The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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L. Adams Beck >> The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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"But I'll give it to you. Marry me, and we will travel till
you're tired of it."
"Yes, and look on as at a play - sitting in the stalls, and
applauding when we are pleased. No, I'm going to work there."
"For God's sake, how? Let me come too."
"You can't. You're not in it. I am going to attach myself to the
medical mission at Lahore and learn nursing, and then I shall go
to my own people."
"Missionaries? You've nothing in common with them?"
"Nothing. But they teach what I want. Mr. Clifden, I shall not
come this way again. If I remember - I'll write to you, and tell
you what the real world is like."
She smiled, the absorbed little smile I knew and feared. I saw
pleading was useless then. I would wait, and never lose sight of
her and of hope.
"Vanna, before you go, give me your gift of sight. Interpret for
me. Stay with me a little and make me see."
"What do you mean exactly?" she asked in her gentlest voice, half
turning to me.
"Make one journey with me, as my sister, if you will do no more.
Though I warn you that all the time I shall be trying to win my
wife. But come with me once, and after that - if you will go, you
must. Say yes."
Madness! But she hesitated - a hesitation full of hope, and
looked at me with intent eyes.
"I will tell you frankly," she said at last, "that I know my
knowledge of the East and kinship with it goes far beyond mere
words. In my case the doors were not shut. I believe - I know
that long ago this was my life. If I spoke for ever I could not
make you understand how much I know and why. So I shall quite
certainly go back to it. Nothing - you least of all, can hold me.
But you are my friend - that is a true bond. And if you would
wish me to give you two months before I go, I might do that if it
would in any way help you. As your friend only - you clearly
understand. You would not reproach me afterwards when I left you,
as I should most certainly do?"
"I swear I would not. I swear I would protect you even from
myself. I want you for ever, but if you will only give me two
months - come! But have you thought that people will talk. It may
injure you.
I'm not worth that, God knows. And you will take nothing I could
give you in return."
She spoke very quietly.
"That does not trouble me. - It would only trouble me if you
asked what I have not to give. For two months I would travel with
you as a friend, if, like a friend, I paid my own expenses-"
I would have interrupted, but she brushed that firmly aside. "No,
I must do as I say, and I am quite able to or I should not
suggest it. I would go on no other terms. It would be hard if
because we are man and woman I might not do one act of friendship
for you before we part. For though I refuse your offer utterly, I
appreciate it, and I would make what little return I can. It
would be a sharp pain to me to distress you."
Her gentleness and calm, the magnitude of the offer she was
making stunned me so that I could scarcely speak. There was such
an extraordinary simplicity and generosity in her manner that it
appeared to me more enthralling and bewildering than the most
finished coquetry I had ever known. She gave me opportunities
that the most ardent lover could in his wildest dream desire, and
with the remoteness in her eyes and her still voice she deprived
them of all hope. It kindled in me a flame that made my throat
dry when I tried to speak.
"Vanna, is it a promise? You mean it?"
"If you wish it, yes. But I warn you I think it will not make it
easier for you when the time is over.
"Why two months?"
"Partly because I can afford no more. No! I know what you would
say. Partly because I can spare no more time. But I will give you
that, if you wish, though, honestly, I had very much rather not.
I think it unwise for you. I would protect you if I could -
indeed I would!"
It was my turn to hesitate now. Every moment revealed to me some
new sweetness, some charm that I saw would weave itself into the
very fibre of my I had been! Was I not now a fool? Would it not
being if the opportunity were given. Oh, fool that be better to
let her go before she had become a part of my daily experience? I
began to fear I was courting my own shipwreck. She read my
thoughts clearly.
"Indeed you would be wise to decide against it. Release me from
my promise. It was a mad scheme."
The superiority - or so I felt it - of her gentleness maddened
me. It might have been I who needed protection, who was running
the risk of misjudgment - not she, a lonely woman. She looked at
me, waiting - trying to be wise for me, never for one instant
thinking of herself. I felt utterly exiled from the real purpose
of her life.
"I will never release you. I claim your promise. I hold to it."
"Very well then - I will write, and tell you where I shall be.
Good-bye, and if you change your mind, as I hope you will, tell
me."
She extended her hand cool as a snowflake, and was gone, walking
swiftly up the road. Ah, let a man beware when his wishes
fulfilled, rain down upon him!
