XIV. The Yellow Flower
The girl sat in a great chair before the fire, huddled, staring into theglow of the smoldering logs.
Her dark hair clouded her face. The evening gown was twisted andcrumpled about her. There was no ornament on her; her arms, hershoulders, the exquisite column of her throat were bare.
She sat with her eyes wide, unmoving, in a profound reflection.
The library was softly lighted; richly furnished, a little beyondthe permission of good taste. On a table at the girl's elbow were twoobjects; a ruby necklace, and a dried flower. The flower, fragile withage, seemed a sort of scrub poppy of a delicate yellow; the flower ofsome dwarfed bush, prickly like a cactus.
The necklace made a great heap of jewels on the buhl top of the table,above the intricate arabesque of silver and tortoise-shell.
It was nearly midnight. Outside, the dull rumble of London seemed asound, continuous, unvarying, as though it were the distant roar of aworld turning in some stellar space.
It was a great old house in Park Lane, heavy and of that gloomyarchitecture with which the feeling of the English people, at an earliertime, had been so strangely in accord. It stood before St. James's Parkoppressive and monumental, and now in the midst of yellow fog its heavyfront was like a mausoleum.
But within, the house had been treated to a modern re-casting, notentirely independent of the vanity of wealth.
After the dinner at the Ritz, the girl felt that she could not go on;and Lady Mary's party, on its way to the dancing, put her down at thedoor. She gave the excuse of a crippling headache. But it was a deeper,more profound aching that disturbed her. She was before the tragic hour,appearing in the lives of many women, when suddenly, as by the openingof a door, one realizes the irrevocable aspect of a marriage of whichthe details are beginning to be arranged. That hour in which a womanmust consider, finally, the clipping of all threads, except the singleone that shall cord her to a mate for life.
Until to-night, in spite of preparations on the way, the girl had notfelt this marriage as inevitable. Her aunt had pressed for it, subtly,invisibly, as an older woman is able to do.
Her situation was always, clearly before her. She was alone in theworld; with very little, almost nothing. The estate her father inheritedhe had finally spent in making great explorations. There was no unknowntaste of the world that he had not undertaken to enter. The finaldriblets of his fortune had gone into his last adventure in the GreatGobi Desert from which he had never returned.
The girl had been taken by this aunt in London, incredibly rich, but onthe fringes of the fashionable society of England, which she longed toenter. Even to the young girl, her aunt's plan was visible. With a greatsettlement, such as this ambitious woman could manage, the girl could bea duchess.
The marriage to Lord Eckhart in the diplomatic service, who would oneday be a peer of England, had been a lure dangled unavailingly beforeher, until that night, when, on his return from India, he had carriedher off her feet with his amazing incredible sacrifice. It was theimmense idealism, the immense romance of it that had swept her into thisirrevocable thing.
She got up now, swiftly, as though she would again realize how the thinghad happened and stooped over the table above the heap of jewels. Theywere great pigeon-blood rubies, twenty-seven of them, fastened togetherwith ancient crude gold work. She lifted the long necklace until it hungwith the last jewel on the table.
The thing was a treasure, an immense, incredible treasure. And it wasfor this--for the privilege of putting this into her hands, that theman had sold everything he had in England--and endured what the gossipssaid--endured it during the five years in India--kept silent and wasnow silent. She remembered every detail the rumor of a wild life, adissolute reckless life, the gradual, piece by piece sale ofeverything that could be turned into money. London could not think of ane'er-do-well to equal him in the memory of its oldest gossips--andall the time with every penny, he was putting together this immensetreasure--for her. A dreamer writing a romance might imagine a thinglike this, but had it any equal in the realities of life?
She looked down at the chain of great jewels, and the fragment ofprickly shrub with its poppy-shaped yellow flower. They were symbols,each, of an immense idealism, an immense conception of sacrifice thatlifted the actors in their dramas into gigantic figures illumined withthe halos of romance.
Until to-night it had been this ideal figure of Lord Eckhart that thegirl considered in this marriage. And to-night, suddenly, the actualphysical man had replaced it. And, alarmed, she had drawn back. Perhapsit was the Teutonic blood in him--a grandmother of a German house. And,yet, who could say, perhaps this piece of consuming idealism was fromthat ancient extinct Germany of Beethoven.
