“What do you mean?”
“There are other ways of getting to understand people without learning heaps of languages.”
“For heaven’s sake, what are you driving at?” Then Conway added more quietly: “This is absurd. We mustn’t wrangle. Tell me, Mallinson, what’s it all about? I still don’t understand.”
“Then why are you making such an almighty fuss?”
“Tell me the truth, please tell me the truth.”
“Well, it’s simple enough. A kid of her age shut up here with a lot of queer old men – naturally she’ll get away if she’s given a chance. She hasn’t had one up to now.”
“Don’t you think you may be imagining her position in the light of your own? As I’ve always told you, she’s perfectly happy.”
“Then why did she say she’d come?”
“She said that? How could she? She doesn’t speak English.”
“I asked her – in Tibetan – Miss Brinklow worked out the words. It wasn’t a very fluent conversation, but it was quite enough to – to lead to an understanding.” Mallinson flushed a little. “Damn it, Conway, don’t stare at me like that – anyone would think I’d been poaching on your preserves.”
Conway answered: “No one would think so at all, I hope, but the remark tells me more than you were perhaps intending me to know. I can only say that I’m very sorry.”
“And why the devil should you be?”
Conway let the cigarette fall from his fingers. He felt tired, bothered, and full of deep conflicting tenderness that he would rather not have had aroused. He said gently: “I wish we weren’t always at such cross-purposes. Lo-Tsen is very charming, I know, but why should we quarrel about it?”
“Charming?” Mallinson echoed the word with scorn. “She’s a good bit more than that. You mustn’t think everybody’s as cold-blooded about these things as you are yourself. Admiring her as if she were an exhibit in a museum may be your idea of what she deserves, but mine’s more practical, and when I see someone I like in a rotten position I try and do something.”
“But surely there’s such a thing as being too impetuous? Where do you think she’ll go to if she does leave?”
“I suppose she must have friends in China or somewhere. Anyhow, she’ll be better off than here.”
“How can you possibly be so sure of that?”
“Well, I’ll see that she’s looked after myself, if nobody else will. After all, if you’re rescuing people from something quite hellish, you don’t usually stop to enquire if they’ve anywhere else to go to.”
“And you think Shangri-La is hellish?”
“Definitely, I do. There’s something dark and evil about it. The whole business has been like that, from the beginning – the way we were brought here, without reason at all, by some madman – and the way we’ve been detained since, on one excuse or another. But the most frightful thing of all – to me – is the effect it’s had on you.”
“On me?”
“Yes, on you. You’ve just mooned about as if nothing mattered and you were content to stay here forever. Why, you even admitted you liked the place… Conway, what has happened to you? Can’t you manage to be your real self again? We got on so well together at Baskul – you were absolutely different in those days.”
“My dear boy!”
Conway reached his hand towards Mallinson’s, and the answering grip was hot and eagerly affectionate. Mallinson went on: “I don’t suppose you realize it, but I’ve been terribly alone these last few weeks. Nobody seemed to be caring a damn about the only thing that was really important – Barnard and Miss Brinklow had reasons of a kind, but it was pretty awful when I found you against me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You keep on saying that, but it doesn’t help.”
Conway replied on sudden impulse: “Then let me help, if I can, by telling you something. When you’ve heard it, you’ll understand, I hope, a great deal of what now seems very curious and difficult. At any rate, you’ll realize why Lo-Tsen can’t possibly go back with you.”
“I don’t think anything would make me see that. And do cut it as short as you can, because we really haven’t time to spare.”
Conway then gave, as briefly as he could, the whole story of Shangri-La, as told him by the High Lama, and as amplified by the conversation both with the latter and with Chang. It was the last thing he had ever intended to do, but he felt that in the circumstances it was justified and even necessary; it was true enough that Mallinson was his problem, to solve as he thought fit. He narrated rapidly and easily, and in doing so came again under the spell of that strange, timeless world; its beauty overwhelmed him as he spoke of it, and more than once he felt himself reading from a page of memory, so clearly had ideas and phrases impressed themselves. Only one thing he withheld – and that to spare himself an emotion he could not yet grapple with – the fact of the High Lama’s death that night and of his own succession.