We met again in the dining-room at a quarter to twelve, drank some coffee, and started as the clock struck midnight. We took a guide from the hotel to show the way and carry the wraps, and we drove in my hired car the first fourteen miles to Laxapana. There we left the car and walking up a glen with a river rushing down it like a Highland valley, we mounted by the rock steps and jungle paths towards Oosamalle at the foot of the final peak. It was a clear and moonless night with the sky one soft blaze of stars; and above us and below us in the zigzag paths were little bands of pilgrims, their lanterns flashing in and out amongst the trees, their voices chanting as they went.
“I have never known anything so lovely,” said Imogen.
She and Pamela Brayburn had given their warm cloaks to the guide. They were both dressed in shirts open at the throat, shorts, stockings gartered below the knees, and stout shoes. They had the look of a couple of schoolboys. Our guide carried the lantern just ahead of us, Imogen behind him and I at the tail. Here and there the steps cut in the solid rock were steep and disappeared into caverns; here and there were chains. The mountain-side was alive with lights and vocal with hymns. The hymns floated down to us airy and delicate as though they were sung by the spirits of the Peak, and rose up from the valley reverberating like the music of water. We left the trees beneath us. The Peak towered straight above us now, a huge blunt mass of rock, hiding from us half the starlit sky. We traversed a ledge with a chain for a hand-rail; a scramble up over broken rocks; at the end a rough ladder clamped to a cliff face, and we stepped over a low brick wall on to the flat summit of the mountain.
I never saw anything stranger or more memorable than the top of Adam’s Peak. To men with their blood thinned by the tropics, the air at that height was cold as an Arctic night; and on the flat, square surface, of a hundred and fifty feet, great bonfires flung their sparks and flames into the darkness. They blazed at the corners, in front of the wooden canopy which sheltered the sacred footprint, and here and there in no sort of order upon the platform. Above, the stars bright as diamonds crowded the skies; around us stretched the empty black of the night; and this little square, eight thousand feet above the sea, was one flickering crimson glare in which shifted and crossed and halted, as though engaged in some fantastic dance, a throng of coolies in rags, Mussulmen in snow-white robes, Buddhist monks in yellow gowns and three Europeans — ourselves. For there were no other Europeans but ourselves upon the Peak that night.
The two girls hurried towards one of these fires, Pamela taking her cloak from the guide as she hurried. The men about the fire made way for them. I held Imogen’s thick sable coat for her and as she thrust an arm into a sleeve, the red light played not only upon her face but upon a blue jewel gleaming darkly against her throat. I buttoned the coat close about her neck.
“Better keep warm,” I said.
“And hide the sapphire,” she added with a slow smile.
“Yes, I meant that too,” I said, and I turned to Pamela Brayburn. She was already muffled to the ears.
“We shan’t have long to wait,” I said, and I suddenly felt Imogen’s hand cling to my arm. I blamed myself for a fool. In my haste to hide the jewel at her throat I had really alarmed her, and no doubt to a girl fresh from the guarded ways of England, the throng of strange, dark people upon that lonely summit might well have been alarming.
“It’s all right,” I said.
This bonfire was towards the eastern corner of the platform and there the crowd was thickest. I drew Imogen and her cousin away. Along the southern parapet there were empty spaces, and we walked across to one of them. From this parapet the mountain dropped in a precipice; to our left a spur projected and that spur was gemmed with the lights of moving lanterns and articulate with hymns.
“You are not giddy?” I asked of the two girls. Pamela stood a foot or two behind, Imogen was at my side, her knees touching the low parapet.
“No,” she said.
But where we stood, we looked down a sheer wall. Our guide was with us. He stood beside us, so that we were all four looking down the mountain-side.
“That is the more difficult path,” he said. “Those who come that way acquire a greater merit.”
“Where do they come from?” I asked idly.
“From Ratnapura!” he answered, stretching out his arm. “It lies far away in the jungle.”
