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Title: The Kingdom of Slender Swords
Author: Rives, Hallie Erminie, 1876-
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Kingdom of Slender Swords" ***
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
BY HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(MRS. POST WHEELER)
SATAN SANDERSON
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
TALES FROM DICKENS
Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch
THE CASTAWAY
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy
HEARTS COURAGEOUS
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
A FURNACE OF EARTH
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS
[Illustration]
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(MRS. POST WHEELER)
_With a Foreword by His Excellency Baron Makino_
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A. B. WENZELL
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1910
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
TO
CAROLYN FOSTER STICKNEY
FOREWORD
It has been my happy fortune to have made the acquaintance of the gifted
author of this book. From time to time she was kind enough to confide to
me its progress. When the manuscript was completed I was privileged to
go over it, and the hours so spent were of unbroken interest and
pleasure.
What especially touched and concerned me was, of course, the Japanese
characters depicted, the motives of these actors in their respective
roles, and other Japanese incidents connected with the story. I am most
agreeably impressed with the remarkable insight into, and the just
appreciation of, the Japanese spirit displayed by the author.
While the story itself is her creation, the local coloring, the moral
atmosphere called in to weave the thread of the tale, are matters
belonging to the domain of facts, and constitute an amount of useful and
authentic information. Indeed, she has taken unusual pains to be
correctly informed about the people of the country and their customs,
and in this she has succeeded to a very eminent degree.
I may mention one or two of the striking characteristics of the work.
The sacrifice of the girl Haru may seem unreal, but such is the dominant
idea of duty and sacrifice with the Japanese, that in certain
emergencies it is not at all unlikely that we should behold her real
prototype in life. The description of the Imperial Review at Tokyo and
its patriotic significance vividly recalls my own impression of this
spectacle.
It gives me great satisfaction to know that by perusing these pages, the
vast reading public, who, after all, have the decisive voice in the
national government of the greatest republic of the world, and whose
good will and friendship we Japanese prize in no uncommon degree, should
be correctly informed about ourselves, as far as the scope of this book
goes. We attach great importance to a thorough mutual understanding of
two foremost peoples on the Pacific, in whose direction and coöperation
the future of the East must largely depend. It is, therefore, incumbent
upon us all to do our utmost to cultivate such good understanding, not
only for those immediately concerned, but for the welfare of the whole
human race.
In the chapters of this novel the author seems always to have had such
high ideals before her, and the result is that, besides being an
exciting and agreeable reading, the book contains elements of serious
and instructive consideration, which can not but contribute toward
establishing better and healthier knowledge between the East and West of
the Pacific.
N. MAKINO.
Sendagaya, Tokyo, 9th of August, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHERE THE DAY BEGINS 1
II "THE ROOST" 13
III THE LAND OF THE GODS 27
IV UNDER THE RED SUNSET 42
V THE MAKER OF BUDDHAS 52
VI THE BAYING OF THE WOLF-HOUND 62
VII DOCTOR BERSONIN 72
VIII "SALLY IN OUR ALLEY" 78
IX THE WEB OF THE SPIDER 86
X IN A GARDEN OF DREAMS 92
XI ISHIKICHI 101
XII IN THE STREET-OF-PRAYER-TO-THE-GODS 107
XIII THE WHORLS OF YELLOW DUST 113
XIV WHEN BARBARA AWOKE 119
XV A FACE IN THE CROWD 125
XVI "BANZAI NIPPON!" 133
XVII A SILENT UNDERSTANDING 142
XVIII IN THE BAMBOO LANE 149
XIX THE BISHOP ASKS A QUESTION 154
XX THE TRESPASSER 160
XXI THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 169
XXII THE DANCE OF THE CAPITAL 181
XXIII THE DEVIL PIPES TO HIS OWN 194
XXIV A MAN NAMED WARE 198
XXV AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX-GOD 206
XXVI THE NIGHTLESS CITY 213
XXVII LIKE THE WHISPER OF A BAT'S WINGS 224
XXVIII THE FORGOTTEN MAN 233
XXIX DAUNT LISTENS TO A SONG 244
XXX THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT 252
XXXI THE COMING OF AUSTEN WARE 266
XXXII THE WOMAN OF SOREK 276
XXXIII THE FLIGHT 284
XXXIV ON THE KNEES OF DELILAH 288
XXXV WHEN A WOMAN DREAMS 292
XXXVI BEHIND THE SHIKIRI 297
XXXVII [Japanese: Donto] 303
XXXVIII THE LADY OF THE MANY-COLORED FIRES 308
XXXIX THE HEART OF BARBARA 320
XL THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW 326
XLI UNFORGOT 334
XLII PHIL MAKES AN APPEAL 338
XLIII THE SECRET THE RIVER KEPT 345
XLIV THE LAYING OF THE MINE 353
XLV THE BISHOP ANSWERS A SUMMONS 360
XLVI THE GOLDEN CRUCIFIX 366
XLVII "IF THIS BE FORGETTING" 371
XLVIII WHILE THE CITY SLEPT 379
XLIX THE ALARM 389
L WHOM THE GODS DESTROY 396
LI THE LAUGH 401
LII THE VOICE IN THE DARK 409
LIII A RACE WITH DAWN 414
LIV INTO THE SUNLIGHT 425
LV KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS 428
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE DAY BEGINS
Barbara leaned against the palpitant rail, the light air fanning her
breeze-cool cheek, her arteries beating like tiny drums, atune with the
throb, throb, throb, of the steel deck as the black ocean leviathan
swept on toward its harbor resting-place.
All that Japanese April day she had been in a state of tremulous
excitement. She had crept from her berth at dawn to see the hazy sun
come up in a Rosicrucian flush as weirdly soft as a mirage, to strain
her eyes for the first filmy feather of land. Long before the gray-green
wisp showed on the horizon, the sight of a lumbering _junk_ with its
square sail laced across with white stripes, and its bronze seamen, with
white loin-cloth and sweat-band about the forehead, naked and thewed
like sculptures, as they swayed from the clumsy tiller, had sent a
thrill through her. And as the first far peaks etched themselves on the
robin's-egg blue, as impalpable and ethereal as a perfume, she felt warm
drops coming with a rush to her eyes.
For Japan, every sight and sound of it, had been woven with the earliest
imaginings of Barbara's orphaned life. Her father she had never seen.
Her mother she remembered only as a vague, widowed figure. In Japan they
two had met and had married, and after a single year her mother had
returned to her own place and people broken-hearted and alone. In the
month of her return Barbara had been born. A year ago her aunt, to whom
she owed the care of her young girlhood, had died, and Barbara had found
herself, at twenty-three, mistress of a liberal fortune and of her own
future. Japan had always exercised a potent spell over her imagination.
She pictured it as a land of strange glowing trees, of queer costumes
and weird, fantastic buildings. More than all, it was the land of her
mother's life-romance, where her father had loved and died. There was
one other tangible tie--her uncle, her mother's brother, was Episcopal
bishop of Tokyo. He was returning now from a half year's visit in
America, and this fact, coupled with an invitation from Patricia
Dandridge, the daughter of the American Ambassador, with whom Barbara
had chummed one California winter, had constituted an opportunity wholly
alluring. So she found herself, on this April day, the pallid Pacific
fuming away behind her, gazing with kindling cheeks on that shadowy
background, vaguely intangible in the magical limpidity of the distance.
The land was wonderfully nearer now. The hills lay, a clear pile of
washed grays and greens, with saffron tinted valleys between, wound in a
haze of tender lilac. By imperceptible gradations this unfolded, caught
sub-tones, ermine against umbers, of warmer red and flickering emerald,
white glints of sun on surf like splashes of silver, till suddenly,
spectral and perfect, above a cluster of peaks like purple gentians,
glowed forth a phantom mountain, its golden wistaria cone inlaid in the
deeper azure. It hung like an inverted morning-glory, mist and
mother-of-pearl at the top, shading into porphyry veined with streaks of
verd and jade--Fuji-San, the despair of painters, the birthplace of the
ancient gods.
The aching beauty of it stung Barbara with a tender, intolerable pang.
The little fishing-villages that presently came into sight, tucked into
the clefts of the shore, with gray dwellings, elfishly frail, climbing
the green slope behind them--the growing rice in patches of cloudy gold
on the hillsides--the bluish shadows of bamboo groves--all touched her
with an incommunicable delight.
A shadow fell beside her and she turned. It was her uncle. His
clean-shaven face beamed at her over his clerical collar.
"Isn't it glorious?" she breathed. "It's better than champagne! It's
like pins and needles in the tips of your fingers! There's positively an
odor in the air like camelias. And did any one ever see such colors?"
She pointed to the shore dead-ahead, now a serrated background of deep
tones, swimming in the infinite gold of the tropic afternoon.
Bishop Randolph was a bachelor, past middle age, ruddy and with eyes
softened by habitual good-humor. He was the son of a rector of a rich
Virginian parish, which on his father's death had sent the son a
unanimous call. He had answered, "No; my place is in Japan," without
consciousness of sacrifice. For him, in the truest sense, the present
voyage was a homeward one.
"Japan gets into the blood," he said musingly. "I often think of the old
lady who committed suicide at Nikko. She left a letter which said: 'By
favor of the gods, I am too dishonorably old to hope to revisit this
jewel-glorious spot, so I prefer augustly to remain here for ever!' I
have had something of the same feeling, sometimes. I remember yet the
first time I saw the coast. That was twenty-five years ago. We watched
it together--your father and I--just as we two are doing now."
She looked at him with sudden eagerness, for of his own accord he had
never before spoken to her of her dead father. The latter had always
seemed a very real personage, but how little she knew about him! The
aunt who had brought her up--her mother's sister--had never talked of
him, and her uncle she had seen but twice since she had been old enough
to wonder. But, little by little, gleaning a fact here and there, she
had constructed a slender history of him. It told of mingled blood, a
birthplace on a Mediterranean island and a gipsy childhood. There was a
thin sheaf of yellowed manuscript in her possession that had been left
among her mother's scanty papers, a fragment of an old diary of his.
Many leaves had been ruthlessly cut from it, but in the pages that were
left she had found bits of flotsam: broken memory-pictures of his own
mother which had strangely touched her, of a bitter youth in England and
America overshadowed by the haunting fear of blindness, of quests to
West-Indian cities, told in phrases that dripped liquid gold and
sunshine. The voyage to Japan had been made on the same vessel that
carried her uncle, and they two had thus become comrades. The latter had
been an enthusiastic young missionary, one of a few chosen spirits sent
to defend a far field-casement thrown forward by the batteries of
Christendom. His sister had come out to visit him and a few months later
had married his friend.
Such was the story, as Barbara knew it, of her father and mother--a love
chapter which had soon closed with a far-away grave by the Inland Sea.
Her fancy had made of her father a pathetic figure. As a child, she had
dreamed of some day placing a monument to his memory in the Japanese
capital. She possessed only one picture of him, a tiny profile
photograph which she wore always in a locket engraved with her name. It
showed a dark face, clean-shaven, finely chiseled and passionate, with
the large, full eye of the dreamer. She had liked to think it looked
like the paintings of St. John. Perhaps this thought had caused the
projected monument to take the form of a Christian chapel. From a
nebulous idea, the plan had become a bundle of blue-prints, which she
had sent to her uncle, with the request that he purchase for her a
suitable site and begin the building. He had done this before his visit
to America and now the Chapel was completed, save in one particular--the
memorial window of rich, stained-glass stowed at that moment in the
ship's hold. The bishop had not seen it. From some feeling which she had
not tried to analyze, Barbara had said nothing to him of the Chapel's
especial significance. Now, however, at his unexpected reference, the
feeling frayed, and she told him all of her plan.
He gazed at her a moment in a startled fashion, then looked away, his
hand shading his eyes. When she finished there was a long pause which
made her wonder. She touched his arm.
"You were very fond of father, weren't you?"
"Yes," he said, in a tone oddly restrained.
"And was my mother with you when he fell in love with her?"
"Yes," and after a pause: "I married them."
"Then they went to Nagasaki," she said softly, "and there--he died. You
weren't there then?"
"No," he answered in a low voice. His face was still turned away, and
she caught an unaccustomed note of feeling in his voice.
He left her abruptly and began to pace up and down the deck, while she
stood watching the shoreline sharpen, the tangled blur of harbor resolve
and shift into manifold detail. Shapeless dots had become anchored
ships, a black pencil a wharf, a long yellow-gray streak a curved
shore-front lined with buildings, and the warm green blotch rising
behind it a foliaged hill pricked out with soft, gray roofs. There was a
rush of passengers to one side, where from a brisk little tug, at whose
peak floated a flag bearing a blood-red sun, a handful of spick-and-span
Japanese officials were climbing the ship's ladder.
At length the bishop spoke again at her elbow, now in his usual voice:
"What are you going to do with that man, Barbara?"
A faint flush rose in her cheek. "With what man?"
"Austen Ware."
She shrugged her shoulders and laughed--a little uneasily. "What can one
do with a man when he is ten thousand miles away?"
"He's not the sort to give up a chase."
"Even a wild-goose chase?" she countered.
"When I was a boy in Virginia," he said with a humorous eye, "I used to
chase wild geese, and bag 'em, too."
The bishop sauntered away, leaving a frown on Barbara's brow. She had
had a swift mental vision of a cool, dark-bearded face and assured
bearing that the past year had made familiar. It was a handsome face, if
somewhat cold. Its owner was rich, his standing was unquestioned. The
fact that he was ten years her senior had but made his attentions the
more flattering. He had had no inherited fortune and had been no idler;
for this she admired him. If she had not thrilled to his declaration, so
far as liking went, she liked him. The week she left New York he had
intended a yachting trip to the Mediterranean. When he told her, coolly
enough, that he should ask her again in Japan, she had treated it as a
jest, though knowing him quite capable of meaning it. From every worldly
standpoint he was distinctly eligible. Every one who knew them both
confidently expected her to marry Ware. Well, why not?
Yet to-day she did not ask herself the question confidently. It belonged
still to the limbo of the future--to the convenient "some day" to which
her thought had always banished it. Since she had grown she had never
felt for any one the sentiment she had dreamed of in that vivid girlhood
of hers, a something mixed of pride and joy, that a sound or touch would
thrill with a delight as keen as pain; but unconsciously, perhaps, she
had been clinging to old romantic notions.
A passenger leaning near her was whistling _Sally in our Alley_ under
his breath and a Japanese steward was emptying over the side a vase of
wilted flowers. A breath of rose scent came to her, mixed with a faint
smell of tobacco, and these and the whistled air awoke a sudden
reminiscence. Her gaze went past the clustered shipping, beyond the gray
line of buildings and the masses of foliage, and swam into a tremulous
June evening seven years past.
She saw a wide campus of green sward studded with stately elms festooned
with electric lights that glowed in the falling twilight. Scattered
about were groups of benches each with its freight of dainty frocks, and
on one of them she saw herself sitting, a shy girl of sixteen, on her
first visit to a great university. Men went by in sober black gown and
flat mortar-boards, young, clean-shaven, and boyish, with arms about one
another's shoulders. Here and there an orange "blazer" made a vivid
splash of color and groups in white-flannels sprawled beneath the trees
under the perfumed haze of briar-wood pipes that mingled with the
near-by scent of roses. From one of the balconies of the ivied
dormitories that faced the green came the mellow tinkle of a mandolin
and the sound of a clear tenor:
"Of all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like pretty Sally.
She is the darling of my heart--"
The groups about her had fallen silent--only one voice had said: "That's
'Duke' Daunt." Then the melody suddenly broke queerly and stopped, and
the man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "I'm going in. It's time
to dress anyway." And somehow his voice had seemed to break queerly,
too.
Duke Daunt! The scene shifted into the next day, when she had met him
for a handful of delirious moments. For how long afterward had he
remained her childish idol! Time had overlaid the memory, but it started
bright now at the sound of that whistled tune.
Her uncle's voice recalled her. He was handing her his binoculars. She
took them, chose a spot well forward and glued her eyes to the glass.
A sigh of ecstasy came from her lips, for it brought the land almost at
arm's length--the stone _hatoba_ crowded with brown Japanese faces,
pricked out here and there by the white Panama hat or pith-helmet of the
foreigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribboned
parasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting _rick'sha_,--the little
flotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage--the stately, columned
front of the club on the Bund with its cool terrace of round tables--the
_kimono'd_ figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along the
water-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailed
beetle--farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue and
beyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright,
yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green from
which cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. Arching over all the
enormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery of
the declining sun. It unfolded before her like a panorama--all the
basking, many-hued, polyglot, half-tropical life--a colorful medley,
queer and mysterious!
Nearer, nearer yet, the ship drew on, till there came to meet it two
curved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. The
captain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the group
of male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through the
hawse-holes.
Barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. The slow swinging of the vessel
to the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and the
shore, perilously near. She saw it now in its proper perspective--a trim
steam yacht, painted white, with a rakish air of speed and tautness,
the sun glinting from its polished brass fittings. It lay there,
graceful and light, a sharp, clean contrast to the gray and yellow
_junk_ and grotesque _sampan_, a disdainful swan amid a noisy flock of
teal and mallard.
Adjusting the focus Barbara looked. A man in naval uniform who had
boarded the ship at Quarantine was pointing out the yacht to a
passenger, and Barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "You see the
patches of green?--they're decorations for the Squadron that's due
to-morrow. Look just beyond them. Prettiest craft I've ever seen east of
the Straits.... Came in this morning. Owner's in Nara now, doing the
temples.... Has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, going
the pace.... They won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'd
go high and dry on empty champagne bottles."
Barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. Puzzled, she
withdrew her gaze, then looked once more.
Suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "What are
you going to do with that man?"--her uncle's query seemed to echo
satirically about her. For the white yacht was Austen Ware's, and there,
on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name
BARBARA
CHAPTER II
"THE ROOST"
The day had been sluggish with the promise of summer, but the failing
afternoon had brought a soft suspiration from the broad bosom of the
Pacific laden with a refreshing coolness. Along the Bund, however, there
was little stir. A few blocks away the foreign dive-quarter was
drowsing, and only a single _samisen_ twanged in Hep Goon's saloon,
where sailors of a dozen nationalities spent their wages while in port.
At the curbing, under the telegraph poles, the chattering _rick'sha_
coolies squatted, playing _Go_ with flat stones on a square scratched
with a pointed stick in the hard, beaten ground. On the spotless mats
behind their paper _shoji_ the curio-merchants sat on their gaudy wadded
cushions, while, over the glowing fire-bowls of charcoal in the inner
rooms, their wives cooked the rice for the early evening meal. The
office of the Grand Hotel was quiet; only a handful of loungers gossiped
at the bar, and the last young lady tourist had finished her flirtation
on the terrace and retired to the comfort of a stayless _kimono_. In the
deep foliage of the "Bluff" the slanting sunlight caught and quivered
till the green mole seemed a mighty beryl, and in its hedge-shaded
lanes, dreamy as those of an English village, the clear air was pungent
with tropic blooms.
On one of these fragrant byways, its front looking out across the bay,
stood a small bungalow which bore over its gateway the dubious
appellation "The Roost." From its enclosed piazza, over which a wistaria
vine hung pale pendants, a twisted stair led to the roof, half of which
was flat. This space was surrounded by a balustrade and shaded by a
rounded gaily striped awning. From this airy retreat the water, far
below, looked like a violet shawl edged with shimmering quicksilver and
embroidered with fairy fishing _junk_ and _sampan_; and the subdued
voices of the street mingled, vague and undefined, with a rich dank
smell of foliage, that moved silently, heavy with the odor of
plum-blossoms, a gliding ghost of perfume. Thin blue-and-white Tientsin
rugs and green wicker settees gave an impression of coolness and
comfort; a pair of ornate temple brasses gleamed on a smoking-stand, and
a rich Satsuma bowl did duty for a tobacco jar.
Under the striped awning three men were grouped about a miniature
roulette table; a fourth, middle-aged and of huge bulk, with a cynical,
Semitic face, from a wide arm-chair was lazily peering through the
fleecy curdle of a Turkish cigarette. A fifth stood leaning against the
balustrade, watching.
The last was tall, clean-cut and smooth-shaven, with comely head well
set on broad shoulders, and gray eyes keen and alert. Possibly no one of
the foreign colony (where a Secretary of Embassy was by no means a _rara
avis_) was better liked than Duke Daunt, even by those who never
attempted to be sufficiently familiar with him to call him by the
nickname, which a characteristic manner had earned him in his salad
days.
At intervals a player muttered an impatient exclamation or gave a
monosyllabic order to the stolid Japanese servant who passed
noiselessly, deftly replenishing glasses. Through all ran the droning
buzz of bees in the wistaria, the recurrent rustle of the metal wheel,
the nervous click of the rolling marble and the shuffle and thud of the
ivory disks on the green baize. All at once the marble blundered into
its compartment and one of the gamesters burst into a boisterous laugh
of triumph.
As the sudden discord jangled across the silence, the big man in the
arm-chair started half round, his lips twitched and a spasm of something
like fright crossed his face. The glass at his elbow was empty, but he
raised it and drained air, while the ice in it tinkled and clinked. He
set it down and wiped his lips with a half-furtive glance about him, but
the curious agitation had apparently been unnoted, and presently his
face had once more regained its speculative, slightly sardonic
expression.
Suddenly a distant gun boomed the hour of sunset. At the same instant
the marble ceased its erratic career, the wheel stilled and the youngest
of the gaming trio and the master of the place--Philip Ware, a graceful,
shapely fellow of twenty-three, with a flushed face and nervous
manner--pushed the scattered counters across the table with shaking
fingers.
"My limit to-day," he said with sullen petulance, and flipping the
marble angrily into the garden below, crossed to a table and poured out
a brandy-and-soda.
Daunt's gray eyes had been looking at him steadily, a little curiously.
He had known him seven years before at college, though the other had
been in a lower class than himself. But those intervening years had left
their baleful marks. At home Phil had stood only for loose habit, daring
fad, and flaunting mannerism--milestones of a career as completely
dissolute as a consistent disregard of conventional moral thoroughfares
could well make it. To Yokohama he was rapidly coming to be, in the eyes
of the censorious, an example for well-meaning youth to avoid, an
incorrigible _flanêur_, a purposeless idler on the primrose paths.
"Better luck next time," said one of the others lightly. "Come along,
Larry; we'll be off to the club."
The older man rose to depart more deliberately, his great size becoming
apparent. He was framed like a wrestler, abnormal width of shoulder and
massive head giving an effect of weight which contrasted oddly with
aquiline features in which was a touch of the accipitrine, something
ironic and sinister, like a vulture. His eyes were dappled yellow and
deep-set and had a peculiar expression of cold, untroubled regard. He
crossed to the farther side and looked down.
"What a height!" he said. "The whole harbor is laid out like a
checker-board." He spoke in a tone curiously dead and lacking in
_timbre_. His English was perfect, with a trace of accent.
"Pretty fair," assented Phil morosely. "It ought to be a good place to
view the Squadron, when it comes in to-morrow morning. It must have cost
the Japanese navy department a pretty penny to build those temporary
wharves along the Bund. They must be using a thousand incandescents! By
the decorations you'd think the Dreadnaughts were Japan's long lost
brothers, instead of battle-ships of a country that's likely to have a
row on with her almost any minute. I wonder where they will anchor."
The yellowish eyes had been gazing with an odd, intent glitter, and into
the heavy, pallid face, turned away, had sprung sharp, evil lines, that
seemed the shadows of some monstrous reflection on which the mind had
fed. Its sudden, wicked vitality was in strange contrast to the toneless
voice, which now said: "They will lie just opposite this point."
"So far in?" The young man leaning on the balustrade spoke interestedly.
"It seems as though from here one could almost shoot a pea aboard any
one of them."
"You might send me up some sticks of _Shimosé_, Doctor," said Phil with
satiric humor, "and I'll practise. I'll begin by shying a few at this
forsaken town; it needs it!"
The big man smiled faintly as he withdrew his eyes, and held out his
hand to the remaining visitor. The degrading lines had faded from his
face.
"I'm distinctly glad to have seen you, Mr. Daunt," he said. "I've
watched your trials with your aëroplane more than once lately at the
parade-ground. I saw the elder Wright at Paris last year and I believe
your flight will prove as well sustained as his. It's a pity you can't
compete for some of the European prizes."
"I'm afraid that would take me out of the amateur class," was the
answer. "It's purely an amusement with me--a fad, if you like."
"A very useful one," said the other, "unless you break your neck at it.
I wonder we haven't met before in Tokyo. I have an appointment to-night,
by the way, with your Ambassador. Come in to see me soon," he said,
turning to Phil. "I'm at home most of the time. Come and dine with me
again. I've only an indifferent cook, as you have discovered, I'm
afraid, but my new boy Ishida can make a famous cup of coffee and I can
always promise you a good cigar."
"Doctor Bersonin's the real thing!" said Phil, when the other had
disappeared. "He's a scientist--the biggest in his line--but he's no
prig. He believes in enjoying life. You ought to see his villa at
Kisaraz on the Chiba Road. He's worth a million, they say, and he must
make no end of money as a government expert." He paused, then added:
"You seem mighty quiet to-night! How does he strike you?"
Daunt was silent. He had seen that strange look that had shot across the
expert's face--at the sound of a laugh! He was wondering, too, what
attraction could exist between this middle-aged scientist with his cold
eyes and emotionless voice and Phil, sparkling and irresponsible
black-sheep and ne'er-do-well, who thought of nothing but his own coarse
pleasures. Frequently, of late, he had seen them together, at theater or
tea-house, and once in Bersonin's motor-car in Shiba Park in Tokyo.
"You don't like him! I can see that well enough," went on Phil
aggressively. "Why not? He's a lot above any man _I_ know, and I'm proud
to have him for a friend of mine."
"There's no accounting for tastes," returned Daunt dryly. "At any rate,
I don't imagine it matters particularly whether I like Doctor Bersonin
or not. There's another thing that's more apropos." He pointed to the
decanter in the other's hands. "You've had enough of that to-night, I
should think."
Phil reddened. "I've had no more than I can carry, if it comes to that,"
he retorted. "And I guess I'm able to take care of myself."
Daunt hesitated a moment. To-day's call had been a part of his
consistent effort, steadily growing more irksome, to keep alive for the
sake of the old college name, the _quasi_ friendship between them and to
invoke whatever influence he might once have possessed.
"I'm thinking of your brother," he said quietly. "You say his yacht came
into harbor from Kobe to-day. He'll scarcely be more than a week in the
temple cities, and any train may bring him after that. You'll want all
the time you've got to straighten out. You'll need to put your best foot
forward."
A look that was not pleasant shot across Phil's face. "I suppose I
shall," he said savagely. "A pretty brother he is! He wrote me from home
that if he found I'd been playing, he'd cut his allowance to me to
twenty dollars a week. I'd like to knock that smile of his down his
throat--the cold-blooded fish! _He_ spends enough!"
"He's earned it, I understand," said Daunt.
"So will I, perhaps, after I've had my fling. I'm in no hurry, and I
won't take orders always from him! I've had to knuckle down to him all
my life, and I'm precious tired of it, I can tell you."
Daunt's eyes had turned to the broad expanse below, where the white
sails of vagrant _sampan_ drifted. In the road he could hear the sharp
tap-tap of a blind _amma_--adept in the Japanese massage which coaxes
soreness from the body--as he passed slowly along, feeling his way with
his stick and from time to time sounding on his metal flute his
characteristic double note. Across the moment's silence the sound came
clear and bird-like, very shrill and sweet.
"What business is it of his," Phil added, "if I choose to stay out here
in the East?"
Daunt withdrew his gaze. "Take his advice, Phil," he said. "The East
isn't doing you any good. You're doing nothing but dissipate. And--it
doesn't pay."
Phil gave a short, sneering laugh. "Why shouldn't I stay abroad if I can
have more fun here than I can at home?" he returned. "If I had my way,
I'd never want to see the United States again! This country suits me at
present. When I get tired, I'll leave--if I can raise enough to get out
of town."
A flush had risen to Daunt's forehead, but he turned away without reply.
At the stair, however, he spoke again:
"Look here, Phil," he said, coming slowly back. "Why not come up to
Tokyo for a while? It's--quieter, and it will be a change. I have a
little Japanese house in Aoyama that I leased as a place to work on my
Glider models, but I don't use it now, and it's fairly well furnished.
The caretaker is an excellent cook, too." He took a key from its ring
and laid it on the table. "Let me leave this anyway--the address is on
the label--and do as you like about it."
Phil looked at him an instant with narrowing eyes, then laughed. "Tokyo
as a gentle sedative, eh? And pastoral visitations every other day!"
"You needn't be afraid of that," replied Daunt. "I'll not come to
lecture you. I haven't set foot in the place for a month, and probably
shan't for a month to come. Go up and try it, anyway. Drop the Bund and
the races for a little while and get a grip on things!"
Phil looked away. A sudden memory came to him of a face he had seen in
Tokyo--at one of the _matsuri_ or ward-festivals--a girl's face, oval
and pensive and with a smile like a flash of sunlight. Her _kimono_ had
been all of holiday colors, and he had tried desperately to pick
acquaintance, with poor success. A second time he had seen her, on the
beach at Kamakura. Then she had worn a _kimono_ of rich brown, soft and
clinging, and an _obi_ stamped with yellow maple leaves and fastened
with a little silver clasp in the shape of a firefly. She was with a
party of girls bent on frolic; they had discarded the white cleft _tabi_
and clog and were splashing through the surf bare-kneed. He could see
yet the foam on the perfect naked feet, and below the lifted _kimono_
and red petticoat, the gleam of the white skin that is the dream of
Japanese women. A flush crept over Phil's face as he remembered. He had
had better success that time. She had dropped her swinging clog and he
had rescued it, and won a word of thanks and a smile from her dark eyes.
She herself had unbent little, but the girls with her were full of
frolic and the handsome foreigner was an adventure. He had discovered
that she spoke English and lived in Tokyo, in the ward of the _matsuri_.
But though he had strolled through that district a score of times since,
he had not seen her again.
"You're not a bad sort, Daunt," he said. "I don't know but I--will."
"Good," said Daunt. "I'll send a chit to my caretaker the first thing in
the morning, and I'll put your name on the visitors' list at the Tokyo
Club. Well, I must be off."
* * * * *
Phil saw him cross the fragrant close to the gate with a growing sneer.
Then he threw himself on a chair and gazed moodily out across the
deepening haze to where, just inside the harbor breakwater, lay the
white yacht of whose coming Daunt had spoken.
A bitter scowl was on his face. Far below, at a little wharf, he could
see a tiny red triangle; it marked his sail-boat, the _Fatted-Calf_, so
christened at a tea-house on the river where he and other choice spirits
maintained the club whose _geisha_ suppers had become notorious. Japan,
to his way of life, had proven expensive. He had drawn on every
available resource and had borrowed more than he liked to remember, but
still his debts had grown. And now, with the coming of the white yacht,
he saw a lowering danger to the allowance on which he abjectly depended.
He knew his brother for one whom no plea could sway from a
determination, who on occasion could hew to the line with merciless
exactitude. Suppose he should cut off his allowance altogether. An ugly
passion stole over his countenance. He sprang up, filled a glass from
the decanter and drank it thirstily. With the instant glow of the liquor
his mood relaxed. He picked up the key from the table and stood
thoughtfully swinging it a moment by its wooden label. Then he put it in
his pocket and, looking at his watch, caught up a straw hat and went
briskly down to the street.
He swung down the steep, twisting, ravine-like road to the Bund with
less of ill-humor. He had no thought of the dark blue sky arching over,
soft with vapors like a smoke of gold, or of the glimpses of the sea
that came in sharp bursts of light between the curving walls that
towered on either side. He sniffed the thick, Eastern smells as a cat
sniffs catnip, his eye searching the stream of brown, shouting coolies
and toiling _rick'sha_, to linger on a satiny oval face under a shining
head-dress, or the powdered cheek of a gold-brocaded _geisha_ on her way
to some noble's feast.
At the foot of the hill, stood a sign-board on which was pasted a large
bill in yellow:
AT THE GAIETY THEATER
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT OF
THE POPULAR HARDMANN COMIC OPERA COMPANY
WITH
MISS CISSY CLIFFORD
He paused in front of this a moment, then passed to the Bund. At its
upper end, near the hotel front, great floating wharves had been built
out into the water. They were gaily trimmed with bunting and electric
lights in geometrical designs, and were flanked by arches covered with
twigs of ground-pine. A small army of workmen were still busied on them,
for the European Squadron in whose honor they had been erected would
arrive at dawn the next morning. Just beyond the arches, under a row of
twisted pines, were a number of park benches, and from one of these a
girl with a beribboned parasol greeted him.
"You're a half hour late, Phil," she complained. "I've been waiting here
till I'm tired to death." She made place for him with a rustle of
flounces. She was showily dressed, her cheeks bore the marks of habitual
grease-paint and the fingers of one over-ringed hand were slightly
yellowed from cigarette smoke.
"Hello, Cissy," he said carelessly, and sat down beside her. In his mind
was still the picture of that oval Japanese face suffused with pink,
those pretty bare feet splashing through the foam, and he looked
sidewise at his companion with an instant's sullen distaste.
"I had another row with the manager to-day," she continued. "I told him
he must think his company was a kindergarten!"
"Trust you to set him right in that," he answered satirically.
"My word!" she exclaimed. "How glum you are to-day! Same old poverty, I
suppose." She rose and shook out her skirts. "Come," she said. "There's
no play to-night. I'm in for a lark. Let's go to the Jewel-Fountain
Tea-House. They've got a new juggler there."
CHAPTER III
THE LAND OF THE GODS
In the first touch of the shore, where the Ambassador's pretty daughter
waited, Barbara's problem had been swept away. Patricia had rushed to
meet her, embraced her, with a moist, ecstatic kiss on her cheek,
rescued the bishop from his ordeal of hand-shaking and carried him off
to find their trunks, leaving Barbara borne down by a Babel of sound and
scent whose newness made her breathless, and to whose manifold
sensations she was as keenly alive as a photographic plate to color.
A half-dozen gnarled, unshaven porters in excessively shabby jackets
and straw sandals carried her hand-baggage into the hideously
modern, red-brick custom-house, over whose entrance a huge golden
conventionalized chrysanthemum shone in the sunlight, and as she watched
them, a dapper youth in European dress, with a shining brown derby, a
bright purple neck-tie, a silver-mounted cane and teeth eloquent of gold
bridge-work, slid into her hand a card whose type proclaimed that Mr. Y.
Nakajima "did the guiding for foreign ladies and gentlemans." The air
was fragrant with the mild aroma from tiny Japanese pipes and a-flutter
with moving fans. A group of elderly men in hot frock-coats and tiles of
not too modern vintage were welcoming a returning official, and sedate
gentlemen in sad-colored _houri_ and spotless cleft foot-wear, bowed
double in stately ceremonial, with the sucking-in of breath which in the
old-fashioned Japanese etiquette means "respectful awe bordering on
terror."
Barbara had found herself singularly conscious of a feeling of universal
good-nature. It came to her even in the posture of the resting coolies,
stretched at the side of the quay, lazily sunning themselves, with
whiffs of the omnipresent little pipe, and in the faces of the
bare-legged _rick'sha_ men, with round hats like bobbing mushrooms, arms
and chests glistening with sweat, and thin towels printed in black and
blue designs tucked in their girdles. She smiled at them, and they
smiled back at her with that unvarying smile which the Japanese of every
caste wears to wedding and to funeral. She even caught herself patting
the tonsured head of a preternaturally solemn baby swaddled in a
variegated _kimono_ and strapped to the back of a five-year-old boy.
The _rick'sha_ ride to the _stenshun_ (for so the Japanese has adapted
the English word "station") was a moving panorama of strange high lights
and shades, of savory odors from bake-ovens, of open shop-fronts hung
with gaudy figured crape, or piled with saffron _biwa_, warty purple
melons, ebony eggplant, shriveled yellow peppers and red Hokkaido
apples, of weighted carts drawn by chanting half-naked coolies, and
swiftly gliding victorias of Europeans. From a hundred houses in the
long, narrow streets hung huge gilded sign-boards, painted with
idiographs of black and red. At intervals the tall stone front of a
foreign business building looked down on its neighbors, or a tea-house
towered three stories high, showing gay little verandas on which stood
pots of flowers and dwarf trees; between were smaller houses of frame
and of cement, and thick-walled _go-downs_ for storing goods against
fire.
Here and there, from behind a gateway of unpainted wood, showing a
delicate grain, a pine thrust up its needled clump of green, or a
cherry-tree flung its pink pyrotechnics against the sky's flood of
dimming blue and gold. At a crossing a deformed beggar with distorted
face and the featureless look of the leper, waved a crutch and wheedled
from the roadside, and a child in dun-colored rags, unbelievably agile
and dirty, ran ahead of Barbara's _rick'sha_, prostrating himself again
and again in the dust, holding out grimy hands and whining for a _sen_.
In the side streets Barbara could catch glimpses of bare-breasted women
sitting in shop doors nursing babies, and children of a larger growth
playing Japanese hopscotch or tossing "diavolo," the latest foreign toy.
When the _rick'sha_ set them down at the station she felt bewildered,
yet full of exhilaration. As they drew up at its stone front, a porter
with red cap and brass buttons emerged and began to ring a heavy bell,
swinging it back and forth in both hands. The bishop bought their
tickets at a little barred window bearing over it the sign: "Your
baggages will be sent freely in every direction."
Making their way along the platform, crowded with Japanese, mostly in
native dress, and filled with the aroma of cigarettes and the thin
ringing of innumerable wooden clogs on stone flags, Barbara was
conscious for the first time of a studious surveillance. A young
Japanese passed her carrying his bent and wizened mother on his back;
the old woman, clutching him tightly about the neck, turned her shaven
head to watch. Children in startling rainbow tinted _kimono_ stared from
the platform with round, serious eyes. A peasant woman, with teeth
brilliantly blackened, peered from a car window, and a group of young
men turned bodily and regarded her with gravely observant gaze, in a
prolonged, unwinking scrutiny that seemed as innocent of courtesy as of
any intent to offend. In European cities she had felt the gaze of other
races, but this was different. It was not the curious study of a
phenomenon, of an enduring puzzle of far origins, nor the expression of
the ignorant, vacantly amused by what they do not understand; it was a
deeper look of inner placidity, that held no wonder and no awe, and
somehow suggested thoughts as ancient as the world. A curious sense
began to possess Barbara of having left behind her all familiar
every-day things, of being face to face with some new wonder, some
brooding mystery which she could not grasp.
They entered the car just behind an ample lady who had been among the
ship's passengers--a good-natured, voluble Cook's tourist who, the
second day out, had confided to Barbara her certainty of an invitation
to the Imperial Cherry-Blossom party, as her husband had "a friend in
the litigation." She wore a painted-muslin, and the husband of
influential acquaintance and substantial, red-bearded person showed now
a gleaming expanse of white waistcoat crossed by a gold watch-chain that
might have restrained a tiger. The lady nodded and smiled beamingly.
"Isn't it all perfectly splendid!" she cried. "There was a baby on the
platform that was too _sweet_!--for all the world like the Japanese
dolls we buy at home, with their hair shingled and a little round spot
shaved right in the crown! My husband tried to give it a silver dollar,
but the mother just smiled and bowed and went away and left it lying on
the bench." She found a seat and fanned herself vigorously with a
handkerchief. "I just thought I never _would_ get through that car
door," she added. "It's only two feet across!"
The road was narrow gage and the seats ran the length of the car on
either side. Hardly had its occupants settled themselves when, to the
shrill piping of a horn, the train started.
"Goodness, this is a relief!" sighed Patricia, as the bishop opened the
first Japanese newspaper he had seen for many months. "I hate
_rick'sha_--they're such unsociable things! I haven't said ten words to
you, Barbara, and I've got oceans to talk about. But I'll be merciful
till I get you home. What a good-looking youth that is in the corner!"
The young man referred to had a light skin and long, almond-shaped eyes.
He wore a suit of gray merino underwear, and between the end of the
drawers and the white, cleft sock, an inch of polished skin was visible.
His hat was a modish felt. His _houri_, which bore a woven crest on
breast and sleeves, swung jauntily open and above his left ear was
coquettishly disposed an unlighted cigarette. Next him, under a brass
rack piled with bright-patterned carpet-bags, an old lady in
dove-colored silk was placidly inflating a rubber air-cushion. Her face
had an artificial delicacy of _nuance_ that was a triumph of rice-powder
and rouge. Beside her was a girl of perhaps eighteen, in a _kimono_ of
dark blue and an _obi_ of gold brocade. The latter wore white silk
"mits" with bright metal trimming and on one slender finger was a
diamond ring. Her hands were delicately artistic and expressive, and her
complexion as soft as the white wing of a miller. She gazed steadfastly
away, but now and then her sloe-black eyes returned to study Barbara's
foreign gown and hat with surreptitious attention.
"What complexions!" whispered Patricia. "The old lady made hers this
morning, sitting flat on a white mat in front of a camphor-wood
dressing-chest about two feet high, with twenty drawers and a round
steel mirror on top. It beats a hare's-foot, doesn't it! The daughter's
is natural. If I had been born with a skin like that, it would have
changed my whole disposition!"
Having settled her air-cushion, the old lady drew from her girdle a
lacquer case and produced a pipe--a thin reed with a tiny silver bowl at
its end. A flat box yielded a pinch of tobacco as fine as snuff. This
she rolled between her fingers into a ball the size of a small pea,
placed it carefully in the bowl and began to smoke. Each puff she
inhaled with a lingering inspiration and emitted it slowly, in a thin
curdled cloud, from her nostrils. Three puffs, and the tiny coal was
exhausted. She tapped the pipe gently against the edge of the seat, put
it back into the case and replaced the latter in her girdle. Then,
tucking up her feet under her on the plush seat, she turned her back to
the aisle and went to sleep.
Three students in the uniform of some lower school with foreign jackets
of blue-black cloth set off with brass buttons, sat in a row on the
opposite side. Each had a cap like a cadet's, with a gilt cherry-blossom
on its front, and all watched Barbara movelessly. The man nearest her
wore a round straw hat and horn spectacles. He was reading a vernacular
newspaper, intoning under his breath with a monotonous sing-song, like
the humming of a bumblebee. Between them a little boy sat on the edge of
the seat, his clogs hanging from the thong between his bare toes, the
sleeves of his _kimono_ bulging with bundles. He stared as if hypnotized
at a curl of Barbara's bronze hair which lay against the cushion. Once
he stretched out a hand furtively to touch it, but drew it back hastily.
"If I could only talk to him!" Barbara exclaimed. "I want to know the
language. Tell me, Patsy--how long did it take you to learn?"
"I?" cried Patricia in comical amazement. "Heavens and earth, _I_
haven't learned it! I only know enough to badger the servants. You have
to turn yourself inside out to think Japanese, and then stand on your
head to talk it."
"Never mind, Barbara," said the bishop, looking up from his newspaper.
"You can learn it if you insist on it. Haru would be a capital
teacher--bless my soul, I believe I forgot to tell you about her!"
"Who is Haru?" asked Barbara.
"She's a young Japanese girl, the daughter of the old _samurai_ who sold
us the land for the Chapel. The family is a fine old one, but of frayed
fortune. I was greatly interested in her, chiefly, perhaps, because she
is a Christian. She became so with her father's consent, though he is a
Buddhist. She isn't of the servant class, of course, but I thought--if
you liked--she would make an ideal companion for you while you are
learning Tokyo."
"I know Haru," said Patricia. "She's a dear! She's as pretty as a
picture, and her English is too quaint!"
"It would be lovely to have her," Barbara answered. "You're a very
thoughtful man, Uncle Arthur. Are you sure she'll want to?"
"I'll send her a note and ask her to come to you at the Embassy this
evening. Then--all aboard for the Japanese lessons!"
"No such wisdom for me, thank you," said Patricia. "I prefer to take
mine in through the pores. All the Japanese officials speak English
anyway, just as much as the diplomatic corps. By the way, there's Count
Voynich, the Servian _Chargé_." She nodded toward the farther end of the
carriage where a bored-looking European plaintively regarded the
landscape through a monocle. "He's nice," she added reflectively, "but
he's a dyspeptic. I caught him one night at a dinner dropping a capsule
into his soup. He has a cabinet with three hundred Japanese
_nets'kés_--they're the little ivory carvings on the strings of
tobacco-pouches. He didn't speak to me for a month once because I said
it looked like a dental exhibition. Almost every secretary has a fad,
and that's his. Ours has an aëroplane. He practises on it nearly every
day on the parade-ground. The pudgy woman in the other corner with a
cockatoo in her hat is Mrs. Sturgis, the wife of the big exporter. She
wears red French heels and calls her husband 'papa'."
Barbara's laughter was infectious. It caught the bishop. It reflected
itself even on the demure face of the Japanese girl, and the serious
youths opposite giggled openly in sympathy.
"I do envy you your first impressions!" exclaimed Patricia. "I've been
here so long that I've forgotten mine. It seems perfectly natural now
for people to live in houses made of bird-cages and paper napkins, and
travel about in grown-up baby-buggies, and to see men walking around
with bare legs and oil-skin umbrellas. It's like the sea-shore at home,
I suppose--you get used to it."
The train had stopped at a suburb and guards went by proclaiming its
name in a musical guttural, their voices dwelling insistently on the
long-drawn, last syllable. The next carriage was a third-class one with
bare floors and wooden benches, set crosswise. Through the opened door
Barbara could see its crowd of brown faces, keen and saturnine. On its
front seat a heavy-featured, lumpish coolie woman was nursing a
three-year-old baby, holding it to her bared breast with red and
roughened hands. Just outside the station's white-washed fence, a clump
of factory chimneys spouted pitchy smoke into the dimming sky, and the
descending sun glistened from a monster gas-tank. Farther away, beyond
clipped hedges, lay thatched roofs, looking as soft as mole-skin, with
wild flowers growing on the ridges, and bamboo clumps soaring above
them, like pale green ostrich-feathers yellow at the tips. Through the
open window came the treble note of a girl singing.
A man passed hastily through the carriage leaving a trail of small
pamphlets bound in green paper with gold lettering--an advertisement of
a health resort, printed in English for the tourist. Barbara opened one
curiously. She looked up with a merry eye.
"Here's a paragraph for you, Uncle Arthur," she said. "Listen:
"'This place has other modern monuments, first and second-class
hotels and many sea-scapes. In one quarter are a number of
missionaries, but they can easily be avoided.'"
"Do let us credit that to difficulties of the language," he protested.
"I'm sure that must have been meant complimentarily."
"But what a contradiction!" put in Patricia wickedly.
"Well," he retorted. "My baker has a sign on his wagon, 'The biggest
loafer in Tokyo.' He means that well, too."
A shrill whistle, a slamming of doors, and now the gray roofs fell away.
On one side the steel road all but dipped in the bay. Wild ducks drew
startled wakes across the rippleless lagoon. On a sand-bar a flock of
gray and white gulls disported, looking at a distance like pied bathers;
and about an anchored fishing boat, a dozen naked urchins were splashing
with shrill cries. Far across the inlet, hazy, vapory, visionary,
Barbara could make out a farther shore, an outline in violets and
opalines, coifed with lilac cloud, and in the mid-azure a high-pooped
_junk_ swam by, a shape of misty gold, palely drawn in wan, blue light.
On the other side the train was rounding grassy hills, terraced to the
very tops. Laid against their steep sides, or standing upright on wooden
framework, were occasional huge advertisements in red or white--Chinese
characters or pictures--while flowering camelia trees and small
green-yellow shrubs drew lengthening blue shadows. A high tressle
spanned acres of orchard where continuous trellis made a carpet of
growing fruit, across which Barbara saw far away the bold outline of
bluish hills.
They were crossing flooded rice-fields now, like gigantic crazy
checker-boards, and the air was musical with the low, chirring chorus of
frogs. Shades of orange light played over the marshes, bars of rape
braided them with vivid yellow, and on the narrow, curving partitions
between the burnished squares, round stacks of garnered straw stood like
crawfish chimneys. Amid them peasants worked with broad-bladed mattocks,
knee-deep in mud. They were blue clad, with white cloths bound about
their heads, and some had sashes of crimson. Here and there, naked to
the thighs, a boy trod a water-wheel between the terraced levels. At
intervals a refractory rock-hillock served as excuse for a single
twisted pine-tree shading a carved tablet to some _Shinto_ divinity, or
a steep bluff sheltered a tiny shrine of unpainted wood; and all along
the way, shining canals drew silver ribbons through the paddy-fields,
and little arrowy flights of birds darted hither and thither.
Occasionally they passed small, neat stations, each with its white
sign-boards bearing long liquid names in English, and queer Japanese
characters. Opposite one, on a sloping hill that was a mass of deep
glowing green, Patricia pointed out the peaked roofs of a cluster of
temples, the shrine of some century-dead Buddhist saint. Barbara began
to realize that these fields through which this modern train was gliding
were old Japan, that in those blue hills had been nurtured the ancient
legends she had read, of famous two-sworded _samurai_, of swaggering
bandits and pleasure-loving _shogun_, and of tea-house _geisha_ who
danced their way into _daimyo's_ palaces. The spell of the land, whose
sheer beauty had thrilled her on the ship, drew her closer with the
threads of memories almost forgotten.
Its contrasts were wonderful. They spoke of primary and unmixed
emotions, that lisped themselves through the fading golden sunlight, the
moist, dreamy air, the graceful outlines of roof and tree. In the west
the sun was declining toward a range of hills jagged as the teeth of a
bear. Their tops were pale as cloud and their bases melted into an ebony
line of forest. The plain below was a winey purple, with slashes of red
earth gorges like fresh wounds, and one side had the cloudy color of
raspberries crushed in curdled milk. The farther range seemed a part of
a far-off painted curtain, tinted in pastels, and high above a milky
cloud floated, curling like a lace scarf about the opal crest of Fuji,
mysteriously blue and dim as an Arctic summer sea.
Barbara glimpsed it, the very spirit of beauty, between the whirling
shadows of pine and camphor trees, between tiled walls guarding thatched
temples, flights of gray pigeons and spurts of pink cherry-blossom. As
she leaned out, and the pines bowed rhythmically, and the water-wheels
turned in the furrows, and the yellow-green of the bamboo, the
purple-indigo of the hills and the golden-pink of the cherries lifting,
above the hedges, went by like raveling skeins of a tapestry--that
majestic Presence, ghostly and splendid above the wild contour of hill
and mountain, seemed to call to her.
And across the gorgeous landscape, rejoicing from every rift and crevice
of its moist soil, in its colors of rich red earth and green foliage, in
the grace and vigor of its springing, resilient bamboo groves and the
cardinal pride of its flowering camelias, Barbara's heart answered the
call.
CHAPTER IV
UNDER THE RED SUNSET
The slowing of the train awoke Barbara from her reverie. The three boy
students got out, casting sidelong glances at her. More Japanese
entered, and two foreigners--a bright-faced girl on the arm of a
keen-eyed, soldierly man with bristling white hair, a mustache like a
walrus, and a military button. The girl's hands were full of
cherry-branches, whose bunches of double blossoms, incredibly thick and
heavy, filled the car with a delicate fragrance. The bishop folded his
newspaper and put it into his pocket.
As he did so the owner of the expansive waistcoat leaned across the
aisle and addressed him.
"Say, my friend," he said, "you've lived out here some time, I
understand."
"Yes," the bishop replied. "Twenty-five years."
"Well, I take it, then, you ought to know this country right down to the
ground; and if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question or two."
"Do," said the bishop. "I'll be glad to answer if I can."
The other got up and took a seat opposite. "You see," he pursued
confidentially, "I came on this trip just for a rest and to settle the
bills for the curios my wife"--he indicated the lady, who had now moved
up beside him--"thinks she'd like to look at back home. But I've been
getting interested by the minute. It's quite some time since I went to
school, and I guess there hadn't so much happened then to Japan. I wish
you'd run down the scale for me--just to hit the high places. Now there
was a big rumpus here, I remember, at the time of our Civil War. They
chose a new Emperor, didn't they?"
"No. The dynasty has been unbroken for two thousand years."
"Two thousand years!" cried the lady. "Why, that's before Christ!"
"When our ancestors, Martha, were painting themselves up in yellow ochre
and carrying clubs--what was the row about, then?"
"It was something like this. To go back a little, the Emperor was always
the nominal ruler and spiritual head, but the temporal power was
administered by a self-decreed Viceroy called the _shogun_. Japan was a
closed country and only a little trading was allowed in certain ports."
His questioner nodded. The girl beside the white-haired old soldier had
touched the latter's sleeve, and both were listening attentively. "Then
Perry came along and kicked open the gate. Bombarded 'em, didn't he?"
The bishop's eyes twinkled. "Only with gifts. He brought a small
printing-press, a toy telegraph line and a miniature locomotive and
railroad track. He set up these on the beach and showed the officials
whom the _shogun's_ government sent to treat with him, how they worked.
In the end he made them understand the immense value of the scientific
advancement of the western world. The visit was an eye-opener, and the
wiser Japanese realized that the nation couldn't exist under the old
_régime_ any longer. It must make general treaties and adopt new ideas.
Some, on the other hand, wanted things to stay as they were."
"Pulling both ways, eh?"
"Yes. At length the progressists decided on a sweeping measure. Under
the _shogunate_, the _daimyos_ (they were the great landed nobles) had
been in a continual state of suppressed insurrection."
"Some wouldn't knuckle down to the _shogun_, I suppose."
"Exactly. There was no national rallying-point. But they all alike
revered their Emperor. In all the bloody civil wars of a thousand
years--and the Japanese were always fighting, like Europe in the Middle
Ages--no _shogun_ ever laid violent hands on the Emperor. He was half
divine, you see, descended from the ancient gods, a living link between
them and modern men. So now they proposed to give him complete temporal
power, make him ruler in fact, and abolish the _shogunate_ entirely."
"Phew! And the big _daimyos_ came into line on the proposition?"
"They poured out their blood and their money like water for the new
cause. The _shogun_ himself voluntarily relinquished his power and
retired to private life."
"Splendid!" said the stranger, and the girl clapped her gloved hands.
"So that was the 'Restoration,' the beginning of _Meiji_, whatever that
may mean?"
"The 'Era of Enlightenment.' The present Emperor, Mutsuhito, was a boy
of sixteen then. They brought him here to Yedo, and renamed it
Tokyo----"
"And proceeded to get reeling drunk on western notions," said the man
with the military button, smiling grimly. "I was out here in the
Seventies."
"True, sir," assented the bishop. "It was so, for a time. And the
opposition took refuge in riot, assassination, and suicide. But
gradually Japan worked the modernization scheme out. She sent her young
statesmen to Europe and America to study western systems of education,
jurisprudence and art. She hired an army of experts from all over the
world. She sent her cleverest lads to foreign universities. In the end
she chose what seemed to her the best from all. Her military ideas come
from Germany and her railroad cars from the town of Pullman, Illinois.
When the best didn't suit her, she invented a system of her own, as she
has done with wireless telegraphy."
"So!" said the other. "I'm greatly obliged to you, sir. I've read plenty
in the newspapers, but I never had it put so plain. It strikes me," he
added to the old soldier, "that a nation plucky enough to do this in
fifty years, in fifty more will make some other nations get a move on."
He brought a big fist smashing down in an open palm. "And, by gad! the
Japanese deserve all they get! When we go back I guess me and Martha
won't march in any anti-Jap torch-light processions, anyway!"
The fields were gone now. The train was rumbling along a canal teeming
with laden _sampan_, level with the paper _shoji_ of frail-looking
houses on its opposite bank. Beyond lay a sea of roofs, swelling gray
billows of tiling spotted with green foam, from which steel factory
chimneys lifted like the black masts of sunken ships. A leafy hill of
cryptomeria rose near-by, and an octagonal stone tower peeped above its
foliage. Crows were circling about it, black dots against the bronze.
The train was entering Tokyo.
A door slammed sharply. From the forward smoking carriage a man had
entered. He was an European and Barbara was struck at once by his great
size and the absence of color in his leaden face. The bored-looking
diplomatist in the corner gathered himself hastily into a bow, which the
other acknowledged abstractedly. Seemingly he had been occupied in some
intent speculation which spread a kind of glaze over his sharp features.
A book drooped carelessly from his heavy fingers.
"That is Doctor Bersonin," said the bishop, as the girls collected their
wraps. "He came just before I left, last fall. He is the government
expert, and is supposed to be one of the greatest living authorities on
explosives."
"Oh, yes," said Patricia, "I know. He invented a dynamo or a torpedo, or
something. I saw him once at a reception; he had a foreign decoration as
big as a dinner-plate."
The big man made his way slowly along the aisle and, still absorbed,
took a dust-coat from a rack. As he ponderously drew it on, the daylight
was suddenly eclipsed, and the rumbling reëchoed from metal roofing.
They were in Shimbashi Station.
"Isn't he simply odious!" whispered Patricia, as the expert stepped
before them on to the long, dusky, asphalt platform. "His eyes are like
a cat's and his hands look as if they wanted to crawl, like big white
spiders! There is the Embassy _betto_," she said suddenly, pointing over
the turnstile, where stood a Japanese boy in a wide-winged _kimono_ of
tea-colored pongee with crimson facings and a crimson mushroom hat. "The
carriage is just outside. You'll come, too, of course, Bishop," she
added. "Father will expect you."
