on his face, an expression of mysterious rapture, as it were, and one
that Francis recognized and swiftly pigeon-holed in his now attentive
mind.
"Which was?" he asked sympathetically. "You told me once, but so long
ago that really it's slipped my mind. Something magical, wasn't it?" He
watched closely for his friend's reply.
Farque lowered his voice to a whisper almost devotional:
"The Perfume of the Garden of Happiness," he murmured, with an
expression in his eyes as though the mere recollection gave him joy.
"'Burn it,' he told me, 'in a brazier; then inhale. You will enter the
Valley of a Thousand Temples wherein lies the Garden of Happiness, and
there you will meet your Love. You will have seven years of happiness
with your Love before the Waters of Separation flow between you. I give
this to you who alone of men here have appreciated the wisdom of my
land. Follow my body towards the Sunrise. You, an eastern soul in a
barbarian body, will meet your Destiny.'"
The doctor's attention, such is the power of self-interest, quickened
amazingly as he heard. His own romance flamed up with power. His
friend--it dawned upon him suddenly--loved a woman.
"Come," said Farque, rising quietly, "we will go into the other room,
and I will show you what I have shown to but one other in the world
before. You are a doctor," he continued, as he led the way to the
silk-covered divan where golden dragons swallowed crimson suns, and
wonderful jade horses hovered near. "You understand the mind and nerves.
States of consciousness you also can explain, and the effect of drugs
is, doubtless, known to you." He swung to the heavy curtains that took
the place of door, handed a lacquered box of cigarettes to his friend,
and lit one himself. "Perfumes, too," he added, "you probably have
studied, with their extraordinary evocative power." He stood in the
middle of the room, the green light falling on his interesting and
thoughtful face, and for a passing second Francis, watching keenly,
observed a change flit over it and vanish. The eyes grew narrow and slid
tilted upwards, the skin wore a shade of yellow underneath the green
from the lamp of jade, the nose slipped back a little, the cheek-bones
forward.
"Perfumes," said the doctor, "no. Of perfumes I know nothing, beyond
their interesting effect upon the memory. I cannot help you there.
But, you, I suspect," and he looked up with an inviting sympathy that
concealed the close observation underneath, "you yourself, I feel sure,
can tell me something of value about them?"
"Perhaps," was the calm reply, "perhaps, for I have smelt the perfume of
the Garden of Happiness, and I have been in the Valley of a Thousand
Temples." He spoke with a glow of joy and reverence almost devotional.
The doctor waited in some suspense, while his friend moved towards an
inlaid cabinet across the room. More than broad-minded, he was that much
rarer thing, an open-minded man, ready at a moment's notice to discard
all preconceived ideas, provided new knowledge that necessitated the
holocaust were shown to him. At present, none the less, he held very
definite views of his own. "Please ask me any questions you like," he
added. "All I know is entirely yours, as always." He was aware of
suppressed excitement in his friend that betrayed itself in every word
and look and gesture, an excitement intense, and not as yet explained by
anything he had seen or heard.
The scholar, meanwhile, had opened a drawer in the cabinet and taken
from it a neat little packet tied up with purple silk. He held it with
tender, almost loving care, as he came and sat down on the divan beside
his friend.
"This," he said, in a tone, again, of something between reverence and
worship, "contains what I have to show you first." He slowly unrolled
it, disclosing a yet smaller silken bag within, coloured a deep rich
orange. There were two vertical columns of writing on it, painted in
Chinese characters. The doctor leaned forward to examine them. His
friend translated:
"The Perfume of the Garden of Happiness," he read aloud, tracing
the letters of the first column with his finger. "The Destroyer of
Honourable Homes," he finished, passing to the second, and then
proceeded to unwrap the little silken bag. Before it was actually open,
however, and the pale shredded material resembling coloured chaff
visible to the eyes, the doctor's nostrils had recognized the strange
aroma he had first noticed about his friend's letter received earlier
in the day. The same soft, penetrating odour, sharply piercing, sweet
and delicate, rose to his brain. It stirred at once a deep emotional
pleasure in him. Having come to him first when he was aglow with his own
unexpected romance, his mind and heart full of the woman he had just
left, that delicious, torturing state revived in him quite naturally.
