Part 18

“A retainer came by and finding him, summoned help. When they got him to the house, they told him the woman was dead. She had severed an artery in her throat as a Japanese lady must do in the face of dishonour. Blind with rage he sent to the house of her husband to slaughter him. He had disappeared.

“Henceforth my ancestor was known as The Man without a Sword—a terrible name. He could not appear among the nobles. His life was a ruined thing.”

Arima paused again and then added:

“It would be better that the Abbot should tell you the rest. You will think it remarkable.”

I stood up, so possessed with the story, for he had told it like one inspired, that it was only as I moved that my position flashed on me.

“How can I go? I am lost in the mountains. Come with me!”

He stood beside me, looking onward:

“That is impossible. There are never any guides. There is only power. Besides, there are different ways for different people and I know nothing of yours.”

I looked about me, considering. The bridge was the obvious way and certainly the easiest. I did not know the hour, and there was a hint of dusk in the air, but I had already learnt that in this strange land time and its phenomena have quite other meanings than with us. Night might break on me in a wave of sunlight or dawn open its rose in the heart of midnight. Who could tell? But the bridge way would be safer.

I turned to say a last word to Arima. There was no human being in sight; it was a vast solitude dominated by the black cone of the mountain’s shadow.

I made for the bridge walking as quickly as the rough stones allowed, and climbing its semi-circular hump I looked before me and rejoiced to see the track much clearer than it had seemed from the other side. Evidently a well-used way, and this encouraged me in my hope of meeting someone who could direct me to the monastery of Naniwa. Therefore I went with more confidence, relieved from the crawling fear of the supernatural which the other side of the bridge inspired.

The track took me up a slight rise and round a jutting rock which obscured the river, and having done about two miles of quick walking I heard steps coming round a bend of the trail and rejoiced to think I could ascertain the way.

Nearer they came and disclosed a Japanese, his kimono pulled up through the obi for the ease of walking. He made the usual polite bow and would have passed but for my raised hand. I asked my way with the honorifics I had learnt from Arima. He stopped at once and replied with the utmost courtesy:

“The monastery? Yes— You could go this way. One reaches it by several. But it is not the right way. Far from it.”

“Then will you tell me how to go?”

“Sir, I cannot tell you. I wish I could. I really do not know your way.” It was infuriating. I said scoffingly:

“If you know this is wrong surely you know which is right?” He replied as if he were saying the most ordinary thing in the world:

“Sir, it is not so easy as you think. Places are states of mind in this country, therefore you will honourably see that no one can tell anyone else their way and how best to get there.”

Bowing, he made to pass me. It was then that for the first time I noticed two things. One that his hair was dressed in the old-fashioned queue headdress which one sees in Japanese prints, shaved, but for a knot drawn up on the head, the other that he had a most remarkable face. The features were good, even excellent, and the dark bright colouring fine. But the eyes were arresting under the black level brows, and filled with tranquillity as a pool with shadows. On the impulse they gave me I spoke.

“I wish I could go with you.”

“Sir, that could hardly be. I come from Yedo and I go to my garden in the valley you have left.”

Yedo!—the ancient and long-disused name of Tokyo,—and Tokyo on the central island and days’ journey away! Train and boat might have brought him, and yet—shivering doubt assailed me like the thin creeping of drops of water through a dyke which presages the later roar of the flood. The garden! I could not withhold myself nor hesitate.

“May I ask your name?”

“If you want to know my name you must watch what road I take and know to what I return. How can you know? I did not even think you would have seen me. Since it is so however, I will repeat that in this road you will have great need of self-defence. Now I bid you goodbye and wish you safely at Naniwa.”

He was gone round the corner so quickly that I had a sensation of vanishing. I ran after him and looked. Nothing. So I took my way onward. He had told me nothing to change it. A word really would have sent me backward to try my luck in another direction but he had not spoken it.

