by Talbot Mundy
“Asses! Why weren’t you arrested?”
“No evidence. They have also accused Hawkesey, who has been confined to barracks. And they have accused several Indian troopers, who are supposed to have resented your being near the temple.”
“Why accuse Hawkes?”
“Your mother said he did it for revenge, because she had refused to pay him a thousand pounds.”
“Easy,” said Joe. “I will swear on a Grand Central Stationful of Bibles that Hawkes had nothing at all to do with it.”
“But who did?”
“What does it matter?”
“Amal — my ayah — is missing. Might not she have done it?”
Joe detected some sort of ulterior motive behind the question — felt as if he, not the ayah, was being impugned — wondered whether any one other than Annie Weems was listening behind the screen. He shook his head.
“What motive could the ayah have? I have given her a little money once or twice. No other dealings. She had no grievance.”
“Are you sure?” She took his hand in both hers. “Are you so sure that Amal had no grievance?”
“The point is,” said Joe, “that I haven’t any. I feel I paid, perhaps a high price, but not too high, for a tremendous privilege. Has it occurred to you—” “That you are talking too much? Yes,” she said, and drew her hand away and left him.
Annie Weems came in again and bossed him off to sleep. She seemed to possess the knack of shooing thoughts away over horizons, until nothing was left but the drone of a fly, that she slew with a slap of a fly-stick. And then nothing, except dreams of contenting meadows from which he did not wish to wake up, but which he only half remembered when he stirred, and which he forgot entirely as soon as he was fully awake again.
And when he awoke it was morning. Attendants stood beside his bed — half-naked fellows as bronze as statues with immaculate white linen on their loins. Without a word to him they picked up the bed, moving like automatons, and raised it shoulder-high. No one gave any command. He felt himself being borne out into the courtyard, and the sunlight dazzled him so that he had to close his eyes until they set the bed down in shadow beneath a cloister. There, on the bed-sheet, they lifted him into a chair that he instantly recognized — a thing that he had fervently cursed at least a dozen times and wished at the bottom of every harbor they entered. His mother had hardly ever used it, but she would no more travel without it than without her check-book. It had cost twice its original price already in extra tips and excess freight, to say nothing of fuss and annoyance. He had grown so to hate the thing that he resented being lifted into it. However, it was comfortable. They raised the back so that he could sit almost upright. He was alone then; there was no sound but the splashing of water and singing of birds. He saw the birds at last — at least a hundred of them, of a dozen different varieties, in an aviary in a corner of the court between two bright-green trees. A servant came and helped him into an embroidered jacket that looked as if it might be Chinese, it was such a gorgeous yellow; but the red and blue embroidered patterns were such as he had never seen before. The servant left him; the man apparently was dumb; he said nothing.
Joe tried to think about his mother, wondering where she was, but though he lay in her chair he could not form a picture of her in his mind. It was as if even the memory of her had no right to trespass in that sanctuary.
“Why think of her? She’ll be here in the flesh all too soon.”
He wondered whether that thought was unfilial, but he found he had grown contentingly frank with himself. He was curious about the ayah, not in the least curious about his mother — although he wondered why and by what means she had been kept away from him all this time; she was not an easy person to keep away from places. He began to study his surroundings.
Beyond a high wall he could see temple roofs, trees, pagodas — acres of them. The wall appeared to segregate the section where he found himself, as if it were a lay enclave surrounded on three sides by the temple buildings but not belonging to them. The pool, shaped like an egg split lengthwise, occupied almost a third of the space exposed to sunlight. It was brim-full, and immeasurably tiny driblets, hardly more than moisture, slipped over the brink to feed gloxinias and ferns that grew around the pool in riotous profusion. There was evidently a hidden drain that carried away nine-tenths of the overflow.
He saw now that the statue of the woman who held the jar from which the water spilled into the pool was more than life-size and peculiarly un-Indian in conception. It was almost Juno-esque, and the face was not like any Indian face that he had ever seen. Nor was it Greek — or Chinese. It resembled, if anything, the Polynesian type of female beauty. It was as pagan as the purple shadows on the wall beside it and as gracious as the flowers at its feet. Its marble was not the dead stuff many sculptors have to use; time had not robbed it of life, it had stolen time’s secret and stood gracious at the door of the eternal Now.
The courtyard was paved and worn smooth with the tread of centuries; the gray stone was so in harmony with the hues of vivid flowers that it was difficult to tell where sight began and sound left off. New York was a forgotten dream; a month might be a million years; even Cummings, and the hotel, and his mother were a legend. But Rita was real; he could half close his eyes and imagine her walking beside that fountain.
Reverie was broken almost suddenly. He was aware of a man beside him, and then of several men who approached in single file, in silence, dressed in white robes but with turbans of various colors. He vaguely recognized the man beside him but was puzzled by his clothing, although the beard and the long hair looked familiar; mighty of shoulder and taller than the others, he alone wore splendor, and he wore it like a high priest of the Ages — a robe of peacock-color, lined with crimson and edged with gold embroidery on silver braid, time-mellowed but not faded. Of them all, he was the only one unturbaned. Probably a minute passed before Joe recognized him as the Yogi of the beehive hut — the Yogi Ram-Chittra Gunga, who had led the line, stark-naked, on the night when some one’s knife had made a target of his lungs. He refused to name the ayah as the culprit, even in his own thought.
