by Talbot Mundy
His self-control was not so perfect as it had been. The last few words were in a tone of voice that fought with overwhelming sadness.
Ommony was about to ask a question when the Lama spoke again:
“My son, remember this: the highest motive is of no avail without proportion and a sense of fitness; because these are the life of wisdom. Time is a delusion. All is the eternal Now. But in a world in which all is delusion, of which time is a controlling element, there is a proper time for all things. We cannot mount the camel that has passed us, nor the camel that has not yet come. Neither does the water that has gone by turn the mill-wheel. He who feels the force of destiny within him, waits, as birds wait for the sunrise — as the seed waits for the spring. It is not enough to do the right thing. If the full moon shines at midday, what does it accomplish? If the drum beats out of time, what happens to the symphony? To discern the right time, and to act precisely then, is as important as the knowledge how to act. But discernment does not come by reason of desire; it comes by observation of essential truths — as that the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons and the tides keep their appointed path, and when they fail there is disaster. This is an appointed time. Mark well.”
The somber silence and the ragged flanks of the pit, that towered upward through a million shapeless shadows to the star-pierced oval summit, combined to inspire dread — but of what? Ommony could feel Diana trembling.
The Lama spoke again after a long pause, as dispassionately as a big clock ticking in the dark — asserting measured, elemental facts.
“Remember. Remember each word, my son. I speak with death not far from me. At dawn the Ahbors go to the northern end of the valley, by the Tsang-po Falls, to await my coming. At noon I meet them.”
He was silent for many minutes. Not until the silence had grown almost unendurable did he go on speaking. “Lest the Ahbors harm themselves by slaying more than me, who am responsible, I have sent into Tibet all but a few of my monastery people. At noon I will try to reach agreement with the Ahbors, that if they slay me, for having broken their law, they shall permit the others to return to the monastery, and a new Lama to be sent to hold authority. But as to the outcome of that I know nothing. It may be that the Jade must be hidden by the Tsang-po waters. There is a time for all things; it is not my province to know the time for that; there are others whose province it is.”
He stared into the dark in front of him. When he spoke again, at the end of five minutes, his voice sounded almost as if he had left his body and were speaking to it and to Ommony.
“Remember every word. Those few, who have remained, are chosen men, who know the secret way. They will take you into India — you, San-fun-ho and all the European chelas to Tilgaun — the Tibetan chelas into Tibet by the route that leads through Sikkim, because they have a destiny that they can best fulfill in Tibet.”
Followed another tense silence, broken by the long-drawn howl of an animal somewhere on the ledges half a mile above them. It sounded lonelier than the wail of a forgotten soul.
“I am not the guardian of Hannah Sanburn. Even as you and I, my son, she governs her own destiny. But she is good. No harm can come if she should leave Tilgaun, because she has done her work there, and it is another’s turn. There is one who will take my place as trustee; he will present himself; I have written his appointment. There is one who will take her place; perhaps she is that one at whose house you were in Delhi; but that is Hannah Sanburn’s business. There is one who will take your place; but that is your affair. No man is indispensable. He who clings to the performance of a duty when the work is done and another waits to carry evolution forward, is as the fungus on the living tree. He rots. The tree rots under him.”
Silence again. A wedge of silver, creeping down the western side of the pit, dispersed the shadows and threw great fangs of limestone into high relief; but that was very far above them. Where they sat it seemed darker than ever.
“Remember every word, my son. I speak in the portal of death. I do not say that Hannah Sanburn shall go with you to the West. That may, or it may not be. I do say, tarry not in Tilgaun, because this is an appointed time. Three of the lesser chelas will go with San-fun-ho to the West. Let her select them. Let the others stay in Tilgaun, where as much awaits them as they have the character to do.”
The beast in the dark loneliness above them howled again. Ommony sat watching the forerunner of the moonlight chasing shadows down the pit-side — wondering. After nearly a quarter of a century in India he and Hannah Sanburn would be almost as much strangers in the West as San-fun-ho would be.
