The ninth vibration and other stories Part 12

I turned from her. The serpent was in Paradise. When is he absent?

On one of the terraces a man was beating a tom-tom, and veiled women listened, grouped about him in brilliant colours.

"Isn't that all India?" she said; "that dull reiterated sound? It half stupefies, half maddens. Once at Darjiling I saw the Lamas' Devil Dance--the soul, a white-faced child with eyes unnaturally enlarged, fleeing among a rabble of devils--the evil pa.s.sions. It fled wildly here and there and every way was blocked. The child fell on its knees, screaming dumbly--you could see the despair in the staring eyes, but all was drowned in the thunder of Tibetan drums. No mercy--no escape.

Horrible!"

"Even in Europe the drum is awful," I said. "Do you remember in the French Revolution how they Drowned the victims' voices in a thunder roll of drums?"

"I shall always see the face of the child, hunted down to h.e.l.l, falling on its knees, and screaming without a sound, when I hear the drum. But listen--a flute! Now if that were the Flute of Krishna you would have to follow. Let us come!"

I could hear nothing of it, but she insisted and we followed the music, inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill of the mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. And Vanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all hearts must adore, even as the herd-girls adored him in his golden youth by Jumna river and in the pastures of Brindaban.

Next day we were climbing the hill to the ruins where the evil magician brought the King's daughter nightly to his will, flying low under a golden moon. Vanna took my arm and I pulled her laughing up the steepest flowery slopes until we reached the height, and lo! the arched windows were eyeless and a lonely breeze blowing through the cloisters, and the beautiful yellowish stone arches supported nothing and were but frames for the blue of far lake and mountain and the divine sky. We climbed the broken stairs where the lizards went by like flashes, and had I the tongue of men and angels I could not tell the wonder that lay before us,--the whole wide valley of Kashmir in summer glory, with its scented breeze singing, singing above it.

We sat on the crushed aromatic herbs and among the wild roses and looked down.

"To think," she said, "that we might have died and never seen it!"

There followed a long silence. I thought she was tired, and would not break it. Suddenly she spoke in a strange voice, low and toneless;

"The story of this place. She was the Princess Padmavati, and her home was in Ayodhya. When she woke and found herself here by the lake she was so terrified that she flung herself in and was drowned. They held her back, but she died."

"How do you know?"

"Because a wandering monk came to the abbey of Tahkt-i-Bahi near Peshawar and told Vasettha the Abbot."

I had nearly spoilt all by an exclamation, but I held myself back. I saw she was dreaming awake and was unconscious of what she said.

"The Abbot said, 'Do not describe her. What talk is this for holy men?

The young monks must not hear. Some of them have never seen a woman.

Should a monk speak of such toys?' But the wanderer disobeyed and spoke, and there was a great tumult, and the monks threw him out at the command of the young Abbot, and he wandered down to Peshawar, and it was he later--the evil one!--that brought his sister, Lilavanti the Dancer, to Peshawar, and the Abbot fell into her snare. That was his revenge!"

Her face was fixed and strange, for a moment her cheek looked hollow, her eyes dim and grief-worn. What was she seeing?--what remembering? Was it a story--a memory? What was it?

"She was beautiful?" I prompted.

"Men have said so, but for it he surrendered the Peace. Do not speak of her accursed beauty."

Her voice died away to a drowsy murmur; her head dropped on my shoulder and for the mere delight of contact I sat still and scarcely breathed, praying that she might speak again, but the good minute was gone. She drew one or two deep breaths, and sat up with a bewildered look that quickly pa.s.sed.

"I was quite sleepy for a minute. The climb was so strenuous. Hark--I hear the Flute of Krishna again."

And again I could hear nothing, but she said it was sounding from the trees at the base of the hill. Later when we climbed down I found she was right--that a peasant lad, dark and amazingly beautiful as these Kashmiris often are, was playing on the flute to a girl at his feet--looking up at him with rapt eyes. He flung Vanna a flower as we pa.s.sed. She caught it and put it in her bosom. A singular blossom, three petals of purest white, set against three leaves of purest green, and lower down the stem the three green leaves were repeated. It was still in her bosom after dinner, and I looked at it more closely.

