sylvia was in tokyo.
he tried to beat down the wave-crest of emotion, happiness, that surged over him, gripped him and shook him. he wanted none of it, wished desperately to fight against it. it was all right for him to be pleased to see her again, to be with her, but this titillating on the verge of transports of joy—he would simply have to keep a tight hold on himself. the situation held too many potentialities of complications, uncertainties, distress. even the way in which the news of her coming had reached him had illustrated, oddly, the curious blend of the bitter and the sweet which the situation held. it had been the tinker hag again. she had caught him at tea, had seized upon him and led him to a secluded corner that she might enjoy in every detail, undisturbed, his reaction to the dénouement. probably she had overcome a desire to fare forth and shout out the news in the market place, had kept it for him, so that she might be the first to communicate it. it was her hobby, probably the only interest which kept her alive, this interest in living, this contriving complicated situations among her acquaintances in order that she might satisfy a morbidly curious and perverted taste for the dramatic by gloating over their display of the more unusual emotions, their unguarded laying bare before her avid eye the reactions usually painstakingly held in check. he had been irritatedly aware of the greedy glare of this old woman; it was almost indecent; as she watched him[pg 264] rapaciously solicitous lest she fail to catch the slightest indication of face or voice which might betray his feelings. he did not think she could have gotten much out of it. he thought he had played up well. still, one could never know. anyway, it was disquieting, disgusting, that the return of sylvia, after all this time, should immediately revive the watchfulness of the idle women, should so wantonly render complicated, almost impossible, intimate relation with this girl.
and, now, what about sylvia? did she know that he had become free? how long had she known it? had she just heard of it and returned forthwith? no; he dismissed that thought. but might she not have heard some time ago and simply allowed a decent interval to elapse in order to avoid giving the gossips grist for their mills? but he caught himself up sharply. what an ass he was to imagine, vaingloriously, that he had entered into her considerations at all. presumably she had been governed by entirely different motives, something not even remotely connected with him. what grounds had he to imagine that his presence was of the slightest moment to her. of course, it did seem as if she must have left tokyo on account of the gossip connecting him with her; but, after all, that proved nothing, could certainly not by even the most fanciful contortion of imagination be construed into an indication of feeling related to affection. no, he was an ass.
the only thing he could do would be to sit tight and suffer matters to occur as they might. he was curious to meet her—he sternly insisted to himself that that was all—and yet he rather dreaded it, wondered what he should say, how he should act. he would leave it to her to take the lead. women did these things better than men, had finer perceptions, possessed an [pg 265]instinctive sureness with which they could handle deftly such delicate situations.
so when he met her, he was not much surprised that the incident seemed almost commonplace. luckily, there were others at the time whom she met also for the first time since her return. she treated him exactly like these, included him with those others with the usual drab, conventional commonplaces. it almost irritated him that the meeting had been so trivial. was she then not interested? it piqued him. well, why shouldn't he find out. he was free now, and if he did care for her—there was no denying that she interested him immensely, that she still had that old charm for him, yes, hang it, that he did care for, that he might easily come to love her. and why not? came back to his mind the charm of the days when he and she had been close, when he had been afraid to dally with the thought of her in the place of isabel. he need not fear that now. he had the right to. and if it had been pleasant then, why not now, why not allow himself the felicity of dreaming that dream. he warmed to the thought, a glow of sheer pleasure and happiness suffused him. of course. he would be careful to be tactful. she was tremendously sensitive and he must take care not to spoil everything by being too precipitate, but he would watch his chance.
