CHAPTER III
THE LAND OF THE GODS
In the first touch of the shore, where the Ambassador's pretty daughterwaited, Barbara's problem had been swept away. Patricia had rushed tomeet her, embraced her, with a moist, ecstatic kiss on her cheek,rescued the bishop from his ordeal of hand-shaking and carried him offto find their trunks, leaving Barbara borne down by a Babel of sound andscent whose newness made her breathless, and to whose manifoldsensations she was as keenly alive as a photographic plate to color.
A half-dozen gnarled, unshaven porters in excessively shabby jacketsand straw sandals carried her hand-baggage into the hideouslymodern, red-brick custom-house, over whose entrance a huge goldenconventionalized chrysanthemum shone in the sunlight, and as she watchedthem, a dapper youth in European dress, with a shining brown derby, abright purple neck-tie, a silver-mounted cane and teeth eloquent of goldbridge-work, slid into her hand a card whose type proclaimed that Mr. Y.Nakajima "did the guiding for foreign ladies and gentlemans." The airwas fragrant with the mild aroma from tiny Japanese pipes and a-flutterwith moving fans. A group of elderly men in hot frock-coats and tiles ofnot too modern vintage were welcoming a returning official, and sedategentlemen in sad-colored _houri_ and spotless cleft foot-wear, boweddouble in stately ceremonial, with the sucking-in of breath which in theold-fashioned Japanese etiquette means "respectful awe bordering onterror."
Barbara had found herself singularly conscious of a feeling of universalgood-nature. It came to her even in the posture of the resting coolies,stretched at the side of the quay, lazily sunning themselves, withwhiffs of the omnipresent little pipe, and in the faces of thebare-legged _rick'sha_ men, with round hats like bobbing mushrooms, armsand chests glistening with sweat, and thin towels printed in black andblue designs tucked in their girdles. She smiled at them, and theysmiled back at her with that unvarying smile which the Japanese of everycaste wears to wedding and to funeral. She even caught herself pattingthe tonsured head of a preternaturally solemn baby swaddled in avariegated _kimono_ and strapped to the back of a five-year-old boy.
The _rick'sha_ ride to the _stenshun_ (for so the Japanese has adaptedthe English word "station") was a moving panorama of strange high lightsand shades, of savory odors from bake-ovens, of open shop-fronts hungwith gaudy figured crape, or piled with saffron _biwa_, warty purplemelons, ebony eggplant, shriveled yellow peppers and red Hokkaidoapples, of weighted carts drawn by chanting half-naked coolies, andswiftly gliding victorias of Europeans. From a hundred houses in thelong, narrow streets hung huge gilded sign-boards, painted withidiographs of black and red. At intervals the tall stone front of aforeign business building looked down on its neighbors, or a tea-housetowered three stories high, showing gay little verandas on which stoodpots of flowers and dwarf trees; between were smaller houses of frameand of cement, and thick-walled _go-downs_ for storing goods againstfire.
Here and there, from behind a gateway of unpainted wood, showing adelicate grain, a pine thrust up its needled clump of green, or acherry-tree flung its pink pyrotechnics against the sky's flood ofdimming blue and gold. At a crossing a deformed beggar with distortedface and the featureless look of the leper, waved a crutch and wheedledfrom the roadside, and a child in dun-colored rags, unbelievably agileand dirty, ran ahead of Barbara's _rick'sha_, prostrating himself againand again in the dust, holding out grimy hands and whining for a _sen_.In the side streets Barbara could catch glimpses of bare-breasted womensitting in shop doors nursing babies, and children of a larger growthplaying Japanese hopscotch or tossing "diavolo," the latest foreign toy.
When the _rick'sha_ set them down at the station she felt bewildered,yet full of exhilaration. As they drew up at its stone front, a porterwith red cap and brass buttons emerged and began to ring a heavy bell,swinging it back and forth in both hands. The bishop bought theirtickets at a little barred window bearing over it the sign: "Yourbaggages will be sent freely in every direction."
