throbbed, a choking seized his throat. Then the habit of years asserted
itself. With an effort of will his mind grew calm and the vision faded.
Again he saw the lake, the bamboos upon the opposite shore, the carp in
the water weeds at his feet.
“What has the circumstance, the external, to do with the abiding me,
the eternal?” he murmured. Then he looked again from the corner of his
eye toward the tourists.
She had stopped and was standing by the water’s edge, gazing across
toward the other shore. He saw her mild, wondering eyes animated with
the delight of the garden, the broad, low brow above them, the lines
of a sweet, firm mouth parted in a smile, the gleam of white teeth, and
then behind her, what he had not noticed before, a great-framed youth
with tow hair and a frank, kindly face bronzed with a tropical sun. And
as the girl gazed across the little lake the youth gazed at the girl.
Caswell brought his eyes back to his book of verses. His philosophy
suddenly seemed to have grown more effective. He smiled inwardly, for
an Occidental sense of humor slumbered in the ashes of his old self.
Then he became grave again. “Am I a thistledown upon the breeze?” he
muttered. He repeated one of the mental formulas which the Buddhists
of his sect used to compose the mind and open its doors to the
all-pervasive soul.
The party of tourists came on and mounted the balcony. They passed him
before they noticed him, for he was in the corner at the end. The girl
looked at the view and the young man furtively watched the girl, but
the older woman spied Caswell sitting on the floor with his feet under
him, an open book in his lap, gazing stolidly across the lake. Her
curiosity was aroused.
“Who is that?” she said to the fat Japanese boy.
The Japanese boy sucked in his breath and bowed low.
“Yais, sank you,” he said laboriously; “he is, what you say, temple
man.”
“Do you mean a priest?” asked his interrogator.
“Sank you, ah, no, not priest,” sucking his breath again. “I sink
perhaps priest, some day.”
“Be careful, Auntie,” suggested the girl, in a low tone. “You know so
many of them speak English.”
“I haven’t said anything to hurt his feelings,” she answered. “It’s no
disgrace to be a priest, for they are not exactly like other heathens.
Ask him,” she added to the boy, “if he speaks English.”
The boy had often seen Caswell, but he did not know what he was or
whence, except that he was a friend of one of the priests. He put the
question. Caswell muttered something in Japanese without looking up.
“He say he spek no English.”
“There,” said the aunt, “I knew he couldn’t understand.”
“_You_ speak very well,” said the girl to the Japanese boy.
The fat boy doubled over in a bow, sucked his breath, and beamed. “Ah,
no! Sank you,” he said, “sank you ver’ much.”
“Ah, yes,” said the girl, smilingly. “Where did you learn?”
“At Kioto mission school,” he responded.
“So you are going to be a missionary,” said the aunt. “How interesting!
You are a good boy.”
“Sank you,” said the boy, “yais, I am temple man boy; some day,
perhaps, priest.”
“Buddhist priest?” repeated the aunt in surprise.
The boy sucked his breath and bowed.
The young man laughed quietly.
“I think this is rather extraordinary,” said the aunt.
“It is rather the rule,” said the young man. “The Japanese appreciate
our missionary efforts, only they use them in their own way. It is
useful to have a temple boy who speaks a little English.”
“Well,” said the aunt, “it ought to be reported or something. I don’t
see why the people of America should pay for educating Buddhist
priests.”
“Neither do the Japanese,” replied the young man, “only they accept
what they regard as our eccentricities without raising questions.”
“The young man seems to be intelligent,” thought Caswell.
The aunt made no reply, but stood meditating for a few moments. Then
she opened the guide-book, in which she had her finger at the place.
“In the second story, there are paintings by Kano Masanobi. At the top
is the golden pavilion. We can give it half an hour. Take off your
shoes,” she added; “we mustn’t waste time.”
She leaned against the rail and extended a foot so that the Japanese
boy could remove the shoe.
The young man began unlacing his shoes, but Caswell noticed that the
girl stood leaning on the rail. Presently she turned to her aunt.
“I think I’ll not go in,” she said.
The young man stopped unlacing his shoes, and Caswell saw that the girl
noticed it.
“But, my dear child,” said her aunt, “what an extraordinary idea! You
must!”
“No,” she said, gently but firmly; “if you will let me, I think I
should rather wait here. You take Mr. Williams and show him the
pictures and explain them to him.”