But the man and the ideal seemed distinct things having no relation.She drew back from the one, and she stood on tip-toe, with arms extendedlongingly toward the other.
What should she do?
Had the example of her father thrown on Lord Eckhart a golden shadow?She moved the bit of flower, gently as in a caress. He had given up theincome of a leading profession and gone to his death. His fortune andhis life had gone in the same high careless manner for the thing hesought. For the treasure that he believed lay in the Gobi Desert--notfor himself, but for every man to be born into the world. He was thegreat dreamer, the great idealist, a vague shining figure before thegirl like the cloud in the Hebraic Myth.
The girl stood up and linked her fingers together behind her back. Ifher father were only here--for an hour, for a moment! Or if, in theworld beyond sight and hearing, he could somehow get a message to her!
At this moment a bell, somewhere in the deeps of the house, jangled, andshe heard the old butler moving through the hall to the door. Theother servants had been dismissed for the night, and her aunt on thepreliminaries of this marriage was in Paris.
A moment later the butler appeared with a card on his tray. It wasa card newly engraved in some English shop and bore the name "Dr.Tsan-Sgam." The girl stood for a moment puzzled at the queer name, andthen the memory of the strange outlandish human creatures, from the endsof the world, who used sometimes to visit her father, in the old time,returned, and with it there came a sudden upward sweep of the heart--wasthere an answer to her longing, somehow, incredibly on the way!
She gave a direction for the visitor to be brought in. He was a bigold man. His body looked long and muscular like that of some typeof Englishmen, but his head and his features were Mongolian. He wasentirely bald, as bald as the palm of a hand, as though bald fromhis mother he had so remained to this incredible age. And age was theimpression that he profoundly presented. But it was age that a toughvitality in the man resisted; as though the assault of time wore it downslowly and with almost an imperceptible detritus. The great naked headand the wide Mongolian face were unshrunken; they presented, rather, theaspect of some old child. He was dressed with extreme care, in the verybest evening clothes that one could buy in a London shop.
He bowed, oddly, with a slow doubling of the body, and when he spokethe girl felt that he was translating his words through more than onelanguage; as though one were to put one's sentences into French orItalian and from that, as a sort of intermediary, into English--asthough the way were long, and unfamiliar from the medium in which theman thought to the one in which he was undertaking to express it. But atthe end of this involved mental process his English sentences appearedcorrectly, and with an accurate selection in the words.
"You must pardon the hour, Miss Carstair," he said, in his slow, precisearticulation, "but I am required to see you and it is the only time Ihave."
Then his eyes caught the necklace on the table, and advancing with twosteps he stooped over it.
For a moment everything else seemed removed, from about the man. Hisangular body, in its unfamiliar dress, was doubled like a finger; hisgreat head with its wide Mongolian face was close down over the buhl topof the table and his finger moved the heap of rubies.
The girl had a s
udden inspiration.
"Lord Eckhart got these jewels from you?"
The man paused, he seemed to be moving the girl's words backward throughthe intervening languages.
Then he replied.
"Yes," he said, "from us."
The girl's inspiration was now illumined by a further light.
"And you have not been paid for them?"
The man stood up now. And again this involved process of moving thewords back through various translations was visible--and the answer up.
"Yes--" he said, "we have been paid."
Then he added, in explanation of his act.
"These rubies have no equal in the world--and the gold-work attachingthem together is extremely old. I am always curious to admire it."
He looked down at the girl, at the necklace, at the space about them, asthough he were deeply, profoundly puzzled.
"We had a fear," he said, "--it was wrong!"
Then he put his hand swiftly into the bosom pocket of his evening coat,took out a thin packet wrapped in a piece of vellum and handed it to thegirl.
"It became necessary to treat with the English Government about theremoval of records from Lhassa and I was sent--I was directed to getthis packet to you from London. To-night, at dinner with Sir HenryMarquis in St. James's Square, I learned that you were here. I had thenonly this hour to come, as my boat leaves in the morning." He spoke withthe extreme care of one putting together a delicate mosaic.
