It seemed a long and expensive journey to take for so short a stay; but doubtless he had business reasons, and the matter dropped from my mind.
When we returned, three or four weeks later, he was no longer in Rangoon apparently, and I did not expect to come upon his tracks again.
The Burmese lady explained the Grone mystery with some bitterness, and no wonder!
Having come out free, upon the understanding with her, already mentioned, she had taken a room for him at the hotel, and had busied herself in buying blankets and a carpet and other small luxuries, to break the Mandalay monastery to him as gently as possible.
When three days pa.s.sed and he made no sign of moving on, she quietly intimated that it might be as well to begin the new life without delay, and said she had written to her brother, himself a priest in the monastery, to meet Dr Grone at Mandalay and present him to the authorities at the monastery.
This must probably have been about the time that I asked him innocently how long he would be staying in Rangoon.
His plan had doubtless been to go to Mandalay in a dilettante sort of fashion, and to live in the monastery for a time, with the hope of getting access to some valuable and little known MSS.; but it did not suit his plans at all to be met at once by the brother of his benefactress, and kept under the eye of this priest, who knew exactly the circ.u.mstances under which he had been enabled to take the long journey from Ma.r.s.eilles.
Being evidently a prudent man, he determined to seize the first opportunity for retreat from an impossible situation. How he raised enough money for the return voyage is not known. My Burmese acquaintance thought he must have applied to one of the Consulates, and that his university position would doubtless ensure his raising a loan.
Anyway, he shipped himself surrept.i.tiously once more on board the _Devonshire_, and arranged that the letter, containing the usual excuse of a "sudden telegram from Ma.r.s.eilles announcing the unexpected death of a near relation," should not be handed to his benefactress until the anchor was safely weighed.
It was not a pleasant story, and treachery is no less perfidious for having an intellectual motive. I felt glad that Dr Grone was not a fellow-countryman.
Having disburdened herself on this one point of righteous indignation, our little Burmese lady became as bright and cheery as a child, wearing her collection of pretty native dresses, which could all have been packed easily into a fair-sized doll"s trunk, with singular grace and charm. When the tender arrived to disembark us in Calcutta, her husband came with it, and was speedily introduced.
We had tea with them a few days later in their handsome Calcutta flat, and this gave me the opportunity for a long and interesting talk with the husband, who proved to be a most intelligent and open-minded man.
He spoke of Fielding Hall"s delightful book with appreciation tinged by kindly amus.e.m.e.nt.
"He has been many years in the country, but he still judges us as a foreigner."
When I suggested that the judgment was at least very flattering to the Burmese, this Burmese gentleman laughed, and said:
"Flattering? Yes--but not always quite true. One must see from _inside_, not from outside, to be quite true in one"s judgments; and no foreigner can see from outside. It is a question of race and heredity, not of having spent twenty or thirty years, or even a lifetime, in a foreign land."
I suggested that those who saw from _inside_ only, might also lack some essential factor in forming an accurate judgment.
He agreed heartily to this, adding: "Yes, indeed. The ideal critic must have lived neither too near nor too far--mentally as well as physically; also he must have intuition. Now Mr Fielding Hall is an artist as well as a poet, but in judging my country he lets his intuition run riot sometimes, as well as his imagination."
After reporting this conversation, it is unnecessary to add that my Burmese friend spoke English rather better than I did myself.
We then talked about the position of woman in Burmah, and how much this had been extolled and held up as a object lesson to the rest of the world.
If the position of woman is the true test of a nation"s civilisation, as has been so often affirmed, then certainly Burmah must be in the van of the nations! Yet this is scarcely borne out by facts.
I put this point as politely as I could, and my mind was at once set at ease by the purely impersonal way in which he met my remark.
"Of course, we are not in the van of the nations, and yet it is quite true that our women have an exceptional position--quite a good enough one for an election cry for the Woman"s Suffrage! Ah, yes! I have been in England," he added, with a merry twinkle in his little black eyes.
"But you must realise that the unique position of woman with us is somewhat accidental. It is not the result of philosophical or moral conviction on the part of our men; it has been the natural outcome of circ.u.mstances, and a question of expediency rather than of ethics. So it was not really a "test paper" for us at all! Our frequent wars in the past have taken the men out of their homes, and the women, at such times, were left alone to cope with not only the domestic, but the agricultural problems. All business of this kind pa.s.sed through their hands, and in time they developed the qualities of industry, good judgment and power of taking responsibility, necessary for success in such a life. Then when the husbands came back and found everything going on so well and without trouble to themselves, they were only too glad to fall in with the existing state of things. We Burmese are lazy fellows after all. We can rise to a big call, but if our women will look after our business for us, we are quite content to smoke our pipes in peace and look on--and, of course, the one who makes the wheels go round is the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of expediency than n.o.bility in the att.i.tude of our men towards our women, and more of laziness than either, perhaps! But Fielding Hall would call this blasphemy, I am afraid!"
And so, with a joking word, our interesting talk came to an end, leaving me with a sincere hope that I might some day meet again both the intelligent husband and the charming wife.