“There is a fitness in all things and a time for all things,” said the Lama, as if he had read Ommony’s mind. “But a great faith is required, and a sincerity that like the temper of the steel turns faith into a ready weapon and impenetrable armor. Hannah Sanburn has nobility. It may be, she may help you to serve San-fun-ho. But beware, my son, of the snare of personality. If ye two seek to serve each other, ye are like the two sides of a triangle that has no base, nor any purpose. But if ye both serve San-fun-ho, and she the world, the triangle is perfect.” He paused again, then slowly turned his head and looked into Ommony’s eyes. His own were like blue jewels burning in the dark.
“Without you,” he said, “or without her, San-fun-ho will find others. She is my chela, and I know the power that is in her. But beware of being false! Better for you never to have been born! Better to die ten thousand deaths than to betray her through self-seeking! Let her alone, my son, unless you can follow all the way! Then, if she should lead you wrong, that will be her affair; in after lives you will have karma of sincerity, and she the fruit of false teaching — if she should teach falsely. — But I know my chela. She will lead upward, as an eagle, and all the enemies of light will spread their nets for her in vain!”
As he ceased speaking the whole western wall of the gigantic pit became suffused in silver, as the moon’s edge crossed the eastern rim. Wan, scrawny crags of limestone yearned like frozen ghosts toward the light. The pit’s awful nakedness lay revealed, its outlines dimmed in shadow, as mysterious, as silent and as measureless as the emotion born of gazing.
Suddenly, as the moon’s disk appeared, there shone a green light in the midst of the pit — a light that swirled as if in moving water, and increased in size, as if it multiplied itself within the substance it had touched. It grew into a pool — a globe — a sphere — an ovoid mass of liquid green light, all in motion, transparent, huge-afloat, it seemed, in black precipitated silence, two, or perhaps three hundred feet away. Slowly, very slowly, it became apparent that the egg-shaped mass was resting on seven upright stones, of the same color as itself, that were set beneath it on a platform of dark rock that rose exactly in the middle of the pit.
As the full moon floated into view the enormous mass of jade so caught the light that it seemed to absorb all of it. And suddenly a figure stood before the livid jade — a girl’s; she was the Gretchen-girl, with whom Ommony had spoken on the night when he first saw San-fun-ho’s companions on the stage. She was draped in white, but the stuff glowed green in the jade’s reflection, and as she peered into the enormous stone she held the end of the loose drapery across the lower portion of her face, like a shield, with her elbow forward. She gazed for about a minute, and then disappeared. Another took her place.
“It is only San-fun-ho who dares to look into the Jade for long,” said the Lama solemnly. “It shows them all the horror of their lower selves. They look by moonlight. They must drape themselves, for they have much to overcome, and there is magic in the Jade. None but my chela — none but San-fun-ho — dares to face it in the full light of the sun.”
One by one the seventeen girls appeared, looked deep into the Jade, and vanished into darkness.
“They are not bad,” said the Lama. “Not bad, my son. There are not so many better women. Do you dare to look?”
But Ommony sat still.
“Better so,” said the Lama. “In curiosity there is
no wisdom. He who cannot look long enough to see his higher nature shining through the lower, had better have seen nothing.”
There commenced a chant, of women’s voices, rising from the fathomless darkness below the Jade. It began by being low and almost melancholy, but changed suddenly into faster tempo and a rising theme of triumph, ending in a measured march of glory. There was no accompaniment, no drum-beat, but the final phrases pulsed with power, ending on a chord that left imagination soaring into upper realms of splendor. Then, in silence, as sublimely as the moon had sailed across the rim of the dark pit, the girls emerged out of the black night as if they had been projected by a magic lantern. No sound of footfall or of breathing reached across the intervening gap as, with restraint that told of strength in hand and limitless lore of rhythm, they danced their weaving measure seven times around the stone, as lovely to the eye as Grecian figures, cut in cameo on green and conjured into life. It was sheer spiritual magic.
