There was more. But that is enough to show me Uncle's hand as plainly as if I were a palmist. If nothing happens to prevent, the man promises to do what thousands of his kind have done before: regardless of obstacles and consequences marry the girl off to the highest bidder; rid himself of all responsibility and make a profit at the same time. From his point of view it is the only thing to do. He would be the most astonished uncle in Mikado-land if anybody suggested to him that Sada had any rights or feelings in the matter. He would tell you that as Sada's only male relative, custom gave him the right to dispose of her as he saw fit, and custom is law and there is nothing back ofthat!
So far I have played only a thinking part in the drama. But I will not stand by and see the girl, whose very loneliness is a plea, sacrificed without some kind of a struggle to help her. At the present writing I feel about as effective as a February lamb, and every move calls for tact. Wish I had been born with a needle wit instead of a Roman nose! For if Uncle has a glimmer of a suspicion that I would befriend Sada at the cost of his plans, so surely as the river is lost in the sea, Sada would disappear from my world until it was too late for me to lend a hand.
Good-by, Mate. At eventide, as of old, look my way and send me strength from your vast store of calm courage and common sense. The odds are against me, but the god of luck has never yet failed to laugh with me.
September, 1911.
I am in a monastery, Mate, but only temporarily, thank you. It is a blessing to the cause that Fate did not turn me into a monk or a sister or any of those inconvenient things with a restless religion, that wakes you up about 3 A.M. on a wintry dawn to pray shiveringly to a piece of wood, to the tune of a thumping drum. Some morning when the frost was on the cypress that carven image would disappear!
For one time at least I would have a nice fire, and my prayers would not be decorated with icicles.
For two weeks my friends and I have been tramping through picture-book villages and silk-worm country, and over mountain winding ways, sleeping on the floor, sitting on our feet and giving our stomachs surprise parties with hot, cold and lukewarm rice, seaweed and devil-fish.
It has been one hilarious lark of outdoor life, with nothing to pin us to earth but the joy of being a part of so beautiful a world.
The road led us through superb forests, over the Bridge of Paradise to Koyo San, whose peak is so far above the mist-wreathed valleys that it scrapes the clouds as they float by. But I want to say right here; Kobo Daishi, who founded this monastery in the distant ages and built a temple to his own virtues, may have been a saint, but he was not much of a gentleman! Else he would not have been so reckless of the legs and necks of the coming generations, as to blaze the trail to his shrine over mountains so steep that our pack-mule coming up could easily have bitten off his own tail if he had so minded.
Later.
This afternoon I must hustle down. I suppose the only way to get down is to roll. Well; anyway I am in a hurry. My mail beat me up the trail and a letter from Sada San begs me to come to Kioto to see her as soon as I can. She only says she needs help and does not know what to do. And blessed be the telegram that winds up from Hiroshima; the school is in urgent need of an assistant at the Kindergarten and they ask me to come. The principal, Miss Look, has gone to America on business, for three months. Hooray! Here is my chance to resign from the "Folded Hands' Society" and do something that is really worth while, as long as I cannot go to my man. How good it will seem once again to be in that dear old mission school, where in the long ago I toiled and laughed and suffered while I waited for Jack.
The prospect of being with the girls and the kiddies again makes me want to do a Highland Fling, even if I am in a monastery with a sad-faced young priest serving me tea and mournful sighs between prayers.
What a flirtatious old world it is after all. It smites you and bruises you, then binds up the hurts by giving you a desire or so of your heart. Just now the desire of my heart is to catch that train for Kioto.
So here goes a prayer, pinned to a shrine, for a body intact as I tread the path that drops straight down the mountain, through the crimson glory of the maples and the blazing yellow of the gingko tree, to the tiny little station far away that looks like a decorated hen-coop.
KIOTO, September, 1911.
Dearest Mate:
I cannot spend a drop of ink in telling you how I got here. How the baggage beast ran away and decorated the mountain shrubbery with my belongings. And how after all my hurry of dropping down from Koyo San, the brakesman forgot to hook our car to the train and started off on a picnic while the engine went merrily on and left us out in the rice-fields. Suffice it to say I landed in a whirl that spun me down to Uncle's house and back to the hotel. And by the way my thoughts are going, for all I know I may be booked to spin on through eternity.
My visit to Sada was so full of things that did not happen. When I reached the house, I sent in my card to Sada. Uncle came gliding in like a soft-footed panther. He did it so quietly that I jumped when I saw him. We took up valuable time repeating polite greetings, as set down on page ten of the Book of Etiquette, in the chapter on Calls Made by Inconvenient Foreigners.
When our countless bows were finished, I asked in my coaxingest voice if I might see Sada. Presently she came in, dressed in Japanese clothes and beautiful even in her pallor. She was changed—sad, and a little drooping. The conflict of her ideals of duty to her mother's people and the real facts in the case, had marked her face with something far deeper than girlish innocence. It was inevitable. But above the evidences of struggle there was a something which said the dead and gone Susan West had left more than a mere memory. Silently I blessed all her kind.
Sada was unfeignedly glad to see me, and I longed to take her in my arms and kiss her. But such a display would have marked me in Uncle's eyes as a dangerous woman with unsuppressed emotions, and unfit for companionship with Sada. I had hoped his Book of Etiquette said, "After this, bow and depart." But my hopes had not a pin-feather to rest on. He stayed right where he was. All right, old Uncle, thought I, if stay you will, then I shall use all a woman's power to beguile you and a woman's wit to out-trick you, so I can make you show your hand. It is going to be a game with the girl as the prize. It is also going to be like playing leap-frog with a porcupine. He has cunning and authority to back him, and I have only my love for Sada.
For a time I talked at random, directing my whole conversation to him as the law demands. By accident, or luck, I learned that the weak point in his armor of polite reserve was color prints. Just talk color prints to a collector and you can pick his pocket with perfect ease.
My knowledge of color prints could be written on my thumb nail. But I made a long and dangerous shot, by looking wise and asking if he thought Matahei compared favorably with Moronobo as painters of the same era. I choked off a gasp when I said it, for I would have you know that for all I knew, Matahei might have lived in the time of Jacob and Rebecca, and Moronobo a thousand years afterwards. But I guessed right the very first time and Mura San, with a flash of appreciation at my interest, said that my learning was remarkable. It was an untruth and he knew that I knew it, but it was courteous and I looked easy. Then he talked long and delightfully as only lovers of such things can. At least, it would have been delightful had I not been so anxious to see Sada alone. But it was not to be. At least, not then. But mark one for me, Mate: Uncle was so pleased with my keen and hungry interest in color prints and my desire to see his collection, that he invited me to a feast and a dance at the house the next night.
The following evening I could have hugged the person, male or otherwise, who called my dear host away for a few minutes just before the feast began.
