The Substance of a Dream | Page 5

all the precious stuff were escaping in a cataract through the rift, in one gigantic plunge, to be lost for ever in some bottomless abyss.
Suddenly, the dead silence struck me: my ear missed the "ruckle," and the occasional exclamations of delight. I turned abruptly, and glanced at the child. She was standing still as a stone, with one hand just in front of her holding the forgotten pipe, arrested on the way to her mouth, as the heavenly vision struck her: rapt, lost in her eyes, which were filled with wonder to the brim, open-mouthed, entranced, with a smile on her lips of which she was totally unconscious, faint, involuntary, seraphic, indescribable. The ecstasy of union had swallowed her: she was gone. I called her by her name: she never heard: her soul was away at the golden gates.
And I said to myself, as I gazed at her with intense curiosity, mixed with regret that I was not Raffael, so marvellous was the picture: This, this is the wisdom of the sages, the secret of Plotinus and the Buddhists: this is Nirwána, Moksha, Yoga, the unattainable ecstasy of bliss, the absolute fruition, which men call by many names: the end towards which the adult strives, in vain, to recover what he lost by ceasing to be a child: a child, which is sexless, knowing as yet nothing of the esoteric dissatisfaction of the soul that wants and has not found. Aye! to reach the mystic union, the absolute extinction of the Knower in the All; to lose one's Self in Infinity, without a remnant of regret; to attain to the unattainable, the point of self-annihilation where all distinction between subject and object, something and nothing, disappears, it is necessary to be a child: to be born again. Rebirth! the key to the enigma of unhappiness lies there!
* * * * *
And after a while, as I watched her, she came back to herself. Our eyes met: and she looked at me long, with a far-off expression that I could not define. And at last, she gave a little sigh. Daddy, she said, why does the golden rain never fall here? Our rain is always only common rain.
And I said solemnly: Little girls are the reason why. But she didn't understand. She looked at me reproachfully with puzzled eyes--such great, grey, beautiful, sea-green eyes!--and then drew a long breath. And she went back to her bubbles, and together we watched them go as they floated away into the valley, wild with excitement as to whether my bubble or her bubble would go farthest before it burst--till the Rhadamanthine summons came, and the Bubble-Blower went to bed.
Poona, 1919.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: O quantum est subitis casibus ingenium! an exquisite line of Martial which ought to be posted on a board on every putting-green.]

CONTENTS
I. ON THE BANKS OF GANGES
II. THE HEART OF A WOMAN
III. A STORY WITHOUT AN END

The Vignette I owe to the artistic genius of my friend, Arthur Hight.

I
On the Banks of Ganges
BENEDICTION
What! the Digit of the Moon on his brow, Gangá in his hair, and Gaurí on his knee, and yet proof against all Love's arrows! O wonder of wonders! who but the greatest of all the gods would not have melted long ago, like butter between three fires?[2]
Now, long ago, it happened, that Párwatí was left alone on Kailàs for a little while, as she waited for the Lord of the Moony Tire. And having nothing else to do, she amused herself by building an elephant of snow, with large ears and a little tail, made of a yak's hair. And when it was finished, she was so delighted with her toy, that she began to clap her hands: and then, not being able to endure waiting, she went off with impatience to fetch the Moony-crested god, to show him what she had done, and revel in his applause. And the moment that her back was turned, Nandi[3] happened to come along: and just as he reached the elephant, which owing to his abstraction he never noticed, taking it for a mere hump, formed at random by the snowdrifts, he was suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to roll. And so, over he rolled, and went from side to side, throwing up his legs into the air. And as luck would have it, exactly at that very moment the Daughter of the Snow returned, pulling Maheshwara along eagerly by the hand. And she looked and saw Nandi, rolling about on the flat snow just where she had left her elephant, which was gone. And she uttered a loud cry, and stood, aghast with rage and disappointment. And she opened her mouth to curse the author of the mischief, and was on the very verge of saying: Sink into a lower birth,