Landscape with figures
according to the measure of our renunciation, become temples of
godhead. Using your western phraseology, we have come strangely near to
Christian doctrine.”
“That is so; but my point is that in the West most of us hold that it
is the business of man to forget God, to immerse himself, while he is a
man, in his no doubt blind and temporary manhood, so that he may work
out whatever the purpose of creation was in creating him. It is the
duty of man to erect his ego into a god. He must be immensely conscious
of himself and the world, immensely unconscious of the universe. He
must be tremendously aware of man and his destiny. In Europe, in
America, we have formed the idea of Destiny and Progress.”
“And do you progress?” Wang Li suddenly spoke like a voice coming out
of the wind.
Lord Sombrewater began to search in his mind for the answer to that
question. But, except Frew-Gaff, the others did not await his reply,
and wandered off as their fancy directed. Hsiao disappeared. Quentin
attached a couple of admiring young girls and drove off Sprot, who
tried to accompany him, with lively pictures of his approaching fate.
Blackwood retired thoughtfully to a dark corner alone; Terence was
listlessly meditating on Yuan’s aura; Fulke and Ruby gloomily watched
to see what Lychnis would do. But Lychnis only sat with two Chinese
girls on the cliff-edge at the side of the torrent, and they were all
holding out crystal goblets in their orchid-hands to catch the spray
drops. They talked in their own languages and seemed well contented
with each other. Fifty feet below them the swaying moons of the barge
smote strange colours on the foam of the rapids, and the cluster of
small tethered boats streamed and leapt astern. Above them dreamed the
motionless Wang Li, with the moon on his scanty white beard.
An hour passed, and Sombrewater and Frew-Gaff were still in
conversation with Yuan. Ambrose surveyed the party, and there came
to his mind, as he watched Yuan, the description Lychnis had made to
him of eyes that were oblongs of darkness in a mask of dry gold. He
sought, too, for an adequate description of the power that lurked in
the disposed beauty of that petal-mouth of dark enamel. He traced the
effect of power to the absence of muscular compression, of visible
will. It was unconscious and placid, like the dark, fathomless Lake,
where doubtless men had been drowned. Then suitably to his thoughts
came Sprot, with terror-stricken face, scrambling up the rocks, crying
out: “Hsiao! Hsiao the drunken painter! Hsiao is drowned!” Wang Li
dreamed on.
The visitors gathered together and discussed what Sprot called
the fatality in tones of horror or dismay. Sombrewater sadly but
efficiently put questions to the witness. “I saw the body bobbing about
in the wash under the bank,” Sprot averred. “A frightful-looking thing.”
“You are quite sure it was ... our friend Hsiao?”
“Absolutely. That fearful, black, waving top-knot. It was awful—awful!”
Presently they turned towards Yuan, who was studying a glistening fern.
“He does not seem to realize ...” said Lord Sombrewater. “He cannot
have understood ... I had perhaps better speak to him.” He approached
Yuan. “Yuan, my dear friend, I am afraid we have terrible news. Hsiao
has been drowned.” Yuan did not look up. “Hsiao is dead.”
“Quick and dead are relative terms,” responded Yuan. “Hsiao is Hsiao.”
“The blow has stunned him,” whispered Sprot, and suddenly found the
basilisk eye of Yuan upon him.
“You would desire, I gather, that the party should break up?” Yuan
inquired.
“But, my God——” began Sprot.
Sombrewater silenced him. “We would naturally not wish to go on
merrymaking,” he said to Yuan.
Yuan seemed to fall in with their wishes. The party descended the rocks
in silence, and boarded the vessel with eyes turned from the bank. Wang
Li remained. He was in contemplation, and need not be disturbed, Yuan
said. They floated off on the current, Quentin and Terence at the oars.
“Will you not extinguish the lanterns?” asked Lord Sombrewater.
“As you wish,” Yuan politely replied.
Lychnis watched. The death of Hsiao did not greatly affect her, she
admitted. It was a pity, certainly. In any case death did not seem to
be reality to her, and her heart approved Yuan’s demeanour. Suddenly a
scream rang out, and Ruby pointed hysterically to the hideous floating
corpse. With a shudder Lord Sombrewater turned to Yuan. “We must
recover him.”
“Why?” Yuan asked. He did not seem to be able to understand this
preoccupation with a trivial event.
34
The following was compiled by Ambrose after listening to both the
girls. At two o’clock in the morning a lamp still burned in their
bedroom. Ruby, with a garment in her hand, was being addressed by
Lychnis, who still wore her white dress and had not even unbuttoned her
shoes.
“Can’t you see, little idiot, that death’s not important? It isn’t
real. Neither is life real. Life and death are not real. Something else
is, and that something else is in Yuan and Wang Li, and it goes on and
is everywhere, and death doesn’t make any difference. Yuan and Wang are
dead, too. I mean they are not alive in the way we understand life.”
But Ruby was not in an amiable mood. “At any rate,” she said savagely,
“there’s no doubt that we shall go away now from this horrible place.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I heard daddy say to your father that he couldn’t feel comfortable
here again. ‘With those cold-blooded freaks,’ he said.”
“Oh! And did my father agree?”
“I think so. He nodded.”
“Well——” Lychnis was aware of an unwonted nervous disturbance, a desire
to cry, at the secession and hostility of her obedient friend. She
concealed it. “It’s time we were in bed.” She stood up, unfastened her
dress, and let it slide to the floor, bending meanwhile on Ruby her
frowning brows. “We shall stay,” she added definitely.
