To what had I committed myself? She knew her strength and had no fears.I could scarcely realize that she had liking enough for me to make theoffer. That it meant no shade more than she had said I knew well. Shewas safe, but what was to be the result for me? I knew nothing—she wasa beloved mystery.“Strange she is and secret, Strange her eyes; her cheeks arecold as cold sea-shells.”
Yet I would risk it, for I knew there was no hope if I let her go now, and if I saw her again, some glimmer might fall upon my dark.
Next day this reached me:—Dear Mr. Clifden,—
I am going to some Indian friends for a time. On the 15th of June I shall be at Srinagar in Kashmir. A friend has allowed me to take her little houseboat, the “Kedarnath.” If you like this plan we will share the cost for two months. I warn you it is not luxurious, but I think you will like it. I shall do this whether you come or no, for I want a quiet time before I take up my nursing in Lahore. In thinking of all this will you remember that I am not a girl but a woman. I shall be twenty-nine my next birthday. Sincerely yours, VANNA LORING.
P.S. But I still think you would be wiser not to come. I hope to hear you will not.
I replied only this:—Dear Miss Loring,—I think I understand the position fully. I will be there. I thank you with all my heart. Gratefully yours, STEPHEN CLIFDEN.
IV
Three days later I met Lady Meryon, and was swept in to tea. Her manner was distinctly more cordial as she mentioned casually that Vanna had left—she understood to take up missionary work—“which is odd,” she added with a woman’s acrimony, “for she had no more in common with missionaries than I have, and that is saying a good deal. Of course she speaks Hindustani perfectly, and could be useful, but I haven’t grasped the point of it yet.” I saw she counted on my knowing nothing of the real reason of Vanna’s going and left it, of course, at that. The talk drifted away under my guidance. Vanna evidently puzzled her. She half feared, and wholly misunderstood her.
No message came to me, as time went by, and for the time she had vanished completely, but I held fast to her promise and lived on that only.
I take up my life where it ceased to be a mere suspense and became life once more.
On the 15th of June, I found myself riding into Srinagar in Kashmir, through the pure tremulous green of the mighty poplars that hedge the road into the city. The beauty of the country had half stunned me when I entered the mountain barrier of Baramula and saw the snowy peaks that guard the Happy Valley, with the Jhelum flowing through its tranquil loveliness. The flush of the almond blossom was over, but the iris, like a blue sea of peace had overflowed the world—the azure meadows smiled back at the radiant sky. Such blossom! the blue shading into clear violet, like a shoaling sea. The earth, like a cup held in the hand of a god, brimmed with the draught of youth and summer and—love? But no, for me the very word was sinister. Vanna’s face, immutably calm, confronted it.
That night I slept in a boat at Sopor, and I remember that, waking at midnight, I looked out and saw a mountain with a gloriole of hazy silver about it, misty and faint as a cobweb threaded with dew. The river, there spreading into a lake, was dark under it, flowing in a deep smooth blackness of shadow, and everything awaited—what? And even while I looked, the moon floated serenely above the peak, and all was bathed in pure light, the water rippling and shining in broken silver and pearl. So had Vanna floated into my sky, luminous, sweet, remote. I did not question my heart any more. I knew I loved her.
Two days later I rode into Srinagar, and could scarcely see the wild beauty of that strange Venice of the East, my heart was so beating in my eyes. I rode past the lovely wooden bridges where the balconied houses totter to each other across the canals in dim splendour of carving and age; where the many-coloured native life crowds down to the river steps and cleanses its flower-bright robes, its gold-bright brass vessels in the shining stream, and my heart said only—Vanna, Vanna!
One day, one thought, of her absence had taught me what she was to me, and if humility and patient endeavor could raise me to her feet, I was resolved that I would spend my life in labor and think it well spent.
My servant dismounted and led his horse, asking from every one where the “Kedarnath” could be found, and eager black eyes sparkled and two little bronze images detached themselves from the crowd of boys, and ran, fleet as fauns, before us.
Above the last bridge the Jhelum broadens out into a stately river, controlled at one side by the banked walk known as the Bund, with the Club House upon it and the line of houseboats beneath. Here the visitors flutter up and down and exchange the gossip, the bridge appointments, the little dinners that sit so incongruously on the pure Orient that is Kashmir.
She would not be here. My heart told me that, and sure enough the boys were leading across the bridge and by a quiet shady way to one of the many backwaters that the great river makes in the enchanting city. There is one waterway stretching on afar to the Dal Lake. It looks like a river—it is the very haunt of peace. Under those mighty chenar, or plane trees, that are the glory of Kashmir, clouding the water with deep green shadows, the sun can scarcely pierce, save in a dipping sparkle here and there to intensify the green gloom. The murmur of the city, the chatter of the club, are hundreds of miles away. We rode downward under the towering trees, and dismounting, saw a little houseboat tethered to the bank. It was not of the richer sort that haunts the Bund, where the native servants follow in a separate boat, and even the electric light is turned on as part of the luxury. This was a long low craft, very broad, thatched like a country cottage afloat. In the forepart lived the native owner, and his family, their crew, our cooks and servants; for they played many parts in our service. And in the afterpart, room for a life, a dream, the joy or curse & many days to be.
