CHAPTER XXIII

[37]Om, of the heavenly world;Ma, of the world of spirits;Ni, of the human world;Pad, of the animal world;me, of the world of ghosts;hum, of the spaces of hell.

[38]This has been translated to mean: “The great liberation by hearing on the astral plane from the profound doctrine of the divine thoughts of the peaceful and wrathful deities emancipating the self.” Mr. Evans Wentz translates it “The book of the Dead,” but this is a very free and decidedly doubtful rendering of the manuscript’s shorter title: “Pardo Todol.”

If a vain man should value your virtue, beware! For he will steal it in the name of God, and he will sell your reputation in the market-place.From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.

If a vain man should value your virtue, beware! For he will steal it in the name of God, and he will sell your reputation in the market-place.

From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.

CHAPTER XXIII

Therewas no more rain that day, but mist that wrapped Darjiling in a dripping shroud. Beads like perspiration gathered and trickled down interior walls, and there were no fires; the monks led the austere life that includes indifference to such minor afflictions as ague, and through indifference they seemed to have become immune. But Ommony suffered.

A monk brought him a long sheepskin coat, and in that he paraded the corridors to keep his blood circulating. He begged more sheepskins and set Dawa Tsering to work making a coat for Diana, because animals used to the plains die of pneumonia in those altitudes more readily than human beings. He tried to decide whether or not to go into Darjiling and buy European clothes, while he leaned over a parapet to watch strong-legged Sikhim women looming out of the mist loaded like camels with huge piles of cord-wood for the monastery kitchen, until that bored him.

He was feverish with impatience. At noon he made up his mind to go and ask the Lama’s advice about disguise, supposing he could find him. But as he left the cell to hunt for the Lama a monk came with the midday meal and stood by to watch him eat—a cheery old monk, who laughed when questioned and talked about everything under the sun except what Ommony wanted to know, spinning his prayer-wheel furiously as if to immunize himself against heretical contagion.

And when the monk had shuffled away with the empty platters and Ommony set forth again to hunt for the Lama, Maitraya met him midway along the first draughty corridor—Maitraya smothered in a sheepskin coat like Ommony’s and blowing great clouds of breath in front of him.

“I am paid, O Gupta Rao! I have a draft on Benjamin and money for the railway fares to Delhi—enough for first-class fares for all of us and liberal provision for the way. Would that there were more men like Tsiang Samdup! May the generous gods bless him! No argument, Gupta Rao; no deductions; no delay; a bag of money, an order on Benjamin, and such courteously worded thanks as Vishnu never received from a mother just delivered of a son! I feel as if my whole body had been drenched in thanks from inside outward! Are you on your way to your cell?”

“I am on my way to find the Lama. Where is he?”

“Gone! Didn’t you know that? He left an hour ago, he and all the women and Samding, on little Tibetan ponies. There was no ceremony. They rode away like ghosts into the mist.”

Maitraya took Ommony’s arm in rank defiance of caste decorum.

“Come along, Gupta Rao. I know you are no Brahman. You are possibly a Kshattriya like me, but what the devil has caste to do with our profession! Whatever you are, you have the approval of me, Maitraya! You are a great actor. You are a man after mine own heart—a little conceited possibly—a trifle grumpy on occasion—but we all have faults. I know a first-rate actor, when I see him! I forgive the little insignificances. I respect the strength of character—the genius! Come, let us go along to your cell; I have a proposal for you.”

Ommony led him to the cell and sat down on the truckle bed. Maitraya would not sit; he threw an attitude and paced the floor, striving to create an atmosphere of tremendous drama, that somehow refused to materialize between those dripping walls. He shuddered at the cold when he should have gestured like a Mogul chieftain, and coughed, which rather spoiled the grandeur of his voice.

“Gupta Rao—let us accept our destiny! If two men, mutually worthy of respect, were ever brought together for immortal purposes, those two are we! Consider! Have we not a task in common? Have we not a great ideal to espouse together? Is it not our duty to inspire the stage of Hind[39]? Have we not a ripe field waiting for us? Should we not revisit all the scenes of our success and stage such plays as shall uplift the drama of this land of Hind for ever? Think of those audiences, Gupta Rao! Think of the profits! Charge no more than one-halfrupeeadmission, and we make our fortunes!”

Ommony cast about for an excuse for refusing, that should not turn a friend into an enemy.

“Who do you propose should write the plays?” he asked.

“We have a play!Ye Rulers of the Upper Spheres—a play, I tell you! I have memorized the whole of it! Let the Jew finance us, Gupta Rao! Let us go to Benjamin and use our joint persuasion to wheedle a decent contract out of him. I offer you a one-third interest! Commercialism—pah! The Jew is a commercialist, so we must feed him withrupees. The Lama, on the other hand, is ignorant of money’s value; he fails to see that it is good for the audience to pay a fair price for its education. As for us, let us take the middle way between two crass extremes. And if in the process we make a fortune, that will be no more than what is due to us. Have you heard that Christian adage, that the laborer is worthy of his hire?”