it took time, still, as he felt his way slowly, with anxious care, holding himself in check, carefully consolidating such little gains as he made before venturing an infinitely small step forward, he felt that they were gradually approaching something like the old relation. he had even come to the point where they had made a few small excursions together. but they were few and separated by intervals that seemed infinitely long, and he fretted under the necessity of keeping himself in hand. now that he was allowing himself to consider,[pg 266] at least as a remote potentiality, the idea of love, the situation became ever so much more complicated, was more difficult to manage. he must not allow himself to think of this too much. in the back of his mind remained the uneasy thought that he had loved isabel, had ardently desired to marry her—and then his marriage had been a failure, anyway. if one failed once, one might do so twice. after all, love was often mainly something contrived by oneself. one took love of an image conjured up by one's imagination for love of the woman; it might be a sort of auto-intoxication. he must be sure of himself. he must force himself to be rational, to refrain from letting fancy take charge of what should be the function of the brain. anyway, there was plenty of work to do. he would use work as a counterirritant.
japan had suddenly launched into one of its periods of frantic excitement. first came news from manchuria, where chang tso-lin was moving a great expedition to drive the soviet troops out of mongolia. conservative papers registered perfunctory surprise at the completeness of his equipment, motor transport, field artillery, even airplanes; but most of the papers, the people generally, sneered contemptuously, shrugged shoulders. it was an old story. of course, the manchurian war-lord could have obtained them from only one source, the militarists. the war office issued its usual denial, which no one believed. presently came news of attacks by chinese bandits on settlements in the south manchuria railway territory, massacres of japanese colonists, clashes with japanese police, burning of a consulate or two. from high official sources, unnamed, but generously quoted in the press, were given out alarming statements. it was the bolshevik menace, irresponsible hordes of manchuria, malcontent koreans, being goaded on by mysterious machinations[pg 267] from moscow. it would be necessary to move troops into manchuria to protect the railway region, especially now that chang tso-lin was engaged in mongolia and could not protect neighboring territory. the divisions in korea were moved inland. it would be necessary to send fresh troops to korea. of course, it would be impossible to consider the proposition to reduce the army at the session of the diet which was just about to meet.
the people murmured; again the feeling became prevalent that a great militaristic scheme was being carried out, cleverly hidden by the uniformed old men up there in the copper-roofed building towering on the hill beyond the foreign office. opinions were divided. some insisted that japanese lives must be avenged, colonists protected, the dignity of the empire upheld; others cried out bitterly that the entire turmoil was but part of a great plot ingeniously hatched out by the general staff. some papers claimed to have proof that this was but another attempt to carry out the favorite old military plan, to have a buffer state created by chang tso-lin and remnants of white russian factions; that the bandits were backed by chang, that the very rifles which had dealt out death to japanese had been furnished in mysterious roundabout ways by the war office. it was hinted that the massacres were, in fact, quite welcome to the general staff, that they were a part of the whole scheme.
it was a busy period for kent. news was breaking constantly, here and there, in unexpected quarters. it was intensely interesting at first, sending story upon story over the wire, each one conveying the tingling feeling of anticipation that each day was bringing nearer some great event, some cataclysm, indefinite but gradually assuming certainty, something overwhelming, big news. but events were happening too quickly,[pg 268]—the staccato hammering of situation after situation, the manchurian affair, army bill, rice scandal, diet fights, police charges, rumors and revelations, farmer revolts and riots in the cities, all became a conglomerate chaos of excitement, a whirl of incidents flickering by with dizzily shifting changes, making concentration on any one of them almost impossible. like the nation in general, kent found himself unable to maintain the high key of excited absorption; one became overwhelmed as if by a succession of great waves, one following so closely after the other that the mind, battered and bewildered, failing to register complete, clear impression of each one, became in reaction dulled, exhausted, almost apathetic. after all, this ubiquitous clamor, this constantly flickering and flashing of new heterogeneous pictures, produced finally but an impression of a stupendous blur; one became exhausted by the repetition of explosions of excitement, causing one to hold one's breath, nervously, in expectancy of some prodigious dénouement, a political deluge, that constantly impended but which always seemed to fall just short, to evaporate harmlessly as each happening became overshadowed by the occurrence of some new and astounding development.
