THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
BY HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(MRS. POST WHEELER)
SATAN SANDERSON
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
TALES FROM DICKENS
Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch
THE CASTAWAY
Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy
HEARTS COURAGEOUS
Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell
A FURNACE OF EARTH
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS
[Illustration]
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(MRS. POST WHEELER)
_With a Foreword by His Excellency Baron Makino_
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
A. B. WENZELL
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1910
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
TO
CAROLYN FOSTER STICKNEY
FOREWORD
It has been my happy fortune to have made the acquaintance of the gifted
author of this book. From time to time she was kind enough to confide to
me its progress. When the manuscript was completed I was privileged to
go over it, and the hours so spent were of unbroken interest and
pleasure.
What especially touched and concerned me was, of course, the Japanese
characters depicted, the motives of these actors in their respective
roles, and other Japanese incidents connected with the story. I am most
agreeably impressed with the remarkable insight into, and the just
appreciation of, the Japanese spirit displayed by the author.
While the story itself is her creation, the local coloring, the moral
atmosphere called in to weave the thread of the tale, are matters
belonging to the domain of facts, and constitute an amount of useful and
authentic information. Indeed, she has taken unusual pains to be
correctly informed about the people of the country and their customs,
and in this she has succeeded to a very eminent degree.
I may mention one or two of the striking characteristics of the work.
The sacrifice of the girl Haru may seem unreal, but such is the dominant
idea of duty and sacrifice with the Japanese, that in certain
emergencies it is not at all unlikely that we should behold her real
prototype in life. The description of the Imperial Review at Tokyo and
its patriotic significance vividly recalls my own impression of this
spectacle.
It gives me great satisfaction to know that by perusing these pages, the
vast reading public, who, after all, have the decisive voice in the
national government of the greatest republic of the world, and whose
good will and friendship we Japanese prize in no uncommon degree, should
be correctly informed about ourselves, as far as the scope of this book
goes. We attach great importance to a thorough mutual understanding of
two foremost peoples on the Pacific, in whose direction and coöperation
the future of the East must largely depend. It is, therefore, incumbent
upon us all to do our utmost to cultivate such good understanding, not
only for those immediately concerned, but for the welfare of the whole
human race.
In the chapters of this novel the author seems always to have had such
high ideals before her, and the result is that, besides being an
exciting and agreeable reading, the book contains elements of serious
and instructive consideration, which can not but contribute toward
establishing better and healthier knowledge between the East and West of
the Pacific.
N. MAKINO.
Sendagaya, Tokyo, 9th of August, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHERE THE DAY BEGINS 1
II "THE ROOST" 13
III THE LAND OF THE GODS 27
IV UNDER THE RED SUNSET 42
V THE MAKER OF BUDDHAS 52
VI THE BAYING OF THE WOLF-HOUND 62
VII DOCTOR BERSONIN 72
VIII "SALLY IN OUR ALLEY" 78
IX THE WEB OF THE SPIDER 86
X IN A GARDEN OF DREAMS 92
XI ISHIKICHI 101
XII IN THE STREET-OF-PRAYER-TO-THE-GODS 107
XIII THE WHORLS OF YELLOW DUST 113
XIV WHEN BARBARA AWOKE 119
XV A FACE IN THE CROWD 125
XVI "BANZAI NIPPON!" 133
XVII A SILENT UNDERSTANDING 142
XVIII IN THE BAMBOO LANE 149
XIX THE BISHOP ASKS A QUESTION 154
XX THE TRESPASSER 160
XXI THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 169
XXII THE DANCE OF THE CAPITAL 181
XXIII THE DEVIL PIPES TO HIS OWN 194
XXIV A MAN NAMED WARE 198
XXV AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX-GOD 206
XXVI THE NIGHTLESS CITY 213
XXVII LIKE THE WHISPER OF A BAT'S WINGS 224
XXVIII THE FORGOTTEN MAN 233
XXIX DAUNT LISTENS TO A SONG 244
XXX THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT 252
XXXI THE COMING OF AUSTEN WARE 266
XXXII THE WOMAN OF SOREK 276
XXXIII THE FLIGHT 284
XXXIV ON THE KNEES OF DELILAH 288
XXXV WHEN A WOMAN DREAMS 292
XXXVI BEHIND THE SHIKIRI 297
XXXVII [Japanese: Donto] 303
XXXVIII THE LADY OF THE MANY-COLORED FIRES 308
XXXIX THE HEART OF BARBARA 320
XL THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW 326
XLI UNFORGOT 334
XLII PHIL MAKES AN APPEAL 338
XLIII THE SECRET THE RIVER KEPT 345
XLIV THE LAYING OF THE MINE 353
XLV THE BISHOP ANSWERS A SUMMONS 360
XLVI THE GOLDEN CRUCIFIX 366
XLVII "IF THIS BE FORGETTING" 371
XLVIII WHILE THE CITY SLEPT 379
XLIX THE ALARM 389
L WHOM THE GODS DESTROY 396
LI THE LAUGH 401
LII THE VOICE IN THE DARK 409
LIII A RACE WITH DAWN 414
LIV INTO THE SUNLIGHT 425
LV KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS 428
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
THE KINGDOM OF
SLENDER SWORDS
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE DAY BEGINS
Barbara leaned against the palpitant rail, the light air fanning her
breeze-cool cheek, her arteries beating like tiny drums, atune with the
throb, throb, throb, of the steel deck as the black ocean leviathan
swept on toward its harbor resting-place.
