Chapter IV: Part 4

“The invisible centre of Unity,” observed Wang. And here they noticed, looking down avenues of tree-tops, that the landscape surrounding the island and the Lake had changed, in the sense that the secret of its design, hidden from every other view-point, was strikingly revealed. From everywhere else it baffled, and perhaps a little chafed, the mind. From here it ever variously satisfied and rested one. And the more one looked at the Rock itself, the more one was convinced by a volume or surface, a space of yellow or blue tiling, a green and grinning monster, a bending cypress or sophora.

There was no furniture in the room, except a few stools, an affair of ebony and enamel that looked like a smoking table, a musical instrument, or an unknown parlour game, and some jars which Quentin at once recognized as products of the Tang and Ming dynasties—in fact, he identified the signatures, with the applause of old Wang Li. “Though,” the old man strangely observed, “the name which can be written down is not the everlasting name.”

“That is, of course, true,” replied Quentin. But he replied absently, for there came in two exquisite and fragile girls, who, after ceremoniously saluting the company, ran like mice, the one to Lychnis, the other to Ruby, and, squatting beside them, began to chatter softly in a shy and welcoming, if incomprehensible, way.

Then, when the visitors had been allowed time to feast their imaginations on the rhythmic wonders of pavilion and arch, marble pathway and bronze dragon, sweeping terrace and dreaming cedar, that sought their attention at every window (or else, according to their natures, wondered what freak could have made himself responsible for this freakish fantasia of unexpected colour and disconcerting line), a light but sumptuous luncheon of pigeons’ eggs floating in soup, braised bamboo-shoots and other things was served, under the direction of a sort of major-domo whose choleric features they at once recognized. Sprot plucked at Lord Sombrewater’s gay sleeve and whispered, but Lord Sombrewater shook him off.

“It would scarcely be polite,” said Yuan at this point, “to leave you in a state of doubt at what must have appeared to be a remarkable series of coincidences. With the permission of my great-grandfather, I will enter upon some details.”

Old Wang Li nodded and assumed an expression of almost idiotic vacancy, murmuring: “That which can be told is not to be compared for excellence with that which cannot be told.” The hideous and poetical Hsiao, who had exchanged with Quentin a number of cups of wine, had fallen into an inspired contemplation of half a melon. Yuan, impassive (and was he humble or imperious, smiling or fierce?—Lychnis and Ambrose could not make up their minds), entered upon details.

“The founder of our line, himself a descendant of the Wu-Lung, or Five Dragons, first lived on this Rock in the time of Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor. It was about the year 2630 +B.C.+, as you reckon dates in Europe. There are, it is true, discrepancies between the dates given in the Bamboo Books and those given by the majority of Chinese historians. In any case the event was not very recent, and in consequence we are a highly civilized family. At times our influence has been very wide, especially in days when the philosophy of Lao-tzu, which was embraced by my family not long after 600 +B.C.+, has been in the ascendant. At other times our influence has been less, but at no time have we lost possession of this island, owing to a faculty long cherished in the family for devising instruments of considerable ingenuity and precision.”

Lychnis laughed almost aloud at the look on Sprot’s face—a look of depressed triumph at the justification of a dismal prophecy.

“It was a member of the Dragon family,” continued Yuan, “who invented the south-pointing needle, gun-powder, anæsthetics, and the flying chariot. It would be idle to pretend that we have not even now at our disposal matters of still greater ingenuity, so that it has for a long time past been the custom to regard this neighbourhood as one where it is not unreasonable to flatter our quite unexpressed desire to enjoy the pleasures of unmolested contemplation. There have, of course, been those who were rash enough to ignore the tradition. Thus, generation by generation, we have built our pavilions, set our hands to these valleys and turned them into our pleasure garden, with summer-houses for the use of the visitors who have honoured our possessions by sharing them. And the desires of our visitors are, of course, flattered equally with our own.”

Hence the respect accorded to the visitors on their journey. Ambrose received a glance from Lychnis.

“And hasn’t anybody ever got away with some of the boodle?” asked Sprot.

