“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, O 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.”
Silence--and I pondered. Finally she laid the book aside, and repeated
from memory and in a tone of perfect music; “Kabir says, ‘I shall go
to the House of my Lord with my Love at my side; then shall I sound the
trumpet of triumph.’”
And when she left me alone in the moonlight silence the old doubts came
back to me--the fear that I saw only through her eyes, and began to
believe in joy only because I loved her. I remember I wrote in the
little book I kept for my stray thoughts, these words which are not mine
but reflect my thought of her; “Thine is the skill of the Fairy Woman,
and the virtue of St. Bride, and the faith of Mary the Mild, and the
gracious way of the Greek woman, and the beauty of lovely Emer, and the
tenderness of heart-sweet Deirdre, and the courage of Maev the great
Queen, and the charm of Mouth-of-Music.”
Yes, all that and more, but I feared lest I should see the heaven of joy
through her eyes only and find it mirage as I had found so much else.
SECOND PART Early in the pure dawn the men came and our boat was towed
up into the Dal Lake through crystal waterways and flowery banks, the
men on the path keeping step and straining at the rope until the bronze
muscles stood out on their legs and backs, shouting strong rhythmic
phrases to mark the pull.
“They shout the Wondrous Names of God--as they are called,” said Vanna
when I asked. “They always do that for a timid effort. Bad shah! The
Lord, the Compassionate, and so on. I don’t think there is any religion
about it but it is as natural to them as One, Two, Three, to us. It
gives a tremendous lift. Watch and see.”
It was part of the delightful strangeness that we should move to that
strong music. We sat on the upper deck and watched the dream--like
beauty drift slowly by until we emerged beneath a little bridge into the
fairy land of the lake which the Mogul Emperors loved so well that they
made their noble pleasance gardens on the banks, and thought it little
to travel up yearly from far--off Delhi over the snowy Pir Panjal with
their Queens and courts for the perfect summer of Kashmir.
We moored by a low bank under a great wood of chenar trees, and saw the
little table in the wilderness set in the greenest shade with our chairs
beside it, and my pipe laid reverently upon it by Kahdra.
Across the glittering water lay on one side the Shalimar Garden known
to all readers of “Lalla Ruhk”--a paradise of roses; and beyond it
again the lovelier gardens of Nour-Mahal, the Light of the Palace, that
imperial woman who ruled India under the weak Emperor’s name--she whose
name he set thus upon his coins:
“By order of King Jehangir. Gold has a hundred splendours added to it by
receiving the name of Nour-Jahan the Queen.”
Has any woman ever had a more royal homage than this most royal
lady--known first as Mihr-u-nissa--Sun of Women, and later, Nour-Mahal,
Light of the Palace, and latest, Nour-Jahan-Begam, Queen, Light of the
World?
Here in these gardens she had lived--had seen the snow mountains change
from the silver of dawn to the illimitable rose of sunset. The life, the
colour beat insistently upon my brain. They built a world of magic where
every moment was pure gold. Surely--surely to Vanna it must be the same.
I believed in my very soul that she who gave and shared such joy could
not be utterly apart from me? Could I then feel certain that I had
gained any ground in these days we had been together? Could she still
define the cruel limits she had laid down, or were her eyes kinder, her
tones a more broken music? I did not know. Whenever I could hazard a
guess the next minute baffled me.
Just then, in the sunset, she was sitting on deck, singing under her
breath and looking absently away to the Gardens across the Lake. I could
catch the words here and there, and knew them.
“Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now--who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway far,
Before you agonize them in farewell?”
“Don’t!” I said abruptly. It stung me.
“What?” she asked in surprise. “That is the song every one remembers
here. Poor Laurence Hope! How she knew and loved this India! What are
you grumbling at?”
Her smile stung me.
“Never mind,” I said morosely. “You don’t understand. You never will.”
And yet I believed sometimes that she would--that time was on my side.
When Kahdra and I pulled her across to Nour-Mahal’s garden next day, how
could I not believe it--her face was so full of joy as she looked at me
for sympathy?
“I don’t think so much beauty is crowded into any other few miles in
the world--beauty of association, history, nature, everything!” she said
with shining eyes. “The lotus flowers are not out yet but when they come
that is the last touch of perfection. Do you remember Homer--‘But whoso
ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, was neither willing to bring
me word again, nor to depart. Nay, their desire was to remain there
for ever, feeding on the lotus with the Lotus Eaters, forgetful of all
return.’ You know the people here eat the roots and seeds? I ate them
last year and perhaps that is why I cannot stay away. But look at
Nour-Mahal’s garden!”
We were pulling in among the reeds and the huge carven leaves of the
water plants, and the snake-headed buds lolling upon them with the
slippery half-sinister look that water-flowers have, as though their
cold secret life belonged to the hidden water world and not to ours. But
now the boat was touching the little wooden steps.
O beautiful--most beautiful the green lawns, shaded with huge pyramids
of the chenar trees, the terraced gardens where the marble steps climbed
from one to the other, and the mountain streams flashed singing and
shining down the carved marble slopes that cunning hands had made to
delight the Empress of Beauty, between the wildernesses of roses. Her
pavilion stands still among the flowers, and the waters ripple through
it to join the lake--and she is--where? Even in the glory of sunshine
the passing of all fair things was present with me as I saw the empty
shell that had held the Pearl of Empire, and her roses that still bloom,
her waters that still sing for others.
The spray of a hundred fountains was misty diamond dust in the warm air
laden with the scent of myriad flowers. Kahdra followed us everywhere,
singing his little tuneless happy song. The world brimmed with beauty
and joy. And we were together. Words broke from me.
“Vanna, let it be for ever! Let us live here. I’ll give up all the world
for this and you.”
“But you see,” she said delicately, “it would be ‘giving up.’ You use
the right word. It is not your life. It is a lovely holiday, no more.
You would weary of it. You would want the city life and your own kind.”