So for all seekers I pray this prayer—beautiful in its sonorous Latin, but noble in all the tongues;
“Supplico tibi, Pater et Dux—I pray Thee, Guide of our vision, that we may remember the nobleness with which Thou hast endowed us, and that Thou wouldest be always on our right and on our left in the motion of our wills, that we may be purged from the contagion of the body and the affections of the brute and overcome and rule them. And I pray also that Thou wouldest drive away the blinding darkness from the eyes of our souls that we may know well what is to be held for divine and what for mortal.”
“The nobleness with which Thou hast endowed us-” this, and not the cry of the miserable sinner whose very repentance is no virtue but the consequence of failure and weakness is the strong music to which we must march.
And the way is open to the mountains.
I
There are strange things in this story, but, so far as I understand them, I tell the truth. If you measure the East with a Western foot-rule you will say, “Impossible.” I should have said it myself.
Of myself I will say as little as I can, for this story is of Vanna Loring. 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 the war, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked up anything in the welter in France, it was that real work is the only salvation this mad world has to offer; so I meant to begin at the beginning, and learn my trade like a journeyman labourer. I had come to the right place. A very wonderful city is Peshawar—rather let us say, two cities—the compounds, the fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace as their strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaar humming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours that come up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the camel caravans loaded with merchandise from Afghanistan, Bokhara, and farther. And it is because of this that Peshawar is the Key of India, and a city of Romance that stands at every corner, and cries aloud in the market—place. For at Peshawar every able-bodied man sleeps with his revolver under his pillow, and the old Fort is always ready in case it should be necessary at brief and sharp notice to hurry the women and children into it, and possibly, to die in their defense. So enlivening is the neighbourhood of the frontier tribes that haunt the famous Khyber Pass 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 farther afield, perhaps up into Central Asia, when I met Vanna Loring. If I say that her hair was soft and dark; that she had the deepest hazel eyes I have ever seen, and a sensitive, tender mouth; that she moved with a flowing grace like “a wave of the sea”—it sounds like the portrait of a beauty, and she was never that. Also, incidentally, it gives none of her charm. I never heard any one get any further than that she was “oddly attractive”—let us leave it at that. She was certainly attractive to me.
She was the governess of little Winifred Meryon, whose father held the august position of General Commanding the Frontier Forces, and her mother the more commanding position of the reigning beauty of Northern India, generally speaking. No one disputed that. She was as pretty as a picture, and her charming photograph had graced as many illustrated papers as there were illustrated papers to grace.
But Vanna—I gleaned her story by bits when I came across her with the child in the gardens. I was beginning to piece it together now.
Her love of the strange and beautiful she had inherited from a young Italian mother, daughter of a political refugee; her childhood had been spent in a remote little village in the West of England; half reluctantly she told me how she had brought herself up after her mother’s death and her father’s second marriage. Little was said of that, but I gathered that it had been a grief to her, a factor in her flight to the East.
We were walking in the Circular Road then with Winifred in front leading her Pekingese by its blue ribbon, and we had it almost to ourselves except for a few natives passing slow and dignified on their own occasions, for fashionable Peshawar was finishing its last rubber of bridge, before separating to dress for dinner, and had no time to spare for trivialities and sunsets.
“So when I came to three-and-twenty,” she said slowly, “I felt I must break away from our narrow life. I had a call to India stronger than anything on earth. You would not understand but that was so, and I had spent every spare moment in teaching myself India—its history, legends, religions, everything! And I was not wanted at home, and I had grown afraid.”
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 I could not get away like other people. No money, you see. So I thought I would come out here and teach. Dare I? Would they let me? I knew I was fighting life and chances and risks if I did it; but it was death if I stayed 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 was spurred—spurred to take some wild leap; and I took it. Six years ago I came out. First I went to a doctor and his wife at Cawnpore. They had a wonderful knowledge of the Indian peoples, and there I learned Hindustani and much else. Then he died. But an aunt had left me two hundred pounds, and I could wait a little and choose; and so I came here.”
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’ve drunk of a cup I never thought to taste; and if I died tomorrow I should know I had done right. I rejoice in every moment I live—even when Winifred 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 the persecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all. But that is all on the surface 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 you I 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’t understand.”
“Oh, I have had that feeling, too,” I said patronizingly. “If one has read very much about a place-”
“That was not quite what I meant. Never mind. The people, the place—that is the real thing to me. All this is the dream.” The sweep of her hand took in not only Winifred and myself, but the general’s stately residence, which to blaspheme in Peshawar is rank infidelity.
