Landscape with Figures 23 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 23Chapter 22
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 23
Chapter 22
FraserEnglish
Arrayed in harmonious splendours, they floated, next morning, in a crowd of fragile and fantastic boats of red, yellow and black, through lanes of flushed lotuses towards the Rock. Servants paddled them. Here and there an unknown white bird with crimson beak walked sedately on the carpet of leaves, or a green-headed duck dabbled with his bill among the stalks of the water-lilies. The Rock itself, at the distance of half a mile, covered with foliage and flowers, looked as if some lake-dragon, rising from the fathomless bottom, had thrust up the carpet of lilies with his back and fallen asleep on the water.
“It’s black and mysterious down there, among the stalks of the lilies,” whispered Lychnis. “One would like to be a fish and swim down among oozy roots. It must be wonderful to be a fish and nose about in a reed-world. But aren’t they pure, the lotuses? Like the flushing thoughts that sometimes come up from our black insides.”
“It is remarkable,” observed Quentin from under his canopy, “that a creature with so much in the way of tripes should throw off the dewy cobwebs of imaginations that one so often has.”
“Illusions,” said Blackwood.
“It’s lovely floating on water,” said Ruby. “I’m ready to live any number of lives like this, Mr. Blackwood.”
He firmly shut his ascetic lips, and his eyelids too (notes Ambrose), shutting them down on the bright summer-morning picture of Lychnis, full length and slender in her floating casket of coral.
“You’re not frightened, Ruby?” queried her friend across the separating leaf-carpet.
She shook her head.
But perhaps Lychnis herself was just a little dubious when they came within a hundred yards of the sun-beaten Rock and closely saw its dragon-spine ridge, its burden of pine and fig-tree, and its steep side, with little exquisite summer-houses pat to the colour and design of contour and foliage. And they were all a little silent when, rounding the head of the island, they entered its shadow and paddled under its towering wall. This was on the side of the Lake away from their Pavilion; they were cut off, so to speak, from what they knew.
But the island seemed civilized and friendly enough. The wall of rock, coming up sheer out of the depths of the Lake (one could see great carp and wondrous fish nosing in crannies many feet below), was alive, a wrinkled meditation in stone. Reeds fringed it here and there, foliage hung in cascades from the summit, an arbour or a garden seat stood by some perilous path, under pine, rhododendron or orange-tree. Then, coming to a sheltered bight between two flying and fantastic buttresses of rock, they saw a flight of steps, gleaming and twisting up the cliff like a devil in anguish, and at the foot of the steps, by the water’s edge, the Dragon itself waited courteously on a marble quay to receive them.
The Dragon, a brilliant coloured bird, resolved itself into three Chinese gentlemen. The first, in pale heliotrope, was very old and bright and clean, with blind eyes, scanty white beard, and a hilarious appearance. The second was a shapeless little dump of a man in mauve, darkly pigmented, with black top-knot, little wisp of black chin-tuft, long slits for eyes, and a general appearance of inspired ugliness. The third, in a richly embroidered robe the colour of a peony stalk, was the goat-rider. He was younger and taller than the others, and now, at close quarters, one saw that the clear, penetrating eyes in the face of dry gold were candid, mild and grave—or so, usually, they seemed; but at moments they were more difficult to read than the eyes of the hawk or the leopard.
All three received the visitors with smiles and many assurances of welcome, yet also with a certain well-bred air of aloofness—an air that refused to presume on the willingness of the visitors to know them and at the same time esteemed itself at a pretty high price, modestly, as a fine jewel might. A highly civilized trio.
The tall youth stepped forward. Entreating them to mount the stairs (which they did), making also from time to time, in concert with his two companions, gestures expressive of his desire to assist them in the intolerably steep ascent, he explained that the laughing old gentleman with the scanty white beard was his great-grandfather, Wang Li; and the ugly, poetical gentleman, named Hsiao Chai, his grandfather. His own name was Yuan Ch’ien. His father was making a pilgrimage.
Arriving at the top of the stairs, he indicated a direction. “Not to weary you,” he said, “with the florid and excessive courtesy which is the custom among ourselves, this path leads to my great-grandfather’s summer pavilion, where, begging you to excuse the omission of a number of preliminary calls and other formalities, he would desire you to take luncheon.”
