The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT

  They walked together around the curving road, leaving Haru with thetea-basket. "Patsy would have come," Barbara had said, "but she is inthe clutches of her dressmaker." And Daunt had answered, "I have adistinct regard for that Chinaman!"

  His black mood had vanished, and the leering imps had flown. In thebrightness of her physical presence, how baseless and foolish seemed hissullen imaginings! What man who owned a steam yacht, knowing her, wouldnot wish to name it the _Barbara_? Walking beside her, so near that hecould feel the touch of her light skirt against his ankles, it seemedimpossible that he should ever again be other than light-hearted. Shewas no acquaintance of hours, after all. He had known her for sevenyears. He was in wild spirits.

  The sky was duller now. Its marvelous haze of blue and gold had turnedpallid, and the sun glared with a pale, yellowish effrontery. A strangesighing was in the air, so faint, however, that it seemed only thestirring of innumerable leaves, the resinous rasping of pine-needles andthe lisping fall of the flaming petals from the century-old cameliatrees, that stained the ground with hot, bleeding red. Far below in theshallow pools, nut-brown, bare-legged girls were gathering seaweed inhand-nets, _kimono_ tucked beneath their belts and scarlet petticoatsfalling to their knees, like a flock of brilliant flamingos. At a turnin the road stood a stone image of Jizo, with a red paper bib about itsneck. Before it lay three small rice-cakes; somewhere in theneighborhood was a little sick child, three years old. At its base wereheaps of tiny stones, piled by mothers whose little children had died.

  They stopped at a tea-house open on all sides, and, sitting cross-leggedon its _tatame_, drank tea from earthenware pots that held only a smallcupful, 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 acrisp rice-cake to a baby sagging from an urchin's shoulder. A doll wasstrapped to the baby's back. They peered into a Buddhist temple where amonotonous chant came from behind a blue-figured curtain. They went,laughing like two children, down the zigzag stone steps, pastinnumerable _uomitei_--crimson-benched "resting-houses," where graveJapanese pedestrians sat eating stewed eels and chipping hard-boiledeggs--to the rocky edge of the tide, which now rolled in with ameasured, sullen booming. He pointed to a gloomy fissure which ran intothe 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 amold-fashioned enough not to believe that." Her brown eyes were wistfuland a little troubled, and her voice was so adorable that he could havegone 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 thelegend? 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 onhis tongue, when "Look!" she exclaimed. "How strange the sea looks offthere!"

  A sinister, whitish bank, like a mad drift of smoke, lay far off on thewater, and a tense, whistling hum came from the upper air. A drop ofwater 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 towait, I'm afraid. See--even her High Priest is forsaking her!"

  From where they stood steps were roughly hewn into the rock, windingacross the face of the cliff. Beside these, stone pillars were socketed,carrying an iron chain that hung in rusted festoons. Along thisprecarious pathway from the cavern an old man was hastily coming,followed by a boy with a sagging bundle tied in a white cloth. "Thatparcel, 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, aburst of wind fell on them like a flapping weight, spattering them withdrops that struck the rock as if hurled from a sling-full of meltedmetal. Barbara had never in her life experienced anything like itsferocity. It both startled and angered her, like a personal affront.

  Daunt had sprung to her side and was shouting something. But the wordswere indistinguishable; she shook her head and went on stubbornly,clinging to the chain, a whirl of blown garments. She felt him grasp herarm.

  "Go back!" she shrieked. "It's--bad--luck!"

  As he released her there came a second's menacing lull, and in it shesprang down the steps and ran swiftly out along the pathway. He wasafter her in an instant, overtaking her on a frail board trestle thatspanned a pool, where the cliff was perpendicular. Here the wind, shaggywith spume, hurled them together. Daunt threw an arm about her, clingingwith the other hand to the wooden railing. Her hair was a reddish swirlacross his shoulder and her breath, panting against his throat, ridgedhis skin with a creeping delight. The rocks beneath them, through whosefissures tongues of water ran screaming, was the color of raspberriesand tawny with seaweed. There was only a weird, yellow half-light,through which the gale howled and scuffled, like dragons fighting. Aslather of wave licked the palsied framework.

