Concerning Lafcadio Hearn Part 18

"_Everything you feel you would not like me to know._" Perhaps when she had put this ban upon him, she suspected that there were incidents in his life which he dared not tell her. Could he not deceive her? No, he might write a lie, but he could never meet her fine sweet eyes with a lie. What was he to do? And why had he always been so humble before that slight girl? "a.s.suredly those fine grey eyes were never lowered before living gaze: she seemed as one who might look G.o.d in the face."

Slowly his senses became more confused, and a darkness came, and a light in the darkness that shone on her; and he saw her bathed in a soft radiance, that seemed of some substance like ivory. And he knew that she was robing for her bridal with him.

He was at her side: all around them was a gentle whispering of many friends, who were dead. Would they smile thus--_if they knew_?

Then there arose something within him, and he knew that he must tell her all. He commenced to speak, and she became transfigured, and smiled at him with the tenderness of an angel; and the more he told the greater was her forgiveness. And he heard the voices of the others lauding him for his self-sacrifice and his sincerity. Yet as they praised a fear clutched him for one last avowal that he must make. And with the growing of this doubt all seemed maliciously to change, and even she no longer smiled. He then would have told her alone, but even as he tried to hush his voice, it seemed to pierce the quietude "with frightful audibility, like the sibilation of a possessing spirit." Then with a reckless despair he shouted it aloud, and everything vanished, and the darkness of night was about him.

For many restless days and nights he harried himself with bitter self-a.n.a.lysis; and day by day he tore up a certain page; yet without that page his ma.n.u.script was worthless. As the days grew into weeks a new fear seized him that his silence had betrayed him, and that already she had decided against him. In the face of this danger he became terrified, and one morning he feverishly copied the memorable page, and, addressing the whole, dropped it in the first letter-box, before he might change his mind.

Then an awful revelation of his act overcame him. Should he telegraph her to return the ma.n.u.script unopened. No, it was already too late. What was done--was done for ever. He now vaguely realized what he feared in her--"a penetrating dynamic moral power that he felt without comprehending." He tried to steel himself for the worst, but he knew with a premonition that behind his imagined worst there were depths beyond depths of worse.

The single word "Come" which he received two days later confirmed his fears. When he reached the door of her apartment, she had already risen to take from a locked drawer an envelope which he knew was his. She proffered him no greeting, but asked in a cold voice if he wished her to burn the doc.u.ment. At his whispered _yes_, he met her eyes, and they seemed to strip him of the last remnant of his pride. "He stood before her as before G.o.d,--morally naked as a soul in painted dreams of the Judgment Day."

The fire caught the paper, and he stood near, in fear of her next word, while she watched the flame.

At last she asked if the woman was dead. He well knew to what she referred, and replied that almost five years had pa.s.sed since her death.

To the penetrating questions which followed he answered that the child--a boy--was well, and that his friend was still there--in the same place. She turned to him abruptly and coldly, angered that he could have believed that she would pardon such a crime.

He must have had some hope, or he would not have sent the letter. Had he measured her by his own moral standard? Certainly he had placed her below the level of honest people. Would he dare to ask their judgment of his sin?

Speechless, he writhed under the scorn of her words, and a knowledge of shame to which his former agony was as nothing burned within him. That in him which her inborn goodness had taught her, was now laid bare to himself.

Again she spoke after a silence--perhaps he would think she was cruel; but she was not, nor was she unjust, for transcendent sin that denies "all the social wisdom gained by human experience" cannot be pardoned, it can only be atoned. And that sin was his; and G.o.d would exact his expiation. And that expiation she now demanded in G.o.d's name, and as her right. He must go to the friend whom he had wronged, and tell him the whole truth. He must ask for the child, and fulfil his whole duty; also he must place even his life at the man's will. And she would rather see him dead than believe that he could be a coward as well as a criminal.

This she requested not as a favour, but as her right.

