two mothers, with the advice of Mrs. Sprot, were quite definite; their
daughters should not go on such an absurd expedition. “This is the
maddest thing my husband has agreed to yet,” said Lady Sombrewater. “I
protested from the beginning. I protested against the voyage. I pointed
out that we were quite comfortable at home, but I was not listened to.
I protested against this outlandish China, but I was laughed at. I
protested during the storm. I had a feeling that we were being plotted
against. But nobody seemed to be able to do anything or have any sense
at all. And now look what a pickle we’re in, landed here like this, as
Mr. Sprot so rightly says. I protest——” She looked round for something
to protest against. “I protest against this kind of scenery. It’s most
un-English. My daughter shall not go.”
“Of course not, mother,” said Lychnis. But she smiled at her father and
pinched Ambrose’s arm.
Ruby saw it. “Oh, mother,” she pouted, interpreting the signs, “if
Lychnis is going, why can’t I go, too?”
“But Lychnis is not going,” said Lady Sombrewater, with firm reproof;
and Ruby, who was not so quick as she was red and white and lovely,
looked terribly confused.
“Then,” put in Quentin, “the sensations that we experience on our
journey will be very much abated in sharpness, because, for a man who
is pure in heart, like myself, there is nothing gives so much point to
the beauty of early morning, to the sudden revelation of a landscape,
the contemplation of the purity of flowers, the noonday rest, and the
bed among bracken under the winds of night, as the neighbourhood of a
couple of maidens.”
The three ladies glanced at the girls and at one another, and their
eyes were guardian angels. “I absolutely put my foot down,” said Lady
Sombrewater.
“And I mine,” added Lady Frew-Gaff. “In any case, if one of the girls
fell sick, who would look after her, I should like to know?”
“Oh, come now, my dear!” put in her husband. “I myself, though not an
expert, know a good deal about the body——”
“Encyclopædic Richard,” observed Quentin. “And for the matter of that,
I also know something of the body.”
“And Blackwood was actually a professional physiologist.”
“A physiologist is not a mother,” said Lady Sombrewater.
“The body,” observed Blackwood, “is but a collection of obscene guts
and unpleasant juices. Beauty is therefore a superficial illusion and
the reality is extremely revolting. The body——”
Lady Sombrewater waved the girls away. She was used to these
uncompromising declarations of the Sages, but she had not got to like
them, and she could still protect the girls.
“The body,” continued Blackwood, “is merely an involuted skin, highly
specialized at various points, and capable of sensations, especially
tactile sensations, which some—as, for instance, Quentin, who has not
received enlightenment—consider desirable. Man, in brief, is nothing
but a piece of skin capable, in contact with another skin, of a supreme
sensation which results in the establishment of a third sensational
skin. Of the behaviour of these skins and their obscene accompaniments,
and of the cunning fluids by which, for their extraordinary object of
perpetuation, the said skins are cleverly kept in what is curiously
known as health, I have a considerable knowledge. The two maiden skins,
therefore, would be in a position to receive expert assistance should
they fall ill and inexplicably wish to recover.”
“Mr. Blackwood!” began the three ladies at once.
But Lord Sombrewater put an end to the discussion. “We’ll settle all
that presently,” he said; and they heard in his voice their doom, and
perhaps (though Ambrose was not able to find out whether their thoughts
were precise) the doom of their daughters.
9
Ambrose found an opportunity, during the afternoon, to ascertain from
the two girls their views as to the expedition.
He had gone ashore with them, at the instance of Lychnis, and they had
climbed to the top of a humped green hill so as to survey the country.
There they stood, under a plum-tree in blossom, protected, as Lychnis
observed, by cousins of Terence’s messengers from Paradise. Lychnis
herself was in a fragile plum-colored frock, out of compliment to them,
and her red-haired fellow was in willow-green.
Behind, between two contortions of cliff, lay the sea. Far away,
across the wrinkled and fissured hills, there were mountains with the
unmelted snows of winter lying on their tops like petals of narcissus.
The afternoon was spring-like, and there seemed to Ambrose to be a
fragrance of lilies; but whether it came from distant fields or whether
the girls were scented with it, he could not quite decide. But he
suddenly remembered that the Chinaman had spoken of a great lake of
water-lilies beyond the mountains of the interior.
Lychnis stood on the hill with her hands clasped behind her, frowning
at the snows.
“Is that where we are going?” she asked.
