The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER XXIX

  DAUNT LISTENS TO A SONG

  The day had dawned sultry, with a promise of summer humidity, and Dauntwas not surprised to find the barometer performing intemperate antics."Confound it!" he muttered irritably, as he dressed. "If it was a monthlater, one would think there was a typhoon waltzing around somewhere inthe China Sea."

  That morning had seen his first trial of his new fan-propeller, andthe Glider's action had surpassed his wildest expectation. The flight,of which Barbara had caught a glimpse from Thorn's garden, had been alonger one than usual--quite twelve miles against a sluggish uppercurrent--but even that failed to bring its customary glow. Thereafterhe had spent a long morning immersed in the work of the Chancery: thestudy of a disputed mining concession in Manchuria; a report on acontemplated issue of government bonds; a demand for a passport by aself-alleged national with a foreign accent and a paucity ofnaturalization papers; the daily budget of translations fromvernacular newspapers, by which a home government gains a bird's-eyeview of comment and public opinion in far-away capitals. The Chancerywas a pleasant nest of rooms opening into one another. Through itswindows stole the smell of the garden blossoms, and across thecompound wall sounded the shrill ventriloquistic notes of peddlers, thebrazen chorus of a marching squad of buglers, or the warning "_Hek!Hek!_" of a flying _rick'sha_. The main room was cool, furnished withplain desks and filing cabinets. Against one wall yawned a huge safe inwhich were kept the code-books and records, and framed pictures offormer Chiefs of Mission hung on the walls. In the anteroom Japaneseclerks and messengers sat at small tables. The place was pervaded by theclick of type-writer keys, tinkling call-bells, and the various notes ofa busy office, and floating down from a stairway came the buzzingmonotone of a Student Interpreter in his mid-year oral examinationsunder the Japanese secretary.

  But to-day Daunt could not exorcise with the mass of detail the leeringimps that plagued him. They peered at him over the edge of thecode-books and whispered from the margins of decorous despatches,chuckling satirically.

  "Barbara!" they sneered. "Mere acquaintances often name steam-yachts forgirls, don't they! Arrived the same day as her ship, eh? Rather singularcoincidence! What a flush she had when Voynich spoke of Phil's brotherlast night at the tea-house. Angry? Of course she was! What engaged girllikes to have the fact paraded--especially when she's practising onanother man? And how about the telegram? How long have you known her, bythe way? Two days? Really, now!"

  The weekly governmental pouch had closed at noon, and pouch-days werehalf-holidays, but Daunt did not go to the Embassy. An official letterhad arrived from Washington which must be delivered in Kamakura. Dauntseized this excuse, plunged ferociously into tweeds and an hourafterward found himself in a railway carriage thudding gloomily towardthe lower bay. In his heart he knew that he was trying to run away--fromsomething that nevertheless traveled with him.

  The sky was palely blue, without a cloud, but the bay, where the railsskirted it, was heaving in long swells of oily amethyst like a vastcarpet 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 anduncertain, and Fuji was wrapped in a wraith-like mist into which itsglimmering profile disappeared.

  At a way-station a coolie with a huge tray piled with neat, flat, woodenboxes passed the window calling "_Ben-to! Ben-to!_" It reminded Dauntthat he had had no luncheon, and he bought one. He had long agoaccustomed himself to Japanese food and liked it, but to-day the twoshallow sections inspired no appetite. The half which held the rice heviciously threw out of the window and unrolling the fresh-cutchop-sticks from their paper square, rummaged discontentedly among thecontents of the other: dried cuttlefish, bean-curd, slices of boiledlily-bulb, cinnamon-sticks, lotos stems and a coil of edible seaweed,all wrapped in green leaves. In the end, the _melange_ followed therice.

