illustration: i consented to deliver a message for him] the slim princess * * * * * _by_ george ade 1907 * * * * * "the slim princess" has been elaborated and rewritten from a story printed in _the saturday evening post_ of philadelphia late in 1906 and copyright, 1906, by the curtis publishing company. * * * * * contents i woman in morovenia ii kalora's affliction iii the cruelty of law iv the garden party v he arrives vi he departs vii the only koldo viii by messenger ix as to washington, d.c. x on the wing xi an outing--a reunion xii the governor cables xiii the home-coming xiv heroism rewarded * * * * * the slim princess * * * * * i woman in morovenia morovenia is a state in which both the mosque and the motor-car now occur in the same landscape. it started out to be turkish and later decided to be european. the mohammedan sanctuaries with their hideous stencil decorations and bulbous domes are jostled by many new shops with blinking fronts and german merchandise. the orthodox turn their faces toward mecca while the enlightened dream of a journey to paris. men of title lately have made the pleasing discovery that they may drink champagne and still be good mussulmans. the red slipper has been succeeded by the tan gaiter. the voluminous breeches now acknowledge the superior graces of intimate english trousers. frock-coats are more conventional than beaded jackets. the fez remains as a part of the insignia of the old faith and hereditary devotion to the sick man. the generation of males which has been extricating itself from the shackles of orientalism has not devoted much worry to the condition of woman. in morovenia woman is still unliberated. she does not dine at a palm-garden or hop into a victoria on thursday afternoon to go to the meeting of a club organized to propagate cults. if she met a cult face to face she would not recognize it. nor does she suspect, as she sits in her prison apartment, peeping out through the lattice at the monotonous drift of the street life, that her sisters in far-away michigan are organizing and raising missionary funds in her behalf. she does not read the dressmaking periodicals. she never heard of the wednesday matinée. when she takes the air she rides in a carriage that has a sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to the eyes, and she must never lean out to wriggle her little finger-tips at men lolling in front of the cafés. she must not see the men. she may look at them, but she must not see them. no wonder the sisters in michigan are organizing to batter down the walls of tradition, and bring to her the more recent privileges of her sex! two years ago, when this story had its real beginning, the social status of woman in morovenia was not greatly different from what it is to-day, or what it was two centuries ago. woman had two important duties assigned to her. one was to hide herself from the gaze of the multitude, and the other was to be beautiful--that is, fat. a woman who was plump, or buxom, or chubby might be classed as passably attractive, but only the fat women were irresistible. a woman weighing two hundred pounds was only two-thirds as beautiful as one weighing three hundred. those grading below one hundred and fifty were verging upon the impossible. ii kalora's affliction if it had been planned to make this an old-fashioned discursive novel, say of the victor hugo variety, the second chapter would expend itself upon a philosophical discussion of fat and a sensational showing of how and why the presence or absence of adipose tissue, at certain important crises, had altered the destinies of the whole race. the subject offers vast possibilities. it involves the physical attractiveness of every woman in history and permits one to speculate wildly as to what might have happened if cleopatra had weighed forty pounds heavier, if elizabeth had been a gaunt and wiry creature, or if joan of arc had been so bulky that she could not have fastened on her armor. the soft layers which enshroud the hard machinery of the human frame seem to arrive in a merely incidental or accidental sort of way. yet once they have arrived they exert a mysterious influence over careers. because of a mere change in contour, many a queen has lost her throne. it is a terrifying thought when one remembers that fat so often comes and so seldom goes. it has been explained that in morovenia, obesity and feminine beauty increased in the same ratio. the woman reigning in the hearts of men was the one who could displace the most atmosphere. because of the fashionableness of fat, count selim malagaski, governor-general of morovenia, was very unhappy. he had two daughters. one was fat; one was thin. to be more explicit, one was gloriously fat and the other was distressingly thin. jeneka was the name of the one who had been blessed abundantly. several of the younger men in official circles, who had seen jeneka at a distance, when she waddled to her carriage or turned side-wise to enter a shop-door, had written verses about her in which they compared her to the blushing pomegranate, the ripe melon, the luscious grape, and other vegetable luxuries more or less globular in form. no one had dedicated any verses to kalora. kalora was the elder of the two. she had come to the alarming age of nineteen and no one had started in bidding for her. in court circles, where there is much time for idle gossip, the most intimate secrets of an important household are often bandied about when the black coffee is being served. the marriageable young men of morovenia had learned of the calamity in count malagaski's family. they knew that kalora weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds. she was tall, lithe, slender, sinuous, willowy, hideous. the fact that poor old count malagaski had made many unsuccessful attempts to fatten her was a stock subject for jokes of an unrefined and turkish character. whereas jeneka would recline for hours at a time on a shaded veranda, munching sugary confections that were loaded with nutritious nuts, kalora showed a far-western preference for pickles and olives, and had been detected several times in the act of bribing servants to bring this contraband food into the harem. worse still, she insisted upon taking exercise. she loved to play romping games within the high walls of the inclosure where she and the other female attaches of the royal household were kept penned up. her father coaxed, pleaded and even threatened, but she refused to lead the indolent life prescribed by custom; she scorned the sweet and heavy foods which would enable her to expand into loveliness; she persistently declined to be fat. kalora's education was being directed by a superannuated professor named popova. he was so antique and book-wormy that none of the usual objections urged against the male sex seemed to hold good in his case, and he had the free run of the palace. count selim malagaski trusted him implicitly. popova fawned upon the governor-general, and seemed slavish in his devotion. secretly and stealthily he was working out a frightful vengeance upon his patron. twenty years before, count selim, in a moment of anger, had called popova a "christian dog." in morovenia it is flattery to call a man a "liar." it is just the same as saying to him, "you belong in the diplomatic corps." it is no disgrace to be branded as a thief, because all business transactions are saturated with treachery. but to call another a "christian dog" is the thirty-third degree of insult. popova writhed in spirit when he was called "christian," but he covered his wrath and remained in the nobleman's service and waited for his revenge. and now he was sacrificing the innocent kalora in order to punish the father. he said to himself: "if she does not fatten, then her father's heart will be broken, and he will suffer even as i have suffered from being called christian." it was popova who, by guarded methods, encouraged her to violent exercise, whereby she became as hard and trim as an antelope. he continued to supply her with all kinds of sour and biting foods and sharp mineral waters, which are the sworn enemies of any sebaceous condition. and now that she was nineteen, almost at the further boundary of the marrying age, and slimmer than ever before, he rejoiced greatly, for he had accomplished his deep and malign purpose, and laid a heavy burden of sorrow upon count selim malagaski. iii the cruelty of law if the father was worried by the prolonged crisis, the younger sister, jeneka, was well-nigh distracted, for she could not hope to marry until kalora had been properly mated and sent away. in morovenia there is a very strict law intended to eliminate the spinster from the social horizon. it is a law born of craft and inspired by foresight. the daughters of a household must be married off in the order of their nativity. the younger sister dare not contemplate matrimony until the elder sister has been led to the altar. it is impossible for a young and attractive girl to make a desirable match leaving a maiden sister marooned on the market. she must cooperate with her parents and with the elder sister to clear the way. as a rule this law encourages earnest getting-together in every household and results in a clearing up of the entire stock of eligible daughters. but think of the unhappy lot of an adorable and much-coveted maiden who finds herself wedged in behind something unattractive and shelf-worn! jeneka was thus pocketed. she could do nothing except fold her hands and patiently wait for some miraculous intervention. in morovenia the discreet marrying age is about sixteen. jeneka was eighteen--still young enough and of a most ravishing weight, but the slim princess stood as a slight, yet seemingly insurmountable barrier between her and all hopes of conventional happiness. count malagaski did not know that the shameful fact of kalora's thinness was being whispered among the young men of morovenia. when the daughters were out for their daily carriage-ride both wore flowing robes. in the case of kalora, this augmented costume was intended to conceal the absence of noble dimensions. it is not good form in morovenia for a husband or father to discuss his home life, or to show enthusiasm on the subject of mere woman; but the count, prompted by a fretful desire to dispose of his rapidly maturing offspring, often remarked to the high-born young gentlemen of his acquaintance that kalora was a most remarkable girl and one possessed of many charms, leaving them to infer, if they cared to do so, that possibly she weighed at least one hundred and eighty pounds. [illustration: papova rejoiced greatly] [blank page] these casual comments did not seem to arouse any burning curiosity among the young men, and up to the day of kalora's nineteenth anniversary they had not had the effect of bringing to the father any of those guarded inquiries which, under the oriental custom, are always preliminary to an actual proposal of marriage. count selim malagaski had a double reason for wishing to see kalora married. while she remained at home he knew that he would be second in authority. there is an occidental misapprehension to the effect that every woman beyond the borders of the levant is a languorous and waxen lily, floating in a milk-warm pool of idleness. it is true that the women of a household live in certain apartments set aside as a "harem." but "harem" literally means "forbidden"--that is, forbidden to the public, nothing more. every villa at newport has a "harem." the women of morovenia do not pour tea for men every afternoon, and they are kept well under cover, but they are not slaves. they do not inherit a nominal authority, but very often they assume a real authority. in the united states, women can not sail a boat, and yet they direct the cruise of the yacht. railway presidents can not vote in the senate, and yet they always know how the votes are going to be cast. and in morovenia, many a clever woman, deprived of specified and legal rights, has learned to rule man by those tactful methods which are in such general use that they need not be specified in this connection. kalora had a way of getting around her father. after she had defied him and put him into a stewing rage, she would smooth him the right way and, with teasing little cajoleries, nurse him back to a pleasant humor. he would find himself once more at the starting-place of the controversy, his stern commands unheeded, and the disobedient daughter laughing in his very face. thus, while he was ashamed of her physical imperfections, he admired her cleverness. often he said to popova: "i tell you, she might make some man a sprightly and entertaining companion, even if she _is_ slender." whereupon the crafty popova would reply: "be patient, your excellency. we shall yet have her as round as a dumpling." and all the time he was keeping her trained as fine as the proverbial fiddle. iv the garden party said the governor-general to himself in that prime hour for wide-awake meditation--the one just before arising for breakfast: "she is not all that she should be, and yet, millions of women have been less than perfect and most of them have married." he looked hard at the ceiling for a full minute and then murmured, "even men have their shortcomings." this declaration struck him as being sinful and almost infidel in its radicalism, and yet it seemed to open the way to a logical reason why some titled bachelor of damaged reputation and tottering finances might balance his poor assets against a dowry and a social position, even though he would be compelled to figure kalora into the bargain. it must be known that the governor-general was now simply looking for a husband for kalora. he did not hope to top the market or bring down any notable catch. he favored any alliance that would result in no discredit to his noble lineage. "at present they do not even nibble," he soliloquized, still looking at the ceiling. "they have taken fright for some reason. they may have an inkling of the awful truth. she is nineteen. next year she will be twenty--the year after that twenty-one. then it would be too late. a desperate experiment is better than inaction. i have much to gain and nothing to lose. i must exhibit kalora. i shall bring the young men to her. some of them may take a fancy to her. i have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. there may be in morovenia one--one would be sufficient--one bachelor who is no stickler for full-blown loveliness. i may find a man who has become inoculated with western heresies and believes that a woman with intellect is desirable, even though under weight. i may find a fool, or an aristocrat who has gambled. i may stumble upon good fortune if i put her out among the young men. yes, i must exhibit her, but how--how?" he began reaching into thin air for a pretext and found one. the inspiration was simple and satisfying. he would give a garden-party in honor of mr. rawley plumston, the british consul. of course he would have to invite mrs. plumston and then, out of deference to european custom, he would have his two daughters present. it was only by the use of imported etiquette that he could open the way to direct courtship. possibly some of the cautious young noblemen would talk with kalora, and, finding her bright-eyed, witty, ready in conversation and with enthusiasm for big and masculine undertakings, be attracted to her. at the same time her father decided that there was no reason why her pitiful shortage of avoirdupois should be candidly advertised. even at a garden-party, where the guests of honor are two english subjects, the young women would be required to veil themselves up to the nose-tips and hide themselves within a veritable cocoon of soft garments. the invitations went out and the acceptances came in. the english were flattered. count malagaski was buoyed by new hopes and the daughters were in a day-and-night flutter, for neither of them had ever come within speaking distance of the real young man of their dreams. on the morning of the day set apart for the début of kalora, count selim went to her apartments, and, with a rather shamefaced reluctance, gave his directions. "kalora, i have done all for you that any father could do for a beloved child and you are still thin," he began. "slender," she corrected. "thin," he repeated. "thin as a crane--a mere shadow of a girl--and, what is more deplorable, apparently indifferent to the sorrow that you are causing those most interested in your welfare." "i am not indifferent, father. if, merely by wishing, i could be fat, i would make myself the shape of the french balloon that floated over morovenia last week. i would be so roly-poly that, when it came time for me to go and meet our guests this afternoon, i would roll into their presence as if i were a tennis-ball." "why should you know anything about tennis-balls? you, of all the young women in morovenia, seem to be the only one with a fondness for athletics. i have heard that in great britain, where the women ride and play rude, manly games, there has been developed a breed as hard as flint--allah preserve me from such women!" "father, you are leading up to something. what is it you wish to say?" "this. you have persistently disobeyed me and made me very unhappy, but to-day i must ask you to respect my wishes. do not proclaim to our guests the sad truth regarding your deficiency." "good!" she exclaimed gaily. "i shall wear a robe the size of an arabian tent, and i shall surround myself with soft pillows, and i shall wheeze when i breathe and--who knows?--perhaps some dark-eyed young man worth a million piasters will be deceived, and will come to you to-morrow, and buy me--buy me at so much a pound." and she shrieked with laughter. "stop!" commanded her father. "you refuse to take me seriously, but i am in earnest. do not humiliate me in the presence of my friends this afternoon." then he hurried away before she had time to make further sport of him. to count selim malagaski this garden-party was the frantic effort of a sinking man. to kalora it was a lark. from the pure fun of the thing, she obeyed her father. she wore four heavily quilted and padded gowns, one over another, and when she and jeneka were summoned from their apartments and went out to meet the company under the trees, they were almost like twins and both duck-like in general outlines. first they met mrs. rawley plumston, a very tall, bony and dignified woman in gray, wearing a most flowery hat. to every man of morovenia mrs. plumston was the apotheosis of all that was undesirable in her sex, but they were exceedingly polite to her, for the reason that morovenia owed a great deal of money in london and it was a set policy to cultivate the friendship of the british. while jeneka and kalora were being presented to the consul's wife, these same young men, the very flower of bachelorhood, stood back at a respectful distance and regarded the young women with half-concealed curiosity. to be permitted to inspect young women of the upper classes was a most unusual privilege, and they knew why the privilege had been extended to them. it was all very amusing, but they were too well bred to betray their real emotions. when they moved up to be presented to the sisters they seemed grave in their salutations and restrained themselves, even though one pair of eyes, peering out above a very gauzy veil, seemed to twinkle with mischief and to corroborate their most pronounced suspicions. out of courtesy to his guests, count malagaski had made his garden-party as deadly dull as possible. little groups of bored people drifted about under the trees and exchanged the usual commonplace observations. tea and cakes were served under a canopy tent and the local orchestra struggled with pagan music. kalora found herself in a wide and easy kind of a basket-chair sitting under a tree and chatting with mrs. plumston. she was trying to be at her ease, and all the time she knew that every young man present was staring at her out of the corner of his eye. mrs. plumston, although very tall and evidently of brawny strength, had a twittering little voice and a most confiding manner. she was immensely interested in the daughter of the governor-general. to meet a young girl who had spent her life within the mysterious shadows of an oriental household gave her a tingling interest, the same as reading a forbidden book. she readily won the confidence of kalora, and kalora, being most ingenuous and not educated to the wiles of the drawing-room, spoke her thoughts with the utmost candor. "i like you," she said to mrs. plumston, "and, oh, how i envy you! you go to balls and dinners and the theater, don't you?" "alas, yes, and you escape them! how i envy _you_!" "your husband is a very handsome man. do you love him?" "i tolerate him." "does he ever scold you for being thin?" "does he _what_?" "is he ever angry with you because you are not big and plump and--and--pulpy?" "heavens, no! if my husband has any private convictions regarding my personal appearance, he is discreet enough to keep them to himself. if he isn't satisfied with me, he should be. i have been working for years to save myself from becoming fat and plump and--pulpy." "then you don't think fat women are beautiful?" "my child, in all enlightened countries adipose is woman's worst enemy. if i were a fat woman, and a man said that he loved me, i should know that he was after my bank-account. take my advice, my dear young lady, and bant." "bant?" "reduce. make yourself slender. you have beautiful eyes, beautiful hair, a perfect complexion, and with a trim figure you would be simply incomparable." kalora listened, trembling with surprise and pleasure. then she leaned over and took the hand of the gracious englishwoman. "i have a confession to make," she said in a whisper. "i am not fat--i am slim--quite slim." and then, at that moment, something happened to make this whole story worth telling. it was a little something, but it was the beginning of many strange experiences, for it broke up the wonderful garden-party in the grounds of the governor-general, and it gave morovenia something to talk about for many weeks to come. it all came about as follows: at the military club, the night before the party, a full score of young men, representing the quality, sat at an oblong table and partook of refreshments not sanctioned by the prophet. they were young men of registered birth and supposititious breeding, even though most of them had very little head back of the ears and wore the hair clipped short and were big of bone, like work-horses, and had the gusty manners of the camp. they were foolishly gloating over the prospect of meeting the two daughters of the governor-general, and were telling what they knew about them with much freedom, for, even in a monarchy, the chief executive and his family are public property and subject to the censorship of any one who has a voice for talking. of these male gossips there were a few who said, with gleeful certainty, that the elder daughter was a mere twig who could hide within the shadow of her bounteous and incomparable sister. "wait until to-morrow and you shall see," they said, wagging their heads very wisely. to-morrow had come and with it the party and here was kalora--a pretty face peering out from a great pod of clothes. they stood back and whispered and guessed, until one, more enterprising than the others, suggested a bold experiment to set all doubts at rest. count malagaski had provided a diversion for his guests. a company of arabian acrobats, on their way from constantinople to paris, had been intercepted, and were to give an exhibition of leaping and pyramid-building at one end of the garden. while kalora was chatting with mrs. plumston, the acrobats had entered and, throwing off their yellow-and-black striped gowns, were preparing for the feats. they were behind the two women and at the far end of the garden. mrs. plumston and kalora would have to move to the other side of the tree in order to witness the exhibition. this fact gave the devil-may-care young bachelors a ready excuse. "do as i have directed and you shall learn for yourselves," said the one who had invented the tactics. "i tell you that what you see is all shell. now then--" four conspirators advanced in a half-careless and sauntering manner to where kalora and the consul's wife sat by the sheltering tree, intent upon their exchange of secrets. "pardon me, mrs. plumston, but the acrobats are about to begin," said one of the young men, touching the fez with his forefinger. "oh, really?" she exclaimed, looking up. "we must see them." "you must face the other way," said the young man. "they are at the east end of the garden. permit us." whereupon the young man who had spoken and a companion who stood at his side very gently picked up mrs. plumston's big basket-chair between them and carried it around to the other side of the tree. and the two young men who had been waiting just behind picked up kalora's chair and carried _her_ to the other side of the tree, and put her down beside the consul's wife. did they carry her? no, they dandled her. she was as light as a feather for these two young giants of the military. they made a palpable show of the ridiculous ease with which they could lift their burden. it may have been a forward thing to do, but they had done it with courtly politeness, and the consul's wife, instead of being annoyed, was pleased and smiling over the very pretty little attention, for she could not know at the moment that the whole maneuver had grown out of a wager and was part of a detestable plan to find out the actual weight of the governor-general's elder daughter. if mrs. plumston did not understand, count selim malagaski understood. so did all the young men who were watching the pantomime. and kalora understood. she looked up and saw the lurking smiles on the faces of the two gallants who were carrying her, and later the tittering became louder and some of the young men laughed aloud. she leaped from her chair and turned upon her two tormentors. "how dare you?" she exclaimed. "you are making sport of me in the presence of my father's guests! you have a contempt for me because i am ugly. you mock at me in private because you hear that i am thin. you wish to learn the truth about me. well, i will tell you. i _am_ thin. i weigh one hundred and eighteen pounds." she was speaking loudly and defiantly, and all the young men were backing away, dismayed at the outbreak. her father elbowed his way among them, white with terror, and attempted to pacify her. "be still, my child!" he commanded. "you don't know what you are saying!" "yes, i do know what i am saying!" she persisted, her voice rising shrilly. "do they wish to know about me? must they know the truth? then look! _look_!" with sweeping outward gestures she threw off the soft quilted robes gathered about her, tore away the veil and stood before them in a white gown that fairly revealed every modified in-and-out of her figure. what ensued? is it necessary to tell? the costume in which she stood forth was no more startling or immodest than the simple gown which the american high-school girl wears on her commencement day, and it was decidedly more ample than the sum of all the garments worn at polite social gatherings in communities somewhat to the west. nevertheless, the company stood aghast. they were doubly horrified--first, at the effrontery of the girl, and second, at the revelation of her real person, for they saw that she was doomed, helpless, bereft of hope, slim beyond all curing. v he arrives kalora was alone. after putting the company to consternation she had flung herself defiantly back into the chair and directed a most contemptuous gaze at all the desirable young men of her native land. the governor-general made a choking attempt to apologize and explain, and then, groping for an excuse to send the people away, suggested that the company view the new stables. the acrobats were dismissed. the guests went rapidly to an inspection of the carriages and horses. they were glad to escape. jeneka, crushed in spirit and shamed at the brazen performance of her sister, began a plaintive conjecture as to "what people would say," when kalora turned upon her such a tigerish glance that she fairly ran for her apartment, although she was too corpulent for actual sprinting. mrs. plumston remained behind as the only comforter. "it was a most contemptible proceeding, my child. when they lifted us and carried us to the other side of the tree i thought it was rather nice of them; something on the order of the old walter raleigh days of chivalry, and all that. and just think! the beasts did it to find out whether or not you were really plump and heavy. it's a most extraordinary incident." "i wouldn't marry one of them now, not if he begged and my father commanded!" said kalora bitterly. "and poor jeneka! this takes away her last chance. until i am married she can not marry, and after to-day not even a blind man would choose me." "for goodness' sake, don't worry! you tell me you are nineteen. no woman need feel discouraged until she is about thirty-five. you have sixteen years ahead of you." "not in morovenia." "why remain in morovenia?" "we are not permitted to travel." "perhaps, after what happened to-day, your father will be glad to let you travel," said mrs. plumston with a significant little nod and a wise squint. "don't you generally succeed in having your own way with him?" "oh, to travel--to travel!" exclaimed kalora, clasping her hands. "if i am to remain single and a burden for ever, perhaps it would lighten father's grief if i resided far away. my presence certainly would remind him of the wreck of all his ambitions, but if i should settle down in vienna or paris, or--" she paused and gave a little gasp--"or if anything should happen to me, if i should--should disappear, that is, really disappear, jeneka would be free to marry and--" "oh, pickles!" said mrs. plumston. "i have heard of romantic young women jumping overboard and taking poison on account of rich young men, but i never heard of a girl's snuffing herself out so as to give her sister a chance to get married. the thing for you to do at a time like this, when you find yourself in a tangle, is to think of yourself and your own chances for happiness. father and jeneka will take care of themselves. they are popular and beloved characters here in morovenia. they are not taking you into consideration except as you seem to interfere with their selfish plans. i have made it a rule not to work out my neighbor's destiny." "what can i do?" asked kalora, seemingly impressed by the earnestness of the consul's wife. "leave morovenia. keep at your father until he consents to your going. here you are despised and ridiculed--a victim of heathen prejudice left over from the dark ages. get away, even if you have to walk, and take my word for it, the moment you leave morovenia you will be a very beautiful girl; not a merely attractive young person, but what we would call at home a radiant beauty--the oriental type, you know. and as a personal favor to me, don't be fat." "no fear of that," said the girl with a melancholy attempt at a smile. "but you must go and join the others. do, please. i am now in disgrace, and you may compromise your social standing in morovenia if you remain here and talk to me." "i dare say i should go. i have a husband who requires as much attention and scolding as a four-year-old. sometimes i almost favor the oriental system of the husband's directing the wife. good-by." "good-by." mrs. plumston gave her a kiss and a friendly little pat on the arm, and walked away toward the stables with a swinging, heel-and-toe, masculine stride. kalora had the whole garden to herself. she sat squared up in the wicker chair with her fists clenched, looking straight ahead, trying in vain to think of some plan for avenging herself upon the whole race of bachelors. as she sat thus some one spoke to her. "how do you do?" came a voice. she was startled and looked about, but saw no one. "up here!" came the voice again. she looked up and saw a young man on the top of the wall, his legs hanging over. evidently he had climbed up from the outside, and yet kalora had never suspected that the wall could be climbed. [illustration: "up here!" came the voice again] he was smoothly shaven, with blond hair almost ripe enough to be auburn; he wore a gray suit of rather loose and careless material, a belt, but no waistcoat; his trousers were reefed up from a pair of saddle-brown shoes, and the silk band around his small straw hat was tricolored. in his hand was a paper-covered book. swung over his shoulder was a camera in a leather case. he sat there on top of the high wall and gazed at kalora with a grinning interest, and she, forgetting that she was unveiled and clad only in the simple garments which had horrified the best people of morovenia, gazed back at him, for he was the first of the kind she had seen. "what are you doing here?" she asked wonderingly. "i am looking for the show," he replied. "they told me down at the hotel that a very hot bunch of acrobats were doing a few stunts down here this afternoon, and i thought i'd break in if i could. wanted to get some pictures of them." "were you invited?" "no, but that doesn't make any difference. in cairo i went to a native wedding every day. if i passed a house where there was a wedding being pulled off, i simply went inside and mingled. they never put me out--seemed to enjoy having me there. i suppose they thought it was the american custom for outsiders to ring in at a wedding." "you said american, didn't you? are you from america?" "do i look like a scandinavian? i am from the grand old commonwealth of pennsylvania. did you ever hear of the town of bessemer?" "i'm afraid not." "did you ever hear of the pike family that robbed all the orphans, tore down the starry banner, walked on the humble working-girl and gave the double cross to the common people? did you?" "dear me, no," she replied, following him vaguely. "well, i am alexander h., of the tribe of pike, and i have two reasons for being in your beautiful little city. one is federal grand jury and the other is ten-cent magazine. you know, our folks are sinfully rich. about four years ago i came in for most of the guvnor's coin, and in trying to keep up the traditions of the family, i have made myself unpopular, but i didn't know how unpopular i really was until i got this magazine from home this morning." and he held up the paper-covered book, which had a rainbow cover. "they have been writing up a few of us captains of industry, and they have said everything about me that they _could_ say without having the thing barred out of the mails. i notice that you speak our kind of talk fairly well, but i think i can take you by the hand and show you a lot of new and beautiful english language. i will read this to you." before she could warn him, or do anything except let out a horrified "oh-h!" he had leaped lightly from his high perch and was standing in front of her. "i'm afraid you don't understand," she said, rising and taking a frightened survey of the garden, to be sure that no one was watching. "strangers are not permitted in here. that is, men, and more especially--ah--christians." "i'm not a christian, and i can prove it by this magazine. i am an octopus, and a viper, and a vampire, and a man-eating shark. i am what you might call a composite zoo. if you want to get a line on me just read this article on _the shameless brigand of bessemer_, and you will certainly find out that i am a nice young fellow." kalora had studied english for years and thought she knew it, and yet she found it difficult fully, to comprehend all the figurative phrases of this pleasing young stranger. "do i understand that you are traveling abroad because of your unpopularity at home?" she asked. "i am waiting for things to cool down. as soon as the muck-rakers wear out their rakes, and the great american public finds some other kind of hysterics to keep it worked up to a proper temperature, i shall mosey back and resume business at the old stand. but why tell you the story of my life? play fair now, and tell me a lot about yourself. where am i?" "you are here in my father's private garden, where you hare no right to be." "and father?" "is count selim malagaski, governor-general of morovenia." "wow! and you?" "i am his daughter." "the daughter of all that must be something. have you a title?" "i am called princess." "can you beat that? climb up a wall to see some a-rabs perform, and find a real, sure-enough princess, and likewise, if you don't mind my saying so, a pippin." "i don't know what you mean," she said. "a corker." "corker?" "i mean that you're a good-looker--that it's no labor at all to gaze right at you. i didn't think they grew them so far from headquarters, but i see i'm wrong. you are certainly all right. pardon me for saying this to you so soon after we meet, but i have learned that you will never break a woman's heart by telling her that she is a beaut." [illustration: "are you a real ingénue, or a kidder?"] kalora leaned back in her chair and laughed. she was beginning to comprehend the whimsical humor of the very unusual young man. his direct and playful manner of speech amused her, and also seemed to reassure her. and, when he seated himself within a few inches of her elbow, fanning himself with the little straw hat, and calmly inspecting the tiny landscape of the forbidden garden, she made no protest against his familiarity, although she knew that she was violating the most sacred rules laid down for her sex. she reasoned thus with herself: "to-day i have disgraced myself to the utmost, and, since i am utterly shamed, why not revel in my lawlessness?" besides, she wished to question this young man. mrs. plumston had said to her: "you are beautiful." no one else had ever intimated such a thing. in fact, for five years she had been taunted almost daily because of her lack of all physical charms. perhaps she could learn the truth about herself by some adroit questioning of the young man from pennsylvania. "you have traveled a great deal?" she asked. "me and baedeker and cook wrote it," he replied; and then, seeing that she was puzzled, he said: "i have been to all of the places they keep open." "you have seen many women in many countries?" "i have. i couldn't help it, and i'm glad of it." "then you know what constitutes beauty?" "not always. what is sponge cake for me may be sawdust for somebody else. say, i rode for an hour in a 'rickshaw at nagoya to see the most beautiful girl in japan and when we got to the teahouse they trotted out a little shrimp that looked as if she'd been dried over a barrel--you know, stood _bent_ all the time, as if she was getting ready to jump. her neck was no bigger than a gripman's wrist and she had a nose that stood right out from her face almost an eighth of an inch. her eyes were set on the bias and she was painted more colors than a bandwagon. i said, 'if this is the champion geisha, take me back to the land of the chorus girl.' and in china! listen! i caught a chinese belle coming down the queen's road in hong-kong one day, and i ran up an alley. i have seen parisian beauties that had a coat of white veneering over them an inch thick, and out here in this country i have seen so-called cracker-jacks that ought to be doing the mountain-of-flesh act in the ringling side-show. so there you are!" "but in your own country, and in the larger cities of the world, there must be some sort of standard. what are the requirements? what must a woman be, that all men would call her beautiful?" "well, princess, that's a pretty hard proposition to dope out. good looks can not be analyzed in a lab or worked out by algebra, because, i'm telling you, the one that may look awful lucky to me may strike somebody else as being fairly punk. providence framed it up that way so as to give more girls a chance to land somebody. still, there is one kind that makes a hit wherever people are bright enough to sit up and take notice. now i suppose that any male being in his right senses would find it easy to look at a woman who was young enough and had eyes and hair and teeth and the other items, all doing team-work together, and then if she was trim and slender--" "should she be slender?" interrupted kalora, leaning toward him. "sure. i don't mean the same width all the way up and down, like an art student, but trim and--here, i'll show you. you will find the pictures of the most beautiful women in the world right here in the ads of a ten-cent magazine. look them over and you will understand what i mean." he turned page after page and showed her the tapering goddesses of the straight front, the tooth-powder, the camera, the breakfast-food, the massage-cream, and the hair-tonic. "these are what you call beautiful women?" she asked. "these are about the limit." "then in your country i would not be considered hideous, would i?" "hideous? say, if you ever walked up fifth avenue you would block the traffic! and in the palm-garden at the waldorf--why, you and the head waiter would own the place! are you trying to string me by asking such questions? are you a real ingénue, or a kidder?" "i hardly know what you mean, but i assure you that here in morovenia they laugh at me because i am not fat." "this is a shine country, and you're in wrong, little girl," said mr. pike, in a kindly tone. "why don't you duck?" "duck?" "leave here and hunt up some of the red spots on the map. you know what i mean--away to the bright lights! i don't like to knock your native land but, honestly, morovenia is a bad boy. i've struck towns around here where you couldn't buy illustrated post-cards. they take in the sidewalks at nine o'clock every night. that orchestra down at the hotel handed me a new coon song last night--_bill bailey_! can you beat that? as long as you stay here you are hooked up with a funeral." kalora, with wrinkled brow, had been striving to follow him in his figurative flights. "strange," she murmured. "you are the second person i have met to-day who advises me to go away--to the west." "that's the tip!" he exclaimed with fervor. "go west and when you start, keep on going. you come to america and bring along the papers to show that you're a real live princess and you'll own both sides of the street. we'll show you more real excitement in two weeks than you'll see around here if you live to be a hundred." "i should like to go, but--look! hurry, please! you must go!" she pointed, and young mr. pike turned to see two guards in baggy uniforms bearing down upon him, their eyes bulging with amazement. "shall i try to put up a bluff, or fight it out?" he asked, as he stood up to meet them. "you can not explain," gasped kalora. "run! _run_! they know you have no right here. this means going to prison--perhaps worse." "does it?" he asked, between his set teeth. "if those two brunettes get me, they'll have to go some." when the two pounced upon him he made no resistance and they captured him. he stood between them, each of them clutching an arm and breathing heavily, not only from exertion, but also out of a sense of triumph. vi he departs and now, in order to give a key to the surprising performances of alexander h. pike, it will be necessary to call up certain biographical data. when he was in the hill school he won the pole vault, but later, in his real collegiate days, he never could come within two inches of 'varsity form, and therefore failed to make the track-team. while attending the institute of technology he worked one whole autumn to perfect an offensive play which was to be used against "buff" rodigan, of the semi-professional athletic-club team. this play was known as "giving the shoulder," with the solar plexus as the point of attack. the purpose of the play was not to kill the opposing player, but to induce him to relinquish all interest in the contest. furthermore, mr. pike, while spending a month or more at a time in new york city, during his post-graduate days, had worked with mr. mike donovan, in order to keep down to weight. mr. donovan had illustrated many tricks to him, one of the best being a low feint with the left, followed by a right cross to the point of the jaw. while the two bronze-colored guards stood holding him, mr. pike rapidly took stock of his accomplishments, and formulated a program. with a sudden twist he cleared himself, sprang away from the two, and jumped behind a tree. one soldier started to the right of the tree and the other to the left, so as to close in upon him and retake him. this was what he wanted, for he had them "spread," and could deal with them singly. he used the donovan tactics on the first guard, and they worked out with shameful ease. when the soldier saw the left coming for the pit of his stomach, he crouched and hugged himself, thereby extending his jaw so that it waited there with the sun shining on it until the young man's right swing came across and changed the middle of the afternoon to midnight. number one was lying in profound slumber when alumnus pike turned to greet number two. the second soldier, having witnessed the feat of pugilism, doubled his fists and extended them awkwardly, coming with a rush. mr. pike suddenly squatted and leaned forward, balancing on his finger-tips, until number two was about to fall upon him and crush him, and then he arose with that rigid right shoulder aimed as a catapult. there was a sound as when the air-brake is disconnected, and number two curled over limply on the ground and made faces in an effort to resume breathing. mr. pike picked up his magazine and put it under his coat. he buttoned the coat, smiled in a pale, but placid manner at kalora, who was still immovable with terror, and then he proceeded to vindicate his "prep school" training. he ran over to the canopy tent, under which the refreshments had been served, pulled out one of the poles and, pointing it ahead of him, ran straight for the wall. kalora, watching him, regarded this as a wholly insane proceeding. was he going to attempt to poke a hole through a wall three feet thick? just as he seemed ready to flatten himself against the stones, he dropped the end of the pole to the ground and shot upward like a rocket. kalora saw him give an upward twist and wriggle, fling himself free from the pole and disappear on the other side of the wall, the camera following like the tail of a comet. as he did so, number two, coming to a sitting posture, began to shriek for reinforcements. number one was up on his elbow, regarding the affairs of this world with a dreamy interest. fortunately for the governor-general, the participants in the exploded garden-party had escaped at the very first opportunity. count malagaski, greatly perturbed and almost in a state of collapse over the unhappy affair in the garden, was returning to his apartments when the second surprising episode of the day came to a noisy climax. he heard the uproar and had the two guards brought before him. they reported that they had found a stranger in the garb of an infidel seated within the secret garden chatting with the princess kalora. they did not agree in their descriptions of him, but each maintained that the intruder was a very large person of forbidding appearance and terrific strength. "how did he manage to escape?" asked the governor-general. "by jumping over the wall." "over a wall ten feet high?" demanded the governor-general. "without touching his hands, sir. he was very tall; must have been seven feet." "if you ever had an atom of gray matter, evidently this stranger has beaten it out of you. hurry and notify the police!" kalora's candid version of the whole affair was hardly less startling than that of the guards. the stranger had come over the wall suddenly, much to her alarm. he attempted to converse with her, but she sternly ordered him from the premises. he was exceedingly tall, as the guards had said, and very dark, with rather long hair and curling black mustache. he addressed her in english, but spoke with a marked german accent. this description, faithfully set down by popova, was carried away to the secret police of morovenia, said to be the most astute in the world. they were instructed to watch all trains and guard the frontier and, as soon as they had their prisoner safely put away in the lower dungeon of the municipal prison, they were to notify the governor-general, who would privately pass sentence. a crime against any member of the ruler's household comes under a separate category and need not be tried in public sessions. for entering a royal harem or addressing a woman of title the sentences range from the bastinado to solitary confinement for life. no wonder kalora waited in trembling. like every other provincial she had much respect for the indigenous constabulary. she did not believe it possible for the pleasing stranger to break through the network that would be woven about him. shunning her father and sister, and shunned by them, she waited many sleepless hours in her own apartments for the inevitable news from beyond the walls. next morning there came to her a cheering and terrifying message. vii the only koldo three hours after his pole-vault, mr. alexander h. pike, wearing a dinner-jacket newly ironed by his man-slave, and with a soft hat crushed jauntily down over the right ear, was pacing back and forth in the main corridor of the hotel de l'europe waiting for the dread summons to the table d'hote. he had to admit to himself that his nerves seemed to be about as taut as piano wires. he told himself that possibly he was "up against it," and yet he had stood on the brink of disaster so often during his college career without acquiring vertigo, that the experience of the afternoon was like a joyous renewal of youth. he had no set program but he had a feeling that if he was to be questioned he would lie entertainingly. of one thing he was certain--it would help his case if he made no attempt to hurry across the frontier. he believed in the wisdom of hunting up the authorities whenever the authorities were hunting for him. for instance, in the prep school, after getting the cow into the chapel, he discovered her there and notified the principal and was the only boy who did not fall under suspicion. to assume a childlike innocence and to bluff magnificently,--these had been the twin rules that had saved him so often and would save him now, unless he should be confronted by the princess or the two guards, in which case--he whistled softly. suddenly two men came slamming in at the front door and stalked down the avenue of palms. they seemed to be throbbing with the importance of their errand, as they moved toward a little side office, which was the official lair of the manager. one of the men was elderly and wizened and the other was a detective. pike knew it as soon as he glanced at the heavy jowls and the broad face and heard the authoritative footfall. he knew, also, that he was not a bona fide detective, but a municipal detective, who is paid a monthly salary and walks stealthily along side streets in citizen's dress, all the time imagining that the people he meets take him to be a merchant or a lawyer. in this he is mistaken, for he resembles nothing except a municipal detective. if mr. pike had known that the officer who accompanied popova was the celebrated koldo, chief of the secret service, no doubt the impulse to retreat to his apartment and get behind the bed canopies would have been stronger. he knew, however, that no detective of analytical methods would expect to find the criminal standing at his elbow, so he followed the two over to the office and calmly wedged himself into the conference. the great koldo was agitated as he told his story to the manager, who was a polite and sympathetic importation from switzerland. popova stood by and corroborated by nodding. "an outrage of the most dreadful nature has been reported from the palace," said koldo. "dear me!" murmured the manager. "i am so sorry." "a stranger scaled the wall and entered the forbidden precincts. he addressed himself to the princess kalora with most insulting familiarity. two of the household guards captured him, but he escaped after beating them brutally. the report of the whole affair and a description of the man have been brought to me by the esteemed popova--this gentleman here, who is court interpreter and instructor in languages to the royal family." popova nodded and mr. pike saw the scattered spires of bessemer, pennsylvania, whirling away into a cloud of disappearance. "if you have a description of the man, no doubt you will be able to find him," he said, knowing that this kind of speech would strengthen his plea of innocence when brought out at the trial. the chief of the secret service turned and looked wonderingly at the bland stranger and resumed: "after some reflection i have decided to make inquiries at all the hotels, to learn if any foreigner answering this description has lately arrived in the city." "you may be sure that any information i possess will be put at your disposal immediately," said the manager, with a smile and a professional bow. the only koldo, breathing deeply, brought from his pocket a sheet of paper, while mr. pike propped himself deliberately against the door and tried to mold his features into that expression of guileless innocence which he had observed on the face of a cherub in the vatican. "he is very rugged and powerful," said the detective, referring to his notes. "large, quite large--black hair, dark eyes with a glance that seems to pierce through anything--long mustache, also black--wears much jewelry--speaks with a marked german accent--wears a suit of scotch plaid--heavy military boots." mr. pike removed his hat and allowed the electric light to twinkle on his ruddy hair. "how--ah--where did you get this description?" he asked gently. "from the princess herself," replied popova. "she saw him at close range." "believe me, i am sorry, but no one answering the description has been at my hotel," said the manager. "then i shall go to the hotel bristol and the hotel victoria," announced koldo, with something of fierce determination in his tone. "an excellent plan," assented the manager. "would you mind if i butted in with a suggestion?" said mr. pike, laying a friendly hand on the arm of the redoubtable koldo. "don't you think it would be better if you went alone to these hotels? this distinguished gentleman," indicating popova, "is well known on account of being a high guy up at the palace. sure as you live, if he trails around with you, you will be spotted. you don't want to hunt this fellow with a brass band. besides, you don't need any help, do you?"--to the head of the secret service. "certainly not," replied the famous detective, swelling visibly. "i have all the data--already i am planning my campaign." "then i should like to have a talk with pop-what's-his-name. i think i can slip him a few valuable pointers. you go right along and nail your man and we'll sit here in the shade of the sheltering palm and tell each other our troubles." "i must return to the palace quite soon," murmured popova, gazing at the stranger uneasily. "call a carriage for the professor," spoke up mr. pike briskly, to the manager. "i know his time is valuable, so we'll get down to business immediately, if not sooner." the manager knew a millionaire's voice when he heard it, so he hurried away. the impatient koldo said that he would communicate directly with the palace as soon as he had effected the capture, and started for the front door. then, remembering himself, he went out the back way. the old tutor, finding himself alone with mr. pike, was not permitted to relapse into embarrassment. "in the first place, i want you to know who and what i am," said mr. pike. "come into my suite and i'll show you something. then you'll see that you're not wasting your time on a light-weight." he led the way to a large parlor ornately done in red, and pulled out from a leather trunk a passport issued by the department of state of the united states of america. it was a huge parchment, with pictorial embellishments, heavy gothic type and a seal about the size of a pie. mr. pike's physical peculiarities were enumerated and there was a direct request that the bearer be shown every courtesy and attention due a citizen of the great republic. popova looked it over and was impressed. "it isn't everybody that gets those," said mr. pike, as he put the document carefully back into the trunk and covered it with shirts. "have a red chair. take off your hat--ah, i remember, you leave that on, don't you?" the old gentleman seated himself, somewhat reassured by the cheery manner of his host, who sat in front of him and beamed. mr. pike, supposed to be given to vapory and aimless conversation, really was a general. already we have learned that he based his every-day conduct on a groundwork of safe principles. he had certain private theories, which had stood the test, and when following these theories he proceeded with bustling confidence. one of his theories was that every man in the world has a grievance and regards himself as much-abused, and in order to win the regard and confidence of that man, all one has to do is feel around for the grievance and then play upon it. mr. pike, in his province of employer, had been compelled to study the methods of successful labor-union agitators. "you don't know much about me, but i know plenty about you," he began, closing one eye and nodding wisely. "i hadn't been here very long before i found out who was the real brains of that outfit up at the palace." "really, you know, we are not supposed to discuss the merits of our ruler," said popova, fairly startled at the candid tone of the other. he lifted one hand in timid deprecation. "of course you're not. that's why some one who is simply a figurehead goes on taking all the credit for tricks turned by a smart fellow who is working for him. now, if you lived in the dear old land of ready money, where the accident of birth doesn't give any man the right to sit on somebody else's neck, you'd be a big gun. you'd have money and a pull and probably, before you got through, you'd be investigated. over here, you are deliberately kept in the background. you are the patsy." "the what?" "the squidge--that means the fellow who does all the worrying and gets nothing out of it. now, before you return to what you call the palace, and which looks to me like the main building of the allegheny brick works, will you do me the honor of going into that cave of gloom, known as the american bar, and hitting up just one small libation?" "i am not sure that i catch your meaning," said popova, who felt himself somewhat smothered by rhetoric. "into the bar--down at the little iron table--business of hoisting beverage." "we of the faith are not supposed to partake of any drink containing even a small percentage of alcohol." "i'm not _supposed_ to dally with it myself, having been brought up on cistern water, but i find in traveling that i entertain a more kindly feeling for you strange foreign people when i carry a medium-sized headlight. come along, now. don't compel me to tear your clothes." there was no resisting the masterful spirit of the young steel magnate, and popova was led away to a remote apartment, where a single shelf, sparsely set with bottles, made a weak effort to reproduce the fabled splendors of far-away new york. "let's see, what shall we tackle?" asked mr. pike, as he checked down the line with a rigid forefinger. "if you don't care what happens to you, we might try a couple of cocktails--that is, if you like the taste of _eau de quinine_. oh, i'll tell you what! here are lemons, seltzer and gin. boy, two gin fizzes." the attendant, who was very juvenile and much afraid of his job, smiled and shook his head. "do you mean to say that you never heard of a gin fizz?" asked mr. pike. "all the ingredients within reach, simply waiting to be introduced to each other, and you have been holding them apart. you ought to be ashamed of yourself. bring out some ice. produce your jigger. get busy. hand me the tools and i'll do this myself." then, while the other two looked on in abashed admiration, mr. pike deftly squeezed the lemons and splashed in allopathic portions of the crystal fluid and used ice most wastefully. after vigorous shaking and patient straining he shot a seething stream of seltzer into each glass and finally delivered to popova a translucent drink that was very tall and capped with foam. "hide that, professor," he said. "in a few minutes you will speak several new languages." popova sipped conservatively. "don't be afraid," urged mr. pike, encouragingly. "if the boy watched me carefully, possibly he can duplicate the order." the youth was more than willing, for he seldom received instruction. with now and then a word of counsel or warning from the wise man of the west in the corner, he cautiously assembled two other fizzes, while mr. pike, in a most nonchalant and roundabout manner, sought information concerning affairs of state, local politics, the governor-general's household and princess kalora. popova told more than he had meant to tell and more than he knew that he was telling. it may have been that the fizzes were insidious or that mr. pike was unduly persuasive, or that a combination of these two powerful influences moved the elderly tutor to impulses of unusual generosity. at any rate, he found himself possessed of an affection for the young man from bessemer, pennsylvania. it was an affection both fatherly and brotherly. when mr. pike asked him to perform just a small service for him, he promised and then promised again and was still promising when his host went with him to the carriage and said that he had not lived in vain and that in years to come he would gather his grandchildren around him and tell of the circumstances of his meeting with the greatest scholar in southeastern europe. viii by messenger on the morning after the strange happenings in the garden, kalora sat by one of the cross-barred windows overlooking a side street, and envied the humble citizens and unimportant woman drifting happily across her field of vision. never in all her life had she walked out alone. the sweet privilege of courting adventure had been denied her. and yet she felt, on this morning, an almost intimate acquaintance with the outside world, for had she not talked with a valorous young man who could leap over high walls and subdue giants and pay compliments? he had thrown a sudden glare of romance across her lonesome pathway. the few minutes with him seemed to encompass everything in life that was worth remembering. she told herself that already she liked him better than any other young man she had met, which was not surprising, for he had been the first to sit beside her and look into her eyes and tell her that she was beautiful. she knew that whatever of wretchedness the years might hold in store for her, no local edict could rob her of one precious memory. she had locked it up and put it away, beyond the reach of courts and relatives. during many wakeful hours she had recalled each minute detail of that amazing interview in the garden, and had tried to estimate and foreshadow the young man's plan of escape from the secret police. perhaps he had been taken during the night. the greatest good fortune that she could picture for him was a quick flight across the frontier, which meant that he would never return--that she had seen him once and could not hope to see him again. in her contemplation of the luminous figure of the only young man, she had ceased to speculate concerning her own misfortunes. the fact of her disgrace remained in the background, eclipsed--not in evidence except as a dim shadow over the day. while she sat immovable, gazing into the street, feeling within herself a tumult which was not of pain, nor yet of pleasure, but a satisfactory commingling of both, she heard her name spoken. popova was standing in the doorway. he greeted her with a smile and bow, both of which struck her as being singularly affected, for he was not given to polite observances. as he squatted near her, she noticed that he was tremulous and seemed almost frightened about something. "i have come to tell you that i regret exceedingly the--the distressing incident of yesterday, and that i sympathize with you deeply--deeply," he began. "it is your fault," she said, turning from him and again gazing into the street. "you taught me everything i do not need in morovenia. you neglected the one essential. i am not blind. it was never your desire that i should be like my sister." she spoke in a low monotone and with no tinge of resentment, but her words had an immediate and perturbing effect on popova, who stared at her wide-eyed and seemed unable to find his voice. "you must know that i have been governed by your father's wishes," he said awkwardly. "why do you--" "do not misunderstand me. i thank you for what you have done. i would not be other than what i am. tell me--the stranger--you know, the one in the garden--has he been taken?" inquired the princess. "taken! taken! not even a clue--not a trace! either the earth opened to swallow him or else koldo is a dunce. the description was most accurate. by the way, i--i had a most interesting conversation regarding the case, with a young man at the hotel de l'europe last evening. he is a person of great importance in his own country, also a student of world-politics--i--he--never have i encountered such discrimination in one so young. it was because of my admiration for his talents and my confidence in his integrity that i consented to deliver a message for him." kalora squirmed in her pillows, and turned eagerly to face popova. "a message? for me?" she cried, eagerly. "i will admit that the whole proceeding is most irregular, to put it mildly. the young man was so deeply interested in your perilous adventure of yesterday, and so desirous of felicitating you upon your escape, that i yielded to his importunities and promised to deliver to you this letter." he brought it out cautiously, as if it were loaded with an explosive, and kalora pounced upon it. "i rely upon you to maintain absolute secrecy in regard to my part in this unusual--" but kalora, unheeding him, had torn open the letter and was reading, as follows: my dear princess: i hope that's the way to begin. something tells me that you would not stand for "your majesty" or any of these "royal highness" trimmings. believe me, you are the best ever. i have just had a talk with the eminent plain-clothes man who is looking for the burglar that broke into the garden this afternoon and tried to steal you. he read to me the description. say, if i tried to write at this minute all of my present emotions concerning you, i would burn holes in the paper. when it comes to turning out fiction, marie corelli is not in the running. honestly, when mr. detective walked into the hotel this evening, i figured it a toss-up whether i should ever see home and mother again. i am only an humble steel-maker, but i am for you and i want to see you again and tell you right to your face what i think of you. if you will sort of happen to be in the garden at 4 p.m. to-morrow (thursday), i will come over the wall at the very spot i picked out to-day. i know that this method of becoming acquainted with young women is not indorsed by the _ladies_' _home journal_ or beatrice fairfax, but, as nearly as i can find out, there is no other way in which i can get into society over here. so far as the bloodhounds of the law are concerned, don't give them a thought. i have met, the great koldo, and he won't know until about next sunday that yesterday was tuesday. the professor has promised to bring a reply to the hotel. he is not on. sincerely, your german friend. she read it all and found herself gasping--surprised, frightened, and moved to a fluttering delight. she had thought of him as skulking in byways, of concealing his name and attempting to disguise himself so that he might dodge through the meshes woven by the invincible koldo, and here he was, still flaunting himself at the hotel and calmly preparing to repeat his hazardous experiment. "he is a fool!" she exclaimed, forgetting that popova was present. "i trust the message has not offended you," said the tutor, decidedly alarmed at her agitation and not understanding what it meant. "i tell you he is a fool--a fool!" she repeated. and while popova wondered, she sprang to her feet and ran to him and gave him a muscular embrace around the tender portion of his neck, for he still squatted after the oriental manner, even though he wore a long black coat of german make. "i consented to bring it because he was most urgent, and seemed a proper sort of person," began popova, "and not knowing the contents--" "bless you, i am not offended," interrupted kalora, and then, looking at the letter again, she burst into happy laughter. the young stranger was unquestionably a fool. she had not dreamed that any one could be so reckless and heedless, so contemptuous of the dread machinery of the law, so willing to risk his very life for the sake of--of seeing her again! "if he has been impertinent, possibly you will take no notice of his communication," suggested popova. "oh, i _must_--i must at least acknowledge the receipt of it. common courtesy demands that. i shall write just a few lines and you must take them to him at once. he seems to be a very forward person unacquainted with our local customs, and so i shall formally thank him and suggest to him that any further correspondence would be inadvisable. that's the really proper thing to do, don't you think?" "possibly." "then wait here until i have written it, and unless you wish me to go to my father and tell him something that would put an end to your illustrious career, deliver this message within a hour--deliver it yourself. give it to him and to no one else." never was a go-between more nonplussed, but he promised with a readiness and a sincerity which indicated that he was keenly aware of the fact that kalora held him in her power. the minx had read his secret without an effort! mr. pike was waiting in the avenue of potted palms when the greatest scholar of southeastern europe, now reduced to the humble role of messenger boy, came to him, somewhat flurried and breathless, and slipped a small envelope into his hand. popova rather curtly refused to renew his acquaintance with occidental fizzes, and waited only until he had announced to mr. pike that the princess wished to emphasize the advice contained in the letter and to assure the presumptuous stranger that it was meant for his welfare. this is what mr. pike read: my very good friend: i have protected you, not because you deserve protection, but because i like you very much. you must not come to the palace grounds again. they are now under double guard and, if i attempted to meet you, no doubt a whole company of our big soldiers would surround you and surely you could not overcome so many powerful men. i am thinking only of your safety. i beg you to leave morovenia at once. your danger is greater than you can imagine. what more can i say, except that i shall always remember you? sincerely, k. mr. pike read it carefully three times and then told himself aloud that it was not what he would precisely term a love-letter. "i may have made an impression, but certainly not a ten-strike," he thought to himself, as he folded up the missive and put it into the most sacred compartment of his russia-leather pocketbook, along with the letter of credit. "i fear me that the incident is closed," he said. "i would stay here one year if i thought there was a chance of seeing her again, but if she wants me to fly i guess i had better fly." that evening, after an earnest controversy with the manager over a very complicated bill, studded with "extras," mr. alexander h. pike, accompanied by dragoman, leather trunks, hat-boxes and hold-alls, drove away to the transcontinenta express, and slept soundly while crossing the dangerous frontier. possibly he would not have slept so soundly if he had known that at four o'clock that afternoon the princess kalora had been idling her time in the palace garden, walking back and forth near the high wall. she had told him not to come, and of course he would not come. no one could be so audacious and foolhardy as to invite destruction after being solemnly warned--and yet, if he _did_ come, she wanted to be there to speak to him again and rebuke him and tell him not to come a third time. she went back to her apartment much relieved and intensely disappointed. such is the perverseness of the feminine nature, even in morovenia. ix as to washington, d.c. about the time that mr. pike arrived in vienna, and after kalora had been in voluntary retirement for some forty-eight hours, the famous koldo, head of the secret police, came into possession of a most important clue. having searched for two days, without finding the trail of the criminal with the black mustache and the german accent, he bethought himself of the wisdom of going to the garden where the intruder had engaged in a desperate struggle with the two guards. possibly he would discover incriminating footprints. instead, he found some scraps of paper, with printing of a foreign character. by questioning the guards he learned that these tatters had come from a printed book which the mysterious stranger had carried, and which he never relinquished even while reducing his foes to insensibility. koldo put these pieces of paper into a strong envelope, which he sealed and marked "exhibit a," and delivered his precious find to the governor-general. while mr. pike sat in ronacher's at vienna, watching a most entertaining vaudeville performance, count selim malagaski was in his library, conferring with the wise popova. "how did he escape?" asked count malagaski again and again, shaking his head. "the police have searched every corner of the town, and can find no one answering the description." "have you questioned kalora again?" "yes, and she now remembers that he had a very heavy scar over his right eye. her description and these few scraps of paper torn from the book he was carrying are all that we have to guide us in our search." the governor-general held up the several remnants of a ten-cent magazine. "it is in english; i read it badly." he gave the torn pages to the old tutor, and popova, picking up the first, read as follows: what is the great danger that threatens the american woman? it is _obesity_. it is well known that ninety-nine per cent of all the women in the united states are striving to reduce their weight. for all such we have a message of hope. write to madam clarissa and she---"the remainder is torn away," said popova. the governor-general had been leaning forward, listening intently. "do you mean to say that there is a country in which all the woman are fat?" he asked. "it would seem so," replied popova. "let us read further." he picked up another of the torn pages and read aloud: to the oatena company of pine creek, michigan: when i began using your wonderful health-food i was a mere skeleton. i have been living on it for three months and i have gained a pound a day. permit me to express the conviction that you are real benefactors to the human race. gratefully yours, oscar tilbury, oakdale, arkansas. "stop!" exclaimed the governor-general, striking the table. "is it possible that somewhere in this world there is a food which will add a pound a day?" "the testimonial seems genuine," replied popova. "it has been sworn to before a notary." "what country is this?" "america, the land of milk and honey." "both very fattening," commented the governor-general. "popova, i have an inspiration. you well know that my situation here is most desperate. i must find husbands for these two daughters, but i dare not hope that any one will come for kalora until the disgraceful affair has been forgotten and i can absolutely demonstrate that she has developed into some degree of attractiveness. it is better for all concerned that she should leave morovenia until the present scandal blows over. now, why not america? it is a remote, half-savage country, and she will be far from the temptations which would beset her at any fashionable capital in europe. we read in this magazine that all the women in america are fat. she will come back to us in a little while as plump as a partridge. from the sworn testimonial it would appear that she can obtain in america a marvelous food which will cause her to gain a pound a day. she now weighs one hundred and eighteen pounds. if she remained there a year she would weigh, let me see--one hundred and eighteen plus three hundred and sixty-five--oh, that doesn't seem possible! that is too good to be true! but even six months, or only three months, would be sufficient. she _must_ be sent away for a while, in the care of some one who will guard her carefully. read up on america to-night, and let me know all about it in the morning." next day popova, having consulted all the british authorities at hand, reported that the united states of america covered a large but undeveloped area, that the population was so engrossed with the accumulation of wealth that it gave little heed to pleasures or intellectual relaxation, and that the country as a whole was unworthy of consideration except as the abode of a swollen material prosperity. "just the place for her," exclaimed the governor-general. "no pleasures to distract her, an atmosphere of plodding commercialism, an abundance of health-giving nourishment! perhaps the mere change of climate will have the desired effect. we will make the experiment. she is doomed if she remains here, and america seems to be our only hope. i suppose our beloved monarch sends a minister to that country. if so, communicate with the secretary of the legation and request him to secure secluded apartments for her and a suite. you shall accompany her." "i?" exclaimed popova, unable to conceal his joy. "yes; she must be under careful restraint all the time. what is the capital of the united states?" "washington. it is a sleepy and well-behaved town. i have looked it up." "good! you shall take her to washington. if one of the many civil wars should break out, or there should be an uprising of the red men, she can hurry to the protection of the turkish embassy. let us make immediate preparations--and remember, popova, that my whole future happiness as a father depends upon the success of this expedition." when kalora was gravely informed by her father that she and the tutor and a half-dozen female attendants were to be bundled up and sent away to america, and that she was to do penance, take a dieting treatment, and come back in due time to try and atone for her unfortunate past, did she weep and beg to be allowed to remain at her own dear home? no; she listened in apparently meek and rather mournful submission, and, after her father went away, she turned handsprings across the room. her utmost dream of happiness had been realized. she was to go to the land of the red-headed stranger where she would be admired and courted, and where, in time, she might aspire to the ultimate honor of having her picture in a ten-cent magazine. x on the wing the train rolled away from the low and dingy station and was in the open country of morovenia. kalora and her elderly guardian and the young women who were to be her companions during the period of exile had been tucked away into adjoining compartments. each young woman was muffled and veiled according to the most discreet and orthodox rules. popova's bright red fez contrasted strangely with his silvering hair, but no more strangely than did this wondrous experience of starting for a new world contrast with the quiet years that he had spent among his books. the train sped into the farm-lands. on either side was a wide stretch of harvest fields, heaving into gentle billows, with here and there a shabby cluster of buildings. if kalora had only known, morovenia was very much like the far-away america, except that morovenia had not learned to decorate the hillsides with billboards. at last she was to have a taste of freedom! no father to scold and plead; no much-superior sister to torment her with reproaches; no peering through grated windows at one little rectangle of outside sunshine. to be sure, popova had received explicit and positive instructions concerning her government. but popova--pshaw! she unwound her veil and removed her head-gear and sat bareheaded by the car-window, greedily welcoming each new picture that swung into view. "you must keep your face covered while we are in public or semi-public places," said popova gently, repeating his instructions to the very letter. "i shall not." thus ended any exercise of popova's authority during the whole journey. before the train had come to budapest all the young women, urged on to insubordination, had removed their veils, and kalora had boldly invaded another compartment to engage in rapt and feverish dialogue with a little but vivacious frenchwoman. two hours out from vienna, the tutor found her involved in a business conference with a guard of the train. she had learned that the tickets permitted a stopover in vienna. she wished to see vienna. she had decided to spend one whole day in vienna. popova, as usual, made a feeble show of maintaining his authority, but he was overruled. count selim malagaski, at home, consulting the prearranged schedule, said, "this morning they have arrived in paris and popova is arranging for the steamship tickets." at which very moment, kalora was in an open carriage driving from one vienna shop to another, trying to find ready-made garments similar to those worn by mrs. rawley plumston. popova was now a bundle-carrier. the shopping in vienna was merely a prelude to a riotous extravagance of time and money in paris. popova, writing under dictation, sent a message to morovenia to the effect that they had been compelled to wait a week in order to get comfortable rooms on a steamer. kalora had the dressmakers working night and day. she and her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother and the whole line of maternal ancestors had been under suppression and had attired themselves according to the directions of a religious prophet, who had been ignorant concerning color effects. and yet, now that kalora had escaped from the cage, the original instinct asserted itself. the love of finery can not be eliminated from any feminine species. when she boarded the steamer she was outwardly a creature of the new world. from the moment of embarking she seemed exhilarated by the salt air and the spirit of democracy. she lingered in new york--more shopping. by the time she arrived at washington and went breezing in to call upon a certain dignified young secretary, the transformation was complete. she might not have been put together strictly according to mode, but she was learning rapidly, and willing to learn more rapidly. xi an outing--a reunion the secretary of the legation at washington was surprised to receive a letter from the governor-general of morovenia requesting him to find apartments for the princess kalora and a small retinue. the letter explained that the governor-general's daughter had been given a long sea-voyage and assigned to a period of residence within the quiet boundaries of washington, in the hope that her health might be improved. the secretary looked up the list of hotels and boarding-houses. he did not deem it advisable to send a convalescent to one of the large and busy hotels; neither did he think it proper to reserve rooms for her at an ordinary boarding-house, where she would sit at the same table with department-employees and congressmen. so he compromised on a very exclusive hotel patronized by legislators who had money of their own, by many of the titled attaches of the embassies, and by families that came during the season with the hope of edging their way into official society. he explained to the manager of the hotel that the princess kalora was an invalid, would require secluded apartments, and probably would not care to meet any of the other persons living at the hotel. within a week after the rooms had been reserved the invalid drove up to the legation to thank the secretary for his kindness. now, the secretary had lived in modern capitals for many years, was trained in diplomacy, and had schooled himself never to appear surprised. but the princess kalora fairly bowled him over. he had pictured her as a wan and waxen creature, who would be carried to the hotel in a closed carriage or ambulance, there to recline by the windowside and look out at the rustling leaves. he had decided, after hours of deliberation, that the etiquette of the situation would be for some member of the legation to call upon her about once a week and take flowers to her. and here was the invalid, bounding out of a coupé, tripping up the front steps and bursting in upon him like an untamed amazon from the prairies of nebraska. she wore a tailor-made suit of dark material, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big welts on the back and stout, low-heeled oxfords. this was the young woman who had come five thousand miles to improve her health! this was the child of the orient, and in the orient, woman is a hothouse flower. this was the timid young recluse to whom the soft-spoken diplomats were to carry a few roses about once a week. why had she called upon the secretary? first, to thank him for having engaged the rooms; second, to invite him to take her out to a country club and teach her the game of golf. she had heard people at the hotel talking about golf. the game had been strongly commended to her by a congressman's daughter, with whom she had ascended to the top of the washington monument. when the secretary, having recovered his breath, asked if she felt strong enough to attempt such a vigorous game, she was moved to silvery laughter. she told what she had accomplished during three short days in washington. she had attended two matinees with popova, had gone motoring into the virginia hills, had inspected all the public buildings, and studied every shop-window in pennsylvania avenue. the secretary knew that all this outdoor freedom was not usually accorded a young woman of his native domain, and yet he felt that he had no authority to restrain her or correct her. she was a princess, and he was relatively a subordinate, and, when she requested him to take her to the country club, he gave an embarrassed consent. "you have been in america a long time?" she asked. "about three years." "you have met many people--that is, the important people?" "all of them are important over here. those that are not very wealthy or very eminent are getting ready to be." "i am wondering if you could tell me something about a young man i met abroad. i met him only once, and i have quite forgotten his name." "i'm afraid i haven't met him." "he is rather good-looking and has--well, red hair; not rusty red, but a sort of golden red." "there are millions of red-haired young men in america." "please don't discourage me. now i remember the name of his home. he lived in pennsa--pennsylvania, that's it." "pennsylvania is about four times as large as morovenia." "but he is very wealthy. he talked as if he had come into millions." "i can well believe it. the millionaires of pennsylvania are even as the sands of the sea or the leaves of the forest." "he owns some sort of mills or factories--where they make steel." "every millionaire in pennsylvania has something to do with steel. now, if you were searching in that state for a young man who is penniless and has nothing to do with the steel industry, possibly i might be of some service to you. the whole area of pennsylvania is simply infested with millionaires. not all of them are red-headed, but they will be, before congress gets through with them." this playful lapse into the american vernacular was quite lost upon the princess kalora, who was sitting very still and gazing in a most disconsolate manner at the secretary. "i felt sure that you could tell me all about him," she said. "believe me, if i encounter any young millionaire from pennsylvania, whose hair is golden-red, i shall put detectives on his trail and let you know at once. you met him abroad?" "at a garden party in morovenia." "indeed! garden parties in morovenia! and yet that is not one-half as surprising as to find you here in washington." "you are not displeased to find me here?" "charmed--delighted." "and you will take me to the country club?" "at any time. it will really give me much pleasure." "i shall drop a note. good-by." he stood at the window to watch her as she nimbly jumped into the coupé and was driven away. that evening he made a most astonishing report to his intimates of the corps and asked: "what shall i do?" "do you feel competent to take charge of her and regulate her conduct?" "i do not." "have you instructions to watch her and make sure that she observes the etiquette and keeps within the restrictions of her own country while she is visiting in washington?" "nothing of the sort." "from your first interview with her, do you believe that it would be advisable for any of us to attempt to interfere with her plans?" "decidedly not." "then take her to the country club and teach her the game of golf, and remember the old saying at home, that no man was ever given praise for attempting to govern another man's family." so it was settled that the legation would not attempt any supervision of kalora's daily program. and it was a very wise decision, for the daily program was complicated and the legation would have been kept exceedingly busy. popova became merely a sort of footman, or modified chaperon. he knew that he had no real authority and seldom attempted even the most timid suggestions as to her conduct. once or twice he mentioned health-food and dieting, and was pooh-poohed into a corner. as for the women attendants, who had been sent along that they might be the companions of the princess during the long hours of loneliness and seclusion, they were trained to act as hair-dressers and french maids and repairing seamstresses! kalora had money and a title and physical attractions. could she well escape the gaieties of washington? be assured that she made no effort to escape them. she followed the busy routine of dinners and balls, receptions and afternoon teas, her childish enthusiasm never lagging. she could play at golf and she seemed to know horseback riding the first time she tried it, and after the first two weeks she drove her own motor-car. the letters that went back to morovenia were fairly dripping with superlatives and happy adjectives. she was delighted with washington; she was in excellent health; the members of the legation were very thoughtful in their attentions; the autumn weather was all that could be desired; her apartments at the hotel were charming. in fact, her whole life was rose-colored, but never a word of real news for her anxious father and sister--nothing about gaining a pound a day. the governor-general hoped from the encouraging tone of the letters that she was quietly housed, out in the borders of some primeval forest, gradually enlarging into the fullness of perfect womanhood. about three months after her departure, in order to reassure himself regarding the progress in her case, he wrote a letter to the minister at washington. he told the minister that his child was disposed to be unruly and that popova had become careless and somewhat indefinite in his reports--and would he, the minister, please write and let an anxious parent know the actual weight of princess kalora? the minister resented this manner of request. he did not feel that it was within the duties of a high official to go out and weigh young women, so he replied briefly that he knew no way of ascertaining the exact weight of an acrobatic young woman who never stood still long enough to be weighed, but he could assure the father that she was somewhat slimmer and more petite than when she arrived in washington a few weeks before. this letter slowly traveled back to morovenia, and on the very day of its delivery to count selim malagaski, who read it aloud and then went into a frothing paroxysm of rage, the princess kalora in washington figured in a most joyful episode. a western millionaire, who had bought a large cubical palace on one of the radiating avenues, was giving a dancing-party, to which the entire blue book had been invited. kalora went, trailed by the long-suffering popova. she wore her most fetching parisian gown, and decked herself out with wrought jewelry of quaint and heavy design, which was the envy of all the other young women in town, and she put in a very busy night, for she danced with army officers, and lieutenants of the navy, and one senator, and goodness knows how many half-grown diplomats. at two o'clock in the morning she was in the supper-room: a fairly late hour for a young woman supposed to be leading a quiet life. the food set before her would not have been prescribed for a tender young creature who was dieting. she was supping riotously on stuffed olives. her companion was a young gentleman from the army. they sat beneath a huge palm. the tables were crowded together rather closely. she chanced to look across at the little table to her right, and she saw a young man--a young man with light hair almost ripe enough to be auburn. with a smothered "oh!" she dropped the olive poised between her fingers, and as she did so, he looked across and saw her and exclaimed: "well, i'll be--" he came over, almost upsetting two tables in his impetuous course. she expected to see him jump over them. he seized her hand and gazed at her in grinning delight, and the young gentleman from the army went into total eclipse. xii the governor cables "i don't believe it. it's too good to be true. i am in a trance. it isn't you, is it?" and he was still holding her hand. "yes--it is." "the princess--ah--?" "kalora." "_that's_ it. i was so busy thinking of you after i left your cute little country that i couldn't remember the name. i thought of 'calico' and 'fedora' and 'kokomo' and a lot of names that sounded like it, but i knew i was wrong. _kalora_--_kalora_--i'll remember that. i knew it began with a 'k.' but what in the name of all that is pure and sanctified are you doing in the land of the free?" "you invited me to come. don't you remember? you urged me to come." "that's why you notified me as soon as you arrived, isn't it? how long have you been here?" "i forget--three months--four months. surely you have seen my name in the papers. every morning you may read a full description of what princess kalora of morovenia wore the night before. for a simple and democratic people you are rather fond of high-sounding titles, don't you think?" "i haven't read the papers, because i'm always afraid i'll find something about myself. they don't describe my costumes, however. they simply say that i am trying to blow up and scuttle the ship of state. but this has nothing to do with your case. it is customary, when you accept an invitation, to let the host know something about it. in other words, why didn't you drop me a line?" "i will confess--the whole truth--since you have been candid enough to admit that you had forgotten my name. i tried to find you, through the legation. i described you, but--your name--_please_ tell me your name again? you mentioned it, that day in the garden. popova promised to go to the hotel and get it for me, but we were bundled away in such a hurry." "heavens! imagine any one forgetting such a name! alexander h. pike, bessemer, pennsylvania, tariff-fed infant and all-round plutocrat." "why, of course, _pike, pike_--it is the name of a fish." "thank you." the young gentleman from the army moved uneasily, and they remembered that he was present. he hoped they wouldn't mind if he went to look up his partner for the next dance, and they assured him that they wouldn't, and he believed them and was backing away when popova arrived to suggest the lateness of the hour and intimate his willingness to return to the hotel. his sudden journey to the western hemisphere and his period of residence at washington had been punctuated with surprises, but the amazement which smote him when he saw kalora leaning across the table toward the young man who had introduced the gin fizz into morovenia was sudden and shocking. mr. pike greeted him rapturously and gave him the keys to north america, and then kalora patted him on the arm and sent him away to wait for her. they sat and talked for an hour--sat and talked and laughed and pieced out between them the wonderful details of that very lively day in morovenia. "and you have come all the way to washington, d.c. in order to increase your weight?" he asked. "that certainly would make a full-page story for a sunday paper. think of anybody's coming to washington to fatten up! why, when i come down here to regulate these committees, i lose a pound a day." "i never dreamed that there could be a country in which women are given so much freedom--so many liberties." "and what we don't give them, they take--which is eminently correct. of all the sexes, there is only one that ever made a real impression on me." "and to think that some day i shall have to return to morovenia!" "forget it," urged mr. pike, in a low and soothing tone. "far be it from me to start anything in your family, but if i were you, i would never go back there to serve a life sentence in one of those lime-kilns, with a curtain over my face. you are now at the spot where woman is real superintendent of the works, and this is where you want to camp for the rest of your life." "but i can not disobey my father. i dare not remain if he--" she paused, realizing that the talk had led her to dangerous ground, for mr. pike had dropped his large hand on her small one and was gazing at her with large devouring eyes. "you won't go back if i can help it," he said, leaning still nearer to her. "i know this is a little premature, even for me, but i just want you to know that from the minute i looked down from the wall that day and saw you under the tree--well, i haven't been able to find anything else in the world worth looking at. when i met you again to-night, i didn't remember your name. you didn't remember my name. what of that? we know each other pretty well--don't you think we do? the way you looked at me, when i came across to speak to you--i don't know, but it made me believe, all at once, that maybe you had been thinking of me, the same as i had been thinking of you. if i'm saying more than i have a right to say, head me off, but, for once in my life, i'm in earnest." "i'm glad--you like me," she said, and she pushed back in her chair and looked down and away from him and felt that her face was burning with blushes. "when you have found out all about me, i hope you'll keep on speaking to me just the same," he continued. "i warn you that, from now on, i am going to pester you a lot. you'll find me sitting on your front door-step every morning, ready to take orders. to-morrow i must hie me to new york, to explain to some venerable directors why the net earnings have fallen below forty per cent. but when i return, o fair maiden, look out for me." he would be back in washington within three days. he would come to her hotel. they were to ride in the motor-car and they were to go to the theaters. she must meet his mother. his mother would take her to new york, and there would be the opera, and this, and that, and so on, for he was going to show her all the attractions of the western hemisphere. the night was thinning into the grayness of dawn when he took her to the waiting carriage. she put her hand through the window and he held it for a long time, while they once more went over their delicious plans. after the carriage had started, popova spoke up from his dark corner. "i am beginning to understand why you wished to come to america. also i have made a discovery. it was mr. pike who overcame the guards and jumped over the wall." "i shall ask the governor-general to give you koldo's position." an enormous surprise was waiting for them at the hotel. it was a cable from morovenia--long, decisive, definite, composed with an utter disregard for heavy tolls. it directed popova to bring the shameless daughter back to morovenia immediately--not a moment's delay under pain of the most horrible penalties that could be imagined. they were to take the first steamer. they were to come home with all speed. surely there was no mistaking the fierce intent of the message. popova suffered a moral collapse and kalora went into a fit of weeping. both of them feared to return and yet, at such a crisis, they knew that they dared not disobey. the whole morning was given over to hurried packing-up. an afternoon train carried them to new york. a steamer was to sail early next day, and they went aboard that very night. [illustration: they were to come home with all speed.] kalora had left a brief message at her hotel in washington. it was addressed to mr. alexander h. pike, and simply said that something dreadful had happened, that she had been called home, that she was going back to a prison the doors of which would never swing open for her, and she must say good-by to him for ever. she tried to communicate with him before sailing away from new york. messenger boys, bribed with generous cab-fares, were sent to all the large hotels, but they could not find the right mr. pike. the real mr. pike was living at a club. she leaned over the railing and watched the gang-plank until the very moment of sailing, hoping that he might appear. but he did not come, and she went to her state-room and tried to forget him, and to think of something other than the reception awaiting her back in the dismal region known as morovenia. xiii the home-coming the governor-general waited in the main reception-room for the truant expedition. he was hoping against hope. orders had been given that popova, kalora and the whole disobedient crew should be brought before him as soon as they arrived. his wrath had not cooled, but somehow his confidence in himself seemed slowly to evaporate, as it came time for him to administer the scolding--the scolding which he had rehearsed over and over in his mind. he heard the rolling wheels grit on the drive outside, and then there was murmuring conversation in the hallway, and then kalora entered. his most dreadful suspicions were ten times confirmed. she wore no veil and no flowing gown. she was tightly incased in a gray cloth suit, and there was no mistaking the presence of a corset underneath. on her head was a kind of alpine hat with a defiant feather standing upright at one side. before her father had time to study the details of this barbaric costume, he sat staring at her as she was silhouetted for an instant between him and the open window. merciful mahomet! she was as lean and supple as an austrian race-horse! he could say nothing. she ran over and gave him a smack on the forehead and then said cheerily: "well, popsy, here i am! what do you think of me?" while count selim malagaski was holding to his chair and trying to sort out from the limited vocabulary of morovenia the words that could express his boiling emotions, he saw popova standing shamefaced in the doorway. was it really popova? the tutor wore a traveling-suit with large british checks, a blue four-in-hand, and, instead of a fez, a rakish cap with a peak in front. as he edged into the room the young women attendants filed timidly behind him. horror upon horrors! they were in shirt-waists, with skirts that came tightly about the hips, and every one of them wore a chip hat, and not one of them was veiled! the governor-general tried to steady himself in order to meet this unprecedented crisis. "so this is how you have managed my affairs?" he said in angry tones to the trembling popova. [illustration: popsy.] "what is the meaning of this shocking exhibition?" "don't blame him, father," spoke up kalora. "i am responsible for whatever has happened. we have seen something of the world. we have learned that morovenia is about two hundred years behind the times. they knew that you would not approve, but i have compelled them to have the courage of their convictions. you can see for yourself that we no longer belong here. there is but one thing for you to do, and that is to send us away again." "no!" exclaimed her father, banging his fist on the table, and then coming to his feet. "you shall remain here--all of you--and be punished! you have ruined your own prospects; you have condemned your poor sister to a life of single misery, and you have made your father the laughing-stock of all morovenia! if i can not reform you and make you a dutiful child, at least i can make an example of you!" "stop!" she said very sharply. "let us not have an unfortunate scene in the presence of the servants. if you have anything to say to me, send them away, and remember also, father, i have certain rights which even you must respect. also, i have a great surprise for you. i am beautiful. hundreds of young men have told me so. under no circumstances would i permit myself to become large and gross and bulky. you are disheartened because no young man in morovenia wishes to marry me. bless you, there isn't a young man in this country worth marrying!" "young woman, you have taxed my patience far beyond the limit," said her father, speaking low in an effort to control his wrath. "hereafter you shall never go beyond the walls of this palace! you shall be a waiting-maid for your sister! the servants shall be instructed to treat you as a menial--one of their own class! these shameless women are dismissed from my service! as for you"--turning upon the old tutor--"you shall be put away under lock and key until i can devise some punishment severe enough to fit your case!" that night kalora slept on a hard and narrow cot in a bare apartment adjoining her sister's gorgeous boudoir--quite a change from the suite overlooking the avenue. the shirt-waist brigade had been sent into banishment, and poor popova was sitting on a wooden stool in a dungeon, thinking of the dinners he had eaten at old point comfort and wondering if he had not overplayed himself in the effort to be avenged upon the governor-general. xiv heroism rewarded a month later popova was still in prison, and had demonstrated that even after one has lunched for several months at the shoreham, the new willard and the raleigh, he may subsist on such simple fare as bread and water. kalora had been humiliated to the uttermost, but her spirit was unbroken and defiant. she was nominally a servant, but jeneka and the others dared not attempt any overbearing attitude toward her, for they feared her sharp and ready wit. the fires of inward wrath seemed to have reduced her weight a few pounds, so that if ever a man faced a situation of unbroken gloom, that man was the poor governor-general. count malagaski sat in the large, over-decorated audience room, alone with his sorrowful meditations. an attendant brought him a note. "the man is at the gate," said the attendant. "he started to come in. we tried to keep him out. he pushed three of the soldiers out of the way, but we finally held him back, so he sends this note." a few lines had been written in pencil on the reverse side of a typewritten business letter. the governor-general could speak english, but he read it rather badly, so he sent for his secretary, who told him that the note ran as follows: you don't know me and there is no need to give my name. must see you on important matter of business. something in regard to your daughter. "great heavens, another one!" said the governor-general. "there are one thousand young men ready and willing to marry jeneka and not one in all the world wants kalora. send him away!" "i am afraid he won't go," suggested the attendant. "he is a very positive character." "then send him in to me. i can dispose of his case in short order." a few moments later count selim malagaski found himself sitting face to face with a ruddy young man in a blue suit--a square-shouldered, smiling young gentleman, with hair of subdued auburn. "i take it that you're a busy man and i'll come to the point," said the young man, pulling up his chair. "i try to be business from the word go, even in matters of this kind. you have a daughter." "i have two daughters," replied the governor-general sadly. "you have only one that interests me. i have been around a good deal, but she is about the finest looking girl i--" "before you say any more, let me explain to you," said the governor-general very courteously. "perhaps you are not entitled to this information, but you seem to be a gentleman and a person of some importance, and you have done me the honor to admire my daughter, and, therefore, it is well that you should know all the facts in the case. i have two daughters. one is exceedingly beautiful and her hand has been sought in marriage by young men of the very first families of morovenia, notably count luis muldova, who owns a vast estate near the roumanian frontier. i have another daughter who is decidedly unattractive, so much so that she has never had an offer of marriage. i am telling you all this because it is known to all morovenia, and even you, a stranger, would have learned it very soon. under the law here, a younger sister may not marry until the elder sister has married. my unattractive daughter is the elder of the two. do you see the point? do you understand, when you come talking of a marriage with my one desirable daughter, that not only are you competing with all the wealthy and titled young men of this country, but also you are condemned to sit down and patiently wait until the elder sister has married,--which means, my dear sir, that probably you will wait for ever? therefore i think i may safely wish you good day." "hold on, here," said the visitor, who had been listening intently, with his eyes half-closed, and nodding his head quickly as he caught the points of the unusual situation. "if i can fix it up with you and daughter--and i don't think i'll have any trouble with daughter--what's the matter with my rustling around and finding a good man for sister? there is no reason why any young woman with a title should go into the discard these days. at least we can make a try. i have tackled propositions that looked a good deal tougher than this." "do you think it possible that you could find a desirable husband for a young woman who has no physical charms and who, on two or three occasions, has scandalized our entire court?" "i don't say i can, but i'm willing to take a whirl at it." "my dear sir, before we go any further, tell me something about yourself. you are an englishman, i presume?" "great scott! you're the first one that ever called me that. i have been called a good many things, but never an englishman. i'll have to begin wearing a flag in my hat. i'm an american." "american!" gasped the governor-general. "i am very sorry to hear it. i have every reason for regarding you and your native country as my natural enemies." "you're dead wrong. america is all right. the states size up pretty well alongside of this little patch of country." "i do not blame you for being loyal to your own home, sir, but isn't it rather presumptuous for you, an american, to aspire to the hand of a princess who could marry any one of a dozen young men of wealth and social position?" "what's the matter with my wealth and social position? i'm willing to stack up my bank-account with any other candidate. i happen to be worth eighteen million dollars." "dollars?" repeated the governor-general, puzzled. "what would that be in piasters?" "it's a shame to tell you. only about four hundred million piastres, that's all." "what!" exclaimed the governor-general. "surely you are joking. how could one man be worth four hundred million piasters?" "say, if you'll give me a pencil and a pad of paper and about a half-day's time, i'll figure out for you what henry frick is worth in piasters and then you _would_ have a fit. why, in the land of ready money i'm only a third-rater, but i've got the four hundred million, all right." "but have you any social position?" asked the governor-general. "any rank? any title? over here those things count for a great deal." "i am grand exalted ruler of the benevolent and protective order of elks," said the visitor calmly. "really!" "i am a knight templar." "a knight? that is certainly something." "do you see this badge with all the jewels in it? that means that i am a noble of the mystic shrine." "i can see that it is the insignia of a very distinguished order," said the governor-general, as he touched it admiringly. "what is more, i am king of the hoo-hoos." "a king?" "a sure-enough king. now, don't you worry about my wealth or my title. i've got money to burn and i can travel in any company. the thing for us to do is to get together and find a good husband for the cripple, and fix up this whole marriage deal. but before we go into it i want to meet your daughter and find out exactly how i stand with her." "that will be unnecessary, and also impossible. whatever arrangements you make with me may be regarded as final. my daughter will obey my wishes." "not for mine! i am not trying to marry any girl that isn't just as keen for me as i am for her. why, i've seen her only twice. let me talk it over with her, and if she says yes, then you can look me up in bradstreet and we'll all know where we stand." "i am sorry, but it is absolutely contrary to our customs to permit a private interview between an unmarried woman and her suitor." "whereas in our country it is the most customary thing in the world! now, why should we observe the customs of _your_ country and disregard the customs of _my_ country, which is about forty times as large and eighty times as important as your country? don't be foolish! i may be the means of pulling you out of a tight hole. you go and send your daughter here to me. give me ten minutes with her. i'll state my case to her, straight from the shoulder, and, if she doesn't give me a lot of encouragement, i'll grab the first train back to paris. if she _does_ give me any encouragement, then you'll see what can be accomplished by a real live matrimonial agency." the governor-general hesitated, but not for long. the confident manner of the stranger had inspired him with the first courage that he had felt for many weeks and revived in him the long-slumbering hope that possibly there was somewhere in the world a desirable husband for kalora. he was about to violate an important rule, but there was no reason why any one on the outside should hear about it. "this is most unusual," he said. "if i comply with your request, i must beg of you not to mention the fact of this interview to any one. remain here." he went away, and the young man waited minute after minute, pacing back and forth the length of the room, cutting nervous circles around the big office chairs, wiping his palms with his handkerchief and wondering if he had come on a fool's errand or whether-he heard a rustle of soft garments, and turned. there in the doorway stood a feminine full moon--an elliptical young woman, with half of her pink and corpulent face showing above a gauzy veil, her two chubby hands clasped in front of her, the whole attitude one of massive shyness. "i--i beg pardon," he said, staring at her in wonder. she tried to speak, but was too much flustered. he saw that she was smiling behind the veil, and then she came toward him, holding out her hand. he took the hand, which felt almost squashy, and said: "i am very glad to meet you." then there was a pause. "won't you be seated?" he asked. she sank into one of the leather chairs and looked up at him with a little simper, and there was another pause. "i--i never have seen you before, have i?" she asked, with a secretive attempt to take a good look at him. "you can search me," he replied, staring at her, as if fascinated by her wealth of figure. "if i had seen you before, i have a remote suspicion that i should remember you. i don't think it would be easy to forget you." "you flatter me," she said softly. "do i? well, i meant every word of it. will you pardon me for being a wee bit personal? are there many young ladies in these parts that are as--as--corpulent, or fat, or whatever you want to call it--that is, are you any plumper than the average?" "i have been told that i am." "once more pardon me, but have you done anything for it?" "for what?" she asked, considerably surprised. "i wouldn't have mentioned it, only i think i can give you some good tips. i had a cousin flora who was troubled the same way. about the time she went to smith college she got kind of careless with herself, used to eat a lot of candy and never take any exercise, and she got to be an awful looking thing. if you'll cut out the starchy foods and drink nothing but kissingen, and begin skipping the rope every day, you'll be surprised how much of that you'll take off in a little while. at first you won't be able to skip more than twenty-five or fifty times a day, but you keep at it and in a month you can do your five hundred. put on plenty of flannels and wear a sweater. and i'll show you a dandy exercise. put your heels together this way,"--and he stood in front of her,--"and try to touch the floor with your fingers--so!"--illustrating. "you won't be able to do it at first, but keep at it, and it'll help a lot. then, if you will lie flat on your back every morning, and work your feet up and down----" she had listened, at first in utter amazement. now her timid coquettishness was giving way to anger. "what are you trying to tell me?" she asked. "it's none of my business, but i thought you'd be glad to find out what'd take off about fifty pounds." "and is this why you came to see me?" she demanded. "_i_ didn't come to see _you_." "my father said you were waiting and he sent me to you." "sent _you_," replied mr. pike in frank surprise. "my dear girl, you may be good to your folks and your heart may be in the right place, and i don't want to hurt your feelings, but father has got mixed in his dates. i certainly didn't come here to see _you_." as he was speaking jeneka wriggled forward in her chair and then arose. she stood before him, heaving perceptibly. "your manner is most insulting," she declared. she had expected to be showered with compliments, and here was this giggling stranger advising her to be thin! she toddled over to the door and pushed a bell. then she turned upon the bewildered stranger and remarked coldly: "unless you have something further to communicate, you may consider this interview at an end." a servant appeared in the doorway. "show this person out," said the portly princess. the servant gave a little scream. "mr. pike!" "kalora!" and then he was holding both her hands. "you are _here_--here in morovenia? you came all the way?" "all the way! i'd have come ten times as far. before i left new york i heard about all those messenger boys hunting me around the hotels, but i didn't know what it meant. when i got back to washington i found your note, and, as soon as i could get congress calmed down, i started--got in here last night." "but why did you come?" [illustration: "mr. pike!" "kalora!"] "can't you guess?" mr. pike wasted no time in circumlocution. during this hurried interview jeneka had been holding a determined thumb against the electric button. the governor-general, waiting impatiently up the hallway, heard the prolonged buzzing and came to investigate. he found the adorable jeneka, all trembling with indignation, in the doorway. she saw him and pointed. he looked and saw the distinguished stranger, the man of many titles and unbounded wealth, standing close to the slim princess, holding both her hands and beaming upon her with all of the unmistakable delirious happiness of love's young dream. "what does it mean?" asked the governor-general. "is it possible----" "he was rude to me," began jeneka, "he was most insulting----" mr. pike turned to meet his prospective father-in-law. "you meant well, but you got twisted," he remarked. "this is the one i was looking for." at first count selim malagaski was too dumfounded for speech. "are you sure?" he asked. "can it be possible that you, a man worth millions of piasters, an exalted ruler, a noble of the mystic shrine, have deliberately chosen this waspy, weedy----" "let up!" said mr. pike sharply. "you can say what you please about your daughter, but you mustn't make remarks about the prospective mrs. pike. i don't know anything about her local reputation for looks, but i think she's the most beautiful thing that ever drew breath, and i'd make it stronger than that if i knew how. you thought i meant the fat one. well, i didn't, but i hope the agreement goes just the same. and i'll stick to what i said. i'll get the other one married off. it may take a little time, but i think i can find some one." "_find_ some one?" cried jeneka indignantly. "_find_ some one?" repeated her father. "she has been sought by every young man of quality in the whole kingdom. how dare you suggest that----" then he paused, for he was beginning to comprehend that young mr. pike had stepped in and saved him, and that, instead of rebuking mr. pike, he should be weeping on his breast and calling him "son." jeneka came to her senses at the same moment, for she saw her dream of five years coming true. she knew that soon she would be the countess muldova. mr. pike suddenly felt himself caressed by three happy mortals. "i shall make you a knight of the gleaming scimitar," said the governor-general. "i have the authority." "thanks," replied mr. pike. "and we can have a double wedding," exclaimed jeneka, whose ecstasy was almost apoplectic. "we shall be married in washington," said kalora decisively. "i am not going to be carted over to my husband's house and delivered at the back door, even if it is the custom of my native land. i shall be married publicly and have twelve bridesmaids." "you may start for washington immediately," said her father with genuine enthusiasm. "i shall need a chaperon. send for popova." "good! his punishment shall be--permanent exile." "nothing would please him better," said kalora. "over here he is nothing--in washington he will be a distinguished foreigner. washington! _washington_! to think that all of us are going back there! to think that once more i shall have pickles--all the pickles i want to eat!" "we have over fifty varieties waiting for you," observed young mr. pike tenderly. "i have been thinking," spoke up the governor-general. "i shall apply to the sultan. he shall make you a most noble prince of the order of bosporus. the decoration is a great star, studded with diamonds." "thanks," replied mr. pike. that night the great palace at morovenia was completely illuminated for the first time in many months. the end transcriber note: as the limitations of a plain text file preclude the usage of superscripts, a caret character has been inserted before all superscripted letters. for example: 100^3 for 100 to the third power. [illustration: cover] [illustration: _we stared--frozen--at the great face above us._] _up from the horror of hiroshima came a god. he gave the people hope and for this they killed him--as they have always killed their gods._ the image and the likeness by john scott campbell shanghai had changed. we sensed that the moment we came ashore. extraterritoriality was long gone; we had known that, of course. the days of exploitation, of clubs where chinese and burmese and indian servants waited on britons and americans were passed. pan-asia had seen to that. this was 1965. the white man's burden in the east had been upon brown and yellow shoulders for over sixteen years now, and the indians and burmese and indonesians were ruling themselves, after their fling at communism in the fifties. the initial bitterness which followed the debacle of 1955 had passed, we were glad to see. porters no longer spat in the faces of white men. they were polite, but we had not been in the city a half hour before we sensed something else. there was an edge to that politeness. it was as major reid had written before we left san francisco--a subtle change had come over asia in the previous few years. they smiled--they waited on us--they bent over backwards to atone for the excesses of the first years of freedom from foreign rule; but through it all was an air of aloofness, of superior knowledge. baker put it in his typically blunt british way. "the blighters have something up their sleeves, all right. the whole crew of them. did you notice that rickshaw boy? when i said to take us to the hotel, he answered 'yes, today i take you'. the major was right--there's something in the wind, and it's damned serious." we were sitting, surrounded by our luggage, in our suite at the new china hotel. there were four of us: llewelyn baker, walter chamberlin, robert martin, and myself, william cady. baker and martin were anthropologists, and old china hands as well. chamberlin was a geologist, and i claimed knowledge of zoology. we were here ostensibly as a scientific expedition, and had permission from the republic of east asia to do some work on celebese man, following up the discoveries by rance of bones and artifacts on that east indian island in 1961. we had another reason for coming at this particular time, although this was not mentioned to the authorities. our real objective was to find out certain things about new buddhism, the violently nationalistic religion which was sweeping pan-asia. new buddhism was more than a religion. it was a motivating force of such power that men like major reid at the american embassy were frankly worried, and had communicated their fears to their home governments. the pan-asia movement had, at first, been understandable. at first it had been nationalism, pure and simple. the asiatics were tired of exploitation and western bungling, and wanted to rule themselves. during the communist honeymoon in the early fifties, it was partly underground and partly taken over by the reds for their own purposes. but through everything it retained a character of its own, and after '55 it reappeared as a growing force which was purely oriental. or at least so it seemed. our job was, among other things, to find out if russian control was really destroyed. we had already made several observations. the most obvious was the number of priests. yellow robed buddhist priests had always been common, begging rice and coppers in the streets, but in 1955 a new kind appeared. he was younger than his predecessors, and was usually an ex-soldier. and his technique was different. he was a salesman. "rice--rice for buddha," he would say. "rice for the living buddha, to give him strength. rice for the great one, that he may grow mighty. rice for the strength to cast off our bonds." and they had organization. this wasn't any hit or miss revival, started by a crackpot, or by some schemer for his own enrichment. there was direction back of it, and very good direction too. we sensed that it had been japanese, at least at the start, but with the end of the occupation, we could no longer barge in and investigate officially. now there were treaties to respect, and diplomatic procedure and all that sort of thing. instead, we were here to spy. unofficially, of course. the ambassador was very explicit on that point. we were strictly on our own. if we were caught, there could be no protection. so here we were. four scientists investigating celebese man, and trying to find out, on the side, just what was back of new buddhism. we washed up, had dinner, and presently, as we had expected, major reid called. after a few jocular references to anthropology, for the benefit of the waiter, he got down to business. "i'll have to be brief," he said, "because i can't spend too much time with you without stirring up suspicion. you all know the background. they claim that this business is simply a new religion, a revival of buddhism modeled to fit new conditions. president tung claims that there is no connection between it and the state. we think differently. we have reason to believe that the direction back of this movement is communism, and that its ultimate object is military attack on the western world. what we don't know is the nature of the proposed attack. some of us suspect that they are making h-bombs, and have covered up so that we cannot spot them. that's what we must find out. "the headquarters of new buddhism is on a small volcanic island called yat, off the east coast of celebes. your job is to reach that island and find out what's going on, and then bring the information back. clear?" we nodded. we had received a similar briefing in washington, and from a far more distinguished personage than major reid, but we felt no need of mentioning this. in such a business, gratuitous information, even to friends, serves no useful end. * * * * * our informant in washington had told us a good many other things, too. in the name of new buddhism, the priests had been collecting immense quantities of supplies, and on an increasing scale. tons of foodstuffs had been gathered and then shipped off to an unknown destination. machinery, lumber, structural steel, canvas by the thousands of yards had been purchased, loaded onto ships and barges, and spirited away. it appeared that the new buddhists were maintaining a standing army, or perhaps a labor force somewhere east of borneo, but the picture was very incomplete. part of the failure of ordinary methods of intelligence may have been due to the supersecrecy of the new buddhists themselves. it was not difficult to corrupt priests on the lower levels, but all they knew was that certain quotas of food and materials were set for their territory, which were then shipped away to borneo. the big break had come only a few months ago. one of the oss men got through to a barge captain, who had been to the headquarters itself. he identified the location as an island a few miles off the northeast coast of celebes. it was, he said, highly mountainous--in fact he believed it to be an extinct volcano, with a water filled crater reached only by a narrow passage from the sea. boats, he said, could go in and out, but his barge was not among those permitted. he delivered his cargo, three thousand tons of rice and five thousand raw hides, and was then sent on his way. under questioning, he said that there were many people living on the island--thousands at least. most of them lived in barracks among the trees fronting the ocean, but some had special privileges and were allowed to go to the top of the crater rim. of the activities within the crater our informant knew nothing. at night the clouds were often lit by reflections from there, and once he had heard noises, accompanied by a distinct shaking of the earth, as though blasting were being done at a great depth. this was the extent of our knowledge. we knew the location, but it was up to us to find out the rest. our departure from shanghai for the great island of celebes involved the usual exasperation of delay and red tape. the american embassy did everything possible to expedite matters, and brought a little pressure to bear, i think, on the strength of the then impending american sixth loan to china. in any case we were at last cleared, and boarded the plane for celebes. we took one of the six place compartments on the upper deck, and presently had company in the form of two yellow-clad new buddhist priests. baker, who had the best command of chinese, engaged them in conversation. as we had expected, they were very willing to talk, and displayed a lively interest in celebes man. that they were here to watch us was obvious. baker bided his time, and then switched the conversation to new buddhism. on this subject too the priests were anything but reticent. they described with enthusiasm the great spiritual renaissance that was sweeping all asia "like a wind, the breath of life from the living buddha." baker asked a few questions about the buddha, since to show no curiosity about such a life subject might excite suspicion. the priests were ready for them, and gave what was evidently the stock answer: the living buddha was the very incarnation of gautama himself, a spiritual leader who was being groomed to take over the guidance of all mankind, in east and west alike. "where does the great one live?" asked baker, alert for a trap. "in celebes, where you are going," was the reply. "oh," said baker innocently, "then perhaps it could be arranged for us to meet him?" this, explained the priest, was quite impossible. in due time buddha would display himself for the world to see and marvel over; meanwhile, while his preparation was yet incomplete, he must remain in seclusion. by now convinced that the presence of the priests was no accident, baker settled down to the sort of verbal sparring match that he enjoyed. he had been speaking in the cantonese dialect, but now he abruptly switched to english. "you know," he remarked, "you fellows are using an amazing amount of material at your headquarters. enough food to keep a good sized standing army." the two priests, who had professed ignorance of english at the start of the conversation, stiffened visibly. baker returned to chinese. the priests recovered their composure with some effort. the older replied suavely, "gossip is a creative art. there is a large monastery at our central temple, and much is needed to maintain its activities." "truth," said baker pontifically, "is usually disappointing. the imagination changes a mud hut to a palace, and a sickly priest to a demigod." the two priests inclined their heads slightly at this. we watched their expressions. if baker's purposely provoking language brought a reaction, it was not visible. but we had learned one thing: they spoke english but preferred that we did not know it. * * * * * our arrival at new macassar, the indonesian capital of celebes, was attended by the usual confusion and delay. our buddhist friends vanished with a speed which suggested special consideration, while the man from the american consulate was still getting our equipment through customs. this business at length completed, we were escorted to a taxi by the attache and whisked up one of the wide avenues of the city without a question as to where we were to stay. baker and martin stared out the window with studied ease--they knew that something was up, but were content to await further developments. now i noticed something else. the driver of our cab was a european, not a native. i started to frame a question, when, without warning, the car ducked into a side street, swung around two corners and abruptly entered an open doorway in a tall stucco building. both walt and i were half out of our seats in alarm, when our guide spoke. "the american consulate, gentlemen," he said, with the slightest trace of a diplomatic smile. the cab had stopped in the ground floor garage of the consulate, and opening the door was the consul himself. "good morning, i'm stimson. hope avery didn't give you too wild a ride, but i thought it best not to advertise my interest in you at the front door. things have changed a bit in the last few days. well, avery will show you to your rooms. i'll be in the upstairs study when you're freshened up." there was little to speculate on as we shaved and changed to less rumpled clothes, but we worked over the available data for what it was worth. "consul takes us in tow," remarked chamberlin. "that isn't in line with the unofficial status so strongly impressed on us at washington." "and sneaking us in through the back door isn't according to best diplomatic form, either. stimson wants to protect us from something, but obviously doesn't want the local constabulary to know." this from martin. "it seems to me," i ventured, "that they could check the hotels. it shouldn't take them long to put two and two together when we don't show. i'm blessed if i can see what stimson has to gain from this maneuver." baker turned from the mirror where he had been adjusting his tie. "suppose we ask him," he commented. the consul was waiting for us in his study. after the briefest greeting which his official position permitted, he got down to business. "gentlemen, i've had to pull a diplomatic boner of the first magnitude. i refer to the cloak and dagger method of getting you here. but believe me, it was the only way. they're onto your scheme. if you went to a hotel in new macassar, you wouldn't be alive tomorrow morning." "but, the taxi--" began martin. "it gave us a few hours. if i had sent the consulate car, they'd have us sealed off tight right now. i could keep you safe here, or get you on the shanghai plane, but you couldn't make another move. as it is, we have perhaps two hours--with luck." the consul settled back in his chair, evidently gathering his thoughts. we waited, more mystified than before, if that were possible. at length stimson started again. "you're well briefed on the general situation. reid gave me the gist of his conversation. but there are some other things that even reid doesn't know." he opened a folding blotter on his desk and drew out an eight by ten photographic print. "you're aware of the efforts that have been made to look into the crater on yat. to date we have not succeeded in getting an eye witness to the rim. we have flown over yat, of course, and have taken pictures from every altitude from 5,000 to 70,000 feet, but so far they have outsmarted us. they have smoke generators all around the rim, which they fire up night and day whenever the natural clouds lift. we've used every color, including infra red. we've taken stereo pairs, and flash shots at night, but, with one exception, all we've ever gotten are beautiful pictures of clouds and smoke. the exception i have here. it was taken two weeks ago, during a brief break in a heavy storm. before i say anything more, i'd like to have you look at it and form your own opinions." he placed the print on the desk, facing us, and leaned back while we four crowded around. my first glimpse was disappointing. fully two thirds of the picture was occupied by clouds. but gradually i made out the details. there seemed to be several buildings of uncertain size in the lower part, and a fringe of brush extending up to the left. half visible through the mist were several structures which seemed to me, in comparison to the larger buildings, like chicken houses or perhaps rabbit hutches. no humans were in sight, evidently because of the storm. but in the center of the picture was the thing which fixed our attention from the first, leaving the other details for later scrutiny. this was an immense human figure, lying on its side with the head pillowed on its hands in the attitude of the colossal figures of the reclining buddha found in the mountains of china. the body was partly covered by a robe, but whether this was part of the figure or a canvas protection against the rain, was difficult to tell. only the head, hands and feet showed. the face was partly in shadow, but enough could be seen to identify the typical buddha countenance: closed eyes and lips curled in an enigmatic smile. * * * * * we stared at this peculiar picture for a good minute, taking in the details, while stimson watched us. then baker looked up. "what is it?" he asked. "before i tell you our guesses," replied the consul, "i'd like to hear your reactions." "it would appear that the new buddhists are doing the obvious--setting up a buddhist temple. although, except for the statue, you'd never guess it." this from chamberlin. martin squinted closely at the print. "yes, the buildings look more like airship hangars than a temple." stimson raised his eyebrows slightly. "that's an interesting observation," he commented. "wish there were some humans, or something else to give a scale," said baker. "for all we can tell, it could be anything from doll houses and a life sized statue, all the way up to an air base, and a reclining buddha to end all reclining buddhas." there was an expectant pause. stimson, seeing that we had nothing more to add, cleared his throat, glanced briefly out of the window behind his chair, and hunched forward. "this picture was made from an f-180a, modified for photo reconnaissance. the plane was on a routine flight from singapore to mindanao, over a solid deck of clouds. the pilot swung south over yat just out of curiosity. he approached the island at 50,000 feet, using radar, and was about to pass over when he spotted a hole in the overcast. time was 1800--just sunset--but the edge of the crater was well lighted, although the bottom was in deep shadow. more important, the smoke generators had been turned off. obviously the clouds had just parted, and would close in again in a minute. the presence of the f-180a at this particular instant was just one of those one in a million lucky breaks. the pilot realized this. he put the ship into a dive and ordered his photographer to ready the cameras. "the plane approached yat at a speed above mach 1.2, so there was no audible warning, and evidently the island's radar was off, for the surprise was complete. within 90 seconds the f-180a closed level just over the crater and shot past with only a thin stratus layer between it and ground. time over the crater was hardly 10 seconds, and neither pilot nor observer saw anything, but the synchronous vertical camera was operating and four flashes were made during the middle four seconds. then the plane was in the clouds again at a 45 degree climb and a dozen miles towards the philippines before anyone on yat could even get outdoors. "as might be expected there was a considerable protest over this violation of celebese territory, although oddly, it was based on moral grounds rather than national integrity. the protest was signed by the lama of macassar, and demanded neither indemnity nor punishment of the pilot, but asked merely that incense be burned in washington to appease buddha. now of course the lama isn't that naive, or devout. as you may know, phobat rau was educated at harvard and cit, and is a thoroughly trained and tough statesman who knows his way around anywhere, and doesn't believe the theological hogwash in pan-buddhism any more than i do. so it was a question of getting behind his motives. of course, it could be a cover, but our final guess was that the protest was really made for the benefit of the faithful in asia. this opinion was strengthened, at least as far as i am concerned, about a fortnight ago when rau attended the british embassy reception for lord hayes. he didn't avoid me, but actually seemed to single me out as a foil for some of his witty small talk. asked if i was much of a student of buddhist architecture and carvings, and if i had seen the kyoto buddha, or the reclining buddha on the yangtze. he was fishing, of course, but i played it dumb, and presently he gave up. "well, there you have it, at least as far as the picture is concerned. the buddhists were considerably upset, for they tightened up security all over the islands. and then you came into the scene. naturally nobody believed that you were just after celebese man, but the governor granted permission--so easily, in fact, that we got suspicious. americans are no match for oriental subtlety, but we do have a few tricks, one of whom is a code clerk in the macassar foreign office, and from her we learned that you were set for the preferred treatment: to be let in easily, and then knocked off in some painless way. hence the taxi, and the sneak ride here." he paused. "that's the situation to date, gentlemen. any questions?" martin had been studying the photograph. "at what altitude was this taken?" the consul shook his head. "the autorecorder was off. the observer forgot to set it, in the rush." "well, couldn't they estimate?" "they did, but it's obviously way off. the pilot swears that he levelled at 9,000, but that would make these buildings a quarter of a mile long, and the buddha at least five hundred feet. unless you want to believe that they have another willow run on yat, you can't take that figure." another pause. finally baker spoke. "you said you had a guess." "yes, i have." stimson seemed reluctant to speak. "but it sounds so damned fantastic i hate to tell it to you--well, to be short, i don't think that this buddha is a statue." we all sat up. "then what is it?" this from martin. "i mean, not a statue of stone or masonry in the usual sense of the term. i think that it is a portable image of buddha--an inflated gas bag like they use in the easter parade. i think they intend to float it in the air--perhaps tow it--to impress the faithful. if the thing's really 500 feet long, it may be a blimp or a rigid airship with its own motors. but, whatever the details, i think our mystery is just a piece of propaganda for neo-buddhism, although a damned good one, from the native standpoint." we all relaxed. this was an anticlimax. stimson had built us up to something--just what, we were not sure--and then had pricked the bubble. "well, it sounds reasonable," baker finally remarked, returning the print to stimson, "although not particularly dangerous, and certainly not worth risking our necks to spy on. however, i don't think it's good enough to explain all of the supplies that have gone into yat." the consul nodded. "yes, that's the rub. if they hadn't taken such pains to conceal the thing, i'd be inclined to call it just a cover for something else." "maybe it still is," said baker. stimson looked at us carefully, as though making up his mind. "that is where you gentlemen come in," he said finally. "i have reason to believe that our picture has tipped their hand, that they are going ahead with whatever they have planned in the next few days. someone's got to get to yat first--someone who can observe intelligently, and speak the language. my staff is all clerical, and there is no chance to get any cia men now. you're the only ones available." he paused. we looked at each other, and then at baker. he cleared his throat a couple of times, took another squint at the photo, and then spoke. "speaking for myself, stimson, when do we leave?" "that goes for me too," said martin. chamberlin and i nodded. stimson seemed relieved. "i'd hoped to hear that. in fact, i'd have been considerably embarrassed if you gentlemen hadn't come through, because i have a seaplane waiting right now to take you to yat." ii the next two hours passed swiftly. once the decision was made, we all became so involved in the details of preparation as to have no more time for reflection, either upon the nature of what we should find on the island of yat, or the possible personal consequences of our expedition. first stimson briefed us on the geography of our objective. yat was a volcanic island, one of a group strung across the shallow sea east of borneo and north of celebese. it was almost circular, with a diameter of about seven miles, and was entirely covered by a dense tropical forest. the principal feature of the island was an extinct volcanic crater, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet, at the east end of the island. the crater measured about two miles across, and perhaps a third of its area was filled with water from a narrow channel leading to the sea. photos taken before the closure of yat by the indonesians showed a typical malay isle: cocoanut and mango plantations, with forests of gum and mahogany climbing and filling most of the crater. the entrance channel was narrow and quite deep and the interior lake constituted an ideally sheltered anchorage. on the east coast the land rose steeply in a series of mossy cliffs over which waterfalls poured, while to the west, away from the volcano, plantations stretched inland from the coral beaches. as we studied the pictures and charts, stimson briefed us on the course of action. "your first objective is to find out what they're doing in that crater. are they building some new weapon, or training an army, or what. you'll have geiger counters and a krypton analyser of course, although the analyser is no guarantee in detecting fissionable material production. then we want to know what their plans are, particularly in the next few days or weeks. finally, just who is involved in it? is new buddhism entirely asiatic, as they claim, or has russia cut herself in too?" "you will be landed on the west coast of the island just after sunset. the east, with its cliff and entrance channel is undoubtedly too well guarded, but on the west side, with four miles of flat country, they may depend on defense in depth, so that you'll have a better chance of getting past the beach. the plane will come in low, make a landing just off the breakers and drop you off in rubber swim suits. it will then taxi to the north of the island and make a fairly long stop, to divert attention, since it will certainly be picked up by radar. your job will be to swim ashore, bury the rubber suits, and make your way east to the crater. if you reach the rim, see what you can, and report by radio at any hour. if you don't make it to the top, observe as much as possible on the island, make your reports, and rendezvous with the plane at your landing point at 2400 the next day. if you miss that time, a plane will be back daily at the same time for four days. after that, we will assume that you have been caught." we were driven to the harbor in the same disreputable taxicab which had brought us to the consulate a few hours before. time was a little past three in the afternoon as the seaplane roared down a lane in the swarm of junks, tramp freighters and warships of the indonesian state. we hoped that we were not too well observed; there was no way of knowing until we arrived on yat, and the learning might not be too pleasant. the flight northeast from new macassar was uneventful. we passed over a blue tropical sea, dotted with island jewels. for a time the low coast of the great island of celebes made a blue haze on the eastern horizon, and then we had the ocean to ourselves. at dusk there were still two hundred miles between us and yat, a flight of about forty minutes. pulling down the shades, lest the cabin lights reveal us to a chance indonesian patrol, we busied ourselves with packing the portable radio equipment and putting on our watertight clothing. the last fifty miles were made on the deck--in fact, once or twice the hull actually touched a wave-top. the pilot extinguished the cabin lights and we peered ahead for a first glimpse of our objective. the sky was clear, but the moon would not rise until nine, so that the only indication we had that yat was at hand was a slight deepening in the tropic night ahead and to the right, which the pilot said marked mount kosan, the ancient crater. but no sooner had we gotten this vaguely orienting information, than the flaps were lowered, the plane slowed to under 100 miles per hour, and we touched the water. the co-pilot opened the side door, and we crouched together peering out. the plane taxied over a choppy cross sea toward the shadow of the island, while we squinted through the salt spray. presently the engines dropped to idle, and the rumble of surf became audible. "practically dead calm tonight," said the co-pilot reassuringly. "wind usually dies out at sunset. you won't have any trouble getting through. just watch your step when you're ashore." "that's always good advice for sailors," remarked baker. as the plane lost headway, the white line of surf and the silhouettes of cocoa palms took shape. evidently the plantations came right to the water's edge at this point, a circumstance for which we were all thankful. i was just turning to martin with some remark about this when the pilot called softly and urgently. "we're as close as we can drift safely. jump, and good luck." "righto, and thanks," came baker's voice, and then a splash. i was next. i took a deep breath, and clutched my rubber covered bundle of radio gear. i leaped out into darkness. an instant later i was gasping for air beside baker. two more splashes in quick succession and then the engines picked up speed, the dark shape of the wing overhead moved off, and we were alone. * * * * * for a moment we swam in circles, getting our bearings. baker had removed his glasses for the jump, and so we depended mainly on martin for directions. there was really no need for worry, however, for it soon became apparent that a strong onshore current was bringing us in to the breakers at a good clip. the line of phosphorescence marking their crests was now hardly a hundred yards away. with martin in the lead we began to swim. presently one of the swells picked us up quite gently, moved us forward, and then suddenly exploded into a foamy torrent which tossed us head over heels and left us gasping and spitting sand on the beach. as quickly as possible we got into the shelter of the first ranks of trees. here we dug a hole at the base of a great cocoanut palm and buried the rubber suits and cases of radio gear, along with a small vial of radium d. this had been provided for us, along with the geiger counter, by the thorough mr. stimson as a means for locating our cache when we returned, if we should miss our bearings. it was 7:45 when this chore was completed. we had an hour and twenty-three minutes to moonrise. turning inland, we walked in silence through the grove for a few hundred yards, and then came upon a road. this we recognized, from our map study, as the main coastal highway. we hurried across, rather elated at the progress we were making and a little surprised at the lack of fences or other protective devices on the island. things seemed just too easy. on the other side of the road we encountered a rice paddy, which made the going a good deal more difficult. but after about ten minutes of sloshing through this, we came to a diagonal road, or rather path which seemed to be going our way. thanks to this, by 8:45 we felt the ground rising underfoot and sensed a darker bulk in the shadows ahead, which could only be mount kosan itself. here we came to our first fence, an affair of steel posts and barbed wire, which appeared to be a guard against cattle, but hardly more. after inspecting one of the posts for signs of electrification, we crawled under the bottom wire and started up the slope. "are you sure we're on the right island?" asked chamberlin. "from the security measures i don't think we're going to find anything more secret than a copra plantation." baker shushed him, and whispered back, "we're on the right island, but that's the only thing that's right. this is simply too easy to be true." "well," said martin, "stimson could be all wet. maybe they're just sculping a king sized buddha after all." the slope had now steepened considerably, and further conversation died out in the effort of climbing. the volcano was heavily forested all the way up with mahogany and gum trees, and a dense undergrowth of vines and ferns entangled our feet. twice we came upon rapidly flowing streams. we were perhaps two thirds of the way up when the moon appeared. its light didn't penetrate very far into the dense foliage, but it did enable us to make out the top of the mountain, which took the form of a vine covered outcrop of lava. we altered our course slightly, and at 9:50 p.m. the forest fell away and we faced a rough wall of rock some two hundred feet in height. before tackling this last obstacle, we paused for a rest and some hot coffee from the thermos which was included in our equipment. then, at five minutes past ten, we started the final ascent. the cliff proved to be more of a climb than we had anticipated, and the time was close to eleven before we pulled ourselves up over the last boulder and could look across the crater to the other rim. the last few feet we negotiated with the greatest caution. martin, i think, was first, and he pulled himself on his belly across to the beginning of the inner slope. he lay quietly for a half minute, then muttered something under his breath which sounded vaguely like "i'll be damned", and made way for baker, who was next. i squeezed in beside him, and so we got a look into the crater at the same time. baker, being a very self-contained man, made no audible comment, but i must have, for the sight which met our eyes was certainly the last thing i had expected to see. the crater of mount kosan was filled with steel and concrete structures of gargantuan size, and of the most amazing shapes i had ever seen. i say amazing, but i do not mean in the sense of unfamiliar, on the contrary these incredible objects had the commonest shapes. had it not been for trees and normal buildings to give the scene a scale, i would have sworn that we were looking into a picnic grounds a hundred feet across instead of a two mile diameter plain ringed by mountains 2,000 feet high. the buildings seen in the aerial photo occupied only a small part of the crater--all of the other structures must have been concealed by clouds. * * * * * directly below our perch the rim dropped vertically into deep shadows, as the moonlight reached but half the crater. a thousand yards west of us, where the light first touched the floor, we could make out several clumps of brush or small trees, among which was set a rectangular concrete surface measuring perhaps four hundred feet square, and resting on hundred foot steel columns. near this, and partly supported by the side of the mountain was what appeared to be a great table, of roughly the same area, but standing on trussed columns the height of a thirty story building. in front of this was a chair, if by chair you understand me to mean a boxlike building twenty stories high, with a braced back rising as far again. a half mile along the rim was an even larger structure whose dimensions could only be measured in fractions of miles, which resembled nothing more than a vast shed built against the cliff. next my attention was attracted to a number of objects lying upon the platform immediately west of us. one of these appeared to be a steel bowl-like container some thirty feet deep and a hundred in diameter, like the storage tanks used in oil fields. nearby was an open tank measuring perhaps fifty feet in each dimension, and beside this were the most startling of all--several hundred foot pieces of built-up structural steel resembling knife, fork and spoon. in retrospect, the deduction from this evidence was obvious, but as we stared down at this spectacle, a sort of numbness took hold of our minds. as a later comparison of impressions verified, none of us came remotely near guessing the truth in those incredible seconds. for what seemed like minutes we just stared, and then the spell was broken. walt had squeezed in beside me, where he gave vent to a low whistle of amazement. baker shushed him, and then shifted to a better position, in so doing knocking a rock from the ledge. this started a small avalanche which went clattering down the cliff with a sound, to our hypersensitive ears, like thunder. we all froze in our places, abruptly aware that the moon illuminated us like actors in a spotlight. for a good minute we waited tense, and then gradually relaxed. baker started to say something when without warning the ground beneath us shook, starting a score of rockslides. we recoiled from the edge and braced for a stronger earthquake shock. then suddenly baker uttered a hoarse cry. he was pointing--pointing down into the blackness at our feet where our eyes had as yet been unable to penetrate. something was there, something vast and dim and shapeless like a half inflated airship. then a part of it was detached and came up almost to our level. it moved too rapidly for any detail to be seen--our only impression was of a vast white column large as the washington monument which swung up into the moonlight and then was withdrawn. at the same time the ground quivered anew, starting fresh slides. we blinked stupidly for several seconds, and then became conscious for the first time of the sound. it was like a vast cavernous wheeze at first, and then a series of distinct wet thuds followed by a prolonged gurgling rumble. if these descriptive phrases sound strange and awkward, let me give assurance that they are as nothing to the eerie quality of the noises themselves. we lay glued to our rocky perch, hardly daring to breathe, until the last windy sigh had died away. baker found his voice first. "good god, it's something alive!" chamberlin tried to reason. "it can't be--why, it's two hundred feet high--it's just a gas bag, like stimson said. it's--" he stopped. the thing had moved again, more rapidly and with purpose. the great column rose, then pressed down into the ground and pushed the main bulk up out of the shadows. there was a moment of confusion while our senses tried to grasp shape and scale at the same time, and then it all came into focus as the thing arose into the light. at one instant we were sane humans, trying to make out a great billowy form wallowing in the darkness below. in the next instant we were madmen, staring into a human face a hundred feet wide, that peered back at us from the level of the cliff top! for a second we were all still--we four, and that titanic placid oriental face hanging before us in the moonlight. then the great eyes blinked sleepily and the thing started to move toward us. i cannot recall in detail what happened. i remember someone screamed, an animal cry of pure terror. it may have been me, although baker claims to be the guilty one. in any case the four of us arose as one and plunged headfirst off our rock into the tangle of brush at the top of the cliff. i think that only the vines saved us from certain death in that first mad instant. i know that we were wrestling with them for what seemed like an eternity. they wrapped around my legs, tangled in my arms. they were like clutching hands, holding me back in a nightmare-like struggle, while the thing in the crater came closer. then abruptly i realized that they _were_ hands, human hands seizing us, pulling us back from the cliff and then skillfully tieing us up. it was all over in a moment. the madness was ended. we were once more rational humans, tied hand and foot, and propped against the rocky ledge in front of a dozen yellow-robed men. for a time we just breathed heavily--ourselves and our brown skinned captors alike. then one of the latter spoke. "you can stand now, yes?" baker struggled to his feet in reply. the rest of us did likewise, aided not unkindly, by the yellow-robed men. baker found his voice. "thank you," he said. in the brightening moonlight we looked more carefully at our captors. they were of small stature, evidently japanese, and, by their costume, all priests. baker laughed briefly and glanced at the rest of us. "it would appear," he said dryly, "that we have been taken." iii the leader of the priests indicated by a gesture that he wished us to move along a narrow trail cut in the vines along the rim. i attempted to get another look at the horror within the crater, but the ledge of rock down which we had just fallen stood in the way. we were guided into a pitch black trail which descended steeply into the forest on the outer slope of mount kosan. i lost track of direction almost at once. the trail zigzagged a couple of times, and then i sensed that we were in a covered passage. after a few more steps and a turn, a light appeared ahead, to show we were walking in a concrete lined tunnel. our captors had split themselves into two groups, a half dozen ahead and an equal number behind. soon there appeared a metal door in one wall, which proved to be the entrance to an elevator. we all squeezed in, and were taken down a distance which surely must have brought us near to the crater floor itself. the door then opened, and again we were escorted along a concrete passage. there were many turns. our captors paused before a narrow door with a tiny barred window. this was unlocked, we were directed to enter, and the door clanked shut behind us. for the first few minutes no one had anything to say. we examined the interior of our cell, but found nothing more remarkable than concrete, a small ventilator hole near the ceiling, and a wooden bench along the wall opposite the door. martin found his voice first. "a human being," he said slowly, "as big as the woolworth building!" chamberlin, apparently still involved in his last abortive try at reason said, "but it's impossible. the laws of mechanics--why the biggest dinosaurs were only eighty feet long, and they had to be supported by water. it's a mechanical device, i tell you." "it could have been an illusion," i ventured. "perhaps an image projected on a fog bank, or something similar--" neither walt nor i were very convincing--not with the memory of that face fresh in our minds. we all fell silent again. several minutes passed, when abruptly we became conscious of a movement of the floor, slight but repeated with regularity. a shake, a pause of six or eight seconds, then another shake. baker stood on the bench and put his ear to the ventilator. he heard nothing. the movement came again. shake, pause, shake, pause, like some distant and monstrous machine. i was reminded of the small earthquakes felt in the vicinity of a heavy drop hammer. shake, pause, shake, pause, and then a heavier jolt accompanied by a distinct thud. after that, quiet. "obviously," baker said, "they knew all about us." he was evidently thinking out loud. "probably picked us up on the beach, and then just let us go on, clearing out the guards ahead, and keeping near enough to see that we didn't use the radio. why? maybe to find out how much we knew about the place already. i daresay they know one thing now: we never expected to find--what we did. which brings us to our buddha. the big question is, is it mechanical or--alive?" he paused. "i don't know--none of us can know yet--but, i'm inclined to believe the latter. cady, what's your opinion?" i had forgotten for the moment that i was a zoologist. to tell the truth, the whole thing had been a little outside of the type of specimen i was familiar with. "its movements were lifelike," i replied. "they suggest muscular action rather than mechanical drive. but, as walt says, it's just not possible. nature has placed a limit on the size of living creatures. the strength of bones, the energy requirements, the osmotic pressures needed to move fluids through tissue. besides, where could it come from? there have been giants--eight, ten, maybe up to twelve feet--but this thing is of a different order of magnitude. it must weigh millions of pounds. as a zoologist, i can't believe that it's alive." martin and chamberlin had a few more remarks of the same nature, and then the conversation died away. we waited. eventually they would come--the yellow-robed ones. when they did, we might learn more. i had little doubt as to our ultimate fate, but in the dulled condition of my senses, i didn't seem particularly to care. my watch had been smashed in the struggle, so that i had no idea of how long they kept us in the cell. it could not have been too many hours, for the elementary needs of nature had only begun to assert themselves when the sound of a key came from the door. we all stood up. it was our conductor of last night, the one who spoke pidgin english. "good morning, gentlemens," he said with a bow. "you spend nice night, yes? get plenty sleep?" we did not reply. still smiling politely, he beckoned. "now please to come with me. head lama talk to you now." * * * * * once more we traversed the interminable concrete corridors of that subterranean city, but this time we came out into a hall illuminated by natural daylight. the walls here were neatly plastered, and the doors more ornamental. "getting near the high brass," murmured chamberlin. the last hall was terminated by a window and balcony, beyond which the green of a distant hillside could be seen. before we reached this, however, our guide stopped at a heavy aluminum door and directed us into a sort of ante-room, occupied by uniformed guards and a male receptionist. a few words were exchanged in japanese, and the guards quickly and expertly frisked us, although this had already been done once. this ceremony over, another door was opened and we were admitted to a large and sunny office, whose big windows gave a panoramic view of the whole crater. our eyes were so dazzled by the sudden burst of light, and our curiosity was so great to see that fantastic place by daylight, that we did not at once see the man who sat behind a desk opposite the windows, watching us with an expression of high amusement. baker first noticed him. "phobat rau! so you're back of this, after all!" the other stood up. he was a short man, evidently burmese, and wore a tan military uniform. his smile revealed a bonanza of gold teeth, while his thick lensed spectacles glittered in the brilliant sunshine streaming in through the windows. "it is a great pleasure to have you here, professor baker, although there is in the circumstances some cause for regret. but all that in its time. what do you think of our buddha?" as he spoke, baker was glancing about the room, and i saw that his eye had alighted upon an instrument just behind rau's desk. a second look showed it to be a tape recorder, with the operating lamp on. "until we have more data," replied baker, "our views are still as you have them recorded." phobat rau laughed delightedly. "you're a good observer, professor. yes, i must confess i was curious about your reactions to our charge. so you doubt that he is alive?" baker nodded. "under the circumstances last night, there was every chance for a mistake, or a hoax." "in that case, perhaps you would like a second look. he's right across the valley now, having his breakfast." we hastened to the window. rau's office, we found, was in a sort of cliff house perched half way up the northern side of the crater, and commanded a view of the entire area, now brightly illuminated by the morning sunlight. we easily identified the enormous furniture of last night, against the west cliff about a mile away. but we had little interest in these structures, monstrous as they were. for, sitting cross-legged on the ground before the low table, was the giant. at that distance he did not look so huge--in fact, with an effort we could almost ignore scale and perspective and imagine that he was a normal human fifty feet distant. he appeared a typical young japanese, his hair cut long in the old style, and wearing a sleeveless tunic like the statues of buddha. his face was smooth and serene, and he was eating a white pasty looking substance from his great steel dish, using a big spoon. even as we watched, he finished the meal and stood up, causing the whole building to sway slightly. he glanced about for a moment, his eye lingering briefly in our direction, and then he walked in a leisurely way to the lagoon, where he bent over and rinsed out his utensils. returning to the table, he placed them carefully in the position we had noted last night. he then straightened to his full height, raised his great arms far up into the morning air and began a series of earth shaking calisthenics. after about ten minutes of this he walked over to the leanto structure, entered and closed a curtain behind him. rau, who had been watching us with great amusement, offered an explanation. "his reading room. books on his scale would be a bit difficult to make, so he uses microfilm and a projector. the microfilm," he added, "is on eight by ten plates, and the screen is two hundred feet square." we returned to the desk and took the seats rau indicated. "so now," said our host, "you would like to hear a word of explanation, perhaps?" "several, if you can spare the time," answered baker with a dryness equal to rau's. "it all began," began phobat rau, "on a beautiful summer's day in 1945, august 6, i believe, was the exact date. perhaps you recall what happened on that day, in the city of hiroshima. if not, i will refresh your memories. a bomb was dropped on that day, a new type of bomb. it caused a great deal of destruction, and killed tens of thousands of people. some died at once from the blast and heat, but many more, who had escaped apparently uninjured, developed serious illness days later and died. the cause you know, of course. it was called radiation injury, the internal destruction of cell structure by gamma rays emitted by the bomb. "many strange things happened in that blast. in some, injury was confined to particular parts of the body, as the hair. others were made sterile, in fact, the reproductive function and apparatus seemed particularly susceptible to the rays. in many cases, the genes--those vital units within the cell which determine growth and structure and all physical and mental characteristics--the genes were altered, so that children grew abnormally, with deformities or mental sickness. "but these things you well know. afterwards biologists and physicians and geneticists came from all parts of the world to study the effects of the atomic bomb, and the flow of learned papers on this subject is not ended even now." * * * * * the speaker paused, as if inviting some comment or question. seeing that we intended to remain silent, he resumed. "there was one case, however, which was not studied by western scientists. in many respects, it was the most interesting of all, for the bomb blast and the accompanying deluge of gamma radiation occurred just at the instant of conception. as usual, damage was sustained by the genes, but this damage was of a peculiar and highly special sort. the only gene affected, apparently, was the one controlling growth, although, as you will see presently, other structural and chemical changes took place without which the growth could never have occurred. "the infant involved was a male, named kazu takahashi. he was born prematurely on march 26, 1946, with a weight of fourteen pounds six ounces. the parents were well to do, and the infant was given the best of care, first in a private hospital, and later in its own home. "during the first few days of life, little kazu was apparently normal, except for his prematureness and a rather great weight for a seven-month infant. and then the change began. his nurse first noticed an increasing appetite. he cried constantly and would be silent only when feeding. he emptied nursing bottles in a few seconds, after he learned to pull off the nipple, and was soon consuming a quart of milk every hour. the nurse humored him, in order to keep him quiet, and presently became afraid to tell either the parents or the doctor just how much milk her charge was drinking. as the days passed and no ill effects developed, she became less worried, although the daily milk ration had to be increased twice, to 23 quarts a day on the sixth day. "kazu doubled his weight in the first eleven days, and at the end of two weeks tipped the scales at 39 pounds. his pink tender skin was now rapidly becoming normal in color and texture, and he was behaving more and more like an ordinary child, although already of startling size. by the fourth week he was drinking 59 quarts of milk a day and weighed 145 pounds. the parents--by now thoroughly alarmed--called in the doctor, who at once realized the cause of the abnormality. he could offer no suggestions, however, save to continue feeding at a rate to keep the child quiet. this, by the sixth week, soared to the incredible figure of 130 quarts a day to feed a baby now five feet tall and weighing 290 pounds. at this point the takahashi family felt that their problem was getting beyond them, and being buddhists, they appealed to the local temple--it was not in hiroshima, but at a nearby town--for assistance. the priests took the child in, after a generous contribution had been made by father takahashi, and for a time the embarrassing matter seemed solved. the takahashis went on a three weeks vacation to the south coast of honshu, and all was peaceful, externally at least. "when the family returned, they found a note under the door urgently requesting their presence at the temple. when they arrived, they were met by a highly agitated chief priest. something had to be done, he said. things were getting out of hand. he then took them to the nursery. here they beheld a baby that would have been seven feet eight inches tall if it could stand, and which had weighed in that morning on the platform scales in the temple kitchen, at 670 pounds. after hearing the details of the milk bill, father takahashi wrote out another check and departed hurriedly. "after the passage of three more weeks, a delegation from the temple again waited upon mr. takahashi, with the news that his son now measured 9 feet 3 inches in length, weighed 1175 pounds, and consumed the entire output of a local dairy. they politely requested that he take care of his own infant. mr. takahashi as politely refused, and at this point bowed out of our story completely." phobat rau hesitated again and inquired if his statistics were boring us. baker glanced out of the window and replied that while he ordinarily did not have much appreciation of figures of this kind, under the circumstances they had a certain interest. rau smiled briefly and continued. "the summer of 1946 was one of increasing difficulty for the temple. by the beginning of july kazu weighed 1600 pounds and cried with a voice like a wounded bull. a number of trustworthy medical men examined him, and concurred that his only abnormality was size. in bodily proportions he was quite ordinary, and, for a 3-1/2 month baby, his mental development was, if anything, a bit ahead of normal. the priests took in their belts, appointed eight of the strongest as nursemaids, and wondered where it would all end. "it was at this point that a member of the buddhist priesthood from burma happened to pass through the neighborhood and heard of the infant. after being sworn to secrecy; even from other members of his order, he was allowed to view little kazu. now this priest, whose name i might as well admit was phobat rau, had perhaps a bit more imagination than some others, and when he looked upon the little monster, he was struck by an idea which was to grow like kazu himself." "the living buddha," murmured baker, "ye gods, what a symbol." rau nodded like a schoolteacher. "a symbol, and more. a machine to rebuild the world, or conquer it!" * * * * * baker chose to ignore this leading remark. he wanted more of the story. "so you took him over?" "well, it was not so easy as that. you see, i was only a young priest then, and had no resources to undertake such a project. but the more i thought of the possibilities, the more sure i was. but first i had to convince others, and time was short. the priests were near to their limit, and were about to appeal to the americans. i secured their promise to wait until i could return to burma, and then i flew to bangkok, to rangoon, to every center of buddhism where i was known. it was a sales trip, you might say, and for a time i thought that i had failed. but there were also forces working for me. the world was uncertain. the communists were at the start of their triumphal sweep over asia, and the leaders of our faith foresaw what lay ahead. on the first of august, 1946, a delegation of priests from eight buddhist countries journeyed to japan to view kazu, who was now a lusty 4-1/2 months old, 12-1/2 feet long and of 2914 pounds weight. he was in fine health, and when he slept the resemblance to the infant buddha was startling. you gentlemen are worldly men, and i pride myself upon freedom from the more naive illusions of my faith, but perhaps you can try to imagine that our feelings were not entirely those of ambitious schemers--that perhaps within us was some higher motive for the step we took. our poor suffering asia was in deeper misery than ever before, for atop her own famine and war had come also the troubles of the west. under the red flag millions of our deluded countrymen were taking arms against their brothers. confused by a glib ideology, they were daily turning more from the religion of their fathers. although we did not speak it, we all felt inwardly that perhaps there was a purpose in this great infant--that, though we made promises with tongue in cheek, perhaps a miracle would occur to fulfill them. "and so we arranged to transport kazu takahashi from japan to a safe location where he might grow to manhood, where he might be suitably educated to take the place that we would prepare for him. the details of this move were not difficult to arrange. a special traveling crib 20 feet long was built, and in this by truck, lighter and motor junk he was carried by easy stages to this island. here we established a great monastery, surrounded by rice and fruit plantations. here we brought physicians and scholars to care for him and plan his education, and we built a nursery to accommodate his increasing bulk. "we did not know, of course, what his final size would be. we kept careful records of his growth, but even after the first year he was not more than ten times the normal height. but year by year we had to revise our estimates, for his growth soon accelerated beyond our wildest expectations. for a time indeed we feared that it would never stop and that he would die of starvation when the world could no longer feed him. for a time also we were sure that he would never be able to stand, through the action of simple mechanical laws relating to weight and the size of bones, but apparently nature has provided a marvelous compensation, for his bones, as revealed by x-rays, are of a density and strength equal to that of steel. "his feeding was always a problem, although fortunately its increase was not beyond our ability to organize and plan. at first we supplied him from plantations on yat and on neighboring islands. then we were forced to organize neo-buddhism as an implement to solicit contributions of food and money. perforce we took many into partial confidence, but the complete story was known only to those on yat. "on his first birthday kazu was 29-1/2 feet long and weighed 30,100 pounds. by his second birthday he could walk, and now surpassed all land animals save the monsters of the jurassic age, with a height to 51 feet and a weight of 158,000 pounds. during 1949, while the communists were overrunning china, our buddha grew from 70 to 82 feet. in june of 1950, while the world watched the flames of war kindle in korea, we saw him exceed the capacity of our million pound scale. in the year of 1950 also we built his first schoolroom and developed the system of projected pictures and letters used in his education. "in 1951, buddha's increasing appetite combined with the inroads made by the communists upon our territory brought a crisis. he was now 200 feet tall, weighed seven million pounds and ate as much as 75,000 men. in spite of all our efforts, his food supply was dwindling and, worse, the communists were becoming suspicious. and so we were forced to a decision. we had to appeal to the western world. but to whom? to america, or to russia? you all know the situation in 1952, the time of the false peace. we turned to russia. they sent a commission to investigate, and then acted with dispatch. russia would feed our buddha, but on a condition: neo-buddhism must sponsor communism. "we had no choice. now that the secret was out, russia had yat at its mercy. so we agreed, but with one reservation. we alone should direct the education of kazu. to this russia agreed. perhaps they considered that it was unimportant. perhaps they thought that kazu was an idiot, useful only as a symbol. but they agreed, and so his education continued in the tradition of buddhist scholarship. he is well read, gentlemen. he knows the classics of china, and of india, and of the west also. i myself taught him english. at the request of our sponsors, he has studied russian. he is still young, but he has an inquiring mind. when he takes his true place in the world, he may not always be the tool of the kremlin. but of these things even i am not given to know." rau paused, and indicated the window. buddha was emerging from his leanto. "look well, gentlemen. there stands the hope of asia. there is the living buddha himself. he is only 19 years of age, but he stands 590 feet high, and weighs 198,000,000 pounds. at first he will be but a symbol, but soon he will be much more. the time of compromise, i promise you, will not last forever." rau stopped. we waited for him to resume, but instead, he pressed a button on his desk. immediately several members of the guard entered. rau now addressed us in a new voice. "gentlemen, you probably wonder why i have spoken so frankly of all of this. to be candid, to a certain extent i wonder also. perhaps it is to get it off my chest, as you say. perhaps it is just pride in what i have done. but whatever the reason, the consequences for you are regrettable. your spying trip to yat alone is sufficient for death; what i have told you makes your return a complete impossibility. i am sorry, particularly for you, baker. we shall do it as humanely as possible. good day." the guards, as upon a signal, closed in on us. for a second i thought insanely of flight, or a plunge through the great windows to certain death on the crags below. but there was no chance. before any thought could be translated into action we were back in the corridor, escorted by an augmented guard of priests, on our way back to our cell, and death. a death that would be--as "humane as possible". iv it was not until some minutes after the steel door had clicked shut that the full realization of our predicament came to us. rau's story had been so fascinating, and his manner so rational and civilized that we all had forgotten that he was of a race and ideology opposed to all that we stood for, and that we were spies caught red-handed in the innermost shrine of neo-buddhism. even after twenty years of cold war, all of our civilized instincts rose against the idea that a suave brilliant intellectual like phobat rau could so cold bloodedly order our deaths. but the awakening was at hand. if we doubted rau's intentions, one look at the cold mongol faces of the guards was enough to dispel any hope. baker tried to sum it up. "no use trying to argue with him. fact is, we won't even see rau again. we could, of course, simply call it quits and wait for them, but i'd rather fight it out. anyone have an idea?" martin hopped up on the bench and studied the ventilator. he reached one arm in as far as possible, and reported that there was a bend about a foot in. while he was doing this, chamberlin made a minute investigation of the door, but found that neither hinges nor lock were accessible. there were no other openings into the chamber save the electric conduit which presumably entered above the electric fixture in the ceiling. finally baker spoke. "nothing we can do until they come for us. we'd better plan towards that, unless they're going to gas us through the ventilator." this unpleasant thought had not occurred to the rest of us before. martin returned to the opening and sniffed, and then with happy inspiration, he rolled up his jacket and stuffed it in. baker nodded approval. so the time passed. we listened at the door for footsteps but none came. presently we became aware of a now familiar sensation. the floor commenced to shake gently and regularly. we counted the steps. there were twelve, and then they stopped. chamberlin calculated mentally. "say, about 250 feet per step. that would be three thousand feet--six tenths of a mile. wonder where--" martin, still near the ventilator, shushed him, and pulled the coat out. through the small hole we heard a deep sound, a sort of low pitched irregular rumble. baker suddenly jumped up and listened at the opening. after a bit the sound stopped. baker became excited. "it was a voice," he explained. "i think it was _his_ voice. it was speaking japanese. i couldn't catch many words, but i think he was talking about us." now the rumble came again, and louder. a few words, a pause, and then more words, as though he was in conversation with someone whom we could not hear. baker listened intently, but he could catch only fragments, owing to his small knowledge of japanese and the extremely low pitched articulation of the giant. presently the voice rose to a volume which literally made the mountain tremble, and then it stopped. baker shook his head. "couldn't make it out. i think he was inquiring where we were, but it was too idiomatic. i think he became excited or angry at the last." "fee, fi, fo, fum," said chamberlin. "now wouldn't _that_ be an interesting end?" martin laughed. "we wouldn't even be enough to taste." as no one else seemed anxious to pursue this subject further, we subsided into a sort of lethargy. even plans for what we should do when the guards came were forgotten. and then, suddenly, the door was opened. we all sprang to our feet. a priest--in fact, the same one who had brought us here originally--came in. a squad of guards stood outside. "good afternoon, how are you? chief priest ask me to tell you, buddha wish to see you. please you come with me." he politely indicated the door. with a shrug baker complied, and the rest of us followed. down the hall we marched again, through all of the turns of the morning and so at last into the corridor which ended in a window. this time we passed the aluminum door and continued right to the end. the window, we now saw, was really a french door which opened to a small balcony. our guide opened the door and pushed us out. the balcony, we found, was about four hundred feet above the valley floor, but we did not spend much time enjoying the view. scarcely fifty feet in front of us stood the living buddha! for a full minute we stared at each other, and then i began to realize that he was embarrassed! a wrinkle appeared between his eyes and he swallowed a couple of times. then he spoke. "good afternoon, professor baker and party. i am happy to meet you." the voice, and particularly the language, so startled us that for a moment nobody could think of a reply. the voice was a deep pulsing rumble, like the tone of the biggest pipes of an organ, and filled with a variety of glottal wheezings and windy overtones. i think it was through these additional sounds rather than the actual tones that we could understand him at all, for the fundamentals were surely below the ordinary limits of human audibility. what we heard and could translate into articulate words was hardly more than a cavernous whisper. the important thing was that we could understand him, and, more than that, that he was friendly. baker made reply at last. "good afternoon. we also are happy, and most honored. how should we address you?" "my name is kazu takahashi, but i am told that i am also buddha. this i would like to discuss with you, if you have time." "we have time for nothing else," said baker. buddha's eyebrows raised slightly. "so i was right. they are going to kill you." baker glanced at us meaningfully. this giant was no fool. suddenly there came over me a little thrill of hope. maybe--but he was speaking again. "i have not before had opportunity to talk to men from west. only from china, japan, soviet state. you will tell me of rest of world?" "with pleasure," said baker. i became conscious that the door behind us was opening. i glanced back, and saw phobat rau, surrounded by guards and priests. he gestured to us to come in. baker turned, while buddha bent his head closer to see also. rau came to the door. "come back," he called urgently. "you are in grave danger. you must come in." * * * * * quite definitely i had no desire to go in. neither did baker, for he shook his head and moved away from the door. rau's face was suddenly enraged. he made a quick motion to the guards, and then held them back. with an evident effort he calmed himself and called again, softly. "please come in. i was hasty this morning. i am sorry. i think now i see a way for you to return safely, if you will come in." for reply, baker turned to the giant. he climbed upon the rail of the balcony. "take us away from here, if you wish to hear what we have to say. take us, or they will kill us!" in answer, buddha extended one hand, palm up, so that it was level with the balcony. for an instant i hesitated at the sight of that irregular rough surface, big as a city block, and then i heard steps behind us and a click. with one accord we leaped over the parapet just as a scattered volley of pistol shots rang out. we tumbled head over heels down a rough leathery slope into a hollow, and then the platform lifted like a roller coaster. in a second the balcony, the whole hillside vanished and we went rocketing up into the blue sky. a gale of wind blew past, almost carrying us with it, and then a portion of the surface rose and became thirty foot tree trunks which curled incredibly over and around us, forming a small cavern which shut out the wind and held us securely against falling. buddha had closed his fist. for a breathless fifteen seconds we were carried in darkness, and then the great hand unfolded. it was lying flat on an immense smooth area of concrete, which we presently identified as the higher of the two tables. we got to our feet and staggered to the edge of the palm. here we met another problem, in the form of a rounded ten foot drop-off to the concrete table. as we stood looking down in dismay, the other vast hand came up from below, carrying a heavy sheet of metal. this was carefully placed with one edge on the hand and the other on the table, forming a ramp. holding onto each other for mutual support, we made our way to the table and there literally collapsed. chamberlin became violently sick, and none of the rest of us felt much better. the giant carefully withdrew both hands and watched us from a distance of a hundred yards, with only the head and upper part of his body visible. from our position on the concrete platform i now looked closely at kazu for the first time. my first impression was not so much one of size, as of an incredible richness of detail. it was like examining a normal human through a powerful microscope, except here the whole was visible at once. even at a distance of two hundred feet, the hair, the eyelashes, the pores of the skin showed up with a texture and form which i had never noted before, even in my studies as a biologist. the general effect was most confusing, for i would lose and regain the sense of scale, first thinking of him as an ordinary man, and then realizing the proportion. the nearest comparison that i can think of is the sensation when standing very close to a large motion picture screen, but here the image is blurry whereas i saw with a clarity and sharpness that was simply unbelievable. buddha seemed to realize our condition, for he smiled sympathetically, and waited until poor walt had recovered somewhat from his nausea. baker, as spokesman, renewed the conversation. walking a few steps toward the front of the enormous desk, he spoke in a loud clear voice. "you have saved our lives. we thank you." the great head nodded benignly, and after a thoughtful pause, that strange voice began. "my teachers have brought others before me to lecture, but always i know that they speak only as they are told to speak. you are different. i am glad that i saw you last night, or i would never know that you had come." he paused, evidently gathering his thoughts for the next foray into an unfamiliar language. then he leaned closer. "phobat rau has spoken to you of my birth and life here?" baker nodded, and then, realizing that kazu could not see such a microscopic movement, he replied orally. "he has told us your story in detail. it is a marvel which we can yet scarcely believe. but the greatest marvel of all is that you speak our language, and comprehend so quickly." kazu thought of this for a moment. "yes, my teachers have done well, i think. i have studied the writings of many great men, but there is yet much that i do not understand. i think it is important that i understand, because i am so strong. i do not wish to use this strength for evil, and i am not sure that those whom my teachers serve are good. i have studied the words of the great buddha, but now my teachers say that i am to appear as if i were buddha. but that is an untruth, and untruth is evil. so now i hope that you will tell me the whole truth." kazu stepped back a quarter of a mile, and then reappeared, dragging his four hundred foot chair. sitting on this, he crouched forward until his face was hardly a hundred feet before us, and his warm humid breath swept over us like wind from some exotic jungle. baker took a moment to marshal his thoughts, and then came forward, threw out his chest and began speaking as though addressing an outdoor political meeting. how long baker spoke i do not know. he began by outlining history, contrasting the ideals of buddha and other great religious leaders with the dark record of human oppression and cruelty. kazu's vast face proved most expressive of his feelings as he listened intently. when baker came to the subject of communism, he leaned over so far backward in his effort to be fair that i feared that he was overdoing it, and would convince the giant in the wrong direction. * * * * * when baker was only part-way through his lecture, he remarked that some point in geography could be better explained by a drawing, but that obviously he could not make one large enough for kazu to see. at this the giant laughed and pointed to his big leanto. "come," he said, "you shall draw on a piece of glass and the light will make it great that i may see." we were thereupon transferred the mile distance to the building by a reversal of our previous route: up the ramp to kazu's ample palm, a series of breathtaking swoops through space, and we were in the vast interior of the leanto. the furnishings of this study room consisted of a chair, a sloping writing desk and a screen fully two hundred feet square on the wall opposite the chair. beside the chair was a sort of bracket on the wall which supported the projection room. kazu placed his hand level with an elevated balcony leading to this and we scrambled off. with baker in the lead, we opened the door and entered the projection room. it was larger than we had estimated from outside, when we had the immense furniture for comparison. the dimensions were perhaps forty feet on the side, and most of the interior was taken up by shelves on which were stored thousands of films of book pages, maps, photographs and diagrams of all kinds. in the side facing the screen were a number of ports and a battery of movie and still projectors. one of the latter was, we saw, adapted for writing or drawing on the glass slide while it was being projected. we studied this for a moment, located the special marking pencil, and then i called out of the door that we were ready. "look also," replied kazu, "you will find device which magnify voice. my teachers use this always." a further search disclosed a microphone and the switch for a public address amplifier. baker settled down to his now illustrated lecture. after he had talked himself hoarse, baker asked each of the rest of us to speak briefly on our own specialties. i was the last, and i was practically through when i became aware that we were not alone in the room. i gave martin a nudge, and turned from the microphone to face eight of the uniformed guards, led by our friendly yellow-robed priest. only now he wasn't friendly, and he carried a heavy automatic which was carefully aimed right at us. "very clever, gentlemen," he said. "you took good advantage of your chance with our simple giant, did you not? tried your best to ruin the whole work of pan-asia just to save your miserable skins. well, you shall not--" he was interrupted by the thunder of kazu's voice. "please continue, mr. cady. i find it most interesting. why do you stop?" i took a step toward the microphone, but a menacing gesture with the gun stopped me. i looked from yellow-robe to baker. after a moment's hesitation, the latter spoke. "i'm afraid, my friend, that you have misjudged the situation. i admit that we jumped into buddha's hand to escape from phobat rau, but if you are familiar with the expression, our leap was from the frying pan into the fire. your giant is holding us prisoner, and even now forces us to tell him things on pain of death." the priest looked astonished, and the gun barrel dropped slightly. "no one," continued baker in a sincere tone, "could have been more welcome than you. but"--his voice dropped and he took a step toward the other--"we must be careful. if he should even suspect that you are here to rescue us, he would crush this room like an egg!" the priest, now thoroughly alarmed, glanced about nervously, his automatic pointing at the floor. the guards, who knew no english, looked at each other in surprise. baker took quick advantage of the confusion. "we must not allow him to become suspicious. i will continue talking over the microphone while your guards take my friends to safety." with this he stepped to the microphone and projector. the priest seemed for an instant about to stop him, and then he turned to the guards and gave a series of rapid orders. they advanced and surrounded martin, walt and me, and indicated by gesture that we were to go with them to the walk-way which led to the wall of the great room. in panic i looked at baker, but he was bent over the glass plate of the projector, drawing something and speaking in his precise clipped voice. "i shall now show you a map of the united states and indicate the principal cities. first, on the atlantic coast we have new york...." we were out of the room and on the gallery. for a moment i thought that kazu might see us, and then i realized that the whole place was dark and that he was concentrating on baker's silly map. briefly i wondered what baker was up to anyway, but this sudden terrible turn of events made any kind of calm reasoning very difficult. outside the projection room, baker's voice came booming over the loudspeakers. "chicago is located at the southern end of lake michigan, just west of detroit, while st. louis--" * * * * * suddenly the room lights came on, and the whole structure of the bridge shook as from an earthquake. the guards ahead abruptly turned and scrambled back, knocking us over in their haste. i grabbed the handrail for support, and then became aware of a vast blurry shape looming above and of a hand as large as a building that reached down toward the guards, now halfway back to the projection room. in a sort of hypnotic horror i watched the thumb and forefinger snap them and a thirty foot section of railing off into space. then, very gently the hand plucked the roof from the projection room, exposing baker and the priest. yellow-robe dropped his gun and ran towards a corner, but baker neatly tripped him and then stepped back for kazu to finish the job. a moment later baker came out onto the bridge. martin tried to frame a question. "what--how did he--?" baker grinned and pointed silently at the screen. we looked and understood. where a map of the united states should have been was a scrawled message in english: "priests here taking us captive." we returned to our lecturing, but after what had happened neither we nor kazu felt much like concentrating on geographical or other general facts. we all knew that rau had not given up. for the moment we were protected by kazu's immense power, but there were some doubts in our minds as to how long this might last. after all, rau was his lifelong mentor and protector. for the moment the young giant seemed to have taken a liking to us, but perhaps it was only a passing whim. presently rau would assert his authority and kazu, his curiosity satisfied, would hand us over--in exchange, perhaps, for supper. after about fifteen minutes more of lecturing, kazu interrupted. "soon will be sunset. suggest we return to privacy of high table to discuss next move." the transfer took less than a minute. the afternoon, we saw, was indeed far gone. none of us had realized how long we had been in the projection room. once we were safely back on the table, kazu addressed us, using his softest voice, which was a hurricane-like whisper. "phobat rau plans for me to go soon to head armies of asia in fight against west. my study of history has raised doubts of rightness of such war, and what you say strengthen these. now i must see for myself, without guidance or interference from rau. but i need assistance, to direct me how i shall go. i believe you will be fair. will you help me?" for a moment the incongruity of that last question prevented our grasping the full implication of kazu's statement. then baker, evidently realizing that this was no time for philosophic quibbling, signified our assent. kazu proceeded at once to practical plans. "tonight i sleep in usual place, where you disturbed me with small rock slide. but you must stay awake by turns to guard against capture. in morning you direct my steps away from yat to mainland of asia, where--" he stopped. seeing the direction he was looking, we hastened to the edge of the table. far below, on the ground, was a railroad train surrounded by a small crowd of priests. for a moment we were puzzled, and then we saw that the train was made up entirely of gondola cars such as are used to carry coal and other bulk cargo. but these cars, a dozen in number, contained a white substance which steamed. we did not require more than one guess. the train brought kazu's supper. the giant made a slight bow of thanks to the delegation at his feet, and proceeded carefully to empty the cars into his dish. then, instead of squatting at his low eating table, he brought the dish and other utensils up to our level and dumped a ton or so of steaming rice at our feet. evidently he wished us to share his supper. we had no tools other than our hands, but since we had not eaten in almost twenty-four hours, we did not stop for the conventions. scooping up double handfuls of the unseasoned stuff, we fell to even before kazu had gotten his ponderous spoon into position. suddenly, baker yelled at us. "hold it!" he turned to kazu who had a spoonful poised halfway to his mouth. "kazu, don't eat. this rice is doped!" i took a mouthful of the rice. there was not much flavor--only a little salt which i guessed came from seawater. i explored the stuff with my tongue, and presently noticed a familiar taste. it took me a moment to place it. yes, that was it. barbiturate. the stuff in sleeping pills. kazu bent his great face over us. baker briefly explained. kazu appeared at first puzzled. he dropped the spoon into the dish and pushed it away from him. his brow wrinkled, and he glanced down at the ground. walking to the edge, we saw that the group of priests were standing quietly around the engine, as though waiting for something. what they were waiting for evidently struck kazu and us at the same time. kazu leaned toward them and spoke in japanese. his voice was angry. baker tried to translate. "he says, 'how dare you poison buddha'--look, they're running off--" the next second things happened too rapidly for translation or even immediate interpretation. kazu spoke again, his voice rising to an earth shaking roar at the end. the little men below were scattering in all directions, and the train started to back off down its track. suddenly kazu turned and picked up his hundred foot steel dish. he swept it across the table and then down in a long curving arc. there was an earth shaking thud and where the running figures and the train had been was now only the upturned bottom of the immense dish. priests and cars alike were entombed in a thousand tons of hot rice! kazu now turned to us. "come," he said, "yat is not safe, even for buddha. now we must leave here at once." he extended his hand towards us, and then, with another thought, turned and strode to the leanto. in a moment he returned carrying the projection room, with a tail of structural steel and electric cables hanging below. this he placed on the table and indicated that we were to enter. as soon as we were inside, kazu clapped on the roof and picked up the stout steel box. we clung to the frame supporting the projectors, while a mass of slides, film cans and other debris battered us with every swooping motion. we could not see what was going on outside, but the giant seemed to be picking up a number of things from the ground and from inside the leanto. then he commenced a regular stride across the crater floor. now at last we got to a window, just in time to glimpse the nearby cliff. on the rim, some hundreds of feet above i saw a group of uniformed men clustered about some device. then we were closer and i saw that it was an antiaircraft gun, which they were trying to direct at us. i think kazu must have seen it at the same moment, for abruptly he scrambled up the steep hillside and pulverized gun, crew and the whole crater rim with one tremendous blow of his fist. i got a brief aerial view of the whole island as kazu balanced momentarily on the rim, and then we were all thrown to the floor as he stumbled and slid down the hillside to the level country outside of the crater. v up until this moment we had been engaged in an essentially personal enterprise, even though its object was to secure information vital to the united nations. from this time on, however, the personal element was to become almost completely subordinate to the vast problems of humanity itself, for, as we were to soon find, we had tied ourselves to a symbol that was determined to live up to all that was claimed or expected of him, and further, who depended upon our advice. the situation for us was made much worse because at first we doubted both his sincerity and good sense--in fact, it was not until after the wagnerian climax of the whole thing that we at last realized, along with the rest of the world, exactly what kazu takahashi believed in. kazu crossed the flat eastern half of yat in less than a minute, evidently wishing to get out of range of rau's artillery as quickly as possible. his feet tore through the groves as a normal man's might through a field of clover; indeed, he experienced more trouble from the softness of the ground than from any vegetation. as we were soon to learn, one of the disadvantages of kazu's size lay in the mechanical properties of the world as experienced by him. kazu stood almost 600 feet high, or roughly 100 times the linear dimensions of a normal man. from the simple laws of geometry, this increased his weight by 100^3 or 1 million times. but the area of his body, including the soles of his feet which had to support this gigantic load, had increased by but 100^2, or ten thousand times. the ground pressure under his feet was thus 100 times greater, for each square inch, than for a normal man. the result was that kazu sank into the ground at each step until he reached bedrock, or soil strong enough to carry the load. at the beach he hesitated briefly, as though getting his bearings, and then waded into the ocean. the surf which had used us so violently was to him only a half inch ripple. he strode through the shallows and past the reef in a matter of seconds, and then plunged into deeper water. from our dizzy perch, now carried at hip height, we watched the great feet drive down into the sea, leaving green walls of solid water about them. although we did not realize it at the time, we later learned that kazu's wading forays were attended by tidal waves which inundated islands up to a hundred miles away. this trip across a twenty mile strait swamped a dozen native fishing craft, flooded out four villages and killed some hundreds of people. we fared better than some of these innocent bystanders, for kazu carefully held our steel box above the sea, and presently lurched through shallow water to the dry land. the new island was larger than yat, and entirely given over to rice growing for kazu's food supply. he threaded his way easily among the paddies, up through some low hills, and then down a narrow gorge into the sea again. ahead lay a much more extensive body of water. the sun was now hardly fifteen degrees above the horizon, and its glare plus a bank of clouds made it difficult to see the distant land. kazu raised our room to the level of his face. "is that island of celebes?" baker started to pick up the microphone, and then abruptly realizing that it was dead, he shouted back from the projection port. "i think it is. let me look for a chart." kazu waited patiently while we searched, placing the room on a hilltop to give us a steadier platform. we all began a mad scramble in the mass of debris. kazu removed the roof to give more light, but it soon became clear that there wasn't much hope. all that we could find were thousands of slides of the chinese classics. at last we gave up. when we told kazu this, he looked across the water and wrinkled his brow. we could sense the reason for his anxiety, for the distant shore could hardly be less than seventy miles away. mentally i reduced this to terms i could understand. seven tenths of a mile, of which an unknown percentage might be swimming. kazu's voice rumbled down to us, "i would prefer to wade. i cannot swim well." he peered down into our roofless box anxiously. "if we only had one chart," began baker, when walt, who had been rummaging near the projector window, called to us. "take a look over there, just around the point." we saw the prow of a ship. there was a moment of terror lest it be an indonesian coast patrol, and then we saw that it was just a small island steamer of a thousand tons or so, chugging along less than two miles offshore. * * * * * i think that the idea hit us all at the same instant. baker, as spokesman, called to kazu. the giant, for the first time, grinned at us. then he picked up our box and waded into the ocean. i don't think the people in the little ship even saw us until we were practically upon them, because of the mist and sunset glare. what they thought i can only imagine, for the water was little more than knee deep and kazu towered fully four hundred feet above it. then a hand as big as the foredeck reached down and gently stopped them by the simple expedient of forming a v between thumb and fingers into which the prow pushed. i heard the sound of bells and saw tiny figures scurrying about on the deck. on the opposite side a number of white specks appeared in the water as crewmen dove overboard. our box was now lowered until its door was next to the bridge. we leaped aboard, under cover of a great hand which obligingly plucked away the near wall of the pilot house. we entered the house just as the captain beat a precipitate retreat out the other side, and after a moment in the chartroom we found what we wanted. while martin stood watch at the far door, we took advantage of the electric lights to examine the chart of the east coast of celebes. that island, we found, was only sixty miles away and the deepest sounding was less than six hundred feet. kazu could wade the whole distance. * * * * * the nautical charts did not show much detail for the interior of celebes, but from our elevation we could see enough of the terrain to guide kazu quite well. the course which baker plotted took us across the northern part of the big island, and far enough inland to avoid easy detection from the sea. as the day progressed, the sky gradually filled with clouds, promising more rain, so that i doubt if many people saw us. those who did, i suspect, were more interested in taking cover than in interfering with kazu's progress. the journey across celebes took only a couple of hours, and so, by noon, we stood on the shore of the strait of macassar, looking across seventy-five miles of blue water to the mountains of borneo. it was not until now that baker explained what he had in mind in choosing this particular route. "we're going to singapore," he said. "get under the protection of the royal navy and air force before the commies spot us and start dropping bombs and rockets. if buddha wants to see the world, he'd better start by getting a good bodyguard." kazu seemed agreeable when appraised of this plan, and so we began to plot a more detailed route over the 1,100 miles between us and the british crown colony. we stood at the narrowest part of the strait, but unfortunately most of it was too deep for kazu to wade. reference to the charts showed that by going 250 miles south, we would reduce the swim to about 30 miles, or the equivalent of some 500 yards for a normal man. to this was added a wade of 120 miles through shallows and over the many small balabalagan islands. suddenly kazu's hand swept down and came up with a 60-foot whale, which he devoured in great gory bites. after this midocean lunch, kazu resumed his wading. in the middle of the strait the depth exceeded five thousand feet, and he had to swim for a time, after fastening our box to his head by means of the trailing cables. at length the sea became shallow once more, kazu's feet crunched through coral, and the coast of borneo appeared dimly ahead. we were all taking time for the luxury of a sigh of relief when chamberlin screamed a warning. "planes! coming in low at three o'clock!" fortunately kazu heard this also, although the language confused him. precious seconds were wasted while he held the box up to his face for more explicit directions. the planes, a flight of six, were streaking towards us just above the wavetops. we could see that they carried torpedoes, and it was not difficult to guess their intentions. "go sideways!" baker yelled, but kazu did not move. he simply stood facing the oncoming aircraft, our box held in his left hand at head level, and his right arm hanging at his side, half submerged. either kazu was too frightened to move, or he did not understand the danger. the planes were hardly a half mile away now, evidently holding their fire until the last moment to insure a hit. what even one torpedo could do i didn't dare to contemplate, and here were twelve possible strikes. after all, kazu was made of flesh, and after having seen the effect of tnt on the steel side of a ship, i had little doubt as to what would happen to him. now the last seconds were at hand. the planes were closing at five hundred yards, the torpedoes would drop in a second.... but suddenly kazu moved. his whole body swung abruptly to the left and at the same time the right hand came up through the water. we, of course, were pitched headlong, but we did briefly glimpse a tremendous fan of solid green water rising up to meet the planes. they tried to dodge but it was too late. into the waterspout they flew, all six with their torpedoes still attached, and down into the ocean they fell, broken and sinking. it was all over in a moment. we were so amazed it was moments before we could move. kazu turned and resumed his stroll toward borneo without a single backward glance at the havoc wrought by his splash. * * * * * as we entered the foothills i became conscious for the first time of a curious change. it was a psychological change in me, a change in my sense of scale. we had been carried so long at kazu's shoulder level, and had grown so accustomed to looking out along his arms from almost the same viewpoint as his, that we were now estimating the size of the mountains as though we were as large as kazu! it is difficult to express just how i felt, and now that it is all over, the memory has become so tenuous and subtle that i fear i will never be able to explain it so that anyone but my three companions could understand. but this was the first moment that i noticed the effect. the mountains were suddenly no longer 4,000 foot peaks viewed from a plane 500 feet above ground level, but were forty foot mounds with a six inch cover of mossy brush, and i was walking up their sides as a normal human being! the change was, as nearly as i can express it, from the viewpoint of a normal human being under extraordinary circumstances to that of an ordinary man visiting a miniature world. the whale to me was now a fat jellyfish seven inches long, the chinese warplanes were toys with an eight inch wingspread, the little steamer of yesterday was a flimsy toy built of cardboard and tinfoil. we had, in effect, identified ourselves completely with kazu. and so we climbed dripping from the straits of macassar, and entered the mists and jungles of borneo. our course toward singapore carried us across the full width of southern borneo, a distance, from a point north of kotabaroe to cape datu, of almost six hundred miles. after about an hour, the blue outlines of the schwanner mountains appeared ahead and presently we passed quite close to mt. raya, which at 7,500 feet was the greatest mountain kazu had ever seen. then, dropping into another valley, we followed the course of the kapuas river for a time, and finally turned west again through an area of plantations. here kazu made an effort to secure food by plucking and eating fruit and treetops together. the result was unsatisfactory, but presently we came upon a granary