There was a slightly guarded look on her always-guarded face.
“No. I don’t think I did.”
Nicholas shut up his case. “Hum, considering you’re so vague about it, you remembered that fairly well.” He looked up at the clock. “Hum, Blake ought to be here.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “Oh, here. Even if I can’t come...”
“Oh no!”
“Damn it, we’ve got to keep the orphanage going.” He saw the constriction in her. Then she walked over to the window. He picked up his case, paused, and then went over and stood by her. He spoke quietly: “It was a pure fluke. Last Monday week I left eighteen pounds, and I happened to notice the Personal Column of The Times. I knew that the Aldwycham was always twenty pounds on Thursdays, and I began to wonder. Last Monday I left twenty-two pounds in your flat. That was the sum acknowledged in last Thursday’s Times. Then I was certain.” He paused. “Don’t you even open the envelopes?”
“No.”
“Sidonie.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“What I do with the money is my own business.”
“I understand. You are not going to talk. As usual.” He paused. “I don’t suppose you believe me, but always in the back of my mind I felt there was something very odd about that money on Mondays.”
She turned, and he thought she looked very fatigued, inside, somewhere in her soul, it she had a soul.
“Well, I think we have done for the day,” she said. “Yes. Good evening, Miss Coleman.”
“Good evening.”
SIXTEEN
Nicholas had dined well at his club and relished the very slight current of wind in the hot air that seemed to presage a cooler night as he walked along. He hoped that he would not get there too late, but had determined to put himself in a confident mood with good food and wine before he paid his visit. He felt somehow on holiday as he took a different way this Monday evening. And perhaps Sidonie would let him come tomorrow night—if he could think up a good reason for not going home. He felt somehow that now he could go to see her and leave his money on the table and know that even that strange hostile love she gave him was not tarnished by payment. This afternoon his heart had twinged when he saw her distressed and fatigued, as if she had been trapped into an admission that somewhere in her was a humanity and kindness, and could never forgive him for discovering it. Probably, thought Nicholas, she’ll be more arctic than ever now, with that queer twist in her, and...
Ah, this must be the place! Nicholas smiled as he strolled down the quiet mews with their green gables and the noise of horses eating in the stables. It was inevitable that Elder should live in a hermit’s corner of London. Nicholas thought in a sardonic way that this was quite an honoring of an employee by the great banker, Nicholas Bude, and he thought in a more sardonic way that Elder would feel about as grateful as a stone statue would for roses left at the base. How he had fooled him with his charitable thoughts about Professor Crampton. Probably Crampton and he had split the money. History of Ming dynasty, my eye! Nicholas paused in his stride that seemed to wake the cobbles very loud in the dropping light. Well, certainly Elder knew Chinese, so he had better not jump to conclusions like a kangaroo. He would feel his way.
Over the small green doorway there was a box of red geraniums, and Nicholas wondered if Elder owned the whole house. But a name plate of solid brass in the wall indicated two other tenants, both with foreign names, and Nicholas had for an instant that habitual English feeling of distrust which comes at contact with a foreigner even on a doorplate. There was a notice on the door that bade him not to ring but to walk in. Hum, informal, or sinister? Nicholas went into the hallway and was surprised by the age of the place inside that fresh young doorway. Somehow one felt in the dwelling of learned men or those engaged in mysterious studies. The largest gong Nicholas had ever seen in his life almost covered one wall, and Nicholas knew that it had been left there because no one could get it inside the small door or up the narrow cornered stairway. The gong looked so loud that he felt just to knock on it would send every fire brigade in London out clanging. He felt that nobody in this brooding house would ever dare to touch that gong.
Nicholas found himself walking softly as he went to examine the name on the doorway in the hall, and then he realized there was no need to walk softly, as the house was carpeted so heavily that even the large gong would ring almost soundless on this pile if it fell down. The name on the door was Indian, Nicholas thought, and then he remembered that Elder’s name had been the highest on the doorplate and that probably he lived on the top floor. Nicholas ascended the stairway in a silence that almost unnerved him. In a small niche on the first corner of the stairway there was a flower that somehow was like a blossom of live coral growing or embalmed in oil within a glass vase that was illuminated by an interior bulb. It was delicate and lovely and the glow somehow turned the place into a chapel.