To what had I committed myself? She knew her strength and had no
fears. I could scarcely realize that she had liking enough for me
to make the offer. That it meant no shade more than she had said
I knew well. She was safe, but what was to be the result for me?
I knew nothing - she was a beloved mystery.
"Strange she is and secret, Strange her eyes; her cheeks are
cold as cold sea-shells."
Yet I would risk it, for I knew there was no hope if I let her go
now, and if I saw her again, some glimmer might fall upon my
dark.
Next day this reached me:- Dear Mr. Clifden,-
I am going to some Indian friends for a time. On the 15th of June
I shall he at Srinagar in Kashmir. A friend has allowed me to
take her little houseboat, the "Kedarnath." If you like this plan
we will share the cost for two months. I warn you it is not
luxurious, but I think you will like it. I shall do this whether
you come or no, for I want a quiet time before I take up my
nursing in Lahore. In thinking of all this will you remember that
I am not a girl but a woman. I shall he twenty-nine my next
birthday. Sincerely yours, VANNA LORING.
P.S. But I still think you would be wiser not to come. I hope to
hear you will not.
I replied only this :- Dear Miss Loring,- I think I understand
the position fully. I will be there. I thank you with all my
heart. Gratefully yours, STEPHEN CLIFDEN.
IV
Three days later I met Lady Meryon, and was swept in to tea. Her
manner was distinctly more cordial as she mentioned casually
that Vanna had left - she understood to take up missionary work -
"which is odd," she added with a woman's acrimony, "for she had
no more in common with missionaries than I have, and that is
saying a good deal. Of course she speaks Hindustani perfectly,
and could be useful, but I haven't grasped the point of it yet" I
saw she counted on my knowing nothing of the real reason of
Vanna's going and left it, of course, at that. The talk drifted
away under my guidance. Vanna evidently puzzled her. She half
feared, and wholly misunderstood her.
No message came to me, as time went by, and for the time she had
vanished completely, but I held fast to her promise and lived on
that only.
I take up my life where it ceased to be a mere suspense and
became life once more.
On the 15th of June, I found myself riding into Srinagar in
Kashmir, through the pure tremulous green of the mighty poplars
that hedge the road into the city. The beauty of the country had
half stunned me when I entered the mountain barrier of Baramula
and saw the snowy peaks that guard the Happy Valley, with the
Jhelum flowing through its tranquil loveliness. The flush of the
almond blossom was over, but the iris, like a blue sea of peace
had overflowed the world - the azure meadows smiled back at the
radiant sky. Such blossom! the blue shading into clear violet,
like a shoaling sea. The earth, like a cup held in the hand of a
god, brimmed with the draught of youth and summer and - love? But
no, for me the very word was sinister. Vanna's face, immutably
calm, confronted it.
That night I slept in a boat at Sopor, and I remember that,
waking at midnight, I looked out and saw a mountain with a
gloriole of hazy silver about it, misty and faint as a cobweb
threaded with dew. The river, there spreading into a lake, was
dark under it, flowing in a deep smooth blackness of shadow, and
everything awaited - what? And even while I looked, the moon
floated serenely above the peak, and all was bathed in pure
light, the water rippling and shining in broken silver and pearl.
So had Vanna floated into my sky, luminous, sweet, remote. I did
not question my heart any more. I knew I loved her.
Two days later I rode into Srinagar, and could scarcely see the
wild beauty of that strange Venice. of the East, my heart was so
beating in my eyes. I rode past the lovely wooden bridges where
the balconied houses totter to each other across the canals in
dim splendour of carving and age; where the many-coloured native
life crowds down to the river steps and cleanses its
flower-bright robes, its gold-bright brass vessels in the shining
stream, and my heart said only - Vanna, Vanna!
One day, one thought, of her absence had taught me what she was
to me, and if humility and patient endeavor could raise me to her
feet, I was resolved that I would spend my life in labor and
think it well spent.
My servant dismounted and led his horse, asking from every one
where the "Kedarnath" could be found, and eager black eyes
sparkled and two little bronze images detached themselves from
the crowd of boys, and ran, fleet as fauns, before us.
Above the last bridge the Jhelum broadens out into a stately
river, controlled at one side by the banked walk known as the
Bund, with the Club House upon it and the line of houseboats
beneath. Here the visitors flutter up and down and exchange the
gossip, the bridge appointments, the little dinners that sit so
incongruously on the pure Orient that is Kashmir.
