[Illustration:
“He had come quite close to his garden gate before he perceived the
little figure waiting there.”
(Page 25)
]
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THE
LOVE OF AZALEA
BY
ONOTO WATANNA
AUTHOR OF “A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE,” “THE HEART OF HYACINTH,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY GAZO FOUDJI
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1904
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Copyright, 1904, by
WINIFRED BABCOCK
Copyright, 1904, by
DODD, MEAD & CO.
Published October
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ILLUSTRATIONS
“He had come quite close to _Frontispiece_
his garden gate before he
perceived the little figure
waiting there.”
“‘This is the American way,’ 88
he said, boyishly, and,
stooping, kissed her.”
“She threw the tablets in the 98
direction of the little
river in the valley below.”
“‘My house awaits your coming, 162
and I have sworn to possess
you.’”
“The shadows of the night were 166
her only covering, and the
soft, mossy grass her
mattress.”
“As the sword flashed upward 228
he dashed to one side and
then slipped under its
guard.”
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THE LOVE OF AZALEA
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[Illustration]
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THE LOVE OF AZALEA
CHAPTER I
IT was drowsy in the little mission church, and the gentle mellifluous
voice of the young preacher increased rather than dispelled the sleepy
peacefulness. The church, if such it could be styled, was well filled.
The people of Sanyo knew it for the coolest of retreats. They drifted
aimlessly in and out of the church, making no pretense of either
understanding or appreciating the proceedings. It was a curious
congregation, one which, innocently enough, never thought of assisting
the pastor. They came to see the white priest, not to listen to the
pleading message he brought, which as yet they could not understand. His
Japanese was too correct. Spoken slowly and painfully in the unfamiliar
accent of the Caucasian, it was often quite unintelligible. But, as was
said, the church was cool, the villagers curious, and the minister an
unending source of wonder to them. If some of the congregation waited
patiently throughout the length of the sermon, it was not because they
deemed this the proper thing to do, but because they knew they would be
treated to another form of entertainment, which they childishly enjoyed.
For, after the sermon, the minister, closing the large black book before
him and opening a small red one, would raise his voice, throw back his
head, open his mouth, and sing aloud in a voice which had never lost its
fascination for his hearers. He had done this from the first, leading an
unresponsive congregation in hymns of praise; but singing to the end
alone. No aiding voice took up the refrain with him nor was there even
the music of an organ to bear his clear voice company. Through the
opened windows the chirp of the birds floated. Sometimes a baby, grown
restless, laughed and crowed aloud.
On this particular Sunday, however, the minister, who appeared unusually
happy, had introduced an innovation. As its nature had been whispered
about the village, the service in consequence was well attended. Behind
the minister’s small sandal-wood pulpit a bench had been placed, upon
which the people saw seated five of the most disreputable waifs of the
town. At first they were hardly recognizable. From smudgy-faced, soiled
and tattered bits of flotsam, they were transformed in garments of
white—miniature surplices they were.
The minister beamed upon them. The boys looked stoically back at him.
This day those in the church forgot to look about at the various objects
of interest, forgot to drowse, for all eyes were intent upon that little
row behind the priest. When the sermon was ended and the minister turned
to the red hymn book, the boys arose to their feet, and as his baritone
voice was raised, five piping and discordant minor voices joined with
him.
The result of the minister’s effort for a choir was immediate. It broke
up the apathy of the congregation.
Groups lingered about the mission house after the service—groups of
curious child-women for the most part. The question discussed from every
standpoint was the seeming elevation of these most unsavory and godless
of town waifs. How could these good people guess that the young
minister, restless at the seeming fruitlessness of his labors, had given
of his own meagre salary to induce the hungriest of the town, for so
many sen, to be respectable for one day in the week? What would not a
Japanese vagabond do for a sen or a sweet potato? Submit to a bath, a
robe too clean to touch and the pleasure—sometimes pain—of mimicking the
voice of the white man.
