by Talbot Mundy
Well, it was getting near daybreak. The moon had gone down. The few visible stars were already paling. The chill that heralds sunrise was like the chill on her heart, but night was nearly over. Was he still in love with that woman? Why was it a mistake? How could one help being in love? Can that which can’t be helped be a mistake?
“I’m glad I love him! It isn’t a mistake. It can’t be, because I didn’t ask for it, and I couldn’t help it. It’s my right! I will love him forever! But I’ll tell no one! It’s my secret.”
She heard Andrew coming, sturdily crunching the snow. The bivouac was stirring; the Tibetans were boiling tea. But it was still dark, and the darkness felt like loneliness — forever.
Andrew sat down beside her and resumed exactly where he had left off. His expression hadn’t changed. It had been the other part of him that went the rounds of the bivouac.
“She was the wrong girl,” he said abruptly. “Wrong one for me. Sweet, sentimental, much too easy on the eye, if I’d only known it. If they look like the Mother of God, they’re not fit to be mothers of men. Too easy on the ear. Voice like an angel’s. Eyes like pools of intelligence. I don’t see, even now, how I could have known better than to trust her with my whole heart and conscience.”
“Andrew, it isn’t criminal to fall in love. Did she betray you?”
“She did not — in the way you mean. She encouraged me in my determination to be absolutely honest, first with myself, then with her, so that we could both be honest with the world. Sex, for instance: we respected each other. We often talked about sex without ever once crossing the line. It got so that I used to save my thoughts, just to tell to her and to no one else.”
“Were you still practicing law?”
“Yes. Trying to drive law and honesty in double harness. Getting hopeful, too — not doing so badly. And then one day I took her boating — on a lake. I’d had a hard week. It was hot. It was nice out there on the lake in the motorboat, so we stayed until after dark. Then I learned we can only be honest one by one. You can’t do it in droves. Not even two by two. It’s a one-man, one-woman business.”
He paused for a full minute, so that Elsa thought he had decided to say no more. But he resumed abruptly:
“I’d got so used to being honest with her — absolutely honest, and no ulterior motives or hidden meanings — that you couldn’t have made me believe she’d misinterpret anything I’d say or do. She might not understand. She might ask for an explanation. But misinterpret — no. She’d be sure I was on the level, whatever I’d do.”
He paused again. He swallowed a couple of times. Then he looked at Elsa, but she looked away for fear of breaking the train of his thought.
“I belonged at that time to a good, broad-minded gang — young married people mostly — but some unmarried ones — all up and coming and full of fun, without a sour one in the lot. Painters, musicians, a lawyer or two — a young college prof — a fellow who wrote stuff for the magazines — an actress — a couple of rich men’s sons who weren’t money-conscious. It was a good gang. We used to go bathing by moonlight, and we’d peel like kids at a waterhole, thinking no more of it — and seeing surely no more shame in it than in the couple of drinks we’d have later and the songs we’d sing on the way home.”
“Was it against the law to strip naked and swim?” Elsa asked.
“Yes. I reckon maybe it was. There’s a fool law against absolutely anything you want to do in the United States. That’s what makes black-mail easy.”
“I’m sorry, Andrew. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m listening.”
“That evening I felt hot. I craved a swim. It was the place where I was used to swimming with the friends I’ve just told you about. There was no one near — no other boat — no chance of scandalizing any mugwumps. I had nothing on but a shirt and a pair of slacks. I pulled ’em off and dived in, feeling grateful to be with a girl who’d see no harm.”
“And what happened?”
“She never spoke to me again. Never again. I swam around awhile, and called out to her once or twice to jump in and join me. But she didn’t answer. When I climbed into the boat, I couldn’t get her to speak. She wouldn’t open her lips. I had to return to the car and drive her home to her mother’s house without one word from her. She shut the door in my face. That was a Saturday night. Sunday morning I phoned. No answer. Afternoon the same. Evening the same — no answer. Monday I went to work. Some time Monday she committed suicide.”
