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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'Black Light,' Talbot Mundy weaves a complex tapestry of adventure and mysticism set against the backdrop of early 20th-century colonial India. Combining vivid prose with intricate characterizations, Mundy explores themes of power, spirituality, and the clash of cultures. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of its protagonists as they navigate the perilous landscapes of both physical and metaphysical realms, reflecting the author's penchant for blending thrilling plotlines with philosophical inquiry. The literary style showcases Mundy's unique ability to infuse Eastern philosophies with Western sensibilities, creating a rich allegorical tale that resonates with readers fascinated by the interplay of light and darkness in human nature. Talbot Mundy, a British author and adventurer, drew inspiration for 'Black Light' from his extensive travels across Asia and Africa, alongside his keen interest in esoteric traditions and mythology. His life experiences as a journalist and explorer contributed a vibrant authenticity to the story, allowing him to capture the diverse cultures he encountered while contemplating the broader existential questions of life and fate. This novel is a testament to Mundy's deep understanding of the psychological and spiritual dimensions of his characters. I highly recommend 'Black Light' to readers seeking a multilayered adventure that transcends mere entertainment. Mundy'Äôs masterful storytelling and philosophical insights provide an enriching experience, urging readers to reflect on their own beliefs and the nature of existence. This book remains a compelling exploration of the shadows and illuminations that define the human experience.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Black Light
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I "Shall I sin, to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?"
There was no moon yet. The ponderous temple wall loomed behind Hawkes, a huge tree breathing near him, full of the restlessness of parakeets that made the silence audible and darkness visible; its branches, high above the wall, were a formless shadow, too dense for the starlight. Hawkes' white uniform absorbed the hue of smoke, a trifle reddened by the glow of embers.
"Come and try!" he remarked to himself, and retired again into the shadow, muttering: "I'd like to have some one try to buy me—just once."
No purchasers appeared, and he did not appear to expect any among the bearers of lanterns, like fireflies, who came unhurrying from the city —decent enough citizens—silversmiths and sandal makers, weavers, tradesmen not so virtuous, nor yet so mean that they might not glean a little comfort at a day's end, from the same hymn men have sung for centuries, until its words mean less than the mood it makes. They took no notice, or appeared to take none, of Joe Beddington who left his horse amid the trees three hundred yards away and strode by himself, so to speak, in the stream.
The citizens of Adana gathered in the clearing amid the trees, filled it and spread outward along the temple wall, extinguishing their lanterns because the priests, who are obstinate people, object to imported kerosene; and anyhow, there would be a full moon presently, so why waste oil? Joe Beddington, staring about him, strode through their midst and presently stood where Hawkes had been. Chandri Lal, a small lean cobra-charmer eased himself out of a shadow and laid his circular basket near Beddington's feet, studying the dying fire, speculating whether to blow that into flame or wait until the moon should rise above the temple wall. Hymn or no hymn, business is business; Chandri Lal had heard that all Americans shed money as clouds shed rain. He hoped Hawkes would not see him. He knew, to half an ounce, the weight of Hawkes' boot and the heft behind it.
Sergeant Hawkes came out of the shadow and saluted Joe, or rather he saluted about a hundred million dollars:
"Your mother decided not to come, sir? Just as well. She'd have got tired standing here."
"No," Joe answered, "mother would have tired us."
Hawkes changed the subject: "Let me tell you about this temple."
"You did. It dates back to a million B.C. Never been entered by any one not directly descended from somebody named in the Mahabharata. That's nothing. You should see our American D.A.R.s. They're going to censor the telephone book. Mother, you know, is a D. A. R. My father was more like yours —quite human—no rating, except in Bradstreet. Mother's folk came over on the Hesperus and did the red men dirt."
"They're going to start the hymn," said Hawkes.
"What are the words of it?"
"Quiet now. Tell you later. You know, sir, we're not supposed to be here; but the high priest is a decent fellow in his own way. When I sent him word there'd be a foreign visitor to watch to-night's ceremony he merely asked me to be here too."
Joe Beddington believed that no more than Hawkes did.
"You don't say."
Hawkes evoked some truth to justify prevarication:
"Yes, sir, even natives who aren't Hindus aren't supposed to witness this. Mohammedans, for instance—" "I get you. Like the accounts of a corporation—keep 'em esoteric. That's a dandy hymn. Hello— who's the man in vestments? Oh, my God!"
The edge of an enormous moon rose over the top of the wall and framed a robed priest in an aureole of mellow light; a platform high above the wall on which his bare feet rested had become a pool of liquid amber. An incredible star, in a purple sky, appeared to draw nearer and pause exactly over the crown of his head; subtly liquid high lights glistened on his robes and the shadows beneath him deepened into velvet mystery in which every dark hue in the spectrum brooded waiting to be born. It was exactly what the Norman stained-glass makers aimed at and almost achieved.
The confidingly plaintive minor chanting of the hymn ceased. Silence fell. One pure golden gong note—absolute A-major—stole on the night as if it were the voice of a ray of the rising moon. And then the priest's voice. In a chant that rose and fell like the cool wet melody of tumbling streams, unhurried, flowing because Law insists, he asserted what all Night knows and Man should seek to understand. There was no argument, no vehemence, no question. He propounded no problem—pleaded with neither violable principle nor erring ignorance. Whatever he had to say, it was so absolute that Beddington, to whom the words meant nothing, recognized the beauty and interpreted the essence, so that every fiber in him thrilled to the mystic meaning. It embarrassed him, like the sight of a naked woman.
