Fromthe square, gray platform of Shimbashi station, terraced by stone steps, hung with tiled eaves, and surrounded by a swarming school of black jinrikishas, each with a chattering, gesticulating, blue-clad human horse before it, one dives at will into the iridescent life of modern Yedo. Regarded as a city, it is little more than a collection of villages carelessly swept together; little communities where the same streets catch up altered names; districts with opposing trades, antagonistic feast-days, and rival deities.
Tanners preëmpt an unsavory ward. Shoemakers claim for themselves a network of small streets. The dry-goods merchants command an avenue. Pipe-sellers, wine-merchants, tobacconists, book-sellers, marketmen, carpenters,—each guild tends to make a centre for itself. Perhaps, as one consequence of this segregation, Tokio becomes the stronghold of street peddlers. It matters little to the housewife that the nearest market is four miles away, when sections of that market, strapped to boyish shoulders, go crying past her gate with the punctuality of planets. Tokio is a place where circulating libraries literally circulate; where perambulating oil-shops fill lamps on the patron's kitchen step or in the glass frame at his gate, and then stop to light them; where the tailor finishes a quilt or an overcoat on the bedroom floor, and the hair-dresser needs no local habitation.
In a great semicircle crowded near the Red Gate of the Imperial University, live and study and brawl and bluster the students,—the future Nogis, Togos, Kurokis, Saigos, Itos, and Oyamas of their race,—now no more than restless young spirits in a recognized democracy of their own. Some of them cook their own meals and patch their own faded hakama,—a species of heroism to make death on a battlefield grow tame. Others "board" in one of the long, barn-like dormitories, orin a convenient cheap lodging-house, often three and four in a room, at the enormous rate of fifty cents a week. Poverty seems to them admirable, nothing whatever to be ashamed of. The Japanese youth of the samurai class is bred to a distaste of bodily luxury. Should one of their number show a leaning toward soft cushions and rich food, the others ridicule him, call him "O Sharè Sama," the Tokio equivalent of "Dandy," and say that his soul grows fat.
Yuki sped through all, breathless with the wonder of home-returning. The three jinrikishas, Tetsujo, of course, in the lead, went one after the other in a straight line, as though on an invisible track. Whether in a lane four feet wide, or in an avenue two hundred, this goose-like manner of procedure never changed. Old familiar street-corners, familiar pines, changed shop fronts, appealed to the girl with a sense of reality. Her eyes filled and her heart beat faster as she caught her first glimpse, after four years, of towering moated walls where crawled the "Dragon Pines" of Iyemitsu, and of the high dark roof now sheltering her beloved ruler.
Beyond the palace and its moats came foreignized Yedo. Sidewalks were here, though pedestrians still preferred the middle of the street, turning aside good-naturedly at the warning "Hek! hek!" of approaching vehicles. The streets, conspicuously broad, were paved with concrete or with stone. On every side rose buildings just completed, of brick and stone, or great steel frames for other edifices. It might have been Connecticut. The sidewalk trees, set rigidly in hollowed concrete basins, refused to grow in Japanese fashion, and had the poise of elms. Down centres of these streets horse-cars jangled. Work was already started on the superseding electric line. Yuki observed it all with conscious pride, yet her eyes brightened with new eagerness as another quick turn plunged them once more into the heart of feudal Yedo.
The streets narrowed now to lanes, bordered on each side with shops,—mere open booths,—flung wide to the dim rear plaster wall. Shelves holding various wares came down sheer to the matted floor. In the middle of the space generally sat the master, while skirmishing about, sometimes in a gloomyslit of a passage to the rear, sometimes up or down stepladder-like stairs to a crouching upper story, could be seen the small apprentices, or kozo. The life of the Japanese kozo forms a literature to itself; but this is not the place to begin it. These were the narrow streets Yuki had longed for. Here were the shop signs swinging wonderful tones of blue, dark crimson, and white, here the great gold Chinese ideograph, sprawling across long banners.
In a sort of pause between districts came a hint of suburbs, and, winding through it, Little Pebble River. A river is never more mysterious than when carrying its deep secrets through a busy town. This one, the Koishikawa, dominated the section through which it passed, giving its own name, and establishing certain small industries of dyeing, grinding, fishing, and boating possible nowhere else in Yedo, until the great central artery of the Sumida is reached. Cherry-trees joined finger-tips above the Koishikawa,—real grass crept down its banks to trail finger in the hurrying tide.
It was all beautiful, all real, all familiar. From afar the clanging of beaten metal smote the ears. Yuki remembered that the main bridge led almost to the great gate of the Arsenal. A moment later it came into view. Tall chimneys pulsed black worlds of smoke, and corrugated roofs scowled above spiked, enclosing walls. At every gate stood a sentry-box and a soldier in blue uniform.
"A mighty noise, young lady!" volunteered Yuki's jinrikisha man, in a hoarse shout. He nodded his head toward the clamor, and then looked backward to bestow on her a confidential grin. In the river, just in front of the arsenal, great muddy barges were poled in and beached,—with loads of coal and copper, iron and wood.
"Yes, indeed, it is a terrible noise," answered Yuki politely. "They must be very busy behind those walls." She sighed heavily, but her sigh was lost in the roar of flame. The fact that her country was at that very moment on the verge of war with Russia, perhaps with France also,—with France, Pierre's country!—was one of those thoughts she was trying to keep away.
"They work with double force by lamp and by sun," boastedthe jinrikisha man, when they had passed the most deafening uproar. "Oh, but the Russians think us children to be cheated and lied to! But we are preparing a lesson for the cowardly bears,—we do not fear them! Look, O Jo San!" He chuckled loudly, and without relaxing his wonderful mechanical trot or falling an inch behind the pace of the two preceding kuruma, unwrapped from his wrist the inevitable twisted tenugui, or hand towel. Keeping one end under his palm, he let the rest stream backward, like a flag. Instead of the usual bird, flower, or landscape etching in indigo blue, the pattern represented a fleet of Japanese war-ships in full engagement with the Russian navy. Under the water-level great communities of deep-sea fish looked expectantly upward, chop-sticks and rice-bowls in their fins. A few Russian sailors, the first of a gorging repast, had commenced to sink downward. The eyes of the fish were admirable in their expression of calm certainty. Thus, before the firing of Togo's first challenge, did the Tokio populace enjoy prophetic visions.
Beyond the arsenal, and its huddled concourse of working-men's houses waiting just without the walls, the Koishikawa took a more definite turn to the north. The Onda party, following it, came soon to a region of green lanes and pleasant gardens. The clamor of metal-workers died away. One knew that birds lived in the groves. Before them the highland of the district loomed in great dark masses, and splendid trees of camphor and of pine soared clear against the blue. At foot of the hill "Kobinata" (Little Sunshine) the three jinrikishas halted in unison, and the three runners looked with bovine yet inquiring faces, each upon his living burden. The hillside road, now to be taken, rose steep and white between bamboo hedges. Onda motioned his coolie to lower the shafts. "I am a heavy man, and with my own feet will take the slope," he said.
