Landscape with figures
Yuan smiled. “I do not want to lay Europe in ruins. No. I indicate the
nature of my mechanical problems to these friends of mine, and they
work out the details in contemplation. They know the inner secrets of
platinum and ebonite and wood.”
“You are kind to Europe.” Sir Richard’s upper lip was firm. It is
inconvenient that the amateur should know more than the professor,
and it was only because of the paramount claims of science that he
endeavoured to draw Yuan into a discussion. The two gentlemen talked at
great length, while Lychnis listened entranced, and Ruby yawned. But
discussion was not easy, because Yuan was dealing in symbols that were
entirely strange and in realms of experience where his companion had
never been. Some formulæ that he wrote down were excessively pleasing;
to Sir Richard they meant as much as the experiences of a mystic, while
Lychnis recognized that they were indeed precisely that.
From the laboratories they went to the gardens and hot-houses, full of
unfamiliar plants and insects; from the gardens and hot-houses to the
breeding-grounds; and it was here that even Sir Richard’s scientific
mind shrank a little at sight of some of the monsters Yuan had created,
in what seemed an irresponsible way. In particular a frightful cross
between an ape and a tiger shocked his moral sense. But Yuan took no
pains to justify himself, and only replied that all those who help in
the great work of creation will have their jokes from time to time.
Towards evening Yuan left them to make his preparations for the
water-party, and Sir Richard sat by the Lake with the two girls
pondering deeply on the afternoon’s talk. He evidently desired to
unburden himself, and found a certain difficulty in speaking to
Lychnis, the only possible listener. But in the end, if he was
displeased with her, the contents of his mind were too much for him.
“That man could alter the world,” he said, turning to her somewhat
constrainedly at last. “I do not pretend to be an expert in more
than one or two of the sciences we touched on, but I know enough to
recognize that what he says is of first-class importance. Do you
understand, my dear girl, that he has discovered all we know in
physiology by pure contemplation? I would go farther and guess that
physiology is no problem to him at all; he simply perceives the
nature of the body, and it is my opinion that he will live for ever.
There seems practically no nervous expenditure. He avails himself of
some sort of cosmical energy and forgets about his own organization,
which has become merely the sphere, so to speak, in which the energy I
speak of is present. And I don’t mind confessing that I am completely
baffled in my own branch. He talks, Lychnis, as if he had experienced
everything he knows, as if he actually saw, felt, even heard, physical
reality. He proceeds, as it were, from insight; and, really, there
doesn’t seem to be anything hidden. Odd, if reality should, after all,
be something more than a state of affairs in a field of electrical
stresses. It is profoundly disconcerting. It is as if the most refined
discoveries of science should prove to be familiar to an ape or to an
idiot. They are ape-like, these friends of yours, and a trifle idiotic.
I am not an anthropologist—not an expert—but I perceive something
orangoid in your friends, in the disposition, for example, of the lower
limbs horizontally, in the posture of the hands.”
Sir Richard, forgetting his constraint, seemed to ask for sympathy; but
she was angry with him for his frame of mind towards her, and made only
some brief reply.
33
The mood which they all fell into, staring out over the Lake at
the warm shadows of evening, was broken by the dip of paddles and
the simultaneous arrival, with the party from the Yellow Emperor’s
Pavilion, of Yuan, Hsiao and Wang, with several slight and exquisite
girls. They had a remarkable faculty, those three, of waking from
reverie on the tick of an appointment. Lychnis sat and watched as each
one, in gorgeous robe of mediæval China, stepped from the dusk of the
water, like some mystery of the summer night breaking into flower.
Darkness fell swiftly, and an ochre moon rose over the sombre side of
the valley. She sat on in silence, white and wraith-like among those
shapes of splendour, and they gathered around her, waiting on her will,
and there was a consciousness that for all of them for that moment the
universe turned about her. Ambrose records that it occurred to Yuan and
himself at the same time to announce to her that all was ready, and
they stood, the two of them (Yuan in a magnificent robe of deep green,
himself in dark amber), looking at one another across her moon-golden
head. Ambrose immediately gave place, and stood, so Lychnis afterwards
told him, smiling complaisantly at the glimmer of stars that was
breaking over the trees.
Soon they were all out on the Lake in a ceremonial barge, towing a
cluster of painted boats, and the island became a dark complex in
the moonlight, illuminated by the dying reflection of a farewell
rocket that shot up from the point. In answer Yuan lit a score of
lanterns—orange, violet, and brown—swaying moons that cast unearthly
reflections in the Lake. But there was silence among the visitors, a
certain uneasiness, because of the relation that had arisen as between
Lychnis and Yuan and as between those two and the rest.
But Lord Sombrewater would not permit any breach of etiquette, and
presently there was a murmur of talk under the ochre moon as the barge
swished slowly through dark red lilies towards the distant sources of
the Lake, where they were to picnic by the waterfalls. Two or three
of the Chinese girls perched like finches on their favourite, their
amusing Quentin, and soon enough there was plenty of laughter at
his incomprehensible jokes. Ambrose, sitting beside Frew-Gaff, took
opportunity to observe that there was no cause for any reasonable
anxiety.
