The ninth vibration and other stories Part 2

For this is a subject on which the spiritually learned men of India, like the great mystics of all the faiths, have much to say. I had listened with bewilderment and doubt to the expositions of my Pandit on this very head. Her simple words seemed for a moment the echo of his deep and searching thought. Yet it surely could not be. Impossible.

"Never. What does it mean?" She raised clear unveiled eyes. "You must forgive me for being so stupid, but it is my mother who is at home with all these scientific phrases. I know none of them."

"It means that for some people the material universe--the things we see with our eyes--is only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which either hides or shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that sense they see things as they really are, not as they seem to the rest of us. And whether this is the statement of a truth or the wildest of dreams, I cannot tell."

She did not answer for a moment; then said;

"Are there people who believe this--know it?"

"Certainly. There are people who believe that thought is the only real thing--that the whole universe is thought made visible. That we create with our thoughts the very body by which we shall re-act on the universe in lives to be.

"Do you believe it?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

She paused; looked at me, and then went on:

"You see, I don't think things out. I only feel. But this cannot interest you."

I felt she was eluding the question. She began to interest me more than any one I had ever known. She had extraordinary power of a sort. Once, in the woods, where I was reading in so deep a shade that she never saw me, I had an amazing vision of her. She stood in a glade with the sunlight and shade about her; she had no hat and a sunbeam turned her hair to pale bronze. A small bright April shower was falling through the sun, and she stood in pure light that reflected itself in every leaf and gra.s.s-blade. But it was nothing of all this that arrested me, beautiful as it was. She stood as though life were for the moment suspended;--then, very softly, she made a low musical sound, infinitely wooing, from scarcely parted lips, and instantly I saw a bird of azure plumage flutter down and settle on her shoulder, pluming himself there in happy security. Again she called softly and another followed the first. Two flew to her feet, two more to her breast and hand. They caressed her, clung to her, drew some joyous influence from her presence. She stood in the glittering rain like Spring with her birds about her--a wonderful sight. Then, raising one hand gently with the fingers thrown back she uttered a different note, perfectly sweet and intimate, and the branches parted and a young deer with full bright eyes fixed on her advanced and pushed a soft muzzle into her hand.

In my astonishment I moved, however slightly, and the picture broke up.

The deer sprang back into the trees, the birds fluttered up in a hurry of feathers, and she turned calm eyes upon me, as unstartled as if she had known all the time that I was there.

"You should not have breathed," she said smiling. "They must have utter quiet."

I rose up and joined her.

"It is a marvel. I can scarcely believe my eyes. How do you do it?"

"My father taught me. They come. How can I tell?"

She turned away and left me. I thought long over this episode. I recalled words heard in the place of my studies--words I had dismissed without any care at the moment. "To those who see, nothing is alien.

They move in the same vibration with all that has life, be it in bird or flower. And in the Uttermost also, for all things are One. For such there is no death."

That was beyond me still, but I watched her with profound interest. She recalled also words I had half forgotten--

"There was nought above me and nought below, My childhood had not learnt to know; For what are the voices of birds, Aye, and of beasts, but words, our words,-- Only so much more sweet."

That might have been written of her. And more.

She had found one day in the woods a flower of a sort I had once seen in the warm damp forests below Darjiling--ivory white and shaped like a dove in flight. She wore it that evening on her bosom. A week later she wore what I took to be another.

"You have had luck," I said; "I never heard of such a thing being seen so high up, and you have found it twice."

"No, it is the same."

"The same? Impossible. You found it more than a week ago." "I know. It is ten days. Flowers don't die when one understands them--not as most people think."

Her mother looked up and said fretfully:

"Since she was a child Brynhild has had that odd idea. That flower is dead and withered. Throw it away, child. It looks hideous."

Was it glamour? What was it? I saw the flower dewy fresh in her bosom She smiled and turned away.

It was that very evening she left the veranda where we were sitting in the subdued light of a little lamp and pa.s.sed beyond where the ray cut the darkness. She went down the perspective of trees to the edge of he clearing and I rose to follow for it seemed absolutely unsafe that she should be on the verge of the panther-haunted woods alone. Mrs. Ingmar turned a page of her book serenely;

"She will not like it if you go. I cannot imagine that she should come to harm. She always goes her own way--light or dark."

I returned to my seat and watched steadfastly. At first I could see nothing but as my sight adjusted itself I saw her a long way down the clearing that opened the snows, and quite certainly also I saw something like a huge dog detach itself from the woods and bound to her feet. It mingled with her dark dress and I lost it. Mrs. Ingmar said, seeing my anxiety but nothing else; "Her father was just the same;--he had no fear of anything that lives. No doubt some people have that power. I have never seen her attract birds and beasts as he certainly did, but she is quite as fond of them."

