Landscape with figures
our beds any night for the sake of the wealth that’s about us. These
servants—can you trust them? They’re not white men, you know. I kicked
one just now, to show who’s master here. I’ve always heard you ought to
kick native servants. But, as I was saying, all this wealth and not
a keeper, or a policeman, or even a ‘Trespassers-will-be-Prosecuted’
board.”
“It may be the custom of some Europeans to kick native servants,” said
Lord Sombrewater testily, “but I shall be obliged if, in this case, you
will use the extreme politeness they use with us.”
“Oh, certainly, certainly. But, if you will excuse me, all this gold
and tortoiseshell, and the bric-à-brac—I suppose that’s valuable,
too—who does it belong to? It must belong to somebody, I suppose. Or do
you think we might—er—appropriate ... as a souvenir, I mean?”
“I don’t suppose they’d object to your pinching it,” said Fulke. “It’s
clear there’s no capitalist system here.”
“Then you will be happy here?” asked Lychnis.
That brought him up short. “Yes, by the split kidneys of St.
Sebastian!—thoroughly, frightfully happy!” He added to Ambrose in an
undertone: “There’s always the Lake.”
“As for me,” put in Blackwood, “my summer-house down by the Lake is
of marble and has a copper dome. So beautiful are my surroundings
that I would readily stay here for ever, because of the exquisite and
continuous temptation to the senses. But can these servants not be
made to understand that I always have two lumps of sugar in my tea?”
“Sugar?” exclaimed Sprot. “What’s that got to do with meditation?”
“It’s a stimulant to the intestinal acrobatics,” said Quentin. “He
rewards his performing vestiges with two lumps of sugar.”
“And you, Richard?” inquired the chairman.
“It seems to me we are committed. True, it is a nuisance to be without
any facilities—no instruments, no materials, no laboratory—none to
speak of, that is. Yet the place is very pleasant. Not that I am
particularly susceptible to natural beauty——”
“It’s not natural,” broke in Terence unexpectedly. It was noticed for
the first time that he seemed dissatisfied.
“But the air is stimulating, and, as you know, I am something of an
optimist—in short, I particularly desire to find out what it is that
gives these little grassy mountains that peculiar blue tinge, and the
rocks simply shout for examination. Not that I am an expert geologist,
of course. Still, one can record some observations. And I would add
that I think we shall be at peace here. There is an air of happy
serenity that lies on the valley.”
“And you, Terence?”
Terence, in the attitude of Rabindranath Tagore in meditation, raised
his large, grey, poetic eyes. “I confess to a certain disappointment.
Dragons are somewhat outside my habit of dreaming, and the Chinese
gods are not, on the whole, attractive. I find something bland and
pawnbroker-like in their faces——”
“That,” put in Blackwood, “is the everlasting calm of those who have
learnt to despise the world.”
“I find it unheroic and fatuous. Moreover, I dislike the empty and
unmeaning classicism of this Gentleman’s Park. And these rhododendrons
and magnolias—they are so consciously ornamental and Chinese and
matter-of-fact.”
“Still,” observed Sombrewater, “you would not wish to depart just yet?”
“So long as I am allowed to remain in my tower and commune with the
myriad quivering spirits of the bamboo-forest.”
“By all means—if we may eat a few from time to time. I take it, then,
that it’s settled. We remain.”
“I shall remain,” observed Lychnis, “till all’s blue. One need not
starve, or stay out in the wet, for there are houses and servants and
food everywhere. And I would like to say,” she added, with a certain
diffidence, “that the matter-of-factness is only apparent. It seems
to me, Terence, that it hides something—what shall I say?—almost
unbearably passionate, all this classical restraint. Yes, the Pavilion
and the little bridges and the landscape and everything else. These
two paintings, for instance—the Flower-Spray. That empty, palpitating
background. It is more than an evening sky. The flowers—don’t you think
so, daddy?”—she appealed to her father to support her declaration
of faith—“the flowers ... oh, they are more than lovely! There is
something moves in them, behind them. Some great artist did that, with
the calmness of a poet-painter who has feared beauty and conquered
his fear. Then”—she looked round and gathered courage from their
attentiveness—“the Geese. Not very romantic, Terence. But the soul of
Geese is there, dear plump things! What is it Quentin would say in
philosophy? Divested of all accident of appearance. They are whatever
it is that is Goose at the perfect moment of evolution. The life of
the universe is seen through the Geese in that picture. The painter
has not hindered it with some sentimental pre-occupation of his own.
Romanticism looks silly beside that sort of reality. I—I did not mean
to have said so much. But it said itself. It was strange—those two
pictures hypnotized me. Something that is not quite life—more than
life; I can’t express it—moved in them, and words came to me.”
Quentin opened his eyes like a man waking from the illumination of
prayer. “O exquisite penetration of unfolding virginity! These are
the pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove, and we have
heard a voice from the invisible but all-pervading reality of the
universe. Now, I myself formed the same conclusion with regard to the
art of China in the days of my purity—that is to say, when I was about
thirteen. Some echo of those far-off days came to me as I studied my
dessert-plate. This band of creamy pink enamel. This domestic scene in
the centre of the plate. These two girls—what ivory-textured skins!
what lily-petal hands holding the battledores. If the beauty, and by
consequence the virtue, of the girls of this valley is anything like so
fragile——”
“It is very fine ware,” put in Sir Richard. “I would like to understand
their process more perfectly. Not that I am an expert in the
manufacture of pottery. I wonder, by the way, if these cabinets are
unlocked.”
