Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/135

 The persistent seeker after antiquities took a step toward the door, but suddenly struck with an ingenious idea, turned back and called to the collector persuasively.

"Even though you do not wish to sell this family treasure you mentioned, surely you would not object to telling one who appreciates such things about it. Art is what I am interested in too. Come, tell me about your treasure."

The earnestness in Hammersmith's voice appeared to arrest the collector; moreover he was a courteous man, and to refuse such a request was hardly possible.

"When I mentioned my family treasure," he explained quietly, "I supposed that you knew to what I referred—the Unfinished Buddha. Have you never heard of it? Its name is a classic in the art world. You have never heard of it?"

Hammersmith admitted that he had not. The collector regarded him keenly, with an expression of complete incredulity.

"How strange!"

Hammersmith's face grew red. He was about to offer some excuse for his ignorance, when he perceived that the collector was no longer conscious of his presence. The little man had sunk languidly into a chair and with hands clasped in his lap seemed absorbed with some inner image of beauty. After a moment of deep meditation, he arose, and going to the back of the shop, drew forth a heavy chest which had been concealed under a cot behind the counter. Here, under lock and key, reposed the treasure. The little man lifted it gently from its resting-place and brought it forward. Carefully removing the bit of old yellow silk in which it was wrapped, he revealed within the palms of his hands a tiny green Buddha, The hand of the carver had never smoothed it; it was incomplete, but no suggestion of crudeness marred it.

"Death stayed the hand of the sculptor," murmured the collector softly, "but the hand of the brooding centuries has effaced the scars."

He sank into his chair, sighing gently.

excursion into the wise old East is a glorious adventure, if one's heart is open to romance," he said. "For such an one, mystery lurks behind every gray wall. Once again, like wine in the blood, comes the thrill that I knew on first visiting Japan's ancient imperial city, that subtle diarm which still lingers like ghostly melodies echoing down the dusty centuries. I remember the golden summer morning when I visited the shrines at Nikko and stopped breathless before the Yomei-mon, the most beautiful gate in Japan, called the sunrise to sunset gate, where three hundred years ago a pair of immortal lovers met and tarried the whole long day.

"In Japan three hundred years ago it was not customary for a woman to be from under authority; but O-Miyuku-san was an orphan; moreover she was an emperor's daughter and a descendant of the gods over whom no mortal had any authority. At sunrise she had come unattended to the shrine at Nikko to do honor to the spirit of her father, the emperor, lately dead. Long after her prayers were said, she lingered in the holy place, drinking in the beauty of the shrine, richly embellished with carvings from the enchanted hand of Jingoro, filled with child-like wonder at the sight of the marvelous painted dragons which looked so life-like that they were said to uncoil from their pillars at night to drink from the lotus pool. In a dream, she paused before the Yomei-mon, wondering if it could, indeed, be the gate of Paradise through which her father would presently beckon her.

"Time does not exist in the presence of beauty. O-Miyuku-san did not know