The name on the door on the second landing was in an Eastern script that was only a pattern in Nicholas’s eye, and curious Oriental furnishings in the hallways gave Nicholas a feeling that eyes somewhere in this twilight watched him climbing to the next corner of the stairway where there was another lighted niche. Nicholas stopped before the tiny Moorish-looking lantern from which an opal and greenish light dissolved on the open page of a massive book inscribed in strange and beautiful hieroglyphics. So exquisite was this cameo of light and color that for an instant Nicholas lost his fear in the wizardry before his eye. He felt that he would see for a long time that shy and ancient light diamonded on the ivory page, and that somehow the message of that Asiatic script was as legible as if he could read it like plain English. There was something here that came like an aroma into the mind. Nicholas felt the house inhabited, like the air, in a mystery garden. And the silence was like the hush after music.
The top landing or hallway was somehow cold and austere, and Nicholas had a sense of being at a great distance from the light that glowed in the alcove at the end below the parting of two blue curtains. He had a feeling of an Indian sky over the moonlighted Taj Mahal. There was nothing but an ivory globe of light and the blue curtains, and yet he felt his vision of the Taj Mahal had been the picture his eye was meant to see or imagine. He had a sense that later on he would require many hours of meditation to remember and understand this vision.
On the right the door bore a white card with the name: JOHN GREGORIOUS ELDER.
Gregorious! What a queer Latin-chanted name! So that was what the G. stood for that he had noticed today when looking up Elder’s address. He looked at the card that was yellowing somewhat with age and sought for the bell. At first he could not discover it, and then he saw what seemed to be a tiny cupboard in the wall, drew aside its door, and found the bell that was a carved animal head. He tried to push it and found that it pulled. When he pulled it out there was no answering sound within, and he waited a moment and wondered if Elder had gone to bed. After half a minute or so he pulled it again, three times, and heard no ringing inside the door. He was just beginning to notice the unusual way the door occupied the frame, and the absence of a doorknob, when to his astonishment the door moved sideways in silence and revealed a small cubicle or hallway across which hung a heavy crimson curtain. Nicholas felt his heart stop. He did not like this sliding door that opened by itself and this small empty cubicle that was ready to swallow him when he stepped in. God knows what was at the other side of the curtain. For an instant he thought of returning down the stairway, but,he knew that he could not do that now that the door had opened. He stepped in with caution to the cubicle that was illumined by a light fashioned in a serpent’s head that stuck out two glowing fangs from the ceiling. He paused for a moment, and then the door closed behind him and he nearly jumped as something brushed him, and turned to find himself being almost touched by a dragon’s head that was attached to the door. He backed hastily from the red fiery eyes that glowed at him and knew that now he was wholly scared.
Anything was better than being imprisoned with this diabolical head, and he carefully opened the curtain and stepped into another cubicle. In this he found himself alone with an Asiatic god carved in alabaster that glowed in a green and golden light above the wick that floated in a bowl below it.
“One more cubicle,” Nicholas thought, “and I’ll yell out loud!” The antique and gnarled smile of the god mocked his fright, and he drew the next yellow curtain and stepped into a Chinese room. By this time nothing could astound him, but it was a moment before he realized that the mandarin or high priest who occupied the thronal chair at the end of the room was Elder. Confused as he was, Nicholas realized the loveliness of the room, and beyond in the alcove the glow of the evening light somehow reassured him of the world as it melted through the windows in a natural harmony with the glow from the lamps and lanterns that made a balcony of shadow over the lighted floor of the room.
Mr. Elder kept his hands within his great silken sleeves as he arose with a slight bow. “Good evening, Mr. Bude. I did not expect this pleasure.”
Nicholas realized that he must keep his head. “Good evening, Mr. Elder. I just thought I’d come along. How are you?”
