The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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L. Adams Beck >> The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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Her sympathy with nature was deep and wonderful but might it not
be that though the earth was eloquent to her the skies were
silent? I was but a beginner myself - I knew little indeed. Dare
I risk that little in a sweet companionship which would sink me
into the contentment of the life lived by the happily deluded
between the cradle and the grave and perhaps close to me for ever
that still sphere where my highest hope abides? I had much to
ponder, for how could I lose her out of my life - though I knew
not at all whether she who had so much to make her happiness
would give me a single thought when I was gone.
If all this seem the very uttermost of selfish vanity, forgive a
man who grasped in his hand a treasure so new, so wonderful that
he walked in fear and doubt lest it should slip away and leave
him in a world darkened for ever by the torment of the knowledge
that it might have been his and he had bartered it for the mess
of pottage that has bought so many birthrights since Jacob
bargained with his weary brother in the tents of Lahai-roi. I
thought I would come back later with my prize gained and throwing
it at her feet ask her wisdom in return, for whatever I might not
know I knew well she was wiser than I except in that one shining
of the light from Eleusis. I walked alone in the woods thinking
of these things and no answer satisfied me.
I did not see her alone until the day I left, for I was compelled
by the arrangements I was making to go down to Simla for a night.
And now the last morning had come with golden sun - shot mists
rolling upward to disclose the far white billows of the sea of
eternity, the mountains awaking to their enormous joys. The trees
were dripping glory to the steaming earth; it flowed like rivers
into their most secret recesses, moss and flower, fern and leaf
floated upon the waves of light revealing their inmost soul in
triumphant gladness. Far off across the valleys a cuckoo was
calling - the very voice of spring, and in the green world above
my head a bird sang, a feathered joy, so clear, so passionate
that I thought the great summer morning listened in silence to
his rapture ringing through the woods. I waited until the
Jubilate was ended and then went in to bid good-bye to my
friends.
Mrs. Ingmar bid me the kindest farewell and I left her serene in
the negation of all beauty, all hope save that of a world run on
the lines of a model municipality, disease a memory, sewerage,
light and air systems perfected, the charted brain sending its
costless messages to the outer parts of the habitable globe, and
at least a hundred years of life with a decent cremation at the
end of it assured to every eugenically born citizen. No more. But
I have long ceased to regret that others use their own eyes
whether clear or dim. Better the merest glimmer of light
perceived thus than the hearsay of the revelations of others. And
by the broken fragments of a bewildered hope a man shall
eventually reach the goal and rejoice in that dawn where the
morning stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy. It
must come, for it is already here.
Brynhild walked with me through the long glades in the fresh thin
air to the bridle road where my men and ponies waited, eager to
be off. We stood at last in the fringe of trees on a small height
which commanded the way; - a high uplifted path cut along the
shoulders of the hills and on the left the sheer drop of the
valleys. Perhaps seven or eight feet in width and dignified by
the name of the Great Hindustan and Tibet Road it ran winding far
away into Wonderland. Looking down into the valleys, so far
beneath that the solitudes seem to wall them in I thought of all
the strange caravans which have taken this way with tinkle of
bells and laughter now so long silenced, and as I looked I saw a
lost little monastery in a giant crevice, solitary as a planet on
the outermost ring of the system, and remembrance flashed into my
mind and I said;
"I have marching orders that have countermanded my own plans. I
am to journey to the Buddhist Monastery of Tashigong, and there
meet a friend who will tell me what is necessary that I may
travel to Yarkhand and beyond. It will be long before I see
Kashmir."
In those crystal clear eyes I saw a something new to me - a faint
smile, half pitying, half sad;
"Who told you, and where?"
"A girl in a strange place. A woman who has twice guided me -"
I broke off. Her smile perplexed me. I could not tell what to
say. She repeated in a soft undertone;
"Great Lady, be pitiful to the blind eyes and give them light."
And instantly I knew. 0 blind - blind! Was the unhappy King of
the story duller of heart than I? And shame possessed me. Here
was the chrysoberyl that all day hides its secret in deeps of
lucid green but when the night comes flames with its fiery
ecstasy of crimson to the moon, and I - I had been complacently
considering whether I might not blunt my own spiritual instinct
by companionship with her, while she had been my guide, as
infinitely beyond me in insight as she was in all things
beautiful. I could have kissed her feet in my deep repentance.
True it is that the gateway of the high places is reverence and
he who cannot bow his head shall receive no crown. I saw that my
long travel in search of knowledge would have been utterly vain
if I had not learnt that lesson there and then. In those moments
of silence I learnt it once and for ever.
She stood by me breathing the liquid morning air, her face turned
upon the eternal snows. I caught her hand in a recognition that
might have ended years of parting, and its warm youth vibrated in
mine, the foretaste of all understanding, all unions, of love
that asks nothing, that fears nothing, that has no petition to
make. She raised her eyes to mine and her tears were a rainbow of
hope. So we stood in silence that was more than any words, and
the golden moments went by. I knew her now for what she was, one
of whom it might have been written;
"I come from where night falls clearer
Than your morning sun can rise;
From an earth that to heaven draws nearer
Than your visions of Paradise,-
For the dreams that your dreamers dream
We behold them with open eyes."
With open eyes! Later I asked the nature of the strange bond that
had called her to my side.
"I do not understand that fully myself," she said - "That is part
of the knowledge we must wait for. But you have the eyes that
see, and that is a tie nothing can break. I had waited long in
the House of Beauty for you. I guided you there. But between you
and me there is also love."