At her words he grew pale as if to death, and for a moment she feared that he might refuse, and that she must despise him. No! his colour rushed back, and her heart leaped, as with a calm resolve he answered, "I will do it."

"Then go!" she replied, betraying no gladness.

A year went by. She knew that he had kept his promise. He wrote to her often, and pa.s.sionately, but the letters were never answered. Did she doubt him still?--or was she afraid of her own heart? He could not know the truth, so he waited with hopes and fears, and the seasons pa.s.sed.

Then one day she was startled to receive a letter which told her that he was pa.s.sing through her suburb, and he begged only to be permitted to see her. To his surprise the answer brought the happy words, "You may."

From the shy, beautiful eyes of the child, whom he brought, there seemed to plead a woman's sorrow, until her own soul answered in forgiveness.

And the boy and the father marvelled at the tenderness that had come upon her, and the father sobbed until her voice thrilled: that suffering was strength and knowledge, that always he must suffer for the evil he had wrought, but she would help him to bear the pain, and to endure his atonement. She would s.h.i.+eld his frailty--she would love his boy.

THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD (21) was translated in New York, while Hearn was finis.h.i.+ng the proofs of "Two Years in the French West Indies."

Of it he writes:--

As for the "Sylvestre Bonnard" I believe I told you that that was translated in about ten days and published in two weeks from the time of beginning it.... But the work suffers in consequence of haste.

After his departure for the Orient, two articles on West Indian Society appeared in the _Cosmopolitan_ (243-244). They give a sympathetic study of the sad and pathetic tragedy of the race of the mixed blood. These articles bear a similarity to the chapter upon and the references to this subject, in "Two Years in the French West Indies."

GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR j.a.pAN[30] (7) is the first of the series of j.a.panese books. It was published after Hearn had been in j.a.pan for four years; since 1891 six of the articles had appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (246-251). Also in 1890, an article, "A Winter Journey to j.a.pan," was published in _Harper's Monthly_ (245). This was his initial paper on j.a.pan.

[30] Copyright, 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn; and published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.]

In many ways the present book on j.a.pan is his happiest, for the charm over everything is fresh and radiant. It is here that we learn the old graceful customs, the touching child-like ways, and the sacred appealing rites and beliefs that so endear to us the j.a.panese. Later we are to have studies more philosophical, more erudite, but none more penetrating in virtue of the very simplicity of subject.

It is difficult to believe that the writer, bewitched with the warmth and colour of the tropics, giving his pen an unlicensed flow of word colour and enthusiasm, in a few years could have matured into this quiet, gentle thinker equally absorbed by the East. One finds scarcely a trace of the Hearn of the tropics: therein lies his unique genius; just so admirably as he reflected the West Indian life, does he now reflect that of the j.a.panese.

It is the old j.a.pan that Hearn loves, and the pa.s.sing of which he mourns even at the first. In his Preface, he says, "My own conviction, and that of many impartial and more experienced observers of j.a.panese life, is that j.a.pan has nothing whatever to gain by conversion to Christianity, either morally or otherwise, but very much to lose." Also in one of his letters he writes, "I felt, as never before, how utterly dead old j.a.pan is, and how ugly New j.a.pan is becoming." It is old j.a.pan that we find in the present volume. It is much as if we looked into a diary of his first days in the Orient, giving his impressions and conclusions, as well as portraying the pictures themselves.

One of the reviews of the book contains the following:--

"If j.a.pan is all that he says; if the j.a.panese are so compounded of all the virtues, and so innocent of the ugly failings that mar our Western civilization, then the poet's dream of a Golden Age has actually been realized in the remote East. Much as we should like to believe that such a land and such a people actually exist, we cannot altogether conquer our doubts, or avoid the suspicion that the author's feeling sometimes gets the better of his judgment." (379.)

