THE LAND OF THE GODS
In the first touch of the shore, where the Ambassador's pretty daughter
waited, Barbara's problem had been swept away. Patricia had rushed to
meet her, embraced her, with a moist, ecstatic kiss on her cheek,
rescued the bishop from his ordeal of hand-shaking and carried him off
to find their trunks, leaving Barbara borne down by a Babel of sound and
scent whose newness made her breathless, and to whose manifold
sensations she was as keenly alive as a photographic plate to color.
A half-dozen gnarled, unshaven porters in excessively shabby jackets
and straw sandals carried her hand-baggage into the hideously
modern, red-brick custom-house, over whose entrance a huge golden
conventionalized chrysanthemum shone in the sunlight, and as she watched
them, a dapper youth in European dress, with a shining brown derby, a
bright purple neck-tie, a silver-mounted cane and teeth eloquent of gold
bridge-work, slid into her hand a card whose type proclaimed that Mr. Y.
Nakajima "did the guiding for foreign ladies and gentlemans." The air
was fragrant with the mild aroma from tiny Japanese pipes and a-flutter
with moving fans. A group of elderly men in hot frock-coats and tiles of
not too modern vintage were welcoming a returning official, and sedate
gentlemen in sad-colored _houri_ and spotless cleft foot-wear, bowed
double in stately ceremonial, with the sucking-in of breath which in the
old-fashioned Japanese etiquette means "respectful awe bordering on
terror."
Barbara had found herself singularly conscious of a feeling of universal
good-nature. It came to her even in the posture of the resting coolies,
stretched at the side of the quay, lazily sunning themselves, with
whiffs of the omnipresent little pipe, and in the faces of the
bare-legged _rick'sha_ men, with round hats like bobbing mushrooms, arms
and chests glistening with sweat, and thin towels printed in black and
blue designs tucked in their girdles. She smiled at them, and they
smiled back at her with that unvarying smile which the Japanese of every
caste wears to wedding and to funeral. She even caught herself patting
the tonsured head of a preternaturally solemn baby swaddled in a
variegated _kimono_ and strapped to the back of a five-year-old boy.
The _rick'sha_ ride to the _stenshun_ (for so the Japanese has adapted
the English word "station") was a moving panorama of strange high lights
and shades, of savory odors from bake-ovens, of open shop-fronts hung
with gaudy figured crape, or piled with saffron _biwa_, warty purple
melons, ebony eggplant, shriveled yellow peppers and red Hokkaido
apples, of weighted carts drawn by chanting half-naked coolies, and
swiftly gliding victorias of Europeans. From a hundred houses in the
long, narrow streets hung huge gilded sign-boards, painted with
idiographs of black and red. At intervals the tall stone front of a
foreign business building looked down on its neighbors, or a tea-house
towered three stories high, showing gay little verandas on which stood
pots of flowers and dwarf trees; between were smaller houses of frame
and of cement, and thick-walled _go-downs_ for storing goods against
fire.
Here and there, from behind a gateway of unpainted wood, showing a
delicate grain, a pine thrust up its needled clump of green, or a
cherry-tree flung its pink pyrotechnics against the sky's flood of
dimming blue and gold. At a crossing a deformed beggar with distorted
face and the featureless look of the leper, waved a crutch and wheedled
from the roadside, and a child in dun-colored rags, unbelievably agile
and dirty, ran ahead of Barbara's _rick'sha_, prostrating himself again
and again in the dust, holding out grimy hands and whining for a _sen_.
In the side streets Barbara could catch glimpses of bare-breasted women
sitting in shop doors nursing babies, and children of a larger growth
playing 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 porter
with red cap and brass buttons emerged and began to ring a heavy bell,
swinging it back and forth in both hands. The bishop bought their
tickets at a little barred window bearing over it the sign: "Your
baggages will be sent freely in every direction."
Making their way along the platform, crowded with Japanese, mostly in
native dress, and filled with the aroma of cigarettes and the thin
ringing of innumerable wooden clogs on stone flags, Barbara was
conscious for the first time of a studious surveillance. A young
Japanese passed her carrying his bent and wizened mother on his back;
the old woman, clutching him tightly about the neck, turned her shaven
head to watch. Children in startling rainbow tinted _kimono_ stared from
the platform with round, serious eyes. A peasant woman, with teeth
brilliantly blackened, peered from a car window, and a group of young
men turned bodily and regarded her with gravely observant gaze, in a
prolonged, unwinking scrutiny that seemed as innocent of courtesy as of
any intent to offend. In European cities she had felt the gaze of other
races, but this was different. It was not the curious study of a
phenomenon, of an enduring puzzle of far origins, nor the expression of
the ignorant, vacantly amused by what they do not understand; it was a
deeper look of inner placidity, that held no wonder and no awe, and
somehow suggested thoughts as ancient as the world. A curious sense
began to possess Barbara of having left behind her all familiar
every-day things, of being face to face with some new wonder, some
brooding mystery which she could not grasp.
