They thought that perhaps if they returned to India the dead fire would re-kindle under that ardent sun. But no.
One day, at Benares, standing near the great Monkey Temple of Durga, Martin stopped suddenly, and a light came into his eyes.
“B. V. I’ve just remembered that one of the wisest of the pandits lives near here—a wonderful old fellow called Jadrup Gosein. Let’s go and state the case to him. The wisest man I know.”
They went, Beatrice Veronica ashamed to feel a little uprush of regret at the sacrifice of a part of the wonderful day. Martin knew so much. It was heavenly to go to these places with him, and have them illumined by his research. But they went to the pandit.
The holy man was seated under the shadow of a great image of Ganesha the Elephant-Headed One, the Giver of Counsel, and when they sat themselves before him at a measured distance the case was stated.
There was a long pause—a deep silence filled with hot sunshine smelling of marigolds, and the patter of bare feet on sun-baked floors, as curious quick eyes watched the conclave from afar.
Jadrup Gosein meditated deeply, then raised his serene dark face upon them with the dim look that peers from the very recesses of being. His words, incomprehensible to Beatrice Veronica, had the hollow resonance of a bell, near at hand but softened.
“There was a man long since,” he began, “to whom the high Gods offered in reward of merit, a rose-tree—very small and weak,—a suckling, as it were, among trees, with feeble fibrous root, accessible to all the dangers of drought and sun, and as he stretched his hand doubting, they offered him for choice a rose from the trees of Paradise, crimson and perfumed, its hidden bosom pearled with dew and wafting divine odours. And they said ‘Choose.’ So he said within his soul, ‘The tree may die—who knows the management of its frail roots? But the rose is here, sweeter than sweet, immortal since it grew in Paradise! I choose the rose.’
“And they put it in his hand. And the wise Elephant-Headed One said:
“ ‘O fool! What is a rose compared to a rose-tree that bears myriads of roses? Also the rose dies in the heat of human hands. The tree lives; a gathered rose is dead.’