"Do you certainly know that we shall meet again?"

"When you have learnt, we can meet when we will. He will teach you the Laya Yoga. You should not linger here in the woods any longer. You should go on. In three days it will be possible."

"But how have you learnt--a girl and young?"

"Through a close union with Nature--that is one of the three roads. But I know little as yet. Now take my hand and come.

"One last question. Is this house ruined and abject as I have seen it in the daylight, or royal and the house of G.o.ds as we see it now? Which is truth?"

"In the day you saw it in the empty illusion of blind thought. Tonight, eternally lovely as in the thought of the man who made it. Nothing that is beautiful is lost, though in the sight of the unwise it seems to die.

Death is in the eyes we look through--when they are cleansed we see Life only. Now take my hand and come. Delay no more."

She caught my hand and we entered the dim magnificence of the great hall. The moon entered with us.

Instantly I had the feeling of supernatural presence. Yet I only write this in deference to common use, for it was absolutely natural--more so than any I have met in the state called daily life. It was a thing in which I had a part, and if this was supernatural so also was I.

Again I saw the Dark One, the Beloved, the young Krishna, above the women who loved him. He motioned with his hand as we pa.s.sed, as though he waved us smiling on our way. Again the dancers moved in a rhythmic tread to the feet of the mountain G.o.ddess--again we followed to where she bent to hear. But now, solemn listening faces crowded in the shadows about her, grave eyes fixed immovably upon what lay at her feet--a man, submerged in the pure light that fell from her presence, his dark face stark and fine, lips locked, eyes shut, arms flung out cross-wise in utter abandonment, like a figure of grief invisibly crucified upon his shame. I stopped a few feet from him, arrested by a barrier I could not pa.s.s. Was it sleep or death or some mysterious state that partook of both? Not sleep, for there was no flutter of breath. Not death--no rigid immobility struck chill into the air. It was the state of subjection where the spirit set free lies tranced in the mighty influences which surround us invisibly until we have entered, though but for a moment, the Ninth Vibration.

And now, with these Listeners about us, a clear voice began and stirred the air with music. I have since been asked in what tongue it spoke and could only answer that it reached my ears in the words of my childhood, and that I know whatever that language had been it would so have reached me.

"Great Lady, hear the story of this man's fall, for it is the story of man. Be pitiful to the blind eyes and give them light."

There was long since in Ranipur a mighty King and at his birth the wise men declared that unless he cast aside all pa.s.sions that debase the soul, relinquishing the lower desires for the higher until a Princess laden with great gifts should come to be his bride, he would experience great and terrible misfortunes. And his royal parents did what they could to possess him with this belief, but they died before he reached manhood. Behold him then, a young King in his palace, surrounded with splendour. How should he withstand the pa.s.sionate crying of the flesh or believe that through pleasure comes satiety and the loss of that in the spirit whereby alone pleasure can be enjoyed? For his gift was that he could win all hearts. They swarmed round him like hiving bees and hovered about him like b.u.t.terflies. Sometimes he brushed them off. Often he caressed them, and when this happened, each thought proudly "I am the Royal Favourite. There is none other than me."

Also the Princess delayed who would be the crest-jewel of the crown, bringing with her all good and the blessing of the High G.o.ds, and in consequence of all these things the King took such pleasures as he could, and they were many, not knowing they darken the inner eye whereby what is royal is known through disguises.

(Most pitiful to see, beneath the close-shut lids of the man at the feet of the Dweller in the Heights, tears forced themselves, as though a corpse dead to all else lived only to anguish. They flowed like blood-drops upon his face as he lay enduring, and the voice proceeded.) What was the charm of the King? Was it his stately height and strength?

Or his faithless gayety? Or his voice, deep and soft as the sitar when it sings of love? His women said--some one thing, some another, but none of these ladies were of royal blood, and therefore they knew not.

Now one day, the all-privileged jester of the King, said, laughing harshly:

"Maharaj, you divert yourself. But how if, while we feast and play, the Far Away Princess glided past and was gone, unknown and unwelcomed?"

And the King replied:

"Fool, content yourself. I shall know my Princess, but she delays so long that I weary."

Now in a far away country was a Princess, daughter of the Greatest, and her Father hesitated to give her in marriage to such a King for all reported that he was faithless of heart, but having seen his portrait she loved him and fled in disguise from the palaces of her Father, and being captured she was brought before the King in Ranipur.

He sat upon a cloth of gold and about him was the game he had killed in hunting, in great ma.s.ses of ruffled fur and plumage, and he turned the beauty of his face carelessly upon her, and as the Princess looked upon him, her heart yearned to him, and he said in his voice that was like the male string of the sitar:

"Little slave, what is your desire?"

