“This is all news to me,” said Ommony. “Mac said something, but—”
“It isn’t news, you iconoclast! It’s a most romantic mystery. The girl was there when I arrived. She wouldn’t have been; but you know what a business it is to get to Tilgaun. I was supposed to wait for ponies and servants from the mission; they didn’t come, and as there was a party of rajah’s people going, I traveled with them. They were in a hurry, so I reached the mission quite a number of days before I was expected, and I met the girl on the far side of the rope bridge just before you reach Tilgaun—you remember the place? There’s a low steep cliff with only a narrow passage leading out of it. She was sitting there nursing a twisted ankle—nothing serious—but she couldn’t get away without my seeing her; and of course it never entered my head to suspect that she would want to avoid me. She told me her name was Elsa.”
“That was my sister’s name,” remarked Ommony, who had an old-fashioned way of growing sentimental when that name cropped up among intimates.
“I lent her a spare pony and she rode up to the mission with me. Jolly—she was the jolliest girl I have ever seen, all laughter and intelligence—with strange sudden fits of demureness—or perhaps that isn’t the right word. Freeze isn’t the right word either. She would suddenly lapse into silence and her face would grow absolutely calm—not expressionless, but calm—like a Chinese girl’s. It was as if she were two distinct and separate women. But she’s white. I watched her finger-nails.”
“Might be Chinese,” Ommony suggested. “They’re given to laughter, and their finger-nails don’t show the dark lunula when they’re pressed. Hannah Sanburn receives all-comers at the mission.”
“I am certain she is English,” Mrs. Cornock-Campbell answered. “But as far as I could judge she speaks Tibetan and several dialects perfectly. Her English hasn’t a trace of Chi-chi accent. She has been wonderfully educated. She has art in every fiber of her being—plays the piano fairly well—mostly her own compositions, and you may believe me or not, they’re fit to be played by a master. And she draws perfectly, from memory. That night at supper, and afterward, she talked incessantly and kept on illustrating what she meant by drawing on sheets of paper—wonderful things—not caricatures—snap-shots of people and things she had seen. Wait; I’ve kept some of them. Let me show you.”
She found a portfolio and laid it on Ommony’s lap. He turned over sheet after sheet of pencil drawings that seemed to have caught motion in the act—yaks, camels, oxen, Tibetan men and women taken in mid-smile, old monastery doorways, flowers—done swiftly and with humor. There was a sureness of touch that men work lifetimes to achieve; and there was a quality that almost nobody in this age has achieved—a sort of spirit of antiquity, as simple as it was indefinable in words. It was as if the artist knew that things are never what they seem, but was translating what she saw of things’ origins into modern terms that could be understood. The drawings were of yesterday, clothed in the garments of to-day and looking forward to to-morrow.
“She seemed to see right through you,” Mrs. Cornock-Campbell went on. “I don’t believe the smartest man in the world could fool that girl. She has the something within that men instinctively recognize and don’t try to take liberties with. She seemed equally familiar with Tibetan and European thought, as well as life, and to know all the country to the northward. I gathered she had been to Lhassa, which seems incredible, but she spoke of it as if she knew the very street-stones, and you’ll see there are sketches of bits of Lhassa in that portfolio—notice the portrait of the Dalai Lama and the sketch of the southern gate.
“And all the while the girl talked Miss Sanburn seemed as proud and as uncomfortable as a martyr at the stake! When Elsa began to talk of Lhassa I thought Miss Sanburn would burst with anxiety; you could see she was on the perpetual point of cautioning her not to be indiscreet, but she restrained herself with a forced smile that made me simply love her. I know Miss Sanburn was in agonies of terror all the time.
“When Elsa had gone to bed—that was long after midnight—I asked Miss Sanburn what her surname was. She hesitated for about thirty seconds, looking at me—”