“By George, I would give thousands to feel that! I can’t get out of Europe here. I want to write, Miss Loring,” I found myself saying. “I’d done a bit, and then the war came and blew my life to pieces. Now I want to get inside the skin of the East, and I can’t do it. I see it from outside, with a pane of glass between. No life in it. If you feel as you say, for God’s sake be my interpreter!”
I really meant what I said. I knew she was a harp that any breeze would sweep into music. I divined that temperament in her and proposed to use it for my own ends. She had and I had not, the power to be a part of all she saw, to feel kindred blood running in her own veins. To the average European the native life of India is scarcely interesting, so far is it removed from all comprehension. To me it was interesting, but I could not tell why. I stood outside and had not the fairy gold to pay for my entrance. Here at all events she could buy her way where I could not. Without cruelty, which honestly was not my besetting sin—especially where women were concerned, the egoist in me felt I would use her, would extract the last drop of the enchantment of her knowledge before I went on my way. What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman should minister to my thirst for information? Men are like that. I pretend to be no better than the rest. She pleased my fastidiousness—that fastidiousness which is the only austerity in men not otherwise austere.
“Interpret?” she said, looking at me with clear hazel eyes; “how could I? You were in the native city yesterday. What did you miss?”
“Everything! I saw masses of colour, light, movement. Brilliantly picturesque people. Children like Asiatic angels. Magnificently scowling ruffians in sheepskin coats. In fact, a movie staged for my benefit. I was afraid they would ring down the curtain before I had had enough. It had no meaning. When I got back to my diggings I tried to put down what I had just seen, and I swear there’s more inspiration in the guide-book.”
“Did you go alone?”
“Yes, I certainly would not go sight-seeing with the Meryon crowd. Tell me what you felt when you saw it first.”
“I went with Sir John’s uncle. He was a great traveler. The colour struck me dumb. It flames—it sings. Think of the grey pinched life in the West! I saw a grave dark potter turning his wheel, while his little girl stood by, glad at our pleasure, her head veiled like a miniature woman, tiny baggy trousers, and a silver nose-stud, like a star, in one delicate 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 be spinning dreams, thick as motes in the sun. The clay rose in smooth spirals under his hand, and the wheel sang, ‘Shall the vessel reprove him who made one to honour and one to dishonour?’ And I saw the potter thumping his wet clay, and the clay, plastic as dream-stuff, shaped swift as light, and the three Fates stood at his shoulder. Dreams, dreams, and all in the spinning of the wheel, and the rich shadows of the old broken courtyard where he sat. And the wheel stopped and the thread 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. I did not dislike it at the moment, for I wanted to hear more, and the impersonal 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 turquoise green round the lip. He saw I understood. And then I bought a little gold cap and a wooden box of jade-green Kabul grapes. About a rupee, all told. But it was Eastern merchandise, and I was trading from Balsora and Baghdad, and Eleazar’s camels were swaying down from Damascus along the Khyber Pass, and coming in at the great Darwazah, and friends’ eyes met me 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 the secret of immortal youth, and I felt old as I looked at her. One might be eighty and share that passionate impersonal joy. Age could not wither nor custom stale the infinite variety of her world’s joys. She had a child’s dewy youth in her eyes.
There are great sunsets at Peshawar, flaming over the plain, dying in melancholy splendour over the dangerous hills. They too were hers, in a sense in which they could never be mine. But what a companion! To my astonishment a wild thought of marriage flashed across me, to be instantly rebuffed with a shrug. Marriage—that one’s wife might talk poetry to one about the East! Absurd! But what was it these people felt and I could not feel? Almost, shut up in the prison of self, I knew what Vanna had felt in her village—a maddening desire to escape, to be a part of the loveliness that lay beyond me. So might a man love a king’s daughter in her hopeless heights.
“It may be very beautiful on the surface,” I said morosely; “but there’s a lot of misery below—hateful, they tell me.”
“Of course. We shall get to work one day. But look at the sunset. It opens like a mysterious flower. I must take Winifred home now.”
“One moment,” I pleaded; “I can only see it through your eyes. I feel it while you speak, and then the good minute goes.”
She laughed.
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. I wish I could help you; I am so exquisitely happy myself.”
My writing was at a standstill. It seemed the groping of a blind man in a radiant world. Once perhaps I had felt that life was good in itself—when the guns came thundering toward the Vimy Ridge in a mad gallop of horses, and men shouting and swearing and frantically urging them on. Then, riding for more than life, I had tasted life for an instant. Not before or since. But this woman had the secret.