All that Japanese April day she had been in a state of tremulous
excitement. She had crept from her berth at dawn to see the hazy sun
come up in a Rosicrucian flush as weirdly soft as a mirage, to strain
her eyes for the first filmy feather of land. Long before the gray-green
wisp showed on the horizon, the sight of a lumbering _junk_ with its
square sail laced across with white stripes, and its bronze seamen, with
white loin-cloth and sweat-band about the forehead, naked and thewed
like sculptures, as they swayed from the clumsy tiller, had sent a
thrill through her. And as the first far peaks etched themselves on the
robin's-egg blue, as impalpable and ethereal as a perfume, she felt warm
drops coming with a rush to her eyes.
For Japan, every sight and sound of it, had been woven with the earliest
imaginings of Barbara's orphaned life. Her father she had never seen.
Her mother she remembered only as a vague, widowed figure. In Japan they
two had met and had married, and after a single year her mother had
returned to her own place and people broken-hearted and alone. In the
month of her return Barbara had been born. A year ago her aunt, to whom
she owed the care of her young girlhood, had died, and Barbara had found
herself, at twenty-three, mistress of a liberal fortune and of her own
future. Japan had always exercised a potent spell over her imagination.
She pictured it as a land of strange glowing trees, of queer costumes
and weird, fantastic buildings. More than all, it was the land of her
mother's life-romance, where her father had loved and died. There was
one other tangible tie--her uncle, her mother's brother, was Episcopal
bishop of Tokyo. He was returning now from a half year's visit in
America, and this fact, coupled with an invitation from Patricia
Dandridge, the daughter of the American Ambassador, with whom Barbara
had chummed one California winter, had constituted an opportunity wholly
alluring. So she found herself, on this April day, the pallid Pacific
fuming away behind her, gazing with kindling cheeks on that shadowy
background, vaguely intangible in the magical limpidity of the distance.
The land was wonderfully nearer now. The hills lay, a clear pile of
washed grays and greens, with saffron tinted valleys between, wound in a
haze of tender lilac. By imperceptible gradations this unfolded, caught
sub-tones, ermine against umbers, of warmer red and flickering emerald,
white glints of sun on surf like splashes of silver, till suddenly,
spectral and perfect, above a cluster of peaks like purple gentians,
glowed forth a phantom mountain, its golden wistaria cone inlaid in the
deeper azure. It hung like an inverted morning-glory, mist and
mother-of-pearl at the top, shading into porphyry veined with streaks of
verd and jade--Fuji-San, the despair of painters, the birthplace of the
ancient gods.
The aching beauty of it stung Barbara with a tender, intolerable pang.
The little fishing-villages that presently came into sight, tucked into
the clefts of the shore, with gray dwellings, elfishly frail, climbing
the green slope behind them--the growing rice in patches of cloudy gold
on the hillsides--the bluish shadows of bamboo groves--all touched her
with an incommunicable delight.
A shadow fell beside her and she turned. It was her uncle. His
clean-shaven face beamed at her over his clerical collar.
"Isn't it glorious?" she breathed. "It's better than champagne! It's
like pins and needles in the tips of your fingers! There's positively an
odor in the air like camelias. And did any one ever see such colors?"
She pointed to the shore dead-ahead, now a serrated background of deep
tones, swimming in the infinite gold of the tropic afternoon.
Bishop Randolph was a bachelor, past middle age, ruddy and with eyes
softened by habitual good-humor. He was the son of a rector of a rich
Virginian parish, which on his father's death had sent the son a
unanimous call. He had answered, "No; my place is in Japan," without
consciousness of sacrifice. For him, in the truest sense, the present
voyage was a homeward one.
