They were sitting in Mr. Kung’s library, where usually they spent the evenings. The windows were open to the soft evening air. The city was almost quiet in the distance, its many voices no more than a murmur afar off. It was late autumn but the weather was dry and warm, holding the promise of another mild winter in Europe. The walls were solidly books, except for the windows. Here and there a few small tables held priceless jade statues and vases or lamps, objects with which Mr. Kung could not part unless he found something he liked even better, in which case the rejected article went into his enormous shop on the rue de la Paix—a museum of a place—replaced by the new, more favored object until yet another more favored object appeared. It was an endless sifting process, only the more choice works of art remaining here. Rann had noticed the subtle changes taking place constantly and Stephanie had explained the process to him.
“Mr. Kung,” Rann asked, “how did you become so deeply interested in these works of art?”
“Ah, art is the free man’s dream,” Mr. Kung said, “and a man’s life begins and ends with his work—that is, if he is an artist. Each of these works represents the best in a man’s life to that point, for an artist is forever striving to improve and he leaves a piece of himself behind each time as he grows. If one, in a generation long past his, collects carefully then he can know the artist and follow his development even as if he lived in the same day. The artist can never escape his work, and if he is good it is his stamp on the future.”
“I wish I knew where my work begins,” Rann said. “I think of it constantly. I prepare for it without knowing what it is. Meanwhile I ask questions—I cannot keep myself from the necessity of knowing—everything!”
Stephanie laughed. She was curled in the seat under the open window that overlooked the rock garden. “It’s true—nine-tenths of everything you say is questions.”
She was giving him lessons in Chinese now, claiming that teaching the language would help her to improve her own abilities. It was the most profound and fascinating language he had yet learned, and the most difficult, perhaps because it was the most difficult both to speak and to write. He found himself learning it primarily through the writing, the brushing of characters in their manifold design, and every stroke with design and meaning. Each written word was a work of art unto itself, a picture of its meaning, a signal of its sound, carrying within sight and sound a conveyance of feeling. “House,” for example, was only a building, walls and a roof, which might be used for any purpose. But if people lived in that house, “house” became another word, brushed differently and with different sound and meaning. It became “home.” Therefore each written character was a work of art, carefully brushed with precision, each stroke taken in exact order.
It was in discussing the Chinese language that he was learning this winter evening, after dinner, the conversation had moved so easily to the subject of art again, a subject that always drew Mr. Kung’s concentrated thought and attention, since his life’s work was the accumulation and dispersing of objects of art. It was a lucrative business as well, but somehow he could not think of Mr. Kung in connection with business or money. He had more than once been in the shop and had seen and heard Mr. Kung refuse to sell some favorite piece to a customer willing and waiting to pay its price.
“It is not for sale,” Mr. Kung said with dignity upon such occasions.
“But why—”
“I reserve it without explanation,” Mr. Kung said.
“My father,” Stephanie had explained later when they were alone, “my father will not sell a beautiful object which has caught his soul unless the buyer has the soul for it too.”
Later that evening while they enjoyed the warmth of the fire in the library after dinner, Mr. Kung held in his right hand a round piece of priceless jade, a pure soft green, which he rolled in his palm with his fingers. He seldom sat in his Chinese Windsor chair without such a piece of jade in his right palm, turning it slowly but constantly. Sometimes it was a ball of white jade, or the red one. It depended on the color of the satin robe he wore. Tonight his robe was silver-gray, again, his favorite and most often worn color.
“Why do I hold the jade piece in my hand?” he had repeated when Rann had put the question to him. “There is more than one reason. Jade is cool—always cool to the touch. And turning it is my habit. It relieves any tension I may feel. It brings me calm. Moreover, not least, it keeps my fingers supple. It is a sort of unconscious play. But it is more than that. I hold beauty in my hand. In art there is always something deeper than play. The artist knows this. Perhaps his art is a sort of play, an overflow of the spirit, but it is more—it is a revelation of human nature, varying with its time. That is why it is so necessary to know the age of a beautiful object, in order that we may know the creator and what is revealed, through him, of the times in which he lived—the times and therefore the people. If they loved beauty then they were civilized. Art must serve more than a functional purpose. We can judge the cultural stage of a people by the art of its architecture, the style of its literature as well as its content, the manner of its painting, for painting describes the human mind of its times.”
Mr. Kung spoke slowly, reflectively, thinking as he talked, his mellow, gentle voice distinct in the silent room. His two listeners did not speak. Stephanie’s head was turned to the window as she sat silent; the spotlights on the garden created a dramatic effect on the trees and rocks. Rann followed her gaze but looked at nothing and saw nothing, for he was absorbed in a strange new consciousness, a perception of the meaning of beauty that was deeper than any he had known before. Art—he saw it now in its totality—could be expressed in many ways, concretely through many facets of expression, but also in living—just living. The life in this house was based on love and comprehension of the beauty of art and the art of living.
