Читать книгу The Kingdom of Slender Swords - Hallie Erminie Rives - Страница 10

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Barbara stood in her room at the Embassy. It was spacious and airy, the high walls paneled in ivory-white, with draperies of Delft blue. The bed and dressing-table were early Adams. A generous bay-window set with flower-boxes filled a large part of one side, and its deep seat was upholstered in blue crepe, the tint of the draperies, printed with large white chrysanthemums. The floor was laid with thin matting of rice-straw in which was braided at intervals a conventional pattern in old-rose. Opposite the bay-window stood a Sendai chest on which was a small Japanese Buddha of gold-lacquer, Amida, the Dweller-in-Light, seated in holy meditation on his lotos-blossom. At first sight this had recalled to Barbara a counterpart image which she had unearthed in a dark corner of the garret in her pinafore days, and which for a week had been her dearest possession.

To this room Mrs. Dandridge herself had taken her, presenting to her Haru, whom the bishop's note had brought—a vivid, eager figure from a Japanese fan, who had sunk suddenly prone, every line of her slender form bowed, hands palm-down on the floor and forehead on them, in a ceremonious welcome to the foreign Ojo-San. Her mauve kimono was woven with camelias in silver, set off by an obi, showing a flight of storks on a blue background and clasped in front with a silver firefly. The heavy jet hair was rolled into wings on either side, and a high puff surmounted her forehead. Thin twin spirals, stiff with pomade, joined at the back like the pinions of a butterfly, and against the blue-black loops lay a bright knot of ribbon. She was now moving about the room with silent padding of light feet in snowy, digitated tabi, admiring the gowns which the maid had taken from Barbara's trunks. Occasionally she passed a slim hand up and down a soft wrap with a graceful, purring regard, or held a fleecy boa under her small oval chin and stole a glance in the cheval glass with a little ecstatic quiver of shoulder. Once she paused to look at the lacquer image on the Sendai chest. "Buddha," she said. "Japan man think very good for die-time."

"Haru," said Barbara as the maid's busy Japanese fingers went searching for elusive hooks and eyes, "is it true that every Japanese name has a meaning?"

"So, Ojo-San! That mos' indeed true. All Japan name mean something. 'Haru' mean spring, for because my born that time. Very funny—né?"

"It is very pretty," said Barbara.

"How tha's nize!" was the delighted exclamation. "Mama-San give name. My like name yella-ways for because mama-San no more in this world. My house little lonesome now."

"Where is your house, Haru? Near by?"

The slender hand, pointed to the wooded height behind the garden. "Jus' there on the street call Prayer-to-the-gods. My house so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big." She indicated a space of perhaps six feet square. "Funny!—né?"

"And who lives there with you?"

Haru smiled brilliantly. "Oh, so-o-o many peoples! Papa-San, an'—jus' me."

"No brother?"

She shook her head. "My don' got," she said. "Papa-San very angry for because my jus' girl an' no could be kill in Port Arthur!"

She spoke with a smile, but the matter-of-fact words brought suddenly home to Barbara something of the flavor of that passionate loyalty, that hot heroism and debonair contempt of death which has been the theme of a hundred stories. "Do all Japanese feel so, Haru?" she asked. "Would every father be glad to give his son's life for Japan?"

The girl looked at her as if she jested. "Of course! All Japan man mos' happy if to be kill for our Emperor! Tha's for why better to be man. Girl jus' can stay home an' wish!" As the gown's last fastening was slipped into its place, she turned up her lovely oval face with a smiling, sidelong look.

"Ma-a-a!" she exclaimed. "How it is beau-tee-ful! né? only—"

"Only what?"

"My thinks the Ojo-San must suffer through the center!"

Laughingly Barbara caught the other's slim wrist and drew her before the mirror. By oriental standards the Japanese girl was as finely bred as herself. In the two faces, both keenly delicate and sensitive, yet so sharply contrasted—one palely olive under its jetty pillow of straight black hair, the other fair and brown-eyed, crowned with curling gold—the extremes of East and West looked out at each other.

"See, Haru," said Barbara. "How different we are!"

"You so more good-look!" sighed the Japanese girl. "My jus' like the night."

"Ah, but a moonlighted night," cried Barbara, "soft and warm and full of secrets. When you have a sweetheart you will be far more lovely to him than any foreign girl could be!"

Haru blushed rosily. "Sweetheart p'r'aps now," she said, "—all same kind America story say 'bout."

"Have you really, Haru?" cried Barbara. "I love to hear about sweethearts. Maybe—some day—I may have one, too. Some time you'll tell me about him. Won't you?"

Suddenly, far below the window, there came a snarling scramble and a savage, menacing bay. Barbara leaned out. A tawny, long-muzzled wolf-hound, fastened to a stake, glared up at her out of red-dimmed eyes.

"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "He looks sick. Does he have to be tied up?"

The Japanese girl shivered. "Very bad dog," she said. "My think very danger to not kill."

The deep tone of the dinner gong shuddered through the house and Barbara hastened out. Patricia met her in the hall and the two girls, with arms about each other's waists, descended the broad angled stair to the dining-room, where the Ambassador stood, tall and spare and iron-gray, with a contagious twinkle in his kindly eye.

"Well," he asked, "did you feel the earthquake?"

Barbara gave an exclamation of dismay. "Has there been one already?"

