Stephen Wainwright, holding his daughter jealously in his arms, felt
those long-locked founts of emotion that had been pent up behind his
steely exterior bursting all bounds. He had the immense feeling that he
wanted for evermore to cherish and guard this precious thing that was
all his own.
"Our actions are followed by their consequences as surely as a body by
its shadow," says the Japanese proverb, and that cruel act of his mad
youth had haunted the days of this man, who had achieved all that some
men sell their souls for in life. And yet the greatest of all prizes had
escaped him--peace of mind. Even now, as he held Sunny in his arms, he
was consumed by remorse and anguish.
In his crowded life of fortune and fame, and a social career at the side
of the brilliant woman who bore his name, Stephen Wainwright's best
efforts had been unavailing to obliterate from his memory that tragic
face that like a flower petal on a stream he had so lightly blown away.
O-Haru-no was her name then, and she was the child of a Japanese woman
of caste, whose marriage to an attaché of a Russian embassy had, in its
time, created a furore in the capital. Her father had perished in a
shipwreck at sea, and her mother had returned to her people, there, in
her turn, to perish from grief and the cold neglect of the Japanese
relatives who considered her marriage a blot upon the family escutcheon.
Always a lover and collector of beautiful things, Wainwright had
harkened to the enthusiastic flights of a friend, who had "discovered"
an incomparable piece of Satsuma, and had accompanied him to an old
mansion, once part of a Satsuma yashiki, there to find that his friend's
"piece of Satsuma" was a living work of art, a little piece of
bric-a-brac that the collector craved to add to his collections. He had
purchased O-Haru-no for a mere song, for her white skin had been a
constant reproach and shame in the house of her ancestors. Moreover,
this branch of the ancient family had fallen upon meagre days, and
despite their pride, they were not above bartering this humble
descendant for the gold of the American. O-Haru-no escaped with joy from
the harsh atmosphere of the house of her ancestors to the gay home of
her purchaser.
The fact that he had practically bought his wife, and that she had been
willing to become a thing of barter and sale, had from the first caused
the man to regard her lightly. We value things often, not by their
intrinsic value, but by the price we have paid for them, and O-Haru-no
had been thrown upon the bargain counter of life. However, it was not in
Stephen Wainwright's nature to resist anything as pretty as the wife he
had bought. A favourite and sardonic jest of his at that time was that
she was the choicest piece in his collections, and that some day he
purposed to put her in a glass case, and present her to the Museum of
Art of his native city. Had indeed Stephen Wainwright seen the dancer,
as she lay among her brilliant robes, her wide sleeves outspread like
the wings of a butterfly, and that perfectly chiselled face on which the
smile that had made her famous still seemed faintly to linger, he might
have recalled that utterance of the past, and realised that no object of
art in the great museum of which his people were so proud, could compare
with this masterpiece of Death's grim hand.
He tried to delude himself with the thought that the temporary wife of
his young days was but an incident, part of an idyll that had no place
in the life of the man of steel, who had seized upon life with strong,
hot hands.
But Sunny! His own flesh and blood, the child whose hair had suggested
her name. Despite the galloping years she persisted ever in his memory.
He thought of her constantly, of her strange little ways, her pretty
coaxing ways, her smile, her charming love of the little live things,
her perception of beauty, her closeness to nature. There was a quality
of psychic sweetness about her, something rare and delicate that
appealed to the epicure as exquisite and above all price. It was not his
gold that had purchased Sunny. She was a gift of the gods and his memory
of his child contained no flaw.
It was part of his punishment that the woman he married after his return
to America from Japan should have drifted farther and farther apart from
him with the years. Intuitively, his wife had recognised that hungry
heart behind the man's cold exterior. She knew that the greatest urge in
the character of this man was his desire for children. From year to year
she suffered the agony of seeing the frustration of their hopes.
Highstrung and imaginative, Mrs. Wainwright feared that her husband
would acquire a dislike for her. The idea persisted like a monomania.
She sought distraction from this ghost that arose between them in social
activities and passionate work in the cause of woman's suffrage. It was
her husband's misfortune that his nature was of that unapproachable sort
that seldom lets down the mask, a man who retired within himself, and
sought resources of comfort where indeed they were not to be found.
Grimly, cynically, he watched the devastating effects of their separated
interests, and in time she, too, in a measure was cast aside, in thought
at least, just as the first wife had been. Stephen Wainwright grew
grimmer and colder with the years, and the name applied to him was
curiously suitable.
