record. While his mind worked his eyes were fixed on the moon sailing
in a clump of bamboo beyond the inn, like a swan among reeds. His
meditations were disturbed, suddenly, by an outbreak of imprecation in
his near neighbourhood. It was Fulke. The language he used was like
thunder and earthquake among those silent mountains, and seemed to
Ambrose to give a distinctly reddish tinge to the sky.
He whistled, and Fulke paused like a nightingale disturbed in his song.
Then with a “That you, Ambrose? My God!” he resumed his theme.
“What is it?” asked Ambrose.
“What is it! I’ll tell you, so that you put it down in the records,
on parchment, with tender, fragrant little illustrations. What is it!
Only this. I asked Lord Sombrewater this evening if I might propose to
Lychnis. Lychnis!” He groaned at the name, at the stolen taste of a
pleasure never to be his.
“Oh yes?”
“Oh yes! You slug-flesh! You snail-guts! Don’t you want to know what he
answered?”
“As soon as you wish to tell me, revolutionary but propriety-observing
Fulke. I don’t know if you wish to tell Lychnis as well. That’s her
window, you know.”
Fulke looked up to her window, and Ambrose saw in the moonlight that
his face was all furrowed with desire and despair. He clasped his hands
together. “Exquisite—immaculate, goddess-minded,” he whispered, and
suddenly tore at his hair.
Ambrose drew him off down the road, pondering on the word “immaculate.”
The demand of the virgin and ineffective for immaculacy—he would have
liked to dwell on that, but it did not seem the right moment. “And what
did Lord Sombrewater say?” he asked.
“I asked him,” said Fulke, dwelling miserably on the scene, “if I might
ask Lychnis to marry me, and he looked at me for about three seconds
and said: ‘Why, certainly.’”
“I see.”
“He summed up my chances in exactly three seconds. ‘Certainly,’ he
said. ‘Walk straight in,’ as it were. Tell me, you duplicating jelly,
is he right?”
“I think so.”
“My God! you don’t know how it hurts, Ambrose! You don’t feel pain or
anything like that yourself, do you? But I tell you, I suffer. Make
a note of it. Make a note that the infernal fluids that the spring
disturbs in the blood are hurrying from end to end of me with messages
of desire and love. But don’t make the mistake of supposing that I
am possessed by mere lust. The sensations of my heart are like the
sensations of the opening lilac. I am chaste, and I always have been,
and I only desire to worship her, kneeling among spring flowers. She
only thinks I am ungainly, I know. But my soul loves all that is pure
and virgin and flame-like and verdant and too good and lovely in
her for the world. She is just that. She is my Grail, and, in short,
chastity is a bloody obsession with me.” Wringing Ambrose by the hand,
he plunged away.
The moon, Ambrose noted, was now clear of the bamboos, swimming in
the shimmering skylake. He continued his meditations. It was not long
before the sound of a voice singing came to his ears, and presently
Quentin arrived, well satisfied with wine and adventure. He greeted
Ambrose mockingly, bowing and shaking himself by the hand.
“A custom I have learnt in the neighbourhood, O moon-souled one.”
“Can you tell me why it is,” Ambrose asked him, “that a remarkable
filthiness of language often goes with an unusual purity of mind?”
“You mean Fulke? These revolutionary environment-altering,
ideal-state-creating people always seem to suffer from a
prolonged adolescence, just as your opposite, return-to-nothing,
environment-rejecting Buddhist blokes, like Blackwood, seem to have
never had any adolescence at all. Early excess, perhaps, in their case;
late excess in the other. How terrible, Ambrose, are the results of a
wrongly-timed excess!”
“The observation shall be recorded. Don’t wake everyone up when you go
in.”
“I’m not going in. I shall breathe out the wine that’s in me and watch
Fulke worshipping the narcissus in the early dawn. You can go in. I’ll
relieve you.”
So Ambrose left him, with one last look at the bamboo grove and the
floating swan-moon.