“To a very great extent we are unmolested because of the respect which is paid, in this country, to intelligence. And no doubt many suppose that because we spend a great deal of time in apparently idle contemplation no wealth is produced. But visitors have had the curious desire to remove precious articles to their own homes, and they have, as you put it, got away. But that—do I divine the more interior workings of your mind?—was because we did not stop them, as, indeed, why should we?”

“I presume,” said Sprot, suddenly going turkey-cock red, “that one has complete liberty of movement here?”

“Until one transgresses the ordinary laws of ceremony,” answered Yuan.

“What I mean to say is——” began Sprot.

Lord Sombrewater enjoined silence on him, and exchanged explanatory and understanding glances with Yuan. But Sprot meant to assert himself.

“What I mean to say is, that we are British. The might of the British Empire——”

“If I may anticipate your remarks,” said Yuan, “there is, in a sense, no British Empire. There is only myself and a few friends.” Lord Sombrewater resumed his attitude of attentive politeness, and Hsiao transferred his inspired contemplation to the other half of the melon.

“No Br——!” began Sprot.

“It is possible that occasion may serve to demonstrate that we have here facilities for the complete destruction of any empire that ever was, except the empire of contemplative activity. But what have we to do with the making or unmaking of empires? It breaks into the day so.”

“I take it,” said Lord Sombrewater at last, “that you have in your hands discoveries of which you make no use—no industrial use, shall I suggest?”

“Precisely. We use them only for our convenience and for the convenience of visitors—as, for instance, you will, I am sure, agree that our fireworks have an unrivalled variety and brilliance.”

“Marvellous!” said Quentin. “I love fireworks.”

“And we have done much to improve the weather.”

“These discoveries,” asked Sir Richard, leaning forward, “are discoveries of physical science?”

“They are what physical science is hoping to discover by tortuous methods of its own. In the West, if I may say so, you seek reality through the examination of appearances, and you have little sense of it. Here we experience reality and are able to reproduce phenomena, as may be desirable.”

“Indeed! Very interesting,” said Sir Richard, biting his lip. “You have laboratories....”

But Fulke burst in: “My God! these people could build the Ideal State in about ten minutes, and they sit here thinking and enjoying themselves.”

“Those who think do not enjoy,” said Blackwood. “It is in a state of non-thinking that one approaches the final bliss of annihilation.”

“Bliss of your big toe!” said old Wang, waking suddenly. The veils fell from his eyes, and one saw that they were used to looking fixedly at things non-human, that they were full of an almost dreadful humour. “In argument on matters of reality,” he added quaintly, “there are no rules of courtesy.”

“It is not to be thought,” said Yuan, “that we dream of Utopias. We contemplate reality, each of us from generation to generation in his own way. We perceive the inward structure of things, and occasionally, when apposite, one of us may bring up a discovery from those profound fishings, in the shape of a picture, a poem, or a mechanical contrivance. There have been men of our family who saw that it would be spontaneous to destroy their surroundings in order to shape them according to a greater perfectness perceived in contemplation. They obeyed their natures, but it usually happens that we pass in due time (as my great-grandfather has passed) beyond all interest in the seen world, and lose ourselves in the experience of what is beneath all appearance, whether of life or death.”

“Well,” said Lord Sombrewater, “we have already detained you from your contemplative activities long enough for one day. I look forward to many pleasant conversations; and I desire to thank you on behalf of all of us for the very kindly way in which you have looked after our interests for some time past, and for your really lavish provision for our entertainment and comfort.”

The company rose. “Oh, but may I ask one question?” said Lychnis, with timidity. The Chinese girls twittered round her, smoothing her clothes. “Did you—I can’t help wanting to know—did you actually fetch us here, or have we come of our own free wills?”

There was a certain feeling of embarrassment, but Yuan, who had been regarding her with profound attention, replied: “We were informed of your intention to visit Asia, and since then it has been our most earnest desire that Fate would guide you to this valley.”

Lychnis hoped that the rest of their desires in regard to the party would prove convenient, being so difficult to resist. Then aloud: “But supposing you hadn’t liked us?”

“We did like you. We allowed ourselves the gratification of studying your very pleasing appearance, and only the laws of politeness prevented us from listening to your elegant conversation.”

