Ninth vibration and other stories — The Ninth Vibration Part 04
I
There are strange things in this story, but, so far as I understand them, I tell the truth.
If you measure the East with a Western foot-rule you will say, “Impossible.
” I should have said it myself.
Of myself I will say as little as I can, for this story is of Vanna Loring.
I am an incident only, though I did not know that at first.
My name is Stephen Clifden, and I was eight-and-thirty; plenty of money, sound in wind and limb.
I had been by way of being a writer before the war, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked up anything in the welter in France, it was that real work is the only salvation this mad world has to offer; so I meant to begin at the beginning, and learn my trade like a journeyman labourer.
I had come to the right place.
A very wonderful city is Peshawar--rather let us say, two cities--the compounds, the fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace as their strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaar humming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours that come up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the camel caravans loaded with merchandise from Afghanistan, Bokhara, and farther.
And it is because of this that Peshawar is the Key of India, and a city of Romance that stands at every corner, and cries aloud in the market--place.
For at Peshawar every able-bodied man sleeps with his revolver under his pillow, and the old Fort is always ready in case it should be necessary at brief and sharp notice to hurry the women and children into it, and possibly, to die in their defense.
So enlivening is the neighbourhood of the frontier tribes that haunt the famous Khyber Pass and the menacing hills where danger is always lurking.
But there was society here, and I was swept into it--there was chatter, and it galled me.
I was beginning to feel that I had missed my mark, and must go farther afield, perhaps up into Central Asia, when I met Vanna Loring.
If I say that her hair was soft and dark; that she had the deepest hazel eyes I have ever seen, and a sensitive, tender mouth; that she moved with a flowing grace like “a wave of the sea”--it sounds like the portrait of a beauty, and she was never that.
Also, incidentally, it gives none of her charm.
I never heard any one get any further than that she was “oddly attractive”--let us leave it at that.
She was certainly attractive to me.
She was the governess of little Winifred Meryon, whose father held the august position of General Commanding the Frontier Forces, and her mother the more commanding position of the reigning beauty of Northern India, generally speaking.
No one disputed that.
She was as pretty as a picture, and her charming photograph had graced as many illustrated papers as there were illustrated papers to grace.
But Vanna--I gleaned her story by bits when I came across her with the child in the gardens.
I was beginning to piece it together now.
Her love of the strange and beautiful she had inherited from a young Italian mother, daughter of a political refugee; her childhood had been spent in a remote little village in the West of England; half reluctantly she told me how she had brought herself up after her mother’s death and her father’s second marriage.
Little was said of that, but I gathered that it had been a grief to her, a factor in her flight to the East.
We were walking in the Circular Road then with Winifred in front leading her Pekingese by its blue ribbon, and we had it almost to ourselves except for a few natives passing slow and dignified on their own occasions, for fashionable Peshawar was finishing its last rubber of bridge, before separating to dress for dinner, and had no time to spare for trivialities and sunsets.
“So when I came to three-and-twenty,” she said slowly, “I felt I must break away from our narrow life.
I had a call to India stronger than anything on earth.
You would not understand but that was so, and I had spent every spare moment in teaching myself India--its history, legends, religions, everything!
And I was not wanted at home, and I had grown afraid.
” I could divine years of patience and repression under this plain tale, but also a power that would be dynamic when the authentic voice called.
That was her charm--gentleness in strength--a sweet serenity.
“What were you afraid of?
” “Of growing old and missing what was waiting for me out here.
But I could not get away like other people.
No money, you see.
So I thought I would come out here and teach.
Dare I?
Would they let me?
I knew I was fighting life and chances and risks if I did it; but it was death if I stayed there.
And then--Do you really care to hear?
” “Of course.
Tell me how you broke your chain.
” “I spare you the family quarrels.
I can never go back.
But I was spurred--spurred to take some wild leap; and I took it.
Six years ago I came out.
First I went to a doctor and his wife at Cawnpore.
