Lost Horizon (12 page)

But even such vaguely future fears could only enhance the total loveliness of the present. Once again Conway was captivated, and by the same qualities of charm and ingenuity that had made his years in China happier than others. The vast encircling
massif
made perfect contrast with the tiny lawns and weedless gardens, the painted tea-houses by the stream, and the frivolously toy-like houses. The inhabitants seemed to him a very successful blend of Chinese and Tibetan; they were cleaner and handsomer than the average of either race, and seemed to have suffered little from the inevitable inbreeding of such a small society. They smiled and laughed as they passed the chaired strangers, and had a friendly word for Chang; they were good-humored and mildly inquisitive, courteous and carefree, busy at innumerable jobs but not in any apparent hurry over them. Altogether Conway thought it one of the pleasantest communities he had ever seen, and even Miss Brinklow, who had been watching for symptoms of pagan degradation, had to admit that everything looked very well “on the surface.” She was relieved to find the natives “completely” clothed, even though the women did wear ankle-tight Chinese trousers; and her most imaginative scrutiny of a Buddhist temple revealed only a few items that could be regarded as somewhat doubtfully phallic. Chang explained that the temple had its own lamas, who were under loose control from Shangri-La, though not of the same order. There were also, it appeared, a Taoist and a Confucian temple further along the valley. “The jewel has facets,” said the Chinese, “and it is possible that many religions are moderately true.”

“I agree with that,” said Barnard heartily. “I never did believe in sectarian jealousies. Chang, you’re a philosopher, I must remember that remark of yours. ‘Many religions are moderately true.’ You fellows up on the mountain must be a lot of wise guys to have thought that out. You’re right, too, I’m dead certain of it.”

“But we,” responded Chang dreamily, “are only
moderately
certain.”

Miss Brinklow could not be bothered with all that, which seemed to her a sign of mere laziness. In any case she was preoccupied with an idea of her own. “When I get back,” she said with tightening lips, “I shall ask my society to send a missionary here. And if they grumble at the expense, I shall just bully them until they agree.”

That, clearly, was a much healthier spirit, and even Mallinson, little as he sympathized with foreign missions, could not forbear his admiration. “They ought to send
you
,” he said. “That is, of course, if you’d like a place like this.”

“It’s hardly a question of
liking
it,” Miss Brinklow retorted. “One wouldn’t like it, naturally—how could one? It’s a matter of what one feels one ought to do.”

“I think,” said Conway, “if I were a missionary I’d choose this rather than quite a lot of other places.”

“In that case,” snapped Miss Brinklow, “there would be no merit in it, obviously.”

“But I wasn’t thinking of merit.”

“More’s the pity, then. There’s no good in doing a thing because you like doing it. Look at these people here!”

“They all seem very happy.”

“
Exactly
,” she answered with a touch of fierceness. She added: “Anyhow, I don’t see why I shouldn’t make a beginning by studying the language. Can you lend me a book about it, Mr. Chang?”

Chang was at his most mellifluous. “Most certainly, madam, with the greatest of pleasure. And, if I may say so, I think the idea an excellent one.”

When they ascended to Shangri-La that evening he treated the matter as one of immediate importance. Miss Brinklow was at first a little daunted by the massive volume compiled by an industrious nineteenth century German (she had more probably imagined some slighter work of a “Brush up your Tibetan” type), but with help from the Chinese and encouragement from Conway she made a good beginning and was soon observed to be extracting grim satisfaction from her task.

Conway, too, found much to interest him, apart from the engrossing problem he had set himself. During the warm, sunlit days he made full use of the library and music room, and was confirmed in his impression that the lamas were of quite exceptional culture. Their taste in books was catholic, at any rate; Plato in Greek touched Omar in English; Nietzsche partnered Newton; Thomas More was there, and also Hannah More, Thomas Moore, George Moore, and even Old Moore. Altogether Conway estimated the number of volumes at between twenty and thirty thousand; and it was tempting to speculate upon the method of selection and acquisition. He sought also to discover how recently there had been additions, but he did not come across anything later than a cheap reprint of
Im Westen Nichts Neues.
During a subsequent visit, however, Chang told him that there were other books published up to about the middle of 1930 which would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; they had already arrived at the lamasery. “We keep ourselves fairly up-to-date, you see,” he commented.