Then another gong note. Caught into a shadow as if night had reabsorbed him, the priest vanished. The enormous moon wetted the temple roof with liquid light that overflowed until the clearing amid the trees lay luminous and filled with the kneeling forms of humans sketched, as it were, with violet pastel on the amber floor. They sang their Nunc Dimittis. Dark trees stirred to a faint wind, scented with the breath of ripened grain and cows in the smoke-dimmed villages. Leaves whispered the obbligato for the hymn. A little whirl of dust arose and walked away along a moonlit path. Hawkes' voice fell flat and out of harmony:
"They don't come out from the temple until the moonlight reaches a mark in the central quadrangle. They're performing a ceremony in some way connected with astrology or so I'm told."
"I'd give my boots to go inside and see," said Joe.
"Can't be done, sir. Nobody's allowed in—never. Do you see that Yogi?"
The ascending moon had bathed another section of the temple wall in soft light. Now a gate in the wall was visible and—to the right, beyond cavernous darkness where the wall turned outward sharply and a high dome cast its shadow—there was an outcrop of the curiously layered and twisted green-gray rock on which the temple foundations rested. It formed vague Titan-steps and a platform backed against the masonry. There was what looked like a giant beehive on the platform. A man sat beside it, naked except for a rag on his loins. He had gray hair falling to his shoulders and a white beard that spread on his breast.
"That man used to be the high priest of the temple. He is famous all over India for his astrology, and that's strange, because he won't tell fortunes; or perhaps he will, perhaps he won't, I don't know; he refused to tell mine."
"How much did you offer him?"
"He won't take money."
"How does he live?"
"Temple people feed him. Pilgrims, all sorts of pious people, bring him little offerings of food. He gives away most of it. That Yogi would surprise you, sir. Talks good English. Traveled—France, England, the United States. Some say he can talk French and German. But there he sits day after day, and says nothing. I'll bet you he'd say less than nothing if he knew how. Maybe he does. How old do you suppose he is? There's records— actual official records."
"He doesn't look so specially old," said Joe.
"The moonlight is a bit deceptive. The natives say he is more than two centuries old.* I'm a Christian myself. I believe the Bible all right. But I can't persuade myself that in these days people live to be as long in the tooth as Abraham."
[* Instances of extreme longevity are not unknown among Indian ascetics. See Mukerji's account in the Atlantic Monthly of the Holy Man of Benares whom authentic official records certify to have been more than two centuries old. He died quite recently. ]
The moon grew less dramatic—smaller in appearance but more searching, as it rose above the temple; its mellow amber faded; masonry and men's garments took on a grayish hue; the Yogi-astrologer sat motionless —a graven image posturing against the wall, not moving even when a woman, whose black sari was hardly darker than her skin, came forth from a shadow and bowed in the dust at his feet.
Joe Beddington strolled toward the Yogi. Chandri Lal, captain of emasculated cobras, stirred himself to seize an opportunity; he followed at a half-run, leaning forward, with his basket in both hands ready to be laid before Joe's feet. Joe scorned him:
"Nothing doing. I've seen scores of snake acts." Suddenly a foot leaped forth from darkness. The basket went in one direction, cobras in another. Hawkes' swagger-cane descended sharply, semi-officially, as it were, without personal malice, on Chandri Lal's naked shoulders.
"Git, you heathen! Git the hell from here! Use judgment! Showing off snakes in this place is as bad as a Punch-and-Judy show in church. Now mind, I've warned you! One more breach of blooming etiquette, and-—" Chandri Lal picked up his basket and followed the trail of his snakes in the dust. The woman at the Yogi's feet implored some favor from him, elbows, forehead, belly in the dust, beseeching mercy. Joe watched. The Yogi made no response. Joe spoke at last, producing money:
"Old man, will you tell my fortune?"
The Yogi met his gaze. There was almost a minute's silence, broken at last by a passionate outburst from the woman. Then the Yogi's voice, calm as eternity—only startling because he used such perfect English:
"That is what she—this ayah also wants."
"Why not tell her?"
"If it were good for her to know, she would know; there would be no need to tell her."
"Tell mine. How much shall I pay you?"
"Do as you will with your money."
Joe held out twenty rupees. Chandri Lal drew nearer; he could smell money as well as see it through perplexing shadow.
"Give it to that ayah," said the Yogi.
"Why? Oh, all right—here you are, mother, your lucky evening —take 'em." Joe dropped the rupees in the dust before her nose and Chandri Lal pounced, but Hawkes' boot served for a danger signal, so he backed away again. Blubbering, the ayah stowed the money in her bosom.
"Come on, tell," said Joe. "I'm waiting."
"You have paid the ayah," said the Yogi. "Let her tell you."
Joe grinned uneasily. "Stung, eh? Serves me right. I should have known you can't tell fortunes any more than I can."
The Yogi seemed indifferent, but in a sense Hawkes' honor was concerned since he was acting showman:
"Hell, he can tell 'em. They all come to him—high priest— pilgrims—bunnias—he tells some—some he doesn't. If he tells, it comes true."
"Bunk!" said Joe.
"Why should I tell you?" asked the Yogi suddenly. "Should I sin to satisfy your itch for what you have no right to?"
"How about the ayah, then? You told me to ask her. How if shesins?"
"Who shall say she sins? If she tells what she neither knows nor not-knows, what harm can happen? Nothing to strain Karma's entrails. Knowledge is one thing—speech another. There is a time for speaking, and a time for silence. That which brings forth action at the wrong time is not wisdom, though it may have knowledge."
