Her mother pitied him, and would gladly have consented to her daughter’s union with him, had she not perceived the girl’s untractable repugnance. Observing this, she could not forbear offering some gentle expostulations.
“Yhahil,” said she, one day, “why, my child, do you look so coldly upon poor Goutama? He loves you: is not that enough to endear a man to a woman’s heart?”
“No, my mother. We cannot prepare the channel for the current of our own feelings; they will take what course they list. We may control them, nay, we may master, but cannot change them; they are independent of our will. I cannot love Goutama, and will never wed a Pariah. In this world if there be little happiness, there is, at least, a choice of miseries, and mine shall be those arising from unwedded life, rather than from a union which could never render me happy.”
“But why should you seek to elevate yourself above the condition to which you were born?”
“Because it is one of acknowledged disgrace. No mortal was ever born degraded, and the stigmas imposed by conventional prejudices I am unwilling to sanction by perpetuating them. I would emerge from the atmosphere of social degradation by which I have been for years surrounded. I feel within me the elements of that nobility which is indigenous in every living soul, the nobility of mind, and have a strong presentiment that I shall elevate myself above the present abasement to which destiny seems to have consigned me.”
“Daughter, these are dangerous sentiments to encourage; they will plant thorns in your bosom which you will find it difficult to pluck out.”
“If the thorns are there, the roses will grow upon them, and I am content.”
“But is it not better to have the humblest flower blossom within your heart, than to find nothing but the bitter root growing there, which puts forth neither flower nor fruit?”
“Those joys, my mother, are the sweetest which have sparkled from a cup impregnated with the bitters of affliction. Enjoyment is enhanced by suffering, and I trust I am only passing through the ordeal of the one, to bring me into the enviable inheritance of the other.”
The mother forbore to urge a measure to which she saw her child so decidedly opposed, but her disappointment was severe. She feared that her daughter would never perpetuate her race, and that she was destined to be the parent of a degraded offspring—degraded even among the outcasts of the Hindoo population. The father was no less unhappy, but he did not interfere with the prejudices of a beloved child. In truth, he felt the force of these prejudices, and forbore to divert them. He was a wealthy man, and there was no moral reason why she should not pursue the bent of her own conscience, when it did not lead her into practical dereliction. Yhahil was thus left uncontrolled to follow the impulses of her own feelings.