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# 2025-07-20 - V. Lydiat by L. Adams Beck
(IMG) Intergalactic Rose
I found Dreams and Delights by L. Adams Beck in Project Gutenberg's
new books feed. Reading the Wikipedia page, i see that she wrote
Algernon Blackwood pastiche, among other things. Interesting!
(TXT) L. Adams Beck
Of the stories in this book, the ones i enjoyed the most were
V. Lydiat, Stately Julia, and The Man Without A Sword. I think
their more personal approach made them more accessible to me. They
all "rang true" to their form. For example, The Man Without A Sword is
set in Japan, and it feels familiar, similar in spirit to other
supernatural Japanese fiction i have read.
Here is the full text of V. Lydiat for inclusion in my Interludes
personal anthology.
I felt amused to read the protagonist, a woman author, used the pen
name V. Lydiat to hide her gender. It made me wonder whether this
was also true for L. Adams Beck.
* * *
She sat and looked at the signature written under the name of the
story in readiness for typing.
# The Ninefold Flower
It was a fine story, she knew, and the signature satisfied her
also as it always did. _V._ is the most beautiful letter in the
alphabet to write and look at, the ends curving over from the
slender base like the uprush of a fountain from its tense spring.
When she *commenced author,* as the eighteenth century puts it,
she devoted days and days to the consideration of that pen-name.
For several reasons it must not reveal identity. Most women
prefer the highwayman's mask when they ride abroad to hold up the
public. It gives a freedom impossible when one is tethered to
the responsibilities of name and family. One becomes a foundling
in the great city of Literature and the pebble-cold eye of human
relationship passes unaware over what would have stung it into anger
or jealousy if it had held the key of the mystery. That is, if the
secret is guarded as carefully as V. Lydiat's.
But, for all I know, her strange reason for secrecy may never in
this world have swayed man or woman before.
In reality she was Beatrice Veronica Law Leslie.
A mouthful indeed! You can make as many combinations with that as
with the trick lock of a safe, and it will be as difficult to pick
the secret. She had a strong superstition about keeping to her own
initials, anagrammed or reversed and twisted. It seemed to her that
this was part of a bond of honour of which another held the pledge.
With this pen-name a most astonishing thing had befallen Beatrice
Veronica Law Leslie, for she won a literary success so sudden and
singular that the very management of it required a statesmanship she
never before knew she possessed.
A little must here be said of her life that this strange thing may
be understood. She was the only child of a well-known Oxford don
and a somewhat remarkable mystically-minded mother who died when
the girl was fourteen. Her father, after that loss, "tried life
a little, liked it not, and died" four years later, and Beatrice
Veronica who was known in her family as B. V. then betook herself to
the guardianship of an aunt in Montreal. Here, she also tried life a
little, on the society side, and certainly liked it not. There was
an urge within her that cried aloud for adventure, for the sight
of the dissolving glories of the Orient and contact with strange
lives that called to her dumbly in books. They peeped and mocked and
vanished to their unknown countries taking her longing with them,
and life lay about her vapid, flat, dominated by an Aunt of Fashion.
She floated on a duck pond and sighed for the ocean. What is a young
woman of spirit, not too beautiful to be dangerous, of small but
sufficient means, to do in such a case? Beatrice Veronica knew very
well.
She waited until she was twenty-one, meanwhile securing the
allegiance of a girl, Sidney Verrier, in like case, an enthusiast
like herself, and on a May morning of dreamy sweetness they got
themselves into a C.P.R. train for Victoria, B. C., leaving two
ill-auguring aunts on the platform, and away with them on a trip to
the Orient _via_ Japan. They were under bond to return in a year.
It was a wonderful, a heavenly experience--that wander-year of
theirs. The things they saw, the men and women they met, the marvels
which appealed to every sense! But I must not dwell on these for
they are but the pedestal to the story of V. Lydiat.
A year! Impossible. Four, six, eight years went by and still
unheeded aunts clamoured, and the pavements of Montreal lacked their
footsteps.
And then, in Agra, Sidney Verrier married, and apologetically,
doubtfully, dissolved the fair companionship, and Beatrice Veronica
was left to solitude.
When the bridal car rolled off to the station and the honeymoon
at Mussoori, she sat down and considered. She had not realized it
until then. The ways of the world were open, for experience had made
them plain. She had acquaintances, go where she would. There was no
material reason why she should not continue this delightful nomad
existence delightfully. But she was lonely, and suddenly it became
clear to her that she wanted quiet, time, recollection. She had
assisted at a great feast of the senses and had eaten to satiety.
Now--imperatively--something in her heart cried "Enough."
Afterwards she wondered if that had been the voice of V. Lydiat
crying in the wilderness. The note of preparation.
But where to go? Her aunt was still treading the daily round of
bridge and luncheon parties in Montreal and the soul of Beatrice
Veronica shuddered in the remembrance. No, no. The bird set free
does not re-enter its gilded cage, however temptingly the little
dish of seed is set forth. But she loved Canada for all that.
She remembered, as she and Sidney Verrier had passed through the
glorious giant-land of the Rockies, how broadly uplifted and vast
had been the heights and spaces, how enormous the glee of the rivers
tumbling from hidden sources, and they called her across far waters
and beneath strange stars.
But could one live in such colossal companionship? Is it possible to
dine and sleep and yawn in the presence of Gods and Emperors? There
was the doubt. And then she remembered a shining city laving her
feet in shining seas, with quiet gardens where the roses blush and
bloom in a calm so deep that you may count the fall of every petal
in the drowsy summer afternoons. A city of pines and oaks, of happy
homes great and small,--a city above all, bearing the keys of the
Orient at her golden girdle,--for it is but to step aboard a boat,
swift almost as the Magic Carpet, and you wake one happy morning
with all the dear remembered scents and sights before you once more.