She would not be here. My heart told me that, and sure enough the
boys were leading across the bridge and by a quiet shady way to
one of the many backwaters that the great river makes in the
enchanting city. There is one waterway stretching on afar to the
Dal Lake. It looks like a river - it is the very haunt of peace.
Under those mighty chenar, or plane trees, that are the glory of
Kashmir, clouding the water with deep green shadows, the sun can
scarcely pierce, save in a dipping sparkle here and there to
intensify the green gloom. The murmur of the city, the chatter of
the club, are hundreds of miles away. We rode downward under the
towering trees, and dismounting, saw a little houseboat tethered
to the bank. It was not of the richer sort that haunts the Bund,
where the native servants follow in a separate boat, and even the
electric light is turned on as part of the luxury. This was a
long low craft, very broad, thatched like a country cottage
afloat. In the forepart lived the native owner, and his family,
their crew, our cooks and servants; for they played many parts in
our service. And in the afterpart, room for a life, a dream, the
joy or curse & many days to be.
But then, I saw only one thing - Vanna sat under the trees,
reading, or looking at the cool dim watery vista, with a single
boat, loaded to the river's edge with melons and scarlet
tomatoes, punting lazily down to Srinagar in the sleepy
afternoon.
She was dressed in white with a shady hat, and her delicate dark
face seemed to glow in the shadow like the heart of a pale rose.
For the first time I knew she was beautiful. Beauty shone in her
like the flame in an alabaster lamp, serene, diffused in the very
air about her, so that to me she moved in a mild radiance. She
rose to meet me with both hands outstretched - the kindest, most
cordial welcome. Not an eyelash flickered, not a trace of self-
consciousness. If I could have seen her flush or tremble - but no
- her eyes were clear and calm as a forest pool. So I remembered
her. So I saw her once more.
I tried, with a hopeless pretence, to follow her example and hide
what I felt, where she had nothing to hide.
"What a place you have found. Why, it's like the deep heart of a
wood!"
"Yes, I saw it once when I was here with the Meryons. But we lay
at the Bund then - just under the Club. This is better. Did you
like the ride up?"
I threw myself on the grass beside her with a feeling of perfect
rest.
"It was like a new heaven and a new earth. What a country!"
The very spirit of Quiet seemed to be drowsing in those branches
towering up into the blue, dipping their green fingers into the
crystal of the water. What a heaven!
"Now you shall have your tea and then I will show you your
rooms," she said, smiling at my delight. "We shall stay here a
few days more that you may see Srinagar, and then they tow us up
into the Dal Lake opposite the Gardens of the Mogul Emperors. And
if you think this beautiful what will you say then?"
I shut my eyes and see still that first meal of my new life. The
little table that Pir Baksh, breathing full East in his
jade-green turban, set before her, with its cloth worked in a
pattern of the chenar leaves that are the symbol of Kashmir; the
brown cakes made by Ahmad Khan in a miraculous kitchen of his own
invention - a few holes burrowed in the river bank, a smoldering
fire beneath them, and a width of canvas for a roof. But it
served, and no more need be asked of luxury. And Vanna, making it
mysteriously the first home I ever had known, the central joy of
it all. Oh, wonderful days of life that breathe the spirit of
immortality and pass so quickly - surely they must be treasured
somewhere in Eternity that we may look upon their beloved light
once more.
"Now you must see the boat. The Kedarnath is not a Dreadnought,
but she is broad and very comfortable. And we have many
chaperons. They all live in the bows, and exist simply to
protect the Sahiblog from all discomfort, and very well they do
it. That is Ahmad Khan by the kitchen. He cooks for us. Salama
owns the boat, and steers her and engages the men to tow us when
we move. And when I arrived he aired a little English and said
piously; The Lord help me to give you no trouble, and the Lord
help you!" That is his wife sitting on the bank. She speaks
little but Kashmiri, but I know a little of that. Look at the
hundred rat-tail plaits of her hair, lengthened with wool, and
see her silver and turquoise jewelry. She wears much of the
family fortune and is quite a walking bank. Salama, Ahmad Khan
and I talk by the hour. Ahmad comes from Fyzabad. Look at
Salama's boy - I call him the Orange Imp. Did you ever see
anything so beautiful?"
I looked in sheer delight, and grasped my camera. Sitting near us
was a lovely little Kashmiri boy of about eight, in a faded
orange coat, and a turban exactly like his father's. His curled
black eyelashes were so long that they made a soft gloom over the
upper part of the little golden face. The perfect bow of the
scarlet lips, the long eyes, the shy smile, suggested an Indian
Eros. He sat dipping his feet in the water with little
pigeon-like cries of content.
