Chapter Five

The forest was exceedingly dark, and Kalyani could find no path within it. With its dense tangle of trees, creepers, and thorns, there was no path at all; and over and above that lay the deep blackness. Forcing her way through trees, creepers, and thorns, Kalyani pressed deeper into the wood. The thorns pricked the little girl's body. Now and again the child cried out, and hearing her the dacoits set up a louder shouting. In this manner, her limbs bleeding, Kalyani penetrated far into the forest.

After a while the moon rose. Until then she had nourished some hope that, in the darkness, the dacoits would not be able to see her, and that after searching a little they would desist; but with the rising of the moon that hope was gone. The moon climbed the sky and poured her light over the crown of the wood; within, the forest gloom was steeped in light. The darkness grew bright. Here and there, through chinks, the moonlight stole into the wood and peered and prying about. The higher the moon climbed, the more light entered the forest, and the deeper the shadows withdrew into the inner places of the wood.

Carrying her daughter, Kalyani too hid herself ever deeper within. Thereupon the dacoits, shouting yet louder, came running from every side; the little girl, taking fright, wept the more loudly. Then Kalyani gave over the attempt at flight. Beneath a great tree, upon a thornless patch of grass, she sat down, and taking her daughter in her lap she called only this: "Where art Thou? O Thou whom I worship day by day, to whom I bow day by day, in the trust of whom I have dared to enter even this wilderness — where art Thou, O Madhusudana!" At that moment, between terror, the depth of her devotion, and the languor of hunger and thirst, Kalyani little by little lost outward consciousness, and grew filled with an inward awareness; and she heard, sung in heavenly voices upon the upper air —

"Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare! Gopala, Govinda, Mukunda, Shaure! Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare!"

From her childhood Kalyani had heard in the Puranas that the celestial sage Narada wanders the worlds along the highways of the sky, with his veena chanting the name of Hari; and that same fancy now stirred within her. In her mind's eye she beheld a great-bodied, great-souled sage, white of body, white of hair, white of beard, white of raiment, the veena in his hand, singing as he passed along the moon-bright blue road of the heavens —

"Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare!"

By degrees the song drew nearer, and she heard it more plainly —

"Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare!"

Nearer yet — and clearer still —

"Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare!"

At length the song rang out directly over Kalyani's head, and the woodland resounded with it —

"Hare Murare, Madhu-Kaitabhare!"

Then Kalyani opened her eyes. In that half-formed moonlight, mingled with the forest gloom, she beheld before her that same sage-like figure, white of body, white of hair, white of beard, white of raiment. With her wandering wits Kalyani thought she would make obeisance; but obeisance she could not make. Even as she sought to bow her head, all consciousness forsook her, and she sank prostrate upon the ground.