He shook his head and motioned toward a dense assemblage comprising a
half dozen of his own race in clerical black, and a half hundred
_kimono'd_ Japanese, whose faces seemed one composite smile of welcome.
"There is a part of my flock," he said. "There will be a jubilation at
my bachelor palace to-night. I shall see you to-morrow, I hope."
They watched him for a moment, the center of a ceremonious ring of
bowing figures, then passed through the station to the steps where the
carriage waited.
The station debouched on to a broad open square bordered with canals and
lined with ranks of _rick'sha_, some of which had small red flags with
the name of a hotel in white letters, in English. The space was gray and
dusty; pedestrians dotted it and across it a bent and sweating
street-sprinkler hauled his ugly trickling cart, chanting in a half-tone
as he went. A little distance away Barbara caught a glimpse of a busy
paved street, lined with ambitious glass shop-fronts and with a double
line of clanging trolley-cars passing to and fro beneath a maze of
telegraph wires seemingly as fine as pack-thread. Her nostrils twitched
with strange odors--from stagnant moats of sticky, black mud, from
panniers of dressed fish, from the rice-powder and pomade of women's
toilets--all the scents bred in swarming streets by a glowing tropic
sun.
At one side waited a handful of foreign carriages. All the drivers of
these wore the loose, flapping liveries and the round hats of green or
crimson or blue. "They are Embassy turn-outs," explained Patricia. "Each
one has its color, you see. Ours is red and you can see it farthest." As
they took their seats an open victoria rolled up, with cobalt-blue
wheels, and a _betto_ with a _kimono_ of dark cloth trimmed with wide
strips of the same hue ran ahead, clearing the way with raucous cries.
"There goes the Bulgarian Minister's wife," said Patricia. "She's got
the finest pearls in Tokyo."
A hundred yards from the entrance the Embassy carriage halted abruptly
and Barbara caught her companion's arm with a low exclamation. At the
side of the square, seated or reclining on the ground was a body of
perhaps eighty men dressed in a deadly brownish-yellow, the hue of
iron-rust, with coarse hats and rough straw sandals. They were disposed
in lines, a handcuff was on each left wrist, and a thin, rattling iron
chain linked all together.
"They are convicts," said Patricia; "on their way to the copper mines, I
imagine. They will move presently and we can pass."
At the head of the melancholy platoon stood an officer in dark blue
cloth uniform and clumsy shoes, a sword by his side. He stood motionless
as an idol, his sparse mustaches waxed, his visored cap set square on
his crisp, black hair, his bronze face impassive. The prisoners looked
on stolidly at the stir of the station, the flying _rick'sha_, the
crowded _sampan_ in the canal, and the noisy trolley-cars passing
near-by. Some talked in low tones and pointed here and there, with
furtive glances at the officer. Barbara noted their different
expressions, some stolid, low-browed and featureless, some with
side-looks of sharper cunning, all touched with oriental apathy.
A bell now began to clamor in the train-shed and there came the rasping
hoot of an engine. The officer turned, gave a sharp order, and the
prisoners rose, with light clanking of their chains. Another order, and
they moved, in double lines of single file, into the station.
Patricia heaved a sigh of relief as the halted traffic started.
"_Hyaku_, Tucker," she called to the driver. "_Hyaku_ means quickly,"
she explained aside. "His name is Taka, but I call him Tucker because
it's easier to remember."
As they rolled swiftly on, through the wondrous panorama of teeming
Tokyo streets, the sun hung, an elongated globe of deep orange-crimson,
streaked with little whips of rosy cloud. Beneath it the mountains lay
like coiled, purple dragons, indolent and surfeited. One star twinkled
palely in the lemon-colored sky. Yet now to Barbara the splendor of
color seemed tragic, the poured-out beauty but a veil, behind which
moved, old and apish and gray, the familiar passions of the world.
Before her eyes were flowing and mingling a thousand strands of orient
life, yet she saw only the red light glowing on the stone entrance of
Shimbashi, with those hideous saffron jackets filing perpetually into
its yawning mouth, like unholy spectres in a dream.
CHAPTER V
THE MAKER OF BUDDHAS
The setting sun poured a flood of wine-colored light over
Reinanzaka--the "Hill-of-the-Spirit"--whose long slope rose behind the
American Embassy, whither the Dandridge victoria was rolling. It was a
long leafy ridge stippled with drab walls of noble Japanese houses, and
striped with narrow streets of the humble; one of the many green knolls
that, rising above the gray roofs, make the Japanese capital seem an
endless succession of teeming village and restful grove.
Along its crest ran a lane bordered with thorn hedges. A little way
inside this stood a huge stone _torii_, facing a square, ornamented
gateway, shaded by cryptomerias. The latter was heavily but chastely
carved, and on its ceiling was a painting, in green and white on a
gold-leaf ground, of Kwan-on, the All-Pitying. From the gate one looked
down across the declivity, where in a walled compound, the rambling
buildings of the Embassy showed pallidly amid green foliage. Beyond this
were sections of trafficking streets, and still farther a narrow, white
road climbed a hill toward a military barracks--a blur of dull,
terra-cotta red. In the dying afternoon the lane had an air of placid
aloofness. Somewhere in a thoroughfare below a trolley bell sounded, an
impudent note of haste and change in a symphony of the intransmutable.
Over all was the scent of cherry-blossoms and a faint musk-like odor of
incense.
From the gate a mossy pavement, shaded by sacred _mochi_ trees, led to a
Buddhist temple-front of the _Mon-to_ sect, before which a flock of
fluttering gray-and-white pigeons were pecking grains of rice scattered
by a priest, who stood on its upper step, watching them through placid,
gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore a long green robe, a stole of gold
brocade was around his neck, and his face was seamed with the lines of
life's receding tides. At one side of the pavement, worn and grooved by
centuries of worshiping feet, was a square stone font and on the other
side a graceful bell-tower of red lacquer. Back of this stood a forest
of tall bronze lanterns, and beyond them a graveyard, an acre thick with
standing stone tablets of quaint, squarish shape, chiseled with deep-cut
idiographs. Nearer the graveyard, overshadowed by the greater bulk of
the temple, was a long, low nunnery, with clumps of flowers about it.
Through its bamboo lattices one caught glimpses of women's figures, clad
in slate-color, of placid faces and boyishly shaven heads. About the
yard a few little children were playing and a mother, with a baby on her
back, looked smilingly on.
The space where the priest stood was connected by a small, curved,
elevated bridge with another temple structure standing on the right of
the yard, evidently used as a private residence. This was more ornate,
far older and touched with decay. Its porch was arcaded, set with oval
windows and hung with bronze lanterns green from age. Its entrance doors
were beautifully carved, paneled with endless designs in dull colors,
and bordered with great gold-lacquer peonies laid on a background of
green and vermilion. From their corners jutted snarling heads of
grotesque lions and on either side stood gigantic _Ni-O_--glowering
demon-guardians of sacred thresholds. Through the straight-boled trees
that grew close about it, came transient gleams of a hedged garden, of
burnished green and maroon foliage, where cherry-blooms hung like fluffy
balls of pink smoke. The garden had a private entrance--a gate in the
outer lane--and over this was a small tablet of unpainted wood:
[Illustration]
Which, translated, read:
ALOYSIUS THORN
Maker of Buddhas
Directly opposite stood a small Christian Chapel. It was newly built and
still lacked its final decoration--a rose-window, whose empty sashes
were stopped now with black cloth. High above the flowering green its
slanting roof lifted a cross.
It rose, white and pure, emblem of the Western faith that yet had been
born in the East. Over against the ornate pageantry of Buddhist
architecture, in a land of another creed, of variant ideals and a
passionate devotion to them, it stood, simple, silent, and watchful. The
priest on the temple steps was looking at the white cross, regarding it
meditatively, as one to whom concrete symbols are badges of spiritual
things.
Footsteps grated on the gravel and the occupant of the older temple came
slowly through its garden. He was a foreigner, though dressed in
Japanese costume. His shoulders were broad and powerful and he moved
with a quickness and grace in step and action that had something feline
in it. His hair, worn long, was black, touched with gray, and a curved
mustache hid his lips. His expression was sensitively delicate and
alertly odd--an impression added to by deeply-set eyes, one of which was
visibly larger than the other, of the variety known as "pearl," slightly
bulbous, though liquid-brown and heavily lashed.
The new-comer ascended the steps and stood a moment silently beside the
priest, watching the gluttonous pigeons. As he looked up, he saw the
other's gaze fixed on the Chapel cross. A quick shiver ran across his
mobile face, and passing, left it hard with a kind of grim defiance.
Presently the priest said in Japanese:
"The Christian temple across the way honorably approaches completion.
Assuredly, however, moths have eaten my intelligence. Why does the
gloomy hole illustriously elect to remain in its wall?"
"It is for a thing they call a 'window'," said Thorn. "After a time they
will put therein an august abomination, representing sublimely hideous
cloud-born beings and idiotic-looking saints in colored glass."
The priest nodded his shaven head sagely.
"It will, perhaps, deign to be a _gaku_ of the Christian God. I shall,
with deference, study it. I have watered my worthless mind with much
arrogant reading of Him. Doubtless He was also Buddha and taught The
Way."
An acolyte had come from the temple and approached the red bell-tower.
Midway of the huge bronze bell a heavy cedar beam, like a catapult, was
suspended from two chains. He swung this till its muffled end struck the
metal rim, and the air swelled with a dreamy sob of sound. He swung it
again, and the sob became a palpitant moan, like breakers on a far-away
beach. Again, and a deep velvety boom throbbed through the stillness
like the heart of eternity.
"It is time for the service," said the priest, and turning, went into
the temple, from whose interior soon came the woodeny tapping of a
_mok'gyo_--the hollow wooden fish, which is the emblem of the _Mon-to_
sect--and the sound of chanting voices.
* * * * *
Thorn, the man with whom the priest had spoken, crossed the bridge to
the other temple with a slow step. He passed between the scowling
guardian figures, slid back a paper _shoji_ and entered. The room in
which he stood had been the _haiden_, or room of worship. Around its
walls were oblong carvings, marvelously lacquered, of the nine flowers
and nine birds of old Japanese art. In one were set six large painted
panels; the red seal they bore was that of the great Cho Densu, the Fra
Angelico of Japan. In its center, under a brocade canopy, was a raised
platform once the seat of the High Priest. It faced a long transept,
like a chancel; this ended in a short flight of steps leading, through
doors of soft, fretted gold-lacquer, to a huge altar set with carved
tables, great tarnished brasses and garish furniture. The walls of the
transept were done in red with green ornamentations. From the overhead
gloom grotesque phoenix and dragon peered down and in the gathering
dimness, shot through with the wan yellow gleam of brass, the place
seemed uncanny.
Thorn drew back a heavy drapery which covered a doorway, and entered a
room that was windowless and very dark. He lit a candle.
The dim light it furnished disclosed a weird and silent assembly. The
space was crowded with strange glimmering deities--of bronze, of silver,
of priceless gold-lacquer--the dust thick on their faces, their aureoles
misty with cobwebs. Some gazed with passionless serenity, or blessed
with outstretched hand; some threatened with scowling faces and clenched
thunderbolts: Jizo of the tender smile, in whose sleeves nestle the
souls of dead children; Kwan-on, of divine compassion, with her many
hands; Emma-dai-O, Judge of the Dead, menacing and terrible; strange
sardonic _tengu_, half-bird, half-human. The floor was thick with them.
From shelves on the walls leered swollen, frog-like horrors such as
often appear on Alaskan totem-poles, triple-headed divinities of India
and China, coiled cobras, idols from Ceylon, and curious Thibetan
praying-wheels. A sloping stairway slanted through the gloom; beside it
was an image of the red god, Aizen Bosatsu, his appalling countenance
framed in lurid flames, seated on a fiery lotos.
The master of this celestial and infernal pantheon closed and locked the
door, and mounted the stairway to the loft--a low, rambling room of
eccentric shape, under the curving gables.
Here, through a long window beneath the very eaves, the light still came
brightly. In the center was a board table, littered with delicate
carving-tools. He kindled the charcoal in a bronze _hibachi_, and set
over it a copper pot which began to emit a thick, weedy odor. From a
cabinet he took phials containing various powders, and measured into the
pot a portion from each. Lastly he added a quantity of gold-leaf,
slowly, flake by flake. At one side a white silk cloth was draped over a
pedestal; he drew this away and looked at the unfinished figure it had
concealed. It was an image of Kwan-on, the All-Merciful.
Through the open window the chant of the priests came clearly:
"_Waku hyoryu kokai_
_Ry[=u]gyo Shokinan_
_Nembi Kwan-on riki_
_Har[=o] fun[=o]motsu._"
(He who is beset with perils of dragon and great fish--who
drifts on an endless sea--if he offer petition to Kwan-on, waves
will not destroy him.)
Thorn crossed the room and leaning his elbows on the window-ledge,
looked out. Through the odor of incense the monotonous intonation of the
liturgy rose with the grandeur of a Gregorian chant:
"_Sh[=u]j[=o] kikon-yaku
Mury[=o]ku hisshin
Kwan-on myochiriki
N[=o]ku sekenku._"
(He who is in distress--when immeasurable suffering presses on
him--Kwan-on, all-wise and all-powerful, can save him from the
world's calamity.)
Once, while the quiet yard echoed back the slow cadences of the antique
tongue, the watcher's eyes turned to the image on the pedestal, then
came back to an object that drew them--had drawn them for many days
against his will!--the white cross of the Chapel. A last glow of
refracted light touched it now, as red as blood, a symbol of the
infinite passion and pain. A long time he stood there. The twilight
deepened, the chant ceased, lights sprang up along the lane, night fell
with its sickle moon and crowding stars, but still he stood, his face
between his hands.
At length he turned, and groping for the cloth, threw it over the
Kwan-on and lit a lamp swinging from a huge brass censer. Unlocking an
alcove, he took out a fleece-wrapped bundle and sweeping the tools to
one side, set it on the table. He carefully closed the window and thrust
a bar through the staple of the door before he unwrapped it.
When the fleece was removed, he propped the image it had contained
upright on the table. He poured into a shallow plate a few drops of the
liquid heating over the fire-bowl--under the lamplight it gleamed and
sparkled like molten gold--and with a small brush, using infinite care,
began to lay the lacquer on its carven surface.
Once, at a sound in some room below--perhaps the movement of a
servant--he stopped and listened intently. It was as if he worked by
stealth, at some labor self-forbidden, to which an impulse,
overmastering though half-denied, drove him in secret.
It was a crucifix with a dead Christ upon it.
CHAPTER VI
THE BAYING OF THE WOLF-HOUND
Barbara stood in her room at the Embassy. It was spacious and airy, the
high walls paneled in ivory-white, with draperies of Delft blue. The bed
and dressing-table were early Adams. A generous bay-window set with
flower-boxes filled a large part of one side, and its deep seat was
upholstered in blue crepe, the tint of the draperies, printed with large
white chrysanthemums. The floor was laid with thin matting of rice-straw
in which was braided at intervals a conventional pattern in old-rose.
Opposite the bay-window stood a Sendai chest on which was a small
Japanese Buddha of gold-lacquer, Amida, the Dweller-in-Light, seated in
holy meditation on his lotos-blossom. At first sight this had recalled
to Barbara a counterpart image which she had unearthed in a dark corner
of the garret in her pinafore days, and which for a week had been her
dearest possession.
To this room Mrs. Dandridge herself had taken her, presenting to her
Haru, whom the bishop's note had brought--a vivid, eager figure from a
Japanese fan, who had sunk suddenly prone, every line of her slender
form bowed, hands palm-down on the floor and forehead on them, in a
ceremonious welcome to the foreign _Ojo-San_. Her mauve _kimono_ was
woven with camelias in silver, set off by an _obi_, showing a flight of
storks on a blue background and clasped in front with a silver firefly.
The heavy jet hair was rolled into wings on either side, and a high puff
surmounted her forehead. Thin twin spirals, stiff with pomade, joined at
the back like the pinions of a butterfly, and against the blue-black
loops lay a bright knot of ribbon. She was now moving about the room
with silent padding of light feet in snowy, digitated _tabi_, admiring
the gowns which the maid had taken from Barbara's trunks. Occasionally
she passed a slim hand up and down a soft wrap with a graceful, purring
regard, or held a fleecy boa under her small oval chin and stole a
glance in the cheval glass with a little ecstatic quiver of shoulder.
Once she paused to look at the lacquer image on the Sendai chest.
"Buddha," she said. "Japan man think very good for die-time."
"Haru," said Barbara as the maid's busy Japanese fingers went searching
for elusive hooks and eyes, "is it true that every Japanese name has a
meaning?"
"So, _Ojo-San_! That mos' indeed true. All Japan name mean something.
'Haru' mean spring, for because my born that time. Very funny--_né?_"
"It is very pretty," said Barbara.
"How tha's nize!" was the delighted exclamation. "_Mama-San_ give name.
My like name yella-ways for because _mama-San_ no more in this world. My
house little lonesome now."
"Where is your house, Haru? Near by?"
The slender hand, pointed to the wooded height behind the garden. "Jus'
there on the street call Prayer-to-the-gods. My house so-o-o small, an'
garden 'bout such big." She indicated a space of perhaps six feet
square. "Funny!--_né_?"
"And who lives there with you?"
Haru smiled brilliantly. "Oh, so-o-o many peoples! _Papa-San_, an'--jus'
me."
"No brother?"
She shook her head. "My don' got," she said. "_Papa-San_ very angry for
because my jus' girl an' no could be kill in Port Arthur!"
She spoke with a smile, but the matter-of-fact words brought suddenly
home to Barbara something of the flavor of that passionate loyalty, that
hot heroism and debonair contempt of death which has been the theme of a
hundred stories. "Do all Japanese feel so, Haru?" she asked. "Would
every father be glad to give his son's life for Japan?"
The girl looked at her as if she jested. "Of _course_! All Japan man
mos' happy if to be kill for our Emperor! Tha's for why better to be
man. Girl jus' can stay home an' _wish_!" As the gown's last fastening
was slipped into its place, she turned up her lovely oval face with a
smiling, sidelong look.
[Illustration]
"_Ma-a-a!_" she exclaimed. "How it is _beau_-tee-ful! _né_? only--"
"Only what?"
"My thinks the _Ojo-San_ must suffer through the center!"
Laughingly Barbara caught the other's slim wrist and drew her before the
mirror. By oriental standards the Japanese girl was as finely bred as
herself. In the two faces, both keenly delicate and sensitive, yet so
sharply contrasted--one palely olive under its jetty pillow of straight
black hair, the other fair and brown-eyed, crowned with curling
gold--the extremes of East and West looked out at each other.
"See, Haru," said Barbara. "How different we are!"
"You so more good-look!" sighed the Japanese girl. "My jus' like the
night."
"Ah, but a moonlighted night," cried Barbara, "soft and warm and full of
secrets. When you have a sweetheart you will be far more lovely to him
than any foreign girl could be!"
Haru blushed rosily. "Sweetheart p'r'aps now," she said, "--all same
kind America story say 'bout."
"Have you really, Haru?" cried Barbara. "I love to hear about
sweethearts. Maybe--some day--I may have one, too. Some time you'll tell
me about him. Won't you?"
Suddenly, far below the window, there came a snarling scramble and a
savage, menacing bay. Barbara leaned out. A tawny, long-muzzled
wolf-hound, fastened to a stake, glared up at her out of red-dimmed
eyes.
"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "He looks sick. Does he have to be tied
up?"
The Japanese girl shivered. "Very bad dog," she said. "My think very
danger to not kill."
The deep tone of the dinner gong shuddered through the house and Barbara
hastened out. Patricia met her in the hall and the two girls, with arms
about each other's waists, descended the broad angled stair to the
dining-room, where the Ambassador stood, tall and spare and iron-gray,
with a contagious twinkle in his kindly eye.
"Well," he asked, "did you feel the earthquake?"
Barbara gave an exclamation of dismay. "Has there been one already?"
"Pshaw!" he said contritely. "Perhaps there hasn't. You see, in Japan,
we get so used to asking that question--"
"Now, Ned!" warned Mrs. Dandridge. "You'll have Barbara frightened to
death. We really don't have them so very often, my dear--and only gentle
shakes. You mustn't be dreaming of Messina."
The Ambassador pointed to the ceiling, where a wide crack zigzagged
across. "There's a recent autograph to bear me out. It happened on the
eleventh of last month."
"Father remembers the date because of the horrible accident it caused,"
said Patricia. "A piece of the kitchen plaster came down in his favorite
dessert and we had to fall back on pickled plums.
"I'm simply wild to see your gowns, Barbara," she continued, as they
took their places. "Is that the latest sleeve, and is everything going
to be slinky? We're always about six months behind. I know a girl in
Yokohama who goes to every steamer and kodaks the smartest tourists.
I've almost been driven to do it myself."
"You should adopt the Japanese dress, Patsy," said Mrs. Dandridge. "How
does it seem, Barbara, to see _kimono_ all around you?"
"I can't get it out of my mind," she answered, "that they are all
wearing them for some sort of masquerade."
"It takes a few days to get used to it," said the Ambassador. "And what
a beautiful and practical costume it is!"
"And comfortable!" sighed Patricia. "No 'bones' or tight places, and
only four or five things to put on. I don't wonder European women look
queer to the Japanese. The cook's wife told me the other day that the
first foreign lady she ever saw looked to her like a wasp with a wig on
like a _Shinto_ devil."
There rose again on the still night air the savage bay Barbara had heard
in her room. "I'm afraid I must make up my mind to lose Shiro," the
Ambassador said regretfully. "He's a Siberian wolf-hound that a friend
sent me from Moscow. But the climate doesn't agree with him, apparently.
For the last two days he's seemed really unsafe. There's a famous
Japanese dog-doctor in this section, but he's been sick himself and I
haven't liked to go to an ordinary native 'vet.' But I shall have him
looked at to-morrow."
"I do hope you will," said Mrs. Dandridge nervously. "He almost killed
Patsy's Pomeranian the first day he came. Watanabé says he hasn't
touched his food to-day, and we can't take any risks with so many
children in the compound. We have forty-seven, Barbara," she continued,
"counting the stablemen's families, and some of them are the dearest
mites! Every Christmas we give them a tree. It makes one feel
tremendously patriarchal!"
It was a home-like meal, albeit thin slices of lotos-stem floated in
Barbara's soup, the lobster had no claws, and the _entrée_ was baked
bamboo. Save for a high, four-paneled screen of gold-leaf with delicate
etchings of snow-clad pines, the white room was without ornament, but
the table gleamed with old silver, and in its center was a great bowl of
pink azaleas. Smooth-faced Japanese men-servants came and went
noiselessly in snowy footwear and dark silk _houri_ whose sleeves bore
the Embassy eagle in silver thread.
The Ambassador was a man of keen observation, and a cheerful philosophy.
His theory of life was expressed in a saying of his: "Human-kind is
about the same as it has always been, except a good deal kinder." He had
learned the country at first hand. He had a profound appreciation of its
whole historical background, one gained not merely from libraries, but
from deeper study of the essential qualities of Japanese character and
feeling. He had the perfect gift, moreover, of the _raconteur_, and he
held Barbara passionately attentive as he sketched, in bold outlines,
the huge picture of Japanese modernization. Yet light as was his touch,
he nevertheless made her see beneath the veneer of the foreign, the
unaltering ego of a civilization old and austere, of unfamiliar,
strenuous ideals, with cast steel conventions, eternal mysteries of
character and of racial destiny.
Coffee was served in the small drawing-room--a home-like, soft-toned
room of crystal-paned bookcases, and furniture that had been handed down
in the Dandridge family from candle-lighted colony days.
"It seems a shame," said Mrs. Dandridge, "that this evening has to be
broken, but Patsy and I must look in at the Charity Bazaar. I'm sure you
won't mind, Barbara, if we leave you alone now for an hour or so. It's a
new idea: every lady is to bring something she has no further use for,
but which is too good to throw away."
"I presume," observed the Ambassador innocently, "that some of them will
bring their husbands."
"Ned," said Mrs. Dandridge, as she drew on her wrap, "people will soon
think you haven't a serious side. It would serve you right if I took you
along as my contribution."
"Ah," returned he, "I was thoughtful enough to make a previous
engagement. Doctor Bersonin is coming to see me."
Patsy's nose took a decided elevation.
"The Government expert," she said. "He was on the train. It's the first
time I ever saw him without that smart-looking Japanese head-boy of his
who goes with him everywhere as interpreter."
"I've noticed that," Mrs. Dandridge said. "He's always with him in his
automobile. By the way, Patsy, who _does_ that boy remind me of? It has
always puzzled me."
"Why," Patricia answered, "he looks something like that Japanese student
we saw so often the winter Barbara and we were in Monterey. You
remember, Barbara--the one who spoke such perfect English. We thought he
was loony, because he used to sit on the beach all day and sail little
wooden boats."
"So he does," said her mother. "There's a decided resemblance. But
Doctor Bersonin's boy is anything but loony. He has a most intelligent
face."
"Besides," said Patricia, "the other was nearsighted and wore
spectacles. Good-by, Barbara. I hope the doctor will be gone when we get
back."
Her voice came muffled from the hall "--Oh, I can't help it, mother! I'm
only a diplomat-once-removed! He _is_ horrid!"
CHAPTER VII
DOCTOR BERSONIN
The Ambassador received his caller in his study. From across the hall,
Barbara, through the half-open door, could see the expert's huge form
filling an arm-chair, where the limpid light of the desk-lamp fell on
his heavy, colorless face. The walls were lined with bookshelves and
curtains of low tone, and against this formless background his big
profile stood out pallid and hawk-like. She could hear his voice
distinctly. Its even, dead flatness affected her curiously; it was not
harsh, but absolutely without tone-quality or sympathy.
For some time the talk was on casual topics and she occupied herself
listlessly with a tray of photographs on the table. She read their
titles, smiling at the extraordinary intricacies of "English as she is
Japped" by the complaisant oriental photographer: _The Picking Sea-Ear
at Enoshima_; _East-looking Panorama of Fuji Mount_; _Geisha in the
Famous Dance of Maple-Leaf_.
The smile left her face. Something had been said in the farther room
which caught her attention and in a moment she found herself listening
intently.
"I understand the trials of the new powder have been very successful,"
the Ambassador was saying. "Is it destined to revolutionize warfare, do
you think?"
"It is too soon to tell yet," was the reply, "just what the result will
be. It will enormously increase the range of projectiles, as Your
Excellency may guess, and its area of destruction will nearly double
that of lyddite."
Barbara felt, rather than saw, that the Ambassador gave a little
shudder. "I can imagine what that means," he said. "I saw Port Arthur
after the siege. So war is to grow more dreadful still! When will it
cease, I wonder."
"Never," Bersonin answered, with a cold smile. "It is the love of power
that makes war, and that, in man, is inherent and ineradicable. A nation
is only the individual in the aggregate, and selfishness is the guiding
gospel of both."
To Barbara the words seemed coldly, cruelly repellant. She felt a sudden
quiver of dislike run over her.
"You paint a sorry picture," said the Ambassador. "Can human ingenuity
go much further, then? What, in your opinion, will be the fighting
engine of the future?"
"The engine of the future"--Bersonin spoke deliberately--"will be along
other lines. It will be an atomic one. It will employ no projectile and
no armor plate will resist it. The discoverer will have harnessed the
law of molecular vibration. As there is a positive force that binds
atoms together, so there must be a negative force that, under certain
conditions, can drive them apart!"
He spoke with what seemed an extraordinary conviction. His manner had
subtly changed. For the first time his tone had gathered something like
feeling, and the dry, metallic voice seemed to Barbara to vibrate with a
curious, gloating triumph.
"Granted such a force," he went on, "and a machine to generate and
direct it, and of what value is the most powerful battle-ship, the most
stupendous fort? Mere silly shreds of steel and stone! Why, such an
engine might be carried in a single hand, and yet the nation that
possessed it could be master of the world!"
A dark flush had risen to his pallid cheek, and on the arm of his chair
Barbara saw the massive fingers of one huge hand clench and unclench
with a furtive, nervous gesture. The sight gave her a sharp sense of
recoil as if from the touch of something sinister and evilly suggestive.
"No!" said the Ambassador vehemently. "Humanity would revolt. Such a
discovery would be worth less than nothing! Its use by any warring
nation would call down the execration of civilization, and the man who
knew the secret would be too dangerous to be at large!"
There was dead silence for a moment. Bersonin sat motionless, staring
straight before him. Very slowly the color seemed to fade from his
cheek. When he spoke again his voice had regained its dead level of
tonelessness.
"That has occurred to me," he said. "I think Your Excellency is right.
Invention may do its work too well. However--no doubt we speak of
scientific impossibilities; let us hope so, at any rate."
Barbara pushed the photographs aside and slipped into the next room,
closing the door and drawing the heavy portières that hung over it. She
had had for a moment a vague, almost childish, sense of shrinking as if
from something monstrous and uncanny--such a sensation as the naked
diver may have, when, peering through his water-glass, he sees a dim
grisly shape glide, stealthy and cold, through the opaque depths. She
was growing absurdly fanciful, she thought. She did not turn on the
electric light, but threw open one of the long, French windows. There
was a new moon and a pale radiance flooded the room, with a sudden odor
of wistaria and plum-blossoms. The window gave on to a porch running the
length of the house, and this made her think suddenly of home. Yet the
air was too humid for California, too moist and rich even for Florida.
And suddenly she found herself pitying the people there to whom the East
would always be a closed book. Yet how dim and vague Japan had been to
her a month before!
A grand piano stood open by the window and in the dim light she sat down
and let her fingers wander idly in long arpeggios. She could see one
side of the Japanese garden, with a glimpse of a tiny dry lake and a
pebbled rivulet spanned by an arching bridge of red lacquer. It ended in
a sharp, sloping hill covered with shrubbery. On the ridge far above she
distinguished the outlines of native houses and flanking them the
curved, Tartar-like gables of a gray old temple. Somewhere, beyond that
little hill, perhaps, stood the Chapel erected to her father's memory,
which she had yet to see. As her fingers strayed over the ivory keys,
she thought of him, of his vivid, aberrant career and untimely end.
There are nights in the Japanese spring when the landscape, in its
wondrous delicacy of tones, seems only an envelope of something subtler
and unseen, the filmy covering of a beauty that is wholly spiritual.
To-night it seemed so to Barbara. The close was very still, wrapped in a
dreamy haze as soft as sleep, the mountains on the horizon wan shapes of
silver mist, semi-diaphanous. It seemed to her that in this living,
sentient breath of Japan, her father was nearer to her than he had ever
been before.
The thought brought to her vague memories of her mother and of her
childhood. Old airs began to mingle with the chords, and on the shrill
fairy sound-carpet woven by the myriad insect-looms of the garden, the
bits of melody went treading softly out across the perfume of the
wistaria.
CHAPTER VIII
"SALLY IN OUR ALLEY"
She thought no one heard, but out by the azalea hedge, a man was
standing, listening to the hushed chords floating through the open
window.
From the bungalow on the Yokohama Bluff, Daunt had come back to Tokyo
with a sense of dissatisfaction deeper than should have been caused by
his jarring talk with Phil. Perhaps, though he did not guess it, his
mood had to do with a bulky letter in his pocket, received that day. It
was from "Big" Murray, his chum at college, whom he had commonly
addressed by opprobrious epithets that covered an affection time had not
diminished. Of all the men in his class Daunt would have picked him as
the one least likely to marry. Yet the letter had contained a
wedding-invitation and a ream of the usual hyperbole. "Going to name me
godfather, is he!" Daunt had muttered as he read. "The driveling old
horse-thief!" For in some elusive way the intended distinction suggested
that he himself was a hoary back-number, not to be reckoned among the
forces of youth. Strolling from Shimbashi Station, under the clustered,
gaily-colored paper-lanterns, swaying above the rustle and stir of the
exotic street, this thought rankled. A vague discontent stirred in him.
Tokyo had been the objective point of Daunt's six years of diplomatic
career, and he had found the Kingdom of the Slender Swords a fascinating
and absorbing study. He loved its contrasts and its contradictions, its
marvelous artistry, the reserve and nobility of its people, and its
savage, unshamed, sincerity of purpose. In the absorbing routine of the
Chancery and the bright gaieties of the capital's diplomatic circle, the
first year had gone swiftly enough. Since then the Glider experiments
had lent an added zest.
Even at college, Langley's first aëroplane had interested him and out of
that interest had grown a course of reading which had given him a broad
technical knowledge of applied mechanics. In Japan he had conceived the
idea of the new fan-propeller, worked out in many an hour of study in
the little Japanese house in Aoyama, which he had taken because it
adjoined the parade-ground where his earliest experiments were made. At
first the _Corps Diplomatique_ had smiled at this as a harmless _pour
passer le temps_, to be classified with the Roumanian Minister's kennel
of Pomeranians or the Chilian Secretary's collection of _daimyo_ dolls.
But week by week the little crowd of Japanese spectators had grown
larger; often Daunt had recognized among the attentive brown faces this
or that superior military officer whom he knew, albeit in civilian
dress. One day his friend, Viscount Sakai, a dapper young officer on the
General Staff, had surprised him with the offer from the Japanese War
Department of the use of an empty garage on the edge of the great
esplanade. Only a month ago, he had awaked to the knowledge that his
name was known to the aëro enthusiasts of Paris, New York and Vienna,
and that his propeller was an assured success.
Yet to-night he felt that he had somehow failed. The splendid vitality
of the moving scene, the thud and click of wooden _géta_ and the whirr
of _rick'sha_--all the many-keyed diapason of the rustling, lanterned
vistas stretching under the pale moon-lighted sky--lacked the sense of
intimate companionship. The warm still air, freighted with aromatic
scents of cedar from some new-built shop, the pungent smell of incense
burning before some shadowed shrine, the odors of drenched shrubbery
behind the massive retaining wall of some rich noble's compound, came to
him with a new sense of estrangement. The murmured sound of voices
behind the glimmering paper _shoji_ told him, suddenly, that he was
lonely. For the first time in six years, he was feeling keenly his long
isolation from the things of home, the pleasant fellowship and the
firesides of old friends. In this foreign service which he so loved, he
had been growing out of touch, he told himself, out of thought, of the
things "Big" Murray had sought and found.
Unconsciously, the "drivel," as he had denominated it, of the letter in
his pocket, had infected him with sweet and foolish imaginings, and
slowly these took the nebulous shape of a woman. He had often dreamed of
her, though he had never seen her face. It was half-veiled now in the
bluish haze of his pipe, while she talked to him before a fire of
driftwood (that burned with red and blue lights because of sea-ghosts in
it) and her voice was low and clear like a flute.
The wavering outline was still before his mind's eye as he trod the
quiet road that led to the Embassy, entered its wide gate and slowly
crossed the silent garden toward his bachelor cottage on the lawn. And
there, suddenly, the vision had seized a vagrant melody and had spoken
to him in song. Daunt thrust his cold pipe into his pocket and listened
with head thrown back.
It was no brilliant display of technique that held him, for the player
was touching simple chords, but these were singing old melodies that
took him far to other scenes and other times. He smiled to himself. How
long it had been since he had sung them--not since the old college days!
That happy, irresponsible era of senior dignities came back vividly to
him, the campus and the singing. For years he had not recollected it all
so keenly! He had been glee-club soloist, pushed forward on all
occasions and applauded to the echo. Praise of his singing he had
accepted somewhat humorously--never but once had it touched him deeply,
and that had been on commencement afternoon.
He had slipped away from the wavering cheers at the station, because he
could not bear the farewells, and, far down one of the campus lanes, had
come on pretty Mrs. Claybourne sitting on a rustic bench. Again he heard
her speak, as plainly as if it were yesterday: "Why, if it isn't Mr.
Daunt! I wonder how the university can open in the fall without you!" He
had sat down beside her as she said: "This very insistent young person
with me has been heartbroken because we could not get tickets for the
Glee-Club Concert last night. She wanted to hear you sing."
He had looked up then to see a young girl, seated on the leaning trunk
of a tulip-tree. Her neutral-tinted skirt lay against the dark bark; her
face was almost hidden by a spray of the great, creamy-pink blossoms.
Some quality in its delicate loveliness had made him wish to please her,
and sitting there he had sung the song that was his favorite. Mrs.
Claybourne had pulled a big branch of the tulip-tree to hand him like a
bouquet over the footlights, but the girl's parted lips, her wide deep
brown eyes, had thanked him in a better way!
The music, now floating over the garden, by such subconscious
association, recalled this scene, overlaid, but never forgotten. Hark! A
cascade of silver notes, and then an old air that had been revived in
his time to become the madness of the music-halls and the pet of the
pianolas--the one the crowded campus had been wont to demand with
loudest voice when his tenor led the "Senior Singing." It brought back
with a rush the familiar faces, the gray ivied dormitories with their
slim iron balconies, the throbbing plaint of mandolins, and his own
voice--
"Of all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like pretty Sally!
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives----"
He scarcely knew he sang, but the vibrant tenor, lifting across the
scent of the wistaria, came clearly to the girl at the piano. For a
moment Barbara's fingers played on, as she listened with a strained
wonder. Then the music ceased with a discord and she came quickly
through the opened window.
The song was smitten from Daunt's lips. In the instant that she stood
outlined on the broad piazza, a fierce snarling yelp and a clatter came
from within the house and there rang out a screamed Japanese warning. An
outer door flew open and the huge figure of Doctor Bersonin ran out,
pursued by a leaping white shadow, while the air thrilled to the savage
cry of a hound, shaken with rage.
"_Run, Barbara!_" The Ambassador's voice came from the doorway. But the
white, moonlit figure, in its gauzy evening gown, turned too late.
Empty-handed, Daunt dashed for the piazza, as, with a crash, a heavy
porch chair, hurled by a Japanese house-boy, penned the animal for an
instant in a corner. He caught the white figure up in his arms, sprang
into the shade of the wistaria arbor, and set her feet on its high
railing. The voice from the doorway called again, sharply.
"This way, Doctor! _Quick!_"
The wolf-hound, trailing its broken chain, had leaped the barrier and
was launched straight at the crouching expert. The latter had dragged
something small and square from his pocket and he seemed now to hold
this out before him. Daunt, wrenching a cleat from the arbor railing,
felt a puff of cold wind strike his face, and something like an elfin
note of music, high and thin as an insect's, drifted across the
confusion. He rushed forward with his improvised weapon--then stopped
short. The dog was no longer there.
The Ambassador made an exclamation. He stepped down and peered under the
piazza; even in the dim light the long space was palpably empty. The
head-boy spoke rapidly in Japanese and pointed toward the gate.
"He says he must have jumped down this side," explained Daunt, "and run
out to the street. He's nowhere in the garden, at any rate. We can see
every inch. How surprising!" He spoke to the boy in the vernacular. "He
will have the gates closed at once and telephone a warning to the police
station."
Bersonin had sat down on the edge of the piazza. He was crouched far
over; his big frame was shaken with violent shudderings. Suddenly his
head went back and he began to laugh--a jarring, grating, weird
man-hysteria that seemed to burst suddenly beyond his control.
The Ambassador went to him hurriedly, but Bersonin shook off the hand on
his shoulder and rising, still emitting his dreadful laughter, staggered
across the lawn and out of the gate.
The appalling mirth reëchoed from far down the quiet road.
CHAPTER IX
THE WEB OF THE SPIDER
Bersonin walked on, fighting desperately with his ghastly spasm of
merriment.
It was a nervous affection which had haunted him for years. It dated
from a time when, in South America, in an acute crisis of desperate
personal hazard, he had laughed the first peal of that strange laughter
of which he was to be ever after afraid. Since then it had seized him
many times, unexpectedly and in moments of strong excitement, to shake
him like a lath. It had given him a morbid hatred of laughter in others.
Recently he had thought that he was overcoming the weakness--for in two
years past he had had no such seizure--and the recurrence to-night
shocked and disconcerted him. He, the man of brain and attainment, to be
held captive by a ridiculous hysteria, like a nerve-racked anæmic girl!
The cold sweat stood on his forehead.
Before long the paroxysms ceased and he grew calmer. The quiet road had
merged into a busier thoroughfare. He walked on slowly till his command
was regained. West of the outer moat of the Imperial Grounds, he turned
up a pleasant lane-like street and presently entered his own gate. The
house, into which he let himself with a latch-key, was a rambling,
modern, two-story structure of yellow stucco. The lower floor was
practically unused, since its tenant lived alone and did not entertain.
The upper floor, besides the hall, contained a small bedroom, a bath and
dressing-room and a large, barely-furnished laboratory. The latter was
lined on two sides with glass-covered shelves which gave glimpses of
rows of books, of steel shells, metal and crystal retorts and crucibles,
the delicate paraphernalia of organic chemistry and complicated
instruments whose use no one knew save himself--a fit setting for the
great student, the peer of Offenbach in Munich and of Bayer in Vienna.
Against the wall leaned a drafting-board, on which, pinned down by
thumb-tacks, was a sketch-plan of a revolving turret. From a bracket in
a corner--the single airy touch of delicacy in a chamber almost sordid
in its appointments--swung a bamboo cage with a brown _hiwa_, or
Japanese finch, a downy puff of feathers with its head under its wing.
In the upper hall Bersonin's Japanese head-boy had been sitting at a
small desk writing. Bersonin entered the laboratory, opened a safe let
into a wall, and put into it something which he took from his pocket.
Then he donned a dressing-gown the boy brought, and threw himself into a
huge leather chair.
"Make me some coffee, Ishida," he said.
The servant did so silently and deftly, using a small brass _samovar_
which occupied a table of its own. With the coffee he brought his master
a box of brown Havana cigars.
For an hour Bersonin sat smoking in the silent room--one cigar after
another, deep in thought, his yellow eyes staring at nothing. Into his
countenance deep lines had etched themselves, giving to his coldly
repellant look an expression of malignant force and intention. With his
pallid face, his stirless attitude, his great white fingers clutching
the arms of the chair, he suggested some enormous, sprawling batrachian
awaiting its more active prey.
All at once there came a chirp from the cage in the corner and its tiny
occupant, waked by the electric-light, burst into song as clear and
joyous as though before its free wing lay all the meads of Eden. A look
more human, soft and almost companionable, came into its master's
massive face. Bersonin rose and, whistling, opened the cage door and
held out an enormous forefinger. The little creature stepped on it, and,
held to his cheek, it rubbed its feathered head against it. For a moment
he crooned and whistled to it, then held his finger to the cage and it
obediently resumed its perch and its melody. The expert took a dark
cloth from a hook and threw it over the cage and the song ceased.
Bersonin went to the door of the room and fastened it, then unlocked a
desk and spread some papers on the table. One was a chart, drawn to the
minutest scale, of the harbor of Yokohama. On it had been marked a group
of projectile-shaped spots suggesting a flotilla of vessels at anchor.
For a long time he worked absorbedly, setting down figures, measuring
with infinite pains, computing angles--always with reference to a small
square in the map's inner margin, marked in red. He covered many sheets
of paper with his calculations. Finally he took another paper from the
safe and compared the two. He lifted his head with a look of
satisfaction.
Just then he thought he heard a slight noise from the hall. Swiftly and
noiselessly as a great cat he crossed to the door and opened it.
Ishida sat in his place scratching laboriously with a foreign pen.
Bersonin's glance of suspicion altered. "What are you working at so
industriously, Ishida?" he asked.
The Japanese boy displayed the sheet with pride.
It was an ode to the coming Squadron. Bersonin read it:
"Welcome, foreign men-of-war!
Young and age,
Man and woman,
None but you welcome!
And how our reaches know you but to satisfy,
Nor the Babylon nor the Parisian you to treat,
Be it ever so humble,
Yet a tidbit with our heart!
What may not be accomplishment Rising-Sun?
"_By H. Ishida, with best compliment._"
Bersonin laid it down with a word of approbation. "Well done," he said.
"You will be a famous English scholar before long." He went into the
dressing-room, but an instant later recollected the papers on the table.
The servant was in the laboratory when his master hastily reentered; he
was methodically removing the coffee tray.
Alone once more, Ishida reseated himself at his small desk. He tore the
poem carefully to small bits and put them into the waste-paper basket.
Then, rubbing the cake of India-ink on its stone tablet, he drew a mass
of Japanese writing toward him and, with brush held vertically between
thumb and forefinger, began to trace long, delicate characters at the
top of the first sheet, thus:
[Japanese: Ouryuu no fusetsusuirai ni oyobosu eikyou
hidarino toori kinji]
In the Japanese phrase this might literally be translated as follows:
cross-current of, laying water thunder on,
work-effect
left hand respectively
Which in conventional English is to say:
A STUDY OF CROSS-CURRENTS IN THEIR EFFECT ON
SUBMARINE MINES
SUBMITTED WITH DEFERENCE
This finished, he sealed it in an envelope, took a book from the breast
of his _kimono_ and began to read. Its cover bore the words: "Second
English Primer, in words of Two Syllables." Its inner pages, however,
belied the legend. It was Mahan's _Influence of Sea-Power on History_.
Yet Lieutenant Ishida of the Japanese Imperial Navy, one time student in
Monterey, California, now in Special Secret-Service, read abstractedly.
He was wondering why Doctor Bersonin should have in his possession a
technical naval chart and what was the meaning of certain curious
markings he had made on it.
CHAPTER X
IN A GARDEN OF DREAMS
In the garden the moon's faint light glimmered on the broad, satiny
leaves of the camelias and the delicate traceries of red maple foliage.
At its farther side, amid flowering bushes which cast long indigo
shadows, stood a small pagoda, brought many years before from Korea, and
toward this Daunt and the girl whom he had held for a breathless moment
in his arms, strolled slowly along a winding, pebbled path tremulant
with the flickering shadows of little leaves. The structure had a small
platform, and here on a bench they sat down, the fragrant garden spread
out before them.
He had remembered that a guest had been expected to arrive that day from
America, and knew that this must be she. But, strangely enough, it did
not seem as if they had never before met. Nor had he the least idea
that, since that short sharp scene, they had exchanged scarcely a dozen
words. In its curious sequel, as he stood listening to the echo of
Bersonin's strange laughter, he had momentarily forgotten all about her.
Then he had remembered with a shock that he had left her perched, in
evening dress, on the high railing of the arbor.
"I wonder if you are in the habit," she had said with a little laugh,
"of putting unchaperoned girls on the tops of fences, and going away and
forgetting all about them."
Her laugh was deliciously uneven, but it did not seem so from fright. He
had answered something inordinately foolish, and had lifted her down
again--not holding her so closely this time. He remembered that on the
first occasion he had held her very tightly indeed. He could still feel
the touch of a wisp of her hair which, in his flying leap, had fallen
against his cheek. It was red-bronze and it shone now in the moonlight
like molten metal. Her eyes were deep blue, and when she smiled--
He wrenched his gaze away with a start. But it did not stray
far--merely to the point of a white-beaded slipper peeping from the
edge of a ruffle of gauze that had mysteriously imprisoned filmy
sprays of lily-of-the-valley.
He looked up suddenly, conscious that she was laughing silently. "What
is it?" he asked.
"We seem so tremendously acquainted," she said, "for people who--" She
stopped an instant. "You don't even know who I am."
In the references to her coming he had heard her name spoken and now, by
a sheer mental effort, he managed to recall it.
"You are Miss Fairfax," he said. "And my name, perhaps I ought to add,
is Daunt. I am the Secretary of Embassy. I hope, after our little effort
of to-night, you will not consider diplomacy only high-class vaudeville.
Such comedy scarcely represents our daily bill."
"It came near enough to being tragedy," she answered.
"It was so uncommonly life-like, I was torn with a fear that you might
not guess it was gotten up for your especial benefit."
"How well you treat your visitors!" she said with gentle irony. "Had you
many rehearsals?"
"Very few," he said. "I was afraid the boy might misread the stage
direction and slip the dog-chain too soon. But I am greatly pleased. I
have always had an insatiable longing to be a hero--if only on the
stage. I aspire to Grand Opera, also, as you have noticed." He laughed,
a trifle shamefacedly, then added quickly: "I hope you liked the final
disappearance act. It was rather effective, don't you think?"
She smiled unwillingly. "Ah, you make light of it! But don't think I
didn't know how quickly you acted--what you risked in that one minute!
And then to run back a second time!" She shuddered a little. "You could
have done nothing with that piece of wood!"
"I assure you," he said, "you underrate my prowess! But it wasn't to be
used--it was only the dog's cue."
"Poor brute!" she said. "I hope he will injure nobody."
"Luckily, the children are off the streets at this hour," he answered.
"He'll not go far; the police are too numerous. I am afraid our very
efficient performer is permanently retired from the company. But I
haven't yet congratulated you. You didn't seem one bit afraid."
"I hadn't time to be frightened. I--was thinking of something else! The
fright came afterward, when I saw you--when you left me on the railing."
She spoke a little constrainedly, and went on quickly: "I really am a
desperate coward about some things. I should never dare to go up on an
aëroplane, for instance, as Patsy tells me you do almost every day. She
says the Japanese call you the 'Honorable Fly-Man'."
"There's no foreign theater in Tokyo, and no winter Opera," he said
lightly. "We have to amuse one another, and the Glider is by way of
contributing my share of the entertainment. It is certainly an uplifting
performance." He smiled, but she shook her head.
"Ah," she said, "I know! I was at Fort Logan last summer the day
Lieutenant Whitney was killed. I saw it."
The smile had faded and her eyes had just the look he had so often
fancied lay in those eyes he had been used to gaze at across the burning
driftwood--his "Lady of the Many-Colored Fires." He caught himself
longing to know that they would mist and soften if he too should some
day come to grief in such sudden fashion. They were wholly wonderful
eyes! He had noted them even in the instant when he had snatched her
from the piazza--from the danger into which his cavalier singing had
called her.
"How brazen you must have thought it!" he exclaimed. "My impromptu solo,
I mean. I hardly know how I came to do it. I suppose it was the
moonlight (it does make people idiotic sometimes, you know, in the
tropics!) and then what you played--that dear old song! I used to sing
it years ago. It reminded me--"
"Yes--?"
"Of the last evening at college. It was a night like this, though not so
lovely. I sang it then--my last college solo."
"Your _last_?" She was leaning toward him, her lips parted, her eyes
bright on his face.
"Yes," he said. "I left town the next day."
Her eyes fell. She turned half away, and put a hand to her cheek. "Oh,"
she said vaguely. "Of course."
"But it _was_ brazen," he finished lamely. "I promise never to do it
again."
The breath of the night was coolly sweet. It hovered about them, mingled
of all the musky winds and flower-months of Eden. A dulled, weird sound
from the street reached their ears--the monotonous hand-tapping of a
small, shallow drum.
"Some Buddhist _devotée_," he said, "making a pious round of holy
places. He is stalking along in a dingy, white cotton robe with red
characters stamped all over it--one from each shrine he has visited--and
here and there in a doorway he will stop to chant a prayer in return for
a handful of rice."
"How strange! It doesn't seem to belong, somehow, with the telegraph
wires and the trolley cars. Japan is full of such contrasts, isn't it?
It seems to be packed with mystery and secrets. Listen!" The deep,
resonant boom of a great bell at a distance had throbbed across the
nearer strumming. "That must be in some old temple. Perhaps the man with
the drum is going there to worship. Does any one live in the temples?
The priests do, I suppose."
"Yes," he answered. "Sometimes other people do, too. I know of a
foreigner who lives in one."
"What is he? European?"
"No one knows. He has lived there fifteen years. He calls himself
Aloysius Thorn. I used to think he must be an American, for in the
Chancery safe there is an envelope bearing his name and the direction
that it be opened after his death. It has been there a long time, for
the paper is yellow with age. No doubt it was put there by some former
Chief-of-Mission at his request. He has nothing to do with other
foreigners; as a rule he won't even speak to them. He is something of a
curiosity. He knows some lost secret about gold-lacquer, they say."
"Is he young?"
"No."
"Married?"
"Oh, no! He lives quite alone. He has one of the loveliest private
gardens in the city. Sometimes one doesn't see him for months, but he is
here now."
She was silent, while he looked again at the white toe of the slipper
peeping from a gauzy hem. The silence seemed to him an added bond
between them. The moon, tilting its slim sickle along the solemn range
of western hills, touched their jagged contour with a shimmering
radiance and edged with silver the vast white apparition towering,
filmily exquisite, above them, a solitary snowy cone, hovering
wraith-like between earth and sky. The horizon opposite was deep violet,
crowded with tiny stars, like green-gilt coals. In the quiet a drowsy
crow croaked huskily from the hillside. Barbara looked through dreamy
eyes.
"It can't always be so beautiful!" she said at length. "Nothing could, I
am sure."
"No, indeed," he agreed cheerfully. "There are times when, as my
number-one boy says, 'honorable weather are disgust.' In June the
_nubai_, the rainy season, is due. It will pour buckets for three weeks
without a stop and frogs will sing dulcet songs in the streets. In July
your head feels as if a red-hot feather pillow had been stuffed into
your skull and everybody moves to Chuzenji or Kamakura. If it weren't
for that, and an occasional dust-storm in the winter, and the
centillions of mosquitoes, and a weekly earthquake or two, we wouldn't
half appreciate this!" He made a wide gesture.
"Yet now," she said softly, "it seems too lovely to be real! I shall
wake presently to find myself in my berth on the _Tenyo Maru_ with Japan
two or three days off."
He fell into her mood. "We are both asleep. That was why the dog
vanished so queerly. Dream-dogs always do. And I don't wonder at my
singing, either. People do exactly what they shouldn't when they are
asleep. But no! I really don't like the dream version at all. I want
this to be true."
"Why?"
Her tone was low, but it made him tingle. A sudden _mêlée_ of daring,
delicious impulses swept over him. "Because I have dreamed too much," he
said, in as low a voice. "Here in the East the habit grows on one; we
dream of what all the beauty somehow misses--for us. But to-night, at
least, is real. I shall have it to remember when you have gone, as I--I
suppose you will be soon."
She leaned out and picked a slender maple-leaf from a branch that came
in through the open side of the pagoda, and, holding it in her fingers,
turned toward him. Her lips were parted, as if to speak. But suddenly
she tossed it from her, rose and shook out her skirts with a laugh.
Carriage-wheels were rolling up the drive from the lower gate.
"Thank you!" she cried gaily. "But no hint shall move me. I warn you
that I intend to stay a long time!"
In the lighted doorway, as Patricia and her mother stepped from the
carriage, she swept him a curtsey.
"Honorably deign to accept my thanks," she said, "for augustly saving my
insignificant life! And now, perhaps, we can be properly introduced!"
CHAPTER XI
ISHIKICHI
Under the frail moon that touched the Embassy garden to such beauty,
Haru walked home to the house "so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big"
in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods.
On Reinanzaka Hill the shadows were iris-hearted. From its high-walled
gardens of the great came no glimpses of phantom-lighted _shoji_, no
sound of vibrant strings from tea-houses nor gleams of painted lips and
fingers of _geisha_.
Haru carried a paper-lantern tied to the end of a short wand, but it was
not dark enough to need its light, and as she walked, she swung it in
graceful circles. She heard a dove sobbing its low _owas! owas!_ and
once a crow flapped its sleepy way above her, uttering its harsh note,
which, from some subtlety of suggestion hidden from the western mind,
the Japanese liken to the accents of love. It startled her for a second;
then she began to sing, under her breath, to the tune of her clacking
_géta_, a ditty of her childhood:
"_Karasu, Karasu!_ "Crow, crow,
_Kanzaburo!_ Kanzaburo!
_Oya no on wo--_ Forget not the virtue
_Wasurena yo!_" Of your honorable parents."
On the crest of the hill, by the Street-of-Hollyhocks, a wall opened in
a huge gate of heavy burnished beams studded with great iron
rivet-heads. Here resided no less a personage than an Imperial Princess.
Beside the gate stood a conical sentry-box, in which all day, while the
gate was open, stood a soldier of the Household Guards. The box was
empty now.
Opposite the gate, a hedged lane opened, into which she turned, and
presently the song ceased. She had come to the newly built Chapel. Her
father's name was on the household list of the temple across the way,
but she herself walked each Sunday to Ts'kiji, to attend the bishop's
Japanese service in the Cathedral. When, influenced by a school-mate,
she had wished to become a Christian, the old _samurai_ had interposed
no objection. With the broad tolerance of the esoteric Buddhist, to whom
all pure faiths are good, he had allowed her to choose for herself. She
had grown to love the strangely new and beautiful worship with its
singing, its service in a tongue that she could understand, its Bible
filled with marvelous stories of old heroes, and with vivid imagery like
that of the _Kojiki_, the "Record of Ancient Matters" or the
_Man-yoshu_, the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves," over whose archaic
characters her father was always poring. She had ceased to visit the
temple, but otherwise the change had made little difference in her
placid life. With the simplicity with which the Japanese of to-day
kneels with equal faith before a plain _Shinto_ shrine and a golden
altar of Buddha, she had continued the daily home observances. Each
morning she cleaned the _butsu-dan_--refilled its tiny lamp with
vegetable oil, freshened its incense-cup and water bowl, and dusted its
golden shrine of Kwan-on which held the scroll inscribed with the spirit
names of a hundred ancestors, and the _ihai_, or mortuary tablet, of her
dead mother. Though she no longer prayed before it, it still signified
to her the invisible haunting of the dead--the continuing loving
presence of that mother who waited for her in the _Meidoland_.
For many days Haru had watched the progress of the Chapel building. The
Cathedral was a good two miles distant, but this was near her home; here
she would be able to attend more than the weekly Sunday service.
