A LIVING STATUE
In the meantime Florence, too, had gone for a walk in the rain. The
discovery she made that day was destined to play a very large part in her
immediate future.
Florence by nature belonged to the country, not to the city. Fate had, by
some strange trick, cast her lot in the city. But on every possible
occasion she escaped to quiet places where the rattle and bang of city
life were gone and she might rest her weary feet by tramping over the
good, soft, yielding earth.
Since their rooms were very near the heart of the city, at first thought
it might seem impossible for her to reach such a spot of tranquility
without enduring an hour-long car ride.
This was not true. The city which had for so long been Florence's home is
unique. No other in the world is like it. Located upon a swamp, it turned
the swamp first into a garden, then into a city where millions live in
comfort. Finding a stagnant river running into the lake, it turned the
river about and made it a swift one going from the lake. Lacking islands
upon its shore-line, this enterprising metropolis proceeded to build
islands. A brisk twenty-minute walk brought Florence to one of these
islands.
This island at that time, though of a considerable size, was quite
incomplete. In time it was to be a place where millions would tread. At
that moment, save for one dark, dome-shaped building at its north end, it
was a place of desolation, or so it seemed to Florence.
At either end the land rose several feet above the surface of the lake.
In the center it was so low that in time of storm waves dashed completely
over it.
Since the island had been some years in building a voluntary forest which
might better, perhaps, be called a jungle, had sprung up on its southern
extremity. Beyond this jungle lay the breakwater where in time of storm
great waves mounted high and came crashing down upon heaps of limestone
rocks as large as small houses.
To the left of this jungle, on the side facing the lake, was a narrow,
sandy beach. It was toward this beach that Florence made her way. There
she hoped to spend an hour of quiet meditation as she promenaded the
hard-packed sand of the beach. Vain hope. Some one was there before her.
* * * * * * * *
Petite Jeanne had entered many strange places. None was more strange nor
more fantastically beautiful than the one she found within the four walls
of that dragon-guarded building in the heart of a great city.
Playing the role of an American born Chinese lady, she passed the
attendant and climbed two flights of stairs unmolested.
As she reached the top of the second flight she found her feet sinking
deep in the thick pile of an Oriental rug. One glance about her and she
gripped at her heart to still it.
"It is a dream!" she told herself. "There is no place like this."
Yet she dared not distrust her senses. Surely the lovely Chinese ladies,
dressed in curious Chinese garments of matchless silk, gliding silently
about the place, were real; so, too, was the faint, fragrant odor of
incense, and the lamps that, burning dimly, cast a shadow of purple and
old rose over all.
"Dragons," she murmured, "copper dragons looking as old as time itself.
Smoke creeps from their nostrils as if within them burned eternal fire.
Lamps made of three thousand bits of glass set in copper. Banners of
silk. Pictures of strange birds. Who could have planned all this and
brought it into being?
"And there," she whispered, as she dared a few steps across the first
soft-carpeted space, "there is an altar, an altar to a god wholly unknown
to me. The ladies are kneeling there. Suppose they invite me to join
them!" At once she felt terribly frightened. She sank deep in the
shadows. She was playing the part of a Chinese lady, yet she knew nothing
of their religion. And this appeared to be a temple.
She was contemplating flight when a sound, breaking in upon her
attention, caused her to pause. From somewhere, seemingly deep down and
far away, came the dong-dong of a gong. Deep, serene, melodious, it
seemed to call to her. A simple, impulsive child of nature, she murmured:
"It calls. I shall go."
Turning her back to the broad stairs that led down and away to the cool,
damp, outer air, she took three steps downward on a narrow circular
staircase which led, who could tell where?
Smoke rose from the spaces below, the smoke of many incense burners.
Pausing there, she seemed about to turn back. But again came the deep,
melodious, all but human call of the gong. Moving like one in a trance,
she took three more steps downward and was lost from sight.
* * * * * * * *
The person who had disturbed Florence's hoped-for hour of solitude on the
island beach was a girl. Yet, as Florence first saw her, she seemed less
a living person than a statue. Tanned by the sun to a shade that matched
the giant rock on which she stood, clad only in a scant bathing suit that
in color matched her skin, standing rigid, motionless, she seemed a thing
hewn of stone to stand there forever.
Yet, even as Florence looked on entranced, she flung her arms high, gave
vent to a scream that sent gulls scurrying from rocky roosts, and then,
leaping high, disappeared beneath the dull surface of the water.
That scream, together with the deft arching of her superb body as she
dove, marked her as one after Florence's own kind. Gone was her wish for
solitude. One desire possessed her now: to know this animated statue of
the island.
"Where does she live?" she asked herself. "How can she dare to visit this
desolate spot alone?"
Even as she asked this question, the girl emerged from the water, shook
back her tangled hair, drew a rough blue overall over her dripping
bathing suit, and then, leaping away like a wild deer, cleared the
breakwater at a bound and in a twinkling lost herself on a narrow path
that wound through the jungle of low willows and cottonwoods.
"She is gone!" Florence exclaimed. "I have lost her!" Nevertheless, she
went racing along the beach to enter the jungle over the path the girl
had taken. She had taken up a strange trail. That trail was short. It
ended abruptly. This she was soon enough to know.