The Baroness said no more, her eyes were moist and her beautiful bare bosom heaved, the rosy tips of her breasts pointing up towards the painted ceiling. The Count turned to her and said slowly “Baroness, why should you not be a little girl of 13 playing on the edge of the canal, falling asleep on the grass and dreaming you are grown up, have married and live in a distant country.”
“Now, Count, you are laughing at me.”
“No, listen to me. Our celebrated Spanish poet Calderon de la Barca says: ‘Life is a dream’. If Calderon had been an initiated person as well as a great author, he would have said, ‘Life is a dream within a dream’.”
The Baroness glanced at him questioningly.
“Don’t ask me anything more, I must beg you to allow me to add nothing.”
A long silence followed. The Count rose; he took a pipe and lay down at the further end of the room. He smoked for some time without a word. When he had finished he placed a transparent, weary hand on the dark head of the younger lad. The emeralds in his rings sparkled in the semi darkness and seemed to form a crown on the adolescent’s forehead.
Chatours lay down besides the Baroness and presently his head was on her kindly knees. He seemed to be saying passionate and tender words to her. She listened dreamily, her fingers lingering caressingly on the young man’s hair. On her lips played the smile of a woman who knows that much will be forgiven her for she has loved much. Suddenly Mrs. Brixton rose, declared it was past midnight and their husbands on the wall must certainly have noticed their absence by then. The Baroness who never hesitated to tell fibs, exclaimed, “All right, we will tell them we went to the Wagons Lits Hotel to drink a glass of champagne and to see the famous Iko Lang Tang.”
Her troubles already forgotten, she got to her feet, pulled her frock up over her shoulders and laughed, showing all her beautiful strong teeth which were made for cracking nuts and her full red lips which were certainly made for kisses.
They took leave of their amiable host. He went as far as the door with them, accompanied by his silent pages. The women got into rickshaws and Chatours asked if he might see the Baroness safely home, but at the last moment, probably mistaking the way, he took her in a totally different direction. It was noticed by all of them, but no one took the trouble to remark upon what was in reality quite unimportant.
The Count found himself alone. The air was warm, the night calm and dark. He placed his right hand on the head of his younger page and said, “They have all gone, I am glad to be alone, the world is too noisy. I like you, my child, because you are quiet. Women are talkative and expansive in love, my dream is spoilt by their unrest, the charm is broken — broken by their sighs, their caresses, their transports — their egoism. You at least know how to remain silent while I love; you have grasped a mystery no woman will ever understand as long as this world exists; you understand the subject of our love is but a lucky chance, an inevitable necessity for the love dream of our soul.” He shut the door and vanished.
Maugrais walked all alone down the deserted Hutung. A street hawker passed, probably the last for that night. He gave a shrill cry as if to awaken all that drowsy atmosphere. A rickshaw coolie dozed under the wall. The swelling murmur of the City had ceased; Peking was now asleep. Suddenly at the corner of the Hutung at a cross road, Maugrais saw a strange figure waiting. He stopped short and recognized Mr. Brixton. He was not tall, but squarely built and very British. The husband of the beautiful American stood motionless, in a white dinner jacket smoking a long cigar. He did not evince the slightest surprise at the sight of Maugrais. “Hullo,” he said, “what a beautiful night.” Maugrais grasped that Brixton had in all probability seen his wife pass in a rickshaw. He surmised also that the Englishman was trying to make sure if she really was at Count de Cordobas’ house. All these ideas and many others flashed through his brain. Nevertheless he appeared as indifferent as Brixton.
“Yes, a lovely night, the music bored you I suppose, so you strolled through the Chinese city. I quite agree it is more interesting.”