containing thousands of sacks of rice. the workmen, warned by our earthquake approach, fled long before we reached it. kazu carefully removed the corrugated iron roof and ate the whole contents of the warehouse, which amounted to about a handful. the sacks appeared about a quarter of an inch in length, and seemed to be filled with a fine white powder. following this meal, kazu drained a small lake, getting incidentally a goodly catch of carp, although he could not even taste them. then, since it was now late in the afternoon, he turned northwest to the hills to spend the night. the last part of the journey was almost entirely through shallow water--three hundred miles of the warm south china sea. baker planned to make a before dawn start, so that we might be close to the malay peninsula before daylight could expose us to further attack. kazu suggested pushing on at once, but baker did not think it wise to approach the formidable defenses of singapore by night. and so for a second time we sought out an isolated valley where kazu could snuggle between two soft hills, and we could get what sleep was possible in the wreckage of the projection room. the china sea passage was made without incident. we started at three a.m. in a downpour of rain, and by six, at dawn, the low outline of the malay peninsula came into sight. we made our landfall some forty miles north of singapore, and at once cut across country toward johore bahru and the great british crown colony. the rice paddies, roads and other signs of civilization were a welcome sight, and i was already relaxing, mentally, in a hot tub at the officers club when the awakening came. it came in the form of a squadron of fighter planes carrying british markings which roared out of the south without warning and passed kazu's head with all their guns firing. fortunately neither his eyes nor our thin shelled box was hit, but kazu felt the tiny projectiles which penetrated even his twelve inch hide. as the planes wheeled for another pass he called out in english that he was a friend, but of course the pilots could not hear above the roar of their jets. on the second try two of the planes released rockets, which fortunately missed, but this put a different light on the whole thing. a direct hit with a ten inch rocket would be as dangerous as a torpedo. baker tried to yell some advice, but there was no chance before the planes came in again. this time kazu waved, and finally threw a handful of earth and trees at them. the whole squadron zoomed upwards like a covey of startled birds. by the time we had reached a temporary haven, kazu was thoroughly winded, and we were battered nearly insensible. baker, in fact, was out cold. kazu slowed down, and then finding no directions or advice forthcoming, he resumed a steady dogtrot to the north. martin and i tried to draw baker to a safer position beside the projector, but in the process one of the steel shelves collapsed, adding martin to the casualty list. walt and i then attempted to drag the two of them to safety, but in the midst of these efforts a particularly hard lurch sent me headfirst into the projector, and my interest in proceedings thereupon became nil. walt, battered and seasick, gave up and collapsed with the rest of us. further efforts at communication by kazu proved fruitless. buddha was on his own. vi i awoke with a throbbing headache to find the steel room motionless, and warm sunshine streaming into my face. looking around, i saw that my three companions were all up and apparently in good shape. baker was the first to notice that i was awake, and he came over immediately. "feel better?" he inquired cheerfully. he helped me up and i staggered to the window. the room was perched, as usual, on a hilltop, but the vegetation around was not tropical jungle. i turned to the others, noting as i did that the room was cleaned up. "where--" i started, with a gesture outside. baker stopped me and led me to an improvised canvas hammock. "you really got a nasty one," he said. "you've been out two days." "two days!" i tried to rise, but the effort so increased the headache that i gave up and collapsed into the hammock. "just lie quiet and i'll bring you up to date." baker drew up an empty film box for a seat. "i was knocked about a bit myself, you know, and by the time i came around, our friend had trotted the whole length of the malay peninsula and was halfway across burma." "but the people at singapore," i began, "don't those fools know yet--" "things have changed," said baker. "the biggest change has been in buddha's mind. he took our advice and almost got killed for his pains. now he's on his own." i tried to look through the open door. baker shook his head. "he's not here. no--" this in answer to my startled look, "just off for a stroll, towards china this time, i think. yesterday he visited lhasa. said it's quite a place. talked to the lamas in tibetan, and they understood him. he calls it playing buddha." baker got up and searched among the maps, finally finding one of southeast asia. he spread it out before me, and placed a finger rather vaguely on the great yunnan plateau between burma and china. "we're here, somewhere. buddha doesn't know exactly, himself. he made it to lhasa by following the himalayas, and watching for the potala. i hope he'll find his way back this time--be a bit awkward for us if he doesn't." he stepped outside and brought in some cold cooked rice and meat. "kazu brought us a handful of cows yesterday. they were practically mashed into hamburger. i guess you'd call this pounded steak." i ate some of the meat and settled back to rest again. presently i dozed off. when i awakened it was dark and kazu was back. martin had started a big campfire outside, evidently with kazu's aid, for it was stoked with several logs fully eight feet in diameter and was sending flames fifty feet into the sky. kazu himself was squatting directly over it, staring down at us. when i came to the door, he spoke. "ah, little brother bill. i am so sorry that you were hurt. i am afraid i forgot to be gentle, and that is not forgiveable in buddha." i made an appropriate reply, and then waited. evidently he had as yet told nothing of his day's expedition. finally he plucked a roasted bullock from the fire and popped it into his mouth like a nut. "today," he said, "i visit chungking, nanking, peking. i think i see hundred million chinese. i know more than that see me. also i talk to them. they understand, for miles. they expected me. as you say, brother llewelyn, rau has excellent propaganda machine. everywhere they hail me as buddha, come to save them from war and disease and western imperialism. i speak to them as buddha; today, i am buddha." baker glanced at us meaningfully and murmured, "i was afraid of this." but kazu continued. "today all of china believes i am buddha. only you and i know this is not so, but we can fight best if they believe." "have you eaten?" inquired martin. kazu nodded. "at every temple they collect rice for buddha. many small meals make full belly. but," his face wrinkled with concern, "many thousands could live on what i eat today. china is so poor. so many people, so little food. i must find ways to help them." he paused, and then resumed in a firmer tone. "but not in communist way. rau was right about western imperialists, but he named wrong country. russian imperialists have enslaved china. first we must drive communists from china. then i can help." "amen," said baker softly. then, to kazu.... "we've been trying to do just that for years. but how can you fight seven hundred million people?" "don't fight--lead them." it sounded so simple, the way he said it. well, maybe he could. but now baker had more practical questions. "what does the rest of the world think about all this? have you talked to any europeans, or heard a radio?" kazu shook his head. "but i caught communist general. he tell me russia sending army to capture me. he say only hope is for me to surrender, or russian drop atom bomb on me. then i eat him." we must have showed our startled reaction, for kazu laughed. "not much nourishment in communist. i eat him for propaganda--many people see me do it. effect very good." he paused. "not tasty, but symbolic meal. china is like buddha, giant who can eat up enemies." "what are you going to do next?" asked baker. "that is question. i need more information. where is leadership in china i can trust? what will russians do? how long for british and americans to wake up?" "you're not the only one asking these questions," said baker. "but maybe you can get some answers." * * * * * before kazu could continue, chamberlin held up his hand for silence. we listened, and presently heard above the crackle of the great bonfire, the throb of an airplane engine. kazu heard it too, for he suddenly arose and stepped back out of the light. we four also hastened into the shadows and peered into the dark sky. the approaching aircraft displayed no lights, but presently we saw it in the firelight--a multi-jet bomber bearing american markings. we rushed back into the illuminated area and danced up and down, waving our arms. the huge plane swung in a wide circle and came in less than five hundred feet above the hilltop. i could make out faces peering down at us from the glassed greenhouse in front. as it roared past, one wing tipped slightly in the updraft from the fire, and then suddenly the plane stopped dead in its tracks. the jets roared a deeper note as they bit into still air, and then very slowly and gently the great ship moved back and down until it rested on its belly beside our steel box. not until it was quite safe on the ground did kazu's hands release their hold on the wings, where he had caught it in midair. the eleven crew men from the b125 came out with their hands in the air, but their expressions were more incredulous than frightened. baker added to the unreality of the situation by his greeting, done in the best "dr. livingstone-i-presume" manner. "welcome to camp yunnan. sorry we had to be so abrupt. i'm baker, these are chamberlin, martin, cady." "i'm faulkner," replied the leader of the americans automatically, and then he abruptly sat down and was violently sick. we waited patiently until he could speak again. "my god, i didn't believe it when we heard." he was talking to no-one in particular. "one minute we're flying at 450 miles per hour, the next we're picked out of the air like a--like a--" he gave up. kazu came into the firelight and squatted down, quite slowly. baker introduced him. "colonel, i'd like you to meet kazu takahashi." the american arose and extended his hand, and then dropped it abruptly to his side. kazu emitted a thunderous chuckle. "handshake is, i fear, formality i must always pass up, even at risk of impoliteness." i think that the language, and particularly the phrasing, jolted the airmen even more than the actual capture. colonel faulkner kept shaking his head and murmuring "my god!" for several moments, and then pulled himself together. "so the story's really true after all," he finally said. "we got it on the radio day before yesterday at manila. it was so garbled at first that nobody could make any sense. ships reported thousand foot men wading in the ocean. new macassar radio reported that buddha was reincarnated, and then denied the story. announcements of a pitched battle at singapore, and frantic reports from every town on the peninsula. then a statement by some lama on macassar that the british had kidnaped buddha, had him hypnotized or doped, and were using him to exterminate china." he paused and looked up at kazu, who had bent down until his face was only a hundred feet above us. "part of it is true," said baker. "there was a giant wading in the ocean. as to the rest, i fear we have caught the red radio without a script. i'll tell you the story presently, but just now there are more urgent things to do. is your radio working?" faulkner nodded and led us towards the plane. baker continued. "briefly, kazu is a mutation produced by the hiroshima bomb. he's been groomed for twenty years to take over as the world's largest puppet, but it turns out he has a mind of his own. we just happened along, and are going on for the ride. want to join the party?" the colonel grinned for the first time as we all squeezed into the radio compartment of the plane. "i like travel," he said. "it's so broadening." the radio was not only operative, but proved most informative as well. every transmitter on earth, it seemed, was talking about the giant. in the course of an hour we listened to a dozen major stations and got as many versions of the story. the communist propaganda factory had obviously been caught flat footed, for their broadcasts were a hopeless mixture of releases evidently prepared for the planned introduction of buddha to the world, and hastily assembled diatribes against the capitalist imperialists who had so foully captured him. some of the russians apparently were not in on the secret of buddha's dimensions, for they described in detail how a raiding party of eighty american commando-gangsters had landed by parachute on yat, seized buddha, and taken him away in a seaplane. before we went to sleep that night, kazu extinguished the fire so that no one else would be attracted as the colonel had been. * * * * * next morning the first question concerned transportation. colonel faulkner naturally did not want to leave his plane, particularly since it was undamaged, but a takeoff from our narrow mountain ledge was obviously impossible, so he regretfully ordered his crew to unload their personal effects for transfer to our box. at this point kazu stepped in. "if you will enter your airplane and start jets," he said, "buddha will serve as launching mechanism." before the takeoff, the colonel transferred his spare radio gear to our box, along with an auxiliary generator, and we agreed on a schedule to keep in touch. then kazu gently picked up the bomber, raised it high above his head and sent it gliding off to the north. the engines coughed a couple of times and then caught with a roar. colonel faulkner wagged his wings and vanished into the haze. our plan was to follow the plane east to the wu river, and then north to its meeting with the yangtze, which occurs some seventy five miles below chungking. while the b125 cruised around us in a great circle, we loaded our belongings into the box, and kazu picked us up and signalled the plane that we were ready. colonel faulkner's intention had been to circle us rather than leave us behind with his superior speed, but in a moment it became clear that this would not be necessary. kazu set off down the canyon at a pace better than three hundred miles per hour, and the colonel had to gun his motors to keep up. we passed only a few small towns on the wu. kazu had been here before, and had evidently stopped to talk and make friends, for we observed none of the fright which had formerly greeted his advent. instead, crowds ran out to meet us, waving the forbidden nationalist flag and shooting off firecrackers. kazu spoke briefly in cantonese to each group, and then hurried on. baker explained that he was giving them formal blessings, in the name of buddha. an hour's time brought us to fowchow, on the mighty yangtze kiang. here kazu turned left, wading in the stream, and negotiated the seventy odd miles to chungking in fifteen minutes. the distance from chungking to hankow is somewhat more than five hundred miles. for much of this distance the yangtze is bounded by mountains and rocky gorges, but in the final 150 miles, the hills drop away and the river winds slowly through china's lake country. kazu made good time in the gorge, but his feet sank a hundred feet into the soft alluvial soil of the lowlands and he had constantly to watch out for villages and farms. buddha had not visited hankow before, but he was expected. even before the city came into view, the roads were lined with people and the canals and lakes jammed with sampans. just outside of the city we noticed a small group of men in military uniform under a white flag. we guessed that they represented the communist city government, and so did kazu, for he set our box beside the group and ordered the spokesman to come in for a parlay. the unfortunate officer who was picked obviously did not relish the idea, particularly after martin cracked in english, "he doesn't look fat enough." giving martin a glare, he drew himself up stiffly and said, "general soo prepared to die, if necessary for people of china." the communist general showed somewhat less bravado after the stomach turning ascent to the six hundred foot level, but he managed to get off a speech in answer to kazu's question. as before, baker gave us a running translation. "he says welcome to hankow. the people's government, ever responsive to the will of the citizens, joins with all faithful buddhists in welcoming buddha, and in expressing heartfelt thanksgiving that rumors claiming buddha to be a puppet of western imperialists are all false. now he's saying that there is to be a big party--a banquet--for buddha, in the central square. rice has been collected and cooked, and a thousand sheep slaughtered to feed hungry buddha." kazu replied formally that while he appreciated the hospitality of the people of hankow, he could not accept food from the enemies of china. these words, which were clearly audible to the entire city, were greeted with cheers by the throng below. the general took this in, thought about it a moment, and then made a neat about face. "general soo," said he stoutly, "was communist when he believed communism only hope for china. you have changed everything. general soo now faithful buddhist!" "may i," said baker with a grin, "be the first to congratulate general soo on his perspicacity." * * * * * as the general had promised, there was a great banquet spread. in spite of soo's protestations, baker insisted on sampling each course rather extensively for sleeping potions or poison, but either the idea had not occurred to the communists, or there hadn't been enough time, or poison available. for the most part the civil government of hankow joined with general soo in a loudly declared conversion to buddhism without communist trappings. in spite of baker's skepticism, i believed that most of them were quite sincere. at least, they sincerely wanted to be on the side with the most power, and for the time being at least, kazu seemed an easy winner. general soo, in particular, insisted on making a long speech in which he declared the russians to be the true "western imperialists", now unmasked, who since the days of the first stalin had sought to enslave china with lies and trickery. baker shook his head over this, and privately opined that soo was a very poor fence straddler: such remarks went beyond the needs of expediency, and would probably completely alienate him from the kremlin. however, the crowd thought it was all fine. kazu replied with a short, and generally well planned statement of his policy. "those who follow me," he concluded, "have no easy path. they must be strong, to throw off the yoke of those who would enslave them, but they must be merciful to their enemies in defeat, even to those who but a moment before were at their throats. for though we win the war, if we at the same time forget what we have fought for, then we have indeed lost all. i proclaim to all china, and to her enemies both within and without our borders, that the faith of buddha has returned, and that interference in china's affairs by any other nation will not be tolerated." colonel faulkner had landed at the hankow airport and now, with his crew, shared our private banquet on the terrace of the city's largest hotel, only a few hundred feet from where kazu squatted. under cover of the cheering and speechmaking, he relayed to us some news which he had heard on the radio, which was not quite so rosy. it seemed, first, that the chinese iii army, under general wu, had declared itself for buddha, and was engaged in a pitched battle with the manchurian first army north of tientsin. the communist garrison at shanghai, where there was a large population of russian "colonists", had holed in, awaiting attack by a buddhist peoples army assembled from revolting elements of the ii and vii corps at nanking. a revolt at canton, far to the south, had been put down by the communists with the aid of air support coming directly from russia. the most ominous note, however, was a veiled threat by old mao himself that if mutinous elements did not submit, he might call upon his great ally to the east to use the atomic bomb. mao spoke apparently from near peking, where he was assembling the i and v armies. we digested this news while kazu finished the last of his 1000 sheep. we all cast anxious glances into the sky. soviet planes at canton meant that they could be here also, and buddha, squatting in a glare of light in the midst of hankow, was a sitting duck for a bombing attack. as soon as the main part of the formalities were over, baker managed to get kazu's attention, and informed him of the situation. kazu's reaction was immediate and to the point. "we do not await attack. we go north to free our brothers, and to instruct our errant general mao in buddha's truth." by the time we were packed and in our travelling box, the time was eight-thirty. reference to our map showed the airline distance from hankow to peking to be about 630 miles, and buddha, greatly refreshed by the food and rest, promised to reach the capital by eleven. to make walking easier, baker plotted a route which avoided the lowlands, particularly the valley of the yellow river, in favor of a slightly longer course through the mountains to the east. we started northwest, splashing through the swamps and lakes around hankow at first, and presently reached firmer ground in the hawiyang shan. we followed the ridge of these mountains for a time, and then dropped to the hilly country of honan province. at first the night was very dark, but presently the light of a waning moon made an occasional fix possible, although navigation was confusing and uncertain at best. we splashed across the yellow river at ten o'clock, somewhere east of kaifeng, and for a time were greatly slowed by what appeared to be thick gumbo. our speed improved once we got up into the rugged taihang mountains. here also we felt safer from air observation or attack, although kazu was soon panting from the exertion of crossing an endless succession of fifteen to thirty foot ridges. this was indeed rough country, terrain which had protected the lush plains of china for centuries against the mongols. here the great wall had been built, and presently, in the moonlight, we saw its trace, winding serpentlike over the mountains. we followed the wall for almost two hundred miles--all the way, in fact, to the latitude of peking--before we swung east again for the final lap to mao's capital. * * * * * during the last hour we trailed an antenna and listened in on the world of radio. the news was not good. the shanghai garrison had sprung a trap on their disorganized attackers, and were marching on nanking. mao's armies were closing the southern half of a great pincers on wu's troops, and only awaited the dawn to launch the final assault. worst of all, there had been reports of increasing soviet air activity over the area; a major air strike also apparently would come with daylight. we were scarcely halfway from the edge of the city to the moated summer palace when a small hell of gunfire broke out around kazu's feet. he jumped, with a roar of pain, and then lashed out with one foot, sweeping away a whole city block and demolishing the ambush. limping slightly, he made the remaining distance by a less direct route and at last stood at the moat before the palace. the ancient building, and, indeed, everything about, was quite dark. kazu peered about uncertainly, and then raised our box to ask for advice. baker was pessimistic. "i don't think you'll find general mao here. but at this stage of things, i don't believe it would matter if you did. the decision will be made tomorrow by the armies." kazu stepped carefully over the moat and wall, and sat down wearily in the gardens of the summer palace. we peered with interest at the foliage, marble bridges and the graceful buildings, illuminated only by ghostly moonlight. with kazu squatting among them, they looked like models, a toy village out of ancient china. i wished that a picture might be taken, for surely never before had buddha been in so appropriate a setting. while kazu rested, we examined his feet. a number of machine gun bullets had entered his foot thick hide, and there was one wound a yard long from which oozed a sticky gelatinous blood. there did not appear to be any serious damage, although the chances of infection worried us. in any event, there was nothing we could do except douse it with buckets of water from the moat. kazu thanked us formally, as befitted a deity, and added, as though talking to himself, "now is the most difficult time. how can i bring peace without the use of violence? i can appear before these armies and command them to stop. but what if they do not obey? should i use force? oh, that i were really the great lord buddha--then i would have the wisdom, the knowledge that is a thousand times more potent than giant size. oh buddha, grant me wisdom, if only for a moment, that i may act rightly." presently the giant stretched out full length in the garden and, while we kept guard, slept for a time. the first pale glow of dawn appeared soon after five, and we were preparing to awaken kazu when martin held up a warning hand. we listened. at first we heard nothing, and then there came a deep drone of jets. not a single plane, not even a squadron. nothing less than a great fleet of heavy aircraft was approaching peking from the west. baker fired his automatic repeatedly near kazu's ear, and presently his rumbly breathing changed and he opened his eyes. "planes," said baker briefly. "it's not safe here. better get moving." kazu sat up, yawning, and we climbed into the box. the giant took a long draught from the nearest fishpond and tied our cage to his neck and shoulder so that both of his hands would be free. by this time the noise of the planes had increased to a roar, which echoed through the silent city. kazu arose to his full height and waited. a pinkish line of light had now appeared along the eastern horizon which, i realized with consternation, must silhouette the mighty tower of kazu's body to whomever was coming out of the western shadows. * * * * * and then we saw them. a great fleet of heavy bombers, flying high, far beyond even kazu's reach. baker seized the glasses to look, and then gave a cry of warning. the leading plane had dropped something--a black spherical object above which blossomed a parachute. i think that kazu realized what it was as soon as we, but he still stood quietly. baker lost whatever calm he had left and screamed, "run, run--it's the h-bomb!" but still kazu did not move. in a moment another of the deadly spheres appeared, directly over us, and then a third. now at last kazu moved, but not toward safety. he walked slowly until he was directly beneath the first bomb, and reached up, until his hand was a thousand feet in the air. down came the bomb, quite rapidly, for the parachute was not very large. "what's the matter with the fool," yelled martin. but now baker seemed to get kazu's idea. "it has barometric fusing--it's set to detonate at a certain altitude. if that's below a thousand feet, and kazu can catch it, it won't go off!" martin started something about detonation at two thousand feet, when kazu gave a slight jump and his hand closed about the deadly thing, as though he had caught a fly. we cowered, expecting the flash that would mean the end, but nothing happened. in kazu's crushing grip the firing mechanism was reduced to wreckage before it could act. when buddha opened his palm, it contained only a wad of crumpled metal inside of which was a now harmless sphere of plutonium. in quick succession kazu repeated this performance with the other two bombs, wadded the whole together and flung it to the ground. then he turned to the north. by the time we had cleared the city, it was quite light, and we could see a dark pall of smoke in the northeast. the armies which had been poised last night had finally met, and a great battle was underway. kazu hurried towards it, and presently we could hear the crackle of small arms fire and the heavier explosions of mortars and rockets. it took a moment or so for kazu to get his bearings. evidently we were approaching mao's legions from the rear. still keeping from the roads to avoid killing anyone, kazu advanced to near the battle line, and there stopped. "my brothers," his voice thundered above the heaviest cannon, "my poor brothers on both sides, listen to me. stop this killing. stop this useless slaughter. no one can win, and all will--" suddenly there was a blinding flash of light, a thousand times brighter than the newly appeared sun. it came from behind us, and in the terrible instant that it remained we could see buddha's enormous shadow stretching out across the battlefield. kazu stopped speaking and braced his shoulders for the blast. subconsciously i was counting seconds. four, five, six, seven--a sudden, insane hope gripped me. if we were far enough from the burst--and then the blast hit us, and with it, the sound. kazu pitched forward a hundred yards, and stumbled on as far again. then he recovered. one hand reached behind him, to the back that had taken the full brunt of heat and gamma radiation, and a half animal cry escaped from his lips. over his shoulder we got a glimpse of the fireball, of the fountain of color which would presently form the terrible mushroom cloud. the thunder of the explosion reverberated, and was replaced by silence. the crackle of rifles, the thud of field pieces had ceased. from our perch we looked down at a scene straight from dante's inferno. about kazu's feet was a shallow ravine in which a thousand or so communist troops had taken cover. these were now scrambling and clawing at the sides like ants trying to get away. vehicles were abandoned, rifles thrown away. a few had been burned, but it seemed that for the most part the soldiers had been sheltered from direct radiation by the wall of their canyon, and by kazu's great shadow. for an eternity, it seemed, kazu stood there, swaying slightly, one hand still pressed against his back, while the little men writhed about his ankles. then, quite slowly, he raised one foot. i thought that he was going to walk away, but instead, the foot moved deliberately until it was directly over the ravine, and then, like a tremendous pile driver, it descended. a faint and hideous screaming came up to us, which abruptly ended. the foot came up, and again descended, turning back and forth in the yielding earth. slowly kazu brought his hand up, and lifted our box so that he could look at us. as he did so, i saw that half of his hand was the color of charcoal, and i smelled a horrible odor of tons of burnt flesh. now at last he spoke, in a voice that we could scarcely understand. "guide me," he said, "guide me, baker. guide me to moscow!" vii kazu walked quite slowly from the battlefield. his gait was unsteady, and at first we feared that he would collapse. we could not tell how deep the burns were, nor whether he was internally hurt by the blast. he appeared to be suffering from some kind of shock, for he did not speak again for a long time. but gradually he seemed to gather himself together, and we became almost convinced that the shock was more psychological than physical, and that even the atom bomb was powerless against his might. we did not remain to see the outcome of the battle, but presently martin turned the radio on. the news at first was fragmentary. word that a russian plane had atom bombed the new buddha spread across china, and with it ended the last shreds of communist prestige. the armies which had been pro-communist turned on their officers. mao himself was murdered on the battlefield before kazu was out of sight. the former red defenders of shanghai massacred twenty thousand hapless russian emigrants. all across asia the story was the same, a terrible revulsion. at first it was believed that buddha had died instantly; later rumor had it that he had crawled off to mongolia to die. radio moscow at first was silent. the horror of what had been done was too much even for that well oiled propaganda machine. at last a line was patched together: the bomb had been dropped by an american plane, bearing russian markings. then radio peking announced that chinese fighters had shot it down and that the crew was russian. to this moscow could think of only one reply: radio peking was lying; the station had been taken over by the americans! a little later another moscow broadcast announced solemnly that the whole story was wrong--buddha hadn't been there at all! all the time that this confused flood of talk was circling the globe, kazu takahashi, still clinging to the battered steel projection room, was striding across siberia, staggering now and then, but still maintaining a pace of better than three hundred miles per hour. at first he simply walked westward without any directions from us. by ten o'clock he had put a thousand miles between him and the coast and was well across the southern gobi desert. now baker, who had been almost as stunned as kazu, began to look into his maps. he had nothing for central asia as detailed as the charts we had used in borneo and celebes, but he presently found a small scale map that would do. with this he identified the snowy range of mountains now towering on our left as the nan shan, northernmost bastion of tibet. he hurriedly called to kazu to turn northwest before he entered the great tarim basin, for the western side of that vast desert was closed by a range of mountains 20,000 feet high. even with the new course, our altitude would be above six thousand feet for many miles. at noon we were paralleling another mighty range, the little known altai mountains, and at one o'clock we passed the zaisan nor, the great lake which forms the headwaters for the irtysh river. here kazu paused for a drink, and to rinse his burns with fresh water. then we were away again, this time due west over more mountain tops, avoiding the inhabited lowlands. at three-thirty the hills dropped away and there appeared ahead the infinite green carpet of the siberian forest. kazu stopped again at another lake, which baker guessed might be dengiz. at four-thirty we crossed a wide river which we could not identify, and then at last commenced to climb into the foothills of the southern urals. just in time baker discovered that kazu's course was taking him straight toward the industrial city of magnetogorsk. we veered north again into the higher mountains and then turned east to the forests. we were sure now that kazu must be delirious, but after a while he stopped at the edge of a lake. "how far are we from moscow?" he asked. "twelve hundred miles, more or less," said baker. "you can make it by nine, maybe ten, tonight." kazu shook his head. "no. tonight i must rest, gather strength. we start two am, arrive kremlin at sunrise. we catch them same time they catch me. no warning whatever." kazu lay down on the swampy lake bottom while we huddled on the floor of the box, courting sleep which never came. at one o'clock we at last gave it up, and baker fired his pistol until kazu stirred. while he was awakening we listened to the radio. things had calmed down quite a bit, and as we pieced the various broadcasts together, an amazing realization came over us. everyone believed that kazu was dead! evidently no word of our trip across all of central asia had been received! search planes, both soviet and chinese, were combing the eastern gobi for the body. * * * * * other news included a war declaration by china upon the soviet union, and the announcement that the russian politbureau had scheduled a meeting in the kremlin to consider the emergency. we passed all of this on to kazu, whose grim face relaxed for the first time in a fleeting grin. "good reporters. know what are most savory items. now guide me well, and away from towns until we reach it." the trip across the urals and the plains of european russia retains a nightmare quality in my mind, comparable only with that first night on yat. even baker, who plotted the course, can remember it little better. now and again we caught glimpses of the dim lights in farms, and once we saw the old moon reflected in the volga. much of the low country was covered with ground fog, which reached to kazu's waist; this, combined with the blackout which had been ordered in every town, made observation by us or the russians either way difficult. a few people saw kazu, and their reports reflect a surrealist madness; those who had the horrifying experience of suddenly meeting buddha in the early morning mists were universally incapable of making any coherent report to the authorities. and then, just as the ghostly false dawn turned the night into a misty gray, we saw ahead the towers of moscow. now kazu increased his speed. concealment was no longer possible; he must reach the kremlin ahead of the warning. at 500 miles per hour buddha descended upon moscow. his plunging feet reduced block after block of stores and apartment houses to dust, and the sky behind us was lighted more brightly by the fires he started than by the dull red of the still unrisen sun. now at last i heard the tardy wail of a siren and saw armored cars darting through the streets. on the roof of an apartment house i glimpsed a crew trying to unlimber an antiaircraft gun, but kazu saw it also, and smashed the building to rubble with a passing kick. and then we were at the red square. st. basil's at one end, the fifty foot stone walls of the kremlin along one side and lenin's tomb like a pile of red children's blocks. kazu stood for a moment surveying this famous scene, his feet sunk to the ankle in a collapsed subway. it was my first view of the red square, and somehow i knew that it would be the last, for anyone. then kazu slowly walked to the kremlin and looked down into it. i remember how suddenly absurd it all seemed. the kremlin walls, the very symbol of the iron curtain, were scarcely six inches high! the whole thing was only a child's playpen. but now kazu had found what he wanted. without bothering to lift his feet, he crushed through the walls, reached down and pulled the roof from one of the buildings. he uncovered a brightly lighted ant-hill. like a dollhouse exposed, he revealed rooms and corridors along which men were running. kazu dropped to his knees and held our box up so that we might also see. "are these the men?" he asked. baker replied in the negative. kazu abruptly pressed his hand into the building, crushing masonry and timbers and humans all into a heap of dust, and turned to a larger building. as he did, something about it seemed familiar to me. yes, i had seen it before, in newsreels. it was-but again kazu's fingers were at work. lifting at the eaves, he carefully took off the whole roof. through a window we saw figures hurrying toward a covered bridge connecting this building with another. at baker's warning, kazu demolished the bridge, and then gently began picking the structure to pieces. in a moment we saw what we were after. a wall was pulled down, exposing a great room with oil paintings of lenin and stalin on the wall and a long conference table in the center. and clustered between the table and the far wall were a score of men. anyone would have recognized them, for their faces had gone round the world in posters, magazines and newsreels. they were the men of the politbureau. they were red russia's rulers. there was an instant of silent mutual recognition, and then kazu spoke to them. as befitting a god, he spoke in their own tongue. exactly what he said i do not know, but after a little hesitation they came around the table to the precarious edge of the room where the outer wall had been. kazu gave further directions and held up our steel box. fearfully they came forward and jumped the gap into our door. one by one they made the leap, some dressed in the bemedalled uniforms of marshals, others in the semi-military tunics affected by civilian ministers. the last was the man who had succeeded stalin on his death, and who had taken for himself the same name, as though it were a title. as he entered our room, we saw that he even looked like the first stalin, clipped hair, moustache and all. he was a brilliant man, we knew. brilliant and ruthless. he had grown up through the purges, in a world which knew no mercy, where only the fittest, by communist standards, survived. he had survived, because he was merciless and efficient and because he hated the free west with a hatred that was deadly and implacable. * * * * * i often wonder what his thoughts were at that moment. he came because he was ordered to and because he knew the alternative. he knew he was to die, but he obeyed because by so doing he could prolong life a little, and because there was always a chance. at that moment i deeply regretted knowing no russian. the twenty one who came in talked among themselves in short sentences. they saw us, but ignored us. baker spoke, first in english and then in german. the one called stalin understood the german, for he looked at baker searchingly for a moment, and then turned away. only one of them replied. this was malik, the man who wrecked the old united nations and then became foreign minister after vishinsky was murdered. he ignored the german and spat out his reply in english. "you will not live to gloat over us. he will kill you too, all of you!" we can never be sure of what kazu planned, because now--and of this i am certain--his plans changed. there was suddenly a stillness. we waited. then i ran to the window and looked upward into the great face. it had changed. a deep weariness and a bewilderment was upon it--as though kazu had suddenly sickened of destruction and slaughter. his whispering was the roaring of winds as he said, "no--no. this is not the way--not buddha's way. they must talk. they must understand each other. they must sit at tables and settle their differences, that is my mission." kazu took five steps. below us was an airfield. "can you fly?" he asked us. chamberlin had been an army pilot in the fifties. kazu pushed the box up to a transport, an american dc8. "go in this," he said quite clearly. "go in this plane until you are in washington. tell america about me. tell america i am coming--that i am bringing--_them_. tell america there must be--peace." we scrambled out of the steel box, leaving the russians in a miserable heap in one corner. he arose to his full height and carefully adjusted the cables around his neck. i noticed that his fingers fumbled awkwardly, and that he staggered slightly. then he spoke once more. "i cannot cross atlantic. only route for buddha is siberia, bering straight, alaska. but this not take long. you better hurry or i get to washington first!" he turned on his heel and walked a few steps to the end of the runway. "now get in plane. i give little help in takeoff!" we climbed into the familiar interior of the big american transport. a moment later it arose silently, vertically like an elevator. chamberlin, in the pilot's seat, hurriedly started the engines. he leaned from a window and waved his arm, and we shot forward and upward. for a moment the plane wavered and dipped, taking all of walt's ability to recover. then with a powerful roar, the big dc8 zoomed over the flames of moscow toward the west. * * * * * the flight to london and the atlantic crossing seemed unreal. we lived beside the radio. war and revolt against the soviets had broken out everywhere. with the directing power in the kremlin gone, the top-heavy soviet bureaucracy was paralyzed. the yugoslavs marched into the ukraine, chinese armies occupied irkutsk and were pressing across siberia. internal revolution broke out at a hundred points once it was learned that moscow was no more. eagerly we listened to every report for word of kazu. at first there was nothing, and then a chinese plane reported seeing him crossing the ob river, near the arctic circle. they said that he carried a box in his hand and appeared to be talking to it. then news from the tiny river settlement of zhigansk on the lena that he had passed, but that he limped and staggered as he climbed the mountains beyond. after that, silence. planes swarmed over eastern siberia, the arctic coast and alaska, but found nothing. five hundred tons of c ration were rushed to fairbanks, and tons of medical supplies for burns and possible illness were readied, but no patient appeared. at first we were hopeful, knowing kazu's powers. perhaps he had lost his way, without baker and the maps, but surely he could not vanish. as the days passed baker became more worried. "it's the radiation," he explained. "he took the full dose of gamma rays right in his back. he might go on for days, and then suddenly keel over. he's had a bad burn outside, but it's nothing to what it did to him internally." so the days passed, and so gradually hope died. and then, at last, there was news. it came, belatedly, from an eskimo hunter on the pribolof islands, in bering sea. he reported that a great sea god had come out of the waters, so tall that his head vanished into the clouds. but, he was a sick god, for he could hardly stand, and soon crawled on his hands. around his neck, said the eskimo, he carried a charm, and he spoke words to this in a strange tongue. and the charm answered him in the same tongue, and with the voice of a man. and the two spoke to each other for a time and then the great one arose and walked off of the island and into the fog and the ocean. questioned, the man was somewhat vague as to the exact direction taken, although it seemed clear that kazu had headed south. when baker examined his chart of bering sea, he found that the ocean to the north and west, towards siberia, was shallow--less than five hundred feet. but the pribolofs stood on the edge of a great deep. only twenty miles south of the islands, the ocean floor dropped off to more than ten thousand feet, for three hundred miles of icy fog shrouded ocean, before the bleak aleutians arose out of the mists. this desolate area was searched for months by ships and planes, but no trace ever appeared from the treacherous currents of the stormy sea. kazu had vanished. so here ended the story of kazu takahashi, who was born in the days of the first bomb, and who died by the last ever to sear the world. he was believed by millions to be the incarnation of the lord buddha, but to four men he was known not as a god but as a great and good man. the end * * * * * transcriber notes: this etext was produced from if worlds of science fiction november 1952. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. obvious punctuation errors have been corrected. corrections made: page 6 original: wind, and its damned serious." replacement: wind, and it's damned serious." page 16 original: first fence, and affair of steel posts replacement: first fence, an affair of steel posts page 31 original: when baker as only part-way replacement: when baker was only part-way page 34 original: handfulls of the unseasoned stuff, replacement: handfuls of the unseasoned stuff, unchanged: page 16 sculping a king sized buddha after sculping is an old useage of the word page 55 straight, alaska. but this not straight is an old useage of the word generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see 57473-h.htm or 57473-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/57473/57473-h/57473-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/57473/57473-h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/yellowpearlstory00tesk the yellow pearl a story of the east and the west by adeline m. teskey author of "where the sugar maple grows," etc. [illustration: logo] hodder and stoughton new york george h. doran company copyright, 1911, by george h. doran company [illustration: frontispiece] the yellow pearl adeline m. teskey the yellow pearl _march 1st, 1----_ here i am in this strange country about which i have learned in the geography and history, and about which i heard my father talk. the daughter of an american man and a chinese woman, i suppose i am what is called a mongrel. my father was a commissioner of customs in china, and living for years in that country he fell in love with my mother and married her--as was natural. who could help falling in love with my dear, yellow, winsome, little mother? my name is margaret, called after my father's mother; my father said that the word margaret means a pearl, so he gave me the pet name "pearl." dear father! "it was a monstrous thing for brother george to marry away there," i overheard my aunt gwendolin remark a short time after my arrival. "why could he not have come back home to his own country and found a wife?--and above all to have married a heathen chinese!" "not a heathen," said my grandmother, reproachfully, "she had previously embraced the faith of europeans; so my dear george wrote me from that far-away country." "oh, they are all heathens in my estimation," cried my aunt gwendolin, scornfully; "what faith they embrace does not change the fact that they belong to the yellow people." my mother died while i was yet a child, and my father has died and left me alone in the world within the last year. grandmother, my father's mother, when she learned about her son's death, sent at once for me. "i cannot leave a granddaughter of mine in that country, and among that heathen, if not barbarous, people," she wrote to the american consul, "and i ask your services to assist her to come to my home in america." the consul, absent-minded, gave me my grandmother's letter to read, and thus i learned her feeling about my mother's people and country. i never would have come to this horrible america if i could have helped myself; but i am scarcely of age, and by my father's will grandmother is appointed my guardian. the result of it all is, that having crossed the intervening waters, i am here in the home of my grandmother, my aunt gwendolin and my uncle theodore morgan. when i arrived this morning i was ushered into the sitting-room by a maid, and the first one i beheld was my grandmother, sitting in a rocking-chair. she called me to her, and crossing the room, i kotowed to her, that is i went down on my hands and knees and touched my forehead to the floor, as my chinese nurse had taught me when i was yet a baby that i should always do when i came into the presence of an elderly woman, a mother of children. "my _dear_ grandchild!" cried my grandmother, "_do_ get up. all you should do is to kiss me--your grandmother!" and she put out her hand and assisted me from the floor. grandmother is the dearest, prettiest little woman i ever saw, with white hair and the brightest of eyes, and i have to love her, although i had made up my mind to hate everything in america. a moment after she had lifted me from the floor, my aunt gwendolin came in. she is tall and thin, not nearly so beautiful a woman as my chinese mother. she wears skirts that drag on the floor, and her hair is built up into a sort of a mountain on top of her head. i am reminded every time i look at her of a certain peak in the thian shan mountains. i very much prefer little women, like my own dear mother, like the women of my own country. my uncle theodore is long-armed, long-legged, long-bodied. he looks a little like my father, and for that reason i hate him a little less than my aunt gwendolin. after my mother's death, my father brought into our home a french governess, daughter of a french consul, to teach me. father seemed to be lost in his business, or his grief at the loss of my mother, and paid very little heed to me after the arrival of the governess. "she is an educated woman," he told me when he had engaged her, "and i want her to teach you all you could learn in a first-class girls' school in europe or america." after that the french governess spent hours with me every day, and i saw my father only at intervals. how much we talked about, that french lady and i! everything, almost, except religion; _that_ my father vetoed, as her faith was not the one he wished me to embrace. "i'll take you over to your grandmother by and by," he used to say, "to get the proper religious instruction." the governess said that i inherited more from my father's side of the house than my mother's; that although i was born in china, i was more of an occidental than an oriental; more than once she said that my american mannerisms and tricks of speech were really remarkable, and that i was a living example of the power of heredity. but i am never going back on my mother's people, _never_, my dear little oval-faced mother whose grave is under a spreading camphor tree at the heart of the world. does it not mean something that china is at the centre of the world--the kernel? "the girl is not bad to look at, in fact i think she is a beauty--a face filled with the indescribable dash of the orient," said my uncle theodore, when they were talking me over in the sitting-room after i had retired to my chamber upstairs. evidently they had forgotten the opening in the floor which had been left by the workmen while making some changes in the plumbing. and they did not know my extraordinary keenness of hearing, which my governess said was an oriental trait. it seemed to give my governess some pleasure to talk about that keen sense of the orientals, and to speculate as to how they had acquired it. "they have lived in a country where it is necessary, for self-protection, to hear all that is being plotted and planned," she said, "a country of conspiracies and intrigues, of plots and counterplots. centuries of this have developed abnormal hearing." "she has a superb figure," said my uncle, continuing to talk about me, "and that oval face of hers, with her creamy complexion, is really bewitching." "yellow! you mean, _yellow_!" interrupted my aunt gwendolin; "she's entirely too yellow for beauty. i'm terribly afraid that some of our set will discover her nationality. that's _one_ thing you must remember, theodore, nobody on this continent is ever to learn anything about her chinese blood. they are so despised here as a race. she is our brother's daughter, with some foreign strain inherited from her mother; that is enough; never, _never_, let us acknowledge the chinese. the italians and spanish are yellowish too,--i have it!" she exclaimed, "_spanish!_--spanish will do!--some of those are _our_ people now, you know! it will be quite interesting to have her a native of one of our dependencies--a descendant of some old spanish family!" "do not be foolish, gwendolin," said my grandmother. "i could not endure the thought of introducing a celestial," continued my aunt. "none must know that we have introduced the yellow peril into the country!" "why, gwendolin, how you do talk," said my grandmother; "the child's father was an american, and she was admitted into this country as an american." "you must talk with the girl to-morrow, theodore," continued my aunt, ignoring my grandmother's remark, "and tell her to keep sacred her progenitors. she speaks such perfect english no one would suspect that there was much foreign about her." "she has a striking, unusual air that would attract a second glance from most people," said my uncle. "if you can keep her nationality from professor ballington you will do better than i think you can; he is a great ethnologist; it is his life-work to make discoveries in that line." "well it _must_ be kept, no matter what means we resort to," returned my aunt gwendolin, with a ring of determination in her voice. "poor child," said my dear old grandmother, "she is my granddaughter, and i love her already, my george's child. she looks beautiful to me whether yellow or no." i had gone down to dinner on this first evening in a soft yellow silk, with long flowing sleeves trimmed with dragons, i know i looked well in it. governess always said i did. it was partly chinese and partly european in design. governess planned it herself, and she said the french were born with a knowledge how to dress artistically; she boasted that she made it to suit my peculiar style. "did you notice that china silk she had on at dinner?" said aunt gwendolin; "there must be an end to all that; a ban must be put on everything chinese." "it was rather becoming i thought," said uncle theodore, "in harmony with the clear yellow of her skin. let her dress alone, she seems to know how to put it. that is a born gift with some women, and if it is not, they never seem to acquire it. there is great elegance in the straight lines of the oriental dress." "let her alone," said aunt gwendolin scornfully, "and let the whole city know we have introduced the yellow per----" "gwendolin, dear," interrupted grandmother, "do not speak so." "those chinese silks, of which she seems to have gowns galore--i was at the unpacking of her trunks--must be tabooed," said my aunt. "her father has evidently intended her to dress like an european or american; she has _some_ waist line, and does not wear the sacque the women wear in china; but her sleeves are _years_ old." "the dear child may object to having her attire changed at once," said my grandmother. "she is used to those soft clinging silks, and may not want to give them up. and sleeves are of little consequence. let her alone for awhile." "let her alone!" again retorted aunt gwendolin, "and let professor ballington see her? he'd know her nationality at once in that yellow silk covered with sprawling dragons, as almost anybody might. i cannot have anything so mortifying occur when the girl is calling me 'aunt'!" "ballington is a curious kind of a chap, and values people on their own merits; _he'd_ think none the less of the girl because she has some chinese blood in her," returned uncle theodore. "i'll take her out to-morrow," continued my aunt, "and buy her some taffeta silks and french muslins, and dress her up as a christian _should_ be dressed." grandmother said no more. the mother is not the head of the house in america as she is in dear old china. i suppose it is the daughter who rules in this country. i am so sleepy i cannot listen any longer, even to talk about myself. my governess has taught me that eavesdropping is not honourable, but i cannot avoid hearing so long as i stay in my room, and i have nowhere else to go. i will turn out the electric light, throw myself on the bed, yellow silk and all, and cry myself asleep. i wonder is that an american or a chinese act? my governess was continually tracing my actions to one or other of the nations. _march 2, 1----_ it happened this morning! that man aunt gwendolin thought would be so sure to know that i was the yellow pearl, came to the house, and was ushered into my uncle's den by the maid, a few moments after i had been sent in there to have the "talk" with him which was spoken about the night before. "he is a tall man, very, very white," were my thoughts regarding him, as he bowed politely before me, when my uncle introduced us; and i suppose his thoughts regarding me were: "she is a short woman, very, very, yellow." he left after a few moments' conversation with my uncle; and turning to me the latter said, "that gentleman who has just gone is professor of ethnology in the state university. he knows all about the peculiarities of all the peoples and tribes that ever have graced or disgraced the face of this planet we call the world---has your aunt told you that she thinks it better that you should say nothing about your chinese ancestry?" he added hastily and awkwardly. "have the chinese done anything disgraceful?" i asked him. "no, no, i don't suppose they really have," he answered with an air of annoyance. "a girl like you cannot understand; you had better simply follow instructions. i hope it will not be necessary to mention this subject again," he added meaningly. i could not mistake him; i must not _dare_ tell professor ballington or any one else in this great country that my mother was a chinese woman. in the afternoon aunt gwendolin took me down into the shops of the city, "to select an outfit," she said. we stood for hours, it seemed to me, over counters laden with silks and muslins of every colour in the rainbow. aunt gwendolin held the various shades up against my face to see which best became my "spanish complexion." this was said, i suppose, for the ears of the sales-people, and the fashionable customers standing around. when selections were made among the goods, i was taken to the establishment of a "parisienne modiste," where i was pinched, puckered, and pulled until i was nearly numb. a sort of a steel waist was put on me, which my aunt and the modiste called a "corset," and was so tightly pulled i could scarcely breathe. "i can't stand it, aunt gwendolin," i whisperingly gasped. "yes, you _can_!" she returned peremptorily, "you'll get used to it; that's nothing like as tight as the girls all wear them in this country." "i can't breathe," i gasped again, when the modiste had turned her back; (aunt gwendolin had signed to me the first time not to let her hear me). "hush!" said my aunt; "for pity sake do not let the modiste know that you never had a corset on before." "i'd rather have my feet bound like the women do in chi----" aunt gwendolin placed her jewelled fingers over my mouth before i had finished the sentence. just as i was through being "fitted," one of aunt gwendolin's fashionable friends came in. "arabella," my aunt called her, but the modiste called her mrs. delaney. i was not noticed, and slipped off into a corner, and this newcomer and my relative fell into a deep and absorbing talk about the new style of sleeve. i saw my opportunity and slipped unnoticed out the front door, which fortunately was behind them. hurrying down a few blocks i reached a bookseller's window. with one glance i had noticed, when my aunt and i were passing the window on the way to the establishment of the parisienne modiste, the word china on the cover of a book. "i'll buy that book," i had said to myself, "and learn what there is about china that makes americans despise her people." entering the store, i found a number of books about china and the chinese: "one of china's scholars," "how the chinese think," "the greatest novels of china," "chinese life." i paid for them all and ordered them sent to my grandmother's house. the bookseller looked at me very curiously for several moments, and then ventured, "you speak english very well." "of course i do," i said, tossing my head and trying to act saucily, as my governess had told me the american girls did. i would not have dared to treat a man that way in china. he did not venture to speak again. it is funny to be able in this america to frighten a man! confucius says that women should "be always modest and respectful in demeanour, and prefer others to themselves"; but i have not to mind confucius any longer; i am now in the "sweet land of liberty," as they sing in their national anthem. i heard my father say once that the gentleness and modesty of oriental women was really beautiful; but it would not be beautiful in america. i hurried back to the establishment of the parisienne modiste, and found my aunt and her friend still talking about sleeves. they had never noticed my absence. how very important sleeves are in america! i never heard them talked about in china. the talkers had evidently forgotten me, so i slipped out again, and walked several blocks, watching the manners, and catching snatches of the conversation of americans. "i'm going to have mine eighteen gores----" "pleating down the front, frills at the side----" "pocahontas hat, and prince chap suit----" "front panel, and revers turned----" "frills and pipings all around----" "gored, or cut in one piece----" "oh, pompadour, by all means, with----" these were the snatches of conversation which i caught from the women as they passed me. the men were mostly silent and glum. this curious country, that aunt gwendolin says has gone away ahead of the rest of the world, why do its women talk more about dress than anything else? and why have its men such pushing, hurrying, knock-you-down-if-you-stand-in-my-way faces? when i got back to the establishment of the parisienne modiste i found my aunt ready to take me to the milliner's to be "outfitted with hats." walking a block or two we entered a much-decorated room, and at my aunt's request an attendant brought several hats for our inspection--curious-looking things like straw bee-hives, or huge wasps' nests, covered over largely with wings and the heads of poor little dead birds, ends and loops of ribbon, roses and leaves, looking as if they were only half sewed on and liable to tumble off if touched, and long feathers, buckles, and pins. my aunt selected several, fitted them on my head, and declared they were very becoming to my spanish style of beauty. i, almost in tears, whispered into her ear, so the attendant would not hear me, "i shall not have to wear them where any one can see me, shall i?" aunt gwendolin smiled (the attendant was looking) and replied sweetly, "yes, they are very pretty, indeed." we in china could never kill our birds and wear them on our heads--the breasts of our beautiful mandarin ducks, the wings of our gold and silver pheasants, the heads of our pretty parrakeets--we never could do it--we would feel like murderers. our majestic-looking wild geese, that fly over our heads in flocks sometimes thirty miles in length, going south in the autumn and north in the spring, we never molest them. the buddhists believe that all geese perform an aerial pilgrimage to the holiest of the lakes in the mountains every year, transporting the sins of the neighbourhood, returning to the valley with a new stock of inspiration for the people in the locality where they choose to alight. here in this civilised country--i have been reading in one of their magazines that grandmother loaned me--they catch the beautiful water-fowls, kill them, and hack off their downy breasts to make ladies' hats. and the little young birds starve in the nest, because the mother never returns to feed them. ugh! civilised countries are dreadful! when the hats were selected my aunt conducted me to the furrier's. "the cold weather is not over yet," she said, "and while we are about it i shall select some necessary furs." i had noticed as we were passing through the streets that the ladies had curious looking things around their necks and shoulders, capes trimmed with heads of animals, and tails and paws of the same. i wondered the dogs did not bark at them. they looked like some hunters who had been out shooting and had thrown their dead game over their shoulders. the furrier whose shop we had entered seemed to know my aunt, and as soon as she said, "i want you to show me some of your best fur garments suitable for a young lady," he brought down from some shelves the greatest quantity of fur articles, ermine, mink, seal, sable, all covered with heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, mouths, teeth, whiskers. i shuddered and drew back when my aunt went to place one around my neck. "oh, auntie!" i cried, "don't touch it to me!" "ha, ha, ha," softly and politely laughed the shopkeeper, "the young lady has not become acquainted with the newest thing in furs, so beautiful and realistic--so charming!" aunt gwendolin frowned. she evidently did not like my display of nerves, and resolutely fastened around my throat an ermine scarf with seven or eight heads, and twice as many tails. "there!" she said, "that will do nicely, it is very becoming to her creamy spanish." "it could not be better," said the polite shopkeeper. a muff was then chosen to match the scarf, with just as many horrible grinning heads, and little snaky tails; and paying for them, my aunt ordered them sent home. on my return home i dropped a silver coin into the housemaid's hand, and told her when the parcel of books arrived she was to carry it up to my room and say nothing about it. she seemed to understand, and asked no questions. an hour later she came to my door with the books in her arms, and found me examining my new set of furs. "betty," i cried, throwing wide the door of my room, "come in and tell me all about my furs--how the man that sells them gets all those little heads and tails. where do they get them? and how do they catch them? i want to know it all." "oh, miss," said betty, stepping briskly into the room, nothing loath to accept the invitation to examine the new furs, "they lives out in the wild woods--these little critters, an' men poisons 'em, an' traps 'em. an' when they is dead, they skins 'em, tans the skins, an' makes 'em up into muffs, an' boas, an' tippets, an' fur coats, an' so forth, an' so forth." "poison and trap them!" i cried, "doesn't that make the little creatures suffer?" "you bet!" said betty. "how cruel!" i added. "yes, miss, ain't it awful?" returned betty, making a wry face. "they's a book just been throwed in at the door to-day telling all as to how it is done. the american humane association has wrote the book--_they_ don't approve of killin' things. i'll bring it up an' let you read it." suiting the action to the thought betty rushed away down to the kitchen for the book. she returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it hastily into my hand--my aunt was calling her--and hastened away. i glanced down at a picture on the front page--a hare caught by the hind leg in a trap. a most agonised expression was on the little animal's face. below the picture was the title of the story, "_the cost of a skin_." i dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story: "furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life. skins and dead birds are not half so beautiful as flowers, or ribbons, or velvets, or mohair. they are popular because they are barbaric. they appeal to the vulgarians. our ideas of art, like our impulses, and like human psychology generally, are still largely in the savage state of evolution. no one but a vulgarian would attempt to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head, or muffling her shoulders in grinning weasels, and dangling mink-tails. indeed, to one who sees things as they are, in the full light of adult understanding, a woman rigged out in such cemeterial appurtenances is repulsive. she is a concourse of unnecessary funerals; she is about as fascinating, about as choice and ingenious in her decorations, as she would be, embellished with a necklace of human scalps. she should excite pity and contempt. she is a pathetic example of a being trying to add to her charms by high crimes and misdemeanours, and succeeding only in advertising her indifference to feeling. "of all the accessories gathered from every quarter of the earth to garnish human vanity, furs are the most expensive; for in no way does man show such complete indifference to the feelings of his victims as he does in the fur trade. "the most of the skins used for furs are obtained by catching their owners in traps, and death in such cases comes usually at the close of hours, or even days, of the most intense suffering and terror. the principal device used by professional trappers is the steel-trap, the most villanous instrument of arrest that was ever invented by the human mind. it is not an uncommon thing for the savage jaws of this monstrous instrument to bite off the leg of their would-be captive at a single stroke. if the leg is not completely amputated by the snap of the terrible steel, it is likely to be so deeply cut as to encourage the animal to gnaw or twist it off. this latter is the common road to escape of many animals. trappers say that on an average one animal in every five caught has only three legs." "we'd never do it in china--_never_!" i cried, throwing the leaflet from me. "it is only this horrid, civilised america that could be so terribly cruel! i shall never wear my furs--_never_! i shall beg grandmother--she seems to be the only civilised being i know that has any heart--to allow me to go without them!" i looked again at my leaflet, which i had picked from the floor, and continued to read the words of the author: "i would rather be an insect--a bee or a butterfly--and float in dim dreams among the wild flowers of summer than be a man and feel the wrongs of this wretched world." i rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf. "stay there! stay there!" i cried. "the yellow pearl will have nothing to do with civilisation!" "yellow pearl," i said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "_you_ know that they have fur in china, that the rich wear fur-lined garments." "yes," i replied to that accusing _i_, "the rich wear fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. they are not caught in the cruel steely traps of america. linings, mind you, _linings_," i reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons." _march 9th, 1----_ the result of all the pinching, puckering, fitting, which i underwent at the establishment of the parisienne modiste is that i am walking around arrayed in taffeta silk, and squeezed out of all my natural shape by the steel waist. my sleeves are made so that my shoulders appear very much nearer my ears than nature intended them to be. my hair is done up in a quarter hundred--more or less--little puffs, and a quarter hundred hairpins are scratching my scalp. i have had to lay aside my nice soft shoes, and pretty chinese slippers, and am gyrating around in tight shoes, with a french heel somewhere about the middle of the sole. i almost fell downstairs the first day i wore them; and when i wanted to take them off my aunt gwendolin was indignant. "you'll learn to walk in them soon," she said; "you are in a civilised country now, and must do as the people do here. you cannot pad around without heels any more." i look ugly, and i feel cross. i have reached the land of bondage! oh, for my beautiful china silks, thick, soft, lustrous, and loose enough to be comfortable--which have been bundled up and put in a large cedar chest in the attic. oh, for my own country, my heathen china, with its dress thousands of years old in fashion! what frights some of the women in this stuck-up country look--in their tight waists, showing their figures! that may be pretty enough--if really modest, which my country denies--when they are young, slender, lithe; but fancy a great stout woman in a "shirt waist," as they call it, with a belt defining her girth, and perhaps a tight skirt making her look positively vulgar. ugh! grandmother has had me in her room; indeed, she took me in a couple of days after my arrival, and locking the door to keep out all intruders, she talked long and solemnly to me. she was shocked when she learned that i had scarcely heard of christ, and that i had never read the bible. "my dear child," she cried, "what was your father thinking about? why did he so neglect your religious education?" "he always said that he was going to bring me over to you, grandmother, to teach me religion," i replied. "i know all about confucius and buddha, my nurses used to talk about them; but they never mentioned christ." the result of this conversation is, that grandmother has me go into her room for a half-hour every day to study the bible. we began at the first chapter of genesis, and already we have got as far as abraham. between times i am reading the chinese books in my own room upstairs, and i learn from one of them that more than a century before the birth of abraham, china had two great and good men; fully as good as abraham i should think,--yao and shun--who framed laws that govern the nation to-day. why did not yao and shun get a "_call_" as abraham did? i think they deserved one fully as well. after we get through our study of genesis and abraham, grandmother usually has a little talk about that great and beautiful man, christ; telling me how kind and gentle he was, and how he always considered the good of others rather than his own good. "the princely man!" i cried the first time she mentioned him. she wanted to know what i meant, and i told her that my nurses had told me about china's ideal and model, the "princely man," and i thought the christ must be _he_. "more, much more than confucius, the princely man," returned my grandmother. "it is my sincere hope, my dear granddaughter, that your mind may become illumined as you proceed with your study, until you understand the vast difference between the princely man and christ." "there is a pretty legend about christ," she added, "which says that as he walked the earth sweet flowers grew in the path behind him. the legend is true in a spiritual sense--wherever his steps have pressed the earth all these centuries, flowers have sprung up, flowers of love, kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness." then grandmother began to sing softly, in the sweetest old trembly soprano voice one ever heard, asking me to join her: "let every kindred, every tribe on this terrestrial ball, to him all majesty ascribe, and crown him lord of all." _march 10th, 1----_ we went to church this morning, it being sunday--aunt gwendolin, uncle theodore, and i. grandmother was indisposed and did not go. it was my first attendance at church, for aunt gwendolin said i had nothing fit to wear until she dressed me up. "are _you_ going, theodore?" i heard my aunt, through the opening in the floor, say in a surprised tone, as if she were not accustomed to seeing him go. "i think i'll go this morning," returned my uncle, continuing to brush his coat, which act had prompted my aunt's question. "i want to see how our fashionable way of worshipping god will impress the little celestial. it will be her first attendance at church." aunt gwendolin came up to my room and selected the gown i was to wear, in fact my whole outfit. she took from the wardrobe a white french cloth costume (it was very much in harmony with my feelings that i should appear in america's church for the first time in the colour which china uses for mourning), and one of the beehive hats with several birds on it. "oh, i can't wear that if anybody is going to see me," i cried when she brought out the hat. "well, if you are going to make a scene," said my aunt curtly, "wear _this_," and she brought from its bandbox a "sailor" covered with white drooping ostrich feathers. "you'll look sweet in that," she added; "and when you get more used to civilised head-gear you can wear the others." "do we go to church to look sweet?" i inquired. "oh, dear, no," she answered impatiently, "but there is nothing gained in being a fright--were there no christians in your country to hold meetings?" without waiting for my reply, she dived into the closet and brought out my fur tippet, but i begged so hard not to wear it, that she said as the day was mild i need not. i'll have to see grandmother and have it disposed of before another churchgoing time. aunt gwendolin herself was beautifully dressed in a light blue-gray; at a glance she looked like a passing cloud dropped down from the sky, but a closer inspection revealed a mystery of shirrings, tuckings, smockings, frillings never seen in a cloud. in reply to my questions she had told me the name of all the strange puckerings. i'd like the cloud-gown better without the puckerings. "what do we go to church for?" i asked as we were being whirled along in the automobile, which was controlled by a very good-looking young man whom they called "chauffeur." "why--why--what a heathen you are! to worship god, of course," said my aunt shortly. "does god require us to wear such fashionable clothes to worship him?" i asked, feeling wearied with the effort of dressing--collars, belts, buckles, pins, gloves, corsets, shoes, hats, buttonings, and lacings. uncle theodore laughed, and aunt gwendolin frowned, and looked carefully round to see whether her white taffeta petticoat was touching the ground--we were by this time at the church and walking from the automobile to the church door. following aunt gwendolin's lead, we were soon in a front seat. we were there but a few moments when a number of young men and women, dressed in black robes, with white ties under their chins, came in through some back door behind the gallery where they afterwards stood, and began to sing. "lead me to the li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang one young woman, all in a tremble. "lead me to the li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight," sang a man in a heavy voice. then the woman screeched in as high notes as her voice could reach, i am sure, and the man ran away down to a growl. after the whole company had repeated "lead me to the light," they began to sing against each other, all in a jumble; they seemed to finish the song in some foreign language. i did not know a word of it. i suppose as it was for the worship of god it did not matter whether any one else understood it or not. after the singing was done, a man--the minister they call him--uncle theodore has since told me--stood up before the people and read a verse from the bible--one of the verses i have not got to yet in my reading with grandmother. then he began to talk about the hardships of poor missionaries out in what he called "the unchristianised west of our own country," and the _awful_ need of the natives. it was "missionary sunday;" a bulletin lying in the seat acquainted us with the fact, and the music and the sermon were to be of a missionary character. the minister told a story about a young man who had gone out as a missionary to the indians, who was living in a shack, twelve by fourteen, cooking his own meals, and eating and sleeping in the one room. he had not salary enough to pay his board. when the minister had talked half an hour, and had us all wrought up about the woes of the missionary, and the needs of the heathen, he closed his sermon. and we leaned back in our seats and were lulled into forgetfulness of the grievous story, by low-toned, dreamy, soothing music, from the echo organ. aunt gwendolin has told me since that the organ cost seventy thousand dollars. christians are most extraordinary people; they rouse one all up to the pitch of being willing to do most anything by a heart-rending address, and then scatter all the impression by their music. when the organist had finished, i wasn't the least worried about the ills of the missionary or the indians. indeed all the people looked relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from them. when we were again in the automobile aunt gwendolin said: "didn't the church look well this morning? it has been undergoing some repairs, and three thousand dollars' worth of cathedral oak has been added to the wainscoting." "that would pay the board of the young missionary among the indians for a long time," i said. "hush!" said aunt gwendolin impatiently, "do not talk foolishness!" perhaps uncle theodore thought she shut me up too peremptorily, for he said: "paying that young man's board out in the west would never be noticed or talked about, my dear; other denominations would pay no attention to it, while this cathedral oak wainscoting--oh my! oh my! will excite the admiration and jealousy of the whole city." "i _love_ beautiful churches," returned my aunt gwendolin poutingly. "i shall take pearl around to see st. george's, where the altar cost five thousand dollars. it will be an education to the girl. a man gave it in memory of his wife, which was a very beautiful thing to do." "pooh!" exclaimed my uncle, "why didn't he do something for some poor wretches who need it, in memory of his wife?" while they had been talking i was looking at the curious, high-crowned, black, shiny hats (a stove-pipe, uncle theodore has since told me they ought to be called) which the men all were wearing. they seem to be as essential in america as the queue is in china. in the afternoon grandmother invited me into her private room to have a quiet talk with her, she said. "everything is very new to you, my dear margaret--pearl i believe your father called you--in this country, and you must come to me with all your troubling problems. i feel for you, my dear grandchild, and do not fear to say anything, _anything_ at all you feel like saying to me." she took my small yellow hands in hers, and looked at me lovingly, saying as she gently chafed them that they were very pretty and plump. there _were_ things puzzling me, had puzzled me that very day, and i felt inclined to place them before my kind granny. "what are christians, grandmother?" i asked. "my dear child," said my grandmother, "the word simply means the followers of christ." "oh, it cannot mean _that_!" i cried, then stopped, abashed. grandmother raised her glasses from her eyes, placed them on her forehead, and stared at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds, then she said: "my dear pearl, why do you say that?" she was looking at me and i must answer, although fearing that i had hurt her feelings in some way by my abrupt contradiction. "you said that the man, christ, was very kind and gentle, and that he always thought of the good of others before his own," i continued. "would _he_ pay thousands upon thousands for a grand church, in which to sit and be happy, and feel rich; and thousands upon thousands for a great organ to play sweet music and make him forget the world's sorrows, while his brothers were too poor to pay for their board----?" "no, he would _not_!" said grandmother, tears welling into her blue eyes. jumping from my seat i threw my arms around her neck and kissed her wrinkled, quivering face, saying, "_you_ are a follower of the princely man--of the good man, christ, _you_ are, grandmother----" a peremptory rap at the door stopped further conversation, and when i opened it, a lady was ushered in to see grandmother. i was introduced to mrs. paton, of whom i had before heard my grandmother speak as "a great christian worker," and whom i heard my aunt gwendolin denounce as a "tiresome crank, spoiling every one's comfort." i looked very earnestly at the lady, trying to fit her into the two definitions. mrs. paton began almost at once to talk about the "temperance movement," and the "evils of intoxicating liquors," and "the selfishness of the onlooking world, who were not the real sufferers." she left after the expiration of half an hour, and grandmother said to me: "you would not understand mrs. paton's remarks, my dear. you will have to be longer in the country before you know what is meant by the 'evils of intoxicating liquors.' did you ever really see a drunken man?" "no, grandmother," i said, "i never even _heard_ of one. _drunk!_--what does it mean?" "oh," said grandmother, "something that as a country we have reason to be terribly ashamed of--men drinking intoxicating liquors until they lose their senses----" another rap interrupted grandmother, and we were called out to tea. the only really delightful thing they do in this america is to drink tea, just the same as we do in china. i see how it is; they have a new confucius in this america, but they do not live the new confucius--none but my dear grandmother. _march 12th, 1----_ it is settled--but not without a fight--i do not have to wear the furs with heads and tails, and all the rest. to please my grandmother, who was so afraid i might catch cold, i submitted to accepting a plain set, a set which dear grandmother had selected herself. aunt gwendolin was furious, and fought hard that i should be compelled to wear the first set, but grandmother overruled. i see the mother can be the head of the house in america when she chooses. it was the kittens that decided grandmother. one day she and i were out for a short walk, and we met a girl with two little kittens around her hat--not real live kittens, but the skins of two little gray and white kittens stuffed with cotton batting, and with glass eyes, arranged as if meeting and sparring around the crown of that girl's hat. "it is barbaric," said grandmother. "there are two kinds of heathen. there are the heathen who are born such, and there are the heathen by choice. and if we look about us we must acknowledge we have a great multitude of them at home." it almost made grandmother sick, and she decided at once that i could get the furs changed. "i never seem to have awakened to the enormity of it before," said poor grandmother with a sigh. how glad i am that the mother can be the head of the house in america when she chooses! a young man whom we all call cousin ned, because he is a distant relative of the family, comes here to grandmother's house very often. he talks incessantly about "first base," "second base," and "third base," "innings," and "runs," "pitchers," and "short-stop," "outfield," and "infield," "right-fielder," "centre-fielder," and "left-fielder," "scores," and "catchers." it is all greek to grandmother and me, but we can get him to talk about nothing else. i asked uncle theodore the first time i saw this cousin of ours, what he was doing--his home is many miles away, and he is boarding in the city. "he is here ostensibly to attend the university," said uncle theodore, "but ned is a great sport." as uncle theodore was walking away he sang lightly: "if fame you're on the lookout for and seek it over all the words you must engrave upon your mind are these: play ball!" this was rather unusual, for uncle theodore rarely sings, and i am sure i do not know what he meant by it. by reason of the relationship, cousin ned feels free to come to the house without ceremony at all hours of the day. most of the time he is wearing a "sweater," with a large letter on the breast. _march 30th, 1----_ aunt gwendolin decided, soon after i came, that i must begin at once to take lessons in spanish. the teachers are now visiting the house daily, one to teach me the spanish language, and the other to instruct me how to sing spanish songs. seã±or de bobadilla has just been here, and i have been screeching away for half an hour in a small room where my aunt has had a piano placed specially for my use. she says she is not going to "bring me out"--that means introduce me to society, grandmother says; that was one of the puzzling questions i carried to her--until i can sing spanish songs. i see through it all, because of the conversation i heard through the floor opening; she thinks by that means to convince her society friends that i am spanish instead of chinese. how very funny! there was a small dinner-party at this house the other evening, but of course i could not be at the table. i have not "come out." grandmother argued for my appearing, but aunt gwendolin was firm to the contrary, and she won. ancestors are not much regarded in america. my aunt gave me permission, however, to look in on the guests when they were seated at the table. she had a large mirror fastened to the door, and by leaving it open at a particular angle i could watch--myself unseen behind a curtain--the ceremony of dining as practised in america. mercy! those women with bare arms and bare shoulders sitting there before the men! how could they help blushing for themselves! i just gave one glance at them, then ran away and hid my face! having the evening to myself, i went up to my room and enjoyed myself reading my chinese books. my aunt said that i was to stay at the curtained door, and learn the ways of society by watching the manners of the guests at dinner; but i saw all i wanted to see in one glance. i'd like to carry all those women little shawls to put around their bare shoulders. mrs. delancy's was the barest of them all, but i have heard my aunt talk since about how "elegantly gowned mrs. delancy was." a strange thing happened up in my room; i opened one of my books just at the page where it tells about the chinese ambassadors, on the occasion of their visits to christian countries, noticing with grave disapproval the dã©collete costumes of the women at the state functions. what wonder!--if they looked anything like the women at my aunt's dinner party! seã±or de bobadilla says that i am making remarkable progress with my spanish songs; he tells grandmother in a half-whisper, as if fearing to let me hear him, that i am very bright and intelligent; he congratulated her on having such a prodigy for a grandchild. oh, cunning seã±or de bobadilla, you want to continue my lessons indefinitely. i am learning to quiver and shake, and trill, run up the scale, and down the scale, jump from a note away down low to a note away up high. i'll soon be able to sing "lead me to the light," as well as the church choir. the professor looks very spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie, shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat down to his shoulders. seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my efforts he keeps ejaculating, "goot! goot! _excellent! superb!_" i, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses, or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on the piano, and trying to look spanish, too. seã±or de la prisa is teaching me the spanish language--a lesson every day, and i am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot: "_es un dia bonita. el viento es frio. se esta haciendo tarde. es temprano._" i'll soon believe myself that i am _really_ spanish, and have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as uncle theodore calls my dear native land. i have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my chinese books, and asking grandmother questions until i feel very wise. i am almost as wise as a real american now. some weeks following mrs. paton's sunday visit to my grandmother, i was out for a short walk of pleasure when i overtook her. she was pleased to meet me again, she said, and we walked along together, chatting, at least she talked and i listened, sometimes asking questions. "just think of it, my dear," she said, "this is the day on which men are applying for licenses to sell poison to kill their fellow-men." then she told me story after story of the terrible misery caused by intoxicating drinks, and the sin and crime they caused people to commit, until i was almost in tears. a noise of voices and tramping feet interrupted her, and there came around a corner, marching toward us, a long procession of men. "who are they?" i inquired, slipping my arm into hers. i had never before seen so many men together. "strikers," she returned sadly. "strikers?" i exclaimed. "yes," she added, "men who will not work until their employers pay them the amount they think they ought to be paid." tramp! tramp! tramp! the great crowd passed us in long file, dusty, worn, hard-worked men. my heart swelled as i looked at their strained faces; i could not go any farther on my walk; i had to rush home to ask grandmother questions. "grandmother!" i cried, panting into her room, "strikes in a country that follows christ!--and men asking for a license to sell poison to their fellow-men!" i fell on my knees in front of her chair and sobbed, i could not have told why. she took my face in her soft old withered hands, and holding it was about to speak, when my aunt gwendolin, who had overheard me, came into the room and cried indignantly: "that crank of a mrs. paton has been talking to the girl; i know her very words. that woman should be forcibly restrained!" grandmother did not answer her, but continued to stroke my face until i grew quieter, and until my aunt had left the room. then in reply to my many pointed questions she told me in brief, that the reason men got licenses to sell liquor was that they paid money for them, and the country granted them for the sake of the great revenue they brought into its treasury. "oh, grandmother!" i cried, raising my head from her lap, "when britain tried to induce the chinese emperor to legalise the opium traffic because of the import duty, he said, 'nothing shall induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people'!"--i had read all this in my books on china. grandmother was wiping away tears, and i said no more. i went up to my own room, and half an hour later i heard my uncle theodore, to whom my grandmother had repeated my words, say: "she is preternaturally sharp. no girl of this country thinks of the things she does. i suppose they develop younger in those eastern climes." "it is all new to her," said my grandmother; "she has just come in upon it and sees it with fresh eyes. the girls here have grown up with it and become used to it by degrees." "oh, it's that oriental blood--half witch, half demon--that's at the bottom of all her tantrums. the orientals are all a subtle lot, and we as a country are wise to make them stay at home," said my aunt gwendolin. _april 10, 1----_ aunt gwendolin has discovered my chinese books that i had intended to keep hidden in my room. she came in suddenly one day and found me seated in the midst of them. "what's this? what's this?" she cried in great agitation. "how are we ever going to get you into the ways of christianised, civilised folk if you keep feeding your mind on literature about uncivilised people?" and she gathered my books up into her arms and carried them away. i have them all read, however, and she cannot carry away the thoughts they have left in my mind. what great creatures we human beings are! what a world with which no one else can meddle we can carry around in our little brains and hearts! it is all the same whether they are american or chinese brains or hearts. "i see now where she has gotten all her smart sayings about the chinese," my aunt said to my grandmother and uncle theodore. "how can we ever hope to do anything with her when she is being poisoned by such stuff as is in those books? 'for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain' commend me to the chinese!" "i'll sicken her of the chinese," she added: "i'll bring one into the kitchen to cook; then perhaps she'll feel more compunction about acknowledging that she is part celestial. she actually seems as if she were proud of the fact now." grandmother remonstrated, but my aunt replied: "i have always been wanting to try a chinese cook; they are really the world's cooks and so careful and clean, it is said. then i would like to give pearl enough of it. she will not be so fond of claiming kinship with the cook." the result of all this was that inside of twenty-four hours a chinaman was installed in the kitchen--and the biscuits are perfect. his name is yee yick; of course he has three names, all chinamen have; but trying to become americanised they use only two in this country. my aunt has decided that it is sufficient to call him yick. "the english call their servants by their surnames," was all the explanation she made. yick is a dude; he has a suit for almost every day in the week, and is very vain of his appearance. his queue is rolled up around his head, which is a sign that he has not yet abandoned his home gods. he is very anxious to learn english, and betty tells me that he has a slate hanging up in the kitchen on which he is writing english words every spare moment. i had watched yick a good deal, but i never exchanged a word with him, until the event occurred about which i am going to write; and i know he never dreamed that i could speak his language. poor yick! if he is "chief cook and bottle-washer," as my aunt says, he is my countryman, and i cannot help taking an interest in him. one day i walked to the end of the veranda which runs the whole length of the house, and glancing in through the kitchen window as i passed, i saw yick making his tea-biscuits. he had the flour and shortening all mixed, and raising the bowl of milk which was on the table, he took a great mouthful, and then began to force it out in a heavy spray through his teeth into the dish of prepared flour, in the same manner as the chinese laundryman sprinkles clothes. i wrung my hands, and cried within myself, "oh, yick, you terrible man! you horrible little pigtail!" but i slipped back to the front of the veranda without making an audible sound. how could i tell on poor yick, and bring down such an awful storm on his head as would result? he was a stranger in a strange land, and it was my duty to protect him. was it such a very wicked thing he had done? he never killed little birds, anyway, and wore them on his head; nor trapped cunning little animals, and strung their heads and tails around his neck! i decided i would not tell on him. but that evening at dinner i passed the plate of white, flaky biscuits without taking any. i sat at grandmother's left hand, and when she was not looking, i slipped the biscuit which she had taken away from her bread-and-butter plate, and let it slide from my hand down onto the floor. dear, absent-minded grandmother never missed it. aunt gwendolin and uncle theodore ate three biscuits each. "it seems to me that yick keeps constantly improving in his biscuits," said my aunt, as she reached for her third. "they ought to be better than other people at most everything," returned my uncle theodore, "they have been a long while practising. they may have been making biscuits before moses was born. the chinaman possesses a history which dwarfs the little day of modern nations. it is a saying of theirs that from the time heaven was spread and earth was brought into existence china can boast a continuous line of great men." i looked pleased and smiled. my aunt seeing it said, with a toss of her head: "a continuous line of great cooks and laundrymen." that evening when my aunt and uncle were out, and grandmother had gone to bed, i slipped down to the kitchen and stood face to face with yick. he almost kotowed to me, but commanding him to stand up, i told him in plain chinese that i had seen him mixing the biscuits, and disapproved of his plan. his hair almost seemed to stand on end when he heard me speaking his native tongue. he started to tremble, and his knees bent under him. "yee yick," i continued, in the language he thoroughly understood, "if you ever put the milk in your mouth again, and sift it out through your teeth into the flour, i shall inform the mistress of the house, and you shall be dismissed!" trembling all over yick began rapidly in chinese to promise that he would never, _never_ be guilty of the act again. then, as if scarcely able to believe that i could understand his native tongue, he repeated his promise in english. "no, missee, yee yick not putee milk in mouthee! no, missee, yee yick not putee milk in mouthee!" i assured him in chinese that i would keep the secret of what i had seen on condition that he would keep his promise, and went out of the kitchen, leaving the poor fellow almost in tears. i believe he scarcely knows whether to regard me as a spirit or a being of flesh and blood, it is so hard for him to understand how i can speak chinese. the plumbers have closed up the hole in the floor, so i shall hear no more about the "wily celestial." _april 20th, 1----_ while i have been waiting to be prepared to "come out," i determined to walk around the streets and see some more of the doings of americans. grandmother gave her consent, with a warning to keep off certain streets. "it is quite safe for a young girl to walk alone in most places in our country, thank god," said dear grandmother devoutly, "and i am very willing that you should look about you. i remember when i was a girl i liked to walk and see things, too." but aunt gwendolin knocked the whole thing in the head--apparently. "it is so plebeian for her to go tramping through the streets," she said to my grandmother. "cannot she be satisfied to go out every day with us in the automobile? the grounds are spacious around this place, and she can have all the exercise she wants right here." so the question was settled--to all appearance. a week after my aunt's fiat i read in the daily newspaper that in the "house of jacob," a certain jewish synagogue downtown, there was conducted on a certain afternoon every week sewing classes for young jewish girls. instantly i decided that i wished to visit it, and see those "children of abraham," about whom grandmother had been teaching me in the bible, those people who were god's favourites, and i set about laying plans to accomplish my desire. happily, when that afternoon came around, aunt gwendolin went out to a bridge party--i have not yet found out what that means, but i hoped that afternoon that she would have a good many bridges to cross, so it would keep her a long time away--and it was betty's day out. previous to this i had found in a closet a black skirt and shawl formerly worn by grandmother, and a bonnet which she had laid aside. as soon as my aunt had safely departed (i had seen betty go an hour before), i hastily threw the heavy black satin skirt over mine, draped the black embroidered silk shawl around my shoulders, and tied on the bonnet. with a black chiffon veil, which was not very transparent, tied over my face, i felt very comfortable. it was quite proper for an _elderly_ lady to go anywhere she wished. grandmother was taking her customary afternoon nap, as i slipped down the backstairs into the kitchen. yick, preparing the flour for his biscuits, saw me and started. i could not keep my secret from him; i decided to take him into my confidence and trust him. so lifting my veil, i looked at him markedly, and told him rapidly in chinese that he was not to tell any one he had seen me. he smiled, winked, and nodded knowingly, assuring me in voluble chinese that he would keep my secret. "you no tellee onee me," he said significantly, with grimaces and gesticulations. going out through the back door, and down through a lane at the back of the house, i was soon on the street. taking the street-cars--in which aunt gwendolin thinks it is very plebeian to ride--i was soon whirled down in front of the "house of jacob." what a mercy it is, in this curious america, that so many people are plebeian and ride in street-cars that they do not pay any attention to one another. nobody noticed my grandmotherly garb. a woman reporter entered the front door of the synagogue along with me, and i imagined that i was regarded with some deference--grandmother's old skirt and shawl are made of rich material. i followed the reporter around the room in which the classes were held, a few yards in the rear. there they were, a hundred or more little jewish children, red-headed, black-headed, blonde-headed, and jewish women had them arranged in groups, and were teaching them to sew. "these little red-heads are typical russian jews," i heard the director of the ceremonies say to the reporter, "only in this country a few months. _there's_ one that has the marked jewish features," she added, pointing to another type of child. "they are all fond of jewellery--an oriental trait." dear, dear, i only stayed a short time looking at them. they are not much different from others, those people who struck rocks and water gushed out, had manna and quails rained down on them, and walked through a wilderness led by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. i have seen hundreds of chinese who looked just as remarkable. i cannot understand why god showed partiality to abraham's children. i went out onto the street again, and wandered on till i came to what i recognized as chinese quarters. there were the laundries of hoy jan, lem tong, lee ling, and the shops and warehouses of moy yen, man hing, and cheng key. the dear names; it did me almost as much good to look at them as it could to make a visit to my own country. as i walked down the quiet street, a wistful oval face looked down on me from a window. a chinese woman's face, and the first i had seen since coming to america. stepping into a little shop near by, a shop containing preserved ginger, curious embroidered screens, little ivory elephants and jade ornaments, i asked who lived in the house where i saw the face at the window, and was informed that it was the home of mr. and mrs. lee yet. it was drawing near dinner time in my grandmother's house; already i had stayed out longer than i had intended: i had no time to investigate further regarding mrs. yet. when i got back to the house i found that my aunt had returned before me, but fortunately had not noticed my absence. when yick walked into the dining room with the steaming plum-pudding for our dinner, aunt gwendolin said: "yick, who was that little old woman i saw coming up our back lane half an hour ago?" "me nevee see no little old womee," returned yick, with a child-like smile. "how stupid those chinese are," said my aunt, when yick had left the room. "i certainly saw an old woman, and there that creature never saw her!" the _creature_ had helped a _young_ woman take off her black bonnet and shawl, and escape up the backstairs half an hour before. i suppose it's "that oriental blood--half witch, and half demon" that's at the bottom of my tantrum of this afternoon. _april 25th, 1----_ mrs. paton has been in to make another sunday visit to grandmother; she is an old friend and privileged to come when she chooses--and as before i had the privilege of hearing her talk. "we are calling ourselves a christian country," she said to grandmother, "and yet we care more for pleasure than for anything else. an actress is paid more money in one month than a preacher of the gospel is paid in a year. does not that show what the people of our country care most for? going over to christianise the heathen forsooth! we are not following christ ourselves! what an example we set them! how can we expect them to think much of our religion when they see it has done so little for _us_? "christianity is despised, and rightly so. it is called cant, and so it is; going around with the bible under its arm, and never obeying its precepts. we want more men overturning the tables of the money-changers, and upsetting the commercialism that is grinding other men down to starvation!" dear grandmother was not argumentative, and gently assented to all her visitor was saying. "when this country is really following christ itself," continued the visitor, "we shall see our wealthy men, instead of using their wealth to build palaces, and to minister to the pride of themselves in a thousand forms, choosing to lead the simple life, with personal expenditure cut down to a minimum, and their ability to minister to others increased to a maximum; in short we will find them following in the footsteps of their lord. man is really the richer as he decreases his wants, and increases his capacity to help." when she rose to leave, at the end of an hour's chat, she said very solemnly to me as she held my hand in a farewell clasp: "my dear, each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other. _you_ have an aptitude that the world has no match for. it is your aptitude for your own peculiar and immediate duty." oh, how solemn the words look as i write them down. what can my duty be? i wonder when i am going to find out. aunt gwendolin thinks it is to sing spanish songs, i know; she firmly believes that to be my own _peculiar and immediate duty_. grandmother thinks it is to study the bible. and uncle theodore thinks it is to look artistically dressed. i have not come to a conclusion yet as to what i think myself. when i get so terribly lonesome in this america that i cannot stand it any longer, i get betty to steal down my yellow silk out of the box in the attic, the one trimmed with green dragons, and i dress up in it, and put on my head the pretty embroidered band that the chinese women wear instead of the hideous hats of america, and sweep up and down the room like a peacock with a spreading tail, betty going into raptures over my appearance, sometimes laughing hysterically, and sometimes almost in tears, because they have "no such grand clothes in america." if aunt gwendolin hears a noise and comes trailing along the hall, i jump into bed and cover myself up, yellow silk and all, and betty proceeds to bathe my head for a headache--i really have one by that time. how many foreigners they have in this great country, shanghai roosters, turkey hens, persian cats, arabian horses. i wonder do all those foreign creatures feel something calling them back, back to their own country? cousin ned spends most all his time at grandmother's at present. he had his arm broken at a baseball game, and is carrying it in a sling. _april 30th, 1----_ we had the pleasure of professor ballington's company at lunch to-day--uncle theodore had him down in his office on some business, and insisted on his coming home and lunching with him. when he and my uncle walked in unannounced they found grandmother, aunt gwendolin, and me in the sitting-room. the professor shook hands with me in a very friendly manner; he really seemed pleased to see me. oh, it is awfully nice for a girl in a strange land, feeling alone and lonesome, to have some one glad to see her. he had not spoken to me since that morning my uncle introduced me to him, but he has seen me a number of times when i have been out in the carriage with my grandmother and aunt. he seated himself beside me, and we were just beginning to chat pleasantly when my aunt gwendolin said: "you have not heard our little dependency sing, professor ballington?" grandmother's cheeks flushed, and uncle theodore looked embarrassed. "pearl, dear," she added sweetly, addressing me, "give us one of your stirring spanish songs before we go to lunch. you can sing better before lunch than after." in obedience to the request--which i felt to be a command--i went to the piano and sang lightly the only spanish song _i could_ sing. all the hearers seemed pleased with my effort. professor ballington looked calmly at me, but a smile lay behind his blue eyes. what did that smile mean? we immediately sat down to lunch, and i was saved the embarrassment of having to tell that i could only sing _one_ spanish song. i guess aunt gwendolin made sure that no such a dilemma should occur. by some stray remark of uncle theodore's, the conversation at the table turned on what he calls the "asiatic problem." "those dreadful asiatics," interposed aunt gwendolin, "so sly and subtle, they certainly should be shut out. they are a menace to any country." "above all nations is humanity," smilingly returned professor ballington. "especially those inferior people, the chinese," added my aunt. "we can scarcely call the chinese inferior, miss morgan," returned professor ballington. (how i wanted to give him a hug!) "the chinaman despises our day of small things. like the jew he possesses a great national history which dwarfs that of all other nations. the golden era of confucius lies back five hundred years before the coming of christ, and the palmy days of the chan dynasty antedate the period of david and solomon." "oh, yes," said my aunt curtly, "but what has he accomplished in all that time? we regard them as a nation of laundrymen." "and they regard us as a nation of shopkeepers, and express lofty contempt for our greed of gain," said the professor. "the idea!" said my aunt scornfully; "the fact is i always feel inclined to relegate the yellow-skinned denizens of china to the brute kingdom. think of the _dreadful_ things that happen there! life itself is of small account to them!" "one of our own writers," returned the professor, "says, 'life is safer in pekin than in new york.' another writer adds, 'chicago beats china for official dishonesty!'" "it is a nation which for thousands of years has set more store by education than any other nation under the sun," said uncle theodore, "i have been reading up about them lately" (that's because of me) "and it is perfectly astonishing, their high ideals. there are clearly marked gradations in society, and the highest rank is open only to highly educated men. first, the scholar; because mind is superior to wealth. second, the farmer; because the mind cannot act without the body, and the body cannot exist without food and raiment. third, the mechanic; because next to food and raiment shelter is necessary. fourth, the tradesman; men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity. and last of all the soldier; because his business is to destroy, and not to build up society. how does that compare with our country which makes more of the destroyer than of any other citizen? no man in china can rise to any position of responsibility except by education; money in _this_ country will carry a man into the legislature if he cannot write his own name." "chinese ethics are grand," added the professor. "listen to the teaching of lao teh. 'i would meet good with good, but i would also meet evil with good, confidence with confidence--distrust with confidence. virtue is both good and trustful.'" "there isn't a doubt that they are a wonderful people," returned uncle theodore. "when our ancestors were wandering about in sheep-skins and goat-skins--if in any other skins but their own--china had a civilisation. wrong seems to be not a question of right with us, but of might. we do not attempt to stop people taking chances on the stock exchange; taking such chances is perfectly legal, but taking chances in a lottery is a serious offence. if a chinaman takes chances in a little game which he understands, the morals of the community are endangered, and the poor celestial must be hurried off to jail. we civilised people allow betting at a horse-race, and disallow it in other places. it is only the uninfluential people we send to jail for violation of the law." they talked back and forth in an animated way for some time. i was dying to speak, but did not dare; but i am sure that once in the heat of the argument, professor ballington shot a glance across the table at me which spoke volumes. the same smile was in his eyes that was there when i sang for him my _one_ spanish song. what did he mean? can he guess? does he know that i am not spanish?--that i am the yellow pearl? _may 5th, 1----_ a very important item has appeared in the newspaper to-day--poor lee yet has fallen into trouble; rather, other people are trying to get him into trouble, and his wife, the little oval-faced mrs. yet, has been subpoenaed to appear as a witness in his behalf. that dear little sad woman to have to go to court before all those americans! "she shall _not_ be studied and laughed at as a curiosity. she _shall_ be dressed up like an american woman!" i declared as soon as i read the item. in pursuance of my idea this afternoon, i a second time donned grandmother's garments--lucky that grandmother and i are the same height--and a second time left the house unnoticed by any one except yick. how very much at home i feel in the garments of an elderly gentlewoman! perhaps i am walking around the world the eighteen-year-old reincarnation of some dear, silken-clad old granny who inhabited this sphere hundreds of years ago. i quickly found my way down to the home of mrs. yet, and rapped at the door. it was opened by the little woman herself, who looked even sadder than when i first saw her. i addressed her in chinese and lifting my veil, told her that i had come to make her a visit. she smiled in a pleased way, opened wide the door, and invited me into the house. she had never noticed the discrepancy between my antiquated dress and young face, and was blissfully unconscious that my garments were fifty years (more or less) out of date. on my entrance something small and pink moved behind a wire screen in the corner of the room, and mrs. yet clipclapped across the floor in her chinese sandals, and picked up a little bundle of chinese life, saying: "this my baby. he eighteen month. he sick--get tooth--got one tooth." we talked about the baby, she sometimes speaking in chinese, and sometimes in broken english, until we felt acquainted. then i said: "mrs. yet, i see by the newspaper that you will have to appear in court to give evidence in behalf of your husband. you do not want to go there in chinese dress to be the subject of curiosity, and newspaper remark?" the trouble which had left her face while she was talking about the baby, reappeared, and tears gathered in her almond eyes. it was more than i could stand, and i cried, "don't! don't! mrs. yet--i have come to make things all right--i, your country-woman--speaking your own language. i am going to give myself the pleasure of dressing you like an american woman." she remonstrated politely but i urged so strongly that at last she yielded; and it seemed when she did so as if a great burden had rolled from off her pale little face. immediately i went out to one of the great stores and ordered several costumes for her to "fit on"--i wasn't a child any longer. grandmother's rich old skirt and shawl carried weight a second time (they could not see my face distinctly through the veil), for without hesitation a woman was despatched with the costumes. this woman expert worked over the little mrs. yet, pinching, and pulling, and puckering, after the manner of american dressmakers, until she had her resplendent in a rich maroon-coloured wool costume, which exactly suited her olive skin, and made her almost a beauty. at last the costume was satisfactorily settled and paid for. oh, it is nice to have plenty of money to pay for all one wants. father left me plenty (and although i do not control it until i come of a certain age, i get a liberal monthly instalment). i then went to a milliner's and bought a hat of a shade to harmonise with the costume. it was trimmed with ribbon, and deep, rich, maroon roses, and just looked _too sweet for anything_. "youthful and stylish," as the milliner said. why not? mrs. yet is young, and she has just as good a right to look stylish as any american woman! happy? i should say i am! i never was happier in my life than i am to-night; even if i did steal out in grandmother's old clothes, and am a "sly, subtle oriental." _may 10th, 1----_ the court met to-day, and there has appeared in the evening papers this notice: "a novelty in the shape of a chinese woman witness appeared in the sessions yesterday. mrs. lee yet went into the box in behalf of her husband. her trim little figure was becomingly attired in a dark-red, tailored costume, and a reddish trimmed hat set off to perfection her rich oriental complexion and features, beautiful in their national type. she gave her evidence without an interpreter, and did much toward clearing her husband of the accusations falsely laid against him." oh, isn't it delightful to think that i have been instrumental in bringing all this to a happy issue! i shall carry this newspaper down to mrs. yet's home, and read to her this pleasing paragraph. _may 11th, 1----_ a "windfall," as uncle theodore calls it, has come to the family; grandmother was quite a "well-to-do" woman before, now she is a _rich_ woman. some investments in mines that grandfather made years ago have turned out to be of marvellous value, and the result is that my grandmother, my uncle theodore, my aunt gwendolin have greatly increased in wealth. aunt gwendolin wanted to change the form of our living at once; she would introduce a page and a butler to our household staff. but grandmother said she was accustomed to a quiet life and preferred it. she insists, in spite of my aunt's protests, that a chinese cook, a house-maid, a laundress, a gardener, and that lovely chauffeur ought to be enough to attend to the wants of four people. aunt gwendolin stormed, and said it was so _common_ to live as we did, that the english always kept a butler; but grandmother was firm. another example that mothers in america can rule in the house if they wish. grandmother seemed a good deal concerned about this sudden acquisition of wealth. "an addition of silver to bell-metal does not add to the sweetness of the tone," she said. "i fear an undue proportion of silver impairs more than bells." _may 13th, 1----_ "bulls and bears in a hard struggle over wheat." uncle theodore read the great headline from his evening paper. "wild scenes prevailed to-day at the board of trade," he continued, "when john smith began taking in his profits on wheat. it is estimated that he made a profit of over three hundred thousand in less than half an hour. altogether he has cleared more than five millions on his wheat deal, and that within six months." "dear me! dear me!" cried grandmother, "and people dying for want of bread!" "well," returned uncle theodore, "smith is only a highly sensitive product of our so-called civilisation; the civilisation we are rushing and straining to carry to the quiet, unassuming people whom _we_ call heathen. they have no millionaires, made so at the expense of their brothers. when we teach them all the graft, lynching, homicide, enormities of trusts, railroads, new religions, and quack remedies, we shall have them civilised." "christianity has to blush for christendom," sighed grandmother. i have been asking grandmother since how bulls and bears could struggle over wheat; and she tells me that the strugglers are not four-footed beasts at all, but _men_. i see how it is, bulls and bears are both cantankerous animals, which, if they come in conflict about anything, are sure to have a fight; and men who have given evidence of like natures have been called after those fierce animals. it must be that way. i have asked grandmother whether that is not the way they came by their names, and she said she supposed it must be. _may 21st, 1----_ my poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. lee yet met with an accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must remain for weeks, and the day following mrs. yet was stricken down with diphtheria. i was out in the automobile with grandmother and aunt gwendolin and chancing to pass the house of lee yet, i saw the awful word "diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door. that night when all his day's work was done i gave yick a coin and asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease. he came back with the intelligence that it was poor little mrs. yet, and that there was no one waiting on her. fortunately the next afternoon aunt gwendolin went to "bridge," and again donning grandmother's garments, i slipped out of the house and down to the home of mrs. yet. meeting the doctor at the door, just as he was coming out, i ordered him to engage a nurse. he looked at me in surprise, but i paid in advance for a week's service, so he could do nothing but obey me. opening the door i went into the front room of the little home and found the celestial baby fretting away in its cradle just as any other baby would fret if left to itself. i began to call it all sorts of pet names in chinese, and the little slant-eye cooed and smiled back at me as if he really liked it. a chinese neighbour woman came in and told me that the baby was to be kept in the front room, while its mother was quarantined in a room upstairs. she further informed me that she came in twice a day to feed the baby, and the rest of the time he was alone. "i have it! i have it!" i cried exultingly to my own interior self, "i know now my _aptitude_! i know now what i can do that is impossible to any other; it surely is _impossible_ to any other--in this nation of an hour--to jabber the chinese i can jabber to this eighteen months' old baby! i shall come here and take care of him, while the trained nurse is taking care of the mother upstairs. i'll come for awhile every day anyway, and will pay the chinese woman, who cannot leave her laundry-minding in the daytime, to take care of him at night! he's just as much a dear human baby as any purple-and-fine-linen american baby!" how fortune favoured me that evening! aunt gwendolin announced that she was going in the morning on a month's visit to another city. she was not much more than out the door the following day when i asked grandmother's permission to go where i liked every afternoon of the week. dear grandmother remonstrated a little--for fear i might tire myself too much--or might go where it was not wise to go, etc., etc. but i coaxed, and i won the day. a strange event happened the very first afternoon. just as i had passed through the lane at the rear of the house, who should be standing there at the back gate but the chauffeur, beside the automobile. he knew me despite my grandmotherly garb (as i had commenced going to the house of mrs. yet in grandmother's black shawl, bonnet, and skirt, i thought it better to continue doing so), politely touched his cap, and said if i had far to go it would take him but a few minutes to whirl me there in the automobile. he is very good looking, and a gentleman. uncle theodore says he is a student who is taking this means to earn money further to pursue his medical studies. sometimes uncle theodore familiarly calls him "sawbones." nodding my assent, i entered the car, gave my directions, and soon was down in front of mrs. yet's small house. i lifted the fretting little baby out of his cradle as soon as i entered, washed and dressed him, he kicking and squirming just as i suppose any other baby kicks and squirms. all the fear i had was that he would roll out of my hands, he was such a slippery little eel when his body was wet. where did i learn how to wash and dress a baby? i must have known how by instinct, for i never did it, or saw it done before. the chinese woman who keeps the little oriental at night told me the articles that went next the skin, and i had no trouble guessing about where to put the others. after one or two attempts i did it as well as a mother of twenty babies. every day i am being conveyed down to my duties in the automobile. the chauffeur seemed to divine that i would go out every afternoon (perhaps because aunt gwendolin was away) without my telling him, and is always waiting at the little rear gate in the back street to obey my commands. what a delightful time we are having! "when the cat's away the mice can play!" dear grandmother has never seen me either leave or return to the house, but necessarily yick and betty are both into the secret. "'for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' commend me to the chinese." _may 22d, 1----_ a most impressive occurrence has transpired, as mrs. paton would say. just as i was coming out of mrs. yet's house this afternoon who should be passing but professor ballington! i had not yet dropped my black chiffon veil, and glancing down from his great height of six feet, he looked me full in the face. at the same instant he saw the word, "diphtheria," in the great black letters on a scarlet ground, and stopping he exclaimed: "why, miss pearl! this is a surprise! do you know where you are--what risk you are running? diphtheria is contagious--_very_!" "i know," i replied, "but some one has to mind a little chinese baby in there. its father is in the hospital, and its mother is shut in a room upstairs with diphtheria, and there is no one to stay all afternoon with the baby if i do not. he's a chinese baby, and of no account in america," i added. (i came within one of telling him that i was the only one who could call him pet names in the language he could understand; wouldn't aunt gwendolin have taken a fit?) "i just _had_ to come," i pleaded, seeing his look of disapproval. "each man and woman is born with an aptitude to do something impossible to any other, an aptitude that the world has no match for, mrs. paton says; and i have just found out that my aptitude, impossible to any other, is to mind this chinese baby; no one else can _match_ me in this!" he looked less severe, almost kind, and half as if he could scarcely keep from laughing. then he said, "have you disinfectants? they are very necessary." i shook my head, and he said: "come with me to a drug store and i will supply you with a stock." and i, decked in my grandmother's cast-off clothes, walked along the street, and into the "palace drug store" with the elegantly dressed and caned professor. he didn't seem the least ashamed of me; indeed, he was so polite that i forgot for the moment that my dress was anything odd--forgot it until i saw a young man clerk looking at me in an amused way; then i dropped my thick veil. the professor insisted on my taking a certain kind of lozenge to hold in my mouth while i was in the infected house, and ordered quantities and quantities of disinfectants carried there, giving me instruction as to how they should be used. when we were walking back to the house of mrs. yet, the professor remarked that the chinese were a people worth studying. "have you heard any of their poetry, miss pearl?" he questioned. and before i had time to reply--perhaps he thought he had no right to make me give an answer to that question, he is a "great philologist"--he continued: "could anything be more exquisite than those lines to a plum blossom? "'one flower hath in itself the charms of two; draw nearer! and she breaks to wonders new; and you would call her beauty of the rose- she, too, is folded in a fleece of snows; and you might call her pale--she doth display the blush of dawn beneath the eye of day, the lips of her the wine cup hath caressed, the form of her that from some vision blest starts with the rose of sleep still glowing bright through limbs that ranged the dreamlands of the night; the pencil falters and the song is naught, her beauty, like the sun, dispels my thought.' "a certain collection of chinese lyrics," he continued, "'a lute of jade,' moved a london journal to observe that, the more we look into chinese nature as revealed by this book of songs, the more we are convinced that our fathers were right in speaking of man's brotherhood. here's another to a calycanthus flower: "'robed in pale yellow gown, she leans apart, guarding her secret trust inviolate; with mouth that, scarce unclosed, but faintly breathes. its fragrance, like a tender grief, remains half-told, half-treasured still. see how she drops from delicate stem; while her close petals keep their shy demeanour. think not that the fear of great cold winds can hinder her from bloom, who hides the rarest wonders of the spring to vie with all the flowers of kiang nan.' "this is wang seng-ju's tiny poem," he added, "i presume a great many people in this greatly enlightened america never ascribe any sentiment to the chinaman: "'high o'er the hill the moon barque steers, the lantern lights depart, dead springs are stirring in my heart, and there are tears; but that which makes my grief more deep is that you know not that i weep.'" the moon had appeared in all her full-orbed glory, although it was early twilight, and the professor looked at me so earnestly while quoting those words that i actually believe i blushed. "'there yet is man- man, the divinest of all things, whose heart hath known the shipwreck of a thousand hopes, who bears a hundred wrinkled tragedies upon the parchment of his brow.' "ou-yang hein penned those lines," he added, raising his hat in adieu. but before we parted i made him promise to write out for me the chinese verses he had quoted; and it is his beautifully written lines i have copied. i am going to learn them off by heart. how i would love to recite them at one of aunt gwendolin's "drawing-rooms!" the professor had gone but a few paces when he returned to inquire what hospital poor lee yet was in, saying that he would go around and see how he was faring. "this is such a very selfish world," he added, as if half to himself, "i sometimes fear those poor foreigners that come to our shores get woefully treated." that was lovely of him! after all, men are brothers under their skin. that was what their great man, christ, taught--that all men are brothers; he did not except the chinese, as some americans want to do. _june 7th, 1----_ almost as soon as mrs. yet was pronounced well, and was allowed to go among people again and before mr. yet had left the hospital, baby yet fell seriously ill--his teeth. he grew worse, and worse. yick told me about it one day in a few concise chinese words, which he snatched an opportunity to drop to me in passing through the dining room. the wily celestial seems to understand, without being told, that no one is to know that he and i can exchange thoughts in our native tongue. that afternoon i stole out again, and went down to the little yet home. it was just as yick had said, the baby was very ill. he lay on his little pallet, white and still, almost unconscious, and his mother stood over him wringing her hands, and shedding bitter tears. "oh, my baby! my baby! he die and leave me! my heart break!" she cried in chinese when she saw me. "precious treasure! precious treasure!" she continued, bending toward the almost inanimate form on the pallet. the latter is the almost universal term of endearment in china, and no american mother ever agonised more bitterly than did that chinese mother over that atom of herself lying before her. i had to do something to comfort her, so i began to tell her about heaven. _i_, who was not sure that i could get to that blessed place myself (stealing out on the sly in a grandmother's clothes is not a very heavenly trick), said that whoever missed it, babies would be there. "will chinese babies be there? they do not want them in america," she asked rapidly and tremblingly in chinese. "certainly," i replied; and at that moment i seemed to have a vision of all the babies of this wide world that had died--black babies, brown babies, yellow babies, red babies (probably the colour of their skin was only the earth garb); i saw the whole throng, for grandmother had read to me from the bible that of such was the kingdom of heaven. "his tooth not bother him there?" she added. "no," i returned, "there shall be no more pain there." "he like it," she continued, almost smiling through her tears. then she grew very, very still, and a glow stole over her yellow face which made it beautiful. i stepped nearer, put my arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek. she looked at me in a startled way, then drawing a tiny handkerchief from her bosom, she carefully wiped the spot on her cheek where my lips had touched. the practice of kissing is unknown in china. on the way home, when but a few yards from the house of mrs. yet, i met professor ballington again, and told him the story about the sick baby. he asked me to go back with him, and take him in to see it, which i did. he looked scrutinisingly at the little hard pallet on which the baby lay; and what did that dear man do but go out to one of the great stores not far away, and buy the prettiest little cot, and the softest and best mattress that could be found in the market, and order them sent home without delay to that little yellow baby. was it the soft mattress that did it? i do not know; but almost immediately the baby seemed to rest easier, and by degrees came back to life and strength. oh, this would be a glorious country to live in!--if the people were all like professor ballington. _june 10th, 1----_ i made my first visit to the theatre. aunt gwendolin said i should not go until i came _out_, but uncle theodore said he would take me himself, and defy all fashions and formalities. "i enjoy seeing the little girl absorbing our civilisation," he said to grandmother; "sometimes i fancy it seems rather uncivilised to her." grandmother demurred a good deal; she said she did not know but i would be quite as well, or better, if i never went near a theatre. but uncle theodore said that was an old-fashioned idea that grandmother held to because of her puritan ancestry; that it was generally conceded now that the theatre is a great educator, the greatest educator of the people extant to-day. "there is going to be a world-renowned actress to-night, a star of first magnitude in the theatrical world," he added, "and i want my niece to have the advantage of hearing her." i dressed my very prettiest for the occasion. uncle theodore always has an eye for the artistic in dress. i donned soft silks, soft ribbons, and soft feathers. it is one of my uncle's ideas that women should be softly clad; he absolutely hates anything hard, stiff, or masculine-looking on a woman. when we entered the theatre the orchestra was playing most ravishing music. i could have stayed there all night and listened to it without tiring, i believe. it must be the american half of me that is the music-lover, for the chinese are not very musical. the boxes were full of wonderfully well-dressed men and women. how beautiful women can look in this great country, dressed in every colour of the rainbow! men are of less account in america; but they looked well enough, too, in black coats and white shirt-bosoms. after awhile the heavenly music stopped, the curtain on the stage rolled up, and the play began. at first it was entrancing, magnificent--the stage-furnishings, gorgeously dressed women, clever-looking men, all acting a part--a lovely world without anything to mar it, right there in that small space of the stage before our eyes. then a woman, the star actress, came in wearing a very dã©colletã© gown (i am getting hardened to them now), and began to talk in a manner i never had imagined people in good society would talk--right before those hundreds of men and women. i'll not write it down; i do not wish to remember it. but the party of women on the stage, instead of being shocked or ashamed, all laughed little, rippling, merry laughs. my cheeks burned, and i did not dare to look at anybody, not even uncle theodore. after that i could not like the theatre any more and drawing away within myself, i looked and listened as if the actors had been hundreds of miles from me. when the play was over and we were on the way home uncle theodore said: "if i had known the nature of the play, i would not have taken you to-night, pearl." "but _i_," i cried, "_i_ am only _one_! there were hundreds of people being _educated_ as well as _i_!" uncle theodore turned and looked at me quickly; then he said coldly: "my dear, you have a great deal yet to learn." when we reached home i went at once upstairs to my room, and uncle theodore retired to his den. neither of us has ever mentioned the subject since. cousin ned is around morning, noon, and night now. he is walking with a crutch, having had his shin kicked at a foot-ball match. _june 20th, 1----_ i went with grandmother to-day on her weekly visit to the "home for incurable children." grandmother goes to carry her presents, and "to cheer up the little folk," she says; i went prompted by curiosity. we were ushered in by a cheery, wholesome-looking maid who knew grandmother, and gave her the freedom of the house. we first entered the ward where the older children were kept, and there grandmother distributed her books and pictures. while she sat to rest i wandered from one cot to another, where white little faces looked up at me, pleasantly answering my questions, or volunteering information. "i am a _new_ patient," one midget said, with a placid air of importance. "i'm goin' to have an _operation_ to-morrow," said another exultingly. "that's one blessed fact about children," said the attending nurse, "they never fret in anticipation. they look forward with positive pride to a new experience--even if it is an operation." in one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands being useless. the top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his fingers. i walked into another room to see the little babies; blind, crooked-limbed, distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies properly. "why does god leave them here?" i demanded of grandmother as soon as we had reached the open air again. "perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege of acting the god toward them." "christianity means brotherhood, pearl, dear," she added, after we had walked several yards in silence. what a great country this america is! caring for its ailing and crippled in such a beautiful way! "oh, china!" i cried, when i was all alone in my own room, "_you_ would drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on the hillsides to die! oh, china! china! would you could come over here and see how america treats her 'weak and wounded, sick and sore?' these are the words of a church hymn." i said something to this effect the same evening to grandmother, and she replied: "perhaps, my dear, it may be the duty of some of us to carry america to china." seaside, _july 31st, 1----_ we are at the seaside. it is the fashion in america for whole families to shut up their houses in hot weather and go off to some summer resort--the women of them--whether to be cool, or to be in the fashion i do not yet know. grandmother wanted to go one place, aunt gwendolin to another, and uncle theodore, who said he might run over for a few sundays, to yet another. at last a charming spot upon the atlantic coast was decided upon. uncle theodore settled the question emphatically, because dear grandmother needed the revivifying influence of the sea air. aunt gwendolin fretted a little at first for fear it might be humdrum, and commonplace, and for fear none of "our set" would be there; but she recovered from her depression when she heard that mrs. delancy, mrs. deforest, mrs. austin, and others of the same clique had also chosen that particular part of the coast as their recuperating place. mrs. delancy dropped in one day to tell her that the whole fashionable tide had turned toward that coast this summer, and she knew we should have a "simply _grand_ season." aunt gwendolin's spirits rose after that, and she immediately went about ordering a most elaborate summer wardrobe--morning gowns, evening gowns, walking suits, yachting suits, bathing suits. uncle theodore went ahead of the rest of the party and engaged a suite of rooms in the most fashionable hotel on the beach, from the broad balconies of which the view of the sea is grand, and the air delicious. grandmother and i spend much time together. as i am not "out" aunt gwendolin says that i cannot attend any of the functions to which she is going daily--and nightly. i do not know what i miss by being obliged to stay away from the parties and balls, but i know it is very delightful wandering on the beach with grandmother, watching the lights, shades, and colours on the water, the dipping and skimming of the water birds, the movements of the lobster fishers, the going out and coming in of the tide, and all the many, many objects of interest around the great sea world; never caring whether i am fashionable or not fashionable, whether anybody is noticing me or not noticing me. the only objects that i do not like to look at on this sea beach are the human bathers. the sea-gulls taking their bath are graceful, but, oh! those grown-up women in skirts up to their knees, and bare arms, wandering over the beach like great ostriches! they mar the picture of beauty which the earth and sky and sea unite to make, and i would shut them up if i had the power--or add more length to their bathing suits. perhaps the sea-gulls would not look graceful either if they had half their feathers off. we were here a week when professor ballington came. we were all a little surprised to see him because he is not a "society man," as aunt gwendolin says. he does not appear to care much for "functions," and spends much time wandering on the beach. grandmother and i meet him frequently. one time when i went out for a little run before breakfast i found him staring at the great green sea that kept restlessly licking the sand at his feet. he looked lonesome, and i tried to say something to cheer him up. then he asked permission to join me in my stroll, and we had a most delightful time, finding shells, and stones, the formations of various periods of time, professor ballington said. he seems to know everything. i do not wonder he cares so little for society, or the company of women in general. strange how much more the men, the cultured men, the society men, of america know than the women! i suppose it is because the women have to spend so much time talking about the change of sleeves. there was a dance one night in the ballroom, which is around at the opposite side of the house from our apartments, and leaving grandmother absorbed in her book, i slipped around on the balcony and peeped through the slats of the closed shutters on the dancers within. all was in a whirl, and there i saw, with my own two eyes, men with their arms around the waists of women, whirling those same women around the great room in time to music played by an orchestra. it made me dizzy to look at them. "wouldn't that shock china!" i cried. "shall _i_ have to submit to that when i come _out_? oh, why cannot i always stay _in_?" i was so excited i did not know i was talking aloud, until the voice of professor ballington over my head said: "you do not like the thought of coming out into society? you would like always to stay in domestic retirement?" "yes, yes," i said; "what can save me from coming _out_?" "marry some good man," he said, "and spend your energies making a quiet, happy home for _him_." he was looking at me in a very peculiar way, and i felt frightened, i don't know why, and skipped along the balcony back to grandmother's sitting-room. when i entered who should be there talking to grandmother but mrs. paton. she said she had felt lonesome without grandmother in the city, and had made up her mind to spend a week at the seaside. "oh, grandmother!" i cried, as soon as i had greeted mrs. paton, "shall i _have_ to come _out_? cannot i always stay _in_?" grandmother clasped my hand in hers, in the old way she had of quieting me, and explained to mrs. paton that i did not incline to the ways of society people, and had a dread of entering the world which aunt gwendolin loved so well. "give your life to some noble cause, my dear," said mrs. paton earnestly, turning her eyes upon me. "the world is in sore need of consecrated women. you could be a foreign missionary, or a home missionary. oh, don't waste your life on the frivolity called society!" this is not professor ballington's advice. which is right? how glad i am that in this "land of the free," i am not compelled to follow any will but my own! _august_ seaside. well, i did get a surprise last evening while out strolling on the beach, for whom should i meet but "sawbones," otherwise chauffeur graham. he is having summer holidays now, and before settling down to some work to make money for his autumn college expenses, he snatched a day to get a whiff of sea air, he said. he seemed very pleased to see me, and i was _delighted_ to see him, and extended my hand to him in cordial greeting. i know aunt gwendolin would object to her niece shaking hands with the chauffeur--it was the medical man i shook hands with. i stayed out there as long as i dared, and we had a lovely stroll along the beach in the moonlight, the waves whispering at our feet as we walked and talked. chauffeur graham said that it always seemed to him that the waves were coming from the many far-off lands with their incessant pleadings that we carry our enlightenment and advantages to the suffering places of the earth. that was the medical man speaking in him. he must be noble or he would never hear those voices in the waves. how i wish it were proper for me to give him some of the money i do not know what to do with, so that he could go on with his studies and not need to work between times to earn a pittance. grandmother says she is going to engage him again in the autumn, when we all return to the city; she knows him now, and feels safe in his hands, he is so careful. "it is such a nuisance to have a man that you cannot command at any hour of the day--or night," said aunt gwendolin. "make him understand, if you engage him again, that all his time belongs to _us_. these gentlemen chauffeurs who are straining after a university education are unendurable!" "he shall have whatever time he wants for his studies or examinations. it is the least i can do to show my sympathy with his life work," returned my grandmother. _another stroll_. i had another stroll this evening on the beach with chauffeur graham--while aunt gwendolin was getting ready for the dance--and he told me something. "when i am through with my medical course," he said, "i intend to go to china to practise what i have learned." i stopped suddenly in my walk and faced him. "why are you going to china?" i demanded. it makes me indignant to have this nation, an infant in years, patronising my hoary-headed empire! "if a man is going to do his duty by the world," he returned, "he will go where his work is most needed. they have no native medical school in china. "they are a great people," he added after a short pause, "likely to be in the van of the world's march in the ages to come; and i want to have a hand in getting them ready. napoleon said, 'when china moves she will move the world.' all the broken legs will be set in this country whether i am here to set them or not; i want to go where they will not be set unless i do it." "go where the vineyard demandeth vinedresser's nurture and care." i repeated the lines which i had heard them sing in the church. "that's about the way it is," he returned, looking at me in pleased surprise. he left this morning on an early train, to go back to the peg and grind, and now the place is slow and lonesome. after all i think it is better to have to peg and grind; it surely must be the spice of life which rich people miss. i do not care how quickly the hot months pass, and we can go back to the city again. _sept. 30th, 1----_ we are all back in the city again, and settled into the old routine; but there is a new excitement in the air. aunt gwendolin insists that i require to go to some fashionable "young ladies' boarding school," to be "_finished_." she says (but not in grandmother's hearing) that i do not talk as i should, that my voice is quite ordinary, and i must learn the tone of society ladies before i can be brought _out_. "you mean the _artificial_ tone?" said uncle theodore, who was present when i was getting my lecture. "call it what you like, theodore," snapped aunt gwendolin, "it is the tone used by an american society woman; the girl talks yet in the natural voice of a child." "would that she could always keep it," returned uncle theodore. after much talking my aunt persuaded my grandmother that i should go to some such school. "my dear," said grandmother timidly, "your aunt seems to think you may gain much by a period spent in some good school. she may be right. it certainly cannot hurt you, and if it can be of any benefit there is nothing to prevent your having it." to comfort dear grandmother i raised no objection, and it is settled that i go in the fall term. the choice of a school was left entirely to aunt gwendolin, and she has decided upon the most expensive and most fashionable one in the country. she has been corresponding with the lady principal; my rooms have been ordered; and everything is complete. one day my aunt placed in my hand one of her monogrammed sheets of writing-paper, pointing to the following paragraph: "it is the family's wish that much attention be given to preparing the young girl whom i am sending to you, for society; heavy or arduous work in any other line is of secondary consideration. the prestige of your school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of a spanish girl of good family." "i am not a spanish girl, aunt gwendolin!" i said. "i did not say you were," returned my aunt, "i simply said the prestige of her school could not fail to be enhanced by the presence of one." have i got to live up to _that_? boarding school, _october 10th, 1----_ i am here at last, accompanied by two large leather trunks, which aunt gwendolin has filled with all sorts of costumes, for all sorts of occasions. a page opened the door in response to the hackman's ring, when after some hours' journey by rail, i arrived at the fashionable "boarding school," and a maid conducted me up a flight of softly carpeted steps to my appointed rooms. i had not more than taken off my wraps, when madam demill (she has declared that her name should be spelled de mille, but it has become corrupted in this democratic america) the head of the establishment, called upon me. she was cold, hard, stately; a creature of whalebone and steel as to body, and of pompadours and artificial braids as to head. she announced after her first greeting that there was going to be a party that evening, and she wished me to be dressed in evening costume, and appear in the drawing-room at half past eight o'clock. "if you would wear some of your distinctly spanish costumes it would be very _apropos_," she added. "i see you have the decided spanish complexion. i am glad you are pronounced in your nationality; it is so much more interesting. as you did not arrive in time for dinner, a tray shall be brought to your room with sufficient refreshment to keep you in good feature until you partake of the refreshment offered at the party," she added as she swept from the room. how helpless i felt! i was to dress in evening costume for the "party." what was i to put on? for the first time in my life i wished that aunt gwendolin were near me. how i longed for my yellow silk gown that my governess in china had designed with flowing sleeves trimmed with "sprawling dragons!" i knew i looked better in that than in anything else, and i knew how to put it on; no infinitesimal hooks and eyes, pins and buttons, to be found, and put in exact places; which if one fails to do in the american gown the whole thing goes awry. my worry was dispelled by the arrival of the maid with the promised tray. it was not too heavily laden to prevent me from completely emptying it, with the exception of the dishes. while i was eating the maid unpacked my trunks,--you have not got to do much for yourself in a fashionable boarding school--hanging the articles in an adjoining clothes closet. during the same period of time a happy thought occurred to me. "i will call aunt gwendolin over the long distance telephone and ask her what i shall wear at the party to-night!" was the happy inspiration. in response to my request the maid conducted me to the telephone, and when the connection was made, i called: "hello, aunt gwendolin! this is the yellow pearl speaking!" "how does that little minx know that she is the yellow peril?" i heard my aunt say, probably to uncle theodore in the room beside her. then she turned to me and replied: "well." "what gown shall i wear to-night at the party?" back over the two hundred miles of field, forest, lake, came aunt gwendolin's thin, squeaky voice: "wear your cream-coloured oriental lace." "does it fasten in the front or back? if in the back i cannot put it on myself!" i returned, over the fields and trees and waters. "yes, you _can_, get some of the girls to fasten it for you," cried the voice through the phone. "be sure and wear _that_; it so emphasises your spanish style of beau----" i hung up the receiver. at my request the maid helped me to get into the cream oriental lace; and at half past eight i made my appearance in the drawing-room, as to dress, looking like a spanish grande dame, and as to face, looking as yellow, and lonesome, and sour as the fiercest spanish brigand. i was introduced to mr. this-one, and mr. that-one and mr. the-other-one. they all looked alike to me, with high collars, and patent-leather shoes. after awhile there was a little dance, but as i did not know how i had to sit against the wall, and madam demill said i must be put under a dancing master at once. the day following, in the afternoon (all the so-called lessons are gone through in the forenoon, and we have nothing to do but amuse ourselves the rest of the day) a number of the girls came to call on me in my apartments. there were a dozen or more of them present when an arrogant-looking one, with her hair arranged in an immense pompadour over her forehead, from ear to ear, drawled through her nose. "i suppose you do not love americans since we beat your country at the battle of manila?" "no," i said truthfully, "i do not love americans." (of course i mentally excepted grandmother, professor ballington, chauffeur graham--and uncle theodore when he acts nice.) the girls threw their chins into the air, their eyes shot fire, and i heard several faint sniffs. then a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed girl stepped out from the group, and coming quickly to my side, she put her arm around me and said: "we'll _make_ her love us!" and she actually touched her rosebud lips to my yellow cheek. since that i have not hated americans quite so savagely. the act seemed to have a softening effect on the others, too, for from that time they all have treated me very decently, even the girl with the pompadour. golden hair seems to have a great deal of influence in the school. there are _some_ nice girls in america. _oct. 15th, 1----_ life in this "fashionable boarding school" is just about a repetition, daily, of what transpired the evening of my arrival. it is not worth recording, so i am closing up my diary until i return to grandmother's. it takes yick, and mrs. yet, and chauffeur graham, and professor ballington, and even a pinch of aunt gwendolin to give a little spice to life. _thanksgiving_ i took a run back to grandmother's for what those americans call thanksgiving--it is most amusing to foreigners like me--and yick. on grandmother's table there was what they tell me is the regulation dinner for the day--roast turkey and pumpkin pie. when yick, in his best costume, had walked proudly into the dining room with the immense turkey on a platter, and deposited it on the table, he returned to the kitchen convulsed with laughter, betty has told me since. "christians queer people! christians queer people!" he sputtered merrily. "thank god eat turkey, thank god eat turkey!" i knew what yick meant, the oriental idea of thanking god would have been some act of self-denial. it was hard for the poor "heathen chinee" to construe the american self-indulgence into an act of thanksgiving. poor yick, and poor yellow pearl! how far both of you are from comprehending civilisation. _holidays, dec. 20th, 1----_ i am back again at grandmother's for the holidays. grandmother and uncle theodore seemed so glad to see me that i am beginning to feel quite as if this were home. yick and betty are still here, chauffeur graham still manipulates the automobile. mrs. delancy gave a "little christmas dance," as she calls it, last night, and the description has come out in the morning paper: "the home of mrs. delancy was transformed into a bower of flowers, ferns and softly shaded lights, on the night of her christmas dance. the hall and staircase were decorated with southern smilax entwined with white flowers, and the dressing-rooms with mauve orchids; while in the drawing-room the mantelpiece was banked with richmond roses and maidenhair ferns, and that in the dining room with lily-of-the-valley and single daffodils. passing through the dining room, where an orchestra was stationed behind a screen of bamboo, twined with flowers, the guests entered the japanese tea pavilion, which had been erected for the occasion. the entrance was formed of bamboo trellis work covered with southern smilax, flowers, and innumerable tiny electric lights. the walls were covered with fluted yellow silk, and from the ceiling depended dozens of baskets filled with flowers interspersed with japanese lanterns and parasols. huge bouquets of chrysanthemums were fastened against the wall. the table was exquisitely decorated with enormous baskets of flowers; in the centre was one with large mauve orchids over which was tilted a large pink japanese umbrella, trimmed with violets, while from each basket sprang bamboo wands suspended from which were japanese lanterns filled with lily-of-the-valley and violets, the whole forming the most beautiful scheme of decoration seen this season." how tired i am writing it all! i wonder if any one felt tired looking at it. then followed a description of the ladies' gowns: "the ladies were simply stunning in their smartest gowns, mrs. delancy queening it in an exquisite apple-green satin, with pearls and diamonds; miss morgan (which means my respected aunt), whose sparkling blonde beauty always charms her friends, in maize chiffon, through which sparkled a gold-sequined bodice and underskirt, and mrs. deforest, dark and graceful, in a rich white satin gown. mrs. austin looked extremely handsome in a most becoming orchid gown, with ribbon of the same shade twisted in her dark hair." there was a lot more of the same, but my hand refuses to write it. one would think it was a number of half-grown children the newspaper reporter was trying to please by saying nice things about them. strange that in this america nothing is ever said about what the women _say_ or _do_ at those social functions; nothing seems worth noticing about them but the kind of clothes they have on. the men do not count for anything at all. i wonder was professor ballington there. i wonder did he look at any one with that smile away back in his eyes which was there when he looked at me the time i sang my _one_ spanish song. _december 21st, 1----_ yick has given us a new diversion. aunt gwendolin gave him orders to make a _particularly_ nice layer-cake for an afternoon "tea." yick is quite proud of his cakes, and this day he wished to outdo anything he had previously done, so he made a layer cake, icing it with red and white trimmings. he delights to get a new recipe, or find some new way of decoration. the daily paper, which always in the end finds its way into the kitchen, had evidently attracted his attention. he saw in the advertisement pages a round box with an inscription on top. taking the box for a cake, he decorated his culinary effort in imitation of the picture. aunt gwendolin never saw it until it was carried in to the table, before all the finest ladies of the city, and this was what they all read, in three rows of red letters across the white icing: dodd's kidney pills who says my people are not clever and original? _dec. 23d, 1----_ it is drawing near the festive season in this remarkable land, and there is a great bustle everywhere. some people are concerned about providing luxuries for themselves, and some are concerned about providing for those poorer than themselves. mrs. delancy came in all fagged out from her arduous work of shopping. "i have just been treating myself to a few little christmas presents," she gasped, as she carried a great, fat, pug dog and deposited him on grandmother's best white satin sofa pillow. she called the dog many endearing names, such as "darling," "little baby boy," "sweet one," and "tootsy-wootsy." dogs are thought as much of as babies in america; those are the very same terms of endearment that the women address to their babies. "i had to leave this little darling in a restaurant to be fed and cared for while i did my shopping," she explained. "he _would_ come with me, the pet." she then informed aunt gwendolin that she had been to the milliner's and ordered five hats, and had just completed the purchase of a three thousand dollar jacket at the furrier's. the dog on the pillow whined in the midst of her recital, and she stopped long enough to go over and give him a kiss. she was still enlarging on the beauty of the fur coat, when the housemaid tapped on the door, and ushered mrs. paton into the sitting-room. "i heard that you ladies were here," she said, "and i thought you might like to have the privilege of helping a little in those charities," and she began to unfold some papers which she held in her hand. "oh, my dear mrs. paton, do not ask me to-day, _really_," exclaimed mrs. delancy, holding up her hands. "i am among the poor myself to-day, and you know charity begins at home. i really haven't a cent to give to any one else. i'm stony broke, as the boys say. i have laid out so much money to-day for necessities!" mrs. paton then turned to my aunt and said, "gwendolin, _do_ give something out of the thousands you are expending on self-indulgence to help those who have not the necessities of life!" taking the paper into her hand with an ungracious air, my aunt wrote down a certain amount, and then passed it back. "dear me!" sighed mrs. delancy, as soon as mrs. paton had left the place, "how tired i get of those people with their solicitations for some y. m. c. a., or y. w. c. a., or something else _eternally_. they'd keep a person poor if one paid any heed to them, _really_! some one starving or unclothed every time! it does annoy me so to hear harrowing tales!" _january 1st, 1----_ last night there was a sound of revelry in this great land. at the solemn hour of midnight, when the old year was dying, and the new year was just being born, one class of people in this american city rushed out into the open streets, cheering, blowing horns, ringing bells, and making all possible noises on all sorts of musical instruments. another class celebrated the birth of the new year by eating an elaborate meal. this is what appeared in the morning paper regarding the latter: "one million dollars was spent last night in this city celebrating the birth of another year. more than twenty-five thousand persons engaged tables at from three to ten dollars a plate in the leading hotels and cafã©s." how fond of eating americans are! this is the first time i have seen the birth of a new year in any but my native land, and my mind goes back to the celebration on a similar occasion in china. it is a solemn event there. for weeks the people are preparing for it; houses are cleaned, and debts are paid, for a chinaman, if he has any self-respect, will be sure to pay his debts before the new year. i told this to uncle theodore a few days ago, and he said, "i wish that americans would rise to that state of grace." nobody goes to bed that night, but all sit up waiting for the first hour of the new year, when the father of the home, his wife and children all worship before the spirit tablets of their ancestors, and then at the shrine of the household gods. then the door is opened, and the whole family with the servants go outside and bow down to a certain part of the heavens, and so worship heaven and earth, and receive the spirit of gladness and good fortune, which they say comes from that quarter. at the same hour, when the old year is dying, china's emperor, as high priest of his people, goes in state to worship. kneeling alone under the silent stars he renders homage to the superior powers. he on his imperial throne makes the third in the great trinity, heaven, earth, and man. should there come a famine or pestilence, upon him rests the blame, and he must by sacrifice and prayer atone for the imperfections of which heaven has seen him guilty. oh, china! i would prefer kneeling with you under the silent stars on new year's eve, to feasting at the groaning tables, or ringing the bells and blowing the horns of this great, civilised, noisy america! _january 7th, 1----_ oh, glorious! grandmother says i need not go back to boarding school for the winter term; she says the family always go south during the cold weather, and she wants me to go with them. wants me, think of it, _wants_ me. isn't it nice to have somebody want one along with her! i believe grandmother really loves me. aunt gwendolin doesn't; she wanted me sent back to school. she said i would never be fit to be brought _out_ with that kind of carrying on. i love those that love me, but as for loving those that _hate_ me, as grandmother had been teaching me from the bible, i haven't come to that yet. that reminds me, i wish aunt gwendolin would stop snapping at yick; i am afraid some day he will kill himself on the doorstep, so his ghost may haunt her the rest of her life. but i think he likes grandmother and the other members of the family sufficiently well to cause him to refrain from that act of chinese revenge. mexico, _february 1st, 1----_ a great migratory movement has taken place in our family--we are now in the warm, sunny country called mexico. aunt gwendolin was the cause of it. she said she was tired of going to florida, that it was so _common_ to go there now, everybody was going there, that the latest thing was to winter in mexico, and she thought we all ought to follow suit. she talked and argued so much about it that she persuaded grandmother and uncle theodore to her way of thinking, and after travelling hundreds of miles in pullman and sleeper cars, here we are in this land of cactus fences, tortillas, great snakes, and parrots; this land where roses and strawberries grow all the year round; where in some parts are luscious tropical fruits, flowers, and palms. mrs. delancy has come along with us, and professor ballington says he may join our party later. there are many americans around us in the various towns--it is so fashionable at present to winter in mexico. uncle theodore takes me out for long walks with him in this land of perpetual summer, and we see many strange and interesting sights. the rich are so _very_ rich, and the poor are so _very_ poor. there is one drawback--we had to leave behind us our automobile. of course we can hire one here, but we can not have our own lovely chauffeur, and grandmother says she is afraid to trust any of those mexicans. i suppose our poor chauffeur is pegging away hard over his medical lore now, while i am lounging around doing nothing. the granddaughter of a millionairess, with money to get anything i want, and yet i am beginning to think there is nothing worth getting. it is lovely to be poor like the chauffeur and have to work hard for something. my life is so small and worthless that i am oppressed with it. one of the sights that interest us the most when we are out in the country are the cactus hedges. there are great palisades of the organ-cactus lining the railways, and there are ragged, loose-jointed varieties used for corralling cattle. great plantations of a species of cactus called maguey with stiff, prickly leaves a dull, bluish-green, are seen in abundance. from this plant the mexicans get not only thread, pins, and needles, but pulque, the juice or sap of the plant, which they ferment and make into a national beverage. pulque is used by the mexicans as whisky is used by americans, and opium by chinamen. great fields of maize are cultivated, of which there are two or three crops a year. the food of the people is tortillas, made out of this maize mashed into a paste and baked into flat cakes. i ate those tortillas when i first came, as a curiosity, a native production, but i am not going to eat any more. while uncle theodore and i were watching a woman making them, great drops of perspiration fell from her brow into the paste. she pounded away, poor tired creature, and paid no heed to the drops. poor women of mexico, they have to work so hard, preparing the paste, and making those little cakes to be eaten hot at every meal! but no more tortillas for me. we visited the old churches which are beautifully decorated with veined marble and alabaster. precious stones seem to grow in this remarkable land. "keep your eyes open, pearl," said my uncle, "and you may pick up some opals, or amethysts. they grow in this country, and i have heard they can be had for the picking." mexico, _february 12th, 1----_ i have made a discovery--i have found out america's princely man! it is abraham lincoln, and this is his birthday! magazines have been coming down from the north telling us all about this princely man, and i have asked grandmother and uncle theodore hundreds of questions, it seems to me, about him. and i can see that they never get tired answering those questions, but seem as if they could talk about him forever. scarcely a political debate occurs, either in congress or in the press of the country, but the possible views or actual example of abraham lincoln are quoted as the strongest argument, uncle theodore says. the magazines find it impossible to publish too much about him. mention of his name in an incidental fashion from a stage or forum draws a burst of cheering; or if the reference is of a humorous nature the laughter is close to tears. "with love and reverence his memory is cherished by the american people as is the memory of no other man," said dear grandmother. "quoting a 'decoration day' orator," she added, "'he was called to go by the sorrowful way, bearing the awful burden of his people's woe, the cry of the uncomforted in his ears, the bitterness of their passion on his heart. misunderstood, misjudged, he was the most solitary of men. he had to tread the wine-press alone, and of the people none went with him. but he turned not back. he never faltered. as one upheld, sustained by the unseen hand, he set his face steadfastly, undaunted, unafraid, until in death's black minute he paid glad life's arrears: the slaves free! himself immortal!'" yes, it is quite certain that abraham lincoln is america's princely man! _i_ would like to make something happen in the world that would be talked about after i am dead. grandmother says that it is only something that one does for the _good_ of the world that is remembered after he is dead. "if a man has money, people will lionize him as long as he is living for the sake of it," she says, "but money counts for nothing when a man is dead." "money!" said uncle theodore, who had been listening to our talk. "i doubt whether abe ever owned enough to buy a farm." _february 15th, 1----_ one comfort, i am not bothered much with aunt gwendolin--she has become acquainted with a french nobleman, count de pensier, and he is attracting all her attention, thanks be to goodness! mrs. delancy is delighted, and is doing all she can to further the acquaintance. "it is not every day that one has the privilege of associating daily and hourly with one of the _titled aristocracy_ of the old world," she has said several times in my hearing. when we first arrived aunt gwendolin saw some of the spanish ladies wearing mantillas on their heads, and she immediately bought one for me. "there!" she said when i put it on, "isn't that simply perfect? doesn't that make her spanish through and through?" she says that when i become a thorough spanish-american she is going to give a "coming out party" for me. the scarf is really quite becoming. uncle theodore admired it, or admired me with it on, so i wear it wound around my head when i go on my rambles through the country with him. i really much prefer it to the bristling hats of the american women, and it is quite pleasant to be called "seã±orita," and to be thought spanish. these long head scarfs are also worn by the poor women, but theirs are made of cotton. on the street they carry their babies strapped to their backs with it, the little heads and legs bobbing up and down until one would think they might snap off. sometimes the scarf ties the baby to the mother's bosom, thus leaving her hands free for other work. "our american sensibilities" (quoting aunt gwendolin) "are sometimes shocked by mexican doings." one day we saw a procession headed by the father carrying a tiny coffin on his head. behind him walked the mother dragging by the hand a little bare-foot girl, of two or three; and behind them again trotted a dog. the father was drunk, and staggered as he walked. as we watched the little procession on the way to the graveyard they passed in front of a saloon where they sold pulque. the father wanted another drink, so he started to enter the saloon taking the little coffin under his arm. he stumbled on the threshold, and the little pine box fell out of his hands down onto the flag-stones, the cover coming off. and we saw a little dead baby within the coffin, with a crown of gilt paper on its head, and a cross of gilt paper on its brow. in its little hands were a bunch of flowers. the man laughed awkwardly, put the lid on the coffin and placed it on his head again, proceeding toward the graveyard without his drink, followed by the mother, the girl, and the dog. "why do not the american missionaries who are crossing oceans to find heathen, look for them at their own doorstep?" said uncle theodore afterwards, when he was telling the story to grandmother. "sure enough," returned grandmother, "it does look as if the unenlightened of its own continent is america's first duty." aunt gwendolin is having moonlight walks and talks innumerable with count de pensier--and--oh, i am having liberty! _february 21st, 1----_ we have had some unusual excitement lately--a bull and tiger fight. the day following, the description came out in a morning paper: "a fight between a tiagua bull and a bengal tiger in the bull ring this afternoon was most ferocious, and will result in the death of both animals. the sickening spectacle was witnessed by 5,500 people, largely americans, and many of them tourists, who stopped over here especially to witness the barbaric spectacle. after three bulls had been despatched in the regulation manner, the star performance was pulled off. the two animals, enclosed in an iron cage, about thirty feet square, were brought together, and the battle between the enraged brutes commenced. the bull was first taken into the enclosure and given the usual bull fight tortures to arouse his ire, and then the iron cage containing the tiger was wheeled up to the entrance; but the tiger refused to get out and open the battle, and the bull attempted to get into the small cage and get at his adversary. the bull was badly scratched about the face. finally the tiger came from his cage, and the bull gored the cat with a long, sharp horn as he emerged. with a screech of pain, the cat, with a powerful lunge, broke the bull's right leg, and then the two animals went into the fight for their lives. the tiger was able to spring out of the way of the bull in a number of instances, but when the big, heavy animal caught his adversary it went hard with the tiger. the bull stepped upon the tiger in one instance and there was a crunching of ribs audible in the seats of the amphitheatre. "the bull disabled the tiger in the back, and after that the fighting was tame, and the americans cried for pity, while the mexicans cheered and wanted the performance to continue." mrs. delancy, and aunt gwendolin, along with uncle theodore and count de pensier, attended the fight. grandmother would not go, and i stayed with her. "a _christian lady_ going to a bull fight," i said to grandmother under my breath. "yes, my dear," returned grandmother looking really pale, "it shocks me quite as much as _you_. it was not so when i was young. american women of the present day must see everything. it is deplorable!" when the scene was the most harrowing, and the americans were calling for the fight to be stopped, aunt gwendolin, and i believe several other american women, fainted, and had to be carried out. "dear me, dear me," said grandmother again, when she heard the harrowing details. "that is just the way with americans of the present day; they must see everything. it was not so when i was young." who should walk into our presence at that very moment but professor ballington. he had heard grandmother's remark, without knowing the cause for her words, and as he was shaking hands with us he said: "you believe the poet watson diagnosed uncle sam's case when he said: "'but when fate was at thy making, and endowed thy soul with many gifts and costly, she forgot to mix with those a genius for repose; and therefore a sting is ever in thy blood, and in thy marrow a sublime unrest.'" "it was not so when i was young," said grandmother. "how can we lay the shortcoming at the door of fate?" "chinese women would never attend a bull and tiger fight, grandmother," i whispered into her ear when the professor was looking the other way, "nor chinese gentlemen." "i hope not, my dear," is all the reply dear grandmother made. professor ballington only stayed with us a day or two; he was just on a tour, he said, and had to cover a certain amount of space within a certain period of time. grandmother and i were very desirous that he should remain longer; but i really believe aunt gwendolin felt relieved when he was gone. she did not appear to feel comfortable with his comprehending eyes upon her when she was entertaining count de pensier. _february 28th, 1----_ the count has proposed to my aunt gwendolin, and she has accepted him. grandmother is in tears ever since, and uncle theodore is furious. i heard the latter talking to my grandmother--in his excitement he seemed to forget my presence--and he said: "that frenchman is just a fortune-hunter, one of those penniless, titled gentry that swarm in europe. he wants gwendolin's money to regild a tarnished title, and gwendolin wants the title! he has found out from arabella delancy the size of gwendolin's fortune, in possession and in prospective, and he has offered his title in exchange for it! that's the size of the whole affair!" "that's what grieves me most," said grandmother, with quivering lips; "it is not holy matrimony." "i look for a divorce within five years!" continued my uncle. "i had always hoped that gwendolin and professor ballington would make up some time," added grandmother. "oh, gwendolin would never suit ballington," returned uncle theodore. "your granddaughter--the little celestial--is the making of a woman much more to his taste--" he looked up suddenly, and seemed to remember for the first time that i was in the room. i, sly, subtle oriental that i am, worked away on my shadow embroidery and never by the wink of an eyelid, or the movement of a muscle showed that i heard a word. _april 5th, 1----_ we are home again, and all is bustle and confusion--aunt gwendolin is going to be married. she pays no attention to me now at all; and you know, dear diary, how that grieves me. dressmakers, milliners, caterers, florists, decorators, throng the house. count de pensier is staying in a hotel downtown. he calls every forenoon, and every afternoon; and declares, with his hand on his heart, that he cannot return to his own country without his bride. cousin ned has asked me to marry him. he is down in his luck, and blue--missed in his examinations--and he says he believes he might settle down and do something if he were only married. he says the relationship is so far out that there is nothing to hinder him and me from being married. get married, indeed! there's nothing farther from my thoughts. _may 25th, 1----_ well the fuss and flurry are all over--they are married, aunt gwendolin and count de pensier. i cannot do better than copy a paragraph out of the newspaper to describe the doings: "the church was beautifully decorated with azaleas, palms, orchids; tall white wands supporting sheaves of palms stood at each aisle. the walls of the church were festooned with green wreathing. the bride was given away by her brother, theodore morgan, esq. she looked exceedingly handsome in an exquisite gown of heavy, ivory-white satin, with panel of filet lace, seeded with pearls. the long train was trimmed with lace and pearl seeding. with this was worn a costly lace veil, caught to her titian hair with a chaplet of orange blossoms, and she carried a shower bouquet of bridal roses. "the six bridesmaids were gowned in ivory taffeta silk, wearing picture hats; and each carried an immense bouquet of bride's-maid's roses." as is usual at american functions, the men did not seem to be of enough importance to mention anything more than their bare names. it all took place in _christ's_ church. was he there? grandmother says he is back in this world now in spirit. what did he think of it all? "grandmother," i said when it was all over--the church display, the reception, the eating and drinking, the dressing--"if i am ever married let it be in china." "my dear child," said grandmother in alarm, "why do you make such a wild request as that?" "seated at a table the bride is offered a tiny cup of wine," i replied, "of which she takes a sip, while the bridegroom in a seat opposite her also sips from a similar cup of wine. the cups are then exchanged, and again tasted, and the marriage service is completed. they have time to think about each other, instead of thinking of what a grand show they are making for the world." grandmother looked at me in silence a few moments, then she said: "your grandfather and i were married quietly in our own little home parlour. i was dressed in white muslin, and your grandfather in corduroy. we were thinking more about each other than anything else, my dear." the bride and groom, count and countess de pensier, started at once for the ancestral home in sunny france, i suppose to begin regilding the tarnished title uncle theodore spoke about. oh, be joyful! i shall not have to go to the "fashionable boarding school" any more! i shall not have to appear at a "coming out party!" i shall never come _out_ now; i shall always stay _in_! grandmother says i may stay in if i want to, and i _do_ want to. i shall never have to steal out the back door in grandmother's clothes any more, sing any more foreign songs, or pretend i am spanish! it is lovely to be able to act the truth! "it is an ill wind that blows nobody good." (this last is one of grandmother's familiar sayings.) cousin ned has lost one of his eyes! got it knocked out at the last "play." _may 30th, 1----_ i have made a most astounding discovery. walking down the street yesterday i saw a great placard on a wall announcing a lecture; subject, "_the yellow peril_." what did it mean? i thought _i_ was the yellow pearl, and that nobody outside of the family knew it. but this was spelled p-e-r-i-l instead of p-e-a-r-l. what could it mean? i could go no farther, but returned at once to question grandmother. "grandmother!" i cried, entering her room, "what is the yellow peril?" dear grandmother's cheeks flushed, and she said, "my dear child, why bother yourself about that?" "why, grandmother, i thought when i overheard aunt gwendolin talk, that _i_ was the yellow pearl; she called me such the first day i came," i said. "but on the placard it is spelled p-e-r-i-l. what does it mean?" "i am sorry you saw it," said grandmother hesitatingly. "there is too much being said on that subject by a certain class of people--it is the _world_ god loves," she added as if talking to herself, "not the united states, great britain, germany; the yellow people are just as dear to god as we are. the gentle christ looked widely over the world, shed tears for it, shed blood for it." "what does the yellow peril mean, grandmother?" i repeated anxiously. "the mongolian races are more yellow than the caucasian races," said grandmother, when forced to answer. "they are also more numerous, and some people fear that if we allow them in the country they may get the upper hand, and become a menace to our people. do not think any more about it, pearl. our dear late phillips brooks," she added after a short pause, "said, 'no nation, as no man, has a right to take possession of a choice bit of god's earth, to exclude the foreigner from its territory, that it may live more comfortably and be a little more at peace. but if this particular nation has been given the development of a certain part of god's earth for universal purposes, if the world in the great march of centuries is going to be richer for the development of a certain national character, built up by a larger type of manhood here, then for the world's sake, for the sake of every nation that would pour in upon it that which would disturb that development, we have a right to stand guard over it.'" this was a long speech for dear grandmother, who is not given to speechifying, and i know the subject must have given her serious thought, or she would never have remembered it. "is america being built up by a larger type of manhood, grandmother?" i asked. "oh, my dear, i do not know, i do not know," returned grandmother. i stopped talking to grandmother, because she looked worried, but i could not stop _thinking_, i am both the yellow pearl, and the yellow peril! why am i here? what were four hundred millions of us born into the world for? is yellow badness any worse than white badness? _june 20th, 1----_ what a heavenly time we are having, grandmother, uncle theodore, and myself, living our nice, quiet lives without distraction! sometimes we have professor ballington in to dinner, then he drops in evenings quite often when he is not formally invited. other old friends come too, enough to break the monotony. chauffeur graham was obliged to leave grandmother's employ some time ago; indeed he has never come back since we returned from mexico. he says it is his last term in the medical college, and he has to give all the time to his studies. it would be nicer if he were around. i do not seem to care about going out in the automobile now at all.--how is one to know whether this new chauffeur may not run the automobile into a telegraph pole, or something, and kill us all? _june 13th, 1----_ chauffeur graham has graduated. he is now doctor graham. isn't that lovely! just like a story book! uncle theodore and i went up to see him take his degree. my! wasn't he fine looking! tall, beautiful figure, and, as i said before, a handsome face. uncle theodore is quite interested in him, as well as grandmother. on the evening of the day on which he received his degree, he overtook me as i was walking through the park, and told me that he had noticed me in the audience. he says he is going to put in a year's practice in the hospital before going to china. i was glad to hear that; it would seem rather lonesome in this big america without him, i really believe. poor cousin ned is standing behind a counter downtown, selling tacks and shingle nails. he had to give up his studies on account of his eyes--the one eye could not stand the strain. unluckily about that time his father lost his money in some speculation, and there was nothing for it but poor ned must go to work. _another june._ i have been so happy, and life has been so satisfactory that i have not written in my diary for many months. i believe it is only when one's heart is so sorrowful and distracted that it must overflow somewhere, that one pours it into a diary. i have so much to say now that i scarcely know where to begin. well, to begin at the beginning, one night uncle theodore asked doctor graham to dinner, along with professor ballington, and another gentleman. after that doctor graham began to call quite frequently evenings--he seemed to enjoy grandmother's company so much, and i am sure she enjoyed his. well--oh, i never can tell how it all came about, but i have promised to go to china with dr. graham, to help him learn the chinese language. it is an _awful_ language for a foreigner to learn, and i just could not bear the thought of the poor fellow having to wrestle with it alone. it was one evening we were alone in the drawing-room, grandmother having been unable to appear owing to a headache, that we came to the final arrangement. but suddenly i thought of something that was going to upset it all, i believed,--he didn't know who i was! "oh!" i cried, "i cannot go with you--you will not want me--you do not know--that--i--am the yellow peril!" he smiled down at me, and raised my chin in the palm of his left hand--for he had not let me go from his right, although i had tried to get away--and said, "i expect to be very proud of my yellow pearl." now i am receiving congratulations which are making me feel very happy and proud, with the exception of professor ballington's. i cannot help feeling sorry for that poor old bachelor. he came up to me and said: "my dear miss pearl, i had been vain enough to hope once that i might sometime call this pearl mine, but if i cannot do so, i do not know of any one that i would sooner see claim it than doctor graham. and so i say, god bless you! god bless you! you shall always have the love of an old bachelor. and in this world, obsessed with fever and noise, with the sham and superficial, may you always remain the genuine pearl you are." there were tears in his voice. why must every rose have a thorn? we are going to china, doctor graham and i, my native land; the land of flashing poppy-blossoms, red azaleas, purple wistarias, blue larkspur, yellow jasmine, oleanders, begonias, and flowering bamboos--the flowery kingdom. dr. graham is going to establish a hospital, to set broken legs and bind up broken heads; and i am going to try and prevent any more of those little chinese babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to die. grandmother says if we go to china it ought to be to tell the confucionists and buddhists about the great christ. but i believe if he went there himself he would be mending broken legs, binding up broken heads and hearts, and saving the little babies from being thrown out on the hillsides to die. dear grandmother is a standing proof to me that the christ means much more to the world than china's confucius or buddha. one day when she was seated in her rocking-chair i threw my arm around her and told her so. the dear old lady never seemed to accept my words as a personal compliment at all, but began, as once before, to sing in a low, quavering voice: "let every kindred every tribe on this terrestrial ball, to him all majesty ascribe, and crown him lord of all." generously made available by the kentuckiana digital library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) note: images of the original pages are available through the kentuckiana digital library. see http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=b92-224-31182876&view=toc +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation and dialect in the original | | book have been preserved. