The House of Fulfilment E-Book

Elizabeth Louisa Moresby

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The spiritual romance of a soul in the Himalayas. An Englishman in India is so influenced by a group of converts to Buddhism that he travels to a monastic retreat in Tibet in the search for spiritual enlightment. The author, also known as E. Barrington, purports that the supernormal happenings in this romance novel are true and are founded upon the ancient Indian philosophy of Upanishads. Moresby was already sixty years old by the time she started writing her novels, which commonly had an oriental setting, and then became a prolific author. She wrote under various pseudonyms, depending on the genre. She was also known as Elizabeth Louisa Beck, Eliza Louisa Moresby Beck and Lily Moresby Adams.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER I

It was in the most unlikely place in the world that I heard of the Dunbars. When you were in Simla you might go to the Mainguys every day for a month and hear no other subject mentioned but the scandal of the place, which at Simla looms large, various and engrossing. Indeed the aggregated scandal of India–meaning of course all that concerns the governing race–rises like the smoke of an especially black and acrid nature to the Simla heights, and hangs thick in the pines on Jakko. It not infrequently gets into your throat and chokes you. But the Mainguys.

Their bungalow, perched on the steepest cliff that a house could cling to, teeth and claws, without sliding down the abyss into bottomless depths beneath, was where all the gup (gossip) centered. People sat in the veranda looking out level with a blue sky cloudless as ocean itself, over measureless leagues of country far away below, fading into phantasmal beauty where it mingled with the horizon edge, and there, drinking pegs and smoking myriad cigarettes, they hacked reputations to bits, devouring them with relish and flinging the mangled remnants down the gorge. A cannibal feast at best and seasoned with much sniggering and chuckling.

But one went there even if it bored one stiff, for really Mainguy and his wife were good fellows in their way, and had no prudish scruples either about the deeds or personalities of the victims they served up–rather liked them than otherwise for the run they gave them. And besides, those two had more knowledge of India in its byways, its short cuts and incidentally its prices than any other two in the Peninsula. So that if you were planning a trip, shikari or otherwise, anywhere from Cape Comorin to Kashmir, you went to the Garden of Allah (as they humorously called their diggings) and got enough knowledge to start a guidebook.

That was my errand on this particular day. I found Mrs. Mainguy on the veranda embowered in creepers thrusting magnificent orange trumpets like a blare of sound in at every crevice of the trellis. I don’t know what it was but to this day when I smell a scent heavy as yellow honey and as sweet, a blaze of orange breaks and I see Blanche Mainguy attired in a violent trousered negligée of orange and purple, lying in her long chair, propped upon orange cushions to match, an iced “peg” in the receptive wicker hollow beside her, smoking cigarette after cigarette and sending a reputation to flutter down the gulf with each one.

That veranda was a difficult place for weak heads to stand. There was but a plank between you and perdition, so to speak, and the railing so rotten that a kick would have sent it flying in flinders down the abyss. But for the Mainguys, who had ridden six-inch paths in the Himalayas with a blank precipice up on the one hand and down on the other, it was nothing to hang poised in mid-heaven. They slept there in hot weather.

“And I walk in my sleep. Bad conscience and too many cigarettes, you know!” she said that day. “And some night Lyle will wake up and find me hovering on the railing, and then–”

“What? A push?”

“That depends on how I’ve been behaving. But listen, Car. You’re talking about a painting trip up to the back of beyond in Little Tibet–Well, I’ve got the very person here to give you all the tips. She’s having tea with her Excellency and–”

“She?” I ejaculated. “A woman? Never. Not where I want to go!”

She tossed the butt of her cigarette over a foam of orange trumpets, and I saw it eddy like a white butterfly down–down–down–and disappear.

“She knows more than that! My good man, have you never heard of the Dunbars? Lucia Dunbar? They go everywhere in Asia! Come now, you must!”

“Never, on my soul! And why on earth should I? And why do they go everywhere in Asia?”

“Well, considering that she and Lance Dunbar are rolling in riches, and could have everything the world offers and yet go off and live in a temple in China and a sort of log house up in the mountains in Kashmir, one would think you might know something about two such March hares!”

“And still I don’t know!” I retorted. “You’d better give me the points so that I can place her before she bursts upon me.”

“Bursts! God pity the daft! She’s the most gently flowing, harmonious thing in all the world, like the gray evening moths that float about these flowers. She’s–”

“But who is she?” I almost shouted.

“Gowk! Did you never hear of Lord Rostellan–the last earl, a stony broke Irish peer with an unspeakable reputation with women? She was his only daughter, and her wicked old aunt Lady Polesden married her at eighteen to a man as bad as her father–Hubert Sellenger. She endured it for ten years and then divorced him. Her friends insisted. Come, you must have heard of him?”