But then, I saw only one thing—Vanna sat under the trees, reading, or looking at the cool dim watery vista, with a single boat, loaded to the river’s edge with melons and scarlet tomatoes, punting lazily down to Srinagar in the sleepy afternoon.
She was dressed in white with a shady hat, and her delicate dark face seemed to glow in the shadow like the heart of a pale rose. For the first time I knew she was beautiful. Beauty shone in her like the flame in an alabaster lamp, serene, diffused in the very air about her, so that to me she moved in a mild radiance. She rose to meet me with both hands outstretched—the kindest, most cordial welcome. Not an eyelash flickered, not a trace of self-consciousness. If I could have seen her flush or tremble—but no—her eyes were clear and calm as a forest pool. So I remembered her. So I saw her once more.
I tried, with a hopeless pretence, to follow her example and hide what I felt, where she had nothing to hide.
“What a place you have found. Why, it’s like the deep heart of a wood!”
“Yes, I saw it once when I was here with the Meryons. But we lay at the Bund then—just under the Club. This is better. Did you like the ride up?”
I threw myself on the grass beside her with a feeling of perfect rest.
“It was like a new heaven and a new earth. What a country!”
The very spirit of Quiet seemed to be drowsing in those branches towering up into the blue, dipping their green fingers into the crystal of the water. What a heaven!
“Now you shall have your tea and then I will show you your rooms,” she said, smiling at my delight. “We shall stay here a few days more that you may see Srinagar, and then they tow us up into the Dal Lake opposite the Gardens of the Mogul Emperors. And if you think this beautiful what will you say then?”
I shut my eyes and see still that first meal of my new life. The little table that Pir Baksh, breathing full East in his jade-green turban, set before her, with its cloth worked in a pattern of the chenar leaves that are the symbol of Kashmir; the brown cakes made by Ahmad Khan in a miraculous kitchen of his own invention—a few holes burrowed in the river bank, a smoldering fire beneath them, and a width of canvas for a roof. But it served, and no more need be asked of luxury. And Vanna, making it mysteriously the first home I ever had known, the central joy of it all. Oh, wonderful days of life that breathe the spirit of immortality and pass so quickly—surely they must be treasured somewhere in Eternity that we may look upon their beloved light once more.
“Now you must see the boat. The Kedarnath is not a Dreadnought, but she is broad and very comfortable. And we have many chaperons. They all live in the bows, and exist simply to protect the Sahiblog from all discomfort, and very well they do it. That is Ahmad Khan by the kitchen. He cooks for us. Salama owns the boat, and steers her and engages the men to tow us when we move. And when I arrived he aired a little English and said piously; The Lord help me to give you no trouble, and the Lord help you! That is his wife sitting on the bank. She speaks little but Kashmiri, but I know a little of that. Look at the hundred rat-tail plaits of her hair, lengthened with wool, and see her silver and turquoise jewelry. She wears much of the family fortune and is quite a walking bank. Salama, Ahmad Khan and I talk by the hour. Ahmad comes from Fyzabad. Look at Salama’s boy—I call him the Orange Imp. Did you ever see anything so beautiful?”
I looked in sheer delight, and grasped my camera. Sitting near us was a lovely little Kashmiri boy of about eight, in a faded orange coat, and a turban exactly like his father’s. His curled black eyelashes were so long that they made a soft gloom over the upper part of the little golden face. The perfect bow of the scarlet lips, the long eyes, the shy smile, suggested an Indian Eros. He sat dipping his feet in the water with little pigeon-like cries of content.
“He paddles at the bow of our little shikara boat with a paddle exactly like a water-lily leaf. Do you like our friends? I love them already, and know all their affairs. And now for the boat.”
“One moment—If we are friends on a great adventure, I must call you Vanna, and you me Stephen.”
“Yes, I suppose that is part of it,” she said, smiling. “Come, Stephen.”
It was like music, but a cold music that chilled me. She should have hesitated, should have flushed—it was I who trembled. So I followed her across the broad plank into our new home.
“This is our sitting-room. Look, how charming!”
It was better than charming; it was home indeed. Windows at each side opening down almost to the water, a little table for meals that lived mostly on the bank, with a grey pot of iris in the middle. Another table for writing, photography, and all the little pursuits of travel. A bookshelf with some well—worn friends. Two long cushioned chairs. Two for meals, and a Bokhara rug, soft and pleasant for the feet. The interior was plain unpainted wood, but set so that the grain showed like satin in the rippling lights from the water.
