CHAPTER XLVII

"IF THIS BE FORGETTING"

The sailing-master of the yacht _Barbara_, with his mate and crony, sat in the main saloon, whiling away a tedious hour.

The room bore all the earmarks of "a rich man's plaything." It was tastefully and luxuriously furnished. The upholstery was of dark green brocade, thin Persian prayer-rugs were on the hardwood floor, and electric bulbs in clusters were set in silver sconces, which swung with a long, slow motion as the yacht rocked to the deepening respiration of the sea. At one side a small square table held the remains of a comfortable refection, and by it, on a stand, sat a phonograph with which the two men had been gloomily diverting themselves.

But though the _repertoire_ of the instrument was extended, it had brought little satisfaction to-night. The last irksome fortnight of inactivity had made each selection trite and familiar. Moreover, the captain's spirits were not of the best. The abrupt change of ownership, followed hard by the death of the yacht's former master, was a _bouleversement_ that had confused his automatic temperament, and the sight of the double-locked cabin-door in the saloon was a daily depressant. He had never seen the yacht's new owner, though she had written him that he might expect her at any time, and the enigma of a future under a woman's orders troubled his sturdy and unimaginative mind.

"Wish to the Lord she'd come, if she's ever coming!" he muttered, as the phonograph ran down with a wheeze. "This is two days I've kept the dinghy lying at the _hatoba_."

The mate nodded. It was not the first time the remark had been made. "I wonder why she ordered his cabin door kept locked?" he said.

"Papers," returned the captain sapiently. "Wants to seal 'em up for the executor. New owner must be rich, I guess. I'd like to know what she paid for the outfit. First time I ever signed under a new skipper sight unseen!"

"Miss Barbara Fairfax," mused the mate. "Nice name. Curious only one piece of mail should come for her--and second class, too." He picked up a thin package from the table, folded in dark paper. This had been made sodden by the rain; now it parted and a flat, black disk of hard rubber slipped from it and rolled across the floor.

"Blamed if it isn't a phonograph record," he said, as he picked it up. "It's out of the wrapper now--let's try it." He set it in place and rewound the spring, and the saloon filled with a chorus of chirps and tinklings from quivering catgut smitten by ivory plectrums.

"_Samisen!_" said the captain. "I've heard 'em in the tea-houses. Give me a fiddle for mine, any day."

The yacht's cabin-boy entered. "The dinghy's coming, sir," he said. "Lady and gentleman aboard of her."

The captain got up hastily, put out a hand and stopped the machine. "Take away those dishes, and be quick about it," he ordered. "Mr. Rogers, pipe up the men."

He hurried on deck and watched the bobbing craft approach. Under the rising wind the sea was lifting rapidly and the dinghy buried its nose in the spray. Presently he was giving a helping hand to the visitors at the break in the rail, looking into a pair of brown eyes that he thought were the saddest he had ever seen, and replying to a voice that was saying:

"I am Miss Fairfax, Captain Hart, and this is my uncle, Bishop Randolph."

* * * * *

The train which brought Barbara and the bishop from Tokyo had crawled for miles along what seemed a narrow ribbon laid on a yellow floor. The steady, continuous downpour had flooded the rice-fields and the landscape was a waste of turbid freshet, the rivers deep and swollen torrents. At one bridge a small army of workmen were dumping loads of stone about a pier-head and shoring-up the track with heavy timbers. The train crossed this at a snail's pace, that inspired anxiety.

"I'm not an engineer," the bishop had said, "but I prophesy this bridge won't be safe to-morrow unless the water falls."

The early daylight dinner at the hotel had been well nigh a silent ceremonial. That day, with the temple solitary, Barbara had gone down into a deeper Valley of Shadow. Just as her longing to go to him in her trouble had seemed to her overwrought, so now her grief was strangely poignant. When she thought of him her mind was a confusion of tremulous half-thoughts and new emotions. She could not know that the voice she dimly heard was the call of blood--that she was in the grip of that mighty instinct of filiation which strengthens the life-currents of the world. Her grief--mysterious because its springs were haunting and unknown--added its aching pang now to the misery that had encompassed her. She had felt the fierce bounding of the stout little boat, the gusts of windy spray that flew over them, with a tinge of relief, since the buffeting made the inner pain less keen.