“I suppose Sombrewater is right,” replied Sir Richard. “It is not that
I suspect Lychnis for a moment of folly, as you know; but in this world
we must be ready to hear of strange things. I know it; but really, if
we were told, one day, of a marriage with this Oriental (who exerts
an extraordinary fascination, I admit), I should have the creeps. I
somehow cannot tolerate the thought of a union between an English
girl—a girl like Lychnis—and him.”
The thoughts that arise in the brain, Ambrose observed to himself, are
governed, like economic men, by a master of whom they are not aware.
“I have been compelled to give Ruby the same freedom of movement,”
added Sir Richard. “She is quite capable, I am sure, of looking after
herself. A very sensible girl. We shall have no surprises from her.”
“And as to Sprot?” queried Ambrose.
“He refuses to go.”
“Lychnis has spoken to Yuan.”
“I wonder what Yuan will do.”
Ambrose looked at Sprot, who was showing a certain defiant and stupid
courage in face of the danger of staying, which he preferred to the
danger of going away. Appositely they passed three white pelicans on an
islet. They had monstrous beaks, those pelicans, the creation of Yuan.
And Ambrose wondered, with Sir Richard, what Yuan would do.
When they came to the waterfalls among the high rocks at the Lake’s
source the moon was shining into the night-sombre valley, and they
disembarked and climbed and spread supper in face of the golden and
shadowy scene, and the murmur of their talk was subdued to the steady
diapason of the main torrent that poured from the crags, not dissonant
with the peace and ordered serenity of the landscape. Nothing moved.
Far off the island slept, small and brooding. A spirit of peace fell on
them all.
“You are philosophic in great comfort here,” observed Lord Sombrewater.
“We are civilized,” Yuan mildly replied. “It is not philosophy to
evolve noble and consolatory systems, or systems of despair, among
misery and ruin. Those who require to perform their meditations among
desolations or desert wastes are merely unable to cope with the claims
of a domestic environment. Contemplation is an activity that can
only be pursued by people who have mastered Nature. It is only then
that pure reality can be seen. In all other circumstances thought is
conditioned by the actualities of being, and is directed towards the
problem of evil or some antithetic good. Here we have so wrought that
we are free to take part in the experience of a reality that is, as it
were, behind. Our environment does not hinder us; our bodies claim no
attention; we forget ourselves; we cease to be, and what is everlasting
rushes in to fill the place of what was.”
“You seek annihilation,” murmured Blackwood.
“Seek your big toe!” replied Wang, going to the foot of the matter with
characteristic efficiency. Indeed, as he lifted his right eyelid, he
seemed to emit a trickle of some elemental force that could have dried
up the cataract. “In seeking death, you seek what does not exist.”
“Perhaps I have been wrong,” sadly admitted Blackwood. “I must seek, I
see now, for some deeper life.”
“Seek your eyebrows!” retorted Wang. “In seeking life, you seek also
what does not exist.”
“Then what on earth is a man who is all wrong with the world to do?”
Wang opened him with the blade of insight. “You do not get rid of
desire by sitting on it. That is what your thoughts of annihilation
are—desire gone to mildew. Only they think in terms of annihilation who
are extremely conscious of self. Abandon your methods. Desire neither
life nor death, and eat red meat.”
“I fear I have sadly misinterpreted the wisdom of the Sages,”
Blackwood faltered, and actually the moon glowed in a tear on his cheek.
“This is the beginning, and only the beginning, of wisdom,”
replied Wang. “Retrace your steps, give rein to the passions of a
man, and in ten years’ time you may take some gentle exercise in
self-forgetfulness.” With this somewhat paradoxical statement he seemed
to close himself to all outside influence, and the spray of the moonlit
cascade gradually wetted his old bald head.
“It seems likely,” remarked Sir Richard, “that Hsiao will presently be
altogether forgetful of his body, since the goblet in his hand contains
about a pint and a half of your really very powerful and delicious
wine, and that is the third I have seen him consume.”
“In the days when Hsiao thought in terms of good and evil, of restraint
and excess, he used to be very sick,” Yuan replied. “Rid the mind of
purely relative distinctions between drunk and sober, and you will not
be troubled with the gout.”
“Thank you for that recipe,” said Quentin.
“Wang Li does not take wine, I notice,” said Lord Sombrewater.
“That is because he requires no aids to contemplation.”
“Then why does Hsiao take it?” asked Ruby.
“He is an artist, which is a weakness of the will, and he needs some
attachment to the illusions of sense.”
Lord Sombrewater had been deeply pondering. “It seems to me,” he said,
“that there is something to be argued for our western habit of life.
You here—I do not speak of the mass of your countrymen, who present, if
I may say so, the appearance of an immense swarm of toiling insects—you
in this valley have abandoned the world to its fate. You have
abandoned, so it seems to me, much that makes men specifically men, and
you have become the abodes of great impersonal forces. Sometimes when I
talk with you I feel I am talking with the nightwind, or the moonlight,
or the spraying waterfall. God-intoxicated, you have given up your
organisms to be the dwellingplace of the great unknown principle of the
universe, and any pleasure, any joy, that is in you, is its.”
“Precisely,” said Yuan. “Our bodies, to a more or less extent,