That is the inventory of the place I have loved best in the world, but what eloquence can describe what it gave me, what its memory gives me to this day? And I have no eloquence—what I felt leaves me dumb.
“It is perfect,” was all I said as she waved her hand proudly. “It is home.”
“And if you had come alone to Kashmir you would have had a great rich boat with electric light and a butler. You would never have seen the people except at meal—times. I think you will like this better. Well, this is your tiny bedroom, and your bathroom, and beyond the sitting—room are mine. Do you like it all?”
But I could say no more. The charm of her own personality had touched everything and left its fragrance like a flower—breath in the air. I was beggared of thanks, but my whole soul was gratitude. We dined on the bank that evening, the lamp burning steadily in the still air and throwing broken reflections in the water, while the moon looked in upon them through the leaves. I felt extraordinarily young and happy.
The quiet of her voice was soft as the little lap of water against the bows of the boat, and Kahdra, the Orange Imp, was singing a little wordless song to himself as he washed the plates beside us. It was a simple meal, and Vanna, abstemious as a hermit never ate anything but rice and fruit, but I could remember no meal in all my days of luxury where I had eaten with such zest.
“It looks very grand to have so many to wait upon us, doesn’t it? But this is one of the cheapest countries in the world though the old timers mourn over present expenses. You will laugh when I show you your share of the cost.”
“The wealth of the world could not buy this,” I said, and was silent.
“But you must listen to my plans. We must do a little camping the last three weeks before we part. Up in the mountains. Are they not marvellous? They stand like a rampart round us, but not cold and terrible, but “Like as the hills stand round about Jerusalem”—they are guardian presences. And running up into them, high-very high, are the valleys and hills where we shall camp. Tomorrow we shall row through Srinagar, by the old Maharaja’s palace.”
V
And so began a life of sheer enchantment. We knew no one. The visitors in Kashmir change nearly every season, and no one cared-no one asked anything of us, and as for our shipmates, a willing affectionate service was their gift, and no more. Looking back, I know in what a wonder-world I was privileged to live. Vanna could talk with them all. She did not move apart, a condescending or indifferent foreigner. Kahdra would come to her knee and prattle to her of the great snake that lived up on Mahadeo to devour erring boys who omitted their prayers at proper Moslem intervals. She would sit with the baby in her lap while the mother busied herself in the sunny bows with the mysterious dishes that smelt so savory to a hungry man. The cuts, the bruises of the neighbourhood all came to Vanna for treatment.
“I am graduating as a nurse,” she would say laughing as she bent over the lean arm of some weirdly wrinkled old lady, bandaging and soothing at the same moment. Her reward would be some bit of folk-lore, some quaintness of gratitude that I noted down in the little book I kept for remembrance—that I do not need, for every word is in my heart.
We rowed down through the city next day—Salama rowing, and little Kahdra lazily paddling at the bow—a wonderful city, with its narrow ways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its balconied houses looking as if disease and sin had soaked into them and given them a vicious tottering beauty, horrible and yet lovely too. We saw the swarming life of the bazaar, the white turbans coming and going, diversified by the rose and yellow Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, on the dark brows.
I saw two women—girls—painted and tired like Jezebel, looking out of one window carved and old, and the grey burnished doves flying about it. They leaned indolently, like all the old, old wickedness of the East that yet is ever young—“Flowers of Delight,” with smooth black hair braided with gold and blossoms, and covered with pale rose veils, and gold embossed disks swinging like lamps beside the olive cheeks, the great eyes artificially lengthened and darkened with soorma, and the curves of the full lips emphasized with vermilion. They looked down on us with apathy, a dull weariness that held all the old evil of the wicked humming city.
It had taken shape in those indolent bodies and heavy eyes that could flash into life as a snake wakes into fierce darting energy when the time comes to spring—direct inheritrixes from Lilith, in the fittest setting in the world—the almost exhausted vice of an Oriental city as old as time.
“And look-below here,” said Vanna, pointing to one of the ghauts—long rugged steps running down to the river.
“When I came yesterday, a great broken crowd was collected here, almost shouldering each other into the water where a boat lay rocking. In it lay the body of a man brutally murdered for the sake of a few rupees and flung into the river. I could see the poor brown body stark in the boat with a friend weeping beside it. On the lovely deodar bridge people leaned over, watching with a grim open-mouthed curiosity, and business went on gaily where the jewelers make the silver bangles for slender wrists, and the rows of silver chains that make the necks like ‘the Tower of Damascus builded for an armory.’ It was all very wild and cruel. I went down to them-”
“Vanna—you went down? Horrible!”
“No, you see I heard them say the wife was almost a child and needs help. So I went. Once long ago at Peshawar I saw the same thing happen, and they came and took the child for the service of the gods, for she was most lovely, and she clung to the feet of a man in terror, and the priest stabbed her to the heart. She died in my arms.
