CHAPTER XX
THE TRESPASSER
The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended that afternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on its wide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty kimono of pale gray cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japanese face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled from Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden under the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling.
Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality—with her fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please. While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she had made the Japanese girl bring her samisen and play. At first the music had seemed uncouth and elfish—a queer, barbaric twanging, like an intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals. But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner ear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding, her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in her pretty broken English, had told her stories—old legends that are embalmed in the geisha dances, of the forty-seven Ronin, and of the great Shogun who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park.
When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk—he was to show her the Chapel—the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the compound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables—each with the golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel—was just passing. Their occupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in naval uniform, their breasts covered with orders.
"The officers of the foreign Squadron, no doubt," said the Ambassador, "being shown the sights of the capital. Day after to-morrow the Minister of Marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor. You will enjoy that, Barbara."
"I wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond of talking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a Japanese welcome. The stay of these officers will be one long festivity. Yet to read a Continental journal you would think every other Japanese was carrying a club for use if they ventured ashore."
The Ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. For weeks, the newspapers of European capitals had talked of conflicting interests and unreconciled differences between the two countries. He knew that there was little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news" and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strung Chanceries as it does individuals. Beneath this surface current, diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. But as a trained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too long persisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of the Squadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of the lavish and open-hearted hospitality which Japan would offer it. When the carriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back to his books.
Walking up the sloping "Hill-of-the-Spirit" to the templed knoll behind it, Barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. All along flaunting camphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and the scent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. The ground was white and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts were sprinkling water. Little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied with bright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured kimono of red and purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edge a naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shaven head bobbing in the sunshine. Half-way up the hill a group of coolies were resting beside their carts. Their faces had the look of lotos-eaters, languid and serene. As they walked Barbara told of the adventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the Review of the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he had never seen her so beautiful.