They entered the car just behind an ample lady who had been among the
ship's passengers--a good-natured, voluble Cook's tourist who, the
second day out, had confided to Barbara her certainty of an invitation
to the Imperial Cherry-Blossom party, as her husband had "a friend in
the litigation." She wore a painted-muslin, and the husband of
influential acquaintance and substantial, red-bearded person showed now
a gleaming expanse of white waistcoat crossed by a gold watch-chain that
might have restrained a tiger. The lady nodded and smiled beamingly.
"Isn't it all perfectly splendid!" she cried. "There was a baby on the
platform that was too _sweet_!--for all the world like the Japanese
dolls we buy at home, with their hair shingled and a little round spot
shaved 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 on
the bench." She found a seat and fanned herself vigorously with a
handkerchief. "I just thought I never _would_ get through that car
door," she added. "It's only two feet across!"
The road was narrow gage and the seats ran the length of the car on
either side. Hardly had its occupants settled themselves when, to the
shrill piping of a horn, the train started.
"Goodness, this is a relief!" sighed Patricia, as the bishop opened the
first Japanese newspaper he had seen for many months. "I hate
_rick'sha_--they're such unsociable things! I haven't said ten words to
you, Barbara, and I've got oceans to talk about. But I'll be merciful
till 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 the
drawers 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 on
breast and sleeves, swung jauntily open and above his left ear was
coquettishly disposed an unlighted cigarette. Next him, under a brass
rack piled with bright-patterned carpet-bags, an old lady in
dove-colored silk was placidly inflating a rubber air-cushion. Her face
had an artificial delicacy of _nuance_ that was a triumph of rice-powder
and rouge. Beside her was a girl of perhaps eighteen, in a _kimono_ of
dark blue and an _obi_ of gold brocade. The latter wore white silk
"mits" with bright metal trimming and on one slender finger was a
diamond ring. Her hands were delicately artistic and expressive, and her
complexion as soft as the white wing of a miller. She gazed steadfastly
away, but now and then her sloe-black eyes returned to study Barbara's
foreign gown and hat with surreptitious attention.
"What complexions!" whispered Patricia. "The old lady made hers this
morning, sitting flat on a white mat in front of a camphor-wood
dressing-chest about two feet high, with twenty drawers and a round
steel mirror on top. It beats a hare's-foot, doesn't it! The daughter's
is natural. If I had been born with a skin like that, it would have
changed my whole disposition!"
Having settled her air-cushion, the old lady drew from her girdle a
lacquer case and produced a pipe--a thin reed with a tiny silver bowl at
its end. A flat box yielded a pinch of tobacco as fine as snuff. This
she 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 she
inhaled with a lingering inspiration and emitted it slowly, in a thin
curdled cloud, from her nostrils. Three puffs, and the tiny coal was
exhausted. She tapped the pipe gently against the edge of the seat, put
it 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 to
the aisle and went to sleep.
Three students in the uniform of some lower school with foreign jackets
of blue-black cloth set off with brass buttons, sat in a row on the
opposite side. Each had a cap like a cadet's, with a gilt cherry-blossom
on its front, and all watched Barbara movelessly. The man nearest her
wore a round straw hat and horn spectacles. He was reading a vernacular
newspaper, intoning under his breath with a monotonous sing-song, like
the humming of a bumblebee. Between them a little boy sat on the edge of
the seat, his clogs hanging from the thong between his bare toes, the
sleeves of his _kimono_ bulging with bundles. He stared as if hypnotized
at a curl of Barbara's bronze hair which lay against the cushion. Once
he 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 the
language. 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 have
to turn yourself inside out to think Japanese, and then stand on your
head 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 capital
teacher--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 sold
us the land for the Chapel. The family is a fine old one, but of frayed
fortune. I was greatly interested in her, chiefly, perhaps, because she
is a Christian. She became so with her father's consent, though he is a
Buddhist. She isn't of the servant class, of course, but I thought--if
you liked--she would make an ideal companion for you while you are
learning Tokyo."
"I know Haru," said Patricia. "She's a dear! She's as pretty as a
picture, and her English is too quaint!"
"It would be lovely to have her," Barbara answered. "You're a very
thoughtful 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 this
evening. Then--all aboard for the Japanese lessons!"
"No such wisdom for me, thank you," said Patricia. "I prefer to take
mine in through the pores. All the Japanese officials speak English
anyway, just as much as the diplomatic corps. By the way, there's Count
Voynich, the Servian _Chargé_." She nodded toward the farther end of the
carriage where a bored-looking European plaintively regarded the
landscape through a monocle. "He's nice," she added reflectively, "but
he's a dyspeptic. I caught him one night at a dinner dropping a capsule
into his soup. He has a cabinet with three hundred Japanese
_nets'kés_--they're the little ivory carvings on the strings of
tobacco-pouches. He didn't speak to me for a month once because I said
it looked like a dental exhibition. Almost every secretary has a fad,
and that's his. Ours has an aëroplane. He practises on it nearly every
day on the parade-ground. The pudgy woman in the other corner with a
cockatoo in her hat is Mrs. Sturgis, the wife of the big exporter. She
wears red French heels and calls her husband 'papa'."
