CHAPTER VIII
Meanwhile Matsuda sent the articles he had purchased in Tokyo as marriage gifts to the most respected and honorable foreigner, Mr. Verley. The latter was actually pleased and touched. He laughed at Azalea’s first impulse of fear when the presents had arrived and reminded her that these were the only wedding gifts they had received. She, after her temporary fear, fell to admiring the beauty of the gifts. By the time Matsuda came to pay his personal respects to the couple, only the remotest suspicion of design on his part remained in her mind. No one could have been morerespectful and humble in attitude than the rich Matsuda to the foreign minister, no one more solicitous for their comfort and happiness. The little mission house and its pastor found a sudden, unexpected patron, for Sunday after Sunday the chief man of Sanyu attended the services. Matsuda became a “pillar of the church.” First he won the confidence of the minister, and later made the acquaintance of other and more powerful foreigners in the larger cities of Japan.
The recall of the missionary came like a shock in the midst of their happiness. Azalea, by this time, had learned and seemingly understood the religion of herhusband. She had accepted it even before she understood it with a meek faith almost sublime. Yet, in spite of her seeming conversion, and her almost idolatrous love for her husband, there had curiously enough remained always with Azalea that small stubborn feeling of terror of the far-away “land of the barbarians” which constituted the home of her husband. All the joyful searching with her husband as teacher in the books of his people had failed to cure her of this innate sense of fear of the foreigner, a fear inculcated since childhood, when she had listened to the weird and horrible tales of an old grandfather who had once lived in one of the open ports andwhose imagination was livelier than his memory. These vivid tales of horror, added to an occasional visit to the town of foreign sailor men, whose shore conduct was not that of superior beings, and the further assurance of the temple priests that these barbarians were evil—all these impressions were deeply enough implanted in the nature of Azalea, who had never wholly outgrown her child-nature. Just as a Caucasian child might shrink in fear at the thought of suddenly being taken from his safe little cot and transplanted among the savage tribes of Africa, so the little Japanese girl dreaded the thought of life in the questionable and unknown land of America.And now, when she had come to the years of womanhood, a thrill of that early fear still remained with her. Hence when her husband told her of his recall Azalea was quite stupefied.
“You are going to leave me!” she gasped, her eyes wide with terror.
“Leave you!” he repeated. “Why, what put such an idea as that into your head? You are going with me.”
She shook her head.
“No, no! I kinnod go,” she said.
“Cannot! What a word to use to me. Certainly you will go.”
She caught at his hands and held them spasmodically.
“You promise me on that day you marry wiz me that you never goin’ take me away across those oceans. Yes, you promise.”
“But Azalea, I am recalled. I must go. Now, be reasonable. These people who sent for me are my employers.”
She slipped to the floor and sat with her hands clasped about her huddled knees.
“Velly well,” she said after a moment. “You go. I will wait here for you.”
He sat down on the mat beside her and put his arm about her.
“No, no, we must go together.”
With her head against his shoulder she cried hysterically.
“I do not want to go—no, I do not want!” she kept repeating.
Thinking her eccentric stubbornness due to her condition, he said in the tenderest voice:
“I could not leave you alone now. Why, what would a little girl like you do all alone with a wee baby and no husband to care for both of you.”
She struck her hands passionately together.
“Tha’s why!” she said. “Jus’ why I doan want go. I am ’fraid for that liddle bit bebby.”
Argument and persuasion seemed useless at this time, for Azalea could neither understandthe one, nor would she yield to the other. Even when Richard Verley returned from Tokyo, where he had found money cabled for two passages by his missionary society, Azalea would not consider the journey. A less conscientious man than the young minister would have used the price of the second passage in providing for the comfort of his wife, during his absence, but Verley repelled the idea, even though he knew that once in America he could easily find funds. So in obedience to his Massachusetts conscience, Azalea’s share of the cabled funds was sent back.
Then it was that Azalea would hystericallyconsent to journey with her husband, only to refuse in the end.