And her heart said "Victoria,"--where Westernmost West leans forward
to kiss Easternmost East across the Pacific.
So she went there--now a woman of twenty-nine, self-possessed, and
capable, and settled herself in a great hostelry to choose and build
her home. Her home, mark you!--not her prison. It was not to be so
large as to hamper flight when the inevitable call came--
> Take down your golden wings now
> From the hook behind the door,
> The wind is calling from the East
> And you must fly once more.
I wish I might write of the building of Beatrice Veronica's home
for it developed into one of the immense joys of her life. But
more important things are ahead, so it must suffice to say that it
was long, low and brown with sunny verandas and windows avid of
sunshine, and that all the plunder of travel, and books, books,
books found happy place in it and grew there as inevitably as leaves
on a tree.
But it was while all this was in embryo that the thought of writing
impressed itself on Beatrice Veronica. Partly because the house
adventure was expensive and she wanted a larger margin, partly
because she had seen with delighted interest and intelligence all
the splendid spectacle of men and cities. Her sound knowledge of
history and cultivated taste in literature should count for pebbles
in the writer's sling who goes forth to conquer the great Goliath
of the public. She revolved this thought often as she walked by
murmurous seas or nested in a niche of rock to watch the mountains
opposite reflecting every change of sunlight as a soul in adoration
reflects its deity. It really seemed a waste not to turn all this to
some sort of account. And success would be sweet. But how to begin!
She bought an armful of the magazines which make gay the streets
of Victoria. "I ought to be able to do this kind of thing," she
reflected. "I have a good vocabulary. Father always thought about
eight thousand words, and that should go a long way. Besides I've
seen nearly all there is to see. Let's try."
She did, and ended with more respect for the average author. The
eight thousand were as unmanageable as mutineers or idiots. They
marched doggedly in heavy columns, they right-about-faced and
deployed; but there was no life in them. The veriest man-handler
of a grizzly or a cow-boy could do better. Being a young person of
quick insight and decision she decided to waste no more time in that
direction. She laid away the magazines and decided to be a spectator
with memory and hope for companions. She burned her manuscripts and
turned her attention to planning her garden.
And it was then that V. Lydiat dawned on the horizon.
Dawned. That is the only word, for it came and the sun came after.
It happened in this way.
One night, in the usual way Beatrice Veronica fell asleep and
dreamed, but not in the usual way. She was standing by a temple she
remembered very well in Southern India, the Temple of Govindhar.
It stood there, under its palms wonderful as a giant rock of
majolica, coloured lavishly in the hard fierce sunshine, monstrously
sculptured with gods and goddesses, and mythical creatures of land
and water in all the acts of their supernal life, writhing and
tapering upwards to the great architectural crown supported by
tigers and monkeys which finished the building,--a crown gemmed with
worshipping spirits for jewels, a nightmare conception of violence
in form and colour; the last barbaric touch to the misbegotten
splendour. Vaguely the whole thing reminded Beatrice Veronica of her
literary efforts and she stood among the palms looking up to the
blaze against the blue and smiling a little.
Suddenly she became aware that a man was standing near the great
gate which no unbeliever's foot may pass, looking up also, shading
his eyes with his hand from the intolerable sunlight. His face
was sensitive and strong, an unusual blending, his eyes grey and
noticeable. She liked his figure in the light tropical clothing. He
had the air of birth and breeding. But he seemed wearied, as if the
climate had been too much for him, a look one knows very well where
the Peninsula runs down to Cape Cormorin, and the sun beats on the
head like a mighty man of valour.
Then, as dream-people will, he came towards her as if they had known
each other all their lives, and said, slowly, meditatively:
"I have tried and tried. I can't do it."
With a sense that she knew what he meant though she could not drag
it to the surface, she found herself saying earnestly:
"But have you tried hard enough? _Really_ tried?"
He put his hands to his forehead with a tired gesture:
"I'm always trying. But _you_ could do it."
She said, "Could I?" in great astonishment.
They stood a moment side by side, looking at each other and then as
if from a blurred distance she heard his voice again.
"It was said long ago that if any creatures united their psychic
forces they could conquer the world, though singly they could do
nothing."
Temple and palms dissolved into coloured mist; they swam away on
another wave of dream and vanished. She floated up to the surface of
consciousness again, awake, with the pale morning gold streaming in
through the east window.
She knew she had dreamed, for a sense of something lost haunted her
all day, yet could not remember anything, and things went on in
their usual course.
That evening sitting in a corner of the hotel lounge, with the
babble of music and talk about her, she had the irresistible impulse
to write,--to write something; she did not in the least know what.
It was so urgent that she walked quickly to the elevator and so to
her sitting room, and there she snatched pen and paper and wrote
the beginning of a story of modern life in India, but strangely
influenced by and centring about the Temple of Govindhar. As she
wrote the name she remembered that she had seen it among the palm
trees in its hideous beauty, and now, like a human personality, it
forced itself upon her and compelled her to be its mouthpiece.
How it happened she could not in the least tell. Certainly she
had travelled, kept her ears and eyes open and learned as much
as any woman can do who keeps on the beaten track in the Orient
and consorts with her own kind in preference to the natives. The
two worlds are very far apart--so far that nothing from below the
surface can pass over the well-defined limits. Moreover she was not
a learned woman,--Indian thought of the mystic order had never come
her way, and Indian history except at the point where it touches
European was a closed book. Therefore this story astonished her
very much. She read it over breathlessly when it was finished. If
she had had that knowledge when she was there how all the mysteries
of the temple would have leaped to light--what drama, what strange
suspense would have lurked in its monstrous form and colour! The
critic in her brain who, standing aside, watched the posturing and
mouthing of the characters, told her austerely that the work was
good--excellent. But something behind her brain had told her that
already. She read it over ardently, lingeringly, with an astonishing
sense of ownership yet of doubt. _How_ had it come? And the writing?
