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Read Ebook: Hills of Han: A Romantic Incident by Merwin Samuel Louderback Walt Illustrator
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Ebook has 2102 lines and 82813 words, and 43 pages
Illustrator: Walt Louderback
HILLS OF HAN
A Romantic Incident
Illustrated by Walt Louderback
Indianapolis
Hills of Han,
Slumber on! The sunlight, dying,
Lingers on your terraced tops;
Yellow stream and willow sighing,
Field of twice ten thousand crops
Breathe their misty lullabying,
Breathe a life that nei'er stops.
Spin your chart of ancient wonder,
Fold your hands within your sleeve,
Live and let live, work and ponder,
Be tradition, dream, believe...
So abides your ancient plan,
Hills of Han!
Hills of Han,
What's this filament goes leaping
Pole to pole and hill to hill?
What these strips of metal creeping
Where the dead have lain so still.
What this wilder thought that's seeping
Where was peace and gentle will?
Smoke of mill on road and river,
Roar of steam by temple wall...
Drop the arrow in the quiver...
Bow to Buddha.... All is all!
Slumber they who slumber can,
Hills of Han!
NOTE
HILLS OF HAN
ON a day in late March, 1907, Miss Betty Doane sat in the quaintly airy dining-room of the Hotel Miyaka, at Kioto, demurely sketching a man's profile on the back of a menu card.
The man, her unconscious model, lounged comfortably alone by one of the swinging windows. He had finished his luncheon, pushed away his coffee cup, lighted a cigarette, and settled back to gaze out at the hillside where young green grasses and gay shrubs and diminutive trees bore pleasant evidence that the early Japanese springtime was at hand.
Betty could even see, looking out past the man, a row of cherry trees, all afoam with blossoms. They brought a thrill that was almost poignant. It was curious, at home--or, rather, back in the States--there was no particular thrill in cherry blossoms. They were merely pleasing. But so much more was said about them here in Japan.
The man's head was long and well modeled, with a rugged long face, reflective eyes, somewhat bony nose, and a wide mouth that was, on the whole, attractive. Both upper lip and chin were dean shaven. The eyebrows were rather heavy; the hair was thick and straight, slanting down across a broad forehead. She decided, as she sketched it in with easy sure strokes of a stubby pencil, that he must have quite a time every morning brushing that hair down into place.
The sketch was about done; all but the nose. When you studied that nose in detail it seemed a little too long and strong, and--well, knobby--to be as attractive as it actually was. There would be a trick in drawing it; a shadow or two, a suggestive touch of the pencil; not so many real knobs. In the ship's diningroom she had his profile across an aisle. There would be chances to study it.
Behind her, in the wide doorway, appeared a stout, short woman of fifty or more, in an ample and wrinkled traveling suit of black and a black straw hat ornamented only with a bow of ribbon. Her face wore an anxious expression that had settled, years back, into permanency. The mouth drooped a little. And the brows were lifted and the forehead grooved with wrinkles suggesting some long habitual straining of the eyes that recent bifocal spectacles were powerless to correct.
"Betty!" called the older woman guardedly. "Would you mind, dear... one moment...?"
Her quick, nervous eyes had caught something of the situation. There was Betty and--within easy earshot--a man. The child was unquestionably sketching him.
Betty's eagerly alert young face fell at the sound. She stopped drawing; for a brief instant chewed the stubby pencil; then, quite meekly, rose and walked toward the door.
"Mr. Hasmer is outside. I thought you were with him. Betty."
"No... I didn't know your plans... I was waiting here."
But on this occasion, as he bore down on her, the eyes of the distinguished young man rested for an instant on the table, and for a brief moment he wavered in his stride. He certainly saw the sketch. It lay where she had carelessly tossed it, face up, near the edge of the table. And he certainly recognized it for himself; for his strong facial muscles moved a very little. It couldn't have been called a smile; but those muscles distinctly moved. Then, as coolly as before, he strode on out of the room.
Betty's cheeks turned crimson. A further fact doubtless noted by this irritatingly, even arrogantly composed man.
Betty, with desperate dignity, put the sketch in her wrist bag, followed Mrs. Hasmer out of the building, and stepped into the rickshaw that awaited her.
The brown-legged coolie tucked the robe about her, stepped in between the shafts of the vehicle; a second coolie fell into place behind, and they were off down the hill. Just ahead, Mrs. Hasmer's funny little hat bobbed with the inequalities of the road. Just behind, Doctor Hasmer, a calm, patient man who taught philosophy and history in a Christian college fifteen hundred miles or more up the Yangtse River and who never could remember to have his silvery beard trimmed, smiled kindly at her when she turned.
And behind him, indifferent to all the human world, responsive in his frigid way only to the beauties of the Japanese country-side and of the quaint, gray-brown, truly ancient city extending up and down the valley by its narrow, stone-walled stream, rode Mr. Jonathan Brachey.
The coolies, it would seem, had decided to act in concert. From shop to shop among the crowded little streets went the four rickshaws. Any mere human being would have accepted good-humoredly the comradeship implied in this arrangement on the part of a playful fate; but Mr. Brachey was no mere human being. Side by side stood the four of them in a toy workshop looking down at toy-like artisans with shaved and tufted heads who wore quaint robes and patiently beat out designs in gold and silver wire on expertly fashioned bronze boxes and bowls. They listened as one to the thickly liquid English of a smiling merchant explaining the processes and expanding on the history of fine handiwork in this esthetic land. Yet by no sign did Mr. Brachey's face indicate that he was aware of their presence; except once--on a crooked stairway in a cloisonn? shop he flattened himself against the wall to let them pass, muttering, almost fiercely, "I beg your pardon!"
The moment came, apparently, when he could endure this enforced companionship no longer. He spoke gruffly to his rickshaw coolies, and rolled off alone. When they finally reached the railway station after a half-hour spent in wandering about the spacious enclosure of the Temple of Nishi Otani, with its huge, shadowy gate house, its calm priests, its exquisite rock garden under ancient mystical trees--the tall journalist was pacing the platform, savagely smoking a pipe.
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