The Motor Maids in Fair Japan Part 24

Mary and Billie regarded her with compa.s.sion. How little romance there was in a j.a.panese girl's life! O'Kami San, so young and pretty and charming, too, was about to enter into years of drudgery perhaps; the wife of a cranky old man, and here she was accepting her fate as calmly as a novitiate about to take the vows for life and enter a convent.

"New husband much rich," she said. "Much old. Need attentionly young wife."

Only once did O'Kami San glance at the two handsome young men who belonged to the Campbell party. But Nicholas, always gallant and thoughtful, helped Mme. Ito and her daughter to alight at the way-station where they were to change cars, while Reggie carried their small belongings and placed them on the platform.

"G.o.d bless you, O'Kami San," called Billie, leaning far out of the window. And if the little j.a.panese girl did not understand the meaning of the salutation she comprehended the spirit of it.

"Receive thanks," she said formally, her eyes glistening suspiciously.

Then she gave the j.a.panese farewell, "Sayonara" (since it must be), and waved her little hands until the train was out of sight.

Billie watched her sadly. The lines of the five kimonos, which could be distinctly counted where they crossed at her neck, seemed to symbolize the heavy marriage yoke the little bride had slipped so uncomplainingly over her head, and as for that pink silk head band to keep down the horns of jealousy, it might just as well have been an iron band with spikes in it, for all the sentiment and romance it represented. But little O'Kami San had gone up into the hills to her aged husband, and if she guessed that there was anything brighter and happier than just being an "attentionly wife" to an old man, she never murmured. No one has ever plumbed the depths of unselfishness and self-sacrifice of the little j.a.panese wife.

During the last few miles of the journey they left the train and took to jinrikshas. Along a magnificent avenue they rode, built through a forest of cryptomerias towering one hundred and eighty feet high, some of them with trunks thirty feet in diameter. They were like the columns of a gigantic cathedral of which the sky was the dome.

After refreshing themselves with tea at their little villa and removing the grime of the journey, the travelers wandered off into the ancient forest, cool and gray and very still, except for the sound of the wind whispering through the pine trees.

Terraced stairways of gray stone climb up the mountainside from temple to temple and court to court. Over a busy little river hung the scarlet bridge of beauty which no profane foot may ever touch, only the Emperor's consecrated feet. No human hand has mended the sacred bridge for nearly three centuries, but it is said to be in perfect repair.

Pa.s.sing along the temples and shrines that crowded one another on the hillside, they came at last to a row of images of Buddha, innumerable stone statues of the G.o.d, his kindly, gentle face almost obliterated by spray from the river and a soft mantle of moss. There is a tradition which says that no two people have ever counted these images with the same results, and while the others wandered up the next terraced flight of steps, Billie and Mary remained to count the Buddhas.

The loud song of the little river rushing by them dazed their senses and when they reached the end Billie had counted eighty and Mary only seventy-five.

"Let's try again," said Billie; once more they followed the interminable line and once more there was a wide discrepancy between the results.

For the third time they started the count, and finally came as near as seventy-eight and seventy-nine; but the act of counting and recounting had a curious effect on their senses. It seemed to make them very sleepy, or perhaps it was the magic of that ancient place, the monotonous song of the torrent and the cool gray shadows in the depths of the forest where the sun never penetrated.

"Do you know, Billie, I think I'll have to rest a moment before we join the others," said Mary, leading the way up the hillside and sitting down under a giant pine tree. "I'm almost paralyzed with sleep."

"I feel the same way," answered Billie drowsily. "We can catch up with them later. Suppose we take a little repose, as a French lady I knew used to say."

The two girls removed their hats, and making pillows of their jackets they stretched themselves on the soft carpet of pine needles. Presently, lulled by the monotonous water song and the murmur of the wind through the trees, they dropped off into a sleep so profound and deep that they did not hear the voices of their friends returning to search for them.

The enchantment of centuries had woven its net about their feet and stilled their senses; for Nikko is called the "City of Rest," and an endless number of saints and holy men who once lived and prayed among its groves now sleep there.

The two young girls sank deeper and deeper into the peaceful sleep which the atmosphere of Nikko breathes. Their souls seemed to have entered the region of the most profound rest that may come to a living person.

And while they slept the sun sank and the twilight of the forest faded into night. But the searchers had taken the wrong path and their cries grew fainter and fainter as they ranged the mountainside for the lost girls. Among the trees their paper lanterns glowed like fireflies and occasionally there was a long cry: "A-hai!"

But Buddha himself must have placed the seal of sleep on the young girls'

eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE STORM KING.

While two of the Motor Maids slept in the sacred wood on the mountain two others rested in one of the bedrooms of the villa straining their ears for sounds of the returning search party. It was only eight o'clock, but Miss Campbell, worn out with excitement and fatigue, had already dropped off to sleep in the next room.

Nancy was quietly and softly weeping, her face buried in her pillow, and Elinor lay staring into the darkness. Mr. Campbell had a.s.sured them that the girls could not be lost for long, and that the only mishap that could possibly come to them in that holy place was sleeping under the pine trees; but he could not conceal the anxiety he really felt, the anxiety of a father for his only daughter, the being he loved best in all the world.

