11
JUST after sunrise the next day ten figures in the costume of ancient China (on the advice and with the assistance of Such-a-one) embarked in a cluster of odd craft that lay alongside the Floating Leaf. Each boat had a windowed cabin, like a gondola. On the sail of each was an emblem like a flying beast. The Dragon, Quentin pointed out.
Lychnis went first, swaying like an amber chrysanthemum on its stalk; Ruby followed, her plump, maiden curves voluptuously shown, as she balanced, in plum-coloured silk; Lord Sombrewater in marigold and green; Sir Richard in apricot, with a device in black like a system of coordinates; Sprot in mauve; Blackwood in lilac; Terence in flame-orange; Quentin in peacock-blue; Fulke in primrose with sleeves of green; Ambrose, lastly, in misty white. Clustered in their boats they seemed like flowers in fantastic baskets floating in the stream.
The resentment of the three ladies was soon forgotten in the excitement of the journey. Indeed, it was not long before the sea and the Floating Leaf and the thought of their life in Europe seemed to fall under the horizon of the mind, and they saw only the new beauty and strangeness of the country where they found themselves. As Quentin remarked, nowhere else in the world were such refined harmonies of colour in landscape to be seen or such subtleties of tone. The river wound secretly and intimately deep among the emerald hills, with their dragon crags; now between lines of willows putting out a mist of silvery-grey leaves, a mist deepened here into a tender blue, there into a subtle rose; now through the delicate umber shadows of some flowery gorge among jade-hued rocks. Here a bridge spanned the river, springing from a group of trees and gracefully completing the rhythm of the valley; there a village nestled by some profound logic in the nook of a hill; once and again was some glimpse of the forest, or of the white, slender beam of a rushing cascade that plunged down from distant fells in harmonious passion. Over all floated white clouds like masses of blossoms, and it was as if the forces of Nature and the hand of man had united to suggest a landscape-dream of some profoundly meditating, non-human spirit, in which man had his place with the plum-blossom, the torrent and the black-bird on the branch.
They went slowly, by sail and pole, in three boats. Terence, as mystical leader of the expedition, sat in the first beside Such-a-one. Quentin took his morning exercise in the second, thrusting with the bamboo pole, and Frew-Gaff his in the third. They called to one another, startling coot, mallard and teal from the reeds. Ambrose was with Frew-Gaff and the two girls in the third boat. Lychnis and Ruby lay curled up on one side, looking out; Ambrose on the other.
A shout came over to them from Quentin: “How are the maiden skins?”
For answer Lychnis clapped the small hands that lay in her sleeves like petals, and Fulke, in another window, was observed trying in vain to catch her eye. Then, at another shout from Quentin, she asked to be put out on the bank, and met him. It was a rice-field, and half a dozen blue-clad labourers were at work there.
“I’m tired of standing still,” Quentin observed, strutting and striding in his magnificent robe, a blur of deep blue that gave emphasis to the whole riverside scene.
“So am I,” she answered; “my legs want to run.” She picked up her robe, and her green trousers flashed over the field like a pair of parrots. Ruby, who had scrambled ashore after her, followed, and her legs flashed like flamingoes.
“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.”