Sylvia was in Tokyo.
He tried to beat down the wave-crest of emotion, happiness, that surged
over him, gripped him and shook him. He wanted none of it, wished
desperately to fight against it. It was all right for him to be pleased
to see her again, to be with her, but this titillating on the verge
of transports of joy--he would simply have to keep a tight hold on
himself. The situation held too many potentialities of complications,
uncertainties, distress. Even the way in which the news of her coming
had reached him had illustrated, oddly, the curious blend of the bitter
and the sweet which the situation held. It had been the Tinker hag
again. She had caught him at tea, had seized upon him and led him to
a secluded corner that she might enjoy in every detail, undisturbed,
his reaction to the dénouement. Probably she had overcome a desire
to fare forth and shout out the news in the market place, had kept
it for him, so that she might be the first to communicate it. It was
her hobby, probably the only interest which kept her alive, this
interest in living, this contriving complicated situations among her
acquaintances in order that she might satisfy a morbidly curious and
perverted taste for the dramatic by gloating over their display of the
more unusual emotions, their unguarded laying bare before her avid
eye the reactions usually painstakingly held in check. He had been
irritatedly aware of the greedy glare of this old woman; it was almost
indecent; as she watched him rapaciously solicitous lest she fail to
catch the slightest indication of face or voice which might betray his
feelings. He did not think she could have gotten much out of it. He
thought he had played up well. Still, one could never know. Anyway, it
was disquieting, disgusting, that the return of Sylvia, after all this
time, should immediately revive the watchfulness of the idle women,
should so wantonly render complicated, almost impossible, intimate
relation with this girl.
And, now, what about Sylvia? Did she know that he had become free? How
long had she known it? Had she just heard of it and returned forthwith?
No; he dismissed that thought. But might she not have heard some
time ago and simply allowed a decent interval to elapse in order to
avoid giving the gossips grist for their mills? But he caught himself
up sharply. What an ass he was to imagine, vaingloriously, that he
had entered into her considerations at all. Presumably she had been
governed by entirely different motives, something not even remotely
connected with him. What grounds had he to imagine that his presence
was of the slightest moment to her. Of course, it did seem as if she
must have left Tokyo on account of the gossip connecting him with her;
but, after all, that proved nothing, could certainly not by even the
most fanciful contortion of imagination be construed into an indication
of feeling related to affection. No, he was an ass.
The only thing he could do would be to sit tight and suffer matters to
occur as they might. He was curious to meet her--he sternly insisted to
himself that that was all--and yet he rather dreaded it, wondered what
he should say, how he should act. He would leave it to her to take the
lead. Women did these things better than men, had finer perceptions,
possessed an instinctive sureness with which they could handle deftly
such delicate situations.
So when he met her, he was not much surprised that the incident seemed
almost commonplace. Luckily, there were others at the time whom she
met also for the first time since her return. She treated him exactly
like these, included him with those others with the usual drab,
conventional commonplaces. It almost irritated him that the meeting
had been so trivial. Was she then not interested? It piqued him. Well,
why shouldn't he find out. He was free now, and if he did care for
her--there was no denying that she interested him immensely, that
she still had that old charm for him, yes, hang it, that he did care
for, that he might easily come to love her. And why not? Came back to
his mind the charm of the days when he and she had been close, when
he had been afraid to dally with the thought of her in the place of
Isabel. He need not fear that now. He had the right to. And if it had
been pleasant then, why not now, why not allow himself the felicity
of dreaming that dream. He warmed to the thought, a glow of sheer
pleasure and happiness suffused him. Of course. He would be careful to
be tactful. She was tremendously sensitive and he must take care not
to spoil everything by being too precipitate, but he would watch his
chance.