“I seem to have heard another one about stealing,” said Ommony dryly. “The play is the Lama’s.”

“Bah! It isn’t copyright. He should have taken elementary precautions. Besides, he has no right to keep for his own use an idea that has universal application. The play is religious; who can copyright religion?”

“Did you think of obtaining the Lama’s permission?” asked Ommony.

“No, I confess, I never thought of that. But it’s too late now; he’s gone. Let us go to Benjamin. The Jew will see the point of not letting a good profitable play lie idle for the sake of a bit of squeamishness. Come along. Let Benjamin convince you.”

Ommony jumped at that solution. He knew Benjamin.

“All right,” he said. “You make the proposal to him. If Benjamin agrees, I will then consider it. And don’t forget, you’ll need a genius to act the part of San-fun-ho!”

“Aha!” exclaimed Maitraya. “Genius? I can act that part much better than thecheladid! Not that he was bad, mind you—not that he was bad. I will play San-fun-ho, and you the king. Together we will create dramatic history!”

“First create confidence in Benjamin! I’ll answer yes or no when you have persuadedhim,” said Ommony.

He got rid of Maitraya with difficulty. No argument availed until it dawned on Maitraya that he could pocket the cost of transportation by leaving Ommony behind; then he permitted himself to be led along the corridor and lost in the maze of passages and stairways.

Ommony went in search of the Abbot, and found a monk at last who did not shake his head and grin when spoken to, but led up an outside stairway to a grimly austere cell just under the roof, where the Abbot sat cross-legged on a stone platform at one end, meditating. He opened his eyes and gazed at Ommony for several minutes before a smile at last spread over his Mongolian face and he passed one lean hand down the length of his scrawny gray beard. He appeared to be well pleased with the result of his inspection.

“The spirit of restlessness is difficult to overcome,” he said at last. “It is sometimes wise to yield to it. There are many lives. Not all knowledge can be acquired at once. In what way can I help, my son?”

Ommony thought of asking a dozen questions, but discerned that the gentle courtesy concealed an iron aptitude for silence. He came straight to the point.

“I beg forgiveness for intrusion. I return thanks for food and lodging. Did the holy Lama Tsiang Samdup make a statement of his wishes with regard to me?”

The Abbot’s face became wreathed in smiles again. He nodded.

“Where do you wish to go, my son? To Tilgaun? When?”

“Now!”

The Abbot struck a gong that hung on the wall beside him; before its overtones had died a young monk appeared in the doorway and received swiftly spoken singsong orders in a language Ommony did not understand. The monk gave guttural assent, and waited in the door for Ommony to go with him, but there was two or three minutes’ delay while the Abbot amused himself by playing with Diana almost childishly, laughing at her new sheepskin coat and using his staff to measure her height at the shoulder and her length from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail. Ommony made Diana sit up and salute him, whereat he blessed the dog solemnly. Finally he gave seven turns to a prayer-wheel fixed in an iron bracket within comfortable reach, nodded to the monk, and smiled farewell at Ommony, dismissing him with a blessing that sounded like the first bars of an anthem to eternal peace.

Followed laughter, bustling, friendliness, and no delay. They speeded the departing guest. A dozen monks made themselves agreeable; two of them carried out Ommony’s trunk into the courtyard; some led out little sturdy Tibetan ponies and held them while others lashed the loads in place with the unhurried speed of old campaigners. There was ample supply of provisions, including grain for the ponies, and when Ommony suggested paying for it all they laughed. They seemed amused at the idea that any guest of theirs should pay for anything.

However, he noticed that two sturdy-looking Tibetans who were certainly not monks, had been told off to accompany him; they were listening to instructions from the young monk who had received the Abbot’s incomprehensible orders; standing at a little distance apart, they kept nodding as the instructions were repeated again and again.

There were in all eight ponies and the party was on the way, filing through the wide gate with one Tibetan leading and the other Tibetan bringing up the rear, within thirty minutes. Dawa Tsering burst into song as he rode under the arch behind Ommony and they were all swallowed in a drifting bank of cloud that even hid the monastery wall as they turned sharp to the right and followed the track that ran beside it. The sturdy little ponies put their best foot forward as they always do when they are headed northward.

The ninety miles to Tilgaun meant four days of strenuous going, for the miles are reckoned as the crow flies, whereas men and their mounts must climb and descend over the shoulders of hills heaped on one another by the gods to keep away intruders. The trail wound down through phantom deodars and dipped into a fleecy white fog that condensed in dew on everything warm that it touched, descending seven thousand feet into the Rungeet Valley before they crossed a long bridge and commenced to climb again.