Soon after it was dark and raining, with a moon very young and bewildered in drifting clouds. She gave a weary light scarcely enough to hint the track and indicate a group of trees, the first I had seen, on the right. Coming up, among them was a small flickering light, and the barking of a dog sounded homely and even inviting, for by this time I was dragging tired feet. If I could sleep there how welcome the rest and shelter!

The place looked poor and dilapidated enough to be open to any offer of payment though in any case I might have trusted to the hospitality of the country Japanese.

I knocked at the rough door wondering that anyone could exist in such a tumble-down place and a young girl came to the door, faintly seen in dim lamplight. She stared at me in astonishment and bowing low, called softly:

“Madam, mistress,—what shall I do? A gentleman.”

A young voice answered:

“Tell him to come in if he will do us such an honour,” and a graceful little figure appeared in the opening of a lattice door, her face unseen because the light fell behind her. I obeyed. Poor as the house was that room was enchanting. Very simple, but the draperies were good, the cushions beautiful in colour, the _hibachi_ was full of charcoal and above and round all bathing it in charm was the delicate perfume of a woman’s presence. She rose from her profound Japanese salutation and looked me in the face.

“Hay sama!” she faltered, paling to the lips. And I knew—I knew!

Six months before in the crowded city of Tokyo I had gone to a dinner at a restaurant near Shimbashi. I remembered the garden outside with clumps of gorgeous chrysanthemums, lamps of splendid colour before the dusk drowned them and the moon washed them with silver. Geisha attended us, girls with every nerve braced and strung for their profession of charming the wary and unwary alike. And I was charmed by the sad mirth that looked out from one pair of dark and lovely eyes. I drew her aside before the evening ended and asked her to follow me to the _machiai_—a house of meeting, and escaping from the noisy party I waited in the cold handsomely furnished room that never spoke of love, until she came.

That meeting led to many things—some merry, some sad, but when I left Tokyo to see her no more I knew that the part I had played was to set my heel on her little head and drive her deeper into the mire. Still, it was ended and need trouble me no more. One could forget.

And now I sat by her side in this land of bitter memories.

She drew a cushion beside mine and leaning her little black head against my shoulder looked up in my face, welcoming me with the sweet courtesy mingled with fear that I remembered so well.

“And why are you here in this wild place, Hana san? Have you given up your work?”

Her bewildered look! I can see it now.

“How can I tell? I—I came. I was told it must be.”

“You are resting here? You go back?”

“Let us talk of other things, Hay sama. How I am glad to see you!” I could get nothing more from her than that.

Silence and the little noises of dropping charcoal, and the softness of her in my arms. It was a renewal of that passionate intimacy which had left a wound in the very heart of my soul.

We talked into the small hours,—so much to say, so much to hear, and time passed—hours, days— How could I tell? And then as fatigue and quiet and warmth overpowered all my resolution she put her arms about me and gathered me to her bosom and the night melted into passion and passion into dream and the dark stole past us on noiseless feet.

I waked in a chill dawn alone, disillusioned and abashed, dragged back violently to a thing I had forgotten and abhorred. The room was empty, a cold wind blowing through the tattered paper of the window, and when I called, no answer. The two women had gone with the night. No food, no fire, dead ash in the _hibachi_, emptiness and the squalid decay of a wooden house long forgotten. What had a beauty of Tokyo been doing in such a place?

Fear of the loneliness seized me. I went out quickly without looking after me, then at the twist of the path turned and saw—desolation and waving weeds and a bough of some bush thrust through the window that had taken root within. I pushed on toward Naniwa, sick at heart.

It was at that moment a thought shot through me and chilled my blood. When Arima and I had visited Naniwa it had taken us exactly two hours from his house to the monastery hill. But yesterday I had walked for many hours, and to-day seemed no nearer my goal. Grey interminable moorland stretched before me with a mountain blocking the way at a distance and other tossing peaks beyond. Where was I? Where was Naniwa? Might I not walk for ever and ever in widening circles to a lost goal? The ground whispered with evil in every blade of grass. It hissed in the rustle of dry squat bushes. And last night—last night! There were reasons why that memory brought horror and shame to be my companions on the right and left. But I went on from sheer inability to consider what else I must do.

