Landscape with figures
of rock, the valley turning with it in its general design. Rounding
the rocks on their left-hand, they saw before them a reach of water
stretching away two or three miles, and perhaps a mile wide. This lake
also, softly lapping in the all-pervading sunlight, was studded with
islets of tender green; but in the middle of it—as near as they could
judge the middle—there stood a greater island of rock, lifted high
out of the water, crowned with pine-trees, flower-bearing, afloat,
as it seemed, in a water-meadow sewn with a million opening buds of
the lotus. The boats drifted unheeded while they all gazed at the
tremulous, tender beauty of the scene—lapping water; island rock in
lotus-meadow; reedy shores; blossom on emerald hills; beyond, a hint
of snow-capped mountains; and all poised before them, clear-cut and
delicate in a dream-medium of quivering, sun-saturated air.
With one accord they turned to Lychnis, as if to inquire what her
thoughts were. Her face had a flush like the tip of the opening lotus.
“The Dragon Altar on the Dragon Island,” she whispered to Such-a-one,
who was observed to be in the doubled-up position of one who makes
obeisance.
Nor would he lead them in the boats any nearer the rock.
“I’ll swim there,” said Quentin. “There’ll be lanes through the
lotus-meadow.”
“I desire you to be good enough to refrain on this occasion.” Lord
Sombrewater spoke peremptorily.
“Very well,” Quentin replied. “I obey. My heart is chastened, for the
moment, by the supreme and subtle distinction of the water-colourist
who composed this classic landscape, and there will be opportunities
for enterprise at a later date.”
“But where are we going to live?” complained Ruby. “We can’t live for
ever in these boats.”
“What does it matter?” asked Lychnis. “I’d like to go on floating for
ever among the lotuses, dabbling my hands in the lake, until the world
vanished and there was only a single lotus and my contemplation.” There
was profound passion in her voice, and Blackwood turned to controvert
the element of heresy in her point of view. But she woke from reverie
and made some inquiries. “This is perhaps the earthly paradise. Can
we stay here?” She addressed the Chinaman. “Is this valley for us?
May we live in those pavilions and contemplate in those porcelain
towers? Oh, Ruby! did you see the verandahs? What a summer we shall
have—water-parties and lantern-feasts!”
The black eyes of their guide, unreadable as boot-buttons, regarded her
child-like excitement. He bowed. “Nobody will prevent you, in these
valleys, from the enjoyment of whatever you may find at your disposal.
Let us explore the accommodative facilities.”
So they skirted the margin of the water for more than a mile, stealing
glances at the mysterious island. They passed many a reedy creek, where
carp, great and little, were swimming in hundreds, and green-headed
ducks; many a lawn coming down to the water’s edge, with willow-tree
or small, twisted pine; and at last they came to a mooring raft of
bamboo poles. There Such-a-one made fast, and led his party, in their
gay silks, by lawn and tall grove of bamboo toward the tributary
valleys. At well-spaced intervals he would indicate some pavilion,
designed and placed with regard to the surrounding contours, that was
at their disposal, and the party began to drop members at one or other
of these. Blackwood chose one by a stream not far from the lake for
himself alone. It had a copper-domed summer-house, where he could sit
and meditate by the water. Quentin, too, chose to be solitary, in a
gorgeous pavilion with a verandah and a pointed roof of yellow and
peacock-blue tiles. Next, farther away from the lake, Lord Sombrewater
chose an airy and complicated summer pavilion for Lychnis and Ruby,
Frew-Gaff, Ambrose and himself. Such-a-one bowed as they entered,
saying: “The Pavilion of the Yellow Emperor.” This Pavilion, situated
among lawns within the crescent of a forest of tall and splendid
bamboo, was a puzzle of open verandahs, screens, windows, interior
courtyards and little chambers and closets in threes. The massive roof,
weighted with curved rows of vermilion tiles, rose from a tangle of
upward-curling horns and grotesque monsters to a central and whirling
creature that was both dragon and spasm of forked lightning. The
furniture was exquisite, and in every room was a shrub or a flower—a
lily floating in a cistern or an oleander in a porcelain tub. A faint
scent of musk pervaded. The dwelling was provided with half a dozen
respectful menservants and three girls. There seemed more, because they
were all alike and always coming and going. The men were taller and
finer than those who had left in a hurry at the mouth of the Gorge of
Dragons. The girls, as Quentin remarked, were beautiful toys.
Lychnis and Ruby, with Sir Richard Frew-Gaff, vanished, and Ambrose
gathered from their voices, now near, now distant, that they
were exploring the mazes of the Pavilion. With Lord Sombrewater
he accompanied Terence, Fulke and Sprot on a search for further
accommodation. Behind the Pavilion, deep in the bamboo-forest, Terence
came on a graceful, tile-encased tower like a lighthouse among the
bamboo-leaf-spray, and elected to dwell in the topmost watch-chamber.
Finally, Sprot, entreating Fulke not to desert him, found a house of
lacquer and enamel, like a cabinet for a precious gem. There these two
ensconced themselves, neither very satisfied with the other.
Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose returned to the Yellow Emperor’s Pavilion,
smiling and contented with the graceful fortune that seemed to have
befallen them. Lychnis stood at the door in a new robe of heliotrope.
A deep sash sheathed her hips, and her father, in his pleasure, put an
arm round the slender waist and kissed her. Then, “Where’s Such-a-one?”
he asked. “There are one or two things we ought to discuss.”