To-night, as she looked at the cross shining in the moonlight, she
thought it very beautiful. A tiny symbol like it, made of white enamel,
was hung on a little chain about her neck. It had been given her by the
bishop the day of her confirmation. She drew this out and swung it about
her finger as she walked on.
In the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods were no huge and gloomy compounds.
It was a roadway of humbler shops and homes, bordered with mazes of
lantern fire, and lively with pedestrians. At a meager shop, pitifully
small, whose _shoji_ were wide open, Haru paused. A smoky oil lamp swung
from the ceiling, and under its glow, a woman knelt on the worn
_tatamé_. Beside her, on a pillow, lay a newborn baby, and she was
soothing its slumber by softly beating a tiny drum close to its ear. She
nodded and smiled to Haru's salutation.
"_Hai! Ojo-San_," she said. "_Go kigen yo!_ Deign augustly to enter."
"Honorable thanks," responded Haru, "but my father awaits my unworthy
return. _Domo! Aka-San des'ka?_ So this is Miss Baby! Ishikichi will
have a new comrade in this little sister."
"Poison not your serene mind with contemplation of my uncomely last-sent
one!" said the woman, pridefully tilting the pillow so as to show the
tiny, vacuous face. "Are not its hands degradedly well-formed?"
"Wonderfully beyond saying! The father is still exaltedly ill?"
"It is indeed so! I have not failed to sprinkle the holy water over
Jizo, nor to present the straw sandals to the Guardians-of-the-Gate.
Also I have rubbed each day the breast of the health-god; yet O-Binzuru
does not harken. Doubtless it is because of some sin committed by my
husband in a previous existence! I have not knowledge of your Christian
God, or I would make my worthless sacrifices also to Him."
"He heals the sick," said Haru, "but He augustly loves not sacrifice--as
He exaltedly did in olden time," she hastily supplemented, recalling
certain readings from the Old Testament.
"The gods of Nippon divinely change not their habit," returned the
woman. "Also my vile intellect can not comprehend why the foreigners'
God should illustriously concern Himself with the things of another
land."
"The Christian Divinity," said Haru, "is a God of all lands and all
peoples."
The other mused. "It passes in my degraded mind that He, then, would
lack a sublime all-sympathy for our Kingdom-of-Slender-Swords. You are
transcendently young, _Ojo-San_, but I am thirty-two, and I hold by the
gods of my ancestors."
"Honorably present my greetings to your husband," Haru said, as she
bowed her adieu. "May his exalted person soon attain divine health!
To-morrow I will send another book for him to read."
The woman watched her go, with a smile on her tired face--the Japanese
smile that covers so many things. She looked at the baby's face on the
pillow. "Praise _Shaka_," she said aloud, "there is millet yet for
another week. Then we must give up the shop. Well--I can play the
_samisen_, and the gods are not dead!"
Behind her a diminutive figure had lifted himself upright from a
_f'ton_. He came forward from the gloom, his single sleeping-robe
trailing comically and his great black eyes round and serious. "Why must
we give up the shop, honorable mother?"
"Go to sleep, Ishikichi," said his mother. "Trouble me not so late with
your rude prattle."
"But why, _Okka-San_?"
"Because rent-money exists not, small pigeon," she answered gently. "So
long as we have ignobly lived here, we have paid the _banto_ who brings
his joy-giving presence on the first of each month. Now we have no more
money and can not pay."
"Why have we no more money?"
"Because the honorable father is sick and you are too small to earn. But
let it not trouble your heart, for the gods are good. See--we have
almost waked the _Aka-San_!"
She bent over the pillow and began again the elfin drumming at the
infant's ear. But Ishikichi lay open-eyed on his _f'ton_, his baby mind
grappling with a new and painful wonder.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE STREET-OF-PRAYER-TO-THE-GODS
Haru unlatched a gate across which twisted a plum-branch with tarnished,
silver bark. It hid a garden so tiny that it was scarcely more than a
rounded boulder set in moss, with a clump of golden _icho_ shrubs.
Across the path, high in air, were stretched giant webs in whose centers
hung black spiders as big as Japanese sparrows. Beyond was a low
doorway, shaded by a gnarled _kiri_ tree. The thin, white rice-paper
pasted behind the bars of its sliding grill shone goldenly with the
candle-light within. She rang a bell which hung from a cord.
"_Hai-ai-ai-ai-ee!_" sounded a long-drawn voice from within, and in a
moment a little maid slid back the _shoji_ and bobbed over to the
threshold.
Her mistress stepped from her _géta_ into the small anteroom. Here the
floor was covered with soft _tatamé_,--the thick, springy rice-straw
mats which, in Japan, play the part of carpets--and a bronze vase on a
low lacquer stool held a branch of dark ground-pine and a single white
lily. A voice was audible, reciting in a droning monotone. It stopped
suddenly and called Haru's name.
She answered instantly, and parting the panels, passed into the next
room, where her father sat on his mat reading in the faint soft light of
an _andon_. He was an old man, with white head strongly poised on gaunt
shoulders. Broken in fortune and in health, the spirit of the _samurai_
burned inextinguishably in the fire of his sunken eyes. He took her hand
and drew her down beside him. She knew what was in his mind.
"Be no longer troubled," she said. "The American _Ojo-San_ is as lovely
as Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess, and as kind as she is beautiful. I shall
be happy to be each day with her."
"That is good," he said. "Yet I take no joy from it. You are the last of
a family that for a thousand seasons has served none save its Emperor
and its _daimyo_."
"I am no servant," she answered quickly. "Rather am I, in sort, a
companion to the _Ojo-San_, to offer her my tasteless conversation and
somewhat to go about with her in this unfamiliar city. It is an
honorable way of acquiring gain, and thus I may unworthily pay my
support, for which now from time to time you are brought to sell the
priceless classics in which your soul exaltedly delights."
His face softened. "I have lived too long," he said. "My hand is
palsied--I, a two-sword man of the old clan! I should have died in the
war, fighting for Nippon and my Emperor. But even then was I too
dishonorably old! Why did not the gods grant me a son?--me, who wearied
them with my sacrifices?"
She did not answer for a moment. Nothing in her cried out at this
reiterated complaint, for she was of the same blood. If she had been a
son, that wound in her father's heart had been healed. Through her arm
the family would have fought. Her glorious death-name might even now be
written on an _ihai_ on the Buddha-shelf, her glad soul swelling the
numbers of that ghostly legion whose spiritual force was the true
vitality of her nation.
"Perhaps that, too, might be," she said presently in a low voice.
"Should I augustly marry one not of too exalted a station, he could
receive adoption into our family."
He looked into her deeply flushing face. "You think of the Lieutenant
Ishida Hétaro," he said. "It is true that the go-between has already
deigned to sit on my hard mats. He is, I think, in every way worthy of
our house. I would rather he were in the field, with a sword in his
hand--I know not much of this 'Secret Service.' What are his present
duties? Doubtless"--with a spark of mischief in his hollow, old
eyes--"you are better informed than I."
"He is in the household of one named Bersonin, a man-mountain like our
wrestlers, whose service Japan pays with a wage."
His seamed face clouded. "To cunningly watch the foreigner's incomings
and his outgoings, and make august report to the Board of Extraordinary
Information," he said, with a trace of bitterness. "To play the clod
when one is all eyes and ears. Honorable it is, no doubt, yet to my old
palate it savors too much of the actor strutting on the circular stage.
But times change, and if, to live, we must ape the foreigners, why, we
must borrow their ways till such time--the gods grant it be soon!--when
we can throw them on the dust heap. And what am I to set my debased
ignorance against my Princes and my Emperor!" He paused a moment and
sighed. "Ishida is well esteemed," he continued presently. "He has dwelt
in America and learned its tongue--a necessity, it seems, in these
topsy-turvy times. Yet, as for marriage, waiting still must be. These
are evil days for us, my child. From whence would come the gifts which
must be sent before the bride, to the husband's house? Your mother"--he
paused and bowed deeply toward the golden _butsu-dan_ in its
alcove--"may she rest on the lotos-terrace of _Amida_!--came to my poor
house with a train of coolies bearing lacquer chests: silken _f'ton_,
_kimono_ as soft and filmy as mist, gowns of cloth and of cotton,
cushions of gold and silver patternings, jeweled girdles, velvet sandals
and all lovely garniture. Shall her daughter be sent to a husband with a
chest of rags? No, no!"
She leaned her dark head against his blue-clad shoulder and drew the
scroll from his trembling fingers.
"I wind your words about my heart," she said. "Waiting is best. Perhaps
the evil times will withdraw. I have prayed to the Christian God
concerning it. But your eyes are augustly wearied. Let me read to you a
while."
He settled himself back on the mat, his gaunt hands buried in his
sleeves, and, snuffing the wick in the _andon_, she began to read the
archaic "grass-writing." It was the _Shundai Zatsuwa_ of Kyuso Moro.
"Be not _samurai_ through the wearing of two swords, but day and
night have a care to bring no reproach on the name. When you
cross your threshold and pass out through the gate, go as one
who shall never return again. Thus shall you be ready for every
adventure. The Buddhist is for ever to remember the five
commandments and the _samurai_ the laws of chivalry.
"All born as _samurai_, men and women, are taught from childhood
that fidelity must never be forgotten. And woman is ever taught
that this, with submission, is her chief duty. If in unexpected
strait her weak heart forsakes fidelity, all her other virtues
will not atone.
"_Samurai_, men and women, the young and the old, regulate their
conduct according to the precepts of Bushido, and a _samurai_,
without hesitation, sacrifices life and family for lord and
country."
CHAPTER XIII
THE WHORLS OF YELLOW DUST
For a long time in her blue and white room Barbara lay awake,
listening to the incessant chorus that came on the deepening mystery
of the dark: the rustle of the pine-needles outside her window, the
_kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri_ of a night-cricket on the sill, and the wavering
chant of a toiling coolie keeping time to the thrust of his body as he
hauled his heavy cart. The shadow of a twisted pine-branch crossed one
of the windows, and in the infiltering moonlight she could see the
yellow gleam of the gold-lacquer Buddha on the Sendai chest.
She could imagine it the same image she had found as a little girl in
the garret, and had made her pet delight. For an instant she seemed to
be once more a child seated on her low stool before it, her hands
tight-clasped, looking up into its immobile countenance, half-hoping,
half-fearing those carven lips would speak. On the wings of this
sensation came a childish memory of a day when her aunt had found her
thus and had thought her praying to it. She remembered the look of
frozen horror on her aunt's face and her own helpless mortification. For
she did not know how to explain. She had had to write a verse from the
Bible fifty times in her copybook:
_Thou shalt have no other gods before Me._
And she had had to do half of them over because she had forgotten the
capital M. That day her treasure had disappeared, and she had never seen
it again.
The glimmering figure in the dark made her think, too, of the man of
whom Daunt had told her, who shunned his own race, hiding himself for
years and years in a Japanese temple, with its painted dragon carvings,
glowing candles and smoking censers. The incense from them seemed now to
be filling all the night with odors rich and alluring, whispering of
things mysterious and confined. Striking across the lesser sounds she
could hear at intervals the flute of a blind _masseur_, and nearer, in
the Embassy grounds, the recurrent signal of a patroling night watchman:
three strokes of one hard, wooden stick upon another, like a high,
mellow note of a xylophone.
This sounded a little like a ship's bell--striking on a white yacht,
whose owner was visiting the ancient capital, Nara. He would appear
before long, and she knew what he would say, and what he would want her
to say to him. She felt somehow guilty, with a sorry though painless
compunction. The man on the steamer that morning had spoken of a younger
brother who was in Japan, "going the pace." Phil--she had often heard
Austen Ware speak of him. Perhaps he had only come over to keep the
other out of mischief. She told herself this a second time, because it
gave her a drowsy satisfaction, though she knew it was not so. She had
always pictured Phil as "fast," and she wondered sleepily what the word
meant here in the orient, where there were no theater suppers, and where
men probably played _fan-tan_--no, that was Chinese--or some other queer
game instead of poker--unless they ... had aëroplanes.
The bell of the distant temple, which she had heard in the garden,
boomed softly, and the _amma's_ flute sounded again its piercing,
plaintive double-note. The two sounds began to weave together with a
sense of unreality, dreamy, occult, incommunicable. So at length Barbara
slept, fitfully, the fragments of that lavish day falling into a bizarre
mosaic, in which strange figures mingled uncannily.
She knew them for visions, and to avoid them climbed a grassy hill to a
gray old temple in which she saw her father seated cross-legged on a
huge lotos-flower. She knew him because his face was just like the face
in the locket she wore. She called out and ran toward him, but it was
only a great gold-lacquered Buddha with candles burning around it. She
ran out of the temple, where a dog pursued her and a monstrous man with
a pallid face, who sat in a tree full of cherry-blossoms, threw
something at her which suddenly went off with a terrific explosion and
blew both him and the dog into bits. It seemed terrible, but she could
only laugh and laugh, because somebody held her tight in his arms and
she knew that nothing could frighten her ever any more.
And on the tide of this shy comfort she drifted away at last upon a deep
and dreamless sea.
* * * * *
Later, when the moon had set and only the faint starlight lay over the
garden, the Ambassador still sat in his study, thoughtfully smoking a
cigar. On the mantel, under a glass case, was a model of a battle-ship.
Over it hung a traverse drawing of the Panama Canal cuttings, and maps
and framed photographs looked from the walls between the dark-toned
book-shelves. The floor was covered with a deep crimson rug of
camel's-hair. The shaded reading-lamp on the desk threw a bright circle
of light on an open volume of Treaties at his elbow.
At length he rose, took up the lamp, and approached the mantel. He stood
a moment looking thoughtfully at the model under its rounded glass. It
was built to scale, and complete in every exterior detail, from the
pennant at its head to the tiny black muzzles that peeped from its open
casemates. Two years ago America had sent a fleet of such vessels to
circumnavigate the globe. An European Squadron of even deadlier type
would cast anchor the next morning in those waters. Yet now Bersonin's
phrase rang insistently through his mind: "Mere silly shreds of steel!"
It recurred like a refrain, mixing itself with the expert's curious
words in the study, with that extraordinary incident of the
piazza--which had bred a stealthy mistrust that would not down.
With the lamp in his hand he opened the door into the hall and stood
listening a moment. Save for the creaks and snappings that haunt frame
structures in a land of rapid decay, the house was still. He entered the
drawing-room, noiselessly undid the fastenings of a French window and
stepped out on to the piazza.
There he threw the lamplight about him, mentally reconstructing the
scene of two hours before. Here he himself had stood, yonder Bersonin,
and in the corner the dog--ten feet from the edge of the porch. It had
vanished in the same instant that he had seen it leaping straight at the
expert. What was it Bersonin had taken from his pocket? A weapon? And
_where had the hound gone_?
He stepped forward suddenly; the chair which had been thrown by the
Japanese boy had been set upright, but beneath it, and on the piazza
beyond, disposed in curious wreaths and whorls, like those made by steel
filings above an electro-magnet, lay a thick sifting of what looked like
reddish-yellow dust. He stooped and took up some in his fingers; it was
dry and impalpable, of an extraordinary fineness.
He stood looking at it a full minute, intent with some absorbed and
disquieting communing. Then he shook his broad shoulders, as though
dismissing an incredible idea, returned the lamp to the study and went
slowly up the stair to his room.
But he was not sleeping when dawn came, gray in the sky. It stole
pink-fingered through the window and drew rosy lights on the blank wall
across which strange fancies of his had linked themselves in a weird
processional. It crept between the heavy curtains of the study below,
and gilded the fittings of the little battle-ship on the mantel--as
though to deck it in crimson bunting like its mammoth prototypes in the
lower bay.
For at that moment the Yokohama Bund was throbbing with the _salvos_ of
great guns pealing a salute. The water's edge was lined with a watching
crowd. Files of marines were drawn up beneath the green-trimmed arches
and cutters flying the sun-flag lay at the wharf, where groups of
officers stood in dress-uniform.
Over the ledge of the morning was spread a filmy curtain of damask rose,
and beneath it, into the harbor, like a broad dotted arrow-head, was
steaming a flock of black battle-ships, with inky smoke pouring from
their stacks.
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN BARBARA AWOKE
When Barbara awoke next morning she lay for a moment staring open-eyed
from her big pillow at the white wall above, where a hanging-shelf
projected to guard the sleeper from falling plaster in earthquake. The
room was filled with a soft light that filtered in through the
split-bamboo blinds. Then she remembered: it was her first whole day in
Japan.
She felt full of a gay _insouciance_, a glad lightness of joy that she
had never felt before. Slipping a thin rose-colored robe over her
nightgown, she threw open the window and leaned out. The air was as pure
and clean as if it had been sieved through silk, and she breathed it
with long inspirations. It made her think of the unredeemed dirt of
other countries, the sooty air of crowded factories, hardly growing
foliage and unlovely walls.
The Embassy was a pretentious frame structure in which frequent
alterations had masked an original plan. With its tall porte-cochère,
its long narrow L which served as Chancery, the smaller white cottage
across the lawn occupied by the Secretary of Embassy, the rambling
servants' quarters and stables, it suggested some fine old Virginia
homestead, transported by Aladdin's genii to the heart of an oriental
garden. For the tiny rock-knoll, with its single twisted pine-tree in
front of the main door, the wistaria arbor and red dwarf maples, the
great stone lanterns, the miniature lake and pebbled rivulet spanned by
its arching bridge--all these were Japanese. In the early morning the
eerie witchery of the night was gone, but the sky was as deep as space
and the air languid with the perfume and warmth of a St. Martin's
summer. A green-golden glow tinged the camelia hedges and above them the
long cool expanse of weather-boarding and olive blinds--like a carving
in jade and old ivory.
As she stood there bathed in the sunlight, her hands dividing the
curtains, Barbara made a gracious part of the glimmering setting. Her
thick, ruddy hair sprang curling from her strongly modeled forehead, and
fell about her white shoulders, a warm reddish mass against the
delicately tinted curtain. There was a thoroughbred straightness in the
lines of the tall figure, in the curve of the cheek and the round
directness of the chin; and her eyes, bent on the lucent green, were the
color of brown sea-water under sapphire cloud-shadows.
From a circle of evergreens near the porte-cochère a white flag-pole
rose high above the treetops. The stars-and-stripes floated from its
halyards, for the day was the national holiday of an European power. In
the hedges sparrows were twittering, and in a plum-tree a _uguisu_--the
little Buddhist bird that calls the sacred name of the Sutras--was
warbling his sweet, slow, solemn syllables: "_Ho-kek-yo! Ho-kek-yo!_" A
gardener was sweeping the pink rain of cherry-petals from the paths with
a twig broom, the long sleeves of his blue _kimono_ fluttering in the
yellow sunshine, and in front of the servants' quarters a little girl in
flapping sandals was skipping rope with a chenille fascinator. Beyond
the wall of the compound Barbara could see the street, a low row of open
shops. In one, a number of men and girls, sitting on flat mats, were
making bamboo fans. At the corner stood a round well, from which a group
of women, barefooted and with tucked-up clothing, were drawing water in
unpainted wooden buckets with polished brass hoops, and beside it, under
a dark blue awning, a man and woman were grinding rice in a hand-mill
made of two heavy stone disks. A blue-and-white figured towel was bound
about the woman's head against the fine white rice-dust. Above them, on
a tiny portico, an old man, with the calm, benevolent face of a
porcelain mandarin, was watering an unbelievably-twisted dwarf plum on
which was a single bunch of blossoming. At the side of the street grew a
gnarled _kiri_ tree, its shambling roots encroaching on the roadway. In
their cleft was set a wooden _Shinto_ shrine with small piles of pebbles
before it. From a distance, high and clear, she heard a strain of bugles
from some squad of soldiers going to barracks, or perhaps to the
parade-ground, where, she remembered, an Imperial Review of Troops was
to be held that morning.
Barbara started suddenly, to see on the lawn just below her window, a
figure three feet high, with a round, cropped head, gazing at her from a
solemn, inquiring countenance. He wore a much-worn but clean _kimono_,
and his infantile toes clutched the thongs of clogs so large that his
feet seemed to be set on spacious wooden platforms. The youngster bent
double and staggeringly righted himself with a staccato "_O-hayo!_"
Barbara gave an inarticulate gasp; in face of his somber dignity she did
not dare to laugh. "How do you do?" she said. "Do you live here?"
"No," he replied. "I lives in a other houses."
"Oh!" exclaimed Barbara, aghast at his command of English. "What is your
name?"
"Ishikichi," he said succinctly.
"And will you tell me what you are doing, Ishikichi?"
A small hand from behind his back produced a tiny bamboo cage in which
was a bell-cricket. As he held it out, the insect chirped like an elfin
cymbal. "Find more one," he said laconically.
"And what shall you do with them, I wonder."
He took one foot from its clog and wriggled bare toes in the grass.
"Give him to new little sister," he said.
"So you have a new little sister!" exclaimed Barbara. "How fine that
must be!"
A glaze of something like disappointment spread over the diminutive
face. "Small like," he said. "More better want a brother to play with
me."
"Maybe you might exchange her for a brother," she hazarded, but the
cropped head shook despondently:
"I think no can now," he said. "We have use her four days."
Barbara laughed outright, a peal of silvery sound that echoed across the
garden--then suddenly drew back. A man on horseback was passing across
the drive toward the main gate of the compound. It was Daunt,
bareheaded, his handsome tanned face flushed with exercise, the breeze
ruffling his moist, curling hair. She flashed him a smile as his
riding-crop flew to his brow in salute. The sun glinted from its
Damascene handle, wrought into the long, grotesque muzzle of a fox.
Between the edsges of the blue silk curtains she saw him turn in the
saddle to look back before he disappeared.
She stood peering out a long time toward the low white cottage across
the clipped lawn. The laughter had left her eyes, and gradually over her
face grew a wave of rich color. She dropped the curtain and caught her
hands to her cheeks. For an instant she had seemed to feel the pressure
of strong arms, the touch of coarse tweed vividly reminiscent of a pipe.
What had come over her? The one day that had dawned at sea in golden
fire and died in crimson and purple over a file of convicts--the
dreaming night with its temple bell striking through silver mist and
violet shadows--these had left her the same Barbara that she had always
been. But somewhere, somehow, in the closed gulf between the then and
now, something new and strange and sweet had waked in her--something
that the sound of a voice in the garish sunlight had started into
clamorous reverberations.
She sat down suddenly and hid her face.
CHAPTER XV
A FACE IN THE CROWD
They rode to the parade-ground--Barbara and Patricia with the
Ambassador, behind his pair of Kentucky grays--along wide streets grown
festive overnight and buzzing with _rick'sha_ and pedestrians. Every
gateway held crossed flags bearing the blood-red rising-sun, and colored
paper lanterns were swung in festoons along the gaudy blocks of shops,
as wide open as tiers of cut honeycomb.
In their swift flight the city appeared a living sea of undulations, of
immense green wastes alternating with humming sections of trade, of
abrupt, cliff-like hills, of small parks that were masses of
cherry-bloom and landscapes of weird Japanese beauty. Patricia quoted
one of Haru's quaint sayings: "So-o-o many small village got such a
lonesomeness an' come more closer together. Tha's the way Tokyo born."
Occasionally the Ambassador pointed out the stately palace of some
influential noble, or the amorphous, depressing front of the
foreign-style stucco residence of some statesman, built in that
different period when the empire took first steps in the path of
world-powers, with its low, graceful Japanese portion beside it.
Everywhere Barbara was conscious of the flutter of children--of little
girls whose dress and hair showed a pervasive sense of care and
adornment; of faces neither gay nor sad looking from latticed windows
that hung above open gutters of sluggish ooze; of frail balconies
adorned with growing flowers or miniature gardens set in earthen trays;
of doorways hung with soft-fringed, rice-straw ropes and dotted with
paper charms--the talismanic _o-fuda_ seen on every hand in Japan. In
Yokohama what had struck her most had been the curious composite, the
jumbled dissonance of East and West. Here was a new impression; this was
real Japan, but a Japan that, if it had taken on western hues, had
everywhere qualified them by subtle variations, themselves oriental.
Past the carriage whirled landaus bearing Japanese _grandes dames_ in
native dress, with pomade-stiff coiffures against which their
rice-powdered faces made a ghastly contrast; between the rear springs of
each vehicle was fixed a round flat pommel on which a runner stood,
balancing himself to the swift movement. A Japanese military officer in
khaki, with a row of decorations on his breast, rode by on a horse too
big for him, at a jingling trot. Two soldiers passing afoot, faced
sidewise and their heavy cowhide heels came together with a thud, as
they saluted. Their arms had the jerky precision of a mechanical toy.
Through all there seemed to Barbara to strike a sense of the tenacity of
the old, of the stubborn persistence of type, as though eyes behind a
mask looked grimly at the mirror's reflection of some outlandish and but
half-accustomed masquerade. It was the shadow of the old Japan of castes
and spies and censors, of homage and _hara-kiri_, of punctilio and
porcelain. Trolley cars rumbled past; skeins of telegraph wire spun
across the vision. Yet when stone wall gaped or green hedge opened, it
was to reveal the curving tops of Buddhist _torii_ in quaint vistas of
straight-boled trees, gliding Tartar contours of roof between clumps of
palm, or bamboo thickets with shadows as black as ink; while from the
lazy scum of the wide, moat-like, stone gutters, open to the
all-putrefying sun, rose thick, marshy odors suggesting the vast languor
of a land more ancient than Egypt and Nineveh.
The carriage stopped abruptly at a cross street. A _Shinto_ funeral
_cortège_ was passing. Twelve bearers, six on each side, clad in
mourning _houri_ of pure white, bore on their shoulders the hearse, like
a shrine, built of clean unpainted wood, beautifully grained, and with
carven roof and curtains of green and gold brocade. Priests in yellow
robes, with curved gauze caps and stoles of scarlet and black, walked at
the head, fanning themselves now and then with little fans drawn from
their girdles. Coolies, dressed in white like the hearse bearers,
carried stiff, conical bouquets, six feet long, made of flowers of
staring colors, and clumps of lotos made of _papier maché_ covered with
gold and silver leaf. The chief mourner, a woman, rode smiling in a
_rick'sha_. She wore a silver-gray _kimono_ and a tall canopied cap of
white brocade with wide floating strings like an old-fashioned bonnet.
"Well, of all things!" said Patricia, in an awe-struck whisper. "What do
you think of that?" For the file of _rick'sha_ following her carried a
curious assemblage of mourners. In each sat a dog, some large, some
small, with great bows of black or white crepe tied to their collars.
Taka, the driver, turned his head and spoke:
"Dog-doctor die," he said. "All dog very sorry."
"It's the 'vet.,' father," Patricia cried. "He is dead, then--and all
his old patients are attending the funeral! See, Barbara! They are lined
up according to diplomatic precedence. That French poodle in front
belongs to the Japanese senior prince. The Aberdeen is the British
Ambassador's. And there's the Italian Embassy bull-terrier and the
Spanish _Chargé's_ 'chin.' The foreigners' dogs have black bows and the
others white. Why is that, I wonder?"
"I presume," said the Ambassador, "because white is the Japanese
mourning color."
"Of course. How stupid of me!" She sat suddenly upright. "Of all
_things_! There's our 'Dandy'!" She pointed to a tiny Pomeranian on the
seat of the last _rick'sha_. "I wondered why number-three boy was
washing him so hard this morning! It's a mercy he didn't see us, or he'd
have broken up the procession. Please take note that he's the
tail-end--which shows my own unofficial insignificance."
"There's a tourist at the hotel," said the Ambassador, "who should have
seen this. I was there the other day and I overheard her speaking to one
of the Japanese clerks. She said she had seen everything but a funeral,
and she wanted him to instruct her guide to take her to one. The clerk
said: 'I am too sorry, Madam, but this is not the season for funerals.'"
The horses trotted on, to drop to a walk, presently, on a brisk incline.
High, slanting retaining walls were on either side, and double rows of
cherry-trees, whose interlacing branches wove a roof of soft pink bloom.
Along the road were many people; _inkyo_--old men who no longer labored,
and _ba-San_--old women whom age had relieved from household cares--bent
and withered and walking with staves or leaning on the arms of their
daughters, who bore babies of their own strapped to their backs;
children clattering on loose wooden clogs; youths sauntering with
_kimono'd_ arms thrown, college-boy fashion, about each other's
shoulders; a troop of young girls in student _hakama_--skirts of deep
purple or garnet--laughing and chatting in low voices or airily swinging
bundles tied in colored _furoshiki_. Midway the wall opened into a
miniature park filled with trees, with a small lake and a _Shinto_
monument.
"Why, there's little Ishikichi," said Patricia. "I never saw him so far
from home before. Isn't that a queer-looking man with him!"
The solemn six-year-old, Barbara's window acquaintance of the morning,
was trotting from the inclosure, his small fingers clutching the hand of
a foreigner. The latter was of middle age. His coat was a heavy,
double-breasted "reefer." His battered hat, wide-brimmed and
soft-crowned, was a joke. But his linen was fresh and good and his
clumsy shoes did not conceal the smallness and shapeliness of his feet.
He was lithe and well built, and moved with an easy swing of shoulder
and a step at once quick and graceful. His back was toward them, but
Barbara could see his long, gray-black hair, a square brow above an
aquiline profile at once bold and delicate, and a drooping mustache shot
with gray. Many people seemed to regard him, but he spoke to no one save
his small companion. His manner, as he bent down, had something
caressing and confiding.
At the sound of wheels the man turned all at once toward them. As his
gaze met Barbara's, she thought a startled look shot across it. At side
view his face had seemed a dark olive, but now in the vivid sunlight it
showed blanched. His eyes were deep in arched orbits. One, she noted,
was curiously prominent and dilated. From a certain bird-like turn of
the head, she had an impression that this one eye was nearly if not
wholly sightless. All this passed through her mind in a flash, even
while she wondered at his apparent agitation.
For as he gazed, he had dropped the child's hand. She saw his lips
compress in an expression grim and forbidding. He made an involuntary
movement, as though mastered by a quick impulse. Then, in a breath, his
face changed. He shrank back, turned sharply into the park and was lost
among the trees.
"What an odd man!" exclaimed Patricia. "I suppose he resented our
staring at him. He's left the little chap all alone, too. Stop the
horses a moment, Tucker," she directed, and as they pulled up she called
to the child.
But there was no reply. Ishikichi looked at her a moment frowningly,
then, without a word, turned and stalked somberly after his companion.
"What an infant thunder-cloud!" said Patricia as the carriage proceeded.
"That must be where our precious prodigy gets his English. Poor mite!"
she added. "He was the inseparable of the son of Toru, the flower-dealer
opposite the Embassy, Barbara, and the dear little fellow was run over
and killed last week by a foreign carriage. No doubt he's grieving over
it, but in Japan even the babies are trained not to show what they feel.
I wonder who this new friend is?"
"I've seen the man once before," said the Ambassador. "He was pointed
out to me. His name is Thorn. His first name is Greek--Aloysius, isn't
it?--yes, Aloysius. He is a kind of recluse: one of those bits of human
flotsam, probably, that western civilization discards, and that drift
eventually to the East. It would be interesting to know his history."
So this, thought Barbara, was the exile of whom Daunt had told her, who
had chosen to bury himself--from what unguessed motive!--in an oriental
land, sunk out of sight like a stone in a pool. When he looked at her
she had felt almost an impulse to speak, so powerfully had the shadow in
his eyes suggested the canker of solitariness, the dreary ache of
bitterness prolonged. She felt a wave of pity surging over her.
But the carriage leaped forward, new sights sprang on them and the
fleeting thought dropped away at length behind her, with the overhanging
cherry-blooms, the little green park, and the strange face at its
gateway.
CHAPTER XVI
"BANZAI NIPPON!"
Gradually, as they proceeded, the throng became denser. Policemen in
neat suits of white-duck and wearing long cavalry swords lined the road.
They had smart military-looking caps and white cotton gloves, and stood,
as had the officer before the file of convicts in Shimbashi Station,
moveless and imperturbable. The crowds were massed now in close, locked
lines on either side. In one place a school-master stood guard over a
file of small boys in holiday _kimono_: a little paper Japanese flag was
clutched in each chubby hand.
In all the ranks there was no jostling, or fighting for position, no
loud-voiced jest or expostulation; a spell was in the air; the Imperial
Presence who was to pass that way had cast His beneficent Shadow before.
Through a double row of saluting police they whirled into an immense
brown field, as level as a floor, stretching before them seemingly
empty, a dull, yellow-brown waste horizoned by feathery tree-tops. The
carriage turned to the right, skirting a surging sea of brown faces held
in check by a stretched rope; these gave place to a mass of officers
standing in dress-uniform, with plumed caps and breasts ablaze with
decorations; in another moment they descended before a canvas _marquée_
where brilliant regimental uniforms from a dozen countries shifted and
mingled with diplomatic costumes heavy with gold-braid, and with women's
gay frocks and picture-hats.
The air was full of exhilaration; people were laughing and chatting. The
British Ambassador displayed the plaid of a Colonel of Highlanders; he
had fought in the Soudan. The Chinese Minister was in his own mandarin
costume; from his round, jade-buttoned hat swept the much coveted
peacock feathers and on his breast were the stars of the "Rising-Sun"
and the "Double-Dragon." The American Ambassador alone, of all the
foreign representatives, wore the plain frock-coat and silk hat of the
civilian. From group to group strolled officials of the Japanese Foreign
Office and Cabinet Ministers, their ceremonial coats crossed by white or
crimson cordons. And through it all Barbara moved, responsive to all
this lightness and color, bowing here and there to introductions that
left her only the more conscious of the one tall figure that had met
them and now walked at her side.
Daunt could not have told that the flowers in her hat were brown
orchids: he only knew that they matched the color of her eyes. Last
night the moonlight had lent her something of the fragile and ethereal,
like itself. Now the sunlight painted in clear warm colors of cream and
cardinal. It glinted from the perfect curve of her forehead, and tangled
in the wide wave of her bronze hair, making it gleam like hot copper
spun into silk-fine strands. His finger-tips tingled to touch it.
He started, as--"A penny for your thoughts," she said, with sudden
mischief.
"Have you so much about you?" he countered.
"That's a subterfuge."
"You wouldn't be flattered to hear them, I'm afraid."
"The reflection is certainly a sad blow to my self-esteem!"
"Well," he said daringly, "I was thinking how I would like to pick you
up in my arms before all these people and run right out in the center of
that field--"
She flushed to the tips of her ears. "And then--"
"Just run, and run, and run away."
"What a heroic exploit!" she said with subtle mockery, but the flush
deepened.
"You know to what lengths I can go in my longing to be a hero!" he
muttered.
"Running off with girls under your arm seems to have become a mania. But
isn't your idea rather prosaic in this age of flying-machines? To swoop
down on one in an aëroplane would be so much more thrilling! This is the
field where you practise, too, isn't it? Is that building away over
there where you keep your Glider?"'
"Yes. At first I made the models in a Japanese house of mine near here.
I keep it still, from sentiment."
"How fine to meet a man who admits to having sentiment! I'm tremendously
interested in Japanese houses. You must show it to me."
"I will. And when will you let me take you for a 'fly?'"
"I'm relieved," she said, "to find you willing to ask permission."
Her eyes sparkled into his, and both laughed. Patricia was chatting
animatedly with Count Voynich, the young diplomatist whom she had
pointed out in the train, and whose monocle now looked absurdly
contemplative and serene under a menacing helmet. The confusion of many
colors, the pomp and panoply under the day's golden azure, was singing
in Barbara's veins. She moved suddenly toward the front. "Come," she
said, "I want you to tell me things!"
"I'm going to," he answered grimly. "I've known I should, ever since--"
"Look!" she cried. Several coaches had bowled up; behind each stood
footmen in gold-lace and cocked hats, knee breeches and white silk
stockings. Daunt named the occupants as they descended: the Premier, one
of the "Elder Statesmen," the Minister of the Household.
"Who are the people there at the side, under the awning?"
"Tourists. Each Embassy and Legation is allowed a certain number of
invitations."
"Why, yes," said Barbara. "I see some of my ship-mates." She smiled and
nodded across as faces turned toward her. There was the gaunt, sallow
woman who had distributed Christian Science tracts (till sea-sickness
claimed her for its own) and little Miss Tippetts (the printed
steamer-list, with unconscious wit, had made it "Tidbits"), who had
flitted about the companion-ways like a shawled wraith, radiant now in a
white _lingerie_ gown and a hat covered with red hollyhocks. And there,
too, was the familiar painted-muslin and the expansive white waistcoat
of the train.
A hundred yards to the right was spread a wide silk canopy of royal
purple, caught back with crimson tassels. "What is that?" Barbara asked,
pointing.
"That is for the Emperor and his suite. The big sixteen-petaled
chrysanthemum on its front is the Imperial Crest; no one else is allowed
to use or carry it. The men on horseback are Princes of the Blood.
Almost all the great generals of the late war are in that group behind
them. The man smoking a cigarette is the Japanese Minister of War."
"But when do the troops come?" Barbara inquired. "I see only one little
company out there in the center."
"That is a band," he said. "Look farther. Can you make out something
like a wide, brown ribbon stretched all around the field?"
She looked. The far-away, moveless, dun-colored strip merged with the
sere plain, but now, here and there, she saw minute needle points of
sunlight twinkle across it. She made an exclamation. For the tiny
flashes were sun-gleams from the bayonets of massed men, clad in
neutral-tinted khaki, silent, motionless as a brown wall, a living river
frozen to utter immobility by a word of command that had been spoken two
long hours before.
A mounted _aide_ galloped wildly past toward the purple canopy. As he
flashed by, a thin bugle-note rang out and a band far back by the gate
at which they had entered began playing a minor melody. Strange, slow,
infinitely solemn and sad, the strain rolled around the hushed
field--the _Kimi-ga-yo_, the "Hymn of the Sovereign," adapted by a
German melodist a score of years ago, which in Japan is played only in
the Imperial Presence or that of its outward and visible tokens. The
counterpoint, with its muttering roll of snare-drums on the long chords,
and sudden, sharp clashes of cymbals, gave the majestic air an effect
weird and unforgetable. The strain sank to silence, but with the last
note a second nearer band caught it up and repeated it; then, nearer
still, another and another.
Barbara, leaning, saw a great state-coach of green and gold coming down
the field. It was drawn by four of the most beautiful bay horses she had
ever seen. Coachman, postilions and footmen wore red coats heavily
frogged with gold, white cloth breeches and block enamel top-boots. As
it came briskly along that animate wall of spectators, the vast
concourse, save for the welling or ebbing minor of the bands, was
silent, hushed as in a cathedral. But as it passed, the packed sea of
brown faces--the mass of _kimono_ next the gate and the ranks of
splendid uniforms--bent forward as one man, in a great sighing rustle,
like a field of tall grass when a sudden wind passes over it.
The plumed hats of the diplomatists came off; they bowed low. The ladies
courtesied, and Barbara, as her gaze lifted, caught an instant's
glimpse, through the coach's glass sides, of that kingly figure,
heaven-descended and sacred, mysterious alike to his own subjects as to
the outside world, through whom flows to the soul of modern Japan the
manifest divinity and living guidance of cohorts of dead Emperors
stretching backward into the night of Time!
* * * * *
The band stationed in the center of the immense field had begun to
play--something with a martial swing; and now the far brown strip that
had blent with brown earth began to shift and tremble like the quiver of
air above heated metal. Its motes detached themselves, clustered anew;
and the long, wide ribbon, like a huge serpent waked from rigid sleep in
the sunshine, swept into view: regiments of men, armed and blanketed, by
file and platoon. They moved with high, jerky "goose-step" and loosely
swinging arm, line upon line, till the ground shook with the tread.
Before each regiment were borne strange flags, blackened and tattered by
blood and shell. Some were mere flapping fringes. But they were more
precious than human lives. One had been found on a Manchurian
battlefield, wrapped about the body of a dead Japanese, beneath his
clothing. Wounded, he had so concealed it, then killed himself, lest,
captured alive, the standard he bore might fall into the hands of the
enemy. As each new rank came opposite the coach before the purple
canopy, an officer's sword flashed out in salute, and a "_banzai!_" tore
across the martial music like the ragged yell of a fanatical Dervish.
Daunt, watching Barbara, saw the light leaping in her brown eyes, the
excitement coming and going in her face. Again and again he fixed his
gaze before him, as infantry, cavalry and artillery marched and pounded
and rumbled past. In vain. Like a wilful drunkard it returned to
intoxicate itself with the sight of her eager beauty, that made the
scene for him only a splendid blur, an extraneous impression of masses
of swaying bodies moving like marionettes, of glistening bayonets,
horses, clattering ammunition wagons, and fluttering pennants.
In Barbara, however, every nerve was thrilling to the sight. For the
moment she had forgotten even the man beside her. As she watched the
audacious outpouring of drilled power, tempered and restrained, yet so
terribly alive in its coiled virility, she was feeling a keen pang of
sympathy that was almost pain. In this burning panorama she divined no
shrinking, devious thing sinking with the fatigue of ages, aping the
superficialities of a remote race: not merely a tidal wave of intense
vitality, mobile and mercurial, hastening onward toward an inaudible
unknown, but a splendid rebirth, a dazzling reincarnation of old spirit
in new form, a symbol concrete and vital, like the blaze of a beacon
flaming a racial _réveille_.
She turned toward Daunt, her hand outstretched, her fingers on his arm,
her lips opened.
But she did not speak. Afterward she did not know what she had intended
to say.
CHAPTER XVII
A SILENT UNDERSTANDING
Phil descended from his _rick'sha_ at the Tokyo Club and paid the
coolie.
The building faced an open square between the Imperial Hotel and the
Parliament Buildings, along one of the smaller picturesque moats, which
the fever for modernization was now filling in to make a conventional
boulevard. A motor shed stood at the side of the plaza and an automobile
or two was generally in evidence. The structure was small but
comfortable enough, with reading- and card-rooms and a billiard-room of
many tables. It was the clearing-house for the capital's news, the
general exchange for Diet, Peers' Club and the Embassies. It was a place
of tacit free-masonry and conversational dissections. From five to seven
in the afternoon it was a polyglot babble of Japanese, English, French,
German and Italian, punctuated with the tinkle of glasses and the
cheerful click of billiard balls. Over its tables secretaries met to
gossip of the newest _entente_ or the latest social "affair," and
_protocols_ had been drafted on the big, deep, leather sofas adjoining
the bar.
The door was opened by a servile bell-boy in buttons. Phil tossed his
hat on to the hall-rack and entered. It was cool and pleasant inside,
and a great bowl of China asters sat on the table beside the membership
book. On the wall was a wire frame full of visitors' cards. He strode
through the office and entered a large, glass-inclosed piazza where a
number of Japanese, some in foreign, some in native costume, were
watching a game of _Go_. Two younger Legation _attachés_ were shaking
dice at another table. It was but a little past noon and the place had
an air of sober quiet, very different, Phil reflected, from the club on
the Yokohama Bund, which was always buzzing, and where he was
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. Frowning, he passed into the next
room.
Here his eye lightened. Sitting in a corner of one of the huge sofas
which sank under his enormous weight, was Doctor Bersonin. A little
round table was before him on which sat a tall glass frosted with
cracked ice.
"Sit down," said the expert. "How do you come to be in Tokyo? The
Review, I presume." He struck a call-bell on the table and gave an order
to the waiter.
Phil lighted a cigarette. "No," he said, "I've come to stay for a
while."
"You haven't given up your bungalow on the Bluff?" asked Bersonin
quickly. There was an odd eagerness in his colorless face--a look of
almost dread, which Phil, lighting his cigarette, did not see. It
changed to relief as the other answered:
"No. Probably I shan't be here more than a few days."
The expert settled back in his seat. "You'll not find the hotel
everything it should be, I'm afraid," he observed more casually.
"I'm not there," Phil answered. "I--I've got a little Japanese house."
"So! A _ménage de garçon_, eh?" The big man held up his clinking glass
to the light, and under cover of it, his deep-set yellowish eyes darted
a keen, detective look at Phil's averted face. "Well," he went on, "how
are your affairs? Has the stern brother appeared yet?"
Phil shifted uneasily. "No," he replied. "I expect him pretty soon,
though." He drained the glass the boy had filled. "You've been
tremendously kind, Doctor," he went on hurriedly, "to lend me so much,
without the least bit of security--"
"Pshaw!" said Bersonin. "Why shouldn't I?" He put his hand on the
other's shoulder with a friendly gesture. "I only wish money could give
me as much pleasure as it does you, my boy."
Two men had seated themselves in the next room. Through the open door
came fragments of conversation, the gurgle of poured liquid and the
bubbling hiss of Hirano mineral water. Bersonin lowered his voice:
"Youth! What a great thing it is! Red-blood and imagination and zest to
enjoy. All it needs is the wherewithal to gild its pleasures. After a
time age catches us, and what are luxuries then? Only things to make
tiresomeness a little less irksome!"
Phil moved his glass on the table top in sullen circles. "But suppose
one hasn't the 'wherewithal' you talk of? What's the fun without money,
even when you're young? I've never been able to discover it!"
"Find the money," said Bersonin.
"I wish some one would tell me how!"
Bersonin's head turned toward the door. He sat suddenly rigid. It came
to Phil that he was listening intently to the talk between the two men
in the next room.
"I needn't point out"--it was a measured voice, cold and incisive and
deliberate--"that when the American fleet came, two years ago,
conditions were quite different. The cruise was a national _tour de
force_; the visit to Japan was incidental. Besides, there was really no
feeling then between the two nations--that was all a creation of the
yellow press. But the coming of this European Squadron to-day is a
different thing. It is a season of general sensitiveness and distrust,
and when the ships belong to a nation between which and Japan there is
real and serious diplomatic tension--well, in my opinion the time is, at
best, inopportune."
"Perhaps"--a younger voice was speaking now, less certain, less poised
and a little hesitant--"perhaps the very danger makes for caution.
People are particularly careful with matches when there's a lot of
powder about."
"True, so far as intention goes. But there is the possibility of some
_contre-temps_. You remember the case of the _Ajax_ in the Eighties. It
was blown up in a friendly harbor--clearly enough by accident, at least
so far as the other nation was concerned. But it was during a time of
strain and hot blood, and you know how narrowly a great clash was
averted. If war had followed, regiments would have marched across the
frontier, shouting: 'Remember the _Ajax_!' As it was, there was a panic
in three bourses. Solid securities fell to the lowest point in their
history. The yellow press pounded down the market, and a few speculators
on the short side made gigantic fortunes."
A moment's pause ensued. Bersonin's fingers were rigid. There seemed
suddenly to Phil to be some significance between his silence and the
conversation--as if he wished it to sink into his, Phil's, mind. The
voice continued:
"What has happened once may happen again. What if one of those
Dreadnaughts by whatever accident should go down in this friendly
harbor? It doesn't take a vivid imagination to picture the headlines
next morning in the newspapers at home!"
The ice in the tumblers clinked; there was a sound of pushed-back
chairs.
As their departing footsteps died in the hall, Bersonin's gaze lifted
slowly to Phil's face. It had in it now the look it had held when he
gazed from the roof of the bungalow on the Bluff across the anchorage
beneath. Phil did not start or shrink. Instead, the slinking evil that
ruled him met half-way the bolder evil in that glance, from whose
sinister suggestion the veil was for a moment lifted, recognizing a
tacit kinship. Neither spoke, but as the hard young eyes looked into the
cavernous, topaz eyes of Doctor Bersonin, Phil _knew_ that the thought
that lay coiled there was a thing unholy and unafraid. His heart beat
faster, but it warmed. He felt no longer awed by the other's greater
age, standing and accomplishments. He was conscious of a new,
half-insolent sense of easy comradeship.
"Suppose," said Bersonin slowly, "I should show you how to find the
money."
A sharp eagerness darted across Phil's face. Money! How much he needed
it, longed for it! It could put him on his feet, clear off his debts,
square his bridge-balance, and--his brother notwithstanding!--enable him
to begin another chapter of the careless life he loved! He looked
steadily into the expert's face.
"Tell me!" he almost whispered.
Bersonin rose and held out his hand. He did not smile.
"Come with me to-night," he said. "I dine late, but we'll take a spin in
my car and have some tea somewhere beforehand. Tell me where your house
is and I'll send Ishida with the motor-car for you."
Phil gave him the address and he went out with no further word. A great,
brass-fitted automobile, with a young, keen-eyed Japanese sitting beside
the chauffeur, throbbed up from the shed. Bersonin climbed ponderously
in. A gray-haired diplomatist, entering the Club with a stranger,
pointed the big man out to the other as he was whirled away.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE BAMBOO LANE
_What did Bersonin mean?_ Phil replenished his glass, feeling a tense,
nervous excitement.
Why had he listened so intently--made _him_ listen--to what the men in
the next room were saying? He could recall it all--for some reason every
word was engraven on his mind. The visit of the foreign Squadron.
Speculators who had once made quick fortunes through an accident to a
battle-ship. He thought of the look he had seen on Bersonin's face.
"What do you want me to do?" He muttered the words to himself. As he
rose to go he glanced half-fearfully over his shoulder.
He walked along the street, his brain afire. He was passing a moat in
whose muck bottom piling was being driven; the heavy plunger was lifted
by a dozen ropes pulled by a ring of coolie women, dressed like men,
with blue-cotton leggins and red cloths about their heads. As they
dragged at the straw ropes, and the great weight rose and fell, they
chanted a wailing refrain, with something minor and plaintive in its
burden--
"_Yó--eeya--kó--ra!
Yó-eeya--kó--ra!_"
_What do you want me to do?..._ The words wove oddly with the refrain.
Why should he say them over and over? Again and again it came--an echo
of an echo--and again and again he seemed to see the look in the
expert's hollow, cat-like eyes! It haunted him as he walked on toward
Aoyama parade-ground, to the little house in _Kasumigatani Cho_, the
"Street-of-the-Misty-Valley."
Then, as he walked, he saw some one that for the moment drove it from
his mind. He had turned for a short-cut through a temple inclosure, and
there he met her face to face--the girl of the _matsuri_, whom he had
seen wading in the foam at Kamakura. Her slim neck, pale with
rice-powder, rose from a soft white neckerchief flowered with gold, and
a scarlet poppy was dreaming in her black hair. Phil's face sprang red,
and a wave of warm color overran her own.
"_O-Haru-San!_" he cried.
"_Konichi-wa_," she answered with grave courtesy and made to pass him,
but he turned and walked by her side. "Please, please!" he entreated.
"If you only knew how often I have looked for you! Don't be unkind!"
"Why you talk with me?" said Haru, turning. "My Japanese girl--no all
same your country."
"You wild, pretty thing!" he said. "Why are you so afraid of me?
Foreigners don't eat butterflies."
"No," she answered, without hesitation, "they jus' break wings."
He laughed unevenly. Her quickness of retort delighted him, and her
beauty was stinging his blood. He put out his hand and touched her
sleeve, but she drew away hurriedly:
"See!" she said. "My know those people to come in gate. Talk--'bout my
_papa-San_--please, so they will to think he have know you, _né_?"
Phil obeyed the hint, but Haru's cheeks, as she saluted her friends,
were flushing painfully. It was her first subterfuge employed in a
moment of embarrassment with the realization that her home was near and
that she was violating the code of deportment that from babyhood hedges
about the young Japanese girl with a complicated etiquette.
The women they had passed looked back curiously at the foreigner walking
with her. One, a girl of Haru's own age, called smilingly after her:
"_Komban Mukojima de sho?_" Phil understood the query. Was she going to
Mukojima--to the cherry festival--to-night! His eyes sparkled at the
tossed-back, "_Hai!_" Well, he would be there, too! He had appreciated
the quick wit of her subterfuge. The clever little baggage! She was not
such a small, brown saint, after all!
"I think I did that rather well," he said, when they had passed out of
earshot. "They'll think your honorable parent and I exchange New Year
gifts at the very least."
A little smile of irrepressible fun was lurking under Haru's flush. "You
have ask how is _papa-San_ rhu-ma-tis-um," she said. "In our street he
have some large fame, for because he so old and no have got."
Phil laughed aloud. "Look here, little Haru," he said, "you and I are
going to be great friends, aren't we?" He looked down at the slim,
nervous arm, so soft and firm of flesh, so deliciously turned and
modeled. He knew a jade bracelet in Yokohama that would mightily become
it--he would write to-night and have it sent up! "When can I see you
again, eh?"
They had turned into a narrow deserted lane, bordered with
bamboo fences, and opening, a little way beyond, into the wider
Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods. She stopped as he spoke and shook her
head. "My no can tell," she answered. "No come more far. My house very
near now."
He caught her hand--it was almost as small as a child's, with its
delicate wrist and slender fingers. "Give me a kiss and I will let you
go," he said.
As she shrank back indignantly against the palings, her free hand flung
up across her face, he threw his arms about her and strained her to him.
She wrestled against him with little inarticulate sobs, but he lifted
her face and kissed her again and again.
He released her, breathing hard, the veins in his temples throbbing, his
lips burning hot. He stood a moment looking after her, as white-faced
and breathless, she fled down the bamboo lane.
"There!" he muttered. "That's for you to remember me by--till next
time!"
CHAPTER XIX
THE BISHOP ASKS A QUESTION
Bishop Randolph lived in the quarter of Tokyo called Ts'kiji--a section
of "made-ground" in the bay, composed, as the ancient vestry jest had
it, of the proverbial tomato-cans. It was flat and low, and its inner
canal in the old days had formed the boundary of the extraterritorial
district given over by a reluctant government to the residence of
foreigners.
It was a mile from the great, double-moated park of the Imperial Palace,
from the Diet and the Foreign Office, whither, scarcely a generation
ago, representatives of European powers had galloped on horse-back, with
a mounted guard against swashbuckling "two-sword men." The streets,
however, on which once an American Secretary of Legation, so spurring,
had been cut in two by a single stroke of a thirsting _samurai_ sword,
were peaceful enough in this era of _Meiji_. The cathedral, the college,
the low brown hospital and the lines of red-brick mission houses stood
on grassy lawns behind green hedges which gave a suggestion of a quiet
English village. A couple of the smaller Legations still clung to their
ancient sites and the quarter boasted, besides, a score of ambitious
European residences and a modern hotel.
In the rectory the bishop sat at tiffin with the archbishop of the
Russian Cathedral, a man of seventy-eight, gray-bearded and
patriarchal--another St. Francis Xavier. In this foreign field the pair
had been friends during more than a score of years. Both were equally
broad-minded, had long ago thrown down the sectarian barriers too apt to
prevail in less restricted communities. To a large extent they were
confidants. The archbishop spoke little English, and the bishop no
Russian and but "inebriate" French (as he termed it), so that their talk
was habitually in Japanese. When they had finished eating both men bowed
their heads in a silent grace. The Russian, as he rose, made the sign of
the cross.
As they entered the library a wrinkled house-servant sucked in his
breath behind them.
"Will the thrice-eminent guest deign to partake of a little worthless
tobacco?" he inquired, in the ceremonious honorifics of the vernacular.
The thrice-eminent shook his head, and the bishop answered: "Honorable
thanks, Honda-_San_, our guest augustly does not smoke."
At the table they had been talking of the great dream of both--the
Christianization of modern Japan. The archbishop continued the
conversation now:
"As I was saying, the great stumbling-block is the language. It is all
right for you and me, who have had twenty years at it, but our helpers
haven't. His code of courtesy forbids a Japanese to seem to correct
even when we are absurdly wrong. One of my boys"--so the bishop
affectionately referred to his younger coadjutors--"was preaching the
other day on 'The Spiritual Attributes of Mankind.' He meant to use
the word _ningen_, man in the wide sense. He preached, he thought,
with a good deal of success--the people seemed particularly grave and
attentive. Afterward he asked an old Japanese what he thought of the
subject. The man replied that he had felt much instructed to find
there were so many things to be said about it. He added that he
himself generally ate them boiled. My young man had used the word
_ninjin_--carrots. 'The Spiritual Attributes of Carrots!' And a whole
sermon on it. Imagine it!"
The archbishop threw back his head and laughed. Then the conversation
drifted again into the serious. "Of course," said the bishop, "there is
at bottom the oriental inability to separate racial traits, to realize
that Christianity has made Christendom's glories, not her shames. The
Japanese are essentially a spiritually-minded people. Some of the West's
most common vices they are strangely without. And their code of
every-day morals--well, we can throw very few stones at them there!"
The archbishop nodded.
"Few, indeed," he said. "No Japanese Don Juan ever could exist. A
Japanese woman would be scandalized by a Greek statue. She would recoil
at a French nude. She would fly with astonishment and shame from the
sight of a western ballet. Our whole system strikes the Oriental as not
only monstrous but disgustingly immoral. It seems to him, for instance,
sheer barbarity for a man to love his wife even half as well as he does
his own mother and father. A curious case in point happened not so long
ago. A peasant had a mother who became blind. He consulted the village
necromancer, who told him if his mother could eat a piece of human heart
she would get her sight back. The peasant went home in tears and told
his wife. She said, 'We have only one boy. You can very easily get
another wife as good or better than me, but you might never have another
son. Therefore, you must kill me and take my heart for your mother.'
They embraced, and he killed her with his sword. The child awoke and
screamed. Neighbors and the police came. In the police court the
peasant's tale moved the judges to tears. They quite understood. They
didn't condemn the man to death. Really the one who ought to have been
killed was the necromancer."
"And this," said the bishop musingly, "only a few miles from where they
were teaching integral calculus and Herbert Spencer!"