"No, no, honorable master. Indeed I say no!" protested the coolie, while making the greatest haste to obey. "It is not fitting that so exalted a person as your divine lordship should walk. Though I break my worthless bones, I will draw you up that precipice!"
Onda, smiling slightly, stepped into the road. Iriya would have followed his example, but he motioned, bidding her, and likewise Yuki, to remain seated. He paused to tuck his blue robe a few inches higher, catching the pointed end-fold in his belt. Iriya and her grunting bearer went by him. He remained standing, waiting for Yuki. Their eyes met, and both smiled. He put one powerful hand to the back of the girl's vehicle, his face being then about on a level with hers, and, ascending the hill beside her, used his supplementary strength at the very steep or stony places.
The girl sat very slim and straight, looking eagerly about her. "Father, what is it about this land of ours that makes all things so honorably different,—so strangely beautiful?"
"My daughter, it is not well to speak boastfully, even of one's land," answered Tetsujo; but his fine, strong face did not bear out the reproof of his words.
"There will be a gate now, soon to the left,—a little gate of straw thatching, tied with loops of black hemp twine! A pine-tree sends one stiff arm across it. On a clear day one sees, in that green frame, the snows of Fuji-san! Oh, can I bear it, father? Imustspeak. My heart aches already with the loveliness. See, even the trees know that they are beautiful; each has a soul! The trees of America have no souls."
"No, from what I have heard and seen of the Americans, their trees have only hardwood centres. It is what the Americans would prefer."
"Not all, not all," protested Yuki. "I have a friend, that blonde girl on the hatoba (wharf),—I have other friends who understand us strangely. I think in a previous life they must have been Japanese."
"Bah! It is but poor respect you pay our country," answered Tetsujo, half-teasingly. "Ah," he cried, catching her arm, "the little gate, my child,—the pine-tree." Yuki's coolie had stopped without bidding. His face, too, wore the smile of one who loves and understands. The little gate rose straight and square in its deep gold color of old straw, the black knots made fantastic decoration along the ridge, the pine-tree stretched an arm of everlasting green, and over the straight line of the leaves, far, far out to the West, hungthe frail cone of Fuji, like a silver bowl inverted. Yuki did not try to speak. Her father and the coolie feasted also in silence. In a few moments the little procession, still wordless, began again the steep ascent.
Now Tetsujo's eyes went to the pebbled ground. His next remark seemed at first incongruous. "Did you see the belching of black smoke, my Yuki, and did you hear the clashing of scourged steel?"
"Yes, father, and the smoke creeps after us like an evil spirit, even to the foot of Little Sunshine Hill."
"Nippon is soon to enter upon mortal struggle with a great and merciless foe. All arts of war and treachery will be used against us. We may not survive."
"Father, it must not come,—the gods must divert it!"
"Every samurai will give his life. Every child and woman of his race will lie, self-slain, in blood, before the yielding. And yet defeat may be decreed. To be blind is to be weak. We must face unflinchingly the ultimate horror."
"The old gods must protect us!" cried the girl.
"You are a Christian. The Christian gods will be invoked to aid our enemies."
"Oh, father, you hurt me! When I wished to become a Christian, like the other girls, I wrote you many letters,—you did not oppose it then."
"Neither do I oppose it now," said Tetsujo. "In things of religious faith each soul should seek an individual path. Because of your intelligence I allowed you to decide. But in patriotism,—in loyalty to your native land,—I still have responsibility. Ah, you are my one child, and most dearly beloved; but if ever I should see in you one taint of selfish swerving,—if I should suspect that through the foreign education the sinews of your love were weak—"
Yuki stopped him by a gesture. Her head was proudly lifted. Her eyes gleamed, and her thin nostrils shook,—"Such thoughts as these are not to be spoken between a samurai and his child. My very heart is knit of the fibres of that word 'Nippon.'"
"You are certain, Yuki?" Tetsujo's question and his eyes dug deep.
Yuki hesitated less than a fraction of thought. "I am certain," she said.
A silence rose between them. Yuki's bright joyousness felt a drifting cloud. What did her father mean? Had Prince Haganè spoken ill of her? The promise to Pierre gnawed like a hungry worm. She fought anew the phantoms of love and approaching war. The two laden jinrikisha coolies tugged on with ostentatious groans. The hand towels now came into requisition for the mopping of streaming brows. The road began to curve into a level space, from which hedge-bordered lanes radiated. Again Tetsujo spoke.
"That new American envoy,—he with the nose of a sick vulture and the fine yellow eye,—is he favorable to us? Is he one that at all understands us?"
"Indeed, my father, he is of wonderful understanding. He and Baron Kanrio are as brothers in thought. Did not Prince Haganè speak of him?"
Ignoring the question, Tetsujo went on. "The younger of the two women,—that straw-colored maiden who seems standing on the edge of a small typhoon,—she, I suppose, is the school friend, the Miss Todd, you referred to."
"Yes," answered Yuki, a little resentfully. "And she is considered beautiful. I think her augustly beautiful, even as Amaterasu, our Sun Goddess."
"Not ours. It may be that other nations have also sun goddesses," said Tetsujo, significantly. "To me all foreign females are of hideous aspect. They look and strut like fowls. And the two young males,—sons of Mr. Todd, I take it,—they are as the painted toys sold in temple booths. Yet, if the foreigners have been kind, it is well to express gratitude, and to send gifts as costly as my purse will allow."
"The Todds are rich,—very, very rich,—even as our great silk merchants," cried Yuki, in indignation. "They do not want gifts, or expect them. It is not an American custom. Gwendolen, my friend, my sister, wishes only to be with me, freely, as we have been for four years past."
Tetsujo considered. "I could not refuse you a continuance of friendship, my child, though I confess it will irk me greatly to see those strange creatures on my mats. After the first fewdays of your home-coming,—in a week, perhaps,—you can speak again of this desire."
Yuki's heart sank. A week,—and she had promised to see them to-morrow, perhaps this afternoon! She opened her lips to remonstrate, and then thought better of it. If he felt it a concession to admit Gwendolen, daughter of the new American minister, what would he say to Pierre? Deliberately she fought down the rising host of apprehensions. "No," she whispered, "I shall not dwell upon it. I must not spoil my home-coming with uncertain fears. I shall try to be untroubled until I can tell my father all."
Well along the top of the hill, Onda re-entered his kuruma, and with the word "hidari" (left), started the little string of vehicles down a path that ran in wavering lines between hedges of various growths. Many were of dwarf bamboo or sa-sa, other of a higher bamboo, springing from resilient stems twenty feet in air. A few were of the small-leafed dōdan, a bush which turns to wet vermilion with the frost. Several were of intertwisted thorn, a cruel and relentless guardian. One showed a flat green wall like that of a three-story city house jutting upon a pavement; but the masonry was all of growth, rafters of thick stems, and facing of the close-clipped evergreen mochi-tree. The small tiled gate jutting from the centre of the lower edge seemed the entrance of a cave. Doubtless behind this imposing and misleading front nestled an unpretentious cot, a well-sweep, a small vegetable and flower garden, and a handful of old trees.
