Читать книгу The Love of Azalea - Onoto Watanna - Страница 4

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IT was drowsy in the little mission church, and the gentle mellifluous voice of the young preacher increased rather than dispelled the sleepy peacefulness. The church, if such it could be styled, was well filled. The people of Sanyo knew it for the coolest of retreats. They drifted aimlessly in and out of the church, making no pretense of either understanding or appreciating the proceedings. It was a curious congregation, one which, innocently enough, never thought of assisting the pastor. They came to see the white priest, not to listen to the pleading message he brought, which as yet they could not understand. His Japanese was too correct. Spoken slowly and painfully in the unfamiliar accent of the Caucasian, it was often quite unintelligible. But, as was said, the church was cool, the villagers curious, and the minister an unending source of wonder to them. If some of the congregation waited patiently throughout the length of the sermon, it was not because they deemed this the proper thing to do, but because they knew they would be treated to another form of entertainment, which they childishly enjoyed. For, after the sermon, the minister, closing the large black book before him and opening a small red one, would raise his voice, throw back his head, open his mouth, and sing aloud in a voice which had never lost its fascination for his hearers. He had done this from the first, leading an unresponsive congregation in hymns of praise; but singing to the end alone. No aiding voice took up the refrain with him nor was there even the music of an organ to bear his clear voice company. Through the opened windows the chirp of the birds floated. Sometimes a baby, grown restless, laughed and crowed aloud.

On this particular Sunday, however, the minister, who appeared unusually happy, had introduced an innovation. As its nature had been whispered about the village, the service in consequence was well attended. Behind the minister’s small sandal-wood pulpit a bench had been placed, upon which the people saw seated five of the most disreputable waifs of the town. At first they were hardly recognizable. From smudgy-faced, soiled and tattered bits of flotsam, they were transformed in garments of white—miniature surplices they were.

The minister beamed upon them. The boys looked stoically back at him. This day those in the church forgot to look about at the various objects of interest, forgot to drowse, for all eyes were intent upon that little row behind the priest. When the sermon was ended and the minister turned to the red hymn book, the boys arose to their feet, and as his baritone voice was raised, five piping and discordant minor voices joined with him.

The result of the minister’s effort for a choir was immediate. It broke up the apathy of the congregation.

Groups lingered about the mission house after the service—groups of curious child-women for the most part. The question discussed from every standpoint was the seeming elevation of these most unsavory and godless of town waifs. How could these good people guess that the young minister, restless at the seeming fruitlessness of his labors, had given of his own meagre salary to induce the hungriest of the town, for so many sen, to be respectable for one day in the week? What would not a Japanese vagabond do for a sen or a sweet potato? Submit to a bath, a robe too clean to touch and the pleasure—sometimes pain—of mimicking the voice of the white man.

The mellow tinkling of temple bells disturbed the gossips. It was the hour of noon, when the gods were good and for a little prayer would give them sweet food and excellent appetites. So straight from the temple of the white priest they dispersed, through the valley to the opposite hill, where the Shinto Temple, golden-tipped, beckoned them to the prayers they mechanically understood; a moment only in the temple, nodding heads and prostrating bodies, and after that, home and the noon-day meal. Thus every day. Only on the Sunday, since the coming of the foreign priest, they had added to the routine this weekly pilgrimage of curiosity to the white man’s temple. Strange indeed were the ways of the foreign devils!

“Let us wait a little while,” said a round-faced, merry-eyed maid of fifteen, grasping the sleeves of girl friends.

Azalea was departing slowly when recalled by the raised voice of her friend. At a short distance from the other girls she paused and looked back inquiringly.

“Wait till they come out,” continued the speaker, Ume-san by name, “those beggars, and we will have some fun.”

“Oh, good!” agreed Koto, snapping her fan upon her hand; “we will find out what the white beast says to them.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Fuji, stretching herself—she was fat and indolent and the church seat was hard—“he pays them.”

Azalea looked interested.

“I wish,” said she wistfully, “he would pay me something.”

“Perhaps he will,” said Fuji, nodding her head slowly; “my honorable father says he is rich—very rich.”

“And my honorable father says so, too,” said Ume.

“Oh, all foreign devils are,” declared Koto conclusively.

“Well, but Matsuda Isami says he is not,” said Azalea. “And Matsuda knows surely.”

“Matsuda is jealous,” said Koto. “He wants to be always the richest. The gods despise avarice.”

Azalea was fluttering her fan somewhat nervously. She regarded it thoughtfully, then closed it sharply.

“I am avaricious,” she said, with the point of her fan touching her pretty red underlip.

Her friends laughed at her, and she blushed.

“Yes,” she said, “I am avaricious. The gods will despise me truly. I adore money. I would like to have one hundred yen all to myself.”

“What would you do with it?” questioned Ume, the oldest of the four.

“I would leave my step-mother’s house,” said Azalea simply.

“Here they come!” cried Koto. The girls fell into an excited little line by the church door, one behind the other. Out came the choir—their surplices doffed, their washed faces wide with smiles and their little eyes shining. Five sen rattled in the sleeve of each. The girls had drawn in hiding behind the church portico in order to surprise them. Now they sprang out into view, and grasped the boys by the sleeves. Thinking they were being set upon for their hard-earned sen, a series of angry shrieks and snorts burst out. Their fears set at rest by the merry laughter of the girls, they were finally induced to tell all they knew. The minister, it seems, had brought them to his house at various times, had fed them on sweet potatoes and rice cakes, and had taught them to sing just as he did. For this public effort in his temple, he had given them each—well, they did not propose to tell any one how much he had given, but the intimation was that it was a sum sufficient to keep them in luxury for some time to come. Furthermore, they, the members of his choir, were to have this same sum given to them as a weekly income, for singing, just like the white priest, in his church, each Sunday.