Lady Meryon, with her escort of girls and subalterns, came daintily past the hotel compound, and startled me from my brooding with her pretty silvery 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; or bridge for those who like it.”
I had not the faintest notion whether governesses dined with the family or came in afterward with the coffee; but it was a sporting chance, and I took it.
Then Sir John came up and joined us.
“You can’t well dance tomorrow, Kitty,” he said to his wife. “There’s been an outpost affair in the Swat Hills, and young Fitzgerald has been shot. Come to dinner of course, Clifden. Glad to see you. But no dancing, I think.”
Kitty Meryon’s mouth drooped like a pouting child’s. Was it for the lost dance, 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 illustrated papers.
“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 tomorrow anyhow.”
II
Next evening I went into Lady Meryon’s flower-scented drawing-room. The electric fans were fluttering and the evening air was cool. Five or six pretty girls and as many men made up the party—Kitty Meryon the prettiest of them all, fashionably undressed in faint pink and crystal, with a charming smile in readiness, all her gay little flags flying in the 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 to interest her who lived in her foolish little world as one shut in a bright bubble? And she had said the wrong word about young Fitzgerald—I wanted Vanna, with her deep seeing eyes, to say the right one and adjust those cruel values.
Governesses dine, it appeared, only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments. Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her silver 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—not unwatched by the quick flash of Lady Meryon’s eyes as I did it.
“I think you hypnotize me, Miss Loring. When I hear anything I straightway want to know what you will say. Have you heard of Fitzgerald’s death?”
“That is why we are not dancing tonight. Tomorrow the cable will reach his home in England. He was an only child, and they are the great people of the village where we are the little people. I knew his mother as one knows 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 not know.”
“His father?”
“A brave man—a soldier himself. He will know it was a good death and that Harry would not fail. He did not at Ypres. He would not here. But all 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—that he was on guard here holding the outposts against blood and treachery and terrible things—playing the Great Game. One never loses at that game if one plays it straight, and I am sure that at the last it was joy he felt and not fear. He has not lost. Did you notice in the church a niche before every soldier’s seat to hold his loaded gun? And the tablets on the walls; “Killed at Kabul River, aged 22.”—“Killed on outpost duty.”—“Murdered by an Afghan fanatic.” This will be one memory more. 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-Bahi Monastery on the way. You should do that run before you go. The fort is the last but one on the way to Chitral, and beyond that the road is so beset that only soldiers may go farther, and indeed the regiments escort each other up and down. But it is an early start, for we must be back in Peshawar at six for fear of raiding natives.”
“I know; they hauled me up in the dusk the other day, and told me I should be swept off to the hills if I fooled about after dusk. But I say—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 with the happiest smile. I knew they could send her nowhere that she would not find joy. I thought her mere presence must send the vibrations of happiness through the household. Yet again—why? For where there is no receiver the current speaks in vain; and for an instant I seemed to see the air full of messages—of speech striving to utter its passionate truths to deaf ears stopped for ever against the breaking waves of sound. But Vanna heard.
She left the room; and when the bridge was over, I made my request. Lady Meryon shrugged her shoulders and declared it would be a terribly dull run—the scenery nothing, “and only” (she whispered) “Aunt Selina and poor Miss Loring?”
Of course I saw at once that she did not like it; but Sir John was all for my going, and that saved the situation.
I certainly could have dispensed with Aunt Selina when the automobile drew up in the golden river of the sunrise at the hotel. There were only the 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 in a cloud drift—the sensitive sweet mouth that had quivered a little when she spoke of Fitzgerald—the pure glance that radiated such kindness to all the world. She sat there with the Key of Dreams pressed against her slight bosom—her eyes dreaming above it. Already the strange airs of her unknown world were breathing about me, and as yet I knew not the things 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 through the flat, burned country, with the ominous Kabul River flowing through it. Military preparations everywhere, and the hills looking watchfully down—alive, as it were, with keen, hostile eyes. War was at present about us as behind the lines in France; and when we crossed the Kabul River on a bridge of boats, and I saw its haunted waters, I began to feel the atmosphere of the place closing down upon me. It had a sinister beauty; it breathed suspense; and I wished, as I was sure Vanna did, for silence that was not at our command.