Making their way along the platform, crowded with Japanese, mostly innative dress, and filled with the aroma of cigarettes and the thinringing of innumerable wooden clogs on stone flags, Barbara wasconscious for the first time of a studious surveillance. A youngJapanese passed her carrying his bent and wizened mother on his back;the old woman, clutching him tightly about the neck, turned her shavenhead to watch. Children in startling rainbow tinted _kimono_ stared fromthe platform with round, serious eyes. A peasant woman, with teethbrilliantly blackened, peered from a car window, and a group of youngmen turned bodily and regarded her with gravely observant gaze, in aprolonged, unwinking scrutiny that seemed as innocent of courtesy as ofany intent to offend. In European cities she had felt the gaze of otherraces, but this was different. It was not the curious study of aphenomenon, of an enduring puzzle of far origins, nor the expression ofthe ignorant, vacantly amused by what they do not understand; it was adeeper look of inner placidity, that held no wonder and no awe, andsomehow suggested thoughts as ancient as the world. A curious sensebegan to possess Barbara of having left behind her all familiarevery-day things, of being face to face with some new wonder, somebrooding mystery which she could not grasp.
They entered the car just behind an ample lady who had been among theship's passengers--a good-natured, voluble Cook's tourist who, thesecond day out, had confided to Barbara her certainty of an invitationto the Imperial Cherry-Blossom party, as her husband had "a friend inthe litigation." She wore a painted-muslin, and the husband ofinfluential acquaintance and substantial, red-bearded person showed nowa gleaming expanse of white waistcoat crossed by a gold watch-chain thatmight have restrained a tiger. The lady nodded and smiled beamingly.
"Isn't it all perfectly splendid!" she cried. "There was a baby on theplatform that was too _sweet_!--for all the world like the Japanesedolls we buy at home, with their hair shingled and a little round spotshaved right in the crown! My husband tried to give it a silver dollar,but the mother just smiled and bowed and went away and left it lying onthe bench." She found a seat and fanned herself vigorously with ahandkerchief. "I just thought I never _would_ get through that cardoor," she added. "It's only two feet across!"
The road was narrow gage and the seats ran the length of the car oneither side. Hardly had its occupants settled themselves when, to theshrill piping of a horn, the train started.
"Goodness, this is a relief!" sighed Patricia, as the bishop opened thefirst Japanese newspaper he had seen for many months. "I hate_rick'sha_--they're such unsociable things! I haven't said ten words toyou, Barbara, and I've got oceans to talk about. But I'll be mercifultill I get you home. What a good-looking youth that is in the corner!"
The young man referred to had a light skin and long, almond-shaped eyes.He wore a suit of gray merino underwear, and between the end of thedrawers and the white, cleft sock, an inch of polished skin was visible.His hat was a modish felt. His _houri_, which bore a woven crest onbreast and sleeves, swung jauntily open and above his left ear wascoquettishly disposed an unlighted cigarette. Next him, under a brassrack piled with bright-patterned carpet-bags, an old lady indove-colored silk was placidly inflating a rubber air-cushion. Her facehad an artificial delicacy of _nuance_ that was a triumph of rice-powderand rouge. Beside her was a girl of perhaps eighteen, in a _kimono_ ofdark blue and an _obi_ of gold brocade. The latter wore white silk"mits" with bright metal trimming and on one slender finger was adiamond ring. Her hands were delicately artistic and expressive, and hercomplexion as soft as the white wing of a miller. She gazed steadfastlyaway, but now and then her sloe-black eyes returned to study Barbara'sforeign gown and hat with surreptitious attention.
"What complexions!" whispered Patricia. "The old lady made hers thismorning, sitting flat on a white mat in front of a camphor-wooddressing-chest about two feet high, with twenty drawers and a roundsteel mirror on top. It beats a hare's-foot, doesn't it! The daughter'sis natural. If I had been born with a skin like that, it would havechanged my whole dispositio
n!"
Having settled her air-cushion, the old lady drew from her girdle alacquer case and produced a pipe--a thin reed with a tiny silver bowl atits end. A flat box yielded a pinch of tobacco as fine as snuff. Thisshe rolled between her fingers into a ball the size of a small pea,placed it carefully in the bowl and began to smoke. Each puff sheinhaled with a lingering inspiration and emitted it slowly, in a thincurdled cloud, from her nostrils. Three puffs, and the tiny coal wasexhausted. She tapped the pipe gently against the edge of the seat, putit back into the case and replaced the latter in her girdle. Then,tucking up her feet under her on the plush seat, she turned her back tothe aisle and went to sleep.