Brixton made no reply. They continued their way together in silence, going in the direction of the Legation Quarter. Maugrais thought he noticed Brixton sometimes cast discreet though sharp glances at him and imagined the other suspected him of being his wife’s lover. That idea and the stubborn silence of the Englishman suddenly made him furious. He turned to Brixton and said abruptly in an unamiable tone, “Well what are you thinking about like that?” Brixton turned his clean shaven face towards the speaker, took his cigar from between his lips and answered slowly. “I , I was thinking of a naive amusing incident of my school days. We had a school fellow called Bennett. His parents were rich and always gave him an excellent lunch to bring to school. He arrived with a small parcel of smoked herrings cheese, fruit, nuts and jam. As we had our lunch at midday during the third recreation, we amused ourselves by opening his desk during the first and second recreations and sneaking his dainties. He noticed nothing and ate what ever we left him. This continued for some months. But one day whether the things were better than usual or whether our appetites were keener I do not know, but we ate up everything and left him nothing for his lunch. At noon, when he opened his desk, he hesitated a minute at the empty drawer then closed it without a word. The next day he brought a key, locked his desk after placing his lunch within. That day his dainty meal looked more tempting than ever, but we no longer had any chance of tasting his fruit and jams.” He said no more.
Maugrais had no idea what to say. However, he was thinking about answering when Brixton threw away his cigar, got into a rickshaw, raised his hat and was carried off in the direction of the Legation Quarter. Once more Maugrais found himself alone. He walked on for some time, picking his way through the mud in the Hutungs. Suddenly at a corner he perceived a caravan of camels approaching. One of the animals had a softly clanging bell round its neck.
Some coolies slept lying face downwards flat on the saddles, their heads hanging over the skinny ribs. The long string passed, majestically swaying, going towards the West to the Gobi Desert. The sound of the bell which rang gravely through the night seemed to call in an inviting and intimate way — a reminder of immense green steppes, of dry deserts, of golden sands and wide horizons bathed in the blue light.
“They are going towards the West, towards Mongolia,” he said to himself. And all at once a slender figure, with long white arms rose to his mind, and anguished words sounded in his ears. “The Call of the West, the call of Europe. It is too late.” He said aloud, “Already too late.” Then a moment after, “But is it really too late?”
CHAPTER IV
“DEAREST one, The memory of the other night still lingers with me. Wait for me at your house. Blanche.” Said the little note on blue paper. Chatours read it over complacently, his eyes slightly vacant.
It was a hot muggy afternoon. Out of doors the heavy, scorching air impeded one’s breathing. In his little Chinese house with its small courtyards full of carefully tended rose trees, Chatours scantily clad in a silken kimono, waited dreamily, stretched full length on a large divan.
He reviewed in his mind that mad evening, that dinner he had been more or less forced to accept, the music, the soft night, the dreams in the smoking den and the final abandon of that desirable woman who perhaps only under the influence of the heavenly drug, had on that very first evening, given him exactly what he desired with the very words he wished for. And he had found himself very far away; very near the West. Seeker of shades and memories, in Blanche he had recognized a much loved phantom who haunted his nights and whom in spite of his exile he could not forget. It flashed through his mind he might be able to love again, he might find himself in that lost frame of mind he had so often sought in vain. And as he waited now for Blanche, the wish to be sure of his feelings made him delightfully anxious. Would he be disappointed? He passed in review his life as he lay on the golden silk of the soft divan. He saw once more his father’s house where he been reared too carefully, too
gently. He pictured the Castle towers, the vine-covered chapel, so purple in autumn, the French garden, the espaliers where, as a child, he had stolen fruit, the familiar fields and the landscape from the terrace, where, on the horizon, one glimpsed the intense blue of the far-off sea. He thought of his dear Brittany, which had filled his soul with overmuch melancholy and his heart with some of life’s weariness.
“My college days,” he murmured, “how far off they seem.” And he thought of his youthful dream of the time when he should understand everything, should taste of everything, when he loved life for what it hid from him, for all the curiosity it aroused in him. His thoughts passed on to the rare sensations he had gone through during his lengthy travels, to the adventures he had had in all parts of the world, the conquests he owed to his youth. He thought, too, of that particular adventure in which he had left behind a little of himself, from which he had been obliged to flee and to come to the blue city, the far-off mysterious Peking, in order to forget.
He was dreaming, a far-away look in his eyes. The cries of the Chinese city reached his ears, the cry of the street hawker, sometimes sad and monotonous, sometimes discordant and harsh; the rickshaw bells, the squeak of the water carts and the sounds of a blind man’s guitar dying away in the cool closed chamber to the murmur of the electric fan.