“You saw us!” cried the Sages.

“Look!” said Yuan, introducing Lychnis to a cabinet in the wall.

She looked in, and swung round at him on her hips. “The _Floating Leaf_! My mother, knitting under the awning! Oh! can you see inside things, too? Or in the dark?” She flushed and frowned, remembering her afternoon with Ambrose under the plum-tree in blossom, when she had given herself to his regard.

“This adds a terror to life,” observed Quentin. “It teaches us to be careful.”

“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....”

She smiled at Ambrose faintly, enigmatically, baffling further inquiry. Strange creature, she seemed to him, neither child nor woman—at any rate half-fairy. “I don’t dare look at him very close,” she concluded. “He’s so still, so different. If he came walking by now in a meditation I should shiver. Oh! listen, Ambrose. Someone really is coming!”

Ambrose stepped back into the bamboo thicket, and the shimmering, scented girl shrank in under his arm. There were voices, in English and Chinese—chiefly little exclamations and some laughter. Whoever it was passed on and the voices died out in the forest.

“Quentin,” whispered Ambrose, “and some young women we don’t know.”

They emerged on the white moonlit lawn, crossed the shadow of a great cedar, and entered the house.

27

One afternoon Lychnis, Ruby, Ambrose, Quentin and Fulke were on the island in company with Wang, Hsiao and Yuan. All were meditative, or sleepy, and they lay about on a little turfy place jutting out from the cliff a few feet above the water. They looked like a handful of orchids. Lychnis lay on her front with her head hanging over the Lake. She was gazing intently at the water, and her hair parted and fell down on either side of her face, leaving the slender neck bare, as if she had been laid on the plank of the guillotine. “How satisfying,” muttered Quentin, “to wring that neck!”

Yuan regarded the neck, but no shade or thought of emotion appeared on his countenance; nor did his fingers tighten.

“What a hateful thing to say!” said Ruby, who neither slept nor meditated, and only lay motionless.

Old Wang, after studying her for some time, had been heard to murmur: “The room has been made empty for the Master, but he does not enter it.”

Lychnis was fascinated by the water. She was thinking, if only she could wriggle out of her tunic and trousers, shoulders first, and slide over the cliff into the Lake and glide neatly among the stems of the water-lilies! To dip the chin first, and the mouth, tentatively, gingerly, in the cold element of a different universe; to bury the eyes, next, in its queer sights; to feel it slide over neck and back and legs; then suddenly to dart through it and surprise the inhabitants, like an unexpected meteor.

“I simply must know what it’s like to be a water-creature.” A sentence had emerged from the depths of her water-feelings.

“You can,” said Yuan, “by entering into subjective relationship with them.”

She looked at him as one who balances an infinity of considerations. “No doubt. But how does one enter into subjective relationship with, say, a water-beetle?”

“First,” began Yuan, “by forgetting self; then by emptying the mind....”

But old Wang interrupted, as if to give the young man instruction on an important matter. “Those who know, say nothing,” he observed; “those who say, know nothing.”

“But,” said Lychnis, “that makes conversation so difficult.”

“Why converse?” Wang asked her, with a sardonic grin. “Speak only when compelled, and then reluctantly, and only in the words of the Sages.”

“In the meantime,” said Yuan, who, in relation to his great-grandfather, was only at the beginning of wisdom, “let us take a walk under the water.”

Lychnis lifted her head and glanced round at Ambrose. “Among all those plants? I’m not afraid, but isn’t it rather impossible?”

“I’ll dive in and save you,” said Quentin.

“I don’t like you under water,” she replied—“a spread-out monster with a dim, waving beard. Besides, I’ve no costume.”

“That is not a thing that matters—” began Yuan.

“Of course not,” put in Quentin, with immense approval.

The Chinese gentleman continued: “What I mean is, that we go as we are. It is not a miracle.”

The scattered orchids stood up, mystified, and undulated in a gay chain along the paths on the side of the cliffs. Presently Yuan halted at a place where glassy-green steps led down into deep waters between reed-clumps.

“A good place for pike, no doubt,” remarked Ambrose.

