Читать книгу The Garden of Vision - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 7

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“You don’t like her?” Eleanor said, smiling also. “And yet—”

“Yes—and yet?”

“Well, you certainly couldn’t keep the peace tonight. It wasn’t your fault. And yet—I know no one in the world more courageous and, in a way, chivalrous. And her love of beauty—outside moral values, I grant—sweeps her off her feet. She has thought very little, but she has read immensely. There are very few things that don’t interest her. Hers is a most responsive intellect. But she has a difficult life. Rich, alone in the world, no one to be responsible to, spoilt to death by the wild set she lives in, racing madly to be ahead of the latest fashion—and yet, with it all, the most lovable being the minute you understand her.”

He rejoined politely:

“But extremely difficult to understand, surely?”

She laughed with a note of desperation:

“Oh, impossible to explain anyone to anyone else! But she’s worth knowing. Tremendous energy. A splendid swimmer, walker, rider—an expert at jujutsu—”

He made a little sound of astonishment.

“I thought she hated everything Japanese.”

“Not she! Your national code of honor and patriotism is the very thing to capture her. And her touch of oriental blood—”

“Oriental?”—The shell of politeness cracked in a moment. He was alive and interested.

“You haven’t heard that? Her great-great-grandmother was an Indian princess who eloped with Sir Godfrey Brandon. He was in the employment of the East India Company. He brought her to England after they married, and she made him an excellent wife. A long way back, but to me Yasoma’s beauty is always a blossom of the true East. Her courage and daring are partly English, I suppose. It certainly makes her a thing apart from the average English girl, and more than once I’ve seen the two strains clash. Everyone calls her Soma, but her real name is Yasoma. It has been handed down from the princess.”

He was silent, digesting this very unexpected revelation. She saw it and lapsed into silence, wondering how it would affect their stormy intercourse.

Asiatics hang together and very naturally. Did not a thrill run through India when Japan faced the Russian Bear and humbled his pride? But it was so little—that one drop in the current of noble blood that had run in Brandon veins since the days of the Queen of France, sister of Henry VIII, who had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk! Could it affect anything but the fair outside? Could it engrave the resistant English character with the something which made Yasoma aloof and bewildering at moments, not only to the gay crowd she lived in but also to Eleanor? A million people would answer, “Never!” but Eleanor was not sure. There were moments when alien eyes looked at her from underneath Yasoma’s black brows—a something which flatly denied the code imposed by long English training. Yet might not her recklessness be the backwash reaction of the war—the dry rot that has set in and set free the instinct to snatch at coarse pleasures and easy satisfactions?

To Ito this could not occur. In his intercourse with her he had simply seen the West snarling at the East across “salt, estranging seas” of misunderstanding. He took her for the type of abrupt-mannered English girl willing to take the obvious sexual advantages and sneer at the far more potent and subtle ones which lie deep below the surface, and in addition he saw the Western crudity which almost invariably asks the wrong questions and has the wrong suspicions.

His silence lasted so long that Eleanor looked at him with interest and expectancy. She understood that the revelation might work as a strange leaven. It would be strange to discover the girl as not wholly one of the highly superior white people who considered they had taught Asia all she knew and were competent to mold the whole world into “civilization!” That consideration would work for peace. On the other hand, the dash of Asiatic blood was that of a conquered people! Japan the unconquered—she who drove back the mighty Kubla Khan with the power of China behind him, she who has been the first to look the white man in the eyes and say, “Thus far and no farther,” has many thoughts lying behind the smiling silence with which she surveys the nations of Asia and their overlords. Eleanor felt it would be curious to see how the quarrel would adjust itself on these new terms of knowledge.

“That’s rather interesting,” he said at last. “Then I suppose she feels it a disgrace and so overdoes her contempt of everything Asiatic. It accounts for a good deal. I wonder contempt for the Asiatic did not prevent a marriage between her ancestors. I believe that was the general attitude then—if indeed it has ceased.”

Eleanor looked at him in astonishment.

“Disgrace? She thinks—and so does everyone else—that it adds the last touch of romance to her background. One can take what happened a hundred years ago with that kind of gaiety. And as to Asia, she loves Asiatic art, and romance, and history. No!—to be painfully honest, I think she dislikes you—a whim, like so much else! She has never had to check a whim. No one in the world is freer. She’s the last of her family. A few distant cousins—nothing more. No ties, no land to look after, no responsibilities. She can please herself absolutely and not a soul to hinder her.”

