CHAPTER XXX
A monkbrought food and set it on a stool between Tsiang Samdup and Ommony. They ate in silence—the monk watching—the Lama tossing scraps to Diana, his wrinkles rippling into a smile each time she caught a piece of meat in mid-air. Then, when the monk went away with the remnants, he resumed his story abruptly, before Ommony could start to question him.
“My son, since the beginning of the world—and your brain can not imagine how long ago that was—there has never been one minute when the knowledge that was in the beginning has been utterly forgotten. There have always been men who possessed and guarded the secrets; and there always will be such men. There is not a religion in the world that is not based on the tradition that such secrets do exist; there is not a philosophy that is not founded on the ancient mysteries; there is not a modern science, however perverted and material, that is not an effort to discover and to put to use some aspect of the ancient knowledge and the Higher Law.
“There is a Law of Evolution. Scientists have touched the fringe of it, and what do they tell you in consequence? That man has evolved from the worms! There is a Law of Cause and Effect, of which one infinitely tiny fraction has been dimly sensed. To what use do they put it? They brew poison-gas, with which to murder one another! There is a Law of Cycles, as the astronomers can tell you, and as financiers begin vaguely to understand. But those who think they understand it use the secret to enrich themselves—by each enrichment of themselves afflicting others. Men dig in the ruins of Egypt and Babylon, but buy and sell the trophies and draw the absurd deduction that they know more than all the ancients did—even as worms digging in a carcass may imagine themselves superior to the life that once used that body for a while.
“Do you begin to see, my son, why it would be unwise to reveal the ancient wisdom by more than infinitesimal fragments at a time? I heard, when I was in Delhi, that the men of the West are studying the construction of the atom, and have guessed at the force imprisoned in it. Wait until they have learned how to explode the atom, and then see what they will do to one another.
“But you will notice this, as you grow wiser. There is a fitness in things. There is a balance in the universe and an intelligence that governs it. No man can escape the consequences of his own act, though it take him a million lives to redress the balance. Justice is inevitable. Evil produces evil, and is due to ignorance. But Justice being infinite in all its ways, there is a Middle Way by which we may escape from ignorance. I, who saw the world increasing its downward impetus, while it believes itself to be progressing upward through the invention of new means for exploiting selfishness; I, who saw the ruins of Egypt, and of Babylon; of Rome and Greece; of Jerusalem; of Ceylon; of India; I, who have lived for fifty years within a stone’s throw of a city ten times older than Babylon; Iknewthat day follows night, and I waited for the dawn, not knowing the hour. I waited.
“I knew there are those who have won merit in their former lives, whose time comes to be born again. I knew that the key to evolution is in character, not in numbers or material increase—in the character of the soul, my son! I knew that at the right time those would begin to be born, whose character would influence the world as mine could not. And I waited, studying the Jade of Ahbor.
“For the Jade, my son, was set here in the dawn of time by men who understood how to make a mirror for the soul, even as men nowadays make mirrors that reflect stars which no eye can detect. You laugh? That is not wise! Men laughed, remember, at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. I had not thought you were one who mocks what is contrary to common superstition.”
“My father,” said Ommony, “you are confirming rumors I have heard on and off for twenty years. I was laughing at the men who told me I was a fool to pay any attention to such madness.”
“Nor was that wise!” the Lama answered. “It is foolish either to laugh or to grieve over other men’s ignorance; the hidden motive of that laughter or grief is pride, which blinds the faculties.” He looked at Ommony a very long time in silence, studying him.
“It is also unwise to speak of truths to men who prefer untruths,” he said at last. “They proceed to indiscretions, for which the speaker is in part responsible. But I think, my son, you see the error of that way. The Jade of Ahbor is a mirror of the human soul. Whoever looks in it beholds his lower nature first; and there are few who can look long enough to see the first gleam of their higher nature shining through the horrors that the Jade reveals. When I first looked into the Jade, he who led me to behold it carried me forth like a dead man. And I had been thechelaof the Tashi Lama! I will lead you to the Jade; but will you dare to look?”
He paused, his bright old eyes observing Ommony’s with that disturbing stare with which an artist studies the face of one whose portrait he is painting.
“There was a time,” he went on, “when those who professed to be teachers were stood before the Jade of Ahbor, that their own characters might be revealed to them. Those who could endure the test (and they were few) might teach; and those who failed, might not. For it is character that must be taught; all else depends on it. That time will come again, but not yet. To-day, if men knew of the Jade of Ahbor they would seize upon it. They would test their rulers by it, as they try their criminals. They would overthrow whoever failed the test—and all would fail. Thereafter intellectual men would seize power, who would destroy the stone, asserting its magic property was superstition, andthatone fragment of the ancient knowledge would be lost.
“And now,” he paused again, “I read temptation in your mind. You think that I, who have enabled you to reach this valley, will enable you to leave it; and that is true, you shall return to India unharmed. But you think that you, and certain other men, might use that stone discreetly. Imagination tells you that to return to the Ahbor Valley; that to occupy it by force or trickery, and so to obtain access to the stone would be a good thing, which should benefit the human race. Nay, my son, waste no words on denial, for I saw the thought!
“Therefore, I tell you this: the ancient wisdom is more wise than your imagination. They who know cause and effect can foretell consequences. Lest the evils should befall, that must inevitably follow if such an instrument were placed too soon into men’s hands, the means to hide the stone, if necessary for another million years, has been placed in the hands of those who guard it. My son, men fight to the death over the Golden Rule. What would they not do with the Jade of Ahbor?
“You have heard that the Tsangpo River holds more water than the Brahmaputra, which is the same river lower down? Part of the Tsangpo pours into caverns, which have an outlet below Bengal to the sea. One man (and therearemore than one who know the secret) can in one moment admit a mighty river into caverns that are now dry. Then not an army of engineers could find the Jade of Ahbor in a thousand years.—But,” he spoke very slowly, “he who had deliberately made that act necessary—having been warned, asyouare warned—would be responsible. You can not foresee the consequences, but it may be that in a million lives you can not outlive them, because all the harm that, through you, befalls others must inevitably return to you for readjustment. It is well not to deceive yourself that this life is the last.”
