Landscape with figures
might spring up there. “It seems funny to say ... I mean, all those men
are a nuisance in one way or another. When they look at me their eyes
are seeing me as a young woman. Daddy, even ... you understand? Fulke
displeasingly, because he’s like a chimpanzee and I find it insulting,
and Sprot sentimentally and disgustingly, and Quentin—rather
excitingly. And Sir Richard, too, Ambrose, though it sounds wicked of
me to say it, but I can’t help knowing. Terence, of course, pretends
I’m his inspiration. Do poets embrace their inspirations? I expect so.
And with Arthur Blackwood it’s the way he sternly doesn’t look at me,
and when I’ve been talking to him he always goes into four or five
kinds of trances. It’s all a nuisance. But you, when you look at me and
talk to me, though I know you perceive every inch and movement of me
and very many of my thoughts, but not all by any means, I don’t mind.
It is so, isn’t it?”
He bowed, and admired her standing up straight and frowning and flushed
against the stem of the young plum-tree. A pink blossom fluttered down
on her.
She held on the way of her talk. “Now you are admiring me and making a
mental note of my shape. You will record, later on, that the sky behind
the blossom”—she turned to look—“is all tender apple-green, because
it’s soon going to begin to be evening. Well, look at me.” She stood
up on the toes of her slender shoes, and threw her arms out and her
head back, so that he could study her breast and throat. He did so, and
discusses the twin blossoms of her, and her whole shape, as a relation
of subtle, slender curves that had a most stimulating effect on the
mind and carried it beyond thoughts of physical beauty to profound
thoughts of an informing creative spirit. He mentions that her throat
was a springing flowerstalk.
“There,” she said at last. “You have looked, and it’s nothing to me. It
would not be nothing if I were in love. I should be glad and happy at
being studied. But I’m glad to be quite assured that I’m not, because
now I know that one day, soon perhaps, I shall be able to ask you
questions—questions I could put to no woman, last of all my mother, and
no other man. You are the only soul in the world, Ambrose, who could
receive from a woman such questions as I shall ask you—the only soul
who could answer them without being silly. Soon—there are things I must
ask you soon. Over there,” she pointed to the distant mountains, now
cold and spiritual in the sinking sun—“over there, perhaps, we shall
find someone, and there will no longer be something missing. There will
be a note found to complete a music. And you,” she added with sudden
malice—“you shall be marriage registrar.”
Then Ruby came wandering back—a lazy, redheaded Juno—and with her hands
she clasped a mass of flowers to her bosom. “These are for the ship,”
she observed. “Why didn’t you come and help me when I called? And what
have you been jawing about? You’re always jawing, you two.”
“We’ve been talking most frightful stupid nonsense,” said Lychnis.
“I expect so,” replied Ruby with unconcern.
Then some of the others came from the ship, and they all gathered
flowers until the silver moon rose out of the fissure of a hill into
the tender, trembling sky. Mist began to form, and drove them back to
the _Floating Leaf_, and it was not long before there was nothing to
be seen but the mist and the moon, and here and there a plum-tree on a
black knoll rising out of the mist, and a flight of wild geese crossing
the sky.
10
Next morning, not unexpectedly, the Chinaman presented himself before
Ambrose in his cabin like a scowling apparition, and proposed, in
respectful and professorial language, that he should accompany the
party. “For,” said he, “a guide to the country, its manners and
customs, its flora and fauna; an interpreter of the language of the
people, and more especially of their state of mind in regard to the
several members of the party; a softener of passions; a holder forth
of the timely coin; and, if need be, one who can remind men at the
appropriate juncture of the unfortunate results that follow unthinking
interference with the obvious will of Fate—such a one would perhaps be
not without use to the party.”
“Are you such a one?” asked Ambrose.
“While striving constantly to imitate the tranquil humility of the
narcissus upon which we gaze through the port-hole, I am one who has
made not altogether unavailing efforts to acquire the technique of such
a one as I describe.”
“Then such a one had better address his further inquiries to Lord
Sombrewater.”
The other bowed and accompanied Ambrose to the owner’s room, where
he repeated his proposal. Ambrose noted with admiration how swiftly
his chief put on an impassivity that did not seem less than that of
the Chinaman. The little expressionless, pheasant eyes met eyes of
unreadable black lacquer, and Ambrose records that there seemed to be a
sort of communication going on, as between animals or birds.
Lord Sombrewater at once confirmed an impression which Ambrose
had himself long since received. “You are a man of considerable
understanding,” he said. “You have, very markedly, the characteristic
visage of a Sage.”
“I have gone but a very little way,” the Chinaman replied, “in
imitation of those who have obtained wisdom, or, more correctly, of
those who have learned to throw wisdom away.”
“You are a deft waiter as well.”
“That, noble viscount, comes of having perceived the inner nature of
plates, glasses, table-napkins and the like. It is in such a purely
menial capacity that I venture to offer my inexpert services.”
“In what capacity were you on the navigating bridge that night we were
driven ashore?”
“I desired to meditate from that exposed place upon the state of mind
of the master when he said, ‘The self-controlled man occupies himself
with the unseen and not with what is visible,’ and when he said,
‘Purify the means of perception, so that by doing nothing all shall be
accomplished.’”
