Landscape with figures
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