The key of dreams : a romance of the Orient

Front matter

1 ARBOR I on deposit from

Massey College

I

Chapter I

LIKE a swallow flying to the eaves of home I made for Japan, rushing across Canada with scarcely a pause. The thundering engines roared across' the transcontinental track that cuts the mighty North. It moved me — I own it, but I could not stay. The Rockies stood, white sentinels, at the Western gate. There was something young in the air like Spring — something inviolate, exquisite, stir¬ ring in an age-long sleep — “mewing its mighty youth” while the eagle wings feathered for flight. One of the younger sculptors has beheld Canada as a colossal woman, her head thrown back in the lassi¬ tude of a sleep that is breaking — flying back into the night with the broken tangle of dreams. Her robe is covered with pine trees faintly indicated. One great hand outstretched guards a group of moose and lesser forest dwellers, and before her feet stands the little figure of a young pioneer looking up in sim¬ ple wonder and awe to the Vastness above him — the Mother of men to be. So I saw her and mar¬ velled.

But on — on — to a new world as old as time ! This could not hold me. No — not the leagues of the Okanagon, flushed apple blossoms against a blue Italian sky — all dreamy sweetness and pure colour¬ ing, massed and massed until the sense aches at its loveliness. Pomona is in her temple here. When she died in Rome her freed feet came lightly over the sea and every spire of smoke curling into the quiet air from hidden homesteads is incense on her altar. But no place for me — on, on !

In vain the Bow rushed — a ringing river — down the gorges with the snow peaks receding from her stormy way. In vain the wide blue lakes looked up and smiled

“With such a look as might express The best of human happiness — ”

I fled past them, driven by the Furies of memory and horror, longing to blot out the very sight of the men and women of my own race, because they re¬ called too much — they too had trodden the wine¬ press of blood.

And when I stood at last on Vancouver Island I touched the beginning of peace, because beyond that ocean lay Asia, vast and mysterious, in whose bosom I might forget the sick dream of a world reeling into chaos. Standing on the shore I remembered a page in the book that was drawing me to the Rising Sun. So it runs : —

“Here in Peking a Chinese gentleman, old and dignified, wrinkled and patient, spoke with me of Europe. He knew it well. A part of his education had been there. His delicate hands, fine as the in¬ struments of some music of the mind, lay with the long fingers intertwined on the blue brocade of his robe. The stiff black cap did not hide the faint smile in wearied eyes as he continued;

‘Your august continent glides swiftly in the swell of the river before it plunges to the fall. In my insignificant land we based our civilization many ages ago on the Moralities — the duties of each to

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the Family, the Empire, the Pieties, and thus was twisted a triple cord of trust between man and man. How should it fail? But in your venerated coun¬ tries no man trusts another, for each famishes for the other’s gold — that is his God — and as with the one, so with the nations. There must come a war when the one people overwhelmed in the vortex will clutch the others and drag them in and your civiliza¬ tion with them.’ ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘We unin¬ telligent peoples of Asia will watch and smile, because we have known this thing must be. The sun will set in blood in Europe. It is rising be¬ yond Japan; it will shine through China — and farther.’

“He said no more but changed the subject cour¬ teously to the bronzes and porcelains I had come to see. And this was 1913 !”

Well — if Dunbar was right — if these people had known before it came, some one among them might guess the remedy. My way lay onward.

A year in Japan — a year of health flowing back, at first a trickling brook — afterwards the steady up¬ ward flow of a rising tide, and I was healed in body and had bathed my soul in beauty — very far some¬ times from the heavenly order, the beauty that money buys in all the markets of all the world. Perhaps I found my new possessions a wine of Circe’s enchantments. Enlightenment I had not found, nor scarcely sought. It was enough to live in a country untouched by the immense weariness under which the western Titan staggers. To see the daily joy of life in happy places far away from the crowd was all I asked for the time. I engaged a very good fellow, one Amakasu San, to travel with me, and under his guidance I had found my bearings and enough of the language to carry me through the day’s needs. Now I was free of Japan. I could come and go as I would, and I was weary of the cities and such gaiety as they offer the for¬ eigner who can pay for it in ways as well left untold — and for my first trip alone I came up to Ikao, the lovely little town of the running boiling springs that perches like a bird on the hills fronting the moun¬ tains of Nikko, with the great range of Haruna to back it. At Maebashi I parted from Amakasu, and, when I was alone, exulted for awhile that I was out of leading strings, need see no more sights, be guided no more by that stubborn inevitable cour¬ tesy which decided what was best for me with a pity¬ ing allowance for the foreigner’s ignorance.

