"I cannot tell. It may have been the impress of my mind on yours, for I see such things always. You say I took your hand?"

"Take it now."

She obeyed, and instantly, as I felt the firm cool clasp, I heard the rain of music through the pines--the Flute Player was pa.s.sing. She dropped it smiling and the sweet sound ceased.

"You see! How can I tell what you have seen? You will know better when I am gone. You will stand alone then."

"You will not go--you cannot. I have seen how you have loved all this wonderful time. I believe it has been as dear to you as to me. And every day I have loved you more. I depend upon you for everything that makes life worth living. You could not--you who are so gentle--you could not commit the senseless cruelty of leaving me when you have taught me to love you with every beat of my heart. I have been patient--I have held myself in, but I must speak now. Marry me, and teach me. I know nothing.

You know all I need to know. For pity's sake be my wife."

I had not meant to say it; it broke from me in the firelight moonlight with a power that I could not stay. She looked at me with a disarming gentleness.

"Is this fair? Do you remember how at Peshawar I told you I thought it was a dangerous experiment, and that it would make things harder for you. But you took the risk like a brave man because you felt there were things to be gained--knowledge, insight, beauty. Have you not gained them?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Then, is it all loss if I go?"

"Not all. But loss I dare not face."

"I will tell you this. I could not stay if I would. Do you remember the old man on the way to Vernag? He told me that I must very soon take up an entirely new life. I have no choice, though if I had I would still do it."

There was silence and down a long arcade, without any touch of her hand I heard the music, receding with exquisite modulations to a very great distance, and between the pillared stems, I saw a faint light.

"Do you wish to go?"

"Entirely. But I shall not forget you, Stephen. I will tell you something. For me, since I came to India, the gate that shuts us out at birth has opened. How shall I explain? Do you remember Kipling's 'Finest Story in the World'?"

"Yes. Fiction!"

"Not fiction--true, whether he knew it or no. But for me the door has opened wide. First, I remembered piecemeal, with wide gaps, then more connectedly. Then, at the end of the first year, I met one day at Cawnpore, an ascetic, an old man of great beauty and wisdom, and he was able by his own knowledge to enlighten mine. Not wholly--much has come since then. Has come, some of it in ways you could not understand now, but much by direct sight and hearing. Long, long ago I lived in Peshawar, and my story was a sorrowful one. I will tell you a little before I go."

"I hold you to your promise. What is there I cannot believe when you tell me? But does that life put you altogether away from me? Was there no place for me in any of your memories that has drawn us together now?

Give me a little hope that in the eternal pilgrimage there is some bond between us and some rebirth where we may met again."

"I will tell you that also before we part. I have grown to believe that you do love me--and therefore love something which is infinitely above me."

"And do you love me at all? Am I nothing, Vanna--Vanna?"

"My friend," she said, and laid her hand on mine.

A silence, and then she spoke, very low.

"You must be prepared for very great change, Stephen, and yet believe that it does not really change things at all. See how even the G.o.ds pa.s.s and do not change! The early G.o.ds of India are gone and Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna have taken their places and are one and the same. The old Buddhist stories say that in heaven "The flowers of the garland the G.o.d wore are withered, his robes of majesty are waxed old and faded; he falls from his high estate, and is re-born into a new life." But he lives still in the young G.o.d who is born among men. The G.o.ds cannot die, nor can we nor anything that has life. Now I must go in."

I sat long in the moonlight thinking. The whole camp was sunk in sleep and the young dawn was waking upon the peaks when I turned in.

The days that were left we spent in wandering up the Lidar River to the hills that are the first ramp of the ascent to the great heights.

We found the damp corners where the mushrooms grow like pearls--the mushrooms of which she said--"To me they have always been fairy things.

To see them in the silver-grey dew of the early mornings--mysteriously there like the manna in the desert--they are elfin plunder, and as a child I was half afraid of them. No wonder they are the darlings of folklore, especially in Celtic countries where the Little People move in the starlight. Strange to think they are here too among strange G.o.ds!"

We climbed to where the wild peonies bloom in glory that few eyes see, and the rosy beds of wild sweet strawberries ripen. Every hour brought with it some new delight, some exquisiteness of sight or of words that I shall remember for ever. She sat one day on a rock, holding the sculptured leaves and ma.s.sive seed-vessels of some glorious plant that the Kashmiris believe has magic virtues hidden in the seeds of pure rose embedded in the white down.

"If you fast for three days and eat nine of these in the Night of No Moon, you can rise on the air light as thistledown and stand on the peak of Haramoukh. And on Haramoukh, as you know it is believed, the G.o.ds dwell. There was a man here who tried this enchantment. He was a changed man for ever after, wandering and muttering to himself and avoiding all human intercourse as far as he could. He was no Kashmiri--A Jat from the Punjab, and they showed him to me when I was here with the Meryons, and told me he would speak to none. But I knew he would speak to me, and he did."

"Did he tell you anything of what he had seen in the high world up yonder?"