Sada told me hurriedly that Uncle had insisted on her singing every night at the tea-house. She had first rebelled, and then flatly refused, for she did not like the girls. She hated what she saw and was afraid of the men. Her master was furiously angry; said he would teach her what obedience meant in this country. He would marry her off right away and be rid of a girl who thought her foreign religion gave her a right to disobey her relatives. She was afraid he would do it, for he had not asked her to go to the tea-house again. Neither had he permitted her to go out of the house. Once she was sick with fear, for she knew Uncle had been in a long consultation with the rich man Hara and he was in such good humor afterwards. But Hara, she learned, had gone away.
She wouldnotsing at these dinners again, not if Uncle choked her and what must she do! I saw the man returning but I quickly whispered, "What about Billy?"
Ah, I knew I was right. The rose in her hair was no pinker than her cheeks. If Billy could only have seen her then, I would wager my shoes—and shoes are precious in this country—that her duty to her mother's people would have to take a back seat.
Before Uncle reached us I whispered, "Keep Billy in your heart, Sada. Write him. Tell him." And in the same breath I heartily thanked Uncle for inviting me.
It was a feast, Mate—the most picturesque, uneatable feast I ever sat on my doubly honorable feet to consume. There were opal-eyed fish with shaded pink scales, served whole; soft brown eels split up the back and laid on a bed of green moss; soups, thin and thick; lotus root and mountain lily, and raw fish. Each course—and their name was many—was served on a little two-inch-high lacquer table, with everything to match. Sometimes it was gold lacquer, then again green, once red and another black. But it was all a dream of color that shaded in with the little maids who served it; and they, swift, noiseless and pretty, were trained to graceful perfection. The few furnishings of the room were priceless. Uncle sat by in his silken robes, gracious and courteous, surprising me with his knowledge of current events. In the guise of host, he is charming. That is, if only he would not always talk with dropped eyelids, giving the impression that he is half dreaming and is only partly conscious of the world and its follies. And all the time I know perfectly well that he sees everything around him and clean on to the city limits.
Again and again in his talks he referred to his color prints and the years of patience required to collect them. Right then, Mate, I made a vow to study the pesky things as they have seldom been attacked before—even though I never had much use for pictures in which you cannot tell the top side from the bottom, without a label. But then, Jack says, my artistic temperament will never keep me awake at night. Now I decided all at once to make a collection. Heaven knows what I will do with it. But Uncle grew so enthusiastic he included his niece in the conversation, and while his humor was at high tide I coaxed him into a promise that Sada might come down to Hiroshima very soon, and help me look for prints.
Yes, indeed there was a dance afterwards, and everything was deadly, hysterically solemn—so rigidly proper, so stiffly conventional that it palled. It was the most maleless house of revelry I ever saw. Why, even the kakemono were pictures of perfect ladies and the gate-man was a withered old woman.
There was absolutely nothing wrong I could name. It was all exquisitely, daintily, lawfully Japanese. But I sat by my window till early morning. There was a very ghost of a summer moon. Out of the night came the velvety tones of a mighty bell; the sing-song prayers of many priests; the rippling laugh of a little child and the tinkling of a samisen. Every sound made for simple joy and peace. But I thought of the girl somewhere beyond the twinkling street lights, who, with mixed races in her blood and a strange religion in her heart, had dreamed dreams of this as a perfect land, and was now paying the price of disillusionment with bitter tears.
Eight o 'clock the next morning.
I cabled Jack, "Hiroshima for winter."
He answered, "Thank the Lord you are nailed down at last."
P.S.—I have bought all the books on color prints I could find.
October, 1911.
Hiroshima! Get up and salute, Mate! Is not that name like the face of an old familiar friend? I have to shake myself to realize that it is not the long ago, but now. A recent picture of Jack and one of you and the babies is about the only touch of the present. Everything is just as it was in the old days, when the difficulties of teaching in a foreign kindergarten in aforeignerlanguage was the least of the battle that faced me. Well, I thought I 'd finished with battles, but there 's a feeling of fight in the air.
Same little room, in the same old mission school. Same wall paper, so blue it turned green. And, Lord love us, from the music-rooms still come the sounds like all the harmonies of a baby organ-factory gone on a strike.
But bless you, honey, there is an eternity of difference in having to stand a thing and doing it of your own free will. As Black Charity would remark, "I don't pay 'em no mind," and let them wheeze out their mournful complaints to the same old hymns.
Had you been here the night my dinky little train pulled into the station, you would have guessed that it was a big Fourth of July celebration or the Emperor's birthday. I would not dare guess how many girls there were to meet me. It seemed like half a mile of them lined up on the platform, and each carried a round red lantern.
Until they had made the proper bow with deadly precision, there was not a smile or a sound. That ceremony over, they charged down upon me in an avalanche of gaiety. They waved their lanterns, they calledbanzai, they laughed and sung some of the old time foolish songs we used to sing. They promptly put to rout all legends of their excessive modesty and shyness. They were just young and girlish. Plain happy. Eager and sweet in their generous welcome. It warmed every fiber of my being. When they thinned out a little, I saw at the other end of the platform a figure flying towards me, with the sleeves of her kimono out-stretched like the wings of a gray bird, and a great red rose for a top-knot. It was Miss First River, a little late, but more than happy, as she sobbed out her welcome on the front of my clean shirt-waist.
It was she, you remember, who in all those other years was my faithful secretary and general comforter. The one who slept across my door when I was ill and who never forgot the hot water bag on a cold night. For years she has supported a drunken father and a crazy mother; has sent one brother to America and made a preacher of another.
Now she is to be married, she told me in a little note she slipped into my hand as we walked up the Street of the Upper Flowing River to the school, adding, "Please guess my heart."
And miracle of the East! She has known the man a long time and they are in love! I am so glad I am going to be here for the wedding. It comes off in a few weeks.
I started work in the kindergarten this morning. It has been said that when the Lord ran out of mothers he made kindergartners. Surely he never did a better job—for the kindergartners. Mate, when I stepped into that room, it was like going into an enchanted garden of morning-glories and dahlias. What a greeting the regiment of young Japlings gave me! I just drank in all the fragrance of joy in the eager comradeship and sweet friendliness of the small Mikados and Mikadoesses with a keen delight that made the hours spin like minutes.
And would you believe it? The first sound that greeted my ears after their whole duty had been accomplished in the very formal bow, was—"Oh—it is theskitten Sensei(skipping teacher) A skit! A skit! We want to skit!" Of course, they were not the same children by many years. But things die slowly in Hiroshima. Even good reputations. Everything was pushed aside, and work or no work, teachers and children celebrated by one mad revel of skipping.
There are many things to do, and getting into the old harness of steady routine work and living on the tap of a bell, is not so easy as it sounds, after years of live-as-you-please. But it is good for the constitution and is satisfying to the soul.
I once asked my friend Carson from Colorado if he could choose but one gift in all the world, what would it be? "The contintment of stidy work," answered the wise old philosopher from out of the West; and my heart echoes his wisdom.
