Chitra, a Play in One Act [3]
Chitra
Sprung from the highest of all royal houses, the greatest of all heroes is he.
Arjuna
Lady, offer not such wealth of beauty as is yours on the altar of false reputation. Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises. Tell me who in the highest of kingly lines is the supreme hero?
Chitra
Hermit, you are jealous of other men's fame. Do you not know that all over the world the royal house of the Kurus is the most famous?
Arjuna
The house of the Kurus!
Chitra
And have you never heard of the greatest name of that far-famed house?
Arjuna
From your own lips let me hear it.
Chitra
Arjuna, the conqueror of the world. I have culled from the mouths of the multitude that imperishable name and hidden it with care in my maiden heart. Hermit, why do you look perturbed? Has that name only a deceitful glitter? Say so, and I will not hesitate to break this casket of my heart and throw the false gem to the dust.
Arjuna
Be his name and fame, his bravery and prowess false or true, for mercy's sake do not banish him from your heart--for he kneels at your feet even now.
Chitra
You, Arjuna!
Arjuna
Yes, I am he, the love-hungered guest at your door.
Chitra
Then it is not true that Arjuna has taken a vow of chastity for twelve long years?
Arjuna
But you have dissolved my vow even as the moon dissolves the night's vow of obscurity.
Chitra
Oh, shame upon you! What have you seen in me that makes you false to yourself? Whom do you seek in these dark eyes, in these milk-white arms, if you are ready to pay for her the price of your probity? Not my true self, I know. Surely this cannot be love, this is not man's highest homage to woman! Alas, that this frail disguise, the body, should make one blind to the light of the deathless spirit! Yes, now indeed, I know, Arjuna, the fame of your heroic manhood is false.
Arjuna
Ah, I feel how vain is fame, the pride of prowess! Everything seems to me a dream. You alone are perfect; you are the wealth of the world, the end of all poverty, the goal of all efforts, the one woman! Others there are who can be but slowly known. While to see you for a moment is to see perfect completeness once and for ever.
Chitra
Alas, it is not I, not I, Arjuna! It is the deceit of a god. Go, go, my hero, go. Woo not falsehood, offer not your great heart to an illusion. Go.
SCENE III
Chitra
No, impossible. To face that fervent gaze that almost grasps you like clutching hands of the hungry spirit within; to feel his heart struggling to break its bounds urging its passionate cry through the entire body--and then to send him away like a beggar--no, impossible.
Enter MADANA and VASANTA.
Ah, god of love, what fearful flame is this with which thou hast enveloped me! I burn, and I burn whatever I touch.
Madana
I desire to know what happened last night.
Chitra
At evening I lay down on a grassy bed strewn with the petals of spring flowers, and recollected the wonderful praise of my beauty I had heard from Arjuna;--drinking drop by drop the honey that I had stored during the long day. The history of my past life like that of my former existences was forgotten. I felt like a flower, which has but a few fleeting hours to listen to all the humming flatteries and whispered murmurs of the woodlands and then must lower its eyes from the Sky, bend its head and at a breath give itself up to the dust without a cry, thus ending the