There was not a wasted motion, not a step but symbolized the ordered, infinitely beautiful evolving of a universe; and as they passed behind the glowing jade their figures seemed to swim within the stone, as if they were nymphs afloat in moonlit water. But there was no sign yet of San-fun-ho.
“They shall remember this night!” said the Lama. The fire within the Jade grew dim and died as the moon’s edge passed beyond the crags. The girls vanished in black darkness.
“And so, you have seen the Jade. Few have seen that,” said the Lama. “And you will find that there are very few who will believe you have seen it; but that is no harm, because most of those who would believe are merely credulous, of the sort who hunt miracles and seek to make themselves superior by short-cuts. Whereas there are no short-cuts, and there is no superiority of the sort they crave, but only a gradual increase of responsibility, which is attained by earned self-mastery.”
Suddenly a voice came from the pit beneath them, clear and confident, — the chela’s:
“O Tsiang Samdup!”
The Lama answered with a monosyllable, his body rigid with emotion. His dim outline was like an eagle’s startled from his aerie in the night.
“O Tsiang Samdup, the Ahbors have come for a conference. They ask for word with you.”
“Cover the Jade,” he answered.
There was presently a phantom movement, shapeless and billowy, as if a huge black cloth were being hauled back into place; and then the rain came, softly, steadily, until the air grew full of music made by little cataracts that splashed from rock to rock. The Lama sighed and, for a moment, his outline seemed to shrink as old age claimed him, but he threw that off and stood up, motioning to Ommony to move back under shelter of the rock.
“Wait there,” he commanded, and vanished. Ommony could hear him climbing down into the darkness — and presently two voices as he talked in low tones with the chela. Then silence, for a very long time, only broken by the music of the rain and a weird wind sighing on the upper ledges until wind and rain ceased, and there was only the tinkle of dripping water.
The dog crept close to Ommony for warmth, shivering at the loneliness. Ommony tried to memorize the Lama’s conversation. He had almost forgotten the Jade. It was nothing as compared to the tremendous issues that the Lama dealt in. Thought groped in an unseen future. The sensation was of waiting on the threshold of a new world — waiting to be born. The past lost all reality. The world he had known — war — selfishness — corruption — was a nightmare, wrought of hopelessness and full of useless aims. The future? It was his — his own — immensely personal to him. He was about to be born again into the old world, but with an utterly new consciousness of values. He knew he had a duty in the world; but he could not formulate it — would not know how to begin — only knew it was immensely dark and silent on the threshold.
The Lama’s voice broke silence, speaking to the chela somewhere in the pit below:
“The first duty of a chela is obedience!”
Silence again. Not even wind or rain to break the stillness. At last the Lama’s figure, like a shadow issuing from nothing, approaching along the ledge and sitting down near him — but not near enough for conversation. Then, after a very long pause, the chela’s voice, resonant and clear from somewhere in the distance:
“O Tsiang Samdup! I obey. And they obey me. May I wait until the dawn? It is not long.”
The Lama gave assent — one monosyllable — then groaned, and came and sat closer to Ommony.
“My work is done,” he said. “There is a limit to endurance.”
He glanced up at the sky, but there was no sign yet of dawn.
A low chant came from the distance — almost like the humming of a swarm of bees, but the Lama took no notice of it.
“She will go with you, thinking I come later. You may tell her in Tilgaun, and she will understand. She will be brave then. She will not forget she was my chela.”
There was only the sound of humming after that until the crags around the rim of the great pit grew faintly luminous before the coming of the dawn, and the stars grew paler. Then the hum swelled into song, whose music sounded like the mystic evolution of new worlds; they were all girls’ voices, thrilling with courage and exultation. Ommony strained his ears to catch the words, but the distance was too great. Somehow, although he could not penetrate the darkness, he felt as if a veil were lifting.
The song ceased, and in the hush that followed Tsiang Samdup rose to his feet.
