"What though those icy breeze,He blow sof' on ze isleThough evrything he pleasesAnd jos those man he's wild,In vain with large kindThe gift of those gods are sown,Those heathen in blindnessBow down to wood and stone."
"What though those icy breeze,He blow sof' on ze isleThough evrything he pleasesAnd jos those man he's wild,In vain with large kindThe gift of those gods are sown,Those heathen in blindnessBow down to wood and stone."
They let her finish the chant, the words of which were almost unintelligible to her convulsed audience, who vainly sought to strangle their mirth before the crestfallen and sadly hurt Mr. Sutherland. He took the rosary from Sunny's fingers, saying reprovingly:
"My dear child, that is not a prayer, and how many times must I tell you that we donot use a rosary in our church. All we desire from you at this time is a humble profession as to your conversion to Christianity. Therefore, my child, your friends and I wish to be reassured on that score."
"I'd like to hear her do the catechism. She says she knows it," came in a muffled voice from Bobs.
"Certainly, certainly," responded the missionary. "Attention, my dear. First, I will ask you: What is your name?"
Sunny, watching him with the most painful earnestness indicative of her earnest desire to please, was able to answer at once joyously.
"My name are Sunny—Syndicutt."
The mirth was barely suppressed by the now indignant minister, who glared in displeasure upon the small person so painfully trying to realise his ambitions for her. To conciliate the evidently angry Mr. Sutherland, she rattled along hurriedly:
"I am true convert. I swear him. By those eight million gods of the heavens and the sea, and by God-dam I swear it that I am nixe Kirishitan girl."
A few minutes later Sunny was alone, even Professor Barrowes having hastily followedhis charges from the room to avoid giving offence to the missionary, whose angry tongue was now loosened, and flayed the unhappy girl ere he too departed in dudgeon via the front door.
That evening, after the dinner, Sunny, who had been very quiet during the meal, went directly from the table to her room upstairs, and to the calls after her of her friends, she replied that she had "five thousan words to learn him to spell."
Professor Barrowes, furtively wiping his eyes and then his glasses, shook them at his protesting young charges and asserted that the missionary was quite within his rights in punishing Sunny by giving her 500 lines to write.
"She's been at it all day," was the disgusted comment of Monty. "It's a rotten shame, to put that poor kid to copying that little hell of a line."
"Sir," said the Professor, stiffening and glaring through his glasses at Monty, "I wish you to know that line happens to be taken from a—er—book esteemed sacred, and I have yet to learn that it had its origin in the infernal regions as suggested by you. What is more, I may say that Miss Sunny's progress in readingand spelling, arithmetic, and geography has not been what I had hoped. Accordingly I have instructed her that she must study for an hour in the evening after dinner, and I have further advised the young lady that I do not wish her to leave the house on any pleasure expedition this evening."
A howl of indignant protest greeted this pronouncement and the air was electric with bristling young heads.
"Say, Proff. Sunny promised to go out with me this evening. She knows a shop where they sell that sticky gum drop stuff that I like, and we're going down Snowdrop Ave. to Canal Lane. Let her off, just this time, will you?"
"I will not. She must learn to spell Cat, Cow, Horse and Dog and such words as a baby of five knows properly before she can go out on pleasure trips."
Jinx ponderously sat up on his favourite sofa, the same creaking under him as the big fellow moved. In an injured tone he set forth his rights for the evening to Sunny.
"Sunny has a date with me to play me a nice little sing-song on that Jap guitar of hers. I'm not letting her off this or any other night."
"She made a date with me too," laughedBobs. "We were to star gaze, if you please. She says she knows the history of all the most famous stars in the heavens, and she agreed to show me the exact geographical spot in the firmament where that Amaterumtumtum, or whatever she calls it, goddess, lost her robes in the Milky Way just while she was descending to earth to be an ancestor to the Emperor of Japan." Mockingly Bobs bowed his head in solemn and comical imitation of Sunny at the mention of the Emperor.
Jerry was thinking irritably that Sunny and he were to have stolen away after supper for a little trip in a private junk, owned by a friend of Sunny's, and she said that the rowers would play the guitar and sing as the gondoliers of Italy do. Jerry had a fancy for that trip in the moonlight, with Sunny's little hand cuddled up in his, and the child chattering some of her pretty nonsense. Confound it, the little baggage had promised her time to every last one of her friends, and so it was nearly every night in the week. Sunny had much ado making and breaking engagements with her friends.
"It strikes me," said Professor Barrowes, stroking his chin humorously, "that Miss Sunny has in her all the elements that go tothe making of a most complete and finished coquette. For your possible edification, gentlemen, I will mention that the young lady also offered to accompany me to a certain small temple where she informs me a bonze of the Buddhist religion has a library of er—one million years, so claims Miss Sunny, and this same bonze she assured me has a unique collection of ancient butterflies which have come down from prehistoric days. Ahem!—er—I shall play fair with you young gentlemen. I desire very much to see the articles I have mentioned. I doubt very much the authenticity of the same, but have an open mind. I shall, however, reserve the pleasure of seeing these collections till a more convenient period. In the meanwhile I advise you all to go about your respective concerns, and I bid you good-night, gentlemen, I bid you good-night."
The house was silent. The living room, with its single reading lamp, seemed empty and cold, and Professor Barrowes with a book whose contents would have aforetime utterly absorbed him, as it dealt with the fascinating subject of the Dinornis, of post-Pliocene days, found himself unable to concentrate. His well-governed mind had in some inexplicableway become intractable. It persisted in wandering up to the floor above, where Professor Barrowes knew was a poor young girl, who was studying hard into the night. Twice he went outdoors to assure himself that Sunny was still studying, and each time the glowing light, and the chanting voice aroused his further compunction and remorse. Unable longer to endure the distracting influence that took his mind from his favourite study, the Professor stole on tiptoe up the stairs to Sunny's door. The voice inside went raucously on.
"C-a-t—dog. C-a-t—dog. C-a-t—dog!"
Something about that voice, devoid of all the charm peculiar to Sunny, grated against the sensitive ear at the keyhole, and accordingly he withdrew the ear and applied the eye. What he saw inside caused him to sit back solidly on the floor, speechless with mirthful indignation.
Hatsu, the maid, sat stonily before the little desk of her mistress, and true to the instructions of Sunny, she was loudly chanting that C-a-t spelled Dog.
Outside the window—well, there was a lattice work that ascended conveniently to Sunny's room. Her mode of exit was visible to the simplest minded, but the question thatagitated the mind of Professor Barrowes, and sent him off into a spree of mirthful speculation was which one of the members of the Sunny Syndicate Limited had Miss Sunny Sindicutt eloped with?
