"BANZAI NIPPON!"
Gradually, as they proceeded, the throng became denser. Policemen in
neat suits of white-duck and wearing long cavalry swords lined the road.
They had smart military-looking caps and white cotton gloves, and stood,
as had the officer before the file of convicts in Shimbashi Station,
moveless and imperturbable. The crowds were massed now in close, locked
lines on either side. In one place a school-master stood guard over a
file of small boys in holiday _kimono_: a little paper Japanese flag was
clutched in each chubby hand.
In all the ranks there was no jostling, or fighting for position, no
loud-voiced jest or expostulation; a spell was in the air; the Imperial
Presence who was to pass that way had cast His beneficent Shadow before.
Through a double row of saluting police they whirled into an immense
brown field, as level as a floor, stretching before them seemingly
empty, a dull, yellow-brown waste horizoned by feathery tree-tops. The
carriage turned to the right, skirting a surging sea of brown faces held
in check by a stretched rope; these gave place to a mass of officers
standing in dress-uniform, with plumed caps and breasts ablaze with
decorations; in another moment they descended before a canvas _marquée_
where brilliant regimental uniforms from a dozen countries shifted and
mingled with diplomatic costumes heavy with gold-braid, and with women's
gay frocks and picture-hats.
The air was full of exhilaration; people were laughing and chatting. The
British Ambassador displayed the plaid of a Colonel of Highlanders; he
had fought in the Soudan. The Chinese Minister was in his own mandarin
costume; from his round, jade-buttoned hat swept the much coveted
peacock feathers and on his breast were the stars of the "Rising-Sun"
and the "Double-Dragon." The American Ambassador alone, of all the
foreign representatives, wore the plain frock-coat and silk hat of the
civilian. From group to group strolled officials of the Japanese Foreign
Office and Cabinet Ministers, their ceremonial coats crossed by white or
crimson cordons. And through it all Barbara moved, responsive to all
this lightness and color, bowing here and there to introductions that
left her only the more conscious of the one tall figure that had met
them and now walked at her side.
Daunt could not have told that the flowers in her hat were brown
orchids: he only knew that they matched the color of her eyes. Last
night the moonlight had lent her something of the fragile and ethereal,
like itself. Now the sunlight painted in clear warm colors of cream and
cardinal. It glinted from the perfect curve of her forehead, and tangled
in the wide wave of her bronze hair, making it gleam like hot copper
spun into silk-fine strands. His finger-tips tingled to touch it.
He started, as--"A penny for your thoughts," she said, with sudden
mischief.
"Have you so much about you?" he countered.
"That's a subterfuge."
"You wouldn't be flattered to hear them, I'm afraid."
"The reflection is certainly a sad blow to my self-esteem!"
"Well," he said daringly, "I was thinking how I would like to pick you
up in my arms before all these people and run right out in the center of
that field--"
She flushed to the tips of her ears. "And then--"
"Just run, and run, and run away."
"What a heroic exploit!" she said with subtle mockery, but the flush
deepened.
"You know to what lengths I can go in my longing to be a hero!" he
muttered.
"Running off with girls under your arm seems to have become a mania. But
isn't your idea rather prosaic in this age of flying-machines? To swoop
down on one in an aëroplane would be so much more thrilling! This is the
field where you practise, too, isn't it? Is that building away over
there where you keep your Glider?"'
"Yes. At first I made the models in a Japanese house of mine near here.
I keep it still, from sentiment."
"How fine to meet a man who admits to having sentiment! I'm tremendously
interested in Japanese houses. You must show it to me."
"I will. And when will you let me take you for a 'fly?'"
"I'm relieved," she said, "to find you willing to ask permission."
Her eyes sparkled into his, and both laughed. Patricia was chatting
animatedly with Count Voynich, the young diplomatist whom she had
pointed out in the train, and whose monocle now looked absurdly
contemplative and serene under a menacing helmet. The confusion of many
colors, the pomp and panoply under the day's golden azure, was singing
in Barbara's veins. She moved suddenly toward the front. "Come," she
said, "I want you to tell me things!"
"I'm going to," he answered grimly. "I've known I should, ever since--"
"Look!" she cried. Several coaches had bowled up; behind each stood
footmen in gold-lace and cocked hats, knee breeches and white silk
stockings. Daunt named the occupants as they descended: the Premier, one
of the "Elder Statesmen," the Minister of the Household.
"Who are the people there at the side, under the awning?"
"Tourists. Each Embassy and Legation is allowed a certain number of
invitations."
"Why, yes," said Barbara. "I see some of my ship-mates." She smiled and
nodded across as faces turned toward her. There was the gaunt, sallow
woman who had distributed Christian Science tracts (till sea-sickness
claimed her for its own) and little Miss Tippetts (the printed
steamer-list, with unconscious wit, had made it "Tidbits"), who had
flitted about the companion-ways like a shawled wraith, radiant now in a
white _lingerie_ gown and a hat covered with red hollyhocks. And there,
too, was the familiar painted-muslin and the expansive white waistcoat
of the train.