And then a feeling possessed me — a sense of ex¬ pectation, not merely of new pleasures, but of new influences — as a man may hold himself in suspense when two paths lie before him and he must make his selection. For a moment the hills were danger¬ ous — the clouds lay black behind them and I felt thunder in the air. A fancy — passing and foolish ! The sun was shining, the little roofs clustered like the nests of birds above me and the waking dream was gone.

I would not go to the hostelry where the foreign people put up when they come to a place as yet little spoilt by western contact. I made for the Maruya inn and my first solitude was good to me — and good the warm sunshine in the deep woods and the low warble of brooks flowing to the valleys beneath, through rocks stained golden with sulphur and iron.

It was the day after my coming and I was sitting

!3 on my silk cushions like a Japanese, mapping out the tramps I was to transact in the next few weeks. Each one was carefully planned by Amakasu San for my edification and I was under bond to write with faithful report of my doings. I laid down the map, and the late afternoon air was cool and sweet, a faint breeze blowing as the delightful people came and went talking quietly along the woodland path that leads from the tiny town to the Maruya. I would go out and see this happy world that I had dropped into like a stray bird.

It was the flowers that allured me to the steepN trails that drop to the woods, for in the glades and open spaces was such a luxuriance as I had never seen or imagined. July is early summer at Ikao, and the rains had ceased and the strong sun drew forth sweetest odour and colour from the steaming earth. Here were royal groups of the Japanese lily, huge curling flowers massed on each stately rod like the sceptre of a goddess — blossoms ivory white striped with faint gold and diapered with warm brown freckles centred by hammer-headed scarlet stamens. it was marvellous to see these exotic beauties growing as freely as primroses in the cold shy woods of home. And about them columbines, iris — the wild magnolia and hydrangea, and strong ropes of wistaria flinging knotted garlands from tree to tree. None of the people had followed — the solitude was exquisite and when I turned a cor¬ ner of dark and solemn cryptomerias, soaring to heights immeasurable the dwellings of men might have been miles away. I stood leaning against a trunk and looking down a long vista where the sink¬ ing sun hung on the ridge of a distant mountain. A calm pleasure breathed like a gentle air about me.

Suddenly I saw that I was not alone. Seated on a fallen trunk a few yards away was a Japanese woman, still as the evening hour, her back turned to me, looking steadily toward the mountain and unconscious of any presence but the wide and lumi¬ nous sky in its dying splendour.

I had been long enough in the country now to dis¬ tinguish classes to a certain extent; no easy matter at first in the land of almost universal grace and courtesy — and I knew this was a woman of the higher rank. She wore a kimono of soft gray silken stuff with a broad obi of pale violet touched with gold. The haori or coat that lay beside her was of black silk with the white lozenged crests upon it which denote gentle birth — hers was a conventional¬ ized leaf which might have been maple. Her hair, shining like black lacquer, was exquisitely done in the fashion known as the marumage worn by mar¬ ried women, and the satin coils and swirls were upheld by fine kanzashi — the ornamental pins, in themselves so simple but often of great cost. So much I could see but no more, and, knowing the shrinking delicacy of the Japanese lady, it impressed me as a little strange that she should be alone in this solitary place. We remained a few minutes mo¬ tionless and then she rose, putting on the coat as if to go further, and in so doing a little handkerchief slipped from her hanging sleeve and fell unnoticed to the ground. I followed and retrieved it, prepar¬ ing my best bow and Japanese for the occasion — both poor enough at that — and overtook her.

She turned with graceful composure and bowing, replied softly; “I thank you, Dunbar sama.”

The English had only a sweet foreign ripple. My name — how could she know it? — was perfectly pro¬ nounced except for a slight accent on the first syl¬ lable, — but more than all and far beyond it was the face that looked up into mine. Hitherto I had not thought the Japanese women beautiful. Cer¬ tainly many were charming, but it seemed to me that they owed quite as much to their setting as the setting owed to them. The gracious dress, the frame of ebon hair with satin reflets , the back¬ ground of horned temple roofs, or streets aglow with golden signs enriched with Chinese characters — how can a woman but be an enchanting picture with all these for her accessories? Yet, if the fea¬ tures are dissected and the figures measured, the grace is often a vanishing quantity. Here, on the contrary was beauty undeniable. I will describe it later, for at the moment the strangeness of the meeting obscured it.

