Albert Kinross

“ Madge Harewood had turned to Colin. He was looking very well in his regimentals, the usual gunner outfit, blue and red and lots of gold braid, the slip of striped ribbon on his breast lending a finishing touch of the heroic to what otherwise had been but mere barbarous ornament. The girl was on his arm, and, as they moved away, I noticed that again the old look had gone clean out of his eyes, swamped by a light of happiness that I considered excessive—just as when, in the cart that afternoon, he had held forth about Madge Harewood. ”

“ None knew but I, who have been dead these many years, and who am once more living—I, who have cheated Death! For did I not die that far-away day when they, the red lamas, led me through their hideous temples, through their thrice-cursed city that they call holy—led me up to the temple-palace of Potala, that is hewn out of the live rock and stands high above the city? They led me to the gilded roof with the giant Buddha, so that they might fling me into the pit where I died slowly. ”

“ More like a small city than aught else is the temple of the Grand Lama. He himself stood there to receive me, in robes of yellow silk, richly jewelled and embroidered; and, amidst the crowd of many-coloured lamas that was about him, I fancied I saw the grinning face of Sherab Gyatso, and the face of that other priest who had hurried forward from Chetang. But for these I had no eyes, seeing that the great man whose life has no end was before me, the Pope of this heathen race. ”

“ We were seated in that dazzling room, the old portraits looking doubly sober in their brilliant setting; and, if the story he now unfolded was wild and horrible, a thing to shudder at, it must have been the lights, the security born of so much radiance, that nerved me through the terrors of those hours.
“I must go back,” Colin began, “to him.” He pointed to the first of the later Fonnereaus as he spoke. “He is bad enough, and he is only the son! The other is not here; he was never painted. Downstairs there is a miniature of him, as a young man, done before he went away. ”

“ Her face, one I shall always admire, was strong, even masterful, despite its manifest womanliness: authority, patience unending, and the settled tension of habitual watchfulness mingled, were written unmistakably amid its smoother lines—the face of a woman who had suffered much, but, unshaken, still hoped on.
Old Fonnereau, my host, came in later. He was very much like Colin—tall, well set-up, and dark complexioned; but quite grey, and his eyes—well, Colin's had a peculiar look in them, but, compared with his father's, they were ordinary, almost ordinary. ”

“ Fonnereau. Old Fonnereau certainly did join in in his half-hearted way, trying to look straight across at us. But always the Thing, or whatever it was, that I had imagined, seemed to get between and fill his eyes with that strange, shrinking terror that the look in Colin's but barely hinted at. He would have been a handsome enough man but for this joyless and unceasing preoccupation, with his white hair, fine figure, dark complexion and accurate features. ”

“ I was in the dark, an inky darkness, clutching at my ring and wondering how long—how long could I hold without dropping! And again the cold terror of my plight seized on me.
“But I was not long to shiver through this awful solitude, for presently came light—light from below, light from above—how thrown I could not tell. Reddish it burnt, yet very steadily; and then I saw where I was. This pit might be some natural chimney leading downward from the temple-roof to the foot of the eminence upon which stood the Dalai Lama's Palace. ”

“ Colin folded the faded papers on his knee, and, candlestick in hand, went over to the empty grate. The ashes drove up the chimney or fell powdered between the bars. The story I had listened to would never be told again—never as I had heard it that winter's night, in all its naked horror.
“To bed,” said Colin,—“we must sleep! The lights can burn.” And thus we left that brilliant room, from whose walls the portraits no longer looked down on us with unseeing eyes. ”

“ Colin humoured her, and we passed through the long corridors, endless in the candle-light, to the very spot where I had met Old Fonnereau in his paint-smeared coat on the yesterday. A few paces further and Colin halted, throwing open the door of a large and formal apartment. This hall was hung with family portraits, and was mainly remarkable for its size and an atmosphere sickly with the smell of wet oil-paint. Here too the candles burnt, but brighter and in greater number than outside. Madge Harewood slipped a hand through Colin's arm, and he smiled. ”

“ I replied that my present dignities were proof sufficient that he had not forgotten me.
“There's a dance to-night. We're going over after dinner, and so's Madge. You'll like her,” he said, alluding to his fiancée.
She was uppermost in what followed. His eyes were quite clear, no trace whatsoever of the old trouble in them, as he rattled on about the future—lightheartedly, hopefully, just as any other man of his years and prospects might have done. Colin Fonnereau, like the rest of them, had become commonplace, monotonously happy. ”

“ For three years afterwards V Battery was stationed near my rooms. The whole turnout passed my windows every other morning, Colin, a useful-looking subaltern, bobbing in his saddle beside the lumbering guns; on Sundays, with a plume a foot long in his busby and a chest gorgeous with gold braid, he would often go by leading his men to church.
During those three years Colin and I saw much of one another—nearly as much as at school. I liked him. I never quite understood him, I admit; but we were very friendly all the same. He was one of those men whose people only exist on paper. ”

“ Madge Harewood paused and I paused, and Colin faced them—and in his eyes! I understood. All those men in bygone fashions had the same look, the same premature grey hair, and their eyes were worse, infinitely worse than Old Fonnereau's—filled with the same nerveless dread of some spectral object dangling in mid-air. ”