"Half a mo', sir, half a mo'—excuse me," Hawkes remarked and stepped aside into a shadow. Suddenly his fist struck like a poleax and a man went reeling backward on his heels—fell—struggled to his feet, and ran, leaving his turban behind him. Hawkes pointed to the turban. "Hey, you—there's a present for you."
Chandri Lal pounced on the turban and thrust it into the basket with the snakes, then changed his mind and tried to sell it to the ayah.
"Bastards!" Hawkes informed the wide world, chafing his right knuckles.
"Possibly—even probably," remarked the Yogi. "But did the blow correct the accident of birth?"
"It weren't intended to," Hawkes answered. "It was meant to cure that swine of sneaking in the dark where he ain't invited. Do you call that sinful?"
"Not a big sin," said the Yogi. "But you shall measure it at the time of payment. Who knows? It may have been a good sin—one of those by which we are instructed. Few learn, save by sinning. He—that man you struck —he may learn also."
"I'll learn him," Hawkes muttered.
"You pack quite a wallop," said Joe. "What had he done to you?"
"Nothing, sir." Hawkes took him by the arm and led him to where the temple cast the darkest shadow. It felt like being led by a policeman across Trafalgar Square; in spite of silence and the peculiar vacancy of moonlight there was a remarkable feeling of crowds in motion—unexplainable unless as a trick of the nervous system. On the way, jerkily through the corner of his mouth, Hawkes hinted at a sort of half-embarrassment:
"The Book says turn the other cheek. But that was Jerusalem. This is India."
"So you don't believe in theories from books?"
"Theories, sir? They're funny. Any of 'em might be all right if we all believed 'em. But a one-man theory is like a one-man army—only good if you can keep it quiet. I'm a one-man army. There's a theory I'm a fusileer, belonging to a battalion at Nusserabad. But I'm no theorizer. So I'm here on special duty, drawing double pay and doing nothing except enjoy life."
"Doing nothing?"
"A bit of everything. I'm supposed to be learning languages. I'm instructor in fencing and fancy needlework to British officers of native regiments. That's to say, I pick out gravel from their faces and forearms when they skin 'emselves riding to pig. They half of 'em can't ride, but they've all got gizzards; so they fall off frequent. Gravel leaves a bad scar unless it's cleaned out careful. Scars spoil luck with women. So instead of sweating in a barracks I stay here—and to hell with the King's Regulations."
"Don't you do any regular work?"
"Not me, sir. Now and then I'm loaned to teach a Maharajah's butler how to mix drinks—I'm a genius at that. And on the quiet, now and then I do a little propaganda."
"Secret service, eh?"
"No, sir. Not a secret in my system. Quite the contrary. Officers wish for promotion. I'm an expert in promotion. Have to be, since I'm paid by results. I invent ways for making 'em famous—famous, that is, in the proper quarter; it's useless to try to sell a black pig in a white pig market. That's a stool, sir—care to sit down—nautch procession won't be here for half an hour yet."
Beddington sat on the stool and suddenly became aware, by means of other senses than he knew he had, of people near him. The darkness seemed alive with living shadows that he could neither hear nor see—an uncanny sensation that made the hair rise on his neck. However, he controlled himself.
"Who are they?" he demanded in a normal voice.
"Troopers from the native Lancer regiment. And I'll bet they're jealous. Didn't they see me give that bloke from Poonch a bloody nose? They're laying for him. I step in and wipe their eye. You can't beat that for competition. Come here, Khilji—meet a gentleman from the United States."
One after another, seven shadows emerged into the semi-darkness, took shape and saluted—big men—white teeth gleaming in the midst of black beards. He addressed as Khilji, grinning, imitated Hawkes' use of his right fist; then, out of sheer politeness, because Beddington might not otherwise understand, he added a remark in English:
"Hah-hah! Saucy bastards are the men from Poonch! You Hawkes, you taught him something."
"Yes," said Hawkes, "I poonched him. He was lucky. You men would ha' killed him. That would have cost you about six months pay apiece to hire a substitute to take the blame. You ought to pay me a commission for saving you all that money."
"Eh-eh, you Hawkes!"
Men became shadows. Shadows melted into darkness. Silence.
"You seem well acquainted here," said Beddington.
"By nature, sir, I'm like a terrier. I snoot and sniff around and pass the time o' day with all and sundry. Time I'm through, I know the news— and which dog I can lick if I have to—and where the likely pickings are in back yards. Yes, sir, I believe I know these parts as thoroughly as some folk."
"Care for a drink?"
Beddington produced a flask, a self-defensive habit that he had adopted since prohibition. It enabled him to pose as normal, which he was not. It relieved him of the burden of making conversation. One drink—then straight to the point although he had noticed that it did not work so well in foreign lands. For instance, Hawkes stared, straining his eyes in the dark as he drank.
"Hot stuff, sir."
"Yes, I've no ice."
"Sir, I meant wonderful stuff."
"Have another. Do you drink much?"
"No, sir. Can't afford it. Three or four drinks and I'd lose if I bet to-morrow was Friday. I like drink, but I like prosperity more. When I've time on my hands I snoot around and see things."
"Could you undertake a private investigation for me?"
Hawkes struck a match to light his pipe; he used the match adroitly. Beddington understood:
"It's on the level. But it's personal and private."
"Money in it?
"Yes. Whatever's fair." It was Beddington's turn to watch Hawkes face. The first match had failed; Hawkes struck another and cupped it in his hands. But a face is a mask if a man is a rogue. Beddington judged better by the tone of voice and phrasing of the answer.