I bowed again in silence, afraid of startling her; but profoundly curious. She repeated her words and added with the little Japanese difficulty over the /. “Do you like to know how I know your name? Is it not surprising?”

She stood laughing before me, a bewitching secret dipping in her bright eyes.

“I want to hear it of all things. Pray tell me. And first of all your own name that I may know what to call the lady who speaks my language so exquisitely.”

“Ah no, that must delay. The moment is not here. The rest you shall know.”

She looked down and smiled as if at her own thoughts, and continued;

1 6

“I too stay at the Maruya. I look always at the register papers because I hope a friend. Last even¬ ing I read ‘Lancelot Dunbar!’ (she pronounced the L as though it were R, Japanese fashion) . And my heart stopped to beat. I held it with my hands — so (she clasped her hands upon it with a swift gesture) — and still it beat. I said — ‘He is come back !’ ”

“He? Who?” I was bewildered. Had I ever seen her? No. One does not forget such faces. Had she seen me? I asked this eagerly.

“Seen? No.” She answered with a pretty scorn. “The name! It made my heart to beat.”

“And why — why?”

She looked up now and there was a mist that might have been regret in the soft eyes.

“Because there is a man — His name is Lancelot Dunbar. And when I read this I said — ‘He is come back!’ Then I watched through the screens to see, and no! How have you his name?”

I considered a moment.

“Where did you know him?”

“Here — Japan. After the war came he went to his land like the samurai he was that he might fight. Letters came. The last said — ‘When the war is done I return. Do not fear!’ So two seasons I come to Ikao and wait. And when I saw your name I said — ‘It is true. He comes.’ But no. Tell me — What are you?”

She stood before me, still with a fixed Japanese smile, but the small hands clasped tightly in each other told another story.

“It is difficult for me to answer your question.”

i7

I said, “for I don’t know the position. Will it be painful to you to hear bad news?”

The colour fell away from her face, even as it was dying fast from the sky. The sun had set behind Mount Monokiki and shadow filled the air.

“I ask you to speak.” I could hear the words very faintly.

“Lancelot Dunbar was my cousin. Men of the same family sometimes bear the same name. He was killed in France two years ago.”

Long silence. Not a leaf stirred, not a blade of grass. She had slightly turned from me, so that I saw only a profile in the shadow and from that I could tell nothing. The evening came quietly, glid¬ ing through the woodways and still we stood there motionless. It seemed that a long time went by. Then — a very singular thing. She turned suddenly upon me, her eyes shining;

“You think I am sorry? You think I cry? No. I am glad. When the letters did not come, I said ‘He has forgotten. His heart is gone away!’ — Because I knew he is not true. It was horrible — a shame to me. But he died — and remembered; — the shame is dead also !”

Was I never to be free of Lance Dunbar? Here again, Fate, the ruler of men, had flung me un¬ asked, unwilling, into the heart of his romance. It shocked me — I had the pang men feel in turning over the relics of the helpless dead, the letters they cherished, the trifles that to us are nothing, but to them were stained with heart’s blood and tears. It seemed a violation — a brutality.

“Don’t tell me any more.” I said. “I had beti8 ter not know. It’s all over. Those things are best forgotten. Shall I take you back?”

“Not yet. There is more to know. When he died — was there a book? It is poems of Japan?”

I remembered — Yes. The few little possessions he had with him at the front had been sent to me. One was a slim crepe-covered book of Japanese poems in their own tongue. They were printed on a paper made beautiful with faint clouds and dim grey branches of plum wandering through them like a memory of dead days. Under many of the little verses was written the English meaning. I told her, adding:

“I have it here. I brought it because places were named in it that I wanted to see, but I have only read a little.”

Silence again, but for the sleepy chirp of a bird. Her voice was scarcely louder.

“It is mine. In it my name is written. Look to what you call the last page — Miyuki Yamashina — as you would say it. That is my name.”

“I will send it to you. I will give it to you at once. You shall have it this very evening. And now, Miss Yamashina, will you not return with me? It is growing dark in the woods.”

“Yes — I am Miss Yamashina now,” she said with a kind of suppressed bitterness, — “but I was mar¬ ried. My husband was a naval officer. He was drowned. And then, because I had no children, I am no more of his family and must have my own name again. We do that here sometimes. I am only Miss Yamashina now.”

Our talk was punctuated with silences. What could I say? I murmured something about my sympathy, words as futile to me as to her. Finally I asked again if I might take her back. It was now so dark under the trees that I could see her only as a shadowy presence. She drew away;

“We have a proverb — ‘Rei sugureba shitsurei to naru.’ In English it means that too much polite¬ ness is not polite. It is now best to leave me. Sayonara.”

