The Kingdom of Slender Swords
CHAPTER XL
THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW
Nikko's thin street, with its gigantic isle of cryptomeria, was ashimmer of gold, a flicker of crimson and mandarin-blue. All the townwas out of doors, for it was the _matsuri_, the local festival ofIeyasu, the great _shogun_ deity, when the ancient furniture andtreasures of the temple are carried in priestly processional through thestreets. The path of the pageant was lined with spectators: oldcountry-women with shaven eyebrows and burnished, blackened teeth, andwith hair tightly plastered in old-fashioned wheels and pinions;children in kaleidoscopic dress, frantically dragged by older girls withpink paper flowers in their stiff black hair; men sitting sedately onsober-colored _f'ton_, bowing to pedestrian acquaintances with elaborateand stereotyped ceremony. In the moldy shade above a grim, wizened rowof images of the god of justice, was nailed a sign-board: "Everybody arerequire not to broke the trees." Beside the moss-covered replicas abooth had been erected for foreign spectators. It was crowded withtourists--a bank of perspiring, fan-fluttering humanity. Up and downtrudged post-card sellers, and _sake_ bearers with trays of shallow,lacquer cups. The air shimmered with a fine white dust from thethousands of wooden clogs, and the trees were sibilant with the tumultof the _semi_.
The procession seemed interminable. Priests rode on horseback, clothedin black gauze robes with stoles of gold brocade and queer, winged hats.Acolytes marched afoot in green or yellow with stoles of black, likehuge parti-colored beetles. Groups of bearers in white _houri_ carriedbrass altar furniture, great drums fantastically painted, ancientchain-armor and tall banners of every tint. The center of interest was asacred _mikoshi_, or palanquin, holding the divine symbols, elaboratelycarved and gold-lacquered, borne by sixty men in white, with cloths oflike hue bound turban-wise about their foreheads. Around these circleddrum-beaters and pipe-players, making an indescribable medley of sounds.The god entered into his devotees. The palanquin tossed like the wavesof the sea. The bearers howled and chanted gutturally. Sweat poured fromtheir faces. Some of them smiled and danced as they staggered on underthe 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 streetto the road that skirts the brawling Alpine torrent, rushing between itssteep stone banks. Here the spray filled the air with a cool mist andthe westerning sun tied the seething water with silver tasseling.Caravans of panier-laden Chinese ponies passed them, led by women intight blue breeches with sweat-bands about their heads, and squads ofuncomfortable tourists bound to Chuzenji, the summer capital of the_Corps Diplomatique_, crumpled in sagging red-blanketed chairs hangingfrom the bearing-poles of lurching, bronze-muscled coolies. Youngpeasant girls trotted by swinging baskets of yellow asters and purplemorning-glories. A _rick'sha_ carried a baby with gay-colored dolls andpainted cats of _papier-mache_ tied behind it, on its way to the familyshrine where the toys could be blessed. The _rick'sha_ man was smiling,but his cough rattled against Barbara's heart. A line of white-robedBuddhist pilgrims trudged along under mushroom hats, with rosariescrossed over their breasts and little bells tinkling at their girdles ontheir way to worship the Sun on the sacred mountain of Nantai-Zan. Nowand then the cut-velvet of the hills rolled back to display clumps ofdwellings--the wizard-gray of thatched roofs set in a rippling sea ofleaves--and green flights of worn stone steps, staggering up to weirdold temples where droning priests were ever at prayer. At the bottom ofthe road the stream narrowed to a gorge, spanned by the sacredred-lacquer bridge which no foot save the Emperor's may ever tread. Onthe farther side the wooded hills rose in fantastic, top-heavy shapeslike a mad artist's dream. Everywhere they were split and seamed bylandslide, gashed by torrents and typhoon, but covered with a wealth andsplendor of color. Here and there century-old cryptomeria stood likegray-green bronze pillars, towering over younger forests as straight andsymmetrical as Noah's-ark trees.
As they walked, Ware chatted of his trip up the China coast--aninteresting recital that took Barbara insensibly out of herself. Morethan once he looked at her curiously. Since that fateful hour when hehad stood behind the _shikiri_, he, like Barbara, had gone through muchto look so unflurried. He had known moments of bitterness that weregalling 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 Dauntmust wither! "It will pass," he had told himself, "and she will turn tome."
The trip to Nikko had encouraged him. It had been the time of thebishop's regular spring visit and Barbara had welcomed the opportunityto leave Tokyo, which was so full of painful memories. Patricia adoredJapan's "Temple Town" and Ware had joined the party there with as littledelay as was seemly. In the three days of the poignant mountain airBarbara had seemed to Patricia to be more like her old self. She couldnot guess the strength of the effort this had cost or the fierceness ofthe 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 asubtle Japanese flavor. On one side of the building the ground fell in aprecipitous descent to the rocky bed of the river, whose rush made arestful monotone like wind sighing through linden trees. Behind it theheight rose abruptly, and up its side clambered a twisting path, fromwhich a light foot-bridge sprang to the upper piazzas. The path led to ashrine a hundred yards above, set beside an old wisteria tree, musicalwith the chirp of the "silver-eye," and fluttering with countless paperarrows of prayer. Before it were two wooden benches, and from this eyrieone could look down on the hotel with its graceful balconies, and farbelow the tumbling stream with its guarded red-lacquer arch.
Ware walked with Barbara up the path to the foot-bridge. Near itsentrance a small stand had been placed and on it was a phonograph, itsungainly trumpet pointing down toward the stretch of lawn. A heavyred-bearded man, in a warm frock-coat, a white waistcoast and a silk hatpushed far back on his head, was laboring over this, and a plump ladystood 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 Marthaare 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 arecord 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 threedays' acid bath that makes it as hard as steel. It'll last for ever. Nowwhat do you suppose I'm going to do with the record? I'm going to giveit to you."
The lady beside him nodded and smiled. "He's been planning it ever sincehe heard you say the other day that you liked _samisen_ music," shesaid.
"You see," he went on with a laugh. "I haven't forgotten that line oftalk your uncle gave me on the train, my first day in Japland. It did mea lot of good. I guess what he doesn't know about it isn't worthtelling," 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 kindlinessof the couple pleased her.
The piazza opened into a small sitting-room with cool bamboo chairs andportieres of thin green silk stenciled with maple-leaves.
"Will you wait a moment, Barbara?" asked Ware. "I have something to showyou."
She stopped, looking at him with a trace of confusion. "Certainly," sheanswered. "What is it?"
He put a folded paper into her hands. "To-day is the anniversary of ourmeeting," he said. "This is a memento."
r /> She took it with a puzzled look and scrutinized it. Wonder filled herface. "You have made over your yacht to me!" she cried.
"My engagement gift," he said. "She is your namesake; I want her to beyours."
A flush crept over her cheek. She knew the yacht was his favoritepossession and the action touched her. At the same time it broughtswiftly home to her, in a concrete way, a numbing reminder of theimminence of her marriage.
"The deed has been recorded," he went on, "and the sailing-master andcrew have signed articles under the new owner. Perhaps you will let mecome 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 anddrew aside the portiere. She was agitated, feeling unable to meet thesituation in the conventional way. At the threshold she paused and heldout her hand.
He bent and kissed it. She half-hesitated, but in the pause there was alaughing 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 thephonograph called to him.
"I clean forgot to ask the young lady where to send this record," hesaid. "Do you know her address?"
"It will be more or less uncertain, I fancy," said Ware. "But her yachtis in Yokohama harbor. It is named the _Barbara_. You might send itthere."