I
The City of Sendai, on the north-eastern coast of Japan, raises its head
queenly-wise towards the sun, as though conscious of its own matchless
beauty and that which envelops it on all sides. Here, where the waters
flow into the Pacific, the surges are never heard. Neptune seems to have
forgotten his anger in the presence of such peerless beauty.
Near to Sendai there is a bay called Matsushima. Here Nature has flung
out her favors with more than lavish hand; for throughout the bay she
has scattered jewel-like rocks, whose white sides rise above the waters,
and whose surface gives nutrition to the graceful pine-trees which find
their roots within the stone. Near to a thousand rocks they are said to
number, and save for the one called Hadakajima, or Naked Island, all are
crowned with pine-trees.
The historic temple Zuiganjii is situated at the base of a hill a few
cho from the beach. About the temple are the tombs and sepulchres of the
great Date family, once the feudal lords of Sendai. There is a huge
image of Date Masamune, whose far-seeing mind sent an envoy to Rome
early in the seventeenth century. The sepulchres are, for the most part,
in the hollowed caves of the range of rocky hills behind the temples.
Nameless flowers, large and brilliant in color, bloom about the tombs of
these proud, slumbering lords. Mount Tomi bends its noble head in homage
towards the glories of a past generation. The air is very still and
cool. Silence enshrines and deifies all.
The inhabitants of Sendai and the little fishing village on the northern
shore of the bay were simple, gentle folk. As though affected by the
slumberous beauty of the hills and mountains hedging them in upon all
sides, these let their life glide by with slow and sweetly sleepy tread.
Not even the shock of the Restoration had brought this region’s people
into that prophetic regard for the future which pervaded all other parts
of the empire. The change-compelling progress which pressed in upon all
sides seemed not as yet to have laid its withering finger upon fair
Matsushima. Like their home, the inhabitants clung to their hermit
existence.
When an English ship, having ploughed its way through the waters of the
Pacific, sent out its men in boats to take the bay’s soundings, the
people were not alarmed, but greatly mystified. The strange white men
made their way in their smaller boats to the shore. A missionary and his
wife were landed.
A little home, on a small hill situated only a short distance from the
Temple Zuiganjii, they built for themselves. Afterwards, native artisans
raised for them a larger structure, where for many years they patiently
taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. The people gradually learned to love
and reverence their pale teachers. There came a time when the little
band, which had at first gone desultorily and curiously to the
mission-house, began to see what the strangers termed “the light.” Then
the Christian Church in far-away England enrolled a little list of
converts to their religion.
The missionary grew old and white and bent. His gentle wife passed away.
He lingered wistfully, a strangely isolated, though beloved, figure in
the little community.
Then came a second visitation from an English vessel. Sailors and
officers lolled about the town by day and rioted by night. Some of them
wooed the dark-eyed daughters of the town but to leave them. One there
was, however, who brought a girl, a shrinking, yet trustful girl, to the
old missionary on the hill, and there, in the shabby old mission-house,
the solemn and beautiful ceremony of the Christian marriage service was
performed over their heads.
That was ten years before. At first the Englishman had seemingly settled
in his adopted land, as he loved to call it. The place appealed to his
artistic perceptions. The Mecca of all his hopes, he called it. Why
should he return to the world of cold and strife? Here were peace, rest,
and love unbounded. But before the close of the second year of their
union an event occurred which shook the stranger suddenly into life’s
vivid reality. A great duty thrust itself in his track. Not for himself,
but for another, must he turn his back upon the land of love. A son had
been born to him in the season of Little Heat.
So the Englishman crushed to his breast his foreign wife and child, and
with reiterated promises of a speedy return he left them.
Letters in those days travelled slowly from England to Japan. Sometimes
those addressed to the little town of Sendai remained for weeks in the
offices at the open ports. Sometimes they travelled hither and thither
from one port to another, the stupid indifference of officials scarcely
troubling itself to send them to their proper destination. But finally,
after many months, the little wife and mother in Sendai held between her
trembling hands an English letter. It had come in a very large envelope,
and there were several bulky inclosures—neatly folded documents they
were—tied with red tape. There was also another letter, shorter than the
one she held in her hand, and written in a different form. She could not
even read her letter, though she did not doubt from whom it had come.
Happy, she pressed her precious package to her lips and breast. She
believed that the strangely printed papers within the envelopes, similar
in her eyes to the many English papers he had always about him, were
merely other forms of his epistle of love.
The woman waited with a divine patience for the return of the old
missionary from a little journey inland. She watched for him, watched
ceaselessly, constantly. And when he had returned she dressed the little
Komazawa in fresh, sweet-smelling garments, and carried him with her
papers to the mission-house.
Why detail the pain of that interview? The papers and one of the
letters, it is true, were, indeed, from her lord, but they were sent by
another, a stranger. The Englishman had died—died in what he termed a
foreign country, since his home was by her side. In his last hours he
had striven to write to her and instruct her in the course she must take
in the years to come when he could not be by her as her loving guide.
Madame Aoi meekly followed the counsel of the aged missionary. Under his
guidance, childlike and with unquestioning faith, she studied
unceasingly the English language and the Christian faith.
If the old missionary had at first marvelled at the calm which settled
upon her after that one wild outcry when first she had heard the dread
tidings of her husband, he was not long in discovering that her
passiveness was but an outer mask to veil the anguish of a broken heart,
and to give her that strength which must overcome the weakness which
would be the doom of her hopes. For Aoi was not left without some hope
in life. Her lord, in departing, had set upon her an injunction, a duty.
This it was her task to perform. Once that was accomplished, perhaps the
strain might lessen. Meanwhile tirelessly, ceaselessly, she studied.
She had the natural gift of intelligence, and the advantage of having
spent two full years with her husband. Hence it was not long before she
mastered the language, and, if she spoke it brokenly and even haltingly,
she wrote and read accurately.
To the little Komazawa she spoke only in English. She kept him jealously
apart from the villagers, and taught his little tongue to shape and form
the words of his father’s language.
“Some day, liddle one,” she would say, “you will become great big man.
Then you will cross those seas. You will become great lord also at that
England. So! It is the will of thy august father.”
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