by Talbot Mundy
“I’m waiting for you to hedge,” said Ommony. “So far, I simply don’t believe you.”
“Well: the next was eleven years old, and she made trouble. She was the child of a sea-captain who was hanged for shooting drunken sailors. Some missionaries took care of her; but they said things about her father, and she ran away — from Poona — the mission was in Poona. So, of course, there was a search, and much in the newspapers. We had to hide her carefully. The missionaries offered a reward, but she did not want to go back to the missionaries. In many ways her character was such as Tsiang Samdup wished. And in the end we conveyed her by bullock-gharry all the way from Bombay to Ahmedabad, where we kept her several months in the home of a Hindu midwife. Then the Middle Way. The Middle Way is easy, when you know it.
“The third was from Bangalore — and she was only nine months old — no trouble at all — the daughter of a very pretty lady who was engaged to be married but the man died. She gave the baby to my wife’s sister. That child went North in the arms of a Tibetan woman from Darjeeling.
“And the fourth was from London — a Russian musician’s daughter. And the fifth was from Glasgow. And the sixth from Sweden, or so it was said. Those three were all about the same age — six, or seven, or thereabouts.
“The seventh — she was nine years old, and the best of them all — was from New York — born in New York — or at sea, I forget which. Her father, an Irishman, died and the mother, who was English, went to visit her people in England. But the people had died too. So she went back to America, and there was some difficulty in connection with the immigration laws. She was not allowed to land. She had to return to England, where there was destitution and I know not what followed after that, though it is easy to imagine things. The mother was dying, and I was told she wished above all things to save the child from being put in an institution. Some people who are well known to me offered to care for the child. It happened I was in London, Ommony. I went and saw the mother; and, since she was dying, I took a chance and told her certain things; and perhaps because she was dying, and therefore could understand and see around the corner, as it were, she agreed. We had conversed, as you might say, heart to heart. It was I who brought that child to India. I had to adopt her legally, and — oh, Ommony, if I could have kept her! She was like my little own daughter to me! But what was there that I could do for her — an old Jew, here in Delhi? Money, yes; but nothing else, and money is nothing. It broke my heart. She went northward by the Middle Way — you know what I mean by the Middle Way?”
Ommony’s expression was stone-cold; he was speechless. He eyed Benjamin with a hard stare that had reached the rock-bottom of revelation and disgust. He did not dare to speak. Having pledged his word in advance not to betray Benjamin’s secrets, his word was good; there was no hesitation on that score. A deliberate promise, in his estimation, stood above all obligations, whatever the consequences to himself. But he felt that sickening sensation of having trusted a man who turned out to be rotten after all.
He did not dare to say a word that might give Benjamin an inkling of his real feelings. He must use the man as an ally. In a way he was indebted to him — for information as to the Lama’s real activities. No wonder the Lama had kept so carefully aloof! Ommony forced himself to smile — battling with the horror of the thought of being co-trustee with a Tibetan, who with his right hand helped to run a philanthropic mission and with his left imported European girls, for the Powers of Evil only knew what purpose. There are other purposes, as well as crude vice, for which children may be stolen. His own sister —
“You say Tsiang Samdup is better than both of us?” he remarked at last, surprised at the evenness of his own voice.
“Much better!” said Benjamin. “Ah, Ommony — I see your face. Old I am. Blind I am not. But listen: have you seen what happens to the children whose parents die or desert them? Not the children of the poor; the little girls who are well born, who feel things that other children do not feel. I am a Jew — I know what feeling is! Hah! I have seen animals in cages who were happier! And what is happiness? Provision of necessities? Bah! They provide necessities for men in jail — and will you search in the jails to find happiness? I will show you thousands who have all they want, and nothing that they need! You understand me? Tsiang Samdup—”
“Never mind,” said Ommony, “I’ll find out for myself.” He did not want to talk; he was afraid of what he might hear — still more of what he might say. There are some men, who present an impassive face toward the world, who can face death grinning and are not afraid of “the terror that moveth by night” or “the pestilence that stalketh at noonday,” who would rather be crucified than reveal the horror they have for a certain sort of traffic. Their emotion, too sacred, or too profane to be discussed, is nameless — indescribable — only to be borne with set teeth.