Most of the time it was like sitting on an earthquake; there was nothing to do but cling tightly and watch the pony’s ears in the mist as the nimble legs slid, struggled and recovered. There was no chance for anything but single file among the rocks and rhododendrons; even Diana had to trot behind the pony to escape being trodden on. It was not the surfaced highroad they were taking, but presumably a short-cut, which the Tibetan guide appeared to know as intimately as a mole knows tunnels.

They climbed nine thousand feet and slept in a windy hut above the clouds, where the Tibetans cooked greasy supper and sang plaintive songs in which Dawa Tsering joined. There was no sign of the Lama’s party, nor any answer to Ommony’s questions as to how far ahead the Lama might be; nor was there any indication that the Lama’s party had crossed that pass ahead of them. But at dawn, when Ommony wanted to make an early start the Tibetans had scores of excuses that ended with blunt refusal. They were not impudent or surly; they smiled as cheerfully as Chinese statues and simply did not load the ponies.

“If I slew them, as they deserve, there would be none to do the work,” said Dawa Tsering. “Why not offer them money, thou? Never fear—I will win it back from them at dice!”

Ommony offered money, but the Tibetans only showed their teeth in wider grins than ever. There was nothing to do but wait until they were pleased to move, and they did not do that until the sun was over the highest ridges by a full hour and a wind had blown new banks of mist into the ravines. Then suddenly, as if they had received a message through the ether, they began to pack the ponies and were off in no time without a word of explanation.

The hills lay in parallel waves that must be crossed diagonally, as a boat offers its shoulder to a rising sea. To the northward the huge range of the Himalayas made itself felt but was invisible; there was a sense of impending immensity, increased by the curtain of cloud that drifted between earth and Heaven. Wherever passes gaped between the shoulders of the mountains, dense white clouds flowed down along them, looking like incredibly swift glaciers. Half of the time the rump of the pony ahead was just discernible through the mist, but once in a while some trick of wind would reveal enormous vistas that a man could hardly contemplate and keep his balance.

But the ponies were content to climb hour after interminable hour, and Dawa Tsering sang about the wind-swept hills of Spiti as they rose and descended through every imaginable plane of vegetation, from steamy bottoms where dense jungle stifled them, up through bamboo and rhododendron to where oaks and maples flourished—up beyond those to the fir-line—up again until the firs gave out and raw wind rolled the clouds around them straight from Kanchenjunga—then down again into the suffocating tropics, where woodticks fell on them and a man’s hands were kept constantly busy picking leeches off the ponies and Diana had to be gone over carefully three times within the hour.

They crossed rock-cluttered torrents over bamboo bridges that swayed and danced under the weight of one pony at a time, and bivouacked again at midnight in the clouds, where icy wind shrieked through the chinks of a deserted herdsman’s hut; then descended two hours after dawn into a steaming cauldron where black water quarreled on its way through aromatic jungle.

Never a sign of the Lama’s party, although they passed stonechortens[40]every mile or so, and cairns built by pilgrims, to which every passer by had stuck little prayer-flags to flutter the eternal formula “Om mani padme hum.” There were messages on bits of paper from one pilgrim to another, weighted down with stones near some of thechortens, but none that the Lama had left.

And there were unaccountable delays. At times the two Tibetans seemed to think they had come too fast and, after a whispered consultation, unloaded the ponies whether they appeared to need a rest or not. The ponies rolled on sky-hung moss-banks within a dozen feet of the edge of an abyss, and the Tibetans chewed oily seed by the handful, offering Ommony some, and pointing out good places to sit down when he showed impatience. Dawa Tsering flicked at the edge of his knife with a suggestive thumb-nail, but they laughed at that, too, showing him a tough tree, dwarfed by the wind, that he could cut down if he needed exercise. In their own good time they started off again without excuse or argument, usually singing hymns to pacify the spirits of the mountains.

As he drew near Tilgaun Ommony’s thought dwelt more on Hannah Sanburn than on the Lama and Samding. Aware now that for twenty years she had kept a secret from him, in spite of mutual respect and confidence that in every other way he could think of had been almost absolute, he wondered how to tackle her about it. He did not care to know even a part of her secret without letting her know that he knew it.

There had been times when he had seriously thought of asking Hannah Sanburn to become his wife; other times, when the thought that he could hardly live at the mission without marrying her had been all that kept him from resigning his forestry job and spending the remainder of his life in active duty as a trustee at Tilgaun. He was too confirmed a bachelor not to flinch from matrimony when he reasoned out all the pros and cons, but in the back of his head there was a conviction that Hannah Sanburn would not refuse, if he should ask her. But he also had known, any time these past ten years, that he never would ask her to marry him unless—he wondered what the reservation was; he had never quite defined it.