Ratnapura? I had heard the name, and as I was remembering where I had heard it, a great wave of crimson colour swept across the mountain-top and someone stumbled against Imogen. Stumbled so roughly that she was lifted off her feet. Fortunately, too, she uttered a cry, and as she pitched forward I flung my right arm across the front of her waist and held her. I set her again upon her feet. The man who had stumbled was on his knees on the ground behind us. But before I could lay a hand on him, he had mumbled some words and slipped away into the darkness. But I had caught the words. They asked for pardon; they talked of an accident. But they were spoken in the Burmese tongue.
I should not have followed the man if I could. I should have stayed with Imogen and her cousin in any case. But I could not have caught him even if I had pursued him. For at that moment a great clamour rang out from end to end of the rock and there was a rush towards the eastern corner. A faint and tender light was welling out of the east. A moment or two more and the sky was broken. Broad bars of cloud edged with gold stood out against a glowing crimson radiance. Prison bars above the mountains of Kandy. The whole effect was violent and lurid. Not a soul upon the Peak but turned his face towards them and so stood immobile and silent whilst the sun rose and the daylight came.
I looked at the rock surface on which we stood. There was not a fissure nor a ridge which could make a man stumble. Then I turned again and leaned over the southern wall. I heard Imogen shiver behind me, and I felt the clutch of her hand. But there was no one near to us now.
“There’s no danger,” I said.
And there was none. But the cliff plunged sheer for hundreds of feet to a sloping eave which overhung the ground below. Had Imogen fallen from that parapet she must have been dashed to pieces in the fall!
Behind me she gasped and uttered a cry. I had been holding her away so that she should not see. Even if she had now seen, I turned about and stood between her and the wall so that she should see no more. But she was not looking down the precipice. She was looking straight outwards to the west and her eyes were filled with wonder instead of fear.
I, too, gasped when I saw what Imogen saw — the miracle of the shadow. It was flung out across the white morning mists in the shape of a perfect cone. It was gigantic and lay across the world, its apex touching the distant clouds. It was transparent, for the mists thinned away underneath and green jungle and brown rock and the sparkle of the sea swam into view. There it rested whilst the sun rose behind our shoulders, a pyramid of gauze so exactly edged and pointed that it might have been carved out of stone. Then at a certain moment it began not so much to fade as to foreshorten. It came back on us as we watched it from the wall; and quicker with each second which passed. It was as though the Peak drew it in and consumed it impatiently. In the end it rushed like a shutter which a spring releases and was gone. Below us stretched rock and shining forest, and far away the sparkle of the sea.
Imogen caught Pamela with one hand and me with the other.
“I am glad I saw that,” she cried. “The shadow! Everyone has talked of it. But I couldn’t imagine it was anything so wonderful!”
“Nor I,” said Pamela.
The shadow had been lifted too from Imogen. The bonfires had died down and though the air was sharp the sunlight lit up the platform from end to end. The pilgrims, their pilgrimage over, were crowded about the ladder. We moved to the chain which guarded the sacred footprint, in the very centre of the flat summit.
“Well, I’ll say this for his nibs” — thus Pamela irreverently referred to Gautama or Siva or Adam— “he didn’t pinch his feet.”
Since the foot was five feet lo
ng and thirty inches broad, we could all agree with her.
“And I’ll say this for myself,” Pamela added. “If the whole of him matched his feet, he still couldn’t want his breakfast more than I do! My mother gave me two pieces of advice when I left home. ‘Darling Pamela,’ she said, ‘first, never go without your breakfast, for if you do your gastric juices will eat you like alligators; and secondly, if you find yourself with four kings in a little poker game on board a liner, throw your hand in for the dealer has four aces.’”
“I should like to meet your mother,” I said.
Pamela shook her head.
“You would not. For if mother heard that you had taken two weak, lonely girls up to the top of a mountain without so much as a sandwich in a newspaper, she’d drive you screaming from the house.”