No longer did the eight thousand of her vocabulary march in dull
squadrons, heavy-footed, languid. They sped, ran, flew, with perfect
grace, like the dancers of princes. They were beautiful exceedingly.
They bore the tale like a garland. She read it again and again, with
bewildered delight.
She tapped it out herself on the keys of her Corona and sent it to
the editor of a very famous magazine, with the signature of "V.
Lydiat." As I have said, that matter took long thought, prompted
from behind by instincts.
It was done and V. Lydiat, a climbing star, shed a faint beam over
the world. For the editor wrote back eagerly. He knew he had found
a new flavour. "Your work impresses me as extremely original. I am
anxious to see more of it. I need hardly say I accept it for the
magazine and I shall hope to hear from you again before long." A
cheque followed.
No need to dwell on Beatrice Veronica's feelings, mixed beyond
disentanglement. She was not astonished that the work should be
recognized as good, but--V. Lydiat! What had happened to her and
how? Strange tales are told to-day of sudden brain-stimulations and
complexes. Was she the happy victim of such an adventure, and if so,
would it be recurrent? How should she know? What should she do? She
felt herself moving in worlds not realized, and could not in the
least decide the simple question of whether it was honest to accept
commendation for a thing she felt in her very soul she had not done
and could not do.
But then, who? What was V. Lydiat?
He, she, or it, came from starrier spheres than hers. Wings
plumed its shoulders, while hers were merely becomingly draped
in seasonable materials. She knew that the visitor was a subtler
spirit, dwelling beyond the mysteries, saturated with the colour and
desire of dead ages which can never die--an authentic voice, hailed
at once by the few, to be blown at last on the winds of the soul
which, wandering the world, let fall here and there the seeds of
amaranth and asphodel.
Yes--V. Lydiat was entirely beyond her.
But you will understand that, though Beatrice Veronica could not
enter into the secret places, it was a most wonderful thing to
be amanuensis and business manager. To her fell the letters from
editors and publishers, the correspondence which rained in from the
ends of the earth, protesting gratitude, praise, entreaties for
counsel in all things from routes to religions. These latter were
the most difficult, for it would have taken V. Lydiat to answer them
adequately. But Beatrice Veronica did the best she could, and her
life moved onward aureoled and haloed.
She learned at last the rules of the game. V. Lydiat's ethereal
approach could only be secured by the wand of a fountain pen. She
must sit thus armed with a fair sheet before her and wait, fixing
her mind on some idle point of light or persistent trembling of
leaves, and suddenly the world would pass miraculously from her
and she would awake in another--an amazing world, most beautiful,
brimming with romance, lit by suns of gallant men and moons of
loveliest women. The great jewels of the Orient shed starry
splendours, and ghostly creeping figures pursued them through
jungles and mountain passes. Strange magics lurked in the dark and
drew the soul along the Way of Wonder.
The strangest experience. It began always in the same way. The blue
Canadian sky, the hyacinth gleam of the sea through oak and pine
dissolved in unrealities of mist, and sultry Oriental skies, yellow
as a lion's eyes or the brazen boom of a gong, beat their fierce
sunlight downward as from an inverted bowl. And then--then, she knew
V. Lydiat was at hand. But never with companionship. It was a despot
and entered in, with flags flying, to the annihilation of Beatrice
Veronica. She wrote like a thing driven on a wind, and woke to find
it done. The possession obliterated her, and when she could collect
her routed forces it was gone.
So time went on and V. Lydiat's fame was established and Beatrice
Veronica wore it as a woman too poor to appear at Court with fitting
magnificence shines in borrowed jewels and trembles to wear them.
One night in the moonlit warmth, with the vast Princesses of the
Dark hidden in the ambush of breathless trees, she sat in the high
veranda of her little house with the broad vista through pines to
the sea.
It was a heavenly night; if the baby waves broke in the little
bay they must break in diamonds,--the wet stones must shine like
crystals.
That day V. Lydiat had transported her to a great and silent
jungle in Cambodia and they went up together through the crowding
whispering trees to the ruined palaces where once great kings
dwelt, and passed together through sounding halls sculptured with
dead myths to the chambers, once secret, whence queens looked forth
languidly from wildly-carved casements into the wilderness of sweets
in the gardens.
V. Lydiat had led her to a great tank of crystal water in the
knotted shade, paved with strange stones inlaid with human figures
in wrought metal,--a place where women with gold-embraced heads once
idly bathed their slender limbs in the warm lymph--a secret place
then, but now open to cruel sunlight and cold incurious stars.
So far she knew it all. She had photographed that tank with its
stony cobras while Sidney Verrier timed the exposure. But of the
story told to-day she knew nothing.
A wonderful story, old as time, new as to-morrow, for the figures
in it were of to-day, people who had gone there, as she herself
had done, only to see, and were captured, subjugated by the old
alarming magic which lurks in the jungle and behind the carven walls
and eyeless windows. A dangerous place, and she had not known it
then--had thought of it only as a sight to be seen, a memory to be
treasured. But V. Lydiat knew better--knew it was alive and terrible
still.
She leaned her arms on the sill and looked out to the sea that led
towards the hidden Orient and in her heart she spoke to the strange
visitor.
"I wish I knew you," she whispered. "You come and go and I can't
touch you even while you are within and about me. You interpret. You
make life wonderful, but perhaps you are more wonderful still. If
I could only lay hold of you, touch you, have one glimpse of you!
_What_ are you? Where do you come from? Where do you go? I hear. O,
let me see!"
It was like a prayer, and the more intense because the dead
stillness of the night presented it as its own cry and entreaty.
Dead silence. Not even the voice of the sea.
She laid her head on her folded arms.