Hunted through his mind and pinned at last into a corner, up there thirteen thousand feet above sea level with a view of Kanchenjunga to adjust mere human problems to their right proportion, he realized that he would marry Hannah Sanburn—gladly enough—at any time—if by doing so he could solve a difficulty from which she could not otherwise escape.

He was almost convinced that there was a page in Hannah Sanburn’s life which needed very careful protecting; something which called for limitless generosity. He had no use for generosity that hedged itself within conventional limits. He liked his freedom and the habit of consulting no one’s inclinations but his own in private matters, that becomes almost second nature in an independent man of forty-five, but he knew he could forego all that and be a reasonably companionable married man, if his interpretation of the law of friendship should impose that course on him. To Cottswold Ommony friendship was the highest law; no conceivable claims could outweigh it; Hannah Sanburn was his friend; there was nothing to argue about. But he hoped—without much confidence, but he hoped—that she was not in the predicament he guessed her to be in; suspecting that, since she had kept him in the dark for twenty years, she could quite easily have fooled Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, who notoriously believed the best of every one.

He rather dreaded meeting her—very much dreaded the inevitable interview; and although he fretted to overtake the Lama he was much more patient with delay than he might otherwise have been, leaving untried a good many methods with which he might have persuaded the Tibetans to hurry. He salved his conscience by grumbling aloud to them andsotto voceto Dawa Tsering, but there was not much energy in his complaints.

At last, toward the end of the fourth day out, they topped a fifteen-thousand-foot rise and looked over a sheer ravine, where eagles perched, toward Tilgaun that nestled in a valley with a Lamaist monastery perched on a crag three thousand feet above it. The mission buildings glowed warm in the westering sun—one instance where a rich man’s money had been spent on art as well as altruism, with good manners and respect for other men’s historical associations, such as missionaries commonly dispense with. The graceful contour of the buildings and the color of the carved stone matched the panorama. There was no assertiveness, no challenge. The Tibetan roof-lines paid acknowledgment to older art on crag and cliff around them. Without beauty there is no beatitude. Old Marmaduke, who tortured thirty million dollars from protesting pigs, had somehow learned that; so the mission buildings were a monument to beauty, not to his ambition or his zeal.

Ommony was thrilled by the sight, as always on his rare visits. All the way down the winding track, that looked so short and actually was a half-day’s journey, he recalled the days when Marmaduke had hurled Chicago business methods into battle with obstruction, subtly raised against him by foes that were easy enough to identify but undiscoverable when it came to issues. Rajahs, all the missionaries, all the Indian priesthood, politicians and the press had joined in opposing the project, occasionally praising, always preventing.

Even the banks, that levied toll on Marmaduke’s long purse, had invented difficulties. There were strikes of labor-gangs (imported in the teeth of government obstruction) because money for the pay-roll did not arrive punctually. There had been personal attacks on Marmaduke—three bullets, and a dose of ground glass in his food, in addition to assaults on his reputation. Missionaries had declared (and perhaps believed) that he was a satyr who sought to corrupt young innocents. Consignments of supplies, machinery and what-not else had failed to reach the destination, or had arrived so smashed as to be useless. Marmaduke had grinned, continued grinning, and had won, dying with his boots on six months after Hannah Sanburn was installed in charge, hoping, as they laid him on a stretcher, that the pigs he had slain for sausage-meat might have most of the credit; since it was they who made the mission possible.

His will, in which he appointed a Tibetan Lama chief trustee, had been a nine days’ wonder, partly because of its novelty, but mostly because that masterly provision introduced an international element, which made it next to impossible for politicians to undo the work. Tibet as a military power can not be taken seriously: but it is noteworthy that not even “big business” has succeeded in controlling its government or in penetrating its frontiers. The backing of the Dalai Lama is worth more, in some contingencies, than a billion dollars and a million armed men. (There is a European parallel.)

And the Tashi Lama is to the Dalai Lama as is the differential calculus to the simple rule of three, only if anything rather more so.

[39]India.

[40]Vase-shaped stone monuments of Buddhist origin.

My son, the wise are few; for Wisdom very seldom pleases, so that they are few who seek her. Wisdom will compel whoever entertains her to avoid all selfishness and to escape from praise. But Wisdom seeks them who are worthy, discovering some here and there, unstupified and uncorrupted by the slime of cant, with whom thereafter it is a privilege to other men to tread the self-same earth, whether or not they know it.From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.

From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.

CHAPTER XXIV

Thereis a narrow bridge, swung high above a noisy stream, that forms the only practicable gate to Tilgaun. On the Tilgaun side is a high mound that resembles a look-out post, with a big prayer-flag on top that might be the defiant emblem of an army. The track leads below that mound, across a hollow, and climbs again toward the mission, more than a mile away.