  He bent and shouted into her ear. All she caught was: "Must--cave--nextlull--"

  She nodded her head and her lips smiled at him through the confusedobscurity. A thrill swept her like silver rain. Pulse on pulse, anemotion like fire and snow in one thrilled and chilled her. She closedher eyes with a wild longing that the wind might last for ever, thatthat moment, like the ecstasy of an opium dream, might draw itself outto infinite length. Slowly she felt the breath of the tempest ebb aboutthem, then suddenly felt herself lifted from her feet, and her eyesopened into Daunt's. Her cheek lay against his breast, as it had done inthat short moment in the Embassy garden. She could feel his heart boundunder the rough tweed. Once more the wind caught them, but he staggeredthrough it, and into the high, rock entrance of the cave.

  Inside its dripping rim the sudden cessation of the wind seemed almostuncanny, and the boom of the surf was a dull thunderous roar. He set heron her feet on the damp rock and laughed wildly.

  "Do you realize," she said, "that we have transgressed the most sacredtenet of Ben-ten by coming here together? We are doomed tomisunderstanding!"

  "Now that I recollect, that applies only to lovers," he answered. "Thenwe--"

  "Are quite safe," she quickly finished for him. "Come, I want to see theshrine. 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 rackof thin blue-and-white towels to cleanse the hands of worshipers. On asquare pedestal stood a stone Buddha, curiously incrusted by drippingsfrom the roof. Near it was a wooden booth, its front hung with pendentsof twisted rice-straw and strips of white paper folded in diagonalnotches. It held a number of tiny wooden _torii_ strung with lightedcandles, above each of which was nailed a paper prayer. A few coppercoins lay scattered beneath them. Daunt thrust two of the candles intowooden holders and they slowly followed the narrowing fissure, gutteredby the feet of centuries, between square posts bearing carven texts, andsmall images, coated with the spermy droppi
ngs from innumerable candles.

  She held up her winking light toward his face. "What a desperateabsorption!" she said laughingly. "You haven't said a thing for fiveminutes."

  "I'm thinking we had better explain at once to Ben-ten that we're notlovers. Otherwise we may get the penalty. Perhaps we'd better just tellher 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; shereally did! We didn't intend it at all. So be a nice, gracious goddessand 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 doneexactly the same myself.'"

  The passage had grown so low that they had to bend their heads, then allat once it widened into a concave chamber. The cannonading of the windrumbled 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 adull, gold silence. Beads of moisture spangled her robe, glistening likebrilliants through the mossy darkness. "Poor deity!" said Barbara. "Tohave 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 facelooked pale. Her unresisting fingers still lay in his; he felt theirtouch like a breath of fire through all his veins. Her eyes sparkledback the eery witch-glow of the candle-flames. "You are a green-goldengnome-girl!" he said unsteadily. "And I am under a spell."

  "Yes, yes," she said. "I am Rumptydudget's daughter! I have only to wavemy candlestick--so!--to turn you into a stalagmite!"

  She suited the action to the word--and dropped her candle, which wasinstantly extinguished on the damp floor. Bending forward to retrieveit, Daunt slipped. The arm he instinctively threw out to save himselfstruck the wall and his own candle flew from its socket. As he regainedhis footing, confused by the blank, enfolding darkness, he stumbledagainst Barbara, and his face brushed hers. In another instant the touchhad thrilled into a kiss.

  A moment she lay in his arms, passive, panting, her unkissed mouthstinging 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 heartwas a great wave of sound that throbbed like the iron-shod fury of theseas.

  "I love you, Barbara!" he said simply. "I love you!"

