44
ONCE more Ambrose is sitting with Lychnis on the verandah. It is a warm autumn afternoon, and they are taking pleasure in the sunset glory of aster, dahlia and chrysanthemum that surrounds the Pavilion, and in the golden cloud-rack of leaves that now drifts on the lawn.
She came back, he tells us, so self-possessed, this once moody and relentless fairy. She had a certain calm dignity, unself-conscious and convincing—because, as Wang told her, she had lost her self in what is more authoritative than self; she had opened the way and permitted in herself the play of forces that brook no questioning, at once terrible and lovely.
She was perched on the rail of the verandah, clinging to a post, in a fit of meditation, and sometimes a leaf drifted against her cheek or shoulder.
“I realize now,” she said, “how completely I had forgotten you all. I do really think you had passed—all of you—utterly out of my mind. It is surprising. It would have been quite easy never to see you—any of you—again.”
“So loosely,” remarked Ambrose, “are people bound to one another! It is true—many men might be one’s father, or one’s husband. It is a habit formed accidentally.”
“I find it odd that my lot should have fallen with just you and the others.”
“You do not find it disturbing that human relationships should be so fluid, sentiment so flimsy, and the universe so heedless?”
“I find it beautiful. I should hate the world, now, if it were not all death and change. I have no use for anything that is not inexorable. I like the universe to stare pitilessly—with eyes resembling Yuan’s. It is only the cold and the passionless that I can admire. Ambrose, fancy a universe all mushy with love, like an over-ripe pear!”
“Excellent!” Ambrose remembers being conscious of enthusiasm in his voice, more surprisingly of a flush on the flower-texture of her face.
“Yuan helped me to enter the mind of tiger and eagle, to become the tiger and the eagle, and I found in them what I now find in myself, something I can’t describe—something immense. I have been a tree, too, you know, and a lotus, and a beetle. What I found in all of them Yuan has now become. He has given himself entirely to the contemplation of it in its nakedness, untransformed into bird, or mountain, or man. I did not want to follow his example, I suppose, because there are things I may find amusing in the world. Wang says that, having found the kingdom of the unnameable, the world has been given to me as well, and this is in order. But I think I have still just a little farther to go. The peach hasn’t quite done its work, and when I’m entirely dead perhaps I shall be like Yuan.”
Lord Sombrewater came along the verandah and sat down beside Ambrose. His eye was more pheasant-like than ever. He was glum. Lychnis had given him the outline of her story, and informed him of her willingness to go where he liked, but she had not given him certain information. He could have got it with a question, but he did not care at any time to get his information by direct questioning, and this was a question somewhat difficult to put.
Ambrose replied to her thoughts.
“There are people,” he observed, “so securely in alliance with our friend Yuan’s unnameable that they do not fear to step down into the world and drink deeply of its pleasures.”
“You, too, have tasted—” she began, and relapsed—refused, swiftly, to meet him in a common experience. “There are so many ways of approaching what it is I desire to say,” she continued, “and no words for it. But it really doesn’t matter. The chief thing is that nothing any longer matters, except the continual experience. One is so at peace.”
“The peace of God,” Ambrose interjected.
“I suppose one must say ‘God.’ But there is a great danger of being misunderstood.”
“This experience,” he observed, “is enjoyed in various forms by many people, yet it is one experience. The truth is one truth, expressed with modifications due to climatic or other circumstances. It is named after the system of Jesus, or Mithra, or Buddha. There is the Holy Ghost, or the intent contemplation; the paradise of Nirvana or the Holy City, with tastefully-jewelled gates—a hundred different expressions of the same thing. There is a form of the experience marketed by priests, another by wine-merchants at twelve and sixpence the bottle, and this has the advantage that it augments the national revenue. But whether the experience in itself has anything at all to do with reality, we are not in a position to decide.”
“I am glad you can laugh at it,” she said, with friendliness. “It is the mark of those elected to salvation that they can laugh at themselves. Those who have known truth laugh a lot—like Wang. I have learnt that.”
“You have learnt a great deal, Lychnis.” Lord Sombrewater entered the conversation. “Does there remain any region of experience which you have not understood?”
Ambrose perceived from her enigmatic smile that she understood her father’s question. She did not seem willing to give an unequivocal answer. Lord Sombrewater had no hesitation in questioning her intimately before him, and it would have been in accordance with her own relation with him to reply plainly. But she did not answer plainly. He noted that there had been some change, and wondered whether he should not seek an opportunity to withdraw.
“There is no region of experience that I have not understood,” she replied.
“Upon exploration, I presume?” queried Lord Sombrewater.
“It is a question whether a thing that has not been physically experienced can be understood,” she murmured.
He turned his head away in swift impatience.
“Hallo! hallo!” A stinging shout travelled to them across the lawn. It was Quentin coming back from an expedition with Fulke Arnott and Ruby. Seeing Lychnis on the verandah, he rushed over the lawn like a bear, leapt the rail, put his arm round her, where she clung to the post, and kissed her full on the lips. Then he drew back and gazed at her, saying reverently: “The Holy Spirit returns. The morning dew is once more seen on the flowers. The lamp of heaven shines, banishing for ever the dissensions of this little band and, as we hope, the bad temper of our host. If you require a husband, command me——” He paused for her reply, and Lord Sombrewater remained still, shading his face with a plump, capable hand. She shook her head, laughing. “Then I will be your virgin for ever,” he exclaimed.
