Meanwhile Matsuda sent the articles he had purchased in Tokyo as
marriage gifts to the most respected and honorable foreigner, Mr.
Verley. The latter was actually pleased and touched. He laughed at
Azalea’s first impulse of fear when the presents had arrived and
reminded her that these were the only wedding gifts they had received.
She, after her temporary fear, fell to admiring the beauty of the gifts.
By the time Matsuda came to pay his personal respects to the couple,
only the remotest suspicion of design on his part remained in her mind.
No one could have been more respectful and humble in attitude than the
rich Matsuda to the foreign minister, no one more solicitous for their
comfort and happiness. The little mission house and its pastor found a
sudden, unexpected patron, for Sunday after Sunday the chief man of
Sanyu attended the services. Matsuda became a “pillar of the church.”
First he won the confidence of the minister, and later made the
acquaintance of other and more powerful foreigners in the larger cities
of Japan.
The recall of the missionary came like a shock in the midst of their
happiness. Azalea, by this time, had learned and seemingly understood
the religion of her husband. She had accepted it even before she
understood it with a meek faith almost sublime. Yet, in spite of her
seeming conversion, and her almost idolatrous love for her husband,
there had curiously enough remained always with Azalea that small
stubborn feeling of terror of the far-away “land of the barbarians”
which constituted the home of her husband. All the joyful searching with
her husband as teacher in the books of his people had failed to cure her
of this innate sense of fear of the foreigner, a fear inculcated since
childhood, when she had listened to the weird and horrible tales of an
old grandfather who had once lived in one of the open ports and whose
imagination was livelier than his memory. These vivid tales of horror,
added to an occasional visit to the town of foreign sailor men, whose
shore conduct was not that of superior beings, and the further assurance
of the temple priests that these barbarians were evil—all these
impressions were deeply enough implanted in the nature of Azalea, who
had never wholly outgrown her child-nature. Just as a Caucasian child
might shrink in fear at the thought of suddenly being taken from his
safe little cot and transplanted among the savage tribes of Africa, so
the little Japanese girl dreaded the thought of life in the questionable
and unknown land of America. And now, when she had come to the years of
womanhood, a thrill of that early fear still remained with her. Hence
when her husband told her of his recall Azalea was quite stupefied.
“You are going to leave me!” she gasped, her eyes wide with terror.
“Leave you!” he repeated. “Why, what put such an idea as that into your
head? You are going with me.”
She shook her head.
“No, no! I kinnod go,” she said.
“Cannot! What a word to use to me. Certainly you will go.”
She caught at his hands and held them spasmodically.
“You promise me on that day you marry wiz me that you never goin’ take
me away across those oceans. Yes, you promise.”
“But Azalea, I am recalled. I must go. Now, be reasonable. These people
who sent for me are my employers.”
She slipped to the floor and sat with her hands clasped about her
huddled knees.
“Velly well,” she said after a moment. “You go. I will wait here for
you.”
He sat down on the mat beside her and put his arm about her.
“No, no, we must go together.”
With her head against his shoulder she cried hysterically.
“I do not want to go—no, I do not want!” she kept repeating.
Thinking her eccentric stubbornness due to her condition, he said in the
tenderest voice:
“I could not leave you alone now. Why, what would a little girl like you
do all alone with a wee baby and no husband to care for both of you.”
She struck her hands passionately together.
“Tha’s why!” she said. “Jus’ why I doan want go. I am ’fraid for that
liddle bit bebby.”
Argument and persuasion seemed useless at this time, for Azalea could
neither understand the one, nor would she yield to the other. Even when
Richard Verley returned from Tokyo, where he had found money cabled for
two passages by his missionary society, Azalea would not consider the
journey. A less conscientious man than the young minister would have
used the price of the second passage in providing for the comfort of his
wife, during his absence, but Verley repelled the idea, even though he
knew that once in America he could easily find funds. So in obedience to
his Massachusetts conscience, Azalea’s share of the cabled funds was
sent back.
Then it was that Azalea would hysterically consent to journey with her
husband, only to refuse in the end.
