Part 8

“One can invent many things when it is appropriate to invent them,” said Yuan, “and there are several matters on this Rock that may interest you during your visit to our valley.”

“Excellent!” said Lord Sombrewater, and indicated a desire that the boats should be brought. So they were conducted back to the stairway, but not before Hsiao, rising abruptly from his meditation, had executed in three or four sweeps a painting of half a melon.

“What skill!” exclaimed Terence. “What sweeping brushwork! And really, what a significant melon! One would say that it was the most significant object in the universe. It leads the mind out to those half-realized worlds that are interwoven with ours.”

“It is merely,” said Hsiao Chai, “that I have drawn the reality of the melon. You are a painter, too, I know—a European painter; that is, a painter of superficial appearances.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Sir Richard, “he paints souls, emanations, auras and things.”

“Oh, that!” said Hsiao, with indifference, and they descended the stairway to the marble quay. They floated off in the little boats down water lanes among the lotuses, and once more the three brilliant and bowing figures resolved themselves into one.

“It is a charming dragon,” sang out Quentin to Lychnis; but she pulled out her jade combs and disappeared in a cascade of hair. “Just as,” notes Ambrose, “some slender and savage fairy might vanish in a forest cave to interrogate her thoughts in solitude.” For, as she confessed in due course, her mind was entirely taken up with a picture of that still unexplained island, with its marble quay, its writhing staircase, its pavilions, paths and cypresses, its vermilion theorem in some unfamiliar geometry perched up in the trees.

He tells us that there was no doubt in his mind that their journey to the valley had in some way been compelled by that keen-eyed young man, or by his hilarious great-grandparent, but for what object was at present not clear.

23

In due course the visit was returned by the three Chinese gentlemen, who brought with them several beautiful girls. To entertain them, Lord Sombrewater decreed a picnic; so under an enamel sky, blue to apricot, tables were spread on the lawn between the horns of the grove, and echoes of laughter and sprightly conversation quivered among the delicately shimmering clumps of bamboo. Before them an exceedingly up-to-date lawn-mower was cutting green swathes in a carpet of daisies, like a plough driving through the Milky Way. Willow and elm and plane-tree were mirrored in the glassy lake. Everybody was happy—even Blackwood, who enjoyed the opportunity to reject the opportunity of enjoyment. Old Wang Li, wearing the appearance of an aged villager who has for some time lapsed from mental efficiency, laughed much to himself at nothing; but from time to time there issued from his vacuity some startling observation, and terrifying depths of knowledge were sometimes revealed in a sudden lightning that flickered through the veils of his eyes. Hsiao Chai abandoned himself frankly to the pleasures of the table and occasionally to silent contemplation of the landscape. Yuan engaged in discussion with a certain smiling ardour and charm of youth. But it seemed to Lychnis that he, too, was absentminded part of the time, even when he discussed. His eyes, she said, were not seeing what was around them. There was a rapt, a heart-chilling look in them, she said, as if they pierced through appearances and contemplated realities that might have been frightening for ordinary people to perceive. Ambrose makes it clear that there was nothing impolite in the behaviour of the three guests. They were self-effacing, unself-conscious and simple, but, watching their patrician faces, one felt oneself to be in the company of great gentlemen. It was beyond their power to obscure themselves. All three were in touch, as inconspicuously as might be managed, with some fountain—in communion, secretly, with some tremendous reality. They had become vehicles for it, and it could not be hidden. With Wang it flowered in unexpected and unreasonable laughter; with Hsiao in the frown of creative inspiration; with Yuan in an imperious raptness of gaze. On him also there sat a certain majesty of self-dedication and the foreknowledge of some difficult paradise.

As the meal progressed, the system of thought that was to be inferred from the talk of the three Chinese gentlemen seemed to the others more and more curiously upside down. But perhaps not to Quentin.

“You are a man to be much admired,” said Hsiao at some free remark of his.

“So he is, indeed,” said Lord Sombrewater dryly, “though it has been our experience, on our travels, to hear him referred to less sympathetically.”

“That is doubtless because men seek to impose their own ideas of conduct on the rest of mankind,” observed Yuan.