"Japan gets into the blood," he said musingly. "I often think of the old
lady who committed suicide at Nikko. She left a letter which said: 'By
favor of the gods, I am too dishonorably old to hope to revisit this
jewel-glorious spot, so I prefer augustly to remain here for ever!' I
have had something of the same feeling, sometimes. I remember yet the
first time I saw the coast. That was twenty-five years ago. We watched
it together--your father and I--just as we two are doing now."
She looked at him with sudden eagerness, for of his own accord he had
never before spoken to her of her dead father. The latter had always
seemed a very real personage, but how little she knew about him! The
aunt who had brought her up--her mother's sister--had never talked of
him, and her uncle she had seen but twice since she had been old enough
to wonder. But, little by little, gleaning a fact here and there, she
had constructed a slender history of him. It told of mingled blood, a
birthplace on a Mediterranean island and a gipsy childhood. There was a
thin sheaf of yellowed manuscript in her possession that had been left
among her mother's scanty papers, a fragment of an old diary of his.
Many leaves had been ruthlessly cut from it, but in the pages that were
left she had found bits of flotsam: broken memory-pictures of his own
mother which had strangely touched her, of a bitter youth in England and
America overshadowed by the haunting fear of blindness, of quests to
West-Indian cities, told in phrases that dripped liquid gold and
sunshine. The voyage to Japan had been made on the same vessel that
carried her uncle, and they two had thus become comrades. The latter had
been an enthusiastic young missionary, one of a few chosen spirits sent
to defend a far field-casement thrown forward by the batteries of
Christendom. His sister had come out to visit him and a few months later
had married his friend.
Such was the story, as Barbara knew it, of her father and mother--a love
chapter which had soon closed with a far-away grave by the Inland Sea.
Her fancy had made of her father a pathetic figure. As a child, she had
dreamed of some day placing a monument to his memory in the Japanese
capital. She possessed only one picture of him, a tiny profile
photograph which she wore always in a locket engraved with her name. It
showed a dark face, clean-shaven, finely chiseled and passionate, with
the large, full eye of the dreamer. She had liked to think it looked
like the paintings of St. John. Perhaps this thought had caused the
projected monument to take the form of a Christian chapel. From a
nebulous idea, the plan had become a bundle of blue-prints, which she
had sent to her uncle, with the request that he purchase for her a
suitable site and begin the building. He had done this before his visit
to America and now the Chapel was completed, save in one particular--the
memorial window of rich, stained-glass stowed at that moment in the
ship's hold. The bishop had not seen it. From some feeling which she had
not tried to analyze, Barbara had said nothing to him of the Chapel's
especial significance. Now, however, at his unexpected reference, the
feeling frayed, and she told him all of her plan.
He gazed at her a moment in a startled fashion, then looked away, his
hand shading his eyes. When she finished there was a long pause which
made her wonder. She touched his arm.
"You were very fond of father, weren't you?"
"Yes," he said, in a tone oddly restrained.
"And was my mother with you when he fell in love with her?"
"Yes," and after a pause: "I married them."
"Then they went to Nagasaki," she said softly, "and there--he died. You
weren't there then?"
"No," he answered in a low voice. His face was still turned away, and
she caught an unaccustomed note of feeling in his voice.
He left her abruptly and began to pace up and down the deck, while she
stood watching the shoreline sharpen, the tangled blur of harbor resolve
and shift into manifold detail. Shapeless dots had become anchored
ships, a black pencil a wharf, a long yellow-gray streak a curved
shore-front lined with buildings, and the warm green blotch rising
behind it a foliaged hill pricked out with soft, gray roofs. There was a
rush of passengers to one side, where from a brisk little tug, at whose
peak floated a flag bearing a blood-red sun, a handful of spick-and-span
Japanese officials were climbing the ship's ladder.
At length the bishop spoke again at her elbow, now in his usual voice:
"What are you going to do with that man, Barbara?"
A faint flush rose in her cheek. "With what man?"
"Austen Ware."
She shrugged her shoulders and laughed--a little uneasily. "What can one
do with a man when he is ten thousand miles away?"
"He's not the sort to give up a chase."
"Even a wild-goose chase?" she countered.
"When I was a boy in Virginia," he said with a humorous eye, "I used to
chase wild geese, and bag 'em, too."