"He said he had seen the Dream of the G.o.d. I could not get more than that. But there are many people here who believe that the Universe as we know it is but an image in the dream of Ishvara, the Universal Spirit--in whom are all the G.o.ds--and that when He ceases to dream we pa.s.s again into the Night of Brahm, and all is darkness until the Spirit of G.o.d moves again on the face of the waters. There are few temples to Brahm. He is above and beyond all direct worship."

"Do you think he had seen anything?"

"What do I know? Will you eat the seeds? The Night of No Moon will soon be here."

She held out the seed-vessels, laughing. I write that down but how record the lovely light of kindliness in her eyes--the almost submissive gentleness that yet was a defense stronger than steel. I never knew--how should I?--whether she was sitting by my side or heavens away from me in her own strange world. But always she was a sweetness that I could not reach, a cup of nectar that I might not drink, unalterably her own and never mine, and yet--my friend.

She showed me the wild track up into the mountains where the Pilgrims go to pay their devotions at the Great G.o.d's shrine in the awful heights, regretting that we were too early for that most wonderful sight. Above where we were sitting the river fell in a tormented white cascade, crashing and feathering into spray-dust of diamonds. An eagle was flying above it with a mighty spread of wings that seemed almost double-jointed in the middle--they curved and flapped so wide and free.

The fierce head was outstretched with the rake of a plundering galley as he swept down the wind, seeking his meat from G.o.d, and pa.s.sed majestic from our sight. The valley beneath us was littered with enormous boulders spilt from the ancient hollows of the hills. It must have been a great sight when the giants set them trundling down in work or play!--I said this to Vanna, who was looking down upon it with meditative eyes. She roused herself.

"Yes, this really is Giant-Land up here--everything is so huge. And when they quarrel up in the heights--in Jotunheim--and the black storms come down the valleys it is like colossal laughter or clumsy boisterous anger. And the Frost giants are still at work up there with their great axes of frost and rain. They fling down the side of a mountain or make fresh ways for the rivers. About sixty years ago--far above here--they tore down a mountain side and d.a.m.ned up the mighty Indus, so that for months he was a lake, shut back in the hills. But the river giants are no less strong up here in the heights of the world, and lie lay brooding and hiding his time. And then one awful day he tore the barrier down and roared down the valley carrying death and ruin with him, and swept away a whole Sikh army among other unconsidered trifles. That must have been a soul-shaking sight."

She spoke on, and as she spoke I saw. What are her words as I record them? Stray dead leaves pressed in a book--the life and grace dead. Yet I record, for she taught me what I believe the world should learn, that the Buddhist philosophers are right when they teach that all forms of what we call matter are really but aggregates of spiritual units, and that life itself is a curtain hiding reality as the vast veil of day conceals from our sight the countless...o...b.. of s.p.a.ce. So that the purified mind even while prisoned in the body, may enter into union with the Real and, according to attainment, see it as it is.

She was an interpreter because she believed this truth profoundly. She saw the spiritual essence beneath the lovely illusion of matter, and the air about her was radiant with the motion of strange forces for which the dull world has many names aiming indeed at the truth, but falling--O how far short of her calm perception! She was indeed of a Household higher than the Household of Faith. She had received enlightenment. She beheld with open eyes.

Next day our camp was struck and we turned our faces again to Srinagar and to the day of parting. I set down but one strange incident of our journey, of which I did not speak even to her.

We were camping at Bijbehara, awaiting our house boat, and the site was by the Maharaja's lodge above the little town. It was midnight and I was sleepless--the shadow of the near future was upon me. I wandered down to the lovely old wooded bridge across the Jhelum, where the strong young trees grow up from the piles. Beyond it the moon was shining on the ancient Hindu remains close to the new temple, and as I stood on the bridge I could see the figure of a man in deepest meditation by the ruins. He was no European. I saw the straight dignified folds of the robes. But it was not surprising he should be there and I should have thought no more of it, had I not heard at that instant from the further side of the river the music of the Flute. I cannot hope to describe that music to any who have not heard it. Suffice it to say that where it calls he who hears must follow whether in the body or the spirit. Nor can I now tell in which I followed. One day it will call me across the River of Death, and I shall ford it or sink in the immeasurable depths and either will be well.

But immediately I was at the other side of the river, standing by the stone Bull of Shiva where he kneels before the Symbol, and looking steadfastly upon me a few paces away was a man in the dress of a Buddhist monk. He wore the yellow robe that leaves one shoulder bare; his head was bare also and he held in one hand a small bowl like a stemless chalice. I knew I was seeing a very strange inexplicable sight--one that in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder aside for I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible may well be the actual. His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If I compare it to the pa.s.sionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for the Riddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a n.o.ble acquiescence and a content that had it vibrated must have pa.s.sed into joy.

Words or their equivalent pa.s.sed between us. I felt his voice.

"You have heard the music of the Flute?"

"I have heard."

"What has it given?"

"A consuming longing."

"It is the music of the Eternal. The creeds and the faiths are the words that men have set to that melody. Listening, it will lead you to Wisdom.

Day by day you will interpret more surely."

"I cannot stand alone."

"You will not need. What has led you will lead you still. Through many births it has led you. How should it fail?"

"What should I do?"