For Mrs. Delany felt nothing of it. A bright shallow ripple of talk was her contribution to the joys of the day; though it was, fortunately, enough for her happiness if we listened and agreed. I knew Vanna listened only in show. Her intent eyes were fixed on the Tahkt-i-Bahi hills after we had swept out of Nowshera; and when the car drew up at the rough track, she had a strange look of suspense and pallor. I remember I wondered at the time if she were nervous in the wild open country.
“Now pray don’t be shocked,” said Mrs. Delany comfortably; “but you two young people may go up to the monastery, and I shall stay here. I am dreadfully ashamed of myself, but the sight of that hill is enough for me. Don’t hurry. I may have a little doze, and be all the better company when you get back. No, don’t try to persuade me, Mr. Clifden. It isn’t the part of a friend.”
I cannot say I was sorry, though I had a moment of panic when Vanna offered to stay with her—very much, too, as if she really meant it. So we 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 I followed, lending my hand mutely when the difficulties obliged it, she accepting 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 looked as age-worn as no doubt it was. We threaded it, and struggled over the ridge, and looked down victorious on the other side.
There she stopped. A very wonderful sight, of which I had never seen the like, lay below us. Rock and waste and towering crags, and the mighty ruin of the monastery set in the fangs of the mountain like a robber baron’s castle, looking far away to the blue mountains of the Debatable Land—the land of mystery and danger. It stood there—the great ruin of a vast habitation of men. Building after building, mysterious and broken, corridors, halls, refectories, cells; the dwelling of a faith so alien that I could not reconstruct the life that gave it being. And all sinking gently into ruin that in a century more would confound it with the roots of the mountains.
Grey and wonderful, it clung to the heights and looked with eyeless windows at the past. Somehow I found it infinitely pathetic; the very faith it expressed is dead in India, and none left so poor to do it reverence.
But Vanna knew her way. Unerringly she led me from point to point, and she was visibly at home in the intricacies. Such knowledge in a young woman bewildered me. Could she have studied the plans in the Museum? How else should she know where the abbot lived, or where the refractory brothers were punished?
Once I missed her, while I stooped to examine some scroll-work, and following, found her before one of the few images of the Buddha that the rapacious Museum had spared—a singularly beautiful bas-relief, the hand raised to enforce the truth the calm lips were speaking, the drapery falling in stately folds to the bare feet. As I came up, she had an air as if she had just ceased from movement, and I had a distinct feeling that she had knelt before it—I saw the look of worship! The thing troubled 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 the subject?”
She hesitated; then chose her words as if for a beginner;—“It is the Blessed One preaching to the Tree-Spirits. See how eagerly they lean from the boughs to listen. This other relief represents him in the state of mystic vision. Here he is drowned in peace. See how it overflows from the 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 and infinity meet. To attain that vision was the aim of the monks who lived here.”
“Did they attain?” I found myself speaking as if she could certainly answer.
“A few. There was one, Vasettha, the Brahman, a young man who had renounced all his possessions and riches, and seated here before this image of the Blessed One, he fell often into the mystic state. He had a strange vision at one time of the future of India, which will surely be fulfilled. He did not forget it in his rebirths. He remembers-”
She broke off suddenly and said with forced indifference,—“He would sit here often looking out over the mountains; the monks sat at his feet to hear. 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 a young man,—a famous Chinese Pilgrim came down through Kashmir to visit the 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. I tremble now to think-”
Again she paused, and again the faint creeping sense of mystery invaded me.
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 down into the lower worlds of storm and desire. He fled with Lilavanti and never 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 you find and know what you know! The East is like an open book to you. Tell me the rest.”
“How should I know any more?” she said hurriedly. “We must be going back. You should study the plans of this place at Peshawar. They were very 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 more to be said.
We clambered down the hill in the hot sunshine, speaking only of the view, the strange shrubs and flowers, and, once, the swift gliding of a snake, and found Mrs. Delany blissfully asleep in the most padded corner of the car. The spirit of the East vanished in her comfortable presence, and luncheon seemed the only matter of moment.
“I wonder, my dears,” she said, “if you would be very disappointed and think me very dense if I proposed our giving up the Malakhand Fort? The driver has been giving me in very poor English such an account of the dangers of that awful road up the hill that I feel no Fort would repay me for its terrors. Do say what you feel, Miss Loring. Mr. Clifden can lunch with the officers at Nowshera and come any time. I know I am an atrocity.”