CHAPTER IV
To be adopted by four young men and one older one; to be surrounded by every care and luxury; to be alternately scolded, pampered, admonished and petted, this was the joyous fate of Sunny. Life ran along for the happy child like a song, a poem which even Takumushi could not have composed.
Sunny greeted the rising sun with the kisses that she had been taught to throw to garden audiences, and hailed the blazing orb each morning, having bowed three times, hands on knees, with words like these:
"Ohayo! honourable Sun. I glad you come again. Thas a beautiful day you are bring, an I thang you thad I are permit to live on those day. Hoh! Amaterasuoho-mikami, shining lady of the Sun, I are mos' happiest girl ad those Japan!"
The professional geisha is taught from childhood—for her apprenticeship begins from earliest youth—that her mission in life is to bring joy and happiness into the world, to divert,to banish all care by her own infectious buoyancy, to heal, to dissipate the cares of mere mortals; to cultivate herself so that she shall become the very essence of joy. If trouble comes to her own life, to so exercise self-control that no trace of her inner distress must be reflected in her looks or conduct. She must, in fact, make a science of her profession. To laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who find a balm in tears—that is the work of the geisha.
Sunny, a product of the geisha house, and herself apprentice to the joy women of Japan, was of another race by blood, yet always there was to cling to her that intangible charm, that like a strange perfume bespeaks the geisha of Japan. In her odd way Sunny laid out her campaign to charm and please the ones who had befriended her, and toward whom she felt a gratitude that both touched and embarrassed them.
Her new plan of life, however, violated all the old rules which had governed in the teahouse. Sunny was sore put to it to adjust herself to the novelty of a life that knew not the sharp and imperative voice, which cut like a whip in staccato order, from the master of the geishas; nor the perilous trapeze, theswinging rope, to fall from which was to bring down upon her head harsh rebuke, and sometimes the threatening flash of the whip, whirling in the air, and barely scraping the girl on the rope. She had been whipped but upon that one occasion, for her mother was too valuable an asset in the House of a Thousand Joys for Hirata to risk offending; but always he loved to swing the lash above the girl's head, or hurl it near to the feet that had faltered from the rope, so that she might know that it hung suspended above her to fall at a time when she failed. There were pleasant things too in the House of a Thousand Smiles that Sunny missed—the tap tap of the drum, the pat pat of the stockinged feet on the polished dance matting; the rising and falling of the music of the samisen as it tinkled in time to the swaying fans and posturing bodies of the geishas. All this was the joyous part of that gaudy past, which her honourable new owners had bidden her forget.
Sunny desired most earnestly to repay her benefactors, but her offers to dance for them were laughingly joshed aside, and she was told that they did not wish to be repaid in dancing coin. All they desired in return was that she should be happy, forget the bitter past, andthey always added "grow up to be the most beautiful girl in Japan." This was a joking formula among them. To order Sunny to be merely happy and beautiful. Happy she was, but beauty! Ah! that was more difficult.
Beauty, thought Sunny, must surely be the aim and goal of all Americans. Many were the moments when she studied her small face in the mirror, and regretted that it would be impossible for her to realise the ambition of her friends. Her face, she was assured, violated all the traditions and canons of the Japanese ideal of beauty. That required jet black hair, lustrous as lacquer, a long oval face, with tiny, carmine touched lips, narrow, inscrutable eyes, a straight, sensitive nose, a calmness of expression and poise that should serve as a mask to all internal emotions; above all an elegance and distinction in manners and dress that would mark one as being of an elevated station in life. Now Sunny's hair was fair, and despite brush and oil generously applied, till forbidden by her friends, it curled in disobedient ringlets about her young face. The hair alone marked her in the estimation of the Japanese as akin to the lower races, since curly hair was one of the marks peculiar to the savages. Neither were her eyes accordingto the Japanese ideal of beauty. They were, it is true, long and shadowed by the blackest of lashes, and in fact were her one feature showing the trace of her oriental taint or alloy, for they tipped up somewhat at the corners, and she had a trick of glancing sideways through the dark lashes that her friends found eerily fascinating; unfortunately those eyes were large, and instead of being the prescribed black, were pure amber in colour, with golden lights of the colour of her hair. Her skin, finally, was, as the mentor of the geisha house had primly told her, bleached like the skin of the dead. Save where the colour flooded her cheeks like peach bloom, Sunny's skin was as white as snow, and all the temporary stains and dark powder applied could not change the colour of her skin. To one accustomed to the Japanese point of view, Sunny therefore could see nothing in her own lovely face that would realise the desire of her friends that she should be beautiful; but respectfully and humbly she promised them that she would try to obey them, and she carried many gifts and offerings to the feet of Amaterasu-ohomikami, whose beauty had made her the supreme goddess of the heavens.
"Beauty," said Jerry Hammond, walkingup and down the big living room, his hair rumpled, and his hands loosely in his pockets, "is the aim and end of all that is worth while in life, Sunny. If we have it, we have everything. Beauty is something we are unable to define. It is elusive as a feather that floats above our heads. A breath will blow it beyond our reach, and a miracle will bring it to our hand. Now, the gods willing, I am going to spend all of the days of my life pursuing and reaching after Beauty. Despite my parents' fond expectations of a commercial career for their wayward son, I propose to be an artist."
From which it will be observed that Jerry's idea of beauty was hardly that comprehended by Sunny, though in a vague way she sensed also his ideal.
"An artist!" exclaimed she, clasping her hands with enthusiasm. "Ho!howthad will be grade. I thing you be more grade artist than Hokusai!"
"Oh, Sunny, impossible! Hokusai was one of the greatest artists that ever lived. I'm not built of the same timber, Sunny." There was a touch of sadness to Jerry's voice. "My scheme is not to paint pictures. I propose to beautify cities. To the world I shall be known merely as an architect, but you and I, Sunny,we will know, won't we, that I am an artist; because, you see, even if one fails to create the beautiful, the hunger and the desire for it is just as important. It's like being a poet at heart, without being able to write poetry. Now some fellowswritepoetry of a sort—but they are not poets—not in their thought and lives, Sunny. I'd rather be a poet than write poetry. Do you understand that?"
"Yes—I understand," said Sunny softly. "The liddle butterfly when he float on the flower, he cannot write those poetry—but he are a poem; and the honourable cloud in those sky, so sof', so white, so loavely he make one's heart leap up high at chest—thas poem too!"
"Oh, Sunny, what a perfect treasure you are! I'm blessed if you don't understand a fellow better than one of his own countrywomen would."
To cover a feeling of emotion and sentiment that invariably swept over Jerry when he talked with Sunny on the subject of beauty, and because moreover there was that about her own upturned face that disturbed him strangely, he always assumed a mock serious air, and affected to tease her.
