From the square, gray platform of Shimbashi station, terraced by stone
steps, hung with tiled eaves, and surrounded by a swarming school of
black jinrikishas, each with a chattering, gesticulating, blue-clad
human horse before it, one dives at will into the iridescent life of
modern Yedo. Regarded as a city, it is little more than a collection of
villages carelessly swept together; little communities where the same
streets catch up altered names; districts with opposing trades,
antagonistic feast-days, and rival deities.
Tanners preëmpt an unsavory ward. Shoemakers claim for themselves a
network of small streets. The dry-goods merchants command an avenue.
Pipe-sellers, wine-merchants, tobacconists, book-sellers, marketmen,
carpenters,--each guild tends to make a centre for itself. Perhaps, as
one consequence of this segregation, Tokio becomes the stronghold of
street peddlers. It matters little to the housewife that the nearest
market is four miles away, when sections of that market, strapped to
boyish shoulders, go crying past her gate with the punctuality of
planets. Tokio is a place where circulating libraries literally
circulate; where perambulating oil-shops fill lamps on the patron's
kitchen step or in the glass frame at his gate, and then stop to light
them; where the tailor finishes a quilt or an overcoat on the bedroom
floor, and the hair-dresser needs no local habitation.
In a great semicircle crowded near the Red Gate of the Imperial
University, live and study and brawl and bluster the students,--the
future Nogis, Togos, Kurokis, Saigos, Itos, and Oyamas of their
race,--now no more than restless young spirits in a recognized democracy
of their own. Some of them cook their own meals and patch their own
faded hakama,--a species of heroism to make death on a battlefield grow
tame. Others "board" in one of the long, barn-like dormitories, or in a
convenient cheap lodging-house, often three and four in a room, at the
enormous rate of fifty cents a week. Poverty seems to them admirable,
nothing whatever to be ashamed of. The Japanese youth of the samurai
class is bred to a distaste of bodily luxury. Should one of their number
show a leaning toward soft cushions and rich food, the others ridicule
him, call him "O Sharé Sama," the Tokio equivalent of "Dandy," and say
that his soul grows fat.
Yuki sped through all, breathless with the wonder of home-returning. The
three jinrikishas, Tetsujo, of course, in the lead, went one after the
other in a straight line, as though on an invisible track. Whether in a
lane four feet wide, or in an avenue two hundred, this goose-like manner
of procedure never changed. Old familiar street-corners, familiar pines,
changed shop fronts, appealed to the girl with a sense of reality. Her
eyes filled and her heart beat faster as she caught her first glimpse,
after four years, of towering moated walls where crawled the "Dragon
Pines" of Iyemitsu, and of the high dark roof now sheltering her beloved
ruler.
Beyond the palace and its moats came foreignized Yedo. Sidewalks were
here, though pedestrians still preferred the middle of the street,
turning aside good-naturedly at the warning "Hek! hek!" of approaching
vehicles. The streets, conspicuously broad, were paved with concrete or
with stone. On every side rose buildings just completed, of brick and
stone, or great steel frames for other edifices. It might have been
Connecticut. The sidewalk trees, set rigidly in hollowed concrete
basins, refused to grow in Japanese fashion, and had the poise of elms.
Down centres of these streets horse-cars jangled. Work was already
started on the superseding electric line. Yuki observed it all with
conscious pride, yet her eyes brightened with new eagerness as another
quick turn plunged them once more into the heart of feudal Yedo.
The streets narrowed now to lanes, bordered on each side with
shops,--mere open booths,--flung wide to the dim rear plaster wall.
Shelves holding various wares came down sheer to the matted floor. In
the middle of the space generally sat the master, while skirmishing
about, sometimes in a gloomy slit of a passage to the rear, sometimes up
or down stepladder-like stairs to a crouching upper story, could be seen
the small apprentices, or kozo. The life of the Japanese kozo forms a
literature to itself; but this is not the place to begin it. These were
the narrow streets Yuki had longed for. Here were the shop signs
swinging wonderful tones of blue, dark crimson, and white, here the
great gold Chinese ideograph, sprawling across long banners.
In a sort of pause between districts came a hint of suburbs, and,
winding through it, Little Pebble River. A river is never more
mysterious than when carrying its deep secrets through a busy town. This
one, the Koishikawa, dominated the section through which it passed,
giving its own name, and establishing certain small industries of
dyeing, grinding, fishing, and boating possible nowhere else in Yedo,
until the great central artery of the Sumida is reached. Cherry-trees
joined finger-tips above the Koishikawa,--real grass crept down its
banks to trail finger in the hurrying tide.
