THE MAN WITHOUT A SWORD

I could not know, for chill and farHis alien heaven closed him in.His peace shone distant as a starRemote in skies we cannot win.

I could not know, for chill and far

His alien heaven closed him in.

His peace shone distant as a star

Remote in skies we cannot win.

I laid my flowers on the altar of ice beside his. Who could fail to be moved where such adoration is given after such a pilgrimage? And if some call the Many-Named “God,” and some “Siva,” what matter? To all it is the Immanent God. And when I thought of the long winter and the snow falling, falling, in the secret places of the mountains, and shrouding this temple in white, the majesty of the solitudes and of the Divine filled me with awe.

Outside the marmot’s cry was shrill,The mountain torrents plunged in smoke;Inside our hearts were breathless stillTo hear the secret word He spoke.We heard Him, but the eyelids close,The seal of silence dumbs the lipsOf such as in the awful snowsReceive the dread Apocalypse.

Outside the marmot’s cry was shrill,

The mountain torrents plunged in smoke;

Inside our hearts were breathless still

To hear the secret word He spoke.

We heard Him, but the eyelids close,

The seal of silence dumbs the lips

Of such as in the awful snows

Receive the dread Apocalypse.

Later we climbed down into the snowy glen beneath the Cave, and ate our meal under a rock, with the marmots shrilling about us, and I found at my feet—what? A tuft of bright golden violets—all the delicate penciling in the heart, but shining gold. I remembered Ulysses in the Garden of Circe, where themolyis enshrined in the long thundering roll of Homer’s verse:—

“For in another land it beareth a golden flower, but not in this.”

It is a shock of joy and surprise to find so lovely a marvel in the awful heights.

We were too weary to talk. We watched the marmots, red-brown like chestnuts, on the rocks outside their holes, till everything became indistinct and we fell asleep from utter fatigue.

The way back was as toilsome, only with ascents and descents reversed; and so we returned to Panjitarni.

Next day we rested; for not only was it necessary from fatigue, but some of our men were mountain-sick because of the height. This most trying ailment affects sleep and appetite, and makes the least exertion a painful effort. Some felt it less, some more, and it was startling to see our strong young men panting as their hearts laboured almost to bursting. The native cure is to chew a clove of garlic; whether it is a faith cure or no I cannot tell, but it succeeded. I myself was never affected.

Of the journey down I will say little. Our sadhu journeyed with us and was as kind and helpful on the way as man could be. He stayed at our camp for two days when we reached Pahlgam; for he was all but worn out, and we begged him to rest. It touched me to see the weary body and indomitable soul.

At last the time came for parting. He stood under a pine, with his small bundle under his arm, his stick in his hand, and his thin feet shod for the road in grass sandals. His face was serenely calm and beautiful. I said I hoped God would be good to him in all his wanderings; and he replied that he hoped this too, and he would never forget to speak to Him of us and to ask that we might find the Straight Way home. For himself, he would wander until he died—probably in some village where his name would be unknown but where they would be good to him for the sake of the God.

So he salaamed and went, and we saw him no more. Was it not the mighty Akbar who said, “I never saw any man lost in a straight road”?

He came with us; we journeyed downTo lowlier levels where the fieldsAre golden with the wheat new-mown,And all the earth her increase yields.He told us that his way lay on.He might not rest; the High God’s cryRang “Onward!” and the beacon shone,“And I must wander till I die.“But when I speak unto my GodI still will tell him you were kind,That you may tread where He has trodUntil the Straight Way home you find.”He joined his hands in deep salute,And, smiling, went his lonely way,Sole, yet companioned, glad, yet mute,And steadfast toward the perfect day.And still I see him lesseningAdown the endless Indian plain.Yet certain am I of this thing—Our souls have met—shall meet again.

He came with us; we journeyed downTo lowlier levels where the fieldsAre golden with the wheat new-mown,And all the earth her increase yields.

He came with us; we journeyed down

To lowlier levels where the fields

Are golden with the wheat new-mown,

And all the earth her increase yields.

He told us that his way lay on.He might not rest; the High God’s cryRang “Onward!” and the beacon shone,“And I must wander till I die.

He told us that his way lay on.

He might not rest; the High God’s cry

Rang “Onward!” and the beacon shone,

“And I must wander till I die.

“But when I speak unto my GodI still will tell him you were kind,That you may tread where He has trodUntil the Straight Way home you find.”

“But when I speak unto my God

I still will tell him you were kind,

That you may tread where He has trod

Until the Straight Way home you find.”

He joined his hands in deep salute,And, smiling, went his lonely way,Sole, yet companioned, glad, yet mute,And steadfast toward the perfect day.

He joined his hands in deep salute,

And, smiling, went his lonely way,

Sole, yet companioned, glad, yet mute,

And steadfast toward the perfect day.

And still I see him lesseningAdown the endless Indian plain.Yet certain am I of this thing—Our souls have met—shall meet again.

And still I see him lessening

Adown the endless Indian plain.

Yet certain am I of this thing—

Our souls have met—shall meet again.

Thus I have tried to give some dim picture of the wonders of that wonderful pilgrimage. But who can express the faith, the devotion that send the poorer pilgrims to those heights? They do it as the sadhu did it. Silence and deep thought are surely the only fitting comments on such a sight.

THE MAN WITHOUT A SWORD

(What is told in this story of jujutsu or judo, the Japanese national science of self-defence and attack, is from the point of view of an expert, strange as it may appear.)

This is the true story of an experience which befell me in Japan. For six years I have kept silence and I tell it now only because my own knowledge assures me of the growing interest in matters relating to what Oriental scholars call “the formless world”—that is to say the sphere surrounding us which we now know to be independent of solidity and time as we conceive them, a world not to be grasped by our fallible senses yet apprehended by some of us in certain conditions not tracked and charted definitely. Modern science, feeling after the mysterious, has named this world which permeates ours and yet is invisible, the Fourth Dimension because it is not subject to the three illusions of length, breadth and height which imprison most of us from the cradle to the grave. But why philosophize? Let me tell my story.

