There is a place uplifted nine thousand feet in purest air where one
of the most ancient tracks in the world runs from India into Tibet.
It leaves Simla of the Imperial councils by a stately road; it passes
beyond, but now narrowing, climbing higher beside the khuds or steep
drops to the precipitous valleys beneath, and the rumor of Simla grows
distant and the way is quiet, for, owing to the danger of driving horses
above the khuds, such baggage as you own must be carried by coolies, and
you yourself must either ride on horseback or in the little horseless
carriage of the Orient, here drawn and pushed by four men. And presently
the deodars darken the way with a solemn presence, for--
“These are the Friars of the wood,
The Brethren of the Solitude
Hooded and grave--”
their breath most austerely pure in the gradually chilling air. Their
companies increase and now the way is through a great wood where it
has become a trail and no more, and still it climbs for many miles and
finally a rambling bungalow, small and low, is sighted in the deeps of
the trees, a mountain stream from unknown heights falling beside it. And
this is known as the House in the Woods. Very few people are permitted
to go there, for the owner has no care for money and makes no provision
for guests. You must take your own servant and the khansamah will cook
you such simple food as men expect in the wilds, and that is all. You
stay as long as you please and when you leave not even a gift to the
khansamah is permitted.
I had been staying in Ranipur of the plains while I considered the
question of getting to Upper Kashmir by the route from Simla along the
old way to Chinese Tibet where I would touch Shipki in the Dalai
Lama’s territory and then pass on to Zanskar and so down to Kashmir--a
tremendous route through the Himalaya and a crowning experience of
the mightiest mountain scenery in the world. I was at Ranipur for the
purpose of consulting my old friend Olesen, now an irrigation official
in the Rampur district--a man who had made this journey and nearly lost
his life in doing it. It is not now perhaps so dangerous as it was, and
my life was of no particular value to any one but myself, and the plan
interested me.
I pass over the long discussions of ways and means in the blinding heat
of Ranipur. Olesen put all his knowledge at my service and never uttered
a word of the envy that must have filled him as he looked at the
distant snows cool and luminous in blue air, and, shrugging good-natured
shoulders, spoke of the work that lay before him on the burning
plains until the terrible summer should drag itself to a close. We had
vanquished the details and were smoking in comparative silence one night
on the veranda, when he said in his slow reflective way;
“You don’t like the average hotel, Ormond, and you’ll like it still less
up Simla way with all the Simla crowd of grass-widows and fellows out
for as good a time as they can cram into the hot weather. I wonder if I
could get you a permit for The House in the Woods while you re waiting
to fix up your men and route for Shipki.”
He explained and of course I jumped at the chance. It belonged, he said,
to a man named Rup Singh, a pandit, or learned man of Ranipur. He had
always spent the summer there, but age and failing health made this
impossible now, and under certain conditions he would occasionally allow
people known to friends of his own to put up there.
“And Rup Singh and I are very good friends,” Olesen said; “I won his
heart by discovering the lost Sukh Mandir, or Hall of Pleasure, built
many centuries ago by a Maharao of Ranipur for a summer retreat in the
great woods far beyond Simla. There are lots of legends about it here in
Ranipur. They call it The House of Beauty. Rup Singh’s ancestor had been
a close friend of the Maharao and was with him to the end, and that’s
why he himself sets such store on the place. You have a good chance if I
ask for a permit.
“He told me the story and since it is the heart of my own I give it
briefly. Many centuries ago the Ranipur Kingdom was ruled by the Maharao
Rai Singh a prince of the great lunar house of the Rajputs. Expecting
a bride from some far away kingdom (the name of this is unrecorded)
he built the Hall of Pleasure as a summer palace, a house of rare and
costly beauty. A certain great chamber he lined with carved figures of
the Gods and their stories, almost unsurpassed for truth and life. So,
with the pine trees whispering about it the secret they sigh to tell,
he hoped to create an earthly Paradise with this Queen in whom all
loveliness was perfected. And then some mysterious tragedy ended all
his hopes. It was rumoured that when the Princess came to his court,
she was, by some terrible mistake, received with insult and offered the
position only of one of his women. After that nothing was known. Certain
only is it that he fled to the hills, to the home of his broken hope,
and there ended his days in solitude, save for the attendance of two
faithful friends who would not abandon him even in the ghostly quiet of
the winter when the pine boughs were heavy with snow and a spectral moon
stared at the panthers shuffling through the white wastes beneath. Of
these two Rup Singh’s ancestor was one. And in his thirty fifth year
the Maharao died and his beauty and strength passed into legend and his
kingdom was taken by another and the jungle crept silently over his Hall
of Pleasure and the story ended.