"All right, sir, I'll be frank too. If it's unlawful, the answer's no. If it's dirty, it's no. If it's merely risky—yes, provided the pay fits the risk. If it's difficult, so much the better."
"It probably is difficult. I want to find some one whose name I don't know, and whose age I can only guess approximately. She may be dead, but if she is I want to see proof. She may know who she is; she may not."
"Woman, eh? White?"
"United States American of Scotch, Welsh and Irish ancestry."
"Age?
"Roughly, twenty-one."
"Present information?"
"None whatever—except that her parents died in this district, of cholera, about twenty-one years ago."
Hawkes whistled—sharp—flat—then natural. There was a distinct pause. Then, in a normal voice:
"Sounds vague enough. I can try, sir."
"The parents of this child had a Goanese butler—a man named Xavier Braganza—who also died of cholera. But before he died he told a Catholic missionary and several other people that the native wet-nurse —the ayah as he called her—had carried the child away and vanished. But—and this is about all the clue we have—he added that the ayah was an idolatrous heathen without a trace in her of any sort of virtue, who would probably keep the child in hiding until old enough for sale."
"About twenty-one years ago, sir, this district was almost wiped out by cholera. Nearly all the white officials died. Records got lost and stolen —some o' them got burned—the dacoits came down from the hills and plundered right and left, taking the cholera back with 'em, so that it spread into Nepaul. Almost anything a man can think of might have happened."
"There's one reason why I want this search kept quiet. Possibly the child was sold into a harem or something worse. If so, and we find her, it might be a lot too late to help her. Do you understand me? There might be legal difficulties, even if her character weren't rotted to the core. It might be useless or even cruel to give her a hint of who she is."
A quarter-tone change in Hawkes' voice suggested alertness and a vague suspicion: "Any money coming to her?"
"Of her own? No. Her mother, though, was my mother's youngest bridesmaid. There was a very strong friendship between them. If this girl should be found, and should prove to be not too far socially and morally sunk my mother would see to it that she should never lack for money."
"Hell's bells! Fairy godmothers are always other people's luck," said Hawkes. "Myself, I was an orphan once, and butter wouldn't have melted in my mouth, I was that sweet and guileless. Any one who'd claimed me might ha' raised me for a duke and done a proud job. I could ha' rolled in millions and done credit to the money. However, they raised me in a London County Council Institute, and it weren't a bad place either. When I was old enough I was sent to sea on a training-ship, to the tune of a heap o' blarney about Nelson o' the Nile—and Admiral Sir Francis Drake—and Britain needs no bulwarks. I served three years apprenticeship, and I'm still wondering what Nelson found that made life tolerable. So I quit the sea and joined the army—and here I am, what might have been a millionaire, if only millionaires had sense and knew a promising orphan when they see one. Hide up now, sir.—Nautch is coming."
"Why hide?"
"Well, sir, it's like some husbands with their wives. The husband knows —you bet he knows, but all he asks is not to catch her at it; he's conventional, but he's tolerant; so, if she'll give him half a chance, he'll look the other way. Same here; there are about as many eyes in this here dark as there are mosquitoes; they know we're here, and it's against their law and custom; but they're good, kind-hearted folks, so if we act half respectful o' their prejudices they'll take care to seem to look the other way. Get right down in the ditch, sir—no, no snakes, I saw to that—if you should lie on that piece o' sacking and set your elbows on the bank you'll get a good view."
A gong sounded and Hawkes knocked his pipe against his boot to empty it. There came a surging of excitement from the trees, where probably a thousand Hindus shuffled for position. They seemed to try to make-believe they were in hiding, as if tradition had made that a part of the ritual; they resembled a stage ambush. The moon had risen until shadow of dome and wall were short enough to leave a dusty road uncovered, pale, with undetermined edges. The temple wall where the Yogi sat beside his beehive hut was already bathed in light and the Yogi no longer looked like a bas-relief, nor even like a statue; he sat motionless, but he looked human, although indifferent to the woman who lay flat on the earth in front of him still sobbing her petition:
"Speak, thou holy one, thou man of wisdom!"
In a side-mouth whisper Hawkes interpreted her words to Joe.
Music—strange stuff that made Joe Beddington's spine tingle —music with a rhythm no more obvious at first than that of wind in the trees or water flowing amid the boulders of a ford. It was several minutes before the musicians appeared from around the curve of the high wall— a group of about twenty men in long loin-cloths, naked from the waist up, not even marching in step but nevertheless appearing to obey one impulse. On either side of them, in single file, walked a line of lantern bearers with the lanterns hung on long sticks. There were only two small drums; the remainder were weird wind-instruments, creating a timeless tune that seemed to have no connection with another system of sounds from an unseen source, which nevertheless insisted on the ear's attention and in some way emphasized the melody.
Then came priests—not less than fifty of them, draped in saffron colored linen but each man's naked belly gleaming in the moonlight. They bore all sorts of mysteries of many shapes, including some that resembled chalices of jeweled gold. There were censers, too, and a reek of incense made from pungent gums whose smell stirred imagination more commandingly than ever pictured symbols did. More lantern bearers in a group—and then the sistra and some things like castanets, creating that sea of sound which underlay and permeated the music. It was pleasing but not satisfying; it stirred an unfamiliar emotion and awakened nerves not normally self-assertive. Beddington spared one swift glance along the lane of moon-white dust and saw that the music had stirred the waiting Hindus to the verge of hysteria; they were leaping like shadows of flames on a wall; he himself felt an impulse to do something of the sort. Only a habit restrained him. His will urged. He wanted to do it.
