Landscape with Figures 34 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 34Chapter 33
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 34
Chapter 33
FraserEnglish
The mood which they all fell into, staring out over the Lake at the warm shadows of evening, was broken by the dip of paddles and the simultaneous arrival, with the party from the Yellow Emperor’s Pavilion, of Yuan, Hsiao and Wang, with several slight and exquisite girls. They had a remarkable faculty, those three, of waking from reverie on the tick of an appointment. Lychnis sat and watched as each one, in gorgeous robe of mediæval China, stepped from the dusk of the water, like some mystery of the summer night breaking into flower. Darkness fell swiftly, and an ochre moon rose over the sombre side of the valley. She sat on in silence, white and wraith-like among those shapes of splendour, and they gathered around her, waiting on her will, and there was a consciousness that for all of them for that moment the universe turned about her. Ambrose records that it occurred to Yuan and himself at the same time to announce to her that all was ready, and they stood, the two of them (Yuan in a magnificent robe of deep green, himself in dark amber), looking at one another across her moon-golden head. Ambrose immediately gave place, and stood, so Lychnis afterwards told him, smiling complaisantly at the glimmer of stars that was breaking over the trees.
Soon they were all out on the Lake in a ceremonial barge, towing a cluster of painted boats, and the island became a dark complex in the moonlight, illuminated by the dying reflection of a farewell rocket that shot up from the point. In answer Yuan lit a score of lanterns—orange, violet, and brown—swaying moons that cast unearthly reflections in the Lake. But there was silence among the visitors, a certain uneasiness, because of the relation that had arisen as between Lychnis and Yuan and as between those two and the rest.
But Lord Sombrewater would not permit any breach of etiquette, and presently there was a murmur of talk under the ochre moon as the barge swished slowly through dark red lilies towards the distant sources of the Lake, where they were to picnic by the waterfalls. Two or three of the Chinese girls perched like finches on their favourite, their amusing Quentin, and soon enough there was plenty of laughter at his incomprehensible jokes. Ambrose, sitting beside Frew-Gaff, took opportunity to observe that there was no cause for any reasonable anxiety.
“I suppose Sombrewater is right,” replied Sir Richard. “It is not that I suspect Lychnis for a moment of folly, as you know; but in this world we must be ready to hear of strange things. I know it; but really, if we were told, one day, of a marriage with this Oriental (who exerts an extraordinary fascination, I admit), I should have the creeps. I somehow cannot tolerate the thought of a union between an English girl—a girl like Lychnis—and him.”
The thoughts that arise in the brain, Ambrose observed to himself, are governed, like economic men, by a master of whom they are not aware.
“I have been compelled to give Ruby the same freedom of movement,” added Sir Richard. “She is quite capable, I am sure, of looking after herself. A very sensible girl. We shall have no surprises from her.”
“And as to Sprot?” queried Ambrose.
“He refuses to go.”
“Lychnis has spoken to Yuan.”
“I wonder what Yuan will do.”
Ambrose looked at Sprot, who was showing a certain defiant and stupid courage in face of the danger of staying, which he preferred to the danger of going away. Appositely they passed three white pelicans on an islet. They had monstrous beaks, those pelicans, the creation of Yuan. And Ambrose wondered, with Sir Richard, what Yuan would do.
When they came to the waterfalls among the high rocks at the Lake’s source the moon was shining into the night-sombre valley, and they disembarked and climbed and spread supper in face of the golden and shadowy scene, and the murmur of their talk was subdued to the steady diapason of the main torrent that poured from the crags, not dissonant with the peace and ordered serenity of the landscape. Nothing moved. Far off the island slept, small and brooding. A spirit of peace fell on them all.
“You are philosophic in great comfort here,” observed Lord Sombrewater.
“We are civilized,” Yuan mildly replied. “It is not philosophy to evolve noble and consolatory systems, or systems of despair, among misery and ruin. Those who require to perform their meditations among desolations or desert wastes are merely unable to cope with the claims of a domestic environment. Contemplation is an activity that can only be pursued by people who have mastered Nature. It is only then that pure reality can be seen. In all other circumstances thought is conditioned by the actualities of being, and is directed towards the problem of evil or some antithetic good. Here we have so wrought that we are free to take part in the experience of a reality that is, as it were, behind. Our environment does not hinder us; our bodies claim no attention; we forget ourselves; we cease to be, and what is everlasting rushes in to fill the place of what was.”
“You seek annihilation,” murmured Blackwood.
“Seek your big toe!” replied Wang, going to the foot of the matter with characteristic efficiency. Indeed, as he lifted his right eyelid, he seemed to emit a trickle of some elemental force that could have dried up the cataract. “In seeking death, you seek what does not exist.”
“Perhaps I have been wrong,” sadly admitted Blackwood. “I must seek, I see now, for some deeper life.”
“Seek your eyebrows!” retorted Wang. “In seeking life, you seek also what does not exist.”
“Then what on earth is a man who is all wrong with the world to do?”
Wang opened him with the blade of insight. “You do not get rid of desire by sitting on it. That is what your thoughts of annihilation are—desire gone to mildew. Only they think in terms of annihilation who are extremely conscious of self. Abandon your methods. Desire neither life nor death, and eat red meat.”
“I fear I have sadly misinterpreted the wisdom of the Sages,” Blackwood faltered, and actually the moon glowed in a tear on his cheek.
“This is the beginning, and only the beginning, of wisdom,” replied Wang. “Retrace your steps, give rein to the passions of a man, and in ten years’ time you may take some gentle exercise in self-forgetfulness.” With this somewhat paradoxical statement he seemed to close himself to all outside influence, and the spray of the moonlit cascade gradually wetted his old bald head.