Her anger had usually the effect of reducing Ruby to sulks or
submission. To-night she became defiant, and replied, looking at her
persecutor with shining, fascinated eyes. (And no wonder, thought
Ambrose, as he pictured the slim, contemptuous figure that had the
matter of subjugation in hand.)
“You think it’s for you to decide, Lychnis. It isn’t. We’ve made up our
minds to consider ourselves in future.”
“You’ve been plotting with Fulke, have you?”
Ruby’s eyes quivered. “Let me tell you daddy thinks so, too. If we want
to go now we shall.”
“Not without my permission—and Yuan’s.”
“Oh, Yuan! Why don’t you go to him altogether?”
The words had slipped out, and with the realization of what she had
said came the end of her courage.
The reply darted at her was, “Get into bed.”
She still had an ounce or two. “I won’t!”
“Do you remember last time you said that?”
Ruby remembered a night when a fury who exuded a sort of elemental
invincibleness had used a slipper on her until she howled for pain. She
did not care for pain.
Lychnis slid in beside her, and switched out all the lights in the room
except the one that hung in the ebony ceiling of their bed. “You hate
it when that light goes out, don’t you?” she asked in a cold voice.
“Every night you shake for fear of the strangeness of this house and
this valley and the tall, plum-cheeked Yuan with gimlet eyes. When the
queer moonlight creeps in through the lattices, as if Yuan were there,
flooding us with some cold emanation of his cold, unhuman spirit, you
lie and tremble. I am going to put the light out now.”
She switched it out with one hand and with the other gave Ruby a pinch.
Ruby sat up. “I hate you! Oh, you beast, I hate you!”
“You’d better ask Fulke to do something about it.” Lychnis spoke in a
ghostly voice.
But all at once Ruby collapsed into her pillow and began violently
crying. “Don’t—oh, please don’t tease me about Fulke!” she sobbed.
Lychnis had an intimation. “What’s the matter?”
For some time there was no answer; then a buried voice came from the
pillow: “I can’t bear you to speak of him.” A silence. Then: “I—I want
him. I love him.”
Lychnis peered into the dim moonlight, silent for a little. Then: “But,
my dear, I didn’t realize it was like that. I am surprised.” She put
her arms round Ruby. “Since when?”
There followed long confidences and comfortings. “And that’s why,”
concluded the afflicted one, “I said I hate you. I’ve been hating you a
long time—because you keep him from me!”
Lychnis smiled in the dark. “But don’t you see? That’s nearly over. You
will have him from me altogether—very soon.”
“Do you really think so?” Consoled, glowing, and happily doubtful,
Ruby fell asleep. When she was asleep Lychnis turned over on her
face and sobbed her heart out. She saw clearly that Ruby would soon
have Fulke—the chimpanzee-like Fulke—away from her altogether. She
didn’t mind that. But it gave her a sense of desertion. It was strange
that soon Fulke should lie in her place, or take Ruby to his. She
would be alone. It was the case that she was losing her friends—even
her father. Her heart sank at the deep silence. The shadow of the
lattice lengthened out on the floor. Outside a spray of leaves brushed
monotonously against the roof of the verandah. Soon she would be alone,
quite alone—face to face with a queer reality—except for Ambrose. The
name floated to her in the silence. Ambrose. Perhaps he was on the
verandah composing. She crept from the bed, crept out on the verandah.
Outside there was nothing but the warm moonlight and the leaves
brushing on the roof. She came back, alone with the spectre of Yuan.
She shivered and lay deathly still, clutching the bedclothes, while the
ghostly moonlight peered in through the lattice, stole in and embraced
her like an emanation from his cold, unearthly mind. The spray of
leaves swished to and fro on the roof of the verandah.
35
Before making an important decision, which Ambrose presently records,
Lychnis suffered several changes of mood of a subtle kind, and she
was able under his expert questioning to describe them, to give an
account of the happenings in the mental, the emotional, the spiritual
sphere—the slight happenings that irresistibly fixed her course.
She woke heavy-eyed. After a long wandering in the hot mists of
early morning by the reedy shore of the Lake and among the creeks
and cliffs and waterfalls, she came clearly to see herself isolated.
Since the first morning when she had explored the valley with Ambrose
and encountered the swans, she alone (Ambrose not for the moment
considered) had made progress in experience. The others, she perceived,
had all abandoned the experience which they had begun, content to
remain on the fringe, to let it go ungrasped, uncomprehended. They
had stopped short on the threshold of the valley, on the threshold
of a dream. She had entered the dream. To her life was yielding up
secrets. She looked back from the dome of an emerald hill and saw the
vermilion roof, with its horns and glittering dragons, of the Yellow
Emperor’s Pavilion, in the crescent of the bamboo grove. They were
all sleeping there, except Ambrose, the recorder of other people’s
experiences, whose white-clad figure she saw in the far distance down
by the Lake. They were sleeping, while she woke and strove with what
life was offering to the mind. She would keep them there until she had
finished, until the valley and its denizens had no more to give, for
it is the privilege of those who wrestle with the stuff of experience
that they should sacrifice the others. Looking up, she saw that a great
mass of clouds in the east was thrusting its arms about the valley. An
encircling wall seemed to shut her off from the nearly forgotten world
of Europe. It made it easier not to go back.