“Ah! I know!” said Benjamin. “I know you, Ommony! What I have said is secret; therefore you don’t wish to hear any more, because you are too much a man to violate what is told in confidence. And you have made no promise to the Lama. Am I right?”
Ommony nodded — grimly. That was the one bright point of light.
“I could tell — I could tell much,” Benjamin went on. “But I saw you shut your mind against me. As well pour oil on fire to put it out as talk to a man who mistrusts! Very well. We have been friends, you and I. Remember that, Ommony. And now this: you believe in a devil — some kind of a devil — all Englishmen do. You believe I am a devil — Benjamin, your friend, whom you hid in a cave in your forest — me and my wife and my daughter. We are devils. Very well. A promise that is made to the devil has not to be kept, Ommony! Go and see for yourself. I will help you. When you have seen, you shall judge. Then, after that, if you say I am a devil, you shall break your faith with me. You shall denounce me. I will let you be the judge.”
“Have you ever been into the Ahbor country?” Ommony asked. His voice was sullen now. There was a leaden note in it.
“No,” Benjamin answered.
“And those — those children went to the Ahbor country?”
“Yes.”
“Then what proof have you of what the Lama has done with them?”
“Ommony — as God is my witness — I have none! I think — I — I am almost positively sure — but—”
He paced the floor twice, and then flung himself down on the blankets beside Ommony, looking up into his face. He was afraid at that moment, if ever man was.
“That is why I have told you! I swore never to tell! Find out, Ommony! Tell the truth to me before I die. I am an old man, Ommony. If I have been a devil, I will eat — eat — eat the shame to the last crumb! Ommony, I swear — by my fathers I swear, I believe — I am almost positively sure—”
He buried his face in his hands; and there was silence, in which Ommony could hear Diana’s quiet breathing and his own heart-beats and the ticking of the watch in his vest-pocket.
CHAPTER IX. “Gupta Rao”
When the actor, having thrown aside the costume and the wig, departs — is he a villain? Shall we take stones and murder him because for our amusement he enacted villainy?
If he should act death in the play because decency demands that, do we therefore burn him afterward and curse his memory? And is his wife a widow?
And is life not like the play? The gods who watch the drama know that somebody must play the villain’s part, and somebody the pauper’s. They reward men for the acting. He who acts a poor part well receives for his reward a more important part when his turn shall come to be born again into the world.
He, therefore, who is wise plays pauper, king or villain with the gods in mind.
— from The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
DAWN came and no Dawa Tsering. Pale light through cobwebbed windows drove the dark into corners and consumed it, until the devil-mask on the wall over Ommony’s head grinned like a living thing and the street noises began, announcing that Delhi was awake. Diana stirred and sniffe
d, mistrusting her surroundings, but patient so long as Ommony was satisfied to be there. Benjamin shuffled away to the stairs. The daughter came, fussily, fatly hospitable, with chota hazri* on the brass Benares tray — fruit, tea, biscuits, and a smile that would have won the confidence of Pharaoh, Ruler of the Nile.
But Ommony’s heart had turned harder than Pharaoh’s ever did. He could hardly force himself to be civil. He drank the tea and ate the fruit because he needed it, unconscious now of any ritual of friendship in the act, answering polite inquiries with blunt monosyllables, his mind and memory working furiously, independently of any efforts at conversation. His face was a mask, and a dull one at that, with no smile on it. The iron in him had absolute charge.
He was not by any means the sort of man who flatters himself.
“You damned, deluded fool!” he muttered pitilessly, and Diana opened one eye wide, awaiting action.