  The stammering utterance pierced the swift, confused sweetness of thatfirst kiss like a lance of desperate gladness. Through the tumblingpassion of the words he poured into her heart, she could feel his handstouching 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 withoutreally knowing it. I made a woman out of my own fancy, that I dreamedalive. In the long winter evenings when I worked at my models in thelittle house in Aoyama, I used to see her face in my driftwood blaze andtalk to her. I called her my 'Lady of the Many-Colored Fires.' I neverthought she really existed, but that first night in the Embassy garden Iknew that my dream-woman was you!--_you_, Barbara!"

  Her hands pushed him from her no more. They fell to trembling on hisbreast. In the dense, salty obscurity, she turned her head sharply, tofeel 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 youcame? Why did I happen to be there in the garden that night, at thatparticular moment? Why, it was the purest accident that I came hereto-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'thave--why, you'd forgotten the whole thing! You had, you _had_!... Don'thold me.... No, I don't care what you think!... Yes, I _do_ care!...Yes, I--I ... This is perfectly shameless!... Dark? That makes it allthe worse. What will you ... No, no! You must not kiss me again! We mustgo back!--I will go back...."

  She freed herself, and he fumbled for his fallen candle. He struck amatch. The sputtering blue flame lit her white, languorous face, herfallen hair, her heaving breast. It went out. He struck another and thewick 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 knowmyself--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 theshadow! I ought not to have brought you into this dismal hole! You arepositively shivering."

  "Let us hurry," she said, and they went quickly into the warmer air andlight of the entrance.

  The squall had passed with the fateful swiftness of its coming. Thewaves still gurgled and tumbled, but the fury of the wind was over. Themurk light had lifted, showing the wet sky a patchy drab, which againwas beginning to show glimpses of golden hue.

  * * * * *

  They walked back to Haru at the tea-house, beneath the wild, poignantbeauty of disheveled cryptomeria, echoing once more the eternal song ofthe _semi_--along paths strewn with drenched petals and sweet with themoist scents of sodden leaves--then together, down the steep, templedhill and across the planked walk to the mainland, where a trolley buzzedthrough the springing rice-fields, musical now with the _me kayui_--_mekayui_ of the frogs. Daunt accompanied them to the through line of therailway. From there he was to return to Kamakura for the answer to hisletter.

  The sun was setting when the Tokyo express pulled into the station. AsHaru disappeared into the compartment, Daunt took Barbara's hand to helpher to the platform. There had been no other first-class passengers toembark and the forward end of the asphalt was deserted. Her lovely,flushed face was turned toward him, and there in the dusk of thestation, 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, Barbaraclosed her eyes, the longer to keep the impression of that eager gaze:the lithe, muscular poise of the strong frame, the parted lips, thebrown hair curling under the peak of the cloth cap. She tried to imaginehim on his backward journey. Now the trolley had passed the rice-fields,now he was striding along the shore road toward Kamakura, where thegreat bronze Buddha was lifting its face of dreamless calm. Now,perhaps, he was turning back toward the deepening blur of the greenisland. She shivered a little as she remembered the frown that hadseemed 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 ofthe night before, which she had read in the candle-lighted
street!To-morrow Ware also was coming--for an answer! She knew what that wouldbe, too. She felt a sudden pity for him. Yet she knew now--what wisdomshe had gained in these two swift days!--that his was not the love thatmost deserved it. Daunt's parting kiss clung to her lips like a livingflower. The hand he had clasped still burned to his touch; she lifted itand held it against her hot face, while the darkening carriage seemed tofill with the dank smell of salty wind and seaweed, mingled with hisvoice:

  "Barbara, I love you!--Dearest! Dearest!"

  * * * * *

  She thought the gesture unseen, unguessed by any one. But in the forwardcar, beyond the glass vestibule door, which to her was only a tremblingmirror, a man sat watching with burning eyes. He had been gazing throughthe window when the train stopped, had risen to his feet with instantrecognition--to shrink back into his seat, his fingers clenched, hisbitten lip indrawn, and a pallor on his face.

  It was Austen Ware, and he had seen that kiss.