Adopting the same high-mannered air as their hosts, the party moved forward without remarking to one another on the strangeness of this or that—except Sprot, who loudly whispered to Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose, “Speaks English!”
Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose, who had noticed it for themselves, made no sign of having heard him, and it was disconcerting when Yuan, ten yards away, spoke as if he were answering the thought. “Anticipating,” he said, “the surprise which you are bound to feel, I may speak of myself so far as to explain that I have been acquainted with London and many of your European capitals, not to mention the cities of the United States of America. And we have had visitors from England before.”
Sprot paled. Where were those visitors now? In dungeons, perhaps, under the island, or mouldering on the oozy bed of the Lake. One hoped not to see white skeletons, ominously marred, their parts disposed after some plan other than the usual.
“My knowledge of your customs,” continued Yuan, “enables me to be certain that you will pardon what my countrymen and many of my relations might regard as an immoral absence of ceremony. We run our affairs here on lines which are not precisely national, in any sense.”
Wang Li and Hsiao signified approval of this last sentiment. Lord Sombrewater observed to the very old man that he considered the surroundings most elegant.
“We are now,” replied Wang Li, “almost at that invisible centre on which the unity of the whole depends”; and he smiled in a way that Ambrose at first tentatively describes as imbecile.
The surroundings were indeed elegant. The party had come to the house of the Dragon—not so much a house as a walled village of tasteful, if startling, elegance. It was full, as they afterwards found, of relations; but now, instead of entering the stout red gates, they proceeded, by a harmonious approach, amid scenery with the character of a contrived design on a dessert-plate, to the summer pavilion of Wang Li.
“This way,” said Wang, indicating a complicated geometrical harmony of vermilion lines and arcs, perched among trees, a symphony of red balconies and lemon-yellow roof; and they went up into an airy pavilion like a nest of red straws in the pines, sunny, but mysteriously cool. It was on the side of the island where they had landed, and a red balcony hung out over the water. Lychnis seated herself there, on the floor.
“The invisible centre of Unity,” observed Wang. And here they noticed, looking down avenues of tree-tops, that the landscape surrounding the island and the Lake had changed, in the sense that the secret of its design, hidden from every other view-point, was strikingly revealed. From everywhere else it baffled, and perhaps a little chafed, the mind. From here it ever variously satisfied and rested one. And the more one looked at the Rock itself, the more one was convinced by a volume or surface, a space of yellow or blue tiling, a green and grinning monster, a bending cypress or sophora.
There was no furniture in the room, except a few stools, an affair of ebony and enamel that looked like a smoking table, a musical instrument, or an unknown parlour game, and some jars which Quentin at once recognized as products of the Tang and Ming dynasties—in fact, he identified the signatures, with the applause of old Wang Li. “Though,” the old man strangely observed, “the name which can be written down is not the everlasting name.”
“That is, of course, true,” replied Quentin. But he replied absently, for there came in two exquisite and fragile girls, who, after ceremoniously saluting the company, ran like mice, the one to Lychnis, the other to Ruby, and, squatting beside them, began to chatter softly in a shy and welcoming, if incomprehensible, way.
Then, when the visitors had been allowed time to feast their imaginations on the rhythmic wonders of pavilion and arch, marble pathway and bronze dragon, sweeping terrace and dreaming cedar, that sought their attention at every window (or else, according to their natures, wondered what freak could have made himself responsible for this freakish fantasia of unexpected colour and disconcerting line), a light but sumptuous luncheon of pigeons’ eggs floating in soup, braised bamboo-shoots and other things was served, under the direction of a sort of major-domo whose choleric features they at once recognized. Sprot plucked at Lord Sombrewater’s gay sleeve and whispered, but Lord Sombrewater shook him off.
“It would scarcely be polite,” said Yuan at this point, “to leave you in a state of doubt at what must have appeared to be a remarkable series of coincidences. With the permission of my great-grandfather, I will enter upon some details.”
