Free Lost Horizon by James Hilton Page B

no wine. “You will excuse me,” he had explained at the outset, “but my diet is very restricted; I am obliged to take care of myself.”
    It was the reason he had given before, and Conway wondered by what form of invalidism he was afflicted. Regarding him now more closely, he found it difficult to guess his age; his smallish and somehow undetailed features, together with the moist clay texture of his skin, gave him a look that might either have been that of a young man prematurely old or of an old man remarkably well preserved. He was by no means without attractiveness of a kind; a certain stylized courtesy hung about him in a fragrance too delicate to be detected till one had ceased to think about it. In his embroidered gown of blue silk, with the usual side-slashed skirt and tight-ankled trousers, all the hue of water color skies, he had a cold metallic charm which Conway found pleasing, though he knew it was not everybody’s taste.
    The atmosphere, in fact, was Chinese rather than specifically Tibetan; and this in itself gave Conway an agreeable sensation of being at home, though again it was one that he could not expect the others to share. The room, too, pleased him; it was admirably proportioned, and sparingly adorned with tapestries and one or two fine pieces of lacquer. Light was from paper lanterns, motionless in the still air. He felt a soothing comfort of mind and body, and his renewed speculations as to some possible drug were hardly apprehensive. Whatever it was, if it existed at all, it had relieved Barnard’s breathlessness and Mallinson’s truculence; both had dined well, finding satisfaction in eating rather than talk. Conway also had been hungry enough, and was not sorry that etiquette demanded gradualness in approaching matters of importance. He had never cared for hurrying a situation that was itself enjoyable, so that the technique well suited him. Not, indeed, until he had begun a cigarette did he give a gentle lead to his curiosity; he remarked then, addressing Chang: “You seem a very fortunate community, and most hospitable to strangers. I don’t imagine, though, that you receive them often.”
    “Seldom indeed,” replied the Chinese, with measured stateliness. “It is not a traveled part of the world.”
    Conway smiled at that. “You put the matter mildly. It looked to me, as I came, the most isolated spot I ever set eyes on. A separate culture might flourish here without contamination from the outside world.”
    “Contamination, would you say?”
    “I use the word in reference to dance bands, cinemas, electric signs, and so on. Your plumbing is quite rightly as modern as you can get it, the only certain boon, to my mind, that the East can take from the West. I often think that the Romans were fortunate; their civilization reached as far as hot baths without touching the fatal knowledge of machinery.”
    Conway paused. He had been talking with an impromptu fluency which, though not insincere, was chiefly designed to create and control an atmosphere. He was rather good at that sort of thing. Only a willingness to respond to the superfine courtesy of the occasion prevented him from being more openly curious.
    Miss Brinklow, however, had no such scruples. “Please,” she said, though the word was by no means submissive, “will you tell us about the monastery?”
    Chang raised his eyebrows in very gentle deprecation of such immediacy. “It will give me the greatest of pleasure, madam, so far as I am able. What exactly do you wish to know?”
    “First of all, how many are there of you here, and what nationality do you belong to?” It was clear that her orderly mind was functioning no less professionally than at the Baskul mission-house.
    Chang replied: “Those of us in full lamahood number about fifty, and there are a few others, like myself, who have not yet attained to complete initiation. We shall do so in due course, it is to be hoped. Till then we are half-lamas, postulants, you