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!"