Verley’s recall was imperative. Yet at times he thought of refusing to return. His many gifts and benevolences among the people had eaten away the last instalment of his small salary. He could not leave his wife supplied with funds sufficient for the entire period of her illness; yet once in America he would be able to send small sums regularly. The society had mentioned something vaguely of a desire to have him lecture in the United States and after that it was intimated that he might be sent to China. In any event he would return for Azalea after the birth of her child.
All these confused thoughts and reasonings played through the mind and conscience of Verley. Yet so finely balanced were the moral and emotional traits of this young man that for a time he could come to no decision. He prayed, and then the precepts of his religion conquered. Since Azalea would not accompany him, he must go alone. Parting was inevitable, but absence was not for long.
Once again he sought Azalea. Failing to move her by the most passionate entreaty, Verley tried to make her see his reasons for his decision, which he now felt more than ever must be final.
Azalea looked up at him with an apathetic, yet tender, expression:
“Yaes, yaes,” she said wearily, “I understand. I kinnod go. Your God—yaes, my God also—he calling you—not me. You go! I stay!”
Verley now mutely enough accepted the cruelty of circumstances and sought to cheer the drooping spirits of his wife. She at this time was beset by feelings of the most intense depression, induced as much by her frail condition of health as her childish terror of the seas which lay between and separated her husband’s America from her Japan.
During the last weeks of his stay inJapan, Richard Verley spent his time in attempts to earn sufficient money so that, at least, Azalea, until he could communicate with her from America, should not want for anything. He wrote articles for a Tokyo weekly paper. Even the native journalists of Japan dream not of making a living at this profession, unless they own an interest in the paper to which they contribute. The amount the young American missionary received for his contributions could be said to add nothing to the meagre sum he had been enabled to lay by from his salary. This, he calculated, would keep Azalea in comparative comfort for possibly two months. He sighed as hethought of her childish ignorance of the value of money, and he hardly dared to think of the possibility of the premature birth of his child.
But upon the eve of his going fortune quite suddenly reversed its frowning face. His financial worries found an unexpected alleviation. Matsuda Isami, the friend of his church and a professed convert, had come to him and offered a certain sum of money. Of course the American had protested at accepting any money for personal use from the Japanese, but Matsuda insisted that he knew of the minister’s embarrassment, and being himself possessed of much, wished to share at least a small partof it with his friend. He felt sure Mr. Verley would sail from Japan in an easier frame of mind if he could be assured that his wife was well protected from want. The amount offered by Matsuda was insignificant, but seventy-five yen goes far toward living in Japan. She would be independent for six months to come, at least. And while the minister hesitated over the temptation, the wily Matsuda suggested that if the minister felt any backwardness about accepting it as a gift, to at least accept it as a loan, giving Matsuda a lien upon the contents of his house. This need only be perfunctory, a formal salve to his pride, for Matsuda was confident theminister would pay the loan in no time. It is needless to say that the man of trade triumphed over the man of dreams. Richard Verley mortgaged the furniture of his house, without explaining this part to his wife, who was already disheartened at his protracted departure. He was enabled to put into her hand, the day before he sailed, a sum of money larger than she had ever seen before.
The parting was heart-wrenching. It took place in the little house, for he did not wish to have her go to the big city to see the actual sailing of the boat, and she at the last moment had decided against going even to the railroad station of thetown with him. She wished, she said, to see him leave the house, just as if he were going on a visit in the neighborhood, to the church, to an afflicted beggar, or one dying and deserted. He told her she was the bravest woman in the world because she would not let him see her face save with a smile upon the lips. Her eyes kept back their tears. Only at the last moment she clung about his neck and, from kissing his face, fell to kissing his breast, his arms and hands, and then slipped to the floor, there to kiss, in a fashion that shocked him, his very feet.
When he was gone she closed every shoji of the house and shut herself up alone.That night she slept underneath his desk in the little study where he had worked, his large black bible the pillow for her head.