“I studied the Jade of Ahbor,” he resumed after a long while. “Which is the same as to say that I studied my own failings and my own strength, using the one with which to conquer the other, so that light might flow into my mind. And many times that one came to me, of whom I spoke before—he who first led me to the Jade. Many times I journeyed into India. Many men I spoke with. And there came Marmaduke the American to Darjiling, much wrought up about the future of the world and very angry with the Christian missionaries. And as you know, he founded the Marmaduke Mission at Tilgaun and endowed it. He wished me to be a trustee, but I refused, until that one came to me, of whom I spoke before, and said it was not good to refuse the work that destiny had given me to do. Then I accepted, although it did not appear to me then that my act was wise.
“And you and Hannah Sanburn became the other trustees. And you and I corresponded, from which it became clear to me that you are a determined man, of good faith, having courage, but possessed by indignation against those whose vision of right and wrong is shorter than your own. And in indignation there is not much wisdom; so I avoided meeting you.
“And then came Doctor Terry and your sister to this valley—children!—hand in hand—as innocent as lambs—as brave and simple as two humming-birds—in search of me, because, forsooth, they had been told I knew the secret of the Jade of Ahbor. She far-gone with child; he dying of wounds; the Ahbors hunting them—for the Ahbors guard this valley as cobras guard ancient ruins.”
“How did they get into the valley?” asked Ommony.
“None knows. Not even I, nor the Ahbors. They suffered; they had no memory, except of caverns and of being washed along an ancient conduit underground. I heard of them, because the Ahbors asked me whether it were best to crucify them living or to cut them up and throw them into the Brahmaputra. The Ahbors said they seemed such unoffending people that it might be the gods would be angry if they should put them to further pain. They also said there was a baby to be born, and it is against the Ahbors’ law to slay the mother until one month after childbirth; nevertheless, it is also against their law to admit strangers and to let them live.
“Therefore I lied to the Ahbors, inventing an ancient prophecy that a saint was to be born of strangers in this valley. Thus I rescued those two innocents, there being—as that Tashi Lama, whose chela I was, said—a condition in me, due to faults in former lives, that, though I may fulfill a useful destiny, I must come to a violent death through lies of my own telling.
“I lied to the Ahbors, and I had to keep on lying to them. But he who lies does well, my son, who gladly eats the consequences when he may, and ends them. Better a little self-surrender now than unknown consequences in the lives to come! I am answerable to the Ahbors. I would rather receive their judgment than that of the Unseen! It pays not to postpone the reckoning.
“The baby was born here, in this room, and those two children who were its parents died, though I did what might be done for them. I eased their death as well as I was able, giving them comfort in the knowledge that there are many lives to come, in which there is recompense for every thought and deed, as also opportunity to undo all the evil of the past. They died in peace, and I buried their bodies yonder; you can see the grave below this window—that mass of rocks, over which the purple flowers trail.
“Before she died, that child who was your sister gave her baby into my hands. It was her last effort. She gave the baby to me, not at my request. In the clarity of vision and the peace that precedes death, she gave her baby into my hands, smiling, saying: ‘I see that this is as it should be. It could not have been otherwise.’ ”
For five minutes the Lama was silent, remembering, his sky-blue eyes on vacancy, his wrinkles motionless.