"I've been obedient. I've laid myself down on the threshold that
you might walk over me and take possession. Have you no reward for
me? Are you just some strange cell of my own brain suddenly awake
and working, or are you some other--what?--but nearer to me than
breathing, as near as my own soul?"
The longing grew inarticulate and stronger, like the dumb yearning
instincts which move the world of unspeaking creatures. It
seemed to her that she sent her soul through the night pleading,
pleading. Then very slowly she relaxed into sleep as she lay in the
moonlight--deep, soul-satisfying sleep. And so dreamed.
She stood in the Shalimar Garden of the dead Mogul Empresses in
Kashmir. How well she knew it, how passionately she loved it! She
and Sidney Verrier had moored their houseboat on the Dal Lake not
far away one happy summer and had wandered almost daily to the
Shalimar, glorying in the beauty of its fountains and rushing
cascades, and the roses--roses everywhere in a most bewildering
sweetness. How often she had gone up the long garden ways to the
foot of the hills that rise into mountains and catch the snows and
stars upon their heights. It was no wonder she should dream of it.
So in her dream she walked up to the great pavilion supported on
noble pillars of black marble from Pampoor, and the moon swam in a
wavering circle in the water before it, and she held back a moment
to see it break into a thousand reflections, and then became aware
of a man leaning with folded arms by the steps: his face clear in
the moonlight.
Instantly she knew him, as he did her--the man of her dream of the
Temple of Govindhar.
As before he turned and came toward her.
"I have waited for you by the temple and here and in many other
places. I wait every night. How is it you come so seldom?" he said.
His voice was stronger, his bearing more alert and eager than at
Govindhar. He spoke with a kind of assurance of welcome which she
responded to instantly.
"I would have come. I didn't know. How can I tell?"
He looked at her smiling.
"There is only one way. Why didn't you learn it in India? It was all
round you and you didn't even notice. You don't know your powers.
Listen."
Beatrice Veronica drew towards him, eyes rapt on his face, scarcely
breathing. Yes--in India she had felt there were mighty stirrings
about her, thrills of an unknown spiritual life, crisping the
surface like a breeze, and passing--passing before ever you could
say it was there. But it did not touch her with so much as an
outermost ripple. She was too ignorant. Now--she could learn.
"You see--this is the way of it," he said, leaning against the black
pillar. "The soul is sheer thought and knowledge, but, prisoned
in the body, it is the slave of the senses and all its powers
are limited by these. And they lead it into acts which in their
consequences are fetters of iron. Still, at a certain point of
attainment one can be freer than most men believe possible. When
this is so, you use the Eight Means of Mental Concentration and are
free. You step into a new dimension."
"Is this true? Do you know it?" she said earnestly.
"Because, if there is any way which can be taken, I have a
quest--something--someone----"
She stammered, and could not finish.
"I know. Someone you want to find in the dark. Well, it can be
done. You would not believe the possibilities of that freed state
of consciousness. Here, in the Shalimar you think you see nothing
but moonlight and water--nothing in fact but what your senses tell
you. But that is nonsense. Your eyes are shut. You are asleep in
Canada and yet you see them by the inner light of memory even now
and the help I am giving you! Well--use the Eight Means, and you
will see them waking and as clearly as you do in sleep. But I,
who am instructed, see more. This garden to me is peopled with
those who made it--the dead kings and queens who rejoiced in its
beauty. See--" he laid his hand on hers and suddenly she saw.
Amazing--amazing! They were alone no longer.
Sitting on the floor of the pavilion, looking down into the
moon-mirroring water was a woman in the ancient dress of Persia,
golden and jewelled,--she flung her head up magnificently as if at
the words, and looked at them, the moon full in her eyes. The garden
was peopled now not only with roses but white blossoms sending
out fierce hot shafts of perfume. They struck Beatrice Veronica
like something tangible, and half dazed her as she stared at the
startling beauty of the unveiled woman revealed like a flaming jewel
in the black and white glory of the night.
With his hand on hers, she knew without words. Nourmahal the
Empress, ruler of the Emperor who made the Shalimar for her
pleasure, who put India with all its glories at her feet. Who else
should be the soul of the garden?
It seemed to Beatrice Veronica that she had never beheld beauty
before. It was beyond all pictures, all images in its sultry
passionate loveliness,--it was----
But as she watched spellbound, the man lifted his hand from hers and
the garden was empty of all but moonlight and roses once more, and
he and she alone. She could have wept for utter loss.
"Was it a ghost?" she asked trembling.
"No, no,--an essential something that remains in certain places, not
a ghost. There is nothing of what you mean by that word. Don't be
frightened! You'll often see them."
She stared at him perplexed, and he added:
"You see? One has only to put oneself in the receptive state and
time is no more. One sees--one hears. You are only a beginner so I
cannot show you much. But you _are_ a beginner or you would not be
here in the Shalimar with me now. There is a bond between us which
goes back--" He paused, looking keenly at her, and said quickly
"Centuries, and further."
She was stunned, dazed by the revelations. They meant so much more
that it is possible to record. Also the sensation was beginning
in her which we all know before waking. The dream wavers on its
foundation, loosens, becomes misty, makes ready to disappear. It
would be gone--gone before she could know. She caught his hand as if
to steady it.
"Are you V. Lydiat?" she cried.--"You must be. You are. You come to
me every day--a voice. O let me come to you like this, and teach
me, teach me, that I may know and see. I am a blind creature in a
universe of wonders. Let me come every night."
His face was receding, palpitating, collapsing, but his voice came
as if from something beyond it.
"That is what you call me. Names are nothing. Yes, come every
night."
It was gone. She was in the Shalimar alone, and somewhere in the
distance she heard Sidney Verrier's voice calling clear as a bird.