They had a wonderful knowledge of the Indian peoples, and there I learned Hindustani and much else.
Then he died.
But an aunt had left me two hundred pounds, and I could wait a little and choose; and so I came here.
” It interested me.
The courage that pale elastic type of woman has!
“Have you ever regretted it?
Would they take you back if you failed?
” “Never, to both questions,” she said, smiling.
“Life is glorious.
I’ve drunk of a cup I never thought to taste; and if I died tomorrow I should know I had done right.
I rejoice in every moment I live--even when Winifred and I are wrestling with arithmetic.
” “I shouldn’t have thought life was very easy with Lady Meryon.
” “Oh, she is kind enough in an indifferent sort of way.
I am not the persecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all.
But that is all on the surface and does not matter.
It is India I care for-the people, the sun, the infinite beauty.
It was coming home.
You would laugh if I told you I knew Peshawar long before I came here.
Knew it--walked here, lived.
Before there were English in India at all.
” She broke off.
“You won’t understand.
” “Oh, I have had that feeling, too,” I said patronizingly.
“If one has read very much about a place-” “That was not quite what I meant.
Never mind.
The people, the place--that is the real thing to me.
All this is the dream.
” The sweep of her hand took in not only Winifred and myself, but the general’s stately residence, which to blaspheme in Peshawar is rank infidelity.
“By George, I would give thousands to feel that!
I can’t get out of Europe here.
I want to write, Miss Loring,” I found myself saying.
“I’d done a bit, and then the war came and blew my life to pieces.
Now I want to get inside the skin of the East, and I can’t do it.
I see it from outside, with a pane of glass between.
No life in it.
If you feel as you say, for God’s sake be my interpreter!
” I really meant what I said.
I knew she was a harp that any breeze would sweep into music.
I divined that temperament in her and proposed to use it for my own ends.
She had and I had not, the power to be a part of all she saw, to feel kindred blood running in her own veins.
To the average European the native life of India is scarcely interesting, so far is it removed from all comprehension.
To me it was interesting, but I could not tell why.
I stood outside and had not the fairy gold to pay for my entrance.
Here at all events she could buy her way where I could not.
Without cruelty, which honestly was not my besetting sin--especially where women were concerned, the egoist in me felt I would use her, would extract the last drop of the enchantment of her knowledge before I went on my way.
What more natural than that Vanna or any other woman should minister to my thirst for information?
Men are like that.
I pretend to be no better than the rest.
She pleased my fastidiousness--that fastidiousness which is the only austerity in men not otherwise austere.
“Interpret?
” she said, looking at me with clear hazel eyes; “how could I?
You were in the native city yesterday.
What did you miss?
” “Everything!
I saw masses of colour, light, movement.
Brilliantly picturesque people.
Children like Asiatic angels.
Magnificently scowling ruffians in sheepskin coats.
In fact, a movie staged for my benefit.
I
was afraid they would ring down the curtain before I had had enough.
It had no meaning.
When I got back to my diggings I tried to put down what I had just seen, and I swear there’s more inspiration in the guide-book.
” “Did you go alone?
” “Yes, I certainly would not go sight-seeing with the Meryon crowd.
Tell me what you felt when you saw it first.
” “I went with Sir John’s uncle.
He was a great traveler.
The colour struck me dumb.
It flames--it sings.
Think of the grey pinched life in the West!
I saw a grave dark potter turning his wheel, while his little girl stood by, glad at our pleasure, her head veiled like a miniature woman, tiny baggy trousers, and a silver nose-stud, like a star, in one delicate nostril.
In her thin arms she held a heavy baby in a gilt cap, like a monkey.
And the wheel turned and whirled until it seemed to be spinning dreams, thick as motes in the sun.
The clay rose in smooth spirals under his hand, and the wheel sang, ‘Shall the vessel reprove him who made one to honour and one to dishonour?
’ And I saw the potter thumping his wet clay, and the clay, plastic as dream-stuff, shaped swift as light, and the three Fates stood at his shoulder.