“It seems likely,” remarked Sir Richard, “that Hsiao will presently be altogether forgetful of his body, since the goblet in his hand contains about a pint and a half of your really very powerful and delicious wine, and that is the third I have seen him consume.”
“In the days when Hsiao thought in terms of good and evil, of restraint and excess, he used to be very sick,” Yuan replied. “Rid the mind of purely relative distinctions between drunk and sober, and you will not be troubled with the gout.”
“Thank you for that recipe,” said Quentin.
“Wang Li does not take wine, I notice,” said Lord Sombrewater.
“That is because he requires no aids to contemplation.”
“Then why does Hsiao take it?” asked Ruby.
“He is an artist, which is a weakness of the will, and he needs some attachment to the illusions of sense.”
Lord Sombrewater had been deeply pondering. “It seems to me,” he said, “that there is something to be argued for our western habit of life. You here—I do not speak of the mass of your countrymen, who present, if I may say so, the appearance of an immense swarm of toiling insects—you in this valley have abandoned the world to its fate. You have abandoned, so it seems to me, much that makes men specifically men, and you have become the abodes of great impersonal forces. Sometimes when I talk with you I feel I am talking with the nightwind, or the moonlight, or the spraying waterfall. God-intoxicated, you have given up your organisms to be the dwellingplace of the great unknown principle of the universe, and any pleasure, any joy, that is in you, is its.”
“Precisely,” said Yuan. “Our bodies, to a more or less extent, according to the measure of our renunciation, become temples of godhead. Using your western phraseology, we have come strangely near to Christian doctrine.”
“That is so; but my point is that in the West most of us hold that it is the business of man to forget God, to immerse himself, while he is a man, in his no doubt blind and temporary manhood, so that he may work out whatever the purpose of creation was in creating him. It is the duty of man to erect his ego into a god. He must be immensely conscious of himself and the world, immensely unconscious of the universe. He must be tremendously aware of man and his destiny. In Europe, in America, we have formed the idea of Destiny and Progress.”
“And do you progress?” Wang Li suddenly spoke like a voice coming out of the wind.
Lord Sombrewater began to search in his mind for the answer to that question. But, except Frew-Gaff, the others did not await his reply, and wandered off as their fancy directed. Hsiao disappeared. Quentin attached a couple of admiring young girls and drove off Sprot, who tried to accompany him, with lively pictures of his approaching fate. Blackwood retired thoughtfully to a dark corner alone; Terence was listlessly meditating on Yuan’s aura; Fulke and Ruby gloomily watched to see what Lychnis would do. But Lychnis only sat with two Chinese girls on the cliff-edge at the side of the torrent, and they were all holding out crystal goblets in their orchid-hands to catch the spray drops. They talked in their own languages and seemed well contented with each other. Fifty feet below them the swaying moons of the barge smote strange colours on the foam of the rapids, and the cluster of small tethered boats streamed and leapt astern. Above them dreamed the motionless Wang Li, with the moon on his scanty white beard.
An hour passed, and Sombrewater and Frew-Gaff were still in conversation with Yuan. Ambrose surveyed the party, and there came to his mind, as he watched Yuan, the description Lychnis had made to him of eyes that were oblongs of darkness in a mask of dry gold. He sought, too, for an adequate description of the power that lurked in the disposed beauty of that petal-mouth of dark enamel. He traced the effect of power to the absence of muscular compression, of visible will. It was unconscious and placid, like the dark, fathomless Lake, where doubtless men had been drowned. Then suitably to his thoughts came Sprot, with terror-stricken face, scrambling up the rocks, crying out: “Hsiao! Hsiao the drunken painter! Hsiao is drowned!” Wang Li dreamed on.
The visitors gathered together and discussed what Sprot called the fatality in tones of horror or dismay. Sombrewater sadly but efficiently put questions to the witness. “I saw the body bobbing about in the wash under the bank,” Sprot averred. “A frightful-looking thing.”
“You are quite sure it was ... our friend Hsiao?”
“Absolutely. That fearful, black, waving top-knot. It was awful—awful!”
Presently they turned towards Yuan, who was studying a glistening fern.
“He does not seem to realize ...” said Lord Sombrewater. “He cannot have understood ... I had perhaps better speak to him.” He approached Yuan. “Yuan, my dear friend, I am afraid we have terrible news. Hsiao has been drowned.” Yuan did not look up. “Hsiao is dead.”
“Quick and dead are relative terms,” responded Yuan. “Hsiao is Hsiao.”
“The blow has stunned him,” whispered Sprot, and suddenly found the basilisk eye of Yuan upon him.
“You would desire, I gather, that the party should break up?” Yuan inquired.
“But, my God——” began Sprot.
Sombrewater silenced him. “We would naturally not wish to go on merrymaking,” he said to Yuan.
Yuan seemed to fall in with their wishes. The party descended the rocks in silence, and boarded the vessel with eyes turned from the bank. Wang Li remained. He was in contemplation, and need not be disturbed, Yuan said. They floated off on the current, Quentin and Terence at the oars.
“Will you not extinguish the lanterns?” asked Lord Sombrewater.
“As you wish,” Yuan politely replied.
Lychnis watched. The death of Hsiao did not greatly affect her, she admitted. It was a pity, certainly. In any case death did not seem to be reality to her, and her heart approved Yuan’s demeanour. Suddenly a scream rang out, and Ruby pointed hysterically to the hideous floating corpse. With a shudder Lord Sombrewater turned to Yuan. “We must recover him.”
“Why?” Yuan asked. He did not seem to be able to understand this preoccupation with a trivial event.