Had a big fat letter from Jack, and the reputation he gives those germs he is associating with, is simply disgraceful. He gives me statistics also. Wish he wouldn't. It takes so much time and I always have to count on my fingers.
He tells me, too, of an English woman who has joined the insect expedition. Says she is the most brilliant woman he ever met. Thanks awfully. And he has to sit up nights studying, to keep up with her. I dare say.
I 'll wager she 's high of color and mighty of muscle and with equal vehemence says a thing is "strawdn'ry" whether it 's a dewdrop or a spouting volcano.
I can't help feeling a little bit envious of her—out there with myJack! Well! I will not get agitated till I have to.
A note from Sada says Uncle has had another outburst. He still consents for her to come down here. Her beautiful ideals have been smashed to smithereens, and the fact that nothing has ever been invented that will stick them together, adds no comfort to the situation. Her disappointment is heart-breaking. I cannot make a move till I get her to myself and have a life-and-death talk with her. I am playing for time.
I wrote her a cheerfully foolish letter. Told her I was making all kinds of plans for her visit. I also looked up some doubtful dates—at least, my textbook on color prints said they were doubtful—and referred them to Uncle for confirmation, asking that he give instructions to Sada about a certain dealer in Hiroshima who has some pictures so violent, positively I would not hang them in the cow-shed. That is, if I cared for Suky. But it is anything for conversation now.
I almost forgot to tell you that we have the samechefas when I was kindergarten teacher here in the school years ago. He 's prosperous as a pawnbroker. He gave me a radiant greeting. "How are you,Tanaka?" quoth I. "All same like damn monkey,Sensei," he replied. But he is unfailingly cheerful and the cleverest grafter in the universe, with an artistic temperament highly developed; he sometimes sends in the unchewable roast smothered in cherry blossoms.
How wise you were, Mate, to choose home and husband instead of a career. I love you for it.
HIROSHIMA, October, 1911.
For springing surprises, all full of kindness and delicate courtesies, Japanese girls would be difficult to equal. Before a whisper of it reached me, they made arrangements the other day for a re-union of all my graduates of the kindergarten normal class. It is hard to imagine when they found the time for the elaborate decorations they put up in the big kindergarten room, and the hundred and one little things they had done to show their love and warmth of welcome. It was a part of their play to blindfold me and lead me in. When I opened my eyes, there they stood. Twenty-five happy faces smiling into mine, and twenty babies to match. It was the kiddies that saved the day. I was not a little bewildered, and tears stung my eyes. But with one accord the babies set up a howl at anything so inconceivable as a queer foreign thing with a tan head appearing in their midst. When peace was restored by natural methods, the fun began.
The girls fairly bombarded me with questions. Could I come to see every one of them? Where was Jack? Could they see his picture? Did he say I could come? How "glad" it was to be together again. Did I remember how we used to play? Then everybody giggled. One thought had touched them all. Why not play now!
The baby question was quickly settled. Soon there was a roaring fire in my study. We raided the classroom for rugs and cushions and with the collection made down beds in a half ring around the crackling flames. On each we put a baby, feet fireward. We called in theObasan(old woman) to play nurse, and on the table near we placed a row of bottles marked "First aid to the hungry." As I closed the door of the emergency nursery, I looked back to see a semi-circle of pink heels waving hilariously. Surely the fire goddess never had lovelier devotees than the Oriental cherubs that lay cooing and kicking before it that day.
How we played! In all the flowery kingdom so many foolish people could not have been found in one place. What chaff and banter! What laying aside of cares, responsibilities, and heavy hearts, if there were any, and just being free and young! For a time at least the years fell away from us and we relived all the games and folk-dances we ever knew. True, time had stiffened joints and some of the movements were about as graceful as a pair of fire tongs and I may be dismissed for some of the fancy steps I showed the girls, but they were happy, and far more supple than when we began.
When we were breathless we hauled in our old friend the bighibachi, with a peck of glowing charcoal right in the middle. We sat on our folded feet and made a big circle all around, with only the glimmer of the coals for a light. Then we talked.
Each girl had a story to tell, either of herself or some one we had known together. Over many we laughed. For others the tears started.
Warmed by companionship and moved by unwonted freedom, how much the usually reserved women revealed of themselves, their lives, their trials and desires! But whatever the story, the dominant note was acceptance of what was, without protest. It may be fatalism, Mate, but it is indisputable that looking finality in the face had brought to all of them a quietness of spirit that no longing for wider fields or personal ambition can disturb.
None of them had known their husbands before marriage. Few had ever seen them. Many were compelled to live with the difficulties of an exacting mother-in-law, who had forgotten that she was ever a young wife.
But above it all there was a cheerful peacefulness; a willingness of service to the husband and all his demands, a joy in children and home, that was convincing as to the depth and dignity of character which can so efface itself for the happiness of others.
One girl, Miss Deserted Lobster Field, was missing. I asked about her and this is her story. She was quite pretty; when she left school there was no difficulty in marrying her off. Two months afterward the young husband left to serve his time in the army. For some reason the mother-in-law did not "enter into the spirit of the girl," and without consulting those most concerned, she divorced her son and sent the girl home. When the soldier-husband returned, a new wife, whom he had never seen, was waiting for him at the cottage door.
The sent-home wife was terribly in the way in her father's house, for by law she belonged neither there nor in any other place. It is difficult to re-marry these offcasts. Something, however, had to be done. So dear father took a stroll out into the village, and being sonless adopted a young boy as the head of his house. Ayoshithis boy is called. Father married the adopted son to the soldier's wife that was, securely and permanently. A yoshi has no voice in any family matter and is powerless to get a divorce.
Moral: If in Japan you want to make sure of keeping a husband when you get him, take a boy to raise, then marry him.
But the wedding of weddings is the one which took place last summer, by suggestion. The great unseen has lived in America for two years. The maid makes her home in the school. The groom-to-be wrote to a friend in Hiroshima: "Find me a wife." The friend wrote back: "Here she is." Miss Chestnut Tree, the maid, fluttered down to the court-house, had her name put on the house register of the far-away groom, did up her hair as a married woman should and went back to work.
To-morrow she sails for America, and we are all going down to wave her good-by and good luck.
She is married all right. There will be no further ceremony.
I would not dare tell you all the stories they told me. For I would never stop writing and you would never stop laughing or crying.
The end of all things comes sometimes. The beautiful afternoon ended too soon. But for the rest of time, this day will be crowned with halos made with the mightiness of the love and the dearness of the girls who were once my students, always my friends.
It took some time to assort the babies and make sure of tying the right one on the right mother's back. Not by one shaved head could I see the slightest difference in any of them, but mothers have the knack of knowing.
Out of the big gate they went and down the street all aglow with the early evening lights twinkling in the purple shadows. Theirgetaclick-clacked against the hard street, to the music of their voices as they called back to me, "Oyasumi, Oyasumi, Go kigen yoro shiku" (Honorably rest. Be happy always to yourself).