Onda's gate, some hundreds of yards further to the north, emerged in wooden simplicity from a sa-sa hedge. Along the street the bamboo only showed. Within it ran a line of well-trained thorn. This fence was characteristic of the race which had planned it; Onda's father and grandfather, and many generations before, had owned this spot of ground in Yedo.
Tetsujo, although the first to arrive, remained in his kuruma, while Iriya and Yuki made haste to descend. The former went at once to the gate, pulling aside a thin wooden panel. A little gate-bell jangled, and at the musical summons wooden-shod feet were heard, running down the pathway from the house. Old Suzumè, shrivelled, yellow, her black eyesdarting excitement everywhere, fell on her knees in the gateway. She began immediately to mutter a jumble of ceremonious phrases, in the pauses drawing her breath with ferocious energy. Behind her showed a moon-faced maiden, who stared first, as if bewildered, and then suddenly fell to the earth beside Suzumè.
"That is sufficient," said Tetsujo, now descending and pushing between them as he entered the gate. "Here, Suzumè, take my purse, and let these good rascals rob us as little as possible. Go within, Maru, and prepare to remove the foreign shoes from the feet of your young mistress."
Maru, quaking like a jelly, as she always did when addressed directly by the "august master," obeyed instantly, and knelt at the stone house-step to receive the shoes. Suzumè unwillingly remained at the gate to haggle with the three jinrikisha men.
When the shoes were reverently drawn off, dusted on Maru's blue striped apron, and set side by side on the stone step, the little handmaid disappeared around the corner of the house. A moment later was heard the scurrying of soft stockinged feet within.
Yuki stretched a hand toward the closed shoji.
"No, dear, wait an instant," said Iriya, hurriedly interposing. "Let Maru San open the shoji. She has been rehearsing this for a year."
Yuki drew back. "I have forgotten so many things," she murmured, flushing.
"They are not lost; they will spring quickly in the warm rain of home love," said Tetsujo, behind them.
The shoji were sliding apart, both at once, with noiseless precision. In the opening Maru's globe-like countenance beamed. Now, for the first time, Iriya performed the equivalent of an introduction. "Maru San," she said, in her pleasant voice, "this is our o jo san (honorable young lady of the house), Onda Yuki-ko, for whom we have been longing."
"Hai, o jo san! Go kigen yō! Irasshai!" palpitated the little servant, asking her to enter.
"I have written you often of Maru," Iriya went on, turning to her daughter.
Tetsujo brushed unceremoniously through the group, and strode alone to the big corner guest-room at the rear.
"She is the orphaned child of Suzumè's dead husband's step*-son," continued Iriya, placidly. "About two years ago she was left quite destitute, so of course her natural home was here. Maru is a good girl, and of much help to us."
"Ah, Mistress, Mistress," cried old Suzumè, nearly tripping on her clogs to reach them, "you know well that Maru is a very cat in the sun for laziness." The speaker struggled hard to look severe.
"Hai, hai," said Maru, in deprecating confirmation, and bobbed over to the matting.
"Why, o jo san, in my opinion Maru is not worth the honorable rice she puts in her gluttonous mouth," said Suzumè, on a high note of satisfaction. "Yet the kind mistress here, besides food and occasional outworn garments, allows her sixty sen each month for spending. Ah, Kwannon Sama, of divine compassion, will reward our mistress for her kind heart!"
Iriya laughed, a merry, low laugh, as young as Yuki's own.
"I thank you, Suzumè; but do you realize that the master sits alone in the zashiki, with no tea, no coal, no—"?
"Dō-mo!" exclaimed the old woman, and scrambled rapidly to her feet. "But I become more and more the fool with age, as a tree gathers lichen. I will attend."
"Be at leisure, honorable, ancient relative; I will fetch the tea," said Maru.
"No," cried Yuki, suddenly stretching out a hand; "I want to take it just as I used to as a little girl. I think it will please my father. Let me take it, Suzumè San!"
Maru paused with round, incredulous eyes. "Arà!" cried old Suzumè, scarcely knowing whether she were the more pleased or astonished. "A fashionable, wonderful young lady, educated in America, with numberless young Japanese noblemen waiting to marry her,—and she wishes to bear the tray like a tea-house musumè! Ma-a-a! How strange! Yet it is a good desire. The mistress's face shines with it. It shows your heart has not changed color, o jo san. I will prepare atonce. Come, lazy fatling!" This last remark was of course addressed to Maru.
In his wide, dim zashiki, or reception-room,—analogous to the drawing-room of the West,—Tetsujo sat alone. He was glad for a moment of solitude. His mind did not move swiftly on any subject. The bewilderment of his first vision of Yuki, changed from a clinging Japanese child to an alert, self-possessed American, had not altogether passed. Then that bobbing, blue-eyed he-creature on the hatoba,—he had given sour food for thought. What language was it that the thing had tried to speak, what wish to utter? Well, at least Yuki was safe now among her home people, away from the influence of all such mountebanks. In a few days she would be wishing to don again her Japanese dress, and then he could begin to believe he had a child.
The Onda residence faced directly to the north, thus giving the big guest-chamber and the outlying garden a southern exposure. Two sides of the room, the south and the west, had removable shoji. The inner walls were partly of plaster, partly of sliding, opaque panels of gold, called fusuma. These were painted in war-like designs by Kano artists. To-day the western shoji were all closed; but the sun, just reaching them, shed a mellow tone of light throughout the room. All southern shoji were out, admitting, as it were, the fine old garden as part of the decoration of the room. The day had deepened into one of those quite common to the Tokio winter, where the sunshine battles with a white glamour, scarcely to be called mist, and yet with the softening tone of it. No young spring growth was waking in the garden. All was sombre-green, ochre, or cold gray,—pines and evergreen azaleas, heaped rocks, stone lanterns, bridge, and the pear-shaped water of a pond. In line and structure the garden was still a thing of beauty, planned in an artist's mind. It had the look of a stained-glass window done in faded hues, of old tapestry, of wrought metal. At the corner of the guest-room veranda stood a huge old plum-tree just coming into white bloom.
Smiling Yuki, in tailor-made American gown and black stockings, brought in the tray and knelt before her father. The old warrior flushed with pleasure. "Why, this is better than I could have thought!"
"I told you I was just your little girl," said Yuki. "And oh, father, I do feel so queerly young and real again! I see everything around me just as I wish. It is like making things come true in dreams." Tetsujo caught her by a slender shoulder, looking deep, deep into answering eyes. For once, no troubled thoughts rose to blur the vision. Suddenly he smiled. "Then makemydream come true, my Yuki; remove the shapeless foreign garment."
Yuki sprang to her feet, laughing with delight. "Yes, yes, that is the next real thing to do, of course. I will borrow a kimono from mother, as my trunks have not arrived. But don't let them bring in dinner till I get back. I am so hungry for a real dinner!"
