The Devil's Guard, page 26
"Every man goes forward on his own responsibility," said Lhaten. "There is no escape from it. But no two healthy men think quite alike, or there would be no such thing as independent judgment. We never interfere with any one unless he reaches out to us. We could not help Rait. We could not even help that splendid man Narayan Singh—at least, not much—so long as he depended on his saber. Don't you see that to help a man win saber fights is to increase his faith in sabers? We prefer to guide that valor and integrity into much more profitable channels; but how shall we guide unless the individual is willing to be guided? We are not dugpas, who compel obedience. We, are like musicians, who play harmonies for you to follow if you can; and just as, let us say, Beethoven could not compromise with those who did not understand him, or who detested his music, neither can we compromise. It is for you, or for any one else, to agree or not as you see fit.
"I shall try to explain what happened. When you were in that monastery talking to the yellow lama you appealed to me."
"I did not," Grim retorted.
Lhaten laughed. "Didn't you think of me?" he asked.
"Yes. I wished like the deuce you were there to explain why we were led to that place and how to get swag."
"That opened a line of communication. I could reach you. I sent you a warning, but you did not understand it entirely; in fact, you hardly understood at all. What you did was to get up to go and explore. It was a most emphatic warning against violence, because violence is the dugpas' specialty, at which they can beat you easily. If you should win by violence against them you would merely play into the hands of other dugpas, who are worse than they. So I warned you against violence. But how did you interpret it?"
"I received no warning," Grim, answered.
"No? What did you do at the door of the stable?"
"I told Narayan Singh to stand guard outside, and I gave him my pistol."
"Why?"
"I hadn't used it for a long time. He had asked to look at it the day before. As he was going to stand outside I thought he might as well employ his time."
"Why did you leave him outside?"
"Impulse. No sense in two of us going in. I preferred to know exactly where he was, in case of need."
"Do you realize that if you had kept your pistol you would certainly have used it? If you had taken him into the stable with you there would certainly have been a fight. The noise would have brought Ramsden and Chullunder Ghose into the trap, and the outcome would have been much worse than it actually was. It was bad enough anyhow. Why didn't you cry out, when you shut the stable door and struck a match and knew you were surrounded?"
"It flashed on me that they would kill Narayan Singh the moment he should open the door. It was better to leave him outside to join forces with Jeff Ramsden."
"That decision saved you," Lhaten answered. "Do you remember what happened next?"
"Not clearly." "Well, they knocked you on the head and you had sense enough to lie still. Otherwise they would have killed you. They dragged you to that pile of sheepskins in the corner and lifted you up through a hole in the wall, that was almost entirely hidden by the shadows and a transverse beam. Up there in the hole they stripped you naked. And it was there that I found you later on."
"Where were you while this was happening?"
"Too far away to have come to your help one second sooner than I did. Remember, I am nothing but a chela. I am not so limited as you in some respects, and I knew there was serious danger, so I warned you of it, meanwhile hurrying to get as near you as I could. Remember, I am not allowed to oppose violence with violence because that defeats its purpose; my effort was directed to induce you to rise above it.
"I tried to reach all four of you. There was a woman in the monastery who was being employed to stir up Ramsden and Chullunder Ghose. The dugpas work on the principle that if you irritate you will get action and the action will follow the line of least resistance. Ramsden was the man they wanted. They weren't so foolish as to think that women could inveigle him; they simply made use of her to irritate him, and presently Ramsden, Chullunder Ghose and Narayan Singh all walked into the trap."
"What saved Narayan Singh that time?" Grim asked.
"Fidelity. The man's sole thought was how to save his friends' lives. Even fighting can't entirely smother that fine motive. It enabled me to reach him; and I think I reached Ramsden at the same time; Ramsden was probably thinking of nothing but how to find you and protect you from the trap. Ramsden ordered Narayan Singh to go and find you if he could. The Sikh obeyed him and fell down a well in the dark, so his pursuers missed him. The well was not very deep but the rope was slippery with ice, so it took him nearly an hour to climb out."