Beatrice Veronica woke that morning with the sun glorying through
the eastern arch of her veranda. She was still dressed. She had
slept there all night. Of the dream she remembered snatches, hints,
which left new hopes and impulses germinating in her soul. The
unknown flowers were sown in spring. They would blossom in summer in
unimaginable beauty.
That was the beginning of a time of strange and enchanting
happiness. Thus one may imagine the joy of a man born blind who
by some miraculous means is made to see, and wakes in a world of
wonders. It is impossible that anyone should know greater bliss. The
very weight of it made her methodical and practical lest a grain
of heavenly gold should escape her in its transmutation to earthly
terms.
The morning was V. Lydiat's. At ten o'clock she betook herself to
her high veranda, and folding her hands and composing her mind
looked out to sea through the wide way of pines which terminated
in its azure beauty. Then, as has been told before, it would blow
softly away on a dream-wind, and the story begin.
And at night there was now invariably the meeting. At first that
was always in some place she knew--somewhere she recognized from
memory, haunts of her own with Sidney Verrier. But one night a new
thing happened--she woke into dream by the Ganges at Cawnpore, at
the terrible Massacre Ghaut, a place she had always avoided because
of the horrible memories of the Indian mutiny which sicken the soul
of every European who stands there.
Now she stood at the top of the beautiful broken steps under the
dense shade of the very trees where the mutineers ambushed, and he
was below, beckoning her.
"Well done, well done!" he said, as she came slowly down to where
holy Ganges lips the lowest step. "This was a great experiment. You
could never have come here alone,--I could not have brought you
until now, and I had to fight the repugnance in you, but here you
are. You see? We have been putting stepping-stones, you and I, each
from our own side, and now the bridge is made and we hold hands in
the middle. You can come anywhere now. And listen--I too am learning
to go where I have never been. The world will be open to us soon."
He looked at her with glowing eyes--the eyes of the explorer, the
discoverer, on the edge of triumph.
"But why here--in this horrible place?" She shrank a little even
from him as she looked about her. He laughed:
"That is no more now than a last year's winter storm. They know.
They were not afraid even then. They laugh now as they go on their
way. Be happy, beloved. They are beyond the mysteries."
Of that dream, she carried back to earth the word "beloved." Who
had said it, she could not tell, but in the dark--the warm friendly
dark--there was someone who loved her, whom she loved with a perfect
union. Was it--could it be V. Lydiat? She did not know. Also she
remembered that she had dreamed the Massacre Ghaut at Cawnpore, and
took pains to search for pictures and stories of the place to verify
her dream. Yes--it was true. Things were becoming clearer.
Also, her power in writing increased very noticeably about this
time. V. Lydiat was recognized as holding a unique place amongst
writers of the Orient. On the one side were the scholars, the
learned men who wrote in terms of ancient Oriental thought, terms
no ordinary reader could understand, and on the other, the writers
of the many-faceted surface, the adventurers, toying with the
titillating life of zenana and veiled dangerous love-affairs,--a
tissue of coloured crime. V. Lydiat recorded all, and with a method
of his own which approached perfect loveliness in word and phrase.
The faiths of the East were his,--in India and China alike his soul
sheltered under the Divine Wings, at home in strange heavens, and
hells which one day would blossom into heavens. As he and Beatrice
Veronica had posed stepping-stones until they met in the middle, so
he built a splendid bridge across the wide seas of misunderstanding
between east and west, and many souls passed across it going and
coming and were glad.
"I'm only a pioneer," he said to Beatrice Veronica one day (she
could dream the day as well as the night) sitting in the gardens of
the Taj. "You too. It will be done much better soon. See how we are
out-growing our limitations and feeling out after the wonders of
the sub-conscious self, the essential that hands on the torch when
we die. Die? No, I hate that word. Let's say, climb a step higher
on the ladder of existence. Every inch gives us a wider view of the
country. You see?"
She liked that "You see?" which came so often. It was so eager--so
fraternal in a way. Yes, they were good comrades, she and V. Lydiat.
"Do you know I write for you?" she ventured to ask. "I have often
wondered if you speak as unconsciously as I write."
"No, no. I know. I always know. Longer ago than you would believe
you used to work for me. We are in the same whirl-pool, you and I.
Our atoms must always be whirled together again. You can't escape
me, Beatrice Veronica."
"Do you think I want to?" she asked.
But in daily life she clung to her secret like grim death. She would
not have been burdened with V. Lydiat's laurels for the world.
The dishonesty of it! And yet one could never explain. Hopeless!
Who would believe? And apart from that, she had a kind of growing
certainty that V. Lydiat would enter upon his own one day. Not that
she remembered him as any more than a vague dream influence; she
did not, but yet the realization of a Presence was growing, and she
herself developing daily.
There is not much space here to tell the wondrous sights she saw
with V. Lydiat, and holding by his hand. That would be a book in
itself--and a beautiful one. And though she could only remember
them in drifts like a waft of far-off music on a breeze, it was
incomparable food for the sub-conscious self, and strengthened
every latent faculty of memory and experience. Beatrice Veronica
promised to be a very remarkable woman if some day the inner and
outer faculties should unite.
But what was to be the solvent? That, this story can only indicate
faintly for the end is not yet.
She went out a little less into her small world of daily life--not
shunning it certainly, but her inner life was so crowded, so
blissful that the outer seemed insipid enough. Why figure at teas
and bridge parties, and struggle with the boredom of mah jong when
the veranda was waiting with the green way before it that led to
the silence of the sea, and the lover beyond? For it had come to
that--the lover. All joy summed up in that word, joy unmeasurable as
the oceans of sunlight--a perfect union. She walked as one carefully
bearing a brimmed cup,--not a drop, not a drop must spill,--so she
carried herself a little stiffly as it might seem to the outer world
which could not guess the reason.
