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NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1926
Copyright, 1922
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
Fourth Printing
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
VAIL BALLOU PRESS, INC.
BINGHANTON AND NEW YORK
I desire to thank the Editors of The Atlantic Monthly, Asia, and the Japanese Grassho, in which periodicals most of these stories have appeared, for their kindly interest in their publication in book form, L. ADAMS BECK, CANADA
THERE is a place uplifted nine thousand feet in purest air where one of the most ancient tracks in the world runs from India into Tibet. It leaves Simla of the Imperial councils by a stately road; it passes beyond, but now narrowing, climbing higher beside the khuds or steep drops to the precipitous valleys beneath, and the rumor of Simla grows distant and the way is quiet, for, owing to the danger of driving horses above the khuds, such baggage as you own must be carried by coolies, and you yourself must either ride on horseback or in the little horseless carriage of the Orient, here drawn and pushed by four men. And presently the deodars darken the way with a solemn presence, for--
These are the Friars of the wood, The Brethren of the Solitude Hooded and grave--"
--their breath most austerely pure in the gradually chilling air. Their companies increase and now the way is through a great wood where it has become a trail and no more, and still it climbs for many miles and finally a rambling bungalow, small and low, is sighted in the deeps of the trees, a mountain stream from unknown heights falling beside it. And this is known as the House in the Woods. Very few people are permitted to go there, for the owner has no care for money and makes no provision for guests. You must take your own servant and the khansamah will cook you such simple food as men expect in the wilds, and that is all. You stay as long as you please and when you leave not even a gift to the khansamah is permitted.
I had been staying in Ranipur of the plains while I considered the question of getting to Upper Kashmir by the route from Simla along the old way to Chinese Tibet where I would touch Shipki in the Dalai Lama's territory and then pass on to Zanskar and so down to Kashmir--a tremendous route through the Himalaya and a crowning experience of the mightiest mountain scenery in the world. I was at Ranipur for the purpose of consulting my old friend Olesen, now an irrigation official in the Ranipur district--a man who had made this journey and nearly lost his life in doing it. It is not now perhaps so dangerous as it was, and my life was of no particular value to any one but myself, and the plan interested me.
I pass over the long discussions of ways and means in the blinding heat of Ranipur. Olesen put all his knowledge at my service and never uttered a word of the envy that must have filled him as he looked at the distant snows cool and luminous in blue air, and, shrugging good-natured shoulders, spoke of the work that lay before him on the burning plains until the terrible summer should drag itself to a close. We had vanquished the details and were smoking in comparative silence one night on the veranda, when he said in his slow reflective way;
"You don't like the average hotel, Ormond, and you'll like it still less up Simla way with all the Simla crowd of grass-widows and fellows out for as good a time as they can cram into the hot weather. I wonder if I could get you a permit for The House in the Woods while you're waiting to fix up your men and route for Shipki."
He explained and of course I jumped at the chance. It belonged, he said, to a man named Rup Singh, a pandit, or learned man of Ranipur. He had always spent the summer there, but age and failing health made this impossible now, and under certain conditions he would occasionally allow people known to friends of his own to put up there.
"And Rup Singh and I are very good friends," Olesen said; "I won his heart by discovering the lost Sukh Mandir, or Hall of Pleasure, built many centuries ago by a Maharao of Ranipur for a summer retreat in the great woods far beyond Simla. There are lots of legends about it here in Ranipur. They call it The House of Beauty. Rup Singh's ancestor had been a close friend of the Maharao and was with him to the end, and that's why he himself sets such store on the place. You have a good chance if I ask for a permit."
He told me the story and since it is the heart of my own I give it briefly. Many centuries ago the Ranipur Kingdom was ruled by the Maharao Rai Singh a prince of the great lunar house of the Rajputs. Expecting a bride from some far away kingdom (the name of this is unrecorded) he built the Hall of Pleasure as a summer palace, a house of rare and costly beauty. A certain great chamber he lined with carved figures of the Gods and their stories, almost unsurpassed for truth and life. So, with the pine trees whispering about it the secret they sigh to tell, he hoped to create an earthly Paradise with this Queen in whom all loveliness was perfected. And then some mysterious tragedy ended all his hopes. It was rumoured that when the Princess came to his court, she was, by some terrible mistake, received with insult and offered the position only of one of his women. After that nothing was known. Certain only is it that he fled to the hills, to the home of his broken hope, and there ended his days in solitude, save for the attendance of two faithful friends who would not abandon him even in the ghostly quiet of the winter when the pine boughs were heavy with snow and a spectral moon stared at the panthers shuffling through the white wastes beneath. Of these two Rup Singh's ancestor was one. And in his thirty fifth year the Maharao died and his beauty and strength passed into legend and his kingdom was taken by another and the jungle crept silently over his Hall of Pleasure and the story ended.
"There was not a memory of the place up
there," Olesen went on. "Certainly I never heard
anything of it when I went up to the Shipki in 1904. But
I had been able to be useful to Rup Singh and he gave me
a permit for The House in the Woods, and I stopped there
for a few days' shooting. I remember that day so well.
I was wandering in the dense woods while my men got their
midday grub, and I missed the trail somehow and found
myself in a part where the trees were dark and thick and
the silence heavy as lead. It was as if the trees were
on guard--they stood shoulder to shoulder and stopped the
way. Well, I halted, and had a notion there was
something beyond that made me doubt whether to go on. I
must have stood there five minutes hesitating. Then I
pushed on, bruising the thick ferns under my shooting
boots and stooping under the knotted boughs. Suddenly I
tramped out of the jungle into a clearing, and lo and
behold a ruined House, with blocks of marble lying all
about it, and carved pillars and a great roof all being
slowly smothered by the jungle. The weirdest thing you
ever saw. I climbed some fallen columns to get a better
look, and as I did I saw a face flash by at the arch of a
broken window. I sang out in Hindustani, but no answer:
only the echo from the woods. Somehow that dampened my
ardour, and I didn't go in to what seemed like a great
ruined hall for the place was so eerie and lonely, and
looked mighty snaky into the bargain. So I came
ingloriously away and told Rup Singh. And his whole face
changed. 'That is The House of Beauty,' he said. 'All
my life have I sought it and in vain. For, friend of my
soul, a man must lose himself that he may find himself
and what lies beyond, and the trodden path has ever been
my doom. And you who have not sought have seen. Most
strange are the way of the
"Did he ever tell you the story?"
"Never. I only know what I've picked up
here. Some horrible mistake about the Rani that drove
the man almost mad with remorse. I've heard bits here
and there. There's nothing so vital as tradition in
India."
"I wonder what really happened."
"That we shall never know. I got a little
old picture of the Maharao--said to be painted by a
Pahari artist. It's not likely to be authentic, but you
never can tell. A Brahman sold it to me that he might
complete his daughter's dowry, and hated doing it."
"May I see it?"
"Why certainly. Not a very good light,
but--can do, as the Chinks say."
He brought it out rolled in silk stuff and
I carried it under the hanging lamp. A beautiful young
man indeed, with the air of race these people have beyond
all others,--a cold haughty face, immovably dignified.
He sat with his hands resting lightly on the arms of his
chair of State. A crescent of rubies clasped the folds
of the turban and from this sprang an aigrette scattering
splendours. The magnificent hilt of a sword was ready
beside him. The face was not only beautiful but
arresting.
"A strange picture," I said. "The artist
has captured the man himself. I can see him trampling on
any one who opposed him, and suffering in the same cold
secret way. It ought to be authentic if it isn't. Don't
you know any more?"
"Nothing. Well--to bed, and tomorrow I'll
see Rup Singh."
I was glad when he returned with the
permission. I was to be very careful, he said, to make no
allusion to the lost palace, for two women were staying
at the House in the Woods--a mother and daughter to whom
Rup Singh had granted hospitality because of an
obligation he must honor. But with true Oriental
distrust of women he had thought fit to make no
confidence to them. I promised and asked Olesen if he
knew them.
"Slightly. Canadians of Danish blood like
my own. Their name is Ingmar. Some people think the
daughter good-looking. The mother is supposed to be
clever; keen on occult subjects which she came back to
India to study. The husband was a great naturalist and
the kindest of men. He almost lived in the jungle and
the natives had all sorts of rumours about his powers.
You know what they are. They said the birds and beasts
followed him about. Any old thing starts a legend."
"What was the connection with Rup Singh?"
"He was in difficulties and undeservedly,
and Ingmar generously lent him money at a critical time,
trusting to his honour for repayment. Like most
Orientals he never forgets a good turn and would do
anything for any of the family--except trust the women
with any secret he valued. The father is long dead. By
the way Rup Singh gave me a queer message for you. He
said; 'Tell the Sahib these words--"Let him who finds
water in the desert share his cup with him who dies of
I certainly did not. However my way was
thus smoothed for me and I took the upward road, leaving
Olesen to the long ungrateful toil of the man who devotes
his life to India without sufficient time or knowledge to
make his way to the inner chambers of her beauty. There
is no harder mistress unless you hold the pass-key to her
mysteries, there is none of whom so little can be told in
words but who kindles so deep a passion. Necessity
sometimes takes me from that enchanted land, but when the
latest dawns are shining in my skies I shall make my
feeble way back to her and die at her worshipped feet.
So I went up from Kalka.