"The soup shall not even be poured," promised Tetsujo. She gave a little bow like the dart of a humming-bird, and would have sped past him, but he, catching at a fold of her skirt, detained her. She stopped, and seeing the expression of his face, her own sobered. "Welcome, my daughter," said Tetsujo, in a tone that trembled; "welcome, child of my ancestors,—the last of an honorable race!"
Nextto the zashiki, or guest-room, around by the corner of the big plum-tree on which, now, great snowy pearls of buds opened with every hour, was the master's benkyo-beya, or study, where sets of Chinese and Japanese classics, often running into a hundred volumes, had snug place in fragrant cabinets of unvarnished cypress wood.
Contiguous to this, along the western side, and bounded ten feet farther by the fusuma of her parents' chamber, Yuki's little sleeping-room was tucked away. The stately garden, curving around by the plum-tree, spread here wider paths and less pretentious hillocks. Just in front of Yuki's shoji and the narrow veranda which ran unchecked along the south and west of the house, two sedate gray stones led into a gravelled space. Here were flower-beds somewhat in foreign fashion, but without bordering plants or bricks. Many of the small bushes were resultant from seed-packets mailed by Yuki in Washington. Imported pansies, alyssum, geraniums, marigolds, and ragged-robins grew here in springtime in friendly proximity to indigenous asters, columbine, pinks, and small ground-orchids. These flower spaces were now vacant but for tiny springing communities of chrysanthemum shoots, bare stems of peony with swollen red buds at the tip, and a few indispensable small pines. Beyond it all was the tall hedge of sa-sa shutting out the street, and its ugly inner rind of thorn.
The eastern side of the house contained, so to speak, its executive offices, dining-room, servants' quarters, pantry, kitchen, and well-shed. Along this portion (except by the kitchen, which stepped down unaided to a bare earth floor) strips of narrow veranda and convenient stepping-stones led into a vegetable garden, small wood-yard, and strawberry patch. The longest bit of veranda had the dignity of a rail,—amere upright strip of board, edged heavily on top with bamboo, and pierced with openings cut into the shapes of swallows.
TETSUJO'S HOUSE AND GARDEN
TETSUJO'S HOUSE AND GARDEN
TETSUJO'S HOUSE AND GARDEN
It was here, the morning after Yuki's arrival, that the women of the household were to be found. Suzumè chattered incessantly as she washed the breakfast-dishes and passed inward to arrange them on the pantry shelves. Little Maru San, a few feet away, out in the sunshine of the garden, scrubbed at pieces of a ripped-up kimono in a tub that stood high on its own three legs. Afterward she rinsed the bits and spread them smoothly to dry on a board. The tailless white cat, disdainfully satiate after a meal of tea, rice, and fish-bones, curled itself up in a fork of the bare persimmon-tree to sleep. Maru's favorite bantam cock, followed at a respectful distance by two wives and an unidentified black chick, sauntered along the kitchen drain, his yellow eye slanted for a swimming flake of white. The clear, windless air had a smell of new-washed leaves and of foreign violets. Yuki's heart stirred with the deep homeliness of it all. Iriya, noting her expression, asked brightly, "Is my dear one just a little happy to be at home?"
"No, mother, not a little happy, but very, very happy. It has been a long time."
Iriya was hanging out a bed-quilt of plaid silk, the squares three feet across and of superb coloring. "Yes," she repeated, "it has been a long time."
"Why did you let me go at all?" cried Yuki, passionately. "I was your only one. You must have missed me sorely. Sometimes I feel that I never should have gone."
"Hush, my jewel." Iriya gave an apprehensive glance toward the other side of the house. "Say not such words where the kind father may hear. He was so proud of you. It was his dearest wish, and Lord Haganè, our daimyo, advised it also. You see, we had no son, and Tetsujo was not willing to give me up that another wife might bring this hope to pass. He has been a good master to me, has Onda Tetsujo."
A glow of loving pride softened the regret that this thought of the son, that had not been given, always brought to her.
Suzumè looked up from her dish-tub, wrinkling with shrewd smiles. "You have no son—but what of it? Some day youwill have a grand son-in-law, a young prince, maybe. Yuki-ko will make a marriage to bring glory to us all."
Yuki drooped her head. "I don't want to think of marriage yet. I just want to stay here in this precious home and try to win back some of those four long years which I have lost."
"But you are nineteen, Miss Yuki,—nearer twenty, in fact. A terrible age for a young lady of rank to be caught single."
"I wish it could be as you wish, my Yuki," sighed Iriya. "But, as Suzumè says, you are nearing twenty. I pray the gods that my son-in-law may not be of too exalted station to receive adoption into this family, instead of your being absorbed into his. That would be the greatest joy life holds for me. But, alas! I am a selfish, talkative old woman to let such thoughts escape. I should wish your marriage to be only that which may possibly serve your country and repay your father for his sacrifices."
Yuki lifted a small queer look. "In America, where my father sent me, I was taught, in the matter of marriage, to do some of the thinking myself."
Iriya caught her breath. Suzumè stopped washing to stare. Maru, looking up with her round mouth formed for a "Ma-a-a!" jostled the tub in her excitement. It went over with a "swash." The soapy water, with drifting islands of blue cloth, flowed out swiftly, carrying the pompous bantam and his family on the unexpected tide. The cat opened one green eye, then the other.
"Come, my child," said Iriya, quickly, to Yuki, "condescend to bear me company to the guest-chamber. I have the flowers to arrange. Perhaps, in America, you have learned some new and beautiful composition."
Yuki's queer look deepened into a naughty little laugh and shrug as she turned to obey. She knew perfectly why her mother wished to get her from the hearing of Suzumè and Maru. Tokio is not free from gossip, and, though Suzumè was devoted to the family she served, she dearly loved the start, the incredulity, the deepening interest of a listener's face.
To her mother's last suggestion Yuki replied, "I fear not,mother. The only idea of arrangement they have in America is to get many different flowers together, chop them to the same length of stem, and push them down evenly into a shapeless vase with other flowers painted on the sides."
"Ah," said Iriya, crestfallen and surprised, "we shall not then adopt the foreign arrangement."
The mother and daughter clasped hands, swinging them as children do, and moved along the narrow veranda. They were now skirting the closed shoji of the dining-room. In turning the corner, the plum-tree came into full sight. A hundred blossoms must have opened since the dawn. Yuki broke from her mother with a cry, ran to the tree, and threw her arms about the great trunk. "Oh, you are the most beautiful tree in the whole world!" she said aloud, and looked with adoration up into its shining branches.
As Iriya reached her, she lowered her gaze. "Do you remember, mother, that morning four years ago, when I went away, how I clung to this tree last of all, sobbing from my heart the poem that my father taught me?—
"Though bereft and poor,I in exile wanderingFar on mount and moor,Happy plum beside my door,Oh, forget not thou the spring."
"Though bereft and poor,I in exile wanderingFar on mount and moor,Happy plum beside my door,Oh, forget not thou the spring."