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. for a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ civilization tales of the orient by ellen n. la motte author of "the backwash of war," etc new york george h. doran company copyright, 1919, by george h. doran company printed in the united states of america the stories "under a wineglass," "homesick" and "the yellow streak" are published by courtesy of the _century magazine_. contents page i the yellow streak 11 ii on the heights 33 iii homesick 65 iv civilization 93 v misunderstanding 121 vi prisoners 141 vii canterbury chimes 177 viii under a wineglass 217 ix cholera 235 x cosmic justice 247 the yellow streak i the yellow streak he came out to shanghai a generation ago, in those days when shanghai was not as respectable as it is now--whatever that says to you. it was, of course, a great change from home, and its crude pleasures and crude companions gave him somewhat of a shock. for he was of decent stock, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, and the beach-combers, adventurers, rough traders and general riff-raff of the china coast, gathered in shanghai, did not offer him the society he desired. he was often obliged to associate with them, however, more or less, in a business way, for his humble position as minor clerk in a big corporation entailed certain responsibilities out of hours, and this responsibility he could not shirk, for fear of losing his position. thus, by these acts of civility, more or less enforced, he was often led into a loose sort of intimacy, into companionship with people who were distasteful to his rather fastidious nature. but what can you expect on the china coast? he was rather an upright sort of young man, delicate and abstemious, and the east being new to him, shocked him. he took pleasure in walking along the bund, marvelling at the great river full of the ships of the world, marvelling at the crowds from the four corners of the world who disembarked from these ships and scattered along the broad and sunny thoroughfare, seeking amusements of a primitive sort. but in these amusements he took no part. for himself, a gentleman, they did not attract. not for long. the sing-song girls and the "american girls" were coarse, vulgar creatures and he did not like them. it was no better in the back streets--bars and saloons, gaming houses and opium divans, all the coarse paraphernalia of pleasure, as the china coast understood the word, left him unmoved. these things had little influence upon him, and the men who liked them overmuch, who chaffed him because of his squeamishness and distaste of them, were not such friends as he needed in his life. however, there were few alternatives. there was almost nothing else for it. companionship of this kind, or the absolute loneliness of a hotel bedroom were the alternatives which confronted him. he had very little money,--just a modest salary--therefore the excitement of trading, of big, shady deals, said nothing to him. he went to the races, a shy onlooker. he could not afford to risk his little salary in betting. above all things, he was cautious. consequently life did not offer him much outside of office hours, and in office hours it offered him nothing at all. you will see from this that he was a very limited person, incapable of expansion. now as a rule, life in the far east does not have this effect upon young men. it is generally stimulating and exciting, even to the most unimaginative, while the novelty of it, the utter freedom and lack of restraint and absence of conventional public opinion is such that usually, within a very short time, one becomes unfitted to return to a more formal society. in the old days of a generation ago, life on the china coast was probably much more exciting and inciting than it is to-day, although to-day, in all conscience, the checks are off. but our young man was rather fine, rather extraordinarily fastidious, and moreover, he had a very healthy young appetite for the normal. the offscourings of the world and of society rolled into shanghai with the inflow of each yellow tide of the yangtzse, and somehow, he resented that deposit. he resented it, because from that deposit he must pick out his friends. therefore instead of accepting the situation, instead of drinking himself into acquiescence, or drugging himself into acquiescence, he found himself quite resolved to remain firmly and consciously outside of it. in consequence of which decision he remained homesick and lonely, and his presence in the community was soon forgotten or overlooked. shy and priggish, he continued to lead his lonely life. in his solitary walks along the bund, there was no one to take his arm and snigger suggestions into his ear, and lead him into an open doorway where the suggestions could be carried out. he had come out to the east for a long term of years, and the prospect of these interminable years made his position worse. not that it shook his decision to remain aloof and detached from the call of the east--his decision was not shaken in the slightest, which seemed almost a pity. like all foreigners, of course, he had his own opinions of the chinese. they were an inferior, yellow race, and therefore despicable. but having also a firm, unshakable opinion of his own race, especially of those individuals of his race in which a yellow streak predominated, he held the chinese in no way inferior to these yellow-streaked individuals. which argues broadmindedness and fairmindedness. of the two, perhaps, he thought the chinese preferable--under certain circumstances. yet he knew them to be irritating in business dealings, corrupt, dishonest--on the whole he felt profound scorn for them. but as they had been made to suit the purposes of the ruling races of the world--such, for example, as himself, untainted by a yellow streak--he had to that extent, at least, succumbed to the current opinions of shanghai. he resolved to make use of them--of one, at least, in particular. he wanted a home. wanted it desperately. he wanted to indulge his quiet, domestic tastes, to live in peace a normal, peaceful life, far apart from the glittering trivialities of the back streets of the town. he wanted a home of his own, a refuge to turn to at the end of each long, monotonous day. you see, he was not an adventurer, a gambler, a wastrel, and he wanted a quiet home with a companion to greet him, to take care of him, to serve him in many ways. there was no girl in england whom he wanted to come out to marry him. had there been such a girl, he would probably not have allowed her to come. he was a decent young man, and the climate was such, here on the china coast, that few women could stand it without more of the comforts and luxury than his small salary could have paid for. so finally, at the end of a year or two, he got himself the home he wanted, in partnership with a little chinese girl who answered every purpose. he was not in love with her, in any exalted sense, but she supplied certain needs, and at the end of his long days, he had the refuge that he craved. she kept him from going to the bad. his few friends--friends, however, being hardly the word to apply to his few casual acquaintances,--were greatly surprised at this. such an establishment seemed to them the last sort of thing a man of this type would have gone in for. he had seemed such a decent sort, too. really, a few professed to be quite shocked--they said you never knew how the east would affect a person, especially a decent person. for themselves, they preferred looser bonds, with less responsibility. they said this to each other between drinks, and there was then, as now, much drinking in shanghai. a few even said this to each other quite seriously, as they lay in pairs on opium divans, smoking opium, with little chinese girls filling their pipes--girls who would afterwards be as complaisant as was required. one man who had lost his last cent at the gambling wheels, professed great astonishment at this departure from the usual track, a departure quite unnecessary since there were so many ways of amusing oneself out here in the east. of course such unions were common enough, heaven knows--there was nothing unusual about it. but then such fastidious people did not as a rule go in for them. it was not the ménage, it was the fact that this particular young man had set up such, that caused the comment. the comment, however, was short-lived. there was too much else to think about. rogers liked his new life very much. never for a moment did he think of marrying the girl. that, of course, never dawned on him. recollect, he was in all things decent and correct, and such a step would have been suicidal. until the time came for him to go home, she was merely being made use of--and to be useful to the ruling races is the main object in life for the chinese. they exist for the profit and benefit of the superior races, and this is the correct, standard opinion of their value, and there are few on the china coast, from hongkong upwards, who will disagree with it. in time, a son was born to rogers, and for a while it filled him with dismay. it was a contingency he had not foreseen, a responsibility he had not contemplated, had not even thought he could afford. but in time he grew used to the boy, and, in a vague way, fond of him. he disturbed him very little, and counted very little in his life, after all. later, as the years rolled by, he began to feel some responsibility towards the child. he despised half-breeds, naturally--every one does. they are worse than natives, having inherited the weakness of both ancestries. he was sincerely glad to be rid of the whole business, when, at the end of about fifteen years, he was called home to england. it had all served his purpose, this establishment of his, and thanks to it, he was still clean and straight, undemoralised by the insidious, undermining influences of the east. when he returned to his native land, he could find himself a home upon orthodox lines and live happily ever afterwards. before he left shanghai, he sent his little chinese girl, a woman long ago, of course, back to her native province in the interior, well supplied with money and with the household furniture. for the boy he had arranged everything. he was to be educated in some good, commercial way, fitted to take care of himself in the future. through his lawyer, he set aside a certain sum for this purpose, to be expended annually until the lad was old enough to earn his own living. in all ways rogers was thoughtful and decent, far-sighted and provident. no one could accuse him of selfishness. he did not desert his woman, turn her adrift unprovided for, as many another would have done. no, thank heavens, he thought to himself as he leaned over the rail of the ship, fast making its way down the yellow tide, he had still preserved his sense of honour. so many men go to pieces out in the east, but he, somehow, had managed to keep himself clear and clean. rogers drops out of the tale at this point, and as the ship slips out of sight down the lower reaches of the yangtzse, so does he disappear from this story. it is to the boy that we must now turn our attention, the half-caste boy who had received such a heritage of decency and honour from one side of his house. in passing, let it be also said that his mother, too, was a very decent little woman, in a humble, chinese way, and that his inheritance from this despised chinese side was not discreditable. his mother had gone obediently back to the provinces, as had been arranged, the house passed into other hands, and the half-caste boy was sent off to school somewhere, to finish his education. being young, he consoled himself after a time for the loss of his home, its sudden and complete collapse. the memory of that home, however, left deep traces upon him. in the first place, he was inordinately proud of his white blood. he did not know that it had cost his guardian considerable searching to find a school where white blood was not objected to--when running in chinese veins. his schoolmates, of european blood, were less tolerant than the school authorities. he therefore soon found his white blood to be a curse. there is no need to go into this in detail. for every one who knows the east, knows the contempt that is shown a half-breed, a eurasian. neither fish, flesh nor fowl--an object of general distrust and disgust. oh, useful enough in business circles, since they can usually speak both languages, which is, of course, an advantage. but socially, impossible. in time, he passed into a banking house, where certain of his qualities were appreciated, but outside of banking hours he was confronted with a worse problem than that which had beset his father. he felt himself too good for the chinese. his mother's people did not appeal to him, he did not like their manners and customs. above all things he wanted to be english, like his father, whom in his imagination he had magnified into a sort of god. but his father's people would have none of him. even the clerks in the bank only spoke to him on necessary business, during business hours, and cut him dead on the street. as for the roysterers and beach-combers gathered in the bars of the hotels, they made him feel, low as they were, that they were not yet sunk low enough to enjoy such companionship as his. it was very depressing and made him feel very sad. he did not at first feel any resentment or bitterness towards his absent father, disappeared forever from his horizon. but it gave him a profound sense of depression. true, there were many other half-breeds for him to associate with--the china coast is full of such--but they, like himself, were ambitious for the society of the white man. what he craved was the society of the white man, to which, from one side of his house, he was so justly entitled. he was not a very noticeable half-breed either, for his features were regular, and he was not darker than is compatible with a good sunburn. but just the same, it was unmistakable, this touch of the tar brush, to the discriminating european eye. he seemed inordinately slow witted--it took him a long time to realise his situation. he argued it out with himself constantly, and could arrive at no logical explanation. if his mother, pure chinese, was good enough for his father, why was not he, only half-chinese, good enough for his father's people? especially in view of the fact that his father's history was by no means uncommon. his father and his kind had left behind them a trail of half-breeds--thousands of them. if his mother had been good enough for his father---his thoughts went round and round in a puzzled, enquiring circle, and still the problem remained unsolved. for he was very young, and not as yet experienced. he was well educated. why had his father seen to that? and he was well provided for, and was now making money on his own account. he bought very good clothes with his money, and went in the bar of one of the big hotels, beautifully dressed, and took a drink at the bar and looked round to see who would drink with him. he could never catch a responsive eye, so was forced to drink alone. he hated drinking, anyway. in many ways he was like his father. the petty clerks who were at the office failed to see him at the race course. he hated the races, anyway. in many respects he was like his father. but he was far more lonely than his father had ever been. thus he went about very lonely, too proud to associate with the straight chinese, his mother's people, and humbled and snubbed by the people of his father's race. he was twenty years old when the great war upset europe. shanghai was a mass of excitement. the newspapers were ablaze. men were needed for the army. one of the clerks in the office resigned his post and went home to enlist. in the first rush of enthusiasm, many other young englishmen in many other offices resigned their positions and enlisted, although not a large number of them did so. for it was inconceivable that the war could last more than a few weeks--when the first p. and o. boat reached london, it would doubtless all be over. during the excitement of those early days, some of the office force so far forgot themselves as to speak to him on the subject. they asked his opinion, what he thought of it. they did not ask the shroff, the chinese accountant, what he thought of it. but they asked him. his heart warmed! they were speaking to him at last as an equal, as one who could understand, who knew things english, by reason of his english blood. so the autumn came, and still the papers continued full of appeals for men. no more of the office force enlisted, and their manner towards him, of cold indifference, was resumed again after the one outburst of friendliness occasioned by the first excitement. still the papers contained their appeals for men. but the men in the other offices round town did not seem to enlist either. he marvelled a little. doubtless, however, england was so great and so invincible that she did not need them. but why then these appeals? soon he learned that these young men could not be spared from their offices in the far east. they were indispensable to the trade of the mighty empire. still, he remained puzzled. one day, in a fit of boldness, he ventured to ask the young man at the next stool why he did not go. according to the papers, england was clamouring loudly for her sons. "enlist!" exclaimed the young englishman angrily, colouring red. "why don't you enlist yourself? you say you're an englishman, i believe!" the half-breed did not see the sneer. a great flood of light filled his soul. he was english! one half of him was english! england was calling for her own--and he was one of her own! he would answer the call. a high, hot wave of exultation passed over him. his spirit was uplifted, exalted. the glorious opportunity had come to prove himself--to answer the call of the blood! why had he never thought of it before! for days afterwards he went about in a dream of excitement, his soul dwelling on lofty heights. he asked to be released from his position, and his request was granted. the manager shook hands with him and wished him luck. his brother clerks nodded to him, on the day of his departure, and wished him a good voyage. they did not shake hands with him, and were not enthusiastic, as he hoped they would be. his spirits were a little dashed by their indifference. however, they had always slighted him, so it was nothing unusual. it would be different after he had proved himself--it would be all right after he had proved himself, had proved to himself and to them, that english blood ran in his veins, and that he was answering the call of the blood. his adventures in the war do not concern us. they concern us no more than the gap in the office, caused by his departure, concerned his employer or his brother clerks. within a few weeks, his place was taken by another young englishman, just out, and the office routine went on as usual, and no one gave a thought to the young recruit who had gone to the war. just one comment was made. "rather cheeky of him, you know, fancying himself an englishman." then the matter dropped. gambling and polo and golf and cocktails claimed the attention of those who remained, and life in shanghai continued normal as usual. in due course of time, his proving completed, he returned to his native land. as the ship dropped anchor in the lower harbour, his heart beat fast with a curious emotion. an unexpected emotion, chinese in its reactions. the sight of the yellow, muddy yangtzse moved him strangely. it was his river. it belonged, somehow, to him. he stood, a lonely figure, on the deck, clad in ill-fitting, civilian clothes, not nearly so jaunty as those he used to wear before he went away. his clothes fell away from him strangely, for illness had wasted him, and his collar stood out stiffly from his scrawny neck. one leg was gone, shot away above the knee, and he hobbled painfully down the gangplank and on to the tender, using his crutches very awkwardly. the great, brown, muddy yangtzse! his own river! the ships of the world lay anchored in the harbour, the ships of all the world! the tender made its way upward against the rushing tide, and great, clumsy junks floated downstream. as they neared the dock, crowds of bobbing sampans, with square, painted eyes--so that they might see where they were going--came out and surrounded them. a miserable emotion overcame him. they were his junks--he understood them. they were his sampans, with their square, painted eyes--eyes that the foreigners pointed to and laughed at! he understood them all--they were all his! presently he found himself upon the crowded bund, surrounded by a crowd of men and women, laughing, joyous foreigners, who had come to meet their own from overseas. no one was there to meet him, but it was not surprising. he had sent word to no one, because he had no one to send word to. he was undecided where to go, and he hobbled along a little, to get out of the crowd, and to plan a little what he should do. as he stood there undecided, waiting a little, hanging upon his crutches, two young men came along, sleek, well-fed, laughing. he recognised them at once--two of his old colleagues in the office. they glanced in his direction, looked down on his pinned-up trouser leg, caught his eye, and then, without sign of recognition, passed on. he was still a half-breed. on the heights ii on the heights rivers made his way to china many years ago. he was an adventurer, a ne'er-do-weel, and china in those days was just about good enough for him. since he was english, it might have seemed more natural for him to have gone to india, or the straits settlements, or one of the other colonies of the mighty empire, but for some reason, china drew him. he was more likely to meet his own sort in china, where no questions would be asked. and he did meet his own sort--people just like himself, other adventurers and ne'er-do-weels, and their companionship was no great benefit to him. so he drifted about all over china, around the coast towns and back into the interior, to and fro, searching for opportunities to make his fortune. but being the kind of man he was, fortune seemed always to elude him. in course of time he became rather well known on the china coast--known as a beach-comber. and even when he went into the remote, interior province of szechuan, where he lived a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence for several years, he was also known as a beach-comber. which shows that being two thousand miles inland does not alter the characteristics associated with that name. personally, he was not a bad sort. men liked him, that is, men of his own type. some of them succeeded better than he did, and afterwards referred to him as "poor old rivers," although he was not really old at that time. neither was he really old either, when he died, several years later. he was rather interesting too, in a way, since he had experienced many adventures in the course of his wanderings in remote parts of the country, which adventures were rather tellable. he even knew a lot about china, too, which is more than most people do who have lived in china many years. had he been of that sort, he might have written rather valuable books, containing his shrewd observations and intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic conditions. but he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. at the end of which time he met a plaintive little englishwoman, just out from home, and she, knowing nothing whatever of rivers, but being taken with his glib tongue and rather handsome person, married him. as the wife of a confirmed beach-comber she had rather a hard time of it. but for all that she was so plaintive and so supine, there was a certain quality of force within her, and she insisted upon some provision for the future. they were living in the interior at that time, not too far in, and rivers had come down to shanghai to negotiate some transactions for a certain firm. he could do things like that well enough when he wanted to, as he had a certain ability, and a knowledge of two or three chinese dialects, and these things he could put to account when he felt like it. aided by his wife, stimulated by her quiet, subtle insistence, he put through the business entrusted to him, and the business promised success. which meant that the interior town in which they found themselves would soon be opened to foreign trade. and as a new trade centre, however small, europeans would come to the town from time to time and require a night's lodging. here was where mrs. rivers saw her chance and took it. in her simple, wholly supine way, she realised that there were nothing but chinese inns in the place, and therefore it would be a good opportunity to open a hotel for foreigners. numbers of foreigners would soon be arriving, thanks to rivers' efforts, and as he was now out of employment (having gone on a prolonged spree to celebrate his success and been discharged in consequence), there still remained an opportunity for helping foreigners in another way. personally, he would have preferred to open a gambling house, but the risks were too great. at that time the town was not yet fully civilized or europeanised, and he realised that he would encounter considerable opposition to this scheme from the chinese--and he was without sufficient influence or protection to oppose them. his wife, therefore, insisted upon the hotel, and he saw her point. she did not make it in behalf of her own welfare, or the welfare of possible future children. she merely made it as an opportunity that a man of his parts ought not to miss. he had made a few hundred dollars out of his deal, and fortunately, had not spent all of it on his grand carouse. there was enough left for the new enterprise. so they took a temple. buddhism being in a decadent state in china, and the temples being in a still further state of decay, it was an easy matter to arrange things with the priests. the temple selected was a large, rambling affair, with many compounds and many rooms, situated in the heart of the city, and near the newly opened offices of the newly established firm, the nucleus of this coming trade centre of china. a hundred dollars mex. rented it for a year, and mrs. rivers spent many days sweeping and cleaning it, while rivers himself helped occasionally, and hired several coolies to assist in the work as well. the monks' houses were washed and whitewashed; clean, new mats spread on the floors, cheap european cots installed, with wash basins, jugs and chairs, and other accessories such as are not found in native inns. the main part of the temple still remained open for worship, with the dusty gods on the altars and the dingy hangings in place as usual. the faithful, such as there were, still had access to it, and the priests lived in one of the compounds, but all the other compounds were given over to rivers for his new enterprise. thus the prejudices of the townspeople were not excited, the old priests cleared a hundred dollars mex., while the new tenants were at liberty to pursue their venture to its most profitable limits. mrs. rivers managed the housekeeping, assisted by a capable chinese cook, and rivers had a sign painted, in english, bearing the words "temple hotel." fortunately it was summertime, so there were no expenses for artificial heat, an item which would have taxed their small capital beyond its limits. two weeks after the temple hotel swung out its sign, the first guest arrived, the manager of the new company. he came to town reluctantly, dreading the discomforts of a chinese inn, and bringing with him his food and bedding roll, intending to sleep in his cart in the courtyard. consequently he was greatly pleased and greatly surprised to find a european hotel, and he stayed there ten days in perfect comfort. mrs. rivers treated him royally--lost money on him, in fact, but it was a good investment. at parting, the manager told rivers that his wife was a marvel, as indeed she was. then he went down to shanghai and spread the news among his friends, and from that time on, the success of the temple hotel was assured. true, rivers still continued to be a good fellow, that is, he continued to drink pretty hard, but his guests overlooked it and his wife was used to it, and the establishment continued to flourish. in a year or two the railroad came along, and a period of great prosperity set in all round. like most foreigners, rivers had a profound contempt for the chinese. they were inferior beings, made for servants and underlings, and to serve the dominant race. he was at no pains to conceal this dislike, and backed it up by blows and curses as occasion required. in this he was not alone, however, nor in any way peculiar. others of his race feel the same contempt for the chinese and manifest it by similar demonstrations. lying drunk under a walnut tree of the main courtyard, rivers had only to raise his eyes to his blue-coated, pig-tailed coolies, to be immensely aware of his superiority. kwong, his number-one boy, used to survey him thus stretched upon the ground, while rivers, helpless, would explain to kwong what deep and profound contempt he felt for all those who had not his advantages--the great, god-given advantage of a white skin. the lower down one is on the social and moral plane, the more necessary to emphasize the distinction between the races. kwong used to listen, imperturbable, thinking his own thoughts. when his master beat him, he submitted. his impassive face expressed no emotion, neither assent nor dissent. except for incidents like these, of some frequency, things went on very well with rivers for three or four years, and then something happened. he had barely time to bundle his wife and children aboard an english ship lying in harbour and send them down river to shanghai, before the revolution broke out. he himself stayed behind to see it through, living in the comparative security of his consulate, for the outbreak was not directed against foreigners and he was safe enough outside the city, in the newly acquired concession. on this particular day, when things had reached their climax and the rebels were sacking and burning the town, rivers leaned over the ramparts of the city wall and watched them. the whole tartar city was in flames, including the temple hotel. he watched it burn with satisfaction. when things quieted down, he would put in his claim for an indemnity. the chinese government, whichever or whatever it happened to be, should be made to pay handsomely for his loss. really, at this stage of his fortunes nothing could have been more opportune. the temple hotel had reached the limit of its capacity, and he had been obliged to turn away guests. moreover the priests, shrewd old sinners, had begun to clamour for increased rental. they had detected signs of prosperity--as indeed, who could not detect it--and for some time past they had been urging that a hundred dollars mex. a year was inadequate compensation. well, this revolution, whatever it was all about, would put a stop to all that. rivers would claim, and would undoubtedly receive, an ample indemnity, with which money he would build himself a fine modern hostelry, such as befitted this flourishing new trade centre, and as befitted himself, shrewd and clever man of affairs. altogether, this revolution was a most timely and fortunate occurrence. he surveyed the scene beneath him, but a good way off, be it said. shrieks and yells, firing and destruction, and the whole tartar city in names and fast crumbling into ashes. the revolution settled itself in due time. the rebels either got what they wanted, or didn't get what they wanted, or changed their minds about wanting it after all, as sometimes happens with chinese uprisings. whichever way it was, law and order were finally restored and life resumed itself again on normal lines, although the tartar city, lying within the chinese city, was a total wreck. what happened in consequence to the despoiled and dispersed manchu element is no concern of ours. rivers put in his claim for an indemnity and got it. it was awarded promptly, that is, with the delay of only a few months, and he at once set out to build himself a fine hotel, in accordance with his highest ambitions. the construction was entrusted to a native contractor, and while the work progressed apace, he and his wife went down river to shanghai, and the children were sent north somewhere to a mission school. during this enforced residence in shanghai, in which city he had been known some years ago as a pronounced beach-comber and ne'er-do-weel, he was obliged to live practically without funds. however, he was able to borrow on the strength of his indemnity, but to do him justice, he limited his borrowings to the lowest terms, not wishing to encroach upon his capital. in all this economy of living, his wife assisted him greatly, for although supine and flexible there was that quality of force about her which we have mentioned before. as befitted a person who had lost his all in a chinese uprising and had been rewarded with a large sum of money in return, rivers was particularly bitter against the chinese. his old contempt and hatred flared up to large proportions, and he expressed his feelings openly and freely, especially at those times when alcohol clouded his judgment. moreover, he was living in shanghai now, where it was easy to express his feelings in the classic way approved by foreigners, and sanctioned by the customs and usages of the international settlement. he delighted to walk along the bund, among crowds of burdened coolies bending and panting under great sacks of rice, and to see them shrink and swerve as he approached, fearing a blow of his stick. when he rode in rickshaws, he habitually cheated the coolie of his proper fare, secure in the knowledge that the chinese had no redress, could appeal to no one, and must accept a few coppers or none at all, at his pleasure. if the coolie objected, rivers still had the rights of it. a crowd might collect, vociferating in their vile jargon, but it mattered nothing. a word from rivers to a passing european, to a policeman, to any one whose word carries in the settlement, was sufficient. he had but to explain that one of these impertinent yellow pigs had tried to extort three times the legal fare, and his case was won. no coolie could successfully contradict the word of a foreigner, no police court, should matters go as far as that, would take a chinaman's word against that of a white man. he was quite secure in his bullying, in his dishonesty, in his brutality, and there is no place on earth where the white man is more secure in his whitemanishness than in this settlement, administered by the ruling races of the world. rivers thoroughly enjoyed these street fracases, in which he was the natural and logical victor. he enjoyed telling about them afterward, for they served to illustrate his conception of the chinese character and of the chinese race in general. it was but natural for him to feel this way, seeing what losses he had suffered through the revolution. as he told of his losses, it was not apparent to an outsider that the hotel had not been utterly and entirely his property, instead of an old buddhist temple rented from the priests for one hundred dollars mex. a year. besides rivers, others in the town in the interior had suffered hardships. among them was his number-one boy, kwong, who had served him faithfully for several years. kwong had been rather hard hit by the uprising. his wretched little hovel had been burned to the ground, his wife had fallen victim to a bullet, while his two younger children disappeared during the excitement and were never heard of again. killed, presumably. after the victorious rebels had had their way, all that remained to kwong was his son liu, aged eighteen, and these two decided to come down to shanghai and earn their living amidst more civilized surroundings. one of the strongest arguments in favour of the international settlement is that it affords safety and protection to the chinese. they flock to it in great numbers, preferring the just and beneficent administration of the white man to the uncertainties of native rule. so kwong and his son made their way down the yangtzse, floating down river on a stately junk with ragged matting sails. it was the tide, and a bamboo pole for pushing, rather than any assistance derived from the ragged sails, which eventually landed them in the safe harbour of whangpoo creek, and stranded them on the mud flats below garden bridge. being illiterate people, father and son, unskilled labour was all that presented itself, so they became rickshaw coolies, as so many country people do. during a year, some two hundred thousand men, young and old and mostly from up-country, take up the work of rickshaw runners. it is not profitable employment, and the work is hard, and many of them drop out--the come-and-go of rickshaw runners is enormous, a great, unstable, floating population. kwong and liu hired a rickshaw between them, for a dollar and ten cents a day, and their united exertions barely covered the day's hire. sometimes they had a few coppers over and above the daily expenses, sometimes they fell below that sum and had to make up the deficit on the morrow. on the occasions when they were in debt to the proprietor, they were forced to forego the small outlay required for food, and neither could afford a meagre bowl of millet. pulling a rickshaw on an empty stomach is not conducive to health. kwong, being an older man, found the strain very difficult, and liu, being but a fledgling and weak and undeveloped at that, also found it difficult. they were always tired, nearly always hungry, and part of the time ill. and what neither could understand was the passengers' objection to paying the legal fare. now and then, of course, they had a windfall in the shape of a tourist or a drunken sailor from a cruiser, but these exceptions were few and far between. necessarily so, considering the number of rickshaws, and that the tram cars were strong competitors as well. they were also surprised at the attitude of the europeans. the first time that liu was struck over the head by a beautiful malacca cane, he was aghast with astonishment--and pain. fortunately he knew enough not to hit hack. not understanding english, he did not know that he was being directed to turn up the peking road, and accordingly had run swiftly past the peking road until brought to his senses, so to speak, by a silver knob above the ear, which made him dizzy with pain. as time passed, however, he grew accustomed to this attitude of the ruling race, and accepted the blows without remonstrance, knowing that remonstrance was vain. his fellow coolies soon taught him that. he and his kind were but dogs in the sight of the foreigners, and must accept a dog's treatment in consequence. once a lady leaned far forward in the rickshaw and gave him a vicious kick. up till then, he had not realised that the women of the white race also had this same feeling towards him. but what can one expect? if a man lowers himself to the plane of an animal and gets between shafts, he must expect an animal's treatment. in certain communities, however, there are societies to protect animals. matters went along like this for some months, and kwong and liu barely kept themselves going. however, they managed to keep out of debt for the rickshaw hire, which was in itself an achievement. rivers also continued to live in shanghai at this time, making up-river trips now and then to inspect the progress of his new hotel, which was favourable. as he landed at the bund one day, returning from one of these excursions, he chanced to step into the rickshaw pulled by his old servitor, kwong. kwong made him a respectful salute, but rivers, preoccupied, failed to recognise his former servant in the old and filthy coolie who stood between the shafts of an old and shabby rickshaw. he always made it a point to select old rickshaws, pulled by broken down men. they looked habitually underpaid, and were probably used to it, and were therefore less likely to raise objections at the end of the trip than one of the swift young runners who stood about the european hotels. remember, in extenuation, that rivers was living on credit at this time, on borrowed money, and he did not like to be more extravagant than he had to. the day was a piping hot one, and the distance rivers travelled was something under three miles, out on the edge of french town. when he alighted, he found but three copper cents in his pocket, all that was left him after a considerable carouse on the river boat coming down. he tendered this sum to the panting and sweating kwong, who stood exhausted but respectful, hoping in a friendly way that his old master would recognise him. to do rivers justice, he did not recognise his former servant, nor did he have more than three copper cents in his possession, although that fact was known to him when he stepped into the rickshaw and directed the coolie to french town, extreme limits. kwong indignantly rejected the copper cents, and rivers flung them into the dust and turned away. kwong ran after him, expostulating, catching him by the coat sleeve. rivers turned savagely. the wide road was deserted, and in a flash he brought his heavy blackwood stick across kwong's face with a terrific blow. the coolie fell sprawling in the dust at his old master's feet, and rivers, furious, kicked him savagely in the stomach, again and again, until the man lay still and ceased writhing. blood gushed from his mouth, making a puddle in the dust, a puddle which turned black and thick about the edges. in an instant rivers was sobered. he glanced swiftly up and down the road, and to his dismay, saw a crowd of blue coated figures running in his direction. he had barely time to stoop down and pick up the tell-tale coppers before he was surrounded by a noisy and excited group of chinese, gesticulating furiously and rending the hot, blue air with their outlandish cries. a policeman came in sight, and a passing motor filled with foreigners stopped to see the trouble. he had overdone things, surely. there was nothing for it but the police station. now such accidents are not infrequent in shanghai, the white man's city built in china, administered by the white men to their own advantage, and to the advantage of the chinese who seek protection under the white man's just and beneficent rule. however, human life is very cheap in china, cheaper than most places in the orient, although that is not saying much. it would, therefore, have been very easy for rivers to have extricated himself from this scrape had he possessed any money. two hundred and fifty dollars, mex. is the usual price for a coolie's life when an affair of this kind happens. there is a well established precedent to this effect. unfortunately for rivers, he did not possess two hundred and fifty dollars, for as has been said, he was at this time living on borrowed money. nothing for it then but a trial, and certain unpleasant publicity. happily, there were no witnesses to the occurrence, and rivers' plea of self-defence would naturally he accepted. it was an unpleasant business, however, but there was no other way out of it, seeing that he was bankrupt. the trial took place with due dignity. evidence, produced after an autopsy, proved that at the time of the accident kwong was in a very poor state of health. every one knows that the work of a rickshaw coolie is hard, the physical strain exceedingly severe. four years, at the outside, is the average life of a rickshaw runner, after which he must change his occupation to something more suited to a physical wreck. much testimony was produced to show that kwong had long ago reached that point. he was courting death, defying death, every day. it was his own fault. he had great varicose veins in his legs, which were large and swollen. his heart, constantly overtaxed by running with heavy weights, was enlarged and ready to burst any moment. his spleen also was greatly dilated and ready to burst--in fact, it was not at all clear whether after such a long run--three miles in such heat--he would not have dropped dead anyway. such cases were of daily occurrence, too numerous to mention. the slight blow he had received--a mere push as defendant had stated under oath--was probably nothing more than a mere unfortunate coincidence. such being the evidence, and the courts being administered by europeans, and there being no doubt whatever of the quality of justice administered by europeans in their own behalf, it is not surprising that rivers was acquitted. the verdict returned was, accidental death due to rupture of the spleen, caused by over-exertion. rivers was a good deal shaken, however, when he stepped out of the courtroom, into the hot, bright sunshine, and received the congratulations of his friends. he had heard so many disgusting medical details of the havoc caused by rickshaw pulling, that he resolved to be very careful in future about hitting these impudent, good-for-nothing swine. amongst the crowd in the courtroom, but practically unnoticed, sat liu, son of the late kwong. the proceedings being in english, he was unable to follow them, but he knew enough to realise that the slayer of his father was being tried. presumably his life was at stake, as was befitting under the circumstances. therefore his surprise was great when the outcome of the case was explained to him by a chinese friend who understood english, and his astonishment, if such it may be called, was still more intense upon seeing rivers walk out of the courtroom receiving congratulatory handshakes as he passed. to the ignorant mind of the young chinese, rivers was being felicitated for having committed murder. he was unable to draw any fine distinctions, or to understand that these congratulations were not intended for rivers personally, but because his acquittal strengthened established precedents. precedents that rendered unassailable the status of the ruling race. liu was therefore filled with an overmastering and bitter hatred of rivers, and had he realised what the acquittal stood for, would probably have been filled with an equally intense hatred for the dominant race in general. not understanding that, however, he concentrated his feelings upon rivers, and resolved to bring him to account in accord with simpler, less civilized standards. within two months, the temple hotel was finished and ready for use. much foreign furniture had been sent up from shanghai, and rivers and his wife also removed themselves to the up-river town and set about their business. rivers was glad to leave shanghai; he had had enough of it, since his unlucky episode, and was glad to bury himself in the comparative obscurity of the interior. life resumed itself smoothly once again, and he prospered exceedingly. his attitude towards the natives, however, was more domineering than ever, now that he had recovered from the unpleasant two weeks that preceded his trial. these two weeks had been more uncomfortable than he liked to think about, but safely away from the scene of the disturbance, he became more abusive, more brutal than ever in his attitude towards the chinese. his servants horribly feared him, yet did his bidding with alacrity. the reputation of a man who could kill when he chose, with impunity, stood him in good stead. liu, the son of kwong, followed him up-river and obtained a place in his household as pidgeon-cook, assistant to number-one cook. rivers failed to recognize his new servant, and at such times as he encountered him, was delighted with the servile attitude of the youth, and called him "son of a turtle" which is the worst insult in the chinese language. liu bided his time, for time is of no moment in the orient. his hatred grew from day to day, but he continued to wait. he wished to see rivers thoroughly successful, at the height of his career, before calling him to account. since he would have to pay for his revenge with his life--not being a european--he determined that a white man at the top of his pride would be a more fitting victim than one who had not yet climbed the ladder. such was his simple reasoning. under his long blue coat there hung a long, thin knife, whetted to razor sharpness on both edges. summer came again, and the blazing heat of mid-china, lay over the land. mrs. rivers went north to join her children, and the number of guests in the hotel diminished to two or three. business and tourists came to a standstill during these scorching weeks, and rivers finally went down to shanghai for a few days' jollification. he left his affairs in the hands of the shroff, the chinese accountant, who could be trusted to manage them for a short time. he returned unexpectedly one night about eleven o'clock, quite drunk. the few guests had retired and the hotel was closed. at the gate, the watchman lay asleep beside his lantern, and when rivers let himself in with his key, he found liu in the lounge, also asleep. he cursed liu, but submitted to the steady, supporting arm which the boy place around his waist, and was led to bed without difficulty. liu assisted his master to undress, folding up the crumpled, white linen clothes with silver buttons, and laying them neatly across a chair. he was an excellent servant. then he retired from the room, listening outside the door till he heard sounds of heavy, stertorous breathing. at that moment, the contempt of the chinese for the dominant race was even greater than rivers' contempt for the inferior one. when the proprietor's breathing had assumed reassuring proportions, liu opened the door cautiously, and stepped lightly into the room. he then locked it with equal caution, slipped quietly across to the verandah, and passed out through the long, wide-open windows. the verandah was a dozen feet from the ground, and the dark passage below, leading to the gate, was deserted. at the other end sat the watchman with his lantern, presumably asleep. liu had not heard his drum tap for an hour. a shaft of moonlight penetrated the room, and a light wind blowing in from outside gently stirred the mosquito curtains over the bed. liu tiptoed to the bed, and with infinite care drew the netting aside and stood surveying his victim. rivers lay quite still with arms outstretched, fat and bloated, breathing with hoarse, blowing sounds, quite repulsive. the moonlight was sufficient to enable liu to see the dark outline upon the bed, and to gauge where he would strike. he hovered over his victim, exultant, prolonging from minute to minute this strange, new feeling of power and dominance. that was what it meant to be a white man--to feel this feeling always--always--all one's life, not merely for a few brief, exhilarating moments! and with that feeling of power and dominance was the ability to inflict pain, horrible, frightful pain. that also was part of the white man's heritage, this ability to inflict pain and suffering at will. and after that, death. liu also had the power to inflict death. leaning over the bed, with the long, keen knife in his steady clutch, he was for those glorious moments the equal of the white man! he prolonged his sensations breathlessly--this sense of superb power, this superb ability to inflict humiliation, pain and death. a mosquito lit on rivers' blotched cheek, and he raised a heavy arm to brush it away. then he relaxed again with a snore. liu paused, waiting. the glorious exaltation was mounting higher. it occurred to him to sharpen these sensations, to heighten them. after all, he was about to kill a drunken man in a drunken sleep. he wanted something better. he wanted to feel his power over a conscious man, a man conscious and aware of what was to befall him. even as his father had been conscious and aware of what was befalling him, even as thousands of his countrymen were awake and aware, knowing what was being done to them--by the dominant race. he wished rivers awake and aware. it involved greater risk, but it was worth it. therefore, with the point of his sharp, keen knife, he gently prodded the throat of the sleeper, lying supine before him under the moon rays. gently, very gently, he prodded the exposed throat, placed the point of his knife very gently upon his heaving, corded larynx, which pulsed inward and outward under the heaving, stertorous breaths. gently he stimulated the corded, puffing throat, gently, with the point of his sharp knife. the result was as he wished. first rivers stirred, moved a restless arm, flopped an impotent, heavy arm that fell back upon the pillow, an arm that failed to reach its objective, to quell the tickling, cold point prodded into his throat. then as he slowly grew conscious, the movements of the arm became more coordinated. into his drunken mind came the fixed sensation of a disturbance at his throat. he became conscious, opened a heavy eye, and fixed it upon liu, without at the same time feeling the pressing point at his throat. liu saw his returning consciousness, and leaning over him, pressed upon his throat, ever so lightly, the point of his long knife. thus for a moment or two they regarded each other, liu having the advantage. but so it had always been. having the advantage was one of the attributes of the dominant race. thus for those few brief seconds, liu experienced the whole glory of it. and as little by little rivers emerged from the drunken to the conscious, to the abjectly, cravenly conscious, so liu mounted to the heights. then he saw that rivers was about to cry out. to let forth a roaring bellow, a howling bellow. enough. he had tasted the whole of it. he had felt, for prolonged and glorious moments, the feelings of the superior race. therefore he drove home, silently, his sharp, keen knife, and stifled the mad bellow that was about to be let forth. after which, he crept very cautiously to the balcony, and peered anxiously up and down the dark alleyway beneath. he lowered himself with infinite caution over the railing. he had become once more the cringing oriental. homesick iii homesick a chinese gentleman, with his arms tucked up inside the brocaded sleeves of his satin coat, stood one day with one foot in china and the other upon european soil. from time to time he bore with alternate weight upon the right foot, on chinese soil, and then upon the left foot, upon european soil, and his mental attitude shifted from right to left accordingly. the foot upon chinese soil reflected upward to his brain the restriction of chinese laws, the breaking of which were accompanied by heavy penalties. the foot upon european soil reassured him as to his ability to indulge himself, with no penalties whatsoever. therefore, after balancing himself for a few moments first upon this foot, then upon that, he gave way to his inclinations and resolved to indulge them. in certain matters, europeans were more liberal than chinese. from this you will see that he had been standing with one foot in china, where opium traffic was prohibited, where heavy fines were attached to opium smoking and to opium buying, where heavy jail sentences were imposed upon those who smoked or bought opium, while the other foot, planted upon the ground of the foreign concession, assured him of his absolute freedom to buy opium in any quantity he chose, and to smoke himself to a standstill in an opium den licensed under european auspices. in his saner moments, when not under the influence of the drug, he resented the european occupation of certain parts of chinese territory, but when his craving for opium occurred--which it did with great frequency--he was delighted to realise that there were certain parts of china not under the authority of the drastic laws of china, which laws prohibited with such drastic and heavy penalties the indulgences he craved. therefore he swayed himself backwards and forwards for a space, first upon this foot, then upon that, and finally withdrew both feet into the foreign concession, and directed his steps to a shop where opium was sold under european influence. the shop was capacious but dark. he stated his requirements and they were measured out to him--a large keg was withdrawn from its place on a shelf, and a gentle chinese, clad, like himself, in satin brocade, dug into the contents of the keg with a ladle and withdrew from it a black, molasses-like substance, which ran slowly and gummily from the ladle into the small silver box which the customer had produced. the box finally filled, with some of the gummy, black contents running over the edges, our gentleman withdrew himself, having accomplished his purpose. tucked into the security of his belt, it was impossible to detect the contraband as he again stepped over the boundary line which separated chinese from european soil. half an hour after our chinese gentleman had stepped across the boundary line into the native city, with a large supply of opium concealed in his belt, part of which he would retail to certain friends who had not time enough to run across into the european concession to buy it for themselves, a young englishman stood, by curious coincidence, upon the same spot recently occupied by the chinese. he also stood with one foot upon chinese soil, with the other upon the soil of the foreign concession, and regretted, with considerable vehemence, that at this dividing line his efforts must cease. he had been pursuing, for perhaps a mile, the proprietor of a certain gambling den, whom he wished to apprehend. but at the boundary line, which the chinese had reached before him, his prey had escaped. he was off somewhere, safe in the devious lanes and burrows of the native city. therefore he stood baffled, and finally made his way back into the settlement, along the quais, and finally reached his rooms. he pondered somewhat over the situation. that which was permitted on chinese territory, was prohibited in the foreign holdings--and the reverse. it just depended whether you were on this side the line or that, as to whether or not you were a lawbreaker. morality appeared arbitrary, determined by geographical lines--a matter of dollars and cents. lawson walked slowly along the bund, turning the matter over in his rather limited mind. take the opium business, he considered. the chinese considered it harmful, and wished to abolish it. very good. yet the foreign concessions made money out of it and insisted upon selling it. take another example, he reflected--gambling, his job. or rather, his job was the suppression of gambling--in the foreign holdings. the chinese considered it harmless, a matter of individual inclination. very good. but the foreigners considered it a vice, and he, lawson, was appointed to run to earth chinese fan-tan houses, in the concession, and suppress them. yet his own people, the foreigners, gambled freely and uproariously in their own establishments--at the races, and at certain houses which they maintained for their pleasure. true, these houses were not in the concession--for some reason the foreigners had set their face against gambling in the concession--yet they maintained their establishments, their showy and luxurious establishments, outside the concession and upon chinese soil. they must pay a handsome squeeze for the privilege. yet it was difficult to reconcile. what was right and wrong, anyway? what was moral or immoral, anyway? lawson, of very limited intelligence, walked along, sorely puzzled. sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander--well, two very different kinds of sauces, composed of very different ingredients, as far as he could see. lawson, being a young man of limited intelligence, was greatly puzzled. he had been greatly bothered over this for a long time. it began to look to him--very vaguely--as if morality was not an abstract but a concrete affair. just then he passed an opium shop, and considered again. that surely was a nasty game, yet his government encouraged it--and made money from it. but the chinese, on their side of the boundary line, were doing their best to suppress it. it was very difficult for them to make headway, however, since opium shops flourished and were encouraged by the foreign concessions, over which the chinese had no control. topsy turvy, anyway. no wonder a person like lawson was unable to understand it. it all resolved itself into a question of money, after all. for after all, money was the main object of life, whether on the part of an individual or of a government. and since all governments were composed of individuals, and reflected the ideas of individuals, there you were! by this time, young lawson had become quite bored with life in the far east. the romance was gone and it offered so little variety. one day was so like another, and every day, winter and summer, it was the same thing or the same sorts of things, and there was an intense sameness about it all. by day he did his work--that goes without saying--one has to work in the far east, that is what one comes out to do. otherwise, why come? unless one is a tourist or a missionary, or a buyer of chinese antiques, or has had an overwhelming desire to write a book upon international politics, a desire springing from the depths of gross ignorance. but after all, why not such a book? it reaches, if it reaches at all, a public still less informed, and misinformation is as valuable as no information at all, when we desire to interfere with the destiny of the chinese. in his leisure moments, lawson had tried his hand at such a book--until he suddenly realised that he had been in the orient too long to make it a success. he knew just a trifle too much about affairs, and found himself setting forth facts which would lead to his undoing, as a minor official in the international settlement--if he gave them publicity. he could not afford to lose his position. and he was by no means sure that the deep, unerring sense of justice, the innate instinct of the masses, would rally to his support. he had his own opinion of the ruling classes, but he trusted the masses still less. it was a biting cold night, with a high wind from the north howling down the long streets and whipping the waters of the harbour into a fury. junks strained at their anchors, tossed and heaved, and now and then one broke loose from its moorings and wandered about adrift, spreading infinite terror amongst the owners of other junks, who feared for their safety. a cruiser or two lay in the roads, and the french mail, and two or three japanese cargo-boats, and half a dozen tramp ships from the china coast, but none of these were unduly buffeted by the gale, which only created havoc among the junks and sampans. lawson's lodgings overlooked the harbour, and he laid down his pen and moved from the table to the dark window, trying in vain to see what was going on without. below, the long line of the quais was outlined by long rows of electric lights, swaying and tossing from their poles, and illuminating the shining, wet asphalt of the bund. he was very, very tired of it all. so many years he had been out, and the same monotonous round must be gone through with, over and over again, day after day--until he made money enough to return home. and as a salaried clerk, a court runner, whose duty it was to enforce the laws against gambling in the settlement, that day seemed very far distant indeed. whenever he heard of a fan-tan place--and he heard of them every day--he must investigate, see that it was closed and the keepers, if he was lucky enough to catch them, duly punished. and the players as well. now to eradicate gambling from amongst the chinese is a difficult task, futile and ridiculous, a good waste of time and money. he wondered why his government should attempt it. foolish thing for his government to do--yet what would become of lawson if the undertaking were abolished? taste tea, probably--apprentice himself to some tea merchant, and learn all the nasty rôle of tea spitting. from which you will see that lawson was squeamish about some things, and did not envy those of his friends who had become tea tasters, and who moved all day up and down a long table, filled with rows of stupid little cups, with an attendant china boy forever shoving a cuspidor from one advanced position to another. and if not a tea taster, then some commercial house would absorb his energies, which would be worse still--close at his elbow a spectacled chinese clicking all day upon a dirty little abacus,--checking him up, keeping tabs on him. no, the work he had was better. but he was so tired of it. he leaned himself against the dripping, cold pane, and regarded the lights below, shining on the wet asphalt of the quais. he was thirty years old and ten years in the east had about done for him. the east does, for many people. yes, he reflected bitterly, it had about done for him. it undermines people, in some mysterious manner, and in lawson's case there had been so little to undermine. he had little imagination, and could never imagine the larger possibilities of life, and what he had missed, therefore the undermining of his character was of small account. he was only conscious of an intense boredom, and to-night the boredom was accentuated, because of the weather. he was too inert to splash about in such a driving rain in quest of a friend more weary than himself. if he could just get out of it all! by which, understand, he had not the adventurous spirit of the beach-comber, the adventurer who combs pleasure and profits from the ports of the china coast. he wasn't that sort. he had no desire to take a sampan and row out to the nearest cargo-boat and ship away to the southern seas, and sink himself in romance north or south of the line. no, the mystery of the east, the romance of foreign lands made no appeal to him. and the everlasting monotony of his daily work, of his daily association with his few wearied friends, clerks and suchlike, all minor and unimportant cogs of the big machine overseas, offered him nothing. very decidedly he was homesick. but his tired mind came upon a blank wall--he had no home to be homesick for. nothing compelling, nothing to return to--all broken up long ago, such as it was, long before he had come out to the orient. yet he was longing for the sight of his native land again. yes, that was it--just the familiar sight of it. it offered him nothing in the way of tie or kin, yet he was longing to see it again, just his own native land. he was exiled in china--and he was exiled at home, when you got down to it--but to-night his home land drew him with overwhelming insistence. what can you do, i'd like to know, when you are like this? along the outskirts of the settlement stood big houses, cheerful with lights, with home life, with all that the successful ones had brought out from home, to establish home in the orient. but lawson had nothing to do with these, with all the pompous, successful ones, who ignored him completely and were unaware of his existence. they were all superior to him, with the superiority that new-found money brings, and they looked down upon him as a cheap court runner, told off to round up the fan-tan playing chinese. you see, lawson was common--he had sprung from nothing and was nothing. but these others, these successful ones, they too had sprung from nothing, but out here in the orient they had become important. through the possession of certain qualities which lawson did not possess, they had become large and prominent in the community. they referred to themselves, among each other, as "younger sons." which left one to infer that they were of distinguished lineage. but lawson knew better, and knew it with great bitterness. like himself, they were indeed "younger sons"--of greengrocers. therefore, for that reason perhaps, they went home seldom, for at home they were nobodies. whereas out here--oh, out here, by reason of certain qualities which lawson did not possess, they were important and pompous, and lived in big houses, with lights and guests and servants and motors. therefore lawson resented them, because they thought he was common. and he was common, he admitted bitterly, but so were they. only they were successful, by reason of certain qualities which he did not possess. they ignored him, and left him alone in the community, and it is never very good to be too much alone, especially in the far east. true, they provided him with his job--with his wretchedly paid little government job, which they maintained for no altruistic or moral reasons. to suppress gambling amongst the chinese? perhaps. incidentally, on the surface, it looked well. looked well, he considered, coming from those who never helped the chinese in anything else. who exploited them, in all possible ways, and undermined them--undermined the chinese who were pretty well done for anyway, by nature, being chinese. no, he reflected savagely--he had heard the story--one night some big personage living in one of the big houses, to which he was never invited--had given a big dinner, with much wine and fine food and many guests and all the rest of it--and what happened? no servants, or rather many servants without liveries or clothing of any kind, everything having been pawned the evening before over the fan-tan tables. therefore he, lawson, was employed by government to suppress these gambling houses, to keep the servants from stealing and pawning their liveries, making embarrassment in the big, foreign-style houses, making amusement and consternation and scandal. he had happened along shortly after this affair, and so obtained the appointment. lawson leaned his forehead against the cold glass, down which the rain poured in sheets. the lights of the french mail glimmered intermittently through the darkness--to-morrow she would weigh anchor and be off for marseilles, for home. not that he had a home, as we have said, but he longed for the familiar look of things, for the crowds all speaking his own tongue, for the places he knew, the well known street signs, and the big hoardings. and he couldn't go back. he had not money enough to go back. every penny of his little salary went for living expenses and living comes high in china. to say nothing of the passage money and the money for afterwards---a gentle cough behind him made him turn round in a hurry. his china-boy stood expectantly in the doorway. "what is it?" demanded lawson sharply. ah chang drew in his breath, not wishing to breathe upon his superior. the indrawn, hissing noise irritated lawson immensely. he had been out ten years, and in that time had never learned that ah chang and the others were showing him respect, deep proofs of oriental respect, when they sucked in their breath with that hissing noise, to avoid breathing upon a superior. to lawson it was just another horrid trait, another horrid native characteristic. "man come see master," observed ah chang, addressing space impersonally. "heap plenty important business. you see?" anything for a change this dreary evening. "very well," said lawson, "i see." in a moment or two, a tall chinese shuffled into the room, bowing repeatedly with hands on knees. after which he passed his long slim hands up into the sleeves of his satin coat, and waited quietly till the boy withdrew. he gave a swift look about the room, a glance so hurried that it seemed impossible he could have satisfied himself that they were alone, and then began to speak. lawson recognised him at once as the keeper of a house he had raided the week before, a big, crowded place, where the police had captured a score of players and much money. it was an important haul, a notorious den, that they had been after for a long time. only it changed its location so often, moved from place to place each night, or so it seemed, that lawson had spent months trying to find it. it is not easy finding such places in the crowded, native streets of the concession, and he had stumbled upon it by a piece of sheer luck. and the proprietor had been heavily fined and heavily warned, yet here he stood to-night, silent, respectful, hands up his sleeves, waiting. for once in his life, lawson's imagination worked. he foresaw something portentous looming in the background of that impenetrable mind, revealed in the steady, unblinking stare of those slanting chinese eyes, fixed steadily and fearlessly and patiently upon his. "sit down," he commanded, with a sweep of his hand towards an upright chair. * * * * * after his visitor had departed, lawson stood lost in thought. he was not angry, yet he should have been, he realised. assuredly he should have been angry, assuredly he should have kicked his visitor downstairs. but as it was, he remained in deep thought, pondering over a suggestion that had been made to him. the suggestion, stripped of certain oriental qualities of flowery phraseology and translated from pidgin-english into business english, was the merest, most vague hint of an exchange of favours. so slight was the hint, but so overwhelming the possibilities suggested, that, as we have said, lawson had not kicked his visitor downstairs, but remained standing lost in thought for several moments after his departure. as he had stood earlier in the day, with one foot in the foreign concession, and the other on chinese soil, considering the different standards that obtained in each, so he stood now, figuratively, on the boundary line of an ethical problem and swayed mentally first towards one side and then the other. the irony of it, the humour of it, appealed to him. it seemed so insanely just--just what you might expect. he had been asked--that was too definite a word--to forego his activities for a few brief weeks. and during those few brief weeks he could repay himself, week by week, on friday nights---he had been merely asked--too strong a word--the suggestion had been merely hinted at--he balanced himself back and forth over the problem. if his efforts during the next few weeks should prove fruitless, possible enough, considering the wily race he was dealing with----and in exchange, well, once a week on friday night, he could slip outside the boundaries of the concession to a large, foreign gambling house kept by and for his own people. by his own people, the europeans, who employed him to eradicate gambling from amongst the chinese. do you wonder that he shifted himself back and forth, morally, first from this point of view, then to that? his own people who objected to gaming, when it involved the loss of their servants' liveries. but they had no such scruples when it came to their own pleasure. therefore, for their own pleasure, careless of the inconsistency, they had established a very fine place of their own just outside the boundaries of the foreign concession. lawson had heard of the place before--the most famous, the most notorious on the china coast. kept by the son of a parson, so he had been told, a university graduate. once, ten years ago, he had gone there and lost a month's pay in an evening. but now it was to be different. he could go there now, every friday night, and reap the reward of his inability to discover chinese dens within the concession. for nearly an hour he remained undecided, then determined to test the offer made him--but offer was too strong a word. and his salary was so meagre, so abominably small. and the people in the big houses would have none of him, they never invited him, he was left so alone, to himself. he was intensely homesick. therefore, still on the boundary line, he went to the telephone and called up a certain number. in a confident manner he asked for a limousine. after which he got into his overcoat, muffled himself up well around the ears and nose, for the air outside was cold with a biting north wind, and the rain still drove slantwise in torrents. in a few moments ah chang announced that the calliage had come. round the earner from his lodgings on a side street and in darkness, stood a big car with the motor puffing violently. it was a big, handsome car, very long, and on the front seat sat two men in livery, one of whom jumped down briskly to open the door. lawson entered and sank down into the soft cushions, for it was very luxurious. then the car moved on briskly, without any directions from himself, and he leaned back upon the cushions and took pleasure in the luxury of it, and of the two men in livery upon the front seat, and enjoyed the pouring rain which dashed upon the glass, yet left him so dry and comfortable within. "they will only think it's inconsistent--that's all," he said to himself, "if they ever find out--which is unlikely." beyond the confines of the settlement the motor rapidly made its way, slipping noiselessly over the smooth, wet asphalt, and then out along the bumpy roads beyond the city limits. all was dark now, the street lamps having been left behind with the ending of the good roads, and the car jolted along slowly, over deep ruts. a stretch of open country intervened between the settlement and a native village of clustering mud huts. lawson, having no imagination, was not impressed with his position. people did all sorts of things in china, just as elsewhere--only here, in china, it was so much easier to get away with it. his coming to-night might be considered inconsistent, he repeated over and over to himself, but nothing more. every one did it, he reassured himself. the car stopped finally, before a pair of high, very solid black gates, and the footman jumped off the box to open the door. he was conscious of a small grill with a yellow face peeping out, backed by flickering lantern light, of a rainy, windswept compound, with a shaft of light from an open door flooding the courtyard. then he was inside a warm, bright anteroom, with an obsequious china-boy relieving him of overcoat and muffler, and he became aware of many big, fur-lined overcoats, hanging on pegs on the wall. beyond, in the adjoining room, were two long tables, the players seated with their backs to him, absorbed. only a few people were present, for the night was early. there was no one there he knew--even had there been, he would not have cared. he drew out a chair and seated himself confidently, while a china-boy pushed a box of cigars towards him, a very good brand. and behind came another boy with a tray of whisky and soda, while a third boy carried sandwiches. it was all very well done, he thought absently. the proprietor, being a parson's son and a university graduate, did it very well. there was no disorder, it was all beautifully done. he wondered what amount of squeeze the chinese received, for allowing such a fine place to remain undisturbed on chinese soil. a very big squeeze, certainly. they would surely be very grasping, considering the warfare waged against them, upon their own establishments, by the europeans. it was all very interesting. lawson considered the matter critically, from various angles, knowing what he knew. he sorted his chips carefully. it must pay the parson's son well, he concluded, to be able to run such a fine place, in such style, with so much to eat and drink and all, and with all those motors to carry out the guests. all this in addition to the squeeze--it must really be an enormous squeeze. and the people for whose amusement this was established, were the people who were employing him---for a brief, fleeting second his eye rested upon the calm, unquestioning face of the chinese at the wheel, brother of the proprietor of the fan-tan place he had raided a week ago. the placid eye of the oriental fixed his for the fraction of a second, even as he called out the winning numbers. there was no recognition either way, yet lawson felt himself flushing. the wheel spun again and slowly stopped, and he found himself gathering in thirty-five chips, raking them in with eager fingers over the green cloth. it was all right then, after all! * * * * * lawson was going home. speaking about this, some said, well enough--he has become quite incompetent of late. getting stale, probably. unable to discover the obvious, losing his keenness. ten years in the far east about does for one. but with lawson, the situation was different. he had become so tired of boundary lines, of perpetual swaying back and forth from one side to the other, without conviction. geographical and moral concessions, wrong here, right there, had blurred his sense of the abstract. all he was conscious of was an overwhelming desire to leave it all and go home. and now he was going home. he was very glad. it hurt to be so glad. he was going away from china, forever. he was going back to his own land, where he was born, where he belonged, even though there was no one to welcome his return. there was no roof to receive him save an attic roof, rented for a few shillings a week. for though he had plenty of money now, he still thought in small sums. he was glad to be going home--the joy was painful. his chief praised him a little at parting, and said he had done good work and hoped his successor would do as well. regretted his departure at this moment, since that old fellow who kept such a notorious den was breaking loose again, more villainous, more elusive than ever. lawson heard this with astonishment, with infinite regret. wished he could have stayed to see it ended. he was going home. it hurt to be so glad. in all these years he had been so utterly lonely, so utterly miserable. his few companions came down to the landing stage on the bund to see him off, to wish him luck. they were rather wistful, for they also knew loneliness. they had tried to forget about this longing for home in the many ways of forgetfulness that the east offered, nevertheless they were wistful. lawson understood, he felt great pity for them. he advised them to get away before they were done for, for the east does for many people in the long run. the launch, waiting to take him down river where the steamer lay anchored, grated against the steps of the landing stage, as if eager to be off. "i wish," said one of his friends, "that we had your luck--that we too were going home." lawson's heart ached for them. he had experience but no imagination. "yes," he said simply, "it is very good to be going home." civilization iv civilization i maubert leaned against the counter in his wine-shop, reading a paper that had just come to him--an official looking paper, which he held unsteadily, unwillingly, and which trembled a little between his big, thick fingers. behind the counter sat madame maubert, knitting. before her, ranged neatly on the zinc covered shelf, was a row of inverted wine glasses, three of them still dripping, having been washed after the last customers by a hasty dip into a bucket of cold water. "mobilised," said maubert slowly. "i am mobilised--at last." madame maubert looked up from her knitting. for a year now they had both been expecting this, for the war had been going on for over a year, and maubert, while over age and below par in physical condition, was still a man and as such likely to be called into the reserves. the two exchanged glances. "when?" asked madame maubert, resuming her clicking. "at once, imbecile," replied her husband stolidly. "naturally," he continued, "when one is at last sent for, there can be no delay. i must report at once." "oh, la la," said madame maubert, noncommittally. maubert glanced round his shop, his little wine-shop, his lucrative little business that he had made successful. very well. his wife must run it alone now, as best she could. as best she could, that was evident. she could do many things well. she must do it now while he went forth into service of some kind--into a munition factory probably, or perhaps near the front, as orderly to an officer, or as sentinel, perhaps, along some road in the first zone of the armies. he would not be placed on active service--he was too old for that. nevertheless it meant a horrid jarring out of his usual routine of life, consequently he was angry and resentful, and there was no fine glow of pride or patriotism or such-like feeling in his breast. bah! all that sort of thing had vanished from men long and long ago, after the first few bitter weeks of war and of realisation of the meaning of war. war was now an affair--a sordid, ugly affair, and maubert knew it as well as any man. living in his backwater of a village, keeper of the principal wine-shop of the village, his zinc counter rang every night under emphatic fists, emphasising emphatic remarks about the war, and the remarks were true but devoid of romance. they differed considerably from the tone of the daily press. from the kitchen beyond came the clattering of dishes, and some talking in immature, childish voices, and the insistent, piping tones of a quite young child. they were all in there, all four of them, the eldest twelve, the youngest four, and maubert and his wife leaned across the zinc counter and looked at each other. "it is your fault," he said slowly, with conviction. his eyes, deep set, ugly, sunken, glared angrily into hers. "it is your fault that i am mobilised." she sat still, rather bewildered, gazing at him steadily. "you wished it!" he began again, "you coward! you trembling coward!" still madame maubert made no sign, waiting further explanations. she laid down her knitting and took her elbows in her hands, and by gripping her elbows firmly, stopped the trembling he spoke of. "you don't understand, eh?" he went on sneeringly. "always thinking of yourself, of your pretty figure, how to keep yourself always here at the bar, pretty and attractive, ready to gossip with all comers. nothing must interrupt that. you'd done your share, all that was necessary. and i--poor fool--i let you! i didn't insist--i gave in----" "you wish to say----?" began madame maubert at last, breaking her silence. "yes! to say just that!" burst out maubert. "just that--you coward! when you might have--when you might have--made _this_ out of the question for me." he shook his order for mobilisation. again there was a noise from the kitchen, again the sound of many young voices, and one voice that ended in a cry, an irritated, angry, querulous howl. "i see," said madame maubert slowly, "five instead of four--five would have made it safe for you--eh? i didn't think of that--at the time." "of your own self at the time--as always!" ground out maubert, very angry. he was a very big man, of the bully type, with a red neck that swelled under his anger, or on the occasions when he had taken too much red wine--which meant that it swelled very often and made him a great brute, and his wife disliked him, and tried to put the zinc counter between them or anything else that gave shelter. "you selfish coward!" he cried out again, and slammed his fist down, and then raised it again and shook it at her, "you could have saved me from this--this--being mobilised----! five instead of four! five instead of four! then i would have been exempt, no matter what happened! you contemptible----" he struck at his wife, but missed her. the doorway darkened and two soldiers entered, limping. "my husband is mobilised," exclaimed madame maubert quickly. "his country needs him--he is rather elevated in consequence! doubtless he will be of the auxiliaries, where there is less danger. discomfort, perhaps, but less danger. nevertheless he is regretful," she concluded scornfully. the simple soldiers, home on leave, laughed uproariously. they placed a few sous upon the counter and asked for wine, and drank to maubert solicitously. then they all drank together, to one another's good fortune, and to la patrie. ii maubert was at the front. near it, that is, but in the first zone of the armies and shut off from communication with the rear. he was shut off from communication with his wife and family, isolated in a little hut standing by the roadside, his sentry box. a little box of straw standing upright on the roadside, and with just enough room for him inside, also standing upright. no more. whenever he heard the whir of a motor coming down the road, he opened his front door and stood squarely in the middle of the roadway, waving a red flag by day or a lantern by night, and expecting, both night and day, to be run down and killed by the onrushing motor. he flagged the ambulances and got cursed for it. he flagged the general's car and got cursed for it. impossible pieces of paper were shoved out to him to read, filled with unintelligible hieroglyphics, which he could not read, which he made a vain pretence of reading and then concluded were all right. after which the car or the ambulance dashed on again, and he communed with himself within his hut, wondering whether the car was carrying a uniformed spy, or whether the ambulance was carrying a spy hidden under its brown wings, beneath the seat somewhere. it was all so perplexing and precarious, this business of sentry duty. the papers issued by the d.e.s. were so illegible. sometimes they were blue, sometimes pink, and the remarks written on them were such that no one could understand or know what they were about. people had the right to circulate by this road or that--and when they were trying to circulate by a route not specified in the blue or pink paper, they always explained glibly that it was because they had missed the way, and made the wrong turning. it was all so perplexing. whenever he stopped their cars, the general was always so furiously impatient, and the ambulance drivers were always so furiously impatient, and one asked you if you did not respect the army of france, and the other if you did not respect the wounded of france, if you had no pity for them, and must delay them--altogether it was very perplexing. maubert always had the impression that if he failed in his duties, if he let through a general who wore stripes and medals galore, yet who was a spy general, that he would be courtmartialed and shot. or if he let through an ambulance full of wounded--apparently--yet with a spy concealed in the body--that he would be courtmartialed and shot. always he had in his mind this fear of being courtmartialed and shot, and it made him very nervous, and he did not like to tell people that he could barely read and write. very barely able to read and write, and totally unable to read the hieroglyphics written on the pink and blue papers issued down the road by headquarters, at the d.e.s. he felt that some one ought to know these facts about himself, these extenuating circumstances, in case of trouble. yet he hesitated to give himself away. bad as it was, there were worse jobs than sentry duty. a little way down the road there was an _estaminet_, where he slept when he could, where he spent his leisure hours, where he bought as much wine as he could pay for. but his sentry box always confronted him, which leaked when it rained, and the wind blew through it, and on certain days, when there was much travel by the road, he hardly spent a moment inside it but was always standing in the mud and wind of the highway, waving his flag, and stopping impatient, snorting motors. and always pretending that he could read the pink and blue papers, angrily thrust out for his inspection. too great a responsibility for one who could barely read and write. came the time, eventually, for his leave. five days permission. one day to get to paris. one day from paris to his province. one day in his province at home with his wife. one day back to paris, one day to get back to his sentry box in the first zone of the armies. not much time, all considered. he bought a bottle of wine at the _estaminet_, and got aboard the train for paris. somewhere along the route came a long stop, and he bought another bottle of wine--forty centimes. another stop, and another bottle of wine. he thought much of his wife during these long hours of the journey--thoughts augmented and made glowing by three bottles of wine. she wasn't so bad, after all. the gare montparnasse was reached, and he got off, dizzily, to change trains. he knew, vaguely, that to get to his province in the interior, he must first somehow get to the gare du nord. there was a métro entrance somewhere about the gare montparnasse and he tried to find it. the métro would take him to the gare du nord. no good. such crowds of people all about, and they called him mon vieux, and pulled him this way and that, laughing with him, offering him cigarettes and happy comments, received by a brain in which three bottles of wine were already fermenting. thus it happened that he missed the métro entrance, and instead of finding a métro to take him to the gare du nord, he missed the entrance, turned quite wrong, and walked up the middle of the rue de la gaiétè. and because of the three bottles of wine within him--entirely within his head--he walked light-heartedly up the rue de la gaiétè, with his helmet tossed backwards on his shaggy head, his heavy kit swinging in disordered fashion from his shoulders, his mouth open, shouting meaningless things to the passers-by, and his steps very short, jerky and unsteady. thus it happened, that many people, seeing him in this condition, shuddered, and asked what france had come to, when she must place her faith in such men as that. other people, however, laughed at him, and made way for him, or closed in on him and squeezed his arm, and whispered things into his ears. back and forth he ricochetted along the narrow street, singing and swinging, mouth open, with strange, happy cries coming from it. some laughed and said what a pity, and others laughed and said how perfectly natural and what could you expect. presently down the street came a big, double decked tramcar, and maubert stood in front of the tramcar, refusing to give way. it should have presented a blue paper to him--or a pink paper--anyway, there he stood in front of it, asking for its permission to circulate, and as it had no permission, it stopped within an inch of running over him, while the conductor leaned forward shouting curses. then it was that a firm but gentle hand inserted itself within maubert's arm, while a firm but gentle voice asked maubert to be a good boy and come with her. maubert was very dazed, and also perplexed that he had not received a paper from the big, double-decked tramcar, which obviously had no right to circulate without such permission, sanctioned by himself. he was gently drawn off the tracks, by that unknown arm, while the big tramcar proceeded on its way without permission. it was all wrong, yet maubert felt himself drawn to one side of the roadway, felt himself still propelled along by that gentle but firm arm, and looked to see who was leading him. he was quite satisfied by what he saw. the three bottles of wine made him very uncritical, but they also inflamed certain other faculties. to these other faculties his befogged mind gave quick response. to hell with the tramcar, papers or no papers, pink or blue. also, although not quite so emphatically, he relinquished all thoughts of arriving at the gare du nord, and of finding a train to take him home to his province, where his wife lived. the reasons that made him desire his wife, were quite satisfied with the gentle pressure on his arm. thus it happened that big maubert, shaggy and dirty and drunk, reeling down the rue de la gaiétè, very suddenly gave up all idea of finding his way to his province in the interior. never mind about those three days in paris. maubert was quite sober when he got on the train again at montparnasse. he did not regret his larger vacation. he had had a very good permission, take it all in all. iii at about the time that maubert found himself mobilised and summoned into the reserves, a further mobilisation of subjects of the french empire was taking place in certain little known, outlying dominions of the "empire." i should have said republic or even democracy. the result, however, is all the same. in certain outlying portions of the mighty empire or republic or democracy, as you will, further mobilisation of french subjects was taking place, although in these outlying dominions the forces were not mobilised but volunteered. that is to say, the headsman or chief of a certain village, lying somewhere between the equator and ten degrees north latitude, was requested by those in authority to furnish so many volunteers. the word being thus passed round, volunteers presented themselves, voluntarily. among them was ouk. ouk knew, having been so informed by the headsman of his village, that failure to respond to this opportunity meant a voluntary sojourn in the jungle. ouk hated the jungle. all his life he had lived in terror of it, of the evil forces of the jungle, strangling and venomous, therefore he did not wish to take refuge amongst them, for he knew them well. of the two alternatives, the risks of civilization seemed preferable. civilization was an unknown quantity, whereas the jungle was familiar to himself and his ancestors, and the fear transmitted by his ancestors was firmly emplanted in his mind. therefore he had no special desire to sojourn amongst the mighty forces of the forest, which he knew to be overwhelming. at that time, he did not know that the forces of civilization were equally sinister, equally overwhelming. all his belated brain knew, was that if he failed to answer the call of those in authority, he must take refuge in the forests. which was sure death. it was sure death to wander defenceless, unarmed, in the twilight gloom of noon day, enveloped by dense overgrowth, avoiding venomous serpents and vile stinging insects by day, and crouching by night from man-eating tigers. it presented therefore, no pleasant alternative--no free wandering amidst beautiful, tropical trees and vines heavy with luscious fruits--there would be no drinking from running streams in pleasant, sunlit clearings. ouk knew the jungle, and as the alternative was civilization, he chose civilization which he did not yet know. therefore he freely offered himself one evening, coming from his native village attired in a gay sarong, a peaked hat, and nothing more. he entered a camp, where he found himself in company with other volunteers, pressed into the service of civilization by the same pressure that had so appealed to himself. there were several hundred of them in this camp, all learning the ways of europe, and learning with difficulty and pain. the most painful thing, perhaps, were the coarse leather shoes they were obliged to wear. ouk's feet had been accustomed to being bare--clad, on extreme occasions, with pliant straw sandals. he garbed them now, according to instructions, in hard, coarse leather shoes, furnished by those in authority, which they told him would do much to protect his sensitive feet against the cold of a french winter. ouk had no ideas as to the rigours of a french winter, but the heavy shoes were exceedingly painful. in exchange for his gay sarong, they gave him a thick, ill fitting suit of khaki flannel, in which he smothered, but this, they likewise explained to him, would do much to protect him from the inclemency of french weather. thus wound up and bound up, and suffering mightily in the garb of european civilization, ouk gave himself up to learn how to protect it. the alternative to this decision, being as we have said, an alternative that he could not bring himself to face. three months of training being accomplished, ouk and his companions were by that time fitted to go forth for the protection of great ideals. they were the humble defenders of these ideals, and from time to time the newspapers spoke in glowing terms, of their sentimental, clamorous wish to defend them. even in these remote, unknown regions, somewhere between the equator and ten degrees north latitude, volunteers were pressing forward to uphold the high traditions of their masters. ouk and his companions knew nothing of these sonorous, ringing phrases in the papers. they knew only of the alternative, the jungle. time came and the day came when they were all ushered forth from their training camp, packed into a big junk, and released into the stormy tossings of the harbour, there to await the arrival of the french mail, that was to convey them to europe. the sun beat down hot upon them, in their unaccustomed shoes and khaki, the harbour waves tossed violently, and the french mail was late. eventually it arrived, however, and they all scrambled aboard, passing along a narrow gangplank from which four of them slipped and were drowned in the sea. but four out of five hundred was a small matter, quite insignificant. when the french mail arrived at saigon, ouk was able to replenish his supply of betel nut and sirra leaves, buying them from coolies in bobbing sampans, which sampans had been allowed to tie themselves to the other side of the steamer. at singapore also he bought himself more betel nut and sirra leaves, but after leaving singapore he was unable to replenish his stock, and consequently suffered. every one with him, in that great company of volunteers, also suffered. it was an unexpected deprivation. the ship ploughed along, however, the officers taking small notice of ouk and his kind--indeed, they only referred to ouk by number, for no one of those in authority could possibly remember the outlandish names of these heathen. nor did their names greatly matter. time passed, the long voyage was over, and ouk landed at marseilles. in course of time he found himself placed in a small town in one of the provinces, the very town from which maubert had been released to go to the front. thus it happened that there were as many men in that town as had been taken away from it, only the colour and the race of the men had changed. the nationality of all of them, however, was the same--they were all subjects of the mighty french empire or democracy, and in france race prejudice is practically nil. therefore ouk, who worked in a munition factory, found himself regarded with curiosity and with interest, though not with prejudice. thus it happened that madame maubert found herself gazing at ouk one evening, from behind the safe security of her zinc covered bar. curiosity and interest were in her soul, but no particular sense of racial superiority. ouk and some companions, speaking together in heathen jargon, were seated comfortably at one of the little yellow tables of the café, learning to drink wine in place of the betel nut of which they had been deprived. all through the day they worked in one of the big factories, but in the evenings they were free, and able to mix with civilization and become acquainted with it. and they became acquainted with it in the bar of madame maubert, who served them with yellow wine, and who watched, from her safe place behind the zinc covered counter, the effect of yellow wine upon yellow bodies which presumably contained yellow souls--if any. all this made its impression upon ouk. all this enforced labour and civilization and unaccustomed wine. so it happened that one evening ouk remained alone in the bar after his companions had gone, and he came close up to the zinc covered counter behind which was seated madame maubert, and he regarded her steadily. she too, regarded him steadily, and beheld in his slim, upright figure something which attracted her. and ouk beheld in madame maubert something which attracted him. seated upon her high stool on the other side of the counter, she towered above him, but he felt no awe of her, no sense of her superiority. true, she looked somewhat older than the girls in his village, but on the other hand, she had a pink and white skin, and ouk had not yet come in contact with a pink and white skin. nor had madame maubert ever seen, close to, the shining, beautiful skin of a young oriental. after all, were they not both subjects of the same great nation, were they not both living and sacrificing themselves for the preservation of the same ideals? madame maubert had given up her man. ouk had given up--heaven knows what--the jungle! anyway, such being the effect of yellow wine upon ouk, and such being the effect of ouk on madame maubert, they both leaned their elbows upon opposite sides of the zinc counter that evening and looked at each other. for a whole year madame maubert's husband had been away from her, and for nearly a whole year ouk had been away from the women of his kind, and suddenly they realised, gazing at each other from opposite sides of the zinc covered bar, that civilization claimed them. each had a duty to perform towards its furtherance and enhancement. iv let us now go back to maubert, standing for long months within his straw covered hut, or standing in the roadway in front of it, demanding passports. every day, for many months past, he remembered his misspent permission and cursed the way he had passed it. passed it in so futile a manner. things might have been so different. his companions often chaffed him about it, chaffed him rudely. for he had never seen fit to tell them that he had not gone down to his home in the provinces, as they thought he had, but had been ensnared by some woman in paris who had pulled him away from a passing tram on the rue de la gaiétè. one day the _vaguemestre_ brought him a letter. he was very dizzy when he read it. everything swam round. rage and relief combated together in his limited brain. rage and relief--rage and relief! he could take his letter to the authorities and demand his release--or---for now he had five children, had maubert. no one would question it. in his hand lay the letter of his wife. five children. the fifth just born. that meant release from the service of his country. she said she was sorry. that she had done it for him. he would understand. but maubert did not understand. he remembered his misspent permission, and the thought of it nauseated him. she, too. the thought of it nauseated him. certainly he did not understand. on the other hand, the authorities had on their books the date of his permission. he looked again at the letter of his wife. the dates coincided admirably. he had but to go to his superior officer and show him the letter of his wife, announcing the birth of their fifth child. then he would be free. free from the service of his country, the hated service, the examining of passports presented by a rushing general, by a rushing ambulance, by some rushing motor that was perhaps carrying a spy. he so hated it all. but now, more than anything else, he hated his wife. he would accept his release and go home and kill her. he wouldn't be free any more if he did that, however. he argued it out with himself. so he couldn't kill her. he must accept it. if he accepted his release from the service of his country, he must accept it on her terms. he spent a long day in the rain and the wind, thinking it out. but he thought it out at last. he would accept her terms, obtain his release, go home and see--and then decide. he told his colonel about it, and his colonel chaffed him, and looked over some papers, and finally set in motion the mechanism by which he was finally set free from the service of his country. it took some weeks before this was accomplished, but it was finally done. and when he arrived in paris, coming down from his post in the first zone of the armies, he was painfully sober. no more wine that day for him. no more wine, bought at the _estaminet_ before he left, or bought during the long journey down to paris. no more zig-zagging up the rue de la gaiétè. he found the métro entrance at the exit of the gare montparnasse, took the train, and arrived, shortly afterwards, at the gare du nord, very sober. very sober and angry. and when he reached his home in the provinces, he was still sober and still angry. nor did he know what he should do. he did not know whether he should kill his wife or not. if he did, he must go back to the front. and he hated the front. he hated his duties, sentry duty, in the first zone of the armies. he could not report to his colonel again, and say, "give me back my sentry box--let me serve my country--that fifth child is not mine!" he was in a tight place, surely. but at his home, his mood changed, his wife was very gentle. she said she had been wrong. "ouk is dead," she said. "all those poor little men who come from the tropics die very soon in our cold, damp weather. they cannot stand it. the khaki flannels we give them do not warm them. there is not much wool in them. the cold penetrates into their bones. they catch cold and die, all of them, sooner or later. it is an extravagance, importing them." therefore he was mollified. "for your sake," said his wife. maubert looked down at the fifth child lying in its cradle. the child that brought him release from the service of his country--release from sentry duty, from looking at hastily shoved out, unintelligible passports. "for your sake," repeated his wife, slipping her arm through his arm. "very well," said maubert stiffly. all the same, he thought to himself, the child certainly looks like a chinese. misunderstanding v misunderstanding i they say out here, that one can never understand the native mind and its workings. so primitive are they, these quiet, gentle, brown-skinned men and women, crouching over their compound fires in the evening, lazily driving the lumbering buffaloes in the rice fields, living their facile life, here on the edge of the jungle. so primitive are they, these gentle, simple forest people. in the towns--oh, but they are not made for the towns, they are so strangely out of place in the towns which the foreigner has contrived for himself on the borders of their brown, sluggish rivers, towns which he has created by pushing backward for a little the jungle, while he builds his pink and yellow bungalows beneath the palm trees, and spaces them between the banana trees, along straight tracks which he calls roads. wide, red roads, which the natives have made under his direction, and deep, cool bungalows, which the natives have made under his direction. altogether, they are his towns, the foreigners' towns, and he has constructed them so that they may remind him of his home, ten thousand miles across the world. it is not necessary to try to fancy the natives in these foreign towns. they mean nothing to him, and are far distant from his tendencies and desires. his own villages are different--thatched huts, erected on bamboo piles, roofed with palm leaves. they cluster close together along the winding brown rivers, on the edge of the jungle. mounted very high on their stilts of bamboo, crowding each other very close together, compound touching compound for the sake of companionship and safety. safety from the wild beasts of the forests, those that cry by night, and howl and prowl and kill; safety from the serpents, whose sting is death, shelter, protection, from all the dark, lurking dangers of the jungle--the evil, mighty forests, at whose edge, between it and the winding yellow rivers, they build themselves their homes. yes, but life is very easy here, just the same. a little stirring of the rich earth in the clearings, and food springs forth. a little paddling up the stream or down, in a pirogue or a sampan, a net strung across the sluggish waters, and there is food again. a little wading in shallow, sunlit pools, a swift strike with a trident, and a fish is caught. and fruit hangs heavy from the trees. life is very easy in these countries. and with the coming of the sudden sunset of the tropics, the evening fires are lighted in the compounds and there is gathering together, with song and laughter, rest and ease. so as life is very facile in the jungle, love of money is unknown. why money--what can it mean? why toil for something which one has no use for, cannot spend? just enough, perhaps, to bargain with the white man for some simple need--to buy a water buffalo, maybe, for ploughing in the rice fields. no more than that--it's not needed. and the very little coins, the very, very little coins, two dozen of them making up the white man's penny, just enough of these left over to stick upon the lips of buddha, at the corners, with a little gum. thus a prayer to buddha, and the offering of a little coin, stuck with resin to the god's lips, as an offering. that is all. life is very simple, living in one's skin. i have said all this so that you might understand. only, remember, no one understands, quite, the workings of the savage mind. and these of whom i write are gentle savages, and their way of life is simple, primitive and crude. only, upon contact with the white man, some of this has been obliged to wear off a little. they have had to become adaptive, to assume a little polish, as it were. but at heart, after these many years of contact, they are still simple. they are mindless, gentle, squatting bare backed in the shade, chewing, spitting, betel nut. chewing as the ox chews, thinking as the ox thinks. gentle brown men and women, touching the edge of the most refined civilization of the western world. the tale jerks here--why shouldn't it? the lieutenant told me this bit of it himself--he lives in the foreigners' town, and keeps order there. there was a revolt last year. but that is too dignified a word, it assumes too much, it assumes something that there never was. for revolt signifies organisation, and there wasn't any. it signifies a general understanding, and there wasn't any. it signifies great numbers involved, and there were no great numbers. how could there have been any of these things, said the lieutenant, among a scattered people, scattered through the jungle, on the edges of the warm, mighty forests, at the headwaters of the great winding rivers which penetrate inland for a thousand miles. no, it was in no sense a revolt, which is too strong a word. they had no organisation, they could not communicate with each other, had they wished. distances were great, and they could not read or write. they had never been molested--never schooled. it was better so. education is no good to a squatter in the shade. no, it was rather an uprising of a handful of them in the town of the white man, the town of red earth streets, with pink and yellow bungalows, cool and sheltered under spreading palms. the town where many foreigners lived, who walked about listlessly in their white linen clothes, ghastly pale, with dark rings beneath their eyes, who stifled in the heat and thought of home, ten thousand miles away. it all happened suddenly, no one knows how or why. but one morning, just after the sun rose in his red, burning splendour, there crept into the town a few hundred men. they came in by this red street, with the statue of the bishop at the top--the bronze statue of the bishop who had lived and worked and died here years ago. they came by the red street leading past the bazaar, the model market, fashioned, with improvements, like the one at home. they came by the red street leading past the botanical garden, the gardens where at the close of scorching days the women of the white man, ghastly white, used to drive before sunset, to breathe a little after the stifling day. they came along the quais, where the white man's ships found harbour. altogether, creeping in on many roads, coming in their fours and fives, they made about three hundred. and they were in revolt, if you please, against the representatives of the most refined civilization of the western world! just three hundred, no more. not a ripple of it, apparently, spread backwards to the jungle, to the millions inland, in the forests. what happened? oh, it was all over in an hour! the lieutenant heard them coming--his orderly ran in with the word--and he was out in an instant with eight men. eight soldiers armed with rifles. it was quite amusing. and opposed to them, that mob, in their peaked hats, in their loin cloths or their sarongs, bare to waist as usual. poor fools! fancy--not a gun among them! they thought they were invisible! the geomancer had told them that, and they believed him. carried at their head a flag, some outlandish, homemade thing, with unknown characters upon it. well, it was all over in a moment--those eight men armed with guns saw to that. short work--thirty wounded, fourteen killed. the rest scattered, but before the day was out they had them--had them in two hours, for a fact. all disarmed, and the lieutenant had their weapons. come to see them at his bungalow, if we'd time? interesting lot of trophies, most unique collection. quite unequalled. homemade spears, forged and hammered, stuck on bamboo poles. homemade swords, good blades, too, for all their crudeness. must have taken months to make them, fashioned slyly, on the quiet. killing weapons, meant to kill. swords like the crusaders, only cased in bamboo scabbards. funny lot--come to see them if we'd time. nothing like it, a unique collection. and the flag--red cotton flag, all blood stained, with some device in corner, just barbaric. poor fools! flag pathetic? pathetic? heavens, no! well, they stamped it out very thoroughly, at four o'clock that afternoon. it finished at the race course, for there is always a race course where the white man rules. word went round, as it always goes round in times like this, and just before sunset the whole native population was out to see the white man's method. no one hindered them or feared them, for apparently they had no hand in this uprising, and moreover, were unarmed. they were full of curiosity to see what they should see. silently they trooped out in hundreds through the shady, palm bordered, red streets of the town, padding barefoot past the sheltered bungalows, past the bronze statue of the bishop, out to the edge of the town. all the tropics was there, moving silently, flowing gently, in their hundreds, to the race course. dark skins, yellow skins, eyes straight, eyes slanting, black hair cut short, or worn in pigtails, or in top knots, or in chignons; bare bodies, bare legs, or legs clothed in brilliant sarongs or in flapping pyjamas--all the costumes of all the countries bordering the seven seas streamed outward from the town, very silent. and as the sun blazed low to his setting; all the tropics waited to see what the white man would do. they did it very cleverly, the white men. for they called upon the native troops to do it for them, to see if they were loyal. there were thirty-four prisoners all told, and they walked along with hands bound behind them, looking very stupid. even as they walked along, at that moment the wife of the lieutenant was showing their crude spears to friends--she gave tea to her friends in the pink bungalow, and exhibited the captured weapons, but the lieutenant was not there--he was at the race course, supervising. they led them forward in groups of six, and they were faced by six native soldiers armed with rifles. and just behind the six native soldiers stood six soldiers of the white troops, also with rifles. and when the word was given to fire, if the native troops had not fired upon their brothers, the white troops would have fired upon both. it was cleverly managed, and very well arranged. but there was no hitch. six times the native troops fired upon batches of naked, kneeling men, and six times the white soldiers stood behind them with raised rifles, in case of hesitation. only the crack of the rifles broke the stillness. the dense crowd of natives gathered close, standing by in silence. giving no sign, they watched the retribution of the white man. the sun beat down upon them, in their wide hats, their semi-nakedness, attired in their sombre or brilliant cotton skirts. when it was over, they dispersed as quietly as they had gathered. the silent crowds walked back from the race course, the pleasure ground of the dominant race, and drifted along the red streets of the town, back again to the holes and burrows from which they had come. ii a year later, nearly. the lieutenant who had quelled the uprising, with a handful of men armed with rifles of the latest device, as against three hundred natives armed with spears, had been decorated and was very proud. he also continued to exhibit his unique collection of arms to all comers, when the mail boats came in. nor did he see their pathos. and in the jungles of the interior, where most of them lived, the natives never knew of the existence of the little red flag, and would not have understood if they had been told. why? the white men were kind and considerate. easy and indulgent masters who in no wise interfered with life as lived in the jungle. but with the native troops who had fired upon their brothers it was different. thus it happened that the small coastwise steamer, going her usual cruise among the islands and along the coast of one of the seven seas, carried unusual freight. being a very little boat, with a light cargo, she was sometimes severely buffeted by the northeast monsoon, which was blowing at that time of the year. on these days, when the monsoon was strongest, the few passengers she carried were not comfortable. on other days, when she found calm weather among the islands, it was very pleasant. she dropped anchor from time to time in little bays bordered with cocoanut tree, and from the bays emerged sampans with vivid painted eyes on their prows, seeking out the steamer and the bales of rice she carried, or the mails. the mails, consisting of half a dozen letters for each port, were tied up in big canvas sacks, sealed with big government seals, and the white men who lived on these remote, desert islands, would come themselves to fetch them. they paddled themselves to the steamer in pirogues or in sampans, white faced, anæmic, apathetic, devoid of vitality. the great, overwhelming heat of the tropics, the isolation of life, in unknown islands in the southern seas, makes one like that. yet they were "making money" on their island plantations of rubber or cocoanut, or expecting to make it. it takes seven years of isolation in the tropic seas, after one has started a plantation--and even then, many things may happen---so the little steamer stopped here and there, at little, unknown bays, at places not mentioned in the guide books, and from the beautiful, desolate islands came out sampans and junks, with the lonely figure of a white man sitting despondent among the naked rowers, eager to get his letters from home. it was his only eagerness, but very dull and listless at that. at night, the islands loomed large and mysterious in the darkness, while now and then a single ray of light from some light house, gleaming from some lost, mysterious island of the southern seas, beamed with a curious constancy. there were dangerous rocks, sunken reefs. and always the soft wind blew, the soft, enervating wind of the tropics. on the fore part of the little steamer, that wound its way with infinite care, slowly, among the sunken rocks, the shoals and sandbars, sat a company of fifty men. natives, such as you might see back there in the jungle, or harnessed to the needs of civilization, bearing the white man in rickshaws along the red streets of the little town. these, however, were native troops--the rickshaw runner used in another way. they were handcuffed together, sitting in pairs on the main deck. in the soft, moist wind, they eat rice together, with their free hands, out of the same bowl. very dirty little prisoners, clad in khaki, disarmed, chained together in pairs. a canvas was stretched over that part of the deck, which sheltered them from the glaring sun, and prevented the odour of them from rising to the bridge, a little way above, where stood the captain in yellow crêpe pyjamas. for they were dirty, handcuffed together like that, unexercised, unwashed. they would be put ashore in three days, however, to work on the roads, government roads. notoriously good roads, the colony has too. their offense? grave enough. with the european world at war, this colony, like those of all the other nations, had called upon its native troops. the native troops had been loyal, had responded, had volunteered to go when told they must. proof of that? forty thousand of them at the moment helping in this devastating war. it was a good record--it spoke well---only this handful had refused. refused absolutely, flagrantly defiant. just this little group, out of all the thousands. so they were being sent off somewhere, handcuffed, to make roads. prisoners for three years to make roads, useless roads that led nowhere. good roads, excellent, for traffic that never was. some said they were the soldiers who had been forced to kill their brothers a while back--after that paltry revolution. one didn't know. they are stupid, these natives. chewing betel nut all day, their mouths a red, bloody gash across their faces. the ship stopped finally in some bay. then a big, unwieldy junk put out from shore, and tacked back and forth, for two hours, against a strong head wind, coming to rest finally against the steamer's side. two big iron rods were put out, with a padlock at each end, and places for twenty-five feet to be locked in. then came european guards, with rifles, and revolvers in big leather cases hanging at their sides. the prisoners were very docile, but it was well to take precautions. when all was ready, the prisoners filed out slowly and with difficulty, because of their chains, and descended the gangway ladder to the uncouth junk, with its painted, staring eyes. after that, the junk slowly detached itself from the ship, unrolled its ragged matting sails, and made towards the mainland with the docile cargo. the third passenger leaned over the rail. a sweet breeze blew in from the island, a scented breeze, laden with the heavy scents of the tropics. for three years, he said, they would labour at the futile roads, the roads that led nowhere. really, commented the third passenger, it was impossible to understand the oriental mind. they had chosen this--this isolation, this cutting off from home and friends, rather then go to europe to serve the race that had treated them so well. afraid? oh, no--too ignorant to be afraid. brave enough when it came to that--just obstinate. just refused to serve, to do as they were told. refused to serve, to fight for the race that had treated them so well, by and large, take it all in all. that had built them towns and harbours, brought in ships and trade--had done everything, according to best western standards. it was incomprehensible--truly it was difficult to fathom the oriental mind! the revolt a year ago? oh, nothing! the big junk with the staring eyes carried them off, the supine, listless prisoners, handcuffed together, foot-locked to an iron bar. they must build roads for three years. somewhere at the back of those slow minds was a memory of the race course, of the brothers they had slain. perhaps. who knows. but the occidental mind does not understand the oriental mind, and it was good to be rid of them, dirty little creatures, who smelled so bad under the awning of the main deck. the anchor chain wound in, grating link on link. the soft, sweet wind blew outward from the cocoanut trees, from the scented earth of the island. the third passenger watched the junk disappear in the shadows of the warm night, then he went below to get another drink. prisoners vi prisoners mercier was writing his report for the day. he sat at a rattan table, covered with a disorderly array of papers, ledgers and note books of various sorts, and from time to time made calculations on the back of an old envelope. he finally finished his work, and pushing back his chair, lighted a cigarette. unconsciously, he measured time by cigarettes. one cigarette, and he would begin work. one cigarette and he would start on the first paragraph. one cigarette, to rest after the first paragraph before beginning the second, and so on. it was early in the morning, but not early for a morning in the tropics. already the sun was creeping over the edge of the deep, palm-shaded verandah, making its way slowly across the wooden floor, till it would reach him, at his table, in a very short time. and as it slowly crept along, a brilliant line of light, so the heat increased, the moist, stagnant heat, from which there was no escape. outside some one was pulling the punkah rope, and the great leaves of linen, attached to heavy teak poles, swayed back and forth over his head, stirring slightly the dense, humid atmosphere. mercier was a young man, not over thirty. he had come out to the east three years ago, to a minor official post in the penal settlement, glad of a soft position, of easy work, of an opportunity to see life in the tropics. at a port on the mainland, he transshipped from the liner to a little steamer, which two days later dropped anchor in the blue bay of his future home. at that time, he was conscious of being intensely pleased at the picture spread before him. long ago, in boyhood, he had cherished romantic dreams of the tropics, of islands in southern seas, of unknown, mysterious life set in gorgeous, remote setting. it had all appealed to his fancy, and then suddenly, after many long years, sordid, difficult years, the opportunity had come for the realisation of his dreams. he had obtained a post as minor official in one of the colonies of his country--overseas in the far east--and he gladly gave up his dull, routine life at home, and came out to the adventures that awaited him. the island, as he saw it for the first time, was beautiful. steep hills, rocky and mountainous, rose precipitately out of the blue waters, and the rising sun glinted upon the topmost peaks of the hills and threw their deep shadows down upon the bay, and upon the group of yellow stucco bungalows that clustered together upon the edge of the water, upon the narrow strip of land lying between the sea and the sheer sides of the backing mountains. the bay was a crescent, almost closed, and a coral reef ran in an encircling sweep from the headland beyond, and the translucent, sparkling waters of the harbour seemed beautiful beyond belief. his heart beat wildly when for the first time he beheld his new home--it exceeded in beauty anything that he had ever dreamed of. what mattered it whether or no it was a penal settlement for one of the great, outlying colonies of his mother country, two days' sail from the nearest port on the mainland, the port itself ten thousand miles from home. it was beautiful to look upon--glorious to look upon, and it was glorious to think that the next few years of his life would be spent amidst such surroundings. the captain of the coasting steamer told him it would be lonely--he laughed at the idea. how could one be lonely amidst such beauty as that! his thirsty soul craved beauty, and here it was before him, marvellous, complete, the island a gem sparkling in the sunlight, veiled in the shadow of an early morning. lying somewhere, all this beauty, one degree north or south of the equator! no, assuredly, he would not be lonely! were there not many families on the island, the officials and their families, a good ten or fifteen of them? besides, there was his work. he knew nothing of his work, of his duties. but in connection with the prisoners, of course--and there were fifteen hundred prisoners, they told him, concentrated on those few square miles of island, off somewhere in the southern seas, a few miles north or south of the equator. he was anxious to see the prisoners, the unruly ones of the colony. strange types they would appear to his conventional, sophisticated eyes. he saw them in imagination--yellow skins, brown skins, black skins, picturesque, daring, desperate perhaps. the anchor splashed overboard into the shallow water, and the small steamer drifted on the end of the chain, waiting for a boat to come out from shore. with the cessation of the steamer's movement, he felt the heat radiate round him, in an overpowering wave, making him feel rather sick and giddy. yet it was only six o'clock in the morning. before the boat arrived from shore, the sun had passed over the highest peak of the mountains and was glaring down with full power upon the cluster of hidden bungalows, the edges and ends of which bungalows protruded a little from the shelter of vines and palm trees. white clad men came down to the beach, and a woman or two appeared on the verandahs, and then disappeared back into the verandahs, while the men came down to the water's edge alone. the rowboat was pulled ashore by strong rowers, dark skinned, brawny men, and as the boat neared the beach, other dark skinned brawny men took a carrying chair and splashed out to meet the boat, inviting him by gestures to step into the chair and be carried ashore. he forgot the heat in the novelty of this new sensation--being carried ashore in a chair, with the clear, transparent water beneath him, and wavy sands, shell studded, over which the bearers walked slowly, with precision. and then came his first hours on shore. how calmly they had welcomed him, those white faced, pale men, with the deep circles beneath their eyes. they looked at him with envy, it seems, as a being newly come from contact with civilization, and they looked upon him with pity, as a being who had deliberately chosen to shut himself off from civilization, for a period of many years. he was taking the place of one who was going home--and the man was in a desperate hurry to get away. he looked ill, withal he was so fat, for he was very fat and flabby, extraordinarily white, with circles beneath his puffy eyes blacker and more marked than those on the other faces. the departing official shook hands hurriedly with mercier, and kissed his old companions good-bye hurriedly upon both cheeks, and then hastened into the chair, to get to the rowboat, to get to the steamer as soon as possible. the other officials on the beach commented volubly on his good fortune--ah, but he had the chance! what chance! what luck! what fortune! they themselves had no luck, they must remain here how long, ah, who knew how long! they all stood there upon the beach watching the departing one until he reached the steamer, drifting idly at the length of her anchor chain. then they remembered mercier again, and surrounded him, not eagerly, listlessly, and asked him to the office of the administrator, to have a cup of champagne. a cup of champagne, at a little after six in the morning. as they walked slowly up the beach, mercier spoke of the beauty of the place, the extraordinary beauty of the island. they seemed not to heed him. they smiled, and reminded him that he was a newcomer, and that such was the feeling of all newcomers and that it would soon pass. and in a body, ten of them, they conducted mercier to the bureau of the administrator, a tired, middle aged men, who shook hands without cordiality, and ordered a boy to bring a tray with a bottle and glasses and mouldy biscuits, and they all sat together and drank without merriment. it was dark in the administrator's office, for the surrounding verandah was very wide and deep, and tall bamboos grew close against the edges of the railing, and a little way behind the bamboos grew banana trees and travellers' palms, all reaching high into the air and making a thick defence against the sunlight. the stone floor had been freshly sprinkled with water, and the ceiling was high, made of dark teak wood, and it was very dark inside, and damp and rather cool. there was a punkah hanging from the ceiling, but it stood at rest. its movement had come to make the administrator nervous. he was very nervous and restless, turning his head from side to side in quick, sharp jerks, first over one shoulder and then the other, and now and then suddenly bending down to glance under the table. later on, some one explained to mercier that the administrator had a profound fear of insects, the fierce, crawling, stinging things that lived outside under the bamboos, and that crept in sometimes across the stone paved floor, and bit. only last week, one of the paroled convicts, working in the settlement, had been bitten by some venomous evil thing, and had died a few hours later. such accidents were common--one must always be on guard. most people became used to being on guard, but with the administrator, the thing had become a nightmare. he had been out too long--his nerves were tortured. it was the heat, of course--the stifling, enervating heat. few could stand it for very long, and the authorities back home must have forgotten to relieve the old man--he was such a good executive, perhaps they had forgotten on purpose. the sub-officials were changed from time to time, but the old man seemed to have been forgotten. he could not stand it much longer--that was obvious. mercier went thoughtfully to the bungalow assigned to him, installed his few meagre possessions, and entered without zest upon his work. somehow, the keenness had been taken out of him by that hour's conversation in the darkened bureau of the chief. the weeks passed slowly, but mercier never regained his enthusiasm. the physical atmosphere took all initiative away. his comrades were listless beings, always tired, dragging slowly to their daily rounds, and finishing their work early in the morning before the heat became intolerable. then for hours they rested--retired to their bungalows or that of a comrade, and rested, to escape the intense heat which never varied, winter or summer, although it was a farce to speak of the seasons as winter or summer, except in memory of home. mercier soon fell in with their ways. he drank a great deal, beginning very early in the morning, and measured time by cigarettes, postponing his duties, such that claimed him, till he had just finished another cigarette. they were cheap and bad, but there was a solace in them, and they whiled away the time. the only joviality about the place came in the evenings, after many cigarettes, which made him nervous, and after very many little glasses of brandy, which unfitted him for work but which were necessary to stimulate him for what work he had to do. near the group of bungalows belonging to the officials and to the prison guards, stood the prison building itself, a large, rambling, one storeyed structure, with many windows fitted with iron bars. here the newcomers were kept, about eight hundred of them, and nearby, in an adjacent compound, were quarters for about seven hundred prisoners out on parole, by reason of good conduct. the confined prisoners did not work, being merely confined, but those out on parole, on good conduct, and whose terms would soon come to an end, were trusted to work about the island in various capacities. they made the roads--such few as there were. the island was so small that many roads were not required, and since there was no traffic, but little labour was required to keep the roads in repair. they also worked in the rice fields, but, again, there were not many rice fields. it was easier to bring rice from the mainland. there was a herd of water buffaloes, used for ploughing during the season, and the buffaloes needed some attention, but not much. so the paroled convicts were employed in other ways about the island, in cooking for the prisoners, in cleaning the various buildings, and as servants in the households of the officials. only the most trusted, however, were given such posts as that. yet it was necessary to trust many of them, and each official had a large retinue of servants, for there was little settlement work to be done, and something must be done with the men on parole, since the prison itself was too small to hold fifteen hundred men under lock and key at the same time. moreover, these trusted ones were rather necessary. in the tropics, work is always done in a small, half-hearted way, by reason of the heat which so soon exhausts the vitality, consequently many people are required to perform the smallest task. mercier, therefore, was obliged to accept the life as he found it, and he found it different from the romantic conception which he had formed at home. and he became very listless and demoralised, and the lack of interests of all sorts bored him intolerably. he was not one to find solace in an intellectual life. the bi-monthly call of the supply ship with its stocks of provisions, the unloading of which he must oversee, was the sole outside interest he had to look forward to. old newspapers and magazines came with the supply ship, and these were eagerly read, and soon abandoned, and nothing was left but cigarettes and brandy to sustain him between whiles. on a certain morning, when he had been at the settlement for over a year, he finished his daily report and strolled over to lay it upon the desk in the office of the administrator. the supply ship was due in that day, and he wandered down to the beach to look for her. there she was, just dropping anchor. his heart beat a little faster, and he hastened his steps. it was cattle day. bullocks from the mainland, several hundred miles away, which came once a month for food. he took his boat and rowed, out to the ship, and then directed the work of removing the bullocks. it was nasty work. the coolies did it badly. the hatch was opened, and by means of a block and pulley, each bullock was dragged upward by a rope attached to its horns. kicking and struggling, they were swung upwards over the side of the ship and lowered into the lighter below. sometimes they were swung out too far and landed straddle on the side of the lighter, straddling the rail, kicking and roaring. and sometimes, when the loosely moored lighter drifted away a little from the ship's side, an animal would be lowered between the ship's side and the lighter, and squeezed between the two--so crushed that when it was finally hauled up and lowered safely into the boat, it collapsed in a heap, with blood flowing from its mouth. the coolies did it all very badly--they had no system, and as mercier could not speak to them in their language, he could not direct them properly. besides, he was no organiser himself, and probably could not have directed them properly had he been able to speak to them. all he could do, therefore, was to look on, and let them do it in their own way. sometimes as an animal was being raised, its horns would break, and it would be lowered with a bleeding head, while the coolies stood by and grinned, and considered it a joke. mercier was still sensitive on some points, and while long ago he had ceased to find any beauty in the island, he was nevertheless disgusted with needless suffering, with stupid, ugly acts. there were only twenty cattle to be unloaded on this day, but it took two hours to transfer them to the lighter, and at the end of that time the tide had fallen so that they must wait for another six or eight hours, in the broiling sun, until the water was high enough for the lighter to approach the landing stage, where another block and pulley was rigged. which meant that later in the day--possibly in the hottest part--mercier would be obliged to come down again to oversee the work, and to see that it was finished. for the cattle must be ashore by evening--meat was needed for the settlement, and some must be killed for food that night. mercier was thoroughly disgusted with his work, with his whole wasted life. ah, it was a dog's life! yet how eagerly he had tried to obtain this post--how eagerly he had begged for the chance, pleaded for it, besought the few influential people he knew to obtain it for him. on the way back to his bungalow, he passed along the palm grown road, on each side of which were the red and white bungalows, residences of the dozen officials of the island. they were screened by hedges of high growing bushes, bearing brilliant, exotic flowers which gave out a heavy, sweet perfume, and the perfume hung in clouds, invisible yet tangible, pervading the soft, warm air. how he had dreamed of such perfumes--long ago. yet how sickening in reality. and how dull they were, the interiors of these sheltered bungalows, how dull and stupid the monotonous life that went on inside them--dejected, weary, useless little rounds of household activity, that went along languorously each day, and led nowhere. it all led nowhere. within each house was the wearied, stupid wife of some petty official, and sometimes there were stupid, pallid children as well, tended by convicts on parole. nowhere could he turn to find intellectual refreshment. the community offered nothing--there was no society--just the dull daily greetings, the dull, commonplace comments on island doings or not doings, for all lay under the spell of isolation, under the pall of the great, oppressive, overwhelming heat. how deadly it all was, the monotonous life, the isolation, the lack of interests and occupation. as he passed along, a frowzy woman in a mother hubbard greeted him from a verandah and asked him to enter. years ago she had come out fresh and blooming, and now she was prematurely aged, fat and stupid--more stupid, perhaps, than the rest. yet somehow, because there was nothing else to do, mercier pushed open the flimsy bamboo gate, walked up the gravelled path, and flung himself dejectedly upon a chaise longue which was at hand. and the woman talked to him, asked him how many cattle had come over that morning, whether they were yet unloaded, when they would be finally landed and led to the slaughter pens a little way inland. it was all so gross, so banal, yet it was all there was of incident in the day, and most clays were still more barren, with not even these paltry events to discuss. and he felt that he was sinking to the level of these people, he who had dreamed of high romance, of the mystery of the far eastern tropics! and this was what it meant--what it had come to! a fat woman in a mother hubbard asking him how many bullocks had come in that day, and when they would be ready to kill and eat! she clapped together her small, fat hands, and a servant entered, and she ordered grenadine and soda and liqueurs, and pushed towards him a box of cheap cigarettes. where was her charm? why had he married her, her husband--who was at the moment in the administrator's bureau, compiling useless statistics concerning the petty revenues of the prison colony? but he was just like her, in his way. all the men were run to seed, and all their women too. and these were the only women on the island, these worn, pale, bloated wives who led an idle life in the blazing heat. seven such women, all told. he relapsed into silence, and she likewise fell silent, there being nothing more to get nor give. they were all gone, intellectually. they had no ideas, nothing to exchange. so he smoked on, lazily, in silence, feeling the slight stir in his blood caused by the quinquina. he filled his glass again, and looked forward to the next wave of relaxation. overhead, the punkah swung slowly, stirring the scented air. these were the scents he had dreamed of, the rich, heavy perfumes of the tropics. only it was all so dull! the door opened and a little girl entered the verandah, a child of perhaps fourteen. a doomed child. he looked at her languidly, and continued to look at her, thinking vague thoughts. she was beautiful. her cotton frock, belted in by some strange arrangement of seashells woven into a girdle, pressed tightly over her young form, revealing clearly the outline of a childish figure soon ready to bloom into full maturity under these hot rays of vertical sunshine. she would develop soon, even as the native women developed into maturity very early. his tired glance rested upon her face. that, too, bore promise of great beauty. the features were fine and regular, singularly well formed, and the eyes those of a gentle cow, unspeculative, unintelligent. she was very white, with the deathlike whiteness of the tropics, and under the childish eyes were deep, black rings, coming early. he noticed her hands--slender, long, with beautiful fingernails--such hands in paris! and again his roving glance fell lower, and rested upon her bare legs, well formed, well developed, the legs of a young woman. he stirred lightly in his chair. the feet matched the hands--slender, long feet, with long, slender toes. she was wearing native sandals, clumsy wooden sandals, with knobs between the first two toes. only the knobs were of silver, instead of the usual buttons of bone, or wood. some one had brought them to her from the mainland, evidently. well, here she was, a doomed creature, uneducated, growing older, growing into womanhood, with no outlook ahead. her only companions her dull, stupid mother, and the worn-out wives of the officials--all years older than herself. or perhaps she depended for companionship upon the children--there were a dozen such, about the place, between the ages of two and six. and she stood between these two groups, just blooming into womanhood, with her beautiful young body, and her atrophied young brain. her eyes fell shyly under his penetrating, speculative glances, and a wave of colour rose into her white cheeks. she felt, then, hey? felt what? mercier leaned forward, with something curious pulsing in his breast. the sort of feeling that he had long since forgotten, for there was nothing for such feelings to feed upon, here in his prison. yet the sensation, vague as it was, seemed to have been recognised, shared for an instant by the young creature beside him. it was rather uncanny. he had heard that idiots or half-witted people were like that. she rose uneasily, placing upon her long, sprawling curls an old sun hat, very dirty, the brim misshapen by frequent wettings of pipe-clay. a servant appeared from behind the far corner of the verandah, an old man, dark skinned, emaciated, clad in a faded red sarong. he was her personal servant, told off to attend her. something must be done for the men on parole, some occupation given them to test their fitness before returning them again to society. as she passed from the verandah, followed by the old black man in his red sarong, mercier felt a strange thrill. where were they going, those two? he turned to the inattentive, vacuous mother. "your daughter," he began, "is fast growing up. soon she will be marrying." the woman shrugged her shoulders. "with whom?" she answered. "who will take her? what dowry can we give her? we cannot even send her to singapore to be educated. who will take her--ignorant, uneducated--without a _dot_? besides," she continued eagerly, warmed into a burst of confidence, "you have heard--you have seen--the trouble lies here," and she tapped her forehead significantly. and with a sigh she concluded, "we are all prisoners here, every one of us--like the rest." mercier rose from the chaise longue, still thinking deeply, still stirred by the vague emotion that had called forth an answer from the immature, half-witted child. he had a report to make to the bureau, and he must be getting on. later, when the tide turned, and the lighter could come against the jetty, he must attend to the cattle. he did not linger in the office of the administrator, but sent in his report by a waiting boy, and then strolled inland by the road that led past the prison, into the interior of the island. on his way he passed the graveyard. it was a melancholy graveyard, containing a few slanting shafts erected to the memory of guards and of one or two officers who had been killed from time to time by prisoners who had run amok. such uprisings occurred now and then, but seldom. he entered the cemetery, and looked about languidly, reading the names on the stones. killed, killed, killed. then he came upon a few who had died naturally. or was it natural to have died, at the age of thirty, out here on the edge of the world? yet it was most natural, after all. he himself was nearly ready for the grave, ready because of pure boredom, through pure inertia, quite ready to succumb to the devitalising effect of this life. this hideous life on a desert island. this hideous mockery of life, lived while he was still so young and so vital, and which was reducing him, not slowly but with great pacing strides, to an inertia to which he must soon succumb. why didn't the prisoners revolt now, he wondered? he would gladly accept such a way out--gladly offer himself to their knives, or their clubs, or whatever it was they had. anything that would put an end to him, and land him under a stone in this forsaken spot. surely he was no more alive than the dead under those stones. no more dead than the dead. he passed out of the gate, swinging on a loose hinge, and in deep meditation walked along the palm bordered road back of the settlement. soon the last bungalow was left behind, even though he walked slowly. then succeeded the paddy fields, poorly tilled and badly irrigated. there were enough men on the island to have done it properly--only what was the use? who cared--whether they raised their own rice or brought it from the mainland twice a month? it was not a matter to bother about. water buffaloes, grazing by the roadside, raised their heavy heads and stared at him with unspeakable insolence. they were for ploughing the rice fields, but who had the heart to oversee the work? better leave the men squatting in content by the roadside, under the straggly banana trees, than urge them to work. it meant more effort on the part of the officials and effort was so useless. all so futile and so hopeless. he nodded in recognition of the salutes given him by groups of paroled prisoners, chewing betel nut under the trees. let them be. a bend in the road brought him to a halt. just beyond, lying at full length upon the parched grass, was the little girl he had seen that morning. she lay on her back, with bare legs extended, asleep. nearby, squatting on his heels and lost in a meditative pipe, sat the kling, her body servant. the man rose to his feet respectfully as mercier passed, watching his mistress and watching mercier with a sombre eye. mercier passed on slowly, with a long glance at the child. she was not a child, really. her cotton dress clung round her closely, and he gazed fascinated, at the young figure, realising that it was mature. mature enough. a thought suddenly rose to his mind, submerging everything else. he walked on hurriedly, and at a turn of the road, looked back. the kling was sitting down again impassively, refilling his pipe. from that time on, mercier's days were days of torment, and the nights as well. he struggled violently against this new feeling, this hideous obsession, and plunged into his work violently, to escape it. but his work, meagre and insufficient at best, was merely finished the sooner because of his energy, which left him with more time on his hands. that was all. time in which to think and to struggle. no, certainly, he did not wish to marry. that thought was put aside immediately. marry a stupid little child like that, with a brain as fat as her body! but not as beautiful as her body. besides, she was too young to marry, even in the tropics, where all things mate young. but there she was, forever coming across his path at every turn. in his long walks back into the interior, behind the settlement, he came upon her daily, with her attendant kling. the kling always squatting on his heels, smoking, or else rolling himself a bit of areca nut into a sirrah-leaf, and dabbing on a bit of pink lime from his worn, silver box. mercier tried to talk to the child, to disillusion himself by conversations which showed the paucity of ideas, her retarded mentality. but he always ended by looking at the beautiful, slim hands, at the beautiful, slim feet, at the cotton gown slightly pressed outward by the maturing form within. he was angry with himself, furious at the obsession that possessed him. once he entered the gravelled path of the child's home, and seriously discussed with her mother the danger of letting her roam at large over the island, accompanied only by the old kling. he explained vigorously that it was not safe. there were hundreds of paroled prisoners at large, engaged in the ricefields, on the plantations, mending the roads--there was not a native woman on the place. he explained and expostulated volubly, surprised at his own eloquence. the mother took it calmly. the kling, she replied, was trustworthy. he was an old man, very trustworthy and very strong. no harm could come to her daughter under his protection. and the long rambles abroad were good for the child. was she not accustomed to convicts, as servants? she had a houseful of them, and many years' experience. what did he know of them, a comparative newcomer? for example, she had three pirates, malays from the coast of siam. they were quiet enough now. and one cambodian, a murderer, true enough, but gentle enough now. three house-boys and a cook. as for the old kling, he was a marvel--he had been a thief in his day, but now--well now, he was body-servant for her daughter and a more faithful soul it would be hard to find. for seven years she had lived upon the island, surrounded by these men. she knew them well enough. true, there was the graveyard back of the prison compound, eloquent, mute testimony of certain lapses from trustworthiness, but she was not afraid. she had no imagination, and mercier, failing to make her sense danger, gave it up. it had been a great effort. he had been pleading for protection against himself. mercier awoke one morning very early. it was early, but still dark, for never, in these baleful tropics, did the dawn precede the sunrise, and there was no slow, gradual greying and rosying creeping of daylight, preceding the dawn. it was early and dark, with a damp coolness in the air, and he reached down from his cot for his slippers, and first clapped them together before placing them upon his slim feet. then he arose, stepped out upon his verandah, and thought awhile. darkness everywhere, and the noise of the surf beating within the enclosed crescent of the harbour. over all, a great heat, tinged with a damp coolness, a coolness which was sinister. and standing upon his verandah, came rushing over him the agony of his wasted life. his prisoner life upon this lonely island in the southern seas. exchanged, this wasted life, for his romantic dreams, and a salary of a few hundred francs a year. that day he would write and ask for his release--send in his resignation--although it would be weeks or months before he could be relieved. as he stood there in agony, the dawn broke before him suddenly, as tropic dawns do break, all of a sudden, with a rush. before him rose the high peaks of the binding mountains, high, impassable, black peaks, towering like a wall of rock. it was the wall of the world, and he could not scale it. before him stretched the curve of the southern sea, in a crescent, but for all its fluidity, as impassable as the backing wall of rock. between the two he was hemmed in, on a narrow strip of land, enclosed between the mountain wall and the curving reach of sea. he and all his futile interests lay within that narrow strip of land, between the mountain wall and the sea--and the strip was very narrow and small. he went forth from his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native sandals of wood, with a button between the toes. for underfoot lay the things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the infitting curve of the sea. he tramped awkwardly along in his loose fitting sandals, fast at the toe, clapping up and down at the heel. the one street of the town through which he passed was bordered by the houses of the officials, all sleeping. they were accustomed to sleeping. only he, mercier, could not sleep. he was not yet accustomed to being a prisoner. perhaps--in time---he clapped along gently, though to him it seemed very noisily, past the bungalows of the officials, past the big prison, also sleeping. past the administration buildings, past the weed-grown, unused tennis courts, out upon the red road leading to the mountains. turn upon turn of the red road he passed, and then stopped, halted by a sight. a sight which for weeks past he had worn in his heart, but which he had never hoped to see fulfilled. she was there, that child! that child so young, so voluptuous in her development, so immature in her mentality, and beside her, a little way away, sat the kling prisoner who guarded her. the kling squatted upon his heels, chewing areca nut, and spitting long distances before him. the child also squatted upon the grass by the roadside, very listless. the kling did not move as mercier approached, clapping in his sandals. but the child moved and cast upon him a luminous, frightened gaze, and then regarded him fixedly. therefore mercier sat down by the child, and noted her. noted her with a hungry feeling, taking in every beautiful detail. her exquisite little hands, and her exquisite little feet, shod in wooden sandals, with a button between the toes, such sandals as he was wearing. he talked to her a little, and she answered in half-shy, frightened tones, but underneath he detected a note of passion--such as he felt for her. she was fourteen years old, you see, and fully developed, partly because she was half-witted, and partly because of these hot temperatures under the equator. thus it befell that every morning mercier arose early, clad his feet in noisy, clapping sandals, and went out for a walk along the red road underlying the mountain. and every morning, almost by accident, he met the half-witted child with her faithful kling attendant. and the kling, squatting down upon his heels, chewed areca nut, and spat widely and indifferently, while mercier sat down beside the little girl and wondered how long he could stand it--before his control gave way. for she was a little animal, you see, and yearned for him in a sort of fourteen-year-old style, fostered by the intense heat of the tropics. but mercier, not yet very long from home, held back--because of certain inhibitions. sometimes he thought he would ask for her in marriage--which was ridiculous, and showed that life in the far east, especially in a prison colony, affects the brain. at other times, he thought how very awkward it would be, in such a little, circumscribed community as that, if he did not ask her in marriage. suppose she babbled--as she might well do. there is no accounting for the feeble-minded. but as the days grew on, madder and wilder he became, earlier and earlier he arose to meet her, to go forth to find her on the red road beneath the mountains. there she was always waiting for him, while the kling, her attendant, squatted chewing betel nut a little farther on. * * * * * in time, he had enough. he had had quite enough. she was a stupid fool, half-witted. he grew quite satiated. also she grew alarmed. very much alarmed. but always, in the distance, with his back discreetly turned, sat her kling guardian, the paroled prisoner, chewing betel nut. so his way out was easy. one day, about eleven o'clock in the morning, clad in very immaculate white clothes, he came to call upon the child's parents, with a painful duty to perform. he must report what he had seen. when out taking his constitutional, he had seen certain things in an isolated spot of the red road, leading up to the mountains. these paroled prisoners could not be trusted--he had intimated as much weeks ago. therefore he made his report, his painful report, as compelled by duty. in his pocket was his release--the acceptance of his resignation. his recall from his post. when the boat came in next time--that day, in fact--he would go. but he could not go, with a clear conscience, till he had reported on what he had seen. the kling--the old, stupid, trusted kling--stupid to trust a child like that with a servant like that---so the kling was hanged next morning, and mercier sailed away that afternoon, when the little steamer came in. the little colony on the island of prisoners went on with its life as usual. ah, bah! there was no harm done! she was so very immature! mercier need not have exacted the life of the kling servant, after all. he was supersensitive and over-scrupulous. life in a prison colony in the far east certainly affects one's judgment. canterbury chimes vii canterbury chimes i the colonial bishop lay spread out on his long, rattan chair, idly contemplating the view of the harbour, as seen from his deep, cool verandah. as he lay there, pleasant thoughts crossed his mind, swam across his consciousness in a continuous stream, although, properly speaking, he was not thinking at all. the thoughts condensed in patches, were mere agglomerations of feelings and impressions, and they strung themselves across his mind as beads are strung along a string. his mental fingers, however, slipped the beads along, and he derived an impression of each bead as it passed before his half closed eyes. the first that appeared was a sense of physical well-being. he liked the climate. this climate of the far eastern tropics, which so few people could stand, much less enjoy. but he liked it; he liked its enclosing sense of warmth and dampness and heavy scented atmosphere. never before had he brought such an appetite to his meals, or so enjoyed his exercise, or revelled in perspiration after a hard bicycle ride, and so enjoyed the cool wash and splash in the java jar afterwards. the climate suited him admirably. it made one very fit, physically, and was altogether delightful. from this you will see that the bishop was a young man, not over forty-five. then the servants. good boys he had, well trained, obedient, anticipative, amusing, picturesque in their oriental dress. rather trying because of their laziness, but not too exasperating to be a real irritant. so many people found native servants a downright source of annoyance--even worse than the climate--but for himself, he had never found them so. they gave him no trouble at all, and he had been out ten years, so ought to know. the native life was charming too, so rich in colour, in all its gay costumes. surely the first futurists must have been the orientals. no modern of the most ultra-modern school had ever revelled in such gorgeous colour combinations, in such daring contrasts and lurid extremes, as did these dark hued people, in their primitive simplicity. he liked them all, decent and docile. he liked their earrings--only that day he had counted a row of nine in the ear of some wandering juggler. nose rings too--how pretty they were, nose rings. rubies too, and most of them real, doubtless. how well they looked in the nostril of a thin, aquiline brown nose. it all went with the country. barbaric, perhaps, contrasted with other standards, but beautiful--in its way. he would not change it for the world. and the perfumes! a faint scent of gardenias was at that moment being wafted in from his well-kept, rich gardens, where somehow his boys managed to make flowers grow in the brown, devitalised earth. for the soil was devitalised, surely. it got no rest, year in, year out. for centuries it had nourished, in one long, eternal season, the great rich mass of tropical vegetation. european flowers would not grow in the red earth, or the black earth, whichever it was--he had been accustomed to think of red or black earth as being rich, but out here in the tropics, it was unable to produce, for more than a brief season, the flowers and shrubs that were native to his home land. but gardenias and frangipanni---the next bead that slipped along was the memory of an arab street at dusk--the merchants sitting at their shop fronts, the gloom of the little, narrow shops, the glow of rich stuffs and rich colours that lay in neat piles on the shelves, and the scent of incense burning in little earthenware braziers at the door of each shop--how sweet was the warm air, laden with this deeply sweet smell of burning, glowing incense---a step sounded on the verandah, and the bishop concluded his revery abruptly. it was not the nearly noiseless step of a bare foot, such as his servants. it was the step of someone in european shoes, yet without the firm, decided tramp of a european. yet the tread of a european shoe, muffled to the slithering, soft effect of a native foot. a naked foot, booted. this was the bishop's hour of rest, and his servants had instructions to admit no one. well, no one in a general sense, yet there were always two or three recognised exceptions. but it was not one of these exceptions, coming in noiselessly like that. the bishop sprang up, standing straddle of his long chair, and looking fixedly in the direction of the approaching sound. he hated interruptions, and was indignant to think that any one should have slipped in, past the eyes of his watchful servants. just then a figure appeared at the far end of the verandah, a white clad figure rapidly advancing. a dark skinned, slim figure, clad in white linen european clothes, even down to a pair of new, ill fitting, white canvas shoes with rubber soles. that accounted for the sound resembling bare feet. really, they could never wear shoes properly, these natives, however much they might try. still standing straddle across his chair, the bishop called out angrily to the intruder. since he was not a european, and obviously not a native prince--native princes never slithered in like that, all the pomp of the east heralded their coming--the bishop could afford to let his annoyance manifest itself in his voice. therefore he called out sharply, asking the stranger's business. a slim youth stepped forward, bare headed, hollow chested, very dark in the gathering twilight, and his hands clasped together as if in supplication, stood out blackly against the whiteness of his tunic. the bishop noticed that they were trembling. well they might, for he had taken a great liberty, by this presumptuous, unannounced visit. it had a sort of sneaking character about it. coming to steal, perhaps, and being surprised in the act, had determined to brazen it out under the pretext of a visit. the young man, however, walked boldly up to the bishop's chair, and the bishop, rather taken aback, sat himself down again and extended his legs on the rest, in their usual comfortable position. "i've come to see you, sir," began the stranger, using very good english though with a marked native accent, "on a question of great importance. on a matter of principle--of high principle. i've never seen you before, but you are known to me by reputation." the bishop snorted at this piece of impudence, but the youth went on unabashed. "a very noble reputation, if i may presume to say so. but you know that, of course. what you are, what you stand for. therefore i have dared to come to you for help. it is not a matter of advice--that does not enter in at all. but i want your great help--on our side. to right a great, an immense, an immensely growing wrong." the youth hesitated and stopped, wringing his dark, thin hands together in evident agitation. the bishop surveyed him coldly, with curiosity, without sympathy, enjoying his embarrassment. so that was it--some grievance, real or fancied. fancied, most likely. he felt a distinct sense of resentment that his hour of repose should have been broken in upon so rudely by this native--bringing him wrongs to redress in this uncalled for manner. there were plenty of people in the bishop's service expressly appointed for the purpose of looking into complaints and attending to them. to bring them up to headquarters, to the bishop himself, was an act of downright impertinence. very much as if a native should bring his petty quarrels up to the governor-general. these thoughts passed through the bishop's mind as he regarded the intruder with a fixed and most unfriendly eye. a few moments of hesitating silence followed, while the bishop watched the darting movements of a lizard on the wall, and waited for the stranger to continue. "i want your help," went on the youth in a low voice. "you are so powerful--you can do so much. not as a man, but because of your office. perhaps as a man, too, for they say you are a good and just man. but the combination of a strong man in a high office----" still no help from the bishop. that he did not clap his hands together and call for his servants to have this intruder thrown out, marked him, in his estimation, as the kind of man that the youth had suggested. a just and liberal man. very well, he was ready to listen. now that he was caught, so to speak, and obliged to listen against his will. "it's about the opium traffic," explained the young man, breathing hard with excitement, and wringing his thin hands together in distress. "oh, that's it, is it?" exclaimed the bishop, breaking silence. "i thought it must be some such thing. i mean, something that is no concern of mine--nor yours either," he concluded sharply. "it is both my concern and your concern," replied the young man solemnly, "both yours and mine. your race, your country, is sinning against my race and my country----" "your country!" interrupted the bishop disdainfully. "yes, my country!" exclaimed the young man proudly. "mine still, for all that you have conquered it, and civilized it and degraded it!" the bishop sprang up from his chair angrily, and then sank back again, determined to listen. he would let this fellow say all he had to say, and then have him arrested afterwards. he would let him condemn himself out of his own mouth. how well they spoke english too, these educated natives. "what is this colony, sir," continued the young man gaining control of himself, "but a market for the opium your government sells? for you know, sir, as well as i, that the sale of opium is a monopoly of your government. and we are helpless, defenceless, powerless to protect ourselves. and do you know what your government makes out of this trade, sir--the revenue it collects from selling opium to my people? three quarters of the revenue of this colony are derived from opium. your government runs this colony on our degradation. you build your roads, your forts, your schools, your public buildings, on this vice that you have forced upon us. before you came, with your civilization, we were decent. very decent, on the whole. now look at us--what do you see? how many shops in this town are licensed by your government for the sale of opium--and the license money pocketed as revenue? how many opium divans, where we may smoke, are licensed by your government, and the license money pocketed as part of the revenue?" "you needn't smoke unless you wish to," remarked the bishop drily. "we don't force you to do it. we don't put the pipe between your teeth and insist upon your drugging yourselves. how many shops do you say there are--how many smoking places? several hundred? we don't force you into them, i take it. you go of your own choice, don't you? we europeans don't do it. it's as free for us as it is for you. we have the same opportunities to kill ourselves--i suppose that's how you look at it--as you do. yet somehow we abstain. if you can't resist----" the bishop shrugged his shoulders. yet he rather despised himself for the argument. it sounded cheap and unworthy, somehow. the youth, however, did not seem to resent it, and went on sadly. "it's true," he said, "we need not, i suppose. yet you know," he continued humbly, "we are a very simple people. we are very primitive, very--lowly. we didn't understand at first, and now it's too late. we've most of us got the habit, and the rest are getting it. we're weak and ignorant. we want you to protect us from ourselves. just as you protect your own people--at home. you don't import it into your own country--you don't want to corrupt your own people. but what about the races you colonise and subject--who can't protect themselves? it's not fair!" he concluded passionately, "and besides, this year you have sold us two millions more than last year----" "where did you get your figures?" broke in the bishop with rising indignation. this cowering, trembling boy seemed to have all the arguments on his side. "from your own reports, sir. government reports. compiled by your own officials." "and how did _you_ obtain a government report?" asked the bishop angrily. "spying, eh?" the young man ignored the insult, and went on patiently. "some are distributed free, others may be bought at the book shops. there is one lying on your table this moment, sir." "well enough for me," remarked the bishop, "but how did you come by it?" the sharp eyes had recognised the fat, blue volume buried under a miscellaneous litter of books and pamphlets on a wicker table. a lean finger pointed towards it, and the accusing voice went on. "there is more than opium in that report, sir. look at the schools. how little schooling do you give us, how little money do you spend for them. we are almost illiterate--yet you have ruled us for many years. how little do you spend on schools, so that you may keep us submissive and ignorant? you know how freely you provide us with opium, so that we may be docile and easy to manage--easy to manage and exploit." the bishop sprang up from his chair, making a grasp for the white coat of his tormentor, but the fellow nimbly avoided him, and darted to the other side of the table. it was almost completely dark by this time, and the bishop could not pursue his guest in the gloom, nor could he reach the bell. "are you a seditionist, sir? how dare you criticise the government?" the answer was immediate and unexpected. "yes, i criticise the government--just as i have been criticising it to you. but more in sorrow than in anger. although in time the anger may come. therefore that is why i have come to you--for help, before our anger comes. you are a strong man, a just, a liberal man--so i'm told. you hold a high position in the church maintained by your government, just as the opium traffic is maintained by your government. both are government monopolies." in the distance the cathedral chimes rang over the still air--the old, sweet canterbury chimes, pealing the full round, for it was the hour. then the hour struck, and both men counted it, mechanically. "your salary, sir--as well as the salaries of the other priests of your established church, out here in this colony--comes from the established opium trade. your canterbury chimes ring out, every fifteen minutes, over the opium dens of the crown!" at this supreme insult the bishop leaped at his tormentor, striking a blow into space. the youth bounded over the low rail of the verandah and disappeared amongst the shrubbery in the darkness. to say that the bishop was shaken by this interview is to put it mildly. for he was a good man in his way, and moreover, in a certain restricted sense, a religious one. but he was lazy and not inclined to meddle in affairs that did not concern him. and colonial politics and the management of colonial affairs were certainly not his concern. nevertheless, the horrible grouping together of facts, as the young seditionist had grouped them for him, their adroit placing together, with the hideous, unavoidable connection between them, upset him tremendously. he sat on in the darkness trying to think, trying to see his way clear, trying to excuse or to justify. he had never thought of these things before, yet he well knew of their existence. all sorts of injustices abounded in civilized states--it was perhaps worse in the colonies. yet even in the colonies, little by little they were being weeded out, or adjusted. yet this particular evil, somehow, seemed to flourish untouched. not an effort was made to uproot it. the only effort made, apparently, was to increase and encourage it. and with the acquiescence of men like himself. all for what--for money? for crown revenues! pretty poor business, come to think of it. surely, if the colony could not exist by honest and legitimate trade, it might better not exist at all. to thrive upon the vices of a subject people, to derive nearly the whole revenue from those vices, really, somehow, it seemed incompatible with--with--that nasty fling about the church! he rang for his boy, and a lamp was brought in and placed upon the table beside him, and the bishop reached over for the unheeded report, which had been lying on the table so long. the columns of figures seemed rather formidable--he hated statistics, but he applied himself to the report conscientiously. yes, there it was in all its simplicity of crude, bald statements, just as the young man had said. glaring, horrible facts, disgraceful facts. for an hour he sat absorbed in them, noting the yearly increase in consumption as indicated by the yearly increase in revenue. three quarters of the revenue from opium--one quarter from other things. he wondered vaguely about his salary; that painful allusion to it troubled him. it was just possible that it came from the one quarter derived from legitimate trade. certainly, it was quite possible. but on the other hand, there was an unquiet suspicion that perhaps it didn't. the bishop moved into the dining room, carrying the fat blue book under his arm, and read it carefully during his solitary meal. those carefully compiled tables, somehow, did not do credit to what he had heretofore been pleased to consider the greatest colonising nation in the world. were all colonies like that--run on these principles? yet the government, apparently, had felt no hesitation in setting forth these facts explicitly. presumably the government felt justified. yet it certainly was not--the word honourable rose to his mind, but he suppressed it at once--however, nothing else suggested itself. years ago, so many years ago that he had lost count, the bishop had worked for a time in the east end. he had had clubs and classes, and worked with the young men. he used to know a good deal about certain things, and to feel strongly---but since then he had become prosperous, and a high dignitary in the church. something stirred uneasily in the back of his mind, as he dawdled over his dinner and turned the pages of the blue book---then he went back to the verandah again, and subsided into his long chair. he sat in darkness, for he disliked the night-flying insects of the tropics, and had a nervous horror of them. lamps made them worse--brought them in thicker shoals. he gazed out at the twinkling lights of the vessels at anchor in the harbour. there were many ships in the roadway to-night, a sight which would ordinarily have pleased him, but his thoughts were in sharp contrast now to his comfortable, contented thoughts of a few hours ago. ii the bishop spent rather a wakeful night, that is, until about two in the morning, at which hour he settled his problem and fell asleep. it finally resolved itself in his mind as a matter for him to let alone. he could not better it, and had not the smallest intention of making a martyr of himself, of resigning his office, or of incurring any of the other disagreeable experiences which beset the path of the moral crusader. no, he could do nothing, for at two o'clock, as we have said, he had arrived at the conclusion that the evil--if such it could be called, since there was considerable doubt on the subject--had reached a magnitude which no single individual could deal with. whereupon he wisely dismissed the matter from his mind. not having gone to sleep till late he was considerably annoyed when his china-boy arrived at six with his early tea. this sense of irritation still clung to him when an hour later he sat down on the verandah facing the harbour and began his breakfast. even after ten years in the tropics, the bishop still continued to enjoy bacon and eggs with unabated relish, and these did something, this morning, to mitigate his ill humour. a fresh papaya, with a dozen seeds left in as flavouring, also helped. finally the boy came in and laid letters by his plate. home letters, bearing the familiar postmarks, so dear to dwellers in outlying parts of the world. a small malay kriss, with a handle of ivory and silver and a blade of five waves served as letter opener. the bishop slit each envelope carefully, and laid the pile back on the table, to be read slowly, with full enjoyment. one by one he went through them, smiling a little, or frowning, as it happened. the mail from home was early this week--evidently it had come in last evening, although he had not seen the steamer in the roads. all the better--all the more of a surprise. he stopped suddenly, anxiously, and an open letter in his hand trembled violently. he finished it hurriedly, went through it a second time, and again once more before he could acknowledge its meaning. "my dear brother" [it began, with a formality about the opening that boded trouble], "i write to you in great distress, but sure that you will respond to the great demand i am about to make upon you, upon all the kindness which you have shown us for these many years. herbert, your namesake, is in deep trouble--disgrace, i might better say. never mind the details. they are sufficiently serious, sufficiently humiliating. we have managed to cover it up, to conceal what we can, but for the present at least, or until this blows over, it is impossible for him to remain at home. it has all come about so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that there has been no time to write to you to obtain your consent. but he must leave home at once, and there is no one to whom we can send him except yourself. in his present position, feeling the deep dishonour that he has brought upon himself, upon all of us in fact, we do not dare to send him forth into the world alone. therefore, without delay, we are sending him to you, feeling sure of your response. under your guidance and care, with the inestimable benefits that he will derive through the association with such a man as yourself, we hope that he will recover his normal balance. take him in, do what you can for him for all our sakes. he has always been devoted to you, although it was a lad's devotion--you have not seen him for several years, and he is now twenty. put him to work, do whatever you think best for him; we give him entirely into your hands. we turn to you in this hour of our distress, knowing that you will not fail us. "such is the urgency, that he is going out to you on the boat that carries this letter. failing that, he will leave in any event on the boat of the following week. we regret that there has not been sufficient time to prepare you. he will be no expense, being well provided with funds, although in future i shall make out his remittances in your name. in haste, in grief, and with all love, "your affectionate brother, "allan." the bishop sat thunderstruck in his chair, aghast at his predicament. here was a pretty situation! a scapegrace nephew, who had done heavens knew what dishonourable thing--the bishop thought of a dozen things all at once, all equally disgraceful and equally probable,--was about to be quartered upon him, in his peaceful, ordered, carefree life, for an indefinite period! really, it was intolerable. what did he, the bishop, know of young men and their difficulties? who was he to guide the footsteps of an erring one? what practical experience had he in such matters--it was one thing to expound certain niceties of theological doctrine, which, after all, had little bearing on daily life--and quite another to become guardian and preceptor to a young scamp. for he was a scamp, obviously. and of all places in the world, to send a weak, undisciplined person out to the colony--this rather notorious colony where even those of the highest principles had some difficulty in holding to the path. it was obvious that the place for this young man was in his home--in the home of his father and mother, who while they had doubtless spoiled him, must nevertheless retain a certain influence. he needed all the kindness and loving care that a home could give. the bishop sought refuge in platitudes, for of such consisted his daily thoughts, running through his brain in certain well defined, well worn brain paths. then a wave of indignation passed over him concerning his brother--the selfishness of turning his son out, at this time of all times! of shirking responsibility towards him, of turning that responsibility over to another! to another whom he had not even consulted! all his life his brother had had what he wanted--riches, a beautiful home, an easy life. yet at the first breath of trouble he evaded his responsibilities and dumped them upon another! the bishop worked himself up into a fine fury, seeing his future plans upset, his easy-going life diverted from its normal, flowing course by the advent of this scapegrace nephew. his eyes rested once more upon the letter: "he is going out to you on the boat that carries this letter." if so, then he must have already landed and would appear at any moment. for the mailboat must have come in last night, and the passengers had either been put ashore last evening, or had been put ashore at sunrise, supposing the boat remained discharging cargo all night. it was now eight o'clock. the youth should have been here. apparently, then, he had failed to catch this boat, and was coming the following week. but the bishop was troubled; he must go into town and make sure. since he was to be burdened with the rascal for a week (but only for a week, he would send him packing home by the next boat, he promised himself) his sense of duty prompted him to act at once. he raised his fine, thin hands and clapped them together smartly. "rickshaw! quickly!" he ordered the china-boy who appeared in answer to his summons. a few minutes later he descended the broad steps of the verandah and entered his neat, black rickshaw, with highly polished brasses, drawn by two boys in immaculate white livery. the bishop kept no carriage--that would have seemed ostentatious--but his smart, black rickshaw was to be seen all over town, stopping before houses of high and low degree, but mostly high. he reached the quais after a sharp run, passing the godowns filled with rubber, which gave forth its peculiar, permeating odour upon the heavy, stagnant air of the harbourside. no, the mailboat had gone on, had weighed anchor early in the morning, at sunrise, they told him, and had continued on her way up the coast. no such passenger as he described had been landed--no one by that name. the bishop, leaning upon the worn counter in the dingy shipping office, scrutinised the passenger list carefully. there was a name there, certainly, that suggested his nephew's, but with two or three wrong letters. not enough for a positive identification, but perhaps done purposely, as a disguise. could the youth have deliberately done this? it was possible. when pressed for a description, the bishop was most hazy. he could only say that he was searching for a young man, about twenty. the agent told him that twenty young men, about twenty, had come ashore. the bishop was not quite satisfied, was vaguely uneasy, but there was nothing to be done. however, when the day passed and no nephew appeared, he drew a long breath of relief. he was safe for another week. had a week before him in which to formulate his plans. and he would formulate them too, he promised himself, and would put the responsibility of this irresponsible young creature back upon the shoulders where it belonged. it was a great temptation not to return to the shipping office again and engage a berth on the next homeward bound liner, but on second thought, he determined not to do so. above all things he prided himself on being just and liberal. he would give his nephew a week's trial in the colony, after which the letter returning him to his father would bear the air of resigned but seasoned judgment, rather than the unreasoning impulse of a moment's irritation. a week's guardianship, and--well, so it should be. nothing longer, no greater incursion into his smooth, harmonious existence. the week of anticipation passed slowly. after the first shock was over, after the first sense of imposition had passed away, and he found himself with a week for consideration, he became more decided than ever on his course of action. mentally, he began many letters to his brother, usually beginning, "i regret exceedingly," from which beginning he launched out into well balanced, well phrased excuses, of admirable logic, by means of which he proved the imperative necessity of finding other anchorage for this stray and apparently very frail bark. of necessity these letters were vague, since he did not know what particular form of frailty he had to contend with. of one thing, however, he was sure--the colony offered opportunities for the indulgence of every form known to man, with none of those nice restrictions which are thrown round such opportunities in more civilized parts of the globe. he would explain all this at length, as soon as he knew upon which points to concentrate his argument. but, take it by and large, there were no safeguards of any sort, and only the strongest and most upright could walk uprightly amidst such perils. the coming of the next liner was awaited with much anxiety. the bishop had gone so far as to confide to a few friends that a young nephew would arrive with her, for a week's stay--on his way elsewhere. he remembered the boy, his namesake. rather a handsome little chap as he recalled him--perhaps under more auspicious circumstances it might have been a pleasure to have had a visit from him. but this suddenly becoming endowed with him for weeks or months--it might be years, perhaps--quite another matter. when the mailboat arrived one afternoon, the bishop's rickshaw stood at the jetty, while the bishop himself, in his immaculate gaiters, with his sash blowing in the soft wind, stood at the end of the jetty anxiously regarding the tender making its way inshore. she was crowded with a miscellaneous throng of passengers, among whom were many young men, all strange, new, expectant young men coming out for the first time, but among them he saw no face that resembled the one he was searching for. which might possibly be, he reflected, since the face, as he recalled it at the time of their last meeting many years ago, was very childish and immature. the tender made fast to the steps, and amidst much luggage, much scrambling of coolies and general disorder, the passengers came off. the bishop standing on the steps scrutinised each one carefully. not there. nor was there a second trip to the liner, since the tender had fetched ashore all who were to disembark at that port. the bishop turned away with mingled feelings, part relief, part indignation. another week of suspense to be gone through with, and after that, another week before he could release himself of his burden. it was all exceedingly trying and unreasonable--the feeling of irritation against his brother mounted higher--it was outrageous, keeping him upset this way. then a thought suddenly came into his mind. that name on the passenger list a week ago, the name slightly different yet curiously alike--could it have been altered slightly on purpose? ashamed to face him, ashamed to come to him? bundled off in disgrace from home, willy-nilly, and now here,--hiding? a wave of sick apprehension came over the bishop. agonising fear. he must see walker at once. walker, his old friend, who would know what to do, what to advise. if only he were in town. walker was in town as it happened, and the bishop found him at his hotel, and poured out to him all his wretched anxieties, the whole miserable business, not sparing himself in describing his attitude of unwelcome and unwillingness to receive the boy, and concluding with his sick fears concerning his safety. walker listened gravely and attentively, and was troubled. it was very possible indeed--more than possible. a search must be begun at once. fortunately, in that small community, it was not easy for a foreigner to disappear, and a stranger could not go inland, into the interior, undetected. therefore, if he was here at all, he would soon be found--somewhere. he would set in motion the machinery immediately. first the hotels; that was easy. then the other places. it would doubtless be necessary to call in the police. the bishop begged for secrecy--no publicity. walker promised. that, too, would be easy. leave it to him. the bishop might rest easy on that score--no publicity. walker would do everything himself, as far as possible. only, he might have to send for the bishop, if it became necessary, to identify---two nights later, the bishop was reclining on the long chair on his verandah, while overhead the heavy punkah fans swayed to and fro, stirring the moist, warm air. out in the harbour the lights gleamed fitfully, the lanterns on the bobbing sampans contrasting with the steadier beams of the big ships anchored in the roadway. the ships of the orient, congregated from the seven seas, full of the mystery and romance of the east. he had left it to walker--as he had been told. in the darkness, with one hand clasped behind his head and the other holding a glowing cigar, he contemplated the scene, his favourite hour of the day. each moment another and another light flitted across the heavy blackness, showing red or green, while the lights on the moving sampans darted back and forth in the darkness, restless and alert. he had left it to walker. he had stopped thinking of his impending nephew for a few moments, and his mind had relaxed, as the mind relaxes when an evil has been postponed from time to time, and normal feeling reasserts itself after the reprieve. there was a quiet footfall on the verandah, and the bishop was aroused from his meditations. his chinese servant approached deferentially. "man want see master," he explained laconically, with the imperturbability of the east. "what like man?" enquired the bishop, in pidgin english. "china man," came the response. "must see master. all belong velly important." a quick foreboding possessed the bishop, even in this hour of his tranquillity. "show him here," he replied, after a second's consideration. a tall figure appeared before him, bowing. a lean, very dirty chinese, who bowed repeatedly. in spite of the oriental repression of feeling, it was plain that he was troubled. he extended a lean, claw-like hand, with a long and very dirty nail on the little finger, and offered a soiled letter to the bishop. "velly important. all belong much tlouble," he explained, and tucked his hands well inside his long blue sleeves, and stood by impassively, while the bishop received the letter, crumpled and soiled, as if carried for a long time in a pocket. he turned it over and found it addressed to himself. there was no stamp. the handwriting was walker's. the bishop started erect in his long chair, and then sprang up, straddling it as usual. "where get this?" he asked excitedly. the impassive chinese bowed once more. "say come quick. letter velly important. letter belong you. no police. my savee you want letter now." he backed away, still bowing. with a sweep of his arm he indicated the dark night outside. "you come quick," he repeated, "or call police." by the light of a lamp which his obsequious but curious chinese servant carried in, the bishop tore open walker's letter, read it, then crushed it hurriedly into his pocket. "come quick," reiterated the unknown chinese, "i got lickshaw." the bishop strode forward across the verandah, snatching at his hat as he went, and then hastened across the lawn with hurried steps, followed by the chinese pacing rapidly behind him. two rickshaws were waiting under the street lamp, two shabby rickshaws. yet somehow, the bishop did not care for his own private conveyance at this moment, did not wish the sharp, inquisitive eyes of his runners to follow him just then. he mounted hastily, and the coolies started off with a will, the chinese leading the way. even in that moment of anxiety, the bishop was aware that the chinese was leading the way, was conscious that the place of honour was not his--for the first time in his life, his vehicle followed, second place, a rickshaw that carried a chinese. the distance seemed interminable. fortunately, at that hour few of his acquaintances were abroad, but in the anxiety which possessed him, he scarcely realised it. he was conscious of passing through crowded streets, the quarter of the mohammedans, where incense pots were alight, scenting the warm air. then the vile-smelling bazaar, crowded with buyers, bargaining and shouting under the swaying torches. then they passed the european section of the town, where the streets were wide, clean and deserted. they must be going back of the quais now, for the air was heavy with the acrid scent of rubber. then they turned into a narrow, wildly tumultuous street full of chinese, scattered all over the road and sidewalk, shouting, calling, beating drums, yelling wares for sale, the babel of the chinese quarter, only such as the bishop had never seen it. the rickshaws turned many times, up narrow lanes and alleys, across wider thoroughfares, and finally halted before a dingy house of many storeys, a foreign-style house, converted to native uses. they stopped before a red painted door, a double door, in two halves, like a saloon door. over the entrance hung a sign, black and white, in large, sprawling chinese characters. subconsciously, he was aware that he had passed such signs, in such characters, many times before. a curious and large crowd gathered before the house parted at their approach, and the filthy chinese led the way, followed by the bishop in his immaculate garb. as they passed in and the swing doors closed behind them, a throng of yellow faces peered down and looked under the door, which was hung high. and all the while, the low, insistent shuffling noises of the crowd outside penetrated into the dark, dimly lit room in which the bishop and his companion found themselves. around three sides of this room, which was narrow, ran a wide bench covered with dirty matting. lying at intervals in pairs all along the bench, were two coolies in a little pen, with a lamp between them, separated by a narrow ridge from the pen adjoining, which held two more ragged smokers. the bishop beheld rows of them, haggard, pallid rows. a horn lantern was suspended from the ceiling, and the air was unstirred by punkah, the heavy, foul air reeking with the sickening, pungent fumes of opium. as he passed, the smokers raised themselves on their elbows and gazed at him with glazed, dull eyes. the sight of a bishop in a low class opium den was unusual, and the dimmed brains of the smokers dimly recognised the distraction. then, as he moved on, they sank down again upon their wooden pillows, and with slow, infinite pains, set themselves to roll their bits of opium, to cook it over the dim lamps that dotted the murky atmosphere with glints of light, and to resume their occupations. at the back of the room, the proprietor paused before a part of the bench where the pen was occupied by one smoker only, a foreigner. the foreigner lay stretched out in an awkward attitude, knees drawn up, his head sliding off the wooden block, most uncomfortable. a candle was thrust into the bishop's unsteady hand. "looksee," whispered a voice. the bishop looked. "all lite?" questioned the anxious voice of the proprietor, "die lil' while ago. no can smoke like china boys. no can do." the bishop continued to look at the beautiful, disdainful head of the young foreigner, sliding limply off its wooden pillow. "all lite?" continued the whining voice insistently. "my got money. have got watch. no steal." a skinny hand with filthy fingernails crept forth and thrust itself into the pockets of the limp waistcoat, crumpled so pitifully upon the thin, young figure, and presently a gold watch was drawn forth. the watch was slowly waved before the bishop's eyes, and the case snapped open, so that he could read the name engraved within. after which the bishop continued to gaze fixedly upon the dead youth, lying disgraced upon a bench in one of the lowest opium dives in the colony. "smoke here week," went on the insistent voice of the proprietor, "all time smoke. no go out. no eat. smoke all same china-boy. no same china-boy. no can do." there was a slight movement at the back of the room, and an object was passed from hand to hand and finally held for inspection under the bishop's nose. in a grimy frame, protected by a square of fly-brown glass, was a square, official-looking bit of paper. of value evidently, since much care had been taken to preserve it. "license," went on the explanatory voice. "gov'ment license. all samee gov'ment license. pay heap money. no can help if man die. plenty china-boy die too. this velly lespectable place." the bishop recalled himself as from a dream. during the few moments he had spent looking down upon the huddled figure, he seemed to have grown older, to have shrunken down, to have lost something of his fine, arrogant hearing and conscious superiority. "all lite?" whined the voice insistently. "all lite?" "yes," said the bishop shortly, "it's all right." he strode rapidly through the foul room, through the heavy, tainted, pungent air. outside, the dense crowd pressed closely about the swinging doors scattered widely as he approached. two policemen were coming down the street, attracted by the excitement of the crowd. the bishop got into a rickshaw and drove homewards. a heavy weight seemed to have been lifted from his mind. through the oppressive, hot night air the canterbury chimes pealed their mellow notes. "thank god," said the bishop fervently, "it was not _my_ nephew." under a wineglass viii under a wineglass a little coasting steamer dropped anchor at dawn at the mouth of chanta-boun creek, and through the long, hot hours she lay there, gently stirring with the sluggish tide, waiting for the passage-junk to come down from chanta-boun town, twelve miles further up the river. it was stifling hot on the steamer, and from side to side, whichever side one walked to, came no breeze at all. only the warm, enveloping, moist heat closed down, stifling. very quiet it was, with no noises or voices from the after deck, where under the awning lay the languid deck passengers, sleeping on their bedding rolls. very quiet it was ashore, so still and quiet that one could hear the bubbling, sucking noises of the large land-crabs, pattering over the black, oozy mud, or the sound of a lean pig scratching himself against the piles of a native hut, the clustered huts, mounted on stilts, of the village at the mouth of the creek. the captain came down from the narrow bridge into the narrow saloon. he was clad in yellow pajamas, his bare feet in native sandals, and held a well pipeclayed topee in one hand. impatient he was at the delay of the passage-junk coming down from up-river, with her possible trifling cargo, and possible trifling deck-passengers, of which the little steamer already carried enough. "this long wait--it is very annoying," he commented, sitting upon the worn leather cushions of the saloon bench. "and i had wished for time enough to stop to see the lonely man. i have made good time on this trip--all things considered. with time to spare, to make that call, out of our way. and now the good hours go by, while we wait here, uselessly." "the lonely man?" asked the passenger, who was not a deck-passenger. he was the only saloon passenger, and because of that, he slept first in one, then in the other of the two small cabins, alternating according to which side the wind blew from. "you would not mind, perhaps," continued the captain, "if, after all--in spite of this long delay--we still found time for the lonely man? an unscheduled call, much out of our way--oh, a day's sail from here, and we, as you know, go slowly----" "three days from now--four days from now--it matters little to me when we reach bangkok," said the passenger largely, "but tell me of this man." upon the sideboard, under an inverted wineglass, sat a small gilt buddha, placed there by the china-boys. the captain fixed his eyes upon the buddha. "like that. immovable and covered in close, sitting still in a small space. covered in. some one turned a wineglass over on him, long ago, and now he sits, still and immovable like that. it makes my heart ache." "tell me. while we are waiting." "three years ago," began the captain dreamily, still looking at the tiny gilt buddha in its inverted wineglass, "he came aboard. bound for nowhere in particular--to bangkok, perhaps, since we were going that way. or to any other port he fancied along the coast, since we were stopping all along the coast. he wanted to lose himself, he said. and, as you have seen, we stop at many remote, lonely villages, such as this one. and we have seen many lonely men, foreigners, isolated in villages such as this one, unknown, removed, forgotten. but none of them suited him. he had been looking for the proper spot for many years. wandering up and down the coast, in cargo-boats, in little coasting vessels, in sailing vessels, sometimes in native junks, stopping here and there, looking for a place where he could go off and live by himself. he wanted to be quite, absolutely, to himself. he said he should know the place immediately, if he saw it--recognise it at once. he said he could find himself if he could get quite absolutely away. find himself, that is, recover himself--something, a part of him which he had lost. just temporarily lost. he was very wistful and very eager, and said i must not think him a fool, or demented. he said he only wanted to be by himself, in the right spot, to accomplish his purpose. he would accomplish his purpose and then return. "can you see him, the lonely man, obsessed, going up and down the china coast, shipping at distant ports, one after another, on fruitless quests, looking for a place to disembark. the proper place to disembark, the place which he should recognise, should know for his own place, which would answer the longing in him which had sent him searching round the world, over the seven seas of the world. the spot in which he could find himself again and regain what he had lost. "there are many islands hereabouts," went on the captain. "hundreds. desert. he thought one would suit him. so i put him down on one, going out of my way to find it for him. he leaned over the rail of the bridge, and said to me 'we are getting nearer.' then he said that he saw it. so i stopped the ship and put him down. he was very grateful. he said he liked to be in the gulf of siam. that the name had a picturesque sound, the pirate islands. he would live all by himself on one of the pirate islands, in the gulf of siam. isolated and remote, but over one way was the coast of indo-china, and over the other way was the coast of malay. neighbourly, but not too near. he should always feel that he could get away when he was ready, what with so much traffic through the gulf, and the native boats now and then. he was mistaken about the traffic, but i did not tell him so. i knew where he was and could watch him. i placed a cross on the chart, on his island, so that i might know where i had left him. and i promised myself to call upon him, from time to time--to see when he should be ready to face the world again." the captain spread a chart upon the table. "six degrees north latitude," he remarked, "ten thousand miles from----" "greenwich," supplied the passenger, anxious to show that he knew. "from her," corrected the captain. "he told me about her a little. i added the rest, from what he omitted. it all happened quite a long time ago, which was the bother of it. and because it had taken place so long ago, and had endured for so long a time, it made it more difficult for him to recover himself again. do you think people ever recover themselves again? when the precious thing in them, the spirit of them has been overlaid and overlaid, covered deep with artificial layers----? "the marvel was that he wanted to regain it--wanted to break through. most don't. the other thing is so easy. money--of course. she had it, and he loved her. he had none, and she loved him. she had had money always, had lived with it, lived on it, it got into her very bones. and he had not two shillings to rub together, but he possessed the gift--genius. but they met somewhere, and fell in love with each other, and that ended him. she took him, you see, and gave him all she had. it was marvellous to do it, for she loved him so. took him from his four shilling attic into luxury. out of his shabby, poor, worn clothes into the best there were. from a penny 'bus into superb motors. with all the rest of it to match. and he accepted it all because he loved her, and it was the easiest way. besides, just before she had come into his life, he had written--well, whatever it was--however, they all praised him, the critics and reviewers, and called him the coming man, and he was very happy about it, and she seemed to come into his life right at the top of his happiness over his work. and sapped it. didn't mean to, but did. cut his genius down at the root. said his beginning fame was quite enough--quite enough for her, for her friends, for the society into which she took him. they all praised him without understanding how great he was, or considering his future. they took him at her valuation, which was great enough. but she thought he had achieved the summit. did not know, you see, that there was anything more. "he was so sure of himself, too, during those first few years. young and confident, conscious of his power. drifting would not matter for a while. he could afford to drift. his genius would ripen, he told himself, and time was on his side. so he drifted, very happy and content, ripening. and being overlaid all the time, deeper and thicker, with this intangible, transparent, strong wall, hemming him in, shutting in the gold, just like that little joss there under the wineglass. "she lavished on him everything, without measure. but she had no knowledge of him, really. just another toy he was, the best of all, in her luxurious equipment. so he travelled the world with her, and dined at the embassies of the world, east and west, in all the capitals of europe and of asia. getting restive finally, however, as the years wore on. feeling the wineglass, as it were, although he could not see it. looking through its clear transparency, but feeling pressed, somehow, conscious of the closeness. but he continued to sit still, not much wishing to move, to stretch himself. "then sounds from the other side began to filter in, echoing largely in his restricted space, making within it reverberations that carried vague uneasiness, producing restlessness. he shifted himself within his space, and grew conscious of limitations. from without came the voices, insistent, asking what he was doing now? meaning, what thing was he writing now, for a long time had passed since he had written that which called forth the praise of men. there came to him, within his wineglass, these demands from the outside. therefore he grew very uneasy, and tried to rise, and just then it was that he began to feel how close the crystal walls surrounded him. he even wanted to break them, but a pang at heart told him that was ingratitude. for he loved her, you see. never forget that. "now you see how it all came about. he was conscious of himself, of his power. and while for the first years he had drifted, he was always conscious of his power. knew that he had but to rise, to assume gigantic stature. and then, just because he was very stiff, and the pain of stiffness and stretching made him uncouth, he grew angry. he resented his captivity, chafed at his being limited like that, did not understand how it had come about. it had come about through love. through sheer, sheltering love. the equivalent of his for her. she had placed a crystal cup above him, to keep him safe. and he had sat safe beneath it all these years, fearing to stir, because she liked him so. "it came to a choice at last. his life of happiness with her--or his work. poor fool, to have made the choice at that late day. so he broke his wineglass, and his heart and her heart too, and came away. and then he found that he could not work, after all. years of sitting still had done it. "at first he tried to recover himself by going over again the paths of his youth. a garret in london, a studio off montparnasse, shabby, hungry--all no use. he was done for. futile. done himself in for no purpose, for he had lost her too. for you see he planned, when he left her, to come back shortly, crowned anew. to come back in triumph, for she was all his life. nothing else mattered. he just wanted to lay something at her feet, in exchange for all she had given him. said he would. so they parted, heart-broken, crushed, neither one understanding. but he promised to come back, with his laurels. "that parting was long ago. he could not regain himself. after his failure along the paths of his youth, his garrets and studios, he tried to recover his genius by visiting again all the parts of the world he had visited with her. only this time, humbly. standing on the outside of palaces and embassies, recollecting the times when he had been a guest within. rubbing shoulders with the crowd outside, shabby, poor, a derelict. seeking always to recover that lost thing. "and getting so impatient to rejoin her. longing for her always. coming to see that she meant more to him than all the world beside. eating his heart out, craving her. longing to return, to reseat himself under his bell. only now he was no longer gilded. he must gild himself anew, bright, just as she had found him. then he could go back. "but it could not be done. he could not work. somewhere in the world, he told me, was a spot where he could work. where there were no memories. somewhere in the seven seas lay the place. he should know it when he saw it. after so many years' exclusion, he was certain he should feel the atmosphere of the place where he could work. and there he would stay till he finished, till he produced the big thing that was in him. thus, regilded, he would return to her again. one more effort, once more to feel his power, once more to hear the stimulating rush of praise,--then he would give it up again, quite content to sit beneath his wine-glass till the end. but this first. "so i put him down where i have told you, on a lonely island. somewhat north of the equator, ten thousand miles away from her. wistfully, he said it was quite the right spot. he could feel it. so we helped him, the china-boys and i, to build a little hut, up on stilts, thatched with palm leaves. very desolate it is. on all sides the burnished ocean, hot and breathless. and the warm, moist heat, close around, still and stifling. like a blanket, dense, enveloping. but he said it was the spot. i don't know. he has been there now three years. he said he could do it there--if ever. from time to time i stop there, if the passengers are willing for a day or two's delay. he looks very old now, and very thin, but he always says it's all right. soon, very soon now, the manuscript will be ready. next time i stop, perhaps. once i came upon him sobbing. landing early in the morning, slipped ashore and found him sobbing. head in arms and shoulders shaking. it was early in the morning and i think he'd sobbed all night. somehow, i think it was not for the gift he'd lost--but for her. "but he says over and over again that it is the right spot--the very right place in the world for such as he. told me that i must not mind, seeing him so lonely, so apparently depressed. that it was nothing. just the tropics, and being so far away, and perhaps thinking a little too much of things that did not concern his work. but the work would surely come on. moods came on him from time to time, which he recognised were quite the right moods in which to work, in which to produce great things. his genius was surely ripe now--he must just concentrate. some day, very shortly, there would be a great rush, he should feel himself charged again with the old, fine fire. he would produce the great work of his life. he felt it coming on--it would be finished next time i called. "this is the next time. shall we go?" asked the captain. accordingly, within a day or two, the small coastwise steamer dropped her anchor in a shallow bay, off a desert island marked with a cross on the captain's chart, and unmarked upon all other charts of the same waters. all around lay the tranquil spaces of a desolate ocean, and on the island the thatched roof of a solitary hut showed among the palms. the captain went ashore by himself, and presently, after a little lapse of time, he returned. "it is finished," he announced briefly, "the great work is finished. i think it must have been completed several weeks ago. he must have died several weeks ago. possibly soon after my last call." he held out a sheet of paper on which was written one word, "beloved." cholera ix cholera there is cholera in the land, and there is fear of cholera in the land. both are bad, though they are different. those who get cholera have no fear of it. they are simple people and uneducated, fishermen and farmers, and little tradesmen, and workers of many kinds. those who have fear of cholera have more intelligence, and know what it means. they have education, and their lives are bigger lives--more imposing, as it were, and they would safeguard them. those who are afraid are the foreigners and the officials, yes, even the emperor himself. is he afraid, the emperor? one can but guess. he has spent many weeks of this hot summer, when cholera was ravaging his country, in his summer palace at nikko. there he was safe. and cholera spread itself throughout the land, in the seaports, in the capital, across the rice-fields to the inland villages, taking its toll here and there, of little petty lives. but dangerous to the emperor, these lives, afflicted or cut short, whichever happens. so he is staying safe at nikko, in seclusion, waiting for the cool of autumn to come and purge his land. once he was to come back to tokyo, to his capital. for september waned and he was due there, the son of heaven, due in his capital. many of his subjects came to the station at nikko on the day appointed for his departure, stepping with short steps in their high clogs, tinkling on the roadside in their clogs, scratching in their sandals. they came in crowds to the station, at the hour when he was due to enter the royal train. but when the time came for his departure, he did not go. he would tarry awhile longer at nikko. so the crowds were disappointed and did not understand. rumour had it that cholera had developed in the royal household itself--the purveyor to the palace, so it was stated, had contracted the disease. a fish dealer, bringing fish to the palace, had brought cholera with him. so the emperor tarries at nikko, and the highroad, behind the imperial palace in tokyo is closed to the public, lest any poor coolie, strolling by, should become ill and bring this dread thing near to the precincts of the son of heaven. the foreigners are very careful as to what they eat. they avoid the fruits, the ripe, rich autumn figs, and the purple grapes, and the hard, round, woody pears, and the sweet butter and many other things. oh, these days the rich foreigners are very careful of themselves, and meal times are not as pleasant as they used to be. they discuss their food, and wonder about it. and because there is cholera, rife in the ports, and among the fishermen and sailors, the authorities have closed the fish market of tokyo. the great nihom-bashi market, down by the bridge, the vile, evil smelling fish market, lying along the sluggish canal, is closed. the canal is full of straw thatched boats. it all smells very nasty in that quarter, it smells like cholera. no wonder there is cholera, with that smell. no wonder the great market is closed. so the baskets of bamboo are empty, turned upside down, for there is no fish in them. the people, bare-legged, nearly naked, stand idly about the empty fish market, and talk together of this fear which is abroad, which has ruined their trade. what is this fear? they cannot understand. they do not know it. only the emperor cannot eat fish now, for some reason, and their business is ruined because of his caprice. it is very hot. all summer has this great heat continued, and it makes one nervous. day after day it lasts, unbroken, always the same, unavoidable. there is no escape from the stifling dampness of it--one cannot breathe. over all the land it is like this, this heavy, sultry heat. it is no cooler when it rains, no dryer when the hot sun shines. it is enveloping, engulfing. in the big hotel, the leather shoes of the foreigners become mouldy overnight, and the sweat runs in streams from the brown bodies of the rickshaw boys. the rickshaw boys of the big hotel wear clothes, long legged, tight cotton trousers, and flapping white coats. this is to save the feelings of the foreigners and the missionaries, who believe that clothing should always be worn, even in hot weather. so as the rickshaw boy runs along, one can see his white coat grow damp between the shoulder blades, then wet all across the back, till it is all wet and sticks to him tight. yet it is more modest to wear clothes, when doing the work of a horse. one does not object to a man doing the work of a horse, provided he dress like a man. but the coolies toiling at the log carts, and the little tradesmen in their shops, wear few clothes, because they are independent of the foreigners. therefore they seem to suffer less with the heat, or to suffer less obviously. ah, but the heat is intense, overwhelming! day after day, one cannot breathe. and in it, cholera goes on. they say a typhoon is coming. word has come from formosa that a typhoon is rushing up from the southern seas, from hong kong, the equator, wherever it is they come from. it will reach us to-night. that will be better. the heat will go then, blown from the land by the gigantic blast of the typhoon, zig-zagging up the coast from formosa. well, it is late september--this unnatural heat,--why will it not leave? why must it linger till torn like a blanket from the sweating earth, by this hurricane from the southern seas? only it did not come--the typhoon. they said it would, but it failed. has it gone shooting off into the pacific, futile? so the damp, stifling heat lingers, and the toll of cholera rolls slowly upward day by day. it is a long way from nikko to tokyo by motor. a hundred miles, when one can cross the bridge, but the bridge is washed away now, so a detour of many more miles is necessary, to ferry the motor across the tonegawa on a flat bottomed, frail boat. the motor sinks nearly to the hubs in the blazing, glaring sands of the dry river bed, and many naked coolies are needed to push and pull it through the hot sands, and work it into the boat. in the glaring sun of noon, the broad river lies motionless, like a sheet of glowing steel. children bathe in the river, and the sweating coolies dip their brown bodies in it, and the sun beats down pitiless. a junk gets loose from its moorings, and drifts down stream, stern first, on the slow current. who cares? no one. it will beach itself presently, on a mud flat, and can be recovered towards evening. the great heat lies over all the land, and cholera is in the slowly flowing water, and the fishermen and the coolies and the children live and work and play by the river bank, and they have no fear of it, because they are ignorant. from nikko to the capital, the road runs through village after village, endlessly, mile after mile. on each side of the village street are straw thatched houses, and along the roads coolies bend under great loads, carried on poles across their shoulders. black bulls drag giant loads on two wheeled carts, their masters straining beside them. the bulls' mouths are open, their tongues hang out, and saliva drools out in streams. it leaves a wet, irregular wake, in the dust of the roadside, behind the carts. by and by, the men will stop for food and drink. they cannot choose what it shall be. they cannot afford to choose. but the food of the emperor is carefully selected. physicians examine those who handle it, who bring it to the palace, to see that they are in good health. they examine the food, disinfect it, see to its cooking. news of this is in the papers each day, not to show that the emperor is afraid, but to set an example to his subjects. in the houses along the roadside, little tradesmen are at work, all naked in the heat. or else they are bathing. for all along the high road from nikko to the capital, following its every bend and turning, runs a ditch or channel filled with water. sometimes the water is clean and rushing, sometimes foul and stagnant and evil smelling. and all the way along the high road people are bathing in this ditch or channel, in the foul or running water, as it happens. they stand naked, knee deep, men and children, while the women wash and bathe also, but more modestly. also, besides their bodies, they wash much else in this long ditch,--clothes, pots, what-not. very dirty seems this channel, sewer, bath tub, as you please. and cholera is abroad in the land. at the entrance to the temples sits the image of binzuru. long ago, when history was new and the gods were young, binzuru, one of the sixteen great disciples, broke his vow of chastity by remarking on the beauty of a woman. so he was put outside the temples. his image no longer rests upon the altars, with those of the calm, serene ones. he's disgraced, expelled, no longer fit to sit upon the altars, with the cold, serene ones, in their colossal calm. he's so human now, outside the temples. sitting on a chair for human beings to touch him, now he's off the altar, he's in contact with humanity. the devout ones rub his wooden image--there is no bronze or gold in poor binzuru's makeup. so the people rub his wooden image, rub his ears, his head, his forehead, rub his arms, his legs, his shoulders. how they suffer, human beings! how their bodies ache and suffer, judged by poor binzuru's body! for if you rub binzuru on the part which hurts you in your body, and then rub your body with a hand fresh from binzuru, you will be cured. your pain will go. that's true. binzuru is polished smooth and shining, quite deformed with rubbing--his poor head's a nubbin! and in gratitude for what he's done for people, he sits now on a pile of cushions, one for each new cure. bibs and caps adorn him too, votive offerings from the faithful whom he's cured. but he is no good for cholera, poor binzuru. you can't reach him quick enough to rub his stomach, then your own. cholera's too quick for that. you can't reach him soon enough. he can't help in this. down the road a stretcher comes, swinging from a bamboo pole, carried on the shoulders of two men. over it a mat is thrown, and through the little open triangle at one end, you see a pair of brown legs lying. only legs, no more. drawn up stiffly, toes clinched. here in the hospital they lie in rows, very quiet. not an outcry, not a murmur. everything is swimming in carbolic. the nurses wear masks across their mouths and noses. they come and go in clogs, barefooted, and splash through the carbolic on the floors. this is cholera. these people, lying so quietly upon their hard pillows, have cholera. it is not spectacular. all are poor folk, fishermen, sailors, farmers, shopkeepers, all the ignorant, the stupid, who were not afraid. one is dying. nose pinched, gasping, bathed in sweat. the hot air can't warm him. he is dying, cold. so there is cholera in the land, and fear of cholera. those who were not afraid have cholera. with them it is a matter of a few days only, one way or the other. but those who have fear of cholera have something which lasts much longer, weeks and weeks. till the heat breaks. till the typhoon comes. cosmic justice x cosmic justice young withers bought out his uncle's firm of withers, ltd., importers. he had been associated with his uncle for some years, as a minor partner, and how he could manage to take over the prosperous withers, ltd. without capital, is one of the mysteries of finance that do not concern us. suffice it that he did, everything included, the big godowns on the quais, shipping rights, the goodwill, stock and fixtures, and the old compradore, li yuan chang. most particular was old mr. withers that li yuan chang should be included. "you will never find a better compradore," he had explained over and over, "in fact, the business will go to pieces without him." presumably old mr. withers knew what he was talking about, for li had been his interpreter, his accountant, his man of affairs for years. so of course young withers made no objection, and considered that he was very fortunate in having li stay with him, after the turnover. for old li was rich enough to retire by this time, no doubt, as compradores always find means to put away something year by year over and above their salaries. but he was scrupulously honest--old mr. withers had full and complete trust in him, and explained to his nephew that he could leave tientsin from time to time, for as long a time as he liked, in fact, and could be sure meanwhile that old li would look out for his interests. "just be careful of him," he explained. "he's really invaluable. but be a little careful of him--considerate, i mean--he's not very strong----" "chandoo?" asked young withers suspiciously, by which he meant, was li addicted to smoking that cheapest form of opium, the refuse and scrapings, which was the only grade that all but the richest could afford. "oh never," replied old mr. withers, "never. in all the years i've had him. never touches a pipe. temperate and austere in all things, to a degree. but he is getting old now and needs humouring--likes to feel his importance, does not care to be overlooked in the way young men may be inclined to overlook him,--his work, i mean. besides, he's not very strong, rather delicate in fact, so you must be easy with him. but you'll never get a better compradore, and he's good for many years yet--or until you learn the ropes." after which old mr. withers concerned himself very earnestly in the preparations for his departure, for he was leaving china for a better land,--england, i mean. young withers set about learning the business under the direction of old li. which greatly complimented old li, who liked being deferred to by a european. and young withers being very easy-going, and having fallen into a business which required no up-building, being already in its stride, most successful, he left a good many of the details to his compradore, and bragged about him a good deal, saying that indeed he had inherited from his uncle a most wonderful and competent man of affairs. therefore he was greatly astonished one day, about two years after his accession, when li asked for a vacation--a long one. "want go america," explained the chinese succinctly. young withers was dumbfounded. "but you can't go america!" he explained, "no can go. what become of business here in tientsin if you go america? no can do." li had had his own way about many things during a great number of years, and opposition, no matter from what motives, meant nothing to him. he settled his big horn spectacles more firmly on his nose, and flecked invisible dust from his rich black brocade coat. "want go america," he repeated without emphasis. "whatever for?" asked young withers, to whom a desire to go to america was incomprehensible. he himself had never felt a desire to go to america, and that his old compradore should be so obsessed was past his understanding. besides, he could imagine somewhat what would befall the old gentleman, who after many years was only able to speak pidgin-english, who never wore european clothes, and who had managed to retain his magnificent queu in spite of all the troubles following the boxer business. old withers had managed to preserve li's queu for him. took him into his compound and sheltered him, and finally got a permit from the legation to allow him to wear it. li was enormously proud of this queu, which was long and thick and glossy, and its length enhanced by a black silk cord, neatly plaited in towards the end--altogether, it came nearly down to his heels, the envy and admiration of many a chinese gentleman who had been abruptly shorn before help arrived. young withers visualised his dignified compradore the figure of fun to irreverent american crowds. he sincerely wished to preserve him from what he felt must be an unpleasant experience. he was even more anxious to protect his old friend from what would probably be in store for him, than through any selfish desire to retain his services. "come back again four month," observed li. "not long time. want to go." young withers sighed. it was impossible to explain to the old man. there were pitfalls and pitfalls, he well knew. yet he had never been to america himself, so could not speak from experience. only the evening before he had been dining in company with a wise woman of sorts, a french lady who had lived in a cave in tibet for some years, pursuing reluctant hermits into their mountain fastnesses in order to obtain elucidation on certain buddhist books. she had told him frankly that she was bound back again for her cave, or for the wilds of mongolia, but never, under any circumstances, could she trust herself to the risks of american civilization. young withers tried to explain something of this to the old man, who was very patient and did not interrupt him, but the seed was falling on barren ground. if he could just understand english better, thought withers, i might be able to make him see. so withers' oratory was lost, to a large degree, and when he came to a pause li repeated, without emphasis, "want go america." "but you're too old!" exclaimed the young man, exasperated by such obstinacy. "too--you're too--you're not strong enough. you're too--delicate----" "want go america. four month. come back then," said li, and withers gave it up. two weeks later li was standing on the deck of a small japanese liner bound from tientsin to kobe, from which port he would transship to a larger japanese liner bound for san francisco. he took with him many bundles of odd sizes, wrapped in coarse blue cotton, seemingly of no value. he waved a dignified farewell from the rail, and young withers, on the dock, watched the departure of his old compradore with infinite misgivings. four months, including the passage both ways, proved much too long a time in which to see america. li returned unexpectedly one day, within half that time, a silent and broken man. his blue bundles, whatever their mystery, were gone, his rich brocade coat was gone, and gone also was his confidence and trust in human kind. only his thick, glossy, long queu remained to him,--that, and a singular taciturnity. whatever his experiences, no word would he speak concerning them--he preserved a rigid silence. something had been broken in the old man, there beyond the seas, and whatever had befallen him was abhorrent and unspeakable. he seemed very much older, very much more frail, and his thin, fine hands were always trembling in a manner unaccustomed. young withers was in distress, for li's distress was so obvious, his singular reticence making him suffer still more. "those thugs in san francisco must have cleaned out the old fellow first day on shore," he concluded, and then thought no more about it. it was pitiful to see the old man, however, pitiful to watch him going about his duties with the recollection of his terrible days in the new world undermining his spirits and vitality. the secret, whatever it was that had befallen him, was sapping his frail strength. only on one occasion, several months later, did he bring up the subject. he appeared suddenly before withers' desk one day, and there was an angry gleam in his spectacled eyes. "your uncle never let me go america. twenty years with your uncle. very good man. never can go." he turned away abruptly. "by jove," thought young withers to himself, "the old chap's holding me responsible. blaming it all on me. i like that!" and he laughed a little, uneasily. these chinese were queer ones. you never knew how they stood. the firm of withers, ltd. was very busy. every week or so ships came into the harbour with boxes and bales of european merchandise of a rather shoddy kind, intended for the markets of north china. and there was much business in transferring these boxes and bales to the big godowns, with their heavy iron doors and windows, in checking them up, sorting them out--in short, all the sort of activity that goes with a firm of importers, such as this one. also there was much business in distributing these boxes and bales, or rather the contents thereof, to the railway station, for shipment to peking and to remote provinces in the north and west. in peking, these shoddy goods were made into smaller bales, and laden on camels, for some far off, remote destination in the interior. this took withers frequently to peking, leaving old li in charge of the godowns in tientsin. withers always took charge of this end of the business, because of the opportunity it offered to get away from daily contact with his old compradore. somehow, he felt rather uneasy in the old man's presence. there was a change in his manner, most marked. again and again that remark occurred to him, and again and again, in the compradore's presence, withers was conscious of a feeling of undefinable hostility. he holds me responsible, he thought, absurd, but that's what it is. because i did not prevent him from going to america. therefore withers was very glad to go to peking from time to time, for he liked the excitement of the barbaric capital, and besides, he thought it would be good for li to be quite on his own in charge of the godowns, and might distract his thoughts from that obsession which was preying upon him. one day, after an absence of two weeks, young withers returned to his tientsin office, which wore a somewhat deserted air. the shroff was clicking on his abacus, and left off snicking the beads up and down to remark casually that the compradore had gone. the shroff was a young chinese who spoke excellent, mission-school english, and wore good european clothes, and he shared withers' astonishment that such a thing had happened. "wanted to go home, he said. had had enough business. gone home ten days ago, with his family. said say good-bye to you." withers' first feeling was of relief. that's that, he thought to himself, and just as well. he stood eyeing the young chinese accountant, and the shroff looked him back fairly in the eye, and the same thought passed through both minds. a younger man would do just as well as compradore, and here was the younger man at hand, waiting. "let's go down to the godowns," said withers, and the two walked out of the office together, in the direction of the quais. the shroff should learn things from the beginning, and taking charge of the bales and boxes in the warehouses, counting them, distributing their contents, was part of the business. on unlocking the great, heavy doors, the godowns presented a singular aspect. never, in all the years that young withers had been associated as junior partner in withers, ltd., and never in the few years since he had become withers, ltd. himself, had the godowns presented such an aspect. they were empty. quite, stark, utterly empty. not a bale, not a box, not a yard of calico was to be found anywhere about. the sunshine slanted in through the open door, and not a moat of dust danced in the rays, for nothing had been disturbed for some time, and the dust was settled. they went top-side, into the lofts. the same thoroughness presented itself. everything had been cleared out, absolutely. "stolen!" exclaimed withers. "clean-sweep!" said the shroff, in his mission-school english. "ruined!" added withers to himself. together they hurried back to the office and examined things. it was evident in a moment how it had been done. withers had signed an order for the removal of five boxes. the compradore had deftly added a cipher and raised it to fifty. and so on. done repeatedly, with neatness and precision, over withers' own signature. no wonder the streets about the godowns had presented an air of activity at times. "we must find him," said withers, "catch him quickly, before he has time to dispose of the money." the old compradore had made no effort to hide his whereabouts. there were a dozen people to whom he had said farewell, telling them that he had now given up work and was retiring with his family to his home in the western hills. over jehol way. three weeks by cart. aye, his cart had come down from peking to fetch him, a two days' journey. he was not taking the train. he had started early one morning in his big, blue-hooded cart, drawn by a gorgeous yellow mule, its harness inlaid with jade stones. not number-one jade, of course, but still jade, and of value. ten days ago he had gone. withers and the shroff caught the first train out for peking, and arriving in two hours, made hasty preparations for their journey. they obtained a cart and a mule, bedding rolls and tinned food, and by afternoon had set out through the west gate of the tartar city, over the dusty plains towards the western hills. over jehol way, towards a village beyond jehol, up in the hills, where li yuan chang had his dwelling. travelling is slow in a peking cart, and uncomfortable. the heavy, springless vehicle lumbered along, bouncing over the deep, dried ruts, at times sinking hub deep into the dry holes. there were times when the road was below the level of the adjacent fields, so deep below that even the hood of the cart was below them, worn as they were by centuries of travel. at these times, the dust swept through the narrow channel, blinding. once or twice they ran into a dust storm whirling down from the north, from the great gobi desert, beyond. then they drew down the curtains of the cart, suffocating inside, tossed from side to side, up and down, by the hard jolting of the vehicle. by night they rested at wayside inns, sometimes finding the compounds filled with camels, great shaggy brutes that lay about at all angles, over the courtyard, and snorted and nipped at the intruders. they slept at night in their cart, wrapping up well in their bedding rolls, shivering at times in the keen october wind. their coolies shared the k'ang within, with the camel drivers and other travellers, but withers and the shroff preferred the cart, for there were worse if smaller animals than camels to be found in native hostelries. toilsome, weary days succeeded one another, broken by restless nights, yet ever they pushed westward, slowly, laboriously. the coolies brought them news of the wayside, gathering it each night from the inns. a great mandarin had passed that way some days ago--a great man surely, to judge by the length of the axles of his cart, which stuck out a good foot beyond the hubs, marking him as a man of importance. and a great yellow mule, with harness set with jade stones, and the brasses polished,--oh, a very rich man, evidently! so each night they heard accounts of the rich man who had gone ahead, with his retinue, his family and servants and packmules. it was well noised abroad, evidently, through the countryside. travellers coming from beyond jehol had met him with his train, and the inns at which they stopped always had news of his progress, outward bound. in a hurry, too. and very fearful of the roadside dangers. always in the compounds before dusk, fearful of highwaymen. to withers, the suspense of the slow journey was well nigh unbearable. he, too, was in a hurry, worn with fatigue and anxiety. at first, he had been merely anxious to overtake the old man, to obtain restitution. but with the wayside gossip prevailing, other fears entered his mind. one day at noon time, they entered a village apparently deserted. the heavy gates of the compounds were closed, not a person visible in the long, straggling street. every one had withdrawn himself into his house, behind locked and bolted doors. at the inn, they pounded repeatedly on the gates, asking admission. slowly, after a very long time, the gates were opened an inch, and it could be seen that there was the pressure of many men on the inside, ready to slam and bar them in an instant. then, seeing they were but travellers, they were hastily admitted into the courtyard, and the gates closed and barred again. bandits. a band of them was scouring the country, thirty or more, down from mongolia. abject terror was on every face. the whole village was under its spell. "we must push on," said withers, "we must hasten." the shroff was very fearful, but as he was to be compradore now, to do the work of a european, he could not show fear. but the mafu and the coolies were too frightened to continue the journey, so they were left behind, and withers and the shroff went off by themselves. it was very foolhardy, he told himself, it was sheer madness. but he was ruined anyhow, so it did not much matter. only, he must somehow reach the village three days' journey beyond jehol--if only he could arrive in time. very laborious was the travelling, and they walked in the wake of fear. they now passed through many deserted villages, one after another, locked and barred, that the murderous band from mongolia had ridden through. only, they had gone ahead, the bandits--perhaps they would not he riding back that way again. perhaps they would be going on, into the north again, after they had finished---finished? yes, it was a very rich man they were after,--they had asked for him all along the road. they were trailing him to his home, following with great ease the description of the great mandarin, with the great yellow mule with jade-set harness, who had gone by with his retinue just before. so withers and the shroff continued their desolate journey, day by day, across the plains, over such roads as are not, save in north china. passing through villages shut and empty, through fields in which there were no workers, following in the train of terror that had been spread over the land by the bandits from the north. and the terror reached into withers' heart, making it cold. they do not want _us_, he said to himself, over and over. we are quite safe. but the old man---the little shroff, however, who was also filled with terror, did not think they were safe at all. only he must appear as brave as a european, so he could only tremble inwardly. besides all that, the big mule was very difficult to manage, and they had to drag the cart from the deep ruts many times a day, and each evening when they were most tired, they had to calm the suspicions of those within, and make long explanations before the inn gates, before they could be admitted into the compounds. they arrived at their destination at dusk one evening, after three weeks' weary travel. trembling fingers pointed out the house--trembling, but in a manner, reassured. at the end of the long street they would find the house, a very fine house indeed--formerly a mandarin's palace, they explained, but purchased a few months ago by a rich man who had come there with his family to live. the tired men and tired mule pushed on through the long street, gazed upon curiously by clustering chinese, huddled in doorways. they came to a high wall topped with broken glass, a high, strong wall, surrounding a large compound. beyond, at the entrance, stood two stone lions, such as mark the homes of the rich and great. but the great stone guardian lions were guarding a broken door. the high, red lacquered door was split into many pieces, the hinges holding, but the doors themselves split, so that a man's body could crawl through. withers led the way, the shroff following. within, the compound was deserted. they made their way to the doors of the main house, which had been smashed in. the rooms inside were empty, stripped, their treasures gone, cleaned out. very much in appearance like the godowns in tientsin. they made their way through the silent compound into the women's compound in the rear. it was the same--ransacked, despoiled. but there were many compounds and many houses, so together they passed through moon gates, over elaborate terraces, beside peony mountains, and summer houses, across delicate rock bridges with marble balustrades. silent, deserted, bearing the evidence of thorough looting. then, quite at the rear, a woman appeared, the number-one wife of li yuan chang. she peered round the edges of a moon gate, hiding her body behind it. she recognised withers and the shroff and came forward. she was very apologetic, very embarrassed, for she was wearing coolie clothes. her own, she explained, had been taken from her by the bandits. timidly she approached them, but the timidity was embarrassment. she was very embarrassed to be found in coolie clothes, felt resentment at the humiliation, and apologised repeatedly for her appearance. she could think of nothing else. then she led the way still further to the rear, to a compound quite behind all the other compounds and other houses of the gorgeous mandarin's palace. the last stand of the defenders. they were scattered about the courtyard in all attitudes, in grotesque and uncouth positions, all dead. she pointed to a figure lying face downward, a thin, elderly figure, in blood-soaked black brocade, with a magnificent queu lying at right angles to the dead body. once more she apologised for appearing before the gentlemen in coolie clothes. she felt the disgrace keenly. "my husband," she explained contemptuously, pointing to the old compradore, "was unable to protect us. he was always such a delicate old thing." * * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page 19: felt replaced with left | | page 97: comtemptible replaced with contemptible | | page 128: apparparently replaced with apparently | | page 155: muts replaced with must | | page 199: aleady replaced with already | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ the tragedy of the korosko sir arthur conan doyle. chapter i. the public may possibly wonder why it is that they have never heard in the papers of the fate of the passengers of the _korosko_. in these days of universal press agencies, responsive to the slightest stimulus, it may well seem incredible that an international incident of such importance should remain so long unchronicled. suffice it that there were very valid reasons, both of a personal and of a political nature, for holding it back. the facts were well known to a good number of people at the time, and some version of them did actually appear in a provincial paper, but was generally discredited. they have now been thrown into narrative form, the incidents having been collated from the sworn statements of colonel cochrane cochrane, of the army and navy club, and from the letters of miss adams, of boston, mass. these have been supplemented by the evidence of captain archer, of the egyptian camel corps, as given before the secret government inquiry at cairo. mr. james stephens has refused to put his version of the matter into writing, but as these proofs have been submitted to him, and no correction or deletion has been made in them, it may be supposed that he has not succeeded in detecting any grave misstatement of fact, and that any objection which he may have to their publication depends rather upon private and personal scruples. the _korosko_, a turtle-bottomed, round-bowed stern-wheeler, with a 30-inch draught and the lines of a flat-iron, started upon the 13th of february in the year 1895, from shellal, at the head of the first cataract, bound for wady halfa. i have a passenger card for the trip, which i here reproduce: s.w. "korosko," february 13th. passengers. colonel cochrane cochrane london. mr. cecil brown london. john h. headingly boston, u.s.a. miss adams boston, u.s.a. miss s. adams worcester, mass., u.s.a. mons. fardet paris. mr. and mrs. belmont dublin. james stephens manchester. rev. john stuart birmingham. mrs. shlesinger, nurse and child florence. this was the party as it started from shellal, with the intention of travelling up the two hundred miles of nubian nile which lie between the first and the second cataract. it is a singular country, this nubia. varying in breadth from a few miles to as many yards (for the name is only applied to the narrow portion which is capable of cultivation), it extends in a thin, green, palm-fringed strip upon either side of the broad coffee-coloured river. beyond it there stretches on the libyan bank a savage and illimitable desert, extending to the whole breadth of africa. on the other side an equally desolate wilderness is bounded only by the distant red sea. between these two huge and barren expanses nubia writhes like a green sandworm along the course of the river. here and there it disappears altogether, and the nile runs between black and sun-cracked hills, with the orange drift-sand lying like glaciers in their valleys. everywhere one sees traces of vanished races and submerged civilisations. grotesque graves dot the hills or stand up against the sky-line: pyramidal graves, tumulus graves, rock graves--everywhere, graves. and, occasionally, as the boat rounds a rocky point, one sees a deserted city up above--houses, walls, battlements, with the sun shining through the empty window squares. sometimes you learn that it has been roman, sometimes egyptian, sometimes all record of its name or origin has been absolutely lost. you ask yourself in amazement why any race should build in so uncouth a solitude, and you find it difficult to accept the theory that this has only been of value as a guard-house to the richer country down below, and that these frequent cities have been so many fortresses to hold off the wild and predatory men of the south. but whatever be their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a climatic change, there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on the hills you can see the graves of their people, like the port-holes of a man-of-war. it is through this weird, dead country that the tourists smoke and gossip and flirt as they pass up to the egyptian frontier. the passengers of the _korosko_ formed a merry party, for most of them had travelled up together from cairo to assouan, and even anglo-saxon ice thaws rapidly upon the nile. they were fortunate in being without the single disagreeable person who, in these small boats, is sufficient to mar the enjoyment of the whole party. on a vessel which is little more than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or the grumbler holds the company at his mercy. but the _korosko_ was free from anything of the kind. colonel cochrane cochrane was one of those officers whom the british government, acting upon a large system of averages, declares at a certain age to be incapable of further service, and who demonstrate the worth of such a system by spending their declining years in exploring morocco, or shooting lions in somaliland. he was a dark, straight, aquiline man, with a courteously deferential manner, but a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress and precise in his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim finger-nails. in his anglo-saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a self-contained manner which was apt at first acquaintance to be repellent, and he seemed to those who really knew him to be at some pains to conceal the kind heart and human emotions which influenced his actions. it was respect rather than affection which he inspired among his fellow-travellers, for they felt, like all who had ever met him, that he was a man with whom acquaintance was unlikely to ripen into a friendship, though a friendship, when once attained, would be an unchanging and inseparable part of himself. he wore a grizzled military moustache, but his hair was singularly black for a man of his years. he made no allusion in his conversation to the numerous campaigns in which he had distinguished himself, and the reason usually given for his reticence was that they dated back to such early victorian days that he had to sacrifice his military glory at the shrine of his perennial youth. mr. cecil brown--to take the names in the chance order in which they appear upon the passenger list--was a young diplomatist from a continental embassy, a man slightly tainted with the oxford manner, and erring upon the side of unnatural and inhuman refinement, but full of interesting talk and cultured thought. he had a sad, handsome face, a small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which was relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid smile and gleam when anything caught his fancy. an acquired cynicism was eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful enthusiasms, and he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen appreciation for what seemed to the average man to be either trivial or unhealthy. he chose walter pater for his travelling author, and sat all day, reserved but affable, under the awning, with his novel and his sketch-book upon a camp-stool beside him. his personal dignity prevented him from making advances to others, but if they chose to address him they found a courteous and amiable companion. the americans formed a group by themselves. john h. headingly was a new englander, a graduate of harvard, who was completing his education by a tour round the world. he stood for the best type of young american--quick, observant, serious, eager for knowledge and fairly free from prejudice, with a fine balance of unsectarian but earnest religious feeling which held him steady amid all the sudden gusts of youth. he had less of the appearance and more of the reality of culture than the young oxford diplomatist, for he had keener emotions though less exact knowledge. miss adams and miss sadie adams were aunt and niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured bostonian old-maid, with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and swarthy features. she had never been from home before, and she was now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the east up to the standard of massachusetts. she had hardly landed in egypt before she realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. the saddle-galled donkeys, the starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes of the babies, the naked children, the importunate beggars, the ragged, untidy women--they were all challenges to her conscience, and she plunged in bravely at her work of reformation. as she could not speak a word of the language, however, and was unable to make any of the delinquents understand what it was that she wanted, her passage up the nile left the immemorial east very much as she had found it, but afforded a good deal of sympathetic amusement to her fellow-travellers. no one enjoyed her efforts more than her niece, sadie, who shared with mrs. belmont the distinction of being the most popular person upon the boat. she was very young--fresh from smith college--and she still possessed many both of the virtues and of the faults of a child. she had the frankness, the trusting confidence, the innocent straightforwardness, the high spirits, and also the loquacity and the want of reverence. but even her faults caused amusement, and if she had preserved many of the characteristics of a clever child, she was none the less a tall and handsome woman, who looked older than her years on account of that low curve of the hair over the ears, and that fullness of bodice and skirt which mr. gibson has either initiated or imitated. the whisk of those skirts, and the frank, incisive voice and pleasant, catching laugh were familiar and welcome sounds on board of the _korosko_. even the rigid colonel softened into geniality, and the oxford-bred diplomatist forgot to be unnatural with miss sadie adams as a companion. the other passengers may be dismissed more briefly. some were interesting, some neutral, and all amiable. monsieur fardet was a good-natured but argumentative frenchman, who held the most decided views as to the deep machinations of great britain, and the illegality of her position in egypt. mr. belmont was an iron-grey, sturdy irishman, famous as an astonishingly good long-range rifle-shot, who had carried off nearly every prize which wimbledon or bisley had to offer. with him was his wife, a very charming and refined woman, full of the pleasant playfulness of her country. mrs. shlesinger was a middle-aged widow, quiet and soothing, with her thoughts all taken up by her six-year-old child, as a mother's thoughts are likely to be in a boat which has an open rail for a bulwark. the reverend john stuart was a nonconformist minister from birmingham--either a presbyterian or a congregationalist--a man of immense stoutness, slow and torpid in his ways, but blessed with a considerable fund of homely humour, which made him, i am told, a very favourite preacher, and an effective speaker from advanced radical platforms. finally, there was mr. james stephens, a manchester solicitor (junior partner of hickson, ward, and stephens), who was travelling to shake off the effects of an attack of influenza. stephens was a man who, in the course of thirty years, had worked himself up from cleaning the firm's windows to managing its business. for most of that long time he had been absolutely immersed in dry, technical work, living with the one idea of satisfying old clients and attracting new ones, until his mind and soul had become as formal and precise as the laws which he expounded. a fine and sensitive nature was in danger of being as warped as a busy city man's is liable to become. his work had become an engrained habit, and, being a bachelor, he had hardly an interest in life to draw him away from it, so that his soul was being gradually bricked up like the body of a mediaeval nun. but at last there came this kindly illness, and nature hustled james stephens out of his groove, and sent him into the broad world far away from roaring manchester and his shelves full of calf-skin authorities. at first he resented it deeply. everything seemed trivial to him compared to his own petty routine. but gradually his eyes were opened, and he began dimly to see that it was his work which was trivial when compared to this wonderful, varied, inexplicable world of which he was so ignorant. vaguely he realised that the interruption to his career might be more important than the career itself. all sorts of new interests took possession of him; and the middle-aged lawyer developed an after-glow of that youth which had been wasted among his books. his character was too formed to admit of his being anything but dry and precise in his ways, and a trifle pedantic in his mode of speech; but he read and thought and observed, scoring his "baedeker" with underlinings and annotations as he had once done his "prideaux's commentaries." he had travelled up from cairo with the party, and had contracted a friendship with miss adams and her niece. the young american girl, with her chatter, her audacity, and her constant flow of high spirits, amused and interested him, and she in turn felt a mixture of respect and of pity for his knowledge and his limitations. so they became good friends, and people smiled to see his clouded face and her sunny one bending over the same guide-book. the little _korosko_ puffed and spluttered her way up the river, kicking up the white water behind her, and making more noise and fuss over her five knots an hour than an atlantic liner on a record voyage. on deck, under the thick awning, sat her little family of passengers, and every few hours she eased down and sidled up to the bank to allow them to visit one more of that innumerable succession of temples. the remains, however, grow more modern as one ascends from cairo, and travellers who have sated themselves at gizeh and sakara with the contemplation of the very oldest buildings which the hands of man have constructed, become impatient of temples which are hardly older than the christian era. ruins which would be gazed upon with wonder and veneration in any other country are hardly noticed in egypt. the tourists viewed with languid interest the half-greek art of the nubian bas-reliefs; they climbed the hill of korosko to see the sun rise over the savage eastern desert; they were moved to wonder by the great shrine of abou-simbel, where some old race has hollowed out a mountain as if it were a cheese; and, finally, upon the evening of the fourth day of their travels they arrived at wady halfa, the frontier garrison town, some few hours after they were due, on account of a small mishap in the engine-room. the next morning was to be devoted to an expedition to the famous rock of abousir, from which a great view may be obtained of the second cataract. at eight-thirty, as the passengers sat on deck after dinner, mansoor, the dragoman, half copt, half syrian, came forward, according to the nightly custom, to announce the programme for the morrow. "ladies and gentlemen," said he, plunging boldly into the rapid but broken stream of his english, "to-morrow you will remember not to forget to rise when the gong strikes you for to compress the journey before twelve o'clock. having arrived at the place where the donkeys expect us, we shall ride five miles over the desert, passing a temple of ammon-ra, which dates itself from the eighteenth dynasty, upon the way, and so reach the celebrated pulpit rock of abousir. the pulpit rock is supposed to have been called so, because it is a rock like a pulpit. when you have reached it you will know that you are on the very edge of civilisation, and that very little more will take you into the country of the dervishes, which will be obvious to you at the top. having passed the summit, you will perceive the full extremity of the second cataract, embracing wild natural beauties of the most dreadful variety. here all very famous people carve their names--and so you will carve your names also." mansoor waited expectantly for a titter, and bowed to it when it arrived. "you will then return to wady halfa, and there remain two hours to suspect the camel corps, including the grooming of the beasts, and the bazaar before returning, so i wish you a very happy good-night." there was a gleam of his white teeth in the lamplight, and then his long, dark petticoats, his short english cover-coat, and his red tarboosh vanished successively down the ladder. the low buzz of conversation which had been suspended by his coming broke out anew. "i'm relying on you, mr. stephens, to tell me all about abousir," said miss sadie adams. "i do like to know what i am looking at right there at the time, and not six hours afterwards in my state-room. i haven't got abou-simbel and the wall pictures straight in my mind yet, though i saw them yesterday." "i never hope to keep up with it," said her aunt. "when i am safe back in commonwealth avenue, and there's no dragoman to hustle me around, i'll have time to read about it all, and then i expect i shall begin to enthuse, and want to come right back again. but it's just too good of you, mr. stephens, to try and keep us informed." "i thought that you might wish precise information, and so i prepared a small digest of the matter," said stephens, handing a slip of paper to miss sadie. she looked at it in the light of the deck lamp, and broke into her low, hearty laugh. "_re_ abousir," she read; "now, what _do_ you mean by '_re_,' mr. stephens? you put '_re_ rameses the second' on the last paper you gave me." "it is a habit i have acquired, miss sadie," said stephens; "it is the custom in the legal profession when they make a memo." "make what, mr. stephens?" "a memo--a memorandum, you know. we put _re_ so-and-so to show what it is about." "i suppose it's a good short way," said miss sadie, "but it feels queer somehow when applied to scenery or to dead egyptian kings. '_re_ cheops'--doesn't that strike you as funny?" "no, i can't say that it does," said stephens. "i wonder if it is true that the english have less humour than the americans, or whether it's just another kind of humour," said the girl. she had a quiet, abstracted way of talking as if she were thinking aloud. "i used to imagine they had less, and yet, when you come to think of it, dickens and thackeray and barrie, and so many other of the humourists we admire most are britishers. besides, i never in all my days heard people laugh so hard as in that london theatre. there was a man behind us, and every time he laughed auntie looked round to see if a door had opened, he made such a draught. but you have some funny expressions, mr. stephens!" "what else strikes you as funny, miss sadie?" "well, when you sent me the temple ticket and the little map, you began your letter, 'enclosed, please find,' and then at the bottom, in brackets, you had '2 enclo.'" "that is the usual form in business." "yes, in business," said sadie demurely, and there was a silence. "there's one thing i wish," remarked miss adams, in the hard, metallic voice with which she disguised her softness of heart, "and that is, that i could see the legislature of this country and lay a few cold-drawn facts in front of them. i'd make a platform of my own, mr. stephens, and run a party on my ticket. a bill for the compulsory use of eyewash would be one of my planks, and another would be for the abolition of those yashmak veil things which turn a woman into a bale of cotton goods with a pair of eyes looking out of it." "i never could think why they wore them," said sadie; "until one day i saw one with her veil lifted. then i knew." "they make me tired, those women," cried miss adams wrathfully. "one might as well try to preach duty and decency and cleanliness to a line of bolsters. why, good land, it was only yesterday at abou-simbel, mr. stephens, i was passing one of their houses--if you can call a mud-pie like that a house--and i saw two of the children at the door with the usual crust of flies round their eyes, and great holes in their poor little blue gowns! so i got off my donkey, and i turned up my sleeves, and i washed their faces well with my handkerchief, and sewed up the rents--for in this country i would as soon think of going ashore without my needle-case as without my white umbrella, mr. stephens. then as i warmed on the job i got into the room--such a room!