"But to get back to you, Sunny. Now, all you've got to do to please the Syndicate is tobe a good girlandbeautiful. It ought not to be hard, because you see you've got such a bully start. Keep on, and who knows you'll end not only by being the most beautiful girl in Japan, but the Emperor himself—the Emperor of Japan, mark you, will step down from his golden throne, wave his wand toward you and marry you! So there you'll be—the royal Empress of Japan."
"The Emperor!" Sunny's head went reverently to the mats. Her eyes, very wide, met Jerry's in shocked question. "You want me marry wiz—the Son of Heaven?HowI can do those?"
Again her head touched the floor, her curls bobbing against flushed cheeks.
"Easy as fishing," solemnly Jerry assured her. "They say the old dub is quite approachable, and you've only to let him see you once, and that will be enough for him. Just think, Sunny, what that will mean to you, and to us all—to be Empress of Japan. Why, you will only need to wave your hand or sleeve, and all sorts of favours will descend upon our heads. You will be able to repay us threefold for any insignificant service we may have done for you. Once Empress of Japan, you can summon us back to these fair isles and turnover to us all the political plums of the Empire. As soon as you give us the high sign, old scout, we'll be right on the job."
"Jerry, you like very much those plum?"
"You better believe I do."
Sunny, chin in hand, was off in a mood of abstraction. She was thinking very earnestly of the red plum tree that grew above the tomb of the great Lord of Kakodate. He, that sleeping lord, would not miss a single plum, and she would go to the cemetery in the early morning, and when she had accomplished the theft, she would pray at the temple for absolution for her sin, which would not be so bad because Sunny would have sinned for love.
"A penny for your thoughts, Sunny!"
"I are think, Jerry, that some things you ask me I can do; others, no—thas not possible. Wiz this liddle hand I cannod dip up the ocean. Thas proverb of our Japan. I cannod marry those Emperor, and me? I cannod also make beauty on my face."
"Give it a try, Sunny," jeered Jerry, laughing at her serious face. "You have no idea what time and art will do for one."
"Time—and—art," repeated Sunny, like a child learning a lesson. She comprehended time, but she had inherited none of the Japanesetraits of patience. She would have wished to leap over that first obstacle to beauty. Art, she comprehended, as a physical aid to a face and form unendowed with the desired beauty. She carried her problem to her maid.
"Hatsu, have you ever seen the Emperor?"
Both of their heads bobbed quickly to the mat.
Hatsu had not. She had, it is true, walked miles through country roads, on a hot, dry day, to reach the nearest town through which the Son of Heaven's cortege had once passed. But, of course, as the royal party approached, Hatsu, like all the peasants who had come to the town on this gala day, had fallen face downward on the earth. It was impossible for her therefore to see the face of the Son of Heaven. However, Hatsu had seen the back of his horse—the modern Emperor rode thus abroad, clear to the view of subjects less humble than Hatsu, who dared to raise their eyes to his supreme magnificence. Sunny sighed. She felt sure that had she been in Hatsu's place, she would at least have peeped through her fingers at the mikado. Rummaging among her treasures in the bamboo chest,Sunny finally discovered what she sought—a picture of the Emperor. This she laid before her on the floor, and for a long, long time she studied the features thoughtfully and anxiously. After a while, she said with a sigh, unconscious of the blasphemy, which caused her maid to turn pale with horror,
"I do not like his eye, and I do not like his nose, and I do not like his mouth. Yet, Hatsusan, it is the wish of Jerry-sama that I should marry this Emperor, and now I must make myself so beautiful that it will not hurt his eye if he deigns to look at me."
Hatsu, at this moment was too overcome with the utter audacity of the scheme to move, and when she did find her voice, she said in a breathless whisper:
"Mistress, the Son of Heaven already has a wife."
"Ah, yes," returned Sunny, with somewhat of the careless manner toward sacred things acquired from her friends, "but perhaps he may desire another one. Come, Hatsusan. Work very hard on my face. Make me look like ancient picture of an Empress of Japan. See, here is a model!" She offered one of her mother's old prints, that revealed a court lady in trailing gown and loosened hair, an upliftedfan half revealing, half disclosing a weirdly lovely face, as she turned to look at a tiny dog frolicking on her train.
It was a long, a painful and arduous process, this work of beautifying Sunny. There was fractious hair to be darkened and smoothed, and false hair to help out the illusion. There was a small face that had to be almost completely made over, silken robes from the mother's chest to slip over the girlish shoulders, shining nails to be polished and hidden behind gold nail protectors, paint and paste to be thickly applied, and a cape of a thousand colours to be thrown over the voluminous many coloured robes beneath.
The sky was a dazzling blaze of red and gold. Even the deepening shadows were touched with gilt, and the glory of that Japanese sunset cast its reflection upon the book-lined walls of the big living room, where the Americans, lingering over pipe and hook, dreamily and appreciatively watched the marvellous spectacle through the widely opened windows. But their siesta was strangely interrupted, for, like a peacock, a strange vision trailed suddenly into the room and stood with suspended breath, fan half raised, in the manner of a court lady of ancient days, awaitingjudgment. They did not know her at first. This strange figure seemed to have stepped out of some old Japanese print, and was as far from being the little Sunny who had come into their lives and added the last touch of magic to their trip in Japan.
After the first shock, they recognised Sunny. Her face was heavily plastered with a white paste. A vivid splotch of red paint adorned and accentuated either slightly high cheek bone. Her eyebrows had disappeared under a thick layer of paste, and in their place appeared a brand new pair of intensely black ones, incongruously laid about an inch above the normal line and midway of her forehead. Her lips were painted to a vivid point, star shaped, so that the paint omitted the corners of Sunny's mouth, where were the dimples that were part of the charm of the Sunny they knew. Upon the girl's head rested an amazing ebony wig, one long lock of which trailed fantastically down from her neck to the hem of her robe. Shining daggers and pins, and artificial flowers completed a head dress. She was arrayed in an antique kimona, an article of stiff and unlimited dimensions, under which were seven other robes of the finest silk, each signifying some special virtue. A train trailedbehind Sunny that covered half the length of the room. Her heavily embroidered outer robe was a gift to her mother from a prince, and its magnificence proclaimed its antiquity.
It may be truly said for Sunny that she indeed achieved her own peculiar idea of what constituted beauty, and as she swept the fan from before her face with real art and grace there was pardonable pride in her voice as she said:
"Honourable Mr. sirs, mebbenowyou goin' say I are beautifullest enough girl to make those Emperor marry wiz me."