The mellow tinkling of temple bells disturbed the gossips. It was the
hour of noon, when the gods were good and for a little prayer would give
them sweet food and excellent appetites. So straight from the temple of
the white priest they dispersed, through the valley to the opposite
hill, where the Shinto Temple, golden-tipped, beckoned them to the
prayers they mechanically understood; a moment only in the temple,
nodding heads and prostrating bodies, and after that, home and the
noon-day meal. Thus every day. Only on the Sunday, since the coming of
the foreign priest, they had added to the routine this weekly pilgrimage
of curiosity to the white man’s temple. Strange indeed were the ways of
the foreign devils!
“Let us wait a little while,” said a round-faced, merry-eyed maid of
fifteen, grasping the sleeves of girl friends.
Azalea was departing slowly when recalled by the raised voice of her
friend. At a short distance from the other girls she paused and looked
back inquiringly.
“Wait till they come out,” continued the speaker, Ume-san by name,
“those beggars, and we will have some fun.”
“Oh, good!” agreed Koto, snapping her fan upon her hand; “we will find
out what the white beast says to them.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Fuji, stretching herself—she was fat and indolent
and the church seat was hard—“he pays them.”
Azalea looked interested.
“I wish,” said she wistfully, “he would pay me something.”
“Perhaps he will,” said Fuji, nodding her head slowly; “my honorable
father says he is rich—very rich.”
“And my honorable father says so, too,” said Ume.
“Oh, all foreign devils are,” declared Koto conclusively.
“Well, but Matsuda Isami says he is not,” said Azalea. “And Matsuda
knows surely.”
“Matsuda is jealous,” said Koto. “He wants to be always the richest. The
gods despise avarice.”
Azalea was fluttering her fan somewhat nervously. She regarded it
thoughtfully, then closed it sharply.
“I am avaricious,” she said, with the point of her fan touching her
pretty red underlip.
Her friends laughed at her, and she blushed.
“Yes,” she said, “I am avaricious. The gods will despise me truly. I
adore money. I would like to have one hundred yen all to myself.”
“What would you do with it?” questioned Ume, the oldest of the four.
“I would leave my step-mother’s house,” said Azalea simply.
“Here they come!” cried Koto. The girls fell into an excited little line
by the church door, one behind the other. Out came the choir—their
surplices doffed, their washed faces wide with smiles and their little
eyes shining. Five sen rattled in the sleeve of each. The girls had
drawn in hiding behind the church portico in order to surprise them. Now
they sprang out into view, and grasped the boys by the sleeves. Thinking
they were being set upon for their hard-earned sen, a series of angry
shrieks and snorts burst out. Their fears set at rest by the merry
laughter of the girls, they were finally induced to tell all they knew.
The minister, it seems, had brought them to his house at various times,
had fed them on sweet potatoes and rice cakes, and had taught them to
sing just as he did. For this public effort in his temple, he had given
them each—well, they did not propose to tell any one how much he had
given, but the intimation was that it was a sum sufficient to keep them
in luxury for some time to come. Furthermore, they, the members of his
choir, were to have this same sum given to them as a weekly income, for
singing, just like the white priest, in his church, each Sunday.
Azalea sighed and, sitting on the church steps, looked at the fortunate
boys with envious and wistful eyes.
“And does not the white beast want females also to sing?” she asked.
“Females!” repeated one of the boys. “Did the gods ever favor females?”
“The foreign devil is not a god,” said Azalea thoughtfully. “Who knows,
perhaps he would pay me also to sing with him.”
“Time to go home,” said Koto, and she pulled Ume’s sleeve. “Are you not
hungry? Come, Azalea!”
“She won’t give me to eat, my most honorable mother-in-law,” said
Azalea. “I need not go there.”
“You will soon be a beggar, too, Azalea,” laughed Koto, “and the white
man will give you charity. But come, girls.”
Clinging to each other’s hands and almost tripping over each other’s
heels, the three girls fluttered homeward down the hill, leaving Azalea
sitting alone, looking moodily and reflectively at the choir boys, now
counting their money. She knew that they, like her, were orphans. Unlike
her, they had not an uncharitable roof, called by her ungracious
step-parent a home for her. Shelter beneath it was only grudgingly
accorded, because Azalea’s step-mother was vain and feared the criticism
of neighbors and the wrath of the gods should she turn Azalea out. As it
was, the young girl was only half fed and her clothes were those
half-worn ones thrown to her by arrogant and fortunate step-sisters, yet
the girl’s nimble fingers made those same threadbare garments objects of
attractiveness, which set off her own appealing beauty. But she was
seventeen, unmarried and unhappy. Something must be done soon, or she
would become the bride of the river. Her step-mother’s scoldings grew
with the girl’s increasing beauty and grace. She did not know this was
the cause, only she knew life was becoming unbearable.