It was all beautiful, all real, all familiar. From afar the clanging of
beaten metal smote the ears. Yuki remembered that the main bridge led
almost to the great gate of the Arsenal. A moment later it came into
view. Tall chimneys pulsed black worlds of smoke, and corrugated roofs
scowled above spiked, enclosing walls. At every gate stood a sentry-box
and a soldier in blue uniform.
"A mighty noise, young lady!" volunteered Yuki's jinrikisha man, in a
hoarse shout. He nodded his head toward the clamor, and then looked
backward to bestow on her a confidential grin. In the river, just in
front of the arsenal, great muddy barges were poled in and
beached,--with loads of coal and copper, iron and wood.
"Yes, indeed, it is a terrible noise," answered Yuki politely. "They
must be very busy behind those walls." She sighed heavily, but her sigh
was lost in the roar of flame. The fact that her country was at that
very moment on the verge of war with Russia, perhaps with France
also,--with France, Pierre's country!--was one of those thoughts she was
trying to keep away.
"They work with double force by lamp and by sun," boasted the jinrikisha
man, when they had passed the most deafening uproar. "Oh, but the
Russians think us children to be cheated and lied to! But we are
preparing a lesson for the cowardly bears,--we do not fear them! Look, O
Jo San!" He chuckled loudly, and without relaxing his wonderful
mechanical trot or falling an inch behind the pace of the two preceding
kuruma, unwrapped from his wrist the inevitable twisted tenugui, or hand
towel. Keeping one end under his palm, he let the rest stream backward,
like a flag. Instead of the usual bird, flower, or landscape etching in
indigo blue, the pattern represented a fleet of Japanese war-ships in
full engagement with the Russian navy. Under the water-level great
communities of deep-sea fish looked expectantly upward, chop-sticks and
rice-bowls in their fins. A few Russian sailors, the first of a gorging
repast, had commenced to sink downward. The eyes of the fish were
admirable in their expression of calm certainty. Thus, before the firing
of Togo's first challenge, did the Tokio populace enjoy prophetic
visions.
Beyond the arsenal, and its huddled concourse of working-men's houses
waiting just without the walls, the Koishikawa took a more definite turn
to the north. The Onda party, following it, came soon to a region of
green lanes and pleasant gardens. The clamor of metal-workers died away.
One knew that birds lived in the groves. Before them the highland of the
district loomed in great dark masses, and splendid trees of camphor and
of pine soared clear against the blue. At foot of the hill "Kobinata"
(Little Sunshine) the three jinrikishas halted in unison, and the three
runners looked with bovine yet inquiring faces, each upon his living
burden. The hillside road, now to be taken, rose steep and white between
bamboo hedges. Onda motioned his coolie to lower the shafts. "I am a
heavy man, and with my own feet will take the slope," he said.
"No, no, honorable master. Indeed I say no!" protested the coolie, while
making the greatest haste to obey. "It is not fitting that so exalted a
person as your divine lordship should walk. Though I break my worthless
bones, I will draw you up that precipice!"
Onda, smiling slightly, stepped into the road. Iriya would have followed
his example, but he motioned, bidding her, and likewise Yuki, to remain
seated. He paused to tuck his blue robe a few inches higher, catching
the pointed end-fold in his belt. Iriya and her grunting bearer went by
him. He remained standing, waiting for Yuki. Their eyes met, and both
smiled. He put one powerful hand to the back of the girl's vehicle, his
face being then about on a level with hers, and, ascending the hill
beside her, used his supplementary strength at the very steep or stony
places.
The girl sat very slim and straight, looking eagerly about her. "Father,
what is it about this land of ours that makes all things so honorably
different,--so strangely beautiful?"
"My daughter, it is not well to speak boastfully, even of one's land,"
answered Tetsujo; but his fine, strong face did not bear out the reproof
of his words.
"There will be a gate now, soon to the left,--a little gate of straw
thatching, tied with loops of black hemp twine! A pine-tree sends one
stiff arm across it. On a clear day one sees, in that green frame, the
snows of Fuji-san! Oh, can I bear it, father? I _must_ speak. My heart
aches already with the loveliness. See, even the trees know that they
are beautiful; each has a soul! The trees of America have no souls."
"No, from what I have heard and seen of the Americans, their trees have
only hardwood centres. It is what the Americans would prefer."
