The House of the Misty Star, Frances Little [great reads .TXT] 📗
- Author: Frances Little
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Zura was called from the room by some household duty. Jane and I were left alone. Though my companion looked tired and a little anxious, she seemed buoyed up by some mental vision to which she hopefully clung.
"Miss Jenkins, please tell me just what the poster said," asked Jane.
The printed words I had read that morning seemed burned into my brain. I repeated them exactly.
"Well, it didn't even give a hint that Page was that nice cashier gentleman from Chicago, did it?" she inquired.
"No, Jane, it didn't; only it was signed by the Chicago Bank. But Kobu told me he was sure Page was the man. He has cabled the authorities to come."
"He has cabled, has he? He knows, does he? Kobu has himself going to another thought. Isn't that what Zura says? Page Hanaford is no more the man wanted for borrowing that bank's money than I am a fashion plate wanted in Paris." Her words were light, but very sure.
Her apparent levity irritated me. "How do you know? What are you saying, Jane?" I asked sharply.
"Oh, I just have a feeling that way. Page is too good-looking," answered my companion.
"For the love of heaven, Jane Gray, that's no reason. Good looks don't keep a man from sin."
"Maybe not, but they help; and Page loves poetry too," she ended with quiet stubbornness. Then after a pause: "That program did not say what particular thing our boy was wanted for, did it?" Neither in joy nor sorrow did Jane's talent desert her for misusing words.
"No, the circular did not state the details. But if you think there is any mistake about the whole thing go to the room and look at that policeman pacing up and down before the door. And if you think the boy's not desperately ill, look inside and see those two doctors and that speck of a trained nurse watching his every breath. You can read the paper yourself, if you don't believe me."
"Miss Jenkins, don't pin your faith to a program; they tell awful fibs. Once I wrote one myself for a meeting and I said, 'The audience will remain standing while collection is taken,' and it made me say: 'The remains of the audience will be collected while standing.'"
"How can you?" I asked. Hot tears stung my eyes.
Instantly Jane was by my side. "How can I? Because it's best never to believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. I know the dear boy is ill. But he's not guilty. The idea of that sweet boy, with such a nice mouth and teeth, doing anything dishonorable! It's all a mistake. I know guilt when I see it, and Page hasn't a feature of it."
Jane Gray exasperated me to the verge of hysteria, but her sure, simple faith had built a hospital and changed the criminal record of a city. The thought that she might be right, in spite of the circular and Kobu, gave me so much comfort that the tears flowed unchecked.
My companion looked at me critically for a moment, then left the room. She returned shortly bearing a heaped-up tray, which she arranged before me. "Honey, you can't be hopeful when you are hungry. You told me so yourself. I don't believe you've eaten since morning. Here's just a little bite of turkey and mince pie and chicken salad. Eat it. There's plenty more, for nobody's touched that big dinner we were going to celebrate Page's new position with. Now turn around to the lamp so you can see. What a funny fat shadow you make! But how sweet it is to know if we keep our faces to the light the shadows are always behind us! Now I must run and get a little sleep. Zura says I am to go on watch at three."
I thought her gone, when the door opened again and I could see only her gray head and bright, though tired face. "Miss Jenkins, please don't let that layer cake fool you. It is not tough. I just forgot to take the brown papers from the bottom of the layers when I iced them. Do as I tell you, eat and sleep."
Without its rest?
I'd rather He'd unlock the day
And, as the hours swing open, say,
'Thy will be best.'"
"Good-night, dear friend."
Then she was gone. The tables were turned in more ways than one. Jane was counselor and I the counseled, she the comforter and I to be comforted.
In the daughters of Japan lies a hidden quality ever dormant unless aroused by a rough shake from the hand of necessity; it is the power to respond calmly and skilfully to emergencies. In this, as never before, Zura Wingate declared her Oriental heritage. On the tragic morning when I had gone with Page to the Kencho I had left her a singing, joyous girl, her feet touching the borderland of earth's paradise. I returned and found her a woman, white lipped and tense, but full of quiet command. The path to love's domain had been blocked by a sorrow which threatened desolation to happiness and life. Not with tears and vain rebellion did she protest against fate or circumstances, nor waste a grain of energy in useless re-pinings. With the lofty bearing her lordly forefathers wore when going forth to defeat or victory this girl stood ready, and served so efficiently that both nurse and doctors bestowed their highest praise when they told her she was truly a Japanese woman.
