Adventure Magazine Cover, November 10, 1924 — page 110: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 painted to resemble house corners at the end of a street, and the whole scene sug- gested the extreme fringe of a village, with the audience looking out through it toward the open country. For a wonder, there was electric light, although none too much, and the switch- board was a mystery, painted red and labeled in English ‘““Keep Away!’’ At the rear of the theatre and along both sides was a balcony for women, screened off with narrow wooden slats that left openings about four inches square. The orchestra pit was a platform, three feet lower than the stage, in full view of the audience. The musicians were already squatting there, Tibetans to a man; four were armed with radongs;* four more had tomtoms; the remaining dozen were pro- vided with stringed instruments. radongs blew 2 fog-horn blare to greet the lama as he stepped on to the stage, and he smiled and bowed to acknowledge the com- pliment with such evident satisfaction that it appeared his eardrums after all had not been burst by the reverberation. _ In the opposite wing, no longer in white or in stockings, protected by three stalwart Tibetans, who lounged in the flies, were the women of mystery. ‘They were in costume, which so orientalized them that Ommony almost doubted recognition. For memory plays strange tricks; his took him back to the day when he and Benjamin had played a part at Chota Pegu and the nautch girls had been wild with inquisitive mischief— ready to betray the chief-priest at a nod. These girls now, in gauzy draperies, less naked, but as subtle in their motions, so resembled those nautch girls at first glance that he was not sure they were the same he had seen in the room among the Hindu ladies until he noticed that they laughed and chattered on a comparatively low note instead of a high-pitched dissonance. Ss? THE lama clapped his hands and Kee sat down inside the well, where he xe) could see out through holes in the painted cloth. Then he told Ommony to make Diana sit down almost exactly in front of the well, and the rehearsal began at once, as if preordained from the be- ginning of time, the girls in their Indian costume mingling with the stage crowd, *Radong—a sort of trumpet, very long, with the bell- shaped end set at an angle to the tube. The Adventure and so well versed in their part that they pushed the other actors into place, needing no direction by the lama. - Ommony had plenty of chance to observe some of them closely, for three had been told off to engage the saddhu in mock conversation during parts of the first act. One—the Gretchen-girl—put an offering into his begging-bowl. But though he missed his cue twice through trying to en- gage her in real, whispered conversation, he failed; she was as evasive as abstract thought—as apparently engaging and as actually distant as a day-dream. She turned every advance he made into an ex- cuse for by-play for the imaginary audi- ence’s benefit, and all Ommony accom- plished was to draw the lama’s irony from behind the wall— “Some saddhus hide lascivious hearts un- der robes of sanctity, but you are supposed to be one who has truly forsaken the pursuit of women, Gupta Rao!” When the laugh that followed the rebuke had died down Ommony was:still not sure of the Gretchen-girl’s real nationality. He had tried her with English, French, German and two or three Indian languages, watch- ing her face, but detecting no expression that suggested she had understood him. As for the others, one might be a Jewess; but there are many well-bred women, for Instance in Rajputana, and in Persia, who are fair-skinned and who resemble Jewesses in profile. Even fair hair was no proof of their origin; most eastern women, but by no means all, have dark hair. The only really convincing evidence that - they were Europeans was their behavior, and even that was offset by the fact that some of them were certainly Tibetans, whose manner was equally unembarrassed in the presence of men, yet equally free from familiarity. The difference from their behavior and that of Maitraya’s actresses grew more and more noticeable as the professionals be- came aware of an atmosphere to which they were utter strangers. They tried at first to imitate it; then grew resentful and sneered; resorting at last to low jests in loud whispers and attempts to scandalize by bold advances to the men, until at last the lama stood up in the well like a priest in a pulpit and beckoned those three women to come and stand in front of him. “T could show you your secret hearts,” COMmiclhoo (© 5}