"I remember well," said Iriya, and drew her daughter's outstretched hand to her cheek.
Something shone suddenly in Yuki's eyes. "And I wept so passionately that father, half in tears himself, came and entreated me to cease. He said that if I shed more tears upon it, his tree, like that of Michizanè, might rise through the air and follow me to exile."
"Yes," smiled Iriya; "often have I recalled it in the time of spring, standing under this tree alone."
"It really did follow me after all, you know," the girl went on shyly. "It came at night, in dreams, when you and father could not miss it. Did it ever fail to return before the dawn?"
"No," returned Iriya, with deep gravity. "The dear tree loves us also. Never once did it fail to return."
Tetsujo strode toward them from his study. "How can one ponder on the classics, with pigeons cooing beneath his very eaves?"
Yuki clung to him. "You had the classics for four long years when I was away."
"So had I water through those four long years, small pigeon,—yet while I live must I thirst. The classics feed deep wells of the soul."
He put a strong, loving hand about her, and drew her near. It sprang into Yuki's mind to speak now of her foreign friends, to ask permission to visit them or, at least, to send them her Tokio address. Pierre's beautiful face and blue eyes reproached her. But this moment was too sweet for jeopardy. She pressed her cheek against the rough blue cotton of her father's shoulder. Iriya, stealing nearer, put also a loving arm about the girl. The sunshine made a halo for the three. The plum, loosening its first petals, sent them down in fragrant benediction.
So her day passed, a wonderful day, steeped in love and childish recollections. At night, the winds being chill, and the fear of robbers inherent in the Japanese mind, all shoji, and after them the wooden storm panels (amado), were tightly drawn. In the ashes of the great brass hibachi balls of charcoal glowed like incandescent apples. A lamp was suspended from the ceiling, swinging but a few feet above their heads. Here the four women of the household grouped themselves. Tetsujo had gone out for a call. The pieces of kimono, ripped and washed that morning by Maru San, were now to be refashioned. Iriya, Suzumè, and Maru drew forth little sewing-boxes and prepared for work. Yuki, half sitting, half lying on the floor, fondled the tailless cat, and declared boldly that she hated sewing and was not going to begin that part of a Japanese woman's drudgery quite so early.
"All good wives love sewing, particularly on the master's nightclothes," said Suzumè, reprovingly, and peering over the rim of huge horn spectacles toward the culprit.
"The o jo san will tell us something of foreign habits as we sew," suggested Iriya, the peacemaker.
"Yes—yes—I will be what is called over there thebureau of information," laughed wilful Yuki. "Any questions from you, Mr. Cat?" she cried, holding the drowsy animal high above her and smiling into its blinking eyes.—"Do American cats like rice?" "No." "Queer cats, you say,—and so they think of you." "Do they wear tails?" "Yes, long ones." "What do they use them for?" "For getting pinched in doors." "No more questions, Pussy San? Ah, you will never learn. Ruskin says that curiosity forms tendrils of the mind."
"What I would like to feel sure of, honorable young lady, is this," began Suzumè, primly, with a disapproving glance toward the cat.
"We are ready, Madame Suzumè, speak on," said Yuki, cuddling pussy back into her sleeve.
"Is it really true, as newspapers and pictures say, that women over there, even women of decent character, go to evening entertainments with no clothes above the waist, dance with red-faced men until they are on the verge of apoplexy, and then have to be restored by much fanning and a cold medicine called 'punch'?"
"Not altogether, good nurse," said Yuki, fighting hard to retain a semblance of gravity. "They wear cloth and flowers, feathers and jewelry above the waist, and arrange them with great beauty; but it is true that they dance with men, and that their shoulders and arms are bare."
"That is a strange custom," mused Suzumè. "Even our Sacred Empress condescends to go with bare arms. Why, I wonder, do they wish to expose arms more than legs? There is more leg, and in a supple young girl it is more shapely."
"That is too hard a thing for me," laughed Yuki. "Well, Maru, your eyes are big and solemn like the Owl San in our pine. What is your question?"
Maru, after much giggling and blushing, confessed to a desire to know, once for all, whether foreigners had toes like real people, or whether, as she had been assured from childhood, they possessed but a single horny hoof, which, from desire to hide the ugliness, they kept in pointed leather cases known as shoes.
"That is false entirely. I have seen hundreds of barefoot children in America, and they all had ten toes, even as we."
Maru seemed cast down. "Ma-a-a! what foolish tales are spread," she murmured. "Doubtless the foreigners have similar strange beliefs of us."
"It is what the great creatures eat that turns me sick," cried old Suzumè, and nearly perforated a finger in her vehemence. "Their soup is like the contents of a slop-bucket, with warm grease swimming on the top. The stuff would choke in a decent person's throat. And then the great heaps of animal flesh,—and greasy vegetables, and implements like gardener's tools to eat them with! And then—Kwannon preserve us—the unspeakable nightmares that come even after the tasting of such food!"
"Arà!" cried the maid, roused to new excitement by this recital of horror, "it is said that America is an honorably highly civilized country, and Nippon merely a divine half-civilized country, but I thank the gods who have given me to live in this half-civilized country."
At bedtime, Yuki, creeping between soft, fragrant futons, drew a deep sigh of childish content. The andon in the corner, shedding its gentle, paper-screened light, continued the impression of sunshine. The girl smiled to find herself again counting the lapped cedar boards of the ceiling, "Hitotsu—futatsu—mitsu—yotsu—" following them into uncertain dimness at the far end of the chamber. As in childhood she speculated upon the possibilities of that small black knot-hole left vacant in the wood. How much smaller now it was than four years ago! Still there was a chance, a pygmy probability, that a very small nedzumi might creep through, and, falling to the floor, scamper over mats and bedding, and—here came the shudder!—over the very face of a sleeper. She drew the bedclothes up spasmodically, then smiled to think how bright would be the eyes of the little mouse, twinkling in semi-darkness. In a moment more, with the smile still on her lips, she was asleep.
So a second day passed, and a third,—hushed, golden days, too precious to be imperilled. With the fourth morning,Sunday, came a change. In the night a storm had risen, sweeping down from Kamschatka along the Yezo coast to the wide unsheltered plain of Yedo. Here it wallowed like a great beast in a field, snorting with fury, crushing trees, fences, and houses, and fighting back the black clouds that would have crowded in upon it.
Through Yuki's troubled sleep came the sounds of vehicles rattling on foreign streets, and the blurred chime of church-bells. Her first conscious thought was, "It is Sunday. Gwendolen and I must be sure to go to service."
The wooden amado of the house chattered with fright. The wind gave long, derisive howls as it swept under the low-hanging roof, clutched and shook the rafters, and then darted out to the heart of the storm once more. Yuki realized slowly that she was not in America at all, that she was at home, in Tokio. With a slower, heavier recognition came the knowledge that her friend Gwendolen was here also, and if she were in Washington could not seem more remote.
She heard old Suzumè and Maru straining to open the amado, then Tetsujo's voice calling loudly from his chamber, "Keep them all shut on the eastern side!"