I stretched an eager hand but she repelled it gently, drawing
back a little. "Not love of each other though we are friends and
in the future may be infinitely more. But - have you ever seen a
drawing of Blake's - a young man stretching his arms to a white
swan which flies from him on wings he cannot stay? That is the
story of both our lives. We long to be joined in this life, here
and now, to an unspeakable beauty and power whose true believers
we are because we have seen and known. There is no love so
binding as the same purpose. Perhaps that is the only true love.
And so we shall never be apart though we may never in this world
be together again in what is called companionship."
"We shall meet," I said confidently. She smiled and was silent.
"Do we follow a will-o'-the wisp in parting? Do we give up the
substance for the shadow? Shall I stay?"
She laughed joyously;
"We give a single rose for a rose-tree that bears seven times
seven. Daily I see more, and you are going where you will be
instructed. As you know my mother prefers for a time to have my
cousin with her to help her with the book she means to write. So
I shall have time to myself. What do you think I shall do?"
"Blow away on a great wind. Ride on the crests of tossing waves.
Catch a star to light the fireflies!"
She laughed like a bird's song.
"Wrong - wrong! I shall be a student. All I know as yet has come
to me by intuition, but there is Law as well as Love and I will
learn. I have drifted like a happy cloud before the wind. Now I
will learn to be the wind that blows the clouds."
I looked at her in astonishment. If a flower had desired the same
thing it could scarcely have seemed more incredible, for I had
thought her whole life and nature instinctive not intellective.
She smiled as one who has a beloved secret to keep.
"When you have gained what in this country they call The
Knowledge of Regeneration, come back and ask me what I have
learnt."
She would say no more of that and turned to another matter,
speaking with earnestness;
"Before you came here I had a message for you, and Stephen
Clifden will tell you the same thing when you meet. Believe it
for it is true. Remember always that the psychical is not the
mystical and that what we seek is not marvel but vision. These
two things are very far apart, so let the first with all its
dangers pass you by, for our way lies to the heights, and for us
there is only one danger - that of turning back and losing what
the whole world cannot give in exchange. I have never seen
Stephen Clifden but I know much of him. He is a safe guide - a
man who has had much and strange sorrow which has brought him joy
that cannot be told. He will take you to those who know the
things that you desire. I wish I might have gone too."
Something in the sweetness of her voice, its high passion, the
strong beauty of her presence woke a poignant longing in my
heart. I said;
"I cannot leave you. You are the only guide I can follow. Let us
search together - you always on before."
"Your way lies there," she pointed to the high mountains. "And
mine to the plains, and if we chose our own we should wander. But
we shall meet again in the way and time that will be best and
with knowledge so enlarged that what we have seen already will be
like an empty dream compared to daylight truth. If you knew what
waits for you you would not delay one moment."
She stood radiant beneath the deodars, a figure of Hope, pointing
steadily to the heights. I knew her words were true though as yet
I could not tell how. I knew that whereas we had seen the
Wonderful in beautiful though local forms there is a plane where
the Formless may be apprehended in clear dream and solemn
vision-the meeting of spirit with Spirit. What that revelation
would mean I could not guess - how should I? - but I knew the
illusion we call death and decay would wither before it. There is
a music above and beyond the Ninth Vibration though I must love
those words for ever for what their hidden meaning gave me.
I took her hand and held it. Strange - beyond all strangeness
that that story of an ancient sorrow should have made us what we
were to each other - should have opened to me the gates of that
Country where she wandered content. For the first time I had
realized in its fulness the loveliness of this crystal nature,
clear as flowing water to receive and transmit the light - itself
a prophecy and fulfilment of some higher race which will one day
inhabit our world when it has learnt the true values. She drew a
flower from her breast and gave it to me. It lies before me white
and living as I write these words.
I sprang down the road and mounted, giving the word to march. The
men shouted and strode on - our faces to the Shipki Pass and what
lay beyond.
We had parted.
Once, twice, I looked back, and standing in full sunlight, she
waved her hand.
We turned the angle of the rocks.
What I found - what she found is a story strange and beautiful
which I may tell one day to those who care to hear. That for me
there were pauses, hesitancies, dreads, on the way I am not
concerned to deny, for so it must always be with the roots of the
old beliefs of fear and ignorance buried in the soil of our
hearts and ready to throw out their poisonous fibres. But there
was never doubt. For myself I have long forgotten the meaning of
that word in anything that is of real value.
Do not let it be thought that the treasure is reserved for the
few or those of special gifts. And it is as free to the West as
to the East though I own it lies nearer to the surface in the
Orient where the spiritual genius of the people makes it possible
and the greater and more faithful teachers are found. It is not
without meaning that all the faiths of the world have dawned in
those sunrise skies. Yet it is within reach of all and asks only
recognition, for the universe has been the mine of its jewels-
"Median gold it holds, and silver from Atropatene, Ruby and
emerald from Hindustan, and Bactrian agate, Bright with beryl
and pearl, sardonyx and sapphire."-
-and more that cannot be uttered - the Lights and Perfections.
So for all seekers I pray this prayer - beautiful in its sonorous
Latin, but noble in all the tongues;
"Supplico tibi, Pater et Dux - I pray Thee, Guide of our vision,
that we may remember the nobleness with which Thou hast endowed
us, and that Thou wouldest be always on our right and on our left
in the motion of our wills, that we may be purged from the
contagion of the body and the affections of the brute and
overcome and rule them. And I pray also that Thou wouldest drive
away the blinding darkness from the eyes of our souls that we may
know well what is to be held for divine and what for mortal."
"The nobleness with which Thou hast endowed us-" this, and not
the cry of the miserable sinner whose very repentance is no
virtue but the consequence of failure and weakness is the strong
music to which we must march.
And the way is open to the mountains.
THE INTERPRETER A ROMANCE OF THE EAST
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 shoul- der. 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.
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