I
There are strange things in this story, but, so far as Iunderstand them, I tell the truth. If you measure the East with a Western foot-rule you will say, "Impossible." I should have said it myself.
Of myself I will say as little as I can, for this story is of Vanna Loring. I am an incident only, though I did not know that at first.
My name is Stephen Clifden, and I was eight-and-thirty; plenty of money, sound in wind and limb. I had been by way of being a writer before the war, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked up anything in the welter in France, it was that real work is the only salvation this mad world has to offer; so I meant to begin at the beginning, and learn my trade like a journeyman labourer.
I had come to the right place. A very wonderful city is Peshawar - rather let us say, two cities - the compounds, the fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace as their strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaar humming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours that come up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the camel caravans loaded with merchandise from Afghanistan, Bokhara, and farther. And it is because of this that Peshawar is the Key of India, and a city of Romance that stands at every corner, and cries aloud in the market - place. For at Peshawar every able-bodied man sleeps with his revolver under his pillow, and the old Fort is always ready in case it should be necessary at brief and sharp notice to hurry the women and children into it, and possibly, to die in their defense. So enlivening is the neighbourhood of the frontier tribes that haunt the famous Khyber Pass and the menacing hills where danger is always lurking.
But there was society here, and I was swept into it - there was chatter, and it galled me.
I was beginning to feel that I had missed my mark, and must go farther afield, perhaps up into Central Asia, when I met Vanna Loring. If I say that her hair was soft and dark; that she had the deepest hazel eyes I have ever seen, and a sensitive, tender mouth; that she moved with a flowing grace like "a wave of the sea - it sounds like the portrait of a beauty, and she was never that. Also, incidentally, it gives none of her charm. I never heard any one get any further than that she was "oddly attractive" - let us leave it at that. She was certainly attractive to me.
She was the governess of little Winifred Meryon, whose father held the august position of General Commanding the Frontier Forces, and her mother the more commanding position of the reigning beauty of Northern India, generally speaking. No one disputed that. She was as pretty as a picture, and her charming photograph had graced as many illustrated papers as there were illustrated papers to grace.
But Vanna - I gleaned her story by bits when I came across her with the child in the gardens. I was beginning to piece it together now.
Her love of the strange and beautiful she had inherited from a young Italian mother, daughter of a political refugee; her childhood had been spent in a remote little village in the West of England; half reluctantly she told me how she had brought herself up after her mother's death and her father's second marriage. Little was said of that, but I gathered that it had been a grief to her, a factor in her flight to the East.
We were walking in the Circular Road then with Winifred in front leading her Pekingese by its blue ribbon, and we had it almost to ourselves except for a few natives passing slow and dignified on their own occasions, for fashionable Peshawar was finishing its last rubber of bridge, before separating to dress for dinner, and had no time to spare for trivialities and sunsets.
"So when I came to three-and-twenty," she said slowly, "I felt Imust break away from our narrow life. I had a call to India stronger than anything on earth. You would not understand but that was so, and I had spent every spare moment in teaching myself India - its history, legends, religions, everything! And Iwas not wanted at home, and I had grown afraid."I could divine years of patience and repression under this plain tale, but also a power that would be dynamic when the authentic voice called. That was her charm - gentleness in strength - a sweet serenity.
"What were you afraid of?"
"Of growing old and missing what was waiting for me out here. But I could not get away like other people. No money, you see. So Ithought I would come out here and teach. Dare I? Would they let me? I knew I was fighting life and chances and risks if I did it;but it was death if I stayed there. And then- Do you really care to hear?""Of course. Tell me how you broke your chain.""I spare you the family quarrels. I can never go back. But I was spurred - spurred to take some wild leap; and I took it. Six years ago I came out. First I went to a doctor and his wife at Cawnpore. They had a wonderful knowledge of the Indian peoples, and there I learned Hindustani and much else. Then he died. But an aunt had left me two hundred pounds, and I could wait a little and choose; and so I came here."It interested me. The courage that pale elastic type of woman has!
"Have you ever regretted it? Would they take you back if you failed?""Never, to both questions," she said, smiling. "Life is glorious.
I've drunk of a cup I never thought to taste; and if I died tomorrow I should know I had done right. I rejoice in every moment I live - even when Winifred and I are wrestling with arithmetic.""I shouldn't have thought life was very easy with Lady Meryon.""Oh, she is kind enough in an indifferent sort of way. I am not the persecuted Jane Eyre sort of governess at all. But that is all on the surface and does not matter. It is India I care for -the people, the sun, the infinite beauty. It was coming home.
