CHAPTER XV

A FACE IN THE CROWD

They rode to the parade-ground--Barbara and Patricia with the Ambassador, behind his pair of Kentucky grays--along wide streets grown festive overnight and buzzing with _rick'sha_ and pedestrians. Every gateway held crossed flags bearing the blood-red rising-sun, and colored paper lanterns were swung in festoons along the gaudy blocks of shops, as wide open as tiers of cut honeycomb.

In their swift flight the city appeared a living sea of undulations, of immense green wastes alternating with humming sections of trade, of abrupt, cliff-like hills, of small parks that were masses of cherry-bloom and landscapes of weird Japanese beauty. Patricia quoted one of Haru's quaint sayings: "So-o-o many small village got such a lonesomeness an' come more closer together. Tha's the way Tokyo born." Occasionally the Ambassador pointed out the stately palace of some influential noble, or the amorphous, depressing front of the foreign-style stucco residence of some statesman, built in that different period when the empire took first steps in the path of world-powers, with its low, graceful Japanese portion beside it.

Everywhere Barbara was conscious of the flutter of children--of little girls whose dress and hair showed a pervasive sense of care and adornment; of faces neither gay nor sad looking from latticed windows that hung above open gutters of sluggish ooze; of frail balconies adorned with growing flowers or miniature gardens set in earthen trays; of doorways hung with soft-fringed, rice-straw ropes and dotted with paper charms--the talismanic _o-fuda_ seen on every hand in Japan. In Yokohama what had struck her most had been the curious composite, the jumbled dissonance of East and West. Here was a new impression; this was real Japan, but a Japan that, if it had taken on western hues, had everywhere qualified them by subtle variations, themselves oriental. Past the carriage whirled landaus bearing Japanese _grandes dames_ in native dress, with pomade-stiff coiffures against which their rice-powdered faces made a ghastly contrast; between the rear springs of each vehicle was fixed a round flat pommel on which a runner stood, balancing himself to the swift movement. A Japanese military officer in khaki, with a row of decorations on his breast, rode by on a horse too big for him, at a jingling trot. Two soldiers passing afoot, faced sidewise and their heavy cowhide heels came together with a thud, as they saluted. Their arms had the jerky precision of a mechanical toy.

Through all there seemed to Barbara to strike a sense of the tenacity of the old, of the stubborn persistence of type, as though eyes behind a mask looked grimly at the mirror's reflection of some outlandish and but half-accustomed masquerade. It was the shadow of the old Japan of castes and spies and censors, of homage and _hara-kiri_, of punctilio and porcelain. Trolley cars rumbled past; skeins of telegraph wire spun across the vision. Yet when stone wall gaped or green hedge opened, it was to reveal the curving tops of Buddhist _torii_ in quaint vistas of straight-boled trees, gliding Tartar contours of roof between clumps of palm, or bamboo thickets with shadows as black as ink; while from the lazy scum of the wide, moat-like, stone gutters, open to the all-putrefying sun, rose thick, marshy odors suggesting the vast languor of a land more ancient than Egypt and Nineveh.

The carriage stopped abruptly at a cross street. A _Shinto_ funeral _cortège_ was passing. Twelve bearers, six on each side, clad in mourning _houri_ of pure white, bore on their shoulders the hearse, like a shrine, built of clean unpainted wood, beautifully grained, and with carven roof and curtains of green and gold brocade. Priests in yellow robes, with curved gauze caps and stoles of scarlet and black, walked at the head, fanning themselves now and then with little fans drawn from their girdles. Coolies, dressed in white like the hearse bearers, carried stiff, conical bouquets, six feet long, made of flowers of staring colors, and clumps of lotos made of _papier maché_ covered with gold and silver leaf. The chief mourner, a woman, rode smiling in a _rick'sha_. She wore a silver-gray _kimono_ and a tall canopied cap of white brocade with wide floating strings like an old-fashioned bonnet.

"Well, of all things!" said Patricia, in an awe-struck whisper. "What do you think of that?" For the file of _rick'sha_ following her carried a curious assemblage of mourners. In each sat a dog, some large, some small, with great bows of black or white crepe tied to their collars. Taka, the driver, turned his head and spoke:

"Dog-doctor die," he said. "All dog very sorry."

"It's the 'vet.,' father," Patricia cried. "He is dead, then--and all his old patients are attending the funeral! See, Barbara! They are lined up according to diplomatic precedence. That French poodle in front belongs to the Japanese senior prince. The Aberdeen is the British Ambassador's. And there's the Italian Embassy bull-terrier and the Spanish _Chargé's_ 'chin.' The foreigners' dogs have black bows and the others white. Why is that, I wonder?"