it became necessary to remain almost constantly near the center of affairs, to be in readiness to snap up the news events which flashed forth with explosive suddenness, like lightning from a hovering thunder cloud. it became his custom to spend much of his time at the imperial hotel. it was close to the diet building, the foreign office, the central police station, and when things were quiet, when there was nothing to do but wait, he enjoyed the atmosphere, the feeling of remoteness from the humdrum surroundings of everyday modernity, which was conveyed to him by this enormous structure of fantastic masonry where genius had[pg 269] contrived to work out in permanencies of stone and bronze the delicate and ephemeral fancies of an opulent dream image. resting in a remote corner among the myriad corniced recesses which gave on the spacious vestibule, his eye found constant delight in the intricacy of detail, embroidery-like stone pillar, fretwork and balustrades, gilded mortar binding together complicated interlacing designs; the flood of colors of rugs and cushions—browns, ocher, terracotta and maroon, and blues, ultra-marine, lapis lazuli, indigo—in a riot of shadings and combinations, and all of it, colors and contours, blended into a great harmonious whole, impressive, inspiring, so it seemed almost a sacrilege that this mirage-like brilliance should be profaned by the comings and goings of mere hotel guests and townsfolk bent on prosaic concerns of business.
in the afternoon, at tea time, it was especially pleasant, when the russian orchestra played. flicker of color of butterfly-winged kimonos would animate the scene with a glimmer of exotic rich life. they really fitted into the picture, these young girls of the japanese aristocracy, with their undulating, polychromatic textures, and when the music lent itself to the forming of a picture, some symphony or bit of opera, one might dream oneself surrounded by an arabian nights setting, or a scene from "aïda."
here one might meet every one who counted at all in the ultra-modern life of tokyo, foreigners and japanese, business men, newspapermen, young fellows from the embassies, in the bar; and, upstairs, in the lobby or in peacock alley, the women at tea. kent often saw the suzuki girls there. kimiko seemed happy enough, showed no trace of the incident which had brought her to him. but he came principally for the chance that it afforded him to see sylvia.
[pg 270]
it had been a strenuous afternoon, but a disappointing one. a stormy scene had been expected in the diet. he had sat in the gallery for hours, listening to dreary debate, hoping that momentarily something would happen; had made the rounds of the foreign office, newspaper offices, even the lair of old viscount kikuchi—but nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. now the diet had adjourned until the following morning; the crowds had dispersed. he was glad to see sylvia alone at one of the tables overlooking the inner court.
"you're just the one i want to see. it's been a maddening day; lots of work and no results. may i sit with you?"
"of course, but i'm afraid i cannot be with you long, although, as a matter of fact, i'm trying to make a sort of a meal here. i'm off on an expedition of my own, and i shall have no dinner until late, midnight maybe."
an expedition. he urged her not to be mysterious. she soon gave in. after all, it was entirely professional. she intended to go to the great nichiren temple at ikegami, a few miles from tokyo. it would be full moon and she had always had an idea that there might be a picture there for her, some fantastic harmonious blending of contour of gnarled pines, curved temple roofs, which might be enhanced, softened, etherealized by moonbeam glamor.
"i'm not at all sure that there will be a picture there, at least not for me. i may not be able to get enough color out of it; but i want the experience, anyway, the eeriness of the hundreds of old graves in the cryptomeria shadows. i have been wanting to go for a long time; so to-night i'm going."
the idea appealed to him instantly. "i wish you'd let me come with you."
[pg 271]
"i'm afraid it might be rather unconventional, would it not?" she hesitated.
"it would be still more unconventional if you went alone. you should have an escort. i shan't disturb you. i promise you that i shall be as dumb and unobtrusive as your walking-stick; but, really, i do wish you would let me come along."
she looked at him reflectively. he wondered what thoughts were forming behind these fine, black eyes; the desire to go with her, which had been only an inspirational whim, took deeper hold. she must let him come. he leaned forward earnestly. she smiled. "very well, then. i suppose you might as well come; but remember, i shall be at work; i shall want to think, to absorb. you must be as you promised, just inanimate, a block of wood."
he promised hastily, curiously noting in himself a feeling of trembling pleasure. they finished their tea and took the electric train to omori.
