The House of the Misty Star, Frances Little [great reads .TXT] 📗

"It is perfectly plain, Miss Jenkins. Page has been disappointed in love. I know the signs," Jane said with a little sigh, brightening as she went on, "but that doesn't kill, just hurts, and makes people moody. I am going to tell Page I know his secret. I know, too, a recipe that will soon heal wounds like his. We have it right here in the house."

  "Oh! Jane Gray," I said, exasperated, "do cultivate a little common sense. Now you run along and make us some beaten biscuit for supper by that recipe that you know is infallible, and do not add to Page's burden whatever it is, by trying your sentimental remedies on him."

  I heard Zura softly singing as she went about her work. She sang more and talked less in the two weeks that followed our Thanksgiving celebration than ever before since I had known her. In that time we had not seen Page. In our one talk of what we had seen in the garden Zura simply remarked that she supposed what we heard Page say meant he dreaded to tell somebody of the loss of his fortune and family. She lightly scoffed at my suggestion of anything more serious. I prayed that might be true, but why his confusion and evasion?

  Thoughts of the boy and his secret would have weighed heavily upon me had it not been for my joy in seeing day by day the increasing sweetness and graciousness of my adopted child. Her gentleness of manner and speech often caused me to wonder if she could be the same untamed hoyden of some months ago. Every day I prided myself on my quick understanding of girls, also of the way to rear them. It made me more than happy to see what I was accomplishing with Jane's help. While it was no royal road to peace and happiness which we traveled, for Zura's impatience with the Orient and its ways, her rebellion against the stigma laid upon Eurasians, brought the shadows upon many a day's sunshine, yet, as the time slipped by, there seemed to be a growing contentment. There were fewer references made to a definite return to America. In the prospect of her permanent stay with me, I found great joy.

  Her high spirits found expression in her work. Her love of excitement fed on encounters with Ishi and in teasing Jane.

  One afternoon she locked the old gardener up in a tea-house till he apologized for some disrespect. She detained him till intense fear of the coming darkness induced him to submit.

  One night Jane brought home a long bundle.

  "A new dress, Saint Jinny?" asked Zura.

  "No, honey, I haven't had a store dress in ten years. One somebody is through with becomes me quite well. These are the models for my hospital."

  "You mean plans, don't you? You wouldn't be caught bringing home a model. Models are ladies who would be overcome by the superfluous drapery of a dress. My daddy used them for pictures in his studio. Sit right down here by the fire, Miss Jaygray, and while you dissipate in hot beef tea, I'll give you a lesson on models."

  Zura painted so graphically a word picture of her father's studio it made me laugh, for I knew well enough that such clotheless creatures would not be permitted outside the Cannibal islands. The sheriff would take them up.

  As Zura continued her wild exaggerations a look of horror covered Miss Gray's face.

  "Oh! Zury!" she cried. "Surely those ladies had on part of a dress."

  "No! angel child, not even a symptom. Daddy didn't want to paint their clothes. He wanted to copy the curves that grew on the people."

  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, passing 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 space 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 "assemble" 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 Japanese 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 shell 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 gods, 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