“I go,” he said quietly. “I am old, my son. I cannot bear to say good-by to my beloved chela. May the gods, who guard your manhood, give you strength and honesty to serve her. She will ask for me. You may say to her: ‘The first duty of a chela is obedience.’”
He turned into the tunnel, walking swiftly, and was gone. A silver bell rang, over in the distance, opposite, seven times, slow and distinct; then a pause, in which the overtones spread off into infinity; then seven times again. And as the last note faded into silence, dawn touched the crags with silver and the chela’s voice rose young and glorious, intoning the oldest invocation in the world:
“O my Divinity, blend Thou with me... that out of darkness I may go forth in Light.”
Daylight spread swiftly down the crags until it touched a ledge on which the chela stood, and all beneath that was darkness, like a pool of ink. Her right hand was raised. The other girls, beneath her, were invisible. Dawn glistened on her face.
Her lips moved and her breast swelled as she drew breath to intone the Word. And then, in chorus from the mist and darkness that enwrapped her feet, and from her own lips, came the magic, long-drawn syllable that has been sacred since before Atlantis sank under the ocean and new races explored new continents — the Word that signifies immeasurable, absolute, unthinkable, all-compassing, forever infinite and unattainable, sublime and holy Essence — the Beginning and the End.
“O-O-O-O-O-O-o-o-om-m-m-m-m—”
It rose, and rose, and died away among the crags, until the last reverberation echoed faintly from the upper levels and there came an answer to it, sonorous and strong, in a man’s voice, from a crag beside a cave-mouth three hundred feet above the ledge where Ommony stood, nearly midway between him and the chela. “O-O-O-O-O-O-o-o-om-m-m-m-m!”
The Lama raised his right hand in a final benediction, turned into the cave and vanished. Then the chela’s voice — calling to Ommony as dawn sank deep into the pit, revealing her companions on a ledge below.
“O Gupta Rao — change your name now! Wait for me. I am coming — Tsiang Samdup bids us go forth together!”
THE END
THE CAVES OF TERROR
OR, THE GREY MAHATMA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
/> The first edition’s cover
CHAPTER I
THE GRAY MAHATMA
Meldrum Strange has “a way” with him. You need all your tact to get him past the quarreling point; but once that point is left behind there isn’t a finer business boss in the universe. He likes to put his ringer on a desk-bell and feel somebody jump in Tibet or Wei-hei-wei or Honolulu. That’s Meldrum Strange.
When he sent me from San Francisco, where I was enjoying a vacation, to New York, where he was enjoying business, I took the first train.
“You’ve been a long time on the way,” he remarked, as I walked into his office twenty minutes after the Chicago flyer reached Grand Central Station. “Look at this!” he growled, shoving into my hand a clipping from a Western newspaper.
“What about it?” I asked when I had finished reading.
“While you were wasting time on the West Coast this office has been busy,” he snorted, looking more like General Grant than ever as he pulled out a cigar and started chewing it. “We’ve taken this matter up with the British Government, and we’ve been retained to look into it.”
“You want me to go to Washington, I suppose.”
“You’ve got to go to India at once.”
“That clipping is two months old,” I answered. “Why didn’t you wire me when I was in Egypt to go on from there?”
“Look at this!” he answered, and shoved a letter across the desk.
It bore the address of a club in Simla.
Meldrum Strange, Esq.,
Messrs. Grim, Ramsden and Ross,
New York.
Dear Sir,
Having recently resigned my commission in the British Indian army I am free to offer my services to your firm, provided you have a sufficiently responsible position here in India to offer me. My qualifications and record are known to the British Embassy in Washington, D. C., to whom I am permitted to refer you, and it is at the suggestion of —— —— (he gave the name of a British Cabinet Minister who is known the wide world over) that I am making this proposal; he was good enough to promise his endorsement to any application I might care to make. If this should interest you, please send me a cablegram, on receipt of which I will hold my services at your disposal until your letter has time to reach Simla, when, if your terms are satisfactory, I will cable my acceptance without further delay.