He blamed himself, as mercilessly as he always had been merciful to others, for having acted as the Lama Tsiang Samdup’s foil for twenty years. Above all things he despised a smug fool, and he called himself just that. He should have suspected the Lama long ago. He should have seen through Benjamin. He had believed his trusteeship of the Tilgaun Mission was a clean and selfless contribution to the world’s need. Why hadn’t he resigned then from his government job long ago to devote his whole career to the trust he had undertaken? If he had done that, he knew no Lama could have hoodwinked him. No little girls would have been smuggled then into the unknown by way of Tilgaun.
The self-accusation case-hardened him. He set his teeth, and almost physically reached out for the weapons of alertness, patience, persistence, cunning, with which he might redeem the situation. For redeem it he surely would, or else perish in the attempt. Exposure too soon would do no good. He needed full proof. And he cared less to punish the offenders than to rescue the children who had been carried off, and to make anything of the sort impossible in future, wondering, as he considered that, what anyone would be able to do for girls in their predicament. The early years are the most impressionable; their characters would have been undermined. And then a worse thought: was Benjamin the only agent? There might be a regular market for European girls in that unknown corner of the earth, with secret agents supplying it from a dozen sources. If so, he felt and accepted his full share of responsibility. Who else could share it with him? Only Hannah Sanburn. She, too, had shielded the Lama and, if ignorant of what was going on, might at least have suspected.
And thoughts of Hannah Sanburn did not give comfort. He remembered now a dozen incidents that should have made him suspect her years ago. That look in her eyes, for instance, and her nervousness whenever he had urged her to bring about a meeting between the Lama and himself. He recalled now how carefully she had always shepherded him through the mission, under pretext of observing the proprieties; she had never given him a chance to talk alone with any of the mission girls, and like a fool he had believed she did that to prevent the very suggestion of scandal from finding an excuse. He had admired her for it. But there was that room (or was it two rooms) near her own quarters that she had always kept locked, and that he had not cared to ask to inspect, because she said she kept her personal belongings in there.
And now this story, told by Mrs. Cornock-Campbell, a witness as trustworthy as daybreak, of a white girl named Elsa, who spoke English and Tibetan, who had been to Lhasa, and who could draw — for he had seen the drawings — as masterfully as Michael Angelo. And Hannah Sanburn’s plea for secrecy. And the fact that McGregor had had suspicions.
Marmaduke might not have been the father of this strange girl, but that did not preclude the possibility of Hannah Sanburn being the mother. It seemed likely — more than likely — that the Lama possessed knowledge which enabled him to blackmail Hannah Sanburn; it was easy enough to understand how that well-bred New England woman would fight to preserve her good name, and how, if the Lama had once tempted her into one false position, she could be terrified from bad to worse. There is more deliberate blackmail in the world than most of its indirect victims suspect.
Nevertheless, Ommony wondered that Hannah Sanburn should not have confided in himself. She might have known he would have shielded her and helped her to redeem the situation. She had had dozens of proofs of his friendship. He smiled rather grimly as he thought to what lengths he would have gone to shield and befriend Hannah Sanburn — and yet more grimly — cynically — as it dawned on him to what lengths he might now have to go. Friendship is friendship — unto death if need be.
Benjamin returned; and an hour’s thought had had its effect on him too. His assistants came, and he chased them out on hurriedly invented errands, barring the shop door behind them.
“I have sent for Maitraya,” he announced, stroking his beard, watching Ommony sidewise. He seemed to be not quite sure that Ommony might not have changed his mind with daylight.
“All right. Hunt me out a costume.”
Ommony stepped off the pile of blankets and began to strip himself. Benjamin’s swift fingers sought and plucked along the shelves, selecting this and that until a little heap of clothing lay ready on a table, Ommony saying nothing but observing almost savagely, like a caged man watching his meal prepared.
“There, that is perfect,” said Benjamin at last. “A dude — a dandy, such as actors are — aping the high caste — too educated to submit to inferiority — a little of this, a little of that — fashionable — tolerated — half-philosopher, half-mountebank—”
Stark-naked, Ommony confronted him, and Benjamin betrayed the naked fear that has nothing to do with physical consequences. Ommony looked straight into his eyes and analyzed it, as he had done fifteen years ago when he protected Benjamin against accusers.