13
Days of such journeying followed; sometimes they went in the boats and
sometimes wandered by dizzy paths along the sides of the zigzagging
mountains among groves of spruce, fir, or high up among pines and
slender cascades. The weather was very fair and warm, and the sun
was only dimmed by the shadow of the lapis lazuli crags that towered
threateningly over the path or by the jade-brown walls of a gorge.
At every turn there was some new glimpse of a sun-bathed horizon,
or a gleam of the sails of their boats on the shining, enamelled
stream. White cranes stalked among the emerald rice-fields. The roofs
of villages reposed under the hills, suitably to the contour, and
sometimes there were to be seen the quaint eaves of a temple appositely
jutting out. And sometimes the glistening cascade fell from their
very feet to some green trough in the snowy bloom of cherry, peach
and magnolia far below. The spring weather, the exhilarating air of
the heights, and a special comradeship that, as Ambrose notes, is apt
to accompany such an adventure—at any rate for the first few days—put
them all in good spirits with themselves and one another, and the
ravines and wrinkled, wizard-faced crags not infrequently echoed with
human song. Lychnis usually glided ahead, like a spirit that seeks the
consummation of life in some perfect gesture of the dance, and her
attendant followed with a more deliberate and serene enjoyment. Terence
came next, officially leading, often in colloquy with Such-a-one; and
the rest streamed out behind in ever-changing order, gay in their
coloured garments, like a marching troop of flowers.
They camped one warm night, there being no village and no inn, at the
mouth of an unusually gloomy ravine, where the mountains, towering
above them, seemed almost to meet. The moon was in her third quarter.
Three of the Sages—Terence, Frew-Gaff and Sprot—with Ambrose, were
standing among the reeds by the water’s edge, peering into the
mysterious, moon-dappled mouth of the gorge. Terence, profoundly
stirred in spirit, had received illumination, and his eyes were deep
pools troubled by shining moon-angels. He raised his hands up before
the mountains and exclaimed: “The Last Wall!”
“Meaning,” said Frew-Gaff, “that on the other side of this barrier,
which is to be pierced by means of this gorge, we shall find a sort of
Fairyland of Pantomime Peaches?”
“The land of the Peach-blossom People, undoubtedly, matter-dividing
Richard.”
“Dancing about in pink and purple tights, I suppose.”
“And as real as æther waves, fanatic particle-worshipper.”
“Well, after all,” said Sprot surprisingly, “there may be something
in what Terence says. There are more things in heaven and earth, as
Wordsworth reminds us. There is much that we cannot comprehend, and I
was never one to scoff at what is beyond our understanding.” It was
clear, Ambrose saw, that he had something up his sleeve.
“Let me feel your pulse,” said Sir Richard. “Ah! I thought so. The
spring and the excellent wine we drank at dinner, and something that is
no doubt aphrodisiacal in the night itself, have disturbed your blood.
I detect overtones of moonshine in the vibrations of your nervous
system. The sap is stirring in you; you are beginning to Sprot.”
“Clever—very clever,” replied the little man, with a certain
resentment. He would have shown it more positively, but he knew it was
better not to engage with these men in a contest of words.
“He has had a vision, perhaps,” fluted Terence from the gorge-mouth in
deep tones. “Illumination comes oftenest to those who are simple in
mind.”
“True,” observed Sir Richard.
“Not entirely a vision,” said Sprot, with a sudden falter. Then he
made up his mind. “Look here, you chaps, you mustn’t laugh at me for
once....”
“Go on,” said Frew-Gaff.
“How beautiful is the humility of those who have experienced the
Experience!” exclaimed Terence.
Sprot pointed a finger. “You see Blackwood up there?”
Following his finger, they dimly saw the motionless form of Blackwood
seated cross-legged on a ledge of the mountain. He was in discipline.
“Yes,” they breathed.
“Well, I was up there talking to him, because I thought he might do me
a bit of good, and as we were chatting, about self-control and” (he
coughed) “purity and that sort of thing, and it was getting dark, we
both distinctly saw a man pass riding on a goat, like the one you saw,
Terence, beside the ship. He went down that narrow path very silent and
swift, ghost-like; but what got us both a bit startled was his eyes,
which were what you might call fierce and majestic, if I might put it
so.”