"Do you mean you foresaw that?" Grim asked.
"Not I! No more than a musician foresees the effect of music on an audience. He merely plays the harmonies. Emotion does the rest. Have you not seen a beaten regiment stirred by half a dozen bugles and a drum until it rallies? That is the crudest possible illustration. True music appeals to the inner more than to the outer ear; it stirs that spirit in a man that catches inspiration. And the force I have been taught to use is ten times subtler than the rarest music. Let it only reach a man in a moment when his finest thought is active and it will rend the veil between him and his own reality. Then he will do the right thing always—even if it means that he shall tumble down a well!"
"You saw him die," said Grim.
"There was a thought of hatred then. He hated Rait. He wanted his revenge on Rait. I could not make him hear. Did you try?"
"Yes. He disobeyed," Grim answered.
"Nevertheless, he very likely saved your life and Ramsden's. There are deaths much less magnificent than that," said Lhaten.
"Ramsden will want to know," said Grim, "why you could furnish stretcher-bearers and could come that long way with Narayan Singh and me, but could not lift a finger in the actual work of rescue. He's a whole-hearted old dog. He doesn't like men who appear to him to sit on fences when the issue is in doubt. I think I understand you, but I'm pretty nearly sure I can't explain it to him."
"Ask him then," said Lhaten, "whether, if he should wish to stop a dog fight, he would get down and fight like the dogs with his teeth. And if not, why not? He will say he knows better. He is likely to admit that he would lose the whole advantage of superior intelligence and would find himself on a plane where the dogs were his masters. Does a fireman go into the fire? Does the conductor of an orchestra play all the instruments—even though in his day he has had to play many of them? Does the architect lay bricks? Does the poet set type? And if he who tends the beacon light should leave it to direct the rescue, who could see? I am no match for the dugpas if I try to fight them with their weapons. Each of us must use what he can to best advantage, and there is deadly danger in another's duty, just as there is duty in another's danger. When Ramsden wakes ask him whether he had any sensation of power in reserve while he was in the dugpas' hands. I did my best to stir that consciousness and once or twice I think I reached him."
They were silent for a long time after that. Outside it blew a hurricane that shook the roof, beating the smoke back through the hole and filling the hut with a stinging blue cloud. Hail and snow sizzled on the hearth and Grim went and stirred the fire to keep it from going out, heaping on dry yak-dung to protect it. He came and looked at me, but I pretended to be sleeping.
"How far are we from the goal?" he asked when he sat down again.
"If you mean geographically, about six days' march," said Lhaten. "You have already come a long way into Tibet. The elevation here is sixteen thousand feet."
"Am I going to be allowed to make it/"
"Yes. You."
"What about my friends?"
"That is not my business. I can't answer you," said Lhaten. "You might get there with your friends. Two explorers have passed near it within comparatively recent years. You would see no more than the explorers did—a very plain, uninteresting village, occupied by plain, uninteresting looking people. There are no barbed-wire entanglements! But seclusion is something the Masters know how to preserve. I have authority to lead you in alone; and in that case you will be allowed to stay a while—perhaps for quite a long time. But if you insisted on taking your friends without authority, you might exclude yourself."
"Can I obtain authority?" Grim asked.
"It may be. But I don't know and I promise nothing. No man is ever taken in on any other terms than on his own initiative and entirely of his own free will. So that would be Ramsden's affair."
"And Chullunder Ghose?"
"The same."
For a long time Grim was silent—for so long a time that I began to think he had left the hut without my knowing it. But at last I caught the familiar grunt that he makes when he has considered all points of something and rejected it.
"I shall not go in without my friends," he said.
"Is that exactly fair to them?" asked Lhaten. "You impose on them responsibility for your success or failure."
