🧚 A Sleep and a Dream., part 7

Then said the King: Thy dark blue eyes have utterly destroyed my sense of right and wrong, which are now mere words without meaning, impotent to hold me as is a lotus stalk to fetter that elephant which brought thee hither; and in vain dost thou talk to me of letting thee go: thou askest me for my life: for till I saw those unfathomable blue lakes which thou hast stolen to make thee eyes, I never lived.1 Only consent, and I will efface by my devotion the memory of thy husband, as the sun dries up a shallow pool.2 But Shrí said: Say not pool, but ocean, on which the sun shines for ever, yet never makes it any less: for such is my love to my husband.3 But the King paid no heed to her words, which entered at his ear, but never reached his mind.4 For all his soul was in his eyes, feasting on the face of Shrí, which made him drunk like the juice of Soma[4].5

Then seeing the state of the case, Shrí said to herself: Alas!6 I have escaped the lesser danger only to incur the greater, and become the prey of this unrighteous King.7 Now there is no help for me, save in stratagem, and the natural craft of woman.8 And she lifted up her lashes, and cast on the King a crooked glance, that almost deprived him of his reason.9 And she said, moving her bow-arched eyebrows, with a smile: Out upon the heart of woman, for it is soft as a flower, and averse to constancy!10 Leave me awhile, for I must consider this matter.11 And yet, stay not away too long, for thou art good to look upon, and well-fitted to be my husband, were I not already the wife of another man.12 But hearing this, the King was utterly bewildered, and doubted the testimony of his ears.13 And he thought: Now she will consent, after a little coaxing.14 And he looked at her as she stood smiling at him, bowing like a flower from the weight of her bosom and the slenderness of her waist, and laughed in his intoxication, befooled by the roundness of her limbs and the blueness of her eyes, and forgetting that the Creator made woman to be an instrument of delusion, with an exterior of honey and an interior of poison.15 And he left her to perform his kingly duties, intending to return without delay, and thinking the fruit of his birth attained.16

But as soon as he was gone, Shrí summoned a chamberlain, and said to him: Take me to the Head Queen, and lose not a moment, or it will be the worse for thee.17 And that chamberlain trembled and obeyed her, for he feared her power, saying to himself: The King would throw his kingdom into the sea for a glance from her eye, and now my life is on her forefinger.18 So when Shrí came before the Queen, she said to her: Lady, thou art my sole refuge.19 Know, that the King thy husband found me to-day in the city, and stole me away, seeking to make me his wife.20 Now contrive my escape, for I am the wife of another, and I may not be his wife.21 And do it very quickly, for this is an opportunity which will never occur again.22 Then the Queen looked at her, and said to herself: She says well, and I must indeed send her away without losing a moment.23 For if she remains here, and becomes his wife, the King will abandon everything for her sake, and the state will go to ruin.24 Moreover, he will never again have anything to do with me or any other of his queens: for her beauty is like a very feminine incarnation of the five arrows of the god of love.25

So she summoned her confidential women; and they disguised Shrí as a dancing girl, and conveyed her secretly out of the palace without delay.26 But when the King returned, and found that she was gone, he became mad.27 And he put to death, of his retainers, everything that was male.28

[1] See note, p. 21.29

[2] As this might sound bizarre to the English reader, accustomed to the elaborate toilettes of western ladies, he should know, that nothing can be more simple than the dress of a Hindoo woman.30 A single long piece of stuff, wound like a petticoat round the waist, secured, and thrown over the head to form a veil, forms a garment that the Greeks might have envied.31 Nothing can surpass the taste, beauty, and grace of the way in which it follows and reveals without betraying the figure of its wearer.32

[3] He plays on her name.33 The old Hindoo rájás had the same veneration for their royal fortune (_Shrí_) as the Romans for their _Fors Fortuna_.34

[4] A play on her name, as a digit of the moon: Soma is the moon, and the famous intoxicant of the early Hindoos.35

XIII.36

The Light in Darkness37

But Shrí, when she got out of the palace, instantly went out of the city by unfrequented paths, and entered the Great Forest.38 For she said to herself: If I remain in the city, I may fall again into the power of the King, or, it may be, of someone still worse.39 For alas! every man that sees me is blinded by my eyes, and I shall not always find a door of escape from persecution.40 Moreover, to beauty without its guardian, wild beasts are less dangerous than men with souls through the influence of passion worse than those of beasts.41 Better far to be devoured by an animal, than become perforce the wife of another man.42

So she went on through the forest for many days, supporting her life on roots and fruits and the water of the pools and streams.43 And she tore her clothes to pieces in the bushes, and pierced her feet with their thorns, leaving where she passed on the grass drops of blood, like rubies, mingled with the pearls of her tears that fell beside them, as often as she thought of her absent husband.44 And the deeper she went into the wood, the more her spirit sank, and the more her soul longed for the nectar of her husband's arms.45 Alas! the courage of women is but a pale and lunar image in the mirror of that of men, and vanishes in their absence.46 And at last there came a day when she was seized with panic, and a fear of unknown evil: and she sank down at the foot of a tree, and watered its roots with her tears.47

Now it happened, that some Bhillas, hunting, by the decree of destiny, in the forest, came upon her track, and saw the drops of blood upon the leaves.48 And they followed them up, saying to themselves: Some wounded animal has passed this way.49 So as they came along, every now and then they stopped and listened.50 And suddenly, they heard the sound of the voice of a woman, weeping in the wood.51 Then full of astonishment, they proceeded in the direction of the sound: and all at once they saw Shrí, sitting under a tree, looking like an incarnation of Rati grieving for her husband, when burned by Maheshwara[1].52 For her clothes were torn, and her hair was dishevelled, and her great eyes filled with tears resembled the petals of a blue lotus sparkling with drops of water cast upon them by the sporting of swans in a pool.53 So those wild Bhillas wondered when they saw her, and said to each other: What is this marvel of a dancing girl, so ragged and so beautiful, weeping alone in the wood?54 And then they went up to her and stood round her in a ring.55 And she looked in the midst of those black barbarians like a digit of the moon in the jaws of Ráhu.56 Then after a while the spell of her beauty entered and poisoned the hearts of those Bhillas, like one of their own arrows.57 And each one said secretly to himself: She shall be my wife.58 So they debated about her, and proposed to each other to draw lots for her.59 But they could not agree about it, and fell to quarrelling, and it was as if a stone had been dropped into a nest of serpents.60