So frequent were the demands from household and sick-room that I feared for her strength. I knew she suffered. Rigid face muscles and dark-rimmed eyes so testified; but aside from these some tireless spirit held her far above weariness. Alert to see and quick to perform, under her hand, after a few days, the house settled down into a routine where each member had a special duty. In turn we watched or waited while the heavy, anxious days dragged themselves along until they numbered ten.
In the last half of each night Zura and I watched by Page and wrestled with the cruel thing that held him captive. They were painful, but revealing hours. I was very close to the great secrets of life, and the eternal miracle of coming dawn was only matched in tender beauty by the wonder of a woman's love. It was Zura's cool, soft hand that held the burning lids and shut out the hideous specters Page's fevered eyes saw closing down upon him. It was her voice that soothed him into slumber after the frenzy of delirium.
"Ah," he'd pant, weary of the struggle with a fancied foe, "you've come, my lovely princess. No! You're my goddess!" Then with tones piteous and beseeching he would begin anew the prayer ever present on his lips since his illness. "Beloved goddess, tell me—what did I do with them? You are divine; you know. Help me to find them quick. Quick; they are shutting the door; it has bars. I cannot see your face."
"I am here, Page," Zura would answer. "If the door shuts, I'll be right by your side."
In love for the boy each member of the house was ready day or night for instant service, but vain were our combined efforts to help the fevered brain to lay hold of definite thought long enough for him to name the thing that was breaking his heart. From pleading for time to search for something, he would wander into scenes of his boyhood. Once he appealed to me as his mother and asked me to sing him to sleep. Before I could steady my lips he had drifted into talk of the sea and tried to sing a sailor's song. Often he fancied himself on a pirate ship and begged not to be put off on some lonely island. He fiercely resisted. But his feebleness was no match for Zura's young strength, and as she held him she would begin to sing:
Then fell asleep and sought for thee
And found thee:
Had I but known 'twas only seeming,
I had not waked, but lay forever dreaming."
"Dreaming, dreaming," the boy would repeat. "Sweetheart, you are my dearest dream."
Inch by inch we fought and held at bay the enemy. We lost all contact with the outside. To us the center of the world was the pink-and-white room, and on the stricken boy that lay on the bed was staked all our hope.
The long delayed crisis flashed upon us early one morning when the doctors found in what we had feared was the end only a healing sleep from which Page awakened and called Zura by name. Even then it was a toss-up whether he could win out against despair. Uppermost in his mind was ever the torturing thought of the thing that had made him a fugitive.
An icy hand was laid upon our joy at the signs of returning health when we remembered a certain ship that was right then cutting the blue waters of the Pacific nearing the shores of Japan, bearing authority to make a prisoner of Page if he lived. They were not happy days, and it was with undefined emotions that I saw life and strength come slowly to the sick man.
By daily visits Kobu kept himself advised of the patient's condition, and kept us informed of the swift approach of the Vancouver steamer and its dreaded passenger. One day, when Page was sleeping and our anxiety as to what was coming had reached the breaking point, the detective came. He announced that he had received information that the steamer had docked at Yokohama that morning. In the afternoon the Chicago Bank representative would arrive at Otsu, our nearest railroad station. Kobu said he would bring the guest to our house at once and his kind wish that Page San's "sicker would soon be healthy" did not wholly hide the triumph of his professional pride.
He went his way to the station, leaving behind him thoughts sadder than death can bring.
When I told Jane what we were to expect her pale eyes were almost drowned. She looked frail and tired, but from somewhere a smile made rainbows of her tears.
"Don't give up, Miss Jenkins. No use crying over cherry blossoms before they wither. Kobu's human enough to be mistaken. Detectives aren't so smart. Sometimes they tree a chipmunk and think it's a bear."
It was the nearest I'd ever heard Jane come to a criticism, and I knew she felt deeply to go this far.
Zura listened quietly to what I had to tell. But her eyes darkened and widened. "You mean they are coming to take Page away?"
"Yes; as soon as he is strong enough."
"Then I am going with him."
"Go with him? You, a young girl, go with a man who is in charge of an officer? It's impossible. I pray God it's not true, but if the law can prove that Page has sinned, he will have to pay the penalty in prison. You can't go there."
"No, but I can wait outside, and be ready to stand by him when he is released. No matter how guilty the law declares him, he is still the same Page to me. He's mine. I belong to him. Did not my own mother think home and country well lost for love? She knew her fate and smiled while she blindly followed.
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