It Happened in Japan

by Baroness Albert d' Anethan

Even in moments of the greatest excitement or of distress, Stanislas--where the question of his work was in any way involved--rarely acted hastily or without looking at the question from all sides. Thus in the present case, though it would have been impossible for him to have explained the exact reason why, after weighty consideration, he ended by thrusting the hastily written letter into a drawer, where it reposed peacefully until destroyed many months later.

Not that at this moment De Güldenfeldt for one second contemplated asking Mrs. Nugent a second time to become his wife. No thought, indeed, was further from his mind. After much quiet deliberation, indeed considerable hesitation, he had brought himself to the point of making this offer, and greatly to his surprise, disappointment, and distress, he had been refused. He was deeply in love with Pearl, but it must be confessed the sentiment for the moment that had the greatest hold on the spirit of Stanislas de Güldenfeldt, swamping all other feelings,--even for the time being that of his love--was that of wounded pride, Stanislas was by no means perfect, his faults were many and manifold, and like all those who from their earliest youth have acted as their own masters--seldom having been crossed in either whims or desires--he was extra-ordinarily intolerant, even in small matters, of the slightest contradiction or hindrance to his wishes. But when it came to the point of renouncing what he most desired in life, not only for the moment, but he knew well for all futurity, Stanislas was consumed with what was far more than a merely temporary sentiment of annoyance and distress. A great astonishment, a permanent anger and resentment filled his whole being, and his one thought at the present moment was to fly from Pearl and all associations of her, striving his utmost to entirely banish from his mind the woman who had so strangely upset his equanimity, disarranging so completely his rather settled habits and whole system of life.

Thus it was, travelling by slow stages and passing his nights at clean and picturesque tea-houses sleeping on futon [4] and eating the food of the country, Stanislas, and the young interpreter of his Legation, Suzuki, his sole companion in his travels, one day found themselves at Sendai, from which place they took the train to Shiogama. There a sampan--the flat bottomed junk of the Japanese--was engaged, and for several hours Stanislas, stretched at the bottom of the boat, with hands clasped behind his head, and eyes gazing lazily up unto the unclouded sky above, glided in and out through the thousands of lovely islands of this archipelago, so full of mystery and of dreams. Weird and wonderful were those islands, bays, and promontories, in some cases beautiful and entrancing in their wealth of thick grown pines and rich and varied vegetation, and in others, almost uncanny in their bare, naked, volcanic rocks, worn into strange patterns and fantastic shapes by the inroads of the ever surging sea. Under the late afternoon sun, and across this lovely limpid sea of green, would fade far away in the distance vast and misty ranges of thickly wooded hills, while here and there, gleaming through the soft whiteness of the light, a great peak of purple would arise aloft like a beckoning finger, reaching far beyond into the fast flying clouds of the faintly shaded sky.

[ [4] Japanese quilts.

On reaching Matsushima (the "Island of the Pines") after this never-to-be-forgotten sail of some delicious hours, and on arriving at the tea-house perched on a rock high above the water, that was to be his shelter for the night, de Güldenfeldt, while the evening meal was being prepared under the supervision of Suzuki, leaned idly over the little barrier of the verandah. He leant and gazed wonderingly at the beautiful scene, till his whole soul was pervaded by the gentleness, the dreamy passionlessness, the immense repose of the solemn charm of the sight before him. The musically rippling water, the many thousand islands, the fading sun-set, with its great shafts of glowing colour shooting across the sky, and merging mysteriously into soft and subtle twilight--all had a peculiar beauty and character of their own. It seemed to him like nothing he had ever seen before. No old recollections, no old memories were stirred to life as his eyes wandered over the waters, and dwelt on the many thousand islands of every form and size, now growing shapeless and dim in the darkening shadows of the night.

And as he gazed thus, drinking in the beauty of the scene and thinking of nothing--not even for the moment of Pearl--and as the short twilight gradually faded and night fell, Stanislas was the witness of a strange and picturesque sight.

Thousands and thousands of dazzling lights were shimmering on the surface of the dark calm sea before him, each light growing gradually fainter and fainter, and gliding further and further away into the open. Then it was that de Güldenfeldt remembered that it was the sacred and yearly ceremony of the "Shoryobune," or the launching of the Ships of the Souls, when thousands of little skiffs and barks, each illuminated with a single lantern, are once a year set afloat upon the open sea by the simple fisher-folk. On this date the ocean is nought for the time being but one vast highway of the Dead, whose passing souls must cross the waters, be they rough or calm, to eventually reach the haven of their distant and Eternal Home.

Now gleaming on the crest of the wave, now disappearing beneath the waters, those fires of the Dead take their onward uncertain journey. Sad indeed, is the fate of the lost lamenting soul, whose little craft with its twinkling light is submerged and extinguished by the scudding spray of the sea, disappearing for ever from all human sight and ken. For that poor struggling spirit is no rest, nor eternal repose, forever and forever will it be an outcast and a wanderer, hovering on the shores of that Land in which Nirvâna is found, but fated never to dwell within the regions of its blessed calm and peace.

It is said that as these ghostly lights take their strange and onward journey across the sea, the distant murmur of many voices is heard like the mournful roar of the surf beating on the strand, the language uncomprehended and indistinguishable of those many thousand weary souls, struggling on towards their long prayed-for, long-expected haven of peace and holy contemplation.

And as de Güldenfeldt gazed out thus far before him, his eye became fixed upon one little glimmer, dancing up and down on the water, and a cry above the murmur of the many voices seemed to him to come from the direction of that light. Stanislas could not tear his eyes away from this distant gleam, nor shut his ears to the sound of that cry, so faint and weak, and yet so strangely dominant over all other sounds around him. And as he looked, fascinated and engrossed, the fancy seized him that it was even at the spectacle of his own striving weary soul he was gazing, and that the wail that proceeded from that flickering light, rising and falling across the waters, was the echo of the cry of desolation and despair that had filled and rent his heart, ever since the day he had parted from Pearl Nugent in anger and bitter disillusion. He leant further over the balcony, trying to pierce the gloom and to follow the wind-fraught vagaries of that one faint glimmering light. Now it tore swiftly along, now it rose high above the waves, seeming to challenge with its swift and triumphant haste the more backward competitors in this strenuous race, of which the distant goal was the stormy and open sea.