GYANGTSE
Late afternoon of the seventeenth day, and ahead, against the brazen
furnace of the sunset, the battlements of Gyangtse. Trent straightened
up in his saddle as he saw the town rise above the ochre hills.
Gyangtse! From there the Chumbi Valley, the passes of Sikkhim, and down
into tropical India! But Gyangtse meant more than that to him.... Like
the frail filament of a dream was the memory of the journey from
Shingtse-lunpo--dust and bitter winds; smoke of campfires in the
nostrils; and in his heart a cavernous doubt. It was this doubt that fed
upon his nerve-tissues, not the travel. And Gyangtse meant that it would
end. He would be lifted to lofty spheres, or....
Now, as the town unfolded in the sunset, he looked at Dana Charteris,
who rode near him--rode in silence, staring ahead. (Thus she had ridden
for those seventeen days--in silence and staring ahead, a wintry
coolness freezing the warmth from her eyes.) Tears trembled upon her
lashes.
The road took them under a bastion and toward the gate. When they were
yet some distance away a uniformed figure, mounted and followed by
turbaned Gurkhas, clattered out to meet them.
"Cavendish! The District Agent!"
Kerth, who was riding ahead with the muleteers and the grain-sacks,
called back these words to Trent and the girl.
The uniformed figure had drawn up--a tanned young man, with the mark of
a helmet-strap running across each cheek and a lonely hungering in his
eyes. He was laughing and shaking hands with Trent; then he touched his
helmet as he saw Dana Charteris.
They were guided into a compound where marigolds kindled a warmth
against white walls. Servants with weathered, smiling faces appeared
from the house, sticking out their tongues in greeting.
But Trent found a poignant sharpness in this welcome, for the
winter-light in the eyes of Dana Charteris had chilled him to the soul.
2
A bath in a collapsible canvas tub; clean clothing; dinner in a
high-ceilinged, cool room; and, afterward, Trent, Kerth and the young
Agent talking, over cigars.
Dana Charteris had slipped away soon after the meal, and the room seemed
barren to Trent. He scarcely heard his two companions, and sat nervously
fingering the arm of the chair and blowing smoke into the air. When he
could no longer endure it he begged to be excused and went to the room
assigned to him, where he got from his pack a certain object and thrust
it into his pocket.
In the compound he encountered a Gurkha.... Yes, he had seen the
memsahib, the soldier replied; he heard her order one of the sahib's
muleteers to saddle her pony and she went toward Pal-khor Choide.
Trent followed.
He had passed the crimson walls of the lamasery before he saw her--a
slender shadow ahead in the dusk. He urged his pony into a canter, and
presently slackened pace beside her. She had not turned, but now the
brown eyes were directed upon him and he felt a polar coldness in the
look. For a moment his voice refused to answer his summons.
"Dana--" he faltered. "Why did you run away, like this?"
She smiled--not the smile he knew, that awakened a golden memory of
autumn forests and cathedral spaces.
"I wanted to be alone. Why did you follow?"
From his pocket he drew a glinting bracelet. In the dusk she saw the
cobra-head lifted in bizarre relief. It seemed to strike into her heart.
"To give you this;"--his voice was low, trembling--"to tell you that I
cannot be your--your bracelet-brother longer." He seemed to drink
courage from those first words and plunged ahead. "Back there in Burma,
at the jungle camp, I promised myself that until we reached civilization
I'd remain the--the brother; and now...." He extended the bracelet.
"Won't you accept it?"
The winter-light faded suddenly from her eyes; they shone with a new
illumination. With its coming, the chill in his heart thawed; the early
night was aromatic and healing. (Overhead a few stars were caught in the
gauzy dusk, like dewdrops in a web.) Her fingers closed about the
bracelet.
"I've been so foolish!" she whispered, in a choked voice. "Oh, so
childish and small--while you've been big and fine and strong. Arnold
Trent, forgive me! I thought because--because you didn't speak; because
you didn't tell me of what I saw in your eyes--back there in
Burma--that, like _Sentimental Tommy_, the glamour tarnished when you
touch it--that you were just--play-acting--and, because the adventure
was over, you--you...." She swallowed, then finished: "Oh, I've been
such a foolish _Grizel_!"
... When they rode back into Gyangtse the distant, purple-black spurs of
the Himalayas were swimming in the pallid luster poured from a flagon
moon.
3
Serpents of tobacco smoke writhed in the room where Euan Kerth and the
young District Agent had been talking since dinner; spiraled about the
two tanned faces and dissolved, as if by magic, leaving a thin grayish
haze.
"... If anyone else had told me that, Euan Kerth," said the young
officer, breaking a long silence, "I wouldn't believe it!... And they're
in those sacks! No wonder you wanted a dozen Gurkhas to guard 'em! Gad!
Of course I'll lend you an escort! Why, if it were learned that we had
'em, here in this house, we'd be murdered before midnight! But go on,
man, finish your story."
Kerth resumed. The golden roofs of Lhakang-gompa lived in his words;
Shingtse-lunpo, with its maze of whitewashed houses. Another long
silence followed when he finished. The serpents of smoke still crawled
and lolled in the air. Cavendish spoke.
"Kerth, I wonder--" He broke off; the lonely hungering in his eyes was
clouded by an expression of bewilderment. He cleared his throat;
laughed. "Of course, it can't be so, but.... Well, about six months ago
an old lama was sick in the Jong. They brought him to me, on a litter,
just before he died--at his request. He told me something queer. He said
that Lhassa was no longer the political center of Tibet, and that the
man in the Potala was not the Dalai Lama, but a priest posing
as the Dalai Lama. He said the real Dalai Lama was in another
monastery--somewhere toward Mongolia--that there...." Again he broke
off; laughed. "But of course there can't be anything to it."
And Euan Kerth, his face dimmed by the smoke from his cheroot, smiled
his satanic smile.
"No, of course," he repeated, "there can't be anything to it."