The Kingdom of Slender Swords

by Hallie Erminie Rives

  THE KINGDOM OF SLENDER SWORDS

  CHAPTER I

  WHERE THE DAY BEGINS

  Barbara leaned against the palpitant rail, the light air fanning herbreeze-cool cheek, her arteries beating like tiny drums, atune with thethrob, throb, throb, of the steel deck as the black ocean leviathanswept on toward its harbor resting-place.

  All that Japanese April day she had been in a state of tremulousexcitement. She had crept from her berth at dawn to see the hazy suncome up in a Rosicrucian flush as weirdly soft as a mirage, to strainher eyes for the first filmy feather of land. Long before the gray-greenwisp showed on the horizon, the sight of a lumbering _junk_ with itssquare sail laced across with white stripes, and its bronze seamen, withwhite loin-cloth and sweat-band about the forehead, naked and thewedlike sculptures, as they swayed from the clumsy tiller, had sent athrill through her. And as the first far peaks etched themselves on therobin's-egg blue, as impalpable and ethereal as a perfume, she felt warmdrops coming with a rush to her eyes.

  For Japan, every sight and sound of it, had been woven with the earliestimaginings of Barbara's orphaned life. Her father she had never seen.Her mother she remembered only as a vague, widowed figure. In Japan theytwo had met and had married, and after a single year her mother hadreturned to her own place and people broken-hearted and alone. In themonth of her return Barbara had been born. A year ago her aunt, to whomshe owed the care of her young girlhood, had died, and Barbara had foundherself, at twenty-three, mistress of a liberal fortune and of her ownfuture. Japan had always exercised a potent spell over her imagination.She pictured it as a land of strange glowing trees, of queer costumesand weird, fantastic buildings. More than all, it was the land of hermother's life-romance, where her father had loved and died. There wasone other tangible tie--her uncle, her mother's brother, was Episcopalbishop of Tokyo. He was returning now from a half year's visit inAmerica, and this fact, coupled with an invitation from PatriciaDandridge, the daughter of the American Ambassador, with whom Barbarahad chummed one California winter, had constituted an opportunity whollyalluring. So she found herself, on this April day, the pallid Pacificfuming away behind her, gazing with kindling cheeks on that shadowybackground, vaguely intangible in the magical limpidity of the distance.

  The land was wonderfully nearer now. The hills lay, a clear pile ofwashed grays and greens, with saffron tinted valleys between, wound in ahaze of tender lilac. By imperceptible gradations this unfolded, caughtsub-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 thedeeper azure. It hung like an inverted morning-glory, mist andmother-of-pearl at the top, shading into porphyry veined with streaks ofverd and jade--Fuji-San, the despair of painters, the birthplace of theancient gods.

  The aching beauty of it stung Barbara with a tender, intolerable pang.The little fishing-villages that presently came into sight, tucked intothe clefts of the shore, with gray dwellings, elfishly frail, climbingthe green slope behind them--the growing rice in patches of cloudy goldon the hillsides--the bluish shadows of bamboo groves--all touched herwith an incommunicable delight.

  A shadow fell beside her and she turned. It was her uncle. Hisclean-shaven face beamed at her over his clerical collar.

  "Isn't it glorious?" she breathed. "It's better than champagne! It'slike pins and needles in the tips of your fingers! There's positively anodor 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 deeptones, swimming in the infinite gold of the tropic afternoon.

  Bishop Randolph was a bachelor, past middle age, ruddy and with eyessoftened by habitual good-humor. He was the son of a rector of a richVirginian parish, which on his father's death had sent the son aunanimous call. He had answered, "No; my place is in Japan," withoutconsciousness of sacrifice. For him, in the truest sense, the presentvoyage was a homeward one.

  "Japan gets into the blood," he said musingly. "I often think of the oldlady who committed suicide at Nikko. She left a letter which said: 'Byfavor of the gods, I am too dishonorably old to hope to revisit thisjewel-glorious spot, so I prefer augustly to remain here for ever!' Ihave had something of the same feeling, sometimes. I remember yet thefirst time I saw the coast. That was twenty-five years ago. We watchedit 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 hadnever before spoken to her of her dead father. The latter had alwaysseemed a very real personage, but how little she knew about him! Theaunt who had brought her up--her mother's sister--had never talked ofhim, and her uncle she had seen but twice since she had been old enoughto wonder. But, little by little, gleaning a fact here and there, shehad constructed a slender history of him. It told of mingled blood, abirthplace on a Mediterranean island and a gipsy childhood. There was athin sheaf of yellowed manuscript in her possession that had been leftamong 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 wereleft she had found bits of flotsam: broken memory-pictures of his ownmother which had strangely touched her, of a bitter youth in England andAmerica overshadowed by the haunting fear of blindness, of quests toWest-Indian cities, told in phrases that dripped liquid gold andsunshine. The voyage to Japan had been made on the same vessel thatcarried her uncle, and they two had thus become comrades. The latter hadbeen an enthusiastic young missionary, one of a few chosen spirits sentto defend a far field-casement thrown forward by the batteries ofChristendom. His sister had come out to visit him and a few months laterhad married his friend.

