Landscape with figures
right. Ambrose is here. You and I—we are of no use to her.” Their eyes
met in a perfect orgasm of wretchedness, and they glided off, the two
of them, along the tunnel and up out of the water-world into the air
and the sun.
Hsiao appeared to be disappointed. He had given himself up to the
contemplation of Ruby’s torch of red hair that glimmered through the
shadows of the stalk-forest. But, instantly dismissing anything so
painful as disappointment, he addressed himself to a contemplation of
Lychnis. “She has hands like the white opening water-lily,” he was
understood to say. “They would be cool and fragrant to the mouth, and
delicately scented.”
Wang Li tapped Ambrose on the shoulder, and pointed at his
great-grandson.
“A young man,” he said, “not free from the chains of desire.”
“Desire?” queried Ambrose.
“Desire. An itch of the mind; the mind still itching to experience,
to understand, to know. He still takes an interest in things. He
approaches the matter from the wrong angle. Seek first the kingdom of
non-being and the world of appearances will be yours at a later date.”
He notices a good deal for an old man who is permanently unconscious,
thought Ambrose. Peripherally, no doubt.
As for Lychnis and Yuan, they had gone on ahead. They looked as if
they were swimming in a gloom of stalks. One was going now deeper
into the Lake, into a pool of shadows, into a treeless, inter-stellar
space, lit only by the faint emanation of some distant, strange sun.
The empty universe was inhabited by flights of fish, like angels going
on heavenly errands, and also by monstrous shapes of fiendish though
fish-like aspect.
“If these are the work of God,” said Ambrose, “I am hitherto
imperfectly acquainted with the full variety of His resources.”
“Of God,” replied Wang, “by the hand of my great-grandson, Yuan. Some
experiments of his.”
“I must bring my friend Sprot to see them,” said Ambrose, and received
a wink of consciousness from the Sage’s right eye. Old Wang and his two
descendants had a power of divination in the matter of character and
motive that was quite extraordinary. From Wang especially there was
nothing hidden.
“My great-grandson considers,” the old philosopher went on, “that,
while he is taking an interest in appearances, a man may as well
lend a hand in the temporary work of evolution, and add, by reason
of his conscious artistry, a certain distinction, either of ugliness
or beauty, to what sometimes appears to be the product of a bungler
working in the dark. It is the function of the artist to give point, to
relieve, to dramatize. For example——” He pointed abruptly to a glorious
creature that floated past like a sun, raying out veils of splendour,
and again to a slender torpedo-shape marvellously adapted for speed.
“No doubt also you have remarked the rarity of the birds in these
parts, and the perfect colour and shape of the flowers. Yuan’s. Nothing
but a certain indifference to the scientific point of view on the part
of his numerous relations has prevented him from experimenting with the
human species.”
“I am willing,” said Quentin, “to act as his agent, or vehicle, in any
experiments he may make with the human species, provided they are of a
creative, and not of a merely negative, order.”
“How,” asked Ambrose, “does he justify his pre-occupation with
objective existences?”
“He does not justify it,” said Wang, with what might have been taken
for a great-grandfatherly groan; “he boasts of it. It is a phase, of
course. It will pass. In time he will embrace his duty and become a
Sage.”
“In the meantime,” remarked Hsiao, “his activities greatly enhance the
amenities of the landscape and multiply the conveniences of life.”
Rounding a turn in the tunnel they came on Lychnis and Yuan, who were
both gazing upward. High overhead floated the red hull of a coracle,
and on either side of it a paddle, like a web foot, occasionally broke
the surface. “Fulke and Ruby, I have no doubt,” said Yuan. “Lazy, are
they not? Or else urgently discussing something.”
“Don’t let’s bother about them,” she replied. “Go on. Tell me more
about strange things.”
Willingly enough he returned to his subject, and the pair of them sped
on, absorbed in whatever theme they were discussing. Or perhaps it
was not the theme they enjoyed, but the experience—the experience of
sinking through the levels of consciousness and meeting in the deeps
where there is no opposition between this and that.
Presently there was a shaft in the tunnel with a spiral stair. This
the party ascended, and found themselves in the middle of the Lake. A
boat was moored there, and far away among the lotuses was the red craft
that had passed over their heads. Old Wang was smiling to himself with
abandon, and continued to smile until they landed on the island.
“And the joke?” asked Ambrose politely.
“I laughed to see how easily young trees bend to a breeze. It would not
be in accordance with wisdom to resist a main impulse of Nature. Here I
am in agreement with Hsiao. This is the doctrine of spontaneity.”
“Excellent,” replied Ambrose. “But, I take it, if there is any flaw in
the spontaneity the result will appear as indecision?”
“You are right,” said Wang, with a piercing look.
28
Soon enough there began to be a fuss about Lychnis and Yuan. It
appeared that Fulke and Ruby, on their ascent into the familiar world,
had taken a red cockle-shell skiff and spent the afternoon floating
about the Lake, tasting a certain joy in their common misery. No harm
in that. But on landing and returning home to the Pavilion, and on
finding it in the sole occupation of Sprot, they had communicated to
him their fears. These he received with the liveliest satisfaction,
spoke much of the accuracy of his forecasting, and spent the evening
stamping up and down in a resolved manner. When the party from the
island returned, he drew Quentin aside and significantly questioned
him, in the presence of Fulke and Terence, as to the proceedings of the
afternoon.
