Chapter II: Act II

SCENE:—_The drawing room of_ SIR SOLOMON RAUB’S _town house in Charles Street, Mayfair, Folding doors L. to music room and door R_. PARLOURMAID _enters through folding doors carrying a large spray of roses, passes through the room and goes to glass over the mantlepiece, where she pins the roses in her dress, and goes out R. Shortly afterwards_ LADY OLIVIA _enters followed by_ MURIEL. LADY OLIVIA _goes to settee near fire and sits down_.

MURIEL [_as she enters_]. Roses! how beautiful they smell!

LADY OLIVIA. What roses, Muriel? There are none here.

MURIEL. There must have been. I can smell them.

LADY OLIVIA. You are always smelling things that no one else can
[_peevishly_]. It is a shocking habit, and very bad manners.
[_Holding her bottle of smelling salts to her nose._] I can smell
nothing.

MURIEL. You never can smell anything, mother.

LADY OLIVIA. Muriel! You are positively disgusting! Why should one
smell? In any decent house the sense of smell is unnecessary.

MURIEL. I get great pleasure from my sense of smell.

LADY OLIVIA [_with a slight shudder_]. Really, Muriel! Is smell a
sense?

MURIEL. Of course it is—one of the five senses.

LADY OLIVIA. Well, four is too many for any woman of breeding; why
should you try to cultivate a fifth? It can only lead you into more
mischief.

MURIEL [_coldly_]. Mischief! Whatever do you mean?

LADY OLIVIA. Should I ever have married your father if I had not been
carried away by my four senses? Heaven knows whom I’d have married
if I’d had a fifth!

MURIEL. Someone still better.

LADY OLIVIA. Don’t slight your father. It’s probably from him you get
this wonderful sense of smell. When I first knew him, he was always
complaining that the English never wash. That’s why he loathed going
where there would be crowds. I had the greatest difficulty in
getting him to take me to the Court balls, but I used to say ‘it’s a
penalty you pay for being a foreigner. It’s not that they don’t
wash: it’s that they’re English. If you were an Englishman, you
wouldn’t notice it, for you would be the same yourself.’

MURIEL. I think he is quite right. I have noticed it myself.

LADY OLIVIA. Yes, because you are only half-English; and what I say
is, what is the good of your sense of smell? It’s only an annoyance.
The best thing you can do with it is to lose it. There! I’ve said
something that I am sure is in the Bible!

[_Enter_ SIR SOLOMON RAUB _with_ LADY PHAORON _who never rises with
the ladies, but always stays and smokes a very strong cigar and
drinks several glasses of port with the men; after them follows_
LORD BELVOIR _and_ SIR PHILO PHAORON.

LADY PHAORON. I hope you don’t mind if I smoke a pipe, Lady Olivia?

[MURIEL _makes a wry grimace_.

LADY OLIVIA. Oh dear no, not in the least, dear Lady Phaoron. I never
smell anything.

LADY PHAORON [_throwing a half-smoked cigar into the fire and taking
out a pipe_]. The cigars one gets now since they put the extra duty
on are so unsatisfying.

SIR SOLOMON [_who is smoking one_]. Like most European products they
are for tired business men, not for connoisseurs, dear lady.

SIR PHILO. In ancient Egypt, women did not smoke. [_Dreamily, as if
slowly tasting the comfort of it._] In fact, they did not eat with
the men, but had their meals in their own apartments.

LORD BELVOIR. Was there any special reason for that?

SIR PHILO. No special reason, Lord Belvoir, but it was an ancient
custom; and I venture to think originally an æsthetic one.

MURIEL. Do you mean that they idealized women and could not bear to
see them feeding like animals?

LADY PHAORON. The question is could the women bear to see the men
eating?

LADY OLIVIA. So long as they all ate together, my dear, I don’t see
that it would matter. I always keep something loud to chew when my
neighbour is unfortunate in his teeth-equipment. I’ve often thought
that the soup course is only tolerable because we all do it
simultaneously. As my mother always used to say to us girls in the
nursery, ‘Keep together! Don’t get scattered!’