Ommony had sat still, lest interruption break the thread of the Lama’s story. But it appeared to be broken. His own personal relation to it stirred impatience.
“How, where, when did my sister and Jack Terry die?” he asked.
“Bear with me, my son. I have a great deal to tell, and not much time in which to tell it. My hour comes soon. There is a death awaiting me, and I am nearly ready.”
The Lama closed his eyes, his right hand patting Diana’s head, as if he were eliminating detail and remembering the thread.
“I studied the Jade of Ahbor,” he resumed after a long while. “Which is the same as to say that I studied my own failings and my own strength, using the one with which to conquer the other, so that light might flow into my mind. And many times that one came to me, of whom I spoke before—he who first led me to the Jade. Many times I journeyed into India. Many men I spoke with. And there came Marmaduke the American to Darjiling, much wrought up about the future of the world and very angry with the Christian missionaries. And as you know, he founded the Marmaduke Mission at Tilgaun and endowed it. He wished me to be a trustee, but I refused, until that one came to me, of whom I spoke before, and said it was not good to refuse the work that destiny had given me to do. Then I accepted, although it did not appear to me then that my act was wise.
“And you and Hannah Sanburn became the other trustees. And you and I corresponded, from which it became clear to me that you are a determined man, of good faith, having courage, but possessed by indignation against those whose vision of right and wrong is shorter than your own. And in indignation there is not much wisdom; so I avoided meeting you.
“And then came Doctor Terry and your sister to this valley—children!—hand in hand—as innocent as lambs—as brave and simple as two humming-birds—in search of me, because, forsooth, they had been told I knew the secret of the Jade of Ahbor. She far-gone with child; he dying of wounds; the Ahbors hunting them—for the Ahbors guard this valley as cobras guard ancient ruins.”
“How did they get into the valley?” asked Ommony.
“None knows. Not even I, nor the Ahbors. They suffered; they had no memory, except of caverns and of being washed along an ancient conduit underground. I heard of them, because the Ahbors asked me whether it were best to crucify them living or to cut them up and throw them into the Brahmaputra. The Ahbors said they seemed such unoffending people that it might be the gods would be angry if they should put them to further pain. They also said there was a baby to be born, and it is against the Ahbors’ law to slay the mother until one month after childbirth; nevertheless, it is also against their law to admit strangers and to let them live.
“Therefore I lied to the Ahbors, inventing an ancient prophecy that a saint was to be born of strangers in this valley. Thus I rescued those two innocents, there being—as that Tashi Lama, whosechelaI was, said—a condition in me, due to faults in former lives, that, though I may fulfill a useful destiny, I must come to a violent death through lies of my own telling.
“I lied to the Ahbors, and I had to keep on lying to them. But he who lies does well, my son, who gladly eats the consequences when he may, and ends them. Better a little self-surrender now than unknown consequences in the lives to come! I am answerable to the Ahbors. I would rather receive their judgment than that of the Unseen! It pays not to postpone the reckoning.
“The baby was born here, in this room, and those two children who were its parents died, though I did what might be done for them. I eased their death as well as I was able, giving them comfort in the knowledge that there are many lives to come, in which there is recompense for every thought and deed, as also opportunity to undo all the evil of the past. They died in peace, and I buried their bodies yonder; you can see the grave below this window—that mass of rocks, over which the purple flowers trail.
“Before she died, that child who was your sister gave her baby into my hands. It was her last effort. Shegavethe baby to me, not at my request. In the clarity of vision and the peace that precedes death, shegaveher baby into my hands, smiling, saying: ‘I see that this is as it should be. It could not have been otherwise.’ ”
For five minutes the Lama was silent, remembering, his sky-blue eyes on vacancy, his wrinkles motionless.
“And so I understood my destiny,” he went on presently. “I understood that in my hands lay one who was greater than myself—whom I might serve, that she might serve the world, as I can not by reason of my limitations. That little spark of life, if I should do my duty, should be fanned into a flame, whose light should blaze across the world, and bless, and brighten it.
“And I have served, my son. I know of no regrets. Day in, day out, for more than twenty years I have fanned that flame, and nursed and fed it, letting no consideration hinder, omitting no experience that might serve, sparing her no duty, killing out my own pride, and my own weakness, lest it rob her of one element of virtue, inflicting no punishment (for who am I that I should dare to punish?), omitting no reproof (for who am I that I should dare to let the child deceive herself?)
“I obtained a wet-nurse, who was doubtless born into this valley to that very end, the wife of an Ahbor chieftain, whose recent ancestors were healthy, whose mind was modest, unassuming, calm. I made that wet-nurse stand before the Jade of Ahbor, before I trusted the flow from her breasts.
“And I received advice, as he whosechelaI had been prophesied. He, who had come to me in this place and in Lhassa, came again. From him I learned that Hannah Sanburn might be trusted, and that if I should see fit to trust her no harm would come of it. I think she has told you, my son, what share she had in mothering the child.”
Ommony nodded. “Hannah is a noble woman,” he said gruffly. “I imagine she sacrificed more than—”
But the Lama interrupted with a gesture of his hand. “My son, there is no such thing as sacrifice, except in the imagination. There is opportunity to serve, and he who overlooks it robs himself. Would you call the sun’s light sacrifice? But you are right when you say Hannah Sanburn is a noble woman. Her nobility is part of her. It works. It overcomes the fear of what the world might say. It conquers pride. It leaves adjustment of all consequences to the Higher Law. It keeps faith. It knows no malice. It is brave. My burden, when I took that child to Tilgaun, was all that I could bear, because I loved her and I feared for her: but Hannah Sanburn’s was no less—no atom less—when she returned the child to me.