A moment of tense silence, and then the room resounded and echoed to the startled mirth of the young barbarians. But no mirth came from Sunny, and no mirth came from Jerry. The girl stood in the middle of the room, and through all her pride and dazzling attire she showed how deeply they had wounded her. A moment only she stayed, and then tripping over her long train and dropping her fan in her hurry, Sunny fled from the room.
Jerry said with an ominous glare at the convulsed Bobs, Monty and even the aforesaid melancholy Jinx:
"It was my fault. I told her art and time would make her beautiful."
"The devil they would," snorted Bobs. "I'd like to know how you figured that art and time could contribute to Sunny's natural beauty. By George, she got herself up with the aid of your damned art, to look like a valentine, if you ask me."
"I don't agree with you," declared Jerry hotly. "It's all how one looks at such things. It's a symptom of provincialism to narrow our admiration to one type only. Such masters as Whistler of our own land, and many of the most famous artists of Europe have not hesitated to take Japanese art as their model. What Sunny accomplished was the reproduction of a living work of art of the past, and it is the crassest kind of ignorance to reward her efforts with laughter."
Jerry was almost savage in his denunciation of his friends.
"I agree with you," said Professor Barrowes snapping his glasses back on his nose, "absolutely, absolutely. You are entirely right, Mr. Hammond," and in turn he glared upon his "class" as if daring anyone of them to question his own opinion. Jinx indeed did feebly say:
"Well, for my part, give me Sunny as we know her. Gosh! I don't see anything pretty in all that dolled-up stuff and paint on her."
"Now, young gentleman," continued Professor Barrowes, seizing the moment to deliver a gratuitous lecture, "there are certain cardinal laws governing art and beauty. It is not a matter of eyes, ears and noses, or even the colour of the skin. It is how we are accustomed to look at a thing. As an example, we might take a picture. Seen from one angle, it reveals a mass of chaotic colour that has no excuse for being. Seen from another point, the purpose of the artist is clearly delineated, and we are trapped in the charm of his creation. Every clime has its own peculiar estimate, but it comes down each time to ourselves. Poetically it has been beautifully expressed as follows: 'Unless we carry the beautiful with us, we will find it not.' Ahem!" Professor Barrowes cleared his throat angrily, and scowled, with Jerry, at their unappreciative friends.
Goto, salaaming deeply in the doorway, was sonorously announcing honourable dinner for the honourable sirs, and coming softly across the hall, in her simple plum coloured kimona with its golden obi, the paint washed from herface, and showing it fresh and clean as a baby's, Sunny's April smile was warming and cheering them all again.
Jinx voiced the sentiment of them all, including the angry professor and beauty loving Jerry:
"Gosh! give me Sunny just as she is, without one plea."
CHAPTER V
There comes a time in the lives of all young men sojourning in foreign lands when the powers that be across the water summon them to return to the land of their birth.
Years before, letters and cablegrams not unsimilar to those that now poured in upon her friends came persistently across the water to the father of Sunny. Then there was no Professor Barrowes to govern and lay down the law to the infatuated man. He was able to put off the departure for several years, but with the passage of time the letters that admonished and threatened not only ceased to come, but the necessary remittances stopped also. Sunny's father found himself in the novel position of being what he termed "broke" in a strange land.
As in the case of Jerry Hammond, whose people were all in trade, there was a strange vein of sentiment in the father of Sunny. To his people indeed, he appeared to be one ofthose freaks of nature that sometimes appear in the best regulated families, and deviate from the proper paths followed by his forbears. He had acquired a sentiment not merely for the land, but for the woman he had taken as his wife; above all, he was devoted to his little girl. It is hard to judge of the man from his subsequent conduct upon his return to America. His marriage to the mother of Sunny had been more or less of a mercenary transaction. She had been sold to the American by a stepfather anxious to rid himself of a child who showed the clear evidence of her white father, and greedy to avail himself of the terms offered by the American. It was, in fact, a gay union into which the rich, fast young man thoughtlessly entered, with a cynical disregard of anything but his own desires. The result was to breed in him at the outset a feeling that he would not have analysed as contempt, but was at all events scepticism for the seeming love of his wife for him.
It was different with his child. His affection for her was a beautiful thing. No shadow of doubt or criticism came to mar the love that existed between father and child. True, Sunny was the product of a temporary union, a ceremony of the teacup, which neverthelessis a legal marriage in Japan, and so regarded by the Japanese. Lightly as the American may have regarded his union with her mother, he looked upon the child as legally and fully his own, and was prepared to defend her rights.
In America, making a clean breast to parents and family lawyers, he assented to the terms made by them, on condition that his child at least should be obtained for him. The determination to obtain possession of his child became almost a monomania with the man, and he took measures that were undeniably ruthless to gratify his will. It may be also that he was at this time the victim of agents and interested parties. However, he had lived in Japan long enough to know of the proverbial frailty of the sex. The mercenary motives he believed animated the woman in marrying him, her inability to reveal her emotions in the manner of the women of his own race; her seeming indifference and coldness at parting, which indeed was part of her spartan heritage to face dire trouble unblenching—the sort of thing which causes Japanese women to send their warrior husbands into battle with smiles upon their lips—all these things contributed to beat the maninto a mood of acquiescence to the demands of his parents. He deluded himself into believing that his Japanese wife, like her dolls, was incapable of any intense feeling.
In due time, the machinery of law, which works for those who pay, with miraculous swiftness in Japan, was set into motion, and the frail bonds that so lightly bound the American to his Japanese wife, were severed. At this time the mother of Sunny had been plastic and apparently complacent, though rejecting the compensation proffered her by her husband's agents. The woman, who was later to be known as Madame Many Smiles, turned cold as death, however, when the disposition of her child was broached. Nevertheless her smiling mask betrayed no trace to the American agents of the anguished turmoil within. Indeed her amiability aroused indignant and disgusted comment, and she was pronounced a soulless butterfly. This diagnosis of the woman was to be rudely shattered, when, beguiled by her seeming indifference, they relaxed somewhat of their vigilant espionage of her, and awoke one morning to find that the butterfly had flown beyond their reach.
The road of the mendicant, hunger, cold, and even shame were nearer to the gates ofNirvanna than life in splendour without her child. That was all part of the story of Madame Many Smiles.
History, in a measure, was to repeat itself in the life of Sunny. She had come to depend for her happiness upon her friends, and the shock of their impending departure was almost more than she could bear.