She was conscious that this had not been good fortune so far for Yasoma. It had made her a rallying point for the revolt of youth, a kind of standard-bearer of rebellion. Where others went far she would go a little farther to show that all things are possible to people to whom life has been made easy. Eleanor, who had received a great deal of her careless confidence, could by no means place the line which bounded her in any direction. But if such a line existed she was very sure that whenever it pleased Yasoma to ignore boundaries it would vanish and a good deal else with it. And what that reaction would effect she could not tell.

These, however, were points not to be discussed with any man—especially an Asiatic. The attitude of Asiatic manhood to the sex question is uncertain in this transitional time, and the social history of Japan contains revulsions of feeling stretching from the time of great empresses and literary ladies who pleased themselves with regard to the other sex, and viewed their love-affairs with irony scarcely hidden beneath lovely lashes, to the epoch when Japan and Europe discovered one another and introduced respectively: a national womanhood taking a stand on its rights 21 and claiming more daily from confounded and bewildered manhood; and a national womanhood, submissive, tender, fluttering to please its masters, stooping perpetually but with no intention of conquering. Of course that attitude is being tinctured with the Western spirit, but the instinct of mastership is still strong in the Island Empire of the East, and as yet Japan and the West find it difficult to be candid with each other on the fundamental. But it was interesting to watch Ito’s reaction, tempered impartially by Oxford and hereditary feeling, to what she had said. She knew well he could imagine none but the charming hetæræ of Japan in such an untrammeled freedom, and though the word “respectable” had no existence in his vocabulary he must think the defiance dangerous.

“And Miss Brandon lives alone!” he said at last, not as a question—for all the world knew that—but as one musing on the oddness of the situation.

“Certainly, except for a most devoted Irishwoman who was her nurse as a baby. Rather a remarkable woman in her way and strongly religious. But of course she has no control whatever over her mistress.”

Eleanor believed this statement, but Ito was quicker to feel that control may exist in terms of influence rather than command with a character like Yasoma Brandon’s. At all events he smiled.

“We have these faithful servants in Japan. Naturally, most humble, most dutiful, yet I have known them count for more than a little. It is perhaps best that Miss Brandon has some sensible person in her house.”

There was the faintest touch of sarcasm in the tone which Eleanor could not wholly accept.

“Sensible people are always an advantage, but she has the kind of strength which will certainly work out her problem to an answer.”

“Happily?”

“What sensible person asks for the happy working-out of a problem? What one wants from it is the stark truth of the answer. You ask that question, and you a Buddhist, bound to look upon all these things from the angle of the most scientific faith in all the world! How can she expect to achieve happiness of the sort you mean? Who does?”

He hurried to explain.

“You and I are both Buddhists and it is the glory of Buddhism that we have no dogmas and need not agree. What I really mean is—will she achieve the best that lies in her and make it helpful to the general good? And, now that I have said it, it would sound absurd to anyone in London but you.”

“I seldom rise on a wind of prophecy, but if you ask me I should say yes. I believe in twenty years’ time, perhaps less, there will be developments in her of strength and courage and honesty very surprising to those who know her now. She needs travel and wide intercourse with people of different race and mentality, and then—”

But she pulled herself up. There was no friendliness between the two, and explanation leads to copious misunderstandings. These things must be felt, not worded. He noticed her halt and respected it.

“What did she represent tonight?” he asked with indifference. “It was a very splendid dress.”

“A Russian lady of the time of Ivan the Terrible. Her partner—she always dances with the same man—is to wear an equally gorgeous one of slender chains of steel and copper in orientalized Tatar designs with long red silk tassels and a high crest of shaking gold wires, set with sparkling stones. A so-called great artist designed it from an old Russian picture. There’s a kind of pageant, and he will carry a balalaika and address her in a kind of recitation which begins—‘My 23 fair sun, my falcon, my ermine!’ He is a very handsome young man, and they will be a splendid pair. They are always together in anything of this sort.”

It amused her a little to watch the cumulative effect of these revelations upon him. As she expected—distinct distaste.

“And you approve?”—with a look which included Eleanor for a moment in the ranks of the enemy.

“I? I neither approve nor disapprove. I think she might do better with her gifts. I think it rather silly. I also think ripe grapes are more to be relished than green ones. But one has to wait. Processes can’t be hurried.”

She could see the subject bored him, however, and added:

“Talk to me about yourself. There too I am sure change and processes have been at work. I have seen that since you came back.”

“You Buddhist sage!” he said, half grave, half smiling. “Yes, indeed I have wanted very much to talk with you. Will you give me half an hour now and would it be too much to ask you to say—’Not at home’?”

Orders were given, and he drew his chair nearer and instead of beginning gazed at the fire with dark and thoughtful eyes as if finding words a difficulty.