As Ommony rode across the bridge behind the leading Tibetan he was aware of faces peering from the top of the mound beside the prayer-flag. When he was midway over the bridge the faces disappeared. When he reached the foot of the mound there were six Bhutani mission girls standing in a row on the rim of the hollow.

They wore the Marmaduke Mission costume, which is made from one piece of daffodil-yellow fabric woven on the mission looms. Their hair was decked with flowers, and they were laughing, that being a part of old Marmaduke’s legacy, he having had a notion that to laugh with good reason, is two-thirds of an education. The other third is harder to acquire, but comes much easier because of laughter; or so said Marmaduke, who had considered many pigs, that perished.

They were not so poised and self-reliant as the Lama’s dancing girls, but they looked marvelously better than the common run of Hill women, and as different from ordinary mission converts as a live trout is from a dead sardine. At a glance it was obvious that nobody had told them they were heathen in their blindness; somebody had shown them how to revel in the sunshine and to wonder at the wine-light of gloaming. It was conceivable that they had studied nature’s mirth instead of watching frogs dissected with a scalpel, and had learned to be amused with each existing minute rather than to meditate on metaphysical conundrums.

But they had their heritage nevertheless. Their eyes were on Dawa Tsering. It was just as well that there were six of them together.

Dawa Tsering, gasconading on pony-back with his feet within nine inches of the ground, called two of them by name, inquired about a third who was not there, and asked whether they had forgotten him.

“I know a good way to remind you who I am!” he boasted, and got off the pony to act the satyr among wood-nymphs. Ommony checked him curtly. He protested:

“I tell you, Ommonee, the gods make free with women and the devils do the same! It is ridiculous to pretend we are better than gods and devils. What are women for, do you suppose?”

It was so that they discovered who Ommony was. In that Bhat-Brahman costume covered by a sheepskin coat and without his beard they had not recognized him. All six looked at him sharply, hesitated, glanced at the sky, accepted that as an excuse, and ran, gathering up the yellow robes and showing copper-colored legs, their long hair streaming in the wind behind them.

“Why are they afraid ofyou?” asked Dawa Tsering. “Are you such a terror among women as all that?”

“It was the rain,” said Ommony. But he knew better. The girls were giggling.

The sky had clouded over suddenly, and in a moment, on a blast of icy wind, the rain came down in sheets that cut off the view of the mission buildings. The ponies turned their rumps to it and stood, heads down, tails blown tight under. Diana whimpered and took refuge under the end of the bridge, where Ommony joined her; there was no hope of getting the ponies to move until the storm passed. It turned to hail and swept the bridge like concentrated musketry, lightning and terrific, volleying thunderclaps heightening the illusion.

Twenty minutes later, when the sky cleared as suddenly as it had clouded and the setting sun shone on drifts of melting hail, Ommony saw the drenched girls leave the shelter of a rock and scamper for the mission gate. He did not doubt for one fraction of a moment that they had been sent by Hannah Sanburn to the bridge-end to keep a look-out for him. Discontented—it was aggravating to be treated as a potential enemy—he rode on prepared to see the Lama hurrying away ahead of him.

However, Hannah Sanburn met him in the gate and laughed at his disguise. He judged she was relieved, not annoyed to see him. There was all the old friendliness expressed on her New England face. Boston, Massachusetts—Commonwealth Avenue or Tremont Street—stood out all over her, even after twenty years of Tilgaun. She was dressed in tailored serge with a camel-hair overcoat turned up to her ears. A wealth of chestnut hair, beginning to turn gray, showed under a plain deerstalker hat. She had not lost one trace of her New England manner—not a vestige of her pride. No weakness, but a firm and comprehending kindness dwelt on the almost manly forehead, at the corners of her mouth and in the grand gray eyes.

“All alone?” asked Ommony, dismounting, shaking hands. He liked her laughter; it was wholesome, even if she did look quizzically at his jaw and chin that she had never seen before without the modifying beard.

“Yes, Cottswold. You’re a day late. Tsiang Samdup left this morning.”

“Why?” he asked bluntly.

She did not answer but looked straight at Dawa Tsering, nodded, smiled at his sheepish grin, and walked straight up to him.

“Give me your knife,” she said quietly, and took it from him almost before he guessed what she intended. He made no effort to prevent, but sat still on his pony, looking foolish. “You shall have that back if you behave yourself, not otherwise. If you look twice at one of the mission girls I will order the blacksmith to break your knife in two. You understand me?”

She made friends with Diana next, saying hardly a word but lifting her by the forelegs to see whether the feet were injured by the long march. The hound accepted her authority as promptly as Dawa Tsering did.