  Such was the story, as Barbara knew it, of her father and mother--a lovechapter 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 haddreamed of some day placing a monument to his memory in the Japanesecapital. She possessed only one picture of him, a tiny profilephotograph which she wore always in a locket engraved with her name. Itshowed a dark face, clean-shaven, finely chiseled and passionate, withthe large, full eye of the dreamer. She had liked to think it lookedlike the paintings of St. John. Perhaps this thought had caused theprojected monument to take the form of a Christian chapel. From anebulous idea, the plan had become a bundle of blue-prints, which shehad sent to her uncle, with the request that he purchase for her asuitable site and begin the building. He had done this before his visitto America and now the Chapel was completed, save in one particular--thememorial window of rich, stained-glass stowed at that moment in theship's hold. The bishop had not seen it. From some feeling which she hadnot tried to analyze, Barbara had said nothing to him of the Chapel'sespecial significance. Now, however, at his unexpected reference, thefeeling frayed, and she told him all of her plan.

  He gazed at her a moment in a startled fashion, then looked away, hishand shading his eyes. When she finished there was a long pause whichmade 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. Youweren't there then?"

  "No," he answered in a low voice. His face was still turned away, andshe caught an unaccustomed note of feeling in his voice.

  He left her abruptly and began to pace up and down the deck, while shestood watching the shoreline sharpen, the tangled blur of harbor resolveand shift into manifold detail. Shapeless dots had become anchoredships, a black pencil a wharf, a long yellow-gray streak a curvedshore-front lined with buildings, and the warm green blotch risingbehind it a foliaged h
ill pricked out with soft, gray roofs. There was arush of passengers to one side, where from a brisk little tug, at whosepeak floated a flag bearing a blood-red sun, a handful of spick-and-spanJapanese 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 onedo 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 tochase wild geese, and bag 'em, too."

  The bishop sauntered away, leaving a frown on Barbara's brow. She hadhad a swift mental vision of a cool, dark-bearded face and assuredbearing that the past year had made familiar. It was a handsome face, ifsomewhat cold. Its owner was rich, his standing was unquestioned. Thefact that he was ten years her senior had but made his attentions themore 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, sofar as liking went, she liked him. The week she left New York he hadintended a yachting trip to the Mediterranean. When he told her, coollyenough, that he should ask her again in Japan, she had treated it as ajest, though knowing him quite capable of meaning it. From every worldlystandpoint he was distinctly eligible. Every one who knew them bothconfidently expected her to marry Ware. Well, why not?

  Yet to-day she did not ask herself the question confidently. It belongedstill to the limbo of the future--to the convenient "some day" to whichher thought had always banished it. Since she had grown she had neverfelt for any one the sentiment she had dreamed of in that vivid girlhoodof hers, a something mixed of pride and joy, that a sound or touch wouldthrill with a delight as keen as pain; but unconsciously, perhaps, shehad been clinging to old romantic notions.

  A passenger leaning near her was whistling _Sally in our Alley_ underhis breath and a Japanese steward was emptying over the side a vase ofwilted flowers. A breath of rose scent came to her, mixed with a faintsmell of tobacco, and these and the whistled air awoke a suddenreminiscence. Her gaze went past the clustered shipping, beyond the grayline of buildings and the masses of foliage, and swam into a tremulousJune evening seven years past.

  She saw a wide campus of green sward studded with stately elms festoonedwith electric lights that glowed in the falling twilight. Scatteredabout were groups of benches each with its freight of dainty frocks, andon one of them she saw herself sitting, a shy girl of sixteen, on herfirst visit to a great university. Men went by in sober black gown andflat mortar-boards, young, clean-shaven, and boyish, with arms about oneanother's shoulders. Here and there an orange "blazer" made a vividsplash of color and groups in white-flannels sprawled beneath the treesunder the perfumed haze of briar-wood pipes that mingled with thenear-by scent of roses. From one of the balconies of the ivieddormitories that faced the green came the mellow tinkle of a mandolinand 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, andthe man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "I'm going in. It's timeto 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 himfor a handful of delirious moments. For how long afterward had heremained her childish idol! Time had overlaid the memory, but it startedbright now at the sound of that whistled tune.

  Her uncle's voice recalled her. He was handing her his binoculars. Shetook 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 atarm's length--the stone _hatoba_ crowded with brown Japanese faces,pricked out here and there by the white Panama hat or pith-helmet of theforeigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribbonedparasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting _rick'sha_,--the littleflotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage--the stately, columnedfront of the club on the Bund with its cool terrace of round tables--the_kimono'd_ figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along thewater-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailedbeetle--farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue andbeyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright,yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green fromwhich cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. Arching over all theenormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery ofthe declining sun. It unfolded before her like a panorama--all thebasking, 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 twocurved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. Thecaptain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the groupof male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through thehawse-holes.

  Barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. The slow swinging of the vesselto the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and theshore, perilously near. She saw it now in its proper perspective--a trimsteam 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 ofteal and mallard.

  Adjusting the focus Barbara looked. A man in naval uniform who hadboarded the ship at Quarantine was pointing out the yacht to apassenger, and Barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "You see thepatches of green?--they're decorations for the Squadron that's dueto-morrow. Look just beyond them. Prettiest craft I've ever seen east ofthe Straits.... Came in this morning. Owner's in Nara now, doing thetemples.... Has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, goingthe pace.... They won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'dgo high and dry on empty champagne bottles."

  Barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. Puzzled, shewithdrew her gaze, then looked once more.

  Suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "What areyou going to do with that man?"--her uncle's query seemed to echosatirically about her. For the white yacht was Austen Ware's, and there,on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name

  BARBARA