“You are a fisherman, then?” Yuan suddenly enveloped him, as it were, in an all-seeing gaze, which, while extremely polite, was also extremely inexorable.

“I fish, and meditate, and compose my thoughts.” Ambrose returned his gaze with a polite stare which, so Lychnis told him, was beautifully inflexible.

“Then we will fish and meditate together.”

“With the greatest pleasure.”

The two men bowed, and Yuan led the way down the glassy-green steps. They found themselves entering a roomy, inclined tunnel of some substance so transparent that they seemed to be entering a partition of the water. One by one they stepped down, taking a last glance, when their eyes came to its level, across the many-leaved surface of the Lake. In a few minutes they were walking in the depths of a forest of stalks where strange creatures loomed. It was very silent, very dim, very still, under that ceiling of flat leaves, or under an open sky of lake-water. Sometimes a flight of small, ghostly fish darted invisibly through the stalk-forest, or suddenly wheeling their sides in a light-beam became a thousand rainbows. Sometimes a beetle-creature struggled up skywards through the water, swimming as if faint for heaven. Or swans swam overhead like June clouds, or thrust their snaky necks down between lilies. A cormorant, breaking the limit of the water into a shiver of crystal, passed them in silent white pursuit of a hurrying fish. And in one region of the brownish-greenish water-universe a solemn carp, opening and shutting his mouth like a machine, took part with myriads of his kind in a mazy, rhythmical, interminable, involuted and apparently purposeful dance.

“Just like human beings,” observed Quentin.

“Why do they do that?” asked Lychnis. She and Ruby were walking on either side of Yuan; Fulke was following with despairful, scowling face. “Are they happy?”

“They obey their nature,” said Yuan. “According to the doctrine of Hsiao, they are Sages.”

“They cannot be Sages,” she put in, “because they have never been conscious. To be a Sage means to have abandoned human consciousness and to have adopted the demeanour of a fish or a vegetable.”

But he merely stood with bent head considering the glaucous lairs of the water-world. He was not thinking. He was abandoned, unconscious of self or of any process, to what his eyes saw. He was in relation with the water, the fish, the beetles, through the reality which filled him and them and superseded delimitation. He had ceased to exist. He was no longer separate. But an onlooker would have been struck by his self-possession.

Fulke went close to Lychnis and faint-heartedly touched her. His desire to put his arms round her nearly achieved itself. Distracted by himself and by his desire, he was now without inward resource. Entangled in the inhibitions of self-consciousness, he blushed, stammered, and did not know how to stand or where to put his hands.

Ambrose made notes on the behaviour of all concerned.

“Lychnis.” Fulke faltered a whisper.

She gave no sign of having heard.

“Lychnis. I.... Why won’t you talk to me? I could answer your questions.... I....”

She made no answer.

“I know things, too. I am intelligent. Oh, slime and hell! I hardly know what I’m saying!”

“Yes, yes. You are very intelligent—very nice.” She spoke as if half-asleep.

He stumbled back over the damp sand to Ruby. “Look at her!” he exclaimed. “She’s following him. He’s drawing her into his own mad world. What can we do, Ruby?”

“I don’t know.” Ruby was dejected, alarmed. “She’s funny. I do wish she wouldn’t be. You don’t think——” She stopped. “I don’t like it much here. It’s not a place for people to be. Could I go back? Would they mind?”

“My God!” he answered. “I think I’ll come with you. She’ll be all right. Ambrose is here. You and I—we are of no use to her.” Their eyes met in a perfect orgasm of wretchedness, and they glided off, the two of them, along the tunnel and up out of the water-world into the air and the sun.

Hsiao appeared to be disappointed. He had given himself up to the contemplation of Ruby’s torch of red hair that glimmered through the shadows of the stalk-forest. But, instantly dismissing anything so painful as disappointment, he addressed himself to a contemplation of Lychnis. “She has hands like the white opening water-lily,” he was understood to say. “They would be cool and fragrant to the mouth, and delicately scented.”

Wang Li tapped Ambrose on the shoulder, and pointed at his great-grandson.

“A young man,” he said, “not free from the chains of desire.”

“Desire?” queried Ambrose.