This was the man whose tears were falling on the soft hair of the
strange girl from Japan. He had lifted her hat, that he might again see
that hair, so bright and pretty that had first suggested her name. With
awkward gentleness, he smoothed it back from the girl's thin little
face.
"Sunny, you know your father now, fully, don't you? Tell me that you
do--that you have not forgotten me. You were within a few weeks of six
when I went away, and we were the greatest of pals. Surely you have not
forgotten altogether. It seems just the other day you were looking at
me, just as you are now. It does not seem to me as if you have changed
at all. You are still my little girl. Tell me--you have not forgotten
your father altogether, have you?"
"No. Those year they are push away. You are my Chichi (papa). I so happy
see you face again."
She held him back, her two hands on his shoulders, and now, true to her
sex, she prepared to demand a favour from her father.
"Now I think you are going to give Katy and me mos' bes' job ad you
business."
"Job? Who is Katy?"
"I are not told you yet of Katy. Katy are my frien'."
"You've told me nothing. I must know everything that has happened to you
since I left Japan."
"Thas too long ago," said Sunny sadly, "and I am hongry. I lig' eat
liddle bit something."
"What! You've had no lunch?"
She told him the incident of the dog meat, not stopping to explain just
then who Katy was, and how she had come to be with her. He leaned over
to the desk and pushed the button. Miss Holliwell, coming to the door,
saw a sight that for the first time in her years of service with Senator
Wainwright took away her composure. Her employer was kneeling by a chair
on which was seated the strange girl. Her hat was off, and she was
holding one of his hands with both of hers. Even then he did not break
the custom of years and explain or confide in his secretary, and she saw
to her amazement that the eyes of the man she secretly termed "the
sphinx" were red. All he said was:
"Order a luncheon, Miss Holliwell. Have it brought up here. Have Mouquin
rush it through. That is all."
Miss Holliwell slowly closed the door, but her amazement at what she had
seen within was turned to indignation at what she encountered without.
As the door opened, Katy pressed up against the keyhole, fell back upon
the floor. During the period when Sunny had been in the private office
of Miss Holliwell's employer, she had had her hands full with the
curious young person left behind. Katy had found relief from her pent-up
curiosity in an endless stream of questions and gratuitous remarks which
she poured out upon the exasperated secretary. Katy's tongue and spirit
were entirely undaunted by the chilling monosyllabic replies of Miss
Holliwell, and the latter was finally driven to the extremity of
requesting her to wait in the outer office:
"I'm awfully busy," said the secretary, "and really when you chatter
like that I cannot concentrate upon my work."
To which, with a wide friendly smile, rejoined Katy:
"Cheer up, Miss Frozen-Face. Mums the word from this time on."
"Mum" she actually kept, but her alert pose, her cocked-up ears and
eyes, glued upon the door had such a quality of upset about them that
Miss Holliwell found it almost as difficult to concentrate as when her
tongue had rattled along. Now here she was engaged in the degrading
employment of listening and seeing what was never intended for her ears
and eyes. Miss Holliwell pushed her indignantly away.
"What do you _mean_ by doing a thing like that?"
Between what she had seen inside her employer's private office, and the
actions of this young gamin, Miss Holliwell was very much disturbed. She
betook herself to the seat with a complete absence of her cultivated
composure. When Katy said, however:
"Gee! I wisht I knew whether Sunny is safe in there with that gink,"
Miss Holliwell was forced to raise her hand to hide a smile that would
come despite her best efforts. For once in her life she gave the wrong
number, and was cross with the girl at the telephone desk because it was
some time before Mouquin's was reached. The carefully ordered meal
dictated by Miss Holliwell aroused in the listening Katy such mixed
emotions, that, as the secretary hung up the receiver, the hungry
youngster leaned over and said in a hoarse pleading whisper:
"Say, if you're orderin' for Sunny, make it a double."
Inside, Sunny was telling her father her story. "Begin from the first,"
he had said. "Omit nothing. I must know everything about you."
Graphically, as they waited for the lunch, she sketched in all the
sordid details of her early life, the days of their mendicancy making
the man feel immeasurably mean. Sitting at the desk now, his eyes shaded
with his hand, he gritted his teeth, and struck the table with repeated
soundless blows when his daughter told him of Hirata. But something, a
feeling more penetrating than pain, stung Stephen Wainwright when she
told him of those warmhearted men who had come into her life like a
miracle and taken the place that he should have been there to fill. For
the first time he interrupted her to take down the names of her friends,
one by one, on a pad of paper. Professor Barrowes, Zoologist and
Professor of Archeology. Wainwright had heard of him somewhere recently.