And another says:--

"In volume one he is still the outside observer, remote enough to be amused with the little pretty, bird-like glances of the Orient towards the Occident, pleased at the happy chance which makes a blind shampooer's cry musical as she taps her way down the street, instead of giving her a voice raucous as that which hurts and haunts the unwilling ears of wayfarers down Newgate Street and on Ludgate-Hill; or complimentary to the cunning fancy which paints a branch of flowering cherry in a cleft bamboo on a square of faintly-coloured paper and calls the cherry blossom 'beauty' and the bamboo 'long life.' He notices the shapely feet of the people: 'bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny, tiny _geta_, or feet of young girls in snowy _tabi_. The _tabi_, the white digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological aspect--the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness.'

"A little further on the leaven of witchcraft is working, and he cannot write so airily. It is not as a mere spectator that he talks of his visit to the Buddhist cemetery, where the rotting wooden laths stand huddled about the graves, and one tomb bears an English name and a cross chiselled upon it. Here he made acquaintance with the G.o.d, who is the lover of little children, Jizo-Sama, about whose feet are little piles of stones heaped there by the hands of mothers of dead children.

He is not quite as much in earnest as volume two will find him, or he could not call the gentle G.o.d 'that charming divinity'; but the sight-seer is dying in him nevertheless. It was with a friend's hand that he struck the great bell at Enos.h.i.+ma." (286.)

But even here with a new world unfolding to his delighted eyes, it was colour that Hearn really wanted.

I am not easy about my book, of which I now await the proofs. It lacks colour--it isn't like the West Indian book. But the world here is not forceful: it is all washed in faint blues and greys and greens. There are really _gamboge_, or saffron-coloured valleys,--and lilac fields; but these exist only in the early summer and the rape-plant season, and ordinarily j.a.pan is chromatically spectral.

The opening chapter is his first day in the Orient, "the first charm of j.a.pan is intangible and volatile as a perfume." Everything seems to him elfish and diminutive. "Cha," his Kurumaya, takes him past the shops where it appears to him "that everything j.a.panese is delicate, exquisite, admirable--even a pair of common wooden chop-sticks in a paper bag with a little drawing upon it." The money itself is a thing of beauty. But one must not dare to look, for there is enchantment in these wares, and having looked, one must buy. In truth one wishes to buy everything, even to the whole land, "with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people."

Before the steps leading to a temple he stops.

I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and sky mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the billowing of bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled bay on the right, and to the feet of the green wooded hills flanking the city on two sides. Beyond that semi-circle of green hills rises a lofty range of serrated mountains, indigo silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of them towers an apparition indescribably lovely,--one solitary snowy cone, so filmly exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape of cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious tint as the sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy cone appears, seeming to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the luminous land and the luminous heaven,--the sacred and matchless mountain, Fujiyama.

Pa.s.sing to the temple garden he wonders why the trees are so lovely in j.a.pan.

Is it that the trees have been so long domesticated and caressed by man in this land of the G.o.ds, that they have acquired souls, and strive to show their grat.i.tude, like women loved, by making themselves more beautiful for man's sake? a.s.suredly they have mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful slaves. That is to say, j.a.panese hearts. Apparently there have been some foreign tourists of the brutal cla.s.s in this place, since it has been deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing that "it is forbidden to injure the trees."

Of Hearn's first visit to a Buddhist temple, I quote what one of his critics has to say:--

"The silence of centuries seems to descend upon your soul, you feel the thrill of something above and beyond the commonplace of this every-day world, even here, amidst the turmoil, the rush, the struggle of this monster city of the West, if you take up his 'Glimpses of Unfamiliar j.a.pan,' and turn to his description of his first visit to a Buddhist temple. Marvellous is his power of imparting the mystery of that strange land, of hidden meanings and allegories, of mists and legends. The bygone spirit of the race, the very essence of the heart of the people, that has lain sleeping in the temple gloom, in the shadows of the temple shrines, awakes and whispers in your ears. You feel the soft, cus.h.i.+oned matting beneath your feet, you smell the faint odour of the incense, you hear the shuffling of pilgrim feet, the priest sliding back screen after screen, pouring in light upon the gilded bronzes and inscriptions; and you look for the image of the Deity, of the presiding Spirit, between the altar groups of convoluted candelabra. And you see:

Only a mirror, a round, pale disc of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea.