“The indications point that way, I believe. Does it amuse you to go?”
“Oh yes! And really, if we don’t find something new, something strange,
there, I think I shall die. Shall we perhaps discover some secret of
life there, do you suppose?”
“You mean?”
Ruby was wandering about, rather bored, and Lychnis, as often before,
talked intimately to her confessor. “I am so tired of reading books and
meeting people and thinking, just to fill up the time. I am so tired of
being conscious and trying to be more conscious. It is a disease that a
drink of genuine life would purge out of the system. I want to become
so that I’m waiting to get up in the morning just because it is another
day to live; then, when I lie down in bed at night, sleep would be a
deep physical pleasure. I wish it was a young world, with only a few
people in it, and spring meant that one would go out of doors and ride
away on some quest.”
“Romantic,” he observed. “And is not that what you are to do now, with
your squires?”
“But it will be only us, and we only fill up the time, without zest and
unconsciousness. Would you call my father whole-hearted any more? He
knows now that he makes what is not worth making, and he has lost touch
with life. Sir Richard lives merely intellectually, and he only knows
about the how of things and argues fantastically as to their why. He
makes out God to be a symbol in mathematics. Then Terence. His visions
are old, and I think they are pathological and mad. His auras and
reincarnations and glittering spirits from other planes, and all his
vibrations and rhythms and things—they are the cloud-rack of a decaying
personality. They are illusions of visions; and who would follow them
to the world’s end, except daddy, more in contempt than faith? And as
for Blackwood, he is so disillusioned that he wants to come to an end,
and maltreats his mind with some old lost discipline for making it
think of nothing, which it was never meant to do. And Sprot does not
even know that there are thoughts, or doubts, or despairs. He’s merely
a cell, and he can only market goods, I am sure without zest. No, Fulke
is the only one who has any vision of a sweet and joyous world. He has
youth in him, and desire, and all that. But his shape displeases me.”
She looked up at the plum-blossom burning on the branches above her.
“There is Quentin. He has zest,” Ambrose observed.
“But what for? Yet he pleases me, and if I find nothing at the end of
this journey I think I may let him please me more—if he can. For one
can have pleasure if one can have nothing else. Yet there are certain
things about love that I don’t thoroughly understand—you could tell me,
if I could ask you. I think I could.”
Her head was bent in thought. Then she raised up her passion-lidded
eyes, and Ambrose took the opportunity to examine her state of mind.
“Perhaps it is not life that you desire,” he said thoughtfully. “There
is something else—you will understand what I mean some day.”
“You mean love, I suppose?” she asked, indifferent.
“No, not that.”
“I find love a bore,” she observed. “It might not be, I can conceive.
Several have loved me, and Fulke now I’m afraid, and Quentin, if we
are to call that love. And I love myself undoubtedly. When I see
myself in the mirror I wish, sometimes, that I were a young man, and I
feel that if I were women would love me, and I would take one—perhaps
Ruby, though she is rather stupid. I could love a god, if he wasn’t
too curly-headed and milk-white. Mine would be dark-haired, not fair,
like Terence’s clumsy Irish heroes. But there are no gods, unless
there are some lost here in China. Mine would have an air of profound
thoughtfulness. If there were gods, do you think I would have a chance?”
She looked so comically serious that Ambrose laughed at her.
She was petulant at his laughing. “You don’t love me, do you, Ambrose?
You only think I’m funny.”
He says her sentence came at him like a flung blossom with a little
dart in it. He records his answer:
“I can make no talk when it comes to ‘I’ and ‘me.’ Really, I’m not sure
that I’m aware of feelings and desires and so forth.” He remarks that
he scarcely knew how to put it.
“Oh, I know,” she replied scornfully. “You only make notes. We are
all specimens. Still, that’s just as well, because if you were at
all likely to love me”—she flushed, now, at the word spoken before
in a rushing impulse—“there’d be nobody left to talk to. You know,
Ambrose....” She hesitated, looking about in the grass as if words
might spring up there. “It seems funny to say ... I mean, all those men
are a nuisance in one way or another. When they look at me their eyes
are seeing me as a young woman. Daddy, even ... you understand? Fulke
displeasingly, because he’s like a chimpanzee and I find it insulting,
and Sprot sentimentally and disgustingly, and Quentin—rather
excitingly. And Sir Richard, too, Ambrose, though it sounds wicked of
me to say it, but I can’t help knowing. Terence, of course, pretends
I’m his inspiration. Do poets embrace their inspirations? I expect so.