It took time, still, as he felt his way slowly, with anxious care,
holding himself in check, carefully consolidating such little gains as
he made before venturing an infinitely small step forward, he felt that
they were gradually approaching something like the old relation. He
had even come to the point where they had made a few small excursions
together. But they were few and separated by intervals that seemed
infinitely long, and he fretted under the necessity of keeping himself
in hand. Now that he was allowing himself to consider, at least as a
remote potentiality, the idea of love, the situation became ever so
much more complicated, was more difficult to manage. He must not allow
himself to think of this too much. In the back of his mind remained
the uneasy thought that he had loved Isabel, had ardently desired to
marry her--and then his marriage had been a failure, anyway. If one
failed once, one might do so twice. After all, love was often mainly
something contrived by oneself. One took love of an image conjured
up by one's imagination for love of the woman; it might be a sort of
auto-intoxication. He must be sure of himself. He must force himself to
be rational, to refrain from letting fancy take charge of what should
be the function of the brain. Anyway, there was plenty of work to do.
He would use work as a counterirritant.
Japan had suddenly launched into one of its periods of frantic
excitement. First came news from Manchuria, where Chang Tso-lin
was moving a great expedition to drive the Soviet troops out of
Mongolia. Conservative papers registered perfunctory surprise at the
completeness of his equipment, motor transport, field artillery, even
airplanes; but most of the papers, the people generally, sneered
contemptuously, shrugged shoulders. It was an old story. Of course,
the Manchurian war-lord could have obtained them from only one source,
the militarists. The War Office issued its usual denial, which no
one believed. Presently came news of attacks by Chinese bandits on
settlements in the South Manchuria Railway territory, massacres
of Japanese colonists, clashes with Japanese police, burning of a
consulate or two. From high official sources, unnamed, but generously
quoted in the press, were given out alarming statements. It was the
Bolshevik menace, irresponsible hordes of Manchuria, malcontent
Koreans, being goaded on by mysterious machinations from Moscow. It
would be necessary to move troops into Manchuria to protect the railway
region, especially now that Chang Tso-lin was engaged in Mongolia and
could not protect neighboring territory. The divisions in Korea were
moved inland. It would be necessary to send fresh troops to Korea. Of
course, it would be impossible to consider the proposition to reduce
the army at the session of the Diet which was just about to meet.
The people murmured; again the feeling became prevalent that a great
militaristic scheme was being carried out, cleverly hidden by the
uniformed old men up there in the copper-roofed building towering
on the hill beyond the Foreign Office. Opinions were divided. Some
insisted that Japanese lives must be avenged, colonists protected,
the dignity of the Empire upheld; others cried out bitterly that the
entire turmoil was but part of a great plot ingeniously hatched out by
the General Staff. Some papers claimed to have proof that this was but
another attempt to carry out the favorite old military plan, to have
a buffer state created by Chang Tso-lin and remnants of White Russian
factions; that the bandits were backed by Chang, that the very rifles
which had dealt out death to Japanese had been furnished in mysterious
roundabout ways by the War Office. It was hinted that the massacres
were, in fact, quite welcome to the General Staff, that they were a
part of the whole scheme.
It was a busy period for Kent. News was breaking constantly, here
and there, in unexpected quarters. It was intensely interesting at
first, sending story upon story over the wire, each one conveying
the tingling feeling of anticipation that each day was bringing
nearer some great event, some cataclysm, indefinite but gradually
assuming certainty, something overwhelming, big news. But events were
happening too quickly,--the staccato hammering of situation after
situation, the Manchurian affair, army bill, rice scandal, Diet fights,
police charges, rumors and revelations, farmer revolts and riots in
the cities, all became a conglomerate chaos of excitement, a whirl
of incidents flickering by with dizzily shifting changes, making
concentration on any one of them almost impossible. Like the nation in
general, Kent found himself unable to maintain the high key of excited
absorption; one became overwhelmed as if by a succession of great
waves, one following so closely after the other that the mind, battered
and bewildered, failing to register complete, clear impression of each
one, became in reaction dulled, exhausted, almost apathetic. After
all, this ubiquitous clamor, this constantly flickering and flashing
of new heterogeneous pictures, produced finally but an impression
of a stupendous blur; one became exhausted by the repetition of
explosions of excitement, causing one to hold one's breath, nervously,
in expectancy of some prodigious dénouement, a political deluge, that
constantly impended but which always seemed to fall just short, to
evaporate harmlessly as each happening became overshadowed by the
occurrence of some new and astounding development.