Stroking Diana’s head with one shapely, rather freckled hand, ordering the Tibetans to lead the ponies to the stable, she led the way into the stone-paved courtyard. Cloistered buildings of worn gray stone formed three sides of it, and in the midst there was an oval mass of flowers, damaged by the hail but gorgeous in the last rays of the setting sun.

There was a room reserved for Ommony’s exclusive use, in a corner facing that front courtyard, and though he had never used it oftener than once in three years it had always been kept ready for him. Another room, used less seldom, was reserved for Tsiang Samdup in the corner opposite.

“Mr. McGregor sent your clothes by messenger. You’ll find them all unpacked and cared for—lots of hot water—I’m sorry you can’t grow a beard in fifteen minutes! Come to my room when you’re ready. I’ll take the dog.”

Ommony shut himself into the room to smoke and think. He dreaded the coming interview more and more, the longer he postponed it—realized that what he most detested, in a world full of discordances, was to have to account for his actions to any one else. “Marriage might be all right,” he muttered, “if women would govern themselves and concede men the same privilege.”

He let an hour slip by before he presented himself in Hannah Sanburn’s private room—a long room over an archway leading to an inner cloister, bow-windowed on both sides, paneled in teak, with a blazing fire at one end. The crimson curtains had been drawn; the shaded oil lamps cast a warm glow over everything; a square table had been spread near the fire and Hannah Sanburn was making toast, stepping back and forward cautiously across Diana, who had made herself thoroughly at home on the hearthrug. Old Montagu’s portrait, life-size, head and shoulders, smiled at the scene from the end-wall, the flickering firelight making his shrewd, peculiarly boyish features seem almost ready to step out of the frame and talk.

It was more difficult than ever to put her to the question in that atmosphere. She had changed into a semi-evening dress, that aged her a little but added an old-worldly charm. It would be difficult to imagine a hostess whom one would less like to offend, and the arrival of bacon and eggs on a silver tray carried by a seventeen-year-old Bhutani girl provided welcome excuse for delay.

Hannah Sanburn seemed entirely unembarrassed and, if she noticed Ommony’s air of having something on his mind, she concealed the fact perfectly, talking about the events of the mission in a matter-of-fact voice, relating difficulties she had overcome, outlining plans for the future, avoiding anything that might lead to personal issues.

“I don’t know how much good we’re doing—sometimes I think scarcely any,” she said at last. “We rear and educate these girls. The best ones, of course, stay on for a while as teachers. But they all get married sooner or later and lapse into the old ways. It will be a century at least before this school begins to make much visible impression.”

Ommony stared at the fire. “Thank goodness, we’ll be dead then, with something different to fret about,” he grumbled, angry with the destiny that he felt compelled him to probe a gentlewoman’s secrets. She noticed the tone of his voice—could not very well ignore it.

“What is troublingyou, Cottswold? I supposed you were the most contented man on earth. Have you lost your interest in your forest?”

“I’ve resigned from the forestry.” He stared at her, and broke the ice suddenly, doing the very thing he was determined not to, blurting a blunt question without tact or even a preliminary warning. “Who is this girl Elsa, who is never at the mission when I’m here, but who has been to Lhassa, talks English and Tibetan, and can draw like Michael Angelo?”

He jerked his jaw forward to conceal the contempt that he felt for himself for having blundered in so clumsily, all the while watching her face but detecting no nervousness. To his surprise and relief she laughed and leaned her head against the high chair-back, looking at him humorously from under lowered eyelids, as she might have listened to a lame excuse from some one in the school.

“Poor Cottswold! How you must have felt uncomfortable!—you’re so faithful to your friends. No, Elsa is not my daughter. I have never hadthatexperience. If sheweremy daughter I know quite well I would have said so long ago. I can imagine myself being proud of her, even—even in those circumstances.”

“I confess I’m mightily relieved,” said Ommony, grinning uncomfortably. “Not, of course, that I’d have—”

“No, I know you wouldn’t,” she interrupted. “You are the last person on earth I would hide that kind of secret from.”

“Why any kind of secret, Hannah? Am I not to be trusted?”

“Not in this instance. You’re the one man who couldn’t be told.” Then, after a dramatic pause: “Elsa is your niece.”

“Niece?” he said, and shut his teeth with a snap. That one word solved the whole long riddle.

“Her name is Elsa Terry.”

He did not speak. He leaned forward, staring at her under knitted brows, his eyes as eloquent as the silence that lasted while the Bhutani girl came in and removed the supper table. Even after the girl had gone, for two or three minutes the only sounds were the solemn ticking of a big clock on the mantelpiece, the cracking of a pine-knot in the fire, and a murmur of song from a building fifty yards away.