“There was not a memory of the place up there,” Olesen went on.
“Certainly I never heard anything of it when I went up to the Shipki
in 1904. But I had been able to be useful to Rup Singh and he gave me a
permit for The House in the Woods, and I stopped there for a few days’
shooting. I remember that day so well. I was wandering in the dense
woods while my men got their midday grub, and I missed the trail somehow
and found myself in a part where the trees were dark and thick and the
silence heavy as lead. It was as if the trees were on guard--they stood
shoulder to shoulder and stopped the way. Well, I halted, and had a
notion there was something beyond that made me doubt whether to go on.
I must have stood there five minutes hesitating. Then I pushed on,
bruising the thick ferns under my shooting boots and stooping under the
knotted boughs. Suddenly I tramped out of the jungle into a clearing,
and lo and behold a ruined House, with blocks of marble lying all about
it, and carved pillars and a great roof all being slowly smothered
by the jungle. The weirdest thing you ever saw. I climbed some fallen
columns to get a better look, and as I did I saw a face flash by at the
arch of a broken window. I sang out in Hindustani, but no answer: only
the echo from the woods. Somehow that dampened my ardour, and I didn’t
go in to what seemed like a great ruined hall for the place was so
eerie and lonely, and looked mighty snaky into the bargain. So I came
ingloriously away and told Rup Singh. And his whole face changed. ‘That
is The House of Beauty,’ he said. ‘All my life have I sought it and in
vain. For, friend of my soul, a man must lose himself that he may find
himself and what lies beyond, and the trodden path has ever been my
doom. And you who have not sought have seen. Most strange are the way
of the Gods’. Later on I knew this was why he had always gone up yearly,
thinking and dreaming God knows what. He and I tried for the place
together, but in vain and the whole thing is like a dream. Twice he has
let friends of mine stay at The House in the Woods, and I think he won’t
refuse now.”
“Did he ever tell you the story?”
“Never. I only know what I’ve picked up here. Some horrible mistake
about the Rani that drove the man almost mad with remorse. I’ve heard
bits here and there. There’s nothing so vital as tradition in India.”
“I wonder’. what really happened.”
“That we shall never know. I got a little old picture of the
Maharao--said to be painted by a Pahari artist. It’s not likely to be
authentic, but you never can tell. A Brahman sold it to me that he might
complete his daughter’s dowry, and hated doing it.”
“May I see it?”
“Why certainly. Not a very good light, but--can do,” as the Chinks say.
He brought it out rolled in silk stuff and I carried it under the
hanging lamp. A beautiful young man indeed, with the air of race
these people have beyond all others;--a cold haughty face, immovably
dignified. He sat with his hands resting lightly on the arms of his
chair of State. A crescent of rubies clasped the folds of the turban and
from this sprang an aigrette scattering splendours. The magnificent hilt
of a sword was ready beside him. The face was not only beautiful but
arresting.
“A strange picture,” I said. “The artist has captured the man himself.
I can see him trampling on any one who opposed him, and suffering in the
same cold secret way. It ought to be authentic if it isn’t. Don’t you
know any more?”
“Nothing. Well--to bed, and tomorrow I’ll see Rup Singh.”
I was glad when he returned with the permission. I was to be very
careful, he said, to make no allusion to the lost palace, for two women
were staying at the House in the Woods--a mother and daughter to whom
Rup Singh had granted hospitality because of an obligation he must
honor. But with true Oriental distrust of women he had thought fit to
make no confidence to them. I promised and asked Olesen if he knew them.
“Slightly. Canadians of Danish blood like my own. Their name is Ingmar.
Some people think the daughter good-looking. The mother is supposed
to be clever; keen on occult subjects which she came back to India to
study. The husband was a great naturalist and the kindest of men. He
almost lived in the jungle and the natives had all sorts of rumours
about his powers. You know what they are. They said the birds and beasts
followed him about. Any old thing starts a legend.”