--and i packed the folks out of it, and i fairly did the chores as if i had been the hired help. i've seen no more of that temple of abou-simbel than if i had never left boston; but, my sakes, i saw more dust and mess than you would think they could crowd into a house the size of a newport bathing-hut. from the time i pinned up my skirt until i came out with my face the colour of that smoke-stack, wasn't more than an hour, or maybe an hour and a half, but i had that house as clean and fresh as a new pine-wood box. i had a _new york herald_ with me, and i lined their shelf with paper for them. well, mr. stephens, when i had done washing my hands outside, i came past the door again, and there were those two children sitting on the stoop with their eyes full of flies, and all just the same as ever, except that each had a little paper cap made out of the _new york herald_ upon his head. but, say, sadie, it's going on to ten o'clock, and to-morrow an early excursion." "it's just too beautiful, this purple sky and the great silver stars," said sadie. "look at the silent desert and the black shadows of the hills. it's grand, but it's terrible too; and then when you think that we really _are_, as that dragoman said just now, on the very end of civilisation, and with nothing but savagery and bloodshed down there where the southern cross is twinkling so prettily, why, it's like standing on the beautiful edge of a live volcano." "shucks, sadie, don't talk like that, child," said the older woman nervously. "it's enough to scare any one to listen to you." "well, but don't you feel it yourself, auntie? look at that great desert stretching away and away until it is lost in the shadows. hear the sad whisper of the wind across it! it's just the most solemn thing that ever i saw in my life." "i'm glad we've found something that will make you solemn, my dear," said her aunt. "i've sometimes thought--sakes alive, what's that?" from somewhere amongst the hill shadows upon the other side of the river there had risen a high shrill whimpering, rising and swelling, to end in a long weary wail. "it's only a jackal, miss adams," said stephens. "i heard one when we went out to see the sphinx by moonlight." but the american lady had risen, and her face showed that her nerves had been ruffled. "if i had my time over again i wouldn't have come past assouan," said she. "i can't think what possessed me to bring you all the way up here, sadie. your mother will think that i am clean crazy, and i'd never dare to look her in the eye if anything went wrong with us. i've seen all i want to see of this river, and all i ask now is to be back at cairo again." "why, auntie," cried the girl, "it isn't like you to be faint-hearted." "well, i don't know how it is, sadie, but i feel a bit unstrung, and that beast caterwauling over yonder was just more than i could put up with. there's one consolation, we are scheduled to be on our way home to-morrow, after we've seen this one rock or temple, or whatever it is. i'm full up of rocks and temples, mr. stephens. i shouldn't mope if i never saw another. come, sadie! good-night!" "good-night! good-night, miss adams!" and the two ladies passed down to their cabins. monsieur fardet was chatting, in a subdued voice, with headingly, the young harvard graduate, bending forward confidentially between the whiffs of his cigarette. "dervishes, mister headingly!" said he, speaking excellent english, but separating his syllables as d frenchman will. "there are no dervishes. they do not exist." "why, i thought the woods were full of them," said the american. monsieur fardet glanced across to where the red core of colonel cochrane's cigar was glowing through the darkness. "you are an american, and you do not like the english," he whispered. "it is perfectly comprehended upon the continent that the americans are opposed to the english." "well," said headingly, with his slow, deliberate manner, "i won't say that we have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people--mostly of irish stock--who are always mad with england; but the most of us have a kindly thought for the mother country. you see they may be aggravating folk sometimes, but after all they are our _own_ folk, and we can't wipe that off the slate." "_eh bien!_" said the frenchman. "at least i can say to you what i could not without offence say to these others. and i repeat that there _are_ no dervishes. they were an invention of lord cromer in the year 1885." "you don't say!" cried headingly. "it is well known in paris, and has been exposed in _la patrie_ and other of our so well-informed papers." "hut this is colossal," said headingly. "do you mean to tell me, monsieur fardet, that the siege of khartoum and the death of gordon and the rest of it was just one great bluff?" "i will not deny that there was an emeute, but it was local, you understand, and now long forgotten. since then there has been profound peace in the soudan." "but i have heard of raids, monsieur fardet, and i've read of battles, too, when the arabs tried to invade egypt. it was only two days ago that we passed toski, where the dragoman said there had been a fight. is that all bluff also?" "pah, my friend, you do not know the english. you look at them as you see them with their pipes and their contented faces, and you say, 'now, these are good, simple folk, who will never hurt any one.' but all the time they are thinking and watching and planning. 'here is egypt weak,' they cry. '_allons!_' and down they swoop like a gull upon a crust. 'you have no right there,' says the world. 'come out of it!' but england has already begun to tidy everything, just like the good miss adams when she forces her way into the house of an arab. 'come out,' says the world. 'certainly,' says england; 'just wait one little minute until i have made everything nice and proper.' so the world waits for a year or so, and then it says once again, 'come out.' 'just wait a little,' says england; 'there is trouble at khartoum, and when i have set that all right i shall be very glad to come out.' so they wait until it is all over, and then again they say, 'come out.' 'how can i come out,' says england, 'when there are still raids and battles going on? if we were to leave, egypt would be run over.' 'but there are no raids,' says the world. 'oh, are there not?' says england, and then within a week sure enough the papers are full of some new raid of dervishes. we are not all blind, mister headingly. we understand very well how such things can be done. a few bedouins, a little backsheesh, some blank cartridges, and, behold--a raid!" "well, well," said the american, "i'm glad to know the rights of this business, for it has often puzzled me. but what does england get out of it?" "she gets the country, monsieur." "i see. you mean, for example, that there is a favourable tariff for british goods?" "no, monsieur; it is the same for all." "well, then, she gives the contracts to britishers?" "precisely, monsieur." "for example, the railroad that they are building right through the country, the one that runs alongside the river, that would be a valuable contract for the british?" monsieur fardet was an honest man, if an imaginative one. "it is a french company, monsieur, which holds the railway contract," said he. the american was puzzled. "they don't seem to get much for their trouble," said he. "still, of course, there must be some indirect pull somewhere. for example, egypt no doubt has to pay and keep all those red-coats in cairo." "egypt, monsieur! no, they are paid by england." "well, i suppose they know their own business best, but they seem to me to take a great deal of trouble, and to get mighty little in exchange. if they don't mind keeping order and guarding the frontier, with a constant war against the dervishes on their hands, i don't know why any one should object. i suppose no one denies that the prosperity of the country has increased enormously since they came. the revenue returns show that. they tell me also that the poorer folks have justice, which they never had before." "what are they doing here at all?" cried the frenchman angrily. "let them go back to their island. we cannot have them all over the world." "well, certainly, to us americans, who live all in our own land, it does seem strange how you european nations are for ever slopping over into some other country which was not meant for you. it's easy for us to talk, of course, for we have still got room and to spare for all our people. when we begin pushing each other over the edge we shall have to start annexing also. but at present just here in north africa there is italy in abyssinia, and england in egypt, and france in algiers--" "france!" cried monsieur fardet. "algiers belongs to france. you laugh, monsieur. i have the honour to wish you a very good-night." he rose from his seat, and walked off, rigid with outraged patriotism, to his cabin. chapter ii. the young american hesitated for a little, debating in his mind whether he should not go down and post up the daily record of his impressions which he kept for his home-staying sister. but the cigars of colonel cochrane and of cecil brown were still twinkling in the far corner of the deck, and the student was acquisitive in the search of information. he did not quite know how to lead up to the matter, but the colonel very soon did it for him. "come on, headingly," said he, pushing a camp-stool in his direction. "this is the place for an antidote. i see that fardet has been pouring politics into your ear." "i can always recognise the confidential stoop of his shoulders when he discusses _la haute politique_," said the dandy diplomatist. "but what a sacrilege upon a night like this! what a nocturne in blue and silver might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert. there is a movement in one of mendelssohn's songs which seems to embody it all-a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an interminable expanse. the subtler emotions which cannot be translated into words are still to be hinted at by chords and harmonies." "it seems wilder and more savage than ever to-night," remarked the american. "it gives me the same feeling of pitiless force that the atlantic does upon a cold, dark, winter day. perhaps it is the knowledge that we are right there on the very edge of any kind of law and order. how far do you suppose that we are from any dervishes, colonel cochrane?" "well, on the arabian side," said the colonel, "we have the egyptian fortified camp of sarras about forty miles to the south of us. beyond that are sixty miles of very wild country before you would come to the dervish post at akasheh. on this other side, however, there is nothing between us and them." "abousir is on this side, is it not?" "yes. that is why the excursion to the abousir rock has been forbidden for the last year. but things are quieter now." "what is to prevent them from coming down on that side?" "absolutely nothing," said cecil brown, in his listless voice. "nothing, except their fears. the coming of course would be perfectly simple. the difficulty would lie in the return. they might find it hard to get back if their camels were spent, and the halfa garrison with their beasts fresh got on their track. they know it as well as we do, and it has kept them from trying." "it isn't safe to reckon upon a dervish's fears," remarked brown. "we must always bear in mind that they are not amenable to the same motives as other people. many of them are anxious to meet death, and all of them are absolute, uncompromising believers in destiny. they exist as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all bigotry--a proof of how surely it leads towards blank barbarism." "you think these people are a real menace to egypt?" asked the american. "there seems from what i have heard to be some difference of opinion about it. monsieur fardet, for example, does not seem to think that the danger is a very pressing one." "i am not a rich man," colonel cochrane answered after a little pause, "but i am prepared to lay all i am worth, that within three years of the british officers being withdrawn, the dervishes would be upon the mediterranean. where would the civilisation of egypt be? where would the hundreds of millions which have been invested in this country? where the monuments which all nations look upon as most precious memorials of the past?" "come now, colonel," cried headingly, laughing, "surely you don't mean that they would shift the pyramids?" "you cannot foretell what they would do. there is no iconoclast in the world like an extreme mohammedan. last time they overran this country they burned the alexandrian library. you know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the koran. a statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. what do these fellows care for the sentiment of europe? the more they could offend it, the more delighted they would be. down would go the sphinx, the colossi, the statues of abou-simbel--as the saints went down in england before cromwell's troopers." "well now," said headingly, in his slow, thoughtful fashion, "suppose i grant you that the dervishes could overrun egypt, and suppose also that you english are holding them out, what i'm never done asking is, what reason have you for spending all these millions of dollars and the lives of so many of your men? what do you get out of it, more than france gets, or germany, or any other country, that runs no risk and never lays out a cent?" "there are a good many englishmen who are asking themselves that question," remarked cecil brown. "it's my opinion that we have been the policemen of the world long enough. we policed the seas for pirates and slavers. now we police the land for dervishes and brigands and every sort of danger to civilisation. there is never a mad priest or a witch doctor, or a firebrand of any sort on this planet, who does not report his appearance by sniping the nearest british officer. one tires of it at last. if a kurd breaks loose in asia minor, the world wants to know why great britain does not keep him in order. if there is a military mutiny in egypt, or a jehad in the soudan, it is still great britain who has to set it right. and all to an accompaniment of curses such as the policeman gets when he seizes a ruffian among his pals. we get hard knocks and no thanks, and why should we do it? let europe do its own dirty work." "well," said colonel cochrane, crossing his legs and leaning forward with the decision of n man who has definite opinions, "i don't at all agree with you, brown, and i think that to advocate such a course is to take a very limited view of our national duties. i think that behind national interests and diplomacy and all that there lies a great guiding force--a providence, in fact--which is for ever getting the best out of each nation and using it for the good of the whole. when a nation ceases to respond, it is time that she went into hospital for a few centuries, like spain or greece--the virtue has gone out of her. a man or a nation is not placed upon this earth to do merely what is pleasant and what is profitable. it is often called upon to carry out what is both unpleasant and unprofitable, but if it is obviously right it is mere shirking not to undertake it." headingly nodded approvingly. "each has its own mission. germany is predominant in abstract thought; france in literature, art, and grace. but we and you--for the english-speakers are all in the same boat, however much the _new york sun_ may scream over it--we and you have among our best men a higher conception of moral sense and public duty than is to be found in any other people. now, these are the two qualities which are needed for directing a weaker race. you can't help them by abstract thought or by graceful art, but only by that moral sense which will hold the scales of justice even, and keep itself free from every taint of corruption. that is how we rule india. we came there by a kind of natural law, like air rushing into a vacuum. all over the world, against our direct interests and our deliberate intentions, we are drawn into the same thing. and it will happen to you also. the pressure of destiny will force you to administer the whole of america from mexico to the horn." headingly whistled. "our jingoes would be pleased to hear you, colonel cochrane," said he. "they'd vote you into our senate and make you one of the committee on foreign relations." "the world is small, and it grows smaller every day. it's a single organic body, and one spot of gangrene is enough to vitiate the whole. there's no room upon it for dishonest, defaulting, tyrannical, irresponsible governments. as long as they exist they will always be sources of trouble and of danger. but there are many races which appear to be so incapable of improvement that we can never hope to get a good government out of them. what is to be done, then? the former device of providence in such a case was extermination by some more virile stock-an attila or a tamerlane pruned off the weaker branch. now, we have a more merciful substitution of rulers, or even of mere advice from a more advanced race. that is the case with the central asian khanates and with the protected states of india. if the work has to be done, and if we are the best fitted for the work, then i think that it would be a cowardice and a crime to shirk it." "but who is to decide whether it is a fitting case for your interference?" objected the american. "a predatory country could grab every other land in the world upon such a pretext." "events--inexorable, inevitable events--will decide it. take this egyptian business as an example. in 1881 there was nothing in this world further from the minds of our people than any interference with egypt; and yet 1882 left us in possession of the country. there was never any choice in the chain of events. a massacre in the streets of alexandria, and the mounting of guns to drive out our fleet--which was there, you understand, in fulfilment of solemn treaty obligations--led to the bombardment. the bombardment led to a landing to save the city from destruction. the landing caused an extension of operations--and here we are, with the country upon our hands. at the time of trouble we begged and implored the french, or any one else, to come and help us to put the thing to rights, but they all deserted us when there was work to be done, although they are ready enough to scold and to impede us now. when we tried to get out of it, up came this wild dervish movement, and we had to sit tighter than ever. we never wanted the task; but, now that it has come, we must put it through in a workmanlike manner. we've brought justice into the country, and purity of administration, and protection for the poor man. it has made more advance in the last twelve years than since the moslem invasion in the seventh century. except the pay of a couple of hundred men, who spend their money in the country, england has neither directly nor indirectly made a shilling out of it, and i don't believe you will find in history a more successful and more disinterested bit of work." headingly puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette. "there is a house near ours, down on the back bay at boston, which just ruins the whole prospect," said he. "it has old chairs littered about the stoop, and the shingles are loose, and the garden runs wild; but i don't know that the neighbours are exactly justified in rushing in, and stamping around, and running the thing on their own lines." "not if it were on fire?" asked the colonel. headingly laughed, and rose from his camp-stool. "well, it doesn't come within the provisions of the monroe doctrine, colonel," said he. "i'm beginning to realise that modern egypt is every bit as interesting as ancient, and that rameses the second wasn't the last live man in the country." the two englishmen rose and yawned. "yes, it's a whimsical freak of fortune which has sent men from a little island in the atlantic to administer the land of the pharaohs," remarked cecil brown. "we shall pass away again, and never leave a trace among these successive races who have held the country, for it is not an anglo-saxon custom to write their deeds upon rocks. i dare say that the remains of a cairo drainage system will be our most permanent record, unless they prove a thousand years hence that it was the work of the hyksos kings. but here is the shore party come back." down below they could hear the mellow irish accents of mrs. belmont and the deep voice of her husband, the iron-grey rifle-shot. mr. stuart, the fat birmingham clergyman, was thrashing out a question of piastres with a noisy donkey-boy, and the others were joining in with chaff and advice. then the hubbub died away, the party from above came down the ladder, there were "good-nights," the shutting of doors, and the little steamer lay silent, dark, and motionless in the shadow of the high halfa bank. and beyond this one point of civilisation and of comfort there lay the limitless, savage, unchangeable desert, straw-coloured and dream-like in the moonlight, mottled over with the black shadows of the hills. chapter iii. "stoppa! backa!" cried the native pilot to the european engineer. the bluff bows of the stern-wheeler had squelched into the soft brown mud, and the current had swept the boat alongside the bank. the long gangway was thrown across, and the six tall soldiers of the soudanese escort filed along it, their light-blue gold-trimmed zouave uniforms, and their jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the clear morning light. above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. in shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and abusing that of his neighbour. colonel cochrane and mr. belmont stood together in the bows, each wearing the broad white puggareed hat of the tourist. miss adams and her niece leaned against the rail beside them. "sorry your wife isn't coming, belmont," said the colonel. "i think she had a touch of the sun yesterday. her head aches very badly." his voice was strong and thick like his figure. "i should stay to keep her company, mr. belmont," said the little american old maid; "but i learn that mrs. shlesinger finds the ride too long for her, and has some letters which she must mail to-day, so mrs. belmont will not be lonesome." "you're very good, miss adams. we shall be back, you know, by two o'clock." "is that certain?" "it must be certain, for we are taking no lunch with us, and we shall be famished by then." "yes, i expect we shall be ready for a hock and seltzer at any rate," said the colonel. "this desert dust gives a flavour to the worst wine." "now, ladies and gentlemen!" cried mansoor, the dragoman, moving forward with something of the priest in his flowing garments and smooth, clean-shaven face. "we must start early that we may return before the meridial heat of the weather." he ran his dark eyes over the little group of his tourists with a paternal expression. "you take your green glasses, miss adams, for glare very great out in the desert. ah, mr. stuart, i set aside very fine donkey for you--prize donkey, sir, always put aside for the gentleman of most weight. never mind to take your monument ticket to-day. now, ladies and gentlemen, if _you_ please!" like a grotesque frieze the party moved one by one along the plank gangway and up the brown crumbling bank. mr. stephens led them, a thin, dry, serious figure, in an english straw hat. his red "baedeker" gleamed under his arm, and in one hand he held a little paper of notes, as if it were a brief. he took miss sadie by one arm and her aunt by the other as they toiled up the bank, and the young girl's laughter rang frank and clear in the morning air as "baedeker" came fluttering down at their feet. mr. belmont and colonel cochrane followed, the brims of their sun-hats touching as they discussed the relative advantages of the mauser, the lebel, and the lee-metford. behind them walked cecil brown, listless, cynical, self-contained. the fat clergyman puffed slowly up the bank, with many gasping witticisms at his own defects. "i'm one of those men who carry everything before them," said he, glancing ruefully at his rotundity, and chuckling wheezily at his own little joke. last of all came headingly, slight and tall, with the student stoop about his shoulders, and fardet, the good-natured, fussy, argumentative parisian. "you see we have an escort to-day," he whispered to his companion. "so i observed." "pah!" cried the frenchman, throwing out his arms in derision; "as well have an escort from paris to versailles. this is all part of the play, monsieur headingly. it deceives no one, but it is part of the play. _pourquoi ces droles de militaires, dragoman, hein?_" it was the dragoman's _role_ to be all things to all men, so he looked cautiously round before he answered, to make sure that the english were mounted and out of earshot. "_c'est ridicule, monsieur!_" said he, shrugging his fat shoulders. "_mais que voulez-vous? c'est l'ordre official egyptien._" "_egyptien! pah, anglais, anglais--toujours anglais!_" cried the angry frenchman. the frieze now was more grotesque than ever, but had changed suddenly to an equestrian one, sharply outlined against the deep-blue egyptian sky. those who have never ridden before have to ride in egypt, and when the donkeys break into a canter, and the nile irregulars are at full charge, such a scene of flying veils, clutching hands, huddled swaying figures, and anxious faces is nowhere to be seen. belmont, his square figure balanced upon a small white donkey, was waving his hat to his wife, who had come out upon the saloon-deck of the _korosko_. cochrane sat very erect with a stiff military seat, hands low, head high, and heels down, while beside him rode the young oxford man, looking about him with drooping eyelids as if he thought the desert hardly respectable, and had his doubts about the universe. behind them the whole party was strung along the bank in varying stages of jolting and discomfort, a brown-faced, noisy donkey-boy running after each donkey. looking back, they could see the little lead-coloured stern-wheeler, with the gleam of mrs. belmont's handkerchief from the deck. beyond ran the broad, brown river, winding down in long curves to where, five miles off, the square, white block-houses upon the black, ragged hills marked the outskirts of wady halfa, which had been their starting-point that morning. "isn't it just too lovely for anything?" cried sadie joyously. "i've got a donkey that runs on casters, and the saddle is just elegant. did you ever see anything so cunning as these beads and things round his neck? you must make a memo. _re_ donkey, mr. stephens. isn't that correct legal english?" stephens looked at the pretty, animated, boyish face looking up at him from under the coquettish straw hat, and he wished that he had the courage to tell her in her own language that she was just too sweet for anything. but he feared above all things lest he should offend her, and so put an end to their present pleasant intimacy. so his compliment dwindled into a smile. "you look very happy," said he. "well, who could help feeling good with this dry, clear air, and the blue sky, and the crisp yellow sand, and a superb donkey to carry you? i've just got everything in the world to make me happy." "everything?" "well, everything i have any use for just now." "i suppose you never know what it is to be sad?" "oh, when i _am_ miserable, i am just too miserable for words. i've sat and cried for days and days at smith's college, and the other girls were just crazy to know what i was crying about, and guessing what the reason was that i wouldn't tell them, when all the time the real true reason was that i didn't know myself. you know how it comes like a great dark shadow over you, and you don't know why or wherefore, but you've just got to settle down to it and be miserable." "but you never had any real cause?" "no, mr. stephens, i've had such a good time all my life that i really don't think, when i look back, that i ever had any real cause for sorrow." "well, miss sadie, i hope with all my heart that you will be able to say the same when you are the same age as your aunt. surely i hear her calling." "i wish, mr. stephens, you would strike my donkey-boy with your whip if he hits the donkey again," cried miss adams, jogging up on a high, raw-boned beast. "hi, dragoman, mansoor, you tell this boy that i won't have the animals ill used, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself. yes, you little rascal, you ought! he's grinning at me like an advertisement for a tooth paste. do you think, mr. stephens, that if i were to knit that black soldier a pair of woollen stockings he would be allowed to wear them? the poor creature has bandages round his legs." "those are his putties, miss adams," said colonel cochrane, looking back at her. "we have found in india that they are the best support to the leg in marching. they are very much better than any stocking." "well, you don't say! they remind me mostly of a sick horse. but it's elegant to have the soldiers with us, though monsieur fardet tells me there's nothing for us to be scared about." "that is only my opinion, miss adams," said the frenchman hastily. "it may be that colonel cochrane thinks otherwise." "it is monsieur fardet's opinion against that of the officers who have the responsibility of caring for the safety of the frontier," said the colonel coldly. "at least we will all agree that they have the effect of making the scene very much more picturesque." the desert upon their right lay in long curves of sand, like the dunes which might have fringed some forgotten primeval sea. topping them they could see the black, craggy summits of the curious volcanic hills which rise upon the libyan side. on the crest of the low sand-hills they would catch a glimpse every now and then of a tall, sky-blue soldier, walking swiftly, his rifle at the trail. for a moment the lank, warlike figure would be sharply silhouetted against the sky. then he would dip into a hollow and disappear, while some hundred yards off another would show for an instant and vanish. "wherever are they raised?" asked sadie, watching the moving figures. "they look to me just about the same tint as the hotel boys in the states." "i thought some question might arise about them," said mr. stephens, who was never so happy as when he could anticipate some wish of the pretty american. "i made one or two references this morning in the ship's library. here it is--_re_--that's to say, about black soldiers. i have it on my notes that they are from the 10th soudanese battalion of the egyptian army. they are recruited from the dinkas and the shilluks--two negroid tribes living to the south of the dervish country, near the equator." "how can the recruits come through the dervishes, then?" asked headingly sharply. "i dare say there is no such very great difficulty over that," said monsieur fardet, with a wink at the american. "the older men are the remains of the old black battalions. some of them served with gordon at khartoum, and have his medal to show. the others are many of them deserters from the mahdi's army," said the colonel. "well, so long as they are not wanted, they look right elegant in those blue jackets," miss adams observed. "but if there was any trouble, i guess we would wish they were less ornamental and a bit whiter." "i am not so sure of that, miss adams," said the colonel. "i have seen these fellows in the field, and i assure you that i have the utmost confidence in their steadiness." "well, i'll take your word without trying," said miss adams, with a decision which made every one smile. so far their road had lain along the side of the river, which was swirling down upon their left hand deep and strong from the cataracts above. here and there the rush of the current was broken by a black shining boulder over which the foam was spouting. higher up they could see the white gleam of the rapids, and the banks grew into rugged cliffs, which were capped by a peculiar, outstanding semi-circular rock. it did not require the dragoman's aid to tell the party that this was the famous landmark to which they were bound. a long, level stretch lay before them, and the donkeys took it at a canter. at the farther side were scattered rocks, black upon orange; and in the midst of them rose some broken shafts of pillars and a length of engraved wall, looking in its greyness and its solidity more like some work of nature than of man. the fat, sleek dragoman had dismounted, and stood waiting in his petticoats and his cover-coat for the stragglers to gather round him. "this temple, ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with the air of an auctioneer who is about to sell it to the highest bidder, "very fine example from the eighteenth dynasty. here is the cartouche of thotmes the third," he pointed up with his donkey-whip at the rude, but deep, hieroglyphics upon the wall above him. "he live sixteen hundred years before christ, and this is made to remember his victorious exhibition into mesopotamia. here we have his history from the time that he was with his mother, until he return with captives tied to his chariot. in this you see him crowned with lower egypt, and with upper egypt offering up sacrifice in honour of his victory to the god ammon-ra. here he bring his captives before him, and he cut off each his right hand. in this corner you see little pile--all right hands." "my sakes, i shouldn't have liked to be here in those days," said miss adams. "why, there's nothing altered," remarked cecil brown. "the east is still the east. i've no doubt that within a hundred miles, or perhaps a good deal less, from where you stand--" "shut up!" whispered the colonel, and the party shuffled on down the line of the wall with their faces up and their big hats thrown backwards. the sun behind them struck the old grey masonry with a brassy glare, and carried on to it the strange black shadows of the tourists, mixing them up with the grim, high-nosed, square-shouldered warriors, and the grotesque, rigid deities who lined it. the broad shadow of the reverend john stuart, of birmingham, smudged out both the heathen king and the god whom he worshipped. "what's this?" he was asking in his wheezy voice, pointing up with a yellow assouan cane. "that is a hippopotamus," said the dragoman; and the tourists all tittered, for there was just a suspicion of mr. stuart himself in the carving. "but it isn't bigger than a little pig," he protested. "you see that the king is putting his spear through it with ease." "they make it small to show that it was a very small thing to the king," said the dragoman. "so you see that all the king's prisoners do not exceed his knee--which is not because he was so much taller, but so much more powerful. you see that he is bigger than his horse, because he is a king and the other is only a horse. the same way, these small women whom you see here and there are just his trivial little wives." "well, now!" cried miss adams indignantly. "if they had sculpted that king's soul it would have needed a lens to see it. fancy his allowing his wives to be put in like that." "if he did it now, miss adams," said the frenchman, "he would have more fighting than ever in mesopotamia. but time brings revenge. perhaps the day will soon come when we have the picture of the big strong wife and the trivial little husband--_hein?_" cecil brown and headingly had dropped behind, for the glib comments of the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists jarred upon their sense of solemnity. they stood in silence watching the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, as it passed in the vivid sunshine down the front of the old grey wall. above them two crested hoopoes were fluttering and calling amid the ruins of the pylon. "isn't it a sacrilege?" said the oxford man at last. "well, now, i'm glad you feel that about it, because it's how it always strikes me," headingly answered with feeling. "i'm not quite clear in my own mind how these things should be approached--if they are to be approached at all--but i am sure this is not the way. on the whole, i prefer the ruins that i have not seen to those which i have." the young diplomatist looked up with his peculiarly bright smile, which faded away too soon into his languid, _blase_ mask. "i've got a map," said the american, "and sometimes far away from anything in the very midst of the waterless, trackless desert, i see 'ruins' marked upon it--or 'remains of a temple,' perhaps. for example, the temple of jupiter ammon, which was one of the most considerable shrines in the world, was hundreds of miles away back of anywhere. those are the ruins, solitary, unseen, unchanging through the centuries, which appeal to one's imagination. but when i present a check at the door, and go in as if it were barnum's show, all the subtle feeling of romance goes right out of it." "absolutely!" said cecil brown, looking over the desert with his dark, intolerant eyes. "if one could come wandering here alone--stumble upon it by chance, as it were--and find one's self in absolute solitude in the dim light of the temple, with these grotesque figures all round, it would be perfectly overwhelming. a man would be prostrated with wonder and awe. but when belmont is puffing his bulldog pipe, and stuart is wheezing, and miss sadie adams is laughing--" "and that jay of a dragoman speaking his piece," said headingly; "i want to stand and think all the time, and i never seem to get the chance. i was ripe for manslaughter when i stood before the great pyramid, and couldn't get a quiet moment because they would boost me on to the top. i took a kick at one man which would have sent _him_ to the top in one jump if i had hit meat. but fancy travelling all the way from america to see the pyramid, and then finding nothing better to do than to kick an arab in front of it!" the oxford man laughed in his gentle, tired fashion. "they are starting again," said he, and the two hastened forwards to take their places at the tail of the absurd procession. their route ran now among large, scattered boulders, and between stony, shingly hills. a narrow winding path curved in and out amongst the rocks. behind them their view was cut off by similar hills, black and fantastic, like the slag-heaps at the shaft of a mine. a silence fell upon the little company, and even sadie's bright face reflected the harshness of nature. the escort had closed in, and marched beside them, their boots scrunching among the loose black rubble. colonel cochrane and belmont were still riding together in the van. "do you know, belmont," said the colonel, in a low voice, "you may think me a fool, but i don't like this one little bit." belmont gave a short gruff laugh. "it seemed all right in the saloon of the _korosko_, but now that we are here we _do_ seem rather up in the air," said he. "still, you know, a party comes here every week, and nothing has ever gone wrong." "i don't mind taking my chances when i am on the war-path," the colonel answered. "that's all straightforward and in the way of business. but when you have women with you, and a helpless crowd like this, it becomes really dreadful. of course, the chances are a hundred to one that we have no trouble; but if we should have--well, it won't bear thinking about. the wonderful thing is their complete unconsciousness that there is any danger whatever." "well, i like the english tailor-made dresses well enough for walking, mr. stephens," said miss sadie from behind them. "but for an afternoon dress, i think the french have more style than the english. your milliners have a more severe cut, and they don't do the cunning little ribbons and bows and things in the same way." the colonel smiled at belmont. "_she_ is quite serene in her mind, at any rate," said he. "of course, i wouldn't say what i think to any one but you, and i daresay it will all prove to be quite unfounded." "well, i could imagine parties of dervishes on the prowl," said belmont. "but what i cannot imagine is that they should just happen to come to the pulpit rock on the very morning when we are due there." "considering that our movements have been freely advertised, and that every one knows a week beforehand what our programme is, and where we are to be found, it does not strike me as being such a wonderful coincidence." "it is a very remote chance," said belmont stoutly, but he was glad in his heart that his wife was safe and snug on board the steamer. and now they were clear of the rocks again, with a fine stretch of firm yellow sand extending to the very base of the conical hill which lay before them. "ay-ah! ay-ah!" cried the boys, whack came their sticks upon the flanks of the donkeys, which broke into a gallop, and away they all streamed over the plain. it was not until they had come to the end of the path which curves up the hill that the dragoman called a halt. "now, ladies and gentlemen, we are arrived for the so famous pulpit rock of abousir. from the summit you will presently enjoy a panorama of remarkable fertility. but first you will observe that over the rocky side of the hill are everywhere cut the names of great men who have passed it in their travels, and some of these names are older than the time of christ." "got moses?" asked miss adams. "auntie, i'm surprised at you!" cried sadie. "well, my dear, he was in egypt, and he was a great man, and he may have passed this way." "moses's name very likely there, and the same with herodotus," said the dragoman gravely. "both have been long worn away. but there on the brown rock you will see belzoni. and up higher is gordon. there is hardly a name famous in the soudan which you will not find, if you like. and now, with your permission, we shall take good-bye of our donkeys and walk up the path, and you will see the river and the desert from the summit of the top." a minute or two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. the swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional spoutings of foam. on the other side was a frightful wilderness of black, scattered rocks, which were the _debris_ carried down by the river at high flood. in no direction were there any signs of human beings or their dwellings. "on the far side," said the dragoman, waving his donkey-whip towards the east, "is the military line which conducts wady halfa to sarras. sarras lies to the south, under that black hill. those two blue mountains which you see very far away are in dongola, more than a hundred miles from sarras. the railway there is forty miles long, and has been much annoyed by the dervishes, who are very glad to turn the rails into spears. the telegraph wires are also much appreciated thereby. now, if you will kindly turn round, i will explain, also, what we see upon the other side." it was a view which, when once seen, must always haunt the mind. such an expanse of savage and unrelieved desert might be part of some cold and burned-out planet rather than of this fertile and bountiful earth. away and away it stretched to die into a soft, violet haze in the extremest distance. in the foreground the sand was of a bright golden yellow, which was quite dazzling in the sunshine. here and there, in a scattered cordon, stood the six trusty negro soldiers leaning motionless upon their rifles, and each throwing a shadow which looked as solid as himself. but beyond this golden plain lay a low line of those black slag-heaps, with yellow sand-valleys winding between them. these in their turn were topped by higher and more fantastic hills, and these by others, peeping over each other's shoulders until they blended with that distant violet haze. none of these hills were of any height--a few hundred feet at the most--but their savage, saw-toothed crests, and their steep scarps of sun-baked stone, gave them a fierce character of their own. "the libyan desert," said the dragoman, with a proud wave of his hand. "the greatest desert in the world. suppose you travel right west from here, and turn neither to the north nor to the south, the first houses you would come to would be in america. that make you home-sick, miss adams, i believe?" but the american old maid had her attention drawn away by the conduct of sadie, who had caught her arm by one hand and was pointing over the desert with the other. "well, now, if that isn't too picturesque for anything!" she cried, with a flush of excitement upon her pretty face. "do look, mr. stephens! that's just the one only thing we wanted to make it just perfectly grand. see the men upon the camels coming out from between those hills!" they all looked at the long string of red-turbaned riders who were winding out of the ravine, and there fell such a hush that the buzzing of the flies sounded quite loud upon their ears. colonel cochrane had lit a match, and he stood with it in one hand and the unlit cigarette in the other until the flame licked round his fingers. belmont whistled. the dragoman stood staring with his mouth half-open, and a curious slaty tint in his full, red lips. the others looked from one to the other with an uneasy sense that there was something wrong. it was the colonel who broke the silence. "by george, belmont, i believe the hundred-to-one chance has come off!" said he. chapter iv. "what's the meaning of this, mansoor?" cried belmont harshly. "who are these people, and why are you standing staring as if you had lost your senses?" the dragoman made an effort to compose himself, and licked his dry lips before he answered. "i do not know who they are," said he in a quavering voice. "who they are?" cried the frenchman. "you can see who they are. they are armed men upon camels, ababdeh, bishareen--bedouins, in short, such as are employed by the government upon the frontier." "be jove, he may be right, cochrane," said belmont, looking inquiringly at the colonel. "why shouldn't it be as he says? why shouldn't these fellows be friendlies?" "there are no friendlies upon this side of the river," said the colonel abruptly; "i am perfectly certain about that. there is no use in mincing matters. we must prepare for the worst." but in spite of his words, they stood stock-still, in a huddled group, staring out over the plain. their nerves were numbed by the sudden shock, and to all of them it was like a scene in a dream, vague, impersonal, and un-real. the men upon the camels had streamed out from a gorge which lay a mile or so distant on the side of the path along which they had travelled. their retreat, therefore, was entirely cut off. it appeared, from the dust and the length of the line, to be quite an army which was emerging from the hills, for seventy men upon camels cover a considerable stretch of ground. having reached the sandy plain, they very deliberately formed to the front, and then at the harsh call of a bugle they trotted forward in line, the parti-coloured figures all swaying and the sand smoking in a rolling yellow cloud at the heels of their camels. at the same moment the six black soldiers doubled in from the front with their martinis at the trail, and snuggled down like well-trained skirmishers behind the rocks upon the haunch of the hill. their breech blocks all snapped together as their corporal gave them the order to load. and now suddenly the first stupor of the excursionists passed away, and was succeeded by a frantic and impotent energy. they all ran about upon the plateau of rock in an aimless, foolish flurry, like frightened fowls in a yard. they could not bring themselves to acknowledge that there was no possible escape for them. again and again they rushed to the edge of the great cliff which rose from the river, but the youngest and most daring of them could never have descended it. the two women clung one on each side of the trembling mansoor, with a feeling that he was officially responsible for their safety. when he ran up and down in his desperation, his skirts and theirs all fluttered together. stephens, the lawyer, kept close to sadie adams, muttering mechanically, "don't be alarmed, miss sadie; don't be at all alarmed!" though his own limbs were twitching with agitation. monsieur fardet stamped about with a guttural rolling of r's, glancing angrily at his companions as if they had in some way betrayed him; while the fat clergyman stood with his umbrella up, staring stolidly with big, frightened eyes at the camel-men. cecil brown curled his small, prim moustache, and looked white, but contemptuous. the colonel, belmont, and the young harvard graduate were the three most cool-headed and resourceful members of the party. "better stick together," said the colonel. "there's no escape for us, so we may as well remain united." "they've halted," said belmont. "they are reconnoitring us. they know very well that there is no escape from them, and they are taking their time. i don't see what we can do." "suppose we hide the women," headingly suggested. "they can't know how many of us are here. when they have taken us, the women can come out of their hiding-place and make their way back to the boat." "admirable!" cried colonel cochrane. "admirable! this way, please, miss adams. bring the ladies here, mansoor. there is not an instant to be lost." there was a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. the slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. the two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, sadie's arms thrown round her aunt. when they had walled them up, the men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. as they did so there rang out the sharp, peremptory crack of a rifle-shot from the escort, followed by another and another, but these isolated shots were drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of the bullets. the tourists all huddled behind the rocks, with the exception of the frenchman, who still stamped angrily about, striking his sun-hat with his clenched hand. belmont and cochrane crawled down to where the soudanese soldiers were firing slowly and steadily, resting their rifles upon the boulders in front of them. the arabs had halted about five hundred yards away, and it was evident from their leisurely movements that they were perfectly aware that there was no possible escape for the travellers. they had paused to ascertain their number before closing in upon them. most of them were firing from the backs of their camels, but a few had dismounted and were kneeling here and there--little shimmering white spots against the golden back-ground. their shots came sometimes singly in quick, sharp throbs, and sometimes in a rolling volley, with a sound like a boy's stick drawn across iron railings. the hill buzzed like a bee-hive, and the bullets made a sharp crackling as they struck against the rocks. "you do no good by exposing yourself," said belmont, drawing colonel cochrane behind a large jagged boulder, which already furnished a shelter for three of the soudanese. "a bullet is the best we have to hope for," said cochrane grimly. "what an infernal fool i have been, belmont, not to protest more energetically against this ridiculous expedition! i deserve whatever i get, but it _is_ hard on these poor souls who never knew the danger." "i suppose there's no help for us?" "not the faintest." "don't you think this firing might bring the troops up from halfa?" "they'll never hear it. it is a good six miles from here to the steamer. from that to halfa would be another five." "well, when we don't return, the steamer will give the alarm." "and where shall we be by that time?" "my poor norah! my poor little norah!" muttered belmont, in the depths of his grizzled moustache. "what do you suppose that they will do with us, cochrane?" he asked after a pause. "they may cut our throats, or they may take us as slaves to khartoum. i don't know that there is much to choose. there's one of us out of his troubles anyhow." the soldier next them had sat down abruptly, and leaned forward over his knees. his movement and attitude were so natural that it was hard to realise that he had been shot through the head. he neither stirred nor groaned. his comrades bent over him for a moment, and then, shrugging their shoulders, they turned their dark faces to the arabs once more. belmont picked up the dead man's martini and his ammunition-pouch. "only three more rounds, cochrane," said he, with the little brass cylinders upon the palm of his hand. "we've let them shoot too soon, and too often. we should have waited for the rush." "you're a famous shot, belmont," cried the colonel. "i've heard of you as one of the cracks. don't you think you could pick off their leader?" "which is he?" "as far as i can make out, it is that one on the white camel on their right front. i mean the fellow who is peering at us from under his two hands." belmont thrust in his cartridge and altered the sights. "it's a shocking bad light for judging distance," said he. "this is where the low point-blank trajectory of the lee-metford comes in useful. well, we'll try him at five hundred." he fired, but there was no change in the white camel or the peering rider. "did you see any sand fly?" "no, i saw nothing." "i fancy i took my sight a trifle too full." "try him again." man and rifle and rock were equally steady, but again the camel and chief remained un-harmed. the third shot must have been nearer, for he moved a few paces to the right, as if he were becoming restless. belmont threw the empty rifle down, with an exclamation of disgust. "it's this confounded light," he cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. "think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! if i had him at bisley i'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. what's the matter with the frenchman?" monsieur fardet was stamping about the plateau with the gestures of a man who has been stung by a wasp. "_s'cre nom! s'cre nom!_" he shouted, showing his strong white teeth under his black waxed moustache. he wrung his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of blood from his finger-tips. a bullet had chipped his wrist. headingly ran out from the cover where be had been crouching, with the intention of dragging the demented frenchman into a place of safety, but he had not taken three paces before he was himself hit in the loins, and fell with a dreadful crash among the stones. he staggered to his feet, and then fell again in the same place, floundering up and down like a horse which has broken its back. "i'm done!" he whispered, as the colonel ran to his aid, and then he lay still, with his china-white cheek against the black stones. when, but a year before, he had wandered under the elms of cambridge, surely the last fate upon this earth which he could have predicted for himself would be that he should be slain by the bullet of a fanatical mohammedan in the wilds of the libyan desert. meanwhile the fire of the escort had ceased, for they had shot away their last cartridge. a second man had been killed, and a third--who was the corporal in charge--had received a bullet in his thigh. he sat upon a stone, tying up his injury with a grave, preoccupied look upon his wrinkled black face, like an old woman piecing together a broken plate. the three others fastened their bayonets with a determined metallic rasp and snap, and the air of men who intended to sell their lives dearly. "they're coming!" cried belmont, looking over the plain. "let them come!" the colonel answered, putting his hands into his trouser-pockets. suddenly he pulled one fist out, and shook it furiously in the air. "oh, the cads! the confounded cads!" he shouted, and his eyes were congested with rage. it was the fate of the poor donkey-boys which had carried the self-contained soldier out of his usual calm. during the firing they had remained huddled, a pitiable group, among the rocks at the base of the hill. now upon the conviction that the charge of the dervishes must come first upon them, they had sprung upon their animals with shrill, inarticulate cries of fear, and had galloped off across the plain. a small flanking-party of eight or ten camel-men had worked round while the firing had been going on, and these dashed in among the flying donkey-boys, hacking and hewing with a cold-blooded, deliberate ferocity. one little boy, in a flapping galabeeah, kept ahead of his pursuers for a time, but the long stride of the camels ran him down, and an arab thrust his spear into the middle of his stooping back. the small, white-clad corpses looked like a flock of sheep trailing over the desert. but the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of the donkey-boys. even the colonel, after that first indignant outburst, had forgotten all about them. the advancing camel-men had trotted to the bottom of the hill, had dismounted, and leaving their camels kneeling, had rushed furiously onward. fifty of them were clambering up the path and over the rocks together, their red turbans appearing and vanishing again as they scrambled over the boulders. without a shot or a pause they surged over the three black soldiers, killing one and stamping the other two down under their hurrying feet. so they burst on to the plateau at the top, where an unexpected resistance checked them for an instant. the travellers, nestling up against one another, had awaited, each after his own fashion, the coming of the arabs. the colonel, with his hands back in his trouser-pockets, tried to whistle out of his dry lips. belmont folded his arms and leaned against a rock, with a sulky frown upon his lowering face. so strangely do our minds act that his three successive misses, and the tarnish to his reputation as a marksman, was troubling him more than his impending fate. cecil brown stood erect, and plucked nervously at the up-turned points of his little prim moustache. monsieur fardet groaned over his wounded wrist. mr. stephens, in sombre impotence, shook his head slowly, the living embodiment of prosaic law and order. mr. stuart stood, his umbrella still over him, with no expression upon his heavy face, or in his staring brown eyes. headingly lay with that china-white cheek resting motionless upon the stones. his sun-hat had fallen off, and he looked quite boyish with his ruffled yellow hair and his un-lined, clean-cut face. the dragoman sat upon a stone and played nervously with his donkey-whip. so the arabs found them when they reached the summit of the hill. and then, just as the foremost rushed to lay hands upon them, a most unexpected incident arrested them. from the time of the first appearance of the dervishes the fat clergyman of birmingham had looked like a man in a cataleptic trance. he had neither moved nor spoken. but now he suddenly woke at a bound into strenuous and heroic energy. it may have been the mania of fear, or it may have been the blood of some berserk ancestor which stirred suddenly in his veins; but he broke into a wild shout, and, catching up a stick, he struck right and left among the arabs with a fury which was more savage than their own. one who helped to draw up this narrative has left it upon record that, of all the pictures which have been burned into his brain, there is none so clear as that of this man, his large face shining with perspiration, and his great body dancing about with unwieldy agility, as he struck at the shrinking, snarling savages. then a spear-head flashed from behind a rock with a quick, vicious, upward thrust, the clergyman fell upon his hands and knees, and the horde poured over him to seize their unresisting victims. knives glimmered before their eyes, rude hands clutched at their wrists and at their throats, and then, with brutal and unreasoning violence, they were hauled and pushed down the steep winding path to where the camels were waiting below. the frenchman waved his unwounded hand as he walked. "_vive le khalifa! vive le madhi!" he shouted, until a blow from behind with the butt-end of a remington beat him into silence. and now they were herded in at the base of the abousir rock, this little group of modern types who had fallen into the rough clutch of the seventh century--for in all save the rifles in their hands there was nothing to distinguish these men from the desert warriors who first carried the crescent flag out of arabia. the east does not change, and the dervish raiders were not less brave, less cruel, or less fanatical than their forebears. they stood in a circle, leaning upon their guns and spears, and looking with exultant eyes at the dishevelled group of captives. they were clad in some approach to a uniform, red turbans gathered around the neck as well as the head, so that the fierce face looked out of a scarlet frame; yellow, untanned shoes, and white tunics with square brown patches let into them. all carried rifles, and one had a small discoloured bugle slung over his shoulder. half of them were negroes--fine, muscular men, with the limbs of a jet hercules; and the other half were baggara arabs--small, brown, and wiry, with little, vicious eyes, and thin, cruel lips. the chief was also a baggara, but he was a taller man than the others, with a black beard which came down over his chest, and a pair of hard, cold eyes, which gleamed like glass from under his thick, black brows. they were fixed now upon his captives, and his features were grave with thought. mr. stuart had been brought down, his hat gone, his face still flushed with anger, and his trousers sticking in one part to his leg. the two surviving soudanese soldiers, their black faces and blue coats blotched with crimson, stood silently at attention upon one side of this forlorn group of castaways. the chief stood for some minutes, stroking his black beard, while his fierce eyes glanced from one pale face to another along the miserable line of his captives. in a harsh, imperious voice he said something which brought mansoor, the dragoman, to the front, with bent back and outstretched supplicating palms. to his employers there had always seemed to be something comic in that flapping skirt and short cover-coat above it; but now, under the glare of the mid-day sun, with those faces gathered round them, it appeared rather to add a grotesque horror to the scene. the dragoman salaamed and salaamed like some ungainly automatic doll, and then, as the chief rasped out a curt word or two, he fell suddenly upon his face, rubbing his forehead into the sand, and flapping upon it with his hands. "what's that, cochrane?" asked belmont. "why is he making an exhibition of himself?" "as far as i can understand, it is all up with us," the colonel answered. "but this is absurd," cried the frenchman excitedly; "why should these people wish any harm to me? i have never injured them. on the other hand, i have always been their friend. if i could but speak to them, i would make them comprehend. hola, dragoman, mansoor!" the excited gestures of monsieur fardet drew the sinister eyes of the baggara chief upon him. again he asked a curt question, and mansoor, kneeling in front of him, answered it. "tell him that i am a frenchman, dragoman. tell him that i am a friend of the khalifa. tell him that my countrymen have never had any quarrel with him, but that his enemies are also ours." "the chief asks what religion you call your own," said mansoor. "the khalifa, he says, has no necessity for any friendship from those who are infidels and unbelievers." "tell him that in france we look upon all religions as good." "the chief says that none but a blaspheming dog and the son of a dog would say that all religions are one as good as the other. he says that if you are indeed the friend of the khalifa, you will accept the koran and become a true believer upon the spot. if you will do so he will promise on his side to send you alive to khartoum." "and if not?" "you will fare in the same way as the others." "then you may make my compliments to monsieur the chief, and tell him that it is not the custom for frenchmen to change their religion under compulsion." the chief said a few words, and then turned to consult with a short, sturdy arab at his elbow. "he says, monsieur fardet," said the dragoman, "that if you speak again he will make a trough out of you for the dogs to feed from. say nothing to anger him, sir, for he is now talking what is to be done with us." "who is he?" asked the colonel. "it is ali wad ibrahim, the same who raided last year, and killed all of the nubian village." "i've heard of him," said the colonel. "he has the name of being one of the boldest and the most fanatical of all the khalifa's leaders. thank god that the women are out of his clutches." the two arabs had been talking in that stern, restrained fashion which comes so strangely from a southern race. now they both turned to the dragoman, who was still kneeling upon the sand. they plied him with questions, pointing first to one and then to another of their prisoners. then they conferred together once more, and finally said something to mansoor, with a contemptuous wave of the hand to indicate that he might convey it to the others. "thank heaven, gentlemen, i think that we are saved for the present time," said mansoor, wiping away the sand which had stuck to his perspiring forehead. "ali wad ibrahim says that though an unbeliever should have only the edge of the sword from one of the sons of the prophet, yet it might be of more profit to the beit-el-mal at omdurman if it had the gold which your people will pay for you. until it comes you can work as the slaves of the khalifa, unless he should decide to put you to death. you are to mount yourselves upon the spare camels and to ride with the party." the chief had waited for the end of the explanation. "now he gave a brief order, and a negro stepped forward with a long, dull-coloured sword in his hand. the dragoman squealed like a rabbit who sees a ferret, and threw himself frantically down upon the sand once more. "what is it, cochrane?" asked cecil brown--for the colonel had served in the east, and was the only one of the travellers who had a smattering of arabic. "as far as i can make out, he says there is no use keeping the dragoman, as no one would trouble to pay a ransom for him, and he is too fat to make a good slave." "poor devil!" cried brown. "here, cochrane, tell them to let him go. we can't let him be butchered like this in front of us. say that we will find the money amongst us. i will be answerable for any reasonable sum." "i'll stand in as far as my means will allow," cried belmont. "we will sign a joint bond or indemnity," said the lawyer. "if i had a paper and pencil i could throw it into shape in an instant, and the chief could rely upon its being perfectly correct and valid." but the colonel's arabic was insufficient, and mansoor himself was too maddened by fear to understand the offer which was being made for him. the negro looked a question at the chief, and then his long black arm swung upwards and his sword hissed over his shoulder. but the dragoman had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their swarthy faces. the others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle around the grovelling, pleading man. the colonel had not understood this sudden change, nor had the others fathomed the reason of it, but some instinct flashed it upon stephens's horrified perceptions. "oh, you villain!" he cried furiously. "hold your tongue, you miserable creature! be silent! better die--a thousand times better die!" but it was too late, and already they could all see the base design by which the coward hoped to save his own life. he was about to betray the women. they saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then mansoor spoke rapidly and earnestly, pointing up the hill. at a word from the baggara, a dozen of the raiders rushed up the path and were lost to view upon the top. then came a shrill cry, a horrible strenuous scream of surprise and terror, and an instant later the party streamed into sight again, dragging the women in their midst. sadie, with her young, active limbs, kept up with them, as they sprang down the slope, encouraging her aunt all the while over her shoulder. the older lady, struggling amid the rushing white figures, looked with her thin limbs and open mouth like a chicken being dragged from a coop. the chief's dark eyes glanced indifferently at miss adams, but gazed with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. then he gave an abrupt order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove to the cluster of kneeling camels. their pockets had already been ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the neck of which was tied up by ali wad ibrahim's own hands. "i say, cochrane," whispered belmont, looking with smouldering eyes at the wretched mansoor, "i've got a little hip revolver which they have not discovered. shall i shoot that cursed dragoman for giving away the women?" the colonel shook his head. "you had better keep it," said he, with a sombre face. "the women may find some other use for it before all is over." chapter v. the camels, some brown and some white, were kneeling in a long line, their champing jaws moving rhythmically from side to side, and their gracefully poised heads turning to right and left in a mincing, self-conscious fashion. most of them were beautiful creatures, true arabian trotters, with the slim limbs and finely turned necks which mark the breed; but among them were a few of the slower, heavier beasts, with ungroomed skins, disfigured by the black scars of old firings. these were loaded with the doora and the waterskins of the raiders, but a few minutes sufficed to redistribute their loads and to make place for the prisoners. none of these had been bound with the exception of mr. stuart--for the arabs, understanding that he was a clergyman, and accustomed to associate religion with violence, had looked upon his fierce outburst as quite natural, and regarded him now as the most dangerous and enterprising of their captives. his hands were therefore tied together with a plaited camel-halter, but the others, including the dragoman and the two wounded blacks, were allowed to mount without any precaution against their escape, save that which was afforded by the slowness of their beasts. then, with a shouting of men and a roaring of camels, the creatures were jolted on to their legs, and the long, straggling procession set off with its back to the homely river, and its face to the shimmering, violet haze, which hung round the huge sweep of beautiful, terrible desert, striped tiger-fashion with black rock and with golden sand. none of the white prisoners, with the exception of colonel cochrane, had ever been upon a camel before. it seemed an alarming distance to the ground when they looked down, and the curious swaying motion, with the insecurity of the saddle, made them sick and frightened. but their bodily discomfort was forgotten in the turmoil of bitter thoughts within. what a chasm gaped between their old life and their new! and yet how short was the time and space which divided them! less than an hour ago they had stood upon the summit of that rock, and had laughed and chattered, or grumbled at the heat and flies, becoming peevish at small discomforts. headingly had been hypercritical over the tints of nature. they could not forget his own tint as he lay with his cheek upon the black stone. sadie had chattered about tailor-made dresses and parisian chiffons. now she was clinging, half-crazy, to the pommel of a wooden saddle, with suicide rising as a red star of hope in her mind. humanity, reason, argument--all were gone, and there remained the brutal humiliation of force. and all the time, down there by the second rocky point, their steamer was waiting for them--their saloon, with the white napery and the glittering glasses, the latest novel, and the london papers. the least imaginative of them could see it so clearly: the white awning, mrs. shlesinger with her yellow sun-hat, mrs. belmont lying back in the canvas chair. there it lay almost in sight of them, that little floating chip broken off from home, and every silent, ungainly step of the camels was carrying them more hopelessly away from it. that very morning how beneficent providence had appeared, how pleasant was life!--a little commonplace, perhaps, but so soothing and restful. and now! the red head-gear, patched jibbehs, and yellow boots had already shown to the colonel that these men were no wandering party of robbers, but a troop from the regular army of the khalifa. now, as they struck across the desert, they showed that they possessed the rude discipline which their work demanded. a mile ahead, and far out on either flank, rode their scouts, dipping and rising among the yellow sand-hills. ali wad ibrahim headed the caravan, and his short, sturdy lieutenant brought up the rear. the main party straggled over a couple of hundred yards, and in the middle was the little, dejected clump of prisoners. no attempt was made to keep them apart, and mr. stephens soon contrived that his camel should be between those of the two ladies. "don't be down-hearted, miss adams," said he. "this is a most indefensible outrage, but there can be no question that steps will be taken in the proper quarter to set the matter right. i am convinced that we shall be subjected to nothing worse than a temporary inconvenience. if it had not been for that villain mansoor, you need not have appeared at all." it was shocking to see the change in the little bostonian lady, for she had shrunk to an old woman in an hour. her swarthy cheeks had fallen in, and her eyes shone wildly from sunken, darkened sockets. her frightened glances were continually turned upon sadie. there is surely some wrecker angel which can only gather her best treasures in moments of disaster. for here were all these worldlings going to their doom, and already frivolity and selfishness had passed away from them, and each was thinking and grieving only for the other. sadie thought of her aunt, her aunt thought of sadie, the men thought of the women, belmont thought of his wife--and then he thought of something else also, and he kicked his camel's shoulder with his heel, until he found himself upon the near side of miss adams. "i've got something for you here," he whispered. "we may be separated soon, so it is as well to make our arrangements." "separated!" wailed miss adams. "don't speak loud, for that infernal mansoor may give us away again. i hope it won't be so, but it might. we must be prepared for the worst. for example, they might determine to get rid of us men and to keep you." miss adams shuddered. "what am i to do? for god's sake tell me what i am to do, mr. belmont! i am an old woman. i have had my day. i could stand it if it was only myself. but sadie--i am clean crazed when i think of her. there's her mother waiting at home, and i--" she clasped her thin hands together in the agony of her thoughts. "put your hand out under your dust-cloak," said belmont, sidling his camel up against hers. "don't miss your grip of it. there! now hide it in your dress, and you'll always have a key to unlock any door." miss adams felt what it was which he had slipped into her hand, and she looked at him for a moment in bewilderment. then she pursed up her lips and shook her stern, brown face in disapproval. but she pushed the little pistol into its hiding-place, all the same, and she rode with her thoughts in a whirl. could this indeed be she, eliza adams, of boston, whose narrow, happy life had oscillated between the comfortable house in commonwealth avenue and the tremont presbyterian church? here she was, hunched upon a camel, with her hand upon the butt of a pistol, and her mind weighing the justifications of murder. oh, life, sly, sleek, treacherous life, how are we ever to trust you? show us your worst and we can face it, but it is when you are sweetest and smoothest that we have most to fear from you. "at the worst, miss sadie, it will only be a question of ransom," said stephens, arguing against his own convictions. "besides, we are still dose to egypt, far away from the dervish country. there is sure to be an energetic pursuit. you must try not to lose your courage, and to hope for the best." "no, i am not scared, mr. stephens," said sadie, turning towards him a blanched face which belied her words. "we're all in god's hands, and surely he won't be cruel to us. it is easy to talk about trusting him when things are going well, but now is the real test. if he's up there behind that blue heaven--" "he is," said a voice behind them, and they found that the birmingham clergyman had joined the party. his tied hands clutched on to his makloofa saddle, and his fat body swayed dangerously from side to side with every stride of the camel. his wounded leg was oozing with blood and clotted with flies, and the burning desert sun beat down upon his bare head, for he had lost both hat and umbrella in the scuffle. a rising fever flecked his large, white cheeks with a touch of colour, and brought a light into his brown ox-eyes. he had always seemed a somewhat gross and vulgar person to his fellow-travellers. now, this bitter healing draught of sorrow had transformed him. he was purified, spiritualised, exalted. he had become so calmly strong that he made the others feel stronger as they looked upon him. he spoke of life and of death, of the present, and their hopes of the future; and the black cloud of their misery began to show a golden rift or two. cecil brown shrugged his shoulders, for he could not change in an hour the convictions of his life; but the others, even fardet, the frenchman, were touched and strengthened. they all took off their hats when he prayed. then the colonel made a turban out of his red silk cummerbund, and insisted that mr. stuart should wear it. with his homely dress and gorgeous headgear, he looked like a man who has dressed up to amuse the children. and now the dull, ceaseless, insufferable torment of thirst was added to the aching weariness which came from the motion of the camels. the sun glared down upon them, and then up again from the yellow sand, and the great plain shimmered and glowed until they felt as if they were riding over a cooling sheet of molten metal. their lips were parched and dried, and their tongues like tags of leather. they lisped curiously in their speech, for it was only the vowel sounds which would come without an effort. miss adams's chin had dropped upon her chest, and her great hat concealed her face. "auntie will faint if she does not get water," said sadie. "oh, mr. stephens, is there nothing we could do?" the dervishes riding near were all baggara with the exception of one negro--an uncouth fellow with a face pitted with small-pox. his expression seemed good-natured when compared with that of his arab comrades, and stephens ventured to touch his elbow and to point to his water-skin, and then to the exhausted lady. the negro shook his head brusquely, but at the same time he glanced significantly towards the arabs, as if to say that, if it were not for them, he might act differently. then he laid his black forefinger upon the breast of his jibbeh. "tippy tilly," said he. "what's that?" asked colonel cochrane. "tippy tilly," repeated the negro, sinking his voice as if he wished only the prisoners to hear him. the colonel shook his head. "my arabic won't bear much strain. i don't know what he is saying," said he. "tippy tilly. hicks pasha," the negro repeated. "i believe the fellow is friendly to us, but i can't quite make him out," said cochrane to belmont. "do you think that he means that his name is tippy tilly, and that he killed hicks pasha?" the negro showed his great white teeth at hearing his own words coming back to him. "aiwa!" said he. "tippy tilly--bimbashi mormer--boum!" "by jove, i've got it!" cried belmont. "he's trying to speak english. tippy tilly is as near as he can get to egyptian artillery. he has served in the egyptian artillery under bimbashi mortimer. he was taken prisoner when hicks pasha was destroyed, and had to turn dervish to save his skin. how's that?" the colonel said a few words of arabic and received a reply, but two of the arabs closed up, and the negro quickened his pace and left them. "you are quite right," said the colonel. "the fellow is friendly to us, and would rather fight for the khedive than for the khalifa. i don't know that he can do us any good, but i've been in worse holes than this, and come out right side up. after all, we are not out of reach of pursuit, and won't be for another forty-eight hours." belmont calculated the matter out in his slow, deliberate fashion. "it was about twelve that we were on the rock," said he. "they would become alarmed aboard the steamer if we did not appear at two." "yes," the colonel interrupted, "that was to be our lunch hour. i remember saying that when i came back i would have--o lord, it's best not to think of it!" "the reis was a sleepy old crock," belmont continued, "but i have absolute confidence in the promptness and decision of my wife. she would insist upon an immediate alarm being given. suppose they started back at two-thirty, they should be at halfa by three, since the journey is down stream. how long did they say that it took to turn out the camel corps?" "give them an hour." "and another hour to get them across the river. they would be at the abousir rock and pick up the tracks by six o'clock. after that it is a clear race. we are only four hours ahead, and some of these beasts are very spent. we may be saved yet, cochrane!" "some of us may. i don't expect to see the padre alive to-morrow, nor miss adams either. they are not made for this sort of thing either of them. then again we must not forget that these people have a trick of murdering their prisoners when they see that there is a chance of a rescue. see here, belmont, in case you get back and i don't, there's a matter of a mortgage that i want you to set right for me." they rode on with their shoulders inclined to each other, deep in the details of business. the friendly negro who had talked of himself as tippy tilly had managed to slip a piece of cloth soaked in water into the hand of mr. stephens, and miss adams had moistened her lips with it. even the few drops had given her renewed strength, and now that the first crushing shock was over, her wiry, elastic, yankee nature began to reassert itself. "these people don't look as if they would harm us, mr. stephens," said she. "i guess they have a working religion of their own, such as it is, and that what's wrong to us is wrong to them." stephens shook his head in silence. he had seen the death of the donkey-boys, and she had not. "maybe we are sent to guide them into a better path," said the old lady. "maybe we are specially singled out for a good work among them." if it were not for her niece her energetic and enterprising temperament was capable of glorying in the chance of evangelising khartoum, and turning omdurman into a little well-drained broad-avenued replica of a new england town. "do you know what i am thinking of all the time?" said sadie. "you remember that temple that we saw--when was it? why, it was this morning." they gave an exclamation of surprise, all three of them. yes, it had been this morning; and it seemed away and away in some dim past experience of their lives, so vast was the change, so new and so overpowering the thoughts which had come between. they rode in silence, full of this strange expansion of time, until at last stephens reminded sadie that she had left her remark unfinished. "oh yes; it was the wall picture on that temple that i was thinking of. do you remember the poor string of prisoners who are being dragged along to the feet of the great king--how dejected they looked among the warriors who led them? who could--who _could_ have thought that within three hours the same fate should be our own? and mr. headingly--" she turned her face away and began to cry. "don't take on, sadie," said her aunt; "remember what the minister said just now, that we are all right there in the hollow of god's hand. where do you think we are going, mr. stephens?" the red edge of his baedeker still projected from the lawyer's pocket, for it had not been worth their captor's while to take it. he glanced down at it. "if they will only leave me this, i will look up a few references when we halt. i have a general idea of the country, for i drew a small map of it the other day. the river runs from south to north, so we must be travelling almost due west. i suppose they feared pursuit if they kept too near the nile bank. there is a caravan route, i remember, which runs parallel to the river, about seventy miles inland. if we continue in this direction for a day we ought to come to it. there is a line of wells through which it passes. it comes out at assiout, if i remember right, upon the egyptian side. on the other side, it leads away into the dervish country--so, perhaps--" his words were interrupted by a high, eager voice, which broke suddenly into a torrent of jostling words, words without meaning, pouring strenuously out in angry assertions and foolish repetitions. the pink had deepened to scarlet upon mr. stuart's cheeks, his eyes were vacant but brilliant, and he gabbled, gabbled, gabbled as he rode. kindly mother nature! she will not let her children be mishandled too far. "this is too much," she says; "this wounded leg, these crusted lips, this anxious, weary mind. come away for a time, until your body becomes more habitable." and so she coaxes the mind away into the nirvana of delirium, while the little cell-workers tinker and toil within to get things better for its homecoming. when you see the veil of cruelty which nature wears, try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a very homely, kindly face behind. the arab guards looked askance at this sudden outbreak of the clergyman, for it verged upon lunacy, and lunacy is to them a fearsome and supernatural thing. one of them rode forward and spoke with the emir. when he returned he said something to his comrades, one of whom closed in upon each side of the minister's camel, so as to prevent him from falling. the friendly negro sidled his beast up to the colonel, and whispered to him. "we are going to halt presently, belmont," said cochrane. "thank god! they may give us some water. we can't go on like this." "i told tippy tilly that, if he could help us, we would turn him into a bimbashi when we got him back into egypt. i think he's willing enough if he only had the power. by jove, belmont, do look back at the river." their route, which had lain through sand-strewn khors with jagged, black edges--places up which one would hardly think it possible that a camel could climb--opened out now on to a hard, rolling plain, covered thickly with rounded pebbles, dipping and rising to the violet hills upon the horizon. so regular were the long, brown pebble-strewn curves, that they looked like the dark rollers of some monstrous ground-swell. here and there a little straggling sage-green tuft of camel-grass sprouted up between the stones. brown plains and violet hills--nothing else in front of them! behind lay the black jagged rocks through which they had passed with orange slopes of sand, and then far away a thin line of green to mark the course of the river. how cool and beautiful that green looked in the stark, abominable wilderness! on one side they could see the high rock--the accursed rock which had tempted them to their ruin. on the other the river curved, and the sun gleamed upon the water. oh, that liquid gleam, and the insurgent animal cravings, the brutal primitive longings, which for the instant took the soul out of all of them! they had lost families, countries, liberty, everything, but it was only of water, water, water, that they could think. mr. stuart in his delirium began roaring for oranges, and it was insufferable for them to have to listen to him. only the rough, sturdy irishman rose superior to that bodily craving. that gleam of river must be somewhere near halfa, and his wife might be upon the very water at which he looked. he pulled his hat over his eyes, and rode in gloomy silence, biting at his strong, iron-grey moustache. slowly the sun sank towards the west, and their shadows began to trail along the path where their hearts would go. it was cooler, and a desert breeze had sprung up, whispering over the rolling, stone-strewed plain. the emir at their head had called his lieutenant to his side, and the pair had peered about, their eyes shaded by their hands, looking for some landmark. then, with a satisfied grunt, the chief's camel had seemed to break short off at its knees, and then at its hocks, going down in three curious, broken-jointed jerks until its stomach was stretched upon the ground. as each succeeding camel reached the spot it lay down also, until they were all stretched in one long line. the riders sprang off, and laid out the chopped tibbin upon cloths in front of them, for no well-bred camel will eat from the ground. in their gentle eyes, their quiet, leisurely way of eating, and their condescending, mincing manner, there was something both feminine and genteel, as though a party of prim old maids had foregathered in the heart of the libyan desert. there was no interference with the prisoners, either male or female, for how could they escape in the centre of that huge plain? the emir came towards them once, and stood combing out his blue-black beard with his fingers, and looking thoughtfully at them out of his dark, sinister eyes. miss adams saw with a shudder that it was always upon sadie that his gaze was fixed. then, seeing their distress, he gave an order, and a negro brought a water-skin, from which he gave each of them about half a tumblerful. it was hot and muddy, and tasted of leather, but oh how delightful it was to their parched palates! the emir said a few abrupt words to the dragoman, and left. "ladies and gentlemen," mansoor began, with something of his old consequential manner; but a glare from the colonel's eyes struck the words from his lips, and he broke away into a long, whimpering excuse for his conduct. "how could i do anything otherwise," he wailed, "with the very knife at my throat?" "you will have the very rope round your throat if we all see egypt again," growled cochrane savagely. "in the meantime--" "that's all right, colonel," said belmont. "but for our own sakes we ought to know what the chief has said." "for my part i'll have nothing to do with the blackguard." "i think that that is going too far. we are bound to hear what he has to say." cochrane shrugged his shoulders. privations had made him irritable, and he had to bite his lip to keep down a bitter answer. he walked slowly away, with his straight-legged military stride. "what did he say, then?" asked belmont, looking at the dragoman with an eye which was as stern as the colonel's. "he seems to be in a somewhat better manner than before. he said that if he had more water you should have it, but that he is himself short in supply. he said that to-morrow we shall come to the wells of selimah, and everybody shall have plenty--and the camels too." "did he say how long we stopped here?" "very little rest, he said, and then forward! oh, mr. belmont--" "hold your tongue!" snapped the irishman, and began once more to count times and distances. if it all worked out as he expected, if his wife had insisted upon the indolent reis giving an instant alarm at halfa, then the pursuers should be already upon their track. the camel corps or the egyptian horse would travel by moonlight better and faster than in the day-time. he knew that it was the custom at halfa to keep at least a squadron of them all ready to start at any instant. he had dined at the mess, and the officers had told him how quickly they could take the field. they had shown him the water-tanks and the food beside each of the beasts, and he had admired the completeness of the arrangements, with little thought as to what it might mean to him in the future. it would be at least an hour before they would all get started again from their present halting-place. that would be a clear hour gained. perhaps by next morning-and then, suddenly, his thoughts were terribly interrupted. the colonel, raving like a madman, appeared upon the crest of the nearest slope, with an arab hanging on to each of his wrists. his face was purple with rage and excitement, and he tugged and bent and writhed in his furious efforts to get free. "you cursed murderers!" he shrieked, and then, seeing the others in front of him, "belmont," he cried, "they've killed cecil brown." what had happened was this. in his conflict with his own ill-humour, cochrane had strolled over this nearest crest, and had found a group of camels in the hollow beyond, with a little knot of angry, loud-voiced men beside them. brown was the centre of the group, pale, heavy-eyed, with his upturned, spiky moustache and listless manner. they had searched his pockets before, but now they were determined to tear off all his clothes in the hope of finding something which he had secreted. a hideous negro with silver bangles in his ears, grinned and jabbered in the young diplomatist's impassive face. there seemed to the colonel to be something heroic and almost inhuman in that white calm, and those abstracted eyes. his coat was already open, and the negro's great black paw flew up to his neck and tore his shirt down to the waist. and at the sound of that r-r-rip, and at the abhorrent touch of those coarse fingers, this man about town, this finished product of the nineteenth century, dropped his life-traditions and became a savage facing a savage. his face flushed, his lips curled back, he chattered his teeth like an ape, and his eyes--those indolent eyes which had always twinkled so placidly--were gorged and frantic. he threw himself upon the negro, and struck him again and again, feebly but viciously, in his broad, black face. he hit like a girl, round arm, with an open palm. the man winced away for an instant, appalled by this sudden blaze of passion. then with an impatient, snarling cry, he slid a knife from his long loose sleeve and struck upwards under the whirling arm. brown sat down at the blow and began to cough--to cough as a man coughs who has choked at dinner, furiously, ceaselessly, spasm after spasm. then the angry red cheeks turned to a mottled pallor, there were liquid sounds in his throat, and, clapping his hand to his mouth, he rolled over on to his side. the negro, with a brutal grunt of contempt, slid his knife up his sleeve once more, while the colonel, frantic with impotent anger, was seized by the bystanders, and dragged, raving with fury, back to his forlorn party. his hands were lashed with a camel-halter, and he lay at last, in bitter silence, beside the delirious nonconformist. so headingly was gone, and cecil brown was gone, and their haggard eyes were turned from one pale face to another, to know which they should lose next of that frieze of light-hearted riders who had stood out so clearly against the blue morning sky, when viewed from the deck-chairs of the _korosko_. two gone out of ten, and a third out of his mind. the pleasure trip was drawing to its climax. fardet, the frenchman, was sitting alone with his chin resting upon his hands, and his elbows upon his knees, staring miserably out over the desert, when belmont saw him start suddenly and prick up his head like a dog who hears a strange step. then, with clenched fingers, he bent his face forward and stared fixedly towards the black eastern hills through which they had passed. belmont followed his gaze, and, yes-yes--there was something moving there! he saw the twinkle of metal, and the sudden gleam and flutter of some white garment. a dervish vedette upon the flank turned his camel twice round as a danger signal, and discharged his rifle in the air. the echo of the crack had hardly died away before they were all in their saddles, arabs and negroes. another instant, and the camels were on their feet and moving slowly towards the point of alarm. several armed men surrounded the prisoners, slipping cartridges into their remingtons as a hint to them to remain still. "by heaven, they are men on camels!" cried cochrane, his troubles all forgotten as he strained his eyes to catch sight of these new-comers. "i do believe that it is our own people." in the confusion he had tugged his hands free from the halter which bound them. "they've been smarter than i gave them credit for," said belmont, his eyes shining from under his thick brows. "they are here a long two hours before we could have reasonably expected them. hurrah, monsieur fardet, _ca va bien, n'est ce pas?_" "hurrah, hurrah! _merveilleusement bien! vivent les anglais! vivent les anglais!_" yelled the excited frenchman, as the head of a column of camelry began to wind out from among the rocks. "see here, belmont," cried the colonel. "these fellows will want to shoot us if they see it is all up. i know their ways, and we must be ready for it. will you be ready to jump on the fellow with the blind eye? and i'll take the big nigger, if i can get my arms round him. stephens, you must do what you can. you, fardet, _comprenez vous? il est necessaire_ to plug these johnnies before they can hurt us. you, dragoman, tell those two soudanese soldiers that they must be ready--but, but". . . his words died into a murmur, and he swallowed once or twice. "these are arabs," said he, and it sounded like another voice. of all the bitter day, it was the very bitterest moment. happy mr. stuart lay upon the pebbles with his back against the ribs of his camel, and chuckled consumedly at some joke which those busy little cell-workers had come across in their repairs. his fat face was wreathed and creased with merriment. but the others, how sick, how heart-sick, were they all! the women cried. the men turned away in that silence which is beyond tears. monsieur fardet fell upon his face, and shook with dry sobbings. the arabs were firing their rifles as a welcome to their friends, and the others as they trotted their camels across the open returned the salutes and waved their rifles and lances in the air. they were a smaller band than the first one--not more than thirty--but dressed in the same red headgear and patched jibbehs. one of them carried a small white banner with a scarlet text scrawled across it. but there was something there which drew the eyes and the thoughts of the tourists away from everything else. the same fear gripped at each of their hearts, and the same impulse kept each of them silent. they stared at a swaying white figure half seen amidst the ranks of the desert warriors. "what's that they have in the middle of them?" cried stephens at last. "look, miss adams! surely it is a woman!" there was something there upon a camel, but it was difficult to catch a glimpse of it. and then suddenly, as the two bodies met, the riders opened out, and they saw it plainly. "it's a white woman!" "the steamer has been taken!" belmont gave a cry that sounded high above everything. "norah, darling," he shouted, "keep your heart up! i'm here, and it is all well!" chapter vi. so the _korosko_ had been taken, and the chances of rescue upon which they had reckoned--all those elaborate calculations of hours and distances--were as unsubstantial as the mirage which shimmered upon the horizon. there would be no alarm at halfa until it was found that the steamer did not return in the evening. even now, when the nile was only a thin green band upon the farthest horizon, the pursuit had probably not begun. in a hundred miles, or even less, they would be in the dervish country. how small, then, was the chance that the egyptian forces could overtake them. they all sank into a silent, sulky despair, with the exception of belmont, who was held back by the guards as he strove to go to his wife's assistance. the two bodies of camel-men had united, and the arabs, in their grave, dignified fashion, were exchanging salutations and experiences, while the negroes grinned, chattered, and shouted, with the careless good-humour which even the koran has not been able to alter. the leader of the new-comers was a greybeard, a worn, ascetic, high-nosed old man, abrupt and fierce in his manner, and soldierly in his bearing. the dragoman groaned when he saw him, and flapped his hands miserably with the air of a man who sees trouble accumulating upon trouble. "it is the emir abderrahman," said he. "i fear now that we shall never come to khartoum alive." the name meant nothing to the others, but colonel cochrane had heard of him as a monster of cruelty and fanaticism, a red-hot moslem of the old fighting, preaching dispensation, who never hesitated to carry the fierce doctrines of the koran to their final conclusions. he and the emir wad ibrahim conferred gravely together, their camels side by side, and their red turbans inclined inwards, so that the black beard mingled with the white one. then they both turned and stared long and fixedly at the poor, head-hanging huddle of prisoners. the younger man pointed and explained, while his senior listened with a sternly impassive face. "who's that nice-looking old gentleman in the white beard?" asked miss adams, who had been the first to rally from the bitter disappointment. "that is their leader now," cochrane answered. "you don't say that he takes command over that other one?" "yes, lady," said the dragoman; "he is now the head of all." "well, that's good for us. he puts me in mind of elder mathews who was at the presbyterian church in minister scott's time. anyhow, i had rather be in his power than in the hands of that black-haired one with the flint eyes. sadie, dear, you feel better now its cooler, don't you?" "yes, auntie; don't you fret about me. how are you yourself?" "well, i'm stronger in faith than i was. i set you a poor example, sadie, for i was clean crazed at first at the suddenness of it all, and at thinking of what your mother, who trusted you to me, would think about it. my land, there'll be some head-lines in the _boston herald_ over this! i guess somebody will have to suffer for it." "poor mr. stuart!" cried sadie, as the monotonous droning voice of the delirious man came again to their ears. "come, auntie, and see if we cannot do something to relieve him." "i'm uneasy about mrs. shlesinger and the child," said colonel cochrane. "i can see your wife, belmont, but i can see no one else." "they are bringing her over," cried he. "thank god! we shall hear all about it. they haven't hurt you, norah, have they?" he ran forward to grasp and kiss the hand which his wife held down to him as he helped her from the camel. the kind grey eyes and calm sweet face of the irishwoman brought comfort and hope to the whole party. she was a devout roman catholic, and it is a creed which forms an excellent prop in hours of danger. to her, to the anglican colonel, to the nonconformist minister, to the presbyterian american, even to the two pagan black riflemen, religion in its various forms was fulfilling the same beneficent office--whispering always that the worst which the world can do is a small thing, and that, however harsh the ways of providence may seem, it is, on the whole, the wisest and best thing for us that we should go cheerfully whither the great hand guides us. they had not a dogma in common, these fellows in misfortune; but they held the intimate, deep-lying spirit, the calm, essential fatalism which is the world-old framework of religion, with fresh crops of dogmas growing like ephemeral lichens upon its granite surface. "you poor things!" she said. "i can see that you have had a much worse time than i have. no, really, john, dear, i am quite well--not even very thirsty, for our party filled their water-skins at the nile, and they let me have as much as i wanted. but i don't see mr. headingly and mr. brown. and poor mr. stuart--what a state he has been reduced to!" "headingly and brown are out of their troubles," her husband answered. "you don't know how often i have thanked god to-day, norah, that you were not with us. and here you are, after all." "where should i be but by my husband's side? i had much, _much_ rather be here than safe at halfa." "has any news gone to the town?" asked the colonel. "one boat escaped. mrs. shlesinger and her child and maid were in it. i was downstairs in my cabin when the arabs rushed on to the vessel. those on deck had time to escape, for the boat was alongside. i don't know whether any of them were hit. the arabs fired at them for some time." "did they?" cried belmont exultantly, his responsive irish nature catching the sunshine in an instant. "then, be jove, we'll do them yet, for the garrison must have heard the firing. what d'ye think, cochrane? they must be full cry upon our scent this four hours. any minute we might see the white puggaree of a british officer coming over that rise." but disappointment had left the colonel cold and sceptical. "they need not come at all unless they come strong," said he. "these fellows are picked men with good leaders, and on their own ground they will take a lot of beating." suddenly he paused and looked at the arabs. "by george!" said he, "that's a sight worth seeing!" the great red sun was down with half its disc slipped behind the violet bank upon the horizon. it was the hour of arab prayer. an older and more learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon the skyline and adored _that_. but these wild children of the desert were nobler in essentials than the polished persian. to them the ideal was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and their faces to the central shrine of their religion that they prayed. and how they prayed, these fanatical moslems! rapt, absorbed, with yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their foreheads upon their praying carpets. who could doubt, as he watched their strenuous, heart-whole devotion, that here was a great living power in the world, reactionary but tremendous, countless millions all thinking as one from cape juby to the confines of china? let a common wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may not be the besom with which providence may sweep the rotten, decadent, impossible, half-hearted south of europe, as it did a thousand years ago, until it makes room for a sounder stock? and now as they rose to their feet the bugle rang out, and the prisoners understood that, having travelled all day, they were fated to travel all night also. belmont groaned, for he had reckoned upon the pursuers catching them up before they left this camp. but the others had already got into the way of accepting the inevitable. a flat arab loaf had been given to each of them--what effort of the _chef_ of the post-boat had ever tasted like that dry brown bread?--and then, luxury of luxuries, they had a second ration of a glass of water, for the fresh-filled bags of the newcomers had provided an ample supply. if the body would but follow the lead of the soul as readily as the soul does that of the body, what a heaven the earth might be! i now, with their base material wants satisfied for the instant, their spirits began to sing within them, and they mounted their camels with some sense of the romance of their position. mr. stuart remained babbling upon the ground, and the arabs made no effort to lift him into his saddle. his large, white, upturned face glimmered through the gathering darkness. "hi, dragoman, tell them that they are forgetting mr. stuart," cried the colonel. "no use, sir," said mansoor. "they say that he is too fat, and that they will not take him any farther. he will die, they say, and why should they trouble about him?" "not take him!" cried cochrane. "why, the man will perish of hunger and thirst. where's the emir? hi!" he shouted, as the black-bearded arab passed, with a tone like that in which he used to summon a dilatory donkey-boy. the chief did not deign to answer him, but said something to one of the guards, who dashed the butt of his remington into the colonel's ribs. the old soldier fell forward gasping, and was carried on half senseless, clutching at the pommel of his saddle. the women began to cry, and the men, with muttered curses and clenched hands, writhed in that hell of impotent passion, where brutal injustice and ill-usage have to go without check or even remonstrance. belmont gripped at his hip-pocket for his little revolver, and then remembered that he had already given it to miss adams. if his hot hand had clutched it, it would have meant the death of the emir and the massacre of the party. and now as they rode onwards they saw one of the most singular of the phenomena of the egyptian desert in front of them, though the ill-treatment of their companion had left them in no humour for the appreciation of its beauty. when the sun had sunk, the horizon had remained of a slaty-violet hue. but now this began to lighten and to brighten until a curious false dawn developed, and it seemed as if a vacillating sun was coming back along the path which it had just abandoned. a rosy pink hung over the west, with beautifully delicate sea-green tints along the upper edge of it. slowly these faded into slate again, and the night had come. it was but twenty-four hours since they had sat in their canvas chairs discussing politics by starlight on the saloon deck of the _korosko_; only twelve since they had breakfasted there and had started spruce and fresh upon their last pleasure trip. what a world of fresh impressions had come upon them since then! how rudely they had been jostled out of their take-it-for-granted complacency! the same shimmering silver stars, as they had looked upon last night, the same thin crescent of moon--but they, what a chasm lay between that old pampered life and this! the long line of camels moved as noiselessly as ghosts across the desert. before and behind were the silent, swaying white figures of the arabs. not a sound anywhere, not the very faintest sound, until far away behind them they heard a human voice singing in a strong, droning, unmusical fashion. it had the strangest effect, this far-away voice, in that huge inarticulate wilderness. and then there came a well-known rhythm into that distant chant, and they could almost hear the words- we nightly pitch our moving tent, a day's march nearer home. was mr. stuart in his right mind again, or was it some coincidence of his delirium, that he should have chosen this for his song? with moist eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew that home was very near to this wanderer. gradually the voice died away into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of the desert. "my dear old chap, i hope you're not hurt?" said belmont, laying his hand upon cochrane's knee. the colonel had straightened himself, though he still gasped a little in his breathing. "i am all right again, now. would you kindly show me which was the man who struck me?" "it was the fellow in front there--with his camel beside fardet's." "the young fellow with the moustache--i can't see him very well in this light, but i think i could pick him out again. thank you, belmont!" "but i thought some of your ribs were gone." "no, it only knocked the wind out of me." "you must be made of iron. it was a frightful blow. how could you rally from it so quickly?" the colonel cleared his throat and hummed and stammered. "the fact is, my dear belmont--i'm sure you would not let it go further--above all not to the ladies; but i am rather older than i used to be, and rather than lose the military carriage which has always been dear to me, i--" "stays, be jove!" cried the astonished irishman. "well, some slight artificial support," said the colonel stiffly, and switched the conversation off to the chances of the morrow. it still comes back in their dreams to those who are left, that long night's march in the desert. it was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. the whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. a star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of their path. they looked again, and it was a hand's-breadth up, and another was shining beneath it. hour after hour the broad stream flowed sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. in their vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the prisoners; for their own fate, and their own individuality, seemed trivial and unimportant amid the play of such tremendous forces. slowly the grand procession swept across the heaven, first climbing, then hanging long with little apparent motion, and then sinking grandly downwards, until away in the east the first cold grey glimmer appeared, and their own haggard faces shocked each other's sight. the day had tortured them with its heat, and now the night had brought the even more intolerable discomfort of cold. the arabs swathed themselves in their gowns and wrapped up their heads. the prisoners beat their hands together and shivered miserably. miss adams felt it most, for she was very thin, with the impaired circulation of age. stephens slipped off his norfolk jacket and threw it over her shoulders. he rode beside sadie, and whistled and chatted to make here believe that her aunt was really relieving him by carrying his jacket for him, but the attempt was too boisterous not to be obvious; and yet it was so far true that he probably felt the cold less than any of the party, for the old, old fire was burning in his heart, and a curious joy was inextricably mixed with all his misfortunes, so that he would have found it hard to say if this adventure had been the greatest evil or the greatest blessing of his lifetime. aboard the boat, sadie's youth, her beauty, her intelligence and humour, all made him realise that she could at the best only be expected to charitably endure him. but now he felt that he was really of some use to her, that every hour she was learning to turn to him as one turns to one's natural protector; and above all, he had begun to find himself--to understand that there really was a strong, reliable man behind all the tricks of custom which had built up an artificial nature, which had imposed even upon himself. a little glow of self-respect began to warm his blood. he had missed his youth when he was young, and now in his middle age it was coming up like some beautiful belated flower. "i do believe that you are all the time enjoying it, mr. stephens," said sadie with some bitterness. "i would not go so far as to say that," he answered. "but i am quite certain that i would not leave you here." it was the nearest approach to tenderness which he had ever put into a speech, and the girl looked at him in surprise. "i think i've been a very wicked girl all my life," she said after a pause. "because i have had a good time myself, i never thought of those who were unhappy. this has struck me serious. if ever i get back i shall be a better woman--a more earnest woman--in the future." "and i a better man. i suppose it is just for that that trouble comes to us. look how it has brought out the virtues of all our friends. take poor mr. stuart, for example. should we ever have known what a noble, constant man he was? and see belmont and his wife, in front of us there, going fearlessly forward, hand in hand, thinking only of each other. and cochrane, who always seemed on board the boat to be a rather stand-offish, narrow sort of man! look at his courage, and his unselfish indignation when any one is ill used. fardet, too, is as brave as a lion. i think misfortune has done us all good." sadie sighed. "yes, if it would end right here one might say so; but if it goes on and on for a few weeks or months of misery, and then ends in death, i don't know where we reap the benefit of those improvements of character which it brings. suppose you escape, what will you do?" the lawyer hesitated, but his professional instincts were still strong. "i will consider whether an action lies, and against whom. it should be with the organisers of the expedition for taking us to the abousir rock--or else with the egyptian government for not protecting their frontiers. it will be a nice legal question. and what will you do, sadie?" it was the first time that he had ever dropped the formal miss, but the girl was too much in earnest to notice it. "i will be more tender to others," she said. "i will try to make some one else happy in memory of the miseries which i have endured." "you have done nothing all your life but made others happy. you cannot help doing it," said he. the darkness made it more easy for him to break through the reserve which was habitual with him. "you need this rough schooling far less than any of us. how could your character be changed for the better?" "you show how little you know me. i have been very selfish and thoughtless." "at least you had no need for all these strong emotions. you were sufficiently alive without them. now it has been different with me." "why did you need emotions, mr. stephens?" "because anything is better than stagnation. pain is better than stagnation. i have only just begun to live. hitherto i have been a machine upon the earth's surface. i was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. that is what i have only just begun to realise. for all these years i have never been stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me. i had no time for it. i had observed it in others, and i had vaguely wondered whether there was some want in me which prevented my sharing the experience of my fellow-mortals. but now these last few days have taught me how keenly i can live--that i can have warm hopes, and deadly fears--that i can hate, and that i can--well, that i can have every strong feeling which the soul can experience. i have come to life. i may be on the brink of the grave, but at least i can say now that i have lived." "and why did you lead this soul-killing life in england?" "i was ambitious--i wanted to get on. and then there were my mother and my sisters to be thought of. thank heaven, here is the morning coming. your aunt and you will soon cease to feel the cold." "and you without your coat!" "oh, i have a very good circulation. i can manage very well in my shirt-sleeves." and now the long, cold, weary night was over, and the deep blue-black sky had lightened to a wonderful mauve-violet, with the larger stars still glinting brightly out of it. behind them the grey line had crept higher and higher, deepening into a delicate rose-pink, with the fan-like rays of the invisible sun shooting and quivering across it. then, suddenly, they felt its warm touch upon their backs, and there were hard black shadows upon the sand in front of them. the dervishes loosened their cloaks and proceeded to talk cheerily among themselves. the prisoners also began to thaw, and eagerly ate the doora which was served out for their breakfasts. a short halt had been called, and a cup of water handed to each. "can i speak to you, colonel cochrane?" asked the dragoman. "no, you can't," snapped the colonel. "but it is very important--all our safety may come from it." the colonel frowned and pulled at his moustache. "well, what is it?" he asked at last. "you must trust to me, for it is as much to me as to you to get back to egypt. my wife and home, and children, are on one part, and a slave for life upon the other. you have no cause to doubt it." "well, go on!" "you know the black man who spoke with you--the one who had been with hicks?" "yes, what of him?" "he has been speaking with me during the night. i have had a long talk with him. he said that he could not very well understand you, nor you him, and so he came to me." "what did he say?" "he said that there were eight egyptian soldiers among the arabs--six black and two fellaheen. he said that he wished to have your promise that they should all have very good reward if they helped you to escape." "of course they shall." "they asked for one hundred egyptian pounds each." "they shall have it." "i told him that i would ask you, but that i was sure that you would agree to it." "what do they propose to do?" "they could promise nothing, but what they thought best was that they should ride their camels not very far from you, so that if any chance should come they would be ready to take advantage." "well, you can go to him and promise two hundred pounds each if they will help us. you do not think we could buy over some arabs?" mansoor shook his head. "too much danger to try," said he. "suppose you try and fail, then that will be the end to all of us. i will go tell what you have said." he strolled off to where the old negro gunner was grooming his camel and waiting for his reply. the emirs had intended to halt for a half-hour at the most, but the baggage-camels which bore the prisoners were so worn out with the long, rapid march, that it was clearly impossible that they should move for some time. they had laid their long necks upon the ground, which is the last symptom of fatigue. the two chiefs shook their heads when they inspected them, and the terrible old man looked with his hard-lined, rock features at the captives. then he said something to mansoor, whose face turned a shade more sallow as he listened. "the emir abderrahman says that if you do not become moslem, it is not worth while delaying the whole caravan in order to carry you upon the baggage-camels. if it were not for you, he says that we could travel twice as fast. he wishes to know therefore, once for ever, if you will accept the koran." then in the same tone, as if he were still translating, he continued: "you had far better consent, for if you do not he will most certainly put you all to death." the unhappy prisoners looked at each other in despair. the two emirs stood gravely watching them. "for my part," said cochrane, "i had as soon die now as be a slave in khartoum." "what do you say, norah?" asked belmont. "if we die together, john, i don't think i shall be afraid." "it is absurd that i should die for that in which i have never had belief," said fardet. "and yet it is not possible for the honour of a frenchman that he should be converted in this fashion." he drew himself up, with his wounded wrist stuck into the front of his jacket, "_je suis chretien. j'y reste,_" he cried, a gallant falsehood in each sentence. "what do you say, mr. stephens?" asked mansoor in a beseeching voice. "if one of you would change, it might place them in a good humour. i implore you that you do what they ask." "no, i can't," said the lawyer quietly. "well then, you, miss sadie? you, miss adams? it is only just to say it once, and you will be saved." "oh, auntie, do you think we might?" whimpered the frightened girl. "would it be so very wrong if we said it?" the old lady threw her arms round her. "no, no, my own dear little sadie," she whispered. "you'll be strong! you would just hate yourself for ever after. keep your grip of me, dear, and pray if you find your strength is leaving you. don't forget that your old aunt eliza has you all the time by the hand." for an instant they were heroic, this line of dishevelled, bedraggled pleasure-seekers. they were all looking death in the face, and the closer they looked the less they feared him. they were conscious rather of a feeling of curiosity, together with the nervous tingling with which one approaches a dentist's chair. the dragoman made a motion of his hands and shoulders, as one who has tried and failed. the emir abderrahman said something to a negro, who hurried away. "what does he want a scissors for?" asked the colonel. "he is going to hurt the women," said mansoor, with the same gesture of impotence. a cold chill fell upon them all. they stared about them in helpless horror. death in the abstract was one thing, but these insufferable details were another. each had been braced to endure any evil in his own person, but their hearts were still soft for each other. the women said nothing, but the men were all buzzing together. "there's the pistol, miss adams," said belmont. "give it here! we won't be tortured! we won't stand it!" "offer them money, mansoor! offer them anything!" cried stephens. "look here, i'll turn mohammedan if they'll promise to leave the women alone. after all, it isn't binding--it's under compulsion. but i can't see the women hurt." "no, wait a bit, stephens!" said the colonel. "we mustn't lose our heads. i think i see a way out. see here, dragoman! you tell that grey-bearded old devil that we know nothing about his cursed tinpot religion. put it smooth when you translate it. tell him that he cannot expect us to adopt it until we know what particular brand of rot it is that he wants us to believe. tell him that if he will instruct us, we are perfectly willing to listen to his teaching, and you can add that any creed which turns out such beauties as him, and that other bounder with the black beard, must claim the attention of every one." with bows and suppliant sweepings of his hands the dragoman explained that the christians were already full of doubt, and that it needed but a little more light of knowledge to guide them on to the path of allah. the two emirs stroked their beards and gazed suspiciously at them. then abderrahman spoke in his crisp, stern fashion to the dragoman, and the two strode away together. an instant later the bugle rang out as a signal to mount. "what he says is this," mansoor explained, as he rode in the middle of the prisoners. "we shall reach the wells by mid-day, and there will be a rest. his own moolah, a very good and learned man, will come to give you an hour of teaching. at the end of that time you will choose one way or the other. when you have chosen, it will be decided whether you are to go to khartoum or to be put to death. that is his last word." "they won't take ransom?" "wad ibrahim would, but the emir abderrahman is a terrible man. i advise you to give in to him." "what have you done yourself? you are a christian, too." mansoor blushed as deeply as his complexion would allow. "i was yesterday morning. perhaps i will be to-morrow morning. i serve the lord as long as what he ask seem reasonable; but this is very otherwise." he rode onwards amongst the guards with a freedom which showed that his change of faith had put him upon a very different footing to the other prisoners. so they were to have a reprieve of a few hours, though they rode in that dark shadow of death which was closing in upon them. what is there in life that we should cling to it so? it is not the pleasures, for those whose hours are one long pain shrink away screaming when they see merciful death holding his soothing arms out for them. it is not the associations, for we will change all of them before we walk of our own free-wills down that broad road which every son and daughter of man must tread. is it the fear of losing the i, that dear, intimate i, which we think we know so well, although it is eternally doing things which surprise us? is it that which makes the deliberate suicide cling madly to the bridge-pier as the river sweeps him by? or is it that nature is so afraid that all her weary workmen may suddenly throw down their tools and strike, that she has invented this fashion of keeping them constant to their present work? but there it is, and all these tired, harassed, humiliated folk rejoiced in the few more hours of suffering which were left to them. chapter vii. there was nothing to show them as they journeyed onwards that they were not on the very spot that they had passed at sunset upon the evening before. the region of fantastic black hills and orange sand which bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining rounded pebbles upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass. behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills. the sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air. the long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. far out on the flanks rode the vedettes, halting at every rise, and peering backwards with their hands shading their eyes. in the distance their spears and rifles seemed to stick out of them, straight and thin, like needles in knitting. "how far do you suppose we are from the nile?" asked cochrane. he rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the eastern skyline. "a good fifty miles," belmont answered. "not so much as that," said the colonel. "we could not have been moving more than fifteen or sixteen hours, and a camel does not do more than two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting. that would only give about forty miles, but still it is, i fear, rather far for a rescue. i don't know that we are much the better for this postponement. what have we to hope for? we may just as well take our gruel." "never say die!" cried the cheery irishman. "there's plenty of time between this and mid-day. hamilton and hedley of the camel corps are good boys, and they'll be after us like a streak. they'll have no baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that! little did i think, when i dined with them at mess that last night, and they were telling me all their precautions against a raid, that i should depend upon them for our lives." "well, we'll play the game out, but i'm not very hopeful," said cochrane. "of course, we must keep the best face we can before the women. i see that tippy tilly is as good as his word, for those five niggers and the two brown johnnies must be the men he speaks of. they all ride together and keep well up, but i can't see how they are going to help us." "i've got my pistol back," whispered belmont, and his square chin and strong mouth set like granite. "if they try any games on the women, i mean to shoot them all three with my own hand, and then we'll die with our minds easy." "good man!" said cochrane, and they rode on in silence. none of them spoke much. a curious, dreamy, irresponsible feeling crept over them. it was as if they had all taken some narcotic drug--the merciful anodyne which nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far. they thought of their friends and of their past lives in the comprehensive way in which one views that which is completed. a subtle sweetness mingled with the sadness of their fate. they were filled with the quiet serenity of despair. "it's devilish pretty," said the colonel, looking about him. "i always had an idea that i should like to die in a real, good, yellow london fog. you couldn't change for the worse." "i should have liked to have died in my sleep," said sadie. "how beautiful to wake up and find yourself in the other world! there was a piece that hetty smith used to say at the college: 'say not good-night, but in some brighter world wish me good-morning.'" the puritan aunt shook her head at the idea. "it's a terrible thing to go unprepared into the presence of your maker," said she. "it's the loneliness of death that is terrible," said mrs. belmont. "if we and those whom we loved all passed over simultaneously, we should think no more of it than of changing our house." "if the worst comes to the worst, we won't be lonely," said her husband. "we'll all go together, and we shall find brown and headingly and stuart waiting on the other side." the frenchman shrugged his shoulders. he had no belief in survival after death, but he envied the two catholics the quiet way in which they took things for granted. he chuckled to think of what his friends in the cafe cubat would say if they learned that he had laid down his life for the christian faith. sometimes it amused and sometimes it maddened him, and he rode onwards with alternate gusts of laughter and of fury, nursing his wounded wrist all the time like a mother with a sick baby. across the brown of the hard, pebbly desert there had been visible for some time a single long, thin, yellow streak, extending north and south as far as they could see. it was a band of sand not more than a few hundred yards across, and rising at the highest to eight or ten feet. but the prisoners were astonished to observe that the arabs pointed at this with an air of the utmost concern, and they halted when they came to the edge of it like men upon the brink of an unfordable river. it was very light, dusty sand, and every wandering breath of wind sent it dancing into the air like a whirl of midges. the emir abderrahman tried to force his camel into it, but the creature, after a step or two, stood still and shivered with terror. the two chiefs talked for a little, and then the whole caravan trailed off with their heads for the north, and the streak of sand upon their left. "what is it?" asked belmont, who found the dragoman riding at his elbow. "why are we going out of our course?" "drift sand," mansoor answered. "every sometimes the wind bring it all in one long place like that. to-morrow, if a wind comes, perhaps there will not be one grain left, but all will be carried up into the air again. an arab will sometimes have to go fifty or a hundred miles to go round a drift. suppose he tries to cross, his camel breaks its legs, and he himself is sucked in and swallowed." "how long will this be?" "no one can say." "well, cochrane, it's all in our favour. the longer the chase the better chance for the fresh camels!" and for the hundredth time he looked back at the long, hard skyline behind them. there was the great, empty, dun-coloured desert, but where the glint of steel or the twinkle of white helmet for which he yearned? and soon they cleared the obstacle in their front. it spindled away into nothing, as a streak of dust would which has been blown across an empty room. it was curious to see that when it was so narrow that one could almost jump it, the arabs would still go for many hundreds of yards rather than risk the crossing. then, with good, hard country before them once more, the tired beasts were whipped up, and they ambled on with a double-jointed jogtrot, which set the prisoners nodding and bowing in grotesque and ludicrous misery. it was fun at first, and they smiled at each other, but soon the fun had become tragedy as the terrible camel-ache seized them by spine and waist, with its deep, dull throb, which rises gradually to a splitting agony. "i can't stand it, sadie," cried miss adams suddenly. "i've done my best. i'm going to fall." "no, no, auntie, you'll break your limbs if you do. hold up, just a little, and maybe they'll stop." "lean back, and hold your saddle behind," said the colonel. "there, you'll find that will ease the strain." he took the puggaree from his hat, and tying the ends together, he slung it over her front pommel. "put your foot in the loop," said he. "it will steady you like a stirrup." the relief was instant, so stephens did the same for sadie. but presently one of the weary doora camels came down with a crash, its limbs starred out as if it had split asunder, and the caravan had to come down to its old sober gait. "is this another belt of drift sand?" asked the colonel presently. "no, it's white," said belmont. "here, mansoor, what is that in front of us?" but the dragoman shook his head. "i don't know what it is, sir. i never saw the same thing before." right across the desert, from north to south, there was drawn a white line, as straight and clear as if it had been slashed with chalk across a brown table. it was very thin, but it extended without a break from horizon to horizon. tippy tilly said something to the dragoman. "it's the great caravan route," said mansoor. "what makes it white, then?" "the bones." it seemed incredible, and yet it was true, for as they drew nearer they saw that it was indeed a beaten track across the desert, hollowed out by long usage, and so covered with bones that they gave the impression of a continuous white ribbon. long, snouty heads were scattered everywhere, and the lines of ribs were so continuous that it looked in places like the framework of a monstrous serpent. the endless road gleamed in the sun as if it were paved with ivory. for thousands of years this had been the highway over the desert, and during all that time no animal of all those countless caravans had died there without being preserved by the dry, antiseptic air. no wonder, then, that it was hardly possible to walk down it now without treading upon their skeletons. "this must be the route i spoke of," said stephens. "i remember marking it upon the map i made for you, miss adams. baedeker says that it has been disused on account of the cessation of all trade which followed the rise of the dervishes, but that it used to be the main road by which the skins and gums of darfur found their way down to lower egypt." they looked at it with a listless curiosity, for there was enough to engross them at present in their own fates. the caravan struck to the south along the old desert track, and this golgotha of a road seemed to be a fitting avenue for that which awaited them at the end of it. weary camels and weary riders dragged on together towards their miserable goal. and now, as the critical moment approached which was to decide their fate, colonel cochrane, weighed down by his fears lest something terrible should befall the women, put his pride aside to the extent of asking the advice of the renegade dragoman. the fellow was a villain and a coward, but at least he was an oriental, and he understood the arab point of view. his change of religion had brought him into closer contact with the dervishes, and he had overheard their intimate talk. cochrane's stiff, aristocratic nature fought hard before he could bring himself to ask advice from such a man, and when he at last did so, it was in the gruffest and most unconciliatory voice. "you know the rascals, and you have the same way of looking at things," said he. "our object is to keep things going for another twenty-four hours. after that it does not much matter what befalls us, for we shall be out of the reach of rescue. but how can we stave them off for another day?" "you know my advice," the dragoman answered; "i have already answered it to you. if you will all become as i have, you will certainly be carried to khartoum in safety. if you do not, you will never leave our next camping-place alive." the colonel's well-curved nose took a higher tilt, and an angry flush reddened his thin cheeks. he rode in silence for a little, for his indian service had left him with a curried-prawn temper, which had had an extra touch of cayenne added to it by his recent experiences. it was some minutes before he could trust himself to reply. "we'll set that aside," said he at last. "some things are possible and some are not. this is not." "you need only pretend." "that's enough," said the colonel abruptly. mansoor shrugged his shoulders. "what is the use of asking me, if you become angry when i answer? if you do not wish to do what i say, then try your own attempt. at least you cannot say that i have not done all i could to save you." "i'm not angry," the colonel answered after a pause, in a more conciliatory voice, "but this is climbing down rather farther than we care to go. now, what i thought is this. you might, if you chose, give this priest, or moolah, who is coming to us, a hint that we really are softening a bit upon the point. i don't think, considering the hole that we are in, that there can be very much objection to that. then, when he comes, we might play up and take an interest and ask for more instruction, and in that way hold the matter over for a day or two. don't you think that would be the best game?" "you will do as you like," said mansoor. "i have told you once for ever what i think. if you wish that i speak to the moolah, i will do so. it is the fat, little man with the grey beard, upon the brown camel in front there. i may tell you that he has a name among them for converting the infidel, and he has a great pride in it, so that he would certainly prefer that you were not injured if he thought that he might bring you into islam." "tell him that our minds are open, then," said the colonel. "i don't suppose the _padre_ would have gone so far, but now that he is dead i think we may stretch a point. you go to him, mansoor, and if you work it well we will agree to forget what is past. by the way, has tippy tilly said anything?" "no, sir. he has kept his men together, but he does not understand yet how he can help you." "neither do i. well, you go to the moolah, then, and i'll tell the others what we have agreed." the prisoners all acquiesced in the colonel's plan, with the exception of the old new england lady, who absolutely refused even to show any interest in the mohammedan creed. "i guess i am too old to bow the knee to baal," she said. the most that she would concede was that she would not openly interfere with anything which her companions might say or do. "and who is to argue with the priest?" asked fardet, as they all rode together, talking the matter over. "it is very important that it should be done in a natural way, for if he thought that we were only trying to gain time, he would refuse to have any more to say to us." "i think cochrane should do it, as the proposal is his," said belmont. "pardon me!" cried the frenchman. "i will not say a word against our friend the colonel, but it is not possible that a man should be fitted for everything. it will all come to nothing if he attempts it. the priest will see through the colonel." "will he?" said the colonel with dignity. "yes, my friend, he will, for, like most of your countrymen, you are very wanting in sympathy for the ideas of other people, and it is the great fault which i find with you as a nation." "oh, drop the politics!" cried belmont impatiently. "i do not talk politics. what i say is very practical. how can colonel cochrane pretend to this priest that he is really interested in his religion when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? i will say this for the colonel, that i do not believe he is at all a hypocrite, and i am sure that he could not act well enough to deceive such a man as this priest." the colonel sat with a very stiff back and the blank face of a man who is not quite sure whether he is being complimented or insulted. "you can do the talking yourself if you like," said he at last. "i should he very glad to be relieved of it." "i think that i am best fitted for it, since i am equally interested in all creeds. when i ask for information, it is because in verity i desire it, and not because i am playing a part." "i certainly think that it would be much better if monsieur fardet would undertake it," said mrs. belmont with decision, and so the matter was arranged. the sun was now high, and it shone with dazzling brightness upon the bleached bones which lay upon the road. again the torture of thirst fell upon the little group of survivors, and again, as they rode with withered tongues and crusted lips, a vision of the saloon of the _korosko_ danced like a mirage before their eyes, and they saw the white napery, the wine-cards by the places, the long necks of the bottles, the siphons upon the sideboard. sadie, who had borne up so well, became suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred horribly upon their nerves. her aunt on one side of her, and mr. stephens on the other, did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary, overstrung girl relapsed into something between a sleep and a faint, hanging limp over her pommel, and only kept from falling by the friends who clustered round her. the baggage-camels were as weary as their riders, and again and again they had to jerk at their nose-ropes to prevent them from lying down. from horizon to horizon stretched that one huge arch of speckless blue, and up its monstrous concavity crept the inexorable sun, like some splendid but barbarous deity, who claimed a tribute of human suffering as his immemorial right. their course still lay along the old trade route, but their progress was very slow, and more than once the two emirs rode back together, and shook their heads as they looked at the weary baggage-camels on which the prisoners were perched. the greatest laggard of all was one which was ridden by a wounded soudanese soldier. it was limping badly with a strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be kept with the others. the emir wad ibrahim raised his remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. the wounded man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard track. his companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. at the same instant a baggara slipped down from his camel with a sword in his hand. "don't look! don't look!" cried belmont to the ladies, and they all rode on with their faces to the south. they heard no sound, but the baggara passed them a few minutes afterwards. he was cleaning his sword upon the hairy neck of his camel, and he glanced at them with a quick, malicious gleam of his teeth as he trotted by. but those who are at the lowest pitch of human misery are at least secured against the future. that vicious, threatening smile which might once have thrilled them left them now unmoved--or stirred them at most to vague resentment. there were many things to interest them in this old trade route, had they been in a condition to take notice of them. here and there along its course were the crumbling remains of ancient buildings, so old that no date could be assigned to them, but designed in some far-off civilisation to give the travellers shade from the sun or protection from the ever-lawless children of the desert. the mud bricks with which these refuges were constructed showed that the material had been carried over from the distant nile. once, upon the top of a little knoll, they saw the shattered plinth of a pillar of red assouan granite, with the wide-winged symbol of the egyptian god across it, and the cartouche of the second rameses beneath. after three thousand years one cannot get away from the ineffaceable footprints of the warrior-king. it is surely the most wonderful survival of history that one should still be able to gaze upon him, high-nosed and masterful, as he lies with his powerful arms crossed upon his chest, majestic even in decay, in the gizeh museum. to the captives, the cartouche was a message of hope, as a sign that they were not outside the sphere of egypt. "they've left their card here once, and they may again," said belmont, and they all tried to smile. and now they came upon one of the most satisfying sights on which the human eye can ever rest. here and there, in the depressions at either side of the road, there had been a thin scurf of green, which meant that water was not very far from the surface. and then, quite suddenly, the track dipped down into a bowl-shaped hollow, with a most dainty group of palm-trees, and a lovely green sward at the bottom of it. the sun gleaming upon that brilliant patch of clear, restful colour, with the dark glow of the bare desert around it, made it shine like the purest emerald in a setting of burnished copper. and then it was not its beauty only, but its promise for the future: water, shade, all that weary travellers could ask for. even sadie was revived by the cheery sight, and the spent camels snorted and stepped out more briskly, stretching their long necks and sniffing the air as they went. after the unhomely harshness of the desert, it seemed to all of them that they had never seen anything more beautiful than this. they looked below at the green sward with the dark, star-like shadows of the palm-crowns; then they looked up at those deep green leaves against the rich blue of the sky, and they forgot their impending death in the beauty of that nature to whose bosom they were about to return. the wells in the centre of the grove consisted of seven large and two small saucer-like cavities filled with peat-coloured water, enough to form a plentiful supply for any caravan. camels and men drank it greedily, though it was tainted by the all-pervading natron. the camels were picketed, the arabs threw their sleeping-mats down in the shade, and the prisoners, after receiving a ration of dates and of doora, were told that they might do what they would during the heat of the day, and that the moolah would come to them before sunset. the ladies were given the thicker shade of an acacia tree, and the men lay down under the palms. the great green leaves swished slowly above them; they heard the low hum of the arab talk, and the dull champing of the camels, and then in an instant, by that most mysterious and least understood of miracles, one was in a green irish valley, and another saw the long straight line of commonwealth avenue, and a third was dining at a little round table opposite to the bust of nelson in the army and navy club, and for him the swishing of the palm branches had been transformed into the long-drawn hum of pall mall. so the spirits went their several ways, wandering back along the strange, un-traced tracks of the memory, while the weary, grimy bodies lay senseless under the palm-trees in the oasis of the libyan desert. chapter viii. colonel cochrane was awakened from his slumber by some one pulling at his shoulder. as his eyes opened they fell upon the black, anxious face of tippy tilly, the old egyptian gunner. his crooked finger was laid upon his thick, liver-coloured lips, and his dark eyes glanced from left to right with ceaseless vigilance. "lie quiet! do not move!" he whispered, in arabic. "i will lie here beside you, and they cannot tell me from the others. you can understand what i am saying?" "yes, if you will talk slowly." "very good. i have no great trust in this black man, mansoor. i had rather talk direct with the miralai." "what have you to say?" "i have waited long, until they should all be asleep, and now in another hour we shall be called to evening prayer. first of all, here is a pistol, that you may not say that you are without arms." it was a clumsy, old-fashioned thing, but the colonel saw the glint of a percussion cap upon the nipple, and knew that it was loaded. he slipped it into the inner pocket of his norfolk jacket. "thank you," said he; "speak slowly, so that i may understand you." "there are eight of us who wish to go to egypt. there are also four men in your party. one of us, mehemet ali, has fastened twelve camels together, which are the fastest of all save only those which are ridden by the emirs. there are guards upon watch, but they are scattered in all directions. the twelve camels are close beside us here--those twelve behind the acacia tree. if we can only get mounted and started, i do not think that many can overtake us, and we shall have our rifles for them. the guards are not strong enough to stop so many of us. the water-skins are all filled, and we may see the nile again by to-morrow night." the colonel could not follow it all, but he understood enough to set a little spring of hope bubbling in his heart. the last terrible day had left its mark in his livid face and his hair, which was turning rapidly to grey. he might have been the father of the spruce well-preserved soldier who had paced with straight back and military stride up and down the saloon deck of the korosko. "that is excellent," said he. "but what are we to do about the three ladies?" the black soldier shrugged his shoulders. "mefeesh!" said he. "one of them is old, and in any case there are plenty more women if we get back to egypt. these will not come to any hurt, but they will be placed in the harem of the khalifa." "what you say is nonsense," said the colonel sternly. "we shall take our women with us, or we shall not go at all." "i think it is rather you who talk the thing without sense," the black man answered angrily. "how can you ask my companions and me to do that which must end in failure? for years we have waited for such a chance as this, and now that it has come, you wish us to throw it away owing to this foolishness about the women." "what have we promised you if we come back to egypt?" asked cochrane. "two hundred egyptian pounds and promotion in the army--all upon the word of an englishman." "very good. then you shall have three hundred each if you can make some new plan by which you can take the women with you." tippy tilly scratched his woolly head in his perplexity. "we might, indeed, upon some excuse, bring three more of the faster camels round to this place. indeed, there are three very good camels among those which are near the cooking fire. but how are we to get the women upon them?--and if we had them upon them, we know very well that they would fall off when they began to gallop. i fear that you men will fall off, for it is no easy matter to remain upon a galloping camel; but as to the women, it is impossible. no, we shall leave the women, and if you will not leave the women, then we shall leave all of you and start by ourselves." "very good! go!" said the colonel abruptly, and settled down as if to sleep once more. he knew that with orientals it is the silent man who is most likely to have his way. the negro turned and crept away for some little distance, where he was met by one of his fellaheen comrades, mehemet ali, who had charge of the camels. the two argued for some little time--for those three hundred golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. then the negro crept back to colonel cochrane. "mehemet ali has agreed," said he. "he has gone to put the nose-rope upon three more of the camels. but it is foolishness, and we are all going to our death. now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and tell them." the colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the wind. belmont and fardet were ready for any risk. stephens, to whom the prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. then he pulled out his baedeker and began to write his will upon the flyleaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. by some strange gymnastic of the legal mind a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. it was not dissolution which he feared, but the humiliation and agony of a fruitless struggle against it. colonel cochrane and tippy tilly had crept together under the shadow of the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. sadie and her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl's head pillowed upon the old woman's bosom. mrs. belmont was awake, and entered into the scheme in an instant. "but you must leave me," said miss adams earnestly. "what does it matter at my age, anyhow?" "no, no, aunt eliza; i won't move without you! don't you think it!" cried the girl. "you've got to come straight away or else we both stay right here where we are." "come, come, ma'am, there is no time for arguing, or nonsense," said the colonel roughly. "our lives all depend upon your making an effort, and we cannot possibly leave you behind." "but i will fall off." "i'll tie you on with my puggaree. i wish i had the cummerbund which i lent poor stuart. now, tippy, i think we might make a break for it!" but the black soldier had been staring with a disconsolate face out over the desert, and he turned upon his heel with an oath. "there!" said he sullenly. "you see what comes of all your foolish talking! you have ruined our chances as well as your own!" half-a-dozen mounted camel-men had appeared suddenly over the lip of the bowl-shaped hollow, standing out hard and clear against the evening sky where the copper basin met its great blue lid. they were travelling fast, and waved their rifles as they came. an instant later the bugle sounded an alarm, and the camp was up with a buzz like an overturned bee-hive. the colonel ran back to his companions, and the black soldier to his camel. stephens looked relieved, and belmont sulky, while monsieur fardet raved, with his one uninjured hand in the air. "sacred name of a dog!" he cried. "is there no end to it, then? are we never to come out of the hands of these accursed dervishes?" "oh, they really are dervishes, are they?" said the colonel in an acid voice. "you seem to be altering your opinions. i thought they were an invention of the british government." the poor fellows' tempers were getting frayed and thin. the colonel's sneer was like a match to a magazine, and in an instant the frenchman was dancing in front of him with a broken torrent of angry words. his hand was clutching at cochrane's throat before belmont and stephens could pull him off. "if it were not for your grey hairs--" he said. "damn your impudence!" cried the colonel. "if we have to die, let us die like gentlemen, and not like so many corner-boys," said belmont with dignity. "i only said i was glad to see that monsieur fardet has learned something from his adventures," the colonel sneered. "shut up, cochrane! what do you want to aggravate him for?" cried the irishman. "upon my word, belmont, you forget yourself! i do not permit people to address me in this fashion." "you should look after your own manners, then." "gentlemen, gentlemen, here are the ladies!" cried stephens, and the angry, over-strained men relapsed into a gloomy silence, pacing up and down, and jerking viciously at their moustaches. it is a very catching thing, ill-temper, for even stephens began to be angry at their anger, and to scowl at them as they passed him. here they were at a crisis in their fate, with the shadow of death above them, and yet their minds were all absorbed in some personal grievance so slight that they could hardly put it into words. misfortune brings the human spirit to a rare height, but the pendulum still swings. but soon their attention was drawn away to more important matters. a council of war was being held beside the wells, and the two emirs, stern and composed, were listening to a voluble report from the leader of the patrol. the prisoners noticed that, though the fierce, old man stood like a graven image, the younger emir passed his hand over his beard once or twice with a nervous gesture, the thin, brown fingers twitching among the long, black hair. "i believe the gippies are after us," said belmont. "not very far off either, to judge by the fuss they are making." "it looks like it. something has scared them." "now he's giving orders. what can it be? here, mansoor, what is the matter?" the dragoman came running up with the light of hope shining upon his brown face. "i think they have seen something to frighten them. i believe that the soldiers are behind us. they have given the order to fill the water-skins, and be ready for a start when the darkness comes. but i am ordered to gather you together, for the moolah is coming to convert you all. i have already told him that you are all very much inclined to think the same with him." how far mansoor may have gone with his assurances may never be known, but the mussulman preacher came walking towards them at this moment with a paternal and contented smile upon his face, as one who has a pleasant and easy task before him. he was a one-eyed man, with a fringe of grizzled beard and a face which was fat, but which looked as if it had once been fatter, for it was marked with many folds and creases. he had a green turban upon his head, which marked him as a mecca pilgrim. in one hand he carried a small brown carpet, and in the other a parchment copy of the koran. laying his carpet upon the ground, he motioned mansoor to his side, and then gave a circular sweep of his arm to signify that the prisoners should gather round him, and a downward wave which meant that they should be seated. so they grouped themselves round him, sitting on the short green sward under the palm-tree, these seven forlorn representatives of an alien creed, and in the midst of them sat the fat little preacher, his one eye dancing from face to face as he expounded the principles of his newer, cruder, and more earnest faith. they listened attentively and nodded their heads as mansoor translated the exhortation, and with each sign of their acquiescence the moolah became more amiable in his manner and more affectionate in his speech. "for why should you die, my sweet lambs, when all that is asked of you is that you should set aside that which will carry you to everlasting gehenna, and accept the law of allah as written by his prophet, which will assuredly bring you unimaginable joys, as is promised in the book of the camel? for what says the chosen one?"--and he broke away into one of those dogmatic texts which pass in every creed as an argument. "besides, is it not clear that god is with us, since from the beginning, when we had but sticks against the rifles of the turks, victory has always been with us? have we not taken el obeid, and taken khartoum, and destroyed hicks and slain gordon, and prevailed against every one who has come against us? how, then, can it be said that the blessing of allah does not rest upon us?" the colonel had been looking about him during the long exhortation of the moolah, and he had observed that the dervishes were cleaning their guns, counting their cartridges, and making all the preparations of men who expected that they might soon be called upon to fight. the two emirs were conferring together with grave faces, and the leader of the patrol pointed, as he spoke to them, in the direction of egypt. it was evident that there was at least a chance of a rescue if they could only keep things going for a few more hours. the camels were not recovered yet from their long march, and the pursuers, if they were indeed close behind, were almost certain to overtake them. "for god's sake, fardet, try and keep him in play," said he. "i believe we have a chance if we can only keep the ball rolling for another hour or so." but a frenchman's wounded dignity is not so easily appeased. monsieur fardet sat moodily with his back against the palm-tree, and his black brows drawn down. he said nothing, but he still pulled at his thick, strong moustache. "come on, fardet! we depend upon you," said belmont. "let colonel cochrane do it," the frenchman answered snappishly. "he takes too much upon himself this colonel cochrane." "there! there!" said belmont soothingly, as if he were speaking to a fractious child. "i am quite sure that the colonel will express his regret at what has happened, and will acknowledge that he was in the wrong--" "i'll do nothing of the sort," snapped the colonel. "besides, that is merely a personal quarrel," belmont continued hastily. "it is for the good of the whole party that we wish you to speak with the moolah, because we all feel that you are the best man for the job." but the frenchman only shrugged his shoulders and relapsed into a deeper gloom. the moolah looked from one to the other, and the kindly expression began to fade away from his large, baggy face. his mouth drew down at the corners, and became hard and severe. "have these infidels been playing with us, then?" said he to the dragoman. "why is it that they talk among themselves and have nothing to say to me?" "he's getting impatient about it," said cochrane. "perhaps i had better do what i can, belmont, since this damned fellow has left us in the lurch." but the ready wit of a woman saved the situation. "i am sure, monsieur fardet," said mrs. belmont, "that you, who are a frenchman, and therefore a man of gallantry and honour, would not permit your own wounded feelings to interfere with the fulfilment of your promise and your duty towards three helpless ladies." fardet was on his feet in an instant, with his hand over his heart. "you understand my nature, madame," he cried. "i am incapable of abandoning a lady. i will do all that i can in this matter. now, mansoor, you may tell the holy man that i am ready to discuss through you the high matters of his faith with him." and he did it with an ingenuity which amazed his companions. he took the tone of a man who is strongly attracted, and yet has one single remaining shred of doubt to hold him back. yet as that one shred was torn away by the moolah, there was always some other stubborn little point which prevented his absolute acceptance of the faith of islam. and his questions were all so mixed up with personal compliments to the priest and self-congratulations that they should have come under the teachings of so wise a man and so profound a theologian, that the hanging pouches under the moolah's eyes quivered with his satisfaction, and he was led happily and hopefully onwards from explanation to explanation, while the blue overhead turned into violet, and the green leaves into black, until the great serene stars shone out once more between the crowns of the palm-trees. "as to the learning of which you speak, my lamb," said the moolah, in answer to some argument of fardet's, "i have myself studied at the university of el azhar at cairo, and i know that to which you allude. but the learning of the faithful is not as the learning of the unbeliever, and it is not fitting that we pry too deeply into the ways of allah. some stars have tails, oh my sweet lamb, and some have not; but what does it profit us to know which are which? for god made them all, and they are very safe in his hands. therefore, my friend, be not puffed up by the foolish learning of the west, and understand that there is only one wisdom, which consists in following the will of allah as his chosen prophet has laid it down for us in this book. and now, my lambs, i see that you are ready to come into islam, and it is time, for that bugle tells that we are about to march, and it was the order of the excellent emir abderrahman that your choice should be taken, one way or the other, before ever we left the wells." "yet, my father, there are other points upon which i would gladly have instruction," said the frenchman, "for, indeed, it is a pleasure to hear your clear words after the cloudy accounts which we have had from other teachers." but the moolah had risen, and a gleam of suspicion twinkled in his single eye. "this further instruction may well come afterwards," said he, "since we shall travel together as far as khartoum, and it will be a joy to me to see you grow in wisdom and in virtue as we go." he walked over to the fire, and stooping down, with the pompous slowness of a stout man, he returned with two half-charred sticks, which he laid cross-wise upon the ground. the dervishes came clustering over to see the new converts admitted into the fold. they stood round in the dim light, tall and fantastic, with the high necks and supercilious heads of the camels swaying above them. "now," said the moolah, and his voice had lost its conciliatory and persuasive tone, "there is no more time for you. here upon the ground i have made out of two sticks the foolish and superstitious symbol of your former creed. you will trample upon it, as a sign that you renounce it, and you will kiss the koran, as a sign that you accept it, and what more you need in the way of instruction shall be given to you as you go." they stood up, the four men and the three women, to meet the crisis of their fate. none of them, except perhaps miss adams and mrs. belmont, had any deep religious convictions. all of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented. but there was the european pride, the pride of the white race which swelled within them, and held them to the faith of their countrymen. it was a sinful, human, un-christian motive, and yet it was about to make them public martyrs to the christian creed. in the hush and tension of their nerves low sounds grew suddenly loud upon their ears. those swishing palm-leaves above them were like a swift-flowing river, and far away they could hear the dull, soft thudding of a galloping camel. "there's something coming," whispered cochrane. "try and stave them off for five minutes longer, fardet." the frenchman stepped out with a courteous wave of his uninjured arm, and the air of a man who is prepared to accommodate himself to anything. "you will tell this holy man that i am quite ready to accept his teaching, and so i am sure are all my friends," said he to the dragoman. "but there is one thing which i should wish him to do in order to set at rest any possible doubts which may remain in our hearts. every true religion can be told by the miracles which those who profess it can bring about. even i who am but a humble christian, can, by virtue of my religion, do some of these. but you, since your religion is superior, can no doubt do far more, and so i beg you to give us a sign that we may be able to say that we know that the religion of islam is the more powerful." behind all his dignity and reserve, the arab has a good fund of curiosity. the hush among the listening arabs showed how the words of the frenchman as translated by mansoor appealed to them. "such things are in the hands of allah," said the priest. "it is not for us to disturb his laws. but if you have yourself such powers as you claim, let us be witnesses to them." the frenchman stepped forward, and raising his hand he took a large, shining date out of the moolah's beard. this he swallowed and immediately produced once more from his left elbow. he had often given his little conjuring entertainment on board the boat, and his fellow-passengers had had some good-natured laughter at his expense, for he was not quite skilful enough to deceive the critical european intelligence. but now it looked as if this piece of obvious palming might be the point upon which all their fates would hang. a deep hum of surprise rose from the ring of arabs, and deepened as the frenchman drew another date from the nostril of a camel and tossed it into the air, from which, apparently, it never descended. that gaping sleeve was obvious enough to his companions, but the dim light was all in favour of the performer. so delighted and interested was the audience that they paid little heed to a mounted camel-man who trotted swiftly between the palm trunks. all might have been well had not fardet, carried away by his own success, tried to repeat his trick once more, with the result that the date fell out of his palm, and the deception stood revealed. in vain he tried to pass on at once to another of his little stock. the moolah said something, and an arab struck fardet across the shoulders with the thick shaft of his spear. "we have had enough child's play," said the angry priest. "are we men or babes, that you should try to impose upon us in this manner? here is the cross and the koran--which shall it be?" fardet looked helplessly round at his companions. "i can do no more; you asked for five minutes. you have had them," said he to colonel cochrane. "and perhaps it is enough," the soldier answered. "here are the emirs." the camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the two arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come. there was a rapid exchange of words between the emirs, and then they strode forward together to the group around the prisoners. bigots and barbarians, they were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the twilight of the palm grove. the fierce old greybeard raised his hand and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman. the fire that smouldered in his arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others. here were to be read the strength and danger of the mahdi movement; here in these convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic, red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their own hands might be bloody when they met it. "have the prisoners embraced the true faith?" asked the emir abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes. the moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to confess to a failure. "they were about to embrace it, when-"let it rest for a little time, o moolah." he gave an order, and the arabs all sprang for their camels. the emir wad ibrahim filed off at once with nearly half the party. the others were mounted and ready, with their rifles unslung. "what's happened?" asked belmont. "things are looking up," cried the colonel. "by george, i think we are going to come through all right. the gippy camel corps are hot on our trail." "how do you know?" "what else could have scared them?" "o colonel, do you really think we shall be saved?" sobbed sadie. the dull routine of misery through which they had passed had deadened all their nerves until they seemed incapable of any acute sensation, but now this sudden return of hope brought agony with it like the recovery of a frost-bitten limb. even the strong, self-contained belmont was filled with doubts and apprehensions. he had been hopeful when there was no sign of relief, and now the approach of it set him trembling. "surely they wouldn't come very weak," he cried. "be jove, if the commandant let them come weak, he should be court-martialled." "sure we're in god's hands, anyway," said his wife, in her soothing, irish voice. "kneel down with me, john, dear, if it's the last time, and pray that, earth or heaven, we may not be divided." "don't do that! don't!" cried the colonel anxiously, for he saw that the eye of the moolah was upon them. but it was too late, for the two roman catholics had dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves. a spasm of fury passed over the face of the mussulman priest at this public testimony to the failure of his missionary efforts. he turned and said something to the emir. "stand up!" cried mansoor. "for your life's sake, stand up! he is asking for leave to put you to death." "let him do what he likes!" said the obstinate irishman; "we will rise when our prayers are finished, and not before." the emir stood listening to the moolah, with his baleful gaze upon the two kneeling figures. then he gave one or two rapid orders, and four camels were brought forward. the baggage-camels which they had hitherto ridden were standing unsaddled where they had been tethered. "don't be a fool, belmont!" cried the colonel; "everything depends upon our humouring them. do get up, mrs. belmont! you are only putting their backs up!" the frenchman shrugged his shoulders as he looked at them. "_mon dieu!_" he cried, "were there ever such impracticable people? _voila!_" he added, with a shriek, as the two american ladies fell upon their knees beside mrs. belmont. "it is like the camels--one down, all down! was ever anything so absurd?" but mr. stephens had knelt down beside sadie and buried his haggard face in his long, thin hands. only the colonel and monsieur fardet remained standing. cochrane looked at the frenchman with an interrogative eye. "after all," said he, "it is stupid to pray all your life, and not to pray now when we have nothing to hope for except through the goodness of providence." he dropped upon his knees with a rigid, military back, but his grizzled, unshaven chin upon his chest. the frenchman looked at his kneeling companions, and then his eyes travelled onwards to the angry faces of the emir and moolah. "_sapristi!_" he growled. "do they suppose that a frenchman is afraid of them?" and so, with an ostentatious sign of the cross, he took his place upon his knees beside the others. foul, bedraggled, and wretched, the seven figures knelt and waited humbly for their fate under the black shadow of the palm-tree. the emir turned to the moolah with a mocking smile, and pointed at the results of his ministrations. then he gave an order, and in an instant the four men were seized. a couple of deft turns with a camel-halter secured each of their wrists. fardet screamed out, for the rope had bitten into his open wound. the others took it with the dignity of despair. "you have ruined everything. i believe you have ruined me also!" cried mansoor, wringing his hands. "the women are to get upon these three camels." "never!" cried belmont. "we won't be separated!" he plunged madly, but he was weak from privation, and two strong men held him by each elbow. "don't fret, john!" cried his wife, as they hurried her towards the camel. "no harm shall come to me. don't struggle, or they'll hurt you, dear." the four men writhed as they saw the women dragged away from them. all their agonies had been nothing to this. sadie and her aunt appeared to be half senseless from fear. only mrs. belmont kept a brave face. when they were seated the camels rose, and were led under the tree behind where the four men were standing. "i've a pistol in me pocket," said belmont, looking up at his wife. "i would give me soul to be able to pass it to you." "keep it, john, and it may be useful yet. i have no fears. ever since we prayed i have felt as if our guardian angels had their wings round us." she was like a guardian angel herself as she turned to the shrinking sadie, and coaxed some little hope back into her despairing heart. the short, thick arab, who had been in command of wad ibrahim's rearguard, had joined the emir and the moolah; the three consulted together, with occasional oblique glances towards the prisoners. then the emir spoke to mansoor. "the chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?" said the dragoman. his fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking incessantly at the front of his covercoat. "why does he wish to know?" asked the colonel. "i do not know." "but it is evident," cried monsieur fardet. "he wishes to know which is the best worth keeping for his ransom." "i think we should see this thing through together," said the colonel. "it's really for you to decide, stephens, for i have no doubt that you are the richest of us." "i don't know that i am," the lawyer answered; "but in any case, i have no wish to be placed upon a different footing to the others." the emir spoke again in his harsh rasping voice. "he says," mansoor translated, "that the baggage-camels are spent, and that there is only one beast left which can keep up. it is ready now for one of you, and you have to decide among yourselves which is to have it. if one is richer than the others, he will have the preference." "tell him that we are all equally rich." "in that case he says that you are to choose at once which is to have the camel." "and the others?" the dragoman shrugged his shoulders. "well," said the colonel, "if only one of us is to escape, i think you fellows will agree with me that it ought to be belmont, since he is the married man." "yes, yes, let it be monsieur belmont," cried fardet. "i think so also," said stephens. but the irishman would not hear of it. "no, no, share and share alike," he cried. "all sink or all swim, and the devil take the flincher." they wrangled among themselves until they became quite heated in this struggle of unselfishness. some one had said that the colonel should go because he was the oldest, and the colonel was a very angry man. "one would think i was an octogenarian," he cried. "these remarks are quite uncalled for." "well, then," said belmont, "let us all refuse to go." "but this is not very wise," cried the frenchman. "see, my friends! here are the ladies being carried off alone. surely it would be far better that one of us should be with them to advise them." they looked at one another in perplexity. what fardet said was obviously true, but how could one of them desert his comrades? the emir himself suggested the solution. "the chief says," said mansoor, "that if you cannot settle who is to go, you had better leave it to allah and draw lots." "i don't think we can do better," said the colonel, and his three companions nodded their assent. it was the moolah who approached them with four splinters of palm-bark protruding from between his fingers. "he says that he who draws the longest has the camel," said mansoor. "we must agree to abide absolutely by this," said cochrane, and again his companions nodded. the dervishes had formed a semicircle in front of them, with a fringe of the oscillating heads of the camels. before them was a cooking fire, which threw its red light over the group. the emir was standing with his back to it, and his fierce face towards the prisoners. behind the four men was a line of guards, and behind them again the three women, who looked down from their camels upon this tragedy. with a malicious smile, the fat, one-eyed moolah advanced with his fist closed, and the four little brown spicules protruding from between his fingers. it was to belmont that he held them first. the irishman gave an involuntary groan, and his wife gasped behind him, for the splinter came away in his hand. then it was the frenchman's turn, and his was half an inch longer than belmont's. then came colonel cochrane, whose piece was longer than the two others put together. stephens' was no bigger than belmont's. the colonel was the winner of this terrible lottery. "you're welcome to my place, belmont," said he. "i've neither wife nor child, and hardly a friend in the world. go with your wife, and i'll stay." "no, indeed! an agreement is an agreement. it's all fair play, and the prize to the luckiest." "the emir says that you are to mount at once," said mansoor, and an arab dragged the colonel by his wrist-rope to the waiting camel. "he will stay with the rearguard," said the emir to his lieutenant. "you can keep the women with you also." "and this dragoman dog?" "put him with the others." "and they?" "put them all to death." chapter ix. as none of the three could understand arabic, the order of the emir would have been unintelligible to them had it not been for the conduct of mansoor. the unfortunate dragoman, after all his treachery and all his subservience and apostasy, found his worst fears realised when the dervish leader gave his curt command. with a shriek of fear the poor wretch threw himself forward upon his face, and clutched at the edge of the arab's jibbeh, clawing with his brown fingers at the edge of the cotton skirt. the emir tugged to free himself, and then, finding that he was still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. the dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the arab's horny foot had left him. all was bustle and movement in the camp, for the old emir had mounted his camel, and some of his party were already beginning to follow their companions. the squat lieutenant, the moolah, and about a dozen dervishes surrounded the prisoners. they had not mounted their camels, for they were told off to be the ministers of death. the three men understood as they looked upon their faces that the sand was running very low in the glass of their lives. their hands were still bound, but their guards had ceased to hold them. they turned round, all three, and said good-bye to the women upon the camels. "all up now, norah," said belmont. "it's hard luck when there was a chance of a rescue, but we've done our best." for the first time his wife had broken down. she was sobbing convulsively, with her face between her hands. "don't cry, little woman! we've had a good time together. give my love to all friends at bray! remember me to amy mccarthy and to the blessingtons. you'll find there is enough and to spare, but i would take roger's advice about the investments. mind that!" "o john, i won't live without you!" sorrow for her sorrow broke the strong man down, and he buried his face in the hairy side of her camel. the two of them sobbed helplessly together. stephens meanwhile had pushed his way to sadie's beast. she saw his worn earnest face looking up at her through the dim light. "don't be afraid for your aunt and for yourself," said he. "i am sure that you will escape. colonel cochrane will look after you. the egyptians cannot be far behind. i do hope you will have a good drink before you leave the wells. i wish i could give your aunt my jacket, for it will be cold to-night. i'm afraid i can't get it off. she should keep some of the bread, and eat it in the early morning." he spoke quite quietly, like a man who is arranging the details of a picnic. a sudden glow of admiration for this quietly consistent man warmed her impulsive heart. "how unselfish you are!" she cried. "i never saw any one like you. talk about saints! there you stand in the very presence of death, and you think only of us." "i want to say a last word to you, sadie, if you don't mind. i should die so much happier. i have often wanted to speak to you, but i thought that perhaps you would laugh, for you never took anything very seriously, did you? that was quite natural of course with your high spirits, but still it was very serious to me. but now i am really a dead man, so it does not matter very much what i say." "oh don't, mr. stephens!" cried the girl. "i won't, if it is very painful to you. as i said, it would make me die happier, but i don't want to be selfish about it. if i thought it would darken your life afterwards, or be a sad recollection to you, i would not say another word." "what did you wish to say?" "it was only to tell you how i loved you. i always loved you. from the first i was a different man when i was with you. but of course it was absurd, i knew that well enough. i never said anything, but i tried not to make myself ridiculous. but i just want you to know about it now that it can't matter one way or the other. you'll understand that i really do love you when i tell you that, if it were not that i knew you were frightened and unhappy, these last two days in which we have been always together would have been infinitely the happiest of my life." the girl sat pale and silent, looking down with wondering eyes at his upturned face. she did not know what to do or say in the solemn presence of this love which burned so brightly under the shadow of death. to her child's heart it seemed incomprehensible--and yet she understood that it was sweet and beautiful also. "i won't say any more," said he; "i can see that it only bothers you. but i wanted you to know, and now you do know, so it is all right. thank you for listening so patiently and gently. good-bye, little sadie! i can't put my hand up. will you put yours down?" she did so and stephens kissed it. then he turned and took his place once more between belmont and fardet. in his whole life of struggle and success he had never felt such a glow of quiet contentment as suffused him at that instant when the grip of death was closing upon him. there is no arguing about love. it is the innermost fact of life--the one which obscures and changes all the others, the only one which is absolutely satisfying and complete. pain is pleasure, and want is comfort, and death is sweetness when once that golden mist is round it. so it was that stephens could have sung with joy as he faced his murderers. he really had not time to think about them. the important, all-engrossing, delightful thing was that she could not look upon him as a casual acquaintance any more. through all her life she would think of him--she would know. colonel cochrane's camel was at one side, and the old soldier, whose wrists had been freed, had been looking down upon the scene, and wondering in his tenacious way whether all hope must really be abandoned. it was evident that the arabs who were grouped round the victims were to remain behind with them, while the others who were mounted would guard the three women and himself. he could not understand why the throats of his companions had not been already cut, unless it were that with an eastern refinement of cruelty this rearguard would wait until the egyptians were close to them, so that the warm bodies of their victims might be an insult to the pursuers. no doubt that was the right explanation. the colonel had heard of such a trick before. but in that case there would not be more than twelve arabs with the prisoners. were there any of the friendly ones among them? if tippy tilly and six of his men were there, and if belmont could get his arms free and his hand upon his revolver, they might come through yet. the colonel craned his neck and groaned in his disappointment. he could see the faces of the guards in the firelight. they were all baggara arabs, men who were beyond either pity or bribery. tippy tilly and the others must have gone on with the advance. for the first time the stiff old soldier abandoned hope. "good-bye, you fellows! god bless you!" he cried, as a negro pulled at his camel's nose-ring and made him follow the others. the women came after him, in a misery too deep for words. their departure was a relief to the three men who were left. "i am glad they are gone," said stephens, from his heart. "yes, yes, it is better," cried fardet. "how long are we to wait?" "not very long now," said belmont grimly, as the arabs closed in around them. the colonel and the three women gave one backward glance when they came to the edge of the oasis. between the straight stems of the palms they saw the gleam of the fire, and above the group of arabs they caught a last glimpse of the three white hats. an instant later, the camels began to trot, and when they looked back once more the palm grove was only a black clump with the vague twinkle of a light somewhere in the heart of it. as with yearning eyes they gazed at that throbbing red point in the darkness, they passed over the edge of the depression, and in an instant the huge, silent, moonlit desert was round them without a sign of the oasis which they had left. on every side the velvet, blue-black sky, with its blazing stars, sloped downwards to the vast, dun-coloured plain. the two were blurred into one at their point of junction. the women had sat in the silence of despair, and the colonel had been silent also--for what could he say?