Part 4

“By the Virgin Mother, how beautiful!” Quentin sang out, and chased them down the rice-field like a great swaying peacock. He caught Lychnis first, as he came up with her among the bamboos, by her streaming hair and forced her head back, so that all her face and throat were exposed to him. She saw the red, smiling lips in the frizzy beard pouting a suggestion of kisses, and turned her face sharply aside. “The unburnt child dreads the fire!” He grinned his contempt at her and gave a vigorous tug at the handful of amber hair. “Rich, ungathered coral! Sweet, shadowy, unentered cavern of a mouth! Unfleshed teeth! Little tiger that has not yet tasted a man! Little fool!”

She stared soberly up at him. “Out of the strong cometh an excess of sweetness, too luscious pomegranate of a man!”

He grinned and led her back, still in captivity, to the boats, annexing the slow Ruby by the way, and as he drove his pair through the field the labourers began to follow and gather in round them, with a kind of singing chatter, like a chorus. Fulke, who was also on the bank, a little shamefaced because he lacked the spontaneity of Quentin and the two girls to run, started forward; but when the little crowd came near the boats, Such-a-one raised his voice to such effect that they sped across the field and vanished like rabbits among the bamboos.

“Odd, that,” said Quentin. “What is his secret charm? The authority lay not in the tone, but in the words. Or did he perform a miracle—The Manifestation and Evanishment of the Blue Men?”

“I believe anything, now,” Lychnis replied. “Every minute I hope to see that dragon flying across the hills.”

Then there was a cry from Terence and a gesture like the waving of a banner.

“He wants to go on,” said Quentin. “He’s losing sight of his Peach-blossom friends.”

So the boats began to move slowly ahead, those four, with Ambrose, following along the bank; and at everything Quentin said the girls laughed, encouraging the flow of his spontaneity. Presently they came to a village shadowed among huge rocks and trees. Variegated ducks surrounded them and a flock of geese steadily testified with outstretched necks to some difficult truth. The village was sombre, mysterious and deserted, but a girl was searching for some object among the pebbles at the water’s edge. She looked up, startled, at the approach of five gorgeous strangers like ghostly mandarins and their ladies, and began to make off with little tottering steps.

“Delicious object!” cried Quentin. “Totter, rather, to these arms and the refuge of this beard, which is indeed a better beard than any countryman of yours can produce. For the beard in these parts is scanty,” he explained, turning to Ambrose, “as you will undoubtedly record.” Then, seizing the girl by the skirt of her jacket, he turned her about and pinched her chin and her yellow cheeks. She screamed. At once from the shadowy houses there was a swift, silent arrival of yellow-skinned relations, and the rest of the party drew together while Quentin, with sparkling eyes and wide smile, faced the crowd. But immediately the voice of Such-a-one came from the leading boat, suavely rising and falling, and once more with mysterious effect, for the gathering dispersed, not, this time, without conveying, through their expressionless faces, some hint of a threat like the threat of geese.

Lord Sombrewater sprang out of his boat. “This is quite enough,” he said, with acid authority. “Lychnis! Ruby!” He pointed, and they returned to their window.

“Funny,” remarked Quentin to Ambrose. “Your Chinaman has some talisman in his tongue. This will be useful should one of you go too far.”

12

Late in the afternoon they disembarked, and Such-a-one led them by a steep road through a village to a solitary inn halfway up the mountain. The moon came up behind the mountain, and soft hues and scents of the spring night stole into the sky.

A warm, stirring silence. The inn slept, and Ambrose kept watch in the road—before him a trembling emptiness of sky, and the fantastic roof of the inn, and a candle burning behind the paper blind. The blind moved, the candle was extinguished, and Lychnis and Ruby leaned out between the bamboo shoots. They threw him down flowers, whispering good-night. Then silence, breathing, scent-laden.

Ambrose was arranging the events of the day in his mind for purposes of record. While his mind worked his eyes were fixed on the moon sailing in a clump of bamboo beyond the inn, like a swan among reeds. His meditations were disturbed, suddenly, by an outbreak of imprecation in his near neighbourhood. It was Fulke. The language he used was like thunder and earthquake among those silent mountains, and seemed to Ambrose to give a distinctly reddish tinge to the sky.

