The Devil's Guard, page 20
"Why should you trouble about my prospects?" Grim asked.
The woman laughed, with a crackle like the sound of dry brushwood burning.
"I warned you," she remarked. "Deal plainly with him."
"Am I not plain?" the man answered. "Everything is forbidden! We are forbidden even to talk of what we know. Grudgingly, little by little, we are taught some fragment and then are put to wearisome long tests to demonstrate that we can refrain from using what we worked so hard to win. Is it likely that you, who have not spent half a lifetime sitting at a guru's feet, will be allowed to go beyond, for instance, me or that woman? I have a proposal to make."
"I have a man to rescue," Grim answered him.
"I offer to help to rescue him. Why not?"
Grim's answer, like a bark, broke on the silence
"Why?"
"I have told you why. This chelaship is too long and too empty of results. I don't believe that man you want to rescue, as you call it, is in trouble. Some of the dugpas may be devils but not all. The difference is this: our gurus make us miserable with what they call self-restraint. Dugpas all make use of what they know and have a good time doing it. Why not have a good time while it lasts? There is no such satisfaction as the use of knowledge."
"Is it the quest after knowledge that's making them torture the man!"
"Tshuh-tshuh! Do you believe that? Are you sure of it?"
"Bait wrote a letter," said Grim.
"Are you sure? Dugpas can forge handwriting. Isn't it likelier they are holding a door open for you? Since you haven't been trained to interpret mental messages—although, for that very reason you are all the more amenable to mental impulse, which you can't understand, but which governs you nevertheless—how should they make your approach to them easy except by some trick? They could goad you, but you might rush wildly in the wrong direction. What was it put the thought into your head to enter Tibet?"
"Yes! What was it?" said the woman.
Grim did not answer.
"Why should the White Lodge be willing to receive you, and the Black Lodge not?" the man went on. "Which would you rather have— knowledge now, or knowledge at the end of twenty or thirty lifetimes, which is all the White Lodge offers you and at the cost of endless self-discipline. And they don't even offer it. They make you struggle for it. They withhold it. Whereas the Black Lodge makes things easy. They will teach you and send you back to the United States, where you will enjoy prosperity and influence. I hate this barren land, into which I was born and in which my die is cast."
He paused, but Grim said nothing, so the man resumed:
"Listen: by being nobody and living like a louse a man may go through life and never even know there is such knowledge as I offer you—such opportunity. But you are not a louse. You must ally yourself with one force or the other or you will simply be torn apart as countries often are that try to keep neutral in wartime. The White Lodge is extremely difficult to enter, and if you should succeed in finding the place you seek, the odds are ten thousand to one you would not be admitted. If admitted,—well, imagine for yourself, if you can, what it means to be taught prodigious secrets, which you are not allowed to use! I assure you, virtue grows monotonous. And if your virtue grows weak, you are out like a sorefooted soldier—like me!"
Grim spoke at last:
"So that's it, eh? You're a chela dismissed for disobedience."
The woman's laughter crackled again like burning brushwood: "Didn't I tell you he is no fool!"
"But if you choose the Black Lodge," the man went on, "you will be allowed to use the forces whose nature will be revealed to you. The Black Lodge, too, is difficult to enter, because none but he who has strength of character is useful to them. But, once in, you are in the ranks' of the magicians. You become a power. You are given work to do from which you see immediate results. You are on the side of the erosive forces, like the wind and flood, that are just as much agents of evolution as are those other forces that assemble the detritus and so slowly build up structures that shall only be destroyed again. So now choose."
"I chose some time ago," Grim answered.
The man stood up and I could see his face more distinctly. He was a thin-lipped, handsome fellow with a certain truculence about the angle of his jaw. His sheep-skin overcoat was open in front, showing what looked like expensive clothing underneath.
"Which way?" he demanded.
"I might tell you that, perhaps, when I have traveled it a bit," said Grim.