twilight was falling when they reached the village. they walked through narrow winding lanes, past tall bamboo fences enclosing spacious gardens, came to the open country, rice fields, scattered groups of houses clustered on tree-clad hills. in the gathering shadows crickets were tuning up for their serenades; the moon, rising from behind the pine groves on the ikegami ridge, bathed the landscape with soft luminosity.
as they climbed the long broad stone stairway leading up to the temple heights, they heard the monotonous euphony of a chant. at a minor shrine close to the entrance a priest was engaged in some ceremonial. as they stood by the stone foxes guarding the entrance to the small court fronting it, they could see his vestmented figure, kneeling, facing the dimly illuminated gorgeousness of gilt, and brocade, and lacquer, a[pg 272] glimpse of resplendent oriental opulence devoted to mysterious, age-old rites.
they passed on. the rest of the temple grounds lay in darkness, illuminated sparingly by a few faint electric lights, irritatingly modern amidst all the ancient buildings, lofty cryptomerias, crumbling tombs. they passed along the broad stone-paved path, smoothed by wear of feet of generations of worshipers, under the massive, towering crimson gateway leading into the inner court. here was a plateau on the hilltop, whence ran on all sides corrugations of ridges and valleys, set with hundreds of graves, carved stone monuments, lichened sepulchers, broodingly silent in the shadows of fantastically gnarled pine limbs.
the main temple buildings were closed. the wide court was bathed in moonlight, brilliant, white, setting out in strong relief every detail of contour of curved roof, carved pillars, bronze figures anachronistically finding in their midst a battered rapid-fire gun, trophy from the russian war. but it was all too brightly visible, too plainly seen; the eeriness, the nebulous awe of obscure mystery, lay beyond, all about them, among the graves in the shadows of the pines.
from the right of the courtyard, near the gateway, a pathway ran, straight as a sword, penetrating into the heart of the pine grove, a chasm of opalescent light, a shimmery gorge of white brilliance in abrupt contrast to the almost solid walls of blackness, leading like a fantastically contrived magic road to a pagoda, which closed it, with intricately carved roof set upon roof, rising with slender elegance towards the dark sapphire heavens. it formed a picture, but strange, eccentrically unusual, without color—pale, shimmery, pearly—set against ebony blackness. it seemed to him that it would be impossible to express it through the ordinary media of the brush; as if it might be worked out[pg 273] only by some odd special process, mother-of-pearl and teak; but even then it would lose the peculiar scintillating brilliance which seemed to make even the blackness luminous.
he looked at the girl, wondering what she was getting out of it. she was entirely absorbed, eyes intent, frowning in thought, perplexity. she shook her head. "no. come."
they crossed the courtyard, found a path leading behind one of the main buildings and an old, crumbling edifice, rotting, giving forth moldy odor of decay. it led down into a lower stratum of ridges and gullies, slippery flags laid between mounds and hillsides, twisting and turning, with stone stairways, leading upwards, downwards, among thousands of ancient burial plots. over it all lay the murky shadows of cryptomeria, slashed here and there by bright streaks of pale moonlight. the silence seemed uncannily brooding, ominously oppressive, riven only by spasmodic droning booms from a great brass bell, somewhere deep in the shadows behind them, reverberating shiveringly through the shadows.
it was as if they were enveloped in an atmosphere of the supernatural, as if they had willfully intruded into a realm of ghosts and specters, a scene set for mysterious danse macabre-like rites, rash beings possessed of the ephemeral spark of life of the moment interfering with their puny inconsequential presence in this, the realm of those who had held sway here for centuries.
she had taken his arm; now she was clinging to him closely. he could feel her shivering nervously. the feeling was infectious, crept over him irritatingly. he brought himself together. "come, you are getting nervous. let us rest for a moment before going on."
he led her up a stairway leading to the top of a[pg 274] small eminence, an enclosure surrounded by a low stone balustrade, evidently the private burial place of some family of the nobility of remote medieval days. in the open space surrounded on all sides by blackness the illumination seemed almost dazzling, brilliantly white, with a spotlight effect, enhancing the sense of unearthliness, remoteness from the world of material things.