Suddenly he comprehended art as an incentive in life, a call to labor, and yet at the same time a joy. But was there not contradiction here? He put it to Mr. Kung.
“Sir, is the purpose of art the enjoyment of beauty, or is it to provide a sort of work, even though enjoyable, for the artist?”
Mr. Kung replied immediately as though he had already asked himself the question many times before. “Both—art is both labor and pleasure for the creator. It is a compulsion and it is a release, a joy and a demand. It is both male in its aggression into life, and it is female in its acceptance into life. It is one’s destiny, if he be the creator. It is the appointment of heaven when one has the gift. Art condemns no one. It portrays. What does it portray? The deepest truth, and in doing so attains beauty.”
The quiet, steady voice, rich in its mellow tones, reached to his soul. Something crystallized in him, a form, a desire, almost clear enough to be defined as purpose. His range of possibilities assumed boundaries. As yet he had never said to himself that he would become this certain person or that certain person. He had taken each day, each experience, each revelation of new knowledge through a book or a human being or by his own discovery for enough in itself. The impact was never of his own making. It came and he made the most of it. Now he was stunned at the sudden knowledge of himself. Before he could break the pit of silence into which he had fallen, Mr. Kung spoke.
“I am tired, my children. I must leave you.”
He struck a small brass gong on the table beside his chair. The door opened; a Chinese manservant entered and, approaching Mr. Kung, he held out his arm. Hand upon this arm, Mr. Kung smiled at the two who rose to their feet, and left the room.
They sat down again, Stephanie now upon a hassock before the dying fire. She did not speak nor did he. How could he speak when he was so dazed within himself, such questions pressing him—art, yes but which art? How to discover his own talent, if he had a talent? He had never spoken to anyone out of his own depths. He had always been the listener, the learner. With Lady Mary no speech beyond the most casual had ever been necessary. Their communication was
always physical, without the necessity of words, each absorbed in individual ways. Besides, he did not know if he wanted to speak to anyone. What was there yet to be put into words? I want to create—what? Something of beauty, something of meaning, something to relieve the terrible inner pressure of this need! How could he put this into words? And would she understand? They had never talked of inward feelings, thoughts, desires—
“I will tell you something very strange,” she said. Her voice was dreamlike.
“Yes?” he said.
“Never has my father left me alone with a man before. Man or boy, I have never been left alone with him. I wonder why he leaves me alone with you?”
“I hope—because he trusts me.”
“Oh, there is more to it than that,” she said positively.
She lifted her head to fling back her long, straight black hair and looked at him.
“Why do you think so?” he asked.
“He is planning something,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, but he is planning. He has been very different since you came into this house. I know him. He is very different.”
“In what way?”
“Not his usual arrogant self. Oh, he has never been loud, you know, always quiet—absorbed in his art collections—but arrogant. It was necessary for me to tell him everything I did, where I was going—he always managed to keep me too busy with what he needed done—I’ve had little time to myself since I grew too old for a governess. He’s always watched me—or had people watching me.”
“How can you bear that?” he demanded.
“I understand him,” she said simply.
She was looking at the fire and her hair was hanging over her face again. He saw only the lovely profile. Until now he had not truly examined it, but now he noticed each detail, not because it was her profile but because it was lovely. An awareness had awakened in him since he had been in this house. An awareness of beauty. There was more to know than knowledge. There was beauty. The awareness swelled again into a yearning to create beauty of his own. Again how? And what?
Out of the sheer need, he spoke. “Stephanie!”
She did not look up. “Yes?”
“Do you think you know me? Even a little!”
She shook the long dark hair. “No.”
“Why not?” he pleaded.
“Because I have never known anyone like you,” she said, lifting her head and looking at him straightly.
“Am I so—difficult?”
“Yes—because you know everything already.”
“Except myself.”
“You don’t know what you want to do?”
“Do you?”
“Of course. I want to help my father in his business, but above all I want to learn how to be independent.”
“Surely you’ll marry!”
“I’ve never seen anyone I want to marry.”
“There’s time—you’re only as old as I am!”
“Do you want to marry?”
“No!”
“Then there’s the two of us. And now I can tell you safely what my father wants and why he won’t let you go when you talk of leaving. I suppose you’ve noticed that?”
“Yes, but I haven’t wanted to go—not really! I learn so much from him—and there are all these books! I haven’t needed much persuasion to stay. Haven’t you noticed?”
“My father has his own way of getting people to do what he wants—gentle but relentless.”
“So what does he want?”
“He wants us to marry each other, of course.”
He was shocked. “But why?”
“So that he’ll have a son, stupid!”
“But I thought he didn’t like Americans!”
“He likes you.”
“Wouldn’t he rather have a Chinese?”
“He knows I won’t marry a Chinese—ever!”
“No?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s too much in me that’s not Chinese. And yet there’s too much Chinese in me to marry a Frenchman—or any white man. So—I won’t marry.”