"Not all, not all," protested Yuki. "I have a friend, that blonde girl
on the hatoba (wharf),--I have other friends who understand us
strangely. I think in a previous life they must have been Japanese."
"Bah! It is but poor respect you pay our country," answered Tetsujo,
half-teasingly. "Ah," he cried, catching her arm, "the little gate, my
child,--the pine-tree." Yuki's coolie had stopped without bidding. His
face, too, wore the smile of one who loves and understands. The little
gate rose straight and square in its deep gold color of old straw, the
black knots made fantastic decoration along the ridge, the pine-tree
stretched an arm of everlasting green, and over the straight line of the
leaves, far, far out to the West, hung the frail cone of Fuji, like a
silver bowl inverted. Yuki did not try to speak. Her father and the
coolie feasted also in silence. In a few moments the little procession,
still wordless, began again the steep ascent.
Now Tetsujo's eyes went to the pebbled ground. His next remark seemed at
first incongruous. "Did you see the belching of black smoke, my Yuki,
and did you hear the clashing of scourged steel?"
"Yes, father, and the smoke creeps after us like an evil spirit, even to
the foot of Little Sunshine Hill."
"Nippon is soon to enter upon mortal struggle with a great and merciless
foe. All arts of war and treachery will be used against us. We may not
survive."
"Father, it must not come,--the gods must divert it!"
"Every samurai will give his life. Every child and woman of his race
will lie, self-slain, in blood, before the yielding. And yet defeat may
be decreed. To be blind is to be weak. We must face unflinchingly the
ultimate horror."
"The old gods must protect us!" cried the girl.
"You are a Christian. The Christian gods will be invoked to aid our
enemies."
"Oh, father, you hurt me! When I wished to become a Christian, like the
other girls, I wrote you many letters,--you did not oppose it then."
"Neither do I oppose it now," said Tetsujo. "In things of religious
faith each soul should seek an individual path. Because of your
intelligence I allowed you to decide. But in patriotism,--in loyalty to
your native land,--I still have responsibility. Ah, you are my one
child, and most dearly beloved; but if ever I should see in you one
taint of selfish swerving,--if I should suspect that through the foreign
education the sinews of your love were weak--"
Yuki stopped him by a gesture. Her head was proudly lifted. Her eyes
gleamed, and her thin nostrils shook,--"Such thoughts as these are not
to be spoken between a samurai and his child. My very heart is knit of
the fibres of that word 'Nippon.'"
"You are certain, Yuki?" Tetsujo's question and his eyes dug deep.
Yuki hesitated less than a fraction of thought. "I am certain," she
said.
A silence rose between them. Yuki's bright joyousness felt a drifting
cloud. What did her father mean? Had Prince Hagané spoken ill of her?
The promise to Pierre gnawed like a hungry worm. She fought anew the
phantoms of love and approaching war. The two laden jinrikisha coolies
tugged on with ostentatious groans. The hand towels now came into
requisition for the mopping of streaming brows. The road began to curve
into a level space, from which hedge-bordered lanes radiated. Again
Tetsujo spoke.
"That new American envoy,--he with the nose of a sick vulture and the
fine yellow eye,--is he favorable to us? Is he one that at all
understands us?"
"Indeed, my father, he is of wonderful understanding. He and Baron
Kanrio are as brothers in thought. Did not Prince Hagané speak of him?"
Ignoring the question, Tetsujo went on. "The younger of the two
women,--that straw-colored maiden who seems standing on the edge of a
small typhoon,--she, I suppose, is the school friend, the Miss Todd, you
referred to."
"Yes," answered Yuki, a little resentfully. "And she is considered
beautiful. I think her augustly beautiful, even as Amaterasu, our Sun
Goddess."
"Not ours. It may be that other nations have also sun goddesses," said
Tetsujo, significantly. "To me all foreign females are of hideous
aspect. They look and strut like fowls. And the two young males,--sons
of Mr. Todd, I take it,--they are as the painted toys sold in temple
booths. Yet, if the foreigners have been kind, it is well to express
gratitude, and to send gifts as costly as my purse will allow."
"The Todds are rich,--very, very rich,--even as our great silk
merchants," cried Yuki, in indignation. "They do not want gifts, or
expect them. It is not an American custom. Gwendolen, my friend, my
sister, wishes only to be with me, freely, as we have been for four
years past."
Tetsujo considered. "I could not refuse you a continuance of friendship,
my child, though I confess it will irk me greatly to see those strange
creatures on my mats. After the first few days of your home-coming,--in
a week, perhaps,--you can speak again of this desire."
