Chapter 10

And as I listened, I knew that all was over, and that her words were my doom: for I understood that she was stronger far than I, and in a position absolutely impregnable by any efforts I might make. And I stood gazing at her silently with a tumult in my soul that could find no utterance in words. And I said at last, in a very low voice: Is thy decision irrevocable, and am I really never to see thee any more? And she said: Even this time is more than I had allowed thee, and I am afraid for thee. Aye! I fear that thy life is the forfeit thou wilt pay. Yet blame not me for anything that may occur. For Narasinha would have slain thee already, as he is furiously jealous of anything that comes near me in the form of a man, had I not myself expressly interfered in thy behalf, making him swear to overlook thy former trespass on a ground that he considers as his own. But he will not listen to me now. And to-morrow, as soon as he discovers what has taken place to-night, for I cannot hide it, he will take measures to prevent thy ever coming back, very likely such as thou thyself hinted at, of me, a little while ago. Thou art looking at me now for the very last time; and remember, I told thee myself, I will take no blame, if thy temerity turns out to have cost thee dear. Farewell, and if thou canst, forget me, and go away to a great distance, without the loss of a single moment. For in a very little while, thou mayst find, there will not even be the chance, and it will be too late.

And instead of going, I stood, rooted to the spot like a tree, gazing at her thirstily, in a stupor of despair, and saying to myself: What! can it really be possible that I am actually looking at her now, as she says, for the very last time in my life, doomed to go here, or there, in the world, without ever seeing her again, knowing all the while that she is, still, somewhere to be seen, and actually being seen, only not by me? Out upon such horror, for it would be less, even if she were dead! And she, so kind, so gentle, how in the world can she stand there, bidding me with a wave of her hand, in that low sweet voice of hers, to go away to a great distance, to save my life, knowing well, for she is very clever, that she is taking it away, by banishing me for ever? And am I just to be thrown away at the bidding of Narasinha?

And at the thought, all at once I began to laugh with sheer rage. And I said to myself: What! must I turn my back on heaven, and go meekly down to hell, at the order of Narasinha? Would she banish me at all, but for Narasinha? Who in the world is Narasinha? Is Narasinha my master? Is he even her master, for as it seems, she is rather his? Are these his orders, or her own? Ha! now, I wonder. What if after all this Narasinha were only a man of straw, doing exactly as he is told, and acting as her agent and her instrument, for the sake of what she gives him? Is it likely, after all, that he orders, and she obeys? And am I being fooled, and handed over by herself to banishment, or even death, behind the screen of Narasinha?

And I looked at her as she stood, patiently waiting for me to go, with a soul torn to pieces by rage, and suspicion, and love-longing, and flat refusal to go away. And suddenly there came into my recollection Haridása, saying as he stood outside the door: Nectar when she turns towards thee: poison when she turns away. And I said to myself: So now, she turns away. And can she possibly not know, what becomes of all her lovers?

And I went up to her, all at once, and took her by her two hands, and looked straight into her eyes. And I said: Táráwalí, thou choosest thy servants well. I know the use of Chaturiká. And now dimly I begin to see the use of Narasinha. Does he never tell thee where he throws the bodies of thy old lovers, when thou hast finished with their souls?

And then, strange! her eyes wavered, as if unable to meet my own. And like a flash of lightning, I understood. And I exclaimed: Ha! have I found at last the question that thou canst not answer, and laid my finger on the flaw in thy consummate skill? So then, this was all but a comedy that thou wert playing, to shift the blame from thy own shoulders and turn me over to extinction at the hands of Narasinha? Ah! thou art thy own mistress, and not one to obey. But ah! thou lovely lady that hast no pity for thy poisoned lovers, it is not the lover this time that shall die. And thou shalt meet thy master for the first time in thy life.

And I looked at her for a single instant in a frenzy of fierce hatred that suddenly blazed up from the ashes of my dead devotion, lying scorned and cheated and betrayed by the idol it adored. And I seized her in the grip of death, and tore from my arm the lute-string that was wound about my wrist. And I said: Dear, I never gave thee thy music-lesson: but now I will give thee a very long one on a single string. And in an instant, I twisted it about her neck, and drew it tight, holding her still as she struggled, in an ecstasy of giant strength. And so I stood, trembling all over, for a very long time. And at last, I felt that she lay in my arms like a dead weight, hanging as it were against her will in the terrible embrace of a lover that loved with hatred instead of love.

And I laid her down very gently, turning carefully away, that I might not see her face. And I went away very quickly, and all at once, as I went, I fell down and began to sob, as if my heart would break. And at last, after a long while, I got up, and stood, thinking, and looking back under the trees. And I crept back on tiptoe, and looked and saw her at a distance, lying in the moonlight, very still, like the tomb of my own heart. And then I turned sharp round, and went away for good and all, without a soul. And I said to myself in agony: Now I have made the whole world empty with my own hand, and it was myself that I have killed, as well as her. And now I will go after her as soon as I possibly can. But there is one thing still to do, before I go, for I have to give another lesson to Narasinha. Only this time I will not use a lute-string, but crush out his soul with my bare hands.