His visitor sat a while in thought. "By the way," he said presently,
changing the subject, "I passed your new Chapel the other day. It is
very handsome. Your niece, I think you told me, built it. May I ask--"
"Yes," said the host, "it is my dead sister's child, Barbara--John
Fairfax's daughter."
A look passed between them, and the bishop rose and paced up and down, a
habit when he was deeply moved. "She came back to Japan with me," he
continued. "I am to take her to see the Chapel this afternoon. Yesterday
she told me that she intends it to be dedicated to her father's memory."
For a moment there was no reply. Then the other said: "You have heard
nothing of Fairfax all these years?"
"Not a word."
"She has never known?"
The bishop shook his head. "She believes he died before her mother left
Japan." He paused before the window, his back to the other. "He was my
friend!" he said; "and I loved him. I gave my sister to him, and she
loved him, too!"
"I remember," said the archbishop slowly. "She went back to America from
Nagasaki. How strange it was! She never told any one why she left him?"
"Never a word. She died before I went to America again. She left me a
letter which hinted at something wholly unforgivable--almost Satanic, it
must have seemed to her."
"And he?"
"Disappeared. He was thought to have gone to China. Perhaps he is alive
there yet. I have always wondered. If so, how is he living--in what
way?" The bishop turned abruptly. "In view of what we know, can I lend
myself to the dedication of this house of our Lord to a memory that may
be infamous? I ask you as a friend."
The older man was a long time silent.
"'His ways are past finding out,'" he said at length. "I am conscious,
sometimes, of a hidden purpose in things. The daughter's memory of her
father is a beautiful thing. Let us not destroy it!"
CHAPTER XX
THE TRESPASSER
The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended that
afternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on its
wide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty _kimono_ of pale gray
cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japanese
face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled
from Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden under
the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling.
Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality--with her
fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please.
While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she
had made the Japanese girl bring her _samisen_ and play. At first the
music had seemed uncouth and elfish--a queer, barbaric twanging, like an
intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious
chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals.
But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner
ear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding,
her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at
the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and
servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in her
pretty broken English, had told her stories--old legends that are
embalmed in the _geisha_ dances, of the forty-seven _Ronin_, and of the
great _Shogun_ who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park.
* * * * *
When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk--he was to show her the
Chapel--the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the
compound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables--each with the
golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel--was just passing. Their
occupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in naval
uniform, their breasts covered with orders.
"The officers of the foreign Squadron, no doubt," said the Ambassador,
"being shown the sights of the capital. Day after to-morrow the Minister
of Marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor.
You will enjoy that, Barbara."
"I wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond of
talking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a Japanese welcome. The stay of
these officers will be one long festivity. Yet to read a Continental
journal you would think every other Japanese was carrying a club for use
if they ventured ashore."
The Ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. For weeks, the
newspapers of European capitals had talked of conflicting interests and
unreconciled differences between the two countries. He knew that there
was little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news"
and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strung
Chanceries as it does individuals. Beneath this surface current,
diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. But as a
trained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too long
persisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of the
Squadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of the
lavish and open-hearted hospitality which Japan would offer it. When the
carriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back to
his books.
* * * * *
Walking up the sloping "Hill-of-the-Spirit" to the templed knoll behind
it, Barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. All along flaunting
camphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and the
scent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. The ground was
white and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts were
sprinkling water. Little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied with
bright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured _kimono_ of red
and purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edge
a naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shaven
head bobbing in the sunshine. Half-way up the hill a group of coolies
were resting beside their carts. Their faces had the look of
lotos-eaters, languid and serene. As they walked Barbara told of the
adventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the Review
of the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he had
never seen her so beautiful.
"What has happened--_who_ has happened, Barbara?" he asked, for he
suddenly guessed he knew what that look meant.
Her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "I don't
know--do you?"
He took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morning
newspaper. It chronicled the arrival of the yacht _Barbara_.
She looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages----'"
"But not Ware?" he finished. "All right. He'll speak for himself, no
doubt. The paper says he's at Nara; but then, he doesn't know you are
here yet. We pushed our sailing date forward, you remember."
"I'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "Meanwhile, I
can't tell you what a good time I'm having. I shall stay in Japan for
ever: I can feel it in my bones! I shall have a Japanese house with a
chaperon, two tailless cats and an _amah_, and study the three systems
of flower-arrangement and the Tea-Ceremony."
They had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentry
now stood. "He wears the uniform of the Imperial Guard," the bishop
said. "That is the residence of one of the daughters of the Emperor."
He turned into the lane that opened opposite. It was hedged with some
unfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little way
inside stood an old temple gate with a stone _torii_. She stopped with
an exclamation.
"Yes," he said, "there is the Chapel."
Barbara was looking opposite the _torii_, where, amid the flowering
green, a slanting roof lifted, holding a cross. It stood out, whitely
cut against the blue, a silent witness. Facing the dragon-swarming gate,
it made her think of pale martyrs in gorgeous pagan countries, of Paul
standing before the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, and lonely Christian
anchorites in profane lands of green and gold.
"What Christians some of these Japanese make!" the bishop said, as they
finished their tour of the building. "I know of a carpenter in Sendai
who became a convert. He used to visit the prison and one day he took a
woman there to see her husband, a hardened and obdurate criminal. In the
interview the man stabbed his wife. The chief-of-police, on account of
the carpenter's reputation for justice and pure-living, left the
punishment of the man to him. What do you think he did?"
She could not guess.
"He refused to punish him at all, on the simple ground that Christ would
not. As a result the convict is now one of the best Christian teachers
we have in Sendai. The month before this happened," he continued,
smiling reflectively, "a thief broke into the rectory and stole my
watch. I notified the police, and they brought it back to me in a few
days. But where is my thief? You remember Jean Valjean and the silver
candle-sticks? Maybe the Sendai carpenter was nearer right than I."
Barbara had paused in front of the black space for the stained-glass
window.
"It will be here," the bishop said, answering her thought. "It is to
be put in place in time for the dedication service to-morrow
morning." He stepped to the door and peered into the interior. "You
will want to look about a bit, no doubt. I have a call to make in the
neighborhood--suppose I stop on my way back for you."
* * * * *
For a few moments after his departure Barbara stood listening to the
dulled sound of the workmen's tools. The roof of the temple opposite had
a curving, Tartar-like ridge, at either end of which was a huge fish,
its head pointed inward, its wide forked tail twisted high in air. Under
its scalloped eaves she saw the flash of a swallow, and far above a
gaudy paper kite careened in the blue.
She crossed the lane and looked into the shady inclosure, where the
bronze lanterns and the tombstones stood, as gray and lichened as the
stone beneath her feet. Before many of the graves stood green bamboo
vases holding bunches of fresh leaves. An old woman was moving
noiselessly about, watering these with a long bamboo dipper and lighting
incense-sticks as she went. In one place a young man knelt before an
ancestral monument, softly clapping his hands in prayer. The whole place
was drenched in a tone limpid and serene, the very infusion of peace.
Only in the black temple interior she caught the dim glow of candles and
somewhere a muffled baton was tapping on hollow wood.
"Min ... Min ... Min .. Min .. Min . Min .
Min-Min-Min-Minminminminmin...." At first slowly, then faster and
faster, till the notes merged and died away in a muttering roll, to
begin once more with the slowness of a leisurely metronome.
The ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted her
and she went nearer. Beyond the hedge she could see a portion of its
garden. Reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt,
open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered.
Before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, gray
gravel. On one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms of
deep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and striped
ground-bamboo. Beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sides
clambered an irregular pathway, set with tall _shinto_ lanterns and
large stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. Here and there
the flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose,
and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to be
powdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies.
Barbara had seen many photographs of Japanese gardens, but they had
either lacked color or been over-tinted. This lay chromatic, visualized,
braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed glories
of a tropic spring. For a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picture
for ever on her brain.
She opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings of
the ancient structure. Its _shoji_ had been noiselessly drawn open, and
a man stood there looking fixedly at her.
CHAPTER XXI
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
It was the man she had seen that morning at the entrance to the little
park.
Barbara realized instantly and uneasily that she was an intruder. Yet
she felt an intense interest, mixed of what she had heard and of what
she had imagined. His _outré_ street-costume had now been laid aside; he
wore Japanese dress, with dark gray _houri_ and white cleft sock. His
iron-gray head was bare. The expression of his face was conscious and
alert, with a sort of savage shyness.
"I am afraid I am intruding," she said. "I ought to have known the
garden was private."
"Private gardens may sometimes be seen, I suppose."
The words were ungracious, though the _timbre_ of the voice was musical
and soft. "I beg your pardon," she said, and moved away.
He made a gesture, a quick timid movement of one hand, and stepped down
toward her. "No," he said almost violently. "I don't want you to go.
Can't you see I mean you to stay?"
Barbara saw clearly now the variation in his eyes; the larger one was
clouded, as though a film covered the iris. It gave her a slight feeling
of repugnance, which she instantly regretted, for, as though rendered
conscious of it through a sensitiveness almost telepathic, he turned
slightly, and put a hand to his brow to cover it.
"Oh," she said hastily, "I am glad. This is the most beautiful garden I
have ever seen."
He looked at her quickly and keenly with his one bright eye. It held
none of the swart, in-turned reflectiveness of the Japanese; it was
sharp and restless. Its brilliance, under eyebrows that seemed on the
verge of a frown, was almost fierce. The curved, gray mustache did not
hide the strong, irregular, white teeth.
"You know Japanese gardens?"
"Not yet," she answered. "Japan is new to me. I needn't say how lovely I
think this is--you must grow tired hearing strangers rhapsodize over
it!"
"Strangers!" he laughed; the sound was not musical like his spoken
voice, but harsh and grating. "I have one joy--no stranger ever dreams
of coming to see me!"
"I should have said 'your friends,'" said Barbara.
"Friends would be more troublesome than my enemies," he said grimly,
"who, at least, never ask me where I don't want to go."
She looked at him wonderingly. She had never met any one in the least
like him. His features were refined and unquestionably aristocratic but
his whole expression was quiveringly sensitive, resentfully shy. It was
the expression, she thought, of one whom a look might cut like a
whiplash, a word sting like a searing acid.
"The only foreigners I know are those who write me letters: malicious
busybodies, people who want subscriptions to all sorts of shams, or
invite me to join respectable, humbug societies, or write merely to
gratify a low curiosity. As for friends, I have none."
"Surely, I saw you with one this morning," she said, with a smile.
"Ah," he said, his look changing swiftly; "I don't count Ishikichi.
Children understand me."
"And me," she said. "I made friends with Ishikichi this morning. He was
catching crickets in the garden. I am visiting the American Embassy,"
she added.
"The garden there has been a famous playground for the child, no doubt,"
he returned. "His boon companion lived just opposite the compound."
"The little Toru, who was run over?"
"Yes. Ishikichi has been inconsolable. To-day, however, he has ceased to
sorrow. The owner of the carriage has sent six hundred _yen_ to the
father, who is now able to pay his debts and enlarge his business. The
tablet on the Buddha-shelf that bears the little boy's death-name will
be henceforth the dearest possession of the family. To Ishikichi he is a
glorious hero whose passing it would be a crime to grieve." He broke
off, with the odd, timid gesture she had seen before. "But you came to
see the garden," he said. "If you like, I will show it to you."
Without waiting for her answer, he led the way, moving quickly and
agilely. The softness of his tread in the cloth _tabi_ seemed almost
feminine. A little farther on he turned abruptly:
"When you passed me in the carriage this morning you must have thought
me unmannerly," he said. "I was, no doubt. My manners are only
villainous notions of my own."
"Not at all," she answered. "I only thought--"
"Well?"
"That perhaps I reminded you of some one you had known."
He turned and walked on without reply. As they proceeded, from behind
the flowering bush came the tintinnabulent tinkle and drip of running
water. The stepping-stones meandered on in graceful curves and presently
arrived at a little lake at whose edge grew pale water-hyacinths and
whose surface was mottled with light green lotos-leaves, dotted here and
there with pink half-opened buds. Now and then these stirred languidly
at the flirt of a golden fin, while over them, in flashes of
flame-yellow, darted hawking dragon-flies. Thickets of maroon-tinted
maple glowed in the sunlight and clusters of yellow oranges hung on
dwarf trees. On the lake's margin bright-hued pebbles were strewn
between rounded stones whose edges were soft and green with moss.
Barbara longed to feel those mossy boulders with her bare feet--to
splash in that limpid water like a happy child.
"This is the best view," he said simply.
Looking on the endless symphonies of green, it came to her for the first
time what fascination could be wrought of mere brown stone and foliage.
The effect had a curious sense to her of the unsexual and unhuman.
Again, with the odd impression of telepathy with which he had covered
his myopic eye, he seemed to answer her thought:
"The Japanese," he said, "sees Nature as neuter. His very language
possesses no gender. He does not subconsciously think of a young girl
when he looks at a swaying palm, nor of the lines of a beautiful body
when he sees the undulations of the hills. He notes much in nature,
therefore, that western art--which is passional--doesn't observe at
all."
"I see," she said. "We insist on looking through a tinted film that
makes everything iridescent?"
"And deflects the lines of forms. The Japanese art is less artificial.
Now--turn to the left."
In one spot the trees and shrubbery had been cut clean away, and through
the vista she saw the distant mountains, clear and pure as though carved
of tinted jade set in a plate of lapus lazuli. A faint curdle of cloud
frayed from their jagged tops, and above it hung the dreamy snow-clad
cone of Fuji, palely emerald as the tint of glaciers under an Alaskan
sky. A single crow, a jet-black moving spot, flapped its way across the
azure expanse.
"The one touch of blue," he said. "The color ethical, the color
pantheistic, the color of the idea of the divine!"
His personality, so touched with mystery, interested Barbara intensely.
The sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity had quite vanished. She sat
down on one of the warm boulders. Thorn rested one foot on the bent
trunk of a dwarf tree and leaned his elbow on his knee, his hand, in the
gesture that seemed habitual, covering his eye. In the wide _kimono_
sleeve the forearm was bare and suggested a peculiar physical
cleanliness like that of a wild animal.
"How strange it is," she said, "that for centuries, the western world
believed this wonderful land inhabited by a barbarous people--because it
didn't possess western civilization!"
He made an exclamation. "Civilization! It is a hateful word! It stands
in the West for all that is sordid and ugly. It has bred monstrous,
thundering piles built up to heaven, eternally smoking the sky--places
of architecture and mechanics gone mad, where one lives by machinery and
moves by steam, and is perpetually tormented by absurd conventions. I
have lived in its cities. I have walked their selfish streets, shy and
shabby and hungry!"
"Hungry!"
"Yes--and worse. I've not spoken of those experiences for years. I don't
know why I speak of them now to you. Does it surprise you to hear that I
have known poverty?" For the first time he turned fully facing her. His
supple hand had left his brow and moved in gestures at one time fierce
and graceful. "When I was sixteen I learned what penury meant in London.
Once I was driven to take refuge in a workhouse in some evil quarter of
the Thames. My memory of it is a mixture of dreadful sights and
sounds--of windows thrown violently open or shattered to pieces--of
shrieks of murder--of heavy plunges in the river."
Barbara shuddered in the warm sunlight. Over the edge of the garden was
a misty space where foliage and roofs sank out of sight, to rise again
in long undulations of green trees and gray tiling, like a painted
ocean. Far away lifted the leafy plateau of Aoyama, with its blur of
terra-cotta barracks. At an immense distance a great temple roof jutted,
and still farther away the spread-out, populous city curved up, like the
rim of a basin, to a hazy horizon. Yet on this background of
pleasantness and peace those other scenes of horror--such was the
vehemence of his tone, the savage directness in his phrases--seemed to
start up, blank and wretched apparitions, before her.
"At nineteen," he went on. "I found myself in New York, delicate,
diffident, satanically proud, and without a friend--one of the billion
ants crawling in the skeleton of the mastodon. I was threadbare and
meals were scant and uncertain--a little, penniless, half-blind,
eccentric wanderer! I lived in a carpenter-shop and slept on the
shavings. One week I sold coral for a Neapolitan peddler. Oh, I learned
my civilization well! The very memory now of walking down those roaring
cañons of streets--all cut granite and iron fury, and hideous houses two
hundred feet high--moos at me in the night! It is frightful,
nightmarish, devilish! And when one can be here under a violet sky, in
sight of blue peaks and an eternally lilac, luke-warm sea!"
His hand swept across the hewn vista--to the wild, bold background of
indigo hills, with its slender phantom above them, swimming in the
half-tropical blue. "It is better," he said, "to live in Japan in
sack-cloth and ashes, than to own the half of any other country. I am as
old as the three-legged crow that inhabits the sun. I can't read the
comic papers or a French novel. I shouldn't go to the Paris opera if it
were next door. I shouldn't like to visit the most beautiful lady and be
received in evening dress. I shall pass my life in sandals and a
_kimono_, and when it's over I shall be under the big trees in the old
Buddhist cemetery there, beside the nunnery, among the fireflies and
grasshoppers, with six laths above me, inscribed with prayers in an
unknown tongue and a queerly carved monument typifying the five elements
into which we melt away."
He shook his broad shoulders. Again his hand went to his brow and he
half turned away.
"But now even Japan must adopt western civilization," he said bitterly.
It is 'putting a lily in the mouth of hell!' Carpets, pianos, windows,
brass-bands--to make Goths out of Greeks! Who would want them changed?
Who would not love them as they are, better than the children of boasted
western civilizations--industrious, pleasing, facing death with a smile,
not because they are such fatalists as the Arabs, for instance, but
because they have no fear of the hereafter. The old courtesy, the old
faith, the old kindliness--will they weather it? Or vanish like snow in
sun? The poetry, the legend, the lovely and touching observances are
going fast. Modernism gives them foreign fireworks now, and forbids the
ghost-boats of the Bon! I wish I could fly out of _Meiji_ for ever, back
against the stream of time, into _tempo_ fourteen hundred years ago!"
"The Bon?" she said. "What is that?"
"I forgot," he said, "that Japan is all new to you," and told her of the
Japanese All-Souls Day--the Feast of Lanterns, when the spirits of the
dead return, to be fed with tea in tiny cups and with the odor of
incense; how, when the dusk falls, on canal and river the little straw
boats are launched with written messages and lighted paper lanterns, to
bear back the blessed ghosts.
Returning, Barbara led the way. Once she stooped over a single, strange
blossom on a long stalk, whose golden center shone cloudily through
silky filaments like the leaves of immortelles. "What is that?" she
asked.
"It is a wild flower I found on one of my inland rambles," he
said. "Perhaps it has no name. I call it _Yumé-no-hana_--the
'Flower-of-Dream.' It will open almost any day now."
"Have you quite forgiven me for breaking in?" she asked, as they walked
along the stepping-stones.
For the first time she surprised him in a smile. It lit his face with a
sudden irradiation. "Will you do it again?"
"May I--some time?"
"Then you are not afraid? Remember I am a renegade, a follower of
Buddha, and a most atrocious and damnable _taboo_!"
"Afraid!" For a moment they looked at each other, and she saw a little
quiver touch his lips. "I shall come again to-morrow--to see the
flower."
"Just one thing," he said. "I am a solitary. If you would not
mention--to any one--"
"I understand," she answered.
He walked by her side to the bamboo gate. "I am glad," she said, "that I
remind you of some one you liked."
"Perhaps it was some one I knew in a dream," he answered.
"Yes," she said. "Perhaps it was."
As she spoke she saw him start. She looked up. Across the temple yard,
through the entrance _torii_, she saw the bishop coming up the lane. He
was walking absorbed in thought, his eyes on the ground, his hands
clasped behind him.
"Good-by," she said, and stepped through the gate.
But Thorn did not answer. At sight of the approaching figure he had
drawn back abruptly. Now he turned sharply away into a path which led
toward the temple. She saw him once glance swiftly back over his
shoulder before he disappeared behind the hedges.
* * * * *
The man with whom Barbara had been talking went slowly up the temple
steps. His face was haggard and drawn. There he paused and looked back
across the yard.
"_Credo in resurrectionem mortuorum_," he muttered--"Yes, I believe in
the resurrection of the dead!"
As he stood there the head priest pushed open the _shoji_. He bowed to
the other on the threshold and came out.
"To-day my abashed thought has dwelt on your exalted work," he said. "Is
our new image of Kwan-on peerlessly all but done, perhaps?"
Thorn shook his head. "It moves with exalted slowness. To-day I
contemptibly have not worked."
The priest looked at him curiously, through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
"You are honorably unwell," he said. "It is better to lie down in the
heat of the day. Presently I will say an insignificant prayer to the
_Hotoké-Sama_--the Shining Ones--for your illustrious recovery."
"I am not ill," was the answer. "Be not augustly concerned."
He turned away slowly and crossed the little bridge to his own abode.
CHAPTER XXII
THE DANCE OF THE CAPITAL
The Ginza--the "Street-of-the-Silversmiths"--is the Broadway, the
Piccadilly, the _Boulevard des Italiens_ of modern Tokyo. Here old and
new war daily in a combat in which the new is daily victor. Modern
shop-fronts of stone and brick stand cheek by jowl with graceful, flimsy
frame structures that are pure Japanese. Trolley-cars, built in the
United States, fill the street with clangor and its pavements (for it
has them) roar with trade.
In its flowing current one may see many types: Americans from the
near-by Imperial Hotel, bristling with enthusiasm; earnest tourists
with Murrays tucked in their armpits, doggedly "doing" the country;
members of foreign Legations whirling in victorias; Chinamen, queued
and decorously clad in flowered silk brocade; an occasional Korean
with queerly shaped hat of woven horse-hair; over-dandified
_O-sharé-Sama_--"high-collar" men, as the Tokyo phrase goes--in
tweeds and yellow puttees; comfortable merchants and men of affairs in
dull-colored _kimono_ and clogs; blue-clad workmen with the marks of
their trades stamped in great red or white characters on their backs;
sallow, bare-footed students with caps of _Waseda_ or the Imperial
University; stolid and placid-faced Buddhist priests in _rick'sha_, en
route to some temple funeral; soldiers in khaki with red- and
yellow-striped trousers; coolies dragging carts; country people on
excursions from thatched inland villages, clothed in common cloth and
viewing the capital for the first time with indrawn breath and
chattering exclamations; rich noblemen, beggars, idlers, guides--all are
tributary to this river.
When evening falls women and children predominate: bent old women with
brightly blackened teeth; patient-faced mothers with babies on their
backs toddling on clacking wooden _géta_; white-faced vermilion-lipped
_geisha_ glimpsing by in _rick'sha_ to some tea-house entertainment;
coolie women dressed like men, trudging in the roadway; girl-students
peering into jewelers' windows; children clad like gaudy moths and
butterflies, clattering hand in hand, or pursuing one another with
shrill cries.
Before the sun has well set lanterns begin to twinkle and glow above
doorways--yellow electric bulbs in clusters, white acetylene globes,
smoky oil lamps, and great red and white paper-lanterns lit by candles.
As the violet of the dusk deepens to purple, these multiply till the
vista is ablaze. Lines of colored lights in pink and lemon break out
like air-flowers along upper stories of tea-houses, from whose interiors
come the strumming of _biwa_ and the twang of _samisen_. On frail
balconies, pricked out with yellow lanterns, dwarf pines or jars of
growing azalea hang their masses of soft green or pink down over the
passers-by. From open _shoji_ women lean, their _kimono_ parted, their
rounded breasts bared to the cool night.
On the curb peripatetic dealers squat in little stalls formed of movable
screens with their wares spread before them; curio-merchants with a
_mélange_ of brass, crystal and bronze; dealers in _suzumushi_--musical
insects in the tiniest cages of plaited straw; sellers of Buddhist texts
and worm-eaten, painted scrolls; of ink-horns, shoe-sticks, eye-glasses
and children's toys. At intervals grills of savory _waka-fuji_ (salted
fry-cakes) sizzle over charcoal braziers which throw a red glow on an
intent row of children's faces. Here and there a shop-front emits the
blatant bark of a foreign phonograph. On the corners men with arms full
of vernacular evening newspapers call the names of the sheets in musical
cadences, with a quaint, upward inflection. The air is filled with a
heavy, rich odor, suggesting the pomade of women's head-dresses, _saké_,
and sandalwood. In the roadway every vehicle contributes its bobbing
lantern, till the traffic seems a celestial Saturnalia, staggering with
drunken stars.
So it looked to Barbara as her two _goriki_--"strong-pull men"--whirled
her rubber-tired _rick'sha_ across the interminable city in her first
bewildering view of Tokyo by night. Daunt, for her benefit, had arranged
a trip to the Cherry-Viewing-Festival on the Sumida River, and a
Japanese dinner at the Ogets'--the Cherry-Moon Tea-House--in the famous
district of Asak'sa, where the great temple of Kwan-on the Merciful
shines with its ever-burning candles. They had started from the Embassy:
Baroness Stroloff, the wife of the Bulgarian Minister and Patricia's
especial favorite, the twin sisters of the Danish Secretary, the Swiss
Minister's daughter and two young army officers studying the
language--all of whom Barbara had met at the Review--and the long
procession (since police regulations in Tokyo forbid _rick'sha_ to
travel abreast) trailed "goose-fashion," threading in and out, a
writhing, yellow-linked chain.
Daunt had traced their route with Barbara on a map of the city,
and had translated for her the names of the streets through
which they were now passing. By the Street-of-Big-Horses they
skirted the District-of-Honorable-Tea-Water, threaded the
Lane-where-Good-Luck-Dwells, and so, by Middle-Monkey-Music-Street, they
came to the Sumida, a broader, slothful Thames, gleaming with ten
thousand lanterns on _sampan_, houseboats and barges. The bridge of
Ah-My-Wife brought them to the farther side. At the entrance of a long
avenue of blooming cherry-trees a policeman halted them. _Rick'sha_ were
not permitted beyond this point and the sweating human horses were
abandoned.
The road ran high along the river on a green embankment like a wide
wall, between double rows of cherry-trees, whose branches interlocked
overhead. It was densely crowded with people, each one of whom seemed to
be carrying a colored paper-lantern or a cherry-branch drooped over the
shoulder. In the hues of the loose, warm-weather _kimono_ bloomed all
the flowers of all the springs--golds and mauves and scarlets and
magentas--and everywhere in the lantern-light fluttered radiant-winged
children, like vivid little birds in a tropical forest. From tiny
one-storied tea-houses along the way, with elevated mats covered with
red flannel blankets, _biwa_ and _koto_ and _samisen_ gurgled and fluted
and tinkled. On the right the embankment descended steeply, giving a
view of sunken roadways and tiled roofs; on the left lay the long
reaches of the dreamy river murmuring with oars and voices and vibrating
like a vast flood of gold and vermilion fireflies.
Barbara had never imagined such a welter of movement and color. The soft
flute-like voices, the slow shuffling of sandals on the dry earth, the
pensive smiling faces, the pink flowers on every hand, made this
different from any holiday crowd she had ever seen. It suggested a
carnival of Venice orientalized, painted over and set blazing with
Japanese necromancy.
Here and there jugglers and top-spinners displayed their skill to
staring spectators. A cluster of shaven-headed babies swarmed silently
about a sweetmeat seller, and beside his push-cart a man clad like a
gray-feathered hawk whistled discordantly on a bamboo reed and gyrated
with a vacant grin on his pock-marked face. Where the crowd was less
close men tricked out in girls' attire, with whitened, clown-like faces,
turned somersaults, and through the thickest of the press a dejected,
blaze-faced ox, whose nose and forehead were painted with spots of
scarlet, slowly drew a two-storied scaffold on which was perched the god
of spring--a plaster figure wreathed with flowers. The animal's ears
were tickled by long tassels of bright green and red, and his look was
one of patient boredom. The man who led him wore a short jerkin, and his
bare legs, from thigh to knee, were tattooed in big, blue, graceful
leaves.
The greatest numbers surged about a large tent, outside of which waddled
here and there mountains of men, their faces round as full moons, naked
save for gaily colored aprons. The fat hung on their breasts in great
creased folds like an overfed baby's, and in the lantern-light their
flesh looked an unhealthy, mottled pink. Each wore his hair wound in a
short queue, bent forward and tied in a stiff loop on the crown. As one
of the vast hulks lumbered by, cooling his moon-face with a tiny fan,
Daunt pointed him out to Barbara.
"That is the famous Hitachiyama," he told her, "the champion wrestler of
Japan."
"How big he is!"
"It runs in families," he said. "They diet and train, too, from
babyhood. He weighs three hundred and forty-seven pounds."
A roar came from the lighted canvas and a man emerged and wrote
something on a sign-board like a tally-sheet. Daunt stopped and perused
it. "You may be interested, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "to learn
that Mr. Terrible-Horse has knocked out Mr. Small-Willow-Tree, but that
Mr. Tiger-Elephant has been allowed a foul over Mr. Frozen-Stork. I wish
we could see a bout, but we must hurry or we'll miss the _geisha_
dancing."
They came presently where the roadway overlooked a sunken temple yard
encircled by moats of oozy slime dotted with pink and white lotos buds.
The inclosure was set with giant cryptomeria centuries old, and was
crowded with people. Stone steps led down between twisted pine-trees and
_Shinto_ lanterns, to a gate on whose either side was a great stone cow,
rampant, like the figures in coats-of-arms. There was a droll contrast
between the posture and the placid bovine countenances. In the center of
the inclosure rose a wide platform with a tasseled curtain like the
stage of a theater. Opposite was a pavilion in which sat rows of women
in dark-colored dress, moveless as images and holding musical
instruments. The whole flagged space between jostled with the
iridescent, lantern-carrying throng. A priest led the party to seats at
one side on mats reserved for foreign visitors.
"Look, Barbara," said Patricia. "There goes our friend the
expert--across there. He looks bigger and pastier than ever."
Bersonin was dressed in white flannel which accentuated his enormous
size. A younger man was with him, smoking a cigarette, and in their wake
followed a Japanese servant.
The rest of the party had turned and were looking in that direction.
"Why," said Baroness Stroloff, "that's Doctor Bersonin."
One of the young army men looked at her curiously. "Do you know him?" he
asked.
"Why, of course. One meets him everywhere. I saw him at a dinner last
week. Have you met him?"
"Oh, yes, we're supposed to know everybody," he said carelessly. His
tone, however, held something which made her say:
"Most men don't like him, I find. I wonder why."
"Why don't people like lizards?" said Patsy. "Because they're cold and
clammy and wicked-looking."
"They like them enough to eat them in Senagambia," said the young
officer smiling. "Bersonin is a great man, no doubt, but there's
something about him--I met a man once who had run across him in South
America and--he was prejudiced. Who's the young fellow with him, Daunt?"
"His name is Ware--Philip Ware," was the answer. "I knew him at
college."
Barbara felt the blood staining her cheeks. So that was "Phil," the
brother of whom Austen Ware had told her! The name called up thoughts
that had obtruded themselves in the moment she saw the white yacht lying
at anchor, and which since then she had wilfully thrust from her mind.
Her gaze studied the handsome, youthful form, noting the bold, restless
glance, the dissipated lines of the comely face, with a sudden distaste.
A twang from the orchestra recalled her, as the curtain was looped back
for the _Miyako Odori_, the "Dance of the Capital."
It was Barbara's introduction to a native orchestra and at first its
strummings and squealings, its lack of modes and of harmony, its odd
barbaric phrasing, infected her with a mad desire to laugh. But
gradually there came to her the hint of under-rhythm--as when she had
listened to Haru's _samisen_ in the garden--and with it an overpowering
sense of suggestion. It was the remote cry of occult passions, a
twittering of ghostly shadows, the wailing of an oriental Sphynx whom
Time had abandoned to the eternal desert. It had in it melancholy and
the enigma of the ages. It wiped away the ugly modern European
buildings, the western costumes, the gloze of borrowed method, and left
Barbara looking into the naked heart of the East, old, intent, and full
of mystical meaning.
The ivory plectrons chirruped, the flutes squeaked and wailed, the
little hour-glass drums thudded, and down the stage swept sixty
_geisha_, in blue, cherry-painted _kimono_. A sly, thin thread of
scarlet peeped from their woven sleeves. Their small _tabi'd_ feet,
cleft like the foot of a faun, moved in slow, hovering steps. When they
wheeled, swaying like young bamboo, they stamped softly, and the white
foot, raised from the boards, under the puffed _kimono_ edge writhed and
bent from the ankle like a pliant hand. Their faces, heavily powdered,
and held without expression, looked like white, waxen masks in which
lived sparkling black eyes. In the slow, languorous movement their _obi_
of gold and fans of silver caught the cherry-shaded lights and tossed
them back in gleams of mother-of-pearl.
Barbara fell to watching the Japanese spectators. All around her they
stood and sat at ease, drinking in the play of color and motion of which
they never tire. The dance had no passion, no sensuality, none of the
savagery and abandon of the dances of Southern Asia, with whose
reproductions the western stage is familiar. Beside a ballet of the
West, it would have seemed almost ascetic. She knew that it was
symbolic--that every posture was a sentence of a story they knew, as old
and as sacred, perhaps, as the birth of the gods.
The parted curtain swung together and Daunt seated himself at Barbara's
side. "Do you like it, ever so little?" he asked.
"Ever so _much_!"
"I wonder if you are going to like me, too," he said, so softly that no
one else heard.
She felt her color coming as she answered: "Why, of course. How could I
help it, when you plan things like this for me?"
"I have at last found my _métier_; give me more things to do."
"Very well. When will you take me to see your Japanese house?"
For a second Daunt hesitated. The little native house in the
Street-of-the-Misty-Valley was a sentimental place to him. There he had
worked out the models of his first Glider; there he had talked with his
Princess of Dreams, his "Lady of the Many-Colored Fires." The glimpse of
Phil had reminded him that it now had a tenant. When he showed it to
Barbara, it should not be with Phil in possession.
She noted the hesitation, and, somewhat puzzled, and wondering if to
oriental ethics the suggestion was a _gaucherie_, waved the matter
lightly aside. "You are just going to say 'one of these days.' Please
don't. When I was little, that always meant never. I withdraw the
motion--but what is this coming?"
A boy was ascending the platform. He bowed and laid a box of thin
unpainted wood at Daunt's feet. It contained a _kakemono_, or
wall-painting, rolled and tied with a red-and-white cord of twisted
rice-paper. Daunt read the accompanying card.
"'Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years,'" he said, "'presents her compliments
to the illustrious strangers.' She is the star. The gift is a pretty
custom, isn't it, even if it is advertisement. Here comes the lady
herself to present her thanks for our distinguished patronage."
She bowed low before them, smiling, her small piquant face powdered
white as mistletoe-berries above her carmine-painted lips. Daunt
unrolled the _kakemono_, revealing a delicately-painted cluster of
butterflies. He chatted with her in the vernacular, and she replied with
much drawing-in of breath and flute-like laughter.
"She says," he translated, "that this is a picture of her honorable
ancestors." A little smile, a genuflection, a breath of perfume and the
powdered face and gorgeous _kimono_ were gone. The orchestra chirruped,
the curtain parted and another figure began.
Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years! As the party walked back to the waiting
_rick'sha_, Barbara wondered what lay beneath that smiling surface. She
had heard of the strenuous training that at five years began to teach
the gauzy, fragile, child-butterfly to paint its wings, to flirt and
sing and dance its dazzling moth-flame way. For the _geisha_ nothing was
too gorgeous, too transcendent. Her lovers might be statesmen and
princes. But in return she must be always gay, always laughing, always
young--all things to all men--to the end of the butterfly chapter!
Butterfly hair, butterfly gown--and butterfly heart?
Barbara wondered.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DEVIL PIPES TO HIS OWN
Doctor Bersonin, huge and white-flanneled, with Phil by his side,
strolled away through the swarming crowd.
Not a word, not a glance of the younger man that evening, had escaped
him--he had been studying him with all the minute attention of that
great, overweening brain that, from an origin of which he never spoke,
had made him one of the foremost experimenters in Europe. The swift
gleam in Phil's eye as he watched the _geisha_, the eager drinking in of
the girlish daintiness, the colors and perfumes to which he stretched
himself like a cat--the watchful, impassive eyes took note of
everything. All Bersonin's talk had held an evil lure. It had touched on
the extravagant and sensual vagaries of luxury, the sybaritic pleasures
of the social _gourmet_, subjects appealing to the imagination of the
youth whom he was examining like a slide under the microscope. They had
stopped once at a _chaya_ for tea, but Phil had called for the hot
native _saké_, and as its musty, sherry-like fumes crept into his blood
he talked with increasing recklessness. Beneath their veiled
contemptuousness, Bersonin's feline eyes began to harbor a stealthy
satisfaction. He had guessed why Phil had suggested coming to Mukojima.
The latter's restlessness, his anxious surveillance of the passers-by,
might have enlightened a less observant spectator.
Phil's new passion had, in fact, a strong hold on him. That long-ago
picture of Haru, barefooted in the surf, frequent recollection had
stamped on his brain and the sight of her fresh beauty to-day had fanned
the coal to a flame. Those stolen kisses in the bamboo lane had roused a
lurking devil that counted nothing but his own desires. For this hour,
while the _saké_ ran in his pulses, the flame overshadowed even
Bersonin.
"Well, my boy," said the latter at length quizzically, "when you find
her, just give me the hint and I'll go."
Phil flushed, then laughed shortly. "So you are a mind-reader, too?" he
said.
"It's written all over you," said Bersonin. "Why didn't you tell me? We
could have postponed our dinner and left you free for the chase. It _is_
a chase, eh?"
"Yes," said Phil. "I--I haven't had much luck with her yet. I just
happened to know she was to be here to-night. She's a pretty little
devil," he added, "the prettiest I've seen in Japan."
"The Japanese type is the rage in Paris now," said the other. "Take her
there, dress her in jewels, and drive her through the _Bois_ some
afternoon and you'll be the most talked-of man in France next morning."
The red deepened in Phil's cheek. The prospect drew him. He looked at
Bersonin. Paris and jewels!
He drank more _saké_ at the next tea-house. It had begun to show in a
shaking of the hand, a louder voice. Suddenly Phil sprang to his feet.
"There she is!" he exclaimed.
Bersonin looked. "Lovely!" he said, "I congratulate you. I'll walk back
to the motor-car--the sights amuse me. You can come along when you
please. Dinner will wait. And, anyway, what's dinner to a pretty woman?"
Phil plunged into the crowd and the expert spoke quickly to the servant,
who was staring after him. "Better keep him in sight," he said. "You can
come when he does."
Bersonin was sauntering on, when a turmoil behind him made him turn. A
woman's cry and an angry oath in English rang out, startlingly clear
above the low murmur of the multitude. He caught a glimpse of a Japanese
form leaping like a tiger--of Phil lying in the dust of the road--of a
girl vanishing swiftly into the shadows.
As the expert hurried forward, Phil stumbled to his feet. Lights were
dancing before his eyes and his neck felt as if he had been garroted.
With his first breath he turned on Ishida, incoherent with rage and
curses. The big man caught his arm.
"The honorable sir make mistake," said the Japanese smoothly. "Man have
done that who have ranned away."
"He lies!" said Phil fiercely. "There was no one else near me but the
girl. He did it himself! He tried to _ju-jits'_ me!"
The fingers of the Japanese were clenched, but his face was impassive as
he added: "I think he have been snik-thief."
"That's no doubt the way it was, Phil," said Bersonin. "Why on earth
would Ishida touch you? That's an old thieves' trick. The fellow tried
to get your watch, I suppose. But we must move on. The police will be
here presently, and we don't want our names in the papers."
They went rapidly through the close ranks that had been watching with
the decorous, inquisitive silence so typically oriental.
"I suppose you're right," said Phil sulkily. "I--I beg your pardon,
Ishida."
The Japanese bowed gravely.
"Only a mistake," he said, "which honorable sir make."
CHAPTER XXIV
A MAN NAMED WARE
The three-storied front of the Cherry-Moon Tea-House, when Daunt's party
arrived, was glowing with tiers of large round lanterns of oiled-paper
bearing a conventionalized moon and cherry-blossoms. At the door sat
rows of little velvet-lined sandals. Here shoes were discarded, and
servants drew on the guests' feet loose slippers of cotton cloth, soft
and yielding. One other guest was awaiting the party at the entrance.
This was Captain Viscount Sakai, of the General Staff, spruce,
fine-featured and in immaculate European evening dress. He had a clear,
olive complexion, and, save for the narrow, Japanese eye, might have
been a Spaniard.
The small second-story _shokudo_ in which they dined was floored in soft
_tatamé_ edged with black and laid in close-fitting geometrical pattern.
Save for a plain alcove at one end, holding a dwarf pine and a single
_nanten_ branch with clusters of bright red berries, it was empty. There
was no drapery. The walls were sliding screens of gold-leaf on which
were finely drawn etchings of pine-trees covered with snow, the effect
suggested rather than finished. It was brilliant with electric light.
Tiny square tables of black lacquer were disposed along three sides of
the room, one for each guest. They were but four inches high and on the
floor behind each lay a thin, flat _zabuton_ or cushion of brocade. The
bowing _geisha_ in wonderful rainbow _kimono_ who awaited them might
have stepped from the temple stage at Mukojima. These pointed to the
tables with inviting smiles:
"Plee shee down!" they said in unison.
"I never _could_ 'shee down' gracefully when any one is looking!"
complained Patricia, as she tucked her small feet under her on the
kneeling-cushion.
"_Banzai!_" commented Voynich, setting his monocle. "You have practised
before a mirror!" He collapsed beside her with a groan. "I shall be
reincarnated an accordion!"
"Count," said Patricia plaintively, "no bouquets, please. I know when
you are stringing me."
He looked blank and the Japanese officer hastily produced a lavender
note-book and a gold pencil. "That is a new one," he said. "I must--what
is it?--ah yes! I must _nail_ it. Excuse me. I write it in my
swear-album."
"The Viscount is learning American slang," Patricia informed Barbara.
"One of these days you must tell him some of the very latest."
He looked across with gravely twinkling eyes. "I shall be--ah--tickle to
die!" he said. "It is my specialty. Nex' year I become Professor in
Slang Literature at the Imperial University."
The meal began merrily. Barbara sat on Daunt's left, with one of the
_attachés_ next her. Baroness Stroloff was on Daunt's other hand.
Barbara remembered it afterward as a meal of elfish daintiness--of warm,
pungent, wine-like liquor in blue porcelain bottles, of food of strange
look and cloying taste, highly colored and seasoned, in a hundred tiny
red and black lacquer dishes that carried her back to her doll-days,
with covers patterned in gold, served by prostrating _geisha_ whose
_kimono_ were woven with violet Fujis, winged dragons and marvelous
exotic blossoms.
Daunt pointed to a dish which had just been set before her. "You must
try the _hasu-no-renkon_," he said. "That's cooked lotos-root. It's
nearly as good as it looks."
"How do you ever remember the names!"
"Oh, it's quite easy to talk Japanese," he replied recklessly. "There
are only fifty syllables in the language, and any way you string them
together it means something or other. It doesn't matter whether it's the
right thing or not, if you just bow and smile. There are seventeen ways
of drawing in your breath which are a lot more important than what you
say!"
"What disgraceful nonsense! What is that pink thing?"
"Raw bonito. The refuge of dyspeptics. Voynich, over there, eats nothing
else at home, they say. The variegated compound is _kuchitori_. It's
made of sugared chestnuts, leeks and pickled fish. May I compliment you
on the way you handle your chopsticks? At my first Japanese dinner I bit
one in two. Isn't Baroness Stroloff stunning, by the way!"
The latter was deep in discussion with Patricia, moving her hands in
quick, vivacious gestures which clusters of opals made into flashes of
blue fire. "But you must send to Hakodate for your furs," she was
saying. "I will give you the address of my man there. You should get
them now, not wait till fall, when the tourists have bought all the
best."
"I'm dying for an ermine stole."
"Oh, my _dear_, not ermine! Get sables. One can be so insulting in
sables!"
Barbara laughed with the rest. "What a nice lot you are," she said, "all
knowing each other, all friendly. I thought diplomatists were always
poring over international law books and drawing up musty treaties."
"It's not all cakes and ale," he asserted. "I worked till three this
morning on a cipher telegram."
"After the melodrama?"
"Ah, it was opera!" he protested. "It has left me memories of only
flowers, and scents and music!"
"You made most of the music, if I remember rightly."
"How unkind! I could no more help it than fly."
"On your Glider?"
He laughed again. "Don't forget what is to happen one day with that same
machine."
"What is that?"
"I am to swoop down and carry you off. It was your own suggestion, you
know."
"But it was to be at the Imperial Review. That doesn't happen again for
a year."
"I won't wait that long!"
She turned her head; her eyes sparkled in the caught light. Her fingers
were fluttering a square of red paper that had been rolled about her
chopsticks. On it was a line of tiny characters. "What is that writing?"
"That is a love-poem," he answered. "You know a Japanese poem has only
thirty-one syllables. You find them everywhere and on everything, from a
screen to a fire-shovel. I've seen them printed on tooth-picks. Your
huckster composes them as he brings the fish from market, and your
_amah_ writes them at night by a firefly lantern."
"Can you read it?"
He translated: "_I thought my love's long hair drooped down from the
gate of the sky. But it was only the shadow of evening._"
"How delicately pretty!" she exclaimed. "It's written in _kana_, the
sound-alphabet, isn't it?"
"Yes. How much you have learned already!"
"Haru has begun teaching me. Let me show you my proficiency." She took
his pencil and wrote:
[Japanese: Donto]
"There! who would guess that was Japanese for 'Daunt.' And what an
impression you must have made on Haru for her to select your name as my
first lesson!"
Across the soft _shoo-shoo_ of spotless, _tabi_-clad feet, the flitting
of bright-hued _kimono_, the gay badinage that flew about the low
tables, Daunt felt her beauty thrill him from head to foot like a
garment of mist and fire. As she dropped her hand to the cushion it had
touched his, and for an instant their pulses had seemed to throb into
one. The tiny, lacquered cup she took up trembled in her fingers.
She started when the young army officer nearest her said: "Speaking of
sailing, give me a steam-yacht like the one that berthed yesterday at
Yokohama. She belongs to a man named Ware--Austen Ware--a New Yorker, I
understand. Perhaps you know him, Miss Fairfax."
"I have met him," she answered.
The young army officer looked up quickly--he was an enthusiastic
yachtsman. "A beautiful vessel!" he said. "I noticed her to-day, but she
was too far away to make out her name."
"It is the _Barbara_," said Voynich.
"Why--" exclaimed Patricia, "that's--" She bit her tongue, caught by
something in Barbara's face. "Good gracious!" she ended. "My--my foot's
asleep!"
Barbara had felt her flush fading to paleness. She felt a quick relief
that none there, save Patricia and Daunt, knew her first name. In the
diversion caused by Patricia's helpless efforts to stand up, she stole a
glance at Daunt.
A shadow had fallen on his face. He did not look at her, but in his
brain the yacht's name was ringing like a knell. She knew Phil's
brother! Austen Ware's yacht had arrived in Yokohama on the same day as
her ship. And it was named the _Barbara_. Yet to-night he had
dreamed--what had he been dreaming? These thoughts mixed themselves
weirdly with the gaiety and nonsense that he forced himself to render.
Barbara felt this with an aching sense of resentment. What was he
thinking of her? And why should she care so fiercely? The courses
passed, but the lightness and blitheness of the scene were somehow
chilled. The decorative food: the numberless, tiny cups and trays; the
taper, pink-tinted fingers that poured the warm drink; the _kimono_, the
music and lights,--all palled.
She was glad when the Baroness decreed the dinner over by repeating
Patricia's experiment of painful unfolding, and calling for her wraps.
CHAPTER XXV
AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX-GOD
The street into which they trooped seemed an oriental opera-bouffe:
swaying, chatting people in loose, light-colored _kimono_, some carrying
crested paper lanterns tied to the ends of short rods: a thousand lights
and hues flashing and weaving. But for two of the party the colors had
lost their warmth and the movement its fascination.
"I simply _can't_ coop up yet in a _rick'sha_!" pleaded Patricia, as
they donned their discarded shoes. "Why not walk a little?" The proposal
met with a chorus of approval. They set out together, and presently
Barbara found Daunt beside her. Her resentment did not cool as she
laughed and talked mechanically, acutely aware that he was answering in
monosyllables or with silence.
Daunt was crying out upon himself for a fool. What right had he to feel
that hot sting in his heart? Yesterday morning he had not known that she
existed. If an hour ago the skies had been golden-sprinkled azure, and
Tokyo the capital of an Empire of Romance, it was only because he was a
boyish, silly dolt, sick with vanity and complacency. What had there
been between them, after all, save a light camaraderie into which a man
was an insufferable cad to read more? So he paced on, achingly cognizant
of the lapses in his conversation, quite unconscious that her own was
growing more forced and strained.
They were in the midst of a densely packed crowd where a native theater
was pouring its audience into the street. They had fallen behind the
rest, and there were about them only _kimono'd_ shoulders and flowered,
blue-black head-dresses. He made a way for her ruggedly toward a paling
where there was a little space. Above it was hung a poster of a Japanese
actress.
"That is the famous Sada Gozen," he told her. "She has just returned
from a season in Paris and New York, and Tokyo is quite wild about her."
As he spoke numbers thrust him against her and the touch brought
instantly to him that moment in the garden when he had held her in his
arms to lift her to the arbor ledge. The picture of her that evening in
the pagoda was stamped on his heart: the sweet, moon-lighted profile,
the curling, brown hair, the faint perfume of her gown that mingled with
the wistaria. It came before him there in the bustle and press with a
sudden swift sadness. He knew that it would be always with him to
remember.
A Japanese couple, hastening to their _rick'sha_, caromed against them,
and, with an effort, he tried to turn it to a smile:
"Some say it's difficult for a foreigner to come into intimate contact
with the Japanese," he said. "You have already pierced that illusion.
One is always finding out that he has been mistaken in people."
Her quivering feeling grasped at a fancied innuendo. "It doesn't take
long, then, you think?" Her tone held a dangerous lure, but he did not
perceive it.
"Not where you are concerned, apparently," he answered lightly.
She turned her head swiftly toward him, and her eyes flashed. "Where _I_
am concerned!" she repeated fiercely, and in his astonishment he almost
wrecked the paling. "Oh, I hate double-meaning! Why not say it? Do you
suppose I don't know what you are thinking?"
"I?" he said in bewilderment. "What _I_ am thinking?"
"You mean you have found you are mistaken in _me_! You have no right--no
earthly right, to draw conclusions."
"Ah!" he said, with a sharp breath. "I had no such meaning. You can't
imagine--"
"Don't say you didn't," she interrupted. "That only makes it worse!" She
scarcely understood her own resentment, and a hot consciousness that her
behavior was quite childish and unreasonable mixed itself with her
anger.
"What have I said?" he exclaimed, in contrition and distress. "I
wouldn't hurt you for a million worlds! Whatever it was, I ought to do
_hara-kiri_ for it! I--I will perform the operation whenever you say!"
A ridiculous desire to cry had seized her--why, she could not have
told--and she would rather have died than have him see her do so. "If
you will go ahead," she said tremulously, "and make a path for me, I
think we can get through now."
He turned instantly and his broad shoulders parted the crowd in a haste
that was thoroughly un-Japanese. But she did not follow him. Instead,
she drew back, and thinking only to hide momentarily her hurt and her
pride, slipped through a narrow gateway.
She found herself in a crowded corridor of the emptying playhouse. The
mass of Japanese faces confused her. A door opened at another angle and
she passed through it hastily into the open air. The street she was now
in was narrow, and she followed it, expecting it to turn into the larger
thoroughfare. It did so presently, and at its corner she paused till the
burning had left her eyes, and her breath came evenly. Then she walked
back toward the theater, feeling an impatient irritation at her
behavior.
Presently, however, she stopped, puzzled. The theater was not there. The
street, too, had not the character of the one in which she had left
Daunt. She must have taken the wrong turn. She walked rapidly in the
opposite direction, until another street crossed at right angles. This
she tried with no better result. In the maze of lantern-lighted vistas,
she was completely lost.
She was not frightened, for she was aware that, so far as physical harm
was concerned, Tokyo, of all great cities of the world, was perhaps the
safest and most orderly. She knew that "_Bei-koku Taish'-kan_" meant
"American Embassy." She had mastered the phrase that morning, and had
only to step into a _rick'sha_ and use it. Daunt, however, did not know
this. Aware that she had been behind him, he would not go on, and she
contritely pictured him anxiously searching the crowds for her. The
thought overrode her anger and humiliation. She would not take the
_rick'sha_ till she despaired of finding him.
Just before her, at the side of the way, stood a small temple with a
recumbent stone fox at its entrance. It made her think suddenly of the
riding-crop she had seen Daunt carrying, with its Damascene fox-head
handle. In the doorway burned a rack of little candles, and a chest,
barred across the top, sat ready to receive the offerings of worshipers.
Above this was suspended the mirror which is the invariable badge of a
_Shinto_ shrine. It was tilted at an angle and tossed back the glimmer
of the candle-flame. With a whimsical smile she took a copper coin from
her purse and leaned to toss it into the chest.
But her fingers closed on it and she drew back hastily, with a quick
memory of one of the tales Haru had told her in the garden. She knew
suddenly that she stood before a temple of Inari, the Fox-God, patron
deity of her whose conquests brought shame to households and dishonor to
wives. She remembered a song the Japanese girl had sung to the tinkle of
her _samisen_:
"My weapons are a smile and a little fan--
_Sayonara, Sayonara_...."
It was the song of the "Fox-Woman." She slipped the purse hastily back
into her pocket.
The Fox-Woman! As she walked on, for the first time the phrase came to
Barbara with a sudden, sharp sense of actuality. There were fox-women of
every race and clime, women who came, with painted smile, between true
lovers! What if she herself--what if here, in this land, that baleful
wisdom were to strike home to _her_? Like a keen blade the thought
pierced through her, and something shy and sweet, newborn in her breast,
shrank startled and fearful from it.
The street had narrowed curiously. It was paved now from side to side
with flat stone flags. She realized all at once that there were no
longer _rick'sha_ to be seen, only people afoot. A blaze of light caught
her eye, and she looked up to see, spanning the street, an arched
gateway, at either side of which stood a policeman, quiet and
imperturbable. Its curved top was decorated with colored electric bulbs,
and from its keystone towered a great image molded in white plaster--the
figure of a woman in ancient Japanese costume. One hand held a fan; the
other lifted high above her head a circular globe of light. A huge
weeping-willow drooped over one side of the archway, through which came
glimpses of moving colors, crowds, hanging lanterns and elfish music.
Barbara hesitated. To what did that white, female figure beckon? She
looked behind her--direction now meant nothing. Perhaps she had wandered
in a circle and the theater lay beyond.
She stepped through the gate.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE NIGHTLESS CITY
Straight before her lay a wide pavement, humming with voices, lined with
three-story houses that glowed with iron-hooped lanterns of red, yellow
and green, and tinkled with the music of _samisen_. From their gaily
lighted _shoji_ swathes of warm, yellow light fell on the _kimono'd_
figures of men strolling slowly up and down. A little way off rose a
square tower, with a white clock-face, illumined by a circle of electric
bulbs. Narrower streets, also innocent of roadway, crossed at right
angles and at mathematical intervals. They were starry with lamps that
hung in long projecting balconies ornamented with grill and carved work.
From these came the shrieking sounds of music and an indescribable
atmosphere of frivolity, of obvious dedication to some flippant cult.
In and out of these side streets flowed a multitude of boys and men, in
unbelted summer robes of light colors, lazily vivacious, moving on
naked, clogged feet, making the air a bluish haze of cigarette smoke. In
the blazing dusk they suggested the populace of some crowded Spa
strolling to the pools in flowing bath-robes and straw hats. On some of
the far balconies Barbara could see women leaning, in ornate costumes,
smoking tiny pipes. Here and there girls strolled past her, for the most
part in couples, gaudily clad, their cheeks white with rice-powder,
their lips carmined, their blue-black hair wonderfully coaxed and
pomaded into shining wings and whorls, thrust through with many jeweled
hair-pins, like slim daggers. They jested freely with the men they
passed, laughing continually with low voices. In a doorway a slim girl,
dressed in deep red, gleefully tickled with one bare foot the hide of a
shaggy poodle vainly essaying slumber. As she went on, the crowd became
more numerous; men's _kimono_ brushed Barbara's skirts and eyes stared
at her with contemplative boldness.
"Madame!"
She felt a hand pluck her sleeve. It was a young Japanese, in foreign
dress, with a shining brown derby, shining aureated teeth, and shining
silver-handled cane. "Madame wishes a guide?" he inquired. She
recollected him instantly as the youth who had slipped into her hand the
printed card when she had landed from the ship at Yokohama. She did not
know the name of the theater she had left, however, so shook her head
and hurried on.
Without warning she emerged into the nun-like quiet of a park with an
acre of growing trees and an irregular little lake that lay dark and
still under the moon. Beside it was a stretch of hard, beaten earth,
seemingly a playground. Benches were set under the trees, and among them
moved or sat other girls in costumes like those she had seen on the
pavement. At sight of Barbara's foreign dress some of them giggled with
amusement and called to one another in repressed, laughing voices. A
bell struck somewhere, and, as though this had been a signal, they all
rose and departed, passing out by the way Barbara had come.
She traversed the park--to come face to face with a high palisade. She
took a new direction, only to come again on the same barrier. The park
seemed only a part of a vast inclosure into which she had penetrated.