“He has discarded purpose,” said Hsiao. “He behaves as his impulses dictate.”

“I am appreciated,” said Quentin.

“He despises,” continued Hsiao, “the artificial bonds that check our natural impulses. He has become primitive. He gives rein to his nature. He gratifies it, and this is right, because life is short, and our days should not be occupied with conforming to external practices and submitting our natures to impossible inhibitions. There is only one virtue, and that is to behave according to our natures. Men are remembered not for their virtue or their wickedness, but only for having lived to their full bent. And all is soon enough forgotten. Indulge, therefore, the ear and the eye, the mouth and the belly—indulge the desires of body and mind.”

“I am understood,” said Quentin.

“It will be observed,” put in Yuan, “that Hsiao has halted in the pleasures of sense. He has been caught, like a fly in amber, in the beauty of appearances. He perceives, and indicates to us, the spirit, the underlying reality of Nature, but he permits himself the desires of sense, thus adding to the sum of human emotion. Such a man is not the perfect man.”

“I should think not, indeed,” said Sprot. “Such a man is most dangerous.”

“And what in your view is the perfect man?” asked Lord Sombrewater, with interest.

“The perfect man,” replied Yuan, to an accompaniment of profound hilarity on the part of Wang Li, “is without passion, desires nothing and indicates nothing. He has the appearance of a fool and is usually ugly. In speaking I depart from wisdom. In speaking we limit truth. Yet, to come in the neighbourhood of definition, let me say that the perfect man neglects himself and is preserved; forgets himself and is remembered; takes what comes; makes no plans; eats what he likes; sleeps without dreams; wakes without care; breathes deep; conforms to custom, lest he become self-conscious; seems to be of the world while his thoughts are with eternity; uses language while communing in silence with what is beyond language; ignores the distinction between spirit and matter; is neither benevolent nor malevolent, wicked nor good, adding nothing to the sum of human emotion; and, his mind being utterly in repose, he dwells for ever with the unnameable.”

“That again,” said Quentin, toying with a dish of spiced wild duck, “is me.”

“But does not the true Sage calmly await annihilation?” ventured Blackwood.

“The true Sage awaits nothing, calmly or otherwise.” It was Wang Li who thought fit to speak. He spoke or kept silence at random, recognizing no rule. “He pays no heed either to becoming or ceasing-to-be. He rejects distinctions of life or death, remaining as nearly as possible unconscious until, in the course of Nature, he returns to the non-relative—which is not to be described as annihilation.”

“Mr. Blackwood is wrong,” said Hsiao, with decision, “in rejecting life. One should reject nothing that is in accordance with Nature. And Wang Li is wrong to spend his years in a state of unconsciousness. For even now as he talks to you he is unconscious. He is not even conscious that he is unconscious—otherwise there would be in his mind the shadow of pride, which is a shadow of passion. He is with eternity, and only peripherally speaks. Yuan, I fear, is going the same way. For me, the object of life is enjoyment. One is born and one will die. In between one has life. I do not reject it. I accept it and gratify my senses while they can be gratified. I perceive the unnameable, but one can perceive without embracing. When one has returned to the unnameable one will have no senses. In the meantime, from the point of view of the senses, death is a fact; life’s another.”

“Neither is a fact,” said Wang, his eyes lit with a terrifying gleam of amusement. “There is only one Fact. From it all apparent distinctions derive. In it they disappear.”

“Do you mean to say,” clamoured Sprot incredulously, “that I ... Me ...” (he pointed to himself) “am not a fact?”

“You are as the shadow of a non-existing cloud passing over a lawn that isn’t there,” said Quentin, with a wink at Hsiao.

“Did I hear a voice?” asked Wang. “How can I, that am not, hear a voice from nothing?” And Sprot clasped his head in desperation, proving himself to himself by the hardness of his skull.

24

The meal came to an end in a somewhat startling manner, for Wang ceased abruptly from conversation and entered a trance of contemplation, while Hsiao went fast asleep.

