II
Five years, all spent far away from treaty ports, slowly flitted by before I saw the Jizō-Dō again. Many changes had taken place both without and within me during that time. The beautiful illusion of Japan, the almost weird charm that comes with one's first entrance into her magical atmosphere, had, indeed, stayed with me very long, but had totally faded out at last. I had learned to see the Far East without its glamour. And I had mourned not a little for the sensations of the past.
But one day they all came back to me—just for a moment. I was in Yokohama, gazing once more from the Bluff at the divine spectre of Fuji haunting the April morning. In that enormous spring blaze of blue light, the feeling of my first Japanese day returned, the feeling of my first delighted wonder in the radiance of an unknown fairy-world full of beautiful riddles,—an Elf-land having a special sun and a tinted atmosphere of its own. Again I knew myself steeped in a dream of luminous peace; again all visible things assumed for me a delicious immateriality. Again the Orient heaven—flecked only with thinnest white ghosts of cloud, all shadowless as Souls entering into Nirvana—became for me the very sky of Buddha; and the colors of the morning seemed deepening into those of the traditional hour of His birth, when trees long dead burst into blossom, and winds were perfumed, and all creatures living found themselves possessed of loving hearts. The air seemed pregnant with even such a vague sweetness, as if the Teacher were about to come again; and all faces passing seemed to smile with premonition of the celestial advent.
Then the ghostliness went away, and things looked earthly; and I thought of all the illusions I had known, and of the illusions of the world as Life, and of the universe itself as illusion. Whereupon the name Mu-myo returned to memory; and I was moved immediately to seek the ancient thinker of the Jizō-Dō.
The quarter had been much changed: old houses had vanished, and new ones dovetailed wondrously together. I discovered the court at last nevertheless, and saw the little temple just as I had remembered it. Before the entrance women were standing; and a young priest I had never seen before was playing with a baby; and the small brown hands of the infant were stroking his shaven face. It was a kindly face, and intelligent, with very long eyes.
"Five years ago," I said to him, in clumsy Japanese, "I visited this temple. In that time there was an aged bonsan here."
The young bonsan gave the baby into the arms of one who seemed to be its mother, and responded:—
"Yes. He died—that old priest; and I am now in his place. Honorably please to enter."
I entered. The little sanctuary no longer looked interesting: all its innocent prettiness was gone. Jizō still smiled over his bib; but the other divinities had disappeared, and likewise many votive offerings—including the picture of Adelaide Neilson. The priest tried to make me comfortable in the chamber where the old man used to write, and set a smoking-box before me. I looked for the books in the corner; they also had vanished. Everything seemed to have been changed.
I asked:—
"When did he die?"
"Only last winter," replied the incumbent, "in the Period of Greatest Cold. As he could not move his feet, he suffered much from the cold. This is his ihai."
He went to an alcove containing shelves incumbered with a bewilderment of objects indescribable,—old wrecks, perhaps, of sacred things,—and opened the doors of a very small butsudan, placed between glass jars full of flowers. Inside I saw the mortuary tablet,—fresh black lacquer and gold. He lighted a lamplet before it, set a rod of incense smouldering, and said:—
"Pardon my rude absence a little while; for there are parishioners waiting."
So left alone, I looked at the ihai and watched the steady flame of the tiny lamp and the blue, slow, upcurlings of incense,—wondering if the spirit of the old priest was there. After a moment I felt as if he really were, and spoke to him without words. Then I noticed that the flower vases on either side of the butsudan still bore the name of Toussaint Cosnard of Bordeaux, and that the incense-box maintained its familiar legend of richly flavored cigarettes. Looking about the room I also perceived the red cat, fast asleep in a sunny corner. I went to it, and stroked it; but it knew me not, and scarcely opened its drowsy eyes. It was sleeker than ever, and seemed happy. Near the entrance I heard a plaintive murmuring; then the voice of the priest, reiterating sympathetically some half-comprehended answer to his queries: "A woman of nineteen, yes. And a man of twenty-seven,—is it?" Then I rose to go.
"Pardon," said the priest, looking up from his writing, while the poor women saluted me, "yet one little moment more!"
"Nay," I answered; "I would not interrupt you. I came only to see the old man, and I have seen his ihai. This, my little offering, was for him. Please to accept it for yourself."
"Will you not wait a moment, that I may know your name?"
"Perhaps I shall come again," I said evasively. "Is the old nun also dead?"
"Oh no! she is still taking care of the temple. She has gone out, but will presently return. Will you not wait? Do you wish nothing?"
"Only a prayer," I answered. "My name makes no difference. A man of forty-four. Pray that he may obtain whatever is best for him."
The priest wrote something down. Certainly that which I had bidden him pray for was not the wish of my "heart of hearts." But I knew the Lord Buddha would never hearken to any foolish prayer for the return of lost illusions.