I have never liked Simla. It is beautiful
enough--eight thousand feet up in the grip of the great
hills looking toward the snows, the famous summer home of
the Indian Government. Much diplomacy is whispered on
Observatory Hill and many are the lighter diversions of
which Mr. Kipling and lesser men have written. But Simla
is also a gateway to many things--to the mighty deodar
forests that clothe the foothills of the mountains, to
Kulu, to the eternal snows, to the old, old bridle way
that leads up to the Shipki Pass and the mysteries of
Tibet--and to the strange things told in this story. So
I passed through with scarcely a glance at the busy
gayety of the little streets and the tiny shops where the
pretty ladies buy their rouge and powder. I was attended
by my servant Ali Khan, a Mohammedan from Nagpur, sent up
with me by Olesen with strong recommendation. He was a
stout walker, so too am I, and an inveterate dislike to
the man-drawn carriage whenever my own legs would serve
me decided me to walk the sixteen miles to the House in
the Woods, sending on the baggage. Ali Khan despatched
it and prepared to follow me, the fine cool air of the
hills giving us a zest.
"Subhan Alla! (Praise be to God!) the air
is sweet!" he said, stepping out behind me. "What
time does the Sahib look to reach the House?"
"About five or six. Now, Ali Khan, strike
out of the road. You know the way."
So we struck up into the glorious pine
woods, mountains all about us. Here and there as we
climbed higher was a little bank of forgotten
snow, but spring had triumphed and everywhere was
the waving grace of maiden-hair ferns, banks of
violets and strangely beautiful little wild
flowers. These woods are full of panthers, but
in day time the only precaution necessary is to
take no dog,--a dainty they cannot resist. The
air was exquisite with the sun-warm scent of
pines, and here and there the trees broke away
disclosing mighty ranges of hills covered with
rich blue shadows like the bloom on a plum,--the
clouds chasing the sunshine over the mountain
sides and the dark green velvet of the robe of
pines. I looked across ravines that did not seem
gigantic and yet the villages on the other side
were like a handful of peas, so tremendous was
the scale. I stood now and then to see the
rhododendrons, forest trees here with great
trunks and massive boughs glowing with blood-red
blossom, and time went by and I took no count of
it, so glorious was the climb.
It must have been hours later when it
struck me that the sun was getting low and that by now we
should be nearing The House in the Woods. I said
as much to Ali Khan. He looked perplexed and
agreed. We had reached a comparatively level
place, the trail faint but apparent, and it
surprised me that we heard no sound of life from
the dense wood where our goal must be.
"I know not, Presence," he said. "May his
face be blackened that directed me. I thought surely
I could not miss the way, and yet--"
We cast back and could see no trail
forking from the one we were on. There was nothing for
it but to trust to luck and push on. But I began
to be uneasy and so was the man. I had stupidly
forgotten to unpack my revolver, and worse, we
had no food, and the mountain air is an
appetiser, and at night the woods have their
dangers, apart from being absolutely trackless.
We had not met a living being since we left the
road and there seemed no likelihood of asking for
directions. I stopped no longer for views but
went steadily on, Ali Khan keeping up a running
fire of low-voiced invocations and lamentations.
And now it was dusk and the position
It was at that moment I saw a woman before
us walking lightly and steadily under the pines.
She must have struck into the trail from the side
for she never could have kept before us all the
way. A native woman, but wearing the
all-concealing boorka, more like a town dweller
than a woman of the hills. I put on speed and Ali
Khan, now very tired, toiled on behind me as I
came up with her and courteously asked the way.
Her face was entirely hidden, but the answering
voice was clear and sweet. I made up my mind she
was young, for it had the bird-like thrill of
youth.
"If the Presence continues to follow this
path he will arrive. It is not far. They wait for
him."
That was all. It left me with a desire to
see the veiled face. We passed on and Ali Khan
looked fearfully back.
"Ajaib! (Wonderful!) A strange place to
meet one of the purdah-nashin (veiled women)
I turned with some curiosity as he spoke,
and lo! there was no human being in sight. She had
disappeared from the track behind us and it was
impossible to say where. The darkening trees
were beginning to hold the dusk and it seemed
unimaginable that a woman should leave the way
and take to the dangers of the woods.
"Puna-i-Khoda--God protect us!" said Ali
Khan in a shuddering whisper. "She was a devil of the
wilds. Press on, Sahib. We should not be here
in the dark."
There was nothing else to do. We made the
best speed we could, and the trees grew more dense and
the trail fainter between the close trunks, and
so the night came bewildering with the
expectation that we must pass the night unfed and
unarmed in the cold of the heights. They might
send out a search party from The House in the
Woods--that was still a hope, if there were no
other. And then, very gradually and wonderfully
the moon dawned over the tree tops and flooded
the wood with mysterious silver lights and about
her rolled the majesty of the stars. We pressed
on into the heart of the night. From the dense
black depths we emerged at last. An open glade
lay before us--the trees falling back to right
and left to disclose what?
A long low house of marble, unlit, silent,
bathed in pale splendour and shadow. About it
stood great deodars, clothed in clouds of the
white blossoming clematis, ghostly and still.
Acacias hung motionless trails of heavily scented
bloom as if carved in ivory. It was all silent
as death. A flight of nobly sculptured steps led
up to a broad veranda and a wide open door with
darkness behind it. Nothing more.
I forced myself to shout in
Hindustani--the cry seeming a brutal outrage upon the
night, and an echo came back numbed in the black woods.
I tried once more and in vain. We stood absorbed
also into the silence.
"Ya Alla! it is a house of the dead!"
whispered Ali Khan, shuddering at my shoulder,--and even
as the words left his lips I understood where we
were. "It is the Sukh Mandir
It was impossible to be in Ranipur and
hear nothing of the dead house of the forest and Ali
Khan had heard--God only knows what tales. In
his terror all discipline, all the inborn respect
of the native forsook him, and without word or
sign he turned and fled along the track, crashing
through the forest blind and mad with fear. It
would have been insanity to follow him, and in
India the first rule of life is that the Sahib
shows no fear, so I left him to his fate whatever
it might be, believing at the same time that a
little reflection and dread of the lonely forest
would bring him to heel quickly.
I stood there and the stillness flowed
like water about me. It was as though I floated upon
it--bathed in quiet. My thoughts adjusted
themselves. Possibly it was not the Sukh Mandir.
Olesen had spoken of ruin. I could see none. At
least it was shelter from the chill which is
always present at these heights when the sun
sets,--and it was beautiful as a house not made
with hands. There was a sense of awe but no fear
as I went slowly up the great steps and into the
gloom beyond and so gained the hall.
The moon went with me and from a carven
arch filled with marble tracery rained radiance that
revealed and hid. Pillars stood about me,
wonderful with horses ramping forward as in the
Siva Temple at Vellore. They appeared to spring
from the pillars into the gloom urged by
invisible riders, the effect barbarously rich and
strange motion arrested, struck dumb in a violent
gesture, and behind them impenetrable darkness.
I could not see the end of this hall--for the
moon did not reach it, but looking up I beheld
the walls fretted in great panels into the utmost
splendour of sculpture, encircling the stories of
the Gods amid a twining and under-weaving of
leaves and flowers. It was more like a temple
than a dwelling. Siva, as Nataraja the Cosmic
Dancer, the Rhythm of the Universe, danced before
me, flinging out his arms in the passion of
creation. Kama, the Indian Eros, bore his bow
strung with honey-sweet black bees that typify
the heart's desire. Krishna the Beloved smiled
above the herd-maidens adoring at his feet.
Ganesha the Elephant-Headed, sat in massive calm,
wreathing his wise trunk about him. And many
more. But all these so far as I could see tended
to one centre panel larger than any, representing
two life-size figures of a dim beauty. At first
I could scarcely distinguish one from the other
in the upward-reflected light, and then, even as
I stood, the moving moon revealed the two as if
floating in vapor. At once I recognized the
subject--I had seen it already in the ruined
temple of Ranipur, though the details differed.
Parvati, the Divine Daughter of the Himalaya, the
Emanation of the mighty mountains, seated upon a
throne, listening to a girl who played on a Pan
pipe before her. The goddess sat, her chin
leaned upon her hand, her shoulders slightly
inclined in a pose of gentle sweetness, looking
down upon the girl at her feet, absorbed in the
music of the hills and lonely places. A band of
jewels, richly wrought, clasped the veil on her
brows, and below the bare bosom a glorious girdle
clothed her with loops and strings and tassels of
jewels that fell to her knees--her only garment.
The girl was a lovely image of young
womanhood, the proud swell of the breast tapering to the
slim waist and long limbs easily folded as she
half reclined at the divine feet, her lips
pressed to the pipe. Its silent music
mysteriously banished fear. The sleep must be
sweet indeed that would come under the
guardianship of these two fair creatures--their
gracious influence was dewy in the air. I
resolved that I would spend the night beside
them. Now with the march of the moon dim vistas
of the walls beyond sprang into being. Strange
mythologies--the incarnations of Vishnu the
Preserver, the Pastoral of Krishna the Beautiful.
I promised myself that next day I would sketch
some of the loveliness about me. But the moon was
passing on her way--I folded the coat I carried
into a pillow and lay down at the feet of the
goddess and her nymph. Then a moonlit quiet. I
slept in a dream of peace.