The evocative power of perfume with regard to memory is compelling. A
livelier sympathy towards his friend, and towards what he was about to
hear, awoke in him spontaneously.
He did not mention the letter, however. He merely leaned over to smell
the fragrant perfume more easily.
Farque drew back the open packet instantly, at the same time holding
out a warning hand. "Careful," he said gravely, "be careful, my old
friend--unless you desire to share the rapture and the risk that have
been mine. To enjoy its full effect, true, this dust must be burned in a
brazier and its smoke inhaled; but even sniffed, as you now would sniff
it, and you are in danger----"
"Of what?" asked Francis, impressed by the other's extraordinary
intensity of voice and manner.
"Of Heaven; but, possibly, of Heaven before your time."
4
The tale that Farque unfolded then had certainly a strange celestial
flavour, a glory not of this dull world; and as his friend listened, his
interest deepened with every minute, while his bewilderment increased.
He watched closely, expert that he was, for clues that might guide his
deductions aright, but for all his keen observation and experience he
could detect no inconsistency, no weakness, nothing that betrayed the
smallest mental aberration. The origin and nature of what he already
decided was an _idee fixe_, a mania, evaded him entirely. This evasion
piqued and vexed him; he had heard a thousand tales of similar type
before; that this one in particular should baffle his unusual skill
touched his pride. Yet he faced the position honestly, he confessed
himself baffled until the end of the evening. When he went away,
however, he went away satisfied, even forgetful--because a new problem
of yet more poignant interest had replaced the first.
"It was after three years out there," said Farque, "that a sense of my
loneliness first came upon me. It came upon me bitterly. My work had
not then been recognized; obstacles and difficulties had increased; I
felt a failure; I had accomplished nothing. And it seemed to me I had
misjudged my capacities, taken a wrong direction, and wasted my life
accordingly. For my move to China, remember, was a radical move, and my
boats were burnt behind me. This sense of loneliness was really
devastating."
Francis, already fidgeting, put up his hand.
"One question, if I may," he said, "and I'll not interrupt again."
"By all means," said the other patiently, "what is it?"
"Were you--we are such old friends"--he apologized--"were you still
celibate as ever?"
Farque looked surprised, then smiled. "My habits had not changed," he
replied, "I was, as always, celibate."
"Ah!" murmured the doctor, and settled down to listen.
"And I think now," his friend went on, "that it was the lack of
companionship that first turned my thoughts towards conscious
disappointment. However that may be, it was one evening, as I walked
homewards to my little house, that I caught my imagination lingering
upon English memories, though chiefly, I admit, upon my old Chinese
tutor, the dead Shan-Yu.
"It was dusk, the stars were coming out in the pale evening air, and the
orchards, as I passed them, stood like wavering ghosts of unbelievable
beauty. The effect of thousands upon thousands of these trees, flooding
the twilight of a spring evening with their sea of blossom, is almost
unearthly. They seem transparencies, their colour hangs sheets upon the
very sky. I crossed a small wooden bridge that joined two of these
orchards above a stream, and in the dark water I watched a moment the
mingled reflection of stars and flowering branches on the quiet surface.
It seemed too exquisite to belong to earth, this fairy garden of stars
and blossoms, shining faintly in the crystal depths, and my thought, as
I gazed, dived suddenly down the little avenue that memory opened into
former days. I remembered Shan-Yu's present, given to me when he died.
His very words came back to me: The Garden of Happiness in the Valley
of the Thousand Temples, with its promise of love, of seven years of
happiness, and the prophecy that I should follow his body towards the
Sunrise and meet my destiny.
"This memory I took home with me into my lonely little one-storey house
upon the hill. My servants did not sleep there. There was no one near. I
sat by the open window with my thoughts, and you may easily guess that
before very long I had unearthed the long-forgotten packet from among my
things, spread a portion of its contents on a metal tray above a lighted
brazier, and was comfortably seated before it, inhaling the light blue
smoke with its exquisite and fragrant perfume.