“This,” said Lord Sombrewater to Ambrose, “is a great compliment. I quite see that it may be regarded as the last gesture of true refinement.” He rose, and with Frew-Gaff and Ruby followed Lychnis and Yuan, who were strolling among the paths of the bamboo grove. “I desire to hear more of the conversation of that young man,” he remarked.

“I don’t believe he is young,” said Sprot to Ambrose. “I shouldn’t be surprised to find he was a hundred. I don’t like these people. Did you ever hear such views? And I think it very wrong to let Lychnis go walking off confidentially like that with a young married man. He’s sure to be married. And anyway, he’s a foreigner—more than a foreigner. In my opinion a Chinaman’s more than foreign—like a frog. You don’t suppose”—he came closer to Ambrose—“you don’t suppose Lychnis would ... I mean, a nice young girl wouldn’t....”

“I should recommend you, as a mental exercise,” said Ambrose, “to formulate to yourself more precisely what is in your mind. It makes my record of the conversation more precise.”

Lord Sombrewater beckoned, and he joined the brilliant figures in the bamboo grove. Yuan was discoursing of the bamboo and Lychnis listening bright-eyed.

“There are many plants here that I have not seen before,” said Lord Sombrewater. “They are of a rare beauty.”

“We have assisted Nature,” said Yuan, smiling.

“How do you propagate? May I ask?”

“In the usual ways—by seed, by division, by cuttings of the base of the culm, by cuttings of rhizomes. Layering is impossible for most of these plants. We create a favourable position for them, and make special soils and dressings.”

“The warmth and the sea-mists are helpful, I have no doubt. What about rats and voles?”

“We have exterminated them, except for some that we keep for special purposes.”

“They really are very beautiful plants,” said Lord Sombrewater, with envy.

“It is most wonderful,” replied Yuan, “when all of them over an immense region flower at once.”

“And do you find that they die?”

“They disappear.”

“Many travellers have agreed that the plants die after flowering.”

“How are the plants renewed? My opinion is that they do not die, after flowering, until they have given off suckers from the roots.”

They discussed technical questions of extreme difficulty. Lychnis and Ambrose followed in a world of fluttering green butterflies, peering at spikelet and bract, while Yuan described and demonstrated, until Wang Li and Hsiao were heard calling from their barge.

25

At a suitable interval from their first visit to the Rock they were bidden to a water-picnic, and thereafter with increasing frequency to a luncheon-party, or a supper, or some excursion with various members of the family, male and female, among the intricate and distant windings of the Lake. They were invited into the most interior chambers of the house itself. Lychnis and Ruby made friends of young girls or married women with exquisite names. The depression that some of the party had begun to feel lifted, and there was great gaiety and friendship. Messengers were soon dispensed with, and all their arrangements were made by wireless, once they had learned to use the apparatus discovered in a cabinet on the day of their arrival at the Pavilion. It was, Ambrose reports, a better instrument than any known in Europe, the principle of it, Sir Richard and Fulke agreed, being in advance of European physical knowledge—a thing guessed at, but not grasped. They began to know the coves, shrubberies and summer-houses, and some of the mysteries of the island; and they began to see what Sprot and Fulke called the sinister side of their hosts’ lives. The weather was wonderful—clear, warm and mellow, with mist in the morning. Peaches and apricots ripened on the brown flanks of the island, and the two parties spent glorious days and wonderful summer evenings about the Lake and the valleys among those fantastic oyster-shell hills. The only rule that Lord Sombrewater made was that Lychnis and Ruby were on no account to visit the Rock unless accompanied by himself, Sir Richard Frew-Gaff, or Ambrose.