* * * * *

Ha! Narasinha, I have told thee, and thou knowest all. And now thou hast only to count the hours that are left to thee, for I am coming very soon.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: Pronounce in three syllables _Shut-roon-jye_: it means, _one who triumphs over his foes_. So again, in three syllables, _Narasing_: which means, _man-lion_, alluding to one of Wishnu's incarnations. (Europeans do not adequately realise that the short final _a_, in Sanskrit, is always mute. They pronounce e.g. _Ráma_, _Krishna_, as if the last letter were long. They are monosyllables.)]

[Footnote 7: "The menace prevented the deed," observes Gibbon, of a would-be assassin of Commodus. That was also the error of the Germans, in 1914.]

[Footnote 8: A heavenly musician.]

[Footnote 9: _Dharma_ does not mean religion in our sense of the word. It means, for every man, that set of obligations laid on him by his caste or status: thus everybody's _dharma_ is different.]

[Footnote 10: A crown prince. Palace intrigues were common in the old Hindoo courts. Each wife thought of nothing but providing the heir to the throne, if not by fair means, then by foul.]

[Footnote 11: Krishna, the lute-player, and flute-player, _par excellence_. He resembles Odin in this particular.]

[Footnote 12: i.e. _the city of lotuses._ The final _a_ is mute.]

[Footnote 13: i.e. _a line of stars_; _a constellation_; _a star intensified._]

[Footnote 14: That is to say, abandoned, dissolute: independence being, in old Hindoo ears, a synonym for every possible species of depravity.]

[Footnote 15: There is here an untranslatable play on _mánasa_ and _manasi-já_ = a feminine god of love.]

[Footnote 16: There is no vulgarity in this idea: it is a poetical degree in the scale of passion. An _abhisáriká_ is a lady so mastered by her love that she cannot wait for her lover, but goes to him of her own accord. There are all sorts of conditions laid down to regulate her going: she must not go in broad daylight, but in a thunderstorm, or dusk.]

[Footnote 17: _Láwanya_ means loveliness as well as salt.]

[Footnote 18: The exact equivalent, and indeed the only possible translation of _kupanditá._]

[Footnote 19: This is due to the peculiar dress of Hindoo women, all in one piece, and put on so that the edge that runs around the feet afterwards runs up diagonally and winds around the whole figure. No national costume was ever better calculated to set off the sinuosities and soft grace of a woman's figure to advantage than the marvellous simplicity of the _sarí_ which is nothing more than a very long strip of almost anything you please.]

[Footnote 20: i.e. _the clever one_: a name, like Nipuniká, employed in Hindoo plays to denote the qualities of a _grisette_: _Suzanne._]

[Footnote 21: _Anuraktámritam bálá wiraktá wisham ewa sá._]

[Footnote 22: A female door-keeper. This appears to have been customary in old times. Runjeet Singh had a body-guard of women, dressed like boys.]

[Footnote 23: The roots of these great figs "grow down" (hence their name) from the branches, often coalescing with the trunks into the most extraordinary shapes: it needs no imagination to see Dryads under the bark: they are visible to the naked eye. The huge leaves and great white blossom of the _shála_ make it one of the most beautiful of earthly trees: as the champak is one of the most weird, like a great candlestick of innumerable branches whose pale flower-cups grow out of the end of its clumsy fingers without leaves.]

[Footnote 24: Durgá, _the inaccessible one_, is one of Párwatí's innumerable names. It has reference to a mountain steep, with accessory meanings, moral and theological.]

[Footnote 25: There are constant references in Hindoo poetry to swinging, which is a national pastime in India, with a special festival in its honour.]

[Footnote 26: Pronounce as a trisyllable: Haridás.]

[Footnote 27: The Indian women used to send little earthenware dishes, with a lighted wick in their oil, floating down the Ganges, to symbolise their children's lives. Perhaps they do it still: but all these beautiful old superstitious practices are dying away, in the light of "representative institutions." New lamps for old ones!]

[Footnote 28: That is Shrí, the Hindoo Aphrodite. Only those who have studied Hindoo goddesses on the old temple walls, where they stand with everlasting marble smiles in long silent rows, buried in the jungles that encircle their deserted fanes, will enter into the atmosphere of this strange description.]

[Footnote 29: _Daiwatam hi hayottamah_, says Somadewa: _a good horse is a divine thing._]

[Footnote 30: The Hindoo Æsculapius. Ayurweda, the science of medicine.]

