by Talbot Mundy
Ommony stared at the fire. “Thank goodness, we’ll be dead then, with something different to fret about,” he grumbled, angry with the destiny that he felt compelled him to probe a gentlewoman’s secrets. She noticed the tone of his voice — could not very well ignore it.
“What is troubling you, Cottswold? I supposed you were the most contented man on earth. Have you lost your interest in your forest?”
“I’ve resigned from the forestry.” He stared at her, and broke the ice suddenly, doing the very thing he was determined not to, blurting a blunt question without tact or even a preliminary warning. “Who is this girl Elsa, who is never at the mission when I’m here, but who has been to Lhasa, talks English and Tibetan, and can draw like Michael Angelo?”
He jerked his jaw forward to conceal the contempt that he felt for himself for having blundered in so clumsily, all the while watching her face but detecting no nervousness. To his surprise and relief she laughed and leaned her head against the high chair-back, looking at him humorously from under lowered eyelids, as she might have listened to a lame excuse from someone in the school.
“Poor Cottswold! How you must have felt uncomfortable! — you’re so faithful to your friends. No, Elsa is not my daughter. I have never had that experience. If she were my daughter I know quite well I would have said so long ago. I can imagine myself being proud of her, even — even in those circumstances.”
“I confess I’m mightily relieved,” said Ommony, grinning uncomfortably. “Not, of course, that I’d have—”
“No, I know you wouldn’t,” she interrupted. “You are the last person on earth I would hide that kind of secret from.”
“Why any kind of secret, Hannah? Am I not to be trusted?”
“Not in this instance. You’re the one man who couldn’t be told.” Then, after a dramatic pause: “Elsa is your niece.”
“Niece?” he said, and shut his teeth with a snap. That one word solved the whole long riddle.
“Her name is Elsa Terry.”
He did not speak. He leaned forward, staring at her under knitted brows, his eyes as eloquent as the silence that lasted while the Bhutani girl came in and removed the supper table. Even after the girl had gone, for two or three minutes the only sounds were the solemn ticking of a big clock on the mantelpiece, the cracking of a pineknot in the fire, and a murmur of song from a building fifty yards away.
“You and almost everybody else have always believed Jack Terry and your sister Elsa vanished twenty years ago without trace,” she said at last. “They didn’t.”
“Didn’t they go to the Ahbor country?”
“Yes.”
“You mean they’re alive and you’ve known it all these years?”
“They have been dead nearly twenty years. I learned about it soon afterward. You know now why they went up there?”
“I’ve no new information. Jack Terry was as mad as a March hare—”
“I think not,” Hannah Sanburn answered, her gray eyes staring at the fire. “Jack Terry was the most unselfish man I ever heard of. He adored your sister. She was a spiritual, other-worldly little woman, and that beast Kananda Pal—”
“I blame Jenkins,” said Ommony, grinding his teeth. “Kananda Pal was born into a black-art family and knew no better. Jenkins—”
“Never mind him now. Jack Terry did his best. Your sister Elsa used to have lapses; she would cry for days on end and write letters to Mr. Jenkins begging him to give back the mind he had stolen from her. No, she wasn’t mad; it was obsession. I did my best, but I hadn’t much experience in those days and she was difficult to understand; the phases of the moon seemed to have something to do with it; Jack Terry and I were agreed about that. You’ve met Sirdar Sirohe Singh of Tilgaun?”
Ommony nodded.
“He has always been a friend. He appears to be a mystic. He knows things that other people don’t know, and hardly ever talks of them. Jack Terry learned from him — Jack set his arm, or a collar-bone, I forget which — anyway he told Jack about the Crystal Jade of Ahbor.”
Ommony’s lips moved in the suggestion of a whistle and Diana opened one eye.
