But Arunodaya, careless of his minister, gave himself up a willing
captive to the witchery of his Widyadhari wife. And for a time, her task
was very easy. For owing to his inexperience, he resembled a child, and
every woman was to him an illusion, and a mystery, so that he would have
sunk under the spell, even had it been less potent than it actually was.
And Makarandika was as it were his _diksha_,[38] incarnate in a form of
more than mortal fascination: and like a priestess she took him by the
hand and led him into the _garbha_[39] of that strange temple built not
of stone, but of the materials of elementary infatuation, and made him
perform, so to say, a _pradakshina_ round the image of the divinity[40]
of which she was herself a bewildering and irresistible incarnation. And
lost in the adoration of a neophyte, he lay like a drunken bee in a
lotus-cup, rolling in honey, and forgetting utterly not only his kingdom
and its affairs, but everything else in the three worlds.
[Footnote 38: _i.e._ initiation.]
[Footnote 39: The Greek [Greek: adyton], or sanctuary.]
[Footnote 40: The Hindoo shrine, says Mr. A. K. Coomaraswamy, is
essentially a place of pilgrimages and circumambulations, to which men
come for _darshan_, to "see" the god.]
And yet, strange! there lay all the while lurking in the recesses of his
soul a vague misgiving, mixed with a faint and unintelligible
dissatisfaction, resembling a taste of something bitter in the draught
of his infatuation, and an ingredient that qualified and just prevented
his gratification from reaching its extreme degree, of ecstasy without
alloy. And yet he hardly dared to acknowledge it, even to himself,
accusing himself of ingratitude and treachery, and saying to his own
soul: How is it possible to requite such infinite affection, and
devotion, and service, and beauty, by returning nothing in exchange for
it all but suspicion, and distrust, and doubt? For even if she were not
the very wife of my former birth, what could I possibly wish for, more?
And yet, it is very strange. For notwithstanding all she does, she does
not seem to reach and satisfy the craving for recognition in my heart,
which obstinately refuses to corroborate her asseverations: nor do I
ever feel that confidence and certainty, arising from the depths of
recollection, which, if she really were my former wife, surely I ought
to feel. Is it my fault, or hers? Alas! instead of meeting her half-way,
I am oppressed with what is very nearly disappointment, and feel almost
like a dupe, that have allowed myself to fall into the snare of beauty,
so as to yield to another what should belong to one alone. Little indeed
would she have to complain of in the warmth of my return, had she just
that one thing that she lacks, the stamp of genuine priority: for then
she would get in full the very thing I long to give her.
Aye! I am as it were dying to do, the thing I cannot do, and divided
from supreme bliss by a partition composed of the most exasperating
inability to know for certain, what all the time may after all be true.
For if she is only playing a part not really hers, how in the world did
she discover the way to take me in, by exhibiting a knowledge of those
very same dim vestiges of recollection which I have never told to anyone
but my own prime minister? And very sure I am, that it was not he who
told her, since he almost lost his reason with astonishment, and
admiration that was mixed with envy and annoyance, when her beauty
struck him dumb. So after all, perhaps I am mistaken, and only torturing
myself for nothing. Out on me, if what she says be really true! for then
indeed I deserve something even worse than death, for treating her with
such monstrous ungenerosity. Can it be that her memory is truer and
stronger, putting mine, for its fidelity, to utter shame? Or why, again,
should I struggle any longer against conviction, and persevere in
longing for what I have not got? Who knows whether even if I actually
got it, I should be any better off than I actually am? Could the very
wife of my former birth be a better wife than this? Is not this wife
just as good as any wife could ever be? Does she not as it were combine
the virtues of even a hundred wives? Yet if she be not the true, can it
be that the other is even now upbraiding me, somehow, somewhere, for
falling with such inconstancy straight into another's snares, and
wasting on a stranger the love that belongs to her? Alas! alas! Why did
the Creator make my memory too strong for blank oblivion, and yet so
feeble as to leave me without a proof, and plunge me in such perplexity
in this matter of a wife?