So then, that astounded prime minister gazed at Arunodaya for a while in
silence, and took his dismissal, and went away like a man in a dream.
And when he reached his home, he sat for a long time musing, like a
picture painted on a wall. And then, all at once, he began to laugh. And
he exclaimed: Ha! this, then, was the secret, and now at length I begin
to understand, and all is explained. For this young king
_brahmachari_,[16] little as he suspects it, has been under my eye ever
since he was born. And this, then, was the reason why he was perpetually
wandering about alone, and lying for hours gazing at the lotuses in the
forest pools, or looking at the sea-waves, like a rock on the shore,
differing totally from all others of his kind, who as a rule resemble
_must_ elephants, in utterly refusing to have anything to do with
dancing girls or women of any kind, as it were wilfully contradicting
the design of the Creator, who beyond a doubt formed him on purpose to
prevent Rati and Priti[17] from quarrelling, by providing a second body
for their common lord. And all the while I took him for a very _yogi_,
he was, as it turns out, dreaming, not of emancipation, but this wife of
his former birth: and hard as it is, I think that even emancipation
would, of the two, be easier to attain. Well might he say, that she was
difficult to find. For who ever got at the wife of his former birth,
except in a dream. Aye! this is an obstacle to his marriage indeed, that
even the Lord of the Elephant-Face would be puzzled to surmount or
remove.
[Footnote 16: As we might say, _bachelor_, but the Hindoo
expression is stricter, meaning, _one who has taken a vow of
virginity_.]
[Footnote 17: The two wives of Love.]
And after a while, he said again: Is it a mere fancy? Or can it be, that
he really is haunted by some dim recollection of his former wife, since
beyond a doubt the influences of pre-existence do sometimes persist, and
like ships, sail without sinking over the dark ocean of oblivion, from
one birth-island to another? And what, then, is she like? For could I
only discover what she looks like in his dreams, it might be that by
policy or stratagem I could make shift to find her, or somebody so like
her that he would never know the difference. I will go to him to-morrow
and ask him to describe her, and he cannot well refuse. For how can he
expect me to discover her, unless I know what she is like? Or can it be,
that he does not even know himself? That would be better still. For
then, if, with the assistance of the astrologers, I can manage to devise
a scheme, so as to persuade him that I have lit upon that which he is
looking for, how could he detect the imposition? There are only too many
kings' daughters who would think that the very fruit of their birth was
gained, by practising so innocent a deception as to pass for the wife of
his former birth in order to become in very truth his wife in this. And
if I cannot succeed in some dexterous trick of substitution, I shall be
almost ready to abandon the body myself, for sheer exasperation. For
even apart from the necessity of getting him married, there is not one
of the surrounding kings who is not ready to throw a crore of gold
pieces at my head, if only I will even promise to become his partisan
against all the rest, and marry Arunodaya to some daughter of his own.
Out upon it, that with kings' daughters lying thick as lotuses all round
him, and ready and even eager to be plucked, this unhappy longing of the
king for an unattainable _parijata_ flower should make them all of no
more value than withered leaves! O Rider on the Mouse,[18] come to my
assistance, for without thy help we shall all be swallowed by calamity,
in the form of the utter extinction of this perverse king's kingdom and
his race.
[Footnote 18: _i.e._ Ganesha.]
V
Now, just at this very moment, it happened, by the decree of destiny,
that one of the kings of the Widyadharas,[19] who was rightly named
Mahidhara, for his home was on a mountain top that stood in a far-off
island beyond the rising sun, was holding a _swayamwara_ for all his
hundred daughters. And for ninety-nine days each daughter chose her
husband, one a day, from out of the suitors who flocked to the marriage
in such numbers that the sky looked like a cart-wheel, with lines of
Widyadharas assembling from all directions, like vultures, for its
spokes. And finally the hundredth day, and with it, the turn of the
youngest daughter came, to choose.
[Footnote 19: See Preface.]
Now this daughter resembled a thorn, fixed by the Creator in the hearts
of all her sisters, causing perpetual irritation, like a rebel chief in
a united kingdom. For she stood aloof from them all, like a little
finger that somehow or other refuses to bend into the closed hand, being
not only the youngest, but the smallest, and the most perverse, and the
loveliest of all, putting not only all her sisters but every other
Widyadhari to the necessity of acknowledging, sore against their will,
that the presence of her beauty robbed them of their own, reducing them
to confusion, like so many impostors confronted by the true heir. And
her nature was so totally dissimilar to that of everybody else, that she
resembled a thing made by the Creator standing as it were upon his head,
out of the essence of contradiction: since none of her own family could
ever tell what she would or would not say, or do, or even where she was.
And even her beauty was as wayward as she was herself. For one of her
eyebrows was always as it were on the tiptoe of surprise, arrogantly
arching a little higher than the other; and her eyes were very long,
with corners that looked as if they were on the very point of turning
upwards, which none the less they never did, as if expressly to
disappoint and deride the expectation they aroused, and keep it hovering
for ever in an agony of suspense. And her lips always seemed to smile
even when they were not smiling, and her head was almost, always poised
a very little on one side, looking as if it were listening for the
far-off mutter of the mischief that lay as it were slumbering in the
thunder-cloud hanging low in the heaven of her huge dark eyes, whose
lashes resembled the long grass that fringes the edge of a forest pool.
And her limbs were so slender, and her colour was so pale, in the shadow
of the masses of her sable hair, that had it not been for the indigo of
her lotus eyes and the vermilion of her lips, she would have resembled a
marble incarnation of the beauty of death, or a wraith of mist touched
as it hovers in a dark valley by the ashy beam of a waning moon. And,
strange! her spell seemed made of moods that always changed, yet never
varied, compounded half of shy timidity, and half of proud disdain, like
an atmosphere of paradoxical fascination, formed of the rival fragrances
of sandalwood and camphor, translated into the language of the soul.
So then, as those Widyadhara suitors waited in the hall, standing round
in a ring, she came in slowly, with the garland of choosing in her hand.
And beginning with the first she came to, she walked very deliberately
all round that circle of excited wooers, going from one to the next in
order, and examining each in turn. And in the dead silence, there was
absolutely nothing heard but the faint clash of her golden anklets, as
she moved round slowly on little hesitating feet, that trod as it were
on everybody's heart. And as she went, those suitors, as she came to
them and passed them, turned gradually from dark to pale, and then again
to black, like the buttresses on the king's high road, when torches pass
along.[20] And every Widyadhara's soul abandoned, so to say, his body,
on finding that she left him to go on to the next, dooming him as it
were to death by carrying further the fatal wreath.
[Footnote 20: This is from Kalidas.]
So, then, having given to all, as if by way of boon, a bitter glimpse of
beauty mixed with a momentary ray of hope, dashing the cup from each
one's lip just as it thought it was going to taste, she came to the very
end. And then, she stopped dead. And she looked at them all, for a
single moment, over the wreath they all desired, and she raised it to
her lips, as if to scent its fragrance, saying as it were to all: Very
sweet indeed is the thing beyond your reach. And then, with a little
pout, she put it round her own neck. And she said, in the Arya metre:
Tell me, O breeze, is there syrup for the bees?
Only, alas! when kind flowers please.
And then, she went away, leaving all her lovers as it were in the lurch,
like a flock of _Chakrawakas_ when the sun has disappeared.