"That is a curious flower," I said. "Three and three and three. Nine.

That makes the mystic number. I never saw a purer white. What is it?"

"Of course it is mystic," she said seriously. "It is the Ninefold Flower. You saw who gave it?"

"That peasant lad."

She smiled.

"You will see more some day. Some might not even have seen that."

"Does it grow here?"

"This is the first I have seen. It is said to grow only where the G.o.ds walk. Do you know that throughout all India Kashmir is said to be holy ground? It was called long ago the land of the G.o.ds, and of strange, but not evil, sorceries. Great marvels were seen here."

I felt the labyrinthine enchantments of that enchanted land were closing about me--a slender web, grey, almost impalpable, finer than fairy silk, was winding itself about my feet. My eyes were opening to things I had not dreamed. She saw my thought.

"Yes, you could not have seen even that much of him in Peshawar. You did not know then."

"He was not there," I answered, falling half unconsciously into her tone.

"He is always there--everywhere, and when he plays, all who hear must follow. He was the Pied Piper in Hamelin, he was Pan in h.e.l.las. You will hear his wild fluting in many strange places when you know how to listen. When one has seen him the rest comes soon. And then you will follow."

"Not away from you, Vanna."

"From the marriage feast, from the Table of the Lord," she said, smiling strangely. "The man who wrote that spoke of another call, but it is the same--Krishna or Christ. When we hear the music we follow. And we may lose or gain heaven."

It might have been her compelling personality--it might have been the marvels of beauty about me, but I knew well I had entered at some mystic gate. A pa.s.s word had been spoken for me--I was vouched for and might go in. Only a little way as yet. Enchanted forests lay beyond, and perilous seas, but there were hints, breaths like the wafting of the garments of unspeakable Presences. My talk with Vanna grew less personal, and more introspective. I felt the touch of her finger-tips leading me along the ways of Quiet--my feet brushed a s.h.i.+ning dew. Once, in the twilight under the chenar trees, I saw a white gleaming and thought it a swiftly pa.s.sing Being, but when in haste I gained the tree I found there only a Ninefold flower, white as a spirit in the evening calm. I would not gather it but told Vanna what I had seen.

"You nearly saw;" she said. "She pa.s.sed so quickly. It was the Snowy One, Uma, Parvati, the Daughter of the Himalaya. That mountain is the mountain of her lord--s.h.i.+va. It is natural she should be here. I saw her last night lean over the height--her face pillowed on her folded arms, with a low star in the mists of her hair. Her eyes were like lakes of blue darkness. Vast and wonderful. She is the Mystic Mother of India.

You will see soon. You could not have seen the flower until now."

"Do you know," she added, "that in the mountains there are poppies of clear blue--blue as turquoise. We will go up into the heights and find them."

And next moment she was planning the camping details, the men, the ponies, with a practical zest that seemed to relegate the occult to the absurd. Yet the very next day came a wonderful moment.

The sun was just setting and, as it were, suddenly the purple glooms banked up heavy with thunder. The sky was black with fury, the earth pa.s.sive with dread. I never saw such lightning--it was continuous and tore in zigzag flashes down the mountains like rents in the substance of the world's fabric. And the thunder roared up in the mountain gorges with shattering echoes. Then fell the rain, and the whole lake seemed to rise to meet it, and the noise was like the rattle of musketry. We were standing by the cabin window and she suddenly caught my hand, and I saw in a light of their own two dancing figures on the tormented water before us. Wild in the tumult, embodied delight, with arms tossed violently above their heads, and feet flung up behind them, skimming the waves like seagulls, they pa.s.sed. Their s.e.x I could not tell--I think they had none, but were bubble emanations of the rejoicing rush of the rain and the wild retreating laughter of the thunder. I saw the fierce aerial faces and their inhuman glee as they fled by, and she dropped my hand and they were gone. Slowly the storm lessened, and in the west the clouds tore raggedly asunder and a flood of livid yellow light poured down upon the lake--an awful light that struck it into an abyss of fire.

