THE STORM KING.
While two of the Motor Maids slept in the sacred wood on the mountain two
others rested in one of the bedrooms of the villa straining their ears
for sounds of the returning search party. It was only eight o'clock, but
Miss Campbell, worn out with excitement and fatigue, had already dropped
off to sleep in the next room.
Nancy was quietly and softly weeping, her face buried in her pillow, and
Elinor lay staring into the darkness. Mr. Campbell had assured them
that the girls could not be lost for long, and that the only mishap that
could possibly come to them in that holy place was sleeping under the
pine trees; but he could not conceal the anxiety he really felt, the
anxiety of a father for his only daughter, the being he loved best in all
the world.
Nancy had felt the anxiety, too, and remorse had entered into her soul;
not because she had met Yoritomo in the garden and exchanged notes with
him in a romantic manner, the notes having been hidden under a stone near
the old shrine, for she was beginning dimly to realize that such things
were only silly and common. Her remorse was caused by something else more
remote in her consciousness but looming bigger all the time. The cruel
letter she had written to Billie in anger and then torn into pieces and
thrown into a brass vase in Mme. Fontaine's drawing-room! Why had she
been so angry? She could not understand it now. She only knew that the
longer she poured her troubles into Mme. Fontaine's ears the more
sympathetic the widow became until Nancy was worked into a perfect rage.
As for the widow, she had said very little indeed, only a few words now
and then, vague, suggestive remarks, but they had set Nancy thinking; had
stirred her up so violently, indeed, that she had written that foolish
letter. There had been no waste basket by the desk and Nancy, after a
wretched sleepless night, had torn up the letter and dropped it in the
nearest vase. Why had she not torn it into smaller bits? Why had she not
burned it in a charcoal brazier? Why had she ever written it at all?
Why--why--? A dozen whys flashed through her troubled mind. She would
never rest again until she knew the letter had been entirely destroyed,
reduced to ashes. Out of this long train of unhappy thought a resolution
came to Nancy to write to Mme. Fontame and ask her to find the letter and
burn it up. This she accordingly did a few days after the visit to Nikko,
and of what came of it more will be told later.
In the meantime, while Nancy, goaded by a troubled conscience was weeping
abundantly into her pillow, Billie and little Mary Price lay sleeping
peacefully in the great cathedral forest.
Precisely at the moment that Nancy's disturbed fancies had taken the form
of a resolution Billie and Mary opened their eyes on a world of velvety
blackness. Straight overhead through the lacework of intertwined boughs
gleamed an occasional tiny star, like the light shining through a pin
prick in a black curtain. Scarcely two hours had passed since they had
slipped into the unknown, and now sitting up and rubbing their eyes, they
wondered where in the world they were. Hearing Mary stirring beside her
in the dark, Billie put out a hand and grasped Mary's groping to meet it.
The two friends sat silently for a few minutes. At last Billie said
softly:
"What are we going to do, Mary, dear?"
"I am thinking of what they are going to do," answered Mary. "How
frightened they will be about us, Billie! As for me, I can't help feeling
happy out in this dark peaceful place. I should like to lie here all
night and watch the dawn come through the trees."
All of which was extremely poetic, but Billie had become suddenly prosaic
at the thought of her father, wild with anxiety she was certain,
searching the terraced mountainside for them at the risk of falling off a
precipice or tumbling into the river. Besides, at that moment, she felt a
puff of hot wind in her face, and immediately was conscious that she was
very thirsty and that the palms of her hands were dry and burning.
"Don't you think it's very hot, Mary?" she whispered. "I feel as if I had
been baked brown in an oven."
"The wind has changed," answered Mary. "It was cool and sweet when we
dropped off, and now it's like a wind that's blown over a desert."
Through the forest came a murmur like thousands of voices gathering in
strength and volume all the time. The gigantic pillars of the cathedral
began swaying and tossing their arched boughs and the whole mountain
seemed to resound with strange sounds, cries and calls, grindings and
poundings. The pin prick stars disappeared and the place was as black as
the pit.
The two girls rose quickly and clasped hands again.
"I think we'd better go straight down," said Billie. "We're obliged to
strike a path somewhere and perhaps we may find a temple or a tomb or a
pagoda or something. Anything to get away from that awful thing that's
coming, whatever it is."
Fortunately the act of descending gave them a sense of direction. Many
times they fell, skinning their shins and their foreheads against trees,
but they picked themselves up again, entirely unconscious of bruises, and
ran on as fast as they could go with the hot devastating wind behind
them. Suddenly the whole mountainside was illuminated by a flash of
lightning, like a jagged stream of fire stretching from heaven to earth.
A deafening roar of thunder followed. Then all the forest seemed to be
perfectly quiet. Such a stillness settled over the place that the girls
stopped and held their breath.
"Look," whispered Billie, pointing to a strange looking light coming
rapidly nearer, wobbling and undulating like the light on the bow of a
ship in a rough ocean. Then came another terrifying flash of lightning,
and thunder that seemed to rock the whole world. The two girls rushed
toward the friendly light with one accord, and collided with the bearer
with such force that three persons were precipitated with unintentionally
devotional attitudes at the foot of a shrine of Buddha.
"By Jove, but this is luck," called a familiar voice.