Then he began to think of Blanche.
“Suppose I really loved her,” he said. “No, that is impossible, she could not be sufficiently mine, she would never abandon herself completely enough. She is so very frivolous. So we must just amuse ourselves.” And he inhaled his cigarette and tried to blow rings. They rose slowly, at first blue but ending in scented grey smoke. “No,” he went on, “she is not young enough for me to fashion to my liking and her character is not supple enough for me to love her as I would like to love.”
At that moment, the door-bell rang, interrupting his reverie. Chatours’ heart beat faster; he rose to receive his expected visitor. High heels sounded on the stones outside, a frock rustled. In a rush of heat, Blanche entered the room. Bewildered, she leant against the wall. “Oh, hold me, dear, please, I am dazzled by the sun light and can see nothing yet. Oh, that fan is deliciously cooling. I feel better already. How charming this room is.”
Then with a slight blush of modesty, “But it was not here I came the other night.”
“No, dear, you are right, this room is cosier, don’t you think so? Do take off your hat and make yourself at home. You will find powder and whatever you need, even a kimono if you are too warm, in the dressing room.”
“All that one can possibly want, you monster, I think I am going to be jealous,” she said, going towards the small dressing room hidden behind a silken curtain. Chatours soon heard the rattle of crystal flasks. A few minutes later she returned, her arms raised as she arranged her hair, displaying her admirable bust and the pure, slender lines of her body. She had clad herself in a lavender blue kimono. Great branches of maple were painted on it, the red leaves seeming to be bleeding to death against the blue of an autumn sky.
“Come and sit down,” said Chatours as he gently pushed her on to the golden cushions of the divan. The room was small, the daylight, dimmed already by the lowered mat blinds outside, filtered through the paper and shewed up the curious patterns of the wood window-sashes against the silk curtains. The whole room was blue, from the carpets to the hangings on the walls. Chinese vases made a vivid spot of colour among the strange furniture.
Old porcelain rice bowls full of flowers lay on stands and the mahogany tables were loaded with pipes, lamps, opium jars in all colours and sizes. A few photographs of friends, comrades and relatives, scattered about acted as a reminder of the West. The fan blew on a large white bowl full of ice, refreshing the air pleasantly.
“When you arrived I was thinking,” said Chatours, “I was wondering if I loved you, if I could love you, or if it was only the madness of a night that gave us the illusion of love.” Her eyes shining, Blanche turned gently to him. She was rather astonished at this style of speech, for she was used to mad words of tenderness and to the stalish compliments of an ordinary adventure. What did this doubt in the midst of their passion signify? How should she take such a beginning?
“Whatever do you mean, dear, illusion of love. Is it illusion when we are just the two of us and have given proof of our sentiments. What sensations are you seeking and what more can you expect?” Chatours smiled. He gave that ugly and contemptuous curl to his lips at which he was such an adept, but replied tenderly.
“My little Blanche, you do not understand ….”
“Do you take me for a goose?”
“No, dear, but listen to me for a moment. What would you think of a man who in matters of love is not only seeking a partner in the game but also and principally a kindred soul. Would you understand a man who seeks, in the woman to whom he is devoting himself, a little of his own mind? You must understand that such a man could only love if the woman is a mirror in which he finds his reflection, if the same feelings thrill her and if she has more or less the same ideas. She must bring her intelligence to help him and avoid any note of discord in the union of two hearts.”
“But such a man would be a coxcomb, a conceited ass, who simply wanted a slave.”
“A conceited ass, no, dear, an egoist, yes, who seeks in love his own satisfaction, who, by giving himself utterly, will not allow himself to be robbed. This man I have imagined is very sure of himself, and his chief satisfaction, don’t you think, would be to mould a being into the image of his own soul.” Chatours felt she still did not understand; a bird of adventure, a simple small-brained soul, she could not be expected to understand.
“But why complicate life,” she said, “when it is so easy to be happy and to profit by each hour without self-analysis. My dear, don’t think so much. This airing of your peculiar theories has given you a care-worn look and I don’t recognize in you the tender lover of the other evening. Let us be happy and banish this foolish mood. Life is pleasant, let us seize our opportunity.” She drew nearer, caressing and affectionate. Chatours pressed her to him, down among the cushions. She put her head against his heart and he kissed her golden hair softly. Blanche vibrated, she pressed closer, murmuring tender words.