Yes, I had heard of him. Most men had. I remembered very well how his wife had divorced him after indescribable miseries, and he had died and she had married–whom?

“Lance Dunbar. He came in for his cousin’s money–that delightful other Lance Dunbar who wrote a book called “Sundering Seas’–a queer highbrow thing I never could read. Anyhow he went west in the war, and the other Lance got his money and turned Buddhist–”

“Good Lord, why?” I interjected. To me it gave much the same impression as hearing he had turned Mormon. I hadn’t the faintest notion of what was implied. Nor for the matter of that had she.

“Ask me another! How do I know! Anyhow he married Lucia Sellenger and they live in a Chinese temple and a log house in Kashmir.”

“He in one and she in the other? Well, that’s quite the fashionable modern marriage.”

She went off in one of her shrill mirthless chuckles.

“Gosh, no! They’re the pattern pair of the universe. She’d seen quite enough of that sort of thing with Rostellan and Sellenger to give her a violent liking for propriety. Their life in the wilds is the queerest romance you ever heard of–all magic and mystery and extraordinary natives and spooky people. But the loveliest house you ever saw, and she’s like–a dream.”

She didn’t say this in the conventional way that calls a new hat, a new cocktail, a dream. Her voice dropped on the word as if she meant it. Then she chuckled again.

“Don’t I just know–You’re thinking, “Isn’t it absolutely creamy that a woman like that should be putting up with little Blanchie?’ So it is–and I don’t suppose she’d ever have absolutely rummaged creation for me, but she’s a kind of cousin. Rostellan was my father’s first cousin, and I used to stay there long ago. She’s younger than I am. A little over thirty now. By the way, she’s a cousin of her Ex’s too. The Rostellans were related to everybody.”

“Still, she sounds a little out of drawing in Simla,” I said cautiously. “What’s she here for?”

“To meet some Canadian girl that is going up with her to Kashmir. Now if you really are going up that way yourself, though I should have thought there was enough in India to keep you in water-colors for the rest of your life, why not–”

A soft movement in the drawing-room, and the gaudy striped palampores dividing it from the veranda parted. A woman stood between them, worthy of a better frame.

She was all in gray, wearing a long chain of gray moonstones, with faint blue and golden lights swimming in them. Her hair, turned back winglike from the pale oval of her face, was feathered with silver though she looked a young woman. This, with features clear-cut as a gem, gave her a most arresting air of distinction emphasized by a sensitive mouth and gray eyes in a deep shadowy setting of black lashes. Shadowy–that was the word that expressed her–twilight, dusk, quiet as a dream. She brought that atmosphere with her. It was a new note in the gonging of the red and blue palampores and Blanche Mainguy’s orange cushions and vociferating costume of orange and violet trousers and coat.

“Come on, Lucia!” she shrilled. “Here’s a case for first aid. This is Hew Cardonald–Lady Lucia Dunbar–and–oh, but do sit down and be chummy. He wants to get up somewhere beyond Ladakh into the mountains for shooting and painting. He’s simply landscape-mad and has made a success already. I’ve told him you know every inch of the place. Now don’t you? Doesn’t Lance? Start away by calling him “Car’ as I do. Let’s be friends.”

Her voice–voices interest me–was twilight too, like the running of a very little stream in darkening woods. After Blanche Mainguy’s it sounded like a low song and inspired inward delight that can never be spoken. She settled into a chair at the edge of the veranda, laying an arm on the railing, and immediately the mountains and azure distance of earth and sky became a noble background for her slender throat and finely poised head and the grace of her long folded limbs. It reminded me of a picture in the Uffizi Gallery–St. Catherine–she of Siena–dreaming on the red city wall with nothing above or around but deep measureless blue–the formless infinity of her vision. I had done some portraits in water-color and pastel, not wholly bad, and at that moment my whole being resolved itself into a wish to paint her after my own fashion–as I saw her. The very name of the portrait–for all my pictures had names that came with them–flashed on me. But I will tell that later.

Why dwell on these things? I want to get on to what matters–to where this extraordinary story really begins. But there are preliminaries not to be passed over.

She was kind and interested at once, offered me her husband’s help, invited me to break the long trek at their house in the pine woods above the Sind River where the track goes up from Srinagar to the heart of Asia. Clearly and concisely she gave me the information I wanted, and turning to my art talked of the landscape work of the great Chinese and Japanese artists and of her collection until I forgot time and place in the fascination of the subject and her own. And Blanche Mainguy smoked and smoked, her vivid, ugly face twinkling into mischief as she saw me caught in the strong toil of graciousness which, to people more in the world than I, had been irresistible from the beginning.