Verley’s recall was imperative. Yet at times he thought of refusing to
return. His many gifts and benevolences among the people had eaten away
the last instalment of his small salary. He could not leave his wife
supplied with funds sufficient for the entire period of her illness; yet
once in America he would be able to send small sums regularly. The
society had mentioned something vaguely of a desire to have him lecture
in the United States and after that it was intimated that he might be
sent to China. In any event he would return for Azalea after the birth
of her child.
All these confused thoughts and reasonings played through the mind and
conscience of Verley. Yet so finely balanced were the moral and
emotional traits of this young man that for a time he could come to no
decision. He prayed, and then the precepts of his religion conquered.
Since Azalea would not accompany him, he must go alone. Parting was
inevitable, but absence was not for long.
Once again he sought Azalea. Failing to move her by the most passionate
entreaty, Verley tried to make her see his reasons for his decision,
which he now felt more than ever must be final.
Azalea looked up at him with an apathetic, yet tender, expression:
“Yaes, yaes,” she said wearily, “I understand. I kinnod go. Your
God—yaes, my God also—he calling you—not me. You go! I stay!”
Verley now mutely enough accepted the cruelty of circumstances and
sought to cheer the drooping spirits of his wife. She at this time was
beset by feelings of the most intense depression, induced as much by her
frail condition of health as her childish terror of the seas which lay
between and separated her husband’s America from her Japan.
During the last weeks of his stay in Japan, Richard Verley spent his
time in attempts to earn sufficient money so that, at least, Azalea,
until he could communicate with her from America, should not want for
anything. He wrote articles for a Tokyo weekly paper. Even the native
journalists of Japan dream not of making a living at this profession,
unless they own an interest in the paper to which they contribute. The
amount the young American missionary received for his contributions
could be said to add nothing to the meagre sum he had been enabled to
lay by from his salary. This, he calculated, would keep Azalea in
comparative comfort for possibly two months. He sighed as he thought of
her childish ignorance of the value of money, and he hardly dared to
think of the possibility of the premature birth of his child.
But upon the eve of his going fortune quite suddenly reversed its
frowning face. His financial worries found an unexpected alleviation.
Matsuda Isami, the friend of his church and a professed convert, had
come to him and offered a certain sum of money. Of course the American
had protested at accepting any money for personal use from the Japanese,
but Matsuda insisted that he knew of the minister’s embarrassment, and
being himself possessed of much, wished to share at least a small part
of it with his friend. He felt sure Mr. Verley would sail from Japan in
an easier frame of mind if he could be assured that his wife was well
protected from want. The amount offered by Matsuda was insignificant,
but seventy-five yen goes far toward living in Japan. She would be
independent for six months to come, at least. And while the minister
hesitated over the temptation, the wily Matsuda suggested that if the
minister felt any backwardness about accepting it as a gift, to at least
accept it as a loan, giving Matsuda a lien upon the contents of his
house. This need only be perfunctory, a formal salve to his pride, for
Matsuda was confident the minister would pay the loan in no time. It is
needless to say that the man of trade triumphed over the man of dreams.
Richard Verley mortgaged the furniture of his house, without explaining
this part to his wife, who was already disheartened at his protracted
departure. He was enabled to put into her hand, the day before he
sailed, a sum of money larger than she had ever seen before.
The parting was heart-wrenching. It took place in the little house, for
he did not wish to have her go to the big city to see the actual sailing
of the boat, and she at the last moment had decided against going even
to the railroad station of the town with him. She wished, she said, to
see him leave the house, just as if he were going on a visit in the
neighborhood, to the church, to an afflicted beggar, or one dying and
deserted. He told her she was the bravest woman in the world because she
would not let him see her face save with a smile upon the lips. Her eyes
kept back their tears. Only at the last moment she clung about his neck
and, from kissing his face, fell to kissing his breast, his arms and
hands, and then slipped to the floor, there to kiss, in a fashion that
shocked him, his very feet.
When he was gone she closed every shoji of the house and shut herself up
alone. That night she slept underneath his desk in the little study
where he had worked, his large black bible the pillow for her head.
[Illustration]
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