Had this no outlet save the gate at which she had entered? Wondering,
she retraced her steps to the lighted pavement. She was puzzled now, and
turned into one of the cross streets. Its blaze of light, its movement
and murmur of humanity bewildered her for a moment; then what she saw
instantly arrested her.
The lower stories of most of the abutting buildings had for fronts only
lattices of vertical wooden bars, set a few inches apart. Inside these
bars, which made strange, human bird-cages, seated on mats of brocade,
or flitting here and there, were galaxies of Japanese girls, marvelously
habited in chameleon colors--even more brilliant than the _geisha_ she
had seen at Mukojima--like branches of iridescent humming-birds or banks
of pulsing butterflies. Here and there, a foil to the fluttering cages,
stretched a silent arcade brilliantly lighted and hung with women's
photographs. Above each was fixed a placard with a name in Japanese
characters.
What was this place into which she had strayed? She had heard of the
famous "Street-of-the-_Geisha_," where the dancers live. Had she
stumbled on this in the throes of some festival? Why were there no women
on the pavements? She had seen none save those in the gaudy robes whom
the bell had called away. What was the meaning of the high
palisades?--the narrow gate with its stolid policemen?--the barred house
fronts?
Projecting on to the pavement, at the side of each building, was a
small, windowed kiosk like the box-office of a theater. In the one
nearest Barbara a man was sitting. His arm was thrust through the
window, and his hand, holding a half-opened fan, tapped carelessly on
its side while he chanted in a coaxing voice. Inside a man with
close-cropped gray hair strode along the seated rows, striking sharply
together flint and steel, till a shower of gleaming sparks fell on each
head-dress. This done, he emerged and paced three times up and down the
pavement, making squeaking noises with his lips, and describing with his
hands strange passes in the air. These reminded Barbara irresistibly of
a child's cryptic gestures for luck. He then struck the flat of his hand
six times smartly against the door-post and retired. She noticed that he
paused at the entrance to snuff the row of candles that burned in a
shrine beside it.
The whole street, with its rows of gilded cages was a gleaming vista of
_tableaux-vivants_, drenched in prismatic hues. Each, Barbara noted, had
its uniform scheme of costume: one showed the sweeping lines and deep,
flowing sleeves of the pre-_Meiji_ era; another the high, garnet skirt
of the modern school-girl; in one the _kimono_ were of rich mauve,
shading at the bottom to pale pink set with languorous red peonies; in
another, of gray crepe figured with craggy pine-trees; in a third, of
scarlet and blue, woven with gold thread and embroidered in peacock
feathers. Before each inmate's cushion sat a tiny brass _hibachi_, or
fire-bowl, in whose ashes glowed a live coal for the lighting of pipes
and cigarettes, and a miniature toilet-table, like a doll's-cabinet,
topped by a small, round mirror. From tiny compartments now and then one
would draw a little box of rouge, a powder-puff of down, or an ivory
spicula, with which, in complete indifference to observation, she would
heighten the vivid red of a lip, or smooth a refractory hair. The
background against which they posed was of heavy and exquisitely
intricate gold-lacquer carvings of stork, dragon and phoenix, of
cunningly disposed mirrors, or of draped crimson and silver weaves.
Before the bars men paused to chat a moment and pass on: behind them the
gorgeous robes and tinted faces flitted hither and thither with a magpie
chatter, with glimpses of ringed fingers clutching the lattice, and of
naked feet, slim and brown against the flooring.
Barbara watched curiously. She was no longer conscious that passing men
studied her furtively--that here and there, through the slender bars, a
delicate hand waved daringly to her. In all the fairy-like gorgeousness
she felt a subtle sense of repugnance that kept her feet in the middle
of the pavement. She noted now that, however the costumes varied, they
agreed in one particular: the _obi_ of each inmate was tied, not at the
back, but in front. It seemed a kind of badge. Somewhere she had read
what it stood for. What was it?
A group of men passed her at the moment--foreigners, speaking an
unfamiliar tongue. They talked loudly and pointed with their sticks. One
of them observed her, and turning, said something to his companions.
They looked back. One of them laughed coarsely.
At the sound, which echoed a patent vulgarity in the allusion, the blood
flew to her cheeks. The tone had told her in a flash what the palisades,
the barred inclosures, the gaudy finery and reversed _obi_ had failed to
suggest. A veil was wound about her hat and with nervous haste she drew
down its folds over her face, feeling suddenly sick and hot. Driven now
by an overpowering desire to find her way out, she doubled desperately
back to the wider street.
"Madame!"
She turned, with relief this time, to see "Mr. Y. Nakajima," the guide,
of the gold fillings and silver-topped cane.
"You are lost," he said. "Come with me, and I will find you."
She bade him take her to the gate as quickly as possible and followed
him rapidly, stung with an acute longing for the noisy roadway with its
careening _rick'sha_. He was a thin, humorous-looking youth with a
chocolate skin and long almond eyes, from which he shot at Barbara
glances half obsequious, half impertinent and preternaturally sly, from
time to time making some remark which she answered as shortly as she
might.
By the arch with its lofty female figure, under the weeping willow,
Barbara turned for an instant and looked back. The street seemed to
her a maze of reeling lights--a blur of painted lips and drowsing
eyes and ghostly sobbing of the _samisen_. Just outside the gate a
pilgrim-priest, his coffin-like shrine strapped on his back, was
mumbling a prayer.
The guide spoke complacently: "Japan Yoshiwara are very famed," he said.
"I think other countries is very seldom to have got."
"Where do they all come from?" Barbara asked suddenly. "How do they come
to be here?"
"From many village," he answered. He had raised his voice, for several
passers-by had paused to listen inquisitively to the strange sounds, so
uncouthly unlike their own liquid syllabary; and he loved to display his
English. "A man have a shop. Business become bad; he owe so plenty
money. He can not pay, but he have pretty daughter. Here they offer
maybe two, three hundred _yen_, for one year. So she dutifully pay
honorable father debt."
Barbara turned away. Again she felt the edge of mystery, bred of the
unguessable divergence between the moral Shibboleths of West and East.
It caught at her like the cool touch of dread that chills the strayer in
haunted places. In a hundred ways this land drew her with an
extraordinary attraction; now a feeling of baffled perplexity and pain
mingled with the fascination. It was almost a sort of terror. If in two
days Japan offered such passionate variety, such undreamed contrasts and
subtleties, what would it eventually show to her? Could she ever really
know it, understand it?
"There is a theater near here where Sada Gozen is playing," she said.
"Can you take me there?"
He nodded. "The _Raimon-za_--the Play-House-of-the-Gate-of-Thunder. It
is more five minutes of distant."
He conducted her through a maze of narrow streets and pointed to the
building, which she saw with a breath of relief. Taking out her purse
she put a bill into his hand. "Thank you," she said, "and good night."
"I shall go with Madame at her hotel."
She shook her head. "I can find my way now."
"But Madame--"
"No," she said decidedly.
He stood a moment swinging his cane, looking after her with impudent
almond eyes. Then he lighted a cigarette, settled his derby at a jaunty
angle and sauntered back toward the Yoshiwara.
* * * * *
Barbara came on Daunt in the middle of the block. He had stationed
himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser
stature of the native crowds. With him was a Japanese boy who, she noted
with surprise, was Ito, one of the house-servants. Her heart jumped as
she saw the relief spring to Daunt's anxious face.
"_Mea culpa!_" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her
hand to him. "What a trouble I have been to you! I was actually lost.
Isn't it absurd?"
Her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. All his heart had leaped to
meet them. In the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but
since then it had been given him partly to understand. His thoughtless
words--blunderer that he was!--had seemed to carp at her like a whining
school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! Yet to his memory even her
hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were
golden, and Tokyo once more fairy-land.
"What _will_ the others say!" she said. "They will have missed us long
ago."
"We will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. We
can get _rick'sha_ at the next stand."
"What did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you
found I had vanished into thin air?"
"I imagined for a while you were punishing me. Then I guessed you had
somehow turned into the side street. But I felt that you would find your
way back, so--I waited."
"Thank you," she said softly. "I have not acted so badly since I was a
child. Are you going to shrive me?"
"I am the one to ask that of you," he replied.
"No--no! It is I. I must do penance. What is it to be?"
He looked at her steadily; his eyes shone with dark fire. In the pause
she felt her heart throb quickly, and she laughed with a sweet
unsteadiness. "I am glad you are going to give me none," she said.
"But I do," he answered, "I shall. I--"
The boy Ito, behind them, spoke his name. Daunt started with a stab of
recollection and drew from his pocket a folded pink paper, fastened with
a blue seal.
"How stupid of me! My wits have gone wool-gathering to-night. Here is a
telegram for you. It came soon after we left the Embassy, and Mrs.
Dandridge, thinking it might be urgent, sent Ito after us to the
tea-house. He missed us, but saw me here on his way back."
Barbara broke the seal and held the message to the candle-light that
shone from a low temple entrance. She did not notice at the moment that
it was the temple of the Fox-God whose alms she had that evening denied.
She had guessed who was the sender and the knowledge fell like a cool,
fateful hand on her mood.
And alas, on Daunt's also. For, as she turned the leaf, his gaze,
wandering through the temple doorway, to the candle-starred mirror above
the tithe-box, had unwittingly seen reflected there, in the painfully
exact chirography of a Japanese telegraph-clerk, the signature
[Illustration: Austen Ware (in reverse)]
CHAPTER XXVII
LIKE THE WHISPER OF A BATS' WINGS
On the other side of Tokyo that night Doctor Bersonin sat with Phil in
his great laboratory. Dinner had been laid on a round table at one end
of the room. This was now pushed into a corner; they sat in deep leather
chairs with slim liqueur glasses of green _crême de menthe_ on a stand
between them, with a methyl lamp and cigars.
Phil had more than once refilled his glass from the straw-braided,
long-necked vessel at his elbow. He was restless and ill at ease. The
tense excitement that had followed his hour with Bersonin at the Club
had been allayed by the lights and movement of the cherry-festival; but
in that cool, bare room, under the continuous, slow scrutiny of the
expert's pallid, mask-like face, the sense of half-fearful elation had
returned, reinforced by a feverish expectation.
During the dinner, served at ten, conversation had been desultory, full
of lapses broken only by the plaintive chirp of the _hiwa_ from its
corner. When the cigars and cordial had been brought by the
silent-footed Ishida, Bersonin had risen to draw the curtain closely
over the window and to lock the door. When he came back he stood before
the mantelpiece, his arm laid along it, looking down from his towering
height on the other's unquiet hand playing with the chain of the
spirit-lamp. His face was very white. Phil drew a long, slow breath and
looked up.
Bersonin spoke. His voice was cold and measured; the only sign of
agitation was in the slow, spasmodic working of the great white fingers
against the dark wood.
"I have brought you here to-night," he said, "to make you a proposition.
I have need of help--of a kind--that you can give me. It will require
certain qualities which I think you possess--which we possess in common.
I have chosen you because you have daring and because you are not
troubled by what the coward calls conscience--that fool's name for
fear!"
Phil touched his dry lips with his tongue. "I have as little of that as
the next man," he replied. "I never found I needed much."
Bersonin continued:
"What I have to say I can say without misgiving. For if you told it
before the fact there is possibly but one man in Japan who would think
you sane; and if you told it after--well, for your own safety, you will
not tell it then! Your acceptance of my proposition will have a definite
effect on your prospects, which, I believe, can scarcely be looked on as
bright."
Phil muttered an oath. "You needn't remind me of that," he said with
surly emphasis. "I've got about as much prospects as a coolie stevedore.
Well, what of it?"
The cold voice went on, and now it had gathered a sneer:
"You are twenty-three, educated, good-looking, with the best of life
before you--but dependent on the niggardly charity of a rich brother for
the very bread you eat. Even here, on this skirt of the world where
pleasures are cheap, it is only by dint of debt that you keep your head
above water. Now your sedate relative has come to sit in judgment on
your past year. What does he care for your private tastes? What will he
do when he hears of the _geisha_ suppers and the bar-chits at the Club
and the roulette table at the bungalow? Increase that generous stipend
of yours? I fancy not."
Phil lit a cigar with a hand that shook. The doctor's contemptuous words
had roused a tingling anger that raced with the alcohol in his blood.
He, with the tastes of a gentleman, as poor as a temple-rat, while his
brother sailed around the globe in his steam-yacht! He saw his allowance
cut off--saw himself driven to the cheap expedients of the Bund
beach-comber, cringing for a _yen_ from men who had won his hundreds at
the Roost--or perhaps sitting on an under-clerk's stool in some
Settlement counting-house, shabby-genteel, adding figures from eight in
the morning to five at night. No more moon-light cherry-parties on the
Sumida River, or plum-blossom picnics, or high jinks in the Inland Sea.
No more pony-races at Omori, or cat-boat sailing at Kamakura, or
philandering at the Maple-Leaf Tea-House. No more laughing Japanese
faces and tinted fingers--no more stolen kisses in bamboo lanes--no more
Haru!
He struck the stand with his fist. "And if--I agree?" he said thickly.
"What then?"
Bersonin leaned forward, his hands on the stand. It rocked under his
weight. "I have talked of money. I will show you a quick way to gain
it--not by years, but by _days_!--wealth such as you have never dreamed,
enough to make your brother poor beside you! Not only money, but power
and place and honors. Is the stake big enough to play for?"
Phil stared at him, fascinated. It was not madness back of those
dappled, yellowish eyes. They were full of a knowledge, cold and
measured and implacable.
"What do you--want me to do?" He almost gasped the words.
The expert looked him in the eye a full moment in silence, his fingers
crawling and twitching. Then, with a quick, leopard-like movement, he
went to the wall-safe, opened it and took out what seemed a square metal
box. In its top was set an indicator, like the range-finder of a camera.
Its very touch seemed to melt his icy control. His paleness flushed; his
hand trembled as he set it upon the desk.
"Wait!" he said. "Wait!"
He looked swiftly about the room. His eye rested on the bamboo cage and
a quick gleam shot across his face. He opened the wire door and the
little bird hopped to his finger. He moved a metal pen-rack to the very
center of the desk and perched the tiny creature on it. It burst into
song, warbling full-throated, packed with melody. Bersonin set the metal
case a little distance away and adjusted it with minutest care.
"Sing, Dick!" he cried loudly; "sing! sing!--"
The song stopped. There had come a thrill in the air--a puff of icy wind
on Phil's face--a thin chiming like a fairy cymbal. Phil sprang up with
a cry. The fluffy ball, with its metal perch, had utterly disappeared;
only in the center of the desk was a pinch of reddish-brown powder like
the dust of an emery-wheel, laid in feathery whorls.
He stared transfixed. "What does it mean?" he asked hoarsely.
The doctor's voice was no longer toneless. It leaped now with an evil
exultation. "It means that I--Bersonin--have found what physicists have
dreamed of for fifty years! I have solved the secret of the love and
hatred of atoms! That box is the harness of a force beside which the
engines of modern war are children's toys."
He grasped Phil's arm with a force that made him wince. The amber eyes
glittered.
"At first I planned to sell it to the highest bidder among the powers. I
was a fool to think of that! The nation that buys it, to guard the
secret for itself, must wall me in a fortress! That would be the reward
of Bersonin--the great Bersonin, who had wrested from nature the most
subtle of her secrets! But I am too clever for that! It must be _I_--_I
alone_--who holds the key! It shall bring me many things, but the first
of these is money. I must have funds--unlimited funds. The money I
despise, except as a stepping-stone, but the money _you love_ and must
have! Well, I offer it to you!"
Phil's heart was beating hard. The tension of the room had increased; a
hundred suffocating atmospheres seemed pressing on it. "How--how--" he
stammered.
Bersonin took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the
stand. It was a chart of Yokohama harbor. A red square was drawn in the
margin, and from this a fine, needle-like ray pointed out across the
anchorage. With his pencil the Doctor wrote two words on the red
square--"The Roost."
Phil shrank trembling into his chair. He seemed to see the other looking
at him over clinking glasses at the Club, while voices spoke from the
next room. "_What if one of those Dreadnaughts should go down in this
friendly harbor!_" It came from his lips in a thin whisper, almost
without his volition--the answer to the question that had haunted him
that day.
A gleam like the fire of unholy altars came in Bersonin's eyes.
"Not one--_two_! A bolt from a blue sky, that will echo over Europe! And
what then? A fury of popular passion in one country; suspicion and alarm
in all. Rumors of war, fanned by the yellow press. The bottom dropping
out of the market! It means millions at a single _coup_, for, in spite
of diplomatic quibbles, the market is like a cork. The Paris bourse is
soaring. Wall Street will make a new record to-morrow. In London,
Consols are at Ninety-two. My agents are awaiting my word. I have many,
for that is safer. I shall spread selling orders over five
countries--British bonds in Vienna and New York, and steel and American
railroads in London. I risk all and you--nothing. Yet if you join hands
with me in this we shall share alike--you and I! And with the winnings
we get now we shall get more. Trust me to know the way! Money shall be
dirt to you. The pleasure-cities of every continent shall be your
playgrounds. You shall have your pretty little Japanese _peri_, and
fifty more besides."
Phil's face had flushed and paled by turns. He looked at the expert with
a shivering fascination: "But there are--there will be--men aboard those
ships...." He shuddered and wrenched his gaze away.
Bersonin put out his great hand and laid it on the other's shoulder--its
weight seemed to be pressing him down into the chair.
"Well?" he said, in a low intense voice. "What if there are?"
There was a long silence. Then slowly Phil lifted a face as white as
paper. A look slinking and devilish lay in it now.
The doctor bent down and began to speak in a low tone. The sound passed
around the room, sibilant, like the sound of a bat's wings in the dark.
* * * * *
It was an hour before midnight when Phil opened the gate of the expert's
house and passed down the moon-lighted street. He walked stumblingly,
cowering at the tree-shadows, peering nervously over his shoulder like
one who feels the presence of a ghastly familiar.
In the great room he had left, Bersonin stood by the fireplace. The
nervous strain and exaltation were still on him. He poured out a glass
of the liqueur which he had not yet tasted and drank it off. The hot
pungent mint sent a glow along his nerves. Behind him Ishida was
methodically removing the dinner service. The doctor crossed the room
and stood before the bamboo cage. He drew back the spring-door and
whistling, held out his finger.
"Here, Dick!" he called. "Here, boy!"
There was no response.
He started. His face turned a gray-green. He drew back and stealthily
turned his head.
But the Japanese did not seem to have noticed the silence. With the tray
in his hands, he was looking fixedly at the feathery sprays of
reddish-yellow dust on the polished top of the desk.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FORGOTTEN MAN
Barbara pushed open the bamboo gate of the temple garden, then paused.
The recluse with whom she had talked yesterday sat a little way
inside, while before him, in an attitude of deepest attention, stood
the diminutive figure on the huge clogs whose morning acquaintance she
had made from her window. Thorn was looking at him earnestly with his
great myopic eye, through a heavy glass mounted with a handle like a
lorgnette.
"My son," he said. "Why will you persist in eating _amé_, when I have
taught you the classics and the true divinity of the universe? It is too
sweet for youthful teeth. One of these days you will be carried to a
dentist, an esteemed person with horrible tools, prior to the removal of
a small hell, containing several myriads of lost souls, from the left
side of your lower jaw!"
Barbara's foot grated on a pebble and he rose with a startled quickness.
The youngster bent double, his face preternaturally grave. Thorn thrust
the glass into his sleeve and smiled.
"I am experimenting on this oriental raw material," he said, "to
illustrate certain theories of my own. Ishikichi-_San_, though a slave
to the sweetmeat dealer, is a learned infant. He can write forty Chinese
characters and recite ten texts of Mencius. He also knows many damnable
facts about figures which they teach in school. He has just propounded a
question that Confucius was too wise to answer: 'Why is poverty?' Not
being so wise as the Chinese sage, I attempted its elucidation. Thus
endeth our lesson to-day, Ishikichi. _Sayonara_."
He bowed. The child ducked with a jerky suddenness that sent his round,
battered hat rolling at Barbara's feet. She picked it up and set it on
the shaven head.
"Oh!" she said humbly. "I beg your pardon, Ishikichi! I put the rim
right in your eye!"
"Don't menshum it," he returned solemnly. "I got another." He stalked to
the gate, faced about, bobbed over again and disappeared.
Barbara looked after him smilingly. "Is Ishikichi in straitened
circumstances? Or is his bent political economy?"
"His father has been ill for a long time," Thorn replied. "He keeps a
shop, and in some way the child has heard that they will have to give it
up. It troubles him, for he can't imagine existence without it."
"What a pity! I would be so glad to--do you think I could give them
something?"
He shook his head. "After you have been here a while, you will find that
simple charity in Japan is not apt to be a welcome thing."
"I am beginning to understand already," she said, as they walked along
the stepping-stones, "that these gentle-mannered people do not lack the
sterner qualities. Yet how they grace them! The iron-hand is here, but
it has the velvet glove. Courtesy and kindness seem almost a religion
with them."
"More," he answered. "This is the only country I have seen in the world
whose people, when I walk the street, do not seem to notice that I am
disfigured!"
She made no pretense of misunderstanding. "Believe me," she said gently,
"it is no disfigurement. But I understand. My father lived all his life
in the dread of blindness."
A faint sound came from him. She was aware, without lifting her eyes to
his, that he was staring at her strangely.
"All his life. Then your father is not ... living?"
"He died before I was born."
She glanced at him as she spoke, for his tone had been muffled and
indistinct. There was a deep furrow in his forehead which she had not
seen before.
"Do you look like him?"
"No, he was dark. I am like my mother."
Thorn was looking away from her, toward the lane, where, beyond the
hedge, a man was passing, half-singing, half-chanting to himself in a
repressed, sepulchral voice.
"My mother died, too, when I was a little girl," she added, "so I know
really very little about him."
She had forgotten to look for the Flower-of-Dream. They had come to the
little lake with its mossy stones and basking, orange carp. Through the
gap in the shrubbery the white witchery of Fuji-San glowed in the sun
with far-faint shudderings of lilac fire. She sat down on a sunny
boulder. Thorn stooped over the water, looking into its cool, green
depths, and she saw him pass his hand over his brow in that familiar,
half-hesitant gesture of the day before.
"Will you tell me that little?" he asked. "I think I should like to
hear."
"I very seldom talk about him," she said, looking dreamily out across
the distance, "but not because I don't like to. You see, knowing so
little, I used to dream out the rest, so that he came to seem quite
real. Does that sound very childish and fanciful?"
"Tell me the dreams," he answered. "Mine are always more true than
facts."
"He was born," she began, "in the Mediterranean--"
She turned her head. The stone on which Thorn's foot rested had crashed
into the water. He staggered slightly in regaining his balance, and his
face had the pale, startled look it wore when he had first seen her from
the roadside. He drew back, and again his hand went up across his face.
"Yes," he said. "Go on."
"In the Mediterranean--just where, I don't know, but on an island--and
his mother was Romaic. I have never seen Greece, but I like to know that
some of it is in my blood. His father was American, of a family that had
a tradition of Gipsy descent. Perhaps he was born with the 'thumb-print'
on the palm that they call the Romany mark. As a child I used to wonder
what it looked like."
She smiled up at him, but his face was turned away. He had taken his
hand from his brow, and slipped it into his loose sleeve, and stood
rigidly erect.
"I often used to try to imagine his mother. I am sure she had a dark and
beautiful face, with large, brown eyes like a wild deer's, that used to
bend above his cradle. Perhaps each night she crossed her fingers over
him, and said--"
"_En to onoma tou Patros_," he repeated, "_kai tou Ouiou kai tou Agiou
Pneumatos!_"
"Yes," she said, surprised. "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost. You know it?"
"It is the old Greek-orthodox fashion," he said in a low voice.
"I should not wonder," she continued, "if she made three little wounds
on him, as a baby, as I have read Greek mothers do, to place him under
the protection of the Trinity. She must have loved him--her first
boy-baby! And I think the most of what he was came to him from her."
Thorn moved his position suddenly, and Barbara saw his shoulders rise in
a deep-taken breath.
"Love of right and hatred of wrong," he said, "admiration for the
beautiful and the true, faith in man and woman, sensitiveness to
artistic things--ah, it is most often the mother who makes men what they
are. Not our strength or power of calculation, but her heart and power
to love! In the twilight of every home one sees the mother-souls glowing
like fireflies. I never had a picture of my mother. I would rather have
her portrait than a fortune!"
His voice was charged with feeling. She felt a strange flutter of the
heart, a painful and yearning sympathy such as she had never felt
before.
"I wonder what he saw from that Greek cradle," she resumed. "I could
never fancy the room so well. I suppose it had pictures. Do you think
so?"
He nodded. "And maybe--on one wall--a Greek _ikon_, protected by a
silver case ... I've seen such ... that left exposed only the
olive-brown faces and hands and feet of the figures. Perhaps ... when he
was very little ... he used to think the brown Virgin represented his
mother and the large-eyed child himself."
"Ah," she cried, and a deeper light came in her eyes. "You have been in
Greece! You have seen what he saw!" But he made no reply, and after a
moment she went on:
"He had never known what terror was till one day an accident, received
in play, brought him the fear of blindness. It must have stayed with him
all his life after that, wherever he went--for he lived in other
countries. I have a few leaves of an old diary of his ... here and there
I feel it in the lines."
She, too, fell silent. "And then--?" he said.
"There my dreams end. You see how little I know of him. I don't know why
he came to Japan. But he met my mother here and here they were married.
I should always love Japan, if only for that."
"He--died here?"
"In Nagasaki. My mother went back to America, and there I was born."
She was looking out across the wide space where the roofs sank out of
sight--to the foliaged slope of Aoyama. Suddenly a thrill, a curiously
complex motion, ran over her. Above those far tree-tops, sailing in
slow, sweeping, concentric circles, she saw a great machine, like a
gigantic vulture. She knew instantly what it was, and there flashed
before her the memory of a day at Fort Logan when a brave young
lieutenant had crashed to death before her eyes in a shattered
aëroplane.
If Daunt were to fall ... what would it mean to her! In that instant the
garden about her, Thorn, the blue sky above, faded, and she stared
dismayed into a gulf in whose shadows lurked the disastrous, the
terrifying, the irreparable. "I love him! I love him!"--it seemed to
peal like a temple-bell through her brain. Even to herself she could
never deny it again!
She became aware of music near at hand. It brought her back to the
present, for it was the sound of the organ in the new Chapel across the
way.
Looking up, she was struck by the expression on Thorn's face. He seemed,
listening, to be held captive by some dire recollection. It brought to
her mind that bitter cry:
"I can not but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me!"
She rose with a sudden swelling of the throat.
"I must go now," she said. "The Chapel is to be dedicated this morning.
The organ is playing for the service now."
She led the way along the stepping-stones to the bamboo gate. As they
approached, through the interstices of the farther hedge she could see
the figure of the Ambassador, with Mrs. Dandridge, among the _kimono_
entering the chapel door. In the temple across the yard the baton had
begun its tapping and the dulled, monotonous tom-tom mingled weirdly
with the soaring harmonies of the organ.
With her hand on the paling she spoke again:
"One thing I didn't tell you. It was I who built the Chapel. It is in
the memory of my father. See, there is the memorial window. They were
putting it in place when I came a little while ago."
She was not looking at Thorn, or she would have seen his face overspread
with a whiteness like that of death. He stood as if frozen to marble.
The morning sun on the Chapel's eastern side, striking through its open
casements, lighted the iridescent rose-window with a tender radiance,
gilding the dull yellow aureole about the head of the Master and giving
life and glow to the face beside Him--dark, beardless, and passionately
tender--at which Thorn was staring, with what seemed almost an agony of
inquiry.
"St. John," she said softly, "'the disciple whom Jesus loved.'" She drew
from the bosom of her dress the locket she always wore and opened it.
"The face was painted from this--the only picture I have of my father."
His hand twitched as he took it. He looked at it long and earnestly--at
the name carved on its lid. "Barbara--Barbara Fairfax!" he said. She
thought his lips shook under the gray mustache.
"You--are a Buddhist, are you not?" she asked. "And Buddhists believe
the spirits of the dead are always about us. Do you think--perhaps--he
sees the Chapel?"
He put her locket into her hands hastily. "God!" he said, as if to
himself. "He will see it through a hundred existences!"
Her eyes were moist and shining. "I am glad you think that," she said.
In the Chapel the bishop's gaze kindled as it went out over the kneeling
people.
"_We beseech Thee, that in this place now set apart to Thy
service, Thy holy name may be worshiped in truth and purity
through all generations._"
The voice rang valiant and clear in the summer hush. It crossed the
still lane and entered a window where, in a temple loft, a man sat still
and gray and quiet, his hands clenched in his _kimono_ sleeves:
"_We humbly dedicate it to Thee, in the memory of one for the
saving of whose soul Thou wert lifted upon the Cross._"
The man in the loft threw himself on his face with a terrible cry.
"My child!" he cried in a breaking voice. "My little, little child, whom
they have robbed me of--whom I have never known in all these weary
years! You have grown away from me--I shall never have you now! Never
... never!"
Behind him the unfinished image of Kwan-on the All-Pitying, tossed the
sunlight about the room in golden-lettered flashes, and beneath his
closed and burning lids these seemed to blend and weave--to form bossed
letters which had stared at him from the rim of the rose-window:
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.
CHAPTER XXIX
DAUNT LISTENS TO A SONG
The day had dawned sultry, with a promise of summer humidity, and Daunt
was not surprised to find the barometer performing intemperate antics.
"Confound it!" he muttered irritably, as he dressed. "If it was a month
later, one would think there was a typhoon waltzing around somewhere in
the China Sea."
That morning had seen his first trial of his new fan-propeller, and
the Glider's action had surpassed his wildest expectation. The flight,
of which Barbara had caught a glimpse from Thorn's garden, had been a
longer one than usual--quite twelve miles against a sluggish upper
current--but even that failed to bring its customary glow. Thereafter
he had spent a long morning immersed in the work of the Chancery: the
study of a disputed mining concession in Manchuria; a report on a
contemplated issue of government bonds; a demand for a passport by a
self-alleged national with a foreign accent and a paucity of
naturalization papers; the daily budget of translations from
vernacular newspapers, by which a home government gains a bird's-eye
view of comment and public opinion in far-away capitals. The Chancery
was a pleasant nest of rooms opening into one another. Through its
windows stole the smell of the garden blossoms, and across the
compound wall sounded the shrill ventriloquistic notes of peddlers, the
brazen chorus of a marching squad of buglers, or the warning "_Hek!
Hek!_" of a flying _rick'sha_. The main room was cool, furnished with
plain desks and filing cabinets. Against one wall yawned a huge safe in
which were kept the code-books and records, and framed pictures of
former Chiefs of Mission hung on the walls. In the anteroom Japanese
clerks and messengers sat at small tables. The place was pervaded by the
click of type-writer keys, tinkling call-bells, and the various notes of
a busy office, and floating down from a stairway came the buzzing
monotone of a Student Interpreter in his mid-year oral examinations
under the Japanese secretary.
But to-day Daunt could not exorcise with the mass of detail the leering
imps that plagued him. They peered at him over the edge of the
code-books and whispered from the margins of decorous despatches,
chuckling satirically.
"Barbara!" they sneered. "Mere acquaintances often name steam-yachts for
girls, don't they! Arrived the same day as her ship, eh? Rather singular
coincidence! What a flush she had when Voynich spoke of Phil's brother
last night at the tea-house. Angry? Of course she was! What engaged girl
likes to have the fact paraded--especially when she's practising on
another man? And how about the telegram? How long have you known her, by
the way? Two days? Really, now!"
The weekly governmental pouch had closed at noon, and pouch-days were
half-holidays, but Daunt did not go to the Embassy. An official letter
had arrived from Washington which must be delivered in Kamakura. Daunt
seized this excuse, plunged ferociously into tweeds and an hour
afterward found himself in a railway carriage thudding gloomily toward
the lower bay. In his heart he knew that he was trying to run away--from
something that nevertheless traveled with him.
The sky was palely blue, without a cloud, but the bay, where the rails
skirted it, was heaving in long swells of oily amethyst like a vast
carpet shaken at a distance in irregular undulations, on which _junk_
with flapping, windless sails, of the deep gold color of old straw,
tumbled like ungainly sea-spiders. The western hills looked misty and
uncertain, and Fuji was wrapped in a wraith-like mist into which its
glimmering profile disappeared.
At a way-station a coolie with a huge tray piled with neat, flat, wooden
boxes passed the window calling "_Ben-to! Ben-to!_" It reminded Daunt
that he had had no luncheon, and he bought one. He had long ago
accustomed himself to Japanese food and liked it, but to-day the two
shallow sections inspired no appetite. The half which held the rice he
viciously threw out of the window and unrolling the fresh-cut
chop-sticks from their paper square, rummaged discontentedly among the
contents of the other: dried cuttlefish, bean-curd, slices of boiled
lily-bulb, cinnamon-sticks, lotos stems and a coil of edible seaweed,
all wrapped in green leaves. In the end, the _mélange_ followed the
rice.
At Kamakura an immediate answer to the letter he brought was not
forthcoming, and to kill the time he strolled far down the curved beach.
The usual breeze was lacking. A haze as fine as gossamer had drawn
itself over the sky, and through it gulls were calling plaintively. Here
and there on the sea-wall women were spreading fish-nets, and along the
causeway trudged blue-legged peasant-women, their backs bent beneath
huge loads of brushwood. In one place a bronze-faced fisherman in a
fantastic _kimono_ on which was painted sea-monsters and hobgoblins in
crimson and orange, seated on the gunwale of his _sampan_ drawn above
the shingle, watched a little girl who, with clothing clutched
thigh-high, was skipping the frothy ripples as if they were ropes of
foam. A mile from the town he met a regiment of small school-boys, in
indigo-blue and white _kimono_, marching two and two like miniature
soldiers, a teacher in European dress at either end of the line--future
Oyamas, Togos and Kurokis in embryo.
They were coming from Enoshima, the hill-island that rises in the bay
like an emerald St. Michael, where in a rocky cave, looking seaward,
dwells holy Ben-ten, the Buddhist Goddess of Love. Daunt could see its
masses of dark green foliage with their pink veinings of cherry-trees,
and the crawling line of board-walk, perched on piling, which gave
access from the mainland when the tide was in. On its height, if
anywhere, would be coolness. He filled his pipe and set off toward it
along the sultry sand. The hot dazzle of the sun was in his face. There
was no movement in the crisp leaves of the bamboo trees and the damp
heat beat up stiflingly from the gray glare. Somewhere in the air,
stirless and humid, there rested a faint, weedy smell like a steaming
sea-growth in a tidal ooze.
Daunt's pipe sputtered feebly, and, girding at the heat, he hurled it at
a handful of blue ducks that plashed tiredly in the gray-green heave,
and watched them dive, to reappear far away, like bobbing corks. He
wished he could as easily scatter the blue-devils that dogged him.
He drew a sigh of relief as he reached the long elevated board-walk and
shook the sand from his shoes. Underneath its shore-end a fisherman sat
in the stern of a boat fishing with cormorants. A row of the solemn
birds sat on a pole projecting over the water, each tethered by a string
whose end was tied to the man's wrist. They seemed to be asleep, but now
and then one would plunge like a diver, to reappear with a fish
wriggling in its beak. Daunt watched them listlessly a moment, then,
passing beneath a great bronze _torii_, he slowly climbed the single
shaded street that staggered up the hill between the multitudes of gay
little shops running over with colored sea-shells, with grotesque
lanterns made of inflated fish-skins, with carved crystal and pink and
white coral--up and up, by old, old flights of mossy steps, under more
ancient trees, by green monuments and lichen-stippled Buddhas, till the
sea below crawled like a wrinkled counterpane. Daunt knew a tea-house on
the very lip of the cliff, the _Kinki-ro_--"Inn of the Golden
Turtle"--and he bent his steps lazily in its direction.
In the heavy heat the low tile roof looked cool and inviting. Tall
soft-eyed iris were standing in its garden overlooking the water, and
against the green their velvety leaves made vivid splashes of golden
blue. On a dead tree two black crows were quarreling and cherry-petals
powdered the paths like pink hail. The haze, sifting from the sky,
seemed to wrap everything in a vast, shimmering veil. At the hedge he
paused an instant. Some one, somewhere, was humming, low-voiced, an air
that he had once loved. He pushed open the gate and went on into the
tremulous radiance. Then he stopped short.
Barbara was seated above him in the fork of a low camelia tree, one arm
laid out along a branch, her green gown blending with a bamboo thicket
behind her and her vivid face framed in the blossoms. She sat, chin in
hand, looking dreamily out across the bay, and the hummed song had a
rhythm that seemed to fit her thought--slow and infinitely tender.
"You!" he cried.
She turned with a startled movement that dissolved into low, delicious
laughter.
"Fairly caught," she answered. "I don't often revert far enough to climb
trees, but I thought no one but Haru and I was here. Will you come and
help me down, Honorable Fly-man?"
"Wait--" he said. "What was the song you were humming?"
She looked at him with a quick intake of breath, then for answer began
to sing, in a voice that presently became scarce more than a whisper:
"Forgotten you? Well, if forgetting
Be hearing all the day
Your voice through all the strange babble
Of voices grave, now gay--
If counting each moment with longing
Till the one when I see you again,
If this be forgetting, you're right, dear!
And I have forgotten you then!"
Daunt's hand fell to his side. A young girl's face nested in creamy,
pink blossoms--a sweet, shy, flushed face under a mass of curling,
gold-bronze hair. "I remember now!" he said in a low voice. "I ... sang
it to you ... that day!"
"I am flattered!" she exclaimed. "The day before yesterday you had
forgotten that you ever saw poor little me! It was Mrs. Claybourne, of
course, that you sang to! Yet you were my idol for a long month and a
day!"
"It was to _you_," he said unsteadily. "I didn't know your name. But I
never forgot the song. I remembered it that night in the garden, when I
first heard you playing!"
CHAPTER XXX
THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT
They walked together around the curving road, leaving Haru with the
tea-basket. "Patsy would have come," Barbara had said, "but she is in
the clutches of her dressmaker." And Daunt had answered, "I have a
distinct regard for that Chinaman!"
His black mood had vanished, and the leering imps had flown. In the
brightness of her physical presence, how baseless and foolish seemed his
sullen imaginings! What man who owned a steam yacht, knowing her, would
not wish to name it the _Barbara_? Walking beside her, so near that he
could feel the touch of her light skirt against his ankles, it seemed
impossible that he should ever again be other than light-hearted. She
was no acquaintance of hours, after all. He had known her for seven
years. He was in wild spirits.
The sky was duller now. Its marvelous haze of blue and gold had turned
pallid, and the sun glared with a pale, yellowish effrontery. A strange
sighing was in the air, so faint, however, that it seemed only the
stirring of innumerable leaves, the resinous rasping of pine-needles and
the lisping fall of the flaming petals from the century-old camelia
trees, that stained the ground with hot, bleeding red. Far below in the
shallow pools, nut-brown, bare-legged girls were gathering seaweed in
hand-nets, _kimono_ tucked beneath their belts and scarlet petticoats
falling to their knees, like a flock of brilliant flamingos. At a turn
in the road stood a stone image of Jizo, with a red paper bib about its
neck. Before it lay three small rice-cakes; somewhere in the
neighborhood was a little sick child, three years old. At its base were
heaps of tiny stones, piled by mothers whose little children had died.
They stopped at a tea-house open on all sides, and, sitting cross-legged
on its _tatamé_, drank tea from earthenware pots that held only a small
cupful, while they listened to a street minstrel beating on a tom-tom,
and singing a mysterious song that seemed about to choke him. They fed a
crisp rice-cake to a baby sagging from an urchin's shoulder. A doll was
strapped to the baby's back. They peered into a Buddhist temple where a
monotonous chant came from behind a blue-figured curtain. They went,
laughing like two children, down the zigzag stone steps, past
innumerable _uomitei_--crimson-benched "resting-houses," where grave
Japanese pedestrians sat eating stewed eels and chipping hard-boiled
eggs--to the rocky edge of the tide, which now rolled in with a
measured, sullen booming. He pointed to a gloomy fissure which ran into
the mountain, at a little distance.
"O Maiden, journeying to Holy Ben-ten," he said, "behold her shrine!"
"How disillusioning!"
"People find love so, sometimes."
She slowly shook her head. "Not all of them," she said softly. "I am
old-fashioned enough not to believe that." Her brown eyes were wistful
and a little troubled, and her voice was so adorable that he could have
gone on his knees to her.
"We will ask Ben-ten about it," he said.
"Oh, but not '_we!_'" she cried. "I must go alone. Don't you know the
legend? People quarrel if they go together."
"I can't imagine quarreling with you. I'd rather quarrel with myself."
"That would be difficult, wouldn't it?"
"Not in some of my moods. Ask my head-boy. To-day, for instance--"
"Well?" For he had paused.
"I was meditating self-destruction when I met you."
"By what interesting method, I wonder?"
"I was about to search for a volcano to jump into."
"I thought the nearest active crater is a hundred miles away."
"So it is, but I'm an absent-minded beggar."
She laughed. "May I ask what inspired to-day's suicidal mood?"
"It was--a telegram."
"Oh!" She colored faintly. "I--I hope it held no bad news."
He looked into her eyes. "I hope not," he said. Something else was on
his tongue, when "Look!" she exclaimed. "How strange the sea looks off
there!"
A sinister, whitish bank, like a mad drift of smoke, lay far off on the
water, and a tense, whistling hum came from the upper air. A drop of
water splashed on Daunt's wrist. "There's going to be a blow," he said.
"The seaweed gatherers are all coming in, too. Ben-ten will have to
wait, I'm afraid. See--even her High Priest is forsaking her!"
From where they stood steps were roughly hewn into the rock, winding
across the face of the cliff. Beside these, stone pillars were socketed,
carrying an iron chain that hung in rusted festoons. Along this
precarious pathway from the cavern an old man was hastily coming,
followed by a boy with a sagging bundle tied in a white cloth. "That
parcel, no doubt," said Daunt, "contains the day's offerings. Wait!
You're not going?" For she had started down the steps.
She had turned to answer, when, with the suddenness of an explosion, a
burst of wind fell on them like a flapping weight, spattering them with
drops that struck the rock as if hurled from a sling-full of melted
metal. Barbara had never in her life experienced anything like its
ferocity. It both startled and angered her, like a personal affront.
Daunt had sprung to her side and was shouting something. But the words
were indistinguishable; she shook her head and went on stubbornly,
clinging to the chain, a whirl of blown garments. She felt him grasp her
arm.
"Go back!" she shrieked. "It's--bad--luck!"
As he released her there came a second's menacing lull, and in it she
sprang down the steps and ran swiftly out along the pathway. He was
after her in an instant, overtaking her on a frail board trestle that
spanned a pool, where the cliff was perpendicular. Here the wind, shaggy
with spume, hurled them together. Daunt threw an arm about her, clinging
with the other hand to the wooden railing. Her hair was a reddish swirl
across his shoulder and her breath, panting against his throat, ridged
his skin with a creeping delight. The rocks beneath them, through whose
fissures tongues of water ran screaming, was the color of raspberries
and tawny with seaweed. There was only a weird, yellow half-light,
through which the gale howled and scuffled, like dragons fighting. A
slather of wave licked the palsied framework.
He bent and shouted into her ear. All she caught was: "Must--cave--next
lull--"
She nodded her head and her lips smiled at him through the confused
obscurity. A thrill swept her like silver rain. Pulse on pulse, an
emotion like fire and snow in one thrilled and chilled her. She closed
her eyes with a wild longing that the wind might last for ever, that
that moment, like the ecstasy of an opium dream, might draw itself out
to infinite length. Slowly she felt the breath of the tempest ebb about
them, then suddenly felt herself lifted from her feet, and her eyes
opened into Daunt's. Her cheek lay against his breast, as it had done in
that short moment in the Embassy garden. She could feel his heart bound
under the rough tweed. Once more the wind caught them, but he staggered
through it, and into the high, rock entrance of the cave.
Inside its dripping rim the sudden cessation of the wind seemed almost
uncanny, and the boom of the surf was a dull thunderous roar. He set her
on her feet on the damp rock and laughed wildly.
"Do you realize," she said, "that we have transgressed the most sacred
tenet of Ben-ten by coming here together? We are doomed to
misunderstanding!"
"Now that I recollect, that applies only to lovers," he answered. "Then
we--"
"Are quite safe," she quickly finished for him. "Come, I want to see the
shrine. We must find a candle."
He peered into the gloomy depths. "I think I see some burning," he said.
"We will explore."
A little way inside they came to a small well, with a dipper and a rack
of thin blue-and-white towels to cleanse the hands of worshipers. On a
square pedestal stood a stone Buddha, curiously incrusted by drippings
from the roof. Near it was a wooden booth, its front hung with pendents
of twisted rice-straw and strips of white paper folded in diagonal
notches. It held a number of tiny wooden _torii_ strung with lighted
candles, above each of which was nailed a paper prayer. A few copper
coins lay scattered beneath them. Daunt thrust two of the candles into
wooden holders and they slowly followed the narrowing fissure, guttered
by the feet of centuries, between square posts bearing carven texts, and
small images, coated with the spermy droppings from innumerable candles.
She held up her winking light toward his face. "What a desperate
absorption!" she said laughingly. "You haven't said a thing for five
minutes."
"I'm thinking we had better explain at once to Ben-ten that we're not
lovers. Otherwise we may get the penalty. Perhaps we'd better just tell
her it was an accident, and let it go at that? What do you think?"
"That might be the simplest."
"All right then, I'll say 'Ben-ten, dear, she wanted to come alone; she
really did! We didn't intend it at all. So be a nice, gracious goddess
and don't make her quarrel with me!'"
"What do you suppose she will answer?"
"She will say: 'Young man, in the same circumstances, I should have done
exactly the same myself.'"
The passage had grown so low that they had to bend their heads, then all
at once it widened into a concave chamber. The cannonading of the wind
rumbled fainter and fainter. He took her hand and drew her forward.
"There is Ben-ten," he said.
The Goddess of Love sat in a barred cleft of the rock, enshrined in a
dull, gold silence. Beads of moisture spangled her robe, glistening like
brilliants through the mossy darkness. "Poor deity!" said Barbara. "To
have to live for ever in a sea-cavern! It's a clammy idea, isn't it?"
"That's--" He paused. "I could make a terrible pun, but I won't."
"One shouldn't joke about love," she said.
"Have _you_ discovered that too?"
She gazed at him strangely, without answering. In the wan light his face
looked pale. Her unresisting fingers still lay in his; he felt their
touch like a breath of fire through all his veins. Her eyes sparkled
back the eery witch-glow of the candle-flames. "You are a green-golden
gnome-girl!" he said unsteadily. "And I am under a spell."
"Yes, yes," she said. "I am Rumptydudget's daughter! I have only to wave
my candlestick--so!--to turn you into a stalagmite!"
She suited the action to the word--and dropped her candle, which was
instantly extinguished on the damp floor. Bending forward to retrieve
it, Daunt slipped. The arm he instinctively threw out to save himself
struck the wall and his own candle flew from its socket. As he regained
his footing, confused by the blank, enfolding darkness, he stumbled
against Barbara, and his face brushed hers. In another instant the touch
had thrilled into a kiss.
A moment she lay in his arms, passive, panting, her unkissed mouth
stinging with the burn of his lips. The world was a dense blackness,
shot with fire and full of pealing bells, and the beating of her heart
was a great wave of sound that throbbed like the iron-shod fury of the
seas.
"I love you, Barbara!" he said simply. "I love you!"
The stammering utterance pierced the swift, confused sweetness of that
first kiss like a lance of desperate gladness. Through the tumbling
passion of the words he poured into her heart, she could feel his hands
touching her face, her throat, her loosened hair.
"Barbara! Listen, dear! I must say it! It's stronger than I am--no,
don't push me away! Love me! You _must_ love me!
With her arms on his breast, she had made a movement to release herself.
"We are mad, I think!" she breathed.
"Then may we never be sane!"
"I--you have known me only two days! What--"
"Ah, no! I've known you all these years and have been loving you without
really knowing it. I made a woman out of my own fancy, that I dreamed
alive. In the long winter evenings when I worked at my models in the
little house in Aoyama, I used to see her face in my driftwood blaze and
talk to her. I called her my 'Lady of the Many-Colored Fires.' I never
thought she really existed, but that first night in the Embassy garden I
knew that my dream-woman was you!--_you_, Barbara!"
Her hands pushed him from her no more. They fell to trembling on his
breast. In the dense, salty obscurity, she turned her head sharply, to
feel again his lips on hers, her own molding to his kiss. She drooped,
swaying, stunned, breathless.
"Barbara, I love you!"
"No--not again. Light--the candle."
"Just a moment longer--here in the dark, with Ben-ten. It's fate,
darling! Why should I have been in Japan and not in Persia when you
came? Why did I happen to be there in the garden that night, at that
particular moment? Why, it was the purest accident that I came here
to-day! No--not accident. It was kismet! Barbara!"
"Make--a light. I--beg you!"
His lips were murmuring against her cheek. "Say 'I love you,' too!"
"I--can not. You ... you would hold me cheap ... I would be--I am!...
What? Yes, it was a tulip tree. I was sixteen.... Oh, you couldn't
have--why, you'd forgotten the whole thing! You had, you _had_!... Don't
hold me.... No, I don't care what you think!... Yes, I _do_ care!...
Yes, I--I ... This is perfectly shameless!... Dark? That makes it all
the worse. What will you ... No, no! You must not kiss me again! We must
go back!--I will go back...."
She freed herself, and he fumbled for his fallen candle. He struck a
match. The sputtering blue flame lit her white, languorous face, her
fallen hair, her heaving breast. It went out. He struck another and the
wick blazed up.
"Look at me, dear!" he said. "Tell me in the light. Will you marry me?"
"I can not answer--now."
"Why? Don't you love me?"
"I--in so short a time, how could I? Let us go now. I don't know
myself--nor--nor you!"
She was trembling, and he noted it with a pang of compunction.
"To-morrow, sweetheart? Will you give me my answer then?"
"Yes!" It was almost inaudible.
"At the Foreign Minister's ball to-morrow night? I'll come to you there,
dearest. I--"
He stopped. She had caught her hand to her throat with a wild gesture.
"Ben-ten! She--she is frowning at us! There--look there!"
"My poor darling!" he said. "You are nervous. See, it was only the
shadow! I ought not to have brought you into this dismal hole! You are
positively shivering."
"Let us hurry," she said, and they went quickly into the warmer air and
light of the entrance.
The squall had passed with the fateful swiftness of its coming. The
waves still gurgled and tumbled, but the fury of the wind was over. The
murk light had lifted, showing the wet sky a patchy drab, which again
was beginning to show glimpses of golden hue.
* * * * *
They walked back to Haru at the tea-house, beneath the wild, poignant
beauty of disheveled cryptomeria, echoing once more the eternal song of
the _semi_--along paths strewn with drenched petals and sweet with the
moist scents of sodden leaves--then together, down the steep, templed
hill and across the planked walk to the mainland, where a trolley buzzed
through the springing rice-fields, musical now with the _mé kayui_--_mé
kayui_ of the frogs. Daunt accompanied them to the through line of the
railway. From there he was to return to Kamakura for the answer to his
letter.
The sun was setting when the Tokyo express pulled into the station. As
Haru disappeared into the compartment, Daunt took Barbara's hand to help
her to the platform. There had been no other first-class passengers to
embark and the forward end of the asphalt was deserted. Her lovely,
flushed face was turned toward him, and there in the dusk of the
station, he bent swiftly and kissed her once more on the lips.
"Dearest, dearest!" he said behind his teeth, and turned quickly away.
In the car, as the train fled through the glory of the sunset, Barbara
closed her eyes, the longer to keep the impression of that eager gaze:
the lithe, muscular poise of the strong frame, the parted lips, the
brown hair curling under the peak of the cloth cap. She tried to imagine
him on his backward journey. Now the trolley had passed the rice-fields,
now he was striding along the shore road toward Kamakura, where the
great bronze Buddha was lifting its face of dreamless calm. Now,
perhaps, he was turning back toward the deepening blur of the green
island. She shivered a little as she remembered the frown that had
seemed to rest on the stony countenance of Ben-ten in her cave.
Her thought drifted into to-morrow, when she was to give him her answer.
Ah, she knew what that answer would be! She thought of the telegram of
the night before, which she had read in the candle-lighted street!
To-morrow Ware also was coming--for an answer! She knew what that would
be, too. She felt a sudden pity for him. Yet she knew now--what wisdom
she had gained in these two swift days!--that his was not the love that
most deserved it. Daunt's parting kiss clung to her lips like a living
flower. The hand he had clasped still burned to his touch; she lifted it
and held it against her hot face, while the darkening carriage seemed to
fill with the dank smell of salty wind and seaweed, mingled with his
voice:
"Barbara, I love you!--Dearest! Dearest!"
* * * * *
She thought the gesture unseen, unguessed by any one. But in the forward
car, beyond the glass vestibule door, which to her was only a trembling
mirror, a man sat watching with burning eyes. He had been gazing through
the window when the train stopped, had risen to his feet with instant
recognition--to shrink back into his seat, his fingers clenched, his
bitten lip indrawn, and a pallor on his face.
It was Austen Ware, and he had seen that kiss.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE COMING OF AUSTEN WARE
Dusk purpled over the rice-fields as the train sped on. Still the man
who had witnessed that farewell sat crouched in his seat in the forward
car, stirless and pallid.
From boyhood Austen Ware had trod a calculate path. Judicious,
masterful, possessed, he had gone through life with none of the
temptations that had lain in wait for his younger brother Phil. These
traits were linked to a certain incapacity for bad luck and an
unwearying tenaciousness of purpose. Seldom had any one seen his face
change color, had seldom seen his poise of glacial complacency shaken.
To-night, however, the oil lamps which glowed dully in the ceiling of
the carriage threw their faint light on a face torn with passion.
Barbara's beauty, whose perfect indifference no touch of sentimental
passion had devitalized, had, from the first, aroused Ware's stubborn
sense of conquest. He had been too wise to make missteps--had put ardor
into the background, while surrounding her with tactful and graceful
observances which unconsciously usurped a large place in her thought. In
the end he had broken down an instinctive disinclination and converted
it into liking.
But this was all. For the rest he had perforce been content to wait.
Thus matters had stood when they parted a few months ago. He recalled
the day he had sailed for Suez. Looking back across the widening water,
he had conceived then no possibility of ultimate failure. "How beautiful
she is!" he had said to himself. "She will marry me. She does not love
me, but she cares for no other man. She will marry me in Japan." There
had been nobody else then!
As he peered out into the glooming dusk all kinds of thoughts raced
through his mind. Who was the man? Was this the resurrection of an old
"affair" that he had never guessed? No, when he left her, Barbara had
been fancy free! It was either a "steamer acquaintance," or one come to
quick fruition on a romantic soil. He took out a cigar-case and struck a
match with shaking fingers. Had it even come to clandestine
_rendezvous_? She had gone one way, the man another! A whirl of rage
seized him: the slender metal snapped short off in the fierce wrench of
his fingers. He thrust the broken case into his pocket with a muttered
curse that sat strangely on his fastidious tongue.
Gradually, out of the wrack emerged his dominant impulse, caution. He
had many things to learn; he must find out how the land lay. He must
move slowly, reëstablish the old, easy, informal footing. Above all he
must lay himself open to no chance of a definite refusal. A plan began
to take shape. His telegram had told her he would arrive in Tokyo next
day. Meanwhile he would find out what Phil knew.
He left the train at Yokohama under cover of the crowd. In a half-hour
he was aboard his yacht. Two hours later he sat down to order his dinner
on the terrace of the hotel, cool, unruffled, immaculately groomed. The
place was brightly barred with the light from the tall dining-room
windows, and the small, round tables glowed with _andons_ whose
candle-light shone on men's conventional black-and-white, and women's
fluttering gowns. There was no wind--only the long, slow breath of the
bay that seemed sluggish with the scents of the tropical evening. A
hundred yards from the hotel front great floating wharves had been built
out into the water. They were gaily trimmed with bunting and electric
lights in geometrical designs. A series of arches flanked them, and
these were covered with twigs of ground pine. Ware had guessed these
decorations were for the European Squadron of Dreadnaughts, of whose
arrival to-day's newspapers had been full.
As he looked over the _menu_, a man sitting near-by rose and came to him
with outstretched hand. He was Commander DeKay, a naval _attaché_ whom
Ware had known in Europe. They had met again, a few days since, at
Kyoto. He hospitably insisted on the other's joining his own party of
five.
Ware was not gregarious, and to-night was in a sullen mood. But, with
his habitual policy, he thrust this beneath the surface and in another
moment was bowing to the introductions: Baroness Stroloff, her sister, a
chic young matron whose natural habitat seemed to be Paris; the
ubiquitous and popular Count Voynich, and a statuesque American girl,
whose name Ware recognized as that of a clever painter of Japanese
children. He looked well in evening dress, and his dark beard, thick
curling pompadour and handsome eyes added a something of distinction to
a well-set figure.
"So you have just arrived, Mr. Ware?" the Baroness said. "I hope you're
not one of those terrible two-days-in-Japan tourists who spoil all our
prices for us."
"I expect to stay a month or more," he said. "And as for prices, I shall
put up as good a battle as I can."