My name is Hay, and I am a middle-class Scotchman, a public school and University man who, like others, took part in the War. I came through whole and sound but it left its mark. For one thing, it knocked to smithereens the average ideals of success and attainment, which, again like others, had shaped my life, and from being a strictly average man in that I followed the herd in all its decencies of convention the war left me naked and unsheltered in the open without a rag of conviction to hide me from the truth if it should happen to pass my way. But I had ceased to believe in its existence outside the things we use in daily intercourse.

Another effect also. My war experience was naval and chiefly in the Mediterranean where men of all nationalities were coming and going, and that constant contact wore thin the shell an Englishman inhabits—such crustaceans as we are!—until I began to see in what different terms the universe may be stated from the differing angles of race and nationality. What helped me to this understanding was a friendship I struck up with a Japanese naval officer—a remarkable fellow as I thought then and know now. He spoke English perfectly and had not only read but inwardly digested what he read, which is more than can be said for most of us. I owed him two services besides. He taught me to speak Japanese—I am quick at languages,—and being a great expert in the national art of defence and attack which is known as jujutsu, he began to give me lessons which were the beginning of much. His name was Arima, his age the same as mine—thirty-four,—and for very different reasons we both left our services when the war shut down.

Yet I knew our friendship would not end there, nor did it. One day while I was dining alone in my club in London, wondering whether I should ever again find anything which I honestly felt worth doing, a letter reached me. I knew the almost mercantile precision of the hand before I opened it and it sent a pleasurable thrill through nerves which had been stagnant with exhaustion since I had been ashore.

“Hay sama,“I think much of you and wonder if you ever free a thought to cross the sea to my little house in Kyushu. That is our southern island and since illness drove me from our navy I live there. I need the sunshine of a friend’s company and if you feel the same need come, I beg you, and make me a long visit. I live in a beautiful valley run through by a river which will please you. It flows by rocks and mountains, pine woods and prosperous villages; a happy land. Not far from my house is a temple to Hachiman, God of War. I do not pay my devotions there for reasons which you will understand. But come, my friend. I have learned many things since we met and no doubt it is the same with you.”

“Hay sama,

“I think much of you and wonder if you ever free a thought to cross the sea to my little house in Kyushu. That is our southern island and since illness drove me from our navy I live there. I need the sunshine of a friend’s company and if you feel the same need come, I beg you, and make me a long visit. I live in a beautiful valley run through by a river which will please you. It flows by rocks and mountains, pine woods and prosperous villages; a happy land. Not far from my house is a temple to Hachiman, God of War. I do not pay my devotions there for reasons which you will understand. But come, my friend. I have learned many things since we met and no doubt it is the same with you.”

That letter flung up a window in a stifling room. It meant escape from the dull indifference besetting me and contact with those people who of all in the world preserve the Stoic virtues which seemed to be the only ones likely to extricate me from my Slough of Despond. I wrote my answer within ten minutes and in two months I was in Japan.

I did not go at once to Arima, nor will I tell my first adventures on landing and making myself at home in Tokyo. They are neither good reading nor thinking. I had more than one reason to regret that Arima had made me free of the country by giving me its tongue. Pretty well worn out, with a stale taste of sour regrets in my mouth, I went down at last to Kyushu, and in the garden of Arima’s delightful little house I take up the story.

It was a true Japanese garden, a wide landscape seen through the diminishing end of a telescope. There was a forest, a mountain which had spilt its mighty boulders by the side of a running river with a Chinese bridge thrown over it. True, one could have bestridden the mountain and hopped the river, but what did that matter? The real river, the Kogagawa, rippled beside the grass which ran down to where a great willow dipped cool fingers in liquid crystal from the mountain heights, and under that green veil of drooping boughs with eyes half closed it was possible to dream that the little garden passed into the idea which had filled its maker’s mind, and became grand and terrible, a place of wild beauty and awe.

“It must be so,” said Arima smiling, “because he saw it so, and what a man has once clearly seen is registered immortal and can be seen by others when necessary.”

He sat under the willow, his fine bronzed face and throat bare to the flitting shadows of trembling leaves.

“Who made it?” I asked. “He cannot have been a common man.”

“He was my great-great-grandfather and very far from a common man. I have a paper in his own hand which tells why and how he made it and it is a very strange story.”

He threw away his cigarette and sat looking at the wandering paths paved with flat stones here and there, the little flowering herbs springing in the crevices; at the mountain where, altering the scale, you might wander and be lost for dreadful days in mighty gorges and ravines. The river swept round it in a rapid current possibly two feet wide and joined the Kogagawa in a lovely bay quite four feet across where a fairy fleet might have anchored after a prosperous voyage from Stratford on Avon in the dream of a midsummer night.

“Some day I will read you his paper, but not yet. I have reasons for delay. The spirit of our country is hovering over you but has not yet entered in and possessed you. People come to Japan in ship-loads and see the surface bright with colour and gaiety which we spread out before them. But they do not know. We do not mean they should. To be truthful—I do not think any foreigner can understand Japan unless he is a Buddhist at heart— As you are.”

“I?” I echoed in uttermost astonishment. “My good fellow, I am nothing. I haven’t the devil of a ghost of a notion what it all means.”

He looked at me with a quaint smile hiding in the deeps of his narrow eyes. It peered out like a wise gnome, as old as the hills and older.

“Your downstairs self knows very well. It has not passed it on yet to your honourable upstairs self. But the wireless begins to talk and the air is full of voices beating at your ears. What stories they will tell you! I should like to hear them.”

For the moment I could not be sure that he was in earnest. But I could ask, for it was an intimate hour.

The full moon was rounding up from behind the mountain of Naniwa where the monastery of the Thousand-Armed Kwannon, Spirit of Pity, looks out over a wide and wonderful landscape of woods and valleys. That day we had visited the house of the Abbot,—The House Built upon Clouds, they call it, and there, for a moment I had had an experience new and very difficult to describe.

Yet I must try. It began with a physical sensation like a strange intake of breath which I could not expel, and made my heart beat violently. That passed, but I thought it had affected my head for it seemed that my memory was disturbed. I could not remember my name, and my past life, as I recalled it from childhood, was gone, shrunk to an invisible point so small that I could look over it to something beyond. That something moved in cloudy shapes impossible to focus into clear vision. I saw as one sees when a telescope needs adjusting and another turn will clear all into intelligibility. But for a moment I had dropped my historic, racial sense like a garment, and the monk with his calm face like lined and weathered ivory seemed nearer to me than anyone I had ever known though it was not half an hour since we had met. I could remember his sonorous Japanese name. My own was gone. I must place the scene clearly. Arima was examining some ancient vessels of fine three-metal work from Tibet, and the Abbot and I stood by the window looking out over the vast drop of the valley from such a height that it was like a swallow’s nest in the eaves of the spiritual city. Suddenly I was aware that our eyes were fixed on each other, on my side with passionate, on his with searching intensity.

