“Not a word uttered sitting alone,
But a small light I see in the heart.
Unwontedly troublesome are human affairs.
Who shall forget this state?
Enjoying one day’s quiet
I know now how I passed hundreds of busy years.
My yearning, where shall I communicate?
Far, far away, in the land of white clouds.”
I read the whole piece over again. It was not so very poor; but as a depiction of ethereal conditions I had just experienced, I felt something still wanting. I might try to compose one more piece, and with the pencil still between my fingers, I happened to look out of the opened door way of my room to see at beautiful vision flitting across the three feet space. What could it have been?
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