I bowed and left her. The night was coming fast.

Chapter II

I COULD not piece the story together as I went slowly back. Perhaps it was better I should not — yet the strange tie that bound me to the man whose all I had taken, thrilled like a harp¬ string. I called my servant, Tazaki, and in a few minutes he had put the book in my hand. Yes, on the last page — the first of course, of a Japanese book, was written in a small hand “Miyuki Yamashina,” with a date of some years ago and the name of a place — “Haruna.”

Why, that was here ! It was to be my expedition of tomorrow. The Haruna Temple, the wild Ha¬ runa vallev. Then Lance too knew it all — the

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memories of him here would be thick as motes in the sunbeam. No wonder that it stirred me, as I came up from Maebashi, for I was entering a soulcomplex that might well survive what we call death and vibrate in the lonely woods where a woman sat alone and mourned — as I believed.

There was also something written on the inner cover — in hiragana, the running character used much by women and those who cannot master the Chinese characters. I could not read it and in any case would not now have done so, but I looked long at it, for it seemed like a message or a quotation from some letter, and that space had the air of hav¬ ing been more thumbed and read than the rest. The secret slept in France and as far as I was con¬ cerned, there it should sleep.

I caused Tazaki to wrap up the book in politest Japanese fashion, securing it with knots of scarlet twine, and so directed it and sent it to the room he knew she occupied. No answer was returned.

I slept ill that night. There was a crying in the wind that had sprung up; the wooden shutters rat¬ tled; the trees sighed, and in my own heart was a sighing. I saw her sitting among them, a bowed figure, the smile dropped like a useless mask from features wrung with agony, alone in the weeping darkness.

So much could be divined through the few words said; “I have waited two seasons at Ikao!” A weary waiting where the wintry snows must fall on dark hair as on the wild mountains, and life and love freeze and age in the heart’s solitude! I half hoped I might see her no more. And yet —

Now I began to remember her face, to shape it in my mind. Her colouring was like white jasmine faintly flushed with rose — the mat whiteness of the Japanese skin when it is beautiful. The finely drawn eyebrows lay black and level above dark eyes with the sweet inner curve of the lid so much more lovely than the acute angle of the Occidental eye. I know nothing which gives such a lingering soft¬ ness to the glance. The face had the narrowing to the chin that denotes race in Japan, was poised like a flower on its long throat, and the somewhat full lips were voluptuously rose-red. But that was not the whole charm; it lay even more in the slow sweet¬ ness of her voice and the music of the strange Far Eastern inflections — the phrases English, yet un- English because of the tone — the little thrill. Who can describe beauty? and still less its perfume felt but unseen — the mystery that like a struck note evokes its harmonic response from the soul that hears and cannot but answer. To understand, to know more about her, to touch the connecting link between Dunbar and her life — and how?

“By Sundering Seas” lay on a cushion. I turned the pages to the second visit to Japan and read this —

“I saw it last in the winter, when the snow was heaped soft and deep on the curved roofs of shrine and temple, and one whose name was Deep Snow and her cheeks as white clung to me, entreating with honey-sweet sobs that I would stay. But a voice sweeter than any earthly sound called me across sundering seas — a face, veiled like a bride, with eyes dim as stars in blown clouds, drifted westward before me and what could I do but follow the Un¬ known? Ah, Deep Snow, in her cold embrace shall I remember yours? Will the lightness, warmth and softness that lay on my breast be forgotten in the kiss that is the key of all the dreams? Forgot¬ ten — Yes! And you too, Deep Snow, will turn into the arms of another, settling yourself like a bird in its warm wings — my heart remembers how! So, I who have had enough of women and of love, drink to you for the last time: Hail and farewell! I drink it in the fiery wine that each man tastes alone. But your kiss is cold beside it. You fade in the dis¬ tance, a little wraith lessening in whirls of .snow and the coming night. This month, a year ago, we sat in enchanted gardens beneath tropic palms far, far away, and it was a summer that might well be eter¬ nal. Even then I knew it would not last — that winter must come, for you had no pass-word of mine, nor I of yours. We never built a house for our love — it was but a little tent for a brief camping. And now I say with the Roman, We have eaten and drunk and wantoned together. It is time to part.

But no, Deep Snow, — I will not end on that note. May all your gods be good to you. May the com¬ passion of Kwannon sama have you in keeping and your soul be born at last in a blue lotus in the Para¬ dise of the West, unclosing in the warm beams of the Divine.”