As she stood at length, with her task, in the cabin whose door had been so long locked, she remembered the white-robed priests of Kudan Hill, stalking barefooted across the hot coals. Her soul, she thought, must tread a fiery path on which rested no miracle of painlessness, and which had no end. Above her she could hear the irregular footfalls of the bishop on the tilting deck, and the shrill humming of the wind in the ventilators. It seemed to be mocking her. Before the world she was living a painful pretense. Even her uncle believed her to be grieving for the man whose life had gone out that night at Nikko!

When all had been done and the papers sealed in a portmanteau for delivery to the Consul-General, Barbara came into the brilliant saloon. The yacht was pitching heavily and she could stand with difficulty. Steadying herself against the table, she saw the empty wrapper addressed to herself. It bore a Nikko postmark. Who could have sent it here? As she stood holding the paper in her hand, the bishop entered.

"Captain Hart thinks we would better stay aboard to-night, Barbara," he said. "There is a nasty sea and we should be sure of a drenching in the dinghy. We have no change of clothing, you know."

"You will be quite comfortable, Miss Fairfax," the captain's voice spoke deferentially from the doorway. "The guest-rooms are always kept ready."

"Very well," she said, a little wearily. "That will be best, no doubt." She held up the torn wrapper. "What was in this, I wonder?"

The captain confessed his indiscretion with embarrassment, and she absolved him with a smile that covered a sharper pang than she had yet felt that evening. For that thin disk had been on the hillside that Nikko night--perhaps had heard that quarrel, had seen that blow, had watched a man crawling, staggering foot by foot, till he collapsed against the frame that held it! By what strange chance had it been sent to her here?

Her uncle bade her good night presently, being an indifferent sailor, and betook himself to bed. The room that had been prepared for her opened into the saloon. She was too restless to retire, and after a time she climbed up the companion-way to the windy deck.

The vaulted sapphire of the sky had been swept clean of cloud and the stars sparkled whitely. Off at one side, a flock of sinister shadows, she could make out the Squadron of battle-ships, and beyond, in a curving line, the twinkling lights of the Bund. Could it ever again be to her that magical shore she had first seen from a ship's deck, with hills which the cherry-trees made fairy tapestries of green-rose, and mountains creased of purple velvet and veined with gold? The great white phantom lifting above them--would it henceforth be but a bulk of ice and stone, no longer the shrine of the Goddess-of-Radiant-Flower-Bloom? The sky--would it ever again seem the same violet arch that had bent over a Tokyo garden of musk flowers and moonlight? Would the world never seem beautiful to her again?

All about her the foam-stippled water glowed with points of phosphorescence, as though a thousand ghostly lanterns were afloat. It made her think of the festival of the _Bon_, of which Thorn had told her, when the _Shoryo-buné_--the boats of the departed spirits--in lambent flotillas, go glimpsing down to the sea. How unbelievable that she should never see him again! She felt a sudden envy of the placid millions encircling her to whose faith no life was ever lost, whose loved ones were ever coming back in the perennial cherry-blooms, the maple-leaves, the whispering pines.

Her love would come back to her only in bitter memories, in painful thoughts that would shame and burn. All else beside, she had been Austen Ware's promised wife. How could she still feel love for the man who had caused his death? Yet--if she must--if she could never tear that image from her breast!

Like the reflection of a camera-obscura, memory painted a sudden picture on the void; she saw herself sitting amid the branches of a tulip-tree, while some one sang--a song the wind was humming in the cordage:

"Forgotten you? Well, if forgetting Be yearning with all my heart, With a longing, half pain and half rapture, For the time when we never shall part; If the wild wish to see you and hear you, To be held in your arms again-- If this be forgetting, you're right, dear, And I have forgotten you then."

Great, slow tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.