Creatures of the Night (Boxed Set Edition). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

fickleness and fondness for change, and when he was ready to wax wroth, and quoted the words of the sage, “A barren wife may be superseded by another in the eighth year; she whose children all die, in the tenth; she who brings forth only daughters, in the eleventh; she who scolds, without delay,” thinking that she alluded to his love, she smoothed his temper by explaining that she referred to his forgetting his friend. “How is it possible, O my soul,” she asked with the softest of voices, that thou canst happiness here whilst thy heart is wandering there? Why didst thou conceal this from me, O astute one? Was it for fear of distressing me? Think better of thy wife than to suppose that she would ever separate thee from one to whom we both owe so much!

      After this Padmavati advised, nay ordered, her lover to go forth that night, and not to return till his mind was quite at ease, and she begged him to take a few sweetmeats and other trifles as a little token of her admiration and regard for the clever young man of whom she had heard so much.

      Vajramukut embraced her with a transport of gratitude, which so inflamed her anger, that fearing lest the cloak of concealment might fall from her countenance, she went away hurriedly to find the greatest delicacies which her comfit boxes contained. Presently she returned, carrying a bag of sweetmeats of every kind for her lover, and as he rose up to depart, she put into his hand a little parcel of sugar-plums especially intended for the friend; they were made up with her own delicate fingers, and they would please, she flattered herself, even his discriminating palate.

      The young prince, after enduring a number of farewell embraces and hopings for a speedy return, and last words ever beginning again, passed safely through the palace gate, and with a relieved aspect walked briskly to the house of the old nurse. Although it was midnight his friend was still sitting on his mat.

      The two young men fell upon one another’s bosoms and embraced affectionately. They then began to talk of matters nearest their hearts. The Raja’s son wondered at seeing the jaded and haggard looks of his companion, who did not disguise that they were caused by his anxiety as to what might have happened to his friend at the hand of so talented and so superior a princess. Upon which Vajramukut, who now thought Padmavati an angel, and his late abode a heaven, remarked with formality—and two blunders to one quotation—that abilities properly directed win for a man the happiness of both worlds.

      The pradhan’s son rolled his head.

      “Again on your hobby-horse, nagging at talent whenever you find it in others!” cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. “Surely you are jealous of her!” he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; “jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are, would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and the little pleasant surprise that she has prepared for you. There! take and eat; they are made by her own dear hands!” cried the young Raja, producing the sweetmeats. “As she herself taught me to say—

      Thank God I am a man,

       Not a philosopher!”

      “The kind messages she sent me! The pleasant surprise she has prepared for me!” repeated the minister’s son in a hard, dry tone. “My lord will be pleased to tell me how she heard of my name?”

      “I was sitting one night,” replied the prince, “in anxious thought about you, when at that moment the princess coming in and seeing my condition, asked, ‘Why are you thus sad? Explain the cause to me.’ I then gave her an account of your cleverness, and when she heard it she gave me permission to go and see you, and sent these sweetmeats for you: eat them and I shall be pleased.”

      “Great king!” rejoined the young statesman, “one thing vouchsafe to hear from me. You have not done well in that you have told my name. You should never let a woman think that your left hand knows the secret which she confided to your right, much less that you have shared it to a third person. Secondly, you did evil in allowing her to see the affection with which you honour your unworthy servant—a woman ever hates her lover’s or husband’s friend.”

      “What could I do?” rejoined the young Raja, in a querulous tone of voice. “When I love a woman I like to tell her everything—to have no secrets from her—to consider her another self——”

      “Which habit,” interrupted the pradhan’s son, “you will lose when you are a little older, when you recognize the fact that love is nothing but a bout, a game of skill between two individuals of opposite sexes: the one seeking to gain as much, and the other striving to lose as little as possible; and that the sharper of the twain thus met on the chessboard must, in the long run, win. And reticence is but a habit. Practise it for a year, and you will find it harder to betray than to conceal your thoughts. It hath its joy also. Is there no pleasure, think you, when suppressing an outbreak of tender but fatal confidence in saying to yourself, ‘O, if she only knew this?’ ‘O, if she did but suspect that?’ Returning, however, to the sugar-plums, my life to a pariah’s that they are poisoned!”

      “Impossible!” exclaimed the prince, horror-struck at the thought; “what you say, surely no one ever could do. If a mortal fears not his fellow-mortal, at least he dreads the Deity.”

“I never yet knew,” rejoined the other, “what a woman in love does fear. However, prince, the trial is easy. Come here, Muti!” cried he to the old woman’s dog, “and off with thee to that three-headed kinsman of thine, that attends upon his amiable-looking master.[67]”

      Having said this, he threw one of the sweetmeats to the dog; the animal ate it, and presently writhing and falling down, died.

      “The wretch! O the wretch!” cried Vajramukut, transported with wonder and anger. “And I loved her! But now it is all over. I dare not associate with such a calamity!”

      “What has happened, my lord, has happened!” quoth the minister’s son calmly. “I was prepared for something of this kind from so talented a princess. None commit such mistakes, such blunders, such follies as your clever women; they cannot even turn out a crime decently executed. O give me dulness with one idea, one aim, one desire. O thrice blessed dulness that combines with happiness, power.”

      This time Vajramukut did not defend talent.

      “And your slave did his best to warn you against perfidy. But now my heart is at rest. I have tried her strength. She has attempted and failed; the defeat will prevent her attempting again—just yet. But let me ask you to put to yourself one question. Can you be happy without her?”

      “Brother!” replied the prince, after a pause, “I cannot”; and he blushed as he made the avowal.

      “Well,” replied the other, “better confess then conceal that fact; we must now meet her on the battle-field, and beat her at her own weapons—cunning. I do not willingly begin treachery with women, because, in the first place, I don’t like it; and secondly, I know that they will certainly commence practicing it upon me, after which I hold myself justified in deceiving them. And probably this will be a good wife; remember that she intended to poison me, not you. During the last month my fear has been lest my prince had run into the tiger’s brake. Tell me, my lord, when does the princess expect you to return to her?”

      “She bade me,” said the young Raja, “not to return till my mind was quite at ease upon the subject of my talented friend.”

      “This means that she expects you back to-morrow night, as you cannot enter the palace before. And now I will retire to my cot, as it is there that I am wont to ponder over my plans. Before dawn my thought shall mature one which must place the beautiful Padmavati in your power.”

      “A word before parting,” exclaimed the prince “you know my father has already chosen a spouse for me; what will he say if I bring home a second?”

      “In my humble opinion,” said the minister’s son rising to retire, “woman is a monogamous, man a polygamous, creature, a fact scarcely established in physiological theory, but very observable in every-day practice. For what said the poet?—