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

dwelt in the innermost place of a citadel built of ancient beliefs and traditions.

  Out of the unchecked flood of denunciation, I learned that he held Christianity responsible for his woes. I, as a believer and an American, must hear what he thought; as his friend I must advise him if I could.

  In the twenty years that I had known the school superintendent, he had always been reserved regarding his personal and family life. To me his home was a vague, blurred background in which possible members of his family moved. He surprised me this day by referring in detail to the bitter grief which had come to him in years gone by through his only child.

  I had heard the story outside, but not even remotely had Kishimoto San ever before hinted that he possessed a child. I knew his need for help must be imperative, that the wound was torn afresh, else he was too good a Buddhist to make "heavy the ears of a friend" with a recital of his own sorrows.

  He said he had been most ambitious for his daughter. Years ago he had sent her to Yokohama to study English and music. While there the girl lived with his sister who had absorbed many new ideas regarding liberty for women. Once he was absent from Japan and without his knowledge the girl married an American artist, Harold Wingate by name, and went with him to his country to live.

  Kishimoto San had not seen her since her marriage until lately. He had honorably prayed that he never would. Some weeks before she had returned to Hijiyama practically penniless, which was bad, and a widow, which made it very difficult to marry her off again; but worse still was the half-breed child she had brought with her, a daughter of about seventeen. This girl, whose name was Zura, I soon found was the sore spot in Kishimoto San's grievance, the center around which his storm of trouble brewed.

  It was like pouring oil on flames when I asked particularly about the girl.

  Though he could speak English that was quite understandable, he broke loose in Japanese hardly translatable. "She is a wild, untamed barbarian. She has neither manners nor modesty, and not only dares openly to scorn the customs of my country and religion, but defies my commands, my authority."

  Knowing him as I did, I thought it must indeed be a free, wild spirit to meet the blow of Kishimoto San's will and not be crushed by the impact. My interest in the girl increased in proportion to his vehemence. I ventured to ask for details. They came in a torrent.

  "It is not our custom for young girls to go on the street unattended. I forbade her going. Deaf to my orders, she strays about the streets alone and dares to sail her own sampan. She handles it as deftly as a common fisherman. She goes to out-of-the-way places and there remains till it suits her impudence to return to my house. In the hours of the night she disturbs my meditations by sobbing for her home and her father. She romps on the highways with street children, who follow her as they would a performing monkey."

  "But surely," I mildly interposed, "it is no great breach of custom to play with children. Your granddaughter is doubtless lonely and it may give her pleasure."

  The face of my visitor stiffened.

  "Pleasure!" he repeated. "Does she not know that a woman's only pleasure is obedience? Is there not enough of my blood in her to make her bow to the law? Twice she has told me to attend to my own affairs! Told me! Her ancestor! Her Master!" This last word he always pronounced with a capital M.

  Kishimoto San was not cruel. Unlike many of his countrymen, who are educated by modern methods as regarding laws governing women, he was still an old-time Oriental in the raw.

  It was at this uncomfortable moment that the little maid brought in tea. I instructed her to serve it on the balcony which overlooked sea and mountain. The appealing beauty of the scene always soothed me as a lullaby would a restless child. I hoped as much for my disturbed visitor. I gave him his second cup of tea, and asked him whether the mother could not control her daughter. It set him going.

  "Her mother!" he scoffed. "Madam, if her mother had been blest with the backbone of a jellyfish she would never have married a man whose people were not her people, whose customs are as far removed from hers as the East is from the West. My daughter was young. Had she married one of her own country, all would have been well. Her will would have been directed by her mother-in-law. She was trained to obedience. See what the teachings of your country do to our women! In a letter she wrote telling me she had gone, she thanked me for teaching her the laws of submission. It helped her to bow to the commands of this man when he bade her marry him, and she loved him! Love! as if that had anything to do with marriage. Now comes the result of this accursed union—a troublesome girl who is neither one thing nor the other, who laughs at the customs of my country and upsets the peace of my house, who boldly declares she is an American. She need not herald it. In dress and manners she wears the marks of her training."

  I offered no comment, but every moment served to deepen my interest in this girl who could defy a will which had ruled a whole island for half a century.

  My silence seemed to irritate him. He turned fiercely upon me.