The bishop sauntered away, leaving a frown on Barbara's brow. She had
had a swift mental vision of a cool, dark-bearded face and assured
bearing that the past year had made familiar. It was a handsome face, if
somewhat cold. Its owner was rich, his standing was unquestioned. The
fact that he was ten years her senior had but made his attentions the
more flattering. He had had no inherited fortune and had been no idler;
for this she admired him. If she had not thrilled to his declaration, so
far as liking went, she liked him. The week she left New York he had
intended a yachting trip to the Mediterranean. When he told her, coolly
enough, that he should ask her again in Japan, she had treated it as a
jest, though knowing him quite capable of meaning it. From every worldly
standpoint he was distinctly eligible. Every one who knew them both
confidently expected her to marry Ware. Well, why not?
Yet to-day she did not ask herself the question confidently. It belonged
still to the limbo of the future--to the convenient "some day" to which
her thought had always banished it. Since she had grown she had never
felt for any one the sentiment she had dreamed of in that vivid girlhood
of hers, a something mixed of pride and joy, that a sound or touch would
thrill with a delight as keen as pain; but unconsciously, perhaps, she
had been clinging to old romantic notions.
A passenger leaning near her was whistling _Sally in our Alley_ under
his breath and a Japanese steward was emptying over the side a vase of
wilted flowers. A breath of rose scent came to her, mixed with a faint
smell of tobacco, and these and the whistled air awoke a sudden
reminiscence. Her gaze went past the clustered shipping, beyond the gray
line of buildings and the masses of foliage, and swam into a tremulous
June evening seven years past.
She saw a wide campus of green sward studded with stately elms festooned
with electric lights that glowed in the falling twilight. Scattered
about were groups of benches each with its freight of dainty frocks, and
on one of them she saw herself sitting, a shy girl of sixteen, on her
first visit to a great university. Men went by in sober black gown and
flat mortar-boards, young, clean-shaven, and boyish, with arms about one
another's shoulders. Here and there an orange "blazer" made a vivid
splash of color and groups in white-flannels sprawled beneath the trees
under the perfumed haze of briar-wood pipes that mingled with the
near-by scent of roses. From one of the balconies of the ivied
dormitories that faced the green came the mellow tinkle of a mandolin
and the sound of a clear tenor:
"Of all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like pretty Sally.
She is the darling of my heart--"
The groups about her had fallen silent--only one voice had said: "That's
'Duke' Daunt." Then the melody suddenly broke queerly and stopped, and
the man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "I'm going in. It's time
to dress anyway." And somehow his voice had seemed to break queerly,
too.
Duke Daunt! The scene shifted into the next day, when she had met him
for a handful of delirious moments. For how long afterward had he
remained her childish idol! Time had overlaid the memory, but it started
bright now at the sound of that whistled tune.
Her uncle's voice recalled her. He was handing her his binoculars. She
took them, chose a spot well forward and glued her eyes to the glass.
A sigh of ecstasy came from her lips, for it brought the land almost at
arm's length--the stone _hatoba_ crowded with brown Japanese faces,
pricked out here and there by the white Panama hat or pith-helmet of the
foreigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribboned
parasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting _rick'sha_,--the little
flotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage--the stately, columned
front of the club on the Bund with its cool terrace of round tables--the
_kimono'd_ figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along the
water-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailed
beetle--farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue and
beyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright,
yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green from
which cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. Arching over all the
enormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery of
the declining sun. It unfolded before her like a panorama--all the
basking, many-hued, polyglot, half-tropical life--a colorful medley,
queer and mysterious!
Nearer, nearer yet, the ship drew on, till there came to meet it two
curved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. The
captain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the group
of male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through the
hawse-holes.
Barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. The slow swinging of the vessel
to the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and the
shore, perilously near. She saw it now in its proper perspective--a trim
steam yacht, painted white, with a rakish air of speed and tautness,
the sun glinting from its polished brass fittings. It lay there,
graceful and light, a sharp, clean contrast to the gray and yellow
_junk_ and grotesque _sampan_, a disdainful swan amid a noisy flock of
teal and mallard.
Adjusting the focus Barbara looked. A man in naval uniform who had
boarded the ship at Quarantine was pointing out the yacht to a
passenger, and Barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "You see the
patches of green?--they're decorations for the Squadron that's due
to-morrow. Look just beyond them. Prettiest craft I've ever seen east of
the Straits.... Came in this morning. Owner's in Nara now, doing the
temples.... Has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, going
the pace.... They won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'd
go high and dry on empty champagne bottles."
Barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. Puzzled, she
withdrew her gaze, then looked once more.
Suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "What are
you going to do with that man?"--her uncle's query seemed to echo
satirically about her. For the white yacht was Austen Ware's, and there,
on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name
BARBARA