“Perhaps you are right, dear,” he said, moved, in spite of the fading of his dream, by the perfume emanating from her, by the feelings this woman raised in him by her touching abandon. He opened her kimono tenderly. Her firm flesh seemed to breathe of passion, the colour of her hair blended with the gold cushions. The multi-coloured porcelains brightened the shadows, a Buddha sneered from his corner, the tuberoses gave forth their oppressive scent, a cicada’s note sounded. In the atmosphere of that small room Blanche and Chatours, their lips joined, felt themselves yielding gently to the ardour of their senses.
At the red door of Chatours’ house, in the heat, Maugrais waited for the boy to open to him. A fat porter came out at length, he bowed in the old fashioned way and bade the visitor enter. As they crossed the shady little flowery courtyard, the porter questioned the guest about his health and about his last meal. When they reached the pavilion, he took his leave with dignity, satisfied with the answers he had received. Maugrais entered the room and perceived, not without some astonishment, that the master of the house was not alone; beside him, on the sofa, clad in a blue kimono, Blanche de Beaurelois, her bare arms raised like the two handles of a jar, was putting some rebellious hairpins back into her blonde hair. His face betrayed no surprise; with an exquisite courtesy he simply shook hands with his slightly embarrassed friend and kissed Blanche’s two plump arms which took a rosy hue in their confusion.
“I came to see that Sung painting you boasted of yesterday at the Wolf’s,” he explained at once. “What a good idea to put on kimonos. This hot afternoon is really terrible. If I hadn’t a date in an hour, I would have done the same. You see, Madame,” he continued turning to Blanche, “I am becoming a serious person, almost a business man.”
The Baroness, having recovered from her momentary confusion, laughed. From Maugrais’ words and attitude she recognized in him the friend who would never betray, the ally who understood and therefore sympathised, the man who pardoned because he too had suffered. “Oh yes,” she retorted, her eyes brightening. “I know you have entirely changed these last few weeks. You work in the mornings, you ride in the afternoon at 5, you are even seen at dinner parties and the other evening you actually went to the cinema. It is strange, one is apt to jump to the conclusion that you are trying to lose yourself in a fever of activity and in the whirl of social life.”
Maugrais smiled, he did not answer but began to look for the painting he had come to see.
“Here it is,” said Chatours triumphantly, shewing a long roll of silk hanging from the wall behind a blackwood table full of bronze and plaster figures. The colouring was soft and slightly faded, the drawing a little hazy, but the subject did not lack elegance nor the unexpected.
Maugrais looked at it for some time. “Yes, may be it is a Sung, but I am inclined to believe it to be a Yuan. Anyhow it is a beautiful purchase.”
“I don’t like Chinese paintings,” declared Blanche standing up behind Maugrais. I always like to know what a picture represents and I never can understand the Chinese subjects.”
“I think I might be able to explain the meaning of this one,” said Maugrais. “It is a fairly well-known legend. Here you have the inside of a Taoist temple. Buddhism was not popular in those days. Two friends are visiting an old priest and are conversing with him in the shade of the sanctuary. One approaches a wall and looks attentively at an old picture hanging on it. It represents the square before a temple. There are young people on the steps of the building. He looks at a young girl in a long golden tunic and falls in love with the chaste expression of her features. Standing in front of the picture, he looks at her and suddenly a violent sensation assails him. He is dazed, but when he recovers he sees the maiden approaching. She takes his hand, leads him into the temple to an isolated part where along walls covered with paintings and old parchments, plaster statues of the great apostles of the Tao philosophy are set out. There are also the mysterious Kuo instruments for the aid of divination … ‘Live here with me,’ says the priestess, and her voice was like celestial music. ‘Practise silence and inactivity, two virtues symbolised eternally by Heaven and Earth. Take your fill of Sheng, that reviving fluid which impregnates the world and become Sheng yourself’.”
Silhouettes of Peking Page 6