I had always been dead set against taking a companion permanently into
my home. For one reason I heeded the warning of the man who made the
Japanese language. To denote "peace" he drew a picture of a roof with a
woman under it. Evidently being a gentleman of experience, he expressed
the word "trouble" by adding another person of the same sex to the
picture without changing the size of the roof.
Then, too, there was my cash account to settle with. Ever since I'd been
drawing a salary from the National Education Board of Missions, I felt
like apologizing to the few feeble figures that stared accusingly at me
from my small ledger, for the demands I made upon them for charity, for
sickness, and for entertainment of all who knocked at my door.
My classes were always crowded, but there were times when the purses of
my students were more lean than their bodies. Frequently such an one
looked at me and said, "Moneys have all flewed away from my pockets.
Only have vast consuming fire for learning." It being against my
principle to see anybody consumed while I had a rin, there was nothing
to do but make up to the Board what I had failed to collect.
These circumstances caused me to hesitate risking the peace of my
household, or putting one more responsibility on my purse.
Then sweet potatoes decided me. It was a matter of history that famine,
neither wide-spread nor local, ever gained a foothold where "Satsuma
Emo" flourished. This year they were fatter and cheaper than ever
before. I knew dozens of ways to fix them, natural and disguised; so I
bought an extra supply and made up my mind to keep Jane Gray.
The little missionary thrived in her new environment as would a drooping
plant freshly potted. As she grew stronger, she hinted at trying once
again to live in her old quarters, that she might fast and work and pray
for her sinners. I promptly suppressed any plans in that direction.
After all, I had been a lonelier woman than I realized, and Jane was
like a kitten with a bell around its neck--one grows used to its
playing about the house and misses it when gone. She also resembled a
fixed star in her belief that she had been divinely appointed to carry a
message of hope to the vilest of earth, and I felt that the same power
had charged me with the responsibility of impressing her with a measure
of commonsense.
So we compromised for a while at least. She would stay with me, and I
would not interfere with her work in the crime section, nor give way to
remarks on the subject.
I was sure the conditions in the Quarter would prove impossible, but as
some people cannot be convinced unless permitted to draw their own
diagram of failure, it was best for her to try when she was able to make
the effort.
The making of an extra room in a Japanese house is only a matter of
shifting a paper screen or so into a ready-made groove. It took me some
time to decide whether I should screen off Jane in the corner that
commanded a full view of the wonderful sea, or at the end where by
sliding open the paper doors she could step at once into the fairy land
of my garden.
Jane decided it herself. I discovered her stretched in an old
wheel-chair before the open doors, looking into the sun-flooded
greenery of the garden, and heard her softly repeating,
"Fair as plumes of dreams
In a land
Where only dreams come true,
And flutes of memory waken
Longings forgotten."
Any one who felt that way about my garden had a right to live close to
it.
In half an hour Jane was established. My enthusiasm waned a bit the next
day when I found all the pigeons in the neighborhood fluttering about
the open door, fearlessly perching on the invalid's lap and shoulders
while she fed them high-priced rice and dainty bits of dearly-bought
chicken.
I dispersed the pigeons with a flap of my apron and with forced mildness
protested. "I'm obliged to ask you to be less generous. The price of
rice is higher than those pigeons can fly and, as for chicken, it's
about ten sen a feather. There's abundant food for you; but we cannot
afford to feed all the fowls of the air."
"Oh! dear Miss Jenkins, I couldn't drive them away. The cunning things!
Every coo they uttered sounded like a love word."
I hoped it was the patient's physical weakness, and not a part of her
nature.
I could not possibly survive a steady diet of emotion so tender that it
bubbled over at the flutter of a pigeon's wing.
I'd brought it on myself, however, and I was determined to share my home
and my life with Jane Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with
the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor excuse of a body seemed
the last place power of any kind would choose for a habitation. I was
not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my companion, but from the
day of her arrival unusual events popped up to speak for themselves.
A nearby volcano, asleep for half a century, blew off its cap, covering
land and sea with ashes and fiery lava. All my pink roses bloomed weeks
earlier than they had any business to, and for the first time in years
my old gardener got drunk. Between dashes of cold water on his head he
tearfully wailed my unexpressed sentiments, in part:
"Too many damfooly things happen all same time. Evil spirit get loose.
Sake help me fight. Me nice boy. Me ve'y good boy but I no like foreign
devil what is."
Then one day, about a month after my family had been enlarged, I had
just wheeled my newly acquired responsibility out in the garden to sun
when Kishimoto San called. He often came for consultation. While his
chief interest in life was to keep Hijiyama strictly Japanese and
rigidly Buddhist, he was also superintendent of schools for his district
and educational matters gave us a common interest. However, the late
afternoon was an unusual hour for him to appear and one glance at his
face showed trouble of a personal nature had drawn heavy lines in his
mask of calmness. I had known Kishimoto San for twenty years. Part of
him I could read like a primer; the other part was a sealed volume to
which I doubt if even Buddha had the key. Sometimes when he was calling
I wished Gabriel would appear in my doorway and announce the end of the
world to see, if without omitting a syllable, Kishimoto would keep on to
the end of the last phrase in the greeting prescribed for the occasion.