"A light air entered through the window, the distant orchards below me
trembled, rose and floated through the dusk, and I found myself, almost
at once, in a pavilion of flowers; a blue river lay shining in the sun
before me, as it wandered through a lovely valley where I saw groves of
flowering trees among a thousand scattered temples. Drenched in light
and colour, the Valley lay dreaming amid a peaceful loveliness that woke
what seemed impossible, unrealizable, longings in my heart. I yearned
towards its groves and temples, I would bathe my soul in that flood of
tender light, and my body in the blue coolness of that winding river.
In a thousand temples must I worship. Yet these impossible yearnings
instantly were satisfied. I found myself there at once ... and the time
that passed over my head you may reckon in centuries, if not in ages. I
was in the Garden of Happiness and its marvellous perfume banished time
and sorrow, there was no end to chill the soul, nor any beginning, which
is its foolish counterpart.
"Nor was there loneliness." The speaker clasped his thin hands, and
closed his eyes a moment in what was evidently an ecstasy of the
sweetest memory man may ever know. A slight trembling ran through his
frame, communicating itself to his friend upon the divan beside
him--this understanding, listening, sympathetic friend, whose eyes had
never once yet withdrawn their attentive gaze from the narrator's face.
"I was not alone," the scholar resumed, opening his eyes again, and
smiling out of some deep inner joy. "Shan-Yu came down the steps of the
first temple and took my hand, while the great golden figures in the dim
interior turned their splendid shining heads to watch. Then, breathing
the soul of his ancient wisdom in my ear, he led me through all the
perfumed ways of that enchanted garden, worshipping with me at a hundred
deathless shrines, led me, I tell you, to the sound of soft gongs and
gentle bells, by fragrant groves and sparkling streams, mid a million
gorgeous flowers, until, beneath that unsetting sun, we reached the
heart of the Valley, where the source of the river gushed forth beneath
the lighted mountains. He stopped and pointed across the narrow waters.
I saw the woman----"
"_The_ woman," his listener murmured beneath his breath, though Farque
seemed unaware of interruption.
"She smiled at me and held her hands out, and while she did so, even
before I could express my joy and wonder in response, Shan-Yu, I saw,
had crossed the narrow stream and stood beside her. I made to follow
then, my heart burning with inexpressible delight. But Shan-Yu held up
his hand, as they began to move down the flowered bank together, making
a sign that I should keep pace with them, though on my own side.
"Thus, side by side, yet with the blue sparkling stream between us,
we followed back along its winding course, through the heart of that
enchanted valley, my hands stretched out towards the radiant figure of
my Love, and hers stretched out towards me. They did not touch, but our
eyes, our smiles, our thoughts, these met and mingled in a sweet union
of unimagined bliss, so that the absence of physical contact was
unnoticed and laid no injury on our marvellous joy. It was a spirit
union, and our kiss a spirit kiss. Therein lay the subtlety and glory of
the Chinese wonder, for it was our _essences_ that met, and for such
union there is no satiety and, equally, no possible end. The Perfume of
the Garden of Happiness is an essence. We were in Eternity.
"The stream, meanwhile, widened between us, and as it widened, my Love
grew farther from me in space, smaller, less visibly defined, yet ever
essentially more perfect, and never once with a sense of distance that
made our union less divinely close. Across the widening reaches of blue,
sunlit water I still knew her smile, her eyes, the gestures of her
radiant being; I saw her exquisite reflection in the stream; and, mid
the music of those soft gongs and gentle bells, the voice of Shan-Yu
came like a melody to my ears:
"'You have followed me into the sunrise, and have found your destiny.
Behold now your Love. In this Valley of a Thousand Temples you have
known the Garden of Happiness, and its Perfume your soul now inhales.'
"'I am bathed,' I answered, 'in a happiness divine. It is forever.'
"'The Waters of Separation,' his answer floated like a bell, 'lie
widening between you.'
"I moved nearer to the bank, impelled by the pain in his words to take
my Love and hold her to my breast.
"'But I would cross to her,' I cried, and saw that, as I moved, Shan-Yu
and my Love came likewise closer to the water's edge across the widening
river. They both obeyed, I was aware, my slightest wish.
"'Seven years of Happiness you may know,' sang his gentle tones across
the brimming flood, 'if you would cross to her. Yet the Destroyer of
Honourable Homes lies in the shadows that you must cast outside.'
