The ninth vibration and other stories

The ninth vibration and other stories Page 2

by L. Adams Beck

  THE INTERPRETER A ROMANCE OF THE EAST

  I

  There are strange things in this story, but, so far as I understandthem, I tell the truth. If you measure the East with a Western foot-ruleyou will say, "Impossible." I should have said it myself.

  Of myself I will say as little as I can, for this story is of VannaLoring. I am an incident only, though I did not know that at first.

  My name is Stephen Clifden, and I was eight-and-thirty; plenty of money,sound in wind and limb. I had been by way of being a writer before thewar, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked up anything in the welterin France, it was that real work is the only salvation this mad worldhas to offer; so I meant to begin at the beginning, and learn my tradelike a journeyman labourer. I had come to the right place. A verywonderful city is Peshawar--rather let us say, two cities--thecompounds, the fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace astheir strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaarhumming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours thatcome up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the camel caravansloaded with merchandise from Afghanistan, Bokhara, and farther. Andit is because of this that Peshawar is the Key of India, and a cityof Romance that stands at every corner, and cries aloud in themarket--place. For at Peshawar every able-bodied man sleeps with hisrevolver under his pillow, and the old Fort is always ready in case itshould be necessary at brief and sharp notice to hurry the women andchildren into it, and possibly, to die in their defense. So enliveningis the neighbourhood of the frontier tribes that haunt the famous KhyberPass and the menacing hills where danger is always lurking.

  But there was society here, and I was swept into it--there was chatter,and it galled me.

  I was beginning to feel that I had missed my mark, and must go fartherafield, perhaps up into Central Asia, when I met Vanna Loring. If I saythat her hair was soft and dark; that she had the deepest hazel eyesI have ever seen, and a sensitive, tender mouth; that she moved with aflowing grace like "a wave of the sea"--it sounds like the portrait of abeauty, and she was never that. Also, incidentally, it gives none of hercharm. I never heard any one get any further than that she was "oddlyattractive"--let us leave it at that. She was certainly attractive tome.

  She was the governess of little Winifred Meryon, whose father heldthe august position of General Commanding the Frontier Forces, and hermother the more commanding position of the reigning beauty of NorthernIndia, generally speaking. No one disputed that. She was as pretty asa picture, and her charming photograph had graced as many illustratedpapers as there were illustrated papers to grace.

  But Vanna--I gleaned her story by bits when I came across her with thechild in the gardens. I was beginning to piece it together now.

  Her love of the strange and beautiful she had inherited from a youngItalian mother, daughter of a political refugee; her childhood hadbeen spent in a remote little village in the West of England; halfreluctantly she told me how she had brought herself up after hermother's death and her father's second marriage. Little was said ofthat, but I gathered that it had been a grief to her, a factor in herflight to the East.

  We were walking in the Circular Road then with Winifred in front leadingher Pekingese by its blue ribbon, and we had it almost to ourselvesexcept for a few natives passing slow and dignified on their ownoccasions, for fashionable Peshawar was finishing its last rubber ofbridge, before separating to dress for dinner, and had no time to sparefor trivialities and sunsets.

  "So when I came to three-and-twenty," she said slowly, "I felt I mustbreak away from our narrow life. I had a call to India stronger thananything on earth. You would not understand but that was so, and I hadspent every spare moment in teaching myself India--its history, legends,religions, everything! And I was not wanted at home, and I had grownafraid."

  I could divine years of patience and repression under this plain tale,but also a power that would be dynamic when the authentic voice called.That was her charm--gentleness in strength--a sweet serenity.

  "What were you afraid of?"

  "Of growing old and missing what was waiting for me out here. But Icould not get away like other people. No money, you see. So I thought Iwould come out here and teach. Dare I? Would they let me? I knew I wasfighting life and chances and risks if I did it; but it was death if Istayed there. And then--Do you really care to hear?"

  "Of course. Tell me how you broke your chain."

  "I spare you the family quarrels. I can never go back. But I wasspurred--spurred to take some wild leap; and I took it. Six years ago Icame out. First I went to a doctor and his wife at Cawnpore. They hada wonderful knowledge of the Indian peoples, and there I learnedHindustani and much else. Then he died. But an aunt had left me twohundred pounds, and I could wait a little and choose; and so I camehere."

  It interested me. The courage that pale elastic type of woman has!

  "Have you ever regretted it? Would they take you back if you failed?"

  "Never, to both questions," she said, smiling. "Life is glorious. I'vedrunk of a cup I never thought to taste; and if I died tomorrow I shouldknow I had done right. I rejoice in every moment I live--even whenWinifred and I are wrestling with arithmetic."

  "I shouldn't have thought life was very easy with Lady Meryon."

  "Oh, she is kind enough in an indifferent sort of way. I am not thepersecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all. But that is all on thesurface and does not matter. It is India I care for-the people, the sun,the infinite beauty. It was coming home. You would laugh if I told youI knew Peshawar long before I came here. Knew it--walked here, lived.Before there were English in India at all." She broke off. "You won'tunderstand."

  "Oh, I have had that feeling, too," I said patronizingly. "If one hasread very much about a place-"

  "That was not quite what I meant. Never mind. The people, theplace--that is the real thing to me. All this is the dream." The sweepof her hand took in not only Winifred and myself, but the general'sstately residence, which to blaspheme in Peshawar is rank infidelity.

  "By George, I would give thousands to feel that! I can't get out ofEurope here. I want to write, Miss Loring," I found myself saying. "I'ddone a bit, and then the war came and blew my life to pieces. Now I wantto get inside the skin of the East, and I can't do it. I see it fromoutside, with a pane of glass between. No life in it. If you feel as yousay, for God's sake be my interpreter!"

  I really meant what I said. I knew she was a harp that any breeze wouldsweep into music. I divined that temperament in her and proposed to useit for my own ends. She had and I had not, the power to be a part of allshe saw, to feel kindred blood running in her own veins. To the averageEuropean the native life of India is scarcely interesting, so far is itremoved from all comprehension. To me it was interesting, but I couldnot tell why. I stood outside and had not the fairy gold to pay for myentrance. Here at all events she could buy her way where I could not.Without cruelty, which honestly was not my besetting sin--especiallywhere women were concerned, the egoist in me felt I would use her, wouldextract the last drop of the enchantment of her knowledge before I wenton my way. What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman shouldminister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretendto be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness--thatfastidiousness which is the only austerity in men not otherwise austere.

  "Interpret?" she said, looking at me with clear hazel eyes; "how couldI? You were in the native city yesterday. What did you miss?"

  "Everything! I saw masses of colour, light, movement. Brilliantlypicturesque people. Children like Asiatic angels. Magnificently scowlingruffians in sheepskin coats. In fact, a movie staged for my benefit. Iwas afraid they would ring down the curtain before I had had enough. Ithad no meaning. When I got back to my diggings I tried to put downwhat I had just seen, and I swear there's more inspiration in theguide-book."

  "Did you go alone?"

  "Yes, I certainly would not go sight-seeing with the Meryon crowd. Tellme what yo
u felt when you saw it first."

  "I went with Sir John's uncle. He was a great traveler. The colourstruck me dumb. It flames--it sings. Think of the grey pinched life inthe West! I saw a grave dark potter turning his wheel, while his littlegirl stood by, glad at our pleasure, her head veiled like a miniaturewoman, tiny baggy trousers, and a silver nose-stud, like a star, in onedelicate nostril. In her thin arms she held a heavy baby in a gilt cap,like a monkey. And the wheel turned and whirled until it seemed to bespinning dreams, thick as motes in the sun. The clay rose in smoothspirals under his hand, and the wheel sang, 'Shall the vessel reprovehim who made one to honour and one to dishonour?' And I saw the potterthumping his wet clay, and the clay, plastic as dream-stuff, shapedswift as light, and the three Fates stood at his shoulder. Dreams,dreams, and all in the spinning of the wheel, and the rich shadows ofthe old broken courtyard where he sat. And the wheel stopped and thethread broke, and the little new shapes he had made stood all about him,and he was only a potter in Peshawar."

  Her voice was like a song. She had utterly forgotten my existence. Idid not dislike it at the moment, for I wanted to hear more, and theimpersonal is the rarest gift a woman can give a man.

  "Did you buy anything?"

  "He gave me a gift--a flawed jar of turquoise blue, faint turquoisegreen round the lip. He saw I understood. And then I bought a littlegold cap and a wooden box of jade-green Kabul grapes. About a rupee, alltold. But it was Eastern merchandise, and I was trading from Balsora andBaghdad, and Eleazar's camels were swaying down from Damascus along theKhyber Pass, and coming in at the great Darwazah, and friends' eyes metme everywhere. I am profoundly happy here."

  The sinking sun lit an almost ecstatic face.

  I envied her more deeply than I had ever envied any one. She had thesecret of immortal youth, and I felt old as I looked at her. One mightbe eighty and share that passionate impersonal joy. Age could not withernor custom stale the infinite variety of her world's joys. She had achild's dewy youth in her eyes.

  There are great sunsets at Peshawar, flaming over the plain, dying inmelancholy splendour over the dangerous hills. They too were hers, ina sense in which they could never be mine. But what a companion! Tomy astonishment a wild thought of marriage flashed across me, to beinstantly rebuffed with a shrug. Marriage--that one's wife might talkpoetry to one about the East! Absurd! But what was it these people feltand I could not feel? Almost, shut up in the prison of self, I knew whatVanna had felt in her village--a maddening desire to escape, to be apart of the loveliness that lay beyond me. So might a man love a king'sdaughter in her hopeless heights.

  "It may be very beautiful on the surface," I said morosely; "but there'sa lot of misery below--hateful, they tell me."

  "Of course. We shall get to work one day. But look at the sunset. Itopens like a mysterious flower. I must take Winifred home now."

  "One moment," I pleaded; "I can only see it through your eyes. I feel itwhile you speak, and then the good minute goes."

  She laughed.

  "And so must I. Come, Winifred. Look, there's an owl; not like the owlsin the summer dark in England--

  "Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping, Wavy in thedark, lit by one low star."

  Suddenly she turned again and looked at me half wistfully.

  "It is good to talk to you. You want to know. You are so near it all. Iwish I could help you; I am so exquisitely happy myself."

  My writing was at a standstill. It seemed the groping of a blind manin a radiant world. Once perhaps I had felt that life was good initself--when the guns came thundering toward the Vimy Ridge in a madgallop of horses, and men shouting and swearing and frantically urgingthem on. Then, riding for more than life, I had tasted life for aninstant. Not before or since. But this woman had the secret.

  Lady Meryon, with her escort of girls and subalterns, came daintily pastthe hotel compound, and startled me from my brooding with her prettysilvery voice.

  "Dreaming, Mr. Clifden? It isn't at all wholesome to dream in the East.Come and dine with us tomorrow. A tiny dance afterwards, you know; orbridge for those who like it."

  I had not the faintest notion whether governesses dined with the familyor came in afterward with the coffee; but it was a sporting chance, andI took it.

  Then Sir John came up and joined us.

  "You can't well dance tomorrow, Kitty," he said to his wife. "There'sbeen an outpost affair in the Swat Hills, and young Fitzgerald hasbeen shot. Come to dinner of course, Clifden. Glad to see you. But nodancing, I think."

  Kitty Meryon's mouth drooped like a pouting child's. Was it for the lostdance, or the lost soldier lying out on the hills in the dying sunset.Who could tell? In either case it was pretty enough for the illustratedpapers.

  "How sad! Such a dear boy. We shall miss him at tennis." Then brightly;"Well, we'll have to put the dance off for a week, but come tomorrowanyhow."

  II

  Next evening I went into Lady Meryon's flower-scented drawing-room. Theelectric fans were fluttering and the evening air was cool. Five orsix pretty girls and as many men made up the party--Kitty Meryon theprettiest of them all, fashionably undressed in faint pink and crystal,with a charming smile in readiness, all her gay little flags flying inthe rich man's honour. I am no vainer than other men, but I saw that.Whatever her charm might be it was none for me. What could I say tointerest her who lived in her foolish little world as one shut in abright bubble? And she had said the wrong word about young Fitzgerald--Iwanted Vanna, with her deep seeing eyes, to say the right one and adjustthose cruel values.

  Governesses dine, it appeared, only to fill an unexpected place, or makea decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments. Fortunately KittyMeryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as hersilver ripple of talk.

  It was when the party had settled down to bridge and I was standing out,that I ventured to go up to her as she sat knitting by a window--notunwatched by the quick flash of Lady Meryon's eyes as I did it.

  "I think you hypnotize me, Miss Loring. When I hear anything Istraightway want to know what you will say. Have you heard ofFitzgerald's death?"

  "That is why we are not dancing tonight. Tomorrow the cable will reachhis home in England. He was an only child, and they are the great peopleof the village where we are the little people. I knew his mother as oneknows a great lady who is kind to all the village folk. It may kill her.It is travelling tonight like a bullet to her heart, and she does notknow."

  "His father?"