The ceremony off his mind, he sat silent, unresponsive to the openings I
tried to make for a beginning. Not till I had exhausted small talk of
current events and asked after his family in particular instead of his
ancestors in general, did his tongue loosen.
Then the floodgates of his pent-up emotion opened and forth poured a
torrent of anger, disappointment, and outraged pride. I had never before
seen a man so shaken, but then I hadn't seen many, much less one with
the red blood of Daimyos in his veins. He was a man whose soul dwelt in
the innermost place of a citadel built of ancient beliefs and
traditions.
Out of the unchecked flood of denunciation, I learned that he held
Christianity responsible for his woes. I, as a believer and an American,
must hear what he thought; as his friend I must advise him if I could.
In the twenty years that I had known the school superintendent, he had
always been reserved regarding his personal and family life. To me his
home was a vague, blurred background in which possible members of his
family moved. He surprised me this day by referring in detail to the
bitter grief which had come to him in years gone by through his only
child.
I had heard the story outside, but not even remotely had Kishimoto San
ever before hinted that he possessed a child. I knew his need for help
must be imperative, that the wound was torn afresh, else he was too good
a Buddhist to make "heavy the ears of a friend" with a recital of his
own sorrows.
He said he had been most ambitious for his daughter. Years ago he had
sent her to Yokohama to study English and music. While there the girl
lived with his sister who had absorbed many new ideas regarding liberty
for women. Once he was absent from Japan and without his knowledge the
girl married an American artist, Harold Wingate by name, and went with
him to his country to live.
Kishimoto San had not seen her since her marriage until lately. He had
honorably prayed that he never would. Some weeks before she had returned
to Hijiyama practically penniless, which was bad, and a widow, which
made it very difficult to marry her off again; but worse still was the
half-breed child she had brought with her, a daughter of about
seventeen. This girl, whose name was Zura, I soon found was the sore
spot in Kishimoto San's grievance, the center around which his storm of
trouble brewed.
It was like pouring oil on flames when I asked particularly about the
girl.
Though he could speak English that was quite understandable, he broke
loose in Japanese hardly translatable. "She is a wild, untamed
barbarian. She has neither manners nor modesty, and not only dares
openly to scorn the customs of my country and religion, but defies my
commands, my authority."
Knowing him as I did, I thought it must indeed be a free, wild spirit to
meet the blow of Kishimoto San's will and not be crushed by the impact.
My interest in the girl increased in proportion to his vehemence. I
ventured to ask for details. They came in a torrent.
"It is not our custom for young girls to go on the street unattended. I
forbade her going. Deaf to my orders, she strays about the streets alone
and dares to sail her own sampan. She handles it as deftly as a common
fisherman. She goes to out-of-the-way places and there remains till it
suits her impudence to return to my house. In the hours of the night she
disturbs my meditations by sobbing for her home and her father. She
romps on the highways with street children, who follow her as they would
a performing monkey."
"But surely," I mildly interposed, "it is no great breach of custom to
play with children. Your granddaughter is doubtless lonely and it may
give her pleasure."
The face of my visitor stiffened.
"Pleasure!" he repeated. "Does she not know that a woman's only pleasure
is obedience? Is there not enough of my blood in her to make her bow to
the law? Twice she has told me to attend to my own affairs! Told me! Her
ancestor! Her Master!" This last word he always pronounced with a
capital M.
Kishimoto San was not cruel. Unlike many of his countrymen, who are
educated by modern methods as regarding laws governing women, he was
still an old-time Oriental in the raw.
It was at this uncomfortable moment that the little maid brought in tea.
I instructed her to serve it on the balcony which overlooked sea and
mountain. The appealing beauty of the scene always soothed me as a
lullaby would a restless child. I hoped as much for my disturbed
visitor. I gave him his second cup of tea, and asked him whether the
mother could not control her daughter. It set him going.
"Her mother!" he scoffed. "Madam, if her mother had been blest with the
backbone of a jellyfish she would never have married a man whose people
were not her people, whose customs are as far removed from hers as the
East is from the West. My daughter was young. Had she married one of
her own country, all would have been well. Her will would have been
directed by her mother-in-law. She was trained to obedience. See what
the teachings of your country do to our women! In a letter she wrote
telling me she had gone, she thanked me for teaching her the laws of
submission. It helped her to bow to the commands of this man when he
bade her marry him, and she loved him! Love! as if that had anything to
do with marriage. Now comes the result of this accursed union--a
troublesome girl who is neither one thing nor the other, who laughs at
the customs of my country and upsets the peace of my house, who boldly
declares she is an American. She need not herald it. In dress and
manners she wears the marks of her training."