"He paddles at the bow of our little shikara boat with a paddle
exactly like a water-lily leaf. Do you like our friends? I love
them already, and know all their affairs. And now for the boat."
"One moment - If we are friends on a great adventure, I must call
you Vanna, and you me Stephen."
"Yes, I suppose that is part of it," she said, smiling. "Come,
Stephen."
It was like music, but a cold music that chilled me. She should
have hesitated, should have flushed - it was I who trembled. So I
followed her across the broad plank into our new home.
"This is our sitting-room. Look, how charming!"
It was better than charming; it was home indeed. Windows at each
side opening down almost to the water, a little table for meals
that lived mostly on the bank, with a grey pot of iris in the
middle. Another table for writing, photography, and all the
little pursuits of travel. A bookshelf with some well - worn
friends. Two long cushioned chairs. Two for meals, and a Bokhara
rug, soft and pleasant for the feet. The interior was plain
unpainted wood, but set so that the grain showed like satin in
the rippling lights from the water.
That is the inventory of the place I have loved best in the
world, but what eloquence can describe what it gave me, what its
memory gives me to this day? And I have no eloquence - what I
felt leaves me dumb.
"It is perfect," was all I said as she waved her hand proudly.
"It is home."
"And if you had come alone to Kashmir you would have had a great
rich boat with electric light and a butler. You would never have
seen the people except at meal - times. I think you will like
this better. Well, this is your tiny bedroom, and your bathroom,
and beyond the sitting - room are mine. Do you like it all?"
But I could say no more. The charm of her own personality had
touched everything and left its fragrance like a flower - breath
in the air. I was beggared of thanks, but my whole soul was
gratitude. We dined on the bank that evening, the lamp burning
steadily in the still air and throwing broken reflections in the
water, while the moon looked in upon them through the leaves. I
felt extraordinarily young and happy.
The quiet of her voice was soft as the little lap of water
against the bows of the boat, and Kahdra, the Orange Imp, was
singing a little wordless song to himself as he washed the plates
beside us. It was a simple meal, and Vanna, abstemious as a
hermit never ate anything but rice and fruit, but I could
remember no meal in all my days of luxury where I had eaten with
such zest.
"It looks very grand to have so many to wait upon us, doesn't it?
But this is one of the cheapest countries in the world though the
old timers mourn over present expenses. You will laugh when I
show you your share of the cost."
"The wealth of the world could not buy this," I said, and was
silent.
"But you must listen to my plans. We must do a little camping the
last three weeks before we part. Up in the mountains. Are they
not marvellous? They stand like a rampart round us, but not cold
and terrible, but "Like as the hills stand round about Jerusalem"
- they are guardian presences. And running up into them, high
-very high, are the valleys and hills where we shall camp.
Tomorrow we shall row through Srinagar, by the old Maharaja's
palace."
V
And so began a life of sheer enchantment. We knew no one. The
visitors in Kashmir change nearly every season, and no one
cared-no one asked anything of us, and as for our shipmates, a
willing affectionate service was their gift, and no more. Looking
back, I know in what a wonder-world I was privileged to live.
Vanna could talk with them all. She did not move apart, a
condescending or indifferent foreigner. Kahdra would come to her
knee and prattle to her of the great snake that lived up on
Mahadeo to devour erring boys who omitted their prayers at proper
Moslem intervals. She would sit with the baby in her lap while
the mother busied herself in the sunny bows with the mysterious
dishes that smelt so savory to a hungry man. The cuts, the
bruises of the neighbourhood all came to Vanna for treatment.
"I am graduating as a nurse," she would say laughing as she bent
over the lean arm of some weirdly wrinkled old lady, bandaging
and soothing at the same moment. Her reward would be some bit of
folk-lore, some quaintness of gratitude that I noted down in the
little book I kept for remembrance - that I do not need, for
every word is in my heart.
We rowed down through the city next day - Salama rowing, and
little Kahdra lazily paddling at the bow - a wonderful city,
with its narrow ways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its
balconied houses looking as if disease and sin had soaked into
them and given them a vicious tottering beauty, horrible and yet
lovely too. We saw the swarming life of the bazaar, the white
turbans coming and going, diversified by the rose and yellow
Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, on the dark
brows.