“There are people who would hardly agree with you,” replied Conway with a smile. “Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year, you know.”

“Nothing of importance, my dear sir, that could not have been foreseen in 1920, or that will not be better understood in 1940.”

“You’re not interested, then, in the latest developments of the world crisis?”

“I shall be very deeply interested—in due course.”

“You know, Chang, I believe I’m beginning to understand you. You’re geared differently, that’s what it is. Time means less to you than it does to most people. If I were in London I wouldn’t always be eager to see the latest hour-old newspaper, and you at Shangri-La are no more eager to see a year-old one. Both attitudes seem to me quite sensible. By the way, how long is it since you last had visitors here?”

“That, Mr. Conway, I am unfortunately unable to say.”

It was the usual ending to a conversation, and one that Conway found less irritating than the opposite phenomenon from which he had suffered much in his time—the conversation which, try as he would, seemed never to end. He began to like Chang rather more as their meetings multiplied, though it still puzzled him that he met so few of the lamasery personnel; even assuming that the lamas themselves were unapproachable, were there not other postulants besides Chang?

There was, of course, the little Manchu. He saw her sometimes when he visited the music room; but she knew no English, and he was still unwilling to disclose his own Chinese. He could not quite determine whether she played merely for pleasure, or was in some way a student. Her playing, as indeed her whole behavior, was exquisitely formal, and her choice lay always among the more patterned compositions—those of Bach, Corelli, Scarlatti, and occasionally Mozart. She preferred the harpsichord to the piano, but when Conway went to the latter she would listen with grave and almost dutiful appreciation. It was impossible to know what was in her mind; it was difficult even to guess her age. He would have doubted her being over thirty or under thirteen; and yet, in a curious way, such manifest unlikelihoods could neither of them be ruled out as wholly impossible.

Mallinson, who sometimes came to listen to the music for want of anything better to do, found her a very baffling proposition. “I can’t think what she’s doing here,” he said to Conway more than once. “This lama business may be all right for an old fellow like Chang, but what’s the attraction in it for a girl? How long has she been here, I wonder?”

“I wonder too, but it’s one of those things we’re not likely to be told.”

“Do you suppose she
likes
being here?”

“I’m bound to say she doesn’t appear to
dis
like it.”

“She doesn’t appear to have feelings at all, for that matter. She’s like a little ivory doll more than a human being.”

“A charming thing to be like, anyhow.”

“As far as it goes.”

Conway smiled. “And it goes pretty far, Mallinson, when you come to think about it. After all, the ivory doll has manners, good taste in dress, attractive looks, a pretty touch on the harpsichord, and she doesn’t move about a room as if she were playing hockey. Western Europe, so far as I recollect it, contains an exceptionally large number of females who lack those virtues.”

“You’re an awful cynic about women, Conway.”

Conway was used to the charge. He had not actually had a great deal to do with the other sex, and during occasional leaves in Indian hill-stations the reputation of cynic had been as easy to sustain as any other. In truth he had had several delightful friendships with women who would have been pleased to marry him if he had asked them—but he had not asked them. He had once got nearly as far as an announcement in the
Morning Post
, but the girl did not want to live in Pekin and he did not want to live at Tunbridge Wells, mutual reluctances which proved impossible to dislodge. So far as he had had experience of women at all, it had been tentative, intermittent, and somewhat inconclusive. But he was not, after all that, a cynic about them.

He said with a laugh: “I’m thirty-seven—you’re twenty-four. That’s all it amounts to.”

After a pause Mallinson asked suddenly: “Oh, by the way, how old should you say Chang is?”

“Anything,” replied Conway lightly, “between forty-nine and a hundred and forty-nine.”