She spent many hours kneeling before Kuonnon, the Goddess of Mercy, throwing her petitions upon the lap of the goddess, and bruising her brow at the stone feet. It is sad to relate of Sunny, who so avidly had embraced the Christian faith, and was to the proud Mr. Sutherland an example of his labours in Japan, that in the hour of her great trouble she should turn to a heathen goddess. Yet here was Sunny, bumping her head at the stone feet. What could the Three-in-one God of the Reverend Mr. Sutherland do for her now? Sunny had never seen his face; but she knew well the benevolent comprehending smile of the Goddess of Mercy, and in Her, Sunny placed her trust. And so:
"Oh, divine Kuonnon, lovely Lady of Mercy, hear my petition. Do not permit my friends to leave Japan. Paralyse their feet. Blind their eyes that they may not see the way.Pray you close up the west ocean, so no ships may take my friends across. Hold them magnetised to the honourable earth of Japan."
Sitting back on her heels, having voiced her petition anxiously she scanned the face of the lady above her. The candles flickered and wavered in the soft wind, and the incense curled in a spiral cloud and wound in rings about the head of the celestial one. Sunny held her two hands out pleadingly toward the unmoving face.
"Lovely Kuonnon, it is true that I have tried magic to keep my friends with me, but even the oni (goblins) do not hear me, and my friends' boxes stand now in the ozashiki and the cruel carts carry them through the streets."
Her voice rose breathlessly, and she leaned up and stared with wide eyes at the still face above her, with its everlasting smile, and its lips that never moved.
"It is true! It is true!" cried Sunny excitedly. "The mission sir is right. There is no living heart in your breast. You are only stone. You cannot even hear my prayer. How then will you answer it?"
Half appalled by her own blasphemy, she shivered away from the goddess, casting terrified glances about her, and still sobbing in thisgasping way, Sunny covered her face with her sleeve, and wended her way from the shrine to her home.
Here the dishevelled upset of the house brought home to her the unalterable fact of their certain going. Restraint and gloom had been in the once so jolly house, ever since Professor Barrowes had announced the time of departure. To the excited imagination of Sunny it seemed that her friends sought to avoid her. She could not understand that this was because they found it difficult to face the genuine suffering that their going caused their little friend. Sunny at the door of the living room sought fiercely to dissemble her grief. Never would she reveal uncouth and uncivilised tears; yet the smile she forced to her face now was more tragic than tears.
Jinx was alone in the room. The fat young man was in an especially gloomy and melancholy mood. He was wracking his brain for some solution to the problem of Sunny. To him, Sunny went directly, seating herself on the floor in front of him, so that he was obliged to look at the imploring young face, and had much ado to control the lump that would rise in Jinx's remorseful throat.
"Jinx," said Sunny persuasively, "I do notlike to stay ad this Japan all alone also. I lig' you stay wiz me. Pray you do so, Mr. dear Jinx!"
"Gosh! I only wish I could, Sunny," groaned Jinx, sick with sympathy, "but, I can't do it. It's impossible. I'm not—not my own master yet. I did the best I could for you—wrote home and asked my folks if—if I could bring you along. Doggone them, anyway, they've kept the wires hot ever since squalling for me to get back."
"They do nod lig' Japanese girl?" asked Sunny sadly.
"Gosh, what do they know about it? I do, anyway. I think you're a peachy kid, Sunny. You suit me down to the ground, I'll tell the world, and you look-a-here, I'm coming back to see you, d'ye understand? I give you my solemn word I will."
"Jinx," said Sunny, without a touch of hope in her voice, "my father are say same thing; but—he never come bag no more."
Monty and Bobs, their arms loaded with sundry boxes of sweets and pretty things that aforetime would have charmed Sunny, came in from the street just then, and with affected cheer laid their gifts enticingly before the unbeguiled Sunny.
"See here, kiddy. Isn't this pretty!"
Bobs was swinging a long chain of bright red and green beads. Not so long before Sunny had led Bobs to that same string of beads, which adorned the counter of a dealer in Japanese jewelry, and had expressed to him her ambition to possess so marvellous a treasure. Bobs would have bought the ornament then and there; but it so happened that his finances were at their lowest ebb, his investment in the Syndicate having made a heavy inroad into the funds of the by no means affluent Bobs. The wherewithal to purchase the beads on the eve of departure had in fact come from some obscure corner of his resources, and he now dangled them enticingly before the girl's cold eyes. She turned a shoulder expressive of aversion toward the chain.
"I do nod lig' those kind beads," declared Sunny bitterly. Then upon an impulse, she removed herself from her place before Jinx, and kneeled in turn before Bobs, concentrating her full look of appeal upon that palpably moved individual.
"Mr. sir—Bobs, I do nod lig' to stay ad Japan, wizout you stay also. Please you take me ad America wiz you. I are not afraid those west oceans. I lig' those water. It is verysad for me ad Japan. I do nod lig' Japan. She is not Clistian country. Very bad people live on Japan. I lig' go ad America. Please you take me wiz you to-day."
Monty, hovering behind Bobs, was scowling through his bone-ribbed glasses. Through his seventeen-year-old brain raced wild schemes of smuggling Sunny aboard the vessel; of choking the watchful professor; of penning defiant epistles to the home folks; of finding employment in Japan and remaining firmly on these shores to take care of poor little Sunny. The propitiating words of Bobs appeared to Monty the sheerest drivel, untrue slush that it was an outrage to hand to a girl who trusted and believed.
Bobs was explaining that he was the beggar of the party. When he returned to America, he would have to get out and scuffle for a living, for his parents were not rich, and it was only through considerable sacrifice, and Bobs' own efforts at work (he had worked his way through college, he told Sunny) that he was able to be one of the party of students who following their senior year at college were travelling for a year prior to settling down at their respective careers. Bobs was too chivalrous to mention to Sunny the fact that hiscontribution to the Sunny Syndicate had caused such a shrinkage in his funds that it would take many months of hard work to make up the deficit; nor that he had even become indebted to the affluent Jinx in Sunny's behalf. What he did explain was the fact that he expected soon after he reached America, to land a job of a kind—he was to do newspaper work—and just as soon as ever he could afford it, he promised to send for Sunny, who was more than welcome to share whatever two-by-four home Bobs may have acquired by that time.
Sunny heard and understood little enough of his explanation. All she comprehended was that her request had been denied. Her own father's defective promises had made her forever sceptical of those of any other man in the world. Jinx in morose silence pulled fiercely on his pipe, brooding over the ill luck that dogged a fellow who was fat as a movie comedian and was related to an army of fat-heads who had the power to order him to come and go at their will. Jinx thought vengefully and ominously of his impending freedom. He would be of age in three months. Into his own hands then, triumphantly gloated Jinx, would fall the fortune of the house of Crawford, andthenhis folks would see! He'd show 'em!And as for Sunny—well, Jinx was going to demonstrate to that little girl what a man of his word was capable of doing.
Sunny, having left Bobs, was giving her full attention to Monty, who showed signs of panic.
