1.02.18. Book 2: Ch 18. From Pool to Sea

CHAPTER XVIII AND now my story, like the happy little river that runs before me, runs gladly to the sea. The river near my tree has broken from the swimming pool, and flows over coloured pebbles. Golden lights play on the pebbles, turning them to jewels. Then come grey boulders, and there is a short white leap into a small black pool below. When we first found this place, after many searches among the valleys of these mountains, we looked with some apprehension upon the pools, for the children had not then learned to swim, and the pools, whose steep rocks run sheer down into un­known depths, looked most perilous. This black pool in particular we dreaded, and knowing the power of a name we called it the Death Pool, and the children dutifully avoided it. Now with what different eyes we regard it. The overhanging cave holds no terrors. We have explored every inch of it. The children may roll down the rocks if they like-and as their latest achievement, the excite­ments of diving having somewhat paled, is to race down the sloping face of the rock and jump feet first into the middle of the pool, it is not improbable they will-we do not mind; they swim like fish under water or on it. So the darkness of the Death Pool suggests not danger now to us, but coolness and the shadow of peace. But from my rock, the river seems to end there. In he leaps, white and glad, and loses himself in the shadow. And yet I know he does nothing of the kind; on, on he goes, leaping and laughing, lingering sometimes to enjoy the living green of the forest, or the crimson wild-olive leaves that carpet his bare bed in places; and all the way down for a mile or more, till it gets too hot for thrushes, the Malabar thrush, that bird of blue in sunshine and of deepest purple in shade, whistles his wonderful changeful notes, and many a little wild thing comes to drink; and life is all one glorious, shining, un­marred, unmarrable joy. And then, in the end, the sea, the sea where he would be. And now this last chapter seems looking at me out of the river, with its waterfalls and pools. For the last chapter in our Brownie’s life came as suddenly as that plunge of out little river into its pool. And after that, we lost sight of her, though we know that she goes on.

She had not been quite well, but had given us no particular anxiety, and of course she never for one moment thought of leaving the nursery. We were all together. A dear and faithful fellow­-worker had come from England, Mabel Wade, and the extra help that meant made it possible to be together. * One day Mabel came to say the Brownie seemed tired but she did not want to leave Suhina, and would not, till the baby had finished her bottle; that event over, Mabel said she would bring her down to my room to rest, which a few minutes later she did, the Brownie looking mystified but pleased. It was a new experience, and we all like new experiences. "Salaam, Amma," she said as she snuggled under her blanket, that joy of the Tamil mind and body except in the most sweltering weather, and I said, "Salaam, go to sleep," and tucked her up with a sort of good-night kiss, though it was afternoon. I can see her amused little Brownie-smile now, and the cosy way she nestled down more like a little brown wren than ever; and she fell asleep, to waken six hours afterwards in Paradise.

* See "Lotus Buds," chapter xvi.

Those six hours were agonising enough for us. Mabel was new to India then, and the horror of a mysterious, sudden, deadly seizure such as now rent our poor child’s mortal frame, without a doctor to take the responsibility, was no light trial to her. To me it was bad enough, but I had grown accustomed to accentuated trials; they are part of life here. And we very soon saw there was no human hope. But of all this the sleeping girl knew nothing. She slept in love, as the old word has it, and at midnight woke: but of that awakening how little we know, only we know the river had leaped; the dark Death Pool for the moment had swallowed up its joyful white. But the pool was only a passage to the sea. The sea, what must it be? Surprises, powers all unimagined, wait us there. And is it not perfectly splendid to know that every God-planned life, how­ever circumstanced, is no mere flat expanse of same­ness of days stretched out in the plain, but a river, flowing among forests of joy and of mystery, open at places, however deep the ravine may be sometimes, to the good glad light of heaven, with pools set in it here and there, and waterfalls, where spray rainbows make beautiful the air, and lovely sunlit reaches, where the ripples dance over golden-brown pebbles, and happy things come down to drink. And all the time, without one lost minute, it is hastening on to its best and gladdest time; for the best and the gladdest is always on before.