Barbara's laughter was infectious. It caught the bishop. It reflected
itself even on the demure face of the Japanese girl, and the serious
youths opposite giggled openly in sympathy.
"I do envy you your first impressions!" exclaimed Patricia. "I've been
here so long that I've forgotten mine. It seems perfectly natural now
for people to live in houses made of bird-cages and paper napkins, and
travel about in grown-up baby-buggies, and to see men walking around
with 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 its
name in a musical guttural, their voices dwelling insistently on the
long-drawn, last syllable. The next carriage was a third-class one with
bare floors and wooden benches, set crosswise. Through the opened door
Barbara could see its crowd of brown faces, keen and saturnine. On its
front seat a heavy-featured, lumpish coolie woman was nursing a
three-year-old baby, holding it to her bared breast with red and
roughened hands. Just outside the station's white-washed fence, a clump
of factory chimneys spouted pitchy smoke into the dimming sky, and the
descending sun glistened from a monster gas-tank. Farther away, beyond
clipped hedges, lay thatched roofs, looking as soft as mole-skin, with
wild flowers growing on the ridges, and bamboo clumps soaring above
them, like pale green ostrich-feathers yellow at the tips. Through the
open window came the treble note of a girl singing.
A man passed hastily through the carriage leaving a trail of small
pamphlets bound in green paper with gold lettering--an advertisement of
a health resort, printed in English for the tourist. Barbara opened one
curiously. 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 biggest
loafer 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 drew
startled wakes across the rippleless lagoon. On a sand-bar a flock of
gray and white gulls disported, looking at a distance like pied bathers;
and about an anchored fishing boat, a dozen naked urchins were splashing
with shrill cries. Far across the inlet, hazy, vapory, visionary,
Barbara could make out a farther shore, an outline in violets and
opalines, 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 the
very tops. Laid against their steep sides, or standing upright on wooden
framework, were occasional huge advertisements in red or white--Chinese
characters or pictures--while flowering camelia trees and small
green-yellow shrubs drew lengthening blue shadows. A high tressle
spanned acres of orchard where continuous trellis made a carpet of
growing fruit, across which Barbara saw far away the bold outline of
bluish hills.
They were crossing flooded rice-fields now, like gigantic crazy
checker-boards, and the air was musical with the low, chirring chorus of
frogs. Shades of orange light played over the marshes, bars of rape
braided them with vivid yellow, and on the narrow, curving partitions
between the burnished squares, round stacks of garnered straw stood like
crawfish chimneys. Amid them peasants worked with broad-bladed mattocks,
knee-deep in mud. They were blue clad, with white cloths bound about
their heads, and some had sashes of crimson. Here and there, naked to
the thighs, a boy trod a water-wheel between the terraced levels. At
intervals a refractory rock-hillock served as excuse for a single
twisted pine-tree shading a carved tablet to some _Shinto_ divinity, or
a steep bluff sheltered a tiny shrine of unpainted wood; and all along
the 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 white
sign-boards bearing long liquid names in English, and queer Japanese
characters. Opposite one, on a sloping hill that was a mass of deep
glowing green, Patricia pointed out the peaked roofs of a cluster of
temples, the shrine of some century-dead Buddhist saint. Barbara began
to realize that these fields through which this modern train was gliding
were old Japan, that in those blue hills had been nurtured the ancient
legends she had read, of famous two-sworded _samurai_, of swaggering
bandits and pleasure-loving _shogun_, and of tea-house _geisha_ who
danced their way into _daimyo's_ palaces. The spell of the land, whose
sheer beauty had thrilled her on the ship, drew her closer with the
threads of memories almost forgotten.
Its contrasts were wonderful. They spoke of primary and unmixed
emotions, that lisped themselves through the fading golden sunlight, the
moist, dreamy air, the graceful outlines of roof and tree. In the west
the sun was declining toward a range of hills jagged as the teeth of a
bear. Their tops were pale as cloud and their bases melted into an ebony
line of forest. The plain below was a winey purple, with slashes of red
earth gorges like fresh wounds, and one side had the cloudy color of
raspberries crushed in curdled milk. The farther range seemed a part of
a far-off painted curtain, tinted in pastels, and high above a milky
cloud 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 whirling
shadows of pine and camphor trees, between tiled walls guarding thatched
temples, flights of gray pigeons and spurts of pink cherry-blossom. As
she leaned out, and the pines bowed rhythmically, and the water-wheels
turned in the furrows, and the yellow-green of the bamboo, the
purple-indigo of the hills and the golden-pink of the cherries lifting,
above the hedges, went by like raveling skeins of a tapestry--that
majestic Presence, ghostly and splendid above the wild contour of hill
and mountain, seemed to call to her.
And across the gorgeous landscape, rejoicing from every rift and crevice
of its moist soil, in its colors of rich red earth and green foliage, in
the grace and vigor of its springing, resilient bamboo groves and the
cardinal pride of its flowering camelias, Barbara's heart answered the
call.