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

I had seen so very few girls of my country since my coming to Japan. I remembered hearing Jane say that the styles now change there every two or three years. My new skirt, I've had only five years, has seven pleats and as many more gores.

  Zura Wingate advanced to my lowly seat on the floor and listlessly put out one hand to greet me. The other she held behind her. It had been years since I had shaken hands with any one. I was ill at ease, and made more so by realizing that I did not know what to say to this self-contained child of my own beloved land. I made a brilliant start, however. "Howdy. Do you like Japan?"

  The answer came with the sudden energy of a popgun: "No." Then she sat down close to a hibachi, her back against the wall.

  I went on, determined to be friendly. "I am sure you will find much of interest here. All the beauties of Japan are not on the surface. The loveliness of the scenery and the picturesqueness of the people will appeal to you."

  The phrase was about as new as "Mary had a little lamb," but it was all I could think to say. My conversational powers seemed off duty.

  The girl scented my confusion and a half-smile crept around her lips.

  "Country's all right," she answered. "But the natives are like punk imitations of a vaudeville poster; they're the extension of the limit."

  Her words, although English, were as incomprehensible to me as if I had never heard the language, but her scorn was unmistakable. As if to emphasize it, the hand she had persistently held behind her was thrust forward toward the burning coals in the hibachi. Her fingers held a half burnt cigarette. This she lighted, and without embarrassment or enjoyment began to smoke.

  An American girl smoking! I was shocked, but I held tight.

  "Do you smoke much?" I asked, for the want of something better to say.

  "Never smoked before. But my august, heaven-born grandfather, who to my mind is descended direct from the devil, wishes me to adopt the customs of his country. Thought I'd start with this."

  "But," I reminded her, "it is not the custom in this country for young girls to smoke."

  "Oh, isn't it?"—indifferently—"it doesn't matter. Had to begin on something or—die."

  The spasm of pain which swept the girl's face stirred within me a memory long forgotten.

  Once, when my own starved youth had wearied and clamored anew for an outlet, I had determined on a reckless adventure. From corn-shucks and dried grass I made a cigar which I tried to smoke. It gave me the most miserable penitent hour I have ever known. The picture of the child of long ago hiding in the corn crib until recovery was possible caused me now to shake with laughter.

  The fire in Zura's eyes began to burn. "Think it's funny? I don't. Have one." She flung a package of cigarettes in my lap.

  Ignoring the impertinence of her speech and act I hastened to explain the cause of my amusement. I told her of my desolate childhood, of the quiet village in which my uneventful girlhood was passed, where the most exciting thing that ever happened was a funeral about once in four years.

  When I finished she showed the first signs of friendliness as she exclaimed, "Heavens! Didn't you have any 'movies,' any chums, any boys to treat you now and then to a sundae?"

  Kishimoto San certainly stated a fact. Her English was strange. I was sure the words were not in my dictionary. But I would not appear stupid before this child who had no business to know more than I did. So I looked a little stern and said that my Sundays never seemed a treat; they were no different from week-days. If the other things she talked about were in a circus, I had never been to one to hear them.

  At this such a peal of laughter went up from the girl as I dare say at no time had ever played about the ancient beams. The maid, just entering with hot tea, stood as if stunned. The old grandmother sat like a statue of age with hand uplifted, protesting against any expression of youth and its joys.

  Mrs. Wingate pushed aside the paper doors, gently chiding, "Zura, yo' naughty ve'y bad."

  But the reproof was as meaningless as the babbling of a baby. Neither disapproval nor black looks availed; unchecked the merriment went on until exhausted by its own violence. I knew she was laughing at me, but what mattered? To her I was a comical old figure in a strange museum. To me she stood for all I had lost of girlhood rights and I wanted her for my friend. Her laughter went through me like a draft of wine. The echo swept a long silent chord, and the tune it played was the jig-time of youth.

  When Zura caught her breath and explained the meaning of her words, it disclosed to me a phase of life of which I had never dreamed. Pictures that moved and talked while you looked, public halls for dancing, and boys meeting young girls alone after dark to "treat" them! The child spoke of it all easily and as a matter of course. I knew more than I wanted of the dark side of Oriental life, but I had been so long accustomed to idealizing my own country and all its ways that her talk was to me like an unkind story about a dear friend.

  But happy to find a listener who was interested in things familiar to her—Zura chattered away, of her friends and her pleasures, and though many of her words were in an unknown tongue, the picture she unconsciously drew of herself was as clear as transparency. It was an unguided, undisciplined life, big with possibilities for love or hate that even now was wavering in the balance for good or bad.

