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.”