Yuki's heart sank. A week,--and she had promised to see them to-morrow,
perhaps this afternoon! She opened her lips to remonstrate, and then
thought better of it. If he felt it a concession to admit Gwendolen,
daughter of the new American minister, what would he say to Pierre?
Deliberately she fought down the rising host of apprehensions. "No," she
whispered, "I shall not dwell upon it. I must not spoil my home-coming
with uncertain fears. I shall try to be untroubled until I can tell my
father all."
Well along the top of the hill, Onda re-entered his kuruma, and with the
word "hidari" (left), started the little string of vehicles down a path
that ran in wavering lines between hedges of various growths. Many were
of dwarf bamboo or sa-sa, other of a higher bamboo, springing from
resilient stems twenty feet in air. A few were of the small-leafed
d[=o]dan, a bush which turns to wet vermilion with the frost. Several
were of intertwisted thorn, a cruel and relentless guardian. One showed
a flat green wall like that of a three-story city house jutting upon a
pavement; but the masonry was all of growth, rafters of thick stems, and
facing of the close-clipped evergreen mochi-tree. The small tiled gate
jutting from the centre of the lower edge seemed the entrance of a cave.
Doubtless behind this imposing and misleading front nestled an
unpretentious cot, a well-sweep, a small vegetable and flower garden,
and a handful of old trees.
Onda's gate, some hundreds of yards further to the north, emerged in
wooden simplicity from a sa-sa hedge. Along the street the bamboo only
showed. Within it ran a line of well-trained thorn. This fence was
characteristic of the race which had planned it; Onda's father and
grandfather, and many generations before, had owned this spot of ground
in Yedo.
Tetsujo, although the first to arrive, remained in his kuruma, while
Iriya and Yuki made haste to descend. The former went at once to the
gate, pulling aside a thin wooden panel. A little gate-bell jangled, and
at the musical summons wooden-shod feet were heard, running down the
pathway from the house. Old Suzumé, shrivelled, yellow, her black eyes
darting excitement everywhere, fell on her knees in the gateway. She
began immediately to mutter a jumble of ceremonious phrases, in the
pauses drawing her breath with ferocious energy. Behind her showed a
moon-faced maiden, who stared first, as if bewildered, and then suddenly
fell to the earth beside Suzumé.
"That is sufficient," said Tetsujo, now descending and pushing between
them as he entered the gate. "Here, Suzumé, take my purse, and let these
good rascals rob us as little as possible. Go within, Maru, and prepare
to remove the foreign shoes from the feet of your young mistress."
Maru, quaking like a jelly, as she always did when addressed directly by
the "august master," obeyed instantly, and knelt at the stone house-step
to receive the shoes. Suzumé unwillingly remained at the gate to haggle
with the three jinrikisha men.
When the shoes were reverently drawn off, dusted on Maru's blue striped
apron, and set side by side on the stone step, the little handmaid
disappeared around the corner of the house. A moment later was heard the
scurrying of soft stockinged feet within.
Yuki stretched a hand toward the closed shoji.
"No, dear, wait an instant," said Iriya, hurriedly interposing. "Let
Maru San open the shoji. She has been rehearsing this for a year."
Yuki drew back. "I have forgotten so many things," she murmured,
flushing.
"They are not lost; they will spring quickly in the warm rain of home
love," said Tetsujo, behind them.
The shoji were sliding apart, both at once, with noiseless precision. In
the opening Maru's globe-like countenance beamed. Now, for the first
time, Iriya performed the equivalent of an introduction. "Maru San," she
said, in her pleasant voice, "this is our o jo san (honorable young lady
of the house), Onda Yuki-ko, for whom we have been longing."
"Hai, o jo san! Go kigen y[=o]! Irasshai!" palpitated the little
servant, asking her to enter.
"I have written you often of Maru," Iriya went on, turning to her
daughter.
Tetsujo brushed unceremoniously through the group, and strode alone to
the big corner guest-room at the rear.
"She is the orphaned child of Suzumé's dead husband's stepson,"
continued Iriya, placidly. "About two years ago she was left quite
destitute, so of course her natural home was here. Maru is a good girl,
and of much help to us."
"Ah, Mistress, Mistress," cried old Suzumé, nearly tripping on her clogs
to reach them, "you know well that Maru is a very cat in the sun for
laziness." The speaker struggled hard to look severe.
"Hai, hai," said Maru, in deprecating confirmation, and bobbed over to
the matting.