“Very much better, Mr. Bude. Won’t you sit down?” Nicholas looked about for a familiar chair and then placed himself on a low carven stool. He had a feeling that sitting thus with his knees hunched up he was at one more disadvantage with this Oriental seigneur who sat with dignity on his elaborate chair under a canopy of fine tapestry on a kind of dais. He had a curious feeling that all the blood in Mr. Elder’s dried body had gone to make the splendid dyes in the robe he wore.
Nicholas looked about the room. “This is a bit surprising, you know, this place, Mr. Elder.”
“Yes, it is strange how the very old can seem most new to the eye.”
“Hum, yes, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
He wondered what was written in invisible ink on the old parchment of Elder’s face. It might well be that question he received by post each Monday morning.
“Can I offer you some tea, Mr. Bude?” Elder indicated a great copper urn on the dais. “It has been waiting for you.”
At least Elder had a beautiful courtesy.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Elder.”
He watched the ceremonious way in which Elder dipped in some inner well of the urn with a giant amber spoon from which he filled cups that looked so fine that one might think they had been made of beaten air. Elder with tongs pinched out some leaves from a jar and scattered them on the tea which immediately gave out a delicate aroma. Nicholas got up to fetch his tea, feeling a courtesy imposed on him by this room. On his way over, his eye paused astounded on what had been concealed by the dais from his view. On a long couch on the floor beneath a veil of blue silk a naked girl lay asleep. Only her feet showed outside the veil, underneath which a golden shadow was her waist-long hair. Mr. Elder did not appear to notice the astonishment which had registered on his guest’s face and handed him the cup of tea. Nicholas nearly dropped the beautiful cup as his eye ranged the outline of the figure on the couch. He stood for a moment and then sipped his tea. He realized how delicate the flavor was, and how the hint of citron was like a faint shadow, as it were, on the palate, and he smiled in a polite way at Mr. Elder.
“I don’t know Chinese, but I know good tea.”
Mr. Elder smiled. Nicholas had a feeling that his smile was somehow detached from his face, like a tranquil and luminous cloud from the land, and it had a singular calm in it. It turned Mr. Elder’s bony face into a boy’s, Nicholas thought, and had an uneasy feeling in his conscience. It was hard to believe that evil lurked in the spirit of this place. But it was also very hard to explain this girl or woman or whatever it was on the couch.
“I think we will shut out the evening,” said Mr. Elder, and moved slowly to draw the curtain across the alcove. Nicholas watched the last rays of the sun and felt that it was very curious that Mr. Elder should have turned to close the curtain at the exact moment at which the sun touched the solid horizon. Nicholas took a step or two nearer to the couch and suddenly began to wonder if this was an embalmed woman. There was no sign of life or breathing or motion, and although her head was apparently leaning deeply into the cushion, Nicholas thought that some tremor ought to show in the veil if she were breathing. As if he had just discovered his guest’s awareness of her, Mr. Elder dropped his eye on the girl.
“Ah, you are afraid that we will waken her?” He paused. “There is no fear. In the land where she is now, our voices cannot go.”
“Is she asleep?”
Mr. Elder indicated the burner and the opium pipe.
“Not so much asleep as gone on a voyage.”
“My God, opium!”
“Why say ‘My God’ like that? A bottle of wine and a cigar do not shock you. Gas at the dentist’s, chloroform in the hospital, do they shock you?”
“No, but...” Nicholas paused. “Once you go in for that, you’re done for, aren’t you?”
“So are you if you go in for drink, and it becomes the whole end and meaning of your life. She is not an addict. Sometimes she finds it good as I do, to release the soul from the hibernation in the clay, and let it go from the body like the butterfly from the caterpillar. She is naked simply because it gives more liberty to the air about her body. There is something about clothes that clogs one’s parting. I think that is because the soul cannot altogether go and hangs by a last silken thread to the clay. She may be somewhere by the Ganges now, but that thread goes with her, like his life line with the spider when he voyages in air. I put the silk on her simply because you came in. But her body is no more now than a Pharaoh’s mummy.” Nicholas was thoughtful, impressed by Elder’s calm voice. “You mean, the mind goes away somewhere, on a kind of holiday, and gets a rest from the things that worry it all day?”