they found a fallen stone pillar and seated themselves. she remained silent, staring out into this spectral ghost world, the fantastic eccentricities of shapes and contours, where everything was black and white only, like a gigantic etching. he, watching her, became absorbed in turn. he was pleased that she fitted into the scene, even into the oriental setting, a filmy silk shawl lending a kimono-like effect, her great pile of raven hair suggestive of the high japanese coiffure. whimsically, out of nowhere, came the idea to him: thank providence, she was not a blonde! it would have spoiled the effect which she was now producing—fine, clear profile, pale features, black hair blending into the picture formed by mass-grown monuments, great carved lanterns, outlined sharply in the suffusion of moonlight.
the whole thing seemed unreal, as if they had found themselves suddenly in a world centuries removed from that in which they usually moved, as if they had become participants in an elfin play, were on the brink of the enacting of something supernatural, some midsummer night's dream fancy, or a dance of specters; as if they might expect momentarily to hear some unseen goblin orchestra strike into an overture of tinkling bluebells, insect violins, bumblebee bassoons, murmur of night wind, leading them, this girl and himself, into some scene of dreamlike phantasy in which they had fortuitously become the main characters.
[pg 275]
what a setting for romance! these surroundings, this girl, this wonder of pure, harmonious perfection! somehow, he felt that it would be impossible to create again this same effect, that it could not be consciously contrived merely by coming to this place any moonlight night with the determination, purposely, of summoning the spell. there came to him a feeling that this could be attained only once in a lifetime, that he was impassively, fatuously failing to seize the immeasurably rare opportunity——
opportunity for what? he shook himself together. he was becoming moonstruck. after all, this girl—— she did not notice his gaze. it was fascinating to watch her, the infinitely fine play of light in her eyes, her impatient frown in concentration of thoughts which were almost palpable, visible. and yet, what did she think? it occurred that in the same manner he had speculated as to the thoughts which might lurk behind the white brows of kimiko-san, sadako-san and the rest. how different they must be; fine, dreamlike, exotic, quaint as might be the ideas of those girls, would not the glamor thereof, the ephemeral delicacy, fade as one became familiar with them, become commonplace, irritatingly trite after wear of years of association? here, on the other hand, was a brain capable of absorbing the most subtle and evasive expressions of life, existence in its varied manifestations, of shaping them into concrete, lasting form, creative, a mind like one's own, or even more capable, which would grow, develop like an unfolding blossom, presenting ever new beauties and richness in years of life together.
without conscious thought, acting entirely on impulse, he leaned towards her. she looked at him, awakened suddenly from her reverie. "i must be poor company," she smiled. "but then, you know, i[pg 276] told you beforehand. it is all so bewildering, puzzling to me. i can see the pictures here, the dazzlingly wonderful potentialities which lie right here before me, about me; and yet i can't get hold of it. it eludes me entirely. it is the lack of color, i think, the predominance of light and shadow effects, black and white. it is not for me, i'm afraid. this is a subject for some great etcher, for some kind of a klinger or boeklin composition; and yet one would have to get in these elusive opalescent tints, these evasive iridescences. it is very disappointing, to feel it all so far beyond one's capabilities; and yet i have enjoyed it so much. i have let it get away with me. but now it must be late. come," she took his hand simply, confidently. "we must be going home. you must forgive me if i have let the moonlight run away with my thoughts. but didn't you feel something like that too? did you not feel coming to you dreams, visions that, even though they must fade away and lose their evanescence, will still continue to live in some form, to take shape in one's life."
he did not answer. the dream was already beginning to concentrate, to solidify into definite form of thought, purpose. he wondered whether it were possible that she might divine, by some subtle woman's intuition, the inspiration which was now growing into tangible form of a wish, deliberate pursuance of desire, that now finally he was sure that she was the woman whom he had been awaiting, that he had come to the end of his seeking.