The Portal of Dreams

by Charles Neville Buck

Once more I awoke with a moist forehead and a hunger which gnawed at the pit of my stomach. Only the gods knew how long I had been without food. The air fanned me with the soft, reviving breath of night. The moon, riding up the east made an irregular diagram of silvered light across the ledge, and fell with a reassuring touch of ivoried white, on the newspaper sheet and the portrait.

I was too famished and spent to stand, but I made the journey down to the beach on hands and knees, and when I had eaten my fill of unsavory crabs I lay for a time in the grateful coolness of the wet sand and drew new strength from its healing. My sickness was ended. The pitiable weakness that had made the downward journey a torture was the heritage of hunger. I had needed no medicine but food, and now I found myself able to walk back upright. That night I slept sweetly and dreamed once again of the familiar door beyond which lay luxury and security.

The sun was high when I awoke with a sense of great refreshment and recovery. The slit of sky framed in the rift was not yet hot, but tenderly blue with a color of promise. The fronds of fern and palm stirred to the land breeze. I went down to my surf bath and breakfast with an almost buoyant step. A half-hour after my return, when I turned to look at the jungle edge a sight greeted me which demonstrated the decision of the natives that our intercourse was not so soon to become a closed incident.

This time, however, their coming was characterized by a more gratifying element of respect. They swarmed out of the bush, not in paltry dozens nor scores, but in their panoplied hundreds. Gorgeously decked chiefs and the club-bearing warriors smeared with indigo halted in the open, leaving a satisfying interval between their position and mine. With great and conspicuous show of peace the warriors discarded their spears and shields and raised their weaponless hands for me to behold as I looked down from my high place. The white-haired king broke a spear, gazing up at me the while, then dropping the pieces knelt and bowed his slanting forehead to the sands. At his back bent the priests, trailing their bright feathers in the dust. No one could misunderstand their pantomime. Men of their tribe had offended the deities. A nation had come in humility and supplication for forgiveness.

While they made obeisance in relays a group of young men approached the priests, bearing armfuls of orchids. The king and priests and orchid-bearers moved forward for a few steps and halted, gazing up inquiringly at me. This performance was several times repeated before I understood that they were seeking my consent to approach nearer. Then I bowed and pointed inward. A rigorous order of precedence was observed, the aged king keeping his place at their head and his followers their positions of relative rank. The weight of his years made the royal steps so slow that the colorful pageant crept like an army of snails.

Suddenly it dawned upon me that if I were to be a god receiving a delegation of mortals, I should receive it in some suitable degree of state. They were sending to me the mightiest men of their villages. The kinky head of their king was abased. Aged Merlins were coming on their marrow bones, resplendently trailing their feathered finery along the white and flaring sands. I stood awaiting them in a raveled, mud-smeared suit of pajamas which at their best had never been ostentatious. The thing seemed unfit. Evidently these folk inclined to the splendor of pomp. Jeffersonian simplicity would be lost on them. Their pageant should be met with pageantry. There had been some who had doubted and denied me. Of a surety if I were to play this nabob from the skies; if I were to turn the averted tragedy into a screaming and cheerful farce, it was my duty to dress the part.

With a signal of raised hands, I signified that they were to await my reappearance. Then I bowed with profound dignity, and stepping from their view, disappeared.

A few minutes later I emerged from my cave, a transmogrified being. I was no longer the derelict of rags and tatters. Mine was the opulent splendor of a High Mandarin of China. About my fever-wasted frame fell and flapped the gorgeous folds of the embroidered kimono. In my hands I carried a violin and bow. It is true I was unshaven, and through holes in my canvas shoes protruded eight or ten toes, but what mortal can assume to criticise such eccentricities as may be the part of godhood?

When I took my stand once more on my pedestal of mountain, I found them patiently awaiting the nod of deity. The sun fell resplendently on my silver storks and gold dragons and silk poppies. The lessening land breeze fluttered the embroidery-crusted folds and splintered light from my person. I listened with satisfaction to the incoherent sound that went up from many throats; a chorused gasp of profound awe and admiration and wonderment.

I signaled my immortal readiness to receive them. As the ludicrousness of the farce broke over me I had to bite back unsolemn roars of laughter. A spirit of deviltry and vaudeville possessed me. As their high priests in deadly earnest marched on all fours with faces as rapt and fanatically sober as those of Mecca pilgrims, I drew the bow across the catgut and, lifting my voice, proclaimed myself in ragtime.