Then, as if at a word of command, two glorious rainbows sprang across the water with the mountains for their piers, each with its proper colours chorded. They made a Bridge of Dread that stood out radiant against the background of storm--the Twilight of the G.o.ds, and the doomed G.o.ds marching forth to the last fight. And the thunder growled sullenly away into the recesses of the hill and the terrible rainbows faded until the stars came quietly out and it was a still night.

But I had seen that what is our dread is the joy of the spirits of the Mighty Mother, and though the vision faded and I doubted what I had seen, it prepared the way for what I was yet to see. A few days later we started on what was to be the most exquisite memory of my life. A train of ponies carried our tents and camping necessaries and there was a pony for each of us. And so, in the cool grey of a divine morning, with little rosy clouds flecking the eastern sky, we set out from Islamabad for Vernag. And this was the order of our going. She and I led the way, attended by a sais (groom) and a coolie carrying the luncheon basket.

Half way we would stop in some green dell, or by some rus.h.i.+ng stream, and there rest and eat our little meal while the rest of the cavalcade pa.s.sed on to the appointed camping place, and in the late afternoon we would follow, riding slowly, and find the tents pitched and the kitchen department in full swing. If the place pleased us we lingered for some days;--if not, the camp was struck next morning, and again we wandered in search of beauty.

The people were no inconsiderable part of my joy. I cannot see what they have to gain from such civilization as ours--a kindly people and happy.

Courtesy and friendliness met us everywhere, and if their labor was hard, their harvest of beauty and laughter seemed to be its reward. The little villages with their groves of walnut and fruit trees spoke of no unfulfilled want, the mulberries which fatten the sleek bears in their season fattened the children too. I compared their lot with that of the toilers in our cities and knew which I would choose. We rode by s.h.i.+mmering fields of barley, with red poppies floating in the clear transparent green as in deep sea water, through fields of millet like the sky fallen on the earth, so innocently blue were its blossoms, and the trees above us were trellised with the wild roses, golden and crimson, and the ways tapestried with the scented stars of the large white jasmine.

It was strange that later much of what she said, escaped me. Some I noted down at the time, but there were hints, shadows of lovelier things beyond that eluded all but the fringes of memory when I tried to piece them together and make a coherence of a living wonder. For that reason, the best things cannot be told in this history. It is only the cruder, grosser matters that words will hold. The half-touchings--vanis.h.i.+ng looks, breaths--O G.o.d, I know them, but cannot tell.

In the smaller villages, the head man came often to greet us and make us welcome, bearing on a flat dish a little offering of cakes and fruit, the produce of the place. One evening a man so approached, stately in white robes and turban, attended by a little lad who carried the patriarchal gift beside him. Our tents were pitched under a glorious walnut tree with a running stream at our feet.

Vanna of course, was the interpreter, and I called her from her tent as the man stood salaaming before me. It was strange that when she came, dressed in white, he stopped in his salutation, and gazed at her in what, I thought, was silent wonder.

She spoke earnestly to him, standing before him with clasped hands, almost, I could think, in the att.i.tude of a suppliant. The man listened gravely, with only an interjection, now and again, and once he turned and looked curiously at me. Then he spoke, evidently making some announcement which she received with bowed head--and when he turned to go with a grave salute, she performed a very singular ceremony, moving slowly round him three times with clasped hands; keeping him always on the right. He repaid it with the usual salaam and greeting of peace, which he bestowed also on me, and then departed in deep meditation, his eyes fixed on the ground. I ventured to ask what it all meant, and she looked thoughtfully at me before replying.

"It was a strange thing. I fear you will not altogether understand, but I will tell you what I can. That man though living here among Mahomedans, is a Brahman from Benares, and, what is very rare in India, a Buddhist. And when he saw me he believed he remembered me in a former birth. The ceremony you saw me perform is one of honour in India. It was his due."