“Lucia, you humbug!” she interposed with a grin. “When you know you hate shooting beasties as much as you love painting, and think every man a butcher that kills so much as a bird! Why are you helping him in his iniquities?”

She beamed into the bright tranquillity of a smile.

“People do what they must at the point where they stand. You know I never preach, Blanche. And I’m sure when Mr. Cardonald gets up among the mountains he’ll give nothing else a thought.”

She stopped, the smile deepening in her eyes–how shall I describe it?–like one holding back a secret of enchantment that must not be loosed lest misunderstanding should brush the butterfly’s dust off its feathers. And I began to understand a little. After all, I am an artist first and the rest nowhere, and this woman had the key of the fields as well as I. If we could only get rid of Blanche Mainguy, who cared for none of these things! Providence was good to me.

A grave servant appeared between the palampores with all the dignified melancholy of the best Indian manners.

“My tailor!” And off went Blanche Mainguy to the conference. I wondered what on earth the man would think of Englishwomen when those trousers dazzled his view. Lady Lucia looked after her and caught my thought, laughing audibly.

“Do you know how kind she is? I wonder how many people do! I could tell you lovely things about her. But to return–Satshang is the place for you. The mountains and mountain valleys there are beyond all description, and in Ladakh the rainbow colors of the lower mountains are incredible. Nothing I have ever seen does them the least justice, and Alam Khan is the ruler. We were up camping there and saw a great deal of him, and afterwards when he fell ill he came down to our guest-house to be nursed.”

This was heaven’s own luck. I questioned eagerly.

“About twenty-eight, and you’ll like him. He lives in the queerest old castle-fortress perched in mountains jagged like a lion’s teeth. Pure romance. Our guest-house? Oh, we have two. One for Hindus. One for Mohammedans. All sorts of people come and go, and each guest-house has servants of its own faith. Europeans stay in the house with us. Yes. We have a little hospital too. I trained as a nurse, and I have a woman who helps. You can’t think what a blessing it is among these people far away from all doctors. They come right down to us from all sorts of places. I think it will amuse you to see it.”

I thought so too. There was something so new about the notion, the remoteness, and yet people of all nationalities coming and going–an unrivaled opportunity for seeing below the surface. The curse of Asia is that a European man travels, gets civility, sees the outside of the picture, and there is halted. “Thus far and no farther” is on every Asiatic face about you. Unless–yes, indeed, unless–Suppose one had this soft graciousness, this exquisiteness of manner, which would appeal to the inherent Asiatic law of stately behavior–why, then, one might get through the barred door and into wonderland. Fool I might be, and no one admitted it more cheerfully than myself, but I knew what I was–and that’s not a bad step-off into the depths. To be sure that Asia is a sealed book is an excellent check to hasty opinions and definite conclusions. But I did not yet know that no man can paint Asia who does not know her soul as well as her face and love the two in one.

Every minute I watched her more keenly. She had a certain air of strangeness as of thoughts and goals very different from any I had met before.

I wanted to understand–they stirred the deep-down something in me which had always been more or less in the way of my work, something weary and discontented, touched it with a faint promise of some dim life stirring in roots that had never grown. Again I say the strangest thing in the world to meet at the Mainguys’ house in Simla. So I listened but watched as she talked of the wild woods and rushing mountain rivers, talked like the very soul of them–a few words only, but to my mind perfect ones. Her cool sweetness embodied all that the mind of man has dreamed in sky-cold heights and forests–Dryads, Oreads; and I did not know why, for neither then nor at an infinitely wiser moment did I know that she was beautiful as men reckon beauty. But she was what beauty means–she had the same effect on the something below and beyond feeling. I can answer for that. One remembered, longed–but not for her.

In my heart I was desperately searching for courage to ask if I might paint her; but what found its way into speech was a banal supposition that she was in Simla for a change–to see life again. She shook her head laughing.

“Life! You little know the life we have at Baltar! We have every sort of change up there. I have come to meet a girl, Canadian, but of Danish birth. Her name is Ingmar. She is coming in along the Simla-Tibet Road from somewhere near the Shipki Pass.”

“A nurse?” I ventured.

“Oh, no! She has been studying”–she stopped as if she had been about to say more than was allowed, and went on smoothly–“studying with some people near the Tashigong Monastery. She arrives tomorrow.”

Again I fail in description, but everything she said was like moonlight hovering on a dark forest. Even the deep clanging name of the monastery suggested the mysteries within; let us say–lovely, grotesque, terrible creatures moving in the dark with eyes intent on things we can never know. It enthralled me–secret as a nest of nightingales, a hidden song.

I summoned up a gleam of courage and ventured a step further.

“Lady Lucia, you interest me enormously. May I ask what you are working at, at Baltar?”

