The Ninth Vibration | Page 7

the way. A native
woman, but wearing the all-concealing boorka, more like a town
dweller than a woman of the hills. I put on speed and Ali Khan, now
very tired, toiled on behind me as I came up with her and courteously
asked the way. Her face was entirely hidden, but the answering voice
was clear and sweet. I made up my mind she was young, for it had the
bird-like thrill of youth.
"If the Presence continues to follow this path he will arrive. It is not far.
They wait for him."
That was all. It left me with a desire to see the veiled face. We passed
on and Ali Khan looked fearfully back.
"Ajaib! (Wonderful!) A strange place to meet one of the purdah-nashin
(veiled women)" he muttered. "What would she be doing up here in the
heights? She walked like a Khanam (khan's wife) and I saw the gleam

of gold under the boorka."
I turned with some curiosity as he spoke, and lo! there was no human
being in sight. She had disappeared from the track behind us and it was
impossible to say where. The darkening trees were beginning to hold
the dusk and it seemed unimaginable that a woman should leave the
way and take to the dangers of the woods.
"Puna-i-Khoda - God protect us!" said Ali Khan in a shuddering
whisper. "She was a devil of the wilds. Press on, Sahib. We should not
be here in the dark."
There was nothing else to do. We made the best speed we could, and
the trees grew more dense and the trail fainter between the close trunks,
and so the night came bewildering with the expectation that we must
pass the night unfed and unarmed in the cold of the heights. They might
send out a search party from The House in the Woods - that was still a
hope, if there were no other. And then, very gradually and wonderfully
the moon dawned over the tree tops and flooded the wood with
mysterious silver lights and about her rolled the majesty of the stars.
We pressed on into the heart of the night. From the dense black depths
we emerged at last. An open glade lay before us - the trees falling back
to right and left to disclose - what?
A long low house of marble, unlit, silent, bathed in pale splendour and
shadow. About it stood great deodars, clothed in clouds of the white
blossoming clematis, ghostly and still. Acacias hung motionless trails
of heavily scented bloom as if carved in ivory. It was all silent as death.
A flight of nobly sculptured steps led up to a broad veranda and a wide
open door with darkness behind it. Nothing more.
I forced myself to shout in Hindustani - the cry seeming a brutal
outrage upon the night, and an echo came back numbed in the black
woods. I tried once more and in vain. We stood absorbed also into the
silence.
"Ya Alla! it is a house of the dead!" whispered Ali Khan, shuddering at
my shoulder, - and even as the words left his lips I understood where

we were. "It is the Sukh Mandir." I said. "It is the House of the
Maharao of Ranipur."
It was impossible to be in Ranipur and hear nothing of the dead house
of the forest and Ali Khan had heard - God only knows what tales. In
his terror all discipline, all the inborn respect of the native forsook him,
and without word or sign he turned and fled along the track, crashing
through the forest blind and mad with fear. It would have been insanity
to follow him, and in India the first rule of life is that the Sahib shows
no fear, so I left him to his fate whatever it might be, believing at the
same time that a little reflection and dread of the lonely forest would
bring him to heel quickly.
I stood there and the stillness flowed like water about me. It was as
though I floated upon it - bathed in quiet. My thoughts adjusted
themselves. Possibly it was not the Sukh Mandir. Olesen had spoken of
ruin. I could see none. At least it was shelter from the chill which is
always present at these heights when the sun sets, - and it was beautiful
as a house not made with hands. There was a sense of awe but no fear
as I went slowly up the great steps and into the gloom beyond and so
gained the hall.
The moon went with me and from a carven arch filled with marble
tracery rained radiance that revealed and hid. Pillars stood about me,
wonderful with horses ramping forward as in the Siva