  "A brave man--a soldier himself. He will know it was a good death andthat Harry would not fail. He did not at Ypres. He would not here. Butall joy and hope will be dead in that house tomorrow."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I am not sorry for Harry, if you mean that. He knew--we all know--thathe was on guard here holding the outposts against blood and treacheryand terrible things--playing the Great Game. One never loses at thatgame if one plays it straight, and I am sure that at the last it was joyhe felt and not fear. He has not lost. Did you notice in the churcha niche before every soldier's seat to hold his loaded gun? And thetablets on the walls; "Killed at Kabul River, aged 22."--"Killed onoutpost duty."--"Murdered by an Afghan fanatic." This will be one memorymore. Why be sorry."

  Presently:--

  "I am going up to the hills tomorrow, to the Malakhand Fort, with Mrs.Delany, Lady Meryon's aunt, and we shall see the wonderful Tahkt-i-BahiMonastery on the way. You should do that run before you go. The fort isthe last but one on the way to Chitral, and beyond that the road is sobeset that only soldiers may go farther, and indeed the regiments escorteach other up and down. But it is an early start, for we must be back inPeshawar at six for fear of raiding natives."

  "I know; they hauled me up in the dusk the other day, and told me Ishould be swept off to the hills if I fooled about after dusk. But Isay--is it safe for you to go? You ought to have a man. Could I go too?"

  I thought she did not look enthusiastic at the proposal.


  "Ask. You know I settle nothing. I go where I am sent." She said it withthe happiest smile. I knew they could send her nowhere that she wouldnot find joy. I thought her mere presence must send the vibrations ofhappiness through the household. Yet again--why? For where there is noreceiver the current speaks in vain; and for an instant I seemed to seethe air full of messages--of speech striving to utter its passionatetruths to deaf ears stopped for ever against the breaking waves ofsound. But Vanna heard.

  She left the room; and when the bridge was over, I made my request. LadyMeryon shrugged her shoulders and declared it would be a terribly dullrun--the scenery nothing, "and only" (she whispered) "Aunt Selina andpoor Miss Loring?"

  Of course I saw at once that she did not like it; but Sir John was allfor my going, and that saved the situation.

  I certainly could have dispensed with Aunt Selina when the automobiledrew up in the golden river of the sunrise at the hotel. There were onlythe driver, a personal servant, and the two ladies; Mrs. Delany, comely,pleasant, talkative, and Vanna--

  Her face in its dark motoring veil, fine and delicate as a young moon ina cloud drift--the sensitive sweet mouth that had quivered a little whenshe spoke of Fitzgerald--the pure glance that radiated such kindness toall the world. She sat there with the Key of Dreams pressed against herslight bosom--her eyes dreaming above it. Already the strange airs ofher unknown world were breathing about me, and as yet I knew not thethings that belonged unto my peace.

  We glided along the straight military road from Peshawar to Nowshera,the gold-bright sun dazzling in its whiteness--a strange drive throughthe flat, burned country, with the ominous Kabul River flowing throughit. Military preparations everywhere, and the hills looking watchfullydown--alive, as it were, with keen, hostile eyes. War was at presentabout us as behind the lines in France; and when we crossed the KabulRiver on a bridge of boats, and I saw its haunted waters, I began tofeel the atmosphere of the place closing down upon me. It had a sinisterbeauty; it breathed suspense; and I wished, as I was sure Vanna did, forsilence that was not at our command.

  For Mrs. Delany felt nothing of it. A bright shallow ripple of talk washer contribution to the joys of the day; though it was, fortunately,enough for her happiness if we listened and agreed. I knew Vannalistened only in show. Her intent eyes were fixed on the Tahkt-i-Bahihills after we had swept out of Nowshera; and when the car drew upat the rough track, she had a strange look of suspense and pallor. Iremember I wondered at the time if she were nervous in the wild opencountry.

  "Now pray don't be shocked," said Mrs. Delany comfortably; "but you twoyoung people may go up to the monastery, and I shall stay here. I amdreadfully ashamed of myself, but the sight of that hill is enough forme. Don't hurry. I may have a little doze, and be all the better companywhen you get back. No, don't try to persuade me, Mr. Clifden. It isn'tthe part of a friend."

  I cannot say I was sorry, though I had a moment of panic when Vannaoffered to stay with her--very much, too, as if she really meant it. Sowe set out perforce, Vanna leading steadily, as if she knew the way.She never looked up, and her wish for silence was so evident, that Ifollowed, lending my hand mutely when the difficulties obliged it, sheaccepting absently, and as if her thoughts were far away.

  Suddenly she quickened her pace. We had climbed about nine hundred feet,and now the narrow track twisted through the rocks--a track that lookedas age-worn as no doubt it was. We threaded it, and struggled over theridge, and looked down victorious on the other side.

  There she stopped. A very wonderful sight, of which I had never seen thelike, lay below us. Rock and waste and towering crags, and the mightyruin of the monastery set in the fangs of the mountain like a robberbaron's castle, looking far away to the blue mountains of the DebatableLand--the land of mystery and danger. It stood there--the great ruinof a vast habitation of men. Building after building, mysterious andbroken, corridors, halls, refectories, cells; the dwelling of a faith soalien that I could not reconstruct the life that gave it being. And allsinking gently into ruin that in a century more would confound it withthe roots of the mountains.

  Grey and wonderful, it clung to the heights and looked with eyelesswindows at the past. Somehow I found it infinitely pathetic; the veryfaith it expressed is dead in India, and none left so poor to do itreverence.

  But Vanna knew her way. Unerringly she led me from point to point, andshe was visibly at home in the intricacies. Such knowledge in a youngwoman bewildered me. Could she have studied the plans in the Museum?How else should she know where the abbot lived, or where the refractorybrothers were punished?

  Once I missed her, while I stooped to examine some scroll-work, andfollowing, found her before one of the few images of the Buddha that therapacious Museum had spared--a singularly beautiful bas-relief, the handraised to enforce the truth the calm lips were speaking, the draperyfalling in stately folds to the bare feet. As I came up, she had an airas if she had just ceased from movement, and I had a distinct feelingthat she had knelt before it--I saw the look of worship! The thingtroubled me like a dream, haunting, impossible, but real.

  "How beautiful!" I said in spite of myself, as she pointed to the image."In this utter solitude it seems the very spirit of the place."

  "He was. He is," said Vanna.

  "Explain to me. I don't understand. I know so little of him. What is thesubject?"

  She hesitated; then chose her words as if for a beginner;--"It is theBlessed One preaching to the Tree-Spirits. See how eagerly they leanfrom the boughs to listen. This other relief represents him in the stateof mystic vision. Here he is drowned in peace. See how it overflows fromthe closed eyes; the closed lips. The air is filled with his quiet."

  "What is he dreaming?"

  "Not dreaming--seeing. Peace. He sits at the point where time andinfinity meet. To attain that vision was the aim of the monks who livedhere."

  "Did they attain?" I found myself speaking as if she could certainlyanswer.

  "A few. There was one, Vasettha, the Brahman, a young man who hadrenounced all his possessions and riches, and seated here before thisimage of the Blessed One, he fell often into the mystic state. He had astrange vision at one time of the future of India, which will surely befulfilled. He did not forget it in his rebirths. He remembers-"

  She broke off suddenly and said with forced indifference,--"He would sithere often looking out over the mountains; the monks sat at his feet tohear. He became abbot while still young. But his story is a sad one."

  "I entreat you to tell me."

  She looked away over the mountains. "While he was abbot here,--still ayoung man,--a famous Chinese Pilgrim came down through Kashmir to visitthe Holy Places in India. The abbot went forward with him to Peshawar,that he might make him welcome. And there came a dancer to Peshawar,named Lilavanti, most beautiful! I dare not tell you her beauty. Itremble now to think-"

  Again she paused, and again the faint creeping sense of mystery invadedme.

  She resumed;--

  "The abbot saw her and he loved her. He was young still, you remember.She was a woman of the Hindu faith and hated Buddhism. It swept him downinto the lower worlds of storm and desire. He fled with Lilavanti andnever returned here. So in his rebirth he fell-"

  She stopped dead; her face pale as death.

  "How do you know? Where have you read it? If I could only find what youfind and know what you know! The East is like an open book to you. Tellme the rest."

  "How should I know any more?" she said hurriedly. "We must be goingback. You should study the plans of this place at Peshawar. They werevery learned monks who lived here. It is famous for learning."

  The life had gone out of her words-out of the ruins. There was no moreto be said.

  We clambered down the hill in the hot sunshine, speaking only of theview, the strange shrubs and flowers, and, once, the swift gliding of asnake, and found Mrs. Delany blissfully asleep in the most padded cornerof the car. The spirit of the East vanished in her comfortable presence,and luncheon seemed t
he only matter of moment.

  "I wonder, my dears," she said, "if you would be very disappointed andthink me very dense if I proposed our giving up the Malakhand Fort? Thedriver has been giving me in very poor English such an account of thedangers of that awful road up the hill that I feel no Fort would repayme for its terrors. Do say what you feel, Miss Loring. Mr. Clifden canlunch with the officers at Nowshera and come any time. I know I am anatrocity."

  There could be only one answer, though Vanna and I knew perfectly wellthe crafty design of the driver to spare himself work. Mrs. Delanyremained brightly awake for the run home, and favored us with manyremarkable views on India and its shortcomings, Vanna, who had a sincereliking for her, laughing with delight at her description of a visit ofcondolence with Lady Meryon to the five widows of one of the hill Rajas.

  But I own I was pre-occupied. I knew those moments at the monastery hadgiven me a glimpse into the wonderland of her soul that made me longfor more. It was rapidly becoming clear to me that unless my intentionsdeveloped on very different lines I must flee Peshawar. For love is bornof sympathy, and sympathy was strengthening daily, but for love I had nocourage yet.

  I feared it as men fear the unknown. I despised myself--but I feared.I will confess my egregious folly and vanity--I had no doubt as to herreception of my offer if I should make it, but possessed by a colossalselfishness, I thought only of myself, and from that point of view couldnot decide how I stood to lose or gain. In my wildest accesses of vanityI did not suppose Vanna loved me, but I felt she liked me, and I believethe advantages I had to offer would be overwhelming to a woman in herposition. So, tossed on the waves of indecision, I inclined to flight.

  That night I resolutely began my packing, and wrote a note of farewellto Lady Meryon. The next morning I furiously undid it, and destroyed thenote. And that afternoon I took the shortest way to the sun-set road tolounge about and wait for Vanna and Winifred. She never came, and I wasas unreasonably angry as if I had deserved the blessing of her presence.

  Next day I could see that she tried gently hut clearly to discourage ourmeeting and for three days I never saw her at all. Yet I knew that inher solitary life our talks counted for a pleasure, and when we metagain I thought I saw a new softness in the lovely hazel deeps of hereyes.

  III

  On the day when things became clear to me, I was walking towards theMeryons' gates when I met her coming alone along the sunset road, in thelate gold of the afternoon. She looked pale and a little wearied, and Iremembered I wished I did not know every change of her face as I did. Itwas a symptom that alarmed my selfishness--it galled me with the sensethat I was no longer my own despot.

  "So you have been up the Khyber Pass," she said as I fell into step ather side. "Tell me--was it as wonderful as you expected?"

  "No, no,--you tell me! It will give me what I missed. Begin at thebeginning. Tell me what I saw."

  I could not miss the delight of her words, and she laughed, knowing mywhim.

  "Oh, that Pass!--the wonder of those old roads that have borne thetraffic and romance of the world for ages. Do you think there isanything in the world so fascinating as they are? But did you go onTuesday or Friday?"

  For these are the only days in the week when the Khyber can be safelyentered. The British then turn out the Khyber Rifles and man every crag,and the loaded caravans move like a tide, and go up and down the narrowroad on their occasions.

  Naturally mere sightseers are not welcomed, for much business must begot through in that urgent forty eight hours in which life is not riskedin entering.

  "Tuesday. But make a picture for me."

  "Well, you gave your word not to photograph or sketch--as if one wantedto when every bit of it is stamped on one's brain! And you went up toJumrood Fort at the entrance. Did they tell you it is an old Sikh Fortand has been on duty in that turbulent place for five hundred years Anddid you see the machine guns in the court? And every one armed--even theboys with belts of cartridges? Then you went up the narrow winding trackbetween the mountains, and you said to yourself, 'This is the road ofpure romance. It goes up to silken Samarkhand, and I can ride to Bokharaof the beautiful women and to all the dreams. Am I alive and is itreal?' You felt that?"

  "All. Every bit. Go on!"

  She smiled with pleasure.

  "And you saw the little forts on the crags and the men on guard allalong the bills, rifles ready! You could hear the guns rattle as theysaluted. Do you know that up there men plough with rifles loaded besidethem? They have to be men indeed."

  "Do you mean to imply that we are not men?"

  "Different men at least. This is life in a Border ballad. Such a life asyou knew in France but beautiful in a wild--hawk sort of way. Don't theKhyber Rifles bewilder you? They are drawn from these very Hill tribes,and will shoot their own fathers and brothers in the way of duty ascomfortably as if they were jackals. Once there was a scrap here andone of the tribesmen sniped our men unbearably. What do you supposehappened? A Khyber Rifle came to the Colonel and said, 'Let me putan end to him, Colonel Sahib. I know exactly where he sits. He is mygrandfather.' And he did it!"

