Then we spoke of the mighty Himavat5 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 heartbroken 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—
“Thou Sorrowless One! the heartrending cry of the stricken maiden hear!
Thou that so fittingly ‘Heartsease’ art named, give peace of thy peace to me!
Eyes of the gods are thine all-seeing blossoms; their lips, thy whispering leaves.
Tell me, oh! tell, where my heart’s hero wanders, where my loved Nala waits.”
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
