The Breath of the Gods Part 13

Iriya flushed and bowed, looking more than ever like her daughter. She answered in j.a.panese, "Please honorably to thank the lady for her compliment, but acquaint her with the fact that I am already lamentably old. On my next birthday I shall be thirty-nine."

Tetsujo, having accomplished his share of stiff bows,--not forgetting an extra one for the new American minister,--said to his daughter, "My child, we are indeed happy to welcome you. Now thank your good friends in my name. Suitable presents shall be sent them. We must depart for Yedo." He moved one finger toward three waiting jinrikisha men near-by, and the vehicles, like magic, stood beside him.

"Now, already it must be 'Sayonara.' My father desires me to go," said Yuki, and smiled a little tremulously from one foreign face to another.

These farewells at the end of a long and pleasant journey are never careless things to say. "Of course I will see all--every one--very soon!"

"Yuki! Why, we never thought of this. You mustn't leave us so!" cried Gwendolen, in consternation.

"No!" added Pierre, with more vehemence. "It isn't to be thought of.

Tell your father that we are counting on you for the day." He stepped close to her. Yuki instinctively shrank. The puzzled look came again to the face of Tetsujo.

"Be careful, Pierre! Look at his face! You will make a false move at the start," came Gwendolen's whisper.

"Do you expect me to stand here patiently and see her carried away? Non!

Mon Dieu, it was to have been the consecrating day of our lives! I do not give it up. I will try speaking myself with her father."

"Gwendolen is right. Do not speak!" panted Yuki.

But Pierre was not one to relinquish bliss so easily. No move seemed to him quite as undesirable as the one about to take place. Facing the astonished samurai, he began a series of bows which he fondly conceived to embody the finer points of both French and j.a.panese etiquette.

"Monsieur Onda,--Onda San," he commenced eagerly, "Miss Yuki must not go. Ikimasen! Stay here with friends,--tomodachi. She can go your house--afternoon. Please do not take her now."

Onda looked blankly and in silence upon the antics of the strange creature. Not one gleam of comprehension enlivened his fixed gaze.

"Here, man, let me get to him," said Dodge, thrusting himself in front of Pierre. "I'll translate what you are trying to say, though it isn't a particle of use. Shall I go on?"

"Merci."

Speaking slowly, in fairly good j.a.panese, Dodge said, "We having hoped to enjoy the company of your daughter on this first day of landing, I am requested to entreat your august permission to allow her to remain. If you and your wife will join our party also, we shall feel honored by your condescension." "Never told a bigger lie in my life!" was his mental note after this last remark.

Tetsujo replied by the courtesy of a stiff bow. With no further glance or word for the speaker, he stepped up into his jinrikisha, and once seated, said to Yuki, "Reply to the speech of the foreigner, my child."

"I am to go with my parents, of course," said Yuki, nervously. "I wish it. I did not know you were planning so sure for me to remain. I must go now, at once, but will see you as soon as I may, to-morrow, or perhaps this very afternoon."

Iriya had bowed to the foreigners and entered her jinrikisha immediately after Tetsujo. Yuki now climbed into the remaining one, neither Dodge nor Pierre retaining enough self-possession to a.s.sist her. The three coolies caught up the shafts for starting.

"Here, stop, stop!" cried Gwendolen, springing forward. "Yuki, we don't even know your Tokio address!"

Tetsujo gave a gesture and a "cluck." The coolies sprang into action.

"Ko-ishikawa, Kobinata, Shi--j[=u]--" trailed off Yuki's voice into the rattling of the streets.

"The ogre! I'll catch the next train for Tokio," cried Pierre.

"Better stay with us and see about your baggage, Pierre," said Mr. Todd, speaking for the first time. "The girl should go with her people, and you know it."

"But, poor boy," said Mrs. Todd, soothingly, her hand touching his arm, "I know how he has counted on seeing the sights with Yuki."

Onda Tetsujo's spoken order had been "stenshun!" (station), for so have the j.a.panese incorporated our familiar word. A train was just leaving for Yedo. Three second-cla.s.s tickets were bought, and the kuruma-men overpaid and dismissed. Had they been merely "paid," a later train would have been taken.

The short encounter on the Yokohama pier evidently remained in the master's mind as a most disagreeable impression. While in no sense a stupid man, the quality of Onda's intellect was torpid rather than alert. Things came to him slowly, and remained long.

It happened that their train was a "local," stopping at all the small intermediate stations. Between Yokohama and the next stop,--Kanagawa,--not a word was spoken. Yuki felt bewildered, dazed, distressed. What had happened? What was spoiling her home-coming? The promise was not all, for here were her parents, moody and ill at ease, and they as yet knew nothing of her pledge. Surely the few injudicious words Pierre tried to speak should not have wrought all this. Poor Pierre, with his hurt blue eyes and outstretched hand of longing! Well, the American girls used to say that true love never did run smooth. Here she gave a sigh so deep that Iriya started. All three gazed heavily from the windows, only half seeing the villages sweep past, and the wide, gleaming rice-fields in their winter flood, and the long edge of Yedo Bay set with pines, and flecked with shining sails. The gaudy fluttering of small banners above the tea booths of Kawasaki brought a momentary light of pleasure into the girl's eyes. It died down as quickly. Her father's averted face clouded her sun. Yet unconsciously the charm and the glamour of the country was stealing back. At Omori, perhaps the most beautiful of these suburban villages, their compartment, being toward the rear of the train, stopped, it would seem, in the very midst of a grove of "ume" flowers, just coming into bloom. It is an old orchard, knowing many generations of loving care. It is trimmed and tended for beauty alone, the small sour fruit called by foreigners "plums" being uneatable, and no more to the j.a.panese marketer than are "rose-apples"

