by Talbot Mundy
“Tomorrow? You might have told me, Andrew. I never guessed you’d be going so soon. When Dr. Lewis spoke of my staying with Nancy Strong, I had a presentiment. But—” She left off speaking, staring at the brazier.
Andrew didn’t answer. He paced the floor, clenching a wrist behind his back and stepping accurately on the cracks between the flagstones. After a minute or two he stood facing the narrow window and watched the rain in the courtyard, wondering what the devil to say to Elsa. Worse than that, he was wondering what the devil to say to Tom Grayne when he should reach him, nearly a thousand miles away, up over the Roof of the World. Elsa interrupted his train of thought:
“Andrew, if Dr. Morgan Lewis has become the head of the secret intelligence, and if Mu-ni Gam-po knows it, or even suspects it, why should Dr. Lewis have talked in riddles? Why couldn’t he say things plainly?”
Andrew turned his back to the window. He answered almost absent-mindedly, because he was still trying to think what to say to her: “The monk who admitted Morgan Lewis and remained in the room is a spy who reports to Bulah Singh. That’s why.”
“Oh.”
“See here, Elsa.”
“Yes, Andrew. What is it?”
“What we were talking about just now.”
“You mean about your going away tomorrow? I’d rather not talk about it.”
“No. Before that.”
“You mean before Mu-ni Gam-po and Dr. Lewis came in?”
“Yes. Have you written a letter for me to take to Tom Grayne?”
“Of course I have. I tore up a dozen attempts. But I got it finished two days ago. It’s wrapped in oiled silk. Shall I give it to you now?”
“No. What did you write to him?”
“More than twenty pages, Andrew, both sides of the paper.”
“If you don’t care to tell me what you wrote, okay, it’s none of my God- damned business. That suits me. I’ll deliver the letter and say nothing.”
“Andrew, you may read the letter if you want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
Elsa uncurled herself, rearranged the cushions and sat nearly upright. Her eyes looked hunted. “Nearly half the letter,” she said, “is about the baby. After that I told Tom what I have told you. I told Tom he is free. I told him he needn’t worry about me any more. His papers will be quite safe in the bank vault in London, and I’ll leave the key with Professor Mayor. I told him how sorry I am to have caused him so much distress, and that he mustn’t blame himself because it was absolutely all of it my fault. And—”
Andrew strode toward her: “That’s what I’d have betted you’d done!” He sat down on the edge of the basalt throne exactly where Lewis had sat, glaring, and scowling so that his eyes were hardly visible beneath the lowered eyebrows. Then he suddenly controlled himself, pulled out the head of Chenrezi, resumed carving it and didn’t speak until he knew his voice was steady. It almost seemed as if he was speaking to the carved face of Chenrezi:
“Elsa, I’m going to talk to you as a friend if it’s the last time.”
“That’s what I asked you to do.”
“You’re not playing it straight.”
“What do you mean, Andrew? I’m dishonest?”
“Why ask for advice, and insist on telling me the lowdown, when you’d shot your bolt already? Do you call that playing it straight? If you’ve done it, you’ve done it. So why ask me? Do you want to be told you’re a Virgin Mary suffering for the sins of the world? All right, I’ll—”
“You are too cruel, Andrew. I suppose I asked for it, but you might at least—”
“Pull my punches? I won’t. I hate cruelty. But what do you call what you’re doing? Go ahead, give it a name!”
“You said you’d tell me the answer!”
“Yes, but I didn’t know then that you’d written to Tom and told him, from a thousand miles away, where he gets off. I only guessed it. Guesses don’t cut ice.”
Elsa stared at him wide-eyed. He waited for her to speak. She couldn’t. She was almost afraid of him. Her parted lips and bewildered eyes might have checked him if he hadn’t been carving that piece of wood. He continued, without looking at her.
“Tom never lied to you, did he?”
“No, never.”
“Do you love each other?”
“I would never have conceived his baby if I didn’t love him.”
“But you don’t love him now? Or are you letting Lovelace do your thinking: ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov’d I not honor more’ — and all that piffle?”