  At Kamakura an immediate answer to the letter he brought was notforthcoming, and to kill the time he strolled far down the curved beach.The usual breeze was lacking. A haze as fine as gossamer had drawnitself over the sky, and through it gulls were calling plaintively. Hereand there on the sea-wall women were spreading fish-nets, and along thecauseway trudged blue-legged peasant-women, their backs bent beneathhuge loads of brushwood. In one place a bronze-faced fisherman in afantastic _kimono_ on which was painted sea-monsters and hobgoblins incrimson and orange, seated on the gunwale of his _sampan_ drawn abovethe shingle, watched a little girl who, with clothing clutchedthigh-high, was skipping the frothy ripples as if they were ropes offoam. A mile from the town he met a regiment of small school-boys, inindigo-blue and white _kimono_, marching two and two like miniaturesoldiers, a teacher in European dress at either end of the line--futureOyamas, Togos and Kurokis in embryo.

  They were coming from Enoshima, the hill-island that rises in the baylike an emerald St. Michael, where in a rocky cave, looking seaward,dwells holy Ben-ten, the Buddhist Goddess of Love. Daunt could see itsmasses of dark green foliage with their pink veinings of cherry-trees,and the crawling line of board-walk, perched on piling, which gaveaccess from the mainland when the tide was in. On its height, ifanywhere, would be coolness. He filled his pipe and set off toward italong the sultry sand. The hot dazzle of the sun was in his face. Therewas no movement in the crisp leaves of the bamboo trees and the dampheat beat up stiflingly from the gray glare. Somewhere in the air,stirless and humid, there rested a faint, weedy smell like a steamingsea-growth in a tidal ooze.

  Daunt's pipe sputtered feebly, and, girding at the heat, he hurled it ata handful of blue ducks that plashed tiredly in the gray-green heave,and watched them dive, to reappear far away, like bobbing corks. Hewished 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 andshook the sand from his shoes. Underneath its shore-end a fisherman satin the stern of a boat fishing with cormorants. A row of the solemnbirds sat on a pole projecting over the water, each tethered by a stringwhose end was tied to the man's wrist. They seemed to be asleep, but nowand then one would plunge like a diver, to reappear with a fishwriggling in its beak. Daunt watched them listlessly a moment, then,passing beneath a great bronze _torii_, he slowly climbed the singleshaded street that staggered up the hill between the multitudes of gaylittle shops running over with colored sea-shells, with grotesquelanterns made of inflated fish-skins, with carved crystal and pink andwhite coral--up and up, by old, old flights of mossy steps, under moreancient trees, by green monuments and lichen-stippled Buddhas, till thesea below crawled like a wrinkled counterpane. Daunt knew a tea-house onthe very lip of the cliff, the _Kinki-ro_--"Inn of the GoldenTurtle"--and he bent his steps lazily in its direction.

  In the heavy heat the low tile roof looked cool and inviting. Tallsoft-eyed iris were standing in its garden overlooking the water, andagainst the green their velvety leaves made vivid splashes of goldenblue. On a dead tree two black crows were quarreling and cherry-petalspowdered the paths like pink hail. The haze, sifting from the sky,seemed to wrap everything in a vast, shimmering veil. At the hedge hepaused an instant. Some one, somewhere, was humming, low-voiced, an airthat he had once loved. He pushed open the gate and went on into thetremulous radiance. Then he stopped short.

  Barbara was seated above him in the fork of a low camelia tree, one armlaid out along a branch, her green gown blending with a bamboo thicketbehind her and her vivid face framed in the blossoms. She sat, chin inhand, looking dreamily out across the bay, and the hummed song had arhythm that seemed to fit her thought--slow and infinitely tender.

  "You!" he cried.

  She turned with a startled movement that dissolved into low, deliciouslaughter.

  "Fairly caught," she answered. "I don't often revert far enough to climbtrees, but I thought no one but Haru and I was here. Will you come andhelp me down, Honorable Fly-man?"

&n
bsp; "Wait--" he said. "What was the song you were humming?"

  She looked at him with a quick intake of breath, then for answer beganto 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 ... sangit to you ... that day!"

  "I am flattered!" she exclaimed. "The day before yesterday you hadforgotten that you ever saw poor little me! It was Mrs. Claybourne, ofcourse, that you sang to! Yet you were my idol for a long month and aday!"

  "It was to _you_," he said unsteadily. "I didn't know your name. But Inever forgot the song. I remembered it that night in the garden, when Ifirst heard you playing!"