“What are you getting at, Sprotling?” asked Quentin.
“I am going to make representations to Lord Sombrewater. I am going to
convince him that it is desirable for us to leave the valley without
delay.”
Terence lifted up his face and spoke inspired words: “I have a most
convincing reason for that. This afternoon, in a dream, I saw the
mountains of my native country, and a picture of the whole party of
us eating honey in Innisfree. And there came on me a great impulse
to arise and go there, which I would have obeyed at once had not the
vision clearly said that the rest of you are to go, too.” He stood for
a moment looking into the distance, and his grey eyes were undoubtedly
alight with the apprehension of something not immediately attainable.
“I starve here,” he added, “for the sights and the sounds of Europe.
I am out of touch with the Other Side. There is no veil of misery to
pierce; no heaven to reach, because no hell to reach from.”
“The dirt and the poverty,” said Quentin, “the factories and the
brothels, the advertisements, the bankruptcy courts, the demure women
who know the game of love—I agree. I hate this calm, this perfection.
What you say is true. There are no arcs here, consequently no perfect
rounds to long for.”
“Oh, for some work to do!” cried Fulke. “A world to redeem from the
clutches of industrialism—a State to build—a race to create!”
“I am with you in the last item only,” said Quentin, putting out his
crisp, curly beard.
“At all events,” summed up Sprot with enthusiasm, “we hate this
neighbourhood. We are all for returning to the ship. But first, how to
get rid of this Chink, this Yuan?”
“I could knife him, if necessary,” said Quentin, with a certain genuine
earnestness.
“Why not?” asked Sprot. “Nobody would know. It’s often done in these
Asiatic countries. There are no police here. But first—evidence.
Lychnis must be watched.”
Fulke swung round. “You damned, newt-livered, beetle-tongued,
slug-sticky, crawling miasma! Use Lychnis, will you? Besmirch her
reputation because you’re unhappy away from your kennel? My God! if I
hear her name on your slime-coated tongue one single time again, I’ll
drag your entrails out through your eye-sockets!”
“He’s in a temper,” explained Quentin. “He’s in love—but hopelessly, I
fear.”
Fulke looked at him with a light in his eyes like a sullen sunset
drowning in a tide of misery. “Oh!” he cried, “you’re not capable of
love. You’re not clean men. And I that am clean am of all of you the
most miserable. I hate life!” He broke off, and made for the house. He
met Ruby coming out, and once more a circuit of emotion was established
between them.
“Where’s Lychnis?” she asked, with some anxiety.
The others listened.
“Heaven knows,” he answered. “Can’t you find her?”
On investigation it turned out that Lychnis had disappeared. There was
no sign of her anywhere. “Where can she be?” asked Ruby, with tears in
her voice.
They all stood on the lawn staring over the Lake like men who have lost
a vision. Sombrewater and Frew-Gaff, returning late from a geological
expedition in the mountains, were met with the intelligence by an
almost elated Sprot.
“I knew it,” said the little man. “I have warned you, Lord Sombrewater.”
Lord Sombrewater turned and stared at him so that he began fumbling
with his collar. “You have warned me of what?”
He had nothing to say.
“Be so good as to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Lord Sombrewater went abruptly into the Pavilion.
29
Lychnis, in the meanwhile, was off to the south-west with Yuan in the
Dragon. The stars were on fire in heaven; there was a space of white
light about the moon; far below slid the perfumed forest. She sat
behind Yuan in the hollow body of the creature, and he, slung between
the wings, bent this way and that, wheeling and dipping his fantastic
chariot; and sometimes, when he had climbed the peak of the wind, he
would fling himself forward, and she would see the dark, rushing world
beyond the streak of moon on his shoulders as they swooped on a hundred
miles through the night. Then, after a few moments of rest on some hill
that loomed up out of the void, a soft purr of his mysterious engine or
a beat of the wings and the chariot sprang up and forward like an eagle.
Slung behind him, sometimes touching him, Lychnis felt with her body
that Yuan knew the air, knew all the roads, the precipices, the rapids
of the air. He behaved as a far-travelling bird would behave, beating
along the vast empty ways of the night with repeated crutch-strokes,
or spreading out silver wings along the swift surface of a wind. Or,
if he wearied, the tiny engine was switched on, and they traversed the
sky with the speed of a meteor. Through him she knew the airways and
lent him her movements, balancing and clinging with him on the huge
precipice-face of the winds they were climbing, giving herself without
shrinking to the fearful descent into a huge, opening nothingness.
From time to time she caught a glimpse of his cheek. He threw her
back an unsounded word, and she made noiseless answers with her small
whispering mouth to his ear. He was intent and still, and his stillness
held her, so that in spite of the dark void below she had no fear. Only
the wind and the world moved, and they seemed intensely still in the
midst of the sky, with their small heads so close.
Time had no meaning, and space twisted and wheeled around them. Soon,
very far off, under a slanting beam of the moon, there came, as if the
edge of space were advancing toward them, a glimmering of white petals,
a flush of sacred lilies floating on the dark pool of the sky, lotuses