“Desire. An itch of the mind; the mind still itching to experience, to understand, to know. He still takes an interest in things. He approaches the matter from the wrong angle. Seek first the kingdom of non-being and the world of appearances will be yours at a later date.”

He notices a good deal for an old man who is permanently unconscious, thought Ambrose. Peripherally, no doubt.

As for Lychnis and Yuan, they had gone on ahead. They looked as if they were swimming in a gloom of stalks. One was going now deeper into the Lake, into a pool of shadows, into a treeless, inter-stellar space, lit only by the faint emanation of some distant, strange sun. The empty universe was inhabited by flights of fish, like angels going on heavenly errands, and also by monstrous shapes of fiendish though fish-like aspect.

“If these are the work of God,” said Ambrose, “I am hitherto imperfectly acquainted with the full variety of His resources.”

“Of God,” replied Wang, “by the hand of my great-grandson, Yuan. Some experiments of his.”

“I must bring my friend Sprot to see them,” said Ambrose, and received a wink of consciousness from the Sage’s right eye. Old Wang and his two descendants had a power of divination in the matter of character and motive that was quite extraordinary. From Wang especially there was nothing hidden.

“My great-grandson considers,” the old philosopher went on, “that, while he is taking an interest in appearances, a man may as well lend a hand in the temporary work of evolution, and add, by reason of his conscious artistry, a certain distinction, either of ugliness or beauty, to what sometimes appears to be the product of a bungler working in the dark. It is the function of the artist to give point, to relieve, to dramatize. For example——” He pointed abruptly to a glorious creature that floated past like a sun, raying out veils of splendour, and again to a slender torpedo-shape marvellously adapted for speed. “No doubt also you have remarked the rarity of the birds in these parts, and the perfect colour and shape of the flowers. Yuan’s. Nothing but a certain indifference to the scientific point of view on the part of his numerous relations has prevented him from experimenting with the human species.”

“I am willing,” said Quentin, “to act as his agent, or vehicle, in any experiments he may make with the human species, provided they are of a creative, and not of a merely negative, order.”

“How,” asked Ambrose, “does he justify his pre-occupation with objective existences?”

“He does not justify it,” said Wang, with what might have been taken for a great-grandfatherly groan; “he boasts of it. It is a phase, of course. It will pass. In time he will embrace his duty and become a Sage.”

“In the meantime,” remarked Hsiao, “his activities greatly enhance the amenities of the landscape and multiply the conveniences of life.”

Rounding a turn in the tunnel they came on Lychnis and Yuan, who were both gazing upward. High overhead floated the red hull of a coracle, and on either side of it a paddle, like a web foot, occasionally broke the surface. “Fulke and Ruby, I have no doubt,” said Yuan. “Lazy, are they not? Or else urgently discussing something.”

“Don’t let’s bother about them,” she replied. “Go on. Tell me more about strange things.”

Willingly enough he returned to his subject, and the pair of them sped on, absorbed in whatever theme they were discussing. Or perhaps it was not the theme they enjoyed, but the experience—the experience of sinking through the levels of consciousness and meeting in the deeps where there is no opposition between this and that.

Presently there was a shaft in the tunnel with a spiral stair. This the party ascended, and found themselves in the middle of the Lake. A boat was moored there, and far away among the lotuses was the red craft that had passed over their heads. Old Wang was smiling to himself with abandon, and continued to smile until they landed on the island.

“And the joke?” asked Ambrose politely.

“I laughed to see how easily young trees bend to a breeze. It would not be in accordance with wisdom to resist a main impulse of Nature. Here I am in agreement with Hsiao. This is the doctrine of spontaneity.”

“Excellent,” replied Ambrose. “But, I take it, if there is any flaw in the spontaneity the result will appear as indecision?”

“You are right,” said Wang, with a piercing look.

28

Soon enough there began to be a fuss about Lychnis and Yuan. It appeared that Fulke and Ruby, on their ascent into the familiar world, had taken a red cockle-shell skiff and spent the afternoon floating about the Lake, tasting a certain joy in their common misery. No harm in that. But on landing and returning home to the Pavilion, and on finding it in the sole occupation of Sprot, they had communicated to him their fears. These he received with the liveliest satisfaction, spoke much of the accuracy of his forecasting, and spent the evening stamping up and down in a resolved manner. When the party from the island returned, he drew Quentin aside and significantly questioned him, in the presence of Fulke and Terence, as to the proceedings of the afternoon.