“My hardest task has been to provide children of her own age, with whom she might play and be happy without besmirchment from their ignorance. For, though she is able now to stand alone, and to burn up trash in the pure flame of her own character, she was then only a little, very clear flame, needing care—my son, I wonder if you guess how much care she has needed. The Tibetan children would have dimmed her light. They might have smothered it; because the lower yearns toward the higher. And though yeast is plunged into the dough and leavens it, the yeast is spent. It is not good to clean corruption with a golden broom, nor is it wise to take sap from the growing tree.
“But I have agents—agents here and there. We, who pursue the Middle Way, are not without resources. There was Benjamin, who is a man of very faithful pertinacity in some respects; and there are certain others, whom I employed. It is easy to find children who need saving from the rapacity of the world’s convenience; but it is very difficult to make selection—much more difficult when agents do the choosing—and impossible, my son, to find such another child as San-fun-ho, because there is none like her in the world. I tell you, great ones are not born many at a time.
“I obtained children. I obtained many children, hoping that among the many one or two might excel, as indeed it happened. The others are incapable in this life of much advancement, because ofkarmaand the circumstances into which they had been born. It is very difficult to help some individuals, because those who are born into an heredity are so born in order that they may make that experience, and battle with it, and acquire strength for the lives to come. But they have served; they have done royal service. For, as I have educated mychela, in turn she has educated them, learning through them how to practise the wisdom, which is nothing unless put to use. And, lest they lose one rightful opportunity, I found Tibetan girls for them to teach. You have seen for yourself that those children have grown into women, who are not without nobility. Some may make good teachers at Tilgaun.”
“How many laws did you break in obtaining those children?” asked Ommony, smiling. He felt less critical than curious to know how the Lama would defend himself.
“Many, perhaps. I do not know, my son. There is that which, because of errors in past lives, makes it impossible for me to do good without inflicting evil on myself. But it is better to do good than to fear evil. It is he who breaks the laws who must accept the consequences. It appears to me that I have injured none except myself and, although I must meet in lives to come the consequence of having broken even human laws, I do not doubt that the service I have rendered will provide me strength with which to meet and overcome thekarma. We can not doallthe self-cleansing inonelife. It is enough that we do what we can, and serve others.”
“I am sorry I spoke. I beg your pardon.”
The Lama looked keenly at Ommony. “My son, it is not within your power to offend me, even if you had the wish to give offense, which I perceive is not so. I would not impose on you an account of my fumblings with duty, if it were not that you are entitled to sufficient facts on which to base your judgment of whatyourduty may be. I endeavor to be brief.
“Life—right living is Art, my son, not artifice, and not an accumulation of possessions, or of power, but a giving forth of inner qualities. San-fun-ho has had encouragement to exercise herself in all the arts; she will not be deceived by the many who will deny the merit of her art—no more than the lamp’s flame is deceived by darkness.
“Above all, drama! Drama is the way to teach. All life is drama; and by allegories, parables and illustrations men learn easily what no amount of argument will drive into their understanding. Because of sympathy, compassion and a knowledge of what difficulties and what ignorance the greatest and the least most face, mychelacan play all parts. She understands. She knows the difference between the higher and the lower, and is not to be deceived by noise, or fear, or any man’s opinion.
“Nor can her head be turned by flattery; for I have let men tempt her in the subtlest ways, they not knowing that they tempted. The superstitious worship those whose art excels their own—until the time comes when they meditate murder, and slander, (which is more cruel than murder) because they grow weary of emulation. And worship is the most poisonous of all corruption, to him who is the object of it. When an Ahbor, who was bribed by some ambitious men, broke away and stole a fragment of the Jade of Ahbor, and I learned that there were plans on foot to seduce men into all kinds of superstition with its aid, I seized that opportunity.
“I let word go forth through secret channels into India that she who is the rightful priestess of the Jade will come and find it. For there was never a doubt about that, my son. I knew I could trace the fragment and lay my hand on it. I seized that opportunity. I led mychela, clothed as a boy, for she can play all parts, on a journey into India, as you know. And, my son, I have made many errors in my day; I am but an old man seeking, through the cloud of ignorance, to do my duty, knowing what the duty is, but often misled by my own unwisdom. There were times, while mychelawas growing, when I dreamed of triumphs for her among India’s millions. In those deluded moods it had appeared to me—although none had better right than I to know the contrary—that if she should seize on the imagination of the East, which might very easily be done, the East would rise out of its ignorance and teach the West. I did not see, in those deluded hours, that the East would become filled with a self-righteousness that would be even worse, if that were possible, than what consumes the West and, seeking to throw off its conquerors, would plunge the whole world into war. You have heard of Gandhi? That is a man of singleness and merit, seeking, as it were, to hasten the precession of the equinox.
“Even as Gandhi has made mistakes, I made them, though with less excuse. During the lonely months when San-fun-ho was with Hannah Sanburn at Tilgaun I used to journey into India with staff and begging-bowl, making my preparations for the day when San-fun-ho should teach an awakening multitude. Unwise—and the unwisdom multiplied by zeal! I raised too many expectations.
“He, who had come to me before, came once again rebuking me. I told him of this and that which I had done, expecting praise. He said to me: ‘Blood will flow. It will be you to whom the dead may look for recompense. How soon can you repay them all?’ And I said: ‘But I have promised. If I fail, will they not look to me for the fulfilment?’ Buthesaid: ‘Which is better? To fail to do evil, and to eat the fruit of disappointment; or to do great evil, and to interfere with destiny, and then to eat the fruit of that? I tell you, San-fun-ho will light a flame too fierce for India; but in the West she may do some good; and the East may imitate the West, but the West will not imitate the East for many a year to come, being too proud and too full of energy.’
“And then I asked him: ‘Who shall shield her in the West? Lo, I have made these friends for her in India that she may have a foundation to begin with when the time comes.’ To which he answered: ‘Is a dollar without friends? And is she less than a dollar? Moreover, there will come to you a man of her own race, who can serve her better than you when his turn comes. He will know less, but he will have the qualities she needs. Be on the watch for him, and when you think you have found him, put him to many tests.’