"No, I don't," Grim answered bluntly. "I know damned well Rammy wouldn't make that grade and leave me, if positions were reversed. He'll lie about it, naturally. He'll even try to quarrel, if all else fails. It won't be his fault if I don't go on and leave him. It will be my independent judgment as to what I personally care to do. That settles it. All three of us, or none!"
"Let me see—who was it settled that the sun goes round the earth and that the earth is flat?" asked Lhaten. "You will find," he added, "that your friend Ramsden has been listening to every word we have said."
Grim got up to come and test the truth of that remark; but Lhaten went out, letting in a hurricane of wind that blew all the fire off the hearth before the door slammed shut again.
So Grim had to gather up the fuel and relay the fire before he could attend to me, and I had time to think what I should say to him.
Chapter Twenty-Three—Jimgrim and Ramsden engage in argument, and come to terms.
And though ye strive in friendship, be that friendship as ennobling as the gods' good will, I tell you ye must enter one by one. But of the three, faith, hope and friendship, I declare the last is not least; nor without all three shall ye draw nigh the skirts of Wisdom.—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup.
Grim pulled up the yak-skin bench and sat beside me. Due, I think, to the tremendous elevation and, perhaps in part, to the recent torture I had undergone, the edges of thought, if I may coin an expression, stood out definitely. There was no confusion between yes and no. Physically I was weaker than I ever remember to have been, but thought was sharp and vivid—concentrated. The essentials were obvious.
"Rammy, old top, is it true? Were you listening?" Grim asked me. "Now see here: you and I have stuck together, and as a general thing you have left the leading up to me. Damn you, you've been too lazy to argue. You'd rather work like a locomotive to prove me right than go to the trouble of disagreeing. We never have disagreed, and we're not going to this time. But here's a crisis and it's your turn to decide which way the cat jumps. Do your job."
"How is Chullunder Ghose?" I asked him.
"Rotten. But he'll pull through. Lhaten brought some medicine."
"Can he talk yet?"
"No. But look here, there'll be no committee work on this. If you say `forward,' forward we go. And if you don't like the prospect of spending perhaps three years in a Tibetan village, learning stuff that will upset all your previous conclusions—after which we'll probably be turned loose to be hated like hell by half the men who used to like us—just say so and we'll turn back. For that's all there is to it." It was clear enough what Grim wanted to do. His eyes almost gleamed through the smoke.
"If this were poker, any fool could tell you held four aces," I remarked. "Do you guarantee to accept my decision as final?"
"If you play fair," he answered. "yes. But none of your concessions to my prejudice. What I've got to know is, what would you do if left to yourself—supposing I weren't here, for instance. If you don't convince me that you're answering on the level, I shall vote to go back."
His eyes were fixed on mine and it would not have been any use to try to shift ground. On the other hand, no argument of his was going to make me stand in his way. He was aching to go to Sham-bha-la. So was I; but I had less chance of getting in than he had, and was much less likely to be able to understand the mysteries that I supposed would be explained if we should gain admission.
"When we agreed to enter Tibet, we all took the same chance, didn't we?" I said at last. "Narayan Singh lost out, as you or I might have lost out, just as easily. Now, once again: will you accept my answer?"
But he put me through a third degree before he pledged himself, endeavoring to probe for mental reservations. In the end, because habitually I had never tricked him, he committed himself:
"Shoot!"
"Forward," I said, "as soon as Chullunder Ghose is fit to travel; and the devil take the hindermost. Whoever makes the grade, goes in. Whoever doesn't make it, goes home."
"Damn!" he exploded, then laughed at himself. "I might have known you'd turn the trick on me. All right. But I've a trump left. I shall leave you and Chullunder Ghose whenever Lhaten asks me to, and shall go on alone with him, as he proposes. Once there, I shall ask for admission for both of you. If they refuse, then I won't go in either and we'll all three turn back."
I told him he would be a damned fool to refuse for any such reason.
