is coming through Japan on her way to China. I know just how she will
feel when she steps off the steamer and finds no friendly face to
welcome her. I talked over your little scheme with Miss Lessing and
she says I can go up to Yokohama in July to meet her and bring her
right down here. Tell her to tie her handkerchief around her arm so I
will know her, and not to worry the least bit, that I will take care
of her and treat her like one of my own family.
Can you guess how eagerly I am waiting for your answer to my April
letter? It cannot come before the last of June, and happy as I am, the
time seems very long. Yet I would rather live to the last of my days
like this, travelling ever toward the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow, than ever to arrive and find the gold not there!
You say that at last you know I am the "captain of my soul." Well,
Mate, I believe I am, but I just want to say that it's a hard worked
captain that I am, and if anybody wants the job--very much--I think he
can get it.
YOKOHAMA, July 5, 1905.
Do you suppose, if people could, they would write letters as soon as
they got to Heaven! I don't know where to begin nor what to say. The
only thing about me that is on earth is this pen point, the rest is
floating around in a diamond-studded, rose-colored mist!
I will try to be sensible and give you some idea of what has been
happening, but how I am to get it on paper I don't know. I got here
yesterday, the 4th of July, on the early train, and rushed down to the
hatoba to meet the launch when it came in from the steamer. I had had
no breakfast and was as nervous as a witch. Your letter had not come,
and my fears were increasing every moment.
Well I took my place on the steps as the launch landed and waited,
with very little interest I must confess, for your young missionary to
appear. By and by I saw a handkerchief tied to a sleeve, but it was a
man's sleeve. I gave one more look, and my heart seemed to
stop. "Jack!" I cried, and then everything went black before me, and I
didn't know anything more. It was the first time I ever fainted;
sorrow and grief never knocked me out, but joy like that was enough to
kill me!
When I came to, I was at the hotel and I didn't dare open my eyes--I
knew it was all a dream, and I did not want to come back to reality. I
lay there holding on to the vision, until I heard a man's voice close
by say, "She will be all right now, I will take care of her." Then I
opened my eyes, and with three Japanese maids and four Japanese men
and two ladies off the steamer looking on, I flung my arms about
Jack's neck and cried down his collar!
He made me stay quiet all morning, and just before tiffin he calmly
informed me that he had made all the arrangements for us to be married
at three o'clock. I declared I couldn't, that I had signed a contract
for another year at Hiroshima, that Miss Lessing would think I was
crazy, that I must make some plans. But you know Jack! He met every
objection that I could offer, said he would see Miss Lessing and make
it all right about the contract, that I was too nervous to teach any
more, and last that I owed him a little consideration after four years
of waiting. Then I realized how the lines had deepened in his face,
and how the grey was streaking his hair, and I surrendered promptly.
We were married in a little English church on the Bluff, with half a
dozen witnesses. Several Americans whom Jack had met on the steamer, a
missionary friend of mine, and the Japanese clerk constituted the
audience.
It is all like a beautiful dream to me still, and I am afraid to let
Jack get out of my sight for fear I will wake up. It was Fourth of
July, and Christmas, and birthday, and wedding day all rolled into
one. The whole city was celebrating, the hotel a flutter of flags and
ribbons, the bay full of every kind of pleasure craft. At night there
was a grand lantern fete and fireworks, and a huge figure of Uncle Sam
with stars in his coat tails. Thousands of Japanese in their gayest
kimonas thronged the Bund, listening to the music, watching the
foreigners and the fire-works.
Jack and I were like two children, he forgot that he was a staid
doctor, and I forgot that I had ever been a Foreign Missionary
Kindergarten teacher. We were boy and girl again and up to our eyes in
love. It was the first Fourth of July for fifteen years that I did not
have some unhappiness to conceal. As one of my girls said about
herself: "My little lonely heart had flewed away!"
All the loneliness, the heartaches, the pains are justified now. I do
not regret the past for through it the present is.
Do you remember the lines: "He shall restore the years that the locust
hath eaten?" Well I believe that while I have been struggling out
here, He has restored them, and that I will be permitted to return to
a new life, a life given back by God.
Of course you know we are going on around. It seems rather
inconsistent to say I am glad of it after all my wailing for home. The
truth is, home has come to _me_!
Jack says we are to meet you and Dr. Leet in Paris. You needn't try to
persuade me that Heaven will be any better than the present!
There is no use in my trying to thank you for your part in all this,
dear Mate. I have been in a chronic state of gratitude to you ever
since I was born! I can only say with all my heart and soul "God bless
you and Good-bye."
P.S. In my wedding ring is engraved M.L.O.T.D. Can you guess what it
means?
End of Project Gutenberg's Lady of the Decoration, by Frances Little