"I heard his words, I noticed for the first time that in the blaze of
this radiant sunshine we cast no shadows on the sea of flowers at our
feet, and--I stretched out my arms towards my Love across the river.
"'I accept my destiny,' I cried, 'I will have my seven years of bliss,'
and stepped forward into the running flood. As the cool water took my
feet, my Love's hands stretched out both to hold me and to bid me stay.
There was acceptance in her gesture, but there was warning too.
"I did not falter. I advanced until the water bathed my knees, and my
Love, too, came to meet me, the stream already to her waist, while our
arms stretched forth above the running flood towards each other.
"The change came suddenly. Shan-Yu first faded behind her advancing
figure into air; there stole a chill upon the sunlight; a cool mist rose
from the water, hiding the Garden and the hills beyond; our fingers
touched, I gazed into her eyes, our lips lay level with the water--and
the room was dark and cold about me. The brazier stood extinguished at
my side. The dust had burnt out, and no smoke rose. I slowly left my
chair and closed the window, for the air was chill."
5
It was difficult at first to return to Hampstead and the details of
ordinary life about him. Francis looked round him slowly, freeing
himself gradually from the spell his friend's words had laid even upon
his analytical temperament. The transition was helped, however, by the
details that everywhere met his eye. The Chinese atmosphere remained.
More, its effect had gained, if anything. The embroideries of yellow
gold, the pictures, the lacquered stools and inlaid cabinets, above all,
the exquisite figures in green jade upon the shelf beside him, all this,
in the shimmering pale olive light the lamps shed everywhere, helped his
puzzled mind to bridge the gulf from the Garden of Happiness into the
decorated villa upon Hampstead Heath.
There was silence between the two men for several minutes. Far was it
from the doctor's desire to injure his old friend's delightful fantasy.
For he called it fantasy, although something in him trembled. He
remained, therefore, silent. Truth to tell, perhaps, he knew not exactly
what to say.
Farque broke the silence himself. He had not moved since the story
ended; he sat motionless, his hands tightly clasped, his eyes alight
with the memory of his strange imagined joy, his face rapt and almost
luminous, as though he still wandered through the groves of the
Enchanted Garden and inhaled the perfume of its perfect happiness in the
Valley of the Thousand Temples.
"It was two days later," he went on suddenly in his quiet voice, "only
two days afterwards, that I met her."
"You met her? You met the woman of your dream?" Francis's eyes opened
very wide.
"In that little harbour town," repeated Farque calmly, "I met her in the
flesh. She had just landed in a steamer from up the coast. The details
are of no particular interest. She knew me, of course, at once. And,
naturally, I knew her."
The doctor's tongue refused to act as he heard. It dawned upon him
suddenly that his friend was married. He remembered the woman's touch
about the house; he recalled, too, for the first time that the letter of
invitation to dinner had said "come to _us_." He was full of a
bewildered astonishment.
The reaction upon himself was odd, perhaps, yet wholly natural. His
heart warmed towards his imaginative friend. He could now tell him his
own new strange romance. The woman who haunted him crept back into the
room and sat between them. He found his tongue.
"You married her, Edward?" he exclaimed.
"She is my wife," was the reply, in a gentle, happy voice.
"A Ch----" he could not bring himself to say the word. "A foreigner?"
"My wife is a Chinese woman," Farque helped him easily, with a delighted
smile.
So great was the other's absorption in the actual moment, that he had
not heard the step in the passage that his host had heard. The latter
stood up suddenly.
"I hear her now," he said. "I'm glad she's come back before you left."
He stepped towards the door.
But before he reached it, the door was opened and in came the woman
herself. Francis tried to rise, but something had happened to him. His
heart missed a beat. Something, it seemed, broke in him. He faced
a tall, graceful young English woman with black eyes of sparkling
happiness, the woman of his own romance. She still wore the feather boa
round her neck. She was no more Chinese than he was.
"My wife," he heard Farque introducing them, as he struggled to his
feet, searching feverishly for words of congratulation, normal, everyday
words he ought to use, "I'm so pleased, oh, so pleased," Farque was
saying--he heard the sound from a distance, his sight was blurred as
well--"my two best friends in the world, my English comrade and my
Chinese wife." His voice was absolutely sincere with conviction and
belief.
