THE COMPROMISE
Ommony stacked up the fire and resumed his seat in the leather armchair
that Marmaduke had always used. Diana, belly to the blaze, barked and
galloped in her sleep. Hannah Sanburn went on talking:
“Tsiang Samdup said last night that you have been with him two months.
Do you know then what I mean when I say one can’t argue with him? He
just sat there on the hearthrug and—it’s difficult to explain—he
seemed to be listening for an inside message. It may sound idiotic, but
I received the impression of a man waiting for his own soul to talk to
him. He was perfectly silent. He hardly breathed. I felt absolutely sure
he would find some way out of the difficulty. But the strange thing was,
that the solution came from me. I suppose ten minutes passed without a
word said, and I felt all the while as if my mind were being freed from
weights that I had never known were there. Then suddenly I spoke because
I couldn’t help it; I saw what to do so clearly that I simply had to
tell him.
“It wasn’t hypnotism. It was just the contrary. It was as if he had
_de_hypnotized me. I saw all the risks and scores of difficulties. And I
saw absolutely clearly the necessity of doing just one thing. I told him
I would take the child for six months out of every year and treat her as
if she were my own. He might have her for the other six months. Every
single wrinkle on his dear old face smiled separately when I said that.
I had hardly said it when I began to wish I hadn’t; but he held me to my
word.
“He brought me the baby the following week, and she was here in this
building all the while you were ranging the hills for some word of the
Terrys. The hardest work I ever had to do was to keep silent when you
returned here worn out and miserable about your sister’s fate. But, if
you had been let into the secret, you would have interfered—wouldn’t
you? Am I right or wrong, Cottswold?”
“Of course. I would never have dreamed of letting my sister’s child go
back to the Ahbor Valley.”
“Yet, if Tsiang Samdup hadn’t taken her every year for half a year, the
Ahbors would have killed him. And remember: I had bound myself in
advance not to tell any one—and particularly not to tell you. The Lama
was only able to loan her to me for six months of every year by
consenting to the Ahbors watching her all the time she was with me.
Whenever she has been with me Ahbors have watched day and night. The
excuse Tsiang Samdup gave to them was that unless she should be with me
for long periods she would die and the Ahbors would find their valley
invaded by white armies in consequence. They fear invasion of their
valley more than anything else they can imagine. On the other hand, they
regard the child as a gift from Heaven and the old Lama as her rightful
guardian.
“I don’t quite understand the situation up there; the Ahbors don’t
accept Tsiang Samdup’s teachings, they have a religion of their own; and
he isn’t one of them; he’s a Tibetan. But they recognize him as a Lama,
protect his monastery, and submit to his authority in certain ways.
Perhaps I’m stupid; he has tried very hard to explain, and so has Elsa.
Privately I called her Elsa, after her mother, of course. Tsiang Samdup
gave her the Chinese name of San-fun-ho. The word is supposed to signify
every possible human virtue.”
“Who called her _Samding_?” Ommony asked bluntly.
Hannah Sanburn stared. “You know then? This isn’t news? I remember now:
Tsiang Samdup said last night: ‘That of which a man is ignorant may well
be kept from him, but that which he knows should be explained, lest he
confuse it with what he does not know.’”
“I’m putting two and two together,” Ommony answered. “I leaned over a
monastery gallery in Darjiling. The _chela_ was straight underneath me.
A beam of sunlight showed a girl’s breasts. Am I right? Are San-fun-ho,
Samding the _chela_ and my sister’s child Elsa one and the same person?”
“Yes. I wonder you never recognized your sister’s voice—that almost
baritone boyish resonance. You didn’t?”
“Who are those other girls?”
“Companions for her! Don’t rush me. Wait while I explain. Elsa developed
into the most marvelous child I have ever known. It was partly Tsiang
Samdup’s influence; he gave up his whole life to training her; and he’s
wise—I can never begin to tell you how wise he is. But it was partly
due to her heredity. You see, she had your sister’s spiritual qualities,
and something of Jack Terry’s gay indifference to all the usual human
pros and cons—the courage of both of them—and something else added,
entirely her own. I wish she were my child! Oh, how I wish it! And yet,
d’you know, Cottswold, down in my heart I’m glad she isn’t, simply
because, if she were mine, she would have missed so much!”
Hannah Sanburn stared into the fire again, silent until Ommony grew
restless.
“There’s so much to tell!” she said at last. “I knew from the first, and
Tsiang Samdup soon discovered that the odds would be all against her
unless she could have white children of her own age for companions. When
he came and spoke of that I tried to persuade him to let me send her to
America; but at the very suggestion he looked so old and grieved and
disappointed that I felt it would kill him to lose her. I suggested that
he should go with her, but he said no, he had a duty to the Ahbors. I
thought then he was afraid the Ahbors would torture him to death and
burn his monastery if he should let her go; but he read my thoughts and
assured me that consideration had no weight. I believed him. I believe
he is perfectly indifferent to pain and death. He sat still for a long
time, and then said:
“‘It is better not to begin, than to begin and not go through to a
conclusion. _Then_ we should only have deprived ourselves of
opportunity. _Now_ we should rob the child.’