"You know," said the artist, with an air of imparting confidential
information, "everybody is scheduled in Tokyo. If you belong to an
Embassy you have to pay just so much more for everything. In the
Embassies, 'number-one-man' pays more than 'number-two-man,' and so on
down. You and I are lucky, Mr. Ware. We are not on the list, and can
fight it out on its merits."
"Belonging to the rankless file has its advantages in Japan, then."
"Not at official dinners, I assure you," interposed the Baroness' sister
with a shrug. "It means the bottom of the table, and sitting next below
the same student-interpreter nine times in the season. I have discovered
that I rank with, but not above, the dentist."
"You tempt me to enter the service--in the lowest grade," said Ware, and
the Baroness laughed and shook her fan at him reprovingly.
The sky above their heads was pricked out with pale stars, like
cat's-eye pins in a greenish-violet tapestry. Up and down the roadway
went shimmering _rick'sha_, and Japanese couples in light _kimono_
strolled along the bay's edge, under the bent pines, their low voices
mingled with the soft lapping of the tide. Now and then a bicycle would
pass swiftly, bare sandaled feet chasing its pedals, and _kimono_
sleeves flapping like great bats'-wings from its handle-bars; or a
flanneled English figure would stride along, with pipe and racquet, from
late tennis at the recreation-ground. From the corner came the cries of
romping children and the tapping staff and double flute-note of a blind
_masseur_.
The talk flew briskly hither and thither, skimming the froth of the
capital's _causerie_: recent additions to the official set, the splendid
new ball-room at the German Embassy, and the increasing importance of
Tokyo as a diplomatic center--the coming Imperial "Cherry-Viewing
Garden-Party," and the annual Palace duck-hunt at the _Shin-Hama_
preserve, where the game is caught, like butterflies, in scoop-nets--the
new ceremonial for Imperial audiences--whether a stabbing affray between
two Legation _bettos_ would end fatally, and whether the Turkish
Minister's gold dinner service was solid--and a little scandalous
surmise regarding the newest continental widow whose stay in Japan had
been long and her dinners anything but exclusive--a rumored engagement,
and--at last!--the arrival of the new beauty at the American Embassy.
"A _real one_!" commented Voynich, screwing his eye-glass in more
tightly. "And that means something in the tourist season."
Ware's fingers flattened on the stem of his glass of yellow chartreuse
as the artist said: "We are in the throes of a new sensation at present,
Mr. Ware; a case of love at first sight. It's really a lot rarer than
the novelists make out, you know! We are all tremendously interested."
"But he knows her," said Voynich. "The other evening in Tokyo, Mr. Ware,
Miss Fairfax mentioned having met you. She is from Virginia, I think."
Ware bowed. "She is very good to remember me," he said. "And so Miss
Fairfax has met her fate in Japan?"
"Well, rather!" said the artist. "I hear betting is even that she'll
accept him inside a fortnight."
Ware sipped his liqueur with a tinge of relief. Evidently the world of
Tokyo had not yet discovered that the new arrival's first name was that
of his yacht.
"Daunt doesn't play according to Hoyle," grumbled Voynich. "She's a
guest of his own chief and he ought to give the others half a chance. He
lives in the Embassy Compound, too, confound him! He monopolized her
outrageously at the Review the other day! He's an American 'trust.' I
shall challenge him."
The voice of DeKay broke in:
"Coppery hair and pansy-brown eyes, a skin like a snowdrift caught
blushing, and a mouth like the smile of a red flower! A girl that Romney
might have loved, slim and young and thoroughbred--there you have the
capital sentence of the Secretary of the American Embassy!"
Down the middle of the street came running a boy, bare-legged,
bareheaded and scantily clad. A bunch of jangling bells was tied to his
girdle, and his hands were full of what looked like small blue
hand-bills. DeKay got up quickly. "There's an evening extra," he said.
"It's the _Kokumin Shimbun_." He bolted down the steps, stopped the
runner and returned with one of the blue sheets.
He scanned it rapidly--he was a student of the vernacular. "Nothing
especial," he informed them. "Prices in Wall Street are smashing the
records. That looks like a clear political horizon, in spite of what the
wiseacres have been saying. This visit of the Squadron will prove a
useful poultice, no doubt, to reduce international inflammation--its
officers being shown the sights of the capital, and the celebrations to
come off as per schedule, including the Naval Minister's ball to-morrow
night. By the way," he added, turning to Ware, "I arranged for an
invitation for you. It's probably at the hotel in Tokyo now, awaiting
your arrival."
A little gleam came to Ware's eyes. The threads were in his hands, and
this suited his plan. "Thanks," he said; "you're very kind, Commander. I
shall see the subject of your rhapsody, then, before the Judge puts on
his black cap."
"Ah, but you'll have no chance," laughed the Baroness. "Trust a woman's
eye."
"Unless his aëroplane takes a tumble," said the American girl
reflectively. "There's always a chance for a tragedy there!"
They rose to depart. "We are actually going to the opera, Mr. Ware,"
said the Baroness; "the 'Popular Hardman Comic Opera Company,' if you
please, 'with Miss Cissy Clifford.' Doesn't that sound like Broadway? It
comes over every season from Shanghai, and it's our regular spring
dissipation. You'd not be tempted to join us, I suppose?"
He bowed over her hand. "It is my misfortune to have an engagement
here."
"Well, then--_jusqu'au bal_. Good night."
* * * * *
Ware drank his black coffee alone on the terrace. Daunt--a Secretary of
Embassy! A rival less experienced than he, full of youth's
enthusiasms--a young Romeo, wooing from the garden of officialdom! It
had been a handful of days against his own round year; a few meetings,
at most, to offset his long and constant plan! And, as a result, the
thing he had seen through the car window. He shut his teeth. He would
have taken bitter toll of that kiss!
As he lit his cigar, one of the hotel boys came to him. On his arrival
Ware had sent him to Phil's bungalow on the Bluff with a note.
"Ware-_San_ not at home," he said.
"Where is he?"
"No Yokohama now. He go Tokyo yesterday. Stay one week."
"Is he at the hotel there?"
"Boy say no hotel. House have got."
"What is the address?"
"Boy no must tell. He say letter send Tokyo Club."
Ware's composure had been fiercely shaken that night and this obstacle
in his path pricked him to the point of exasperation. With impatience he
threw away his cigar and walked out through the cool, brilliant evening.
But the glittering pageant of the prismatic streets inspired only a
rising irritation. When a pedestrian jostled him, the elaborate bow of
apology and ceremonial drawing-in of breath met with only a morose
stare. He left the Bund and threaded the _Honcho-dori_--the "Main
Street"--striving to curb his mood. Midway of its length was a jeweler's
shop-window with a beautiful display of jewel-jade. In it was hung a
sign which he read with a wry smile: "English Spoken: American
Understood." Ware entered and handed the Japanese clerk his broken
cigar-case.
The counter was spread with irregular pieces of the green and pink
stone, wrought with all the laborious cunning of the oriental lapidary.
At his elbow a clerk was packing a jade bracelet into a tiny box for
delivery. He wrapped and addressed it painstakingly with a little
brush--
Esquire Philp Weare,
Kasumiga-tani Cho, 36.
Tokyo.
In the street Ware smiled grimly as he entered the address in his
note-book. He had always believed in his luck. To-morrow he would find
Phil, and gain further enlightenment--incidentally on the matter of jade
bracelets! His mouth set in contemptuous lines as he walked back to the
hotel.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE WOMAN OF SOREK
"And as to the foreigner named Philip Ware, that is all you know?"
"That is all, Ishida-_San_," Haru answered.
They stood in the cryptomeria shadows of Reinanzaka Hill, from which he
had stepped to her side as she came from the Embassy gate. It was dark,
for the moon was not yet risen, and the evening was very still. One
sleepy _semi_ bubbled in the foliage and in the narrow street at the
foot of the hill, with its glimmering _shoji_, she could hear the fairy
tinkle of wind bells in the eaves.
Such an ambush by her lover, unjustified, would have been a dire affront
to the girl's rigid Japanese code of decorum. That he had seen Phil
greet her at Mukojima the evening before had shamed her pride, and in
speaking of it to-night he had seemed at first to lay a rude finger on
her maiden dignity. But she had seen in an instant that his errand was
inspired by neither anger nor jealousy. He had touched at once her
instinct of the momentous.
Her quick, clever brain and finely attuned perception read what lay
beneath his questions. The great European expert whom Japan herself
employed, and the young foreigner who had pursued her--were they, then,
objects of question to that wonderful, many-sided governmental machine
which was lifting Japan into the front rank of modern nations? Although
she had never shared the disfavor with which her father viewed her
lover's duties, she had wondered at his present apparently menial
position. To-night she was gaining a quick glimpse beneath the surface.
He told her nothing of the details which, though he could not himself
have built a tangible indictment from them, had one by one clung
together into a sharp suspicion that embraced the two men. But the
agitation she felt in his words had sent a quick thrill through her, had
tapped that deep racial well of feeling, the _Yamato Damashii_, which is
the Japanese birthright. She felt a sudden passionate wish that she,
though a woman, might pour herself into the mighty stream of
effort--though she be but a whirling cherry-petal in the great wind of
her nation's destiny. He had come to her for any shred of information
that might add to his knowledge of the youth who was now Bersonin's
satellite. But she had been able to tell him nothing. She had often seen
the huge expert--his automobile had clanged past her that morning--but
till to-night she had not even known the other's name or where he lived.
"That is all, Ishida-_San_." It hurt her to say these words.
She bowed to his ceremonious farewell, a slim, misty figure that stood
listening to his rapid footsteps till they died in the darkness. She
walked up the dim slope with lagging pace. The steep road, always
deserted at night, had no sound of grating cart or whirring _rick'sha_,
but her paper lantern was unlighted and no song greeted the crow that
flapped his grating way above her head. She was thinking deeply.
At the top of the hill, opposite the huge, rivet-studded gate of the
Princess' compound, lay the lane on which the Chapel stood. An evening
service was in progress and the faint sound of the organ was borne to
her. As she turned into the darker shade she was aware of two
pedestrians coming toward her,--of a voice which she recognized with a
shiver of apprehension. The sentry-box by the great gate stood close at
hand. It was empty, and she stepped into it.
Doctor Bersonin and Phil paused at the turning, while the latter lit a
cigar from a match which he struck on the sentry-box. Haru's heart was
in her throat, but her dark _kimono_ blent with the wood and the flash
that showed her both faces blinded his eyes.
"See!" said the doctor. A mile away, from the low-lying darkness of
Hibiya Park, a stream of fireworks shot to the zenith, to explode
silently in clusters of colored balls. "The first rocket in honor of the
Squadron!"
"To-morrow the Admiral has an Imperial audience," said Phil, "and the
superior officers are to be decorated."
"So!" said the other in a low, malignant voice. "And I--who have
designed Japan's turrets and cheapened her arsenal processes--I may not
wear the Cordon and Star of the Rising-Sun!" In the darkness a smile of
malice crossed his face. "We shall see if she will hold her head so
high--_then_! Whether war follow or not, it will damn her in the eyes of
the nations! She will not recover her prestige in twenty years!"
They passed on down the dark slope, out of sight and hearing of the girl
crouched in a corner of the sentry-box. At the foot of the hill,
Bersonin said:
"It will take some days longer to finish my work, but the ships will
stay for a fortnight. To-morrow night I will mark the triangle on the
roof of the bungalow, so that the angle of the tripod will be exact.
There must be no bungling. You can go by an earlier train, so we shall
not be seen together, and I shall return here in time for the ball."
There was a fire in Haru's bosom as she went on along the thorn-hedges.
She had heard every word, and she said the English sentences over and
over to herself to fix them in her mind. What they had been talking of
was the secret that lay beneath Ishida's questions--for an instant she
had almost touched it. A feeling of deep pride rose in her. Japan was
not sleeping--it watched! And in the path of the plotting danger stood
her lover.
These two men hated Japan! War? They had used the word. Japan did not
fear war! Had not that been proven? Her heart swelled. But the thing
they were planning was her country's enduring humiliation, "whether war
follow or not!" She felt a sudden deep horror. Could such plots be and
their God--_her_ God now--not blast them with His thunder? And one of
these men had spoken with her, touched her, _kissed_ her! She struck
herself repeatedly and hard on the lips.
All at once she shivered. Might it be that in spite of all, such a black
design could succeed?
The Chapel was brilliantly lighted and the rose-window threw beautiful
tints, like shawls of many-colored gauze, over the shrubbery. She
entered and slipped into a seat near the door, burning with her
thoughts. The first evening service had brought a curious crowd and the
place was nearly filled. She rose for the singing and knelt for the
prayer mechanically, her delicate fingers twisting the little
white-enamel cross hanging from its thin gold chain on the bosom of her
_kimono_. Painful imaginings were running through her mind. The lesson
was being read: it was from the Old Testament, the modern, somewhat
colloquial translation.
This-after, Samson a Sorek Valley woman called Delilah did love.
Then the Princes of the Philistines the woman-to up-came,
saying:
As for you, by sweet discourse prevail that where his great
power is or by what means overcoming, to bind and torture him we
may be able ...
It seemed to her suddenly that a great wind filled all the Chapel and
that the words sat on it. Slowly her face whitened till it was the hue
of death.
_She_ might find out the secret!
And Delilah to Samson said: where your great power is or by what
means overcoming to bind and torture you one may be able, this
me tell.
She began to tremble in every limb. She, a _samurai's_ daughter? She
thought of her father, aged and broken, grieving that he had had no son
in the war. She had been but a useless girl-child, left to plant paper
prayers at the cross-roads for the brave men who longed to achieve a
glorious death. If she did this thing--would it not be for Japan?
And he at last-to his mind completely opened.
The woman's knees-upon Samson did sleep and she called a man who
of his head the seven locks cut off ... and the power of him was
lost.
If she did, would it avail? She remembered Phil's eyes on her face the
day on the sands at Kamakura--their smouldering, reckless glow. She
remembered the bamboo lane! In those daredevil kisses her woman's
instinct had divined the force of the attraction she exercised over
him--had felt it with contempt and a self-humiliation that burned her
like an acid. To use that for her purpose? But she was a Christian! From
the Christian God's "_Thou shalt not_" there was no appeal.
She remembered suddenly her last service at the Buddhist temple across
the lane, and how the old priest had bade her a gentle farewell, wishing
her peace and joy in her new religion, and saying smilingly that all
religions were augustly good, since they pointed the same way. She saw
the nunnery, with its tall clumps of yellow dahlias and wild hydrangeas;
above which hung gauzy robes that waved like gray ghosts escaping from
the mold into the sunshine. She saw the cherry-trees touched by the
golden summer light, the mossy monuments in the burying-ground, the
pigeons fluttering about the lichened pavement.
The audience was singing now--the Japanese version of _Jesus, Lover of
My Soul_:
_Waga tamashii wo
Ai suru Yesu yo,
Nami wa sakamaki,
Kaze fuki-arete._
She could no longer be a Christian!
But the old gods of her people shining from their golden altars--the
ancient divinities who looked for ever down above the sound of
prayer--they would smile upon her!
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE FLIGHT
For all save one, sleep came early that evening to the house in the
Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods. In her little room Haru lay as stirless as
a sleeping flower. There was no sound save the hushed accents of the
outer night that penetrated the wooden _amado_.
At length she rose, noiselessly slid the paper _shoji_, and with
infinite care, inch by inch, pushed back the shutters. The moon had
risen and a flood of moonlight came into the room. Stealthily she opened
a wall-closet and selected her best and gayest robe--a holiday _kimono_
of dim green, with lotos flowers, and an _obi_ of cloth-of-gold, with
chrysanthemums peeping from the weave. By the round mirror on her low
dressing-cabinet, she redressed the coiled ebony butterfly of her hair,
and set a red flower in it. She touched her face with the soft
rice-powder, and added a tint of carmine to the set paleness of her
cheeks. She wrapped in a _furoshiki_ some soberer street clothing,
toilet articles, and a mauve _kimono_ woven with silver camelias, set
the bundle by the opened _amado_ and noiselessly passed into the next
room.
It was the larger living-apartment. The tiny lamp which burned before
the golden shrine of Kwan-on on the Buddha-shelf cast a wan glimmer over
the spotless alcove, and threw a ghostly light on her finery. Through
the thin paper _shikiri_ she could hear her father's deep breathing, and
in the room in which he slept a little clock chimed eleven. She opened
the door of the shrine and stood looking at the tablet it held--the
_ihai_ of her mother. The _kaimyo_, or soul name, it bore signified
"Moon-Dawn-of-the-Mountain-of-Light-Dwelling-in-the-Mansion-of-Luminous-
Perfume." She rubbed her palms softly together before it and her lips
moved silently. From the golden shadows she seemed suddenly to feel her
mother's hand guiding her childish steps to that place of morning
worship, to see that loving face, as she remembered it, looking down on
her across the rim of years. She bent and passed her hand along the two
swords, one long, one short, that rested on their lacquered rack beneath
the shelf--it was her farewell to her father.
She had left no message. She could tell no one. If she succeeded, she
would have done her part. If she failed--there was only a blank darkness
in that thought. But she had no agitation now--only a dull ache.
In her own room she took a book from a drawer and slipped it into her
sleeve, caught up the _furoshiki_, stepped noiselessly to the outer
porch and carefully closed the _amado_ behind her.
She walked swiftly back to the empty Chapel. The great glass window that
had seemed so beautiful with the light behind it, was now dark and
opaque and dead. Only the cross above the roof in the moonlight looked
as white as snow. She drew the book from her sleeve. It was her Bible,
with her name on the fly-leaf. She unhooked the gold chain about her
neck and slipped off the little enamel cross. She put this between the
leaves of the Bible and laid it on the doorstep.
A half-hour later she stood before a wistaria-roofed gate in
_Kasumiga-tani Cho_--the "Street-of-the-Misty-Valley"--near Aoyama
parade-ground. The glass lantern above it threw a dim light on a gravel
path twisting through low shrubbery. Down the street she could hear a
dozen students chanting the marching song of Hirosé Chusa, the young war
hero:
"Though the body die, the spirit dies not.
He who wished to be reborn
Seven times into this world,
For the sake of serving his country,
For the sake of requiting the Imperial Favor--
Has he really died?"
Haru opened the gate. Cherry-petals were sifting down like rosy
snowflakes over the scarlet trembling of _nanten_ bushes. A little way
inside was a graceful house entrance half-shaded by a trailing vine. The
_amado_ were not closed, the _shoji_ were brilliantly lighted.
With a little sob she unfastened the golden _obi_, rewound and tied it
with the knot in front.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ON THE KNEES OF DELILAH
The room where Phil sat was softly bright with _andon_, through whose
thin paper sides the candle-light filtered tranquilly.
It had been furnished in a plain, half-foreign fashion; a book-rack and
a French mahogany desk sat in a corner, an ormolu clock ticked on its
top, and beside it was a lounge piled with volumes from the shelves. On
a bracket sat three small carvings in dark wood, replicas of the famous
monkeys of the great Jingoro the Left-Handed, preserved in Iyeyasu
temple at Nikko. With their paws one covered his eyes, another his ears,
the third his mouth, representing the "I see not--I hear not--I tell
not" of the ancient wisdom.
The place, however, to which these had given a suggestion of quaint and
extraordinary art, was now touched with a certain tawdriness. It would
have affected a Japanese almost to nausea. The severity of beauty of its
etched and paneled walls, the plain elegance of its satinwood fittings,
were cheapened with a veneer of vulgarity. A row of picture postcards in
colors was pinned on the wall--the sort the tourist buys for ten _sen_
on the Ginza, too highly tinted and with much meretricious gilding--and
a photograph hung in a silver-gilt frame of interlocked dragons. It
showed a girl in abbreviated skirts and exaggerated posture; on the
mount was printed: "Miss Cissy Clifford in _Gay Paree_." The air was
full of the sickly-sweetish smell of Turkish cigarettes. The desk was a
confusion of pipes, ivory _nets'ke_, cigarette-boxes and what not, and a
man's cloth cap and a gauntlet were tossed in a corner, beside an open
gold-lacquer box heaped with gloves.
Phil, however, felt no qualm. The room fitted him as a scabbard fits its
sword. He had discarded his heavier outer clothing and donned a loose,
wide-sleeved robe of cool silk, tied with a crimson cord.
"Give me the whisky-and-soda," he said to the grizzled servant, in the
vernacular, "and I shan't want you again to-night."
The bottle the Japanese left at his elbow was becoming Phil's constant
comforter. Alone with his thoughts, he fled to it as the _hashish_ eater
to his drug, because it banished his dread and bolstered the courage
that he longed for. To-night, as he sat with the intoxication creeping
like dull fire in his blood, he was thinking of Haru, with her soft
smooth skin, her perfect neck, her lithe, graceful limbs, her eyes that
held caught laughter like moss in amber.
His thought broke off. He had heard a sound outside. It seemed to be a
light tapping on the grill of the outer door. Could it be Bersonin? Had
anything gone wrong? He went hastily into the anteroom and opened the
grill.
For an instant he stared unbelievingly at the figure standing there, the
gay _kimono_, the rouged cheeks, the sparkling eyes. He took a step
forward.
"Haru! Is it really you, little girl?" he cried.
She laughed--a high, clear, flute-like note. "Such an astonish!" she
said. "You not know my _mus'_ come ... after ... after those kiss? Can I
not to come in, Phil-lip?"
With a laugh that echoed her own--but one of ringing triumph--he caught
her hand, drew her into the lighted room and closed the _shoji_. His
look flamed over her.
"I couldn't believe my eyes!" he cried. "I don't half believe them yet!
Why, your hands are as cold as ice. We'll have a drink, eh!"
He went into an outer room, came back with a bottle of champagne and
knocked off its neck against the mantel.
"Yes, yes!" she said. "My mus' drink--so to be gay, Phil-lip!" She drank
the bubbling liquor at a draft. "What are the use of to be good? _Né?_"
"You're right, little girl! The pious people are the dull ones!" He came
to her unsteadily--he had noticed the reversed _obi_. "So you'll train
with me, eh? Well, we'll show them a trick or two! How would you like to
have plenty of money, Haru--as much as you can count on a _soroban_?
Would you think a lot more of me if I got it for you?"
"You so--much clever!" she laughed. "No all same Japan man. He ve-ree
stupid! My think you mos' bes' clever man in these whole worl', to goin'
find so much money--_né?_"
With a savage elation he drew her close in his arms. The great spiral of
her headdress drooped under his caresses, and the blue-black hair fell
all about the white face.
CHAPTER XXXV
WHEN A WOMAN DREAMS
Riding with Patricia in the big victoria next day, its red-striped
runner diving ahead, Barbara forgot her vague wonder at Haru's
disappearance, as she felt the enchanted mystery of Tokyo creep further
into her heart. They threaded the softly dreaming silence of the
willow-bordered moat that clasps the Imperial grounds with a girdle of
cloudy emerald, where the "Dragon Pines" of the great _Shogun Iyemits_
fling their craggy masses of olive-green down over the leaning walls to
kiss the mirroring water--past many-roofed, Tartar-like watch-towers,
cream-white on the blue, and through little parks with forests of thin
straight-boled trees and placid lotos ponds seething with the
dagger-blue flashings of dragon-flies, all woven together into a
tapestry, lovely, remote, fantastic--like the projection of some
dream-legend whose people lived a fairy story in a picture-book world.
On this oriental background continually appeared quaint touches of the
foreign and bizarre: a huge American straw hat, much befrilled and
befeathered, on the head of a baby strapped to its mother's back, or a
hideous boa of chenille like bunched caterpillars marring the delicate
native neckwear of an exquisite _kimono_.
On the slope of a hill they came on a motley crowd, which included a
sprinkling of foreigners, gathered before the entrance of a temple yard,
where a rough, improvised amphitheater had been erected. Patricia called
to the driver, and he pulled up.
"Fire-walk," said the _betto_. "Ontaké temple."
From their elevated seat they could see white-robed and barefooted
priests waving long-handled fans and wands topped with shaggy paper
tassels over an area of red-hot cinders. Presently some of them strode
calmly across the smoking mass.
"They call that the 'Miracle of Kudan Hill,'" said Patricia. "They are
making incantations to the god of water to come and drive out the god of
fire. It's a _Shinto_ rite."
A laugh rose from the spectators. The High Priest was inviting the
foreigners to attempt the ordeal.
"Look!" said Patricia. "There is the man who got the free lecture out of
your uncle on the train--the man with the white waistcoat and the red
beard. And there's 'Martha,' too. I do believe she's going to try it!"
She was. Undeterred by the misgivings of the rest, the lady of the
painted muslin calmly divested herself of shoes and stockings and
marched across and back again. "There!" she said triumphantly. "I said I
would, and I _did_! It may be a miracle, but my feet are simply
_frying_!"
The carriage rolled on across a section of busy trade. From a side
street came the brassy blare of a phonograph.
"What a baffling combination it is!" said Barbara. "Last night some of
those people were at Mukojima, listening to dead little drums and
squealing fifes, and to-night here is Damrosch and the _Intermezzo_."
"The other day when I passed," said Patricia, "it was _Waltz Me Around
Again, Willie_, and forty children were prancing to it. Martha's husband
is 'in' phonographs, by the way. She told me all about it at the Review.
He's making a set of Japanese records--_geisha_ songs and native
orchestra pieces and even street-noises--to copyright at home."
Presently the horses stopped before a great gate of unpainted cedar,
roofed with black and white tiles and bossed with nails of hammered
copper. Above it two pine-trees writhed like a Doré print. "One of the
Empress' ladies-in-waiting lives here," Patricia said. "I'll walk home
and on the way I can leave some 'call-tickets'--Tucker's name for
visiting-cards. Give my love to the bishop."
She looked wistfully after Barbara as the latter bowled away toward
Ts'kiji and her uncle's. Under her flyaway spirits Patricia had the
warmest little heart in the world, loyal to its last beat to those she
liked. Daunt was decidedly in this category. Like the rest, she had been
weaving a cheerful little romance for these two friends. Since the
evening at the Cherry-Moon, however, when the newly arrived yacht had
been talked of, she had had misgivings. Yesterday, too, Barbara, while
confiding nothing, had told her of Austen Ware's coming. Patricia walked
up the driveway slowly and with a puzzled frown.
But the girl driving on under cherry-stained sky and cherry-scented
winds, knew, that one hour, no problems. She was full of the flame and
pulse of youth, of a new nascent tenderness and a warm sense of loving
all the world. She asked herself if she could really be the poised,
self-contained girl who a few weeks ago sailed for the Orient. Some
magic alchemy had transmuted all her elements. New emotions dominated
her, and through the beauty before her gaze went flashing more beautiful
thoughts that linked with the future.
In her pocket was a letter. It had been brought to her that morning when
she woke and she had read it over and over, kneeling in the drift of
pillows, her red-gold hair draping her white shoulders, thrilling,
murmuring little inarticulate answers to its phrases, looking up now and
then to peer through the bamboo _sudaré_ to the white and green cottage
across the lawn. He would not see her to-day--until evening. Then he
would ask her....
As the carriage bore her on, she whispered again and again one of the
sentences he had written: "There has never been another woman to me,
Barbara. There never will be! My Lady of the Many-Colored Fires!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
BEHIND THE SHIKIRI
Mr. Y. Nakajima, the almond-eyed guide of gold-filled teeth, came to the
end of his elaborate conversation. He turned from the old servant,
leaning on his pruning knife, and spoke to the man who stood waiting
outside the wistaria-gate in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley.
"He say Mr. Philip Ware stay here," he announced, "but house is
ownerships of his friend, Mr. Daunt, of America Embassy. He regret sadly
that no one are not at home."
Ware reflected. Daunt's house? He lived in the Embassy compound--so they
had said at dinner last night. Why should he maintain this native house
in another quarter of Tokyo? There came to his mind that hackneyed
phrase "the custom of the country," the foreigner's specious
justification of the modern "Madame Butterfly." In this interminable
city, with its labyrinthine mazes, who could tell what this or that gray
roof might shelter? Was this a nook enisled, for pretty Japanese
romances "under the rose"? He had loaned it to Phil--they were friends.
Ware struck his stick hard against the hedge. He scarcely knew what
thought had entered his mind, so nebulous was it, so indefinable. If he
had thought to use this discovery, he knew no way; if it was Daunt's
covert, here was Phil in possession.
"Ask him if he has any idea where he is."
The guide translated. The servant was ignobly unacquainted, as yet, with
the _danna-San's_ illustrious habits. He arrogantly presumed to suggest
that he might augustly be in any one of a hundred esteemed spots.
Ware thought a moment, frowningly. "Tell him I am Ware-_San's_ brother,"
he said then, "and that I have just arrived in Tokyo. I shall wait in
the house till he comes."
The old man bowed profoundly at the statement of the relationship. He
spoke at some length to the guide. The latter looked at Ware
questioningly but hesitated.
"Well?" asked the other tartly.
"He think better please you wait to the hotel."
Ware struck open the gate with a flare of irritation. "You can go now,"
he said to the guide, and disdaining the servant, strode along the
gravel path to the house entrance.
The old man looked after him with an enigmatic Japanese smile. It was
not his fault if the foreigners (the _kappa_ devour them!) ate dead
beasts and were all quite mad! He tucked up his _kimono_, stacked his
gardening-tools neatly under the hedge, and betook himself across the
street for a smoke and a game of _Go_ with the neighbor's _betto_.
Under the trailing vine Ware slid back the _shoji_ and entered the
house.
As he stood looking at the interior his lip curled. He hated the
cheapness and vulgarity to which Phil turned with instinctive liking,
and he had long ago come thoroughly to despise his younger brother and
to relish the whip-hand which the law, with its guardianship, gave him.
The place fitted Phil, from the cigarette odor to the loud photograph in
the dragon-frame and the partly open wall-closet with its significant
array of bottles. It expressed his idea of "a good time!"
He slid open a _shikiri_. It showed a room, evidently unused, littered
with tools, a dusty table with models of curious wing-like propellers, a
small electric dynamo and a steel-lathe. He opened another, and stood
looking at the room it disclosed with a faint smile. It was scrupulously
clean and orderly, and, in contrast to the outer apartment, had an
atmosphere of delicate refinement. On the wall hung a tiny gilt image of
Kwan-on and below it on an improvised shelf an incense rod was burning
with a clean, pungent odor. At one side was suspended a mosquito-bar of
dark green gauze, and across a low stool was laid a _kimono_, with
silver camelias on a mauve ground. He picked this up and looked at it
curiously, half conscious of a faint perfume that clung to it.
He shut his teeth. The camelia had always been Barbara's favorite
flower!
* * * * *
Meanwhile the girl thus incongruously in his thought had felt a
gray shadow across her sunshine. She found her uncle greatly
perplexed and troubled. Haru's Bible, found on the Chapel doorstep,
had been brought to him that morning. He had sent at once to the
Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods and the messenger had returned with news of
her disappearance. The fact that she had taken clothing with her showed
that the flight was a deliberate one.
It pained him to think what the return of the book and the little cross
might mean. In his long residence in Japan the bishop had grown
accustomed to strange _dénouements_, to flashing revelations of subtle
deeps in oriental character. But save for one instance of many years
ago--which the sight of Barbara must always recall to him--he had never
been more saddened than by to-day's disclosure. What he told her had
left Barbara with an uneasy apprehension. She drove away pondering. The
anxious speculation blurred the glamour of the afternoon.
The homeward course took her through Aoyama, by unfrequented streets of
pleasant, suburban-like gardens and small houses with roofs of fluted
tile as softly gray as silk. Here and there a bean-curd peddler droned
his cry of "_To-o-fu! To-o-fu-u!_" and under a spreading _kiri_ tree a
blind beggar squatted, playing a flute through his nostrils, while his
wife, also blind and with a beady-eyed baby strapped to her back,
twanged a _samisen_ beside him. In the road groups of little girls were
playing games with much clapping of hands and shouting in shrill voices.
In one of the cross-streets a dozen coolies strode, carrying flaming
white banners painted in red idiographs. The last bore a huge
_papier-maché_ bottle--an advertisement of a popular brand of beer. A
brass band of four pieces, discoursing hideously tuneless sounds, led
them, and between band and banners stalked a grotesquely clad figure on
stilts ten feet tall, the shafts pantalooned so that his legs seemed to
have been drawn out like India-rubber. The spidery pedestrian was
followed by a score of staring children of all ages and sizes.
Suddenly Barbara rose to her feet in the carriage. She had seen a girl
emerge from a small temple and turn into a side street.
"Fast! Drive fast, Taka," she called quickly. "The street to the left!"
He obeyed, but a _soba-ya_ had halted his shining copper cart of
steaming buckwheat, and momentarily delayed them.
The hastening figure was farther away when they rounded the turning.
Barbara clasped her hands together. "It _was_ Haru! It _was_ Haru! I am
_sure_!" she whispered.
The girl slipped through a gateway hung with wistaria. As Barbara sprang
to the ground she was hurrying through the garden.
"Haru!" But the flying figure did not seem to hear the call.
Barbara ran quickly after her along the gravel path.
* * * * *
In the house, Austen Ware, standing with the _kimono_ in his hand, had
heard the rumble of carriage wheels. He had left the outer _shoji_ open,
and through the aperture he saw the slim form hastening toward the
doorway. An exclamation broke from his lips. Behind her, just entering
the gate, was Barbara!
For a breath he stared. A cool, thriving suspicion--one bred of his
anger and humiliation, that shamed his manhood--ran through him.
Barbara, _there_? Was it another _rendezvous_, then? The fierce,
self-dishonoring doubt merged into the mad jealousy that already burned
him like a brand.
He dropped the _kimono_, drew back the _shikiri_ of the unused
apartment, and stepped inside.
Swiftly and noiselessly the light partition slipped into place behind
him.
CHAPTER XXXVII
[Japanese: Donto]
Through the thin paper pane, parted by his moistened finger, Ware's hot,
hollow eyes saw the Japanese girl come into the room. She had not waited
to shut the _shoji_ behind her. She drew quick sobbing breaths and her
eyes had the desperate look of a hunted animal. She ran into the
sleeping apartment and closed its _shikiri_.
Barbara had halted at the doorway. As she stood looking in, her eyes
fell on the mauve _kimono_ with its silver camelias. It was the robe
Haru had worn the first evening she came to her. If she had doubted, all
doubt was now gone. An instant she hesitated, then, with sudden
resolution, knocked on the grill and stepped across the threshold.
The man who watched could not solve the puzzle, but in that instant the
sick suspicion he had harbored became a cold and lifeless thing in his
breast. A sense of shame rushed through him as he saw her gaze wander
about the interior with its veneer of the foreign: to the disordered
desk--the lounge and its litter of books--the photograph on the
wall--the open panel with its champagne bottles. In her glance distaste
had grown to a quick question. The coarse suggestions of the place were
welling over her. Whose house was this? Had Haru seen her and was she
hiding from her?
Suddenly she saw the man's cap and gauntlet in the corner. Her cheeks
rushed into flame. She seemed to see Haru's innocent face smiling at her
over the throbbing _samisen_ and through its tones to hear again the
echo of a ribald laugh before the gilded cages of the Yoshiwara.
Something in her cried out against the inference. All at once she took
an abrupt step forward. She was looking at the round glass lantern just
outside the doorway, painted with three characters:
[Japanese: Donto]
She chilled as if ether had been poured in her veins. The name they
stood for had been her first lesson in Japanese--_which Haru had taught
her_! She snatched up one of the volumes from the chair. It was
Lillienthal's _Conquest of the Air_. She opened it to the title page.
Ware, watching, saw with surprise that she was trembling violently. She
had grown pale to the lips. The book slipped from her fingers and
crashed on to the _tatamé_. It lay there, open as she had held it, and
he saw what was written across the white leaf. It was Daunt's name.
His thought leaped as if at the flick of a lash. Daunt's book! What was
she thinking? The piteous pallor that swept her face like an icy wave
answered him. Why she was there--her interest in this Japanese girl who
fled from her--he could not guess. But it was clear that she had not
known the house was Daunt's, and that with the knowledge, she was face
to face with what must seem a damning complicity. Perhaps some hint of
this retreat had come to her--he knew how gossip feathered its
shafts!--some covert allusion, some laughing _oui-dire_, to which her
coming had now given such verity. Phil was the _deus ex machina_ of the
situation. His Japanese _amour_ she was now laying at Daunt's door! All
this flashed through his mind in an instant. He watched her intently.
Over Barbara was sweeping a hideous chaos of mocking voices, bits of
recollection barbed with agony. The little house near Aoyama
parade-ground--the carriage had passed the great empty plaza a few
moments ago--that he had kept from "sentiment"! The house she had asked
him to show her, when he had evaded the request. And Haru! A feeling of
physical anguish like that of death came to her; a dull pain was in her
temples and the floor seemed to be rising up with her toward the
ceiling. Daunt? He whose lips had lain on hers, whose letter was in her
bosom--it burned her flesh now like a live coal! "There has never been
another woman to me, Barbara. There never will be!" The words seemed to
launch themselves from the air, stinging like fiery javelins.
Behind the _shikiri_, a weird, malevolent clamor was shouting through
Ware's brain. He stood alone with his temptation. What had he to do with
Daunt, or with her belief in him? She had accepted his own advances,
beckoned him half around the world--for what? To discard him for this
man whom she had known but a handful of days! Chance had arranged this
_mise en scène_. Was he to tell her the truth--and lose her? The key to
the situation was in his hand. He had only to keep silence!
At that moment he felt crumble down in some crude gulf within the fabric
of his self-esteem--the high-built structure of years. Something colder,
formless and malignant, came to sit on its riven foundations. A savage
elation grew in him.
Suddenly a _shikiri_ was flung aside. Haru stood there, her face deathly
pale, her hands wrenching and tearing at her sleeves. She laughed, a
high, gasping, unnatural treble.
"So-o-o, _Ojo-San_! You come make visiting--_né_? The shrill voice rang
through the silent room. "My new house now, an' mos' bes' master. No
more Christian! My bad--oh, ve-ree bad Japan girl!" With another peal of
laughter she pointed to the knot of her _obi_. It was tied in front.
Barbara ran down the garden path as if pursued. She stepped into the
carriage blindly. The _Fox-Woman_! Votary of the Fox-God, at whose
candle-lighted shrine she had refused tribute!
This, then, was the end. It came to her like the striking of a great
bell. To-morrow the streets would lie as vivid in the sunlight, the
buglers would march as blithely, the bent pines would wave, the
lotos-pads in the moat glisten, the gorgeous _geisha_ flash by: she
alone would know that the sun had died in the blue heaven!
"Home, Taka," she said, and leaned back and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Behind her Haru's laughter had broken suddenly. She rushed into the
little sleeping-room and threw herself on the _tatamé_ before the tiny
image of Kwan-on, in a wild burst of sobbing.
Ware opened the _shikiri_ softly, and with noiseless step, passed out of
the house.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE LADY OF THE MANY-COLORED FIRES
The spacious residence of the Minister of Marine that night was a maze
of light. All social Tokyo would be at the ball in honor of the Admiral
and officers of the visiting Squadron.
It was late when Daunt turned his steps thither through the fragrant
evening. The deciphering of a voluminous telegram had kept him at the
Chancery till eleven.
All that day he had worked with a delicious exhilaration rioting in his
pulses. He had not seen Barbara, but her face had seemed always before
him--quiveringly passionate as he had seen it in Ben-ten's cave, hazed
with daring softness as it had turned to his on the steps of the railway
carriage. There had been moments when some aroma of the spring air made
him catch his breath, mindful of the crisp, sweet scent of her hair or
the maddening fragrance of her lips. He thought of "Big" Murray and his
letter, at which he had bridled--how long ago? He understood now what
the complacent old pirate had been talking about! He would have an
epistle to write him to-morrow in return! To-night he was to see her! In
fancy he could feel her slim hand on his sleeve as they danced--could
see himself sitting with her in some dusky alcove sweet with
plum-blossoms--could hear her say ...
A hoarse warning from a _betto_ and he sprang aside for a carriage that
dashed past through the gateway. He shook himself with a laugh and
walked on through the shrubbery. By day it was a place of mossy shadows,
of shrubberied red-lacquer bridges and glimmering cascades; now its
polished dwarf-pines and twisted cypresses gleamed with red paper
lanterns that hung like goblin fruit and quivered, monster misshapen
gold-fish, in the miniature lake. Along the drives stood policemen,
wearing white trousers and gloves. Each held a paper lantern painted
with the Minister's _mon_ or family crest. Farther on carriages became
thicker, till the approach was a crawling stream of gleaming black
enamel, sweating horses, crackling whips, and shouting _bettos_. Daunt
picked his way among these to where a wide swath of electric light
beneath the porte-cochère struck into high relief a strip of scarlet
carpet.
The interior was dressed with that marvelous attention to minutiæ and
artistic _ensemble_ that is characteristically Japanese. The great hall
was brilliant _opera bouffe_: a mingling crowd of gold-braided uniforms
crossed by colored cordons and flashing with decorations, white necks
and shoulders rising from dainty French gowns, gleaming lights, Japanese
men in European costume, languorous black eyes under shining Japanese
head-dresses, and silken _kimono_ woven in tints as soft as dreams. In
the large central room opposite was hung a painting of the Emperor.
Japanese who passed it did so reverently. They did not turn their backs.
Some of the older ones bowed low before it and withdrew backward.
Through a doorway came glimpses of couples on a polished floor swaying
to music that swelled and ebbed unceasingly, and down a long vista a
pink dazzle of cherry-blooms under a cloth roof. Over all was the exotic
perfume of flowers.
Daunt had seen many such affairs where the blending of colors and
sounds, the scintillant shifting of forms, had been but a maze.
To-night's, however, was wound in a glory. All these decorative people,
this scented echo of laughter and music, existed only to form a
kaleidoscopic setting for the one woman. He went to search for her with
his handsome head erect, his shoulders square and a color in his face.
He passed through several rooms, revealing one oriental picture after
another. In one a series of glass-cases reproduced a _daimyo's_
procession in Old Japan: hundreds of dolls, six inches high, fashioned
in elaborate detail--coolies with banners; chest-bearers; caparisoned
horses; bullock-carts with huge, black lacquer wheels; _samurai_,
visored and clad in armor, with glittering swords and lances. In another
were cabinets spread with pieces of priceless gold-lacquer that had cost
a lifetime of loving labor. A third the host denominated his
"ghost-room," since it was lined with quaint pottery unearthed in
ancient Korean tombs. These rooms were filled with the social world of
the capital, a gay glimmer of urbanity set off against masses of all the
blossoms of spring. In the last room the host stood with the visiting
Admiral and several Ambassadors. He was a perfect type of the modern
Japanese of affairs, a diplomatist as well as a seasoned Admiral. He had
been at Annapolis in '75 and his wife was a graduate of Wellesley. He
was one of the strongest of the powerful coterie which was shaping the
destinies of new Japan. Daunt greeted him and paused to chat a while
with his own chief and Mrs. Dandridge. Her gown was gray and silver,
with soft old lace that accentuated the youthful contour of her face,
and framed the graciousness and charm that made her marked in however
charming and gracious an assembly. Barbara was not there.
He entered a veranda where people sat at little tables eating ices
frozen in the shape of Fuji, under fairy lamps whose tiny bamboo and
paper shades were delicately painted with sworls of water and swimming
carp. From one group the Baroness Stroloff waved a hand to him, but
Barbara was not there. Beyond, through a canopied doorway, hung the
cherry-blooms. He paused on the threshold. It was a portion of the
garden walled in with white cloth, and roofed with blue and gold. The
space thus inclosed was set with cherry-trees from whose every gray twig
depended the great pink pendants. It was floored with soft carpeting, in
the center a fountain tinkled coolly, and the roof was dotted with
incandescents. In this retreat the violins of the ball-room wove
dreamily with the talk and laughter, tenuous and ghost-like, soft as the
music of memory. She was not there. Daunt turned back, threaded the hall
and entered the ball-room.
There, through the shifting crowd, over flashing uniforms and diamonded
tiaras, he saw her. Beside her stood a little countess, one of the noted
court beauties, lotos-pale, bamboo-slender, in a _kimono_ of Danjiro
blue, with woven lilies. In the clear radiance, Barbara stood almost
surrounded. Her white satin gown shimmered in the light, which caught
like globes of fire in the gold passion-flowers with which it was
embroidered. A new sense of her beauty poured over him. She had always
seemed lovely, but now her loveliness was touched with something removed
and spiritual. In the blaze of light she looked as delicately pale as a
moon-dahlia, but a spot of color was on either cheek and her eyes were
very bright. Daunt stood still, feasting his gaze.
The Baroness Stroloff paused beside him, chatting with the Cabinet
Minister and the representative of the Associated Press. They watched
the forms flit past in the swinging rhythm of the _deux-temps_, _kimono_
weaving with black coats and uniforms, varnished pumps gliding with
milk-white _tabi_ and velvet pattens. "Pretty tinted creatures," she
said. "How do they ever keep on those little thonged sandals?"
"Ah, their toes were born to them," the journalist answered.
The statesman shrugged his shoulders. "Waltzing in _kimono_ with men is
very, very modern for our Japanese ladies," he said. "I myself never saw
it until two years ago--when the American Fleet was here. That
established it as a fashion. Some of us older ones may frown,
but--_shikata-ga-nai!_ 'Way out there is none,' as we say in our
language. It's a part of the process of Westernization!"
Daunt started when Patricia's fan tapped his arm.
"You're frightfully late," she said, as her partner, the German
_Chargé_, bowed himself away. "Father will give you a wigging if you
don't look out."
"I saw him a few moments ago," he answered. "He didn't seem very
fierce."
"Was he still looking at those spooky curios? I can't see what anybody
wants such things for! I always feel like saying what Mark Twain's man
said when they showed him the mummy: 'If you've got any nice fresh
corpse, trot him out.'"
Daunt's smile was a mechanism. She knew that he had ceased to listen. As
she looked at his side-face with her clear, kind eyes, a shadow came to
her own. Her loyal heart was troubled. After her drive that afternoon,
Barbara had kept her room on the plea of rest for the evening; she had
not come down to dinner and had appeared only at the moment of starting.
At the first glance, then, Patricia had noticed the change. The Barbara
she had always known, of flashing impulses and girlish graces, was gone;
the Barbara of the evening had seemed suddenly older, of even rarer
beauty, perhaps, but with something of detachment, of unfamiliarity.
Riding beside her to the ball, Patricia had felt, under the eager,
brilliant gaiety, this chilly sense of estrangement, and it had puzzled
her. Later she had come to connect it with the man of whose coming
Barbara had told her, the man with handsome, bearded face who had
seemed, since his greeting in the moment of their entrance, to take
unobtrusive yet assured possession of such of her moments as were not
given to the great. Withal, he had lent this an air of the natural and
habitual which, nicely poised and completely conventional as it was,
seemed to convey a subtle atmosphere of proprietorship. So now, as she
saw Daunt's gaze, Patricia was a little sad. There had fallen a silence
between them which he broke with a sudden exclamation.
"No wonder!" he said.
"No wonder what?"
"That she is a success."
"Success! I should think so. She's danced with three Ambassadors and
Prince Hojo sat out two numbers with her. Just look at the men around
her now!"
The music had drifted into a waltz and the group about Barbara was
dissolving. A dark face was bending near. Its owner put his arm about
her and they glided into the throng. Ware, like all heavy men, danced
perfectly and the pair seemed to skim the mirroring floor as easily as
swallows, her red-bronze hair, caught under a web of seed-pearls,
glowing like a net of fire-flies. Heads turned back over white shoulders
and on the edges of the room people whispered as they passed. Floating
lightly as sea-foam, the shimmering gown drew near, passing so close
that Daunt could have touched it. The lovely white face, over her
partner's shoulder, met Daunt's. For a fraction of a second Barbara's
eyes looked into his--then swept by as if he had been empty air. It was
as if a clenched hand had struck him across the face.
He whitened. Patricia felt a sudden sting in her eyelids. She slipped
her hand through his arm, and saying something about the heat (it was
deliciously cool), drew him down the corridor. She chatted on airily,
fighting a desire to cry. But when they came to the entrance of the
cherry-blooms, he had not spoken a word.
"I see mother still in the spook room," she said. "I must go back to
her--no, please don't come with me! Thank you so much for bringing me so
far."
She left him with a nod and a bright smile that he did not see. He was
in a painful quicksand of bewilderment. The cherry-garden was almost
empty and the fountain tinkled in a perfumed quiet. He sat down on a
bench in its farthest corner. What did it mean? Why, it had been like
the cut direct! From her?--impossible! She had not seen him! He had been
mistaken! He would go to her--now! He sprang up.
A page came into the garden. He was a part of the Minister's
establishment; Daunt had often seen him in that house. He carried a tray
with a letter on it.
"For you, sir," he said.
Puzzled, Daunt took it and the boy withdrew. It bore no address. He tore
it open. It contained some folded sheets of paper. A tense whiteness
sprang to his face as he unfolded them. It was his letter--the only
love-letter he had ever written--torn across.
Now he knew! It had been true--what he had imagined of the yacht! The
cherry-trees seemed to writhe about him, bizarre one-legged dancers
waving pink draperies, and a tide of resentment and grief rose in his
breast as hot as lava. Had she been only playing with him, then? When
she had lain panting in his arms in Ben-ten's cave--when her lips had
quivered to his kisses--had it all been acting? Was this what she really
was, his "Lady of the Many-Colored Fires?" He, poor fool! had deemed it
real, when it had been only a week's amusement. He had almost guessed
the truth that night at the tea-house, and how cleverly she had fooled
him! His jarring laugh rang out across the tinkle of the fountain. Then,
Austen Ware's telegram! It was he who had danced with her to-night, no
doubt--Phil's brother. For her the little play was over. The curtain had
to be rung down, and this was how she did it.
Dim thoughts like these went flitting through the gap of his racked
senses. He dropped on the bench and bowed his head between his hands. It
had been real enough to him. Painted on his closed eyelids he seemed to
see, with a chill, numb certainty, his future unrolling like a gray
panorama, incoherent and unwhole, its colors lack-luster, its purpose
denied, its meaning missed. Pain lifted its snake-head from the shadows
and hissed in his ear, like the jubilant serpent that coiled its bright
length by the gate of Eden when the flaming sword drove forth the first
man to the desert of despair.
Daunt did not know that Patricia, pausing in the corridor, had seen the
letter delivered and opened. She went back to her mother with a slow
step.
"You look worn, dear," said Mrs. Dandridge, as they entered the
ball-room. "Are you tired?"
"Yes," she said. "I think I won't dance any more, mother."
The host had entered before them and now stood at the end of the room
with the Admiral of the Squadron and the Ambassador of the latter's
nation. Suddenly a young man pushed hastily through the press. He handed
his chief a telegram. The Ambassador scanned it, changed color, and held
it out to the Admiral with shaking hand. The Secretary who had brought
it said something to the Foreign Minister, who turned instantly to give
a quick order to a servant. The orchestra stopped with a crash.
There was a dead hush over the brilliant room-full, broken only by the
movement of the Squadron's officers as they came hurriedly forward
beside their Admiral. All looked at the white-haired diplomatist who
stood, his eyes full of tears, the pink telegram in his hand.
He addressed the grave group of naval men. "Gentlemen," he said, in a
low voice, "I have the great grief to announce the sudden death to-day
of His Majesty, the King."
He bowed to his host, and, followed by the Admiral and his officers,
left the house. The Ambassadors and Ministers of the other powers, in
order of their precedence, each with his glittering staff and their
ladies about him, followed. The gaiety was over; it had ceased at the
far-away echo of a nation's bells, tolling half a world away.
* * * * *
The great house was almost emptied of its guests when the solitary
figure that had sat in the cherry-garden passed out along the deserted
corridors. Daunt went utterly oblivious that its bright pageantry had
departed. A feverish color was in his cheek and his eyes were dulled
with a painful apathy.
Count Voynich was lighting a cigarette in the cloak room as he entered.
"_Sic transit!_" he said. "This calls a quick halt on the plans of the
Squadron's entertainment, doesn't it!"
There was no answer. Daunt was fumbling, from habit, for the lettered
disk of wood in his pocket.
"If the King could have lived a few weeks longer," said Voynich, "we'd
have heard no more talk of trouble with Japan. He was a great
peacemaker. The new regent may be less circumspect. What do you think?"
No reply. He spoke again sharply.
"I say, Miss Fairfax seems to be making a tremendous walkover, eh?"
There was only silence. Daunt did not hear him. Voynich looked at his
face, whistled softly under his breath, and went quietly away.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE HEART OF BARBARA
The Ambassador, standing by the mantel, looked thoughtfully at his wife.
She sat in a big wicker chair, in a soft dressing-gown, her hands
clasped over one knee in a pose very pretty and girlish.
"Come!" he said good-humoredly. "You women are always imagining romances
and broken hearts. Why, Barbara and Daunt haven't known each other long
enough to fall in love."
She looked at him quizzically. "Do you remember how long we had known
each other when you--"
"Pshaw!" he retorted. "That's just like a woman. She never can argue
without coming to personalities. Besides, there never was another girl
like you, my dear--I couldn't afford to take any chances."
"Away with your blarney, Ned! You know I'm right, though you won't admit
it."
"Of course I won't. Daunt's not a woman's man. He never was. He's been
getting along pretty well with Barbara, no doubt. But this man she's
going to marry she's known for a year. The bishop told me about him the
day after they landed. He thought she was practically engaged to him
then."
"'Practically!'" she commented with gentle scorn. "Are girls who have
been properly brought up ever 'practically' engaged, and not fully so?
She may have expected to marry him, and yet if I ever saw a girl in
love--and, oh, Ned, remember that I understand what that means!--she was
in love with Daunt yesterday. We women see more than men and feel more.
Patsy saw it too. She's feeling badly about it, poor child, I think."
"Nonsense!" the ambassador sniffed. "There isn't a shred of evidence.
Barbara's not a flirt in the first place, and, if she were, Daunt can
take care of himself."
"He came to your study, didn't he, after the ball? I thought I heard his
voice in the hall."
"Yes," he answered.
"How did he look?"
"Well," he said hesitatingly, "he was a bit off color, I thought. I told
him to take a few days off and run up to Chuzenji."
"Is he going?"
"Yes. He's leaving early in the morning. But don't get it into your
sympathetic little head that it has the slightest thing to do with
Barbara. The idea's quite absurd. He's never thought of such a thing as
falling in love with her!"
"Don't you think a woman _knows_ about these things?"
"When she's told. And Barbara has told you, hasn't she?"
"That she is going to marry Mr. Ware. Yes."
"Well, what more do you want?"
She shook her head. "Only for her to be happy!" she said tremulously.
"I've never known a girl who has grown so into my heart, Ned. I feel
almost as though she were Patsy's sister. She has no mother of her
own--no one to advise her. And yet--I--somehow I couldn't talk about it
to her. I _tried_. She doesn't want to. It seemed almost as if she were
afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Of doing something else. As if she were going into this marriage as a
refuge. I don't know just why I felt that, but I did. She was so very
pale, so very quiet and contained. It didn't seem quite natural. It made
me think of Pamela Langham. You remember her? She was in love with a man
who--well, whom she found she couldn't marry. He wasn't the right sort.
I suppose she was afraid she would marry him anyway if she waited. So
she married another man at once--a man who had been in love with her for
years. We were just the same age and she told me all about it at the
time. To-night when Barbara told me she had promised to marry this Mr.
Ware--and soon, Ned!--I seemed to see poor little dead Pamela looking at
me with her pale face and big, deep eyes."
She turned her head and furtively wiped her eyes. "If I could only be
sure!" she said. "But I think how I should feel--if it were Patsy, Ned!"
* * * * *
And while they talked, Barbara lay in her blue-and-white room, wide-eyed
in the dark. The smiling, ball-room mask had slipped from her face and
left it strained and white. She had drawn the curtain and shut out the
misty glory of the garden--and the small white cottage across the
scented lawn.
In those few agonized hours of the afternoon, while she had lain there
thrilling with suffering, something deep within her had seemed to
fail--as though a newly-lighted flame, white and pure, had fallen and
died. Where it had gleamed remained only a painful twilight. It had been
a different Barbara that had emerged. The fairest fabric of those
Japanese days had crashed into the dust, and in the echo of its fall she
stood anchorless, in terror of herself and of the future. The harbor of
convention alone seemed to offer safety--and at the harbor entrance
waited Austen Ware. At the ball the die had been cast.
Outside the window she could hear the rasp of the pine-branches and the
sleepy "korup! korup!" of a pigeon. A tiny night-lamp was on the stand
beside her. Its gleam lit vaguely the golden Buddha on the Sendai chest.
Its face now seemed cold and blank and cruel, and in its dim light, on
the shadowy wall, sharp detached pictures etched themselves. She saw
herself looking at Austen Ware's yacht, set in that wonderful, warm,
orient bay--a swift, white monitor, watching her! She saw a yellow rank
of convicts filing into the yawning mouth of Shimbashi Station--like the
long, drab years of savorless lives! She saw the great white plaster
figure over the entrance-arch of the Yoshiwara--beckoning to hollow
smiles that covered empty hearts!
Over the thronging pictures grew another--a misty, nightgowned little
figure who stood by her, whispering her name. Patricia, after sleepless
hours, crept from her bed to Barbara's room, longing for some assurance,
she knew not what, some breath of the old girlish confidences to melt
the ice that seemed to have congealed between them. And Barbara, with
the first phantom of softened feeling she had known that night, took the
other into her arms.