Sleep annihilates time. Was it long or
short when I woke like a man floating up to the surface
from tranquil deeps? That I cannot tell, but
once more I possessed myself and every sense was
on guard.
My hearing first. Bare feet were coming,
falling softly as leaves, but unmistakable.
There was a dim whispering but I could hear no
word. I rose on my elbow and looked down the
long hall. Nothing. The moonlight lay in pools
of light and seas of shadow on the floor, and the
feet drew nearer. Was I afraid? I cannot tell,
but a deep expectation possessed me as the sound
grew like the rustle of grasses parted in a
fluttering breeze, and now a girl came swiftly up
the steps, irradiate in the moonlight, and
passing up the hall stood beside me. I could see
her robe, her feet bare from the jungle, but her
face wavered and changed and re-united like the
face of a dream woman. I could not fix it for
one moment, yet knew this was the messenger for
whom I had waited all my life--for whom one
strange experience, not to be told at present,
had prepared me in early manhood. Words came,
and I said: "No. We meet in the Ninth Vibration. All
here is true."
"Is a dream never true?"
"Sometimes it is the echo of the Ninth
Vibration and therefore a harmonic of truth. You
are awake now. It is the day-time that is the
sleep of the soul. You are in the Lower
Perception, wherein the truth behind the veil of
what men call Reality is perceived."
"Can I ascend?"
"I cannot tell. That is for you, not me."
"What do I perceive tonight?"
"The Present as it is in the Eternal. Say
no more. Come with me."
She stretched her hand and took mine with
the assurance of a goddess, and we went up the hall
where the night had been deepest between the
great pillars.
Now it is very clear to me that in every
land men, when the doors of perception are opened,
will see what we call the Supernatural clothed in
the image in which that country has accepted it.
Blake, the mighty mystic, will see the Angels of
the Revelation, driving their terrible way above
Lambeth--it is not common nor unclean. The
fisherman, plying his coracle on the Thames will
behold the consecration of the great new Abbey of
Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and
awful lights in the dead mid-noon of night by
that Apostle who is the Rock of the Church.
Before him who wanders in Thessaly Pan will brush
the dewy lawns and slim-girt Artemis pursue the
flying hart. In the pale gold of Egyptian sands
the heavy brows of Osiris crowned with the pshent
will brood above the seer and the veil of Isis
tremble to the lifting. For all this is the
rhythm to which the souls of men are attuned and
in that vibration they will see, and no other,
since in this the very mountains and trees of the
land are rooted. So here, where our remote
ancestors worshipped the Gods of Nature, we must
needs stand before the Mystic Mother of India,
the divine daughter of the Himalaya.
How shall I describe the world we entered?
The carvings upon the walls had taken life they had
descended. It was a gathering of the dreams men
have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and
actual. They watched in a serenity that set them
apart in an atmosphere of their own--forms of
indistinct majesty and august beauty, absolute,
simple, and everlasting. I saw them as one sees
reflections in rippled water--no more. But all
faces turned to the place where now a green and
flowering leafage enshrined and partly hid the
living Nature Goddess, as she listened to a voice
that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only in
glimpses of an indescribable sweetness, but an
influence came from her presence like the scent
of rainy pine forests, the coolness that breathes
from great rivers, the passion of Spring when she
breaks on the world with a wave of flowers.
Healing and life flowed from it. Understanding
also. It seemed I could interpret the very
silence of the trees outside into the expression
of their inner life, the running of the green
life-blood in their veins, the delicate trembling
of their finger-tips.
My companion and I were not heeded. We
stood hand in hand like children who have innocently
strayed into a palace, gazing in wonderment. The
august life went its way upon its own occasions,
and, if we would, we might watch. Then the
voice, clear and cold, proceeding, as it were,
with some story begun before we had strayed into
the Presence, the whole assembly listening in
silence.
"--and as it has been so it will be, for
the Law will have the blind soul carried into a body
which is a record of the sins it has committed,
and will not suffer that soul to escape from
re-birth into bodies until it has seen the
truth--"
And even as this was said and I listened,
knowing myself on the verge of some great
knowledge, I felt sleep beginning to weigh upon
my eyelids. The sound blurred, flowed
unsyllabled as a stream, the girl's hand grew
light in mine; she was fading, becoming unreal; I
saw her eyes like faint stars in a mist. They
were gone. Arms seemed to receive me--to lay me
to sleep and I sank below consciousness, and the
night took me.
When I awoke the radiant arrows of the
morning were shooting into the long hall where I lay, but
as I rose and looked about me, strange--most
strange, ruin encircled me everywhere. The blue
sky was the roof. What I had thought a palace
lost in the jungle, fit to receive its King
should he enter, was now a broken hall of State;
the shattered pillars were festooned with waving
weeds, the many coloured lantana grew between the
fallen blocks of marble. Even the sculptures on
the walls were difficult to decipher. Faintly I
could trace a hand, a foot, the orb of a woman's
bosom, the gracious outline of some young God,
standing above a crouching worshipper. No more.
Yes, and now I saw above me as the dawn touched
it the form of the Dweller in the Windhya Hills,
Parvati the Beautiful, leaning softly over
something breathing music at her feet. Yet I
knew I could trace the almost obliterated
sculpture only because I had already seen it
defined in perfect beauty. A deep crack ran
across the marble; it was weathered and stained
by many rains, and little ferns grew in the
crevices, but I could reconstruct every line from
my own knowledge. And how? The Parvati of
Ranipur differed in many important details. She
stood, bending forward,
Memory rushed over me like the sea over
dry sands. A girl--there had been a girl--we had
stood with clasped hands to hear a strange music,
but in spite of the spiritual intimacy of those
moments I could not recall her face. I saw it
cloudy against a background of night and dream,
the eyes remote as stars, and so it eluded me.
Only her presence and her words survived; "We
meet in the Ninth Vibration. All here is true."
But the Ninth Vibration itself was dreamland. I
had never heard the phrase I could not tell what
was meant, nor whether my apprehension was true
or false. I knew only that the night had taken
her and the dawn denied her, and that, dream or
no dream, I stood there with a pang of loss that
even now leaves me wordless.
A bird sang outside in the acacias, clear
and shrill for day, and this awakened my senses and
lowered me to the plane where I became aware of
cold and hunger, and was chilled with dew. I
passed down the tumbled steps that had been a
stately ascent the night before and made my way
into the jungle by the trail, small and lost in
fern, by which we had come. Again I wandered,
and it was high noon before I heard mule bells at
a distance, and, thus guided, struck down through
the green tangle to find myself, wearied but
safe, upon the bridle way that leads to Fagu and
the far Shipki. Two coolies then directed me to
The House in the Woods.
All was anxiety there. Ali Khan had
arrived in the night, having found his way under the
guidance of blind flight and fear. He had
brought the news that I was lost in the jungle
and amid the dwellings of demons. It was, of
course, hopeless to search in the dark, though
the khansamah and his man had gone as far as they
dared with lanterns and shouting, and with the
daylight they tried again and were even now away.
It was useless to reproach the man even if I had
cared to do so. His ready plea was that as far
as men were concerned he was as brave as any
(which was true enough as I had reason to know
later) but that when it came to devilry the
Twelve Imaums themselves would think twice before
facing it.
"Inshalla ta-Alla! (If the sublime God
wills!) this unworthy one will one day show the Protector
of the poor, that he is a respectable person and
no coward, but it is only the Sahibs who laugh in
the face of devils."
He went off to prepare me some food,
consumed with curiosity as to my adventures, and when I
had eaten I found my tiny whitewashed cell, for
the room was little more, and slept for hours.
Late in the afternoon I waked and looked
out. A low but glowing sunlight suffused the wild
garden reclaimed from the strangle-hold of the
jungle and hemmed in with rocks and forest. A
few simple flowers had been planted here and
there, but its chief beauty was a mountain
stream, brown and clear as the eyes of a dog,
that fell from a crag above into a rocky basin,
maidenhair ferns growing in such masses about it
that it was henceforward scarcely more than a
woodland voice. Beside it two great deodars
spread their canopies, and there a woman sat in a
low chair, a girl beside her reading aloud. She
had thrown her hat off and the sunshine turned
her massed dark hair to bronze. That was all I
could see. I went out and joined them, taking
the note of introduction which Olesen had given
me.
I pass over the unessentials of my story;
their friendly greetings and sympathy for my adventure.
It set us at ease at once and I knew my stay
would be the happier for their presence though it
is not every woman one would choose as a
companion in the great mountain country. But
what is germane to my purpose must be told, and
of this a part is the personality of Brynhild
Ingmar. That she was beautiful I never doubted,
though I have heard it disputed and smiled
inwardly as the disputants urged lip and cheek
and shades of rose and lily, weighing and
appraising. Let me describe her as I saw her or,
rather, as I can, adding that even without all
this she must still have been beautiful because
of the deep significance to those who had eyes to
see or feel some mysterious element which mingled
itself with her presence comparable only to the
delight which the power and spiritual essence of
Nature inspires in all but the dullest minds. I
know I cannot hope to convey this in words. It
means little if I say I thought of all quiet
lovely solitary things when I looked into her
calm eyes,--that when she moved it was like clear
springs renewed by flowing, that she seemed the
perfect flowering of a day in June, for these are
phrases. Does Nature know her wonders when she
shines in her strength? Does a woman know the
infinite meanings her beauty may have for the beholder?
