Landscape with Figures 31 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 31Chapter 30
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 31
Chapter 30
FraserEnglish
Lychnis told Ambrose that the coldness of her reception, when she came back next morning, was a surprise to her. “I was only thinking and thinking of what I had seen and done in the night, of how I felt about Yuan,” she said, “and to find all that anger was horrible. There has been a change. Sir Richard frowns at me. Sprot is delighted, the little beast, because he can impute something to me. Fulke hates me. I prefer it. But our party is breaking up, and it is not like it used to be. I can’t help it. They have no business to interfere when I am going through with an experience.” Her anger rose. “They shall stay here until I have finished with it, or I will stay here alone, or with you. You will never be against me?”
He saw that her mind was in tumult, but by no means altogether because of the trouble she had got into with her father and the others. In any case she had an inextinguishable obstinacy. It appears that she had come back alone across the Lake in a boat, pre-occupied, lovely with the flush of her thoughts, only to find herself when she stepped on shore among grave and resentful faces. Her father was indoors. “Naturally,” she said, “he would never question me before all the others. He and I have always had our quarrels in private.” Ruby, too, was indoors.
It was the incredible Sprot, almost dancing with the pleasure of his accusing thoughts, who put the question: “Where have you been?”
She looked round at Fulke, in her eyes a command that Sprot should die. But there had been a change in Fulke, and he only glowered at her. Quentin answered her appeal with a grin of somewhat resentful amusement. She had therefore to speak for herself:
“Mr. Sprot, I am sorry to learn that you have to leave us.”
“What on earth do you mean?” he stammered. “I am not leaving. Your father has not said so.”
“I have said so.”
“I won’t leave.” He squared up. “And what will you do about it?”
“If I see you anywhere about to-morrow morning I shall ask Yuan to attend to you.” She went to the Pavilion, and they all watched her walking with bent head across the lawn. Then they turned to consider the case of Sprot, who was palely protesting that he would in no circumstances go.
“Especially,” said Quentin pleasantly, “with the country in its present state, when the traveller is more than likely to meet with robbery and violent outrage.”
“I appeal to you.” Sprot clasped, as it were, the knees of Sir Richard Frew-Gaff. But Sir Richard politely regretted that he could do nothing, and walked away.
Sprot exploded. “It’s perfectly scandalous that hard-working, reasonable-minded men should be at the beck and call of a piece of goods like that! Why does everyone pay so much attention to her, I should like to be told. She doesn’t work. She doesn’t produce anything. What right has she to say what shall be? Walking off like a sprig of lilac with a ‘You clear out!’ and all—her and her fat-faced Chink. It’s my opinion....”
“We don’t want your opinion,” said Fulke morosely.
“Yes, we do. You run away and weep with your Ruby,” said Quentin, with a wink to the rest.
Fulke flared. “You shut up, you stinking mud-pump! I’ve had just about enough of your interference.”
“No naughty temper,” said Quentin, and being strong, though a sinner, he immersed young righteousness in the Lake.
A native servant came down with a message that Lord Sombrewater would be glad if Ambrose would step up to the Pavilion. Ambrose therefore left the group on the shore of the Lake, thinking that the harmony of the party was indeed sadly disturbed, and the serene lawns and fine brooding trees disfigured by their quarrelling. Lord Sombrewater was with Lychnis, she moody, he severe. But it was his custom to approach a quarrel with his daughter in a business-like spirit, and he had not allowed the matter to interrupt his eleven o’clock cigar. He motioned Ambrose to a seat by a little lacquer table.
“Good-morning, Ambrose. I want you to know that there are now no restrictions on my daughter’s liberty of movement. She may go where she likes and with whom she likes, and I”—he spoke without bitterness—“I wash my hands of it. I admit that it was foolish to make rules for a daughter who takes as much notice of my wishes as the very solid gate-post of this Pavilion. Facts are facts. She has argued with me, and I think conclusively, that her life is her own. I have fully agreed that her friendship with Yuan is not a matter with which I am closely concerned. We must face the facts, and I see that it is useless to attempt to control her. I want you to convey this to the others. Now, Lychnis, I have done what you have asked. Will you kindly leave us?”
“I never said that you do not come closely into my life. You do. I want you to.”
He waved her away. Ambrose knew that he would never hear in what terms they had quarrelled. But this dismissal, he perceived, was a retaliation on Lord Sombrewater’s part. If she had no place for her father, if she desired to be independent, she would be independent, very much so, and alone; she should feel the cold. Her eyes, Ambrose saw, filled with tears as she went through to her green-and-gold bedroom, and there was no turning on her hips at the door to make a friendly gesture. No doubt she felt that another harbour was closing to her.
“When I made a rule that she should not do this or that, I made a mistake,” said his lordship, and his cigar had gone out. “Lychnis makes her own rules as she goes along. She acts by an inner light, and cannot see why others should have any views on the matter except the views that are so clear to her. No doubt she is right, as maybe we all are, in some deep sense; but it is hard, when she does these strange things, for those who have merely to watch and trust. I find it difficult, Ambrose. I love my daughter. I am jealous, and find it hard to be shut out from her inner life. If I were in her heart, no doubt I should agree that whatever she did was good. I should know what was going to happen, and I should not now be afraid as to where the necessity under which she doubtless acts might be going to lead her. I am honoured, as one should be, for having created a thing that is useless and beautiful ... but not, very naturally, by the thing. What do you say?”
“I say,” Ambrose replied, “that this is false sentiment. Love of a father is one thing; love of someone else is another. You should not be jealous of any kind of love that is not specifically yours to claim. Without jealousy, or, as our Chinese friends would say, without desire, or, as I may qualify it, without the addition of an inappropriate desire to the specific and proper desire of a father, or of a lover, as the case may be, there would exist no clash, or undue passion.”
Lord Sombrewater observed him. “You would not permit anything that might occur to alter whatever the relation between you and Lychnis may be?”
“There is a specific and possibly unique friendship between Lychnis and me which, if I do not allow it to be disturbed by irrelevant humours, can be left to take care of itself.”
“That tells me little.”
“Not having been choked by weeds, it has become a thing by itself, with life and a destiny. I have only to keep it pure of irrelevant desires.”
“You are an extraordinary man. If you would not mind my asking—if anything were to happen, and we left her here in China, would you miss her? Would you, let us say, be aware of a hiatus?”
“The mind,” Ambrose records himself as saying, “is its own place, as the poet so justly says, agreeing with our Chinese friends. Desire perishes, and that which is without desire is immortal.”
“I’m hanged if you don’t out-Wang old Wang!” Lord Sombrewater relit his cigar. Then he suddenly exploded: “And by God! Ambrose, I agree absolutely with Lychnis about Sprot! Out he shall go!”
It was lucky, Ambrose thought, that there should be someone handy to take off the full torrent of Lord Sombrewater’s emotion.