“Glad to see you,” he said weakly.
“Be at ease, my son.”
Attendants brought flat stools with gilded legs and set them in a semicircle facing Joe’s chair — seven stools, the largest in the midst. Six men, none of whom looked less than seventy or eighty years old, sat cross-legged on the stools to right and left and fell into meditation, like graven images, each man’s posture so exactly like the others’ that the same hand might have carved them. The old Yogi gestured as if including them within the orbit of his blessing. His lips moved, but his blessing seemed to need no aid of noise.
“My son,” he said, when he had stood in silence for the space of ten long breaths, “we men of experience ask indulgence from you. We come seeking your leave to ask questions, in the hope that our experience may guide us in interpreting your answers, so that we may act with wisdom.”
“I will answer as well as I can,” said Joe.
“But you are not obliged to answer — now — to us men. There is no deed done that can avoid its consequences. But the effects of cause may be tempered by the element of mercy; and all forces, of whatever violence, may be transmuted one into another. One word at the proper moment may affect the destinies of thousands; cradled in the destinies of thousands lies the future of your soul and mine. Answer or not, as you will, my son. But if you answer, do so truly. And if you are silent, be so in the knowledge that your silence shall bring forth consequences, because silence is the very womb of words and deeds.”
“All right,” said Joe. He felt awed, but he tried to hide the feeling, not exactly ashamed of being awed, but ashamed of showing it.
The ancient of days took his seat on the seventh stool. “My son, you received a hurt at our threshold,” he said after a long silence.
“It was not your fault,” Joe answered. “And if it were, you owe me nothing. In
fact, the obligation is the other way. You have been almost incredibly kind.”
The Yogi bowed his head until the gray beard widened on his breast. He stroked it straight again, using his right hand.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “although a man may bear no malice, may he stop what once is set in motion? The finger that touches the trigger may stand forgiven. But does the bullet cease from its course, or does it strike less surely? Who, my son, struck at your back with a knife?”
“I don’t know,” Joe answered.
“Do you mean by that, you did not see who struck you?”
“How could I see? My back was turned.”
“My son, I did not ask you how you saw. I asked you, did you see? We are men of experience, we seven, who have seen more than our eyes have shown to us.”
“Sorry. I’m afraid I can’t interpret visions.”
“Do you know who struck you?”
“Put it this way: I respectfully decline to say who struck me.”
“That is different.”
A long pause. No interchange of signals, or of speech; but a sensation, on Joe’s part, that the seven were by some means reaching an agreement. They sat stock still, except that the ancient of days in the midst kept on twitching sections of his skin, as a horse does in fly-time; it appeared that the unaccustomed clothing did not feel good. Joe had the peculiar experience of seeing him in imagination naked, as he usually sat by his beehive hut outside the temple — naked and yet, at the same time, robed in the more than royal garments of a high priest. The imagined picture was almost as real as the other; they coalesced — coincided — coexisted; there seemed to be no word in Joe’s vocabulary that could be made to fit the circumstance exactly. Not that it mattered; he was having a good time — liked the seven solemnities — liked him in the midst particularly well.
Presently: “My son, I warn you, there are two ways — and the hour has passed when you might stand still. Backward you may turn and take the way of vengeance, not intending that, nor able to avoid it. Forward you may go and take the way of severance, not willing that, nor able to avoid that either — severance of your ties and another’s — aye, and of many others. Good and evil — do one with your right hand, and you will do the other with your left, whichever way you take. But there are the upper and the lower choice; and it is yours to choose.”
“Sorry,” said Joe. “I am doing my best, but I can’t understand you.”
“There is the way of intuition that transcends prudence; and the way of prudence that postpones crisis to a more convenient occasion.”
“I still don’t understand you.”
“It would be prudent in you to go hence and to name the assailant who struck you.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Nevertheless, my son, it would be prudent; because they will accuse those who are not guilty.”
“How can they convict any one without my evidence?”
“But they can suspect, and they can bring calamities to pass. There are more ways, man from Jupiter, of punishing the suspected than by legal process.”
None knew that better than Joe did. Business had taught him what can happen to suspected men whose guilt is not demonstrable. His mother had too often shown him what self-righteous malice can inflict on underlings. He had no doubt that Hawkes, for instance, could be transferred to a barracks and demoted on circumstantial charges; even the Maharajah could be wrecked politically; Annie Weems’ mission-school could be wiped out with a stroke of an official pen; possibly the priests could be accused of political offenses. Rita — he grew hot at the thought of what slander might do to Rita in a land where evidence is bought and sold. And all because he chose to protect the ayah from the consequences of her savagery.
“It is my opinion,” he said, after a long pause, “that I brought this stabbing on myself. So, if any one is guilty I am. Whoever actually struck the blow was a mere automaton acting on impulse supplied by some one else.”