“You and almost everybody else have always believed Jack Terry and your sister Elsa vanished twenty years ago without trace,” she said at last. “They didn’t.”

“Didn’t they go to the Ahbor country?”

“Yes.”

“You mean they’re alive and you’ve known it all these years?”

“They have been dead nearly twenty years. I learned about it soon afterward. You knownowwhy they went up there?”

“I’ve no new information. Jack Terry was as mad as a March hare—”

“I think not,” Hannah Sanburn answered, her gray eyes staring at the fire. “Jack Terry was the most unselfish man I ever heard of. He adored your sister. She was a spiritual, other-worldly little woman, and that beast Kananda Pal—”

“I blame Jenkins,” said Ommony, grinding his teeth. “Kananda Pal was born into a black-art family and knew no better. Jenkins—”

“Never mind him now. Jack Terry did his best. Your sister Elsa used to have lapses; she would cry for days on end and write letters to Mr. Jenkins begging him to give back the mind he had stolen from her. No, she wasn’t mad; it was obsession. I didmybest, but I hadn’t much experience in those days and she was difficult to understand; the phases of the moon seemed to have something to do with it; Jack Terry and I were agreed about that. You’ve met Sirdar Sirohe Singh of Tilgaun?”

Ommony nodded.

“He has always been a friend. He appears to be a mystic. He knows things that other people don’t know, and hardly ever talks of them. Jack Terry learned from him—Jack set his arm, or a collar-bone, I forget which—anyway he told Jack about the Crystal Jade of Ahbor.”

Ommony’s lips moved in the suggestion of a whistle and Diana opened one eye.

“All the people hereabouts seem to have heard of the jade,” Hannah Sanburn went on, “but thesirdarseems to be the only one who really knows anything about it. AllIknow is that I have had a piece of it in my hands in this house. It nearly drove me frantic to look into it, so I locked it away in that cupboard over there. It was stolen by a girl I should never have trusted, and I’m nearly but not quite sure it was thesirdarwho bribed her to steal it from me. She was murdered, apparently while on the way to thesirdar’shouse a few miles from here. Tsiang Samdup was here last night and showed me the piece of jade; he said he had recovered it in Delhi.”

“What else did he say?” asked Ommony, but she ignored the question, continuing to stare into the fire, as if she could see in it pictures of twenty years ago.

“Jack Terry told me,” she went on presently, “that he believed the Crystal Jade of Ahbor had magic properties. You know how he believed in magic, and how he always insisted that magic is merely science that hasn’t been recognized yet by the schools. He said mineral springs can heal the body, so there was no reason why there shouldn’t be a stone somewhere, possessed of properties that can heal the mind in certain conditions. I didn’t agree with him. It seemed to me utter nonsense, although—I’m less inclined than I was then to say things can’t be simply because we have been taught the contrary. I have held a piece of the Jade of Ahbor in my hands and—well, I don’t know, and that’s all about it.”

She paused again, perfectly still. Ommony got up, heaped wood on the fire, and sat down again. The cracking pine-knots and the ascending sparks broke her reverie.

“It was no use talking to Jack Terry,” she continued, “and your sister would have gone to the North Pole with him, or anywhere else, if he had as much as proposed it. The two set off like Launcelot and Elaine into the unknown. You know, the very heart of the Ahbor Valley isn’t more than fifty miles from here, although theysaynobody has ever gone there and returned alive. Jack Terry—you remember how he always laughed at the impossible—said they would probably be gone not more than three or four weeks. They took scarcely any supplies with them—just a tent and bedding—half a dozen ponies—two servants. The servants deserted the third night out and were killed by Bhutani robbers.”

“Yes,” said Ommony. “That was all I could ever find out, andthatcost a month’s investigation.”

“I knew the whole story two or three weeks before you got permission to leave your forest and come to investigate; I wasn’t allowed to tell.”

“Weren’tallowed. Who in thunder—”

“Tsiang Samdup came down from the Ahbor Valley and in this room, sitting on that hearthrug where the dog lies now, told me the story. I remember how he began—his exact words:

“ ‘My daughter, there is danger in another’s duty. There is also duty in another’s danger. There is merit in considered speech, but strength consists in silence. Truth, that may be told to one, may lead to evil if repeated. I am minded to speak to your ears only.’

“Offhand I told him I would of course respect his confidence, but he sat still for about half an hour before he spoke again. Then he took at least half an hour to commit me to a pledge of secrecy that I could not possibly break without losing my own self-respect. I discovered before he was through that he had been quite right to do that, but I confess there were moments that evening when it looked as if he had trapped me into something against which every moral fiber in me rebelled instinctively. For an hour I hated him. And there have been times—many times since—when it has been extremely difficult to keep the promise. However, Ihavekept it. It was only yesterday that he gave me leave to tellyouas much as I know.”