There could be only one answer, though Vanna and I knew perfectly well the crafty design of the driver to spare himself work. Mrs. Delany remained brightly awake for the run home, and favored us with many remarkable views on India and its shortcomings, Vanna, who had a sincere liking for her, laughing with delight at her description of a visit of condolence 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 had given me a glimpse into the wonderland of her soul that made me long for more. It was rapidly becoming clear to me that unless my intentions developed on very different lines I must flee Peshawar. For love is born of sympathy, and sympathy was strengthening daily, but for love I had no courage 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 her reception of my offer if I should make it, but possessed by a colossal selfishness, I thought only of myself, and from that point of view could not decide how I stood to lose or gain. In my wildest accesses of vanity I did not suppose Vanna loved me, but I felt she liked me, and I believe the advantages I had to offer would be overwhelming to a woman in her position. So, tossed on the waves of indecision, I inclined to flight.
That night I resolutely began my packing, and wrote a note of farewell to Lady Meryon. The next morning I furiously undid it, and destroyed the note. And that afternoon I took the shortest way to the sun-set road to lounge about and wait for Vanna and Winifred. She never came, and I was as 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 our meeting and for three days I never saw her at all. Yet I knew that in her solitary life our talks counted for a pleasure, and when we met again I thought I saw a new softness in the lovely hazel deeps of her eyes.
III
On the day when things became clear to me, I was walking towards the Meryons’ gates when I met her coming alone along the sunset road, in the late gold of the afternoon. She looked pale and a little wearied, and I remembered I wished I did not know every change of her face as I did. It was a symptom that alarmed my selfishness—it galled me with the sense that I was no longer my own despot.
“So you have been up the Khyber Pass,” she said as I fell into step at her side. “Tell me—was it as wonderful as you expected?”
“No, no,—you tell me! It will give me what I missed. Begin at the beginning. Tell me what I saw.”
I could not miss the delight of her words, and she laughed, knowing my whim.
“Oh, that Pass!—the wonder of those old roads that have borne the traffic and romance of the world for ages. Do you think there is anything in the world so fascinating as they are? But did you go on Tuesday or Friday?”
For these are the only days in the week when the Khyber can be safely entered. 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 narrow road on their occasions.
Naturally mere sightseers are not welcomed, for much business must be got through in that urgent forty eight hours in which life is not risked in entering.
“Tuesday. But make a picture for me.”
“Well, you gave your word not to photograph or sketch—as if one wanted to when every bit of it is stamped on one’s brain! And you went up to Jumrood Fort at the entrance. Did they tell you it is an old Sikh Fort and has been on duty in that turbulent place for five hundred years And did you see the machine guns in the court? And every one armed—even the boys with belts of cartridges? Then you went up the narrow winding track between the mountains, and you said to yourself, ‘This is the road of pure romance. It goes up to silken Samarkhand, and I can ride to Bokhara of the beautiful women and to all the dreams. Am I alive and is it real?’ 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 all along the bills, rifles ready! You could hear the guns rattle as they saluted. Do you know that up there men plough with rifles loaded beside them? 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 as you knew in France but beautiful in a wild—hawk sort of way. Don’t the Khyber Rifles bewilder you? They are drawn from these very Hill tribes, and will shoot their own fathers and brothers in the way of duty as comfortably as if they were jackals. Once there was a scrap here and one of the tribesmen sniped our men unbearably. What do you suppose happened? A Khyber Rifle came to the Colonel and said, ‘Let me put an end to him, Colonel Sahib. I know exactly where he sits. He is my grandfather.’ And he did it!”
“The bond of bread and salt?”
“Yes, and discipline. I’m sometimes half frightened of discipline. It moulds a man like wax. Even God doesn’t do that. Well—then you had the traders—wild shaggy men in sheepskin and women in massive jewelry of silver and turquoise,-great earrings, heavy bracelets loading their arms, wild, fierce, handsome. And the camels—thousands of them, some going up, some coming down, a mass of human and animal life. Above you, moving figures against the keen blue sky, or deep below you in the ravines.
“The camels were swaying along with huge bales of goods, and dark beautiful women in wicker cages perched on them. Silks and carpets from Bokhara, and blue—eyed Persian cats, and bluer Persian turquoises. Wonderful! And the dust, gilded by the sunshine, makes a vaporous golden atmosphere for it all.”
“What was the most wonderful thing you saw there?”
“The most beautiful, I think, was a man—a splendid dark ruffian lounging along. He wanted to show off, and his swagger was perfect. Long black 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 yellow eyes, 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 to trains 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 am leaving.”
“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 me into folly—or was it wisdom?
“Listen to me. I would not have said it yet, but this settles it. I want you to marry me. I want it atrociously!”
