Читать книгу At the Emperor's Wish: A Tale of the New Japan - Oscar K. Davis - Страница 5

III

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Jukichi’s son was a fine, sturdy lad who already in the public school was laying a solid foundation for the technical training which later was to fit him for an army career. He did not belie his inheritance. His military instinct manifested itself in the ease with which he excelled his mates in the martial exercises that formed part of his school duties. Often, too, it was revealed in his proud bearing toward his fellows. Ambition found large room in his small breast, and it was his determination to rival and even excel the exploits and skill of that great ancestor, Kokan, whose name he bore. Jukichi had begun his instruction in swordsmanship early, and often the old Masamune blade, that had been the pride of the Kudos for generations, was brought out to take its part in the lessons. At fourteen Kokan was captain of a company of his schoolmates, and the stuff that was in him showed in his grief that his years unfitted him to bear a soldier’s part in the war with China.

But the disappointment did not warp him. Rather it tended to confirm his ambition. And if he had needed a spur he would have found it in the boundless pride in him displayed by his sister, who was the playfellow of his home. O-Mitsu-san was four years his junior. As long as she could remember, from the days when she first toddled out into the yard on her small getas, and robed in the wonderful kimono, gay with bright butterflies, the days of her life had been devoted to adoration of her brother. To her he was everything that was fine and noble, and his imperious spirit received as its just due the deferential homage she paid to his years and his sex. She was little more than a baby, in the Western conception, when O-Haru, the gentle mother, went away on the long journey to the Meido and left the house of Jukichi desolate, and it fell to her to take her mother’s place in the management of the household and the anxious care of the slender, steadily diminishing means of support.

“Though the eagle be starving, yet will he not eat grain,” say the Japanese, and Jukichi fulfilled the saying. No one saw better than he the inevitable end of the course he was pursuing. No one felt more than he the need of doing something to secure an income. Kokan would soon finish with the public schools, and before he would be sufficiently far advanced to enter one of the Local Military Preparatory Schools he must have some years of higher instruction, which no school in the city was fitted to give. The only means of possible relief that presented itself to Jukichi’s prejudiced view was some sort of trade, a vile bargaining and selling for the sake of gaining the money which all his life he had despised. Moreover, he knew that he was unfitted by training as well as by nature for such work. The simple honesty of the old soldier, to whom death was a small price to pay for honor, was no match for the unscrupulous cleverness of men whose native sharpness had been developed by years of practice in a profession from which nothing else was expected. And so Jukichi drifted on.

Between O-Haru and Jukichi there had existed a serene sweetness and depth of love such as seems impossible to the Western world, unused to the Japanese way, where marriages are so often matters of arrangement rather than sentiment. Perhaps it was the recollection of what she had been to him, and the profound sense of his loss, that kept Jukichi a widower. But the death of her mother brought some recompense to the little girl in the transfer to her of much of the calm and confident affection which had been O-Haru’s happiness. More and more her father grew to depend on her in many matters in which he had followed the guidance of her mother, and there developed in her a judgment and self-reliance not often found in one of her years. While yet a child in age she was a woman in character. Not much of her time was spent in school, yet her instruction was not scanty for a Japanese girl. Most of it had been given by her father, whose mode of life left him ample leisure for her lessons. She read well and she had the books of the Bunko that had been her mother’s. Of this “Japanese Lady’s Library” she was diligently studious, and already had attained familiarity with “Woman’s Household Instruction,” and the “Lesser Learning for Woman,” and was intent upon the main part of the work, the profound “Greater Learning.” Besides, she knew the “Hundred Poems,” and often joined with her father and brother in an evening game of quotations. There was little interruption of the quiet current of the family life, and Jukichi loved to put aside pipe or book, when no visitor had come, and play thus with his children. But neither he nor Kokan ever gave a thought to the future of the girl, or noticed the promise she gave of beautiful womanhood.

She was a lonely child for one so bright and winning. Her friends were very few, not because of her condition, for poverty is all too common in Japan to be disgraceful, and many families of great rank have known its bitter pinch. It was rather because of a gentle, instinctive shyness that made her recoil from the often boisterous gayety of her schoolmates. But one there was who held large place in her childish esteem. It was a friendship that began with her schooling. Her father had taken her to the school that first day, for Kokan had finished the primary grades and went to a different school in another part of the city. The master was a large, stern man, with solemn, forbidding face, and O-Mitsu-san was filled with fear. He took her into a great barren room, filled with hard, high benches where sat a multitude of other little boys and girls. He showed her a bench and told her to sit down, and when she took her place, the other children looked at her and whispered together and laughed. She was frightened, and presently, when the master, with a big whip in his hand, called her name in a loud voice, she put her head down on her hands and sobbed with fear. Then the other children laughed more and the master commanded silence in a voice that terrified her. She was very miserable and wished only to get away from that dreadful place and to go home again. By and by a bell rang, and all the children stood up and went out. But one little boy came to her and said shyly:

“Don’t cry, little girl. Come and play.”

After a time, when she had ceased to sob, she looked up into his round face and said:

“What is your name, boy?”

The boy smiled and answered:

“Soichi. Come and play.”

Then they went out and played, and by and by, when it was time to go home, the little boy walked along with her and she was glad. His home was just around the corner from hers, in the fine big house in Azalea Street. He was a funny boy, for he asked her not to tell her father that she had played with him, or that he had walked part way home with her. When she asked him why, he would not tell, but said that some day she would find out, and that would be time enough to tell if she wanted to. Poor little Soichi! Already the boy was learning the hard lesson that old disgrace, however unmerited, cannot be put aside lightly, even by law, and the wise young head knew that the child of the Eta was no playmate, in his world’s eyes, for the daughter of a Samurai.

O-Mitsu cared not at all then. She knew only that he had been kind to her in her wretchedness, and she liked him loyally for that, and loyally, too, she kept her promise not to tell. So they met at school and played, sometimes with other children but often by themselves. Thus several happy months went by and then O-Mitsu got her first great lesson in the new life of the nation. She found out about Soichi. There were plenty of children to tell when it seemed there was a chance of causing pain, for the Japanese child has no less a barbarian heart than many who live in the Western world. The little girl was greatly troubled. She liked the boy and enjoyed the games with him. But the daughter of a Samurai knew her position. She had learned now that the stern looks of the master masked a kindly heart, and her first fear of him was gone. To him she went in her perplexity.

“Why is it,” she asked, “that the Eta boy comes to this school? Are not Etas outcasts?”

The wise teacher smiled gently and said:

“That was true, O-Mitsu-san, but it is not so now. Did you not know that the Emperor has promoted them, and given them the same rights as all the rest of us?”

“Then are they like us now?” she asked.

“Yes, child,” replied the teacher softly, for he, too, was a Samurai and knew what was in the heart of his little questioner, “and because it is the Emperor’s will they must no longer be treated as they were.”

“I am glad,” said O-Mitsu shortly, and went out into the yard to join the game in which Soichi had a part.

But when school was over and Soichi was walking toward home with her she kept silent for a long time. At length, raising her eyes and looking at him, she said:

“I know why now, Soichi.”

At once the boy stopped. The training of bitter experience prepared him to hear her proudly scornful decision. But when she was silent he dared at length to ask:

“Why do you not say it?”

But she smiled and answered:

“I do not care, and I will not tell. Teacher says it is right because the Emperor did it. Come, let us go home.”