  Once again the afternoon sun fell upon the girl. It touched her face, tender of contour and coloring. It found her hair and made of it a crown of bronze and gold. For a moment it lingered, then climbing, lighted up a yellow parchment hanging on the wall just above.

  Through its aged dim characters I read an edict issued in the days of long ago, banishing from the land of fair Nippon all Christians and Christianity. It threatened with relentless torture any attempt to promulgate the faith, and contained an order for all citizens to appear in the public place on a certain day for adherents of the new religion to recant, by stamping on the Cross.

  As the girl talked on, she revealed a life strangely inconsistent in a land which to me stood for all that was highest and most beautiful. A curious thought came to me. I wondered if the man who framed that edict had a vision of what foreign teachings might bring in its trail? Possibly some presentiment haunted him of the great danger that would come to his people through contact with a country leagues removed in customs and beliefs. Neither crucifixion nor torture had availed to keep out the new religion. With it came wisdom and great reforms. Misinterpretation too, had followed. Old laws were shattered, and this girl, Zura Wingate was a product of a new order of things, the result of broken traditions, a daughter of two countries, a representative of neither.

  Zura's conversation was mainly of her amusements and diversions.

  "But how did you manage so many pleasures while you were attending school?" I inquired.

  "School?" she echoed. "Oh! that never bothered me. I had a system at school; it worked fine. The days I felt like going, I crammed hard and broke the average record. I also accumulated a beautiful headache. This earned me a holiday and an excursion for my health."

  It was hard for me to understand a girl who deliberately planned to miss school, but I was taking a whole course in one afternoon. Carefully I approached the object of my visit. "Well, of course you desire to further pursue your studies in English, even though your home is to be in Japan. I came this afternoon to ask—do you not think it would be pleasant if you came to my house every day for a little study—just to keep in practice?"

  The girl's lips framed a red circle as she drew out a long "Oh-h-h! I see! The mighty honorable Boss has been laying plans, has he? Well, I think it would be perfectly grand—N-I-T—which in plain American spells 'I will not do it.'"

  Imagine a young girl telling one of her elders right to her face, she would not do it. I never heard of such a thing. For a moment I was torn between a desire to administer a stern reproof and leave her, and a great yearning to stand by and with love and sympathy to try to soften the only fate which could be in store for such as she.

  We took each other's measure and she, pretty and saucy as a gay young robin, went on fearlessly:

  "I'm an American to the backbone; I'm not going to be Japanese, or any kin to them. As long as I have to stay I'm going to pursue the heavenly scenery around here and put it on paper. Between pictures I'm going to have a good time—all I want to. Thank you for your invitation, but I have other engagements."

  A wilful girl in a Japanese home! My disapproval fled. Soon enough life would administer reproof and stretch out a rough hand to stay her eagerness. I need add nothing.

  A little depressed at losing her as a pupil and knowing that her defiance could only bring sorrow, I asked her gently, "Do you love good times?"

  "Do I? Well, just wait till I get started. See if the slant eyes of the inhabitants will not have another angle before I get through. They need a few lessons on the rights of girls."

  Neither Zura's home nor her parents seemed to have any part in her life. She told of a prank played at midnight one Hallowe'en.

  "But," I asked, "did your mother permit you to be out at such an hour?"

  "My mother!" she repeated with a light laugh. "My mother is nothing but a baby. She neither cared nor knew where I was or what I did."

  "What about your father?" I ventured. "I understand you and he were great friends."

  If I had struck the girl, the effect could not have been more certain. She arose quickly, her face aquiver with pain; she threw her hands forward as if in appeal to some unseen figure; then she moaned, "Oh! Daddy!" and she was gone.

  Like the stupid old meddler I was, I tore the wound afresh. I exposed the bruised place in the girl's life, but my blunder brought to light unsuspected depths.

  It was all so sudden that I was speechless and stared blankly at the mother, who looked helpless and bewildered. The two grandmothers had taken no part nor interest in the scene. Their faces expressed nothing. To them the girl was as incomprehensible as any jungle savage. To me she was like some wild, free bird, caught in a net, old, but very strong, for its meshes were made from a relentless law.

  I made my adieu with what grace I could and left.

  On my way home I met Kishimoto San. Omitting details, I told him Zura declined to come to my house for lessons.

  "So! My granddaughter announced she will not? I shall give her a command to obey."

  I suggested that the girl needed time for adjustment and that he needed much patience.

  "Patience! With a girl?" he replied. "Ah. madam, you utter great demands of my dignity! It