The girl stood staring at the thin packet. A single thought aloneconsumed her.
"It is a message from--my--father."
She spoke almost in a whisper.
The big Oriental replied immediately.
"No," he said, "your father is beyond sight and hearing."
The girl had no hope; only the will to hope. The reply was confirmationof what she already knew. She removed the thin vellum wrapper from thepacket. Within she found a drawing on a plate of ivory. It representeda shaft of some white stone standing on the slight elevation of whatseemed to be a barren plateau. And below on the plate, in fine Englishcharacters like an engraving, was the legend, "Erected to the memory ofMajor Judson Carstair by the monastery at the Head."
The man added a word of explanation.
"The Brotherhood thought that you would wish to know that your father'sbody had been recovered, and that it had received Christian burial, asnearly as we were able to interpret the forms. The stone is a sort ofgranite."
The girl wished to ask a thousand questions: How did her father meet hisdeath, and where? What did they know? What had they recovered with hisbody?
The girl spoke impulsively, her words crowding one another. And theOriental seemed able only to disengage the last query from the others.
"Unfortunately," he said, "some band of the desert people had passedbefore our expedition arrived, nothing was recovered but the body. Itwas not mutilated."
They had been standing. The girl now indicated the big library chair inwhich she had been huddled and got another for herself. Then she wishedto know what they had learned about her father's death.
The Oriental sat down. He sat awkwardly, his big body, in a kind ofsquat posture, the broad Mongolian face emerging, as in a sort ofdeformity, from the collar of his evening coat. Then he began to speak,with that conscious effect of bringing his words through various mediumsfrom a distance.
"We endeavored to discourage Major Carstair from undertaking thisadventure. We were greatly concerned about his safety. The sunkenplateau of the Gobi Desert, north of the Shan States, is exceedinglydangerous for an European, not so much on account of murderous attacksfrom the desert people, for this peril we could prevent; but there is achill in this sunken plain after sunset that the native people only canresist. No white man has ever crossed the low land of the Gobi."
He paused.
"And there is in fact no reason why any one should wish to cross it. Itis absolutely barren. We pointed out all this very carefully to MajorCarstair when we learned what he had in plan, for as I have said hiswelfare was very pressingly on our conscience. We were profoundlypuzzled about what he was seeking in the Gobi. He was not, evidently,intending to plot the region or to survey any route, or to acquire anyscientific data. His equipment lacked all the implements for such work.It was a long time before we understood the impulse that was movingMajor Carstair to enter this waste region of the Gobi to the north."
The man stopped, and sat for some moments quite motionless.
"Your father," he went on, "was a distinguished man in one of thedepartments of human endeavor which the East has always neglected; andin it he had what seemed to us incredible skill--with ease he was ableto do things which we considered impossible. And for this reason theimpulse taking him into the Gobi seemed entirely incredible to us; itseemed entirely inconsistent with this special ability which we knew theman to possess; and for a long time we rejected it, believing ourselvesto be somehow misled."
The girl sat straight and silent, in her chair near the brass fenderto the right of the buhl table; the drawing, showing the white graniteshaft, held idly in her fingers; the illuminated vellum wrapper fallento the floor.
The man continued speaking slowly.
"When, finally, it was borne in upon us that Major Carstair was seekinga treasure somewhere on the barren plateau of the Gobi, we took everymeasure, consistent with a proper courtesy, to show him how fantasticthis notion was. We had, in fact, to exercise a certain care lestthe very absurdity of the conception appear too conspicuously in ourdiscourse."
He looked across the table at the girl.
The man's great bald head seemed to sink a little into his shoulders, asin some relaxation.
"We brought out our maps of the region and showed him the old routesand trails veining the whole of it. We explained the topography of thisdesert plateau; the exact physical character of its relief. There washardly a square mile of it that we did not know in some degree, andof which we did not possess some fairly accurate data. It was entirelyinconceivable that any object of value could exist in this regionwithout our knowledge of it."
The man was speaking like one engaged in some extremely delicatemechanical affair, requiring an accuracy almost painful in itsexactness.