She looked at me with perfect simplicity.

“For one thing we work at the science of mental concentration. Did you happen to read Keyserling’s “Travel Diary of a Philosopher’? No? It was really interesting. Well, he was very much struck with the mastery of concentration in India and said it should be taught in all the schools of the West. It has wonderful consequences. It–”

Suddenly I had a sense of repulsion as from something pretentious and insincere. Not in her, Heaven knows. Not the most egregious ass could look into those limpid eyes and doubt. Her expression was transparent–clear unwavering truth itself. But one knows the jungles of charlatanry that attend the modern occult, and she might be a dupe and the young Canadian a fraud. I saw her in her beautiful house at Baltar the prey of greedy charlatans hastening from East and West to make their market of the rich gullible woman. Suddenly she smiled, answering my doubt. Did she know–could she?

“No–it really is not that kind of thing at all. Come and see. You’ll like it.”

A hurried entry, Blanche Mainguy, red with anger.

“That brute–that Wali Mohammed! He’s cut my green and gold satin so tight that I can’t sit down. Could you think men would be such fools? Lucia, if you sit there looking so calm, I shall scrag you. I smacked him hard in the face! And serve him right!”

There was no smile then; she spoke as eagerly as a hurt child.

“Blanche, you shouldn’t! His people live near us and they are delightful. You would love them. The father brought me a brick of Tibetan tea the other day–and his mother is the loveliest old woman. A great Chinese painter who is with us is painting her. Oh, Blanche!”

I can see her grieved eyes now, but can never describe the oddity of the incident. She made the people human at once, brimming with interest and attraction, and Mrs. Mainguy atrocious but instantly disarmed. The worst of European life in India–in Asia–is that it reduces native life to a cipher–a mere background, let us say. Now it became terrible that Blanche Mainguy should have smacked the man in the face. Rather an incredible sort of happening. She felt it herself, and groaned with despairing rage.

“Lucia, you’re a damned nuisance. If you get all Asia on our conscience like that, life will be a pest. What’s one to do with all the fools and worse about us? And just now when they don’t respect us a bit as they did and would be at our throats if they dared! Lyle says we have to assert ourselves.”

“They’re perfectly charming to me–one and all–the most beautiful manners in the world. Never mind, Blanche dear. If it’s spoiled I have a wonderful pheran of Bokhariot silk, deep-sea blue and colors playing on it like a peacock’s breast. You shall have that. It came over the passes a few months ago from one of the little chiefs beyond Leh.”

“You goose! One can’t help loving you, and yet you’re the greatest idiot in the universe, and all these natives play upon you like–I don’t know what.”

She threw her arms about her cousin and gave her a resounding kiss–Lady Lucia like a sweet child half laughing, half startled in the rough embrace.

“They know I love them!” she said when she could speak.

I got up to go–ashamed to find how long I had stayed.

“Brynhild Ingmar and I leave the day after tomorrow,” she said. “And we shall be so glad if you will come to Baltar. No need to write beforehand. There’s always room and I promise that you’ll find wonderful things to paint.”

I remember Blanche Mainguy escorted me to the door. “Isn’t she a dear? There never was anyone who didn’t adore her. But I always think anyone could take her in, and I have it in my bones that this Ingmar woman is coming to fatten on them. I never like these foreign adventurers.”

To Blanche Mainguy Canada and India were alike foreign. Indeed you must be English–and a Londoner, for choice–to be recognized as human. I laughed, and went slowly along the steep road pondering. That visit had given me much to think of. It had made things easier for my plans–yes. But it had also been something entirely fresh, had touched dusty unused chords which at present gave out a confused jangle of uncomfortable sound–opened a glimpse into worlds not realized. It was quite clear that I must see more of the Dunbars. Men said he was a good fellow, never thrust his queer views upon you, and if I had not been afraid of being a little at sea in such unusual company I should have felt nothing but pleasure in the encounter. Well–they could not freeze me to the bone if I only stayed a week or so, and the whole thing would be a queer experience.

I dined that night at the Viceregal Lodge, and she was there also. It was a great occasion–a royal visitor and so forth–and Lady Lucia wore her diamonds, her hair in a Greek knot bound with a starry fillet. Her profile against a gold brocade curtain was so exquisite that hiding in shadow I made a note on my shirt-cuff and prayed for memory when I got back. She looked a being of another race among the crowd of pretty bobbed, shingled, marceled women, and a line of poetry came and went in my head as I watched unweariedly: “She moved a goddess and she smiled a queen.” Yet with it all, the simplest and happiest of anyone there.

