THE SHADOW OF A TO-MORROW
Nikko's thin street, with its gigantic isle of cryptomeria, was a
shimmer of gold, a flicker of crimson and mandarin-blue. All the town
was out of doors, for it was the _matsuri_, the local festival of
Ieyasu, the great _shogun_ deity, when the ancient furniture and
treasures of the temple are carried in priestly processional through the
streets. The path of the pageant was lined with spectators: old
country-women with shaven eyebrows and burnished, blackened teeth, and
with hair tightly plastered in old-fashioned wheels and pinions;
children in kaleidoscopic dress, frantically dragged by older girls with
pink paper flowers in their stiff black hair; men sitting sedately on
sober-colored _f'ton_, bowing to pedestrian acquaintances with elaborate
and stereotyped ceremony. In the moldy shade above a grim, wizened row
of images of the god of justice, was nailed a sign-board: "Everybody are
require not to broke the trees." Beside the moss-covered replicas a
booth had been erected for foreign spectators. It was crowded with
tourists--a bank of perspiring, fan-fluttering humanity. Up and down
trudged post-card sellers, and _saké_ bearers with trays of shallow,
lacquer cups. The air shimmered with a fine white dust from the
thousands of wooden clogs, and the trees were sibilant with the tumult
of the _semi_.
The procession seemed interminable. Priests rode on horseback, clothed
in black gauze robes with stoles of gold brocade and queer, winged hats.
Acolytes marched afoot in green or yellow with stoles of black, like
huge parti-colored beetles. Groups of bearers in white _houri_ carried
brass altar furniture, great drums fantastically painted, ancient
chain-armor and tall banners of every tint. The center of interest was a
sacred _mikoshi_, or palanquin, holding the divine symbols, elaborately
carved and gold-lacquered, borne by sixty men in white, with cloths of
like hue bound turban-wise about their foreheads. Around these circled
drum-beaters and pipe-players, making an indescribable medley of sounds.
The god entered into his devotees. The palanquin tossed like the waves
of the sea. The bearers howled and chanted gutturally. Sweat poured from
their faces. Some of them smiled and danced as they staggered on under
the immense bearing-poles.
Austen Ware saw the strain on Barbara's face. "You are tired," he said.
"Let us go back to the hotel."
"Where is Patsy?" she asked.
"She went with the bishop to see the priestesses dance at the temple.
But we can skip that."
He drew her out of the crowd and they walked slowly down a side street
to the road that skirts the brawling Alpine torrent, rushing between its
steep stone banks. Here the spray filled the air with a cool mist and
the westerning sun tied the seething water with silver tasseling.
Caravans of panier-laden Chinese ponies passed them, led by women in
tight blue breeches with sweat-bands about their heads, and squads of
uncomfortable tourists bound to Chuzenji, the summer capital of the
_Corps Diplomatique_, crumpled in sagging red-blanketed chairs hanging
from the bearing-poles of lurching, bronze-muscled coolies. Young
peasant girls trotted by swinging baskets of yellow asters and purple
morning-glories. A _rick'sha_ carried a baby with gay-colored dolls and
painted cats of _papier-mâché_ tied behind it, on its way to the family
shrine where the toys could be blessed. The _rick'sha_ man was smiling,
but his cough rattled against Barbara's heart. A line of white-robed
Buddhist pilgrims trudged along under mushroom hats, with rosaries
crossed over their breasts and little bells tinkling at their girdles on
their way to worship the Sun on the sacred mountain of Nantai-Zan. Now
and then the cut-velvet of the hills rolled back to display clumps of
dwellings--the wizard-gray of thatched roofs set in a rippling sea of
leaves--and green flights of worn stone steps, staggering up to weird
old temples where droning priests were ever at prayer. At the bottom of
the road the stream narrowed to a gorge, spanned by the sacred
red-lacquer bridge which no foot save the Emperor's may ever tread. On
the farther side the wooded hills rose in fantastic, top-heavy shapes
like a mad artist's dream. Everywhere they were split and seamed by
landslide, gashed by torrents and typhoon, but covered with a wealth and
splendor of color. Here and there century-old cryptomeria stood like
gray-green bronze pillars, towering over younger forests as straight and
symmetrical as Noah's-ark trees.
As they walked, Ware chatted of his trip up the China coast--an
interesting recital that took Barbara insensibly out of herself. More
than once he looked at her curiously. Since that fateful hour when he
had stood behind the _shikiri_, he, like Barbara, had gone through much
to look so unflurried. He had known moments of bitterness that were
galling and stinging, and that left behind them a sense of degradation.