--but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. in the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, one more. "it may be the rescuers! it may be the egyptians!" cried mrs. belmont, with a sudden flicker of hope. "colonel cochrane, don't you think it may be the egyptians?" "yes, yes," sadie whimpered. "it must be the egyptians." the colonel had listened expectantly, but all was silent again. then he took his hat off with a solemn gesture. "there is no use deceiving ourselves, mrs. belmont," said he; "we may as well face the truth. our friends are gone from us, but they have met their end like brave men." "but why should they fire their guns? they had . . . they had spears." she shuddered as she said it. "that is true," said the colonel. "i would not for the world take away any real grounds of hope which you may have; but on the other hand, there is no use in preparing bitter disappointments for ourselves. if we had been listening to an attack, we should have heard some reply. besides, an egyptian attack would have been an attack in force. no doubt it _is_, as you say, a little strange that they should have wasted their cartridges--by jove, look at that!" he was pointing over the eastern desert. two figures were moving across its expanse, swiftly and stealthily, furtive dark shadows against the lighter ground. they saw them dimly, dipping and rising over the rolling desert, now lost, now reappearing in the uncertain light. they were flying away from the arabs. and then, suddenly they halted upon the summit of a sand-hill, and the prisoners could see them outlined plainly against the sky. they were camel-men, but they sat their camels astride as a horseman sits his horse. "gippy camel corps!" cried the colonel. "two men," said miss adams, in a voice of despair. "only a vedette, ma'am! throwing feelers out all over the desert. this is one of them. main body ten miles off, as likely as not. there they go giving the alarm! good old camel corps!" the self-contained, methodical soldier had suddenly turned almost inarticulate with his excitement. there was a red flash upon the top of the sand-hill, and then another, followed by the crack of the rifles. then with a whisk the two figures were gone, as swiftly and silently as two trout in a stream. the arabs had halted for an instant, as if uncertain whether they should delay their journey to pursue them or not. there was nothing left to pursue now, for amid the undulations of the sand-drift the vedettes might have gone in any direction. the emir galloped back along the line, with exhortations and orders. then the camels began to trot, and the hopes of the prisoners were dulled by the agonies of the terrible jolt. mile after mile, mile after mile, they sped onwards over that vast expanse, the women clinging as best they might to the pommels, the colonel almost as spent as they, but still keenly on the look-out for any sign of the pursuers. "i think . . . i think," cried mrs. belmont, "that something is moving in front of us." the colonel raised himself upon his saddle, and screened his eyes from the moonshine. "by jove, you're right there, ma'am. there are men over yonder." they could all see them now, a straggling line of riders far ahead of them in the desert. "they are going in the same direction as we," cried mrs. belmont, whose eyes were very much better than the colonel's. cochrane muttered an oath into his moustache. "look at the tracks there," said he; "of course, it's our own vanguard who left the palm grove before us. the chief keeps us at this infernal pace in order to close up with them." as they drew closer they could see plainly that it was indeed the other body of arabs, and presently the emir wad ibrahim came trotting back to take counsel with the emir abderrahman. they pointed in the direction in which the vedettes had appeared, and shook their heads like men who have many and grave misgivings. then the raiders joined into one long, straggling line, and the whole body moved steadily on towards the southern cross, which was twinkling just over the skyline in front of them. hour after hour the dreadful trot continued, while the fainting ladies clung on convulsively, and cochrane, worn out but indomitable, encouraged them to hold out, and peered backwards over the desert for the first glad signs of their pursuers. the blood throbbed in his temples, and he cried that he heard the roll of drums coming out of the darkness. in his feverish delirium he saw clouds of pursuers at their very heels, and during the long night he was for ever crying glad tidings which ended in disappointment and heartache. the rise of the sun showed the desert stretching away around them with nothing moving upon its monstrous face except themselves. with dull eyes and heavy hearts they stared round at that huge and empty expanse. their hopes thinned away like the light morning mist upon the horizon. it was shocking to the ladies to look at their companion, and to think of the spruce, hale old soldier who had been their fellow-passenger from cairo. as in the case of miss adams, old age seemed to have pounced upon him in one spring. his hair, which had grizzled hour by hour during his privations, was now of a silvery white. white stubble, too, had obscured the firm, clean line of his chin and throat. the veins of his face were injected, and his features were shot with heavy wrinkles. he rode with his back arched and his chin sunk upon his breast, for the old, time-rotted body was worn out, but in his bright, alert eyes there was always a trace of the gallant tenant who lived in the shattered house. delirious, spent, and dying, he preserved his chivalrous, protecting air as he turned to the ladies, shot little scraps of advice and encouragement at them, and peered back continually for the help which never came. an hour after sunrise the raiders called a halt, and food and water were served out to all. then at a more moderate pace they pursued their southern journey, their long, straggling line trailing out over a quarter of a mile of desert. from their more careless bearing and the way in which they chatted as they rode, it was clear that they thought that they had shaken off their pursuers. their direction now was east as well as south, and it was evidently their intention after this long detour to strike the nile again at some point far above the egyptian outposts. already the character of the scenery was changing, and they were losing the long levels of the pebbly desert, and coming once more upon those fantastic, sunburned, black rocks, and that rich orange sand through which they had already passed. on every side of them rose the scaly, conical hills with their loose, slag-like debris, and jagged-edged khors, with sinuous streams of sand running like water-courses down their centre. the camels followed each other, twisting in and out among the boulders, and scrambling with their adhesive, spongy feet over places which would have been impossible for horses. among the broken rocks those behind could sometimes only see the long, undulating, darting necks of the creatures in front, as if it were some nightmare procession of serpents. indeed, it had much the effect of a dream upon the prisoners, for there was no sound, save the soft, dull padding and shuffling of the feet. the strange, wild frieze moved slowly and silently onwards amid a setting of black stone and yellow sand, with the one arch of vivid blue spanning the rugged edges of the ravine. miss adams, who had been frozen into silence during the long cold night, began to thaw now in the cheery warmth of the rising sun. she looked about her, and rubbed her thin hands together. "why, sadie," she remarked, "i thought i heard you in the night, dear, and now i see that you have been crying." "i've been thinking, auntie." "well, we must try and think of others, dearie, and not of ourselves." "it's not of myself, auntie." "never fret about me, sadie." "no, auntie, i was not thinking of you." "was it of any one in particular?" "of mr. stephens, auntie. how gentle he was, and how brave! to think of him fixing up every little thing for us, and trying to pull his jacket over his poor roped-up hands, with those murderers waiting all round him. he's my saint and hero from now ever after." "well, he's out of his troubles anyhow," said miss adams, with that bluntness which the years bring with them. "then i wish i was also." "i don't see how that would help him." "well, i think he might feel less lonesome," said sadie, and drooped her saucy little chin upon her breast. the four had been riding in silence for some little time, when the colonel clapped his hand to his brow with a gesture of dismay. "good god!" he cried, "i am going off my head." again and again they had perceived it during the night, but he had seemed quite rational since daybreak. they were shocked therefore at this sudden outbreak, and tried to calm him with soothing words. "mad as a hatter," he shouted. "whatever do you think i saw?" "don't trouble about it, whatever it was," said mrs. belmont, laying her hand soothingly upon his as the camels closed together. "it is no wonder that you are overdone. you have thought and worked for all of us so long. we shall halt presently, and a few hours' sleep will quite restore you." but the colonel looked up again, and again he cried out in his agitation and surprise. "i never saw anything plainer in my life," he groaned. "it is on the point of rock on our right front--poor old stuart with my red cummerbund round his head just the same as we left him." the ladies had followed the direction of the colonel's frightened gaze, and in an instant they were all as amazed as he. there was a black, bulging ridge like a bastion upon the right side of the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. at one point it rose into a small pinnacle. on this pinnacle stood a solitary, motionless figure, clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of scarlet upon his head. there could not surely be two such short sturdy figures, or such large colourless faces, in the libyan desert. his shoulders were stooping forward, and he seemed to be staring intently down into the ravine. his pose and outline were like a caricature of the great napoleon. "can it possibly be he?" "it must be. it is!" cried the ladies. "you see he is looking towards us and waving his hand." "good heavens! they'll shoot him! get down, you fool, or you'll be shot!" roared the colonel. but his dry throat would only emit a discordant croaking. several of the dervishes had seen the singular apparition upon the hill, and had unslung their remingtons, but a long arm suddenly shot up behind the figure of the birmingham clergyman, a brown hand seized upon his skirts, and he disappeared with a snap. higher up the pass, just below the spot where mr. stuart had been standing, appeared the tall figure of the emir abderrahman. he had sprung upon a boulder, and was shouting and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long, rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor. the bastion-like cliff was fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over the triggers. from the other lip also came the long spurts of flame and the angry clatter of the rifles. the raiders were caught in an ambuscade. the emir fell, but was up again and waving. there was a splotch of blood upon his long white beard. he kept pointing and gesticulating, but his scattered followers could not understand what he wanted. some of them came tearing down the pass, and some from behind were pushing to the front. a few dismounted and tried to climb up sword in hand to that deadly line of muzzles, but one by one they were hit, and came rolling from rock to rock to the bottom of the ravine. the shooting was not very good. one negro made his way unharmed up the whole side, only to have his brains dashed out with the butt-end of a martini at the top. the emir had fallen off his rock and lay in a crumpled heap, like a brown and white patchwork quilt, at the bottom of it. and then when half of them were down it became evident, even to those exalted fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. they galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. the beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. the women screamed as this mad torrent of frenzied creatures came pouring past them, but the colonel edged his camel and theirs farther and farther in among the rocks and away from the retreating arabs. the air was full of whistling bullets, and they could hear them smacking loudly against the stones all round them. "keep quiet, and they'll pass us," whispered the colonel, who was all himself again now that the hour for action had arrived. "i wish to heaven i could see tippy tilly or any of his friends. now is the time for them to help us." he watched the mad stream of fugitives as they flew past upon their shambling, squattering, loose-jointed beasts, but the black face of the egyptian gunner was not among them. and now it really did seem as if the whole body of them, in their haste to get clear of the ravine, had not a thought to spend upon the prisoners. the rush was past, and only stragglers were running the gauntlet of the fierce fire which poured upon them from above. the last of all, a young baggara with a black moustache and pointed beard, looked up as he passed and shook his sword in impotent passion at the egyptian riflemen. at the same instant a bullet struck his camel, and the creature collapsed, all neck and legs, upon the ground. the young arab sprang off its back, and, seizing its nose-ring, he beat it savagely with the flat of his sword to make it stand up. but the dim, glazing eye told its own tale, and in desert warfare the death of the beast is the death of the rider. the baggara glared round like a lion at bay, his dark eyes flashing murderously from under his red turban. a crimson spot, and then another, sprang out upon his dark skin, but he never winced at the bullet wounds. his fierce gaze had fallen upon the prisoners, and with an exultant shout he was dashing towards them, his broad-bladed sword gleaming above his head. miss adams was the nearest to him, but at the sight of the rushing figure and the maniac face she threw herself off the camel upon the far side. the arab bounded on to a rock and aimed a thrust at mrs. belmont, but before the point could reach her the colonel leaned forward with his pistol and blew the man's head in. yet with a concentrated rage, which was superior even to the agony of death, the fellow lay kicking and striking, bounding about among the loose stones like a fish upon the shingle. "don't be frightened, ladies," cried the colonel. "he is quite dead, i assure you. i am so sorry to have done this in your presence, but the fellow was dangerous. i had a little score of my own to settle with him, for he was the man who tried to break my ribs with his remington. i hope you are not hurt, miss adams! one instant, and i will come down to you." but the old boston lady was by no means hurt, for the rocks had been so high that she had a very short distance to fall from her saddle. sadie, mrs. belmont, and colonel cochrane had all descended by slipping on to the boulders and climbing down from them. but they found miss adams on her feet, and waving the remains of her green veil in triumph. "hurrah, sadie! hurrah, my own darling sadie!" she was shrieking. "we are saved, my girl, we are saved after all." "by george, so we are!" cried the colonel, and they all shouted in an ecstasy together. but sadie had learned to think more about others during those terrible days of schooling. her arms were round mrs. belmont, and her cheek against hers. "you dear, sweet angel," she cried, "how can we have the heart to be glad when you--when you--" "but i don't believe it is so," cried the brave irishwoman. "no, i'll never believe it until i see john's body lying before me. and when i see that, i don't want to live to see anything more." the last dervish had clattered down the khor, and now above them on either cliff they could see the egyptians--tall, thin, square shouldered figures, looking, when outlined against the blue sky, wonderfully like the warriors in the ancient bas-reliefs. their camels were in the background, and they were hurrying to join them. at the same time others began to ride down from the farther end of the ravine, their dark faces flushed and their eyes shining with the excitement of victory and pursuit. a very small englishman, with a straw-coloured moustache and a weary manner, was riding at the head of them. he halted his camel beside the fugitives and saluted the ladies. he wore brown boots and brown belts with steel buckles, which looked trim and workmanlike against his khaki uniform. "had 'em that time--had 'em proper!" said he. "very glad to have been of any assistance, i'm sure. hope you're none the worse for it all. what i mean, it's rather rough work for ladies." "you're from halfa, i suppose?" asked the colonel. "no, we're from the other show. we're the sarras crowd, you know. we met in the desert, and we headed 'em off, and the other johnnies herded 'em behind. we've got 'em on toast, i tell you. get up on that rock and you'll see things happen. it's going to be a knockout in one round this time." "we left some of our people at the wells. we are very uneasy about them," said the colonel. "i suppose you haven't heard anything of them?" the young officer looked serious and shook his head. "bad job that!" said he. "they're a poisonous crowd when you put 'em in a corner. what i mean, we never expected to see you alive, and we're very glad to pull any of you out of the fire. the most we hoped was that we might revenge you." "any other englishman with you?" "archer is with the flanking party. he'll have to come past, for i don't think there is any other way down. we've got one of your chaps up there--a funny old bird with a red top-knot. see you later, i hope! good day, ladies!" he touched his helmet, tapped his camel, and trotted on after his men. "we can't do better than stay where we are until they are all past," said the colonel, for it was evident now that the men from above would have to come round. in a broken single file they went past, black men and brown, soudanese and fellaheen, but all of the best, for the camel corps is the _corps d'elite_ of the egyptian army. each had a brown bandolier over his chest and his rifle held across his thigh. a large man with a drooping black moustache and a pair of binoculars in his hand was riding at the side of them. "hulloa, archer!" croaked the colonel. the officer looked at him with the vacant, unresponsive eye of a complete stranger. "i'm cochrane, you know! we travelled up together." "excuse me, sir, but you have the advantage of me," said the officer. "i knew a colonel cochrane cochrane, but you are not the man. he was three inches taller than you, with black hair and--" "that's all right," cried the colonel testily. "you try a few days with the dervishes, and see if your friends will recognise you!" "good god, cochrane, is it really you? i could not have believed it. great scott, what you must have been through! i've heard before of fellows going grey in a night, but, by jove--" "quite so," said the colonel, flushing. "allow me to hint to you, archer, that if you could get some food and drink for these ladies, instead of discussing my personal appearance, it would be much more practical." "that's all right," said captain archer. "your friend stuart knows that you are here, and he is bringing some stuff round for you. poor fare, ladies, but the best we have! you're an old soldier, cochrane. get up on the rocks presently, and you'll see a lovely sight. no time to stop, for we shall be in action again in five minutes. anything i can do before i go?" "you haven't got such a thing as a cigar?" asked the colonel wistfully. archer drew a thick satisfying partaga from his case, and handed it down, with half-a-dozen wax vestas. then he cantered after his men, and the old soldier leaned back against the rock and drew in the fragrant smoke. it was then that his jangled nerves knew the full virtue of tobacco, the gentle anodyne which stays the failing strength and soothes the worrying brain. he watched the dim blue reek swirling up from him, and he felt the pleasant aromatic bite upon his palate, while a restful languor crept over his weary and harassed body. the three ladies sat together upon a flat rock. "good land, what a sight you are, sadie!" cried miss adams suddenly, and it was the first reappearance of her old self. "what _would_ your mother say if she saw you? why, sakes alive, your hair is full of straw and your frock clean crazy!" "i guess we all want some setting to rights," said sadie, in a voice which was much more subdued than that of the sadie of old. "mrs. belmont, you look just too perfectly sweet anyhow, but if you'll allow me i'll fix your dress for you." but mrs. belmont's eyes were far away, and she shook her head sadly as she gently put the girl's hands aside. "i do not care how i look. i cannot think of it," said she; "could _you_, if you had left the man you love behind you, as i have mine?" "i'm begin--beginning to think i have," sobbed poor sadie, and buried her hot face in mrs. belmont's motherly bosom. chapter x. the camel corps had all passed onwards down the khor in pursuit of the retreating dervishes, and for a few minutes the escaped prisoners had been left alone. but now there came a cheery voice calling upon them, and a red turban bobbed about among the rocks, with the large white face of the nonconformist minister smiling from beneath it. he had a thick lance with which to support his injured leg, and this murderous crutch combined with his peaceful appearance to give him a most incongruous aspect--as of a sheep which has suddenly developed claws. behind him were two negroes with a basket and a water-skin. "not a word! not a word!" he cried, as he stumped up to them. "i know exactly how you feel. i've been there myself. bring the water, ali! only half a cup, miss adams; you shall have some more presently. now your turn, mrs. belmont! dear me, dear me, you poor souls, how my heart does bleed for you! there's bread and meat in the basket, but you must be very moderate at first." he chuckled with joy, and slapped his fat hands together as he watched them. "but the others?" he asked, his face turning grave again. the colonel shook his head. "we left them behind at the wells. i fear that it is all over with them." "tut, tut!" cried the clergyman, in a boisterous voice, which could not cover the despondency of his expression; "you thought, no doubt, that it was all over with me, but here i am in spite of it. never lose heart, mrs. belmont. your husband's position could not possibly be as hopeless as mine was." "when i saw you standing on that rock up yonder, i put it down to delirium," said the colonel. "if the ladies had not seen you, i should never have ventured to believe it." "i am afraid that i behaved very badly. captain archer says that i nearly spoiled all their plans, and that i deserved to be tried by a drumhead court-martial and shot. the fact is that, when i heard the arabs beneath me, i forgot myself in my anxiety to know if any of you were left." "i wonder that you were not shot without any drumhead court-martial," said the colonel. "but how in the world did you get here?" "the halfa people were close upon our track at the time when i was abandoned, and they picked me up in the desert. i must have been delirious, i suppose, for they tell me that they heard my voice, singing hymns, a long way off, and it was that, under the providence of god, which brought them to me. they had a camel ambulance, and i was quite myself again by next day. i came with the sarras people after we met them, because they have the doctor with them. my wound is nothing, and he says that a man of my habit will be the better for the loss of blood. and now, my friends"--his big, brown eyes lost their twinkle, and became very solemn and reverent--"we have all been upon the very confines of death, and our dear companions may be so at this instant. the same power which saved us may save them, and let us pray together that it may be so, always remembering that if, in spite of our prayers, it should _not_ be so, then that also must be accepted as the best and wisest thing." so they knelt together among the black rocks, and prayed as some of them had never prayed before. it was very well to discuss prayer and treat it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the _korosko_. it was easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair, with the slippered arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs. but they had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed against the horrible, jagged facts of life. battered and shaken, they must have something to cling to. a blind, inexorable destiny was too horrible a belief. a chastening power, acting intelligently and for a purpose--a living, working power, tearing them out of their grooves, breaking down their small sectarian ways, forcing them into the better path--that was what they had learned to realise during these days of horror. great hands had closed suddenly upon them, and had moulded them into new shapes, and fitted them for new uses. could such a power be deflected by any human supplication? it was that or nothing--the last court of appeal, left open to injured humanity. and so they all prayed, as a lover loves, or a poet writes, from the very inside of their souls, and they rose with that singular, illogical feeling of inward peace and satisfaction which prayer only can give. "hush!" said cochrane. "listen!" the sound of a volley came crackling up the narrow khor, and then another and another. the colonel was fidgeting about like an old horse which hears the bugle of the hunt and the yapping of the pack. "where can we see what is going on?" "come this way! this way, if you please! there is a path up to the top. if the ladies will come after me, they will be spared the sight of anything painful." the clergyman led them along the side to avoid the bodies which were littered thickly down the bottom of the khor. it was hard walking over the shingly, slaggy stones, but they made their way to the summit at last. beneath them lay the vast expanse of the rolling desert, and in the foreground such a scene as none of them are ever likely to forget. in that perfectly dry and clear light, with the unvarying brown tint of the hard desert as a background, every detail stood out as clearly as if these were toy figures arranged upon a table within hand's-touch of them. the dervishes--or what was left of them--were riding slowly some little distance out in a confused crowd, their patchwork jibbehs and red turbans swaying with the motion of their camels. they did not present the appearance of men who were defeated, for their movements were very deliberate, but they looked about them and changed their formation as if they were uncertain what their tactics ought to be. it was no wonder that they were puzzled, for upon their spent camels their situation was as hopeless as could be conceived. the sarras men had all emerged from the khor, and had dismounted, the beasts being held in groups of four, while the rifle-men knelt in a long line with a woolly, curling fringe of smoke, sending volley after volley at the arabs, who shot back in a desultory fashion from the backs of their camels. but it was not upon the sullen group of dervishes, nor yet upon the long line of kneeling rifle-men, that the eyes of the spectators were fixed. far out upon the desert, three squadrons of the halfa camel corps were coming up in a dense close column, which wheeled beautifully into a widespread semicircle as it approached. the arabs were caught between two fires. "by jove!" cried the colonel. "see that!" the camels of the dervishes had all knelt down simultaneously, and the men had sprung from their backs. in front of them was a tall, stately figure, who could only be the emir wad ibrahim. they saw him kneel for an instant in prayer. then he rose, and taking something from his saddle he placed it very deliberately upon the sand and stood upon it. "good man!" cried the colonel. "he is standing upon his sheepskin." "what do you mean by that?" asked stuart. "every arab has a sheepskin upon his saddle. when he recognises that his position is perfectly hopeless, and yet is determined to fight to the death, he takes his sheepskin off and stands upon it until he dies. see, they are all upon their sheepskins. they will neither give nor take quarter now." the drama beneath them was rapidly approaching its climax. the halfa corps was well up, and a ring of smoke and flame surrounded the clump of kneeling dervishes, who answered it as best they could. many of them were already down, but the rest loaded and fired with the unflinching courage which has always made them worthy antagonists. a dozen khaki-dressed figures upon the sand showed that it was no bloodless victory for the egyptians. but now there was a stirring bugle call from the sarras men, and another answered it from the halfa corps. their camels were down also, and the men had formed up into a single, long, curved line. one last volley, and they were charging inwards with the wild inspiriting yell which the blacks had brought with them from their central african wilds. for a minute there was a mad vortex of rushing figures, rifle butts rising and falling, spear-heads gleaming and darting among the rolling dust cloud. then the bugle rang out once more, the egyptians fell back and formed up with the quick precision of highly disciplined troops, and there in the centre, each upon his sheepskin, lay the gallant barbarian and his raiders. the nineteenth century had been revenged upon the seventh. the three women had stared horror-stricken and yet fascinated at the stirring scene before them. now sadie and her aunt were sobbing together. the colonel had turned to them with some cheering words when his eyes fell upon the face of mrs. belmont. it was as white and set as if it were carved from ivory, and her large grey eyes were fixed as if she were in a trance. "good heavens, mrs. belmont, what _is_ the matter?" he cried. for answer she pointed out over the desert. far away, miles on the other side of the scene of the fight, a small body of men were riding towards them. "by jove, yes; there's some one there. who can it be?" they were all straining their eyes, but the distance was so great that they could only be sure that they were camel-men and about a dozen in number. "it's those devils who were left behind in the palm grove," said cochrane. "there's no one else it can be. one consolation, they can't get away again. they've walked right into the lion's mouth." but mrs. belmont was still gazing with the same fixed intensity, and the same ivory face. now, with a wild shriek of joy, she threw her two hands into the air. "it's they!" she screamed. "they are saved! it's they, colonel, it's they! oh, miss adams, miss adams, it is they!" she capered about on the top of the hill with wild eyes like an excited child. her companions would not believe her, for they could see nothing, but there are moments when our mortal senses are more acute than those who have never put their whole heart and soul into them can ever realise. mrs. belmont had already run down the rocky path, on the way to her camel, before they could distinguish that which had long before carried its glad message to her. in the van of the approaching party, three white dots shimmered in the sun, and they could only come from the three european hats. the riders were travelling swiftly, and by the time their comrades had started to meet them they could plainly see that it was indeed belmont, fardet, and stephens, with the dragoman mansoor, and the wounded soudanese rifleman. as they came together they saw that their escort consisted of tippy tilly and the other old egyptian soldiers. belmont rushed onwards to meet his wife, but fardet stopped to grasp the colonel's hand. "_vive la france! vivent les anglais!_" he was yelling. "_tout va bien, n'est ce pas_, colonel? ah, _canaille! vivent la croix et les chretiens!_" he was incoherent in his delight. the colonel, too, was as enthusiastic as his anglo-saxon standard would permit. he could not gesticulate, but he laughed in the nervous crackling way which was his top-note of emotion. "my dear boy, i am deuced glad to see you all again. i gave you up for lost. never was as pleased at anything in my life! how did you get away?" "it was all your doing." "mine?" "yes, my friend, and i have been quarrelling with you--ungrateful wretch that i am!" "but how did i save you?" "it was you who arranged with this excellent tippy tilly and the others that they should have so much if they brought us alive into egypt again. they slipped away in the darkness and hid themselves in the grove. then, when we were left, they crept up with their rifles and shot the men who were about to murder us. that cursed moolah, i am sorry they shot him, for i believe that i could have persuaded him to be a christian. and now, with your permission, i will hurry on and embrace miss adams, for belmont has his wife, and stephens has miss sadie, so i think it is very evident that the sympathy of miss adams is reserved for me." a fortnight had passed away, and the special boat which had been placed at the disposal of the rescued tourists was already far north of assiout. next morning they would find themselves at baliani, where one takes the express for cairo. it was, therefore, their last evening together. mrs. shlesinger and her child, who had escaped unhurt, had already been sent down from the frontier. miss adams had been very ill after her privations, and this was the first time that she had been allowed to come upon deck after dinner. she sat now in a lounge chair, thinner, sterner, and kindlier than ever, while sadie stood beside her and tucked the rugs around her shoulders. mr. stephens was carrying over the coffee and placing it on the wicker table beside them. on the other side of the deck belmont and his wife were seated together in silent sympathy and contentment. monsieur fardet was leaning against the rail, and arguing about the remissness of the british government in not taking a more complete control of the egyptian frontier, while the colonel stood very erect in front of him, with the red end of a cigar-stump protruding from under his moustache. but what was the matter with the colonel? who would have recognised him who had only seen the broken old man in the libyan desert? there might be some little grizzling about the moustache, but the hair was back once more at the fine glossy black which had been so much admired upon the voyage up. with a stony face and an unsympathetic manner he had received, upon his return to halfa, all the commiserations about the dreadful way in which his privations had blanched him, and then diving into his cabin, he had reappeared within an hour exactly as he had been before that fatal moment when he had been cut off from the manifold resources of civilisation. and he looked in such a sternly questioning manner at every one who stared at him, that no one had the moral courage to make any remark about this modern miracle. it was observed from that time forward that, if the colonel had only to ride a hundred yards into the desert, he always began his preparations by putting a small black bottle with a pink label into the side-pocket of his coat. but those who knew him best at times when a man may best be known, said that the old soldier had a young man's heart and a young man's spirit-so that if he wished to keep a young man's colour also it was not very unreasonable after all. it was very soothing and restful up there on the saloon deck, with no sound but the gentle lipping of the water as it rippled against the sides of the steamer. the red after-glow was in the western sky, and it mottled the broad, smooth river with crimson. dimly they could discern the tall figures of herons standing upon the sand-banks, and farther off the line of riverside date-palms glided past them in a majestic procession. once more the silver stars were twinkling out, the same clear, placid, inexorable stars to which their weary eyes had been so often upturned during the long nights of their desert martyrdom. "where do you put up in cairo, miss adams?" asked mrs. belmont at last. "shepheard's, i think." "and you, mr. stephens?" "oh, shepheard's, decidedly." "we are staying at the continental. i hope we shall not lose sight of you." "i don't want ever to lose sight of you, mrs. belmont," cried sadie. "oh, you must come to the states, and we'll give you just a lovely time." mrs. belmont laughed, in her pleasant, mellow fashion. "we have our duty to do in ireland, and we have been too long away from it already. my husband has his business, and i have my home, and they are both going to rack and ruin. besides," she added slyly, "it is just possible that if we did come to the states we might not find you there." "we must all meet again," said belmont, "if only to talk our adventures over once more. it will be easier in a year or two. we are still too near them." "and yet how far away and dream-like it all seems!" remarked his wife. "providence is very good in softening disagreeable remembrances in our minds. all this feels to me as if it had happened in some previous existence." fardet held up his wrist with a cotton bandage still round it. "the body does not forget as quickly as the mind. this does not look very dream-like or far away, mrs. belmont." "how hard it is that some should be spared, and some not! if only mr. brown and mr. headingly were with us, then i should not have one care in the world," cried sadie. "why should they have been taken, and we left?" mr. stuart had limped on to the deck with an open book in his hand, a thick stick supporting his injured leg. "why is the ripe fruit picked, and the unripe left?" said he in answer to the young girl's exclamation. "we know nothing of the spiritual state of these poor dear young fellows, but the great master gardener plucks his fruit according to his own knowledge. i brought you up a passage to read to you." there was a lantern upon the table, and he sat down beside it. the yellow light shone upon his heavy cheek and the red edges of his book. the strong, steady voice rose above the wash of the water. "'let them give thanks whom the lord hath redeemed and delivered from the hand of the enemy, and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. they went astray in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in. hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. so they cried unto the lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt. oh that men would therefore praise the lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he doeth for the children of men.' "it sounds as if it were composed for us, and yet it was written two thousand years ago," said the clergyman, as he closed the book. "in every age man has been forced to acknowledge the guiding hand which leads him. for my part i don't believe that inspiration stopped two thousand years ago. when tennyson wrote with such fervour and conviction":- 'oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill,' "he was repeating the message which had been given to him, just as micah or ezekiel, when the world was younger, repeated some cruder and more elementary message." "that is all very well, mr. stuart," said the frenchman; "you ask me to praise god for taking me out of danger and pain, but what i want to know is why, since he has arranged all things, he ever put me into that pain and danger. i have, in my opinion, more occasion to blame than to praise. you would not thank me for pulling you out of that river if it was also i who pushed you in. the most which you can claim for your providence is that it has healed the wound which its own hand inflicted." "i don't deny the difficulty," said the clergyman slowly; "no one who is not self-deceived _can_ deny the difficulty. look how boldly tennyson faced it in that same poem, the grandest and deepest and most obviously inspired in our language. remember the effect which it had upon him." 'i falter where i firmly trod, and falling with my weight of cares upon the great world's altar stairs which slope through darkness up to god; i stretch lame hands of faith and grope and gather dust and chaff, and call to what i feel is lord of all, and faintly trust the larger hope.' "it is the central mystery of mysteries--the problem of sin and suffering, the one huge difficulty which the reasoner has to solve in order to vindicate the dealings of god with man. but take our own case as an example. i, for one, am very clear what i have got out of our experience. i say it with all humility, but i have a clearer view of my duties than ever i had before. it has taught me to be less remiss in saying what i think to be true, less indolent in doing what i feel to be right." "and i," cried sadie. "it has taught me more than all my life put together. i have learned so much and unlearned so much. i am a different girl." "i never understood my own nature before," said stephens. "i can hardly say that i had a nature to understand. i lived for what was unimportant, and i neglected what was vital." "oh, a good shake-up does nobody any harm," the colonel remarked. "too much of the feather-bed-and-four-meals-a-day life is not good for man or woman." "it is my firm belief," said mrs. belmont gravely, "that there was not one of us who did not rise to a greater height during those days in the desert than ever before or since. when our sins come to be weighed, much may be forgiven us for the sake of those unselfish days." they all sat in thoughtful silence for a little, while the scarlet streaks turned to carmine, and the grey shadows deepened, and the wild-fowl flew past in dark straggling v's over the dull metallic surface of the great smooth-flowing nile. a cold wind had sprung up from the eastward, and some of the party rose to leave the deck. stephens leaned forward to sadie. "do you remember what you promised when you were in the desert?" he whispered. "what was that?" "you said that if you escaped you would try in future to make some one else happy." "then i must do so." "you have," said he, and their hands met under the shadow of the table. generously made available by the internet archive/american libraries.) sunny-san * * * * * onoto watanna sunny-san by onoto watanna author of "a japanese nightingale," "wooing of wistaria," "heart of hyacinth," "tama," etc. mcclelland and stewart publishers : : toronto copyright, 1922, by george h. doran company [illustration] printed in the united states of america to my friends consul and mrs. samuel c. reat in remembrance of sunny alberta days sunny-san sunny-san chapter i madame many smiles was dead. the famous dancer of the house of a thousand joys had fluttered out into the land of shadows. no longer would poet or reveller vie with each other in doing homage to her whose popularity had known no wane with the years, who had, indeed, become one of the classic objects of art of the city. in a land where one's ancestry is esteemed the all important thing, madame many smiles had stood alone, with neither living relatives nor ancestors to claim her. who she was, or whence she had come, none knew, but the legend of the house was that on a night of festival she had appeared at the illuminated gates, as a moth, who, beaten by the winds and storms without, seeks shelter in the light and warmth of the joyhouse within. hirata had bonded her for a life term. her remuneration was no more than the geishas' meagre wage, but she was allowed the prerogative of privacy. her professional duties over, no admiring patron of the gardens might claim her further service. she was free to return to her child, whose cherry blossom skin and fair hair proclaimed clearly the taint of her white blood. hirata was lenient in his training of the child, for the dancer had brought with her into the house of a thousand joys, daikoku, the god of fortune, and hirata could afford to abide the time when the child of the dancer should step into her shoes. but the day had come far ahead of his preparations, and while the dancer was at the zenith of her fame. they were whispering about the gardens that the moth that had fluttered against the house of joy had fluttered back into the darkness from which she had come. with her she had taken daikoku. a profound depression had settled upon the house of a thousand joys. geishas, apprentices and attendants moved aimlessly about their tasks, their smiles mechanical and their motions automatic. the pulse and inspiration of the house had vanished. in the gardens the effect of the news was even more noticeable. guests were hurriedly departing, turning their cups upside down and calling for their clogs. tea girls slid in and out on hurried service to the departing guests, and despite the furious orders of the master to affect a gaiety they did not feel, their best efforts were unavailing to dispel the strange veil of gloom that comes ever with death. the star of the house of a thousand joys had twinkled out forever. it was the night of the festival of the full moon. the cream of the city were gathered to do honour to the shining tsuki no kami in the clear sky above. but the death of the dancer had cast its shadow upon all, and there was a superstitious feeling abroad that it was the omen of a bad year for the city. in the emptying gardens, hirata saw impending ruin. running hither and thither, from house to garden, snapping his fingers, with irritation and fury, he cursed the luck that had befallen him on this night of all nights. the maids shrank before his glance, or silently scurried out of his path. the geishas with automatic smile and quip vainly sought to force a semblance of exhilaration, and the twang of the samisen failed to drown that very low beat of a buddhist drum in the temple beyond the gardens, where especial honour was to be paid to the famous dancer, who had given her services gratuitously to the temple. in fury and despair, hirata turned from the ingratiating women. again he sought the apartments where the dead dancer lay in state among her robes. here, with her face at her mother's feet, the child of the dancer prayed unceasingly to the gods that they would permit her to attend her mother upon the long journey to the meido. crushed and hurt by a grief that nothing could assuage, only dimly the girl sensed the words of the master, ordering her half peremptorily, half imploringly to prepare for service to the house. possibly it was his insinuation that for the sake of her mother's honour it behooved her to step into her place, and uphold the fame of the departed one, that aroused her to a mechanical assent. soon she was in the hands of the dressers, her mourning robes stripped, and the skin tights of the trapese performer substituted. hirata, in the gardens, clapping his hands loudly to attract the attention of the departing guests, took his stand upon the little platform. saluting his patrons with lavish compliments, he begged their indulgence and patience. the light of his house, it was true, so he said, had been temporarily extinguished, but the passing of a dancer meant no more than the falling of a star; and just as there were other stars in the firmament brighter than those that had fallen, so the house of a thousand joys possessed in reserve greater beauty and talent than that the guests had generously bestowed their favour upon. the successor to the honourable dancer was bound to please, since she excelled her mother in beauty even as the sun does the moon. he therefore entreated his guests to transfer their gracious patronage to the humble descendant of madame many smiles. the announcement caused as much of a sensation as the news of the dancer's death had done. there was an element of disapproval and consternation in the glances exchanged in the garden. nevertheless there was a disposition, governed by curiosity, to at least see the daughter of the famous dancer, who appeared on the night of her mother's death. a party of american students, with a tutor, were among those still remaining in the gardens. madame many smiles had been an especial favourite with them, their interest possibly due to the fact that she was said to be a half caste. her beauty and fragility had appealed to them as something especially rare, like a choice piece of cloisonnè, and the romance and mystery that seemed ever about her, captivated their interest, and set them speculating as to what was the true story of this woman, whom the residents pointed to with pride as the masterpiece of their city. an interpreter having translated the words of the manager, there was a general growl of disapproval from the young americans. however, they, too, remained to see the daughter of madame many smiles, and pushed up near to the rope, along which now came the descendant. she was a child of possibly fourteen years, her cheeks as vividly red as the poppies in her hair, her long large eyes, with their shining black lashes, strangely bright and feverish. she came tripping across the rope, with a laugh upon her lips, her hair glistening, under the spotlight, almost pure gold in colour. bobbed and banged in the fashion of the japanese child, it yet curled about her exquisite young face, and added the last touch of witchery to her beauty. though her bright red lips were parted in the smile that had made her mother famous, there was something appealing in her wide, blank stare at her audience. she was dressed in tights, without the customary cape above her, and her graceful, slender limbs were those of extreme youth, supple as elastic from training and ancestry, the lithe, pliable young body of the born trapese performer and dancer. she tossed her parasol to her shoulder, threw up her delicate little pointed chin and laughed across at that sea of faces, throwing right and left her kisses; but the americans, close to the rope, were observing a phenomenon, for even as her charming little teeth gleamed out in that so captivating smile, a dewdrop appeared to glisten on the child's shining face. even as she laughed and postured to the music that burst out, there a-tiptoe on the tightrope, the dewdrop fell down her face and disappeared into the sawdust. like a flower on the end of a long slender stalk, tossing in the wind, her lovely little head swayed from side to side. her small, speaking hands, the wrists of which were lovelier than those celebrated by the japanese poet who for fifteen years had penned his one-line poems to her mother, followed the rhythm of the music, and every part of that delicate young body seemed to sensitively stir and move to the pantomime dance of the tightrope. in triumph, hirata heard the loud "hee-i-i-!" and the sharp indrawing and expulsions of breaths. scrambling across the room, puffing and expressing his satisfaction, came the lord of negato, drunk with sake and amorous for the child upon the rope. he pushed his way past the besieging tea house maidens, who proffered him sweets and tea and sake. his hands went deep into his sleeves, and drew forth a shining bauble. with ingratiating cries to attract her attention, he flung the jewel to the girl upon the rope. returning his smile, she whirled her fan wide open, caught the gift upon it, and, laughing, tossed it into the air. juggling and playing with the pretty toy, she kept it twirling in a circle above her, caught it again on her fan, and dropped it down onto the sawdust beneath. then, like a naughty child, pleased over some trick, she danced back and forth along the rope, as it swung wide with her. a grunt of anger came from hirata, who approached near enough for her to see and be intimidated by him, but she kept her gaze well above his head, feigning neither to see him, nor the still pressing negato. he was calling up to her now, clucking as one might at a dog, and when at last her glance swept his, he threw at her a handful of coin. this also she caught neatly on her opened fan, and then, acting upon a sudden impetuous and impish impulse, she threw right in the face of her besieging admirer. jumping from the rope to the ground, she smiled and bowed right and left, kissed her hands to her audience, and vanished into the teahouse. with an imprecation, hirata followed her into the house. the little maiden, holding the tray, and pausing to solicit the patronage of the americans, had watched the girl's exit with troubled eyes, and now she said in english: "_now_ hirata will beat her." "what do you mean?" demanded the young man, who had rejected the proffered cup, and was staring at her with such angry eyes that spring morning dropped her own, and bobbed her knees in apology for possible offence. "what do you mean?" repeated jerry hammond, determined upon securing an answer, while his friends crowded about interested also in the reply. half shielding her face with her fan, the girl replied in a low voice: "always the master beats the apprentice who do wrong. when her mother live, he do not touch her child, but now madame many smiles is dead, and hirata is very angry. he will surely put the lash to-night upon her." "do you mean to tell me that that little girl is being beaten because she threw back that dirty gorilla's coin to him?" spring morning nodded, and the tears that came suddenly to her eyes revealed that the girl within had all of her sympathy. "the devil she is!" jerry hammond turned to his friends, "are we going to stand for this?" demanded jerry. "not by a dashed sight!" shrilly responded the youngest of the party, a youth of seventeen, whose heavy bone-ribbed glasses gave him a preternaturally wise look. the older man of the party here interposed with an admonitory warning: "now, boys, i advise you to keep out of these oriental scraps. we don't want to get mixed up in any teahouse brawls. these japanese girls are used----" "she's not a japanese girl," furiously denied jerry. "she's as white as we are. did you see her hair?" "nevertheless----" began professor barrowes, but was instantly silenced by his clamouring young charges. "i," said jerry, "propose to go on a privately conducted tour of investigation into the infernal regions of that house of alleged joys. if any of you fellows have cold feet, stay right here snug with papa. i'll go it alone." that was quite enough for the impetuous youngsters. with a whoop of derision at the idea of their having "cold feet," they were soon following jerry in a rush upon the house that was reminiscent of football days. in the main hall of the teahouse a bevy of girls were running about agitatedly, some of them with their sleeves before their faces, crying. two little apprentices crouched up against a screen, loudly moaning. there was every evidence of upset and distress in the house of a thousand joys. to jerry's demand for hirata, he was met by a frightened silence from the girls, and a stony faced, sinister-eyed woman attempted to block the passage of the young men, thus unconsciously revealing the direction hirata had gone. instantly jerry was upon the screen and with rough hand had shoved it aside. they penetrated to an interior room that opened upon an outbuilding, which was strung out like a pavilion across the garden. at the end of this long, empty structure, lit only by a single lantern, the americans found what they sought. kneeling on the floor, in her skin tights, her hands tied behind her with red cords that cut into the delicate flesh, was the girl who had danced on the rope. through the thin silk of her tights showed a red welt where one stroke of the lash had fallen. before her, squatting on his heels, hirata, one hand holding the whip, and the other his suspended pipe, was waiting for his slave to come to terms. she had felt the first stroke of the lash. it should be her first or last, according to her promise. as the americans broke into the apartment, hirata arose partly to his knees and then to his feet, and as he realized their intention, he began to leap up and down shouting lustily: "oi!--oi! oi-i-i-!" jerry's fist found him under the chin, and silenced him. with murmurs of sympathy and anger, the young men cut the bonds of the little girl. she fell limply upon the floor, breathlessly sighing: "arigato! arigato! arigato!" (thank you.) "hustle. did you hear that gong! they're summoning the police. let's beat it." "and leave her here at his mercy? nothing doing." jerry had lifted the child bodily in his arms, and tossed her across his shoulder. they came out of the house and the gardens through a hue and cry of alarmed attendants and inmates. hirata had crawled on hands and knees into the main dance hall, and every drum was beating upon the place. above the beat of the drums came the shrill outcry of hirata, yelling at the top of his voice: "hotogoroshi!" (murder.) through a protecting lane made by his friends, fled jerry hammond, the girl upon his shoulder, a chattering, clattering, screeching mob at his heels, out of the gardens and into the dusky streets, under the benignant eye of the lady moon, in whose honour a thousand revellers and banquetters were celebrating. fleet of foot and strong as a young atlas, jerry, buoyed up with excitement and rage, fled like the wind before his pursuers, till presently he came to the big brick house, the building of which had been such a source of wonder and amusement to the japanese, but which had ever afterwards housed white residents sojourning in the city. with one foot jerry kicked peremptorily upon the door, and a moment later a startled young japanese butler flung the heavy doors apart, and jerry rushed in. chapter ii she awoke on a great soft bed that seemed to her wondering eyes as large as a room. she was sunk in a veritable nest of down, and, sitting up, she put out a little cautious hand and felt and punched the great pillow to reassure herself as to its reality. there was a vague question trembling in the girl's mind as to whether she might not, in fact, have escaped from hirata through the same medium as her adored mother, and was now being wafted on a snowy cloud along the eternal road to nirvanna. then the small statue like figure at the foot of the great mahogany bed moved. memory flooded the girl. she thought of her mother, and a sob of anguish escaped her. crowding upon the mother came the memory of that delirious moment upon the rope, when feeling that her mother's spirit was animating her body, she had faced the revellers. followed the shivering thought of hirata--the lash upon her shoulder, its sting paining so that the mere recollection caused her face to blanch with terror, dissipated by the memory of what had followed. again she felt the exciting thrill of that long flight through the night on the shoulder of the strange young barbarian. he had burst into the room like a veritable god from the heavens, and it was impossible to think of him otherwise than some mighty spirit which the gods had sent to rescue and save the unworthy child of the dancer. in an instant, she was out of bed, her quick glance searching the big room, as if somewhere within it her benefactor was. she was still in her sadly ragged tights, the red welt showing where the silk had been split by the whip of hirata. the maid approached and wrapped the girl in one of her own kimonas. she was a silent tongued, still faced woman, who spoke not at all as she swiftly robed her charge. a servant in the household of the americans, she had been summoned in the night to attend the strange new visitor. goto, the house boy, had explained to hatsu that the girl was a dancer from a neighbouring teahouse, whom his young masters had kidnapped. she was a great prize, jealously to be guarded, whispered the awed and gossiping goto. hatsu at first had her doubts on this score, for no dancer or teahouse maiden within her knowledge had ever worn hair of such a colour nor had skin which was bleached as that of the dead. hatsu had discovered her charge in a sleep of complete exhaustion, her soft fair hair tossed about her on the pillow like that of a child. now as the maid removed the tawdry tights, and arrayed the strange girl in a respectable kimona, she recognised that those shapely and supple limbs could only be the peculiar heritage of a dancer and performer. a warmth radiated lovingly through her hands as she dressed the young creature confided to her charge. it had never been the lot of hatsu to serve one as beautiful as this girl, and there was something of maternal pride in her as she fell to her task. there was necessity for haste, for the "mr. american sirs" were assembled in the main room awaiting her. hatsu's task completed, she took the girl by the sleeve, and led her into the big living room, where were her friends. even in the long loose robes of the elderly maid, she appeared but a child, with her short hair curling about her face, and her frankly questioning eyes turning from one to the other. there was an expression of mingled appeal and childish delight in that expressive look that she turned upon them ere she knelt on the floor. she made her obeisances with art and grace, as a true apprentice of her mother. indeed, her head ceased not to bob till a laughing young voice broke the spell of silence that her advent had caused with: "cut it out, kid! we want to have a look at you. want to see what sort of prize we pulled in the dark." promptly, obediently she rested back upon her heels, her two small hands resting flatly on her knees. she turned her face archly, as if inviting inspection, much to the entertainment of the now charmed circle. the apprentice of the house of a thousand joys upheld the prestige of her mother's charm. even the thin, elderly man, with the bright glasses over which he seemed to peer with an evidently critical and appraising air, softened visibly before that mingled look of naïve appeal and glowing youth. the glasses were blinked from the nose, and dangled by their gold string. he approached nearer to the girl, again put on his glasses, and subjected her through them to a searching scrutiny, his trained eye resting longer upon the shining hair of the girl. the glasses blinked off again at the unabashed wide smile of confidence in those extraordinary eyes; he cleared his throat, prepared to deliver an opinion and diagnosis upon the particular species before his glass. before he could speak, jerry broke in belligerently. "first of all, let's get this thing clear. she's not going to be handed back to that blanketty blank baboon. i'm responsible for her, and i'm going to see that she gets a square deal from this time on." the girl's eyes widened as she looked steadily at the kindling face of the young man, whom she was more than ever assured was a special instrument of the gods. professor barrowes cleared his throat noisily again, and holding his glasses in his hand, punctuated and emphasised his remarks: "young gentlemen, i suggest that we put the matter in the hands of mr. blumenthal, our consul here at nagasaki. i do not know--i will not express--my opinion of what our rights are in the matter--er as to whether we have in fact broken some law of japan in--er--thus forcibly bringing the--ah--young lady to our home. i am inclined to think that we are about to experience trouble--considerable trouble i should say--with this man hirata. if my memory serves me right, i recall hearing or reading somewhere that a master of such a house has certain property right in these--er--young--ah--ladies." "that may be true," admitted the especial agent of the gods. "suppose she is owned by this man. i'll bet that japan is not so dashed mediæval in its laws, that it permits a chimpanzee like that to beat and ill-use even a slave, and anyway, we'll give him all that's coming to him if he tries to take her from us." "he'll have his hands danged full trying!" the girl's champion this time was the youthful one of the bone ribbed glasses. looking at him very gravely, she perceived his amazing youth, despite the wise spectacles that had at first deceived her. there was that about him that made her feel he was very near to her own age, which numbered less than fifteen years. across the intervening space between them, hazily the girl thought, what a charming playmate the boy of the bone ribbed glasses would make. she would have liked to run through the temple gardens with him, and hide in the cavities of the fantastic rocks, where japanese children loved to play, and where the wistful eyes of the solitary little apprentice of the house of a thousand joys had often longingly and enviously watched them. her new friend she was to know as "monty." he had a fine long name with a junior on the end of it also, but it took many years before she knew her friends by other than the appellations assigned to them by each other. now the elderly man--perhaps he was the father, thought the girl on the mat--was again speaking in that emphatic tone of authority. "now my young friends, we have come to japan with a view to studying the country and people, and to avail ourselves of such pleasures as the country affords to its tourists, etc., and, i may point out, that it was no part of our programme or itinerary to take upon ourselves the responsibility and burden, i may say, of----" "have--a heart!" the big slow voice came from the very fat young man, whose melancholy expression belied the popular conception of the comical element associated with those blessed with excessive flesh. "jinx," as his chums called him, was the scion of a house of vast wealth and fame, and it was no fault of his that his heritage had been rich also in fat, flesh and bone. but now the girl's first friend, with that manner of the natural leader among men, had again taken matters into his own evidently competent hands. "i say, jinx, suppose you beat it over to the consul's and get what advice and dope you can from him. tell him we purpose carrying the case to washington and so forth. and you, monty and bobs, skin over to the teahouse and scare the guts out of that chimpanzee. hire a bunch of japs and cops to help along with the noise. give him the scare of his life. tell him she--she is--dying--at her last gasp and----" (surely the object of their concern understood the english language, for just then several unexpected dimples sprang abroad, and the little row of white teeth showed that smile that was her heritage from her mother.) "tell him," went on jerry, a bit unevenly, deviated from his single track of thought by that most engaging and surprising smile--"that we'll have him boiled in oil or lava or some other japanese concoction. toddle along, old dears, or that fellow with the face supporting the darwinian theory will get ahead of us with the police." "what's your hurry?" growled jinx, his sentimental gaze resting fascinatedly upon the girl on the floor. the young man jerry had referred to as bobs now suggested that there was a possibility that the girl was deaf and dumb, in view of the fact that she had not spoken once. this alarming suggestion created ludicrous consternation. "where's that dictionary, confound it!" jerry sought the elusive book in sundry portions of his clothing, and then appealed to the oracle of the party. "i suggest," said professor barrowes didactically, "that you try the--ah--young lady--with the common japanese greeting. i believe you all have learned it by now." promptly there issued from four american mouths the musical morning greeting of the japanese, reminiscent to them of a well known state productive of presidents. "o--hi--o!" the effect on the girl was instantaneous. she arose with grace to her feet, put her two small hands on her two small knees, bobbed up and down half a dozen times, and then with that white row of pearls revealed in an irresistible smile, she returned: "goog--a--morning!" there was a swelling of chests at this. pride in their protégé aroused them to enthusiastic expressions. "can you beat it?" "did you hear her?" "she's a cute kid." and from monty: "i could have told you from the first that a girl with hair and eyes like that wouldn't be chattering any monkey speech." thereupon the girl, uttered another jewel in english, which called forth not merely approbation, but loud and continuous applause, laughter, and fists clapped into hands. said the girl: "i speag those mos' bes' angleesh ad japan!" "i'll say you do," agreed monty with enthusiasm. "gosh!" said jinx sadly. "she's the cutest kid _i've_ ever seen." "how old are you?" jerry put the question gently, touched, despite the merriment her words had occasioned, by something forlorn in the little figure on the mat before them, so evidently anxious to please them. "how ole?" her expressive face showed evidence of deep regret at having to admit the humiliating fact that her years numbered but fourteen and ten months. she was careful to add the ten months to the sum of her years. "and what's your name?" "i are got two names." "we all have that--christian and surname we call 'em. what's yours?" "i are got angleesh name--fleese. you know those name?" she inquired anxiously. "thas angleesh name." "fleese! fleese!" not one of them but wanted to assure her that "fleese" was a well known name in the english tongue, but even professor barrowes, an authority on the roots of all names, found "fleese" a new one. she was evidently disappointed, and said in a slightly depressed voice: "i are sawry you do not know thad angleesh name. my father are give me those name." "i have it! i have it!" bobs, who had been scribbling something on paper, and repeating it with several accents, shouted that the name the girl meant was undoubtedly "phyllis," and at that she nodded her head so vigorously, overjoyed that he threw back his head and burst into laughter, which was loudly and most joyously and ingenuously entered into by "phyllis" also. "so that's your name--phyllis," said jerry. "you _are_ english then?" she shook her head, sighing with regret. "no, i sawry for those. i _lig'_ be angleesh. thas nize be angleesh; but me, i are not those. also i are got japanese name. it are sunlight. my mother----" her face became instantly serious as she mentioned her mother, and bowed her head to the floor reverently. "my honourable mother have give me that japanese name--sunlight, but my father are change those name. he are call me--sunny. this whad he call me when he go away----" her voice trailed off forlornly, hurt by a memory that went back to her fifth year. they wanted to see her smile again, and jerry cried enthusiastically: "sunny! sunny! what a corking little name! it sounds just like you look. we'll call you that too--sunny." now professor barrowes, too long in the background, came to the fore with precision. he had been scratching upon a pad of paper a number of questions he purposed to put to sunny, as she was henceforth to be known to her friends. "i have a few questions i desire to ask the young--ah--lady, if you have no objection. i consider it advisable for us to ascertain what we properly can about the history of miss--er--sunny--and so, if you will allow me." he cleared his throat, referred to the paper in his hand and propounded the first question as follows: "question number one: are you a white or a japanese girl?" answer from sunny: "i are white on my face and my honourable body, but i are japanese on my honourable insides." muffled mirth followed this reply, and professor barrowes having both blown his nose and cleared his throat applied his glasses to his nose but was obliged to wait a while before resuming, and then: "question number two: who were or are your parents? japanese or white people?" sunny, her cheeks very red and her eyes very bright: "aexcuse me. i are god no parents or ancestors on those worl'. i sawry. i miserable girl wizout no ancestor." "question number three: you had parents. you remember them. what nationality was your mother? i believe madame many smiles was merely her professional pseudonym. i have heard her variously described as white, partly white, half caste. what was she--a white woman or a japanese?" sunny was thinking of that radiant little mother as last she had seen her in the brilliant dancing robes of the dead geisha. the questions were touching the throbbing cords of a memory that pierced. over the sweet young face a shadow crept. "my m-mother," said sunny softly, "are god two bloods ad her insides. her father are lussian gentleman and her mother are japanese." "and your father?" a far-away look came into the girl's eyes as she searched painfully back into that past that held such sharply bright and poignantly sad memories of the father she had known such a little time. she no longer saw the eager young faces about her, or the kindly one of the man who questioned her. sunny was looking out before her across the years into that beautiful past, wherein among the cherry blossoms she had wandered with her father. it was he who had changed her japanese name of sunlight to "sunny." a psychologist might have found in this somewhat to redeem him from his sins against his child and her mother, for surely the name revealed a softness of the heart which his subsequent conduct might have led a sceptical world to doubt. moreover, the first language of her baby lips was that of her father, and for five years she knew no other tongue. she thought of him always as of some gay figure in a bright dream that fled away suddenly into the cruel years that followed. there had been days of real terror and fear, when sunny and her mother had taken the long trail of the mendicant, and knew what it was to feel hunger and cold and the chilly hand of charity. the mere memory of those days set the girl shivering, for it seemed such a short time since when she and that dearest mother crouched outside houses that, lighted within, shone warmly, like gaudy paper lanterns in the night; of still darker days of discomfort and misery, when they had hidden in bush, bramble and in dark woods beyond the paths of men. there had been a period of sweet rest and refuge in a mountain temple. there everything had appealed to the imaginative child. tinkling bells and whirring wings of a thousand doves, whose home was in gilded loft and spire; bald heads of murmuring bonzes; waving sleeves of the visiting priestesses, dancing before the shrine to please the gods; the weary pilgrims who climbed to the mountain's heart to throw their prayers in the lap of the peaceful buddha. a hermitage in a still wood, where an old, old nun, with gentle feeble voice, crooned over her rosary. all this was as a song that lingers in one's ears long after the melody has passed--a memory that stung with its very sweetness. even here the fugitives were not permitted to linger for long. pursuing shadows haunted her mother's footsteps and sent her speeding ever on. she told her child that the shadows menaced their safety. they had come from across the west ocean, said the mother. they were barbarian thieves of the night, whose mission was to separate mother from child, and because separation from her mother spelled for little sunny a doom more awful than death itself, she was wont to smother back her child's cries in her sleeve, and bravely and silently push onward. so for a period of time of which neither mother nor child took reckoning the days of their vagabondage passed. then came a night when they skirted the edges of a city of many lights; lights that hung like stars in the sky; lights that swung over the intricate canals that ran into streets in and out of the city; harbour lights from great ships that steamed into the port; the countless little lights of junks and fisher boats, and the merry lights that shone warmly inside the pretty paper houses that bespoke home and rest to the outcasts. and they came to a brilliantly lighted garden, where on long poles and lines the lanterns were strung, and within the gates they heard the chattering of the drum, and the sweet tinkle of the samisen. here at the gates of the house of a thousand joys the mother touched the gongs. a man with a lantern in his hand came down to the gates, and as the woman spoke, he raised the light till it revealed that delicate face, whose loveliness neither pain nor privation nor time nor even death had ravaged. after that, the story of the geisha was well known. her career had been an exceptional one in that port of many teahouses. from the night of her début to the night of her death the renown of madame many smiles had been undimmed. sunny, looking out before her, in a sad study, that caught her up into the web of the vanished years, could only shake her head dumbly at her questioner, as he pressed her: "your father--you have not answered me?" "i kinnod speag about my--father. i sawry, honourable sir," and suddenly the child's face drooped forward as if she humbly bowed, but the young men watching her saw the tears that dropped on her clasped hands. exclamations of pity and wrath burst from them impetuously. "we've no right to question her like this," declared jerry hammond hotly. "it's not of any consequence who her people are. she's got us now. we'll take care of her from this time forth." at that sunny again raised her head, and right through her tears she smiled up at jerry. it made him think of an april shower, the soft rain falling through the sunlight. chapter iii only one who has been in bondage all of his days can appreciate that thrill that comes with sudden freedom. the americans had set sunny free. she had been bound by law to the man hirata through an iniquitous bond that covered all the days of her young life--a bond into which the average geisha is sold in her youth. sunny's mother had signed the contract when starvation faced them, and reassured by the promises of hirata. what price and terms the avaricious hirata extracted from the americans is immaterial, but they took precautions that the proceeding should be in strict accord with the legal requirements of japan. the american consul and japanese lawyers governed the transaction. hirata, gloated with the unexpected fortune that had come to him through the sale of the apprentice-geisha, overwhelmed the disgusted young men, whom he termed now his benefactors, with servile compliments, and hastened to comply with all their demands, which included the delivery to sunny of the effects of her mother. goto bore the box containing her mother's precious robes and personal belongings into the great living room. life had danced by so swiftly and strangely for sunny in these latter days, that she had been diverted from her sorrow. now, as she slowly opened the bamboo chest, with its intangible odour of dear things, she experienced a strangling sense of utter loss and pain. never again would she hear that gentle voice, admonishing and teaching her; never again would she rest her tired head on her mother's knee and find rest and comfort from the sore trials of the day; for the training of the apprentice-geisha is harsh and spartan like. as sunny lifted out her mother's sparkling robe, almost she seemed to see the delicate head above it. a sob broke from the heart of the girl, and throwing herself on the floor by the chest, she wept with her face in the silken folds. a moth fluttered out of one of the sleeves, and hung tremulously above the girl's head. sunny, looking up, addressed it reverently: "i will not hurt you, little moth. it may be you are the spirit of my honourable mother. pray you go upon your way," and she softly blew up at the moth. it was that element of helplessness, a feminine quality of appeal about sunny, that touched something in the hearts of her american friends that was chivalrous and quixotic. always, when sunny was in trouble, they took the jocular way of expressing their feelings for their charge. to tease, joke, chaff and play with sunny, that was their way. so, on this day, when they returned to the house, to find the girl with her tear-wet face pressed against her mother's things, they sought an instant means, and as jerry insisted, a practical one, of banishing her sadness. after the box had been taken from the room, goto and jinx told some funny stories, which brought a faint smile to sunny's face. monty proffered a handful of sweets picked up in some adjacent shop, while bobs sought scientifically to arouse her to a semblance of her buoyant spirits by discussing all the small live things that were an unfailing source of interest always to the girl, and pretended an enthusiasm over white rabbits which he declared were in the garden. jerry broached his marvellous plan, pronounced by professor barrowes to be preposterous, unheard of and impossible. in jerry's own words, the scheme was as follows: "i propose that we organise and found a company or syndicate, all present to have the privilege of owning stock in said company; its purpose being to take care of sunny for the rest of her days. sooner or later we fellows must return to the u. s. we are going to provide for sunny's future after we are gone." thus the sunny syndicate limited came into being. it was capitalised at $10,000, paid in capital, a considerable sum in japan, and quite sufficient to keep the girl in comfort for the rest of her days. professor timothy barrowes was unanimously elected president, j. lyon crawford (jinx) treasurer; robert m. mapson (bobs), secretary of the concern, and joseph lamont potter, jr. (monty), though under age, after an indignant argument was permitted to hold a minimum measure of stock and also voted a director. j. addison hammond, jr. (jerry), held down the positions of first vice-president, managing director and general manager and was grudgingly admitted to be the founder and promoter of the great idea, and the discoverer of sunny, assets of aforesaid syndicate. at the initial board meeting of the syndicate, which was riotously attended, the purpose of the syndicate was duly set forth in the minutes read, approved and signed by all, which was, to wit, to feed, clothe, educate and furnish with sundry necessities and luxuries the aforesaid sunny for the rest of her natural days. the education of sunny strongly appealed to the governing president, who, despite his original protest, was the most active member of the syndicate. he promptly outlined a course which would tend to cultivate those hitherto unexplored portions of sunny's pliable young mind. a girl of almost fifteen, unable to read or write, was in the opinion of professor barrowes a truly benighted heathen. what matter that she knew the greater learning for women by heart, knew the names of all the gods and goddesses cherished by the island empire; had an intimate acquaintance with the japanese language, and was able to translate and indite epistles in the peculiar figures intelligible only to the japanese. the fact remained that she was in a state of abysmal ignorance so far as american education was concerned. her friends assured her of the difficulty of their task, and impressed upon her the necessity of hard study and co-operation on her part. she was not merely to learn the american language, she was, with mock seriousness, informed, but she was to acquire the american point of view, and in fact unlearn much of the useless knowledge she had acquired of things japanese. to each member of the syndicate professor barrowes assigned a subject in which he was to instruct sunny. himself he appointed principal of the "seminary" as the young men merrily named it; jerry was instructor in reading and writing, bobs in spelling, jinx in arithmetic, and to young monty, aged seventeen, was intrusted the task of instructing sunny in geography, a subject professor barrowes well knew the boy was himself deficient in. he considered this an ideal opportunity, in a sort of inverted way, to instruct monty himself. to the aid and help of the americans came the reverend simon sutherland, a missionary, whose many years of service among the heathen had given to his face that sadly solemn expression of martyr zealot. his the task to transform sunny into a respectable christian girl. sunny's progress in her studies was eccentric. there were times when she was able to read so glibly and well that the pride of her teacher was only dashed when he discovered that she had somehow learned the words by heart, and in picking them out had an exasperating habit of pointing to the wrong words. she could count to ten in english. her progress in geography was attested to by her admiring and enthusiastic teacher, and she herself, dimpling, referred to the u. s. a. as being "over cross those west water, wiz grade flag of striped stars." however, her advance in religion exceeded all her other attainments, and filled the breast of the good missionary with inordinate pride. an expert and professional in the art of converting the heathen, he considered sunny's conversion at the end of the second week as little short of miraculous, and, as he explained to the generous young americans, who had done so much for the mission school in which the reverend simon sutherland was interested, he was of the opinion that the girl's quick comprehension of the religion was due to a sort of reversion to type, she being mainly of white blood. so infatuated indeed was the good man by his pupil's progress that he could not forbear to bring her before her friends, and show them what prayer and sincere labour among the heathen were capable of doing. accordingly, the willing and joyous convert was haled before an admiring if somewhat sceptical circle in the cheerful living room of the americans. here, her hands clasped piously together, she chanted the prepared formula: "gentlemens"--familiar daily intercourse with her friends brought easily to the girl's tongue their various nicknames, but "gentlemens" she now addressed them. "i stan here to make statements to you that i am turn kirishitan." "english, my dear child. use the english language, please." "--that i am turn those christian girl. i can sing those--a-gospel song; and i are speak those--ah--gospel prayer, and i know those cat--cattykussem like--like----" sunny wavered as she caught the uplifted eyebrow of the missionary signalling to her behind the back of professor barrowes. now the words began to fade away from sunny. alone with the missionary it was remarkable how quickly she was able to commit things to memory. before an audience like this, she was as a child who stands upon a platform with his first recitation, and finds his tongue tied and memory failing. what was it now the reverend simon sutherland desired her to say? confused, but by no means daunted, sunny cast about in her mind for some method of propitiating the minister. at least, she could pray. folding her hands before her, and dropping her buddhist rosary through her fingers, she murmured the words of that quaint old hymn: "what though those icy breeze, he blow sof' on ze isle though evrything he pleases and jos those man he's wild, in vain with large kind the gift of those gods are sown, those heathen in blindness bow down to wood and stone." they let her finish the chant, the words of which were almost unintelligible to her convulsed audience, who vainly sought to strangle their mirth before the crestfallen and sadly hurt mr. sutherland. he took the rosary from sunny's fingers, saying reprovingly: "my dear child, that is not a prayer, and how many times must i tell you that we do not use a rosary in our church. all we desire from you at this time is a humble profession as to your conversion to christianity. therefore, my child, your friends and i wish to be reassured on that score." "i'd like to hear her do the catechism. she says she knows it," came in a muffled voice from bobs. "certainly, certainly," responded the missionary. "attention, my dear. first, i will ask you: what is your name?" sunny, watching him with the most painful earnestness indicative of her earnest desire to please, was able to answer at once joyously. "my name are sunny--syndicutt." the mirth was barely suppressed by the now indignant minister, who glared in displeasure upon the small person so painfully trying to realise his ambitions for her. to conciliate the evidently angry mr. sutherland, she rattled along hurriedly: "i am true convert. i swear him. by those eight million gods of the heavens and the sea, and by god-dam i swear it that i am nixe kirishitan girl." * * * * * a few minutes later sunny was alone, even professor barrowes having hastily followed his charges from the room to avoid giving offence to the missionary, whose angry tongue was now loosened, and flayed the unhappy girl ere he too departed in dudgeon via the front door. * * * * * that evening, after the dinner, sunny, who had been very quiet during the meal, went directly from the table to her room upstairs, and to the calls after her of her friends, she replied that she had "five thousan words to learn him to spell." professor barrowes, furtively wiping his eyes and then his glasses, shook them at his protesting young charges and asserted that the missionary was quite within his rights in punishing sunny by giving her 500 lines to write. "she's been at it all day," was the disgusted comment of monty. "it's a rotten shame, to put that poor kid to copying that little hell of a line." "sir," said the professor, stiffening and glaring through his glasses at monty, "i wish you to know that line happens to be taken from a--er--book esteemed sacred, and i have yet to learn that it had its origin in the infernal regions as suggested by you. what is more, i may say that miss sunny's progress in reading and spelling, arithmetic, and geography has not been what i had hoped. accordingly i have instructed her that she must study for an hour in the evening after dinner, and i have further advised the young lady that i do not wish her to leave the house on any pleasure expedition this evening." a howl of indignant protest greeted this pronouncement and the air was electric with bristling young heads. "say, proff. sunny promised to go out with me this evening. she knows a shop where they sell that sticky gum drop stuff that i like, and we're going down snowdrop ave. to canal lane. let her off, just this time, will you?" "i will not. she must learn to spell cat, cow, horse and dog and such words as a baby of five knows properly before she can go out on pleasure trips." jinx ponderously sat up on his favourite sofa, the same creaking under him as the big fellow moved. in an injured tone he set forth his rights for the evening to sunny. "sunny has a date with me to play me a nice little sing-song on that jap guitar of hers. i'm not letting her off this or any other night." "she made a date with me too," laughed bobs. "we were to star gaze, if you please. she says she knows the history of all the most famous stars in the heavens, and she agreed to show me the exact geographical spot in the firmament where that amaterumtumtum, or whatever she calls it, goddess, lost her robes in the milky way just while she was descending to earth to be an ancestor to the emperor of japan." mockingly bobs bowed his head in solemn and comical imitation of sunny at the mention of the emperor. jerry was thinking irritably that sunny and he were to have stolen away after supper for a little trip in a private junk, owned by a friend of sunny's, and she said that the rowers would play the guitar and sing as the gondoliers of italy do. jerry had a fancy for that trip in the moonlight, with sunny's little hand cuddled up in his, and the child chattering some of her pretty nonsense. confound it, the little baggage had promised her time to every last one of her friends, and so it was nearly every night in the week. sunny had much ado making and breaking engagements with her friends. "it strikes me," said professor barrowes, stroking his chin humorously, "that miss sunny has in her all the elements that go to the making of a most complete and finished coquette. for your possible edification, gentlemen, i will mention that the young lady also offered to accompany me to a certain small temple where she informs me a bonze of the buddhist religion has a library of er--one million years, so claims miss sunny, and this same bonze she assured me has a unique collection of ancient butterflies which have come down from prehistoric days. ahem!--er--i shall play fair with you young gentlemen. i desire very much to see the articles i have mentioned. i doubt very much the authenticity of the same, but have an open mind. i shall, however, reserve the pleasure of seeing these collections till a more convenient period. in the meanwhile i advise you all to go about your respective concerns, and i bid you good-night, gentlemen, i bid you good-night." * * * * * the house was silent. the living room, with its single reading lamp, seemed empty and cold, and professor barrowes with a book whose contents would have aforetime utterly absorbed him, as it dealt with the fascinating subject of the dinornis, of post-pliocene days, found himself unable to concentrate. his well-governed mind had in some inexplicable way become intractable. it persisted in wandering up to the floor above, where professor barrowes knew was a poor young girl, who was studying hard into the night. twice he went outdoors to assure himself that sunny was still studying, and each time the glowing light, and the chanting voice aroused his further compunction and remorse. unable longer to endure the distracting influence that took his mind from his favourite study, the professor stole on tiptoe up the stairs to sunny's door. the voice inside went raucously on. "c-a-t--dog. c-a-t--dog. c-a-t--dog!" something about that voice, devoid of all the charm peculiar to sunny, grated against the sensitive ear at the keyhole, and accordingly he withdrew the ear and applied the eye. what he saw inside caused him to sit back solidly on the floor, speechless with mirthful indignation. hatsu, the maid, sat stonily before the little desk of her mistress, and true to the instructions of sunny, she was loudly chanting that c-a-t spelled dog. outside the window--well, there was a lattice work that ascended conveniently to sunny's room. her mode of exit was visible to the simplest minded, but the question that agitated the mind of professor barrowes, and sent him off into a spree of mirthful speculation was which one of the members of the sunny syndicate limited had miss sunny sindicutt eloped with? chapter iv to be adopted by four young men and one older one; to be surrounded by every care and luxury; to be alternately scolded, pampered, admonished and petted, this was the joyous fate of sunny. life ran along for the happy child like a song, a poem which even takumushi could not have composed. sunny greeted the rising sun with the kisses that she had been taught to throw to garden audiences, and hailed the blazing orb each morning, having bowed three times, hands on knees, with words like these: "ohayo! honourable sun. i glad you come again. thas a beautiful day you are bring, an i thang you thad i are permit to live on those day. hoh! amaterasuoho-mikami, shining lady of the sun, i are mos' happiest girl ad those japan!" the professional geisha is taught from childhood--for her apprenticeship begins from earliest youth--that her mission in life is to bring joy and happiness into the world, to divert, to banish all care by her own infectious buoyancy, to heal, to dissipate the cares of mere mortals; to cultivate herself so that she shall become the very essence of joy. if trouble comes to her own life, to so exercise self-control that no trace of her inner distress must be reflected in her looks or conduct. she must, in fact, make a science of her profession. to laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who find a balm in tears--that is the work of the geisha. sunny, a product of the geisha house, and herself apprentice to the joy women of japan, was of another race by blood, yet always there was to cling to her that intangible charm, that like a strange perfume bespeaks the geisha of japan. in her odd way sunny laid out her campaign to charm and please the ones who had befriended her, and toward whom she felt a gratitude that both touched and embarrassed them. her new plan of life, however, violated all the old rules which had governed in the teahouse. sunny was sore put to it to adjust herself to the novelty of a life that knew not the sharp and imperative voice, which cut like a whip in staccato order, from the master of the geishas; nor the perilous trapeze, the swinging rope, to fall from which was to bring down upon her head harsh rebuke, and sometimes the threatening flash of the whip, whirling in the air, and barely scraping the girl on the rope. she had been whipped but upon that one occasion, for her mother was too valuable an asset in the house of a thousand joys for hirata to risk offending; but always he loved to swing the lash above the girl's head, or hurl it near to the feet that had faltered from the rope, so that she might know that it hung suspended above her to fall at a time when she failed. there were pleasant things too in the house of a thousand smiles that sunny missed--the tap tap of the drum, the pat pat of the stockinged feet on the polished dance matting; the rising and falling of the music of the samisen as it tinkled in time to the swaying fans and posturing bodies of the geishas. all this was the joyous part of that gaudy past, which her honourable new owners had bidden her forget. sunny desired most earnestly to repay her benefactors, but her offers to dance for them were laughingly joshed aside, and she was told that they did not wish to be repaid in dancing coin. all they desired in return was that she should be happy, forget the bitter past, and they always added "grow up to be the most beautiful girl in japan." this was a joking formula among them. to order sunny to be merely happy and beautiful. happy she was, but beauty! ah! that was more difficult. beauty, thought sunny, must surely be the aim and goal of all americans. many were the moments when she studied her small face in the mirror, and regretted that it would be impossible for her to realise the ambition of her friends. her face, she was assured, violated all the traditions and canons of the japanese ideal of beauty. that required jet black hair, lustrous as lacquer, a long oval face, with tiny, carmine touched lips, narrow, inscrutable eyes, a straight, sensitive nose, a calmness of expression and poise that should serve as a mask to all internal emotions; above all an elegance and distinction in manners and dress that would mark one as being of an elevated station in life. now sunny's hair was fair, and despite brush and oil generously applied, till forbidden by her friends, it curled in disobedient ringlets about her young face. the hair alone marked her in the estimation of the japanese as akin to the lower races, since curly hair was one of the marks peculiar to the savages. neither were her eyes according to the japanese ideal of beauty. they were, it is true, long and shadowed by the blackest of lashes, and in fact were her one feature showing the trace of her oriental taint or alloy, for they tipped up somewhat at the corners, and she had a trick of glancing sideways through the dark lashes that her friends found eerily fascinating; unfortunately those eyes were large, and instead of being the prescribed black, were pure amber in colour, with golden lights of the colour of her hair. her skin, finally, was, as the mentor of the geisha house had primly told her, bleached like the skin of the dead. save where the colour flooded her cheeks like peach bloom, sunny's skin was as white as snow, and all the temporary stains and dark powder applied could not change the colour of her skin. to one accustomed to the japanese point of view, sunny therefore could see nothing in her own lovely face that would realise the desire of her friends that she should be beautiful; but respectfully and humbly she promised them that she would try to obey them, and she carried many gifts and offerings to the feet of amaterasu-ohomikami, whose beauty had made her the supreme goddess of the heavens. "beauty," said jerry hammond, walking up and down the big living room, his hair rumpled, and his hands loosely in his pockets, "is the aim and end of all that is worth while in life, sunny. if we have it, we have everything. beauty is something we are unable to define. it is elusive as a feather that floats above our heads. a breath will blow it beyond our reach, and a miracle will bring it to our hand. now, the gods willing, i am going to spend all of the days of my life pursuing and reaching after beauty. despite my parents' fond expectations of a commercial career for their wayward son, i propose to be an artist." from which it will be observed that jerry's idea of beauty was hardly that comprehended by sunny, though in a vague way she sensed also his ideal. "an artist!" exclaimed she, clasping her hands with enthusiasm. "ho! _how_ thad will be grade. i thing you be more grade artist than hokusai!" "oh, sunny, impossible! hokusai was one of the greatest artists that ever lived. i'm not built of the same timber, sunny." there was a touch of sadness to jerry's voice. "my scheme is not to paint pictures. i propose to beautify cities. to the world i shall be known merely as an architect, but you and i, sunny, we will know, won't we, that i am an artist; because, you see, even if one fails to create the beautiful, the hunger and the desire for it is just as important. it's like being a poet at heart, without being able to write poetry. now some fellows _write_ poetry of a sort--but they are not poets--not in their thought and lives, sunny. i'd rather be a poet than write poetry. do you understand that?" "yes--i understand," said sunny softly. "the liddle butterfly when he float on the flower, he cannot write those poetry--but he are a poem; and the honourable cloud in those sky, so sof', so white, so loavely he make one's heart leap up high at chest--thas poem too!" "oh, sunny, what a perfect treasure you are! i'm blessed if you don't understand a fellow better than one of his own countrywomen would." to cover a feeling of emotion and sentiment that invariably swept over jerry when he talked with sunny on the subject of beauty, and because moreover there was that about her own upturned face that disturbed him strangely, he always assumed a mock serious air, and affected to tease her. "but to get back to you, sunny. now, all you've got to do to please the syndicate is to be a good girl _and_ beautiful. it ought not to be hard, because you see you've got such a bully start. keep on, and who knows you'll end not only by being the most beautiful girl in japan, but the emperor himself--the emperor of japan, mark you, will step down from his golden throne, wave his wand toward you and marry you! so there you'll be--the royal empress of japan." "the emperor!" sunny's head went reverently to the mats. her eyes, very wide, met jerry's in shocked question. "you want me marry wiz--the son of heaven? _how_ i can do those?" again her head touched the floor, her curls bobbing against flushed cheeks. "easy as fishing," solemnly jerry assured her. "they say the old dub is quite approachable, and you've only to let him see you once, and that will be enough for him. just think, sunny, what that will mean to you, and to us all--to be empress of japan. why, you will only need to wave your hand or sleeve, and all sorts of favours will descend upon our heads. you will be able to repay us threefold for any insignificant service we may have done for you. once empress of japan, you can summon us back to these fair isles and turn over to us all the political plums of the empire. as soon as you give us the high sign, old scout, we'll be right on the job." "jerry, you like very much those plum?" "you better believe i do." sunny, chin in hand, was off in a mood of abstraction. she was thinking very earnestly of the red plum tree that grew above the tomb of the great lord of kakodate. he, that sleeping lord, would not miss a single plum, and she would go to the cemetery in the early morning, and when she had accomplished the theft, she would pray at the temple for absolution for her sin, which would not be so bad because sunny would have sinned for love. "a penny for your thoughts, sunny!" "i are think, jerry, that some things you ask me i can do; others, no--thas not possible. wiz this liddle hand i cannod dip up the ocean. thas proverb of our japan. i cannod marry those emperor, and me? i cannod also make beauty on my face." "give it a try, sunny," jeered jerry, laughing at her serious face. "you have no idea what time and art will do for one." "time--and--art," repeated sunny, like a child learning a lesson. she comprehended time, but she had inherited none of the japanese traits of patience. she would have wished to leap over that first obstacle to beauty. art, she comprehended, as a physical aid to a face and form unendowed with the desired beauty. she carried her problem to her maid. "hatsu, have you ever seen the emperor?" both of their heads bobbed quickly to the mat. hatsu had not. she had, it is true, walked miles through country roads, on a hot, dry day, to reach the nearest town through which the son of heaven's cortege had once passed. but, of course, as the royal party approached, hatsu, like all the peasants who had come to the town on this gala day, had fallen face downward on the earth. it was impossible for her therefore to see the face of the son of heaven. however, hatsu had seen the back of his horse--the modern emperor rode thus abroad, clear to the view of subjects less humble than hatsu, who dared to raise their eyes to his supreme magnificence. sunny sighed. she felt sure that had she been in hatsu's place, she would at least have peeped through her fingers at the mikado. rummaging among her treasures in the bamboo chest, sunny finally discovered what she sought--a picture of the emperor. this she laid before her on the floor, and for a long, long time she studied the features thoughtfully and anxiously. after a while, she said with a sigh, unconscious of the blasphemy, which caused her maid to turn pale with horror, "i do not like his eye, and i do not like his nose, and i do not like his mouth. yet, hatsusan, it is the wish of jerry-sama that i should marry this emperor, and now i must make myself so beautiful that it will not hurt his eye if he deigns to look at me." hatsu, at this moment was too overcome with the utter audacity of the scheme to move, and when she did find her voice, she said in a breathless whisper: "mistress, the son of heaven already has a wife." "ah, yes," returned sunny, with somewhat of the careless manner toward sacred things acquired from her friends, "but perhaps he may desire another one. come, hatsusan. work very hard on my face. make me look like ancient picture of an empress of japan. see, here is a model!" she offered one of her mother's old prints, that revealed a court lady in trailing gown and loosened hair, an uplifted fan half revealing, half disclosing a weirdly lovely face, as she turned to look at a tiny dog frolicking on her train. it was a long, a painful and arduous process, this work of beautifying sunny. there was fractious hair to be darkened and smoothed, and false hair to help out the illusion. there was a small face that had to be almost completely made over, silken robes from the mother's chest to slip over the girlish shoulders, shining nails to be polished and hidden behind gold nail protectors, paint and paste to be thickly applied, and a cape of a thousand colours to be thrown over the voluminous many coloured robes beneath. the sky was a dazzling blaze of red and gold. even the deepening shadows were touched with gilt, and the glory of that japanese sunset cast its reflection upon the book-lined walls of the big living room, where the americans, lingering over pipe and hook, dreamily and appreciatively watched the marvellous spectacle through the widely opened windows. but their siesta was strangely interrupted, for, like a peacock, a strange vision trailed suddenly into the room and stood with suspended breath, fan half raised, in the manner of a court lady of ancient days, awaiting judgment. they did not know her at first. this strange figure seemed to have stepped out of some old japanese print, and was as far from being the little sunny who had come into their lives and added the last touch of magic to their trip in japan. after the first shock, they recognised sunny. her face was heavily plastered with a white paste. a vivid splotch of red paint adorned and accentuated either slightly high cheek bone. her eyebrows had disappeared under a thick layer of paste, and in their place appeared a brand new pair of intensely black ones, incongruously laid about an inch above the normal line and midway of her forehead. her lips were painted to a vivid point, star shaped, so that the paint omitted the corners of sunny's mouth, where were the dimples that were part of the charm of the sunny they knew. upon the girl's head rested an amazing ebony wig, one long lock of which trailed fantastically down from her neck to the hem of her robe. shining daggers and pins, and artificial flowers completed a head dress. she was arrayed in an antique kimona, an article of stiff and unlimited dimensions, under which were seven other robes of the finest silk, each signifying some special virtue. a train trailed behind sunny that covered half the length of the room. her heavily embroidered outer robe was a gift to her mother from a prince, and its magnificence proclaimed its antiquity. it may be truly said for sunny that she indeed achieved her own peculiar idea of what constituted beauty, and as she swept the fan from before her face with real art and grace there was pardonable pride in her voice as she said: "honourable mr. sirs, mebbe _now_ you goin' say i are beautifullest enough girl to make those emperor marry wiz me." a moment of tense silence, and then the room resounded and echoed to the startled mirth of the young barbarians. but no mirth came from sunny, and no mirth came from jerry. the girl stood in the middle of the room, and through all her pride and dazzling attire she showed how deeply they had wounded her. a moment only she stayed, and then tripping over her long train and dropping her fan in her hurry, sunny fled from the room. jerry said with an ominous glare at the convulsed bobs, monty and even the aforesaid melancholy jinx: "it was my fault. i told her art and time would make her beautiful." "the devil they would," snorted bobs. "i'd like to know how you figured that art and time could contribute to sunny's natural beauty. by george, she got herself up with the aid of your damned art, to look like a valentine, if you ask me." "i don't agree with you," declared jerry hotly. "it's all how one looks at such things. it's a symptom of provincialism to narrow our admiration to one type only. such masters as whistler of our own land, and many of the most famous artists of europe have not hesitated to take japanese art as their model. what sunny accomplished was the reproduction of a living work of art of the past, and it is the crassest kind of ignorance to reward her efforts with laughter." jerry was almost savage in his denunciation of his friends. "i agree with you," said professor barrowes snapping his glasses back on his nose, "absolutely, absolutely. you are entirely right, mr. hammond," and in turn he glared upon his "class" as if daring anyone of them to question his own opinion. jinx indeed did feebly say: "well, for my part, give me sunny as we know her. gosh! i don't see anything pretty in all that dolled-up stuff and paint on her." "now, young gentleman," continued professor barrowes, seizing the moment to deliver a gratuitous lecture, "there are certain cardinal laws governing art and beauty. it is not a matter of eyes, ears and noses, or even the colour of the skin. it is how we are accustomed to look at a thing. as an example, we might take a picture. seen from one angle, it reveals a mass of chaotic colour that has no excuse for being. seen from another point, the purpose of the artist is clearly delineated, and we are trapped in the charm of his creation. every clime has its own peculiar estimate, but it comes down each time to ourselves. poetically it has been beautifully expressed as follows: 'unless we carry the beautiful with us, we will find it not.' ahem!" professor barrowes cleared his throat angrily, and scowled, with jerry, at their unappreciative friends. goto, salaaming deeply in the doorway, was sonorously announcing honourable dinner for the honourable sirs, and coming softly across the hall, in her simple plum coloured kimona with its golden obi, the paint washed from her face, and showing it fresh and clean as a baby's, sunny's april smile was warming and cheering them all again. jinx voiced the sentiment of them all, including the angry professor and beauty loving jerry: "gosh! give me sunny just as she is, without one plea." chapter v there comes a time in the lives of all young men sojourning in foreign lands when the powers that be across the water summon them to return to the land of their birth. years before, letters and cablegrams not unsimilar to those that now poured in upon her friends came persistently across the water to the father of sunny. then there was no professor barrowes to govern and lay down the law to the infatuated man. he was able to put off the departure for several years, but with the passage of time the letters that admonished and threatened not only ceased to come, but the necessary remittances stopped also. sunny's father found himself in the novel position of being what he termed "broke" in a strange land. as in the case of jerry hammond, whose people were all in trade, there was a strange vein of sentiment in the father of sunny. to his people indeed, he appeared to be one of those freaks of nature that sometimes appear in the best regulated families, and deviate from the proper paths followed by his forbears. he had acquired a sentiment not merely for the land, but for the woman he had taken as his wife; above all, he was devoted to his little girl. it is hard to judge of the man from his subsequent conduct upon his return to america. his marriage to the mother of sunny had been more or less of a mercenary transaction. she had been sold to the american by a stepfather anxious to rid himself of a child who showed the clear evidence of her white father, and greedy to avail himself of the terms offered by the american. it was, in fact, a gay union into which the rich, fast young man thoughtlessly entered, with a cynical disregard of anything but his own desires. the result was to breed in him at the outset a feeling that he would not have analysed as contempt, but was at all events scepticism for the seeming love of his wife for him. it was different with his child. his affection for her was a beautiful thing. no shadow of doubt or criticism came to mar the love that existed between father and child. true, sunny was the product of a temporary union, a ceremony of the teacup, which nevertheless is a legal marriage in japan, and so regarded by the japanese. lightly as the american may have regarded his union with her mother, he looked upon the child as legally and fully his own, and was prepared to defend her rights. in america, making a clean breast to parents and family lawyers, he assented to the terms made by them, on condition that his child at least should be obtained for him. the determination to obtain possession of his child became almost a monomania with the man, and he took measures that were undeniably ruthless to gratify his will. it may be also that he was at this time the victim of agents and interested parties. however, he had lived in japan long enough to know of the proverbial frailty of the sex. the mercenary motives he believed animated the woman in marrying him, her inability to reveal her emotions in the manner of the women of his own race; her seeming indifference and coldness at parting, which indeed was part of her spartan heritage to face dire trouble unblenching--the sort of thing which causes japanese women to send their warrior husbands into battle with smiles upon their lips--all these things contributed to beat the man into a mood of acquiescence to the demands of his parents. he deluded himself into believing that his japanese wife, like her dolls, was incapable of any intense feeling. in due time, the machinery of law, which works for those who pay, with miraculous swiftness in japan, was set into motion, and the frail bonds that so lightly bound the american to his japanese wife, were severed. at this time the mother of sunny had been plastic and apparently complacent, though rejecting the compensation proffered her by her husband's agents. the woman, who was later to be known as madame many smiles, turned cold as death, however, when the disposition of her child was broached. nevertheless her smiling mask betrayed no trace to the american agents of the anguished turmoil within. indeed her amiability aroused indignant and disgusted comment, and she was pronounced a soulless butterfly. this diagnosis of the woman was to be rudely shattered, when, beguiled by her seeming indifference, they relaxed somewhat of their vigilant espionage of her, and awoke one morning to find that the butterfly had flown beyond their reach. the road of the mendicant, hunger, cold, and even shame were nearer to the gates of nirvanna than life in splendour without her child. that was all part of the story of madame many smiles. history, in a measure, was to repeat itself in the life of sunny. she had come to depend for her happiness upon her friends, and the shock of their impending departure was almost more than she could bear. she spent many hours kneeling before kuonnon, the goddess of mercy, throwing her petitions upon the lap of the goddess, and bruising her brow at the stone feet. it is sad to relate of sunny, who so avidly had embraced the christian faith, and was to the proud mr. sutherland an example of his labours in japan, that in the hour of her great trouble she should turn to a heathen goddess. yet here was sunny, bumping her head at the stone feet. what could the three-in-one god of the reverend mr. sutherland do for her now? sunny had never seen his face; but she knew well the benevolent comprehending smile of the goddess of mercy, and in her, sunny placed her trust. and so: "oh, divine kuonnon, lovely lady of mercy, hear my petition. do not permit my friends to leave japan. paralyse their feet. blind their eyes that they may not see the way. pray you close up the west ocean, so no ships may take my friends across. hold them magnetised to the honourable earth of japan." sitting back on her heels, having voiced her petition anxiously she scanned the face of the lady above her. the candles flickered and wavered in the soft wind, and the incense curled in a spiral cloud and wound in rings about the head of the celestial one. sunny held her two hands out pleadingly toward the unmoving face. "lovely kuonnon, it is true that i have tried magic to keep my friends with me, but even the oni (goblins) do not hear me, and my friends' boxes stand now in the ozashiki and the cruel carts carry them through the streets." her voice rose breathlessly, and she leaned up and stared with wide eyes at the still face above her, with its everlasting smile, and its lips that never moved. "it is true! it is true!" cried sunny excitedly. "the mission sir is right. there is no living heart in your breast. you are only stone. you cannot even hear my prayer. how then will you answer it?" half appalled by her own blasphemy, she shivered away from the goddess, casting terrified glances about her, and still sobbing in this gasping way, sunny covered her face with her sleeve, and wended her way from the shrine to her home. here the dishevelled upset of the house brought home to her the unalterable fact of their certain going. restraint and gloom had been in the once so jolly house, ever since professor barrowes had announced the time of departure. to the excited imagination of sunny it seemed that her friends sought to avoid her. she could not understand that this was because they found it difficult to face the genuine suffering that their going caused their little friend. sunny at the door of the living room sought fiercely to dissemble her grief. never would she reveal uncouth and uncivilised tears; yet the smile she forced to her face now was more tragic than tears. jinx was alone in the room. the fat young man was in an especially gloomy and melancholy mood. he was wracking his brain for some solution to the problem of sunny. to him, sunny went directly, seating herself on the floor in front of him, so that he was obliged to look at the imploring young face, and had much ado to control the lump that would rise in jinx's remorseful throat. "jinx," said sunny persuasively, "i do not like to stay ad this japan all alone also. i lig' you stay wiz me. pray you do so, mr. dear jinx!" "gosh! i only wish i could, sunny," groaned jinx, sick with sympathy, "but, i can't do it. it's impossible. i'm not--not my own master yet. i did the best i could for you--wrote home and asked my folks if--if i could bring you along. doggone them, anyway, they've kept the wires hot ever since squalling for me to get back." "they do nod lig' japanese girl?" asked sunny sadly. "gosh, what do they know about it? i do, anyway. i think you're a peachy kid, sunny. you suit me down to the ground, i'll tell the world, and you look-a-here, i'm coming back to see you, d'ye understand? i give you my solemn word i will." "jinx," said sunny, without a touch of hope in her voice, "my father are say same thing; but--he never come bag no more." monty and bobs, their arms loaded with sundry boxes of sweets and pretty things that aforetime would have charmed sunny, came in from the street just then, and with affected cheer laid their gifts enticingly before the unbeguiled sunny. "see here, kiddy. isn't this pretty!" bobs was swinging a long chain of bright red and green beads. not so long before sunny had led bobs to that same string of beads, which adorned the counter of a dealer in japanese jewelry, and had expressed to him her ambition to possess so marvellous a treasure. bobs would have bought the ornament then and there; but it so happened that his finances were at their lowest ebb, his investment in the syndicate having made a heavy inroad into the funds of the by no means affluent bobs. the wherewithal to purchase the beads on the eve of departure had in fact come from some obscure corner of his resources, and he now dangled them enticingly before the girl's cold eyes. she turned a shoulder expressive of aversion toward the chain. "i do nod lig' those kind beads," declared sunny bitterly. then upon an impulse, she removed herself from her place before jinx, and kneeled in turn before bobs, concentrating her full look of appeal upon that palpably moved individual. "mr. sir--bobs, i do nod lig' to stay ad japan, wizout you stay also. please you take me ad america wiz you. i are not afraid those west oceans. i lig' those water. it is very sad for me ad japan. i do nod lig' japan. she is not clistian country. very bad people live on japan. i lig' go ad america. please you take me wiz you to-day." monty, hovering behind bobs, was scowling through his bone-ribbed glasses. through his seventeen-year-old brain raced wild schemes of smuggling sunny aboard the vessel; of choking the watchful professor; of penning defiant epistles to the home folks; of finding employment in japan and remaining firmly on these shores to take care of poor little sunny. the propitiating words of bobs appeared to monty the sheerest drivel, untrue slush that it was an outrage to hand to a girl who trusted and believed. bobs was explaining that he was the beggar of the party. when he returned to america, he would have to get out and scuffle for a living, for his parents were not rich, and it was only through considerable sacrifice, and bobs' own efforts at work (he had worked his way through college, he told sunny) that he was able to be one of the party of students who following their senior year at college were travelling for a year prior to settling down at their respective careers. bobs was too chivalrous to mention to sunny the fact that his contribution to the sunny syndicate had caused such a shrinkage in his funds that it would take many months of hard work to make up the deficit; nor that he had even become indebted to the affluent jinx in sunny's behalf. what he did explain was the fact that he expected soon after he reached america, to land a job of a kind--he was to do newspaper work--and just as soon as ever he could afford it, he promised to send for sunny, who was more than welcome to share whatever two-by-four home bobs may have acquired by that time. sunny heard and understood little enough of his explanation. all she comprehended was that her request had been denied. her own father's defective promises had made her forever sceptical of those of any other man in the world. jinx in morose silence pulled fiercely on his pipe, brooding over the ill luck that dogged a fellow who was fat as a movie comedian and was related to an army of fat-heads who had the power to order him to come and go at their will. jinx thought vengefully and ominously of his impending freedom. he would be of age in three months. into his own hands then, triumphantly gloated jinx, would fall the fortune of the house of crawford, and _then_ his folks would see! he'd show 'em! and as for sunny--well, jinx was going to demonstrate to that little girl what a man of his word was capable of doing. sunny, having left bobs, was giving her full attention to monty, who showed signs of panic. "monty, i wan' go wiz you ad america. _please_ take me there wiz you. i nod make no trobble for you. i be bes' nize girl you ever goin' see those worl. please take me, monty." "aw--all right, i will. you bet your life i will. that's settled, and you can count on me. _i'm_ not afraid of _my_ folks, if the other fellows are of theirs. i can do as i choose. i'll rustle up the money somehow. there's always a way, and they can say what they like at home, i intend to do things in my own way. my governor's threatening to cut me off; all the fellows' parents are--they're in league together, i believe, but i'm going to teach them all a lesson. i'll not stir a foot from japan without you, sunny. you can put that in your pipe and swallow it. _i_ mean every last word _i_ say." "now, now, now--not so hasty, young man, not so hasty! not so free with promises you are unable to fulfil. less words! less words! more deeds!" professor barrowes, pausing on the threshold, had allowed the junior member of the party he was piloting through japan to finish his fiery tirade. he hung up his helmet, removed his rubbers, and rubbing his chilled hands to bring back the departed warmth, came into the room and laid the mail upon the table. "here you are, gentlemen. american mail. help yourselves. all right, all right. now, if agreeable, i desire to have a talk alone with miss sunny. if you young gentlemen will proceed with the rest of your preparations i daresay we will be on time. that will do, goto. that baggage goes with us. loose stuff for the steamer. clear out." sunny, alone with the professor, made her last appeal. "kind mr. professor, please do not leave me ad those japan. i wan go ad america wiz you. please you permit me go also." professor barrowes leaned over, held out both his hands, and as the girl came with a sob to him, he took her gently into his arms. she buried her face on the shabby coat of the old professor who had been such a good friend to her, and who with all his eccentricities had been so curiously loveable and approachable. after she had cried a bit against the old coat, sunny sat back on her heels again, her two hands resting on the professor's knees and covered with one of his. "sunny, poor child, i know how hard it is for you; but we are doing the best we can. i want you to try and resign yourself to what is after all inevitable. i have arranged for you to go to the sutherlands' home. you know them both--good people, sunny, good people, in spite of their pious noise. mr. blumenthal has charge of your financial matters. you are amply provided for, thanks to the generosity of your friends, and i may say we have done everything in our power to properly protect you. you are going to show your appreciation by--er--being a good girl. keep at your studies. heed the instructions of mr. sutherland. he has your good at heart. i will not question his methods. we all have our peculiarities and beliefs. the training will do you no harm--possibly do you much good. i wish you always to remember that my interest in your welfare will continue, and it will be a pleasure to learn of your progress. when you can do so, i want you to write a letter to me, and tell me all about yourself." "mr. professor, if i study mos' hard, mebbe i grow up to be american girl--jos same as her?" sunny put the question with touching earnestness. "we-el, i am not prepared to offer the american girl as an ideal model for you to copy, my dear, but i take it you mean--er--that education will graft upon you our western civilisation, such as it is. it may do so. it may. i will not promise on that score. my mind is open. it has been done, no doubt. many girls of your race have--ah--assimilated our own peculiar civilisation--or a veneer of the same. you are yourself mainly of white blood. yes, yes, it is possible--quite probable in fact, that if you set out to acquire western ways, you will succeed in making yourself--er--like the people you desire to copy." "and suppose i grow up lig' civilised girl, _then_ i may live ad america?" "nothing to prevent you, my dear. nothing to prevent you. it's a free country. open to all. you will find us your friends, happy--i may say--overjoyed to see you again." for the first time since she had learned the news of their impending departure a faint smile lighted up the girl's sad face. "i stay ad japan till i get--civil--ise." she stood up, and for a moment looked down in mournful farewell on the seamed face of her friend. her soft voice dropped to a caress. "sayonara, _mos_ kindes' man ad japan. i goin' to ask all those million gods be good to you." and professor barrowes did not even chide her for her reference to the gods. he sat glaring alone in the empty room, fiercely rubbing his glasses, and rehearsing some extremely cutting and sarcastic phrases which he proposed to pen or speak to certain parents across the water, whose low minds suspected mud even upon a lily. his muttering reverie was broken by the quiet voice of jerry. he had come out of the big window seat, where he had been all of the afternoon, unnoticed by the others. "professor barrowes," said jerry hammond, "if you have no objection, i would like to take sunny back with me to america." professor barrowes scowled up at his favourite pupil. "i do object, i do object. emphatically. most emphatically. i do not propose to allow you, or any of the young gentlemen entrusted to my charge, to commit an act that may be of the gravest consequences to your future careers." "in my case, you need feel under no obligations to my parents. i am of age as you know, and as you also know, i purpose to go my own way upon returning home. my father asked me to wait till after this vacation before definitely deciding upon my future. well, i've waited, and i'm more than ever determined not to go into the shops. i've a bit of money of my own--enough to give me a start, and i purpose to follow out my own ideas. now as to sunny. i found that kid. she's my own, when it comes down to that. i practically adopted her, and i'll be hanged if i'm going to desert her, just because my father and mother have some false ideas as to the situation." "leaving out your parents from consideration, i am informed that an engagement exists between you and a miss--ah--falconer, i believe the name is, daughter of your father's partner, i understand." "what difference does that make?" demanded jerry, setting his chin stubbornly. "can it be possible that you know human nature so little then, that you do not appreciate the feelings your fiancée is apt to feel toward any young woman you choose to adopt?" "why, sunny's nothing but a child. it's absurd to refer to her as a woman, and if miss falconer broke with me for a little thing like that, i'd take my medicine i suppose." "you are prepared, then, to break an engagement that has the most hearty approval of your parents, because of a quixotic impulse toward one you say is a child, but, young man, i would have you reflect upon the consequences to the child. your kindness would act as a boomerang upon sunny." "what in the world do you mean?" "i mean that sunny is emphatically not a child. she was fifteen years old the other day. that is an exceedingly delicate period in a girl's life. we must leave the bloom upon the rose. it is a sensitive period in the life of a girl." a long silence, and then jerry: "right-oh! it's good-bye to sunny!" he turned on his heel and strode out to the hall. professor barrowes heard him calling to the girl upstairs in the cheeriest tone. "hi! up there, sunny! come on down, you little rascal. aren't you going to say bye-bye to your best friend?" sunny came slowly down the stairs. at the foot, in the shadows of the hall she looked up at jerry. "now remember," he rattled along with assumed merriment, "that when next we meet i expect you to be the empress of japan." "jerry," said sunny, in a very little voice, her small eerie face seeming to shine with some light, as she looked steadily at him, "i lig' ask you one liddle bit favour before you go way from these japan." "go to it. what is it, sunny. ask, and thou shalt receive." sunny put one hand on either of jerry's arms, and her touch had a curiously electrical effect upon him. in the pause that ensued he found himself unable to remove his fascinated gaze from her face. "jerry, i wan' ask you, will you please give me those american--kiss--good-a-bye." a great wave of tingling emotions swept over jerry, blinding him to everything in the world but that shining face so close to his own. sunny a child! her age terrified him. he drew back, laughing huskily. he hardly knew himself what it was he was saying: "i don't want to, sunny--i don't----" he broke away abruptly and, turning, rushed into the living room, seized his coat and hat, and was out of the house in a flash. professor barrowes stared at the door through which jerry had made his hurried exit. to his surprise, he heard sunny in the hall, laughing softly, strangely. to his puzzled query as to why she laughed, she said softly: "jerry are afraid of me!" and professor barrowes, student of human nature as he prided himself upon being, did not know that sunny had stepped suddenly across the gap that separates a girl from a woman, and had come into her full stature. chapter vi time and environment work miracles. it is interesting to study the phases of emotion that one passes through as he emerges from youth into manhood. the exaggerated expressions, the unalterable conclusions, the tragic imaginings, the resolves, which he feels nothing can shake, how sadly and ludicrously and with what swiftness are they dissipated. it came to pass that sunny's friends across the sea reached a period where they thought of her vaguely only as a charming and amusing episode of an idyllic summer in the land of the rising sun. into the oblivion of the years, farther and farther retreated the face of the sunny whose april smile and ingenuous ways and lovely face had once so warmed and charmed their young hearts. new faces, new scenes, new loves, work and the claims and habits that fasten upon one with the years--these were the forces that engrossed them. i will not say that she was altogether forgotten in the new life, but at least she occupied but a tiny niche in their sentimental recollections. there were times, when a reference to japan would call forth a murmur of pleasureable reminiscences, and humorous references to some remembered fantastic trick or trait peculiar to the girl, as: "do you remember when sunny tried to catch that nightingale by putting salt near a place where she thought his tail might rest? i had told her she could catch him by putting salt on his tail, and the poor kid took me literally." jinx chuckled tenderly over the memory. in the first year after his return to america jinx had borne his little friend quite often in mind, and had sent her several gifts, all of which were gratefully acknowledged by the reverend simon sutherland. "will you ever forget" (from bobs) "her intense admiration for monty's white skin? she sat on the bank of the pool for nearly an hour, with the unfortunate kid under water, waiting for her to go away, while she waited for him to come out, because she said she wanted to see what a white body looked like 'wiz nothing but skin on for clothes.' i had to drag her off by main force. ha, ha! i'll never forget her indignation, or her question whether monty was 'ashamed his body.' the public baths of nagasaki, you know, were social meeting places, and introductions under or above water quite the rule." "i suppose," said jerry, pulling at his pipe thoughtfully, "we never will get the japanese point of view anent the question of morals." "it's the shape of their eyes. they see things slant-wise," suggested jinx brilliantly. "but sunny's eyes, as i recall them," protested bobs, "were not slanting, and she had their point of view. you'll recall how the proff had much ado to prevent her taking her own quaint bath in our 'lake' in beauty unadorned." a burst of laughter broke forth here. "did he now? he never told me anything about that." "didn't tell me either, but i _heard_ him. he explained to sunny in the most fatherly way the whole question of morals from the day of adam down, and she got him so tangled up and ashamed of himself that he didn't know where he was at. however, as i recall it, he must have won out in the contention, for you'll recall how she voiced such scathing and contemptuous criticism later on the public bathers of japan, whom she said were 'igrant and nod god nize americazan manner and wear dress cover hees body ad those bath.'" "ah, sunny was a darling kid, take it from me. just as innocent and sweet as a new-born babe." this was jinx's sentimental contribution, and no voice arose to question his verdict. so it will be perceived that her friends, upon the rare occasions when she was recalled to memory, still held her in loving, if humorous regard, and it was the custom of jerry to end the reminiscences of sunny with a big sigh and a dumping of the ash from his pipe, as he dismissed the subject with: "well, well, i suppose she's the empress of japan by now." all of them were occupied with the concerns and careers that were of paramount importance to them. monty, though but in his twenty-first year, an intern at bellevue; bobs, star reporter on the _comet_; jinx, overwhelmingly rich, the melancholy and unwilling magnet of all aspiring mothers-in-law; jerry, an outlaw from the house of hammond, though his engagement to miss falconer bade fair to reinstate him in his parents' affections. he was doggedly following that star of which he had once told sunny. eight hours per day in an architect's office, and four or six hours in his own studio, was the sum of the work of jerry. he "lived in the clouds," according to his people; but all the great deeds of the world, and all of the masterpieces penned or painted by the hand of man, jerry knew were the creations of dreamers--the "cloud livers." so he took no umbrage at the taunt, and kept on reaching after what he had once told sunny was that jade of fortune--beauty. somewhere up the state, professor barrowes pursued the uneven tenor of his way as professor of archeology and zoology in a small college. impetuous and erratic, becoming more restless with the years, he escaped the irritations and demands of the class room at beautiful intervals, when he indulged in a passion of research that took him into the far corners of the world, to burrow into the earth in search of things belonging to the remote dead and which he held of more interest than mere living beings. his fortunes were always uncertain, because of this eccentric weakness, and often upon returning from some such quest his friends had much ado to secure him a berth that would serve as an immediate livelihood. such position secured, after considerable wire pulling on the part of jerry and other friends, professor barrowes would be no sooner seated in the desired chair, when he would begin to lay plans for another escape. an intimate friendship existed between jerry and his old master, and it was to jerry that he invariably went upon his return from his archeological quests. despite the difference in their years, there was a true kinship between these two. each comprehended the other's aspirations, and in a way the passion for exploration and the passion for beauty is analogous. jerry's parents looked askance at this friendship, and were accustomed to blame the professor for their son's vagaries, believing that he aided and abetted and encouraged jerry, which was true enough. of all sunny's friends, professor barrowes, alone, kept up an irregular communication with the sutherlands. gratifying reports of the progress of their protégé came from the missionary at such times. long since, it had been settled that sunny should be trained to become a shining example to her race--if, in fact, the japanese might be termed her race. it was the ambition of the good missionary to so instruct the girl that she would be competent to step into the missionary work, and with her knowledge of the japanese tongue and ways, her instructor felt assured they could expect marvels from her in the matter of converting the heathen. it is true the thought of that vivid little personality in the grey rôle of a preacher, brought somewhat wry faces to her friends, and exclamations even of distaste. "gosh!" groaned jinx sadly, "i'd as lieves see her back on the tightrope." "imagine sunny preaching! it would be a raving joke. i can just hear her twisting up her eight million gods and goddesses with our own deity," laughed bobs. "like quenching a firefly's light, or the bruising of a butterfly's wings," murmured jerry, dreamily, his head encircled with rings of smoke. but then one becomes accustomed to even a fantastic thought. we accredit certain qualities and actions to individuals, and, in time, in our imaginations at least, they assume the traits with which we have invested them. after all, it was very comforting to think of that forlorn orphan child in the safe haven of a mission school. so the years ran on and on, as they do in life, and as they do in stories such as this, and it came to pass, as written above, that sunny disappeared into the fragrant corners of a pretty memory. there is where sunny should perhaps have stayed, and thus my story come to a timely end. consider the situation. a girl, mainly of white blood, with just a drop of oriental blood in her--enough to make her a bit different from the average female of the species, enough, say, to give a snack of that savage element attributed to the benighted heathen. rescued by men of her father's race from slavery and abuse; provided for for the rest of her days; under the instruction of a zealous and conscientious missionary and his wife, who earnestly taught her how to save the souls of the people of japan. sunny's fate was surely a desirable one, and as she progressed on the one side of the water, her friends on the other side were growing in sundry directions, ever outward and upward, acquiring new responsibilities, new loves, new claims, new passions with the passing of the years. what freak of fate therefore should interpose at this juncture, and thrust sunny electrically into the lives of her friends again? chapter vii on a certain bleak day in the month of march, j. addison hammond, jr., tenaciously at work upon certain plans and drawings that were destined at a not far distant date to bring him a measure of fame and fortune, started impatiently from his seat and cursed that "gosh-ding-danged telephone." jerry at this stage of his picturesque career occupied what is known in new york city, and possibly other equally enlightened cities, as a duplex studio. called "duplex" for no very clear reason. it consists of one very large room (called "atelier" by artistic tenants and those who have lived or wanted to live in france). this room is notable not merely for its size, but its height, the ceiling not unsimilar to the vaulted one of a church, or a glorified attic. adjustable skylights lend the desired light. about this main room, and midway of the wall, is a gallery which runs on all four sides, and on this gallery are doors opening into sundry rooms designated as bedrooms. the arrangement is an excellent one, since it gives one practically two floors. that, no doubt, is why we call it "duplex." we have a weakness for one floor bungalows when we build houses these days, but for apartments and studios the epicure demands the duplex. in this especial duplex studio there also abode one t, or as he was familiarly known to the friends of jerry hammond, "hatty." hatty, then, was the valet and man of all work in the employ of jerry. he was a marvellous cook, an extraordinary house cleaner, an incomparable valet, and to complete the perfections of this jewel, possessed solely by the apparently fortunate jerry, his manners, his face and his form were of that ideal sort seen only in fiction and never in life. nevertheless the incomparable hatton, or hatty, was a visible fact in the life and studio of jerry hammond. having detailed the talents of hatty, it is painful here to admit a flaw in the character of the otherwise perfect valet. this flaw he had very honestly divulged to jerry at the time of entering his employ, and the understanding was that upon such occasions when said flaw was due to have its day, the master was to forbear from undue criticism or from discharging said hatton from his employ. hatton, at this time, earnestly assured the man in whose employ he desired to enter, that he could always depend upon his returning to service in a perfectly normal state, and life would resume its happy way under his competent direction. it so happened upon this especial night, when that "pestiferous" telephone kept up its everlasting ringing--a night when jerry hugged his head in his hands, calling profanely and imploringly upon christian and heathen saints and gods to leave him undisturbed--that hatton lay on his bed above, in a state of oblivion from which it would seem a charge of dynamite could not have awakened him. for the fiftieth or possibly hundredth time jerry bitterly swore that he would fire that "damned englishman" (hatton was english) on the following day. he had had enough of him. whenever he especially needed quiet and service, that was the time the "damned englishman" chose to break loose and go on one of his infernal sprees. for the fourth time within half an hour jerry seized that telephone and shouted into the receiver: "what in hades do you want?" the response was a long and continuous buzzing, through which a jabbering female tongue screeched that it was y. dubaday talking. it sounded like "y. dubaday," but jerry knew no one of that name, and so emphatically stated, adding to the fact that he didn't know anyone of that name and didn't want to, and if this was their idea of a joke----" he hung up at this juncture, seized his head, groaned, walked up and down swearing softly and almost weeping with nervousness and distraction. finally with a sigh of hopelessness as he realised the impossibility of concentrating on that night, jerry gathered up his tools and pads, packed them into a portfolio, which he craftily hid under a mass of papers--jerry knew where he could put his hands on any desired one--got his pipe, pulled up before the waning fire, gave it a shove, put on a fresh log, lit his pipe, stretched out his long legs, put his brown head back against the chair, and sought what comfort there might be left to an exasperated young aspirant for fame who had been interrupted a dozen times inside of an hour or so. hardly had he settled down into this comparative comfort when that telephone rang again. jerry was angry now--"hopping mad." he lifted that receiver with ominous gentleness, and his voice was silken. "what can i do for you, fair one?" curiously enough the buzzing had completely stopped and the fair one's reply came vibrating clearly into his listening ear. "mr. hammond?" "well, what of it?" "mr. hammond, manager of some corporation or company in japan?" "what are you talking about?" "if you'll hold the wire long enough to take a message from a friend i'll deliver it." "friend, eh? who is he? i'd like to get a look at him this moment. take your time." "well, i've no time to talk nonsense. this is the y. w. c. a. speaking, and there's a young lady here, who says she--er--belongs to you. she----" "what? say that again, please." "a young lady that appears to be related to you--says you are her guardian or manager or something of the sort. she was delivered to the y. by the reverend miss miriam richardson, in whose care she was placed by the mission society of--er--naggysack, japan. one minute, i'll get her name again." a photograph of jerry at this stage would have revealed a young man sitting at a telephone desk, registering a conflict of feelings and emotions indicative of consternation, guilt, tenderness, fear, terror, compunction, meanness and idiocy. when that official voice came over the wire a second time, jerry all but collapsed against the table, holding the receiver uncertainly in the direction of that ear that still heard the incredible news and confirmed his fears: "name--miss sindicutt." silence, during which the other end apparently heard not that exclamation of desperation: "ye gods and little fishes!" for it resumed complacently: "shall we send her up to you?" "no, no, for heaven's sake don't. that is, wait a bit, will you? give me a chance to get over the----" jerry was about to say "shock," but stopped himself in time and with as much composure as he could muster he told the y. w. c. a. that he was busy just now, but would call later, and advise them what to do in the--under his breath he said "appalling"--circumstances. slowly jerry put the receiver back on the hook. he remained in the chair like one who has received a galvanic shock. that japanese girl, of a preposterous dream, had actually followed him to america! she was here--right in new york city. it was fantastic, impossible! ha, ha! it would be funny, if it were not so danged impossible. in the united states, of all places! she, who ought to be right among her heathens, making good converts. what in the name of common sense had she come to the states for? why couldn't she let jerry alone, when he was up to his neck in plans that he fairly knew were going to create an upheaval in the architectural world? just because he had befriended her in his infernal youth, he could not be expected to be responsible for her for the rest of her days. besides, he, jerry, was not the only one in that comic opera syndicate. the thought of his partners in crime, as they now seemed to him, brought him up again before that telephone, seizing upon it this time as a last straw. he was fortunate to get in touch with all three of the members of the former sunny syndicate limited. while monty and bobs rushed over immediately, jinx escaped from the appawamis golf club where for weeks he had been vainly trying to get rid of some of his superfluous flesh by chasing little red balls over the still snow bound course, flung himself into his powerful rolls royce, and went speeding along the boston post road at a rate that caused an alarm to be sent out for him from point to point. not swift enough, however, to keep up with the fat man in the massive car that "made the grade" to new york inside of an hour, and rushed like a juggernaut over the slick roads and the asphalt pavements of manhattan. jerry's summons to his college friends had been in the nature of an s. o. s. call for help. on the telephone he vouchsafed merely the information that it was "a deadly matter of life and death." the astounding news he flung like a bomb at each hastily arriving member of the late syndicate. when the first excitement had subsided, the paramount feeling was one of consternation and alarm. "gosh!" groaned jinx, "what in the name of thunderation are you going to do with a japanese girl in new york city? i pity you, jerry, for of course you are mainly responsible----" "responsible nothing----" from the indignant jerry, wheeling about with a threatening look at that big "fathead." "i presume i was the _only_ member of that--er--syndicate." "at least it was your idea," said monty, extremely anxious to get back to the hospital, where he had been personally supervising a case of circocele. "you might have known," suggested bobs, "that she was bound to turn out a frankenstein. of course, we'll all stand by you, old scout, but you know how i am personally situated." jerry's wrathful glare embraced the circle of his renegade friends. "you're a fine bunch of snobs. i'm not stuck myself on having a jap girl foisted on to my hands, and there'll be a mess of explanations to my friends and people, and the lord only knows how i'll ever be able to put my mind back on my work and---at the same time, i'm not so white livered that i'm going to flunk the responsibility. we encouraged--invited her to join us out here. i did. you did, so did you, and you! i heard you all--every last one of you, and you can't deny it." "well, it was one thing to sentimentalise over a pretty little jap in japan," growled bobs, who was not a snob, but in spite of his profession at heart something of a stickler for the conventions, "but it's another proposition here. of course, as i said, we fellows all intend to stand by you." (grunts of unwilling assent from monty and jinx.) "we aren't going to welch on our part of the job, and right here we may as well plan out some scheme to work this thing properly. suppose we make the most of the matter for the present. we'll keep her down there at that 'y.' do you see? then, we can each do something to--er--make it--well uncomfortable for her here. we'll freeze her out if it comes down to that. make her feel that this u. s. a. isn't all it's cracked up to be, and she'll get home-sick for her gods and goddesses and at the psychological moment when she's feeling her worst, why we'll just slip her aboard ship, and there you are." "great mind! marvellous intellect you got, bobs. in the first place, the 'y' informed me on the 'phone that they are sending her here. they are waiting now for me to give the word when to despatch her, in fact. now the question is"--jerry looked sternly at his friends--"which one of your families would be decent enough to give a temporary home to sunny? my folks as you know are out of the reckoning, as i'm an outlaw from there myself." followed a heated argument and explanations. monty's people lived in philadelphia. he himself abode at the bellevue hospital. that, so he said, let him out. not at all, from jerry's point of view. philadelphia, said jerry, was only a stone's throw from new york. monty, exasperated, retorted that he didn't propose to throw stones at his folks. monty, who had made such warm promises to sunny! bobs shared a five-room bachelor flat with two other newspaper men. their hours were uncertain, and their actions erratic. often they played poker till the small hours of the morning. sunny would not fit into the atmosphere of smoke and disorder, though she was welcome to come, if she could stand the "gaff." bobs' people lived in virginia. his several sisters, bobs was amusedly assured, would hardly put the girl from japan at her ease. jinx, on whom jerry now pinned a hopeful eye, blustered shamelessly, as he tried to explain his uncomfortable position in the world. when not at his club in new york, he lived with a sister, mrs. vanderlump, and her growing family in the crawford mansion at newport. said sister dominated this palatial abode and brother jinx escaped to new york upon occasions in a true jiggsian manner, using craft and ingenuity always to escape the vigilant eye and flaying tongue of a sister who looked for the worst and found it. it was hard for jinx to admit to his friends that he was horribly henpecked, but he appealed to them as follows: "have a heart about this thing. i ask you, what is a fellow to do when he's got a sister on his back like that? if she suspects every little innocent chorus girl of the town, what is she going to say to sunny when that kid goes up before her in tights?" it is extraordinary how we think of people we have not seen in years as they were when first we saw them. in the heat of argument, no one troubled to point out to jinx that the sunny who had come upon the tight rope that first night must have long since graduated from that reprehensible type of dress or rather undress. finally, and as a last resort, a night letter was despatched to professor timothy barrowes. all were now agreed that he was the one most competent to settle the matter of the disposition of sunny, and all agreed to abide by his decision. at this juncture, and when a sense of satisfaction in having "passed the buck" to the competent man of archæology had temporarily cheered them, a tapping was heard upon the studio door. not the thumping of the goblin's head of the italian iron knocker; not the shriek of the electric buzzer from the desk below, warning of the approach of a visitor. just a soft taptapping upon the door, repeated several times, as no one answered, and increasing in noise and persistence. a long, a silent, a deadly pause ensued. at that moment each found himself attributing to that girl they had known in japan, and whom they realised was on the other side of that door, certain characteristic traits and peculiarities charming enough in japan but impossible to think of as in america. to each young man there came a mental picture of a bizarre and curious little figure, adorned with blazingly bright kimona and obi--a brilliant patch of colour, her bobbed hair and straight bangs seeming somehow incongruous and adding to her fantastic appearance. after all, in spite of her hair, she was typical of that land of crooked streets, and paper houses, and people who walked on the wrong side and mounted their horses from the front. the thought of that girl in new york city grated against their sensibilities. she didn't belong and she never could belong was their internal verdict. it may have been only a coincidence, but it seemed weird, that hatton, lately so dead to the world, should appear at that psychological moment on the steps of the gallery, immaculate in dress and with that cool air of superiority and efficiency that was part of his assets, descend in his stately and perfect way, approach the door as a butler should, and softly, imperturbably fling that door open. his back retained its stiff straight line, that went so well with the uniform hatton insisted upon donning, but his head went sideways forward in that inimitable bow that hatton always reserved for anything especially attractive in the female line. upon the threshold there looked back at hatton, and then beyond him, a girl whom the startled young men took at first to be a perfect stranger. she wore a plain blue serge suit, belted at the waist, with a white collar and jabot. a sailor hat, slightly rolled, crushed down the hair that still shone above the face whose remarkable beauty owed much to a certain quaintness of expression. she stood silently, without moving, for what seemed a long moment to them all, and then suddenly she spoke, breathlessly and with that little catch in her voice, and her tone, her look, her words, her quick motions so characteristic of the little girl they had known, broke the spell of silence and let loose a flood of such warm memories that all the mean and harsh and contemptible thoughts of but a moment since were dissipated forever. they crowded about her, hanging upon and hungry for her unabashed and delighted words, and dazzled by the girl's uncanny loveliness. "jinx! thad are you! i know you by your so nize fat!" she had not lost her adorable accent. indeed, if they could but have realised it, sunny had changed not at all. she had simply grown up. jinx's soft hands were holding the two little fragrant ones thrust so joyously into his own. the fat fellow fought a sudden maddening desire to hug like a bear the girl whose bright eyes were searching his own so lovingly. "monty! oh, you have grow into whole mans. _how_ it is nize. and you still smile on me troo those glass ad you eye." smile! monty was grinning like the proverbial cheshire cat. that case of circocele at bellevue hospital had vanished into the dim regions of young monty's mind. anyway there were a score of other internes there, and monty had his permit in his pocket. "bobs! is thad youself, wiz those fonny liddle hair grow om your mout'. _how_ it is grow nize on you face. i lig' him there." any doubt that bobs had experienced as to the desirability of that incipient moustache vanished then and there. and jerry! jerry, for the last, to be looked at with shining eyes, till something tightened in his throat, and his mind leaped over the years and felt again that dizzy, tingling, electrical sensation when sunny had asked him to kiss her. chapter viii that "even tenor of their ways," to which reference has already been made, ceased indeed to bear a remote resemblance to evenness. it may be recorded here, that for one of them at least, sunny's coming meant the hasty despatch of his peace of mind. their well laid schemes to be rid of her seemed now in the face of their actions like absurd aberrations that they were heartily ashamed of. it is astonishing how we are affected by mere clothes. perhaps if sunny had appeared at the door of jerry hammond's studio arrayed in the shining garments of a japanese, some measure of their alarm might have remained. but she came to their door as an american girl. that sunny should have stood the test of american clothes, that she shone in them with a distinction and grace that was all her own, was a matter of extreme pride and delight to her infatuated friends. appearances play a great part in the imagination and thought of the young american. it was the fantastic conception they had formed of her, and the imagined effect of her strange appearance in america that had filled them with misgiving and alarm--the sneeky sort of apprehension one feels at being made conspicuous and ridiculous. there was an immense relief at the discovery that their fears were entirely unfounded. sunny appeared a finished product in the art of dressing. not that she was fashionably dressed. she simply had achieved the look of one who belonged. she was as natural in her clothes as any of their sisters or the girls they knew. there was this difference, however: sunny was one of those rare beings of earth upon whom the goddess of beauty has ineffaceably laid her hands. her loveliness, in fact, startled one with its rareness, its crystal delicacy. one looked at the girl's face, and caught his breath and turned to look again, with that pang of longing that is almost pain when we gaze upon a masterpiece. yet "under the skin" she was the same confiding, appealing, mischievous little sunny who had pushed her way into the hearts of her friends. her mission in america, much as it aroused the mirth of her friends, was a very serious one, and it may be here stated, later, an eminently successful one. sunny came as an emissary from the mission school to collect funds for the impoverished mission. mr. sutherland, a scotchman by birth, was not without a canny and shrewd streak to his character, and he had not forgotten the generous contributions in the past of the rich young americans whose protégé sunny had been. all this, however, does not concern the devastating effect of her presence in the studio of jerry hammond. there, in fact, sunny had taken up an apparently permanent residence, settling down as a matter of course and right, and indeed assisted by the confused and alternately dazed and beguiled jerry. her effects consisted of a bag so small, and containing but a few articles of japanese silk clothing and a tiny gift for each of her dear friends. indeed, the smallness of sunny's luggage appealed instantly to her friends, who determined to purchase for her all the pretty clothes her heart should desire. this ambition to deck sunny in the fine raiment of new york city was satisfactorily realised by each and everyone of the former syndicate, sunny accompanying them with alacrity, overjoyed by those delicious shopping tours, the results of which returned in jinx's rolls royce, monty's taxi, bobs' messenger boys, and borne by hand by jerry. these articles, however, became such a bone of contention among her friends, each desiring her to wear his especial choice, that sunny had her hands full pleasing them all. she compromised by wearing a dress donated by monty, hat from jinx, a coat from jerry, and stockings and gloves from bobs. it was finally agreed by her friends that there should be a cessation to the buying of further clothes for sunny. instead an allowance of money was voted and quickly subscribed to by all, and after that, sunny, with the fatherly aid of a surprisingly new hatton, did her own purchasing. of her four friends, jerry was possibly the happiest and the unhappiest at this time. he was a prey to both exhilaration and panic. he moved heaven and earth to make sunny so comfortable and contented in his studio, that all thought of returning to japan would be banished forever from her mind. on the other hand, he rushed off, panic stricken and sent telegrams to professor barrowes, entreating him to come at once and relieve jerry of his dangerous charge. his telegrams, however, were unfruitful, for after an aggravating delay, during which sunny became, like hatton, one of the habits and necessities of jerry's life, the telegraph company notified him that professor barrowes was no longer at that particular school of learning, and that his address there was unknown. jerry, driven to extremities by the situation in his studio, made himself such a nuisance to the telegraph company, that they bestirred themselves finally and ascertained that the last address of professor timothy barrowes was red deer, alberta, canada. now red deer represented nothing to jerry hammond save a town in canada where a wire would reach his friend. accordingly he despatched the following: professor timothy barrowes, red deer, alberta, canada. come at once. sunny in new york. need you take her charge. delay dangerous. waiting for you. come at once. answer at once. important. j. addison hammond. professor barrowes received this frantic wire while sitting on a rock very close to the edge of a deep excavation that had recently been dug on the side of a cliff towering above a certain portion of the old red deer river. below, on a plateau, a gang of men were digging and scraping and hammering at the cliff. not in the manner of the husky workers of northwestern canada, but carefully, tenderly. not so carefully, however, but the tongue of the professor on the rock above castigated and nagged and warned. ever and anon sunny's old friend would leap down into the excavation, and himself assist the work physically. as stated, jerry's telegram came to his hand while seated upon aforesaid rock, was opened, and absent-mindedly scanned by jerry's dear friend, and then thrust hastily into the professor's vest pocket, there to remain for several days, when it accidentally was resurrected, and he most thoughtfully despatched a reply, as follows: jeremy addison hammond, 12 west 67th st., new york city, u. s. a. collect. glad to hear from you. especially so this time. discovered dinosaur antedating post pleocene days. of opinion red deer district contains greatest number of fossils of antique period in world. expect discoveries prove historical event archeological world. will bring precious find new york about one month or six weeks. need extra funds transportation dinosaur and guard for same. expect trouble canadian government in re-taking valuable find across border. much envy and propaganda take credit from u. s. for most important discovery of century. get in communication right parties new york, washington if necessary. have consul here wired give full protection and help. information sent confidential. do not want press to get word of remarkable find until fossil set up in museum. see curator about arrangements. may be quoted as estimating age as quaternary period. wire two thousand dollars extra. extraordinary find. greatest moment my life. note news arrival new york sunny. sorry unable be there take charge. dinornis more important sunny. timothy barrowes. what jerry said when he tore open and read that long expected telegram would not bear printing. suffice it to say that his good old friend was consigned by the wrathful and disgusted jerry to a warmer region than mother earth. then, squaring his shoulders like a man, and setting his chin grimly, jerry took up the burden of life, which in these latter days had assumed for him such bewildering proportions. that she was an amazing, actual part of his daily life seemed to him incredible, and beguiling and fascinating as life now seemed to him with her, and wretched and uncertain as it was away from her, his alarm increased with every day and hour of her abode in his house. he assured himself repeatedly that there was no more harm in sunny living in his apartment than there was in her living in his house in japan. what enraged the befuddled jerry at this time was the officious attitude of his friends. monty took it upon himself to go room hunting for a place for sunny, and talked a good deal about the results he expected from a letter written to philadelphia. he did not refer to sunny now as a stone. monty was sure that the place for sunny was right in that philadelphia home, presided over by his doting parents and little brothers and sisters, and where it was quite accessible for week-end visits. jinx, after a stormy scene with his elder sister in which he endeavoured to force sunny upon the indignant and suspicious mrs. vanderlump, left in high dudgeon the newport home in which he had been born, and which was his own personal inheritance, and with threats never to speak to his sister again, he took up his residence at his club, just two blocks from the 67th street studio. bobs cleared out two of his friends from the flat, bought some cretonne curtains with outrageous roses and patches of yellow, purple, red and green, hung these in dining room and bedroom and parlour, bought a brand new victrola and some quite gorgeous chinese rugs, and had a woman in cleaning for nearly a week. to his friends' gibes and suggestions that he apparently contemplated matrimony, bobs sentimentally rejoined that sooner or later a fellow got tired of the dingy life of a smoke-and-card-filled flat and wanted a bit of real sweetness to take away the curse of life. he acquired two lots somewhere on long island and spent considerable time consulting an architect, shamefully ignoring jerry's gifts in that line. that his friends, who had so savagely protested again sharing the burden of sunny, should now try to go behind his back and take her away from him was in the opinion of jerry a clue to the kind of characters they possessed, and of which hitherto he had no slightest suspicion. jerry, at this time, resembled the proverbial dog in the manger. he did not want sunny himself--that is, he dared not want sunny--but the thought of her going to any other place filled him with anguish and resentment. nevertheless he realised the impossibility of maintaining her much longer in his studio. already her presence there had excited gossip and speculation in the studio building, but in that careless and bohemian atmosphere with which denizens of the art world choose to surround themselves the lovely young stranger in the studio of jerry hammond aroused merely smiling and indulgent curiosity. occasionally a crude joke or inquiry from a neighbouring artist aroused murder in the soul of the otherwise civilised jerry. that anyone could imagine anything wrong with sunny seemed to him beyond belief. not that he felt always kindly toward sunny. she aroused his ire more often than she did his approval. she was altogether too free and unconventional, in the opinion of jerry, and in a clumsy way he tried to teach her certain rules of deportment for a young woman living in the u. s. a. sunny, however, was so innocent and so evidently earnest in her efforts to please him, that he invariably felt ashamed and accused himself of being a pig and a brute. jerry was, indeed, like the unfortunate boatman, drifting toward the rocks, and seeing only the golden hair of the lorelei. sunny had settled down so neatly and completely in his studio that it would have been hard to know how she was ever to be dislodged. her satisfaction and delight and surprise at every object upon the place was a source of immense satisfaction and entertainment to jerry. it should be mentioned here, that an unbelievable change could have been observed also in hatton. the man was discovered to be human. his face cracked up in smiles that were real, and clucks that bore a remote resemblance to human laughter issued at intervals from the direction of the kitchen, whither he very often hastily departed, his hand over mouth, after some remark or action of sunny that appeared to smite his funny bone. the buttons on the wall were a never failing source of enchantment to sunny. to go into her own room in the dark, brush her hand along the wall, touch an ivory button, and see the room spring into light charmed her beyond words. so, too, the black buttons that, pressed, caused bells to ring in the lower part of the house. but the speaking tube amazed and at first almost terrified her. jerry sprang the works on her first. while in her room, a sudden screech coming from the wall, she looked panically about her, and then started back as a voice issued forth from that tube, hailing her by name. spirits! here in this so solid and material america! it was only after jerry, getting no response to his calls of "sunny! hi! sunny! come on down! come on down! sunny! i want you!" ran up the stairs, knocked at her door and stood laughing at her in the doorway, that the colour came back to her cheeks. he was so delighted with the experiments, that he led her to the telephone and initiated her into that mystery. to watch sunny's face, as with parted lips, and eyes darkened by excitement, she listened to the voice of jinx, monty or bobs, and then suddenly broke loose and chattered sweet things back, was in the opinion of jerry worth the price of a dozen telephones. however, he cut short her interviews with the delighted fellows at the other end, as he did not wish to have them impose on her good nature and take up too much of the girl's time. the victrola and the player-piano worked day and night in sunny's behalf, and it was not long before she could trill back some of the songs. upon one occasion they pulled up the rugs, and sunny had her first lesson in dancing. jerry told her she took to dancing "like a duck does to water." he honestly believed he was doing a benevolent and worthy act in surrounding the young girl with his arms and moving across the floor with her to the music of the victrola. he would not for worlds have admitted to himself that as his arms encircled sunny, jerry felt just about as near to heaven as he ever hoped to get, though premonitions that all was not normal with him came hazily to his mind as he dimly realised that that tingling sensation that contact with sunny created was symptomatic of the chaos within. however, dancing with sunny, once she had acquired the step, which she, a professional dancer in japan, sensed immediately, was sheer joy, and all would have been well, had not his friends arrived just when they were not wanted, and, of course, sunny, the little fool, had instantly wanted to try her new accomplishment upon her admiring and too willing friends. the consequence was jerry's evening was completely spoiled, and what he meant just as an innocent diversion was turned into a "riotous occasion" by a "bunch of roughnecks," who took advantage of a little innocent girl's eagerness to learn to dance, and handled her "a damn sight too familiarly" to suit the paternal--he considered it paternal--taste of jerry. jerry, as sunny passed in the arms of the light-footed jinx, whose dancing was really an accomplishment, registered several vows. one was he proposed to give sunny herself a good calling down. the other he purposed curtailing some of the visits of the gang, and putting a stop once and for all to the flow of gifts that were in his opinion rotten taste on the part of jinx, a joke coming from monty, plainly suffering a bad case of puppy love, and as for bobs, no one knew better than jerry did that he could ill afford to enter into a flower competition with jinx. that rolls royce, when not bearing the enchanted sunny through the parks and even on little expeditions into the byways and highways of the great white road, which runs through westchester county, was parked not before jinx's club, or the garage, but, with amazing impudence before the door of that duplex studio. jerry intended to have a heart-to-heart talk with old jinx on that score. even at home, sunny had wrought havoc. before she had been three days upon the place, hatton, the stony faced and spare of tongue, had confided to her the whole history of his life, and explained how his missus had driven him to drink. "it's 'ard on a man, miss. 'e tries to do 'is best in life, but it's 'ard, miss, when there's a woman 'as believes the worst, and brings out the worst in a man, miss, and man is only yuman, only yuman, miss, and all yuman beings 'as their failings, as no doubt you know, miss." sunny did know. she told hatton that she was full of failings. she didn't think him a bad man at all because once in a long time he drank a little bit. lots of men did that. there was the count of matsuyama. he had made many gifts to the shiba temple, but he loved sake very much, and often in the tea-gardens the girls were kept up very late, because the count of matsuyama never returned home till he had drunk all the sake on the place, and that took many hours. gratuitously, and filled with a sudden noble purpose, hatton gave sunny his solemn promise never again to touch the inebriating cup. she clapped her hands with delight at this, and cried. "ho! how you are nicer man now. mebbe you wife she come bag agin unto you. how thad will be happy for you." "no, no, miss," sadly and hastily hatton rejoined, "you see, miss, there was another woman in the case also, what the french call, miss: shershy la fam. i'm sorry, miss, but i'm only yuman, beggin' your pardon, miss." sunny had assumed many of the duties that were previously hatton's. the kitchenette was her especial delight. here swathed in a long pongee smock, her sleeves rolled up, sunny concocted some of those delectable dishes which her friends named variously: sunny syndicate cocktail; puree al la sunny; potatoes au sunny; sweet pickles par la sunny, and so forth. her thrift also cut down jerry's bills considerably, and he was really so proud of her abilities in this line that he gave a special dinner to which he generously invited all three of their mutual friends, and announced at the table that the meal was entirely concocted by sunny at a price inconceivably low. the piéce de resistance of this especial feast was a potato dish. served in a casserole, it might at first sight have been taken for a glorified potatoes au gratin; but, no, when tasted it revealed its superior qualities. the flushed and pleased sunny, sitting at the head of the table, and dishing out the third or fourth serving to her admiring friends, was induced to reveal to her friends of what the dish was composed. the revelation, it is regrettable to state, convulsed and disconcerted her friends so that they ceased to eat the previously much appreciated dish. sunny proudly informed them that her dish was made up mainly of potato peelings, washed, minced and scrambled in a mess of odds and ends in the way of pieces of cheese, mushrooms, meat, and various vegetables garnered from plates of a recently wasteful meal. her explanation caused such a profound silence for a moment, which was followed by uneasy and then unrepressed mirth, that she was disconcerted and distressed. her friends consoled her by telling her that it didn't matter what she made dishes of; everything she did was exactly right, which made it a bit harder to explain that the shining pan under the kitchen sink was the proper receptacle for all leftovers on the plates. she was reconciled completely moreover, when jerry assured her that the janitor was kicking over the empty dinner pails that she had been sending down the dumbwaiter. chapter ix sunny had certain traits that contributed largely to what seemed almost an unconscious conspiracy to rob jerry hammond of his peace of mind. there was a resemblance in her nature to a kitten. to maintain a proper decorum in his relations with his guest, jerry was wont, when alone, to form the firm resolution to hold her at arm's length. this was far from being an easy matter. it was impossible for him to be in the room with sunny and not sooner or later find her in touch with him. she had a habit of putting her hand into his. she slipped under his most rigid guard, and acquired a bad trick of pressing close to his side, and putting her arm through his. this was all very well when they took their long walks through the park or up and down riverside drive. she could not see the reason why if she could walk arm in arm with jerry when they climbed on the top of one of the busses that rolled up the wonderful drive she should not continue linked with her friend. in fact, sunny found it far more attractive and comfortable to drive arm in arm with jerry than walk thus with him. for, when walking, she loved to rove off from the paths, to make acquaintance with the squirrels and the friendly dogs. her near proximity, however, had its most dangerous effect in the charmed evenings these two spent together, too often, however, marred by the persistent calls of their mutual friends. at these times, sunny had an uncanny trick of coming up at the back of jerry, when that unconscious young man by the fireplace was off in a day dream (in which, by the way, in a vague way, herself was always a part), and resting her cheek upon the brown comfortable head, there to stay till her warm presence startled him into wakefulness, and he would explode one of his usual expressions of these days: "don't do that, i say!" "keep your hands off me, will you?" "don't come so close." "keep off--keep off, i say." "i don't like it." "for heaven's sake, sunny, will nothing teach you civilised ways?" at these times sunny always retired very meekly to a distant part of the room, where she would remain very still and crushed looking, and, shortly, jerry, overcome with compunction, would coax her to a nearer proximity mentally and physically. another disturbing trick which jerry never had had the heart to ban was that of kneeling directly in front of him, her two hands upon his own knees. from this vantage point, with her friendly expressive and so lovely face raised to his, she would naïvely pour out to him her innocent confidences. after all, he savagely argued within himself, what harm in the world was there in a little girl kneeling by your side, and even laying her head, if it came down to that, at times upon a fellow's knee? it took a rotten mind to discover anything wrong with that, in the opinion of jerry hammond. however, there is a limit to all things, and that limit was reached on a certain evening in early spring, a dangerous season, as we all know. "if you give some people an inch they'll take a mile," jerry at that time angrily muttered, the humour of the situation not at all appealing to him. he was going over a publication on spanish architecture, catalonian work of the 14th and 15th centuries. sunny was enjoying herself very innocently at the piano player, and jerry should, as he afterwards admitted to himself, have "left well enough alone." however it be, nothing would do but he must summon sunny to his side to share the pleasure of looking at these splendid examples of the magnificent work of the great spanish architect fabre. now sunny possessed, to an uncanny degree, that gift of understanding which is extremely rare with her sex. she possessed it, in fact, to such a fine degree, that nearly everyone who met her found himself pouring out the history of his life into her sympathetic and understanding little ear. there was something about her way of looking at one, a sort of hanging absorbedly upon one's narrative of their history, that assured the narrator that he not only had the understanding but the sympathy of his pretty listener. jerry, therefore, summoned her from her diversions at the piano-player, which she hastened to leave, though the record was her favourite, "gluhwormchen." her murmuring exclamations above his shoulder revealed her instant enthusiasm and appreciation of just those details that jerry knew would escape the less artistic eye of an ordinary person. she held pages open, to prolong the pleasure of looking at certain window traceries; she picked out easily the geometrical gothic type, and wanted jerry's full explanation as to its difference to those of another period. her little pink forefinger ever found points of interest in the sketches which made him chuckle with delight and pride. the value of sunny's criticism and opinion, moreover, was enhanced by the fact that she conveyed to the young man her conviction, that while of course these were incredibly marvellous examples of the skill of ancient spanish architects, they were not a patch on the work which j. addison hammond was going to do in the not far distant future. though he protested against this with proper modesty, he was nevertheless beguiled and bewitched by the shining dream she called up. he had failed to note that she was perched on the arm of his chair, and that her head rested perilously near to his own. possibly he would never have discovered this at all had not an accident occurred that sent hatton, busy on some task or other about the studio, scurrying in undignified flight from the room, with his stony face covered with his hands. from the kitchen regions thereafter came the sound of suppressed clucks, which by this time could have been recognised as hatton's laughter. what happened was this: at a moment when a turned leaf revealed a sketch of ravishing splendour, sunny's breathless admiration, and jerry's own motion of appreciation (one fist clapped into the palm of the other hand), caused sunny to slip from the arm of the chair onto jerry's knee. jerry arose. to do him justice, he arose instantly, depositing both book and sunny upon the floor. he then proceeded to read her such a savage lecture upon her pagan ways, that the evident effect was so instantly apparent on her, that he stopped midway, glared, stared at the crushed little figure, so tenderly closing the upset book, and then turned on his heel and made an ignominious and undignified exit from the room. "what's the use? what's the use?" demanded jerry of the unresponsive walls. "hang it all, this sort of thing has got to stop. what in sam hill is keeping that blamed proff?" he always liked to imagine at these times that his faith was pinned upon the early coming of professor barrowes, when he was assured the hectic state of affairs in his studio would be clarified and sunny disposed of once and forever. sunny, however, had been nearly a month now in his studio, and in spite of a hundred telegrams to professor barrowes, demanding to know the exact time of his arrival, threatening moreover to hold back that $2,000 required to bring the dashed dinornis from red deer, alberta, canada, to new york city, u. s. a., he got no satisfactory response from his old-time teacher. that monomaniac merely replied with letter-long telegrams--very expensive coming from the extreme northwestern part of canada to new york city, giving more detailed information about the above mentioned dinornis, or dynosaurus, or whatever he called it, and explaining why more and more funds were required. it seems the professor was tangled up in quite a serious dispute with the canadian authorities. some indignant english residents of canada had aroused the alarm of canadians, by pointing out that dynosaureses were worth as much as radium, and that a mere yankee should not be permitted to carry off those fossilized bones of the original inhabitants of canada, which ought, instead, to be donated to the noble english nation across the sea. as jerry paced his floor he paused to reread the words of the motto recently pinned upon his wall, and, of course, it was as follows: "honi soit qui mal y pense." that was enough for jerry. there was no question of the fact that he had been "a pig and a brute," terms often in these days applied by himself to himself. sunny was certainly not to be blamed for the accident of slipping from the arm of his chair. true, he had already told her that she was not to sit on that arm, but that was a minor matter, and there was no occasion for his making a "mountain out of a molehill." having arrived at the conclusion that, as usual, he, not sunny, was the one to blame, it was in the nature of jerry that he should hurriedly descend to admit his fault. downstairs, therefore again, and into the now empty studio. sounds came from the direction of the kitchen that were entirely too sweet to belong to the "pie-faced" hatton, whose disgusting recent mirth might mean the loss of his job, ominously thought jerry. in the kitchen sunny was discovered on her knees with her lips close to a small hole in the floor in the corner of the room. she was half whistling, half whispering, and she was scattering something into and about that hole, which had been apparently cut out with a vegetable knife, that looked very much like cheese and breadcrumbs. presently the amazed jerry saw first one and then another tiny face appear at that hole, and there then issued forth a full-fledged family of the mouse species, young and old, large and small, male and female. the explanation of the previously inexplicable appearance in the studio of countless mice was now perfectly clear, and the guiltlessness of that accused janitor made visible. jerry's ward had been feeding and cultivating mice! at his exclamation, she arose reproachfully, the mice scampering back into their hole. "oh!" said sunny, regret, not guilt, visible on her face, "you are fright away my honourable mice, and thas hees time eat on hees dinner." she put the rest of her crumbs into the hole, and called down coaxingly to her pets that breakfast would be ready next day. "you mustn't feed mice, you little fool!" burst from jerry. "they'll be all over the house. they are now. everybody in the building's kicking about it." "honourable mice very good animals," said sunny with conviction. "mebbe some you and my ancestor are mice now. you kinnod tell 'bout those. mice got very honourable history ad japan. i am lig' them very much." "that'll do. don't say another word. i'll fix 'em. hi! you, hatton! doggone you, you must have known about this." "very sorry, sir, but orders from you, sir, was to allow miss sunny to have her way in the kitchen, sir. 'hi tries to obey you, sir, and 'hi 'adn't the 'eart to deprive miss sunny of her honly pets, sir. she's honly yuman, sir, and being alone 'hall day, so young, sir, 'as 'ankerings for hinnocent things to play with." "that'll do, hatton. nail up that hole. get busy." nevertheless, hatton's words sunk into the soul of jerry. to think that even the poor working man was kinder to little sunny than was he! he ignored the fact that as hatton nailed tin over the guilty hole his shoulders were observed to be shaking, and those spasmodic clucks emanated at intervals also from him. in fact, hatton, in these days, had lost all his previously polished composure. that is to say, at inconvenient moments, he would burst into this uncontrollable clucking, as for instance, when waiting on table, observing a guest devouring some special edible concocted by sunny, he retired precipitately from service at the table to the kitchen, to be discovered there by the irate jerry, who had followed him, sitting on a chair with tears running down his cheeks. to the threatened kicking if he didn't get up and behave himself, hatton returned: "oh, sir, hi ham honly yuman, and the gentleman was ravim' so about them 'spinnuges,' sir, has 'ees hafter calling them." "well, what are they then?" demanded jerry. "them's weeds, sir," whispered hatton wiping his eyes. "miss sunny, i seen her diggin' them up in the lot across the way, and she come up the fire escape with them in 'er petticoat, sir, and she 'ad four cats in the petticoat also, sir. she's feedin' arf the population of cats in this neighbourhood, sir." jerry had been only irritated at that time. he knew that sunny's "weeds" were perfectly edible and far more toothsome in fact than mere spinach. trust her japanese knowledge to know what was what in the vegetable kingdom. however, mice were a more serious matter. there was an iron clad rule in the building that no live stock of any kind, neither dogs, cats, parrots, or birds or reptiles of any description, (babies included in the ban) were to be lodged on these de luxe premises. still, as jerry watched sunny's brimming eyes, the eyes of one who sees her dear friends imprisoned and doomed to execution, while hatton nailed the tin over the holes, he felt extremely mean and cruel. "i'm awfully sorry, sunny, old scout," he said, "but you know we can't possibly have _mice_ on the place. now if it were something like--like, well a dog, for instance----" "i _are_ got a nize dog," said sunny, beginning to smile through her tears. apprehension instantly replaced the compunction on jerry's face--apprehension that turned to genuine horror, however, when sunny opened the window onto the fire escape, and showed him a large grocer's box, upholstered and padded with a red article that looked suspiciously like a japanese petticoat. digging under this padded silk, sunny brought forth the yellowest, orneriest, scurviest and meanest-looking specimen of the dog family that it had ever been jerry's misfortune to see. she caught this disreputable object to her breast, and nestled her darling little chin against the wriggling head, that persisted in ducking up to release a long red tongue that licked her face with whines of delight and appreciation. "sunny! for the love of mike! where in the name of all the pagan gods and goddesses of japan did you get that god-forsaken mutt from? if you wanted a dog, why in sam hill didn't you tell me, and i'd have gotten you a regular dog--if they'd let me in the house." "jerry, he are a regular dog also. i buyed him from the butcher gentleman, who was mos' kind, and he charge me no moaney for those dog, bi-cause he are say he are poor mans, and those dog came off those street and eat him up those sausage. so that butcher gentleman he are sell him to me, and he are my own dog, and i are love my itchy mos' bes' of all dogs." and she hugged her little cur protectingly to her breast, her bright eyes with the defiant look of a little mother at bay. "itchy!" "thad are my dog's name. the butcher gentleman, he say he are scratch on his itch all those time, so i are name him itchy. also i are cure on those itch spot, for i are wash him every day, and now he are so clean he got only two flea left on his body." "by what process of mathematics, will you tell me, did you arrive at the figure of two?" demanded the stunned young man, thrusting his two fists deep into his pocket and surveying sunny and the aforesaid dog as one might curious specimens in the bronx zoo. "two? two flea?" sunny passed her hand lovingly and sympathetically over her dog's yellow body, and replied so simply that even an extremely dense person would have been able to answer that arithmetic problem. "he are scratch him in two place only." jerry threw back his head and burst into immoderate laughter. he laughed so hard that he was obliged to sit down on a chair, while hatton on the floor sat down solidly also, and desisted with his hammering. jerry's mirth having had full sway, hands in pocket he surveyed sunny, as, lovingly, she returned her protesting cur to its silken retreat. "sunny! sunny!" said jerry, shaking his head. "you'll be the death of me yet." sunny regarded him earnestly at that. "no, jerry, do not say those. i are not want to make you death. thas very sad--for die." "what are we going to do about it? they'll never let you keep a dog here. against the rules." "no, no, it are no longer 'gainst those rule. i are speag wiz the janitor gentleman, and he are say: 'thas all ride, seein' it's you!'" "he did, did he? got around him too, did you? you'll have the whole place demoralised if you keep on." "i are also speag ad those landlord," confessed sunny innocently, "bi-cause he are swear on those janitor gentleman, account someone ad these house are spik to him thad i are got dog. and thad landlord gentleman he come up here ad these studio, and i show him those dog, and he say he are nize dog, and thad those fire escape he is not _inside_. so i nod break those rule, and he go downstairs spik ad those lady mek those complain, and he say he doan keer if she dam clear out this house. he doan lig' her which even." jerry threw up his hands. "you win, sunny! do as you like. fill the place full if you want to. there's horses and cows to be had if they strike your fancy, and the zoo is full of other kind of live stock. take your choice." sunny, indeed, did proceed to take her choice. it is true she did not bring horses and cows and wild animals into jerry's apartment; but she passed the word to her doting friends, and in due time the inmates of that duplex apartment made quite a considerable family, with promise of early increase. there was besides itchy, count and countess taguchi, overfed canaries, who taught sunny a new kind of whistle; mr. and mrs. satsuma, goldfish who occupied an ornate glass and silver dish, fern and rock lined donated by jinx, and miss spring morning, a large persian cat, whom sunny named after her old friend of the teahouse of a thousand joys, but whose name should have been mr. spring morning. it was a very happy family indeed, and in time the master of the house became quite accustomed to the pets (pests he called them at first), and had that proud feeling moreover of the contented man of family. he often fed the satsumas and taguchis himself, and actually was observed to scratch the head of itchy, who in these days penetrated into the various rooms of the apartment (sunny having had especial permission from the janitor gentleman) so long as his presence was noiseless. he wore on his scrawny neck a fine leather and gilt collar that monty sent all the way to philadelphia to get for sunny, thereby earning the bitter resentment of his kid brother, who considered that collar his by rightful inheritance from monty's own recent kid days. monty's remorse upon "swiping" said collar was shortlived, however, for sunny's smile and excitement and the fun they had putting it on itchy more than compensated for any bitter threats of an unreasonable kid brother. besides monty brought peace in that disturbed direction by sending the younger potter a brand new collar, not, it is true, of the history of the one taken, but much more shiny and semi-adjustable. chapter x on the 20th of april, sunny's friend, "mr. dear monty" as she called him (j. lamont potter, jr., was his real name), obtained an indefinite leave of absence from the hospital, and called upon sunny in the absence of jerry hammond. he came directly to the object of his call almost as soon as sunny admitted him. while indeed she was assisting him to remove that nice, loosely hanging taupe coloured spring coat, that looked so well on monty, he swung around, as his arms came out of his coat sleeves, and made sunny an offer of his heart and soul. these the girl very regretfully refused. follows the gist of sunny's remarks in rejection of the offer: "monty, i do not wan' gettin' marry wiz you jos yet, bi-cause you are got two more year to worg on those hospital; then you are got go unto those john hoppakins for post--something kind worg also. then you are go ad those college and hospital in hy----" she tried to say heidelberg, but the word was too much for her, and he broke in impetuously: "listen, sunny, those _were_ my plans, but everything's changed now, since i met you. i've decided to cut it all out and settle down and marry. i've got my degree, and can hang out my shingle. we'll have to economize a bit at first, because the governor, no doubt, will cut me out for doing this; but i'm not in swaddling clothes, and i'll do as i like. so what do you say, sunny?" "i say, thas nod ride do those. your honourable father, he are spend plenty moany for you, and thas unfilial do lig' thad. i thang you, monty, but i are sawry i kinnod do lig' you ask." "but look here, sunny, there are whole heaps of fellows--dubs who never go beyond taking their degree, who go to practising right away, and i can do as they do, as far as that goes, and with you i should worry whether i go up in medicine or not." "but, monty, i _wan_ see you go up--ho! up, way high to those top. thas mos' bes' thing do for gentleman. i do nod lig' man who stay down low on ground. thas nod nize. i do nod wan' make marry wiz gentleman lig' those." "we-el, i suppose i could go on with the work and study. if i did, would you wait for me? would you, sunny?" "i do not know, monty. how i kin see all those year come?" "well, but you can promise me, can't you?" "no, monty, bi-cause mebbe i goin' die, and then thas break promise. thas not perlite do lig' those." "pshaw! there's no likelihood at all of your dying. you're awfully healthy. anyone can see it by your colouring. by jove, sunny, you have the prettiest complexion of any girl i've ever seen. your cheeks are just like flowers. die! you're bugs to think of it even. so you are perfectly safe in promising." "we-el, then i promise that mebbe after those five, six year when you are all troo, _if_ i are not marry wiz someone else, then i go _consider_ marry wiz you, monty." this gracious speech was sweetened by an engaging smile, and monty, believing that "half a loaf is better than no loaf" showed his pleasure, though his curiosity prompted him to make anxious inquiry as to possible rivals. "bobs asked you yet?" "no--not yet." "you wouldn't take him if he did, would you, sunny?" "no. not yet." "or any time. say that." sunny laughed. "any time, monty." "and jinx? what about jinx?" "he are always my good friend." "you wouldn't marry him, would you?" "no. i are lig' him as frien'." monty pursued no further. he knew of the existence of jerry's miss falconer. dashed, but not hopeless monty withdrew. that was on the 20th of april. bob's proposal followed on the 22nd. he inveigled sunny into accompanying him to his polished and glorified flat, which was presided over by an ample bosomed and smiling "mammy" whom bobs had especially imported from the sunny south. his guest, having exclaimed and enthused over the really cosy and bright little flat, bobs, with his fine, clever face aglow, asked her to share it with him. the request frightened sunny. she had exhausted considerable of her stock of excuses against matrimony to monty, and she did not want to see that look of hope fade from mr. dear bobs' face. "oh, bobs, i are _thad_ sorry, but me? i do not wan make marry jos yet. please you waid for some udder day when mebbe perhaps i go change those mind." "it's all right, sunny." bobs took his medicine like a man, his clean cut face slightly paling, as he followed with a question the lightness of which did not deceive the distressed sunny: "you're not engaged to anyone else, are you, sunny?" "emgaged? what are those, bobs?" "you haven't promised any other lucky dog that you'll marry him, have you?" "no-o." sunny shook her bright head. "no one are ask me yet, 'cept monty, and i are say same ting to him." "good!" bobs beamed through his disappointment on her. "while there's life there's hope, you know." he felt that jinx's chances were slim, and he, too, knew of miss falconer and jerry. sunny, by no means elated by her two proposals, confided in hatton, and received sage advice: "miss sunny, hi'm not hin a position exactly to advise you, and hits 'ardly my place, miss, but so long as you hasks my hadvice, i gives it you grattus. now mr. potter, 'ees a trifle young for matrimunny, miss--a trifle young, and mr. mapson, i 'ear that 'ees not got hany too much money, and hits a beggarly profession 'ees followin', miss. i 'ave 'eard this from mr. jerry's hown folks, 'oo more than once 'as cast haspirations against mr. jerry's friends, but hi takes it that wot they're sayin' comes near to the truth habout the newspaper as a perfession, miss. now there's mr. crawford, miss----" hatton's voice took on both a respectful and a confidential tone as he came to jinx. "now, hi flatters myself that hi'm some judge of yuman nature, miss, and i make bold to say, hif i may, miss, that mr. crawford his about halso to pop the 'appy question to you, miss. now, hif hi was hin your place, miss, 'ees the gentleman hi'd be after 'ooking. his people hare of the harristocrissy of hamerica--so far, miss, as hamerica can 'ave harristocrissy--and mr. crawford his the hair to a varst fortune, miss. there's no telling to wot 'eights you might climb if you buckles up with mr. crawford, miss." "ho! hatton, i lig' all those my frien' jos same. me? i would lig' marry all those, but i kinnod do." "'ardly, miss, 'ardly. hamerica is 'ardly a pollagamous country, though 'hit his the 'ome of the mormon people." "mormon?" "a church, miss; a sex of people wots given to pollagummy, which is, i takes it, too 'ard and big a word for you, miss, bein' a forriner, to hunderstand, so hi'll explain a bit clearer, miss. the mormon people hacquire several wives, some helders 'avin' the reputation of bein' in the class with hour hown king 'enry the heighth, and worse, miss,--with solomon 'imself, i 'ave 'eard it said." "ho-h-a-!" said sunny thoughtfully. "thad is very nize--those mormon. thas lig' japanese emperor. some time he got lots wife." hatton wiped the sweat from his brow. he had gotten upon a subject somewhat beyond his depths, and the young person before him rather scandalised his ideas of what a young lady's views on such matters should be. he had hoped to shock sunny somewhat. instead she sighed with an undeniably envious accent as he told her of the reprehensible mormons. after a moment she asked very softly: "hatton, mebbe jerry ask me those same question." hatton turned his back, and fussed with the dishes in the sink. he too knew about miss falconer. "'ardly, miss, 'ardly." "why not, hatton?" "if you'll pardon me, i 'ave a great deal of work before me. hi'm in a 'urry. 'ave you fed the count and countess taguchi, may i ask, miss." "hatton, _if_ a man _not_ ask girl to make marry wiz him, what she can do?" "well now, miss, you got me there. has far as hi'm hable to see personally, miss, there haren't nothing left for 'er to do except wait for the leap year." "leap year? what are those, hatton?" "a hodd year, miss--comes just in so often, miss, due to come next year, halso. when the leap year comes, miss, then the ladies do the popping--they harsks the 'appy question, miss." "o-h-h-! thas very nize. i wish it are leap year now," said sunny wistfully. "hit'll come, miss. hit's on hit's way. a few months and then the ladies' day will dawn," and hatton, moving about with cheer, clucked at the thought. chapter xi a week after bobs proposed to sunny, jinx, shining like the rising sun by an especially careful grooming administered by his valet, a flower adorning his lapel, and a silk hat topping his head, with a box of chocolates large enough to hold an easter bonnet in his hand, and a smaller box of another kind in his vest pocket, presented himself at jerry hammond's studio. flowers preceded and followed this last of sunny's ardent suitors. he was received by a young person arrayed in a pink pongee smock, sleeves rolled up, revealing a pair of dimpled arms, hair in distracting disorder, and a little nose on which seductively perched a blotch of flour, which the infatuated jinx was requested to waft away with his silken handkerchief. sunny's cheeks were flushed from close proximity to that gas stove, and her eyes were bright with the warfare which she waged incessantly upon the aforesaid honourable stove. in the early days of her appearance at the studio--by the way, she had been domiciled there a whole month--sunny's operations at the gas stove had had disastrous results. her attempt to boil water by the simple device of turning on the gas, as she did the electric light was alarming in its odorous effects, but her efforts to blow out the oven was almost calamitous, and caused no end of excitement, for it singed her hair and eyebrows and scorched an arm that required the persistent and solicitous attention of her four friends, a doctor and the thoroughly agitated hatton, on whose head poured the full vials of jerry's wrath and blame. in fact, this accident almost drove hatton to desert what he explained to sunny was the "water wagon." after that sunny was strictly ordered by jerry to keep out of the kitchen. realising, however, that she could not be trusted on that score, he took half a day off from the office, and gave her a full course of instruction in the mysteries and works of said gas stove. it should be assumed therefore that by this time sunny should have acquired at least a primary knowledge of the stove. not so, however. she never lit the oven but she threw salt about to propitiate the oni (goblin) which she was sure had its home somewhere in that strange fire, and she hesitated to touch any of the levers once the fire was lit. most of the dishes created by sunny were more or less under the eye of hatton, but on this day hatton had stepped out to the butcher's. therefore jinx's arrival was hailed by sunny with appreciation and relief, and she promptly lead the happy fellow to the kitchen and solicited his advice. now jinx, the son of the plutocratic rich, had never been inside a kitchen since his small boyhood, and then his recollection of said portion of the house was of a vast white place, where tiles and marble and white capped cooks prevailed, and small boys were chuckled over or stared at and whispered about. the dimensions of sunny's kitchen were about seven by nine feet, and it is well to mention at this moment that the room registered 95 degrees fahrenheit. jinx weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds, stripped. his emotions, his preparations, his hurry to enter the presence of his charmer, to say nothing of a volcanic heart, all contributed to add to the heat and discomfort of the fat young man down whose ruddy cheeks the perspiration rolled. jinx had come upon a mission that in all times in the history of the world, subsequent to cave days, has called for coolness, tact, and as attractive a physical seeming as it is possible to attain. sunny drew her friend along to that gas stove, kneeled on the floor, making room for him to kneel beside her--no easy "stunt" for a fat man--opened the lower door and revealed to him the jets on full blaze. jinx shook his head. the problem was beyond him, but even as his head shook he sniffed a certain fragrant odour that stole directly to a certain point in jinx's anatomy that sunny would quaintly have designated as his "honourable insides." the little kitchen, despite its heat, contained in that oven, jinx knew, that which was more attractive than anything the cool studio could offer. seating himself heavily on a frail kitchen chair, which creaked ominously under his weight, jinx awaited hopefully what he felt sure was soon to follow. in due time sunny opened the upper door of the oven, withdrew two luscious looking pans of the crispest brown rice cakes, plentifully besprinkled with dates and nuts and over which she dusted powdered sugar, and passing by the really suffering jinx she transferred the pans to the window ledge, saying with a smile: "when he are cool, i giving you one, jinx." wiping her hands on the roller towel, she had jinx pull the smock over her head, and revealed her small person in blue taffeta frock, which jinx himself had had the honour of choosing for her. unwillingly, and with one longing backward look at those cakes, jinx followed sunny into the studio. here, removed from the intoxicating effects of that kitchen, sunny having his full attention again, he came to the object of his call. jinx sat forward on the edge of his chair, and his round, fat face looked so comically like the man in the moon's that sunny could not forbear smiling at him affectionately. "ho! jinx, how you are going to lig' those cake when he is getting cold." jinx liked them hot just as well. however, he was not such a gourmand that mere rice and date cakes could divert him from the purpose of his call. he sighed so deeply and his expression revealed such a condition of melancholy appeal that sunny, alarmed, moved over and took his face up in her hand, examining it like a little doctor, head cocked on one side. "jinx, you are sick? what you are eat? show me those tongue!" "aw, it's nothing, sunny--nothing to do with my tongue. it's--it's--just a little heart trouble, sunny." "heart! that are bad place be sick! you are ache on him, mr. dear jinx?" "ye-eh--some." "i sawry! how i are sawry! you have see doctor." "you're the only doctor i need." which was true enough. it was surprising the healing effects upon jinx's aching heart of the solicitous and sympathetic hovering about him of sunny. "oh, jinx, i go at those telephone ride away, get him mr. doctor here come. i 'fraid mebbe you more sick than mebbe you know." "no, no--never mind a doctor." jinx held her back by force. "look-a-here, sunny, i'll tell you just what's the matter with my heart. i'm--i'm--in love!" "oh--love. i have hear those word bi-fore, but i have never feel him," said sunny wistfully. "you'll feel it some day all right," groaned jinx. "and you'll know it too when you've got it." "ad japan nobody--love. thas not nize word speag ad japan." "gosh! it's the nicest word in the language in america. you can't help speaking it. you can't help feeling it. when you're in love, sunny, you think day and night and every hour and minute and second of the day of the same person. that's love, sunny." "ah!" whispered sunny, her eyes very bright and dewey, "i are _know_ him then!" and she stood with that rapt look, scarcely hearing jinx, and brought back to earth only when he took her hand, and clung to it with both his own somewhat flabby ones. "sunny, i'm head over heels in love with you. put me out of my misery. say you'll be mrs. crawford, and you'll see how quickly this old bunged up heart of mine will heal." "oh, jinx, you are ask _me_ to make marry wiz you?" "you bet your life i am. gosh! i've got an awful case on you, sunny." "ho! i sawry i kinnod do thad to-day. i am not good ad my healt'. axscuse me. mebbe some odder day i do so." "any day will do. any day that suits you, if you'll just give me your promise--if you'll just be engaged to me." "engaged?" bobs had already explained to her what that meant, but she repeated it to gain time. "why, yes--don't they have engagements in japan?" "no. marriage broker go ad girl's father and boy's father and make those marriage." "well, this is a civilised land. we do things right here. you're a lucky girl to have escaped from japan. here, in this land, we first get engaged, say for a week or month or even a year--only a short time will do for you and me, sunny--and then, well, we marry. how about it?" sunny considered the question from several serious angles, very thoughtful, very much impressed. "jinx, i do nod like to make marriage, bi-cause thas tie me up wiz jos one frien' for hosban'." "but you don't want more than one husband?" jinx remembered hearing somewhere that the japanese were a polygamous nation, but he thought that only applied to the favoured males of the race. "no--o thas very nize for mormon man i am hear of, bud----" "not fit for a woman," warmly declared jinx. "all i ask of you, sunny, is that you'll promise to marry me. if you'll do that, you'll make me the happiest bug in these united states. i'll be all but looney, and that's a fact." "i sawry, jinx, but me? i kinnod do so." jinx relapsed into a state of the darkest gloom. looking out from the depths of the big, soft overstuffed chair, he could see not a gleam of light, and presently groaned: "i suppose if i weren't such a mass of flesh and fat, i might stand a show with you. it's hell to be fat, i'll tell the world." "jinx, i lig' those fat. it grow nize on you. and _pleass_ do not loog so sad on you face. wait, i go get you something thas goin' make you look smile again." she disappeared into the kitchen, returning with the whole platter of cookies, still quite warm, and irresistibly odorous and toothsome looking. jinx, endeavouring to refuse, had to close his eyes to steady him in his resolve, but he could not close his nose, nor his mouth either, when sunny thrust one of the delicious pieces into his mouth. she wooed him back to a semi-normal condition by feeding him crisp morsels of his favourite confection, nor was it possible to resist something that pushed against one's mouth, and once having entered that orifice revealed qualities that appealed to the very best in one's nature. jinx was not made of the spartan stuff of heroes, and who shall blame him if nature chose to endow him with a form of rich proportions that included "honourable insides" whose capacity was unlimited. so, till the very last cooky, and a sense of well being and fulness, the sad side of life pushed aside _pro tem_, jinx was actually able to smile indulgently at the solicitous sunny. she clapped her hands delightedly over her success. jinx's fingers found their way to his vest pocket. he withdrew a small velvet box, and snapped back the lid. silently he held it toward sunny. her eyes wide, she stared at it with excited rapture. "oh-h! thas mos' beautifullest thing i are ever see." never, in fact, had her eyes beheld anything half so lovely as that shining platinum work of art with its immense diamond. "just think," said jinx huskily, "if you say the word, you can have stones like that covering you all over." "all over!" she made an expressive motion of her hands which took in all of her small person. melancholy again clouded jinx's face. after all, he did not want sunny to marry him for jewelry. "i tell you what you do, sunny. wear this for me, will you? wear it for a while, anyway, and then when you decide finally whether you'll have me or not, keep it or send it back, as you like." he had slipped the ring onto the third finger of sunny's left hand, and holding that had made him a bit bolder. sunny, unsuspecting and sympathetic, let her hand rest in his, the ring up, where she could admire it to her heart's content. "look a here, sunny, will you give me a kiss, then--just one. the ring's worth that, isn't it?" sunny retreated hurriedly, almost panically? "oh, jinx, please you excuse me to-day, bi-cause i _lig'_ do so, but mr. hatton he are stand ad those door and loog on you." "damn hatty!" groaned jinx bitterly, and with a sigh that heaved his big breast aloft, he picked up his hat and cane, and ponderously moved toward the door. in the lower hall of the studio apartment, who should the crestfallen jinx encounter but his old-time friend, jerry hammond, returning from his eight hours' work at the office. his friend's greeting was both curt and cold, and there was no mistaking that look of dislike and disapproval that the frowning face made no effort to disguise. "here again, jinx. better move in," was jerry's greeting. jinx muttered something inarticulate and furious, and for a fat man he made quick time across the hall and out into the street, where he climbed with a heavy heart into the great roadster, which he had fondly hoped might also carry sunny with him upon a prolonged honeymoon. chapter xii sunny poured jerry's tea with a hand turned ostentatiously in a direction that revealed to his amazed and indignant eye that enormous stone of fire that blazed on the finger of sunny's left hand. his appetite, always excellent, failed him entirely, and after conquering the first surge of impulses that were almost murderous, he lapsed into an ominous silence, which no guile nor question from the girl at the head of his table could break. a steady, a cold, a biting glare, a murmured monosyllabic reply was all the response she received to her amiable overtures. his ill temper, moreover, reached out to the inoffensive hatton, whom he ordered to clear out, and stay out, and if it came down to that get out altogether, rather than hang around snickering in that way. thus jerry revealed a side to his character hitherto unsuspected by sunny, though several rumblings and barks from the "dog in the manger" would have apprized one less innocent than she. they finished that meal--or rather sunny did--in silence electric with coming strife. then jerry suddenly left the table, strode into the little hall, took down his hat and coat, and was about to go, heaven knows where, when sunny, at his elbow, sought to restrain him by force. she took his sleeve and tenaciously held to it, saying: "jerry, do not go out these night. i are got some news i lig' tell to you." "let go my arm. i'm not interested in your news. i've a date of my own." "but jerry----" "i say, let go my arm, will you?" the last was said in a rising voice, as he reached the crest of irritation, and jerking his sleeve so roughly from her clasp, he accomplished the desired freedom, but the look on sunny's face stayed with him all the way down those apartment stairs--he ignored the elevator--and to the door of the house. there he stopped short, and without more ado, retraced his steps, sprang up the stairs in a great hurry, and jerking open his door again, jerry returned to his home. he discovered sunny curled on the floor, with her head buried in the seat of his favourite chair--the one occupied that afternoon by the mischief-making jinx. "sunny! i'm awfully sorry i was such a beast. say, little girl, look here, i'm not myself. i don't know what i'm doing." sunny slowly lifted her face, revealing to the relieved but indignant jerry a face on which it is true there were traces of a tear or two, but which nevertheless smiled at him quite shamelessly and even triumphantly. jerry felt foolish, and he was divided between a notion to remain at home with the culprit--she had done nothing especially wrong, but he felt that she was to blame for something or other--or follow his first intention of going out for the night--just where, he didn't know--but anywhere would do to escape the thought that had come to him--the thought of sunny's probable engagement to jinx. however, sunny gave him no time to debate the matter of his movements for the evening. she very calmly assisted him to remove his coat, hung up his hat, and when she had him comfortably ensconced in his favourite chair, had herself lit his pipe and handed it to him, she drew up a stool and sat down in front of his knees, just as if, in fact, she was entirely guiltless of an engagement of which jerry positively did not intend to approve. her audacity, moreover, was such that she did not hesitate to lay her left hand on jerry's knee, where he might get the full benefit of the radiant light from that ring. he looked at it, set down his pipe on the stand at his elbow, and stirred in that restless way which portends hasty arising, when sunny: "jerry, jinx are come to-day to ask me make marriage with him." "the big stiff. i pity any girl that has to go through life with that fathead." "ho! i are always lig' thad fat grow on jinx. it look very good on him. i are told him so." "matter of taste of course," snarled jerry, fascinated by the twinkling of that ring in spite of himself, and feeling at that moment an emotion that was dangerously like hatred for the girl he had done so much for. "monty and bobs are also ask me marry wiz them." sunny dimpled quite wickedly at this, but jerry failed to see any humour in the matter. he said with assumed loftiness: "well, well, proposals raining down on you in every direction. your janitor gentleman and landlord asked you too?" "no-o, not yit, but those landlord are say he lig' take me for ride some nize days on his car ad those park." "the hell he did!" jerry sat up with such a savage jerk at this that he succeeded in upsetting the innocent hand resting so confidingly upon his knee. "who asked him around here anyway?" demanded jerry furiously. "just because he owns this building doesn't mean he has a right to impose himself on the tenants, and i'll tell him so damn quick." "but, jerry, _i_ are ask him come up here. itchy fall down on those fire escape, and he are making so much noise on this house when he cry, that everybody who live on this house open those windows on court, and i are run down quick on those fire escape and everybody also run out see what's all those trouble. then i am cry so hard, bi-cause i are afraid itchy are hurt himself too bad, bi-cause he also are cry very loud." sunny lifted her nose sky-ward, illustrating how the dog's cries had emanated from him. "so then, everybody _very_ kind at me and itchy, and the janitor gentleman carry him bag ad these room, and the landlord gentleman say thas all ride henceforth i have thad little dog live wiz me ad these room also. he say it is very hard for liddle girl come from country way off be 'lone all those day, and mebbe some day he take me and itchy for ride ad those park. so i are say, 'thang you, i will like go vaery much, thang you.'" "well, make up your mind to it, you're not going, do you understand? i'll have no landlords taking you riding in any parks." having delivered this ultimatum as viciously as the circumstances called for, jerry leaned back in pretended ease and awaited further revelations from sunny. "--but," went on sunny, as if finishing a sentence, "that landlord gentleman are not also ask me marry wiz him, jerry. he already got big wife. i are see her. she are so big as jinx, and she smile on me very kind, and say she have hear of me from her hosban', that i am very lonely girl from japan, and thas very sad for me, and she goin' to take those ride wiz me also." "hm!" jerry felt ashamed of himself, but he did not propose to reveal it, especially when that little hand had crept back to its old place on his knee, and the diamond flaunted brazenly before his gaze. nobody but a "fat-head" would buy a diamond of that size anyway, was jerry's opinion. there was something extremely vulgar about diamonds. they were not nearly as pretty as rubies or emeralds or even turquoise, and jerry had never liked them. of course, miss falconer, like every other girl, had to have her diamond, and jerry recalled with irritation how, as a sophomore, he had purchased that first diamond. he neither enjoyed the expedition nor the memory of it. jinx's brazen ring made him think of miss falconer's. however, the thought of miss falconer was, for some reason or other, distasteful to jerry in these days, and, moreover, the girl before him called for his full attention as usual. "so you decided on jinx, did you? bobs and monty in the discard and the affluent fat and fair jinx the winner." "jerry, i are _prefer_ marry all my friends, but i say 'no' to each one of those." "what are you wearing jinx's ring for then?" "bi-cause it are loog nize on my hands, and he _ask_ me wear it there." new emotions were flooding over the contrite jerry. something was racing like champagne through his veins, and he suddenly realised how "damnably jolly" life was after all. still, even though sunny had admitted that no engagement existed between her and jinx, there was that ring. poor little girl! a fellow had to teach her all of the western conventions, she was that innocent and simple. "sunny, you don't want to wear a fellow's ring unless you intend to marry him, don't you understand that? the ring means that you are promised to him, do you get me?" "no! but i _are_ promise to jinx. i are promise that i will consider marry him some day if i do not marry some other man i _wan'_ ask me also." "another man. who----?" sunny's glance directed full upon him left nothing to the imagination. jerry's heart began to thump in a manner that alarmed him. "jerry," said sunny, "i going to wear jinx's ring _until_ that man also asking me. i _wan_ him do so, bi-cause i are lig' him mos' bes' of all my frien'. i think----" she had both of her hands on his knees now, and was leaning up looking so wistfully into his face that he tried to avert his own gaze. in spite of the lump that rose in his throat, in spite of the frantic beating of his heart, jerry did not ask the question that the girl was waiting to hear. after a moment, she said gently: "jerry, hatty are tell me that nex' year he are come a leap. then, he say, thas perlite for girl ask man make marriage wiz her. jerry, _i_ are goin' to wait till those year of leap are come, and then, me? i are goin' ask _you_ those question." for one thrilling moment there was a great glow in the heart of jerry hammond, and then his face seemed suddenly to turn grey and old. his voice was husky and there was a mist before his eyes. "sunny, i must tell you--sunny, i--i--am already engaged to be married to an american girl--a girl my people want me to marry. i've been engaged to her since my eighteenth year. i--_don't_ look at me like that, sunny, or----" the girl's head dropped to the level of the floor, her hands slipping helplessly from his knees. she seemed all in a moment to become purely japanese. there was that in her bowed head that was strangely reminiscent of some old and vanished custom of her race. she did not raise her head, even as she spoke: "i wishin' you ten thousand year of joy. sayonara for this night." * * * * * sunny had left him alone. jerry felt the inability to stir. he stared into the dying embers of his fire with the look of one who has seen a vision that has disappeared ere he could sense its full significance. it seemed at that moment to jerry as if everything desirable and precious in life were within reach, but he was unable to seize it. it was like his dream of beauty, ever above, but beyond man's power to completely touch. sunny was like that, as fragile, as elusive as beauty itself. the thought of his having hurt sunny tore his heart. she had aroused in him every impulse that was chivalrous. the longing to guard and cherish her was paramount to all other feelings. what was it professor barrowes had warned him of? that he should refrain from taking the bloom from the rose. had he, then, all unwittingly, injured little sunny? mechanically, jerry went into the hall, slowly put his hat on his head and passed out into the street. he walked up and down 67th street and along central park west to 59th street, retracing his steps three times to the studio building, and turning back again. his mind was in a chaos, and he knew not what to do. only one clear purpose seemed to push through the fog, the passionate determination to care for sunny. she came first of all. indeed she occupied the whole of his thought. the claim of the girl who had waited for him seven years seemed of minor importance when compared with the claim of the girl he loved. the disinclination to hurt another had kept him from breaking an engagement that had never been of his own desire, but now jerry knew there could be no more evasions. the time had come when he must face the issue squarely. his sense of honour demanded that he make a clean breast of the entire matter to miss falconer. he reached this resolve while still walking on 59th street. it gave him no more than time to catch the night train to greenwich. as he stepped aboard the train that was bearing him from sunny to miss falconer all of the fogs had cleared from jerry's mind. he was conscious of an immense sense of relief. it seemed strange to him that he had never taken this step before. judging the girl by himself, he felt that he knew exactly what she would say when with complete candour he should "lay his cards upon the table." he felt sure that she was a good sport. he did not delude himself with the idea that an engagement that had been irksome to himself had been of any joy to her. it was simply, so he told himself, a mistake of their parents. they had planned and worked this scheme, and into it they had dumped these two young people at a psychological moment. chapter xiii for two days sunny waited for jerry to return. she was lonely and most unhappy, but hers was a buoyant personality, and withal her hurt she kept up a bright face before her little world of that duplex studio. in spite of the two nights when no sleep at all came, and she lay through the long hours trying vainly not to think of the wife of jerry hammond, in the daytime she moved about the small concerns of the apartment with a smile of cheer and found a measure of comfort in her pets. it was all very well, however, to hug itchy passionately to her breast, and assure herself that she had in her arms one true and loving friend. always she set the dog sadly down again, saying: "ah, liddle honourable dog, you are jos liddle dog, thas all. how you can know whas ache on my heart. i do nod lig' you more for to-day." she fed mr. and mrs. satsuma, and whistled and sang to them. after all, a canary is only a canary. its bright, hard eye is blank and cold. even the goldfish, swimming to the top of the honourable bowl, and picking the crumb so cunningly from her finger, lost their charm for her. miss spring morning had long since been vanished with severe japanese reproaches for his inhuman treatment of sunny's first friends, the honourable mice, several of whose little bodies sunny had confided to a grave she herself had dug, with tears that aroused the janitor gentleman's sympathy, so that he permitted the interment in the back yard. the victrola, working incessantly the first day, supplied merely noise. on the second morning she banged the top impulsively down, and cried at caruso: "oh, i do not wan' hear your honourable voice to-day. shut you up!" midway in an aria from "rigoletto" the golden voice was quenched. she hovered about the telephone, and several times lifted the receiver, with the idea of calling one of her friends, but always she rejected the impulse. intuitively sunny knew that until the first pang of her refusal had passed her friends were better away from her. little comfort was to be extracted from hatton, who was acting in a manner that had sunny not been so absorbed by her own personal trouble would have caused her concern. hatton talked incessantly and feverishly and with tears about his missus, and what she had driven him to, and of how a poor man tries to do his duty in life, but women were ever trouble makers, and it was only "yuman nature" for a man to want a little pleasure, and he, hatton, had made this perfectly clear to mr. hammond when he had taken service with him. "a yuman being, miss," said hatton, "is yuman, and that's all there is to it. yuman nature 'as certain 'ankerings and its against yuman nature to gainsay them 'ankerings, if you'll pardon me saying so, miss." however, he assured sunny most earnestly that he was fighting the devil and all his works, which was just what "them 'ankerings" was, and he audibly muttered for her especial hearing in proof of his assertion several times through the day: "get thee be'ind me, satan." satan being "them 'ankerings, miss." in normal times sunny's fun and cheer would have been of invaluable assistance and diversion to hatton. indeed, his long abstention was quite remarkable since she had been there; but sunny, affect cheer as she might, could not hide from the sympathetic hatton's gaze the fact that she was most unhappy. in fact, sunny's sadness affected the impressionable hatton so that the second morning he could stand it no longer, and disappeared for several hours, to return, hiccoughing cravenly, and explaining: "i couldn't 'elp it, miss. my 'eart haches for you, and it ain't yuman nature to gainsay the yuman 'eart." "hatton," said sunny severely, "i are smell you on my nose. you are not smell good." "pardon me, miss," said hatton, beginning to weep. "hi'm sadly ashamed of myself, miss. if you'll pardon me, miss, i'll betake myself to less 'appy regions than mr. 