“So, as I told you, I took mychelainto India, recovering the piece of jade, and making use of my mistakes for the testing of San-fun-ho, since even a man’s mistakes are useful, if he has the will to conquer false pride. And you have seen, my son, that mychela’shead was not turned, even though we traveled with great evidence of secret influence, which is a very subtle agent of corruption. You have seen how women broke the rules of caste to approach her; how men of high position trembled in her presence; how the crowd shouted to see more of her; how her voice stilled anger and turned violence into peace. Yet she was always my patient and obedientchela, was she not? And you shall see—at dawn to-morrow you shall see whether all that glamour of success has or has not dimmed her character by as much as the mist of a man’s breath on a mirror.”
The Lama looked at Ommony for a long time, repeatedly almost closing his eyes and then opening them suddenly, as if to catch some fleeting expression unawares.
“And when you came, my son, hiding in Chutter Chand’s shop. When I knew the piece of the jade had reached your hands. When Benjamin sent word that you were spying on me. Then, it seemed to me that in spite of many faults you might be the man whom I must test. I have tested you in more ways than you guess, and I have seen all your faults, not least of which is a certain pride of righteousness. But San-fun-ho knows how to deal with that. Now think. Answer without self-seeking and without fear, truly. For I offer you my place, as San-fun-ho’s protector and servant, to guard her that she may serve the world. My time has come to die.”
A man is what he is. He starts from where he is. He may progress, or he may retrogress. All effort in his own behalf is dead weight in the scale against him. All effort in behalf of others is a profit to himself; notwithstanding which, unless he first improve himself he can do nothing except harm to others. There is no power in the universe, nor any form of intercession that can separate a cause from its effect, action from reaction, or a man from retribution for his deeds.From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
A man is what he is. He starts from where he is. He may progress, or he may retrogress. All effort in his own behalf is dead weight in the scale against him. All effort in behalf of others is a profit to himself; notwithstanding which, unless he first improve himself he can do nothing except harm to others. There is no power in the universe, nor any form of intercession that can separate a cause from its effect, action from reaction, or a man from retribution for his deeds.
From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER XXXI
Ommonysat still. Diana growled and chased some creature of imagination in her dreams. The Lama threw wood on the fire, and watched it as if he were much more interested in the outcome of that than in what answer Ommony might make.
“What makes you think I could do it?” Ommony asked, half stunned by the suggestion, vaguely and uncomfortably conscious that he was being invited to make himself the butt of half a world’s ridicule, if of nothing worse.
“A flea—a mouse—a drop of water—a piece of wood—can do its duty,” said the Lama. “Is a man less?”
“I will do mine,” said Ommony, “if I can see it. But good God, man—how can I takeyourplace?”
“She—and they—can go to India very easily, my son, without you. They are all provided for. They will never lack for money. It may be you are not the right man to be mychela’sfriend and in that case it is better for you, and for her, and for the world that you accept no burden you can not bear.
“Do not deceive yourself, my son. There will be no personal ease, no basking in the stupifying rays of flattery. You will be accused of all the evil motives that lurk in the minds of your accusers. Lecherous men will accuse you of lying when you say she is your niece; and you can not prove the relationship. Thieves will accuse you of theft. Ambitious men will denounce your ambition. Traitors will accuse you of treachery toward the human race. Bigots will charge you with unpatriotic scheming. Men of outwardly unblemished aspect, but whose secret thoughts are viler than the froth of cess-pools, will accuse you of secretly immoral practises. They will leave you not a shred of reputation. They will try to impoverish you; they will try to prove you insane; they will try to put you in prison.”
“Very well,” said Ommony. “I will do my best.” He nodded, thrusting his stubborn jaw forward. The Lama could have said nothing better calculated to persuade him.
“And you will find,” the Lama went on, nodding back at him, “here and there are men and women, who will accept what San-fun-ho can teach. Some of those will be traitors, who will try to learn in order that they may set up themselves as teachers and accumulate money and fame. Those will be your most dangerous enemies. But some will be honest and steadfast, and they will encourage others; for the West is moving forward on a cycle of evolution; and moreover, it is growing very weary of its own creeds and politics and competition. It begins to be ready at last to put the horse before the cart, instead of the cart before the horse as hitherto. There is a great change coming—although this is Kali Yuga, and it is not wisdom to expect too much. The harvest takes care of itself—none knows how many generations hence. This is a time for the sowing of the seeds of thought on which a whole world’s destiny depends. I have sown my handful. I can sow no more.”
“What makes you so sure you are going to die?” asked Ommony.
“The Ahbors, my son, will attend to it, for I have broken their law. I made them promises which I intend to break; I knew that I must, when I made the promises. There is that in me that blinded me to any other way out of the difficulty, and although I did my duty, that does not preserve me from the effects of wrong-doing. The Ahbors have their rights. This is their country. They protect this monastery and its secrets. They have protected me. Of my own free will I have availed myself of their protection and their law against admitting strangers. Do you remember Socrates, who broke the law of the Athenians, although he did his duty? He might have escaped after they condemned him, but he refused, although his friends insisted. And Socrates did well, my son; he had no right to avoid the consequences of his own acts; it was enough that he had told the Athenians some great truths, for he knew those truths, and it was the proper time to tell; if the Athenians had a law against telling the truth, that was their affair, not his. Socrates drank his poison, which was a simple little matter, and soon over with. Does it appear to you that the Athenians have even yet finished suffering from the injustice they inflicted?”
“But the Athenians could think. These Ahbors are mere savages,” said Ommony.
“The Ahbors have their rights,” the Lama answered. “They work out their own destiny. I work out mine. If I had been a wiser man, less blinded by my lower nature, I could have found a better way to save mychelathan by deceiving the Ahbors. But Iwasblind, so I took the only way I could. When I return to earth again, I am convinced I shall be less blind; and at least I shall owe no debt to the Ahbors, for I will pay it now.”
“Why not leave all that to destiny?” Ommony objected.