"Why, o jo san, in my opinion Maru is not worth the honorable rice she
puts in her gluttonous mouth," said Suzumé, on a high note of
satisfaction. "Yet the kind mistress here, besides food and occasional
outworn garments, allows her sixty sen each month for spending. Ah,
Kwannon Sama, of divine compassion, will reward our mistress for her
kind heart!"
Iriya laughed, a merry, low laugh, as young as Yuki's own.
"I thank you, Suzumé; but do you realize that the master sits alone in
the zashiki, with no tea, no coal, no--"?
"D[=o]-mo!" exclaimed the old woman, and scrambled rapidly to her feet.
"But I become more and more the fool with age, as a tree gathers lichen.
I will attend."
"Be at leisure, honorable, ancient relative; I will fetch the tea," said
Maru.
"No," cried Yuki, suddenly stretching out a hand; "I want to take it
just as I used to as a little girl. I think it will please my father.
Let me take it, Suzumé San!"
Maru paused with round, incredulous eyes. "Arà!" cried old Suzumé,
scarcely knowing whether she were the more pleased or astonished. "A
fashionable, wonderful young lady, educated in America, with numberless
young Japanese noblemen waiting to marry her,--and she wishes to bear
the tray like a tea-house musumé! Ma-a-a! How strange! Yet it is a good
desire. The mistress's face shines with it. It shows your heart has not
changed color, o jo san. I will prepare at once. Come, lazy fatling!"
This last remark was of course addressed to Maru.
In his wide, dim zashiki, or reception-room,--analogous to the
drawing-room of the West,--Tetsujo sat alone. He was glad for a moment
of solitude. His mind did not move swiftly on any subject. The
bewilderment of his first vision of Yuki, changed from a clinging
Japanese child to an alert, self-possessed American, had not altogether
passed. Then that bobbing, blue-eyed he-creature on the hatoba,--he had
given sour food for thought. What language was it that the thing had
tried to speak, what wish to utter? Well, at least Yuki was safe now
among her home people, away from the influence of all such mountebanks.
In a few days she would be wishing to don again her Japanese dress, and
then he could begin to believe he had a child.
The Onda residence faced directly to the north, thus giving the big
guest-chamber and the outlying garden a southern exposure. Two sides of
the room, the south and the west, had removable shoji. The inner walls
were partly of plaster, partly of sliding, opaque panels of gold, called
fusuma. These were painted in war-like designs by Kano artists. To-day
the western shoji were all closed; but the sun, just reaching them, shed
a mellow tone of light throughout the room. All southern shoji were out,
admitting, as it were, the fine old garden as part of the decoration of
the room. The day had deepened into one of those quite common to the
Tokio winter, where the sunshine battles with a white glamour, scarcely
to be called mist, and yet with the softening tone of it. No young
spring growth was waking in the garden. All was sombre-green, ochre, or
cold gray,--pines and evergreen azaleas, heaped rocks, stone lanterns,
bridge, and the pear-shaped water of a pond. In line and structure the
garden was still a thing of beauty, planned in an artist's mind. It had
the look of a stained-glass window done in faded hues, of old tapestry,
of wrought metal. At the corner of the guest-room veranda stood a huge
old plum-tree just coming into white bloom.
Smiling Yuki, in tailor-made American gown and black stockings, brought
in the tray and knelt before her father. The old warrior flushed with
pleasure. "Why, this is better than I could have thought!"
"I told you I was just your little girl," said Yuki. "And oh, father, I
do feel so queerly young and real again! I see everything around me just
as I wish. It is like making things come true in dreams." Tetsujo caught
her by a slender shoulder, looking deep, deep into answering eyes. For
once, no troubled thoughts rose to blur the vision. Suddenly he smiled.
"Then make _my_ dream come true, my Yuki; remove the shapeless foreign
garment."
Yuki sprang to her feet, laughing with delight. "Yes, yes, that is the
next real thing to do, of course. I will borrow a kimono from mother, as
my trunks have not arrived. But don't let them bring in dinner till I
get back. I am so hungry for a real dinner!"
"The soup shall not even be poured," promised Tetsujo. She gave a little
bow like the dart of a humming-bird, and would have sped past him, but
he, catching at a fold of her skirt, detained her. She stopped, and
seeing the expression of his face, her own sobered. "Welcome, my
daughter," said Tetsujo, in a tone that trembled; "welcome, child of my
ancestors,--the last of an honorable race!"