The House of the Misty Star, Frances Little [great reads .TXT] 📗
- Author: Frances Little
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In years gone by the echo of the music had stirred me only to a drowsy thankfulness that I was no goddess, happy as I turned for a longer sleep. The morning after Kishimoto San's visit, long before any sound disturbed the sleeping gods, from my window I watched the Great Dipper drop behind the crookedest old pine in the garden and heard the story of the night-wind as it whispered its secret to the leaves.
Usually my patience was short with people who went mooning around the house at all hours of the night when they should have been sleeping. Somehow though, things seemed changed and changing. Coming events were not casting shadows before them in my home, but thrills. Formerly I had not even a passing acquaintance with thrills. Now, half a century behind-time, they were beginning to burst in upon me all at once, as would a troop of merry friends bent on giving me a surprise party, and the things they seemed to promise kept me awake half the night. My restlessness must have penetrated the thin partition of my Japanese house, for when I went out to breakfast there sat Jane Gray, very small and pale, but as bright-eyed and perky as a sparrow. It was her first appearance at the morning meal.
Before I could ask why she had not rested as usual, she put a question to me. "Well, what is it?"
"What's what?" I returned.
"Why," she exclaimed, "you have been up most of the night. I wanted to ask if you were ill, but I was counting sheep jumping over the fence, and it made me so sleepy I mixed you up with them. I hope it isn't the precious cod-liver babies that are keeping you awake."
It was at Jane's suggestion that we had eliminated meat from our menu and established a kind of liquid food station for the ill-nourished offspring of the quarry women near us.
I assured Miss Gray that babies had been far from my thoughts. Then I told her of my interview with Kishimoto San; of how Zura Wingate had come to her grandfather's house; of her rebellion against things that were; and that she was to come to me for private study. Had I not been so excited over the elements of romance in my story, I would have omitted telling Jane of the incident of the girl and the youth in the park, for it had a wonderful effect on her.
Jane's sentiment was like a full molasses pitcher that continues to drip in spite of all the lickings you give it. At once I saw I was in for an overflow. It was the only part of the story she took in, and as she listened, passed into some kind of a spell. She cuddled down into her chair and shut her eyes like a child in the ecstasies of a fairy story. She barely breathed enough to say, "The darlings! and in that lovely old park! I hope it was moonlight. Do you suppose they sat under the wistaria?"
Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there had come before my mind a picture very like that. Such a picture in the Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted out from mind and reality the better for all concerned. I spoke positively to my companion.
"Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn't for breaking a commandment I would call you foolish with one syllable. Don't you know that in this country a young man and woman walking and talking together cannot be permitted? Neither love nor romance is free or permissible, but they are governed by laws which, if transgressed, will break heart and spirit."
"So I have heard," cooed Miss Gray, unimpressed by my statements. "Wouldn't it be sweet, though, for you and me to go about teaching these dear Japanese people that young love will have its freedom and make a custom of its own?"
"Yes, indeed! Wouldn't it be a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for young love—subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray novel or so!" I said all this and a little more.
Jane went on unheeding, "That's it. We must preach love and live it till we have made convicts of every inhabitant."
Of course she meant "converts," but the kinks in Miss Gray's tongue were as startling as the peculiar twists in her religion.
Upon her asking for more particulars I repeated what Kishimoto San had told me. The girl's father was an artist by profession and, as nearly as I could judge, a rover by habit. Of late the family had lived in a western city. I was not familiar with the name Kishimoto San gave; he called it "Shaal."
"Oh," cried my companion, "I know. I lived there once. It's Seattle."
Occasionally there shot through Jane's mind a real thought, as luminous as a shaft of light through a jar of honey. I would have never guessed the name of that city.
"Then what else happened?" she continued, as eagerly as a young girl hearing a love story.
I told her it had not happened yet, and before it did I was going to call at the house and see the girl as I had promised and settle upon the hour she was to come for daily lessons. Meantime Jane was to take her nap, her milk, and her tonic without my standing over her. In her devotion to her profession she was apt to forget the small details of eating and resting.
