Now that night and darkness had come, we betook ourselves, Somadatta and I, clad in dark apparel which we had gathered well up about us, our loins firmly belted, and with swords in our hands, to the western side of the palatial house of the goldsmith, where, crowning the steep and rocky side of a deep ravine, lay the terrace we sought. With the help of a bamboo pole which we had brought with us, and by a dexterous use of the few existing projections, we climbed the face of the rock at a spot veiled in deep shadow, got over the wall with ease, and found ourselves on a spacious terrace decorated with palms, asoka trees, and magnificent flowering plants of every description, which, now bathed in the silver light of the moon, lay spread out before us.
Not far away, beside a young girl on a garden bench, and looking like a visitant from the spheres in her wonderful likeness to Lakshmi, sat the great-eyed maiden who played ball with my heart; and, at the sight, I began to tremble so violently that I was obliged to lean against the parapet, the touch of whose marble cooled and quieted my fevered and drooping senses.
Meanwhile Somadatta hastened to his beloved, who had sprung up with a low cry.
Seeing which, I also pulled myself together so far as to be able to approach the incomparable one. She, to all appearance surprised at the arrival of a stranger, had risen and seemed undecided as to whether she should go or stay, the while her eyes, like those of a startled young antelope, shot sidelong glances at me, and her body quivered like a tendril swaying in a gentle breeze. As for me, I stood in steadily increasing confusion, with disordered locks, and tell-tale eyes, and was barely able to stammer the few words in which I told her how much I appreciated the unhoped-for happiness of meeting her here. But she, when she noticed my great shyness, seemed herself to become calmer. She sat down on the bench again, and invited me with a gentle movement of her lotus-hand to take a seat beside her; and then, in a voice full of tremulous sweetness, assured me that she was very glad to be able to thank me for having flung the ball back to her with such skill that the game suffered no interruption; for, had that happened, the whole merit of her performance would have been lost and the goddess so clumsily honoured would have visited her anger upon her, or would at least have sent her no happiness. To which I replied that she owed me no thanks as I had at the very most but made good my own default, and, as she did not seem to understand what I meant by that, I ventured to remind her of the meeting of our eyes and of the ensuing confusion which caused her to fail in her stroke so that the ball flew away. But she reddened violently and absolutely refused to acknowledge such a thing,—what should have confused her in that?
"I imagine," I answered, "that from my eyes, which must have rivalled flowers in full blossom then, such a sweet odour of admiration streamed forth that for a moment thou wast stupefied and so thy hand went beside the ball."
"Eh! eh! what talk is that of thine about admiration?" she retorted, "thou art accustomed at home to see much more skilful players."
From which remark I gathered with satisfaction that I had been talked of and that the words I had used to Somadatta had been accurately repeated. But I grew hot and then cold at the thought that I had spoken almost slightingly, and I hastened to assure her that there was not one word of truth in my statement, and that I had only spoken so in order not to betray my precious secret to my friend. But she wouldn't believe that, or made as if she didn't, and, in speaking of it, I happily forgot my bashfulness, grew passionately eager to convince her, and told her how, at sight of her, the Love God had rained his flower darts upon me. "I was convinced," I said, "that in a former existence she had been my wife—whence otherwise could such a sudden and irresistible love have arisen? But if that were so, then she must not less have recognised in me her former husband, and a like love must have sprung up in her breast also."
With such audacious words did I impetuously besiege her, till at length she hid her burning and tearful cheek on my breast, and acknowledged in words that were scarce audible that it had been with her as with me, and that she would surely have died had not her foster-sister most opportunely brought her the picture.
Then we kissed and fondled one another countless times, and felt as if we should expire for joy until suddenly the thought of my impending departure fell like a dark shadow athwart my happiness and forced a deep sigh from me.
Dismayed, Vasitthi asked why I sighed—but when I told her of the cause, she sank back on the bench in a fainting condition, and broke into a perfect tempest of tears and heart-rending sobs. Vain were all my attempts to comfort my heart's dearest. In vain did I assure her that so soon as the rainy season was over, I would return and never again leave her, even if I had to take service as a day labourer in Kosambi. Spoken to the winds were all my assurances that my despair at the separation was not less than her own, and that only stern, inexorable necessity tore me away from her so soon. She was scarcely able between her sobs to utter the few words needed to ask why it was so imperative to go away as early as to-morrow, just as we had found one another. But when I then explained it all to her very exactly and with every detail, she seemed neither to hear nor to comprehend a syllable. "Oh, she saw perfectly that I was longing to get back to my native town where there were many more beautiful maidens than she, who were also far more skilful ball-players, as I had myself acknowledged."