'ammond's studio, miss, 'as it's my desire not to 'urt your sense of smell, miss. so if you'll pardon me, i'll say good-bye, miss, 'oping you'll be in a 'appier mood when next we meet." for the rest of that day there was no further sign from hatton. left thus alone in the apartment, sunny was sore put to find something to distract her, for all the old diversions, without jerry, began to pall. she wished wistfully that jerry had not forbidden her to make friends with other tenants in the house. she felt the strange need of a friend at this hour. there was one woman especially whom sunny would have liked to know better. she always waved to sunny in such a friendly way across the court, and once she called across to her: "do come over and see me. i want you to see some of the sketches i have made of you at the window." sunny pointed the lady out to jerry, and that young man's face became surprisingly inflamed and he ordered sunny so angrily not to continue an acquaintance with her unknown friend, that the poor child avoided going near the window for fear of giving offence. also, there was a gentleman who came and went periodically in the studio building, and whose admiring looks had all but embraced sunny even before she scraped an acquaintance with him. he did not live in this building, but came very frequently to call upon certain of the artists, including the lady across the court. like jinx, he always wore a flower in his buttonhole, but, unlike jinx, his clothes had a certain distinction that to the unsophisticated sunny seemed to spell the last word in style. she was especially fascinated by his tan-coloured spats, and once, examining them with earnest curiosity while waiting for the elevator, her glance arose to his face, and she met his all embracing smile with one of her own engaging ones. this man was in fact a well known dilettante and man about town, a dabbler a bit himself in the arts, but a monument of egotism. he had diligently built up a reputation as a patron and connoisseur of art. one sunday morning sunny came in from a little walk as far as the park, with itchy. in spite of an unexpectedly hard shower that had fallen soon after she had left, she returned smiling and perfectly dry; excited and delighted moreover over the fortune that had befallen her. "jerry!" she cried as soon as she entered, "i are git jost to those corner, when down him come those rain. so much blow! futen (the wind god) get very angery and blow me quick up street, but the rain fall down jos' lig' cloud are burst. streets flow lig' grade river. me? i are run quick and come up on steps of house, and there are five, ten other people also stand on those step and keep him dry. one gentleman he got beeg umberella. i feel sure that umberella it keep me dry. so i smile on those mans----" "you _what_?" "i make a smile on him. like these----" sunny illustrated innocently. "don't you know better than to smile at any man on the street?" sunny was taken aback. the japanese are a smiling nation, and the interchange of smiles among the sexes is not considered reprehensible; certainly not in the class from which sunny had come. "smile are not bad. he are kind thing, jerry. it make people feel happy, and it do lots good on those worl'. when i smile on thad gentlemen, he are smile ride bag on me ad once, and he take me by those arm, and say he bring me home all nize and dry. and, jerry, he say, he thing i am too nize piece--er--brick-brack--" bric-a-brac was a new word for sunny, but jerry recognised what she was trying to say--"to git wet. so he give me all those umberella. he bring me ride up ad these door, and he say he come see me very soon now as he lig' make sure i got good healt'. he are a very kind gentleman, jerry. here are his card." jerry took the card, glared at it, and began panically walking up and down the apartment, raging and roaring like an "angery tiger," as sunny eloquently described him to herself, and then flung around on her and read her such a scorching lecture that the girl turned pale with fright, and, as usual, the man was obliged to swallow his steam before it was all exploded. in parenthesis, it may be here added, that the orders given by jerry to that black boy at the telephone desk, embraced such a diabolical description of the injury that was destined to befall him should the personage in question ever step his foot across jerry's threshold, that sambo, his eyes rolling, never failed to assure the caller, who came very persistently thereafter, that "dat young lady she am move away, sah. yes, sah, she am left this department." it will be seen, therefore, that sunny, a stranger in a strange land, shut in alone in a studio, religiously following the instructions of jerry to refrain from making acquaintances with anyone about her, was in a truly sad state. she started to houseclean, but stopped midway in panic, recalling the japanese superstition that to clean or sweep a house when one of the family is absent is to precipitate bad fortune upon the house. so she got down all of jerry's clothes and piously pressed and sponged them, as she had seen hatton do, being very careful this time to avoid her first mistake in ironing. so earnestly had she applied herself to ironing the crease in the front of one of jerry's trousers that first time that a most disastrous accident was the result. jerry, wearing the pressed trousers especially to please her, found himself on the street the cynosure of all eyes as he manfully strode along with a complete split down the front of one of the legs, which the too ardent iron of sunny had scorched. having brushed and cleaned all of jerry's clothes on this day, she prepared her solitary lunch; but this she could not eat. thoughts of jerry sharing with her the accustomed meals was too much for the imaginative sunny, and pushing the rice away from her, she said: "oh, i do nod lig' put food any more ad my insides. i givin you to my friends." the contents of her bowl were emptied into the pail under the sink, which she kept always so clean, for she still was under the delusion that said pail helped to feed the janitor gentleman and his family. all of that afternoon hung heavily on her hands, and she vainly sought something to interest her and divert her mind from the thought of jerry. she found herself unconsciously listening for the bell, but, curiously enough, all of that day neither the buzzer, the telephone nor even the dumbwaiter rang. she made a tour of exploration to jerry's sacred room, lovingly arranging his pieces on his chiffonier, and washing her hands in some toilet water that especially appealed to her. then she found the bottle of hair tonic. sniffing it, she decided it was very good, and, painfully, sunny deciphered the legend printed on the outside, assuring a confiding hair world that the miraculous contents had the power to remove dandruff, invigorate, strengthen, force growth on bald heads, cause to curl and in every way improve and cause to shine the hair of the fortunate user of the same. "thas very good stuff," said sunny. "he do grade miracle on top those head." she decided to put the shampoo-tonic to the test, and accordingly washed her hair in jerry's basin, making an excellent job of it. descending to the studio, she lit the fireplace, and curled up on a big navaho by the fire. wrapped in a gorgeous bathrobe belonging to jerry, sunny proceeded to dry her hair. while she was in the midst of this process, the telephone rang. sambo at the desk announced that visitors were ascending. sunny had no time to dress or even to put up her hair, and when in response to the sharp bang upon the knocker she opened the door she revealed to the callers a vision that justified their worst fears. her hair unbound, shining and springing out in lovely curling disorder about her, wrapped about in the bright embroidered bathrobe which the younger woman recognised at once as her christmas gift to her fiancé, the work, in fact, of her own hands, sunny was a spectacle to rob a rival of complete hope and peace of mind. the cool fury of unrequited love and jealousy in the breast of the younger woman and the indignant anger in that of the older was whipped at the sight of sunny into active and violent eruption. "what are you doing in my son's apartment?" demanded the mother of jerry, raising to her eyes what looked to sunny like a gold stick on which grew a pair of glasses, and surveying with pronounced disapproval the politely bowing though somewhat flurried sunny. "i are live ad those house," said sunny, simply. "this are my home." "you live here, do you? well, i would have you know that i am the mother of the young man whose life you are ruining, and this young girl is his fiancée." "ho! i am very glad make you 'quaintance," said sunny, seeking to hide behind a politeness her shock at the discovery of the palpable rudeness of these most barbarian ladies. it was hard for her to admit that the ladies of jerry's household were not models of fine manners, as she had fondly supposed, but on the contrary bore faces that showed no trace of the kind hearts which the girl from japan had been taught by her mother to associate always with true gentility. the two women's eyes met with that exclamatory expression which says plainer than words: "of all the unbounded impudence, this is the worst!" "i have been told," went on mrs. hammond haughtily, "that you are a foreigner--a japanese." she pronounced the word as if speaking of something extremely repellent. sunny bowed, with an attempted smile, that faded away as jerry's mother continued ruthlessly: "you do not look like a japanese to me, unless you have been peroxiding your hair. in my opinion you are just an ordinary everyday bad girl." sunny said very faintly: "aexcuse me!" she turned like a hurt thing unjustly punished to the other woman, as if seeking help there. it had been arranged between the two women that mrs. hammond was to do the talking. miss falconer was having her full of that curious satisfaction some women take in seeing in person one's rival. her expression far more moved sunny than that of the angry older woman. "no one but a bad woman," went on mrs. hammond, "would live like this in a young man's apartment, or allow him to support her, or take money from him. decent girls don't do that sort of thing in america. you are old enough to get out and earn for yourself an honest living. aren't you ashamed of yourself? or are you devoid of shame, you bad creature?" "yes," said sunny, with such a look that jerry's mother's frown relaxed somewhat: "i are ashame. i are sawry thad i are bad--woman. aexcuse me this time. i try do better. i sawry i are--bad!" this was plainly a full and complete confession of wrong and its effect on the older woman was to arouse a measure of the hammond compunction which always followed a hasty judgment. for a moment mrs. hammond considered the advisability of reading to this girl a lecture that she had recently prepared to deliver before an institution for the welfare of such girls as she deemed sunny to be. however, her benevolent intention was frustrated by miss falconer. there is a japanese proverb which says that the tongue three inches long can kill a man six feet tall, but the tongue of one's enemy is not the worst thing to fear. the cold smile of the young woman staring so steadily at her had power to wound sunny far more than the lacerating tongue of the woman whom she realised believed she was fighting in her son's behalf. very silken and soft was the manner of miss falconer as insinuatingly she brought mrs. hammond back to the object of their call. she had used considerable tact and strategy in arranging this call upon sunny, having in fact induced jerry to remain for at least a day or two in greenwich, "to think matters over," and see "whether absence would not prove to him that what he imagined to be love was nothing but one of those common aberrations to which men who lived in the east were said to be addicted." jerry, feeling that he should at least do this for her, waited at greenwich. miss falconer had called in the able and belligerent aid of his mother. "mother, dear----" she already called mrs. hammond "mother." "suppose--er--we make a quick end to the matter. you know what we are here for. do let us finish and get away. you know, dear, that i am not used to this sort of thing, and really i'm beginning to get a nervous headache." stiffened and upheld by the young woman whom she had chosen as wife for her son, mrs. hammond delivered the ultimatum. "young woman, i want you to pack your things and clear out from my son's apartment at once. no argument! no excuses! if you do not realise the shamelessness of the life you are leading, i have nothing further to say; but i insist, insist most emphatically, on your leaving my boy's apartment this instant." a key turned in the lock. hatton, dusty and bedraggled, his hat on one side of his head and a cigarette twisting dejectedly in the corner of his mouth, stumbled in at the door. he stood swaying and smiling at the ladies, stuttering incoherent words of greeting and apology. "la-adiesh, beggin' y'r pardon, it's a pleasure shee thish bright shpring day." mrs. hammond, overwhelmed with shame and grief over the revelation of the disreputable inmates of her son's apartment, turned her broad back upon hatton. she recognised that man. he was the man she and jerry's father had on more than one occasion begged their son to be rid of. oh! if only jeremy hammond senior were here now! sunny, having heard the verdict of banishment, stood helplessly, like one who has received a death sentence, knowing not which way to turn. hatton staggered up the stairs, felt an uncertain course along the gallery toward his room, and fell in a muddled heap midway of the gallery. sunny, half blindly, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, had moved with mechanical obedience toward the door, when mrs. hammond haughtily recalled her. "you cannot go out on the street in that outrageous fashion. get your things, and do your hair up decently. we will wait here till you are ready." "and suppose you take that bathrobe off. it doesn't belong to you," said miss falconer cuttingly. "take only what belongs to you," said mrs. hammond. sunny slowly climbed up to her room. everything appeared now strange and like a queer dream to her. she could scarcely believe that she was the same girl who but a few days before had joyously flitted about the pretty room, which showed evidence of her intensely artistic and feminine hands. she changed from the bathrobe to the blue suit she had worn on the night she had arrived at jerry's studio. from a drawer she drew forth the small package containing the last treasures that her mother had placed in her hand. though she knew that mrs. hammond and miss falconer were impatiently awaiting her departure, she sat down at her desk and painfully wrote her first letter to jerry. "jerry sama: how i thank you three and four time for your kindness to me. i am sorry i are not got money to pay you back for all that same, but i will take nothing with me but those clothes on my body. only bad girls take money from gentleman at this america. i have hear that to-day, but i never know that before, or i would not do so. i have pray to amaterasu-oho-mikami, making happy sunshine of your life. may you live ten thousand year. sayonara. sunny." she came out along the gallery, bearing her mother's little package. kneeling by the half-awake but helpless hatton she thrust the letter into his hand. "good-bye, kind hatton," said sunny. "i sawry i not see your face no more. i sawry i are make all those trobble for you wiz those gas stove an' those honourable mice. i never do those ting again. i hope mebbe you missus come home agin some day ad you. sayonara." "wh-wheer y're goin', shunny. whatsh matter?" hatton tried vainly to raise himself. he managed to pull himself a few paces along, by holding to the gallery rails, but sprawled heavily down on the floor. the indignant voice of his master's mother ascended from the stairs: "if you do not control yourself, my good man, i will be forced to call in outside aid and have you incarcerated." downstairs, sunny, unmindful of the waiting women, ran by them into the kitchen. from goldfish to canaries she turned, whispering softly: "sayonara my friends. i sawry leaving you." she was opening the window onto the fire-escape, and itchy with a howl of joy had leaped into her arms, when mrs. hammond and miss falconer, suspicious of something underhand, appeared at the door. "what are you doing, miss? what is that you are taking?" demanded mrs. hammond. sunny turned, with her dog hugged up close to her breast. "i are say good-bye to my liddle dog," she said. "sayonara itchy. the gods be good unto you." she set the dog hastily back in the box, against his most violent protests, and itchy immediately set up such a woeful howling and baying as only a small mongrel dog who possesses psychic qualities and senses the departure of an adored one could be capable of. windows were thrown up and ejaculations and protests emanated from tenants in the court, but sunny had clapped both hands over her ears, and without a look back at her little friend, and ignoring the two women, she ran through the studio, and out of the front door. after her departure a silence fell between miss falconer and mrs. hammond. the latter's face suddenly worked spasmodically, and the strain of the day overtook jerry's mother. she sobbed unrestrainedly, mopping up the tears that coursed down her face. miss falconer fanned herself slowly, and with an absence of her usual solicitude for her prospective mother-in-law, she refrained from offering sympathy to the older woman, who presently said in a muffled voice: "oh, stella, i am afraid that we may have done a wrong act. it's possible that we have made a mistake about this girl. she seemed so very young, and her face--it was not a bad face, stella--quite the contrary, now i think of it." "well, i suppose that's the way you look at it. personally you can't expect me to feel any sort of sympathy for a bad woman like that." "stella, i've been thinking that a girl who would say good-bye to her dog like that cannot be wholly bad." "i have heard of murderers who trained fleas," said miss falconer. then, with a pretended yawn, she added, "but really we must be going now? it's getting very dark out, and i'm dining with the westmores at seven. i told matthews we'd be through shortly. he's at the curb now." she had picked up her gloves and was drawing them smoothly on, when mrs. hammond noticed the left hand was ringless. "why, my dear, where is your ring?" "why, you didn't suppose, did you, that i was going to continue my engagement to jerry hammond after what he told me?" "but our purpose in coming here----" "_my_ purpose was to make sure that if _i_ were not to have jerry neither should she--that japanese doll!" all the bottled-up venom of the girl's nature came forth in that single utterance. "do let us get away. really i'm bored to extinction." "you may go any time you choose, miss falconer," said jerry hammond's mother. "i shall stay here till my son returns." * * * * * it was less than half an hour later that jerry burst into the studio. he came in with a rush, hurrying across the big room toward the kitchen and calling aloud: "sunny! hi! sunny! i'm back!" so intent was he in discovering sunny that he did not see his mother, sitting in the darkened room by the window. through dim eyes mrs. hammond had been staring into the street, and listening to the nearby rumble of the sixth avenue elevated trains. somehow the roar of the elevated spelled to the woman the cruelty and the power of the mighty city, out into which she had driven the young girl, whose eyes had entreated her like a little wounded creature. the club woman thought of her admonitions and speeches to the girls she had professionally befriended, yet here, put to a personal test, she had failed signally. her son was coming through the studio again, calling up toward the gallery above: "hi! sunny, old scout, where are you?" he turned, with a start, as his mother called his name. his first impulse of welcome halted as he saw her face, and electrically there flashed through jerry a realisation of the truth. his mother's presence there was connected with sunny's absence. "mother, where is sunny? what are you doing here? where is sunny, i say?" he shot the questions at her frantically. mrs. hammond began to whimper, dabbing at her face with her handkerchief. "for heaven's sake, answer me. what have you done with sunny?" "jerry, how can i tell you? jerry--miss falcon-er and i--we--we thought it was for your good. i didn't realise that you c-cared so much about her, and i--and we----oh-h-h," she broke down, crying uncontrolledly, "we have driven that poor little girl out--into the street." "you what? what is that you say?" he stared at his mother with a look of loathing. "jerry, i thought--we thought her bad and we----" "bad! _sunny!_ bad! she didn't know what the word meant. my _god_!" he leaped up the stairs, calling the girl's name aloud, as if to satisfy himself that his mother's story was false, but her empty room told its own tale, and half way across the gallery he came upon hatton. he kicked the valet awake, and the latter raised up, stuttering and blubbering, and extending with shaking hand the letter sunny had left. the words leaped up at him and smote him to the soul. he did not see his mother. he did not hear her cries, imploring him not to go out like that. blindly, his heart on fire, jerry hammond dashed out from his studio, and plunged into the darkening street, to begin his search for the lost sunny, who had disappeared into that maelstrom that is new york. chapter xiv despite all that money and influence could do to aid in the search of the missing girl, no trace of sunny had been found since the day she passed through the door of the studio apartment and disappeared into the seething throngs under the sixth avenue elevated. every policeman in manhattan, brooklyn and the bronx; every private detective in the country, and the police and authorities throughout the country, aided in that search, keen to earn the enormous rewards offered by her friends. jerry's entire fortune was at the disposal of the department. jinx had instructed them to "go the limit" as far as he was concerned. bobs, his newspaper instinct keyed up to the highest tension, saw in every clue a promise of a solution, and "covered" the disappearance day and night. young monty, changed from the cheeriest interne at bellevue to the most pessimistic and gloomy, developed a weird passion for the morgue, and spent hours hovering about that ghastly part of the hospital. the four young men met each night at jerry's studio and cast up their barren results. jinx unashamedly and even noisily wept, the big tears splashing down his no longer ruddy cheeks. jinx had honestly loved sunny, and her loss was the first serious grief of his life. monty hugged his head and ruminated over the darkest possibilities. he had suggested to the police that they drag certain parts of the hudson river, and was indignant when they pointed out the impracticability of such a thing. in the spring the great river was swollen to its highest, and flowing along at a great speed, it would have been impossible to find what monty suggested. jerry, of all her friends, had himself the least under command. he was still nearly crazed by the catastrophe, and unable to sleep or rest, taking little or no nourishment, frantically going from place to place, he returned to his studio to pace up and down, as if half demented. despite the fact that her son seemed scarcely conscious of her existence, and practically ignored her, mrs. hammond continued to remain in the apartment. overwhelmed by remorse and anxiety for her son's health and sanity she could not bring herself to leave, even though she knew at this time her act had driven her son far away from her. a great change was visible in the mother of jerry. for the first time, possibly, she acquired a vague idea of what her son's work and life meant to him, and her conscience smote her when she realised how he had gone ahead with no encouragement or sympathy from home. on the contrary, she and his father had thrown every obstacle in his way. like many self-made men, jerry's father cherished the ambition to perpetuate the business he had successfully built up from what he always called "a shoestring." "i started with just a shoestring," jerry's father was wont to say, "and what's more, _i_ didn't have any education to speak of, yet i beat in the race most of the college bred bunch." however, his parents had had great faith in the change that would come to jerry after matrimony, and miss falconer, being a daughter of hammond, sr.'s, partner, the prospects up to this time had not been without hope. now, jerry's mother, away from the somewhat overpowering influence of his father, was seeing a new light. many a tear she dropped upon jerry's sketch books, and she suffered the pang of one who has had the opportunity to help one she loved, and who has withheld that sorely needed sympathy. for the first time, too, jerry's mother appreciated his right to choose his own love. in their anxiety to select for their son a suitable wife, they had overlooked his own wishes in the matter. now mrs. hammond became poignantly aware of his deep love for this strange girl from japan. she began to feel an unconscious tenderness toward the absent sunny, and gradually became acquainted with the girl's nature through the medium of the left behind treasures and friends. sunny's little mongrel dog, the canaries, the gold fish, the nailed up hole where she had fed the mice, her friend the "janitor gentleman," the black elevator boy, the butcher gentleman, the policeman on the beat who had never failed to return sunny's smiling greeting with a cheery "top o' the morning to yourself, miss," hatton--all these revealed more plainly than words could have told that hers was a sensitive and rare nature. in hatton's case, mrs. hammond found a problem upon her hands. the unfortunate valet blamed himself bitterly for sunny's going. he claimed that he had given his solemn word of honour to sunny, and had broken that word, when he should have been there: "like a man, ma'am, hin the place of mr. 'ammond, ma'am, to take care of miss sunny." far from reproving the man, the conscience-stricken mrs. hammond wept with him, and asked timid questions about the absent one. "miss sunny was not an hordinary young lady, begging your pardon, ma'am. she was what the french would call distankey. she was sweet and hinnercent as a baby lamb, hutterly hunconscious of her hown beauty hand charm. you wouldn't 'ave believed such hinnocence possible in the present day, ma'am, but miss sunny come from a race that's a bit hignorant, ma'am, hand it wasn't her fault that she didn't hunderstan' many of the proper conventions of life. but she was perfectly hinnocent and pure as a lily. hanyone who looked or spoke to 'er once would've seen that, ma'am. it shone right hout of miss sunny's heyes." "i saw it myself," said mrs. hammond, in a low voice. after a long, sniffling pause, hatton said: "begging your pardon, ma'am, i'm thinking that i don't deserve to work for mr. 'ammond any longer, but i 'avent the 'eart to speak to 'im at this time, and if you'll be so kind to hexplain things to 'im, i'll betake myself to some hother abode." "my good man, i am sure that even mr. jerry would not blame you. i am the sole one at fault. i take the full blame. i acknowledge it. i would not have you or anyone else share my guilt, and, hatton, i _want_ to be punished. your conscience, i am sure, is clear, but it would make us all very happy, and i am sure it would make--sunny." she spoke the word hesitatingly--"happy, too, if--if--well, if, my good hatton, you were to turn over a new leaf, and sign the pledge. drink, i feel sure, is your worst enemy. you must overcome it, hatton, or it will overcome you." "hi will, ma'am. hi'll do that. if you'll pardon me now, hi'll step right out and sign the pledge. i know just where to go, if you'll pardon me." hatton did know just where to go. he crossed the park to the east side and came to the brightly lighted salvation army barracks. a meeting was in progress, and a fiery tongued young woman was exhorting all the sinners of the world to come to glory. hatton was fascinated by the groans and loud amens that came from that chorus of human wreckage. pushing nearer to the front, he came under the penetrating eye of the salvation captain. she hailed him as a "brother," and there was something so unswervingly pure in her direct gaze that it had the effect of magnetising hatton. "brother," said the salvation captain, "are you saved?" "no, ma'am," said the unhappy hatton, "but begging your pardon, if it haren't hout of horder, hi'd like to be taking the pledge, ma'am." "nothing is out of order where a human soul is at stake," said the woman, smiling in an exalted way. "lift up your hand, my brother." hatton lifted his shaking hand, and, word for word, he repeated the pledge after the salvation captain. nor was there one in that room who found aught to laugh at in the words of hatton. "hi promise, with god's 'elp," said hatton, "to habstain from the use of halcoholic liquors as a beverage, from chewing tobaccer or speaking profane and himpure languidge." having thus spoken, hatton felt a glow of relief and a sense of transfiguration. he experienced, in fact, that hysterical exhilaration that "converts" feel, as if suddenly he were reborn, and had come out of the mud into the clean air. at such moments martyrs, heroes and saints are made. hatton, the automaton-like valet of the duplex studio, with his "yuman 'ankerings" was afire with a true spiritual fervour. we leave him then marching forth from the barracks with the salvation army, his head thrown up, and singing loudly of glory. * * * * * on the third day after the disappearance of sunny, professor timothy barrowes arrived in new york city with the dinornis skeleton of the quaternary period, dug up from the clay of the red deer cliffs of canada. this precious find was duly transported to the museum of natural history, where it was set up by the skilled hands of college workmen, who were zealots even as the little man who nagged and adjured them as he had the excavators on the red deer river. so absorbed, in fact, was professor barrowes by his fascinating employment, that he left his beloved fossil only when the pressing necessity of further funds from his friend and financial agent (jerry had raised the money to finance the dinornis) necessitated his calling upon jerry hammond, who had made no response to his latter telegrams and letters. accordingly professor barrowes wended his way from the museum to jerry's studio. here, enthused and happy over the success of his trip, he failed to notice the abnormal condition of jerry, whose listless hot hand dropped from his, and whose eye went roving absently above the head of his volubly chattering friend. it was only after the restless and continued pacing of the miserable jerry and the failure to respond to questions put to him continued for some time, that professor barrowes was suddenly apprized that all was not well with his friend. he stopped midway in a long speech in which words like mesozoic, triassic and jurassic prevailed and snapped his glasses suddenly upon his nose. through these he scrutinised the perturbed and oblivious jerry scientifically. the glasses were blinked off. professor barrowes seized the young man by the arm and stopped him as he started to cross the room for possibly the fiftieth time. "come! come! what is it? what is the trouble, lad?" jerry turned his bloodshot eyes upon his old teacher. his unshaven, haggard face, twitching from the effects of his acute nearness to nervous prostration, startled professor barrowes. lack of sleep, refusal of nourishment, the ceaseless search, the agonising fear and anguished longing took their full toll from the unhappy jerry, but as his glance met the firm one of his friend, a tortured cry broke from his lips. "oh, for god's sake, professor barrowes, why did you not come when i asked you to? sunny--_oh, my god!_" professor barrowes had jerry's hand gripped closely in his own, and the disjointed story came out at last. sunny had come! sunny had gone! he loved sunny! he could not live without sunny--but sunny had gone! they had turned her out into the streets--his own mother and miss falconer. for the first time, it may be said, since his discovery of the famous fossil of the red deer river, professor barrowes's mind left his beloved dinornis. he came back solidly to earth, shot back by the calling need of jerry. now the man of science was wide awake, and an upheaval was taking place within him. the words of his first telegram to jerry rattled through his head just then: "the dinornis more important than sunny." now as he looked down on the bowed head of the boy for whom he cherished almost a father's love, professor barrowes knew that all the dried-up fossils of all the ages were as a handful of worthless dust as compared with this single living girl. by main force professor barrowes made jerry lie down on that couch, and himself served him the food humbly prepared by his heartbroken mother, who told jerry's friend with a quivering lip that she felt sure he would not wish to take it from his mother's hands. there was no going out for jerry on that night. his protestations fell on deaf ears, and as a further precaution, professor barrowes secured possession of the key of the apartment. only when the professor pointed out to him the fact that a breakdown on his part would mean the cessation of his search would jerry finally submit to the older man taking his place temporarily. and so, at the telephone, which rang constantly all of that evening, professor barrowes took command. a thousand clues were everlastingly turning up. these were turned over to jinx and bobs, the former flying from one part of the city and country to another in his big car, and the latter, with an army of newspaper men helping him, and given full license by his paper, influenced by the elder hammond and potter. finally, professor barrowes, having given certain instructions to turn telephone calls over to monty in bobs' apartment, sat down to jerry's disordered work table, and, glasses perched on the end of his nose, he sorted out the mail. the afternoon letters still lay unopened, tossed down in despair by jerry, when he failed to find that characteristic writing that he knew was sunny's. but now professor barrowes' head had suddenly jerked forward. his chin came out curiously, and his eyes blinked in amazement behind his glasses. he set them on firmer, fiercely, and slowly reread that two-line epistle. the hand holding the paper shook, but the eyes behind the glasses were bright. "jerry--come hither, young man!" he growled, his dry old face quivering up with something that looked comically like a smile glaring through threatened tears. "read that." across the table jerry reached over and took the letter from the famous steel magnate of new york. he read it slowly, dully, and then with a sense as of something breaking in his head and heart. every word of those two lines sank like balm into his comprehension and consciousness. then it seemed that a surge of blood rushed through his being, blinding him. the world rocked for jerry hammond. he saw a single star gleaming in a firmament that was all black. down into immeasurable depths of space sank jerry hammond. chapter xv sunny, after she left jerry's apartment, might be likened to a little wounded wild thing, who has trailed off with broken wing. she had never consciously committed a wrong act. motherless, worse than fatherless, young, innocent, lovely, how should she fare in a land whose ways were as foreign to that from which she had come as if she had been transplanted to a new planet. as she turned into sixth avenue, under the roaring elevated structure, with its overloaded trains, crammed with the home-going workers of new york, she had no sense of direction and no clear purpose in mind. all she felt was that numb sense of pain at her heart and the impulse to get as far away as possible from the man she loved. swept along by a moving, seething throng that pressed and pushed and shoved and elbowed by her, sunny had a sick sense of home longing, an inexpressible yearning to escape from all this turmoil and noise, this mad rushing and pushing and panting through life that seemed to spell america. she sensed the fact that she was in the land of barbarians, where everyone was racing and leaping and screaming in an hysteria of speed. noise, noise, incessant noise and movement--that was america! no one stopped to think; no polite words were uttered to the stranger. it was all a chaos, a madhouse, wherein dark figures rushed by like shadows in the night and little children played in the mud of the streets. the charming, laughing, pretty days in the shelter of the studio of her friend had passed into this nightmare of the sixth avenue noise, where all seemed ugly, cruel and sinister. life in america was not the charming kindly thing sunny had supposed. beauty indeed she had brought in her heart with her, and that, though she knew it not, was why she had seen only the beautiful; but now, even for her, it had all changed. she had looked into faces full of hatred and malice; she had listened to words that whipped worse than the lash of hirata. as she went along that noisy, crowded avenue, there came, like a breath of spring, a poignant lovely memory of the home she had left. like a vision, the girl saw wide spaces, little blue houses with pink roofs and the lower floor open to the refreshing breezes of the spring. for it was springtime in japan just as it was in new york, and sunny knew that the trees would be freighted with a glorified frost of pink and white blossoms. the wistaria vines would hang in purple glory to peer at their faces in the crystal pools. the fluttering sleeves of the happy picnickers threading through lanes of long slender bamboos. the lotus in the ponds would soon open their white fingers to the sun. rosy cheeked children would laugh at sunny and pelt her with flower petals, and she would call back to them, and toss her fragrant petals back. it was strange as she went along that dirty way that her mind escaped from what was before and on all sides of her, and went out across the sea. she saw no longer the passing throngs. in imagination the girl from japan looked up a hill slope on which a temple shone. its peaks were twisted and the tower of the pagoda seemed ablaze with gold. countless steps led upward to the pagoda, but midway of the steps there was a classic torrii, in which was a small shrine. here on a pedestal, smiling down upon the kneeling penitents, kuonnon, the goddess of mercy, stood. to her now, in the streets of the american city, the girl of japan sent out her petition. "oh, kuonnon, sweet lady of mercy, permit the spirit of my honourable mother to walk with me through these dark and noisy streets." the shining goddess of mercy, trailing her robes among the million stars in the heavens above, surely heard that tiny petition, for certain it is that something warm and comforting swept over the breast of the tired sunny. we know that faith will "remove mountains." sunny's faith in her mother's spirit caused her to feel assured that it walked by her side. the japanese believe that we can think our dead alive, and if we are pure and worthy, we may indeed recall them. it came to pass, that after many hours, during which she walked from 67th street to 125th, and from the west to the east side of that avenue, that she stopped before a brightly lighted window, within which cakes and confections were enticingly displayed, and from the cellar of which warm odours of cooking were wafted to the famished girl. sunny's youth and buoyant health responded to that claim. her feet, in the unaccustomed american shoes--in japan she had worn only sandals and clogs--were sore and extremely weary from the long walk, and a sense of intense exhaustion added to that pang of emptiness within. by the baker's window, therefore, on the dingy third avenue of the upper east side, leaned sunny, staring in hungrily at the food so near and yet so far away. she asked herself in her quaint way: "what i are now to do? my honourable insides are ask for food." she answered her own question at once. "i will ask the advice of first person i meet. he will tell me." the streets were in a semi-deserted condition, such as follows after the home-going throngs have been tucked away into their respective abodes. there was a cessation of traffic, only the passing of the trains overhead breaking the hush of early night that comes even in the city of new york. it was now fifteen minutes to nine, and sunny had had nothing to eat since her scant breakfast. kuonnon, her mother's spirit, providence--call it what we may--suffered it that the first person whom sunny was destined to meet should be katy clarry, a product of the teeming east side, a shop girl by trade. she was crossing the street, with her few small packages, revealing her pitiful night marketing at adjacent small shops, when sunny accosted her. "aexcuse me. i lig' ask you question, please," said sunny with timid politeness. "uh-h-h?" miss clarry, her grey, clear eye sweeping the face of sunny in one comprehensive glance that took her "number," stopped short at the curb, and waited for the question. "i are hungry," said sunny simply, "and i have no money and no house in which to sleep these night. what i can do?" "gee!" katy's grey eyes flew wider. the girl before her seemed as far from being a beggar as anyone the east side girl had ever seen. something in the wistful, lovely face looking at her in the dark street tightened that cord that was all mother in the breast of katy clarry. after a moment: "are you stone broke then? out of work? you don't look's if you could buck up against tough luck. what you doin' on the streets? you ain't----? no, you ain't. i needn't insult you by askin' that. where's your home, girl?" "i got no home," said sunny, in a very faint voice. a subtle feeling was stealing over the tired sunny, and the whiteness of her cheeks, the drooping of her eyes, apprized katy of her condition. "say, don't be fallin' whatever you do. you don't want no cop to get 'is hands on you. you come along with me. i ain't got much, but you're welcome to share what i got. i'll stake you till you get a job. heh! get a grip on yourself. there! that's better. hold on to me. i'll put them packages under this arm. we ain't got far to walk. steady now. we don't want no cop to say we're full, because we ain't." katy led the trembling sunny along the dirty, dingy avenue to one of those melancholy side streets of the upper east side. they came to a house whose sad exterior proclaimed what was within. here katy applied her latch key, and in the dark and odorous halls they found their way up four flights of stairs. katy's room was at the far end of a long bare hall, and its dimensions were little more than the shining kitchenette of the studio apartment. katy struck a match, lit a kerosene lamp, and attached to the one half-plugged gas jet a tube at the end of which was a one-burner gas stove. sunny, sitting helplessly on the bed, was too dazed and weary to hold her position for long, and at katy's sharp: "heh, there! lie down," she subsided back upon the bed, sighing with relief as her exhausted body felt the comfort of katy's hard little bed. from sundry places katy drew forth a frying pan, a pitcher of water, a tiny kettle and a teapot. she put two knives and forks and spoons on the table, two cracked plates and two cups. she peeled a single potato, and added it to the two frankfurters frying on the pan. she chattered along as she worked, partly to hide her own feelings, and partly to set the girl at her ease. but indeed sunny was far from feeling an embarrassment such as katy in her place might have felt. the world is full of two kinds of people; those who serve, and those who are served, and to the latter family sunny belonged. not the lazy, wilful parasites of life, but the helpless children, whom we love to care for. katy, glancing with a maternal eye, ever and anon at the so sad and lovely face upon her pillow was curiously touched and animated with a desire to help her. "you're dog-tired, ain't you? how long you been out of work? i always feel more tired when i'm out o' work and looking for a job, than when i got one, though it ain't my idea of a rest exactly to stand on your feet all day long shoving out things you can't afford to have yourself to folks who mostly just want to look 'em over. some of them shoppers love to come in just about closin' hour. they should worry whether the girl behind the counter gets extra pay for overtime or if she's suffering from female weaknesses or not. of course, if i get into one of them big stores downtown, i can give a customer the laugh when the dingdong sounds for closin', but you can't do no such thing in harlem. we're still in the pioneer stage up here. i expect you're more used to the fifth avenue joints. you look it, but, say, i never got a look in at one of them jobs. they favour educated girls, and i ain't packed with learning, i'm telling the world." sunny said: "you loog good to me,"--a favourite expression of jerry's, and something in her accent and the earnestness with which she said it warmed katy, who laughed and said: "oh, go on. i ain't much on looks neither. there, now. draw up. all--l-ler _ready_! dinner is served. stay where you are on the bed. drop your feet over. i ain't got but the one chair, and i'll have it meself, thank you, don't mention it." katy pushed the table beside the bed, drew her own chair to the other side, set the kettle on the jet which the frying pan had released and proudly surveyed her labour. "not much, but looks pretty good to me. if there's one thing i love it is a hot dog." she put on sunny's plate the largest of the two frankfurters and three-quarters of the potato, cut her a generous slice of bread and poured most of the gravy on her plate, saying: "i always say sausage gravy beats anything in the butter line. tea'll be done in a minute, dearie. ain't got but one burner. gee! i wisht i had one of them two deckers that you can cook a whole meal at once with. ever seen 'em? how's your dog?" "dog?" "frankfurter--weeny, or in polite speech, sausage, dearie." "how it is good," said sunny with simple eloquence. "i thang you how much." "don't mention it. you're welcome. you'd do the same for me if i was busted. i always say one working girl should stake the other when the other is out of work and broke. there's unity in strength," quoted katy with conviction. "have some more--do! dip your bread in the gravy. pretty good, ain't it, if i do say it who shouldn't." "it mos' nices' food i are ever taste," declared sunny earnestly. while the tea was going into the cups: "my name's katy clarry. what's yours?" asked katy, a sense of well-being and good humour toward the world flooding her warm being. "sunny." "sunny! that's a queer name. gee! ain't it pretty? what's your other name?" "sindicutt." "sounds kind o' foreign. what are you, anyway? you ain't american--at least you don't look it or talk it, though heaven knows anything and everything calls itself american to-day," said the native-born american girl with scorn. "meaning no offence, you understand, but--well--you just don't look like the rest of us. you ain't a dago or a sheeny. i can see that, and you ain't a hun neither. are you a frenchy? you got queer kind of eyes--meaning no offence, for personally i think them lovely, i really do. i seen actresses with no better eyes than you got." katy shot her questions at sunny, without waiting for an answer. sunny smiled sadly. "katy, i are sawry thad i am not be american girl. i are born ad japan----" "_you_ ain't no chink. you can't tell me no such thing as that. i wasn't born yesterday. what are you, anyway? where do you come from? are you a royal princess in disguise?" the latter question was put jocularly, but katy in her imaginative way was beginning to question whether her guest might not in fact be some such personage. an ardent reader of the yellow press, by inheritance a romantic dreamer, in happier circumstances katy might have made a place for herself in the artistic world. her sordid life had been ever glorified by her extravagant dreams in which she moved as a princess in a realm where princes and lord and kings and dukes abounded. "no, i are not princess," said sunny sadly. "i not all japanese, katy, jos liddle bit. me? i got three kind of blood on my insides. i sawry thad my ancestors put them there. i are japanese and russian and american." "gee! you're what we call a mongrel. meaning no offence. you can't help yourself. personally i stand up first for the home-made american article but i ain't got no prejudice against no one. and anyway, you can _grow_ into an american if you want to. now we women have got the francheese, we got the right to vote and be nachelised too if we want to. so even if you have a yellow streak in you--and looking at you, i'd say it was gold moren't yellow--you needn't tell no one about it. no one'll be the wiser. you can trust me not to open my mouth to a living soul about it. what you've confided in me about being partly chink is just as if you had put the inflammation in a tomb. and it ain't going to make the least bit of difference between us. try one of them uneeda crackers. sop it in your tea now you're done with your gravy. pretty good, ain't it? i'll say it is." "katy, to-night i are going to tell you some things about me, bi-cause i know you are my good frien' now forever. i lig' your kind eye, katy." "go on! you're kiddin' me, sunny. if i had eyes like yours, it'd be a different matter. but i'm stuck on the idea of having you for a friend just the same. i ain't had a chum since i don't know when. if you knew what them girls was like in bamberger's--well, i'm not talkin' about no one behind their backs, but, say--sunny, i could tell you a thing or two'd make your hair stand on end. and as for tellin' me about your own past, say if you'll tell me yours, i'll tell you mine. i always say that every girl has some tradgedy or other in her life. mine began on the lower east side. i graduated up here, sunny. it ain't nothing to brag about, but it's heaven compared with what's downtown. i used to live in that gutter part of the town where god's good air is even begrudged you, and where all the dirty forriners and chinks--meanin' no offence, dearie, and i'll say for the chinks, that compared with some of them russian jews--gee! you're russian too, ain't you, but i don't mean no offence! take it from me, sunny, some of them east side forriners--i'll call them just that to avoid givin' offence--are just exactly like lice, and the smells down there--gee! the stock yards is a flower garden compared with it. well, we come over--my folks did--i was born there--i'm a real american, sunny. look me over. it won't hurt your eyes none. my folks come over from ireland. my mother often told me that they thought the streets of new york were just running with gold, before they come out. that simple they were, sunny. but the gold was nothing but plain, rotten dust. it got into the lungs and the spine of them all. father went first. then mother. lord only knows how they got it--doctor said it was from the streets, germs that someone maybe dumped out and come flyin' up into our place that was the only clean spot in the tenement house, i'll say that for my mother. there was two kids left besides me. i was the oldes' and not much on age at that, but i got me a job chasin' around for a millinery shop, and i did my best by the kids when i got home nights; but the cards was all stacked against me, sunny, and when that infantile parallysus come on the city, the first to be took was my k-kid brother, and me li-little s-sister she come down with it too and--ah-h-h-h!" katy's head went down on the table, and she sobbed tempestuously. sunny, unable to speak the words of comfort that welled up in her heart, could only put her arms around katy, and mingle her tears with hers. katy removed a handkerchief from the top of her waist, dabbed her eyes fiercely, shared the little ball with sunny, and then thrust it down the neck of her waist again. bravely she smiled at sunny again. "there yoh got the story of the clarry's of the east side of new york, late of limerick, ireland. you can't beat it for--for tradgedy, now can you? so spiel away at your own story, sunny. i'm thinkin' you'll have a hard time handin' me out a worse one than me own. don't spare me, kid. i'm braced for anything in this r-rotten world." chapter xvi it was well for sunny that her new friend was endowed with a generous and belligerent nature. having secured for sunny a position at the bamberger emporium, katy's loyalty to her friend was not dampened when on the third day sunny was summarily discharged. hands on hips, katy flew furiously to her brother's defence, and for the benefit of her brother and sister workers she relieved herself loudly of all her pent-up rage of the months. in true union style, katy marched out with sunny. the excuse for discharging sunny was that she did not write well enough to fill out the sales slips properly. nasty as the true reason was, there is no occasion to set forth the details here. suffice it to say that the two girls, both rosy from excitement and wrath, arm and arm marched independently forth from the emporium, katy loudly asserting that she would sue for her half week's pay, and sunny anxiously drawing her along, her breath coming and going with the fright she had had. "gee!" snorted katy, as they turned into the street on which was the dingy house in which they lived, "it did my soul good to dump its garbage on that pie-faced, soapy-eyed monk. you don't know what i been through since i worked for them people. you done me a good turn this mornin' when you let out that scream. i'd been expecting something like that ever since he dirtied you with his eyes. that's why i was hangin' around the office, in spite of the ribbon sales, when you went in. well, here we are!" here they were indeed, back in the small ugly room of that fourth floor, sitting, the one on the ricketty chair, and the other on the side of the hard bed. but the eyes of youth are veiled in sun and rose. they see nor feel not the filth of the world. sunny and katy, out of a job, with scarcely enough money between them to keep body and soul together, were yet able to laugh at each other and exchange jokes over the position in which they found themselves. after they had "chewed the rag," as katy expressively termed it, for awhile, that brisk young person removed her hat, rolled up her sleeves, and declared she would do the "family wash." "it's too late now," said katy, "to job hunt this morning. so i'll do the wash, and you waltz over across the street and do the marketin'. here's ten cents, and get a wiggle on you, because it's 10.30 now, and i got a plan for us two. i'll tell you what it is. there ain't no hurry. just wait a bit, dearie. first we'll have a bite to eat, though i'm not hungry myself. i always say, though, you can land a job better on a full than a empty stomach. well, lunch packed away in us, little you and me trots downtown--not to no 125th street, mind you, but downtown, to fifth avenoo, where the swell shops are, do you get me? i'd a done this long ago, for they say it's as easy to land on fifth avenoo as it is on third. it's like goods, sunny. the real silk is cheaper than the fake stuff, because it lasts longer and is wider, but if one ain't got the capital to invest in it in the first place, why you just have to make the best of the imitation cheese. if i could of dolled myself up like them girls that hold down the jobs on fifth avenoo, say, you can take it from me, i'd a made some of them henna-haired ladies look like thirty cents. now _you_ got the looks, and you got the clothes too. that suit you're wearin' don't look like no million dollars, but it's got a kick to it just the same. the goods is real. i been lookin' at it. where'd you get it?" "i get that suit ad japan, katy." "japan! what are you givin' us? you can't tell me no chink ever made a suit like that." sunny nodded vigorously. "yes, katy, japanese tailor gentleman make thad suit. he copy it from american suit just same on lady at hotel, and he tell me that he are just like twin suits." "i take off my hat to that chink, though i always have heard they was great on copying. however, it's unmaterial who made it, and it don't detract from its looks, and no one will be the wiser that a chink tailor made it. you can trust me not to open my mouth. the main thing is that that suit and your face--and everything about you is going to make a hit on fifth avenoo. you see how bamberger fell for you at the drop, and you could be there still and have the best goin' if you was like some ladies i know, though i'm not mentionin' no names. i'm not that kind, sunny. now, here's my scheme, and see if you can beat it. your face and suit'll land the jobs for us. my brains'll hold 'em for us. do you get me? you'll accept a position--you don't say job down there--only on condition that they take your friend--that's me--too. then together we prove the truth of 'unity being strength.' we'll hang together. said lincoln" (katy raised her head with true solemnity): '"together we rise, divided we fall!' shake on that, sunny." shake they did. "now you skedaddle off for that meat. ask for dog. it goes farther and is fillin'. give the butcher the soft look, and he'll give you your money's worth--maybe throw in an extra dog for luck." at the butcher shop, sunny, when her turn came, favoured the plump gentleman behind the counter to such an engaging smile that he hurriedly glanced about him to see if the female part of his establishment were around. the coast clear, he returned the smile with interest. leaning gracefully upon the long bloody butcher knife in one hand, the other toying with a juicy sirloin, he solicited the patronage of the smiling sunny. she put her ten cents down, and continuing the smile, said: "please you give me plenty dog meat for those money." "surest thing," said the flattered butcher. "i got a pile just waitin' for a customer like you." he disappeared into a hole in the floor, and returned up the ladder shortly, bearing an extremely large package, which he handed across to the surprised and overjoyed sunny, who cried: "ho! i are thang you. how you are kind. i thang you very moach. good-aday!" it so happened that when sunny had come out of the house upon that momentous marketing trip a pimply-faced youth was lolling against the railing of the house next door. his dress and general appearance made him conspicuous in that street of mean and poverty-stricken houses, for he wore the latest thing in short pinch-back coats, tight trousers raised well above silk-clad ankles, pointed and polished tan shoes, a green tweed hat and a cane and cigarette loosely hung in a loose mouth. a harmless enough looking specimen of the male family at first sight, yet one at which the sophisticated members of the same sex would give a keen glance and then turn away with a scowl of aversion and rage. society has classified this type of parasite inadequately as "cadet," but the neighbourhood in which he thrives designates him with one ugly and expressive term. as sunny came out of the house and ran lightly across the street, the youth wagged his cigarette from the corner of one side of his mouth to the other, squinted appraisingly at the hurrying girl, and then followed her across the street. through the opened door of the kosher butcher shop, he heard the transaction, and noted the joy of sunny as the great package was transferred to her arms. as she came out of the shop, hurrying to bear the good news to katy, she was stopped at the curb by the man, his hat gracefully raised, and a most ingratiating smile twisting his evil face into a semblance of what might have appeared attractive to an ignorant and weak minded girl. "i beg your pardon, miss--er--levine. i believe i met you at a friend's house." "you are mistake," said sunny. "my name are not those. good-a-day!" he continued to walk by her side, murmuring an apology for the mistake, and presently as if just discovering the package she carried, he affected concern. "allow me to carry that for you. it's entirely too heavy for such pretty little arms as yours." "thang you. i lig' better carry him myself," said sunny, holding tightly to her precious package. still the pimpled faced young man persisted at her side, and as they reached the curb, his hand at her elbow, he assisted her to the sidewalk. standing at the foot of the front steps, he practically barred her way. "you live here?" "yes, i do so." "i believe i know mrs. munson, the lady that keeps this house. relative of yours?" "no, i are got no relative." "all alone here?" "no, i got frien' live wiz me. aexcuse me. i are in hoarry eat my dinner." "i wonder if i know your friend. what is his name?" "his name are katy." "ah, don't hurry. i believe, now i think of it, i know katy. what's the matter with your comin' along and havin' dinner with me." "thang you. my frien' are expect me eat those dinner with her." "that's all right. i have a friend too. bring katy along, and we'll all go off for a blowout. what do you say? a sweet little girl like you don't need to be eatin' dog meat. i know a swell place where we can get the best kind of eats, a bit of booze to wash it down and music and dancing enough to make you dizzy. what do you say?" he smiled at sunny in what he thought was an irresistible and killing way. it revealed three decayed teeth in front, and brought his shifty eyes into full focus upon the shrinking girl. "i go ask my frien'," she said hurriedly. "aexcuse me now. you are stand ad my way." he moved unwillingly to let her pass. "surest thing. more the merrier. let's go up and get katy. what floor you on?" "i bring katy down," said sunny breathlessly, and running by the pasty faced youth, she opened the door, and closed it quickly behind her, shooting the lock closed. she ran up the stairs, as if pursued, and burst breathlessly into the little room where katy was singing a ditty composed to another of her name, and pasting her lately washed handkerchiefs upon the window pane and mirror. beautiful k-katy--luvully katy! you're the only one that ever i adore, wh-en the moon shines, on the cow shed, i'll be w-waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door!" sang the light-hearted and valiant katy clarry. "oh, katy," cried sunny breathlessly. "here are those dog." she laid the huge package before the amazed and incredulous katy. "for the love of mike! did schmidt sell you a whole cow?" katy tore the wrappings aside, and revealed the contents of the package. an assortment of bones of all sizes, large and small, a few pieces of malodorous meat, livers, lights and guts, and the insides of sundry chickens. katy sat down hard, exclaiming: "good night! what did you ask for?" "i ask him for dog meat," excitedly and indignantly declared sunny. "you got it! you poor simp. heaven help you. never mind, there's no need now of crying over spilled beans. it's too late now to change, so here's where we kiss our lunch a long and last farewell, and do some hustling downtown." "oh, katy, i am thad sorry!" cried sunny tragically. "it's all right, dearie. don't you worry. you can't help being ignorant. i ain't hungry myself anyway, and you're welcome to the cracker there. that'll do till we get back, and then, why, i believe we can boil some of them bones and get a good soup. i always say soup is just as fillin' as anything else, especially if you put a onion in it, and have a bit of bread to sop it up with, and i got the onion all right. so cheer up, we'll soon be dead and the worst is yet to come." "katy, there are a gentleman down on those street, who are want give us nize dinner to eat, with music and some danze. me? i am not care for those music, but i lig' eat those dinner, and i lig' also thad you eat him." "gentleman, huh?" katy's head cocked alertly. "yes, he speak at me on the street, and he say he take me and my frien' out to nize dinner. he are wait in those street now." katy went to the window, leaned far out, saw the man on the street, and drew swiftly in, her face turning first white, then red. "sunny, ain't you got any better sense than speak to a man on the street?" "ho, katy, i din nod speag ad those man," declared sunny indignantly. "he speag ad me, and i do nod lig' hees eye. i do nod lig' hees mout', nor none of hees face, but i speag perlite bi-cause he are ask me eat those dinner." "well, you poor little simp, let me tell you who _that_ is. he's the dirtiest swine in harlem. you're muddied if he looks at you. he's--he's--i can't tell you what he is, because you're so ignorunt you wouldn't understand. you and me go out with the likes of him! sa-ay, i'd rather duck into a sewer. i'd come out cleaner, believe me. now watch how little k-k-k-katy treats that kind of dirt." she transferred the more decayed of the meat and bones from the package to the pail of water which had recently served for her "family wash." this she elevated to the window, put her head out, and as if sweetly to signal the waiting one below, she called: "hi-yi-yi-yi--i-i!" and as the man below looked up expectantly, she gave him the full benefit of the pail's contents in his upturned face. the sight of the drenched, spluttering and foully swearing rat on the street below struck the funny side of the two young girls. clinging together, they burst into laughter, holding their sides, and with their young heads tossed back; but their laughter had an element of hysteria to it, and when at last they stopped, and the stream of profanity from below continued to pour into the room, katy soberly closed the window. for a while they stared at each other in a scared silence. then katy, squaring her shoulders, belligerently said: "well, we should worry over that one." sunny was standing now by the bureau. a very thoughtful expression had come to sunny's face, and she opened the top drawer and drew out her little package. "katy," she said softly, "here are some little thing ad these package, which mebbe it goin' to help us." "say, i been wonderin' what you got in that parcel ever since you been here. i'd a asked you, but as you didn't volunteer no inflamation, i was too much of a lady to press it, and i'm telling the world, i'd not open no package the first time myself, without knowin' what was in it, especially as that one looks kind of mysteriees and foreign looking. i heard about a lady named pandora something and when she come to open a box she hadn't no right to open, it turned into smoke and she couldn't get it back to where she wanted it to go. what you got there, dearie, if it ain't being too personal to ask? i'll bet you got gold and diamonds hidden away somewhere." sunny was picking at the red silk cord. lovingly she unwrapped the japanese paper. the touch of her fingers on her mother's things was a caress and had all the reverence that the japanese child pays in tribute to a departed parent. "these honourable things belong my mother," said sunny gently. "she have give them to me when she know she got die. see, katy, this are kakemona. it very old, mebbe one tousan' year ole. it belong at grade prince of satsuma. thas my mother ancestor. this kakemona, it are so ole as those ancestor," said sunny reverently. "old! gee, i should say it is. looks as if it belonged in a tomb. you couldn't hock nothing like that, dearie, meanin' no offence. what else you got?" "the poor simp!" said katy to herself, as sunny drew forth her mother's veil. in the gardens of the house of a thousand joys the face of the dancer behind the shimmering veil had aroused the enthusiasm of her admirers. now katy bit off the words that were about to explain to sunny that in her opinion a better veil could be had at dacy's for ninety-eight cents. all she said, however, was: "you better keep the veil, sunny. i know how one feels about a mother's old duds. i got a pair of shoes of my mother's that nothing could buy from me, though they ain't much to look at; but i know how you feel about them things, dearie." "this," said sunny, with shining eyes, "are my mother's fan. see, katy, takamushi, a grade poet ad japan, are ride two poem on thad fan and present him to my mother. thad is grade treasure. i do nod lig' to sell those fan." "i wouldn't. you just keep it, dearie. we ain't so stone broke that you have to sell your mother's fan." "these are flower that my mother wear ad her hair when she danze, katy." the big artificial poppies that once had flashed up on either side of the dancer's lovely face, sunny now pressed against her cheek. "ain't they pretty?" said katy, pretending an enthusiasm she did not feel. "you could trim a hat with them if flowers was in fashion this year, but they ain't, dearie. the latest thing is naked hats, sailors, like you got, or treecornes, with nothing on them except the lines. what's that you got there, sunny?" "that are a letter, katy. my mother gave me those letter. she say that some day mebbe i are need some frien'. then i must put those letter at post office box, or i must take those letter in my hand to thad man it are write to. he are frien' to me, my mother have said." katy grabbed the letter, disbelieving her eyes when she read the name inscribed in the thin japanese hand. it was addressed both in english and japanese, and the name was, stephen holt wainwright, 27 broadway, new york city. "someone hold me up," cried katy. "i'm about to faint dead away." "oh, katy, do not be dead away! oh, katy, do not do those faint. here are those cracker. i am not so hungry as you." "my lord! you poor ignorunt little simp, don't you reckernise when a fellow is fainting with pure unadulterated joy? how long have you had that letter?" "four year now," said sunny sadly, thinking of the day when her mother had placed it in her hand, and of the look on the face of that mother. "why did you never mail it?" "i was await, katy. i are not need help. i have four and five good frien' to me then, and i do not need nuther one; but now i are beggar again. i nod got those frien's no more. i need those other one." "were you ever a _beggar_, sunny?" "oh, yes, katy, some time my mother and i we beg for something eat at japan. thad is no disgrace. the gods love those beggar jos' same rich man, and when he go on long journey to those meido, mebbe rich man go behind those beggar. i are hear thad at japan." "do you know who this letter is addressed to, dearie?" "no, katy, i cannot read so big a name. my mother say he will be frien' to me always." "sunny, i pity you for your ignorunce, but i don't hold it against you. you was born that way. why, a child could read that name. goodness knows i never got beyond the third grade, yet i _hope_ i'm able to read that. it says as plain as the nose on your face, sunny: stephen holt wainwright. now that's the name of one of the biggest guns in the country. he's a u. s. senator, or was and is, and he's so rich that he has to hire twenty or fifty cashiers to count his income that rolls in upon him from his vast estates. if you weren't so ignorunt, sunny, you'd a read about him in the _journal_. gee! his picture's in nearly every day, and pictures of his luxurious home and yacht and horses and wife, who's one of the big nobs in this suffrage scare. they call him 'the man of steel,' because he owns most of the steel in the world, and because he's got a mug--a face--on him like a steel trap. that's what i've heard and read, though i've never met the gentleman. i expect to, however, very soon, seeing he's a friend of yours. and now, lovey, don't waste no more tears over that other bunch of ginks, because this senator wainwright has got them all beat in the marathon." "katy, this letter are written by my mother ad the japanese language. mebbe those sen--a--tor kinnod read them. what i shall do?" "what you shall do, baby mine? did you think i was goin' to let precious freight like that go into any post box. perish the idea, lovey. you and me are going to waltz downtown to 27 broadway, and we ain't going to do no walking what's more. the subway for little us. i'm gambling on mr. senator passing along a job to friends of his friends. get your hat on now, and don't answer back neither." on the way downstairs she gave a final stern order to sunny. "hold your hat pin in your hand as we come out. if his nibs so much as opens his face to you, jab him in the eye. i'll take care of the rest of him." thus bravely armed, the two small warriors issued forth, the general marshalling her army of one, with an elevated chin and nose and an eye that scorched from head to foot the craven looking object waiting for them on the street. "come along, dearie. be careful you don't get soiled as we pass." laughing merrily, the two girls, with music in their souls, danced up the street, their empty stomachs and their lost jobs forgotten. when they reached the subway, katy seized sunny's hand, and they raced down the steps just as the south ferry train pulled in. chapter xvii that was a long and exciting ride for sunny. above the roar of the rushing train katy shouted in her ear. perfectly at home in the subway, katy did not let a little thing like mere noise deter the steady flow of her tongue. the gist of her remarks came always back to what sunny was to do when they arrived at 27 broadway; how she was to look; how speak. she was to bear in mind that she was going into the presence of american royalty, and she was to be neither too fresh nor yet too humble. americans, high and low, so katy averred, liked folks that had a kick to them, but not too much of a kick. sunny was to find out whether at some time or other in the past, senator wainwright had not put himself under deep obligations to some member of sunny's family. perhaps some of her relatives might have saved the life of this senator. even chinks were occasionally heroes, katy had heard. it might be, on the other hand, said katy, that sunny's mother had something "on" the senator. so much the better. katy had no objection, so she said, to the use of a bit of refined ladylike blackmail, for "the end justifies the means," said katy, quoting, so she said, from lincoln, the source of all her aphorisms. anyway, the long and short of it was, said katy, that sunny was on no account to get cold feet. she was to enter the presence of the mighty man with dignity and coolness. "keep your nerve whatever you do," urged katy. then once eye to eye with the man of power, she was to ask--it was possible, she might even be able to demand--certain favours. "ask and it shall be given to you. shut your mouth and it'll be taken away. that's how things go in this old world," said katy. sunny was to make application in both their names. if there were no vacancies in the senator's office, then she would delicately suggest that the senator could make such a vacancy. such things were done within katy's own experience. katy had no difficulty in locating the monstrous office building, and she led sunny along to the elevator with the experienced air of one used to ascending skyward in the crowded cars. sunny held tight to her arm as they made the breathless ascent. there was no need to ask direction on the 35th floor, since the wainwright structural steel company occupied the entire floor. it was noon hour, and katy and sunny followed several girls returning from lunch through the main entrance of the offices. a girl at a desk in the reception hall stopped them from penetrating farther into the offices by calling out: "no admission there. who do you want to see? name, please." katy swung around on her heel, and recognising a kindred spirit in the girl at the desk, she favoured her with an equally haughty and glassy stare. then in a very superior voice, katy replied: "we are friends of the senator. kindly announce us, if you please." a grin slipped over the face of the maiden at the desk, and she shoved a pad of paper toward katy. opposite the word "name" on the pad, katy wrote, "miss sindicutt." opposite the word: "business" she wrote "private and personal and intimate." the girl at the desk glanced amusedly at the pad, tore the first sheet off, pushed a button which summoned an office boy, to whom she handed the slip of paper. with one eye turned appraisingly upon the girls, he went off backwards, whistling, and disappeared through the little swinging gate that opened apparently into the great offices beyond. "i beg your pardon?" said katy to the girl at the desk. "i didn't say nothing," returned the surprised maiden. "i thought you said 'be seated.' i will, thank you. don't mention it," and katy grinned with malicious politeness on the discomfited young person, who patted her coiffure with assumed disdain. katy meanwhile disposed herself on the long bench, drew sunny down beside her, and proceeded to scrutinise and comment on all passers through the main reception hall into the offices within. once in a while she resumed her injunctions to sunny, as: "now don't be gettin' cold feet whatever you do. there ain't nothing to be afraid of. a cat may look at a king, him being the king and you the cat. no offence, dearie. ha, ha, ha! that's just my way of speaking. say, sunny, would you look at her nibs at the desk there. gee! ain't that a job? some snap, i'll say. nothin' to do, but give everyone the once over, push a button and send a boy to carry in your names. say, if you're a true friend of mine, you'll land me that job. it'd suit me down to a double tee." "katy, i goin' try get you bes' job ad these place. i am not so smart like you, katy----" "oh, well, you can't help that, dearie, and you got the face all right." "face is no matter. my mother are tell me many time, it is those heart that matter." "_sounds_ all right, and i ain't questionin' your mother's opinion, sunny, but you take it from me, you can go a darn sight further in this old world with a face than a heart." a man had come into the reception room from the main entrance. he started to cross the room directly to the little swinging door, then stopped to speak to a clerk at a wicket window. something about the sternness of his look, an air savouring almost of austerity aroused the imp in katy. "well, look who's here," she whispered behind her hand to sunny. "now watch little k-k-katy." as the man turned from the window, and proceeded toward the door, katy shot out her foot, and the man abstractedly stumbled against it. he looked down at the girl, impudently staring him out of countenance, and frowned at her exaggerated: "i _beg_ your pardon!" then his glance turning irritably from katy, rested upon sunny's slightly shocked face? he stopped abruptly, standing perfectly still for a moment, staring down at the girl. then with a muttered apology, senator wainwright turned and went swiftly through the swinging door. "well, of _all_ the nerve!" said katy. then to the girl at the desk: "who was his nibs?" "why, your friend, of course. i'm surprised you didn't recognise him," returned the girl sweetly. "him--senator wainwright." "the papers sometimes call him 'the man of steel,' but of course, intimate friends like you and your friend there probably call him by a nickname." "sure we do," returned katy brazenly. "i call him 'sen-sen' for short. i'd a known him in an instant with his hat off." "i want to know!" gibed the girl at the desk. the boy had returned, and thrusting his head over the short gate sang out: "this way, please, la-adies!" katy and sunny followed the boy across an office where many girls and men were working at desks. the click of a hundred typewriters, and the voices dictating into dictagraphs and to books impressed katy, but with her head up she swung along behind the boy. at a door marked "miss hollowell, private," the boy knocked. a voice within bade him "come," and the two girls were admitted. miss hollowell, a clear-eyed young woman of the clean-cut modern type of the efficient woman executive, looked up from her work and favoured them with a pleasant smile. "what can i do for you?" the question was directed at katy, but her trained eye went from katy to sunny, and there remained in speculative inquiry. "we have come to call upon the senator," said katy, "on important and private business." katy was gripping to that something she called her "nerve," but her manner to miss hollowell had lost the gibing patronising quality she had affected to the girl at the door. acute street gamin, as was katy, she had that unerring gift of sizing up human nature at a glance, a gift not unsimilar in fact to that possessed by the secretary of senator wainwright. miss hollowell smiled indulgently at katy's words. "_i_ see. well now, i'll speak for mr. wainwright. what can we do for you?" "nothing. _you_ can't do nothing," said katy. she was not to be beguiled by the smile of this superior young person. "my friend here--meet miss sindicutt--has a personal letter for senator wainwright, and she's takin' my advice not to let it out of her hands into any but his." "i'm awfully sorry, because mr. wainwright is very busy, and can't possibly see you. i believe i will answer the purpose as well. i'm mr. wainwright's secretary." "we don't want to speak to no secretary," said katy. "i always say: 'go to the top. slide down if you must. you can't slide up.'" miss hollowell laughed. "oh, very well then. perhaps some other time, but we're especially busy to-day, so i'm going to ask you to excuse us. _good_-day." she turned back to the papers on her desk, her pencil poised above a sheet of estimates. katy pushed sunny forward, and in dumb show signified that she should speak. miss hollowell glanced up and regarded the girl with singular attention. something in the expression, something in the back of the secretary's mind that concerned japan, which this strange girl had now mentioned caused her to wait quietly for her to finish the sentence. sunny held out the letter, and miss hollowell saw that fine script upon the envelope, with the japanese letters down the side. "this are a letter from japan," said sunny. "if you please i will lig' to give those to sen--thad is so big a name for me to say." the last was spoken apologetically and brought a sympathetic smile from miss hollowell. "can't i read it? i'm sure i can give you what information you want as well as mr. wainwright can." "it are wrote in japanese," said sunny. "you cannot read that same. _please_ you let me take it to thad gentleman." miss hollowell, with a smile, arose at that plea. she crossed the room and tapped on the door bearing the senator's name. even in a city where offices of the new york magnates are sometimes as sumptuously furnished as drawing rooms, the great room of senator wainwright was distinctive. the floor was strewn with priceless persian and chinese rugs, which harmonised with the remarkable walls, panelled half way up with mahogany, the upper part of which was hung with masterpieces of the american painters, whose work the steel magnate especially favoured. stephen wainwright was seated at a big mahogany desk table, that was at the far end of the room, between the great windows, which gave upon a magnificent view of the hudson river and part of the harbor. he was not working. his elbows on the desk, he seemed to be staring out before him in a mood of strange abstraction. his face, somewhat stony in expression, with straight grey eyes that had a curious trick when turned on one of seeming to pin themselves in an appraising stare, his iron grey hair and the grey suit which he invariably wore had given him the name of "the man of steel." miss hollowell, with her slightly professional smile, laid the slip of paper on the desk before him. "a miss sindicutt. she has a letter for you--a letter from japan she says. she wishes to deliver it in person." at the word "japan" he came slightly out of his abstraction, stared at the slip of paper, and shook his head. "don't know the name." "yes, i knew you didn't; but, still, i believe i'd see her if i were you." "very well. send her in." miss hollowell at the door nodded brightly to sunny, but stayed katy, who triumphantly was pushing forward. "sorry, but mr. wainwright will see just miss sindicutt." sunny went in alone. she crossed the room hesitantly and stood by the desk of the steel magnate, waiting for him to speak to her. he remained unmoving, half turned about in his seat, staring steadily at the girl before him. if a ghost had arisen suddenly in his path, senator wainwright could not have felt a greater agitation. after a long pause, he found his voice, murmuring: "i beg your pardon. be seated, please." sunny took the chair opposite him. their glances met and remained for a long moment locked. then the man tried to speak lightly: "you wished to see me. what can i do for you?" sunny extended the letter. when he took it from her hand, his face came somewhat nearer to hers, and the closer he saw that young girl's face, the greater grew his agitation. "what is your name?" he demanded abruptly. "sunny," said the girl simply, little dreaming that she was speaking the name that the man before her had himself invented for her seventeen and a half years before. the word touched some electrical cord within him. he started violently forward in his seat, half arising, and the letter in his hand dropped on the table before him face up. a moment of gigantic self-control, and then with fingers that shook, stephen wainwright slipped the envelope open. the words swam before him, but not till they were indelibly printed upon the man's conscience-stricken heart. through blurred vision he read the message from the dead to the living. "on this sixth day of the season of little plenty. a thousand years of joy. it is your honourable daughter, who knows not your name, who brings or sends to you this my letter. i go upon the long journey to the meido. i send my child to him through whom she has her life. sayonara. haru-no." for a long, long time the man sat with his two hands gripped before him on the desk, steadily looking at the girl before him, devouring every feature of the well-remembered face of the child he had always loved. it seemed to him that she had changed not at all. his little sunny of those charming days of his youth had that same crystal look of supreme innocence, a quality of refinement, a fragrance of race that seemed to reach back to some old ancestry, and put its magic print upon the exquisite young face. he felt he must have been blind not to have recognised his own child the instant his eye had fallen upon her. he knew now what that warm rush of emotion had meant when he had looked at her in that outer office. it was the intuitive instinct that his own child was near--the only child he had ever had. by exercising all the self-control that he could command, he was at last able to speak her name, huskily. "sunny, don't you remember me?" like her father, sunny was addicted to moments of abstraction. she had allowed her gaze to wander through the window to the harbour below, where she could see the great ships at their moorings. it made her think of the one she had come to america on, and the one on which jerry had sailed away from japan. painfully, wistfully, she brought her gaze back to her father's face. at his question she essayed a little propitiating smile. "mebbe i are see you face on american ad-ver-tise-ment. i are hear you are very grade man ad these america," said the child of stephen wainwright. he winced, and yet grew warm with pride and longing at the girl's delicious accent. he, too, tried to smile back at her, but something sharp bit at the man's eyelids. "no, sunny. try and think. throw your mind far back--back to your sixth year, if that may be." sunny's eyes, resting now in troubled question upon the face before her, grew slowly fixed and enlarged. through the fogs of memory slowly, like a vision of the past, she seemed to see again a little child in a fragrant garden. she was standing by the rim of a pool, and the man opposite her now was at her side. he was dressed in japanese kimona and hakama, and sunny remembered that then he was always laughing at her, shaking the flower weighted trees above her, till the petals fell in a white and pink shower upon her little head and shoulders. she was stretching out her hands, catching the falling blossoms, and, delightedly exclaiming that the flying petals were tiny birds fluttering through the air. she was leaning over the edge of the pool, blowing the petals along the water, playing with her father that they were white prayer ships, carrying the petitions to the gods who waited on the other side. she remembered drowsing against the arm of the man; of being tossed aloft, her face cuddled against his neck; of passing under the great wistaria arbour. ah, yes! how clearly she recalled it now! as her father transferred her to her mother's arms, he bent and drew that mother into his embrace also. two great tears welled up in the eyes of sunny, but ere they could fall, the distance between her and her father had vanished. stephen wainwright, kneeling on the floor by his long-lost child, had drawn her hungrily into his arms. "my own little girl!" said "the man of steel." chapter xviii stephen wainwright, holding his daughter jealously in his arms, felt those long-locked founts of emotion that had been pent up behind his steely exterior bursting all bounds. he had the immense feeling that he wanted for evermore to cherish and guard this precious thing that was all his own. "our actions are followed by their consequences as surely as a body by its shadow," says the japanese proverb, and that cruel act of his mad youth had haunted the days of this man, who had achieved all that some men sell their souls for in life. and yet the greatest of all prizes had escaped him--peace of mind. even now, as he held sunny in his arms, he was consumed by remorse and anguish. in his crowded life of fortune and fame, and a social career at the side of the brilliant woman who bore his name, stephen wainwright's best efforts had been unavailing to obliterate from his memory that tragic face that like a flower petal on a stream he had so lightly blown away. o-haru-no was her name then, and she was the child of a japanese woman of caste, whose marriage to an attaché of a russian embassy had, in its time, created a furore in the capital. her father had perished in a shipwreck at sea, and her mother had returned to her people, there, in her turn, to perish from grief and the cold neglect of the japanese relatives who considered her marriage a blot upon the family escutcheon. always a lover and collector of beautiful things, wainwright had harkened to the enthusiastic flights of a friend, who had "discovered" an incomparable piece of satsuma, and had accompanied him to an old mansion, once part of a satsuma yashiki, there to find that his friend's "piece of satsuma" was a living work of art, a little piece of bric-a-brac that the collector craved to add to his collections. he had purchased o-haru-no for a mere song, for her white skin had been a constant reproach and shame in the house of her ancestors. moreover, this branch of the ancient family had fallen upon meagre days, and despite their pride, they were not above bartering this humble descendant for the gold of the american. o-haru-no escaped with joy from the harsh atmosphere of the house of her ancestors to the gay home of her purchaser. the fact that he had practically bought his wife, and that she had been willing to become a thing of barter and sale, had from the first caused the man to regard her lightly. we value things often, not by their intrinsic value, but by the price we have paid for them, and o-haru-no had been thrown upon the bargain counter of life. however, it was not in stephen wainwright's nature to resist anything as pretty as the wife he had bought. a favourite and sardonic jest of his at that time was that she was the choicest piece in his collections, and that some day he purposed to put her in a glass case, and present her to the museum of art of his native city. had indeed stephen wainwright seen the dancer, as she lay among her brilliant robes, her wide sleeves outspread like the wings of a butterfly, and that perfectly chiselled face on which the smile that had made her famous still seemed faintly to linger, he might have recalled that utterance of the past, and realised that no object of art in the great museum of which his people were so proud, could compare with this masterpiece of death's grim hand. he tried to delude himself with the thought that the temporary wife of his young days was but an incident, part of an idyll that had no place in the life of the man of steel, who had seized upon life with strong, hot hands. but sunny! his own flesh and blood, the child whose hair had suggested her name. despite the galloping years she persisted ever in his memory. he thought of her constantly, of her strange little ways, her pretty coaxing ways, her smile, her charming love of the little live things, her perception of beauty, her closeness to nature. there was a quality of psychic sweetness about her, something rare and delicate that appealed to the epicure as exquisite and above all price. it was not his gold that had purchased sunny. she was a gift of the gods and his memory of his child contained no flaw. it was part of his punishment that the woman he married after his return to america from japan should have drifted farther and farther apart from him with the years. intuitively, his wife had recognised that hungry heart behind the man's cold exterior. she knew that the greatest urge in the character of this man was his desire for children. from year to year she suffered the agony of seeing the frustration of their hopes. highstrung and imaginative, mrs. wainwright feared that her husband would acquire a dislike for her. the idea persisted like a monomania. she sought distraction from this ghost that arose between them in social activities and passionate work in the cause of woman's suffrage. it was her husband's misfortune that his nature was of that unapproachable sort that seldom lets down the mask, a man who retired within himself, and sought resources of comfort where indeed they were not to be found. grimly, cynically, he watched the devastating effects of their separated interests, and in time she, too, in a measure was cast aside, in thought at least, just as the first wife had been. stephen wainwright grew grimmer and colder with the years, and the name applied to him was curiously suitable. this was the man whose tears were falling on the soft hair of the strange girl from japan. he had lifted her hat, that he might again see that hair, so bright and pretty that had first suggested her name. with awkward gentleness, he smoothed it back from the girl's thin little face. "sunny, you know your father now, fully, don't you? tell me that you do--that you have not forgotten me. you were within a few weeks of six when i went away, and we were the greatest of pals. surely you have not forgotten altogether. it seems just the other day you were looking at me, just as you are now. it does not seem to me as if you have changed at all. you are still my little girl. tell me--you have not forgotten your father altogether, have you?" "no. those year they are push away. you are my chichi (papa). i so happy see you face again." she held him back, her two hands on his shoulders, and now, true to her sex, she prepared to demand a favour from her father. "now i think you are going to give katy and me mos' bes' job ad you business." "job? who is katy?" "i are not told you yet of katy. katy are my frien'." "you've told me nothing. i must know everything that has happened to you since i left japan." "thas too long ago," said sunny sadly, "and i am hongry. i lig' eat liddle bit something." "what! you've had no lunch?" she told him the incident of the dog meat, not stopping to explain just then who katy was, and how she had come to be with her. he leaned over to the desk and pushed the button. miss holliwell, coming to the door, saw a sight that for the first time in her years of service with senator wainwright took away her composure. her employer was kneeling by a chair on which was seated the strange girl. her hat was off, and she was holding one of his hands with both of hers. even then he did not break the custom of years and explain or confide in his secretary, and she saw to her amazement that the eyes of the man she secretly termed "the sphinx" were red. all he said was: "order a luncheon, miss holliwell. have it brought up here. have mouquin rush it through. that is all." miss holliwell slowly closed the door, but her amazement at what she had seen within was turned to indignation at what she encountered without. as the door opened, katy pressed up against the keyhole, fell back upon the floor. during the period when sunny had been in the private office of miss holliwell's employer, she had had her hands full with the curious young person left behind. katy had found relief from her pent-up curiosity in an endless stream of questions and gratuitous remarks which she poured out upon the exasperated secretary. katy's tongue and spirit were entirely undaunted by the chilling monosyllabic replies of miss holliwell, and the latter was finally driven to the extremity of requesting her to wait in the outer office: "i'm awfully busy," said the secretary, "and really when you chatter like that i cannot concentrate upon my work." to which, with a wide friendly smile, rejoined katy: "cheer up, miss frozen-face. mums the word from this time on." "mum" she actually kept, but her alert pose, her cocked-up ears and eyes, glued upon the door had such a quality of upset about them that miss holliwell found it almost as difficult to concentrate as when her tongue had rattled along. now here she was engaged in the degrading employment of listening and seeing what was never intended for her ears and eyes. miss holliwell pushed her indignantly away. "what do you _mean_ by doing a thing like that?" between what she had seen inside her employer's private office, and the actions of this young gamin, miss holliwell was very much disturbed. she betook herself to the seat with a complete absence of her cultivated composure. when katy said, however: "gee! i wisht i knew whether sunny is safe in there with that gink," miss holliwell was forced to raise her hand to hide a smile that would come despite her best efforts. for once in her life she gave the wrong number, and was cross with the girl at the telephone desk because it was some time before mouquin's was reached. the carefully ordered meal dictated by miss holliwell aroused in the listening katy such mixed emotions, that, as the secretary hung up the receiver, the hungry youngster leaned over and said in a hoarse pleading whisper: "say, if you're orderin' for sunny, make it a double." inside, sunny was telling her father her story. "begin from the first," he had said. "omit nothing. i must know everything about you." graphically, as they waited for the lunch, she sketched in all the sordid details of her early life, the days of their mendicancy making the man feel immeasurably mean. sitting at the desk now, his eyes shaded with his hand, he gritted his teeth, and struck the table with repeated soundless blows when his daughter told him of hirata. but something, a feeling more penetrating than pain, stung stephen wainwright when she told him of those warmhearted men who had come into her life like a miracle and taken the place that he should have been there to fill. for the first time he interrupted her to take down the names of her friends, one by one, on a pad of paper. professor barrowes, zoologist and professor of archeology. wainwright had heard of him somewhere recently. yes, he recalled him now. some dispute about a recent "find" of the professor's. a question raised as to the authenticity of the fossil. opposition to its being placed in the museum--newspaper discussion. an effort on the professor's part to raise funds for further exploration in canada northwest. robert mapson, jr. senator wainwright knew the reporter slightly. he had covered stories in which senator wainwright was interested. on the _comet_. sunny's father knew the _comet_ people well. lamont potter, jr. philadelphia people. his firm did business with them. young potter at bellevue. j. lyon crawford, son of a man once at college with wainwright. sunny's father recalled some chaffing joke at the club anent "jinx's" political ambitions. as a prospect in politics he had seemed a joke to his friends. and, last, j. addison hammond, jr., "jerry." how sunny had pronounced that name! there was that about that soft inflection that caused her father to hold his pencil suspended, while a stab of jealousy struck him. "what does he do, sunny?" "ho! he are goin' be grade artist-arki-tuck. he make so beautiful pictures, and he have mos' beautiful thought on inside his head. he goin' to make all these city loog beautiful. he show how make 'partment houses, where all god light and there's garden grow on top, and there's house where they not put out liddle bebby on street. he's go sleep and play on those garden on top house." her father, his elbow on desk, his chin cupped on his hand, watched the girl's kindling face, and suffered pangs that he could not analyse. quietly he urged her to continue her story. unwilling she turned from jerry, but came back always to him. of her life in jerry's apartment, of hatton and his "yuman 'ankerings"; of itchy, with his two fleas; of mr. and mrs. satsuma in the gold cage, of count and countess taguchi who swam in the glass bowl; of the honourable mice; of the butcher and janitor gentlemen; of monty, of bobs, of jinx, who had asked her to marry them, and up to the day when mrs. hammond and miss falconer had come to the apartment and turned her out. then a pause to catch her breath in a wrathful sob, to continue the wistful tale of her prayer to kuonnon in the raging, noisy street; of the mother's gentle spirit that had gone with her on the dark long road that lead to--katy. it was then that miss holliwell tapped, and the waiters came in with the great loaded trays held aloft, bearing the carefully ordered meal and the paraphernalia that accompanies a luncheon de luxe. someone besides the waiters had slipped by miss holliwell. katy, clucking with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, tried to attract the attention of sunny, whose back was turned. sniffing those delicious odours, katy came farther into the room, and following the clucking she let out an unmistakably false cough and loud ahem! this time, sunny turned, saw her friend, and jumped up from her seat and ran to her. said katy in a whisper: "gee! you're smarter than i gave you credit for being. got him going, ain't you? well, pull his leg while the going's good, and say, sunny, if them things on the tray are for you, remember, i gave you half my hot dogs and i always say----" "this are my frien', katy," said sunny proudly, as the very grave faced man whom katy had tried to trip came forward and took katy's hand in a tight clasp. "katy, this are my--chichi--mr. papa," said sunny. katy gasped, staring with wide open mouth from senator wainwright to sunny. her head reeled with the most extravagantly romantic tale that instantly flooded it. then with a whoop curiously like that of some small boy, katy grasped hold of sunny about the waist. "whuroo!" cried katy. "i _knew_ you was a princess. gee. it's just like a dime novel--better than any story in hoist's even." there in the dignified office of the steel magnate the girl from the east side drew his daughter into one of the most delicious shimmies, full of sheer fun and impudent youth. for the first time in years, senator wainwright threw back his head and burst into laughter. now these two young radiant creatures, who could dance while they hungered, were seated before that gorgeous luncheon. sunny's father lifted the top from the great planked steak, entirely surrounded on the board with laced browned potatoes, ornamental bits of peas, beans, lima and string, asparagus, cauliflower and mushrooms. sunny let forth one long ecstatic sigh as she clasped her hands together, while katy laid both hands piously upon her stomach and raising her eyes as if about to deliver a solemn grace, she said: "home, sweet home, was never like this!" chapter xix society enjoys a shock. it craves sensation. when that brilliant and autocratic leader returned from several months' absence abroad, with a young daughter, of whose existence no one had ever heard, her friends were mystified. when, with the most evident pride and fondness she referred to the fact that her daughter had spent most of her life in foreign lands, and was the daughter of senator wainwright's first wife, speculation was rife. that the senator had been previously married, that he had a daughter of eighteen years, set all society agog, and expectant to see the girl, whose debut was to be made at a large coming out party given by her mother in her honour. the final touch of mystery and romance was added by the daughter herself. an enterprising society reporter, had through the magic medium of a card from her chief, mr. mapson, of the new york _comet_, obtained a special interview with miss wainwright on the eve of her ball, and the latter had confided to the incredulous and delighted newspaper woman the fact that she expected to be married at an early date. the announcement, however, lost some of its thrill when miss wainwright omitted the name of the happy man. application to her mother brought forth the fact that that personage knew no more about this coming event than the "throb sister," as she called herself. mrs. wainwright promptly denied the story, pronouncing it a probable prank of miss sunny and her friend, miss clarry. here mrs. wainwright sighed. she always sighed at the mention of katy's name, sighed indulgently, yet hopelessly. the latter had long since been turned over to the efficient hands of a miss woodhouse, a lady from bryn mawr, who had accompanied the wainwright party abroad. her especial duty in life was to refine katy, a task not devoid of entertainment to said competent young person from bryn mawr, since it stirred to literary activity certain slumbering talents, and in due time katy, through the pen of miss woodhouse, was firmly pinned on paper. however, this is not katy's story, though it may not be inapropos to mention here that the mrs. j. lyon crawford, jr., who for so long queened it over, bossed, bullied and shepherded the society of new york, was under the skin ever the same little general who had marched forth with her army of one down the steps of that east side tenement house, with hat pin ostentatiously and dangerously apparent to the craven rat of the east side. coming back to sunny. the newspaper woman persisting that the story had been told her with utmost candour and seriousness, mrs. wainwright sent for her daughter. sunny, questioned by her mother, smilingly confirmed the story. "but, my dear," said mrs. wainwright, "you know no young men yet. surely you are just playing. it's a game between you and katy, isn't it, dear? katy is putting you up to it, i'm sure." "no, mama, katy are--is--not do so. _i_ am! it is true! i am going to make marriage wiz american gentleman mebbe very soon." "darling, i believe i'd run along. that will do for just now, dear. _i'll_ speak to miss ah--what is the name?" "holman, of the _comet_." "ah, yes, miss holman. run along, dear," in a tone an indulgent mother uses to a baby. then with her club smile turned affably on miss holman: "our little sunny is so mischievous. now i'm quite sure she and miss clarry are playing some naughty little game. i don't believe i'd publish that if i were you, miss holman." miss holman laughed in mrs. wainwright's face, which brought the colour to a face that for the last few months had radiated such good humour upon the world. mrs. wainwright smiled, now discomfited, for she knew that the newspaper woman not only intended to print sunny's statement, but her mother's denial. "now, miss holman, your story will have no value, in view of the fact that the name of the man is not mentioned." "i thought that a defect at first," said miss holman, shamelessly, "but i'm inclined to think it will add to the interest. our readers dote on mysteries, and i'll cover the story on those lines. later i'll do a bit of sleuthing on the man end. we'll get him," and the man-like young woman nodded her head briskly and betook herself from the wainwright residence well satisfied with her day's work. an appeal to the editor of the _comet_ on the telephone brought back the surprising answer that they would not print the story if sunny--that editor referred to the child of senator wainwright as "sunny"--herself denied it. he requested that "sunny" be put on the wire. mrs. wainwright was especially indignant over this, because she knew that that editor had arisen to his present position entirely through a certain private "pull" of senator wainwright. of course, the editor himself did not know this, but senator wainwright's wife did, and she thought him exceedingly unappreciative and exasperating. mrs. wainwright sought sunny in her room. here she found that bewildering young person with her extraordinary friend enthusing over a fashion book devoted to trousseaux and bridal gowns. they looked up with flushed faces, and mrs. wainwright could not resist a feeling of resentment at the thought that her daughter (she never thought of sunny as "stepdaughter") should give her confidence to miss clarry in preference to her. however, she masked her feelings, as only mrs. wainwright could, and with a smile to katy advised her that miss woodhouse was waiting for her. katy's reply, "yes, ma'am--i mean, aunt emma," was submissive and meek enough, but it was hard for mrs. wainwright to overlook that very pronounced wink with which katy favoured sunny ere she departed. "and now, dear," said mrs. wainwright, putting her arm around sunny, "tell me all about it." sunny, who loved her dearly, cuddled against her like a child, but nevertheless shook her bright head. "ho! that is secret i not tell. i are a tomb." "tomb?" "yes, thas word lig' katy use when she have secret. she say it are--is--lock up in tomb." "to think," said mrs. wainwright jealously, "that you prefer to confide in a stranger like katy rather than your mother." "no, i not told katy yet," said sunny quickly. "she have ask me one tousan' time, and i are not tol' her." "but, darling, surely you want _me_ to know. is he any young man we are acquainted with?" sunny, finger thoughtfully on her lip, considered. "no-o, i think you are not know him yet." "is he one of the young men who--er----" it was painful for mrs. wainwright to contemplate that chapter in sunny's past when she had been the ward of four strange young men. in fact, she had taken sunny abroad immediately after that remarkable time when her husband had brought the strange young girl to the house and for the first time she had learned of sunny's existence. life had taken on a new meaning to mrs. wainwright after that. suddenly she comprehended the meaning of having someone to live for. her life and work had a definite purpose and impetus. her husband's child had closed the gulf that had yawned so long between man and wife, and was threatening to separate them forever. her love for sunny, and her pride in the girl's beauty and charm was almost pathetic. had she been the girl's own mother, she could not have been more indulgent or anxious for her welfare. sunny, not answering the last question, mrs. wainwright went over in her mind each one of the young men whose ward sunny had been. the first three, jinx, monty and bobs, she soon rejected as possibilities. there remained jerry hammond. private inquiries concerning jerry had long since established the fact that he had been for a number of years engaged to a miss falconer. mrs. wainwright had been much distressed because sunny insisted on writing numerous letters to jerry while abroad. it seemed very improper, so she told the girl, to write letters to another woman's fiancé. sunny agreed with this most earnestly, and after a score of letters had gone unanswered she promised to desist. mrs. wainwright appreciated all that mr. hammond had done for her daughter. sunny's father had indeed expressed that appreciation in that letter (a similar one had been sent to all members of the sunny syndicate) penned immediately after he had found sunny. he had, moreover, done everything in his power privately to advance the careers and interests of the various men who had befriended his daughter. but for his engagement to miss falconer, mrs. wainwright would not have had the slightest objection to sunny continuing her friendship with this mr. hammond, but really it was hardly the proper thing under the circumstances. however, she was both peeved and relieved when sunny's many epistles remained unanswered for months, and then a single short letter that was hardly calculated to revive sunny's childish passion for this jerry arrived. jerry wrote: "dear sunny. glad get your many notes. have been away. glad you are happy. hope see you when you return. jerry." a telegram would have contained more words, the ruffled mrs. wainwright was assured, and she acquired a prejudice against jerry, despite all the good she had heard of him. from that time on her rôle was to, as far as lay in her power, distract the dear child from thought of the man who very evidently cared nothing about her. of course, mrs. wainwright did not know of that illness of jerry hammond when he had hovered between life and death. she did not know that all of sunny's letters had come to his hand at one time, unwillingly given up by professor barrowes, who feared a relapse from the resulting excitement. she did not know that that shaky scrawl was due to the fact that jerry was sitting up in bed, and had penned twenty or more letters to sunny, in which he had exhausted all of the sweet words of a lover's vocabulary, and then had stopped short to contemplate the fact that he had done absolutely nothing in the world to prove himself worthy of sunny, had torn up the aforementioned letters, and penned the blank scrawl that told the daughter of senator wainwright nothing. but it was shortly after that that jerry began to "come back." he started upon the highroad to health, and his recuperation was so swift that he was able to laugh at the protesting and anxious barrowes, who moved heaven and earth to prevent the young man from returning to his work. jerry had been however, "away" long enough, so he said, and he fell upon his work with such zeal that no mere friend or mother could stop him. never had that star of beauty, of which he had always dreamed, seemed so close to jerry as now. never had the incentive to succeed been so vital and gloriously necessary. at the end of all his efforts, he saw no longer the elusive face of the imaginary "beauty," of which he loved to tell sunny, and which he despaired ever to reach. what was a figment of the imagination now took a definite lovely form. at the end of his rainbow was the living face of sunny. and so with a song within his heart, a light in his eyes, and a spring to his step, with kind words for everyone he met, jerry hammond worked and waited. mrs. wainwright, by this time, knew the futility of trying to force sunny to reveal her secret. not only was she very japanese in her ability to keep a secret when she chose, but she was stephen wainwright's child. her mother knew that for months she had neither seen nor written to jerry hammond, for sunny herself had told her so, when questioned. who then was the mysterious fiancé? could it possibly be someone she had known in japan? this thought caused mrs. wainwright considerable trepidation. she feared the possibility of a young russian, a japanese, a missionary. to make sure that jerry was not the one sunny had in mind, she asked the girl whether he had ever proposed to her, and sunny replied at once, very sadly: "no-o. i ask him do so, but he do not do so. he are got 'nother girl he marry then. jinx and monty and bobs are all ask me marry wiz them, but jerry never ask so." "oh, my dear, did you really _ask_ him to ask you to marry him?" "ho! i hint for him do so," said sunny, "but he do not do so. thas very sad for me," she admitted dejectedly. "very fortunate, i call it," said mrs. wainwright. thus jerry's elimination was completed, and for the nonce the matter of sunny's marriage was dropped pro tem, to be revived, however, on the night of her ball, when the story appeared under leaded type in the _comet_. chapter xx there have been many marvellous balls given in the city of new york, but none exceeding the famous cherry blossom ball. the guests stepped into a vast ball room that had been transformed into a japanese garden in spring. on all sides, against the walls, and made into arbours and groves, cherry trees in full blossom were banked, while above and over the galleries dripped the long purple and white heads of the wistaria. the entire arch of the ceiling was covered with cherry branches, and the floor was of heavy glass, in imitation of a lake in which the blossoms were reflected. through a lane of slender bamboo the guests passed to meet, under a cherry blossom bower, the loveliest bud of the season, sunny, in a fairy-like maline and chiffon frock, springing out about her diaphanously, and of the pale pink and white colors of the cherry blossoms. sunny, with her bright, shining hair coifed by the hand of an artist; sunny, with her first string of perfect pearls and a monstrous feather fan, that when dropped seemed to cover half her short fluffy skirts. sunny, with the brightest eyes, darting in and out and looking over the heads of her besieging guests, laughing, nodding, breathlessly parrying the questions that poured in on all sides. everybody wanted to know who _the_ man was. "oh, do tell us who he is," they would urge, and sunny would shake her bright head, slowly unfurl her monstrous fan, and with it thoughtfully at her lips she would say: "ho yes, it are true, and mebbe i will tell you some nother day." now among those present at sunny's party were five men whose acquaintance the readers of this story have already made. it so happened that they were very late in arriving at the wainwright dance, this being due to the fact that one of their number had to be brought there by physical force. jerry, at dinner, had read that story in the _comet_, and was reduced to such a condition of distraction that it was only by the united efforts of his four friends that he was forcibly shoved into that car. the party arrived late, as stated, and it may be recorded that as sunny's eyes searched that sea of faces before her, moving to the music of the orchestra and the tinkle of the japanese bells, they lost somewhat of their shining look, and became so wistful that her father, sensitive to every change in the girl, never left her side; but he could not induce the girl to dance. she remained with her parents in the receiving arbor. suddenly two spots of bright rose came to the cheeks of sunny, and she arose on tip-toes, just as she had done as a child on the tight rope. she saw that arriving party approaching, and heard katy's voice as she husbanded them to what she called "the royal throne." at this juncture, and when he was within but a few feet of the "throne" jerry saw sunny. one long look passed between them, and then, shameless to relate, jerry ducked into that throng of dancers. to further escape the wrathful hands of his friends, he seized some fat lady hurriedly about the waist and dragged her upon the glass floor. his rudeness covered up with as much tact as his friends could muster, they proceeded, as far as lay in their power, to compensate for his defection. they felt no sympathy nor patience with the acts of jerry. were they not all in the same boat, and equally stung by the story of sunny's engagement? both hands held out, sunny welcomed her friends. first professor barrowes: "ho! how it is good ad my eyes see your kind face again." alas! for sunny's several months with especial tutors and governesses, and the beautiful example of mrs. wainwright. always in moments of excitement she lapsed into her strangely-twisted english speech and topsy-turvy grammar. professor barrowes, with the dust in his eyes and brain of that recent triumphant trip into the northwest of canada, brushed aside by the illness of his friend, was on solid enough earth as sunny all but hugged him. bowing, beaming, chuckling, he took the fragrant little hand in his own, and with the pride and glow of a true discoverer, his eye scanned the fairylike creature before him. "ah! miss--ah--sunny. the pleasure is mine--entirely mine, i assure you. may i add that you still, to me, strongly resemble the child who came upon the tight rope, with a smile upon her face, and a dewdrop on her cheek. "may i add," continued professor barrowes, "that it is my devout hope, my dear, that you will always remain unchanged? i hope so devoutly. i wish it." "ho! mr. dear professor, i am jos' nothing but little moth. nothing moach good on these earth. but you--you are do so moach i am hear. you tich all those worl' _how_ those worl' are be ad the firs' day of all! tell me 'bout what happen to you. daikoku (god of fortune) he have been kind to you--yes?" "astounding kind--amazingly so. there is much to tell. if you will allow me, at an early date, i will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you, and--ah--going into detail. i believe you will be much interested in recent discoveries in a hitherto unexplored region of the canadian northwest, where i am convinced the largest number of fossils of the post pliocene and quaternary period are to be found. i had the pleasure of assisting in bringing back to the united states the full-sized skeleton of a dinornis. you no doubt have heard of the aspersions regarding its authenticity, but i believe we have made our--er--opponents appear pretty small, thanks to the aid of your father and other friends. in point of fact, i may say, i am indebted to your father for an undeserved recommendation, and a liberal donation, which will make possible the fullest research, and establish beyond question the--ah----" miss holliwell, smiling and most efficiently and inconspicuously managing the occasion, noting the congestion about sunny, and the undisguised expressions of deepening disgust and impatience on the faces of sunny's other friends, here interposed. she slipped her hand through the professor's arm, and with a murmured: "oh, professor barrowes, do try this waltz with me. it's one of the old ones, and this is leap year, so i am going to ask you." now miss holliwell had had charge of all the matters pertaining to the dinornis; her association with professor barrowes had been both pleasant and gratifying to the man of science. if anyone imagines that sixty-year-old legs cannot move with the expedition and grace of youth, he should have witnessed the gyrations and motions of the legs of professor barrowes as he guided the senator's secretary through the mazes of the waltz. came then monty, upright and rosy, and as shamelessly young as when over four years before, at seventeen, he imagined himself wise and aged-looking with his bone-ribbed glasses. the down was still on monty's cheek, and the adoration of the puppy still in his eyes. "sunny! it does my soul good to see you. you look perfectly great--yum-yum. jove, you gave us a fright, all right. haven't got over it yet. looked for you in the morgue, sunny, and here you are shining like--like a star." "monty! that face of you will make me always shine like star. what you are doing these day?" "oh, just a few little things. nothing to mention," returned monty, with elaborate carelessness, his heart thumping with pride and yearning to pour out the full tale into the sympathetic pink ear of sunny. "i got a year or two still to put in--going up to johns hopkins; then, sunny, i've a great job for next summer--between the postgraduate work. i'll get great, practical training from a field that--well----i'm going to panama, sunny. connection with fever and sanitary work. greatest opportunity of lifetime. i'm to be first assistant--it's the literal truth, to----" he whispered a name in sunny's ear which caused her to start back, gasping with admiration. "monty; how i am proud of you!" "oh, it's nothing much. don't know why in the world they picked _me_. my work wasn't better than the other chaps. i was conscientious enough and interested of course, but so were the other fellows. you could have knocked me down with a feather when they picked me for the job. why, i was fairly stunned by the news. haven't got over it yet. your father knows dr. roper, the chief, you know. isn't the world small? say, sunny, whose the duck you're engaged to? g'wan, tell your old chum." "ho, monty, i will tell you--tonide mebbe some time." "here, here, monty, you've hogged enough of sunny's attention. my turn now." bobs pushed the unwilling monty along, and the youngster, pretending a lofty indifference to the challenging smiles directed at him by certain members of the younger set, was nevertheless soon slipping over the floor, with the prettiest one of them all, whom mrs. wainwright especially led him to. bobs meanwhile was grinning at sunny, while she, with a maternal eye, examined "dear bobs," and noted that he had gotten into his clothes hastily, but that nevertheless he was the same charming friend. "by gum, you look positively edible," was his greeting. "what you been doing with yourself, and what's this latest story i'm hearing about your marrying some sonofagun?" "bobs, i are goin' to tell you 'bout those sonofagun some time this nide," smiled sunny, "but i want to know firs' of all tings, what you are do, dear bobs?" "i?" bobs rose up and down on his polished toes. "city editor of the _comet_, old top, that's my job. youngest ever known on the desk, but not, i hope, the least competent." "ho, bobs. you _are_ one whole editor man! how i am proud of you. now you are goin' right up to top notch. mebbe by'n by you get to be ambassador ad udder country and----" "whew-w! how can a mere man climb to the heights you expect of him. what i want to know is--how about that marriage story? i printed it, because it was good stuff, but who is the lucky dog? come on, now, you know you can tell me anything." "ho, bobs, i _are_ goin' tell you anything. loog, bobs, here are a frien' i wan' you speag ad. she also have wrote a book. her name are--is miss woodenhouse. she is ticher to my frien', miss clarry. she are----" "are! sunny?" "'am'. she am--no, is, very good ticher. she am--is--make me and katy spik and ride english jos same english lady." the young and edified instructor of katy clarry surveyed the young and edified editor of the new york _comet_ with a quizzical eye. the young editor in question returned that quizzical glance, grinned, offered his arm, and they whirled off to the music of a rippling two-step. sunny had swung around and seized the two plump soft hands of jinx, at whose elbow katy was pressing. katy, much to her delight, had been assisting miss holliwell in caring for the arriving guests, and had indeed quite surprised and amused that person by her talent for organisation and real ability. katy was in her element as she bustled about, in somewhat the proprietary manner of the floor walkers and the lady heads of departments in the stores where katy had one time worked. "jinx, jinx, jinx! my eyes are healty jos' loog ad you! i am _thad_ glad see you speag also wiz my bes' frien', katy." she clapped her hands excitedly. "how i thing it nize that you and katy be----" katy coughed loudly. sunny's ignorance at times was extremely distressing. katy had a real sympathy for mrs. wainwright at certain times. jinx had blushed as red as a peony. "have a heart, sunny!" nevertheless he felt a sleepish pride in the thought that sunny's best friend should have singled him out for special attention. jinx, though the desired one of aspiring mothers, was not so popular with the maidens, who were pushed forward and adjured to regard him as a most desirable husband. katy was partial to flesh. she had no patience with the artist who declared that bones were æsthetic and to suit his taste he liked to hear the bones rattle. katy averred that there was something awfully cosy about fat people. "i hear some grade news of you, jinx," said sunny admiringly. "i hear you are got nomin--ation be on staff those governor." "that's only the beginning, sunny. i'm going in for politics a bit. life too purposeless heretofore, and the machine wants me. at least, i've been told so. your father, sunny, has been doggone nice about it--a real friend. you know there was a bunch of city hicks that thought it fun to laugh at the idea of a fat man holding down any public job, but i guess the fat fellow can put it over some of the other bunch." "ho! i should say that so." "look at president taft," put in katy warmly. "he weighs more'n you do, i'll bet." "give a fellow a chance," said jinx bashfully. "if i keep on, i'll soon catch up with him." "sunny," said katy in her ear, "i feel like itchy. you remember you told me how after a bath he liked to roll himself in the dirt because he missed his fleas. that's me all over. i miss my fleas. i ain--aren't used to being refined. gee! i hope miss woodhouse didn't hear me say that. if she catches me talking like that--good-night! d'she ever make _you_ feel like a two-spot?"--scorch with a _look_! good-night!" a broad grin lighted up katy's wide irish face. shoving her arm recklessly through jinx's, she said: "come along, old skate, let's show 'em on the floor what reglar dancers like you and me can do." sunny watched them with shining eyes, and once as they whirled by, katy's voice floated above the murmurs of the dance and music: "gee! how light you are on your feet! plump men usually are. i always say----" and katy and jinx, monty and bobs and the professor and all her friends were lost to view in that moving, glittering throng of dancers, upon whom, like fluttering moths the cherry blossom petals were dropping from above alighting upon their heads and shoulders and giving them that festival look that sunny knew so well in japan. she had a breathing space for a spell, and now that very wistful longing look stole like a shadow back to the girl's young face. all unconsciously a sigh escaped her. instantly her father was at her side. "you want something, my darling?" "yes, papa. you love me very much, papa?" "_do_ i? if there's anything in the world you want that i can give you, you have only to ask, my little girl." "then papa, you see over dere that young man stand. you see him?" "young hammond?" "jerry." her very pronouncement of his name was a caress. "papa, i wan speag to him. all these night i have wan see him. see, wiz my fan i are do lig' this, and nod my head, and wiz my finger, too, i call him, but he do not come," dejectedly. "loog! i will do so again. you see!" she made an unmistakable motion with her hand and fan at jerry and that unhappy young fool turned his back and slunk behind some artificial camphor trees. "by george!" said senator wainwright. "sunny, do you want me to bring that young puppy to you?" "papa, jerry are not a puppy, but jus' same, i wan' you bring him unto me. please. and then, when he come, please you and mamma stand liddle bit off, and doan let nobody else speag ad me. i are got something i wan ask jerry all by me." the music had stopped, but the clapping hands of the dancers were clamouring for a repetition of the crooning dance song that had just begun its raging career in the metropolis. sunny saw her father clap jerry upon the shoulder. she saw his effort to escape, and her father's smiling insistence. a short interval of breathless suspense, and then the reluctant, very white, very stern young jerry was standing before sunny. he tried to avoid sunny's glance, but, fascinated, found himself looking straight into the girl's eyes. she was smiling, but there was something in her dewy glance that reached out and twisted the boy's heart strings sadly. "jerry!" said sunny softly, her great fan touching her lips, and looking up at him with such a glance that all his best resolves to continue calm seemed threatened with panic. he said, with what he flattered was an imitation of composure: "lovely day--er--night. how are you?" "i are so happy i are lig' those soap bubble. i goin' burst away." "yes, naturally you would be happy. beautiful day--er--night, isn't it?" he resolved to avoid all personal topics. he would shoot small talk at her, and she should not suspect the havoc that was raging within him. "how are your mother?" "well, thank you." "how are your frien', miss falconer?" "don't know, i'm sure." "hatton are tol' me all 'bout her," said sunny. "hatton? he's gone. i don't know where?" "he are officer at salavation army. he come to our house, and my father give him money for those poor people. hatton are tell me all 'bout you. i are sawry you sick long time, jerry. thas very sad news for me." jerry, tongue-tied for the moment, knew not what to say or where to look. sunny's dear glance was almost more than he could bear. "beautiful room this. decoration----" "jerry, that are your beautiful picture you are made. i am remember it all. one time you draw those picture like these for me, and you say thas mos' nize picture for party ever. i think so." jerry was silent. "jerry, how you are do ad those worl'? please tell me. i lig' to hear. are you make grade big success? are you found those beauty thad you are loog for always?" "beauty!" he said furiously. "i told you often enough that it was an elusive jade, that no one could ever reach. and as for success. i suppose i've made good enough. i was offered a partnership--i can't take it. i'll----i'll have to get away. sunny, for god's sake, answer me. is it true you are going to be married?" slowly the girl bowed with great seriousness, yet somehow her soft eyes rested in caress upon the young man's tortured face. "jerry," said sunny dreamily, "this are the year of leap, and i are lig' ask you liddle bit question." jerry neither heard nor understood the significance of the girlish words. his young face had blanched. all the joy of life seemed to have been extinguished. yet one last passionate question burst from him. "who--is--he?" slowly sunny raised that preposterous fan. she brought it to her face, so that its great expanse acted as a screen and cut her and jerry off from the rest of the world. her bright lovely gaze sank right into jerry's, and sunny answered softly: "_you!_" now what followed would furnish a true student of psychology with the most irrefutable proof of the devastating effect upon a young man of the superior and civilised west of association with a heathen people. even the unsophisticated eye of sunny saw that primitive purpose leap up in the eye of jerry hammond, as, held in leash only a moment, he proposed then and there to seize the girl bodily in his arms. it was at that moment that her oriental guile came to the top. sunny stepped back, put out her hand, moved it along the wall, behind the cherry petalled foliage, and then while jerry's wild, ecstatic intention brought him ever nearer to her, sunny found and pushed the button on the wall. instantly the room was plunged into darkness. a babble of murmuring sounds and exclamations; laughter, the sudden ceasing of the music, a soft pandemonium had broken loose, but in that blissful moment of complete darkness, oblivious to all the world, feeling and seeing only each other, jerry and sunny kissed. the end transcriber notes: passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. small caps were replaced with all caps. throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. those words were retained as-is. errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. on page 13, "firmanent" was replaced with "firmament". on page 16, "pantomine" was replaced with "pantomime". on page 40, "avaricous" was replaced with "avaricious". on page 48, "sutherlond" was replaced with "sutherland". on page 52, "firmanent" was replaced with "firmament". on page 61, "parent's" was replaced with "parents'". on page 109, a quotation mark was added after "i am personally situated." on page 121, a quotation mark was removed after "j. addison hammond" on page 123, "asumed" was replaced with "assumed". on page 123, "imcredible" was replaced with "incredible". on page 137, "asured" was replaced with "assured". on page 138, "archietects" was replaced with "architects". on page 156, the comma after "'ooking" was replaced with a period. on page 173, "ensconsed" was replaced with "ensconced". on page 184, "reeciver" was replaced with "receiver". on page 194, "repellant" was replaced with "repellent". on page 197, "belligerant" was replaced with "belligerent". the kingdom of slender swords by hallie erminie rives (mrs. post wheeler) satan sanderson illustrated by a. b. wenzell tales from dickens illustrated by reginald b. birch the castaway illustrated by howard chandler christy hearts courageous illustrated by a. b. wenzell a furnace of earth the bobbs-merrill company indianapolis [illustration] the kingdom of slender swords by hallie erminie rives (mrs. post wheeler) _with a foreword by his excellency baron makino_ illustrations by a. b. wenzell indianapolis the bobbs-merrill company publishers copyright 1910 the bobbs-merrill company press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n.y. to carolyn foster stickney foreword it has been my happy fortune to have made the acquaintance of the gifted author of this book. from time to time she was kind enough to confide to me its progress. when the manuscript was completed i was privileged to go over it, and the hours so spent were of unbroken interest and pleasure. what especially touched and concerned me was, of course, the japanese characters depicted, the motives of these actors in their respective roles, and other japanese incidents connected with the story. i am most agreeably impressed with the remarkable insight into, and the just appreciation of, the japanese spirit displayed by the author. while the story itself is her creation, the local coloring, the moral atmosphere called in to weave the thread of the tale, are matters belonging to the domain of facts, and constitute an amount of useful and authentic information. indeed, she has taken unusual pains to be correctly informed about the people of the country and their customs, and in this she has succeeded to a very eminent degree. i may mention one or two of the striking characteristics of the work. the sacrifice of the girl haru may seem unreal, but such is the dominant idea of duty and sacrifice with the japanese, that in certain emergencies it is not at all unlikely that we should behold her real prototype in life. the description of the imperial review at tokyo and its patriotic significance vividly recalls my own impression of this spectacle. it gives me great satisfaction to know that by perusing these pages, the vast reading public, who, after all, have the decisive voice in the national government of the greatest republic of the world, and whose good will and friendship we japanese prize in no uncommon degree, should be correctly informed about ourselves, as far as the scope of this book goes. we attach great importance to a thorough mutual understanding of two foremost peoples on the pacific, in whose direction and coöperation the future of the east must largely depend. it is, therefore, incumbent upon us all to do our utmost to cultivate such good understanding, not only for those immediately concerned, but for the welfare of the whole human race. in the chapters of this novel the author seems always to have had such high ideals before her, and the result is that, besides being an exciting and agreeable reading, the book contains elements of serious and instructive consideration, which can not but contribute toward establishing better and healthier knowledge between the east and west of the pacific. n. makino. sendagaya, tokyo, 9th of august, 1909. contents chapter page i where the day begins 1 ii "the roost" 13 iii the land of the gods 27 iv under the red sunset 42 v the maker of buddhas 52 vi the baying of the wolf-hound 62 vii doctor bersonin 72 viii "sally in our alley" 78 ix the web of the spider 86 x in a garden of dreams 92 xi ishikichi 101 xii in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods 107 xiii the whorls of yellow dust 113 xiv when barbara awoke 119 xv a face in the crowd 125 xvi "banzai nippon!" 133 xvii a silent understanding 142 xviii in the bamboo lane 149 xix the bishop asks a question 154 xx the trespasser 160 xxi the resurrection of the dead 169 xxii the dance of the capital 181 xxiii the devil pipes to his own 194 xxiv a man named ware 198 xxv at the shrine of the fox-god 206 xxvi the nightless city 213 xxvii like the whisper of a bat's wings 224 xxviii the forgotten man 233 xxix daunt listens to a song 244 xxx the island of enchantment 252 xxxi the coming of austen ware 266 xxxii the woman of sorek 276 xxxiii the flight 284 xxxiv on the knees of delilah 288 xxxv when a woman dreams 292 xxxvi behind the shikiri 297 xxxvii [japanese: donto] 303 xxxviii the lady of the many-colored fires 308 xxxix the heart of barbara 320 xl the shadow of a to-morrow 326 xli unforgot 334 xlii phil makes an appeal 338 xliii the secret the river kept 345 xliv the laying of the mine 353 xlv the bishop answers a summons 360 xlvi the golden crucifix 366 xlvii "if this be forgetting" 371 xlviii while the city slept 379 xlix the alarm 389 l whom the gods destroy 396 li the laugh 401 lii the voice in the dark 409 liii a race with dawn 414 liv into the sunlight 425 lv know all men by these presents 428 the kingdom of slender swords the kingdom of slender swords chapter i where the day begins barbara leaned against the palpitant rail, the light air fanning her breeze-cool cheek, her arteries beating like tiny drums, atune with the throb, throb, throb, of the steel deck as the black ocean leviathan swept on toward its harbor resting-place. all that japanese april day she had been in a state of tremulous excitement. she had crept from her berth at dawn to see the hazy sun come up in a rosicrucian flush as weirdly soft as a mirage, to strain her eyes for the first filmy feather of land. long before the gray-green wisp showed on the horizon, the sight of a lumbering _junk_ with its square sail laced across with white stripes, and its bronze seamen, with white loin-cloth and sweat-band about the forehead, naked and thewed like sculptures, as they swayed from the clumsy tiller, had sent a thrill through her. and as the first far peaks etched themselves on the robin's-egg blue, as impalpable and ethereal as a perfume, she felt warm drops coming with a rush to her eyes. for japan, every sight and sound of it, had been woven with the earliest imaginings of barbara's orphaned life. her father she had never seen. her mother she remembered only as a vague, widowed figure. in japan they two had met and had married, and after a single year her mother had returned to her own place and people broken-hearted and alone. in the month of her return barbara had been born. a year ago her aunt, to whom she owed the care of her young girlhood, had died, and barbara had found herself, at twenty-three, mistress of a liberal fortune and of her own future. japan had always exercised a potent spell over her imagination. she pictured it as a land of strange glowing trees, of queer costumes and weird, fantastic buildings. more than all, it was the land of her mother's life-romance, where her father had loved and died. there was one other tangible tie--her uncle, her mother's brother, was episcopal bishop of tokyo. he was returning now from a half year's visit in america, and this fact, coupled with an invitation from patricia dandridge, the daughter of the american ambassador, with whom barbara had chummed one california winter, had constituted an opportunity wholly alluring. so she found herself, on this april day, the pallid pacific fuming away behind her, gazing with kindling cheeks on that shadowy background, vaguely intangible in the magical limpidity of the distance. the land was wonderfully nearer now. the hills lay, a clear pile of washed grays and greens, with saffron tinted valleys between, wound in a haze of tender lilac. by imperceptible gradations this unfolded, caught sub-tones, ermine against umbers, of warmer red and flickering emerald, white glints of sun on surf like splashes of silver, till suddenly, spectral and perfect, above a cluster of peaks like purple gentians, glowed forth a phantom mountain, its golden wistaria cone inlaid in the deeper azure. it hung like an inverted morning-glory, mist and mother-of-pearl at the top, shading into porphyry veined with streaks of verd and jade--fuji-san, the despair of painters, the birthplace of the ancient gods. the aching beauty of it stung barbara with a tender, intolerable pang. the little fishing-villages that presently came into sight, tucked into the clefts of the shore, with gray dwellings, elfishly frail, climbing the green slope behind them--the growing rice in patches of cloudy gold on the hillsides--the bluish shadows of bamboo groves--all touched her with an incommunicable delight. a shadow fell beside her and she turned. it was her uncle. his clean-shaven face beamed at her over his clerical collar. "isn't it glorious?" she breathed. "it's better than champagne! it's like pins and needles in the tips of your fingers! there's positively an odor in the air like camelias. and did any one ever see such colors?" she pointed to the shore dead-ahead, now a serrated background of deep tones, swimming in the infinite gold of the tropic afternoon. bishop randolph was a bachelor, past middle age, ruddy and with eyes softened by habitual good-humor. he was the son of a rector of a rich virginian parish, which on his father's death had sent the son a unanimous call. he had answered, "no; my place is in japan," without consciousness of sacrifice. for him, in the truest sense, the present voyage was a homeward one. "japan gets into the blood," he said musingly. "i often think of the old lady who committed suicide at nikko. she left a letter which said: 'by favor of the gods, i am too dishonorably old to hope to revisit this jewel-glorious spot, so i prefer augustly to remain here for ever!' i have had something of the same feeling, sometimes. i remember yet the first time i saw the coast. that was twenty-five years ago. we watched it together--your father and i--just as we two are doing now." she looked at him with sudden eagerness, for of his own accord he had never before spoken to her of her dead father. the latter had always seemed a very real personage, but how little she knew about him! the aunt who had brought her up--her mother's sister--had never talked of him, and her uncle she had seen but twice since she had been old enough to wonder. but, little by little, gleaning a fact here and there, she had constructed a slender history of him. it told of mingled blood, a birthplace on a mediterranean island and a gipsy childhood. there was a thin sheaf of yellowed manuscript in her possession that had been left among her mother's scanty papers, a fragment of an old diary of his. many leaves had been ruthlessly cut from it, but in the pages that were left she had found bits of flotsam: broken memory-pictures of his own mother which had strangely touched her, of a bitter youth in england and america overshadowed by the haunting fear of blindness, of quests to west-indian cities, told in phrases that dripped liquid gold and sunshine. the voyage to japan had been made on the same vessel that carried her uncle, and they two had thus become comrades. the latter had been an enthusiastic young missionary, one of a few chosen spirits sent to defend a far field-casement thrown forward by the batteries of christendom. his sister had come out to visit him and a few months later had married his friend. such was the story, as barbara knew it, of her father and mother--a love chapter which had soon closed with a far-away grave by the inland sea. her fancy had made of her father a pathetic figure. as a child, she had dreamed of some day placing a monument to his memory in the japanese capital. she possessed only one picture of him, a tiny profile photograph which she wore always in a locket engraved with her name. it showed a dark face, clean-shaven, finely chiseled and passionate, with the large, full eye of the dreamer. she had liked to think it looked like the paintings of st. john. perhaps this thought had caused the projected monument to take the form of a christian chapel. from a nebulous idea, the plan had become a bundle of blue-prints, which she had sent to her uncle, with the request that he purchase for her a suitable site and begin the building. he had done this before his visit to america and now the chapel was completed, save in one particular--the memorial window of rich, stained-glass stowed at that moment in the ship's hold. the bishop had not seen it. from some feeling which she had not tried to analyze, barbara had said nothing to him of the chapel's especial significance. now, however, at his unexpected reference, the feeling frayed, and she told him all of her plan. he gazed at her a moment in a startled fashion, then looked away, his hand shading his eyes. when she finished there was a long pause which made her wonder. she touched his arm. "you were very fond of father, weren't you?" "yes," he said, in a tone oddly restrained. "and was my mother with you when he fell in love with her?" "yes," and after a pause: "i married them." "then they went to nagasaki," she said softly, "and there--he died. you weren't there then?" "no," he answered in a low voice. his face was still turned away, and she caught an unaccustomed note of feeling in his voice. he left her abruptly and began to pace up and down the deck, while she stood watching the shoreline sharpen, the tangled blur of harbor resolve and shift into manifold detail. shapeless dots had become anchored ships, a black pencil a wharf, a long yellow-gray streak a curved shore-front lined with buildings, and the warm green blotch rising behind it a foliaged hill pricked out with soft, gray roofs. there was a rush of passengers to one side, where from a brisk little tug, at whose peak floated a flag bearing a blood-red sun, a handful of spick-and-span japanese officials were climbing the ship's ladder. at length the bishop spoke again at her elbow, now in his usual voice: "what are you going to do with that man, barbara?" a faint flush rose in her cheek. "with what man?" "austen ware." she shrugged her shoulders and laughed--a little uneasily. "what can one do with a man when he is ten thousand miles away?" "he's not the sort to give up a chase." "even a wild-goose chase?" she countered. "when i was a boy in virginia," he said with a humorous eye, "i used to chase wild geese, and bag 'em, too." the bishop sauntered away, leaving a frown on barbara's brow. she had had a swift mental vision of a cool, dark-bearded face and assured bearing that the past year had made familiar. it was a handsome face, if somewhat cold. its owner was rich, his standing was unquestioned. the fact that he was ten years her senior had but made his attentions the more flattering. he had had no inherited fortune and had been no idler; for this she admired him. if she had not thrilled to his declaration, so far as liking went, she liked him. the week she left new york he had intended a yachting trip to the mediterranean. when he told her, coolly enough, that he should ask her again in japan, she had treated it as a jest, though knowing him quite capable of meaning it. from every worldly standpoint he was distinctly eligible. every one who knew them both confidently expected her to marry ware. well, why not? yet to-day she did not ask herself the question confidently. it belonged still to the limbo of the future--to the convenient "some day" to which her thought had always banished it. since she had grown she had never felt for any one the sentiment she had dreamed of in that vivid girlhood of hers, a something mixed of pride and joy, that a sound or touch would thrill with a delight as keen as pain; but unconsciously, perhaps, she had been clinging to old romantic notions. a passenger leaning near her was whistling _sally in our alley_ under his breath and a japanese steward was emptying over the side a vase of wilted flowers. a breath of rose scent came to her, mixed with a faint smell of tobacco, and these and the whistled air awoke a sudden reminiscence. her gaze went past the clustered shipping, beyond the gray line of buildings and the masses of foliage, and swam into a tremulous june evening seven years past. she saw a wide campus of green sward studded with stately elms festooned with electric lights that glowed in the falling twilight. scattered about were groups of benches each with its freight of dainty frocks, and on one of them she saw herself sitting, a shy girl of sixteen, on her first visit to a great university. men went by in sober black gown and flat mortar-boards, young, clean-shaven, and boyish, with arms about one another's shoulders. here and there an orange "blazer" made a vivid splash of color and groups in white-flannels sprawled beneath the trees under the perfumed haze of briar-wood pipes that mingled with the near-by scent of roses. from one of the balconies of the ivied dormitories that faced the green came the mellow tinkle of a mandolin and the sound of a clear tenor: "of all the girls that are so smart, there's none like pretty sally. she is the darling of my heart--" the groups about her had fallen silent--only one voice had said: "that's 'duke' daunt." then the melody suddenly broke queerly and stopped, and the man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "i'm going in. it's time to dress anyway." and somehow his voice had seemed to break queerly, too. duke daunt! the scene shifted into the next day, when she had met him for a handful of delirious moments. for how long afterward had he remained her childish idol! time had overlaid the memory, but it started bright now at the sound of that whistled tune. her uncle's voice recalled her. he was handing her his binoculars. she took them, chose a spot well forward and glued her eyes to the glass. a sigh of ecstasy came from her lips, for it brought the land almost at arm's length--the stone _hatoba_ crowded with brown japanese faces, pricked out here and there by the white panama hat or pith-helmet of the foreigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribboned parasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting _rick'sha_,--the little flotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage--the stately, columned front of the club on the bund with its cool terrace of round tables--the _kimono'd_ figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along the water-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailed beetle--farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue and beyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright, yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green from which cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. arching over all the enormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery of the declining sun. it unfolded before her like a panorama--all the basking, many-hued, polyglot, half-tropical life--a colorful medley, queer and mysterious! nearer, nearer yet, the ship drew on, till there came to meet it two curved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. the captain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the group of male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through the hawse-holes. barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. the slow swinging of the vessel to the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and the shore, perilously near. she saw it now in its proper perspective--a trim steam yacht, painted white, with a rakish air of speed and tautness, the sun glinting from its polished brass fittings. it lay there, graceful and light, a sharp, clean contrast to the gray and yellow _junk_ and grotesque _sampan_, a disdainful swan amid a noisy flock of teal and mallard. adjusting the focus barbara looked. a man in naval uniform who had boarded the ship at quarantine was pointing out the yacht to a passenger, and barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "you see the patches of green?--they're decorations for the squadron that's due to-morrow. look just beyond them. prettiest craft i've ever seen east of the straits.... came in this morning. owner's in nara now, doing the temples.... has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, going the pace.... they won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'd go high and dry on empty champagne bottles." barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. puzzled, she withdrew her gaze, then looked once more. suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "what are you going to do with that man?"--her uncle's query seemed to echo satirically about her. for the white yacht was austen ware's, and there, on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name barbara chapter ii "the roost" the day had been sluggish with the promise of summer, but the failing afternoon had brought a soft suspiration from the broad bosom of the pacific laden with a refreshing coolness. along the bund, however, there was little stir. a few blocks away the foreign dive-quarter was drowsing, and only a single _samisen_ twanged in hep goon's saloon, where sailors of a dozen nationalities spent their wages while in port. at the curbing, under the telegraph poles, the chattering _rick'sha_ coolies squatted, playing _go_ with flat stones on a square scratched with a pointed stick in the hard, beaten ground. on the spotless mats behind their paper _shoji_ the curio-merchants sat on their gaudy wadded cushions, while, over the glowing fire-bowls of charcoal in the inner rooms, their wives cooked the rice for the early evening meal. the office of the grand hotel was quiet; only a handful of loungers gossiped at the bar, and the last young lady tourist had finished her flirtation on the terrace and retired to the comfort of a stayless _kimono_. in the deep foliage of the "bluff" the slanting sunlight caught and quivered till the green mole seemed a mighty beryl, and in its hedge-shaded lanes, dreamy as those of an english village, the clear air was pungent with tropic blooms. on one of these fragrant byways, its front looking out across the bay, stood a small bungalow which bore over its gateway the dubious appellation "the roost." from its enclosed piazza, over which a wistaria vine hung pale pendants, a twisted stair led to the roof, half of which was flat. this space was surrounded by a balustrade and shaded by a rounded gaily striped awning. from this airy retreat the water, far below, looked like a violet shawl edged with shimmering quicksilver and embroidered with fairy fishing _junk_ and _sampan_; and the subdued voices of the street mingled, vague and undefined, with a rich dank smell of foliage, that moved silently, heavy with the odor of plum-blossoms, a gliding ghost of perfume. thin blue-and-white tientsin rugs and green wicker settees gave an impression of coolness and comfort; a pair of ornate temple brasses gleamed on a smoking-stand, and a rich satsuma bowl did duty for a tobacco jar. under the striped awning three men were grouped about a miniature roulette table; a fourth, middle-aged and of huge bulk, with a cynical, semitic face, from a wide arm-chair was lazily peering through the fleecy curdle of a turkish cigarette. a fifth stood leaning against the balustrade, watching. the last was tall, clean-cut and smooth-shaven, with comely head well set on broad shoulders, and gray eyes keen and alert. possibly no one of the foreign colony (where a secretary of embassy was by no means a _rara avis_) was better liked than duke daunt, even by those who never attempted to be sufficiently familiar with him to call him by the nickname, which a characteristic manner had earned him in his salad days. at intervals a player muttered an impatient exclamation or gave a monosyllabic order to the stolid japanese servant who passed noiselessly, deftly replenishing glasses. through all ran the droning buzz of bees in the wistaria, the recurrent rustle of the metal wheel, the nervous click of the rolling marble and the shuffle and thud of the ivory disks on the green baize. all at once the marble blundered into its compartment and one of the gamesters burst into a boisterous laugh of triumph. as the sudden discord jangled across the silence, the big man in the arm-chair started half round, his lips twitched and a spasm of something like fright crossed his face. the glass at his elbow was empty, but he raised it and drained air, while the ice in it tinkled and clinked. he set it down and wiped his lips with a half-furtive glance about him, but the curious agitation had apparently been unnoted, and presently his face had once more regained its speculative, slightly sardonic expression. suddenly a distant gun boomed the hour of sunset. at the same instant the marble ceased its erratic career, the wheel stilled and the youngest of the gaming trio and the master of the place--philip ware, a graceful, shapely fellow of twenty-three, with a flushed face and nervous manner--pushed the scattered counters across the table with shaking fingers. "my limit to-day," he said with sullen petulance, and flipping the marble angrily into the garden below, crossed to a table and poured out a brandy-and-soda. daunt's gray eyes had been looking at him steadily, a little curiously. he had known him seven years before at college, though the other had been in a lower class than himself. but those intervening years had left their baleful marks. at home phil had stood only for loose habit, daring fad, and flaunting mannerism--milestones of a career as completely dissolute as a consistent disregard of conventional moral thoroughfares could well make it. to yokohama he was rapidly coming to be, in the eyes of the censorious, an example for well-meaning youth to avoid, an incorrigible _flanêur_, a purposeless idler on the primrose paths. "better luck next time," said one of the others lightly. "come along, larry; we'll be off to the club." the older man rose to depart more deliberately, his great size becoming apparent. he was framed like a wrestler, abnormal width of shoulder and massive head giving an effect of weight which contrasted oddly with aquiline features in which was a touch of the accipitrine, something ironic and sinister, like a vulture. his eyes were dappled yellow and deep-set and had a peculiar expression of cold, untroubled regard. he crossed to the farther side and looked down. "what a height!" he said. "the whole harbor is laid out like a checker-board." he spoke in a tone curiously dead and lacking in _timbre_. his english was perfect, with a trace of accent. "pretty fair," assented phil morosely. "it ought to be a good place to view the squadron, when it comes in to-morrow morning. it must have cost the japanese navy department a pretty penny to build those temporary wharves along the bund. they must be using a thousand incandescents! by the decorations you'd think the dreadnaughts were japan's long lost brothers, instead of battle-ships of a country that's likely to have a row on with her almost any minute. i wonder where they will anchor." the yellowish eyes had been gazing with an odd, intent glitter, and into the heavy, pallid face, turned away, had sprung sharp, evil lines, that seemed the shadows of some monstrous reflection on which the mind had fed. its sudden, wicked vitality was in strange contrast to the toneless voice, which now said: "they will lie just opposite this point." "so far in?" the young man leaning on the balustrade spoke interestedly. "it seems as though from here one could almost shoot a pea aboard any one of them." "you might send me up some sticks of _shimosé_, doctor," said phil with satiric humor, "and i'll practise. i'll begin by shying a few at this forsaken town; it needs it!" the big man smiled faintly as he withdrew his eyes, and held out his hand to the remaining visitor. the degrading lines had faded from his face. "i'm distinctly glad to have seen you, mr. daunt," he said. "i've watched your trials with your aëroplane more than once lately at the parade-ground. i saw the elder wright at paris last year and i believe your flight will prove as well sustained as his. it's a pity you can't compete for some of the european prizes." "i'm afraid that would take me out of the amateur class," was the answer. "it's purely an amusement with me--a fad, if you like." "a very useful one," said the other, "unless you break your neck at it. i wonder we haven't met before in tokyo. i have an appointment to-night, by the way, with your ambassador. come in to see me soon," he said, turning to phil. "i'm at home most of the time. come and dine with me again. i've only an indifferent cook, as you have discovered, i'm afraid, but my new boy ishida can make a famous cup of coffee and i can always promise you a good cigar." "doctor bersonin's the real thing!" said phil, when the other had disappeared. "he's a scientist--the biggest in his line--but he's no prig. he believes in enjoying life. you ought to see his villa at kisaraz on the chiba road. he's worth a million, they say, and he must make no end of money as a government expert." he paused, then added: "you seem mighty quiet to-night! how does he strike you?" daunt was silent. he had seen that strange look that had shot across the expert's face--at the sound of a laugh! he was wondering, too, what attraction could exist between this middle-aged scientist with his cold eyes and emotionless voice and phil, sparkling and irresponsible black-sheep and ne'er-do-well, who thought of nothing but his own coarse pleasures. frequently, of late, he had seen them together, at theater or tea-house, and once in bersonin's motor-car in shiba park in tokyo. "you don't like him! i can see that well enough," went on phil aggressively. "why not? he's a lot above any man _i_ know, and i'm proud to have him for a friend of mine." "there's no accounting for tastes," returned daunt dryly. "at any rate, i don't imagine it matters particularly whether i like doctor bersonin or not. there's another thing that's more apropos." he pointed to the decanter in the other's hands. "you've had enough of that to-night, i should think." phil reddened. "i've had no more than i can carry, if it comes to that," he retorted. "and i guess i'm able to take care of myself." daunt hesitated a moment. to-day's call had been a part of his consistent effort, steadily growing more irksome, to keep alive for the sake of the old college name, the _quasi_ friendship between them and to invoke whatever influence he might once have possessed. "i'm thinking of your brother," he said quietly. "you say his yacht came into harbor from kobe to-day. he'll scarcely be more than a week in the temple cities, and any train may bring him after that. you'll want all the time you've got to straighten out. you'll need to put your best foot forward." a look that was not pleasant shot across phil's face. "i suppose i shall," he said savagely. "a pretty brother he is! he wrote me from home that if he found i'd been playing, he'd cut his allowance to me to twenty dollars a week. i'd like to knock that smile of his down his throat--the cold-blooded fish! _he_ spends enough!" "he's earned it, i understand," said daunt. "so will i, perhaps, after i've had my fling. i'm in no hurry, and i won't take orders always from him! i've had to knuckle down to him all my life, and i'm precious tired of it, i can tell you." daunt's eyes had turned to the broad expanse below, where the white sails of vagrant _sampan_ drifted. in the road he could hear the sharp tap-tap of a blind _amma_--adept in the japanese massage which coaxes soreness from the body--as he passed slowly along, feeling his way with his stick and from time to time sounding on his metal flute his characteristic double note. across the moment's silence the sound came clear and bird-like, very shrill and sweet. "what business is it of his," phil added, "if i choose to stay out here in the east?" daunt withdrew his gaze. "take his advice, phil," he said. "the east isn't doing you any good. you're doing nothing but dissipate. and--it doesn't pay." phil gave a short, sneering laugh. "why shouldn't i stay abroad if i can have more fun here than i can at home?" he returned. "if i had my way, i'd never want to see the united states again! this country suits me at present. when i get tired, i'll leave--if i can raise enough to get out of town." a flush had risen to daunt's forehead, but he turned away without reply. at the stair, however, he spoke again: "look here, phil," he said, coming slowly back. "why not come up to tokyo for a while? it's--quieter, and it will be a change. i have a little japanese house in aoyama that i leased as a place to work on my glider models, but i don't use it now, and it's fairly well furnished. the caretaker is an excellent cook, too." he took a key from its ring and laid it on the table. "let me leave this anyway--the address is on the label--and do as you like about it." phil looked at him an instant with narrowing eyes, then laughed. "tokyo as a gentle sedative, eh? and pastoral visitations every other day!" "you needn't be afraid of that," replied daunt. "i'll not come to lecture you. i haven't set foot in the place for a month, and probably shan't for a month to come. go up and try it, anyway. drop the bund and the races for a little while and get a grip on things!" phil looked away. a sudden memory came to him of a face he had seen in tokyo--at one of the _matsuri_ or ward-festivals--a girl's face, oval and pensive and with a smile like a flash of sunlight. her _kimono_ had been all of holiday colors, and he had tried desperately to pick acquaintance, with poor success. a second time he had seen her, on the beach at kamakura. then she had worn a _kimono_ of rich brown, soft and clinging, and an _obi_ stamped with yellow maple leaves and fastened with a little silver clasp in the shape of a firefly. she was with a party of girls bent on frolic; they had discarded the white cleft _tabi_ and clog and were splashing through the surf bare-kneed. he could see yet the foam on the perfect naked feet, and below the lifted _kimono_ and red petticoat, the gleam of the white skin that is the dream of japanese women. a flush crept over phil's face as he remembered. he had had better success that time. she had dropped her swinging clog and he had rescued it, and won a word of thanks and a smile from her dark eyes. she herself had unbent little, but the girls with her were full of frolic and the handsome foreigner was an adventure. he had discovered that she spoke english and lived in tokyo, in the ward of the _matsuri_. but though he had strolled through that district a score of times since, he had not seen her again. "you're not a bad sort, daunt," he said. "i don't know but i--will." "good," said daunt. "i'll send a chit to my caretaker the first thing in the morning, and i'll put your name on the visitors' list at the tokyo club. well, i must be off." * * * * * phil saw him cross the fragrant close to the gate with a growing sneer. then he threw himself on a chair and gazed moodily out across the deepening haze to where, just inside the harbor breakwater, lay the white yacht of whose coming daunt had spoken. a bitter scowl was on his face. far below, at a little wharf, he could see a tiny red triangle; it marked his sail-boat, the _fatted-calf_, so christened at a tea-house on the river where he and other choice spirits maintained the club whose _geisha_ suppers had become notorious. japan, to his way of life, had proven expensive. he had drawn on every available resource and had borrowed more than he liked to remember, but still his debts had grown. and now, with the coming of the white yacht, he saw a lowering danger to the allowance on which he abjectly depended. he knew his brother for one whom no plea could sway from a determination, who on occasion could hew to the line with merciless exactitude. suppose he should cut off his allowance altogether. an ugly passion stole over his countenance. he sprang up, filled a glass from the decanter and drank it thirstily. with the instant glow of the liquor his mood relaxed. he picked up the key from the table and stood thoughtfully swinging it a moment by its wooden label. then he put it in his pocket and, looking at his watch, caught up a straw hat and went briskly down to the street. he swung down the steep, twisting, ravine-like road to the bund with less of ill-humor. he had no thought of the dark blue sky arching over, soft with vapors like a smoke of gold, or of the glimpses of the sea that came in sharp bursts of light between the curving walls that towered on either side. he sniffed the thick, eastern smells as a cat sniffs catnip, his eye searching the stream of brown, shouting coolies and toiling _rick'sha_, to linger on a satiny oval face under a shining head-dress, or the powdered cheek of a gold-brocaded _geisha_ on her way to some noble's feast. at the foot of the hill, stood a sign-board on which was pasted a large bill in yellow: at the gaiety theater limited engagement of the popular hardmann comic opera company with miss cissy clifford he paused in front of this a moment, then passed to the bund. at its upper end, near the hotel front, great floating wharves had been built out into the water. they were gaily trimmed with bunting and electric lights in geometrical designs, and were flanked by arches covered with twigs of ground-pine. a small army of workmen were still busied on them, for the european squadron in whose honor they had been erected would arrive at dawn the next morning. just beyond the arches, under a row of twisted pines, were a number of park benches, and from one of these a girl with a beribboned parasol greeted him. "you're a half hour late, phil," she complained. "i've been waiting here till i'm tired to death." she made place for him with a rustle of flounces. she was showily dressed, her cheeks bore the marks of habitual grease-paint and the fingers of one over-ringed hand were slightly yellowed from cigarette smoke. "hello, cissy," he said carelessly, and sat down beside her. in his mind was still the picture of that oval japanese face suffused with pink, those pretty bare feet splashing through the foam, and he looked sidewise at his companion with an instant's sullen distaste. "i had another row with the manager to-day," she continued. "i told him he must think his company was a kindergarten!" "trust you to set him right in that," he answered satirically. "my word!" she exclaimed. "how glum you are to-day! same old poverty, i suppose." she rose and shook out her skirts. "come," she said. "there's no play to-night. i'm in for a lark. let's go to the jewel-fountain tea-house. they've got a new juggler there." chapter iii the land of the gods in the first touch of the shore, where the ambassador's pretty daughter waited, barbara's problem had been swept away. patricia had rushed to meet her, embraced her, with a moist, ecstatic kiss on her cheek, rescued the bishop from his ordeal of hand-shaking and carried him off to find their trunks, leaving barbara borne down by a babel of sound and scent whose newness made her breathless, and to whose manifold sensations she was as keenly alive as a photographic plate to color. a half-dozen gnarled, unshaven porters in excessively shabby jackets and straw sandals carried her hand-baggage into the hideously modern, red-brick custom-house, over whose entrance a huge golden conventionalized chrysanthemum shone in the sunlight, and as she watched them, a dapper youth in european dress, with a shining brown derby, a bright purple neck-tie, a silver-mounted cane and teeth eloquent of gold bridge-work, slid into her hand a card whose type proclaimed that mr. y. nakajima "did the guiding for foreign ladies and gentlemans." the air was fragrant with the mild aroma from tiny japanese pipes and a-flutter with moving fans. a group of elderly men in hot frock-coats and tiles of not too modern vintage were welcoming a returning official, and sedate gentlemen in sad-colored _houri_ and spotless cleft foot-wear, bowed double in stately ceremonial, with the sucking-in of breath which in the old-fashioned japanese etiquette means "respectful awe bordering on terror." barbara had found herself singularly conscious of a feeling of universal good-nature. it came to her even in the posture of the resting coolies, stretched at the side of the quay, lazily sunning themselves, with whiffs of the omnipresent little pipe, and in the faces of the bare-legged _rick'sha_ men, with round hats like bobbing mushrooms, arms and chests glistening with sweat, and thin towels printed in black and blue designs tucked in their girdles. she smiled at them, and they smiled back at her with that unvarying smile which the japanese of every caste wears to wedding and to funeral. she even caught herself patting the tonsured head of a preternaturally solemn baby swaddled in a variegated _kimono_ and strapped to the back of a five-year-old boy. the _rick'sha_ ride to the _stenshun_ (for so the japanese has adapted the english word "station") was a moving panorama of strange high lights and shades, of savory odors from bake-ovens, of open shop-fronts hung with gaudy figured crape, or piled with saffron _biwa_, warty purple melons, ebony eggplant, shriveled yellow peppers and red hokkaido apples, of weighted carts drawn by chanting half-naked coolies, and swiftly gliding victorias of europeans. from a hundred houses in the long, narrow streets hung huge gilded sign-boards, painted with idiographs of black and red. at intervals the tall stone front of a foreign business building looked down on its neighbors, or a tea-house towered three stories high, showing gay little verandas on which stood pots of flowers and dwarf trees; between were smaller houses of frame and of cement, and thick-walled _go-downs_ for storing goods against fire. here and there, from behind a gateway of unpainted wood, showing a delicate grain, a pine thrust up its needled clump of green, or a cherry-tree flung its pink pyrotechnics against the sky's flood of dimming blue and gold. at a crossing a deformed beggar with distorted face and the featureless look of the leper, waved a crutch and wheedled from the roadside, and a child in dun-colored rags, unbelievably agile and dirty, ran ahead of barbara's _rick'sha_, prostrating himself again and again in the dust, holding out grimy hands and whining for a _sen_. in the side streets barbara could catch glimpses of bare-breasted women sitting in shop doors nursing babies, and children of a larger growth playing japanese hopscotch or tossing "diavolo," the latest foreign toy. when the _rick'sha_ set them down at the station she felt bewildered, yet full of exhilaration. as they drew up at its stone front, a porter with red cap and brass buttons emerged and began to ring a heavy bell, swinging it back and forth in both hands. the bishop bought their tickets at a little barred window bearing over it the sign: "your baggages will be sent freely in every direction." making their way along the platform, crowded with japanese, mostly in native dress, and filled with the aroma of cigarettes and the thin ringing of innumerable wooden clogs on stone flags, barbara was conscious for the first time of a studious surveillance. a young japanese passed her carrying his bent and wizened mother on his back; the old woman, clutching him tightly about the neck, turned her shaven head to watch. children in startling rainbow tinted _kimono_ stared from the platform with round, serious eyes. a peasant woman, with teeth brilliantly blackened, peered from a car window, and a group of young men turned bodily and regarded her with gravely observant gaze, in a prolonged, unwinking scrutiny that seemed as innocent of courtesy as of any intent to offend. in european cities she had felt the gaze of other races, but this was different. it was not the curious study of a phenomenon, of an enduring puzzle of far origins, nor the expression of the ignorant, vacantly amused by what they do not understand; it was a deeper look of inner placidity, that held no wonder and no awe, and somehow suggested thoughts as ancient as the world. a curious sense began to possess barbara of having left behind her all familiar every-day things, of being face to face with some new wonder, some brooding mystery which she could not grasp. they entered the car just behind an ample lady who had been among the ship's passengers--a good-natured, voluble cook's tourist who, the second day out, had confided to barbara her certainty of an invitation to the imperial cherry-blossom party, as her husband had "a friend in the litigation." she wore a painted-muslin, and the husband of influential acquaintance and substantial, red-bearded person showed now a gleaming expanse of white waistcoat crossed by a gold watch-chain that might have restrained a tiger. the lady nodded and smiled beamingly. "isn't it all perfectly splendid!" she cried. "there was a baby on the platform that was too _sweet_!--for all the world like the japanese dolls we buy at home, with their hair shingled and a little round spot shaved right in the crown! my husband tried to give it a silver dollar, but the mother just smiled and bowed and went away and left it lying on the bench." she found a seat and fanned herself vigorously with a handkerchief. "i just thought i never _would_ get through that car door," she added. "it's only two feet across!" the road was narrow gage and the seats ran the length of the car on either side. hardly had its occupants settled themselves when, to the shrill piping of a horn, the train started. "goodness, this is a relief!" sighed patricia, as the bishop opened the first japanese newspaper he had seen for many months. "i hate _rick'sha_--they're such unsociable things! i haven't said ten words to you, barbara, and i've got oceans to talk about. but i'll be merciful till i get you home. what a good-looking youth that is in the corner!" the young man referred to had a light skin and long, almond-shaped eyes. he wore a suit of gray merino underwear, and between the end of the drawers and the white, cleft sock, an inch of polished skin was visible. his hat was a modish felt. his _houri_, which bore a woven crest on breast and sleeves, swung jauntily open and above his left ear was coquettishly disposed an unlighted cigarette. next him, under a brass rack piled with bright-patterned carpet-bags, an old lady in dove-colored silk was placidly inflating a rubber air-cushion. her face had an artificial delicacy of _nuance_ that was a triumph of rice-powder and rouge. beside her was a girl of perhaps eighteen, in a _kimono_ of dark blue and an _obi_ of gold brocade. the latter wore white silk "mits" with bright metal trimming and on one slender finger was a diamond ring. her hands were delicately artistic and expressive, and her complexion as soft as the white wing of a miller. she gazed steadfastly away, but now and then her sloe-black eyes returned to study barbara's foreign gown and hat with surreptitious attention. "what complexions!" whispered patricia. "the old lady made hers this morning, sitting flat on a white mat in front of a camphor-wood dressing-chest about two feet high, with twenty drawers and a round steel mirror on top. it beats a hare's-foot, doesn't it! the daughter's is natural. if i had been born with a skin like that, it would have changed my whole disposition!" having settled her air-cushion, the old lady drew from her girdle a lacquer case and produced a pipe--a thin reed with a tiny silver bowl at its end. a flat box yielded a pinch of tobacco as fine as snuff. this she rolled between her fingers into a ball the size of a small pea, placed it carefully in the bowl and began to smoke. each puff she inhaled with a lingering inspiration and emitted it slowly, in a thin curdled cloud, from her nostrils. three puffs, and the tiny coal was exhausted. she tapped the pipe gently against the edge of the seat, put it back into the case and replaced the latter in her girdle. then, tucking up her feet under her on the plush seat, she turned her back to the aisle and went to sleep. three students in the uniform of some lower school with foreign jackets of blue-black cloth set off with brass buttons, sat in a row on the opposite side. each had a cap like a cadet's, with a gilt cherry-blossom on its front, and all watched barbara movelessly. the man nearest her wore a round straw hat and horn spectacles. he was reading a vernacular newspaper, intoning under his breath with a monotonous sing-song, like the humming of a bumblebee. between them a little boy sat on the edge of the seat, his clogs hanging from the thong between his bare toes, the sleeves of his _kimono_ bulging with bundles. he stared as if hypnotized at a curl of barbara's bronze hair which lay against the cushion. once he stretched out a hand furtively to touch it, but drew it back hastily. "if i could only talk to him!" barbara exclaimed. "i want to know the language. tell me, patsy--how long did it take you to learn?" "i?" cried patricia in comical amazement. "heavens and earth, _i_ haven't learned it! i only know enough to badger the servants. you have to turn yourself inside out to think japanese, and then stand on your head to talk it." "never mind, barbara," said the bishop, looking up from his newspaper. "you can learn it if you insist on it. haru would be a capital teacher--bless my soul, i believe i forgot to tell you about her!" "who is haru?" asked barbara. "she's a young japanese girl, the daughter of the old _samurai_ who sold us the land for the chapel. the family is a fine old one, but of frayed fortune. i was greatly interested in her, chiefly, perhaps, because she is a christian. she became so with her father's consent, though he is a buddhist. she isn't of the servant class, of course, but i thought--if you liked--she would make an ideal companion for you while you are learning tokyo." "i know haru," said patricia. "she's a dear! she's as pretty as a picture, and her english is too quaint!" "it would be lovely to have her," barbara answered. "you're a very thoughtful man, uncle arthur. are you sure she'll want to?" "i'll send her a note and ask her to come to you at the embassy this evening. then--all aboard for the japanese lessons!" "no such wisdom for me, thank you," said patricia. "i prefer to take mine in through the pores. all the japanese officials speak english anyway, just as much as the diplomatic corps. by the way, there's count voynich, the servian _chargé_." she nodded toward the farther end of the carriage where a bored-looking european plaintively regarded the landscape through a monocle. "he's nice," she added reflectively, "but he's a dyspeptic. i caught him one night at a dinner dropping a capsule into his soup. he has a cabinet with three hundred japanese _nets'kés_--they're the little ivory carvings on the strings of tobacco-pouches. he didn't speak to me for a month once because i said it looked like a dental exhibition. almost every secretary has a fad, and that's his. ours has an aëroplane. he practises on it nearly every day on the parade-ground. the pudgy woman in the other corner with a cockatoo in her hat is mrs. sturgis, the wife of the big exporter. she wears red french heels and calls her husband 'papa'." barbara's laughter was infectious. it caught the bishop. it reflected itself even on the demure face of the japanese girl, and the serious youths opposite giggled openly in sympathy. "i do envy you your first impressions!" exclaimed patricia. "i've been here so long that i've forgotten mine. it seems perfectly natural now for people to live in houses made of bird-cages and paper napkins, and travel about in grown-up baby-buggies, and to see men walking around with bare legs and oil-skin umbrellas. it's like the sea-shore at home, i suppose--you get used to it." the train had stopped at a suburb and guards went by proclaiming its name in a musical guttural, their voices dwelling insistently on the long-drawn, last syllable. the next carriage was a third-class one with bare floors and wooden benches, set crosswise. through the opened door barbara could see its crowd of brown faces, keen and saturnine. on its front seat a heavy-featured, lumpish coolie woman was nursing a three-year-old baby, holding it to her bared breast with red and roughened hands. just outside the station's white-washed fence, a clump of factory chimneys spouted pitchy smoke into the dimming sky, and the descending sun glistened from a monster gas-tank. farther away, beyond clipped hedges, lay thatched roofs, looking as soft as mole-skin, with wild flowers growing on the ridges, and bamboo clumps soaring above them, like pale green ostrich-feathers yellow at the tips. through the open window came the treble note of a girl singing. a man passed hastily through the carriage leaving a trail of small pamphlets bound in green paper with gold lettering--an advertisement of a health resort, printed in english for the tourist. barbara opened one curiously. she looked up with a merry eye. "here's a paragraph for you, uncle arthur," she said. "listen: "'this place has other modern monuments, first and second-class hotels and many sea-scapes. in one quarter are a number of missionaries, but they can easily be avoided.'" "do let us credit that to difficulties of the language," he protested. "i'm sure that must have been meant complimentarily." "but what a contradiction!" put in patricia wickedly. "well," he retorted. "my baker has a sign on his wagon, 'the biggest loafer in tokyo.' he means that well, too." a shrill whistle, a slamming of doors, and now the gray roofs fell away. on one side the steel road all but dipped in the bay. wild ducks drew startled wakes across the rippleless lagoon. on a sand-bar a flock of gray and white gulls disported, looking at a distance like pied bathers; and about an anchored fishing boat, a dozen naked urchins were splashing with shrill cries. far across the inlet, hazy, vapory, visionary, barbara could make out a farther shore, an outline in violets and opalines, coifed with lilac cloud, and in the mid-azure a high-pooped _junk_ swam by, a shape of misty gold, palely drawn in wan, blue light. on the other side the train was rounding grassy hills, terraced to the very tops. laid against their steep sides, or standing upright on wooden framework, were occasional huge advertisements in red or white--chinese characters or pictures--while flowering camelia trees and small green-yellow shrubs drew lengthening blue shadows. a high tressle spanned acres of orchard where continuous trellis made a carpet of growing fruit, across which barbara saw far away the bold outline of bluish hills. they were crossing flooded rice-fields now, like gigantic crazy checker-boards, and the air was musical with the low, chirring chorus of frogs. shades of orange light played over the marshes, bars of rape braided them with vivid yellow, and on the narrow, curving partitions between the burnished squares, round stacks of garnered straw stood like crawfish chimneys. amid them peasants worked with broad-bladed mattocks, knee-deep in mud. they were blue clad, with white cloths bound about their heads, and some had sashes of crimson. here and there, naked to the thighs, a boy trod a water-wheel between the terraced levels. at intervals a refractory rock-hillock served as excuse for a single twisted pine-tree shading a carved tablet to some _shinto_ divinity, or a steep bluff sheltered a tiny shrine of unpainted wood; and all along the way, shining canals drew silver ribbons through the paddy-fields, and little arrowy flights of birds darted hither and thither. occasionally they passed small, neat stations, each with its white sign-boards bearing long liquid names in english, and queer japanese characters. opposite one, on a sloping hill that was a mass of deep glowing green, patricia pointed out the peaked roofs of a cluster of temples, the shrine of some century-dead buddhist saint. barbara began to realize that these fields through which this modern train was gliding were old japan, that in those blue hills had been nurtured the ancient legends she had read, of famous two-sworded _samurai_, of swaggering bandits and pleasure-loving _shogun_, and of tea-house _geisha_ who danced their way into _daimyo's_ palaces. the spell of the land, whose sheer beauty had thrilled her on the ship, drew her closer with the threads of memories almost forgotten. its contrasts were wonderful. they spoke of primary and unmixed emotions, that lisped themselves through the fading golden sunlight, the moist, dreamy air, the graceful outlines of roof and tree. in the west the sun was declining toward a range of hills jagged as the teeth of a bear. their tops were pale as cloud and their bases melted into an ebony line of forest. the plain below was a winey purple, with slashes of red earth gorges like fresh wounds, and one side had the cloudy color of raspberries crushed in curdled milk. the farther range seemed a part of a far-off painted curtain, tinted in pastels, and high above a milky cloud floated, curling like a lace scarf about the opal crest of fuji, mysteriously blue and dim as an arctic summer sea. barbara glimpsed it, the very spirit of beauty, between the whirling shadows of pine and camphor trees, between tiled walls guarding thatched temples, flights of gray pigeons and spurts of pink cherry-blossom. as she leaned out, and the pines bowed rhythmically, and the water-wheels turned in the furrows, and the yellow-green of the bamboo, the purple-indigo of the hills and the golden-pink of the cherries lifting, above the hedges, went by like raveling skeins of a tapestry--that majestic presence, ghostly and splendid above the wild contour of hill and mountain, seemed to call to her. and across the gorgeous landscape, rejoicing from every rift and crevice of its moist soil, in its colors of rich red earth and green foliage, in the grace and vigor of its springing, resilient bamboo groves and the cardinal pride of its flowering camelias, barbara's heart answered the call. chapter iv under the red sunset the slowing of the train awoke barbara from her reverie. the three boy students got out, casting sidelong glances at her. more japanese entered, and two foreigners--a bright-faced girl on the arm of a keen-eyed, soldierly man with bristling white hair, a mustache like a walrus, and a military button. the girl's hands were full of cherry-branches, whose bunches of double blossoms, incredibly thick and heavy, filled the car with a delicate fragrance. the bishop folded his newspaper and put it into his pocket. as he did so the owner of the expansive waistcoat leaned across the aisle and addressed him. "say, my friend," he said, "you've lived out here some time, i understand." "yes," the bishop replied. "twenty-five years." "well, i take it, then, you ought to know this country right down to the ground; and if you don't mind, i'd like to ask a question or two." "do," said the bishop. "i'll be glad to answer if i can." the other got up and took a seat opposite. "you see," he pursued confidentially, "i came on this trip just for a rest and to settle the bills for the curios my wife"--he indicated the lady, who had now moved up beside him--"thinks she'd like to look at back home. but i've been getting interested by the minute. it's quite some time since i went to school, and i guess there hadn't so much happened then to japan. i wish you'd run down the scale for me--just to hit the high places. now there was a big rumpus here, i remember, at the time of our civil war. they chose a new emperor, didn't they?" "no. the dynasty has been unbroken for two thousand years." "two thousand years!" cried the lady. "why, that's before christ!" "when our ancestors, martha, were painting themselves up in yellow ochre and carrying clubs--what was the row about, then?" "it was something like this. to go back a little, the emperor was always the nominal ruler and spiritual head, but the temporal power was administered by a self-decreed viceroy called the _shogun_. japan was a closed country and only a little trading was allowed in certain ports." his questioner nodded. the girl beside the white-haired old soldier had touched the latter's sleeve, and both were listening attentively. "then perry came along and kicked open the gate. bombarded 'em, didn't he?" the bishop's eyes twinkled. "only with gifts. he brought a small printing-press, a toy telegraph line and a miniature locomotive and railroad track. he set up these on the beach and showed the officials whom the _shogun's_ government sent to treat with him, how they worked. in the end he made them understand the immense value of the scientific advancement of the western world. the visit was an eye-opener, and the wiser japanese realized that the nation couldn't exist under the old _régime_ any longer. it must make general treaties and adopt new ideas. some, on the other hand, wanted things to stay as they were." "pulling both ways, eh?" "yes. at length the progressists decided on a sweeping measure. under the _shogunate_, the _daimyos_ (they were the great landed nobles) had been in a continual state of suppressed insurrection." "some wouldn't knuckle down to the _shogun_, i suppose." "exactly. there was no national rallying-point. but they all alike revered their emperor. in all the bloody civil wars of a thousand years--and the japanese were always fighting, like europe in the middle ages--no _shogun_ ever laid violent hands on the emperor. he was half divine, you see, descended from the ancient gods, a living link between them and modern men. so now they proposed to give him complete temporal power, make him ruler in fact, and abolish the _shogunate_ entirely." "phew! and the big _daimyos_ came into line on the proposition?" "they poured out their blood and their money like water for the new cause. the _shogun_ himself voluntarily relinquished his power and retired to private life." "splendid!" said the stranger, and the girl clapped her gloved hands. "so that was the 'restoration,' the beginning of _meiji_, whatever that may mean?" "the 'era of enlightenment.' the present emperor, mutsuhito, was a boy of sixteen then. they brought him here to yedo, and renamed it tokyo----" "and proceeded to get reeling drunk on western notions," said the man with the military button, smiling grimly. "i was out here in the seventies." "true, sir," assented the bishop. "it was so, for a time. and the opposition took refuge in riot, assassination, and suicide. but gradually japan worked the modernization scheme out. she sent her young statesmen to europe and america to study western systems of education, jurisprudence and art. she hired an army of experts from all over the world. she sent her cleverest lads to foreign universities. in the end she chose what seemed to her the best from all. her military ideas come from germany and her railroad cars from the town of pullman, illinois. when the best didn't suit her, she invented a system of her own, as she has done with wireless telegraphy." "so!" said the other. "i'm greatly obliged to you, sir. i've read plenty in the newspapers, but i never had it put so plain. it strikes me," he added to the old soldier, "that a nation plucky enough to do this in fifty years, in fifty more will make some other nations get a move on." he brought a big fist smashing down in an open palm. "and, by gad! the japanese deserve all they get! when we go back i guess me and martha won't march in any anti-jap torch-light processions, anyway!" the fields were gone now. the train was rumbling along a canal teeming with laden _sampan_, level with the paper _shoji_ of frail-looking houses on its opposite bank. beyond lay a sea of roofs, swelling gray billows of tiling spotted with green foam, from which steel factory chimneys lifted like the black masts of sunken ships. a leafy hill of cryptomeria rose near-by, and an octagonal stone tower peeped above its foliage. crows were circling about it, black dots against the bronze. the train was entering tokyo. a door slammed sharply. from the forward smoking carriage a man had entered. he was an european and barbara was struck at once by his great size and the absence of color in his leaden face. the bored-looking diplomatist in the corner gathered himself hastily into a bow, which the other acknowledged abstractedly. seemingly he had been occupied in some intent speculation which spread a kind of glaze over his sharp features. a book drooped carelessly from his heavy fingers. "that is doctor bersonin," said the bishop, as the girls collected their wraps. "he came just before i left, last fall. he is the government expert, and is supposed to be one of the greatest living authorities on explosives." "oh, yes," said patricia, "i know. he invented a dynamo or a torpedo, or something. i saw him once at a reception; he had a foreign decoration as big as a dinner-plate." the big man made his way slowly along the aisle and, still absorbed, took a dust-coat from a rack. as he ponderously drew it on, the daylight was suddenly eclipsed, and the rumbling reëchoed from metal roofing. they were in shimbashi station. "isn't he simply odious!" whispered patricia, as the expert stepped before them on to the long, dusky, asphalt platform. "his eyes are like a cat's and his hands look as if they wanted to crawl, like big white spiders! there is the embassy _betto_," she said suddenly, pointing over the turnstile, where stood a japanese boy in a wide-winged _kimono_ of tea-colored pongee with crimson facings and a crimson mushroom hat. "the carriage is just outside. you'll come, too, of course, bishop," she added. "father will expect you." he shook his head and motioned toward a dense assemblage comprising a half dozen of his own race in clerical black, and a half hundred _kimono'd_ japanese, whose faces seemed one composite smile of welcome. "there is a part of my flock," he said. "there will be a jubilation at my bachelor palace to-night. i shall see you to-morrow, i hope." they watched him for a moment, the center of a ceremonious ring of bowing figures, then passed through the station to the steps where the carriage waited. the station debouched on to a broad open square bordered with canals and lined with ranks of _rick'sha_, some of which had small red flags with the name of a hotel in white letters, in english. the space was gray and dusty; pedestrians dotted it and across it a bent and sweating street-sprinkler hauled his ugly trickling cart, chanting in a half-tone as he went. a little distance away barbara caught a glimpse of a busy paved street, lined with ambitious glass shop-fronts and with a double line of clanging trolley-cars passing to and fro beneath a maze of telegraph wires seemingly as fine as pack-thread. her nostrils twitched with strange odors--from stagnant moats of sticky, black mud, from panniers of dressed fish, from the rice-powder and pomade of women's toilets--all the scents bred in swarming streets by a glowing tropic sun. at one side waited a handful of foreign carriages. all the drivers of these wore the loose, flapping liveries and the round hats of green or crimson or blue. "they are embassy turn-outs," explained patricia. "each one has its color, you see. ours is red and you can see it farthest." as they took their seats an open victoria rolled up, with cobalt-blue wheels, and a _betto_ with a _kimono_ of dark cloth trimmed with wide strips of the same hue ran ahead, clearing the way with raucous cries. "there goes the bulgarian minister's wife," said patricia. "she's got the finest pearls in tokyo." a hundred yards from the entrance the embassy carriage halted abruptly and barbara caught her companion's arm with a low exclamation. at the side of the square, seated or reclining on the ground was a body of perhaps eighty men dressed in a deadly brownish-yellow, the hue of iron-rust, with coarse hats and rough straw sandals. they were disposed in lines, a handcuff was on each left wrist, and a thin, rattling iron chain linked all together. "they are convicts," said patricia; "on their way to the copper mines, i imagine. they will move presently and we can pass." at the head of the melancholy platoon stood an officer in dark blue cloth uniform and clumsy shoes, a sword by his side. he stood motionless as an idol, his sparse mustaches waxed, his visored cap set square on his crisp, black hair, his bronze face impassive. the prisoners looked on stolidly at the stir of the station, the flying _rick'sha_, the crowded _sampan_ in the canal, and the noisy trolley-cars passing near-by. some talked in low tones and pointed here and there, with furtive glances at the officer. barbara noted their different expressions, some stolid, low-browed and featureless, some with side-looks of sharper cunning, all touched with oriental apathy. a bell now began to clamor in the train-shed and there came the rasping hoot of an engine. the officer turned, gave a sharp order, and the prisoners rose, with light clanking of their chains. another order, and they moved, in double lines of single file, into the station. patricia heaved a sigh of relief as the halted traffic started. "_hyaku_, tucker," she called to the driver. "_hyaku_ means quickly," she explained aside. "his name is taka, but i call him tucker because it's easier to remember." as they rolled swiftly on, through the wondrous panorama of teeming tokyo streets, the sun hung, an elongated globe of deep orange-crimson, streaked with little whips of rosy cloud. beneath it the mountains lay like coiled, purple dragons, indolent and surfeited. one star twinkled palely in the lemon-colored sky. yet now to barbara the splendor of color seemed tragic, the poured-out beauty but a veil, behind which moved, old and apish and gray, the familiar passions of the world. before her eyes were flowing and mingling a thousand strands of orient life, yet she saw only the red light glowing on the stone entrance of shimbashi, with those hideous saffron jackets filing perpetually into its yawning mouth, like unholy spectres in a dream. chapter v the maker of buddhas the setting sun poured a flood of wine-colored light over reinanzaka--the "hill-of-the-spirit"--whose long slope rose behind the american embassy, whither the dandridge victoria was rolling. it was a long leafy ridge stippled with drab walls of noble japanese houses, and striped with narrow streets of the humble; one of the many green knolls that, rising above the gray roofs, make the japanese capital seem an endless succession of teeming village and restful grove. along its crest ran a lane bordered with thorn hedges. a little way inside this stood a huge stone _torii_, facing a square, ornamented gateway, shaded by cryptomerias. the latter was heavily but chastely carved, and on its ceiling was a painting, in green and white on a gold-leaf ground, of kwan-on, the all-pitying. from the gate one looked down across the declivity, where in a walled compound, the rambling buildings of the embassy showed pallidly amid green foliage. beyond this were sections of trafficking streets, and still farther a narrow, white road climbed a hill toward a military barracks--a blur of dull, terra-cotta red. in the dying afternoon the lane had an air of placid aloofness. somewhere in a thoroughfare below a trolley bell sounded, an impudent note of haste and change in a symphony of the intransmutable. over all was the scent of cherry-blossoms and a faint musk-like odor of incense. from the gate a mossy pavement, shaded by sacred _mochi_ trees, led to a buddhist temple-front of the _mon-to_ sect, before which a flock of fluttering gray-and-white pigeons were pecking grains of rice scattered by a priest, who stood on its upper step, watching them through placid, gold-rimmed spectacles. he wore a long green robe, a stole of gold brocade was around his neck, and his face was seamed with the lines of life's receding tides. at one side of the pavement, worn and grooved by centuries of worshiping feet, was a square stone font and on the other side a graceful bell-tower of red lacquer. back of this stood a forest of tall bronze lanterns, and beyond them a graveyard, an acre thick with standing stone tablets of quaint, squarish shape, chiseled with deep-cut idiographs. nearer the graveyard, overshadowed by the greater bulk of the temple, was a long, low nunnery, with clumps of flowers about it. through its bamboo lattices one caught glimpses of women's figures, clad in slate-color, of placid faces and boyishly shaven heads. about the yard a few little children were playing and a mother, with a baby on her back, looked smilingly on. the space where the priest stood was connected by a small, curved, elevated bridge with another temple structure standing on the right of the yard, evidently used as a private residence. this was more ornate, far older and touched with decay. its porch was arcaded, set with oval windows and hung with bronze lanterns green from age. its entrance doors were beautifully carved, paneled with endless designs in dull colors, and bordered with great gold-lacquer peonies laid on a background of green and vermilion. from their corners jutted snarling heads of grotesque lions and on either side stood gigantic _ni-o_--glowering demon-guardians of sacred thresholds. through the straight-boled trees that grew close about it, came transient gleams of a hedged garden, of burnished green and maroon foliage, where cherry-blooms hung like fluffy balls of pink smoke. the garden had a private entrance--a gate in the outer lane--and over this was a small tablet of unpainted wood: [illustration] which, translated, read: aloysius thorn maker of buddhas directly opposite stood a small christian chapel. it was newly built and still lacked its final decoration--a rose-window, whose empty sashes were stopped now with black cloth. high above the flowering green its slanting roof lifted a cross. it rose, white and pure, emblem of the western faith that yet had been born in the east. over against the ornate pageantry of buddhist architecture, in a land of another creed, of variant ideals and a passionate devotion to them, it stood, simple, silent, and watchful. the priest on the temple steps was looking at the white cross, regarding it meditatively, as one to whom concrete symbols are badges of spiritual things. footsteps grated on the gravel and the occupant of the older temple came slowly through its garden. he was a foreigner, though dressed in japanese costume. his shoulders were broad and powerful and he moved with a quickness and grace in step and action that had something feline in it. his hair, worn long, was black, touched with gray, and a curved mustache hid his lips. his expression was sensitively delicate and alertly odd--an impression added to by deeply-set eyes, one of which was visibly larger than the other, of the variety known as "pearl," slightly bulbous, though liquid-brown and heavily lashed. the new-comer ascended the steps and stood a moment silently beside the priest, watching the gluttonous pigeons. as he looked up, he saw the other's gaze fixed on the chapel cross. a quick shiver ran across his mobile face, and passing, left it hard with a kind of grim defiance. presently the priest said in japanese: "the christian temple across the way honorably approaches completion. assuredly, however, moths have eaten my intelligence. why does the gloomy hole illustriously elect to remain in its wall?" "it is for a thing they call a 'window'," said thorn. "after a time they will put therein an august abomination, representing sublimely hideous cloud-born beings and idiotic-looking saints in colored glass." the priest nodded his shaven head sagely. "it will, perhaps, deign to be a _gaku_ of the christian god. i shall, with deference, study it. i have watered my worthless mind with much arrogant reading of him. doubtless he was also buddha and taught the way." an acolyte had come from the temple and approached the red bell-tower. midway of the huge bronze bell a heavy cedar beam, like a catapult, was suspended from two chains. he swung this till its muffled end struck the metal rim, and the air swelled with a dreamy sob of sound. he swung it again, and the sob became a palpitant moan, like breakers on a far-away beach. again, and a deep velvety boom throbbed through the stillness like the heart of eternity. "it is time for the service," said the priest, and turning, went into the temple, from whose interior soon came the woodeny tapping of a _mok'gyo_--the hollow wooden fish, which is the emblem of the _mon-to_ sect--and the sound of chanting voices. * * * * * thorn, the man with whom the priest had spoken, crossed the bridge to the other temple with a slow step. he passed between the scowling guardian figures, slid back a paper _shoji_ and entered. the room in which he stood had been the _haiden_, or room of worship. around its walls were oblong carvings, marvelously lacquered, of the nine flowers and nine birds of old japanese art. in one were set six large painted panels; the red seal they bore was that of the great cho densu, the fra angelico of japan. in its center, under a brocade canopy, was a raised platform once the seat of the high priest. it faced a long transept, like a chancel; this ended in a short flight of steps leading, through doors of soft, fretted gold-lacquer, to a huge altar set with carved tables, great tarnished brasses and garish furniture. the walls of the transept were done in red with green ornamentations. from the overhead gloom grotesque phoenix and dragon peered down and in the gathering dimness, shot through with the wan yellow gleam of brass, the place seemed uncanny. thorn drew back a heavy drapery which covered a doorway, and entered a room that was windowless and very dark. he lit a candle. the dim light it furnished disclosed a weird and silent assembly. the space was crowded with strange glimmering deities--of bronze, of silver, of priceless gold-lacquer--the dust thick on their faces, their aureoles misty with cobwebs. some gazed with passionless serenity, or blessed with outstretched hand; some threatened with scowling faces and clenched thunderbolts: jizo of the tender smile, in whose sleeves nestle the souls of dead children; kwan-on, of divine compassion, with her many hands; emma-dai-o, judge of the dead, menacing and terrible; strange sardonic _tengu_, half-bird, half-human. the floor was thick with them. from shelves on the walls leered swollen, frog-like horrors such as often appear on alaskan totem-poles, triple-headed divinities of india and china, coiled cobras, idols from ceylon, and curious thibetan praying-wheels. a sloping stairway slanted through the gloom; beside it was an image of the red god, aizen bosatsu, his appalling countenance framed in lurid flames, seated on a fiery lotos. the master of this celestial and infernal pantheon closed and locked the door, and mounted the stairway to the loft--a low, rambling room of eccentric shape, under the curving gables. here, through a long window beneath the very eaves, the light still came brightly. in the center was a board table, littered with delicate carving-tools. he kindled the charcoal in a bronze _hibachi_, and set over it a copper pot which began to emit a thick, weedy odor. from a cabinet he took phials containing various powders, and measured into the pot a portion from each. lastly he added a quantity of gold-leaf, slowly, flake by flake. at one side a white silk cloth was draped over a pedestal; he drew this away and looked at the unfinished figure it had concealed. it was an image of kwan-on, the all-merciful. through the open window the chant of the priests came clearly: "_waku hyoryu kokai_ _ry[=u]gyo shokinan_ _nembi kwan-on riki_ _har[=o] fun[=o]motsu._" (he who is beset with perils of dragon and great fish--who drifts on an endless sea--if he offer petition to kwan-on, waves will not destroy him.) thorn crossed the room and leaning his elbows on the window-ledge, looked out. through the odor of incense the monotonous intonation of the liturgy rose with the grandeur of a gregorian chant: "_sh[=u]j[=o] kikon-yaku mury[=o]ku hisshin kwan-on myochiriki n[=o]ku sekenku._" (he who is in distress--when immeasurable suffering presses on him--kwan-on, all-wise and all-powerful, can save him from the world's calamity.) once, while the quiet yard echoed back the slow cadences of the antique tongue, the watcher's eyes turned to the image on the pedestal, then came back to an object that drew them--had drawn them for many days against his will!