“But,” said her aunt, “I didn’t bring you to Japan to sit on a dock and
look at the water. You could do that at home.”
“Please don’t insist,” said the girl, appealingly.
“But I must insist,” said her aunt. “It’s for your own good.”
“But you see you don’t understand,” said the girl, dropping her voice
despairingly.
Her aunt approached her. “Are you ill?” she asked. “Is anything the
matter?”
The girl put her arms about her aunt’s neck and whispered something in
her ear.
Only one word reached Caswell, though they were close to him. It was
the word “stocking.”
The aunt’s face immediately grew severe. The girl blushed and looked
down.
Caswell almost laughed. He understood. At least he thought he
understood. This exquisite creature had a hole in her stocking.
But the big youth remained immovable, like a crouching statue with a
shoe-lacing in his fingers.
“It was thoughtless of you not to have taken care--”
“Please!” said the girl, and she put her hand over her aunt’s mouth.
“Well, it’s your own loss,” said the aunt. “I shall write your mother
about it. Come, Mr. Williams,” she added, “we have no time to waste.
You know these paintings are by the old masters of Japan.”
The young man hesitated. “I don’t think it is civil to leave you,” he
said, clumsily, to the girl.
“It’s her own fault,” said the aunt. “You mustn’t be sorry for her.”
“She is quite right,” said the girl, calmly. “You must go in and see
the pictures.”
The aunt went in and the young man followed without a word. He was
embarrassed.
The girl turned to the rail again, and leaning on it gazed down into
the water at the carp. She seemed contented to be alone, and to have
the young man with her aunt. It surprised Caswell.
A few feet away he was sitting on the floor, with his eyes seemingly
on the book in his lap. But the page was a blank. He was stealthily
watching the movements of the girl. She had come like a message from a
far country--a country, after all, his own--and to him the message was
what the first smell of the June clover fields is to the city man when
he goes back to the farm of his boyhood.
How long he sat in this way, Caswell could not have told, but suddenly
he heard a muffled step on the balcony, and he knew that the youth was
coming back. He knew, too, that the girl also had heard the step, for
he saw the color deepen in the side of her cheek and throat and in her
little ear. But she made no move.
“Simple one that I am,” he said to himself. “She knew that he would
come.”
The youth made a noise as he took his shoes, and the girl turned.
“Where is auntie?” she asked.
“I left her,” said the youth, coloring. “I should rather be here.”
“It is too bad that you are missing the pictures,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Haven’t you some biscuits to feed to the fish?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The fat boy provided us.” He felt in his pocket and
handed her several wafers of rice flour.
She broke one of them and let the crumbs fall. “They say these fish are
very old,” she observed; “hundreds of years, and they come regularly
to the balcony to be fed. Think of all the interesting people who have
thrown crumbs to them!”
“Can you think of any one as interesting as you?” he said, half
playfully.
She made no answer, but continued feeding the carp. “That biggest one,”
she observed, “looks very wise. I wonder if he remembers what the
Shoguns gave him.”
“Probably all crumbs are very much alike to him,” said the youth.
He finished putting on his shoes and joined her by the rail.
“We ought to take a walk about,” he suggested, after a pause. “There
are a number of things to see--the Shogun’s well, the Shogun’s island,
and the hill in the distance, the silk hat mountain which he used to
have covered with white silk on hot July days so that it would look
like snow.”
“The mountain is outside the garden,” said the girl. “It would be too
far to go to it. Anyway,” she added, “I don’t think I had better leave
the balcony. You see, auntie might come down. Where are you going,
after you leave Kioto?” she asked, presently.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “There are two friends of mine in my
regiment coming up to get rid of the fever. I may join them and go into
the mountains. But I’m so well now that I really have no excuse to stay
here much longer.”
“I should think that it would be nice to spend a summer in Japan with
brother officers whom you knew well,” she observed.
“Do you?” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Wasn’t it odd,” she continued, after a pause,
“that we should meet you out here when we hadn’t seen you for a year
and a half, and then on the other side of the world?”
“Yes, it was odd,” he said, but he smiled a little as if to hint that
it was not so very odd, if one knew the inside facts.
“Of course, we had heard how you had been wounded,” she went on,
slowly, “but we thought you were still in the Philippines.”
“I heard in a letter from home,” he said, “that you expected to come to
Japan, but I didn’t know where you were to be.”
She looked down at the carp again and crumbled another biscuit for
them. “You promised last night,” she said, “to tell me how you won the
Medal of Honor. Will you tell me now?”