“Good God!” I said, shuddering; “what a sight for you! Did they never hang him?”
“He was not punished. I told you it was a very long time ago. Her expression had a brooding quiet as she looked down into the running river, almost it might be as if she saw the picture of that past misery in the deep water. She said no more. But in her words and the terrible crowding of its life, Srinagar seemed to me more of a nightmare than anything I had seen, excepting only Benares; for the holy Benares is a memory of horror, with a sense of blood hidden under its frantic crazy devotion, and not far hidden either.
“Our own green shade, when we pulled back to it in the evening cool, was a refuge of unspeakable quiet. She read aloud to me that evening by the small light of our lamp beneath the trees, and, singularly, she read of joy.
“I have drunk of the Cup of the Ineffable, I have found the key of the Mystery, Travelling by no track I have come to the Sorrowless Land; very easily has the mercy of the great Lord come upon me. Wonderful is that Land of rest to which no merit can win. There have I seen joy filled to the brim, perfection of joy. He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from His dance. He holds all within his bliss.”
“What is that?”
“It is from the songs of the great Indian mystic—Kabir. Let me read you more. It is like the singing of a lark, lost in the infinite of light and heaven.”
So in the soft darkness I heard for the first time those immortal words; and hearing, a faint glimmer of understanding broke upon me as to the source of the peace that surrounded her. I had accepted it as an emanation of her own heart when it was the pulsing of the tide of the Divine. She read, choosing a verse here and there, and I listened with absorption.
Suppose I had been wrong in believing that sorrow is the keynote of life; that pain is the road of ascent, if road there be; that an implacable Nature and that only, presides over all our pitiful struggles and seekings and writes a black “Finis” to the holograph of our existence?
What then? What was she teaching me? Was she the Interpreter of a Beauty eternal in the heavens, and reflected like a broken prism in the beauty that walked visible beside me? So I listened like a child to an unknown language, yet ventured my protest.
“In India, in this wonderful country where men have time and will for speculation such thoughts may be natural. Can they be found in the West?”
“This is from the West—might not Kabir himself have said it? Certainly he would have felt it. ‘Happy is he who seeks not to understand the Mystery of God, but who, merging his spirit into Thine, sings to Thy face, O Lord, like a harp, understanding how difficult it is to know—how easy to love Thee.’ We debate and argue and the Vision passes us by. We try to prove it, and kill it in the laboratory of our minds, when on the altar of our souls it will dwell for ever.”
Silence—and I pondered. Finally she laid the book aside, and repeated from memory and in a tone of perfect music; “Kabir says, ‘I shall go to the House of my Lord with my Love at my side; then shall I sound the trumpet of triumph.’”
And when she left me alone in the moonlight silence the old doubts came back to me—the fear that I saw only through her eyes, and began to believe in joy only because I loved her. I remember I wrote in the little book I kept for my stray thoughts, these words which are not mine but reflect my thought of her; “Thine is the skill of the Fairy Woman, and the virtue of St. Bride, and the faith of Mary the Mild, and the gracious way of the Greek woman, and the beauty of lovely Emer, and the tenderness of heart-sweet Deirdre, and the courage of Maev the great Queen, and the charm of Mouth-of-Music.”
Yes, all that and more, but I feared lest I should see the heaven of joy through her eyes only and find it mirage as I had found so much else.
SECOND PART Early in the pure dawn the men came and our boat was towed up into the Dal Lake through crystal waterways and flowery banks, the men on the path keeping step and straining at the rope until the bronze muscles stood out on their legs and backs, shouting strong rhythmic phrases to mark the pull.
“They shout the Wondrous Names of God—as they are called,” said Vanna when I asked. “They always do that for a timid effort. Bad shah! The Lord, the Compassionate, and so on. I don’t think there is any religion about it but it is as natural to them as One, Two, Three, to us. It gives a tremendous lift. Watch and see.”
It was part of the delightful strangeness that we should move to that strong music. We sat on the upper deck and watched the dream—like beauty drift slowly by until we emerged beneath a little bridge into the fairy land of the lake which the Mogul Emperors loved so well that they made their noble pleasance gardens on the banks, and thought it little to travel up yearly from far—off Delhi over the snowy Pir Panjal with their Queens and courts for the perfect summer of Kashmir.
We moored by a low bank under a great wood of chenar trees, and saw the little table in the wilderness set in the greenest shade with our chairs beside it, and my pipe laid reverently upon it by Kahdra.
Across the glittering water lay on one side the Shalimar Garden known to all readers of “Lalla Ruhk”—a paradise of roses; and beyond it again the lovelier gardens of Nour-Mahal, the Light of the Palace, that imperial woman who ruled India under the weak Emperor’s name—she whose name he set thus upon his coins:
“By order of King Jehangir. Gold has a hundred splendours added to it by receiving the name of Nour-Jahan the Queen.”