Ambrose found that in one way the task of keeping the record of their activities began to present difficult problems. Wang, Hsiao and Yuan baffled analysis and gave him no confidences. Their characters did not seem to have recognizable springs. Merry old Wang said little and laughed immoderately, smiting his clean, blanched-yellow old head without obvious occasion; his sayings, moreover, usually seemed inappropriate and without sense. Hsiao, who with his top-knot resembled an inspired turnip, drank a great deal and painted divinely. Yuan was perhaps easier to understand. He had a certain candour, almost an impulsiveness; but then, as his great-grandfather said, he had not yet quite learned to cease from activity and return to his centre. He ranged abroad and vanished sometimes for days at a time, while his elders kept to the Lake and the island, and seemed to find great contentment in an almost perpetual motionlessness. He liked to be among mountains and pines. “He persists,” Wang said, “in riding among wind-storms and adding to the sum of human emotion.” And then he explained that for countless centuries every generation of the family had produced a Sage. There was always one to whom it came as nature, and in his own generation the mantle had fallen on Yuan. But Yuan had yet much to learn. Ambrose thereupon grasped the situation—Wang was a complete Sage, a perfect or superior man, as they put it. Yuan’s father, Sage of another generation, was on a pilgrimage. Hsiao was a side-line. Yuan, the beginner (from the point of view of the Europeans he was already far enough on the way to wisdom), was in training. Like the elders, he would spend hours in the neighbourhood of a flower or a water-fowl—he used courtesy towards flowers and animals—and more than once in her walks Lychnis came upon him wrapped in his meditation, self-unconscious, quite lost to the world. It charmed her.

In another way Ambrose’s task became easier, because, as their reactions to their strange circumstances became stronger, and as their troubles increased, the Sages all came with their confidences. Even Ruby had something to say and advice to ask, and Lychnis made him absolutely her conscience and heart.

26

Late at night, when the moon was up and Ruby and the rest of the household were asleep, Lychnis crept from the curtains of her black, roomy bed, and stole out on the verandah. Ambrose perceived her, standing in the moon like a pink crêpe-de-Chine ghost with a white core, her feet together and her hands behind her head, in a lovely, dart-like attitude, as if she were balancing for a flight into the scented, dark heart of the foliage. Waiting a moment to observe accurately the excellent shape of her head, with the hair drawn in to the neck, and to commit to memory certain curves of her bust, which slightly lifted the front of her glimmering shift and purified the soul like a vision of the Grail, he stirred. She turned, smiled, and vanished, returning again with a wrap like a mist about the moon. They sat side by side.

“It is hot, is it not?” she asked.

“I was composing my account of the day,” he answered. “I want your impressions.”

“Do you record impressions of all of us?” she inquired.

“Most of you, from time to time, tell me things that are of interest.”

“Of interest! You have interests, of course. One forgets that.”

“Oh yes, I have interests. To record with accuracy the essentials of an episode—that is one of them.”

“What an interest! Really, an interest is not very interesting—not so interesting as a passion. You have no passions?”

“They only cloud the vision of clear-eyed desire,” he answered—“in fact, they actually prevent attainment.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got a passion,” she observed—“a sort of general, unattached passion. If it suddenly fastened on someone the results might be frightful.”

“Abeyance it, and give me to-day’s impressions.”

“Oh, impressions! Well, in the first place, it’s hot. Then—I don’t quite know what impressions I have. I mean, they may come from inside me. Can one make impressions on oneself?”

“Let’s hear.”

“Well, I have the idea that life may have some point, after all—that there may be a moment when you can say, Now one has really flowered into a moment of existence between nothing and nothing. I desire to exist, to be—not merely to remain a vague thing, an I, that cannot possess a single experience. One is only the beginning of a being, the material for one.”

“True. But you think you may be about to begin to exist. What are the symptoms?”

“I don’t quite know. How shall I put it?” She considered the question in silence. Then: “Would you say there was something unusually splendid and beautiful about the night?”

“Perhaps there is, now you mention it.”

“Do you happen to notice anything more than ordinarily intoxicating in the scent of the trees?”

He sniffed. “Perhaps, now you point it out.”

“Have you by any chance a sort of feeling that out there in the darkness, in a halo of extreme darkness, there might be some unseen experience that would complete you?”

“Um! I recognize the state of mind you describe as one which is familiar to human beings.”

She rose and stepped from the verandah down on to the lawn. Some jewel on her slipper shone in the grass like a glow-worm. He followed and walked beside her.

“Those are my impressions,” she said. The moon shone in her eyes through a hank of hair.

“The condition,” he lectured, “is the condition of one whose generalized passion, as I think you called it, is about to be attached to an object.”