"Pshaw!" he said contritely. "Perhaps there hasn't. You see, in Japan, we get so used to asking that question—"

"Now, Ned!" warned Mrs. Dandridge. "You'll have Barbara frightened to death. We really don't have them so very often, my dear—and only gentle shakes. You mustn't be dreaming of Messina."

The Ambassador pointed to the ceiling, where a wide crack zigzagged across. "There's a recent autograph to bear me out. It happened on the eleventh of last month."

"Father remembers the date because of the horrible accident it caused," said Patricia. "A piece of the kitchen plaster came down in his favorite dessert and we had to fall back on pickled plums.

"I'm simply wild to see your gowns, Barbara," she continued, as they took their places. "Is that the latest sleeve, and is everything going to be slinky? We're always about six months behind. I know a girl in Yokohama who goes to every steamer and kodaks the smartest tourists. I've almost been driven to do it myself."

"You should adopt the Japanese dress, Patsy," said Mrs. Dandridge. "How does it seem, Barbara, to see kimono all around you?"

"I can't get it out of my mind," she answered, "that they are all wearing them for some sort of masquerade."

"It takes a few days to get used to it," said the Ambassador. "And what a beautiful and practical costume it is!"

"And comfortable!" sighed Patricia. "No 'bones' or tight places, and only four or five things to put on. I don't wonder European women look queer to the Japanese. The cook's wife told me the other day that the first foreign lady she ever saw looked to her like a wasp with a wig on like a Shinto devil."

There rose again on the still night air the savage bay Barbara had heard in her room. "I'm afraid I must make up my mind to lose Shiro," the Ambassador said regretfully. "He's a Siberian wolf-hound that a friend sent me from Moscow. But the climate doesn't agree with him, apparently. For the last two days he's seemed really unsafe. There's a famous Japanese dog-doctor in this section, but he's been sick himself and I haven't liked to go to an ordinary native 'vet.' But I shall have him looked at to-morrow."

"I do hope you will," said Mrs. Dandridge nervously. "He almost killed Patsy's Pomeranian the first day he came. Watanabé says he hasn't touched his food to-day, and we can't take any risks with so many children in the compound. We have forty-seven, Barbara," she continued, "counting the stablemen's families, and some of them are the dearest mites! Every Christmas we give them a tree. It makes one feel tremendously patriarchal!"

It was a home-like meal, albeit thin slices of lotos-stem floated in Barbara's soup, the lobster had no claws, and the entrée was baked bamboo. Save for a high, four-paneled screen of gold-leaf with delicate etchings of snow-clad pines, the white room was without ornament, but the table gleamed with old silver, and in its center was a great bowl of pink azaleas. Smooth-faced Japanese men-servants came and went noiselessly in snowy footwear and dark silk houri whose sleeves bore the Embassy eagle in silver thread.

The Ambassador was a man of keen observation, and a cheerful philosophy. His theory of life was expressed in a saying of his: "Human-kind is about the same as it has always been, except a good deal kinder." He had learned the country at first hand. He had a profound appreciation of its whole historical background, one gained not merely from libraries, but from deeper study of the essential qualities of Japanese character and feeling. He had the perfect gift, moreover, of the raconteur, and he held Barbara passionately attentive as he sketched, in bold outlines, the huge picture of Japanese modernization. Yet light as was his touch, he nevertheless made her see beneath the veneer of the foreign, the unaltering ego of a civilization old and austere, of unfamiliar, strenuous ideals, with cast steel conventions, eternal mysteries of character and of racial destiny.

Coffee was served in the small drawing-room—a home-like, soft-toned room of crystal-paned bookcases, and furniture that had been handed down in the Dandridge family from candle-lighted colony days.

"It seems a shame," said Mrs. Dandridge, "that this evening has to be broken, but Patsy and I must look in at the Charity Bazaar. I'm sure you won't mind, Barbara, if we leave you alone now for an hour or so. It's a new idea: every lady is to bring something she has no further use for, but which is too good to throw away."

"I presume," observed the Ambassador innocently, "that some of them will bring their husbands."

"Ned," said Mrs. Dandridge, as she drew on her wrap, "people will soon think you haven't a serious side. It would serve you right if I took you along as my contribution."

"Ah," returned he, "I was thoughtful enough to make a previous engagement. Doctor Bersonin is coming to see me."

Patsy's nose took a decided elevation.

"The Government expert," she said. "He was on the train. It's the first time I ever saw him without that smart-looking Japanese head-boy of his who goes with him everywhere as interpreter."

"I've noticed that," Mrs. Dandridge said. "He's always with him in his automobile. By the way, Patsy, who does that boy remind me of? It has always puzzled me."

"Why," Patricia answered, "he looks something like that Japanese student we saw so often the winter Barbara and we were in Monterey. You remember, Barbara—the one who spoke such perfect English. We thought he was loony, because he used to sit on the beach all day and sail little wooden boats."

"So he does," said her mother. "There's a decided resemblance. But Doctor Bersonin's boy is anything but loony. He has a most intelligent face."

"Besides," said Patricia, "the other was nearsighted and wore spectacles. Good-by, Barbara. I hope the doctor will be gone when we get back."

Her voice came muffled from the hall "—Oh, I can't help it, mother! I'm only a diplomat-once-removed! He is horrid!"