[Footnote 31: A gem that attracts straws, presumably amber. It is always employed by Hindoo poets as an equivalent of our _magnet._]

[Footnote 32: _i.e._ the mirage.]

[Footnote 33: That is, as if she were a character in a play, coming at her cue. The phrase is common in the Hindoo plays.]

[Footnote 34: This is due to the coal-black stem, which gives to a palm tree shorn of its head the look of a tumble-down smoke-grimed chimney. Unshorn, leaning to the wind, it is the most graceful thing in the world, especially seen against the setting sun.]

[Footnote 35: The great jewel on Wishnu's breast.]

[Footnote 36: Literally, with a _sáshtanganamaskara_: i.e. _with an obeisance made by falling prostrate with the eight corners of the body_, a form of profound reverence made as to a divinity.]

III

A Story without an End

And then, Maheshwara tossed the last leaf into the air. And as it floated away down the stream, he said to the goddess, as she listened with attention: And yet he never came, as I told thee at the beginning. For Narasinha was beforehand with him, after all.

And the Daughter of the Snow sat silent, looking away down the river after the floating leaf, until it was lost to sight. And then she said slowly: Why didst thou say in the beginning that Táráwalí was the most extraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come? For I was deceived by thy encomium, expecting a woman altogether different from her, who was only but a specimen of her sex.

And the Moony-crested god burst into loud laughter. And he exclaimed: Speak low, O Snowy One: for if thy mortal sisters overheard thee betraying their secrets and their cause, they would be very angry, and perhaps begin to curse thee as a traitor, instead of offering thee worship, as they all do now. What! dost thou actually deem her to be but a type of all the rest? Surely, thou must have been asleep all the time that I was reading, after all: since thou hast either misunderstood her altogether, or it may be, wilt not do her justice, out of jealousy: since no woman in the three worlds can ever be trusted to judge another fairly, treating her always as a criminal and a rival, and falling on her tooth and nail, especially if, like Táráwalí, she sets custom at defiance, going by an independent standard of her own. But now, let me help thee to see how utterly mistaken is thy estimate of a character so rare as hardly to be matched in the whole of space and time for her cleverness and her candour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of the account, as that one element in her common to a very host of others. For the Creator was not such a bungler as to confine all feminine beauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, since almost every woman in the world, no matter what her face be like, shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shape essential to her sex, which is far the most important thing of all, being general instead of special, as every woman seen dimly in the dark, or at a distance, or with her face hidden by a veil, will prove, being then above all most attractive when her face cannot be seen at all: as the story that I told thee of the ugly lady, not long ago, shows, if thou hast not forgotten it.[37] Whereas the thing special to Táráwalí was her incomparable soul, in which were mingled elements hardly ever to be found combined, gentleness and strength, and simplicity almost naive, with subtlety beyond all comparison, and pride that never took offence, and superlative beauty with humility, and submissiveness with extreme independence of spirit, and kindness without weakness, and feminine sweetness of disposition with the intellectual vigour of a man, and his courage, and his candour, all of which combined with her extraordinary bodily beauty to make her a paragon of intoxication utterly irresistible to every male[38] she came across, like a very Prakriti in a woman's form.

And Párwatí said: How canst thou lavish such praise on a woman so deservedly slain by her infuriated lover, when he suddenly awoke to the discovery of the real nature behind the mask?

And the great god laughed again, and he looked at her shrewdly and he said: Aha! Snowy One, said I not that thou wert asleep as I read? I shall have to repeat to thee the story all over again another time. Dost thou actually not see that all she said, from beginning to end, was absolutely true? For Shatrunjaya told the whole story very well, as he understood it; but he did not understand completely, and made a terrible error in the most important point of all, being led astray by what he had heard, and easily taken in. For blinded by his rage against his rival Narasinha, he came suddenly to the wrong conclusion, and slew her by mistake, never so much as giving her time for any explanation. For her eyes never wavered, as he thought, for guilt, but for quite another reason. And Narasinha really was, exactly as she said, her tyrant, nor had she anything to do with his assassination of her lovers, which he committed all on his own account, out of jealousy, paying no attention at all to her intercession. But in her gentleness, she shrank from the very idea of any violence, and this was the true cause of the wavering of her eyes, foreseeing as she did another attempt on Shatrunjaya, which she could not avert. And my heart was grieved at her death at the hands of a lover whose life she had saved, and would have saved again if she could. For she was worth far more than he.

And the Daughter of the Snow said: But what was she doing with such a multitude of lovers at all?

