The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER XLV

  THE BISHOP ANSWERS A SUMMONS

  The Chapel was but sparsely filled. From where she sat, Barbara, throughthe open door, could see the willows along the disconsolate roadwaywhipping in the fleering dashes of wind. A woman trudged by,bare-legged, her _kimono_ tucked knee-high, the inevitable, swaddledbaby on her back. The hot, fibrous song of the _semi_ had died to a thinhumming, like bees in an old orchard. Across the bishop's voice sheheard the plaintive call of a huckster, swinging by in slow dogtrot withpanier-pole on shoulder, and the chirr of a singing-frog under thehedge.

  The service was in the vernacular, and though she tried to follow it inher _Romaji_ prayer-book--whose words were printed in Roman lettersinstead of the Japanese ideograph--the lines were meaningless, and shecould 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 benumbinglassitude that was not apathy and yet was far removed from spontaneousfeeling. Daunt's presence that dreadful night on the hillside--hisconfusion--his bleeding hand--his round-about return to the hotel--allthis, at the sight of the Damascene crop in the bushes, had flashed toher mind in damnable sequence. And yet something deep and unfathomedwithin her had driven her to the obliteration of that mute evidence.Austen Ware had slipped and fallen--such was the universal verdict. Thetruth was sealed for ever in the urn now bound over-seas to its lastresting-place. She alone, she thought, knew the secret of that Nikkotragedy.

  With the next daylight the storm had broken and the ensuing gloomyweather had formed a dismal setting for gloomier scenes, through whichshe had moved dully and mechanically. When all was over, to Patricia'ssorrow, she had not returned to the Embassy, but had gone immediately toher uncle's. The pity offered her--though not openly expressed, sinceher engagement had not been formally announced--hurt her like physicalblows, 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 asatiric freak of chance, legally her own!--to seal the private papers ofthe man whose deed of gift might not now be recalled.

  As she sat listening to the meaningless reading and the sighing of thewind above the Chapel roof, Barbara's eyes on the stained-glass figurein the rose-window were full of a wistful loneliness. If her father wereonly alive--if he could be near her now! Unconsciously her gaze strayedacross the hedges, to the gray roof of the old temple where lived theeccentric solitary to whom her thought insistently recurred. In hertrouble she longed to go to him, with a longing the greater because itseemed fantastic and illogical. She recalled suddenly the quaintsix-year-old of the huge clogs and patched _kimono_--Ishikichi, troubledover the giving up of the family establishment, puzzling his baby brainover the hard things of life.

  She was startled by a sound outside--the single, shrill, high scream ofa horse in some stable near at hand. It cut through a pause in theservice, sharp, curdling, like a cry of mortal fear. A baby, nearBarbara, awoke and began to cry and the mother soothed it with whisperedmurmurings.

  Suddenly there arose a strange rattling, a groaning of timbers. Thebishop ceased reading. People were rising to their feet. The buildingwas shifting, swaying, with a sickening upward vibration, as though itwere being trotted on some Brobdingnagian knee. Barbara felt a qualmlike the first touch of _mal de mer_. "_Ji-shin! Ji-shin!_" rose thecry, and there was a rush for the open air. In another moment she foundherself out of doors with the frightened crowd.

  It was her first experience of earthquake, and the terror had grippedher bodily. The wet trees were waving to and fro like gigantic fans, anda dull moan like an echo in a subterranean cavern seemed to issue fromthe very ground. A section of tiling slid from the Chapel roof with acrash. "Rather severe that, for Tokyo," said the bishop at her elbow,where he stood calmly, watch in hand. "Almost two minutes and verticalmovement."

  "Two minutes!" she gasped. She had thought it twenty.

  The nauseating swing had ceased, but in an instant, with a viciouswrench, it began again. "The secondary oscillations," he said. "It willall 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 asinister dust-cloud sprang into the air like a monstrous hand withspread fingers. "It is one of the temples!" said the bishop, and hurriedwith the rest, Barbara following him.

  The paved yard was filling with a throng. Agitated priests and acolytesran hither and thither and slate-colored nuns, with shaven heads andpale, frightened faces, peered through the bamboo-lattices of thenunnery. The newer temple faced the open space as usual, but across thehedged garden no ornate roof now thrust up its Tartar gables. Insteadwas a huddle of wreckage, upon which lay the huge roof, crumpled andshattered, like the fragments of a gigantic mushroom. From the tangleprojected beam ends, coiled about with painted monsters, and here andthere 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 unconsciousof the mud and the pelting rain. The bishop drew her under the templeporch, and they stood together watching the men now working withmattocks, saws and with loose beams for levers, prying up a corner ofthe 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 facewhat the priest had answered! She waited quiveringly.

  Through the bishop's mind swift thoughts were passing. He knew byhearsay of the recluse--knew that he was not an Oriental. He had oftenseen the placard on the little gate: "Maker of Buddhas." He had neverpassed it without a pang. It seemed a satirical derision of the holiestideal of the West--a type and sign of reversion, a sardonic mockery ofthe Creed of Christ. He was a priest holding the torch of the true lightto this alien people, and here, a dark shadow across its brightness, hadstood this derisive denial. Yet now, perhaps, this man stood on thethreshold 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. Iwill come back to you as soon as I can."