I cannot tell. Nor can I tell if I saw this girl as she
may have seemed to those who read only the letter of the
book and are blind to its spirit, or in the deepest sense
as she really was in the sight of That which created her
and of which she was a part. Surely it is a proof of the
divinity of love that in and for a moment it lifts the
veil of so-called reality and shows each to the other
mysteriously perfect and inspiring as the world will
never see them, but as they exist in the Eternal, and in
the sight of those who have learnt that the material is
but the dream, and the vision of love the truth.
I will say then, for the alphabet of what
I knew but cannot tell, that she had the low broad brows
of a Greek Nature Goddess, the hair swept back wing-like
from the temples and massed with a noble luxuriance. It
lay like rippled bronze, suggesting something strong and
serene in its essence. Her eyes were clear and gray as
water, the mouth sweetly curved above a resolute chin.
It was a face which recalled a modelling in marble rather
than the charming pastel and aquarelle of a young woman's
colouring, and somehow I thought of it less as the beauty
of a woman than as some sexless emanation of natural
things, and this impression was strengthened by her
height and the long limbs, slender and strong as those of
some youth trained in the pentathlon, subject to the
severest discipline until all that was superfluous was
fined away and the perfect form expressing the true being
emerged. The body was thus more beautiful than the face,
and I may note in passing that this is often the case,
because the face is more directly the index of the
restless and unhappy soul within and can attain true
beauty only when the soul is in harmony with its source.
She was a little like her pale and wearied
mother. She might resemble her still more when the sorrow
of this world that worketh death should have had its will
of her. I had yet to learn that this would never bc that
she had found the open door of escape.
We three spent much time together in the
days that followed. I never tired of their company and I
think they did not tire of mine, for my wanderings
through the world and my studies in the ancient Indian
literatures and faiths with the Pandit Devaswami were of
interest to them both though in entirely different ways.
Mrs. Ingmar was a woman who centred all her interests in
books and chiefly in the scientific forms of occult
research. She was no believer in anything outside the
range of what she called human experience. The evidences
had convinced her of nothing but a force as yet
unclassified in the scientific categories and all her
interest lay in the undeveloped powers of brain which
might be discovered in the course of ignorant and
credulous experiment. We met therefore on the common
ground of rejection of the so-called occultism of the
day, though I knew even then, and how infinitely better
now, that her constructions were wholly misleading.
Nearly all day she would lie in her chair
under the deodars by the delicate splash and ripple of
the stream. Living imprisoned in the crystal sphere of
the intellect she saw the world outside, painted in few
but distinct colours, small, comprehensible, moving on a
logical orbit. I never knew her posed for an
explanation. She had the contented atheism of a certain
type of French mind and found as much ease in it as
another kind of sweet woman does in her rosary and
confessional.
"I cannot interest Brynhild," she said,
when I knew her better. "She has no affinity with
science. She is simply a nature worshipper, and in such
places as this she seems to draw life from the inanimate
life about her. I have sometimes wondered whether she
might not be developed into a kind of bridge between the
articulate and the inarticulate, so well does she
understand trees and flowers. Her father was like
that--he had all sorts of strange power with animals and
plants, and thought he had more than he had. He could
never realize that the energy of nature is merely
mechanical."
"You think all energy is mechanical?"
"Certainly. We shall lay our finger on
the mainspring one day and the mystery will disappear.
But as for Brynhild--I gave her the best education
possible and yet she has never understood the conception
of a universe moving on mathematical laws to which we
must submit in body and mind. She has the oddest ideas.
I would not willingly say of a child of mine that she is
a mystic, and yet--"
She shook her head compassionately. But I
scarcely heard. My eyes were fixed on Brynhild, who
stood apart, looking steadily out over the snows. It was
a glorious sunset, the west vibrating with gorgeous
colour spilt over in torrents that flooded the sky,
Terrible splendours--hues for which we have no
thought--no name. I had not thought of it as music until
I saw her face but she listened as well as saw, and her
expression changed as it changes when the pomp of a great
orchestra breaks upon the silence. It flashed to the
chords of blood-red and gold that was burning fire. It
softened through the fugue of woven crimson gold and
flame, to the melancholy minor of ashes-of-roses and
paling green, and so through all the dying glories that
faded slowly to a tranquil grey and left the world to the
silver melody of one sole star that dawned above the
ineffable heights of the snows. Then she listened as a
child does to a bird, entranced, with a smile like a
butterfly on her parted lips. I never saw such a power
of quiet.
She and I were walking next day among the
forest ways, the pine-scented sunshine dappling the
dropped frondage. We had been speaking of her mother.
"It is such a misfortune for her," she said thoughtfully,
"that I am not clever. She should have had a daughter
who could have shared her thoughts. She analyses
everything, reasons about everything, and that is quite
out of my reach."
She moved beside me with her wonderful
light step--the poise and balance of a nymph in the
Parthenon frieze.
"How do you see things?"
"See? That is the right word. I see
things--I never reason about them. They are. For her
they move like figures in a sum. For me every one of
them is a window through which one may look to what is
beyond."
"To where?"
"To what they really are--not what they
seem."
I looked at her with interest.
"Did you ever hear of the double vision?"
For this is a subject on which the
spiritually learned men of India, like the great mystics
of all the faiths, have much to say. I had listened with
bewilderment and doubt to the expositions of my Pandit on
this very head. Her simple words seemed for a moment the
echo of his deep and searching thought. Yet it surely
could not be. Impossible.
"Never. What does it mean?" She raised
clear unveiled eyes. "You must forgive me for being so
stupid, but it is my mother who is at home with all these
scientific phrases. I know none of them."
"It means that for some people the
material universe the things we see with our eyes--is
only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which either hides or
shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that sense they
see things as they really are, not as they seem to the
rest of us. And whether this is the statement of a truth
or the wildest of dreams, I cannot tell."
She did not answer for a moment; then
said; "Certainly. There are people who believe
that thought is the only real thing--that the whole
universe is thought made visible. That we create with
our thoughts the very body by which we shall re-act on
the universe in lives to be."
"Do you believe it?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
She paused; looked at me, and then went
on: I felt she was eluding the question. She
began to interest me more than any one I had ever known.
She had extraordinary power of a sort. Once, in the
woods, where I was reading in so deep a shade that she
never saw me, I had an amazing vision of her. She stood
in a glade with the sunlight and shade about her; she had
no hat and a sunbeam turned her hair to pale bronze. A
small bright April shower was falling through the sun,
and she stood in pure light that reflected itself in
every leaf and grass-blade. But it was nothing of all
this that arrested me, beautiful as it was. She stood as
though life were for the moment suspended;--then, very
softly, she made a low musical sound, infinitely wooing,
from scarcely parted lips, and instantly I saw a bird of
azure plumage flutter down and settle on her shoulder,
pluming himself there in happy security. Again she called
softly and another followed the first. Two flew to her
feet, two more to her breast and hand. They caressed her,
clung to her, drew some joyous influence from her
presence. She stood in the glittering rain like Spring
with her birds about her--a wonderful sight. Then,
raising one hand gently with the fingers thrown back she
uttered a different note, perfectly sweet and intimate,
and the branches parted and a young deer with full bright
eyes fixed on her advanced and pushed a soft muzzle into
her hand.
In my astonishment I moved, however
slightly, and the picture broke up. The deer sprang back
into the trees, the birds fluttered up in a hurry of
feathers, and she turned calm eyes upon me, as unstartled
as if she had known all the time that I was there.
"You should not have breathed," she said
smiling. "They must have utter quiet."
I rose up and joined her.
"It is a marvel. I can scarcely believe
my eyes. How do you do it?"
"My father taught me. They come. How can
I tell?"
She turned away and left me. I thought
long over this episode. I recalled words heard in the
place of my studies--words I had dismissed without any
care at the moment. "To those who see, nothing is alien.
They move in the same vibration with all that has life,
be it in bird or flower. And in the Uttermost also, for
all things are One. For such there is no death."
That was beyond me still, but I watched
her with profound interest. She recalled also words I
had half forgotten--
That might have been written of her. And more.
She had found one day in the woods a
flower of a sort I had once seen in the warm damp forests
below Darjiling--ivory white and shaped like a dove in
flight. She wore it that evening on her bosom. A week
later she wore what I took to be another.
"You have had luck," I said; "I never
heard of such a thing being seen so high up, and you have
found it twice."
"No, it is the same."
"The same? Impossible. You found it more
than a week ago."
"I know. It is ten days. Flowers don't
die when one understands them--not as most people think."
Her mother looked up and said fretfully:
"Since she was a child Brynhild has had
that odd idea. That flower is dead and withered. Throw
it away, child. It looks hideous."
Was it glamour? What was it? I saw the
flower dewy fresh in her bosom. She smiled and turned
away.
It was that very evening she left the
veranda where we were sitting in the subdued light of a
little lamp and passed beyond where the ray cut the
darkness. She went down the perspective of trees to the
edge of the clearing and I rose to follow for it seemed
absolutely unsafe that she should be on the verge of the
panther-haunted woods alone. Mrs. Ingmar turned a page
of her book serenely;
"She will not like it if you go. I cannot
imagine that she should come to harm. She always goes
her own way--light or dark."