But it was she who comforted, whispering words that she knew were empty,
caressing the younger girl with a touch that held no tremor, no hint of
those anguished visions that had floated through the leaden silences of
her soul.
Till at last, Patricia, half-reassured, smiled and fell asleep; while
Barbara, her loose gold hair drifting across the pillow, her bare arm
nestling the dark, braided head beside her, lay stirless, staring into
the shadows, where the pale glimmer of the Buddha floated, a ghostly
_chiaroscuro_.
CHAPTER XL
THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW
Nikko's thin street, with its gigantic isle of cryptomeria, was a
shimmer of gold, a flicker of crimson and mandarin-blue. All the town
was out of doors, for it was the _matsuri_, the local festival of
Ieyasu, the great _shogun_ deity, when the ancient furniture and
treasures of the temple are carried in priestly processional through the
streets. The path of the pageant was lined with spectators: old
country-women with shaven eyebrows and burnished, blackened teeth, and
with hair tightly plastered in old-fashioned wheels and pinions;
children in kaleidoscopic dress, frantically dragged by older girls with
pink paper flowers in their stiff black hair; men sitting sedately on
sober-colored _f'ton_, bowing to pedestrian acquaintances with elaborate
and stereotyped ceremony. In the moldy shade above a grim, wizened row
of images of the god of justice, was nailed a sign-board: "Everybody are
require not to broke the trees." Beside the moss-covered replicas a
booth had been erected for foreign spectators. It was crowded with
tourists--a bank of perspiring, fan-fluttering humanity. Up and down
trudged post-card sellers, and _saké_ bearers with trays of shallow,
lacquer cups. The air shimmered with a fine white dust from the
thousands of wooden clogs, and the trees were sibilant with the tumult
of the _semi_.
The procession seemed interminable. Priests rode on horseback, clothed
in black gauze robes with stoles of gold brocade and queer, winged hats.
Acolytes marched afoot in green or yellow with stoles of black, like
huge parti-colored beetles. Groups of bearers in white _houri_ carried
brass altar furniture, great drums fantastically painted, ancient
chain-armor and tall banners of every tint. The center of interest was a
sacred _mikoshi_, or palanquin, holding the divine symbols, elaborately
carved and gold-lacquered, borne by sixty men in white, with cloths of
like hue bound turban-wise about their foreheads. Around these circled
drum-beaters and pipe-players, making an indescribable medley of sounds.
The god entered into his devotees. The palanquin tossed like the waves
of the sea. The bearers howled and chanted gutturally. Sweat poured from
their faces. Some of them smiled and danced as they staggered on under
the immense bearing-poles.
Austen Ware saw the strain on Barbara's face. "You are tired," he said.
"Let us go back to the hotel."
"Where is Patsy?" she asked.
"She went with the bishop to see the priestesses dance at the temple.
But we can skip that."
He drew her out of the crowd and they walked slowly down a side street
to the road that skirts the brawling Alpine torrent, rushing between its
steep stone banks. Here the spray filled the air with a cool mist and
the westerning sun tied the seething water with silver tasseling.
Caravans of panier-laden Chinese ponies passed them, led by women in
tight blue breeches with sweat-bands about their heads, and squads of
uncomfortable tourists bound to Chuzenji, the summer capital of the
_Corps Diplomatique_, crumpled in sagging red-blanketed chairs hanging
from the bearing-poles of lurching, bronze-muscled coolies. Young
peasant girls trotted by swinging baskets of yellow asters and purple
morning-glories. A _rick'sha_ carried a baby with gay-colored dolls and
painted cats of _papier-mâché_ tied behind it, on its way to the family
shrine where the toys could be blessed. The _rick'sha_ man was smiling,
but his cough rattled against Barbara's heart. A line of white-robed
Buddhist pilgrims trudged along under mushroom hats, with rosaries
crossed over their breasts and little bells tinkling at their girdles on
their way to worship the Sun on the sacred mountain of Nantai-Zan. Now
and then the cut-velvet of the hills rolled back to display clumps of
dwellings--the wizard-gray of thatched roofs set in a rippling sea of
leaves--and green flights of worn stone steps, staggering up to weird
old temples where droning priests were ever at prayer. At the bottom of
the road the stream narrowed to a gorge, spanned by the sacred
red-lacquer bridge which no foot save the Emperor's may ever tread. On
the farther side the wooded hills rose in fantastic, top-heavy shapes
like a mad artist's dream. Everywhere they were split and seamed by
landslide, gashed by torrents and typhoon, but covered with a wealth and
splendor of color. Here and there century-old cryptomeria stood like
gray-green bronze pillars, towering over younger forests as straight and
symmetrical as Noah's-ark trees.
As they walked, Ware chatted of his trip up the China coast--an
interesting recital that took Barbara insensibly out of herself. More
than once he looked at her curiously. Since that fateful hour when he
had stood behind the _shikiri_, he, like Barbara, had gone through much
to look so unflurried. He had known moments of bitterness that were
galling and stinging, and that left behind them a sense of degradation.
But he held to his course. So short-lived a thing as her love for Daunt
must wither! "It will pass," he had told himself, "and she will turn to
me."
The trip to Nikko had encouraged him. It had been the time of the
bishop's regular spring visit and Barbara had welcomed the opportunity
to leave Tokyo, which was so full of painful memories. Patricia adored
Japan's "Temple Town" and Ware had joined the party there with as little
delay as was seemly. In the three days of the poignant mountain air
Barbara had seemed to Patricia to be more like her old self. She could
not guess the strength of the effort this had cost or the fierceness of
the fight Barbara's pride was making.
It was sunset when they mounted the steep road to the hotel--a long,
two-storied, modern structure, whose gardens and red balconies gave it a
subtle Japanese flavor. On one side of the building the ground fell in a
precipitous descent to the rocky bed of the river, whose rush made a
restful monotone like wind sighing through linden trees. Behind it the
height rose abruptly, and up its side clambered a twisting path, from
which a light foot-bridge sprang to the upper piazzas. The path led to a
shrine a hundred yards above, set beside an old wisteria tree, musical
with the chirp of the "silver-eye," and fluttering with countless paper
arrows of prayer. Before it were two wooden benches, and from this eyrie
one could look down on the hotel with its graceful balconies, and far
below the tumbling stream with its guarded red-lacquer arch.
Ware walked with Barbara up the path to the foot-bridge. Near its
entrance a small stand had been placed and on it was a phonograph, its
ungainly trumpet pointing down toward the stretch of lawn. A heavy
red-bearded man, in a warm frock-coat, a white waistcoast and a silk hat
pushed far back on his head, was laboring over this, and a plump lady
stood near-by, fanning her beaming face with a pocket-handkerchief.
They greeted Barbara heartily.
"Good afternoon," said the husband. "You can't guess what me and Martha
are up to, can you?"
"The _samisen_ concert to-night?" she hazarded.
"Right!" he said. "First crack out of the box, too! I'm going to take a
record of it." He tapped the cylinder. "This is a composition of my own.
I leave it out here all night to harden, and then I give it a three
days' acid bath that makes it as hard as steel. It'll last for ever. Now
what do you suppose I'm going to do with the record? I'm going to give
it to you."
The lady beside him nodded and smiled. "He's been planning it ever since
he heard you say the other day that you liked _samisen_ music," she
said.
"You see," he went on with a laugh. "I haven't forgotten that line of
talk your uncle gave me on the train, my first day in Japland. It did me
a lot of good. I guess what he doesn't know about it isn't worth
telling," he added with a glance at Ware.
"He is an authority, of course," said Ware.
"Well, I'm an authority, too--on phonographs. And if you'd accept this,
Miss Fairfax--"
"I shall be _delighted_!" said Barbara warmly. "I shall value it very,
very highly."
She smiled back at them over her shoulder. The frank, honest kindliness
of the couple pleased her.
The piazza opened into a small sitting-room with cool bamboo chairs and
portières of thin green silk stenciled with maple-leaves.
"Will you wait a moment, Barbara?" asked Ware. "I have something to show
you."
She stopped, looking at him with a trace of confusion. "Certainly," she
answered. "What is it?"
He put a folded paper into her hands. "To-day is the anniversary of our
meeting," he said. "This is a memento."
She took it with a puzzled look and scrutinized it. Wonder filled her
face. "You have made over your yacht to me!" she cried.
"My engagement gift," he said. "She is your namesake; I want her to be
yours."
A flush crept over her cheek. She knew the yacht was his favorite
possession and the action touched her. At the same time it brought
swiftly home to her, in a concrete way, a numbing reminder of the
imminence of her marriage.
"The deed has been recorded," he went on, "and the sailing-master and
crew have signed articles under the new owner. Perhaps you will let me
come aboard of her to hear that _samisen_ record," he added whimsically.
"There's a phonograph in her outfit."
She smiled, a little tremulously. "You are most kind, Austen," she said.
"I--I don't know what to say."
"Then say nothing," he answered cheerfully. He stepped to the door and
drew aside the portière. She was agitated, feeling unable to meet the
situation in the conventional way. At the threshold she paused and held
out her hand.
He bent and kissed it. She half-hesitated, but in the pause there was a
laughing voice and a footstep in the hall.
"It's Patsy," she said, and passed quickly out.
As Ware walked back across the foot-bridge, the proprietor of the
phonograph called to him.
"I clean forgot to ask the young lady where to send this record," he
said. "Do you know her address?"
"It will be more or less uncertain, I fancy," said Ware. "But her yacht
is in Yokohama harbor. It is named the _Barbara_. You might send it
there."
CHAPTER XLI
UNFORGOT
The sharp sense of imminence which had come to Barbara with Austen
Ware's gift remained with her that evening. The dinner was none too
merry. For the first time Patricia had failed to be enthused over the
Nikko _matsuri_, and the bishop, since Haru's disappearance, had lacked
his usual sallies. Barbara had told him nothing of her visit to the
house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley; to speak of it would probe her
own wound too deeply.
The after-dinner piazza exhaled the bouquet of evening cigars and the
chatter of tourists. Far below, across the gorge, lights twinkled in
native doorways and _shoji_ glimmered like oblong yellow lanterns. The
air was heavy with balsam odors, and beneath the trees, sparkling now
with incandescents, tiny black moths had replaced the sunlight flashing
dragon-flies. Sitting in a semicircle on straw mats the _samisen_
players at length mingled their _outré_, twittering cadences with the
soft thunder of the water.
As the musicians finished their last number and trooped away, Patricia
yawned and rose. "Here," she observed, "is where little Patsy puts her
face and hands to bed. This mountain air is perfectly demoralizing!" The
two girls went up-stairs together.
At her own room Patsy put her arms around the other and kissed her. "Oh,
I wonder if you're _sure_!" she said. Then she fled inside.
Barbara threw open the window of her room and drew a low stool to the
balcony. "I wonder!" she said aloud. With elbows on the railing and chin
in hands, she looked long and earnestly into the dark void. Why was she
no longer able to warm to all this beauty and meaning? These cryptomeria
shadows, dreaming of the faded splendors of a feudal past--the streets
along which legions of pilgrims had walked muttering prayers to their
gods--the marvelous lacquered temples of red and gold, wrought by
patient love of long dead yesterdays, in handiwork to which time had
given a softened glory such as those who dreamed them never saw--the
heavenly soaring of pagoda doves against the peach-blow sky--the shrines
worn with their centuries of worship and dancing and booming bells!
Forgetting--and remembering no more--would that be a soul-task too hard
for her? Was all that had been instinct with wonder and joy to be
henceforth but emptiness and desolation--because an ideal had gone from
her for ever? She thought of the belled and rosaried pilgrims climbing
Nantai-Zan. She seemed to see the faint, far glimmer of their lanterns.
Beyond that pilgrimage over dark crags and grim precipices lay for them
the sunrise of hope!
In the room behind her hung one of the famous prints of Hiroshige, the
great Japanese master--a group of peasants crossing the long skeleton
bridge of Enoshima. She thought of this now, and suddenly all the spot
had meant to her welled over her. She saw again the enchanted
Island--the long shaded stairways of gray stone, the brown-legged girls
gathering seaweed, and beyond the old seawall the gulls calling to their
mates. She saw the generations of lovers pass one by one before
Ben-ten's altar, murmuring their hearts' desire. Daunt's arms seemed to
be again around her. She felt his kisses, heard his voice as they walked
under the singing trees--walked and dreamed and forgot that pain was
ever born into the world.
She started. A horse was coming up the hill, his hoofs thudding softly
in the loose shale. The rider dismounted at the porch. A moment later,
crop in hand, he passed beneath her window. The light fell on his face.
Barbara's heart bounded and then stood still, for she recognized him.
"There has never been another woman to me, Barbara!" Mocking voices
seemed to shout it satirically from the emptiness, and against the dark
Haru's face rose up before her.
She shivered. She went in and closed the window, drawing down the blind
with a nervous haste.
But she could not shut out that face, and in spite of herself her
thoughts had their will with her. What was Daunt doing there? Patsy had
said that he was in Chuzenji. But that was only a handful of miles away.
He looked worn and older--he had been suffering, too! She hugged this
knowledge to her heart. He knew, of course, why she had ended it
all--_Haru would have told him_!
She clenched her hands and began to pace up and down the room, now
stopping to peer with bright miserable eyes into the mirror, now
throwing herself into a chair. Once she put her hand into her bosom,
groping for her father's picture--to withdraw it with an added pang. For
she had forgotten; she had lost the locket the afternoon of her drive
with Patricia.
A knock came at the door, and a bell-boy handed her a penciled note.
She read it wonderingly, then, hastily smoothing her hair, went quickly
along the hall to the sitting-room.
In the dimly lighted room a figure came toward her from the shadow. It
was Philip Ware.
CHAPTER XLII
PHIL MAKES AN APPEAL
The youth who stood before her now, however, was not the Phil Barbara
had seen at Mukojima. There was no hint of spruce grooming in his
attire; it was overlaid with the dust and grime of the road. The jaunty,
self-satisfied look was ravaged by something cringing, that suggested
sleeplessness and undefined anxiety. Why should he come at such an
hour--and to her? The distaste which her first view of him had inspired
returned with added force as she felt the touch of his hand and heard
herself say:
"So this is 'Phil.' I have often heard of you from your brother. Have
you seen him?"
"No," he said. "I don't want him to know I'm here--yet. I--I came to see
you." He paused, twisting his cloth cap in his fingers.
He was in a desperate strait. His brother's silence since his visit to
the house in Aoyama (of which Phil had learned from the servant) had
seemed to mean the worst. The place had contained sufficient documents
in evidence as to his mode of living, and the reflection opened gloomy
vistas of poverty from which he turned with abject fear and dread. There
was one alternative, and this, a grisly shadow, had stalked beside him
since an evening when he had dined with Bersonin. It had peopled his
sleep with terrifying visions which even Haru and the brandy had been
unable to banish, and his waking hours had been haunted by the expert's
yellowish eyes. Between devil and deep sea, he had heard of his
brother's engagement, and the wild thought of appealing to him through
Barbara had come to him as a forlorn hope. Now, face to face with her,
he found the words difficult to say.
"Won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair opposite him, looking
at him inquiringly.
"I ought to apologize for a rig like this," he went on, glancing at his
sorry raiment, "but I came in a friend's motor, and I'm going back
to-night. I thought you wouldn't mind, now--now that you are engaged to
marry Austen. You are, aren't you?"
She inclined her head. "Yes," she said slowly, "I have promised to marry
him."
"Then you know him pretty well, and you know that he--that he doesn't
altogether approve of me."
"I have never heard him say that," she interrupted quickly.
"It's true, though," he rejoined bitterly. "He's always been down on me.
I'm not staid enough for him. He made his money by grubbing, and he
thinks everybody else ought to do the same. It's--it's the matter of
money I want to speak to you about."
He paused again. "Yes?" she said.
"Since I left college," he went on, "Austen has always made me an
allowance. But I've been out here a year now, and I--well, you know what
the East is. I've had to live as other young fellows do, and I've spent
more than he gives me. I've--played some, too, and then this spring I
got hit hard at the races. It was just a run of bad luck, when I had
expected to square myself."
He was eager and voluble now. She seemed to be considering--he was
making an impression. He might come out all right after all! His
volatile spirits rose.
"You see," he said, "Austen never overlooks anything. He's as likely as
not to cut me off entirely and leave me high and dry. I--I thought
perhaps you would--you might get him to do the decent thing and help me
out of the hole. If I once got straight I'd stay so, but I want a fair
allowance. It isn't as if he had to work for what I spend. He ought to
give it to me. I can't go on as I am; I'm in debt--in deep. I can't take
up my _chits_ at the club. I'm living in Tokyo now--in a Japanese house
in Aoyama that a friend has loaned me--because I haven't the face to
show myself in Yokohama!"
He twirled his cap and looked up at her. "That reminds me," he said,
with a sudden recollection. "Austen was there the other day when I was
away, and afterward I found something of yours which he must have
dropped. Here it is. It has your name on it." He handed her a small
locket with a broken chain.
She took it with an exclamation. She was staring at him strangely. "This
house you speak of--whose is it?"
"It belongs to Mr. Daunt."
"You mean--you say--that you have been living in it?"
"Yes. Why?"
She had risen slowly to her feet, her face hotly suffused. "Then--then
Haru--" She spoke in a dry whisper.
He started, looking at her with quick, resentful suspicion. "What do you
know about Haru?"
"Never mind! Never mind that! I want to know. Haru--she is--Mr. Daunt
was not--"
"He never saw her in his life so far as I know," he answered sulkily.
"What has that to do with it?"
For an instant she looked at him without a word, her fingers working.
Then she began to laugh, in a low tone, wildly, chokingly. "Of course!
Of course! What has that to do with it? What you want is more money,
isn't it! That is all you came to tell me!"
He, too, was on his feet now, uncertain and mistrustful. Was she making
game of him? He saw Barbara's gaze go past him--to fasten on something
in the background. He turned. In the doorway with its maple-leaf
portière stood Austen Ware.
Barbara's laugh had fallen in a shuddering breath that was like a sob.
"Here is your brother now," she said. "Austen, Phil and I have been
getting acquainted. And what do you think? He has found my lost locket."
She held it up toward him.
He had come toward them. In the dim light his face looked very white,
and his eyes glittered like quicksilver. He held out his hand.
"Why, Phil!" he exclaimed. "This is a great surprise. When did you
arrive, and are you at this hotel?"
Phil had stood shamefaced. At the tone, however, which seemed an earnest
of renewed favor, he flushed with relief. "I've just come," he
answered--"in a friend's motor, and I must go back at once. But I'll
come up again by train to-morrow, if you'd like me to."
"Very well," was Ware's reply. "We'll wait till then for our talk. I'll
come and see you off." Neither of the others caught the tense repression
in the tone or realized that his smile was forced and unnatural, as he
added: "We must put a ban on late hours, Barbara, if you are to climb
Nantai-Zan to-morrow."
She went to the door, her thoughts in a tumult, a wild exhilaration
possessing her. She wanted to laugh and to cry. The black, cold mist
that had enveloped her had broken, and the warm sunlight was looking
again into her heart.
"Good night, Phil," she said. "Thank you so much for--for bringing me
the locket. You can't guess how much it meant to me!"
As the silk drapery fell behind her, the self-control dropped from
Austen Ware's face, and a hell of hatred sprang into it. Chance had
given Phil the one card that spelled disaster, and chance had prompted
him to play it. In Barbara's mind Daunt stood absolved! He saw the
castle he had been building tottering to its fall. He turned on his
brother a countenance convulsed with a fury of passion from which Phil
shrank startled.
"Come," he said in a muffled voice. "We can't talk here." He led the way
through the hall and across the foot-bridge to the hillside, gloomy now,
for the incandescents in the trees had been extinguished.
Phil followed, his face gone white. A rack stood at the outer door, and
his fingers, slipping along it as he passed, closed on a riding-crop.
On the shrubberied slope Ware turned. One twitching hand dropped on his
brother's shoulder; the other pointed down the path.
"Go, damn you!" he said, "and never show your face to me again! Not one
cent shall you have from me! Now nor hereafter--I have taken care of
that!"
Phil lifted the crop and struck him across the head--two savage, heavy
blows. Ware staggered and fell backward down the steep declivity, his
weight crashing through the bushes with a dull, sickening sound.
There was a silence in which Phil did not breathe. The stars seemed
suddenly very bright. From an open window came a woman's shrill,
careless laugh, threading the hushed roar of the water below. The
lighted _shoji_ across the river seemed to be drifting nearer. He could
see the glow of a forge in a native smithy, like an angry, red-lidded
eye. The crop fell from his grasp. He leaned over, staring into the
dark.
"Austen!" he whispered hoarsely. "Austen!"
There was no response. As he gazed fearfully into the shadow, the rising
moon, peeping through a bank of cloud, deluged the landscape with a
misty gossamer. The light fell on the phonograph. Phil recoiled, for its
long metal trumpet seemed a rigid arm stretched to seize him. With a low
cry he turned and fled.
He skirted the hill to the hotel stables, where Bersonin's huge
motor-car stood silent. The Japanese chauffeur was curled up in the
tonneau, fast asleep.
Five minutes later Barbara heard the throb of the great mechanism
speeding down the shadowy cryptomeria road.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE SECRET THE RIVER KEPT
Daunt had dined cheerlessly in the deserted dining-room. Afterward,
shrinking from the gay piazzas, he had struck off for a long rambling
walk. Only the frail moonlight, glimpsing through a cloudy sky, lay over
the landscape, when, returning, worn but in no mood for sleep, he found
himself at the hill shrine looking down on the white hotel with its long
red balconies, brightened here and there by the lighted window of some
late-retiring guest.
His few days at Chuzenji had passed in a kind of stifled fever. The
report of Barbara's engagement had added its poisoned barb. That
morning, however, a careless remark had torn across his mood as
sheet-lightning tears the weaving dusk. Tokyo was talking of it--of
_him_!--making a jest of that sweet, dead thing in his heart? The
thought had stung his pride, and there had grown in him a sharp sense of
humiliation at his own cowardice. The afternoon had found him riding
down the mountain trail to Nikko. To-morrow he would go back to
Tokyo--to the round of gaieties that would now be hateful, and to his
work.
He put out his hand to one of the benches in the deep pine-shadow, but
drew it back with a sharp breath. A sliver of the warped wood had
pierced his knuckle to the bone.
Frowning, he wrapped the bleeding member in his handkerchief and sat
down at the bench's other end, bitterly absorbed. The vagrant,
intermittent moonlight touched the tumbling water below with creeping
silver, and on the horizon, where the cloud-bank frayed away, one white
constellation swung low, a cluster of lamps in golden chains. But
Daunt's thought had no place for the delicate beauty of the night. His
pipe was long since cold, and he knocked out the dead ashes against the
bench, and did not relight it. He thought of Tokyo, that to-morrow would
stretch so blank and irksome, of the humdrum tedium of the Chancery, in
which a few days ago he had worked so blithely. Then all had been
interest and beauty. Now the future stretched before him dull and
savorless, an arid Desert of Gobi, through whose thirsty waste he must
trudge on for ever to a comfortless goal.
How long he sat there with bowed head he could not have told, but at
length he rose heavily to his feet As he did so he became aware of a
sound below him--a footfall, coming toward him. It crossed a bar of the
moonlight.
He shrank, and a tremor ran over him, for it was Barbara.
She had thrown over her a loose cloak, and a bit of soft, clinging lace
showed between its dark edges. Her brilliant hair was loosely gathered
in a single braid, and in the moonlight it shone like beaten copper
against the vivid pallor of her face. He sat stirless, smitten with
confusion, conscious that a movement must betray him. A painful
embarrassment enveloped him, a fastidious sense of shrinking from her
sight of him. He felt a dull wave of resentment that an antic irony of
circumstance should have brought them beneath the same roof--to make him
seem the moody pursuer, the unwelcome trespasser on her reserve--and
that now thrust him into a position which at any hazard he would have
shunned. But all thought of himself, all feeling save one vanished,
when, with sudden piteous abandon, she threw herself on her knees by the
bench and broke into slow sobs, shuddering and tearless.
In that outbreak of emotion, were not alone the pent-up pain and
humiliation she had suffered, or the desperate joy of that evening's
knowledge. There were in it, too, grief and compunction, dismay and
doubt of the future. She was engaged to Austen Ware. Would Daunt ever
forgive? Would he want her--now? In the first realization of her error,
wound with the knowledge that he was so near her, she had felt only joy;
but in the silence of her room, shock on shock had come the incredulous
question, the burning revulsion. A while she had lain wide-eyed, but at
length, sleepless, she had stolen out to the balmy, fragrant night,
craving its peace, longing passionately for its soft shadows and the
hovering touch of the mountain's breath on her hair. And in its friendly
shadows the gust of feeling had swept her from her feet.
The action took Daunt wholly by surprise. The sound tore his heart like
a ruthless talon, and drew a hoarse word from his lips:
"Barbara!" It was little more than a whisper, but she sprang erect with
a gasp, her breath labored and terror-stricken.
"I--I beg pardon," he said, with a dry catch in his throat. "Don't be
frightened. I will go at once. I should not have stayed. But you came so
suddenly, and I did not dream--I--"
"How strange that you should have been here!" She thought he must hear
the loud drumming of her pulse.
He laughed--a hard, colorless little laugh. "Yes," he answered, "it
seems so."
A mist blinded her eyes, for his tone carried to her, even more sharply
than had the look she had seen from the balcony, a sense of the pain he
had undergone. In what words could she tell him?
"You have been suffering," she said in a low voice. "I see that. And it
was my fault."
He gathered himself together with an effort of will, to still the tingle
that flashed along his nerves. "It was quite sane and right, no doubt,"
he said. "When I have learned to be honest enough with myself, I shall
see it so. My mistake was in ever dreaming that I was worth one of your
thoughts or a single second's memory."
She turned her head abruptly. "Do you hear some one talking? I thought I
heard it as I came up the path--like some one muttering to himself."
He listened, but there was no sound.
"I must have imagined it," she said. There was a moment's pause, and
presently she went on:
"You have been thinking hard things of me. It is natural that you
should. And yet I--whatever you think--whatever you do--that day in the
cave, I was not--was not--"
"You were nothing you should not have been," he replied rapidly. Her
voice had sent a tremor over him--he felt it with a new wave of the
morning's contempt. "I understand. There is nothing for you to justify,
nothing to regret."
She shook her head. "_We have left undone those things which we ought to
have done_," she quoted in a low voice, "_and have done those things
which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us_. We all
recite that every Sunday. I have something now to confess to you. Won't
you stand there in the light? I--I want to see your face."
He stepped slowly into a bar of moonlight.
"Why," she said, "you have hurt your hand!" She made a quick step toward
him, her eyes on the stained bandage.
"It is nothing," he said hastily. "I struck it a little while ago.
What--"
He turned, suddenly alert. A sharp whistle had sounded below them, and
bright points here and there pricked the gloom. "They have turned on the
tree-lights," he said. There was a sound of voices on the path. Some one
ran across the foot-bridge.
"Something has happened," she said. "What can it be?"
He made no reply. There had flashed to him a quick realization of the
position in which, unwittingly, they had placed themselves. She must not
be seen at such an hour, in that lonely spot with him! He knew the
canons of the world he lived in! With a hushed word he drew her back
into the shadow.
The voices were speaking in Japanese, and now he heard them clearly.
"Some one is injured," he told her. "He fell down the hillside, they
think." A hurried step crossed the bridge, and a voice, sharp and
peremptory, asked a question in nervous English. Daunt chilled at the
answer, turning to her, every unselfish instinct alive to spare her.
But she had heard a name. "It is Mr. Ware who is hurt!"
He grasped her wrist. "Wait!" he said hurriedly. "I beg you to go by the
upper path to the side door." But she caught away her arm and ran
quickly down the path.
Daunt sprang up the hill, skirted the building, gained its upper
corridor, now simmering with excitement, and crossed the bridge. Near
its farther end a small group stood about a figure, prostrate beside the
phonograph whose cylinder gleamed in the lantern-light. By it Barbara
was kneeling.
But something came between her gaze and the pallid face--something which
she saw with the distinctness of a black paper silhouette on a white
ground: a glimmering object, unnoted by the rest, which had lain
half-concealed by a bush--something that one day, a thousand years ago,
had glittered against Daunt's brown hair as he saluted her from his
horse! It was a riding-crop, whose Damascene handle bore the device of a
fox's head.
* * * * *
Two hours later the corridors were silent and the bishop and Daunt sat
together in the darkened office, saying few words, both thinking of a
man lying straight and alone--and of a girl in an upper room whose
promise he had taken with him out of the world. Daunt was to leave for
Tokyo on the early morning train. Half the night through he sat there
listening to the moan of the rising weather.
But a little while before the sky whitened to a rainy dawn, a gray
wraith glided along the upper piazza of the hotel. It crossed the
foot-bridge to the hillside.
Barbara groped and found the crop. Across the night she seemed to see an
endless procession of stolid, sulphur-colored figures, linked with thin,
rattling chains, filing into the humid, black mouth of a mine.
Shuddering, she swung the stick with all her strength, and threw it from
her down the steep, into the water that roared and tumbled far below.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE LAYING OF THE MINE
Doctor Bersonin lunched at the Tokyo Club.
For three days the rain had fallen steadily, in one of those seasons of
torrential downpour which in Japan are generally confined to the typhoon
season and which flood its low-lands, turn its creeks into raging rivers
and play havoc with its bridges. For three days the sky had been a dull
expanse of pearl-gray, and the city a waste of drenched green foliage
and gleaming tile, whose roadways were lines of brown mud with a surface
of thin glue, dotted with glistening umbrellas of oil-paper and bamboo.
Under their trickling eaves the shop-fronts, dark and hollow and
comfortless, had held the red glow of _hibachi_; teamsters had shown
bristling tunics of rice-straw and loads covered with saffron tarpaulin;
_rick'sha_ had reeled past with rubber fronts tightly buttoned against
the slanting spears of rain, and the foreign carriages that dragged by
had borne coachmen swathed to the ears. This morning, however, the rain
had ceased and wind had supervened.
The Club was cheerful, with a sprinkling of the younger diplomatic set,
Japanese business men and journalists, all men of note. The up-stairs
dining-room was full of talk as the expert arrived and chose a small
table by himself.
While he waited, the boy brought him one of the English-printed
newspapers, and he cast his eyes over the head-lines. He read:
SQUADRON'S SAILING ORDERS
To Leave To-morrow Morning. An
Answer to the Alarmists.
All Differences Between the Two Governments
to Yield to
Diplomacy.
On the other side was the caption in smaller type:
BEAR RAID ON MARKETS
Mysterious Selling Movement
Causes Uneasiness.
He read the latter despatch--an Associated Press wire, under a New York
date-line:
"At noon to-day the bear movement, heretofore regarded as a
natural reaction following an over-advancement, and hence of
purely academic interest, suddenly assumed such proportions as
to make the outlook one of anxiety. It seems significant that
before the Wall Street opening this morning the London market
responded to an attack of the same nature. In an era of
industrial prosperity and general peace such a phenomenon is
alarming, and a serious decline is anticipated in some quarters.
The short sales which were such a factor in to-day's market were
so distributed that it seems impossible to trace them to any
single interest."
Bersonin's face expressed nothing. He folded the crackling sheet and
laid it to one side.
Most of the comment about him turned on the departure of the Squadron.
Since the royal death, whose announcement had so abruptly ended the
festivities, the black battle-ships had lain motionless in the bay. The
appointment of a regent of confessedly more positive policy had given
rise to many speculations, and the apostles of calamity had seized the
opportunity to sow the seeds of disquiet. The great world, however, had
as yet given little thought to their prognostications. The bourses had
gone higher and higher. Only in diplomatic circles, where the mercury is
habitually unquiet, had there been perceptible effect. To-day the
comment showed a sub-tone of relief.
The doctor ate little. He left the _petit verre_ with his coffee
untouched, signed his _chit_ and went down to his automobile.
"Bersonin must be under the weather," one of the men at another table
observed, as he passed them. "He looks like a putty image."
"Curious chap," remarked the other. "Got a lot in his head, no doubt.
Some queer stories afloat about him, but I don't suppose there's
anything in them."
The other lit his cigar reflectively. "I can't somehow 'go' him,
myself," he said.
Bersonin was whirled to his house, and presently was in his laboratory
with its glass shelves, its books and its wall-safe. A cheerful fire
burned in the grate against the dampness.
He began to walk restlessly up and down the floor. To-day his government
contract expired and Japan had not asked its renewal. He thought of this
with a sudden recrudescence of the hatred he had nurtured for the
Empire. This had been based on fancied slights, on his failure to
receive a decoration, on the surveillance he had lately imagined had
been kept on his movements. Well, to-morrow would repay all with
interest! There was no hitch in the plan which chance had aided so well.
The Roost was the one house on the Yokohama Bluff that could have served
his purpose, planted on the cliff-edge and in line with the anchorage.
And it had happened to be in the hands of this weak fool for his
cat's-paw!
His great, cunning brain turned to the future--to that vast career which
his stupendous egotism had painted for himself. His discovery was so
epoch-making, so terrifying in its possibilities to civilization, that
it had nonplussed him. It was too big to handle. He had made the
greatest dynamic engine the world had seen--possibly the greatest it
would ever see--and yet he knew that the Ambassador had laid his finger
on the truth when he had said: "_Humanity would revolt! The man who knew
the secret would be too dangerous to be at large!_"
But with wealth--wealth enough to buy men and privilege--what might he
not do? It would take time, and scheming, and secrecy, but he had them
all. And the great secret was always his, and his alone! It would make
him more powerful than Emperors, for he who possessed it, with the means
to use it, could laugh at fleets and fortifications. Before the machines
that he should build the greatest steel-clad that was ever floated would
vanish like smoke! He clenched his great hands and his massive frame
quivered.
"The future, the future!" he said in a low, tense voice. "I shall be
greater than Caesar, greater than Napoleon, for I shall hold the force
that can make and unmake kings! So surely as force rules the world, so
surely shall I, Bersonin, rule the world!"
A knock came at the door and Phil entered. He was as pale as the doctor
and his clothing was soaked with the rain. Without a word Bersonin
locked the door, wheeled an arm-chair before the blaze, pushed him into
it and mixed him a glass of spirits. Then he stood looking at him.
"It's all right," said Phil. "The tripod fitted to a hair. It can't be
seen from either side, and I've sent the boy away and locked the house."
"Good," said Bersonin. "All is ready, then. The mechanism is set for the
moment of daybreak. Our gains will be enormous, for in spite of the
selling the market is up. There has been a little distrust of the
situation here and there, though the optimists have had their way. And
this latent distrust will add to the _débâcle_ when it comes. We are
just in time, for the Squadron has its sailing-orders for to-morrow.
Strange how near we were to failure! Who could have foreseen the death
of the King? And the rains, too. They say it is doubtful if the trains
will run to-morrow."
Phil's hand, holding the drink, shook and wavered.
"The damned clock-work in the thing!" he said. "I could hear it all the
way--I thought every one would hear it. I can't get the ticking out of
my brain!" He set down the glass and turned a glittering gaze on the
other.
"It's worth all that comes from it," he said. "You play me fair! Do you
understand? You'll play me fair, or I'll settle with you!"
The doctor smiled, a smile of horrible cunning.
"As you settled with your brother?" he said.
Phil shrank into the chair speechless, looking at him with trepidation
in his eyes. The shot had gone home.
"Pshaw!" said Bersonin. "Do you take me for a fool not to guess? Come,
we needn't quarrel. Our interests are the same. Go home, now, to your
Japanese butterfly--and wait!"
CHAPTER XLV
THE BISHOP ANSWERS A SUMMONS
The Chapel was but sparsely filled. From where she sat, Barbara, through
the open door, could see the willows along the disconsolate roadway
whipping in the fleering dashes of wind. A woman trudged by,
bare-legged, her _kimono_ tucked knee-high, the inevitable, swaddled
baby on her back. The hot, fibrous song of the _semi_ had died to a thin
humming, like bees in an old orchard. Across the bishop's voice she
heard the plaintive call of a huckster, swinging by in slow dogtrot with
panier-pole on shoulder, and the chirr of a singing-frog under the
hedge.
The service was in the vernacular, and though she tried to follow it in
her _Romaji_ prayer-book--whose words were printed in Roman letters
instead of the Japanese ideograph--the lines were meaningless, and she
could not fasten her mind on them.
She had reached a point in these few tragical days where her mind,
overwrought with its own pain, had acquired a kind of benumbing
lassitude that was not apathy and yet was far removed from spontaneous
feeling. Daunt's presence that dreadful night on the hillside--his
confusion--his bleeding hand--his round-about return to the hotel--all
this, at the sight of the Damascene crop in the bushes, had flashed to
her mind in damnable sequence. And yet something deep and unfathomed
within her had driven her to the obliteration of that mute evidence.
Austen Ware had slipped and fallen--such was the universal verdict. The
truth was sealed for ever in the urn now bound over-seas to its last
resting-place. She alone, she thought, knew the secret of that Nikko
tragedy.
With the next daylight the storm had broken and the ensuing gloomy
weather had formed a dismal setting for gloomier scenes, through which
she had moved dully and mechanically. When all was over, to Patricia's
sorrow, she had not returned to the Embassy, but had gone immediately to
her uncle's. The pity offered her--though not openly expressed, since
her engagement had not been formally announced--hurt her like physical
blows, and the quiet of the Ts'kiji rectory was some solace. To-night,
an unwelcome task lay before her. She was to visit the yacht--now, by a
satiric freak of chance, legally her own!--to seal the private papers of
the man whose deed of gift might not now be recalled.
As she sat listening to the meaningless reading and the sighing of the
wind above the Chapel roof, Barbara's eyes on the stained-glass figure
in the rose-window were full of a wistful loneliness. If her father were
only alive--if he could be near her now! Unconsciously her gaze strayed
across the hedges, to the gray roof of the old temple where lived the
eccentric solitary to whom her thought insistently recurred. In her
trouble she longed to go to him, with a longing the greater because it
seemed fantastic and illogical. She recalled suddenly the quaint
six-year-old of the huge clogs and patched _kimono_--Ishikichi, troubled
over the giving up of the family establishment, puzzling his baby brain
over the hard things of life.
She was startled by a sound outside--the single, shrill, high scream of
a horse in some stable near at hand. It cut through a pause in the
service, sharp, curdling, like a cry of mortal fear. A baby, near
Barbara, awoke and began to cry and the mother soothed it with whispered
murmurings.
Suddenly there arose a strange rattling, a groaning of timbers. The
bishop ceased reading. People were rising to their feet. The building
was shifting, swaying, with a sickening upward vibration, as though it
were being trotted on some Brobdingnagian knee. Barbara felt a qualm
like the first touch of _mal de mer_. "_Ji-shin! Ji-shin!_" rose the
cry, and there was a rush for the open air. In another moment she found
herself out of doors with the frightened crowd.
It was her first experience of earthquake, and the terror had gripped
her bodily. The wet trees were waving to and fro like gigantic fans, and
a dull moan like an echo in a subterranean cavern seemed to issue from
the very ground. A section of tiling slid from the Chapel roof with a
crash. "Rather severe that, for Tokyo," said the bishop at her elbow,
where he stood calmly, watch in hand. "Almost two minutes and vertical
movement."
"Two minutes!" she gasped. She had thought it twenty.
The nauseating swing had ceased, but in an instant, with a vicious
wrench, it began again. "The secondary oscillations," he said. "It will
all be over in a ..."
As he spoke, the air swelled with a horrible, crunching, grinding roar,
like the complaint of a million riven timbers. Across the lane a
sinister dust-cloud sprang into the air like a monstrous hand with
spread fingers. "It is one of the temples!" said the bishop, and hurried
with the rest, Barbara following him.
The paved yard was filling with a throng. Agitated priests and acolytes
ran hither and thither and slate-colored nuns, with shaven heads and
pale, frightened faces, peered through the bamboo-lattices of the
nunnery. The newer temple faced the open space as usual, but across the
hedged garden no ornate roof now thrust up its Tartar gables. Instead
was a huddle of wreckage, upon which lay the huge roof, crumpled and
shattered, like the fragments of a gigantic mushroom. From the tangle
projected beam ends, coiled about with painted monsters, and here and
there in the cluttered _débris_ lay great images of unfamiliar deities.
Over all hung a fine yellow dust, choking and penetrating.
What was under those ruins? Barbara shivered. She was quite unconscious
of the mud and the pelting rain. The bishop drew her under the temple
porch, and they stood together watching the men now working with
mattocks, saws and with loose beams for levers, prying up a corner of
the fallen roof. It seemed an hour they had stood there, when a priest,
bareheaded, his robes caked with mud, came from the clustering crowd.
The bishop questioned him in Japanese. Barbara guessed from his face
what the priest had answered! She waited quiveringly.
Through the bishop's mind swift thoughts were passing. He knew by
hearsay of the recluse--knew that he was not an Oriental. He had often
seen the placard on the little gate: "Maker of Buddhas." He had never
passed it without a pang. It seemed a satirical derision of the holiest
ideal of the West--a type and sign of reversion, a sardonic mockery of
the Creed of Christ. He was a priest holding the torch of the true light
to this alien people, and here, a dark shadow across its brightness, had
stood this derisive denial. Yet now, perhaps, this man stood on the
threshold of the hereafter--and he was a man of his own race!
He turned to Barbara. "Wait here for me," he said. "I am going in. I
will come back to you as soon as I can."
CHAPTER XLVI
THE GOLDEN CRUCIFIX
The bishop went quickly through the crowd to a gap under the great
gables, where the beams had been sawed through and the rubbish shoveled
to one side, making a difficult way into the interior. The enormous span
of the roof had sunk sidewise, splitting its supporting beams and
bending the walls outward, but its great ridge had remained intact and
it now stretched, a squat, ungainly lean-to, over what had been the
altar. The space was strewn with brasses, fragments of fretted and
carven doors, and splintered beneath a mass of tiling lay a great image
of Kwan-on. The daylight came dimly in through the chinks in the ruin.
The air was warm and close and had a smell of pulverized plaster, of
stale incense and rotting wood. A group of priests stood on the altar
platform beside a huddle of wadded mats and brocaded draperies, on which
a man was lying, his open eyes upturned to the painted monsters on the
twisted tangle of rafters.
The bishop hesitated, then came close.
The man's head turned toward him--for an instant he seemed to shrink
into the cushions; then in his eyes, dark with the last shadow, came a
swift yearning. He spoke to the priests and they drew back.
"Arthur," he said, "don't you know me?"
A gasping sound came from the leaning bishop. "John! John Fairfax!" he
cried, composure dropping from him, and fell on his knees. "After these
years!"
The other lifted his hand and touched the bishop's pale, smooth-shaven
face.
"I am going, Arthur," he said. "I never intended to speak, though I've
seen you often.... I thought it was best. Did she--did my wife never
tell you?"
"Never a word, John! I have never known!" cried the bishop, in a shaken
voice.
"It was my fault. All mine! I--never believed as she did, Arthur, and
here in the East what was breath and bread to her, to me came to seem
all mumbo-jumbo. I had had a hard life, and I wanted comfort--for her.
Then I found out about the gold-lacquer."
He paused to gather the strength that was fast ebbing.
"I got the formula from a crazy priest, and I began in a small way--the
idol-making, I mean. I had a shop at Saga. At first it was only for the
mandarins in the China trade, and ... no one knew. But the lacquer grew
famous, and within a year I was shipping to Rangoon and Thibet. I made
all sorts of praying-tackle. Then--then I quarreled with my agent,
and--he told my wife. She didn't believe it, but one day ... he brought
her to where I was at work. I was modeling an Amida for a temple in
Nagasaki!"
He threw an arm across his face and moaned.
"She left me that night. A ship was in the harbor. I ... never saw her
again. I never knew I had a daughter till a week ago!... I never knew!"
There was a silence.
"I have seen her. She must never guess, Arthur! She thinks I ... died in
Nagasaki. It's better so. Promise me!"
"I promise, John," said the bishop. "I promise."
The bell of the temple across the inclosure began to strike. "It sounds
... like the bell of the old Greek church," the failing voice said.
"When I left home the priest said I would do nothing good. But--" the
grim ghost of a smile touched his lips--"I made ... good idols, Arthur!"
The smile flickered out. "My little girl! My own, own daughter! Don't
you ... think it was cruel, Arthur?"
"Would you like to see her?" asked the bishop. "She is just outside."
The wan face was illumined. "Yes, yes," he said. "God bless you, Arthur!
Bring her--but quickly!"
For a few moments there was stillness. The priests whispered together,
but approached no nearer. In the other temple, the _Bioki-Fuji_, the
Buddhist ceremony of Sick-Healing, had begun for the injured man, and
the muffled pounding of the _mok'gyo_ came dully into the propped ruins.
The dying man's eyes were closed when Barbara knelt down and took his
chilling hand between hers.
"It is I," she said softly.
His gaze was dimming, but he knew her. "I can't see your face much
longer," he said, "but I can feel your hands. How long ago it seems ...
our Flower-of-Dream. It bloomed to-day, my dear."
She was weeping silently. There was a pause, in which the wind droned
through the shattered timbers. The dying man's free hand wandered feebly
at his side, found a gold-lacquer crucifix, and drew it closer.
"The white cross on the roof. It ... called me back!" He tried to lift
the golden crucifix. "I've been ... making this for a long time. I was
outside when the shock came, but I ... went back to save it.... I should
like it to be ... in your Chapel, Barbara."
She laid her young cheek against his hand; she could not speak.
Across the silence the bishop's low and broken voice rose in the Prayer
for the Sick:
"_O most merciful God, who, according to the multitude of Thy mercies,
dost so put away the sins of those who truly repent, that Thou
rememberest them no more: Open Thine eye of mercy.... Renew in him, most
loving Father.... Impute not unto him his former sins...._"
* * * * *
"Are you still there, Barbara?"
"Yes."
"A little longer." Death was heavy on his tongue. "_Namu Amida Butsu!_"
he muttered. "But at the end--the old things--the old faith--"
The tears ran down the bishop's face.
"They are all dead now," came the broken whisper through the closing
darkness. "There is no one to forgive me, except--"
"God will forgive you!" said the bishop, with a sob.
But the idol-maker did not hear.
CHAPTER XLVII
"IF THIS BE FORGETTING"
The sailing-master of the yacht _Barbara_, with his mate and crony, sat
in the main saloon, whiling away a tedious hour.
The room bore all the earmarks of "a rich man's plaything." It was
tastefully and luxuriously furnished. The upholstery was of dark green
brocade, thin Persian prayer-rugs were on the hardwood floor, and
electric bulbs in clusters were set in silver sconces, which swung with
a long, slow motion as the yacht rocked to the deepening respiration of
the sea. At one side a small square table held the remains of a
comfortable refection, and by it, on a stand, sat a phonograph with
which the two men had been gloomily diverting themselves.
But though the _repertoire_ of the instrument was extended, it had
brought little satisfaction to-night. The last irksome fortnight of
inactivity had made each selection trite and familiar. Moreover, the
captain's spirits were not of the best. The abrupt change of ownership,
followed hard by the death of the yacht's former master, was a
_bouleversement_ that had confused his automatic temperament, and the
sight of the double-locked cabin-door in the saloon was a daily
depressant. He had never seen the yacht's new owner, though she had
written him that he might expect her at any time, and the enigma of a
future under a woman's orders troubled his sturdy and unimaginative
mind.
"Wish to the Lord she'd come, if she's ever coming!" he muttered, as the
phonograph ran down with a wheeze. "This is two days I've kept the
dinghy lying at the _hatoba_."
The mate nodded. It was not the first time the remark had been made. "I
wonder why she ordered his cabin door kept locked?" he said.
"Papers," returned the captain sapiently. "Wants to seal 'em up for the
executor. New owner must be rich, I guess. I'd like to know what she
paid for the outfit. First time I ever signed under a new skipper sight
unseen!"
"Miss Barbara Fairfax," mused the mate. "Nice name. Curious only one
piece of mail should come for her--and second class, too." He picked up
a thin package from the table, folded in dark paper. This had been made
sodden by the rain; now it parted and a flat, black disk of hard rubber
slipped from it and rolled across the floor.
"Blamed if it isn't a phonograph record," he said, as he picked it up.
"It's out of the wrapper now--let's try it." He set it in place and
rewound the spring, and the saloon filled with a chorus of chirps and
tinklings from quivering catgut smitten by ivory plectrums.
"_Samisen!_" said the captain. "I've heard 'em in the tea-houses. Give
me a fiddle for mine, any day."
The yacht's cabin-boy entered. "The dinghy's coming, sir," he said.
"Lady and gentleman aboard of her."
The captain got up hastily, put out a hand and stopped the machine.
"Take away those dishes, and be quick about it," he ordered. "Mr.
Rogers, pipe up the men."
He hurried on deck and watched the bobbing craft approach. Under the
rising wind the sea was lifting rapidly and the dinghy buried its nose
in the spray. Presently he was giving a helping hand to the visitors at
the break in the rail, looking into a pair of brown eyes that he thought
were the saddest he had ever seen, and replying to a voice that was
saying:
"I am Miss Fairfax, Captain Hart, and this is my uncle, Bishop
Randolph."
* * * * *
The train which brought Barbara and the bishop from Tokyo had crawled
for miles along what seemed a narrow ribbon laid on a yellow floor. The
steady, continuous downpour had flooded the rice-fields and the
landscape was a waste of turbid freshet, the rivers deep and swollen
torrents. At one bridge a small army of workmen were dumping loads of
stone about a pier-head and shoring-up the track with heavy timbers. The
train crossed this at a snail's pace, that inspired anxiety.
"I'm not an engineer," the bishop had said, "but I prophesy this bridge
won't be safe to-morrow unless the water falls."
The early daylight dinner at the hotel had been well nigh a silent
ceremonial. That day, with the temple solitary, Barbara had gone down
into a deeper Valley of Shadow. Just as her longing to go to him in her
trouble had seemed to her overwrought, so now her grief was strangely
poignant. When she thought of him her mind was a confusion of tremulous
half-thoughts and new emotions. She could not know that the voice she
dimly heard was the call of blood--that she was in the grip of that
mighty instinct of filiation which strengthens the life-currents of the
world. Her grief--mysterious because its springs were haunting and
unknown--added its aching pang now to the misery that had encompassed
her. She had felt the fierce bounding of the stout little boat, the
gusts of windy spray that flew over them, with a tinge of relief, since
the buffeting made the inner pain less keen.
As she stood at length, with her task, in the cabin whose door had been
so long locked, she remembered the white-robed priests of Kudan Hill,
stalking barefooted across the hot coals. Her soul, she thought, must
tread a fiery path on which rested no miracle of painlessness, and which
had no end. Above her she could hear the irregular footfalls of the
bishop on the tilting deck, and the shrill humming of the wind in the
ventilators. It seemed to be mocking her. Before the world she was
living a painful pretense. Even her uncle believed her to be grieving
for the man whose life had gone out that night at Nikko!
When all had been done and the papers sealed in a portmanteau for
delivery to the Consul-General, Barbara came into the brilliant saloon.
The yacht was pitching heavily and she could stand with difficulty.
Steadying herself against the table, she saw the empty wrapper addressed
to herself. It bore a Nikko postmark. Who could have sent it here? As
she stood holding the paper in her hand, the bishop entered.
"Captain Hart thinks we would better stay aboard to-night, Barbara," he
said. "There is a nasty sea and we should be sure of a drenching in the
dinghy. We have no change of clothing, you know."
"You will be quite comfortable, Miss Fairfax," the captain's voice spoke
deferentially from the doorway. "The guest-rooms are always kept ready."
"Very well," she said, a little wearily. "That will be best, no doubt."
She held up the torn wrapper. "What was in this, I wonder?"
The captain confessed his indiscretion with embarrassment, and she
absolved him with a smile that covered a sharper pang than she had yet
felt that evening. For that thin disk had been on the hillside that
Nikko night--perhaps had heard that quarrel, had seen that blow, had
watched a man crawling, staggering foot by foot, till he collapsed
against the frame that held it! By what strange chance had it been sent
to her here?
Her uncle bade her good night presently, being an indifferent sailor,
and betook himself to bed. The room that had been prepared for her
opened into the saloon. She was too restless to retire, and after a time
she climbed up the companion-way to the windy deck.
The vaulted sapphire of the sky had been swept clean of cloud and the
stars sparkled whitely. Off at one side, a flock of sinister shadows,
she could make out the Squadron of battle-ships, and beyond, in a
curving line, the twinkling lights of the Bund. Could it ever again be
to her that magical shore she had first seen from a ship's deck, with
hills which the cherry-trees made fairy tapestries of green-rose, and
mountains creased of purple velvet and veined with gold? The great white
phantom lifting above them--would it henceforth be but a bulk of ice and
stone, no longer the shrine of the Goddess-of-Radiant-Flower-Bloom? The
sky--would it ever again seem the same violet arch that had bent over a
Tokyo garden of musk flowers and moonlight? Would the world never seem
beautiful to her again?
All about her the foam-stippled water glowed with points of
phosphorescence, as though a thousand ghostly lanterns were afloat. It
made her think of the festival of the _Bon_, of which Thorn had told
her, when the _Shoryo-buné_--the boats of the departed spirits--in
lambent flotillas, go glimpsing down to the sea. How unbelievable that
she should never see him again! She felt a sudden envy of the placid
millions encircling her to whose faith no life was ever lost, whose
loved ones were ever coming back in the perennial cherry-blooms, the
maple-leaves, the whispering pines.
Her love would come back to her only in bitter memories, in painful
thoughts that would shame and burn. All else beside, she had been Austen
Ware's promised wife. How could she still feel love for the man who had
caused his death? Yet--if she must--if she could never tear that image
from her breast!
Like the reflection of a camera-obscura, memory painted a sudden picture
on the void; she saw herself sitting amid the branches of a tulip-tree,
while some one sang--a song the wind was humming in the cordage:
"Forgotten you? Well, if forgetting
Be yearning with all my heart,
With a longing, half pain and half rapture,
For the time when we never shall part;
If the wild wish to see you and hear you,
To be held in your arms again--
If this be forgetting, you're right, dear,
And I have forgotten you then."
Great, slow tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
CHAPTER XLVIII
WHILE THE CITY SLEPT
Daunt accompanied his chief that evening to a dinner at the Nobles'
Club--a "stag," for conventional functions had been discontinued since
the royal death had cast a pall over the stay of the Squadron. As they
drove thither a nearer shadow was over the Ambassador's spirits. His
thoughts would stray to Barbara and her misfortune, which seemed so deep
and irreparable. He had eventually accepted his wife's diagnosis as to
Daunt's _tendresse_, but he had a confidence that his Secretary of
Embassy, though hard-hit, would bear no scars. He could not guess all
that lay beneath the brave domino Daunt was wearing.
The affair was a late one, with various native divertisements:
top-spinners, painters whose exquisite brush-etchings, done in a few
seconds, were given as mementoes to the guests, and jugglers who,
utterly without paraphernalia, caused live fowl to appear in impossible
places. Toward the close the Ambassador found himself seated beside the
Minister of Marine.
"Very clever," he said, as a Chinese pheasant flew out of an inverted
opera-hat. "I almost believe he could produce my missing dog if he were
properly urged."
"Have you lost one?" asked the Admiral. "I'm sorry."
The Ambassador laughed. "It was really something of a relief," he said,
and told the story of the Russian wolf-hound which had so curiously
disappeared on the evening of Doctor Bersonin's call. "The oddest thing
about it," he ended, "is that, though the name of the Embassy was on his
collar, nothing has been heard of him."
The two men chatted for some time on things in general, the conversation
veering to the Squadron. The Ambassador thought the other seemed
somewhat distrait. At two the affair ended and the carriages drew up to
the windy porte-cochère. There was a confidential matter which the
Ambassador wished to speak of with his host. He had mentioned it, but no
fitting opportunity had occurred. At the door the Admiral recalled it,
suggesting with a quizzical reference to the other's American fondness
for late hours that, as his house was on the way, the Ambassador stop
there, while they had their talk over a cigar. The latter, therefore,
departed in the Admiral's carriage, and Daunt drove alone to the
Embassy, directing the coachman to go in a half-hour for his chief.
In the past three days Daunt had fought a constant battle. Every feature
of that night at Nikko was stamped indelibly on his mind. The passionate
resentment, the agony of protest that had come to him at the ball, when
he had received the torn fragments of his letter to Barbara, returned in
double force, opposing a strange, new sense of shame that his thought
should follow her even into the tragic shadow where she now dwelt.
Yet--for fancy will not be denied--his brain would again and again
circle the same somber treadmill:
_We have done those things which we ought not to have done!_ He seemed
to hear her say it on the dark hillside. Her voice had had that in it
which, against his will, had thrilled him. What had she done that she
regretted? She had spoken of the day in the cave at Enoshima--had seemed
to wish him to believe that she had not then been acting a part. Could
anything have happened in that one day's interval so utterly to change
her? She had been unhappy, for he had surprised her weeping. What was it
she had wished to "confess?" So to-night his gloomy reflections ran--to
their submerging wave of self-reproach.