Dreams, dreams, and all in the spinning of the wheel, and the rich shadows of the old broken courtyard where he sat.
And the wheel stopped and the thread broke, and the little new shapes he had made stood all about him, and he was only a potter in Peshawar.
” Her voice was like a song.
She had utterly forgotten my existence.
I
did not dislike it at the moment, for I wanted to hear more, and the impersonal is the rarest gift a woman can give a man.
“Did you buy anything?
” “He gave me a gift--a flawed jar of turquoise blue, faint turquoise green round the lip.
He saw I understood.
And then I bought a little gold cap and a wooden box of jade-green Kabul grapes.
About a rupee, all told.
But it was Eastern merchandise, and I was trading from Balsora and Baghdad, and Eleazar’s camels were swaying down from Damascus along the Khyber Pass, and coming in at the great Darwazah, and friends’ eyes met me everywhere.
I am profoundly happy here.
” The sinking sun lit an almost ecstatic face.
I envied her more deeply than I had ever envied any one.
She had the secret of immortal youth, and I felt old as I looked at her.
One might be eighty and share that passionate impersonal joy.
Age could not wither nor custom stale the infinite variety of her world’s joys.
She had a child’s dewy youth in her eyes.
There are great sunsets at Peshawar, flaming over the plain, dying in melancholy splendour over the dangerous hills.
They too were hers, in a sense in which they could never be mine.
But what a companion!
To my astonishment a wild thought of marriage flashed across me, to be instantly rebuffed with a shrug.
Marriage--that one’s wife might talk poetry to one about the East!
Absurd!
But what was it these people felt and I could not feel?
Almost, shut up in the prison of self, I knew what Vanna had felt in her village--a maddening desire to escape, to be a part of the loveliness that lay beyond me.
So might a man love a king’s daughter in her hopeless heights.
“It may be very beautiful on the surface,” I said morosely; “but there’s a lot of misery below--hateful, they tell me.
” “Of course.
We shall get to work one day.
But look at the sunset.
It opens like a mysterious flower.
I must take Winifred home now.
” “One moment,” I pleaded; “I can only see it through your eyes.
I feel it while you speak, and then the good minute goes.
” She laughed.
“And so must I. Come, Winifred.
Look, there’s an owl; not like the owls in the summer dark in England-- “Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping, Wavy in the dark, lit by one low star.
” Suddenly she turned again and looked at me half wistfully.
“It is good to talk to you.
You want to know.
You are so near it all.
I
wish I could help you; I am so exquisitely happy myself.
” My writing was at a standstill.
It seemed the groping of a blind man in a radiant world.
Once perhaps I had felt that life was good in itself--when the guns came thundering toward the Vimy Ridge in a mad gallop of horses, and men shouting and swearing and frantically urging them on.
Then, riding for more than life, I had tasted life for an instant.
Not before or since.
But this woman had the secret.
Lady Meryon, with her escort of girls and subalterns, came daintily past the hotel compound, and startled me from my brooding with her pretty silvery voice.
“Dreaming, Mr. Clifden?
It isn’t at all wholesome to dream in the East.
Come and dine with us tomorrow.
A tiny dance afterwards, you know; or bridge for those who like it.
” I had not the faintest notion whether governesses dined with the family or came in afterward with the coffee; but it was a sporting chance, and I took it.
Then Sir John came up and joined us.
“You can’t well dance tomorrow, Kitty,” he said to his wife.
“There’s been an outpost affair in the Swat Hills, and young Fitzgerald has been shot.
Come to dinner of course, Clifden.
Glad to see you.
But no dancing, I think.
” Kitty Meryon’s mouth drooped like a pouting child’s. Was it for the lost dance, or the lost soldier lying out on the hills in the dying sunset.
Who could tell?
In either case it was pretty enough for the illustrated papers.
“How sad!
Such a dear boy.
We shall miss him at tennis.