But he held to his course. So short-lived a thing as her love for Daunt
must wither! "It will pass," he had told himself, "and she will turn to
me."
The trip to Nikko had encouraged him. It had been the time of the
bishop's regular spring visit and Barbara had welcomed the opportunity
to leave Tokyo, which was so full of painful memories. Patricia adored
Japan's "Temple Town" and Ware had joined the party there with as little
delay as was seemly. In the three days of the poignant mountain air
Barbara had seemed to Patricia to be more like her old self. She could
not guess the strength of the effort this had cost or the fierceness of
the fight Barbara's pride was making.
It was sunset when they mounted the steep road to the hotel--a long,
two-storied, modern structure, whose gardens and red balconies gave it a
subtle Japanese flavor. On one side of the building the ground fell in a
precipitous descent to the rocky bed of the river, whose rush made a
restful monotone like wind sighing through linden trees. Behind it the
height rose abruptly, and up its side clambered a twisting path, from
which a light foot-bridge sprang to the upper piazzas. The path led to a
shrine a hundred yards above, set beside an old wisteria tree, musical
with the chirp of the "silver-eye," and fluttering with countless paper
arrows of prayer. Before it were two wooden benches, and from this eyrie
one could look down on the hotel with its graceful balconies, and far
below the tumbling stream with its guarded red-lacquer arch.
Ware walked with Barbara up the path to the foot-bridge. Near its
entrance a small stand had been placed and on it was a phonograph, its
ungainly trumpet pointing down toward the stretch of lawn. A heavy
red-bearded man, in a warm frock-coat, a white waistcoast and a silk hat
pushed far back on his head, was laboring over this, and a plump lady
stood near-by, fanning her beaming face with a pocket-handkerchief.
They greeted Barbara heartily.
"Good afternoon," said the husband. "You can't guess what me and Martha
are up to, can you?"
"The _samisen_ concert to-night?" she hazarded.
"Right!" he said. "First crack out of the box, too! I'm going to take a
record of it." He tapped the cylinder. "This is a composition of my own.
I leave it out here all night to harden, and then I give it a three
days' acid bath that makes it as hard as steel. It'll last for ever. Now
what do you suppose I'm going to do with the record? I'm going to give
it to you."
The lady beside him nodded and smiled. "He's been planning it ever since
he heard you say the other day that you liked _samisen_ music," she
said.
"You see," he went on with a laugh. "I haven't forgotten that line of
talk your uncle gave me on the train, my first day in Japland. It did me
a lot of good. I guess what he doesn't know about it isn't worth
telling," he added with a glance at Ware.
"He is an authority, of course," said Ware.
"Well, I'm an authority, too--on phonographs. And if you'd accept this,
Miss Fairfax--"
"I shall be _delighted_!" said Barbara warmly. "I shall value it very,
very highly."
She smiled back at them over her shoulder. The frank, honest kindliness
of the couple pleased her.
The piazza opened into a small sitting-room with cool bamboo chairs and
portières of thin green silk stenciled with maple-leaves.
"Will you wait a moment, Barbara?" asked Ware. "I have something to show
you."
She stopped, looking at him with a trace of confusion. "Certainly," she
answered. "What is it?"
He put a folded paper into her hands. "To-day is the anniversary of our
meeting," he said. "This is a memento."
She took it with a puzzled look and scrutinized it. Wonder filled her
face. "You have made over your yacht to me!" she cried.
"My engagement gift," he said. "She is your namesake; I want her to be
yours."
A flush crept over her cheek. She knew the yacht was his favorite
possession and the action touched her. At the same time it brought
swiftly home to her, in a concrete way, a numbing reminder of the
imminence of her marriage.
"The deed has been recorded," he went on, "and the sailing-master and
crew have signed articles under the new owner. Perhaps you will let me
come aboard of her to hear that _samisen_ record," he added whimsically.
"There's a phonograph in her outfit."
She smiled, a little tremulously. "You are most kind, Austen," she said.
"I--I don't know what to say."
"Then say nothing," he answered cheerfully. He stepped to the door and
drew aside the portière. She was agitated, feeling unable to meet the
situation in the conventional way. At the threshold she paused and held
out her hand.
He bent and kissed it. She half-hesitated, but in the pause there was a
laughing voice and a footstep in the hall.
"It's Patsy," she said, and passed quickly out.
As Ware walked back across the foot-bridge, the proprietor of the
phonograph called to him.
"I clean forgot to ask the young lady where to send this record," he
said. "Do you know her address?"
"It will be more or less uncertain, I fancy," said Ware. "But her yacht
is in Yokohama harbor. It is named the _Barbara_. You might send it
there."