"Monty, I wan' go wiz you ad America.Pleasetake me there wiz you. I nod make no trobble for you. I be bes' nize girl you ever goin' see those worl. Please take me, Monty."
"Aw—all right, I will. You bet your life I will. That's settled, and you can count on me.I'mnot afraid ofmyfolks, if the other fellows are of theirs. I can do as I choose. I'll rustle up the money somehow. There's always a way, and they can say what they like at home, I intend to do things in my own way. My governor's threatening to cut me off; all the fellows' parents are—they're in league together, I believe, but I'm going to teach them all a lesson. I'll not stir a foot from Japan without you, Sunny. You can put that in your pipe and swallow it.Imean every last wordIsay."
"Now, now, now—not so hasty, young man, not so hasty! Not so free with promises you are unable to fulfil. Less words! Less words! More deeds!"
Professor Barrowes, pausing on the threshold, had allowed the junior member of the party he was piloting through Japan to finish his fiery tirade. He hung up his helmet, removed his rubbers, and rubbing his chilled hands to bring back the departed warmth, came into the room and laid the mail upon the table.
"Here you are, gentlemen. American mail. Help yourselves. All right, all right. Now, if agreeable, I desire to have a talk alone with Miss Sunny. If you young gentlemen will proceed with the rest of your preparations I daresay we will be on time. That will do, Goto. That baggage goes with us. Loose stuff for the steamer. Clear out."
Sunny, alone with the professor, made her last appeal.
"Kind Mr. Professor, please do not leave me ad those Japan. I wan go ad America wiz you. Please you permit me go also."
Professor Barrowes leaned over, held out both his hands, and as the girl came with a sob to him, he took her gently into his arms. She buried her face on the shabby coat of the old professor who had been such a good friend to her, and who with all his eccentricities had been so curiously loveable and approachable.After she had cried a bit against the old coat, Sunny sat back on her heels again, her two hands resting on the professor's knees and covered with one of his.
"Sunny, poor child, I know how hard it is for you; but we are doing the best we can. I want you to try and resign yourself to what is after all inevitable. I have arranged for you to go to the Sutherlands' home. You know them both—good people, Sunny, good people, in spite of their pious noise. Mr. Blumenthal has charge of your financial matters. You are amply provided for, thanks to the generosity of your friends, and I may say we have done everything in our power to properly protect you. You are going to show your appreciation by—er—being a good girl. Keep at your studies. Heed the instructions of Mr. Sutherland. He has your good at heart. I will not question his methods. We all have our peculiarities and beliefs. The training will do you no harm—possibly do you much good. I wish you always to remember that my interest in your welfare will continue, and it will be a pleasure to learn of your progress. When you can do so, I want you to write a letter to me, and tell me all about yourself."
"Mr. Professor, if I study mos' hard, mebbeI grow up to be American girl—jos same as her?"
Sunny put the question with touching earnestness.
"We-el, I am not prepared to offer the American girl as an ideal model for you to copy, my dear, but I take it you mean—er—that education will graft upon you our western civilisation, such as it is. It may do so. It may. I will not promise on that score. My mind is open. It has been done, no doubt. Many girls of your race have—ah—assimilated our own peculiar civilisation—or a veneer of the same. You are yourself mainly of white blood. Yes, yes, it is possible—quite probable in fact, that if you set out to acquire western ways, you will succeed in making yourself—er—like the people you desire to copy."
"And suppose I grow up lig' civilised girl,thenI may live ad America?"
"Nothing to prevent you, my dear. Nothing to prevent you. It's a free country. Open to all. You will find us your friends, happy—I may say—overjoyed to see you again."
For the first time since she had learned the news of their impending departure a faint smile lighted up the girl's sad face.
"I stay ad Japan till I get—civil—ise."
She stood up, and for a moment looked down in mournful farewell on the seamed face of her friend. Her soft voice dropped to a caress.
"Sayonara,moskindes' man ad Japan. I goin' to ask all those million gods be good to you."
And Professor Barrowes did not even chide her for her reference to the gods. He sat glaring alone in the empty room, fiercely rubbing his glasses, and rehearsing some extremely cutting and sarcastic phrases which he proposed to pen or speak to certain parents across the water, whose low minds suspected mud even upon a lily. His muttering reverie was broken by the quiet voice of Jerry. He had come out of the big window seat, where he had been all of the afternoon, unnoticed by the others.
"Professor Barrowes," said Jerry Hammond, "if you have no objection, I would like to take Sunny back with me to America."
Professor Barrowes scowled up at his favourite pupil.
"I do object, I do object. Emphatically. Most emphatically. I do not propose to allow you, or any of the young gentlemen entrusted to my charge, to commit an act that may beof the gravest consequences to your future careers."
"In my case, you need feel under no obligations to my parents. I am of age as you know, and as you also know, I purpose to go my own way upon returning home. My father asked me to wait till after this vacation before definitely deciding upon my future. Well, I've waited, and I'm more than ever determined not to go into the shops. I've a bit of money of my own—enough to give me a start, and I purpose to follow out my own ideas. Now as to Sunny. I found that kid. She's my own, when it comes down to that. I practically adopted her, and I'll be hanged if I'm going to desert her, just because my father and mother have some false ideas as to the situation."
"Leaving out your parents from consideration, I am informed that an engagement exists between you and a Miss—ah—Falconer, I believe the name is, daughter of your father's partner, I understand."
"What difference does that make?" demanded Jerry, setting his chin stubbornly.
"Can it be possible that you know human nature so little then, that you do not appreciate the feelings your fiancée is apt to feeltoward any young woman you choose to adopt?"
"Why, Sunny's nothing but a child. It's absurd to refer to her as a woman, and if Miss Falconer broke with me for a little thing like that, I'd take my medicine I suppose."
"You are prepared, then, to break an engagement that has the most hearty approval of your parents, because of a quixotic impulse toward one you say is a child, but, young man, I would have you reflect upon the consequences to the child. Your kindness would act as a boomerang upon Sunny."
"What in the world do you mean?"
"I mean that Sunny is emphatically not a child. She was fifteen years old the other day. That is an exceedingly delicate period in a girl's life. We must leave the bloom upon the rose. It is a sensitive period in the life of a girl."
A long silence, and then Jerry:
"Right-oh! It's good-bye to Sunny!"
He turned on his heel and strode out to the hall. Professor Barrowes heard him calling to the girl upstairs in the cheeriest tone.
"Hi! up there, Sunny! Come on down, you little rascal. Aren't you going to say bye-bye to your best friend?"
Sunny came slowly down the stairs. At the foot, in the shadows of the hall she looked up at Jerry.
"Now remember," he rattled along with assumed merriment, "that when next we meet I expect you to be the Empress of Japan."
