The End of a Golden Thread

We had many talks together, and the talks came to be like looks through open windows into a house full of beautiful things.

I do not think that in the East such looks are often given. A shyness slips like a pane of glass between speaker and listener. Then a little breath breathes on the pane, and a fine mist clouds it. Then a curtain is drawn across, and no more is seen. So even a fugitive glance is something to be thankful for.

Thinking over these long looks that were really times of heart listening to heart, it seemed to me that something new had been given, even a very lovely story too good to keep to ourselves.

One evening, as we sat on a fallen block of stone, looking without speaking at the pink flush in the sky over the mountains, the question rose in my mind, How did Mimosa know what she ought to do and ought not to do in the little matters of life where compromise would have been so easy, and a narrow hardness so hindering and hurting to others?

The festivals, for example, that are part of

Indian life, as the pattern woven in the carpet is 150 part of the carpet, so that you can hardly walk on the carpet without treading upon the pattern; and the little customs and courtesies that are like the dye in the colours, what of them? How walk at all without offence?

“When Kinglet was a baby, my sister-in-law asked me to come with her to the great festival at the temple by the sea, and all my neighbours and relatives went; yes, everyone went, and I went too.

““There was much brightness and a gaiety; but at night tom-toms and strange noises and a feel of something I did not like. I did not go ever again.”’

And the family ceremonies and feasts? ‘‘I always went if I could. But in the Ritual of the Corner while the women censed the offerings, swaying the censer so,” and her arm swung gently to and fro, ‘“‘then I waited outside. I waited while they marked Siva’s sign upon their foreheads, and then I went in and joined with them in love.”

And so it was all through. She could not tell me why she had felt some things impossible; it was just that she was not at home in that air, and the sounds were the voices of strangers.

The sun had set by now, the sky was like a great soft rose with a single star shining deep in its heart. I thought of Jenny Lind, of the story told in her Life of how one found her by the sea in the sunset with her Bible open on her knee, and asked her how she came to abandon the stage at the very height of her fame.

‘‘When every day it made me think less of this’’ — and Jenny Lind touched her Bible — ‘and nothing at all of that’’ — and she pointed to the quiet sky — ‘‘ what else could I do?”’

But Mimosa had no Bible. Would it have been strange if she had missed her way?

She had the end of the golden thread:

‘*T give you the end of a golden thread, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you straight to Jerusalem’s gate Built in the city wall.’’

Oh, need we ever fear? The least strand of that thread is enough to lead the one who holds it fast all the way home.