Caswell started in spite of himself and looked at the youth with
surprise. “Williams!” he said to himself. “That is so; it _was_ a
Lieutenant Victor Williams.” He knew the story. Every newspaper on the
coast of Asia had printed it. “It is strange,” he thought. “He is only
a boy.”
Under the guise of looking into the water, he bent forward intently to
listen. He was curious to hear that extraordinary narrative from the
young man’s own lips.
“It doesn’t make much of a story,” Williams replied. “The first thing
we knew, a lot of _hombres_ got around us and cooped us up in a stone
church. Bradshaw, my captain, was knocked over in the first firing.”
“Killed?” she asked.
“Yes!” he said. “After that--” He stopped because they heard her aunt
calling his name from the balcony overhead.
“Yes!” he answered. “What is it?”
“I wondered where you had gone,” she called down. “I just missed you.”
“He’s telling me a story,” said the girl, looking up.
“He ought to be seeing these things of Kano Masanobi,” her aunt replied.
“You are awfully good to worry about me,” he said. “My mind isn’t worth
it.”
She made no reply and went back into the temple.
“Please go on,” said the girl.
“Where was I?” he said. “Oh, yes, Bradshaw was hit and we were in the
church, and that is about all there was to it. We had to stay there
till we were relieved.”
“But you were wounded,” she said.
“Yes!” he answered. “It came near being serious, but it really was
funny.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You remember,” he said, “the last summer that I was home?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that I took some snapshots of a lot of you in the
sailboat?”
“Yes,” she answered. “It was the day when you climbed part way up the
mast and took us in the cockpit. You never sent me any of the prints.”
“Is that so?” he said. “Well, you see most of them turned out badly,
but there was one that I found in my kit when I got out to the Islands,
and sometimes I used to carry it about in a card-case.” (He put his
hand where the left breast-pocket would have been in a khaki blouse.)
“In fact, I rather got into the habit of carrying it, as one gets into
the habit of carrying a bunch of keys that don’t unlock anything, or a
pocket piece. Besides, when it was hot up-country, it was refreshing
to have a look at the cool lake and all you people in the boat. Well,
when I was hit the bullet came through the left breast-pocket.”
“And went through the picture?” she said.
“That was the funny part of it,” he answered. “When we started on this
particular hike--”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“They call any expedition or march a hike.”
“Go on,” she said.
“Well, when we started I took a blouse along, although one generally
hikes in a blue shirt like the men.” He paused and she looked at him
inquiringly. “But you see,” he went on, “I wore a soiled blouse and
carelessly left the card-case at my quarters in a clean one.”
She looked at him with a perplexed expression. “Then the bullet didn’t
go through the picture?” she said.
“No, that was the joke on the bullet. Instead of having the picture in
my pocket what do you suppose I did have?”
She thought for a moment. “A locket,” she suggested, “or a prayer-book.”
“No,” he said, smiling, “a tooth-brush. The bone handle made the bullet
glance so that instead of going through, it went around and did nothing
worse than scrape a few ribs.”
She looked at him wonderingly for a moment and then dropped her eyes.
“Would you like to see it?” he asked.
“The tooth-brush,” she queried, “or the bullet?”
“No, the picture,” he said, laughing.
“Yes,” she answered.
He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out a worn leather
card-case. He opened it and produced an envelop. From the envelop he
took a small, unmounted photograph and handed it to the girl.
She studied it in silence and a smile broke over her face. “Isn’t it
funny of Agnes?” she asked. “She doesn’t seem to have any nose.”
“That’s so,” he said. “Do you make out Ann, next to George in the stern
sheets?”
They leaned on the rail and bent over the faded print till their heads
almost touched.
“That’s Bess next to me in the sweater,” she went on, “and there’s
Winkle.”
“Do you remember,” he said, “the boom knocked him overboard just before
and he would shake himself on your skirt?”
“Dear little dog!” she murmured. “I don’t think my head came out very
well,” she observed, after a pause. “Something must have been the
matter with the film or the paper. There’s a smudged spot all over it.”
“The climate is very damp in the Islands,” he said. “Give it back to
me.”
Their eyes met as she handed the picture back and she dropped hers.
Caswell saw the color stealing into the side of her face again.
She moved a step away and gazed down into the water. “That big carp is
getting all the crumbs,” she said.
He handed her another wafer and replaced the picture in his pocket.
