The Devil's Guard, page 28
"You may come," he said in sonorous English, "but neither may the bird return into the egg nor you resume your former ignorance. I warn you: stay away, if you have any hunger for the life you knew."
I answered, I had found the world quite good enough for me but Grim was much the best thing in it, so that if I should have to choose between losing Grim or all my other friends I must decide to go with Grim.
"But I've a friend here," I added, "who needs looking after and who prefers to turn back. Consequently, I must turn back. Will you kindly tell Grim—"
I paused, for I hardly knew what he should tell him. It was no use lying. I suspected he would not consent to take a lying message, anyhow. I asked a question:
"Was there something about willingness? Lhaten said—"
"Your own free will," he answered.
"Then will you kindly tell Grim I have been refused admission on the ground that I am not entirely willing. Say that I shall wait for him in India, and that I hold him strictly to our bargain, the terms of which were that we should all three try to enter and the devil take the hindermost."
For about a minute he was silent and his face in firelight took on something of the expression of that Thinker carved in marble near the entrance of the cave. Then:
"Speak! Which way do you prefer?" he asked, in a voice like no man's I had ever heard. He did not speak loud. Neither is an earthquake loud. I answered:
"I should rather go with Grim, but—"
Chullunder Ghose spoke up, crying aloud to call attention to himself, then bowing three or four times, Hindu fashion—seated cross-legged, that is, and repeatedly raising both hands to his forehead.
"Pranam!" he exclaimed in Hindi. "This babu has come a long way, seeking—seeking."
"What have you sought!" asked he who stood beside me.
"Nameless one, my heart is seeking what this head denies!" He beat his head with both hands. "My heart is a lion. My head is a jackal. There are these two sahibs who have never stooped to be my fellow men; they have never imagined me anything else. Not stooping, they have seen me as their equals. Shall I undeceive them?"
"Let the heart speak."
"Shall I show ingratitude?"
"Strip the heart bare."
"How shall I repay them?"
"He who asks repayment—nay, I tell you, he who will accept it, is a victim of illusion. That which has been given, is not given if the giver can retake it. He who looks for his reward receives the ashes of his own gift. As the sun sends forth his rays into the dark, thus only shall a man give of his manhood. There is nothing else."
"Holy one, give me then, of your manhood!" said the babu; and the man beside me smiled as if he liked that answer.
"Can the jackal kill the lion?" he retorted. "Not until the lion is caught in a trap, when none the less the jackal fears to kill him, saying `Whence will come the carrion I preyed on?' The lion is the heart that hunts. The jackal is the head that whimpers and yelps and guzzles dead stuff that the lion leaves. What says your heart?"
"I am unwilling to betray these sahibs. I am the man they trusted."
"And the head?"
"I am afraid."
There was silence then for longer than a minute, while the babu sat swaying himself in agony of indecision. The firelight shone on beads of sweat that stood out on his forehead. Holding the wall to support himself, at last he stood up, standing very straight for a man recovering from sickness.
"I am afraid," he said, "but I shall face fear. I will go alone to India. I say, I will. If Ramsden sahib wishes to return with me, he shall not. I will not permit; for I will rather kill myself than keep him or Jimgrim from their goal. That is all. I will return alone to India."
He sat down and collapsed, laying his head on the rolled sheepskin that served for pillow.
"You will return. Who said you will return alone?" the man beside me asked.
"My head—my head. It aches!"
"Aye, aches because the heart has beaten it! Lhaten shall go with you to Darjiling. When your head says you have thrown away what you might have had, your heart shall answer: `You have given.' For without you, your friends would have refused to enter; and yet with you they could not have entered, because none may come but of his own free will."
"Then goodby, Rammy sahib," said the babu, rather piteously, doing his best to sit up and to smile. He tried to hold his hand out, but collapsed again. I told him I would stay with him until he should be fit to travel, never mind how long that might be; and as I said that, another thought occurred to me.
"They must be secrets that are told where Grim and I are going— very well kept secrets. Shall I ever be allowed to write about them, or to talk of them!" I asked.
"Then they would not be secrets," said the man beside me. "What is known in the heart can not be spoken by the lips. What you learn, you will live; what you think, you will do; there is no other way."
"But until then I am in no way pledged to secrecy?"
"In no way."
So I asked him for paper and pens and an ink pot, which he sent by messenger in two days' time together with a fat brass tube with caps at either end in which to pack my manuscript. And ever since, for nearly four weeks, while Chullunder Ghose recovered from his illness, I have sat here at the porphyry and marble altar writing what I can remember of our journey.
He who brought the paper told me that Grim had gone forward as soon as he heard of how the babu's difficulty had been solved; so I suppose when I get there that Grim will be, as usual, a dozen or more jumps ahead of me in comprehension. But I would rather keep my eye on Grim's back than be neck-and-neck with any other dozen men I know.
It is an hour after dawn and wind is blowing like a whip-lash through the entrance of the cave. Chullunder Ghose is well, and ready for his journey. I shall send this manuscript by his hand to Will Hancock at the mission near Darjiling, and if Will decides that it is fit to see the light of day in company with his books on the Pentateuch and what not else, he has my leave to publish it or to send it along to another friend of mine, who, having no board of trustees to censor his activities, may see fit to stand as its sponsor. If he does so, he is warned that he will run risks, since a reputation for veracity depends on making such assertions as the public thinks are true. I can hardly expect him to believe what Rao Singh said: that it makes no difference what people think of you, or what they do to you. The only thing that matters to you is what you think, and what you do to others. If he should by chance believe it, I can hardly hope that he will act on it; so probably this manuscript of mine will never see the light of day.
I have been warned that somebody will come for me this morning, and that I shall have to go at once without keeping him waiting. I have given to Chullunder Ghose an order on my bankers that he seems to think not niggardly. He copiously overestimates the value of this manuscript and is as proud as Lucifer to be entrusted with its delivery.
He is standing beside me, waiting to insert this last page into the tube. He dislikes some of my quotations of his speeches, but has promised faithfully to deliver every sheet untampered with to Hancock.
Now I hear them coming—
———— There is a big black blot here and the manuscript ends abruptly.—Ed.
THE END
ENDNOTES
Endnote 1: A province in Tibet.
Endnote 2: Foreigner. i.e. Rait.
Endnote 3: Three unspeakable offenses against Tibetan Custom.
Endnote 4;The foulest word of abuse in the Tibetan language. Ragyabas are outcasts who live in unspeakable filth on the outskirts of towns. It is they who have the disposition of all corpses.
Endnote 5:The Dalai Lama.
Endnote 6: That is all.
Endnote 7: An important official.
Endnote 8: A very high official in Tibet.
Endnote 9: According to some authorities this process accounts for a large percentage of the idiots immured in lunatic asylums. It is said that, through vicious habits and in various other ways, they render themselves unable to resist the imposition of other wills on theirs— even of a number of other wills at one time. If true, this would account for the sudden criminal outbursts of otherwise apparently sane people. Whether true or not, there are millions of people who believe—and there is plenty of circumstantial evidence—that experts in malignant hypnotism and thought transmission can project their own personal appearance as well as superimpose their will on another. Compare the Bible, H.P. Blavatsky, Eliphas Levy, and scores of other writers on the subject.
Endnote 10: Guru—a teacher.
Endnote 11: The law of Cause and Effect, which provides exact reward and retribution.
Endnote 12: Wandering religious beggar.
Endnote 13: Good! Very good.
Endnote 14: The Dalai lama.
Talbot Mundy, The Devil's Guard