“My son, there is no other judge in whose hands Icanleave it! But destiny judges a man’s unwillingness to pay, as surely as it judges his mistakes—as surely as it rewards his hidden motives and his honesty. There is no thought hidden from the Higher Law, and no escape from rebirth, time and time again, until each individual learns wisdom by experience. The Ahbors will learn wisdom, some sooner than others; but they will not learn it by being deprived of opportunity to use their own judgment. If they choose to kill me, they must inevitably suffer; but I would rather they should kill me than that they should have killed that child, and for more than one reason. They can do very little harm by killing me; the wrong will not amount to much, because I bear no resentment. If they had killed her, they would have robbed the world.”
“You haveyourrights,” Ommony objected. “You’re worth more than the Ahbors.”
But the Lama’s eyes twinkled humorously. “My son, you argue ignorantly, meaning well enough, but reckoning without the facts.”
“For instance?”
“You would not understand. My course is necessary—never mind why, my son. It was entirely necessary for you to come to this place of your own free will; otherwise it would have been impossible for me to open your mind. I could have talked to you for ten years in India, and you would never have understood. But it was also necessary to provide for your admission to the valley, and for your safe return to India after I am dead. You were admitted because I told the Ahbors about your talking dog, and because I gave my own life as hostage, saying they might slay me if you should ever escape from the valley alive. I did that, knowing they would slay me in any event, when they should learn that San-fun-ho and the others have left the valley for ever. You see, my son, it is necessary I should die, in order to consume as soon as possible the consequences of an untruth. As for the Ahbors; they are very ignorant, but faithful to their valley and their own law, generous toward this monastery: it is better that they should kill me, than that they should be faithless to their laws and to their trust. I will do all I can to minimize the consequences for them.”
A monk came in again with food, and once more the Lama amused himself by feeding Diana. “Make her do tricks,” he insisted, and rewarded her with handfuls of food after each performance, he and the monk laughing as if it were the most interesting and amusing business in the world. The sun had gone down over the mountains and there was a gloom within the chamber that affected Ommony’s nerves, for it seemed to foretell tragedy, but the Lama apparently had not a trouble on his mind. The moment the monk had gone Ommony began questioning:
“Does Elsa—I mean, does San-fun-ho know anything about your plans?”
“Enough, my son. A little. She understands she has a destiny. She understands she is to take you with her into India.”
The Lama rose to his feet, as if to avoid further conversation; but Ommony shot one more question at him:
“Does she know you expect to be killed?”
The Lama did not answer. His wrinkled face became expressionless.
“Where is she now?” asked Ommony.
“Come.”
The Lama led the way, in deepening gloom, along the wooden gallery that overhung the ravine, and through a door into the monastery, which appeared to be a patchwork nest of caves and buildings connected by passages hewn in the rock. Some of it appeared as old as time, but parts were medieval; some was almost modern. There was an air of economically conserved affluence and studied chastity of design—beauty everywhere, but less laid on than inherent in proportions and the almost exquisite restraint.
Pictures were hung on the plastered corridor walls at widely spaced intervals, apparently all drawn by the same hand. The Lama stopped for a second in front of one of them, done in pastel on paper: a study of an eagle soaring, balancing himself to catch the uplift of the changing wind. It might have been done by a Chinaman a thousand years ago, it was so full of life, truth and movement and, above all, so superbly beautiful.
“Mychela!” he said, and smiled, and passed on.
At one place, where the corridor turned at right angles and a lamp hung in chains from the ceiling, there was another pastel drawing, a portrait this one, of the Lama himself.
“Wrinkles and all!” he said, chuckling.
He stood beside Ommony and studied the portrait for more than a minute; it seemed to amuse him as much as it astonished Ommony, who caught his breath.
“My God!” Ommony exclaimed. “That’s—”
“Yes,” said the Lama, chuckling. “That old person was my God once. It takes us long to learn. But San-fun-ho drew the picture, and I saw myself through the eyes of mychela, which are very interesting. Notice, my son, how affectionate she is, and yet how truthful. Not one hidden foolishness escapes her; and she sets it all down. Yet she is as gentle as the rain on dry hills.”
He passed on, opened a door, glanced in, and motioned Ommony to enter.
“School-room!” he said, and chuckled again, as if remembering a chain of incidents.
It looked about as much unlike a school-room as it would be easy to imagine. There was nobody in there, but it was lighted with kerosene lamps as if visitors were expected. Across the full width of the room at one end was a stage, provided with curtain, footlights, wings and painted scenery. There were comfortable seats and small, square, solid tables on the floor for twenty or thirty people; and there was a gallery, at the end opposite the stage, for twenty or thirty more. The place was scrupulously clean and tidy.
“Life, my son, is drama. Why teach how to drug the mind, when the purpose of life is to render it alert and active? Shakespeare was right. You remember? ‘All the world’s a stage.’ No learning is of any value unless we can translate it into action. Bad thoughts produce hideous action; right thinking produces grace and symmetry; and the audience is almost as important as the play. Let the child act the part of a villain, and it learns to strive to be a hero; let the hero’s part be a reward for genuine effort, and lo! sincerity becomes the goal. There have been plays enacted here that would have thrilled Shakespeare to the marrow of his manhood. San-fun-ho wrote most of them.”
“Who were the audience?” asked Ommony.
“Monks—Ahbors. The stupider the better. Let the actors strive to act so simply and sincerely that even monks and savages can understand. There have been plays acted on this stage that I think would have converted even Christian missionaries from the error of their own self-righteousness.”
He led the way out again along the corridor, and now he began to hurry, striding with the regular, long movements of a mountaineer. He had suddenly thrown off fifty years again, in one of those strange resurrections of youth that seemed to sweep over him at intervals. Ommony, with Diana at his heels, had all he could do to keep pace.
However, there were pauses. He opened doors here and there along echoing corridors, giving Ommony a glimpse of rooms, each one of which had some connection with the belovedchela. There was a bedroom, as plain and almost as severely furnished as a monastery cell, only that every single item in it was as perfect as material and craftsmanship could contrive, and the proportions, the color, and something else that was indefinable, produced an atmosphere of unconditioned peace. There was nothing out of place, and no unnecessary object in the room. The walls were pale daffodil-yellow; the Chinese rug was blue; the bed-spread was old-rose. There were flowers in a Ming vase on a small square table, but no other ornament.