I returned to my seat and watched
steadfastly. At first I could see nothing but as my sight
adjusted itself I saw her a long way down the clearing
that opened the snows, and quite certainly also I saw
something like a huge dog detach itself from the woods
and bound to her feet. It mingled with her dark dress
and I lost it. Mrs. Ingmar said, seeing my anxiety but
nothing else; "Her father was just the same;--he had no
fear of anything that lives. No doubt some people have
that power. I have never seen her attract birds and
beasts as he certainly did, but she is quite as fond of
them."
I could not understand her blindness--what
I myself had seen raised questions I found unanswerable,
and her mother saw nothing! Which of us was right?
Presently she came back slowly and I ventured no word.
A woodland sorcery, innocent as the dawn,
hovered about her. What was it? Did the mere love of
these creatures make a bond between her soul and theirs,
or was the ancient dream true and could she at times move
in the same vibration? I thought of her as a wood-spirit
sometimes, an expression herself of some passion of
beauty in Nature, a thought of snows and starry nights
and flowing rivers made visible in flesh. It is surely
when seized with the urge of some primeval yearning which
in man is merely sexual that Nature conceives her fair
forms and manifests them, for there is a correspondence
that runs through all creation.
Here I ask myself--Did I love her? In a
sense, yes, deeply, but not in the common reading of the
phrase. I have trembled with delight before the wild and
terrible splendour of the Himalayan heights--; low golden
moons have steeped my soul in longing, but I did not
think of these things as mine in any narrow sense, nor so
desire them. They were the Angels of the Evangel of
beauty. So too was she. She had none of the "silken
nets and traps of adamant," she was no sister of the
"girls of mild silver or of furious gold";--but fair,
strong, and her own, a dweller in the House of Quiet. I
did not covet her. I loved her.
Days passed. There came a night when the
winds were loosed--no moon, the stars flickering like
blown tapers through driven clouds, the trees swaying and
lamenting.
"There will be rain tomorrow." Mrs. Ingmar
said, as we parted for the night. I closed my door.
Some great cat of the woods was crying harshly outside my
window, the sound receding towards the bridle way. I
slept in a dream of tossing seas and ships labouring
among them.
With the sense of a summons I waked--I
cannot tell when. Unmistakable, as if I were called by
name. I rose and dressed, and heard distinctly bare feet
passing my door. I opened it noiselessly and looked out
into the little passage way that made for the entry, and
saw nothing but pools of darkness and a dim light from
the square of the window at the end. But the wind had
swept the sky clear with its flying bosom and was
sleeping now in its high places and the air was filled
with a mild moony radiance and a great stillness.
Now let me speak with restraint and
exactness. I was not afraid but felt as I imagine a dog
feels in the presence of his master, conscious of a
purpose, a will entirely above his own and
incomprehensible, yet to be obeyed without question. I
followed my reading of the command, bewildered but
docile, and understanding nothing but that I was called.
The lights were out. The house dead
silent; the familiar veranda ghostly in the night. And
now I saw a white figure at the head of the
steps--Brynhild. She turned and looked over her shoulder,
her face pale in the moon, and made the same gesture with
which she summoned her birds. I knew her meaning, for
now we were moving in the same rhythm, and followed as
she took the lead. How shall I describe that strange
night in the jungle. There were fire-flies or dancing
points of light that recalled them. Perhaps she was only
thinking them--only thinking the moon and the quiet, for
we were in the world where thought is the one reality.
But they went with us in a cloud and faintly lighted our
way. There were exquisite wafts of perfume from hidden
flowers breathing their dreams to the night. Here and
there a drowsy bird stirred and chirped from the roof of
darkness, a low note of content that greeted her passing.
It was a path intricate and winding and how long we went,
and where, I cannot tell. But at last she stooped and
parting the boughs before her we stepped into an open
space, and before us--I knew it--I knew it!--The House of
Beauty.
She paused at the foot of the great marble
steps and looked at me.
"We have met here already."
I did not wonder--I could not. In the
Ninth Vibration surprise had ceased to be. Why had I not
recognized her before--O dull of heart! That was my only
thought. We walk blindfold through the profound darkness
of material nature, the blinder because we believe we see
it. It is only when the doors of the material are closed
that the world appears to man as it exists in the eternal
truth.
"Did you know this?" I asked, trembling
before the mystery.
"I knew it, because I am awake. You
forgot it in the dull sleep which we call daily life.
But we were here and THEY began the story of the King who
made this house. Tonight we shall hear it. It is the
story of Beauty wandering through the world and the world
received her not. We hear it in this place because here
he agonized for what he knew too late."
"Was that our only meeting?"
"We meet every night, but you forget when
the day brings the sleep of the soul.--You do not sink
deep enough into rest to remember. You float on the
surface where the little bubbles of foolish dream are
about you and I cannot reach you then."
"How can I compel myself to the deeps?"
"You cannot. It will come. But when you
have passed up the bridle way and beyond the Shipki, stop
at Gyumur. There is the Monastery of Tashi-gong, and
there one will meet you--"
"His name?"
"Stephen Clifden. He will tell you what
you desire to know. Continue on then with him to
Yarkhand. There in the Ninth Vibration we shall meet
again. It is a long journey but you will be content."
"Do you certainly know that we shall meet
again?"
"When you have learnt, we can meet when we
will. He will teach you the Laya Yoga. You should not
linger here in the woods any longer. You should go on.
In three days it will be possible."
"But how have you learnt--a girl and
young?"
"Through a close union with Nature that is
one of the three roads. But I know little as yet. Now
take my hand and come."
"One last question. Is this house ruined
and abject as I have seen it in the daylight, or royal
and the house of Gods as we see it now? Which is truth?"
"In the day you saw it in the empty
illusion of a blind thought. Tonight, eternally lovely
as in the thought of the man who made it. Nothing that
is beautiful is lost, though in the sight of the unwise
it seems to die. Death is in the eyes we look
through--when they are cleansed we see Life only. Now
take my hand and come. Delay no more."
She caught my hand and we entered the dim
magnificence of the great hall. The moon entered with
us.
Instantly I had the feeling of
supernatural presence. Yet I only write this in
deference to common use, for it was absolutely
natural--more so than any I have met in the state called
daily life. It was a thing in which I had a part, and if
this was supernatural so also was I.
Again I saw the Dark One, the Beloved, the
young Krishna, above the women who loved him. He
motioned with his hand as we passed, as though he waved
us smiling on our way. Again the dancers moved in a
rhythmic tread to the feet of the mountain Goddess--again
we followed to where she bent to hear. But now, solemn
listening faces crowded in the shadows about her, grave
eyes fixed immovably upon what lay at her feet--a man,
submerged in the pure light that fell from her presence,
his dark face stark and fine, lips locked, eyes shut,
arms flung out cross-wise in utter abandonment, like a
figure of grief invisibly crucified upon his shame. I
stopped a few feet from him, arrested by a barrier I
could not pass. Was it sleep or death or some mysterious
state that partook of both? Not sleep, for there was no
flutter of breath. Not death--no rigid immobility struck
chill into the air. It was the state of subjection where
the spirit set free lies tranced in the mighty influences
which surround us invisibly until we have entered, though
but for a moment, the Ninth Vibration.
And now, with these Listeners about us, a
clear voice began and stirred the air with music. I have
since been asked in what tongue it spoke and could only
answer that it reached my ears in the words of my
childhood, and that I know whatever that language had
been it would so have reached me.
"Great Lady, hear the story of this man's
fall, for it is the story of man. Be pitiful to the
blind eyes and give them light."
There was long since in Ranipur a mighty
King and at his birth the wise men declared that unless
he cast aside all passions that debase the soul,
relinquishing the lower desires for the higher until a
Princess laden with great gifts should come to be his
bride, he would experience great and terrible
misfortunes. And his royal parents did what they could
to possess him with this belief, but they died before he
reached manhood. Behold him then, a young King in his
palace, surrounded with splendour. How should he
withstand the passionate crying of the flesh or believe
that through pleasure comes satiety and the loss of that
in the spirit whereby alone pleasure can be enjoyed? For
his gift was that he could win all hearts. They swarmed
round him like hiving bees and hovered about him like
butterflies. Sometimes he brushed them off. Often he
caressed them, and when this happened, each thought
proudly "I am the Royal Favourite. There is none other
than me."
Also the Princess delayed who would be the
crest-jewel of the crown, bringing with her all good and
the blessing of the High Gods, and in consequence of all
these things the King took such pleasures as he could,
and they were many, not knowing they darken the inner eye
whereby what is royal is known through all disguises.
(Most pitiful to see, beneath the
close-shut lids of the man at the feet of the Dweller in
the Heights, tears forced themselves, as though a corpse
dead to all else lived only to anguish. They flowed like
blood-drops upon his face as he lay enduring, and the
voice proceeded.) What was the charm of the King? Was
it his stately height and strength? Or his faithless
gayety? Or his voice, deep and soft as the sitar when it
sings of love? His women said--some one thing, some
another, but none of these ladies were of royal blood,
and therefore they knew not.
Now one day, the all-privileged jester of
the King, said, laughing harshly: And the King replied: Now in a far away country was a Princess,
daughter of the Greatest, and her Father hesitated to
give her in marriage to such a King for all reported that
he was faithless of heart, but having seen his portrait
she loved him and fled in disguise from the palaces of
her Father, and being captured she was brought before the
King in Ranipur.