” Then brightly;
“Well, we’ll have to put the dance off for a week, but come tomorrow anyhow.
” II
Next evening I went into Lady Meryon’s flower-scented drawing-room.
The electric fans were fluttering and the evening air was cool.
Five or six pretty girls and as many men made up the party--Kitty Meryon the prettiest of them all, fashionably undressed in faint pink and crystal, with a charming smile in readiness, all her gay little flags flying in the rich man’s honour.
I am no vainer than other men, but I saw that.
Whatever her charm might be it was none for me.
What could I say to interest her who lived in her foolish little world as one shut in a bright bubble?
And she had said the wrong word about young Fitzgerald--I wanted Vanna, with her deep seeing eyes, to say the right one and adjust those cruel values.
Governesses dine, it appeared, only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments.
Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her silver ripple of talk.
It was when the party had settled down to bridge and I was standing out, that I ventured to go up to her as she sat knitting by a window--not unwatched by the quick flash of Lady Meryon’s eyes as I did it.
“I think you hypnotize me, Miss Loring.
When I hear anything I straightway want to know what you will say.
Have you heard of Fitzgerald’s death?
” “That is why we are not dancing tonight.
Tomorrow the cable will reach his home in England.
He was an only child, and they are the great people of the village where we are the little people.
I knew his mother as one knows a great lady who is kind to all the village folk.
It may kill her.
It is travelling tonight like a bullet to her heart, and she does not know.
” “His father?
” “A brave man--a soldier himself.
He will know it was a good death and that Harry would not fail.
He did not at Ypres.
He would not here.
But all joy and hope will be dead in that house tomorrow.
” “And what do you think?
” “I am not sorry for Harry, if you mean that.
He knew--we all know--that he was on guard here holding the outposts against blood and treachery and terrible things--playing the Great Game.
One never loses at that game if one plays it straight, and I am sure that at the last it was joy he felt and not fear.
He has not lost.
Did you notice in the church a niche before every soldier’s seat to hold his loaded gun?
And the tablets on the walls; “Killed at Kabul River, aged 22. ”--“Killed on outpost duty.
”--“Murdered by an Afghan fanatic.
” This will be one memory more.
Why be sorry.
” Presently:-- “I am going up to the hills tomorrow, to the Malakhand Fort, with Mrs. Delany, Lady Meryon’s aunt, and we shall see the wonderful Tahkt-i-Bahi Monastery on the way.
You should do that run before you go.
The fort is the last but one on the way to Chitral, and beyond that the road is so beset that only soldiers may go farther, and indeed the regiments escort each other up and down.
But it is an early start, for we must be back in Peshawar at six for fear of raiding natives.
” “I know; they hauled me up in the dusk the other day, and told me I should be swept off to the hills if I fooled about after dusk.
But I say--is it safe for you to go?
You ought to have a man.
Could I go too?
” I thought she did not look enthusiastic at the proposal.
“Ask.
You know I settle nothing.
I go where I am sent.
” She said it with the happiest smile.
I knew they could send her nowhere that she would not find joy.
I thought her mere presence must send the vibrations of happiness through the household.
Yet again--why?
For where there is no receiver the current speaks in vain; and for an instant I seemed to see the air full of messages--of speech striving to utter its passionate truths to deaf ears stopped for ever against the breaking waves of sound.
But Vanna heard.
She left the room; and when the bridge was over, I made my request.
Lady Meryon shrugged her shoulders and declared it would be a terribly dull run--the scenery nothing, “and only” (she whispered) “Aunt Selina and poor Miss Loring?
” Of course I saw at once that she did not like it; but Sir John was all for my going, and that saved the situation.
I certainly could have dispensed with Aunt Selina when the automobile drew up in the golden river of the sunrise at the hotel.
There were only the driver, a personal servant, and the two ladies; Mrs. Delany, comely, pleasant, talkative, and Vanna-- Her face in its dark motoring veil, fine and delicate as a young moon in a cloud drift--the sensitive sweet mouth that had quivered a little when she spoke of Fitzgerald--the pure glance that radiated such kindness to all the world.