The man sneered, and his smile was like the lip-lift of a panther. I pulled my pistol clear and waited.
"Look at her!" The man pointed at the woman, who kept her eyes fixed on Grim. "Unless you die of weariness you will look and be like her in due time—sexless—hopeless—hideous—neglected—nothing but a drudge for them who keep their secrets to themselves!"
Grim stood up then. I saw the corner of his mouth. He shook himself to adjust the heavy yak-skin overcoat.
"Is it storming still?" he asked.
He began to walk toward some exit that I could not see, the woman gave him the lamp to hold and stepped in between him and the other, who presently followed them.
I could not turn, so I went forward, in total darkness now that they had taken away the lamp.
I had reached what felt like the end of the hole and was groping for hand- and foot-hold to descend on to the cave floor, when something touched me. I was practically helpless, hanging downward by the legs. I tried to crawl back, but a hand took me under the armpit and a voice said in English:
"This way. You will fall badly unless you lean on me." Another arm took hold of me. I felt myself being lifted.
"Jump!" said the same voice.
I supposed it was Narayan Singh, so let myself go confidently and was swung, legs outward, in a semicircle landing on level rock.
"There was a hole several hundred feet deep directly under you," said the voice; and suddenly I knew it was not Narayan Singh, but some one whose clothes vaguely smelt of sandal-wood.
"This way. Hold this or you will never find the way out," he said, thrusting the end of a girdle into my hand.
I could see nothing. He led me along a winding passage between smooth walls that grew gradually colder as they zigzagged, until finally I could hear the wind and saw dim daylight. Even so I did not recognize his back; like me, he nearly filled the passage with his head within two inches of the roof, so his figure was a mere black silhouette between me and the light.
It was not until he turned to face me outside on a platform sheltered from the storm by projecting spurs of rock, that I recognized Lhaten, with the old quiet, friendly laughter in his eyes.
"You are an elephant," he said. "You blunder into things. It was lucky for you that I knew you were there."
"How did you know it?" I asked him.
"Curiosity," he said, "has been the death of many an elephant! We have ways of knowing things. What do you think of Jimgrim now?"
"Haven't you a way of knowing that, too?" I retorted.
"Yes," he said.
"Then why ask? Curiosity?"
He laughed. "No. I couldn't read your thought before you did think. I gave you opportunity to mask your thought. That fellow in the cave was dangerous, and so were you. You might have shot him."
"He was a fool," I said, and was going to say more, but he interrupted:
"A dugpa and a fool are one, but a fool can be deadly dangerous."
He began to turn along the track that led around the windward spur, but I stopped him and asked:
"Where did you learn English?"
"Cambridge University. German at Heidelburg. French at the Sorbonne. Why? Did you suppose we kept ourselves secluded in a cloud of ignorance?"
He turned again and led the way around the spur, leaning into the wind as if he liked it. The ledge grew gradually narrower until at last there was barely room to set one foot on it and we had to move crabwise around a cliff side with a howling gorge beneath us— clinging with our fingers to the rock wall.
When we reached broad track again he led for many miles around the outside of the mountain in which those caves were until when he paused to let me overtake him and rest a moment, I asked if he had seen Narayan Singh.
"He draws the sword too readily," he answered and again led on, with the clear intention of avoiding further questions.
Now we climbed along the bare ridge of an escarpment with the full fury of the blizzard in our faces—time and again almost blown into the abyss—and even he grew weary of it. At last he took shelter, sitting on the snow that partly filled a hollow between tumbled crags, and I crouched facing him. The wind shrieked through the crevices and I had to shout even to hear my own voice
"Where are Grim and the woman?" I asked him.
He bade me look backward along the ridge across which we had come and presently, when a blast of wind lifted and rent the snow cloud, I saw three figures struggling toward us.
"Three?" he asked. "Then they have found the Sikh." He seemed relieved to know it, as if he had suspected that Narayan Singh might be in difficulties.
"He opens eggs," he said, "with sledge hammers."