“Oh! — Andrew!”
“She left a letter addressed to me. It was found by the police. A cop who had reason to hate my guts let some reporters see it. Selections from it made the evening paper in a box on the front page. Next morning I had an eight- column headline to myself, with a portrait and full biography to date.”
“Andrew, how awful!”
“It was all that. In her letter she said I had broken her heart. I had destroyed her trust in man. I had captured her love by cunning words about integrity and self-respect — and then I had debauched it — that was the word she used — debauched it for a moment’s physical pleasure. Life, she said, for herself was no longer worth living, but she prayed that God would have mercy on me.”
“How did she kill herself?”
“Shot. She used my revolver, that I got a permit for at the time of the trial that I told you about, when that political boss’s friends were trying to pick off his opponents one by one. I never had to use the damned thing. I left it in her mother’s house one night because it was bulky and heavy. I forgot it — never thought of it again until she shot herself and the police identified it. After that they arrested me.”
“Andrew — did you have to stand trial?”
“No. The Grand Jury found no true bill — threw it out. But that’s why I left the United States. You see—”
He paused a moment, squaring his chest unconsciously, throwing back his head in a gesture that was one hundred per cent Andrew.
“ — I could have stood it that no one believed my story. In fact, after the Grand jury session I left off telling it. I just shut up. It didn’t sicken me too badly to be dropped socially — high-hatted by men and women whose debaucheries I knew plenty about — couldn’t help knowing. I could have lived all that down. But what good would it do?”
“Andrew, did your friends desert you — I mean, for instance, those you went bathing naked with?”
“Sure. Some damned rat-reporter got hold of their names. They were as mad at me as if I’d disgraced ’em on purpose. One of ’em did sort of half apologize for passing me up. He said he believed my story, but he couldn’t afford to be seen in my company because he had his job and his social position to consider. That wasn’t the trouble. I didn’t blame ’em. I wasn’t even sore at ’em — not at them, I wasn’t. What got under my skin was this.”
He paused again. He stood up. There was dim light shimmering on gray clouds in the distance — false dawn. He looked down at Elsa:
“How could I reconcile that — I mean what had happened — with my own new theory about me and my native land?” He became angry. He was girding again for the battle. “If it’s in my own eye, I’ll get it out of my eye — somehow!” His voice, without becoming louder, grew more vehement: “I’ve learned this much: you can’t tell all you know; and you mustn’t trust anyone else to understand what may be clearer to you than your name in a printed book.”
He looked down again at Elsa. “And now the answer. I don’t know the answer. But I will never return to the U.S.A. until I do know it. If, as, and when I go back, it’ll be in the full knowledge that I’ve something to give to my country. That I’ll be useful — an asset — not one of the damned reformers — not a politician either — nor a meddler, but a leader of men. Until I know which way to lead, I’ll be damned if I’ll take a chance on leading wrong: Maybe I’ll go home some day.”
He strode away from the tent where all eyes could see him:
“Bompo Tsering!” he shouted. “All hands m
ake-ready to march in fifteen minutes!” Then he glanced again at Elsa. “Will you fix something for breakfast for you and me? This is the wrong time to get poisoned. But let’s eat. There’ll be a long day’s march.”
CHAPTER 46
The thaw had set in seriously. The going wasn’t any too good; it was particularly bad for the remnant of loaded sheep that had to be carried through soft drifts. Andrew pressed forward because at that altitude the wind gets up at about ten o’clock and it’s worse than war fighting against it. First, though, the corpse had to be disposed of, although that was no great problem. In Tibet there is no respect for a corpse; it is something that the dead man has no further use for. It belongs now to nature. The wild animals may have it, the sooner the better. The mortal remains of Ugly-face’s dead companion were left sitting upright in a snowdrift, naked. Less than five minutes after the start wolves could be heard fighting one another and the vultures.