"Then, profoundly puzzled, we endeavored to discover what data MajorCarstair possessed that could in any way encourage him in this fantasticidea. It was a difficult thing to do, for we held him in the highestesteem and, outside of this bizarre notion, we had before us, beyond anyquestion, the evidence of his especial knowledge; and, as I have said,his, to us, incredible skill."
He paused, as though the careful structure of the long sentence hadfatigued him.
"Major Carstair's explanations were always in the imagery of romance.He sought 'a treasure--a treasure that would destroy a Kingdom.' And hisindicatory data seemed to be the dried blossom of our desert poppy."
Again the Oriental paused. He put up his hand and passed his fingersover his face. The gaunt hand contrasted with the full contour.
"I confess that we did not know what to do. We realized that we hadto deal with a nature possessing in one direction the exact accurateknowledge of a man of science, and in another the wonder extravagancesof a child. The Dalai Lama was not yet able to be consulted, and itseemed to us a better plan to say no more about the impossible treasure,and address our endeavors to the practical side of Major Carstair'sintelligence instead. We now pointed out the physical dangers of theregion. The deadly chill in it coming on at sunset could not fail toinflame the lungs of a European, accustomed to an equable temperature,fever would follow; and within a few days the unfortunate victim wouldfind his whole breathing space fatally congested."
The man removed his hand. The care in his articulation was marked.
"Major Carstair was not turned aside by these facts, and we permittedhim to go on."
Again he paused as though troubled by a memory.
"In this course," he continued, "the Dalai Lama considered us to haveacted at
the extreme of folly. But it is to be remembered, in ourbehalf, that somewhat of the wonder at Major Carstair's knowledge ofWestern science dealing with the human body was on us, and we feltthat perhaps the climatic peril of the Gobi might present no difficultproblem to him.
"We were fatally misled."
Then he added.
"We were careful to direct him along the highest route of the plateau,and to have his expedition followed. But chance intervened. MajorCarstair turned out of the route and our patrol went on, supposing himto be ahead on the course which we had indicated to him. When the errorwas at last discovered, our patrol was entering the Sirke range. No onecould say at what point on the route Major Carstair had turned out, andour search of the vast waste of the Gobi desert began. The high wind onthe plateau removes every trace of human travel. The whole of the regionfrom the Sirke, south, had to be gone over. It took a long time."
The man stopped like one who has finished a story. The girl had notmoved; her face was strained and white. The fog outside had thickened;the sounds of the city seemed distant. The girl had listened without aword, without a gesture. Now she spoke.
"But why were you so concerned about my father?"
The big Oriental turned about in the chair. He looked steadily at thegirl, he seemed to be treating the query to his involved method oftranslation; and Miss Carstair felt that the man, because of thistedious mental process, might have difficulty to understand preciselywhat she meant.
What he wished to say, he could control and, therefore, could accuratelypresent--but what was said to him began in the distant language.
"What Major Carstair did," he said, "it has not been made clear to you?"
"No," she replied, "I do not understand."
The man seemed puzzled.
"You have not understood!"
He repeated the sentence; his face reflective, his great bare headsettling into the collar of his evening coat as though the man's neckwere removed.
He remained for a moment thus puzzled and reflective. Then he beganto speak as one would set in motion some delicate involved machineryrunning away into the hidden spaces of a workshop.
"The Dalai Lama had fallen--he was alone in the Image Room. His headstriking the sharp edge of a table was cut. He had lost a great deal ofblood when we found him and was close to death. Major Carstair was atthis time approaching the monastery from the south; his descriptionsent to us from Lhassa contained the statement that he was an Americansurgeon. We sent at once asking him to visit the Dalai Lama, for theskill of Western people in this department of human knowledge is knownto us."
The Oriental went on, slowly, with extreme care.
"Major Carstair did not at once impress us. 'What this man needs,' hesaid, 'is blood.' That was clear to everybody. One of our, how shall Isay it in your language, Cardinals, replied with some bitterness, thatthe Dalai Lama could hardly be imagined to lack anything else. MajorCarstair paid no attention to the irony. 'This man must have a supplyof blood,' he added. The Cardinal, very old, and given to imagery in hisdiscourse answered, that blood could be poured out but it could not begathered up... and that man could spill it but only God could make.