  "The bond of bread and salt?"

  "Yes, and discipline. I'm sometimes half frightened of discipline. Itmoulds a man like wax. Even God doesn't do that. Well--then you had thetraders--wild shaggy men in sheepskin and women in massive jewelry ofsilver and turquoise,-great earrings, heavy bracelets loading theirarms, wild, fierce, handsome. And the camels--thousands of them, somegoing up, some coming down, a mass of human and animal life. Aboveyou, moving figures against the keen blue sky, or deep below you in theravines.

  "The camels were swaying along with huge bales of goods, and darkbeautiful women in wicker cages perched on them. Silks and carpets fromBokhara, and blue--eyed Persian cats, and bluer Persian turquoises.Wonderful! And the dust, gilded by the sunshine, makes a vaporous goldenatmosphere for it all."

  "What was the most wonderful thing you saw there?"

  "The most beautiful, I think, was a man--a splendid dark ruffianlounging along. He wanted to show off, and his swagger was perfect. Longblack onyx eyes and a tumble of black curls, and teeth like almonds.But what do you think he carried on his wrist--a hawk with fierce yelloweyes, ringed and chained. Hawking is a favourite sport in the hills. Oh,why doesn't some great painter come and paint it all before they take totrains and cars? I long to see it all again, but I never shall."

  "Why not," said I. "Surely Sir John can get you up there any day?"

  "Not now. The fighting makes it difficult. But it isn't that. I amleaving."

  "Leaving?" My heart gave a leap. "Why? Where?"

  "Leaving Lady Meryon."

  "Why--for Heaven's sake?"

  "I had rather not tell you."

  "But I must know."

  "You cannot."

  "I shall ask Lady Meryon."

  "I forbid you."

  And then the unexpected happened, and an unbearable impulse swept meinto folly--or was it wisdom?

  "Listen to me. I would not have said it yet, but this settles it. I wantyou to marry me. I want it atrociously!"

  It was a strange word. What I felt for her at that moment was difficultto describe. I endured it like a pain that could only be assuaged byher presence, but I endured it angrily. We were walking on the sunsetroad--very deserted and quiet at the time. The place was propitious ifnothing else was.

  She looked at me in transparent astonishment;

  "Mr. Clifden, are you dreaming? You can't mean what you say."

  "Why can't I? I do. I want you. You have the key of all I care for. Ithink of the world without you and find it tasteless."

  "Surely you have all the world can give? What do you want more?"

  "The power to enjoy it--to understand it. You have got that--I haven't.I want you always with me to interpret, like a guide to a blind fellow.I am no better."

  "Say like a dog, at once!" she interrupted. "At least you are frankenough to put it on that ground. You have not said you lo
ve me. Youcould not say it."

  "I don't know whether I do or not. I know nothing about love. I wantyou. Indescribably. Perhaps that is love--is it? I never wanted any onebefore. I have tried to get away and I can't."

  I was brutally frank, you see. She compelled my very thoughts.

  "Why have you tried?"

  "Because every man likes freedom. But I like you better." "I can tellyou the reason," she said in her gentle unwavering voice. "I am LadyMeryon's governess, and an undesirable. You have felt that?"

  "Don't make me out such a snob. No--yes. You force me into honesty.I did feel it at first like the miserable fool I am, but I could kickmyself when I think of that now. It is utterly forgotten. Take me andmake me what you will, and forgive me. Only tell me your secret of joy.How is it you understand everything alive or dead? I want to live--tosee, to know."

  It was a rhapsody like a boy's. Yet at the moment I was not even ashamedof it, so sharp was my need.

  "I think," she said, slowly, looking straight before her, "that I hadbetter be quite frank. I don't love you. I don't know what love meansin the Western sense. It has a very different meaning for me. Your voicecomes to me from an immense distance when you speak in that way. Youwant me--but never with a thought of what I might want. Is that love? Ilike you very deeply as a friend, but we are of different races. Thereis a gulf."

  "A gulf? You are English."

  "By birth, yes. In mind, no. And there are things that go deeper, thatyou could not understand. So I refuse quite definitely, and our wayspart here, for in a few days I go. I shall not see you again, but I wishto say good-bye."

  The bitterest chagrin was working in my soul. I felt as if all weredeserting me-a sickening feeling of loneliness. I did not know the manwho was in me, and was a stranger to myself.

  "I entreat you to tell me why, and where."

  "Since you have made me this offer, I will tell you why. Lady Meryonobjected to my friendship with you, and objected in a way which-"

  She stopped, flushing palely. I caught her hand.

  "That settles it!-that she should have dared! I'll go up this minute andtell her we are engaged. Vanna-Vanna!"

  For she disengaged her hand, quietly but firmly.

  "On no account. How can I make it more plain to you? I should have gonesoon in any case. My place is in the native city--that is the life Iwant. I have work there, I knew it before I came out. My sympathies areall with them. They know what life is--why even the beggars, poorer thanpoor, are perfectly happy, basking in the great generous sun. Oh, thesplendour and riot of life and colour! That's my life--I sicken ofthis."

  "But I'll give it to you. Marry me, and we will travel till you're tiredof it."

  "Yes, and look on as at a play--sitting in the stalls, and applaudingwhen we are pleased. No, I'm going to work there." "For God's sake, how?Let me come too."

  "You can't. You're not in it. I am going to attach myself to the medicalmission at Lahore and learn nursing, and then I shall go to my ownpeople."

  "Missionaries? You've nothing in common with them?"

  "Nothing. But they teach what I want. Mr. Clifden, I shall not come thisway again. If I remember--I'll write to you, and tell you what the realworld is like."

  She smiled, the absorbed little smile I knew and feared. I saw pleadingwas useless then. I would wait, and never lose sight of her and of hope.

  "Vanna, before you go, give me your gift of sight. Interpret for me.Stay with me a little and make me see."

  "What do you mean exactly?" she asked in her gentlest voice, halfturning to me.

  "Make one journey with me, as my sister, if you will do no more. ThoughI warn you that all the time I shall be trying to win my wife. But comewith me once, and after that--if you will go, you must. Say yes."

  Madness! But she hesitated--a hesitation full of hope, and looked at mewith intent eyes.

  "I will tell you frankly," she said at last, "that I know my knowledgeof the East and kinship with it goes far beyond mere words. In my casethe doors were not shut. I believe--I know that long ago this was mylife. If I spoke for ever I could not make you understand how much Iknow and why. So I shall quite certainly go back to it. Nothing--youleast of all, can hold me. But you are my friend--that is a true bond.And if you would wish me to give you two months before I go, I might dothat if it would in any way help you. As your friend only--you clearlyunderstand. You would not reproach me afterwards when I left you, as Ishould most certainly do?"

  "I swear I would not. I swear I would protect you even from myself. Iwant you for ever, but if you will only give me two months--come! Buthave you thought that people will talk. It may injure you. I'm not worththat, God knows. And you will take nothing I could give you in return."

  She spoke very quietly.

  "That does not trouble me.--It would only trouble me if you asked whatI have not to give. For two months I would travel with you as a friend,if, like a friend, I paid my own expenses-"

  I would have interrupted, but she brushed that firmly aside. "No, I mustdo as I say, and I am quite able to or I should not suggest it. I wouldgo on no other terms. It would be hard if because we are man and woman Imight not do one act of friendship for you before we part. For though Irefuse your offer utterly, I appreciate it, and I would make what littlereturn I can. It would be a sharp pain to me to distress you."

  Her gentleness and calm, the magnitude of the offer she was makingstunned me so that I could scarcely speak. There was such anextraordinary simplicity and generosity in her manner that it appearedto me more enthralling and bewildering than the most finished coquetryI had ever known. She gave me opportunities that the most ardent lovercould in his wildest dream desire, and with the remoteness in her eyesand her still voice she deprived them of all hope. It kindled in me aflame that made my throat dry when I tried to speak.

  "Vanna, is it a promise? You mean it?"

  "If you wish it, yes. But I warn you I think it will not make it easierfor you when the time is over.

  "Why two months?"

  "Partly because I can afford no more. No! I know what you would say.Partly because I can spare no more time. But I will give you that,if you wish, though, honestly, I had very much rather not. I think itunwise for you. I would protect you if I could--indeed I would!"

  It was my turn to hesitate now. Every moment revealed to me some newsweetness, some charm that I saw would weave itself into the veryfibre of my I had been! Was I not now a fool? Would it not being if theopportunity were given. Oh, fool that be better to let her go before shehad become a part of my daily experience? I began to fear I was courtingmy own shipwreck. She read my thoughts clearly.

  "Indeed you would be wise to decide against it. Release me from mypromise. It was a mad scheme."

  The superiority--or so I felt it--of her gentleness maddened me. Itmight have been I who needed protection, who was running the risk ofmisjudgment--not she, a lonely woman. She looked at me, waiting--tryingto be wise for me, never for one instant thinking of herself. I feltutterly exiled from the real purpose of her life.

  "I will never release you. I claim your promise. I hold to it."

  "Very well then--I will write, and tell you where I shall be. Good-bye,and if you change your mind, as I hope you will, tell me."

  She extended her hand cool as a snowflake, and was gone, walking swiftlyup the road. Ah, let a man beware when his wishes fulfilled, rain downupon him!

  To what had I committed myself? She knew her strength and had no fears.I could scarcely realize that she had liking enough for me to make theoffer. That it meant no shade more than she had said I knew well. Shewas safe, but what was to be the result for me? I knew nothing--she wasa beloved mystery.

  "Strange she is and secret, Strange her eyes; her cheeks arecold as cold sea-shells."

  Yet I would risk it, for I knew there was no hope if I let her go now,and if I saw her again, some glimmer might fall upon my dark.

  Next day this reached me:--Dear Mr. Clifden,--

&n
bsp; I am going to some Indian friends for a time. On the 15th of June Ishall be at Srinagar in Kashmir. A friend has allowed me to take herlittle houseboat, the "Kedarnath." If you like this plan we will sharethe cost for two months. I warn you it is not luxurious, but I think youwill like it. I shall do this whether you come or no, for I want a quiettime before I take up my nursing in Lahore. In thinking of all this willyou remember that I am not a girl but a woman. I shall be twenty-nine mynext birthday. Sincerely yours, VANNA LORING.

  P.S. But I still think you would be wiser not to come. I hope to hearyou will not.

  I replied only this:--Dear Miss Loring,--I think I understand theposition fully. I will be there. I thank you with all my heart.Gratefully yours, STEPHEN CLIFDEN.

  IV

  Three days later I met Lady Meryon, and was swept in to tea. Her mannerwas distinctly more cordial as she mentioned casually that Vanna hadleft--she understood to take up missionary work--"which is odd," sheadded with a woman's acrimony, "for she had no more in common withmissionaries than I have, and that is saying a good deal. Of course shespeaks Hindustani perfectly, and could be useful, but I haven't graspedthe point of it yet." I saw she counted on my knowing nothing of thereal reason of Vanna's going and left it, of course, at that. The talkdrifted away under my guidance. Vanna evidently puzzled her. She halffeared, and wholly misunderstood her.

  No message came to me, as time went by, and for the time she hadvanished completely, but I held fast to her promise and lived on thatonly.

  I take up my life where it ceased to be a mere suspense and became lifeonce more.

  On the 15th of June, I found myself riding into Srinagar in Kashmir,through the pure tremulous green of the mighty poplars that hedge theroad into the city. The beauty of the country had half stunned me whenI entered the mountain barrier of Baramula and saw the snowy peaks thatguard the Happy Valley, with the Jhelum flowing through its tranquilloveliness. The flush of the almond blossom was over, but the iris, likea blue sea of peace had overflowed the world--the azure meadows smiledback at the radiant sky. Such blossom! the blue shading into clearviolet, like a shoaling sea. The earth, like a cup held in the hand of agod, brimmed with the draught of youth and summer and--love? But no, forme the very word was sinister. Vanna's face, immutably calm, confrontedit.

  That night I slept in a boat at Sopor, and I remember that, waking atmidnight, I looked out and saw a mountain with a gloriole of hazy silverabout it, misty and faint as a cobweb threaded with dew. The river,there spreading into a lake, was dark under it, flowing in a deep smoothblackness of shadow, and everything awaited--what? And even while Ilooked, the moon floated serenely above the peak, and all was bathed inpure light, the water rippling and shining in broken silver and pearl.So had Vanna floated into my sky, luminous, sweet, remote. I did notquestion my heart any more. I knew I loved her.

  Two days later I rode into Srinagar, and could scarcely see the wildbeauty of that strange Venice of the East, my heart was so beatingin my eyes. I rode past the lovely wooden bridges where the balconiedhouses totter to each other across the canals in dim splendour ofcarving and age; where the many-coloured native life crowds down to theriver steps and cleanses its flower-bright robes, its gold-bright brassvessels in the shining stream, and my heart said only--Vanna, Vanna!

  One day, one thought, of her absence had taught me what she was to me,and if humility and patient endeavor could raise me to her feet, I wasresolved that I would spend my life in labor and think it well spent.