Has any woman ever had a more royal homage than this most royal lady—known first as Mihr-u-nissa—Sun of Women, and later, Nour-Mahal, Light of the Palace, and latest, Nour-Jahan-Begam, Queen, Light of the World?
Here in these gardens she had lived—had seen the snow mountains change from the silver of dawn to the illimitable rose of sunset. The life, the colour beat insistently upon my brain. They built a world of magic where every moment was pure gold. Surely—surely to Vanna it must be the same. I believed in my very soul that she who gave and shared such joy could not be utterly apart from me? Could I then feel certain that I had gained any ground in these days we had been together? Could she still define the cruel limits she had laid down, or were her eyes kinder, her tones a more broken music? I did not know. Whenever I could hazard a guess the next minute baffled me.
Just then, in the sunset, she was sitting on deck, singing under her breath and looking absently away to the Gardens across the Lake. I could catch the words here and there, and knew them.
“Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,Where are you now—who lies beneath your spell?Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway far,Before you agonize them in farewell?”
“Don’t!” I said abruptly. It stung me.
“What?” she asked in surprise. “That is the song every one remembers here. Poor Laurence Hope! How she knew and loved this India! What are you grumbling at?”
Her smile stung me.
“Never mind,” I said morosely. “You don’t understand. You never will.”
And yet I believed sometimes that she would—that time was on my side.
When Kahdra and I pulled her across to Nour-Mahal’s garden next day, how could I not believe it—her face was so full of joy as she looked at me for sympathy?
“I don’t think so much beauty is crowded into any other few miles in the world—beauty of association, history, nature, everything!” she said with shining eyes. “The lotus flowers are not out yet but when they come that is the last touch of perfection. Do you remember Homer—‘But whoso ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, was neither willing to bring me word again, nor to depart. Nay, their desire was to remain there for ever, feeding on the lotus with the Lotus Eaters, forgetful of all return.’ You know the people here eat the roots and seeds? I ate them last year and perhaps that is why I cannot stay away. But look at Nour-Mahal’s garden!”
We were pulling in among the reeds and the huge carven leaves of the water plants, and the snake-headed buds lolling upon them with the slippery half-sinister look that water-flowers have, as though their cold secret life belonged to the hidden water world and not to ours. But now the boat was touching the little wooden steps.
O beautiful—most beautiful the green lawns, shaded with huge pyramids of the chenar trees, the terraced gardens where the marble steps climbed from one to the other, and the mountain streams flashed singing and shining down the carved marble slopes that cunning hands had made to delight the Empress of Beauty, between the wildernesses of roses. Her pavilion stands still among the flowers, and the waters ripple through it to join the lake—and she is—where? Even in the glory of sunshine the passing of all fair things was present with me as I saw the empty shell that had held the Pearl of Empire, and her roses that still bloom, her waters that still sing for others.
The spray of a hundred fountains was misty diamond dust in the warm air laden with the scent of myriad flowers. Kahdra followed us everywhere, singing his little tuneless happy song. The world brimmed with beauty and joy. And we were together. Words broke from me.
“Vanna, let it be for ever! Let us live here. I’ll give up all the world for this and you.”
“But you see,” she said delicately, “it would be ‘giving up.’ You use the right word. It is not your life. It is a lovely holiday, no more. You would weary of it. You would want the city life and your own kind.”
I protested with all my soul.
“No. Indeed I will say frankly that it would be lowering yourself to live a lotus-eating life among my people. It is a life with which you have no tie. A Westerner who lives like that steps down; he loses his birthright just as an Oriental does who Europeanizes himself. He cannot live your life nor you his. If you had work here it would be different. No—six or eight weeks more; then go away and forget it.”
I turned from her. The serpent was in Paradise. When is he absent?
On one of the terraces a man was beating a tom-tom, and veiled women listened, grouped about him in brilliant colours.
“Isn’t that all India?” she said; “that dull reiterated sound? It half stupefies, half maddens. Once at Darjiling I saw the Lamas’ Devil Dance—the soul, a white-faced child with eyes unnaturally enlarged, fleeing among a rabble of devils—the evil passions. It fled wildly here and there and every way was blocked. The child fell on its knees, screaming dumbly—you could see the despair in the staring eyes, but all was drowned in the thunder of Tibetan drums. No mercy—no escape. Horrible!”
“Even in Europe the drum is awful,” I said. “Do you remember in the French Revolution how they Drowned the victims’ voices in a thunder roll of drums?”
“I shall always see the face of the child, hunted down to hell, falling on its knees, and screaming without a sound, when I hear the drum. But listen—a flute! Now if that were the Flute of Krishna you would have to follow. Let us come!”