I nodded my head two or three times.
“You’ll eat those harsh words before the morning’s out.”
“They’ll be something to eat, anyway,” said Pamela.
We laughed. Imogen seemed quite to have forgotten her moment of danger. Pamela Brayburn, it seemed to me, was forcing her humour in order to obliterate that moment and, judging from the steadiness of Imogen’s face, was successful.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
The enclosure was emptying fast, and we could hear, already far down the hill-side, the cries of the pilgrims returning to the valleys.
“In a second,” I answered. In spite of Pamela’s appetite we might as well be the last to go. But Pamela raised no objection. We were all, I think, determined that no other accident should imperil Imogen, and a little alarmed, too, by a sort of composite recollection of all the legends which attribute curses to jewels. However, dawdle as we might, we were still not the last to leave. The guide climbed down the ladder first, Imogen followed him, next came Pamela, and I last, taking very good care that no one should pass me. In the same order we made our traverse across the ledge and descended to the tree-line. Half an hour lower down the interminable steps were interrupted by a path and a glade with one or two enormous images of stone scattered about it. I never learned how they came to be there. It looked as if a thousand slaves of a bygone king when Rome was young, being bidden to carry these images to the mountain-top had got so bored with their task that they had thrown them down and preferred there and then to die. However, I recognised the place of these monstrosities in the long chain of purpose when I saw Imogen and Pamela spreading their cloaks on the ground in front of one of them. The slaves might not have known what final cause made them cease to do, and die, but I hoped that looking down from Paradise they now saw Imogen and Pamela leaning their backs restfully against a huge stone gentleman and understood the wise order of events and were content. Trees made a pleasant shade above our heads. Outside the ring of their foliage every pebble flashed like glass. Within our view and call stood a row of huts and along the path in front of them passed family after family of pilgrims, happy in the consciousness of the great merit which that day they had achieved.
“Breakfast,” said I rather proudly.
“Such as?” asked Pamela, turning up her nose.
I had selected the breakfast and the guide had carried it. I thought very well of it. Without a rejoinder I spread it out in front of them. It consisted of sardines, a loaf, chicken, pâté de foie gras, fruit, and a bottle of champagne. And when we had finished them, we, too, were conscious of merit. Pamela reclined on her elbow smoking a cigarette, and nodded her head at me.
“You may meet my mother after all. When I was a baby she always said to me: ‘Pâté de foie gras is more nourishing than Glaxo.’” Then she stretched herself.
“Think of all the other tourists!” she cried with an infinite compassion. “Poor people! I shall express my pity to them over and over again in no uncertain terms.”
“You will be popular,” said I.
“They’ll hate me,” Pamela returned, with a glow of satisfaction.
Imogen was lying stretched upon her back, her head resting upon her hands, her face upturned to the shading trees. She looked more like a slim schoolboy than ever.
“We might drive down to Kandy this afternoon and begin the good work,” she drawled.
I sat up and looked at her. She had tucked her sapphire well out of sight. I had an intuition that she was really anxious to get away from the neighbourhood, however carelessly she spoke. She had, after all, been within a hand’s breadth of a quite horrible death. Nothing could be more natural than that she should wish to put a wide distance between herself and the spot where an accident so nearly fatal had happened.
“I’ll drive you both down,” I said, and from under her half-closed eyelids her eyes shot me a glance of gratitude. “You have a maid with you?”
“Yes.”
“She can take your luggage by train.”
So it was arranged and we descended the rest of the steps and tramped down the glen to the car by the bridge across the tumbling stream. I had left a second bottle of champagne hidden amongst the cushions; and thus, more conscious of our high merit than ever, we reached Hatton by eleven and Kandy before the night fell.
Over dinner that night we debated plans. At least I debated and they decided. I suppose that if people in love can possibly make a mess of their love-making in the early days of their courtship, they generally do. I followed that rule.
“Couldn’t we keep together?”