SIR SOLOMON. Well, I wonder if the ancient Egyptians ever ate the
fruit we are going to have to-night.

SIR PHILO. Oh, is it something special?

SIR SOLOMON. Yes; in fact it is, I believe, the rarest and most
delicious fruit in the world and totally unknown in Europe.

LORD BELVOIR. What is it called?

SIR SOLOMON. It is called the popomack.

SIR PHILO. What does it taste like?

SIR SOLOMON. Well, I don’t know. There are, I understand, very few
people in the world that do know.

SIR PHILO. But how do you know it’s edible at all?

SIR SOLOMON. It has been celebrated as a great delicacy throughout the
East from ancient times. I believe Marco Polo refers to it
somewhere.

LORD BELVOIR. Where, may I ask, did you get it?

SIR SOLOMON. Well, perhaps I had better tell you all about it. Years
ago when I was in Canton on a business visit to our house there, I
was invited to a banquet by Fu-chi-li, the governor of the province,
who was a Mandarin of very high rank. He had been a friend of Li
Hung Chang’s and was immensely rich. In his day he had taken an
active part in politics, and had experienced many vicissitudes of
fortune. During some temporary reverse, it was my father’s privilege
and good luck to render him a considerable service which he repaid a
hundredfold, while still, as is the custom in the East, considering
himself not only my father’s debtor, but after his death his son’s
also. Well, days before the banquet, I realized that something very
special was going to happen; in fact one might have said without
exaggeration that the whole town buzzed of it. When the eventful
evening came I found that I had been extraordinarily honoured. There
were only two other guests, both Chinese of exalted rank. We had a
repast such as it is impossible to describe.

MURIEL. How did you talk to them?

SIR SOLOMON. Oh, they spoke perfect English but [_knitting his brows_]
I can’t remember what we talked about. Anyhow towards the end of a
delightful meal, Fu-chi-li rose and struck a small silver gong. And
here I will follow his example and call Harringham. [_He goes to the
gong and strikes it. The lights immediately go out and they go up
again upon the interior of a Mandarin’s House in China. Seated round
a table are three Chinese and an Englishman. The host, a Mandarin of
high rank, has a gong beside him. The remnants of a repast not yet
quite completed are on the table. There are no servants in the
room._

MANDARIN. I do not understand the Western ideas of love. I have been
reading an English novel called _Maurice Guest_, in which the young
man Maurice loves a woman who does not love him. How is that
possible?

ENGLISHMAN. It is not only possible; it is the custom. Oscar Wilde
would have said it was the only form of real love known to man.

MANDARIN. Ah, Oscar Wilde. I have read him. He is another symptom of
your disease.

ENGLISHMAN. You think that the West is diseased?

MANDARIN. In everything you are looking for something else. That is
your disease. Here, when a man wants a woman, he takes a woman—any
man and any woman, it is all the same. What difference can there be?
You take a woman and you look at her. You look at her hair, her
eyes, her mouth, her limbs—all sound; and yet you are doubtful; you
look again. What are you looking for? You do not know. Well, perhaps
you go away; perhaps you sleep with her or, as you say, marry. Well,
you embrace her, you enjoy her; but as you lie beside her during the
night gazing at the ceiling which you cannot see, you ask yourself:
‘Is that all?’ No one answers you. You get more and more bitter, and
you say to yourself, lying there: ‘My God, this is impossible!’ But
it is you who are impossible. You have had your pleasure, and yet
you are not satisfied.

FIRST CHINAMAN. They call it ‘divine discontent.’

ENGLISHMAN. I am a Jew, and I understand you. To my father,
unfaithfulness would have been impossible. The idea would have been
monstrous to him. He had his own woman; any other would have been
superfluous and meaningless. But [_reflectively_] I am not like
that.

MANDARIN. You were born among these people, and you have become
contaminated.

ENGLISHMAN. I found an Englishwoman who attracted me more than any
woman of my own race. Why was that?

MANDARIN. I do not believe there was any difference. She was probably
less accessible socially, and your desire for her was the desire to
overcome resistance. Evidently you have not got her. When you do,
you will find she is just the same as the others.