“Andrew, what do you want me to do? I’m thought out. I don’t know what to think. If you’re going away, you might at least—”
“Do your thinking for you? Not I! And I won’t yes you either. But see here. I’ll use your phrase. You offered yourself—”
“Yes, like millions of other women, to an ideal — to an idea!”
“Boloney! You offered yourself to Tom Grayne. Tom accepted. If you’ve told me the truth, you’ve no right to run out on him. It’s unfinished business.”
Elsa broke down at last, sobbing quietly, trying to hide the sound from Andrew, counting on the flickering shadows and the male’s natural gift for not noticing things. If he should guess she was crying he might suspect her of trying to arouse pity. He knew she was crying. But he knew her too well to entertain any such suspicion as that. Pretending not to notice, he told her bluntly, almost brutally, what she wanted to tell him:
“You’re disillusioned. You feel helpless. You can’t help Tom by staying here: you’re too closely watched by Bulah Singh. You can’t claim you’re married, because that might get Tom in trouble. No one here knows who was your child’s father; half of Darjeeling suspects me. You’ve roughed it long enough with Tom, on the Roof of the World, to know you’d die of constipated bitterness in the pink-tea world you came from. You’d hate like hell to go back to that. Your bit of an income would keep you off the dole. It ‘ud pay bus fares and a library subscription. You could go to the cinema once or twice a week. You might even stand outside Buckingham Palace and watch the King go by. And you might get a job teaching school — but there’d be an inspector from the Board of Education to make sure you didn’t teach the kids that there’s any other standard of value than money, or any other viewpoint than a mugwump’s.”
“Yes, Andrew. Yes. Yes. Is that the answer?”
“I’m going soon. When I’m gone, you’ll be alone.”
“Lonely as a ghost!”
“Mu-ni Gam-po is sympathetic, but he mistrusts women. And Nancy Strong is a woman, so you don’t trust her. You don’t get along with women.”
“Andrew, that isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You know nothing about it. You’ve never seen me with other women. How could you possibly know?”
“I’m telling you. You listen. What pulled you through bearing a child in a blizzard at sixteen thousand feet above sea level wasn’t so much your guts as what you used ’em for. Don’t forget. I was in on that episode.”
“How could I ever forget?”
“You just wouldn’t be licked because you were fighting back at the whole damned traditional curse that was laid on women when some Levite, who had returned from Babylon to Jerusalem under Ezra, rewrote the Book of Genesis. You were fighting the Apostle Paul and the whole army of phony feminists. Do you want to tell me you can stand the company of women who yowl for sex equality and bet their sex against the field like any two-tailed penny in a crooked two-up joint? They nearly all do it. The political ones are the worst.”
“But there are other kinds of women, Andrew.”
“Yes, and you’re one of the others. You’re clairvoyant. You can see—”
“Andrew, I hate it! Don’t pretend that’s any good! It’s a curse! It isn’t even reliable. I can’t use it when I want to, when it’s needed, when it might help other people. It comes and goes, almost always at the wrong time. It makes me a stranger. People think it’s uncanny. They pester
me to tell their fortunes — especially other people’s fortunes — and when I refuse they think I’m keeping back something too evil to tell. But if I do tell what I see, because I forget not to, they think I’m a witch in league with Satan — Oh, go away, Andrew! Go away! Leave me alone! I’m very, very grateful for all you’ve done. But there’s nothing more you can do. I’m sorry I inflicted all this on you. It wasn’t fair.”
“Nothing’s fair,” he answered. “Nobody is. We’re all liabilities, some of us doing our best, which isn’t much. This world is the only hell we’ll ever know. We’ve got to take it and make the best of it, because we can’t leave it. It isn’t a case of devil take the hindmost. The devil gets the front men first as the general rule, and gets all of us sooner or later.”
“You believe in the devil?”
“Sure I do. You and I and all the rest of us are all one devil.”
“I have never heard you even mention God, except when you’re angry. Do you believe in God?”
“I don’t believe in anything that I believe in,” he answered. “Anything that we believe in is pretty sure to be wrong. But I know there’s God. That’s different. What you know can’t hurt you. What do you know?”