“Why cannot I think it to you?” he sighed at last.

“I think you nearly can. Shall I begin?”

He made a quick sign of assent.

“You told me long ago of your friendship with Mr. Arima and that he was a devoted Buddhist of the Zen type. You told me that he was starting a place in the hills of Japan where young men might be prepared to go through the great experience which we call a flash of the higher consciousness, and take as 24 a matter of pure luck, and you call satori and take as a matter of discipline. What I have believed since you came back is that you have known that experience and that you will soon leave us for a very different life. Forgive me if I am wrong or have said too much.”

He looked at her in very great amazement.

“How did you know?”

“How could so great a thing happen to anyone and leave no mark? And are we not friends? But tell me what you can.”

He began slowly and as if weighing every word.

“You know that one fundamental difference between Christianity and our developed Buddhism is that Christianity teaches the doctrine of original sin and we teach that every living thing—and all things live—has the Buddha nature in itself and needs only to realize it to receive joy and peace and universal wisdom. For years I have been aiming at that—a stern discipline—but though I gained much, very much, I did not gain that. This time I went up to Arima in the hills. . . .”

There was a long silence, then after a while, but very softly, she said:

“You gained it?”

He looked up and said nothing, but she was answered.

Presently he spoke again:

“You know we do not think of the Buddha as an historical figure as they do in Ceylon and Siam. He was that of course, but it would not matter to us if he had not been. History like other facts in this phenomenal world matters little in reality as contrasted with ideas. Ideas really make the universe, for each is a fragment of Realization. Roughly one might say every god is real who is believed in. To us—in our scriptures, as you know, the Buddha as an historical 25 figure is interesting, but in the Idea he is Universal Wisdom, the Law of the Cosmos—the One in whom all Laws are intelligible. You have read the Diamond Scripture? Wonderful!”

She repeated “Wonderful!” with dreaming eyes.

“Well, he is every idea that ever was or can be—the very essence of Mind. If one gets a flash of that and realizes it in one’s own mind it—it changes things.”

She said with hesitation: “Have you brought back any light you can give me?”

“The old Buddha light—the knowledge that all the things we see in this world are only apparent and the creation of our own mind. Of course that accords exactly with modern science. But that matters little, though the realization is an amazing experience. But the joy—the light—No, I cannot speak of it.”

Again a moment’s silence. She said: “I know. Now, what I think you will do is this—”

“Tell me!” he said. A Japanese does not flush with pleasure but his eyes kindled.

“You told me before that your long stay in Europe was to learn its ways and languages thoroughly. You have done that. I think now that you and Arima sama will train men to come to Europe and set forth the marvelous alliance of Buddhism with modern science—especially with physics and psychology here. Perhaps you will come yourself.”

Again his smile made him a boy. He leaned forward vibrating with eagerness.

“Yes—yes. But I must go back first. He is training two brilliant young men to come with me. Nothing monastic except in the training—all absolutely practical. Zen Buddhism is that from beginning to end. Do you think—will people listen? The aim of Zen is to form the Superman.”

“The best minds will. They must, now that physics 26 and philosophy are running into each other’s channels. But I think something else. I am thinking what might happen if your people asserted their right to leadership of the world in certain forms of beauty and philosophy. India is being discovered as a seer, but not Japan. You have been too humble. Believe me, the stern gospel of your past, your samurai honor, your self-control, is the steel tonic that Europe wants now. That was your religion. Can nations live without religion? They are trying out that problem in the West, and it looks as if the answer might be astonishing.”

“You think that? It’s true. I have always said it. Therefore I am a student, a lover of Zen—the wisest, most intellectual form of all Buddhism. You know, you understand. . . . Is that what Europe wants? But they would laugh now if one spoke of it. I have kept my lips gripped.”

“One must keep them gripped on so many things in England,” she answered a little wistfully. “The Americans are much more eager and open-minded—‘The young impatient masters of the world.’ One may speak and write there as one pleases, and they read and listen and accept and reject with perfect freedom. Here, people simply don’t care a straw about anything Asiatic. But you, perhaps you could speak and write here.”

“Why could I?” He looked at her with profound interest.

“Because you would know how to do it, if you could divest your mind of the belief that there is a prejudice against the Japanese mentality.”

“But there is.”

“Yes, but they would listen to Japan as to no other Asiatic people. You have the reputation for common sense because you have succeeded handsomely in war 27 and commerce. That would give you quite an authority in the religious field if you spoke up!”

“Religion!” he said with irony. “Hateful word!”