“All the people hereabouts seem to have heard of the jade,” Hannah Sanburn went on, “but the sirdar seems to be the only one who really knows anything about it. All I know is that I have had a piece of it in my hands in this house. It nearly drove me frantic to look into it, so I locked it away in that cupboard over there. It was stolen by a girl I should never have trusted; and I’m nearly but not quite sure it was the sirdar who bribed her to steal it from me. She was murdered, apparently while on the way to the sirdar’s house a few miles from here. Tsiang Samdup was here last night and showed me the piece of jade; he said he had recovered it in Delhi.”
“What else did he say?” asked Ommony, but she ignored the question, continuing to stare into the fire, as if she could see in it pictures of twenty years ago.
“Jack Terry told me,” she went on presently, “that he believed the Crystal Jade of Ahbor had magic properties. You know how he believed in magic, and how he always insisted that magic is merely science that hasn’t been recognized yet by the schools. He said mineral springs can heal the body, so there was no reason why there shouldn’t be a stone somewhere, possessed of properties that can heal the mind in certain conditions. I didn’t agree with him. It seemed to me utter nonsense, although — I’m less inclined than I was then to say things can’t be simply because we have been taught the contrary. I have held a piece of the Jade of Ahbor in my hands and — well, I don’t know, and that’s all about it.”
She paused again, perfectly still. Ommony got up, heaped wood on the fire, and sat down again. The cracking pine-knots and the ascending sparks broke her reverie.
“It was no use talking to Jack Terry,” she continued, “and your sister would have gone to the North Pole with him, or anywhere else, if he had as much as proposed it. The two set off like Lancelot and Elaine into the unknown. You know, the very heart of the Ahbor Valley isn’t more than fifty miles from here, although they say nobody has ever gone there and returned alive. Jack Terry — you remember how he always laughed at the impossible — said they would probably be gone not more than three or four weeks. They took scarcely any supplies with them — just a tent and bedding — half a dozen ponies — two servants. The servants deserted the third night out and were killed by Bhutani robbers.”
“Yes,” said Ommony. “That was all I could ever find out, and that cost a month’s investigation.”
“I knew the whole story two or three weeks before you got permission to leave your forest and come to investigate; I wasn’t allowed to tell.”
“Weren’t allowed. Who in thunder—”
“Tsiang Samdup came down from the Ahbor Valley and in this room, sitting on that hearthrug where the dog lies now, told me the story. I remember how he began — his exact words”
“‘My daughter, there is danger in another’s duty. There is also duty in another’s danger. There is merit in considered speech, but strength consists in silence. Truth, that may be told to one, may lead to evil if repeated. I am minded to speak to your ears only.’
“Offhand I told him I would of course respect his confidence, but he sat still for about half an hour before he spoke again. Then he took at least half an hour to commit me to a pledge of secrecy that I could not possibly break without losing my own self-respect. I discovered before he was through that he had been quite right to do that, but I confess there were moments that evening when it looked as if he had trapped me into something against which every moral fiber in me rebelled instinctively. For an hour I hated him. And there have been times — many times since — when it has been extremely difficult to keep the promise. However, I have kept it. It was only yesterday that he gave me leave to tell you as much as I know.”
“He might have confided in me in the first place,” said Ommony, but Hannah Sanburn shook her head.
“I did suggest that to him. I urged it. But he
made me see that he was quite right not to. It would have placed you in an impossible position. What had happened was this: the Terrys did succeed in entering the Ahbor Valley. They seemed to have undergone frightful hardships, and nobody knows how they found the way, but they did. They were hunted like animals, and when Tsiang Samdup rescued them Jack Terry was dying from wounds, hunger and exposure; he had managed somehow to find enough food for his wife, and he had persuaded her to eat, and to let him go without.”
“Are you sure of your information?” Ommony asked. “That doesn’t sound like Elsa.”
“There was a baby coming.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Tsiang Samdup took them to his monastery, which is somewhere in the Ahbor Valley. The only way he was able to protect them from the Ahbors, who have never allowed strangers in the Valley and vow they never will, was by prophesying that the baby shortly to be born would be a reincarnation of an ancient Chinese saint, named San-fun-ho. There was no hope of saving Jack Terry, but Tsiang Samdup hoped to save the mother’s life. However, she died giving birth to the child, and Jack Terry followed her the same night.”