I found the air at Simla quite marvellous for psychic possibilities, and this was certainly a great surprise to me; nor was it only a question of alt.i.tude and a dry atmosphere. Missouri and the Dhera Doon are celebrated for the purity of air and climate generally, but the influences there were quite different.
Even Peshawar, with its glorious crown of snow-capped mountains, brought no special psychic atmosphere to me; nor the Khyber Pa.s.s, where I had thoroughly expected to be haunted by the horrors of the past; nothing of the kind occurred. The beauty of the day when we visited this historic pa.s.s was only to be matched by its own extreme natural beauty; but no haunting memories hung round it for me.
Perhaps a night pa.s.sed in those rocky defiles might have brought some weird experience, but no European would be allowed to woo adventure in this way, even with the laudable desire for advance in psychological phenomena! But I stayed there quite long enough to prove--for the hundredth time--that _an att.i.tude of expectation_ acts with me as a deterrent rather than encouragement, where the Unseen is in question.
I had heard so much of Simla Society and Simla Scandals, and so little of Simla Beauty and Loveliness!--in Nature, I mean--not Human Nature.
It is true we were there at the most exquisite time in the year, when the air was still fresh and keen, when the last snows and the first blooms of rhododendrons were greeting each other, when the long stretches of valley, brown and purple and emerald green, lay like soft velvet in the immense distances towards the horizon line.
As I looked at all this, day after day, it seemed to me that Simla, without its crowds of social b.u.t.terflies, male and female, and the dust and the flies, and even the heat that they bring with them, was one of the most exquisitely beautiful spots that the Great Creator ever "thought out" in His mind. Nowhere have I seen such a _velvety_ effect of rolling hill and soft mountain-side; such gorgeous atmospheric visions; such a carnival of beauty and colour.
We must have seen Simla at the most ideal time in the year, or people must become _blase_ and blinded to its intoxicating beauty, thanks to tennis tournaments and Government House receptions and the whole stupid Social mill.
Not even the beauties of Kashmir have dimmed the memory of Simla for me; but I would not go there again, and in the season, for anything that could be offered to me.
All beauty is sacred, and I guard jealously my sacred memory of the place, known to so many merely as a byword for folly and flirtation.
Some strange and curious experiences came to me there, both in automatic writing and other ways; but these are of too private a nature for publication.
And so, with the beauty of Simla and the romance of Kashmir as jewels in my memory, I must end my second visit to India.
It is said that pleasant as well as painful experiences are apt to run in _threes_. I trust this may be the case. If so, it will mean that once again I shall tread upon Indian soil.
CHAPTER XIV
A FAMILY PORTRAIT AND PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHY
In the very heart of Warwickshire there is a beautiful old "half timber"
hall, approached by a n.o.ble avenue of elms. The hall has come down from father to son, in the direct line, for nearly six hundred years, as the dates upon the front of the house testify.
The present Squire is not only an old friend of my early youth, but is connected through marriage, and he and his wife and I have always been on very friendly terms. He is the usual type of fox-hunting squire and county magistrate, did good service during the South African War by raising a corps of Yeomanry from the estate, and going out with them to fight his country"s battles, and, needless to say, he received a hearty ovation from his wife and his county when he returned to them in safety.
He is devoted to his beautiful house and estate, and is the last man to entertain fancies or superst.i.tions in connection with either.
It is necessary to give these few words of explanation before relating an "incident in my life" for which I have always found it difficult to account, except on the supposition that some germ of psychic sensitiveness may exist, even under a hunting squire"s "pink coat and top-boots."
I have known Greba Hall since I was a child, and all its quaint old family portraits, especially those in the fine oak-panelled hall, with the old-fashioned open fireplace and "dogs" of the fifteenth century.
But there were so many of these pictures ma.s.sed together that I have never distinguished one from the other, with the exception of the few immediate ancestors of my friend.
Some years ago I was staying with a lady who lived about three miles from Greba, and we had driven over there to have tea with the Squire"s wife, whom I will call Mrs Lyon. The friend I have mentioned had become interested in psychic matters since my acquaintance with her, and I had discovered that she possessed some psychometric capacity.
In the interests of non-psychic readers, I may explain that psychometry is the science of learning to receive impressions and intuitions from the atmosphere surrounding any material object--a letter, a ring, a piece of pebble or sh.e.l.l, and so forth. We seem capable of impressing all material objects with our personality, and naturally this is especially the case in letters written and signed by us.
The lady with whom I was then staying--Mrs Fitz Herbert--had tried receiving impressions from letters several times, at my suggestion, and always with more or less success. We had been speaking of this with Mrs Lyon, who was always very sympathetic, and she suggested giving one of her own letters to Mrs Fitz Herbert to be "psychometrised."
The latter was sitting facing a door which led from the hall to an inner room, and over this door hung the half-length portrait of an old gentleman, whom I had never specially remarked before, as the picture was hung rather high, and there was nothing very characteristic about the face.