“These walls will not forget her,” said the Lama. There was an agony within him, as his voice betrayed.
He led the way along a corridor, opening doors of rooms where thechela’scompanions had slept, making no comment. Those other rooms were more ornate than thechela’sand vaguely, indefinably less beautiful;—there was more furniture—less character—but tidiness and cleanliness beyond belief.
The monastery was honeycombed into a limestone mountain’s heart. It was enormous. There was possibly accommodation for a thousand people, with perfect ventilation and no dampness, although how that was contrived did not appear. Nor was there any sign of its inhabitants, nor any sound, except the shuffling of Ommony’s loose shoes and the solid thump of the Lama’s bare feet as he strode with bowed head and the skirts of his long robe swinging.
They descended a long, hewn stairway presently and emerged, through a door a foot thick that was carved on both sides with dragons, into the open air. The rush and roar of water pouring into hollow caverns greeted them. They were now on that side of the monastery that Ommony had first seen, with the terraced amphitheater below them, but it was too dark to peer into its depths. The stars blinked down above a rim of mountains. “There will be a full moon,” said the Lama, a propos, apparently, of nothing.
He led down into the dark amphitheater, by paths and steps that linked the circling terraces, and turned, midway, into a tunnel whose dark opening was like an ink-blot in the shadow of rocks and trees. Ten yards along the tunnel Ommony heard him fumbling with a lock; a door swung almost silently; the Lama took him by the hand and pulled him forward, closing the door but not locking it. Then, in such utter darkness that all the senses were almost swallowed by it and Diana whimpered, the Lama led, pauseless, holding Ommony’s hand as if it were a child’s. The old man’s grip was like a swordsman’s, as if his vanished youth, reborn for the moment, were burning him up. The strange thrill that was consuming him communicated itself to Ommony through the linked hands.
At the end of an immeasurable distance—(there was no sense of time or space in that impenetrable darkness)—they emerged into gloom under an oval patch of starlit sky, on a ledge, an incalculable distance down the inside of a limestone pit—somber, irregularly circular, enormous. The Lama sat down on a mat that somebody had placed for him—signed—and Ommony sat down beside him, on the same mat.
“Let the dog not wander away. Bid her lie here,” he said, in a normal voice.
As Ommony’s eyes grew gradually used to the gloom he discerned that they were very near the bottom of the pit, whose almost perpendicular flanks rose so high that the stars appeared like bright dots on a dark-blue dome that rested on the summit. His own breathing seemed abominably noisy in the silence.
In front of where they sat there was a sheer drop, but the bottom did not seem to be more than fifty feet below; and somewhere in the midst of the almost circular space into which he gazed there was an object, bulky, of no ascertainable shape, and apparently raised on a platform of rock so as to be almost on a level with the ledge on which they sat. Diana lay still, sniffing, one ear raised; there were humans not far away.
Presently there was a sound below—apparently a footstep, and Diana growled at it. A lantern appeared, but it was impossible to tell whether the individual who carried it was man or woman. There were several more footsteps, and one word in a clear voice—instantly recognizable—thechela’s. There began to be a prodigious phantom movement in the gloom. Something—a great black cloth apparently—was pulled by many hands and the shape of the object in the center changed. The lantern-light was reflected in a sea-green pin-point that spread and increased as the moonlight spreads on water, but much more fiery, and full of weird movement. The lantern suddenly went out, but the peculiar green glow had made such an impression that with his eyes shut, Ommony could still see evolving, glowing green.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The Jade of Ahbor.”
The Lama’s voice was solemn. He seemed almost to resent the question. However he went on speaking in a low voice.
“That fragment, that was broken off and stolen by an Ahbor, has been set back, but there is none nowadays who knows how to heal the break. There is a blemish. Thus one ignorant fool can spoil the product of a thousand wise men’s labor. But that Ahbor was no better and no worse than they who ruin reputations, to possess an hour’s self-righteousness. Others who should know better, will try to break mychela’sspirit when the time comes—some for their own amusement, some for profit, some because they hate the truth. But she is made of stronger stuff than stone.”
His self-control was not so perfect as it had been. The last few words were in a tone of voice that fought with overwhelming sadness.
Ommony was about to ask a question when the Lama spoke again:
“My son, rememberthis: the highest motive is of no avail without proportion and a sense of fitness; because these are the life of wisdom. Time is a delusion. All is the eternal Now. But in a world in which all is delusion, of which time is a controlling element, there is a proper time for all things. We can not mount the camel that has passed us, nor the camel that has not yet come. Neither does the water that has gone by turn the mill-wheel. He who feels the force of destiny within him, waits, as birds wait for the sunrise—as the seed waits for the spring. It is not enough to do the right thing. If the full moon shines at midday, what does it accomplish? If the drum beats out of time, what happens to the symphony? To discern the right time, and to act precisely then, is as important as the knowledgehowto act. But discernment does not come by reason of desire; it comes by observation of essential truths—as that the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons and the tides keep their appointed path, and when they fail there is disaster. This is an appointed time. Mark well.”
The somber silence and the ragged flanks of the pit, that towered upward through a million shapeless shadows to the star-pierced oval summit, combined to inspire dread—but of what? Ommony could feel Diana trembling.
The Lama spoke again after a long pause, as dispassionately as a big clock ticking in the dark—asserting measured, elemental facts.
“Remember. Remember each word, my son. I speak with death not far from me. At dawn the Ahbors go to the northern end of the valley, by the Tsangpo Falls, to await my coming. At noon I meet them.”
He was silent for many minutes. Not until the silence had grown almost unendurable did he go on speaking.