Three students in the uniform of some lower school with foreign jacketsof blue-black cloth set off with brass buttons, sat in a row on theopposite side. Each had a cap like a cadet's, with a gilt cherry-blossomon its front, and all watched Barbara movelessly. The man nearest herwore a round straw hat and horn spectacles. He was reading a vernacularnewspaper, intoning under his breath with a monotonous sing-song, likethe humming of a bumblebee. Between them a little boy sat on the edge ofthe seat, his clogs hanging from the thong between his bare toes, thesleeves of his _kimono_ bulging with bundles. He stared as if hypnotizedat a curl of Barbara's bronze hair which lay against the cushion. Oncehe stretched out a hand furtively to touch it, but drew it back hastily.
"If I could only talk to him!" Barbara exclaimed. "I want to know thelanguage. Tell me, Patsy--how long did it take you to learn?"
"I?" cried Patricia in comical amazement. "Heavens and earth, _I_haven't learned it! I only know enough to badger the servants. You haveto turn yourself inside out to think Japanese, and then stand on yourhead to talk it."
"Never mind, Barbara," said the bishop, looking up from his newspaper."You can learn it if you insist on it. Haru would be a capitalteacher--bless my soul, I believe I forgot to tell you about her!"
"Who is Haru?" asked Barbara.
"She's a young Japanese girl, the daughter of the old _samurai_ who soldus the land for the Chapel. The family is a fine old one, but of frayedfortune. I was greatly interested in her, chiefly, perhaps, because sheis a Christian. She became so with her father's consent, though he is aBuddhist. She isn't of the servant class, of course, but I thought--ifyou liked--she would make an ideal companion for you while you arelearning Tokyo."
"I know Haru," said Patricia. "She's a dear! She's as pretty as apicture, and her English is too quaint!"
"It would be lovely to have her," Barbara answered. "You're a verythoughtful man, Uncle Arthur. Are you sure she'll want to?"
"I'll send her a note and ask her to come to you at the Embassy thisevening. Then--all aboard for the Japanese lessons!"
"No such wisdom for me, thank you," said Patricia. "I prefer to takemine in through the pores. All the Japanese officials speak Englishanyway, just as much as the diplomatic corps. By the way, there's CountVoynich, the Servian _Charge_." She nodded toward the farther end of thecarriage where a bored-looking European plaintively regarded thelandscape through a monocle. "He's nice," she added reflectively, "buthe's a dyspeptic. I caught him one night at a dinner dropping a capsuleinto his soup. He has a cabinet with three hundred Japanese_nets'kes_--they're the little ivory carvings on the strings oftobacco-pouches. He didn't speak to me for a month once because I saidit looked like a dental exhibition. Almost every secretary has a fad,and that's his. Ours has an aeroplane. He practises on it nearly everyday on the parade-ground. The pudgy woman in the other corner with acockatoo in her hat is Mrs. Sturgis, the wife of the big exporter. Shewears red French heels and calls her husband 'papa'."
Barbara's laughter was infectious. It caught the bishop. It reflecteditself even on the demure face of the Japanese girl, and the seriousyouths opposite giggled openly in sympathy.
"I do envy you your first impressions!" exclaimed Patricia. "I've beenhere so long that I've forgotten mine. It seems perfectly natural nowfor people to live in houses made of bird-cages and paper napkins, andtravel about in grown-up baby-buggies, and to see men walking aroundwith bare legs and oil-skin umbrellas. It's like the sea-shore at home,I suppose--you get used to it."
The train had stopped at a suburb and guards went by proclaiming itsname in a musical guttural, their voices dwelling insistently on thelong-drawn, last syllable. The next carriage was a third-class one withbare floors and wooden benches, set crosswise. Through the opened doorBarbara could see its crowd of brown faces, keen and saturnine. On itsfront seat a heavy-featured, lumpish coolie woman was nursing athree-year-old baby, holding it to her bared breast with red androughened hands. Just outside the station's white-washed fence, a clumpof factory chimneys spouted pitchy smoke into the dimming sky, and thedescending sun glistened from a monster gas-tank. Farther away, beyondclipped hedges, lay thatched roofs, looking as soft as mole-skin, withwild flowers growing on the ridges, and bamboo clumps soaring abovethem, like pale green ostrich-feathers yellow at the tips. Through theopen window came the treble note of a girl singing.
A man passed hastily through the carriage leaving a trail of smallpamphlets bound in green paper with gold lettering--an advertisement ofa health resort, printed in English for the tourist. Barbara opened onecuriously. She looked up with a merry eye.
"Here's a paragraph for you, Uncle Arthur," she said. "Listen:
"'This place has other modern monuments, first and second-class hotels and many sea-scapes. In one quarter are a number of missionaries, but they can easily be avoided.'"