"Oh, my dear plum-tree! It will be torn like mist," said the girl aloud. She sat upright, patting instinctively the loops of her hair, dressed now in Japanese fashion. The floating wick of her andon fell over the edge of the saucer and went out, leaving the room in grayer darkness. The foreign clock that hung in the kitchen rang out the hour of seven. "What gloom! The storm must be terrible indeed!" A moment after the girl said, with a shudder, "This is the day on which I am to speak of my love. I hear his voice calling through the wind. I must wait no longer. Yes, I will speak to-day."
At breakfast the small family of three was silent and preoccupied. The one glimpse they had taken of the shivering, naked plum-tree would have sufficiently accounted for the depression. Iriya and Yuki sat a little behind the master, eating from their small rice-bowls, and attending in turn upon his wants. As Suzumè crept in to remove the half-emptied dishes, Yuki said to her father, "Father, a littlelater, when you have smoked and read your paper, may I speak with you?"
"Why, certainly, my child," said Tetsujo, kindly, looking up from the damp printed sheet he had already unfurled; "though I may have but few thoughts apart from this terrible storm."
"It is a terrible storm," shuddered Iriya. "A great camphor-tree in the Zen Temple garden has fallen. It was a goblin-tree, and the priests fear evil."
"I spoke not of the storm in the material universe, but of that vast political tempest brewing over us. Our minister leaves St. Petersburg to-morrow. War has practically come."
No comment was made. The three tacitly avoided, each, the glance of the other. Iriya rose quietly, then Yuki. In the door-frame the girl paused. "I shall return in half an hour, father."
Tetsujo nodded. "I shall be here."
In her own room Yuki moved about mechanically, putting into place her few indispensable possessions,—a silver brush, comb, and hand-glass, her white prayer-book and neat Bible, a picture of Gwendolen in a burnt-leather frame, and a lacquered box containing a second photograph, not of Gwendolen, and a package of letters, all addressed in the same hand. She fought to keep her imagination from the coming war. Its dark omen only strengthened her determination to have things understood. She prayed for strength and self-control. Punctual to the moment she entered the guest-room, bowing again to her father. He looked up from his brooding revery. Something in the girl's face made him ask, "Ah, have you indeed a matter of importance? My little Yuki has gone. This is a woman who comes to speak with me."
"Alas, father. Childhood, like the petals of the plum-tree, vanishes at the breath of storms."
"What storm can have found you so early, my little one?"
Yuki drew in a long breath, and steadied herself for a deliberate reply. In the pause Tetsujo leaned out, and with one motion of his powerful hand flung a panel of the shoji to one side, giving a view of the drenched and storm-tormented garden. On the veranda floor, usually so smooth, beatenplum-petals clung like bits of white leather. The drip from the low-tiled roof enclosed them in the bars of a silver cage.
"This is my distress, father," began Yuki. "I am a Japanese girl, with my first loyalty toward you and my native country;—yet, in that new land where you sent me,—I have come—I have grown honorably to feel, almost without warning, the—influence of a—person."
Tetsujo looked faintly surprised. "Indeed, I trust so, my child. You would be but a poor, unresponsive creature to have felt no influences. It is from such things that character and knowledge are builded. There were many persons who influenced you, I take it,—some for good, perhaps some for evil. To an intelligent mind a warning is valuable. Now, at home, you will have the leisure to sort and adapt such impressions, casting away those that are trivial and employing those which may be of service to Japan."
"It is augustly as you indicate, dear father," returned Yuki, the distress in her dark eyes deepening. "I attempted to observe many things. But the influence I spoke of is not that kind you are thinking. It—it—is a very special influence. In America they call it—love." She bowed her head over slightly. A faint pink tide of embarrassment showed on her forehead and in the small bared triangle of her throat.
Tetsujo controlled himself well. "You mean—love—'ai'—the love of a man and a woman who wish to marry?"
"In America one thinks very differently of such matters," said Yuki, her eyes still lowered. "Yet I suppose the feeling is honorably the same everywhere. Yes, father, it is of such love that I now must tell you."
"We have many Japanese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country, of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,—but the term which you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life."
"Father," she pleaded, "I am still a Japanese. I know how it must seem to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I must speak."
"You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?"
"To him—that one—I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve.
"Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother, Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better than I."
His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls talk—and the matrons. All theatres treat of it—and books are full of it. You sent me no warning—I could not know, of myself. Please, honorably, restrain anger against me."
"I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But gods! this is a foul spectre to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man—this person—spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio."
"Father, father," cried the girl, "youarebecoming angry. I did not have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met—our noble baron."
If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly undeceived. "The gamester—the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an alien! No Japanese—not even a Yedo scavenger—could have been guilty of that misdeed!"
"But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends,the Todds," said Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like flames about this new thought.
"And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,—did he encourage your filial impiety?"
"It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate, Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.
"Ah, I might have known it," said Tetsujo. His relief was evident. "Only women! Mere cackling geese. America echoes to their shrill voices. That is of no consequence."
"In that country women are of much consequence, and everyone speaks openly of affairs of love and—marriage," persisted Yuki, who now clung half hopelessly to this one tangible point.
"And you yourself—ingrate—would willingly bestow yourself, without a word from me or your mother, upon a man who is a stranger, and whose conduct, heard from your partial lips, impresses me as characteristic of a fool and an outcast?"
His brows were black and twitching. Yuki knew that she must take her stand now or never. "You see only the side of Japanese convention, father. I have given to him a promise. When your consent and that of my mother are gained, I shall be glad to be his wife."
Tetsujo started convulsively, then controlled himself. The sudden checking in of passion recoiled through the very air. With rigid hands he stuffed and lighted his small pipe. When he spoke his voice sounded flat and hollow, like beaten wood.
"Such a promise, unratified by me, of course means nothing, unless—it be defiance of heaven and of natural decency. It binds no one—you least of all. Consider it unsaid."
Yuki looked directly upon him. Her soft feminine chin grew a little squarer, more like his. "That promise is given, father. Neither you nor I have power to recall it. It has gained a living growth in the soul of a third person." She turned half-closed eyes to the garden. Tetsujo went forward in two small stiff jerks. His eyes fastened on her face, as though he saw it for the first time. Veins swelled in his neck, and the fingers on his small pipe-stem grew slowly flat, like the heads of adders.
"Is that you speaking, Onda Yuki?" he asked. "The gods grant that I wake from this dream! But if it be reality, then sorrow is to come. If this man be a foreigner, let him stay in his own land! You are mine utterly,—at my disposal in marriage as in all else. There are ways, in Japan, to curb such mad demons as those that now look at me through your eyes. Go! leave me. I shall hear no more of this,—or else it may be that I shall forget my fatherhood, as you your obligations. Go!"