He let himself into the Chancery with his latch-key, to get his
evening's mail. A telegram had been laid on his desk. It was a
cipher from Washington, and he opened the safe at once and from the
inner drawer took out the official code books. He sat down at one of
the desks and began the decoding of the text. For a time he worked
mechanically--as it were, with but one-half of his brain--tracing each
group of figures in the bulky volume, transposing by the secret key,
dragging, in the complicated process, sense and coherency from the
meaningless digits. Then he sat staring at the result:
"Large short selling to-day in European bourses and in New York
(comma) unexplainable on usual grounds (comma) is creating
anxiety (period) Can scarcely be explained except on hypothesis
that secret group of dealers have suddenly come into possession
of information which leads them to consider the international
situation ominous (period) Newspapers in ignorance of anything
extraordinary (period) London and Paris evidently puzzled
(period) Has situation developed new phases and in your opinion
does it contain possible element of danger (period) Hasten
reply."
A full five minutes Daunt sat motionless, revolving the matter in all
its bearings. An answer must be sent without delay. A part of that
answer might be found in the departure of the Squadron. The newspapers
had announced its receipt of sailing-orders, but the news had yet to be
verified. The Naval Minister could give this verification.
He went at once to the stables, where the carriage was about to start
for the Ambassador. He sprang in. A little later he was at the Admiral's
official residence and his chief was perusing the message. After a
moment's thought the Ambassador read it aloud.
Daunt had made a move to retire, but the Admiral stopped him.
"Pray don't go yet," he said. "There is something I should like to say
on this matter, and I count on your discretion, Mr. Daunt, as on His
Excellency's. Since the American Government attaches significance to
that peculiar incident, I think no harm can come from an exchange of
opinion. It may help us both." He paused a moment, his foot tapping the
floor.
"The news contained in that telegram," he continued presently, "for the
past two days has caused my Government great concern. Your Excellency
will understand when I say that the particular objects of this attack
(if I may so call it) are precisely those securities which would suffer
most were Japan's peace or prosperity threatened. There has seemed to be
a concurrence in it not purely fortuitous. Back of this selling is no
mere opinion--it is too assured for that. Some interest or individual
abroad is apparently banking heavily on a belief that Japan is about to
enter a period of stress!"
The Ambassador spoke for the first time. "_Abroad?_" he said shrewdly.
The Admiral looked at him an instant without speaking. His expression
changed swiftly. He rose and went quickly to the telephone in the next
room.
"He is talking with the Secret Service," said Daunt, in a low tone.
In a few moments their host returned. There was something in his face
that made the Ambassador's keen eye kindle. "The suggestion was most
pertinent," he said. "There is one man in Japan who, exclusive of the
commercial codes, has sent in the past two days cipher telegrams to New
York, London and Berlin."
He took a short turn about the room in some agitation. "Your
Excellency," he said, stopping short, "I make a confident of you. That
man is Doctor Bersonin."
The Ambassador started.
"Pray absolve me," said the Admiral quickly, "from an apparent
indiscretion. Doctor Bersonin is no longer in the Japanese service. His
contract expired at noon to-day. It will not be renewed. As one of _my_
Government I speak to you, as the representative of _your_ Government,
concerning a private individual whose acts are in the purview of us
both. The circumstances are extraordinary, but I think the occasion
justifies this conversation."
He rang a bell sharply and his private secretary entered. "Bring me," he
said in Japanese, "report number eleven of Lieutenant Ishida Hetaro."
When it was brought, he turned to a leaf underscored scored with red.
"Your Excellency," he said, "interested me profoundly this evening by
the account of the disappearance of your dog. I am going to ask Mr.
Daunt--who reads Japanese so fluently--to give a running translation of
this."
Daunt took the manuscript--as perfectly executed as an inscription in
Uncial Greek--and began to read. As he translated, his breath came more
quickly, and the Ambassador leaned forward across the table. Yet the
words chronicled nothing more than the curious disappearance from the
laboratory of a tiny song-bird--_and a steel pen-rest_. The close of the
narrative drew an exclamation from the Ambassador's lips. For it told of
feathery sprays of reddish-brown powder on the expert's desk, and he
seemed to see himself, his study lamp in his hand, bending over curious
whorls of dust on his own piazza.
"May I ask," said the Admiral, "whether the episode of the dog suggested
to Your Excellency the possibility that your caller might himself be
able to solve the mystery of the animal's disappearance?"
The Ambassador's reply came slowly, but with deliberate emphasis:
"It did. The more so, from our previous conversation. In my study I have
the model of a Dreadnaught. We were discussing this, and the doctor
described the fighting machine of the future--an atomic engine which
should utilize some newly discovered law of molecular action, a machine
that might be carried in a single hand, to which a battle-ship would be,
as he expressed it, 'mere silly shreds of steel.' He spoke, I thought,
with a strange confidence that seemed almost unbalanced. In connection
with the conversation, the later incident, I confess, left a deep
impression. Yet the idea it suggested was so incredible that I have
never spoken of it to any one before."
"Suppose," said the Admiral, "that the man we are discussing has
actually constructed such a machine. What possible connection can there
be between that and a confidence in some near event which will lower
Japan's credit in the eyes of the world?"
Before the Ambassador replied there was the sound of voices outside--a
sudden commotion and a woman's agitated protestations. The secretary
came in hurriedly and whispered to the Admiral. A door slammed in the
hall, there was the sound of a short struggle, and a girl burst into the
room. She threw herself at the Admiral's feet, panting broken sentences.
Her _kimono_ was torn and muddied, her blue-black hair was loosened, and
her face white and pitifully working.
A man had darted after her--he was the Admiral's _aide_. He grasped her
arm. "She has been at the Department," he said in English, with a glance
at the visitors. "They detained her there, but she got away. They have
telephoned a warning that she might attempt to see you."
She struggled against him, her eyes sweeping the circle about her with a
passionate entreaty. Suddenly she saw the Ambassador. She lifted her
face, swollen with crying, to him:
"You--nod know me--Haru?" she faltered, "_né_? Say so!"
"Haru!" he exclaimed. Then, turning to the Admiral, "I know the child,"
he said. "She was companion to one of our house-guests till a week ago,
when she disappeared from her home."
His host made an exclamation of pity. "It is _no-byo_, no doubt," he
said, using the word for the strange Japanese brain-fever which is akin
to madness. "She must be cared for at once." He leaned and spoke
soothingly to her.
A spasm seized Haru. She tore herself from the _aide's_ grasp and,
falling prone, beat her small fists on the floor. "They will none of
them listen! They will none of them listen!" she screamed, in Japanese.
"They call it the fever, and they will not hear! And to-morrow it will
be too late!" A peal of hysteric laughter shook her, mixed with
strangling sobs. "Are all the gods with Bersonin-_San_?"
At that name the Admiral's face changed swiftly. "Leave her with me," he
said, "and wait in the anteroom."
"But, Excellency--"
The other lifted his hand, and the _aide_ withdrew with the secretary.
His two callers had risen, but he stayed them. "We have gone far along
the road of confidence to-night," he said in a low tone. "If you are
willing, we will go to the end."
He bent and drew the girl to a sitting posture.
"Tell us," he said gently, "what brought you here."
CHAPTER XLIX
THE ALARM
As the three men listened to the swift, broken story, there was no sound
save the rustle of the wind outside, the clack of a night-watchman, and
the ticking of the clock on the marble mantel. The crouching form, the
sodden garments, the passionate intensity of the slim, clutched hands,
the fire in the dark eyes--all lent effect to a narrative instinct with
terrible truth. The Ambassador's knowledge of the colloquial was
limited, but he knew enough to grasp the story's main features. It
capped the edifice of suspicion and furnished a direful solution to what
had been mysterious. Once the Admiral's eyes met his, and each knew that
the other _believed_. Terrible as its meaning was--pointing to what
black depths of abysmal wickedness--it was true!
The Admiral listened with a countenance that might have been carved of
metal, but the faces of the others were gray-white. Later was to come to
both the pathos and meaning of the sacrifice this frail girl had laid on
the knees of her country's gods, but for the hour, all else was
swallowed up in the horrifying knowledge, struck through with the sharp
fact that one of the partners in this devilish enterprise, however
expatriate, was of their own nation. To Daunt this was intensified by
his own acquaintance with Phil. Memories swept him of that worthless,
ribald career--the evil intimacy with Bersonin--the gradual dominance of
the bottle, which in the end had betrayed him!
With a singular separateness of vision, he seemed, in lightning-like
flashes, to see that betrayal: the blind infatuation, the slow
enticements, the reckless, intoxicated triumph, the final surrender. He
seemed to see Haru, her secret won, running panting through the wind. He
saw Phil waking at last from his drunken slumber--to what shame and
penalty? He shuddered.
* * * * *
When the secretary entered at the crisp sound of the Admiral's bell, he
started at the pallid countenances in the room. The Japanese girl stood
trembling, half-supported by the Admiral's arm. The latter spoke--in a
voice that held no sign of feeling. It was to present the young man to
the girl in the most formal and elaborate courtesy.
"The _Ojo-San_ deigns to be for but an hour the guest of my mean abode,"
he said. "Instruct my _karei_ that in that unworthy interval he may
offer her august refreshment and afterward prepare her proper escort and
conveyance. Meantime, send my _aide_ to me."
The secretary's gleam of astonishment veiled itself under oriental
lashes, and a tinge of color warmed the whiteness of Haru's cheek. He
bowed to her profoundly. As he deferentially opened the door, she turned
back, swayed, and sank suddenly prone in a deep, sweeping obeisance.
An instant the Admiral stood looking after her. "The petal of a
plum-blossom," he said, "under the hoof of the swine!"
His manner changed abruptly as the _aide_ entered. He spoke in quick,
curt Japanese, in a tone sharp and exact as steel shears snipping
through zinc:
"Something has transpired of great moment. There is no time to deal with
it by the ordinary channels. It is of the first importance--the _first_
importance!--that I reach Yokohama within the hour. You will call up
Shimbashi and order a special train with right of way. This admits of
_no delay_! Send for my carriage at once. You will accompany me. We
leave in ten minutes." The _aide_ went out quickly while he seated
himself at his desk and began to write rapidly.
"Two battle-ships!" he said suddenly, wheeling in his seat. "With the
human lives on them! Perhaps even war between two or more nations! Gods
of my ancestors! All this to hang on the loyalty of a mere girl!"
The Ambassador, pacing the floor, snapped the lid of his watch. "It must
still be close to two hours of sunrise," he said in an agitated voice.
"Surely there is time!"
The Admiral was consulting an almanac when the _aide_ reëntered. "Here
is a telegram," he said. "Put it on the wire at once. It must arrive
before us."
"Excellency," said the _aide_, "the train is not possible. The service
to Yokohama ceased at six o'clock. The rains--there is a washout."
His chief pondered swiftly. "It must be left to others, then. Call up
the emergency long-distance for Yokohama and give me a clear wire at
once to the Governor's residence. I must make the telegraphic
instructions fuller." He bent over the desk.
Trepidation was on the _aide's_ face when he returned this time.
"Excellency the accident to the line was the failure of the bridge over
the Rokuga-gawa. It carried both the telegraph and telephone conduits.
No wire will be working before noon to-morrow."
The Admiral half-rose. He stretched out his hand, then drew it back.
"The wireless!" exclaimed the Ambassador.
The _aide's_ troubled voice replied. Whatever the necessity he knew that
it was a crucial one.
"The mast was displaced by to-day's earthquake," he said. "The system is
temporarily useless."
There was a moment of blank silence. The Admiral sat staring straight
before him. The only sign of agitation was his labored breathing.
"Can a horse get through?"
The other shook his head. "Not under three hours. It would have to be by
_détour_--and there are no relays."
"A motor car?"
"Impossible!" exclaimed the Ambassador. "By the long road and in better
weather my Mercedes can not do it under eighty minutes."
The Admiral lifted himself from his chair. His eyes were bloodshot and
on his forehead tiny veins had sprung out in branching clusters of
purple.
"In the name of _Shaka_! Yokohama harbor but a handful of miles away,
and cut off utterly? It must be reached, I tell you! _It must be
reached!_" His voice was low-pitched, but terrible in its intensity.
"Drive to the Naval College and ask for twenty cadets--its swiftest
runners--to be sent after you to Shimbashi. A locomotive can take them
as far as the river. If there are no _sampan_, they can swim. Make
demand in my authority. Not a minute is to be lost!" He put what he had
been writing into the _aide's_ hand. "Read this in the carriage. It will
serve as instruction."
The _aide_ thrust the paper into his breast and vanished. The Admiral
looked about him through stiffened, half-closed eyelids. Then, under the
stress, it seemed, of a mighty shudder--the very soul of that
overwhelming _certainty_ of the peril awaiting the red dawn on that
bungalow roof above the Yokohama anchorage--the racial impassivity, the
restraint and repression of emotion that long generations of ingrain
habit have made second nature to the Japanese, suddenly crumbled. He
struck his hand hard against the desk.
"Has not Japan toiled and borne enough, that this shame must come to
her?" His deep voice shook. "Your Excellency--Mr. Daunt--in all this
land where heroism is hackneyed and sacrifice a fetish, there is no
prince or coolie who, to turn aside this peril, would not give his body
to the torture. Yet must we sit here helpless as _Darumas_! If man but
had wings!"
Daunt stiffened. He felt his heart beat to his temples. He started to
his feet with an exclamation.
"But man _has_ wings!" he cried.
What of the long hours of toil and experiment, the gray mornings on
Aoyama parade-ground when his Glider had carried him circling above the
tree-tops? Could he do it? With no other word he darted to the hall.
They heard his flying feet on the gravel and a quick command to a
_betto_. The wind tossed back the word into the strained quiet.
"Aoyama!" exclaimed the Ambassador, as the hoof-beats, lashed to an
anguish of speed, died into silence. "His Glider!"
A sudden hope flashed into the Admiral's face.
"The gods of _Nippon_ aid him!" he said.
CHAPTER L
WHOM THE GODS DESTROY
There was one whose guilty eyes were closed to the red danger so near.
In the house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley, under the green mosquito
netting, Phil lay in a log-like slumber. The soft light of the paper
_andon_ flowed over the gay wadded _f'ton_, the handsome besotted face
with its mark of the satyr and, at one side, a little wooden pillow of
black lacquer. There was no sound save the sweep of the wind outside and
the heavy breathing of the unconscious man.
For three nights past, since his wild motor-ride from Nikko, he had not
slept, save in illusory snatches, from which he had waked with the sweat
breaking on his forehead. Short as were these, they had held horrid
visions, broken fragments of scenes that waved and clustered about the
lilied altar in the Ts'kiji cathedral, echoing to the solemn service of
the dead. Again and again there had started before him the stolid ring
of blue-clad coolie women, swaying as they had swayed to the straw-ropes
of the pile-driver in the moat-bottom with their weird chant--
_"Yó--eeya--kó--ra!_
_Yó--eeya--kó--ra!"_
And now they chanted a terrible refrain:
_"Thou--shalt--not--kill!"_
To-night, however, deeper potations had done their work. He was
dreaming--yellow dreams like the blackguard fancyings of the
half-world--visions in which he moved, a Prince of Largesse, through
unending pleasures of self-indulgence. He was on an European Boulevard,
riding with Haru by his side in silk and pearls, and people turned to
gaze as he went by.
But now, with sinister topsyturvydom, the dream changed. The _cocher_
drove faster and faster, into a mad gallop. He turned his head and Phil
saw that the face under the glazed hat was the face of his dead brother.
The staring pedestrians began to pursue the carriage. They showered blow
after blow on it, till the sound reverberated like thunder.
Not the ghosts of his dream, but a hand of flesh and blood was knocking.
It was on the outer _shoji_ and the frail dwelling shook beneath it. The
servant, sunk in bovine sleep, heard no sound, but the chauffeur in the
automobile that throbbed outside the wistaria gate, rose from his seat,
and across a bamboo wattle a dog barked and scrambled venomously.
Phil's eyes opened and he sat up giddily. He went unsteadily to the door
and unfastened the _shoji_, blinking at the great form that strode past
him into the inner apartment.
Bersonin's gaze swept the room. "The girl!" he said hoarsely. "Where is
she?"
Phil looked about him dazedly--at the tumbled _f'ton_, the deserted
wooden pillow. Haru gone? His senses, clouded by intoxication, took in
the fact dully, as a thing of no meaning.
The expert grasped him by his shoulder and shook him till the thin silk
of the _kimono_ tore under the enormous white fingers. The violence had
its effect. The daze fell away. Phil broke into loud imprecations.
"Did you tell her anything?"
Phil's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "What is--what makes you
think--" he stammered.
Bersonin's face was a greenish hue. His great hands shook.
"To-night," he said, in a whisper, "to-night--an hour ago--I saw her on
the street. I wasn't sure at first, but I know now it was she! A naval
officer was with her. _He took her into the house of the Minister of
Marine!_"
The other gave a low cry. A chalky pallor overspread his features.
"Haru?--no, Bersonin! You're crazy, I say. She--she would never tell!"
Fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. A sharp moan
came from his lips.
"So she _did_ know! You told her then! O, incredible fool!"
For an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. Phil
quailed before him. A frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt the
passion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in a
flame. His voice rose in a kind of scream:
"Don't look at me like that!" he raved. "I was a fool to trust her, but
it's done now. It's done, I tell you, and you can't undo it! What can
they do to us? They may find the machine, but what can they _prove_?
We're foreigners! They can't touch us without proof!"
He had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. All
the grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic.
He trembled excessively.
"Proof!" sneered Bersonin savagely. "There would have been none if--_it
happened_! I had arranged that! In its operation _the machine destroys
itself_! And neither of us is in Yokohama to-night."
Phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "What
is to be done? Can we still--"
"Listen," said the doctor. "A single hour more, even with your cursed
folly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and all
wires are down. I heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out of
order."
"Then--then--they can not--" Phil's voice shook with a nauseous
eagerness.
"Wait! When I saw the girl there, I was suspicious. I watched. In a
little while your friend Daunt came from the gate. In some way he
happened to be there. The _betto_ was flogging the horses like a crazy
man. He came in this direction!--Can't you understand? His aëroplane! He
is going to use it as a last chance. If he succeeds, we may spend our
lives in the copper mines. If he can be stopped, we may win yet! There
will be nothing but the tale of a Japanese drab--that and nothing else!"
Phil flung on his clothing in a madness of haste. The desperate dread
that had raged in him was become now a single fixed idea, frosted over
by a cold, demented fury. Unhealthy spots of red sprang in his white
cheeks; his eyes dilated to the mania of the paranoiac.
Hatless, he rushed through the little garden, cleared the rear hedge at
a bound, and fled, like a runaway from hell, toward the darkness of the
vast parade-ground.
CHAPTER LI
THE LAUGH
As Bersonin stood by the wistaria gate beside the pulsing motor,
confused thoughts rushed through his mind into an eddying
phantasmagoria. The fear and agitation which he had kept under only
by an immense self-control returned with double weight.
All was known--thanks to the brainless fool in whom he had relied! The
Government knew. The wild tale the Japanese girl had told had been
believed! Had there been suspicions before? He thought of the espionage
he had fancied had been kept of late on his movements, of the silent,
saturnine faces he had imagined dogged his footsteps. Even his servants,
even Ishida, with his blank visage and fantastic English, might be--
He looked sharply at the chauffeur. He was lighting a cigarette in the
hollow of his hands; the ruddy flare of the match lit the brown placid
face, the narrow, secret-keeping eyes.
He tried to _force_ his mind to a measure of control, to look the
situation in the face.
If Phil failed. If the aëroplane won against darkness and wind--if the
bungalow was reached in time, and the machine made harmless. Nothing
would happen. Who, then, would believe the girl's wild story? Who could
show that he had made it? He had worked at night, alone in his locked
laboratory. Besides, it would tell nothing. It would yield its secret
only to the master mind. And if its presence on the roof damned anybody,
it would not be him! _He_ had not put it there. _He had not been in
Yokohama in three days!_
If the aëroplane did not start--he remembered the look on Phil's face
when he rushed away!--or if it failed. With its own deadly ray, the very
machine would vanish. Phil had not known this--could not have told. The
searchers would find nothing! The news would have flashed along the
cables that must roll up for him vast sums in the panic of markets. And
there would be nothing to bring the deed home to him!
Nothing? The warning had been given _before the fact_. The Government
had taken alarm. Bureaus were buzzing already. Sooner or later the
accusation would be running through the street, swiftly and stealthily,
from noble to merchant, from coolie to beggar, from end to end of this
seething oriental city--wherein he was a marked man! What mattered it
whether there were evidence on which a court would condemn him? The
story of his huge _coup_ in the bourses would be told--would rise up
against him. He remembered suddenly a tale he had heard--of a traitor to
Japan cut to pieces in a tea-house. An icy sweat broke out on his limbs.
Where was there any refuge? On a foreign ship? There were many in the
bay. He longed with a desperate longing for the touch of a deck beneath
his feet, a bulwark of blue water between him and possible vengeance. At
Kisaraz' on the Chiba Road, a dozen miles to the north in the curve of
the bay, was his summer villa, his frequent resort for week-end. His
naphtha launch lay there, always ready for use. He could reach it in an
hour.
"Get into the tonneau," he said to the chauffeur. "I'll drive, myself."
He took the wheel the other resigned, threw on the clutch, and the
clamorous monster moved off down the quiet lane. Past ranks of darkened
_shoji_, with here and there a barred yellow square; by lanterned
tea-houses, alight and tinkling, past stolid, pacing watchmen in white
duck clothing, and sauntering groups of night-hawk students chanting
lugubrious songs--faster and faster, till the chauffeur clutched the
seat with uneasiness.
The fever of flight was on his master now. He began to imagine voices
were calling after him. From a police-box ahead a man stepped into the
roadway waving a hand. It was no more than a warning against over-speed,
but the gesture sent a thrill of terror through the big man at the
wheel. He swerved sharply around a corner, skidding on two wheels.
Bersonin muttered a curse as he peered before him, for the stretch was
brilliantly illuminated. He was on the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods,
which to-night seemed strangely alive with hubbub.
That afternoon, with the passing of the rain, there had been held a
neighborhood _hanami_, a "flower-viewing-excursion." A score of
families, with picnic paraphernalia, had trooped to the wistaria arbors
of far-distant Kameido, to return in the small hours laden with empty
baskets and somnolent babies. To-morrow, like to-day, would be holiday,
when school and work alike should be forgotten. The cavalcade had just
returned--afoot, since the trams had ceased running at midnight--the men
merry with _saké_, the women chattering. A few children, still wakeful,
scampered here and there.
The chauffeur leaned forward with an exclamation--they had all but run
down a hobbling figure.
"Keep your hands off!" snarled Bersonin. "Let them get out of the way!"
The automobile dashed on, the people scattering before it.
There was a small figure in the roadway, however, of whom no one took
account--a six year old. Ishikichi had not gone to the _hanami_ that
day. For many hours that long afternoon, while his mother cared for the
sick father, he had beat the tiny drum that soothed a baby's fret,
comforted by the promise that he should be waked in the great hour when
the crowd came home. Stretched on his worn _f'ton_ that night, he had
puzzled over the situation--the hard, blank fact that because they had
no money, they must give up the shop, which was the only home he knew.
When they took his father away to the _byo-in_, the sick-house, what
would he and his mother and the baby-_San_ do? Would they stand, like
the _kadots'ke_, playing a _samisen_ at people's doors? It was not
honorably pleasant to be a _kadots'ke_! Only men could earn money, and
it would be so long before he became a man. So he had been pondering
when he went to sleep. Now, standing in the road, he heard the hum of
the rushing motor, and a quick thought,--born of that instinct of
sacrifice for the parent, that is woven, a golden thread, in the woof of
the Japanese soul--darted into his baby brain. One of the big
fire-wagons of the _seiyo-jin_ was coming! When the carriage killed
Toru, his playmate, the foreigner had sent much money to Toru's house.
He was not sorry any more, because the white-faced man whom he liked,
who lived in the temple, had told him what a fine thing it had been. For
Toru's honorable father had been fighting with the _Gaki_, the
no-rice-devils--it was almost like a war--and Toru had died just as the
brave soldiers did in battle. A great purpose flooded the little soul.
Was he not brave, too?
So, as Bersonin, with a snarl, shook off the hand of the chauffeur and
threw the throttle wide open, Ishikichi did not scamper with the rest.
With his hands tightly clenched in his patched _kimono_, his huge clogs
clattering on the roadway, he ran straight into the path of the hurtling
mass of steel.
There was a sudden, sickening jolt. The car leaped forward, dragging
something beneath it that made no sound. The chauffeur hurled himself
across the seat on the gear, and the automobile stopped with a grinding
discord of screeching pistons. A surge of people came around it--a wave
without outcry, but holding a hushed murmur like the sea. _Shoji_ were
opening, doorways filling the street with light. A man bent and drew
something gently from between the wheels.
With a writhing oath the expert wrenched at the clutch.
"Go on!" he said savagely. "How dare you stop without my orders?"
The Japanese made no reply, but the arms that braced the wheel were
rigid as steel.
Bersonin sank back in his seat, his massive frame quivering, his eyes
glittering like flakes of mica. But for this, in ten minutes he would
have been clear of the city, flying along the Chiba Road! What if he
were detained? He felt strange, chilly tendrils plucking at his flesh,
and a hundred fiery needles seemed pricking through his brain.
Peering over his shoulder, with his horrible fear on him, he saw the
crowd part to admit a woman who, quite silently, but with haste, came
forward and knelt on the ground. There was no movement from the crowd.
In a hush like that of death, the mother rose with Ishikichi in her
arms. The white, still face looked pitifully small. One clog swayed from
its thong between the bare toes. The faded _kimono_ was stained with
red. She spoke no word. There was no tear on her face. But in the
dreadful silence, she turned slowly with her burden and looked steadily
at the twitching face in the car--looked and looked. The chauffeur swung
himself from the seat into the crowd.
An insane desire had been creeping stealthily on Bersonin. He had felt
it coming when he faced the truth in Phil's cringing admission. The
horrible compulsion to laughter was on him. The damnable man-hysteria
had him by the throat. He fought it desperately, as one fights a wild
beast in the dark.
In vain.
His jaws opened. He laughed--a dreadful peal of merriment that echoed up
and down the latticed street. And as he laughed, he knew that he raised
a peril nearer, more fearful even than that from which he had been
flying.
There was an instant's shocked calm, like the silence which follows the
distant spurt of blue flame from the muzzle of a Krupp gun. Then, like
its answering detonation--in such a menacing roar as might arise from
the brink of an Inferno--the silence of the quiet street burst into
awful sound.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later but a single lighted _shoji_ glimmered on the darkened
thoroughfare. The roadway was deserted save for a soldierly figure in
policeman's uniform who stood thoughtfully looking at a huddle in the
dim roadway--a mixture of wrenched and battered iron and glass, in the
midst of which lay an inert, shapeless something that might have been a
bundle of old clothes fallen from a scavenger's cart.
CHAPTER LII
THE VOICE IN THE DARK
Barbara rested ill in her cabin bed that night. Confused dreams troubled
her, mingling familiar thoughts in kaleidoscopic confusion, dragging her
from one tangle to another in a wearying rapidity against which she
struggled in vain. One thing ran through them all--the gold-lacquer
Buddha that had stood on the Sendai chest in her bedroom at the Embassy;
only it seemed to be also that lost image before which she had used to
sit as a child.
She had no feeling of awakening, but all at once the visions were gone
and she lay open-eyed, swinging to the movement of the sea, feeling the
night to be very long. There came over her a creeping oppression--a
sense of terror of the night, of its hidden mysteries and occult forces.
The darkness seemed to be holding some dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing
that sprawled from horizon to horizon.
A small, noiseless clock was hung beside the bed. She could see its pale
face in the light of the thick ground-glass bulb that served as
night-lamp. It was nearly four o'clock.
She twisted back the tawny-brown surge of her hair, rose, and dressed as
hastily as she could in the lurching space. Then she opened the door and
passed into the saloon. A roll of the yacht slammed to the cabin door
and left her in darkness. She felt for the electric switch, but before
she could find it, another movement sent her reeling against a stand.
She threw out her arm to stay her fall and struck something.
There was a clicking sound, a soft whir, and then the music of _samisen_
filled the dark room. She realized that she had staggered against the
phonograph in the corner and that the shock had started its mechanism.
Wincing, she groped her way to a chair and sat down trembling.
The music died away. There was a pause, a sharp click, a curious
confusion of sounds, and then husky and filmy, _a human voice_:
"Barbara!"
She caught her hands to her throat, her blood chilling to ice. It was
the voice of Austen Ware, speaking, it seemed to her, from the world
beyond. She crouched back, breathing fast and hard, while the voice went
on, in strange broken periods, threaded by a whir and clamor that seemed
the noise of the wind outside.
"What is that I knocked over? It's buzzing and wheels are turning in
it--or is it the pain? Can't you stop it, Barbara? No, I know you aren't
here, really. I'm all alone ... I must be light-headed. How stupid!"
The strange truth came to her in a stab of realization. What she heard
was no supernatural voice. In its fall that night the phonograph's
spring had been released and the _samisen_ record had registered also
the delirious muttering of the dying man. She felt herself shuddering
violently.
"I can't go any farther.... You--you've done it for me, Phil. It ... was
the second blow. It seemed to crash right through...."
Barbara's heart was beating to bursting. "Austen, Austen," she whispered
to herself, in an agony. "Tell me! Was it _Phil_? You can't know what
you're saying!"
"No one must know it. The law would ... no, no! What good would it do
now? He's a bad egg, but I ... I was always proud of the family name.
Barbara! Remember, it _wasn't Phil_! It _wasn't Phil_!"
She fell on her knees, her hands clasping the arms of the chair,
thrilling to the truth beneath that pitiful denial. Phil, not Daunt! The
man she had loved had no stain of blood on his soul! She sobbed aloud.
With the whir of the machinery there mixed a grating, scratching
discord, as though an automaton had attempted to laugh.
"How ridiculous it seems to die like this! Only this morning I was so
near ... so near to what I wanted most. It was your losing the locket
that checkmated me. Why couldn't I have found it instead of Phil?... Did
I tell you I was there that day, Barbara--behind the _shikiri_, when you
followed the Japanese girl into the house? I could see just what you
were thinking ... I would never have told you the truth ... never."
With a faint cry Barbara dragged herself backward. In the illusion,
everything about her for the instant vanished. The yacht's walls had
rolled away. She was on a gloomy hillside, and a stricken man was
speaking--confessing.
Again the ghastly attempt to laugh.
"A contemptible thing, wasn't it! I knew that. I've ... I've felt it....
I never seemed contemptible to myself before. But I should have had you,
and that ... would have repaid. It was all coming my ... way. Then, just
the dropping of a locket, and ... Phil ... and now, it's all over!"
Barbara felt herself engulfed in a wave of complex emotions. She was
torn with a great repugnance, a greater joy, and a sense of acute pity
that overmastered them both. Then there rolled over all the recollection
that what she now listened to was but a mechanical echo. The hillside
faded, the walls of the yacht came back.
"I never believed in much, and I'm going without whining. Are you near,
Barbara? Sometimes there are many people around me ... and then only
you. I ... I think I'm beginning to wander!"
She was weeping now, unrestrained.
There was a long pause, in which the whir of the wheels rasped on.
Then--
"Is it your ... arms I feel, Barbara? Or ... is it...."
That was all. The wheels whirred on a little longer, a click
and--silence. Only the rush of the wind outside and the passionate
sobbing of the girl who knelt in the dark room, her face buried in her
hand, her heart tossed on the cross-tides of anguish and of joy.
A long time she knelt there. She was recalled by a confusion on the deck
above her--shouts and a hastening of feet. She lifted her face. The dawn
had come--its pale, faint radiance sifted through the heavy glass ports
and dimly lit the room. The shouts and running multiplied.
She sprang to her feet, opened the door and hurried up the
companion-way.
CHAPTER LIII
A RACE WITH DAWN
In that furious pace toward Aoyama, Daunt had been consumed by one
thought: that upon his single effort hung the saving of human lives--the
covering of a shame to his own nation--the turning away of a foul
allegation from the repute of a friendly Empire. He knew that minutes
were valuable.
On the long, dimly-lighted roadways where the flying hoofs beat their
furious tattoo, few carts were astir, and the trolleys had not yet
appeared on the wider thoroughfares. The rain had washed the air clean,
the wind was dustless and sweet, and the stars were palely bright. Once
a policeman signaled and the driver momentarily slackened speed--then on
as before. The horses were white with foam when they reached the
parade-ground. Here Daunt leaped down and wrenched both lamps from the
carriage. "Go home," he said to the _betto_, and running through a clump
of trees, struck across the waste.
The Japanese stared after him mystified, then with a philosophic
objurgation, turned and drove the sweating horses home at a walk.
Daunt ran to a low door in the long garage. The key was on a ring in his
pocket. He went in, locking the door behind him. There were no electric
lights--he had been there heretofore only by day--and the carriage lamps
made only a subdued glimmer that was reflected from the polished metal
of the great winged thing resting on its carrier. He threw off his
evening coat and set feverishly to work. After its single trial the new
fan-propeller had been unshipped for a slight alteration, and the
flanges had not yet been reassembled. There were delicate adjustments to
be made, wire rigging to be tautened, a score of minute tests before all
could be safe and sure. He worked swiftly and with concentration,
feeling his mind answering to the stress with an absolute coolness.
At length the last attachment was in place, the final bolt sent home and
one of the lamps lashed close in the angle of the wind screen. He took
his place and the engine started its familiar double rhythm:
pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst, as the explosive drop fell faster and faster.
He leaned and broke the clutch which held the big double doors of the
building. They swung open and he threw on the gear.
And suddenly, as the propeller began to spin, in the instant the Glider
started in its rush down the guides, Daunt was aware that some one had
darted through the doors. He had a flashing view of a white, disheveled
face, heard a cry behind him--then the prow of the Glider tilted
abruptly, the air whistled past the screens, the great flat field sank
away, and he was throbbing steeply upward, against the sweep of the
wind.
Daunt threw himself forward--the bubble in the spirit-level clung to the
top of its tube. Rapidly he warped down the elevation-vanes till slowly,
slowly, the telltale bubble crept to the middle of the level. What was
the matter? The engine was working well, yet there was a sense of
heaviness, of sluggishness that was unaccountable. He looked to either
side, before him, behind him.
His fingers tightened on the clutches. Just forward of the whirling
propeller he made out the figure of a man, lying flat along the ribs of
the Glider's body, clutching the steel guys of the planes, looking at
him.
For a moment he stared motionless. It was this extra weight that had
sent the Glider reeling prow-up--had made it unresponsive to control.
The man who clung there had aimed to prevent the flight! Daunt leaned
to let the full beam of the flaring lamp go past him. A quick
intuition had told him whose were the eyes that had glittered across
the throbbing fabric; but the face he saw now was infuriate with a new
look that made him shiver. It was incarnate with the daredevil of
terror. Phil had been a drunkard; he was drunk now with the calculate
madness of overmastering fear. As he gazed, a flitting, irrelevant
memory crossed Daunt's mind, of a day at college, years before, when
by a personal appeal, he had saved Phil from the disgrace of
expulsion. And now it was Phil--_Phil!_--clinging there, with
desperate, hooked fingers, struggling to consummate a crime that must
sink him for ever!
Pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst; on the Glider drove. With a fierce effort,
Daunt crushed down the sense of unreality and swiftly weighed his
position.
The other was directly in front of the propeller, a perilous place. Only
the guy-wire was in his reach. Between them was a shuddering space. To
land in the darkness to rid the aëroplane of that incubus, was
impossible. He must go on. Could he win with such a terrible handicap?
He set his teeth. Tilting the lateral vanes, he soared in a wide
serpentine, peering into the deep, resounding dark below.
Tokyo lay a vast network of tiny pin-pricks of fire. He had never been
so high before, had been content to sweep the tree-tops. To the left a
bearded scimitar of light, merged by blackness, marked the bay. Daunt
swung parallel with this. Pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst. The wind tore in
gusts through the structure, the planes vibrating, the guys humming like
the strings of a gigantic harp. His clothing dragged at his body. He was
too high; he leaned over the mass of levers and the Glider slid down a
long, steep descent, till in the starlight he could see the blue-gray
blur of roofs, the massed shadows of little parks of trees. Now he was
passing the edge of the city--now below him was the gloom of the
rice-fields. A low sobbing sound came in the wind; it was the bubbling
chorus of the frogs, and across it he heard the bark of a peasant's dog.
To the right a dark hill loomed without warning, with a dim
congeries of red tea-houses. It was the famous Ikegami, the shrine
of the Buddhist saint Ichiren, famed for its plum-gardens. It fell
away behind, and now, far off, a score of miles ahead, grew up on
the horizon a misty blotch of radiance. Yokohama! He swerved,
heading out across the lagoon, straight as the bee flies for the
shimmering spot. Pst-pst--pst-pst--faster and faster spat the tiny
explosions. The Glider throbbed and sang like a thing alive, and the
hum of the propeller shrilled into a scream.
Tokyo was far behind now, the pale glow ahead rising and spreading. To
the right he could see the clumped lights of the villages along the
railroad, Kamata--Kawasaki--Tsurumi. He dropped still lower, out of the
lash of the wind.
Suddenly a flying missile struck the forward plane, which resounded like
a great drum. A drop of something red fell on his bare hand and a
feathered body fell like a stone between his feet. A dark carpet, dotted
with foam, seemed to spring up out of the gulf. Daunt threw himself at
the levers and rammed them back. The Glider had almost touched the
sea--for a heartbreaking instant he thought it could never rise. He
heard the curl of the waves, and a cry from behind him. Then, slowly,
slowly, breasting the blast, it came staggering up the hill of air to
safety.
The sky was perceptibly lightening now. Daunt realized it with a
tightening of all his muscles. It was the first tentative withdrawal of
the forces of the dark. Should he be in time? With his free hand he
loosened the coil of the grapnel. Suddenly the chances seemed all
against success. A feeling of hopelessness caught him. He thought of the
two men he had left behind, waiting--waiting. What message would come to
them that morning?
The engine was doing its best, every fiber of tested steel and canvas
ringing and throbbing. But the creeping pallor of the night grew apace.
Kanagawa:--the Glider swooped above it, left it behind. The misty glow
was all around now, lights pricked up through the shadow. Yokohama was
under his feet, and ahead--the darker mass toward which he was
hurtling--was the Bluff.
Slowly, with painful anxiety, he swung the huge float in to skirt the
cliff's seaward edge. There was the naval hospital with its flag-staff.
There beyond, was the familiar break in the rampart of foliage--and
there, flapping in the wind, was the awning on the flat roof of the
Roost. In the dawning twilight, it seemed a monstrous, leprous lichen,
shuddering at the unholy thing it hid. Daunt threw out the grapnel.
He curved sharply in, aslant to the wind, flung down his prow and
swooped upon it. There was a tearing, splintering complaint of canvas
and bamboo; the Glider seemed to stop, to tremble, then leaped on.
Turning his head, Daunt saw the awning disappear like a collapsed kite.
He caught a glimpse, on the steep, ascending roadway of a handful of
naked men running staggeringly, one straggler far behind. The thought
flashed through his mind that these were the cadets from the Naval
College. But they would be too late! The sun was coming too swiftly. The
sky was a tide of amethyst--the dawn was very near! He came about in a
wide loop that took him out over the bay, making the turn with the wind.
For a fraction of a second he looked down--on the Squadron of
battle-ships, a geometrical cluster of black blots from which straight
wisps of dark smoke spun like raveled yarn into the formless obscurity.
A shrill, mad laugh came from behind him.
Daunt was essaying a gigantic figure-of-light whose waist was the flat
bungalow roof. It was a difficult evolution in still sunlight and over a
level ground. He had now the semi-darkness, and the sucking down-drafts
of the wind that made his flight, with its driving falls and recoveries,
seem the careless fury of a suicide. Yet never once did his hand waver,
never did that strange, tense coolness desert him.
As he swept back, like a stone in the sling of the wind, he saw the
thing he had come to destroy. It had the appearance of a large camera,
set on a spidery tripod near the edge of the flat roof, its lens
pointing out over the anchorage. Landing was out of the question; to
slacken speed meant to fall. He must strike the machine with the body of
the Glider or with the grapnel. To strike the roof instead meant to be
hurled headlong, mangled or dead, his errand unaccomplished, down
somewhere in that medley of roofs and foliage. The chances that he could
do this seemed suddenly to fade to the vanishing point. A wave of
profound hopelessness chilled his heart.
With Phil's mad, derisive laughter ringing in his ears, he dropped the
Glider's stem and drove it obliquely across. The grapnel bounded and
clanged along the tiling, missing the tripod by three feet. On, in an
upward staggering lunge, then round once more, wearing into the wind.
There was no peal of laughter now from the man clinging to the steel
rib. With the clarity of the lunatic Phil saw how close the swoop had
been. The scourge of the wind and the rapid flight through the rarefied
air had exalted him to a cunning frenzy. He had no terror of the
moment--all his fear centered in the to-morrow. To his deranged
imagination the black square on the tripod represented his safety. He
had forgotten why. But Bersonin had made him see it clearly. It must not
be touched! Daunt was the devil--he was trying to send him to the
copper-mines, to work underground, with chains on his feet, as long as
he lived!
The Glider heeled suddenly and slid steeply downward. Daunt gripped the
levers and with all his strength warped up the forward plane. He felt a
pang of sharpened agony. He, too, would fail! The crash was almost upon
him. But the Glider hung a moment and righted. Farther and farther he
twisted the laterals, till she swam up, oscillating. A jerk ran through
her after framework; he turned his head. Clinging with foot and hand,
his hair streaming back from his forehead, his lips wide, Phil was
drawing himself, inch by inch, along the sagging guy-wire toward him.
For a rigid second Daunt could not move a muscle. Then, caught by the
upper wind, the perilous tilting of the planes awoke him. He swung head
on, wavered, and swooped a last time for the roof.
Pst-pst--pst-pst--Crash! The curved irons of the grapnel tore away the
coping--slid, screaming. A jolt all but threw him from his seat. There
were running feet somewhere far below him--a battering and shattering of
glass in the piazza. He felt a sudden clearance and the big aëroplane
plunged sidewise out over the bay, with a black, unwieldy weight, that
spun swiftly, hanging on its grapnel.
A shout tore its way from his lips. Heedless of direction, he wrenched
with his fingers to unship the grapnel chain. At the same instant the
first sunbeam slid across the waves and turned the misty gloom to the
golden-blue glory of morning.
And with it, as though the voice of the day itself, there went out over
the water, above the sweep of the wind, a single piercing-sweet note of
music, like the cry of a great, splendid bird calling to the sunrise.
Fishermen in tossing _sampan_, and sailors on heaving _junk_ heard it,
and whispered that it was the cry of the _kaminari_, the thunder-animal,
or of the _kappa_ that lures the swimmer to his death. An icy blast
seemed to shoot past the Glider into the zenith. Staring, Daunt realized
that one of the great planes, the propeller, the after-framework, with
the man who had clung to it, were utterly gone--that the Glider, like a
dead bird caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet, was lunging by its
own momentum--to its fall! Had Phil fallen, or was it--
Suddenly he felt himself flung backward, then forward on his face. The
spreading vanes, crumpled edgewise, like squares of cardboard, were
sliding down. He saw the shipping of the bay spread beneath him--the
twin lighthouses, one red, one white, on the ends of the breakwater--the
black Dreadnaughts--a steamer with bright red funnels--a fleet of
fishing _sampan_ putting out. All were swelling larger and larger. The
wind, blowing upward around him, stole his breath, and he felt the blood
beating in his temples. He heard ships' bells striking, and across the
sound a temple-bell boomed clearly. A mist was coming before his eyes.
Just below him was a white yacht; it seemed to be rushing up to meet him
like a swan.
Thoughts darted through his brain like live arrows. The battle-ships
were saved! No shameful suspicion should touch Japan's name in the
highways of the world! What matter that he lost the game? What did
one--any one--count against so much?
He thought of Barbara. He would never know now what she had been about
to tell him that night at the Nikko shrine! He would never see her
again! But she would know ... she would know!
The sound of the sea--a great roaring in his ears.
CHAPTER LIV
INTO THE SUNLIGHT
On the deck of the white yacht the captain rose to his feet. The battle
fought on that huddle of blankets for the life of the man so hardly
snatched from the sea had been a close one, but it had been won. His
smile of satisfaction overran the group of observant faces at one side,
the bishop watching with strained anxiety, and the girl, who pillowed in
her arms that unconscious head with its drenched, brown curls.
"Don't you be afraid, Miss Fairfax," he said, with bluff heartiness.
"_He'll_ be all right now!"
The assurance came to Barbara's heart with an infinite relief that he
could not guess. At the first sight of the huge bird-like thing slipping
down the sky she had known the man clinging to its framework was Daunt.
The stricken moments while the wreck of the great vanes lay outspread on
the water--the launch of the yacht's boat, and the lifting of the limp
form over its gunwale--the cruelly kind ministrations that had brought
breath back to the inert body--these had seemed to her to consume
dragging hours of agony. A thunder of guns roared across the water, but
she scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on theface to which the tide of
life was returning.
Again the roar, and now the sound pierced the saturating darkness. It
called the numbed senses back to the sphere of feeling--to a
consciousness of an immense weariness and a gentle motion. It seemed to
Daunt as though his head rested on a pillow which rose and fell to an
irregular rhythm. He stirred. His eyes opened.
Memory dawned across them. Haru's story--the windy flight on the
Glider--the sick sense of failure--the plunge down, and down, and the
water leaping toward him! Had he failed? A third time the detonation
rang out. He started, made an effort to rise. His gaze swept the sea.
There, flags flying, bands playing, a line of Dreadnaughts was steaming
down the harbor.
"The battle-ships!" he said, and there was triumph in his eyes.
He turned his head and saw the bishop, the silent crew, the relieved
countenance of the captain. Realization came to him. Soft arms were
about him; the pillow that rose and fell was a woman's heaving breast!
His gaze lifted, and Barbara's eyes flowed into his. He put out a hand
weakly and whispered her name.
She did not speak, but in that look a glory enfolded him. It was not
womanly pity in her face--it was far, far more, something wordless, but
eloquent, veiled, yet passionately tender. He knew suddenly that after
the long night had come the morning, after the pain and the
misunderstanding all would be well.
For an instant he closed his eyes, smiling. The darkness was gone for
ever. His head was on her heart, and it was her dear arms that were
lifting him up, into the sunlight, the sunlight, the sunlight!
CHAPTER LV
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS
Long, windless, golden days of spring and falling cherry-petals, with
cloud-piles like fleecy pillars, with fringing palm-plumes and bamboo
foliage turning from yellow cadmium to tawny green.
Drowsy, lotos-eating days of summer among purple hills wound in a
luminous elfin haze. Days of typhoon and straight-falling rain. Sunsets
of smouldering crimson and nights under a blue-black vault palpitating
with star-swarms or a waste of turquoise, liquid with tropic moonlight.
Languorous days of autumn by the Inland Sea, when the dying summer's
breath lingers like the perfume of incense, and the mirroring lilac
water deepens to bishop's-purple.
So the mild Japanese winter comes--slowly, under a high, keen sky,
bringing at last its scourging of dust and wind, its chill, opaque
nights with their spectral fog veiling the trembling flames of the
constellations, and its few, rare days when the evergreen earth is
covered with a blanket of snow.
There came one such day when Daunt stood with Barbara by the huge stone
_torii_ at the gateway of the _Mon-to_ temple on the Hill-of-the-Spirit.
The air was softly radiant but not cold, the translucent heavens tinted
with a fairy mauve, which on the horizon merged into dying hyacinth. The
camelia hedges stood like blanched rows of crystalled beryl, the
stalwart _mochi_ trees were cased in argent armor, and the curving porch
of the temple, the roof of the near-by nunnery, the forest of bronze
lanterns and the square stone tablets in the graveyard were capped with
soft rounded mounds of snow. It lay thickly over the paved space save
where a wide way had been cleared to the temple steps, for the day was a
_saijits'_, a holy day, when the people gather to worship.
Across the lane they could see the Chapel lifting its white cross into
the clear blue. From its chancel arch was hung a crucifix of
gold-lacquer, where the declining sun, shining through the stained glass
of the rose-window, each evening touched it to shimmering color. The
altar to-day was fragrant with the first plum-blossoms; two hours ago
the bishop, standing before it, had read the sacred office which had
made them man and wife. The carriage which was to take them to Shimbashi
Station waited now at the end of the lane while Barbara brought a branch
of the early blooms to lay on a Buddhist grave in a tenantless garden.
In one of the farther groups before the temple steps was a miniature
_rick-sha_ drawn by a servant. It held a child who had not walked since
a night when, with clenched hands and brave little heart, he had run
into the path of a speeding motor-car. On the breast of his wadded
_kimono_ was a knot of ribbon at which the other children gazed in awe
and wonder. It had been pinned one night to a small hospital shirt when
the wandering eyes were hot with fever and the baby face pinched and
white, by a lady whom Ishikichi had thought must be the Sun Goddess at
very least, and before whom the attendants of that room of pain had
bowed to the very mats. He knew that in some dim way, without quite
knowing how, he had helped that great, mysterious something that meant
the Government of Japan, and that he should be very proud of it. But
Ishikichi was far prouder of the fine foreign front that had displaced
the poor little shop in the Street-of-prayer-to-the-Gods.
Nearer the gateway, on the edge of the gathering, stood an old man, his
face seamed and lined, but with eye clear and young and a smile on his
face. The crest on his sleeve was the _mon_ of an ancient and honored
_samurai_ family. He leaned on the arm of his adopted son--a Commander
of the Imperial Navy whose name had once been Ishida Hetaro. They stood
apart, regarding not the Temple, but the low building across the hedge,
behind whose bamboo lattice dim forms passed and repassed.
"Look," said Barbara suddenly, and touched Daunt's arm. A woman's figure
had paused at the lattice of the nunnery. She was dressed in slate-color
and her delicate features and close-shaven head gave her a singularly
unearthly appearance, like an ethereal and angelic boy. The little
two-wheeled carriage drew up at the lattice and a slender hand reached
out and patted the round cropped head of its occupant. As the vehicle
was drawn away, the nun looked up and across the yard--toward the old
_samurai_ and the young naval officer. The wraith of a flush crept into
her cheek. She smiled, and they smiled in return, the placid Japanese
smile which is the rainbow of forbidden tears. A second they stood thus,
then the slate-colored figure drew back and was gone, and the old man,
supported by the younger arm, passed slowly out of the yard.
Barbara's eyes were still on the lattice as Daunt spoke. "What is it?"
he asked.
"The face of the nun there," she said, with vague wistfulness. "It
reminds me of some one I have known. Who can it be, I wonder!"
They crossed the yard, and entered the deserted garden. The great ruin
at its side was covered with friendly shrubs and the all-transfiguring
snow. The line of stepping-stones had been swept clean and beside the
frost-fretted lake an irregular segment of rock, closely carved with
ideographs, had been planted upright. It stood in mystic peace, looking
between the snow-buried, birdless trees toward the horizon where
Fuji-San towered into the infinite calm--a magical mountain woven of a
world of gems, on which the sun's heart beat in a tumult. At the base of
the stone slab were Buddhist vases filled with green leaves in fresh
water, and in one of these Barbara placed the branch of plum-blossoms.
Its pink petals lay against the brown rock like the kiss of spring on a
wintry heart.
As she arranged the sprays, Daunt stood looking down on her bent head,
where, under her fur hat, the sun was etching gold-hued lines on the
soft copper of her hair. He had taken a yellowed envelope from his
pocket.
"Do you remember, dearest," he said, "that I once told you of an old
envelope in the Chancery safe bearing the name of Aloysius Thorn?"
"Yes," she answered wonderingly.
"It was opened, after his death, while you were away. It contained his
will. I turned it into Japanese, as best I could, for the temple
priests. It is carved there on the stone. The Ambassador gave the
original to the bishop, and he handed it to me to-day for you. He
thought you would like to keep it." He drew the paper from the
discolored envelope and handed it to her.
She sat down on a boulder and unfolding the faded sheets, began to read
aloud, in a voice that became more and more unsteady:
"KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, that I, Aloysius Thorn, of the city of
Tokyo, in Tokyo-fu, Empire of Japan, being in health and of sound and
disposing mind and memory, do make and publish this my last will and
testament, devising, bequeathing and disposing in the manner following,
to wit:
"Item: I give, devise and bequeath to Japanese children, inclusively,
for and through the term of their childhood, the woods of cryptomeria,
with their green silences, and the hillsides with the chirpings of
bell-crickets in the _sa-sa_ grass and the fairy quiverings of golden
butterflies. I give them the husky crow and the darting swallow under
the eaves. And I devise to them all lotos-pools on which to sail their
straw _sampan_, the golden carp and the lilac-flashing dragon-fly in and
above them, and the _dodan_ thickets where the _semi_ chime their silver
cymbals. I also give to them all temple yards, wheresoever situate, and
all moats, and the green banks thereunto appertaining, for their
playgrounds, providing, however, that they break no tree or shrub,
remembering that trees, like children, have souls. And I devise to them
the golden fire of the morning and all long, white clouds, to have and
to hold the same, without let or hindrance. These the above I bequeath
to them, possessing no little child of my own with whom to share my
interest in the world.
"To boys especially I give and bequeath all holidays to be glad in, and
the blue sky for their paper kites. To girls I give and bestow the
rainbow _kimono_, the flower in the hair and the battledore. And I
bequeath them all kinds of dolls, reminding them that these, if loved
enough, may some time come alive.
"Item: To young men, jointly, I devise and bequeath the rough sports of
_kenjuts'_ and of _ju-jits'_, the _shinai_-play and all manly games. I
give them the knowledge of all brave legends of the _samurai_, and
especially do I leave them the care and respect for the aged. I give
them all far places to travel in and all manner of strange and
delectable adventures therein. And I apportion to them the high noon,
with its appurtenances, to wit: the heat and burden of the day, its
commotions, its absorbing occupations and its fiercer rivalries. I give
to them, moreover, the cherry-blossom, the flower of _bushido_, which,
falling in the April of its bloom, may ever be for them the symbol of a
life smilingly yielded in its prime.
"To young women, I give and devise the glow of the afternoon, the soft
blue witchery of pine shadows, the delicate traceries of the bamboo and
the thin, low laughter of waterfalls. I devise to them all manner of
perfumes, and tender spring blossoms (save in the one exception provided
hereinbefore), such as the plum-blossom and the wistaria, with the red
maple-leaves and the gorgeous glories of the chrysanthemum. And I give
to them all games of flower-cards, and all divertisements of music, as
the _biwa_, the flute and the _samisen_, and of dances whatsoever they
may choose.
"Item: To the aged I bequeath snowy hair, the long memories of the past
and the golden _ihai_ on the Buddha-Shelf. I give them the echo of tiny
bare feet on the _tatamé_, and the grave bowing of small shaven heads. I
devise to them the evening's blaze of crimson glory and the amber clouds
above the sunset, the pale _andon_ and the indigo shadows, the dusk
dance of the yellow lanterns, the gathering of friends at the
moon-viewing place and the liquid psalmody of the nightingale. I give to
them also the winter, the benediction of snow-bent boughs and the
waterways gliding with their silver smiles. I give to them sufficient
space to lie down within a temple ground that echoes the play of little
children. And finally I bequeath to them the love and blessing of
succeeding generations for the blossoming of a hundred lives.
"In testimony whereof, I, the said Aloysius Thorn--"
* * * * *
Barbara's voice broke off. Her eyes were wet as she folded the paper.
Daunt drew her to her feet, and with his arm about her, they stood
looking out across the white city lying in all its ghostly glamour--the
many-gabled watch-towers above the castle walls, the glistening plateau
of Aoyama with its dull red barracks, the rolling sea of wan roofs, and
far beyond, the creeping olive of the bay. In the clear distance they
could see the lift of Kudan Hill, and the gray pile of the Russian
Cathedral. Standing in its candle-lighted nave, they had listened to
Japanese choir-boys hymning the Birth in Bethlehem. The next Christmas
they two would be together--but in another land!
"Minister to Persia!" she said. "I am glad of your appointment, for it
means so much to your career. And yet--and yet--"
In the temple yard behind them an acolyte, wading knee-deep in the snow,
swung the cedar beam of the bell-tower and the deep-voiced boom rolled
out across the cradling hush. Again and yet again it struck, the waves
of sound throbbing into volume through the still air. It came to them
like a firm and beautiful voice, the articulate echo of the Soul of
Japan.
The whinny of restive horses stole over the hedges. Silently Daunt held
out his hand to her. She bent and picked a single plum-blossom from the
branch and slipped it into the yellow envelope. For a last time she
looked out across the distance.
"The beautiful country!" she said.
THE END
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
Throughout the document, an "o" with a macron the was replaced with
"[=o]", and a "u" with a macron the was replaced with "[=u]".
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.
Errors in punctuation, inconsistent hyphenation, and idiosyncratic
spellings were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
In the table of contents, "BANZAI NIPPON" was replaced with "BANZAI
NIPPON!"
On page 1, "Rosicrusian" was replaced with "Rosicrucian".
On page 12, "tauntness" was replaced with "tautness".
On page 30, "exhiliration" was replaced with "exhilaration".
On page 36, "cockaboo" was replaced with "cockatoo".
On page 40, "pastelles" was replaced with "pastels".
On page 114, "xilophone" was replaced with "xylophone".
On page 193, "rich'sha" was replaced with "rick'sha".
On page 206, "rich'sha" was replaced with "rick'sha".
On page 213, "oramented" was replaced with "ornamented".
On page 373, "irony plectrons" was replaced with "ivory plectrums".
On page 417, "scimetar" was replaced with "scimitar".
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Kingdom of Slender Swords" ***
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