It was Nicholas Grimm, who calmly picked up himself and then his
oil-paper lantern attached to the end of a slender wand; next he helped
the girls to their feet.
"Take an arm, each one of you. There's no time to lose. The thing that's
coming, whatever it is, will get here in a minute now."
Running like mad, on the very wings of the wind, the three young people
followed the windings of the path and presently came up short on a small
temple, the tomb of some holy personage. Into this they rushed without
ceremony just as the storm burst with all its fury, and crouching in a
corner just out of reach of the rain, they listened to the howls and
shrieks of the wind.
"It's just like some live thing," remarked Mary after a while. "I feel as
if some terrible demon lived up in a cave in the mountain, and when he is
angry he comes down and lashes the earth and shakes the mountain."
Mary's poetic notion of storms in that region was not so far removed from
the Japanese legends.
"You struck the nail on the head that time, Miss Price," said Nicholas.
"There is an extinct volcano over here in the northeast and in its side
is a huge cavern. People around here used to believe that all these
frightful storms issued from the cavern. Every spring and every fall
there was a perfectly corking one that tore up the whole place, and they
called the mountain 'Ni-Ko San,' or Two-Storm Mountain. Then an old party
who was a saint, I believe, and very wise, placed a curse on the storm
demon and named the place 'Nikko San,' Mountain of the Sun's Brightness."
"The demon seems to have returned," remarked Billie.
"Oh, he did. That was the point. The magic curse had to be repeated every
year, and the saint gave the receipt to a priest and it was handed down
from one generation to another in the priest's family for nearly nine
hundred years, but the demon still pursued, as you have probably
observed."
They were all silent for a while. Mary was making a picture in her mind
of the aged priest in his white robes standing like a midget on the side
of the vast mountain exorcising the storm king. That personage, she
imagined, was a gigantic figure formed principally of black clouds with a
terrifying human countenance. Every breath was a whirlwind or a hailstorm
and when he struck the side of the mountain with his staff the lightning
flashed--
Here Mary's thoughts were interrupted by just such a flash uncomfortably
near.
Billie leaped to her feet.
"Oh, Nicholas," she cried, "do you think Papa could still be looking for
me? Suppose he should be out now in all this frightful wind! I hadn't
thought of it until this moment."
"He'll be all right, Miss Billie," answered Nicholas soothingly. "Don't
you worry."
"Don't you tell me not to worry," cried Billie, almost angrily. "Do you
think Papa would look after himself if he thought I was lost on the
mountain? Oh, heavens, why did we count those old broken statues?"
Nicholas laughed.
"Excuse me," he said, choking back his amusement at sight of Billie's
reproachful eyes which even the dim lantern light could not hide. "What
are you going to do?" he added, as Billie seized the lantern from his
hand.
"I'm going to wave this at the door and yell with all my strength until I
haven't any voice left. If Papa is anywhere near he may see it and come
straight here."
Nicholas, who, having also had much training in camps and outdoor life,
had not felt the least uneasiness about Mr. Campbell's safety, now
quietly took the lantern from Billie and began waving it to and fro at
the door, while they both shouted again and again. But their voices were
lost in the roar of the tempest. Billie stifled a sob.
"Papa!" she whispered to herself. "Dearest, dearest Papa!"
While she spoke a flash of lightning lit up the side of the mountain, and
in that momentary illumination Billie saw her father toiling up the path
against the wind and rain.
"Papa, Papa!" she shrieked, seizing the lantern and waving it wildly back
and forth.
"Halloo!" yelled Nicholas, and then there came an answering shout, a
really human cry this time, and after several breathless moments of
waiting Mr. Campbell staggered into the temple.
Nicholas and Mary turned their faces away at sight of his emotion when he
found his daughter in his arms. He actually buried his face on her
shoulder and wept like a child.
"I was beginning to think I was never going to see you again,
sweetheart," he said brokenly.
It gave Mary a lonesome, remote feeling. She drew away from the others
into a corner of the temple and rested her chin on her hands.
"I wonder how it would feel to have some one big and strong and--and
handsome to love and protect one like that," she thought contemplatively.
Just then a figure staggered into the circle of light cast by the
lantern. It was Mr. Buxton.
"Good evening," he said. "Delightful weather, isn't it? Suppose we shed a
little light on Carlton's path," he added calmly, holding the light to
the door. Reggie was close behind his friend, however, and with feelings
of enormous relief, the little company proceeded to sit down on the floor
and relate their experiences.
"It all really happened," remarked Mary, after Billie had confessed the
cause of all the trouble, "because we tried to count the four hundred
statues of Buddha and never got the same answer twice, and he naturally
didn't like it, and I suppose he put us to sleep and summoned the
Storm King--"
"No, child," interrupted Mr. Buxton, "I am sorry to disabuse your
romantic young mind, but it really happened because the pressure of the
coming storm had a stupefying effect. Buddha was a very high-minded
gentleman. He would never have taken offence over such a trivial matter."
"Don't contradict her, Buxton," said Mr. Campbell. "You have no
imagination to comprehend the supernatural, anyhow."
"It would be supernatural for two women to count alike," answered the
incorrigible bachelor, who would have the last word.
Gradually the storm spent its fury, and by midnight they were able to
return to the little villa. Except for a few scratches and bruises, the
only important result of the Storm King's visit was Nancy's determination
to write a letter to Mme. Fontaine.