The two could never account for the way in which they had come together in that dream-land of theirs. They had lost the clue of the mystery once and for all.
Jadrup Gosein could have told them, but it never occurred to them to ask him. There are however many lives and the Gods have a long patience.
THE SEA OF LILIES
A STORY OF CHINA
THE SEA OF LILIES
A STORY OF CHINA
I had come down from the mountain fastnesses of my home in Kashmir on pilgrimage to a certain island off the coast of China. A long, long pilgrimage, but necessary; for, with a Buddhist monk attached to the monastery of Kan-lu-ssu in the hills of North China, I was to collect certain information from the libraries and scholars of two famous monasteries on the island of Puto. I, Lancelot Dunbar, am known to the monks of the northern monastery of Kan-lu-ssu by the friendly title of “Brother of the Pen,” and it is my delightful lot to labour abundantly among the strange and wonderful stores of ancient Buddhist and historic knowledge contained in some of the many monastic libraries scattered up and down India, China and Ceylon. It follows that my wife and I own two homes.
One is a little deserted monastery in the Western Hills, in China, known as “First Gate of Heaven,” and so beautiful that the name might have grown about it like the moss on its tiled roofs. Following the bigger monasteries, it has its quiet courtyard, its lotus-pool and the peaked roofs with their outward, upturned sweep. The pines crowd upon us, and the cloud-dragons of rain and wind play in their uncouth sport among the peaks and fill our streams with singing, glittering water.
Our other home is a red-pine hut near the Liderwat in Kashmir. The beauty of it, the warm homeliness set amid the cold magnificence of the hills and immeasurable forests, no tongue can tell. The hut is very large and low, divided into our own rooms and the guest-rooms, with hospitable fireplaces for fragrant pine-logs and floors strewn with rugs brought by yak and pony down the wild tracks from Yarkand and Leh. Beautiful rooms, as I think—the windows looking out into the pines and the endless ways that lead to romance and vision.
Which home is the more beautiful I cannot say. We have never known, and our friends give no help; for some choose one and some the other. One day I shall write of our life in Kashmir, the clean, beautiful enchantment of it, the journeyings into the mountains—but to-day I must recall myself to the pilgrimage to Puto.