“He asked me to obtain white children for companions for her. I refused,
of course, at once to have anything to do with it. We quarreled
bitterly—or rather, I did. He sat quite still, and when I had finished
scolding him he went away in silence. I did not see him again for
several months, and he never told me how he obtained white children. I
can’t imagine how he did it without raising a scandal all over the
world. I have been in agonies over it, for fear this mission would
suffer. You know, if word once got around that we were importing white
children into the Ahbor Valley, no proof of innocence would ever quiet
the suspicion. Just think what a chance the Christian missionaries would
have for destroying our good name! Can you imagine them sparing us?”
Ommony grinned and nodded. As trustees of a Buddhist mission to the
Buddhists, he had tasted his share of that zealotry.
“He obtained the children through the agency of a Jew named Benjamin,”
he said. “They were all orphans. They were saved from God knows what. Go
on.”
“I have only seen the other children rarely. Now and then they would
come here in twos and threes, and I used to question them, but they all
seemed too happy to remember their past, and they only had the vaguest
notions as to how they ever reached the Ahbor Valley. The general plan
was for me to do my best with Elsa during the six months of the year she
was with me, and for _her_ to teach _them_. Tsiang Samdup said it would
be good for her to have to teach them—that she would learn more in that
way than any other; and as usual he was entirely right.
“To help the other girls he made _them_ pass their teaching on to
Tibetan children. But he hasn’t had quite the success with the others
that he has had with Elsa; they hadn’t her character to begin with. He
never punishes. Have you any idea what patience it calls for to educate
growing children without ever inflicting punishment of any kind—what
patience and skill?”
Ommony glanced at Diana. “It’s the only way. I never punish,” he said
quietly. “Go on.”
“My own share in Elsa’s education has been very slight indeed,” Hannah
Sanburn went on. “I had to teach her Western conventions as to table
manners and so on, and to explain to her what sort of subjects are taboo
in what we call civilized society. I have taught her to wear frocks
properly, have corrected her English pronunciation and have given her
music lessons. I can’t think of anything else. The real education has
been all the other way; it is _I_ who have learned—oh, simply countless
things—by observing _her_. She never argues. You can’t persuade her to
tell more than a fraction of what she knows. She is afraid of nothing
and of nobody. And she is as full of fun as the veriest young pagan that
ever lived.”
“Is she affectionate?” asked Ommony.
“Intensely. But not demonstrative. I should say she loves enormously,
but without the slightest jealousy or passion. She has learned Tsiang
Samdup’s faculty of divining people’s weakness, and of playing up to
their strength instead of taking advantage of the weakness or letting it
annoy her. The result, of course, is that she is instantly popular
wherever she goes.”
“How in the world have you kept these mission girls from talking about
her?” asked Ommony.
“That was quite easy. They adore her. She is _their_ special secret; and
they quite understand that if they talk about her outside the mission
she will stay away. Besides, the mission girls don’t have much
opportunity to talk with outsiders, and those to whom they do talk are
superstitious people, who speak with bated breath of San-fun-ho of
Ahbor. There have been much harder problems than that.”
Hannah Sanburn stared into the fire again. It appeared there were
painful memories.
“You see, there have been European visitors at times. Some of them came
unannounced, and sometimes Elsa was here when they came. There were
times when I could pass her off as a teacher, but sometimes she was
discovered in boy’s clothes, which made that impossible; and whether she
was dressed as a boy or girl she aroused such intense curiosity that
questions became pointed and very difficult to answer. I have dozens of
letters, Cottswold, from friends in Massachusetts asking whether it is
true, as they learn from missionary correspondents, that I have a child.
Some ask why I kept my marriage secret. Some insinuate that they are too
broad-minded to hold a lapse from virtue against me, as long as I don’t
come home and make it awkward for them. Others preach me a sermon on
hypocrisy. Quite a number of my friends have dropped me altogether. I
suppose the strict provisions of the penal code have kept people from
libeling me in India, but that has not prevented them from writing
scandal to their friends abroad.”
“What was the idea of boy’s clothes?”
“Education. Tsiang Samdup insists she must know everything he possibly
can teach her. She has been to Lhassa, far into China, and down into
India. He could not have taken her to some of those places unless she
were disguised as his _chela_; a girl _chela_ would have aroused all
sorts of scandal and difficulties. Then again, he says all human life is
drama and the only way to teach is by dramatic presentation; but who, he
asks, can present a drama unless able to act all parts in it? He says we
can only learn by teaching, and can only teach by learning; and he is
right, Cottswold, he is absolutely right.”
