It was not the shortest way home, but it was part of our projected itinerary and took us through a country typical of the heart of Japan. It began with a fine succession of passes. These I had once taken on a journey years before with a friend, and as we started now up the first one, the Saru ga Bamba no toge, I tried to make the new impression fit the old remembrance. But man had been at work upon the place without, and imagination still more upon its picture within. It was another toge we climbed in the light of that latter-day afternoon. With the companion the old had passed away.
Leaving the others to follow, I started down the zigzags on the farther side. It was already dusk, and the steepness of the road and the brisk night air sent me swinging down the turns with something of the anchor-like escapement of a watch. Midway I passed a solitary pedestrian, who was trolling to himself down the descent; and when in turn he passed me, as I was waiting under a tree for the others to catch up, he eyed me suspiciously, as one whose wanderings were questionable. They were certainly questionable to myself, for by that time we were come to habitations, and each fresh light I saw Itook for the village where we were to stop for the night, in spite of repeated disillusionings.
Overhead, the larger stars came out and winked at me, and then, as the fields of space became more and more lighted with star-points, the hearth-fires to other homes of worlds, I thought how local, after all, is the great cone of shadow we men call night; for it is only nature's nightcap for the nodding earth, as she turns her head away from the sun to lie pillowed in space.
The next day was notable chiefly for the up-and-down character of the country even for Japan; which was excelled only by the unhesitating acceptance of it on the part of the road, and this in its turn only by the crowds that traveled it. It seemed that the desire to go increased inversely as the difficulty in going. The wayfarers were most sociable folk, and for a people with whom personality is at a discount singularly given to personalities. Not a man who had a decent chance but asked whither we were going and whence we had come.
To the first half of the country-side we confided so much of our private history; to the second we contented ourselves in saying, with elaborate courtesy, "The same as six years ago," an answer which sounded polite, and rendered the surprised questioner speechless for the time we took to pass.
Especially the women added to the picturesqueness of the landscape.
Their heads done up in gay-colored kerchiefs, framing their round and rosy faces, their kit slung over their shoulders, and their kimono tucked in at their waists, they trudged along on useful pairs of ankles neatly cased in lavender gaiters. Some followed dutifully behind their husbands; others chatted along in company with their kind,--members these last of some pilgrim association.
There were wayfarers, too, of less happy mind. For over the last pass the authorities were building a new road, and long lines of pink-coated convicts marched to and fro at work upon it, under the surveillance of the dark-blue police; and the sight made me think how little the momentary living counts in the actual life. Here we were, two sets of men, doing for the time an identical thing, trudging along a mountain path in the fresh May air; and yet to the one the day seemed all sunshine, to the other nothing but cloud.