“Obviously,” replied Quentin, “since there is no capitalist system here
and no police. One must lock up things when there are police. There!”
He opened a cabinet and brought out a piece of pottery. “By the
Virgin Mary! it lives. The cellular organization of it lives and the
integument is warm. It blushes under my fingers like a woman’s cheek.
We have here all that’s most precious in the world, including three
maidens.” He dug Fulke in the ribs. “Let us explore the mazy building.”
He led the party all over the Pavilion, discoursing in every room
with infinite learning on some precious object of Chinese art. Before
the ebony bed in the girls’ bedchamber he stood in an attitude of
respectful adoration. Lychnis tactfully withdrew, leading Ruby. He
spoke in a low voice: “And they lie there in each other’s arms, like
shepherdesses in a Boucher. That precious cabinet enshrines them. My
poor Fulke! To have seen, and to have no chance of possessing. But
come away from this holy place. It is not for the likes of us.” They
withdrew, Fulke suppressing a groan.
Finally, in a sort of study, they found a cabinet which contained what
appeared to resemble some kind of listening-in apparatus. “Now,” said
Frew-Gaff, “this is really remarkable.”
16
When evening fell, warm and flower-scented, they emerged, in their
summer-gorgeous robes, from the vermilion-tiled Pavilion, and filed
down towards the Lake. They stood on a lacquer bridge at the head of a
creek and looked silently across the sheen of water.
“Look!” whispered Lychnis, “the Rock!”
It seemed to float before them, in a vapour of evening. The middle and
upper reaches of the sky were clear and summer-foreboding, but clouds
loomed up from behind the mountains beyond the opposite shore, and
opened like large summer flowers.
The Sages went down and stood on a lawn by the water under a huge
flowering tree of unknown kind. Great petals, coloured deep rose,
floated down among them. Lychnis caught one in her hands and inhaled
its odour. Her petal-eyelids closed.
Fulke, roaming disconsolately at large, discovered a mooring-stage of
red painted bamboo among reeds, and there were two or three richly
coloured skiffs, with pointed bows and little masts, tied to it. He
leapt on the raft, and there was an outcry of waterfowl among the
reeds, loudly disturbing the silence. They listened.
“Shall we go out a little way on the water?” He invited Lychnis huskily.
But Lychnis stood quite still, looking at the Rock.
“You, Ruby?” To make Lychnis envious, perhaps.
“I’d rather stay here,” said Ruby, shuddering a little.
Nobody, not even Quentin, responded to his invitation. The evening was
so still. Perhaps a faint awe was on their hearts.
The deep colour faded gradually out, and the light died off the lapping
water. A fish leapt. Night stole over the valley and fell about the
Rock. One by one their hearts misgave them at the experience of beauty.
They quailed before the task of mastering it with their souls, and drew
away. Lychnis only still gazed, and Ambrose studied her.
“Come, my dearest,” said Lord Sombrewater, turning, as he went, to draw
her by the arm.
An ecstatic sigh escaped her. She seemed unable to move. Ambrose and
her father, and one by one the others, turned to see what held her so
fast.
The Rock was ablaze with orange-hued lanterns, as if in the middle of
the water a rhododendron bush had suddenly put forth flowers.
“Almighty, and as we hope merciful, God!” Quentin was spontaneously
upon his knees.
A rocket crept up the black sky, and twenty dying red suns were
extinguished in the Lake. Another and another.
“An extremely ceremonious welcome,” muttered Lord Sombrewater. “Who is
our host, I wonder?”
“Lavish, to say the least,” replied Frew-Gaff.
The display lasted an hour. The culminating device was a vermilion
dragon that writhed and grinned high up above the Rock. With that the
entertainment abruptly ceased, leaving the night darker.
“How shall we find the way?” asked Ruby, with a quiver in her voice.
But two or three servants, with kindly-meant if ghostly foresight,
appeared out of nowhere to guide them, and they went their several
ways through the spectral groves of bamboo, looking back now and then
towards the Lake.
17
Warm-hued lanterns decorated the Pavilion and filled the bedchambers
with a dim, wavering and unreal light. Ambrose retired and composed
his mind. But outside on the verandah he could hear Lychnis and Ruby
whispering and the swish of their robes on the floor.
“I don’t like it, Licky darling,” said Ruby’s voice. “I’m frightened. I
don’t like our room.”
“Well, daddy’s next door, and your father is somewhere close by.”
“I don’t like the place where we are, not by night.”
“I do,” was the answer. “It’s the same valley by night as it was by
day. Can’t you feel how warm and redolent it is?”
“But it’s so strange.”
“I love what’s strange.”
“I feel as if something, someone mysterious, might come and seize us.”
“I should like someone mysterious to come and seize me.”
“Oh, Lychnis, you are dreadful!”
There was no answer. Then, after a silence, Ruby spoke again in a
breathless whisper: “Oh, look! There’s somebody under the trees.”
A pause.
“Silly! It’s only Quentin. How mad of him!”
Lord Sombrewater’s voice broke in from somewhere: “Go to bed at once,
you two.”
Ambrose went out to the verandah in time to see the two silken forms
vanish. But he was quite sure that Lychnis turned and waved to the dim
figure under the trees. Her eyes shone.