“All right, Benjamin. I’ll trust you this once more. But no flinching. See it through.”
He dressed himself, Benjamin watching alertly for the least mistake, but that was an art in which no man in the world could give Ommony instruction; he knew costumes as some enthusiasts know postage stamps, and he bound on the cream-colored silk turban without a glance in the mirror that Benjamin held for him.
“I’ll need an old trunk now, and three or four changes,” he said abruptly. “No, cow-hide won’t do — no, there’s glue in that imported thing — observe caste prejudices, even if I’m supposed to have none — basketwork’s the stuff. That’s it. Throw me in a trousseau.”
He began to pace the floor, adjusting himself to the costume, finding it not difficult; his natural, sturdy gait learned in forest lanes with a gun under his arm, suggested independence and alertness without a hint of drill, which is the secret of self-assurance; add good manners to that and an intimate knowledge; there is not much acting needed.
He looked stout and a bit important in the flowing cotton clothes. The short beard gave him dignity. His skin, weathered by twenty years of outdoor life, needed no darkening. Even his legs, and his bare feet thrust into red morocco slippers had the ivory color that belongs to most of the higher castes; and an actor must be of Brahmin* or Kshatriya origin if he hopes to be admitted anywhere within the pale from which the lower castes are utterly excluded. His profession makes him technically unclean, but that is rather an advantage than a handicap.
“And the name! The honored name!” asked Benjamin admiringly.
“Gupta Rao. I’m a Bhat-Brahmin* of Rajputana.”
Benjamin sat down and laughed with his head to one side, nursing a knee.
“Oh, Oh, you Ommony! A Jew you should have been! Hey-yey-clever! Now who would have thought of that but you! Yah-tchah! Bhat-Brahmin — of whom even rajahs are afraid! Gossiping tongue! The privilege to slander! Yah-keh-keh-keh! You are a clever one! Not even a Brahmin will challenge you, for fear you will make him a laughing-stock! Keh-hah-hah-hey-hey-hey! Ah, but wait, wait! We forgot the pan. You must have a pouch to carry betel-nut. And the caste-mark — keep still while I paint the caste-mark.”
And then at last came Dawa Tsering,
not pleased with himself but trying to appear pleased, adjusting his eyes to the dimness as Benjamin let him in by the back door. “Where is Ommonee?”
He stared about him, brushed past Ommony contemptuously, and at last saw the cast-off dinner jacket and white shirt. He broke into the jargon-Hindustani that serves for lingua franca in that land of a hundred tongues, chattering as he hurried along the passage past the stairs and back again:
“Where is he? Is he hiding? Has he gone?” Then, shouting at last in something near panic: “Oh — Ommonee!”
He stared at Diana, but she gave him no information. She lay curled up on the floor, apparently asleep. Benjamin looked non-committal — busy considering something else.
“Where is he — thou?” the Hillman demanded, coming to a stand in front of Ommony and fingering the handle of his knife. The light was dim just there where the saddles were piled in a ten-foot heap.
“Would you know his voice?” asked Ommony.
“Aye, in a crowd!”
“Would you know his walk?”
“None better! Seen from behind, when he is thinking, he rolls thus, like a bear. But who art thou? Where is he?”
Ommony turned his back, walked to the heap of blankets by the wall, and sat down.
“Would you know him sitting?” he asked casually; and suddenly it occurred to Dawa Tsering that he was being questioned in his own tongue.
“Thou!” he exclaimed. “Well, may the devils destroy the place! Art thou then a magician?” He sniffed three times. “Not even the smell is the same! Was it the Jew who worked the magic? Art thou truly Ommonee?”
“No, I’m changed. I’m Gupta Rao. If you ever call me Ommony again without my permission, I will bring to pass a change in your affairs that you will remember! Do you understand?”