The clump of bushes on the right parted and a tall strong fellow burst out of them and planted himself across my way. A Japanese, broad, brawny, violent-faced. As I halted he sprang at my throat like a wolf.

“And you tracked her here? You could not let her be? Then take your payment from her husband Kondo!”

What happened next came in a blinding flash. He struck at me with a loaded stick. It missed the first blow and I had him by the throat with the new lock I had learnt from Arima, shaking him violently to and fro, driving my fingers deeper and deeper into his flesh in a frenzy of rage and hate. I would have the innermost heart’s blood of the brute.

I had it. He reeled in my grasp with horrible choking noises, and suddenly I was shaking the life out of a dead thing. As I thrust him from me with sickening triumph he fell heavily as a full sack prone on the track before me.

It must have been long before the rage died in me and I stood face to face with my position. I—a foreigner—had killed a Japanese, and after an intrigue with his wife. It felled me beside him—I crouched and hid my face and tried to think.

Presently I rose and with the murderer’s instinct dragged the corpse into the bushes to hide it. Thought was impossible. I suffered as a dumb beast must suffer the extremity of torture without the power to reason. Only I must hide it and flee. The neighbourhood of the horrible thing was hell.

I went on.

Later— “Is it just—is it just?” I said to myself, “that one instant’s madness should doom a man for ever?”—forgetting the long temptation I had played with, the slow delicious yielding, the triumph and delight with which I had slowly built up my torture chamber. Not only from the time I landed in Japan, but before,—I had been busy at the building all my life. How could I complain when the trap snapped on me?

At last I broke from the numbness into memory. The man who had passed me on his way to his garden. His words returned like black birds flying heavily round my head.

“You are not in the right way. Places are states of mind. In this way you will have much need of self-defence.”

And Arima’s words also. “There is no guide. There is only power.”

Power. That brought the Abbot to my mind—the Rules. Could it be that they could rescue me from this horrible country where evil hid like a snake behind every stone. O, to be out of it—free—forgetting! I remember I fell on my knees as if in prayer and with dreadful earnestness began to repeat the Rules, passionately desiring the garden of peace.

“I have no parents. I make the heaven and the earth my parents. I have no weapons—I make submission my strength.” Light broke in my brain. Submission? Then should I dictate—should I trust myself to my own choice of where I would be? Arima had warned me against return.

“If you had used what we call ‘extension’ and had gone on you would have been on the other side of the mountain.” If there were to be refuge for such as I it could only lie along the way of courage. I knew it—I knew it.

I changed my thought instantly. “Set me where I should be if it is in the gateway of hell.” And again. “Only free me of myself. Let me go forward. There is no sin like cowardice. Better lust and murder and the fight to the death with them than cowardice.”

Then, with an intensity that shook me like a leaf in storm I uttered the words of power, hiding my face in a very passion of belief.

Quiet. I lifted my face and looked about me for the terrible way I had accepted. I was lying on the broken steps ascending to the monastery and the House Built upon Clouds at Naniwa. And it was dawn.

The wonder of peace! The sun had not yet out-soared the eastern trees and every bough dropped dew to the glittering grass. A bird, its little clenching feet on a blossomed twig beside me, sang like all the bliss of heaven. In a pool at my feet the lotus, child of the clear cold stream, raised rosy chalices to the sky and from it ran a stream divinely clear and bright. The sun might have been the first that ever shone upon a perfected world untroubled by man, so clear and clean the water-gold of the morning.

I stood up and looked about me drawing deep breaths of purity. Above me beneath a great tree, lost in contemplation, sat the Abbot Gyōsen.

I stumbled towards him. I remember I said: “I have come,” and that he motioned with his hand to a place beside him. Together we watched the slow crescendo of the mighty music of the dawn.

The sun was above the trees when he spoke, turning the serenity of his face upon me.