Nancy had felt the anxiety, too, and remorse had entered into her soul; not because she had met Yoritomo in the garden and exchanged notes with him in a romantic manner, the notes having been hidden under a stone near the old shrine, for she was beginning dimly to realize that such things were only silly and common. Her remorse was caused by something else more remote in her consciousness but looming bigger all the time. The cruel letter she had written to Billie in anger and then torn into pieces and thrown into a bra.s.s vase in Mme. Fontaine's drawing-room! Why had she been so angry? She could not understand it now. She only knew that the longer she poured her troubles into Mme. Fontaine's ears the more sympathetic the widow became until Nancy was worked into a perfect rage.

As for the widow, she had said very little indeed, only a few words now and then, vague, suggestive remarks, but they had set Nancy thinking; had stirred her up so violently, indeed, that she had written that foolish letter. There had been no waste basket by the desk and Nancy, after a wretched sleepless night, had torn up the letter and dropped it in the nearest vase. Why had she not torn it into smaller bits? Why had she not burned it in a charcoal brazier? Why had she ever written it at all?

Why--why--? A dozen whys flashed through her troubled mind. She would never rest again until she knew the letter had been entirely destroyed, reduced to ashes. Out of this long train of unhappy thought a resolution came to Nancy to write to Mme. Fontame and ask her to find the letter and burn it up. This she accordingly did a few days after the visit to Nikko, and of what came of it more will be told later.

In the meantime, while Nancy, goaded by a troubled conscience was weeping abundantly into her pillow, Billie and little Mary Price lay sleeping peacefully in the great cathedral forest.

Precisely at the moment that Nancy's disturbed fancies had taken the form of a resolution Billie and Mary opened their eyes on a world of velvety blackness. Straight overhead through the lacework of intertwined boughs gleamed an occasional tiny star, like the light shining through a pin p.r.i.c.k in a black curtain. Scarcely two hours had pa.s.sed since they had slipped into the unknown, and now sitting up and rubbing their eyes, they wondered where in the world they were. Hearing Mary stirring beside her in the dark, Billie put out a hand and grasped Mary's groping to meet it.

The two friends sat silently for a few minutes. At last Billie said softly:

"What are we going to do, Mary, dear?"

"I am thinking of what they are going to do," answered Mary. "How frightened they will be about us, Billie! As for me, I can't help feeling happy out in this dark peaceful place. I should like to lie here all night and watch the dawn come through the trees."

All of which was extremely poetic, but Billie had become suddenly prosaic at the thought of her father, wild with anxiety she was certain, searching the terraced mountainside for them at the risk of falling off a precipice or tumbling into the river. Besides, at that moment, she felt a puff of hot wind in her face, and immediately was conscious that she was very thirsty and that the palms of her hands were dry and burning.

"Don't you think it's very hot, Mary?" she whispered. "I feel as if I had been baked brown in an oven."

"The wind has changed," answered Mary. "It was cool and sweet when we dropped off, and now it's like a wind that's blown over a desert."

Through the forest came a murmur like thousands of voices gathering in strength and volume all the time. The gigantic pillars of the cathedral began swaying and tossing their arched boughs and the whole mountain seemed to resound with strange sounds, cries and calls, grindings and poundings. The pin p.r.i.c.k stars disappeared and the place was as black as the pit.

The two girls rose quickly and clasped hands again.

"I think we'd better go straight down," said Billie. "We're obliged to strike a path somewhere and perhaps we may find a temple or a tomb or a paG.o.da or something. Anything to get away from that awful thing that's coming, whatever it is."

Fortunately the act of descending gave them a sense of direction. Many times they fell, skinning their shins and their foreheads against trees, but they picked themselves up again, entirely unconscious of bruises, and ran on as fast as they could go with the hot devastating wind behind them. Suddenly the whole mountainside was illuminated by a flash of lightning, like a jagged stream of fire stretching from heaven to earth.

A deafening roar of thunder followed. Then all the forest seemed to be perfectly quiet. Such a stillness settled over the place that the girls stopped and held their breath.

"Look," whispered Billie, pointing to a strange looking light coming rapidly nearer, wobbling and undulating like the light on the bow of a ship in a rough ocean. Then came another terrifying flash of lightning, and thunder that seemed to rock the whole world. The two girls rushed toward the friendly light with one accord, and collided with the bearer with such force that three persons were precipitated with unintentionally devotional att.i.tudes at the foot of a shrine of Buddha.

"By Jove, but this is luck," called a familiar voice.

It was Nicholas Grimm, who calmly picked up himself and then his oil-paper lantern attached to the end of a slender wand; next he helped the girls to their feet.

"Take an arm, each one of you. There's no time to lose. The thing that's coming, whatever it is, will get here in a minute now."

Running like mad, on the very wings of the wind, the three young people followed the windings of the path and presently came up short on a small temple, the tomb of some holy personage. Into this they rushed without ceremony just as the storm burst with all its fury, and crouching in a corner just out of reach of the rain, they listened to the howls and shrieks of the wind.

"It's just like some live thing," remarked Mary after a while. "I feel as if some terrible demon lived up in a cave in the mountain, and when he is angry he comes down and lashes the earth and shakes the mountain."

Mary's poetic notion of storms in that region was not so far removed from the j.a.panese legends.

"You struck the nail on the head that time, Miss Price," said Nicholas.

"There is an extinct volcano over here in the northeast and in its side is a huge cavern. People around here used to believe that all these frightful storms issued from the cavern. Every spring and every fall there was a perfectly corking one that tore up the whole place, and they called the mountain 'Ni-Ko San,' or Two-Storm Mountain. Then an old party who was a saint, I believe, and very wise, placed a curse on the storm demon and named the place 'Nikko San,' Mountain of the Sun's Brightness."

"The demon seems to have returned," remarked Billie.