“Lest the Ahbors harm themselves by slaying more than me, who am responsible, I have sent into Tibet all but a few of my monastery people. At noon I will try to reach agreement with the Ahbors, that if they slay me, for having broken their law, they shall permit the others to return to the monastery, and a new Lama to be sent to hold authority. But as to the outcome of that I know nothing. It may be that the Jade must be hidden by the Tsangpo waters. There is a time for all things; it is not my province to know the time for that; there are others whose province it is.”
He stared into the dark in front of him. When he spoke again, at the end of five minutes, his voice sounded almost as if he had left his body and were speaking to it and to Ommony.
“Remember every word. Those few, who have remained, are chosen men, who know the secret way. They will take you into India—you, San-fun-ho and all the Europeanchelasto Tilgaun—the Tibetanchelasinto Tibet by the route that leads through Sikhim, becausetheyhave a destiny that they can best fulfill in Tibet.”
Followed another tense silence, broken by the long-drawn howl of an animal somewhere on the ledges half a mile above them. It sounded lonelier than the wail of a forgotten soul.
“I am not the guardian of Hannah Sanburn. Even as you and I, my son, she governs her own destiny. But she is good. No harm can come if she should leave Tilgaun, because she has done her work there, and it is another’s turn. There is one who will take my place as trustee; he will present himself; I have written his appointment. There is one who will take her place; perhaps she is that one at whose house you were in Delhi; but that is Hannah Sanburn’s business. There is one who will take your place; but that isyouraffair. No man is indispensable. He who clings to the performance of a duty when the work is done and another waits to carry evolution forward, is as the fungus on the living tree. He rots. The tree rots under him.”
Silence again. A wedge of silver, creeping down the western side of the pit, dispersed the shadows and threw great fangs of limestone into high relief; but that was very far above them. “Where they sat it seemed darker than ever.
“Remember every word, my son. I speak in the portal of death. I do not say that Hannah Sanburn shall go with you to the West. That may, or it may not be. I do say, tarry not in Tilgaun, because this is an appointed time. Three of the lesserchelaswill go with San-fun-ho to the West. Letherselect them. Let the others stay in Tilgaun, where as much awaits them as they have the character to do.”
The beast in the dark loneliness above them howled again. Ommony sat watching the forerunner of the moonlight chasing shadows down the pit-side—wondering. After nearly a quarter of a century in India he and Hannah Sanburn would be almost as much strangers in the West as San-fun-ho would be.
“There is a fitness in all things and a time for all things,” said the Lama, as if he had read Ommony’s mind. “But a great faith is required, and a sincerity that like the temper of the steel turns faith into a ready weapon and impenetrable armor. Hannah Sanburn has nobility. It may be, she may help you to serve San-fun-ho. But beware, my son, of the snare of personality. If ye two seek to serve each other, ye are like the two sides of a triangle that has no base, nor any purpose. But if ye both serve San-fun-ho, and she the world, the triangle is perfect.” He paused again, then slowly turned his head and looked into Ommony’s eyes. His own were like blue jewels burning in the dark.
“Without you,” he said, “or without her, San-fun-ho will find others. She is mychela, and I know the power that is in her. But beware of being false! Better for you never to have been born! Better to die ten thousand deaths than to betray her through self-seeking! Let her alone, my son, unless you can follow all the way! Then, if she should lead you wrong, that will be her affair; in after livesyouwill havekarmaof sincerity, andshethe fruit of false teaching—if sheshouldteach falsely.—But I know mychela. She will lead upward, as an eagle, and all the enemies of light will spread their nets for her in vain!”
As he ceased speaking the whole western wall of the gigantic pit became suffused in silver, as the moon’s edge crossed the eastern rim. Wan, scrawny crags of limestone yearned like frozen ghosts toward the light. The pit’s awful nakedness lay revealed, its outlines dimmed in shadow, as mysterious, as silent and as measureless as the emotion born of gazing.
Suddenly, as the moon’s disk appeared, there shone a green light in the midst of the pit—a light that swirled as if in moving water, and increased in size, as if it multiplied itself within the substance it had touched. It grew into a pool—a globe—a sphere—an ovoid mass of liquid green light, all in motion, transparent, huge—afloat, it seemed, in black precipitated silence, two, or perhaps three hundred feet away. Slowly, very slowly, it became apparent that the egg-shaped mass was resting on seven upright stones, of the same color as itself, that were set beneath it on a platform of dark rock that rose exactly in the middle of the pit.
As the full moon floated into view the enormous mass of jade so caught the light that it seemed to absorb all of it. And suddenly a figure stood before the livid jade—a girl’s; she was the Gretchen-girl, with whom Ommony had spoken on the night when he first saw San-fun-ho’s companions on the stage. She was draped in white, but the stuff glowed green in the jade’s reflection, and as she peered into the enormous stone she held the end of the loose drapery across the lower portion of her face, like a shield, with her elbow forward. She gazed for about a minute, and then disappeared. Another took her place.
“It is only San-fun-ho who dares to look into the Jade for long,” said the Lama solemnly. “It shows them all the horror of their lower selves.Theylook by moonlight.Theymust drape themselves, for they have much to overcome, and there is magic in the Jade. None but mychela—none but San-fun-ho—dares to face it in the full light of the sun.”
One by one the seventeen girls appeared, looked deep into the Jade, and vanished into darkness.
“They are not bad,” said the Lama. “Not bad, my son. There are not so many better women. Doyoudare to look?”
But Ommony sat still.
“Better so,” said the Lama. “In curiosity there is no wisdom. He who can not look long enough to see his higher nature shining through the lower, had better have seen nothing.”
There commenced a chant, of women’s voices, rising from the fathomless darkness below the Jade. It began by being low and almost melancholy, but changed suddenly into faster tempo and a rising theme of triumph, ending in a measured march of glory. There was no accompaniment, no drum-beat, but the final phrases pulsed with power, ending on a chord that left imagination soaring into upper realms of splendor. Then, in silence, as sublimely as the moon had sailed across the rim of the dark pit, the girls emerged out of the black night as if they had been projected by a magic lantern. No sound of footfall or of breathing reached across the intervening gap as, with restraint that told of strength in hand and limitless lore of rhythm, they danced their weaving measure seven times around the stone, as lovely to the eye as Grecian figures, cut in cameo on green and conjured into life. It was sheer spiritual magic.