There was a long silence. The girl spoke first.
“But what did they give you the Medal of Honor for?” she said, slowly
dropping crumbs to the fish.
“That is a question that has puzzled me before,” he answered.
“But you must have done something,” she said.
“Well, there wasn’t anything to eat or drink in the church,” he began,
“nor anything in the neighborhood as far as we knew, except cocoanuts,
and I was afraid to go out to get them--”
He stopped, for her aunt’s voice was calling again from above. They
looked up and saw her on the balcony of the third story.
“Mr. Williams,” she said, “you _must_ come up and see the gold room.”
“Please, no,” he answered; “I’ve put on my shoes.”
“Yes, you must,” she insisted. “I sha’n’t come down until you do.”
“You had better go,” said the girl. “She means what she says.”
“I’ll be up at once,” he called. He took off his shoes and went in.
The girl finished crumbling the wafer to the carp, and watched them for
a time as their grotesque mouths mechanically opened and shut upon the
sinking flakes. Then she turned her eyes across the lake and embraced
the prospect which Caswell had been absorbing when interrupted by her
coming. Presently an idea moved her, and from a little bag she produced
a gold pencil and a bit of paper and found a smooth place upon the
rail. She wrote a few words, took a pin from her dress and fastened the
paper to a post as if for a sign to persons coming out of the temple.
She glanced quickly up, and seeing no one, slipped away around the end
of the balcony.
When she was out of sight, Caswell’s eyes went back to his book of
verses, but they carried no impressions from the page to his brain.
The thoughts which had been aroused were insistent. They possessed him
and he sat and battled with them. He was distracted from his reverie by
the fluttering of the paper on the pin. A warm breeze had awakened and
came in mimic gales which rippled the pools and set the bamboos on the
farther bank in a silver shimmer. After the pin had resisted several
onslaughts, a stronger air loosed it and sent the paper fluttering into
the water.
Almost before it fell Caswell was on his feet. Then he checked himself.
“It is not my business,” he thought. “Shall I interfere with the
course of Fate?” He sat down. Then he rose again. “But perhaps I am
the minister of Fate.” He leaned over the rail. The paper was slowly
sinking, but he read under the clear water, “I am going to walk. Do you
want to come?”
The young man’s stick was lying on the balcony. He took it and leaning
over the rail fished up the wet paper. As he put his hand upon it, he
heard a footfall, and turning saw the big lieutenant coming out of the
temple. He had turned in time to catch the youth’s expression, as he
perceived that the girl was not there.
“Oh!” said the youth, awkwardly. He saw that something had happened.
Caswell bowed in the Japanese manner, sucking his breath as if to
a superior, and extended the dripping paper with the inscrutable
countenance which the East had taught him.
The youth read it at a glance. “Thank you! Thank you, very much!” he
said, impulsively; then remembering himself, he repeated his thanks
in Japanese: “_Arigato! Arigato!_ I understand,” he said, in answer
to Caswell’s gesture toward the water. “The wind blew it in. You were
very good.” He repeated the Japanese word again and bowed, and Caswell,
bowing solemnly, backed off the balcony and left him.
“It was best so,” he thought, when he was on the path by the edge of
the water.
He had come to the priest’s apartments, the little palace where the
great Shogun had lived in his retirement, before he was conscious
whither his steps were taking him. His thoughts were across eight
thousand miles of sea. He looked around him with a start. “Shall I go
in?” he said to himself. One of the priests, although of a different
sect, was his friend. On the porch, a temple student saluted him. He
was known because he often came, not only to talk with his friend, but
to study the screens of Kano Tan Yu and Jakuchu, and the marvelous
folding screens painted by Korin and Soami, and the kakemonos by those
other ancient masters, Cho Densi and Shubun and Eishin.
He took the student’s welcome as an omen and slipped off his sandals.
He was ushered in and, after saluting his friend, the temple tea was
brought and they sat with it between them and discoursed. The temple
tea was not as other tea, but superior. It was a powder made of the
tenderest of the young leaves of certain choice plants. It possessed
the secret flavors of spring, and the property of making the mind glow
and the brain crystal clear without racking the nerves.
They talked for a time, but to Caswell it was with an effort. His soul
that day had no meeting with his friend, and the priest was aware of
it. He produced tobacco and they lit the little pipes and, inhaling a
few whiffs, sat in silence.