"Do let us credit that to difficulties of the language," he protested."I'm sure that must have been meant complimentarily."
"But what a contradiction!" put in Patricia wickedly.
"Well," he retorted. "My baker has a sign on his wagon, 'The biggestloafer in Tokyo.' He means that well, too."
A shrill whistle, a slamming of doors, and now the gray roofs fell away.On one side the steel road all but dipped in the bay. Wild ducks drewstartled wakes across the rippleless lagoon. On a sand-bar a flock ofgray and white gulls disported, looking at a distance like pied bathers;and about an anchored fishing boat, a dozen naked urchins were splashingwith shrill cries. Far across the inlet, hazy, vapory, visionary,Barbara could make out a farther shore, an outline in violets andopalines, coifed with lilac cloud, and in the mid-azure a high-pooped_junk_ swam by, a shape of misty gold, palely drawn in wan, blue light.
On the other side the train was rounding grassy hills, terraced to thevery tops. Laid against their steep sides, or standing upright on woodenframework, were occasional huge advertisements in red or white--Chinesecharacters or pictures--while flowering camelia trees and smallgreen-yellow shrubs drew lengthening blue shadows. A high tresslespanned acres of orchard where continuous trellis made a carpet ofgrowing fruit, across which Barbara saw far away the bold outline ofbluish hills.
They were crossing flooded rice-fields now, like gigantic crazychecker-boards, and the air was musical with the low, chirring chorus offrogs. Shades of orange light played over the marshes, bars of rapebraided them with vivid yellow, and on the narrow, curving partitionsbetween the burnished squares, round stacks of garnered straw stood likecrawfish chimneys. Amid them peasants worked with broad-bladed mattocks,knee-deep in mud. They were blue clad, with white cloths bound abouttheir heads, and some had sashes of crimson. Here and there, naked tothe thighs, a boy trod a water-wheel between the terraced levels. Atintervals a refractory rock-hillock served as excuse for a singletwisted pine-tree shading a carved tablet to some _Shinto_ divinity, ora steep bluff sheltered a tiny shrine of unpainted wood; and all alongthe way, shining canals drew silver ribbons through the paddy-fields,and little arrowy flights of birds darted hither and thither.
Occasionally they passed small, neat stations, each with its whitesign-boards bearing long liquid names in English, and queer Japanesecharacters. Opposite one, on a sloping hill that was a mass of deepglowing green, Patricia pointed out the peaked roofs of a cluster oftemples, the shrine of some century-dead
Buddhist saint. Barbara beganto realize that these fields through which this modern train was glidingwere old Japan, that in those blue hills had been nurtured the ancientlegends she had read, of famous two-sworded _samurai_, of swaggeringbandits and pleasure-loving _shogun_, and of tea-house _geisha_ whodanced their way into _daimyo's_ palaces. The spell of the land, whosesheer beauty had thrilled her on the ship, drew her closer with thethreads of memories almost forgotten.
Its contrasts were wonderful. They spoke of primary and unmixedemotions, that lisped themselves through the fading golden sunlight, themoist, dreamy air, the graceful outlines of roof and tree. In the westthe sun was declining toward a range of hills jagged as the teeth of abear. Their tops were pale as cloud and their bases melted into an ebonyline of forest. The plain below was a winey purple, with slashes of redearth gorges like fresh wounds, and one side had the cloudy color ofraspberries crushed in curdled milk. The farther range seemed a part ofa far-off painted curtain, tinted in pastels, and high above a milkycloud floated, curling like a lace scarf about the opal crest of Fuji,mysteriously blue and dim as an Arctic summer sea.
Barbara glimpsed it, the very spirit of beauty, between the whirlingshadows of pine and camphor trees, between tiled walls guarding thatchedtemples, flights of gray pigeons and spurts of pink cherry-blossom. Asshe leaned out, and the pines bowed rhythmically, and the water-wheelsturned in the furrows, and the yellow-green of the bamboo, thepurple-indigo of the hills and the golden-pink of the cherries lifting,above the hedges, went by like raveling skeins of a tapestry--thatmajestic Presence, ghostly and splendid above the wild contour of hilland mountain, seemed to call to her.
And across the gorgeous landscape, rejoicing from every rift and creviceof its moist soil, in its colors of rich red earth and green foliage, inthe grace and vigor of its springing, resilient bamboo groves and thecardinal pride of its flowering camelias, Barbara's heart answered thecall.
The Kingdom of Slender Swords Page 5