But Such-a-one had completely disappeared, so she told him.
“Indeed!” said he, turning his expressionless eyes, with a sharp,
bird-movement, on Ambrose.
15
Ambrose emerged from his chamber at the side of the house and
looked from the verandah across the quivering bamboo-forest. He was
composing his description of the morning’s adventure. Somewhere in the
neighbourhood he heard the girls chattering, and could not quite locate
the sound. Ruby’s voice came, calling him, and when he looked round in
bewilderment there was laughter. Then a lattice was pushed open at the
other end of the verandah, and Ruby put out her head and shoulders. She
had on a new jacket of geranium-red, and her copper hair was piled up
with combs of tortoise-shell. “Come in and see Licky and me,” she said.
“There’s a door on the verandah round the corner.”
He went into their room, making a note of the words “refined elegance”
for subsequent use in describing its shape and furniture. There was
an effect of green, gold and black; for the walls were green, and
the furniture was ebony, with marquetry of brass, tortoise-shell and
mother-of-pearl. A clear sunlight, tempered by the lattices, showed
him all the exquisite appointments. The ebony cupboard, with half-open,
gold-enamelled doors, contained a hint of richly coloured clothes, like
petals within the sheath. A profusion of silken jackets was scattered
over an ebony and ivory commode, and hung on the handle of a lacquered
cabinet and over a screen painted with butterflies. The curtains of an
ebony bed, like a houseboat, were drawn, disclosing a heap of garments
on the swan-white coverlet. Lychnis was seated on a stool by a window,
having her hair brushed (but she had forbidden the use of resin) by
a Chinese girl with black-bead eyes and almost imperceptible mouth.
At her side was a lacquer table, laden with ivory brushes, jade and
tortoise-shell combs, pigment trays in rare porcelain. There was a box
with a brass mirror in the lid, and tiny drawers for lip-salve, rouge,
powder, and pencil for the eyebrows. She had in her slender hands a
gilt mirror. She was keeping her head very still, but she put, with her
eyebrows, an inquiry as to his state of mind. He indicated satisfaction.
“This is very untidy,” he remarked. “How can you be so untidy in this
perfectly proportioned chamber?”
“We’ve been trying on the clothes,” said geranium-red Ruby. “It took an
awful time to make up our minds. I chose this.” She opened her wide,
black-bordered sleeves like a red butterfly, and turned on her hips to
show him the great black wings of her sash. Her cheeks were flushed a
deep crimson with her enjoyment, and he wondered if, with that and the
advantage that her magnificent figure got from the half-revealing silk,
she did not almost eclipse her slenderer companion. He turned round,
with a view to the formation of a considered judgment.
Lychnis, the last golden comb stuck in her hair, stood up, and the
wrap that had swathed her shoulders fell to the ground. She, too, had
a faint flush, knowing, perhaps, that she was offered for judgment; or
had she used, he wondered, a little pigment from the porcelain tray?
She turned slowly for him to admire her. She wore a chrysanthemum
robe—dusky flowers on a ground of pale amber. Her neck—as Quentin
was wont to say, you could break it by clenching the hand—was a
chrysanthemum stalk. The big bow at the small of her back gathered
her robe in and disclosed the slim, womanish swell of her hips that
he had so often tried to describe. She raised her robe slightly, to
display trousers of some texture crisp and brown, like the petals of
the flower. “And these comic shoes.” She pointed to them, and walked
towards him, putting her feet one before the other in tiny steps.
“Must we walk like that? Ruby’s beautiful when she does it. Am I?”
They were lovely, and friendly, those two young women. He watched
them both imitate the swaying and delicate walk of the Chinese girls,
up and down the room, while the maid put away the clothes, paying no
attention. “You’ll turn into Chineses,” he warned them.
They both sprang at him with cries of “Never!” and pushed and pulled
him from the room and along a corridor just to show what they could do.
But Lychnis abruptly desisted. “Hark! What’s that?”
It was a carillon of silver bells pealing in a tower of porcelain,
calling the Sages from their several retreats to a meal in the Yellow
Emperor’s Pavilion. Lord Sombrewater and Sir Richard Frew-Gaff, clothed
respectively in sunset crimson and turquoise-blue, were already seated
in a chamber more sumptuous, but not less elegant, than the bedchamber.
It was furnished with rich tables, and flowers, and great jars of
finest blue-and-white porcelain. The other Sages arriving, changed
likewise into robes of the most brilliant hue, refreshment was served
in the shape of fragrant tea, with a dish of cooked bamboo shoots and
other more doubtful ingredients.
“I shan’t examine this,” said Quentin. “It smells good, and I’ll risk
the transformation of my lusts that may result from ingesting the
cellular composition of beetles and slugs.”
“An insubstantial diet will do you no harm,” said Sir Richard. “If I
were to drain you of blood and transfuse the sap of a vegetable, it
might render your temperament less—shall I say?—ardent.”
“Ah, no! You’d find me doting on a cabbage, or in dalliance with a
brussels sprout.”
“You approve of our surroundings, I take it?” observed Lord Sombrewater.
“We are in the garden of an emperor.”
“Shall we stay here? What are the views of the Sages? It is pleasant,
certainly, beyond anything I have ever seen; but one or two
circumstances are a little mysterious.”
“It passes my comprehension,” said Sprot, “how anyone owning all
this wealth can leave it absolutely unguarded. We may be murdered in