Landscape with figures
hung in cascades from the summit, an arbour or a garden seat stood by
some perilous path, under pine, rhododendron or orange-tree. Then,
coming to a sheltered bight between two flying and fantastic buttresses
of rock, they saw a flight of steps, gleaming and twisting up the cliff
like a devil in anguish, and at the foot of the steps, by the water’s
edge, the Dragon itself waited courteously on a marble quay to receive
them.
The Dragon, a brilliant coloured bird, resolved itself into three
Chinese gentlemen. The first, in pale heliotrope, was very old and
bright and clean, with blind eyes, scanty white beard, and a hilarious
appearance. The second was a shapeless little dump of a man in mauve,
darkly pigmented, with black top-knot, little wisp of black chin-tuft,
long slits for eyes, and a general appearance of inspired ugliness. The
third, in a richly embroidered robe the colour of a peony stalk, was
the goat-rider. He was younger and taller than the others, and now, at
close quarters, one saw that the clear, penetrating eyes in the face of
dry gold were candid, mild and grave—or so, usually, they seemed; but
at moments they were more difficult to read than the eyes of the hawk
or the leopard.
All three received the visitors with smiles and many assurances of
welcome, yet also with a certain well-bred air of aloofness—an air
that refused to presume on the willingness of the visitors to know them
and at the same time esteemed itself at a pretty high price, modestly,
as a fine jewel might. A highly civilized trio.
The tall youth stepped forward. Entreating them to mount the stairs
(which they did), making also from time to time, in concert with his
two companions, gestures expressive of his desire to assist them in the
intolerably steep ascent, he explained that the laughing old gentleman
with the scanty white beard was his great-grandfather, Wang Li; and the
ugly, poetical gentleman, named Hsiao Chai, his grandfather. His own
name was Yuan Ch’ien. His father was making a pilgrimage.
Arriving at the top of the stairs, he indicated a direction. “Not to
weary you,” he said, “with the florid and excessive courtesy which is
the custom among ourselves, this path leads to my great-grandfather’s
summer pavilion, where, begging you to excuse the omission of a number
of preliminary calls and other formalities, he would desire you to take
luncheon.”
Adopting the same high-mannered air as their hosts, the party moved
forward without remarking to one another on the strangeness of this
or that—except Sprot, who loudly whispered to Lord Sombrewater and
Ambrose, “Speaks English!”
Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose, who had noticed it for themselves, made
no sign of having heard him, and it was disconcerting when Yuan, ten
yards away, spoke as if he were answering the thought. “Anticipating,”
he said, “the surprise which you are bound to feel, I may speak of
myself so far as to explain that I have been acquainted with London and
many of your European capitals, not to mention the cities of the United
States of America. And we have had visitors from England before.”
Sprot paled. Where were those visitors now? In dungeons, perhaps, under
the island, or mouldering on the oozy bed of the Lake. One hoped not to
see white skeletons, ominously marred, their parts disposed after some
plan other than the usual.
“My knowledge of your customs,” continued Yuan, “enables me to be
certain that you will pardon what my countrymen and many of my
relations might regard as an immoral absence of ceremony. We run our
affairs here on lines which are not precisely national, in any sense.”
Wang Li and Hsiao signified approval of this last sentiment. Lord
Sombrewater observed to the very old man that he considered the
surroundings most elegant.
“We are now,” replied Wang Li, “almost at that invisible centre on
which the unity of the whole depends”; and he smiled in a way that
Ambrose at first tentatively describes as imbecile.
The surroundings were indeed elegant. The party had come to the house
of the Dragon—not so much a house as a walled village of tasteful,
if startling, elegance. It was full, as they afterwards found, of
relations; but now, instead of entering the stout red gates, they
proceeded, by a harmonious approach, amid scenery with the character of
a contrived design on a dessert-plate, to the summer pavilion of Wang
Li.
“This way,” said Wang, indicating a complicated geometrical harmony
of vermilion lines and arcs, perched among trees, a symphony of red
balconies and lemon-yellow roof; and they went up into an airy pavilion
like a nest of red straws in the pines, sunny, but mysteriously cool.
It was on the side of the island where they had landed, and a red
balcony hung out over the water. Lychnis seated herself there, on the
floor.
“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