My gratitude to this little country is great, Mate. It has given me much. It was here life taught me her sternest lessons. And here I found the heart's-ease of Jack's love. But for nothing am I more thankful than for the love and friendship of the young girl-mothers who were my pupils, but from whom I have learned more of the sweetness and patience of life than I could ever teach.
November, 1911.
Mate, there is a man in Hiroshima for whom I long and watch as I do for no other inhabitant. It is the postman. You should see him grin as he trots around the corner and finds me waiting at the gate, just as I used to do in the old teaching days. I doubly blest him this morning. Thank you for your letter. It fairly sings content. Homeyness is in every pen stroke.
Please say to your small son David that I will give his love to the "king's little boy"ifI see him. My last glimpse of him was in Nikko. Poor little chap. He was permitted to walk for a moment. In that moment he spied a bantam hen, the anxious mother of half a dozen puff-ball chickens. Royalty knew no denial and went in pursuit. The bantam knew no royalty, pursued also. The four men and six women attendants were in a panic. The baby was rescued from a storm of feathers and taken back to the palace with an extra guard of three policemen.
I have been very busy, at play and at work. We have just had a wedding tea. My former secretary, Miss First River, as she expressed it, "married with" Mr. East Village.
The wedding took place at the ugly little mission church, which was transformed into a beautiful garden, with weeping willows, chrysanthemums, and mountain ferns. Also we had a wedding-bell. In a wild moment of enthusiasm I proposed it. It is always a guess where your enthusiasm will land you out here. I coaxed a cross old tinner to make the frame for me. He expostulated the while that the thing was impossible, because it had never been done before in this part of the country. It was rather a weird shape, but I left the girls to trim it and went to the church to help decorate. The bell was to follow upon completion. It failed to follow and after waiting an hour or so I sent for it. The girls came carrying one trimmed bell and one half covered. I asked, "Why are you making two wedding-bells?" My answer was, "Why Sensei! must not the groom have one for his head too?"
Everybody wanted to do something for the little maid, for she had so bravely struggled with adversity of fortune and perversity of family. So there were four flower girls, and the music teacher played at the wedding march! In spite of her efforts, Lohengrin seemed suffering as it came from the complaining organ.
Miss First River was a lovely enough picture, in her bridal robes of crepe, to cause the guests to draw in long breaths of admiration, till the room sounded like the coming of a young cyclone. They were not accustomed to such prominence given a bride, nor to weddings served in Western style.
Oh, yes, the groom was there, a secondary consideration for the first time in the history of Hiroshima, but so in love he did not seem to mind the obscurity.
The ceremony over, the newly-wed seated themselves on a bench facing the guests. An elder of the church arose and with a solemnity befitting a burial, read a sermon on domestic happiness and some forty or fifty congratulatory telegrams. After an hour or so of this and several speeches, cake was passed around, and it was over. At the maid's request I gave her an "American watch with a good engine in it" and my blessing with much love in it, and went back to work. Do not for a minute imagine that because I am not a regularly ordained missionary-sister, that I am not working. The fact is, Mate, the missionaries are still afflicted with the work habit, and so subtle is its cheerful influence, it weaves a spell over all who come near. No matter what your private belief is, you roll up your sleeves and pitch right in when you see them at it, and you put all your heart in it and thank the Lord for the opportunity to help.
The fun begins at 5:30 in the morning, to the merry clang of a brazen bell, and it keeps right on till 6 P.M. For fear of getting rusty before sunrise, some of the teachers have classes at night. I would rather have rest. I am too tired, then, to think.
I have put away all my vanity clothes. No need for them in Hiroshima and in an icy room on a winter's morning, I do not stop to think whether my dress has an in-curve or an out-sweep. I fall into the first thing I find and finish buttoning it when the family fire in the dining-room is reached. A solitary warming-spot to a big house is one of the luxuries of missionary life.
In between times I 've been cheering up the home sickest young Swede that ever got loose from his native heath. So firmly did he believe that Japan was a land where necessity for work doth not corrupt nor the thief of pleasure break through and steal, he gave up a good position at home and signed a three-years' contract with an oil firm. Now he is so sorry, all the pink has gone out of his cheeks. Until he grows used to the thought that living where the Sun flag floats is not a continuous holiday, the teachers here at school take turns in making life livable for him.
His entertainment means tramps of miles into the country, sails on the lovely Ujina Bay and climbs over the mountains. In the afternoon the boy is so in evidence, we almost fall over him if we step. Yesterday in desperation I tied an apron on him and let him help me make a cake. Even at that, with a dab of chocolate on his cheek and flour on his nose, his summer sky eyes were weepy whenever he spoke of his "Mutter." I have done everything for him except lend him my shoulder to weep on. It may come to that. There is hope, however. One of our teachers is young and pretty.
Jack, in a much delayed epistle, tells me thrilling and awful things about the plague; says he walks through what was once a prosperous village, and now there is not a live dog to wag a friendly tail. Every house and hovel tenantless. Often unfinished meals on the table and beds just as the occupants left them. A great pit near by full of ashes and bones tells the story of the plague come to town, leaving silent, empty houses, and the dust-laden winds as the only mourners.
The native doctors gave a splendid banquet the other night. With the visiting doctors in full array of evening dress and decorations. Jack says it looked like a big international flag draped around the table. Everybody made a speech and Jack has not stopped yet shooting off fireworks in honor of that Englishwoman.
Well, maybeIshould have studied science. It is too late now. Besides, I have Uncle on my hands, and I have to commit to memory pages on color printing that run like this: "Fine as a single hair or swelling imperceptibly till it becomes a broken play of light and shade or a mass of solid black, it still flows, unworried and without hesitation on its appointed course."
Sada San is coining down nest week. I am looking forward to it with great delight and hunting for a plan whereby I can help her.
Suppose Uncle should give me a glad surprise and come too!
My dear Best Girl:
If ever a sailor needed a compass, I need the level head that tops your loving heart. I am worried hollow-eyed and as useless as a brass turtle.
It has been days since I heard from Jack. When he last wrote, he was going to some remote district out from Mukden. I dare not think what might happen to him. Says he must travel to the very source of the trouble.
If Jack really wanted trouble he could find it nearer home. Is n't it like him, though, with his German education, to hunt a thing to its lair? I suppose when next I hear from him, he will have disappeared into some marmot hole at the foot of a tree in a Siberian forest.
Sada is here. A pale shadow of her former radiant self. She is in deadly fear of what Uncle has written he expects of her when she returns.
For the first few days of her visit, she was like an escaped prisoner. She played and sang with the girls. The joy of her laughter was contagious. Everybody fell a victim to her gaiety. We have been on picnics up the river in a sampan where we waded and fished, then landed on an island of bamboo and fern and cooked our dinner over ahibachi. We have had concerts, tableaux and charades, here at the school, with a big table for the stage and a silver moon and a green mosquito-net for the scenery.