"We interrupted then, for Major Carstair was our guest and entitled toevery courtesy, and inquired how it would be possible to restore bloodto the Dalai Lama; it was not conceivable that the lost blood could begathered up.
"He explained then that he would transfer it from the veins of a healthyman into the unconscious body."
The Oriental hesitated; then he went on.
"The thing seemed to us fantastic. But our text treating the life ofthe Dalai Lama admits of no doubt upon one point--'no measure presentingitself in extremity can be withheld.' He was in clear extremity and thismeasure, even though of foreign origin, had presented itself, and wefelt after a brief reflection that we were bound to permit it."
He added.
"The result was a miracle to us. In a short time the Dalai Lama hadrecovered. But in the meantime Major Carstair had gone on into the Gobiseeking the fantastic treasure."
The girl turned toward the man, a wide-eyed, eager, lighted face.
"Do you realize," she said, "the sort of treasure that my fathersacrificed his life to search for?"
The Oriental spoke slowly.
"It was to destroy a Kingdom," he said.
"To destroy the Kingdom of Pain!" She replied, "My father was seekingan anesthetic more powerful than the derivatives of domestic opium. Hesearched the world for it. In the little, wild desert flower lay, hethought, the essence of this treasure. And he would seek it at any cost.Fortune was nothing; life was nothing. Is it any wonder that you couldnot stop him? A flaming sword moving at the entrance to the Gobi couldnot have barred him out!"
The big Oriental made a vague gesture as of one removing somethingclinging to his face.
"Wherefore this blindness?" he said.
The girl had turned away in an effort to control the emotion thatpossessed her. But the task was greater than her strength; when shecame back to the table tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down herface. Emotion seemed now to overcome her.
"If my father were only here," her voice was broken, "if he were onlyhere!"
The big Oriental moved his whole body, as by one motion, toward her. Thehouse was very still; there was only the faint crackling of the logs onthe fire.
"We had a fear," he said. "It remains!"
The girl went over and stood before the fire, her foot on the brassfender, her fingers linked behind her back. For sometime she was silent.Finally she spoke, without turning her head, in a low voice.
"You know Lord Eckhart?"
A strange expression passed over the Oriental's face.
"Yes, when Lhassa was entered, the Head moved north to our monastery onthe edge of the Gobi--the English sovereignty extends to the Kahn line.Lord Eckhart was the political agent of the English government in theprovince nearest to us."
When the girl got up, the Oriental also rose. He stood awkwardly, hisbody stooped; his hand as for support resting on the corner of thetable. The girl spoke again, in the same posture. Her face toward thefire.
"How do you feel about Lord Eckhart?"
"Feel!" The man repeated the word.
He hesitated a little.
"We trusted Lord Eckhart. We have found all English honorable."
"Lord Eckhart is partly German," the girl went on.
The man's voice in reply was like a foot-note to a discourse.
"Ah!" He drawled the expletive as though it were some Oriental word.
The girl continued. "You have perhaps heard that a marriage is arrangedbetween us."
Her voice was steady, low, without emotion.
For a long time there was utter silence in the room.
Then, finally, when the Oriental spoke his voice had changed. It wasgentle, and packed with sympathy. It was like a voice within the gate ofa confessional.
"Do you love him?" it said.
"I do not know."
The vast sympathy in the voice continued. "You do not know?--it isimpossible! Love is or it is not. It is the longing of elements tornasunder, at the beginning of things, to be rejoined."
The girl turned swiftly, her body erect, her face lifted.
"But this great act," she cried. "My father, I, all of our blood, aremoved by romance--by the romance of sacrifice. Look how my father diedseeking an antidote for the pain of the world. How shall I meet thissacrifice of Lord Eckhart?"
Something strange began to dawn in the wide Mongolian face.
"What sacrifice?"
The girl came over swiftly to the table. She scattered the mass ofjewels with a swift gesture.
"Did he not give everything he possessed, everything piece by piece, forthis?"
She took the necklace up and twisted it around her fingers. Her handsappeared to be a mass of rubies.
A great light came into the Oriental's face.
"The necklace," he said, "is a present to
you from the Dalai Lama. Itwas entrusted to Lord Eckhart to deliver."