Old Wang Li nodded and assumed an expression of almost idiotic vacancy, murmuring: “That which can be told is not to be compared for excellence with that which cannot be told.” The hideous and poetical Hsiao, who had exchanged with Quentin a number of cups of wine, had fallen into an inspired contemplation of half a melon. Yuan, impassive (and was he humble or imperious, smiling or fierce?—Lychnis and Ambrose could not make up their minds), entered upon details.
“The founder of our line, himself a descendant of the Wu-Lung, or Five Dragons, first lived on this Rock in the time of Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor. It was about the year 2630 +B.C.+, as you reckon dates in Europe. There are, it is true, discrepancies between the dates given in the Bamboo Books and those given by the majority of Chinese historians. In any case the event was not very recent, and in consequence we are a highly civilized family. At times our influence has been very wide, especially in days when the philosophy of Lao-tzu, which was embraced by my family not long after 600 +B.C.+, has been in the ascendant. At other times our influence has been less, but at no time have we lost possession of this island, owing to a faculty long cherished in the family for devising instruments of considerable ingenuity and precision.”
Lychnis laughed almost aloud at the look on Sprot’s face—a look of depressed triumph at the justification of a dismal prophecy.
“It was a member of the Dragon family,” continued Yuan, “who invented the south-pointing needle, gun-powder, anæsthetics, and the flying chariot. It would be idle to pretend that we have not even now at our disposal matters of still greater ingenuity, so that it has for a long time past been the custom to regard this neighbourhood as one where it is not unreasonable to flatter our quite unexpressed desire to enjoy the pleasures of unmolested contemplation. There have, of course, been those who were rash enough to ignore the tradition. Thus, generation by generation, we have built our pavilions, set our hands to these valleys and turned them into our pleasure garden, with summer-houses for the use of the visitors who have honoured our possessions by sharing them. And the desires of our visitors are, of course, flattered equally with our own.”
Hence the respect accorded to the visitors on their journey. Ambrose received a glance from Lychnis.
“And hasn’t anybody ever got away with some of the boodle?” asked Sprot.
“To a very great extent we are unmolested because of the respect which is paid, in this country, to intelligence. And no doubt many suppose that because we spend a great deal of time in apparently idle contemplation no wealth is produced. But visitors have had the curious desire to remove precious articles to their own homes, and they have, as you put it, got away. But that—do I divine the more interior workings of your mind?—was because we did not stop them, as, indeed, why should we?”
“I presume,” said Sprot, suddenly going turkey-cock red, “that one has complete liberty of movement here?”
“Until one transgresses the ordinary laws of ceremony,” answered Yuan.
“What I mean to say is——” began Sprot.
Lord Sombrewater enjoined silence on him, and exchanged explanatory and understanding glances with Yuan. But Sprot meant to assert himself.
“What I mean to say is, that we are British. The might of the British Empire——”
“If I may anticipate your remarks,” said Yuan, “there is, in a sense, no British Empire. There is only myself and a few friends.” Lord Sombrewater resumed his attitude of attentive politeness, and Hsiao transferred his inspired contemplation to the other half of the melon.
“No Br——!” began Sprot.
“It is possible that occasion may serve to demonstrate that we have here facilities for the complete destruction of any empire that ever was, except the empire of contemplative activity. But what have we to do with the making or unmaking of empires? It breaks into the day so.”
“I take it,” said Lord Sombrewater at last, “that you have in your hands discoveries of which you make no use—no industrial use, shall I suggest?”
“Precisely. We use them only for our convenience and for the convenience of visitors—as, for instance, you will, I am sure, agree that our fireworks have an unrivalled variety and brilliance.”
“Marvellous!” said Quentin. “I love fireworks.”
“And we have done much to improve the weather.”
“These discoveries,” asked Sir Richard, leaning forward, “are discoveries of physical science?”
“They are what physical science is hoping to discover by tortuous methods of its own. In the West, if I may say so, you seek reality through the examination of appearances, and you have little sense of it. Here we experience reality and are able to reproduce phenomena, as may be desirable.”
“Indeed! Very interesting,” said Sir Richard, biting his lip. “You have laboratories....”
But Fulke burst in: “My God! these people could build the Ideal State in about ten minutes, and they sit here thinking and enjoying themselves.”