I might affirm, protest, and swear what I chose—she adhered to her assertion, and ever more copiously flowed her tears. Can any one wonder that I shortly thereafter lay at her feet, covering the hand that hung limply down with kisses and tears, and that I promised not to leave her? And who was then more blissful than I, when Vasitthi flung her soft arms around me, and kissed me again and again, laughing and crying for joy? It is true she now instantly said, "There, thou seest, it was not at all so necessary for thee to travel away, for then thou wouldst unquestionably have had to go." But when I set myself once more to explain everything clearly to her, she closed my mouth with a kiss and said that she knew I loved her and that she did not really mean what she had said of the girls in my native town. Filled with tender caresses and sweet confidences, the hours flew by as in a dream, and there would have been no end to all our bliss had not Somadatta and Medini suddenly appeared to tell us that it was high time to think of returning home.
In the courtyard at Somadatta's we found everything ready for my setting out. I called the overseer of the ox-wagons to me, and—bidding him use the utmost dispatch—sent him to the ambassador, with the information that my business was, I was sorry to say, not yet entirely settled and that I must, as a consequence, relinquish the idea of making the journey under the escort of the embassy. My one request was that he would be so good as give my love to my parents, and therewith I commended myself to his favour.
Scarcely had I stretched myself on my bed, in order—if possible—to enjoy a few hours' sleep—when the ambassador himself entered. Thoroughly dismayed, I bowed deeply before him, while he, in a somewhat surly voice, asked what this unheard-of behaviour meant,—I was to come with him at once.
In reply, I was about to speak of my still unfinished business, but he stopped me peremptorily.
"What nonsense! Business! Enough of such lies. Dost thou suppose I should not know what kind of business is on hand when a young puppy suddenly declares himself unable to leave a town, even if I had not seen that thy wagons already stand fully loaded, and with the oxen put to, in the courtyard?"
Of course I now stood scarlet with shame, and trembling, completely taken in my lie. But when he ordered me to come with him, at once, as already too many of the precious, cool, morning hours had been lost, he encountered an opposition for which he was plainly not prepared. From a tone of command he passed to a threatening one, and finally had recourse to pleading. He reminded me that my parents had only decided to send me on such a distant journey because they knew that I could perform it in his company and under his protection.
But he could have advanced no argument less suited to his purpose. For I at once said to myself that then I should have to wait till another embassy went to Kosambi before I could return to my Vasitthi. No, I would show my father that I was well able to conduct a caravan, alone, through all the hardships and dangers of the road.
It is true the ambassador now painted all of these dangers in sufficiently gloomy colours, but all he said was spoken to the winds. Finally, in a great rage, he left me; "he was not to blame, and I must smart for my own folly."
To me it seemed as if I were relieved from an insufferable burden; I had now surrendered myself so completely to my love. In this sweet consciousness I fell asleep, and did not wake until it was time for us to betake ourselves to the terrace where our loved ones awaited us.
Night after night we came together there, and on each occasion Vasitthi and I discovered new treasures in our mutual affection and bore away with us an increased longing for our next meeting. The moonlight seemed to me to be more silvery, the marble cooler, the scent of the double-jasmines more intoxicating, the call of the kokila more languishing, the rustling of the palms more dreamy, and the restless whispering of the asokas more full of mysterious promise, than they could possibly be elsewhere in all the world.
Oh! how distinctly I can yet recall the splendid asoka trees which stood along the whole length of the terrace and underneath which we so often wandered, holding each other in a close embrace. "The Terrace of the Sorrowless" it was called, from those trees which the poets name the "Sorrowless Tree," and sometimes "Heartsease." I have never elsewhere seen such magnificently grown specimens. The spear-shaped sleepless leaves gleamed in the rays of the moon and whispered in the gentle night-wind, and in between them glowed the golden, orange, and scarlet flowers, although we were as yet only at the beginning of the Vasanta season. But then, O brother, how should these trees not have stood in all their glory, seeing that, as thou knowest, the asoka at once opens his blossoms if his roots be but touched by the foot of a beautiful maiden.
One wonderful night, when the moon was at its full—to me it seems as if it were but yesterday—I stood beneath them with the dear cause of their early bloom, my sweet Vasitthi. Beyond the deep shadow of the ravine, we gazed far out into the land. We saw before us the two rivers wind like silver ribbons away over the vast plain and unite at that most sacred spot, which people call the "Triple-lock," because they believe that the "Heavenly Gunga" joins them there as third—for by this beautiful name, they, in that land, call the wonderful heavenly glow which we in the South know as the Milky Way—and Vasitthi, raising her hand, pointed to where it shone far above the tree-tops.
Then we spoke of the mighty Himavat[1] in the North, whence the beloved Gunga flows down; the Himavat, whose snow-covered peaks are the habitations of the gods and whose immense forests and deep chasms have afforded shelter to the great ascetics. But with even greater pleasure did I follow to where it takes its rise, the course of the Jumna.