“What was the connection with Rup Singh?”
“He was in difficulties and undeservedly, and Ingmar generously lent
him money at a critical time, trusting to his honour for repayment. Like
most Orientals he never forgets a good turn and would do anything for
any of the family--except trust the women with any secret he valued. The
father is long dead. By the way Rup Singh gave me a queer message for
you. He said; ‘Tell the Sahib these words--“Let him who finds water in
the desert share his cup with him who dies of thirst.” He is certainly
getting very old. I don’t suppose he knew himself what he meant.”
I certainly did not. However my way was thus smoothed for me and I took
the upward road, leaving Olesen to the long ungrateful toil of the man
who devotes his life to India without sufficient time or knowledge to
make his way to the inner chambers of her beauty. There is no harder
mistress unless you hold the pass-key to her mysteries, there is none of
whom so little can be told in words but who kindles so deep a passion.
Necessity sometimes takes me from that enchanted land, but when the
latest dawns are shining in my skies I shall make my feeble way back to
her and die at her worshipped feet. So I went up from Kalka.
I have never liked Simla. It is beautiful enough--eight thousand feet
up in the grip of the great hills looking toward the snows, the famous
summer home of the Indian Government. Much diplomacy is whispered
on Observatory Hill and many are the lighter diversions of which Mr.
Kipling and lesser men have written. But Simla is also a gateway to many
things--to the mighty deodar forests that clothe the foot-hills of the
mountains, to Kulu, to the eternal snows, to the old, old bridle way
that leads up to the Shipki Pass and the mysteries of Tibet--and to the
strange things told in this story. So I passed through with scarcely a
glance at the busy gayety of the little streets and the tiny shops
where the pretty ladies buy their rouge and powder. I was attended by
my servant Ali Khan, a Mohammedan from Nagpur, sent up with me by Olesen
with strong recommendation. He was a stout walker, so too am I, and an
inveterate dislike to the man-drawn carriage whenever my own legs would
serve me decided me to walk the sixteen miles to the House in the Woods,
sending on the baggage. Ali Khan despatched it and prepared to follow
me, the fine cool air of the hills giving us a zest.
“Subhan Alla! (Praise be to God!) the air is sweet!” he said, stepping
out behind me. “What time does the Sahib look to reach the House?”
“About five or six. Now, Ali Khan, strike out of the road. You know the
way.”
So we struck up into the glorious pine woods, mountains all about us.
Here and there as we climbed higher was a little bank of forgotten
snow, but spring had triumphed and everywhere was the waving grace of
maiden-hair ferns, banks of violets and strangely beautiful little wild
flowers. These woods are full of panthers, but in day time the only
precaution necessary is to take no dog,--a dainty they cannot resist.
The air was exquisite with the sun-warm scent of pines, and here and
there the trees broke away disclosing mighty ranges of hills covered
with rich blue shadows like the bloom on a plum,--the clouds chasing the
sunshine over the mountain sides and the dark green velvet of the robe
of pines. I looked across ravines that did not seem gigantic and yet the
villages on the other side were like a handful of peas, so tremendous
was the scale. I stood now and then to see the rhododendrons, forest
trees here with great trunks and massive boughs glowing with blood-red
blossom, and time went by and I took no count of it, so glorious was the
climb.
It must have been hours later when it struck me that the sun was getting
low and that by now we should be nearing The House in the Woods. I said
as much to Ali Khan. He looked perplexed and agreed. We had reached
a comparatively level place, the trail faint but apparent, and it
surprised me that we heard no sound of life from the dense wood where
our goal must be.
“I know not, Presence,” he said. “May his face be blackened that
directed me. I thought surely I could not miss the way, and yet-”
We cast back and could see no trail forking from the one we were on.
There was nothing for it but to trust to luck and push on. But I began
to be uneasy and so was the man. I had stupidly forgotten to unpack
my revolver, and worse, we had no food, and the mountain air is an
appetiser, and at night the woods have their dangers, apart from being
absolutely trackless. We had not met a living being since we left the
road and there seemed no likelihood of asking for directions. I stopped
no longer for views but went steadily on, Ali Khan keeping up a running
fire of low-voiced invocations and lamentations. And now it was dusk and
the position decidedly unpleasant.
