The Summer slipped by on sleepy wings. Autumn’s mellow, balmy touch was
upon the land. By day all Nature was beautiful, but at night the starry
skies were cold and chilling. The earth, too, lost its warmth and
shivered as if in anticipation of the coming winter.
On a certain night in the month of October, a woman, with a baby on her
back, made her weary way through the village of Sanyo. One could see
even in the dim light that she was haggard and hollow-eyed. Her small
hands, which ever and anon crept nervously toward the little head
against her neck, were tragically thin. For almost two months Azalea,
the wife of the white priest, had been a common mendicant. She had
wandered about from place to place, seeking at first employment and
later reduced to the begging of alms. The small inland towns of Japan
have few industries offering employment to women. Azalea was further
hampered by the white child she bore upon her back and the ignominy of
her religion, for in some way her history had followed her from town to
town. Neither her beauty nor her youth were of avail to her now to earn
the pity of those who feared the gods too much to refuse alms to a
beggar. The wife of the foreign devil was an outcast of the gods, a
pariah, a thing accursed. What respectable Japanese would lend aid to
one who had wilfully destroyed the tablets of her ancestors? And so in
this land where beggars oft-times grow fat on charity the pariah
starved. Sometimes a peasant or farmer, knowing nothing of her history,
would give her shelter and food at night, but when the morning light
revealed the blue-eyed babe upon her back, they turned her
superstitiously away. She hardly knew whither her feet carried her, so
many, many had been the days since her wanderings began. Only Nature was
compassionate in that the summer months kept her at least from the chill
of exposure. But even Nature has limits to her patience, and Autumn had
come. During the first few weeks of her wanderings, the baby had
appeared strong and well. The out-door life in the country but
strengthened its little frame. The starving of the mother was a gradual
process, something which at first did not affect the baby. But as the
days and weeks went by and the mother grew weaker, the contagion of her
weariness affected the babe. He became peevish and ailing. The round,
cunning, gurgling baby, to whom the mother had passionately clung as
though for strength, grew thin and cried constantly. Its little face
fell into the odd lines of one aged, thin, pinched and anxious; for what
nourishment is there in the breast of a starving woman?
After a night of vain effort to keep the baby warm in her arms in the
open country, Azalea turned frantically back toward her native village.
She had a vague notion of going once more to the home of her
step-mother, this time to beg with her head at the august woman’s feet
for shelter and charity. When the latter had turned her from the door,
stubborn pride had buoyed the girl up and given her that almost feverish
strength which had sustained her this long. Now the last strain of pride
in her breast was dead. Hope had long lingered, hope and faith in the
dimly remembered words of the white God, that he would protect her
always—yet now even hope was gone.
And thus it was, then, half clad and almost starving, that Azalea
returned to Sanyo. It was night and the streets of the town were almost
deserted. But the little houses, like fairy lanterns, glowed in the
darkness with light and warmth, and as she passed along she could hear
the babble and soft, happy murmur of the contented and housed families.
Her hunger gripped at her throat, parching it. The baby was mercifully
silent, but its weight was so heavy that she walked unsteadily and
stooped beneath it.
Who would have recognized in this shadow of a woman the exquisitely
lovely and dainty girl who, despite her shabby clothes, had bravely held
her head so high in the town? Would the white priest himself have
recognized her? She had ceased to think of him in these days. She had
told herself that he had been but a beautiful spirit whom the gods had
sent to bless her for a little time only. Now he was gone. Azalea had
forgotten the language he had taught her; had forgotten the God he had
told her would comfort. Her own wanderings and the cries of her baby had
occupied her mind to the exclusion of all else. Only sometimes when she
slept she dreamed of his great, tender brown eyes watching over and
guarding her, and in her sleep she sighed his name.
Now before the door of her step-mother’s home she stood once more.
Madame Yamada came and looked at her. With her came to the doorstep her
two daughters. Azalea bent so low and humbly that with the weight upon
her back she nigh fell to the ground. Her voice was almost too faint to
hear.
“One night of shelter, good, dear, kindest of mothers—and a little
food!”
Madame Yamada’s voice was as hard as her face.
“So you have returned!” she said. “You are without shame, it seems. This
is the house of respectable people. The Kirishitan cannot enter.”
“Kirishitan—Kirishitan!” Azalea repeated the word vaguely, dazedly. “I
am not Kirishitan,” she said. “The gods——”
Madame Yamada’s shrill laugh interrupted her.
“What! And you carry the evil book in the front of your obi!”
“That!” Azalea dragged the book from her obi. She held it up with both
hands, then with a sudden, wild vehemence dashed it to the ground and
put her foot upon it.
“It has brought me evil. Good step-mother, I have cast it from me. Give
me shelter,” and she stretched her hands out in piteous appeal. But only
the blank wall of shoji faced her now. Madame Yamada and her daughters
had closed the doors upon her, even as she renounced her religion.
In a frenzy she beat with her thin hands upon the panelling, and her
moaning voice reached those within.
“Oh, hearts of stone, take then the child within. It is dying! dying!”
Her step-mother thrust her fist through the paper shoji. One baleful eye
was placed at the opening. But she did not speak.
The burst of passion subsided. Azalea’s hands fell to her side; she
slowly stiffened and straightened herself. She stood in giddy hesitation
a moment, then slowly moved away.
Through half the length of the night she wandered about the hill country
and town of Sanyo. Once she came to some water and its murmuring song
evoked a momentary response in her. She began to laugh in a soft, mad
way as she stepped into it; but the water came only to her ankles and
the baby upon her back moved and moaned in its sleep. Something burned
within her head. Words, words—words—spoken in that deep voice she had so
loved. To take life was an evil and unpardonable thing in the sight of
the One God! She stepped upon the bank of the brook in shivering terror.
Suddenly she ran from it as though from a great temptation. She sped on
from the dark allurement of the country to where the light of the city
told her of the warmth and happiness of others. Through street and
street she wandered, her feet dragging, her head dropped forward. She
lost her sandals and her feet, in the worn and old linen, bled from the
touch of the pavement. She had now lost all sense of locality. Only she
knew that thrice she paraded one particular street—an avenue shaded by
dark, drooping bamboos, under whose shade houses of exquisite structure
and light gleamed out upon the night.
Azalea stopped before one of them—the largest of all. Her hand rested
heavily upon the bamboo gate; but she did not attempt to push it open.
Now she stood still with a nameless quiet and terror in her heart.
Suddenly, as she wavered, the babe upon her back twisted in its
wrappings, and weirdly, piercingly cried aloud. A moment later one
appeared at the door of the house with a lighted andon in his hand. He
came with hasty steps down to the bamboo gate, and there in the dim
light of the lifted andon he saw the woman Azalea. He seized her by the
arm and drew her up the path and into the house.
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