ENGLISHMAN. I mean to marry her. To me she is more desirable.

MANDARIN. Yes, you too have got the disease. When you have her, you
will wonder what you saw in her, and you will think simply that you
have made a mistake, and will spend your life looking in other women
everywhere for what has never existed.

ENGLISHMAN. But these Western races are more subtle in love than we
are. You can see it in their poetry and music. No pure Jew has ever
been a first-rate creative artist.

FIRST CHINAMAN. All Europeans have confused minds. They look at an
eyebrow, and they get an exquisite sensation. Then they embrace the
woman with the eyebrow, and they get another sensation, also
exquisite; but with this sensation they have lost the other. The
eyebrow is now merely an eyebrow, and they are vexed. But why cannot
they embrace one woman, and look at the eyebrow of another?

ENGLISHMAN. Well, I understand it. When you look at anything very
beautiful, you cannot bear the thought that presently it will be
gone, and gone perhaps for ever. So you desire to possess it, to
fasten it to you, so that it will always be there for you to look
at.

MANDARIN. Fu-Chi-Wang bought a beautiful lacquer screen; for a few
days he saw it; for a few months his friends saw it; and now it is
seen only by strangers. Fu-Chi-Wang does not know it is there.

ENGLISHMAN. He would miss it if it were taken away.

MANDARIN. Yes, his eye would come to life again.

ENGLISHMAN. Well, that is what I say about women. How can one stick to
one woman as my father did without one’s senses becoming dulled and
blunted?

MANDARIN. It is not the same thing. When you are thirsty, water will
always quench your thirst. You want thirst to be provoked, you want
to be always thirsty. Water will not make you thirsty, nor does a
wife awaken desire. Mistresses like alcohol tickle the palate
without satisfying the appetite, and in the end destroy both.

ENGLISHMAN. But if you were always surrounded with water, you would
never get thirsty.

MANDARIN. You soon get thirsty if you are not always drinking.

ENGLISHMAN. But in Europe when one mixes much with other women, one is
always being attracted. To me every woman is unique: I should like
to know them all. It is a pity there is not time enough.

MANDARIN. Fatal illusion! Each seems unique because there are many,
since each is in a different relation to you. But it is the
relationship which is unique. A rose in a garden affects me
differently from a rose in a bowl; a yellow rose is like a woman in
a yellow dress, and a red rose is like a woman in a red dress, but
it is only a difference in dress or in shape or in size or in voice
or in colour.

FIRST CHINAMAN. You cannot embrace a colour or a voice, and does it
matter whether what you embrace is big or little? Perhaps your wife
has wit, but you cannot sleep with her wit.

ENGLISHMAN. But these qualities awaken desire.

MANDARIN. Only in fools. The wise man loves to hear a beautiful voice,
to see a beautiful colour. A voice is to be heard, not to be bought
and put in a bed, and colour is to be seen, not hidden in the dark.
But few men, and least of all Europeans, can enjoy with their eyes
and their ears; yet there is no other way of enjoying colour and
sound, and the body cannot rape the mind. [_Silence: then turning to
the_ SECOND CHINAMAN _who has not spoken_]. But you who are wiser
than all of us have said nothing. Let us hear your opinion.

SECOND CHINAMAN. I think we are wiser, but I do not think we are
right.

MANDARIN. What! You agree with the Europeans?

SECOND CHINAMAN. The finest types in the West are fastidious in love
to a degree we should think ridiculous, but I discovered that they
do not thereby lose virility. They are more, not less, passionate
than coarser men, and both bolder and more subtle. They live more
intensely and more deeply because their bodies are more conscious.

ENGLISHMAN. Do you, then, believe there is such a thing as love?

SECOND CHINAMAN. I do not know that perfect love may not be enjoyed by
man. In China, we try to separate our consciousness from our body.
We give our body to women with less thought than we give it to the
table, and our consciousness we keep for our friends. But there is
no harmony in such a life. Our mind and our body should be one. We
despise the man who eats grossly because he does not know what he
eats. Shall we call it love when men live with women they do not
know?