It was at that moment I saw a woman before us walking lightly and
steadily under the pines. She must have struck into the trail from
the side for she never could have kept before us all the way. A native
woman, but wearing the all-concealing boorka, more like a town dweller
than a woman of the hills. I put on speed and Ali Khan, now very tired,
toiled on behind me as I came up with her and courteously asked the
way. Her face was entirely hidden, but the answering voice was clear and
sweet. I made up my mind she was young, for it had the bird-like thrill
of youth.
“If the Presence continues to follow this path he will arrive. It is not
far. They wait for him.”
That was all. It left me with a desire to see the veiled face. We passed
on and Ali Khan looked fearfully back.
“Ajaib! (Wonderful!) A strange place to meet one of the purdah-nashin
(veiled women)” he muttered. “What would she be doing up here in the
heights? She walked like a Khanam (khan’s wife) and I saw the gleam of
gold under the boorka.”
I turned with some curiosity as he spoke, and lo! there was no human
being in sight. She had disappeared from the track behind us and it was
impossible to say where. The darkening trees were beginning to hold the
dusk and it seemed unimaginable that a woman should leave the way and
take to the dangers of the woods.
“Puna-i-Khoda--God protect us!” said Ali Khan in a shuddering whisper.
“She was a devil of the wilds. Press on, Sahib. We should not be here in
the dark.”
There was nothing else to do. We made the best speed we could, and the
trees grew more dense and the trail fainter between the close trunks,
and so the night came bewildering with the expectation that we must pass
the night unfed and unarmed in the cold of the heights. They might send
out a search party from The House in the Woods--that was still a hope,
if there were no other. And then, very gradually and wonderfully the
moon dawned over the tree tops and flooded the wood with mysterious
silver lights and about her rolled the majesty of the stars. We pressed
on into the heart of the night. From the dense black depths we emerged
at last. An open glade lay before us--the trees falling back to right
and left to disclose--what?
A long low house of marble, unlit, silent, bathed in pale splendour and
shadow. About it stood great deodars, clothed in clouds of the white
blossoming clematis, ghostly and still. Acacias hung motionless trails
of heavily scented bloom as if carved in ivory. It was all silent as
death. A flight of nobly sculptured steps led up to a broad veranda and
a wide open door with darkness behind it. Nothing more.
I forced myself to shout in Hindustani--the cry seeming a brutal outrage
upon the night, and an echo came back numbed in the black woods. I tried
once more and in vain. We stood absorbed also into the silence.
“Ya Alla! it is a house of the dead!” whispered Ali Khan, shuddering at
my shoulder,--and even as the words left his lips I understood where we
were. “It is the Sukh Mandir.” I said. “It is the House of the Maharao
of Ranipur.”
It was impossible to be in Ranipur and hear nothing of the dead house
of the forest and Ali Khan had heard--God only knows what tales. In his
terror all discipline, all the inborn respect of the native forsook him,
and without word or sign he turned and fled along the track, crashing
through the forest blind and mad with fear. It would have been insanity
to follow him, and in India the first rule of life is that the Sahib
shows no fear, so I left him to his fate whatever it might be, believing
at the same time that a little reflection and dread of the lonely forest
would bring him to heel quickly.
I stood there and the stillness flowed like water about me. It was
as though I floated upon it--bathed in quiet. My thoughts adjusted
themselves. Possibly it was not the Sukh Mandir. Olesen had spoken of
ruin. I could see none. At least it was shelter from the chill which is
always present at these heights when the sun sets,--and it was beautiful
as a house not made with hands. There was a sense of awe but no fear as
I went slowly up the great steps and into the gloom beyond and so gained
the hall.
The moon went with me and from a carven arch filled with marble tracery
rained radiance that revealed and hid. Pillars stood about me, wonderful
with horses ramping forward as in the Siva Temple at Vellore. They
appeared to spring from the pillars into the gloom urged by invisible
riders, the effect barbarously rich and strange--motion arrested, struck
dumb in a violent gesture, and behind them impenetrable darkness. I
could not see the end of this hall--for the moon did not reach it, but
looking up I beheld the walls fretted in great panels into the utmost
splendour of sculpture, encircling the stories of the Gods amid a
twining and under-weaving of leaves and flowers. It was more like a
temple than a dwelling. Siva, as Nataraja the Cosmic Dancer, the Rhythm
of the Universe, danced before me, flinging out his arms in the passion
of creation. Kama, the Indian Eros, bore his bow strung with honey-sweet
black bees that typify the heart’s desire. Krishna the Beloved smiled
above the herd-maidens adoring at his feet. Ganesha the Elephant-Headed,
sat in massive calm, wreathing his wise trunk about him. And many more.
