We talked excitedly. I fear it was I who said the most. But that was natural enough. For I know my subject, and he does not. I told him the legend that thousands of years ago a perfect stone chime was found in a pool, and that it has since been used to give the correct pitch to all Chinese instruments. The known history of the twelve liis gives the lie to this, of course; but the legend is quaint. I think I must have given him also a rough history of the liis, and of their semimythical origin in the life of the prehistoric king who measured off a length of bamboo tube with millet grains and produced a tone by sucking air through it, and then got his complete scale by cutting other tubes of half the size, a quarter the size, and so on. I remember giving him a minute explanation of the relation of our piano octave and of the Chinese octave to the fixed acoustic laws; and I told him why the Chinese octave is flat.... It got dark while we stood there.
Finally we returned to his study.
He got this Pien Ch'ing, it appears, from a Mandarin shortly after the revolution of 1912. He did not give me the details, and of course I did not press him; though it would mean a good deal to me to know from what palace they were taken, and as much as could be discovered of their history. And, for a wonder, he gave me no idea at all of their cost to him. Quite apart from their historical value, the jade alone—sixteen very large pieces, of an even green color without a streak or flaw that my eye could detect—is worth a fortune in any market from Peking to London.
It must have been his dinner-time.
He said:
“I am exceedingly glad, Dr. Eckhart, that you approve of my purchase. I had to use my own judgment, you see. Now let me ask you—Is not your Foundation establishing a museum of ancient musical instruments?”
“Decidedly we are!” I cried.
My pulse was racing like mad; and I know my forehead was sweating, for every few minutes, it seems to me, I was wiping my spectacles. Indeed, my handkerchief became quite useless for the purpose, and I had to borrow his.
All the possibilities of this most unexpected situation were dancing in my mind at once. What if he should give this treasure to the Foundation... a perfect specimen of the basic musical scale of the Eastern World! I could not be insensible to the fact that some credit would attach to me, should he make the benefaction through me. For this sort of activity is precisely the sort that financial directors are peculiarly fitted to understand. Scholarship and research worry them a little; they are eager for what they call “results.” And if any man in the entire field of musical research has ever produced so tangible and valuable a “result” as this ancient and perfect Pien Ch'ing, I have yet to learn of it.
And I was thinking of flattering ways in which his name could be identified with the gift. For we men of science may be what is called “impractical,” but we early learn the proper methods of managing our benefactors.