MANDARIN. But it is just because we do not know them that they are
desirable.

SECOND CHINAMAN. The body and the spirit are one, but as the stone is
less conscious than the tree, and the tree than the man, so one man
is less conscious than another. Stones and trees love, for stones
and trees live, but we do not call it ‘love’ since it is not full
and conscious enough. Neither is lust full and conscious enough for
that man who desires to live more and more richly, and such a man
will inevitably turn away from it.

ENGLISHMAN. Then you believe that a man should sow his wild oats?

SECOND CHINAMAN. It is a strange expression but I believe the man who
fears nothing and lives, will live according to the power that is
within him. If it is a small power, he will satisfy it
easily—whether with one woman or fifty is immaterial.

ENGLISHMAN. But what becomes of morals?

SECOND CHINAMAN. There is only one moral law which a man can break,
and that is to be satisfied with less than his soul demands. Does it
matter how many he breaks it with?

MANDARIN. Cannot the eye look with pleasure on a beautiful girl
without wanting her as a mistress?

SECOND CHINAMAN. It is unknown what the soul craves for, but when we
say a girl is beautiful we mean that our soul is suddenly more
alive. This feeling of life is so exquisite, that we seize her
greedily in the hope of more, and our life is as suddenly
extinguished. Man must find out how to live. There is no recipe,
although your churches pretend to give you one.

ENGLISHMAN. Do you believe in marriage as an institution?

SECOND CHINAMAN. Does a boatman believe in oars? Yes, until he is
given sails. Does he then believe in sails? Yes, until he finds he
can go easier and further with steam. Marriage has nothing to do
with love.

ENGLISHMAN. Then you do not think that a man should be faithful to his
wife?

SECOND CHINAMAN. To embrace a woman because she is your wife is like
embracing her because she is your mother.

ENGLISHMAN. I do not understand you.

SECOND CHINAMAN. I mean that mere affection should not drive you
further than a mere affectionate embrace. To sleep with your wife
when you are merely fond of her is a sin against love. To sleep with
a woman whom you merely lust after is also a sin against love. In
Europe both these habits are extremely popular.

MANDARIN. I understand you. You mean that they are different symptoms
of the same disharmony.

SECOND CHINAMAN. The fruits of such unions are ugly in body and dull
in mind. I remember standing at your Charing-Cross station watching
the streams of young men and women going to business, and they
looked like herds of disgusting animals. Mongrels, bred not from
harmonious passion, but by accident! Naturally they mostly hate
their parents.

ENGLISHMAN. Then the Western religious bodies are wrong in inculcating
faithfulness?

SECOND CHINAMAN. Physical union without passion is a sin against life.
Lovers who live together after their passion has died are disgusting
to the gods and obviously blunted in mind and body. There may be
passions so harmonious that they endure throughout the lovers’
physical life; that is the only faithfulness. There is no virtue in
hypocrisy even when it is called marriage.

MANDARIN. I do not believe that love is anything more than a pleasure
like eating and drinking. One likes some women more than others as
one likes some foods more than others, but too much of any one of
them will take away the appetite.

SECOND CHINAMAN [_ironically_]. In the beloved there is an infinity of
life. The lover who has just left her for ever is carrying away on
his sleeve a single hair.

FIRST CHINAMAN. One is quite enough, all the others are the same.

MANDARIN. I doubt the reality of this ideal Western love. It is too
much of an abstraction. I should like to see it tested.

ENGLISHMAN. Well, if I couldn’t have one woman I’d have another. Of
course I might prefer the one I hadn’t got.

MANDARIN. Only because you hadn’t got her ... all else is illusion.
It’s the unknown that attracts us. [_With a gesture as if concluding
the argument._] If the popomack were as common as the pineapple we
should not make such a fuss about it, but as we know that we shall
be accounted happy if we taste it once in our lives, it means a
great deal more to us.

ENGLISHMAN. Have you never tasted it?

MANDARIN. Never. I remember my father telling me that when he was a
young man the Governor of his province had one and held a great
feast to eat it.

ENGLISHMAN. I feel deeply sensible of the great honour you have done
me in inviting me to-night to partake of this popomack. I am most
curious to see it.