But all these so far as I could see tended to one centre panel larger
than any, representing two life-size figures of a dim beauty. At first
I could scarcely distinguish one from the other in the upward-reflected
light, and then, even as I stood, the moving moon revealed the two as
if floating in vapor. At once I recognized the subject--I had seen it
already in the ruined temple of Ranipur, though the details differed.
Parvati, the Divine Daughter of the Himalaya, the Emanation of the
mighty mountains, seated upon a throne, listening to a girl who played
on a Pan pipe before her. The goddess sat, her chin leaned upon her
hand, her shoulders slightly inclined in a pose of gentle sweetness,
looking down upon the girl at her feet, absorbed in the music of the
hills and lonely places. A band of jewels, richly wrought, clasped the
veil on her brows, and below the bare bosom a glorious girdle clothed
her with loops and strings and tassels of jewels that fell to her
knees--her only garment.
The girl was a lovely image of young womanhood, the proud swell of the
breast tapering to the slim waist and long limbs easily folded as she
half reclined at the divine feet, her lips pressed to the pipe. Its
silent music mysteriously banished fear. The sleep must be sweet
indeed that would come under the guardianship of these two fair
creatures--their gracious influence was dewy in the air. I resolved that
I would spend the night beside them. Now with the march of the moon dim
vistas of the walls beyond sprang into being. Strange mythologies--the
incarnations of Vishnu the Preserver, the Pastoral of Krishna the
Beautiful. I promised myself that next day I would sketch some of the
loveliness about me. But the moon was passing on her way--I folded the
coat I carried into a pillow and lay down at the feet of the goddess and
her nymph. Then a moonlit quiet I slept in a dream of peace.
Sleep annihilates time. Was it long or short when I woke like a man
floating up to the surface from tranquil deeps? That I cannot tell, but
once more I possessed myself and every sense was on guard.
My hearing first. Bare feet were coming, falling softly as leaves, but
unmistakable. There was a dim whispering but I could hear no word. I
rose on my elbow and looked down the long hall. Nothing. The moonlight
lay in pools of light and seas of shadow on the floor, and the feet drew
nearer. Was I afraid? I cannot tell, but a deep expectation possessed
me as the sound grew like the rustle of grasses parted in a fluttering
breeze, and now a girl came swiftly up the steps, irradiate in the
moonlight, and passing up the hall stood beside me. I could see her
robe, her feet bare from the jungle, but her face wavered and changed
and re-united like the face of a dream woman. I could not fix it for
one moment, yet knew this was the messenger for whom I had waited all
my life--for whom one strange experience, not to be told at present, had
prepared me in early manhood. Words came, and I said:
“Is this a dream?”
“No. We meet in the Ninth Vibration. All here is true.”
“Is a dream never true?”
“Sometimes it is the echo of the Ninth Vibration and therefore a
harmonic of truth. You are awake now. It is the day-time that is the
sleep of the soul. You are in the Lower Perception, wherein the truth
behind the veil of what men call Reality is perceived.”
“Can I ascend?”
“I cannot tell. That is for you, not me.
“What do I perceive tonight?”
“The Present as it is in the Eternal. Say no more. Come with me.”
She stretched her hand and took mine with the assurance of a goddess,
and we went up the hall where the night had been deepest between the
great pillars.
