and this is what thou hast, in common with all others of thy sex. And
yet, in every special property of woman thou hast something of thine
own, which marks thee like a seal, and stamps thee as a thing distinct
and peculiar, and other than them all. For others have blue eyes, but
thine are bluer, and other lips are red, but thine are redder, and
other brows are black, but thine is blacker, and other smiles are
white, but thine, O thine is like a snowflake or the petal of a new
young lotus bud. Dark, dark is hair, but thine is like the midnight,
and many feet are small, but not as thine are. And O thy arms are
softer and more rounded, and thy waist is more enticing, and the two
proud swelling sister milky foes upon thy breast, more erect and more
provoking: and yet thy step is lighter and thy walk is more bewitching
and thy voice's murmur sweeter and thy laughter more delicious and thy
soul fresher and more frank and thy heart it may be harder than that of
any woman that I have ever seen. Moreover, all others of thy sex are
tame, and thou art wild. Then she said: What is the distinction, for I
do not understand? And the King said: Sweet, I cannot tell thee: and
yet it is a difference far greater than all the others put together.
For all things that are tame are, as it were, an incarnation and
embodiment of the littleness of men: but all things that are wild, as
thou art, are, as it were, a portion of the Deity. For thy behaviour
differs from that of other women, as does a wild vine gadding at its
will from the trained flowers in a king's garden, and thy great blue
eyes are utterly without hypocrisy, and resemble those of a falcon or a
child. And thou thyself art like the young beautiful heifer of a wild
white bull. And I know not how to tell thee what I mean, when I say
that thou art wild: and yet it is just this very quality in thee which
drives me to distraction. But see, now, the evening as it falls, and
the water of the great river flowing with its surface unruffled by any
breath of wind: see, how the cranes here and there upon the brink are
mirrored in its water, and yonder pair of swans are, as it were, echoed
by another pair that swim below them upside down; and the peacock on
the temple wall glitters in the last rays of the sun with emerald and
blue and gold: now thou seemest, as it were, a part of it all, and as
it were the soul of all this body, and like a jewel in its proper
setting, and at one with all the creatures of the wood. And I begin to
fear, lest thou shouldst suddenly plunge into the water, and disappear,
leaving me alone.
And as he spoke, there came again a murmur and a rustle in the air.
And he listened and exclaimed with anxiety: Ha! what is that? Then she
said: It is only the beating of the wings of the waterfowl returning to
their roost for the night.
[1] This single word, a common name in Sanskrit for the lotus,
possesses an incomparable, moral and æsthetic, mingled beauty, which
can only be poorly rendered in English by five words instead of one.
Mud-born is the word: but the meaning it covers is the pure white lotus
that springs out of the thick black mire: just as the brightest rainbow
is seen against the darkest cloud.
VI
SHADOWS
And the King drew a deep breath, like a man saved from a great danger.
And she saw it, and said to him: Thou art afraid. Of what art thou
afraid? And the King said: Ah! dear Blue-eyes, I am indeed afraid, but
of this alone, lest something should occur to cut short our
conversation. And shall I not be afraid of death? For as my life
began with the commencement of our converse, so its end will be my
death. And like a miser, the very treasure that I worship fills me
with despair, because the fear of losing it mixes with the joy of its
possession, and I start at every noise. And as I said before, more
than anything I fear lest thou shouldst suddenly escape into the water.
And I am sorely tempted to take hold of thee, and tie thee like my
horse to the tree, to prevent thee from escaping.