A hundred yards to the right was spread a wide silk canopy of royal
purple, caught back with crimson tassels. "What is that?" Barbara asked,
pointing.
"That is for the Emperor and his suite. The big sixteen-petaled
chrysanthemum on its front is the Imperial Crest; no one else is allowed
to use or carry it. The men on horseback are Princes of the Blood.
Almost all the great generals of the late war are in that group behind
them. The man smoking a cigarette is the Japanese Minister of War."
"But when do the troops come?" Barbara inquired. "I see only one little
company out there in the center."
"That is a band," he said. "Look farther. Can you make out something
like a wide, brown ribbon stretched all around the field?"
She looked. The far-away, moveless, dun-colored strip merged with the
sere plain, but now, here and there, she saw minute needle points of
sunlight twinkle across it. She made an exclamation. For the tiny
flashes were sun-gleams from the bayonets of massed men, clad in
neutral-tinted khaki, silent, motionless as a brown wall, a living river
frozen to utter immobility by a word of command that had been spoken two
long hours before.
A mounted _aide_ galloped wildly past toward the purple canopy. As he
flashed by, a thin bugle-note rang out and a band far back by the gate
at which they had entered began playing a minor melody. Strange, slow,
infinitely solemn and sad, the strain rolled around the hushed
field--the _Kimi-ga-yo_, the "Hymn of the Sovereign," adapted by a
German melodist a score of years ago, which in Japan is played only in
the Imperial Presence or that of its outward and visible tokens. The
counterpoint, with its muttering roll of snare-drums on the long chords,
and sudden, sharp clashes of cymbals, gave the majestic air an effect
weird and unforgetable. The strain sank to silence, but with the last
note a second nearer band caught it up and repeated it; then, nearer
still, another and another.
Barbara, leaning, saw a great state-coach of green and gold coming down
the field. It was drawn by four of the most beautiful bay horses she had
ever seen. Coachman, postilions and footmen wore red coats heavily
frogged with gold, white cloth breeches and block enamel top-boots. As
it came briskly along that animate wall of spectators, the vast
concourse, save for the welling or ebbing minor of the bands, was
silent, hushed as in a cathedral. But as it passed, the packed sea of
brown faces--the mass of _kimono_ next the gate and the ranks of
splendid uniforms--bent forward as one man, in a great sighing rustle,
like a field of tall grass when a sudden wind passes over it.
The plumed hats of the diplomatists came off; they bowed low. The ladies
courtesied, and Barbara, as her gaze lifted, caught an instant's
glimpse, through the coach's glass sides, of that kingly figure,
heaven-descended and sacred, mysterious alike to his own subjects as to
the outside world, through whom flows to the soul of modern Japan the
manifest divinity and living guidance of cohorts of dead Emperors
stretching backward into the night of Time!
* * * * *
The band stationed in the center of the immense field had begun to
play--something with a martial swing; and now the far brown strip that
had blent with brown earth began to shift and tremble like the quiver of
air above heated metal. Its motes detached themselves, clustered anew;
and the long, wide ribbon, like a huge serpent waked from rigid sleep in
the sunshine, swept into view: regiments of men, armed and blanketed, by
file and platoon. They moved with high, jerky "goose-step" and loosely
swinging arm, line upon line, till the ground shook with the tread.
Before each regiment were borne strange flags, blackened and tattered by
blood and shell. Some were mere flapping fringes. But they were more
precious than human lives. One had been found on a Manchurian
battlefield, wrapped about the body of a dead Japanese, beneath his
clothing. Wounded, he had so concealed it, then killed himself, lest,
captured alive, the standard he bore might fall into the hands of the
enemy. As each new rank came opposite the coach before the purple
canopy, an officer's sword flashed out in salute, and a "_banzai!_" tore
across the martial music like the ragged yell of a fanatical Dervish.
Daunt, watching Barbara, saw the light leaping in her brown eyes, the
excitement coming and going in her face. Again and again he fixed his
gaze before him, as infantry, cavalry and artillery marched and pounded
and rumbled past. In vain. Like a wilful drunkard it returned to
intoxicate itself with the sight of her eager beauty, that made the
scene for him only a splendid blur, an extraneous impression of masses
of swaying bodies moving like marionettes, of glistening bayonets,
horses, clattering ammunition wagons, and fluttering pennants.
In Barbara, however, every nerve was thrilling to the sight. For the
moment she had forgotten even the man beside her. As she watched the
audacious outpouring of drilled power, tempered and restrained, yet so
terribly alive in its coiled virility, she was feeling a keen pang of
sympathy that was almost pain. In this burning panorama she divined no
shrinking, devious thing sinking with the fatigue of ages, aping the
superficialities of a remote race: not merely a tidal wave of intense
vitality, mobile and mercurial, hastening onward toward an inaudible
unknown, but a splendid rebirth, a dazzling reincarnation of old spirit
in new form, a symbol concrete and vital, like the blaze of a beacon
flaming a racial _réveille_.
She turned toward Daunt, her hand outstretched, her fingers on his arm,
her lips opened.
But she did not speak. Afterward she did not know what she had intended
to say.