In every pastime or pleasure, Sada San has been the moving spirit. Adorably girlish and winning in her innocent joy, I grow faint to think of the rude awakening.
She has talked much of Miss West and their life together; their work and simple pleasures.
To the older woman she poured out unmeasured affection, fresh and sweet. Susan made a flower garden of the girl's heart, where, if even a tiny weed sprouted it was coaxed into a blossom. But she gave no warning of the savage storms that might come and lay the garden waste.
Well, I 'm holding a prayer-meeting a minute that the rosy ideals of the visionary teacher will hold fast when the wind begins to blow.
I found Sada one day on the bed, a crumpled heap of woe; white and shaking with tearless sobs. Anxious to shield her from the persistent friendliness of the girls, I persuaded her to come with me to the old Prince's garden, just back of the school.
She had heard from Uncle. For the first time he definitely stated his plans. Hara, the rich man, had sent to him a proposal of marriage for Sada! Of course, said Uncle, such an offer from so prosperous and prominent a man must be accepted without hesitation. It was wonderful luck for any girl, said dear Mura, especially one of her birth. Nothing further would be done until she returned, and he wished that to be at once.
Not a suggestion of feeling or sentiment; not a word as to Sada's wishes or rights. If these were mentioned to him, he would undoubtedly reply that the rights in the matter were all his. As to feelings, a young girl had no business with such things. His voice would be courteous, his manner of saying it would fairly puncture the air.
His letter was simply a cold business statement for the sale of the girl. When I looked at the misery in her young eyes, I could joyfully have throttled him and stamped upon him. I wished for a dentist's grinding machine and the chance to bore a nice big hole into each one of his white, even teeth.
She knows nothing of the man Hara except that he is coarse and drinks heavily. The girls in the tea-house always seemed afraid when he came. Vague whispers of his awful life had come to her. What was she to do? She had no money, no place to go, and Uncle was the only relative she had in the world.
Mate, I heard a missionary speak a profound truth, when he said that no Japanese would ever be worth while till all his relatives were dead. Their power is a chain forged around individual freedom.
She had such loving thoughts of Uncle, Sada sobbed, before she came. She longed to make his home happy and be one of his people. She loved the beautiful country of her mother and craved its friendship.
Miss West had drilled it into her conscience that marriage was holy, and impossible without love. (Bless you, Susan!) She wanted to do her duty, but shecould notmarry this man whom she had never seen but once, and had never spoken to.
She knew the absolute power the law of the land gave Uncle over her. She knew the uselessness of a Japanese girl struggling against the rigid rules laid down by her elders. She knew resistance might bring punishment. Well, Mate, I do not care ever to see again such a look as was in Sada's eyes as she turned her set face to me and forced through her stiff lips a stony, "I won't!" But I thanked God for all the Susan Wests and their teachings.
In spite of the girl's unhappiness, there was a thrill in the region of my heart. Of her own free will Sada San had decided. Now there was something definite to work upon. In the back of my brain a plan was beginning to form. Hope glimmered like a Jack-o'-lantern.
It was late evening. A flaming sunset flushed the sky and bathed the ancient garden of arched bridges and twisted trees in a pinkish haze. The very shadows spelled romance and poetry. It was wise to use the charm of the hour for the beginning of my plan.
I drew Sada down beside me, as we sat in a queer little play-house by the garden lake.
In olden times it had been the rest place of the Prince Asano, when he was specially moved to write poetry to the moon as it floated up, a silver ball in a navy-blue sky over "Three Umbrella Mountain." Had his ghost been strolling along then, it would have found deeper things than, "in the sadness of the moon night beholds the fading blossom of the heart," to fill his thoughts.
I led the girl to tell me much of her life in Nebraska; of her friends and their amusements. Hers had been the usual story of any fresh wholesome girl. The social life in a small town had limited her experiences, but had kept her deliciously naive and sweet.
For the first time in our talks, she avoided Billy's name. I hailed it as a beautiful sign. I mentioned William myself and delighted in her red-cheeked confusion. I gently asked her to tell me of him.
She and Billy had gone to school together, played together and he always seemed like a big brother to her. Once a boy had called her a half-breed and Billy promptly knocked him down and sat on his head while he manipulated a shingle.
Another time when they were quite small, the desire of her heart was to ride on the tricycle of a rich little boy who lived across the street. But the pampered youth jeered at her pleadings and exultingly rode up and down before her. Billy saw and bided his time till the small Croesus was alone. He nabbed him, chucked him in a chicken-coop and stood guard for an hour while Sada rode gloriously.
Through college they were comrades and rivals. Billy had to work his way, for he was the poor son of an invalid mother. From college he had gone straight to a firm of rich manufacturers and was now one of the big buyers.
He had pleaded with her not to come to Japan. He loved her. He wanted her. When she had persisted, he was furious and they had quarreled. But she had thought she was right, then; she did not know how dear Billy was, how big and splendid. She had written to him but seldom, nothing of her disappointment. Maybe he had married. She could not write now. It would be too much like begging, when she was at bay, for the love she had refused when all was well. No, shecould nottell him.
We talked long and earnestly in that old garden, and the wind that sifted through the pine-needles and the waxy leaves was as gentle as if the spirit of Susan West had come to watch and to bless.
I gained a half promise from her that she would write to Billy at once, but I didn't stop there.
Unsuspected by Sada I learned his full address, and Mate, I wrote a letter to the auburn-haired lover in Nebraska, in which I painted a picture that is going to cause something to happen, else I am mistaken in my estimate of the spirit of the West in general and William Weston Milton in particular.
I told him if he loved the girl to come as fast as steam would bring him; that I would help him at the risk of anything, though I have no idea how. I have just returned from a solitary promenade to the post-office through the dark and lonely streets, so that letter will catch to-morrow's American mail.
Sada told me that for some reason she had never mentioned Billy's name to Uncle. Now isn't that a full hand nestling up my half-sleeve? Uncle thinks the way clear as an empty race-track, and all he has to do is to saunter down the home stretch and gather in the prize-money.
Any scruple on the girl's part will be relentlessly and carelessly brushed aside as a bothersome insect. If she persists, there is always force. He fears nothing from me. I am a foreigner—from his standpoint too crudely frank to be clever.
He doubtless argues, if he gives it any thought, that if I could I would not dare interfere. And then I am so absorbed in color-prints! So I am, and, I pray Heaven, in some way to his undoing. The child has no other friend. Shrinkingly she told me of her one attempt to make friends with some high-class people, and the uncompromising rebuff she had received upon their discovering she was an Eurasian. The pure aristocrats seldom lower the social bars to those of mixed blood. I wonder, Mate, if the ghost of failure, who was her father, could see the inheritance of inevitable suffering he has left his child, what his message would be to those who would recklessly dare a like marriage?
Sada goes to Kioto in the morning. She promises not to show resistance, but to keep quiet and alert, writing me at every opportunity.