He whistled, and Fulke paused like a nightingale disturbed in his song. Then with a “That you, Ambrose? My God!” he resumed his theme.

“What is it?” asked Ambrose.

“What is it! I’ll tell you, so that you put it down in the records, on parchment, with tender, fragrant little illustrations. What is it! Only this. I asked Lord Sombrewater this evening if I might propose to Lychnis. Lychnis!” He groaned at the name, at the stolen taste of a pleasure never to be his.

“Oh yes?”

“Oh yes! You slug-flesh! You snail-guts! Don’t you want to know what he answered?”

“As soon as you wish to tell me, revolutionary but propriety-observing Fulke. I don’t know if you wish to tell Lychnis as well. That’s her window, you know.”

Fulke looked up to her window, and Ambrose saw in the moonlight that his face was all furrowed with desire and despair. He clasped his hands together. “Exquisite—immaculate, goddess-minded,” he whispered, and suddenly tore at his hair.

Ambrose drew him off down the road, pondering on the word “immaculate.” The demand of the virgin and ineffective for immaculacy—he would have liked to dwell on that, but it did not seem the right moment. “And what did Lord Sombrewater say?” he asked.

“I asked him,” said Fulke, dwelling miserably on the scene, “if I might ask Lychnis to marry me, and he looked at me for about three seconds and said: ‘Why, certainly.’”

“I see.”

“He summed up my chances in exactly three seconds. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Walk straight in,’ as it were. Tell me, you duplicating jelly, is he right?”

“I think so.”

“My God! you don’t know how it hurts, Ambrose! You don’t feel pain or anything like that yourself, do you? But I tell you, I suffer. Make a note of it. Make a note that the infernal fluids that the spring disturbs in the blood are hurrying from end to end of me with messages of desire and love. But don’t make the mistake of supposing that I am possessed by mere lust. The sensations of my heart are like the sensations of the opening lilac. I am chaste, and I always have been, and I only desire to worship her, kneeling among spring flowers. She only thinks I am ungainly, I know. But my soul loves all that is pure and virgin and flame-like and verdant and too good and lovely in her for the world. She is just that. She is my Grail, and, in short, chastity is a bloody obsession with me.” Wringing Ambrose by the hand, he plunged away.

The moon, Ambrose noted, was now clear of the bamboos, swimming in the shimmering skylake. He continued his meditations. It was not long before the sound of a voice singing came to his ears, and presently Quentin arrived, well satisfied with wine and adventure. He greeted Ambrose mockingly, bowing and shaking himself by the hand.

“A custom I have learnt in the neighbourhood, O moon-souled one.”

“Can you tell me why it is,” Ambrose asked him, “that a remarkable filthiness of language often goes with an unusual purity of mind?”

“You mean Fulke? These revolutionary environment-altering, ideal-state-creating people always seem to suffer from a prolonged adolescence, just as your opposite, return-to-nothing, environment-rejecting Buddhist blokes, like Blackwood, seem to have never had any adolescence at all. Early excess, perhaps, in their case; late excess in the other. How terrible, Ambrose, are the results of a wrongly-timed excess!”

“The observation shall be recorded. Don’t wake everyone up when you go in.”

“I’m not going in. I shall breathe out the wine that’s in me and watch Fulke worshipping the narcissus in the early dawn. You can go in. I’ll relieve you.”

So Ambrose left him, with one last look at the bamboo grove and the floating swan-moon.