“Oh!” She made a fox-face at him and led the way up a path in the bamboo grove. Presently they were hidden there, and the round moon hung in a deep sky behind a delicate pattern of leaves. “Sultry, is it not?” she continued, and loosened her wrap. She glimmered, in her frail gown, like a firefly or some sort of bamboo-fairy. “I would like ... it would be cool. One would bathe in night ... I might, almost, with only you here.” She stood looking at him, as if she really were considering it. Or was there even a mocking? Then “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, and shrouded her bosom in her wrap, “do you think Yuan might see us?”

“I fancy he would hardly be looking,” Ambrose replied.

“I really did think of doing it,” she asserted. “Has my reality-sense gone wrong? It seems quite odd that I should hesitate, with only you here, and in fairyland. Of course, with others about, reality is different. But you and I live in heaven, don’t we? I presume a person will be naked there? So you think the man on the island would not be looking. He does strike one as being a gentleman.”

“Does he please you?”

“I find him mysterious. What Ruby dislikes about him, I like—I mean the feeling that a cold and merciless god is looking at you. I wish I could be as unself-conscious as that. It’s like being looked at by something impersonal—the wind, the sky. Do you think he is a man? Or some human spirit of the mountains? You do not think him supercilious, do you? Those moth-eyebrows, I mean, and that slanting glance.”

“I think his mouth remarkable,” said Ambrose.

“Yes. It’s so small and innocent and unpitying, like a flower that can’t feel, or suffer, or know of its own destruction. A mouth that would look the same in torture. You can use that, Ambrose.” He smiled. “A mouth that he surely never uses to eat or kiss with. Will you use some of these words when you are writing in your diary?”

“Possibly. Do you understand all that he says?”

“What is the difficulty? I don’t find it a matter of understanding. I don’t have to say to myself, ‘What does he mean?’ I feel it in my bones.”

Ambrose pondered. “Perhaps you have the same means of consciousness as these Chinese.” He remembered her remarkable insights.

“Do you suppose I am a Sage?” she asked.

“At any rate,” he replied, “you resemble them in certain respects. You are at bottom only interested in what they would call the reality behind the flow of phenomena. You actually do live in constant touch with it, and find it exciting. Nothing else will ever quite give you satisfaction. It is a faculty which men of action lose. If they didn’t the flow of phenomena would cease.”

She stripped the dark leaves one by one from a bamboo.

“And what about men who record action and inaction with equal dispassion?”

“Oh,” he answered, “they also sometimes get in touch with reality, in a mild way. But about Yuan. What does he tell you?”

“He told me that when he has once thoroughly investigated the nature of objects, and understood the identity of all things, he will do as his great-grandfather wishes—abandon all desire, and wholly give himself up to what he calls the unnameable. But he will go much farther than his great-grandfather, he says. Already he is convinced of the ultimate unreality of the world. He wishes one day to leave the world of relativity, to contemplate Nature in its absolute aspect, and finally to sleep a white and dreamless sleep of the mind, knowing only what is beyond mind. This is what he said, and in this state he won’t know his nose from his mouth, and his flesh and bones will be dissolved, and he will drift with the wind, not knowing whether he is the wind itself or a leaf riding on it.”

“In old age,” said Ambrose, “he will come down to the less picturesque and more human mysticism of his great-grandfather. But first he has, as you say, to put away desire.”

“He often does, already,” she answered eagerly. “He fasts in heart. It is quite simple, apparently. You only forget there is a you, and when there’s no you it can’t have desires.”

“Quite simple.”

“He says it is the more subtle desires, the desires of the intellect, that trouble him.”

“No doubt they do. And in other matters he is without passions?”

“As far as I can see. Well—he’s not a neuter.”

“He has the eye of a man?”

She hesitated. “Of more than a man.”

“It has expression in it—warmth, feeling, electricity?”

“I don’t know. I cannot say what there is in his eyes. I can only say that they are not dead. They have looked straight at mysterious things, and they are unreadable. All his face is unreadable. He is like rocks and forests. His eyes are the mysterious presences that are among trees. And they slant beautifully.”

“And what is your chief feeling about him?”

“If only I could always think of him as a figure on a vase....”