I am sure Uncle's delight in securing so rich a prize as Hara will burst forth in a big wedding-feast and many rich clothes for the trousseau. I hope so. Preparation will take time. I would rather gain time than treasure.
I put Sada to bed. Tucked her in and cuddled her to sleep as if she had been my own daughter.
There she lies now. Her face startlingly white against the mass of black hair. The only sign of her troubled day is a frequent half-sob and the sadness of her mouth, which is constantly reading the riot act to her laughing eyes in the waking hours.
Poor girl! She is only one of many whose hopes wither like rose-leaves in a hot sun when met by authority in the form of tyrannical relatives.
The arched sky over the mountain of "Two Leaves" is all a-shimmer with the coming day. Thatched roof and bamboo grove are daintily etched against the amber dawn. Lights begin to twinkle and thrifty tradesmen cheerfully call their wares.
It is a land of peace, a country and people of wondrous charm, but incomprehensible is the spirit of some of the laws that rule its daughters.
Mate dear:
One of my girls, when attached with the blues, invariably says in her written apology for a poor lesson, "Please excuse my frivolous with your imagination, for my heart is warmly." So say I.
I am sending you the crepes and the kimono you asked for. Write for something else. I want an excuse to spend another afternoon in the two-by-four shop, with a play-garden attached, that should be under a glass case in a jewelry store. The proprietor gives me a tea-party and tells me a few of his troubles every time I go to his store. Formerly he kept two shops exclusively for hair ornaments and ribbons.
He did a thriving trade with schoolgirls. Recently an order went out from the mighty maker of school laws to the effect that lassies, high and low, must not indulge in such foolish extravagances as head ornaments. The ribbon market went to smash. The old man could not give his stock away. He stored his goods and went to selling high-priced crepes, which everybody was permitted to wear. Make another request quickly. I would rather shop than think.
Also, if you need any information as to how to run a cooking-school, I will enclose it with the next package.
Since the war, scores of Japanese women are wild to learn foreign cooking. On inquiry as to the reason of such enthusiasm, we found it was because their husbands, while away from home, had acquired a taste for Occidental dainties. Now their wives want to know all about them so they can set up opposition in their homes to the many tea-houses which offer European food as an extra attraction. And depend upon it, if the women start to learn, they stick to it till there is nothing more to know on the subject.
I was to furnish the knowledge and the ladies the necessary utensils, but I guess I forgot to mention everything we might need.
The first thing we tried was biscuit. All went well until the time came for baking. I asked for a pan. A pan? What kind of a pan? Would a wash pan do? No, if it was all the same I would rather have a flat pan with a rim. Certainly! Here it was with a rim and a handle! A shiny dust-pan greeted my eyes. Well, there was not very much difference in the taste of the biscuit.
The prize accomplishment so far has been pies. Our skill has not only brought us fame, but the city is in the throes of a pie epidemic. A few days ago when the old Prince of the Ken came to visit his Hiroshima home, the cooking-ladies, after a few days' consultation, decided that in no better way could royalty be welcomed than by sending him a lemon pie. They sent two creamy affairs elaborately decorated with meringued Fujis. They were the hit of the season. The old gentleman wrote a poem about them saying he ate one and was keeping the other to take back to his country home when he returned a month hence. Then he sent us all a present.
We have had only one catastrophe. In a moment of reckless adventure my pupils tried a pound cake without a recipe. A pound cake can be nothing else but what it says. That meant a pound of everything and Japanese soda is doubly strong. That was a week ago and we have not been able to stay in the room since.
Good-by! The tailless pink cat and the purple fish with the pale blue eyes are for the kiddies.
I am inclosing an original recipe sent in by Miss Turtle Swamp ofClear Water Village:
Cake.
1 cup ofDesecratedcoconut 5 cup flowers 1 small spoon and barmilla [vanilla] 3 eggs skinned and whipped 1 cup sugar Stir and pat in pan to cook.
HIROSHIMA, December, 1911.
Mate:
I would be ashamed to tell you how long it is between Jack's letters. He says the activity of the revolutionists in China is seriously interfering with traffic of every kind. All right, let it go at that! Now he has gone way up north of Harbin. In the name of anything why cannot he be satisfied? England is with him. I do not know who also is in the party. Neither do I care. I do not like it a little bit. Jealous? The idea. Just plain furious. I am no more afraid of Jack falling in love with another woman than I am of Saturn making Venus a birthday present of one of his rings. The trouble is she may fall in love with him, and it is altogether unnecessary for any other woman to get her feelings disturbed over Jack.
I fail to see the force of his argument that it is not safe nor wise for any woman in that country, and yet for him to show wild enthusiasm over the presence of the Britisher. No, Jack has lost his head over intellect. It may take a good sharp blow for him to realize that intellect, pure and simple, is an icy substitute for love. Like most men he is so deadly sure of one, he is taking a holiday with the other.
Of course you are laughing at me. So would Jack. And both would say it is unworthy. That's just it. It is the measly little unworthies that nag one to desperation. Besides, Mate, I shrink from any more trouble, any more heart-aches as I would from names. The terror of the by-gone years creeps over me and covers the present like a pall.
There is only one thing left to do. Work. Work and dig, till there is not an ounce of strength left for worry. I stay in the kindergarten every available minute. The unstinted friendship of the kiddies over there, is the heart's-ease for so many of life's hurts.
There are always the long walks, when healing and uplift of spirit can be found in the beauty of the country. I tramp away all alone. The little Swede begs often to go. At first I rather enjoyed him. But he is growing far too affectionate. I am not equal to caring for two young things; a broken-hearted girl and a homesick fat boy are too much for me. He is improving so rapidly I think it better for him to talk love stories and poetry to some one more appreciative. I am not in a very poetical mood. He might just as well talk to the pretty young teacher as to talk about her all the time.
I have scores of friends up and down the many country roads I travel. The boatmen on the silvery river, who always wave their head rags in salute, the women hoeing in the fields with babies on their backs, stop long enough to say good day and good luck. The laughing red-cheeked coolie girls pause in their work of driving piles for the new bridge to have a little talk about the wonders of a foreigner's head. With bated breath they watch while I give them proof that my long hatpins do not go straight through my skull.
The sunny greetings of multitudes of children lift the shadows from the darkest day, and always there is the glorious scenery; the shadowed mystery of the mountains, a turquoise sky, the blossoms and bamboo. The brooding spirit of serenity soon envelops me, and in its irresistible charm is found a tender peace.
On my way home, in the river close to shore, is a crazy little tea-house. It is furnished with three mats and a paper lantern. The pretty hostess, fresh and sweet from her out-of-door life, brings me rice, tea and fresh eel. She serves it with such gracious hospitality it makes my heart warm. While I eat, she tells me stories of the river life. I am learning about the social life of families of fish and their numerous relatives that sport in the "Thing of Substance River"; the habits of the red-headed wild ducks which nest near; of the god and goddesses who rule the river life, the pranks they play, the revenge they take. And, too, I am learning a lesson in patience through the lives of the humble fishermen. In season seven cents a day is the total of their earnings. At other times, two cents is the limit. On this they manage to live and laugh and raise a family. It is all so simple and childlike, so free from pretension, hurry and rush. Sometimes I wonder if it is not we, with our myriad interests, who have strayed from the real things of life.