"But we have already met," came the woman's delightful voice, her eyes
full upon his face with smiling pleasure, "I saw you at Mrs. Malleson's
tea only this afternoon."
And Francis remembered suddenly that the Mallesons were old
acquaintances of Farque's as well as of himself. "And I even dared to
ask who you were," the voice went on, floating from some other space, it
seemed, to his ears, "I had you pointed out to me. I had heard of you
from Edward, of course. But you vanished before I could be introduced."
The doctor mumbled something or other polite and, he hoped, adequate.
But the truth had flashed upon him with remorseless suddenness. She had
"heard of" him--the famous mental specialist. Her interest in him was
cruelly explained, cruelly both for himself and for his friend. Farque's
delusion lay clear before his eyes. An awakening to reality might
involve dislocation of the mind. _She_, too, moreover, knew the truth.
She was involved as well. And her interest in himself was--consultation.
"Seven years we've been married, just seven years to-day," Farque was
saying thoughtfully, as he looked at them. "Curious, rather, isn't it?"
"Very," said Francis, turning his regard from the black eyes to the
grey.
Thus it was that Owen Francis left the house a little later with a mind
in a measure satisfied, yet in a measure forgetful too--forgetful of his
own deep problem, because another of even greater interest had replaced
it.
"Why undeceive him?" ran his thought. "He need never know. It's harmless
anyhow--I can tell her that."
But, side by side with this reflection, ran another that was oddly
haunting, considering his type of mind: "Destroyer of Honourable Homes,"
was the form of words it took. And with a sigh he added "Chinese
Magic."
III
RUNNING WOLF
The man who enjoys an adventure outside the general experience of the
race, and imparts it to others, must not be surprised if he is taken for
either a liar or a fool, as Malcolm Hyde, hotel clerk on a holiday,
discovered in due course. Nor is "enjoy" the right word to use in
describing his emotions; the word he chose was probably "survive."
When he first set eyes on Medicine Lake he was struck by its still,
sparkling beauty, lying there in the vast Canadian backwoods; next, by
its extreme loneliness; and, lastly--a good deal later, this--by its
combination of beauty, loneliness, and singular atmosphere, due to the
fact that it was the scene of his adventure.
"It's fairly stiff with big fish," said Morton of the Montreal Sporting
Club. "Spend your holiday there--up Mattawa way, some fifteen miles west
of Stony Creek. You'll have it all to yourself except for an old Indian
who's got a shack there. Camp on the east side--if you'll take a tip
from me." He then talked for half an hour about the wonderful sport; yet
he was not otherwise very communicative, and did not suffer questions
gladly, Hyde noticed. Nor had he stayed there very long himself. If it
was such a paradise as Morton, its discoverer and the most experienced
rod in the province, claimed, why had he himself spent only three days
there?
"Ran short of grub," was the explanation offered; but to another
friend he had mentioned briefly, "flies," and to a third, so Hyde
learned later, he gave the excuse that his half-breed "took sick,"
necessitating a quick return to civilization.
Hyde, however, cared little for the explanations; his interest in these
came later. "Stiff with fish" was the phrase he liked. He took the
Canadian Pacific train to Mattawa, laid in his outfit at Stony Creek,
and set off thence for the fifteen-mile canoe-trip without a care in the
world.
Travelling light, the portages did not trouble him; the water was swift
and easy, the rapids negotiable; everything came his way, as the saying
is. Occasionally he saw big fish making for the deeper pools, and was
sorely tempted to stop; but he resisted. He pushed on between the
immense world of forests that stretched for hundreds of miles, known to
deer, bear, moose, and wolf, but strange to any echo of human tread, a
deserted and primeval wilderness. The autumn day was calm, the water
sang and sparkled, the blue sky hung cloudless over all, ablaze with
light. Toward evening he passed an old beaver-dam, rounded a little
point, and had his first sight of Medicine Lake. He lifted his dripping
paddle; the canoe shot with silent glide into calm water. He gave an
exclamation of delight, for the loveliness caught his breath away.