Tazaki was at work in the room — I called to him :

“What is the Japanese for Deep Snow?”

“Miyuki, danna sama,” he answered with his jolly smile. “It is also a name of women.”

I closed the book, and stepped out into the bal¬ cony where the glowing sunlight shot through boughs of deepest green. For the moment its sud¬ den brightness filled my eyes with blots of colour and flying motes and strained them. Beneath me stood Miyuki chatting with our host, Kanawa. She wore a kimono of dark blue, her obi patterned with cranes and reeds on soft grey. I had pictured her broken and weeping. I saw her laughing and gay! Hearing me move she looked up smiling and bowed profoundly, the very spirit of youth and grace. What had happened? I could not tell. Only the night was gone and the wild sad words of Lance Dunbar had fled with it, scattering like ghosts be¬ fore the spears of dawn. The joy he had known at the sight of her seized me. Just as I did, he must have leaned over the rail and waved his hand — have run down smiling to a perfect day. Forgetting as she forgot, I joined her and the very morning danced in the depth of eyes veiled with black lashes that looked into mine.

There was no going to Haruna that day. Later she opened her little sun umbrella with its trails of wistaria on grey clouds (all colours she loved were cool and refined) and we wandered through the forest trails to the Benten waterfalls. Down the steep-stepped street with the hot volcanic water plunging beside us to the path that leads to the pil¬ lared pines and the river, the way seemed too rough for the little feet, but she had bound grass sandals upon the snowy two-toed tabi which clothed them and tripped beside me as bravely as any Western girl. I carried our luncheon boxes of white chip, packed with rice and all the good things to give it savour, to which Kanawa san had added baked fish-balls, and for me cold chicken that she would not touch. We sat among the rocks and flowers to eat when the keen mountain appetite struck the hour and she ate her fish and rice daintily with fairy chopsticks fresh from the paper case — laughing a little to see how well I managed mine. Up to that point we had only spoken of the sunshine, the place, the rainbow beauty of blossom — but now as we rested after she had hidden the empty bento boxes neatly away in the bushes and long grass, I gathered my courage.

There were so many things I must ask. I knew Japan well enough by this time to be certain that a Japanese lady does not give her company to any man but her husband in summer woods as my beauty was doing with so light a grace. There was mys¬ tery, possibly dangerous for her and probably for me. I must be assured before it went further.

What I knew already cried — Caution! and I be¬ gan cautiously;

“Did you stay long in the wood when I left you?”

“No. I waited not long. I came up the other way. It was better that I come alone.”

She looked down upon the flowers at her feet and I could see the black lashes soft on the lovely cheek. It was the expression of a chidden child, in¬ finitely humble and sad.

“You think me a being of no pity, no sorrow. That hurts me here (she laid her hand on her bosom). “But if you are patient perhaps you un¬ derstand. Will you hear?”

“I wish it with all my heart. It is necessary.”

She laid on her lap a few flowers which she had gathered, and folding her hands addressed herself gravely to her task.

“My father was English. If you are ever ashamed for me, think that in my blood are two races. How can they be quiet? A Japanese does not some things I do. An English lady thinks not my thoughts. It is difficult.”

I looked at her in astonishment, — it seemed it could not be true. She might have stepped from a kakemono of the old Kyoto school — exotic, fragile, the fine flower of an ancient civilization, the daugh¬ ter of Daimyos, with every race tradition moulding her like hands of iron. Was there any visible trace of mixed descent?

Just where the sunbeam caught her beautifully dressed hair I saw a light of darkest auburn which no Japanese woman would have permitted though it was of the slightest. There was no blunting of

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Mongol or Malay in the delicate nostrils. The bosom was flattened as Japanese women flatten it by the high line of the obi, but that was a concession to taste. Possibly she might be an inch taller than the usual height of her mother’s race; — and that was literally all. Nothing, but these are not the differ¬ ences that tell. Deeper, infinitely deeper are set the racial roots of the great divisions of men, and when two plants are set in the one vase of personal¬ ity not seldom the vase is broken in their expansion and all that is most precious in both peoples dies. She continued;

“My father was an English nobleman — and my mother — she was a maiko — what you call geisha — of Kyoto. He took her away and they lived very happy near Nagasaki. When I was eight years she died and he went away and her cousins took me. Their name was Yamashina. I was not to starve. My father gave money through letters and in two years he ordered that I come to England to school. That was terrible — so lonely. I was in school there for four years. Near London.”