"I presume," said the Ambassador, "because white is the Japanese mourning color."

"Of course. How stupid of me!" She sat suddenly upright. "Of all _things_! There's our 'Dandy'!" She pointed to a tiny Pomeranian on the seat of the last _rick'sha_. "I wondered why number-three boy was washing him so hard this morning! It's a mercy he didn't see us, or he'd have broken up the procession. Please take note that he's the tail-end--which shows my own unofficial insignificance."

"There's a tourist at the hotel," said the Ambassador, "who should have seen this. I was there the other day and I overheard her speaking to one of the Japanese clerks. She said she had seen everything but a funeral, and she wanted him to instruct her guide to take her to one. The clerk said: 'I am too sorry, Madam, but this is not the season for funerals.'"

The horses trotted on, to drop to a walk, presently, on a brisk incline. High, slanting retaining walls were on either side, and double rows of cherry-trees, whose interlacing branches wove a roof of soft pink bloom. Along the road were many people; _inkyo_--old men who no longer labored, and _ba-San_--old women whom age had relieved from household cares--bent and withered and walking with staves or leaning on the arms of their daughters, who bore babies of their own strapped to their backs; children clattering on loose wooden clogs; youths sauntering with _kimono'd_ arms thrown, college-boy fashion, about each other's shoulders; a troop of young girls in student _hakama_--skirts of deep purple or garnet--laughing and chatting in low voices or airily swinging bundles tied in colored _furoshiki_. Midway the wall opened into a miniature park filled with trees, with a small lake and a _Shinto_ monument.

"Why, there's little Ishikichi," said Patricia. "I never saw him so far from home before. Isn't that a queer-looking man with him!"

The solemn six-year-old, Barbara's window acquaintance of the morning, was trotting from the inclosure, his small fingers clutching the hand of a foreigner. The latter was of middle age. His coat was a heavy, double-breasted "reefer." His battered hat, wide-brimmed and soft-crowned, was a joke. But his linen was fresh and good and his clumsy shoes did not conceal the smallness and shapeliness of his feet. He was lithe and well built, and moved with an easy swing of shoulder and a step at once quick and graceful. His back was toward them, but Barbara could see his long, gray-black hair, a square brow above an aquiline profile at once bold and delicate, and a drooping mustache shot with gray. Many people seemed to regard him, but he spoke to no one save his small companion. His manner, as he bent down, had something caressing and confiding.

At the sound of wheels the man turned all at once toward them. As his gaze met Barbara's, she thought a startled look shot across it. At side view his face had seemed a dark olive, but now in the vivid sunlight it showed blanched. His eyes were deep in arched orbits. One, she noted, was curiously prominent and dilated. From a certain bird-like turn of the head, she had an impression that this one eye was nearly if not wholly sightless. All this passed through her mind in a flash, even while she wondered at his apparent agitation.

For as he gazed, he had dropped the child's hand. She saw his lips compress in an expression grim and forbidding. He made an involuntary movement, as though mastered by a quick impulse. Then, in a breath, his face changed. He shrank back, turned sharply into the park and was lost among the trees.

"What an odd man!" exclaimed Patricia. "I suppose he resented our staring at him. He's left the little chap all alone, too. Stop the horses a moment, Tucker," she directed, and as they pulled up she called to the child.

But there was no reply. Ishikichi looked at her a moment frowningly, then, without a word, turned and stalked somberly after his companion.

"What an infant thunder-cloud!" said Patricia as the carriage proceeded. "That must be where our precious prodigy gets his English. Poor mite!" she added. "He was the inseparable of the son of Toru, the flower-dealer opposite the Embassy, Barbara, and the dear little fellow was run over and killed last week by a foreign carriage. No doubt he's grieving over it, but in Japan even the babies are trained not to show what they feel. I wonder who this new friend is?"

"I've seen the man once before," said the Ambassador. "He was pointed out to me. His name is Thorn. His first name is Greek--Aloysius, isn't it?--yes, Aloysius. He is a kind of recluse: one of those bits of human flotsam, probably, that western civilization discards, and that drift eventually to the East. It would be interesting to know his history."

So this, thought Barbara, was the exile of whom Daunt had told her, who had chosen to bury himself--from what unguessed motive!--in an oriental land, sunk out of sight like a stone in a pool. When he looked at her she had felt almost an impulse to speak, so powerfully had the shadow in his eyes suggested the canker of solitariness, the dreary ache of bitterness prolonged. She felt a wave of pity surging over her.

But the carriage leaped forward, new sights sprang on them and the fleeting thought dropped away at length behind her, with the overhanging cherry-blooms, the little green park, and the strange face at its gateway.