I offered no comment, but every moment served to deepen my interest in
this girl who could defy a will which had ruled a whole island for half
a century.
My silence seemed to irritate him. He turned fiercely upon me.
"Tell me, what kind of girls does America produce? What is your boasted
freedom for women but license? Is their place never taught them? Have
they no understanding of the one great law for women?"
I had been absent from my country many long years, and while neither the
best nor the worst had come my way, America was my country, her people
my people, and they stood to me for all that was great and honorable and
righteous. The implication of Kishimoto's question annoyed me all the
more, because I knew him to be a keen observer and not hasty in his
conclusions.
"Softly, Kishimoto San. You answered your own question a few moments
ago. The customs of the two countries are as wide apart as the East is
from the West. Tastes differ in manners as well as religion. If there
are things in America that do not please you, so there are many laws in
Japan that are repugnant to Americans. You are unjust to hold my country
responsible for your woes."
"But I do hold it responsible. My granddaughter comes of its teaching. I
meditate what kind of religion it is that permits a girl to question her
elder's authority and to defy the greatest of laws, filial piety. What
manner of a country is it where custom grants liberty to a girl that she
may roam the streets and sit in a public garden alone with a man!"
This last was indeed serious. In my day and in my town it could be done
if the girl were so fortunate as to have something that stood for a male
cousin. But neither then nor now was it permissible in a land of
man-made laws for men. Unless it was between husband and wife, private
conversation, or a promenade just for two branded the participants as
bold, possibly evil.
I asked for further details. Kishimoto San said the young man was a
minor officer on the steamer by which his granddaughter and her mother
had crossed the Pacific. He thought he was an American. Whenever the
ship coaled in a nearby port, the young chap communicated with the girl
and together they walked and talked.
The plain facts after all sounded harmless and innocent. What more
natural than for a lonely girl to seek for pastime the company of a
youth of her own kind? But it could not be--not in Japan; though as
innocent as two baby kittens playing on the green, it would bring shame
upon the girl and the family, which no deed of heroism would ever erase
from local history. Something must be done; I asked Kishimoto San how I
could be of assistance.
"I have been consulting with myself," he replied in English. "Would you
grant me permission to send her to you daily as a student? Besides her
strange ways, she talks in strange English. I cannot find the same in
any conversation book. Her whole being has need of reconstruction."
I was not in the reconstructing business, but a young girl in the house
meant youth and diversion and a private pupil meant extra pay. What a
little extra money wouldn't do in my house wasn't worth adding up. In
thought I repaired the roof and bought new legs for the kitchen stove.
My visitor, mistaking my silence for hesitation, suggested, "First come
and see her. Analyze her conduct and grant me decision whether she is a
natural, free-born American citizen, as she boasts, or if the gods have
cursed her with a bold spirit. She is of your country, your religion, if
any, and perhaps you can understand her. I fail to comprehend."
He folded his arms for emphasis. The gleam of the western sun caught the
sheen of his silk kimono and covered him with a glow. From under bent
brows he gazed at the scene before him.
Earth and sky and sea breathed beauty. The evening song of the birds was
of love. The spirit of the fading day whispered peace, but unheeding he
sat in troubled silence. Then from the street far below came the shout
of a boy at play. It was a voice full of the gladness of youth. In it
was a challenge of daring and courage. Loudly he called to his troop of
play soldiers to charge splendidly, to fight with the glorious _Yamato
Damashi_ (spirit of Japan).
Kishimoto San heard and with a quick movement raised his head as though
he had felt a blow. "Ah," he murmured to himself, "if it had only been a
boy!"
There was the secret wound that was ever sore and bleeding. There was no
son to perpetuate the name. His most vital hope was dead, his greatest
desire crushed, and by a creature out of the West, who not only stole
his daughter but fathered this girl whom no true Japanese would want as
a wife. To a man of Kishimoto San's traditions the hurt was deep and
cruel.
I well understood his sorrow and disappointment. Pity put all my
annoyance to flight. I promised to go to his house and see if I could
help in any way. I did not tell him that I was about as familiar with
young girls from my home land as I was with young eagles, for the
undaunted spirit of that child had aroused all my love of adventure;
and I wanted to see her. Then, too, I was haunted by the picture of a
lonely girl in a strange land, crying out in the night for her dead
father.
I was trembling with new emotion that evening when I brought my invalid
in from the garden, and tucked her into bed.
Kishimoto San had not only offered me a tremendous experience, but all
unwittingly he made it easily possible for me to defy the tradition of
his picture language, and risk Jane Gray as a permanent fireside
companion.