Landscape with Figures 22 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 22Chapter 21
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 22
Chapter 21
FraserEnglish
Next morning there was a council of the Sages. It was very hot, and the Sages lay in chairs on a lawn before the Pavilion.
“The position is as follows,” said the chairman. “I have received an invitation, very much resembling a command, to make a ceremonial call, along with the rest of you, upon the Mandarin who inhabits the rock-island in the Lotus Lake. The invitation, or command—one moment, please, Sprot—is written in English, and the Mandarin’s name appears to be Lung, or, as he kindly translates, Dragon. The question is, Shall we go? Now, my friend.”
“I say, Certainly not,” Sprot burst out. “Who is he, that we should obey his commands? I vote we don’t go, just to show him we’re free, independent Englishmen!”
Quentin whistled a few bars of the National Anthem.
“And in the alternative?” queried Lord Sombrewater.
“Stay here,” replied Sprot firmly.
“But that would hardly be courteous.”
“Why? They’re only Chinese. A lot of dirty, hugger-mugger, gibbering Orientals. But let’s go away altogether, if you like. I don’t want to stay. A place like this, where nothing ever happens, gets on my nerves. I want to go back to England and see a good old flaring advertisement of Beecham’s Pills. You know where you are, then.”
“And supposing,” asked Sir Richard, “they won’t let us go back?”
“What d’you mean?” Sprot went pale all at once.
Lord Sombrewater’s eyes were suddenly on Frew-Gaff. “Will you enlarge that a little, Richard?”
“What I mean is this: One has been sensible ever since we landed of the existence in these parts of somebody with very considerable power. Looking back, one may perhaps see that influence, or power, working even before we landed. And I myself am sensible of a deliberate, forming hand, not only in events, but in our material environment, even in the landscape. More than that—we are living at the generosity of someone who can afford to be very slow and ceremonious in discovering himself. I feel myself that underneath this prodigality of forethought for our comfort there lies an immense sureness, based on power. I feel that it is a kindly power, but it may be otherwise. In any case I am not afraid. I am profoundly interested; and for that reason, as well as for the sake of that high-breeding which I still hope distinguishes some Englishmen, I vote that we accept the invitation, in appropriate terms.”
“You express me exactly, Richard,” said the chairman, with an abrupt nod—“except that I shall have something to add.”
“I think it’s very unfair,” said Sprot, “to those of us who are uncomfortable in this valley. I do protest most earnestly against my surroundings. Who are our neighbours here? Twelve lunatics who drivel all day on a rock; a most suspicious-looking individual who rides about on a goat, which is contempt of civilization; a flock of gibbering servants; and a person who calls himself Dragon and lives on an island in the middle of a lake. I ask you, Can anybody feel confidence in people who behave like that?”
“What do you think, Quentin?” Sombrewater hoped to extinguish Sprot in the draught of Quentin’s eloquence; but Quentin was lazy in the heat, and Europe-sick, and only murmured of some scandalous adventure with a brocaded young lady on a summer’s afternoon in Spain (where he was engaged in the sale of electrical goods). She had consented, he remembered, because of a poetical feeling for the warm and indolent splendour of the afternoon, and there was a whole Spanish landscape in her torrid embrace.
“Interesting,” said the chairman, “but irrelevant. Terence, I think we can anticipate your views—and yours, Blackwood. Your vote is to remain, I am sure, Fulke?”
“My vote,” said Fulke sullenly, “is to stay here, if we must, but to send the girls immediately back to the ship.”
“Hear, hear,” said Sprot.
“Why?” asked Quentin, stirring.
“Because, in my opinion, as far as one of them is concerned, if she doesn’t go away from this valley now she never will. She’ll be bewitched, if she isn’t already, and go against Nature.”
“But how nice for her,” said Quentin, “to go against Nature! It will be an experience. That’s what we all desire, I presume, and find so difficult to get—experiences, strange experiences. People are so unwilling to lend themselves to experience.”
“Ambrose knows what I mean,” replied Fulke, still sullen and hang-dog with thwarted passion.
“May we this once invite you to contribute to the debate, Ambrose?” asked the chairman, folding his plump, capable hands and looking down at his papers.
Ambrose replied that as regards both the girls he could vouch that their instincts were infallible for whatever was in accordance with Nature, complex as the reactions of one of them might be and tortuous in working to a conclusion. As regards what might prove to be in accordance with Nature, it was inadvisable to dogmatize.
“Very well, then,” said Lord Sombrewater, shooting him a glance. “There is a majority for remaining. And in deciding, myself, to remain, let me say that I accept certain risks, as I may call them. All my life I have taken risks, when I felt within myself a certain compulsion, which was itself, perhaps, born of a hidden knowledge of what the result was bound to be. I have never been wrong. I may be wrong, possibly, this time. But do not the indications all point one way, and are we not really compelled to see this adventure out? We are a band of men who have come together because of a common interest. Business, yes—but as well as that we are seeking something in life. Like all Europeans, we are seekers after something vaguely defined. We find ourselves, suddenly, unexpectedly, in a more than merely other-than-European world. It is a world that so nearly resembles our own world that the subtle differences are the more surprising. It is our world in a slightly distorted mirror. Already some one or two of us find ourselves uncomfortable. There is something in the environment that is not agreeable to our conceptions of what ought to be, or indeed of what is. But I am convinced, with Quentin, that we must not desert this opportunity of experience, be the results what they may, until we have searched it to its last end. We must go on. I propose it.”
Ambrose wondered how far Lord Sombrewater, or any of them, would go. Lychnis, he fancied, would outstrip them in searching an experience to the bottom.
There being a majority, the chairman’s proposal was adopted, and the meeting broke up. Lord Sombrewater took Ambrose by the arm and walked with him to the red mooring-raft among the reeds of the Lake. “A somewhat obscure speech of yours, Ambrose,” he said. “I feel you know my daughter better than I do, and better than any other man ever will. I am her father, and my feelings are strong. One day, no doubt, she will have a lover, and his feelings will presumably be strong too.” (He seemed to think it unnecessary, though, that she should have a lover.) “But you are detached, and the more observant. What were you getting at? To what sort of eventuality did you refer?”
“I have not gone so far in my mind as to formulate an eventuality,” Ambrose replied.
“You are an old pike,” said Sombrewater. “You never bite and you will never be caught.”