  My servant dismounted and led his horse, asking from every one where the"Kedarnath" could be found, and eager black eyes sparkled and two littlebronze images detached themselves from the crowd of boys, and ran, fleetas fauns, before us.

  Above the last bridge the Jhelum broadens out into a stately river,controlled at one side by the banked walk known as the Bund, with theClub House upon it and the line of houseboats beneath. Here the visitorsflutter up and down and exchange the gossip, the bridge appointments,the little dinners that sit so incongruously on the pure Orient that isKashmir.

  She would not be here. My heart told me that, and sure enough the boyswere leading across the bridge and by a quiet shady way to one of themany backwaters that the great river makes in the enchanting city. Thereis one waterway stretching on afar to the Dal Lake. It looks like ariver--it is the very haunt of peace. Under those mighty chenar, orplane trees, that are the glory of Kashmir, clouding the water with deepgreen shadows, the sun can scarcely pierce, save in a dipping sparklehere and there to intensify the green gloom. The murmur of the city, thechatter of the club, are hundreds of miles away. We rode downward underthe towering trees, and dismounting, saw a little houseboat tethered tothe bank. It was not of the richer sort that haunts the Bund, where thenative servants follow in a separate boat, and even the electric lightis turned on as part of the luxury. This was a long low craft, verybroad, thatched like a country cottage afloat. In the forepart lived thenative owner, and his family, their crew, our cooks and servants; forthey played many parts in our service. And in the afterpart, room for alife, a dream, the joy or curse & many days to be.

  But then, I saw only one thing--Vanna sat under the trees, reading, orlooking at the cool dim watery vista, with a single boat, loaded to theriver's edge with melons and scarlet tomatoes, punting lazily down toSrinagar in the sleepy afternoon.

  She was dressed in white with a shady hat, and her delicate dark faceseemed to glow in the shadow like the heart of a pale rose. For thefirst time I knew she was beautiful. Beauty shone in her like the flamein an alabaster lamp, serene, diffused in the very air about her, sothat to me she moved in a mild radiance. She rose to meet me with bothhands outstretched--the kindest, most cordial welcome. Not an eyelashflickered, not a trace of self-consciousness. If I could have seen herflush or tremble--but no--her eyes were clear and calm as a forest pool.So I remembered her. So I saw her once more.

  I tried, with a hopeless pretence, to follow her example and hide what Ifelt, where she had nothing to hide.

  "What a place you have found. Why, it's like the deep heart of a wood!"

  "Yes, I saw it once when I was here with the Meryons. But we lay at theBund then--just under the Club. This is better. Did you like the rideup?"

  I threw myself on the grass beside her with a feeling of perfect rest.

  "It was like a new heaven and a new earth. What a country!"

  The very spirit of Quiet seemed to be drowsing in those branchestowering up into the blue, dipping their green fingers into the crystalof the water. What a heaven!

  "Now you shall have your tea and then I will show you your rooms," shesaid, smiling at my delight. "We shall stay here a few days more thatyou may see Srinagar, and then they tow us up into the Dal Lake oppositethe Gardens of the Mogul Emperors. And if you think this beautiful whatwill you say then?"

  I shut my eyes and see still that first meal of my new life. The littletable that Pir Baksh, breathing full East in his jade-green turban, setbefore her, with its cloth worked in a pattern of the chenar leavesthat are the symbol of Kashmir; the brown cakes made by Ahmad Khan ina miraculous kitchen of his own invention--a few holes burrowed in theriver bank, a smoldering fire beneath them, and a width of canvas fora roof. But it served, and no more need be asked of luxury. And Vanna,making it mysteriously the first home I ever had known, the centraljoy of it all. Oh, wonderful days of life that breathe the spirit ofimmortality and pass so quickly--surely they must be treasured somewherein Eternity that we may look upon their beloved light once more.

  "Now you must see the boat. The Kedarnath is not a Dreadnought, but sheis broad and very comfortable. And we have many chaperons. They alllive in the bows, and exist simply to protect the Sahiblog from alldiscomfort, and very well they do it. That is Ahmad Khan by the kitchen.He cooks for us. Salama owns the boat, and steers her and engages themen to tow us when we move. And when I arrived he aired a little Englishand said piously; The Lord help me to give you no trouble, and the Lordhelp you! That is his w
ife sitting on the bank. She speaks little butKashmiri, but I know a little of that. Look at the hundred rat-tailplaits of her hair, lengthened with wool, and see her silver andturquoise jewelry. She wears much of the family fortune and is quitea walking bank. Salama, Ahmad Khan and I talk by the hour. Ahmad comesfrom Fyzabad. Look at Salama's boy--I call him the Orange Imp. Did youever see anything so beautiful?"

  I looked in sheer delight, and grasped my camera. Sitting near us was alovely little Kashmiri boy of about eight, in a faded orange coat, anda turban exactly like his father's. His curled black eyelashes wereso long that they made a soft gloom over the upper part of the littlegolden face. The perfect bow of the scarlet lips, the long eyes, the shysmile, suggested an Indian Eros. He sat dipping his feet in the waterwith little pigeon-like cries of content.

  "He paddles at the bow of our little shikara boat with a paddle exactlylike a water-lily leaf. Do you like our friends? I love them already,and know all their affairs. And now for the boat."

  "One moment--If we are friends on a great adventure, I must call youVanna, and you me Stephen."

  "Yes, I suppose that is part of it," she said, smiling. "Come, Stephen."

  It was like music, but a cold music that chilled me. She should havehesitated, should have flushed--it was I who trembled. So I followed heracross the broad plank into our new home.

  "This is our sitting-room. Look, how charming!"

  It was better than charming; it was home indeed. Windows at each sideopening down almost to the water, a little table for meals that livedmostly on the bank, with a grey pot of iris in the middle. Anothertable for writing, photography, and all the little pursuits of travel.A bookshelf with some well--worn friends. Two long cushioned chairs.Two for meals, and a Bokhara rug, soft and pleasant for the feet. Theinterior was plain unpainted wood, but set so that the grain showed likesatin in the rippling lights from the water.

  That is the inventory of the place I have loved best in the world, butwhat eloquence can describe what it gave me, what its memory gives me tothis day? And I have no eloquence--what I felt leaves me dumb.

  "It is perfect," was all I said as she waved her hand proudly. "It ishome."

  "And if you had come alone to Kashmir you would have had a great richboat with electric light and a butler. You would never have seen thepeople except at meal--times. I think you will like this better.Well, this is your tiny bedroom, and your bathroom, and beyond thesitting--room are mine. Do you like it all?"

  But I could say no more. The charm of her own personality had touchedeverything and left its fragrance like a flower--breath in the air. Iwas beggared of thanks, but my whole soul was gratitude. We dined onthe bank that evening, the lamp burning steadily in the still air andthrowing broken reflections in the water, while the moon looked in uponthem through the leaves. I felt extraordinarily young and happy.

  The quiet of her voice was soft as the little lap of water againstthe bows of the boat, and Kahdra, the Orange Imp, was singing a littlewordless song to himself as he washed the plates beside us. It was asimple meal, and Vanna, abstemious as a hermit never ate anything butrice and fruit, but I could remember no meal in all my days of luxurywhere I had eaten with such zest.

  "It looks very grand to have so many to wait upon us, doesn't it? Butthis is one of the cheapest countries in the world though the old timersmourn over present expenses. You will laugh when I show you your shareof the cost."

  "The wealth of the world could not buy this," I said, and was silent.

  "But you must listen to my plans. We must do a little camping thelast three weeks before we part. Up in the mountains. Are they notmarvellous? They stand like a rampart round us, but not cold andterrible, but "Like as the hills stand round about Jerusalem"--they areguardian presences. And running up into them, high-very high, are thevalleys and hills where we shall camp. Tomorrow we shall row throughSrinagar, by the old Maharaja's palace."

  V

  And so began a life of sheer enchantment. We knew no one. The visitorsin Kashmir change nearly every season, and no one cared-no one askedanything of us, and as for our shipmates, a willing affectionate servicewas their gift, and no more. Looking back, I know in what a wonder-worldI was privileged to live. Vanna could talk with them all. She did notmove apart, a condescending or indifferent foreigner. Kahdra wouldcome to her knee and prattle to her of the great snake that lived up onMahadeo to devour erring boys who omitted their prayers at proper Moslemintervals. She would sit with the baby in her lap while the motherbusied herself in the sunny bows with the mysterious dishes that smeltso savory to a hungry man. The cuts, the bruises of the neighbourhoodall came to Vanna for treatment.

  "I am graduating as a nurse," she would say laughing as she bent overthe lean arm of some weirdly wrinkled old lady, bandaging and soothingat the same moment. Her reward would be some bit of folk-lore, somequaintness of gratitude that I noted down in the little book I kept forremembrance--that I do not need, for every word is in my heart.

  We rowed down through the city next day--Salama rowing, and littleKahdra lazily paddling at the bow--a wonderful city, with its narrowways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its balconied houses lookingas if disease and sin had soaked into them and given them a vicioustottering beauty, horrible and yet lovely too. We saw the swarming lifeof the bazaar, the white turbans coming and going, diversified by therose and yellow Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, onthe dark brows.

  I saw two women--girls--painted and tired like Jezebel, looking out ofone window carved and old, and the grey burnished doves flying aboutit. They leaned indolently, like all the old, old wickedness of the Eastthat yet is ever young--"Flowers of Delight," with smooth black hairbraided with gold and blossoms, and covered with pale rose veils, andgold embossed disks swinging like lamps beside the olive cheeks, thegreat eyes artificially lengthened and darkened with soorma, and thecurves of the full lips emphasized with vermilion. They looked downon us with apathy, a dull weariness that held all the old evil of thewicked humming city.

  It had taken shape in those indolent bodies and heavy eyes that couldflash into life as a snake wakes into fierce darting energy when thetime comes to spring--direct inheritrixes from Lilith, in the fittestsetting in the world--the almost exhausted vice of an Oriental city asold as time.

  "And look-below here," said Vanna, pointing to one of the ghauts--longrugged steps running down to the river.

  "When I came yesterday, a great broken crowd was collected here, almostshouldering each other into the water where a boat lay rocking. In itlay the body of a man brutally murdered for the sake of a few rupees andflung into the river. I could see the poor brown body stark in the boatwith a friend weeping beside it. On the lovely deodar bridge peopleleaned over, watching with a grim open-mouthed curiosity, and businesswent on gaily where the jewelers make the silver bangles for slenderwrists, and the rows of silver chains that make the necks like 'theTower of Damascus builded for an armory.' It was all very wild andcruel. I went down to them-"

  "Vanna--you went down? Horrible!"

  "No, you see I heard them say the wife was almost a child and needshelp. So I went. Once long ago at Peshawar I saw the same thing happen,and they came and took the child for the service of the gods, for shewas most lovely, and she clung to the feet of a man in terror, and thepriest stabbed her to the heart. She died in my arms.

  "Good God!" I said, shuddering; "what a sight for you! Did they neverhang him?"

  "He was not punished. I told you it was a very long time ago. Herexpression had a brooding quiet as she looked down into the runningriver, almost it might be as if she saw the picture of that past miseryin the deep water. She said no more. But in her words and the terriblecrowding of its life, Srinagar seemed to me more of a nightmare thananything I had seen, excepting only Benares; for the holy Benares is amemory of horror, with a sense of blood hidden under its frantic crazydevotion, and not far hidden either.

  "Our own green shade, when we pulled back to it in the evening c
ool, wasa refuge of unspeakable quiet. She read aloud to me that evening by thesmall light of our lamp beneath the trees, and, singularly, she read ofjoy.

  "I have drunk of the Cup of the Ineffable, I have found the key of theMystery, Travelling by no track I have come to the Sorrowless Land; veryeasily has the mercy of the great Lord come upon me. Wonderful is thatLand of rest to which no merit can win. There have I seen joy filledto the brim, perfection of joy. He dances in rapture and waves of formarise from His dance. He holds all within his bliss."

  "What is that?"

  "It is from the songs of the great Indian mystic--Kabir. Let me read youmore. It is like the singing of a lark, lost in the infinite of lightand heaven."

  So in the soft darkness I heard for the first time those immortal words;and hearing, a faint glimmer of understanding broke upon me as tothe source of the peace that surrounded her. I had accepted it as anemanation of her own heart when it was the pulsing of the tide of theDivine. She read, choosing a verse here and there, and I listened withabsorption.

  Suppose I had been wrong in believing that sorrow is the keynoteof life; that pain is the road of ascent, if road there be; that animplacable Nature and that only, presides over all our pitiful strugglesand seekings and writes a black "Finis" to the holograph of ourexistence?

  What then? What was she teaching me? Was she the Interpreter of a Beautyeternal in the heavens, and reflected like a broken prism in the beautythat walked visible beside me? So I listened like a child to an unknownlanguage, yet ventured my protest.

  "In India, in this wonderful country where men have time and will forspeculation such thoughts may be natural. Can they be found in theWest?"