Azalea sighed and, sitting on the church steps, looked at the fortunate boys with envious and wistful eyes.

“And does not the white beast want females also to sing?” she asked.

“Females!” repeated one of the boys. “Did the gods ever favor females?”

“The foreign devil is not a god,” said Azalea thoughtfully. “Who knows, perhaps he would pay me also to sing with him.”

“Time to go home,” said Koto, and she pulled Ume’s sleeve. “Are you not hungry? Come, Azalea!”

“She won’t give me to eat, my most honorable mother-in-law,” said Azalea. “I need not go there.”

“You will soon be a beggar, too, Azalea,” laughed Koto, “and the white man will give you charity. But come, girls.”

Clinging to each other’s hands and almost tripping over each other’s heels, the three girls fluttered homeward down the hill, leaving Azalea sitting alone, looking moodily and reflectively at the choir boys, now counting their money. She knew that they, like her, were orphans. Unlike her, they had not an uncharitable roof, called by her ungracious step-parent a home for her. Shelter beneath it was only grudgingly accorded, because Azalea’s step-mother was vain and feared the criticism of neighbors and the wrath of the gods should she turn Azalea out. As it was, the young girl was only half fed and her clothes were those half-worn ones thrown to her by arrogant and fortunate step-sisters, yet the girl’s nimble fingers made those same threadbare garments objects of attractiveness, which set off her own appealing beauty. But she was seventeen, unmarried and unhappy. Something must be done soon, or she would become the bride of the river. Her step-mother’s scoldings grew with the girl’s increasing beauty and grace. She did not know this was the cause, only she knew life was becoming unbearable.

The choir boys had already shuffled a portion of the way down the hill slope, when she sprang to her feet and ran after them.

“Gonji!” she called one of them by name. “Wait just a moment.”

They stopped and she overtook them. She was breathless when she reached them.

“Is it because you are beggars,” she said, “that this priest favors you?”

Gonji nodded.

“I,” said Azalea, spreading out her little hands, “am also a beggar.”

They laughed at her. Only the homeless were beggars in their eyes. In addition, members of her sex were received among them only when they had reached the old witch age. The country knew many old women beggars, who drifted, whining, upon their staffs from town to town. Often they were blind and clung to the rope about the neck of a tailless cat, which led them. Who ever heard of a maiden beggar? So Azalea’s statement was received in laughter.

“How much did the minister give?” she demanded, ignoring their jeers.

“Five—ten—maybe one hundred sen,” glibly lied Gonji.

Her eyes widened and shone.

“Oh!” she said.

“That’s only for the singing,” said Gonji; “if we become convert to his religion he will pay more.”

He turned to his companions for verification. They had moved on their way and he made to join them.

“No, no, don’t go! Wait a little while, please!”

“Well?”

“What is ‘convert?’”

“Why,” the Japanese boy of sixteen racked his brain for an explanation of the word, “why, that’s to—ah—that’s just abandoning the gods for a new one.”

“Oh!” His sleeve dropped from her grasp and she drew back, her face somewhat blanched.

“Abandon the gods!” she repeated. “But if we do that, then the gods will be angry with us.”

“That is true,” nodded Gonji reflectively. “It’s bad business,” he added.

“Perhaps,” she essayed almost timidly, “that new God is also kind and good.”

Gonji shook his head skeptically.

“The priest at the temple says that he is really an evil spirit.”

The girl shuddered. She turned away from Gonji and he resumed his way down the hill.

Azalea walked listlessly back to the mission house. When she had reached it, she paused irresolute. A sudden idea had come to her. Why should she not pretend to be converted? When the barbarian priest had paid her she would go to the shrine of Kwannon and confess her lie. She would give half of the money to the gods, who would forgive her; she was hungry and ill-treated and she wished to leave the home of her step-mother, who was cruel to her. If money could be earned by a little lie, why should she not earn it? She would! She would!

The young minister closed and locked the door of the church. Turning on the threshold, he paused a moment before descending the little flight of steps, and looked about him at the smiling, sunny landscape.

The bells of the neighboring temple were melodious, and he found himself absently listening to them. With his hands clasped behind, and his head somewhat bent, Richard Verley turned slowly toward his home.

It was only the length of an iris field from the church, a pleasant saunter. The minister was wont to dream upon these walks—dream of the future harvest which would repay his earnest labors.

He had come quite close to his garden gate before he perceived the little figure waiting there. It was her voice—her odd, breathless voice, which called his attention to her—though he heard the one word ‘convert’ spoken in English. The rest of her speech was unintelligible.

She stood in the sunlight, her cheeks vividly red, her eyes wide with excitement and with fright. It was that fearful, piteous something about her whole attitude which from the first reached and appealed instantly to the sympathies of the minister.

“You wish to speak to me?” he asked.

“Yaes,” she said, nodding her head, and then very swiftly, as though she had learned the words by rote—“I am convert unto you, Excellency.”

“Convert!” His eyes kindled and he stared at her without speaking a moment. Her head drooped, as if from its own small weight.

“Yaes,” she said in the lowest, the faintest of voices, “I am convert—Chlistian!”

He seized both her hands, and held them warmly in his own.

“Come into my house, my child,” he said. “Let us talk it over.”

Her hands fluttered in his, then she suddenly withdrew them. They slipped back into her sleeves. She stood uncertainly before him, hesitating to pass through the gate he had opened for her.

“Come!” he urged gently.