Part 22 (1/2)

The story was kept a secret until the husband died, not long afterwards; but when I came to the village all the people knew it.

I must confess that this story is to me full of the deepest reality, full of pathos. It seems to me to be the unconscious protestation of humanity against the dogmas of religion and of the learned. However it may be stated that love is but one of the bodily pa.s.sions that dies with it; however, even in some of the stories themselves, this explanation is used to clear certain difficulties; however opposed eternal love may be to one of the central doctrines of Buddhism, it seems to me that the very essence of this story is the belief that love does not die with the body, that it lives for ever and ever, through incarnation after incarnation. Such a story is the very cry of the agony of humanity.

'Love is strong as death; many waters cannot quench love;' ay, and love is stronger than death. Not any dogmas of any religion, not any philosophy, nothing in this world, nothing in the next, shall prevent him who loves from the certainty of rejoining some time the soul he loves.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The hereafter = the state to which we attain when we have done with earthly things.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FOREST OF TIME

'The gate of that forest was Death.'

There was a great forest. It was full of giant trees that grew so high and were so thick overhead that the suns.h.i.+ne could not get down below.

And there were huge creepers that ran from tree to tree climbing there, and throwing down great loops of rope. Under the trees, growing along the ground, were smaller creepers full of thorns, that tore the wayfarer and barred his progress. The forest, too, was full of snakes that crept along the ground, so like in their gray and yellow skins to the earth they travelled on that the traveller trod upon them unawares and was bitten; and some so beautiful with coral red and golden bars that men would pick them up as some dainty jewel till the snake turned upon them.

Here and there in this forest were little glades wherein there were flowers. Beautiful flowers they were, with deep white cups and broad glossy leaves hiding the purple fruit; and some had scarlet blossoms that nodded to and fro like drowsy men, and there were long festoons of white stars. The air there was heavy with their scent. But they were all full of thorns, only you could not see the thorns till after you had plucked the blossom.

This wood was pierced by roads. Many were very broad, leading through the forest in divers ways, some of them stopping now and then in the glades, others avoiding them more or less, but none of them were straight. Always, if you followed them, they bent and bent until after much travelling you were where you began; and the broader the road, the softer the turf beneath it; the sweeter the glades that lined it, the quicker did it turn.

One road there was that went straight, but it was far from the others.

It led among the rocks and cliffs that bounded one side of the valley.

It was very rough, very far from all the glades in the lowlands. No flowers grew beside it, there was no moss or gra.s.s upon it, only hard sharp rocks. It was very narrow, bordered with precipices.

There were many lights in this wood, lights that flamed out like sunsets and died, lights that came like lightning in the night and were gone.

This wood was never quite dark, it was so full of these lights that flickered aimlessly.

There were men in this wood who wandered to and fro. The wood was full of them.

They did not know whither they went; they did not know whither they wished to go. Only this they knew, that they could never keep still; for the keeper of this wood was Time. He was armed with a keen whip, and kept driving them on and on; there was no rest.

Many of these when they first came loved the wood. The glades, they said, were very beautiful, the flowers very sweet. They wandered down the broad roads into the glades, and tried to lie upon the moss and love the flowers; but Time would not let them. Just for a few moments they could have peace, and then they must on and on. But they did not care.

'The forest is full of glades,' they said; 'if we cannot live in one, we can find another.' And so they went on finding others and others, and each one pleased them less.

Some few there were who did not go to the glades at all. 'They are very beautiful,' they said, 'but these roads that pa.s.s through them, whither do they lead? Round and round and round again. There is no peace there.

Time rules in those glades, Time with his whip and goad, and there is no peace. What we want is rest. And those lights,' they said, 'they are wandering lights, like the summer lightning far down in the South, moving hither and thither. We care not for such lights. Our light is firm and clear. What we desire is peace; we do not care to wander for ever round this forest, to see for ever those s.h.i.+fting lights.'

And so they would not go down the winding roads, but essayed the path upon the cliffs. 'It is narrow,' they said, 'it has no flowers, it is full of rocks, but it is straight. It will lead us somewhere, not round and round and round again--it will take us somewhere. And there is a light,' they said, 'before us, the light of a star. It is very small now, but it is always steady; it never flickers or wanes. It is the star of Truth. Under that star we shall find that which we seek.'

And so they went upon their road, toiling upon the rocks, falling now and then, bleeding with wounds from the sharp points, sore-footed, but strong-hearted. And ever as they went they were farther and farther from the forest, farther and farther from the glades and the flowers with deadly scents; they heard less and less the crack of the whip of Time falling upon the wanderers' shoulders.