It became necessary to remain almost constantly near the center of
affairs, to be in readiness to snap up the news events which flashed
forth with explosive suddenness, like lightning from a hovering
thunder cloud. It became his custom to spend much of his time at the
Imperial Hotel. It was close to the Diet building, the Foreign Office,
the central police station, and when things were quiet, when there
was nothing to do but wait, he enjoyed the atmosphere, the feeling
of remoteness from the humdrum surroundings of everyday modernity,
which was conveyed to him by this enormous structure of fantastic
masonry where genius had contrived to work out in permanencies of
stone and bronze the delicate and ephemeral fancies of an opulent
dream image. Resting in a remote corner among the myriad corniced
recesses which gave on the spacious vestibule, his eye found constant
delight in the intricacy of detail, embroidery-like stone pillar,
fretwork and balustrades, gilded mortar binding together complicated
interlacing designs; the flood of colors of rugs and cushions--browns,
ocher, terracotta and maroon, and blues, ultra-marine, lapis lazuli,
indigo--in a riot of shadings and combinations, and all of it, colors
and contours, blended into a great harmonious whole, impressive,
inspiring, so it seemed almost a sacrilege that this mirage-like
brilliance should be profaned by the comings and goings of mere hotel
guests and townsfolk bent on prosaic concerns of business.
In the afternoon, at tea time, it was especially pleasant, when the
Russian orchestra played. Flicker of color of butterfly-winged kimonos
would animate the scene with a glimmer of exotic rich life. They really
fitted into the picture, these young girls of the Japanese aristocracy,
with their undulating, polychromatic textures, and when the music lent
itself to the forming of a picture, some symphony or bit of opera, one
might dream oneself surrounded by an Arabian Nights setting, or a scene
from "Aïda."
Here one might meet every one who counted at all in the ultra-modern
life of Tokyo, foreigners and Japanese, business men, newspapermen,
young fellows from the embassies, in the bar; and, upstairs, in the
lobby or in Peacock Alley, the women at tea. Kent often saw the Suzuki
girls there. Kimiko seemed happy enough, showed no trace of the
incident which had brought her to him. But he came principally for the
chance that it afforded him to see Sylvia.
It had been a strenuous afternoon, but a disappointing one. A stormy
scene had been expected in the Diet. He had sat in the gallery for
hours, listening to dreary debate, hoping that momentarily something
would happen; had made the rounds of the Foreign Office, newspaper
offices, even the lair of old Viscount Kikuchi--but nothing out of the
ordinary had occurred. Now the Diet had adjourned until the following
morning; the crowds had dispersed. He was glad to see Sylvia alone at
one of the tables overlooking the inner court.
"You're just the one I want to see. It's been a maddening day; lots of
work and no results. May I sit with you?"
"Of course, but I'm afraid I cannot be with you long, although, as a
matter of fact, I'm trying to make a sort of a meal here. I'm off on an
expedition of my own, and I shall have no dinner until late, midnight
maybe."
An expedition. He urged her not to be mysterious. She soon gave in.
After all, it was entirely professional. She intended to go to the
great Nichiren temple at Ikegami, a few miles from Tokyo. It would
be full moon and she had always had an idea that there might be a
picture there for her, some fantastic harmonious blending of contour of
gnarled pines, curved temple roofs, which might be enhanced, softened,
etherealized by moonbeam glamor.
"I'm not at all sure that there will be a picture there, at least not
for me. I may not be able to get enough color out of it; but I want
the experience, anyway, the eeriness of the hundreds of old graves in
the cryptomeria shadows. I have been wanting to go for a long time; so
to-night I'm going."
The idea appealed to him instantly. "I wish you'd let me come with
you."
"I'm afraid it might be rather unconventional, would it not?" she
hesitated.
"It would be still more unconventional if you went alone. You should
have an escort. I shan't disturb you. I promise you that I shall be as
dumb and unobtrusive as your walking-stick; but, really, I do wish you
would let me come along."
She looked at him reflectively. He wondered what thoughts were forming
behind these fine, black eyes; the desire to go with her, which had
been only an inspirational whim, took deeper hold. She must let him
come. He leaned forward earnestly. She smiled. "Very well, then. I
suppose you might as well come; but remember, I shall be at work; I
shall want to think, to absorb. You must be as you promised, just
inanimate, a block of wood."