I could hear nothing of it, but she insisted and we followed the music, inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill of the mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. And Vanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all hearts must adore, even as the herd-girls adored him in his golden youth by Jumna river and in the pastures of Brindaban.
Next day we were climbing the hill to the ruins where the evil magician brought the King’s daughter nightly to his will, flying low under a golden moon. Vanna took my arm and I pulled her laughing up the steepest flowery slopes until we reached the height, and lo! the arched windows were eyeless and a lonely breeze blowing through the cloisters, and the beautiful yellowish stone arches supported nothing and were but frames for the blue of far lake and mountain and the divine sky. We climbed the broken stairs where the lizards went by like flashes, and had I the tongue of men and angels I could not tell the wonder that lay before us,—the whole wide valley of Kashmir in summer glory, with its scented breeze singing, singing above it.
We sat on the crushed aromatic herbs and among the wild roses and looked down.
“To think,” she said, “that we might have died and never seen it!”
There followed a long silence. I thought she was tired, and would not break it. Suddenly she spoke in a strange voice, low and toneless;
“The story of this place. She was the Princess Padmavati, and her home was in Ayodhya. When she woke and found herself here by the lake she was so terrified that she flung herself in and was drowned. They held her back, but she died.”
“How do you know?”
“Because a wandering monk came to the abbey of Tahkt-i-Bahi near Peshawar and told Vasettha the Abbot.”
I had nearly spoilt all by an exclamation, but I held myself back. I saw she was dreaming awake and was unconscious of what she said.
“The Abbot said, ‘Do not describe her. What talk is this for holy men? The young monks must not hear. Some of them have never seen a woman. Should a monk speak of such toys?’ But the wanderer disobeyed and spoke, and there was a great tumult, and the monks threw him out at the command of the young Abbot, and he wandered down to Peshawar, and it was he later—the evil one!—that brought his sister, Lilavanti the Dancer, to Peshawar, and the Abbot fell into her snare. That was his revenge!”
Her face was fixed and strange, for a moment her cheek looked hollow, her eyes dim and grief-worn. What was she seeing?—what remembering? Was it a story—a memory? What was it?
“She was beautiful?” I prompted.
“Men have said so, but for it he surrendered the Peace. Do not speak of her accursed beauty.”
Her voice died away to a drowsy murmur; her head dropped on my shoulder and for the mere delight of contact I sat still and scarcely breathed, praying that she might speak again, but the good minute was gone. She drew one or two deep breaths, and sat up with a bewildered look that quickly passed.
“I was quite sleepy for a minute. The climb was so strenuous. Hark—I hear the Flute of Krishna again.”
And again I could hear nothing, but she said it was sounding from the trees at the base of the hill. Later when we climbed down I found she was right—that a peasant lad, dark and amazingly beautiful as these Kashmiris often are, was playing on the flute to a girl at his feet—looking up at him with rapt eyes. He flung Vanna a flower as we passed. She caught it and put it in her bosom. A singular blossom, three petals of purest white, set against three leaves of purest green, and lower down the stem the three green leaves were repeated. It was still in her bosom after dinner, and I looked at it more closely.
“That is a curious flower,” I said. “Three and three and three. Nine. That makes the mystic number. I never saw a purer white. What is it?”
“Of course it is mystic,” she said seriously. “It is the Ninefold Flower. You saw who gave it?”
“That peasant lad.”
She smiled.
“You will see more some day. Some might not even have seen that.”
“Does it grow here?”
“This is the first I have seen. It is said to grow only where the gods walk. Do you know that throughout all India Kashmir is said to be holy ground? It was called long ago the land of the gods, and of strange, but not evil, sorceries. Great marvels were seen here.”
I felt the labyrinthine enchantments of that enchanted land were closing about me—a slender web, grey, almost impalpable, finer than fairy silk, was winding itself about my feet. My eyes were opening to things I had not dreamed. She saw my thought.
“Yes, you could not have seen even that much of him in Peshawar. You did not know then.”
“He was not there,” I answered, falling half unconsciously into her tone.
“He is always there—everywhere, and when he plays, all who hear must follow. He was the Pied Piper in Hamelin, he was Pan in Hellas. You will hear his wild fluting in many strange places when you know how to listen. When one has seen him the rest comes soon. And then you will follow.”
“Not away from you, Vanna.”
“From the marriage feast, from the Table of the Lord,” she said, smiling strangely. “The man who wrote that spoke of another call, but it is the same—Krishna or Christ. When we hear the music we follow. And we may lose or gain heaven.”
