Bubbles of the Foam

by F. W. Bain

I

Now in the meanwhile Bimba, when his cousin drove him off his throne, had fled away to the eastern quarter, taking his daughter with him. And he took up his home in the forest, and there he lived, in a little hut on the side of a hill, just where the desert ended, and the trees of the wood began, having fallen from the state of a King to that of a fugitive and a hunter, living by the chase and the fruits of the forest trees, and drinking streams instead of wine. And so he continued to live, year by year, mourning for his wife, and bitterly hating his cousin, disgusted with the world, with no companion but his daughter. And gradually, as time went on, he utterly forgot his kingdom and all his former life, growing ever fonder of the forest that he lived in, and saying to himself: Now is the wood become my wife, since my other wife is gone.[24] And the only thing that matters now is the daughter that she left behind, as if to keep my memory green of what she was herself. So now, then, I will change her name, lest some day in the future it should betray her to my cousin: for her name would be a clue, leading to her destruction. And as a rule, to lose a name is the same thing as to disappear, and die, and be forgotten. So she shall die, as Alipriyá, to be reborn as Aranyání. And what does the title matter? For the bees will love her just as well, by one name as the other.[25]

So then Aranyání grew up alone with her father in the forest, with her identity disguised, turned as it were from a queen into a woodman's daughter, and lying hidden and unknown, like a pearl in an ocean shell. And yet she resembled fire, that refuses to be concealed, betraying its true nature through no matter what envelops it, and shining through, by chinks and holes, the wrapping that would hide it, even when it does not burn. For brought up in the forest though she was, and half alone, since her father often left her by herself, all day long, yet strange to say! the rudeness of her wild condition ran over her, leaving her soul untouched, like the water running in crystal drops that beautify but do not wet the neck of a royal swan. And one day she was discovered like a treasure in the wood by a band of hermits' daughters, that were roaming at a distance from the hermitage, away in the forest's heart. And those daughters of the sages all fell suddenly in love with her at once, not only for her eyes, that reminded them of the deer that were their playmates in their home, but still more for the strange and wild sweetness of her soul, that resembled absolutely nothing but itself. And every now and then, they used to come and play with her, when they rambled in the wood, telling her innumerable stories which they heard from their fathers, those mines of sacred wisdom. And then, very soon, those daughters of the hermits found, to their amazement, that they resembled fools, pouring water into a well. For she remembered everything when she had only heard it once,[26] and meditating over it alone, not only squeezed out of its mango all the juice which it contained, but planted its kernel like a seed of heavenly wisdom in her heart, and watering it with her own imagination, turned it presently into a new and strange tree, loaded with peculiar flowers and fruits of its own: so that as she grew gradually up, she resembled a receptacle of the essence of old lore, mixed with a native and original savour of herself. Ha! very wonderful indeed are the influences that rise up out of a former birth, since even in this lower form of a hunter's daughter the nature of that incomparable goddess overflowed, like a holy sap in the dark heart of a forest tree, and welled out abundantly, till it covered the coarse bark with fragrant buds and shoots, and flowers of immortal scent and hue. For her body kept pace with the progress of her soul, as if out of rivalry and jealousy unwilling to lag behind it, in the acquisition of ornaments and graces. And having no other models, it found itself obliged to imitate the objects that made up the atmosphere and soil in which it grew: till at last the deer and the blue lotuses gazed upon her eyes, and the red fruits and gunjá berries at her lips, and the creepers at her arms, with envy and amazement: and the tamála shadows turned pale when they looked at her hair, and the trunks of the nyagrodha trees despaired, gazing at the curve of her waist as it sank into the outline of her heavy hips, and the swans and the elephants blushed with shame to see her walk, and the gourds swelled till they burst with jealousy, unable to rival the protuberance of those two disdainful sisters, her inimitable breasts, and the bees grew mad, as if intoxicated with honey sweeter than their own, at the fragrance that floated from the flower of her mouth.

