THE BISHOP ASKS A QUESTION
Bishop Randolph lived in the quarter of Tokyo called Ts'kiji--a section
of "made-ground" in the bay, composed, as the ancient vestry jest had
it, of the proverbial tomato-cans. It was flat and low, and its inner
canal in the old days had formed the boundary of the extraterritorial
district given over by a reluctant government to the residence of
foreigners.
It was a mile from the great, double-moated park of the Imperial Palace,
from the Diet and the Foreign Office, whither, scarcely a generation
ago, representatives of European powers had galloped on horse-back, with
a mounted guard against swashbuckling "two-sword men." The streets,
however, on which once an American Secretary of Legation, so spurring,
had been cut in two by a single stroke of a thirsting _samurai_ sword,
were peaceful enough in this era of _Meiji_. The cathedral, the college,
the low brown hospital and the lines of red-brick mission houses stood
on grassy lawns behind green hedges which gave a suggestion of a quiet
English village. A couple of the smaller Legations still clung to their
ancient sites and the quarter boasted, besides, a score of ambitious
European residences and a modern hotel.
In the rectory the bishop sat at tiffin with the archbishop of the
Russian Cathedral, a man of seventy-eight, gray-bearded and
patriarchal--another St. Francis Xavier. In this foreign field the pair
had been friends during more than a score of years. Both were equally
broad-minded, had long ago thrown down the sectarian barriers too apt to
prevail in less restricted communities. To a large extent they were
confidants. The archbishop spoke little English, and the bishop no
Russian and but "inebriate" French (as he termed it), so that their talk
was habitually in Japanese. When they had finished eating both men bowed
their heads in a silent grace. The Russian, as he rose, made the sign of
the cross.
As they entered the library a wrinkled house-servant sucked in his
breath behind them.
"Will the thrice-eminent guest deign to partake of a little worthless
tobacco?" he inquired, in the ceremonious honorifics of the vernacular.
The thrice-eminent shook his head, and the bishop answered: "Honorable
thanks, Honda-_San_, our guest augustly does not smoke."
At the table they had been talking of the great dream of both--the
Christianization of modern Japan. The archbishop continued the
conversation now:
"As I was saying, the great stumbling-block is the language. It is all
right for you and me, who have had twenty years at it, but our helpers
haven't. His code of courtesy forbids a Japanese to seem to correct
even when we are absurdly wrong. One of my boys"--so the bishop
affectionately referred to his younger coadjutors--"was preaching the
other day on 'The Spiritual Attributes of Mankind.' He meant to use
the word _ningen_, man in the wide sense. He preached, he thought,
with a good deal of success--the people seemed particularly grave and
attentive. Afterward he asked an old Japanese what he thought of the
subject. The man replied that he had felt much instructed to find
there were so many things to be said about it. He added that he
himself generally ate them boiled. My young man had used the word
_ninjin_--carrots. 'The Spiritual Attributes of Carrots!' And a whole
sermon on it. Imagine it!"
The archbishop threw back his head and laughed. Then the conversation
drifted again into the serious. "Of course," said the bishop, "there is
at bottom the oriental inability to separate racial traits, to realize
that Christianity has made Christendom's glories, not her shames. The
Japanese are essentially a spiritually-minded people. Some of the West's
most common vices they are strangely without. And their code of
every-day morals--well, we can throw very few stones at them there!"
The archbishop nodded.
"Few, indeed," he said. "No Japanese Don Juan ever could exist. A
Japanese woman would be scandalized by a Greek statue. She would recoil
at a French nude. She would fly with astonishment and shame from the
sight of a western ballet. Our whole system strikes the Oriental as not
only monstrous but disgustingly immoral. It seems to him, for instance,
sheer barbarity for a man to love his wife even half as well as he does
his own mother and father. A curious case in point happened not so long
ago. A peasant had a mother who became blind. He consulted the village
necromancer, who told him if his mother could eat a piece of human heart
she would get her sight back. The peasant went home in tears and told
his wife. She said, 'We have only one boy. You can very easily get
another wife as good or better than me, but you might never have another
son. Therefore, you must kill me and take my heart for your mother.'
They embraced, and he killed her with his sword. The child awoke and
screamed. Neighbors and the police came. In the police court the
peasant's tale moved the judges to tears. They quite understood. They
didn't condemn the man to death. Really the one who ought to have been
killed was the necromancer."
"And this," said the bishop musingly, "only a few miles from where they
were teaching integral calculus and Herbert Spencer!"
His visitor sat a while in thought. "By the way," he said presently,
changing the subject, "I passed your new Chapel the other day. It is
very handsome. Your niece, I think you told me, built it. May I ask--"
"Yes," said the host, "it is my dead sister's child, Barbara--John
Fairfax's daughter."
A look passed between them, and the bishop rose and paced up and down, a
habit when he was deeply moved. "She came back to Japan with me," he
continued. "I am to take her to see the Chapel this afternoon. Yesterday
she told me that she intends it to be dedicated to her father's memory."
For a moment there was no reply. Then the other said: "You have heard
nothing of Fairfax all these years?"
"Not a word."
"She has never known?"
The bishop shook his head. "She believes he died before her mother left
Japan." He paused before the window, his back to the other. "He was my
friend!" he said; "and I loved him. I gave my sister to him, and she
loved him, too!"
"I remember," said the archbishop slowly. "She went back to America from
Nagasaki. How strange it was! She never told any one why she left him?"
"Never a word. She died before I went to America again. She left me a
letter which hinted at something wholly unforgivable--almost Satanic, it
must have seemed to her."
"And he?"
"Disappeared. He was thought to have gone to China. Perhaps he is alive
there yet. I have always wondered. If so, how is he living--in what
way?" The bishop turned abruptly. "In view of what we know, can I lend
myself to the dedication of this house of our Lord to a memory that may
be infamous? I ask you as a friend."
The older man was a long time silent.
"'His ways are past finding out,'" he said at length. "I am conscious,
sometimes, of a hidden purpose in things. The daughter's memory of her
father is a beautiful thing. Let us not destroy it!"