A Syrup of the Bees

by F. W. Bain

IV

So then, that astounded prime minister gazed at Arunodaya for a while in silence, and took his dismissal, and went away like a man in a dream. And when he reached his home, he sat for a long time musing, like a picture painted on a wall. And then, all at once, he began to laugh. And he exclaimed: Ha! this, then, was the secret, and now at length I begin to understand, and all is explained. For this young king brahmachári,[16] little as he suspects it, has been under my eye ever since he was born. And this, then, was the reason why he was perpetually wandering about alone, and lying for hours gazing at the lotuses in the forest pools, or looking at the sea-waves, like a rock on the shore, differing totally from all others of his kind, who as a rule resemble must elephants, in utterly refusing to have anything to do with dancing girls or women of any kind, as it were wilfully contradicting the design of the Creator, who beyond a doubt formed him on purpose to prevent Rati and Priti[17] from quarrelling, by providing a second body for their common lord. And all the while I took him for a very yogi, he was, as it turns out, dreaming, not of emancipation, but this wife of his former birth: and hard as it is, I think that even emancipation would, of the two, be easier to attain. Well might he say, that she was difficult to find. For who ever got at the wife of his former birth, except in a dream. Aye! this is an obstacle to his marriage indeed, that even the Lord of the Elephant-Face would be puzzled to surmount or remove.

And after a while, he said again: Is it a mere fancy? Or can it be, that he really is haunted by some dim recollection of his former wife, since beyond a doubt the influences of pre-existence do sometimes persist, and like ships, sail without sinking over the dark ocean of oblivion, from one birth-island to another? And what, then, is she like? For could I only discover what she looks like in his dreams, it might be that by policy or stratagem I could make shift to find her, or somebody so like her that he would never know the difference. I will go to him to-morrow and ask him to describe her, and he cannot well refuse. For how can he expect me to discover her, unless I know what she is like? Or can it be, that he does not even know himself? That would be better still. For then, if, with the assistance of the astrologers, I can manage to devise a scheme, so as to persuade him that I have lit upon that which he is looking for, how could he detect the imposition? There are only too many kings' daughters who would think that the very fruit of their birth was gained, by practising so innocent a deception as to pass for the wife of his former birth in order to become in very truth his wife in this. And if I cannot succeed in some dexterous trick of substitution, I shall be almost ready to abandon the body myself, for sheer exasperation. For even apart from the necessity of getting him married, there is not one of the surrounding kings who is not ready to throw a crore of gold pieces at my head, if only I will even promise to become his partisan against all the rest, and marry Arunodaya to some daughter of his own. Out upon it, that with kings' daughters lying thick as lotuses all round him, and ready and even eager to be plucked, this unhappy longing of the king for an unattainable párijáta flower should make them all of no more value than withered leaves! O Rider on the Mouse,[18] come to my assistance, for without thy help we shall all be swallowed by calamity, in the form of the utter extinction of this perverse king's kingdom and his race.

V

Now, just at this very moment, it happened, by the decree of destiny, that one of the kings of the Widyádharas,[19] who was rightly named Mahídhara, for his home was on a mountain top that stood in a far-off island beyond the rising sun, was holding a swayamwara for all his hundred daughters. And for ninety-nine days each daughter chose her husband, one a day, from out of the suitors who flocked to the marriage in such numbers that the sky looked like a cart-wheel, with lines of Widyádharas assembling from all directions, like vultures, for its spokes. And finally the hundredth day, and with it, the turn of the youngest daughter came, to choose.

Now this daughter resembled a thorn, fixed by the Creator in the hearts of all her sisters, causing perpetual irritation, like a rebel chief in a united kingdom. For she stood aloof from them all, like a little finger that somehow or other refuses to bend into the closed hand, being not only the youngest, but the smallest, and the most perverse, and the loveliest of all, putting not only all her sisters but every other Widyádhari to the necessity of acknowledging, sore against their will, that the presence of her beauty robbed them of their own, reducing them to confusion, like so many impostors confronted by the true heir. And her nature was so totally dissimilar to that of everybody else, that she resembled a thing made by the Creator standing as it were upon his head, out of the essence of contradiction: since none of her own family could ever tell what she would or would not say, or do, or even where she was. And even her beauty was as wayward as she was herself. For one of her eyebrows was always as it were on the tiptoe of surprise, arrogantly arching a little higher than the other; and her eyes were very long, with corners that looked as if they were on the very point of turning upwards, which none the less they never did, as if expressly to disappoint and deride the expectation they aroused, and keep it hovering for ever in an agony of suspense. And her lips always seemed to smile even when they were not smiling, and her head was almost, always poised a very little on one side, looking as if it were listening for the far-off mutter of the mischief that lay as it were slumbering in the thunder-cloud hanging low in the heaven of her huge dark eyes, whose lashes resembled the long grass that fringes the edge of a forest pool. And her limbs were so slender, and her colour was so pale, in the shadow of the masses of her sable hair, that had it not been for the indigo of her lotus eyes and the vermilion of her lips, she would have resembled a marble incarnation of the beauty of death, or a wraith of mist touched as it hovers in a dark valley by the ashy beam of a waning moon. And, strange! her spell seemed made of moods that always changed, yet never varied, compounded half of shy timidity, and half of proud disdain, like an atmosphere of paradoxical fascination, formed of the rival fragrances of sandalwood and camphor, translated into the language of the soul.

So then, as those Widyádhara suitors waited in the hall, standing round in a ring, she came in slowly, with the garland of choosing in her hand. And beginning with the first she came to, she walked very deliberately all round that circle of excited wooers, going from one to the next in order, and examining each in turn. And in the dead silence, there was absolutely nothing heard but the faint clash of her golden anklets, as she moved round slowly on little hesitating feet, that trod as it were on everybody's heart. And as she went, those suitors, as she came to them and passed them, turned gradually from dark to pale, and then again to black, like the buttresses on the king's high road, when torches pass along.[20] And every Widyádhara's soul abandoned, so to say, his body, on finding that she left him to go on to the next, dooming him as it were to death by carrying further the fatal wreath.

So, then, having given to all, as if by way of boon, a bitter glimpse of beauty mixed with a momentary ray of hope, dashing the cup from each one's lip just as it thought it was going to taste, she came to the very end. And then, she stopped dead. And she looked at them all, for a single moment, over the wreath they all desired, and she raised it to her lips, as if to scent its fragrance, saying as it were to all: Very sweet indeed is the thing beyond your reach. And then, with a little pout, she put it round her own neck. And she said, in the Arya metre:

Tell me, O breeze, is there syrup for the bees?
Only, alas! when kind flowers please.

And then, she went away, leaving all her lovers as it were in the lurch, like a flock of Chakrawákas when the sun has disappeared.