But she looked at him so that he began to laugh, and laughed until he shook the verandah.
“Tell me,” she desired him, “if I answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a plain question, would you believe that I told truth?”
“I should never listen to what you said,” he replied, “but to you speaking. There is no question of believing you. There is that in you, I perceive, that cannot disguise itself with lies. But permit me, once more, before I resign the world. We have not seen that autumn gold-brown hair for so many days, those shadows like mauve asters—or are they heliotrope?—those copper lights, those dahlia-red lips, that delicious cavern, those little white teeth....” He kissed her again. “And now,” prayerfully folding his hands, “to that All which is more than Nothing, that Nothing which is less than Everything.” He looked sideways at her.
“You are a restless man,” she said, smiling. “You have no peace in you.”
Ruby and Fulke Arnott followed on to the verandah, he sheep-faced, she with her radiance a little qualified.
“The wedded pair,” Quentin announced—“at least, not yet wedded in time. A marriage has been imagined, let us say, and will shortly be achieved in matter, between—and so forth. Rejecting Achilles, Venus prefers and elevates the chimpanzee. I am envious. I have no morsel.”
Fulke glowered, powerless to silence him. He would not look in the direction of Lychnis. Ruby, on the whole, tended to behave as if it did not matter what Lychnis had done, since it was Lychnis who had done it, and always provided that Lychnis made no attempt to recapture the affections of Fulke. But her impulses were checked by the somewhat cold behaviour of her father, who presently came out on the verandah.
“Good-afternoon, Lychnis,” he said. “Back again?”
She smiled at him and said nothing.
“To-morrow we depart, early in the morning.” Once more Lord Sombrewater entered the conversation, abruptly. He glanced at his daughter, Ambrose saw, for the effect of his words. She displayed nothing but an infrangible placidity.
“Thank God!” muttered Fulke. “Back to dear, dirty old Europe, with all there is to fight in it. By the tripes of St. Francis——”
“Fulke, dear!” It was Ruby who remonstrated.
“I forgot, darling.” He glanced at Lychnis, and went scarlet. “What I mean is, I long sometimes for the good old fight against the forces of capital....”
Lychnis laughed out—a laugh of pure, satisfying joyousness. “Fulke—my dear Fulke—you are coming to life too, like Quentin. You are all coming to life again. For I must confess,” she explained, “that you had all become a little faded before I went to stay on the Rock. You had lost personality, you know, beside Wang and Yuan.”
“By the foul liver of St. Eno ...” began Fulke. “I’m sorry, my dearest.”
“Well I’m blessed!” exclaimed Sir Richard. He looked uncertainly at Sombrewater, bit his lip, and gravely said his say. “It is reported, Arnold, that there are bandits in the countryside.”
“I am disinclined to remain,” Sombrewater replied. “We must trust to the name of the Dragon. He owes us that, I think. What do you say, Lychnis? I do not desire to force you to go or to stay.”
“Let us go.”
“We are at one, then, on this, at any rate.” He spoke testily. “You had all better begin to pack.”
They departed, except Sir Richard. Lychnis also made as if to go to her room.
“Your room has been changed,” Ambrose had to point out.
She turned, puzzled. “By whose orders?”
“At my request, Lychnis,” said Sir Richard gravely.
“What does this mean, Richard? I had not been told of this.” Lord Sombrewater was sharp.
“I had in mind to save her the inconvenience of the questioning to which Ruby would no doubt subject her.”
“This is not at all kindly done, Richard. You say in effect——” His lordship’s anger was rising, and then he seemed to realize the weakness of his position and turned on his daughter. “For God’s sake, Lychnis, tell us—are you my daughter still, or ... or another man’s wife ... or ... my God! this hurts me ... his mistress!”
Ambrose watched the scene with interest. The dusk was gathering. The questions seemed to flap and flutter against the luminous calm of her spirit like blundering bats. She stood among them smiling a little (though her breast did indeed heave somewhat), and replied: “You compel me to answer a question that seems impertinent. What is it to anyone here what has happened to me while I have been away? But if you place so much importance on the difference between one state and another, and if it hurts you to be kept in suspense, I will tell you—I am a virgin.”
There was silence. Then Sir Richard spoke: “I beg your pardon, Lychnis,” and went into the Pavilion.
When he was gone, her father hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks. “Thank God, my darling, you are still my daughter! You belong to no other man.” He drew back, and looked at her as if to reassure himself. “It is true—quite true—is it not?”
She suffered his kissing and his question, and answered: “Quite true.” Then he, too, went into the house; but whether he felt quite sure that he was secure of her love and sole possessor of her, Ambrose doubts.
Lychnis, on her part, looked at Ambrose with a somewhat dubious smile. “In his business affairs my father has much of the calm of Wang Li. He makes use of impersonal forces, and that is why he is pre-eminent. But in his relations with me he is destroyed by desire. It is odd, is it not? They do not realize, they do not mind, that morally I was Yuan’s mistress. I was prepared”—she spoke to him with a hesitation that was unusual in their talking together—“I was prepared to be his entirely. I did not shirk that, Ambrose. It was only accident that I was not. You understand that, don’t you?”
“In such cases it is so often accident.”
“In such cases.... Am I a case?”
Her eyes were the dusk looking at him, the brown autumn night, the velvety secret of interstellar space, the cold and heedless contemplation of God. He feasted on the beauty of it, when she had gone.