Джеймс Хилтон: Lost Horizon

"Because… well, it is. There are all sorts of reasons. Take my word for it; it won't do. It's incredible enough that she should be out there now - I'm astonished at what you say has happened - but the idea of her going any further is just preposterous."

"I don't see that it's preposterous at all. It's as natural for her to want to leave here as for me."

"But she doesn't want to leave. That's where you make the mistake."

Mallinson smiled tensely. "You think you know a good deal more about her than I do, I daresay," he remarked. "But perhaps you don't, for all that."

"What do you mean?"

"There are other ways of getting to understand people without learning heaps of languages."

"For heaven's sake, what ARE you driving at?" Then Conway added more quietly: "This is absurd. We mustn't wrangle. Tell me, Mallinson, what's it all about? I still don't understand."

"Then why are you making such an almighty fuss?"

"Tell me the truth, PLEASE tell me the truth."

"Well, it's simple enough. A kid of her age shut up here with a lot of queer old men - naturally she'll get away if she's given a chance. She hasn't had one up to now."

"Don't you think you may be imagining her position in the light of your own? As I've always told you, she's perfectly happy."

"Then why did she say she'd come?"

"She said that? How could she? She doesn't speak English."

"I asked her - in Tibetan - Miss Brinklow worked out the words. It wasn't a very fluent conversation, but it was quite enough to - to lead to an understanding." Mallinson flushed a little. "Damn it, Conway, don't stare at me like that - anyone would think I'd been poaching on YOUR preserves."

Conway answered: "No one would think so at all, I hope, but the remark tells me more than you were perhaps intending me to know. I can only say that I'm very sorry."

"And why the devil should you be?"

Conway let the cigarette fall from his fingers. He felt tired, bothered, and full of deep conflicting tenderness that he would rather not have had aroused. He said gently: "I wish we weren't always at such cross-purposes. Lo-Tsen is very charming, I know, but why should we quarrel about it?"

"CHARMING?" Mallinson echoed the word with scorn. "She's a good bit more than that. You mustn't think everybody's as cold-blooded about these things as you are yourself. Admiring her as if she were an exhibit in a museum may be your idea of what she deserves, but mine's more practical, and when I see someone I like in a rotten position I try and DO something."

"But surely there's such a thing as being too impetuous? Where do you think she'll go to if she does leave?"

"I suppose she must have friends in China or somewhere. Anyhow, she'll be better off than here."

"How can you possibly be so sure of that?"

"Well, I'll see that she's looked after myself, if nobody else will. After all, if you're rescuing people from something quite hellish, you don't usually stop to enquire if they've anywhere else to go to."

"And you think Shangri-La is hellish?"

"Definitely, I do. There's something dark and evil about it. The whole business has been like that, from the beginning - the way we were brought here, without reason at all, by some madman - and the way we've been detained since, on one excuse or another. But the most frightful thing of all - to me - is the effect it's had on you."

"On ME?"

"Yes, on you. You've just mooned about as if nothing mattered and you were content to stay here forever. Why, you even admitted you liked the place… Conway, what HAS happened to you? Can't you manage to be your real self again? We got on so well together at Baskul - you were absolutely different in those days."

"My DEAR boy!"

Conway reached his hand towards Mallinson's, and the answering grip was hot and eagerly affectionate. Mallinson went on: "I don't suppose you realize it, but I've been terribly alone these last few weeks. Nobody seemed to be caring a damn about the only thing that was really important - Barnard and Miss Brinklow had reasons of a kind, but it was pretty awful when I found YOU against me."

"I'm sorry."

"You keep on saying that, but it doesn't help."

Conway replied on sudden impulse: "Then let me help, if I can, by telling you something. When you've heard it, you'll understand, I hope, a great deal of what now seems very curious and difficult. At any rate, you'll realize why Lo-Tsen can't possibly go back with you."

"I don't think anything would make me see that. And do cut it as short as you can, because we really haven't time to spare."

Conway then gave, as briefly as he could, the whole story of Shangri-La, as told him by the High Lama, and as amplified by the conversation both with the latter and with Chang. It was the last thing he had ever intended to do, but he felt that in the circumstances it was justified and even necessary; it was true enough that Mallinson WAS his problem, to solve as he thought fit. He narrated rapidly and easily, and in doing so came again under the spell of that strange, timeless world; its beauty overwhelmed him as he spoke of it, and more than once he felt himself reading from a page of memory, so clearly had ideas and phrases impressed themselves. Only one thing he withheld - and that to spare himself an emotion he could not yet grapple with - the fact of the High Lama's death that night and of his own succession.

When he approached the end he felt comforted; he was glad to have got it over, and it was the only solution, after all. He looked up calmly when he had finished, confident that he had done well.

But Mallinson merely tapped his fingers on the tabletop and said, after a long wait: "I really don't know what to say, Conway… except that you must be completely mad…"

There followed a long silence, during which the two men stared at each other in far different moods - Conway withdrawn and disappointed, Mallinson in hot, fidgeting discomfort. "So you think I'm mad?" said Conway at length.

Mallinson broke into a nervous laugh. "Well, I should damn well say so, after a tale like that. I mean… well, really… such utter nonsense… it seems to me rather beyond arguing about."

Conway looked and sounded immensely astonished. "You think it's nonsense?"

"Well… how else can I look at it? I'm sorry, Conway - it's a pretty strong statement - but I don't see how any sane person could be in any doubt about it."

"So you still hold that we were brought here by blind accident - by some lunatic who made careful plans to run off with an aeroplane and fly it a thousand miles just for the fun of the thing?"

Conway offered a cigarette, and the other took it. The pause was one for which they both seemed grateful. Mallinson answered eventually: "Look here, it's no good arguing the thing point by point. As a matter of fact, your theory that the people here sent someone vaguely into the world to decoy strangers, and that this fellow deliberately learned flying and bided his time until it happened that a suitable machine was due to leave Baskul with four passengers… well, I won't say that it's literally impossible, though it does seem to me ridiculously farfetched. If it stood by itself, it might just be worth considering, but when you tack it on to all sorts of other things that are ABSOLUTELY impossible - all this about the lamas being hundreds of years old, and having discovered a sort of elixir of youth, or whatever you'd call it… well, it just makes me wonder what kind of microbe has bitten you, that's all."

Conway smiled. "Yes, I daresay you find it hard to believe. Perhaps I did myself at first - I scarcely remember. Of course it IS an extraordinary story, but I should think your own eyes have had enough evidence that this is an extraordinary place. Think of all that we've actually seen, both of us - a lost valley in the midst of unexplored mountains, a monastery with a library of European books - "