People liked her--but she moved on her own orbit, and it only
intersected theirs at certain well-defined points. Her soft
abstracted air won but eluded;--it put an atmosphere of strangeness
about her, of thoughts she could not share with anyone.
"She must have rather a lonely life of it!" they said. But she never
had.
One day came a letter from Sidney Verrier, now Sidney Mourilyan,
from her husband's coffee plantation in the Shevaroy Hills in
southern India. She wrote from the settlement of Yercaud-- "Not a
town," she wrote, "but dear little scattered houses in the trees. We
have even a club, think of it!--after the wilds where you and I have
been!--and there are pleasant people, and Tony expects to do well
with coffee here. I wish half the day that you could come. You would
like it, B. V.-- You would like it! And you would like my boy--two
years old now, and a sheer delight. Not to mention my garden. The
growth here! The heliotropes are almost trees. The jasmines have
giant stars. The house is stormed with flowers--almost too sweet.
Couldn't you come? Don't you hear the east calling? At all events
you hear me calling, for I want you. And you must be having very
idle lazy days, for I remember I never could imagine what you would
find to do if you stopped travelling. Your whole soul was in that.
It's a cold country you're in--frigid pines, and stark mountains and
icy seas. Do come out into the sunshine again."
She laid down the letter there and looked at the beloved pines
almost glittering in the sunshine as it slid off their smooth
needles. And idle?--her life, her wonderful secret life! Little
indeed did Sidney know if she could write like that. She took up the
letter again, smiling.
"And listen, B. V.--there's a man going round by Japan to Canada,
a man called Martin Welland. I should like you to know him for two
reasons. First, he can tell you all about this place. Second, I
think he is interesting. If you don't find him so, shunt him. My
love, my dear B. V., and do come. Think of all you might do with
this as a starting point."
There was more, but that is the essential. You may think at this
point that you know exactly how this story must inevitably end. But
no.
It was about four months after this that Beatrice Veronica was
rung up on the telephone in her veranda as she sat reading. The
imperative interruption annoyed her;--she put down her book. A man's
voice.
"Miss Leslie? I think your friend Mrs. Mourilyan told you I was
coming to Victoria. My name is Welland."
Polite assurances from the veranda.
"Yes, I am staying at the Empress. May I come out and see you this
afternoon? I have a small parcel for you from Mrs. Mourilyan."
So it was settled, and with her Chinese servant she made the little
black oak table beautiful with silver and long-stemmed flowers in
beautiful old English glass bowls. If he went back to Yercaud he
should at least tell Sidney that her home in "that cold country" was
desirable.
He came at four and she could hear his voice in the little hall as
Wing admitted him.
She liked it. The words were clear, well-cut, neither blurred
nor bungled. Then he came in. A tall man, broad-shouldered, with
grey eyes and hair that sprang strongly from a broad forehead,
clean-shaven, a sensitive mouth, possibly thirty-eight, or so. All
these things flashed together in an impression of something to be
liked and trusted. On his side he saw a young woman in a blue-grey
gown with hazel eyes and hair to match--a harmony of delicate browns
enhancing an almond-pale face with faintly coloured lips and a look
of fragility which belied the nervous strength beneath.
The parcel was given and received; a chain of Indian moonstones in
silver, very lovely in its shifting lights, and then came news, much
news, of the home at Yercaud.
"I heard of you so much there that you are no stranger to me," he
said, watching with curious interest while she filled the Chinese
cups of pink and jade porcelain with jasmine tea from a hidden
valley in Anhui. It fascinated him--the white hands flitting like
little quick birds on their quick errands, the girl, so calm and
self-possessed, mistress of herself and her house. Many years of
wandering had opened his heart to the feminine charm of it all, the
quiet, the rose-leaf scent in the air, the things which group by
instinct about a refined woman.
"You have a delightful home!" he said at last, rather abruptly.
"Yes-- When you return do try to convince Mrs. Mourilyan that I
don't live in a hut on an iceberg. You agree with me, I am sure,
that only Kashmir and perhaps one or two other places can be more
beautiful than this."
"Yes. I fully agree. Yet it misses something which permeates India
in places far less beautiful. It lacks atmosphere. Just as the
fallen leaves of a forest make up a rich soil in which all growth is
luxuriant, so the dead ancientry of India makes earth and air rich
with memory and tradition--and more. You can't get it in these new
countries."
"I know," she said eagerly. "Here it's just a beautiful child with
all her complexities before her. It rests one, you know. I felt it
an amazing rest when I came here."
"I can understand that. And they tell me the climate is delightful.
I wish I could stay here. I may come back some day. But I must
return to India in four months."
"You have work?"
"Yes and no. I have collected an immense quantity of notes for
several books, but--now you will laugh!--I shall never write them."
"But why--why? I know there's an immense opening for true books
about the Orient."
"I think so too. But you allow it's a drawback that I am entirely
devoid of the writing gift. I have my knowledge. I have the
thing flame-clear in my mind. But let me put it on paper and it
evaporates. Dull as ditchwater! You see?"
That last little phrase sent a blush flying up her cheek. It
recalled many things.
"Yes, I see. But couldn't you put it in skilful hands?"
He laid down his cup and turned suddenly on her.
"Could _you_ do it?"
"I? I wish I could, but I am doing work at present----"
"Literary?"
"Of a sort. Secretarial. I write from dictation."
"May I ask what sort of things?"
With a curious reluctance she answered.
"Indian," and said no more.
He seemed to meditate a moment on that; then said slowly:
"It appears you have experience of the very things that interest me.
Tell me--for I have been so long in the wilds-- Is there any writer
nowadays taking the place with regard to things Indian that Lafcadio
Hearn did with things Japanese? A man who gets at the soul of it as
well as the beautiful surface?"
With her eyes on the ground and a sense of something startling in
the air, she answered with a question.