I could not understand her blindness--what I myself had seen raised questions I found unanswerable, and her mother saw nothing! Which of us was right? presently she came back slowly and I ventured no word.

A woodland sorcery, innocent as the dawn, hovered about her. What was it? Did the mere love of these creatures make a bond between her soul and theirs, or was the ancient dream true and could she at times move in the same vibration? I thought of her as a wood-spirit sometimes, an expression herself of some pa.s.sion of beauty in Nature, a thought of snows and starry nights and flowing rivers made visible in flesh. It is surely when seized with the urge of some primeval yearning which in man is merely s.e.xual that Nature conceives her fair forms and manifests them, for there is a correspondence that runs through all creation.

Here I ask myself--Did I love her? In a sense, yes, deeply, but not in the common reading of the phrase. I have trembled with delight before the wild and terrible splendour of the Himalayan heights-; low golden moons have steeped my soul longing, but I did not think of these things as mine in any narrow sense, nor so desire them. They were Angels of the Evangel of beauty. So too was she. She had none of the "silken nets and traps of adamant," she was no sister of the "girls of mild silver or of furious gold;"--but fair, strong, and her own, a dweller in the House of Quiet. I did not covet her. I loved her.

Days pa.s.sed. There came a night when the winds were loosed--no moon, the stars flickering like blown tapers through driven clouds, the trees swaying and lamenting.

"There will be rain tomorrow." Mrs. Ingmar said, as we parted for the night. I closed my door. Some great cat of the woods was crying harshly outside my window, the sound receding towards the bridle way. I slept in a dream of tossing seas and s.h.i.+ps labouring among them.

With the sense of a summons I waked--I cannot tell when. Unmistakable, as if I were called by name. I rose and dressed, and heard distinctly bare feet pa.s.sing my door. I opened it noiselessly and looked out into the little pa.s.sage way that made for the entry, and saw nothing but pools of darkness and a dim light from the square of the window at the end. But the wind had swept the sky clear with its flying bosom and was sleeping now in its high places and the air was filled with a mild moony radiance and a great stillness.

Now let me speak with restraint and exactness. I was not afraid but felt as I imagine a dog feels in the presence of his master, conscious of a purpose, a will entirely above his own and incomprehensible, yet to be obeyed without question. I followed my reading of the command, bewildered but docile, and understanding nothing but that I was called.

The lights were out. The house dead silent; the familiar veranda ghostly in the night. And now I saw a white figure at the head of the steps--Brynhild. She turned and looked over her shoulder, her face pale in the moon, and made the same gesture with which she summoned her birds. I knew her meaning, for now we were moving in the same rhythm, and followed as she took the lead. How shall I describe that strange night in the jungle. There were fire-flies or dancing points of light that recalled them. Perhaps she was only thinking them--only thinking the moon and the quiet, for we were in the world where thought is the one reality. But they went with us in a cloud and faintly lighted our way. There were exquisite wafts of perfume from hidden flowers breathing their dreams to the night. Here and there a drowsy bird stirred and chirped from the roof of darkness, a low note of content that greeted her pa.s.sing. It was a path intricate and winding and how long we went, and where, I cannot tell. But at last she stooped and parting the boughs before her we stepped into an open s.p.a.ce, and before us--I knew it--I knew it!--The House of Beauty.

She paused at the foot of the great marble steps and looked at me.

"We have met here already."

I did not wonder--I could not. In the Ninth vibration surprise had ceased to be. Why had I not recognized her before--O dull of heart! That was my only thought. We walk blindfold through the profound darkness of material nature, the blinder because we believe we see it. It is only when the doors of the material are closed that the world appears to man as it exists in the eternal truth.

"Did you know this?" I asked, trembling before mystery.

"I knew it, because I am awake. You forgot it in the dull sleep which we call daily life. But we were here and THEY began the story of the King who made this house. Tonight we shall hear it. It he story of Beauty wandering through the world and the world received her not. We hear it in this place because here he agonized for what he knew too late."

"Was that our only meeting?"

"We meet every night, but you forget when the day brings the sleep of the soul.--You do not sink deep enough into rest to remember. You float on the surface where the little bubbles of foolish dream are about you and I cannot reach you then."

"How can I compel myself to the deeps?"

"You cannot. It will come. But when you have pa.s.sed up the bridle way and beyond the s.h.i.+pki, stop at Gyumur. There is the Monastery of Tas.h.i.+gong, and there one will meet you--

"His name?"

"Stephen Clifden. He will tell you what you desire to know. Continue on then with him to Yarkhand. There in the Ninth Vibration we shall meet again. It is a long journey but you will be content."