"Ever hear of magic?" Hawkes asked in a whisper. "That's it. But that's not half of it. Watch what's coming."
In one sense it was utterly impossible to watch what came; the eye refused obedience; it was hypnotic motion controlled with such consummate skill that it stirred more psychic senses than the onlooker ever knew he had. Instead of seeing about a hundred dancing women draped in filmy pale-blue stuff like jeweled incense smoke, and chanting as they danced, their bare feet silent in the dust, their ankles clashing with golden bracelets, Beddington's imagination leaped to grapple with those mysteries the dance was meant to symbolize. It was no dance in the ordinary meaning of the word, and yet it made all other dancing seem like stupid repetition of a common catch-phrase. This was as exciting and elusive as the flow of life into the veins of nature. It was as maddening as a fight between strong men or as the sea-surf pounding on a moonlit reef. It was as difficult to watch as one wave in a welter with the wind across the tide. Its movement seemed inevitable— timed—yet so much more than three-dimensional that no one pattern could include it and no eye could define its rhythm. Something in the fashion of the firefly dance, it seemed to link the finite with the infinite.
Beddington forced himself to speak. He was afraid of his own emotions and aware of impulse to obey them. Down the lane of moonlight he could see the Hindus making, as he phrased it, asses of themselves. He did not propose to let hysteria swallow him too.
"My God, Hawkes, I've seen a temple nautch or two, and durbar nautches by the dozen. They were all the bunk. I'd heard of things like this but— this is beyond reason. It's-—" "Impossible, ain't it?" said Hawkes. "But it's true all the same. And it's nothing to what goes on inside the temple."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, I've heard tell."
Hawkes was lying, and Joe knew it, but he let that pass. He had an eye for line and color and an ear for music; vaguely he had always thought the three were varying aspects of one supersensual phenomenon, but now he understood it —though he could not have told how he did. He was in the grip of excitement that made him want to laugh and cry and swear, all in one meaningless spasm. There was more beauty visible at one time, forced on his attention, than his untrained senses and his prisoned intellect could endure without reeling. He could hear a voice that might, or might not be his own —he did not know, chanting in Greek elegiacs, lines from Homer's Iliad that he had not looked at since he left the university. And then climax —perfect and beyond words incomparable.
Borne on a litter by four white bulls, on a throne beneath a peacock canopy formed by the spread of the bird's tail, sat the high priest in his vestments, bearing in his hands a globe of carved crystal containing a light like a jewel. At each corner of the four-square platform of the litter stood a young girl as if supporting the canopy. One breast of each was showing. They were draped in crimson filmy stuff that dimmed while it revealed their outlines. The four bulls and their burden were surrounded and followed by a waving mystery of peacock-feather fans and colored lights that inter-blended in the smoke of incense and the rising dust. They appeared to be towed, bulls and all, by the stream-like motion of the nautch-girls, as if magic had harnessed poetry by unseen traces, guiding it with reins invisible. Then, like a guard of nature forces, four by four, a hundred priests came marching, each disguised in mask and robe suggesting one of the four mystic elements of Fire, Air, Earth and Water. Silence. Dust ascending in the moonlight. And then Hawkes spoke:
"They'll be back about three in the morning. Would you swap that for the stage o' Drury Lane, sir? It don't mean nothing to me. And yet it means so much that I feel like turning pious. It's the thirteenth time I've seen it. Twice I saw it in the monsoon, with the girls all slick and wetted down with rain until the lot of 'em seemed naked—mud as slippery as oil, and not a foot set wrong—wind and rain in their faces—moon under the clouds and branches blowing off the trees. They liked it, if a grin means anything. What would you say it all means?"
"Damned if I know." Joe crawled out from the ditch and straightened himself, rubbing an elbow that had "gone to sleep" from resting on the sun-baked earth. "They probably don't know either. The meaning of things like that gets lost in the course of centuries. Do you suppose all those red jewels glowing on the high priest's robe are genuine rubies?"
"So they say, sir. Why not?"
"Who is that?"
Hawkes hesitated, and disguised the hesitation by spitting into the embers of the fire.
"There's all sorts, sir, connected with the temple."
A woman—quite young, if the set of her shoulders and the grace of her motion were any criterion—came along the path the procession had taken. She was heavily veiled. As she passed the Yogi she saluted him with both hands to her eyes, but he took no notice.
The ayah knelt to her, murmuring what seemed like praises and, seizing the end of her sari, pressed it to her lips. She took a little notice of the ayah —not much. She seemed more inclined to notice Hawkes, but Hawkes deliberately turned his back toward her. Joe laughed.
"Scared of women?"
"Can't be too careful, sir."
Six of the native troopers strode forth from the shadow, halted, formed up two deep, waited for the girl—then, one of them giving the gruff command, they trudged off, two in front of her, four following. She might have been their prisoner, except that the escort looked too proud, and she too sure of herself. It seemed to Joe that she was staring at him through her veil; however, he, too, thought it better to be careful. He walked over to where the Yogi sat as motionless as stone and stared at him instead.
The ayah clutched at Joe's legs, imprecating or else begging, it was hard to tell which. Chandri Lal ran forward to prevent her, but the Yogi stopped him with a monosyllable.
"What does she want?" Joe asked him.
The Yogi answered in English: "She wants instruction."
"Why not give it to her?"
The Yogi stared—smiled—spoke at last, in a deep voice, rich with humor:
"Give? Do you give always what is asked? o' man from Jupiter!"