She sat there with the Key of Dreams pressed against her slight bosom--her eyes dreaming above it.
Already the strange airs of her unknown world were breathing about me, and as yet I knew not the things that belonged unto my peace.
We glided along the straight military road from Peshawar to Nowshera, the gold-bright sun dazzling in its whiteness--a strange drive through the flat, burned country, with the ominous Kabul River flowing through it.
Military preparations everywhere, and the hills looking watchfully down--alive, as it were, with keen, hostile eyes.
War was at present about us as behind the lines in France; and when we crossed the Kabul River on a bridge of boats, and I saw its haunted waters, I began to feel the atmosphere of the place closing down upon me.
It had a sinister beauty; it breathed suspense; and I wished, as I was sure Vanna did, for silence that was not at our command.
For Mrs. Delany felt nothing of it.
A bright shallow ripple of talk was her contribution to the joys of the day; though it was, fortunately, enough for her happiness if we listened and agreed.
I knew Vanna listened only in show.
Her intent eyes were fixed on the Tahkt-i-Bahi hills after we had swept out of Nowshera; and when the car drew up at the rough track, she had a strange look of suspense and pallor.
I
remember I wondered at the time if she were nervous in the wild open country.
“Now pray don’t be shocked,” said Mrs. Delany comfortably; “but you two young people may go up to the monastery, and I shall stay here.
I am dreadfully ashamed of myself, but the sight of that hill is enough for me.
Don’t hurry.
I may have a little doze, and be all the better company when you get back.
No, don’t try to persuade me, Mr. Clifden.
It isn’t the part of a friend.
” I cannot say I was sorry, though I had a moment of panic when Vanna offered to stay with her--very much, too, as if she really meant it.
So we set out perforce, Vanna leading steadily, as if she knew the way.
She never looked up, and her wish for silence was so evident, that I followed, lending my hand mutely when the difficulties obliged it, she accepting absently, and as if her thoughts were far away.
Suddenly she quickened her pace.
We had climbed about nine hundred feet, and now the narrow track twisted through the rocks--a track that looked as age-worn as no doubt it was.
We threaded it, and struggled over the ridge, and looked down victorious on the other side.
There she stopped.
A very wonderful sight, of which I had never seen the like, lay below us.
Rock and waste and towering crags, and the mighty ruin of the monastery set in the fangs of the mountain like a robber baron’s castle, looking far away to the blue mountains of the Debatable Land--the land of mystery and danger.
It stood there--the great ruin of a vast habitation of men.
Building after building, mysterious and broken, corridors, halls, refectories, cells; the dwelling of a faith so alien that I could not reconstruct the life that gave it being.
And all sinking gently into ruin that in a century more would confound it with the roots of the mountains.
Grey and wonderful, it clung to the heights and looked with eyeless windows at the past.
Somehow I found it infinitely pathetic; the very faith it expressed is dead in India, and none left so poor to do it reverence.
But Vanna knew her way.
Unerringly she led me from point to point, and she was visibly at home in the intricacies.
Such knowledge in a young woman bewildered me.
Could she have studied the plans in the Museum?
How else should she know where the abbot lived, or where the refractory brothers were punished?
Once I missed her, while I stooped to examine some scroll-work, and following, found her before one of the few images of the Buddha that the rapacious Museum had spared--a singularly beautiful bas-relief, the hand raised to enforce the truth the calm lips were speaking, the drapery falling in stately folds to the bare feet.
As I came up, she had an air as if she had just ceased from movement, and I had a distinct feeling that she had knelt before it--I saw the look of worship!
The thing troubled me like a dream, haunting, impossible, but real.
“How beautiful!
” I said in spite of myself, as she pointed to the image.
“In this utter solitude it seems the very spirit of the place.
” “He was.
He is,” said Vanna.