"If they won't let me in," I argued, "I'll go back to the States and wait for you. If they turn you into something that's too wise for me to understand, I'll get my fun backing you, nevertheless. Besides," I said, "I've salted down some money and you haven't. Knowing something, as you will, you'll certainly be branded as a nut and you'll need all the support you can get, in addition to some one big enough to punch the heads of your opponents. From what I've seen and heard," said I, "they'll teach you to abstain from violence, but they'll fill you full of stuff that will exude from you and start explosions wherever you go. You'll need some one who isn't a pacifist, to break the heads of bigots. That's a job for me. And I'll help to keep the women from suing you in court when you refuse to accept them as soulmates."
I could no more make him yield than he could make me, though. I threatened to take him by main force as soon as I could recover strength and throw him into the Sham-bha-la ditch, to be fished out by the chelas as an act of charity. He promised to go forward. He refused to make the goal unless Chullunder Ghose and I might make it with him.
Lhaten kept coming and going, though I have not the remotest notion whence he came or whither he went at such regular intervals. As a doctor he was almost a magician; he reminded me of a physician whom I once met at Baroda when bubonic plague was playing havoc in a camp of famine refugees; he was a man who had not graduated with distinction, and who had no professional prospects because he did his thinking for himself and doubted all the doctrinaires, but most of his patients recovered, whereas most of those whose luck submitted them to other ministrations died. The man had the healer's gift—and so had Lhaten.
He was silent, nearly always, but his silence was something like that of the red man, totally devoid of surliness, suggesting that he had so much to think about that talking was a waste of time. How he kept himself clean was a mystery. At midday, when the sun would burn the skin of any one exposed to it, tea would freeze in the kettle within fifteen minutes after it was taken from the fire; washing, consequently, was a questionable luxury and the Tibetans who occupied the portion of the hut that was cut off from ours by the partition were as filthy as might be expected. Lhaten even wore clean clothes, which usually smelt of sandal wood. He only laughed when I asked him how he managed it.
Once, I believe, Rao Singh came, although I would not swear I was not dreaming. At that elevation, for reasons doubtless natural, but of whose nature I have not the remotest notion, dreams were as vivid and sharply etched as waking thought; so that it was difficult at times to draw the line between the dream and actuality. I can remember conversations that I thought I had with Grim, though he assured me afterward that I was sleeping and had not talked during sleep.
We both thought Rao Singh came into the hut, but we did not agree as to how he behaved, so it is possible that both of us were dreaming, though that both should have the same dream with mere minor variations as to detail, seems unlikely. Grim said Rao Singh was wearing a turban; my version of it was a loose fur cap. We both agreed about his eyes, which were as blazing blue as when we saw him in the hermit's cave, and if there is anything in the theory that people don't dream color that alone ought to settle the question. However, I am usually disbelieved when I assert that all my dreams are colored vividly, so I must leave the issue undecided.
As I recall it, no wind blew in through the door when it was opened and admitted Rao Singh. On the contrary, Grim declared there was the usual mid-morning gale and Lhaten had to force himself against the door to shut it. We were both sure there was snow on Rao Singh's coat, but differed about what boots he wore and as to whether he spoke to Lhaten in Tibetan or some other language. Grim thought he used Tibetan; I am nearly sure he spoke Hindi. What is certain is, that Grim and I both understood him, or believe we did—which adds to the weight of evidence in favor of the dream, since we understand people in dreams without defining what language they use.
He said to Lhaten (Grim and I agreed about that) "You should not waste energy. Too much is worse than too little. Exactly enough is the proper quantity." Then he examined Chullunder Ghose, who had been more or less unconscious for ten days and was lying babbling in a sort of half-delirium, under sheepskins that he threw off constantly.
"Can't you reach him?" he asked.
"No," said Lhaten. "I could reach that other, but not him."
"You strike too strenuously, and you don't go deep enough," said Rao Singh. "What did you follow?"
"His affection for his friends."