"Jerry," said Sunny, in a very little voice, her small eerie face seeming to shine with some light, as she looked steadily at him, "I lig' ask you one liddle bit favour before you go way from these Japan."
"Go to it. What is it, Sunny. Ask, and thou shalt receive."
Sunny put one hand on either of Jerry's arms, and her touch had a curiously electrical effect upon him. In the pause that ensued he found himself unable to remove his fascinated gaze from her face.
"Jerry, I wan' ask you, will you please give me those American—kiss—good-a-bye."
A great wave of tingling emotions swept over Jerry, blinding him to everything in the world but that shining face so close to his own. Sunny a child! Her age terrified him. He drew back, laughing huskily. He hardly knew himself what it was he was saying:
"I don't want to, Sunny—I don't——"
He broke away abruptly and, turning,rushed into the living room, seized his coat and hat, and was out of the house in a flash.
Professor Barrowes stared at the door through which Jerry had made his hurried exit. To his surprise, he heard Sunny in the hall, laughing softly, strangely. To his puzzled query as to why she laughed, she said softly:
"Jerry are afraid of me!"
And Professor Barrowes, student of human nature as he prided himself upon being, did not know that Sunny had stepped suddenly across the gap that separates a girl from a woman, and had come into her full stature.
CHAPTER VI
Time and environment work miracles. It is interesting to study the phases of emotion that one passes through as he emerges from youth into manhood. The exaggerated expressions, the unalterable conclusions, the tragic imaginings, the resolves, which he feels nothing can shake, how sadly and ludicrously and with what swiftness are they dissipated.
It came to pass that Sunny's friends across the sea reached a period where they thought of her vaguely only as a charming and amusing episode of an idyllic summer in the Land of the Rising Sun. Into the oblivion of the years, farther and farther retreated the face of the Sunny whose April smile and ingenuous ways and lovely face had once so warmed and charmed their young hearts.
New faces, new scenes, new loves, work and the claims and habits that fasten upon one with the years—these were the forces that engrossed them. I will not say that she was altogether forgotten in the new life, but at least she occupiedbut a tiny niche in their sentimental recollections. There were times, when a reference to Japan would call forth a murmur of pleasureable reminiscences, and humorous references to some remembered fantastic trick or trait peculiar to the girl, as:
"Do you remember when Sunny tried to catch that nightingale by putting salt near a place where she thought his tail might rest? I had told her she could catch him by putting salt on his tail, and the poor kid took me literally."
Jinx chuckled tenderly over the memory. In the first year after his return to America Jinx had borne his little friend quite often in mind, and had sent her several gifts, all of which were gratefully acknowledged by the Reverend Simon Sutherland.
"Will you ever forget" (from Bobs) "her intense admiration for Monty's white skin? She sat on the bank of the pool for nearly an hour, with the unfortunate kid under water, waiting for her to go away, while she waited for him to come out, because she said she wanted to see what a white body looked like 'wiz nothing but skin on for clothes.' I had to drag her off by main force. Ha, ha! I'll never forget her indignation, or her questionwhether Monty was 'ashamed his body.' The public baths of Nagasaki, you know, were social meeting places, and introductions under or above water quite the rule."
"I suppose," said Jerry, pulling at his pipe thoughtfully, "we never will get the Japanese point of view anent the question of morals."
"It's the shape of their eyes. They see things slant-wise," suggested Jinx brilliantly.
"But Sunny's eyes, as I recall them," protested Bobs, "were not slanting, and she had their point of view. You'll recall how the Proff had much ado to prevent her taking her own quaint bath in our 'lake' in beauty unadorned."
A burst of laughter broke forth here.
"Did he now? He never told me anything about that."
"Didn't tell me either, but Iheardhim. He explained to Sunny in the most fatherly way the whole question of morals from the day of Adam down, and she got him so tangled up and ashamed of himself that he didn't know where he was at. However, as I recall it, he must have won out in the contention, for you'll recall how she voiced such scathing and contemptuous criticism later on the public bathers of Japan, whom she said were 'igrant and nodgod nize Americazan manner and wear dress cover hees body ad those bath.'"
"Ah, Sunny was a darling kid, take it from me. Just as innocent and sweet as a new-born babe." This was Jinx's sentimental contribution, and no voice arose to question his verdict.
So it will be perceived that her friends, upon the rare occasions when she was recalled to memory, still held her in loving, if humorous regard, and it was the custom of Jerry to end the reminiscences of Sunny with a big sigh and a dumping of the ash from his pipe, as he dismissed the subject with:
"Well, well, I suppose she's the Empress of Japan by now."
All of them were occupied with the concerns and careers that were of paramount importance to them. Monty, though but in his twenty-first year, an Intern at Bellevue; Bobs, star reporter on theComet; Jinx, overwhelmingly rich, the melancholy and unwilling magnet of all aspiring mothers-in-law; Jerry, an outlaw from the house of Hammond, though his engagement to Miss Falconer bade fair to reinstate him in his parents' affections. He was doggedly following that star of which he had once told Sunny. Eight hours per day in an architect's office, and four or six hoursin his own studio, was the sum of the work of Jerry. He "lived in the clouds," according to his people; but all the great deeds of the world, and all of the masterpieces penned or painted by the hand of man, Jerry knew were the creations of dreamers—the "cloud livers." So he took no umbrage at the taunt, and kept on reaching after what he had once told Sunny was that Jade of fortune—Beauty.
Somewhere up the State, Professor Barrowes pursued the uneven tenor of his way as Professor of Archeology and Zoology in a small college. Impetuous and erratic, becoming more restless with the years, he escaped the irritations and demands of the class room at beautiful intervals, when he indulged in a passion of research that took him into the far corners of the world, to burrow into the earth in search of things belonging to the remote dead and which he held of more interest than mere living beings. His fortunes were always uncertain, because of this eccentric weakness, and often upon returning from some such quest his friends had much ado to secure him a berth that would serve as an immediate livelihood. Such position secured, after considerable wire pulling on the part of Jerry and other friends, Professor Barrowes would be nosooner seated in the desired chair, when he would begin to lay plans for another escape. An intimate friendship existed between Jerry and his old master, and it was to Jerry that he invariably went upon his return from his archeological quests. Despite the difference in their years, there was a true kinship between these two. Each comprehended the other's aspirations, and in a way the passion for exploration and the passion for beauty is analogous. Jerry's parents looked askance at this friendship, and were accustomed to blame the Professor for their son's vagaries, believing that he aided and abetted and encouraged Jerry, which was true enough.