"Have you ever heard of V. Lydiat's books?"
There was a puzzled furrow between his eyebrows.
"Not that I know of. Up in Kulu and beyond, the new books don't
penetrate. A man or a woman?"
"People are not certain. The initial might mean either. But the
critics all say a man. The last is called the 'The Unstruck Music,'
the one before 'The Dream of Stars.' The first, 'The Ninefold
Flower.'"
"Beautiful names," he said. "Can I get them here?"
"I can lend them to you."
They talked long after that, in a curiously intimate way that gave
her secret but intense happiness. It was almost in fear that she
asked when he was going on and where.
When he went off he carried the three books under his arm.
"I shall read 'The Ninefold Flower,' first. It interests me to see
how a writer's mind develops."
That night she had no dream and next day she tried even more eagerly
than usual to get in touch with V. Lydiat, but in vain. The oracle
was dumb. It frightened her, for the whole thing was so strange that
she had never felt sure it might not vanish as suddenly as it came.
She sat patiently all that morning, hoping and sorely disturbed, but
the Pacific hung a relentless azure curtain before her fairyland and
the pines dreamed their own sunshine-fragrance and made no way for
palms.
At one o'clock the telephone rang sharply,
"Welland speaking. May I come and see you this afternoon?"
It was impossible for she had an engagement, but she named the
evening at eight. He caught at it--his voice was evidence of that
eagerness.
He came a minute or two before the time, and a book was in his hand.
She knew the cover with a drift of stars across it before he spoke.
It broke out the moment he was in the room.
"A most amazing thing. I hardly know how to tell you. You'll think
I'm mad. It's my book--_mine_, yet I never wrote it."
They stared at each other in a kind of consternation and the little
colour in her face fell away and left her lily-pale. She could feel
but not control the trembling of her hands.
"You mean----"
"I mean--there are my notes one after another, but expressed in a
way I never could hope for, exquisitely expressed. But it's mine all
the same. A cruel, enchanting robbery! You don't believe me. How
could you? But I can prove it. See here."
With passionate haste he pulled a roll of paper from his pocket, and
pushed the typed sheets before her. The first story in "The Ninefold
Flower," was called "The Lady of Beauty." The notes began, "The
Queen of Beauty," and went on _seriatim_ with the scaffolding of the
story.
"The way it's done here, in this book, is the very way I used to see
it in my dreams, but it was utterly beyond me. For God's sake, tell
me what you think."
She laid it down.
"Of course it's yours. No doubt of that. But his too. You blocked
out the marble. He made the statue. The very judgment of Solomon
could not decide between you."
"That's true," he said hopelessly. "But the mystery of it. The
appalling hopeless mystery. No eye but mine has ever seen that paper
till now."
Silence. A grey moth flew in from the garden and circled about the
lamp. The little flutter of its wings was the only sound. Then in a
shaken voice very unlike its usual sedate sweetness, she asked.
"Mr. Welland, do you ever dream?"
"Awake? Constantly."
"Asleep?"
She saw caution steal into his frank eyes and drop a curtain before
them.
"Why do you ask? Everyone dreams."
She gathered up all her courage for the next question.
"Were you ever in the Shalimar?"
"Certainly. Does anyone ever go to Kashmir and miss it?"
He was fencing, that was palpable. It gave her hope for a golden
gleam through her fear. She clasped her shaking hands tightly in
each other.
"I have the strangest dreams. I can only bring back snatches. Yet I
know there is a wonderful connected story behind them. I dreamt the
Shalimar not long ago,--I brought back one image. A woman in an old
Persian dress sitting by the black Pampoor pillars and looking down
into the water where the moon dipped and swam all gold."
"Yes, yes, go on!" he breathed.
"There were flowers--white flowers. I never saw them there in the
daylight."
"Unbearably sweet," he interjected. "The scent is like the thrust
of a lance. I know, I know. But there was another woman. I can't
remember her face."
"How did she stand?" asked Beatrice Veronica.
"Near me--but she could see nothing. The day still blinded her,
until----"
"Until you laid your hand on hers. Then she saw."
Another long silence. Only the beating of the moth's wings. He
leaned forward from his chair and laid his hands on the clasp of
hers. Their eyes met, absorbing each other; the way for the electric
current was clear.
"I remember now," he said, very softly. "It was you. It was you at
the Temple of Govindhar. At the Massacre Ghaut of Cawnpore. Ah, I
dragged you there against your will to show I was the stronger. It
is you--always you."
What was she to say? With his hands on hers it was a union of
strength which put the past before both like an open book. She
remembered all the dreams now. Impossible to tell them here--they
were so many, like and unlike, shaken shifting jewels in a
kaleidoscope held in some unseen hand. But jewels. They sat a long
time in this way, rapt in wordless memories, their eyes absorbing
each other--the strangest reunion. When speech came it brought
rapture which needed little explanation. They bathed in wonder as
in clear water, they flung the sparkle of it over their heads and
glittered to each other in its radiance. When had such a miracle
been wrought for any two people in all the world? The dreams of the
visionary were actual for them and heaven and earth instinct with
miracle.
"When we are married--when we pass our lives utterly together the
bond will be stronger," he said, kissing her hand passionately two
hours later. "We shall be awake with reason and intellect as well as
vision to help our work, we shall do such things as the world has
never dreamed, prove that miracle is the daily bread of those who
know. Two halves of a perfect whole made one forever and ever. You
see?"
He looked at her a moment with shining eyes and added, "The wise
will come to us for wisdom, the poets for beauty, and we shall make
our meeting-places the shrines of a new worship."
Beatrice Veronica agreed with every pulse of her blood. The Great
Adventure, and together!--what bliss could equal that marvel?