He promised hastily, curiously noting in himself a feeling of trembling
pleasure. They finished their tea and took the electric train to Omori.
Twilight was falling when they reached the village. They walked through
narrow winding lanes, past tall bamboo fences enclosing spacious
gardens, came to the open country, rice fields, scattered groups of
houses clustered on tree-clad hills. In the gathering shadows crickets
were tuning up for their serenades; the moon, rising from behind the
pine groves on the Ikegami ridge, bathed the landscape with soft
luminosity.
As they climbed the long broad stone stairway leading up to the temple
heights, they heard the monotonous euphony of a chant. At a minor
shrine close to the entrance a priest was engaged in some ceremonial.
As they stood by the stone foxes guarding the entrance to the small
court fronting it, they could see his vestmented figure, kneeling,
facing the dimly illuminated gorgeousness of gilt, and brocade, and
lacquer, a glimpse of resplendent Oriental opulence devoted to
mysterious, age-old rites.
They passed on. The rest of the temple grounds lay in darkness,
illuminated sparingly by a few faint electric lights, irritatingly
modern amidst all the ancient buildings, lofty cryptomerias, crumbling
tombs. They passed along the broad stone-paved path, smoothed by wear
of feet of generations of worshipers, under the massive, towering
crimson gateway leading into the inner court. Here was a plateau
on the hilltop, whence ran on all sides corrugations of ridges and
valleys, set with hundreds of graves, carved stone monuments, lichened
sepulchers, broodingly silent in the shadows of fantastically gnarled
pine limbs.
The main temple buildings were closed. The wide court was bathed
in moonlight, brilliant, white, setting out in strong relief every
detail of contour of curved roof, carved pillars, bronze figures
anachronistically finding in their midst a battered rapid-fire gun,
trophy from the Russian War. But it was all too brightly visible, too
plainly seen; the eeriness, the nebulous awe of obscure mystery, lay
beyond, all about them, among the graves in the shadows of the pines.
From the right of the courtyard, near the gateway, a pathway ran,
straight as a sword, penetrating into the heart of the pine grove, a
chasm of opalescent light, a shimmery gorge of white brilliance in
abrupt contrast to the almost solid walls of blackness, leading like a
fantastically contrived magic road to a pagoda, which closed it, with
intricately carved roof set upon roof, rising with slender elegance
towards the dark sapphire heavens. It formed a picture, but strange,
eccentrically unusual, without color--pale, shimmery, pearly--set
against ebony blackness. It seemed to him that it would be impossible
to express it through the ordinary media of the brush; as if it might
be worked out only by some odd special process, mother-of-pearl and
teak; but even then it would lose the peculiar scintillating brilliance
which seemed to make even the blackness luminous.
He looked at the girl, wondering what she was getting out of it. She
was entirely absorbed, eyes intent, frowning in thought, perplexity.
She shook her head. "No. Come."
They crossed the courtyard, found a path leading behind one of the main
buildings and an old, crumbling edifice, rotting, giving forth moldy
odor of decay. It led down into a lower stratum of ridges and gullies,
slippery flags laid between mounds and hillsides, twisting and turning,
with stone stairways, leading upwards, downwards, among thousands of
ancient burial plots. Over it all lay the murky shadows of cryptomeria,
slashed here and there by bright streaks of pale moonlight. The
silence seemed uncannily brooding, ominously oppressive, riven only by
spasmodic droning booms from a great brass bell, somewhere deep in the
shadows behind them, reverberating shiveringly through the shadows.
It was as if they were enveloped in an atmosphere of the supernatural,
as if they had willfully intruded into a realm of ghosts and specters,
a scene set for mysterious _danse macabre_-like rites, rash beings
possessed of the ephemeral spark of life of the moment interfering with
their puny inconsequential presence in this, the realm of those who had
held sway here for centuries.
She had taken his arm; now she was clinging to him closely. He could
feel her shivering nervously. The feeling was infectious, crept over
him irritatingly. He brought himself together. "Come, you are getting
nervous. Let us rest for a moment before going on."
He led her up a stairway leading to the top of a small eminence, an
enclosure surrounded by a low stone balustrade, evidently the private
burial place of some family of the nobility of remote medieval days. In
the open space surrounded on all sides by blackness the illumination
seemed almost dazzling, brilliantly white, with a spotlight effect,
enhancing the sense of unearthliness, remoteness from the world of
material things.