“You have learnt your lesson. Has it brought content?” I summoned my thoughts to reply clearly.

“I have learnt much but the truth I do not know. Does the corpse still lie on the moor and the woman weep in the deserted house. Am I guilty?”

“In your soul, yes. Therefore in truth, yes. When you yielded to lust in your heart and willed murder both were accomplished. Your own Scriptures teach this and that thought is the only true reality. This have all the Buddhas known. In what men ignorantly call fact you are not guilty. But, being guilty, learn this. Every instant terminates a life and the next is a new birth. While each minute exists the past is dead and the future unmade. I speak here according to the knowledge of this world, but the truth is that there is _no_ time, and that you are now what the Divine sees you—a ray of his splendour. This truth being as yet too high for you to remember that even on this world’s showing you are free to be what you will. The choice lies before you. With a thought you may be in the horror of the Desolate Country, with another in the Shining Land. For every man makes his own universe until he can see it as it is in the Thought of the Divine.”

Blinded with truth I asked a question simply as a child.

“Then what must I do?”

“Resolve and go forward,—what else? knowing that in yourself is all power.”

“But the training? Free me from myself! If we can realize these powers the means of using so terrible a weapon rightly should be open to all.”

“It is open. But men will not believe. They will not will. They do not think, and events take them like sea-weed on a wave. You know your own weakness but it is strength compared with that of the majority. You, at least, have seen and heard. Study the teachings of the perfect One, the Buddha, if you would be a man. Realize your union with Power, knowing that it is a harp of many strings of which you are one, and tune yourself in harmony with the music of the spheres. At present you are a man without a sword.”

That phrase! It kindled a world of recollection. I looked into his face with another entreaty.

“Arima sama told me that I might hear the end of the story of the Man without a Sword from your honourable self. Tell it to me, I beseech you.”

He rose and invited me to follow him into the House Built upon Clouds promising that he would rejoin me when he had transacted some necessary business. I sat in the window looking out and down into the glorious depth of waving woods bathing in sunshine like water, experiencing myself such tranquil joy as the trees themselves must know, fulfilling their perfect Law in the smile of the Divine.

It was long before the Abbot returned, but to me it seemed a moment. We have no true means of measuring time for the truth is that it has no existence, and when the soul is liberated this truth is evident. At once he began the story of the Man without a Sword.

“In Japan very terrible was the position of the man who had lost his sword. Better a thousand deaths of lingering torture. There was no man so low as to give him companionship—and he a noble! Therefore he changed his name to that of Kazuma, and casting aside what money was left he abandoned his wife who was dying of grief and shame, and coming to Yedo took up the study of jujutsu hoping some day to become a teacher of this in the great city. More lonely a man could not be than Kazuma. His wife died. His son was taken by his brother and he saw him no more. His own name was blotted out and forgotten. His brother believed and hoped him dead, and but for the command of his foe he would have killed himself.

“Jujutsu, my son, is, as you know from Arima sama, an art that every noble person should learn. It is said to have come from China, and it was taught that the very Gods had used it in chastising the barbarians. The name roughly signifies ‘the strength of weakness,’ and thus it arose. It was noted that the boughs of a willow were not broken by a heavy fall of snow when strong trees cracked beneath the weight. And why? Being pliant they bowed their weakness and the snow slipped off. My son, recall the Rule. ‘I have no strength. I make submission my strength.’ As with the soul so it is with the body. How shall I sum up this art of attack and self-defence? It is the perfect control of the mind resisting defeat. It is to use weakness in such a way that it masters brute strength. I have seen a slight woman who possessed this knowledge fling a heavy man over her shoulder and stun him. There are locks and blows which may easily kill the opponent and for this reason the higher secrets are withheld from all but those who are fit for initiation. The pupils are trained to endure heat and cold and all hardships. It is a high and noble discipline, for no greatness can be attained without abstinence from the three vices of lust, drink, and the love of money with their attendant diseases of the spirit.

