"It will, perhaps, deign to be a gaku of the Christian God. I shall, with deference, study it. I have watered my worthless mind with much arrogant reading of Him. Doubtless He was also Buddha and taught The Way."
An acolyte had come from the temple and approached the red bell-tower. Midway of the huge bronze bell a heavy cedar beam, like a catapult, was suspended from two chains. He swung this till its muffled end struck the metal rim, and the air swelled with a dreamy sob of sound. He swung it again, and the sob became a palpitant moan, like breakers on a far-away beach. Again, and a deep velvety boom throbbed through the stillness like the heart of eternity.
"It is time for the service," said the priest, and turning, went into the temple, from whose interior soon came the woodeny tapping of a mok'gyo—the hollow wooden fish, which is the emblem of the Mon-to sect—and the sound of chanting voices.
Thorn, the man with whom the priest had spoken, crossed the bridge to the other temple with a slow step. He passed between the scowling guardian figures, slid back a paper shoji and entered. The room in which he stood had been the haiden, or room of worship. Around its walls were oblong carvings, marvelously lacquered, of the nine flowers and nine birds of old Japanese art. In one were set six large painted panels; the red seal they bore was that of the great Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan. In its center, under a brocade canopy, was a raised platform once the seat of the High Priest. It faced a long transept, like a chancel; this ended in a short flight of steps leading, through doors of soft, fretted gold-lacquer, to a huge altar set with carved tables, great tarnished brasses and garish furniture. The walls of the transept were done in red with green ornamentations. From the overhead gloom grotesque phœnix and dragon peered down and in the gathering dimness, shot through with the wan yellow gleam of brass, the place seemed uncanny.
Thorn drew back a heavy drapery which covered a doorway, and entered a room that was windowless and very dark. He lit a candle.
The dim light it furnished disclosed a weird and silent assembly. The space was crowded with strange glimmering deities—of bronze, of silver, of priceless gold-lacquer—the dust thick on their faces, their aureoles misty with cobwebs. Some gazed with passionless serenity, or blessed with outstretched hand; some threatened with scowling faces and clenched thunderbolts: Jizo of the tender smile, in whose sleeves nestle the souls of dead children; Kwan-on, of divine compassion, with her many hands; Emma-dai-O, Judge of the Dead, menacing and terrible; strange sardonic tengu, half-bird, half-human. The floor was thick with them. From shelves on the walls leered swollen, frog-like horrors such as often appear on Alaskan totem-poles, triple-headed divinities of India and China, coiled cobras, idols from Ceylon, and curious Thibetan praying-wheels. A sloping stairway slanted through the gloom; beside it was an image of the red god, Aizen Bosatsu, his appalling countenance framed in lurid flames, seated on a fiery lotos.
The master of this celestial and infernal pantheon closed and locked the door, and mounted the stairway to the loft—a low, rambling room of eccentric shape, under the curving gables.
Here, through a long window beneath the very eaves, the light still came brightly. In the center was a board table, littered with delicate carving-tools. He kindled the charcoal in a bronze hibachi, and set over it a copper pot which began to emit a thick, weedy odor. From a cabinet he took phials containing various powders, and measured into the pot a portion from each. Lastly he added a quantity of gold-leaf, slowly, flake by flake. At one side a white silk cloth was draped over a pedestal; he drew this away and looked at the unfinished figure it had concealed. It was an image of Kwan-on, the All-Merciful.
Through the open window the chant of the priests came clearly: