I now turned my eyes fully toward the doorway and the vision had half disappeared behind the screen that stood pushed to one side. It had apparently been moving before it caught my eyes, and had now gone out of sight altogether as I stared in amazement toward it. I stopped composing poetry, and instead I now kept my eyes fixed on the open space in the doorway.
The clock had not ticked a full second when the vision returned from the opposite direction to that which it had disappeared. It was that of a slim woman in a wedding gown with long sleeves, walking gracefully along the upstairs verandah of the wing of the hotel, flanking my room. I did not know why, but the pencil fell from my fingers, and the breath I was inhaling through my nose stopped of its own accord. The sky was darkening, as if forewarning one of the cherry season showers, to hasten the evening dusk; but the gowned figure kept on appearing and disappearing in the heavily-charged atmosphere, walking with benign gentleness along the verandah, twelve yards away from me, overlooking an inner court.
The woman said nothing, nor looked either way. She was walking so softly that the rustling of her silk gown seemed scarcely to catch her ears. Some figures—I could not tell what from the distance—adorned the skirt of her dress, and the figured and unfigured parts shaded into each other like day into night. And the woman was indeed, walking in the borderland of night and day.
What mystified me was what made her go so persistently to and from along the verandah, dressed in her long-sleeved gown. Nor had I any idea of how long she had been at this strange exercise in her strange attire. There was, of course, no telling of her purpose. This figure of a woman, appearing and disappearing across the open doorway, repeating the incomprehensible movements, could not help arousing a singular feeling in me. Could it be that she was moved by her regret for the departing Spring, or how could she be so absorbed? If so absorbed, why should she be dressed in such finery?
That resplendent obi, that stood out so strikingly in the hue of departing Spring, lingering at the threshold of gathering dusk, could it be gold brocade? I fancied the bright ornament, moving backward and forward, enshrouded in the gray of approaching night, was like glittering stars in the early dawn of a Spring day; that every second went out one by one, in this distant depth and then in that of the vast vault of heavens, vanishing gradually into the deepening purple.
Another fancy struck me as the door of night was gradually opening to swallow into its darkness this flowery vision. Super-nature! this sight of fading away from the world of colours, with not a sign of regret, nor of struggle, instead of shining an object of admiration in the midst of golden screens and silver lights. But there she was with the shadow of darkness closing in on her, pacing up and down rhythmically, the very picture of composure, and betraying no disposition to hurry or dismay, but calmly going over the same ground again and again. If it be that she knew not the blackness falling upon her, she must be a creature of extreme innocence. If she knew but did not mind it as blackness, then, there must be something uncanny about her. Black must be her native home, and thus may she be resignedly surrendering her visionary existence to return to her realm of darkness, walking so leisurely between the seen and unseen worlds. The inevitable blackness into which the figures adorning her long-sleeves shaded seemed to hint where she had come from.
My imagination took another turn, bringing before me a vision of a beautiful person, beautifully sleeping. Sleeping, alive she breathes herself away into death, without ever awakening. This must break the heart of those watching anxiously around the bed. If struggling in pain and agony, the dear ones attending might think it merciful that death came at once, to say nothing of the wish of the patient to whom life had become not worth living. But what fault could the innocent child have been guilty of that she should be snatched away in a peaceful sleep? To be carried away to Hades while in sleep is like being betrayed into a surprise and having life taken before the mind is made up. If death it must be, the dying should be made to resign to Fate, and one should like to say a prayer or two, yielding to the inevitable. But if the fact of death alone was made clear, before its conditions had been fulfilled, and if one had a voice to say a prayer, one would use that same voice in hallooing, to call, even forcibly back, the soul that has put one step in the other world. To one passing away in sleep, it may be hard to have the soul called back, pulled back, as it were, by the bond of worries of life that would otherwise break, and that one may feel like saying: “Don’t call me back; let me sleep.” Nevertheless those around would wish to call aloud. I thought I might call that woman in the verandah the next time she came into view, to wake her up from her waking sleep. But my tongue lost its power of speech no sooner had she passed the opening like a dream. Without fail, the next time, I thought. But again she passed and disappeared before I could utter a word. I was asking myself how this could be, when again she passed, and appeared not to care a rap that she was being watched by one who was in a frenzied state of mind about her. She passed and repassed in a manner that told that one like me had never at all entered her mind. As I was repeating my “next time” in my mind, the dark cloud above let down, as if no longer able to hold back, a screen of fine, soft rain, dismally shutting out the shadow of the woman.
CHAPTER VII.
Chilly! With a towel in hand I went down stairs for a warm dip. Leaving my clothes in a small chamber, four more steps downward brought me into the bath room which was about eight mats in size. Stones appeared plentiful, in these parts, the floor of the room being paved with fine granite, as was also the tank and its walls. The reservoir which the tank really was, was a hollow in the centre of the floor, about four feet deep and about as many feet square. This was a hot spring which contained, no doubt, various mineral ingredients; but the water in the basin was perfectly clear and transparent, and tasteless and without odour as well, as some finding its way into the mouth testified. The spring is said to possess medical virtues, but I did not know for what kind of ailments, as I have not taken the trouble to find out. Nor was I subject to any chronic disease, and this phase of the matter had never occurred to me. Only a line of poetry that comes to me, every time I take a dip is that of the Chinese poet Pai Le-tien:
“Soft and warm the water of the spring,