They found a fallen stone pillar and seated themselves. She remained
silent, staring out into this spectral ghost world, the fantastic
eccentricities of shapes and contours, where everything was black and
white only, like a gigantic etching. He, watching her, became absorbed
in turn. He was pleased that she fitted into the scene, even into the
Oriental setting, a filmy silk shawl lending a kimono-like effect, her
great pile of raven hair suggestive of the high Japanese coiffure.
Whimsically, out of nowhere, came the idea to him: thank providence,
she was not a blonde! It would have spoiled the effect which she was
now producing--fine, clear profile, pale features, black hair blending
into the picture formed by mass-grown monuments, great carved lanterns,
outlined sharply in the suffusion of moonlight.
The whole thing seemed unreal, as if they had found themselves suddenly
in a world centuries removed from that in which they usually moved, as
if they had become participants in an elfin play, were on the brink of
the enacting of something supernatural, some midsummer night's dream
fancy, or a dance of specters; as if they might expect momentarily to
hear some unseen goblin orchestra strike into an overture of tinkling
bluebells, insect violins, bumblebee bassoons, murmur of night wind,
leading them, this girl and himself, into some scene of dreamlike
phantasy in which they had fortuitously become the main characters.
What a setting for romance! These surroundings, this girl, this wonder
of pure, harmonious perfection! Somehow, he felt that it would be
impossible to create again this same effect, that it could not be
consciously contrived merely by coming to this place any moonlight
night with the determination, purposely, of summoning the spell.
There came to him a feeling that this could be attained only once in
a lifetime, that he was impassively, fatuously failing to seize the
immeasurably rare opportunity----
Opportunity for what? He shook himself together. He was becoming
moonstruck. After all, this girl---- She did not notice his gaze. It
was fascinating to watch her, the infinitely fine play of light in
her eyes, her impatient frown in concentration of thoughts which were
almost palpable, visible. And yet, what did she think? It occurred that
in the same manner he had speculated as to the thoughts which might
lurk behind the white brows of Kimiko-san, Sadako-san and the rest. How
different they must be; fine, dreamlike, exotic, quaint as might be
the ideas of those girls, would not the glamor thereof, the ephemeral
delicacy, fade as one became familiar with them, become commonplace,
irritatingly trite after wear of years of association? Here, on the
other hand, was a brain capable of absorbing the most subtle and
evasive expressions of life, existence in its varied manifestations, of
shaping them into concrete, lasting form, creative, a mind like one's
own, or even more capable, which would grow, develop like an unfolding
blossom, presenting ever new beauties and richness in years of life
together.
Without conscious thought, acting entirely on impulse, he leaned
towards her. She looked at him, awakened suddenly from her reverie. "I
must be poor company," she smiled. "But then, you know, I told you
beforehand. It is all so bewildering, puzzling to me. I can see the
pictures here, the dazzlingly wonderful potentialities which lie right
here before me, about me; and yet I can't get hold of it. It eludes me
entirely. It is the lack of color, I think, the predominance of light
and shadow effects, black and white. It is not for me, I'm afraid.
This is a subject for some great etcher, for some kind of a Klinger or
Boeklin composition; and yet one would have to get in these elusive
opalescent tints, these evasive iridescences. It is very disappointing,
to feel it all so far beyond one's capabilities; and yet I have enjoyed
it so much. I have let it get away with me. But now it must be late.
Come," she took his hand simply, confidently. "We must be going home.
You must forgive me if I have let the moonlight run away with my
thoughts. But didn't you feel something like that too? Did you not feel
coming to you dreams, visions that, even though they must fade away and
lose their evanescence, will still continue to live in some form, to
take shape in one's life."
He did not answer. The dream was already beginning to concentrate, to
solidify into definite form of thought, purpose. He wondered whether it
were possible that she might divine, by some subtle woman's intuition,
the inspiration which was now growing into tangible form of a wish,
deliberate pursuance of desire, that now finally he was sure that she
was the woman whom he had been awaiting, that he had come to the end of
his seeking.