He sat upon a cloth of gold and about him
was the game he had killed in hunting, in great masses of
ruffled fur and plumage, and he turned the beauty of his
face carelessly upon her, and as the Princess looked upon
him, her heart yearned to him, and he said in his voice
that was like the male string of the sitar:
"Little slave, what is your desire?"
Then she saw that the long journey had
scarred her feet and dimmed her hair with dust, and that
the King's eyes, worn with days and nights of pleasure
did not pierce her disguise. Now in her land it is a
custom that the blood royal must not proclaim itself, so
she folded her hands and said gently: And he, hearing that the waiting slave of
his chief favorite Jayashri was dead, gave her that
place. So the Princess attended on those ladies,
courteous and obedient to all authority as beseemed her
royalty, and she braided her bright hair so that it hid
the little crowns which the Princesses of her House must
wear always in token of their rank, and every day her
patience strengthened.
Sometimes the King, carelessly desiring
her laughing face and sad eyes, would send for her to
wile away an hour, and he would say; "Dance, little
slave, and tell me stories of the far countries. You are
quite unlike my women, doubtless because you are a
slave."
And she thought--"No, but because I am a
Princess,"--but this she did not say. She laughed and
told him the most marvellous stories in the world until
he laid his head upon her warm bosom, dreaming awake.
There were stories of the great Himalayan
solitudes where in the winter nights the white tiger
stares at the witches' dance of the Northern Lights
dazzled by the hurtling of their myriad spears. And she
told how the King-eagle, hanging motionless over the
peaks of Gaurisankar, watches with golden eyes for his
prey, and falling like a plummet strikes its life out
with his clawed heel and, screaming with triumph, bears
it to his fierce mate in her cranny of the rocks.
"A gallant story!" the King would say.
"More!"
Then she told of the tropical heats and
the stealthy deadly creatures of forest and jungle, and
the blue lotus of Buddha swaying on the still
lagoon,--And she spoke of loves of men and women, their
passion and pain and joy. And when she told of their
fidelity and valour and honour that death cannot quench,
her voice was like the song of a minstrel, for she had
read all the stories of the ages and the heart of a
Princess told her the rest. And the King listened
unwearying though he believed this was but a slave.
(The face of the man at the feet of the
Dweller in the Heights twitched in a white agony. Pearls
of sweat were distilled upon his brows, but he moved
neither hand nor foot, enduring as in a flame of fire.
And the voice continued.)
So one day, in the misty green of the
Spring, while she rested at his feet in the garden
Pavilion, he said to her: And she answered proudly: He replied slowly; She laid her cheek on his hand.
"That is the true reason."
But he drew it away and was vaguely
troubled, for her words, he knew not why, reminded him of
the Far Away Princess and of things he had long
forgotten, and he said; "What does a slave know of the
hearts of Kings?" And that night he slept or waked
alone.
Winter was at hand with its blue and
cloudless days, and she was commanded to meet the King
where the lake lay still and shining like an ecstasy of
bliss, and she waited with her chin dropped into the cup
of her hands, looking over the water with eyes that did
not see, for her whole soul said; "How long O my
Sovereign Lord, how long before you know the truth and we
enter together into our Kingdom?"
As she sat she heard the King's step, and
the colour stole up into her face in a flush like the
earliest sunrise. "He is coming," she said; and again;
"He loves me."
So he came beside the water, walking
slowly. But the King was not alone. His arm embraced
the latest-come beauty from Samarkhand, and, with his
head bent, he whispered in her willing ear.
Then clasping her hands, the Princess drew
a long sobbing breath, and he turned and his eyes grew
hard as blue steel.
"Go, slave," he cried. "What place have
you in Kings' gardens? Go. Let me see you no more."
(The man lying at the feet of the Dweller
in the Heights, raised a heavy arm and flung it above his
head, despairing, and it fell again on the cross of his
torment. And the voice went on.)
And as he said this, her heart broke; and
she went and her feet were weary. So she took the wise
book she loved and unrolled it until she came to a
certain passage, and this she read twice;
"If the heart of a slave be broken it may be mended
with jewels and soft words, but the heart of a Princess
can be healed only by the King who broke it, or in
Yamapura, the City under the Sunset where they make all
things new. Now, Yama, the Lord of this City, is the
Lord of Death." And having thus read the Princess rolled
the book and put it from her.
And next day, the King said to his women;
"Send for her," for his heart smote him and he desired to
atone royally for the shame of his speech. And they
sought and came back saying; Fear grew in the heart of the King--a
nameless dread, and he said, "Search." And again they
sought and returned and the King was striding up and down
the great hall and none dared cross his path. But,
trembling, they told him, and he replied; "Search again.
I will not lose her, and, slave though she be, she shall
be my Queen."
So they ran, dispersing to the Four
Quarters, and the King strode up and down the hall, and
Loneliness kept step with him and clasped his hand and
looked into his eyes.
Then the youngest of the women entered
with a tale to tell.
"Majesty, we have found her. She lies
beside the lake. When the birds fled this morning she
fled with them, but upon a longer journey. Even to
Yamapura, the City under the Sunset."
And the King said; "Let none follow." And
he strode forth swiftly, white with thoughts he dared not
think.
The Princess lay among the gold of the
fallen leaves. All was gold, for her bright hair was
outspread in shining waves and in it shone the glory of
the hidden crown. On her face was no smile only at last
was revealed the patience she had covered with laughter
so long that even the voice of the King could not now
break it into joy. The hands that had clung, the swift
feet that had run beside his, the tender body, mighty to
serve and to love, lay within touch, but farther away
than the uttermost star was the Far Away Princess, known
and loved too late. And he said; "My Princess--O, my
Princess!" and laid his head on her cold bosom.
"Too late!" a harsh voice croaked beside
him, and it was the voice of the Jester who mocks at all
things. "Too late! O madness, to despise the blood
royal because it humbled itself to service and so was
doubly royal. The Far Away Princess came laden with
great gifts, and to her the King's gift was the wage of a
slave and a broken heart. Cast your crown and sceptre in
the dust, O King--O King of Fools."
(The man at the feet of the Dweller in the
Heights moved. Some dim word shaped upon his locked
lips. She listened in a divine calm. It seemed that the
very Gods drew nearer. Again the man essayed speech, the
body dead, life only in the words that none could hear.
The voice went on.)
But the Princess flying wearily because of
the sore wound in her heart, came at last to the City
under the Sunset, where the Lord of Death rules in the
House of Quiet, and was there received with royal honours
for in that land are no disguises. And she knelt before
the Secret One and in a voice broken with agony entreated
him to heal her. And with veiled and pitying eyes he
looked upon her, for many and grievous as are the wounds
he has healed this was more grievous still. And he
said; But the Princess, white with pain, asked
only; And the Lord of Peace replied; Then she rose to her feet.
"I will endure and when he comes I will
serve him once more. If he will he shall heal me, and if
not I will endure for ever."
And He who is veiled replied; And the Princess smiled; And the Lord of Death was silent. So she
went outside into the darkness of the spaces, and the
souls set free passed her like homing doves, and she sat
with her hands clasped over the sore wound in her heart,
watching the earthward way. And the Princess is keeping
still the day of her long patience."
The voice ceased. And there was a great
silence, and the listening faces drew nearer.
Then the Dweller in the Heights spoke in a
voice soft as the falling of snow in the quiet of frost
and moon. I could have wept myself blind with joy to
hear that music. More I dare not say.
"He is in the Lower State of Perception.
He sorrows for his loss. Let him have one instant's
light that still he may hope."
She bowed above the man, gazing upon him
as a mother might upon her sleeping child. The dead
eyelids stirred, lifted, a faint gleam showed beneath
them, an unspeakable weariness. I thought they would
fall unsatisfied. Suddenly he saw What looked upon him,
and a terror of joy no tongue can tell flashed over the
dark mirror of his face. He stretched a faint hand to
touch her feet, a sobbing sigh died upon his lips, and
once more the swooning sleep took him. He lay as a dead
man before the Assembly.
"The night is far spent," a voice said,
from I know not where. And I knew it was said not only
for the sleeper but for all, for though the flying feet
of Beauty seem for a moment to outspeed us she will one
day wait our coming and gather us to her bosom.
As before, the vision spread outward like
rings in a broken reflection in water. I saw the girl
beside me, but her hand grew light in mine. I felt it no
longer. I heard the roaring wind in the trees, or was it
a great voice thundering in my ears? Sleep took me. I
waked in my little room.
Strange and sad--I saw her next day and
did not remember her whom of all things I desired to
know. I remembered the vision and knew that whether in
dream or waking I had heard an eternal truth. I longed
with a great longing to meet my beautiful companion, and
she stood at my side and I was blind.
Now that I have climbed a little higher on
the Mount of Vision it seems even to myself that this
could not be. Yet it was, and it is true of not this
only but of how much else!
She knew me. I learnt that later, but she
made no sign. Her simplicities had carried her far
beyond and above me, to places where only the winged
things attain--"as a bird among the bird-droves of God."