Ten minutes after that the woman leaped into the hollow with her hair all caked with snow and frozen; it was almost like a fashionable hat and made her look ridiculous. She laid her lips to Lhaten's ear and whispered.
Then Grim came, dog-tired, and dropped beside me, seeming surprised to find me there but saying nothing. Narayan Singh slid down the side of the hole and squatted on his heels between Grim and Lhaten.
"There is nothing else than dugpas in this land!" he shouted. "It is fit for nothing else!"
"Have you seen one?" asked Lhaten.
"I slew one?"
"Man of blood!" said Lhaten. He got up at once and led the way out of the hollow, finding a track that brought us to the ledge beside the cave where we had left the ponies.
"You will have to sleep here," he remarked. "She will show you where fuel is hidden."
He stood aside to watch us pass in, taking 'care, I thought, that the Sikh's clothes should not touch him. I went instead to the rear of the cave to pull Chullunder Ghose out of his hole, and it took me several minutes to dislodge him without tearing half his skin off. He was chattering with cold and nearly off his head with terror.
"Voices, Rammy sahib! Voices along the tunnel! When you pulled my feet I thought you were a dugpa! Oh, this thusness! Why leave home to come to such a place! Nevertheless, I shall not turn back! This Caesar has crossed Rubicon!"
Lhaten ceased talking to Grim as Narayan Singh entered the cave behind the woman, both of them heavily burdened with wood from some nearby cache. Narayan Singh threw down his heap on the floor and stood and looked at Lhaten, folding his arms truculently.
"Man of peace, I offend you!"
"No," said Lhaten.
"Take me by the hand then!"
Narayan Singh held out his right hand, which Lhaten took in his without the slightest hesitation.
"But if you keep on killing you will kill yourself, because blood draws blood," said Lhaten.
"Lo, I slew a dugpa," said the Sikh. " What of it? I have slain many whose time had come to die, but who were worthier to live than that one. Consider: I followed Jimgrim in search of the woman. She beckoned us over that ridge we crossed a while ago, and we came to a cave, which she entered, bidding Jimgrim follow. But to me she said, `Wait and guard the place.' So I stood in the storm until a man came who sought to enter. I forbade him and we had speech civilly enough until he told me he would show another entrance to the cave that I should guard instead of that one and I gave him leave to go to Lhassa or wherever else he chose, so be he moved himself. He went, but he pointed to where the other entrance was.
"And soon I saw Jimgrim leave that other entrance; or it seemed to me that I saw Jimgrim. He walked away from me in great haste, so I followed. He led me a great climb over the mountain, I can tell you, and when I came on him—or thought I did—he vanished!
"'Dugpas!' I said to myself; and I set to work to find that cave again. But the snow had blotted out my trail. And when at last I drew near the cave there were footsteps showing that many people had come out of it. And there, standing in the cave mouth was the one who had sought to enter. He said he would show me where Jimgrim had gone, so I followed him. But there were no footsteps where we went and the trail was very difficult, so I called a halt. Then he said to me: `Your Jimgrim is no good. He is in the wrong hands. He will soon be like Rait is—mad and being practiced on. You should abandon Jimgrim and let me show you genuine mysteries.'
"So I showed him a genuine one—how a man's life leaves the body when a pistol bullet enters at the brain. After a while came Jimgrim and the woman looking for me. Have you anything to say to that?"
"Not a great deal," Lhaten answered. "Only if you keep on killing there will be a weight of death against you that not even your courage can prevail against."
"You speak riddles," the Sikh answered.
"The word two is a riddle, until you divide it into one plus one," said Lhaten and then, buttoning his overcoat as if he heard a summons through the gale, he took his leave of us and hurried off.
Lhaten always came and went as if there were an hotel or a club house just around the corner.