The three days’ march after that was a torment, that left no energy for conversation. The only thought was of the distance made, and of fatigue and how to carry on. But the luck held. They reached the wind-swept ledges before the thaw made the plain impassable, and it was the thaw that saved them from being overtaken by some cavalry from Lhasa. The phony lama, who hadn’t condescended to tell Andrew his worshipful name, borrowed his binoculars and confirmed his guess they were from Lhasa. They had modern rifles and were well mounted. They were the pursuing party that Ambrose St. Malo had expected, that he had lied about, saying they were his friends. They got stuck in the mud that overlay frozen clay. Not long after that the mud became an ocean of roaring water hurrying down the watershed. So the cavalry turned back, to re-cross the river. Probably their bodies reached the Bay of Bengal.
After that, because there was no more danger of immediate pursuit, Ambrose St. Malo became much less self-effacing, and Bulah Singh ceased to be meek. His feet no longer troubled him. He and St. Malo trudged side by side, exploring each other’s minds, letting Andrew carry all the burden of the days and all the worries of the nights.
Andrew made a few attempts to get in conversation with Ugly-face, but without much success. The old man strode along like a mountaineer, in spite of his big belly. He seemed as unconcerned as a drover. Hardship didn’t bother him. Andrew favored him as much as possible, giving Elsa double quantities of soft rations to share with him when the others weren’t looking. He hadn’t come by that huge belly on a diet of parched barley and rotten yak; deprivation of luxuries would fall harder on him than on others. But he ate what he was given without comment, accepting favors as his natural right, as calmly as he would have ignored their absence. He didn’t seem even to notice the phony lama’s insolence. Humiliated and resentful because Andrew had taken his scarecrow pony to lighten the loads of his own emaciated beasts, the phony lama victimized the old man in every possible way, at every opportunity. He even forced him to carry his bundle of belongings, until Andrew spotted it and threw the bundle into a snowdrift. It cost the phony lama half an hour’s work to get it out again. After that Andrew gave Elsa what amounted to orders:
“Can’t you ride beside him all the rest of the journey, so he can hold your stirrup if he needs to, or lay a hand on the pony’s neck?”
She was afraid. She protested: “But Andrew, I’m sure he wants me to keep away from him. He doesn’t wish to be recognized. He doesn’t wish to be asked questions. No intimacies. I’m quite sure.”
Andrew turned his back to the wind and stood still, so she drew rein — eagerly, because though they had continued to share a tent together, he had been more than usually reticent since he told her his story. He might be going to open up again — to resume confidences. But he didn’t.
“See here,” he said, “it’s just as easy to be silent when you know, as when you don’t know. You haven’t had to talk because you knows the lowdown about me. If what he wants is silence, let him have it. I’m asking you to ride beside him and protect him. When I try to help him a bit that phony lama turns on both of us and accuses him of trying to tempt me to go in some other direction. It’s the same old story of the ex-servant wreaking savagery on the aristocrat when he gets him at his mercy. Your friend Monsieur X is paying for having trusted the wrong man.”
“He pays gallantly,” Elsa objected. “He never murmurs.”
“So you don’t want to ride beside him?”
“Andrew, I’d like to do whatever you wish but—”
He interrupted: “Does he know English? I’ll ask him.”
He strode up to Old Ugly-face, searching memory, recalling as well as he could the intricate, almost fantastic details of rumored intrigues in Lhasa — wondering at the man’s present condition, for he had fallen from high estate like Milton’s Lucifer. He looked at Andrew quizzically, reading his thought. His fierce eyes and funny old beak of a nose suggested pained surprise that any man of breeding could be so impertinent. After a moment’s stare he said in English, that was at any rate better than Bompo Tsering’s:
“Curiosity being a vice of fools and the path to too many hells.”
Andrew chose at once to do what he was being blamed for. He asked: did he wish to be taken to the Shig-po-ling monastery? Ugly-face answered simply that he would go wherever wisdom might lead. Then he looked at Andrew again suddenly. His eyes twinkled. His leathery old face broke into wrinkles and rippled with humor. He said two words, making one of them, as they do in Tibet:
“Tum-Glain.” Then he added: “Seeing him soon!”