And Maheshwara said: Thou art like Shatrunjaya himself, biased against her by the insinuations of Haridása, and the discreditable behaviour of that little liar Chaturiká, who betrayed her as well as others, and by the idle talk of the people, which she rightly compared herself to the croaking of so many frogs. For low people always put the very worst interpretation upon the actions of kings, and especially of queens, of whom all the time they know less than nothing, exactly as she said. And Shatrunjaya's opinion of her wavered, in spite of all his worship, being coloured by the scandal that he heard, so that he saw her through its mist, as strangers always do. And if she had too many lovers, it was all the fault of the Creator, who endowed her with such fascination, combined with the kindness of her heart: since she blamed herself for their misery, and could not bear to send them away without making them as it were some reparation for her crime of being beautiful beyond all resistance. And this was her only fault.

Then said the Mountain-born, with emphasis: I hate her: for a woman should confine herself to one.

And Maheshwara said, looking at her with affection: Ah! Snowy One, thou art right, and thou art wrong. For not every woman is a counterpart of thee. And moreover, to be rigidly inaccessible[39] is terribly hard, when a woman is as she was, a very incarnation of bewildering intoxication, and kind into the bargain. For then she resembles a fortress, besieged night and day and mined everlastingly by innumerable hosts absolutely determined to get in; and sleepless indeed must be the garrison that guards it; and often it yields of sheer weariness and fatigue, unable any longer to endure the strain. And Táráwalí was absolutely right when she said that her lovers drove her, against her inclination, into the reputation of a lady of many lovers, since they were all so infatuated by the very sight of her that they never let her alone. For love that really finds its object will face ten thousand deaths to reach it, and is very hard to repel. And it laughs in utter scorn at arguments, and bribes, and barriers, and dangers, and refusals, bent with a burning heart upon one thing only, to reach its goal, dead or alive, no matter which. And when a woman is an incarnation of that object, she moves the whole world with her little finger, and is fatal, and raised into a category above all ordinary rules. And Táráwalí was moreover in a peculiar position, for her husband had thrown her away of his own accord, so that she actually belonged to nobody but herself, and injured herself alone, if she could not always help yielding when a lover pushed her terribly hard, by touching her heart like Shatrunjaya in the matter of his dream. And very few indeed are the women who would not have done the same, for he was a great musician, and a man among men, and very young. And very rare indeed is the woman who is qualified to censure her. For most women keep their wheel upon the track, either because nobody ever tries to make them leave it, or simply for fear, either of being punished, or of other women's tongues. And not one in a crore could have resisted half the pressure that Táráwalí had to bear, for the very greatest of a winning woman's charms is exactly the one which she possessed in supreme perfection, her soft and delicious willingness to oblige and please, and place all the sweetness of her personality at the absolute disposal of her lover, as Shatrunjaya understood at the very first sight of her: a thing so utterly irresistible, that when it is combined, as it was in her, with intelligence masculine in its quality, its owner sweeps away every man's reason like a chip in a flood. And there was a special reason for Táráwalí's intelligence.

And the goddess said: What was the reason? And the Moony-crested god said: It was the necessary consequence of the actions of a former birth. For in the birth before, she was a man, doomed by _gati_[40] to become a woman in the next, by reason of a sin. And she said again: What sin? Then said Maheshwara: Ask me another time, O thou cajoler: for it is a long story, and now I have no more leisure: since I must go and bestow the favour of my presence on a ceremony performed by a pious devotee who has built me a new temple at Wáránasi. And canst thou guess who it is?

And the Daughter of the Snow said: How in the world can I guess his name, of whom I never heard before?

And the Moony-crested god said: It is not a he, but a she: being no other than Táráwalí herself, in yet another birth. And she is still only a woman, for she has not yet succeeded in raising herself by merit into the condition of a man. And it may be long before she succeeds. For it is easy to sink, but it is hard for any creature to rise into a status of being superior to its own, and the women who emerge into manhood are very rare. For the goodness that is synonymous with real existence[41] is only to be found in those who have behind them the accumulated effort and desert of ages, standing on a peak loftier by far than any of thy father's snowy summits, which cannot be attained in any single birth by no matter what exertions or austerities. But when once any being has attained it, emancipation dawns, touching it into colour more beautiful by far than any tints the rising sun has ever thrown on newly fallen mountain snow.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: A very beautiful story in the MS., which has not yet seen the light. The opinion of the deity is corroborated by that very clever woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who says in one of her letters from Constantinople that if women went without clothes, the face would hardly count at all. Nearly all of them would gain immensely by wearing a permanent veil, but the pretty ones would never consent to it.]

[Footnote 38: Purusha is the philosophical term for the Primordial Male, of which Prakriti is the female antithesis. The god is combining Goethe and Swinburne: the "eternal feminine" and the "holy spirit of man."]

[Footnote 39: See note _ante_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 40: A very short word for a very long process, and untranslatable by any English equivalent. It means the whole system of the laws of metempsychosis, running in a long chain forward into the future, and back into the past.]

[Footnote 41: That is, _sat_ or _sattwa_ = goodness, or true being.]