Chapter 3 ZURA

Just below "The House of the Misty Star," in an old temple, a priest played a merry tattoo on a mighty gong early every morning. First one stroke and a pause, then two strokes and a pause, followed by so many strokes without pause that the sounds merged into one deep mellow tone reaching from temple to distant hills. It was, so to speak, the rising bell for the deities in that district and announced to them the beginning of their day of business.

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.

Zura Wingate advanced to my lowly seat on the floor, and listlessly put out one hand to greet me

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 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 is like requesting me to smile sweetly when grasping the fruit of a chestnut tree which wears a prickly overcoat. But I thank your great kindness for honoring my house and my family. Sayonara."

Deep thought held me fast as I passed through the cheerful, busy streets and up the long flight of steps that led from the highway to my home. I was too occupied mentally to pay much attention to Jane's unnumbered questions regarding my visit. Anyhow, my association with Jane had led me to discover she could talk for a very long while, and never get anywhere, not even to an end.

That night she talked herself to sleep about girls and poetry and beaux, which as far as I could see had nothing to do with the matter.

Had Jane been a mind reader, long ere the night had gone, she could have found strange things in my brain.

Hours afterwards I sat on my balcony that overhung the soft lapping waters below, still deeply thinking. Often at the end of the day's toil I sought this retreat and refreshed my soul in the incomparable beauty of the view.

In that hour the tender spirit of night folded me about. Out of the mystery of the vast blue I heard faintly a new message, potent with promise, charged with possibilities. The earth was wrapped in a robe of gray, made of mist and illusion, and its every sound was hushed by the lullaby of the night-wind. Dim, silent mountains clustered about the silver waters, as great watchmen guarding a precious jewel.

Toward me across the moon-misted sea came a procession of ghostly sails. Every ship seemed to bear troops of white-robed maidens and, as they floated past, they gaily waved their hands to me, calling for comradeship and understanding, a wide-open heart, freedom to love.

* * *