She had known the prince in London, which was perhaps why he divided his attentions between her and his hostess. But I thought his taste excellent. Graciously at home with Royal Highnesses she was equally at home with their Excellencies’ governess, who slipped timidly into the ballroom afterwards with the pretty flapper of the house–a golden-haired Lady Lettice. I was quick to notice that she dispatched a would-be partner of her own to dance with Miss Lyon, and it set me on dancing with the girl myself and leading the talk in the direction that interested me most. I had my reward.

“Lady Lucia Dunbar? Oh, no one in the world like her. She had me up at Baltar and nursed me when I was down and out with malaria–nursed me herself. But not a dull kind of a saint–no, not a bit. A great lady all the time. She can freeze the wrong kind of people stiff–you should see her!–but as simple, as natural–Isn’t she lovely? And yet I suppose not a bit beautiful–except her hair and eyes. Asked you there, has she? Then I advise you to go. You’ll see things–hear things–No, I won’t attempt to describe it. It changed my life. The most beautiful place. Her Ex loves Lady Lucia but he doesn’t quite understand her. I don’t know who does.”

She did not dance yet was the center of a laughing group nearly all the time. I might have thought her one of them, if I had known no more, but that once a young Indian prince came up to her, and they moved together to one of the wide flower-filled windows, and stood talking for a few moments. He raised his hand and pointed to the far-away hills, and her eyes followed with an expression–how can I define it?–a homing dove near the end of a long journey–the content of absolute certainty. They understood each other, and his face, darkly beautiful, for a moment reflected her expression. They were in the same vibration; I, outside. If it be said I watched her all the evening, I admit the truth. I did.

CHAPTER II

Two days afterwards I met Blanche Mainguy and her husband riding in Annandale and, seeing talk in her eye, I dismounted under the deodars. She was a beautiful horsewoman and looked very much better in coat and breeches than in her appalling lounging kit. Her vivacious ugliness was really attractive under the shifting lights and shades of those glorious trees. Mainguy and his horse were one also.... They looked a steady-going English pair in those surroundings.

“And when are you off?” she hailed me. “And where?”

“Tomorrow. Kashmir.”

“To the Dunbars?”

“Of course. Didn’t you settle it yourself?”

She made a grimace. “Didn’t I warn you? Don’t I warn you now? Lucia Dunbar and her entourage–not to mention Lance–get hold of people in the most amazing way. Nobody’s the same after they’ve known them. They cease to be good fellows and become–”

She halted for the right word, and I suggested, “Prigs.” She meditated.

“Not exactly. Worse–and better! I’ll diagnose more clearly when I see you after you’ve undergone the process. I only hope they don’t get hold of the prince. I heard him saying he would dearly like to run up to Baltar. It gave me the creeps. Imagine if he returned a yogi!”

Mainguy burst into one of his sudden guffaws, making his horse start and sidle. “He might! That woman can do anything with anybody. Did you ever see the pretty Canadian, Cardonald?”

Mrs. Mainguy sniffed. “Pretty indeed! That’s not the word. She’s like a cold-storage marble bust of a young Greek empress.”

“They hadn’t empresses!” Mainguy interjected.

“Never mind. That’s what she looks like. They lunched with us before starting, and then we all went up to Observatory Hill to say good-by to her Ex. I give you my word Miss Ingmar never uttered a word all the time except to refuse the cutlets. I said to Lucia, “My goodness, you have got hold of a lemon this time! Don’t ask me to Baltar while that young lady’s around!’”

“Did she agree with you?” I asked curiously.

“She laughed and asked me to come up in the summer. She never says anything but just what she pleases, and does the same. If she wants you to marry the Canadian you’ll do it as sure as you stand there.”

It was my turn to laugh then. I knew too much of life to contemplate marriage with any interest, and except in the anatomical sense was conscious of a vacuum where the heart should be. A man whose nearest relations are a bunch of cousins and not attractive ones at that hasn’t had the right drill for heart development. I told her so and she nodded with a grimace.

“That’s all right! People all say the same sort of thing, but it invariably ends in the same way–they do what Lucia wants. I tell you there’s something uncanny up at Baltar. That’s all right too, but it would have been better for you if you’d been inoculated at eighteen. Dine with us before you go? So sorry! Well, at all events write and tell us what you think.”

I promised vaguely and stood watching while they cantered off laughing and talking loudly. My next visitors beneath the deodars were their Excellencies, riding alone and enjoying the cool sunshine, shading into deep green light like sea water under the innermost boughs. They also pulled up, and their talk also was of Baltar. It seemed to me that all the world was thinking of Lucia Dunbar, and naturally the talk would be as different as the talkers. Her Excellency, fair, wholesome, a little unimaginative, but “good bread” all through as the French say, had a different angle from Blanche Mainguy’s.