Terence took him by the hand, exclaiming, “Brother!” Then once more
addressing the mountain as “The Last Wall,” he stepped towards the
river and said, to some hypothetical listener, “I come.”
“Stop!” cried Sprot. Terence, knee-deep in the reedy water, turned with
an expression of inquiry.
“There’s more than ghosts in these mountains,” said the man of
business. “Gentlemen, I am not an artist, or a dreamer, or a scientist;
I am a practical man, and as such I keep my eyes and ears pretty wide
open, and perhaps I see things that escape some others. Now this fellow
Such-a-one, and his talisman, and all the tales we’ve heard about this
part of the world—what do you make of it?” He paused, a conjuror about
to produce an idea out of an apparently empty mind.
“Absolutely nothing,” said Sir Richard, looking down at him with
tolerance in his moonlit, distinguished face.
“Nothing, naturally, it being a matter plain to be seen without a
microscope, and hence not interesting to a scientific man. Well, Mr.
Poet Fitzgerald, wade into the river by all means, though I might warn
you against catching cold. As I said, I am a practical man. But there’s
something more than a feverish cold hidden in the blackness of that
split in the mountains, in my opinion.”
He stopped, and the others stared expectantly into the gorge.
“There’s dragons,” he exclaimed, like an explosion.
“Credo quia absurdum.” The voice of Quentin unexpectedly broke the
silence, and Sprot jumped round as if his fancies had taken on a
fearful reality.
“These mountains are certainly full of dragons,” continued Quentin.
“Listen!” They listened, and a murmur of rippling water came down the
gorge. “Do you not hear them drinking and swimming? Do you not realize
that all these past days, as we walked among contorted crags, we were
among dragons, twisting and grinning in their sleep? Look above you at
those gruesome, moonlit shapes among the mountains, and their light,
white breath drifting about the peaks. Look——” He stopped abruptly, and
resumed in a queer tone. “Look, in fact, at that one hanging in the
air.”
They looked and saw a great, beaked bird floating overhead with wide,
motionless wings. Their mouths hung open, and Ambrose ascertained
afterwards that their sensations were rather of astonishment than
alarm. Frew-Gaff was the first to bring his mind to bear on it.
“An aeroplane, by all that’s holy!” he exclaimed.
The bird wheeled round a great circle and vanished over the mountains.
“Then what silent engines!” replied Quentin. “I fear it is the Dragon.
Remember the emblem on our boats. It is clear that we have come here,
by the hand of Such-a-one, in the capacity of sacrifice for some annual
feast. Hence the respectful attitude of the surrounding population.
Sprot will undoubtedly suffer first.”
Sprot was pale, trembling. “The camp!” he muttered. “The girls!”
Taken by his infectious alarm, they rushed back to the camp. All
was well. The blue-clad stewards, under the assiduous tutelage of
Such-a-one, were prostrating themselves forehead to ground. The
others were looking up at the mountains with mingled amusement and
apprehension, as if they preferred to believe that someone had played
a rather uncanny joke. The girls, by their dishevelled hair, had come
from their pillows. This drew Quentin. “A girl fresh from her bed is
among the most intoxicating sights of earth,” he murmured to Ambrose.
Then Blackwood came flitting through the night with a not altogether
well-disciplined haste, asking: “What is it in the sky?”
The matter was pretty thoroughly discussed, without satisfactory
conclusion. “Anyway,” said Lord Sombrewater at last, “dragon or
aeroplane, the incident adds piquancy to the adventure. What do you
say, Lychnis? Would you rather go back?”
She shook her head. “On the contrary.”
“And you, Ruby?”
But Ruby had fallen asleep. “What a lovely morsel for sacrifice!” said
Quentin, looking down at her.
14
Ambrose’s narrative proceeds with the same observant calm; and it is
from the heightened colour of the things he has to describe, and the
heightened emotion of the conversation he has to set down, rather than
from any deliberately enhanced passion of his language, that we derive
our impression of the beauty of the Peach-blossom Valley. He shows
us the lagoons, the valleys, the oyster-shaped rocks and the distant
mountains, and he describes the reactions of his companions, without
intervention of sentimental comment.