“Did they leave anything in writing?”
“I have letters I’ll show you presently, written and signed by both of them, in which they speak of the Lama Tsiang Samdup as having risked his own life to save theirs. Jack Terry wrote that he was dying of wounds and exposure. The Lama gave me both letters after he had told the story. But I would have believed him without that. I have always believed every word that Tsiang Samdup said, even while I hated him for having pledged me to silence.”
“Go ahead. I mistrusted him not long ago — and changed my mind.”
“Tsiang Samdup is not to be doubted, Cottswold. He lied to Ahbors, but that was to save life. It was an inspiration — the only way out of it — to tell those savages that the unborn baby was to be a reincarnation of a Chinese saint. I admire him for the lie. Imagine, if you can, old Tsiang Samdup — for he was old even then — rearing and weaning that baby in a monastery in the midst of savages. The Terrys’ death seems to have made it easier in one way: the natives saw them buried, which satisfied their law against admitting strangers, and Tsiang Samdup prevented them from digging up the bodies to throw them in the river, by casting a halo of sainthood over them on the ground that they had brought a saint into the world. You know how all this country to the north of us believes implicitly in reincarnations of saints — the Tashi Lama is supposed to be the reincarnation of his predecessor; and so on. Do you see how Tsiang Samdup became more and more committed?”
There was a long silence. Ommony poked the fire restlessly. A native teacher came in, offered a report for signature, and went out. Hannah Sanburn went on with her story:
“He had promised those savages a baby saint. He had produced the baby. Now he had to educate the saint, and its being a girl made it all the more difficult. But it seems there are people to whom Tsiang Samdup can go for advice. I don’t know who they are, or where they are; he mentions them rarely, and very guardedly; I think he has referred to them twice, or perhaps three times during all the years I have known him, and then only for the purpose of suggesting that he isn’t exactly a free agent. The conclusion I drew from his guarded hints was, that he acts, and is responsible for what he does, but that he would lose the privilege of conference with these unknown individuals if he should allow personal considerations to govern him. At that, I’m only guessing. He said nothing definite.”
“The Masters!” said Ommony, nodding. “I’ll bet you he knows some of the Masters!” But if Hannah Sanburn knew who they were she gave no sign. She went on talking:
“It seems that the Ahbors trust him implicitly within certain limits. They would kill him and burn his monastery if they caught him practicing the least deception; and they watched that baby day and night. The wife of an Ahbor chieftain became the wet-nurse, and the child throve, but it very soon dawned on Tsiang Samdup that however carefully he might educate her — (you knew he had an Oxford education?) — she would grow up like a half-breed, unless he could have skillful assistance from someone of her own race. So he consulted these mysterious authorities, and ‘they,’ whoever they are, told him that a way would open up if he should take me into confidence.
“As I told you, he first bound me to secrecy. He didn’t make me swear, but he gave me a lecture on keeping faith, that was as radical as the Sermon on the Mount, and he tested me every inch of the way to make sure I agreed with him. I have used that sermon over and over again in teaching the teachers of this school.
“When he had me so tied up in my own explanations of what keeping faith really means, that there wasn’t any possible way out for me, he told me the story I have just told you, and made me an astonishing proposal. I have sometimes wished I had accepted it.”
Hannah Sanburn paused for a long time, staring at the fire.
“He offered,” she said at last, “to find someone else for my position here; to smuggle me into the Ahbor Valley; and to teach me more knowledge than Solomon knew — if I would give unqualified consent, and would agree to stay up there and help him educate that baby.”
“And — ?”
“And I refused,” she said quietly. “Won’t you put some more wood on the fire?”