Again, what shall I say? I was conscious that something arresting had happened and could not tell myself what it was. But it was his eyes through which I looked, as through a window, with an overwhelming question.

Also, he was speaking in a clear low monotone like running water. It was as though he continued a conversation of which I had lost the beginning.

“But how can you expect to see without concord of mind? Yours is in the confusion of a tossing sea. It has no direction. The way you must follow is to repeat these words until you understand them perfectly.”

He paused and enunciated these strange words clearly:

“I have no parents. I make the heavens and the earth my parents. I have no magic. I make personality my magic. I have no strength. I make submission my strength. I have neither life nor death. I make the Self-Existent my life and death. I have no friends. I make my mind my friend. I have no armour. I make right-thinking and right-doing my armour. Can you remember this? It is the beginning.” Looking in his eyes I remembered and repeated it perfectly.

“Good!” he said with calm approval.—“And there is one clause more. An important one. ‘I have no sword. I make the sleep of the mind my sword.’ That signifies that the outer reasoning self, which is really nothing, must be lulled asleep and put off its guard before the inner self, which is All, can function.”

Suddenly as it had come the experience ended. I was released. I stood in the window, watching the softly floating clouds, the waving woods far, far beneath, the wheeling of a drove of swallows in blue air. The Abbot was speaking with Arima; they were handling the vessels, barbarically rich, and discussing them with interest. Had my experience been some wild momentary distortion of the brain? I shuddered as if with cold. My hands were shaking. Then all was normal.

But, clambering down the hundreds of beautiful broken steps overgrown with flowers and moss where so many generations have come and gone in pilgrimage, I said nothing to Arima. It had become impossible. Something called the war to my mind and I said something careless, but he waved that aside.

“We must speak of it no more. Why steep one’s soul in illusion? Much that we thought real and allowed to affect us was nothing, and the emotions it caused less than nothing. I have awaked. You are near the dawn.”

I thought this remark cruel, and said something heated about the dead who had paid with their lives for the illusion—the ignorant things one does say! He received it with his invulnerable Japanese courtesy.

“I went too fast. Pardon me. The Buddha alone can impart knowledge to the Buddha, and who am I that I should speak? The time and the master come together. Here, my friend,—you should drink of this running water. It comes from a beautiful spring in the mountain above. They call it ‘Light Eternal’ and say that to taste of it is to drink perfect health. If only it were as easy as that!”

By the mossy rock lay two little dippers of pure white wood. I was extremely English at that instant and nothing would have induced me to soil my lips with a cup used by strangers. I hooped my hands and drank,—he, from the dipper.

“You miss the sacrament,” he said, “but the water in any case is good.”

And so we went home, talking of the treasures of the monastery, wonders of art, famous throughout Japan.

But now, in the gathering night concentrating its radiance in a moon so glorious as to obscure the nearer stars, in the breathless silence made vocal by the ripple of the river on its eternal way, beneath the dropped veil of the willow influences were loosed which opened my heart, and I told Arima my experience of the afternoon. I asked whether he had been conscious of what had passed.

His face was a shadow beneath the boughs. I saw only the moonlight in his eyes as he replied.

“No. I knew nothing. The Abbot Gyōsen was speaking with me all the time. I thought you were absorbed in the view. It is most wonderful.”

That could not satisfy me.

“Impossible,” I said. “For how could that strange formula come into my mind? I never heard it before. I have not the faintest notion what it means.”

There was a brief silence, then he answered slowly.

“I scarcely think it my part to clear up the matter. Will you not ask the Abbot himself? Yet there are one or two things I could say if you wish.”

Seeing I was in earnest he continued.

“The Abbot Gyōsen is a remarkable man. In the first place seclusion in a mountain temple in devout contemplation purifies the heart, and then he is a deep student of Zen. Zen is the science of mental or spiritual concentration. In India they call it Yoga. A man who possesses this knowledge can do things which to the ignorant of its powers appear miracles. They are perfectly natural however. In his youth he had magnificent skill in jujutsu. No man could stand up against him. There was a reason for that.”

He was silent for a moment, and then added:

“His influence is enormous. You would scarcely credit the true stories I could tell of him.”

I listened in deep reflection, staring at the broken ripples of moonlight in the river. Again the weird intake of breath seized me, my heart beat rapidly with the consciousness that I was face to face with the Unknown; that it had eyes but I was blind, groping in the dark. Light, light: That was the cry within me.

“The formula?” I asked, when my breath steadied again.

I could not see even his eyes now. Arima was an invisible presence.

“In Japan,” he said, “in connection with jujutsu and otherwise we recognize a strange force which we callkiai, a very powerful dynamic. We consider it a manifestation of the primal energy. It lies all round us for the taking by anyone who will use the necessary means and in itself is neither good nor evil. The result depends on the person who uses it. What the Abbot Gyōsen passed into your mind was certain of the first rules of this knowledge. We call them the Rules of Detachment. He must have been conscious that you have reached the fit stage for instruction.”

“Then all I can say is that he was entirely mistaken. He could hardly choose a worse subject for any spiritual experiments than myself.”

Arima laughed slightly but kindly as one laughs at a child’s ignorant certitude.

“That is not possible. Men of his sort are not mistaken. Butyoumistake. Certainly this force may be employed for a very high kind of spiritual adventure, but in itself it is neutral. It is only a force, and what he foresees for you I cannot tell. It is a sword. Now a sword may be employed by a god or a devil or any of the grades between.”

This idea was so new to me that I said nothing for a moment, revolving the thing inwardly.