  "This is from the West--might not Kabir himself have said it? Certainlyhe would have felt it. 'Happy is he who seeks not to understand theMystery of God, but who, merging his spirit into Thine, sings toThy face, O Lord, like a harp, understanding how difficult it is toknow--how easy to love Thee.' We debate and argue and the Vision passesus by. We try to prove it, and kill it in the laboratory of our minds,when on the altar of our souls it will dwell for ever."

  Silence--and I pondered. Finally she laid the book aside, and repeatedfrom memory and in a tone of perfect music; "Kabir says, 'I shall goto the House of my Lord with my Love at my side; then shall I sound thetrumpet of triumph.'"

  And when she left me alone in the moonlight silence the old doubts cameback to me--the fear that I saw only through her eyes, and began tobelieve in joy only because I loved her. I remember I wrote in thelittle book I kept for my stray thoughts, these words which are not minebut reflect my thought of her; "Thine is the skill of the Fairy Woman,and the virtue of St. Bride, and the faith of Mary the Mild, and thegracious way of the Greek woman, and the beauty of lovely Emer, and thetenderness of heart-sweet Deirdre, and the courage of Maev the greatQueen, and the charm of Mouth-of-Music."

  Yes, all that and more, but I feared lest I should see the heaven of joythrough her eyes only and find it mirage as I had found so much else.

  SECOND PART Early in the pure dawn the men came and our boat was towedup into the Dal Lake through crystal waterways and flowery banks, themen on the path keeping step and straining at the rope until the bronzemuscles stood out on their legs and backs, shouting strong rhythmicphrases to mark the pull.

  "They shout the Wondrous Names of God--as they are called," said Vannawhen I asked. "They always do that for a timid effort. Bad shah! TheLord, the Compassionate, and so on. I don't think there is any religionabout it but it is as natural to them as One, Two, Three, to us. Itgives a tremendous lift. Watch and see."

  It was part of the delightful strangeness that we should move to thatstrong music. We sat on the upper deck and watched the dream--likebeauty drift slowly by until we emerged beneath a little bridge into thefairy land of the lake which the Mogul Emperors loved so well that theymade their noble pleasance gardens on the banks, and thought it littleto travel up yearly from far--off Delhi over the snowy Pir Panjal withtheir Queens and courts for the perfect summer of Kashmir.

  We moored by a low bank under a great wood of chenar trees, and saw thelittle table in the wilderness set in the greenest shade with our chairsbeside it, and my pipe laid reverently upon it by Kahdra.

  Across the glittering water lay on one side the Shalimar Garden knownto all readers of "Lalla Ruhk"--a paradise of roses; and beyond itagain the lovelier gardens of Nour-Mahal, the Light of the Palace, thatimperial woman who ruled India under the weak Emperor's name--she whosename he set thus upon his coins:

  "By order of King Jehangir. Gold has a hundred splendours added to it byreceiving the name of Nour-Jahan the Queen."

  Has any woman ever had a more royal homage than this most royallady--known first as Mihr-u-nissa--Sun of Women, and later, Nour-Mahal,Light of the Palace, and latest, Nour-Jahan-Begam, Queen, Light of theWorld?

  Here in these gardens she had lived--had seen the snow mountains changefrom the silver of dawn to the illimitable rose of sunset. The life, thecolour beat insistently upon my brain. They built a world of magic whereevery moment was pure gold. Surely--surely to Vanna it must be the same.I believed in my very soul that she who gave and shared such joy couldnot be utterly apart from me? Could I then feel certain that I hadgained any ground in these days we had been together? Could she stilldefine the cruel limits she had laid down, or were her eyes kinder, hertones a more broken music? I did not know. Whenever I could hazard aguess the next minute baffled me.

  Just then, in the sunset, she was sitting on deck, singing under herbreath and looking absently away to the Gardens across the Lake. I couldcatch the words here and there, and knew them.

  "Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now--who lies beneath your spell? Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway far, Before you agonize them in farewell?"

  "Don't!" I said abruptly. It stung me.

  "What?" she asked in surprise. "That is the song every one remembershere. Poor Laurence Hope! How she knew and loved this India! What areyou grumbling at?"

  Her smile stung me.

  "Never mind," I said morosely. "You don't understand. You never will."

  And yet I believed sometimes that she would--that time was on my side.

  When Kahdra and I pulled her across to Nour-Mahal's garden next day, howcould I not believe it--her face was so full of joy as she looked at mefor sympathy?

  "I don't think so much beauty is crowded into any other few miles inthe world--beauty of association, history, nature, everything!" she saidwith shining eyes. "The lotus flowers are not out yet but when they comethat is the last touch of perfection. Do you remember Homer--'But whosoate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, was neither willing to bringme word again, nor to depart. Nay, their desire was to remain therefor ever, feeding on the lotus with the Lotus Eaters, forgetful of allreturn.' You know the people here eat the roots and seeds? I ate themlast year and perhaps that is why I cannot stay away. But look atNour-Mahal's garden!"

  We were pulling in among the reeds and the huge carven leaves of thewater plants, and the snake-headed buds lolling upon them with theslippery half-sinister look that water-flowers have, as though theircold secret life belonged to the hidden water world and not to ours. Butnow the boat was touching the little wooden steps.

  O beautiful--most beautiful the green lawns, shaded with huge pyramidsof the chenar trees, the terraced gardens where the marble steps climbedfrom one to the other, and the mountain streams flashed singing andshining down the carved marble slopes that cunning hands had made todelight the Empress of Beauty, between the wildernesses of roses. Herpavilion stands still among the flowers, and the waters ripple throughit to join the lake--and she is--where? Even in the glory of sunshinethe passing of all fair things was present with me as I saw the emptyshell that had held the Pearl of Empire, and her roses that still bloom,her waters that still sing for others.

  The spray of a hundred fountains was misty diamond dust in the warm airladen with the scent of myriad flower
s. Kahdra followed us everywhere,singing his little tuneless happy song. The world brimmed with beautyand joy. And we were together. Words broke from me.

  "Vanna, let it be for ever! Let us live here. I'll give up all the worldfor this and you."

  "But you see," she said delicately, "it would be 'giving up.' You usethe right word. It is not your life. It is a lovely holiday, no more.You would weary of it. You would want the city life and your own kind."

  I protested with all my soul.

  "No. Indeed I will say frankly that it would be lowering yourself tolive a lotus-eating life among my people. It is a life with which youhave no tie. A Westerner who lives like that steps down; he loses hisbirthright just as an Oriental does who Europeanizes himself. He cannotlive your life nor you his. If you had work here it would be different.No--six or eight weeks more; then go away and forget it."

  I turned from her. The serpent was in Paradise. When is he absent?

  On one of the terraces a man was beating a tom-tom, and veiled womenlistened, grouped about him in brilliant colours.

  "Isn't that all India?" she said; "that dull reiterated sound? Ithalf stupefies, half maddens. Once at Darjiling I saw the Lamas' DevilDance--the soul, a white-faced child with eyes unnaturally enlarged,fleeing among a rabble of devils--the evil passions. It fled wildlyhere and there and every way was blocked. The child fell on its knees,screaming dumbly--you could see the despair in the staring eyes, butall was drowned in the thunder of Tibetan drums. No mercy--no escape.Horrible!"

  "Even in Europe the drum is awful," I said. "Do you remember in theFrench Revolution how they Drowned the victims' voices in a thunder rollof drums?"

  "I shall always see the face of the child, hunted down to hell, fallingon its knees, and screaming without a sound, when I hear the drum. Butlisten--a flute! Now if that were the Flute of Krishna you would have tofollow. Let us come!"

  I could hear nothing of it, but she insisted and we followed the music,inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill ofthe mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. AndVanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all heartsmust adore, even as the herd-girls adored him in his golden youth byJumna river and in the pastures of Brindaban.

  Next day we were climbing the hill to the ruins where the evil magicianbrought the King's daughter nightly to his will, flying low under agolden moon. Vanna took my arm and I pulled her laughing up the steepestflowery slopes until we reached the height, and lo! the arched windowswere eyeless and a lonely breeze blowing through the cloisters, and thebeautiful yellowish stone arches supported nothing and were but framesfor the blue of far lake and mountain and the divine sky. We climbedthe broken stairs where the lizards went by like flashes, and had I thetongue of men and angels I could not tell the wonder that lay beforeus,--the whole wide valley of Kashmir in summer glory, with its scentedbreeze singing, singing above it.

  We sat on the crushed aromatic herbs and among the wild roses and lookeddown.

  "To think," she said, "that we might have died and never seen it!"

  There followed a long silence. I thought she was tired, and would notbreak it. Suddenly she spoke in a strange voice, low and toneless;

  "The story of this place. She was the Princess Padmavati, and her homewas in Ayodhya. When she woke and found herself here by the lake she wasso terrified that she flung herself in and was drowned. They held herback, but she died."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because a wandering monk came to the abbey of Tahkt-i-Bahi nearPeshawar and told Vasettha the Abbot."

  I had nearly spoilt all by an exclamation, but I held myself back. I sawshe was dreaming awake and was unconscious of what she said.

  "The Abbot said, 'Do not describe her. What talk is this for holy men?The young monks must not hear. Some of them have never seen a woman.Should a monk speak of such toys?' But the wanderer disobeyed and spoke,and there was a great tumult, and the monks threw him out at the commandof the young Abbot, and he wandered down to Peshawar, and it was helater--the evil one!--that brought his sister, Lilavanti the Dancer, toPeshawar, and the Abbot fell into her snare. That was his revenge!"

  Her face was fixed and strange, for a moment her cheek looked hollow,her eyes dim and grief-worn. What was she seeing?--what remembering? Wasit a story--a memory? What was it?

  "She was beautiful?" I prompted.

  "Men have said so, but for it he surrendered the Peace. Do not speak ofher accursed beauty."

  Her voice died away to a drowsy murmur; her head dropped on my shoulderand for the mere delight of contact I sat still and scarcely breathed,praying that she might speak again, but the good minute was gone. Shedrew one or two deep breaths, and sat up with a bewildered look thatquickly passed.

  "I was quite sleepy for a minute. The climb was so strenuous. Hark--Ihear the Flute of Krishna again."

  And again I could hear nothing, but she said it was sounding from thetrees at the base of the hill. Later when we climbed down I found shewas right--that a peasant lad, dark and amazingly beautiful asthese Kashmiris often are, was playing on the flute to a girl at hisfeet--looking up at him with rapt eyes. He flung Vanna a flower as wepassed. She caught it and put it in her bosom. A singular blossom, threepetals of purest white, set against three leaves of purest green, andlower down the stem the three green leaves were repeated. It was stillin her bosom after dinner, and I looked at it more closely.

  "That is a curious flower," I said. "Three and three and three. Nine.That makes the mystic number. I never saw a purer white. What is it?"

  "Of course it is mystic," she said seriously. "It is the NinefoldFlower. You saw who gave it?"

  "That peasant lad."

  She smiled.

  "You will see more some day. Some might not even have seen that."

  "Does it grow here?"

  "This is the first I have seen. It is said to grow only where the godswalk. Do you know that throughout all India Kashmir is said to be holyground? It was called long ago the land of the gods, and of strange, butnot evil, sorceries. Great marvels were seen here."

  I felt the labyrinthine enchantments of that enchanted land were closingabout me--a slender web, grey, almost impalpable, finer than fairy silk,was winding itself about my feet. My eyes were opening to things I hadnot dreamed. She saw my thought.

  "Yes, you could not have seen even that much of him in Peshawar. You didnot know then."

  "He was not there," I answered, falling half unconsciously into hertone.

  "He is always there--everywhere, and when he plays, all who hear mustfollow. He was the Pied Piper in Hamelin, he was Pan in Hellas. Youwill hear his wild fluting in many strange places when you know how tolisten. When one has seen him the rest comes soon. And then you willfollow."

  "Not away from you, Vanna."

  "From the marriage feast, from the Table of the Lord," she said, smilingstrangely. "The man who wrote that spoke of another call, but it is thesame--Krishna or Christ. When we hear the music we follow. And we maylose or gain heaven."

  It might have been her compelling personality--it might have been themarvels of beauty about me, but I knew well I had entered at some mysticgate. A pass word had been spoken for me--I was vouched for and might goin. Only a little way as yet. Enchanted forests lay beyond, and perilousseas, but there were hints, breaths like the wafting of the garments ofunspeakable Presences. My talk with Vanna grew less personal, and moreintrospective. I felt the touch of her finger-tips leading me alongthe ways of Quiet--my feet brushed a shining dew. Once, in the twilightunder the chenar trees, I saw a white gleaming and thought it a swiftlypassing Being, but when in haste I gained the tree I found there onlya Ninefold flower, white as a spirit in the evening calm. I would notgather it but told Vanna what I had seen.

  "You nearly saw;" she said. "She passed so quickly. It was the SnowyOne, Uma, Parvati, the Daughter of the Himalaya. That mountain is themountain of her lord--Shiva. It is natural she should be here. I saw herlast night l
ean over the height--her face pillowed on her folded arms,with a low star in the mists of her hair. Her eyes were like lakes ofblue darkness. Vast and wonderful. She is the Mystic Mother of India.You will see soon. You could not have seen the flower until now."