Chapter Eighteen—Chullunder Ghose Chenresi
Of every ten who tread the Middle Way to Knowledge there are nine who turn aside through avarice, though not all avarice is born of belly-hunger or the greed for gold. Some seek preeminence, such eminence as they have won corroded by insane pride. So by this mark you shall know the Middle Way, that whoso treads it truly avoids vices, having found them in himself, so that he knows their habit and is temperate in judgment, throwing no stones lest he break the windows of his own soul.—From The Book Of The Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
Grim now knew something I did not know. He saw something I did not see; and, though all sorts of similes suggest themselves to illustrate the feeling I experienced, none quite explains it.
Not being an artist with either pen or brush the facts of art don't limit me, and none except an artist, possibly, will smile when I suggest that a hack portrait painter or a writer of journalese may feel the same toward a rising genius as I began to feel toward Grim. I was aware his genius had gone beyond mine and, though by his own unrecognition of the fact he puzzled me, I felt an impulse, free (I think) from rivalry or any meaner instinct, to discover the secret and so to keep, if not abreast of him, at least not far behind.
The change in the attitude of others toward him was much more marked than any outward change in Grim himself. The old woman treated him as if he were a young god, to be waited on and possibly reproved at times, but destined for a throne on high Olympus. She shared the cave with us that night, and though Grim did not notice it I saw that she lay where her body would keep the draught away from him.
Narayan Singh, who had sustained his whole life long that hugely difficult role of a proud and patriotic free man in a conquered country, seemed to take his cue from the old woman. His deference became extravagant, the more effective since he cloaked it under military gruffness. She threatened our babu with mayhem for daring to use the word Jimgrim without the added "sahib." He was even distant toward me because I argued with Grim about how much barley we should give the ponies. (I was for conserving rations, Grim for keeping up the ponies' strength and trusting the future for additional supplies of grain; and, as it happened, Grim was right.)
That blizzard was the worst we had experienced and it raged the whole night through. We lay amid a din of avalanches, crashing boulders and a cataclysmic orchestra of shrieking wind. The very mountain seemed to tremble, and the tunnel that led from the rear of our cave kept up a series of irregular explosions like the booming of a big drum.
But dawn broke cold and clear, with no wind, and our thermometer at zero—falling steadily. The silence as we filed out of the cave on ponyback and saw the tumbled range around us glittering under an azure sky, was stupifying. Where the wind had shrieked the night before, now sound itself seemed frozen. When a pinnacle of ice a mile away crashed down into a chasm and was split into glittering jewels on the fanged rocks, all the resulting din came to us like a whisper, as if even echoes were afraid to speak.
Hitherto we had marched into curtains of snow that revealed only glimpses of crag and chasm when the wind tore momentary rents in it. Now square leagues looked like inches and the peaks a hundred miles away seemed almost within pistol shot. The ponies, stringing out along the trail in front of me, picking their way behind our bare- legged guide, resembled insects. Yet in the clear air I could count the feathers of an eagle's wings, soaring a hundred feet below me and a thousand feet above the snow-filled valley bottom.
Nine-tenths of all the track we traveled was bare ridge, swept by the wind so that no snow lay on it. At times we crossed naked summits; oftener we skirted their flanks along ledges that hung over fathomless space. There was made trail here and there, with boulder bridges heaped across wide fissures in the rock. But now and then the trail ceased altogether, where the storms had wrecked a mountainside, and there we had to chop a foothold for the ponies across slopes where the frozen crust would bear a man's weight but let the loaded ponies through on to the glass ice underneath.
There was one such place that sloped toward a chasm on our left hand and for more than half a mile we had to skirt the edge of it, keeping away from the cliff on our right because icicles hung there, that crashed in the strength of the sun. We were midway over when we saw men peering at us, their hooded heads jet black against the sky as they leaned over the top of the cliff from which ice hung like blades of guillotines.
There was a noise that at first suggested intermittent rifle fire and Narayan Singh made swift to load one of the Tibetan rifles Benjamin had sold us. But the crash of ice explained the sound. They were chopping the ton-weight icicles to make them fall across our path.