  "Tell me, what kind of girls does America produce? What is your boasted freedom for women but license? Is their place never taught them? Have they no understanding of the one great law for women?"

  I had been absent from my country many long years, and while neither the best nor the worst had come my way, America was my country, her people my people, and they stood to me for all that was great and honorable and righteous. The implication of Kishimoto's question annoyed me all the more, because I knew him to be a keen observer and not hasty in his conclusions.

  "Softly, Kishimoto San. You answered your own question a few moments ago. The customs of the two countries are as wide apart as the East is from the West. Tastes differ in manners as well as religion. If there are things in America that do not please you, so there are many laws in Japan that are repugnant to Americans. You are unjust to hold my country responsible for your woes."

  "But I do hold it responsible. My granddaughter comes of its teaching. I meditate what kind of religion it is that permits a girl to question her elder's authority and to defy the greatest of laws, filial piety. What manner of a country is it where custom grants liberty to a girl that she may roam the streets and sit in a public garden alone with a man!"

  This last was indeed serious. In my day and in my town it could be done if the girl were so fortunate as to have something that stood for a male cousin. But neither then nor now was it permissible in a land of man-made laws for men. Unless it was between husband and wife, private conversation, or a promenade just for two branded the participants as bold, possibly evil.

  I asked for further details. Kishimoto San said the young man was a minor officer on the steamer by which his granddaughter and her mother had crossed the Pacific. He thought he was an American. Whenever the ship coaled in a nearby port, the young chap communicated with the girl and together they walked and talked.

  The plain facts after all sounded harmless and innocent. What more natural than for a lonely girl to seek for pastime the company of a youth of her own kind? But it could not be—not in Japan; though as innocent as two baby kittens playing on the green, it would bring shame upon the girl and the family, which no deed of heroism would ever erase from local history. Something must be done; I asked Kishimoto San how I could be of assistance.

  "I have been consulting with myself," he replied in English. "Would you grant me permission to send her to you daily as a student? Besides her strange ways, she talks in strange English. I cannot find the same in any conversation book. Her whole being has need of reconstruction."

  I was not in the reconstructing business, but a young girl in the house meant youth and diversion and a private pupil meant extra pay. What a little extra money wouldn't do in my house wasn't worth adding up. In thought I repaired the roof and bought new legs for the kitchen stove.

  My visitor, mistaking my silence for hesitation, suggested, "First come and see her. Analyze her conduct and grant me decision whether she is a natural, free-born American citizen, as she boasts, or if the gods have cursed her with a bold spirit. She is of your country, your religion, if any, and perhaps you can understand her. I fail to comprehend."

  He folded his arms for emphasis. The gleam of the western sun caught the sheen of his silk kimono and covered him with a glow. From under bent brows he gazed at the scene before him.

  Earth and sky and sea breathed beauty. The evening song of the birds was of love. The spirit of the fading day whispered peace, but unheeding he sat in troubled silence. Then from the street far below came the shout of a boy at play. It was a voice full of the gladness of youth. In it was a challenge of daring and courage. Loudly he called to his troop of play soldiers to charge splendidly, to fight with the glorious Yamato Damashi (spirit of Japan).

  Kishimoto San heard and with a quick movement raised his head as though he had felt a blow. "Ah," he murmured to himself, "if it had only been a boy!"

  There was the secret wound that was ever sore and bleeding. There was no son to perpetuate the name. His most vital hope was dead, his greatest desire crushed, and by a creature out of the West, who not only stole his daughter but fathered this girl whom no true Japanese would want as a wife. To a man of Kishimoto San's traditions the hurt was deep and cruel.

  I well understood his sorrow and disappointment. Pity put all my annoyance to flight. I promised to go to his house and see if I could help in any way. I did not tell him that I was about as familiar with young girls from my home land as I was with young eagles, for the undaunted spirit of that child had aroused all my love of adventure; and I wanted to see her. Then, too, I was haunted by the picture of a lonely girl in a strange land, crying out in the night for her dead father.

  I was trembling with new emotion that evening when I brought my invalid in from the garden, and tucked her into bed.

  Kishimoto San had not only offered me a tremendous experience, but all unwittingly he made it easily possible for me to defy the tradition of his picture language, and risk Jane Gray as a permanent fireside companion.

III ZURA

  Just below "The House of the Misty Star," in an old temple, a priest played a merry tattoo on a mighty gong early