Now it is very clear to me that in every land men, when the doors of
perception are opened, will see what we call the Supernatural clothed
in the image in which that country has accepted it. Blake, the mighty
mystic, will see the Angels of the Revelation, driving their terrible
way above Lambeth--it is not common nor unclean. The fisherman, plying
his coracle on the Thames will behold the consecration of the great new
Abbey of Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and awful lights
in the dead mid-noon of night by that Apostle who is the Rock of the
Church. Before him who wanders in Thessaly Pan will brush the dewy
lawns and slim-girt Artemis pursue the flying hart. In the pale gold of
Egyptian sands the heavy brows of Osiris crowned with the pshent will
brood above the seer and the veil of Isis tremble to the lifting. For
all this is the rhythm to which the souls of men are attuned and in that
vibration they will see, and no other, since in this the very mountains
and trees of the land are rooted. So here, where our remote ancestors
worshipped the Gods of Nature, we must needs stand before the Mystic
Mother of India, the divine daughter of the Himalaya.
How shall I describe the world we entered? The carvings upon the walls
had taken life--they had descended. It was a gathering of the dreams men
have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and actual. They watched in
a serenity that set them apart in an atmosphere of their own--forms of
indistinct majesty and august beauty, absolute, simple, and everlasting.
I saw them as one sees reflections in rippled water--no more. But
all faces turned to the place where now a green and flowering leafage
enshrined and partly hid the living Nature Goddess, as she listened to
a voice that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only in glimpses of an
indescribable sweetness, but an influence came from her presence like
the scent of rainy pine forests, the coolness that breathes from great
rivers, the passion of Spring when she breaks on the world with a wave
of flowers. Healing and life flowed from it. Understanding also. It
seemed I could interpret the very silence of the trees outside into the
expression of their inner life, the running of the green life-blood in
their veins, the delicate trembling of their finger-tips.
My companion and I were not heeded. We stood hand in hand like children
who have innocently strayed into a palace, gazing in wonderment. The
august life went its way upon its own occasions, and, if we would, we
might watch. Then the voice, clear and cold, proceeding, as it were,
with some story begun before we had strayed into the Presence, the whole
assembly listening in silence.
“--and as it has been so it will be, for the Law will have the blind
soul carried into a body which is a record of the sins it has committed,
and will not suffer that soul to escape from rebirth into bodies until
it has seen the truth--”
And even as this was said and I listened, knowing myself on the verge of
some great knowledge, I felt sleep beginning to weigh upon my eyelids.
The sound blurred, flowed unsyllabled as a stream, the girl’s hand grew
light in mine; she was fading, becoming unreal; I saw her eyes like
faint stars in a mist. They were gone. Arms seemed to receive me--to lay
me to sleep and I sank below consciousness, and the night took me.
When I awoke the radiant arrows of the morning were shooting into the
long hall where I lay, but as I rose and looked about me, strange--most
strange, ruin encircled me everywhere. The blue sky was the roof. What I
had thought a palace lost in the jungle, fit to receive its King should
he enter, was now a broken hall of State; the shattered pillars were
festooned with waving weeds, the many coloured lantana grew between the
fallen blocks of marble. Even the sculptures on the walls were difficult
to decipher. Faintly I could trace a hand, a foot, the orb of a
woman’s bosom, the gracious outline of some young God, standing above a
crouching worshipper. No more. Yes, and now I saw above me as the dawn
touched it the form of the Dweller in the Windhya Hills, Parvati the
Beautiful, leaning softly over something breathing music at her feet.
Yet I knew I could trace the almost obliterated sculpture only because
I had already seen it defined in perfect beauty. A deep crack ran across
the marble; it was weathered and stained by many rains, and little ferns
grew in the crevices, but I could reconstruct every line from my own
knowledge. And how? The Parvati of Ranipur differed in many important
details. She stood, bending forward, wheras this sweet Lady sat. Her
attendants were small satyr-like spirits of the wilds, piping and
fluting, in place of the reclining maiden. The sweeping scrolls of a
great halo encircled her whole person. Then how could I tell what this
nearly obliterated carving had been? I groped for the answer and could
not find it. I doubted--
“Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root
That takes the reason captive?”
Memory rushed over me like the sea over dry sands. A girl--there had
been a girl--we had stood with clasped hands to hear a strange music,
but in spite of the spiritual intimacy of those moments I could not
recall her face. I saw it cloudy against a background of night and
dream, the eyes remote as stars, and so it eluded me. Only her presence
and her words survived; “We meet in the Ninth Vibration. All here is
true.” But the Ninth Vibration itself was dream-land. I had never heard
the phrase--I could not tell what was meant, nor whether my apprehension
was true or false. I knew only that the night had taken her and the dawn
denied her, and that, dream or no dream, I stood there with a pang of
loss that even now leaves me wordless.