It might have been her compelling personality—it might have been the marvels of beauty about me, but I knew well I had entered at some mystic gate. A pass word had been spoken for me—I was vouched for and might go in. Only a little way as yet. Enchanted forests lay beyond, and perilous seas, but there were hints, breaths like the wafting of the garments of unspeakable Presences. My talk with Vanna grew less personal, and more introspective. I felt the touch of her finger-tips leading me along the ways of Quiet—my feet brushed a shining dew. Once, in the twilight under the chenar trees, I saw a white gleaming and thought it a swiftly passing Being, but when in haste I gained the tree I found there only a Ninefold flower, white as a spirit in the evening calm. I would not gather it but told Vanna what I had seen.
“You nearly saw;” she said. “She passed so quickly. It was the Snowy One, Uma, Parvati, the Daughter of the Himalaya. That mountain is the mountain of her lord—Shiva. It is natural she should be here. I saw her last night lean over the height—her face pillowed on her folded arms, with a low star in the mists of her hair. Her eyes were like lakes of blue darkness. Vast and wonderful. She is the Mystic Mother of India. You will see soon. You could not have seen the flower until now.”
“Do you know,” she added, “that in the mountains there are poppies of clear blue—blue as turquoise. We will go up into the heights and find them.”
And next moment she was planning the camping details, the men, the ponies, with a practical zest that seemed to relegate the occult to the absurd. Yet the very next day came a wonderful moment.
The sun was just setting and, as it were, suddenly the purple glooms banked up heavy with thunder. The sky was black with fury, the earth passive with dread. I never saw such lightning—it was continuous and tore in zigzag flashes down the mountains like rents in the substance of the world’s fabric. And the thunder roared up in the mountain gorges with shattering echoes. Then fell the rain, and the whole lake seemed to rise to meet it, and the noise was like the rattle of musketry. We were standing by the cabin window and she suddenly caught my hand, and I saw in a light of their own two dancing figures on the tormented water before us. Wild in the tumult, embodied delight, with arms tossed violently above their heads, and feet flung up behind them, skimming the waves like seagulls, they passed. Their sex I could not tell—I think they had none, but were bubble emanations of the rejoicing rush of the rain and the wild retreating laughter of the thunder. I saw the fierce aerial faces and their inhuman glee as they fled by, and she dropped my hand and they were gone. Slowly the storm lessened, and in the west the clouds tore raggedly asunder and a flood of livid yellow light poured down upon the lake—an awful light that struck it into an abyss of fire. Then, as if at a word of command, two glorious rainbows sprang across the water with the mountains for their piers, each with its proper colours chorded. They made a Bridge of Dread that stood out radiant against the background of storm—the Twilight of the Gods, and the doomed gods marching forth to the last fight. And the thunder growled sullenly away into the recesses of the hill and the terrible rainbows faded until the stars came quietly out and it was a still night.
But I had seen that what is our dread is the joy of the spirits of the Mighty Mother, and though the vision faded and I doubted what I had seen, it prepared the way for what I was yet to see. A few days later we started on what was to be the most exquisite memory of my life. A train of ponies carried our tents and camping necessaries and there was a pony for each of us. And so, in the cool grey of a divine morning, with little rosy clouds flecking the eastern sky, we set out from Islamabad for Vernag. And this was the order of our going. She and I led the way, attended by a sais (groom) and a coolie carrying the luncheon basket. Half way we would stop in some green dell, or by some rushing stream, and there rest and eat our little meal while the rest of the cavalcade passed on to the appointed camping place, and in the late afternoon we would follow, riding slowly, and find the tents pitched and the kitchen department in full swing. If the place pleased us we lingered for some days;—if not, the camp was struck next morning, and again we wandered in search of beauty.
The people were no inconsiderable part of my joy. I cannot see what they have to gain from such civilization as ours—a kindly people and happy. Courtesy and friendliness met us everywhere, and if their labor was hard, their harvest of beauty and laughter seemed to be its reward. The little villages with their groves of walnut and fruit trees spoke of no unfulfilled want, the mulberries which fatten the sleek bears in their season fattened the children too. I compared their lot with that of the toilers in our cities and knew which I would choose. We rode by shimmering fields of barley, with red poppies floating in the clear transparent green as in deep sea water, through fields of millet like the sky fallen on the earth, so innocently blue were its blossoms, and the trees above us were trellised with the wild roses, golden and crimson, and the ways tapestried with the scented stars of the large white jasmine.
It was strange that later much of what she said, escaped me. Some I noted down at the time, but there were hints, shadows of lovelier things beyond that eluded all but the fringes of memory when I tried to piece them together and make a coherence of a living wonder. For that reason, the best things cannot be told in this history. It is only the cruder, grosser matters that words will hold. The half-touchings—vanishing looks, breaths—O God, I know them, but cannot tell.
In the smaller villages, the head man came often to greet us and make us welcome, bearing on a flat dish a little offering of cakes and fruit, the produce of the place. One evening a man so approached, stately in white robes and turban, attended by a little lad who carried the patriarchal gift beside him. Our tents were pitched under a glorious walnut tree with a running stream at our feet.