“Happy person! So you are going to Baltar! I want to go of all things. Colonel Hutchinson was there the other day and he says it is the most extraordinary thing he ever saw in his life. The most wonderful quiet.”

“Considering who is the guiding spirit that’s scarcely surprising,” his Excellency put in. “I have known Lady Lucia since she was two and–well, she doesn’t grow on every bush. Do you go on up into Little Tibet afterwards?”

I told him yes, and that I had a permit for the Hunza country, and we talked awhile of that and other things; and then they too went off, she leaning down and saying earnestly, “My love to her. My dear love,” as the horses put on speed.

Well, these are the preliminaries! My story really begins when after reaching the Happy Valley of Kashmir and to my mind the loveliest spot of the world, surrounded by its snow peaks, I began camping up from Gunderbal at the mouth of the Sind Valley. One talks of valleys there, but the Happy Valley itself is over five thousand feet above sea-level, and the mountain valleys with their tumbling rivers are a climb into the higher heights through pine woods to the lonely and sparkling snows.

I had hired the usual ponies and their men, and my personal servants led the van with me; and so, in due patriarchal order, we went up by the river, camping the first night at Kangan and beyond that in two marches to Gund and Gagangair. There next day we left the Sind route for Baltar.

It is scarcely possible to describe that four days’ march, the stedfast beauty of pines climbing the heights to the stars, the exultant joy of rushing rivers. An extraordinary exhilaration swept over me as we mounted higher and higher and the clean strong air filled my lungs like some strange wine of the gods. At higher heights it overpowers poor humanity and leaves it sick and stunned. Here it was divine, shot through with golden sunshine and flavored with the pure aroma of pines in their ranked marching myriads. Through every glade was a glimpse of awful peaks guarding a mystery wonderful beyond even their own wonders. And still we climbed, gradually but surely, beside the river rushing from the cold heart of a far-away glacier.

The track was lonely but not solitary. We met a few loaded ponies with black-browed traders beside them, men who know the dangerous heart of Central Asia and the hard secret ways that lead to and fro, men to whom all life is danger and adventure, who scorn the life of ease and look to meet their last hour in some brawl in a wayside caravanserai or in the vast solitudes of the eternal snow.

They shot their keen black gaze at me as I passed, gaging the English sahib to a hair and wondering if money was to be made out of the Feringhi. Many of such men I came to know afterwards and liked them well–excellent company, hardy, good-tempered fellows, and if a little unscrupulous, better the direct thrust you are prepared for than the sly honey-tipped dart of civilized exploitation.

And then there were the pilgrims, holy men making their way to the ruined temple of Shiva placed on a crag above the river. It was out of my way to Baltar, but I would not miss it, and we followed the narrow way through pines and rocks and great slumbrous ferns until we came to a crag above the thundering river, madly plunging for freedom among the rocks. There, set in deep glades of trees, was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life or shall see, a temple, relic of the great old days of Kashmir when mighty kings ruled her and scholars traveled from China and India that they might kneel at her feet and implore the crumbs of her unearthly wisdom.

In every crevice and niche of broken stone irises and ferns had rooted, and the blue of the iris was better than jewels. It was as though the long dream, water-lulled, of ancient stones had broken forth into loveliness of blossom. I looked through the ancient doorway into a sunk quadrangle with carved niches about it, where once devotees had sat tranced in meditation, looking down into the water at their feet, and marveled once more at the hidden beauties of this divine world.

While I sketched it the man at my elbow told me it had first been a temple to the wise and half-divine Snake-people of legend, who dwelt in Kashmir and loved to mirror their beauty in calm water; and when the day of their worship passed it became sacred to the Great God who meditates upon the starriest heights of the mountains with the crescent moon for a jewel in his hair. And now it has fallen into ruin and no priest does service at the broken lingam of the little shrine, though still the faithful pilgrims come to mutter prayers and finger rosaries and pour libations from a small stream that sings through the quadrangle before it slips into the thundering glee of the river below.

I turned reluctantly away. It seemed to me that nothing at Baltar could be so lovely, and I would willingly have camped there for days in the sun-shot shade. But we went on steadily, doing about twelve miles daily, and after four days the woods grew denser and the river louder and the way among moss-grown fern-plumed rocks narrower. The ponies had to be checked and encouraged with many shouts of “Khabar dar”–“Take care!”–to look to their footing with wary instinct, and Faz-ul-din striding beside my pony said with emphasis:

“We now draw near to the residence of Dumba Sahib, the great English lord who beautifies the mountains with his countenance. And since the Presence is his friend I desire to remit the customary present which is made in addition to the contracted charge for ponies and men.”

Here I own myself to have been almost too staggered for utterance. Not for nothing had a relation of my own, impelled into poetry by extortion, proclaimed:

“If you gave a Kashmiri both heaven and hell,

He would ask for another five annas as well.”