A bird sang outside in the acacias, clear and shrill for day, and this
awakened my senses and lowered me to the plane where I became aware of
cold and hunger, and was chilled with dew. I passed down the tumbled
steps that had been a stately ascent the night before and made my way
into the jungle by the trail, small and lost in fern, by which we had
come. Again I wandered, and it was high noon before I heard mule bells
at a distance, and, thus guided, struck down through the green tangle
to find myself, wearied but safe, upon the bridle way that leads to Fagu
and the far Shipki. Two coolies then directed me to The House in the
Woods.
All was anxiety there. Ali Khan had arrived in the night, having found
his way under the guidance of blind flight and fear. He had brought the
news that I was lost in the jungle and amid the dwellings of demons. It
was, of course, hopeless to search in the dark, though the khansamah and
his man had gone as far as they dared with lanterns and shouting,
and with the daylight they tried again and were even now away. It was
useless to reproach the man even if I had cared to do so. His ready plea
was that as far as men were concerned he was as brave as any (which
was true enough as I had reason to know later) but that when it came to
devilry the Twelve Imaums themselves would think twice before facing it.
“Inshalla ta-Alla! (If the sublime God wills!) this unworthy one will
one day show the Protector of the poor, that he is a respectable person
and no coward, but it is only the Sahibs who laugh in the face of
devils.”
He went off to prepare me some food, consumed with curiosity as to my
adventures, and when I had eaten I found my tiny whitewashed cell, for
the room was little more, and slept for hours.
Late in the afternoon I waked and looked out. A low but glowing
sunlight suffused the wild garden reclaimed from the strangle-hold of
the jungle and hemmed in with rocks and forest. A few simple flowers had
been planted here and there, but its chief beauty was a mountain stream,
brown and clear as the eyes of a dog, that fell from a crag above into
a rocky basin, maidenhair ferns growing in such masses about it that
it was henceforward scarcely more than a woodland voice. Beside it two
great deodars spread their canopies, and there a woman sat in a low
chair, a girl beside her reading aloud. She had thrown her hat off and
the sunshine turned her massed dark hair to bronze. That was all I could
see. I went out and joined them, taking the note of introduction which
Olesen had given me.
I pass over the unessentials of my story; their friendly greetings and
sympathy for my adventure. It set us at ease at once and I knew my stay
would be the happier for their presence though it is not every woman one
would choose as a companion in the great mountain country. But what
is germane to my purpose must be told, and of this a part is the
personality of Brynhild Ingmar. That she was beautiful I never doubted,
though I have heard it disputed and smiled inwardly as the disputants
urged lip and cheek and shades of rose and lily, weighing and
appraising. Let me describe her as I saw her or, rather, as I can,
adding that even without all this she must still have been beautiful
because of the deep significance to those who had eyes to see or
feel some mysterious element which mingled itself with her presence
comparable only to the delight which the power and spiritual essence of
Nature inspires in all but the dullest minds. I know I cannot hope to
convey this in words. It means little if I say I thought of all quiet
lovely solitary things when I looked into her calm eyes,--that when she
moved it was like clear springs renewed by flowing, that she seemed the
perfect flowering of a day in June, for these are phrases. Does Nature
know her wonders when she shines in her strength? Does a woman know the
infinite meanings her beauty may have for the beholder? I cannot tell.
Nor can I tell if I saw this girl as she may have seemed to those who
read only the letter of the book and are blind to its spirit, or in the
deepest sense as she really was in the sight of That which created her
and of which she was a part. Surely it is a proof of the divinity of
love that in and for a moment it lifts the veil of so-called reality and
shows each to the other mysteriously perfect and inspiring as the world
will never see them, but as they exist in the Eternal, and in the sight
of those who have learnt that the material is but the dream, and the
vision of love the truth.