“Damn!” said Andrew. He had believed he had a surprise in store for Tom and for Old Ugly-face, too. But if Ugly-face knew where Tom Grayne was, he had probably also known of Andrew’s march and return with supplies, and what route he would take. Had Tom Grayne told him? How? Had Ugly-face used occult, psychic, mental means to guide his party across Andrew’s trail, without the phony lama or Ambrose St. Malo having guessed they were being steered? No use asking. But Andrew was curious to know whether Ugly-face knew his name. He might have heard it from Bompo Tsering. He tried a few tricks to get Ugly-face to address him by name. The old oriental eyes twinkled again. He remarked:
“What men doing presently revealing what their being. Soon my knowing your being — doing. Name no matter.”
Well, at least they were getting on terms. One might say, inside terms. High dignitaries of the most involved religion in the world don’t waste epigrams on people who don’t interest them. Andrew came to the point. He asked outright whether Elsa might not ride beside him.
The answer was prompt: “My not being leader here. What your being?” He didn’t even glance toward Elsa. His bright stare into Andrew’s eyes suggested mockery, but along with it tolerance — deep understanding. Understanding of what? Andrew gave it up. He beckoned to Elsa. From then on she and Old Ugly-face were road companions, sharing a measureless silence. The old man accepted the occasional aid of a stirrup. Now and then, in the difficult places, he rested a hand on the pony’s neck, or on its rump. But ride he would not, though she dismounted many a time and offered her pony. He simply scowled her into silence, shook his head and trudged forward. Of conversation there was none — not even speech between them.
So Elsa had time and nothing to do but think. Gradually, little by little, she gave up Andrew. Unlove him, she could not. She would not try to. But she could deny herself, for his sake. She surrendered him to his own future, cutting loose one by one the tentacles of thought that seemed to bind them together. It didn’t hurt so much as she had believed it would. It seemed clear that Andrew craved to be left alone to build his own destiny from what he could find in the deeps of his own heart. So it was a secret gift to Andrew. Life was working in him, as yeast works. It was kindness to let him alone. Kindness was all she had to give.
So, though they used one tent, and though she cooked his meals, they shared no thoughts, so far as either of them knew. Andrew had plenty to keep his thought occupied, and to guard against, with Bulah Singh and St. Malo evidently trying,
like a pair of mutually contemptuous conspirators, to reach an agreement for treachery, murder and loot. He had to watch like a lynx, to prevent his own men from being seduced by the others into some hair-brained plot. His full attention was occupied.
But to Elsa it seemed that his self-revelation that night had closed a door between him and herself. It was as if he truly believed what he had said then, that to understand is to despise. Did he know that she loved him? Did he despise her for having been unfaithful in her heart to Tom Grayne? Or did he believe that she despised him — on account of his tragedy — she who loved him with all her heart of hearts and only craved to help him to forget! There was no guessing. She knew it would be no use asking. Silence was better-silence, courtesy and a show of courage. But God, oh God, how wrong an honest man can be!
What really kept Elsa’s courage alive was her road companion’s silence. It was like that of a charged storage battery. No throb, no thrum, no sight or sound of power. But power was in him. One knew it. Only a fool wouldn’t know it. It was rooted deep in such humility as only the great can attain. It was included, she knew, within his will not to resist his own personal karma, caused in former lives by faults that he must purge in this life. The revenge of the past meant nothing to him. Humiliation and fatigue were nothing. There was no profit and loss in his calculation.
She remembered the first and all-important precept, taught that night of nights in the initiation chamber at Gombaria’s:
“In superconsciousness, toward which we evolve, all is, and all is free and unconditioned. So, therefore, should the motive and the argument, of profit or of loss, enter into this consciousness, for oneself or for another, by that much we shut the door to superconsciousness and we deny ourselves true vision. Thus we become lost again in the unprofitable wilderness of our illusion.”