There was not a wasted motion, not a step but symbolized the ordered, infinitely beautiful evolving of a universe; and as they passed behind the glowing jade their figures seemed to swim within the stone, as if they were nymphs afloat in moonlit water. But there was no sign yet of San-fun-ho.
“They shall remember this night!” said the Lama.
The fire within the Jade grew dim and died as the moon’s edge passed beyond the crags. The girls vanished in black darkness.
“And so, you have seen the Jade. Few have seen that,” said the Lama. “And you will find that there are very few who will believe you have seen it; but that is no harm, becausemostof those who would believe are merely credulous, of the sort who hunt miracles and seek to make themselves superior by short-cuts. Whereas there are no short-cuts, and there is no superiority of the sort they crave, but only a gradual increase of responsibility, which is attained by earned self-mastery.”
Suddenly a voice came from the pit beneath them, clear and confident,—thechela’s:
“O Tsiang Samdup!”
The Lama answered with a monosyllable, his body rigid with emotion. His dim outline was like an eagle’s startled from his aerie in the night.
“O Tsiang Samdup, the Ahbors have come for a conference. They ask for word with you.”
“Cover the Jade,” he answered.
There was presently a phantom movement, shapeless and billowy, as if a huge black cloth were being hauled back into place; and then the rain came, softly, steadily, until the air grew full of music made by little cataracts that splashed from rock to rock. The Lama sighed and, for a moment, his outline seemed to shrink as old age claimed him, but he threw that off and stood up, motioning to Ommony to move back under shelter of the rock.
“Wait there,” he commanded, and vanished. Ommony could hear him climbing down into the darkness—and presently two voices as he talked in low tones with thechela. Then, silence, for a very long time, only broken by the music of the rain and a weird wind sighing on the upper ledges until wind and rain ceased, and there was only the tinkle of dripping water.
The dog crept close to Ommony for warmth, shivering at the loneliness. Ommony tried to memorize the Lama’s conversation. He had almost forgotten the Jade. It was nothing as compared to the tremendous issues that the Lama dealt in. Thought groped in an unseen future. The sensation was of waiting on the threshold of a new world—waiting to be born. The past lost all reality. The world he had known—war—selfishness—corruption—was a nightmare, wrought of hopelessness and full of useless aims. The future? It was his—his own—immensely personal to him. He was about to be born again into the old world, but with an utterly new consciousness of values. He knew he had a duty in the world; but he could not formulate it—would not know how to begin—only knew it was immensely dark and silent on the threshold.
The Lama’s voice broke silence, speaking to thechelasomewhere in the pit below:
“The first duty of achelais obedience!”
Silence again. Not even wind or rain to break the stillness. At last the Lama’s figure, like a shadow issuing from nothing, approaching along the ledge and sitting down near him—but not near enough for conversation. Then, after a very long pause, thechela’svoice, resonant and clear from somewhere in the distance:
“O Tsiang Samdup! I obey. Andtheyobeyme. May I wait until the dawn? It is not long.”
The Lama gave assent—one monosyllable—then groaned, and came and sat closer to Ommony.
“My work is done,” he said. “There is a limit to endurance.”
He glanced up at the sky, but there was no sign yet of dawn.
A low chant came from the distance—almost like the humming of a swarm of bees, but the Lama took no notice of it.
“She will go with you, thinking I come later. You may tell her in Tilgaun, and she will understand. She will be brave then. She will not forget she was mychela.”
There was only the sound of humming after that until the crags around the rim of the great pit grew faintly luminous before the coming of the dawn, and the stars grew paler. Then the hum swelled into song, whose music sounded like the mystic evolution of new worlds; they were all girls’ voices, thrilling with courage and exultation. Ommony strained his ears to catch the words, but the distance was too great. Somehow, although he could not penetrate the darkness, he felt as if a veil were lifting.
The song ceased, and in the hush that followed Tsiang Samdup rose to his feet.
“I go,” he said quietly. “I am old, my son. I can not bear to say good-by to my belovedchela. May the gods, who guard your manhood, give you strength and honesty to serve her. She will ask for me. You may say to her: ‘The first duty of achelais obedience.’ ”
He turned into the tunnel, walking swiftly, and was gone. A silver bell rang, over in the distance, opposite, seven times, slow and distinct; then a pause, in which the overtones spread off into infinity; then seven times again. And as the last note faded into silence, dawn touched the crags with silver and thechela’svoice rose young and glorious, intoning the oldest invocation in the world:
“O my Divinity, blend Thou with me . . . that out of darkness I may go forth in Light.”
Daylight spread swiftly down the crags until it touched a ledge on which thechelastood, and all beneath that was darkness, like a pool of ink. Her right hand was raised. The other girls, beneath her, were invisible. Dawn glistened on her face.
Her lips moved and her breast swelled as she drew breath to intone the Word. And then, in chorus from the mist and darkness that enwrapped her feet, and from her own lips, came the magic, long-drawn syllable that has been sacred since before Atlantis sank under the ocean and new races explored new continents—the Word that signifies immeasurable, absolute, unthinkable, all-compassing, for ever infinite and unattainable, sublime and holy Essence—the Beginning and the End.
“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-om-m-m-m-m—”
It rose, and rose, and died away among the crags, until the last reverberation echoed faintly from the upper levels and there came an answer to it, sonorous and strong, in a man’s voice, from a crag beside a cave-mouth three hundred feet above the ledge where Ommony stood, nearly midway between him and thechela.
“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-om-m-m-m-m!”
The Lama raised his right hand in a final benediction, turned into the cave and vanished. Then thechela’svoice—calling to Ommony as dawn sank deep into the pit, revealing her companions on a ledge below:
“O Gupta Rao—change your name now! Wait for me. I am coming—Tsiang Samdup bids us go forth together!”
THE END
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.