“Oh, well, by the means you mention you have accomplished much—or
someone has.” Lord Sombrewater thought for a few minutes. He told
Ambrose, when later observations had told him a great deal, that he
was convinced the ship had been steered by some sort of energy-beam
from the shore. Then he decided. It seemed to be his method, at moments
in his career when important decisions were before him, to adopt any
plan that offered itself. It is probable that he decided on some
instinctive summing up of facts, or indications, intuitively perceived.
He unreservedly accepted the proposal that the Chinaman should act as
guide. “What shall we call him?” he asked.
“Such-a-one,” Ambrose suggested.
“Good. I nearly made him minute-writer in your place, Ambrose. I rather
fancy him. But we industrial princes can’t have people assassinated
when they are in the way.”
Ambrose considered the point. “I suppose not,” he said
thoughtfully—“not as a rule. But here nobody would ever know if you
waited till we were some way inland. Quentin would do it for you.”
Sombrewater laughed loud and long. “You ignore the possibility of any
affection a fellow might have for you.”
“No, no,” replied Ambrose. “I make due allowance for it in my
estimation of the probable course of events.”
11
Just after sunrise the next day ten figures in the costume of ancient
China (on the advice and with the assistance of Such-a-one) embarked
in a cluster of odd craft that lay alongside the _Floating Leaf_. Each
boat had a windowed cabin, like a gondola. On the sail of each was an
emblem like a flying beast. The Dragon, Quentin pointed out.
Lychnis went first, swaying like an amber chrysanthemum on its stalk;
Ruby followed, her plump, maiden curves voluptuously shown, as she
balanced, in plum-coloured silk; Lord Sombrewater in marigold and
green; Sir Richard in apricot, with a device in black like a system
of coordinates; Sprot in mauve; Blackwood in lilac; Terence in
flame-orange; Quentin in peacock-blue; Fulke in primrose with sleeves
of green; Ambrose, lastly, in misty white. Clustered in their boats
they seemed like flowers in fantastic baskets floating in the stream.
The resentment of the three ladies was soon forgotten in the excitement
of the journey. Indeed, it was not long before the sea and the
_Floating Leaf_ and the thought of their life in Europe seemed to
fall under the horizon of the mind, and they saw only the new beauty
and strangeness of the country where they found themselves. As Quentin
remarked, nowhere else in the world were such refined harmonies of
colour in landscape to be seen or such subtleties of tone. The river
wound secretly and intimately deep among the emerald hills, with their
dragon crags; now between lines of willows putting out a mist of
silvery-grey leaves, a mist deepened here into a tender blue, there
into a subtle rose; now through the delicate umber shadows of some
flowery gorge among jade-hued rocks. Here a bridge spanned the river,
springing from a group of trees and gracefully completing the rhythm of
the valley; there a village nestled by some profound logic in the nook
of a hill; once and again was some glimpse of the forest, or of the
white, slender beam of a rushing cascade that plunged down from distant
fells in harmonious passion. Over all floated white clouds like masses
of blossoms, and it was as if the forces of Nature and the hand of man
had united to suggest a landscape-dream of some profoundly meditating,
non-human spirit, in which man had his place with the plum-blossom, the
torrent and the black-bird on the branch.
They went slowly, by sail and pole, in three boats. Terence, as
mystical leader of the expedition, sat in the first beside Such-a-one.
Quentin took his morning exercise in the second, thrusting with the
bamboo pole, and Frew-Gaff his in the third. They called to one
another, startling coot, mallard and teal from the reeds. Ambrose was
with Frew-Gaff and the two girls in the third boat. Lychnis and Ruby
lay curled up on one side, looking out; Ambrose on the other.
A shout came over to them from Quentin: “How are the maiden skins?”
For answer Lychnis clapped the small hands that lay in her sleeves like
petals, and Fulke, in another window, was observed trying in vain to
catch her eye. Then, at another shout from Quentin, she asked to be put
out on the bank, and met him. It was a rice-field, and half a dozen
blue-clad labourers were at work there.
“I’m tired of standing still,” Quentin observed, strutting and striding
in his magnificent robe, a blur of deep blue that gave emphasis to the
whole riverside scene.
“So am I,” she answered; “my legs want to run.” She picked up her robe,
and her green trousers flashed over the field like a pair of parrots.
Ruby, who had scrambled ashore after her, followed, and her legs
flashed like flamingoes.
“By the Virgin Mother, how beautiful!” Quentin sang out, and chased
them down the rice-field like a great swaying peacock. He caught
Lychnis first, as he came up with her among the bamboos, by her
streaming hair and forced her head back, so that all her face and
throat were exposed to him. She saw the red, smiling lips in the
frizzy beard pouting a suggestion of kisses, and turned her face
sharply aside. “The unburnt child dreads the fire!” He grinned his
contempt at her and gave a vigorous tug at the handful of amber hair.
“Rich, ungathered coral! Sweet, shadowy, unentered cavern of a mouth!
Unfleshed teeth! Little tiger that has not yet tasted a man! Little
fool!”
She stared soberly up at him. “Out of the strong cometh an excess of
sweetness, too luscious pomegranate of a man!”