CHAPTER XXV
AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX-GOD
The street into which they trooped seemed an oriental opera-bouffe:swaying, chatting people in loose, light-colored _kimono_, some carryingcrested paper lanterns tied to the ends of short rods: a thousand lightsand hues flashing and weaving. But for two of the party the colors hadlost their warmth and the movement its fascination.
"I simply _can't_ coop up yet in a _rick'sha_!" pleaded Patricia, asthey donned their discarded shoes. "Why not walk a little?" The proposalmet with a chorus of approval. They set out together, and presentlyBarbara found Daunt beside her. Her resentment did not cool as shelaughed and talked mechanically, acutely aware that he was answering inmonosyllables or with silence.
Daunt was crying out upon himself for a fool. What right had he to feelthat hot sting in his heart? Yesterday morning he had not known that sheexisted. If an hour ago the skies had been golden-sprinkled azure, andTokyo the capital of an Empire of Romance, it was only because he was aboyish, silly dolt, sick with vanity and complacency. What had therebeen between them, after all, save a light camaraderie into which a manwas an insufferable cad to read more? So he paced on, achingly cognizantof the lapses in his conversation, quite unconscious that her own wasgrowing more forced and strained.
They were in the midst of a densely packed crowd where a native theaterwas pouring its audience into the street. They had fallen behind therest, and there were about them only _kimono'd_ shoulders and flowered,blue-black head-dresses. He made a way for her ruggedly toward a palingwhere there was a little space. Above it was hung a poster of a Japaneseactress.
"That is the famous Sada Gozen," he told her. "She has just returnedfrom a season in Paris and New York, and Tokyo is quite wild about her."
As he spoke numbers thrust him against her and the touch broughtinstantly to him that moment in the garden when he had held her in hisarms to lift her to the arbor ledge. The picture of her that evening inthe pagoda was stamped on his heart: the sweet, moon-lighted profile,the curling, brown hair, the faint perfume of her gown that mingled withthe wistaria. It came before him there in the bustle and press with asudden swift sadness. He knew that it would be always with him toremember.
A Japanese couple, hastening to their _rick'sha_, caromed against them,and, with an effort, he tried to turn it to a smile:
"Some say it's difficult for a foreigner to come into intimate contactwith the Japanese," he said. "You have already pierced that illusion.One is always finding out that he has been mistaken in people."
Her quivering feeling grasped at a fancied innuendo. "It doesn't takelong, then, you think?" Her tone held a dangerous lure, but he did notperceive it.
"Not where you are concerned, apparently," he answered lightly.
She turned her head swiftly toward him, and her eyes flashed. "Where _I_am concerned!" she repeated fiercely, and in his astonishment he almostwrecked the paling. "Oh, I hate double-meaning! Why not say it? Do yousuppose I don't know what you are thinking?"
"I?" he said in bewilderment. "What _I_ am thinking?"
"You mean you have found you are mistaken in _me_! You have no right--noearthly right, to draw conclusions."
"Ah!" he said, with a sharp breath. "I had no such meaning. You can'timagine--"
"Don't say you didn't," she interrupted. "That only makes it worse!" Shescarcely understood her own resentment, and a hot consciousness that herbehavior was quite childish and unreasonable mixed itself with heranger.
"What have I said?" he exclaimed, in contrition and distress. "Iwouldn't hurt you for a million worlds! Whatever it was, I ought to do_hara-kiri_ for it! I--I will perform the operation whenever you say!"
A ridiculous desire to cry had seized her--why, she could not havetold--and she would rather have died than have him see her do so. "Ifyou will go ahead," she said tremulously, "and make a path for me, Ithink we can get through now."
He turned instantly and his broad shoulders parted the crowd in a hastethat was thoroughly un-Japanese. But she did not follow him. Instead,she drew back, and thinking only to hide momentarily her hurt and herpride, slipped through a narrow gateway.
She found herself in a crowded corridor of the emptying playhouse. Themass of Japanese faces confused her. A door opened at another angle andshe passed through it hastily into the open air. The street she was nowin was narrow, and she followed it, expecting it to turn into the largerthoroughfare. It did so presently, and at its corner she paused till theburning had left her eyes, and her breath came evenly. Then she walkedback toward the theater, feeling an impatient irritation at herbehavior.
Presently, however, she stopped, puzzled. The theater was not there. Thestreet, too, had not the character of the one in which she had leftDaunt. She must have taken the wrong turn. She walked rapidly in theopposite direction, until another street crossed at right angles. Thisshe tried with no better result. In the maze of lantern-lighted vistas,she was completely lost.
She was not frightened, for she was aware that, so far as physical harmwas concerned, Tokyo, of all great cities of the world, was perhaps thesafest and most orderly. She knew that "_Bei-koku Taish'-kan_" meant"American Embassy." She had mastered the phrase that morning, and hadonly to step into a _rick'sha_ and use it. Daunt, however, did not knowthis. Aware that she had been behind him, he would not go on, and shecontritely pictured him anxiously searching the crowds for her. Thethought overrode her anger and humiliation. She would not take the_rick'sha_ till she despaired of finding him.
Just before her, at the side of the way, stood a small temple with arecumbent stone fox at its entrance. It made her think suddenly of theriding-crop she had seen Daunt carrying, with its Damascene fox-headhandle. In the doorway burned a rack of little candles, and a chest,barred across the top, sat ready to receive the offerings of worshipers.Above this was suspended the mirror which is the invariable badge of a_Shinto_ shrine. It was tilted at an angle and tossed back the glimmerof the candle-flame. With a whimsical smile she took a copper coin fromher purse and leaned to toss it into the chest.
But her fingers closed on it and she drew back hastily, with a quickmemory of one of the tales Haru had told her in the garden. She knewsuddenly that she stood before a temple of Inari, the Fox-God, patrondeity of her whose conquests brought shame to households and dishonor towives. She remembered a song the Japanese girl had sung to the tinkle ofher _samisen_:
"My weapons are a smile and a little fan-- _Sayonara, Sayonara_...."
It was the song of the "Fox-Woman." She slipped the purse hastily backinto her pocket.
The Fox-Woman! As she walked on, for the first time the phrase came toBarbara with a sudden, sharp sense of actuality. There were fox-women ofevery race and clime, women who came, with painted smile, between truelovers! What if she herself--what if here, in this land, that balefulwisdom were to strike home to _her_? Like a keen blade the thoughtpierced through her, and something shy and sweet, newborn in her breast,shrank startled and fearful from it.
The street had narrowed curiously. It was paved now from side to sidewith flat stone flags. She realized all at once that there were nolonger _rick'sha_ to be seen, only people afoot. A blaze of light caughther eye, and she looked up to see, spanning the street, an archedgateway, at either side of which stood a policeman, quiet andimperturbable. Its curved top was decorated with colored electric bulbs,and from its keystone towered a great image molded in white plaster--thefigure of a woman in ancient Japanese costume. One hand held a fan; theother lifted high above her head a circular globe of light. A hugeweeping-willow drooped over one side of the archway, through which cameglimpses of moving colors, crowds, hanging lanterns and elfish music.
Barbara hesitated. To what did that white, female figure beckon? Shelooked behind her--direction now meant nothing. Perhaps she had wanderedin a circle and the theater lay beyond.
She stepped through the gate.
The Kingdom of Slender Swords Page 27