“Oh, I’ve left off caring! No! There’s no God! No Christ! Nothing! Go away, Andrew. I’ll pack up and go to Nancy Strong’s house. Mu-ni Gam-po will send my things after me. Please come and say good-bye before you leave for Tibet, and—” She sat suddenly bolt upright, possessed by a new idea. “Andrew! If I burn that letter — that I wrote for you to give to Tom — will you — will you tell him instead?”
“No. I won’t. That was a hell of a letter to write to a man.” He got to his feet. “Where is it?”
Elsa hesitated. Suddenly she got up and went to the writing table where her English translation of Tibetan folios lay piled in a heap. She took the letter from a leather folder. It was wrapped in oilskin and heavily sealed. She stood holding it between the fingers of both hands, looking thoroughbred — slim, mettlesome, beginning to be very angry. Andrew stood still, watching.
“You’re proud, aren’t you, Andrew? You’re too proud to have a hand in what looks to you like cowardice. Your pride is cruel. You’re hard. But I can be as hard as you are. So very well: I will burn the letter. Then you shall tell me the answer.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Andrew.
“No, I’m not. I’m burning my bridges, once more, for the last time.”
Andrew stepped aside and watched her lay the letter on the hot coal in the brazier. The burning silk stank; so did the sealing wax; it made her gasp, but even that didn’t conceal from Andrew the fact that her expression changed while she watched the letter turn to ashes . At last she met his eyes, across the brazier.
“Andrew — just now you were thinking about the snow in the passes toward Tibet and what the spring storms will be like. I saw your mental picture — all the long trail — all of it — all in a moment.”
“That’s nothing,” he answered. “Lots of people could do that. What else?”
“You weren’t alone on the trail.”
“Of course I wasn’t. Don’t be silly. There’ll be Bompo Tsering and the rest of the Tibetan gang. There’ll be ponies, and—”
“There was someone else — shadowy — someone who didn’t belong, and yet did belong. It’s hard to explain. It’s as if the others, and the ponies, and the loads, and the trail are all fixed in our mind and quite clear, including even the men’s characters and the ponies’ temperaments. But the other person was vague, as if you weren’t sure, or didn’t like the idea, or—”
“Who was it?” he demanded.
“Andrew! I’ve no right to ask this. It isn’t fair. It isn’t even reasonable. Will you let me go with you to Tibet?”
“Okay.”
“Andrew, are you—”
“I said yes. The hell of it is, it means three extra ponies and maybe a couple of extra yaks to carry fodder for the ponies, and an extra tent, and your rations. It’ll be harder to get away, and there’ll be trouble about staying where they don’t like women — and—”
“Oh, I know. It’s impossible! Andrew, I shouldn’t have asked. I know I shouldn’t have.”
“You can’t play it straight anyhow else, if you can stand the journey. Can you stand it?”
“Andrew, I can stand anything! I’m as strong as a horse. Really I am. I’m all over it — quite well again. Andrew, honestly if I didn’t know I could make it I wouldn’t—”
“Okay. It’ll be tough going.”
“Don’t I know it! But I did it before when I was heavy with child. It should be easier this time. But what will Tom say?”
“That’s Tom’s business.”
“Tom told me to stay in Darjeeling.”
“Yeah. I heard him. But he asked me to do the best I can for you. I said I would. So that’s that. I’ll go and see about those extra ponies before Bulah Singh gets wise to us.”
“One minute, Andrew! Please wait! How about Dr. Morgan Lewis? What will he say?”
“We’ll find that out soon enough. He won’t be so easy as Bulah Singh. Can’t fool Lewis. But he’s on the level. I’m betting he’s the new Number One in Johnson’s place. If I’m right, we’re in luck.”
“Andrew, you’re the kindest and most astonishing man in the world. What can I say that—”
“Say nothing. Just do as you’re told and you’ll be all right.”
“Very well, Andrew. I know it’s no use thanking you for anything. From now on I’m taking orders. You give them. Am I to go to Nancy Strong’s house?”
“Sure. Lewis tipped us off about that.”
“Very well. But Nancy will ask questions, and she’ll know what kind of questions to ask.”
