From the Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup.
CHAPTER XXV
THE COMPROMISE
Ommony stacked up the fire and resumed his seat in the leather armchair that Marmaduke had always used. Diana, belly to the blaze, barked and galloped in her sleep. Hannah Sanburn went on talking:
“Tsiang Samdup said last night that you have been with him two months. Do you know then what I mean when I say one can’t argue with him? He just sat there on the hearthrug and—it’s difficult to explain—he seemed to be listening for an inside message. It may sound idiotic, but I received the impression of a man waiting for his own soul to talk to him. He was perfectly silent. He hardly breathed. I felt absolutely sure he would find some way out of the difficulty. But the strange thing was, that the solution came from me. I suppose ten minutes passed without a word said, and I felt all the while as if my mind were being freed from weights that I had never known were there. Then suddenly I spoke because I couldn’t help it; I saw what to do so clearly that I simply had to tell him.
“It wasn’t hypnotism. It was just the contrary. It was as if he had dehypnotized me. I saw all the risks and scores of difficulties. And I saw absolutely clearly the necessity of doing just one thing. I told him I would take the child for six months out of every year and treat her as if she were my own. He might have her for the other six months. Every single wrinkle on his dear old face smiled separately when I said that. I had hardly said it when I began to wish I hadn’t; but he held me to my word.
“He brought me the baby the following week, and she was here in this building all the while you were ranging the hills for some word of the Terrys. The hardest work I ever had to do was to keep silent when you returned here worn out and miserable about your sister’s fate. But, if you had been let into the secret, you would have interfered—wouldn’t you? Am I right or wrong, Cottswold?”
“Of course. I would never have dreamed of letting my sister’s child go back to the Ahbor Valley.”
“Yet, if Tsiang Samdup hadn’t taken her every year for half a year, the Ahbors would have killed him. And remember: I had bound myself in advance not to tell any one—and particularly not to tell you. The Lama was only able to loan her to me for six months of every year by consenting to the Ahbors watching her all the time she was with me. Whenever she has been with me Ahbors have watched day and night. The excuse Tsiang Samdup gave to them was that unless she should be with me for long periods she would die and the Ahbors would find their valley invaded by white armies in consequence. They fear invasion of their valley more than anything else they can imagine. On the other hand, they regard the child as a gift from Heaven and the old Lama as her rightful guardian.
“I don’t quite understand the situation up there; the Ahbors don’t accept Tsiang Samdup’s teachings, they have a religion of their own; and he isn’t one of them; he’s a Tibetan. But they recognize him as a Lama, protect his monastery, and submit to his authority in certain ways. Perhaps I’m stupid; he has tried very hard to explain, and so has Elsa. Privately I called her Elsa, after her mother, of course. Tsiang Samdup gave her the Chinese name of San-fun-ho. The word is supposed to signify every possible human virtue.”