“And does it not occur to you, my son, that if you should name the assailant he — or she — might serve justice by revealing the source of the impulse? Might you not thus bring your enemy to book?”
“I might. But — it may sound strange — perhaps I’m crazy or something — anyhow, I don’t feel even a trace of resentment against the individual who used the knife.”
“But you think you know the instigator? Against the instigator, whoever that is, you feel resentment?”
“No. He probably regards me as an intruder; and from his point of view I imagine I am. I will forget him, once I get what I’m after. If I win, he loses, that’s all; he may cook in whatever emotions he cares to cultivate.”
“And if — that you may gain your object — you must bring down upon others much perplexity — perhaps calamity?”
“Too vague,” Joe answered. “What I can’t see, I can’t decide on. My objective might seem unimportant to you. If I told, you might see fit to work against me. It is something I don’t wish to tell about — not at the moment.”
“It may be something that we do not know, my son. Understanding is not to be judged by the speech of the lips.” The ancient of days rose, leaning on the staff he carried; they on either side of him rose also, exchanging neither word nor glance. “We men of experience thank you for your answers, courteously made to questions that to you may have seemed impertinent.” He turned to the left, then to the right, reading the eyes of the men on either side of him. Then again he faced Joe. “We are guardians of a threshold.”
“Sorry,” said Joe, “I guess I’m stupid. I still don’t understand you.”
“My son, it is the guardians, not the wayfarer who know what they are guarding. If you knew, you would already be within and there would be no need to enter. They, who from without, attempt to judge what is within, are fools whose voice betrays the multitude into the maze of many opinions, of which each least byway leads into the swamp of disillusionment. We bless you. Be your footfall guided. Be your courage steadfast, and your lack of courage no more than the cup that courage fills. Be faithful to the fire within you. Be a light amid the darkness. Be at war without — at peace within — and be your way straight.”
They were gone before Joe realized it. The weight and the strength of the old Yogi’s blessing almost dazed him. He lay wondering what it all meant, trying to refit himself into the mold of thought that had so pinched him formerly. He could not do it. Old realities had grown absurd. New values dawned that once had seemed ridiculous. He did not understand them yet, but he knew that Rita could help him to understand them. He wished he might talk with her, alone, uninterrupted.
And there she stood — smiling a little wistfully, he thought, but sweeter to the sense than any saint of legend. Jonquil-yellow was the color of her cotton dress; the sunlight edged it with a sheen of brilliant gold, and the skin of her bare arms and of her sandaled feet seemed like the substance of which flowers were woven in the looms of love.
“I wanted you,” he said.
“I knew you did.”
“How did you know?”
“You make your wants known — Joe from Jupiter. Perhaps you don’t know how you do it, but you make them very clearly known.”
CHAPTER XX. “Imagination is the window through which the soul looks at reality.”
“Rita, can you drag up a chair and sit beside me?”
“You are only a convalescent yet, Joe. You have talked too much already.”
“This will rest me, Rita.”
“How do you know?” She came closer to him, arranging the sheet that lay over his knees. “You men who have Jupiter’s sign so burned on your foreheads all burn yourselves up, if we let you.”
“Do you know how to prevent us?”
She was now so near that he could take her hand in both his. And he was not so weak as he had been. He felt life leap in him, and her aware of it.
“I love you.”
“Did you think I don’t know that?” “And the answer?”
>
“Joe, there is only one possible answer, if I tell the truth.”
“You couldn’t lie.”
“Oh, yes, I could.”
“I would know you were lying.”
“Joe, be generous and don’t ask.”
“You want time to consider it?”
She smiled; and not even a glimpse of flowers sunlit through a morning mist can compare with the smile of a woman in whom wisdom is at war with natural desire amid perplexity of impulse. It lighted her whole being — as it were the color of her soul emerging through a dread of consequences. But a man can’t read a woman when the love-surge rises in him; he can only see — hear — feel — and try not to be too impulsive.
“Do you want a little time? I’ll hold my horses.”
“Joe, do you imagine time has anything to do with it? Love is now, and for ever — or never.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
“No.”
“Rita — see here: I don’t know what love is — I’ve never experienced it before. I’ve had a sort of dull regard for things and people, and I suppose I’ve loved my mother in the stupid way an animal loves habit. But I’ve never loved, or been loved, that I know of — until I met you. Do you doubt me?”
“Not for a moment, Joe.”
“I wonder why not.” He was doubly puzzled — by the fact that she believed him, and by her reticence. She looked straight in his eyes without flinching, but her hand trembled and he knew her heart was beating like a bird’s.
“Why should I doubt you? I know. I can see.” Then, after a long pause: “Joe, can you not see?”
“See?” he answered. “I can see you; and you look more beautiful to me than morning. What did you say your name means, Rita?”
“It means Morning.”
“‘Yonder mountain in the morning is the symbol of my soul;’” he quoted. “Rita, I’m a damned ungraceful novice, but I love you. Do you love me?”
“Joe, I must not answer.”