“Can you mean that a force of tremendous possibility lies about us for anyone to use who will? That a man can handle the powers of miracle——”

He shook his head:

“There is no miracle. There is only Law and some of us understand it better than others. Knowledge is always power and the unscrupulous may know as well as the saints. But they will know from a different and disastrous angle. Does one always see power in worthy hands? You and I who have lived through the war know better than that. No, this force is applicable to small things as to great. It can mean success in money-grubbing or the open door to an apostleship. As I said—it is a sword. But it cannot be trifled with. It carries you to a stage where you perceive the danger too late and are seized with an indescribable horror. The wings melt in the sun’s flame, and then——”

He made an eloquent gesture with his hand which suggested a fall from some unimagined height.

“I won’t believe it,” I said resolutely. “That whatever rules the universe should trust it anywhere to clumsy or wicked interference— No, impossible!”

“Yet we see it daily,” Arima replied calmly. “But things always come right in the long run. This power of which I speak is only one gesture of the Supreme and there is much behind it. Illusions pass like clouds but the sun remains.”

“But—but,” I hesitated.

“It is this which explains the mystery of good and evil, as we call them. Think it out and you will see. Shall we go in now? I have a fancy that the processes of the night—even the river—like to be free of us intruders. If we are not in harmony with them——”

“Arima!” I said on an impulse, “have you this secret? I think—I know that in your hands it would be safe. What you have said makes me long for more. If the Abbot judged me fit for so much—and you say he must have known——”

He stretched his hand in the moonlight and grasped mine in a strong clasp. I had a sensation of something throbbing and beating from his wrist to mine. It flowed tingling along my veins until it was warm about my heart.

“It is day!” he said.

I heard no more. It was day. A fierce sun blazed upon me and I was alone in an unknown country. A mountain, in contour like the famous Fuji, loomed up majestic, snow spilt down its sides like the sticks of a half opened fan. I stood in a mighty gorge beside a fiercely running mountain river, the swift torrent forced back by its own speed among the rocks in curling white waves. Where two rocks craned forward to each other from opposing shores a noble Chinese bridge, huge stones gigantically moulded almost to a semi-circular spring, spanned and bridled the wild creature beneath, and on either shore was a willow tree.

Why was it familiar though so strange? But I stood bewildered. A moment ago I had been beside my friend in moonlight and quiet, now a great sun beat on tossing mountains and river, and I was alone.

Terribly alone. I stood ignorant which way to turn, helpless, baffled, in a place which might have been empty from the world’s beginning, but for the bridge. Would anyone ever come? Should I roam there imprisoned in vastness until I died? It was a nightmare of terror. I ran to the great willow as if for refuge in its tent of delicate shifting shade, and pushing aside the boughs I entered and sat down throwing my arm about the trunk, smooth, warm, as the flesh of a woman, that I might steady myself against something living and tangible.

There are Dryads in Japan, tree spirits, and especially do they haunt the willow. Beautiful, alarming, some of the stories, but always instinct with the life which lies just below our horizon. Now I was conscious of some presence beside me, not to be accosted until its own moment of choice. I put out my hand instinctively; it met nothing. I said a word aloud. No answer. And again most disabling fear submerged me. Then, clear and small, as if written, the Rules of Detachment rose in my mind, and hurrying, I repeated them under my breath, not knowing how they could help, but catching at anything.

“I have no parents. I make the heavens and the earth my parents. I have no strength. I make submission my strength.” And so to the end.

“I have no sword. I make the sleep of the mind my sword.”

Now, as I said these words the meaning flashed upon me in light. Here was I—alone in a frightful solitude—so desolate that it might have been the Mountains of the Moon. What means of escape could I make for myself? What friends had I—what sword? The Rules assured me. The enemies—the mountains, the wild ways, were my slaves if I could believe it. In submission strength awaited me. In the surrender of the plotting reason, which can only break tangible material obstacles, my latent powers would function. And what were they?

Once more and confidently I repeated the words, knowing that they unloosed some hard-bound knot in my being. I willed to be in the garden of Arima. My one instinct was flight.

I was sitting beneath the willow tree— Yes, but in Arima’s garden, and he was beside me looking steadfastly at the river where moonlight flowed away with it to the ocean.

Impossible to describe the shock of relief. It never occurred to me to ask if I had been asleep—to think I had been hypnotized or anything of the kind. I knew the experience was real.

“Where have I been?” That was the only possible question. He replied:

“In the garden. Did you not recognize it? See—the mountain, the tumbled rocks, the river and bridge.Butin the garden as my ancestor first saw it. Some day you shall hear why.”

“But first—first— Was I long there? Time—I forgot time.”

“You are there now, only the blinkers are over your eyes again. And as to time—there is no such thing as time. There is only eternity. If I count in the way we measure when we wear our blinkers you had the sight for twenty-four hours. It was last night when it began. Now it is to-night. I have slept, have eaten, have walked to the village and written many letters and all the time you sat here. Time is really nothing but a dream—a necessity in the world of the Three Dimensions. As soon as you break the shell—it is nothing.”

Again I cannot describe the tumult of feeling in me, mingled with a passionate longing for something of my own lost and ravished from me. I had a sense of unutterable weakness and shame. He read my thought like speech and answered:

“But you threw it from yourself. You were frightened, forlorn, and you caught at the Rules and concentrated, and being power they acted as you wished, and transported you back into the blindness of the daily life that walls us in from the Lovely, the Utterly Desirable.”

“You mean,” I said slowly, “that one can ruin oneself as easily as save. And that I should not have come back at my own will?”

“Exactly. One must always go on. To come back is highly dangerous. If you had had patience and had concentrated upon what is called ‘extension’ you would have climbed the mountain and on the other side——”

“What? What?” I cried, for he paused.

“We call it the Shining Country. You would have—liked it! Also you would have met the One who Waits.”

I repeated in bewilderment;

“The One who Waits? But who?”

“I cannot tell. Different people probably for everyone. It might have been my great-great-grandfather for all I know. He is often in his garden. But it is the right one always. Don’t think I blame you though for using your scrap of power in a fright. That often happens at first. What man has mastered jujutsu at the first throw? Still, he may be badly hurt, and you are hurt and will pay for it. Later on, beware that you never use power to bring you back to the place you have left it. A man pays for that to the last farthing.”

“You mean—snatching at the wrong things?”

“Yes, in a way. The wrong things for you. There is no fixed way or rigid moral standard. There cannot be. All depends upon the man himself and the occasion, and—many a man has been saved by his sins. One learns the rules as one goes. Of course the rudiments of them govern every sort of society of men civilized or uncivilized. But you must be hungry. Come in.”