And this renunciation was the strongest tribute to the Dunbars which had yet assailed my senses. I received it in silence, uncertain how to meet it.

My first impression was quiet and deep green shade, and the sound of running waters which intensifies quiet itself–the heart of a great forest diversified into glades where flitting shadows of wild creatures might pass at their ease. High up the side of a mighty hill–a mountain in lesser lands–was a glorious spring pouring down in cascades half hidden in maidenhair, and this, known as the Peri’s or Fairy’s Spring, they told me fed the house with water and electricity. One drinks wild water with caution in India, but there was no need for caution here. It broke pure as crystal from the strong heart of the hills.

And the deodars with tilted boughs upon which woodland spirits might lie and swing were magnificent in height and sweep, and where the glades opened were tall rhododendrons mingling masses of fiery blossom with the velvet background of the deodars–and below them beds of golden and white violets embedded in moss and fern–the small things as lovely as the great.

My God, what beauty; what a home! I thought, and how far from “roaring London, raving Paris,” and how blessed in its remoteness! Would one ever weary of it?

“Down that way is a little village of people all in the service of the great sahib, and the water is piped to their houses as to his own so that there shall be no sickness, and the children here grow up straight and tall like the children of the sahibs.” So spoke Faz-ul-din, willing to overwhelm me with marvels, but I, rapt on the unknown, returned no answer.

The forest was opening its arms and beyond soared the awful peak of one of the mightiest mountains of the Himalayan range–not golden nor white, but some miraculous blending of both into a color unnamable and glorious. It stood alone–a divine presence between earth and heaven, dominating all the world about it or rather gathering it up as an offering to something far and high, to be felt but never spoken.

And now we were slightly descending the rocky path, and the river which we had almost lost in the wild woods was nearing again, and before me I saw half hidden in deodar and rhododendron an immensely long house built of hewn logs, brown-roofed, widely windowed, with a great rustic portico, and a garden that opened my eyes wide with delight and astonishment–lawns, smooth as green velvet, and flowers I had never seen grouping with those that spoke of home in happy companionship. To right and left, farther back among the trees were two more houses of the same build, but a little smaller, and high up on the vast hillside a fourth house, long, brown-roofed, with what I should have guessed was a detached chapel on ground a little higher.

“That great long palace-house is the house of the sahibs!” said Faz-ul-din with showman’s pride, pointing a grimy finger. “Within are rugs and noble chairs and divans worthy of the Maharaja of Kashmir himself. Have not these eyes seen it? And beds formed of rare woods and brass and other shining metals. And lights are furnished by the river even as in the city of Srinagar, and it is said–but this may or may not be truth–that even the cooking is done by the river’s light, which if it be so is a marvel of the jinn. To the right is a house equally splendid for those guests of Dumba Sahib who are followers of the Prophet and the true faith. To the left is a noble house for Hindu guests to whom the eating of the cow is abomination–a craze which is not to be understood. But it is a thing to be remarked that here no meat is given for food, yet no person can desire slain meats, so glorious is the table spread for all. And I speak from knowledge for the sahib has provided a caravanserai for me and my ponies and those like me, and here we rest for the night as his guests and receive noble treatment and such food as is served to true believers in Paradise, and the very ponies have a stable worthy of king’s horses and their food is princely.”

He had halted me that I might have the full benefit of this oration and it flowed like the river itself from his lips.

“Truly the law of guest-right is in this man’s open hand!” I said gravely, and indeed needed to feign no astonishment, so wonderful was the picture, so amazing the setting. Men were passing to and fro between the houses on various errands, in white with scarlet cummerbunds after the manner of Indian servants; but here and there was a stranger sight–two or three men bare-headed, shaven, with robes of a dull yellow. One, unmistakably a Chinese, stood not far off, watching my arrival with interest; another, as evidently English, was coming up from the river, book in hand; a third–but why continue? It was an astonishing place–the threshold of a new world.

Faz-ul-din resumed his discourse.

“And here, when the ponies have delivered the honorable baggage to the servants of the house, I desire permission of the sahib to depart to the caravanserai, hoping that he will sign this chit attesting my good behavior in men and ponies on the road.”

I rode slowly along the approach to the great portico of rough-hewn logs with the bark left on–a palace for Pan, and with what unknown recesses within!

A tall, fair-haired Englishman with two delightful Scotch terriers at his heels came forward; he was light and strongly built, with the air of woods and large spaces upon him, and a quick sensitive way with him that won me. He wore coat and breeches of the rough Kashmiri puttoo which seems as much a part of the surroundings as heather on a Scotch moor, and looked to the manner born–even in the clear ring of his voice.

