Landscape with figures
18
Ambrose went down to the lake in the tremulous mists of daybreak. He
pushed his way in waist-deep among reeds, noiselessly, to observe the
habits of water-fowl.
Presently, without surprise, for she had the same early morning
habits as himself, he saw the mist-white figure of Lychnis, with her
skirt gathered in her hands, on one of the many little islets of
rock scattered along the shore. She was bending forward, parting the
water-lily leaves, gazing intently into the depths. He liked to see her
once again in her own clothes, unswathed, a slender, air-loving Lychnis.
He whistled. She turned and waved—negatively, as it were—but after a
minute she turned round again, and slowly began to make her way back,
stepping and leaping and splashing from stone to stone, as if she
walked on the water; and sometimes she swayed and balanced among the
broad leaves, herself an unfolding white lily.
She came to him in the reeds and took his hand. “I didn’t want to see
you at first. I thought it was Fulke or someone. But you looked so
funny, waist-deep in the reeds and all thoughtful, and I thought I’d
come. Let’s go, a long way—at once, in case any of the others come. I
want to go miles this morning, exploring. Shall we?”
She was enchanting, in her slip of a dress and white stockings and
delicate shoes. “How can you run and explore in shoes like those?” he
asked.
“Fast-running things don’t have big hooves,” she replied.
“Quite true. Come on, then, Fawnsfeet.”
“My skirt’s not very wide,” she said, stepping out. It was a very
slight affair, a mere shift, caught in on her right flank, so that
the movement of side and hip was seen, to give the eye an unsatiable
satisfaction. And one observed the moulding of shoulders and bust, and
the young mounds that, as one supposed, a lover should one day cup with
his hands and put his lips upon—a thought to make a man such as Quentin
swoon. And the torso is incomparable, Ambrose observed to himself.
“I felt I couldn’t bear those other clothes any longer,” she
explained—“except sometimes, to dress up. Ruby, on the other hand,
likes them.”
“She’s asleep?”
“Fat with it, the pig. She woke up when I was having a bath out of a
basin and thanked God that she was not a fool. The basin has a design
of willow-trees done on it, and someone fishing. Do you fish?”
“Indeed, yes. Nothing I like better on a summer or autumn afternoon.”
“Well, I’ll fish with you. We’ll go right to the other end of the Lake
by ourselves and fish all the afternoon. There’s some beauties in here.
I saw them swimming past the rock I was standing on. It’s very deep,
too—quite black with depth, and clear—like a black crystal. I sometimes
think it looks more interesting under water, among water-plants, than
above it. Don’t you?”
They made their way along the shore of the Lake, talking hard and
laughing, smelling the water-smell and the early-morning smell.
Sometimes they went on lawns, crossing the deep red or bright emerald
bridges that spanned the rivulets; sometimes they trod among pebbles
at the water’s edge; and sometimes, where the quaint hills came right
down to the Lake, they had to scramble round sheer cliffs, jumping over
the deep water from fragment to fragment of broken rock. At one place
they had to creep under the bend of a slender, splashing cataract; at
another they passed a man fishing. He took no notice of them.
Gently the air filled with the delicate splendours of the risen sun,
and the steep island of rock out in the middle stood clearly to view. A
breeze stirred the water.
“When the wind ruffles the Lake it looks like a meadow of snowdrops and
violets,” said Lychnis. “I don’t see a sign of life on the island, do
you?”
“Nothing but the foliage and the flowers.”
They had come now to a bay with a lawn shelving to the water. Lychnis
stood with her hands behind her, looking seriously at the Rock. “Oh,”
she exclaimed abruptly, “look at the swans!”
A noble flotilla, led by a god-like bird with frowning brows, swam
royally towards them.
“How they stare!” She seemed fascinated. “Are they so different from
us—in their lives, I mean, in their thoughts and feelings? Are we
related to swans, Ambrose? I feel that I know them. I think I know them
as well as I know people. Ambrose”—she bent her brows on him—“I think I
shall ask you questions soon—to-day, perhaps. May I?”
“But yes, my silver birch.”
She considered. “Last night, Ambrose, Quentin kissed me!”
“Oh yes?”
She glanced at him, but her eyes were full of her thoughts. “Yes,
he kissed me. I went back to him after you’d gone. The night was so
strange and exciting. It was full of some promise. The night was full
of some dark, passionate flower, waiting to open if I had the secret. I
tried.”
“And you found it?”
“No; it was nothing to be kissed by Quentin—no more than my father’s
kiss, or Ruby’s, or the peck of a bird—except that his beard was
prickly and he smelt a good deal of wine. That’s why I must ask you
questions. I don’t ask for facts. I know facts. I want to know how it
can ever become so that they don’t obtrude rather unpleasantly on one’s
consciousness. Do they ever stand out of the way of passion, Ambrose?
Is there a desire that burns them all up into nothing?”
He was silent.
“It is possible that you do not know,” she said slowly.
“You must give me time, if I am to answer you fully. The subject is
important, and wide.”
“Do you mean to write me an essay?”
“Not precisely.” He, too, considered. “It will take me some little
while to arrange the logic, the perspective, of my reply.”
“Oh, well; take time over it, if you must. But I’m not often in the
mood to ask you things.”
“In the meantime, I take it you have been disappointed?”
“I only hope Quentin was as disappointed as I was.”
“You won’t be ashamed with him? You don’t mind meeting him again?”