I shall never forget that meal. Nothing could be simpler. There were rice cakes, honey, eggs, and pale fragrant tea. But—I despair of words—the food had new meanings. I could feel the good of it, the life of nature, of living things, passing into my blood, so restorative that when it was eaten I felt like a tuned violin on the shoulder of a mighty master; not a sound or sight but drew harmonious answer from my spirit. The river flowed from the footstool of the Eternal. Each flower shouted its evangel and their chorus was that of the morning stars singing together. The dart of the swallows was the flight of arrows from the bow of Love. They dazzled in blue air. I daresay no more.

Arima came out in his cotton kimono and bare head. I saw new meanings in his face each moment, and the bronzed beauty of the man struck on a naked nerve, as though each sight of beauty awakened a longing for the next step beyond. He read my thought, and pausing in his work of training a fruit bough answered meditatively;

“Yes, even the first breath of air in that country is inspiration. It is full of dangers—a fighting country, sometimes a No Man’s Land. Some of its ways seem to lead horribly downward. And there is always hell.”

“Hell? A state of mind?”

“Yes, and of body too—they sometimes involve each other. But it braces one. There is much more to it than you can know yet. Only remember—one has got to break into that country somehow unless one is content to be the prisoner of the senses for a whole wasted lifetime.”

I shuddered slightly.

“At the present moment I don’t feel that I ever want to see it again.”

“Natural enough. Let us have a bout of jujutsu now.”

We stripped, and he threw me as he always did, but all the same I was learning. I got a new lock that day and, more important, made an advance in pliability. I stooped and yielded and released myself when I thought he had got me for good. He shouted with pleasure.

“Right! You will be a shodan one day. That is our lowest teaching grade. Now rest.”

He came up to me an hour later:

“You are wishing to go to the Kwannon monastery to see the Abbot. He will receive you. Before you start would you like to hear the story of my ancestor and the garden? It is very short.”

Strange. I had not thought of the Abbot, but I knew now that to see him was my inmost wish. That had been the meaning of my joy. I nodded, and Arima led the way to the willow. I did not then know why but the magic of the garden centred in that willow, thrilled in every leaf of it.

We sat down in its shade; I, on the grass with my arms clasped about my knees.

“My ancestor was a handsome young man, and the only son of a rich and noble family who owned much land about here. Nearly all ran through his fingers in his extravagance and flowed away from the family like river-water, until only a few acres just here were left. I need not tell you all his life—you can imagine the story of a rich, reckless, sensuous fellow without bit or bridle. But he was a fine soldier, a fine poet—we think much of that in Japan—and he wrote the story of his life later with such fire and drama and such strange hidden things, that if it could be printed—but it never could. People would not believe it. Some day you shall read.”

A strange change came over the garden while he spoke. It extended itself before my eyes—flowing outward softly. The flowering bushes which had been within a few feet were now vague in the distance. The mountain flung a cone of shadow over leagues. Even as I saw this, we were in the land of True Sight—yes, that was its name—and Arima was telling his story under the willow of my terror.

“He had broken his own wife’s heart. He coveted the love of the wife of a man of good birth—a samurai named Satoro, and taking her by force made her his own. The husband, unarmed, met him here in what is now this garden, and when he drew his sword to attack him, by the power of the most skilful jujutsu dashed the sword from his hand and himself to the ground, breaking his jaw and blinding him with blood. He had to endure the disgrace. Terrible humiliation for a nobleman! No help— Look about you and see how lonely!”

“Awful and vast the mountains stretched away into snowy silences with the muted roar of a distant avalanche. Cold, shudderingly cold the river, frozen in the pools with a bitter glaze of ice. No life, no death, but arrested petrifaction, with the moon stranded on a peak in a dead world.

“And the sword! A sword worn by his ancestors in knightly fashion, pure steel and gold—the very spirit of the house. Satoro picked it up and stood leaning on it over the prostrate man as he lay on the rocks writhing like a crushed snake to hide his ruined face.

“ ‘This place is your own heart,’ he said; ‘cold, empty and dead. You will come back to it times out of mind. Kimi san, my wife, is on the other side of the mountain. You never possessed her; she is mine. But what I have to say is this. Your sword also is mine. I have a lien on you. You are my slave. I tell you now to begin at the beginning. You shall learn jujutsu. What it will teach you is to defend yourself from yourself. And when you have learnt that— Then I shall give you fresh orders.’

“The man raved and swore and spat blood, all unintelligibly as a beast. He was humiliated in all that a Japanese noble most values, and his only thought at the moment was revenge and suicide. The other stood, looking down upon him with calm. ‘I will return the sword to my lord when he knows its use. A good sword scorns an ignorant wearer. Now I leave you, but we shall meet in this place.’

“He went off, walking lightly and strongly. The fallen man dragged himself together. To lose his sword— Do Westerners understand that bitterness? I cannot tell.

“A retainer came by and finding him, summoned help. When they got him to the house, they told him the woman was dead. She had severed an artery in her throat as a Japanese lady must do in the face of dishonour. Blind with rage he sent to the house of her husband to slaughter him. He had disappeared.

“Henceforth my ancestor was known as The Man without a Sword—a terrible name. He could not appear among the nobles. His life was a ruined thing.”

Arima paused again and then added:

“It would be better that the Abbot should tell you the rest. You will think it remarkable.”

I stood up, so possessed with the story, for he had told it like one inspired, that it was only as I moved that my position flashed on me.

“How can I go? I am lost in the mountains. Come with me!”

He stood beside me, looking onward:

“That is impossible. There are never any guides. There is only power. Besides, there are different ways for different people and I know nothing of yours.”

I looked about me, considering. The bridge was the obvious way and certainly the easiest. I did not know the hour, and there was a hint of dusk in the air, but I had already learnt that in this strange land time and its phenomena have quite other meanings than with us. Night might break on me in a wave of sunlight or dawn open its rose in the heart of midnight. Who could tell? But the bridge way would be safer.

I turned to say a last word to Arima. There was no human being in sight; it was a vast solitude dominated by the black cone of the mountain’s shadow.