“Does he propose that she shall preach a crusade or something like that
in India?” Ommony asked, frowning.
“He proposes she shall be an absolutely free agent, possessed of all
knowledge necessary to freedom. That tour into India was only a part of
her education.”
“But I saw her as Samding receiving princes of the blood and being
almost worshiped,” Ommony objected.
“Education. Tsiang Samdup says she will be either flattered or hated
wherever she goes. He says the hatred will strengthen her. He wants to
be sure no flattery shall turn her head.”
“And those other girls?”
“They are to go free also, as and when she goes. Tsiang Samdup is
fabulously rich. He pays for everything in gold, although I don’t know
where he gets it. He has secret agents all over India—sometimes I think
they’re all over the world. He says wherever Elsa goes, she and the
other girls will be provided for and will find friends.”
“Where does he propose to send them?” Ommony asked, a wave of rebellion
sweeping over him. He was well schooled in self-control, but all the
English in him rose against the notion of his sister’s child being
subject to an Oriental’s whim. Education was one thing: heritage
another.
Hannah Sanburn laughed. The expression of her face was firm, and yet
peculiarly helpless.
“I am not to tell you that.”
“Why in thunder not? You have told so much, that—”
“If you were as used as I am, Cottswold, to trusting that grand old
Lama, and always discovering afterward that his advice was good, you
wouldn’t press the point.”
“My sister’s child—” he began angrily; but she interrupted him.
“Don’t forget: Tsiang Samdup saved the mother from death at the hands of
savages. It is thanks to him, and to nobody but him, that the baby was
born alive.”
“Yes, but—”
“Tsiang Samdup told me, and I believe him, that your sister put the
new-born baby into his arms and begged him to care for it as if it were
his own. She _gave_ him the baby with her dying breath.”
“What else could she do?” asked Ommony. “Poor girl, she was—”
“Yes. But she did it,” said Hannah Sanburn. “Can you name one instance
in which Tsiang Samdup has failed to keep trust to the limit of his
power?”
There followed a long silence, broken only by the faint murmur of
singing in a hall across the rear courtyard, the falling of burned wood
on the hearth, and the muttered barking of Diana chasing something in
her dreams. It endured until Diana awoke suddenly, sat up and growled.
There came a man’s voice from the front courtyard. Two or three minutes
later there was a knock at the door and a toothless old Sikhimese
watchman announced a visitor, mumbling so that Ommony did not catch the
name. A moment later Sirdar Sirohe Singh strode into the room, greeted
by thundering explosions from Diana, who presently recognized him and
lay down again.
The _sirdar_ without speaking bowed profoundly, once to Hannah Sanburn,
once to Ommony, then crossed the room and sat down cross-legged on the
floor, with his back to a corner of the fireplace at Hannah Sanburn’s
right hand, where his own face was in shadow but he could see both hers
and Ommony’s. Diana went up and sniffed him but he took no notice of
her.
“I have word,” he said gruffly, at the end of three or four minutes’
silence.
He seemed to expect comment.
“From whom? About what?”
The _sirdar’s_ amber eyes met Ommony’s. “You remember? When we met the
first time I said I was at your disposal to escort you to another
place.”
Ommony nodded.
“But I am not your superior.” (The _sirdar_ used a word that conveys
more the relationship of a _guru_ to his _chela_ than can be expressed
by one word in English; but at that, the significance was vague.) “Do
you _wish_ to come with me?”
In the West it would have been the part of wisdom to ask when, why,
whither? Twenty and odd years of India had given Ommony an insight into
arguments not current in the West, however. He did not even glance at
Hannah Sanburn.
“Yes.”
“I am ready.”
The _sirdar_ stood up. There was magic in the air. Diana sensed it; she
was trembling. Hannah Sanburn rose and placed herself between the
_sirdar_ and the fire, so that he could not pass her easily.
“Do you accept responsibility?” she asked.
The _sirdar_ nodded.
“Will he return here?”
“As to that I am ignorant. He will arrive there.”
“You will escort him safely to the Lama?”
Again the _sirdar_ nodded.
Hannah Sanburn moved and the _sirdar_ strode past her toward the door.
Ommony started to follow him, but turned, walked deliberately up to
Hannah Sanburn and kissed her, hardly knowing why, except that he
admired her and possibly might never see her again. She seemed to
understand.
“Good-by,” she said quietly. “If you reach the Ahbor Valley you’ll be
safe enough—only do what he tells you.” Then, divining his intention:
“No, take the dog. I would like her, but you may need her. The Lama said
so. Good-by.”