“But why? After all, I disappointed him. It’s for him to be ashamed if
he can’t do better than that. He got nothing from me but my will to
experiment, and I easily made it seem as if he was in fault. He went
off feeling ridiculous, I fancy. But look! they’re asking for bread.”
There was always bread in her pockets. The splendid birds were
clustered at the edge of the lawn, and she ran down and fed them, and
put her slender white hands among their plumage. The god-like leader
dug at her with his beak.
“How he stares! How insolent he is!” she exclaimed. “He pesters me—like
Quentin.”
She retired a little. The great bird followed, bridling and opening his
wings and frowning on her like a Jupiter. She stood still and taut,
fascinated. Suddenly he spread his huge wings about her and laid his
scarlet beak on her breast. She stood in his embrace for a moment,
with thrown-back head, and his beak moved on the slender stalk of her
throat. Then, swiftly and calmly, she disengaged herself and ran to
Ambrose. The swan seemed quite crestfallen. “Look! I’ve disappointed
him,” she said. “For my part, I prefer him to Quentin, but not very
much.”
“You are a great mystery, my water-lily,” Ambrose replied.
They made their way back along the sides of the hills.
19
Nothing happened for three days. A few of the party found that
eventlessness had a faint, queer effect on their nervous systems,
and the pervading scent of musk was enervating. The days were a warm
monochrome. The fiery procession of the sun across the diagonal of the
valley was slow, perceptible and unvaried. One might have been glad
to alter it. The profound peace and happiness of the valley became
even oppressive, even almost sinister for Sprot. The valley smiled
ceaselessly, and, as Quentin said, there is nothing more irritating.
At night, Lychnis told Ambrose, Ruby clung to her in some sort of
irrational fear. Only Lord Sombrewater remained entirely unaffected.
And Lychnis liked it. And Ambrose made observations in his diary.
Then, on the fourth day, there blew up a storm of wind, and the clouds
writhed like dragons, and the distant tiger-roar was heard as the wind
stroked the cracking forests on the fells.
“What music!” Lychnis listened to her emotions, her brows heavy.
“Mendelssohn only,” put in Quentin. “Everything in measure here. None
of your devastating German symphonies—not in these parts; even the
storms are civilized—still less your incoherent Irish harps.”
“I did really begin to feel,” said Terence, “that our environment was
unsympathetic. I haven’t had a dream, still less a vision, since we
came. And I find the Spirits of the Bamboo Forest, though they are
undoubtedly present in quivering myriads, more than a trifle hard
to elicit. But this is better; this is more hopeful. The wind may
bring things. I will therefore retire to my tower, and keep watch
for a messenger from one of those many worlds that are undoubtedly
interfolded with this. If you would like to share my vigil...?” He
turned his great misty eyes upon Lychnis. “I feel it coming upon me
that I am to begin a new portrait of you, in those elaborate clothes,
with your hair so, formally, but half-hidden in veils of bamboo leaves.”
Lychnis declined. She was going out to the forest to hear the great
branches cracking, she said. She and Ruby went to their bedroom to put
on clothes they could walk in—mediæval hunting-clothes.
“Half-hidden! You always have to keep your subject half-hidden,
Terence,” mocked Quentin. “Why don’t you paint her swimming naked in a
mystical bamboo-leaf sea? I should, by heaven! if I were a painter. She
wouldn’t be hidden! I should swoon, painting her.”
“You handle my daughter with your imagination a bit freely, Quentin,”
observed Lord Sombrewater.
“We are all Sages here, I think,” replied Quentin. “We can all embark
on the adventures of conversation, I think, for conversation’s sake,
without being horrified at what we are compelled to say in artistic
justice to our theme. It is true, certainly, that your daughter raises
in me exquisite lusts of the imagination. But if I want to marry her in
my imagination I may, I take it, without asking her parent’s imaginary
consent.”
“It is a pretty point,” said Lord Sombrewater tartly; for, where
Lychnis was concerned, even though a Sage, he would have put
restrictions on the art of conversation.
The girls came back, dressed for the excursion. “I shall accompany
you,” he said.
“And I,” said Sir Richard.
“And I,” said Quentin and Sprot.
“And I,” said Fulke, “if I may.”
Ambrose, naturally, joined himself to their party, as likely to provide
more material for description. They set off, leaving only Blackwood
and Terence Fitzgerald behind.
An hour’s march, mostly along the course of a stream that ran to
the Lake, brought them out of the jewel-like, smooth-surfaced and
quaint-conceited scenery, among which the Lotus Lake and the pavilions
lay, into scenery of a wilder description. Quentin was walking with
Lychnis, Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose.
“Terence should be here,” he remarked. “This is unfinished; this is
romantic.”
“But a bit wizardous,” said Lychnis. “You would scarcely expect to meet
one of his fair-haired Lohengrins—not among these oddly twisted pines
and misshapen rocks. Some strange, gnarled old man, perhaps, with a
staff—some very still old man, with a wrinkled, wicked smile, like a
bit of the scenery suddenly living and peering at you.”
“The mountain air is very bracing,” observed Lord Sombrewater, “and the
wind fortifies me exceedingly; but for a man who makes a regular habit
of six cigars a day the pace is beginning to tell. So much loose rock
about, isn’t there?”
“As for me,” said Quentin, “I am energy, I am vitality itself. I could
tread the mountains flat. When we get up there on the crags I shall