They were together perpetually, and surely human happiness was never
greater than that of these two adventurers with the blue capes
of Wonderland in sight at last over leagues of perilous seas. In
another image, their caravan halted outside the gates of Paradise,
and in a short few weeks those gates would swing open for them and,
closing, shut out Fate.
But she did not dream of Martin Welland now, nor he of her. The
discovery and all it involved was so thrilling that it brought every
emotion to the surface as blood flushes the face when the heart
beats violently. The inner centres were depleted.
They were married and Paradise was at hand, but for a while the
happy business of settling their life engrossed them. It would be
better to live in Canada and make long delightful visits to the
Orient to refill the cisterns of marvel, they thought. A room for
mutual work must be plotted in the bungalow; then there was the
anxious question of a southern aspect. Then it was built, and it
became a debatable decision whether some of the pines must fall to
enlarge the vista to the sea. Friends rallied about her on the news
of the marriage, and rejoiced to see the irradiation of Beatrice
Veronica's pale face. Then they must be entertained.
Then the endless joyful discussions as to whether the author should
still be V. Lydiat or whether collaboration should be admitted.
These things and many more filled the happy world they dwelt in.
Can the end be foreseen? They never foresaw it.
The hungry claim of human bliss fixed its roots in the inner soil
where the Rosa Mystica had blossomed, and exhausted it for all else.
That, at least, is the way in which one endeavours to state the
mysterious enervation of the sub-conscious self which had built the
stepping-stones between them to the meeting-point.
She went hopefully to her table when they had settled down, and he
sat beside her doing his utmost to force the impulse across inches
which had made nothing of oceans. It was dead. He could think of
nothing but the sweet mist of brown tendrils in the nape of her
neck, the pure line from ear to chin, the delights of the day to be.
She sat with the poor remnant of his notes before her--for nearly
all had been exhausted in the three books--and tried to shape them
into V. Lydiat's clear and sensitive beauty of words. It could not
be done. Her eight thousand words marched and deployed heavy-footed
as before. They were as unmanageable as mutineers or idiots. There
was no life in them.
So it all descended to calmer levels. They slept in each other's
arms, but they never dreamed of each other now. They had really been
nearer in their ghostly meeting by the Taj Mahal or in the evil
splendours of Govindhar--far nearer, when she wrote and could not
cease for joy, than when Martin Welland sat beside her and struggled
to find what had flashed like light in the old days. They had to
face it at last--V. Lydiat was dead.
It troubled them much for a while, but troubled the world more. The
publishers were besieged with questions and entreaties. Finally
those also slackened and died off.
V. Lydiat was buried.
They thought that perhaps if they returned to India the dead fire
would re-kindle under that ardent sun. But no.
One day, at Benares, standing near the great Monkey Temple of Durga,
Martin stopped suddenly, and a light came into his eyes.
"B. V. I've just remembered that one of the wisest of the pandits
lives near here--a wonderful old fellow called Jadrup Gosein. Let's
go and state the case to him. The wisest man I know."
They went, Beatrice Veronica ashamed to feel a little uprush of
regret at the sacrifice of a part of the wonderful day. Martin knew
so much. It was heavenly to go to these places with him, and have
them illumined by his research. But they went to the pandit.
The holy man was seated under the shadow of a great image of Ganesha
the Elephant-Headed One, the Giver of Counsel, and when they sat
themselves before him at a measured distance the case was stated.
There was a long pause--a deep silence filled with hot sunshine
smelling of marigolds, and the patter of bare feet on sun-baked
floors, as curious quick eyes watched the conclave from afar.
Jadrup Gosein meditated deeply, then raised his serene dark face
upon them with the dim look that peers from the very recesses of
being. His words, incomprehensible to Beatrice Veronica, had the
hollow resonance of a bell, near at hand but softened.
"There was a man long since," he began, "to whom the high Gods
offered in reward of merit, a rose-tree--very small and weak,--a
suckling, as it were, among trees, with feeble fibrous root,
accessible to all the dangers of drought and sun, and as he
stretched his hand doubting, they offered him for choice a rose
from the trees of Paradise, crimson and perfumed, its hidden bosom
pearled with dew and wafting divine odours. And they said 'Choose.'
So he said within his soul, 'The tree may die--who knows the
management of its frail roots? But the rose is here, sweeter than
sweet, immortal since it grew in Paradise! I choose the rose.'
"And they put it in his hand. And the wise Elephant-Headed One said:
"'O fool! What is a rose compared to a rose-tree that bears myriads
of roses? Also the rose dies in the heat of human hands. The tree
lives; a gathered rose is dead.'
"My children, you have chosen the rose. Be content. Yet in another
life remember and cling to that which unsevered from the parent tree
sends roots into the Now, the Then, and the Future, and blossoms
immortally."
So he dismissed them kindly.
"He means," said Martin with troubled brow, "that ordinary household
happiness shuts a man in from the stars. Do you remember the flute
of Pan, B. V.? He tore the reed from the river and massacred it as a
reed to make it a music-bearer for the Gods.
> The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,
> For the reed that grows never more again
> As a reed with the reeds in the river.
"But we are so happy!" she whispered, clinging against him to feel
the warmth of his love. "The outer spaces are cold, cold. I don't
regret V. Lydiat. I have you. The reeds were happier in the river."
Martin Welland sighed.
"You had both," he said. "You have only me now."
But that regret also slipped away. They forgot. It all faded into
the light of common day and they were extremely happy.
The two could never account for the way in which they had come
together in that dream-land of theirs. They had lost the clue of the
mystery once and for all.
Jadrup Gosein could have told them, but it never occurred to them
to ask him. There are however many lives and the Gods have a long
patience.
* * *
(DIR) source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/6/9/7/8/69786/
tags: fantasy,personal anthology
# Tags
(DIR) fantasy
(DIR) personal anthology
(DIR) short story