Hallie Erminie Rives

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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?" ”

“ The laughter had left her eyes, and gradually over her [pg 124] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [pg 429] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”