On my road homeward, too, there is a crudely carved Buddha. He is so altogether hideous, they have put him in a cage of wooden slats. On certain days it is quite possible to try your fortune, by buying a paper prayer from the priest at the temple, chewing it up and throwing it through the cage at the image. If it sticks you will be lucky.
My aim was not straight or luck was against me to-day. My prayers are all on the floor at the feet of the grinning Buddha.
Jack is in Siberia and Uncle has Sada. I have not heard from her since she left. I am growing truly anxious.
January, 1912.
Dearest Mate:
At last I have a letter from Jack. Strange to say I am about as full of enthusiasm over the news he gives me as a thorn-tree is of pond-lilies.
He says he has something like a ton of notes and things on the various stunts of the bubonic germ in Manchuria when it is feeling fit and spry. But he is seized with a conviction that he must go somewhere in northwest China where he thinks there is happy hunting-ground of evidence which will verify his report to the Government. Suppose the next thing I hear he will be chasing around the outer rim of the old world hunting for somebody to verify the Government.
There is absolutely no use of my trying to say the name of the place he has started for. Even when written it looks too wicked to pronounce. It is near the Pass that leads into the Gobi Desert.
Jack wrote me to go to Shanghai and he would join me later. I am writing him that I can't start till the fate of Sada San is settled for better or for worse.
NANKOW, CHINA. February, 1912.
Mate:
News of Jack's desperate illness came to me ten days ago and has laid waste my heart as the desert wind blasts life. I have been flying to him as fast as boat and train and cart will take me.
The second wire reached me in Peking last night. Jack has typhus fever and the disease is nearing the crisis. I have read the message over and over, trying to read between the lines some faint glimmer of hope; but I can get no comfort from the noncommittal words except the fact that Jack is still alive. I am on my way to the terminus of the railroad, from where the message was sent. I came this far by train, only to find all regular traffic stopped by order of the Government. The line may be needed for the escape of the Imperial Family from Peking if the Palace is threatened by the revolutionists.
Orders had been given that no foreigner should leave the Legation enclosure. I bribed the room boy to slip me through the side streets and dark alleys to an outside station. I must go the rest of the distance by cart when the road is possible, by camel or donkey when not. Nothing seems possible now. Everything within sight looks as if it had been dead for centuries, and the people walking around have just forgotten to be buried.
I am wild with impatience to be gone but neither bribes nor threats will hurry the coolies who take their time harnessing the donkeys and the camels.
A ring of ossified men, women and children have formed about me, staring with unblinking eyes, till I feel as if I was full of peep holes. It is not life, for neither youth nor love nor sorrow has ever passed this way. The tiniest emotion would shrivel if it dared begin to live. Maybe they are better so. But then, they have never known Jack.
How true it is that one big heart-ache withers up all the little ones and the joy of years as well. With this terror upon me, even Sada's desperate trouble has faded and grown pale as the memory of a dream. Jack is ill and I must get to him, though my body is racked with the rough travel, and the ancient road holds the end of love and life for me.
Around the sad old world I am stretching out my arms to you, Mate, for the courage to face whatever comes, and your love which has never failed me.
Such wild unbelievable things have happened!
After twenty miles of intolerable shaking on the back of a camel, my battered body fell off at the last stopping-place, which happened to be here. There is no hotel. But three blessed European hoys living at this place—agents for a big tobacco firm—took me into their little home. From that time—ten days ago—till now, they have served and cared for me as only sons who have not forgotten their mothers could do.
On that awful night I came, while forcing food on me, they said that Jack had stopped with them on his way out to the desert, where he was to complete his work for the Government. He was to go part of the distance with the English woman, who, with her camels and her guides, was traveling to the Siberian railroad. The next day they heard the whole caravan had returned. Four days out Jack had been taken ill. The only available shelter was an old monastery about a mile from the village. To this he had been moved. My hosts opened a window and pointed to a far-away, high-up light. It was like the flicker of a match in a vast cave of darkness. They told me wonderful things of the rooms in the monastery, which were cut in the solid rock of the mountain-side, and the strange dwarf priest who kept it.
They lied beautifully and cheerfully as to Jack's condition, and all the time in their hearts they knew that he had the barest chance to live through the night.
The woman doctor had nursed him straight through, permitting no one else near. The dwarf priest brought her supplies.
Her last message for the day had been, "The crisis will soon be passed."
Even now something grips my throat when I remember how those dear boys worked to divert me, until my strength revived. They rigged up a battered steamer-chair with furs and bath robes, put me in it, promising that as soon as I was rested they would see what could be done to get me up to the monastery. But I was not to worry. All of them set about seeing I had no time to think. Each took his turn in telling me marvelous tales of the life in that wild country. One boy brought in the new litter of puppies, begging me to carefully choose a name for each. The two ponies were trotted out and put through their pranks before the door in the half light of a dim lantern.
They showed me the treasures of their bachelor life, the family photographs and the various little nothings which link isolated lives to home and love. They even assured me they had hadthetable-cloth and napkins washed for my coming. Household interests exhausted, they began to talk of boyhood days. Their quiet voices soothed me. Prom exhaustion I slept. When I woke, my watch said one o'clock. The house was heavy with sleeping-stillness.
Through my window, far away the dim light wavered. It seemed to be signaling me. My decision was quick. I would go, and alone. If I called, my hosts would try to dissuade me, and I would not listen. For life or for death, I was going to Jack. The very thought lent me strength and gave my feet cunning stealthiness. A high wall was around the house but, thank Heaven, they had forgotten to lock the gate.
Soon I was in the deserted, deep-rutted street shut in on either side by mud hovels, low and crouching close together in their pitiful poverty. There was nothing to guide me, save that distant speck of flame. Further on, I heard the rush of water and made out the dim line of an ancient bridge. Half way across I stumbled. From the heap of rags my foot had struck, came moans, and, by the sound of it, awful curses. It was a handless leper. I saw the stumps as they flew at me. Sick with horror, I fled and found an open place.
The light still beckoned. The way was heavy with high, drifted sand. The courage of despair goaded me to the utmost effort. Forced to pause for breath, I found and leaned against a post. It was a telegraph pole. In all the blackness and immeasurable loneliness, it was the solitary sign of an inhabited world. And the only sound was the wind, as it sang through the taut wires in the unspeakable sadness of minor chords. A camel caravan came by, soft-footed, silent and inscrutable. I waited till it passed out to the mysteries of the desert beyond the range of hills.