"Father," said Yuki, quietly, "you must hear more of this or drive me from the house. You owe me consideration and justice; for the ideas that I have, you yourself sent me to America to gain. You even let me be a Christian. With the Christians marriage is a sacred thing—"
"Be still!" said Tetsujo, in a terrible, low voice. His pipe dropped to the floor. The coal burrowed itself, a charred and smoking ring, into the fragrant matting. The odor was that of field-grass burning. The man rocked himself to and fro for control. His lean hands plunged deep into his sleeves, and grasped, one each, a jerking arm. He was terrified at his own obsession of fury, and his soul warned him against a yielding to his madness. His greenish twisted lips writhed horribly once or twice before the next words came. One corner of his mouth went far down at the corner. His words hissed from a small distorted aperture near the chin. "You were allowed to turn Christian for the acquiring knowledge of their foolish—creed. I believed that the soul of a samurai's daughter,—of my daughter,—would be untainted by the immoral portions of their doctrine. I see now my credulity! Gods! I will consume myself with this heat! When you marry—wench,—which shall be soon,—if your Japanese husband approves not of Christianity, you will cease to be Christian!"
The two pairs of eyes met, hard, flashing, defiant. Yuki rose to her feet. He sprang after her. His right hand now felt instinctively for the sword-hilts which should have been at his hip. The leering, down-drawn mouth twitched and writhed.
"Your words do not lash from me my heritage of race!"she cried aloud. "I am still your daughter,—a samurai's daughter!" With a movement like light she stripped back her left sleeve, baring a white, blue-threaded arm. "Because I am a samurai's daughter I refuse a coward's obedience! Hot blood of a samurai stings these veins no less than those bronze arteries you clutch. Show me reason and I will listen. Apart from that I defy you! I shall be faithful to the man I love even though your legal rights prevent our happiness. Turn me into the street,—slay me with your own hand,—I shall not be compelled into a marriage of your choosing!"
Onda clutched his throat. The breath came gurgling like a liquid. For an instant it seemed as if he must hurl himself bodily upon her. Then he stumbled backward against the plaster wall of the room, clawing at its tinted surface. Yuki's eyes never left him. Now he lurched again toward her, then fell back, shaken like a jointed puppet by his own consuming rage. "Gods of my Ancestors! Demons of the deepest Hell! Go, go!—lest indeed I slay you. You fiend—you hannia! From my sight, I say!—I cannot endure—"
He cowered again, striking himself into temporary blindness with one powerful fist.
"I go, father, in obedience,—not in fear," said the girl's clear voice. He sprawled forward, and fell, sobbing like an exhausted runner. Yuki covered her face and went.
Withthe Imperial Restoration in Japan—an event, in time, just thirty-five years before the date mentioned at the beginning of this story—many of the nobles of Japan met with ruin. This was especially the case with the "hatamoto," a class directly dependent for revenue and patronage upon the favor of the usurping "Shogun." The real Emperor, then a boy of sixteen, living in seclusion at Kioto, was still nominal ruler and spiritual head of the government, forming a sort of "Holy Roman Empire," translated into terms of Buddhism. When, as a result of revolution and many sharp, fierce battles, this boy was brought in triumph to take his rightful place as temporal ruler also, with a new court in the great capital of Tokio, the Shogun, direct descendant of the mighty Iyeyasu, went into dignified retirement. Over-rich monasteries and temples, arrogant after centuries of Tokugawa benefice, were forced to part with broad lands, and even, in certain instances, with personal treasure. The simpler "Shinto" faith, an indigenous nature-spirit and ancestor-worshipping creed, opposed its principles to gorgeous Buddhist forms. The pure spirit of the younger faith and the profundities of its philosophy did not suffer. The blow was aimed at externals. The child-like Japanese soul to-day kneels with equal sincerity at a wayside Shinto shrine or before the gold-hung altars of Sakyamuni.
This revolution, then, was threefold and complete. Politics, religion, society, shifted within their national circle and assumed new aspects. The centre of all was the young ruler, Mutsuhito. Now the "kugè," or court nobles of Kioto, who had willingly shared retirement and comparative poverty with this true descendant of the gods, came again into power. But besides these two classes, the hatamoto and other dependent samurai, and the kugè, was still a third,—the most important,—the daimyo or feudal lords of the empire. Some among thesehad never yet given satisfactory hostages to the Shoguns, and lived always in a state of insolent pride and suppressed insurrection. At need of their Emperor, the true mettle of their loyalty rang out. Men, money, lives, property, were poured out like water for this beloved cause. Those who had been haughtiest to the Shoguns bowed now in deepest reverence to the boy Mutsuhito, in whose veins ran the blood of their ancient dynasty. He was to them truly divine; not in the impossible, superstitious sense, but as a sort of human channel flowing between the old gods and modern men. Through him were reconstruction and new national glory to be gained. A life laid down in his cause were but newly come alive.
Prominent among such patriots was the old Daimyo of Konda, father of the present Prince Haganè. His title more literally translated would be that of "Duke," or "Feudal Prince." His lands, lying far to the south, with a rough channel to divide them from the mainland, held almost a separate and independent existence. His chief province, and the one from which he took his title, was Konda. "Haganè" was the family name. At the first hint of national uprising the old daimyo, abandoning his own loved home, came at once to Kioto, and later made the journey with the young Emperor to Yedo. By right he assumed the place of guardian and adviser. The old daimyo was, as it chanced, somewhat learned in foreign matters, and this, in spite of the Shogun's rigid exclusion of all things foreign, of the death-penalty to any Japanese attempting to leave Japan, or, having managed to leave, attempting to return. This was a mighty armor of self-protection to the Tokugawa policy; but, in common with most armor, it had just one small flaw. In this case the flaw was a tiny island, granted to the Dutch, called "Deshima." Not far from the Konda borders lay this innocent fleck of earth, surrounded by blue native seas, and overgrown, like other islands, with tall feathery bamboo, camellia, and camphor trees; and yet, because of its existence, Haganè gained foreign books,—from it he smuggled a Dutch interpreter who could read and write not only his own language, but Japanese. Other curious minds drew near this spring of knowledge; and, partly because of it, long before Perry's expedition tothe Far East, the Japanese people had become restless, eager, awake, and in ferment for a national readjustment.
Haganè's one son, Sanètomo, a few years older than the boy Emperor, and reared as nearly in friendship with him as reverence would allow, was among the first youths of his class to travel in Europe, and to acquire any European language. Upon his father's death, he was asked by the Emperor to take at once the offices and semi-royal prerogatives of the lamented elder statesman. All the daimyos had received national bonds for the alienation of their fiefs; and thus those who had been most powerful still enjoyed great wealth in their own right.
With the Emperor once firmly established, etiquette and the restrictions of court-life began to prove irksome to Sanètomo. One could have continued to practise fine manners under the Shoguns. Here to-day was something better. A new army was to be formed; after that a new navy. Haganè advised adaptation of tactics from the German military school, its unbending automatonism appearing to him a safe restriction for enthusiastic beginners. From the first, however, his mind had been fixed upon the administrative methods of that marvellous small heart of an enormous empire, England. Japan should be to the Far East what England had become to the West. What one island had accomplished, that also could another do.