And with Arthur Blackwood it’s the way he sternly doesn’t look at me,
and when I’ve been talking to him he always goes into four or five
kinds of trances. It’s all a nuisance. But you, when you look at me and
talk to me, though I know you perceive every inch and movement of me
and very many of my thoughts, but not all by any means, I don’t mind.
It is so, isn’t it?”
He bowed, and admired her standing up straight and frowning and flushed
against the stem of the young plum-tree. A pink blossom fluttered down
on her.
She held on the way of her talk. “Now you are admiring me and making a
mental note of my shape. You will record, later on, that the sky behind
the blossom”—she turned to look—“is all tender apple-green, because
it’s soon going to begin to be evening. Well, look at me.” She stood
up on the toes of her slender shoes, and threw her arms out and her
head back, so that he could study her breast and throat. He did so, and
discusses the twin blossoms of her, and her whole shape, as a relation
of subtle, slender curves that had a most stimulating effect on the
mind and carried it beyond thoughts of physical beauty to profound
thoughts of an informing creative spirit. He mentions that her throat
was a springing flowerstalk.
“There,” she said at last. “You have looked, and it’s nothing to me. It
would not be nothing if I were in love. I should be glad and happy at
being studied. But I’m glad to be quite assured that I’m not, because
now I know that one day, soon perhaps, I shall be able to ask you
questions—questions I could put to no woman, last of all my mother, and
no other man. You are the only soul in the world, Ambrose, who could
receive from a woman such questions as I shall ask you—the only soul
who could answer them without being silly. Soon—there are things I must
ask you soon. Over there,” she pointed to the distant mountains, now
cold and spiritual in the sinking sun—“over there, perhaps, we shall
find someone, and there will no longer be something missing. There will
be a note found to complete a music. And you,” she added with sudden
malice—“you shall be marriage registrar.”
Then Ruby came wandering back—a lazy, redheaded Juno—and with her hands
she clasped a mass of flowers to her bosom. “These are for the ship,”
she observed. “Why didn’t you come and help me when I called? And what
have you been jawing about? You’re always jawing, you two.”
“We’ve been talking most frightful stupid nonsense,” said Lychnis.
“I expect so,” replied Ruby with unconcern.
Then some of the others came from the ship, and they all gathered
flowers until the silver moon rose out of the fissure of a hill into
the tender, trembling sky. Mist began to form, and drove them back to
the _Floating Leaf_, and it was not long before there was nothing to
be seen but the mist and the moon, and here and there a plum-tree on a
black knoll rising out of the mist, and a flight of wild geese crossing
the sky.
10
Next morning, not unexpectedly, the Chinaman presented himself before
Ambrose in his cabin like a scowling apparition, and proposed, in
respectful and professorial language, that he should accompany the
party. “For,” said he, “a guide to the country, its manners and
customs, its flora and fauna; an interpreter of the language of the
people, and more especially of their state of mind in regard to the
several members of the party; a softener of passions; a holder forth
of the timely coin; and, if need be, one who can remind men at the
appropriate juncture of the unfortunate results that follow unthinking
interference with the obvious will of Fate—such a one would perhaps be
not without use to the party.”
“Are you such a one?” asked Ambrose.
“While striving constantly to imitate the tranquil humility of the
narcissus upon which we gaze through the port-hole, I am one who has
made not altogether unavailing efforts to acquire the technique of such
a one as I describe.”
“Then such a one had better address his further inquiries to Lord
Sombrewater.”
The other bowed and accompanied Ambrose to the owner’s room, where
he repeated his proposal. Ambrose noted with admiration how swiftly
his chief put on an impassivity that did not seem less than that of
the Chinaman. The little expressionless, pheasant eyes met eyes of
unreadable black lacquer, and Ambrose records that there seemed to be a
sort of communication going on, as between animals or birds.
Lord Sombrewater at once confirmed an impression which Ambrose
had himself long since received. “You are a man of considerable
understanding,” he said. “You have, very markedly, the characteristic
visage of a Sage.”
“I have gone but a very little way,” the Chinaman replied, “in
imitation of those who have obtained wisdom, or, more correctly, of
those who have learned to throw wisdom away.”
“You are a deft waiter as well.”