CHAPTER II "You are an egg that is about to hatch"
Joe stared. The Jupiter Chemical Works, of which his mother owned control by virtue of a trust deed drawn with much more foresight and determination than the Constitution of the United States, is notorious and he understood that perfectly. He was used to seeing his name in newspapers that denounced him one day as a wealthy malefactor and the next day, when he made a donation to something or other, praised him as a pioneer in the forefront of civilization—so used to it that he had ceased to laugh. He had ceased, too, to concern himself about it, having long ago learned that the son of a trust deed drawn by his mother's lawyers in her favor is as helpless as the husband of a reigning queen. He could not even hire and fire the men who wrecked the company's rivals, bribed and blackmailed politicians, cheated law and obliged him to take public blame for what they did, while his mother banked the dividends. He understood the hatred and the flattery of crowds, and could even sympathize. But it puzzled him that a nearly naked Yogi, all those thousands of miles away from New York, should know his business. It was like a slap in the face.
"Why do you call me that?" he demanded.
"The strongest line on your forehead is that of Jupiter," the Yogi answered. "It is long, strong, straight—and it is deepest when you smile, which is as it should be. But you were born with the rising sign of Gemini. If it had been Aries, no mother, nor any woman, nor any combination of men, however masterful, could have held you fettered. Even as it is, you are no woman's plaything."
Joe shrugged his shoulders. He was not his mother's plaything, simply and only because she did not know how to play. She had no more sense of fun in her than Clytemnestra; no more lyrical delight in unreality than a codfish. Owner of banks and trusts and factories, all did her bidding or else learned the discontent of being toads under a roller.
And he could swear on his oath, as a man who had tried it, that astrology was stark, unmitigated bunk. He had studied it, using Newton's method. For his own amusement he had tried it on the rhythmic rise and fall of stock exchange quotations, and he found it rather less reliable than broker's tips, or than the system with which idiots lose their money at Monte Carlo.
"Smile!" said the Yogi. "Always smile when we ignorant folk offend your honor's wisdom!"
Hawkes intervened. As showman for the night he felt his pride involved again. "Say," he objected, "has some one fed you lemons? Here's a gentleman who's acted generous. He's paid his money, no matter who you gave it to. Now act honest and do what he paid for. Tell his fortune."
"Do you demand that?" asked the Yogi, staring at Beddington.
"Tell hers," he answered. The ayah was clutching his ankles again.
"I will tell it to you," said the Yogi. "It was you who paid, and it is true I accepted the money, although I did not keep it. Should you in turn tell her what I tell you, that is your responsibility. I advise—I warn you not to, that is all."
"How in hell can I tell her? I don't know her language."
"Telling what should not be told—and hell—are as cause and effect," said the Yogi. "She is a fool, that ayah. You will look far for a fool who has greater faith and charity. But who can make a fool wise?"
"Are you wise?" Joe asked him.
"No," said the Yogi, "but wiser than she is—and wiser than you, or you would not have asked me. That fool—that charitable, faithful fool desires to know what shall become of her child, who now no longer is a child, but full grown and aware of the blood in her veins, and of her sex, and of the sin of inertia. A riddle is better than speech misunderstood, so I will speak in riddles. This shall happen to her: a war within herself—a worse than ever soldiers wage with bayonets. She shall be torn between the camel of her obstinacy, the horse of her ambition, the mule of her stupidity, and the elephant of her wisdom. When those four have pulled her enough apart, a devil may enter into her, or ten devils—or perhaps a benign spirit —who knows? It depends on at least a hundred thousand million influences, each one of which in former lives she wove into her character. Do you understand that? No, of course you don't. Nevertheless, I have answered you. So go away and think about it. Doubt it—deny it—believe it—mock—swear—take or leave it—it is all one to me. I have told you the truth."
Chandri Lal was whispering to the ayah. Apparently he knew English— possibly enough to misinterpret what he heard. At any rate he understood the ayah and her hunger for information, which was hardly keener than his own craving for money. She had money.
"Heavenborn," he began, "Holy one!" Then, seeing that the Yogi took no notice of him, he addressed Hawkes in the vernacular. Hawkes, nothing loath, interpreted:
"He says," said Hawkes, "that ayah wants to know, shall her child be a queen—a royal ranee?"
"Tell her," suggested Beddington.
"She can be," said the Yogi. "I have cast her horoscope. If she is brave, she can be a queen over herself. She has resources and a struggle is impending. Nay—I will say no more. I am in debt to that fool woman for necessities. Shall I repay her with speech that will stick like a barb in her heart? Shall I use my wisdom to unbridle folly? Nay, nay. There is a time for silence."
He relapsed into silence as solid as concrete. He exuded silence. He was its image, its expression. Even the ayah ceased from importunity, since even she in her hysteria could recognize finality. She began to abuse Hawkes, including Joe within the scope of a tempest of words.
"What does she say?"
"She accuses you and me, sir, of having stopped that Yogi just when he was coming to the point. She says for you to take your money back, it's bad-luck money."
Joe turned away. He felt he had had enough of unreality for one night, yet he grudged returning to the real. The ascending moon, grown pale, was whitening walls and blackening the shadows; even he himself felt like a bone-white ghost, the more so because his foot-fall made no sound in the dry dust. He knew that to talk to his mother would produce a sort of psychic anticlimax that he could not explain, and for which she would have no sympathy. It was at such moments that he knew he hated her; the hatred was kin to fear; the fear, if not prenatal, something she had fastened on him with her will when he was a suckling. At the age of eight and twenty a man had no right, he knew, to be under any one's dominance. He had an iron will of his own; he was notoriously uncontrollable by any one except his mother. Her stronger will, compelling his, was what enabled her, unseen, to guide the destinies of interwoven trusts so intricate that even governments were helpless to prevent.