“Welcome to Baltar. You’re Cardonald, aren’t you? My wife and Miss Ingmar rode up the valley and haven’t got back yet. No–don’t bother–the men will see to your stuff. Yes–you want to settle with Faz-ul-din? He’s a very decent fellow.”

I settled with Faz-ul-din, and as I hope to be believed he refused any sort of tip; stoutly, steadily refused it. He accepted, on pressure, a box of cigarettes, but immediately tendered a pouch of leather ornamented with brass, a tinder-box with flint and steel which he had had from a Yarkhandi trader above the pass. I had to take it and so with salaams we parted, and the train of ponies wound off among the trees.

“But how can I get hold of him again when I start? Is it worth while for a few days–”

The other man laughed.

“We can always get him by wire to Gunderbal. I have my own line. But as to a few days–everyone who comes here stays just as long as he is inclined to give us the pleasure of his company. We are in wonderful country here, wonderful in many ways, and most people find something to interest them. Do feel at home. Will you come in now, or stroll about and see the place?”

I elected for the stroll and lighted up, and we went slowly about the lawns, and by the stream that not only watered the garden but filled it with woodland singing. We approached the little cascade where the Chinese I had noticed before stood in a position of silent abstraction by a cascade falling from a beautiful rock in threads of silver among the maidenhair. He looked up smiling as we drew near, and Dunbar made the introduction.

“Shan-tao, this is my friend Mr. Cardonald. He also is a painter and hopes to do some work here. I’m sure you will allow him to see some of your landscapes.”

To my amazement the reply after a deep Chinese salute was in good enough English with little more than a foreign inflection.

“That will be honor for me. I am most glad. I hope also to see.”

It was promised and we passed on.

“But why, who, what?” I demanded in bewilderment. “What on earth is a Chinese doing here, and an English-speaking one at that! And why the yellow robe?”

“Didn’t you hear at Simla?” Dunbar said good-humoredly. “No–you probably wouldn’t. There’s a monastery in China, some days’ journey north of Peking, and I do a lot of work for them at old manuscripts, translating and editing them with the more learned monks. They come out into the world to spread the teachings of pure Buddhism and are men of different races, but all English-speaking, because English goes further in Asia than other foreign tongues. Well–we are at work on some wonderful manuscripts now which have been buried for over sixteen hundred years in a Chinese monastery in the mountains, and Shan-tao is here for that reason, and another monk named Haridas whom I think you will like. But there are others as well, all of the same community. We have made a rest house for them, and they come here when they crock up or need rest. We have two Burmese there now, and one from Ceylon, and a Tibetan lama–and that last is interesting for a reason I’ll tell you later.”

But it was all interesting–so much so that I scarcely knew on what to focus my thoughts.

“And are they all Buddhists?”

“All. But don’t be frightened. They won’t force it on you, and they’re all men who have seen a good deal of the world, and a queer world. I believe it will interest you.”

I reflected. “I say–I do hope you won’t think it rude, but the Mainguys said at Simla that you were a Buddhist yourself. Is it true?”

“Quite true. Several of us are, but don’t bother your head about that. What does it matter? We have about ten different brands of religion here, and for all I know you may add an eleventh. But all the same we are quite like other people.”

If there was one thing of which I was convinced it was that the Dunbars were extremely unlike other people, but it was not the moment to press the point; and we wandered on from one beauty to another stopping at last by the glade commanding the mighty presence of the mountain solemnly fronting the sunset.

It was an entranced silence–the ecstasy of a blessed spirit in serenest heights of exaltation. Gold flushed slowly into a diviner rose as if from the glow of an enkindling spirit within. It deepened sublimely into an adoration of surging hues that made the mountain one with the skies swimming in splendors about the peak–chorded colors, unutterable in any words and inspiring belief in hues incredible until the eyes open on eternity. How long we stood I did not know. Beside us was the Chinese monk with an Indian beside him, caught up into the same ecstasy.

So, uplifted into the glory of the heavens, seeing things not lawful because impossible to be uttered, we stood and watched it fade slowly into the gray mystery of twilight and the past; and when a young crescent moon hung like a faint lamp in the pines, we turned slowly toward the beautiful dim house, lighted now like a magic lantern with strange shadowgrams of human life reflected on the blinds.

The two brothers were slowly ascending the hill to their dwelling, shadows among the trees.

“My wife must have come back long since. Let us go in,” said Dunbar, quickening his steps, and for a moment I envied the man who owned so much, round whom so many interests clustered and crowded.

I said as much and he smiled with kindly eyes.

“And you an artist? If I had your gift I should ask no more of earth or heaven. It includes both.”

We returned as no strangers. That communion with beauty had built a bridge between us, and thought went to and fro in happy certainty of welcome.