I made for the bridge walking as quickly as the rough stones allowed, and climbing its semi-circular hump I looked before me and rejoiced to see the track much clearer than it had seemed from the other side. Evidently a well-used way, and this encouraged me in my hope of meeting someone who could direct me to the monastery of Naniwa. Therefore I went with more confidence, relieved from the crawling fear of the supernatural which the other side of the bridge inspired.

The track took me up a slight rise and round a jutting rock which obscured the river, and having done about two miles of quick walking I heard steps coming round a bend of the trail and rejoiced to think I could ascertain the way.

Nearer they came and disclosed a Japanese, his kimono pulled up through the obi for the ease of walking. He made the usual polite bow and would have passed but for my raised hand. I asked my way with the honorifics I had learnt from Arima. He stopped at once and replied with the utmost courtesy:

“The monastery? Yes— You could go this way. One reaches it by several. But it is not the right way. Far from it.”

“Then will you tell me how to go?”

“Sir, I cannot tell you. I wish I could. I really do not know your way.” It was infuriating. I said scoffingly:

“If you know this is wrong surely you know which is right?” He replied as if he were saying the most ordinary thing in the world:

“Sir, it is not so easy as you think. Places are states of mind in this country, therefore you will honourably see that no one can tell anyone else their way and how best to get there.”

Bowing, he made to pass me. It was then that for the first time I noticed two things. One that his hair was dressed in the old-fashioned queue headdress which one sees in Japanese prints, shaved, but for a knot drawn up on the head, the other that he had a most remarkable face. The features were good, even excellent, and the dark bright colouring fine. But the eyes were arresting under the black level brows, and filled with tranquillity as a pool with shadows. On the impulse they gave me I spoke.

“I wish I could go with you.”

“Sir, that could hardly be. I come from Yedo and I go to my garden in the valley you have left.”

Yedo!—the ancient and long-disused name of Tokyo,—and Tokyo on the central island and days’ journey away! Train and boat might have brought him, and yet—shivering doubt assailed me like the thin creeping of drops of water through a dyke which presages the later roar of the flood. The garden! I could not withhold myself nor hesitate.

“May I ask your name?”

“If you want to know my name you must watch what road I take and know to what I return. How can you know? I did not even think you would have seen me. Since it is so however, I will repeat that in this road you will have great need of self-defence. Now I bid you goodbye and wish you safely at Naniwa.”

He was gone round the corner so quickly that I had a sensation of vanishing. I ran after him and looked. Nothing. So I took my way onward. He had told me nothing to change it. A word really would have sent me backward to try my luck in another direction but he had not spoken it.

Soon after it was dark and raining, with a moon very young and bewildered in drifting clouds. She gave a weary light scarcely enough to hint the track and indicate a group of trees, the first I had seen, on the right. Coming up, among them was a small flickering light, and the barking of a dog sounded homely and even inviting, for by this time I was dragging tired feet. If I could sleep there how welcome the rest and shelter!

The place looked poor and dilapidated enough to be open to any offer of payment though in any case I might have trusted to the hospitality of the country Japanese.

I knocked at the rough door wondering that anyone could exist in such a tumble-down place and a young girl came to the door, faintly seen in dim lamplight. She stared at me in astonishment and bowing low, called softly:

“Madam, mistress,—what shall I do? A gentleman.”

A young voice answered:

“Tell him to come in if he will do us such an honour,” and a graceful little figure appeared in the opening of a lattice door, her face unseen because the light fell behind her. I obeyed. Poor as the house was that room was enchanting. Very simple, but the draperies were good, the cushions beautiful in colour, thehibachiwas full of charcoal and above and round all bathing it in charm was the delicate perfume of a woman’s presence. She rose from her profound Japanese salutation and looked me in the face.

“Hay sama!” she faltered, paling to the lips. And I knew—I knew!

Six months before in the crowded city of Tokyo I had gone to a dinner at a restaurant near Shimbashi. I remembered the garden outside with clumps of gorgeous chrysanthemums, lamps of splendid colour before the dusk drowned them and the moon washed them with silver. Geisha attended us, girls with every nerve braced and strung for their profession of charming the wary and unwary alike. And I was charmed by the sad mirth that looked out from one pair of dark and lovely eyes. I drew her aside before the evening ended and asked her to follow me to themachiai—a house of meeting, and escaping from the noisy party I waited in the cold handsomely furnished room that never spoke of love, until she came.

That meeting led to many things—some merry, some sad, but when I left Tokyo to see her no more I knew that the part I had played was to set my heel on her little head and drive her deeper into the mire. Still, it was ended and need trouble me no more. One could forget.

And now I sat by her side in this land of bitter memories.

She drew a cushion beside mine and leaning her little black head against my shoulder looked up in my face, welcoming me with the sweet courtesy mingled with fear that I remembered so well.

“And why are you here in this wild place, Hana san? Have you given up your work?”

Her bewildered look! I can see it now.

“How can I tell? I—I came. I was told it must be.”

“You are resting here? You go back?”

“Let us talk of other things, Hay sama. How I am glad to see you!” I could get nothing more from her than that.

Silence and the little noises of dropping charcoal, and the softness of her in my arms. It was a renewal of that passionate intimacy which had left a wound in the very heart of my soul.

We talked into the small hours,—so much to say, so much to hear, and time passed—hours, days— How could I tell? And then as fatigue and quiet and warmth overpowered all my resolution she put her arms about me and gathered me to her bosom and the night melted into passion and passion into dream and the dark stole past us on noiseless feet.

I waked in a chill dawn alone, disillusioned and abashed, dragged back violently to a thing I had forgotten and abhorred. The room was empty, a cold wind blowing through the tattered paper of the window, and when I called, no answer. The two women had gone with the night. No food, no fire, dead ash in thehibachi, emptiness and the squalid decay of a wooden house long forgotten. What had a beauty of Tokyo been doing in such a place?

Fear of the loneliness seized me. I went out quickly without looking after me, then at the twist of the path turned and saw—desolation and waving weeds and a bough of some bush thrust through the window that had taken root within. I pushed on toward Naniwa, sick at heart.