That was good and asked with a modest eagerness. But I must spoil it all by adding:
“We must, of course, give a day or two to Kandy.”
“You can ‘ave Kandy,” said Pamela, adapting the unforgettable aphorism of the lamented moneylender almost before I had finished.
“We are going to Anuradhapura by car in the morning,” Imogen said in the same breath. “You see we’ve already spent some time in Kandy.”
Imogen had the nerve to say that.
“Ah, yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, I see.”
“We’ve got to have a look at that old brass palace and the big man’s bo-tree,” Pamela continued.
“Of course you have,” I agreed, as heartily as I could.
To tell the truth I was terribly hurt. The two girls had been looking up the guide-books whilst they changed for dinner. They had made their plan; they had come down prepared to declare it at the first moment and rather aggressively. And their purpose would have been plain to a blind man. They did not want to see any bo-tree. The brass palace could be a mass of iron junk so far as they were concerned. No, they wanted to be free of me. So they put quite definitely as many miles as possible between us. Very well! They certainly should not be prevented. I had no wish to be their parasite.
“I am sorry,” I said, rather proud of the indifference of my tone. “But we shall meet, no doubt, one day in London.”
There was a definite interval of silence. Pamela looked at Imogen and Imogen looked at Pamela. Pamela lifted her eyebrows. A question: “Shall I?” Ever so slightly Imogen shook her head. I was not going to distress myself. They had tried me out for a day and found me wanting. They were quite entitled to. There was no need for Pamela to ask of her friend whether they oughtn’t to be civil. Not the slightest, and Imogen was perfectly right to answer “No.” I had no wish to be let down easily by Pamela Brayburn. In the end it was Imogen who spoke.
“But, Martin, you’ll be coming to Anuradhapura. You can’t come to Ceylon and not see one of the Buried Cities, especially when I ask you to come!”
A little too late that final clause. Still, it was rather like her hand on my sleeve. But I shook it off. No cajolements for me!
“No doubt I shall roll along there some time,” I replied. “I have promised to put in a couple of days with a friend here.”
There was not a word of truth in what I said. I had no friend in Kandy, and if I had had one I should have broken every promise to him at a real nod from Imogen. I was aching to go on to Anuradhapura. But I did not get that real nod. I just got a conventional politeness. She
said:
“Very well, we’ll wait for you there. You’ll be two days here, you say.”
“Two or three,” I answered. “You’ll want three, I am sure.”
Now Imogen was offended, although, upon my word, I couldn’t see the slightest excuse for offence in my words or my manner. I was careful to be studiously polite. But none the less we passed a stiff and uncomfortable evening. They retired early, as indeed after this long day was to be expected. But I did not expect the outburst of indignation from Pamela which followed upon our formal “Good night.”
Imogen was half-way up the stairs, and Pamela just behind her. I was standing in the lounge, wondering whether after all Crowther wasn’t right, and to cease to exist as a separate entity wasn’t the final ideal one could aim at. Suddenly Pamela stopped. She turned, she came running down the stairs, her face in a flame. She ran straight up to me and stamped her foot.
“Can’t you see an inch before your nose?” she asked. “Can’t you guess what happened this morning?”
“What happened this morning?” I repeated, and as I stared at her blankly, she flung at me:
“I think you are the world’s perfect idiot.”
I was staggered. I could think of no rejoinder but one which Captain Crowther had used to me. I said:
“You do surprise me.”
And like Captain Crowther I really was surprised.
Chapter 10 Again the Shadow
I SULKED ABOUT Kandy for three days. I did every proper thing. I saw the sacred Tooth and I visited the Peradeniya Gardens and I drove along Lady Horton’s road under the arches of high bamboos. I admired the lake and the library and the opulence of the flowers and the fire-flies at night and the blue of the afternoons. At intervals of five minutes I said to myself with determination: “I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds. The only way to see things really is to be alone.” And at the end of the third day I could have wept.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 645