The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER XXXV

  WHEN A WOMAN DREAMS

  Riding with Patricia in the big victoria next day, its red-stripedrunner diving ahead, Barbara forgot her vague wonder at Haru'sdisappearance, as she felt the enchanted mystery of Tokyo creep furtherinto her heart. They threaded the softly dreaming silence of thewillow-bordered moat that clasps the Imperial grounds with a girdle ofcloudy emerald, where the "Dragon Pines" of the great _Shogun Iyemits_fling their craggy masses of olive-green down over the leaning walls tokiss the mirroring water--past many-roofed, Tartar-like watch-towers,cream-white on the blue, and through little parks with forests of thinstraight-boled trees and placid lotos ponds seething with thedagger-blue flashings of dragon-flies, all woven together into atapestry, lovely, remote, fantastic--like the projection of somedream-legend whose people lived a fairy story in a picture-book world.

  On this oriental background continually appeared quaint touches of theforeign and bizarre: a huge American straw hat, much befrilled andbefeathered, on the head of a baby strapped to its mother's back, or ahideous boa of chenille like bunched caterpillars marring the delicatenative neckwear of an exquisite _kimono_.

  On the slope of a hill they came on a motley crowd, which included asprinkling of foreigners, gathered before the entrance of a temple yard,where a rough, improvised amphitheater had been erected. Patricia calledto the driver, and he pulled up.

  "Fire-walk," said the _betto_. "Ontake temple."

  From their elevated seat they could see white-robed and barefootedpriests waving long-handled fans and wands topped with shaggy papertassels over an area of red-hot cinders. Presently some of them strodecalmly across the smoking mass.

  "They call that the 'Miracle of Kudan Hill,'" said Patricia. "They aremaking incantations to the god of water to come and drive out the god offire. It's a _Shinto_ rite."

  A laugh rose from the spectators. The High Priest was inviting theforeigners to attempt the ordeal.

  "Look!" said Patricia. "There is the man who got the free lecture out ofyour uncle on the train--the man with the white waistcoat and the redbeard. 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 thepainted muslin calmly divested herself of shoes and stockings andmarched across and back again. "There!" she said triumphantly. "I said Iwould, 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 sidestreet came the brassy blare of a phonograph.

  "What a baffling combination it is!" said Barbara. "Last night some ofthose people were at Mukojima, listening to dead little drums andsquealing fifes, and to-night here is Damrosch and the _Intermezzo_."

  "The other day when I passed," said Patricia, "it was _Waltz Me AroundAgain, Willie_, and forty children were prancing to it. Martha's husbandis '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 nativeorchestra 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 hammeredcopper. Above it two pine-trees writhed like a Dore print. "One of theEmpress' ladies-in-waiting lives here," Patricia said. "I'll walk homeand on the way I can leave some 'call-tickets'--Tucker's name forvisiting-cards. Give my love to the bishop."

  She looked wistfully after Barbara as the latter bowled away towardTs'kiji and her uncle's. Under her flyaway spirits Patricia had thewarmest little heart in the world, loyal to its last beat to those sheliked. Daunt was decidedly in this category. Like the rest, she had beenweaving a cheerful little romance for these two friends. Since theevening at the Cherry-Moon, however, when the newly arrived yacht hadbeen talked of, she had had misgivings. Yesterday, too, Barbara, whileconfiding nothing, had told her of Austen Ware's coming. Patricia walkedup the driveway slowly and with a puzzled frown.

  But the girl driving on under cherry-stained sky and cherry-scentedwinds, knew, that one hour, no problems. She was full of the flame andpulse of youth, of a new nascent tenderness and a warm sense of lovingall the world. She asked herself if she could really be the poised,self-contained girl who a few weeks ago sailed for the Orient. Somemagic alchemy had transmuted all her elements. New emotions dominatedher, and through the beauty before her gaze went flashing more beautifulthoughts that linked with the future.

  In her pocket was a letter. It had been brought to her that morning whenshe woke and she had read it over and over, kneeling in the drift ofpillows, her red-gold hair draping her white shoulders, thrilling,murmuring little inarticulate answers to its phrases, looking up now andthen to peer through the bamboo _sudare_ to the white and green cottageacross the lawn. He would not see her to-day--until evening. Then hewould ask her....

  As the carriage bore her on, she whispered again and again one of thesentences he had written: "There has never been another woman to me,Barbara. There never will be! My Lady of the Many-Colored Fires!"