It was only at night, and at times like this when life seemed like a dream, that he was really conscious of the grudge he owed his mother and of a secret sense of shame that he must obey her always. True, he had often resisted her. He could withstand her tantrums. The bludgeoning abuse with which she browbeat servants, secretaries and even the firm's attorneys to obedience, made no impression on him. He could laugh. It was when she was quiet and determined, when she grew kittenish and motherly by turns, and above all when she pretended to need his advice that he grew aware of the numbness somewhere in his conscience and an impulse to obey her that was irresistible. He had long ago ceased to attempt to resist that.
It had been only to oblige his mother that he undertook this idiotic search for some one who, for all the proof he had, had not been born. They had nothing but rumor to go on, and a twenty-year rumor at that. It was one of his mother's incredible lapses into sentimentality that she mistook for philanthropic zeal.
Such thoughts flash through a man's mind in a moment. Habit, as it were, presented them en masse, along with their product in the shape of disgust and an impulse to escape from them. Activity of mind or body was the only possible way of escape—learn, discover, do something—now, swiftly. That accounted for Joe's sudden forays at a tangent after odds and ends of stray clues into other people's business—swift questions that made some men think him an inquisitive butter-in; while others thought the habit indicated some form of degeneracy, as if he could not concentrate on one thing at a time.
"Why did you hit that Poonchi?" he demanded, turning disconcertingly on Hawkes. "Who is he?"
Hawkes resented it, yet hardly cared to show resentment—yet at any rate. Only those who meet millionaires every day of their lives understand that there is nothing to be gained by yielding to their arrogance; and besides, as a soldier, the habit of answering all questions promptly was as well developed in him as evasiveness was; he could answer questions fluently and instantly but keep the essential information to himself.
"A spy of the Rajah of Poonch-Terai."
"Has he any right here?"
"Damned if I know. A man's rights in this country are mostly what he can get away with. If he'd been up to no mischief he'd have hit back, he wouldn't have run."
"Have you any idea what sort of mischief?"
"That's not difficult to guess, sir."
"Guess for me. I'm curious."
"Sir, when a man lurks in the shadows where he's uninvited, and runs when he's hit, you can bet he was after either plunder or a woman. Where's the plunder hereabouts? He'd have hit back, wouldn't he, if it had been his own woman or a woman for himself that he was after? Q. E. D. he was a pimp; it'd be sinful not to chase him off the lot."
"Did you say he belongs to the Rajah of Poonch-Terai? But Poonch-Terai is several hundred miles from here."
"Maybe, sir. But the Rajah isn't. He's what they call a Maharajah— a nineteen-gun salute man so rich he needn't trouble himself to pay his debts."
"You mean that spy was trying to get women for him—for his harem?"
"Draw your conclusions. Why not? They're always doing it. The Rajahs haven't much else to think about. They've other folks to collect the taxes for them and rule their district. They can't play polo and get drunk all the time. They pretty soon get weary of a woman, so they're always wanting new ones; and if there happens to be one they can't get, that's the one woman in the universe they've got to have."
"And that's why you're here?"
"Me and those Bengali troopers."
Joe smiled. Hawkes stiffened.
"Which of you loves the lady?"
Soldiers have to learn to sweat their tempers; only generals may grow apoplectic; Hawkes, as a sergeant, grinned appropriate complaisance and instantly made up his mind to take the one revenge available to a poor man faced by a rich one's impudence. He could bleed him. He could act the sycophant and make it pay. The point Joe had missed, and that Hawkes knew he had missed, was a certain vaguely evasive element of mystic chivalry connected with that night-watch by a British sergeant, several Indian troopers and, to make the mixture triply unconventional, a Yogi. What Joe had probably forgotten, if he ever knew it, was that the poor have a way of despising the rich for what they regard as ignorant ill-manners.
"Did you wish me to look for that girl you spoke about, sir?
"Yes. You've one chance in a hundred million."
"Make it worth my while, sir."
"Very well. A thousand if you find her."
"A thousand pounds, sir—right-o, that's fair enough." Beddington had meant rupees; Hawkes knew that. "I'll have to hire a spy or two as well, sir, and I can't afford to pay them out of pocket. I suppose you'll pay legitimate expenses? If you can let me have some money now, sir— ?"
Joe gave him three hundred rupees in paper money.
"Thanks, sir. I'll account for it, of course. The district collector asked me to bring you up to his bungalow afterward. If you'll wait half a minute while I explain to those troopers, I'll see you on your way, sir."
But Joe had sensed the intention to lay siege to his pocketbook. The rich like being "worked," when they are aware of it, about as keenly as eels like being skinned alive. Generosity is one thing, submission to extortion something else.
"No thanks. I know the way. I'll walk. Will you tell the sais to take my horse home?"
"Very well, sir. Do you mind telling Mr. Cummings that I offered? Otherwise he might not understand."
Joe nodded, too displeased to trust himself to speak. Cummings had ordered him spied on, had he? What did the ass suspect him of? Souvenir hunting? Sacrilege? "I wonder," he thought, "who invented the lie that Government service develops genius? They're most of 'em pay-roll parasites, who'd be a failure in any other walk in life—grafters or else incompetents —or both."