I have since known that this power of
direct simplicity in her was why among the great
mountains we beheld the Divine as the emanation of the
terrible beauty about us. We cannot see it as it
is--only in some shadowing forth, gathering sufficient
strength for manifestation from the spiritual atoms that
haunt the region where that form has been for ages the
accepted vehicle of adoration. But I was now to set
forth to find another knowledge--to seek the Beauty that
blinds us to all other. Next day the man who was
directing my preparations for travel sent me word from
Simla that all was ready and I could start two days
later. I told my friends the time of parting was near.
"But it was no surprise to me," I added,
"for I had heard already that in a very few days I should
be on my way."
Mrs. Ingmar was more than kind. She laid
a frail hand on mine.
"We shall miss you indeed. If it is
possible to send us word of your adventures in those wild
solitudes I hope you will do it. Of course aviation will
soon lay bare their secrets and leave them no mysteries,
so you don't go too soon. One may worship science and
yet feel it injures the beauty of the world. But what is
beauty compared with knowledge?"
"Do you never regret it?" I asked.
"Never, dear Mr. Ormond. I am a
worshipper of hard facts and however hideous they may be
I prefer them to the prismatic colours of romance."
Brynhild, smiling, quoted;
"There is nothing greater than science,"
said Mrs. Ingmar with soft reverence. "The mind of man
is the foot-rule of the universe."
She meditated for a moment and then added
that my kind interests in their plans decided her to tell
me that she would be returning to Europe and then to
Canada in a few months with a favourite niece as her
companion while Brynhild would remain in India with
friends in Mooltan for a time. I looked eagerly at her
but she was lost in her own thoughts and it was evidently
not the time to say more.
If I had hoped for a vision before I left
the neighbourhood of that strange House of Beauty where a
spirit imprisoned appeared to await the day of
enlightenment I was disappointed. These things do not
happen as one expects or would choose. The wind bloweth
where it listeth until the laws which govern the inner
life are understood, and then we would not choose if we
could for we know that all is better than well. In this
world, either in the blinded sight of daily life or in
the clarity of the true sight I have not since seen it,
but that has mattered little, for having heard an
authentic word within its walls I have passed on my way
elsewhere.
Next day a letter from Olesen reached me.
"Dear Ormond, I hope you have had a
good time at the House in the Woods. I saw Rup Singh a
few days ago and he wrote the odd message I enclose. You
know what these natives are, even the most sensible of
them, and you will humour the old fellow for he ages very
fast and I think is breaking up. But this was not what I
wanted to say. I had a letter from a man I had not seen
for years--a fellow called Stephen Clifden, who lives in
Kashmir. As a matter of fact I had forgotten his
existence but evidently he has not repaid the compliment
for he writes as follows-- No, I had better send you the
note and you can do as you please. I am rushed off my
legs with work and the heat is hell with the lid off.
And--"
But the rest was of no interest except to
a friend of years' standing. I read Rup Singh's message
first. It was written in his own tongue.
"You have with open eyes seen what this
humble one has dreamed but has not known. If the
thing be possible, write me this word that I may
depart in peace. 'With that one who in a former
birth you loved all is well. Fear nothing for him.
The way is long but at the end the lamps of love are
lit and the Unstruck music is sounded. He lies at
the feet of Mercy and there awaits his hour.' And
if it be not possible to write these words, write
nothing, O Honoured, for though it be in the hells
my soul shall find my King, and again I shall serve
him as once I served." I understood, and wrote those words as he
had written them. Strange mystery of life--that I who
had not known should see, and that this man whose
fidelity had not deserted his broken King in his utter
downfall should have sought with passion for one sight of
the beloved face across the waters of death and sought in
vain. I thought of those Buddhist words of Seneca--"The
soul may be and is in the mass of men drugged and
silenced by the seductions of sense and the deceptions of
the world. But if, in some moment of detachment and
elation, when its captors and jailors relax their guard,
it can escape their clutches, it will seek at once the
region of its birth and its true home."
Well--the shell must break before the bird
can fly, and the time drew near for the faithful servant
to seek his lord. My message reached him in time and
gladdened him.
I turned then to Clifden's letter.
Amazing. I remembered the message I had
heard and this man's words rang true and kindly, but what
could it mean? I really did not question farther than
this for now I could not doubt that I was guided.
Stronger hands than mine had me in charge, and it only
remained for me to set forth in confidence and joy to an
end that as yet I could not discern. I turned my face
gladly to the wonder of the mountains.
Gladly--but with a reservation. I was
leaving a friend and one whom I dimly felt might one day
be more than a friend--Brynhild Ingmar. That problem
must be met before I could take my way.
I thought much of what might be said at
parting. True, she had the deepest attraction for me, but
true also that I now beheld a quest stretching out into
the unknown which I must accept in the spirit of the
knight errant. Dare I then bind my heart to any
allegiance which would pledge me to a future inconsistent
with what lay before me? How could I tell what she might
think of the things which to me were now real and
external--the revelation of the only reality that
underlies all the seeming. Life can never be the same
for the man who has penetrated to this, and though it may
seem a hard saying there can be but a maimed
understanding between him and those who still walk amid
the phantoms of death and decay.
Her sympathy with nature was deep and
wonderful but might it not be that though the earth was
eloquent to her the skies were silent? I was but a
beginner myself--I knew little indeed. Dare I risk that
little in a sweet companionship which would sink me into
the contentment of the life lived by the happily deluded
between the cradle and the grave and perhaps close to me
for ever that still sphere where my highest hope abides?
I had much to ponder, for how could I lose her out of my
life--though I knew not at all whether she who had so
much to make her happiness would give me a single thought
when I was gone.
If all this seem the very uttermost of
selfish vanity, forgive a man who grasped in his hand a
treasure so new, so wonderful that he walked in fear and
doubt lest it should slip away and leave him in a world
darkened for ever by the torment of the knowledge that it
might have been his and he had bartered it for the mess
of pottage that has bought so many birthrights since
Jacob bargained with his weary brother in the tents of
Lahai-roi. I thought I would come back later with my
prize gained and throwing it at her feet ask her wisdom
in return, for whatever I might not know I knew well she
was wiser than I except in that one shining of the light
from Eleusis. I walked alone in the woods thinking of
these things and no answer satisfied me.
I did not see her alone until the day I
left, for I was compelled by the arrangements I was
making to go down to Simla for a night. And now the last
morning had come with golden sun-shot mists rolling
upward to disclose the far white billows of the sea of
eternity, the mountains awaking to their enormous joys.
The trees were dripping glory to the steaming earth, it
flowed like rivers into their most secret recesses, moss
and flower, fern and leaf floated upon the waves of light
revealing their inmost soul in triumphant gladness. Far
off across the valleys a cuckoo was calling--the very
voice of spring, and in the green world above my head a
bird sang, a feathered joy, so clear, so passionate that
I thought the great summer morning listened in silence to
his rapture ringing through the woods. I waited until
the Jubilate was ended and then went in to bid good-bye
to my friends.
Mrs. Ingmar bid me the kindest farewell
and I left her serene in the negation of all beauty, all
hope save that of a world run on the lines of a model
municipality, disease a memory, sewerage, light and air
systems perfected, the charted brain sending its costless
messages to the outer parts of the habitable globe, and
at least a hundred years of life with a decent cremation
at the end of it assured to every eugenically born
citizen. No more. But I have long ceased to regret that
others use their own eyes whether clear or dim. Better
the merest glimmer of light perceived thus than the
hearsay of the revelations of others. And by the broken
fragments of a bewildered hope a man shall eventually
reach the goal and rejoice in that dawn where the morning
stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy.
It must come, for it is already here.
Brynhild walked with me through the long
glades in the fresh thin air to the bridle road where my
men and ponies waited, eager to be off. We stood at last
in the fringe of trees on a small height which commanded
the way;--a high uplifted path cut along the shoulders of
the hills and on the left the sheer drop of the valleys.
Perhaps seven or eight feet in width and dignified by the
name of the Great Hindustan and Tibet Road it ran winding
far away into Wonderland. Looking down into the valleys,
so far beneath that the solitudes seem to wall them in I
thought of all the strange caravans which have taken this
way with tinkle of bells and laughter now so long
silenced, and as I looked I saw a lost little monastery
in a giant crevice, solitary as a planet on the outermost
ring of the system, and remembrance flashed into my mind
and I said; In those crystal clear eyes I saw a
something new to me a faint smile, half pitying, half
sad; "A girl in a strange place. A woman who
has twice guided me "
I broke off. Her smile perplexed me. I
could not tell what to say. She repeated in a soft
undertone-- And instantly I knew. O blind--blind!
Was the unhappy King of the story duller of heart than I?
And shame possessed me. Here was the chrysoberyl that
all day hides its secret in deeps of lucid green but when
the night comes flames with its fiery ecstasy of crimson
to the moon, and I--I had been complacently considering
whether I might not blunt my own spiritual instinct by
companionship with her, while she had been my guide, as
infinitely beyond me in insight as she was in all things
beautiful. I could have kissed her feet in my deep
repentance. True it is that the gateway of the high
places is reverence and he who cannot bow his head shall
receive no crown. I saw that my long travel in search of
knowledge would have been utterly vain if I had not
learnt that lesson there and then. In those moments of
silence I learnt it once and for ever.