Presently Caswell turned his head to listen. Through the paper screen
which made the partition wall, he heard the girl’s voice; then the
voice of her aunt. They were entering the room next.
“It is a party of foreigners,” observed the priest. “They have
doubtless been generous to the boy. Liberal foreigners are sometimes
invited to partake of the temple tea. The tea money (_chadai_) goes to
the restoration fund.”
“Is it so?” said Caswell. He was listening.
“I am afraid that I never could get used to sitting on my feet,” said
her aunt.
“Poor auntie!” said the girl, and then she laughed, and as she laughed
Caswell held his breath. It was a low, sweet, bubbling laugh; the
laughter that is compelled by happiness in the heart, just as a
fountain bubbles under a pressure of crystal water.
A moment later came the deeper tones of a man’s voice, also laughing,
and the echo of the same happiness was in them.
Caswell smiled and a mist came into his eyes. He understood. He looked
at the old priest, and he too was smiling.
“The young foreign lady has an agreeable voice,” observed the priest.
“Unlike most.”
“Unlike most who travel here,” said Caswell, “she is of an honorable
family.”
“Friends, no doubt, of your honorable family,” suggested the priest.
“No,” said Caswell. He realized that he did not even know her name.
“But I know,” he continued. “One may know by the voice and the speech.”
“Assuredly, with us,” said the priest, “but I had thought that all
families in America were equal.”
“Yes and no,” replied Caswell, absently. He had no mind for explaining
the American system then. He was listening, for they were laughing
again, although there seemed no reason for laughter in the conversation.
Presently Caswell rose and began his leave-taking, and the priest
accompanied him to the porch where he had left his sandals. Beside the
sandals they saw three pairs of shoes.
There was a pair of heavy men’s walking shoes, a pair of woman’s
shoes of the type known as “common-sense,” and a third pair on which
Caswell’s eyes rested. These were little Russia leather things, not new
but with the workmanship and fine lines of the Oxford Street bootmaker,
and they had the air of well-being which comes from proper trees and
the care of an expert maid.
“It is a curious custom of the foreigners to make shoes out of
leather,” observed the priest.
“It is, is it not?” said Caswell, but absently, for through the
half-open wall panel he saw the party seated on the matting around the
fire-pot which the fat temple boy had just deposited. The young man
and the girl were sitting next one another. The aunt was examining a
screen. Their backs were turned to him, so that Caswell could look
without being seen. Suddenly, as he gazed at the little shoes, an idea
came to him and he smiled.
The fat boy was coming out on his way for the tea and cakes, and as he
passed Caswell stopped him.
The boy bowed ceremoniously.
“Did you remove the shoes of the honorable young foreign lady?” he
inquired.
[Illustration: “Did you remove the shoes of the honorable young foreign
lady?”]
The boy bowed again and replied that he had indeed been so honored.
“In the foot of the stocking of the young foreign lady,” inquired
Caswell, “was there not a hole?”
“Not the least hole,” replied the fat boy, wonderingly.
“No hole? Are you sure?” said Caswell.
“None,” said the boy.
“Thank you, that is all,” said Caswell, gravely. He looked at the
little shoes again. “Simple one that I am,” he murmured.
“Is it true,” inquired the priest, “that foreign women wear stockings
above their ankles and of colored fabrics?”
Caswell made no reply for a moment. The girl was speaking.
“But you never told me what you did to win your medal,” she said.
“It is true,” said Caswell, in reply to the priest’s question.
“But I should like to know,” said the girl.
“I finally got up the courage to go out after the cocoanuts,” said the
youth, “after I was good and hungry.”
“But what else?” said the girl.
“But that was all--on my word,” said the youth, and they fell to
laughing again.
“It is a curious custom,” observed the priest, referring to the
stockings.
“It is,” said Caswell, politely, “is it not? And now I must depart,” he
added.
He bowed his farewell. “_Sayonara!_” he said, “_Sayonara!_”
“_Sayonara!_” said the priest, bowing. “You will come soon again?”
Caswell straightened up. “I forgot to tell,” he said. “I shall not
return soon. I am going to my own country.”
“Indeed, is it so? Is it so?” said the priest, gently. He bowed again
and wished him the good wishes suitable to such a parting.
“_Sayonara!_” said Caswell. Then he walked toward the wicket gate that
led out of the garden.
“He got up the courage to go out after the cocoanuts,” he murmured, as
he walked away. He quickened his steps, but once he turned and looked
back, for he heard their low, rippling laughter again.