“Does he know that?”
“No, and it’s not necessary for him to know it. It would be to refuse him a son forever. He wants me to marry a man who will take our family name and carry it on. It’s the legal way—the custom—in the China he knew. For him there’s no other China.”
He was silent, trying to sort out his feelings. Shocked, vaguely alarmed and then reassured because neither of them wanted marriage, and yet somehow fascinated—no, that was too strong a word—somehow stirred, in ways that were a result of what Lady Mary had taught him. …
“Well,” he exclaimed abruptly and, recognizing Lady Mary symptoms in himself, he rose to his feet. “At least we understand each other, but we’ll be friends, eh? I like you enormously, of course—more than any other girl I’ve ever known, though in a way you’re the only girl I’ve ever known.”
“You’re the only man—young, that is—I’ve ever known. Someone living in the house, that is—”
“So we’ll just go on being friends,” he decided.
Then he remembered his own previous confession and sat down again.
“Since you don’t really know me,” he said, “but you do know others and you are wise for your years with your father, what do you see me as—tentatively, I mean, and perhaps far in the future … very far?”
She looked at him again, for she had kept subsiding into gazing into the dying fire. Now, looking at him with a peculiar clairvoyance, she answered with astonishing assurance.
“Oh, a writer, of course. Yes, indeed, from our very first meeting. In fact, you know, I thought that’s what you were, sitting at the little table staring at everyone as though you’d never seen people before.”
“A writer!” he repeated, his voice a whisper. “I’ve been told this before and of course I’ve thought of it a great deal myself but I’ve never reached a concrete decision. And you’ve known all along!”
“Oh, yes, definitely!”
He was sobered by a stab of doubt. “You might be wrong!”
“I am right. You’ll see.”
But he could not be sure all at once like that. “Well,” he said slowly. “I’ll have to think. It will take a deal of thinking—a great, great deal. Of course I’ve thought of it, as I said, but only among many other possibilities. But to have you so sure—well, it’s upsetting in a way. Almost compulsive—”
“You asked me!”
“And I’m not blaming you—but to have you come at me like that!”
“I’m always straight-out. I suppose that’s the American in me.”
“You’re much more American than you know. There’s a world of difference between you and your father.”
“I do know—sometimes too well! He doesn’t.”
“That’s because he’s all Chinese.”
They were silent then and for so long that he rose. “You’ve given me too much to think about. I’ll say good night, Stephanie.”
“Good night, Rann.”
He stooped and upon a sudden impulse he kissed the crown of her dark hair. He had never done such a thing before. But she did not move. Perhaps she did not even know what he had done.
IT WAS, HOWEVER, A GERMINAL MEANING. In his bed he lay sleepless, thinking first of what Mr. Kung might be planning for him and then for hours thinking with excitement that perhaps indeed he would be a writer. He had written many short pieces, verse and prose, but usually questions he was asking himself. He thought of these as questions, not writing, and merely putting them down clarified the possible answers in his mind if he was unable to find answers in books or from people. The trouble was that people, even the best of them, really knew so little and of books there were so many that he waste
d time in searching and scanning. And when he was alone the questions often came in rhythm, especially if he were alone outdoors. He remembered that dewy autumn morning at the castle when, unable to sleep and excited from the night before, he had risen at dawn and gone out into the garden at sunrise. There, caught among the blooming roses in the rose garden he had seen an elaborate cobweb, glittering with dew drops, every drop a diamond in the sunshine and in the center of it the creator, a small black spider, and questions came rhyming out of his mind:
Diamond web of silver dew.
Beauty from your evil shape?
Angel? Devil? Which are you?
Or one? Or two?
And at this moment he had been interrupted by Lady Mary. She was in her morning mood, distant and even cold. It had been bewildering at first, the frightening heat of her physical passion, and when that was satisfied to exhaustion, her chill reserve. No one but he knew that within her slender, erect frame there lived two such diverse beings. He had learned to accept both, the one who fell upon him with total abandon and the other distant and dignified in the conventional, almost traditional English manner. He had learned a great deal from Lady Mary. It all seemed useless now in the light of what Stephanie had declared last night. He thought of it again with a sense of illuminating capacity. Yes, he could do it. He could be a writer, devoting himself to the art of writing. “A man’s life begins with his work,” Mr. Kung had said. Then that was why he had not felt his own life begin—had not chosen his work until now. Had he really chosen even now? Could one choose one’s life so quickly?
Not answering his own questions, he fell asleep before dawn broke.
“TO SEE PARIS,” STEPHANIE WAS SAYING, “you must walk—walk—walk, unless you are sitting beside a little table somewhere on the sidewalk, drinking an aperitif and watching the people pass by, for the people are Paris too. Of course, we won’t walk everywhere—say, for example, to Montmartre! There’s a funicular—or even the subway, though I hate going underground. It’s sinister.”