The House of the Misty Star Part 17

Jane covered her eyes and spoke in a voice filled with trouble.

"Dearie! I've lived in America a long time but I didn't know there were people like that! I'm really afraid they aren't selling their souls for the highest price."

"Daddy wasn't dealing in souls, but he did pay a pretty high price for lines."

Jane, unsatisfied, asked why her father couldn't use statues for his model and Zura seeing how troubled her friend was for the souls of the undressed, asked with eager sympathy to be allowed to see the plans for the soon-to-be built hospital.

The ground for the building had been purchased and work was well on the way. Shortly the roof-raising ceremony would take place. In this part of the country it is the most important event in building. Jane said that we were all expected to attend these exercises, even if we were so afraid of the criminal quarters that we had to take our hearts in our hands to enter.

Brown head and gray were bent together over blueprints and long columns of figures. Both maid and woman were frail and delicate tools to be used in the up-building of wrecked lives. Yet by the skill of the Master Mechanic these instruments were not only working wonders in other lives, but also something very beautiful in their own.

Zura took untiring interest in all Jane's plans for the after-festivities of the occasion. Most of their evenings were spent in arranging programs. I took no part. My hands were full of my own work and, while they talked, I paused to listen and was delighted not only in the transformation of Zura, but also in my own enlarged understanding of her.

I loved all young things, and youth itself, but I had never been near them before. With tender interest I watched every mood of Zura's, pa.s.sing from an untamed child to a lovely girl. Sometimes her bounding spirits seemed overlaid by a soft enchantment. She would sit chin in palm, dark, luminous eyes gazing out into s.p.a.ce as if she saw some wonderful picture. I suppose most girls do this. I never had time, but I made it possible for Zura to have her dreams. She should have all that I had missed, if I could give it to her--even a lover in years to come. I did not share these thoughts with Jane, for it is plain human to be irritated when we see our weaknesses reflected in another, and encouragement was the last thing Jane's sentimental soul needed. I failed to make out what had come over my companion these days; she would fasten her eyes on Zura and smile knowingly, as if telling herself a happy secret, sighing softly the while. And poetry! We ate, lived and slept to the swing of some love ditty.

Once I found Zura in a mood of gentle brooding. I suggested to her that, as the year was drawing to a close, it would be wise to start the new one with a clean bill of conscience. Did she not think it would be well for her to write to her grandfather and tell him she could see now that she had made it most difficult for him? That while she didn't want to be taken back she would like to be friends with him?

At once she was alert, but not aggressively so as in the past. "Ursula, I'll do it if you insist; but it wouldn't be honest and I couldn't be polite. I do not want to be friends with that old man who labels everybody evil that doesn't think as he does. We'd never think alike in a thousand years. What's the use of poking up a tiger when he's quiet?"

I persuaded.

She evaded by saying at last: "Well, some time--maybe. I have too much on my mind now."

"What, Zura?"

"Oh, my future--and a few other things."

Kishimoto San had never honored me with a visit since his granddaughter had been an inmate of my house. Whenever a business conference was necessary, I was requested, by mail, to "a.s.semble" in the audience chamber of the Normal School.

The man was beginning to look old and broken but he still faithfully carried out his many duties of office and religion.

He never retreated one inch in his fight against all innovations that would make the country the less j.a.panese or his faith less Buddhistic.

More often than not he stood alone and faced the bitter opposition of the progressives. In no one thing did he so prove his unconquerable spirit and his great ideals for his country as the patience with which he endured the ridicule of his opponents. For to a man of the proud and sensitive East, shot and sh.e.l.l are far easier to face than ridicule.

On a certain afternoon I had gone to meet with a committee to discuss a question pertaining to a school regulation, by which the girl students of the city schools would be granted liberty in dress and conduct more equal with the boys. Of course Kishimoto San stood firm against so radical a measure. Another member of the committee asked him if he did not believe in progress. The unbending old man answered sternly:

"Progress--yes. But a progress based on the traditions of our august ancestors, not a progress founded on Western principle, which, if adopted by us unmodified, means that we, with our legions of years behind us, our forefathers descended from the G.o.ds, as they were, will be neither wholly East nor West but a something as distorted as a dragon's body with the heads and wings of an eagle. Progress! Have not our misconceptions of progress cost us countless lives and sickening humiliations? Has not the breaking of traditions threatened the very foundations of our homes? Small wonder the foreign nations offer careless insult when we stoop to make monkeys of ourselves and adopt customs and a.s.sume a civilization that can no more be grafted on to our nation than cabbage can be grown on plum trees. Take what is needful to strengthen and uplift. Make the highest and best of any land your own standard and live thereby. But remember, in long years ago the divine G.o.ds created you j.a.panese, and to the end of eternity, struggle as you may, as such you cannot escape your destiny!"

As he finished his impa.s.sioned speech, a ray of sun fell upon his face, lifted in stern warning to his opponents. He was like a figure of the Past demanding reverence and a hearing from the Present.