Such information, however, was less trustworthy than much else that was available to the new arrivals. The fact that their curiosities were sometimes unsatisfied tended to obscure the really vast quantity of data which Chang was always willing to outpour. There were no secrecies, for instance, about the customs and habits of the valley population, and Conway, who was interested, had talks which might have been worked up into a quite serviceable degree thesis. He was particularly interested, as a student of affairs, in the way the valley population was governed; it appeared, on examination, to be a rather loose and elastic autocracy operated from the lamasery with a benevolence that was almost casual. It was certainly an established success, as every descent into that fertile paradise made more evident. Conway was puzzled as to the ultimate basis of law and order; there appeared to be neither soldiers nor police, yet surely some provision must be made for the incorrigible? Chang replied that crime was very rare, partly because only serious things were considered crimes, and partly because every one enjoyed a sufficiency of everything he could reasonably desire. In the last resort the personal servants of the lamasery had power to expel an offender from the valley—though this, which was considered an extreme and dreadful punishment, had only very occasionally to be imposed. But the chief factor in the government of Blue Moon, Chang went on to say, was the inculcation of good manners, which made men feel that certain things were “not done,” and that they lost caste by doing them. “You English inculcate the same feeling,” said Chang, “in your public schools, but not, I fear, in regard to the same things. The inhabitants of our valley, for instance, feel that it is ‘not done’ to be inhospitable to strangers, to dispute acrimoniously, or to strive for priority amongst one another. The idea of enjoying what your English headmasters call the mimic warfare of the playing-field would seem to them entirely barbarous—indeed, a sheerly wanton stimulation of all the lower instincts.”

Conway asked if there were never disputes about women.

“Only very rarely, because it would not be considered good manners to take a woman that another man wanted.”

“Supposing somebody wanted her so badly that he didn’t care a damn whether it was good manners or not?”

“Then, my dear sir, it would be good manners on the part of the other man to let him have her, and also on the part of the woman to be equally agreeable. You would be surprised, Conway, how the application of a little courtesy all round helps to smooth out these problems.”

Certainly during visits to the valley Conway found a spirit of good will and contentment that pleased him all the more because he knew that of all the arts that of government has been brought least to perfection. When he made some complimentary remark, however, Chang responded: “Ah, but you see, we believe that to govern perfectly it is necessary to avoid governing too much.”

“Yet you don’t have any democratic machinery—voting, and so on?”

“Oh, no. Our people would be quite shocked by having to declare that one policy was completely right and another completely wrong.”

Conway smiled. He found the attitude a curiously sympathetic one.

Meanwhile, Miss Brinklow derived her own land of satisfaction from a study of Tibetan; meanwhile, also, Mallinson fretted and groused, and Barnard persisted in an equanimity which seemed almost equally remarkable, whether it were real or simulated.

“To tell you the truth,” said Mallinson, “the fellow’s cheerfulness is just about getting on my nerves. I can understand him trying to keep a stiff lip, but that continual joking of his begins to upset me. He’ll be the life and soul of the party if we don’t watch him.”

Conway too had once or twice wondered at the ease with which the American had managed to settle down. He replied: “Isn’t it rather lucky for us he
does
take things so well?”

“Personally, I think it’s damned peculiar. What do you
know
about him, Conway? I mean who he is, and so on.”

“Not much more than you do. I understood he came from Persia and was supposed to have been oil prospecting. It’s his way to take things easily—when the air evacuation was arranged I had quite a job to persuade him to join us at all. He only agreed when I told him that an American passport wouldn’t stop a bullet.”

“By the way, did you ever see his passport?”

“Probably I did, but I don’t remember. Why?”

Mallinson laughed. “I’m afraid you’ll think I haven’t exactly been minding my own business. Why should I, anyhow? Two months in this place ought to reveal all our secrets, if we have any. Mind you, it was a sheer accident, in the way it happened, and I haven’t let slip a word to any one else, of course. I didn’t think I’d tell even you, but now we’ve got on to the subject I may as well.”