“ Fonnereau had suffered through years of silence and repression, to burst out at last as she had burst out just now? Surely Colin would never bring Madge Harewood back there! Never! Never! Let that house perish, with all it held of dire! Why did they not desert it now!
And Colin, standing beside me, lit another cigarette. We were alone at last. “Have one?” and he offered me the case. “It's nearly over,” he said, dropping into a chair. “Thank God for that! I fancy we've come to the end now. A light?” and he passed his own cigarette across. “Madge has been a brick through it all.” ”

“ The red lamas conducted me from place to place, each one with an improving story on his lips; yet everywhere I saw the same tawdry ornament and rude carving, the same monotonous inscriptions, the same greed for tribute, the same mocking lip-service of an unworthy priesthood. And everywhere was filth and the unclean odour of garbage. In the narrow streets the people came and went; and chiefly conspicuous were the soldiery, carrying matchlocks for weapons with forked rests of wood bound to them, as did our arquebusiers of old. ”

“ I held my head proudly, and looked fair into the eyes of the Dalai Lama, crying, “You will do as you will. But if it become known that I have suffered, for the one man you have slain there will come ten thousand.” “Aye, and glad of the pretext,” he answered mockingly; and then he raised his voice. “They will not know,” said he, “for you will die alone and in a far-off land, and with no witness but yourself—yourself who will perforce keep silent. ”

“ The old people retired early, Old Fonnereau saying good-night with a fulness of meaning that escaped me till Mrs. Fonnereau startled us by departing from all ordinary rules, taking Colin to her in a very storm of frenzied tenderness —she whom, until now, I had regarded as the embodiment of restraint, vigilance, and self-mastery! And yet she was not going to lose him; his battery was on home service—and, as for his marriage, what had his marriage to do with the rest? With those family portraits, with Old Fonnereau's eyes and white hair ”

“ He left us after a while, quitting the room without a word of explanation; still possessed, still distracted by that unseen and interloping memory, familiar, or what it might be, that strove so perpetually with his unwilling sight. Mrs. Fonnereau then said some very nice things about Madge Harewood; and Colin, whom every movement of his father's seemed beyond measure to depress, brightened a little. ”

“ And at the last, my eyes and those eyes would call to one another; my eyes and those eyes would fail and grow dim. together, would together grow void and lifeless. He—this other man—and I would do everything together: he and I—for he was I, and I he—and we were both of us dying the self-same death. ”

“ After supper the lovers resumed their old tactics, Lady Harewood rejoined the other mothers, and Miss Harewood was romped off by a spurred and brand-new subaltern, who had danced every dance and eaten of every dish with a zest and relish manifestly Etonian. I, for my part, made inquiries which led to a room marked “Mayor's Parlour,” and cigarettes with a talkative man in pink who was placidly enjoying a whisky and soda. ”

“ Do I not speak the truth?'
“So she began, and,” continued Colin, “she knew the story word for word: how, instead of going to his death, my ancestor's fall had been broken, and how he had come back, not alive but only animate. I told her how he had been tended. 'The love of a woman,' she said. 'It is that alone can give life again to such as you—the love of a woman!'
“I had often thought as much. I had often' noted how the faces here changed. My great-grandfather married without love, and his son suffered as he did, they say, till near his wedding-day. ”

“ Often the waters of some deep-set spring had forced their way through the discoloured rock and worn a shallow channel for themselves to the artificial loophole by which they escaped; often I found myself wondering at the carved pillars that seemed to have grown up out of the soil and were again rooted in the mother-stone overhead ”

“ You will die the Other Death, which is two deaths, the death of the soul and the death of the body, and the one you will see with your eyes and the other will have no meaning.” He turned from me, and, as I stood wondering at his strange words, two of his officers stepped out with drawn knives. ”

“ And I puffed at my cigarette and marvelled; marvelled mostly at the seeming indifference of Life, of the larger drama, to all smaller drama, to the drama of the individual, play within a play—the individual, participant in both, super on the one stage, starring it on the other. ”

“ Even the very servants were more cheerful and alacrious.
Next day, the last before the wedding, was a quiet one. Colin packed his boxes, and they were sent down to the station to be picked up later on. Mrs. Fonnereau hovered round him as he gave his orders, and helped put the things in place; and Old Fonnereau, too, found his way to our quarters. He was in evidence most of that day, and had, it seemed, deferred his usual work in the dining-hall. At meals he sat opposite, the old look in his eyes, yet not quite the old distress ”

“ Madge Harewood played extremely well, avoiding anything in the least degree painful. She made Colin take up his violin, and they went through the first movement of Schubert's “Unfinished Symphony” together. It was soothing, and Old Fonnereau appeared more like Colin than ever before when it was over. A rhapsodie of Liszt, and then it was time for the Harewoods to go home. The break-up was a trifle solemn. We all felt its significance. Our next meeting would be in Ticehurst Church, to wedding bells. Mrs. Fonnereau kissed the girl, and the girl kissed Mrs. Fonnereau. ”

“ Amid much that is irrelevant, the man in pink mentioned the Harewood girls.
“Captain Fonnereau's goin' to marry the littl'un; why doesn't he take the big'un?” demanded the man in pink. “She's a fine girl—Miss Harewood's a fine girl!” he insisted; wherein I cordially agreed, although with Colin I preferred the smaller and less effective of the two Harewood girls. ”