to us. The trees, set close together so that tips of branches met, were entirely leafless, and frosted over with a delicate lichen growth. On this silver filigree of boughs the blossoms shone, white, crimson, or pink,--translucent gems of flowers. The odor, stealing softly to Yuki in little throbs, smote her as with an ecstasy of remembrance. There is no subtler necromancer than perfume. Through it the past may be reconstructed, dead love quiver into life, and sorrow, often more precious than joy itself, steal back like a loving ghost.

Yuki seemed to wake suddenly, as from a troubled sleep. "Why," she cried to herself, "I am at home again! This is j.a.pan!" She sat upright now, eager and vivid, looking from one window to another, a new brightness in her face. The locomotive, which had been restlessly inactive for a few moments past, gave a long, shrill whistle, drew itself together, and prepared for another run. Just as the wheels were turning, a broad-faced woman of the peasant cla.s.s, with a fat baby on her back, a toddler of two years led by one hand, and a pair of squawking geese held in the other, wriggled herself through the turnstile and waved the shrieking fowls, as signal for the train to stop. The gatekeeper, clutching after her, seized a limb of the sleeping infant. Instantly a human scream added to the clamor of the geese. Heads were thrust from car windows,--the guard, dropping the infant's leg, seized its mother by the sash. He chanced to be a small man, she an unusually large woman. As a consequence she dragged him after her. At this sight a train official, leaning as far outward as he could for laughing, signalled the engineer to "back." The victorious one hurled herself and her living burdens into an already overcrowded third-cla.s.s car. A place was made for her, not without many exclamations, such as "Domo! Osoi!" (It is late.) "Kodomo-san itai ka!" (Is Mr. Baby hurt?) and a few gruff sounds of "Iya desu yo!" (How disagreeable!) The locomotive, as if conscious of a good deed, tooted more loudly than before, and made another start.

Yuki sparkled with delight. "Think of a train official doing that in America!" she laughed aloud.

Iriya's answering smile was pathetic in its quickness of response. She moved closer, pressing against Yuki's smart, foreign shoulder. The two began to watch, like happy children, the pa.s.sing scenes.

Tetsujo drew forth his pipe and smoked himself into serenity. He listened now to what the women said. There were other pa.s.sengers, of course, but Tetsujo and his companions had preempted a little corner in the rear. Iriya spoke of old Suzume, who was waiting so impatiently at home to see her charge,--of little Maru San, a distant connection of Suzume, who, since Yuki's departure, had been employed as maid-of-all-work about the house. Messages of welcome from friends and relatives were given. At the last, dropping her voice impressively, Iriya spoke of the coming war. "It is inevitable," she said. "Prince Hagane informed Tetsujo only this morning. There can be no doubt."

The old scenes, the old interests, glowed anew in the girl's heart.

Really they had never left it, but, like certain writing, illegible except in warmth, the pictures slept until the breath of her own land awaked them. She had a strange sense of being slowly turned back to a child. In an English fairy-book a certain Alice could grow tall or short at will by nibbling at a magic mushroom. There had always been magic mushrooms in the East, long, long before that book was written,--strange mountain growths which are the only food of the ghost deer that attend the genii of the forest. Perhaps the little brown sembei which she had just bought at Omori from an insistent peddler was, in reality, a sc.r.a.p of an enchanted mushroom. Perhaps she was really turning back into the little j.a.panese Yuki who had never been to America at all, who had never known a foreign lover, or given a promise which her reason told her to refuse. Her heart stopped beating for an instant. She took a second bite of sembei. Again the trouble faded. Yes, surely, it was a magic mushroom.

Now merry talk flowed from her smiling lips. Tetsujo moved nearer. She called him "Chichi Sama," as in baby days, and her mother "Haha San."

The train made its final stop. A torrent of blue-robed occupants poured out from every car. The sound of wooden clogs upon the concrete floor was like innumerable hollow sh.e.l.ls sc.r.a.ped, lip down, upon an empty box.

Yuki's heart swept in with the throng. She loved the noise, the bare station, the hissing car, the very dust of the travellers' feet. Tetsujo and Iriya exchanged glances behind her back, and smiled. Their eyes said, "This is our dear one,--our own; not an American changeling, but the daughter for whom we have been yearning."

CHAPTER EIGHT

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 preempt 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 gla.s.s 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 bl.u.s.ter 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 j.a.panese youth of the samurai cla.s.s 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 Share 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 j.a.panese 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 s.p.a.ce generally sat the master, while skirmishing about, sometimes in a gloomy slit of a pa.s.sage 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 j.a.panese 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 pa.s.sed, 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 gra.s.s 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 a.r.s.enal. 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.