“What are you getting at, Sprotling?” asked Quentin.

“I am going to make representations to Lord Sombrewater. I am going to convince him that it is desirable for us to leave the valley without delay.”

Terence lifted up his face and spoke inspired words: “I have a most convincing reason for that. This afternoon, in a dream, I saw the mountains of my native country, and a picture of the whole party of us eating honey in Innisfree. And there came on me a great impulse to arise and go there, which I would have obeyed at once had not the vision clearly said that the rest of you are to go, too.” He stood for a moment looking into the distance, and his grey eyes were undoubtedly alight with the apprehension of something not immediately attainable. “I starve here,” he added, “for the sights and the sounds of Europe. I am out of touch with the Other Side. There is no veil of misery to pierce; no heaven to reach, because no hell to reach from.”

“The dirt and the poverty,” said Quentin, “the factories and the brothels, the advertisements, the bankruptcy courts, the demure women who know the game of love—I agree. I hate this calm, this perfection. What you say is true. There are no arcs here, consequently no perfect rounds to long for.”

“Oh, for some work to do!” cried Fulke. “A world to redeem from the clutches of industrialism—a State to build—a race to create!”

“I am with you in the last item only,” said Quentin, putting out his crisp, curly beard.

“At all events,” summed up Sprot with enthusiasm, “we hate this neighbourhood. We are all for returning to the ship. But first, how to get rid of this Chink, this Yuan?”

“I could knife him, if necessary,” said Quentin, with a certain genuine earnestness.

“Why not?” asked Sprot. “Nobody would know. It’s often done in these Asiatic countries. There are no police here. But first—evidence. Lychnis must be watched.”

Fulke swung round. “You damned, newt-livered, beetle-tongued, slug-sticky, crawling miasma! Use Lychnis, will you? Besmirch her reputation because you’re unhappy away from your kennel? My God! if I hear her name on your slime-coated tongue one single time again, I’ll drag your entrails out through your eye-sockets!”

“He’s in a temper,” explained Quentin. “He’s in love—but hopelessly, I fear.”

Fulke looked at him with a light in his eyes like a sullen sunset drowning in a tide of misery. “Oh!” he cried, “you’re not capable of love. You’re not clean men. And I that am clean am of all of you the most miserable. I hate life!” He broke off, and made for the house. He met Ruby coming out, and once more a circuit of emotion was established between them.

“Where’s Lychnis?” she asked, with some anxiety.

The others listened.

“Heaven knows,” he answered. “Can’t you find her?”

On investigation it turned out that Lychnis had disappeared. There was no sign of her anywhere. “Where can she be?” asked Ruby, with tears in her voice.

They all stood on the lawn staring over the Lake like men who have lost a vision. Sombrewater and Frew-Gaff, returning late from a geological expedition in the mountains, were met with the intelligence by an almost elated Sprot.

“I knew it,” said the little man. “I have warned you, Lord Sombrewater.”

Lord Sombrewater turned and stared at him so that he began fumbling with his collar. “You have warned me of what?”

He had nothing to say.

“Be so good as to keep your thoughts to yourself.”

Lord Sombrewater went abruptly into the Pavilion.

29

Lychnis, in the meanwhile, was off to the south-west with Yuan in the Dragon. The stars were on fire in heaven; there was a space of white light about the moon; far below slid the perfumed forest. She sat behind Yuan in the hollow body of the creature, and he, slung between the wings, bent this way and that, wheeling and dipping his fantastic chariot; and sometimes, when he had climbed the peak of the wind, he would fling himself forward, and she would see the dark, rushing world beyond the streak of moon on his shoulders as they swooped on a hundred miles through the night. Then, after a few moments of rest on some hill that loomed up out of the void, a soft purr of his mysterious engine or a beat of the wings and the chariot sprang up and forward like an eagle.