For the time he won his point and I was glad, for it was Kishimoto San's last public speech. Soon after he was stricken with a lingering illness.

In previous talks he had neither asked after his granddaughter nor referred to her. But this afternoon, taking advantage of his look of half-pleasure caused by the victory he had won single handed, I took occasion, when offering congratulations, to give him every opportunity to inquire as to Zura and her progress. I was very proud of what I had done with the girl, of the change her affection for Jane and me had accomplished.

Naturally I was anxious to exhibit my handiwork. As well tempt a mountain lion to inspect a piece of beautiful tapestry in the process of weaving.

However tactfully I led up to the subject he walked around it without touching it. To him she was not. Reconciliation was afar off. I said good-by and left. It was this and the speech I had heard in the afternoon that occupied my mind as I wended my way home.

Of course the country must go forward; but it was a pity that, even if progress were not compatible with tradition, it could not be tempered with beauty. Why must the youth of the land adopt those hideous imitations of foreign clothes? The flower-like children wear on their heads the grotesque combinations of muslin and chicken feathers they called hats? There are miles of ancient moats around the city, filled with lotus, the great pink-and-white blossoms giving joy to the eye as its roots gave food for the body. Slowly these stretches of loveliness were being turned into dreary levels of sand for the roadbed of a trolley. Even now the quiet of the city was broken by the clang of the street-car gong. I was taking my first ride that day.

With Kishimoto San's plea for progress of the right kind still ringing in my ears, my eyes fell upon some of the rules for the conduct of the pa.s.sengers, printed in large type, and hung upon the front door of the car:

"Please do not stick your knees or your elbows out of the windows."

"Fat people must ride on the platform."

"Soiled coolies must take a bath before entering."

An advertis.e.m.e.nt in English emphasized the talk of the afternoon: "Invaluable most fragrant and nice pills, especially for sudden illness.

For refreshing drooping minds and regulating disordered spirits, whooping cough and helping reconvalescents to progress."

The force of Kishimoto's appeal was strong upon me.

I alighted at my street and began the climb that led to my house.

Halfway up a picture-book tea-house offered hospitality; in its miniature garden I paused to rest and faced the sea in all its evening beauty. Happily the glory of the skies and the tender loveliness of the hills still belonged to their Maker, untouched by commercialism.

The golden track of the setting sun streamed across the mountain tops and turned to fiery red a feathery shock of distant clouds. High and clear came the note of a wild goose as he called to his mate on their homeward flight. In the city below a thousand lights danced and beckoned through the soft velvet shadows of coming night. There fluttered up to me many sounds--a temple bell, the happy call of children at play, cheerful echoes of home-like content, the gentle gaiety of simple life.

It was for these, the foundations of the Empire, that Kishimoto San feared ruin, with the coming of too sudden a transition.

But I forgot the man and his woes. The spell of heavenly peace that spread upon land and sea fell like a benediction.

It crept into my heart and filled me with thankfulness that I had known this land and its people and for all the blessings that had fallen to me in the coming of Zura Wingate. Grat.i.tude for my full understanding of her was deep. If only the shadows could be cleared away from the boy I loved, life would be complete.

Exalted by the beauty of the evening, and by my spiritual communings, I entered my house and faced the door of the study. It was ajar.

Silhouetted against the golden light, which had so filled me with joy and peace, stood two figures. And the man held the hands of the girl against his breast, and looked down into her glad eyes as a soul in the balance must look into Paradise.

It was Page Hanaford and Zura Wingate!

As quietly as possible I went around another way and dropped into the first handy chair. The truth was as bare as a model. The force of it came to me like a blow between the eyes. Long ago, because of chilblains, I had adopted felt shoes. In that second of time I stood at the door the noiseless footgear cured me of all the egotism I ever possessed.

Now I knew by what magic the transformation had been wrought in Zura.

And the castle of dreams, built on my supposed understanding of youth and the way it grew, was swept away by a single breath from the young G.o.d of love. What a silly old jay bird I had been! Was that what Jane Gray had been smiling to herself about? I felt like shaking her for seeing it before I did.

At dinner Jane was the only one of the three of us without an impediment in her silence. I was glad when the meal was over and we went to the study.

Zura buried herself in a deep windowseat, to watch the lights on the water, she said. When there was not another glimmer to be seen, from the shadows came a voice with a soft little tremble in it, or possibly I had grown suddenly sensitive to trembles: "Ursula, Mr. Hanaford was here this afternoon."

Now, thought I, it's coming. Steadying myself I asked: "Was he? What did he have to say?"

"Oh-h!"--indifferently--"nothing much. He brought back an armful of books."

An armful of books--aye, and his heart full of love! How dared he speak of it with his life wrapped in the dark shadows of some secret?

Talk to me of progress! That day I could have raced neck-and-neck with a shooting star!