CHAPTER XXV. The Compromise
And this I know: that when the gods have use for us they blindfold us, because if we should see and comprehend the outcome we should grow so vain that not even the gods could preserve us from destruction.
Vanity, self-righteousness and sin, these three are one, whose complements are meekness, self-will and indifference.
Meekness is not modesty. Meekness is an insult to the Soul. But out of modesty comes wisdom, because in modesty the god’s can find expression.
The wise gods do not corrupt modesty with wealth or fame, but its reward is in well-doing and in a satisfying inner vision.
— from The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
OMMONY stacked up the fire and resumed his seat in the leather armchair that Marmaduke had always used. Diana, belly to the blaze, barked and galloped in her sleep. Hannah Sanburn went on talking:
“Tsiang Samdup said last night that you have been with him two months. Do you know then what I mean when I say one can’t argue with him? He just sat there on the hearthrug and — it’s difficult to explain — he seemed to be listening for an inside message. It may sound idiotic, but I received the impression of a man waiting for his own soul to talk to him. He was perfectly silent. He hardly breathed. I felt absolutely sure he would find some way out of the difficulty. But the strange thing was, that the solution came from me. I suppose ten minutes passed without a word said, and I felt all the while as if my mind were being freed from weights that I had never known were there. Then suddenly I spoke because I couldn’t help it; I saw what to do so clearly that I simply had to tell him.
“It wasn’t hypnotism. It was just the contrary. It was as if he had de hypnotized me. I saw all the risks and scores of difficulties. And I saw absolutely clearly the necessity of doing just one thing. I told him I would take the child for six months out of every year and treat her as if she were my own. He might have her for the other six months. Every single wrinkle on his dear old face smiled separately when I said that. I had hardly said it when I began to wish I hadn’t; but he held me to my word.
“He brought me the baby the following week, and she was here in this building all the while you were ranging the hills for some word of the Terrys. The hardest work I ever had to do was to keep silent when you returned here worn out and miserable about your sister’s fate. But, if you had been let into the secret, — you would have interfered — wouldn’t you? Am I right or wrong, Cottswold?”
“Of course. I would never have dreamed of letting my sister’s child go back to the Ahbor Valley.”
“Yet, if Tsiang Samdup hadn’t taken her every year for half a year, the Ahbors would have killed him. And remember: I had bound myself in
advance not to tell anyone — and particularly not to tell you. The Lama was only able to loan her to me for six months of every year by consenting to the Ahbors watching her all the time she was with me. Whenever she has been with me Ahbors have watched day and night. The excuse Tsiang Samdup gave to them was that unless she should be with me for long periods she would die and the Ahbors would find their valley invaded by white armies in consequence. They fear invasion of their valley more than anything else they can imagine. On the other hand, they regard the child as a gift from Heaven and the old Lama as her rightful guardian. I don’t quite understand the situation up there; the Ahbors don’t accept Tsiang Samdup’s teachings, they have a religion of their own; and he isn’t one of them; he’s a Tibetan. But they recognize him as a Lama, protect his monastery, and submit to his authority in certain ways. Perhaps I’m stupid; he has tried very hard to explain, and so has Elsa. Privately I called her Elsa, after her mother, of course. Tsiang Samdup gave her the Chinese name of San-fun-ho. The word is supposed to signify every possible human virtue.”
“Who called her Samding?” Ommony asked bluntly.
Hannah Sanburn stared. “You know then? This isn’t news? I remember now: Tsiang Samdup said last night: ‘That of which a man is ignorant may well be kept from him, but that which he knows should be explained, lest he confuse it with what he does not know.’”
“I’m putting two and two together,” Ommony answered. “I leaned over a monastery gallery in Darjeeling. The chela was straight underneath me. A beam of sunlight showed a girl’s breasts. Am I right? Are San-fun-ho, Samding the chela and my sister’s child Elsa one and the same person?”
“Yes. I wonder you never recognized your sister’s voice — that almost baritone boyish resonance. You didn’t?”