WHEN BARBARA AWOKE
When Barbara awoke next morning she lay for a moment staring open-eyed
from her big pillow at the white wall above, where a hanging-shelf
projected to guard the sleeper from falling plaster in earthquake. The
room was filled with a soft light that filtered in through the
split-bamboo blinds. Then she remembered: it was her first whole day in
Japan.
She felt full of a gay _insouciance_, a glad lightness of joy that she
had never felt before. Slipping a thin rose-colored robe over her
nightgown, she threw open the window and leaned out. The air was as pure
and clean as if it had been sieved through silk, and she breathed it
with long inspirations. It made her think of the unredeemed dirt of
other countries, the sooty air of crowded factories, hardly growing
foliage and unlovely walls.
The Embassy was a pretentious frame structure in which frequent
alterations had masked an original plan. With its tall porte-cochère,
its long narrow L which served as Chancery, the smaller white cottage
across the lawn occupied by the Secretary of Embassy, the rambling
servants' quarters and stables, it suggested some fine old Virginia
homestead, transported by Aladdin's genii to the heart of an oriental
garden. For the tiny rock-knoll, with its single twisted pine-tree in
front of the main door, the wistaria arbor and red dwarf maples, the
great stone lanterns, the miniature lake and pebbled rivulet spanned by
its arching bridge--all these were Japanese. In the early morning the
eerie witchery of the night was gone, but the sky was as deep as space
and the air languid with the perfume and warmth of a St. Martin's
summer. A green-golden glow tinged the camelia hedges and above them the
long cool expanse of weather-boarding and olive blinds--like a carving
in jade and old ivory.
As she stood there bathed in the sunlight, her hands dividing the
curtains, Barbara made a gracious part of the glimmering setting. Her
thick, ruddy hair sprang curling from her strongly modeled forehead, and
fell about her white shoulders, a warm reddish mass against the
delicately tinted curtain. There was a thoroughbred straightness in the
lines of the tall figure, in the curve of the cheek and the round
directness of the chin; and her eyes, bent on the lucent green, were the
color of brown sea-water under sapphire cloud-shadows.
From a circle of evergreens near the porte-cochère a white flag-pole
rose high above the treetops. The stars-and-stripes floated from its
halyards, for the day was the national holiday of an European power. In
the hedges sparrows were twittering, and in a plum-tree a _uguisu_--the
little Buddhist bird that calls the sacred name of the Sutras--was
warbling his sweet, slow, solemn syllables: "_Ho-kek-yo! Ho-kek-yo!_" A
gardener was sweeping the pink rain of cherry-petals from the paths with
a twig broom, the long sleeves of his blue _kimono_ fluttering in the
yellow sunshine, and in front of the servants' quarters a little girl in
flapping sandals was skipping rope with a chenille fascinator. Beyond
the wall of the compound Barbara could see the street, a low row of open
shops. In one, a number of men and girls, sitting on flat mats, were
making bamboo fans. At the corner stood a round well, from which a group
of women, barefooted and with tucked-up clothing, were drawing water in
unpainted wooden buckets with polished brass hoops, and beside it, under
a dark blue awning, a man and woman were grinding rice in a hand-mill
made of two heavy stone disks. A blue-and-white figured towel was bound
about the woman's head against the fine white rice-dust. Above them, on
a tiny portico, an old man, with the calm, benevolent face of a
porcelain mandarin, was watering an unbelievably-twisted dwarf plum on
which was a single bunch of blossoming. At the side of the street grew a
gnarled _kiri_ tree, its shambling roots encroaching on the roadway. In
their cleft was set a wooden _Shinto_ shrine with small piles of pebbles
before it. From a distance, high and clear, she heard a strain of bugles
from some squad of soldiers going to barracks, or perhaps to the
parade-ground, where, she remembered, an Imperial Review of Troops was
to be held that morning.
Barbara started suddenly, to see on the lawn just below her window, a
figure three feet high, with a round, cropped head, gazing at her from a
solemn, inquiring countenance. He wore a much-worn but clean _kimono_,
and his infantile toes clutched the thongs of clogs so large that his
feet seemed to be set on spacious wooden platforms. The youngster bent
double and staggeringly righted himself with a staccato "_O-hayo!_"
Barbara gave an inarticulate gasp; in face of his somber dignity she did
not dare to laugh. "How do you do?" she said. "Do you live here?"
"No," he replied. "I lives in a other houses."
"Oh!" exclaimed Barbara, aghast at his command of English. "What is your
name?"
"Ishikichi," he said succinctly.
"And will you tell me what you are doing, Ishikichi?"
A small hand from behind his back produced a tiny bamboo cage in which
was a bell-cricket. As he held it out, the insect chirped like an elfin
cymbal. "Find more one," he said laconically.
"And what shall you do with them, I wonder."
He took one foot from its clog and wriggled bare toes in the grass.
"Give him to new little sister," he said.
"So you have a new little sister!" exclaimed Barbara. "How fine that
must be!"
A glaze of something like disappointment spread over the diminutive
face. "Small like," he said. "More better want a brother to play with
me."
"Maybe you might exchange her for a brother," she hazarded, but the
cropped head shook despondently:
"I think no can now," he said. "We have use her four days."
Barbara laughed outright, a peal of silvery sound that echoed across the
garden--then suddenly drew back. A man on horseback was passing across
the drive toward the main gate of the compound. It was Daunt,
bareheaded, his handsome tanned face flushed with exercise, the breeze
ruffling his moist, curling hair. She flashed him a smile as his
riding-crop flew to his brow in salute. The sun glinted from its
Damascene handle, wrought into the long, grotesque muzzle of a fox.
Between the edsges of the blue silk curtains she saw him turn in the
saddle to look back before he disappeared.
She stood peering out a long time toward the low white cottage across
the clipped lawn. The laughter had left her eyes, and gradually over her
face grew a wave of rich color. She dropped the curtain and caught her
hands to her cheeks. For an instant she had seemed to feel the pressure
of strong arms, the touch of coarse tweed vividly reminiscent of a pipe.
What had come over her? The one day that had dawned at sea in golden
fire and died in crimson and purple over a file of convicts--the
dreaming night with its temple bell striking through silver mist and
violet shadows--these had left her the same Barbara that she had always
been. But somewhere, somehow, in the closed gulf between the then and
now, something new and strange and sweet had waked in her--something
that the sound of a voice in the garish sunlight had started into
clamorous reverberations.
She sat down suddenly and hid her face.