I will say then, for the alphabet of what I knew but cannot tell, that
she had the low broad brows of a Greek Nature Goddess, the hair swept
back wing-like from the temples and massed with a noble luxuriance. It
lay like rippled bronze, suggesting something strong and serene in its
essence. Her eyes were clear and gray as water, the mouth sweetly curved
above a resolute chin. It was a face which recalled a modelling in
marble rather than the charming pastel and aquarelle of a young woman’s
colouring, and somehow I thought of it less as the beauty of a woman
than as some sexless emanation of natural things, and this impression
was strengthened by her height and the long limbs, slender and strong as
those of some youth trained in the pentathlon, subject to the severest
discipline until all that was superfluous was fined away and the perfect
form expressing the true being emerged. The body was thus more beautiful
than the face, and I may note in passing that this is often the case,
because the face is more directly the index of the restless and unhappy
soul within and can attain true beauty only when the soul is in harmony
with its source.
She was a little like her pale and wearied mother. She might resemble
her still more when the sorrow of this world that worketh death should
have had its will of her. I had yet to learn that this would never
be--that she had found the open door of escape.
We three spent much time together in the days that followed. I never
tired of their company and I think they did not tire of mine, for
my wanderings through the world and my studies in the ancient Indian
literatures and faiths with the Pandit Devaswami were of interest to
them both though in entirely different ways. Mrs. Ingmar was a woman who
centred all her interests in books and chiefly in the scientific forms
of occult research. She was no believer in anything outside the range
of what she called human experience. The evidences had convinced her of
nothing but a force as yet unclassified in the scientific categories and
all her interest lay in the undeveloped powers of brain which might be
discovered in the course of ignorant and credulous experiment. We met
therefore on the common ground of rejection of the so-called occultism
of the day, though I knew even then, and how infinitely better now, that
her constructions were wholly misleading.
Nearly all day she would lie in her chair under the deodars by the
delicate splash and ripple of the stream. Living imprisoned in the
crystal sphere of the intellect she saw the world outside, painted in
few but distinct colours, small, comprehensible, moving on a logical
orbit. I never knew her posed for an explanation. She had the contented
atheism of a certain type of French mind and found as much ease in it as
another kind of sweet woman does in her rosary and confessional.
“I cannot interest Brynhild,” she said, when I knew her better. “She has
no affinity with science. She is simply a nature worshipper, and in such
places as this she seems to draw life from the inanimate life about her.
I have sometimes wondered whether she might not be developed into a kind
of bridge between the articulate and the inarticulate, so well does she
understand trees and flowers. Her father was like that--he had all sorts
of strange power with animals and plants, and thought he had more than
he had. He could never realize that the energy of nature is merely
mechanical.”
“You think all energy is mechanical?”
“Certainly. We shall lay our finger on the mainspring one day and
the mystery will disappear. But as for Brynhild--I gave her the best
education possible and yet she has never understood the conception of a
universe moving on mathematical laws to which we must submit in body and
mind. She has the oddest ideas. I would not willingly say of a child of
mine that she is a mystic, and yet--”
She shook her head compassionately. But I scarcely heard. My eyes were
fixed on Brynhild, who stood apart, looking steadily out over the snows.
It was a glorious sunset, the west vibrating with gorgeous colour spilt
over in torrents that flooded the sky, Terrible splendours--hues for
which we have no thought--no name. I had not thought of it as music
until I saw her face but she listened as well as saw, and her expression
changed as it changes when the pomp of a great orchestra breaks upon the
silence. It flashed to the chords of blood-red and gold that was burning
fire. It softened through the fugue of woven crimson gold and flame, to
the melancholy minor of ashes-of-roses and paling green, and so through
all the dying glories that faded slowly to a tranquil grey and left
the world to the silver melody of one sole star that dawned above the
ineffable heights of the snows. Then she listened as a child does to
a bird, entranced, with a smile like a butterfly on her parted lips. I
never saw such a power of quiet.
She and I were walking next day among the forest ways, the pine-scented
sunshine dappling the dropped frondage. We had been speaking of her
mother. “It is such a misfortune for her,” she said thoughtfully, “that
I am not clever. She should have had a daughter who could have shared
her thoughts. She analyses everything, reasons about everything, and
that is quite out of my reach.”
She moved beside me with her wonderful light step--the poise and balance
of a nymph in the Parthenon frieze.
“How do you see things?”
“See? That is the right word. I see things--I never reason about them.
They are. For her they move like figures in a sum. For me every one of
them is a window through which one may look to what is beyond.”
“To where?”
“To what they really are--not what they seem.”