Vanna of course, was the interpreter, and I called her from her tent as the man stood salaaming before me. It was strange that when she came, dressed in white, he stopped in his salutation, and gazed at her in what, I thought, was silent wonder.
She spoke earnestly to him, standing before him with clasped hands, almost, I could think, in the attitude of a suppliant. The man listened gravely, with only an interjection, now and again, and once he turned and looked curiously at me. Then he spoke, evidently making some announcement which she received with bowed head—and when he turned to go with a grave salute, she performed a very singular ceremony, moving slowly round him three times with clasped hands; keeping him always on the right. He repaid it with the usual salaam and greeting of peace, which he bestowed also on me, and then departed in deep meditation, his eyes fixed on the ground. I ventured to ask what it all meant, and she looked thoughtfully at me before replying.
“It was a strange thing. I fear you will not altogether understand, but I will tell you what I can. That man though living here among Mahomedans, is a Brahman from Benares, and, what is very rare in India, a Buddhist. And when he saw me he believed he remembered me in a former birth. The ceremony you saw me perform is one of honour in India. It was his due.”
“Did you remember him?” I knew my voice was incredulous.
“Very well. He has changed little but is further on the upward path. I saw him with dread for he holds the memory of a great wrong I did. Yet he told me a thing that has filled my heart with joy.”
“Vanna-what is it?”
She had a clear uplifted look which startled me. There was suddenly a chill air blowing between us.
“I must not tell you yet but you will know soon. He was a good man. I am glad we have met.”
She buried herself in writing in a small book I had noticed and longed to look into, and no more was said.
We struck camp next day and trekked on towards Vernag—a rough march, but one of great beauty, beneath the shade of forest trees, garlanded with pale roses that climbed from bough to bough and tossed triumphant wreaths into the uppermost blue.
In the afternoon thunder was flapping its wings far off in the mountains and a little rain fell while we were lunching under a big tree. I was considering anxiously how to shelter Vanna, when a farmer invited us to his house—a scene of Biblical hospitality that delighted us both. He led us up some break-neck little stairs to a large bare room, open to the clean air all round the roof, and with a kind of rough enclosure on the wooden floor where the family slept at night. There he opened our basket, and then, with anxious care, hung clothes and rough draperies about us that our meal might be unwatched by one or two friends who had followed us in with breathless interest. Still further to entertain us a great rarity was brought out and laid at Vanna’s feet as something we might like to watch—a curious bird in a cage, with brightly barred wings and a singular cry. She fed it with fruit, and it fluttered to her hand. Just so Abraham might have welcomed his guests, and when we left with words of deepest gratitude, our host made the beautiful obeisance of touching his forehead with joined hands as he bowed. To me the whole incident had an extraordinary grace, and ennobled both host and guest. But we met an ascending scale of loveliness so varied in its aspects that I passed from one emotion to another and knew no sameness.
That afternoon the camp was pitched at the foot of a mighty hill, under the waving pyramids of the chenars, sweeping their green like the robes of a goddess. Near by was a half circle of low arches falling into ruin, and as we went in among them I beheld a wondrous sight—the huge octagonal tank or basin made by the Mogul Emperor Jehangir to receive the waters of a mighty Spring which wells from the hill and has been held sacred by Hindu and Moslem. And if loveliness can sanctify surely it is sacred indeed.
The tank was more than a hundred feet in diameter and circled by a roughly paved pathway where the little arched cells open that the devotees may sit and contemplate the lustral waters. There on a black stone, is sculptured the Imperial inscription comparing this spring to the holier wells of Paradise, and I thought no less of it, for it rushes straight from the rock with no aiding stream, and its waters are fifty feet deep, and sweep away from this great basin through beautiful low arches in a wild foaming river—the crystal life-blood of the mountains for ever welling away. The colour and perfect purity of this living jewel were most marvellous—clear blue-green like a chalcedony, but changing as the lights in an opal—a wonderful quivering brilliance, flickering with the silver of shoals of sacred fish.
But the Mogul Empire is with the snows of yesteryear and the wonder has passed from the Moslems into the keeping of the Hindus once more, and the Lingam of Shiva, crowned with flowers, is the symbol in the little shrine by the entrance. Surely in India, the gods are one and have no jealousies among them—so swiftly do their glories merge the one into the other.
“How all the Mogul Emperors loved running water,” said Vanna. “I can see them leaning over it in their carved pavilions with delicate dark faces and pensive eyes beneath their turbans, lost in the endless reverie of the East while liquid melody passes into their dream. It was the music they best loved.”
She was leading me into the royal garden below, where the young river flows beneath the pavilion set above and across the rush of the water.
“I remember before I came to India,” she went on, “there were certain words and phrases that meant the whole East to me. It was an enchantment. The first flash picture I had was Milton’s—