Yes, he recalled him now. Some dispute about a recent "find" of the
Professor's. A question raised as to the authenticity of the fossil.
Opposition to its being placed in the Museum--Newspaper discussion. An
effort on the Professor's part to raise funds for further exploration in
Canada northwest.
Robert Mapson, Jr. Senator Wainwright knew the reporter slightly. He had
covered stories in which Senator Wainwright was interested. On the
_Comet_. Sunny's father knew the _Comet_ people well.
Lamont Potter, Jr. Philadelphia people. His firm did business with them.
Young Potter at Bellevue.
J. Lyon Crawford, son of a man once at college with Wainwright. Sunny's
father recalled some chaffing joke at the club anent "Jinx's" political
ambitions. As a prospect in politics he had seemed a joke to his
friends.
And, last, J. Addison Hammond, Jr., "Jerry."
How Sunny had pronounced that name! There was that about that soft
inflection that caused her father to hold his pencil suspended, while a
stab of jealousy struck him.
"What does he do, Sunny?"
"Ho! He are goin' be grade artist-arki-tuck. He make so beautiful
pictures, and he have mos' beautiful thought on inside his head. He
goin' to make all these city loog beautiful. He show how make 'partment
houses, where all god light and there's garden grow on top, and there's
house where they not put out liddle bebby on street. He's go sleep and
play on those garden on top house."
Her father, his elbow on desk, his chin cupped on his hand, watched the
girl's kindling face, and suffered pangs that he could not analyse.
Quietly he urged her to continue her story. Unwilling she turned from
Jerry, but came back always to him. Of her life in Jerry's apartment, of
Hatton and his "yuman 'ankerings"; of Itchy, with his two fleas; of Mr.
and Mrs. Satsuma in the gold cage, of Count and Countess Taguchi who
swam in the glass bowl; of the honourable mice; of the butcher and
janitor gentlemen; of Monty, of Bobs, of Jinx, who had asked her to
marry them, and up to the day when Mrs. Hammond and Miss Falconer had
come to the apartment and turned her out. Then a pause to catch her
breath in a wrathful sob, to continue the wistful tale of her prayer to
Kuonnon in the raging, noisy street; of the mother's gentle spirit that
had gone with her on the dark long road that lead to--Katy.
It was then that Miss Holliwell tapped, and the waiters came in with the
great loaded trays held aloft, bearing the carefully ordered meal and
the paraphernalia that accompanies a luncheon de luxe. Someone besides
the waiters had slipped by Miss Holliwell. Katy, clucking with her
tongue against the roof of her mouth, tried to attract the attention of
Sunny, whose back was turned. Sniffing those delicious odours, Katy came
farther into the room, and following the clucking she let out an
unmistakably false cough and loud Ahem!
This time, Sunny turned, saw her friend, and jumped up from her seat and
ran to her. Said Katy in a whisper:
"Gee! You're smarter than I gave you credit for being. Got him going,
ain't you? Well, pull his leg while the going's good, and say, Sunny, if
them things on the tray are for you, remember, I gave you half my hot
dogs and I always say----"
"This are my frien', Katy," said Sunny proudly, as the very grave faced
man whom Katy had tried to trip came forward and took Katy's hand in a
tight clasp.
"Katy, this are my--Chichi--Mr. Papa," said Sunny.
Katy gasped, staring with wide open mouth from Senator Wainwright to
Sunny. Her head reeled with the most extravagantly romantic tale that
instantly flooded it. Then with a whoop curiously like that of some
small boy, Katy grasped hold of Sunny about the waist.
"Whuroo!" cried Katy. "I _knew_ you was a princess. Gee. It's just like
a dime novel--better than any story in Hoist's even."
There in the dignified office of the steel magnate the girl from the
east side drew his daughter into one of the most delicious shimmies,
full of sheer fun and impudent youth. For the first time in years,
Senator Wainwright threw back his head and burst into laughter.
Now these two young radiant creatures, who could dance while they
hungered, were seated before that gorgeous luncheon. Sunny's father
lifted the top from the great planked steak, entirely surrounded on the
board with laced browned potatoes, ornamental bits of peas, beans, lima
and string, asparagus, cauliflower and mushrooms.
Sunny let forth one long ecstatic sigh as she clasped her hands
together, while Katy laid both hands piously upon her stomach and
raising her eyes as if about to deliver a solemn Grace, she said:
"Home, sweet home, was never like this!"