Then she saw that the long journey had scarred her feet and dimmed her hair with dust, and that the King's eyes, worn with days and nights of pleasure did not pierce her disguise. Now in her land it is a custom that the blood royal must not proclaim itself, so she folded her hands and said gently:

"A place in the household of the King." And he, hearing that the Waiting slave of his chief favorite Jayashri was dead, gave her that place. So the Princess attended on those ladies, courteous and obedient to all authority as beseemed her royalty, and she braided her bright hair so that it hid the little crowns which the Princesses of her House must wear always in token of their rank, and every day her patience strengthened.

Sometimes the King, carelessly desiring her laughing face and sad eyes, would send for her to wile away an hour, and he would say; "Dance, little slave, and tell me stories of the far countries. You quite unlike my Women, doubtless because you are a slave."

And she thought--"No, but because I am a Princess,"--but this she did not say. She laughed and told him the most marvellous stories in the world until he laid his head upon her warm bosom, dreaming awake.

There were stories of the great Himalayan solitudes where in the winter nights the white tiger stares at the witches' dance of the Northern Lights dazzled by the hurtling of their myriad spears. And she told how the King-eagle, hanging motionless over the peaks of Gaurisankar, watches with golden eyes for his prey, and falling like a plummet strikes its life out with his clawed heel and, screaming with triumph, bears it to his fierce mate in her cranny of the rocks.

"A gallant story!" the King would say. "More!" Then she told of the tropical heats and the stealthy deadly creatures of forest and jungle, and the blue lotus of Buddha swaying on the still lagoon,--And she spoke of loves of men and women, their pa.s.sion and pain and joy. And when she told of their fidelity and valour and honour that death cannot quench, her voice was like the song of a minstrel, for she had read all the stories of the ages and the heart of a Princess told her the rest. And the King listened unwearying though he believed this was but a slave.

(The face of the man at the feet of the Dweller in the Heights twitched in a white agony. Pearls of sweat were distilled upon his brows, but he moved neither hand nor foot, enduring as in a flame of fire. And the voice continued.)

So one day, in the misty green of the Spring, while she rested at his feet in the garden Pavilion, he said to her:

"Little slave, why do you love me?"

And she answered proudly:

"Because you have the heart of a King."

He replied slowly;

"Of the women who have loved me none gave this reason, though they gave many."

She laid her cheek on his hand.

"That is the true reason."

But he drew it away and was vaguely troubled, for her words, he knew not why, reminded him of the Far Away Princess and of things he had long forgotten, and he said; "What does a slave know of the hearts of Kings?"

And that night he slept or waked alone.

Winter was at hand with its blue and cloudless days, and she was commanded to meet the King where the lake lay still and shining like an ecstasy of bliss, and she waited with her chin dropped into the cup of her hands, looking over the water with eyes that did not see, for her whole soul said; "How long O my Sovereign Lord, how long before you know the truth and we enter together into our Kingdom?"

As she sat she heard the King's step, and the colour stole up into her face in a flush like the earliest sunrise. "He is coming," she said; and again; "He loves me."

So he came beside the water, walking slowly. But the King was not alone.

His arm embraced the latest-come beauty from Samarkhand, and, with his head bent, he whispered in her willing ear.

Then clasping her hands, the Princess drew a long sobbing breath, and he turned and his eyes grew hard as blue steel.

"Go, slave," he cried. "What place have you in Kings' gardens? Go. Let me see you no more."

(The man lying at the feet of the Dweller in the Heights, raised a heavy arm and flung it above his head, despairing, and it fell again on the cross of his torment. And the voice went on.)

And as he said this, her heart broke; and she went and her feet were weary. So she took the wise book she loved and unrolled it until she came to a certain pa.s.sage, and this she read twice; "If the heart of a slave be broken it may be mended with jewels and soft words, but the heart of a Princess can be healed only by the King who broke it, or in Yamapura, the City under the Sunset where they make all things new. Now, Yama, the Lord of this City, is the Lord of Death." And having thus read the Princess rolled the book and put it from her.

And next day, the King said to his women; "Send for her," for his heart smote him and he desired to atone royally for the shame of his speech.

And they sought and came back saying;

"Maharaj, she is gone. We cannot find her."

Fear grew in the heart of the King--a nameless dread, and he said, "Search." And again they sought and returned and the King was striding up and down the great hall and none dared cross his path. But, trembling, they told him, and he replied; "Search again. I will not lose her, and, slave though be, she shall be my Queen."