I saw two women - girls - painted and tired like Jezebel,
looking out of one window carved and old, and the grey burnished
doves flying about it. They leaned indolently, like all the old,
old wickedness of the East that yet is ever young - "Flowers of
Delight," with smooth black hair braided with gold and blossoms,
and covered with pale rose veils, and gold embossed disks
swinging like lamps beside the olive cheeks, the great eyes
artificially lengthened and darkened with soorma, and the curves
of the full lips emphasized with vermilion. They looked down on
us with apathy, a dull weariness that held all the old evil of
the wicked humming city.
It had taken shape in those indolent bodies and heavy eyes that
could flash into life as a snake wakes into fierce darting energy
when the time comes to spring - direct inheritrixes from Lilith,
in the fittest setting in the world - the almost exhausted vice
of an Oriental city as old as time.
"And look-below here," said Vanna, pointing to one of the ghauts
- long rugged steps running down to the river.
"When I came yesterday, a great broken crowd was collected here,
almost shouldering each other into the water where a boat lay
rocking. In it lay the body of a man brutally murdered for the
sake of a few rupees and flung into the river. I could see the
poor brown body stark in the boat with a friend weeping beside
it. On the lovely deodar bridge people leaned over, watching with
a grim open-mouthed curiosity, and business went on gaily where
the jewelers make the silver bangles for slender wrists, and the
rows of silver chains that make the necks like 'the Tower of
Damascus builded for an armory.' It was all very wild and cruel.
I went down to them-"
"Vanna - you went down? Horrible!"
"No, you see I heard them say the wife was almost a child and
needs help. So I went. Once long ago at Peshawar I saw the same
thing happen, and they came and took the child for the service of
the gods, for she was most lovely, and she clung to the feet of a
man in terror, and the priest stabbed her to the heart. She died
in my arms.
"Good God!" I said, shuddering; "what a sight for you! Did they
never hang him?"
"He was not punished. I told you it was a very long time ago. Her
expression had a brooding quiet as she looked down into the
running river, almost it might be as if she saw the picture of
that past misery in the deep water. She said no more. But in her
words and the terrible crowding of its life, Srinagar seemed to
me more of a nightmare than anything I had seen, excepting only
Benares; for the holy Benares is a memory of horror, with a sense
of blood hidden under its frantic crazy devotion, and not far
hidden either.
Our own green shade, when we pulled back to it in the evening
cool, was a refuge of unspeakable quiet. She read aloud to me
that evening by the small light of our lamp beneath the trees,
and, singularly, she read of joy.
"I have drunk of the Cup of the Ineffable, I have found the key
of the Mystery, Travelling by no track I have come to the
Sorrowless Land; very easily has the mercy of the great Lord
come upon me. Wonderful is that Land of rest to which no merit
can win. There have I seen joy filled to the brim, perfection of
joy. He dances in rapture and waves of form arise from His dance.
He holds all within his bliss."
"What is that?"
"It is from the songs of the great Indian mystic - Kabir. Let me
read you more. It is like the singing of a lark, lost in the
infinite of light and heaven."
So in the soft darkness I heard for the first time those immortal
words; and hearing, a faint glimmer of understanding broke upon
me as to the source of the peace that surrounded her. I had
accepted it as an emanation of her own heart when it was the
pulsing of the tide of the Divine. She read, choosing a verse
here and there, and I listened with absorption.
Suppose I had been wrong in believing that sorrow is the keynote
of life; that pain is the road of ascent, if road there be; that
an implacable Nature and that only, presides over all our pitiful
struggles and seekings and writes a black "Finis" to the
holograph of our existence?
What then? What was she teaching me? Was she the Interpreter of a
Beauty eternal in the heavens, and reflected like a broken prism
in the beauty that walked visible beside me? So I listened like a
child to an unknown language, yet ventured my protest.
"In India, in this wonderful country where men have time and will
for speculation such thoughts may be natural. Can they be found
in the West?"
"This is from the West - might not Kabir himself have said it?
Certainly he would have felt it. 'Happy is he who seeks not to
understand the Mystery of God, but who, merging his spirit into
Thine, sings to Thy face, 0 Lord, like a harp, understanding how
difficult it is to know - how easy to love Thee.' We debate and
argue and the Vision passes us by. We try to prove it, and kill
it in the laboratory of our minds, when on the altar of our
souls it will dwell for ever."
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