It was cold outside. Ommony tied on Diana’s sheepskin jacket, which was
hanging, cleaned and dried, from a peg in the hall. Below in the
courtyard the _sirdar_ turned and said abruptly:
“To your own room first.”
It was like being led out to be shot. In the gloom in the corner near
Ommony’s door a brown-robed Tibetan waited, carrying something on his
arm; Ommony seized Diana’s collar to keep her from flying at him. He and
the _sirdar_ followed Ommony into the room and waited while he lit the
candles; then the _sirdar_ struck a match and lit the overhead oil lamp.
“Where is Dawa Tsering?” Ommony asked suddenly.
The _sirdar_ smiled, showing wonderfully even teeth that suggested not
exactly cruelty, but the sort of familiarity with unavoidable
unpleasantness that surgeons learn.
“He will come with us part of the way,” he said in a dead-level tone of
voice.
Ommony bridled at that. It touched his own sense of responsibility.
“The man is my servant. What do you propose to do to him?”
“I am not his master.”
“You said ‘part of the way.’ What do you mean by that?”
“Wait and see,” said the _sirdar_.
“No,” Ommony answered. “I will lead no man into a trap. What do you
intend?”
The _sirdar_ spoke in undertones to the Tibetan, who tossed a bundle of
garments on the bed and left the room.
“You might save time,” the _sirdar_ suggested, pointing to the bundle on
the bed. His manner was polite, and more mysterious than commanding; he
undid the bundle himself and spread out a Tibetan costume.
“How about you?” asked Ommony, beginning to undress.
“I go as I am.”
Ommony put on the warm Tibetan clothes and examined himself in the
mirror—laughed—remarked that he looked like a monk whose asceticism
consisted in at least three meals a day. But he looked better when he
pulled on a cloth cap and threw a dark shawl over it. The _sirdar_,
walking around him, viewing him carefully from every angle, appeared
satisfied.
Then Dawa Tsering came, unaccompanied by the Tibetan, standing burly and
enormous in his yak-hair cloak, almost filling up the doorway.
“Thou!” he said, grinning as his eyes met Ommony’s. “Say to
Missish-Anbun she should return my knife to me. We go where there
_might_ be happenings.”
“Where do you suppose we are going?” Ommony asked.
“To that old Lama’s roost, I take it. Between you and me, Ommon_ee_, I
am glad to go anywhere, so be I get away from this place. My wife is in
Tilgaun and has sent two of her husbands to catch me and bring me to
her!”
The _sirdar_ grinned, watching Ommony’s face. “They practise polyandry
in these hills,” he remarked.
That was no news, although there was less of it around Tilgaun since the
Marmaduke influence had begun to make itself felt.
“Seven husbands are enough for her,” said Dawa Tsering. “I grew weary of
planting her corn-fields and being beaten for my trouble. I am for
Spiti, where a man can have as many wives as he can manage and _they_
fear _him_! Let us be off before that she-wolf’s husbands catch the two
of us, thou!”
Ommony nodded. The _sirdar_ put the lights out and led the way to the
outer gate, Dawa Tsering following, complaining bitterly about his
knife.
“I am ashamed, Ommon_ee_—I am ashamed to go back to Spiti without my
belly-ripper! Where shall I find such another as that? Get it for me! I
would pay its weight in gold for it—if I had that much gold,” he added
_sotto voce_.
Once outside the gate, though, he was much too eager to be going to fret
about anything else. The whites of his eyes showed alert in the
darkness. There were two ponies; he held Ommony’s, urging him to mount
in haste, then ran behind, slapping the pony’s rump, pursuing the
_sirdar’s_ beast, that cantered with a Tibetan clinging to its tail.
Diana circled around and around the party, barking.
“Thou! Command thy she-dog!” Dawa Tsering panted. “We go through the
village—she will awake my wife’s husbands—command her to be still, or
we are lost!”
_Oh, I went where the Gods are, and I have seen the Dawn_
_Where Beauty and the Muses and the Seven Reasons dwell,_
_And I saw Hope accoutered with a lantern and a horn_
_Whose clarion and rays reach the inner rings of hell._
_Oh, I was in the storehouse of the jewels of the dew_
_And the laughter of the motion of the wind-blown grass,_
_The mystery of morning and its music, and the hue_
_Of the petals of the roses when the rain-clouds pass._
_And so I know who Hope is and why she never sleeps,_
_And seven of the secrets that are jewels on her breast;_
_I stood within the silence of the Garden that she keeps,_
_Where flowers fill the footprints that her sandals pressed;_
_And I know the springs of laughter, for I trod the Middle Way,_
_Where sympathies are sign-posts and the merry Gods the Guides;_
_I have been where Hope is Ruler and evolving realms obey;_
_I know the Secret Nearness where the Ancient Wisdom hides._