She stood by me breathing the liquid
morning air, her face turned upon the eternal snows. I
caught her hand in a recognition that might have ended
years of parting, and its warm youth vibrated in mine,
the foretaste of all understanding, all unions, of love
that asks nothing, that fears nothing, that has no
petition to make. She raised her eyes to mine and her
tears were a rainbow of hope. So we stood in silence
that was more than any words, and the golden moments went
by. I knew her now for what she was, one of whom it
might have been written;
With open eyes! Later I asked the nature
of the strange bond that had called her to my side.
"I do not understand that fully myself,"
she said--"That is part of the knowledge we must wait
for. But you have the eyes that see, and that is a tie
nothing can break. I had waited long in the House of
Beauty for you. I guided you there. But between you and
me there is also love."
I stretched an eager hand but she repelled
it gently, drawing back a little. "Not love of each
other though we are friends and in the future may be
infinitely more. But--have you ever seen a drawing of
Blake's--a young man stretching his arms to a white swan
which flies from him on wings he cannot stay? That is
the story of both our lives. We long to be joined in
this life, here and now, to an unspeakable beauty and
power whose true believers we are because we have seen
and known. There is no love so binding as the same
purpose. Perhaps that is the only true love. And so we
shall never be apart though we may never in this world be
together again in what is called companionship."
"We shall meet," I said confidently. She
smiled and was silent.
"Do we follow a will-o'-the wisp in
parting? Do we give up the substance for the shadow?
Shall I stay?"
She laughed joyously; "Blow away on a great wind. Ride on the
crests of tossing waves. Catch a star to light the
fireflies!"
She laughed like a bird's song.
"Wrong--wrong! I shall be a student. All
I know as yet has come to me by intuition, but there is
Law as well as Love and I will learn. I have drifted
like a happy cloud before the wind. Now I will learn to
be the wind that blows the clouds."
I looked at her in astonishment. If a
flower had desired the same thing it could scarcely have
seemed more incredible, for I had thought her whole life
and nature instinctive not intellective. She smiled as
one who has a beloved secret to keep.
"When you have gained what in this country
they call The Knowledge of Regeneration, come back and
ask me what I have learnt."
She would say no more of that and turned
to another matter, speaking with earnestness; Something in the sweetness of her voice,
its high passion, the strong beauty of her presence woke
a poignant longing in my heart. I said; "Your way lies there," she pointed to the
high mountains. "And mine to the plains, and if we chose
our own we should wander. But we shall meet again in the
way and time that will be best and with knowledge so
enlarged that what we have seen already will be like an
empty dream compared to daylight truth. If you knew what
waits for you you would not delay one moment."
She stood radiant beneath the deodars, a
figure of Hope, pointing steadily to the heights. I knew
her words were true though as yet I could not tell how.
I knew that whereas we had seen the Wonderful in
beautiful though local forms there is a plane where the
Formless may be apprehended in clear dream and solemn
vision--the meeting of spirit with Spirit. What that
revelation would mean I could not guess--how should
I?--but I knew the illusion we call death and decay would
wither before it. There is a music above and beyond the
Ninth Vibration though I must love those words for ever
for what their hidden meaning gave me.
I took her hand and held it.
Strange--beyond all strangeness that that story of an
ancient sorrow should have made us what we were to each
other--should have opened to me the gates of that Country
where she wandered content. For the first time I had
realized in its fulness the loveliness of this crystal
nature, clear as flowing water to receive and transmit
the light--itself a prophecy and fulfilment of some
higher race which will one day inhabit our world when it
has learnt the true values. She drew a flower from her
breast and gave it to me. It lies before me white and
living as I write these words.
I sprang down the road and mounted, giving
the word to march. The men shouted and strode on--our
faces to the Shipki Pass and what lay beyond.
We had parted.
Once, twice, I looked back, and standing
in full sunlight, she waved her hand.
We turned the angle of the rocks.
What I found--what she found is a story
strange and beautiful which I may tell one day to those
who care to hear. That for me there were pauses,
hesitancies, dreads, on the way I am not concerned to
deny, for so it must always be with the roots of the old
beliefs of fear and ignorance buried in the soil of our
hearts and ready to throw out their poisonous fibres.
But there was never doubt. For myself I have long
forgotten the meaning of that word in anything that is of
real value.
Do not let it be thought that the treasure
is reserved for the few or those of special gifts. And
it is as free to the West as to the East though I own it
lies nearer to the surface in the Orient where the
spiritual genius of the people makes it possible and the
greater and, more faithful teachers are found. It is not
without meaning that all the faiths of the world have
dawned in those sunrise skies. Yet it is within reach of
all and asks only recognition, for the universe has been
the mine of its jewels--
--and more that cannot be uttered--the Lights and
Perfections.
So for all seekers I pray this
prayer--beautiful in its sonorous Latin, but noble in all
the tongues;
"Supplico tibi, Pater et Dux--I pray Thee,
Guide of our vision, that we may remember the nobleness
with which Thou hast endowed us, and that Thou wouldest
be always on our right and on our left in the motion of
our wills, that we may be purged from the contagion of
the body and the affections of the brute and overcome and
rule them. And I pray also that Thou wouldest drive away
the blinding darkness from the eyes of our souls that we
may know well what is to be held for divine and what for
mortal."
"The nobleness with which Thou hast
endowed us--" this, and not the cry of the miserable
sinner whose very repentance is no virtue but the
consequence of failure and weakness is the strong music
to which we must march.
And the way is open to the mountains.
(End.)
"Is this a dream?"
"Were such things here as we do speak
about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root
That takes the reason captive?"
"Are there people who believe this--know it?"
"You see, I don't think things out. I only
feel. But this cannot interest you."
"There was nought above me and nought below,
My childhood had not learnt to know;
For what are the voices of birds,
Aye, and of beasts, but words, our words,--
Only so much more sweet."
"Maharaj, you divert yourself. But how if,
while we feast and play, the Far Away Princess glided
past and was gone, unknown and unwelcomed?"
"Fool, content yourself. I shall know my
Princess, but she delays so long that I weary."
"A place in the household of the King."
"Little slave, why do you love me?"
"Because You have the heart of a King."
"Of the women who have loved me none gave
this reason, though they gave many."
"Maharaj, she is gone. We cannot find her."
"Princess, I cannot, But this I can do--I can
give a new heart in a new birth--happy and careless as
the heart of a child. Take this escape from the anguish
you endure and be at peace."
"In this new heart and birth, is there room
for the King?"
"None. He too will be forgotten."
"In this sacred City no pain may disturb the
air, therefore you must wait outside in the chill and the
dark. Think better, Princess! Also, he must pass
through many rebirths, because he beheld the face of
Beauty unveiled and knew her not. And when he comes he
will be weary and weak as a new-born child, and no more a
great King."
"Then he will need me the more," she said; "I
will wait and kiss the feet of my King."
"Their science roamed from star to star
And than itself found nothing greater.
What wonder? In a Leyden jar
They bottled the Creator."
"To the Honoured One who has attained to
the favour of the Favourable.
"Dear Olesen, you will have forgotten
me, and feeling sure of this I should scarcely have
intruded a letter into your busy life were it not
that I remember your good-nature as a thing
unforgettable though so many years have gone by. I
hear of you sometimes when Sleigh comes up the Sind
valley, for I often camp at Sonamarg and above the
Zoji La and farther. I want you to give a message to
a man you know who should be expecting to hear from
me. Tell him I shall be at the Tashigong Monastery
when he reaches Gyumur beyond the Shipki. Tell him
I have the information he wants and I will willingly
go on with him to Yarkhand and his destination. He
need not arrange for men beyond Gyumur. All is
fixed. So sorry to bother you, old man, but I don't
know Ormond's address, except that he was with you
and has gone up Simla way. And of course he will be
keen to hear the thing is settled."
"I have marching orders that have
countermanded my own plans. I am to journey to the
Buddhist Monastery of Tashigong, and there meet a friend
who will tell me what is necessary that I may travel to
Yarkhand and beyond. It will be long before I see
Kashmir."
"Who told you, and where?"
"Great Lady, be pitiful to the blind eyes and
give them light."
"I come from where night falls clearer
Than your morning sun can rise;
From an earth that to heaven draws nearer
Than your visions of Paradise,--
For the dreams that your dreamers dream
We behold them with open eyes."
"We give a single rose for a rose-tree that
bears seven times seven. Daily I see more, and you are
going where you will be instructed. As you know my
mother prefers for a time to have my cousin with her to
help her with the book she means to write. So I shall
have time to myself. What do you think I shall do?"
"Before you came here I had a message for
you, and Stephen Clifden will tell you the same thing
when you meet. Believe it for it is true. Remember
always that the psychical is not the mystical and that
what we seek is not marvel but vision. These two things
are very far apart, so let the first with all its dangers
pass you by, for our way lies to the heights, and for us
there is only one danger--that of turning back and losing
what the whole world cannot give in exchange. I have
never seen Stephen Clifden but I know much of him. He is
a safe guide a man who has had much and strange sorrow
which has brought him joy that cannot be told. He will
take you to those who know the things that you desire. I
wish I might have gone too."
"I cannot leave you. You are the only guide
I can follow. Let us search together--you always on
before."
"Median gold it holds, and silver from Atropatene,
Ruby and emerald from Hindustan, and Bactrian agate,
Bright with beryl and pearl, sardonyx and sapphire."--