--the white cross of the chapel. a last glow of refracted light touched it now, as red as blood, a symbol of the infinite passion and pain. a long time he stood there. the twilight deepened, the chant ceased, lights sprang up along the lane, night fell with its sickle moon and crowding stars, but still he stood, his face between his hands. at length he turned, and groping for the cloth, threw it over the kwan-on and lit a lamp swinging from a huge brass censer. unlocking an alcove, he took out a fleece-wrapped bundle and sweeping the tools to one side, set it on the table. he carefully closed the window and thrust a bar through the staple of the door before he unwrapped it. when the fleece was removed, he propped the image it had contained upright on the table. he poured into a shallow plate a few drops of the liquid heating over the fire-bowl--under the lamplight it gleamed and sparkled like molten gold--and with a small brush, using infinite care, began to lay the lacquer on its carven surface. once, at a sound in some room below--perhaps the movement of a servant--he stopped and listened intently. it was as if he worked by stealth, at some labor self-forbidden, to which an impulse, overmastering though half-denied, drove him in secret. it was a crucifix with a dead christ upon it. chapter vi the baying of the wolf-hound barbara stood in her room at the embassy. it was spacious and airy, the high walls paneled in ivory-white, with draperies of delft blue. the bed and dressing-table were early adams. a generous bay-window set with flower-boxes filled a large part of one side, and its deep seat was upholstered in blue crepe, the tint of the draperies, printed with large white chrysanthemums. the floor was laid with thin matting of rice-straw in which was braided at intervals a conventional pattern in old-rose. opposite the bay-window stood a sendai chest on which was a small japanese buddha of gold-lacquer, amida, the dweller-in-light, seated in holy meditation on his lotos-blossom. at first sight this had recalled to barbara a counterpart image which she had unearthed in a dark corner of the garret in her pinafore days, and which for a week had been her dearest possession. to this room mrs. dandridge herself had taken her, presenting to her haru, whom the bishop's note had brought--a vivid, eager figure from a japanese fan, who had sunk suddenly prone, every line of her slender form bowed, hands palm-down on the floor and forehead on them, in a ceremonious welcome to the foreign _ojo-san_. her mauve _kimono_ was woven with camelias in silver, set off by an _obi_, showing a flight of storks on a blue background and clasped in front with a silver firefly. the heavy jet hair was rolled into wings on either side, and a high puff surmounted her forehead. thin twin spirals, stiff with pomade, joined at the back like the pinions of a butterfly, and against the blue-black loops lay a bright knot of ribbon. she was now moving about the room with silent padding of light feet in snowy, digitated _tabi_, admiring the gowns which the maid had taken from barbara's trunks. occasionally she passed a slim hand up and down a soft wrap with a graceful, purring regard, or held a fleecy boa under her small oval chin and stole a glance in the cheval glass with a little ecstatic quiver of shoulder. once she paused to look at the lacquer image on the sendai chest. "buddha," she said. "japan man think very good for die-time." "haru," said barbara as the maid's busy japanese fingers went searching for elusive hooks and eyes, "is it true that every japanese name has a meaning?" "so, _ojo-san_! that mos' indeed true. all japan name mean something. 'haru' mean spring, for because my born that time. very funny--_né?_" "it is very pretty," said barbara. "how tha's nize!" was the delighted exclamation. "_mama-san_ give name. my like name yella-ways for because _mama-san_ no more in this world. my house little lonesome now." "where is your house, haru? near by?" the slender hand, pointed to the wooded height behind the garden. "jus' there on the street call prayer-to-the-gods. my house so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big." she indicated a space of perhaps six feet square. "funny!--_né_?" "and who lives there with you?" haru smiled brilliantly. "oh, so-o-o many peoples! _papa-san_, an'--jus' me." "no brother?" she shook her head. "my don' got," she said. "_papa-san_ very angry for because my jus' girl an' no could be kill in port arthur!" she spoke with a smile, but the matter-of-fact words brought suddenly home to barbara something of the flavor of that passionate loyalty, that hot heroism and debonair contempt of death which has been the theme of a hundred stories. "do all japanese feel so, haru?" she asked. "would every father be glad to give his son's life for japan?" the girl looked at her as if she jested. "of _course_! all japan man mos' happy if to be kill for our emperor! tha's for why better to be man. girl jus' can stay home an' _wish_!" as the gown's last fastening was slipped into its place, she turned up her lovely oval face with a smiling, sidelong look. [illustration] "_ma-a-a!_" she exclaimed. "how it is _beau_-tee-ful! _né_? only--" "only what?" "my thinks the _ojo-san_ must suffer through the center!" laughingly barbara caught the other's slim wrist and drew her before the mirror. by oriental standards the japanese girl was as finely bred as herself. in the two faces, both keenly delicate and sensitive, yet so sharply contrasted--one palely olive under its jetty pillow of straight black hair, the other fair and brown-eyed, crowned with curling gold--the extremes of east and west looked out at each other. "see, haru," said barbara. "how different we are!" "you so more good-look!" sighed the japanese girl. "my jus' like the night." "ah, but a moonlighted night," cried barbara, "soft and warm and full of secrets. when you have a sweetheart you will be far more lovely to him than any foreign girl could be!" haru blushed rosily. "sweetheart p'r'aps now," she said, "--all same kind america story say 'bout." "have you really, haru?" cried barbara. "i love to hear about sweethearts. maybe--some day--i may have one, too. some time you'll tell me about him. won't you?" suddenly, far below the window, there came a snarling scramble and a savage, menacing bay. barbara leaned out. a tawny, long-muzzled wolf-hound, fastened to a stake, glared up at her out of red-dimmed eyes. "poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "he looks sick. does he have to be tied up?" the japanese girl shivered. "very bad dog," she said. "my think very danger to not kill." the deep tone of the dinner gong shuddered through the house and barbara hastened out. patricia met her in the hall and the two girls, with arms about each other's waists, descended the broad angled stair to the dining-room, where the ambassador stood, tall and spare and iron-gray, with a contagious twinkle in his kindly eye. "well," he asked, "did you feel the earthquake?" barbara gave an exclamation of dismay. "has there been one already?" "pshaw!" he said contritely. "perhaps there hasn't. you see, in japan, we get so used to asking that question--" "now, ned!" warned mrs. dandridge. "you'll have barbara frightened to death. we really don't have them so very often, my dear--and only gentle shakes. you mustn't be dreaming of messina." the ambassador pointed to the ceiling, where a wide crack zigzagged across. "there's a recent autograph to bear me out. it happened on the eleventh of last month." "father remembers the date because of the horrible accident it caused," said patricia. "a piece of the kitchen plaster came down in his favorite dessert and we had to fall back on pickled plums. "i'm simply wild to see your gowns, barbara," she continued, as they took their places. "is that the latest sleeve, and is everything going to be slinky? we're always about six months behind. i know a girl in yokohama who goes to every steamer and kodaks the smartest tourists. i've almost been driven to do it myself." "you should adopt the japanese dress, patsy," said mrs. dandridge. "how does it seem, barbara, to see _kimono_ all around you?" "i can't get it out of my mind," she answered, "that they are all wearing them for some sort of masquerade." "it takes a few days to get used to it," said the ambassador. "and what a beautiful and practical costume it is!" "and comfortable!" sighed patricia. "no 'bones' or tight places, and only four or five things to put on. i don't wonder european women look queer to the japanese. the cook's wife told me the other day that the first foreign lady she ever saw looked to her like a wasp with a wig on like a _shinto_ devil." there rose again on the still night air the savage bay barbara had heard in her room. "i'm afraid i must make up my mind to lose shiro," the ambassador said regretfully. "he's a siberian wolf-hound that a friend sent me from moscow. but the climate doesn't agree with him, apparently. for the last two days he's seemed really unsafe. there's a famous japanese dog-doctor in this section, but he's been sick himself and i haven't liked to go to an ordinary native 'vet.' but i shall have him looked at to-morrow." "i do hope you will," said mrs. dandridge nervously. "he almost killed patsy's pomeranian the first day he came. watanabé says he hasn't touched his food to-day, and we can't take any risks with so many children in the compound. we have forty-seven, barbara," she continued, "counting the stablemen's families, and some of them are the dearest mites! every christmas we give them a tree. it makes one feel tremendously patriarchal!" it was a home-like meal, albeit thin slices of lotos-stem floated in barbara's soup, the lobster had no claws, and the _entrée_ was baked bamboo. save for a high, four-paneled screen of gold-leaf with delicate etchings of snow-clad pines, the white room was without ornament, but the table gleamed with old silver, and in its center was a great bowl of pink azaleas. smooth-faced japanese men-servants came and went noiselessly in snowy footwear and dark silk _houri_ whose sleeves bore the embassy eagle in silver thread. the ambassador was a man of keen observation, and a cheerful philosophy. his theory of life was expressed in a saying of his: "human-kind is about the same as it has always been, except a good deal kinder." he had learned the country at first hand. he had a profound appreciation of its whole historical background, one gained not merely from libraries, but from deeper study of the essential qualities of japanese character and feeling. he had the perfect gift, moreover, of the _raconteur_, and he held barbara passionately attentive as he sketched, in bold outlines, the huge picture of japanese modernization. yet light as was his touch, he nevertheless made her see beneath the veneer of the foreign, the unaltering ego of a civilization old and austere, of unfamiliar, strenuous ideals, with cast steel conventions, eternal mysteries of character and of racial destiny. coffee was served in the small drawing-room--a home-like, soft-toned room of crystal-paned bookcases, and furniture that had been handed down in the dandridge family from candle-lighted colony days. "it seems a shame," said mrs. dandridge, "that this evening has to be broken, but patsy and i must look in at the charity bazaar. i'm sure you won't mind, barbara, if we leave you alone now for an hour or so. it's a new idea: every lady is to bring something she has no further use for, but which is too good to throw away." "i presume," observed the ambassador innocently, "that some of them will bring their husbands." "ned," said mrs. dandridge, as she drew on her wrap, "people will soon think you haven't a serious side. it would serve you right if i took you along as my contribution." "ah," returned he, "i was thoughtful enough to make a previous engagement. doctor bersonin is coming to see me." patsy's nose took a decided elevation. "the government expert," she said. "he was on the train. it's the first time i ever saw him without that smart-looking japanese head-boy of his who goes with him everywhere as interpreter." "i've noticed that," mrs. dandridge said. "he's always with him in his automobile. by the way, patsy, who _does_ that boy remind me of? it has always puzzled me." "why," patricia answered, "he looks something like that japanese student we saw so often the winter barbara and we were in monterey. you remember, barbara--the one who spoke such perfect english. we thought he was loony, because he used to sit on the beach all day and sail little wooden boats." "so he does," said her mother. "there's a decided resemblance. but doctor bersonin's boy is anything but loony. he has a most intelligent face." "besides," said patricia, "the other was nearsighted and wore spectacles. good-by, barbara. i hope the doctor will be gone when we get back." her voice came muffled from the hall "--oh, i can't help it, mother! i'm only a diplomat-once-removed! he _is_ horrid!" chapter vii doctor bersonin the ambassador received his caller in his study. from across the hall, barbara, through the half-open door, could see the expert's huge form filling an arm-chair, where the limpid light of the desk-lamp fell on his heavy, colorless face. the walls were lined with bookshelves and curtains of low tone, and against this formless background his big profile stood out pallid and hawk-like. she could hear his voice distinctly. its even, dead flatness affected her curiously; it was not harsh, but absolutely without tone-quality or sympathy. for some time the talk was on casual topics and she occupied herself listlessly with a tray of photographs on the table. she read their titles, smiling at the extraordinary intricacies of "english as she is japped" by the complaisant oriental photographer: _the picking sea-ear at enoshima_; _east-looking panorama of fuji mount_; _geisha in the famous dance of maple-leaf_. the smile left her face. something had been said in the farther room which caught her attention and in a moment she found herself listening intently. "i understand the trials of the new powder have been very successful," the ambassador was saying. "is it destined to revolutionize warfare, do you think?" "it is too soon to tell yet," was the reply, "just what the result will be. it will enormously increase the range of projectiles, as your excellency may guess, and its area of destruction will nearly double that of lyddite." barbara felt, rather than saw, that the ambassador gave a little shudder. "i can imagine what that means," he said. "i saw port arthur after the siege. so war is to grow more dreadful still! when will it cease, i wonder." "never," bersonin answered, with a cold smile. "it is the love of power that makes war, and that, in man, is inherent and ineradicable. a nation is only the individual in the aggregate, and selfishness is the guiding gospel of both." to barbara the words seemed coldly, cruelly repellant. she felt a sudden quiver of dislike run over her. "you paint a sorry picture," said the ambassador. "can human ingenuity go much further, then? what, in your opinion, will be the fighting engine of the future?" "the engine of the future"--bersonin spoke deliberately--"will be along other lines. it will be an atomic one. it will employ no projectile and no armor plate will resist it. the discoverer will have harnessed the law of molecular vibration. as there is a positive force that binds atoms together, so there must be a negative force that, under certain conditions, can drive them apart!" he spoke with what seemed an extraordinary conviction. his manner had subtly changed. for the first time his tone had gathered something like feeling, and the dry, metallic voice seemed to barbara to vibrate with a curious, gloating triumph. "granted such a force," he went on, "and a machine to generate and direct it, and of what value is the most powerful battle-ship, the most stupendous fort? mere silly shreds of steel and stone! why, such an engine might be carried in a single hand, and yet the nation that possessed it could be master of the world!" a dark flush had risen to his pallid cheek, and on the arm of his chair barbara saw the massive fingers of one huge hand clench and unclench with a furtive, nervous gesture. the sight gave her a sharp sense of recoil as if from the touch of something sinister and evilly suggestive. "no!" said the ambassador vehemently. "humanity would revolt. such a discovery would be worth less than nothing! its use by any warring nation would call down the execration of civilization, and the man who knew the secret would be too dangerous to be at large!" there was dead silence for a moment. bersonin sat motionless, staring straight before him. very slowly the color seemed to fade from his cheek. when he spoke again his voice had regained its dead level of tonelessness. "that has occurred to me," he said. "i think your excellency is right. invention may do its work too well. however--no doubt we speak of scientific impossibilities; let us hope so, at any rate." barbara pushed the photographs aside and slipped into the next room, closing the door and drawing the heavy portières that hung over it. she had had for a moment a vague, almost childish, sense of shrinking as if from something monstrous and uncanny--such a sensation as the naked diver may have, when, peering through his water-glass, he sees a dim grisly shape glide, stealthy and cold, through the opaque depths. she was growing absurdly fanciful, she thought. she did not turn on the electric light, but threw open one of the long, french windows. there was a new moon and a pale radiance flooded the room, with a sudden odor of wistaria and plum-blossoms. the window gave on to a porch running the length of the house, and this made her think suddenly of home. yet the air was too humid for california, too moist and rich even for florida. and suddenly she found herself pitying the people there to whom the east would always be a closed book. yet how dim and vague japan had been to her a month before! a grand piano stood open by the window and in the dim light she sat down and let her fingers wander idly in long arpeggios. she could see one side of the japanese garden, with a glimpse of a tiny dry lake and a pebbled rivulet spanned by an arching bridge of red lacquer. it ended in a sharp, sloping hill covered with shrubbery. on the ridge far above she distinguished the outlines of native houses and flanking them the curved, tartar-like gables of a gray old temple. somewhere, beyond that little hill, perhaps, stood the chapel erected to her father's memory, which she had yet to see. as her fingers strayed over the ivory keys, she thought of him, of his vivid, aberrant career and untimely end. there are nights in the japanese spring when the landscape, in its wondrous delicacy of tones, seems only an envelope of something subtler and unseen, the filmy covering of a beauty that is wholly spiritual. to-night it seemed so to barbara. the close was very still, wrapped in a dreamy haze as soft as sleep, the mountains on the horizon wan shapes of silver mist, semi-diaphanous. it seemed to her that in this living, sentient breath of japan, her father was nearer to her than he had ever been before. the thought brought to her vague memories of her mother and of her childhood. old airs began to mingle with the chords, and on the shrill fairy sound-carpet woven by the myriad insect-looms of the garden, the bits of melody went treading softly out across the perfume of the wistaria. chapter viii "sally in our alley" she thought no one heard, but out by the azalea hedge, a man was standing, listening to the hushed chords floating through the open window. from the bungalow on the yokohama bluff, daunt had come back to tokyo with a sense of dissatisfaction deeper than should have been caused by his jarring talk with phil. perhaps, though he did not guess it, his mood had to do with a bulky letter in his pocket, received that day. it was from "big" murray, his chum at college, whom he had commonly addressed by opprobrious epithets that covered an affection time had not diminished. of all the men in his class daunt would have picked him as the one least likely to marry. yet the letter had contained a wedding-invitation and a ream of the usual hyperbole. "going to name me godfather, is he!" daunt had muttered as he read. "the driveling old horse-thief!" for in some elusive way the intended distinction suggested that he himself was a hoary back-number, not to be reckoned among the forces of youth. strolling from shimbashi station, under the clustered, gaily-colored paper-lanterns, swaying above the rustle and stir of the exotic street, this thought rankled. a vague discontent stirred in him. tokyo had been the objective point of daunt's six years of diplomatic career, and he had found the kingdom of the slender swords a fascinating and absorbing study. he loved its contrasts and its contradictions, its marvelous artistry, the reserve and nobility of its people, and its savage, unshamed, sincerity of purpose. in the absorbing routine of the chancery and the bright gaieties of the capital's diplomatic circle, the first year had gone swiftly enough. since then the glider experiments had lent an added zest. even at college, langley's first aëroplane had interested him and out of that interest had grown a course of reading which had given him a broad technical knowledge of applied mechanics. in japan he had conceived the idea of the new fan-propeller, worked out in many an hour of study in the little japanese house in aoyama, which he had taken because it adjoined the parade-ground where his earliest experiments were made. at first the _corps diplomatique_ had smiled at this as a harmless _pour passer le temps_, to be classified with the roumanian minister's kennel of pomeranians or the chilian secretary's collection of _daimyo_ dolls. but week by week the little crowd of japanese spectators had grown larger; often daunt had recognized among the attentive brown faces this or that superior military officer whom he knew, albeit in civilian dress. one day his friend, viscount sakai, a dapper young officer on the general staff, had surprised him with the offer from the japanese war department of the use of an empty garage on the edge of the great esplanade. only a month ago, he had awaked to the knowledge that his name was known to the aëro enthusiasts of paris, new york and vienna, and that his propeller was an assured success. yet to-night he felt that he had somehow failed. the splendid vitality of the moving scene, the thud and click of wooden _géta_ and the whirr of _rick'sha_--all the many-keyed diapason of the rustling, lanterned vistas stretching under the pale moon-lighted sky--lacked the sense of intimate companionship. the warm still air, freighted with aromatic scents of cedar from some new-built shop, the pungent smell of incense burning before some shadowed shrine, the odors of drenched shrubbery behind the massive retaining wall of some rich noble's compound, came to him with a new sense of estrangement. the murmured sound of voices behind the glimmering paper _shoji_ told him, suddenly, that he was lonely. for the first time in six years, he was feeling keenly his long isolation from the things of home, the pleasant fellowship and the firesides of old friends. in this foreign service which he so loved, he had been growing out of touch, he told himself, out of thought, of the things "big" murray had sought and found. unconsciously, the "drivel," as he had denominated it, of the letter in his pocket, had infected him with sweet and foolish imaginings, and slowly these took the nebulous shape of a woman. he had often dreamed of her, though he had never seen her face. it was half-veiled now in the bluish haze of his pipe, while she talked to him before a fire of driftwood (that burned with red and blue lights because of sea-ghosts in it) and her voice was low and clear like a flute. the wavering outline was still before his mind's eye as he trod the quiet road that led to the embassy, entered its wide gate and slowly crossed the silent garden toward his bachelor cottage on the lawn. and there, suddenly, the vision had seized a vagrant melody and had spoken to him in song. daunt thrust his cold pipe into his pocket and listened with head thrown back. it was no brilliant display of technique that held him, for the player was touching simple chords, but these were singing old melodies that took him far to other scenes and other times. he smiled to himself. how long it had been since he had sung them--not since the old college days! that happy, irresponsible era of senior dignities came back vividly to him, the campus and the singing. for years he had not recollected it all so keenly! he had been glee-club soloist, pushed forward on all occasions and applauded to the echo. praise of his singing he had accepted somewhat humorously--never but once had it touched him deeply, and that had been on commencement afternoon. he had slipped away from the wavering cheers at the station, because he could not bear the farewells, and, far down one of the campus lanes, had come on pretty mrs. claybourne sitting on a rustic bench. again he heard her speak, as plainly as if it were yesterday: "why, if it isn't mr. daunt! i wonder how the university can open in the fall without you!" he had sat down beside her as she said: "this very insistent young person with me has been heartbroken because we could not get tickets for the glee-club concert last night. she wanted to hear you sing." he had looked up then to see a young girl, seated on the leaning trunk of a tulip-tree. her neutral-tinted skirt lay against the dark bark; her face was almost hidden by a spray of the great, creamy-pink blossoms. some quality in its delicate loveliness had made him wish to please her, and sitting there he had sung the song that was his favorite. mrs. claybourne had pulled a big branch of the tulip-tree to hand him like a bouquet over the footlights, but the girl's parted lips, her wide deep brown eyes, had thanked him in a better way! the music, now floating over the garden, by such subconscious association, recalled this scene, overlaid, but never forgotten. hark! a cascade of silver notes, and then an old air that had been revived in his time to become the madness of the music-halls and the pet of the pianolas--the one the crowded campus had been wont to demand with loudest voice when his tenor led the "senior singing." it brought back with a rush the familiar faces, the gray ivied dormitories with their slim iron balconies, the throbbing plaint of mandolins, and his own voice- "of all the girls that are so smart, there's none like pretty sally! she is the darling of my heart, and she lives----" he scarcely knew he sang, but the vibrant tenor, lifting across the scent of the wistaria, came clearly to the girl at the piano. for a moment barbara's fingers played on, as she listened with a strained wonder. then the music ceased with a discord and she came quickly through the opened window. the song was smitten from daunt's lips. in the instant that she stood outlined on the broad piazza, a fierce snarling yelp and a clatter came from within the house and there rang out a screamed japanese warning. an outer door flew open and the huge figure of doctor bersonin ran out, pursued by a leaping white shadow, while the air thrilled to the savage cry of a hound, shaken with rage. "_run, barbara!_" the ambassador's voice came from the doorway. but the white, moonlit figure, in its gauzy evening gown, turned too late. empty-handed, daunt dashed for the piazza, as, with a crash, a heavy porch chair, hurled by a japanese house-boy, penned the animal for an instant in a corner. he caught the white figure up in his arms, sprang into the shade of the wistaria arbor, and set her feet on its high railing. the voice from the doorway called again, sharply. "this way, doctor! _quick!_" the wolf-hound, trailing its broken chain, had leaped the barrier and was launched straight at the crouching expert. the latter had dragged something small and square from his pocket and he seemed now to hold this out before him. daunt, wrenching a cleat from the arbor railing, felt a puff of cold wind strike his face, and something like an elfin note of music, high and thin as an insect's, drifted across the confusion. he rushed forward with his improvised weapon--then stopped short. the dog was no longer there. the ambassador made an exclamation. he stepped down and peered under the piazza; even in the dim light the long space was palpably empty. the head-boy spoke rapidly in japanese and pointed toward the gate. "he says he must have jumped down this side," explained daunt, "and run out to the street. he's nowhere in the garden, at any rate. we can see every inch. how surprising!" he spoke to the boy in the vernacular. "he will have the gates closed at once and telephone a warning to the police station." bersonin had sat down on the edge of the piazza. he was crouched far over; his big frame was shaken with violent shudderings. suddenly his head went back and he began to laugh--a jarring, grating, weird man-hysteria that seemed to burst suddenly beyond his control. the ambassador went to him hurriedly, but bersonin shook off the hand on his shoulder and rising, still emitting his dreadful laughter, staggered across the lawn and out of the gate. the appalling mirth reëchoed from far down the quiet road. chapter ix the web of the spider bersonin walked on, fighting desperately with his ghastly spasm of merriment. it was a nervous affection which had haunted him for years. it dated from a time when, in south america, in an acute crisis of desperate personal hazard, he had laughed the first peal of that strange laughter of which he was to be ever after afraid. since then it had seized him many times, unexpectedly and in moments of strong excitement, to shake him like a lath. it had given him a morbid hatred of laughter in others. recently he had thought that he was overcoming the weakness--for in two years past he had had no such seizure--and the recurrence to-night shocked and disconcerted him. he, the man of brain and attainment, to be held captive by a ridiculous hysteria, like a nerve-racked anæmic girl! the cold sweat stood on his forehead. before long the paroxysms ceased and he grew calmer. the quiet road had merged into a busier thoroughfare. he walked on slowly till his command was regained. west of the outer moat of the imperial grounds, he turned up a pleasant lane-like street and presently entered his own gate. the house, into which he let himself with a latch-key, was a rambling, modern, two-story structure of yellow stucco. the lower floor was practically unused, since its tenant lived alone and did not entertain. the upper floor, besides the hall, contained a small bedroom, a bath and dressing-room and a large, barely-furnished laboratory. the latter was lined on two sides with glass-covered shelves which gave glimpses of rows of books, of steel shells, metal and crystal retorts and crucibles, the delicate paraphernalia of organic chemistry and complicated instruments whose use no one knew save himself--a fit setting for the great student, the peer of offenbach in munich and of bayer in vienna. against the wall leaned a drafting-board, on which, pinned down by thumb-tacks, was a sketch-plan of a revolving turret. from a bracket in a corner--the single airy touch of delicacy in a chamber almost sordid in its appointments--swung a bamboo cage with a brown _hiwa_, or japanese finch, a downy puff of feathers with its head under its wing. in the upper hall bersonin's japanese head-boy had been sitting at a small desk writing. bersonin entered the laboratory, opened a safe let into a wall, and put into it something which he took from his pocket. then he donned a dressing-gown the boy brought, and threw himself into a huge leather chair. "make me some coffee, ishida," he said. the servant did so silently and deftly, using a small brass _samovar_ which occupied a table of its own. with the coffee he brought his master a box of brown havana cigars. for an hour bersonin sat smoking in the silent room--one cigar after another, deep in thought, his yellow eyes staring at nothing. into his countenance deep lines had etched themselves, giving to his coldly repellant look an expression of malignant force and intention. with his pallid face, his stirless attitude, his great white fingers clutching the arms of the chair, he suggested some enormous, sprawling batrachian awaiting its more active prey. all at once there came a chirp from the cage in the corner and its tiny occupant, waked by the electric-light, burst into song as clear and joyous as though before its free wing lay all the meads of eden. a look more human, soft and almost companionable, came into its master's massive face. bersonin rose and, whistling, opened the cage door and held out an enormous forefinger. the little creature stepped on it, and, held to his cheek, it rubbed its feathered head against it. for a moment he crooned and whistled to it, then held his finger to the cage and it obediently resumed its perch and its melody. the expert took a dark cloth from a hook and threw it over the cage and the song ceased. bersonin went to the door of the room and fastened it, then unlocked a desk and spread some papers on the table. one was a chart, drawn to the minutest scale, of the harbor of yokohama. on it had been marked a group of projectile-shaped spots suggesting a flotilla of vessels at anchor. for a long time he worked absorbedly, setting down figures, measuring with infinite pains, computing angles--always with reference to a small square in the map's inner margin, marked in red. he covered many sheets of paper with his calculations. finally he took another paper from the safe and compared the two. he lifted his head with a look of satisfaction. just then he thought he heard a slight noise from the hall. swiftly and noiselessly as a great cat he crossed to the door and opened it. ishida sat in his place scratching laboriously with a foreign pen. bersonin's glance of suspicion altered. "what are you working at so industriously, ishida?" he asked. the japanese boy displayed the sheet with pride. it was an ode to the coming squadron. bersonin read it: "welcome, foreign men-of-war! young and age, man and woman, none but you welcome! and how our reaches know you but to satisfy, nor the babylon nor the parisian you to treat, be it ever so humble, yet a tidbit with our heart! what may not be accomplishment rising-sun? "_by h. ishida, with best compliment._" bersonin laid it down with a word of approbation. "well done," he said. "you will be a famous english scholar before long." he went into the dressing-room, but an instant later recollected the papers on the table. the servant was in the laboratory when his master hastily reentered; he was methodically removing the coffee tray. alone once more, ishida reseated himself at his small desk. he tore the poem carefully to small bits and put them into the waste-paper basket. then, rubbing the cake of india-ink on its stone tablet, he drew a mass of japanese writing toward him and, with brush held vertically between thumb and forefinger, began to trace long, delicate characters at the top of the first sheet, thus: [japanese: ouryuu no fusetsusuirai ni oyobosu eikyou hidarino toori kinji] in the japanese phrase this might literally be translated as follows: cross-current of, laying water thunder on, work-effect left hand respectively which in conventional english is to say: a study of cross-currents in their effect on submarine mines submitted with deference this finished, he sealed it in an envelope, took a book from the breast of his _kimono_ and began to read. its cover bore the words: "second english primer, in words of two syllables." its inner pages, however, belied the legend. it was mahan's _influence of sea-power on history_. yet lieutenant ishida of the japanese imperial navy, one time student in monterey, california, now in special secret-service, read abstractedly. he was wondering why doctor bersonin should have in his possession a technical naval chart and what was the meaning of certain curious markings he had made on it. chapter x in a garden of dreams in the garden the moon's faint light glimmered on the broad, satiny leaves of the camelias and the delicate traceries of red maple foliage. at its farther side, amid flowering bushes which cast long indigo shadows, stood a small pagoda, brought many years before from korea, and toward this daunt and the girl whom he had held for a breathless moment in his arms, strolled slowly along a winding, pebbled path tremulant with the flickering shadows of little leaves. the structure had a small platform, and here on a bench they sat down, the fragrant garden spread out before them. he had remembered that a guest had been expected to arrive that day from america, and knew that this must be she. but, strangely enough, it did not seem as if they had never before met. nor had he the least idea that, since that short sharp scene, they had exchanged scarcely a dozen words. in its curious sequel, as he stood listening to the echo of bersonin's strange laughter, he had momentarily forgotten all about her. then he had remembered with a shock that he had left her perched, in evening dress, on the high railing of the arbor. "i wonder if you are in the habit," she had said with a little laugh, "of putting unchaperoned girls on the tops of fences, and going away and forgetting all about them." her laugh was deliciously uneven, but it did not seem so from fright. he had answered something inordinately foolish, and had lifted her down again--not holding her so closely this time. he remembered that on the first occasion he had held her very tightly indeed. he could still feel the touch of a wisp of her hair which, in his flying leap, had fallen against his cheek. it was red-bronze and it shone now in the moonlight like molten metal. her eyes were deep blue, and when she smiled-he wrenched his gaze away with a start. but it did not stray far--merely to the point of a white-beaded slipper peeping from the edge of a ruffle of gauze that had mysteriously imprisoned filmy sprays of lily-of-the-valley. he looked up suddenly, conscious that she was laughing silently. "what is it?" he asked. "we seem so tremendously acquainted," she said, "for people who--" she stopped an instant. "you don't even know who i am." in the references to her coming he had heard her name spoken and now, by a sheer mental effort, he managed to recall it. "you are miss fairfax," he said. "and my name, perhaps i ought to add, is daunt. i am the secretary of embassy. i hope, after our little effort of to-night, you will not consider diplomacy only high-class vaudeville. such comedy scarcely represents our daily bill." "it came near enough to being tragedy," she answered. "it was so uncommonly life-like, i was torn with a fear that you might not guess it was gotten up for your especial benefit." "how well you treat your visitors!" she said with gentle irony. "had you many rehearsals?" "very few," he said. "i was afraid the boy might misread the stage direction and slip the dog-chain too soon. but i am greatly pleased. i have always had an insatiable longing to be a hero--if only on the stage. i aspire to grand opera, also, as you have noticed." he laughed, a trifle shamefacedly, then added quickly: "i hope you liked the final disappearance act. it was rather effective, don't you think?" she smiled unwillingly. "ah, you make light of it! but don't think i didn't know how quickly you acted--what you risked in that one minute! and then to run back a second time!" she shuddered a little. "you could have done nothing with that piece of wood!" "i assure you," he said, "you underrate my prowess! but it wasn't to be used--it was only the dog's cue." "poor brute!" she said. "i hope he will injure nobody." "luckily, the children are off the streets at this hour," he answered. "he'll not go far; the police are too numerous. i am afraid our very efficient performer is permanently retired from the company. but i haven't yet congratulated you. you didn't seem one bit afraid." "i hadn't time to be frightened. i--was thinking of something else! the fright came afterward, when i saw you--when you left me on the railing." she spoke a little constrainedly, and went on quickly: "i really am a desperate coward about some things. i should never dare to go up on an aëroplane, for instance, as patsy tells me you do almost every day. she says the japanese call you the 'honorable fly-man'." "there's no foreign theater in tokyo, and no winter opera," he said lightly. "we have to amuse one another, and the glider is by way of contributing my share of the entertainment. it is certainly an uplifting performance." he smiled, but she shook her head. "ah," she said, "i know! i was at fort logan last summer the day lieutenant whitney was killed. i saw it." the smile had faded and her eyes had just the look he had so often fancied lay in those eyes he had been used to gaze at across the burning driftwood--his "lady of the many-colored fires." he caught himself longing to know that they would mist and soften if he too should some day come to grief in such sudden fashion. they were wholly wonderful eyes! he had noted them even in the instant when he had snatched her from the piazza--from the danger into which his cavalier singing had called her. "how brazen you must have thought it!" he exclaimed. "my impromptu solo, i mean. i hardly know how i came to do it. i suppose it was the moonlight (it does make people idiotic sometimes, you know, in the tropics!) and then what you played--that dear old song! i used to sing it years ago. it reminded me--" "yes--?" "of the last evening at college. it was a night like this, though not so lovely. i sang it then--my last college solo." "your _last_?" she was leaning toward him, her lips parted, her eyes bright on his face. "yes," he said. "i left town the next day." her eyes fell. she turned half away, and put a hand to her cheek. "oh," she said vaguely. "of course." "but it _was_ brazen," he finished lamely. "i promise never to do it again." the breath of the night was coolly sweet. it hovered about them, mingled of all the musky winds and flower-months of eden. a dulled, weird sound from the street reached their ears--the monotonous hand-tapping of a small, shallow drum. "some buddhist _devotée_," he said, "making a pious round of holy places. he is stalking along in a dingy, white cotton robe with red characters stamped all over it--one from each shrine he has visited--and here and there in a doorway he will stop to chant a prayer in return for a handful of rice." "how strange! it doesn't seem to belong, somehow, with the telegraph wires and the trolley cars. japan is full of such contrasts, isn't it? it seems to be packed with mystery and secrets. listen!" the deep, resonant boom of a great bell at a distance had throbbed across the nearer strumming. "that must be in some old temple. perhaps the man with the drum is going there to worship. does any one live in the temples? the priests do, i suppose." "yes," he answered. "sometimes other people do, too. i know of a foreigner who lives in one." "what is he? european?" "no one knows. he has lived there fifteen years. he calls himself aloysius thorn. i used to think he must be an american, for in the chancery safe there is an envelope bearing his name and the direction that it be opened after his death. it has been there a long time, for the paper is yellow with age. no doubt it was put there by some former chief-of-mission at his request. he has nothing to do with other foreigners; as a rule he won't even speak to them. he is something of a curiosity. he knows some lost secret about gold-lacquer, they say." "is he young?" "no." "married?" "oh, no! he lives quite alone. he has one of the loveliest private gardens in the city. sometimes one doesn't see him for months, but he is here now." she was silent, while he looked again at the white toe of the slipper peeping from a gauzy hem. the silence seemed to him an added bond between them. the moon, tilting its slim sickle along the solemn range of western hills, touched their jagged contour with a shimmering radiance and edged with silver the vast white apparition towering, filmily exquisite, above them, a solitary snowy cone, hovering wraith-like between earth and sky. the horizon opposite was deep violet, crowded with tiny stars, like green-gilt coals. in the quiet a drowsy crow croaked huskily from the hillside. barbara looked through dreamy eyes. "it can't always be so beautiful!" she said at length. "nothing could, i am sure." "no, indeed," he agreed cheerfully. "there are times when, as my number-one boy says, 'honorable weather are disgust.' in june the _nubai_, the rainy season, is due. it will pour buckets for three weeks without a stop and frogs will sing dulcet songs in the streets. in july your head feels as if a red-hot feather pillow had been stuffed into your skull and everybody moves to chuzenji or kamakura. if it weren't for that, and an occasional dust-storm in the winter, and the centillions of mosquitoes, and a weekly earthquake or two, we wouldn't half appreciate this!" he made a wide gesture. "yet now," she said softly, "it seems too lovely to be real! i shall wake presently to find myself in my berth on the _tenyo maru_ with japan two or three days off." he fell into her mood. "we are both asleep. that was why the dog vanished so queerly. dream-dogs always do. and i don't wonder at my singing, either. people do exactly what they shouldn't when they are asleep. but no! i really don't like the dream version at all. i want this to be true." "why?" her tone was low, but it made him tingle. a sudden _mêlée_ of daring, delicious impulses swept over him. "because i have dreamed too much," he said, in as low a voice. "here in the east the habit grows on one; we dream of what all the beauty somehow misses--for us. but to-night, at least, is real. i shall have it to remember when you have gone, as i--i suppose you will be soon." she leaned out and picked a slender maple-leaf from a branch that came in through the open side of the pagoda, and, holding it in her fingers, turned toward him. her lips were parted, as if to speak. but suddenly she tossed it from her, rose and shook out her skirts with a laugh. carriage-wheels were rolling up the drive from the lower gate. "thank you!" she cried gaily. "but no hint shall move me. i warn you that i intend to stay a long time!" in the lighted doorway, as patricia and her mother stepped from the carriage, she swept him a curtsey. "honorably deign to accept my thanks," she said, "for augustly saving my insignificant life! and now, perhaps, we can be properly introduced!" chapter xi ishikichi under the frail moon that touched the embassy garden to such beauty, haru walked home to the house "so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big" in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods. on reinanzaka hill the shadows were iris-hearted. from its high-walled gardens of the great came no glimpses of phantom-lighted _shoji_, no sound of vibrant strings from tea-houses nor gleams of painted lips and fingers of _geisha_. haru carried a paper-lantern tied to the end of a short wand, but it was not dark enough to need its light, and as she walked, she swung it in graceful circles. she heard a dove sobbing its low _owas! owas!_ and once a crow flapped its sleepy way above her, uttering its harsh note, which, from some subtlety of suggestion hidden from the western mind, the japanese liken to the accents of love. it startled her for a second; then she began to sing, under her breath, to the tune of her clacking _géta_, a ditty of her childhood: "_karasu, karasu!_ "crow, crow, _kanzaburo!_ kanzaburo! _oya no on wo--_ forget not the virtue _wasurena yo!_" of your honorable parents." on the crest of the hill, by the street-of-hollyhocks, a wall opened in a huge gate of heavy burnished beams studded with great iron rivet-heads. here resided no less a personage than an imperial princess. beside the gate stood a conical sentry-box, in which all day, while the gate was open, stood a soldier of the household guards. the box was empty now. opposite the gate, a hedged lane opened, into which she turned, and presently the song ceased. she had come to the newly built chapel. her father's name was on the household list of the temple across the way, but she herself walked each sunday to ts'kiji, to attend the bishop's japanese service in the cathedral. when, influenced by a school-mate, she had wished to become a christian, the old _samurai_ had interposed no objection. with the broad tolerance of the esoteric buddhist, to whom all pure faiths are good, he had allowed her to choose for herself. she had grown to love the strangely new and beautiful worship with its singing, its service in a tongue that she could understand, its bible filled with marvelous stories of old heroes, and with vivid imagery like that of the _kojiki_, the "record of ancient matters" or the _man-yoshu_, the "collection of a myriad leaves," over whose archaic characters her father was always poring. she had ceased to visit the temple, but otherwise the change had made little difference in her placid life. with the simplicity with which the japanese of to-day kneels with equal faith before a plain _shinto_ shrine and a golden altar of buddha, she had continued the daily home observances. each morning she cleaned the _butsu-dan_--refilled its tiny lamp with vegetable oil, freshened its incense-cup and water bowl, and dusted its golden shrine of kwan-on which held the scroll inscribed with the spirit names of a hundred ancestors, and the _ihai_, or mortuary tablet, of her dead mother. though she no longer prayed before it, it still signified to her the invisible haunting of the dead--the continuing loving presence of that mother who waited for her in the _meidoland_. for many days haru had watched the progress of the chapel building. the cathedral was a good two miles distant, but this was near her home; here she would be able to attend more than the weekly sunday service. to-night, as she looked at the cross shining in the moonlight, she thought it very beautiful. a tiny symbol like it, made of white enamel, was hung on a little chain about her neck. it had been given her by the bishop the day of her confirmation. she drew this out and swung it about her finger as she walked on. in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods were no huge and gloomy compounds. it was a roadway of humbler shops and homes, bordered with mazes of lantern fire, and lively with pedestrians. at a meager shop, pitifully small, whose _shoji_ were wide open, haru paused. a smoky oil lamp swung from the ceiling, and under its glow, a woman knelt on the worn _tatamé_. beside her, on a pillow, lay a newborn baby, and she was soothing its slumber by softly beating a tiny drum close to its ear. she nodded and smiled to haru's salutation. "_hai! ojo-san_," she said. "_go kigen yo!_ deign augustly to enter." "honorable thanks," responded haru, "but my father awaits my unworthy return. _domo! aka-san des'ka?_ so this is miss baby! ishikichi will have a new comrade in this little sister." "poison not your serene mind with contemplation of my uncomely last-sent one!" said the woman, pridefully tilting the pillow so as to show the tiny, vacuous face. "are not its hands degradedly well-formed?" "wonderfully beyond saying! the father is still exaltedly ill?" "it is indeed so! i have not failed to sprinkle the holy water over jizo, nor to present the straw sandals to the guardians-of-the-gate. also i have rubbed each day the breast of the health-god; yet o-binzuru does not harken. doubtless it is because of some sin committed by my husband in a previous existence! i have not knowledge of your christian god, or i would make my worthless sacrifices also to him." "he heals the sick," said haru, "but he augustly loves not sacrifice--as he exaltedly did in olden time," she hastily supplemented, recalling certain readings from the old testament. "the gods of nippon divinely change not their habit," returned the woman. "also my vile intellect can not comprehend why the foreigners' god should illustriously concern himself with the things of another land." "the christian divinity," said haru, "is a god of all lands and all peoples." the other mused. "it passes in my degraded mind that he, then, would lack a sublime all-sympathy for our kingdom-of-slender-swords. you are transcendently young, _ojo-san_, but i am thirty-two, and i hold by the gods of my ancestors." "honorably present my greetings to your husband," haru said, as she bowed her adieu. "may his exalted person soon attain divine health! to-morrow i will send another book for him to read." the woman watched her go, with a smile on her tired face--the japanese smile that covers so many things. she looked at the baby's face on the pillow. "praise _shaka_," she said aloud, "there is millet yet for another week. then we must give up the shop. well--i can play the _samisen_, and the gods are not dead!" behind her a diminutive figure had lifted himself upright from a _f'ton_. he came forward from the gloom, his single sleeping-robe trailing comically and his great black eyes round and serious. "why must we give up the shop, honorable mother?" "go to sleep, ishikichi," said his mother. "trouble me not so late with your rude prattle." "but why, _okka-san_?" "because rent-money exists not, small pigeon," she answered gently. "so long as we have ignobly lived here, we have paid the _banto_ who brings his joy-giving presence on the first of each month. now we have no more money and can not pay." "why have we no more money?" "because the honorable father is sick and you are too small to earn. but let it not trouble your heart, for the gods are good. see--we have almost waked the _aka-san_!" she bent over the pillow and began again the elfin drumming at the infant's ear. but ishikichi lay open-eyed on his _f'ton_, his baby mind grappling with a new and painful wonder. chapter xii in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods haru unlatched a gate across which twisted a plum-branch with tarnished, silver bark. it hid a garden so tiny that it was scarcely more than a rounded boulder set in moss, with a clump of golden _icho_ shrubs. across the path, high in air, were stretched giant webs in whose centers hung black spiders as big as japanese sparrows. beyond was a low doorway, shaded by a gnarled _kiri_ tree. the thin, white rice-paper pasted behind the bars of its sliding grill shone goldenly with the candle-light within. she rang a bell which hung from a cord. "_hai-ai-ai-ai-ee!_" sounded a long-drawn voice from within, and in a moment a little maid slid back the _shoji_ and bobbed over to the threshold. her mistress stepped from her _géta_ into the small anteroom. here the floor was covered with soft _tatamé_,--the thick, springy rice-straw mats which, in japan, play the part of carpets--and a bronze vase on a low lacquer stool held a branch of dark ground-pine and a single white lily. a voice was audible, reciting in a droning monotone. it stopped suddenly and called haru's name. she answered instantly, and parting the panels, passed into the next room, where her father sat on his mat reading in the faint soft light of an _andon_. he was an old man, with white head strongly poised on gaunt shoulders. broken in fortune and in health, the spirit of the _samurai_ burned inextinguishably in the fire of his sunken eyes. he took her hand and drew her down beside him. she knew what was in his mind. "be no longer troubled," she said. "the american _ojo-san_ is as lovely as ama-terasu, the sun goddess, and as kind as she is beautiful. i shall be happy to be each day with her." "that is good," he said. "yet i take no joy from it. you are the last of a family that for a thousand seasons has served none save its emperor and its _daimyo_." "i am no servant," she answered quickly. "rather am i, in sort, a companion to the _ojo-san_, to offer her my tasteless conversation and somewhat to go about with her in this unfamiliar city. it is an honorable way of acquiring gain, and thus i may unworthily pay my support, for which now from time to time you are brought to sell the priceless classics in which your soul exaltedly delights." his face softened. "i have lived too long," he said. "my hand is palsied--i, a two-sword man of the old clan! i should have died in the war, fighting for nippon and my emperor. but even then was i too dishonorably old! why did not the gods grant me a son?--me, who wearied them with my sacrifices?" she did not answer for a moment. nothing in her cried out at this reiterated complaint, for she was of the same blood. if she had been a son, that wound in her father's heart had been healed. through her arm the family would have fought. her glorious death-name might even now be written on an _ihai_ on the buddha-shelf, her glad soul swelling the numbers of that ghostly legion whose spiritual force was the true vitality of her nation. "perhaps that, too, might be," she said presently in a low voice. "should i augustly marry one not of too exalted a station, he could receive adoption into our family." he looked into her deeply flushing face. "you think of the lieutenant ishida hétaro," he said. "it is true that the go-between has already deigned to sit on my hard mats. he is, i think, in every way worthy of our house. i would rather he were in the field, with a sword in his hand--i know not much of this 'secret service.' what are his present duties? doubtless"--with a spark of mischief in his hollow, old eyes--"you are better informed than i." "he is in the household of one named bersonin, a man-mountain like our wrestlers, whose service japan pays with a wage." his seamed face clouded. "to cunningly watch the foreigner's incomings and his outgoings, and make august report to the board of extraordinary information," he said, with a trace of bitterness. "to play the clod when one is all eyes and ears. honorable it is, no doubt, yet to my old palate it savors too much of the actor strutting on the circular stage. but times change, and if, to live, we must ape the foreigners, why, we must borrow their ways till such time--the gods grant it be soon!--when we can throw them on the dust heap. and what am i to set my debased ignorance against my princes and my emperor!" he paused a moment and sighed. "ishida is well esteemed," he continued presently. "he has dwelt in america and learned its tongue--a necessity, it seems, in these topsy-turvy times. yet, as for marriage, waiting still must be. these are evil days for us, my child. from whence would come the gifts which must be sent before the bride, to the husband's house? your mother"--he paused and bowed deeply toward the golden _butsu-dan_ in its alcove--"may she rest on the lotos-terrace of _amida_!--came to my poor house with a train of coolies bearing lacquer chests: silken _f'ton_, _kimono_ as soft and filmy as mist, gowns of cloth and of cotton, cushions of gold and silver patternings, jeweled girdles, velvet sandals and all lovely garniture. shall her daughter be sent to a husband with a chest of rags? no, no!" she leaned her dark head against his blue-clad shoulder and drew the scroll from his trembling fingers. "i wind your words about my heart," she said. "waiting is best. perhaps the evil times will withdraw. i have prayed to the christian god concerning it. but your eyes are augustly wearied. let me read to you a while." he settled himself back on the mat, his gaunt hands buried in his sleeves, and, snuffing the wick in the _andon_, she began to read the archaic "grass-writing." it was the _shundai zatsuwa_ of kyuso moro. "be not _samurai_ through the wearing of two swords, but day and night have a care to bring no reproach on the name. when you cross your threshold and pass out through the gate, go as one who shall never return again. thus shall you be ready for every adventure. the buddhist is for ever to remember the five commandments and the _samurai_ the laws of chivalry. "all born as _samurai_, men and women, are taught from childhood that fidelity must never be forgotten. and woman is ever taught that this, with submission, is her chief duty. if in unexpected strait her weak heart forsakes fidelity, all her other virtues will not atone. "_samurai_, men and women, the young and the old, regulate their conduct according to the precepts of bushido, and a _samurai_, without hesitation, sacrifices life and family for lord and country." chapter xiii the whorls of yellow dust for a long time in her blue and white room barbara lay awake, listening to the incessant chorus that came on the deepening mystery of the dark: the rustle of the pine-needles outside her window, the _kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri_ of a night-cricket on the sill, and the wavering chant of a toiling coolie keeping time to the thrust of his body as he hauled his heavy cart. the shadow of a twisted pine-branch crossed one of the windows, and in the infiltering moonlight she could see the yellow gleam of the gold-lacquer buddha on the sendai chest. she could imagine it the same image she had found as a little girl in the garret, and had made her pet delight. for an instant she seemed to be once more a child seated on her low stool before it, her hands tight-clasped, looking up into its immobile countenance, half-hoping, half-fearing those carven lips would speak. on the wings of this sensation came a childish memory of a day when her aunt had found her thus and had thought her praying to it. she remembered the look of frozen horror on her aunt's face and her own helpless mortification. for she did not know how to explain. she had had to write a verse from the bible fifty times in her copybook: _thou shalt have no other gods before me._ and she had had to do half of them over because she had forgotten the capital m. that day her treasure had disappeared, and she had never seen it again. the glimmering figure in the dark made her think, too, of the man of whom daunt had told her, who shunned his own race, hiding himself for years and years in a japanese temple, with its painted dragon carvings, glowing candles and smoking censers. the incense from them seemed now to be filling all the night with odors rich and alluring, whispering of things mysterious and confined. striking across the lesser sounds she could hear at intervals the flute of a blind _masseur_, and nearer, in the embassy grounds, the recurrent signal of a patroling night watchman: three strokes of one hard, wooden stick upon another, like a high, mellow note of a xylophone. this sounded a little like a ship's bell--striking on a white yacht, whose owner was visiting the ancient capital, nara. he would appear before long, and she knew what he would say, and what he would want her to say to him. she felt somehow guilty, with a sorry though painless compunction. the man on the steamer that morning had spoken of a younger brother who was in japan, "going the pace." phil--she had often heard austen ware speak of him. perhaps he had only come over to keep the other out of mischief. she told herself this a second time, because it gave her a drowsy satisfaction, though she knew it was not so. she had always pictured phil as "fast," and she wondered sleepily what the word meant here in the orient, where there were no theater suppers, and where men probably played _fan-tan_--no, that was chinese--or some other queer game instead of poker--unless they ... had aëroplanes. the bell of the distant temple, which she had heard in the garden, boomed softly, and the _amma's_ flute sounded again its piercing, plaintive double-note. the two sounds began to weave together with a sense of unreality, dreamy, occult, incommunicable. so at length barbara slept, fitfully, the fragments of that lavish day falling into a bizarre mosaic, in which strange figures mingled uncannily. she knew them for visions, and to avoid them climbed a grassy hill to a gray old temple in which she saw her father seated cross-legged on a huge lotos-flower. she knew him because his face was just like the face in the locket she wore. she called out and ran toward him, but it was only a great gold-lacquered buddha with candles burning around it. she ran out of the temple, where a dog pursued her and a monstrous man with a pallid face, who sat in a tree full of cherry-blossoms, threw something at her which suddenly went off with a terrific explosion and blew both him and the dog into bits. it seemed terrible, but she could only laugh and laugh, because somebody held her tight in his arms and she knew that nothing could frighten her ever any more. and on the tide of this shy comfort she drifted away at last upon a deep and dreamless sea. * * * * * later, when the moon had set and only the faint starlight lay over the garden, the ambassador still sat in his study, thoughtfully smoking a cigar. on the mantel, under a glass case, was a model of a battle-ship. over it hung a traverse drawing of the panama canal cuttings, and maps and framed photographs looked from the walls between the dark-toned book-shelves. the floor was covered with a deep crimson rug of camel's-hair. the shaded reading-lamp on the desk threw a bright circle of light on an open volume of treaties at his elbow. at length he rose, took up the lamp, and approached the mantel. he stood a moment looking thoughtfully at the model under its rounded glass. it was built to scale, and complete in every exterior detail, from the pennant at its head to the tiny black muzzles that peeped from its open casemates. two years ago america had sent a fleet of such vessels to circumnavigate the globe. an european squadron of even deadlier type would cast anchor the next morning in those waters. yet now bersonin's phrase rang insistently through his mind: "mere silly shreds of steel!" it recurred like a refrain, mixing itself with the expert's curious words in the study, with that extraordinary incident of the piazza--which had bred a stealthy mistrust that would not down. with the lamp in his hand he opened the door into the hall and stood listening a moment. save for the creaks and snappings that haunt frame structures in a land of rapid decay, the house was still. he entered the drawing-room, noiselessly undid the fastenings of a french window and stepped out on to the piazza. there he threw the lamplight about him, mentally reconstructing the scene of two hours before. here he himself had stood, yonder bersonin, and in the corner the dog--ten feet from the edge of the porch. it had vanished in the same instant that he had seen it leaping straight at the expert. what was it bersonin had taken from his pocket? a weapon? and _where had the hound gone_? he stepped forward suddenly; the chair which had been thrown by the japanese boy had been set upright, but beneath it, and on the piazza beyond, disposed in curious wreaths and whorls, like those made by steel filings above an electro-magnet, lay a thick sifting of what looked like reddish-yellow dust. he stooped and took up some in his fingers; it was dry and impalpable, of an extraordinary fineness. he stood looking at it a full minute, intent with some absorbed and disquieting communing. then he shook his broad shoulders, as though dismissing an incredible idea, returned the lamp to the study and went slowly up the stair to his room. but he was not sleeping when dawn came, gray in the sky. it stole pink-fingered through the window and drew rosy lights on the blank wall across which strange fancies of his had linked themselves in a weird processional. it crept between the heavy curtains of the study below, and gilded the fittings of the little battle-ship on the mantel--as though to deck it in crimson bunting like its mammoth prototypes in the lower bay. for at that moment the yokohama bund was throbbing with the _salvos_ of great guns pealing a salute. the water's edge was lined with a watching crowd. files of marines were drawn up beneath the green-trimmed arches and cutters flying the sun-flag lay at the wharf, where groups of officers stood in dress-uniform. over the ledge of the morning was spread a filmy curtain of damask rose, and beneath it, into the harbor, like a broad dotted arrow-head, was steaming a flock of black battle-ships, with inky smoke pouring from their stacks. chapter xiv when barbara awoke when barbara awoke next morning she lay for a moment staring open-eyed from her big pillow at the white wall above, where a hanging-shelf projected to guard the sleeper from falling plaster in earthquake. the room was filled with a soft light that filtered in through the split-bamboo blinds. then she remembered: it was her first whole day in japan. she felt full of a gay _insouciance_, a glad lightness of joy that she had never felt before. slipping a thin rose-colored robe over her nightgown, she threw open the window and leaned out. the air was as pure and clean as if it had been sieved through silk, and she breathed it with long inspirations. it made her think of the unredeemed dirt of other countries, the sooty air of crowded factories, hardly growing foliage and unlovely walls. the embassy was a pretentious frame structure in which frequent alterations had masked an original plan. with its tall porte-cochère, its long narrow l which served as chancery, the smaller white cottage across the lawn occupied by the secretary of embassy, the rambling servants' quarters and stables, it suggested some fine old virginia homestead, transported by aladdin's genii to the heart of an oriental garden. for the tiny rock-knoll, with its single twisted pine-tree in front of the main door, the wistaria arbor and red dwarf maples, the great stone lanterns, the miniature lake and pebbled rivulet spanned by its arching bridge--all these were japanese. in the early morning the eerie witchery of the night was gone, but the sky was as deep as space and the air languid with the perfume and warmth of a st. martin's summer. a green-golden glow tinged the camelia hedges and above them the long cool expanse of weather-boarding and olive blinds--like a carving in jade and old ivory. as she stood there bathed in the sunlight, her hands dividing the curtains, barbara made a gracious part of the glimmering setting. her thick, ruddy hair sprang curling from her strongly modeled forehead, and fell about her white shoulders, a warm reddish mass against the delicately tinted curtain. there was a thoroughbred straightness in the lines of the tall figure, in the curve of the cheek and the round directness of the chin; and her eyes, bent on the lucent green, were the color of brown sea-water under sapphire cloud-shadows. from a circle of evergreens near the porte-cochère a white flag-pole rose high above the treetops. the stars-and-stripes floated from its halyards, for the day was the national holiday of an european power. in the hedges sparrows were twittering, and in a plum-tree a _uguisu_--the little buddhist bird that calls the sacred name of the sutras--was warbling his sweet, slow, solemn syllables: "_ho-kek-yo! ho-kek-yo!_" a gardener was sweeping the pink rain of cherry-petals from the paths with a twig broom, the long sleeves of his blue _kimono_ fluttering in the yellow sunshine, and in front of the servants' quarters a little girl in flapping sandals was skipping rope with a chenille fascinator. beyond the wall of the compound barbara could see the street, a low row of open shops. in one, a number of men and girls, sitting on flat mats, were making bamboo fans. at the corner stood a round well, from which a group of women, barefooted and with tucked-up clothing, were drawing water in unpainted wooden buckets with polished brass hoops, and beside it, under a dark blue awning, a man and woman were grinding rice in a hand-mill made of two heavy stone disks. a blue-and-white figured towel was bound about the woman's head against the fine white rice-dust. above them, on a tiny portico, an old man, with the calm, benevolent face of a porcelain mandarin, was watering an unbelievably-twisted dwarf plum on which was a single bunch of blossoming. at the side of the street grew a gnarled _kiri_ tree, its shambling roots encroaching on the roadway. in their cleft was set a wooden _shinto_ shrine with small piles of pebbles before it. from a distance, high and clear, she heard a strain of bugles from some squad of soldiers going to barracks, or perhaps to the parade-ground, where, she remembered, an imperial review of troops was to be held that morning. barbara started suddenly, to see on the lawn just below her window, a figure three feet high, with a round, cropped head, gazing at her from a solemn, inquiring countenance. he wore a much-worn but clean _kimono_, and his infantile toes clutched the thongs of clogs so large that his feet seemed to be set on spacious wooden platforms. the youngster bent double and staggeringly righted himself with a staccato "_o-hayo!_" barbara gave an inarticulate gasp; in face of his somber dignity she did not dare to laugh. "how do you do?" she said. "do you live here?" "no," he replied. "i lives in a other houses." "oh!" exclaimed barbara, aghast at his command of english. "what is your name?" "ishikichi," he said succinctly. "and will you tell me what you are doing, ishikichi?" a small hand from behind his back produced a tiny bamboo cage in which was a bell-cricket. as he held it out, the insect chirped like an elfin cymbal. "find more one," he said laconically. "and what shall you do with them, i wonder." he took one foot from its clog and wriggled bare toes in the grass. "give him to new little sister," he said. "so you have a new little sister!" exclaimed barbara. "how fine that must be!" a glaze of something like disappointment spread over the diminutive face. "small like," he said. "more better want a brother to play with me." "maybe you might exchange her for a brother," she hazarded, but the cropped head shook despondently: "i think no can now," he said. "we have use her four days." barbara laughed outright, a peal of silvery sound that echoed across the garden--then suddenly drew back. a man on horseback was passing across the drive toward the main gate of the compound. it was daunt, bareheaded, his handsome tanned face flushed with exercise, the breeze ruffling his moist, curling hair. she flashed him a smile as his riding-crop flew to his brow in salute. the sun glinted from its damascene handle, wrought into the long, grotesque muzzle of a fox. between the edsges of the blue silk curtains she saw him turn in the saddle to look back before he disappeared. she stood peering out a long time toward the low white cottage across the clipped lawn. the laughter had left her eyes, and gradually over her face grew a wave of rich color. she dropped the curtain and caught her hands to her cheeks. for an instant she had seemed to feel the pressure of strong arms, the touch of coarse tweed vividly reminiscent of a pipe. what had come over her? the one day that had dawned at sea in golden fire and died in crimson and purple over a file of convicts--the dreaming night with its temple bell striking through silver mist and violet shadows--these had left her the same barbara that she had always been. but somewhere, somehow, in the closed gulf between the then and now, something new and strange and sweet had waked in her--something that the sound of a voice in the garish sunlight had started into clamorous reverberations. she sat down suddenly and hid her face. chapter xv a face in the crowd they rode to the parade-ground--barbara and patricia with the ambassador, behind his pair of kentucky grays--along wide streets grown festive overnight and buzzing with _rick'sha_ and pedestrians. every gateway held crossed flags bearing the blood-red rising-sun, and colored paper lanterns were swung in festoons along the gaudy blocks of shops, as wide open as tiers of cut honeycomb. in their swift flight the city appeared a living sea of undulations, of immense green wastes alternating with humming sections of trade, of abrupt, cliff-like hills, of small parks that were masses of cherry-bloom and landscapes of weird japanese beauty. patricia quoted one of haru's quaint sayings: "so-o-o many small village got such a lonesomeness an' come more closer together. tha's the way tokyo born." occasionally the ambassador pointed out the stately palace of some influential noble, or the amorphous, depressing front of the foreign-style stucco residence of some statesman, built in that different period when the empire took first steps in the path of world-powers, with its low, graceful japanese portion beside it. everywhere barbara was conscious of the flutter of children--of little girls whose dress and hair showed a pervasive sense of care and adornment; of faces neither gay nor sad looking from latticed windows that hung above open gutters of sluggish ooze; of frail balconies adorned with growing flowers or miniature gardens set in earthen trays; of doorways hung with soft-fringed, rice-straw ropes and dotted with paper charms--the talismanic _o-fuda_ seen on every hand in japan. in yokohama what had struck her most had been the curious composite, the jumbled dissonance of east and west. here was a new impression; this was real japan, but a japan that, if it had taken on western hues, had everywhere qualified them by subtle variations, themselves oriental. past the carriage whirled landaus bearing japanese _grandes dames_ in native dress, with pomade-stiff coiffures against which their rice-powdered faces made a ghastly contrast; between the rear springs of each vehicle was fixed a round flat pommel on which a runner stood, balancing himself to the swift movement. a japanese military officer in khaki, with a row of decorations on his breast, rode by on a horse too big for him, at a jingling trot. two soldiers passing afoot, faced sidewise and their heavy cowhide heels came together with a thud, as they saluted. their arms had the jerky precision of a mechanical toy. through all there seemed to barbara to strike a sense of the tenacity of the old, of the stubborn persistence of type, as though eyes behind a mask looked grimly at the mirror's reflection of some outlandish and but half-accustomed masquerade. it was the shadow of the old japan of castes and spies and censors, of homage and _hara-kiri_, of punctilio and porcelain. trolley cars rumbled past; skeins of telegraph wire spun across the vision. yet when stone wall gaped or green hedge opened, it was to reveal the curving tops of buddhist _torii_ in quaint vistas of straight-boled trees, gliding tartar contours of roof between clumps of palm, or bamboo thickets with shadows as black as ink; while from the lazy scum of the wide, moat-like, stone gutters, open to the all-putrefying sun, rose thick, marshy odors suggesting the vast languor of a land more ancient than egypt and nineveh. the carriage stopped abruptly at a cross street. a _shinto_ funeral _cortège_ was passing. twelve bearers, six on each side, clad in mourning _houri_ of pure white, bore on their shoulders the hearse, like a shrine, built of clean unpainted wood, beautifully grained, and with carven roof and curtains of green and gold brocade. priests in yellow robes, with curved gauze caps and stoles of scarlet and black, walked at the head, fanning themselves now and then with little fans drawn from their girdles. coolies, dressed in white like the hearse bearers, carried stiff, conical bouquets, six feet long, made of flowers of staring colors, and clumps of lotos made of _papier maché_ covered with gold and silver leaf. the chief mourner, a woman, rode smiling in a _rick'sha_. she wore a silver-gray _kimono_ and a tall canopied cap of white brocade with wide floating strings like an old-fashioned bonnet. "well, of all things!" said patricia, in an awe-struck whisper. "what do you think of that?" for the file of _rick'sha_ following her carried a curious assemblage of mourners. in each sat a dog, some large, some small, with great bows of black or white crepe tied to their collars. taka, the driver, turned his head and spoke: "dog-doctor die," he said. "all dog very sorry." "it's the 'vet.,' father," patricia cried. "he is dead, then--and all his old patients are attending the funeral! see, barbara! they are lined up according to diplomatic precedence. that french poodle in front belongs to the japanese senior prince. the aberdeen is the british ambassador's. and there's the italian embassy bull-terrier and the spanish _chargé's_ 'chin.' the foreigners' dogs have black bows and the others white. why is that, i wonder?" "i presume," said the ambassador, "because white is the japanese mourning color." "of course. how stupid of me!" she sat suddenly upright. "of all _things_! there's our 'dandy'!" she pointed to a tiny pomeranian on the seat of the last _rick'sha_. "i wondered why number-three boy was washing him so hard this morning! it's a mercy he didn't see us, or he'd have broken up the procession. please take note that he's the tail-end--which shows my own unofficial insignificance." "there's a tourist at the hotel," said the ambassador, "who should have seen this. i was there the other day and i overheard her speaking to one of the japanese clerks. she said she had seen everything but a funeral, and she wanted him to instruct her guide to take her to one. the clerk said: 'i am too sorry, madam, but this is not the season for funerals.'" the horses trotted on, to drop to a walk, presently, on a brisk incline. high, slanting retaining walls were on either side, and double rows of cherry-trees, whose interlacing branches wove a roof of soft pink bloom. along the road were many people; _inkyo_--old men who no longer labored, and _ba-san_--old women whom age had relieved from household cares--bent and withered and walking with staves or leaning on the arms of their daughters, who bore babies of their own strapped to their backs; children clattering on loose wooden clogs; youths sauntering with _kimono'd_ arms thrown, college-boy fashion, about each other's shoulders; a troop of young girls in student _hakama_--skirts of deep purple or garnet--laughing and chatting in low voices or airily swinging bundles tied in colored _furoshiki_. midway the wall opened into a miniature park filled with trees, with a small lake and a _shinto_ monument. "why, there's little ishikichi," said patricia. "i never saw him so far from home before. isn't that a queer-looking man with him!" the solemn six-year-old, barbara's window acquaintance of the morning, was trotting from the inclosure, his small fingers clutching the hand of a foreigner. the latter was of middle age. his coat was a heavy, double-breasted "reefer." his battered hat, wide-brimmed and soft-crowned, was a joke. but his linen was fresh and good and his clumsy shoes did not conceal the smallness and shapeliness of his feet. he was lithe and well built, and moved with an easy swing of shoulder and a step at once quick and graceful. his back was toward them, but barbara could see his long, gray-black hair, a square brow above an aquiline profile at once bold and delicate, and a drooping mustache shot with gray. many people seemed to regard him, but he spoke to no one save his small companion. his manner, as he bent down, had something caressing and confiding. at the sound of wheels the man turned all at once toward them. as his gaze met barbara's, she thought a startled look shot across it. at side view his face had seemed a dark olive, but now in the vivid sunlight it showed blanched. his eyes were deep in arched orbits. one, she noted, was curiously prominent and dilated. from a certain bird-like turn of the head, she had an impression that this one eye was nearly if not wholly sightless. all this passed through her mind in a flash, even while she wondered at his apparent agitation. for as he gazed, he had dropped the child's hand. she saw his lips compress in an expression grim and forbidding. he made an involuntary movement, as though mastered by a quick impulse. then, in a breath, his face changed. he shrank back, turned sharply into the park and was lost among the trees. "what an odd man!" exclaimed patricia. "i suppose he resented our staring at him. he's left the little chap all alone, too. stop the horses a moment, tucker," she directed, and as they pulled up she called to the child. but there was no reply. ishikichi looked at her a moment frowningly, then, without a word, turned and stalked somberly after his companion. "what an infant thunder-cloud!" said patricia as the carriage proceeded. "that must be where our precious prodigy gets his english. poor mite!" she added. "he was the inseparable of the son of toru, the flower-dealer opposite the embassy, barbara, and the dear little fellow was run over and killed last week by a foreign carriage. no doubt he's grieving over it, but in japan even the babies are trained not to show what they feel. i wonder who this new friend is?" "i've seen the man once before," said the ambassador. "he was pointed out to me. his name is thorn. his first name is greek--aloysius, isn't it?--yes, aloysius. he is a kind of recluse: one of those bits of human flotsam, probably, that western civilization discards, and that drift eventually to the east. it would be interesting to know his history." so this, thought barbara, was the exile of whom daunt had told her, who had chosen to bury himself--from what unguessed motive!--in an oriental land, sunk out of sight like a stone in a pool. when he looked at her she had felt almost an impulse to speak, so powerfully had the shadow in his eyes suggested the canker of solitariness, the dreary ache of bitterness prolonged. she felt a wave of pity surging over her. but the carriage leaped forward, new sights sprang on them and the fleeting thought dropped away at length behind her, with the overhanging cherry-blooms, the little green park, and the strange face at its gateway. chapter xvi "banzai nippon!" gradually, as they proceeded, the throng became denser. policemen in neat suits of white-duck and wearing long cavalry swords lined the road. they had smart military-looking caps and white cotton gloves, and stood, as had the officer before the file of convicts in shimbashi station, moveless and imperturbable. the crowds were massed now in close, locked lines on either side. in one place a school-master stood guard over a file of small boys in holiday _kimono_: a little paper japanese flag was clutched in each chubby hand. in all the ranks there was no jostling, or fighting for position, no loud-voiced jest or expostulation; a spell was in the air; the imperial presence who was to pass that way had cast his beneficent shadow before. through a double row of saluting police they whirled into an immense brown field, as level as a floor, stretching before them seemingly empty, a dull, yellow-brown waste horizoned by feathery tree-tops. the carriage turned to the right, skirting a surging sea of brown faces held in check by a stretched rope; these gave place to a mass of officers standing in dress-uniform, with plumed caps and breasts ablaze with decorations; in another moment they descended before a canvas _marquée_ where brilliant regimental uniforms from a dozen countries shifted and mingled with diplomatic costumes heavy with gold-braid, and with women's gay frocks and picture-hats. the air was full of exhilaration; people were laughing and chatting. the british ambassador displayed the plaid of a colonel of highlanders; he had fought in the soudan. the chinese minister was in his own mandarin costume; from his round, jade-buttoned hat swept the much coveted peacock feathers and on his breast were the stars of the "rising-sun" and the "double-dragon." the american ambassador alone, of all the foreign representatives, wore the plain frock-coat and silk hat of the civilian. from group to group strolled officials of the japanese foreign office and cabinet ministers, their ceremonial coats crossed by white or crimson cordons. and through it all barbara moved, responsive to all this lightness and color, bowing here and there to introductions that left her only the more conscious of the one tall figure that had met them and now walked at her side. daunt could not have told that the flowers in her hat were brown orchids: he only knew that they matched the color of her eyes. last night the moonlight had lent her something of the fragile and ethereal, like itself. now the sunlight painted in clear warm colors of cream and cardinal. it glinted from the perfect curve of her forehead, and tangled in the wide wave of her bronze hair, making it gleam like hot copper spun into silk-fine strands. his finger-tips tingled to touch it. he started, as--"a penny for your thoughts," she said, with sudden mischief. "have you so much about you?" he countered. "that's a subterfuge." "you wouldn't be flattered to hear them, i'm afraid." "the reflection is certainly a sad blow to my self-esteem!" "well," he said daringly, "i was thinking how i would like to pick you up in my arms before all these people and run right out in the center of that field--" she flushed to the tips of her ears. "and then--" "just run, and run, and run away." "what a heroic exploit!" she said with subtle mockery, but the flush deepened. "you know to what lengths i can go in my longing to be a hero!" he muttered. "running off with girls under your arm seems to have become a mania. but isn't your idea rather prosaic in this age of flying-machines? to swoop down on one in an aëroplane would be so much more thrilling! this is the field where you practise, too, isn't it? is that building away over there where you keep your glider?"' "yes. at first i made the models in a japanese house of mine near here. i keep it still, from sentiment." "how fine to meet a man who admits to having sentiment! i'm tremendously interested in japanese houses. you must show it to me." "i will. and when will you let me take you for a 'fly?'" "i'm relieved," she said, "to find you willing to ask permission." her eyes sparkled into his, and both laughed. patricia was chatting animatedly with count voynich, the young diplomatist whom she had pointed out in the train, and whose monocle now looked absurdly contemplative and serene under a menacing helmet. the confusion of many colors, the pomp and panoply under the day's golden azure, was singing in barbara's veins. she moved suddenly toward the front. "come," she said, "i want you to tell me things!" "i'm going to," he answered grimly. "i've known i should, ever since--" "look!" she cried. several coaches had bowled up; behind each stood footmen in gold-lace and cocked hats, knee breeches and white silk stockings. daunt named the occupants as they descended: the premier, one of the "elder statesmen," the minister of the household. "who are the people there at the side, under the awning?" "tourists. each embassy and legation is allowed a certain number of invitations." "why, yes," said barbara. "i see some of my ship-mates." she smiled and nodded across as faces turned toward her. there was the gaunt, sallow woman who had distributed christian science tracts (till sea-sickness claimed her for its own) and little miss tippetts (the printed steamer-list, with unconscious wit, had made it "tidbits"), who had flitted about the companion-ways like a shawled wraith, radiant now in a white _lingerie_ gown and a hat covered with red hollyhocks. and there, too, was the familiar painted-muslin and the expansive white waistcoat of the train. a hundred yards to the right was spread a wide silk canopy of royal purple, caught back with crimson tassels. "what is that?" barbara asked, pointing. "that is for the emperor and his suite. the big sixteen-petaled chrysanthemum on its front is the imperial crest; no one else is allowed to use or carry it. the men on horseback are princes of the blood. almost all the great generals of the late war are in that group behind them. the man smoking a cigarette is the japanese minister of war." "but when do the troops come?" barbara inquired. "i see only one little company out there in the center." "that is a band," he said. "look farther. can you make out something like a wide, brown ribbon stretched all around the field?" she looked. the far-away, moveless, dun-colored strip merged with the sere plain, but now, here and there, she saw minute needle points of sunlight twinkle across it. she made an exclamation. for the tiny flashes were sun-gleams from the bayonets of massed men, clad in neutral-tinted khaki, silent, motionless as a brown wall, a living river frozen to utter immobility by a word of command that had been spoken two long hours before. a mounted _aide_ galloped wildly past toward the purple canopy. as he flashed by, a thin bugle-note rang out and a band far back by the gate at which they had entered began playing a minor melody. strange, slow, infinitely solemn and sad, the strain rolled around the hushed field--the _kimi-ga-yo_, the "hymn of the sovereign," adapted by a german melodist a score of years ago, which in japan is played only in the imperial presence or that of its outward and visible tokens. the counterpoint, with its muttering roll of snare-drums on the long chords, and sudden, sharp clashes of cymbals, gave the majestic air an effect weird and unforgetable. the strain sank to silence, but with the last note a second nearer band caught it up and repeated it; then, nearer still, another and another. barbara, leaning, saw a great state-coach of green and gold coming down the field. it was drawn by four of the most beautiful bay horses she had ever seen. coachman, postilions and footmen wore red coats heavily frogged with gold, white cloth breeches and block enamel top-boots. as it came briskly along that animate wall of spectators, the vast concourse, save for the welling or ebbing minor of the bands, was silent, hushed as in a cathedral. but as it passed, the packed sea of brown faces--the mass of _kimono_ next the gate and the ranks of splendid uniforms--bent forward as one man, in a great sighing rustle, like a field of tall grass when a sudden wind passes over it. the plumed hats of the diplomatists came off; they bowed low. the ladies courtesied, and barbara, as her gaze lifted, caught an instant's glimpse, through the coach's glass sides, of that kingly figure, heaven-descended and sacred, mysterious alike to his own subjects as to the outside world, through whom flows to the soul of modern japan the manifest divinity and living guidance of cohorts of dead emperors stretching backward into the night of time! * * * * * the band stationed in the center of the immense field had begun to play--something with a martial swing; and now the far brown strip that had blent with brown earth began to shift and tremble like the quiver of air above heated metal. its motes detached themselves, clustered anew; and the long, wide ribbon, like a huge serpent waked from rigid sleep in the sunshine, swept into view: regiments of men, armed and blanketed, by file and platoon. they moved with high, jerky "goose-step" and loosely swinging arm, line upon line, till the ground shook with the tread. before each regiment were borne strange flags, blackened and tattered by blood and shell. some were mere flapping fringes. but they were more precious than human lives. one had been found on a manchurian battlefield, wrapped about the body of a dead japanese, beneath his clothing. wounded, he had so concealed it, then killed himself, lest, captured alive, the standard he bore might fall into the hands of the enemy. as each new rank came opposite the coach before the purple canopy, an officer's sword flashed out in salute, and a "_banzai!_" tore across the martial music like the ragged yell of a fanatical dervish. daunt, watching barbara, saw the light leaping in her brown eyes, the excitement coming and going in her face. again and again he fixed his gaze before him, as infantry, cavalry and artillery marched and pounded and rumbled past. in vain. like a wilful drunkard it returned to intoxicate itself with the sight of her eager beauty, that made the scene for him only a splendid blur, an extraneous impression of masses of swaying bodies moving like marionettes, of glistening bayonets, horses, clattering ammunition wagons, and fluttering pennants. in barbara, however, every nerve was thrilling to the sight. for the moment she had forgotten even the man beside her. as she watched the audacious outpouring of drilled power, tempered and restrained, yet so terribly alive in its coiled virility, she was feeling a keen pang of sympathy that was almost pain. in this burning panorama she divined no shrinking, devious thing sinking with the fatigue of ages, aping the superficialities of a remote race: not merely a tidal wave of intense vitality, mobile and mercurial, hastening onward toward an inaudible unknown, but a splendid rebirth, a dazzling reincarnation of old spirit in new form, a symbol concrete and vital, like the blaze of a beacon flaming a racial _réveille_. she turned toward daunt, her hand outstretched, her fingers on his arm, her lips opened. but she did not speak. afterward she did not know what she had intended to say. chapter xvii a silent understanding phil descended from his _rick'sha_ at the tokyo club and paid the coolie. the building faced an open square between the imperial hotel and the parliament buildings, along one of the smaller picturesque moats, which the fever for modernization was now filling in to make a conventional boulevard. a motor shed stood at the side of the plaza and an automobile or two was generally in evidence. the structure was small but comfortable enough, with readingand card-rooms and a billiard-room of many tables. it was the clearing-house for the capital's news, the general exchange for diet, peers' club and the embassies. it was a place of tacit free-masonry and conversational dissections. from five to seven in the afternoon it was a polyglot babble of japanese, english, french, german and italian, punctuated with the tinkle of glasses and the cheerful click of billiard balls. over its tables secretaries met to gossip of the newest _entente_ or the latest social "affair," and _protocols_ had been drafted on the big, deep, leather sofas adjoining the bar. the door was opened by a servile bell-boy in buttons. phil tossed his hat on to the hall-rack and entered. it was cool and pleasant inside, and a great bowl of china asters sat on the table beside the membership book. on the wall was a wire frame full of visitors' cards. he strode through the office and entered a large, glass-inclosed piazza where a number of japanese, some in foreign, some in native costume, were watching a game of _go_. two younger legation _attachés_ were shaking dice at another table. it was but a little past noon and the place had an air of sober quiet, very different, phil reflected, from the club on the yokohama bund, which was always buzzing, and where he was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. frowning, he passed into the next room. here his eye lightened. sitting in a corner of one of the huge sofas which sank under his enormous weight, was doctor bersonin. a little round table was before him on which sat a tall glass frosted with cracked ice. "sit down," said the expert. "how do you come to be in tokyo? the review, i presume." he struck a call-bell on the table and gave an order to the waiter. phil lighted a cigarette. "no," he said, "i've come to stay for a while." "you haven't given up your bungalow on the bluff?" asked bersonin quickly. there was an odd eagerness in his colorless face--a look of almost dread, which phil, lighting his cigarette, did not see. it changed to relief as the other answered: "no. probably i shan't be here more than a few days." the expert settled back in his seat. "you'll not find the hotel everything it should be, i'm afraid," he observed more casually. "i'm not there," phil answered. "i--i've got a little japanese house." "so! a _ménage de garçon_, eh?" the big man held up his clinking glass to the light, and under cover of it, his deep-set yellowish eyes darted a keen, detective look at phil's averted face. "well," he went on, "how are your affairs? has the stern brother appeared yet?" phil shifted uneasily. "no," he replied. "i expect him pretty soon, though." he drained the glass the boy had filled. "you've been tremendously kind, doctor," he went on hurriedly, "to lend me so much, without the least bit of security--" "pshaw!" said bersonin. "why shouldn't i?" he put his hand on the other's shoulder with a friendly gesture. "i only wish money could give me as much pleasure as it does you, my boy." two men had seated themselves in the next room. through the open door came fragments of conversation, the gurgle of poured liquid and the bubbling hiss of hirano mineral water. bersonin lowered his voice: "youth! what a great thing it is! red-blood and imagination and zest to enjoy. all it needs is the wherewithal to gild its pleasures. after a time age catches us, and what are luxuries then? only things to make tiresomeness a little less irksome!" phil moved his glass on the table top in sullen circles. "but suppose one hasn't the 'wherewithal' you talk of? what's the fun without money, even when you're young? i've never been able to discover it!" "find the money," said bersonin. "i wish some one would tell me how!" bersonin's head turned toward the door. he sat suddenly rigid. it came to phil that he was listening intently to the talk between the two men in the next room. "i needn't point out"--it was a measured voice, cold and incisive and deliberate--"that when the american fleet came, two years ago, conditions were quite different. the cruise was a national _tour de force_; the visit to japan was incidental. besides, there was really no feeling then between the two nations--that was all a creation of the yellow press. but the coming of this european squadron to-day is a different thing. it is a season of general sensitiveness and distrust, and when the ships belong to a nation between which and japan there is real and serious diplomatic tension--well, in my opinion the time is, at best, inopportune." "perhaps"--a younger voice was speaking now, less certain, less poised and a little hesitant--"perhaps the very danger makes for caution. people are particularly careful with matches when there's a lot of powder about." "true, so far as intention goes. but there is the possibility of some _contre-temps_. you remember the case of the _ajax_ in the eighties. it was blown up in a friendly harbor--clearly enough by accident, at least so far as the other nation was concerned. but it was during a time of strain and hot blood, and you know how narrowly a great clash was averted. if war had followed, regiments would have marched across the frontier, shouting: 'remember the _ajax_!' as it was, there was a panic in three bourses. solid securities fell to the lowest point in their history. the yellow press pounded down the market, and a few speculators on the short side made gigantic fortunes." a moment's pause ensued. bersonin's fingers were rigid. there seemed suddenly to phil to be some significance between his silence and the conversation--as if he wished it to sink into his, phil's, mind. the voice continued: "what has happened once may happen again. what if one of those dreadnaughts by whatever accident should go down in this friendly harbor? it doesn't take a vivid imagination to picture the headlines next morning in the newspapers at home!" the ice in the tumblers clinked; there was a sound of pushed-back chairs. as their departing footsteps died in the hall, bersonin's gaze lifted slowly to phil's face. it had in it now the look it had held when he gazed from the roof of the bungalow on the bluff across the anchorage beneath. phil did not start or shrink. instead, the slinking evil that ruled him met half-way the bolder evil in that glance, from whose sinister suggestion the veil was for a moment lifted, recognizing a tacit kinship. neither spoke, but as the hard young eyes looked into the cavernous, topaz eyes of doctor bersonin, phil _knew_ that the thought that lay coiled there was a thing unholy and unafraid. his heart beat faster, but it warmed. he felt no longer awed by the other's greater age, standing and accomplishments. he was conscious of a new, half-insolent sense of easy comradeship. "suppose," said bersonin slowly, "i should show you how to find the money." a sharp eagerness darted across phil's face. money! how much he needed it, longed for it! it could put him on his feet, clear off his debts, square his bridge-balance, and--his brother notwithstanding!--enable him to begin another chapter of the careless life he loved! he looked steadily into the expert's face. "tell me!" he almost whispered. bersonin rose and held out his hand. he did not smile. "come with me to-night," he said. "i dine late, but we'll take a spin in my car and have some tea somewhere beforehand. tell me where your house is and i'll send ishida with the motor-car for you." phil gave him the address and he went out with no further word. a great, brass-fitted automobile, with a young, keen-eyed japanese sitting beside the chauffeur, throbbed up from the shed. bersonin climbed ponderously in. a gray-haired diplomatist, entering the club with a stranger, pointed the big man out to the other as he was whirled away. chapter xviii in the bamboo lane _what did bersonin mean?_ phil replenished his glass, feeling a tense, nervous excitement. why had he listened so intently--made _him_ listen--to what the men in the next room were saying? he could recall it all--for some reason every word was engraven on his mind. the visit of the foreign squadron. speculators who had once made quick fortunes through an accident to a battle-ship. he thought of the look he had seen on bersonin's face. "what do you want me to do?" he muttered the words to himself. as he rose to go he glanced half-fearfully over his shoulder. he walked along the street, his brain afire. he was passing a moat in whose muck bottom piling was being driven; the heavy plunger was lifted by a dozen ropes pulled by a ring of coolie women, dressed like men, with blue-cotton leggins and red cloths about their heads. as they dragged at the straw ropes, and the great weight rose and fell, they chanted a wailing refrain, with something minor and plaintive in its burden- "_yó--eeya--kó--ra! yó-eeya--kó--ra!_" _what do you want me to do?..._ the words wove oddly with the refrain. why should he say them over and over? again and again it came--an echo of an echo--and again and again he seemed to see the look in the expert's hollow, cat-like eyes! it haunted him as he walked on toward aoyama parade-ground, to the little house in _kasumigatani cho_, the "street-of-the-misty-valley." then, as he walked, he saw some one that for the moment drove it from his mind. he had turned for a short-cut through a temple inclosure, and there he met her face to face--the girl of the _matsuri_, whom he had seen wading in the foam at kamakura. her slim neck, pale with rice-powder, rose from a soft white neckerchief flowered with gold, and a scarlet poppy was dreaming in her black hair. phil's face sprang red, and a wave of warm color overran her own. "_o-haru-san!_" he cried. "_konichi-wa_," she answered with grave courtesy and made to pass him, but he turned and walked by her side. "please, please!" he entreated. "if you only knew how often i have looked for you! don't be unkind!" "why you talk with me?" said haru, turning. "my japanese girl--no all same your country." "you wild, pretty thing!" he said. "why are you so afraid of me? foreigners don't eat butterflies." "no," she answered, without hesitation, "they jus' break wings." he laughed unevenly. her quickness of retort delighted him, and her beauty was stinging his blood. he put out his hand and touched her sleeve, but she drew away hurriedly: "see!" she said. "my know those people to come in gate. talk--'bout my _papa-san_--please, so they will to think he have know you, _né_?" phil obeyed the hint, but haru's cheeks, as she saluted her friends, were flushing painfully. it was her first subterfuge employed in a moment of embarrassment with the realization that her home was near and that she was violating the code of deportment that from babyhood hedges about the young japanese girl with a complicated etiquette. the women they had passed looked back curiously at the foreigner walking with her. one, a girl of haru's own age, called smilingly after her: "_komban mukojima de sho?_" phil understood the query. was she going to mukojima--to the cherry festival--to-night! his eyes sparkled at the tossed-back, "_hai!_" well, he would be there, too! he had appreciated the quick wit of her subterfuge. the clever little baggage! she was not such a small, brown saint, after all! "i think i did that rather well," he said, when they had passed out of earshot. "they'll think your honorable parent and i exchange new year gifts at the very least." a little smile of irrepressible fun was lurking under haru's flush. "you have ask how is _papa-san_ rhu-ma-tis-um," she said. "in our street he have some large fame, for because he so old and no have got." phil laughed aloud. "look here, little haru," he said, "you and i are going to be great friends, aren't we?" he looked down at the slim, nervous arm, so soft and firm of flesh, so deliciously turned and modeled. he knew a jade bracelet in yokohama that would mightily become it--he would write to-night and have it sent up! "when can i see you again, eh?" they had turned into a narrow deserted lane, bordered with bamboo fences, and opening, a little way beyond, into the wider street-of-prayer-to-the-gods. she stopped as he spoke and shook her head. "my no can tell," she answered. "no come more far. my house very near now." he caught her hand--it was almost as small as a child's, with its delicate wrist and slender fingers. "give me a kiss and i will let you go," he said. as she shrank back indignantly against the palings, her free hand flung up across her face, he threw his arms about her and strained her to him. she wrestled against him with little inarticulate sobs, but he lifted her face and kissed her again and again. he released her, breathing hard, the veins in his temples throbbing, his lips burning hot. he stood a moment looking after her, as white-faced and breathless, she fled down the bamboo lane. "there!" he muttered. "that's for you to remember me by--till next time!" chapter xix the bishop asks a question bishop randolph lived in the quarter of tokyo called ts'kiji--a section of "made-ground" in the bay, composed, as the ancient vestry jest had it, of the proverbial tomato-cans. it was flat and low, and its inner canal in the old days had formed the boundary of the extraterritorial district given over by a reluctant government to the residence of foreigners. it was a mile from the great, double-moated park of the imperial palace, from the diet and the foreign office, whither, scarcely a generation ago, representatives of european powers had galloped on horse-back, with a mounted guard against swashbuckling "two-sword men." the streets, however, on which once an american secretary of legation, so spurring, had been cut in two by a single stroke of a thirsting _samurai_ sword, were peaceful enough in this era of _meiji_. the cathedral, the college, the low brown hospital and the lines of red-brick mission houses stood on grassy lawns behind green hedges which gave a suggestion of a quiet english village. a couple of the smaller legations still clung to their ancient sites and the quarter boasted, besides, a score of ambitious european residences and a modern hotel. in the rectory the bishop sat at tiffin with the archbishop of the russian cathedral, a man of seventy-eight, gray-bearded and patriarchal--another st. francis xavier. in this foreign field the pair had been friends during more than a score of years. both were equally broad-minded, had long ago thrown down the sectarian barriers too apt to prevail in less restricted communities. to a large extent they were confidants. the archbishop spoke little english, and the bishop no russian and but "inebriate" french (as he termed it), so that their talk was habitually in japanese. when they had finished eating both men bowed their heads in a silent grace. the russian, as he rose, made the sign of the cross. as they entered the library a wrinkled house-servant sucked in his breath behind them. "will the thrice-eminent guest deign to partake of a little worthless tobacco?" he inquired, in the ceremonious honorifics of the vernacular. the thrice-eminent shook his head, and the bishop answered: "honorable thanks, honda-_san_, our guest augustly does not smoke." at the table they had been talking of the great dream of both--the christianization of modern japan. the archbishop continued the conversation now: "as i was saying, the great stumbling-block is the language. it is all right for you and me, who have had twenty years at it, but our helpers haven't. his code of courtesy forbids a japanese to seem to correct even when we are absurdly wrong. one of my boys"--so the bishop affectionately referred to his younger coadjutors--"was preaching the other day on 'the spiritual attributes of mankind.' he meant to use the word _ningen_, man in the wide sense. he preached, he thought, with a good deal of success--the people seemed particularly grave and attentive. afterward he asked an old japanese what he thought of the subject. the man replied that he had felt much instructed to find there were so many things to be said about it. he added that he himself generally ate them boiled. my young man had used the word _ninjin_--carrots. 'the spiritual attributes of carrots!' and a whole sermon on it. imagine it!" the archbishop threw back his head and laughed. then the conversation drifted again into the serious. "of course," said the bishop, "there is at bottom the oriental inability to separate racial traits, to realize that christianity has made christendom's glories, not her shames. the japanese are essentially a spiritually-minded people. some of the west's most common vices they are strangely without. and their code of every-day morals--well, we can throw very few stones at them there!" the archbishop nodded. "few, indeed," he said. "no japanese don juan ever could exist. a japanese woman would be scandalized by a greek statue. she would recoil at a french nude. she would fly with astonishment and shame from the sight of a western ballet. our whole system strikes the oriental as not only monstrous but disgustingly immoral. it seems to him, for instance, sheer barbarity for a man to love his wife even half as well as he does his own mother and father. a curious case in point happened not so long ago. a peasant had a mother who became blind. he consulted the village necromancer, who told him if his mother could eat a piece of human heart she would get her sight back. the peasant went home in tears and told his wife. she said, 'we have only one boy. you can very easily get another wife as good or better than me, but you might never have another son. therefore, you must kill me and take my heart for your mother.' they embraced, and he killed her with his sword. the child awoke and screamed. neighbors and the police came. in the police court the peasant's tale moved the judges to tears. they quite understood. they didn't condemn the man to death. really the one who ought to have been killed was the necromancer." "and this," said the bishop musingly, "only a few miles from where they were teaching integral calculus and herbert spencer!" his visitor sat a while in thought. "by the way," he said presently, changing the subject, "i passed your new chapel the other day. it is very handsome. your niece, i think you told me, built it. may i ask--" "yes," said the host, "it is my dead sister's child, barbara--john fairfax's daughter." a look passed between them, and the bishop rose and paced up and down, a habit when he was deeply moved. "she came back to japan with me," he continued. "i am to take her to see the chapel this afternoon. yesterday she told me that she intends it to be dedicated to her father's memory." for a moment there was no reply. then the other said: "you have heard nothing of fairfax all these years?" "not a word." "she has never known?" the bishop shook his head. "she believes he died before her mother left japan." he paused before the window, his back to the other. "he was my friend!" he said; "and i loved him. i gave my sister to him, and she loved him, too!" "i remember," said the archbishop slowly. "she went back to america from nagasaki. how strange it was! she never told any one why she left him?" "never a word. she died before i went to america again. she left me a letter which hinted at something wholly unforgivable--almost satanic, it must have seemed to her." "and he?" "disappeared. he was thought to have gone to china. perhaps he is alive there yet. i have always wondered. if so, how is he living--in what way?" the bishop turned abruptly. "in view of what we know, can i lend myself to the dedication of this house of our lord to a memory that may be infamous? i ask you as a friend." the older man was a long time silent. "'his ways are past finding out,'" he said at length. "i am conscious, sometimes, of a hidden purpose in things. the daughter's memory of her father is a beautiful thing. let us not destroy it!" chapter xx the trespasser the bishop, and the ambassador, when the former's call was ended that afternoon, found barbara with haru in the garden pagoda. she sat on its wide ledge, haru at her feet, in a dainty _kimono_ of pale gray cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. the oval japanese face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled from phil's kisses. if it had left a trace the trace was hidden under the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling. barbara had fallen in love with haru's piquant personality--with her fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please. while patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she had made the japanese girl bring her _samisen_ and play. at first the music had seemed uncouth and elfish--a queer, barbaric twanging, like an intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals. but slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner ear a strange, errant rhythm. she had felt her feet stealthily gliding, her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. afterward haru, in her pretty broken english, had told her stories--old legends that are embalmed in the _geisha_ dances, of the forty-seven _ronin_, and of the great _shogun_ who slept by the huge stone lanterns in uyeno park. * * * * * when barbara and her uncle started on their walk--he was to show her the chapel--the ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the compound. a string of carriages from the imperial stables--each with the golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel--was just passing. their occupants, some of whom were japanese and some foreign, were in naval uniform, their breasts covered with orders. "the officers of the foreign squadron, no doubt," said the ambassador, "being shown the sights of the capital. day after to-morrow the minister of marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor. you will enjoy that, barbara." "i wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond of talking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a japanese welcome. the stay of these officers will be one long festivity. yet to read a continental journal you would think every other japanese was carrying a club for use if they ventured ashore." the ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. for weeks, the newspapers of european capitals had talked of conflicting interests and unreconciled differences between the two countries. he knew that there was little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news" and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strung chanceries as it does individuals. beneath this surface current, diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. but as a trained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too long persisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of the squadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of the lavish and open-hearted hospitality which japan would offer it. when the carriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back to his books. * * * * * walking up the sloping "hill-of-the-spirit" to the templed knoll behind it, barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. all along flaunting camphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and the scent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. the ground was white and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts were sprinkling water. little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied with bright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured _kimono_ of red and purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edge a naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shaven head bobbing in the sunshine. half-way up the hill a group of coolies were resting beside their carts. their faces had the look of lotos-eaters, languid and serene. as they walked barbara told of the adventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the review of the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he had never seen her so beautiful. "what has happened--_who_ has happened, barbara?" he asked, for he suddenly guessed he knew what that look meant. her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "i don't know--do you?" he took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morning newspaper. it chronicled the arrival of the yacht _barbara_. she looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter: "'the time has come,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things: of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax- of cabbages----'" "but not ware?" he finished. "all right. he'll speak for himself, no doubt. the paper says he's at nara; but then, he doesn't know you are here yet. we pushed our sailing date forward, you remember." "i'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "meanwhile, i can't tell you what a good time i'm having. i shall stay in japan for ever: i can feel it in my bones! i shall have a japanese house with a chaperon, two tailless cats and an _amah_, and study the three systems of flower-arrangement and the tea-ceremony." they had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentry now stood. "he wears the uniform of the imperial guard," the bishop said. "that is the residence of one of the daughters of the emperor." he turned into the lane that opened opposite. it was hedged with some unfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little way inside stood an old temple gate with a stone _torii_. she stopped with an exclamation. "yes," he said, "there is the chapel." barbara was looking opposite the _torii_, where, amid the flowering green, a slanting roof lifted, holding a cross. it stood out, whitely cut against the blue, a silent witness. facing the dragon-swarming gate, it made her think of pale martyrs in gorgeous pagan countries, of paul standing before the temple of diana in ephesus, and lonely christian anchorites in profane lands of green and gold. "what christians some of these japanese make!" the bishop said, as they finished their tour of the building. "i know of a carpenter in sendai who became a convert. he used to visit the prison and one day he took a woman there to see her husband, a hardened and obdurate criminal. in the interview the man stabbed his wife. the chief-of-police, on account of the carpenter's reputation for justice and pure-living, left the punishment of the man to him. what do you think he did?" she could not guess. "he refused to punish him at all, on the simple ground that christ would not. as a result the convict is now one of the best christian teachers we have in sendai. the month before this happened," he continued, smiling reflectively, "a thief broke into the rectory and stole my watch. i notified the police, and they brought it back to me in a few days. but where is my thief? you remember jean valjean and the silver candle-sticks? maybe the sendai carpenter was nearer right than i." barbara had paused in front of the black space for the stained-glass window. "it will be here," the bishop said, answering her thought. "it is to be put in place in time for the dedication service to-morrow morning." he stepped to the door and peered into the interior. "you will want to look about a bit, no doubt. i have a call to make in the neighborhood--suppose i stop on my way back for you." * * * * * for a few moments after his departure barbara stood listening to the dulled sound of the workmen's tools. the roof of the temple opposite had a curving, tartar-like ridge, at either end of which was a huge fish, its head pointed inward, its wide forked tail twisted high in air. under its scalloped eaves she saw the flash of a swallow, and far above a gaudy paper kite careened in the blue. she crossed the lane and looked into the shady inclosure, where the bronze lanterns and the tombstones stood, as gray and lichened as the stone beneath her feet. before many of the graves stood green bamboo vases holding bunches of fresh leaves. an old woman was moving noiselessly about, watering these with a long bamboo dipper and lighting incense-sticks as she went. in one place a young man knelt before an ancestral monument, softly clapping his hands in prayer. the whole place was drenched in a tone limpid and serene, the very infusion of peace. only in the black temple interior she caught the dim glow of candles and somewhere a muffled baton was tapping on hollow wood. "min ... min ... min .. min .. min . min . min-min-min-minminminminmin...." at first slowly, then faster and faster, till the notes merged and died away in a muttering roll, to begin once more with the slowness of a leisurely metronome. the ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted her and she went nearer. beyond the hedge she could see a portion of its garden. reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt, open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered. before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, gray gravel. on one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms of deep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and striped ground-bamboo. beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sides clambered an irregular pathway, set with tall _shinto_ lanterns and large stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. here and there the flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose, and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to be powdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies. barbara had seen many photographs of japanese gardens, but they had either lacked color or been over-tinted. this lay chromatic, visualized, braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed glories of a tropic spring. for a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picture for ever on her brain. she opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings of the ancient structure. its _shoji_ had been noiselessly drawn open, and a man stood there looking fixedly at her. chapter xxi the resurrection of the dead it was the man she had seen that morning at the entrance to the little park. barbara realized instantly and uneasily that she was an intruder. yet she felt an intense interest, mixed of what she had heard and of what she had imagined. his _outré_ street-costume had now been laid aside; he wore japanese dress, with dark gray _houri_ and white cleft sock. his iron-gray head was bare. the expression of his face was conscious and alert, with a sort of savage shyness. "i am afraid i am intruding," she said. "i ought to have known the garden was private." "private gardens may sometimes be seen, i suppose." the words were ungracious, though the _timbre_ of the voice was musical and soft. "i beg your pardon," she said, and moved away. he made a gesture, a quick timid movement of one hand, and stepped down toward her. "no," he said almost violently. "i don't want you to go. can't you see i mean you to stay?" barbara saw clearly now the variation in his eyes; the larger one was clouded, as though a film covered the iris. it gave her a slight feeling of repugnance, which she instantly regretted, for, as though rendered conscious of it through a sensitiveness almost telepathic, he turned slightly, and put a hand to his brow to cover it. "oh," she said hastily, "i am glad. this is the most beautiful garden i have ever seen." he looked at her quickly and keenly with his one bright eye. it held none of the swart, in-turned reflectiveness of the japanese; it was sharp and restless. its brilliance, under eyebrows that seemed on the verge of a frown, was almost fierce. the curved, gray mustache did not hide the strong, irregular, white teeth. "you know japanese gardens?" "not yet," she answered. "japan is new to me. i needn't say how lovely i think this is--you must grow tired hearing strangers rhapsodize over it!" "strangers!" he laughed; the sound was not musical like his spoken voice, but harsh and grating. "i have one joy--no stranger ever dreams of coming to see me!" "i should have said 'your friends,'" said barbara. "friends would be more troublesome than my enemies," he said grimly, "who, at least, never ask me where i don't want to go." she looked at him wonderingly. she had never met any one in the least like him. his features were refined and unquestionably aristocratic but his whole expression was quiveringly sensitive, resentfully shy. it was the expression, she thought, of one whom a look might cut like a whiplash, a word sting like a searing acid. "the only foreigners i know are those who write me letters: malicious busybodies, people who want subscriptions to all sorts of shams, or invite me to join respectable, humbug societies, or write merely to gratify a low curiosity. as for friends, i have none." "surely, i saw you with one this morning," she said, with a smile. "ah," he said, his look changing swiftly; "i don't count ishikichi. children understand me." "and me," she said. "i made friends with ishikichi this morning. he was catching crickets in the garden. i am visiting the american embassy," she added. "the garden there has been a famous playground for the child, no doubt," he returned. "his boon companion lived just opposite the compound." "the little toru, who was run over?" "yes. ishikichi has been inconsolable. to-day, however, he has ceased to sorrow. the owner of the carriage has sent six hundred _yen_ to the father, who is now able to pay his debts and enlarge his business. the tablet on the buddha-shelf that bears the little boy's death-name will be henceforth the dearest possession of the family. to ishikichi he is a glorious hero whose passing it would be a crime to grieve." he broke off, with the odd, timid gesture she had seen before. "but you came to see the garden," he said. "if you like, i will show it to you." without waiting for her answer, he led the way, moving quickly and agilely. the softness of his tread in the cloth _tabi_ seemed almost feminine. a little farther on he turned abruptly: "when you passed me in the carriage this morning you must have thought me unmannerly," he said. "i was, no doubt. my manners are only villainous notions of my own." "not at all," she answered. "i only thought--" "well?" "that perhaps i reminded you of some one you had known." he turned and walked on without reply. as they proceeded, from behind the flowering bush came the tintinnabulent tinkle and drip of running water. the stepping-stones meandered on in graceful curves and presently arrived at a little lake at whose edge grew pale water-hyacinths and whose surface was mottled with light green lotos-leaves, dotted here and there with pink half-opened buds. now and then these stirred languidly at the flirt of a golden fin, while over them, in flashes of flame-yellow, darted hawking dragon-flies. thickets of maroon-tinted maple glowed in the sunlight and clusters of yellow oranges hung on dwarf trees. on the lake's margin bright-hued pebbles were strewn between rounded stones whose edges were soft and green with moss. barbara longed to feel those mossy boulders with her bare feet--to splash in that limpid water like a happy child. "this is the best view," he said simply. looking on the endless symphonies of green, it came to her for the first time what fascination could be wrought of mere brown stone and foliage. the effect had a curious sense to her of the unsexual and unhuman. again, with the odd impression of telepathy with which he had covered his myopic eye, he seemed to answer her thought: "the japanese," he said, "sees nature as neuter. his very language possesses no gender. he does not subconsciously think of a young girl when he looks at a swaying palm, nor of the lines of a beautiful body when he sees the undulations of the hills. he notes much in nature, therefore, that western art--which is passional--doesn't observe at all." "i see," she said. "we insist on looking through a tinted film that makes everything iridescent?" "and deflects the lines of forms. the japanese art is less artificial. now--turn to the left." in one spot the trees and shrubbery had been cut clean away, and through the vista she saw the distant mountains, clear and pure as though carved of tinted jade set in a plate of lapus lazuli. a faint curdle of cloud frayed from their jagged tops, and above it hung the dreamy snow-clad cone of fuji, palely emerald as the tint of glaciers under an alaskan sky. a single crow, a jet-black moving spot, flapped its way across the azure expanse. "the one touch of blue," he said. "the color ethical, the color pantheistic, the color of the idea of the divine!" his personality, so touched with mystery, interested barbara intensely. the sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity had quite vanished. she sat down on one of the warm boulders. thorn rested one foot on the bent trunk of a dwarf tree and leaned his elbow on his knee, his hand, in the gesture that seemed habitual, covering his eye. in the wide _kimono_ sleeve the forearm was bare and suggested a peculiar physical cleanliness like that of a wild animal. "how strange it is," she said, "that for centuries, the western world believed this wonderful land inhabited by a barbarous people--because it didn't possess western civilization!" he made an exclamation. "civilization! it is a hateful word! it stands in the west for all that is sordid and ugly. it has bred monstrous, thundering piles built up to heaven, eternally smoking the sky--places of architecture and mechanics gone mad, where one lives by machinery and moves by steam, and is perpetually tormented by absurd conventions. i have lived in its cities. i have walked their selfish streets, shy and shabby and hungry!" "hungry!" "yes--and worse. i've not spoken of those experiences for years. i don't know why i speak of them now to you. does it surprise you to hear that i have known poverty?" for the first time he turned fully facing her. his supple hand had left his brow and moved in gestures at one time fierce and graceful. "when i was sixteen i learned what penury meant in london. once i was driven to take refuge in a workhouse in some evil quarter of the thames. my memory of it is a mixture of dreadful sights and sounds--of windows thrown violently open or shattered to pieces--of shrieks of murder--of heavy plunges in the river." barbara shuddered in the warm sunlight. over the edge of the garden was a misty space where foliage and roofs sank out of sight, to rise again in long undulations of green trees and gray tiling, like a painted ocean. far away lifted the leafy plateau of aoyama, with its blur of terra-cotta barracks. at an immense distance a great temple roof jutted, and still farther away the spread-out, populous city curved up, like the rim of a basin, to a hazy horizon. yet on this background of pleasantness and peace those other scenes of horror--such was the vehemence of his tone, the savage directness in his phrases--seemed to start up, blank and wretched apparitions, before her. "at nineteen," he went on. "i found myself in new york, delicate, diffident, satanically proud, and without a friend--one of the billion ants crawling in the skeleton of the mastodon. i was threadbare and meals were scant and uncertain--a little, penniless, half-blind, eccentric wanderer! i lived in a carpenter-shop and slept on the shavings. one week i sold coral for a neapolitan peddler. oh, i learned my civilization well! the very memory now of walking down those roaring cañons of streets--all cut granite and iron fury, and hideous houses two hundred feet high--moos at me in the night! it is frightful, nightmarish, devilish! and when one can be here under a violet sky, in sight of blue peaks and an eternally lilac, luke-warm sea!" his hand swept across the hewn vista--to the wild, bold background of indigo hills, with its slender phantom above them, swimming in the half-tropical blue. "it is better," he said, "to live in japan in sack-cloth and ashes, than to own the half of any other country. i am as old as the three-legged crow that inhabits the sun. i can't read the comic papers or a french novel. i shouldn't go to the paris opera if it were next door. i shouldn't like to visit the most beautiful lady and be received in evening dress. i shall pass my life in sandals and a _kimono_, and when it's over i shall be under the big trees in the old buddhist cemetery there, beside the nunnery, among the fireflies and grasshoppers, with six laths above me, inscribed with prayers in an unknown tongue and a queerly carved monument typifying the five elements into which we melt away." he shook his broad shoulders. again his hand went to his brow and he half turned away. "but now even japan must adopt western civilization," he said bitterly. it is 'putting a lily in the mouth of hell!' carpets, pianos, windows, brass-bands--to make goths out of greeks! who would want them changed? who would not love them as they are, better than the children of boasted western civilizations--industrious, pleasing, facing death with a smile, not because they are such fatalists as the arabs, for instance, but because they have no fear of the hereafter. the old courtesy, the old faith, the old kindliness--will they weather it? or vanish like snow in sun? the poetry, the legend, the lovely and touching observances are going fast. modernism gives them foreign fireworks now, and forbids the ghost-boats of the bon! i wish i could fly out of _meiji_ for ever, back against the stream of time, into _tempo_ fourteen hundred years ago!" "the bon?" she said. "what is that?" "i forgot," he said, "that japan is all new to you," and told her of the japanese all-souls day--the feast of lanterns, when the spirits of the dead return, to be fed with tea in tiny cups and with the odor of incense; how, when the dusk falls, on canal and river the little straw boats are launched with written messages and lighted paper lanterns, to bear back the blessed ghosts. returning, barbara led the way. once she stooped over a single, strange blossom on a long stalk, whose golden center shone cloudily through silky filaments like the leaves of immortelles. "what is that?" she asked. "it is a wild flower i found on one of my inland rambles," he said. "perhaps it has no name. i call it _yumé-no-hana_--the 'flower-of-dream.' it will open almost any day now." "have you quite forgiven me for breaking in?" she asked, as they walked along the stepping-stones. for the first time she surprised him in a smile. it lit his face with a sudden irradiation. "will you do it again?" "may i--some time?" "then you are not afraid? remember i am a renegade, a follower of buddha, and a most atrocious and damnable _taboo_!" "afraid!" for a moment they looked at each other, and she saw a little quiver touch his lips. "i shall come again to-morrow--to see the flower." "just one thing," he said. "i am a solitary. if you would not mention--to any one--" "i understand," she answered. he walked by her side to the bamboo gate. "i am glad," she said, "that i remind you of some one you liked." "perhaps it was some one i knew in a dream," he answered. "yes," she said. "perhaps it was." as she spoke she saw him start. she looked up. across the temple yard, through the entrance _torii_, she saw the bishop coming up the lane. he was walking absorbed in thought, his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped behind him. "good-by," she said, and stepped through the gate. but thorn did not answer. at sight of the approaching figure he had drawn back abruptly. now he turned sharply away into a path which led toward the temple. she saw him once glance swiftly back over his shoulder before he disappeared behind the hedges. * * * * * the man with whom barbara had been talking went slowly up the temple steps. his face was haggard and drawn. there he paused and looked back across the yard. "_credo in resurrectionem mortuorum_," he muttered--"yes, i believe in the resurrection of the dead!" as he stood there the head priest pushed open the _shoji_. he bowed to the other on the threshold and came out. "to-day my abashed thought has dwelt on your exalted work," he said. "is our new image of kwan-on peerlessly all but done, perhaps?" thorn shook his head. "it moves with exalted slowness. to-day i contemptibly have not worked." the priest looked at him curiously, through his gold-rimmed spectacles. "you are honorably unwell," he said. "it is better to lie down in the heat of the day. presently i will say an insignificant prayer to the _hotoké-sama_--the shining ones--for your illustrious recovery." "i am not ill," was the answer. "be not augustly concerned." he turned away slowly and crossed the little bridge to his own abode. chapter xxii the dance of the capital the ginza--the "street-of-the-silversmiths"--is the broadway, the piccadilly, the _boulevard des italiens_ of modern tokyo. here old and new war daily in a combat in which the new is daily victor. modern shop-fronts of stone and brick stand cheek by jowl with graceful, flimsy frame structures that are pure japanese. trolley-cars, built in the united states, fill the street with clangor and its pavements (for it has them) roar with trade. in its flowing current one may see many types: americans from the near-by imperial hotel, bristling with enthusiasm; earnest tourists with murrays tucked in their armpits, doggedly "doing" the country; members of foreign legations whirling in victorias; chinamen, queued and decorously clad in flowered silk brocade; an occasional korean with queerly shaped hat of woven horse-hair; over-dandified _o-sharé-sama_--"high-collar" men, as the tokyo phrase goes--in tweeds and yellow puttees; comfortable merchants and men of affairs in dull-colored _kimono_ and clogs; blue-clad workmen with the marks of their trades stamped in great red or white characters on their backs; sallow, bare-footed students with caps of _waseda_ or the imperial university; stolid and placid-faced buddhist priests in _rick'sha_, en route to some temple funeral; soldiers in khaki with redand yellow-striped trousers; coolies dragging carts; country people on excursions from thatched inland villages, clothed in common cloth and viewing the capital for the first time with indrawn breath and chattering exclamations; rich noblemen, beggars, idlers, guides--all are tributary to this river. when evening falls women and children predominate: bent old women with brightly blackened teeth; patient-faced mothers with babies on their backs toddling on clacking wooden _géta_; white-faced vermilion-lipped _geisha_ glimpsing by in _rick'sha_ to some tea-house entertainment; coolie women dressed like men, trudging in the roadway; girl-students peering into jewelers' windows; children clad like gaudy moths and butterflies, clattering hand in hand, or pursuing one another with shrill cries. before the sun has well set lanterns begin to twinkle and glow above doorways--yellow electric bulbs in clusters, white acetylene globes, smoky oil lamps, and great red and white paper-lanterns lit by candles. as the violet of the dusk deepens to purple, these multiply till the vista is ablaze. lines of colored lights in pink and lemon break out like air-flowers along upper stories of tea-houses, from whose interiors come the strumming of _biwa_ and the twang of _samisen_. on frail balconies, pricked out with yellow lanterns, dwarf pines or jars of growing azalea hang their masses of soft green or pink down over the passers-by. from open _shoji_ women lean, their _kimono_ parted, their rounded breasts bared to the cool night. on the curb peripatetic dealers squat in little stalls formed of movable screens with their wares spread before them; curio-merchants with a _mélange_ of brass, crystal and bronze; dealers in _suzumushi_--musical insects in the tiniest cages of plaited straw; sellers of buddhist texts and worm-eaten, painted scrolls; of ink-horns, shoe-sticks, eye-glasses and children's toys. at intervals grills of savory _waka-fuji_ (salted fry-cakes) sizzle over charcoal braziers which throw a red glow on an intent row of children's faces. here and there a shop-front emits the blatant bark of a foreign phonograph. on the corners men with arms full of vernacular evening newspapers call the names of the sheets in musical cadences, with a quaint, upward inflection. the air is filled with a heavy, rich odor, suggesting the pomade of women's head-dresses, _saké_, and sandalwood. in the roadway every vehicle contributes its bobbing lantern, till the traffic seems a celestial saturnalia, staggering with drunken stars. so it looked to barbara as her two _goriki_--"strong-pull men"--whirled her rubber-tired _rick'sha_ across the interminable city in her first bewildering view of tokyo by night. daunt, for her benefit, had arranged a trip to the cherry-viewing-festival on the sumida river, and a japanese dinner at the ogets'--the cherry-moon tea-house--in the famous district of asak'sa, where the great temple of kwan-on the merciful shines with its ever-burning candles. they had started from the embassy: baroness stroloff, the wife of the bulgarian minister and patricia's especial favorite, the twin sisters of the danish secretary, the swiss minister's daughter and two young army officers studying the language--all of whom barbara had met at the review--and the long procession (since police regulations in tokyo forbid _rick'sha_ to travel abreast) trailed "goose-fashion," threading in and out, a writhing, yellow-linked chain. daunt had traced their route with barbara on a map of the city, and had translated for her the names of the streets through which they were now passing. by the street-of-big-horses they skirted the district-of-honorable-tea-water, threaded the lane-where-good-luck-dwells, and so, by middle-monkey-music-street, they came to the sumida, a broader, slothful thames, gleaming with ten thousand lanterns on _sampan_, houseboats and barges. the bridge of ah-my-wife brought them to the farther side. at the entrance of a long avenue of blooming cherry-trees a policeman halted them. _rick'sha_ were not permitted beyond this point and the sweating human horses were abandoned. the road ran high along the river on a green embankment like a wide wall, between double rows of cherry-trees, whose branches interlocked overhead. it was densely crowded with people, each one of whom seemed to be carrying a colored paper-lantern or a cherry-branch drooped over the shoulder. in the hues of the loose, warm-weather _kimono_ bloomed all the flowers of all the springs--golds and mauves and scarlets and magentas--and everywhere in the lantern-light fluttered radiant-winged children, like vivid little birds in a tropical forest. from tiny one-storied tea-houses along the way, with elevated mats covered with red flannel blankets, _biwa_ and _koto_ and _samisen_ gurgled and fluted and tinkled. on the right the embankment descended steeply, giving a view of sunken roadways and tiled roofs; on the left lay the long reaches of the dreamy river murmuring with oars and voices and vibrating like a vast flood of gold and vermilion fireflies. barbara had never imagined such a welter of movement and color. the soft flute-like voices, the slow shuffling of sandals on the dry earth, the pensive smiling faces, the pink flowers on every hand, made this different from any holiday crowd she had ever seen. it suggested a carnival of venice orientalized, painted over and set blazing with japanese necromancy. here and there jugglers and top-spinners displayed their skill to staring spectators. a cluster of shaven-headed babies swarmed silently about a sweetmeat seller, and beside his push-cart a man clad like a gray-feathered hawk whistled discordantly on a bamboo reed and gyrated with a vacant grin on his pock-marked face. where the crowd was less close men tricked out in girls' attire, with whitened, clown-like faces, turned somersaults, and through the thickest of the press a dejected, blaze-faced ox, whose nose and forehead were painted with spots of scarlet, slowly drew a two-storied scaffold on which was perched the god of spring--a plaster figure wreathed with flowers. the animal's ears were tickled by long tassels of bright green and red, and his look was one of patient boredom. the man who led him wore a short jerkin, and his bare legs, from thigh to knee, were tattooed in big, blue, graceful leaves. the greatest numbers surged about a large tent, outside of which waddled here and there mountains of men, their faces round as full moons, naked save for gaily colored aprons. the fat hung on their breasts in great creased folds like an overfed baby's, and in the lantern-light their flesh looked an unhealthy, mottled pink. each wore his hair wound in a short queue, bent forward and tied in a stiff loop on the crown. as one of the vast hulks lumbered by, cooling his moon-face with a tiny fan, daunt pointed him out to barbara. "that is the famous hitachiyama," he told her, "the champion wrestler of japan." "how big he is!" "it runs in families," he said. "they diet and train, too, from babyhood. he weighs three hundred and forty-seven pounds." a roar came from the lighted canvas and a man emerged and wrote something on a sign-board like a tally-sheet. daunt stopped and perused it. "you may be interested, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "to learn that mr. terrible-horse has knocked out mr. small-willow-tree, but that mr. tiger-elephant has been allowed a foul over mr. frozen-stork. i wish we could see a bout, but we must hurry or we'll miss the _geisha_ dancing." they came presently where the roadway overlooked a sunken temple yard encircled by moats of oozy slime dotted with pink and white lotos buds. the inclosure was set with giant cryptomeria centuries old, and was crowded with people. stone steps led down between twisted pine-trees and _shinto_ lanterns, to a gate on whose either side was a great stone cow, rampant, like the figures in coats-of-arms. there was a droll contrast between the posture and the placid bovine countenances. in the center of the inclosure rose a wide platform with a tasseled curtain like the stage of a theater. opposite was a pavilion in which sat rows of women in dark-colored dress, moveless as images and holding musical instruments. the whole flagged space between jostled with the iridescent, lantern-carrying throng. a priest led the party to seats at one side on mats reserved for foreign visitors. "look, barbara," said patricia. "there goes our friend the expert--across there. he looks bigger and pastier than ever." bersonin was dressed in white flannel which accentuated his enormous size. a younger man was with him, smoking a cigarette, and in their wake followed a japanese servant. the rest of the party had turned and were looking in that direction. "why," said baroness stroloff, "that's doctor bersonin." one of the young army men looked at her curiously. "do you know him?" he asked. "why, of course. one meets him everywhere. i saw him at a dinner last week. have you met him?" "oh, yes, we're supposed to know everybody," he said carelessly. his tone, however, held something which made her say: "most men don't like him, i find. i wonder why." "why don't people like lizards?" said patsy. "because they're cold and clammy and wicked-looking." "they like them enough to eat them in senagambia," said the young officer smiling. "bersonin is a great man, no doubt, but there's something about him--i met a man once who had run across him in south america and--he was prejudiced. who's the young fellow with him, daunt?" "his name is ware--philip ware," was the answer. "i knew him at college." barbara felt the blood staining her cheeks. so that was "phil," the brother of whom austen ware had told her! the name called up thoughts that had obtruded themselves in the moment she saw the white yacht lying at anchor, and which since then she had wilfully thrust from her mind. her gaze studied the handsome, youthful form, noting the bold, restless glance, the dissipated lines of the comely face, with a sudden distaste. a twang from the orchestra recalled her, as the curtain was looped back for the _miyako odori_, the "dance of the capital." it was barbara's introduction to a native orchestra and at first its strummings and squealings, its lack of modes and of harmony, its odd barbaric phrasing, infected her with a mad desire to laugh. but gradually there came to her the hint of under-rhythm--as when she had listened to haru's _samisen_ in the garden--and with it an overpowering sense of suggestion. it was the remote cry of occult passions, a twittering of ghostly shadows, the wailing of an oriental sphynx whom time had abandoned to the eternal desert. it had in it melancholy and the enigma of the ages. it wiped away the ugly modern european buildings, the western costumes, the gloze of borrowed method, and left barbara looking into the naked heart of the east, old, intent, and full of mystical meaning. the ivory plectrons chirruped, the flutes squeaked and wailed, the little hour-glass drums thudded, and down the stage swept sixty _geisha_, in blue, cherry-painted _kimono_. a sly, thin thread of scarlet peeped from their woven sleeves. their small _tabi'd_ feet, cleft like the foot of a faun, moved in slow, hovering steps. when they wheeled, swaying like young bamboo, they stamped softly, and the white foot, raised from the boards, under the puffed _kimono_ edge writhed and bent from the ankle like a pliant hand. their faces, heavily powdered, and held without expression, looked like white, waxen masks in which lived sparkling black eyes. in the slow, languorous movement their _obi_ of gold and fans of silver caught the cherry-shaded lights and tossed them back in gleams of mother-of-pearl. barbara fell to watching the japanese spectators. all around her they stood and sat at ease, drinking in the play of color and motion of which they never tire. the dance had no passion, no sensuality, none of the savagery and abandon of the dances of southern asia, with whose reproductions the western stage is familiar. beside a ballet of the west, it would have seemed almost ascetic. she knew that it was symbolic--that every posture was a sentence of a story they knew, as old and as sacred, perhaps, as the birth of the gods. the parted curtain swung together and daunt seated himself at barbara's side. "do you like it, ever so little?" he asked. "ever so _much_!" "i wonder if you are going to like me, too," he said, so softly that no one else heard. she felt her color coming as she answered: "why, of course. how could i help it, when you plan things like this for me?" "i have at last found my _métier_; give me more things to do." "very well. when will you take me to see your japanese house?" for a second daunt hesitated. the little native house in the street-of-the-misty-valley was a sentimental place to him. there he had worked out the models of his first glider; there he had talked with his princess of dreams, his "lady of the many-colored fires." the glimpse of phil had reminded him that it now had a tenant. when he showed it to barbara, it should not be with phil in possession. she noted the hesitation, and, somewhat puzzled, and wondering if to oriental ethics the suggestion was a _gaucherie_, waved the matter lightly aside. "you are just going to say 'one of these days.' please don't. when i was little, that always meant never. i withdraw the motion--but what is this coming?" a boy was ascending the platform. he bowed and laid a box of thin unpainted wood at daunt's feet. it contained a _kakemono_, or wall-painting, rolled and tied with a red-and-white cord of twisted rice-paper. daunt read the accompanying card. "'miss happy-for-a-thousand-years,'" he said, "'presents her compliments to the illustrious strangers.' she is the star. the gift is a pretty custom, isn't it, even if it is advertisement. here comes the lady herself to present her thanks for our distinguished patronage." she bowed low before them, smiling, her small piquant face powdered white as mistletoe-berries above her carmine-painted lips. daunt unrolled the _kakemono_, revealing a delicately-painted cluster of butterflies. he chatted with her in the vernacular, and she replied with much drawing-in of breath and flute-like laughter. "she says," he translated, "that this is a picture of her honorable ancestors." a little smile, a genuflection, a breath of perfume and the powdered face and gorgeous _kimono_ were gone. the orchestra chirruped, the curtain parted and another figure began. miss happy-for-a-thousand-years! as the party walked back to the waiting _rick'sha_, barbara wondered what lay beneath that smiling surface. she had heard of the strenuous training that at five years began to teach the gauzy, fragile, child-butterfly to paint its wings, to flirt and sing and dance its dazzling moth-flame way. for the _geisha_ nothing was too gorgeous, too transcendent. her lovers might be statesmen and princes. but in return she must be always gay, always laughing, always young--all things to all men--to the end of the butterfly chapter! butterfly hair, butterfly gown--and butterfly heart? barbara wondered. chapter xxiii the devil pipes to his own doctor bersonin, huge and white-flanneled, with phil by his side, strolled away through the swarming crowd. not a word, not a glance of the younger man that evening, had escaped him--he had been studying him with all the minute attention of that great, overweening brain that, from an origin of which he never spoke, had made him one of the foremost experimenters in europe. the swift gleam in phil's eye as he watched the _geisha_, the eager drinking in of the girlish daintiness, the colors and perfumes to which he stretched himself like a cat--the watchful, impassive eyes took note of everything. all bersonin's talk had held an evil lure. it had touched on the extravagant and sensual vagaries of luxury, the sybaritic pleasures of the social _gourmet_, subjects appealing to the imagination of the youth whom he was examining like a slide under the microscope. they had stopped once at a _chaya_ for tea, but phil had called for the hot native _saké_, and as its musty, sherry-like fumes crept into his blood he talked with increasing recklessness. beneath their veiled contemptuousness, bersonin's feline eyes began to harbor a stealthy satisfaction. he had guessed why phil had suggested coming to mukojima. the latter's restlessness, his anxious surveillance of the passers-by, might have enlightened a less observant spectator. phil's new passion had, in fact, a strong hold on him. that long-ago picture of haru, barefooted in the surf, frequent recollection had stamped on his brain and the sight of her fresh beauty to-day had fanned the coal to a flame. those stolen kisses in the bamboo lane had roused a lurking devil that counted nothing but his own desires. for this hour, while the _saké_ ran in his pulses, the flame overshadowed even bersonin. "well, my boy," said the latter at length quizzically, "when you find her, just give me the hint and i'll go." phil flushed, then laughed shortly. "so you are a mind-reader, too?" he said. "it's written all over you," said bersonin. "why didn't you tell me? we could have postponed our dinner and left you free for the chase. it _is_ a chase, eh?" "yes," said phil. "i--i haven't had much luck with her yet. i just happened to know she was to be here to-night. she's a pretty little devil," he added, "the prettiest i've seen in japan." "the japanese type is the rage in paris now," said the other. "take her there, dress her in jewels, and drive her through the _bois_ some afternoon and you'll be the most talked-of man in france next morning." the red deepened in phil's cheek. the prospect drew him. he looked at bersonin. paris and jewels! he drank more _saké_ at the next tea-house. it had begun to show in a shaking of the hand, a louder voice. suddenly phil sprang to his feet. "there she is!" he exclaimed. bersonin looked. "lovely!" he said, "i congratulate you. i'll walk back to the motor-car--the sights amuse me. you can come along when you please. dinner will wait. and, anyway, what's dinner to a pretty woman?" phil plunged into the crowd and the expert spoke quickly to the servant, who was staring after him. "better keep him in sight," he said. "you can come when he does." bersonin was sauntering on, when a turmoil behind him made him turn. a woman's cry and an angry oath in english rang out, startlingly clear above the low murmur of the multitude. he caught a glimpse of a japanese form leaping like a tiger--of phil lying in the dust of the road--of a girl vanishing swiftly into the shadows. as the expert hurried forward, phil stumbled to his feet. lights were dancing before his eyes and his neck felt as if he had been garroted. with his first breath he turned on ishida, incoherent with rage and curses. the big man caught his arm. "the honorable sir make mistake," said the japanese smoothly. "man have done that who have ranned away." "he lies!" said phil fiercely. "there was no one else near me but the girl. he did it himself! he tried to _ju-jits'_ me!" the fingers of the japanese were clenched, but his face was impassive as he added: "i think he have been snik-thief." "that's no doubt the way it was, phil," said bersonin. "why on earth would ishida touch you? that's an old thieves' trick. the fellow tried to get your watch, i suppose. but we must move on. the police will be here presently, and we don't want our names in the papers." they went rapidly through the close ranks that had been watching with the decorous, inquisitive silence so typically oriental. "i suppose you're right," said phil sulkily. "i--i beg your pardon, ishida." the japanese bowed gravely. "only a mistake," he said, "which honorable sir make." chapter xxiv a man named ware the three-storied front of the cherry-moon tea-house, when daunt's party arrived, was glowing with tiers of large round lanterns of oiled-paper bearing a conventionalized moon and cherry-blossoms. at the door sat rows of little velvet-lined sandals. here shoes were discarded, and servants drew on the guests' feet loose slippers of cotton cloth, soft and yielding. one other guest was awaiting the party at the entrance. this was captain viscount sakai, of the general staff, spruce, fine-featured and in immaculate european evening dress. he had a clear, olive complexion, and, save for the narrow, japanese eye, might have been a spaniard. the small second-story _shokudo_ in which they dined was floored in soft _tatamé_ edged with black and laid in close-fitting geometrical pattern. save for a plain alcove at one end, holding a dwarf pine and a single _nanten_ branch with clusters of bright red berries, it was empty. there was no drapery. the walls were sliding screens of gold-leaf on which were finely drawn etchings of pine-trees covered with snow, the effect suggested rather than finished. it was brilliant with electric light. tiny square tables of black lacquer were disposed along three sides of the room, one for each guest. they were but four inches high and on the floor behind each lay a thin, flat _zabuton_ or cushion of brocade. the bowing _geisha_ in wonderful rainbow _kimono_ who awaited them might have stepped from the temple stage at mukojima. these pointed to the tables with inviting smiles: "plee shee down!" they said in unison. "i never _could_ 'shee down' gracefully when any one is looking!" complained patricia, as she tucked her small feet under her on the kneeling-cushion. "_banzai!_" commented voynich, setting his monocle. "you have practised before a mirror!" he collapsed beside her with a groan. "i shall be reincarnated an accordion!" "count," said patricia plaintively, "no bouquets, please. i know when you are stringing me." he looked blank and the japanese officer hastily produced a lavender note-book and a gold pencil. "that is a new one," he said. "i must--what is it?--ah yes! i must _nail_ it. excuse me. i write it in my swear-album." "the viscount is learning american slang," patricia informed barbara. "one of these days you must tell him some of the very latest." he looked across with gravely twinkling eyes. "i shall be--ah--tickle to die!" he said. "it is my specialty. nex' year i become professor in slang literature at the imperial university." the meal began merrily. barbara sat on daunt's left, with one of the _attachés_ next her. baroness stroloff was on daunt's other hand. barbara remembered it afterward as a meal of elfish daintiness--of warm, pungent, wine-like liquor in blue porcelain bottles, of food of strange look and cloying taste, highly colored and seasoned, in a hundred tiny red and black lacquer dishes that carried her back to her doll-days, with covers patterned in gold, served by prostrating _geisha_ whose _kimono_ were woven with violet fujis, winged dragons and marvelous exotic blossoms. daunt pointed to a dish which had just been set before her. "you must try the _hasu-no-renkon_," he said. "that's cooked lotos-root. it's nearly as good as it looks." "how do you ever remember the names!" "oh, it's quite easy to talk japanese," he replied recklessly. "there are only fifty syllables in the language, and any way you string them together it means something or other. it doesn't matter whether it's the right thing or not, if you just bow and smile. there are seventeen ways of drawing in your breath which are a lot more important than what you say!" "what disgraceful nonsense! what is that pink thing?" "raw bonito. the refuge of dyspeptics. voynich, over there, eats nothing else at home, they say. the variegated compound is _kuchitori_. it's made of sugared chestnuts, leeks and pickled fish. may i compliment you on the way you handle your chopsticks? at my first japanese dinner i bit one in two. isn't baroness stroloff stunning, by the way!" the latter was deep in discussion with patricia, moving her hands in quick, vivacious gestures which clusters of opals made into flashes of blue fire. "but you must send to hakodate for your furs," she was saying. "i will give you the address of my man there. you should get them now, not wait till fall, when the tourists have bought all the best." "i'm dying for an ermine stole." "oh, my _dear_, not ermine! get sables. one can be so insulting in sables!" barbara laughed with the rest. "what a nice lot you are," she said, "all knowing each other, all friendly. i thought diplomatists were always poring over international law books and drawing up musty treaties." "it's not all cakes and ale," he asserted. "i worked till three this morning on a cipher telegram." "after the melodrama?" "ah, it was opera!" he protested. "it has left me memories of only flowers, and scents and music!" "you made most of the music, if i remember rightly." "how unkind! i could no more help it than fly." "on your glider?" he laughed again. "don't forget what is to happen one day with that same machine." "what is that?" "i am to swoop down and carry you off. it was your own suggestion, you know." "but it was to be at the imperial review. that doesn't happen again for a year." "i won't wait that long!" she turned her head; her eyes sparkled in the caught light. her fingers were fluttering a square of red paper that had been rolled about her chopsticks. on it was a line of tiny characters. "what is that writing?" "that is a love-poem," he answered. "you know a japanese poem has only thirty-one syllables. you find them everywhere and on everything, from a screen to a fire-shovel. i've seen them printed on tooth-picks. your huckster composes them as he brings the fish from market, and your _amah_ writes them at night by a firefly lantern." "can you read it?" he translated: "_i thought my love's long hair drooped down from the gate of the sky. but it was only the shadow of evening._" "how delicately pretty!" she exclaimed. "it's written in _kana_, the sound-alphabet, isn't it?" "yes. how much you have learned already!" "haru has begun teaching me. let me show you my proficiency." she took his pencil and wrote: [japanese: donto] "there! who would guess that was japanese for 'daunt.' and what an impression you must have made on haru for her to select your name as my first lesson!" across the soft _shoo-shoo_ of spotless, _tabi_-clad feet, the flitting of bright-hued _kimono_, the gay badinage that flew about the low tables, daunt felt her beauty thrill him from head to foot like a garment of mist and fire. as she dropped her hand to the cushion it had touched his, and for an instant their pulses had seemed to throb into one. the tiny, lacquered cup she took up trembled in her fingers. she started when the young army officer nearest her said: "speaking of sailing, give me a steam-yacht like the one that berthed yesterday at yokohama. she belongs to a man named ware--austen ware--a new yorker, i understand. perhaps you know him, miss fairfax." "i have met him," she answered. the young army officer looked up quickly--he was an enthusiastic yachtsman. "a beautiful vessel!" he said. "i noticed her to-day, but she was too far away to make out her name." "it is the _barbara_," said voynich. "why--" exclaimed patricia, "that's--" she bit her tongue, caught by something in barbara's face. "good gracious!" she ended. "my--my foot's asleep!" barbara had felt her flush fading to paleness. she felt a quick relief that none there, save patricia and daunt, knew her first name. in the diversion caused by patricia's helpless efforts to stand up, she stole a glance at daunt. a shadow had fallen on his face. he did not look at her, but in his brain the yacht's name was ringing like a knell. she knew phil's brother! austen ware's yacht had arrived in yokohama on the same day as her ship. and it was named the _barbara_. yet to-night he had dreamed--what had he been dreaming? these thoughts mixed themselves weirdly with the gaiety and nonsense that he forced himself to render. barbara felt this with an aching sense of resentment. what was he thinking of her? and why should she care so fiercely? the courses passed, but the lightness and blitheness of the scene were somehow chilled. the decorative food: the numberless, tiny cups and trays; the taper, pink-tinted fingers that poured the warm drink; the _kimono_, the music and lights,--all palled. she was glad when the baroness decreed the dinner over by repeating patricia's experiment of painful unfolding, and calling for her wraps. chapter xxv at the shrine of the fox-god the street into which they trooped seemed an oriental opera-bouffe: swaying, chatting people in loose, light-colored _kimono_, some carrying crested paper lanterns tied to the ends of short rods: a thousand lights and hues flashing and weaving. but for two of the party the colors had lost their warmth and the movement its fascination. "i simply _can't_ coop up yet in a _rick'sha_!" pleaded patricia, as they donned their discarded shoes. "why not walk a little?" the proposal met with a chorus of approval. they set out together, and presently barbara found daunt beside her. her resentment did not cool as she laughed and talked mechanically, acutely aware that he was answering in monosyllables or with silence. daunt was crying out upon himself for a fool. what right had he to feel that hot sting in his heart? yesterday morning he had not known that she existed. if an hour ago the skies had been golden-sprinkled azure, and tokyo the capital of an empire of romance, it was only because he was a boyish, silly dolt, sick with vanity and complacency. what had there been between them, after all, save a light camaraderie into which a man was an insufferable cad to read more? so he paced on, achingly cognizant of the lapses in his conversation, quite unconscious that her own was growing more forced and strained. they were in the midst of a densely packed crowd where a native theater was pouring its audience into the street. they had fallen behind the rest, and there were about them only _kimono'd_ shoulders and flowered, blue-black head-dresses. he made a way for her ruggedly toward a paling where there was a little space. above it was hung a poster of a japanese actress. "that is the famous sada gozen," he told her. "she has just returned from a season in paris and new york, and tokyo is quite wild about her." as he spoke numbers thrust him against her and the touch brought instantly to him that moment in the garden when he had held her in his arms to lift her to the arbor ledge. the picture of her that evening in the pagoda was stamped on his heart: the sweet, moon-lighted profile, the curling, brown hair, the faint perfume of her gown that mingled with the wistaria. it came before him there in the bustle and press with a sudden swift sadness. he knew that it would be always with him to remember. a japanese couple, hastening to their _rick'sha_, caromed against them, and, with an effort, he tried to turn it to a smile: "some say it's difficult for a foreigner to come into intimate contact with the japanese," he said. "you have already pierced that illusion. one is always finding out that he has been mistaken in people." her quivering feeling grasped at a fancied innuendo. "it doesn't take long, then, you think?" her tone held a dangerous lure, but he did not perceive it. "not where you are concerned, apparently," he answered lightly. she turned her head swiftly toward him, and her eyes flashed. "where _i_ am concerned!" she repeated fiercely, and in his astonishment he almost wrecked the paling. "oh, i hate double-meaning! why not say it? do you suppose i don't know what you are thinking?" "i?" he said in bewilderment. "what _i_ am thinking?" "you mean you have found you are mistaken in _me_! you have no right--no earthly right, to draw conclusions." "ah!" he said, with a sharp breath. "i had no such meaning. you can't imagine--" "don't say you didn't," she interrupted. "that only makes it worse!" she scarcely understood her own resentment, and a hot consciousness that her behavior was quite childish and unreasonable mixed itself with her anger. "what have i said?" he exclaimed, in contrition and distress. "i wouldn't hurt you for a million worlds! whatever it was, i ought to do _hara-kiri_ for it! i--i will perform the operation whenever you say!" a ridiculous desire to cry had seized her--why, she could not have told--and she would rather have died than have him see her do so. "if you will go ahead," she said tremulously, "and make a path for me, i think we can get through now." he turned instantly and his broad shoulders parted the crowd in a haste that was thoroughly un-japanese. but she did not follow him. instead, she drew back, and thinking only to hide momentarily her hurt and her pride, slipped through a narrow gateway. she found herself in a crowded corridor of the emptying playhouse. the mass of japanese faces confused her. a door opened at another angle and she passed through it hastily into the open air. the street she was now in was narrow, and she followed it, expecting it to turn into the larger thoroughfare. it did so presently, and at its corner she paused till the burning had left her eyes, and her breath came evenly. then she walked back toward the theater, feeling an impatient irritation at her behavior. presently, however, she stopped, puzzled. the theater was not there. the street, too, had not the character of the one in which she had left daunt. she must have taken the wrong turn. she walked rapidly in the opposite direction, until another street crossed at right angles. this she tried with no better result. in the maze of lantern-lighted vistas, she was completely lost. she was not frightened, for she was aware that, so far as physical harm was concerned, tokyo, of all great cities of the world, was perhaps the safest and most orderly. she knew that "_bei-koku taish'-kan_" meant "american embassy." she had mastered the phrase that morning, and had only to step into a _rick'sha_ and use it. daunt, however, did not know this. aware that she had been behind him, he would not go on, and she contritely pictured him anxiously searching the crowds for her. the thought overrode her anger and humiliation. she would not take the _rick'sha_ till she despaired of finding him. just before her, at the side of the way, stood a small temple with a recumbent stone fox at its entrance. it made her think suddenly of the riding-crop she had seen daunt carrying, with its damascene fox-head handle. in the doorway burned a rack of little candles, and a chest, barred across the top, sat ready to receive the offerings of worshipers. above this was suspended the mirror which is the invariable badge of a _shinto_ shrine. it was tilted at an angle and tossed back the glimmer of the candle-flame. with a whimsical smile she took a copper coin from her purse and leaned to toss it into the chest. but her fingers closed on it and she drew back hastily, with a quick memory of one of the tales haru had told her in the garden. she knew suddenly that she stood before a temple of inari, the fox-god, patron deity of her whose conquests brought shame to households and dishonor to wives. she remembered a song the japanese girl had sung to the tinkle of her _samisen_: "my weapons are a smile and a little fan- _sayonara, sayonara_...." it was the song of the "fox-woman." she slipped the purse hastily back into her pocket. the fox-woman! as she walked on, for the first time the phrase came to barbara with a sudden, sharp sense of actuality. there were fox-women of every race and clime, women who came, with painted smile, between true lovers! what if she herself--what if here, in this land, that baleful wisdom were to strike home to _her_? like a keen blade the thought pierced through her, and something shy and sweet, newborn in her breast, shrank startled and fearful from it. the street had narrowed curiously. it was paved now from side to side with flat stone flags. she realized all at once that there were no longer _rick'sha_ to be seen, only people afoot. a blaze of light caught her eye, and she looked up to see, spanning the street, an arched gateway, at either side of which stood a policeman, quiet and imperturbable. its curved top was decorated with colored electric bulbs, and from its keystone towered a great image molded in white plaster--the figure of a woman in ancient japanese costume. one hand held a fan; the other lifted high above her head a circular globe of light. a huge weeping-willow drooped over one side of the archway, through which came glimpses of moving colors, crowds, hanging lanterns and elfish music. barbara hesitated. to what did that white, female figure beckon? she looked behind her--direction now meant nothing. perhaps she had wandered in a circle and the theater lay beyond. she stepped through the gate. chapter xxvi the nightless city straight before her lay a wide pavement, humming with voices, lined with three-story houses that glowed with iron-hooped lanterns of red, yellow and green, and tinkled with the music of _samisen_. from their gaily lighted _shoji_ swathes of warm, yellow light fell on the _kimono'd_ figures of men strolling slowly up and down. a little way off rose a square tower, with a white clock-face, illumined by a circle of electric bulbs. narrower streets, also innocent of roadway, crossed at right angles and at mathematical intervals. they were starry with lamps that hung in long projecting balconies ornamented with grill and carved work. from these came the shrieking sounds of music and an indescribable atmosphere of frivolity, of obvious dedication to some flippant cult. in and out of these side streets flowed a multitude of boys and men, in unbelted summer robes of light colors, lazily vivacious, moving on naked, clogged feet, making the air a bluish haze of cigarette smoke. in the blazing dusk they suggested the populace of some crowded spa strolling to the pools in flowing bath-robes and straw hats. on some of the far balconies barbara could see women leaning, in ornate costumes, smoking tiny pipes. here and there girls strolled past her, for the most part in couples, gaudily clad, their cheeks white with rice-powder, their lips carmined, their blue-black hair wonderfully coaxed and pomaded into shining wings and whorls, thrust through with many jeweled hair-pins, like slim daggers. they jested freely with the men they passed, laughing continually with low voices. in a doorway a slim girl, dressed in deep red, gleefully tickled with one bare foot the hide of a shaggy poodle vainly essaying slumber. as she went on, the crowd became more numerous; men's _kimono_ brushed barbara's skirts and eyes stared at her with contemplative boldness. "madame!" she felt a hand pluck her sleeve. it was a young japanese, in foreign dress, with a shining brown derby, shining aureated teeth, and shining silver-handled cane. "madame wishes a guide?" he inquired. she recollected him instantly as the youth who had slipped into her hand the printed card when she had landed from the ship at yokohama. she did not know the name of the theater she had left, however, so shook her head and hurried on. without warning she emerged into the nun-like quiet of a park with an acre of growing trees and an irregular little lake that lay dark and still under the moon. beside it was a stretch of hard, beaten earth, seemingly a playground. benches were set under the trees, and among them moved or sat other girls in costumes like those she had seen on the pavement. at sight of barbara's foreign dress some of them giggled with amusement and called to one another in repressed, laughing voices. a bell struck somewhere, and, as though this had been a signal, they all rose and departed, passing out by the way barbara had come. she traversed the park--to come face to face with a high palisade. she took a new direction, only to come again on the same barrier. the park seemed only a part of a vast inclosure into which she had penetrated. had this no outlet save the gate at which she had entered? wondering, she retraced her steps to the lighted pavement. she was puzzled now, and turned into one of the cross streets. its blaze of light, its movement and murmur of humanity bewildered her for a moment; then what she saw instantly arrested her. the lower stories of most of the abutting buildings had for fronts only lattices of vertical wooden bars, set a few inches apart. inside these bars, which made strange, human bird-cages, seated on mats of brocade, or flitting here and there, were galaxies of japanese girls, marvelously habited in chameleon colors--even more brilliant than the _geisha_ she had seen at mukojima--like branches of iridescent humming-birds or banks of pulsing butterflies. here and there, a foil to the fluttering cages, stretched a silent arcade brilliantly lighted and hung with women's photographs. above each was fixed a placard with a name in japanese characters. what was this place into which she had strayed? she had heard of the famous "street-of-the-_geisha_," where the dancers live. had she stumbled on this in the throes of some festival? why were there no women on the pavements? she had seen none save those in the gaudy robes whom the bell had called away. what was the meaning of the high palisades?--the narrow gate with its stolid policemen?--the barred house fronts? projecting on to the pavement, at the side of each building, was a small, windowed kiosk like the box-office of a theater. in the one nearest barbara a man was sitting. his arm was thrust through the window, and his hand, holding a half-opened fan, tapped carelessly on its side while he chanted in a coaxing voice. inside a man with close-cropped gray hair strode along the seated rows, striking sharply together flint and steel, till a shower of gleaming sparks fell on each head-dress. this done, he emerged and paced three times up and down the pavement, making squeaking noises with his lips, and describing with his hands strange passes in the air. these reminded barbara irresistibly of a child's cryptic gestures for luck. he then struck the flat of his hand six times smartly against the door-post and retired. she noticed that he paused at the entrance to snuff the row of candles that burned in a shrine beside it. the whole street, with its rows of gilded cages was a gleaming vista of _tableaux-vivants_, drenched in prismatic hues. each, barbara noted, had its uniform scheme of costume: one showed the sweeping lines and deep, flowing sleeves of the pre-_meiji_ era; another the high, garnet skirt of the modern school-girl; in one the _kimono_ were of rich mauve, shading at the bottom to pale pink set with languorous red peonies; in another, of gray crepe figured with craggy pine-trees; in a third, of scarlet and blue, woven with gold thread and embroidered in peacock feathers. before each inmate's cushion sat a tiny brass _hibachi_, or fire-bowl, in whose ashes glowed a live coal for the lighting of pipes and cigarettes, and a miniature toilet-table, like a doll's-cabinet, topped by a small, round mirror. from tiny compartments now and then one would draw a little box of rouge, a powder-puff of down, or an ivory spicula, with which, in complete indifference to observation, she would heighten the vivid red of a lip, or smooth a refractory hair. the background against which they posed was of heavy and exquisitely intricate gold-lacquer carvings of stork, dragon and phoenix, of cunningly disposed mirrors, or of draped crimson and silver weaves. before the bars men paused to chat a moment and pass on: behind them the gorgeous robes and tinted faces flitted hither and thither with a magpie chatter, with glimpses of ringed fingers clutching the lattice, and of naked feet, slim and brown against the flooring. barbara watched curiously. she was no longer conscious that passing men studied her furtively--that here and there, through the slender bars, a delicate hand waved daringly to her. in all the fairy-like gorgeousness she felt a subtle sense of repugnance that kept her feet in the middle of the pavement. she noted now that, however the costumes varied, they agreed in one particular: the _obi_ of each inmate was tied, not at the back, but in front. it seemed a kind of badge. somewhere she had read what it stood for. what was it? a group of men passed her at the moment--foreigners, speaking an unfamiliar tongue. they talked loudly and pointed with their sticks. one of them observed her, and turning, said something to his companions. they looked back. one of them laughed coarsely. at the sound, which echoed a patent vulgarity in the allusion, the blood flew to her cheeks. the tone had told her in a flash what the palisades, the barred inclosures, the gaudy finery and reversed _obi_ had failed to suggest. a veil was wound about her hat and with nervous haste she drew down its folds over her face, feeling suddenly sick and hot. driven now by an overpowering desire to find her way out, she doubled desperately back to the wider street. "madame!" she turned, with relief this time, to see "mr. y. nakajima," the guide, of the gold fillings and silver-topped cane. "you are lost," he said. "come with me, and i will find you." she bade him take her to the gate as quickly as possible and followed him rapidly, stung with an acute longing for the noisy roadway with its careening _rick'sha_. he was a thin, humorous-looking youth with a chocolate skin and long almond eyes, from which he shot at barbara glances half obsequious, half impertinent and preternaturally sly, from time to time making some remark which she answered as shortly as she might. by the arch with its lofty female figure, under the weeping willow, barbara turned for an instant and looked back. the street seemed to her a maze of reeling lights--a blur of painted lips and drowsing eyes and ghostly sobbing of the _samisen_. just outside the gate a pilgrim-priest, his coffin-like shrine strapped on his back, was mumbling a prayer. the guide spoke complacently: "japan yoshiwara are very famed," he said. "i think other countries is very seldom to have got." "where do they all come from?" barbara asked suddenly. "how do they come to be here?" "from many village," he answered. he had raised his voice, for several passers-by had paused to listen inquisitively to the strange sounds, so uncouthly unlike their own liquid syllabary; and he loved to display his english. "a man have a shop. business become bad; he owe so plenty money. he can not pay, but he have pretty daughter. here they offer maybe two, three hundred _yen_, for one year. so she dutifully pay honorable father debt." barbara turned away. again she felt the edge of mystery, bred of the unguessable divergence between the moral shibboleths of west and east. it caught at her like the cool touch of dread that chills the strayer in haunted places. in a hundred ways this land drew her with an extraordinary attraction; now a feeling of baffled perplexity and pain mingled with the fascination. it was almost a sort of terror. if in two days japan offered such passionate variety, such undreamed contrasts and subtleties, what would it eventually show to her? could she ever really know it, understand it? "there is a theater near here where sada gozen is playing," she said. "can you take me there?" he nodded. "the _raimon-za_--the play-house-of-the-gate-of-thunder. it is more five minutes of distant." he conducted her through a maze of narrow streets and pointed to the building, which she saw with a breath of relief. taking out her purse she put a bill into his hand. "thank you," she said, "and good night." "i shall go with madame at her hotel." she shook her head. "i can find my way now." "but madame--" "no," she said decidedly. he stood a moment swinging his cane, looking after her with impudent almond eyes. then he lighted a cigarette, settled his derby at a jaunty angle and sauntered back toward the yoshiwara. * * * * * barbara came on daunt in the middle of the block. he had stationed himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser stature of the native crowds. with him was a japanese boy who, she noted with surprise, was ito, one of the house-servants. her heart jumped as she saw the relief spring to daunt's anxious face. "_mea culpa!_" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her hand to him. "what a trouble i have been to you! i was actually lost. isn't it absurd?" her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. all his heart had leaped to meet them. in the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but since then it had been given him partly to understand. his thoughtless words--blunderer that he was!--had seemed to carp at her like a whining school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! yet to his memory even her hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were golden, and tokyo once more fairy-land. "what _will_ the others say!" she said. "they will have missed us long ago." "we will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. we can get _rick'sha_ at the next stand." "what did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you found i had vanished into thin air?" "i imagined for a while you were punishing me. then i guessed you had somehow turned into the side street. but i felt that you would find your way back, so--i waited." "thank you," she said softly. "i have not acted so badly since i was a child. are you going to shrive me?" "i am the one to ask that of you," he replied. "no--no! it is i. i must do penance. what is it to be?" he looked at her steadily; his eyes shone with dark fire. in the pause she felt her heart throb quickly, and she laughed with a sweet unsteadiness. "i am glad you are going to give me none," she said. "but i do," he answered, "i shall. i--" the boy ito, behind them, spoke his name. daunt started with a stab of recollection and drew from his pocket a folded pink paper, fastened with a blue seal. "how stupid of me! my wits have gone wool-gathering to-night. here is a telegram for you. it came soon after we left the embassy, and mrs. dandridge, thinking it might be urgent, sent ito after us to the tea-house. he missed us, but saw me here on his way back." barbara broke the seal and held the message to the candle-light that shone from a low temple entrance. she did not notice at the moment that it was the temple of the fox-god whose alms she had that evening denied. she had guessed who was the sender and the knowledge fell like a cool, fateful hand on her mood. and alas, on daunt's also. for, as she turned the leaf, his gaze, wandering through the temple doorway, to the candle-starred mirror above the tithe-box, had unwittingly seen reflected there, in the painfully exact chirography of a japanese telegraph-clerk, the signature [illustration: austen ware (in reverse)] chapter xxvii like the whisper of a bats' wings on the other side of tokyo that night doctor bersonin sat with phil in his great laboratory. dinner had been laid on a round table at one end of the room. this was now pushed into a corner; they sat in deep leather chairs with slim liqueur glasses of green _crême de menthe_ on a stand between them, with a methyl lamp and cigars. phil had more than once refilled his glass from the straw-braided, long-necked vessel at his elbow. he was restless and ill at ease. the tense excitement that had followed his hour with bersonin at the club had been allayed by the lights and movement of the cherry-festival; but in that cool, bare room, under the continuous, slow scrutiny of the expert's pallid, mask-like face, the sense of half-fearful elation had returned, reinforced by a feverish expectation. during the dinner, served at ten, conversation had been desultory, full of lapses broken only by the plaintive chirp of the _hiwa_ from its corner. when the cigars and cordial had been brought by the silent-footed ishida, bersonin had risen to draw the curtain closely over the window and to lock the door. when he came back he stood before the mantelpiece, his arm laid along it, looking down from his towering height on the other's unquiet hand playing with the chain of the spirit-lamp. his face was very white. phil drew a long, slow breath and looked up. bersonin spoke. his voice was cold and measured; the only sign of agitation was in the slow, spasmodic working of the great white fingers against the dark wood. "i have brought you here to-night," he said, "to make you a proposition. i have need of help--of a kind--that you can give me. it will require certain qualities which i think you possess--which we possess in common. i have chosen you because you have daring and because you are not troubled by what the coward calls conscience--that fool's name for fear!" phil touched his dry lips with his tongue. "i have as little of that as the next man," he replied. "i never found i needed much." bersonin continued: "what i have to say i can say without misgiving. for if you told it before the fact there is possibly but one man in japan who would think you sane; and if you told it after--well, for your own safety, you will not tell it then! your acceptance of my proposition will have a definite effect on your prospects, which, i believe, can scarcely be looked on as bright." phil muttered an oath. "you needn't remind me of that," he said with surly emphasis. "i've got about as much prospects as a coolie stevedore. well, what of it?" the cold voice went on, and now it had gathered a sneer: "you are twenty-three, educated, good-looking, with the best of life before you--but dependent on the niggardly charity of a rich brother for the very bread you eat. even here, on this skirt of the world where pleasures are cheap, it is only by dint of debt that you keep your head above water. now your sedate relative has come to sit in judgment on your past year. what does he care for your private tastes? what will he do when he hears of the _geisha_ suppers and the bar-chits at the club and the roulette table at the bungalow? increase that generous stipend of yours? i fancy not." phil lit a cigar with a hand that shook. the doctor's contemptuous words had roused a tingling anger that raced with the alcohol in his blood. he, with the tastes of a gentleman, as poor as a temple-rat, while his brother sailed around the globe in his steam-yacht! he saw his allowance cut off--saw himself driven to the cheap expedients of the bund beach-comber, cringing for a _yen_ from men who had won his hundreds at the roost--or perhaps sitting on an under-clerk's stool in some settlement counting-house, shabby-genteel, adding figures from eight in the morning to five at night. no more moon-light cherry-parties on the sumida river, or plum-blossom picnics, or high jinks in the inland sea. no more pony-races at omori, or cat-boat sailing at kamakura, or philandering at the maple-leaf tea-house. no more laughing japanese faces and tinted fingers--no more stolen kisses in bamboo lanes--no more haru! he struck the stand with his fist. "and if--i agree?" he said thickly. "what then?" bersonin leaned forward, his hands on the stand. it rocked under his weight. "i have talked of money. i will show you a quick way to gain it--not by years, but by _days_!--wealth such as you have never dreamed, enough to make your brother poor beside you! not only money, but power and place and honors. is the stake big enough to play for?" phil stared at him, fascinated. it was not madness back of those dappled, yellowish eyes. they were full of a knowledge, cold and measured and implacable. "what do you--want me to do?" he almost gasped the words. the expert looked him in the eye a full moment in silence, his fingers crawling and twitching. then, with a quick, leopard-like movement, he went to the wall-safe, opened it and took out what seemed a square metal box. in its top was set an indicator, like the range-finder of a camera. its very touch seemed to melt his icy control. his paleness flushed; his hand trembled as he set it upon the desk. "wait!" he said. "wait!" he looked swiftly about the room. his eye rested on the bamboo cage and a quick gleam shot across his face. he opened the wire door and the little bird hopped to his finger. he moved a metal pen-rack to the very center of the desk and perched the tiny creature on it. it burst into song, warbling full-throated, packed with melody. bersonin set the metal case a little distance away and adjusted it with minutest care. "sing, dick!" he cried loudly; "sing! sing!--" the song stopped. there had come a thrill in the air--a puff of icy wind on phil's face--a thin chiming like a fairy cymbal. phil sprang up with a cry. the fluffy ball, with its metal perch, had utterly disappeared; only in the center of the desk was a pinch of reddish-brown powder like the dust of an emery-wheel, laid in feathery whorls. he stared transfixed. "what does it mean?" he asked hoarsely. the doctor's voice was no longer toneless. it leaped now with an evil exultation. "it means that i--bersonin--have found what physicists have dreamed of for fifty years! i have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms! that box is the harness of a force beside which the engines of modern war are children's toys." he grasped phil's arm with a force that made him wince. the amber eyes glittered. "at first i planned to sell it to the highest bidder among the powers. i was a fool to think of that! the nation that buys it, to guard the secret for itself, must wall me in a fortress! that would be the reward of bersonin--the great bersonin, who had wrested from nature the most subtle of her secrets! but i am too clever for that! it must be _i_--_i alone_--who holds the key! it shall bring me many things, but the first of these is money. i must have funds--unlimited funds. the money i despise, except as a stepping-stone, but the money _you love_ and must have! well, i offer it to you!" phil's heart was beating hard. the tension of the room had increased; a hundred suffocating atmospheres seemed pressing on it. "how--how--" he stammered. bersonin took a paper from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the stand. it was a chart of yokohama harbor. a red square was drawn in the margin, and from this a fine, needle-like ray pointed out across the anchorage. with his pencil the doctor wrote two words on the red square--"the roost." phil shrank trembling into his chair. he seemed to see the other looking at him over clinking glasses at the club, while voices spoke from the next room. "_what if one of those dreadnaughts should go down in this friendly harbor!_" it came from his lips in a thin whisper, almost without his volition--the answer to the question that had haunted him that day. a gleam like the fire of unholy altars came in bersonin's eyes. "not one--_two_! a bolt from a blue sky, that will echo over europe! and what then? a fury of popular passion in one country; suspicion and alarm in all. rumors of war, fanned by the yellow press. the bottom dropping out of the market! it means millions at a single _coup_, for, in spite of diplomatic quibbles, the market is like a cork. the paris bourse is soaring. wall street will make a new record to-morrow. in london, consols are at ninety-two. my agents are awaiting my word. i have many, for that is safer. i shall spread selling orders over five countries--british bonds in vienna and new york, and steel and american railroads in london. i risk all and you--nothing. yet if you join hands with me in this we shall share alike--you and i! and with the winnings we get now we shall get more. trust me to know the way! money shall be dirt to you. the pleasure-cities of every continent shall be your playgrounds. you shall have your pretty little japanese _peri_, and fifty more besides." phil's face had flushed and paled by turns. he looked at the expert with a shivering fascination: "but there are--there will be--men aboard those ships...." he shuddered and wrenched his gaze away. bersonin put out his great hand and laid it on the other's shoulder--its weight seemed to be pressing him down into the chair. "well?" he said, in a low intense voice. "what if there are?" there was a long silence. then slowly phil lifted a face as white as paper. a look slinking and devilish lay in it now. the doctor bent down and began to speak in a low tone. the sound passed around the room, sibilant, like the sound of a bat's wings in the dark. * * * * * it was an hour before midnight when phil opened the gate of the expert's house and passed down the moon-lighted street. he walked stumblingly, cowering at the tree-shadows, peering nervously over his shoulder like one who feels the presence of a ghastly familiar. in the great room he had left, bersonin stood by the fireplace. the nervous strain and exaltation were still on him. he poured out a glass of the liqueur which he had not yet tasted and drank it off. the hot pungent mint sent a glow along his nerves. behind him ishida was methodically removing the dinner service. the doctor crossed the room and stood before the bamboo cage. he drew back the spring-door and whistling, held out his finger. "here, dick!" he called. "here, boy!" there was no response. he started. his face turned a gray-green. he drew back and stealthily turned his head. but the japanese did not seem to have noticed the silence. with the tray in his hands, he was looking fixedly at the feathery sprays of reddish-yellow dust on the polished top of the desk. chapter xxviii the forgotten man barbara pushed open the bamboo gate of the temple garden, then paused. the recluse with whom she had talked yesterday sat a little way inside, while before him, in an attitude of deepest attention, stood the diminutive figure on the huge clogs whose morning acquaintance she had made from her window. thorn was looking at him earnestly with his great myopic eye, through a heavy glass mounted with a handle like a lorgnette. "my son," he said. "why will you persist in eating _amé_, when i have taught you the classics and the true divinity of the universe? it is too sweet for youthful teeth. one of these days you will be carried to a dentist, an esteemed person with horrible tools, prior to the removal of a small hell, containing several myriads of lost souls, from the left side of your lower jaw!" barbara's foot grated on a pebble and he rose with a startled quickness. the youngster bent double, his face preternaturally grave. thorn thrust the glass into his sleeve and smiled. "i am experimenting on this oriental raw material," he said, "to illustrate certain theories of my own. ishikichi-_san_, though a slave to the sweetmeat dealer, is a learned infant. he can write forty chinese characters and recite ten texts of mencius. he also knows many damnable facts about figures which they teach in school. he has just propounded a question that confucius was too wise to answer: 'why is poverty?' not being so wise as the chinese sage, i attempted its elucidation. thus endeth our lesson to-day, ishikichi. _sayonara_." he bowed. the child ducked with a jerky suddenness that sent his round, battered hat rolling at barbara's feet. she picked it up and set it on the shaven head. "oh!" she said humbly. "i beg your pardon, ishikichi! i put the rim right in your eye!" "don't menshum it," he returned solemnly. "i got another." he stalked to the gate, faced about, bobbed over again and disappeared. barbara looked after him smilingly. "is ishikichi in straitened circumstances? or is his bent political economy?" "his father has been ill for a long time," thorn replied. "he keeps a shop, and in some way the child has heard that they will have to give it up. it troubles him, for he can't imagine existence without it." "what a pity! i would be so glad to--do you think i could give them something?" he shook his head. "after you have been here a while, you will find that simple charity in japan is not apt to be a welcome thing." "i am beginning to understand already," she said, as they walked along the stepping-stones, "that these gentle-mannered people do not lack the sterner qualities. yet how they grace them! the iron-hand is here, but it has the velvet glove. courtesy and kindness seem almost a religion with them." "more," he answered. "this is the only country i have seen in the world whose people, when i walk the street, do not seem to notice that i am disfigured!" she made no pretense of misunderstanding. "believe me," she said gently, "it is no disfigurement. but i understand. my father lived all his life in the dread of blindness." a faint sound came from him. she was aware, without lifting her eyes to his, that he was staring at her strangely. "all his life. then your father is not ... living?" "he died before i was born." she glanced at him as she spoke, for his tone had been muffled and indistinct. there was a deep furrow in his forehead which she had not seen before. "do you look like him?" "no, he was dark. i am like my mother." thorn was looking away from her, toward the lane, where, beyond the hedge, a man was passing, half-singing, half-chanting to himself in a repressed, sepulchral voice. "my mother died, too, when i was a little girl," she added, "so i know really very little about him." she had forgotten to look for the flower-of-dream. they had come to the little lake with its mossy stones and basking, orange carp. through the gap in the shrubbery the white witchery of fuji-san glowed in the sun with far-faint shudderings of lilac fire. she sat down on a sunny boulder. thorn stooped over the water, looking into its cool, green depths, and she saw him pass his hand over his brow in that familiar, half-hesitant gesture of the day before. "will you tell me that little?" he asked. "i think i should like to hear." "i very seldom talk about him," she said, looking dreamily out across the distance, "but not because i don't like to. you see, knowing so little, i used to dream out the rest, so that he came to seem quite real. does that sound very childish and fanciful?" "tell me the dreams," he answered. "mine are always more true than facts." "he was born," she began, "in the mediterranean--" she turned her head. the stone on which thorn's foot rested had crashed into the water. he staggered slightly in regaining his balance, and his face had the pale, startled look it wore when he had first seen her from the roadside. he drew back, and again his hand went up across his face. "yes," he said. "go on." "in the mediterranean--just where, i don't know, but on an island--and his mother was romaic. i have never seen greece, but i like to know that some of it is in my blood. his father was american, of a family that had a tradition of gipsy descent. perhaps he was born with the 'thumb-print' on the palm that they call the romany mark. as a child i used to wonder what it looked like." she smiled up at him, but his face was turned away. he had taken his hand from his brow, and slipped it into his loose sleeve, and stood rigidly erect. "i often used to try to imagine his mother. i am sure she had a dark and beautiful face, with large, brown eyes like a wild deer's, that used to bend above his cradle. perhaps each night she crossed her fingers over him, and said--" "_en to onoma tou patros_," he repeated, "_kai tou ouiou kai tou agiou pneumatos!