“That’s not a bad way of putting it,” said Mr. Elder. He paused. “As you will have noticed, if the mind is really worried, sleep does not seem to give it any rest.” Nicholas nodded. Elder bent and touched the girl’s instep. “Touch her, and you will find that your hand is not conscious of the flesh.”
Nicholas bent down and touched the girl; and then his eye was startled on her right foot.
“Oh, what a pity!”
Mr. Elder nodded. “Yes, she is a beautiful girl.” Elder paused. “I call it the hoof of Pan.” He paused again. “I have no doubt that a clever psychologist, looking for the secret of the kink in her, might explore her mind forever and yet discover nothing if she kept that foot concealed from him.”
Nicholas was looking in a fascinated way at the curious stump, like a tiny hoof, where the small toe ought to have been. There was a genuine pang in his mind. “I am awfully sorry for her.”
“Yes. I know she sees it out of the corner of her mind’s eye all day long. Perhaps that is why she gets so much peace and relief from the pipe. That sense of being away on wings makes her subconscious mind forget that contact of the hoof and earth. Would you grant her such an occasional peace if you were me?”
“I would. It can’t do much harm.”
Mr. Elder courteously dismissed the girl. “Another cup of tea, Mr. Bude?”
“Yes, thank you.” He watched the enormous green jade stone on Mr. Elder’s ring as his long white hands made a ceremony of movement.
“With that, I recommend this Russian cigarette.”
Nicholas took the slender cigarette, and Mr. Elder lighted it with a long green taper from a golden wick in a bowl.
“Have you lived here long, Mr. Elder?”
“For some twenty years.”
“It is a curious house to find in London.”
“On the ground floor lives an Indian mystic poet whose name I think you will recognize if you read it as you go down. On the floor below lives the most beautiful woman who ever came from the land of Arabia. So, you see, you are in Asia here—if you can believe in this old banking fellow who plays at being a Chinaman!”
Nicholas returned his smile. He realized that he should have recognized the name of the Indian poet. “I suppose it—helps you to get into the East, as you might say, by wearing that robe and having all these Chinese things in the room?”
“Yes, I think just as the perfume hangs around the rose, around each of these pieces hangs still a little of the air Confucius breathed. Perhaps some lotus flowers haunt still this tiny vase. You see how it is like a round blue sky over the lake of water in the bottom. Take it, it is light as the very air. One feels it might be a bubble of air that floated from the artist’s mouth. And this illuminated book, when I open it here, the page is like a beautiful window through which one looks into the poet’s mind.” Mr. Elder paused. “Alas, as you say, I have to have the furniture of my dreams around me, I am not like Coleridge, who can wake up one morning in Xanadu, and a stately pleasure-dome decree. Mr. Elder touched the opium pipe. “This must be my honeydew, and this,” he raised his cup, “my milk of paradise. I am only a Marco Polo, who must ride a pack horse into Asia, where Coleridge rode on his pen. I must have my trappings. I am an old man with longings in me, that is all. Ah, but I talk too much!”
“You talk very well, Mr. Elder. I feel outside on what you once called the margin of the page.” Nicholas looked at the illuminated page of the book. “On the margin of what you called the empty page. Is this page empty?”
“In a way, Mr. Bude, yes. If you look at the sky, when it is a tapestry of cloud and light, it seems full. When the sun is gone down, it is empty. It was all something conjured out of the air. But nevertheless it was there for the moment, like this solid page. That is as much immortality as we can hope for. But I talk on. My mouth is as full of philosophies as a child’s is full of sweetmeats. I crack my teeth on them.” He paused. “You have come to talk about something, Mr. Bude?”
Nicholas had an unpleasant notion that a lying story could hardly pass for truth in this room. But he felt a compulsion in him to go on with his mission. “Well, yes, I did. You see, I wasn’t sure how long you might be away, and I have something in hand. I know a young author, a fellow called Rogerson, a poet, and I thought I might let him earn some bread-and-butter money, and let him knock up a short history of the bank, that would be a kind of record for us, and that we might publish more or less to mark the India loan.”
The Chinese Room Page 9
