The Substance of a Dream | Page 5

glory to
the zenith, while below there poured from the bar a long cascade, a
very Niagara of golden mist and rain, as if the flood-gates of some
celestial dam had suddenly given way, and 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