He was a highly-cultured and widely read man. I imagined when I first met him, as I found to be the case when I knew him better, that he must have left China many years before, for he spoke perfect English, though with a slight American accent. His quaint philosophy had made an instant appeal to me. Though he was much older than I, his mental outlook was surprisingly young and we had become constant companions and very firm friends in quite a short time. I have seldom met a man in whom I felt such complete confidence and sympathy as in this old Chinese doctor. We spent much time together, often taking long expeditions afoot or on ski or sometimes as partners in a game of curling of which he was passionately fond.
Our acquaintance as a matter of fact had been a casual one. I had left London blanketed under fog and rain and after a twenty-four hours’ journey by rail had found myself in Mürren—that winter paradise of the young, opposite the towering Jungfrau with its attendant heights, the Monch and the Eiger, high-up in a glittering world of sunshine, snow and silence. The scene looked almost like a typical Christmas card. We were so high up that by day the sun shone brightly from a sky as blue and cloudless as that of Cannes, there were ten feet of powdery snow everywhere and the crystal-clear air was as bright and invigorating as champagne.
Giacomo, the smiling head waiter, had placed me with Dr. Feng at a small table set in the window in the great salle à manger. We had taken to each other at once and had become companions, not only at meals, but on the superb ice-rink which was in perfect condition as was flooded and re-frozen each night. There we skated or curled, or we took excursions on the wonderful rack-railway up to the Allmendhubel, or else over the snow to what is known as the Half-way House, or else down to the Blumen-tal.
Mürren in winter is par excellence a sports centre for young people who indulge in skating, tobogganing, lugeing and skiing, the winter sports that are, in these post-war days, happily eclipsing the exotic pleasures one obtains on the Riviera. There, in the Bernese Oberland, the vice of gambling hardly exists save in the form of occasional bridge as a relaxation after the day’s sport.
Each winter the Kürhaus hotel is a centre for the ever-growing band of enthusiasts who meet there for the bright social life and superb out-door sport which Mürren affords. These are the people who truly enjoy themselves healthfully. Skiing and similar pursuits demand perfect physical fitness and at the Kürhaus one is in the centre of wholesome out-door exercise by day and in the evening of a gay merriment which only seems to round off and complete the pleasures of days spent in the open air on the towering mountain slopes. At Mürren one finds a winter life that cannot be excelled in Europe.
The scene was wonderfully attractive. All around us were the great hills clothed in virgin snow, dotted here and there with merry parties of girls whose bright sports costumes provided startling splashes of color against the white background. Everywhere pretty lips laughed in the sheer joy of young exuberant life. Everywhere merry conversation rang out from dawn to dusk, everybody seemed to be active, healthy and happy.
But beneath all the fun and frivolling I had found a deeper, more serious note. It was struck for me by Dr. Feng.
More and more I found myself falling under the spell of the old man’s mentality. More and more I realized how much we had in common. A native of Yunnan, he had left China when about thirty—chiefly, I gathered, on account of political troubles. The range and variety of his knowledge was encyclopædic: there seemed to be hardly a subject on which he could not talk brilliantly if he chose to exert himself. And we had one great bond of sympathy—both of us loved music. Feng was a brilliant pianist. I was passionately devoted to the violin and we spent many hours over the works of the great composers. Like most other young men I had a fairly good opinion of myself, but compared with Dr. Feng, I was a mere child in musical knowledge. Our music, however, made us both popular and it had become quite a regular evening custom for us to play to the Kürhaus guests in the great ball-room.
There was, however, a still deeper side to our intercourse. Feng had initiated me into the first principles of the little-known Yogi philosophy—the doctrine that the real man is not the visible body, that the immortal “I,” of which each human being is conscious to a greater or lesser extent, merely occupies and uses the corporal transient flesh. The Yogis believe that the body is but as a suit of clothes which the Spirit puts on and off from time to time, and they insist that the body must be brought under the perfect control of the mind—that the instrument must be finely tuned so as to respond to the touch of the hand of the master.
Feng had made a deep study of the Yogi teaching and was, in himself, living evidence of a man virile and rejuvenated in both body and mind. People stood astounded when they were told his actual age, and I, admiring him, was now endeavoring in my own way to follow his footsteps. The doctrine he urged with such compelling eloquence and powers had taken a deep hold of my mind—how deep I never realized until I found myself flung suddenly into dangers and temptations which were to try my physical and mental fortitude to their very depths.