MANDARIN. Well my friends, the time has come for us to enjoy the most
exquisite delicacy known to man. [_He strikes the gong, which
reverberates slowly through the silence._

[_The lights go out as a servant enters, and the scene is as before,
with_ SIR SOLOMON RAUB _standing by the side of the gong which is
still stirring from the blow he has given it. The door opens and_
HARRINGHAM _enters_.

SIR SOLOMON. Bring in the popomack! [_He turns to the guests._] No
doubt these were the very words Fu-Chi-li used to his servant, who
however returned rushing into the room, white with terror, and
falling prostrate, muttered something in Chinese at which the others
started in astonishment. Even Fu-Chi-li was, I saw, visibly
disconcerted, in spite of his extraordinary self-control. But almost
immediately he was the urbane host again, and dismissing the servant
he explained to us with many apologies that some unforeseen and
altogether extraordinary circumstance had prevented his placing
before us the unique dish with which he had wished to honour our
presence. In spite of his exterior calm, the tone of his voice
betrayed an emotion incompatible with any ordinary feeling of
disappointment, but the other guests remained curiously impassive. I
did not like to ask any questions, and when we parted later, after a
stay somewhat briefer than usual, nothing further had been said.

LORD BELVOIR. And did you never learn what had happened?

SIR SOLOMON. Never!

SIR PHILO. But how did you know that he was going to give you a
popomack?

LADY OLIVIA. And what is a Popomack? You have never told us that.

SIR SOLOMON. Well, when I told Furse, the manager of our Canton
branch, what had happened, he said that Fu-Chi-li must have been
going to give us a popomack; in fact he said he had heard rumours of
it. Furse was a man of about fifty, the son of a Chinese missionary
and born in China, and an absolute mine of out-of-the-way knowledge.
He told me that every now and then, say once in fifty, or once in a
hundred or even a couple of hundred years, a single popomack fruit
turns up somewhere in the East, and that the knowledge of its
existence spreads with extraordinary rapidity and causes the
greatest excitement. There is tremendous competition to procure it,
but all negotiations are mysteriously elaborate and secret; for the
life of any man known to possess it would not be worth a string of
cash. Specimens that have turned up in the past have usually found
their way to the Emperor or to some high Mandarin.

LORD BELVOIR. Had Furse ever seen one?

SIR SOLOMON. No, nor ever heard of the existence of one before.

[HARRINGHAM _enters carrying on a silver platter what looks like a
huge blue orange; it has the shape of an orange, but the hard rind
of a passion fruit or a pomegranate, and is as large as a good-sized
melon and a vivid bright blue. They all gaze at it as_ HARRINGHAM
_places it on the table with a knife and a number of plates. He then
goes out._

MURIEL. What a lovely colour!

LADY PHAORON. I hope it won’t give us indigestion.

SIR PHILO. So that’s a popomack! Extraordinary! Do you know, I believe
it may be the strange fruit mentioned at the banquet of Amenophis IV
of the XVIIIth dynasty about 1500 B.C. The reference to it has never
been understood.

SIR SOLOMON. What does it say about it?

SIR PHILO. The passage is obscure. All I remember is that it mentions
its colour as being remarkable and there was something else strange
about it, but I have forgotten.

LORD BELVOIR. May I ask how you came to get it?

SIR SOLOMON. Furse sent it to me from Canton; it arrived two days ago.
It was a piece of extraordinary luck and is really a remarkable
story, which I must tell you some time. I determined we should have
it to-night in honour of your engagement with Muriel. And now I
think it is time we cut this rarity. I am very curious to taste it.

LADY PHAORON. I hope it won’t give me indigestion.

SIR SOLOMON [_as he takes a knife and proceeds to insert the point_].
Well, I’m sure it would be worth it. The Chinese are great
epicureans and would never have made such a fuss about something
that was merely ordinarily pleasant. This rind is very tough. [_He
makes an effort and succeeds in inserting the point, then pushes the
blade down._] Good God!

ALL [_excitedly_]. What is it?