_" "yes," she said, surprised. "in the name of the father, son and holy ghost. you know it?" "it is the old greek-orthodox fashion," he said in a low voice. "i should not wonder," she continued, "if she made three little wounds on him, as a baby, as i have read greek mothers do, to place him under the protection of the trinity. she must have loved him--her first boy-baby! and i think the most of what he was came to him from her." thorn moved his position suddenly, and barbara saw his shoulders rise in a deep-taken breath. "love of right and hatred of wrong," he said, "admiration for the beautiful and the true, faith in man and woman, sensitiveness to artistic things--ah, it is most often the mother who makes men what they are. not our strength or power of calculation, but her heart and power to love! in the twilight of every home one sees the mother-souls glowing like fireflies. i never had a picture of my mother. i would rather have her portrait than a fortune!" his voice was charged with feeling. she felt a strange flutter of the heart, a painful and yearning sympathy such as she had never felt before. "i wonder what he saw from that greek cradle," she resumed. "i could never fancy the room so well. i suppose it had pictures. do you think so?" he nodded. "and maybe--on one wall--a greek _ikon_, protected by a silver case ... i've seen such ... that left exposed only the olive-brown faces and hands and feet of the figures. perhaps ... when he was very little ... he used to think the brown virgin represented his mother and the large-eyed child himself." "ah," she cried, and a deeper light came in her eyes. "you have been in greece! you have seen what he saw!" but he made no reply, and after a moment she went on: "he had never known what terror was till one day an accident, received in play, brought him the fear of blindness. it must have stayed with him all his life after that, wherever he went--for he lived in other countries. i have a few leaves of an old diary of his ... here and there i feel it in the lines." she, too, fell silent. "and then--?" he said. "there my dreams end. you see how little i know of him. i don't know why he came to japan. but he met my mother here and here they were married. i should always love japan, if only for that." "he--died here?" "in nagasaki. my mother went back to america, and there i was born." she was looking out across the wide space where the roofs sank out of sight--to the foliaged slope of aoyama. suddenly a thrill, a curiously complex motion, ran over her. above those far tree-tops, sailing in slow, sweeping, concentric circles, she saw a great machine, like a gigantic vulture. she knew instantly what it was, and there flashed before her the memory of a day at fort logan when a brave young lieutenant had crashed to death before her eyes in a shattered aëroplane. if daunt were to fall ... what would it mean to her! in that instant the garden about her, thorn, the blue sky above, faded, and she stared dismayed into a gulf in whose shadows lurked the disastrous, the terrifying, the irreparable. "i love him! i love him!"--it seemed to peal like a temple-bell through her brain. even to herself she could never deny it again! she became aware of music near at hand. it brought her back to the present, for it was the sound of the organ in the new chapel across the way. looking up, she was struck by the expression on thorn's face. he seemed, listening, to be held captive by some dire recollection. it brought to her mind that bitter cry: "i can not but remember such things were, that were most precious to me!" she rose with a sudden swelling of the throat. "i must go now," she said. "the chapel is to be dedicated this morning. the organ is playing for the service now." she led the way along the stepping-stones to the bamboo gate. as they approached, through the interstices of the farther hedge she could see the figure of the ambassador, with mrs. dandridge, among the _kimono_ entering the chapel door. in the temple across the yard the baton had begun its tapping and the dulled, monotonous tom-tom mingled weirdly with the soaring harmonies of the organ. with her hand on the paling she spoke again: "one thing i didn't tell you. it was i who built the chapel. it is in the memory of my father. see, there is the memorial window. they were putting it in place when i came a little while ago." she was not looking at thorn, or she would have seen his face overspread with a whiteness like that of death. he stood as if frozen to marble. the morning sun on the chapel's eastern side, striking through its open casements, lighted the iridescent rose-window with a tender radiance, gilding the dull yellow aureole about the head of the master and giving life and glow to the face beside him--dark, beardless, and passionately tender--at which thorn was staring, with what seemed almost an agony of inquiry. "st. john," she said softly, "'the disciple whom jesus loved.'" she drew from the bosom of her dress the locket she always wore and opened it. "the face was painted from this--the only picture i have of my father." his hand twitched as he took it. he looked at it long and earnestly--at the name carved on its lid. "barbara--barbara fairfax!" he said. she thought his lips shook under the gray mustache. "you--are a buddhist, are you not?" she asked. "and buddhists believe the spirits of the dead are always about us. do you think--perhaps--he sees the chapel?" he put her locket into her hands hastily. "god!" he said, as if to himself. "he will see it through a hundred existences!" her eyes were moist and shining. "i am glad you think that," she said. in the chapel the bishop's gaze kindled as it went out over the kneeling people. "_we beseech thee, that in this place now set apart to thy service, thy holy name may be worshiped in truth and purity through all generations._" the voice rang valiant and clear in the summer hush. it crossed the still lane and entered a window where, in a temple loft, a man sat still and gray and quiet, his hands clenched in his _kimono_ sleeves: "_we humbly dedicate it to thee, in the memory of one for the saving of whose soul thou wert lifted upon the cross._" the man in the loft threw himself on his face with a terrible cry. "my child!" he cried in a breaking voice. "my little, little child, whom they have robbed me of--whom i have never known in all these weary years! you have grown away from me--i shall never have you now! never ... never!" behind him the unfinished image of kwan-on the all-pitying, tossed the sunlight about the room in golden-lettered flashes, and beneath his closed and burning lids these seemed to blend and weave--to form bossed letters which had stared at him from the rim of the rose-window: thou shalt have no other gods before me. chapter xxix daunt listens to a song the day had dawned sultry, with a promise of summer humidity, and daunt was not surprised to find the barometer performing intemperate antics. "confound it!" he muttered irritably, as he dressed. "if it was a month later, one would think there was a typhoon waltzing around somewhere in the china sea." that morning had seen his first trial of his new fan-propeller, and the glider's action had surpassed his wildest expectation. the flight, of which barbara had caught a glimpse from thorn's garden, had been a longer one than usual--quite twelve miles against a sluggish upper current--but even that failed to bring its customary glow. thereafter he had spent a long morning immersed in the work of the chancery: the study of a disputed mining concession in manchuria; a report on a contemplated issue of government bonds; a demand for a passport by a self-alleged national with a foreign accent and a paucity of naturalization papers; the daily budget of translations from vernacular newspapers, by which a home government gains a bird's-eye view of comment and public opinion in far-away capitals. the chancery was a pleasant nest of rooms opening into one another. through its windows stole the smell of the garden blossoms, and across the compound wall sounded the shrill ventriloquistic notes of peddlers, the brazen chorus of a marching squad of buglers, or the warning "_hek! hek!_" of a flying _rick'sha_. the main room was cool, furnished with plain desks and filing cabinets. against one wall yawned a huge safe in which were kept the code-books and records, and framed pictures of former chiefs of mission hung on the walls. in the anteroom japanese clerks and messengers sat at small tables. the place was pervaded by the click of type-writer keys, tinkling call-bells, and the various notes of a busy office, and floating down from a stairway came the buzzing monotone of a student interpreter in his mid-year oral examinations under the japanese secretary. but to-day daunt could not exorcise with the mass of detail the leering imps that plagued him. they peered at him over the edge of the code-books and whispered from the margins of decorous despatches, chuckling satirically. "barbara!" they sneered. "mere acquaintances often name steam-yachts for girls, don't they! arrived the same day as her ship, eh? rather singular coincidence! what a flush she had when voynich spoke of phil's brother last night at the tea-house. angry? of course she was! what engaged girl likes to have the fact paraded--especially when she's practising on another man? and how about the telegram? how long have you known her, by the way? two days? really, now!" the weekly governmental pouch had closed at noon, and pouch-days were half-holidays, but daunt did not go to the embassy. an official letter had arrived from washington which must be delivered in kamakura. daunt seized this excuse, plunged ferociously into tweeds and an hour afterward found himself in a railway carriage thudding gloomily toward the lower bay. in his heart he knew that he was trying to run away--from something that nevertheless traveled with him. the sky was palely blue, without a cloud, but the bay, where the rails skirted it, was heaving in long swells of oily amethyst like a vast carpet shaken at a distance in irregular undulations, on which _junk_ with flapping, windless sails, of the deep gold color of old straw, tumbled like ungainly sea-spiders. the western hills looked misty and uncertain, and fuji was wrapped in a wraith-like mist into which its glimmering profile disappeared. at a way-station a coolie with a huge tray piled with neat, flat, wooden boxes passed the window calling "_ben-to! ben-to!_" it reminded daunt that he had had no luncheon, and he bought one. he had long ago accustomed himself to japanese food and liked it, but to-day the two shallow sections inspired no appetite. the half which held the rice he viciously threw out of the window and unrolling the fresh-cut chop-sticks from their paper square, rummaged discontentedly among the contents of the other: dried cuttlefish, bean-curd, slices of boiled lily-bulb, cinnamon-sticks, lotos stems and a coil of edible seaweed, all wrapped in green leaves. in the end, the _mélange_ followed the rice. at kamakura an immediate answer to the letter he brought was not forthcoming, and to kill the time he strolled far down the curved beach. the usual breeze was lacking. a haze as fine as gossamer had drawn itself over the sky, and through it gulls were calling plaintively. here and there on the sea-wall women were spreading fish-nets, and along the causeway trudged blue-legged peasant-women, their backs bent beneath huge loads of brushwood. in one place a bronze-faced fisherman in a fantastic _kimono_ on which was painted sea-monsters and hobgoblins in crimson and orange, seated on the gunwale of his _sampan_ drawn above the shingle, watched a little girl who, with clothing clutched thigh-high, was skipping the frothy ripples as if they were ropes of foam. a mile from the town he met a regiment of small school-boys, in indigo-blue and white _kimono_, marching two and two like miniature soldiers, a teacher in european dress at either end of the line--future oyamas, togos and kurokis in embryo. they were coming from enoshima, the hill-island that rises in the bay like an emerald st. michael, where in a rocky cave, looking seaward, dwells holy ben-ten, the buddhist goddess of love. daunt could see its masses of dark green foliage with their pink veinings of cherry-trees, and the crawling line of board-walk, perched on piling, which gave access from the mainland when the tide was in. on its height, if anywhere, would be coolness. he filled his pipe and set off toward it along the sultry sand. the hot dazzle of the sun was in his face. there was no movement in the crisp leaves of the bamboo trees and the damp heat beat up stiflingly from the gray glare. somewhere in the air, stirless and humid, there rested a faint, weedy smell like a steaming sea-growth in a tidal ooze. daunt's pipe sputtered feebly, and, girding at the heat, he hurled it at a handful of blue ducks that plashed tiredly in the gray-green heave, and watched them dive, to reappear far away, like bobbing corks. he wished he could as easily scatter the blue-devils that dogged him. he drew a sigh of relief as he reached the long elevated board-walk and shook the sand from his shoes. underneath its shore-end a fisherman sat in the stern of a boat fishing with cormorants. a row of the solemn birds sat on a pole projecting over the water, each tethered by a string whose end was tied to the man's wrist. they seemed to be asleep, but now and then one would plunge like a diver, to reappear with a fish wriggling in its beak. daunt watched them listlessly a moment, then, passing beneath a great bronze _torii_, he slowly climbed the single shaded street that staggered up the hill between the multitudes of gay little shops running over with colored sea-shells, with grotesque lanterns made of inflated fish-skins, with carved crystal and pink and white coral--up and up, by old, old flights of mossy steps, under more ancient trees, by green monuments and lichen-stippled buddhas, till the sea below crawled like a wrinkled counterpane. daunt knew a tea-house on the very lip of the cliff, the _kinki-ro_--"inn of the golden turtle"--and he bent his steps lazily in its direction. in the heavy heat the low tile roof looked cool and inviting. tall soft-eyed iris were standing in its garden overlooking the water, and against the green their velvety leaves made vivid splashes of golden blue. on a dead tree two black crows were quarreling and cherry-petals powdered the paths like pink hail. the haze, sifting from the sky, seemed to wrap everything in a vast, shimmering veil. at the hedge he paused an instant. some one, somewhere, was humming, low-voiced, an air that he had once loved. he pushed open the gate and went on into the tremulous radiance. then he stopped short. barbara was seated above him in the fork of a low camelia tree, one arm laid out along a branch, her green gown blending with a bamboo thicket behind her and her vivid face framed in the blossoms. she sat, chin in hand, looking dreamily out across the bay, and the hummed song had a rhythm that seemed to fit her thought--slow and infinitely tender. "you!" he cried. she turned with a startled movement that dissolved into low, delicious laughter. "fairly caught," she answered. "i don't often revert far enough to climb trees, but i thought no one but haru and i was here. will you come and help me down, honorable fly-man?" "wait--" he said. "what was the song you were humming?" she looked at him with a quick intake of breath, then for answer began to sing, in a voice that presently became scarce more than a whisper: "forgotten you? well, if forgetting be hearing all the day your voice through all the strange babble of voices grave, now gay- if counting each moment with longing till the one when i see you again, if this be forgetting, you're right, dear! and i have forgotten you then!" daunt's hand fell to his side. a young girl's face nested in creamy, pink blossoms--a sweet, shy, flushed face under a mass of curling, gold-bronze hair. "i remember now!" he said in a low voice. "i ... sang it to you ... that day!" "i am flattered!" she exclaimed. "the day before yesterday you had forgotten that you ever saw poor little me! it was mrs. claybourne, of course, that you sang to! yet you were my idol for a long month and a day!" "it was to _you_," he said unsteadily. "i didn't know your name. but i never forgot the song. i remembered it that night in the garden, when i first heard you playing!" chapter xxx the island of enchantment they walked together around the curving road, leaving haru with the tea-basket. "patsy would have come," barbara had said, "but she is in the clutches of her dressmaker." and daunt had answered, "i have a distinct regard for that chinaman!" his black mood had vanished, and the leering imps had flown. in the brightness of her physical presence, how baseless and foolish seemed his sullen imaginings! what man who owned a steam yacht, knowing her, would not wish to name it the _barbara_? walking beside her, so near that he could feel the touch of her light skirt against his ankles, it seemed impossible that he should ever again be other than light-hearted. she was no acquaintance of hours, after all. he had known her for seven years. he was in wild spirits. the sky was duller now. its marvelous haze of blue and gold had turned pallid, and the sun glared with a pale, yellowish effrontery. a strange sighing was in the air, so faint, however, that it seemed only the stirring of innumerable leaves, the resinous rasping of pine-needles and the lisping fall of the flaming petals from the century-old camelia trees, that stained the ground with hot, bleeding red. far below in the shallow pools, nut-brown, bare-legged girls were gathering seaweed in hand-nets, _kimono_ tucked beneath their belts and scarlet petticoats falling to their knees, like a flock of brilliant flamingos. at a turn in the road stood a stone image of jizo, with a red paper bib about its neck. before it lay three small rice-cakes; somewhere in the neighborhood was a little sick child, three years old. at its base were heaps of tiny stones, piled by mothers whose little children had died. they stopped at a tea-house open on all sides, and, sitting cross-legged on its _tatamé_, drank tea from earthenware pots that held only a small cupful, while they listened to a street minstrel beating on a tom-tom, and singing a mysterious song that seemed about to choke him. they fed a crisp rice-cake to a baby sagging from an urchin's shoulder. a doll was strapped to the baby's back. they peered into a buddhist temple where a monotonous chant came from behind a blue-figured curtain. they went, laughing like two children, down the zigzag stone steps, past innumerable _uomitei_--crimson-benched "resting-houses," where grave japanese pedestrians sat eating stewed eels and chipping hard-boiled eggs--to the rocky edge of the tide, which now rolled in with a measured, sullen booming. he pointed to a gloomy fissure which ran into the mountain, at a little distance. "o maiden, journeying to holy ben-ten," he said, "behold her shrine!" "how disillusioning!" "people find love so, sometimes." she slowly shook her head. "not all of them," she said softly. "i am old-fashioned enough not to believe that." her brown eyes were wistful and a little troubled, and her voice was so adorable that he could have gone on his knees to her. "we will ask ben-ten about it," he said. "oh, but not '_we!_'" she cried. "i must go alone. don't you know the legend? people quarrel if they go together." "i can't imagine quarreling with you. i'd rather quarrel with myself." "that would be difficult, wouldn't it?" "not in some of my moods. ask my head-boy. to-day, for instance--" "well?" for he had paused. "i was meditating self-destruction when i met you." "by what interesting method, i wonder?" "i was about to search for a volcano to jump into." "i thought the nearest active crater is a hundred miles away." "so it is, but i'm an absent-minded beggar." she laughed. "may i ask what inspired to-day's suicidal mood?" "it was--a telegram." "oh!" she colored faintly. "i--i hope it held no bad news." he looked into her eyes. "i hope not," he said. something else was on his tongue, when "look!" she exclaimed. "how strange the sea looks off there!" a sinister, whitish bank, like a mad drift of smoke, lay far off on the water, and a tense, whistling hum came from the upper air. a drop of water splashed on daunt's wrist. "there's going to be a blow," he said. "the seaweed gatherers are all coming in, too. ben-ten will have to wait, i'm afraid. see--even her high priest is forsaking her!" from where they stood steps were roughly hewn into the rock, winding across the face of the cliff. beside these, stone pillars were socketed, carrying an iron chain that hung in rusted festoons. along this precarious pathway from the cavern an old man was hastily coming, followed by a boy with a sagging bundle tied in a white cloth. "that parcel, no doubt," said daunt, "contains the day's offerings. wait! you're not going?" for she had started down the steps. she had turned to answer, when, with the suddenness of an explosion, a burst of wind fell on them like a flapping weight, spattering them with drops that struck the rock as if hurled from a sling-full of melted metal. barbara had never in her life experienced anything like its ferocity. it both startled and angered her, like a personal affront. daunt had sprung to her side and was shouting something. but the words were indistinguishable; she shook her head and went on stubbornly, clinging to the chain, a whirl of blown garments. she felt him grasp her arm. "go back!" she shrieked. "it's--bad--luck!" as he released her there came a second's menacing lull, and in it she sprang down the steps and ran swiftly out along the pathway. he was after her in an instant, overtaking her on a frail board trestle that spanned a pool, where the cliff was perpendicular. here the wind, shaggy with spume, hurled them together. daunt threw an arm about her, clinging with the other hand to the wooden railing. her hair was a reddish swirl across his shoulder and her breath, panting against his throat, ridged his skin with a creeping delight. the rocks beneath them, through whose fissures tongues of water ran screaming, was the color of raspberries and tawny with seaweed. there was only a weird, yellow half-light, through which the gale howled and scuffled, like dragons fighting. a slather of wave licked the palsied framework. he bent and shouted into her ear. all she caught was: "must--cave--next lull--" she nodded her head and her lips smiled at him through the confused obscurity. a thrill swept her like silver rain. pulse on pulse, an emotion like fire and snow in one thrilled and chilled her. she closed her eyes with a wild longing that the wind might last for ever, that that moment, like the ecstasy of an opium dream, might draw itself out to infinite length. slowly she felt the breath of the tempest ebb about them, then suddenly felt herself lifted from her feet, and her eyes opened into daunt's. her cheek lay against his breast, as it had done in that short moment in the embassy garden. she could feel his heart bound under the rough tweed. once more the wind caught them, but he staggered through it, and into the high, rock entrance of the cave. inside its dripping rim the sudden cessation of the wind seemed almost uncanny, and the boom of the surf was a dull thunderous roar. he set her on her feet on the damp rock and laughed wildly. "do you realize," she said, "that we have transgressed the most sacred tenet of ben-ten by coming here together? we are doomed to misunderstanding!" "now that i recollect, that applies only to lovers," he answered. "then we--" "are quite safe," she quickly finished for him. "come, i want to see the shrine. we must find a candle." he peered into the gloomy depths. "i think i see some burning," he said. "we will explore." a little way inside they came to a small well, with a dipper and a rack of thin blue-and-white towels to cleanse the hands of worshipers. on a square pedestal stood a stone buddha, curiously incrusted by drippings from the roof. near it was a wooden booth, its front hung with pendents of twisted rice-straw and strips of white paper folded in diagonal notches. it held a number of tiny wooden _torii_ strung with lighted candles, above each of which was nailed a paper prayer. a few copper coins lay scattered beneath them. daunt thrust two of the candles into wooden holders and they slowly followed the narrowing fissure, guttered by the feet of centuries, between square posts bearing carven texts, and small images, coated with the spermy droppings from innumerable candles. she held up her winking light toward his face. "what a desperate absorption!" she said laughingly. "you haven't said a thing for five minutes." "i'm thinking we had better explain at once to ben-ten that we're not lovers. otherwise we may get the penalty. perhaps we'd better just tell her it was an accident, and let it go at that? what do you think?" "that might be the simplest." "all right then, i'll say 'ben-ten, dear, she wanted to come alone; she really did! we didn't intend it at all. so be a nice, gracious goddess and don't make her quarrel with me!'" "what do you suppose she will answer?" "she will say: 'young man, in the same circumstances, i should have done exactly the same myself.'" the passage had grown so low that they had to bend their heads, then all at once it widened into a concave chamber. the cannonading of the wind rumbled fainter and fainter. he took her hand and drew her forward. "there is ben-ten," he said. the goddess of love sat in a barred cleft of the rock, enshrined in a dull, gold silence. beads of moisture spangled her robe, glistening like brilliants through the mossy darkness. "poor deity!" said barbara. "to have to live for ever in a sea-cavern! it's a clammy idea, isn't it?" "that's--" he paused. "i could make a terrible pun, but i won't." "one shouldn't joke about love," she said. "have _you_ discovered that too?" she gazed at him strangely, without answering. in the wan light his face looked pale. her unresisting fingers still lay in his; he felt their touch like a breath of fire through all his veins. her eyes sparkled back the eery witch-glow of the candle-flames. "you are a green-golden gnome-girl!" he said unsteadily. "and i am under a spell." "yes, yes," she said. "i am rumptydudget's daughter! i have only to wave my candlestick--so!--to turn you into a stalagmite!" she suited the action to the word--and dropped her candle, which was instantly extinguished on the damp floor. bending forward to retrieve it, daunt slipped. the arm he instinctively threw out to save himself struck the wall and his own candle flew from its socket. as he regained his footing, confused by the blank, enfolding darkness, he stumbled against barbara, and his face brushed hers. in another instant the touch had thrilled into a kiss. a moment she lay in his arms, passive, panting, her unkissed mouth stinging with the burn of his lips. the world was a dense blackness, shot with fire and full of pealing bells, and the beating of her heart was a great wave of sound that throbbed like the iron-shod fury of the seas. "i love you, barbara!" he said simply. "i love you!" the stammering utterance pierced the swift, confused sweetness of that first kiss like a lance of desperate gladness. through the tumbling passion of the words he poured into her heart, she could feel his hands touching her face, her throat, her loosened hair. "barbara! listen, dear! i must say it! it's stronger than i am--no, don't push me away! love me! you _must_ love me! with her arms on his breast, she had made a movement to release herself. "we are mad, i think!" she breathed. "then may we never be sane!" "i--you have known me only two days! what--" "ah, no! i've known you all these years and have been loving you without really knowing it. i made a woman out of my own fancy, that i dreamed alive. in the long winter evenings when i worked at my models in the little house in aoyama, i used to see her face in my driftwood blaze and talk to her. i called her my 'lady of the many-colored fires.' i never thought she really existed, but that first night in the embassy garden i knew that my dream-woman was you!--_you_, barbara!" her hands pushed him from her no more. they fell to trembling on his breast. in the dense, salty obscurity, she turned her head sharply, to feel again his lips on hers, her own molding to his kiss. she drooped, swaying, stunned, breathless. "barbara, i love you!" "no--not again. light--the candle." "just a moment longer--here in the dark, with ben-ten. it's fate, darling! why should i have been in japan and not in persia when you came? why did i happen to be there in the garden that night, at that particular moment? why, it was the purest accident that i came here to-day! no--not accident. it was kismet! barbara!" "make--a light. i--beg you!" his lips were murmuring against her cheek. "say 'i love you,' too!" "i--can not. you ... you would hold me cheap ... i would be--i am!... what? yes, it was a tulip tree. i was sixteen.... oh, you couldn't have--why, you'd forgotten the whole thing! you had, you _had_!... don't hold me.... no, i don't care what you think!... yes, i _do_ care!... yes, i--i ... this is perfectly shameless!... dark? that makes it all the worse. what will you ... no, no! you must not kiss me again! we must go back!--i will go back...." she freed herself, and he fumbled for his fallen candle. he struck a match. the sputtering blue flame lit her white, languorous face, her fallen hair, her heaving breast. it went out. he struck another and the wick blazed up. "look at me, dear!" he said. "tell me in the light. will you marry me?" "i can not answer--now." "why? don't you love me?" "i--in so short a time, how could i? let us go now. i don't know myself--nor--nor you!" she was trembling, and he noted it with a pang of compunction. "to-morrow, sweetheart? will you give me my answer then?" "yes!" it was almost inaudible. "at the foreign minister's ball to-morrow night? i'll come to you there, dearest. i--" he stopped. she had caught her hand to her throat with a wild gesture. "ben-ten! she--she is frowning at us! there--look there!" "my poor darling!" he said. "you are nervous. see, it was only the shadow! i ought not to have brought you into this dismal hole! you are positively shivering." "let us hurry," she said, and they went quickly into the warmer air and light of the entrance. the squall had passed with the fateful swiftness of its coming. the waves still gurgled and tumbled, but the fury of the wind was over. the murk light had lifted, showing the wet sky a patchy drab, which again was beginning to show glimpses of golden hue. * * * * * they walked back to haru at the tea-house, beneath the wild, poignant beauty of disheveled cryptomeria, echoing once more the eternal song of the _semi_--along paths strewn with drenched petals and sweet with the moist scents of sodden leaves--then together, down the steep, templed hill and across the planked walk to the mainland, where a trolley buzzed through the springing rice-fields, musical now with the _mé kayui_--_mé kayui_ of the frogs. daunt accompanied them to the through line of the railway. from there he was to return to kamakura for the answer to his letter. the sun was setting when the tokyo express pulled into the station. as haru disappeared into the compartment, daunt took barbara's hand to help her to the platform. there had been no other first-class passengers to embark and the forward end of the asphalt was deserted. her lovely, flushed face was turned toward him, and there in the dusk of the station, he bent swiftly and kissed her once more on the lips. "dearest, dearest!" he said behind his teeth, and turned quickly away. in the car, as the train fled through the glory of the sunset, barbara closed her eyes, the longer to keep the impression of that eager gaze: the lithe, muscular poise of the strong frame, the parted lips, the brown hair curling under the peak of the cloth cap. she tried to imagine him on his backward journey. now the trolley had passed the rice-fields, now he was striding along the shore road toward kamakura, where the great bronze buddha was lifting its face of dreamless calm. now, perhaps, he was turning back toward the deepening blur of the green island. she shivered a little as she remembered the frown that had seemed to rest on the stony countenance of ben-ten in her cave. her thought drifted into to-morrow, when she was to give him her answer. ah, she knew what that answer would be! she thought of the telegram of the night before, which she had read in the candle-lighted street! to-morrow ware also was coming--for an answer! she knew what that would be, too. she felt a sudden pity for him. yet she knew now--what wisdom she had gained in these two swift days!--that his was not the love that most deserved it. daunt's parting kiss clung to her lips like a living flower. the hand he had clasped still burned to his touch; she lifted it and held it against her hot face, while the darkening carriage seemed to fill with the dank smell of salty wind and seaweed, mingled with his voice: "barbara, i love you!--dearest! dearest!" * * * * * she thought the gesture unseen, unguessed by any one. but in the forward car, beyond the glass vestibule door, which to her was only a trembling mirror, a man sat watching with burning eyes. he had been gazing through the window when the train stopped, had risen to his feet with instant recognition--to shrink back into his seat, his fingers clenched, his bitten lip indrawn, and a pallor on his face. it was austen ware, and he had seen that kiss. chapter xxxi the coming of austen ware dusk purpled over the rice-fields as the train sped on. still the man who had witnessed that farewell sat crouched in his seat in the forward car, stirless and pallid. from boyhood austen ware had trod a calculate path. judicious, masterful, possessed, he had gone through life with none of the temptations that had lain in wait for his younger brother phil. these traits were linked to a certain incapacity for bad luck and an unwearying tenaciousness of purpose. seldom had any one seen his face change color, had seldom seen his poise of glacial complacency shaken. to-night, however, the oil lamps which glowed dully in the ceiling of the carriage threw their faint light on a face torn with passion. barbara's beauty, whose perfect indifference no touch of sentimental passion had devitalized, had, from the first, aroused ware's stubborn sense of conquest. he had been too wise to make missteps--had put ardor into the background, while surrounding her with tactful and graceful observances which unconsciously usurped a large place in her thought. in the end he had broken down an instinctive disinclination and converted it into liking. but this was all. for the rest he had perforce been content to wait. thus matters had stood when they parted a few months ago. he recalled the day he had sailed for suez. looking back across the widening water, he had conceived then no possibility of ultimate failure. "how beautiful she is!" he had said to himself. "she will marry me. she does not love me, but she cares for no other man. she will marry me in japan." there had been nobody else then! as he peered out into the glooming dusk all kinds of thoughts raced through his mind. who was the man? was this the resurrection of an old "affair" that he had never guessed? no, when he left her, barbara had been fancy free! it was either a "steamer acquaintance," or one come to quick fruition on a romantic soil. he took out a cigar-case and struck a match with shaking fingers. had it even come to clandestine _rendezvous_? she had gone one way, the man another! a whirl of rage seized him: the slender metal snapped short off in the fierce wrench of his fingers. he thrust the broken case into his pocket with a muttered curse that sat strangely on his fastidious tongue. gradually, out of the wrack emerged his dominant impulse, caution. he had many things to learn; he must find out how the land lay. he must move slowly, reëstablish the old, easy, informal footing. above all he must lay himself open to no chance of a definite refusal. a plan began to take shape. his telegram had told her he would arrive in tokyo next day. meanwhile he would find out what phil knew. he left the train at yokohama under cover of the crowd. in a half-hour he was aboard his yacht. two hours later he sat down to order his dinner on the terrace of the hotel, cool, unruffled, immaculately groomed. the place was brightly barred with the light from the tall dining-room windows, and the small, round tables glowed with _andons_ whose candle-light shone on men's conventional black-and-white, and women's fluttering gowns. there was no wind--only the long, slow breath of the bay that seemed sluggish with the scents of the tropical evening. a hundred yards from the hotel front great floating wharves had been built out into the water. they were gaily trimmed with bunting and electric lights in geometrical designs. a series of arches flanked them, and these were covered with twigs of ground pine. ware had guessed these decorations were for the european squadron of dreadnaughts, of whose arrival to-day's newspapers had been full. as he looked over the _menu_, a man sitting near-by rose and came to him with outstretched hand. he was commander dekay, a naval _attaché_ whom ware had known in europe. they had met again, a few days since, at kyoto. he hospitably insisted on the other's joining his own party of five. ware was not gregarious, and to-night was in a sullen mood. but, with his habitual policy, he thrust this beneath the surface and in another moment was bowing to the introductions: baroness stroloff, her sister, a chic young matron whose natural habitat seemed to be paris; the ubiquitous and popular count voynich, and a statuesque american girl, whose name ware recognized as that of a clever painter of japanese children. he looked well in evening dress, and his dark beard, thick curling pompadour and handsome eyes added a something of distinction to a well-set figure. "so you have just arrived, mr. ware?" the baroness said. "i hope you're not one of those terrible two-days-in-japan tourists who spoil all our prices for us." "i expect to stay a month or more," he said. "and as for prices, i shall put up as good a battle as i can." "you know," said the artist, with an air of imparting confidential information, "everybody is scheduled in tokyo. if you belong to an embassy you have to pay just so much more for everything. in the embassies, 'number-one-man' pays more than 'number-two-man,' and so on down. you and i are lucky, mr. ware. we are not on the list, and can fight it out on its merits." "belonging to the rankless file has its advantages in japan, then." "not at official dinners, i assure you," interposed the baroness' sister with a shrug. "it means the bottom of the table, and sitting next below the same student-interpreter nine times in the season. i have discovered that i rank with, but not above, the dentist." "you tempt me to enter the service--in the lowest grade," said ware, and the baroness laughed and shook her fan at him reprovingly. the sky above their heads was pricked out with pale stars, like cat's-eye pins in a greenish-violet tapestry. up and down the roadway went shimmering _rick'sha_, and japanese couples in light _kimono_ strolled along the bay's edge, under the bent pines, their low voices mingled with the soft lapping of the tide. now and then a bicycle would pass swiftly, bare sandaled feet chasing its pedals, and _kimono_ sleeves flapping like great bats'-wings from its handle-bars; or a flanneled english figure would stride along, with pipe and racquet, from late tennis at the recreation-ground. from the corner came the cries of romping children and the tapping staff and double flute-note of a blind _masseur_. the talk flew briskly hither and thither, skimming the froth of the capital's _causerie_: recent additions to the official set, the splendid new ball-room at the german embassy, and the increasing importance of tokyo as a diplomatic center--the coming imperial "cherry-viewing garden-party," and the annual palace duck-hunt at the _shin-hama_ preserve, where the game is caught, like butterflies, in scoop-nets--the new ceremonial for imperial audiences--whether a stabbing affray between two legation _bettos_ would end fatally, and whether the turkish minister's gold dinner service was solid--and a little scandalous surmise regarding the newest continental widow whose stay in japan had been long and her dinners anything but exclusive--a rumored engagement, and--at last!--the arrival of the new beauty at the american embassy. "a _real one_!" commented voynich, screwing his eye-glass in more tightly. "and that means something in the tourist season." ware's fingers flattened on the stem of his glass of yellow chartreuse as the artist said: "we are in the throes of a new sensation at present, mr. ware; a case of love at first sight. it's really a lot rarer than the novelists make out, you know! we are all tremendously interested." "but he knows her," said voynich. "the other evening in tokyo, mr. ware, miss fairfax mentioned having met you. she is from virginia, i think." ware bowed. "she is very good to remember me," he said. "and so miss fairfax has met her fate in japan?" "well, rather!" said the artist. "i hear betting is even that she'll accept him inside a fortnight." ware sipped his liqueur with a tinge of relief. evidently the world of tokyo had not yet discovered that the new arrival's first name was that of his yacht. "daunt doesn't play according to hoyle," grumbled voynich. "she's a guest of his own chief and he ought to give the others half a chance. he lives in the embassy compound, too, confound him! he monopolized her outrageously at the review the other day! he's an american 'trust.' i shall challenge him." the voice of dekay broke in: "coppery hair and pansy-brown eyes, a skin like a snowdrift caught blushing, and a mouth like the smile of a red flower! a girl that romney might have loved, slim and young and thoroughbred--there you have the capital sentence of the secretary of the american embassy!" down the middle of the street came running a boy, bare-legged, bareheaded and scantily clad. a bunch of jangling bells was tied to his girdle, and his hands were full of what looked like small blue hand-bills. dekay got up quickly. "there's an evening extra," he said. "it's the _kokumin shimbun_." he bolted down the steps, stopped the runner and returned with one of the blue sheets. he scanned it rapidly--he was a student of the vernacular. "nothing especial," he informed them. "prices in wall street are smashing the records. that looks like a clear political horizon, in spite of what the wiseacres have been saying. this visit of the squadron will prove a useful poultice, no doubt, to reduce international inflammation--its officers being shown the sights of the capital, and the celebrations to come off as per schedule, including the naval minister's ball to-morrow night. by the way," he added, turning to ware, "i arranged for an invitation for you. it's probably at the hotel in tokyo now, awaiting your arrival." a little gleam came to ware's eyes. the threads were in his hands, and this suited his plan. "thanks," he said; "you're very kind, commander. i shall see the subject of your rhapsody, then, before the judge puts on his black cap." "ah, but you'll have no chance," laughed the baroness. "trust a woman's eye." "unless his aëroplane takes a tumble," said the american girl reflectively. "there's always a chance for a tragedy there!" they rose to depart. "we are actually going to the opera, mr. ware," said the baroness; "the 'popular hardman comic opera company,' if you please, 'with miss cissy clifford.' doesn't that sound like broadway? it comes over every season from shanghai, and it's our regular spring dissipation. you'd not be tempted to join us, i suppose?" he bowed over her hand. "it is my misfortune to have an engagement here." "well, then--_jusqu'au bal_. good night." * * * * * ware drank his black coffee alone on the terrace. daunt--a secretary of embassy! a rival less experienced than he, full of youth's enthusiasms--a young romeo, wooing from the garden of officialdom! it had been a handful of days against his own round year; a few meetings, at most, to offset his long and constant plan! and, as a result, the thing he had seen through the car window. he shut his teeth. he would have taken bitter toll of that kiss! as he lit his cigar, one of the hotel boys came to him. on his arrival ware had sent him to phil's bungalow on the bluff with a note. "ware-_san_ not at home," he said. "where is he?" "no yokohama now. he go tokyo yesterday. stay one week." "is he at the hotel there?" "boy say no hotel. house have got." "what is the address?" "boy no must tell. he say letter send tokyo club." ware's composure had been fiercely shaken that night and this obstacle in his path pricked him to the point of exasperation. with impatience he threw away his cigar and walked out through the cool, brilliant evening. but the glittering pageant of the prismatic streets inspired only a rising irritation. when a pedestrian jostled him, the elaborate bow of apology and ceremonial drawing-in of breath met with only a morose stare. he left the bund and threaded the _honcho-dori_--the "main street"--striving to curb his mood. midway of its length was a jeweler's shop-window with a beautiful display of jewel-jade. in it was hung a sign which he read with a wry smile: "english spoken: american understood." ware entered and handed the japanese clerk his broken cigar-case. the counter was spread with irregular pieces of the green and pink stone, wrought with all the laborious cunning of the oriental lapidary. at his elbow a clerk was packing a jade bracelet into a tiny box for delivery. he wrapped and addressed it painstakingly with a little brush- esquire philp weare, kasumiga-tani cho, 36. tokyo. in the street ware smiled grimly as he entered the address in his note-book. he had always believed in his luck. to-morrow he would find phil, and gain further enlightenment--incidentally on the matter of jade bracelets! his mouth set in contemptuous lines as he walked back to the hotel. chapter xxxii the woman of sorek "and as to the foreigner named philip ware, that is all you know?" "that is all, ishida-_san_," haru answered. they stood in the cryptomeria shadows of reinanzaka hill, from which he had stepped to her side as she came from the embassy gate. it was dark, for the moon was not yet risen, and the evening was very still. one sleepy _semi_ bubbled in the foliage and in the narrow street at the foot of the hill, with its glimmering _shoji_, she could hear the fairy tinkle of wind bells in the eaves. such an ambush by her lover, unjustified, would have been a dire affront to the girl's rigid japanese code of decorum. that he had seen phil greet her at mukojima the evening before had shamed her pride, and in speaking of it to-night he had seemed at first to lay a rude finger on her maiden dignity. but she had seen in an instant that his errand was inspired by neither anger nor jealousy. he had touched at once her instinct of the momentous. her quick, clever brain and finely attuned perception read what lay beneath his questions. the great european expert whom japan herself employed, and the young foreigner who had pursued her--were they, then, objects of question to that wonderful, many-sided governmental machine which was lifting japan into the front rank of modern nations? although she had never shared the disfavor with which her father viewed her lover's duties, she had wondered at his present apparently menial position. to-night she was gaining a quick glimpse beneath the surface. he told her nothing of the details which, though he could not himself have built a tangible indictment from them, had one by one clung together into a sharp suspicion that embraced the two men. but the agitation she felt in his words had sent a quick thrill through her, had tapped that deep racial well of feeling, the _yamato damashii_, which is the japanese birthright. she felt a sudden passionate wish that she, though a woman, might pour herself into the mighty stream of effort--though she be but a whirling cherry-petal in the great wind of her nation's destiny. he had come to her for any shred of information that might add to his knowledge of the youth who was now bersonin's satellite. but she had been able to tell him nothing. she had often seen the huge expert--his automobile had clanged past her that morning--but till to-night she had not even known the other's name or where he lived. "that is all, ishida-_san_." it hurt her to say these words. she bowed to his ceremonious farewell, a slim, misty figure that stood listening to his rapid footsteps till they died in the darkness. she walked up the dim slope with lagging pace. the steep road, always deserted at night, had no sound of grating cart or whirring _rick'sha_, but her paper lantern was unlighted and no song greeted the crow that flapped his grating way above her head. she was thinking deeply. at the top of the hill, opposite the huge, rivet-studded gate of the princess' compound, lay the lane on which the chapel stood. an evening service was in progress and the faint sound of the organ was borne to her. as she turned into the darker shade she was aware of two pedestrians coming toward her,--of a voice which she recognized with a shiver of apprehension. the sentry-box by the great gate stood close at hand. it was empty, and she stepped into it. doctor bersonin and phil paused at the turning, while the latter lit a cigar from a match which he struck on the sentry-box. haru's heart was in her throat, but her dark _kimono_ blent with the wood and the flash that showed her both faces blinded his eyes. "see!" said the doctor. a mile away, from the low-lying darkness of hibiya park, a stream of fireworks shot to the zenith, to explode silently in clusters of colored balls. "the first rocket in honor of the squadron!" "to-morrow the admiral has an imperial audience," said phil, "and the superior officers are to be decorated." "so!" said the other in a low, malignant voice. "and i--who have designed japan's turrets and cheapened her arsenal processes--i may not wear the cordon and star of the rising-sun!" in the darkness a smile of malice crossed his face. "we shall see if she will hold her head so high--_then_! whether war follow or not, it will damn her in the eyes of the nations! she will not recover her prestige in twenty years!" they passed on down the dark slope, out of sight and hearing of the girl crouched in a corner of the sentry-box. at the foot of the hill, bersonin said: "it will take some days longer to finish my work, but the ships will stay for a fortnight. to-morrow night i will mark the triangle on the roof of the bungalow, so that the angle of the tripod will be exact. there must be no bungling. you can go by an earlier train, so we shall not be seen together, and i shall return here in time for the ball." there was a fire in haru's bosom as she went on along the thorn-hedges. she had heard every word, and she said the english sentences over and over to herself to fix them in her mind. what they had been talking of was the secret that lay beneath ishida's questions--for an instant she had almost touched it. a feeling of deep pride rose in her. japan was not sleeping--it watched! and in the path of the plotting danger stood her lover. these two men hated japan! war? they had used the word. japan did not fear war! had not that been proven? her heart swelled. but the thing they were planning was her country's enduring humiliation, "whether war follow or not!" she felt a sudden deep horror. could such plots be and their god--_her_ god now--not blast them with his thunder? and one of these men had spoken with her, touched her, _kissed_ her! she struck herself repeatedly and hard on the lips. all at once she shivered. might it be that in spite of all, such a black design could succeed? the chapel was brilliantly lighted and the rose-window threw beautiful tints, like shawls of many-colored gauze, over the shrubbery. she entered and slipped into a seat near the door, burning with her thoughts. the first evening service had brought a curious crowd and the place was nearly filled. she rose for the singing and knelt for the prayer mechanically, her delicate fingers twisting the little white-enamel cross hanging from its thin gold chain on the bosom of her _kimono_. painful imaginings were running through her mind. the lesson was being read: it was from the old testament, the modern, somewhat colloquial translation. this-after, samson a sorek valley woman called delilah did love. then the princes of the philistines the woman-to up-came, saying: as for you, by sweet discourse prevail that where his great power is or by what means overcoming, to bind and torture him we may be able ... it seemed to her suddenly that a great wind filled all the chapel and that the words sat on it. slowly her face whitened till it was the hue of death. _she_ might find out the secret! and delilah to samson said: where your great power is or by what means overcoming to bind and torture you one may be able, this me tell. she began to tremble in every limb. she, a _samurai's_ daughter? she thought of her father, aged and broken, grieving that he had had no son in the war. she had been but a useless girl-child, left to plant paper prayers at the cross-roads for the brave men who longed to achieve a glorious death. if she did this thing--would it not be for japan? and he at last-to his mind completely opened. the woman's knees-upon samson did sleep and she called a man who of his head the seven locks cut off ... and the power of him was lost. if she did, would it avail? she remembered phil's eyes on her face the day on the sands at kamakura--their smouldering, reckless glow. she remembered the bamboo lane! in those daredevil kisses her woman's instinct had divined the force of the attraction she exercised over him--had felt it with contempt and a self-humiliation that burned her like an acid. to use that for her purpose? but she was a christian! from the christian god's "_thou shalt not_" there was no appeal. she remembered suddenly her last service at the buddhist temple across the lane, and how the old priest had bade her a gentle farewell, wishing her peace and joy in her new religion, and saying smilingly that all religions were augustly good, since they pointed the same way. she saw the nunnery, with its tall clumps of yellow dahlias and wild hydrangeas; above which hung gauzy robes that waved like gray ghosts escaping from the mold into the sunshine. she saw the cherry-trees touched by the golden summer light, the mossy monuments in the burying-ground, the pigeons fluttering about the lichened pavement. the audience was singing now--the japanese version of _jesus, lover of my soul_: _waga tamashii wo ai suru yesu yo, nami wa sakamaki, kaze fuki-arete._ she could no longer be a christian! but the old gods of her people shining from their golden altars--the ancient divinities who looked for ever down above the sound of prayer--they would smile upon her! chapter xxxiii the flight for all save one, sleep came early that evening to the house in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods. in her little room haru lay as stirless as a sleeping flower. there was no sound save the hushed accents of the outer night that penetrated the wooden _amado_. at length she rose, noiselessly slid the paper _shoji_, and with infinite care, inch by inch, pushed back the shutters. the moon had risen and a flood of moonlight came into the room. stealthily she opened a wall-closet and selected her best and gayest robe--a holiday _kimono_ of dim green, with lotos flowers, and an _obi_ of cloth-of-gold, with chrysanthemums peeping from the weave. by the round mirror on her low dressing-cabinet, she redressed the coiled ebony butterfly of her hair, and set a red flower in it. she touched her face with the soft rice-powder, and added a tint of carmine to the set paleness of her cheeks. she wrapped in a _furoshiki_ some soberer street clothing, toilet articles, and a mauve _kimono_ woven with silver camelias, set the bundle by the opened _amado_ and noiselessly passed into the next room. it was the larger living-apartment. the tiny lamp which burned before the golden shrine of kwan-on on the buddha-shelf cast a wan glimmer over the spotless alcove, and threw a ghostly light on her finery. through the thin paper _shikiri_ she could hear her father's deep breathing, and in the room in which he slept a little clock chimed eleven. she opened the door of the shrine and stood looking at the tablet it held--the _ihai_ of her mother. the _kaimyo_, or soul name, it bore signified "moon-dawn-of-the-mountain-of-light-dwelling-in-the-mansion-of-luminousperfume." she rubbed her palms softly together before it and her lips moved silently. from the golden shadows she seemed suddenly to feel her mother's hand guiding her childish steps to that place of morning worship, to see that loving face, as she remembered it, looking down on her across the rim of years. she bent and passed her hand along the two swords, one long, one short, that rested on their lacquered rack beneath the shelf--it was her farewell to her father. she had left no message. she could tell no one. if she succeeded, she would have done her part. if she failed--there was only a blank darkness in that thought. but she had no agitation now--only a dull ache. in her own room she took a book from a drawer and slipped it into her sleeve, caught up the _furoshiki_, stepped noiselessly to the outer porch and carefully closed the _amado_ behind her. she walked swiftly back to the empty chapel. the great glass window that had seemed so beautiful with the light behind it, was now dark and opaque and dead. only the cross above the roof in the moonlight looked as white as snow. she drew the book from her sleeve. it was her bible, with her name on the fly-leaf. she unhooked the gold chain about her neck and slipped off the little enamel cross. she put this between the leaves of the bible and laid it on the doorstep. a half-hour later she stood before a wistaria-roofed gate in _kasumiga-tani cho_--the "street-of-the-misty-valley"--near aoyama parade-ground. the glass lantern above it threw a dim light on a gravel path twisting through low shrubbery. down the street she could hear a dozen students chanting the marching song of hirosé chusa, the young war hero: "though the body die, the spirit dies not. he who wished to be reborn seven times into this world, for the sake of serving his country, for the sake of requiting the imperial favor- has he really died?" haru opened the gate. cherry-petals were sifting down like rosy snowflakes over the scarlet trembling of _nanten_ bushes. a little way inside was a graceful house entrance half-shaded by a trailing vine. the _amado_ were not closed, the _shoji_ were brilliantly lighted. with a little sob she unfastened the golden _obi_, rewound and tied it with the knot in front. chapter xxxiv on the knees of delilah the room where phil sat was softly bright with _andon_, through whose thin paper sides the candle-light filtered tranquilly. it had been furnished in a plain, half-foreign fashion; a book-rack and a french mahogany desk sat in a corner, an ormolu clock ticked on its top, and beside it was a lounge piled with volumes from the shelves. on a bracket sat three small carvings in dark wood, replicas of the famous monkeys of the great jingoro the left-handed, preserved in iyeyasu temple at nikko. with their paws one covered his eyes, another his ears, the third his mouth, representing the "i see not--i hear not--i tell not" of the ancient wisdom. the place, however, to which these had given a suggestion of quaint and extraordinary art, was now touched with a certain tawdriness. it would have affected a japanese almost to nausea. the severity of beauty of its etched and paneled walls, the plain elegance of its satinwood fittings, were cheapened with a veneer of vulgarity. a row of picture postcards in colors was pinned on the wall--the sort the tourist buys for ten _sen_ on the ginza, too highly tinted and with much meretricious gilding--and a photograph hung in a silver-gilt frame of interlocked dragons. it showed a girl in abbreviated skirts and exaggerated posture; on the mount was printed: "miss cissy clifford in _gay paree_." the air was full of the sickly-sweetish smell of turkish cigarettes. the desk was a confusion of pipes, ivory _nets'ke_, cigarette-boxes and what not, and a man's cloth cap and a gauntlet were tossed in a corner, beside an open gold-lacquer box heaped with gloves. phil, however, felt no qualm. the room fitted him as a scabbard fits its sword. he had discarded his heavier outer clothing and donned a loose, wide-sleeved robe of cool silk, tied with a crimson cord. "give me the whisky-and-soda," he said to the grizzled servant, in the vernacular, "and i shan't want you again to-night." the bottle the japanese left at his elbow was becoming phil's constant comforter. alone with his thoughts, he fled to it as the _hashish_ eater to his drug, because it banished his dread and bolstered the courage that he longed for. to-night, as he sat with the intoxication creeping like dull fire in his blood, he was thinking of haru, with her soft smooth skin, her perfect neck, her lithe, graceful limbs, her eyes that held caught laughter like moss in amber. his thought broke off. he had heard a sound outside. it seemed to be a light tapping on the grill of the outer door. could it be bersonin? had anything gone wrong? he went hastily into the anteroom and opened the grill. for an instant he stared unbelievingly at the figure standing there, the gay _kimono_, the rouged cheeks, the sparkling eyes. he took a step forward. "haru! is it really you, little girl?" he cried. she laughed--a high, clear, flute-like note. "such an astonish!" she said. "you not know my _mus'_ come ... after ... after those kiss? can i not to come in, phil-lip?" with a laugh that echoed her own--but one of ringing triumph--he caught her hand, drew her into the lighted room and closed the _shoji_. his look flamed over her. "i couldn't believe my eyes!" he cried. "i don't half believe them yet! why, your hands are as cold as ice. we'll have a drink, eh!" he went into an outer room, came back with a bottle of champagne and knocked off its neck against the mantel. "yes, yes!" she said. "my mus' drink--so to be gay, phil-lip!" she drank the bubbling liquor at a draft. "what are the use of to be good? _né?_" "you're right, little girl! the pious people are the dull ones!" he came to her unsteadily--he had noticed the reversed _obi_. "so you'll train with me, eh? well, we'll show them a trick or two! how would you like to have plenty of money, haru--as much as you can count on a _soroban_? would you think a lot more of me if i got it for you?" "you so--much clever!" she laughed. "no all same japan man. he ve-ree stupid! my think you mos' bes' clever man in these whole worl', to goin' find so much money--_né?_" with a savage elation he drew her close in his arms. the great spiral of her headdress drooped under his caresses, and the blue-black hair fell all about the white face. chapter xxxv 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!" chapter xxxvi behind the shikiri mr. y. nakajima, the almond-eyed guide of gold-filled teeth, came to the end of his elaborate conversation. he turned from the old servant, leaning on his pruning knife, and spoke to the man who stood waiting outside the wistaria-gate in the street-of-the-misty-valley. "he say mr. philip ware stay here," he announced, "but house is ownerships of his friend, mr. daunt, of america embassy. he regret sadly that no one are not at home." ware reflected. daunt's house? he lived in the embassy compound--so they had said at dinner last night. why should he maintain this native house in another quarter of tokyo? there came to his mind that hackneyed phrase "the custom of the country," the foreigner's specious justification of the modern "madame butterfly." in this interminable city, with its labyrinthine mazes, who could tell what this or that gray roof might shelter? was this a nook enisled, for pretty japanese romances "under the rose"? he had loaned it to phil--they were friends. ware struck his stick hard against the hedge. he scarcely knew what thought had entered his mind, so nebulous was it, so indefinable. if he had thought to use this discovery, he knew no way; if it was daunt's covert, here was phil in possession. "ask him if he has any idea where he is." the guide translated. the servant was ignobly unacquainted, as yet, with the _danna-san's_ illustrious habits. he arrogantly presumed to suggest that he might augustly be in any one of a hundred esteemed spots. ware thought a moment, frowningly. "tell him i am ware-_san's_ brother," he said then, "and that i have just arrived in tokyo. i shall wait in the house till he comes." the old man bowed profoundly at the statement of the relationship. he spoke at some length to the guide. the latter looked at ware questioningly but hesitated. "well?" asked the other tartly. "he think better please you wait to the hotel." ware struck open the gate with a flare of irritation. "you can go now," he said to the guide, and disdaining the servant, strode along the gravel path to the house entrance. the old man looked after him with an enigmatic japanese smile. it was not his fault if the foreigners (the _kappa_ devour them!) ate dead beasts and were all quite mad! he tucked up his _kimono_, stacked his gardening-tools neatly under the hedge, and betook himself across the street for a smoke and a game of _go_ with the neighbor's _betto_. under the trailing vine ware slid back the _shoji_ and entered the house. as he stood looking at the interior his lip curled. he hated the cheapness and vulgarity to which phil turned with instinctive liking, and he had long ago come thoroughly to despise his younger brother and to relish the whip-hand which the law, with its guardianship, gave him. the place fitted phil, from the cigarette odor to the loud photograph in the dragon-frame and the partly open wall-closet with its significant array of bottles. it expressed his idea of "a good time!" he slid open a _shikiri_. it showed a room, evidently unused, littered with tools, a dusty table with models of curious wing-like propellers, a small electric dynamo and a steel-lathe. he opened another, and stood looking at the room it disclosed with a faint smile. it was scrupulously clean and orderly, and, in contrast to the outer apartment, had an atmosphere of delicate refinement. on the wall hung a tiny gilt image of kwan-on and below it on an improvised shelf an incense rod was burning with a clean, pungent odor. at one side was suspended a mosquito-bar of dark green gauze, and across a low stool was laid a _kimono_, with silver camelias on a mauve ground. he picked this up and looked at it curiously, half conscious of a faint perfume that clung to it. he shut his teeth. the camelia had always been barbara's favorite flower! * * * * * meanwhile the girl thus incongruously in his thought had felt a gray shadow across her sunshine. she found her uncle greatly perplexed and troubled. haru's bible, found on the chapel doorstep, had been brought to him that morning. he had sent at once to the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods and the messenger had returned with news of her disappearance. the fact that she had taken clothing with her showed that the flight was a deliberate one. it pained him to think what the return of the book and the little cross might mean. in his long residence in japan the bishop had grown accustomed to strange _dénouements_, to flashing revelations of subtle deeps in oriental character. but save for one instance of many years ago--which the sight of barbara must always recall to him--he had never been more saddened than by to-day's disclosure. what he told her had left barbara with an uneasy apprehension. she drove away pondering. the anxious speculation blurred the glamour of the afternoon. the homeward course took her through aoyama, by unfrequented streets of pleasant, suburban-like gardens and small houses with roofs of fluted tile as softly gray as silk. here and there a bean-curd peddler droned his cry of "_to-o-fu! to-o-fu-u!_" and under a spreading _kiri_ tree a blind beggar squatted, playing a flute through his nostrils, while his wife, also blind and with a beady-eyed baby strapped to her back, twanged a _samisen_ beside him. in the road groups of little girls were playing games with much clapping of hands and shouting in shrill voices. in one of the cross-streets a dozen coolies strode, carrying flaming white banners painted in red idiographs. the last bore a huge _papier-maché_ bottle--an advertisement of a popular brand of beer. a brass band of four pieces, discoursing hideously tuneless sounds, led them, and between band and banners stalked a grotesquely clad figure on stilts ten feet tall, the shafts pantalooned so that his legs seemed to have been drawn out like india-rubber. the spidery pedestrian was followed by a score of staring children of all ages and sizes. suddenly barbara rose to her feet in the carriage. she had seen a girl emerge from a small temple and turn into a side street. "fast! drive fast, taka," she called quickly. "the street to the left!" he obeyed, but a _soba-ya_ had halted his shining copper cart of steaming buckwheat, and momentarily delayed them. the hastening figure was farther away when they rounded the turning. barbara clasped her hands together. "it _was_ haru! it _was_ haru! i am _sure_!" she whispered. the girl slipped through a gateway hung with wistaria. as barbara sprang to the ground she was hurrying through the garden. "haru!" but the flying figure did not seem to hear the call. barbara ran quickly after her along the gravel path. * * * * * in the house, austen ware, standing with the _kimono_ in his hand, had heard the rumble of carriage wheels. he had left the outer _shoji_ open, and through the aperture he saw the slim form hastening toward the doorway. an exclamation broke from his lips. behind her, just entering the gate, was barbara! for a breath he stared. a cool, thriving suspicion--one bred of his anger and humiliation, that shamed his manhood--ran through him. barbara, _there_? was it another _rendezvous_, then? the fierce, self-dishonoring doubt merged into the mad jealousy that already burned him like a brand. he dropped the _kimono_, drew back the _shikiri_ of the unused apartment, and stepped inside. swiftly and noiselessly the light partition slipped into place behind him. chapter xxxvii [japanese: donto] through the thin paper pane, parted by his moistened finger, ware's hot, hollow eyes saw the japanese girl come into the room. she had not waited to shut the _shoji_ behind her. she drew quick sobbing breaths and her eyes had the desperate look of a hunted animal. she ran into the sleeping apartment and closed its _shikiri_. barbara had halted at the doorway. as she stood looking in, her eyes fell on the mauve _kimono_ with its silver camelias. it was the robe haru had worn the first evening she came to her. if she had doubted, all doubt was now gone. an instant she hesitated, then, with sudden resolution, knocked on the grill and stepped across the threshold. the man who watched could not solve the puzzle, but in that instant the sick suspicion he had harbored became a cold and lifeless thing in his breast. a sense of shame rushed through him as he saw her gaze wander about the interior with its veneer of the foreign: to the disordered desk--the lounge and its litter of books--the photograph on the wall--the open panel with its champagne bottles. in her glance distaste had grown to a quick question. the coarse suggestions of the place were welling over her. whose house was this? had haru seen her and was she hiding from her? suddenly she saw the man's cap and gauntlet in the corner. her cheeks rushed into flame. she seemed to see haru's innocent face smiling at her over the throbbing _samisen_ and through its tones to hear again the echo of a ribald laugh before the gilded cages of the yoshiwara. something in her cried out against the inference. all at once she took an abrupt step forward. she was looking at the round glass lantern just outside the doorway, painted with three characters: [japanese: donto] she chilled as if ether had been poured in her veins. the name they stood for had been her first lesson in japanese--_which haru had taught her_! she snatched up one of the volumes from the chair. it was lillienthal's _conquest of the air_. she opened it to the title page. ware, watching, saw with surprise that she was trembling violently. she had grown pale to the lips. the book slipped from her fingers and crashed on to the _tatamé_. it lay there, open as she had held it, and he saw what was written across the white leaf. it was daunt's name. his thought leaped as if at the flick of a lash. daunt's book! what was she thinking? the piteous pallor that swept her face like an icy wave answered him. why she was there--her interest in this japanese girl who fled from her--he could not guess. but it was clear that she had not known the house was daunt's, and that with the knowledge, she was face to face with what must seem a damning complicity. perhaps some hint of this retreat had come to her--he knew how gossip feathered its shafts!--some covert allusion, some laughing _oui-dire_, to which her coming had now given such verity. phil was the _deus ex machina_ of the situation. his japanese _amour_ she was now laying at daunt's door! all this flashed through his mind in an instant. he watched her intently. over barbara was sweeping a hideous chaos of mocking voices, bits of recollection barbed with agony. the little house near aoyama parade-ground--the carriage had passed the great empty plaza a few moments ago--that he had kept from "sentiment"! the house she had asked him to show her, when he had evaded the request. and haru! a feeling of physical anguish like that of death came to her; a dull pain was in her temples and the floor seemed to be rising up with her toward the ceiling. daunt? he whose lips had lain on hers, whose letter was in her bosom--it burned her flesh now like a live coal! "there has never been another woman to me, barbara. there never will be!" the words seemed to launch themselves from the air, stinging like fiery javelins. behind the _shikiri_, a weird, malevolent clamor was shouting through ware's brain. he stood alone with his temptation. what had he to do with daunt, or with her belief in him? she had accepted his own advances, beckoned him half around the world--for what? to discard him for this man whom she had known but a handful of days! chance had arranged this _mise en scène_. was he to tell her the truth--and lose her? the key to the situation was in his hand. he had only to keep silence! at that moment he felt crumble down in some crude gulf within the fabric of his self-esteem--the high-built structure of years. something colder, formless and malignant, came to sit on its riven foundations. a savage elation grew in him. suddenly a _shikiri_ was flung aside. haru stood there, her face deathly pale, her hands wrenching and tearing at her sleeves. she laughed, a high, gasping, unnatural treble. "so-o-o, _ojo-san_! you come make visiting--_né_? the shrill voice rang through the silent room. "my new house now, an' mos' bes' master. no more christian! my bad--oh, ve-ree bad japan girl!" with another peal of laughter she pointed to the knot of her _obi_. it was tied in front. barbara ran down the garden path as if pursued. she stepped into the carriage blindly. the _fox-woman_! votary of the fox-god, at whose candle-lighted shrine she had refused tribute! this, then, was the end. it came to her like the striking of a great bell. to-morrow the streets would lie as vivid in the sunlight, the buglers would march as blithely, the bent pines would wave, the lotos-pads in the moat glisten, the gorgeous _geisha_ flash by: she alone would know that the sun had died in the blue heaven! "home, taka," she said, and leaned back and closed her eyes. * * * * * behind her haru's laughter had broken suddenly. she rushed into the little sleeping-room and threw herself on the _tatamé_ before the tiny image of kwan-on, in a wild burst of sobbing. ware opened the _shikiri_ softly, and with noiseless step, passed out of the house. chapter xxxviii the lady of the many-colored fires the spacious residence of the minister of marine that night was a maze of light. all social tokyo would be at the ball in honor of the admiral and officers of the visiting squadron. it was late when daunt turned his steps thither through the fragrant evening. the deciphering of a voluminous telegram had kept him at the chancery till eleven. all that day he had worked with a delicious exhilaration rioting in his pulses. he had not seen barbara, but her face had seemed always before him--quiveringly passionate as he had seen it in ben-ten's cave, hazed with daring softness as it had turned to his on the steps of the railway carriage. there had been moments when some aroma of the spring air made him catch his breath, mindful of the crisp, sweet scent of her hair or the maddening fragrance of her lips. he thought of "big" murray and his letter, at which he had bridled--how long ago? he understood now what the complacent old pirate had been talking about! he would have an epistle to write him to-morrow in return! to-night he was to see her! in fancy he could feel her slim hand on his sleeve as they danced--could see himself sitting with her in some dusky alcove sweet with plum-blossoms--could hear her say ... a hoarse warning from a _betto_ and he sprang aside for a carriage that dashed past through the gateway. he shook himself with a laugh and walked on through the shrubbery. by day it was a place of mossy shadows, of shrubberied red-lacquer bridges and glimmering cascades; now its polished dwarf-pines and twisted cypresses gleamed with red paper lanterns that hung like goblin fruit and quivered, monster misshapen gold-fish, in the miniature lake. along the drives stood policemen, wearing white trousers and gloves. each held a paper lantern painted with the minister's _mon_ or family crest. farther on carriages became thicker, till the approach was a crawling stream of gleaming black enamel, sweating horses, crackling whips, and shouting _bettos_. daunt picked his way among these to where a wide swath of electric light beneath the porte-cochère struck into high relief a strip of scarlet carpet. the interior was dressed with that marvelous attention to minutiæ and artistic _ensemble_ that is characteristically japanese. the great hall was brilliant _opera bouffe_: a mingling crowd of gold-braided uniforms crossed by colored cordons and flashing with decorations, white necks and shoulders rising from dainty french gowns, gleaming lights, japanese men in european costume, languorous black eyes under shining japanese head-dresses, and silken _kimono_ woven in tints as soft as dreams. in the large central room opposite was hung a painting of the emperor. japanese who passed it did so reverently. they did not turn their backs. some of the older ones bowed low before it and withdrew backward. through a doorway came glimpses of couples on a polished floor swaying to music that swelled and ebbed unceasingly, and down a long vista a pink dazzle of cherry-blooms under a cloth roof. over all was the exotic perfume of flowers. daunt had seen many such affairs where the blending of colors and sounds, the scintillant shifting of forms, had been but a maze. to-night's, however, was wound in a glory. all these decorative people, this scented echo of laughter and music, existed only to form a kaleidoscopic setting for the one woman. he went to search for her with his handsome head erect, his shoulders square and a color in his face. he passed through several rooms, revealing one oriental picture after another. in one a series of glass-cases reproduced a _daimyo's_ procession in old japan: hundreds of dolls, six inches high, fashioned in elaborate detail--coolies with banners; chest-bearers; caparisoned horses; bullock-carts with huge, black lacquer wheels; _samurai_, visored and clad in armor, with glittering swords and lances. in another were cabinets spread with pieces of priceless gold-lacquer that had cost a lifetime of loving labor. a third the host denominated his "ghost-room," since it was lined with quaint pottery unearthed in ancient korean tombs. these rooms were filled with the social world of the capital, a gay glimmer of urbanity set off against masses of all the blossoms of spring. in the last room the host stood with the visiting admiral and several ambassadors. he was a perfect type of the modern japanese of affairs, a diplomatist as well as a seasoned admiral. he had been at annapolis in '75 and his wife was a graduate of wellesley. he was one of the strongest of the powerful coterie which was shaping the destinies of new japan. daunt greeted him and paused to chat a while with his own chief and mrs. dandridge. her gown was gray and silver, with soft old lace that accentuated the youthful contour of her face, and framed the graciousness and charm that made her marked in however charming and gracious an assembly. barbara was not there. he entered a veranda where people sat at little tables eating ices frozen in the shape of fuji, under fairy lamps whose tiny bamboo and paper shades were delicately painted with sworls of water and swimming carp. from one group the baroness stroloff waved a hand to him, but barbara was not there. beyond, through a canopied doorway, hung the cherry-blooms. he paused on the threshold. it was a portion of the garden walled in with white cloth, and roofed with blue and gold. the space thus inclosed was set with cherry-trees from whose every gray twig depended the great pink pendants. it was floored with soft carpeting, in the center a fountain tinkled coolly, and the roof was dotted with incandescents. in this retreat the violins of the ball-room wove dreamily with the talk and laughter, tenuous and ghost-like, soft as the music of memory. she was not there. daunt turned back, threaded the hall and entered the ball-room. there, through the shifting crowd, over flashing uniforms and diamonded tiaras, he saw her. beside her stood a little countess, one of the noted court beauties, lotos-pale, bamboo-slender, in a _kimono_ of danjiro blue, with woven lilies. in the clear radiance, barbara stood almost surrounded. her white satin gown shimmered in the light, which caught like globes of fire in the gold passion-flowers with which it was embroidered. a new sense of her beauty poured over him. she had always seemed lovely, but now her loveliness was touched with something removed and spiritual. in the blaze of light she looked as delicately pale as a moon-dahlia, but a spot of color was on either cheek and her eyes were very bright. daunt stood still, feasting his gaze. the baroness stroloff paused beside him, chatting with the cabinet minister and the representative of the associated press. they watched the forms flit past in the swinging rhythm of the _deux-temps_, _kimono_ weaving with black coats and uniforms, varnished pumps gliding with milk-white _tabi_ and velvet pattens. "pretty tinted creatures," she said. "how do they ever keep on those little thonged sandals?" "ah, their toes were born to them," the journalist answered. the statesman shrugged his shoulders. "waltzing in _kimono_ with men is very, very modern for our japanese ladies," he said. "i myself never saw it until two years ago--when the american fleet was here. that established it as a fashion. some of us older ones may frown, but--_shikata-ga-nai!_ 'way out there is none,' as we say in our language. it's a part of the process of westernization!" daunt started when patricia's fan tapped his arm. "you're frightfully late," she said, as her partner, the german _chargé_, bowed himself away. "father will give you a wigging if you don't look out." "i saw him a few moments ago," he answered. "he didn't seem very fierce." "was he still looking at those spooky curios? i can't see what anybody wants such things for! i always feel like saying what mark twain's man said when they showed him the mummy: 'if you've got any nice fresh corpse, trot him out.'" daunt's smile was a mechanism. she knew that he had ceased to listen. as she looked at his side-face with her clear, kind eyes, a shadow came to her own. her loyal heart was troubled. after her drive that afternoon, barbara had kept her room on the plea of rest for the evening; she had not come down to dinner and had appeared only at the moment of starting. at the first glance, then, patricia had noticed the change. the barbara she had always known, of flashing impulses and girlish graces, was gone; the barbara of the evening had seemed suddenly older, of even rarer beauty, perhaps, but with something of detachment, of unfamiliarity. riding beside her to the ball, patricia had felt, under the eager, brilliant gaiety, this chilly sense of estrangement, and it had puzzled her. later she had come to connect it with the man of whose coming barbara had told her, the man with handsome, bearded face who had seemed, since his greeting in the moment of their entrance, to take unobtrusive yet assured possession of such of her moments as were not given to the great. withal, he had lent this an air of the natural and habitual which, nicely poised and completely conventional as it was, seemed to convey a subtle atmosphere of proprietorship. so now, as she saw daunt's gaze, patricia was a little sad. there had fallen a silence between them which he broke with a sudden exclamation. "no wonder!" he said. "no wonder what?" "that she is a success." "success! i should think so. she's danced with three ambassadors and prince hojo sat out two numbers with her. just look at the men around her now!" the music had drifted into a waltz and the group about barbara was dissolving. a dark face was bending near. its owner put his arm about her and they glided into the throng. ware, like all heavy men, danced perfectly and the pair seemed to skim the mirroring floor as easily as swallows, her red-bronze hair, caught under a web of seed-pearls, glowing like a net of fire-flies. heads turned back over white shoulders and on the edges of the room people whispered as they passed. floating lightly as sea-foam, the shimmering gown drew near, passing so close that daunt could have touched it. the lovely white face, over her partner's shoulder, met daunt's. for a fraction of a second barbara's eyes looked into his--then swept by as if he had been empty air. it was as if a clenched hand had struck him across the face. he whitened. patricia felt a sudden sting in her eyelids. she slipped her hand through his arm, and saying something about the heat (it was deliciously cool), drew him down the corridor. she chatted on airily, fighting a desire to cry. but when they came to the entrance of the cherry-blooms, he had not spoken a word. "i see mother still in the spook room," she said. "i must go back to her--no, please don't come with me! thank you so much for bringing me so far." she left him with a nod and a bright smile that he did not see. he was in a painful quicksand of bewilderment. the cherry-garden was almost empty and the fountain tinkled in a perfumed quiet. he sat down on a bench in its farthest corner. what did it mean? why, it had been like the cut direct! from her?--impossible! she had not seen him! he had been mistaken! he would go to her--now! he sprang up. a page came into the garden. he was a part of the minister's establishment; daunt had often seen him in that house. he carried a tray with a letter on it. "for you, sir," he said. puzzled, daunt took it and the boy withdrew. it bore no address. he tore it open. it contained some folded sheets of paper. a tense whiteness sprang to his face as he unfolded them. it was his letter--the only love-letter he had ever written--torn across. now he knew! it had been true--what he had imagined of the yacht! the cherry-trees seemed to writhe about him, bizarre one-legged dancers waving pink draperies, and a tide of resentment and grief rose in his breast as hot as lava. had she been only playing with him, then? when she had lain panting in his arms in ben-ten's cave--when her lips had quivered to his kisses--had it all been acting? was this what she really was, his "lady of the many-colored fires?" he, poor fool! had deemed it real, when it had been only a week's amusement. he had almost guessed the truth that night at the tea-house, and how cleverly she had fooled him! his jarring laugh rang out across the tinkle of the fountain. then, austen ware's telegram! it was he who had danced with her to-night, no doubt--phil's brother. for her the little play was over. the curtain had to be rung down, and this was how she did it. dim thoughts like these went flitting through the gap of his racked senses. he dropped on the bench and bowed his head between his hands. it had been real enough to him. painted on his closed eyelids he seemed to see, with a chill, numb certainty, his future unrolling like a gray panorama, incoherent and unwhole, its colors lack-luster, its purpose denied, its meaning missed. pain lifted its snake-head from the shadows and hissed in his ear, like the jubilant serpent that coiled its bright length by the gate of eden when the flaming sword drove forth the first man to the desert of despair. daunt did not know that patricia, pausing in the corridor, had seen the letter delivered and opened. she went back to her mother with a slow step. "you look worn, dear," said mrs. dandridge, as they entered the ball-room. "are you tired?" "yes," she said. "i think i won't dance any more, mother." the host had entered before them and now stood at the end of the room with the admiral of the squadron and the ambassador of the latter's nation. suddenly a young man pushed hastily through the press. he handed his chief a telegram. the ambassador scanned it, changed color, and held it out to the admiral with shaking hand. the secretary who had brought it said something to the foreign minister, who turned instantly to give a quick order to a servant. the orchestra stopped with a crash. there was a dead hush over the brilliant room-full, broken only by the movement of the squadron's officers as they came hurriedly forward beside their admiral. all looked at the white-haired diplomatist who stood, his eyes full of tears, the pink telegram in his hand. he addressed the grave group of naval men. "gentlemen," he said, in a low voice, "i have the great grief to announce the sudden death to-day of his majesty, the king." he bowed to his host, and, followed by the admiral and his officers, left the house. the ambassadors and ministers of the other powers, in order of their precedence, each with his glittering staff and their ladies about him, followed. the gaiety was over; it had ceased at the far-away echo of a nation's bells, tolling half a world away. * * * * * the great house was almost emptied of its guests when the solitary figure that had sat in the cherry-garden passed out along the deserted corridors. daunt went utterly oblivious that its bright pageantry had departed. a feverish color was in his cheek and his eyes were dulled with a painful apathy. count voynich was lighting a cigarette in the cloak room as he entered. "_sic transit!_" he said. "this calls a quick halt on the plans of the squadron's entertainment, doesn't it!" there was no answer. daunt was fumbling, from habit, for the lettered disk of wood in his pocket. "if the king could have lived a few weeks longer," said voynich, "we'd have heard no more talk of trouble with japan. he was a great peacemaker. the new regent may be less circumspect. what do you think?" no reply. he spoke again sharply. "i say, miss fairfax seems to be making a tremendous walkover, eh?" there was only silence. daunt did not hear him. voynich looked at his face, whistled softly under his breath, and went quietly away. chapter xxxix the heart of barbara the ambassador, standing by the mantel, looked thoughtfully at his wife. she sat in a big wicker chair, in a soft dressing-gown, her hands clasped over one knee in a pose very pretty and girlish. "come!" he said good-humoredly. "you women are always imagining romances and broken hearts. why, barbara and daunt haven't known each other long enough to fall in love." she looked at him quizzically. "do you remember how long we had known each other when you--" "pshaw!" he retorted. "that's just like a woman. she never can argue without coming to personalities. besides, there never was another girl like you, my dear--i couldn't afford to take any chances." "away with your blarney, ned! you know i'm right, though you won't admit it." "of course i won't. daunt's not a woman's man. he never was. he's been getting along pretty well with barbara, no doubt. but this man she's going to marry she's known for a year. the bishop told me about him the day after they landed. he thought she was practically engaged to him then." "'practically!'" she commented with gentle scorn. "are girls who have been properly brought up ever 'practically' engaged, and not fully so? she may have expected to marry him, and yet if i ever saw a girl in love--and, oh, ned, remember that i understand what that means!--she was in love with daunt yesterday. we women see more than men and feel more. patsy saw it too. she's feeling badly about it, poor child, i think." "nonsense!" the ambassador sniffed. "there isn't a shred of evidence. barbara's not a flirt in the first place, and, if she were, daunt can take care of himself." "he came to your study, didn't he, after the ball? i thought i heard his voice in the hall." "yes," he answered. "how did he look?" "well," he said hesitatingly, "he was a bit off color, i thought. i told him to take a few days off and run up to chuzenji." "is he going?" "yes. he's leaving early in the morning. but don't get it into your sympathetic little head that it has the slightest thing to do with barbara. the idea's quite absurd. he's never thought of such a thing as falling in love with her!" "don't you think a woman _knows_ about these things?" "when she's told. and barbara has told you, hasn't she?" "that she is going to marry mr. ware. yes." "well, what more do you want?" she shook her head. "only for her to be happy!" she said tremulously. "i've never known a girl who has grown so into my heart, ned. i feel almost as though she were patsy's sister. she has no mother of her own--no one to advise her. and yet--i--somehow i couldn't talk about it to her. i _tried_. she doesn't want to. it seemed almost as if she were afraid." "afraid?" "of doing something else. as if she were going into this marriage as a refuge. i don't know just why i felt that, but i did. she was so very pale, so very quiet and contained. it didn't seem quite natural. it made me think of pamela langham. you remember her? she was in love with a man who--well, whom she found she couldn't marry. he wasn't the right sort. i suppose she was afraid she would marry him anyway if she waited. so she married another man at once--a man who had been in love with her for years. we were just the same age and she told me all about it at the time. to-night when barbara told me she had promised to marry this mr. ware--and soon, ned!--i seemed to see poor little dead pamela looking at me with her pale face and big, deep eyes." she turned her head and furtively wiped her eyes. "if i could only be sure!" she said. "but i think how i should feel--if it were patsy, ned!" * * * * * and while they talked, barbara lay in her blue-and-white room, wide-eyed in the dark. the smiling, ball-room mask had slipped from her face and left it strained and white. she had drawn the curtain and shut out the misty glory of the garden--and the small white cottage across the scented lawn. in those few agonized hours of the afternoon, while she had lain there thrilling with suffering, something deep within her had seemed to fail--as though a newly-lighted flame, white and pure, had fallen and died. where it had gleamed remained only a painful twilight. it had been a different barbara that had emerged. the fairest fabric of those japanese days had crashed into the dust, and in the echo of its fall she stood anchorless, in terror of herself and of the future. the harbor of convention alone seemed to offer safety--and at the harbor entrance waited austen ware. at the ball the die had been cast. outside the window she could hear the rasp of the pine-branches and the sleepy "korup! korup!" of a pigeon. a tiny night-lamp was on the stand beside her. its gleam lit vaguely the golden buddha on the sendai chest. its face now seemed cold and blank and cruel, and in its dim light, on the shadowy wall, sharp detached pictures etched themselves. she saw herself looking at austen ware's yacht, set in that wonderful, warm, orient bay--a swift, white monitor, watching her! she saw a yellow rank of convicts filing into the yawning mouth of shimbashi station--like the long, drab years of savorless lives! she saw the great white plaster figure over the entrance-arch of the yoshiwara--beckoning to hollow smiles that covered empty hearts! over the thronging pictures grew another--a misty, nightgowned little figure who stood by her, whispering her name. patricia, after sleepless hours, crept from her bed to barbara's room, longing for some assurance, she knew not what, some breath of the old girlish confidences to melt the ice that seemed to have congealed between them. and barbara, with the first phantom of softened feeling she had known that night, took the other into her arms. but it was she who comforted, whispering words that she knew were empty, caressing the younger girl with a touch that held no tremor, no hint of those anguished visions that had floated through the leaden silences of her soul. till at last, patricia, half-reassured, smiled and fell asleep; while barbara, her loose gold hair drifting across the pillow, her bare arm nestling the dark, braided head beside her, lay stirless, staring into the shadows, where the pale glimmer of the buddha floated, a ghostly _chiaroscuro_. chapter xl 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." chapter xli unforgot the sharp sense of imminence which had come to barbara with austen ware's gift remained with her that evening. the dinner was none too merry. for the first time patricia had failed to be enthused over the nikko _matsuri_, and the bishop, since haru's disappearance, had lacked his usual sallies. barbara had told him nothing of her visit to the house in the street-of-the-misty-valley; to speak of it would probe her own wound too deeply. the after-dinner piazza exhaled the bouquet of evening cigars and the chatter of tourists. far below, across the gorge, lights twinkled in native doorways and _shoji_ glimmered like oblong yellow lanterns. the air was heavy with balsam odors, and beneath the trees, sparkling now with incandescents, tiny black moths had replaced the sunlight flashing dragon-flies. sitting in a semicircle on straw mats the _samisen_ players at length mingled their _outré_, twittering cadences with the soft thunder of the water. as the musicians finished their last number and trooped away, patricia yawned and rose. "here," she observed, "is where little patsy puts her face and hands to bed. this mountain air is perfectly demoralizing!" the two girls went up-stairs together. at her own room patsy put her arms around the other and kissed her. "oh, i wonder if you're _sure_!" she said. then she fled inside. barbara threw open the window of her room and drew a low stool to the balcony. "i wonder!" she said aloud. with elbows on the railing and chin in hands, she looked long and earnestly into the dark void. why was she no longer able to warm to all this beauty and meaning? these cryptomeria shadows, dreaming of the faded splendors of a feudal past--the streets along which legions of pilgrims had walked muttering prayers to their gods--the marvelous lacquered temples of red and gold, wrought by patient love of long dead yesterdays, in handiwork to which time had given a softened glory such as those who dreamed them never saw--the heavenly soaring of pagoda doves against the peach-blow sky--the shrines worn with their centuries of worship and dancing and booming bells! forgetting--and remembering no more--would that be a soul-task too hard for her? was all that had been instinct with wonder and joy to be henceforth but emptiness and desolation--because an ideal had gone from her for ever? she thought of the belled and rosaried pilgrims climbing nantai-zan. she seemed to see the faint, far glimmer of their lanterns. beyond that pilgrimage over dark crags and grim precipices lay for them the sunrise of hope! in the room behind her hung one of the famous prints of hiroshige, the great japanese master--a group of peasants crossing the long skeleton bridge of enoshima. she thought of this now, and suddenly all the spot had meant to her welled over her. she saw again the enchanted island--the long shaded stairways of gray stone, the brown-legged girls gathering seaweed, and beyond the old seawall the gulls calling to their mates. she saw the generations of lovers pass one by one before ben-ten's altar, murmuring their hearts' desire. daunt's arms seemed to be again around her. she felt his kisses, heard his voice as they walked under the singing trees--walked and dreamed and forgot that pain was ever born into the world. she started. a horse was coming up the hill, his hoofs thudding softly in the loose shale. the rider dismounted at the porch. a moment later, crop in hand, he passed beneath her window. the light fell on his face. barbara's heart bounded and then stood still, for she recognized him. "there has never been another woman to me, barbara!" mocking voices seemed to shout it satirically from the emptiness, and against the dark haru's face rose up before her. she shivered. she went in and closed the window, drawing down the blind with a nervous haste. but she could not shut out that face, and in spite of herself her thoughts had their will with her. what was daunt doing there? patsy had said that he was in chuzenji. but that was only a handful of miles away. he looked worn and older--he had been suffering, too! she hugged this knowledge to her heart. he knew, of course, why she had ended it all--_haru would have told him_! she clenched her hands and began to pace up and down the room, now stopping to peer with bright miserable eyes into the mirror, now throwing herself into a chair. once she put her hand into her bosom, groping for her father's picture--to withdraw it with an added pang. for she had forgotten; she had lost the locket the afternoon of her drive with patricia. a knock came at the door, and a bell-boy handed her a penciled note. she read it wonderingly, then, hastily smoothing her hair, went quickly along the hall to the sitting-room. in the dimly lighted room a figure came toward her from the shadow. it was philip ware. chapter xlii phil makes an appeal the youth who stood before her now, however, was not the phil barbara had seen at mukojima. there was no hint of spruce grooming in his attire; it was overlaid with the dust and grime of the road. the jaunty, self-satisfied look was ravaged by something cringing, that suggested sleeplessness and undefined anxiety. why should he come at such an hour--and to her? the distaste which her first view of him had inspired returned with added force as she felt the touch of his hand and heard herself say: "so this is 'phil.' i have often heard of you from your brother. have you seen him?" "no," he said. "i don't want him to know i'm here--yet. i--i came to see you." he paused, twisting his cloth cap in his fingers. he was in a desperate strait. his brother's silence since his visit to the house in aoyama (of which phil had learned from the servant) had seemed to mean the worst. the place had contained sufficient documents in evidence as to his mode of living, and the reflection opened gloomy vistas of poverty from which he turned with abject fear and dread. there was one alternative, and this, a grisly shadow, had stalked beside him since an evening when he had dined with bersonin. it had peopled his sleep with terrifying visions which even haru and the brandy had been unable to banish, and his waking hours had been haunted by the expert's yellowish eyes. between devil and deep sea, he had heard of his brother's engagement, and the wild thought of appealing to him through barbara had come to him as a forlorn hope. now, face to face with her, he found the words difficult to say. "won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair opposite him, looking at him inquiringly. "i ought to apologize for a rig like this," he went on, glancing at his sorry raiment, "but i came in a friend's motor, and i'm going back to-night. i thought you wouldn't mind, now--now that you are engaged to marry austen. you are, aren't you?" she inclined her head. "yes," she said slowly, "i have promised to marry him." "then you know him pretty well, and you know that he--that he doesn't altogether approve of me." "i have never heard him say that," she interrupted quickly. "it's true, though," he rejoined bitterly. "he's always been down on me. i'm not staid enough for him. he made his money by grubbing, and he thinks everybody else ought to do the same. it's--it's the matter of money i want to speak to you about." he paused again. "yes?" she said. "since i left college," he went on, "austen has always made me an allowance. but i've been out here a year now, and i--well, you know what the east is. i've had to live as other young fellows do, and i've spent more than he gives me. i've--played some, too, and then this spring i got hit hard at the races. it was just a run of bad luck, when i had expected to square myself." he was eager and voluble now. she seemed to be considering--he was making an impression. he might come out all right after all! his volatile spirits rose. "you see," he said, "austen never overlooks anything. he's as likely as not to cut me off entirely and leave me high and dry. i--i thought perhaps you would--you might get him to do the decent thing and help me out of the hole. if i once got straight i'd stay so, but i want a fair allowance. it isn't as if he had to work for what i spend. he ought to give it to me. i can't go on as i am; i'm in debt--in deep. i can't take up my _chits_ at the club. i'm living in tokyo now--in a japanese house in aoyama that a friend has loaned me--because i haven't the face to show myself in yokohama!" he twirled his cap and looked up at her. "that reminds me," he said, with a sudden recollection. "austen was there the other day when i was away, and afterward i found something of yours which he must have dropped. here it is. it has your name on it." he handed her a small locket with a broken chain. she took it with an exclamation. she was staring at him strangely. "this house you speak of--whose is it?" "it belongs to mr. daunt." "you mean--you say--that you have been living in it?" "yes. why?" she had risen slowly to her feet, her face hotly suffused. "then--then haru--" she spoke in a dry whisper. he started, looking at her with quick, resentful suspicion. "what do you know about haru?" "never mind! never mind that! i want to know. haru--she is--mr. daunt was not--" "he never saw her in his life so far as i know," he answered sulkily. "what has that to do with it?" for an instant she looked at him without a word, her fingers working. then she began to laugh, in a low tone, wildly, chokingly. "of course! of course! what has that to do with it? what you want is more money, isn't it! that is all you came to tell me!" he, too, was on his feet now, uncertain and mistrustful. was she making game of him? he saw barbara's gaze go past him--to fasten on something in the background. he turned. in the doorway with its maple-leaf portière stood austen ware. barbara's laugh had fallen in a shuddering breath that was like a sob. "here is your brother now," she said. "austen, phil and i have been getting acquainted. and what do you think? he has found my lost locket." she held it up toward him. he had come toward them. in the dim light his face looked very white, and his eyes glittered like quicksilver. he held out his hand. "why, phil!" he exclaimed. "this is a great surprise. when did you arrive, and are you at this hotel?" phil had stood shamefaced. at the tone, however, which seemed an earnest of renewed favor, he flushed with relief. "i've just come," he answered--"in a friend's motor, and i must go back at once. but i'll come up again by train to-morrow, if you'd like me to." "very well," was ware's reply. "we'll wait till then for our talk. i'll come and see you off." neither of the others caught the tense repression in the tone or realized that his smile was forced and unnatural, as he added: "we must put a ban on late hours, barbara, if you are to climb nantai-zan to-morrow." she went to the door, her thoughts in a tumult, a wild exhilaration possessing her. she wanted to laugh and to cry. the black, cold mist that had enveloped her had broken, and the warm sunlight was looking again into her heart. "good night, phil," she said. "thank you so much for--for bringing me the locket. you can't guess how much it meant to me!" as the silk drapery fell behind her, the self-control dropped from austen ware's face, and a hell of hatred sprang into it. chance had given phil the one card that spelled disaster, and chance had prompted him to play it. in barbara's mind daunt stood absolved! he saw the castle he had been building tottering to its fall. he turned on his brother a countenance convulsed with a fury of passion from which phil shrank startled. "come," he said in a muffled voice. "we can't talk here." he led the way through the hall and across the foot-bridge to the hillside, gloomy now, for the incandescents in the trees had been extinguished. phil followed, his face gone white. a rack stood at the outer door, and his fingers, slipping along it as he passed, closed on a riding-crop. on the shrubberied slope ware turned. one twitching hand dropped on his brother's shoulder; the other pointed down the path. "go, damn you!" he said, "and never show your face to me again! not one cent shall you have from me! now nor hereafter--i have taken care of that!" phil lifted the crop and struck him across the head--two savage, heavy blows. ware staggered and fell backward down the steep declivity, his weight crashing through the bushes with a dull, sickening sound. there was a silence in which phil did not breathe. the stars seemed suddenly very bright. from an open window came a woman's shrill, careless laugh, threading the hushed roar of the water below. the lighted _shoji_ across the river seemed to be drifting nearer. he could see the glow of a forge in a native smithy, like an angry, red-lidded eye. the crop fell from his grasp. he leaned over, staring into the dark. "austen!" he whispered hoarsely. "austen!" there was no response. as he gazed fearfully into the shadow, the rising moon, peeping through a bank of cloud, deluged the landscape with a misty gossamer. the light fell on the phonograph. phil recoiled, for its long metal trumpet seemed a rigid arm stretched to seize him. with a low cry he turned and fled. he skirted the hill to the hotel stables, where bersonin's huge motor-car stood silent. the japanese chauffeur was curled up in the tonneau, fast asleep. five minutes later barbara heard the throb of the great mechanism speeding down the shadowy cryptomeria road. chapter xliii the secret the river kept daunt had dined cheerlessly in the deserted dining-room. afterward, shrinking from the gay piazzas, he had struck off for a long rambling walk. only the frail moonlight, glimpsing through a cloudy sky, lay over the landscape, when, returning, worn but in no mood for sleep, he found himself at the hill shrine looking down on the white hotel with its long red balconies, brightened here and there by the lighted window of some late-retiring guest. his few days at chuzenji had passed in a kind of stifled fever. the report of barbara's engagement had added its poisoned barb. that morning, however, a careless remark had torn across his mood as sheet-lightning tears the weaving dusk. tokyo was talking of it--of _him_!--making a jest of that sweet, dead thing in his heart? the thought had stung his pride, and there had grown in him a sharp sense of humiliation at his own cowardice. the afternoon had found him riding down the mountain trail to nikko. to-morrow he would go back to tokyo--to the round of gaieties that would now be hateful, and to his work. he put out his hand to one of the benches in the deep pine-shadow, but drew it back with a sharp breath. a sliver of the warped wood had pierced his knuckle to the bone. frowning, he wrapped the bleeding member in his handkerchief and sat down at the bench's other end, bitterly absorbed. the vagrant, intermittent moonlight touched the tumbling water below with creeping silver, and on the horizon, where the cloud-bank frayed away, one white constellation swung low, a cluster of lamps in golden chains. but daunt's thought had no place for the delicate beauty of the night. his pipe was long since cold, and he knocked out the dead ashes against the bench, and did not relight it. he thought of tokyo, that to-morrow would stretch so blank and irksome, of the humdrum tedium of the chancery, in which a few days ago he had worked so blithely. then all had been interest and beauty. now the future stretched before him dull and savorless, an arid desert of gobi, through whose thirsty waste he must trudge on for ever to a comfortless goal. how long he sat there with bowed head he could not have told, but at length he rose heavily to his feet as he did so he became aware of a sound below him--a footfall, coming toward him. it crossed a bar of the moonlight. he shrank, and a tremor ran over him, for it was barbara. she had thrown over her a loose cloak, and a bit of soft, clinging lace showed between its dark edges. her brilliant hair was loosely gathered in a single braid, and in the moonlight it shone like beaten copper against the vivid pallor of her face. he sat stirless, smitten with confusion, conscious that a movement must betray him. a painful embarrassment enveloped him, a fastidious sense of shrinking from her sight of him. he felt a dull wave of resentment that an antic irony of circumstance should have brought them beneath the same roof--to make him seem the moody pursuer, the unwelcome trespasser on her reserve--and that now thrust him into a position which at any hazard he would have shunned. but all thought of himself, all feeling save one vanished, when, with sudden piteous abandon, she threw herself on her knees by the bench and broke into slow sobs, shuddering and tearless. in that outbreak of emotion, were not alone the pent-up pain and humiliation she had suffered, or the desperate joy of that evening's knowledge. there were in it, too, grief and compunction, dismay and doubt of the future. she was engaged to austen ware. would daunt ever forgive? would he want her--now? in the first realization of her error, wound with the knowledge that he was so near her, she had felt only joy; but in the silence of her room, shock on shock had come the incredulous question, the burning revulsion. a while she had lain wide-eyed, but at length, sleepless, she had stolen out to the balmy, fragrant night, craving its peace, longing passionately for its soft shadows and the hovering touch of the mountain's breath on her hair. and in its friendly shadows the gust of feeling had swept her from her feet. the action took daunt wholly by surprise. the sound tore his heart like a ruthless talon, and drew a hoarse word from his lips: "barbara!" it was little more than a whisper, but she sprang erect with a gasp, her breath labored and terror-stricken. "i--i beg pardon," he said, with a dry catch in his throat. "don't be frightened. i will go at once. i should not have stayed. but you came so suddenly, and i did not dream--i--" "how strange that you should have been here!" she thought he must hear the loud drumming of her pulse. he laughed--a hard, colorless little laugh. "yes," he answered, "it seems so." a mist blinded her eyes, for his tone carried to her, even more sharply than had the look she had seen from the balcony, a sense of the pain he had undergone. in what words could she tell him? "you have been suffering," she said in a low voice. "i see that. and it was my fault." he gathered himself together with an effort of will, to still the tingle that flashed along his nerves. "it was quite sane and right, no doubt," he said. "when i have learned to be honest enough with myself, i shall see it so. my mistake was in ever dreaming that i was worth one of your thoughts or a single second's memory." she turned her head abruptly. "do you hear some one talking? i thought i heard it as i came up the path--like some one muttering to himself." he listened, but there was no sound. "i must have imagined it," she said. there was a moment's pause, and presently she went on: "you have been thinking hard things of me. it is natural that you should. and yet i--whatever you think--whatever you do--that day in the cave, i was not--was not--" "you were nothing you should not have been," he replied rapidly. her voice had sent a tremor over him--he felt it with a new wave of the morning's contempt. "i understand. there is nothing for you to justify, nothing to regret." she shook her head. "_we have left undone those things which we ought to have done_," she quoted in a low voice, "_and have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us_. we all recite that every sunday. i have something now to confess to you. won't you stand there in the light? i--i want to see your face." he stepped slowly into a bar of moonlight. "why," she said, "you have hurt your hand!" she made a quick step toward him, her eyes on the stained bandage. "it is nothing," he said hastily. "i struck it a little while ago. what--" he turned, suddenly alert. a sharp whistle had sounded below them, and bright points here and there pricked the gloom. "they have turned on the tree-lights," he said. there was a sound of voices on the path. some one ran across the foot-bridge. "something has happened," she said. "what can it be?" he made no reply. there had flashed to him a quick realization of the position in which, unwittingly, they had placed themselves. she must not be seen at such an hour, in that lonely spot with him! he knew the canons of the world he lived in! with a hushed word he drew her back into the shadow. the voices were speaking in japanese, and now he heard them clearly. "some one is injured," he told her. "he fell down the hillside, they think." a hurried step crossed the bridge, and a voice, sharp and peremptory, asked a question in nervous english. daunt chilled at the answer, turning to her, every unselfish instinct alive to spare her. but she had heard a name. "it is mr. ware who is hurt!" he grasped her wrist. "wait!" he said hurriedly. "i beg you to go by the upper path to the side door." but she caught away her arm and ran quickly down the path. daunt sprang up the hill, skirted the building, gained its upper corridor, now simmering with excitement, and crossed the bridge. near its farther end a small group stood about a figure, prostrate beside the phonograph whose cylinder gleamed in the lantern-light. by it barbara was kneeling. but something came between her gaze and the pallid face--something which she saw with the distinctness of a black paper silhouette on a white ground: a glimmering object, unnoted by the rest, which had lain half-concealed by a bush--something that one day, a thousand years ago, had glittered against daunt's brown hair as he saluted her from his horse! it was a riding-crop, whose damascene handle bore the device of a fox's head. * * * * * two hours later the corridors were silent and the bishop and daunt sat together in the darkened office, saying few words, both thinking of a man lying straight and alone--and of a girl in an upper room whose promise he had taken with him out of the world. daunt was to leave for tokyo on the early morning train. half the night through he sat there listening to the moan of the rising weather. but a little while before the sky whitened to a rainy dawn, a gray wraith glided along the upper piazza of the hotel. it crossed the foot-bridge to the hillside. barbara groped and found the crop. across the night she seemed to see an endless procession of stolid, sulphur-colored figures, linked with thin, rattling chains, filing into the humid, black mouth of a mine. shuddering, she swung the stick with all her strength, and threw it from her down the steep, into the water that roared and tumbled far below. chapter xliv the laying of the mine doctor bersonin lunched at the tokyo club. for three days the rain had fallen steadily, in one of those seasons of torrential downpour which in japan are generally confined to the typhoon season and which flood its low-lands, turn its creeks into raging rivers and play havoc with its bridges. for three days the sky had been a dull expanse of pearl-gray, and the city a waste of drenched green foliage and gleaming tile, whose roadways were lines of brown mud with a surface of thin glue, dotted with glistening umbrellas of oil-paper and bamboo. under their trickling eaves the shop-fronts, dark and hollow and comfortless, had held the red glow of _hibachi_; teamsters had shown bristling tunics of rice-straw and loads covered with saffron tarpaulin; _rick'sha_ had reeled past with rubber fronts tightly buttoned against the slanting spears of rain, and the foreign carriages that dragged by had borne coachmen swathed to the ears. this morning, however, the rain had ceased and wind had supervened. the club was cheerful, with a sprinkling of the younger diplomatic set, japanese business men and journalists, all men of note. the up-stairs dining-room was full of talk as the expert arrived and chose a small table by himself. while he waited, the boy brought him one of the english-printed newspapers, and he cast his eyes over the head-lines. he read: squadron's sailing orders to leave to-morrow morning. an answer to the alarmists. all differences between the two governments to yield to diplomacy. on the other side was the caption in smaller type: bear raid on markets mysterious selling movement causes uneasiness. he read the latter despatch--an associated press wire, under a new york date-line: "at noon to-day the bear movement, heretofore regarded as a natural reaction following an over-advancement, and hence of purely academic interest, suddenly assumed such proportions as to make the outlook one of anxiety. it seems significant that before the wall street opening this morning the london market responded to an attack of the same nature. in an era of industrial prosperity and general peace such a phenomenon is alarming, and a serious decline is anticipated in some quarters. the short sales which were such a factor in to-day's market were so distributed that it seems impossible to trace them to any single interest." bersonin's face expressed nothing. he folded the crackling sheet and laid it to one side. most of the comment about him turned on the departure of the squadron. since the royal death, whose announcement had so abruptly ended the festivities, the black battle-ships had lain motionless in the bay. the appointment of a regent of confessedly more positive policy had given rise to many speculations, and the apostles of calamity had seized the opportunity to sow the seeds of disquiet. the great world, however, had as yet given little thought to their prognostications. the bourses had gone higher and higher. only in diplomatic circles, where the mercury is habitually unquiet, had there been perceptible effect. to-day the comment showed a sub-tone of relief. the doctor ate little. he left the _petit verre_ with his coffee untouched, signed his _chit_ and went down to his automobile. "bersonin must be under the weather," one of the men at another table observed, as he passed them. "he looks like a putty image." "curious chap," remarked the other. "got a lot in his head, no doubt. some queer stories afloat about him, but i don't suppose there's anything in them." the other lit his cigar reflectively. "i can't somehow 'go' him, myself," he said. bersonin was whirled to his house, and presently was in his laboratory with its glass shelves, its books and its wall-safe. a cheerful fire burned in the grate against the dampness. he began to walk restlessly up and down the floor. to-day his government contract expired and japan had not asked its renewal. he thought of this with a sudden recrudescence of the hatred he had nurtured for the empire. this had been based on fancied slights, on his failure to receive a decoration, on the surveillance he had lately imagined had been kept on his movements. well, to-morrow would repay all with interest! there was no hitch in the plan which chance had aided so well. the roost was the one house on the yokohama bluff that could have served his purpose, planted on the cliff-edge and in line with the anchorage. and it had happened to be in the hands of this weak fool for his cat's-paw! his great, cunning brain turned to the future--to that vast career which his stupendous egotism had painted for himself. his discovery was so epoch-making, so terrifying in its possibilities to civilization, that it had nonplussed him. it was too big to handle. he had made the greatest dynamic engine the world had seen--possibly the greatest it would ever see--and yet he knew that the ambassador had laid his finger on the truth when he had said: "_humanity would revolt! the man who knew the secret would be too dangerous to be at large!_" but with wealth--wealth enough to buy men and privilege--what might he not do? it would take time, and scheming, and secrecy, but he had them all. and the great secret was always his, and his alone! it would make him more powerful than emperors, for he who possessed it, with the means to use it, could laugh at fleets and fortifications. before the machines that he should build the greatest steel-clad that was ever floated would vanish like smoke! he clenched his great hands and his massive frame quivered. "the future, the future!" he said in a low, tense voice. "i shall be greater than caesar, greater than napoleon, for i shall hold the force that can make and unmake kings! so surely as force rules the world, so surely shall i, bersonin, rule the world!" a knock came at the door and phil entered. he was as pale as the doctor and his clothing was soaked with the rain. without a word bersonin locked the door, wheeled an arm-chair before the blaze, pushed him into it and mixed him a glass of spirits. then he stood looking at him. "it's all right," said phil. "the tripod fitted to a hair. it can't be seen from either side, and i've sent the boy away and locked the house." "good," said bersonin. "all is ready, then. the mechanism is set for the moment of daybreak. our gains will be enormous, for in spite of the selling the market is up. there has been a little distrust of the situation here and there, though the optimists have had their way. and this latent distrust will add to the _débâcle_ when it comes. we are just in time, for the squadron has its sailing-orders for to-morrow. strange how near we were to failure! who could have foreseen the death of the king? and the rains, too. they say it is doubtful if the trains will run to-morrow." phil's hand, holding the drink, shook and wavered. "the damned clock-work in the thing!" he said. "i could hear it all the way--i thought every one would hear it. i can't get the ticking out of my brain!" he set down the glass and turned a glittering gaze on the other. "it's worth all that comes from it," he said. "you play me fair! do you understand? you'll play me fair, or i'll settle with you!" the doctor smiled, a smile of horrible cunning. "as you settled with your brother?" he said. phil shrank into the chair speechless, looking at him with trepidation in his eyes. the shot had gone home. "pshaw!" said bersonin. "do you take me for a fool not to guess? come, we needn't quarrel. our interests are the same. go home, now, to your japanese butterfly--and wait!" chapter xlv the bishop answers a summons the chapel was but sparsely filled. from where she sat, barbara, through the open door, could see the willows along the disconsolate roadway whipping in the fleering dashes of wind. a woman trudged by, bare-legged, her _kimono_ tucked knee-high, the inevitable, swaddled baby on her back. the hot, fibrous song of the _semi_ had died to a thin humming, like bees in an old orchard. across the bishop's voice she heard the plaintive call of a huckster, swinging by in slow dogtrot with panier-pole on shoulder, and the chirr of a singing-frog under the hedge. the service was in the vernacular, and though she tried to follow it in her _romaji_ prayer-book--whose words were printed in roman letters instead of the japanese ideograph--the lines were meaningless, and she could not fasten her mind on them. she had reached a point in these few tragical days where her mind, overwrought with its own pain, had acquired a kind of benumbing lassitude that was not apathy and yet was far removed from spontaneous feeling. daunt's presence that dreadful night on the hillside--his confusion--his bleeding hand--his round-about return to the hotel--all this, at the sight of the damascene crop in the bushes, had flashed to her mind in damnable sequence. and yet something deep and unfathomed within her had driven her to the obliteration of that mute evidence. austen ware had slipped and fallen--such was the universal verdict. the truth was sealed for ever in the urn now bound over-seas to its last resting-place. she alone, she thought, knew the secret of that nikko tragedy. with the next daylight the storm had broken and the ensuing gloomy weather had formed a dismal setting for gloomier scenes, through which she had moved dully and mechanically. when all was over, to patricia's sorrow, she had not returned to the embassy, but had gone immediately to her uncle's. the pity offered her--though not openly expressed, since her engagement had not been formally announced--hurt her like physical blows, and the quiet of the ts'kiji rectory was some solace. to-night, an unwelcome task lay before her. she was to visit the yacht--now, by a satiric freak of chance, legally her own!--to seal the private papers of the man whose deed of gift might not now be recalled. as she sat listening to the meaningless reading and the sighing of the wind above the chapel roof, barbara's eyes on the stained-glass figure in the rose-window were full of a wistful loneliness. if her father were only alive--if he could be near her now! unconsciously her gaze strayed across the hedges, to the gray roof of the old temple where lived the eccentric solitary to whom her thought insistently recurred. in her trouble she longed to go to him, with a longing the greater because it seemed fantastic and illogical. she recalled suddenly the quaint six-year-old of the huge clogs and patched _kimono_--ishikichi, troubled over the giving up of the family establishment, puzzling his baby brain over the hard things of life. she was startled by a sound outside--the single, shrill, high scream of a horse in some stable near at hand. it cut through a pause in the service, sharp, curdling, like a cry of mortal fear. a baby, near barbara, awoke and began to cry and the mother soothed it with whispered murmurings. suddenly there arose a strange rattling, a groaning of timbers. the bishop ceased reading. people were rising to their feet. the building was shifting, swaying, with a sickening upward vibration, as though it were being trotted on some brobdingnagian knee. barbara felt a qualm like the first touch of _mal de mer_. "_ji-shin! ji-shin!_" rose the cry, and there was a rush for the open air. in another moment she found herself out of doors with the frightened crowd. it was her first experience of earthquake, and the terror had gripped her bodily. the wet trees were waving to and fro like gigantic fans, and a dull moan like an echo in a subterranean cavern seemed to issue from the very ground. a section of tiling slid from the chapel roof with a crash. "rather severe that, for tokyo," said the bishop at her elbow, where he stood calmly, watch in hand. "almost two minutes and vertical movement." "two minutes!" she gasped. she had thought it twenty. the nauseating swing had ceased, but in an instant, with a vicious wrench, it began again. "the secondary oscillations," he said. "it will all be over in a ..." as he spoke, the air swelled with a horrible, crunching, grinding roar, like the complaint of a million riven timbers. across the lane a sinister dust-cloud sprang into the air like a monstrous hand with spread fingers. "it is one of the temples!" said the bishop, and hurried with the rest, barbara following him. the paved yard was filling with a throng. agitated priests and acolytes ran hither and thither and slate-colored nuns, with shaven heads and pale, frightened faces, peered through the bamboo-lattices of the nunnery. the newer temple faced the open space as usual, but across the hedged garden no ornate roof now thrust up its tartar gables. instead was a huddle of wreckage, upon which lay the huge roof, crumpled and shattered, like the fragments of a gigantic mushroom. from the tangle projected beam ends, coiled about with painted monsters, and here and there in the cluttered _débris_ lay great images of unfamiliar deities. over all hung a fine yellow dust, choking and penetrating. what was under those ruins? barbara shivered. she was quite unconscious of the mud and the pelting rain. the bishop drew her under the temple porch, and they stood together watching the men now working with mattocks, saws and with loose beams for levers, prying up a corner of the fallen roof. it seemed an hour they had stood there, when a priest, bareheaded, his robes caked with mud, came from the clustering crowd. the bishop questioned him in japanese. barbara guessed from his face what the priest had answered! she waited quiveringly. through the bishop's mind swift thoughts were passing. he knew by hearsay of the recluse--knew that he was not an oriental. he had often seen the placard on the little gate: "maker of buddhas." he had never passed it without a pang. it seemed a satirical derision of the holiest ideal of the west--a type and sign of reversion, a sardonic mockery of the creed of christ. he was a priest holding the torch of the true light to this alien people, and here, a dark shadow across its brightness, had stood this derisive denial. yet now, perhaps, this man stood on the threshold of the hereafter--and he was a man of his own race! he turned to barbara. "wait here for me," he said. "i am going in. i will come back to you as soon as i can." chapter xlvi the golden crucifix the bishop went quickly through the crowd to a gap under the great gables, where the beams had been sawed through and the rubbish shoveled to one side, making a difficult way into the interior. the enormous span of the roof had sunk sidewise, splitting its supporting beams and bending the walls outward, but its great ridge had remained intact and it now stretched, a squat, ungainly lean-to, over what had been the altar. the space was strewn with brasses, fragments of fretted and carven doors, and splintered beneath a mass of tiling lay a great image of kwan-on. the daylight came dimly in through the chinks in the ruin. the air was warm and close and had a smell of pulverized plaster, of stale incense and rotting wood. a group of priests stood on the altar platform beside a huddle of wadded mats and brocaded draperies, on which a man was lying, his open eyes upturned to the painted monsters on the twisted tangle of rafters. the bishop hesitated, then came close. the man's head turned toward him--for an instant he seemed to shrink into the cushions; then in his eyes, dark with the last shadow, came a swift yearning. he spoke to the priests and they drew back. "arthur," he said, "don't you know me?" a gasping sound came from the leaning bishop. "john! john fairfax!" he cried, composure dropping from him, and fell on his knees. "after these years!" the other lifted his hand and touched the bishop's pale, smooth-shaven face. "i am going, arthur," he said. "i never intended to speak, though i've seen you often.... i thought it was best. did she--did my wife never tell you?" "never a word, john! i have never known!" cried the bishop, in a shaken voice. "it was my fault. all mine! i--never believed as she did, arthur, and here in the east what was breath and bread to her, to me came to seem all mumbo-jumbo. i had had a hard life, and i wanted comfort--for her. then i found out about the gold-lacquer." he paused to gather the strength that was fast ebbing. "i got the formula from a crazy priest, and i began in a small way--the idol-making, i mean. i had a shop at saga. at first it was only for the mandarins in the china trade, and ... no one knew. but the lacquer grew famous, and within a year i was shipping to rangoon and thibet. i made all sorts of praying-tackle. then--then i quarreled with my agent, and--he told my wife. she didn't believe it, but one day ... he brought her to where i was at work. i was modeling an amida for a temple in nagasaki!" he threw an arm across his face and moaned. "she left me that night. a ship was in the harbor. i ... never saw her again. i never knew i had a daughter till a week ago!... i never knew!" there was a silence. "i have seen her. she must never guess, arthur! she thinks i ... died in nagasaki. it's better so. promise me!" "i promise, john," said the bishop. "i promise." the bell of the temple across the inclosure began to strike. "it sounds ... like the bell of the old greek church," the failing voice said. "when i left home the priest said i would do nothing good. but--" the grim ghost of a smile touched his lips--"i made ... good idols, arthur!" the smile flickered out. "my little girl! my own, own daughter! don't you ... think it was cruel, arthur?" "would you like to see her?" asked the bishop. "she is just outside." the wan face was illumined. "yes, yes," he said. "god bless you, arthur! bring her--but quickly!" for a few moments there was stillness. the priests whispered together, but approached no nearer. in the other temple, the _bioki-fuji_, the buddhist ceremony of sick-healing, had begun for the injured man, and the muffled pounding of the _mok'gyo_ came dully into the propped ruins. the dying man's eyes were closed when barbara knelt down and took his chilling hand between hers. "it is i," she said softly. his gaze was dimming, but he knew her. "i can't see your face much longer," he said, "but i can feel your hands. how long ago it seems ... our flower-of-dream. it bloomed to-day, my dear." she was weeping silently. there was a pause, in which the wind droned through the shattered timbers. the dying man's free hand wandered feebly at his side, found a gold-lacquer crucifix, and drew it closer. "the white cross on the roof. it ... called me back!" he tried to lift the golden crucifix. "i've been ... making this for a long time. i was outside when the shock came, but i ... went back to save it.... i should like it to be ... in your chapel, barbara." she laid her young cheek against his hand; she could not speak. across the silence the bishop's low and broken voice rose in the prayer for the sick: "_o most merciful god, who, according to the multitude of thy mercies, dost so put away the sins of those who truly repent, that thou rememberest them no more: open thine eye of mercy.... renew in him, most loving father.... impute not unto him his former sins...._" * * * * * "are you still there, barbara?" "yes." "a little longer." death was heavy on his tongue. "_namu amida butsu!_" he muttered. "but at the end--the old things--the old faith--" the tears ran down the bishop's face. "they are all dead now," came the broken whisper through the closing darkness. "there is no one to forgive me, except--" "god will forgive you!" said the bishop, with a sob. but the idol-maker did not hear. chapter xlvii "if this be forgetting" the sailing-master of the yacht _barbara_, with his mate and crony, sat in the main saloon, whiling away a tedious hour. the room bore all the earmarks of "a rich man's plaything." it was tastefully and luxuriously furnished. the upholstery was of dark green brocade, thin persian prayer-rugs were on the hardwood floor, and electric bulbs in clusters were set in silver sconces, which swung with a long, slow motion as the yacht rocked to the deepening respiration of the sea. at one side a small square table held the remains of a comfortable refection, and by it, on a stand, sat a phonograph with which the two men had been gloomily diverting themselves. but though the _repertoire_ of the instrument was extended, it had brought little satisfaction to-night. the last irksome fortnight of inactivity had made each selection trite and familiar. moreover, the captain's spirits were not of the best. the abrupt change of ownership, followed hard by the death of the yacht's former master, was a _bouleversement_ that had confused his automatic temperament, and the sight of the double-locked cabin-door in the saloon was a daily depressant. he had never seen the yacht's new owner, though she had written him that he might expect her at any time, and the enigma of a future under a woman's orders troubled his sturdy and unimaginative mind. "wish to the lord she'd come, if she's ever coming!" he muttered, as the phonograph ran down with a wheeze. "this is two days i've kept the dinghy lying at the _hatoba_." the mate nodded. it was not the first time the remark had been made. "i wonder why she ordered his cabin door kept locked?" he said. "papers," returned the captain sapiently. "wants to seal 'em up for the executor. new owner must be rich, i guess. i'd like to know what she paid for the outfit. first time i ever signed under a new skipper sight unseen!" "miss barbara fairfax," mused the mate. "nice name. curious only one piece of mail should come for her--and second class, too." he picked up a thin package from the table, folded in dark paper. this had been made sodden by the rain; now it parted and a flat, black disk of hard rubber slipped from it and rolled across the floor. "blamed if it isn't a phonograph record," he said, as he picked it up. "it's out of the wrapper now--let's try it." he set it in place and rewound the spring, and the saloon filled with a chorus of chirps and tinklings from quivering catgut smitten by ivory plectrums. "_samisen!_" said the captain. "i've heard 'em in the tea-houses. give me a fiddle for mine, any day." the yacht's cabin-boy entered. "the dinghy's coming, sir," he said. "lady and gentleman aboard of her." the captain got up hastily, put out a hand and stopped the machine. "take away those dishes, and be quick about it," he ordered. "mr. rogers, pipe up the men." he hurried on deck and watched the bobbing craft approach. under the rising wind the sea was lifting rapidly and the dinghy buried its nose in the spray. presently he was giving a helping hand to the visitors at the break in the rail, looking into a pair of brown eyes that he thought were the saddest he had ever seen, and replying to a voice that was saying: "i am miss fairfax, captain hart, and this is my uncle, bishop randolph." * * * * * the train which brought barbara and the bishop from tokyo had crawled for miles along what seemed a narrow ribbon laid on a yellow floor. the steady, continuous downpour had flooded the rice-fields and the landscape was a waste of turbid freshet, the rivers deep and swollen torrents. at one bridge a small army of workmen were dumping loads of stone about a pier-head and shoring-up the track with heavy timbers. the train crossed this at a snail's pace, that inspired anxiety. "i'm not an engineer," the bishop had said, "but i prophesy this bridge won't be safe to-morrow unless the water falls." the early daylight dinner at the hotel had been well nigh a silent ceremonial. that day, with the temple solitary, barbara had gone down into a deeper valley of shadow. just as her longing to go to him in her trouble had seemed to her overwrought, so now her grief was strangely poignant. when she thought of him her mind was a confusion of tremulous half-thoughts and new emotions. she could not know that the voice she dimly heard was the call of blood--that she was in the grip of that mighty instinct of filiation which strengthens the life-currents of the world. her grief--mysterious because its springs were haunting and unknown--added its aching pang now to the misery that had encompassed her. she had felt the fierce bounding of the stout little boat, the gusts of windy spray that flew over them, with a tinge of relief, since the buffeting made the inner pain less keen. as she stood at length, with her task, in the cabin whose door had been so long locked, she remembered the white-robed priests of kudan hill, stalking barefooted across the hot coals. her soul, she thought, must tread a fiery path on which rested no miracle of painlessness, and which had no end. above her she could hear the irregular footfalls of the bishop on the tilting deck, and the shrill humming of the wind in the ventilators. it seemed to be mocking her. before the world she was living a painful pretense. even her uncle believed her to be grieving for the man whose life had gone out that night at nikko! when all had been done and the papers sealed in a portmanteau for delivery to the consul-general, barbara came into the brilliant saloon. the yacht was pitching heavily and she could stand with difficulty. steadying herself against the table, she saw the empty wrapper addressed to herself. it bore a nikko postmark. who could have sent it here? as she stood holding the paper in her hand, the bishop entered. "captain hart thinks we would better stay aboard to-night, barbara," he said. "there is a nasty sea and we should be sure of a drenching in the dinghy. we have no change of clothing, you know." "you will be quite comfortable, miss fairfax," the captain's voice spoke deferentially from the doorway. "the guest-rooms are always kept ready." "very well," she said, a little wearily. "that will be best, no doubt." she held up the torn wrapper. "what was in this, i wonder?" the captain confessed his indiscretion with embarrassment, and she absolved him with a smile that covered a sharper pang than she had yet felt that evening. for that thin disk had been on the hillside that nikko night--perhaps had heard that quarrel, had seen that blow, had watched a man crawling, staggering foot by foot, till he collapsed against the frame that held it! by what strange chance had it been sent to her here? her uncle bade her good night presently, being an indifferent sailor, and betook himself to bed. the room that had been prepared for her opened into the saloon. she was too restless to retire, and after a time she climbed up the companion-way to the windy deck. the vaulted sapphire of the sky had been swept clean of cloud and the stars sparkled whitely. off at one side, a flock of sinister shadows, she could make out the squadron of battle-ships, and beyond, in a curving line, the twinkling lights of the bund. could it ever again be to her that magical shore she had first seen from a ship's deck, with hills which the cherry-trees made fairy tapestries of green-rose, and mountains creased of purple velvet and veined with gold? the great white phantom lifting above them--would it henceforth be but a bulk of ice and stone, no longer the shrine of the goddess-of-radiant-flower-bloom? the sky--would it ever again seem the same violet arch that had bent over a tokyo garden of musk flowers and moonlight? would the world never seem beautiful to her again? all about her the foam-stippled water glowed with points of phosphorescence, as though a thousand ghostly lanterns were afloat. it made her think of the festival of the _bon_, of which thorn had told her, when the _shoryo-buné_--the boats of the departed spirits--in lambent flotillas, go glimpsing down to the sea. how unbelievable that she should never see him again! she felt a sudden envy of the placid millions encircling her to whose faith no life was ever lost, whose loved ones were ever coming back in the perennial cherry-blooms, the maple-leaves, the whispering pines. her love would come back to her only in bitter memories, in painful thoughts that would shame and burn. all else beside, she had been austen ware's promised wife. how could she still feel love for the man who had caused his death? yet--if she must--if she could never tear that image from her breast! like the reflection of a camera-obscura, memory painted a sudden picture on the void; she saw herself sitting amid the branches of a tulip-tree, while some one sang--a song the wind was humming in the cordage: "forgotten you? well, if forgetting be yearning with all my heart, with a longing, half pain and half rapture, for the time when we never shall part; if the wild wish to see you and hear you, to be held in your arms again- if this be forgetting, you're right, dear, and i have forgotten you then." great, slow tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. chapter xlviii while the city slept daunt accompanied his chief that evening to a dinner at the nobles' club--a "stag," for conventional functions had been discontinued since the royal death had cast a pall over the stay of the squadron. as they drove thither a nearer shadow was over the ambassador's spirits. his thoughts would stray to barbara and her misfortune, which seemed so deep and irreparable. he had eventually accepted his wife's diagnosis as to daunt's _tendresse_, but he had a confidence that his secretary of embassy, though hard-hit, would bear no scars. he could not guess all that lay beneath the brave domino daunt was wearing. the affair was a late one, with various native divertisements: top-spinners, painters whose exquisite brush-etchings, done in a few seconds, were given as mementoes to the guests, and jugglers who, utterly without paraphernalia, caused live fowl to appear in impossible places. toward the close the ambassador found himself seated beside the minister of marine. "very clever," he said, as a chinese pheasant flew out of an inverted opera-hat. "i almost believe he could produce my missing dog if he were properly urged." "have you lost one?" asked the admiral. "i'm sorry." the ambassador laughed. "it was really something of a relief," he said, and told the story of the russian wolf-hound which had so curiously disappeared on the evening of doctor bersonin's call. "the oddest thing about it," he ended, "is that, though the name of the embassy was on his collar, nothing has been heard of him." the two men chatted for some time on things in general, the conversation veering to the squadron. the ambassador thought the other seemed somewhat distrait. at two the affair ended and the carriages drew up to the windy porte-cochère. there was a confidential matter which the ambassador wished to speak of with his host. he had mentioned it, but no fitting opportunity had occurred. at the door the admiral recalled it, suggesting with a quizzical reference to the other's american fondness for late hours that, as his house was on the way, the ambassador stop there, while they had their talk over a cigar. the latter, therefore, departed in the admiral's carriage, and daunt drove alone to the embassy, directing the coachman to go in a half-hour for his chief. in the past three days daunt had fought a constant battle. every feature of that night at nikko was stamped indelibly on his mind. the passionate resentment, the agony of protest that had come to him at the ball, when he had received the torn fragments of his letter to barbara, returned in double force, opposing a strange, new sense of shame that his thought should follow her even into the tragic shadow where she now dwelt. yet--for fancy will not be denied--his brain would again and again circle the same somber treadmill: _we have done those things which we ought not to have done!_ he seemed to hear her say it on the dark hillside. her voice had had that in it which, against his will, had thrilled him. what had she done that she regretted? she had spoken of the day in the cave at enoshima--had seemed to wish him to believe that she had not then been acting a part. could anything have happened in that one day's interval so utterly to change her? she had been unhappy, for he had surprised her weeping. what was it she had wished to "confess?" so to-night his gloomy reflections ran--to their submerging wave of self-reproach. he let himself into the chancery with his latch-key, to get his evening's mail. a telegram had been laid on his desk. it was a cipher from washington, and he opened the safe at once and from the inner drawer took out the official code books. he sat down at one of the desks and began the decoding of the text. for a time he worked mechanically--as it were, with but one-half of his brain--tracing each group of figures in the bulky volume, transposing by the secret key, dragging, in the complicated process, sense and coherency from the meaningless digits. then he sat staring at the result: "large short selling to-day in european bourses and in new york (comma) unexplainable on usual grounds (comma) is creating anxiety (period) can scarcely be explained except on hypothesis that secret group of dealers have suddenly come into possession of information which leads them to consider the international situation ominous (period) newspapers in ignorance of anything extraordinary (period) london and paris evidently puzzled (period) has situation developed new phases and in your opinion does it contain possible element of danger (period) hasten reply." a full five minutes daunt sat motionless, revolving the matter in all its bearings. an answer must be sent without delay. a part of that answer might be found in the departure of the squadron. the newspapers had announced its receipt of sailing-orders, but the news had yet to be verified. the naval minister could give this verification. he went at once to the stables, where the carriage was about to start for the ambassador. he sprang in. a little later he was at the admiral's official residence and his chief was perusing the message. after a moment's thought the ambassador read it aloud. daunt had made a move to retire, but the admiral stopped him. "pray don't go yet," he said. "there is something i should like to say on this matter, and i count on your discretion, mr. daunt, as on his excellency's. since the american government attaches significance to that peculiar incident, i think no harm can come from an exchange of opinion. it may help us both." he paused a moment, his foot tapping the floor. "the news contained in that telegram," he continued presently, "for the past two days has caused my government great concern. your excellency will understand when i say that the particular objects of this attack (if i may so call it) are precisely those securities which would suffer most were japan's peace or prosperity threatened. there has seemed to be a concurrence in it not purely fortuitous. back of this selling is no mere opinion--it is too assured for that. some interest or individual abroad is apparently banking heavily on a belief that japan is about to enter a period of stress!" the ambassador spoke for the first time. "_abroad?_" he said shrewdly. the admiral looked at him an instant without speaking. his expression changed swiftly. he rose and went quickly to the telephone in the next room. "he is talking with the secret service," said daunt, in a low tone. in a few moments their host returned. there was something in his face that made the ambassador's keen eye kindle. "the suggestion was most pertinent," he said. "there is one man in japan who, exclusive of the commercial codes, has sent in the past two days cipher telegrams to new york, london and berlin." he took a short turn about the room in some agitation. "your excellency," he said, stopping short, "i make a confident of you. that man is doctor bersonin." the ambassador started. "pray absolve me," said the admiral quickly, "from an apparent indiscretion. doctor bersonin is no longer in the japanese service. his contract expired at noon to-day. it will not be renewed. as one of _my_ government i speak to you, as the representative of _your_ government, concerning a private individual whose acts are in the purview of us both. the circumstances are extraordinary, but i think the occasion justifies this conversation." he rang a bell sharply and his private secretary entered. "bring me," he said in japanese, "report number eleven of lieutenant ishida hetaro." when it was brought, he turned to a leaf underscored scored with red. "your excellency," he said, "interested me profoundly this evening by the account of the disappearance of your dog. i am going to ask mr. daunt--who reads japanese so fluently--to give a running translation of this." daunt took the manuscript--as perfectly executed as an inscription in uncial greek--and began to read. as he translated, his breath came more quickly, and the ambassador leaned forward across the table. yet the words chronicled nothing more than the curious disappearance from the laboratory of a tiny song-bird--_and a steel pen-rest_. the close of the narrative drew an exclamation from the ambassador's lips. for it told of feathery sprays of reddish-brown powder on the expert's desk, and he seemed to see himself, his study lamp in his hand, bending over curious whorls of dust on his own piazza. "may i ask," said the admiral, "whether the episode of the dog suggested to your excellency the possibility that your caller might himself be able to solve the mystery of the animal's disappearance?" the ambassador's reply came slowly, but with deliberate emphasis: "it did. the more so, from our previous conversation. in my study i have the model of a dreadnaught. we were discussing this, and the doctor described the fighting machine of the future--an atomic engine which should utilize some newly discovered law of molecular action, a machine that might be carried in a single hand, to which a battle-ship would be, as he expressed it, 'mere silly shreds of steel.' he spoke, i thought, with a strange confidence that seemed almost unbalanced. in connection with the conversation, the later incident, i confess, left a deep impression. yet the idea it suggested was so incredible that i have never spoken of it to any one before." "suppose," said the admiral, "that the man we are discussing has actually constructed such a machine. what possible connection can there be between that and a confidence in some near event which will lower japan's credit in the eyes of the world?" before the ambassador replied there was the sound of voices outside--a sudden commotion and a woman's agitated protestations. the secretary came in hurriedly and whispered to the admiral. a door slammed in the hall, there was the sound of a short struggle, and a girl burst into the room. she threw herself at the admiral's feet, panting broken sentences. her _kimono_ was torn and muddied, her blue-black hair was loosened, and her face white and pitifully working. a man had darted after her--he was the admiral's _aide_. he grasped her arm. "she has been at the department," he said in english, with a glance at the visitors. "they detained her there, but she got away. they have telephoned a warning that she might attempt to see you." she struggled against him, her eyes sweeping the circle about her with a passionate entreaty. suddenly she saw the ambassador. she lifted her face, swollen with crying, to him: "you--nod know me--haru?" she faltered, "_né_? say so!" "haru!" he exclaimed. then, turning to the admiral, "i know the child," he said. "she was companion to one of our house-guests till a week ago, when she disappeared from her home." his host made an exclamation of pity. "it is _no-byo_, no doubt," he said, using the word for the strange japanese brain-fever which is akin to madness. "she must be cared for at once." he leaned and spoke soothingly to her. a spasm seized haru. she tore herself from the _aide's_ grasp and, falling prone, beat her small fists on the floor. "they will none of them listen! they will none of them listen!" she screamed, in japanese. "they call it the fever, and they will not hear! and to-morrow it will be too late!" a peal of hysteric laughter shook her, mixed with strangling sobs. "are all the gods with bersonin-_san_?" at that name the admiral's face changed swiftly. "leave her with me," he said, "and wait in the anteroom." "but, excellency--" the other lifted his hand, and the _aide_ withdrew with the secretary. his two callers had risen, but he stayed them. "we have gone far along the road of confidence to-night," he said in a low tone. "if you are willing, we will go to the end." he bent and drew the girl to a sitting posture. "tell us," he said gently, "what brought you here." chapter xlix the alarm as the three men listened to the swift, broken story, there was no sound save the rustle of the wind outside, the clack of a night-watchman, and the ticking of the clock on the marble mantel. the crouching form, the sodden garments, the passionate intensity of the slim, clutched hands, the fire in the dark eyes--all lent effect to a narrative instinct with terrible truth. the ambassador's knowledge of the colloquial was limited, but he knew enough to grasp the story's main features. it capped the edifice of suspicion and furnished a direful solution to what had been mysterious. once the admiral's eyes met his, and each knew that the other _believed_. terrible as its meaning was--pointing to what black depths of abysmal wickedness--it was true! the admiral listened with a countenance that might have been carved of metal, but the faces of the others were gray-white. later was to come to both the pathos and meaning of the sacrifice this frail girl had laid on the knees of her country's gods, but for the hour, all else was swallowed up in the horrifying knowledge, struck through with the sharp fact that one of the partners in this devilish enterprise, however expatriate, was of their own nation. to daunt this was intensified by his own acquaintance with phil. memories swept him of that worthless, ribald career--the evil intimacy with bersonin--the gradual dominance of the bottle, which in the end had betrayed him! with a singular separateness of vision, he seemed, in lightning-like flashes, to see that betrayal: the blind infatuation, the slow enticements, the reckless, intoxicated triumph, the final surrender. he seemed to see haru, her secret won, running panting through the wind. he saw phil waking at last from his drunken slumber--to what shame and penalty? he shuddered. * * * * * when the secretary entered at the crisp sound of the admiral's bell, he started at the pallid countenances in the room. the japanese girl stood trembling, half-supported by the admiral's arm. the latter spoke--in a voice that held no sign of feeling. it was to present the young man to the girl in the most formal and elaborate courtesy. "the _ojo-san_ deigns to be for but an hour the guest of my mean abode," he said. "instruct my _karei_ that in that unworthy interval he may offer her august refreshment and afterward prepare her proper escort and conveyance. meantime, send my _aide_ to me." the secretary's gleam of astonishment veiled itself under oriental lashes, and a tinge of color warmed the whiteness of haru's cheek. he bowed to her profoundly. as he deferentially opened the door, she turned back, swayed, and sank suddenly prone in a deep, sweeping obeisance. an instant the admiral stood looking after her. "the petal of a plum-blossom," he said, "under the hoof of the swine!" his manner changed abruptly as the _aide_ entered. he spoke in quick, curt japanese, in a tone sharp and exact as steel shears snipping through zinc: "something has transpired of great moment. there is no time to deal with it by the ordinary channels. it is of the first importance--the _first_ importance!--that i reach yokohama within the hour. you will call up shimbashi and order a special train with right of way. this admits of _no delay_! send for my carriage at once. you will accompany me. we leave in ten minutes." the _aide_ went out quickly while he seated himself at his desk and began to write rapidly. "two battle-ships!" he said suddenly, wheeling in his seat. "with the human lives on them! perhaps even war between two or more nations! gods of my ancestors! all this to hang on the loyalty of a mere girl!" the ambassador, pacing the floor, snapped the lid of his watch. "it must still be close to two hours of sunrise," he said in an agitated voice. "surely there is time!" the admiral was consulting an almanac when the _aide_ reëntered. "here is a telegram," he said. "put it on the wire at once. it must arrive before us." "excellency," said the _aide_, "the train is not possible. the service to yokohama ceased at six o'clock. the rains--there is a washout." his chief pondered swiftly. "it must be left to others, then. call up the emergency long-distance for yokohama and give me a clear wire at once to the governor's residence. i must make the telegraphic instructions fuller." he bent over the desk. trepidation was on the _aide's_ face when he returned this time. "excellency the accident to the line was the failure of the bridge over the rokuga-gawa. it carried both the telegraph and telephone conduits. no wire will be working before noon to-morrow." the admiral half-rose. he stretched out his hand, then drew it back. "the wireless!" exclaimed the ambassador. the _aide's_ troubled voice replied. whatever the necessity he knew that it was a crucial one. "the mast was displaced by to-day's earthquake," he said. "the system is temporarily useless." there was a moment of blank silence. the admiral sat staring straight before him. the only sign of agitation was his labored breathing. "can a horse get through?" the other shook his head. "not under three hours. it would have to be by _détour_--and there are no relays." "a motor car?" "impossible!" exclaimed the ambassador. "by the long road and in better weather my mercedes can not do it under eighty minutes." the admiral lifted himself from his chair. his eyes were bloodshot and on his forehead tiny veins had sprung out in branching clusters of purple. "in the name of _shaka_! yokohama harbor but a handful of miles away, and cut off utterly? it must be reached, i tell you! _it must be reached!_" his voice was low-pitched, but terrible in its intensity. "drive to the naval college and ask for twenty cadets--its swiftest runners--to be sent after you to shimbashi. a locomotive can take them as far as the river. if there are no _sampan_, they can swim. make demand in my authority. not a minute is to be lost!" he put what he had been writing into the _aide's_ hand. "read this in the carriage. it will serve as instruction." the _aide_ thrust the paper into his breast and vanished. the admiral looked about him through stiffened, half-closed eyelids. then, under the stress, it seemed, of a mighty shudder--the very soul of that overwhelming _certainty_ of the peril awaiting the red dawn on that bungalow roof above the yokohama anchorage--the racial impassivity, the restraint and repression of emotion that long generations of ingrain habit have made second nature to the japanese, suddenly crumbled. he struck his hand hard against the desk. "has not japan toiled and borne enough, that this shame must come to her?" his deep voice shook. "your excellency--mr. daunt--in all this land where heroism is hackneyed and sacrifice a fetish, there is no prince or coolie who, to turn aside this peril, would not give his body to the torture. yet must we sit here helpless as _darumas_! if man but had wings!" daunt stiffened. he felt his heart beat to his temples. he started to his feet with an exclamation. "but man _has_ wings!" he cried. what of the long hours of toil and experiment, the gray mornings on aoyama parade-ground when his glider had carried him circling above the tree-tops? could he do it? with no other word he darted to the hall. they heard his flying feet on the gravel and a quick command to a _betto_. the wind tossed back the word into the strained quiet. "aoyama!" exclaimed the ambassador, as the hoof-beats, lashed to an anguish of speed, died into silence. "his glider!" a sudden hope flashed into the admiral's face. "the gods of _nippon_ aid him!" he said. chapter l whom the gods destroy there was one whose guilty eyes were closed to the red danger so near. in the house in the street-of-the-misty-valley, under the green mosquito netting, phil lay in a log-like slumber. the soft light of the paper _andon_ flowed over the gay wadded _f'ton_, the handsome besotted face with its mark of the satyr and, at one side, a little wooden pillow of black lacquer. there was no sound save the sweep of the wind outside and the heavy breathing of the unconscious man. for three nights past, since his wild motor-ride from nikko, he had not slept, save in illusory snatches, from which he had waked with the sweat breaking on his forehead. short as were these, they had held horrid visions, broken fragments of scenes that waved and clustered about the lilied altar in the ts'kiji cathedral, echoing to the solemn service of the dead. again and again there had started before him the stolid ring of blue-clad coolie women, swaying as they had swayed to the straw-ropes of the pile-driver in the moat-bottom with their weird chant- _"yó--eeya--kó--ra!_ _yó--eeya--kó--ra!"_ and now they chanted a terrible refrain: _"thou--shalt--not--kill!"_ to-night, however, deeper potations had done their work. he was dreaming--yellow dreams like the blackguard fancyings of the half-world--visions in which he moved, a prince of largesse, through unending pleasures of self-indulgence. he was on an european boulevard, riding with haru by his side in silk and pearls, and people turned to gaze as he went by. but now, with sinister topsyturvydom, the dream changed. the _cocher_ drove faster and faster, into a mad gallop. he turned his head and phil saw that the face under the glazed hat was the face of his dead brother. the staring pedestrians began to pursue the carriage. they showered blow after blow on it, till the sound reverberated like thunder. not the ghosts of his dream, but a hand of flesh and blood was knocking. it was on the outer _shoji_ and the frail dwelling shook beneath it. the servant, sunk in bovine sleep, heard no sound, but the chauffeur in the automobile that throbbed outside the wistaria gate, rose from his seat, and across a bamboo wattle a dog barked and scrambled venomously. phil's eyes opened and he sat up giddily. he went unsteadily to the door and unfastened the _shoji_, blinking at the great form that strode past him into the inner apartment. bersonin's gaze swept the room. "the girl!" he said hoarsely. "where is she?" phil looked about him dazedly--at the tumbled _f'ton_, the deserted wooden pillow. haru gone? his senses, clouded by intoxication, took in the fact dully, as a thing of no meaning. the expert grasped him by his shoulder and shook him till the thin silk of the _kimono_ tore under the enormous white fingers. the violence had its effect. the daze fell away. phil broke into loud imprecations. "did you tell her anything?" phil's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "what is--what makes you think--" he stammered. bersonin's face was a greenish hue. his great hands shook. "to-night," he said, in a whisper, "to-night--an hour ago--i saw her on the street. i wasn't sure at first, but i know now it was she! a naval officer was with her. _he took her into the house of the minister of marine!_" the other gave a low cry. a chalky pallor overspread his features. "haru?--no, bersonin! you're crazy, i say. she--she would never tell!" fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. a sharp moan came from his lips. "so she _did_ know! you told her then! o, incredible fool!" for an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. phil quailed before him. a frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt the passion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in a flame. his voice rose in a kind of scream: "don't look at me like that!" he raved. "i was a fool to trust her, but it's done now. it's done, i tell you, and you can't undo it! what can they do to us? they may find the machine, but what can they _prove_? we're foreigners! they can't touch us without proof!" he had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. all the grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic. he trembled excessively. "proof!" sneered bersonin savagely. "there would have been none if--_it happened_! i had arranged that! in its operation _the machine destroys itself_! and neither of us is in yokohama to-night." phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "what is to be done? can we still--" "listen," said the doctor. "a single hour more, even with your cursed folly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and all wires are down. i heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out of order." "then--then--they can not--" phil's voice shook with a nauseous eagerness. "wait! when i saw the girl there, i was suspicious. i watched. in a little while your friend daunt came from the gate. in some way he happened to be there. the _betto_ was flogging the horses like a crazy man. he came in this direction!--can't you understand? his aëroplane! he is going to use it as a last chance. if he succeeds, we may spend our lives in the copper mines. if he can be stopped, we may win yet! there will be nothing but the tale of a japanese drab--that and nothing else!" phil flung on his clothing in a madness of haste. the desperate dread that had raged in him was become now a single fixed idea, frosted over by a cold, demented fury. unhealthy spots of red sprang in his white cheeks; his eyes dilated to the mania of the paranoiac. hatless, he rushed through the little garden, cleared the rear hedge at a bound, and fled, like a runaway from hell, toward the darkness of the vast parade-ground. chapter li the laugh as bersonin stood by the wistaria gate beside the pulsing motor, confused thoughts rushed through his mind into an eddying phantasmagoria. the fear and agitation which he had kept under only by an immense self-control returned with double weight. all was known--thanks to the brainless fool in whom he had relied! the government knew. the wild tale the japanese girl had told had been believed! had there been suspicions before? he thought of the espionage he had fancied had been kept of late on his movements, of the silent, saturnine faces he had imagined dogged his footsteps. even his servants, even ishida, with his blank visage and fantastic english, might be-he looked sharply at the chauffeur. he was lighting a cigarette in the hollow of his hands; the ruddy flare of the match lit the brown placid face, the narrow, secret-keeping eyes. he tried to _force_ his mind to a measure of control, to look the situation in the face. if phil failed. if the aëroplane won against darkness and wind--if the bungalow was reached in time, and the machine made harmless. nothing would happen. who, then, would believe the girl's wild story? who could show that he had made it? he had worked at night, alone in his locked laboratory. besides, it would tell nothing. it would yield its secret only to the master mind. and if its presence on the roof damned anybody, it would not be him! _he_ had not put it there. _he had not been in yokohama in three days!_ if the aëroplane did not start--he remembered the look on phil's face when he rushed away!--or if it failed. with its own deadly ray, the very machine would vanish. phil had not known this--could not have told. the searchers would find nothing! the news would have flashed along the cables that must roll up for him vast sums in the panic of markets. and there would be nothing to bring the deed home to him! nothing? the warning had been given _before the fact_. the government had taken alarm. bureaus were buzzing already. sooner or later the accusation would be running through the street, swiftly and stealthily, from noble to merchant, from coolie to beggar, from end to end of this seething oriental city--wherein he was a marked man! what mattered it whether there were evidence on which a court would condemn him? the story of his huge _coup_ in the bourses would be told--would rise up against him. he remembered suddenly a tale he had heard--of a traitor to japan cut to pieces in a tea-house. an icy sweat broke out on his limbs. where was there any refuge? on a foreign ship? there were many in the bay. he longed with a desperate longing for the touch of a deck beneath his feet, a bulwark of blue water between him and possible vengeance. at kisaraz' on the chiba road, a dozen miles to the north in the curve of the bay, was his summer villa, his frequent resort for week-end. his naphtha launch lay there, always ready for use. he could reach it in an hour. "get into the tonneau," he said to the chauffeur. "i'll drive, myself." he took the wheel the other resigned, threw on the clutch, and the clamorous monster moved off down the quiet lane. past ranks of darkened _shoji_, with here and there a barred yellow square; by lanterned tea-houses, alight and tinkling, past stolid, pacing watchmen in white duck clothing, and sauntering groups of night-hawk students chanting lugubrious songs--faster and faster, till the chauffeur clutched the seat with uneasiness. the fever of flight was on his master now. he began to imagine voices were calling after him. from a police-box ahead a man stepped into the roadway waving a hand. it was no more than a warning against over-speed, but the gesture sent a thrill of terror through the big man at the wheel. he swerved sharply around a corner, skidding on two wheels. bersonin muttered a curse as he peered before him, for the stretch was brilliantly illuminated. he was on the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods, which to-night seemed strangely alive with hubbub. that afternoon, with the passing of the rain, there had been held a neighborhood _hanami_, a "flower-viewing-excursion." a score of families, with picnic paraphernalia, had trooped to the wistaria arbors of far-distant kameido, to return in the small hours laden with empty baskets and somnolent babies. to-morrow, like to-day, would be holiday, when school and work alike should be forgotten. the cavalcade had just returned--afoot, since the trams had ceased running at midnight--the men merry with _saké_, the women chattering. a few children, still wakeful, scampered here and there. the chauffeur leaned forward with an exclamation--they had all but run down a hobbling figure. "keep your hands off!" snarled bersonin. "let them get out of the way!" the automobile dashed on, the people scattering before it. there was a small figure in the roadway, however, of whom no one took account--a six year old. ishikichi had not gone to the _hanami_ that day. for many hours that long afternoon, while his mother cared for the sick father, he had beat the tiny drum that soothed a baby's fret, comforted by the promise that he should be waked in the great hour when the crowd came home. stretched on his worn _f'ton_ that night, he had puzzled over the situation--the hard, blank fact that because they had no money, they must give up the shop, which was the only home he knew. when they took his father away to the _byo-in_, the sick-house, what would he and his mother and the baby-_san_ do? would they stand, like the _kadots'ke_, playing a _samisen_ at people's doors? it was not honorably pleasant to be a _kadots'ke_! only men could earn money, and it would be so long before he became a man. so he had been pondering when he went to sleep. now, standing in the road, he heard the hum of the rushing motor, and a quick thought,--born of that instinct of sacrifice for the parent, that is woven, a golden thread, in the woof of the japanese soul--darted into his baby brain. one of the big fire-wagons of the _seiyo-jin_ was coming! when the carriage killed toru, his playmate, the foreigner had sent much money to toru's house. he was not sorry any more, because the white-faced man whom he liked, who lived in the temple, had told him what a fine thing it had been. for toru's honorable father had been fighting with the _gaki_, the no-rice-devils--it was almost like a war--and toru had died just as the brave soldiers did in battle. a great purpose flooded the little soul. was he not brave, too? so, as bersonin, with a snarl, shook off the hand of the chauffeur and threw the throttle wide open, ishikichi did not scamper with the rest. with his hands tightly clenched in his patched _kimono_, his huge clogs clattering on the roadway, he ran straight into the path of the hurtling mass of steel. there was a sudden, sickening jolt. the car leaped forward, dragging something beneath it that made no sound. the chauffeur hurled himself across the seat on the gear, and the automobile stopped with a grinding discord of screeching pistons. a surge of people came around it--a wave without outcry, but holding a hushed murmur like the sea. _shoji_ were opening, doorways filling the street with light. a man bent and drew something gently from between the wheels. with a writhing oath the expert wrenched at the clutch. "go on!" he said savagely. "how dare you stop without my orders?" the japanese made no reply, but the arms that braced the wheel were rigid as steel. bersonin sank back in his seat, his massive frame quivering, his eyes glittering like flakes of mica. but for this, in ten minutes he would have been clear of the city, flying along the chiba road! what if he were detained? he felt strange, chilly tendrils plucking at his flesh, and a hundred fiery needles seemed pricking through his brain. peering over his shoulder, with his horrible fear on him, he saw the crowd part to admit a woman who, quite silently, but with haste, came forward and knelt on the ground. there was no movement from the crowd. in a hush like that of death, the mother rose with ishikichi in her arms. the white, still face looked pitifully small. one clog swayed from its thong between the bare toes. the faded _kimono_ was stained with red. she spoke no word. there was no tear on her face. but in the dreadful silence, she turned slowly with her burden and looked steadily at the twitching face in the car--looked and looked. the chauffeur swung himself from the seat into the crowd. an insane desire had been creeping stealthily on bersonin. he had felt it coming when he faced the truth in phil's cringing admission. the horrible compulsion to laughter was on him. the damnable man-hysteria had him by the throat. he fought it desperately, as one fights a wild beast in the dark. in vain. his jaws opened. he laughed--a dreadful peal of merriment that echoed up and down the latticed street. and as he laughed, he knew that he raised a peril nearer, more fearful even than that from which he had been flying. there was an instant's shocked calm, like the silence which follows the distant spurt of blue flame from the muzzle of a krupp gun. then, like its answering detonation--in such a menacing roar as might arise from the brink of an inferno--the silence of the quiet street burst into awful sound. * * * * * ten minutes later but a single lighted _shoji_ glimmered on the darkened thoroughfare. the roadway was deserted save for a soldierly figure in policeman's uniform who stood thoughtfully looking at a huddle in the dim roadway--a mixture of wrenched and battered iron and glass, in the midst of which lay an inert, shapeless something that might have been a bundle of old clothes fallen from a scavenger's cart. chapter lii the voice in the dark barbara rested ill in her cabin bed that night. confused dreams troubled her, mingling familiar thoughts in kaleidoscopic confusion, dragging her from one tangle to another in a wearying rapidity against which she struggled in vain. one thing ran through them all--the gold-lacquer buddha that had stood on the sendai chest in her bedroom at the embassy; only it seemed to be also that lost image before which she had used to sit as a child. she had no feeling of awakening, but all at once the visions were gone and she lay open-eyed, swinging to the movement of the sea, feeling the night to be very long. there came over her a creeping oppression--a sense of terror of the night, of its hidden mysteries and occult forces. the darkness seemed to be holding some dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing that sprawled from horizon to horizon. a small, noiseless clock was hung beside the bed. she could see its pale face in the light of the thick ground-glass bulb that served as night-lamp. it was nearly four o'clock. she twisted back the tawny-brown surge of her hair, rose, and dressed as hastily as she could in the lurching space. then she opened the door and passed into the saloon. a roll of the yacht slammed to the cabin door and left her in darkness. she felt for the electric switch, but before she could find it, another movement sent her reeling against a stand. she threw out her arm to stay her fall and struck something. there was a clicking sound, a soft whir, and then the music of _samisen_ filled the dark room. she realized that she had staggered against the phonograph in the corner and that the shock had started its mechanism. wincing, she groped her way to a chair and sat down trembling. the music died away. there was a pause, a sharp click, a curious confusion of sounds, and then husky and filmy, _a human voice_: "barbara!" she caught her hands to her throat, her blood chilling to ice. it was the voice of austen ware, speaking, it seemed to her, from the world beyond. she crouched back, breathing fast and hard, while the voice went on, in strange broken periods, threaded by a whir and clamor that seemed the noise of the wind outside. "what is that i knocked over? it's buzzing and wheels are turning in it--or is it the pain? can't you stop it, barbara? no, i know you aren't here, really. i'm all alone ... i must be light-headed. how stupid!" the strange truth came to her in a stab of realization. what she heard was no supernatural voice. in its fall that night the phonograph's spring had been released and the _samisen_ record had registered also the delirious muttering of the dying man. she felt herself shuddering violently. "i can't go any farther.... you--you've done it for me, phil. it ... was the second blow. it seemed to crash right through...." barbara's heart was beating to bursting. "austen, austen," she whispered to herself, in an agony. "tell me! was it _phil_? you can't know what you're saying!" "no one must know it. the law would ... no, no! what good would it do now? he's a bad egg, but i ... i was always proud of the family name. barbara! remember, it _wasn't phil_! it _wasn't phil_!" she fell on her knees, her hands clasping the arms of the chair, thrilling to the truth beneath that pitiful denial. phil, not daunt! the man she had loved had no stain of blood on his soul! she sobbed aloud. with the whir of the machinery there mixed a grating, scratching discord, as though an automaton had attempted to laugh. "how ridiculous it seems to die like this! only this morning i was so near ... so near to what i wanted most. it was your losing the locket that checkmated me. why couldn't i have found it instead of phil?... did i tell you i was there that day, barbara--behind the _shikiri_, when you followed the japanese girl into the house? i could see just what you were thinking ... i would never have told you the truth ... never." with a faint cry barbara dragged herself backward. in the illusion, everything about her for the instant vanished. the yacht's walls had rolled away. she was on a gloomy hillside, and a stricken man was speaking--confessing. again the ghastly attempt to laugh. "a contemptible thing, wasn't it! i knew that. i've ... i've felt it.... i never seemed contemptible to myself before. but i should have had you, and that ... would have repaid. it was all coming my ... way. then, just the dropping of a locket, and ... phil ... and now, it's all over!" barbara felt herself engulfed in a wave of complex emotions. she was torn with a great repugnance, a greater joy, and a sense of acute pity that overmastered them both. then there rolled over all the recollection that what she now listened to was but a mechanical echo. the hillside faded, the walls of the yacht came back. "i never believed in much, and i'm going without whining. are you near, barbara? sometimes there are many people around me ... and then only you. i ... i think i'm beginning to wander!" she was weeping now, unrestrained. there was a long pause, in which the whir of the wheels rasped on. then-"is it your ... arms i feel, barbara? or ... is it...." that was all. the wheels whirred on a little longer, a click and--silence. only the rush of the wind outside and the passionate sobbing of the girl who knelt in the dark room, her face buried in her hand, her heart tossed on the cross-tides of anguish and of joy. a long time she knelt there. she was recalled by a confusion on the deck above her--shouts and a hastening of feet. she lifted her face. the dawn had come--its pale, faint radiance sifted through the heavy glass ports and dimly lit the room. the shouts and running multiplied. she sprang to her feet, opened the door and hurried up the companion-way. chapter liii a race with dawn in that furious pace toward aoyama, daunt had been consumed by one thought: that upon his single effort hung the saving of human lives--the covering of a shame to his own nation--the turning away of a foul allegation from the repute of a friendly empire. he knew that minutes were valuable. on the long, dimly-lighted roadways where the flying hoofs beat their furious tattoo, few carts were astir, and the trolleys had not yet appeared on the wider thoroughfares. the rain had washed the air clean, the wind was dustless and sweet, and the stars were palely bright. once a policeman signaled and the driver momentarily slackened speed--then on as before. the horses were white with foam when they reached the parade-ground. here daunt leaped down and wrenched both lamps from the carriage. "go home," he said to the _betto_, and running through a clump of trees, struck across the waste. the japanese stared after him mystified, then with a philosophic objurgation, turned and drove the sweating horses home at a walk. daunt ran to a low door in the long garage. the key was on a ring in his pocket. he went in, locking the door behind him. there were no electric lights--he had been there heretofore only by day--and the carriage lamps made only a subdued glimmer that was reflected from the polished metal of the great winged thing resting on its carrier. he threw off his evening coat and set feverishly to work. after its single trial the new fan-propeller had been unshipped for a slight alteration, and the flanges had not yet been reassembled. there were delicate adjustments to be made, wire rigging to be tautened, a score of minute tests before all could be safe and sure. he worked swiftly and with concentration, feeling his mind answering to the stress with an absolute coolness. at length the last attachment was in place, the final bolt sent home and one of the lamps lashed close in the angle of the wind screen. he took his place and the engine started its familiar double rhythm: pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst, as the explosive drop fell faster and faster. he leaned and broke the clutch which held the big double doors of the building. they swung open and he threw on the gear. and suddenly, as the propeller began to spin, in the instant the glider started in its rush down the guides, daunt was aware that some one had darted through the doors. he had a flashing view of a white, disheveled face, heard a cry behind him--then the prow of the glider tilted abruptly, the air whistled past the screens, the great flat field sank away, and he was throbbing steeply upward, against the sweep of the wind. daunt threw himself forward--the bubble in the spirit-level clung to the top of its tube. rapidly he warped down the elevation-vanes till slowly, slowly, the telltale bubble crept to the middle of the level. what was the matter? the engine was working well, yet there was a sense of heaviness, of sluggishness that was unaccountable. he looked to either side, before him, behind him. his fingers tightened on the clutches. just forward of the whirling propeller he made out the figure of a man, lying flat along the ribs of the glider's body, clutching the steel guys of the planes, looking at him. for a moment he stared motionless. it was this extra weight that had sent the glider reeling prow-up--had made it unresponsive to control. the man who clung there had aimed to prevent the flight! daunt leaned to let the full beam of the flaring lamp go past him. a quick intuition had told him whose were the eyes that had glittered across the throbbing fabric; but the face he saw now was infuriate with a new look that made him shiver. it was incarnate with the daredevil of terror. phil had been a drunkard; he was drunk now with the calculate madness of overmastering fear. as he gazed, a flitting, irrelevant memory crossed daunt's mind, of a day at college, years before, when by a personal appeal, he had saved phil from the disgrace of expulsion. and now it was phil--_phil!_--clinging there, with desperate, hooked fingers, struggling to consummate a crime that must sink him for ever! pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst; on the glider drove. with a fierce effort, daunt crushed down the sense of unreality and swiftly weighed his position. the other was directly in front of the propeller, a perilous place. only the guy-wire was in his reach. between them was a shuddering space. to land in the darkness to rid the aëroplane of that incubus, was impossible. he must go on. could he win with such a terrible handicap? he set his teeth. tilting the lateral vanes, he soared in a wide serpentine, peering into the deep, resounding dark below. tokyo lay a vast network of tiny pin-pricks of fire. he had never been so high before, had been content to sweep the tree-tops. to the left a bearded scimitar of light, merged by blackness, marked the bay. daunt swung parallel with this. pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst. the wind tore in gusts through the structure, the planes vibrating, the guys humming like the strings of a gigantic harp. his clothing dragged at his body. he was too high; he leaned over the mass of levers and the glider slid down a long, steep descent, till in the starlight he could see the blue-gray blur of roofs, the massed shadows of little parks of trees. now he was passing the edge of the city--now below him was the gloom of the rice-fields. a low sobbing sound came in the wind; it was the bubbling chorus of the frogs, and across it he heard the bark of a peasant's dog. to the right a dark hill loomed without warning, with a dim congeries of red tea-houses. it was the famous ikegami, the shrine of the buddhist saint ichiren, famed for its plum-gardens. it fell away behind, and now, far off, a score of miles ahead, grew up on the horizon a misty blotch of radiance. yokohama! he swerved, heading out across the lagoon, straight as the bee flies for the shimmering spot. pst-pst--pst-pst--faster and faster spat the tiny explosions. the glider throbbed and sang like a thing alive, and the hum of the propeller shrilled into a scream. tokyo was far behind now, the pale glow ahead rising and spreading. to the right he could see the clumped lights of the villages along the railroad, kamata--kawasaki--tsurumi. he dropped still lower, out of the lash of the wind. suddenly a flying missile struck the forward plane, which resounded like a great drum. a drop of something red fell on his bare hand and a feathered body fell like a stone between his feet. a dark carpet, dotted with foam, seemed to spring up out of the gulf. daunt threw himself at the levers and rammed them back. the glider had almost touched the sea--for a heartbreaking instant he thought it could never rise. he heard the curl of the waves, and a cry from behind him. then, slowly, slowly, breasting the blast, it came staggering up the hill of air to safety. the sky was perceptibly lightening now. daunt realized it with a tightening of all his muscles. it was the first tentative withdrawal of the forces of the dark. should he be in time? with his free hand he loosened the coil of the grapnel. suddenly the chances seemed all against success. a feeling of hopelessness caught him. he thought of the two men he had left behind, waiting--waiting. what message would come to them that morning? the engine was doing its best, every fiber of tested steel and canvas ringing and throbbing. but the creeping pallor of the night grew apace. kanagawa:--the glider swooped above it, left it behind. the misty glow was all around now, lights pricked up through the shadow. yokohama was under his feet, and ahead--the darker mass toward which he was hurtling--was the bluff. slowly, with painful anxiety, he swung the huge float in to skirt the cliff's seaward edge. there was the naval hospital with its flag-staff. there beyond, was the familiar break in the rampart of foliage--and there, flapping in the wind, was the awning on the flat roof of the roost. in the dawning twilight, it seemed a monstrous, leprous lichen, shuddering at the unholy thing it hid. daunt threw out the grapnel. he curved sharply in, aslant to the wind, flung down his prow and swooped upon it. there was a tearing, splintering complaint of canvas and bamboo; the glider seemed to stop, to tremble, then leaped on. turning his head, daunt saw the awning disappear like a collapsed kite. he caught a glimpse, on the steep, ascending roadway of a handful of naked men running staggeringly, one straggler far behind. the thought flashed through his mind that these were the cadets from the naval college. but they would be too late! the sun was coming too swiftly. the sky was a tide of amethyst--the dawn was very near! he came about in a wide loop that took him out over the bay, making the turn with the wind. for a fraction of a second he looked down--on the squadron of battle-ships, a geometrical cluster of black blots from which straight wisps of dark smoke spun like raveled yarn into the formless obscurity. a shrill, mad laugh came from behind him. daunt was essaying a gigantic figure-of-light whose waist was the flat bungalow roof. it was a difficult evolution in still sunlight and over a level ground. he had now the semi-darkness, and the sucking down-drafts of the wind that made his flight, with its driving falls and recoveries, seem the careless fury of a suicide. yet never once did his hand waver, never did that strange, tense coolness desert him. as he swept back, like a stone in the sling of the wind, he saw the thing he had come to destroy. it had the appearance of a large camera, set on a spidery tripod near the edge of the flat roof, its lens pointing out over the anchorage. landing was out of the question; to slacken speed meant to fall. he must strike the machine with the body of the glider or with the grapnel. to strike the roof instead meant to be hurled headlong, mangled or dead, his errand unaccomplished, down somewhere in that medley of roofs and foliage. the chances that he could do this seemed suddenly to fade to the vanishing point. a wave of profound hopelessness chilled his heart. with phil's mad, derisive laughter ringing in his ears, he dropped the glider's stem and drove it obliquely across. the grapnel bounded and clanged along the tiling, missing the tripod by three feet. on, in an upward staggering lunge, then round once more, wearing into the wind. there was no peal of laughter now from the man clinging to the steel rib. with the clarity of the lunatic phil saw how close the swoop had been. the scourge of the wind and the rapid flight through the rarefied air had exalted him to a cunning frenzy. he had no terror of the moment--all his fear centered in the to-morrow. to his deranged imagination the black square on the tripod represented his safety. he had forgotten why. but bersonin had made him see it clearly. it must not be touched! daunt was the devil--he was trying to send him to the copper-mines, to work underground, with chains on his feet, as long as he lived! the glider heeled suddenly and slid steeply downward. daunt gripped the levers and with all his strength warped up the forward plane. he felt a pang of sharpened agony. he, too, would fail! the crash was almost upon him. but the glider hung a moment and righted. farther and farther he twisted the laterals, till she swam up, oscillating. a jerk ran through her after framework; he turned his head. clinging with foot and hand, his hair streaming back from his forehead, his lips wide, phil was drawing himself, inch by inch, along the sagging guy-wire toward him. for a rigid second daunt could not move a muscle. then, caught by the upper wind, the perilous tilting of the planes awoke him. he swung head on, wavered, and swooped a last time for the roof. pst-pst--pst-pst--crash! the curved irons of the grapnel tore away the coping--slid, screaming. a jolt all but threw him from his seat. there were running feet somewhere far below him--a battering and shattering of glass in the piazza. he felt a sudden clearance and the big aëroplane plunged sidewise out over the bay, with a black, unwieldy weight, that spun swiftly, hanging on its grapnel. a shout tore its way from his lips. heedless of direction, he wrenched with his fingers to unship the grapnel chain. at the same instant the first sunbeam slid across the waves and turned the misty gloom to the golden-blue glory of morning. and with it, as though the voice of the day itself, there went out over the water, above the sweep of the wind, a single piercing-sweet note of music, like the cry of a great, splendid bird calling to the sunrise. fishermen in tossing _sampan_, and sailors on heaving _junk_ heard it, and whispered that it was the cry of the _kaminari_, the thunder-animal, or of the _kappa_ that lures the swimmer to his death. an icy blast seemed to shoot past the glider into the zenith. staring, daunt realized that one of the great planes, the propeller, the after-framework, with the man who had clung to it, were utterly gone--that the glider, like a dead bird caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet, was lunging by its own momentum--to its fall! had phil fallen, or was it-suddenly he felt himself flung backward, then forward on his face. the spreading vanes, crumpled edgewise, like squares of cardboard, were sliding down. he saw the shipping of the bay spread beneath him--the twin lighthouses, one red, one white, on the ends of the breakwater--the black dreadnaughts--a steamer with bright red funnels--a fleet of fishing _sampan_ putting out. all were swelling larger and larger. the wind, blowing upward around him, stole his breath, and he felt the blood beating in his temples. he heard ships' bells striking, and across the sound a temple-bell boomed clearly. a mist was coming before his eyes. just below him was a white yacht; it seemed to be rushing up to meet him like a swan. thoughts darted through his brain like live arrows. the battle-ships were saved! no shameful suspicion should touch japan's name in the highways of the world! what matter that he lost the game? what did one--any one--count against so much? he thought of barbara. he would never know now what she had been about to tell him that night at the nikko shrine! he would never see her again! but she would know ... she would know! the sound of the sea--a great roaring in his ears. chapter liv into the sunlight on the deck of the white yacht the captain rose to his feet. the battle fought on that huddle of blankets for the life of the man so hardly snatched from the sea had been a close one, but it had been won. his smile of satisfaction overran the group of observant faces at one side, the bishop watching with strained anxiety, and the girl, who pillowed in her arms that unconscious head with its drenched, brown curls. "don't you be afraid, miss fairfax," he said, with bluff heartiness. "_he'll_ be all right now!" the assurance came to barbara's heart with an infinite relief that he could not guess. at the first sight of the huge bird-like thing slipping down the sky she had known the man clinging to its framework was daunt. the stricken moments while the wreck of the great vanes lay outspread on the water--the launch of the yacht's boat, and the lifting of the limp form over its gunwale--the cruelly kind ministrations that had brought breath back to the inert body--these had seemed to her to consume dragging hours of agony. a thunder of guns roared across the water, but she scarcely heard. her eyes were fixed on theface to which the tide of life was returning. again the roar, and now the sound pierced the saturating darkness. it called the numbed senses back to the sphere of feeling--to a consciousness of an immense weariness and a gentle motion. it seemed to daunt as though his head rested on a pillow which rose and fell to an irregular rhythm. he stirred. his eyes opened. memory dawned across them. haru's story--the windy flight on the glider--the sick sense of failure--the plunge down, and down, and the water leaping toward him! had he failed? a third time the detonation rang out. he started, made an effort to rise. his gaze swept the sea. there, flags flying, bands playing, a line of dreadnaughts was steaming down the harbor. "the battle-ships!" he said, and there was triumph in his eyes. he turned his head and saw the bishop, the silent crew, the relieved countenance of the captain. realization came to him. soft arms were about him; the pillow that rose and fell was a woman's heaving breast! his gaze lifted, and barbara's eyes flowed into his. he put out a hand weakly and whispered her name. she did not speak, but in that look a glory enfolded him. it was not womanly pity in her face--it was far, far more, something wordless, but eloquent, veiled, yet passionately tender. he knew suddenly that after the long night had come the morning, after the pain and the misunderstanding all would be well. for an instant he closed his eyes, smiling. the darkness was gone for ever. his head was on her heart, and it was her dear arms that were lifting him up, into the sunlight, the sunlight, the sunlight! chapter lv know all men by these presents long, windless, golden days of spring and falling cherry-petals, with cloud-piles like fleecy pillars, with fringing palm-plumes and bamboo foliage turning from yellow cadmium to tawny green. drowsy, lotos-eating days of summer among purple hills wound in a luminous elfin haze. days of typhoon and straight-falling rain. sunsets of smouldering crimson and nights under a blue-black vault palpitating with star-swarms or a waste of turquoise, liquid with tropic moonlight. languorous days of autumn by the inland sea, when the dying summer's breath lingers like the perfume of incense, and the mirroring lilac water deepens to bishop's-purple. so the mild japanese winter comes--slowly, under a high, keen sky, bringing at last its scourging of dust and wind, its chill, opaque nights with their spectral fog veiling the trembling flames of the constellations, and its few, rare days when the evergreen earth is covered with a blanket of snow. there came one such day when daunt stood with barbara by the huge stone _torii_ at the gateway of the _mon-to_ temple on the hill-of-the-spirit. the air was softly radiant but not cold, the translucent heavens tinted with a fairy mauve, which on the horizon merged into dying hyacinth. the camelia hedges stood like blanched rows of crystalled beryl, the stalwart _mochi_ trees were cased in argent armor, and the curving porch of the temple, the roof of the near-by nunnery, the forest of bronze lanterns and the square stone tablets in the graveyard were capped with soft rounded mounds of snow. it lay thickly over the paved space save where a wide way had been cleared to the temple steps, for the day was a _saijits'_, a holy day, when the people gather to worship. across the lane they could see the chapel lifting its white cross into the clear blue. from its chancel arch was hung a crucifix of gold-lacquer, where the declining sun, shining through the stained glass of the rose-window, each evening touched it to shimmering color. the altar to-day was fragrant with the first plum-blossoms; two hours ago the bishop, standing before it, had read the sacred office which had made them man and wife. the carriage which was to take them to shimbashi station waited now at the end of the lane while barbara brought a branch of the early blooms to lay on a buddhist grave in a tenantless garden. in one of the farther groups before the temple steps was a miniature _rick-sha_ drawn by a servant. it held a child who had not walked since a night when, with clenched hands and brave little heart, he had run into the path of a speeding motor-car. on the breast of his wadded _kimono_ was a knot of ribbon at which the other children gazed in awe and wonder. it had been pinned one night to a small hospital shirt when the wandering eyes were hot with fever and the baby face pinched and white, by a lady whom ishikichi had thought must be the sun goddess at very least, and before whom the attendants of that room of pain had bowed to the very mats. he knew that in some dim way, without quite knowing how, he had helped that great, mysterious something that meant the government of japan, and that he should be very proud of it. but ishikichi was far prouder of the fine foreign front that had displaced the poor little shop in the street-of-prayer-to-the-gods. nearer the gateway, on the edge of the gathering, stood an old man, his face seamed and lined, but with eye clear and young and a smile on his face. the crest on his sleeve was the _mon_ of an ancient and honored _samurai_ family. he leaned on the arm of his adopted son--a commander of the imperial navy whose name had once been ishida hetaro. they stood apart, regarding not the temple, but the low building across the hedge, behind whose bamboo lattice dim forms passed and repassed. "look," said barbara suddenly, and touched daunt's arm. a woman's figure had paused at the lattice of the nunnery. she was dressed in slate-color and her delicate features and close-shaven head gave her a singularly unearthly appearance, like an ethereal and angelic boy. the little two-wheeled carriage drew up at the lattice and a slender hand reached out and patted the round cropped head of its occupant. as the vehicle was drawn away, the nun looked up and across the yard--toward the old _samurai_ and the young naval officer. the wraith of a flush crept into her cheek. she smiled, and they smiled in return, the placid japanese smile which is the rainbow of forbidden tears. a second they stood thus, then the slate-colored figure drew back and was gone, and the old man, supported by the younger arm, passed slowly out of the yard. barbara's eyes were still on the lattice as daunt spoke. "what is it?" he asked. "the face of the nun there," she said, with vague wistfulness. "it reminds me of some one i have known. who can it be, i wonder!" they crossed the yard, and entered the deserted garden. the great ruin at its side was covered with friendly shrubs and the all-transfiguring snow. the line of stepping-stones had been swept clean and beside the frost-fretted lake an irregular segment of rock, closely carved with ideographs, had been planted upright. it stood in mystic peace, looking between the snow-buried, birdless trees toward the horizon where fuji-san towered into the infinite calm--a magical mountain woven of a world of gems, on which the sun's heart beat in a tumult. at the base of the stone slab were buddhist vases filled with green leaves in fresh water, and in one of these barbara placed the branch of plum-blossoms. its pink petals lay against the brown rock like the kiss of spring on a wintry heart. as she arranged the sprays, daunt stood looking down on her bent head, where, under her fur hat, the sun was etching gold-hued lines on the soft copper of her hair. he had taken a yellowed envelope from his pocket. "do you remember, dearest," he said, "that i once told you of an old envelope in the chancery safe bearing the name of aloysius thorn?" "yes," she answered wonderingly. "it was opened, after his death, while you were away. it contained his will. i turned it into japanese, as best i could, for the temple priests. it is carved there on the stone. the ambassador gave the original to the bishop, and he handed it to me to-day for you. he thought you would like to keep it." he drew the paper from the discolored envelope and handed it to her. she sat down on a boulder and unfolding the faded sheets, began to read aloud, in a voice that became more and more unsteady: "know all men by these presents, that i, aloysius thorn, of the city of tokyo, in tokyo-fu, empire of japan, being in health and of sound and disposing mind and memory, do make and publish this my last will and testament, devising, bequeathing and disposing in the manner following, to wit: "item: i give, devise and bequeath to japanese children, inclusively, for and through the term of their childhood, the woods of cryptomeria, with their green silences, and the hillsides with the chirpings of bell-crickets in the _sa-sa_ grass and the fairy quiverings of golden butterflies. i give them the husky crow and the darting swallow under the eaves. and i devise to them all lotos-pools on which to sail their straw _sampan_, the golden carp and the lilac-flashing dragon-fly in and above them, and the _dodan_ thickets where the _semi_ chime their silver cymbals. i also give to them all temple yards, wheresoever situate, and all moats, and the green banks thereunto appertaining, for their playgrounds, providing, however, that they break no tree or shrub, remembering that trees, like children, have souls. and i devise to them the golden fire of the morning and all long, white clouds, to have and to hold the same, without let or hindrance. these the above i bequeath to them, possessing no little child of my own with whom to share my interest in the world. "to boys especially i give and bequeath all holidays to be glad in, and the blue sky for their paper kites. to girls i give and bestow the rainbow _kimono_, the flower in the hair and the battledore. and i bequeath them all kinds of dolls, reminding them that these, if loved enough, may some time come alive. "item: to young men, jointly, i devise and bequeath the rough sports of _kenjuts'_ and of _ju-jits'_, the _shinai_-play and all manly games. i give them the knowledge of all brave legends of the _samurai_, and especially do i leave them the care and respect for the aged. i give them all far places to travel in and all manner of strange and delectable adventures therein. and i apportion to them the high noon, with its appurtenances, to wit: the heat and burden of the day, its commotions, its absorbing occupations and its fiercer rivalries. i give to them, moreover, the cherry-blossom, the flower of _bushido_, which, falling in the april of its bloom, may ever be for them the symbol of a life smilingly yielded in its prime. "to young women, i give and devise the glow of the afternoon, the soft blue witchery of pine shadows, the delicate traceries of the bamboo and the thin, low laughter of waterfalls. i devise to them all manner of perfumes, and tender spring blossoms (save in the one exception provided hereinbefore), such as the plum-blossom and the wistaria, with the red maple-leaves and the gorgeous glories of the chrysanthemum. and i give to them all games of flower-cards, and all divertisements of music, as the _biwa_, the flute and the _samisen_, and of dances whatsoever they may choose. "item: to the aged i bequeath snowy hair, the long memories of the past and the golden _ihai_ on the buddha-shelf. i give them the echo of tiny bare feet on the _tatamé_, and the grave bowing of small shaven heads. i devise to them the evening's blaze of crimson glory and the amber clouds above the sunset, the pale _andon_ and the indigo shadows, the dusk dance of the yellow lanterns, the gathering of friends at the moon-viewing place and the liquid psalmody of the nightingale. i give to them also the winter, the benediction of snow-bent boughs and the waterways gliding with their silver smiles. i give to them sufficient space to lie down within a temple ground that echoes the play of little children. and finally i bequeath to them the love and blessing of succeeding generations for the blossoming of a hundred lives. "in testimony whereof, i, the said aloysius thorn--" * * * * * barbara's voice broke off. her eyes were wet as she folded the paper. daunt drew her to her feet, and with his arm about her, they stood looking out across the white city lying in all its ghostly glamour--the many-gabled watch-towers above the castle walls, the glistening plateau of aoyama with its dull red barracks, the rolling sea of wan roofs, and far beyond, the creeping olive of the bay. in the clear distance they could see the lift of kudan hill, and the gray pile of the russian cathedral. standing in its candle-lighted nave, they had listened to japanese choir-boys hymning the birth in bethlehem. the next christmas they two would be together--but in another land! "minister to persia!" she said. "i am glad of your appointment, for it means so much to your career. and yet--and yet--" in the temple yard behind them an acolyte, wading knee-deep in the snow, swung the cedar beam of the bell-tower and the deep-voiced boom rolled out across the cradling hush. again and yet again it struck, the waves of sound throbbing into volume through the still air. it came to them like a firm and beautiful voice, the articulate echo of the soul of japan. the whinny of restive horses stole over the hedges. silently daunt held out his hand to her. she bent and picked a single plum-blossom from the branch and slipped it into the yellow envelope. for a last time she looked out across the distance. "the beautiful country!" she said. the end transcriber notes: passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. small caps were replaced with all caps. throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe". throughout the document, an "o" with a macron the was replaced with "[=o]", and a "u" with a macron the was replaced with "[=u]". throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. those words were retained as-is. the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. errors in punctuation, inconsistent hyphenation, and idiosyncratic spellings were not corrected unless otherwise noted. in the table of contents, "banzai nippon" was replaced with "banzai nippon!" on page 1, "rosicrusian" was replaced with "rosicrucian". on page 12, "tauntness" was replaced with "tautness". on page 30, "exhiliration" was replaced with "exhilaration". on page 36, "cockaboo" was replaced with "cockatoo". on page 40, "pastelles" was replaced with "pastels". on page 114, "xilophone" was replaced with "xylophone". on page 193, "rich'sha" was replaced with "rick'sha". on page 206, "rich'sha" was replaced with "rick'sha". on page 213, "oramented" was replaced with "ornamented". on page 373, "irony plectrons" was replaced with "ivory plectrums". on page 417, "scimetar" was replaced with "scimitar". 