Only a mirror! Symbolizing what? Illusion? Or that the Universe exists for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? Or the old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find out. (350.)

Many more temples are visited in the following chapter. What impresses him the most is the joyousness of the people's faith: everything is bright and cheerful, and the air is filled with the sound of children's voices as they play in the courts. He sees the many representations of Jizo, the loving divinity who cares for the souls of little children, who comforts them, and saves them from the demons. The face of Jizo is like that of a beautiful boy, and the countenance is made "heavenly by such a smile as only Buddhist art could have imagined, the smile of infinite lovingness and supremest gentleness." There is also Kwannon, "the G.o.ddess of mercy, the gentle divinity who refused the rest of Nirvana to save the souls of men." Her face is golden, smiling with eternal youth and infinite tenderness. And he sees Emma Dai-o, the unpitying, tremendous one. He learns many things of many G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. There is the temple of Kis.h.i.+bojin--the mother of Demons. For some former sin she was born a demon and devoured her own children. But through the teaching of Buddha she became a divine being, loving and protecting the little ones, and j.a.panese mothers pray to her, and wives pray for beautiful boys. At her shrine what impresses the visitor are hundreds of tiny dresses, mostly of poor material, stretched between tall poles of bamboos. These are the thank-offerings of poor simple country mothers whose prayers to her have been answered.

In another chapter Hearn writes of the Festival of the Dead, for between the 13th and the 15th day of July the dead may come back again. Every small and great shrine is made beautiful with new mats of purest rice straw, and is decorated with lotus flowers, _s.h.i.+kimi_ (anise) and _misohagi_ (lespedeza). Food offerings, served on a tiny lacquered table--a _zen_--are placed before the altars. Every hour, tea daintily served in little cups is offered to the viewless visitors. At night beautiful special lanterns are hung at the entrances of homes. Those who have dead friends visit the cemeteries and make offerings there with prayers, and the sprinkling of water, and the burning of incense. On the evening of the 15th the ghosts of those, who in expiation of faults committed in a previous life are doomed to hunger, are fed. And also are fed the ghosts of those who have no friends.

For three days everything is done to feast the dead, and on the last night there comes the touching ceremony of farewell, for the dead must then return.

Everything has been prepared for them. In each home small boats made of barley straw closely woven have been freighted with supplies of choice food, with tiny lanterns, and written messages of faith and love. Seldom more than two feet in length are these boats; but the dead require little room. And the frail craft are launched on ca.n.a.l, lake, sea, or river,--each with a miniature lantern glowing at the prow, and incense burning at the stern. And if the night be fair, they voyage long. Down all the creeks and rivers and ca.n.a.ls the phantom fleets go glimmering to the sea; and all the sea sparkles to the horizon with the lights of the dead, and the sea wind is fragrant with incense.

But alas! it is now forbidden in the great seaports to launch the _shoryobune_, "the boats of the blessed ghosts."

In Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki, there is a glimpse into ancient j.a.pan, for there the Bon-odori, the Dance of the Festival of the Dead, is still maintained. No longer is it danced in the cities. In the temple court, in the shadow of the tomb, with the moonlight as a guide, long processions of young girls dance a slow ghostly dance while the vast audience of spectators keeps a perfect stillness. A deep male chant is heard, and the women respond. Many songs follow, until the night is waning. Then this seeming witchcraft ends, and with merry laughter and soft chatting all disperse.

Hearn spends a long happy day at Matsue, the chief city of the Province of the G.o.ds, where he gathers legends and impressions. Of course it has its temples. The temple is the best place to see the life of the people.

There it is that the children play all day long. In the summer evening, the young artisans and labourers prove their strength in wrestling-matches. The sacred dances are held there; and on holidays it is also the place where toys are sold.