A Mine of Faults - F. W. Bain

And so as she sat and wove, the King stood watching her, leaning against the door-post, with his arms folded, absolutely still. And he resembled a rock, against which the sea of her beauty came beating, wave after wave, as if to shake it from its base. And his soul went travelling, by the means of his eye, slowly and carefully about her, like a painter. And like a bee, it hovered about the flower of her moving lips, and flew circling all about the slowly moving curve of her bosom, and wandered in and out about her slender waist, lost, as she sat kneeling, in the folds of her heavy limbs, and then rose and repeated its journey, ending where it first began, and going round and round her, as if unable to go away. And as he gazed, he became as it were himself a sea, and began as it were to surge in agitation, under the soft mysterious attraction of that moonlike mass of grace and symmetry and curve and colour, floating as it seemed before him in the air, on the edge of that cliff. And all the while, there was silence in the arbour, broken only by the low sound of the singing of the King's daughter. And in that silence, the humming of the bees outside came, every now and then, drifting in upon the breeze, that carried also the scent of the blossoms of the trees, and floated about the King, charming at once by a double spell, like billows of the essence of intoxication rolling in on his already intoxicated soul. And he heard the wind below in the valley sweep sighing among its trees, and now and then, the note of the wild pigeon calling to his wife. So he stood, wrapped in a dream, lifted as it were on that cloud-loved terrace above the world, and bathing in the nectar-poison of the nervous apprehension of pure passion that was absolutely lost, in the ecstasy of self-annihilation, in its object, the maiden form before him, singing and swaying as she wove.

And then, at last, she finished her work, and stopped. And she stood up, and took the garland she had made, and laid it carefully aside, in a corner. And then she turned towards him, and pointed with her finger to the marble seat that ran like a long bench all along the arbour wall. And the King instantly went and took his seat, as if obeying her commands, upon it, while she returned and remained, half sitting, half kneeling, beside her basket with fragments of flowers all around her, and her two hands joined together on her lap.

VIII

And at that moment, there came a great eagle, that passed in the air close beside them, and flew away over the valley. And seeing him, she said: O King Chand, would thy friends below believe him, were he to fly down and tell them, he had seen thee sitting on a mountain cliff, conversing with a woman! Then said Chand with a sigh: Art thou indeed a woman, and not rather some mountain witch that has destroyed me by a spell? For it is but a moment since first I entered this enchanted arbour, and already I am changed, into something other than I was: and short as it has been, yet that moment has contained within it as it were the power of years of alteration. Then she said: If this arbour of mine has wrought a change in thee, to thy dissatisfaction, surely the fault was all thy own, for coming in, and thrusting thyself upon me, as it were, not once alone, but many times, not by my invitation, but of thy own accord. Blame, therefore, thyself alone, if thou hast suffered, by reason of thy intrusion, a change for the worse. And the King said hastily: I said not that the change was for the worse, but only, that I had undergone a change. Then she said: But if, then, thy change is for the better, of what art thou complaining? Surely thou art in that case a gainer, by me and by my arbour. And he said: Nay, neither did I say that the change was for the better. And she laughed, and exclaimed: What! canst thou not even tell, whether this extraordinary change that has befallen thee is good or bad? Dost thou, then, not even know, which to prefer, thy former condition, or thy present? And he said: No. Then she said: Of what nature, then, is this inexplicable change, that leaves thee neither better, nor worse, nor even yet the same, but something indeterminate, of which thou canst give no account at all? And the King remained silent, with his eyes fixed upon her face.

So then, after a while, she said softly: Come now, shall I come to thy assistance, and like a physician, probe for thee thy soul, and show thee, what thou canst not unriddle for thyself? Art thou not angry with thyself, and only for this reason, that thou art beginning to doubt, whether, after all, a woman is exactly only what thou hast hitherto determined to consider her? Say, is it not so? And thy confidence in thyself wavers, and thy soul is endeavouring to make, if possible, someone else, rather than thyself, culpable for the wound given to thy vanity? And the King exclaimed, as if stung by her words: Did I not say, thou wert a witch? Then she said: What need is here of any witchcraft? Art thou not, by thine own avowal, Chand, and who is there that has not heard alike of Chand's delight in war, and his antipathy to my sex? And she paused a moment, and she said: Come now; since fortune and thy own insistence have cast thee for a moment in my way, and this Guru seems long in making his appearance, shall I in the interval do battle against thee, for myself and for my sisters? Thou art fond of battles: art thou ready to try thy fortune in this field?

And the King said in confusion: Nay, for the combatants in this case are unevenly equipped.

Then she laughed ironically, and exclaimed: What! Chand! and afraid of a combat with a woman! Shall I compare thee, then, to a general who has long ago taken up a position of which he boasts loudly as impregnable, yet dare not expose it to the test? And all at once she leaned towards him, and said, with a smile, in a tone of irresistible sweetness: Come, bring thy charges against me, one by one, and I will do what I can, in my weakness,[[12]] to refuse and repel them.

And as she spoke, Yogeshwara said to himself, within his ambush: Ha! now, let us see what he will say. And well did he object, that the combat was uneven, and its result, a foregone conclusion. For this crafty little daughter of a King knows just as well as he does, that she is herself the formidable argument, against which he has not only no weapons of attack, but absolutely no defence at all. And even before the battle has begun, she has annihilated all his force beforehand, by that bewildering glance from those blue irrefutable eyes, which stealing into his heart, have bribed and corrupted it, making it her own ally, and a traitor to himself.

So, then, as she leaned towards him, with her head a little on one side, and her neck a little curved, and her eyes a little closed, and her lips a little parted in a caressing smile, the appeal of her soft entreating beauty struck the King so hard, that in his agitation, his tongue refused to speak. And just as if it had heard what Yogeshwara had said, his heart, drawn towards her through his eyes, deserted him, and going over to the enemy, nestled like a fugitive bird in the little hollow between the twin wave of her breast, saying as it were: Here will I dwell, close to her own, rocked to sleep on the rise and fall of this gentle sea. And he looked at her in silence, overcome with his own emotion, and at last he said with difficulty: Did I not say that I was changed? For but a little while ago, before I entered this magic arbour, my mind was made completely up, with reference to thy sex, and I could have told thee I know not how many unanswerable reasons for condemning it: but now my soul is in confusion, and as I look at thee, I cannot bring against it any arguments at all. Aye! who could bring a charge of any kind against such a thing as thee?