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diff --git a/42427.txt b/42427.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 76fcbd0..0000000 --- a/42427.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11405 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Kingdom of Slender Swords, by Hallie Erminie Rives - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Kingdom of Slender Swords - -Author: Hallie Erminie Rives - -Commentator: Baron Makino - -Illustrator: A. B. Wenzell - -Release Date: March 29, 2013 [EBook #42427] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KINGDOM OF SLENDER SWORDS *** - - - - -Produced by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - 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 cooperation -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 _flaneur_, 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 _Shimose_, 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 aeroplane 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 _Charge_." 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'kes_--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 aeroplane. 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 -_regime_ 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 reechoed 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--_ne?_" - -"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!--_ne_?" - -"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! _ne_? 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. Watanabe 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 _entree_ 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 portieres 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 aeroplane 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 aero 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 _geta_ 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 reechoed 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 anaemic 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 -aeroplane, 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 _devotee_," 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 _melee_ 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 -_geta_, 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 -_tatame_. 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 _geta_ into the small anteroom. Here the -floor was covered with soft _tatame_,--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 Hetaro," 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 aeroplanes. - -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-cochere, -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-cochere 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 -_cortege_ 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 mache_ 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 _Charge'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 _marquee_ -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 aeroplane 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 _reveille_. - -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 _attaches_ 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 _menage de garcon_, 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-- - - "_Yo--eeya--ko--ra! - Yo-eeya--ko--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, _ne_?" - -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 _outre_ 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 -canyons 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 _Yume-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 -_Hotoke-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-share-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 _geta_; 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 -_melange_ 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, _sake_, -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 _metier_; 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 _sake_, 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 _sake_ 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 _sake_ 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 -_tatame_ 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 -_attaches_ 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 _creme 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 _ame_, 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 -aeroplane. - -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 _melange_ 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 _tatame_, 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 _me kayui_--_me -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, reestablish 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 _attache_ 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 aeroplane 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 Hirose 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? _Ne?_" - -"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--_ne?_" - -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_. "Ontake 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 Dore 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 _sudare_ 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 _denouements_, 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-mache_ 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 _tatame_. 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 scene_. 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--_ne_? 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 _tatame_ 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-cochere struck into high relief a strip of scarlet -carpet. - -The interior was dressed with that marvelous attention to minutiae 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 -_Charge_, 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 _sake_ 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-mache_ 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 -portieres 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 portiere. 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 _outre_, 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 -portiere 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 _debacle_ 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 _debris_ 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-bune_--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-cochere. 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, "_ne_? 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_ reentered. "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 -_detour_--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-- - - _"Yo--eeya--ko--ra!_ - _Yo--eeya--ko--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 aeroplane! 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 aeroplane 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 aeroplane 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 _sake_, 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 aeroplane 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 aeroplane -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 _tatame_, 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 the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Kingdom of Slender Swords, by -Hallie Erminie Rives - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KINGDOM OF SLENDER SWORDS *** - -***** This file should be named 42427.txt or 42427.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42427/ - -Produced by David Edwards, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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