It was a strange word. What I felt for her at that moment was difficult to describe. I endured it like a pain that could only be assuaged by her presence, but I endured it angrily. We were walking on the sunset road—very deserted and quiet at the time. The place was propitious if nothing 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. I think 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 frank enough to put it on that ground. You have not said you love me. You could not say it.”
“I don’t know whether I do or not. I know nothing about love. I want you. Indescribably. Perhaps that is love—is it? I never wanted any one before. 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 tell you the reason,” she said in her gentle unwavering voice. “I am Lady Meryon’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 kick myself when I think of that now. It is utterly forgotten. Take me and make 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—to see, to know.”
It was a rhapsody like a boy’s. Yet at the moment I was not even ashamed of it, so sharp was my need.
“I think,” she said, slowly, looking straight before her, “that I had better be quite frank. I don’t love you. I don’t know what love means in the Western sense. It has a very different meaning for me. Your voice comes to me from an immense distance when you speak in that way. You want me—but never with a thought of what I might want. Is that love? I like you very deeply as a friend, but we are of different races. There is a gulf.”
“A gulf? You are English.”
“By birth, yes. In mind, no. And there are things that go deeper, that you could not understand. So I refuse quite definitely, and our ways part here, for in a few days I go. I shall not see you again, but I wish to say good-bye.”
The bitterest chagrin was working in my soul. I felt as if all were deserting me-a sickening feeling of loneliness. I did not know the man who 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 Meryon objected 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 and tell 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 gone soon in any case. My place is in the native city—that is the life I want. I have work there, I knew it before I came out. My sympathies are all with them. They know what life is—why even the beggars, poorer than poor, are perfectly happy, basking in the great generous sun. Oh, the splendour and riot of life and colour! That’s my life—I sicken of this.”
“But I’ll give it to you. Marry me, and we will travel till you’re tired of it.”
“Yes, and look on as at a play—sitting in the stalls, and applauding when 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 medical mission at Lahore and learn nursing, and then I shall go to my own people.”
“Missionaries? You’ve nothing in common with them?”
“Nothing. But they teach what I want. Mr. Clifden, I shall not come this way again. If I remember—I’ll write to you, and tell you what the real world is like.”
She smiled, the absorbed little smile I knew and feared. I saw pleading was 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, half turning to me.
“Make one journey with me, as my sister, if you will do no more. Though I warn you that all the time I shall be trying to win my wife. But come with 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 me with intent eyes.
“I will tell you frankly,” she said at last, “that I know my knowledge of the East and kinship with it goes far beyond mere words. In my case the doors were not shut. I believe—I know that long ago this was my life. If I spoke for ever I could not make you understand how much I know and why. So I shall quite certainly go back to it. Nothing—you least 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 do that if it would in any way help you. As your friend only—you clearly understand. You would not reproach me afterwards when I left you, as I should most certainly do?”
“I swear I would not. I swear I would protect you even from myself. I want you for ever, but if you will only give me two months—come! But have you thought that people will talk. It may injure you. I’m not worth that, 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 what I 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 must do as I say, and I am quite able to or I should not suggest it. I would go on no other terms. It would be hard if because we are man and woman I might not do one act of friendship for you before we part. For though I refuse your offer utterly, I appreciate it, and I would make what little return I can. It would be a sharp pain to me to distress you.”
Her gentleness and calm, the magnitude of the offer she was making stunned me so that I could scarcely speak. There was such an extraordinary simplicity and generosity in her manner that it appeared to me more enthralling and bewildering than the most finished coquetry I had ever known. She gave me opportunities that the most ardent lover could in his wildest dream desire, and with the remoteness in her eyes and her still voice she deprived them of all hope. It kindled in me a flame 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 easier for 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 it unwise 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 new sweetness, some charm that I saw would weave itself into the very fibre of my I had been! Was I not now a fool? Would it not being if the opportunity were given. Oh, fool that be better to let her go before she had become a part of my daily experience? I began to fear I was courting my own shipwreck. She read my thoughts clearly.
“Indeed you would be wise to decide against it. Release me from my promise. It was a mad scheme.”
The superiority—or so I felt it—of her gentleness maddened me. It might have been I who needed protection, who was running the risk of misjudgment—not she, a lonely woman. She looked at me, waiting—trying to be wise for me, never for one instant thinking of herself. I felt utterly 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 swiftly up the road. Ah, let a man beware when his wishes fulfilled, rain down upon him!