I began again to climb the path. It was lighter when I crept through a broken wall and found myself in a stone courtyard, with gilded shrines and grinning Buddhas. One image more hideous than the rest, with eyes like glow-worms, untangled its legs and came towards me. I shook with fright. But it was only the dwarf priest—a monstrosity of flesh and blood, who kept the temple. I pointed to the light which seemed to be hanging to the side of the rocks above. He slowly shook his head, then rested it on his hands and closed his eyes. I pushed him aside and painfully crawled up the shallow stone stairs, and found a door at the top. I opened it. Lying on a stone bed was Jack, white and still. A woman leaned over him with her hand on his wrist. Her face was heavily lined with a long life of sorrow. On her head was a crown of snow-white hair. She raised her hand for silence. I fell at her feet a shaking lump of misery.
I could not live through it again, Mate—those remaining hours of agony, when every second seemed the last for Jack. But morning dawned, and with the miracle of a new-born day came the magic gift of life. When Jack opened his eyes and feebly stretched out his hand to me, my singing heart gave thanks to God.
And so the crisis was safely passed. And the hateful science I believed was taking Jack from me, in the skilful hands of a good woman, gave him back to me.
The one comfort left me in the humiliation of my petty, unreasoning jealousy—yes, I had been jealous—was to tell her.
And she, whose name was Edith Bowden, opened to me the door of her secret garden, wherein lay the sweet and holy memories of her lover, dead in the long ago.
For forty long and lonesome years she had unfalteringly held before her the vision of her young sweetheart and his work, and through them she had toiled to make real his ideals.
I take it all back, Mate. A career that makes such women as this is a beautiful and awesome thing.
In spite of all my pleadings to come with us, Miss Bowden started once again on her lonely way across the wind-swept plains, back to Europe and her work, leaving me with a never-to-be-forgotten humility of spirit and an homage in my heart that never before have I paid a woman.
I am too polite to say it, but I have had a taste of the place you spell with four letters. Also of Heaven. Just now, with Jack's thin hand safely in mine, I am hovering around the doors of Paradise in the house of the boys in Kalgan. If you could see the dusty little Chinese-Mongolian village, hanging on the upper lip of the mouth of the Gobi Desert, you would think it a strange place to find bliss. But joy can beautify sand and Sodom.
Yesterday my hosts made me take a ride out into the Desert. Oh, Mate, in spots these glittering golden sands are sublime. My heart was so light and the air so rare, it was like flying through sunlit space on a legless horse.
Life, or what answers to it, has been going on in the same way since thousands of years before Pharaoh went on that wild lark to the Red Sea. Every minute I expected to see Abraham and Sarah trailing along with their flocks and their families, hunting a place to stake out a claim, and Noah somewhere on a near-by sand-hill, taking in tickets for the Ark Museum, while the "two by two's" fed below. I never heard of these friends being in this part of the country, but you can never tell what a wandering spirit will do.
Jack is getting fat laughing at me. But Jack never was a lady and does not know what havoc imagination and the spell of the East can play with a loving but lonesome wife. And take it from me, beloved, he never will. Nothing gained in exposing all your follies. He sends love to you. So do I—from the joyful heart of a woman whose most terrible troubles never happened.
PEKING, February, 1912.
Mate:
I do not know whether I can write you sanely or not. But write you I must. It is my one outlet in these days of anxious waiting. I have just cabled Billy Milton, in Nebraska, to come by the first steamer. I have not an idea what he will do when he gets to Japan, or how I will help him; but he is my one hope.
Yesterday, on our arrival here, I found a desperate letter from Sada San, written hurriedly and sent secretly. She finds that the man Hara, whom her uncle has promised she shall marry, has a wife and three children!
The man, on the flimsiest pretest, has sent the woman home to clear his establishment for the new wife. And, Mate, can you believe it, he has kept the children—the youngest a nursing baby, just three months old!
One of the geisha girls in the tea-house slipped in one night and told Sada. She went at once to Uncle and asked him if it was true. He said that it was, and that Sada should consider herself very lucky to be wanted by such a man. Upon Sada telling him she would die before she would marry the man, he laughed at her. Since then she has not been permitted to leave her room.
The lucky day for marriage has been found and set. Thank goodness, it is seventeen days from now, and if Billy races across by Vancouver he can make it. In the meantime Nebraska seems a million miles away. I know the heartbeats of the fellow who is riding to the place of execution, with a reprieve. But seventeen days is a deadly slow nag.
I had already told Jack of my anxiety for Sada San and of the fate that was hanging over her, but now that the blow has suddenly fallen I dare not tell him. In a situation like this I know what Jack would want to do; and in his present weakened condition it might be fatal.
It is useless for me to appeal to anybody out here. Those in Japan who would help are powerless. Those who could help would smile serenely and tell me it was the law. And law and custom supersede any lesser question of right or wrong. By it the smallest act of every inhabitant is regulated, from the quantity of air he breathes to the proper official place for him to die. But, imagine themajestyof any law which makes it a ghastly immorality to mildly sass your mother-in-law, and a right, lawful and moral act for a man, with any trumped-up excuse, to throw his legal wife out of the house, that room may be made for another woman who has appealed to his fancy.
Japan may not need missionaries, but, by all the Mikados that ever were or will be, her divorce laws need a few revisions more than the nation needs battleships. You might run a country without gunboats, but never without women.
This case of Hara is neither extreme nor unusual. I have been face to face in this flowery kingdom with tragedies of this kind when a woman was the blameless victim of a man's caprice, and he was upheld by a law that would shame any country the sun shines on. By a single stroke of a pen through her name, on the records at the courthouse, the woman is divorced—sometimes before she knows it. Then she goes away to hide her disgrace and her broken heart—not broken because of her love for the man who has cast her off, but because, from the time she is invited to go home on a visit and her clothes are sent after her, on through life, she is marked. If she has children, the chances are that the husband retains possession of them, and she is seldom, if ever, permitted to see them.
I know your words of caution would be, Mate, not to be rash in my condemnations, to remember the defects of my own land. I am neither forgetful nor rash. I do not expect to reform the country, neither am I arguing. I am simply telling you facts.
I know, too, that some Fountain Head of knowledge will rise from the back seat and beg to state that the new civil code contains many revisions and regulates divorce. The only trouble with the new civil code is that it keeps on containing the revisions and only in theory do they get beyond the books in which they are written.
Next to my own, in my affections, stands this sunlit, flower-covered land which has given the world men and women unselfishly brave and noble. But there are a few deformities in the country's law system that need the knife of a skilled surgeon, amputating right up to the last joint; among these the divorce laws made in ancient times by the gone-to-dust but still sacred and revered ancestors. Who would give a hang for any old ancestor so cut on the bias?
I cannot write any more. I am too agitated to be entertaining.
I wrote Sada a revised version of Blue Beard that would turn that venerable gentleman gray, could he read it. Uncle will be sure to. I dare him to solve the puzzle of my fancy writing. But I made Sada San know the Prince Red Head was coming to her rescue, if the engine did not break down.
Now there is nothing to do but wait and pray there are no weak spots in Billy's backbone.