It was at that moment a thought shot through me and chilled my blood. When Arima and I had visited Naniwa it had taken us exactly two hours from his house to the monastery hill. But yesterday I had walked for many hours, and to-day seemed no nearer my goal. Grey interminable moorland stretched before me with a mountain blocking the way at a distance and other tossing peaks beyond. Where was I? Where was Naniwa? Might I not walk for ever and ever in widening circles to a lost goal? The ground whispered with evil in every blade of grass. It hissed in the rustle of dry squat bushes. And last night—last night! There were reasons why that memory brought horror and shame to be my companions on the right and left. But I went on from sheer inability to consider what else I must do.

The clump of bushes on the right parted and a tall strong fellow burst out of them and planted himself across my way. A Japanese, broad, brawny, violent-faced. As I halted he sprang at my throat like a wolf.

“And you tracked her here? You could not let her be? Then take your payment from her husband Kondo!”

What happened next came in a blinding flash. He struck at me with a loaded stick. It missed the first blow and I had him by the throat with the new lock I had learnt from Arima, shaking him violently to and fro, driving my fingers deeper and deeper into his flesh in a frenzy of rage and hate. I would have the innermost heart’s blood of the brute.

I had it. He reeled in my grasp with horrible choking noises, and suddenly I was shaking the life out of a dead thing. As I thrust him from me with sickening triumph he fell heavily as a full sack prone on the track before me.

It must have been long before the rage died in me and I stood face to face with my position. I—a foreigner—had killed a Japanese, and after an intrigue with his wife. It felled me beside him—I crouched and hid my face and tried to think.

Presently I rose and with the murderer’s instinct dragged the corpse into the bushes to hide it. Thought was impossible. I suffered as a dumb beast must suffer the extremity of torture without the power to reason. Only I must hide it and flee. The neighbourhood of the horrible thing was hell.

I went on.

Later— “Is it just—is it just?” I said to myself, “that one instant’s madness should doom a man for ever?”—forgetting the long temptation I had played with, the slow delicious yielding, the triumph and delight with which I had slowly built up my torture chamber. Not only from the time I landed in Japan, but before,—I had been busy at the building all my life. How could I complain when the trap snapped on me?

At last I broke from the numbness into memory. The man who had passed me on his way to his garden. His words returned like black birds flying heavily round my head.

“You are not in the right way. Places are states of mind. In this way you will have much need of self-defence.”

And Arima’s words also. “There is no guide. There is only power.”

Power. That brought the Abbot to my mind—the Rules. Could it be that they could rescue me from this horrible country where evil hid like a snake behind every stone. O, to be out of it—free—forgetting! I remember I fell on my knees as if in prayer and with dreadful earnestness began to repeat the Rules, passionately desiring the garden of peace.

“I have no parents. I make the heaven and the earth my parents. I have no weapons—I make submission my strength.” Light broke in my brain. Submission? Then should I dictate—should I trust myself to my own choice of where I would be? Arima had warned me against return.

“If you had used what we call ‘extension’ and had gone on you would have been on the other side of the mountain.” If there were to be refuge for such as I it could only lie along the way of courage. I knew it—I knew it.

I changed my thought instantly. “Set me where I should be if it is in the gateway of hell.” And again. “Only free me of myself. Let me go forward. There is no sin like cowardice. Better lust and murder and the fight to the death with them than cowardice.”

Then, with an intensity that shook me like a leaf in storm I uttered the words of power, hiding my face in a very passion of belief.

Quiet. I lifted my face and looked about me for the terrible way I had accepted. I was lying on the broken steps ascending to the monastery and the House Built upon Clouds at Naniwa. And it was dawn.

The wonder of peace! The sun had not yet out-soared the eastern trees and every bough dropped dew to the glittering grass. A bird, its little clenching feet on a blossomed twig beside me, sang like all the bliss of heaven. In a pool at my feet the lotus, child of the clear cold stream, raised rosy chalices to the sky and from it ran a stream divinely clear and bright. The sun might have been the first that ever shone upon a perfected world untroubled by man, so clear and clean the water-gold of the morning.

I stood up and looked about me drawing deep breaths of purity. Above me beneath a great tree, lost in contemplation, sat the Abbot Gyōsen.

I stumbled towards him. I remember I said: “I have come,” and that he motioned with his hand to a place beside him. Together we watched the slow crescendo of the mighty music of the dawn.

The sun was above the trees when he spoke, turning the serenity of his face upon me.

“You have learnt your lesson. Has it brought content?” I summoned my thoughts to reply clearly.

“I have learnt much but the truth I do not know. Does the corpse still lie on the moor and the woman weep in the deserted house. Am I guilty?”

“In your soul, yes. Therefore in truth, yes. When you yielded to lust in your heart and willed murder both were accomplished. Your own Scriptures teach this and that thought is the only true reality. This have all the Buddhas known. In what men ignorantly call fact you are not guilty. But, being guilty, learn this. Every instant terminates a life and the next is a new birth. While each minute exists the past is dead and the future unmade. I speak here according to the knowledge of this world, but the truth is that there isnotime, and that you are now what the Divine sees you—a ray of his splendour. This truth being as yet too high for you to remember that even on this world’s showing you are free to be what you will. The choice lies before you. With a thought you may be in the horror of the Desolate Country, with another in the Shining Land. For every man makes his own universe until he can see it as it is in the Thought of the Divine.”

Blinded with truth I asked a question simply as a child.

“Then what must I do?”

“Resolve and go forward,—what else? knowing that in yourself is all power.”

“But the training? Free me from myself! If we can realize these powers the means of using so terrible a weapon rightly should be open to all.”

“It is open. But men will not believe. They will not will. They do not think, and events take them like sea-weed on a wave. You know your own weakness but it is strength compared with that of the majority. You, at least, have seen and heard. Study the teachings of the perfect One, the Buddha, if you would be a man. Realize your union with Power, knowing that it is a harp of many strings of which you are one, and tune yourself in harmony with the music of the spheres. At present you are a man without a sword.”

That phrase! It kindled a world of recollection. I looked into his face with another entreaty.

“Arima sama told me that I might hear the end of the story of the Man without a Sword from your honourable self. Tell it to me, I beseech you.”

He rose and invited me to follow him into the House Built upon Clouds promising that he would rejoin me when he had transacted some necessary business. I sat in the window looking out and down into the glorious depth of waving woods bathing in sunshine like water, experiencing myself such tranquil joy as the trees themselves must know, fulfilling their perfect Law in the smile of the Divine.