13

Days of such journeying followed; sometimes they went in the boats and sometimes wandered by dizzy paths along the sides of the zigzagging mountains among groves of spruce, fir, or high up among pines and slender cascades. The weather was very fair and warm, and the sun was only dimmed by the shadow of the lapis lazuli crags that towered threateningly over the path or by the jade-brown walls of a gorge. At every turn there was some new glimpse of a sun-bathed horizon, or a gleam of the sails of their boats on the shining, enamelled stream. White cranes stalked among the emerald rice-fields. The roofs of villages reposed under the hills, suitably to the contour, and sometimes there were to be seen the quaint eaves of a temple appositely jutting out. And sometimes the glistening cascade fell from their very feet to some green trough in the snowy bloom of cherry, peach and magnolia far below. The spring weather, the exhilarating air of the heights, and a special comradeship that, as Ambrose notes, is apt to accompany such an adventure—at any rate for the first few days—put them all in good spirits with themselves and one another, and the ravines and wrinkled, wizard-faced crags not infrequently echoed with human song. Lychnis usually glided ahead, like a spirit that seeks the consummation of life in some perfect gesture of the dance, and her attendant followed with a more deliberate and serene enjoyment. Terence came next, officially leading, often in colloquy with Such-a-one; and the rest streamed out behind in ever-changing order, gay in their coloured garments, like a marching troop of flowers.

They camped one warm night, there being no village and no inn, at the mouth of an unusually gloomy ravine, where the mountains, towering above them, seemed almost to meet. The moon was in her third quarter. Three of the Sages—Terence, Frew-Gaff and Sprot—with Ambrose, were standing among the reeds by the water’s edge, peering into the mysterious, moon-dappled mouth of the gorge. Terence, profoundly stirred in spirit, had received illumination, and his eyes were deep pools troubled by shining moon-angels. He raised his hands up before the mountains and exclaimed: “The Last Wall!”

“Meaning,” said Frew-Gaff, “that on the other side of this barrier, which is to be pierced by means of this gorge, we shall find a sort of Fairyland of Pantomime Peaches?”

“The land of the Peach-blossom People, undoubtedly, matter-dividing Richard.”

“Dancing about in pink and purple tights, I suppose.”

“And as real as æther waves, fanatic particle-worshipper.”

“Well, after all,” said Sprot surprisingly, “there may be something in what Terence says. There are more things in heaven and earth, as Wordsworth reminds us. There is much that we cannot comprehend, and I was never one to scoff at what is beyond our understanding.” It was clear, Ambrose saw, that he had something up his sleeve.

“Let me feel your pulse,” said Sir Richard. “Ah! I thought so. The spring and the excellent wine we drank at dinner, and something that is no doubt aphrodisiacal in the night itself, have disturbed your blood. I detect overtones of moonshine in the vibrations of your nervous system. The sap is stirring in you; you are beginning to Sprot.”

“Clever—very clever,” replied the little man, with a certain resentment. He would have shown it more positively, but he knew it was better not to engage with these men in a contest of words.

“He has had a vision, perhaps,” fluted Terence from the gorge-mouth in deep tones. “Illumination comes oftenest to those who are simple in mind.”

“True,” observed Sir Richard.

“Not entirely a vision,” said Sprot, with a sudden falter. Then he made up his mind. “Look here, you chaps, you mustn’t laugh at me for once....”

“Go on,” said Frew-Gaff.

“How beautiful is the humility of those who have experienced the Experience!” exclaimed Terence.

Sprot pointed a finger. “You see Blackwood up there?”

Following his finger, they dimly saw the motionless form of Blackwood seated cross-legged on a ledge of the mountain. He was in discipline. “Yes,” they breathed.

“Well, I was up there talking to him, because I thought he might do me a bit of good, and as we were chatting, about self-control and” (he coughed) “purity and that sort of thing, and it was getting dark, we both distinctly saw a man pass riding on a goat, like the one you saw, Terence, beside the ship. He went down that narrow path very silent and swift, ghost-like; but what got us both a bit startled was his eyes, which were what you might call fierce and majestic, if I might put it so.”

Terence took him by the hand, exclaiming, “Brother!” Then once more addressing the mountain as “The Last Wall,” he stepped towards the river and said, to some hypothetical listener, “I come.”

“Stop!” cried Sprot. Terence, knee-deep in the reedy water, turned with an expression of inquiry.