It seems that in the misty, serene and summer-promising loveliness of
the next daybreak they embarked and entered the gorge almost without
waiting for breakfast, undeterred, confirmed even in their resolution,
by the disappearance of all the servants, except Such-a-one, who
explained that they regarded the manifestation of the Dragon as a
warning, and would undoubtedly spread the news, as they returned to
their villages, that the whole party had been carried away.
The mists had scarcely lifted from the quivering reeds, and the sky
was still all blue and rose, when they poled across the clear black
water and entered the gorge. There proved to be nothing formidable or
gloomy in the gorge. It was wide and, when mists lifted, warm sunlight
poured down among rock shapes of a dream, throwing queer shadows on
the water. Their passage along these fantastic corridors was slow.
The sails were useless, and the water was too deep for the pole, so
that progress could only be made by the use of paddles and by pushing
on the fissures and protuberances of the rock. But it was not easy,
for the boats were heavy, and either they were continually bumping on
a buttress or coming neatly to rest in an angle, or else one had to
paddle against the stream over an open sheet of water, for here and
there the gorge widened into a mountain-locked lake, and there were
arms of the lake running into green mountain-valleys, and wide bays and
beaches bordered with majestic groves of the tall, springing bamboo.
There were also dragon-hiding pools under contorted cliffs, black
waters and shadowy flights of fish.
They all worked silently with pole and paddle. At last Quentin wiped
the sweat off his face and asked: “Who’ll swim with me in the Gorge of
Dragons?”
“I will.” The voices of Lychnis and Ruby chimed high among the rocks,
echoed by Fulke Arnott.
“Wait a minute,” put in Lord Sombrewater. “Is it safe, swimming here?”
He addressed Such-a-one.
The Chinaman smiled gravely. “The river is warm and sweet and clear,
Excellence. There are few reeds in the channel, and there is nothing
more formidable, by day, than pike. These, however, are voracious.”
“I’m not frightened of fish,” said Lychnis. “I’ll kick them.”
Anticipating her father’s consent, she vanished into the interior of
her boat, followed by Ruby; and Ambrose remarks that, after the silk
robes in which they had for so many days suffered obliteration, the
manifestation of their naked limbs and plum-coloured bodies was quite
surprising. Soon four of the party were in the river—the two young
women, Quentin (whom Ambrose likens to a piece of live rock), and Fulke
(who was dragonish). They sported and splashed round the leading boat
like water-gods, or swam far ahead, dark little heads and shining arms
driving showers of water-drops. Then Lychnis and Ruby, when they were
tired of it, played at being hippopotamuses, like children. That was
on the suggestion of Lychnis; and Ambrose, leaning out of his window
when she plunged, saw her shortened body down under the water, and her
pale pretending face, her still eyes, when she floated up through the
water to breathe. She was followed by the dim mass of Quentin, who had
suddenly appeared beside her from under the boat.
“I nearly had you,” he said, spouting water from his mouth. “Drown with
me, and let us be drifted into some underwater cave, locked together in
a never-ending river-dream.” She made a fox-face at him.
The others swam in their turn. After the bathe they had a meal, and
some strolled in the groves and some slept in the warmth, and later
in the day they went on again, singing, and satisfied with the still
splendour of evening. They spent the night in a creek, among clumps of
bamboo.
It was during the following morning that the gorge began to open out,
as the mountain range through which they had passed declined into a
broken litter of jade-green hills, and they saw ahead of them the first
glimpses of the Peach-blossom Valley. They called it the Peach-blossom
Valley then because the journey came to an end there, Terence having
received the necessary intimation; but Ambrose tries over some other
names, as Willow Valley, and Valley of Emerald Hills, and Valley of
Blue Pines. They were so moved, it seems, by the composed beauty of
the scene that met their eyes as they left the mild opening of the
ravine that for a time they forgot each other’s existence and lived
alone in the delicate solitude of that dreamy landscape. The stream,
deep and slow, wound between willows, and through the willow-screen
they saw verdant lawns with a fleeting glimpse of deer. Beyond, there
were orchards of cherry, peach and plum, so that the valley seemed full
of low-drifting clouds, white and pink; above the clouds gleamed the
smooth emerald of the hills, the blue pines and quaint outcroppings of
jade-hued rock. Birds sang. The stream was fed by little tributaries
that murmured among the lawns. Tributaries and stream were spanned
by bridges of lacquer and here, among groves of bamboo, was the
yellow-tiled roof of a pavilion, and there, sticking up out of the
peach-blossom foam, a sunlit pagoda or a porcelain tower; and once, on
the verandah of a pavilion by the water, they saw a figure seated in
meditation, and once an angler under the willows.
