Part 2 (1/2)

Earth and sky and sea breathed beauty. The evening song of the birds was of love. The spirit of the fading day whispered peace, but unheeding he sat in troubled silence. Then from the street far below came the shout of a boy at play. It was a voice full of the gladness of youth. In it was a challenge of daring and courage. Loudly he called to his troop of play soldiers to charge splendidly, to fight with the glorious _Yamato Damas.h.i.+_ (spirit of j.a.pan).

Kis.h.i.+moto San heard and with a quick movement raised his head as though he had felt a blow. ”Ah,” he murmured to himself, ”if it had only been a boy!”

There was the secret wound that was ever sore and bleeding. There was no son to perpetuate the name. His most vital hope was dead, his greatest desire crushed, and by a creature out of the West, who not only stole his daughter but fathered this girl whom no true j.a.panese would want as a wife. To a man of Kis.h.i.+moto San's traditions the hurt was deep and cruel.

I well understood his sorrow and disappointment. Pity put all my annoyance to flight. I promised to go to his house and see if I could help in any way. I did not tell him that I was about as familiar with young girls from my home land as I was with young eagles, for the undaunted spirit of that child had aroused all my love of adventure; and I wanted to see her. Then, too, I was haunted by the picture of a lonely girl in a strange land, crying out in the night for her dead father.

I was trembling with new emotion that evening when I brought my invalid in from the garden, and tucked her into bed.

Kis.h.i.+moto San had not only offered me a tremendous experience, but all unwittingly he made it easily possible for me to defy the tradition of his picture language, and risk Jane Gray as a permanent fireside companion.

III

ZURA

Just below ”The House of the Misty Star,” in an old temple, a priest played a merry tattoo on a mighty gong early every morning. First one stroke and a pause, then two strokes and a pause, followed by so many strokes without pause that the sounds merged into one deep mellow tone reaching from temple to distant hills. It was, so to speak, the rising bell for the deities in that district and announced to them the beginning of their day of business.

In years gone by the echo of the music had stirred me only to a drowsy thankfulness that I was no G.o.ddess, happy as I turned for a longer sleep. The morning after Kis.h.i.+moto San's visit, long before any sound disturbed the sleeping G.o.ds, from my window I watched the Great Dipper drop behind the crookedest old pine in the garden and heard the story of the night-wind as it whispered its secret to the leaves.

Usually my patience was short with people who went mooning around the house at all hours of the night when they should have been sleeping.

Somehow though, things seemed changed and changing. Coming events were not casting shadows before them in my home, but thrills. Formerly I had not even a pa.s.sing acquaintance with thrills. Now, half a century behind-time, they were beginning to burst in upon me all at once, as would a troop of merry friends bent on giving me a surprise party, and the things they seemed to promise kept me awake half the night. My restlessness must have penetrated the thin part.i.tion of my j.a.panese house, for when I went out to breakfast there sat Jane Gray, very small and pale, but as bright-eyed and perky as a sparrow. It was her first appearance at the morning meal.

Before I could ask why she had not rested as usual, she put a question to me. ”Well, what is it?”

”What's what?” I returned.

”Why,” she exclaimed, ”you have been up most of the night. I wanted to ask if you were ill, but I was counting sheep jumping over the fence, and it made me so sleepy I mixed you up with them. I hope it isn't the precious cod-liver babies that are keeping you awake.”

It was at Jane's suggestion that we had eliminated meat from our menu and established a kind of liquid food station for the ill-nourished offspring of the quarry women near us.

I a.s.sured Miss Gray that babies had been far from my thoughts. Then I told her of my interview with Kis.h.i.+moto San; of how Zura Wingate had come to her grandfather's house; of her rebellion against things that were; and that she was to come to me for private study. Had I not been so excited over the elements of romance in my story, I would have omitted telling Jane of the incident of the girl and the youth in the park, for it had a wonderful effect on her.

Jane's sentiment was like a full mola.s.ses pitcher that continues to drip in spite of all the lickings you give it. At once I saw I was in for an overflow. It was the only part of the story she took in, and as she listened, pa.s.sed into some kind of a spell. She cuddled down into her chair and shut her eyes like a child in the ecstasies of a fairy story.

She barely breathed enough to say, ”The darlings! and in that lovely old park! I hope it was moonlight. Do you suppose they sat under the wistaria?”

Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there had come before my mind a picture very like that. Such a picture in the Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted out from mind and reality the better for all concerned. I spoke positively to my companion.

”Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn't for breaking a commandment I would call you foolish with one syllable. Don't you know that in this country a young man and woman walking and talking together cannot be permitted?

Neither love nor romance is free or permissible, but they are governed by laws which, if transgressed, will break heart and spirit.”

”So I have heard,” cooed Miss Gray, unimpressed by my statements.

”Wouldn't it be sweet, though, for you and me to go about teaching these dear j.a.panese people that young love will have its freedom and make a custom of its own?”

”Yes, indeed! Wouldn't it be a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for young love--subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray novel or so!” I said all this and a little more.

Jane went on unheeding, ”That's it. We must preach love and live it till we have made convicts of every inhabitant.”