“There’s more than ghosts in these mountains,” said the man of business. “Gentlemen, I am not an artist, or a dreamer, or a scientist; I am a practical man, and as such I keep my eyes and ears pretty wide open, and perhaps I see things that escape some others. Now this fellow Such-a-one, and his talisman, and all the tales we’ve heard about this part of the world—what do you make of it?” He paused, a conjuror about to produce an idea out of an apparently empty mind.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Sir Richard, looking down at him with tolerance in his moonlit, distinguished face.

“Nothing, naturally, it being a matter plain to be seen without a microscope, and hence not interesting to a scientific man. Well, Mr. Poet Fitzgerald, wade into the river by all means, though I might warn you against catching cold. As I said, I am a practical man. But there’s something more than a feverish cold hidden in the blackness of that split in the mountains, in my opinion.”

He stopped, and the others stared expectantly into the gorge.

“There’s dragons,” he exclaimed, like an explosion.

“Credo quia absurdum.” The voice of Quentin unexpectedly broke the silence, and Sprot jumped round as if his fancies had taken on a fearful reality.

“These mountains are certainly full of dragons,” continued Quentin. “Listen!” They listened, and a murmur of rippling water came down the gorge. “Do you not hear them drinking and swimming? Do you not realize that all these past days, as we walked among contorted crags, we were among dragons, twisting and grinning in their sleep? Look above you at those gruesome, moonlit shapes among the mountains, and their light, white breath drifting about the peaks. Look——” He stopped abruptly, and resumed in a queer tone. “Look, in fact, at that one hanging in the air.”

They looked and saw a great, beaked bird floating overhead with wide, motionless wings. Their mouths hung open, and Ambrose ascertained afterwards that their sensations were rather of astonishment than alarm. Frew-Gaff was the first to bring his mind to bear on it.

“An aeroplane, by all that’s holy!” he exclaimed.

The bird wheeled round a great circle and vanished over the mountains.

“Then what silent engines!” replied Quentin. “I fear it is the Dragon. Remember the emblem on our boats. It is clear that we have come here, by the hand of Such-a-one, in the capacity of sacrifice for some annual feast. Hence the respectful attitude of the surrounding population. Sprot will undoubtedly suffer first.”

Sprot was pale, trembling. “The camp!” he muttered. “The girls!”

Taken by his infectious alarm, they rushed back to the camp. All was well. The blue-clad stewards, under the assiduous tutelage of Such-a-one, were prostrating themselves forehead to ground. The others were looking up at the mountains with mingled amusement and apprehension, as if they preferred to believe that someone had played a rather uncanny joke. The girls, by their dishevelled hair, had come from their pillows. This drew Quentin. “A girl fresh from her bed is among the most intoxicating sights of earth,” he murmured to Ambrose.

Then Blackwood came flitting through the night with a not altogether well-disciplined haste, asking: “What is it in the sky?”

The matter was pretty thoroughly discussed, without satisfactory conclusion. “Anyway,” said Lord Sombrewater at last, “dragon or aeroplane, the incident adds piquancy to the adventure. What do you say, Lychnis? Would you rather go back?”

She shook her head. “On the contrary.”

“And you, Ruby?”

But Ruby had fallen asleep. “What a lovely morsel for sacrifice!” said Quentin, looking down at her.

14

Ambrose’s narrative proceeds with the same observant calm; and it is from the heightened colour of the things he has to describe, and the heightened emotion of the conversation he has to set down, rather than from any deliberately enhanced passion of his language, that we derive our impression of the beauty of the Peach-blossom Valley. He shows us the lagoons, the valleys, the oyster-shaped rocks and the distant mountains, and he describes the reactions of his companions, without intervention of sentimental comment.

It seems that in the misty, serene and summer-promising loveliness of the next daybreak they embarked and entered the gorge almost without waiting for breakfast, undeterred, confirmed even in their resolution, by the disappearance of all the servants, except Such-a-one, who explained that they regarded the manifestation of the Dragon as a warning, and would undoubtedly spread the news, as they returned to their villages, that the whole party had been carried away.