“We are in water-colour land,” said Quentin. “This valley is done on
silk. I fear you others are too gross-minded to subsist here for long.”
It was a landscape of unrivalled delicacy and refined distinction,
a tone-subtlety of pale pink and blue, amber and apple-green, with
harmonious notes of red and, in the hazy sky, of yellow. A soft wind
fanned them up-stream. The valley widened continually, and the channel
of the stream became lost in the first shimmering stretches of a
lagoon. Now on either side they saw other valleys opening out, and
beyond them glimpses of frowning pine-wood under azure and jade-brown
crags. Azalea flamed on the hillsides. Ahead of them the arm of the
lagoon on which they were sailing was studded with emerald islets, and
the oyster-shell rocks rose out of seas of lilies. The hills toppled
curiously, and in the strange perspective the distant mountains seemed
to zigzag and stagger a little—not, indeed, out of harmony with the
general effect of something artificial, composed and deliberately
fantastic in a scene which might have proceeded from the mind of a
classic artist.
Now they approached a part where the hills came right down to the
water, and the lagoon took a right-angled turn between gate-posts
of rock, the valley turning with it in its general design. Rounding
the rocks on their left-hand, they saw before them a reach of water
stretching away two or three miles, and perhaps a mile wide. This lake
also, softly lapping in the all-pervading sunlight, was studded with
islets of tender green; but in the middle of it—as near as they could
judge the middle—there stood a greater island of rock, lifted high
out of the water, crowned with pine-trees, flower-bearing, afloat,
as it seemed, in a water-meadow sewn with a million opening buds of
the lotus. The boats drifted unheeded while they all gazed at the
tremulous, tender beauty of the scene—lapping water; island rock in
lotus-meadow; reedy shores; blossom on emerald hills; beyond, a hint
of snow-capped mountains; and all poised before them, clear-cut and
delicate in a dream-medium of quivering, sun-saturated air.
With one accord they turned to Lychnis, as if to inquire what her
thoughts were. Her face had a flush like the tip of the opening lotus.
“The Dragon Altar on the Dragon Island,” she whispered to Such-a-one,
who was observed to be in the doubled-up position of one who makes
obeisance.
Nor would he lead them in the boats any nearer the rock.
“I’ll swim there,” said Quentin. “There’ll be lanes through the
lotus-meadow.”
“I desire you to be good enough to refrain on this occasion.” Lord
Sombrewater spoke peremptorily.
“Very well,” Quentin replied. “I obey. My heart is chastened, for the
moment, by the supreme and subtle distinction of the water-colourist
who composed this classic landscape, and there will be opportunities
for enterprise at a later date.”
“But where are we going to live?” complained Ruby. “We can’t live for
ever in these boats.”
“What does it matter?” asked Lychnis. “I’d like to go on floating for
ever among the lotuses, dabbling my hands in the lake, until the world
vanished and there was only a single lotus and my contemplation.” There
was profound passion in her voice, and Blackwood turned to controvert
the element of heresy in her point of view. But she woke from reverie
and made some inquiries. “This is perhaps the earthly paradise. Can
we stay here?” She addressed the Chinaman. “Is this valley for us?
May we live in those pavilions and contemplate in those porcelain
towers? Oh, Ruby! did you see the verandahs? What a summer we shall
have—water-parties and lantern-feasts!”
The black eyes of their guide, unreadable as boot-buttons, regarded her
child-like excitement. He bowed. “Nobody will prevent you, in these
valleys, from the enjoyment of whatever you may find at your disposal.
Let us explore the accommodative facilities.”