THE TRESPASSER
The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended that
afternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on its
wide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty _kimono_ of pale gray
cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japanese
face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled
from Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden under
the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling.
Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality--with her
fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please.
While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she
had made the Japanese girl bring her _samisen_ and play. At first the
music had seemed uncouth and elfish--a queer, barbaric twanging, like an
intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious
chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals.
But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner
ear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding,
her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at
the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and
servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in her
pretty broken English, had told her stories--old legends that are
embalmed in the _geisha_ dances, of the forty-seven _Ronin_, and of the
great _Shogun_ who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park.
* * * * *
When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk--he was to show her the
Chapel--the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the
compound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables--each with the
golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel--was just passing. Their
occupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in naval
uniform, their breasts covered with orders.
"The officers of the foreign Squadron, no doubt," said the Ambassador,
"being shown the sights of the capital. Day after to-morrow the Minister
of Marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor.
You will enjoy that, Barbara."
"I wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond of
talking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a Japanese welcome. The stay of
these officers will be one long festivity. Yet to read a Continental
journal you would think every other Japanese was carrying a club for use
if they ventured ashore."
The Ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. For weeks, the
newspapers of European capitals had talked of conflicting interests and
unreconciled differences between the two countries. He knew that there
was little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news"
and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strung
Chanceries as it does individuals. Beneath this surface current,
diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. But as a
trained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too long
persisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of the
Squadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of the
lavish and open-hearted hospitality which Japan would offer it. When the
carriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back to
his books.
* * * * *
Walking up the sloping "Hill-of-the-Spirit" to the templed knoll behind
it, Barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. All along flaunting
camphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and the
scent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. The ground was
white and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts were
sprinkling water. Little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied with
bright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured _kimono_ of red
and purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edge
a naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shaven
head bobbing in the sunshine. Half-way up the hill a group of coolies
were resting beside their carts. Their faces had the look of
lotos-eaters, languid and serene. As they walked Barbara told of the
adventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the Review
of the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he had
never seen her so beautiful.
"What has happened--_who_ has happened, Barbara?" he asked, for he
suddenly guessed he knew what that look meant.
Her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "I don't
know--do you?"
He took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morning
newspaper. It chronicled the arrival of the yacht _Barbara_.
She looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages----'"
"But not Ware?" he finished. "All right. He'll speak for himself, no
doubt. The paper says he's at Nara; but then, he doesn't know you are
here yet. We pushed our sailing date forward, you remember."
"I'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "Meanwhile, I
can't tell you what a good time I'm having. I shall stay in Japan for
ever: I can feel it in my bones! I shall have a Japanese house with a
chaperon, two tailless cats and an _amah_, and study the three systems
of flower-arrangement and the Tea-Ceremony."
They had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentry
now stood. "He wears the uniform of the Imperial Guard," the bishop
said. "That is the residence of one of the daughters of the Emperor."
He turned into the lane that opened opposite. It was hedged with some
unfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little way
inside stood an old temple gate with a stone _torii_. She stopped with
an exclamation.
"Yes," he said, "there is the Chapel."
Barbara was looking opposite the _torii_, where, amid the flowering
green, a slanting roof lifted, holding a cross. It stood out, whitely
cut against the blue, a silent witness. Facing the dragon-swarming gate,
it made her think of pale martyrs in gorgeous pagan countries, of Paul
standing before the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, and lonely Christian
anchorites in profane lands of green and gold.
"What Christians some of these Japanese make!" the bishop said, as they
finished their tour of the building. "I know of a carpenter in Sendai
who became a convert. He used to visit the prison and one day he took a
woman there to see her husband, a hardened and obdurate criminal. In the
interview the man stabbed his wife. The chief-of-police, on account of
the carpenter's reputation for justice and pure-living, left the
punishment of the man to him. What do you think he did?"
She could not guess.
"He refused to punish him at all, on the simple ground that Christ would
not. As a result the convict is now one of the best Christian teachers
we have in Sendai. The month before this happened," he continued,
smiling reflectively, "a thief broke into the rectory and stole my
watch. I notified the police, and they brought it back to me in a few
days. But where is my thief? You remember Jean Valjean and the silver
candle-sticks? Maybe the Sendai carpenter was nearer right than I."
Barbara had paused in front of the black space for the stained-glass
window.
"It will be here," the bishop said, answering her thought. "It is to
be put in place in time for the dedication service to-morrow
morning." He stepped to the door and peered into the interior. "You
will want to look about a bit, no doubt. I have a call to make in the
neighborhood--suppose I stop on my way back for you."
* * * * *
For a few moments after his departure Barbara stood listening to the
dulled sound of the workmen's tools. The roof of the temple opposite had
a curving, Tartar-like ridge, at either end of which was a huge fish,
its head pointed inward, its wide forked tail twisted high in air. Under
its scalloped eaves she saw the flash of a swallow, and far above a
gaudy paper kite careened in the blue.
She crossed the lane and looked into the shady inclosure, where the
bronze lanterns and the tombstones stood, as gray and lichened as the
stone beneath her feet. Before many of the graves stood green bamboo
vases holding bunches of fresh leaves. An old woman was moving
noiselessly about, watering these with a long bamboo dipper and lighting
incense-sticks as she went. In one place a young man knelt before an
ancestral monument, softly clapping his hands in prayer. The whole place
was drenched in a tone limpid and serene, the very infusion of peace.
Only in the black temple interior she caught the dim glow of candles and
somewhere a muffled baton was tapping on hollow wood.
"Min ... Min ... Min .. Min .. Min . Min .
Min-Min-Min-Minminminminmin...." At first slowly, then faster and
faster, till the notes merged and died away in a muttering roll, to
begin once more with the slowness of a leisurely metronome.
The ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted her
and she went nearer. Beyond the hedge she could see a portion of its
garden. Reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt,
open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered.
Before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, gray
gravel. On one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms of
deep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and striped
ground-bamboo. Beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sides
clambered an irregular pathway, set with tall _shinto_ lanterns and
large stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. Here and there
the flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose,
and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to be
powdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies.
Barbara had seen many photographs of Japanese gardens, but they had
either lacked color or been over-tinted. This lay chromatic, visualized,
braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed glories
of a tropic spring. For a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picture
for ever on her brain.
She opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings of
the ancient structure. Its _shoji_ had been noiselessly drawn open, and
a man stood there looking fixedly at her.