The mists had scarcely lifted from the quivering reeds, and the sky was still all blue and rose, when they poled across the clear black water and entered the gorge. There proved to be nothing formidable or gloomy in the gorge. It was wide and, when mists lifted, warm sunlight poured down among rock shapes of a dream, throwing queer shadows on the water. Their passage along these fantastic corridors was slow. The sails were useless, and the water was too deep for the pole, so that progress could only be made by the use of paddles and by pushing on the fissures and protuberances of the rock. But it was not easy, for the boats were heavy, and either they were continually bumping on a buttress or coming neatly to rest in an angle, or else one had to paddle against the stream over an open sheet of water, for here and there the gorge widened into a mountain-locked lake, and there were arms of the lake running into green mountain-valleys, and wide bays and beaches bordered with majestic groves of the tall, springing bamboo. There were also dragon-hiding pools under contorted cliffs, black waters and shadowy flights of fish.

They all worked silently with pole and paddle. At last Quentin wiped the sweat off his face and asked: “Who’ll swim with me in the Gorge of Dragons?”

“I will.” The voices of Lychnis and Ruby chimed high among the rocks, echoed by Fulke Arnott.

“Wait a minute,” put in Lord Sombrewater. “Is it safe, swimming here?” He addressed Such-a-one.

The Chinaman smiled gravely. “The river is warm and sweet and clear, Excellence. There are few reeds in the channel, and there is nothing more formidable, by day, than pike. These, however, are voracious.”

“I’m not frightened of fish,” said Lychnis. “I’ll kick them.” Anticipating her father’s consent, she vanished into the interior of her boat, followed by Ruby; and Ambrose remarks that, after the silk robes in which they had for so many days suffered obliteration, the manifestation of their naked limbs and plum-coloured bodies was quite surprising. Soon four of the party were in the river—the two young women, Quentin (whom Ambrose likens to a piece of live rock), and Fulke (who was dragonish). They sported and splashed round the leading boat like water-gods, or swam far ahead, dark little heads and shining arms driving showers of water-drops. Then Lychnis and Ruby, when they were tired of it, played at being hippopotamuses, like children. That was on the suggestion of Lychnis; and Ambrose, leaning out of his window when she plunged, saw her shortened body down under the water, and her pale pretending face, her still eyes, when she floated up through the water to breathe. She was followed by the dim mass of Quentin, who had suddenly appeared beside her from under the boat.

“I nearly had you,” he said, spouting water from his mouth. “Drown with me, and let us be drifted into some underwater cave, locked together in a never-ending river-dream.” She made a fox-face at him.

The others swam in their turn. After the bathe they had a meal, and some strolled in the groves and some slept in the warmth, and later in the day they went on again, singing, and satisfied with the still splendour of evening. They spent the night in a creek, among clumps of bamboo.

It was during the following morning that the gorge began to open out, as the mountain range through which they had passed declined into a broken litter of jade-green hills, and they saw ahead of them the first glimpses of the Peach-blossom Valley. They called it the Peach-blossom Valley then because the journey came to an end there, Terence having received the necessary intimation; but Ambrose tries over some other names, as Willow Valley, and Valley of Emerald Hills, and Valley of Blue Pines. They were so moved, it seems, by the composed beauty of the scene that met their eyes as they left the mild opening of the ravine that for a time they forgot each other’s existence and lived alone in the delicate solitude of that dreamy landscape. The stream, deep and slow, wound between willows, and through the willow-screen they saw verdant lawns with a fleeting glimpse of deer. Beyond, there were orchards of cherry, peach and plum, so that the valley seemed full of low-drifting clouds, white and pink; above the clouds gleamed the smooth emerald of the hills, the blue pines and quaint outcroppings of jade-hued rock. Birds sang. The stream was fed by little tributaries that murmured among the lawns. Tributaries and stream were spanned by bridges of lacquer and here, among groves of bamboo, was the yellow-tiled roof of a pavilion, and there, sticking up out of the peach-blossom foam, a sunlit pagoda or a porcelain tower; and once, on the verandah of a pavilion by the water, they saw a figure seated in meditation, and once an angler under the willows.

“We are in water-colour land,” said Quentin. “This valley is done on silk. I fear you others are too gross-minded to subsist here for long.”