"Oh," I called out, "had I but a fairy bark of mother-of-pearl, with my wishes for sails, and steered by my will, that it might bear us on the bosom of that silver stream upward to its source. Then should Hastinapura rise again from its ruins and the towering palaces ring with the banqueting of the revellers and the strife of the dice-players. Then the sands of Kurukshetra should yield up their dead. There the hoary Bhishma in silver armour, over which hang his white locks, should tower above the field on his lofty chariot and rain his polished arrows upon the foe; the valiant Phagadatta should come dashing on, mounted on his battle-inflamed, trunk-brandishing bull elephant; the agile Krishna should sweep with the four white battle steeds of Arjuna into the fiercest tumult of the fight. Oh! how I envied the ambassador his belonging to the warrior caste, when he told me that his ancestors also had taken part in that never-to-be-forgotten encounter. But that was foolish. For not by descent only do we possess ancestors. We are our own ancestors. Where was I then? Probably even there, among the combatants. For, although I am a merchant's son, the practice of arms has always been my greatest delight; and it is not too much to say that, sword in hand, I am a match for any man."
Vasitthi embraced me rapturously and called me her hero; I must quite certainly be one of those heroes who yet live in song; which of them, we could not, of course, know, as the perfume of the coral tree would scarcely penetrate to us through the sweet aroma of the "sorrowless" trees.
I asked her to tell me something of the nature of that perfume of which, to say truth, I had never heard. Indeed I found that romance, like all things else, blossomed far more luxuriously here in the valley of the Gunga than with us among the mountains.
So she related to me how once, on his progress through Indra's world, Krishna had, at the martial games, won the celestial coral tree and had planted it in his garden, a tree whose deep red blossoms shed their fragrance far around. And, she said, he who, by any chance, inhaled this perfume, remembered in his heart the long, long past, times long since vanished, out of his former lives.
"But only the saints are able to inhale this perfume here on earth," she said, and added almost roguishly, "and we two shall, I fear me, hardly become such. But what does that matter? Even if we were not Nala and Damayanti, I am sure we loved each other quite as much—whatever our names may have been. And perhaps, after all, Love and Faith are the only realities, merely changing their names and forms. They are the melodies, and we, the lutes on which they are played. The lute is shattered and another is strung, but the melody remains the same. It sounds, it is true, fuller and nobler on the one instrument than on the other, just as my new vina sounds far more beautiful than my old one. We, however, are two splendid lutes for the gods to play upon,—from which to draw the sweetest of all music."
I pressed her silently to my breast, deeply moved, as well as astonished at these strange thoughts.
But she added—and smiled gently, probably guessing what was in my mind—"Oh! I know, I really ought not to have such thoughts; our old family Brahman became quite angry on one occasion when I hinted at something of the kind; I was to pray to Krishna and leave thinking to the Brahmans. So, as I may not think, but may surely believe, I will believe that we were, really and truly, Nala and Damayanti."
And raising her hands in prayer to the asoka before us, in all its glory of shimmering blossom and flimmering leaf, she spoke to it in the words which Damayanti, wandering heart-broken in the woods, uses to the asoka; but on her lips, the flexible Çloka verses of the poet seemed to grow without effort and to blossom ever more richly, like a young shoot transplanted to hallowed soil—
Then she looked on me with love-filled eyes, in whose tears the moonlight was clearly mirrored, and spoke with lips that were drawn and quivering—
"When thou art far away, and dost recall to mind this scene of our bliss, then imagine to thyself that I stand here and speak thus to this noble tree. Only then I shall not say 'Nala,' but 'Kamanita.'"
I locked her in my arms, and our lips met in a kiss full of unutterable feeling.
Suddenly there was a rustling in the summit of the tree above us. A large, luminous red flower floated downward and settled on our tear-bedewed cheeks. Vasitthi took it in her hand, smiled, hallowed it with a kiss, and gave it to me. I hid it in my breast.
Several flowers had fallen to the ground in the avenue of trees. Medini, who sat beside Somadatta, on a bench not far from us, sprang to her feet, and, holding up several yellow asoka blossoms, came towards us, calling out—
"Look, sister! The flowers are beginning to fall already. Soon there will be enough of them for your bath."
"You don't mean those yellow things! Vasitthi may not, on any account, put them into her bath-water," exclaimed my mischievous friend—"that is, if her flower-like body is to blossom in harmony with her love. I assure you, only such scarlet flowers as that one which friend Kamanita has just concealed in his robe, should be used. For it is written in the golden Book of Love: 'Saffron yellow affection it is called, when it attracts attention, indeed, but, notwithstanding, later fades away; scarlet, however, when it does not later fade but becomes only too apparent.'"
At the same time he and Medini laughed in their merry, confidential way.
Vasitthi, however answered gravely, though with her sweet smile, and gently but firmly pressed my hand—
"Thou dost mistake, dear Somadatta! My love has the colour of no flower. For I have heard it said that the colour of the truest love is not red but black—black as Çiva's throat became when the god swallowed the poison which would otherwise have destroyed all created beings. And so it must ever be. True love must be able to withstand the poison of life, and must be willing to taste the bitterest, in order that the loved one may be spared. And from that bitterest it will assuredly prefer to choose its colour, rather than from any pleasures, however dazzling."
In such wise spoke my beloved Vasitthi, that night under the sorrowless trees.
- ↑ Ancient name of the Himalayas.