It was long before the Abbot returned, but to me it seemed a moment. We have no true means of measuring time for the truth is that it has no existence, and when the soul is liberated this truth is evident. At once he began the story of the Man without a Sword.

“In Japan very terrible was the position of the man who had lost his sword. Better a thousand deaths of lingering torture. There was no man so low as to give him companionship—and he a noble! Therefore he changed his name to that of Kazuma, and casting aside what money was left he abandoned his wife who was dying of grief and shame, and coming to Yedo took up the study of jujutsu hoping some day to become a teacher of this in the great city. More lonely a man could not be than Kazuma. His wife died. His son was taken by his brother and he saw him no more. His own name was blotted out and forgotten. His brother believed and hoped him dead, and but for the command of his foe he would have killed himself.

“Jujutsu, my son, is, as you know from Arima sama, an art that every noble person should learn. It is said to have come from China, and it was taught that the very Gods had used it in chastising the barbarians. The name roughly signifies ‘the strength of weakness,’ and thus it arose. It was noted that the boughs of a willow were not broken by a heavy fall of snow when strong trees cracked beneath the weight. And why? Being pliant they bowed their weakness and the snow slipped off. My son, recall the Rule. ‘I have no strength. I make submission my strength.’ As with the soul so it is with the body. How shall I sum up this art of attack and self-defence? It is the perfect control of the mind resisting defeat. It is to use weakness in such a way that it masters brute strength. I have seen a slight woman who possessed this knowledge fling a heavy man over her shoulder and stun him. There are locks and blows which may easily kill the opponent and for this reason the higher secrets are withheld from all but those who are fit for initiation. The pupils are trained to endure heat and cold and all hardships. It is a high and noble discipline, for no greatness can be attained without abstinence from the three vices of lust, drink, and the love of money with their attendant diseases of the spirit.

“This art Kazuma studied, and as he did so much became clear to him and he approached the secret of life. And when he had reached a certain skill his master taught him that there is in jujutsu a higher branch of mysterious power. And he, beginning dimly to apprehend the meaning of the command laid on him by the husband of the woman he had slain, for so indeed he had, desired with eagerness to advance.

“Now, my son, at the gate of this higher initiation stands a ceremony to be endured. The initiate must submit to strangulation and to be revived bykwappo—the art which recalls men to life. And should this fail, revival is made by means of a power namedkiai. To Kazuma, knowing nothing ofkiai, but very weary of life, this command came like the friendly voice of death, and with joy he presented himself to the master of the art who was chosen to be his executioner.

“He lay down, offering his throat, and in a few seconds was what is called dead.

“Now, being thus enfranchised, instantly he found himself in the place of his humiliation by the rushing river, with cold desolation about him. And by the river knelt his conqueror washing the blood from his hands as though their fight was but just ended. He rose and faced Kazuma.

“ ‘You have obeyed my command.’

“ ‘I have obeyed.’

“ ‘What have you learnt?’

“ ‘That there is no death. It is more life, but life as we have made it. As a man has sown he reaps in life after life.’

“ ‘Until what time?’

“ ‘Until the time when he sows good grain.’

“ ‘Do you repent your past?’

“ ‘I do not look back. I go forward. It is forgotten. The man who did the deed died with it. Now I would be a teacher of jujutsu.’

“ ‘Well said! You have learnt to defend yourself from yourself and you would teach others. I will give you fresh orders.’ Kazuma stood like a soldier before his general.

“ ‘Teach what you have learnt. Then come back, and in this place of desolation where you fought and conquered more than you knew make a garden and build a bridge. Go now,—in power!’

“He bowed low, Kazuma also. ‘My friend!’— As the words met his ear they melted in a confused murmur of human voices and he struggled back to consciousness in the school of jujutsu in Yedo. Men knelt and stooped about him fearful lest he had gone so far on the way of death that even the powerful shout ofkiaicould not reach him. But he rose and gravely thanking his executioner went and stood before his master.

“My son, Kazuma became the greatest teacher of jujutsu in Japan. He could disarm and bring to his feet a two-sworded man shrieking for mercy. With his shout he could do to death any evil-doer within hearing and restore the fool when he had mastered his lesson. Power was mighty in his step, his gesture, his glance. What money he made, and it was much, was for those who had need, he himself living in an untouchable content.

“Thus time went by.

“One day, having saved the life of the only son of a noble house, the father coming to him said:

“ ‘My lord, what shall I give you? In mercy accept a gift lest I and my house break under the weight of gratitude. Have pity and take!’

“So, after much musing, Kazuma replied.

“ ‘You have bought great lands by the river Koga. I grow old. Give me, my lord, if you will, a corner by the river, very small, where I may make a garden and build a wooden bridge for those who must cross the rapids. Very dangerous is the current.’

“So it was done and he made his garden and built with his own hands a bridge of wood, and there was no day but the people blessed his name and learnt from him that power lies about them for the taking and that its best use at the present time is to make gardens and be a builder of bridges. Other uses later. My son, Kazuma still walks in his garden and he sits beneath his willow and his sword hangs at his side. The bridge leads where you know, for you have crossed it.”

There was a moment’s silence and it spoke as never yet words. He resumed.

“My son, make your own garden. And there is room for many bridges.”

When my mind dwells on beauty the face of the Abbot full of unworded meanings floats on clear air before me. It ended and completed the story so that all he left unsaid was written in fire between the spoken words. And I understood and like himself cannot express more than the alphabet.

I returned from Naniwa by the hidden way. Flowers blossomed along the moors. I never saw more lovely, and where the corpse had lain children were dancing in a ring. Where the broken house had crouched among trees, was a shrine to the Thousand-Handed Spirit of Mercy beloved in Japan. A child lay in her bosom and her hidden eyes were bent upon it in a moonlight rapture. May I live in that country for the eternities!

I crossed the bridge and walked beside the river to the garden of Arima. He sat by the water plaiting a basket of willow, and rose, bowing, to meet me.

“I have come,” I said, “to learn jujutsu.”

He smiled.

I have learnt it and with it the secret of power. I go in and out of Kazuma’s garden. And beyond.

And the Abbot, who was once Kazuma, and will be more, sits there, girded with his sword.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the public domain.

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