And then strange! just at the very moment when she turned from a child into a woman, there came over her a change, that resembled the presence of a single overhanging cloud in the ruby crystal of a clear pale dawn. For though her father told her something of her story and his own, yet he never told her all, whetting all the more her curiosity by what he did not tell, which like a hidden secret she strove to discover for herself by means of the careless hints that fell every now and then from his mouth unawares, like clues. And the thought that she was the daughter of a King flitted in her mind, and appeared to disappear continually, coming and going, as often as she sat musing in the twilight, like the bats in the shadows of the surrounding dusk. And she mixed this conviction with the rosy hope of the dawn of her own maidenhood, and with visions which she would blush like that dawn to avow even to herself, and with fictions of her own imagination that was filled with old legends and stories, and she brooded over a future that was suggested by the past till it turned into a dream, half pleasant and half melancholy for want of its unlikelihood, that haunted her, and never left her, resembling the colour of the blue shadow that hovers on the pure snow of thy father's[27] western slopes, just before the coming of the early sun. For though she was unaware of it herself, she was plunged in the loneliness of sex, arising from the dim yearning of her as yet untouched affection, and longing for the thing that every maiden waits for, like the night, in the form of a lover, to burst out suddenly into red emotion and an ecstasy of joy. And sometimes, as she sat alone dreaming, and gazing as she loved to do out into the desert, that stretched away below the hill she lived on towards the setting sun, visions of the kings and princes and lovers of her stories assembling in crowds at her own Swayamwara,[28] floated with indistinct and unimaginable beauty in the blue haze of the sand, with an intoxicating fascination that almost took away her breath, till she was amazed and even frightened to find her own heart furiously beating, and shaking into agitation the wave of that bosom which there was nobody to see, as if it was ashamed of her and angry with itself.

And yet, with the exception of her father, she had never seen any man but one, who entered into her forest life merely like one of its trees, for she had been accustomed to see him, every now and then, ever since she was a child. And this was a young woodman, who lived a long way off in the wood. And he used to go hunting with her father, who had found him in the forest: and he came every now and then to see them, since her father was pleased with him, for his good nature and simplicity, resembling as it did the clearness of a stream. And he was as tall as a shala tree, and very strong, and very brown and hairy, and though his name was Babhru,[29] yet her father always called him Bruin,[30] and Aranyání knew him first only by the nickname: for when she was a child, he used to play with her, as often as he came. And so as she grew up, she looked upon him always with the eyes of a child, never even dreaming that her own alteration might produce any alteration in himself: as it did. For little by little, as her beauty grew, so did his affection; till at last it turned into a passionate devotion, that remained notwithstanding absolutely pure, and free from any taint of evil, like the soil in which it grew. And finally, he could not keep away from her. And he came oftener and oftener to see them, till her father was on the very point of forbidding him to come. And then, suddenly, Babhru asked him, to give Aranyání to him as a wife.

And Bimba looked at him, as if struck by the very thunderbolt of astonishment, for though he was fond of Babhru, yet the idea of such a son-in-law was so outrageous that it had never even occurred to him at all. And like a flash of lightning, he suddenly became aware of his daughter's own attraction, and the danger of the proximity of butter to the fire. And though utterly despising Babhru for a son-in-law, he could not tell him why. Therefore he banished him altogether, and not only would not give him Aranyání, but actually forbad him to see her any more: as it were returning upon Babhru the thunderbolt that had fallen on himself: so that that unhappy son-in-law came within a little of abandoning the body, for grief and amazement, and remorse, at ever having asked a question that had produced so terrible a consequence, the very opposite of that at which it aimed. For even to forsake the society of Bimba was a grief to him, since he loved him and looked up to him as a dog does to his master. But the thought of losing that of Aranyání was exactly like a sword driven through the very middle of his heart. And leaving it behind him, as it were, together with his reason that abandoned him, he went away hanging down his head, alone.

But unable to endure separation, yet unwilling to disobey Bimba, he used to come stealthily and lie lurking in the bushes, watching, to catch sight of Aranyání. And sometimes, seizing his opportunity, when he knew that her father was away, he would creep out, trembling like a coward, and speak to her. And Aranyání, displeased at him for coming to see her without her father's knowledge or permission, and not reciprocating his passion in the least, yet partly out of pity, and partly out of kindness arising from recollection of his playing with her in the past, and it may be, partly just a very little pleased with his honest admiration, and willing to waste a little of her time in teasing him, for want of a better lover, would sometimes talk to him a little, and laugh at him and tell him stories, and send him away more utterly infatuated, and more happy, and more miserable than ever, after making him promise never to come again. And every time he promised, and went away only to return again immediately, simply because he could not help it: dreading her reproof every time he dared to come, yet ready for all that to risk his life a hundred times over, only to bask once more in the nectar of the sunshine of that reproof. For the words of the straw, promising not to answer to the call of the amber that attracts it, are void of meaning, and perish in the very moment of their utterance, like pictures drawn on the surface of a running stream.