The midnight of a wave of discontent submerged him. He was far more of a poet than a pirate—hated piracy, from too intimate knowledge of his mother's methods—hated most its subtler intricacies—liked open black-jack methods better as more honest. In such moods a poet is gloomier than any other mortal; and the gloomiest of poets is one who is tied to the chariot wheels of a Jupiter Chemical Works and a bank, by the spidery threads of a trust deed. Worse yet, when the spider in the center of it is his mother, because he must rebel, in despair, against nature herself who has ruled that a filial instinct shall be sometimes overwhelming, and maternal instinct not invariably sweet with the odor of selflessness.
"Damn!" he remarked aloud, and turned toward the Yogi for a last stare. Suddenly he strode into the pool of moonlight in front of the rock where the Yogi sat apparently in meditation. "Old Man—or ought I to call you Holy One?"
"Like unto like," said the Yogi. "Call me what you feel like calling me, that I may know you better. What you see in me is a reflection of that part of you that you desire to hide from others; the remainder of me is, to you, invisible."
"Be generous then. Show me some of it."
"I can't," said the Yogi. "Can I educate you in a minute? It has taken me not less than a million lives on earth to learn the little that I know now. That little does not include the art of changing you instantly into a seer."
"I'm blue," said Joe. "I'm as blue as a hungry nigger. You seem to enjoy life. How do you do it?"
"If you can see that I enjoy it, that is something."
"Come on, take a peep into my future. I'm about desperate. I feel like putting a bullet into my brain. Nevertheless, I know I won't do that."
"Are you afraid to?"
"No. If I were afraid I'd do it, I'd so despise myself for being afraid. I can't see anything ahead for me but more and more melancholy—more and more of a kind of existence I hate, with less and less chance to escape it. To put it bluntly I'm in hell."
"O man from Jupiter!"
"That's what you called me before. What do you mean exactly?"
"You would not understand if I told you. In part, I mean this: Jupiter —Gemini rising: a disturbing influence. You are in hell, to make you boil and put forth. You are a thunder-bolt that might, indeed, be quenched amid a seething sea of trouble; but no umbrella nor any information can withstand you. You are an influence that will burst into another's life. And you will raise that other to an equal height with yours, or you will struggle upward to that other's height, or you will strangle yourself and that other, like two camels caught in one rope."
"When?"
"You are at the threshold."
"I feel as if I had my back toward hope and ambition and were wandering off into a wilderness."
"You are an egg that is about to hatch. The tight shell yields."
"Yogi, I feel like Orestes. You know who he was? He slew his mother."
"That Greek legend is a symbolism and an allegory. Orestes destroyed a tyranny, not a woman; and the hounds of his conscience were changed into heralds of happiness."
"But Clytemnestra died," said Joe.
"As I might also, did I interfere with thunderbolts," the Yogi answered. "Listen to me: Darkness is the womb whence Light is born. No-hope is the matrix out of which Hope burgeons. Discontent is a growing pain; it is the pangs of roots imprisoned in clefts of a rock that shall crush them or be burst asunder. Cowards cry out and shrink and their roots die under them. But strong souls reach into the Silence for more energy, though it brings more pain; they seek relief from pain by bursting that which hurts. It is they whose branches ultimately reach the sky and become a cool bower such as the birds of Wisdom love."
"Am I a coward?" Joe asked.
"You have been. What you are now is your own affair. And what you shall be is the outcome of what you do with what you are; it is the consequence of what you are and what you do. You have my leave to go and leave me to my laughter at the simpleness of things."
CHAPTER III "Cut me off and set me free. I'll be so grateful..."
The dusty moonlit road toward Cummings' bungalow led between slattern walls and ill-kempt gardens, through a grove of trees that had been blackened by the fires of vagrants and nibbled by goats into naked poverty —on past cheap pretentious cottages of Eurasians—past shuttered shops and littered byways where the Christians did business and a Catholic chapel, neat and lean and hungry-looking, raised a crucifix above a white iron roof. Then past the park, so called, where a caged tiger lay dreaming of life with his paws through the bars and his white teeth agleam in a grin of despair made monstrous by the moonlight. On past the club and the tennis courts—the mean hotel "for Europeans only," in a compound in which white-clad servants slept like corpses under trees that cast mottled shadows.
Joe was conscious of being followed. He supposed that the man with the basket of snakes, and the ayah, were taking advantage of his company for the protection it might give them; they kept far enough behind him not to intrude, near enough to be heard if they should cry for help, walking one on each side of the road like ghosts who did not like each other but were wafted on the same slow wind. He glanced over his shoulder at them only once or twice, afraid that if he glanced too often they might take that for an invitation to draw nearer. It occurred to him once that they might be spying on him. He stopped to see if they would stop. But they came on, so he dismissed the thought and continued on his way, his shoes white with dust and his thoughts black with boredom.
He resented being bored, it seemed so stupid. He knew that with his tastes and spiritual equipment he should find life fascinating. He was offended because he did not—even more offended because he vaguely understood the reason, and whose fault it was.
"There's nobody to blame but me," he muttered. Nevertheless, he knew that to throw up everything and leave his mother to find some other vizier of her despotism, would solve nothing. Running away would merely substitute for his mother's tyranny an even more degrading one of laziness and fear. It was not business he dreaded. He well knew there is poetry in commerce, art in high finance and music in the melody and flow of manufacture; as a matter of actual fact, and with only a few exceptions, he had found the conversation of artists even more platitudinous and dull than that of his business intimates.
"Bankers, bishops, band-wagon conductors—painters and musicians —doctors—scientists—politicians—writers —nearly all of 'em are paralyzed by public opinion. It kills 'em if they dare to stick their head out of the herd-thought and—got it, by God! I've got it! My mother is herd-thought individualized!"