The Japanese nation as a whole went reeling drunk with over-potations of foreign ideas. For a while it seemed that everything Japanese was to be swept away. The small opposition party, frenzied by the apparition, took hideous revenge in murder, assassination, and suicide. Haganè's faith did not for a moment waver. After excess comes nausea, reaction. So had his countrymen, in more than one epoch now long past, drunk in the new. In time they would reject the unneedful, and infuse new power in what they had adopted. The thinkers of his empire could afford to wait.
When the new constitution was promulgated in February, 1889, there was rejoicing such as this old earth seldom sees. Haganè was created Minister of War. This position he had continued to hold, with varying intervals. He was now the incumbent.Much of his time was spent, perforce, in the "foreign" official residence, well within sight of the Imperial moats. Most of such edifices in Tokio are depressing. This was particularly cheerless. The house of brick, wood, and plaster, chiefly plaster, stood full two stories high, was of ample dimensions, and had a huge, square, blue-tiled roof. Though planned and built by the most artistic nation now alive, it had not one line of beauty, nor one successful effort after fine proportion. In these early days it seemed an accepted creed among the Japanese that anything to be truly "foreign" must necessarily offend the eye; yet, thought the ingenuous pupils, since ugliness apparently goes in the company of wealth, power, material welfare, and political recognition,—why, by all means, let us be uglier than the foreigners themselves!
Around the house lay something called a garden, a watery emulsion of American flower beds and a Japanese landscape creation. The effect of the whole place was amorphous, unstable, depressing, with the one redeeming feature of bigness.
Onda Tetsujo, speeding toward this haven in his hired jinrikisha, rattled along the uneven stone of the street, and then turned into the one great entrance of the imposing shell. The garden wall had a secret gate or two, but these were generally kept bolted. The storm of the early morning was abating. A drizzling, discouraged rain, with irregular gusts of wind through it, persisted in efforts to exclude all cheer. Onda knocked at one of the rear doors of the Japanese wing, and was but little surprised to hear, from the man who opened for him, that his Excellency the Prince, having transacted all official business for the day, had now retired to his "besso" (villa) on the high land of suburban "Tabata."
Onda re-entered his vehicle and gave the curt order, "Tabata." In the street he added, "Call an atoshi, and pull up the hood and oil-cloth." An atoshi, or "Mr. After," was summoned, the oil-cloth hood of the jinrikisha drawn far over and held in place by a single black cord knotted to one shaft. A sort of oil-cloth lap-robe, hung up in front and hooked to the inner lining of the hood, afforded complete immunity from wetting. Within the careful adjustment satTetsujo, blinking and scowling. The day had brought him a new and unwelcomed experience,—defiance from a woman. He wondered, as he was dragged along the viscid street, whether, in the happy, vanished feudal days, any warrior of his clan had known a similar indignity. There was on record the case of a wilful bride who, married against her wishes to an Onda chief, had disguised herself in a suit of armor grown too small for him, and sought heroic death in battle. But even this was better than open insult and defiance. Well, Yuki must be watched closely. Her education and beauty were not to be thrown away on a foreigner who, likely as not, would tire of and desert her. She must marry a young Japanese already well along on the way to official or military promotion. When this Russian war came, Japan would need all her people, men and women. His only child should not be given over to the loose affections of a foreigner. He scowled anew at the thought, and gave so savage a sound that his coolies stopped short in the road to inquire whether the honorable master were in pain.
"No," growled Tetsujo, in return, "a warrior does not feel pain; that is for babes and women."
A few minutes later the redoubled grunts and groans of his bearers—evidently sharing shamelessly the weaker prerogatives of the other sex—told Tetsujo that they had begun the ascent of the Tabata slope. At the eastern edge, where the hill goes down like a cliff, and one looking far out over rice-fields sees the Sumida River finding a shining road to Tokio, and the great twin peaks of Tsukuba-yama standing guard over the other half of the world, spread the broad eaves of Prince Haganè's villa.
Onda gave a sigh of relief as he stepped out under the door-roof.
"O tanomi moshimasu!" (I make request) he called, rapping on the closed shoji panels with his knuckles.
"Hai!" came almost instantly from within, and a housemaid was on her knees pushing the panels softly aside, a hand on each.
"The august one—is he within?" asked the visitor.
"Hai! Illustrious Sir. Deign to mount the step, and, seatingyourself on the hard mats, be refreshed by our tasteless tea and worthless cakes, while I hasten to announce your joy-giving appearance."
Tetsujo dismissed his kuruma men, shook off his shoes, and remained seated on the mats, still with folded arms, still deep in thought. The little maid, returning quickly, murmured that "the noble master would receive his honorable guest at once."
Prince Haganè sat alone in the great room, immediately surrounded by boxes and trays with tea, writing, and smoking outfits. There was one beautiful hibachi, or firepot, of hammered brass. An English book on International Law lay on the floor beside him among newspapers in Japanese, Chinese, English, French, and German. Passages in these papers had been heavily marked by the blue and red pencil still held in the reader's hand. He did not rise or bow as Tetsujo entered, merely turning his face toward the opened fusuma and saying, "Most welcome, good Tetsujo. Enter and forget the storm."
"I fear I have brought the storm in with me, your Highness," Tetsujo could not refrain from crying. He fell on his knees just within the door, bowed many times, and drew in his breath loudly. Haganè lifted an unread newspaper and made several markings while Tetsujo continued his genuflections. Having at last completed a number satisfactory to his sense of propriety, he sat upright. Haganè folded this last paper, and put it into a heap with the others.
"Draw nearer," he said with a smile. "It is a day for a chat between old friends. No, be not so humble—nearer yet—I insist. Now—that is better and more companionable. Pour yourself some tea."
"Honors are heaped upon your unworthy servant," rejoined Onda, pouring tea, first for the prince, then for himself. "I have just come from the official residence of your Highness. How cold and un-homelike appear all foreign houses; while this—" he paused to look slowly around—"this warms a man's heart to see."
"Though insignificant, it has a certain restfulness," admittedthe host. "Lacking a mistress, it cannot seem in reality a home."
Tetsujo's face clouded. "Speak not to me of mistresses, Lord," he mumbled sourly.
Haganè gave him a queer glance, but said nothing. He understood well the nature of his own kerai. So angular a thought as now distressed him must soon work its way to the surface of speech. "To-day I am in mind of the Chinese sage who taught us that all women are mere manifestations of demoniac force. They are sent here to tempt us—to test—to torment. Would that I could reach a heaven of warriors, untainted by their sex—!"
"Surely, my Tetsujo," interrupted Haganè, gravely, "those of your household bring no torment. I have never known a better wife than Iriya."
"I complain not of Iriya," said the other, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice; "but, Lord, had you seen that ingrate that I must call my daughter! Had you seen Yuki an hour since, you would have perceived what the Chinese mean by she-demons."
"Yuki!" echoed Haganè, this time in genuine surprise. "Is there not some mistake? Yuki is spirited; but I cannot picture her as a—demon!"