  "Do you know," she added, "that in the mountains there are poppies ofclear blue--blue as turquoise. We will go up into the heights and findthem."

  And next moment she was planning the camping details, the men, theponies, with a practical zest that seemed to relegate the occult to theabsurd. Yet the very next day came a wonderful moment.

  The sun was just setting and, as it were, suddenly the purple gloomsbanked up heavy with thunder. The sky was black with fury, the earthpassive with dread. I never saw such lightning--it was continuous andtore in zigzag flashes down the mountains like rents in the substanceof the world's fabric. And the thunder roared up in the mountain gorgeswith shattering echoes. Then fell the rain, and the whole lake seemed torise to meet it, and the noise was like the rattle of musketry. We werestanding by the cabin window and she suddenly caught my hand, and Isaw in a light of their own two dancing figures on the tormented waterbefore us. Wild in the tumult, embodied delight, with arms tossedviolently above their heads, and feet flung up behind them, skimming thewaves like seagulls, they passed. Their sex I could not tell--I thinkthey had none, but were bubble emanations of the rejoicing rush of therain and the wild retreating laughter of the thunder. I saw the fierceaerial faces and their inhuman glee as they fled by, and she dropped myhand and they were gone. Slowly the storm lessened, and in the west theclouds tore raggedly asunder and a flood of livid yellow light poureddown upon the lake--an awful light that struck it into an abyss of fire.Then, as if at a word of command, two glorious rainbows sprang acrossthe water with the mountains for their piers, each with its propercolours chorded. They made a Bridge of Dread that stood out radiantagainst the background of storm--the Twilight of the Gods, and thedoomed gods marching forth to the last fight. And the thunder growledsullenly away into the recesses of the hill and the terrible rainbowsfaded until the stars came quietly out and it was a still night.

  But I had seen that what is our dread is the joy of the spirits of theMighty Mother, and though the vision faded and I doubted what I hadseen, it prepared the way for what I was yet to see. A few days later westarted on what was to be the most exquisite memory of my life. A trainof ponies carried our tents and camping necessaries and there was apony for each of us. And so, in the cool grey of a divine morning, withlittle rosy clouds flecking the eastern sky, we set out from Islamabadfor Vernag. And this was the order of our going. She and I led the way,attended by a sais (groom) and a coolie carrying the luncheon basket.Half way we would stop in some green dell, or by some rushing stream,and there rest and eat our little meal while the rest of the cavalcadepassed on to the appointed camping place, and in the late afternoon wewould follow, riding slowly, and find the tents pitched and the kitchendepartment in full swing. If the place pleased us we lingered for somedays;--if not, the camp was struck next morning, and again we wanderedin search of beauty.

  The people were no inconsiderable part of my joy. I cannot see what theyhave to gain from such civilization as ours--a kindly people and happy.Courtesy and friendliness met us everywhere, and if their labor washard, their harvest of beauty and laughter seemed to be its reward. Thelittle villages with their groves of walnut and fruit trees spoke of nounfulfilled want, the mulberries which fatten the sleek bears in theirseason fattened the children too. I compared their lot with that ofthe toilers in our cities and knew which I would choose. We rode byshimmering fields of barley, with red poppies floating in the cleartransparent green as in deep sea water, through fields of millet likethe sky fallen on the earth, so innocently blue were its blossoms,and the trees above us were trellised with the wild roses, golden andcrimson, and the ways tapestried with the scented stars of the largewhite jasmine.

  It was strange that later much of what she said, escaped me. Some Inoted down at the time, but there were hints, shadows of lovelier thingsbeyond that eluded all but the fringes of memory when I tried to piecethem together and make a coherence of a living wonder. For that reason,the best things cannot be told in this history. It is only the cruder,grosser matters that words will hold. The half-touchings--vanishinglooks, breaths--O God, I know them, but cannot tell.

  In the smaller villages, the head man came often to greet us and makeus welcome, bearing on a flat dish a little offering of cakes and fruit,the produce of the place. One evening a man so approached, statelyin white robes and turban, attended by a little lad who carried thepatriarchal gift beside him. Our tents were pitched under a gloriouswalnut tree with a running stream at our feet.

  Vanna of course, was the interpreter, and I called her from her tent asthe man stood salaaming before me. It was strange that when she came,dressed in white, he stopped in his salutation, and gazed at her inwhat, I thought, was silent wonder.

  She spoke earnestly to him, standing before him with clasped hands,almost, I could think, in the attitude of a suppliant. The man listenedgravely, with only an interjection, now and again, and once he turnedand looked curiously at me. Then he spoke, evidently making someannouncement which she received with bowed head--and when he turned togo with a grave salute, she performed a very singular ceremony, movingslowly round him three times with clasped hands; keeping him always onthe right. He repaid it with the usual salaam and greeting of peace,which he bestowed also on me, and then departed in deep meditation, hiseyes fixed on the ground. I ventured to ask what it all meant, and shelooked thoughtfully at me before replying.

  "It was a strange thing. I fear you will not altogether understand,but I will tell you what I can. That man though living here amongMahomedans, is a Brahman from Benares, and, what is very rare in India,a Buddhist. And when he saw me he believed he remembered me in a formerbirth. The ceremony you saw me perform is one of honour in India. It washis due."

  "Did you remember him?" I knew my voice was incredulous.

  "Very well. He has changed little but is further on the upward path. Isaw him with dread for he holds the memory of a great wrong I did. Yethe told me a thing that has filled my heart with joy."

  "Vanna-what is it?"

  She had a clear uplifted look which startled me. There was suddenly achill air blowing between us.

  "I must not tell you yet but you will know soon. He was a good man. I amglad we have met."

  She buried herself in writing in a small book I had noticed and longedto look into, and no more was said.

  We struck camp next day and trekked on towards Vernag--a rough march,but one of great beauty, beneath the shade of forest trees, garlandedwith pale roses that climbed from bough to bough and tossed triumphantwreaths into the uppermost blue.

  In the afternoon thunder was flapping its wings far off in the mountainsand a little rain fell while we were lunching under a big tree. I wasconsidering anxiously how to shelter Vanna, when a farmer invited us tohis house--a scene of Biblical hospitality that delighted us both. Heled us up some break-neck little stairs to a large bare room, open tothe clean air all round the roof, and with a kind of rough enclosure onthe wooden floor where the family slept at night. There he opened ourbasket, and then, with anxious care, hung clothes and rough draperiesabout us that our meal might be unwatched by one or two friends who hadfollowed us in with breathless interest. Still further to entertain usa great rarity was brought out and laid at Vanna's feet as somethingwe might like to watch--a curious bird in a cage, with brightly barredwings and a singular cry. She fed it with fruit, and it fluttered to herhand. Just so Abraham might have welcomed his guests, and when we leftwith words of deepest gratitude, our host made the beautiful obeisanceof touching his forehead with joined hands as he bowed. To me the wholeincident had an extraordinary grace, and ennobled both host and guest.But we met an ascending scale of loveliness so varied in its aspectsthat I passed from one emotion to another and knew no sameness.

  That afterno
on the camp was pitched at the foot of a mighty hill, underthe waving pyramids of the chenars, sweeping their green like the robesof a goddess. Near by was a half circle of low arches falling intoruin, and as we went in among them I beheld a wondrous sight--the hugeoctagonal tank or basin made by the Mogul Emperor Jehangir to receivethe waters of a mighty Spring which wells from the hill and has beenheld sacred by Hindu and Moslem. And if loveliness can sanctify surelyit is sacred indeed.

  The tank was more than a hundred feet in diameter and circled by aroughly paved pathway where the little arched cells open that thedevotees may sit and contemplate the lustral waters. There on a blackstone, is sculptured the Imperial inscription comparing this spring tothe holier wells of Paradise, and I thought no less of it, for it rushesstraight from the rock with no aiding stream, and its waters are fiftyfeet deep, and sweep away from this great basin through beautiful lowarches in a wild foaming river--the crystal life-blood of the mountainsfor ever welling away. The colour and perfect purity of this livingjewel were most marvellous--clear blue-green like a chalcedony, butchanging as the lights in an opal--a wonderful quivering brilliance,flickering with the silver of shoals of sacred fish.

  But the Mogul Empire is with the snows of yesteryear and the wonder haspassed from the Moslems into the keeping of the Hindus once more, andthe Lingam of Shiva, crowned with flowers, is the symbol in the littleshrine by the entrance. Surely in India, the gods are one and have nojealousies among them--so swiftly do their glories merge the one intothe other.

  "How all the Mogul Emperors loved running water," said Vanna. "I can seethem leaning over it in their carved pavilions with delicate dark facesand pensive eyes beneath their turbans, lost in the endless reverie ofthe East while liquid melody passes into their dream. It was the musicthey best loved."

  She was leading me into the royal garden below, where the young riverflows beneath the pavilion set above and across the rush of the water.

  "I remember before I came to India," she went on, "there werecertain words and phrases that meant the whole East to me. It was anenchantment. The first flash picture I had was Milton's--

  'Dark faces with white silken turbans wreathed.'

  and it still is. I have thought ever since that every man should wear aturban. It dignifies the un-comeliest and it is quite curious to see howmany inches a man descends in the scale of beauty the moment he takes itoff and you see only the skull-cap about which they wind it. They windit with wonderful skill too. I have seen a man take eighteen yards ofmuslin and throw it round his head with a few turns, and in five or sixminutes the beautiful folds were all in order and he looked like a king.Some of the Gujars here wear black ones and they are very effective andworth painting--the black folds and the sullen tempestuous black browsunderneath."

  We sat in the pavilion for awhile looking down on the rushing water, andshe spoke of Akbar, the greatest of the Moguls, and spoke with a curiouspersonal touch, as I thought.

  "I wish you would try to write a story of him--one on more human linesthan has been done yet. No one has accounted for the passionate questof truth that was the real secret of his life. Strange in an Orientaldespot if you think of it! It really can only be understood from theBuddhist belief, which curiously seems to have been the only one heneglected, that a mysterious Karma influenced all his thoughts. If Itell you as a key-note for your story, that in a past life he had been aBuddhist priest--one who had fallen away, would that in any way accountto you for attempts to recover the lost way? Try to think that out, andto write the story, not as a Western mind sees it, but pure East."

  "That would be a great book to write if one could catch the voices ofthe past. But how to do it?"

  "I will give you one day a little book that may help you. The otherstory I wish you would write is the story of a Dancer of Peshawar. Thereis a connection between the two--a story of ruin and repentance."

  "Will you tell it to me?"

  "A part. In this same book you will find much more, but not all. Allcannot be told. You must imagine much. But I think your imagination willbe true."

  "Why do you think so?"

  "Because in these few days you have learnt so much. You have seen theNinefold Flower, and the rain spirits. You will soon hear the Flute ofKrishna which none can hear who cannot dream true."

  That night I heard it. I waked, suddenly, to music, and standing in thedoor of my tent, in the dead silence of the night, lit only by a few lowstars, I heard the poignant notes of a flute. If it had called my nameit could not have summoned me more clearly, and I followed without athought of delay, forgetting even Vanna in the strange urgency thatfilled me. The music was elusive, seeming to come first from one side,then from the other, but finally I tracked it as a bee does a flower bythe scent, to the gate of the royal garden--the pleasure place of thedead Emperors.

  The gate stood ajar--strange! for I had seen the custodian close it thatevening. Now it stood wide and I went in, walking noiselessly over thedewy grass. I knew and could not tell how, that I must be noiseless.Passing as if I were guided, down the course of the strong young river,I came to the pavilion that spanned it--the place where we had stoodthat afternoon--and there to my profound amazement, I saw Vanna, leaningagainst a slight wooden pillar. As if she had expected me, she laid onefinger on her lip, and stretching out her hand, took mine and drew mebeside her as a mother might a child. And instantly I saw!

  On the further bank a young man in a strange diadem or miter of jewels,bare-breasted and beautiful, stood among the flowering oleanders, onefoot lightly crossed over the other as he stood. He was like an imageof pale radiant gold, and I could have sworn that the light came fromwithin rather than fell upon him, for the night was very dark. He heldthe flute to his lips, and as I looked, I became aware that the noiseof the rushing water was tapering off into a murmur scarcely louder thanthat of a summer bee in the heart of a rose. Therefore the music roselike a fountain of crystal drops, cold, clear, and of an entrancingsweetness, and the face above it was such that I had no power to turn myeyes away. How shall I say what it was? All I had ever desired, dreamed,hoped, prayed, looked at me from the remote beauty of the eyes and withthe most persuasive gentleness entreated me, rather than commanded tofollow fearlessly and win. But these are words, and words shaped in therough mould of thought cannot convey the deep desire that would havehurled me to his feet if Vanna had not held me with a firm restraininghand. Looking up in adoring love to the dark face was a ring of woodlandcreatures. I thought I could distinguish the white clouded robe of asnow-leopard, the soft clumsiness of a young bear, and many more, butthese shifted and blurred like dream creatures--I could not be sure ofthem nor define their numbers. The eyes of the Player looked down upontheir passionate delight with careless kindness.

