WHEN A WOMAN DREAMS
Riding with Patricia in the big victoria next day, its red-striped
runner diving ahead, Barbara forgot her vague wonder at Haru's
disappearance, as she felt the enchanted mystery of Tokyo creep further
into her heart. They threaded the softly dreaming silence of the
willow-bordered moat that clasps the Imperial grounds with a girdle of
cloudy emerald, where the "Dragon Pines" of the great _Shogun Iyemits_
fling their craggy masses of olive-green down over the leaning walls to
kiss the mirroring water--past many-roofed, Tartar-like watch-towers,
cream-white on the blue, and through little parks with forests of thin
straight-boled trees and placid lotos ponds seething with the
dagger-blue flashings of dragon-flies, all woven together into a
tapestry, lovely, remote, fantastic--like the projection of some
dream-legend whose people lived a fairy story in a picture-book world.
On this oriental background continually appeared quaint touches of the
foreign and bizarre: a huge American straw hat, much befrilled and
befeathered, on the head of a baby strapped to its mother's back, or a
hideous boa of chenille like bunched caterpillars marring the delicate
native neckwear of an exquisite _kimono_.
On the slope of a hill they came on a motley crowd, which included a
sprinkling of foreigners, gathered before the entrance of a temple yard,
where a rough, improvised amphitheater had been erected. Patricia called
to the driver, and he pulled up.
"Fire-walk," said the _betto_. "Ontaké temple."
From their elevated seat they could see white-robed and barefooted
priests waving long-handled fans and wands topped with shaggy paper
tassels over an area of red-hot cinders. Presently some of them strode
calmly across the smoking mass.
"They call that the 'Miracle of Kudan Hill,'" said Patricia. "They are
making incantations to the god of water to come and drive out the god of
fire. It's a _Shinto_ rite."
A laugh rose from the spectators. The High Priest was inviting the
foreigners to attempt the ordeal.
"Look!" said Patricia. "There is the man who got the free lecture out of
your uncle on the train--the man with the white waistcoat and the red
beard. And there's 'Martha,' too. I do believe she's going to try it!"
She was. Undeterred by the misgivings of the rest, the lady of the
painted muslin calmly divested herself of shoes and stockings and
marched across and back again. "There!" she said triumphantly. "I said I
would, and I _did_! It may be a miracle, but my feet are simply
_frying_!"
The carriage rolled on across a section of busy trade. From a side
street came the brassy blare of a phonograph.
"What a baffling combination it is!" said Barbara. "Last night some of
those people were at Mukojima, listening to dead little drums and
squealing fifes, and to-night here is Damrosch and the _Intermezzo_."
"The other day when I passed," said Patricia, "it was _Waltz Me Around
Again, Willie_, and forty children were prancing to it. Martha's husband
is 'in' phonographs, by the way. She told me all about it at the Review.
He's making a set of Japanese records--_geisha_ songs and native
orchestra pieces and even street-noises--to copyright at home."
Presently the horses stopped before a great gate of unpainted cedar,
roofed with black and white tiles and bossed with nails of hammered
copper. Above it two pine-trees writhed like a Doré print. "One of the
Empress' ladies-in-waiting lives here," Patricia said. "I'll walk home
and on the way I can leave some 'call-tickets'--Tucker's name for
visiting-cards. Give my love to the bishop."
She looked wistfully after Barbara as the latter bowled away toward
Ts'kiji and her uncle's. Under her flyaway spirits Patricia had the
warmest little heart in the world, loyal to its last beat to those she
liked. Daunt was decidedly in this category. Like the rest, she had been
weaving a cheerful little romance for these two friends. Since the
evening at the Cherry-Moon, however, when the newly arrived yacht had
been talked of, she had had misgivings. Yesterday, too, Barbara, while
confiding nothing, had told her of Austen Ware's coming. Patricia walked
up the driveway slowly and with a puzzled frown.
But the girl driving on under cherry-stained sky and cherry-scented
winds, knew, that one hour, no problems. She was full of the flame and
pulse of youth, of a new nascent tenderness and a warm sense of loving
all the world. She asked herself if she could really be the poised,
self-contained girl who a few weeks ago sailed for the Orient. Some
magic alchemy had transmuted all her elements. New emotions dominated
her, and through the beauty before her gaze went flashing more beautiful
thoughts that linked with the future.
In her pocket was a letter. It had been brought to her that morning when
she woke and she had read it over and over, kneeling in the drift of
pillows, her red-gold hair draping her white shoulders, thrilling,
murmuring little inarticulate answers to its phrases, looking up now and
then to peer through the bamboo _sudaré_ to the white and green cottage
across the lawn. He would not see her to-day--until evening. Then he
would ask her....
As the carriage bore her on, she whispered again and again one of the
sentences he had written: "There has never been another woman to me,
Barbara. There never will be! My Lady of the Many-Colored Fires!"