“Call it understanding of natural law. They would like that. Any application of common sense to religion or what they think is science is thought very reliable in England,” she said. “But to be serious”—for Ito was still digesting this—“the West needs an austere gospel. It is almost time for the Puritan reaction to set in which has saved England more than once on the edge of a precipice and then ruined it again with chains and fetters. You once made a discipline effective on all your best men and women. Recover it and tell us your secret. Oh, I know we talk of individuality and the right of self-assertion, but it always ends in the slump of laxity and self-pleasing ineffectuality.” She paused again and quoted:

“‘I have seen four and twenty leaders of revolts—’ and they and their followers always collapsed into bosh and bad art and license.”

“I see that myself in England—and in France. Also in Japan,” he said slowly. “Yes, it is true. Self-pleasing is always a fatuity in the long run, and the West has known no divine reason why it should bestir itself. But who cares? And we are beginning to walk in the same way.”

“Do you know what Ku Ming said, the old Chinese philosopher who died lately? I think it sums up the whole situation—‘Europe has a religion which satisfies her heart but not her head, and a philosophy which satisfies her head but not her heart.’ Could anything be truer? Well—we know a religion and a philosophy which could do both.”

He looked at her with shining eyes:

“Yes. Truer than true. But if we try—”

It was the first time she had been permitted to see 28 the flame of the spirit in his eyes. Hitherto he had been silent, a commentator on life—shrewd, and sardonic, learning his lesson in close observation. She looked at him and wondered. Now the sword, dark and keen, of which he had always reminded her, was bared. Preparation had done its work, and the man was ready.

“Not perfectly ready,” he said, answering her thought after a strange fashion of his own. “A year more with Arima sama—and besides he needs my help out there. He is organizing a big thing, and I am to lecture in physics. I worked hard at that. Our men are to be ready for any class in Europe.”

She was so silent, her eyes so large with meditation, that he offered the usual penny for her thoughts and smiled when she shook her head.

“No, not yet. Tell me all your plans and I’ll say what I think. But tell me this first. Did you agree with that letter?”

“I prefer not to say unless I have your orders and forgiveness beforehand.”

“Both. I think a Japanese comment would be more useful than any.”

“Then, allowing for personal bitterness, I think my friend touches danger-signals. You have said yourself that in Asia men do not recognize Woman as an abstract goddess, but simply women. Simply human beings with certain highly specialized functions which are a national danger if they are exaggerated or neglected. Occasionally swift in intuition, undisciplined and less self-controlled than they should be, and therefore less fitted to control others. Their levity—of course I recognize the exceptions—unfits most of them for governing positions. And possibly, when vicious, more shallowly and hopelessly vicious. Please allow me to end here! I wish to say no more. I shall only 29 agree with you that the exceptional woman must come to the front always. Why make the road easy for the rabble which is utterly unfitted for ruling? For my part, even for men I should make the road much more difficult than it is. But then I am no believer in the rule of the unfittest—which you call democracy—in any department of life. And does anyone value what they get as a matter of course?”

They sat late into the night while he told her of Arima’s work in the hills, of his strange and subtle personality with its unspoken but unlimited influence on others, and always her sympathy urged him on and her hope supported his; and at last, at first with deep reserve but later with simplicity and confidence, he permitted her to understand so far as the futility of words could express it—little enough!—the splendor of the vision which dims all the world’s radiance for the happy ones who see.

And Ito went away brooding on many things of which Yasoma’s insulting attacks and dislike formed no part.

Eleanor Ascham’s words had been fruitful in much more than she guessed—or he either for that matter—since he had known her. They had coalesced with potent influences reaching him from Japan, from a man whose strange and beautiful austerity had sown a seed in many hearts of men who watched the European whirlpool with keen speculation. What did it mean—this dance of death, this mad gaiety and loosening of all bonds of honor and family loyalty and obedience to old ideals? Had it been only in France or Germany or the half-civilized hordes of Russia and Central Europe, it would not have surprised Ito or his friends that such peoples should reel under the shock of war. But that this new devil’s dance of anarchy and the lust of pleasure should flourish in England, the country 30 of tranquillity, where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent, was a thing worth watching, a portent of world-wide concern. Like other Asiatics also he was disposed to dread the English transference of the scepter of rule from the hands of men to women. He knew and vibrated to the knowledge that in India secret-eyed men of all the myriad Indian faiths would shudder with distaste at the spectacle of the women thronging to the poll with the unfledged reason and caprice which were to make or mar their own well-being under Indian skies. Such as Yasoma Brandon! Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

When he left Eleanor Ascham, the way he had chosen but had never mentioned in England grew fairer and fairer in his eyes. A chapter in his life had closed forever, and a way was opening.