“Who called her Samding?” Ommony asked bluntly.
Hannah Sanburn stared. “You know then? This isn’t news? I remember now: Tsiang Samdup said last night: ‘That of which a man is ignorant may well be kept from him, but that which he knows should be explained, lest he confuse it with what he does not know.’ ”
“I’m putting two and two together,” Ommony answered. “I leaned over a monastery gallery in Darjiling. The chela was straight underneath me. A beam of sunlight showed a girl’s breasts. Am I right? Are San-fun-ho, Samding the chela and my sister’s child Elsa one and the same person?”
“Yes. I wonder you never recognized your sister’s voice—that almost baritone boyish resonance. You didn’t?”
“Who are those other girls?”
“Companions for her! Don’t rush me. Wait while I explain. Elsa developed into the most marvelous child I have ever known. It was partly Tsiang Samdup’s influence; he gave up his whole life to training her; and he’s wise—I can never begin to tell you how wise he is. But it was partly due to her heredity. You see, she had your sister’s spiritual qualities, and something of Jack Terry’s gay indifference to all the usual human pros and cons—the courage of both of them—and something else added, entirely her own. I wish she were my child! Oh, how I wish it! And yet, d’you know, Cottswold, down in my heart I’m glad she isn’t, simply because, if she were mine, she would have missed so much!”
Hannah Sanburn stared into the fire again, silent until Ommony grew restless.
“There’s so much to tell!” she said at last. “I knew from the first, and Tsiang Samdup soon discovered that the odds would be all against her unless she could have white children of her own age for companions. When he came and spoke of that I tried to persuade him to let me send her to America; but at the very suggestion he looked so old and grieved and disappointed that I felt it would kill him to lose her. I suggested that he should go with her, but he said no, he had a duty to the Ahbors. I thought then he was afraid the Ahbors would torture him to death and burn his monastery if he should let her go; but he read my thoughts and assured me that consideration had no weight. I believed him. I believe he is perfectly indifferent to pain and death. He sat still for a long time, and then said:
“ ‘It is better not to begin, than to begin and not go through to a conclusion. Then we should only have deprived ourselves of opportunity. Now we should rob the child.’
“He asked me to obtain white children for companions for her. I refused, of course, at once to have anything to do with it. We quarreled bitterly—or rather, I did. He sat quite still, and when I had finished scolding him he went away in silence. I did not see him again for several months, and he never told me how he obtained white children. I can’t imagine how he did it without raising a scandal all over the world. I have been in agonies over it, for fear this mission would suffer. You know, if word once got around that we were importing white children into the Ahbor Valley, no proof of innocence would ever quiet the suspicion. Just think what a chance the Christian missionaries would have for destroying our good name! Can you imagine them sparing us?”