“That, noble viscount, comes of having perceived the inner nature of
plates, glasses, table-napkins and the like. It is in such a purely
menial capacity that I venture to offer my inexpert services.”
“In what capacity were you on the navigating bridge that night we were
driven ashore?”
“I desired to meditate from that exposed place upon the state of mind
of the master when he said, ‘The self-controlled man occupies himself
with the unseen and not with what is visible,’ and when he said,
‘Purify the means of perception, so that by doing nothing all shall be
accomplished.’”
“Oh, well, by the means you mention you have accomplished much—or
someone has.” Lord Sombrewater thought for a few minutes. He told
Ambrose, when later observations had told him a great deal, that he
was convinced the ship had been steered by some sort of energy-beam
from the shore. Then he decided. It seemed to be his method, at moments
in his career when important decisions were before him, to adopt any
plan that offered itself. It is probable that he decided on some
instinctive summing up of facts, or indications, intuitively perceived.
He unreservedly accepted the proposal that the Chinaman should act as
guide. “What shall we call him?” he asked.
“Such-a-one,” Ambrose suggested.
“Good. I nearly made him minute-writer in your place, Ambrose. I rather
fancy him. But we industrial princes can’t have people assassinated
when they are in the way.”
Ambrose considered the point. “I suppose not,” he said
thoughtfully—“not as a rule. But here nobody would ever know if you
waited till we were some way inland. Quentin would do it for you.”
Sombrewater laughed loud and long. “You ignore the possibility of any
affection a fellow might have for you.”
“No, no,” replied Ambrose. “I make due allowance for it in my
estimation of the probable course of events.”
11
Just after sunrise the next day ten figures in the costume of ancient
China (on the advice and with the assistance of Such-a-one) embarked
in a cluster of odd craft that lay alongside the _Floating Leaf_. Each
boat had a windowed cabin, like a gondola. On the sail of each was an
emblem like a flying beast. The Dragon, Quentin pointed out.
Lychnis went first, swaying like an amber chrysanthemum on its stalk;
Ruby followed, her plump, maiden curves voluptuously shown, as she
balanced, in plum-coloured silk; Lord Sombrewater in marigold and
green; Sir Richard in apricot, with a device in black like a system
of coordinates; Sprot in mauve; Blackwood in lilac; Terence in
flame-orange; Quentin in peacock-blue; Fulke in primrose with sleeves
of green; Ambrose, lastly, in misty white. Clustered in their boats
they seemed like flowers in fantastic baskets floating in the stream.
The resentment of the three ladies was soon forgotten in the excitement
of the journey. Indeed, it was not long before the sea and the
_Floating Leaf_ and the thought of their life in Europe seemed to
fall under the horizon of the mind, and they saw only the new beauty
and strangeness of the country where they found themselves. As Quentin
remarked, nowhere else in the world were such refined harmonies of
colour in landscape to be seen or such subtleties of tone. The river
wound secretly and intimately deep among the emerald hills, with their
dragon crags; now between lines of willows putting out a mist of
silvery-grey leaves, a mist deepened here into a tender blue, there
into a subtle rose; now through the delicate umber shadows of some
flowery gorge among jade-hued rocks. Here a bridge spanned the river,
springing from a group of trees and gracefully completing the rhythm of
the valley; there a village nestled by some profound logic in the nook
of a hill; once and again was some glimpse of the forest, or of the
white, slender beam of a rushing cascade that plunged down from distant
fells in harmonious passion. Over all floated white clouds like masses
of blossoms, and it was as if the forces of Nature and the hand of man
had united to suggest a landscape-dream of some profoundly meditating,
non-human spirit, in which man had his place with the plum-blossom, the
torrent and the black-bird on the branch.
They went slowly, by sail and pole, in three boats. Terence, as
mystical leader of the expedition, sat in the first beside Such-a-one.
Quentin took his morning exercise in the second, thrusting with the
bamboo pole, and Frew-Gaff his in the third. They called to one
another, startling coot, mallard and teal from the reeds. Ambrose was
with Frew-Gaff and the two girls in the third boat. Lychnis and Ruby
lay curled up on one side, looking out; Ambrose on the other.
A shout came over to them from Quentin: “How are the maiden skins?”
For answer Lychnis clapped the small hands that lay in her sleeves like
petals, and Fulke, in another window, was observed trying in vain to
catch her eye. Then, at another shout from Quentin, she asked to be put
out on the bank, and met him. It was a rice-field, and half a dozen
blue-clad labourers were at work there.