“Answer her questions. Make sure no one overhears you, that’s all. I’ll see Mu-ni Gam-po on my way out and get him to sleight-of-hand you out of here by the back way, so that Bulah Singh won’t know about it. He’ll know Morgan Lewis has been here. So we’d better keep the curtains drawn and send out a rumor you’ve had a relapse. I’ll attend to all that. How long will it take you to pack your things?”
“Fifteen-twenty minutes.”
“Go to it. Keep under cover at Nancy Strong’s until you hear from me again. I’ll send saddlebags to Nancy’s, and you’ll have to get her to buy any extras you’ll need. Leave your manuscripts with Mu-ni Gam-po. Nancy Strong will take care of anything else you have to leave behind. Will you trust me to buy you a traveling kit?”
“Andrew, is there anything you can’t be trusted to do?”
His expression made her wish she hadn’t said it. He always shook off flattery, and even genuine praise and gratitude, as if the thought of it hurt him.
“Give me one of your boots,” he answered. “I’ll take that with me for, the right size.”
Elsa produced a felt boot from a chest. Andrew wrapped it in a woolen shawl and tucked it under his arm.
“All right. Then I’ll get going and attend to things. I’m glad you’re coming.”
“You’re glad I’m coming? Andrew, please don’t think you have to say that kind of thing. I’m—”
“You go to Nancy Strong’s and be ready to start at a moment’s notice, any hour, day or night. No letters, remember. No telegrams. No good-byes for Bulah Singh to listen in on.”
“Trust me. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“There’s nothing else, is there?”
“Yes, just one other thing. Andrew l I know you don’t like sentimental scenes, so I won’t make one. And besides, I’m so grateful to you that I couldn’t say it anyhow. But — but—”
“Oh, that’s all right. You keep your head and hold your tongue and you’ll be all right. See you later.”
Andrew walked out, leaving her standing beside the brazier, staring after him, wondering. The door slammed. The coals in the brazier sank. A bell summoned the monks to chapel. Silence became a dimension of dim-hued existence. With the faculty that she
hated, of visualizing absent people so clearly that they seemed more real than when they were actually present, she saw Andrew Gunning now, exactly as he had stood a few moments ago beside the brazier talking to her. But, as in a dream when time and space coalesce without confusion, she could simultaneously see him by the window, and on the edge of the basalt throne, carving Chenrezi’s head, fencing verbally with Morgan Lewis, scowling at some of her own remarks. And there was Bulah Singh, the Sikh Chief of Police, gazing at her. Simultaneously there was Tom Grayne, hundreds of miles to the northward, solitary, in a cave, in Tibet. And she knew Tom was thinking of her. He was angry — unhappy — uncertain and — so it seemed to her vision — ashamed.
She dragged out a battered suitcase and began packing.
CHAPTER 5
At the end of the rain-swept courtyard Andrew mounted the stairs and tried to interview Mu-ni Gam-po. But at the corner of the long gallery, where the passage turned off to the Abbot’s apartment, he was told by a smiling monk that blessed meditation must not be disturbed. That was a plain diplomatic evasion. He could hear voices. Whoever was meditating in the Abbot’s apartment was doing it noisily with at least three voices.
Andrew paced the wooden gallery. His footsteps echoed across the courtyard. He was consequently watched by monks, whose gift for grapevine gossip was as well developed as if they had been prisoners in a penitentiary. He was a scandal, the butt of guesswork. The usual bells rang. The routine two-by-two and to-and-fro processions of monks through the courtyard arch continued — mysterious goings and comings, whose mystery was how humans could endure such routine.
It left off raining. A few stars appeared. The moon broke through hurrying clouds and was reflected like a stream of pure gold on the dark wet courtyard paving-stones. Lonely. Beautiful. Unreal. Andrew fought for a grip on reality — an enormously difficult thing to do in a crisis, in which the only certainty was that nothing was certain. Facts were dead things, meaning whatever one chose to make them mean. Ideas were playing havoc with the facts. Somewhere between fact and idea lay reason. But even reason was a mess of contradictions. The reason why he had simply, naturally, intuitionally recognized the rightness of taking Elsa back to Tom Grayne was smothered and contradicted by plausible, logical matter of fact.