  Dim images passed through my mind. Orpheus--No, this was no Greek.Pan-yet again, No. Where were the pipes, the goat hoofs? The youngDionysos--No, there were strange jewels instead of his vines. And thenVanna's voice said as if from a great distance;

  "Krishna--the Beloved." And I said aloud, "I see!" And even as I said itthe whole picture blurred together like a dream, and I was alone in thepavilion and the water was foaming past me. Had I walked in my sleep, Ithought, as I made my way hack? As I gained the garden gate, before me,like a snowflake, I saw the Ninefold Flower.

  When I told her next day, speaking of it as a dream, she said simply;"They have opened the door to you. You will not need me soon.

  "I shall always need you. You have taught me everything. I could seenothing last night until you took my hand."

  "I was not there," she said smiling. "It was only the thought of me, andyou can have that when I am very far away. I was sleeping in my tent.What you called in me then you can always call, even if I am--dead."

  "That is a word which is beginning to have no meaning for me. You havesaid things to me--no, thought them, that have made me doubt if there isroom in the universe for the thing we have called death."

  She smiled her sweet wise smile.<
br />
  "Where we are death is not. Where death is we are not. But you willunderstand better soon."

  Our march curving took us by the Mogul gardens of Achibal, and theglorious ruins of the great Temple at Martund, and so down to Bawanwith its crystal waters and that loveliest camping ground beside them.A mighty grove of chenar trees, so huge that I felt as if we were in agreat sea cave where the air is dyed with the deep shadowy green of theinmost ocean, and the murmuring of the myriad leaves was like a sea atrest. I looked up into the noble height and my memory of Westminsterdwindled, for this led on and up to the infinite blue, and at nightthe stars hung like fruit upon the branches. The water ran with a greatjoyous rush of release from the mountain behind, but was first receivedin a broad basin full of sacred fish and reflecting a little temple ofMaheshwara and one of Surya the Sun. Here in this basin the water laypure and still as an ecstasy, and beside it was musing the young Brahmanpriest who served the temple. Since I had joined Vanna I had begun withher help to study a little Hindustani, and with an aptitude for languagecould understand here and there. I caught a word or two as she spokewith him that startled me, when the high-bred ascetic face turnedserenely upon her, and he addressed her as "My sister," adding asentence beyond my learning, but which she willingly translatedlater.--"May He who sits above the Mysteries, have mercy upon thyrebirth."

  She said afterwards;

  "How beautiful some of these men are. It seems a different type ofbeauty from ours, nearer to nature and the old gods. Look at thatpriest--the tall figure, the clear olive skin, the dark level brows, thelong lashes that make a soft gloom about the eyes--eyes that have thefathomless depth of a deer's, the proud arch of the lip. I think thereis no country where aristocracy is more clearly marked than in India.The Brahmans are aristocrats of the world. You see it is a religiousaristocracy as well. It has everything that can foster pride andexclusiveness. They spring from the Mouth of Deity. They are His wordincarnate. Not many kings are of the Brahman caste, and the Brahmanslook down upon them from Sovereign heights. I have known men who wouldnot eat with their own rulers who would have drunk the water that washedthe Brahmans' feet."

  She took me that day, the Brahman with us, to see a cave in themountain. We climbed up the face of the cliff to where a little treegrew on a ledge, and the black mouth yawned. We went in and often it wasso low we had to stoop, leaving the sunlight behind until it was likea dim eye glimmering in the velvet blackness. The air was dank andcold and presently obscene with the smell of bats, and alive withtheir wings, as they came sweeping about us, gibbering and squeaking.I thought of the rush of the ghosts, blown like dead leaves in theOdyssey. And then a small rock chamber branched off, and in this, lit bya bit of burning wood, we saw the bones of a holy man who lived and diedthere four hundred years ago. Think of it! He lived there always, withthe slow dropping of water from the dead weight of the mountain abovehis head, drop by drop tolling the minutes away: the little groping feetthrough the cave that would bring him food and drink, hurrying intothe warmth and sunlight again, and his only companion the sacred Lingamwhich means the Creative Energy that sets the worlds dancing for joyround the sun--that, and the black solitude to sit down beside him.Surely his bones can hardly be dryer and colder now than they were then!There must be strange ecstasies in such a life--wild visions in thedark, or it could never be endured.

  And so, in marches of about ten miles a day, we came to Pahlgam on thebanks of the dancing Lidar. There was now only three weeks left of thetime she had promised. After a few days at Pahlgam the march would turnand bend its way back to Srinagar, and to--what? I could not believe itwas to separation--in her lovely kindness she had grown so close to methat, even for the sake of friendship, I believed our paths must runtogether to the end, and there were moments when I could still halfconvince myself that I had grown as necessary to her as she was to me.No--not as necessary, for she was life and soul to me, but a part of herdaily experience that she valued and would not easily part with. Thatevening we were sitting outside the tents, near the camp fire, of pinelogs and cones, the leaping flames making the night beautiful with goldand leaping sparks, in an attempt to reach the mellow splendours of themoon. The men, in various attitudes of rest, were lying about, and onehad been telling a story which had just ended in excitement and loudapplause.

  "These are Mahomedans," said Vanna, "and it is only a story of love andfighting like the Arabian Nights. If they had been Hindus, it mightwell have been of Krishna or of Rama and Sita. Their faith comes from anearlier time and they still see visions. The Moslem is a hard practicalfaith for men--men of the world too. It is not visionary now, though itonce had its great mysteries."

  "I wish you would tell me what you think of the visions or apparitionsof the gods that are seen here. Is it all illusion? Tell me yourthought."

  "How difficult that is to answer. I suppose if love and faith are strongenough they will always create the vibrations to which the greatervibrations respond, and so make God in their own image at any time orplace. But that they call up what is the truest reality I have neverdoubted. There is no shadow without a substance. The substance is beyondus but under certain conditions the shadow is projected and we see it.

  "Have I seen or has it been dream?"

  "I cannot tell. It may have been the impress of my mind on yours, for Isee such things always. You say I took your hand?"

  "Take it now."

  She obeyed, and instantly, as I felt the firm cool clasp, I heard therain of music through the pines--the Flute Player was passing. Shedropped it smiling and the sweet sound ceased.

  "You see! How can I tell what you have seen? You will know better when Iam gone. You will stand alone then."

  "You will not go--you cannot. I have seen how you have loved all thiswonderful time. I believe it has been as dear to you as to me. And everyday I have loved you more. I depend upon you for everything that makeslife worth living. You could not--you who are so gentle--you could notcommit the senseless cruelty of leaving me when you have taught me tolove you with every beat of my heart. I have been patient--I have heldmyself in, but I must speak now. Marry me, and teach me. I know nothing.You know all I need to know. For pity's sake be my wife."

  I had not meant to say it; it broke from me in the firelight moonlightwith a power that I could not stay. She looked at me with a disarminggentleness.

  "Is this fair? Do you remember how at Peshawar I told you I thought itwas a dangerous experiment, and that it would make things harder foryou. But you took the risk like a brave man because you felt there werethings to be gained--knowledge, insight, beauty. Have you not gainedthem?"

  "Yes. Absolutely."

  "Then, is it all loss if I go?"

  "Not all. But loss I dare not face."

  "I will tell you this. I could not stay if I would. Do you remember theold man on the way to Vernag? He told me that I must very soon take upan entirely new life. I have no choice, though if I had I would still doit."

  There was silence and down a long arcade, without any touch of her handI heard the music, receding with exquisite modulations to a very greatdistance, and between the pillared stems, I saw a faint light.

  "Do you wish to go?"

  "Entirely. But I shall not forget you, Stephen. I will tell yousomething. For me, since I came to India, the gate that shuts us out atbirth has opened. How shall I explain? Do you remember Kipling's 'FinestStory in the World'?"

  "Yes. Fiction!"

  "Not fiction--true, whether he knew it or no. But for me the door hasopened wide. First, I remembered piecemeal, with wide gaps, then moreconnectedly. Then, at the end of the first year, I met one day atCawnpore, an ascetic, an old man of great beauty and wisdom, and he wasable by his own knowledge to enlighten mine. Not wholly--much has comesince then. Has come, some of it in ways you could not understandnow, but much by direct sight and hearing. Long, long ago I lived inPeshawar, and my story was a sorrowful one. I will tell you a littlebefore I go."

  "I hold you to your prom
ise. What is there I cannot believe when youtell me? But does that life put you altogether away from me? Was thereno place for me in any of your memories that has drawn us together now?Give me a little hope that in the eternal pilgrimage there is some bondbetween us and some rebirth where we may met again."

  "I will tell you that also before we part. I have grown to believe thatyou do love me--and therefore love something which is infinitely aboveme."

  "And do you love me at all? Am I nothing, Vanna--Vanna?"

  "My friend," she said, and laid her hand on mine.

  A silence, and then she spoke, very low.

  "You must be prepared for very great change, Stephen, and yet believethat it does not really change things at all. See how even the gods passand do not change! The early gods of India are gone and Shiva, Vishnu,Krishna have taken their places and are one and the same. The oldBuddhist stories say that in heaven "The flowers of the garland theGod wore are withered, his robes of majesty are waxed old and faded;he falls from his high estate, and is re-born into a new life." But helives still in the young God who is born among men. The gods cannot die,nor can we nor anything that has life. Now I must go in."

  I sat long in the moonlight thinking. The whole camp was sunk in sleepand the young dawn was waking upon the peaks when I turned in.

  The days that were left we spent in wandering up the Lidar River to thehills that are the first ramp of the ascent to the great heights.We found the damp corners where the mushrooms grow like pearls--themushrooms of which she said--"To me they have always been fairy things.To see them in the silver-grey dew of the early mornings--mysteriouslythere like the manna in the desert--they are elfin plunder, and as achild I was half afraid of them. No wonder they are the darlings offolklore, especially in Celtic countries where the Little People move inthe starlight. Strange to think they are here too among strange gods!"

  We climbed to where the wild peonies bloom in glory that few eyes see,and the rosy beds of wild sweet strawberries ripen. Every hour broughtwith it some new delight, some exquisiteness of sight or of words thatI shall remember for ever. She sat one day on a rock, holding thesculptured leaves and massive seed-vessels of some glorious plant thatthe Kashmiris believe has magic virtues hidden in the seeds of pure roseembedded in the white down.

  "If you fast for three days and eat nine of these in the Night of NoMoon, you can rise on the air light as thistledown and stand on the peakof Haramoukh. And on Haramoukh, as you know it is believed, the godsdwell. There was a man here who tried this enchantment. He was a changedman for ever after, wandering and muttering to himself and avoiding allhuman intercourse as far as he could. He was no Kashmiri--A Jat from thePunjab, and they showed him to me when I was here with the Meryons, andtold me he would speak to none. But I knew he would speak to me, and hedid."

  "Did he tell you anything of what he had seen in the high world upyonder?"

  "He said he had seen the Dream of the God. I could not get more thanthat. But there are many people here who believe that the Universe aswe know it is but an image in the dream of Ishvara, the UniversalSpirit--in whom are all the gods--and that when He ceases to dream wepass again into the Night of Brahm, and all is darkness until the Spiritof God moves again on the face of the waters. There are few temples toBrahm. He is above and beyond all direct worship."

  "Do you think he had seen anything?"

  "What do I know? Will you eat the seeds? The Night of No Moon will soonbe here."

  She held out the seed-vessels, laughing. I write that down but howrecord the lovely light of kindliness in her eyes--the almost submissivegentleness that yet was a defense stronger than steel. I never knew--howshould I?--whether she was sitting by my side or heavens away from me inher own strange world. But always she was a sweetness that I could notreach, a cup of nectar that I might not drink, unalterably her own andnever mine, and yet--my friend.

  She showed me the wild track up into the mountains where the Pilgrims goto pay their devotions at the Great God's shrine in the awful heights,regretting that we were too early for that most wonderful sight. Abovewhere we were sitting the river fell in a tormented white cascade,crashing and feathering into spray-dust of diamonds. An eagle wasflying above it with a mighty spread of wings that seemed almostdouble-jointed in the middle--they curved and flapped so wide and free.The fierce head was outstretched with the rake of a plundering galley ashe swept down the wind, seeking his meat from God, and passed majesticfrom our sight. The valley beneath us was littered with enormousboulders spilt from the ancient hollows of the hills. It must havebeen a great sight when the giants set them trundling down in workor play!--I said this to Vanna, who was looking down upon it withmeditative eyes. She roused herself.

  "Yes, this really is Giant-Land up here--everything is so huge. And whenthey quarrel up in the heights--in Jotunheim--and the black stormscome down the valleys it is like colossal laughter or clumsy boisterousanger. And the Frost giants are still at work up there with their greataxes of frost and rain. They fling down the side of a mountain or makefresh ways for the rivers. About sixty years ago--far above here--theytore down a mountain side and damned up the mighty Indus, so that formonths he was a lake, shut back in the hills. But the river giants areno less strong up here in the heights of the world, and lie lay broodingand hiding his time. And then one awful day he tore the barrier down androared down the valley carrying death and ruin with him, and swept awaya whole Sikh army among other unconsidered trifles. That must have beena soul-shaking sight."