The choir boys had already shuffled a portion of the way down the hill
slope, when she sprang to her feet and ran after them.
“Gonji!” she called one of them by name. “Wait just a moment.”
They stopped and she overtook them. She was breathless when she reached
them.
“Is it because you are beggars,” she said, “that this priest favors
you?”
Gonji nodded.
“I,” said Azalea, spreading out her little hands, “am also a beggar.”
They laughed at her. Only the homeless were beggars in their eyes. In
addition, members of her sex were received among them only when they had
reached the old witch age. The country knew many old women beggars, who
drifted, whining, upon their staffs from town to town. Often they were
blind and clung to the rope about the neck of a tailless cat, which led
them. Who ever heard of a maiden beggar? So Azalea’s statement was
received in laughter.
“How much did the minister give?” she demanded, ignoring their jeers.
“Five—ten—maybe one hundred sen,” glibly lied Gonji.
Her eyes widened and shone.
“Oh!” she said.
“That’s only for the singing,” said Gonji; “if we become convert to his
religion he will pay more.”
He turned to his companions for verification. They had moved on their
way and he made to join them.
“No, no, don’t go! Wait a little while, please!”
“Well?”
“What is ‘convert?’”
“Why,” the Japanese boy of sixteen racked his brain for an explanation
of the word, “why, that’s to—ah—that’s just abandoning the gods for a
new one.”
“Oh!” His sleeve dropped from her grasp and she drew back, her face
somewhat blanched.
“Abandon the gods!” she repeated. “But if we do that, then the gods will
be angry with us.”
“That is true,” nodded Gonji reflectively. “It’s bad business,” he
added.
“Perhaps,” she essayed almost timidly, “that new God is also kind and
good.”
Gonji shook his head skeptically.
“The priest at the temple says that he is really an evil spirit.”
The girl shuddered. She turned away from Gonji and he resumed his way
down the hill.
Azalea walked listlessly back to the mission house. When she had reached
it, she paused irresolute. A sudden idea had come to her. Why should she
not pretend to be converted? When the barbarian priest had paid her she
would go to the shrine of Kwannon and confess her lie. She would give
half of the money to the gods, who would forgive her; she was hungry and
ill-treated and she wished to leave the home of her step-mother, who was
cruel to her. If money could be earned by a little lie, why should she
not earn it? She would! She would!
The young minister closed and locked the door of the church. Turning on
the threshold, he paused a moment before descending the little flight of
steps, and looked about him at the smiling, sunny landscape.
The bells of the neighboring temple were melodious, and he found himself
absently listening to them. With his hands clasped behind, and his head
somewhat bent, Richard Verley turned slowly toward his home.
It was only the length of an iris field from the church, a pleasant
saunter. The minister was wont to dream upon these walks—dream of the
future harvest which would repay his earnest labors.
He had come quite close to his garden gate before he perceived the
little figure waiting there. It was her voice—her odd, breathless voice,
which called his attention to her—though he heard the one word ‘convert’
spoken in English. The rest of her speech was unintelligible.
She stood in the sunlight, her cheeks vividly red, her eyes wide with
excitement and with fright. It was that fearful, piteous something about
her whole attitude which from the first reached and appealed instantly
to the sympathies of the minister.
“You wish to speak to me?” he asked.
“Yaes,” she said, nodding her head, and then very swiftly, as though she
had learned the words by rote—“I am convert unto you, Excellency.”
“Convert!” His eyes kindled and he stared at her without speaking a
moment. Her head drooped, as if from its own small weight.
“Yaes,” she said in the lowest, the faintest of voices, “I am
convert—Chlistian!”
He seized both her hands, and held them warmly in his own.
“Come into my house, my child,” he said. “Let us talk it over.”
Her hands fluttered in his, then she suddenly withdrew them. They
slipped back into her sleeves. She stood uncertainly before him,
hesitating to pass through the gate he had opened for her.
“Come!” he urged gently.
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