“Those who think do not enjoy,” said Blackwood. “It is in a state of non-thinking that one approaches the final bliss of annihilation.”
“Bliss of your big toe!” said old Wang, waking suddenly. The veils fell from his eyes, and one saw that they were used to looking fixedly at things non-human, that they were full of an almost dreadful humour. “In argument on matters of reality,” he added quaintly, “there are no rules of courtesy.”
“It is not to be thought,” said Yuan, “that we dream of Utopias. We contemplate reality, each of us from generation to generation in his own way. We perceive the inward structure of things, and occasionally, when apposite, one of us may bring up a discovery from those profound fishings, in the shape of a picture, a poem, or a mechanical contrivance. There have been men of our family who saw that it would be spontaneous to destroy their surroundings in order to shape them according to a greater perfectness perceived in contemplation. They obeyed their natures, but it usually happens that we pass in due time (as my great-grandfather has passed) beyond all interest in the seen world, and lose ourselves in the experience of what is beneath all appearance, whether of life or death.”
“Well,” said Lord Sombrewater, “we have already detained you from your contemplative activities long enough for one day. I look forward to many pleasant conversations; and I desire to thank you on behalf of all of us for the very kindly way in which you have looked after our interests for some time past, and for your really lavish provision for our entertainment and comfort.”
The company rose. “Oh, but may I ask one question?” said Lychnis, with timidity. The Chinese girls twittered round her, smoothing her clothes. “Did you—I can’t help wanting to know—did you actually fetch us here, or have we come of our own free wills?”
There was a certain feeling of embarrassment, but Yuan, who had been regarding her with profound attention, replied: “We were informed of your intention to visit Asia, and since then it has been our most earnest desire that Fate would guide you to this valley.”
Lychnis hoped that the rest of their desires in regard to the party would prove convenient, being so difficult to resist. Then aloud: “But supposing you hadn’t liked us?”
“We did like you. We allowed ourselves the gratification of studying your very pleasing appearance, and only the laws of politeness prevented us from listening to your elegant conversation.”
“You saw us!” cried the Sages.
“Look!” said Yuan, introducing Lychnis to a cabinet in the wall.
She looked in, and swung round at him on her hips. “The Floating Leaf! My mother, knitting under the awning! Oh! can you see inside things, too? Or in the dark?” She flushed and frowned, remembering her afternoon with Ambrose under the plum-tree in blossom, when she had given herself to his regard.
“This adds a terror to life,” observed Quentin. “It teaches us to be careful.”
“One can invent many things when it is appropriate to invent them,” said Yuan, “and there are several matters on this Rock that may interest you during your visit to our valley.”
“Excellent!” said Lord Sombrewater, and indicated a desire that the boats should be brought. So they were conducted back to the stairway, but not before Hsiao, rising abruptly from his meditation, had executed in three or four sweeps a painting of half a melon.
“What skill!” exclaimed Terence. “What sweeping brushwork! And really, what a significant melon! One would say that it was the most significant object in the universe. It leads the mind out to those half-realized worlds that are interwoven with ours.”
“It is merely,” said Hsiao Chai, “that I have drawn the reality of the melon. You are a painter, too, I know—a European painter; that is, a painter of superficial appearances.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Sir Richard, “he paints souls, emanations, auras and things.”
“Oh, that!” said Hsiao, with indifference, and they descended the stairway to the marble quay. They floated off in the little boats down water lanes among the lotuses, and once more the three brilliant and bowing figures resolved themselves into one.
“It is a charming dragon,” sang out Quentin to Lychnis; but she pulled out her jade combs and disappeared in a cascade of hair. “Just as,” notes Ambrose, “some slender and savage fairy might vanish in a forest cave to interrogate her thoughts in solitude.” For, as she confessed in due course, her mind was entirely taken up with a picture of that still unexplained island, with its marble quay, its writhing staircase, its pavilions, paths and cypresses, its vermilion theorem in some unfamiliar geometry perched up in the trees.
He tells us that there was no doubt in his mind that their journey to the valley had in some way been compelled by that keen-eyed young man, or by his hilarious great-grandparent, but for what object was at present not clear.