“He might have confided in me in the first place,” said Ommony, but Hannah Sanburn shook her head.

“I did suggest that to him. I urged it. But he made me see that he was quite right not to. It would have placed you in an impossible position. What had happened was this: the Terrys did succeed in entering the Ahbor Valley. They seemed to have undergone frightful hardships, and nobody knows how they found the way, but they did. They were hunted like animals, and when Tsiang Samdup rescued them Jack Terry was dying from wounds, hunger and exposure; he had managed somehow to find enough food for his wife, and he had persuaded her to eat, and to let him go without.”

“Are you sure of your information?” Ommony asked. “That doesn’t sound like Elsa.”

“There was a baby coming.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Tsiang Samdup took them to his monastery, which is somewhere in the Ahbor Valley. The only way he was able to protect them from the Ahbors, who have never allowed strangers in the Valley and vow they never will, was by prophesying that the baby shortly to be born would be a reincarnation of an ancient Chinese saint, named San-fun-ho. There was no hope of saving Jack Terry, but Tsiang Samdup hoped to save the mother’s life. However, she died giving birth to the child, and Jack Terry followed her the same night.”

“Did they leave anything in writing?”

“I have letters I’ll show you presently, written and signed by both of them, in which they speak of the Lama Tsiang Samdup as having risked his own life to save theirs. Jack Terry wrote that he was dying of wounds and exposure. The Lama gave me both letters after he had told the story. But I would have believed him without that. I have always believed every word that Tsiang Samdup said, even while I hated him for having pledged me to silence.”

“Go ahead. I mistrusted him not long ago—and changed my mind.”

“Tsiang Samdup is not to be doubted, Cottswold. He lied to Ahbors, but that was to save life. It was an inspiration—the only way out of it—to tell those savages that the unborn baby was to be a reincarnation of a Chinese saint. I admire him for the lie. Imagine, if you can, old Tsiang Samdup—for he was old even then—rearing and weaning that baby in a monastery in the midst of savages. The Terrys’ death seems to have made it easier in one way: the natives saw them buried, which satisfied their law against admitting strangers, and Tsiang Samdup prevented them from digging up the bodies to throw them in the river, by casting a halo of sainthood over them on the ground that they had brought a saint into the world. You know how all this country to the north of us believes implicitly in reincarnations of saints—the Tashi Lama is supposed to be the reincarnation of his predecessor; and so on. Do you see how Tsiang Samdup became more and more committed?”

There was a long silence. Ommony poked the fire restlessly. A native teacher came in, offered a report for signature, and went out. Hannah Sanburn went on with her story:

“He had promised those savages a baby saint. He had produced the baby. Now he had to educate the saint, and its being a girl made it all the more difficult. But it seems there are people to whom Tsiang Samdup can go for advice. I don’t know who they are, or where they are; he mentions them rarely, and very guardedly; I think he has referred to them twice, or perhaps three times during all the years I have known him, and then only for the purpose of suggesting that he isn’t exactly a free agent. The conclusion I drew from his guarded hints was, that he acts, and is responsible for what he does, but that he would lose the privilege of conference with these unknown individuals if he should allow personal considerations to govern him. At that, I’m only guessing. He said nothing definite.”

“The Masters!” said Ommony, nodding. “I’ll bet you he knows some of the Masters!” But if Hannah Sanburn knew whotheywere she gave no sign. She went on talking:

“It seems that the Ahbors trust him implicitly within certain limits. They would kill him and burn his monastery if they caught him practising the least deception; and they watched that baby day and night. The wife of an Ahbor chieftain became the wet-nurse, and the child throve, but it very soon dawned on Tsiang Samdup that however carefully he might educate her—(you knewhehad an Oxford education?)—she would grow up like a half-breed, unless he could have skilful assistance from some one of her own race. So he consulted these mysterious authorities, and ‘they,’ whoevertheyare, told him that a way would open up if he should takemeinto confidence.

“As I told you, he first bound me to secrecy. He didn’t make me swear, but he gave me a lecture on keeping faith, that was as radical as the Sermon on the Mount, and he tested me every inch of the way to make sure I agreed with him. I have used that sermon over and over again in teaching the teachers of this school.

“When he had me so tied up in my own explanations of what keeping faith really means, that there wasn’t any possible way out for me, he told me the story I have just told you, and made me an astonishing proposal. I have sometimes wished I had accepted it.”

Hannah Sanburn paused for a long time, staring at the fire.

“He offered,” she said at last, “to find some one else for my position here; to smuggle me into the Ahbor Valley; and to teach me more knowledge than Solomon knew—if I would give unqualified consent, and would agree to stay up there and help him educate that baby.”

“And—?”

“And I refused,” she said quietly. “Won’t you put some more wood on the fire?”

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