My craving for things to happen was being fed as fast as a rapid-firing gun in full action. I found waiting very irksome but there was a cooking class, a mother's meeting, two sets of composition papers to be corrected and various household duties that stubbornly refused to adjust themselves to my limited time.
At last, however, I was free to go and delayed not a minute in starting on my visit.
Kishimoto's home was lower down in the city than mine and very near the sea. The house was ancient and honorable. Its air of antiquity was undisturbed by the great changes which had swept the land in the ages it had stood. The masters had changed from father to son, but the house was as it had been in the beginning, and with it lived unbroken and unshifting, the traditions and beliefs of its founders.
It was only a matter of a few minutes after passing the lodge gates until I was ushered into the general living-room and the center of the family life.
The master being absent, the ceremony of welcoming to his house a strange guest was performed by his wife.
One could see at a glance that she belonged to the old order of things when the seed of a woman's soul seldom had a chance to sprout. She performed her duties with the precision of a clock, with the soft alarm wound to strike at a certain hour, then to be set aside to tick unobtrusively on till needed again.
The seat of honor in a Japanese home is a small alcove designated as "the Tokonoma." In this ancient house simple decorations of a priceless scroll and a flowering plum graced the recess. Before it on a cushion of rich brocade I was asked to be seated.
Etiquette demanded that I hesitate and apologize for my unworthiness as I bowed low and long.
Custom insisted that my hostess urge my acceptance as she abased herself by touching her forehead to her hands folded upon the floor.
Of course it ended by my occupying the cushion, and I was glad for the interruption of tea and cake.
Then equal in length and formality followed the ceremony of being introduced to Kishimoto San's mother and widowed daughter, Mrs. Wingate. The mother, old and withered, was made strong by her power as mother-in-law and her faith in her country and her gods. The daughter was weak and negative by reason of no particular faith and no definite gods. The system by which she had been trained did not include self-reliance nor foster individuality. Under it many of the country's daughters grow to beautiful womanhood because of their gift of living their own inner lives entirely apart, while submitting to the external one imposed by custom.
By the same system other women are made the playthings of circumstance and the soul is ever like a frosted flower bud.
Years ago a man, attracted by the soft girlishness and touched by the adoring deference to his sex, bade this girl marry him without the authority of her father. Nothing had been developed in her to resist outside conditions. It was an unanswered query, whether it was because of ignorance or courage, she braved displeasure, and followed the strange man to a strange country. Sometimes the weakness of Japanese women is their greatest strength. This woman knew how to obey. In her way she had learned to love, but her limited capacity for affection was consumed by wifehood. Having married and borne a child to the man who required nothing of her, duty in life so far as she saw it was canceled. Further effort on her part was unnecessary until the time for her to assert her power as mother-in-law.
Even the contemplation of that happy state failed to enthuse. Languid and a bit sad, her hold on life was gone. The blight had come. On her frail beauty was stamped the sign of the white plague. She greeted me in very broken English, then left the chief duty of entertaining to the mother. The stilted conversation was after the prescribed form and my eagerness to see Zura, whom custom forbade my asking for, was, I dare say, ill concealed.
When I first entered, the farther parts of the large room were veiled in the shadow of the late afternoon. But when Mrs. Kishimoto called, "Zura, come!" a stream of sunlight, as though waiting for the proper time, danced into one corner and rested on the figure of a young girl, sitting awkwardly on her feet, reading.
Her response to her grandmother's command was none too eager; but as she came forward the brilliant light revealed in coloring of hair and dress as many shades of brown as could be found in a pile of autumn leaves. In the round eyes, deep set in a face sprinkled with freckles, in the impertinent tilt of the nose, there was no trace of the Orient; but the high arch of the dark brows betrayed her Japanese origin.
The girl's costume was more remarkable than the girl herself; it was like a velvet pillow slip with neither beginning nor end. It was low in the neck and had no sleeves worth mentioning. How she got into it or out of it was a problem that distracted me half the night, when I was trying to plan for her soul's salvation. I could not hide my amazement at her appearance. She as closely resembled my idea of an American girl as a cartoon does a miniature; but
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