CHAPTER XX
THE TRESPASSER
The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended thatafternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on itswide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty _kimono_ of pale graycotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japaneseface showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fledfrom Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden underthe racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling.
Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality--with herfragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please.While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, shehad made the Japanese girl bring her _samisen_ and play. At first themusic had seemed uncouth and elfish--a queer, barbaric twanging, like anintoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodiouschirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals.But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her innerear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding,her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who atthe first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables andservants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in herpretty broken English, had told her stories--old legends that areembalmed in the _geisha_ dances, of the forty-seven _Ronin_, and of thegreat _Shogun_ who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park.
* * * * *
When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk--he was to show her theChapel--the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of thecompound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables--each with thegolden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel--was just passing. Theiroccupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in navaluniform, their breasts covered with orders.
"The officers of the foreign Squadron, no doubt," said the Ambassador,"being shown the sights of the capital. Day after to-morrow the Ministerof Marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor.You will enjoy that, Barbara."
"I wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond oftalking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a Japanese welcome. The stay ofthese officers will be one long festivity. Yet to read a Continentaljournal you would think every other Japanese was carrying a club for useif they ventured ashore."
The Ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. For weeks, thenewspapers of European capitals had talked of conflicting interests andunreconciled differences between the two countries. He knew that therewas little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news"and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strungChanceries as it does individuals. Beneath this surface current,diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. But as atrained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too longpersisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of theSquadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of thelavish and open-hearted hospitality which Japan would offer it. When thecarriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back tohis books.
* * * * *
Walking up the sloping "Hill-of-the-Spirit" to the templed knoll behindit, Barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. All along flauntingcamphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and thescent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. The ground waswhite and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts weresprinkling water. Little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied withbright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured _kimono_ of redand purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edgea naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shavenhead bobbing in the sunshine. Half-way up the hill a group of coolieswere resting beside their carts. Their faces had the look oflotos-eaters, languid and serene. As they walked Barbara told of theadventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the Reviewof the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he hadnever seen her so beautiful.
"What has happened--_who_ has happened, Barbara?" he asked, for hesuddenly guessed he knew what that look meant.
Her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "I don'tknow--do you?"
He took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morningnewspaper. It chronicled the arrival of the yacht _Barbara_.
She looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages----'"
"But not Ware?" he finished. "All right. He'll speak for himself, nodoubt. The paper says he's at Nara; but then, he doesn't know you arehere yet. We pushed our sailing date forward, you remember."
"I'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "Meanwhile, Ican't tell you what a good time I'm having. I shall stay in Japan forever: I can feel it in my bones! I shall have a Japanese house with achaperon, two tailless cats and an _amah_, and study the three systemsof flower-arrangement and the Tea-Ceremony."
They had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentrynow stood. "He wears the uniform of the Imperial Guard," the bishopsaid. "That is the residence of one of the daughters of the Emperor."
He turned into the lane that opened opposite. It was hedged with someunfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little wayinside stood an old temple gate with a stone _torii_. She stopped withan exclamation.
"Yes," he said, "there is the Chapel."
Barbara was looking opposite the _torii_, where, amid the floweringgreen, a slanting roof lifted, holding a cross. It stood out, whitelycut against the blue, a silent witness. Facing the dragon-swarming gate,it made her think of pale martyrs in gorgeous pagan countries, of Paulstanding before the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, and lonely Christiananchorites in profane lands of green and gold.
"What Christians some of these Japanese make!" the bishop said, as theyfinished their tour of the building. "I know of a carpenter in Sendaiwho became a convert. He used to visit the prison and one day he took awoman there to see her husband, a hardened and obdurate criminal. In theinterview the man stabbed his wife. The chief-of-police, on account ofthe carpenter's reputation for justice and pure-living, left thepunishment of the man to him. What do you think he did?"
She could not guess.
"He refused to punish him at all, on the simple ground that Christ wouldnot. As a result the convict is now one of the best Christian teacherswe have in Sendai. The month before this happened," he continued,smiling reflectively, "a thief broke into the rectory and stole mywatch. I notified the police, and they brought it back to me in a fewdays. But where is my thief? You remember Jean Valjean and the silvercandle-sticks? Maybe the Sendai carpenter was nearer right than I."
Barbara had paused in front of the black space for the stained-glasswindow.
"It will be here," the bishop said, answering her thought. "It is tobe put in place in time for the dedication service to-morrowmorning." He stepped to the door and peered into the interior. "Youwill want to look about a bit, no doubt. I have a call to make in theneighborhood--suppose I stop on my way back for you."
* * * * *
For a few moments after his departure Barbara stood listening to thedulled sound of the workmen's tools. The roof of the temple opposite hada curving, Tartar-like ridge, at either end of which was a huge fish,its head pointed inward, its wide forked tail twisted high in air. Underits scalloped eaves she saw the flash of a swallow, and far above agaudy paper kite careened in the blue.
She crossed the lane and looked into the shady inclosure, where thebronze lanterns and the tombstones stood, as gray and lichened as thestone beneath her feet. Before many of the graves stood green bamboovases holding bunches of fresh leaves. An old woman was movingnoi
selessly about, watering these with a long bamboo dipper and lightingincense-sticks as she went. In one place a young man knelt before anancestral monument, softly clapping his hands in prayer. The whole placewas drenched in a tone limpid and serene, the very infusion of peace.Only in the black temple interior she caught the dim glow of candles andsomewhere a muffled baton was tapping on hollow wood.
"Min ... Min ... Min .. Min .. Min . Min .Min-Min-Min-Minminminminmin...." At first slowly, then faster andfaster, till the notes merged and died away in a muttering roll, tobegin once more with the slowness of a leisurely metronome.
The ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted herand she went nearer. Beyond the hedge she could see a portion of itsgarden. Reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt,open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered.
Before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, graygravel. On one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms ofdeep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and stripedground-bamboo. Beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sidesclambered an irregular pathway, set with tall _shinto_ lanterns andlarge stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. Here and therethe flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose,and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to bepowdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies.
Barbara had seen many photographs of Japanese gardens, but they hadeither lacked color or been over-tinted. This lay chromatic, visualized,braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed gloriesof a tropic spring. For a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picturefor ever on her brain.
She opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings ofthe ancient structure. Its _shoji_ had been noiselessly drawn open, anda man stood there looking fixedly at her.
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