  She spoke on, and as she spoke I saw. What are her words as I recordthem? Stray dead leaves pressed in a book--the life and grace dead. YetI record, for she taught me what I believe the world should learn, thatthe Buddhist philosophers are right when they teach that all forms ofwhat we call matter are really but aggregates of spiritual units, andthat life itself is a curtain hiding reality as the vast veil ofday conceals from our sight the countless orbs of space. So that thepurified mind even while prisoned in the body, may enter into union withthe Real and, according to attainment, see it as it is.

  She was an interpreter because she believed this truth profoundly. Shesaw the spiritual essence beneath the lovely illusion of matter, and theair about her was radiant with the motion of strange forces for whichthe dull world has many names aiming indeed at the truth, but falling--Ohow far short of her calm perception! She was indeed of a Householdhigher than the Household of Faith. She had received enlightenment. Shebeheld with open eyes.

  Next day our camp was struck and we turned our faces again to Srinagarand to the day of parting. I set down but one strange incident of ourjourney, of which I did not speak even to her.

  We were camping at Bijbehara, awaiting our house boat, and the site wasby the Maharaja's lodge above the little town. It was midnight and I wassleepless--the shadow of the near future was upon me. I wandered down tothe lovely old wooded bridge across the Jhelum, where the strong youngtrees grow up from the piles. Beyond it the moon was shining on theancient Hindu remains close to the new temple, and as I stood on thebridge I could see the figure of a man in deepest meditation by theruins. He was no European. I saw the straight dignified folds of therobes. But it was not surprising he should be there and I should havethought no more of it, had I not heard at that instant from the furtherside of the river the music of the Flute. I cannot hope to describethat music to any who have not heard it. Suffice it to say that whereit calls he who hears must follow whether in the body or the spirit. Norcan I now tell in which I followed. One day it will call me across theRiver of Death, and I shall ford it or sink in the immeasurable depthsand either will be well.

  But immediately I was at the other side of the river, standing by thestone Bull of Shiva where he kneels before the Symbol, and lookingsteadfastly upon me a few paces away was a man in the dress of aBuddhist monk. He wore the yellow robe that leaves one shoulder bare;his head was bare also and he held in one hand a small bowl like astemless chalice. I knew I was seeing a very strange inexplicablesight--one tha
t in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder asidefor I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible maywell be the actual. His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If Icompare it to the passionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for theRiddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a nobleacquiescence and a content that had it vibrated must have passed intojoy.

  Words or their equivalent passed between us. I felt his voice.

  "You have heard the music of the Flute?"

  "I have heard."

  "What has it given?"

  "A consuming longing."

  "It is the music of the Eternal. The creeds and the faiths are the wordsthat men have set to that melody. Listening, it will lead you to Wisdom.Day by day you will interpret more surely."

  "I cannot stand alone."

  "You will not need. What has led you will lead you still. Through manybirths it has led you. How should it fail?"

  "What should I do?"

  "Go forward."

  "What should I shun?"

  "Sorrow and fear."

  "What should I seek?"

  "Joy."

  "And the end?"

  "Joy. Wisdom. They are the Light and Dark of the Divine." A cold breezepassed and touched my forehead. I was still standing in the middle ofthe bridge above the water gliding to the Ocean, and there was no figureby the Bull of Shiva. I was alone. I passed back to the tents with theshudder that is not fear but akin to death upon me. I knew I had beenprofoundly withdrawn from what we call actual life, and the return isdread.

  The days passed as we floated down the river to Srinagar. On board theKedarnath, now lying in our first berth beneath the chenars near and yetfar from the city, the last night had come. Next morning I should beginthe long ride to Baramula and beyond that barrier of the Happy Valleydown to Murree and the Punjab. Where afterwards? I neither knew norcared. My lesson was before me to be learned. I must try to detachmyself from all I had prized--to say to my heart it was but a loanand no gift, and to cling only to the imperishable. And did I as yetcertainly know more than the A B C of the hard doctrine by which Imust live? "Que vivre est difficile, O mon cocur fatigue!"--an immenseweariness possessed me--a passive grief.

  Vanna would follow later with the wife of an Indian doctor. I believedshe was bound for Lahore but on that point she had not spoken certainlyand I felt we should not meet again.

  And now my packing was finished, and, as far as my possessions went, thelittle cabin had the soulless emptiness that comes with departure. I wasenduring as best I could. If she had held loyally to her pact, couldI do less. Was she to blame for my wild hope that in the end she wouldrelent and step down to the household levels of love?

  She sat by the window--the last time I should see the moonlit banks andher clear face against them. I made and won my fight for the courage ofwords.

  "And now I've finished everything--thank goodness! and we can talk.Vanna--you will write to me?"

  "Once. I promise that."

  "Only once? Why? I counted on your words."

  "I want to speak to you of something else now. I want to tell you amemory. But look first at the pale light behind the Takht-i-Suliman."

  So I had seen it with her. So I should not see it again. We watcheduntil a line of silver sparkled on the black water, and then she spokeagain.

  "Stephen, do you remember in the ruined monastery near Peshawar, how Itold you of the young Abbot, who came down to Peshawar with a Chinesepilgrim? And he never returned."

  "I remember. There was a Dancer."

  "There was a Dancer. She was Lilavanti, and she was brought there totrap him but when she saw him she loved him, and that was his ruin andhers. Trickery he would have known and escaped. Love caught him in anunbreakable net, and they fled down the Punjab and no one knew any more.But I know. For two years they lived together and she saw the agony inhis heart--the anguish of his broken vows, the face of the Blessed Onereceding into an infinite distance. She knew that every day added a linkto the heavy Karma that was bound about the feet she loved, and her soulsaid "Set him free," and her heart refused the torture. But her soul wasthe stronger. She set him free."

  "How?"

  "She took poison. He became an ascetic in the hills and died in peacebut with a long expiation upon him."

  "And she?"

  "I am she."

  "You!" I heard my voice as if it were another man's. Was it possiblethat I--a man of the twentieth century, believed this impossible thing?Impossible, and yet--what had I learnt if not the unity of Time, theillusion of matter? What is the twentieth century, what the first?Do they not lie before the Supreme as one, and clean from our pettydivisions? And I myself had seen what, if I could trust it, asserted themarvels that are no marvels to those who know.

  "You loved him?"

  "I love him."

  "Then there is nothing at all for me."

  She resumed as if she had heard nothing.

  "I have lost him for many lives. He stepped above me at once, for he wasclean gold though he fell, and though I have followed I have not found.But that Buddhist beyond Islamabad--you shall hear now what he said. Itwas this. 'The shut door opens, and this time he awaits.' I cannot yetsay all it means, but there is no Lahore for me. I shall meet him soon."

  "Vanna, you would not harm yourself again?"

  "Never. I should not meet him. But you will see. Now I can talk no more.I will be there tomorrow when you go, and I will ride with you to thepoplar road."

  She passed like a shadow into her little dark cabin, and I was leftalone. I will not dwell on that black loneliness of the spirit, forit has passed--it was the darkness of hell, a madness of jealousy, andcould have no enduring life in any heart that had known her. But it wasdeath while it lasted. I had moments of horrible belief, of horribledisbelief, but however it might be I knew that she was out of reach forever. Near me--yes! but only as the silver image of the moon floated inthe water by the boat, with the moon herself cold myriads of miles away.I will say no more of that last eclipse of what she had wrought in me.

  The bright morning came, sunny as if my joys were beginning instead ofending. Vanna mounted her horse and led the way from the boat. I castone long look at the little Kedarnath, the home of those perfect weeks,of such joy and sorrow as would have seemed impossible to me in thechrysalis of my former existence. Little Kahdra stood crying bitterly onthe bank--the kindly folk who had served us were gathered saddened andquiet. I set my teeth and followed her.

  How dear she looked, how kind, how gentle her appealing eyes, as I drewup beside her. She knew what I felt. She knew that the sight of littleKahdra crying as he said good--bye was the last pull at my sore heart.Still she rode steadily on, and still I followed. Once she spoke.

  "Stephen, there was a man in Peshawar, kind and true, who loved thatLilavanti who had no heart for him. And when she died, it was in hisarms, as a sister might cling to a brother, for the man she loved hadleft her. It seems that will not be in this life, but do not think Ihave been so blind that I did not know my friend."

  I could not answer--it was the realization of the utmost I could hopeand it came like healing to my spirit. Better that bond between us,slight as most men might think it, than the dearest and closest with awoman not Vanna. It was the first thrill of a new joy in my heart--thefirst, I thank the Infinite, of many and steadily growing joys and hopesthat cannot be uttered here.

  I bent to take the hand she stretched to me, but even as they touched,I saw, passing behind the trees by the road, the young man I had seenin the garden at Vernag--most beautiful, in the strange miter of hisjewelled diadem. His flute was at his lips and the music rang out suddenand crystal clear as though a woodland god were passing to awaken allthe joys of the dawn.

  The horses heard too. In an instant hers had swerved wildly, and she layon the ground at my feet. The music had ceased.

  Days had gone before I could recall what had happened then. I liftedher in my arms and carried her into the res
t-house near at hand, andthe doctor came and looked grave, and a nurse was sent from the MissionHospital. No doubt all was done that was possible, but I knew from thefirst what it meant and how it would be. She lay in a white stillness,and the room was quiet as death. I remembered with unspeakable gratitudelater that the nurse had been merciful and had not sent me away.

  So Vanna lay all day and through the night, and when the dawn came againshe stirred and motioned with her hand, although her eyes were closed.I understood, and kneeling, I put my hand under her head, and rested itagainst my shoulder. Her faint voice murmured at my ear.

  "I dreamed--I was in the pine wood at Pahlgam and it was the Night of NoMoon, and I was afraid for it was dark, but suddenly all the trees werecovered with little lights like stars, and the greater light was beyond.Nothing to be afraid of."

  "Nothing, Beloved."

  "And I looked beyond Peshawar, further than eyes could see, and in theruins of the monastery where we stood, you and I--I saw him, and he laywith his head at the feet of the Blessed One. That is well, is it not?"

  "Well, Beloved."

  "And it is well I go? Is it not?"

  "It is well."

  A long silence. The first sun ray touched the floor. Again the whisper.

  "Believe what I have told you. For we shall meet again." I repeated--

  "We shall meet again."

  In my arms she died.

  Later, when all was over I asked myself if I believed this and answeredwith full assurance--Yes.

  If the story thus told sounds incredible it was not incredible to me.I had had a profound experience. What is a miracle? It is simply thevision of the Divine behind nature. It will come in different formsaccording to the eyes that see, but the soul will know that itsperception is authentic.

  I could not leave Kashmir, nor was there any need. On the contrary I sawthat there was work for me here among the people she had loved, and myfirst aim was to fit myself for that and for the writing I now feltwas to be my career in life. After much thought I bought the littleKedarnath and made it my home, very greatly to the satisfaction oflittle Kahdra and all the friendly people to whom I owed so much.

  Vanna's cabin I made my sleeping room, and it is the simple truth thatthe first night I slept in the place that was a Temple of Peace in mythoughts, I had a dream of wordless bliss, and starting awake for sheerjoy I saw her face in the night, human and dear, looking down uponme with that poignant sweetness which would seem to be the utmostrevelation of love and pity. And as I stretched my hands, another facedawned solemnly from the shadow beside her with grave brows bent onmine--one I had known and seen in the ruins at Bijbehara. Outside andvery near I could hear the silver weaving of the Flute that in India isthe symbol of the call of the Divine. A dream--yes, but it taught me tolive. At first, in my days of grief and loss, I did but dream--the dayswere hard to endure. I will not dwell on that illusion of sorrow, nowlong dead. I lived only for the night.

  "When sleep comes to close each difficult day, When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, Must doff my will as raiment laid away-- With the first dream that comes with the first sleep, I run--I run! I am gathered to thy heart!"

  To the heart of her pity. Thus for awhile I lived. Slowly I becameconscious of her abiding presence about me, day or night It grewclearer, closer.

  Like the austere Hippolytus to his unseen Goddess, I could say;

  "Who am more to thee than other mortals are, Whose is the holy lot, As friend with friend to walk and talk with thee, Hearing thy sweet mouth's music in mine ear, But thee beholding not."

  That was much, but later, the sunshine was no bar, the bond strengthenedand there have been days in the heights of the hills, in the depths ofthe woods, when I saw her as in life, passing at a distance, but realand lovely. Life? She had never lived as she did now--a spirit, freedand rejoicing. For me the door she had opened would never shut. ThePresences were about me, and I entered upon my heritage of joy, knowingthat in Kashmir, the holy land of Beauty, they walk very near, and liftup the folds of the Dark that the initiate may see the light behind.

  So I began my solitary life of gladness. I wrote, aided by the littlebook she had left me, full of strangest stories, stranger by far thanmy own brain could conceive. Some to be revealed--some to be hidden. Andthus the world will one day receive the story of the Dancer of Peshawarin her upward lives, that it may know, if it will, that death isnothing--for Life and Love are all.

 

‹ Prev Next ›