“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.
“Explain to me. I don’t understand. I know so little of him. What is the
subject?”
She hesitated; then chose her words as if for a beginner;--“It is the
Blessed One preaching to the Tree-Spirits. See how eagerly they lean
from the boughs to listen. This other relief represents him in the state
of mystic vision. Here he is drowned in peace. See how it overflows from
the closed eyes; the closed lips. The air is filled with his quiet.”
“What is he dreaming?”
“Not dreaming--seeing. Peace. He sits at the point where time and
infinity meet. To attain that vision was the aim of the monks who lived
here.”
“Did they attain?” I found myself speaking as if she could certainly
answer.
“A few. There was one, Vasettha, the Brahman, a young man who had
renounced all his possessions and riches, and seated here before this
image of the Blessed One, he fell often into the mystic state. He had a
strange vision at one time of the future of India, which will surely be
fulfilled. He did not forget it in his rebirths. He remembers-”
She broke off suddenly and said with forced indifference,--“He would sit
here often looking out over the mountains; the monks sat at his feet to
hear. He became abbot while still young. But his story is a sad one.”
“I entreat you to tell me.”
She looked away over the mountains. “While he was abbot here,--still a
young man,--a famous Chinese Pilgrim came down through Kashmir to visit
the Holy Places in India. The abbot went forward with him to Peshawar,
that he might make him welcome. And there came a dancer to Peshawar,
named Lilavanti, most beautiful! I dare not tell you her beauty. I
tremble now to think-”
Again she paused, and again the faint creeping sense of mystery invaded
me.