“I’m tired of standing still,” Quentin observed, strutting and striding
in his magnificent robe, a blur of deep blue that gave emphasis to the
whole riverside scene.
“So am I,” she answered; “my legs want to run.” She picked up her robe,
and her green trousers flashed over the field like a pair of parrots.
Ruby, who had scrambled ashore after her, followed, and her legs
flashed like flamingoes.
“By the Virgin Mother, how beautiful!” Quentin sang out, and chased
them down the rice-field like a great swaying peacock. He caught
Lychnis first, as he came up with her among the bamboos, by her
streaming hair and forced her head back, so that all her face and
throat were exposed to him. She saw the red, smiling lips in the
frizzy beard pouting a suggestion of kisses, and turned her face
sharply aside. “The unburnt child dreads the fire!” He grinned his
contempt at her and gave a vigorous tug at the handful of amber hair.
“Rich, ungathered coral! Sweet, shadowy, unentered cavern of a mouth!
Unfleshed teeth! Little tiger that has not yet tasted a man! Little
fool!”
She stared soberly up at him. “Out of the strong cometh an excess of
sweetness, too luscious pomegranate of a man!”
He grinned and led her back, still in captivity, to the boats, annexing
the slow Ruby by the way, and as he drove his pair through the field
the labourers began to follow and gather in round them, with a kind
of singing chatter, like a chorus. Fulke, who was also on the bank, a
little shamefaced because he lacked the spontaneity of Quentin and the
two girls to run, started forward; but when the little crowd came near
the boats, Such-a-one raised his voice to such effect that they sped
across the field and vanished like rabbits among the bamboos.
“Odd, that,” said Quentin. “What is his secret charm? The authority
lay not in the tone, but in the words. Or did he perform a miracle—The
Manifestation and Evanishment of the Blue Men?”
“I believe anything, now,” Lychnis replied. “Every minute I hope to see
that dragon flying across the hills.”
Then there was a cry from Terence and a gesture like the waving of a
banner.
“He wants to go on,” said Quentin. “He’s losing sight of his
Peach-blossom friends.”
So the boats began to move slowly ahead, those four, with Ambrose,
following along the bank; and at everything Quentin said the girls
laughed, encouraging the flow of his spontaneity. Presently they
came to a village shadowed among huge rocks and trees. Variegated
ducks surrounded them and a flock of geese steadily testified with
outstretched necks to some difficult truth. The village was sombre,
mysterious and deserted, but a girl was searching for some object
among the pebbles at the water’s edge. She looked up, startled, at the
approach of five gorgeous strangers like ghostly mandarins and their
ladies, and began to make off with little tottering steps.
“Delicious object!” cried Quentin. “Totter, rather, to these arms
and the refuge of this beard, which is indeed a better beard than
any countryman of yours can produce. For the beard in these parts is
scanty,” he explained, turning to Ambrose, “as you will undoubtedly
record.” Then, seizing the girl by the skirt of her jacket, he turned
her about and pinched her chin and her yellow cheeks. She screamed.
At once from the shadowy houses there was a swift, silent arrival of
yellow-skinned relations, and the rest of the party drew together while
Quentin, with sparkling eyes and wide smile, faced the crowd. But
immediately the voice of Such-a-one came from the leading boat, suavely
rising and falling, and once more with mysterious effect, for the
gathering dispersed, not, this time, without conveying, through their
expressionless faces, some hint of a threat like the threat of geese.
Lord Sombrewater sprang out of his boat. “This is quite enough,” he
said, with acid authority. “Lychnis! Ruby!” He pointed, and they
returned to their window.
“Funny,” remarked Quentin to Ambrose. “Your Chinaman has some talisman
in his tongue. This will be useful should one of you go too far.”
12
Late in the afternoon they disembarked, and Such-a-one led them by a
steep road through a village to a solitary inn halfway up the mountain.
The moon came up behind the mountain, and soft hues and scents of the
spring night stole into the sky.
A warm, stirring silence. The inn slept, and Ambrose kept watch in the
road—before him a trembling emptiness of sky, and the fantastic roof of
the inn, and a candle burning behind the paper blind. The blind moved,
the candle was extinguished, and Lychnis and Ruby leaned out between
the bamboo shoots. They threw him down flowers, whispering good-night.
Then silence, breathing, scent-laden.