“This art Kazuma studied, and as he did so much became clear to him and he approached the secret of life. And when he had reached a certain skill his master taught him that there is in jujutsu a higher branch of mysterious power. And he, beginning dimly to apprehend the meaning of the command laid on him by the husband of the woman he had slain, for so indeed he had, desired with eagerness to advance.

“Now, my son, at the gate of this higher initiation stands a ceremony to be endured. The initiate must submit to strangulation and to be revived by _kwappo_—the art which recalls men to life. And should this fail, revival is made by means of a power named _kiai_. To Kazuma, knowing nothing of _kiai_, but very weary of life, this command came like the friendly voice of death, and with joy he presented himself to the master of the art who was chosen to be his executioner.

“He lay down, offering his throat, and in a few seconds was what is called dead.

“Now, being thus enfranchised, instantly he found himself in the place of his humiliation by the rushing river, with cold desolation about him. And by the river knelt his conqueror washing the blood from his hands as though their fight was but just ended. He rose and faced Kazuma.

“‘You have obeyed my command.’

“‘I have obeyed.’

“‘What have you learnt?’

“‘That there is no death. It is more life, but life as we have made it. As a man has sown he reaps in life after life.’

“‘Until what time?’

“‘Until the time when he sows good grain.’

“‘Do you repent your past?’

“‘I do not look back. I go forward. It is forgotten. The man who did the deed died with it. Now I would be a teacher of jujutsu.’

“‘Well said! You have learnt to defend yourself from yourself and you would teach others. I will give you fresh orders.’ Kazuma stood like a soldier before his general.

“‘Teach what you have learnt. Then come back, and in this place of desolation where you fought and conquered more than you knew make a garden and build a bridge. Go now,—in power!’

“He bowed low, Kazuma also. ‘My friend!’— As the words met his ear they melted in a confused murmur of human voices and he struggled back to consciousness in the school of jujutsu in Yedo. Men knelt and stooped about him fearful lest he had gone so far on the way of death that even the powerful shout of _kiai_ could not reach him. But he rose and gravely thanking his executioner went and stood before his master.

“My son, Kazuma became the greatest teacher of jujutsu in Japan. He could disarm and bring to his feet a two-sworded man shrieking for mercy. With his shout he could do to death any evil-doer within hearing and restore the fool when he had mastered his lesson. Power was mighty in his step, his gesture, his glance. What money he made, and it was much, was for those who had need, he himself living in an untouchable content.

“Thus time went by.

“One day, having saved the life of the only son of a noble house, the father coming to him said:

“‘My lord, what shall I give you? In mercy accept a gift lest I and my house break under the weight of gratitude. Have pity and take!’

“So, after much musing, Kazuma replied.

“‘You have bought great lands by the river Koga. I grow old. Give me, my lord, if you will, a corner by the river, very small, where I may make a garden and build a wooden bridge for those who must cross the rapids. Very dangerous is the current.’

“So it was done and he made his garden and built with his own hands a bridge of wood, and there was no day but the people blessed his name and learnt from him that power lies about them for the taking and that its best use at the present time is to make gardens and be a builder of bridges. Other uses later. My son, Kazuma still walks in his garden and he sits beneath his willow and his sword hangs at his side. The bridge leads where you know, for you have crossed it.”

There was a moment’s silence and it spoke as never yet words. He resumed.

“My son, make your own garden. And there is room for many bridges.”

When my mind dwells on beauty the face of the Abbot full of unworded meanings floats on clear air before me. It ended and completed the story so that all he left unsaid was written in fire between the spoken words. And I understood and like himself cannot express more than the alphabet.

I returned from Naniwa by the hidden way. Flowers blossomed along the moors. I never saw more lovely, and where the corpse had lain children were dancing in a ring. Where the broken house had crouched among trees, was a shrine to the Thousand-Handed Spirit of Mercy beloved in Japan. A child lay in her bosom and her hidden eyes were bent upon it in a moonlight rapture. May I live in that country for the eternities!