Of all Sunny's friends, Professor Barrowes, alone, kept up an irregular communication with the Sutherlands. Gratifying reports of the progress of their protégé came from the missionary at such times. Long since, it had been settled that Sunny should be trained to become a shining example to her race—if, in fact, the Japanese might be termed her race. It was the ambition of the good missionary to so instruct the girl that she would be competent to step into the missionary work, and with her knowledge of the Japanese tongue and ways, her instructor felt assured they couldexpect marvels from her in the matter of converting the heathen.
It is true the thought of that vivid little personality in the grey rôle of a preacher, brought somewhat wry faces to her friends, and exclamations even of distaste.
"Gosh!" groaned Jinx sadly, "I'd as lieves see her back on the tightrope."
"Imagine Sunny preaching! It would be a raving joke. I can just hear her twisting up her eight million gods and goddesses with our own deity," laughed Bobs.
"Like quenching a firefly's light, or the bruising of a butterfly's wings," murmured Jerry, dreamily, his head encircled with rings of smoke.
But then one becomes accustomed to even a fantastic thought. We accredit certain qualities and actions to individuals, and, in time, in our imaginations at least, they assume the traits with which we have invested them. After all, it was very comforting to think of that forlorn orphan child in the safe haven of a mission school.
So the years ran on and on, as they do in life, and as they do in stories such as this, and it came to pass, as written above, that Sunny disappeared into the fragrant corners of apretty memory. There is where Sunny should perhaps have stayed, and thus my story come to a timely end.
Consider the situation. A girl, mainly of white blood, with just a drop of oriental blood in her—enough to make her a bit different from the average female of the species, enough, say, to give a snack of that savage element attributed to the benighted heathen. Rescued by men of her father's race from slavery and abuse; provided for for the rest of her days; under the instruction of a zealous and conscientious missionary and his wife, who earnestly taught her how to save the souls of the people of Japan. Sunny's fate was surely a desirable one, and as she progressed on the one side of the water, her friends on the other side were growing in sundry directions, ever outward and upward, acquiring new responsibilities, new loves, new claims, new passions with the passing of the years. What freak of fate therefore should interpose at this juncture, and thrust Sunny electrically into the lives of her friends again?
CHAPTER VII
On a certain bleak day in the month of March, J. Addison Hammond, Jr., tenaciously at work upon certain plans and drawings that were destined at a not far distant date to bring him a measure of fame and fortune, started impatiently from his seat and cursed that "gosh-ding-danged telephone."
Jerry at this stage of his picturesque career occupied what is known in New York City, and possibly other equally enlightened cities, as a duplex studio. Called "duplex" for no very clear reason. It consists of one very large room (called "atelier" by artistic tenants and those who have lived or wanted to live in France). This room is notable not merely for its size, but its height, the ceiling not unsimilar to the vaulted one of a church, or a glorified attic. Adjustable skylights lend the desired light. About this main room, and midway of the wall, is a gallery which runs on all four sides, and on this gallery are doors opening into sundry rooms designated as bedrooms.The arrangement is an excellent one, since it gives one practically two floors. That, no doubt, is why we call it "duplex." We have a weakness for one floor bungalows when we build houses these days, but for apartments and studios the epicure demands the duplex.
In this especial duplex studio there also abode one t, or as he was familiarly known to the friends of Jerry Hammond, "Hatty." Hatty, then, was the valet and man of all work in the employ of Jerry. He was a marvellous cook, an extraordinary house cleaner, an incomparable valet, and to complete the perfections of this jewel, possessed solely by the apparently fortunate Jerry, his manners, his face and his form were of that ideal sort seen only in fiction and never in life. Nevertheless the incomparable Hatton, or Hatty, was a visible fact in the life and studio of Jerry Hammond.
Having detailed the talents of Hatty, it is painful here to admit a flaw in the character of the otherwise perfect valet. This flaw he had very honestly divulged to Jerry at the time of entering his employ, and the understanding was that upon such occasions when said flaw was due to have its day, the master was to forbear from undue criticism or fromdischarging said Hatton from his employ. Hatton, at this time, earnestly assured the man in whose employ he desired to enter, that he could always depend upon his returning to service in a perfectly normal state, and life would resume its happy way under his competent direction.
It so happened upon this especial night, when that "pestiferous" telephone kept up its everlasting ringing—a night when Jerry hugged his head in his hands, calling profanely and imploringly upon Christian and heathen saints and gods to leave him undisturbed—that Hatton lay on his bed above, in a state of oblivion from which it would seem a charge of dynamite could not have awakened him.
For the fiftieth or possibly hundredth time Jerry bitterly swore that he would fire that "damned Englishman" (Hatton was English) on the following day. He had had enough of him. Whenever he especially needed quiet and service, that was the time the "damned Englishman" chose to break loose and go on one of his infernal sprees. For the fourth time within half an hour Jerry seized that telephone and shouted into the receiver:
"What in hades do you want?"
The response was a long and continuous buzzing, through which a jabbering female tongue screeched that it was Y. Dubaday talking. It sounded like "Y. Dubaday," but Jerry knew no one of that name, and so emphatically stated, adding to the fact that he didn't know anyone of that name and didn't want to, and if this was their idea of a joke——"
He hung up at this juncture, seized his head, groaned, walked up and down swearing softly and almost weeping with nervousness and distraction. Finally with a sigh of hopelessness as he realised the impossibility of concentrating on that night, Jerry gathered up his tools and pads, packed them into a portfolio, which he craftily hid under a mass of papers—Jerry knew where he could put his hands on any desired one—got his pipe, pulled up before the waning fire, gave it a shove, put on a fresh log, lit his pipe, stretched out his long legs, put his brown head back against the chair, and sought what comfort there might be left to an exasperated young aspirant for fame who had been interrupted a dozen times inside of an hour or so. Hardly had he settled down into this comparative comfort when that telephone rang again. Jerry was angry now—"hoppingmad." He lifted that receiver with ominous gentleness, and his voice was silken.
"What can I do for you, fair one?"
Curiously enough the buzzing had completely stopped and the fair one's reply came vibrating clearly into his listening ear.
"Mr. Hammond?"
"Well, what of it?"
"Mr. Hammond, manager of some corporation or company in Japan?"
"What are you talking about?"
"If you'll hold the wire long enough to take a message from a friend I'll deliver it."
"Friend, eh? Who is he? I'd like to get a look at him this moment. Take your time."
"Well, I've no time to talk nonsense. This is the Y. W. C. A. speaking, and there's a young lady here, who says she—er—belongs to you. She——"
"What? Say that again, please."
"A young lady that appears to be related to you—says you are her guardian or manager or something of the sort. She was delivered to the Y. by the Reverend Miss Miriam Richardson, in whose care she was placed by the Mission Society of—er—Naggysack, Japan. One minute, I'll get her name again."