ISHIKICHI
Under the frail moon that touched the Embassy garden to such beauty,
Haru walked home to the house "so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big"
in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods.
On Reinanzaka Hill the shadows were iris-hearted. From its high-walled
gardens of the great came no glimpses of phantom-lighted _shoji_, no
sound of vibrant strings from tea-houses nor gleams of painted lips and
fingers of _geisha_.
Haru carried a paper-lantern tied to the end of a short wand, but it was
not dark enough to need its light, and as she walked, she swung it in
graceful circles. She heard a dove sobbing its low _owas! owas!_ and
once a crow flapped its sleepy way above her, uttering its harsh note,
which, from some subtlety of suggestion hidden from the western mind,
the Japanese liken to the accents of love. It startled her for a second;
then she began to sing, under her breath, to the tune of her clacking
_géta_, a ditty of her childhood:
"_Karasu, Karasu!_ "Crow, crow,
_Kanzaburo!_ Kanzaburo!
_Oya no on wo--_ Forget not the virtue
_Wasurena yo!_" Of your honorable parents."
On the crest of the hill, by the Street-of-Hollyhocks, a wall opened in
a huge gate of heavy burnished beams studded with great iron
rivet-heads. Here resided no less a personage than an Imperial Princess.
Beside the gate stood a conical sentry-box, in which all day, while the
gate was open, stood a soldier of the Household Guards. The box was
empty now.
Opposite the gate, a hedged lane opened, into which she turned, and
presently the song ceased. She had come to the newly built Chapel. Her
father's name was on the household list of the temple across the way,
but she herself walked each Sunday to Ts'kiji, to attend the bishop's
Japanese service in the Cathedral. When, influenced by a school-mate,
she had wished to become a Christian, the old _samurai_ had interposed
no objection. With the broad tolerance of the esoteric Buddhist, to whom
all pure faiths are good, he had allowed her to choose for herself. She
had grown to love the strangely new and beautiful worship with its
singing, its service in a tongue that she could understand, its Bible
filled with marvelous stories of old heroes, and with vivid imagery like
that of the _Kojiki_, the "Record of Ancient Matters" or the
_Man-yoshu_, the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves," over whose archaic
characters her father was always poring. She had ceased to visit the
temple, but otherwise the change had made little difference in her
placid life. With the simplicity with which the Japanese of to-day
kneels with equal faith before a plain _Shinto_ shrine and a golden
altar of Buddha, she had continued the daily home observances. Each
morning she cleaned the _butsu-dan_--refilled its tiny lamp with
vegetable oil, freshened its incense-cup and water bowl, and dusted its
golden shrine of Kwan-on which held the scroll inscribed with the spirit
names of a hundred ancestors, and the _ihai_, or mortuary tablet, of her
dead mother. Though she no longer prayed before it, it still signified
to her the invisible haunting of the dead--the continuing loving
presence of that mother who waited for her in the _Meidoland_.
For many days Haru had watched the progress of the Chapel building. The
Cathedral was a good two miles distant, but this was near her home; here
she would be able to attend more than the weekly Sunday service.
To-night, as she looked at the cross shining in the moonlight, she
thought it very beautiful. A tiny symbol like it, made of white enamel,
was hung on a little chain about her neck. It had been given her by the
bishop the day of her confirmation. She drew this out and swung it about
her finger as she walked on.
In the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods were no huge and gloomy compounds.
It was a roadway of humbler shops and homes, bordered with mazes of
lantern fire, and lively with pedestrians. At a meager shop, pitifully
small, whose _shoji_ were wide open, Haru paused. A smoky oil lamp swung
from the ceiling, and under its glow, a woman knelt on the worn
_tatamé_. Beside her, on a pillow, lay a newborn baby, and she was
soothing its slumber by softly beating a tiny drum close to its ear. She
nodded and smiled to Haru's salutation.
"_Hai! Ojo-San_," she said. "_Go kigen yo!_ Deign augustly to enter."
"Honorable thanks," responded Haru, "but my father awaits my unworthy
return. _Domo! Aka-San des'ka?_ So this is Miss Baby! Ishikichi will
have a new comrade in this little sister."
"Poison not your serene mind with contemplation of my uncomely last-sent
one!" said the woman, pridefully tilting the pillow so as to show the
tiny, vacuous face. "Are not its hands degradedly well-formed?"
"Wonderfully beyond saying! The father is still exaltedly ill?"
"It is indeed so! I have not failed to sprinkle the holy water over
Jizo, nor to present the straw sandals to the Guardians-of-the-Gate.
Also I have rubbed each day the breast of the health-god; yet O-Binzuru
does not harken. Doubtless it is because of some sin committed by my
husband in a previous existence! I have not knowledge of your Christian
God, or I would make my worthless sacrifices also to Him."
"He heals the sick," said Haru, "but He augustly loves not sacrifice--as
He exaltedly did in olden time," she hastily supplemented, recalling
certain readings from the Old Testament.
"The gods of Nippon divinely change not their habit," returned the
woman. "Also my vile intellect can not comprehend why the foreigners'
God should illustriously concern Himself with the things of another
land."
"The Christian Divinity," said Haru, "is a God of all lands and all
peoples."
The other mused. "It passes in my degraded mind that He, then, would
lack a sublime all-sympathy for our Kingdom-of-Slender-Swords. You are
transcendently young, _Ojo-San_, but I am thirty-two, and I hold by the
gods of my ancestors."
"Honorably present my greetings to your husband," Haru said, as she
bowed her adieu. "May his exalted person soon attain divine health!
To-morrow I will send another book for him to read."
The woman watched her go, with a smile on her tired face--the Japanese
smile that covers so many things. She looked at the baby's face on the
pillow. "Praise _Shaka_," she said aloud, "there is millet yet for
another week. Then we must give up the shop. Well--I can play the
_samisen_, and the gods are not dead!"
Behind her a diminutive figure had lifted himself upright from a
_f'ton_. He came forward from the gloom, his single sleeping-robe
trailing comically and his great black eyes round and serious. "Why must
we give up the shop, honorable mother?"
"Go to sleep, Ishikichi," said his mother. "Trouble me not so late with
your rude prattle."
"But why, _Okka-San_?"
"Because rent-money exists not, small pigeon," she answered gently. "So
long as we have ignobly lived here, we have paid the _banto_ who brings
his joy-giving presence on the first of each month. Now we have no more
money and can not pay."
"Why have we no more money?"
"Because the honorable father is sick and you are too small to earn. But
let it not trouble your heart, for the gods are good. See--we have
almost waked the _Aka-San_!"
She bent over the pillow and began again the elfin drumming at the
infant's ear. But Ishikichi lay open-eyed on his _f'ton_, his baby mind
grappling with a new and painful wonder.