[_The popomack rolls into two cut halves, and immediately a
frightful smell unlike anything they have ever experienced before
pervades the room._

ALL. Faugh! Ugh! It’s appalling! Take it away! It’s unbearable.

SIR PHILO [_jumping excitedly, holding his handkerchief to his nose_].
That’s it! That’s it! I remember now! It smells! _Une odeur
épouvantable_ Lefebure translates it. It’s quite correct. It’s the
real thing! Wonderful! A divine colour, lapis-lazuli blue, and a
smell like the plague!

SIR SOLOMON [_who has retreated to a far corner of the room with his
handkerchief to his nose_]. Then you don’t think there’s anything
wrong with it?

SIR PHILO. Wrong! Of course not! No, it’s absolutely correct. This
proves it. [_Almost dancing in his excitement._] Marvellous!

LADY PHAORON [_tartly_]. Marvellous! It’s disgusting!

LADY OLIVIA [_the only one who has taken no part in the excitement now
begins to sniff uneasily and suddenly puts her handkerchief to her
nose_]. Oh, my fifth sense! I’ve found it!

[_She shrieks and immediately faints._ SIR SOLOMON _rings the bell
and_ HARRINGHAM _enters in his usual imperturbable manner, but
suddenly visibly shrinks; he makes an involuntary movement towards
his pocket, but recollects himself, and suppresses it with a face
fearfully contorted_.

SIR SOLOMON. Help me to carry your mistress to her room, Harringham.
You had better come too, Muriel. [_To his guests._] Excuse us one
moment.

[_Exeunt_ SIR SOLOMON _and_ HARRINGHAM, _carrying_ LADY OLIVIA,
_followed by_ MURIEL.

SIR PHILO [_his face beaming, at least that part of it which is not
covered by his handkerchief_]. This is really thrilling! I wouldn’t
have missed it for anything. I’m going to taste it. [_He cuts a
slice of the popomack and begins eating it._] Ah! heavenly! Come on
Belvoir, you must taste it. [_To_ LADY PHAORON.] Will you try some,
my dear?

LADY PHAORON. Certainly not, I shall go and see if I can be of any use
to Olivia. [_Exit._

SIR PHILO [_cutting another two slices and beginning a fresh one
greedily_]. Here, you must taste it, Belvoir; you can’t imagine how
delicious it is!

LORD BELVOIR. Well, the smell is pretty awful, but I’ll risk it.

SIR PHILO. That’s right.

[LORD BELVOIR _begins to eat reluctantly, but his expression at once
changes to one of intense satisfaction_.

LORD BELVOIR. You are quite right; it’s really wonderful.

SIR PHILO. Yes, isn’t it?

[_The two men go on in silence, eating greedily and cutting more
slices until the popomack is more than half gone. Gradually they
cease to hold their handkerchiefs to their noses, and by the time_
SIR SOLOMON _returns they have put them back into their pockets.
They are still eating when he returns._

SIR PHILO. How’s Lady Olivia?

SIR SOLOMON. She’s come round, thank you, but she’s going to lie down
for a bit. This is really awful. I must apologize.

SIR PHILO. Apologize! Not at all! Taste it; it’s wonderful! Heavenly!
Isn’t it, Belvoir?

[BELVOIR _nods, his mouth full_.

SIR SOLOMON [_hardly concealing his expression of disgust behind his
handkerchief which he holds carefully to his nose_]. Faugh! I
wouldn’t dream of touching the stuff. I can scarcely bear to stay in
the room with it.

SIR PHILO. Eat it, and you won’t notice the smell; it’s just the same
with cheese.

SIR SOLOMON. No, thank you! But if you like it do you mind finishing
it quickly?

SIR PHILO. Delighted! But I warn you you’re missing something; isn’t
he, Belvoir? and you’ll regret it.

[_He cuts the last slice and hands half to_ BELVOIR _after cutting
off the rind. The two men eat in silence._ SIR SOLOMON _watching
them with a curious expression. Presently he rings for the butler.
Enter_ HARRINGHAM.

SIR SOLOMON. Take what’s left of this away, and burn it!

CURTAIN