- --■•-■ ^-.'f ■■■'-TTirp . ■TT^T;,. LIBRARY OF THE NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE OF HOME ECONOMICS CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA, NEW YORK on of President Livingston farrand PZ 3.F84*^'"'™"""'''"*"y Library A maid of Japan, Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014497394 CHAP. PAGE I. A Flood-tide Jewel i II. Britisher AND Samurai.. 25 III. The Girl has Answered 55 IV. The Priest of the Lonely Temple 75 V. Know Thyself 95 VI. Between the Lights 123 VII. O Bassan is Comforted 143 VIII. Two Very Unhappy Girls 165 IX. The Spirit of the Grove igi X. Envoi 2x3 Wl "... Ces sympathies Aux impdrieuses douceurs, Par qui les S,nies averties Partout se reconnaissent soeurs." Thbophils Gahtier CHAPTER I a 3f IooO=C:i&c Jewel HE night was too still for sleep. All gentle spirits seemed to be abroad in the silence of the silver air — on the bosom of the dreaming sea, whose molten radiance spread from the velvet sand at Hime's feet, to the far-swelling line of the horizon where star-fringed sky and world of water met. The burnished tide heaved slowly under that rain of light, and the stars grew paler as they sank through it and dropped, one by one, beyond the distant verge *v^ 4_ of the argent dappled sheen. Not a sail transgressed the empty majesty of air, no sea- bird's wing divided sky and sea. Broad rip- ples came whispering up the smooth, un- dinled sand, and spread in fans of silver lace beneath the moon, then sank back reluctantly to the full flood, that anon sent others out to woo the perfumed shore. The benison of peace was shed upon the night, and Himd, light as a foam bell, lay upon the sand. Her chin was resting on her hands, her elbows had sunk deep in two tiny dimpling pools, and her hair floated round her in a wide, dark circle as the water broke, cool and soft, over her young body. She was gazing out to sea with a look of deep content in her eyes. Him€ was satisfied, and apart; the things of earth seemed to touch her no more than if she were some sea-sprite resting for a moment on an alien strand, ready to float back to her home on the next outgoing wave. As she lay there, the tide sent in a long streamer of honey-coloured sea-weed, and she caught it in her hand and threw it far out on the water, laughing at the arc of diamonds it scattered before it fell. Then she wanted it back, and, springing to her feet, waited till one broad, slow billow rolled up to the shore; she flung herself on its breast and swam out into the deep. A few strokes brought her to where the jet- sam lay Uke an amber serpent on the silver swell. She caught it again, tossed it farther away, and then forgot all about it, and let her- self float hither and thither, staring up at the star-threaded infinitudes of the sky. She was of the sea, the little white maiden. Sixteen years ago a woman had come down to the shore on such a night as this with her life's flower, a tiny bud then, in her arms. She stood alone on the stainless sands and watched a great ship sail away under the moon; and her heart went with it in the keeping of one who neither knew nor cared. He was a man of a distant land, a lazy, blue-eyed man who would not forego his pleasure, but preferred 3 to have it authorised — a Phihstine to whom some Calvinistic forefather had bequeathed a lively belief in the tortures of the damned. It was the strongest dogma of his creed, and no temptation was yielded to unless he could arrange to cheat the Prince of Darkness of the hold it might otherwise have given him upon a self-indulgent yet timorous soul. Soon after this man landed in Japan his guide took him to Enoshima, and his roving glance fell on a girl's face. A little sum of money (and that was chaffered over for days) bought an orphan from relatives too poor to maintain her, bought her cheap youth and freshness, her forlorn loneliness, her absurd gratitude for his careless kindness, and some- thing else not mentioned in the bargain^ and of which he was unconscious to the end — her heart. True to his creed, he married her, for a pretty wife was a necessary part of the holi- day in Japan, although he had no particular use for family encumbrances in England; 4 and, the holiday being at an end, he told her he was now going home. When Haru found that a year of happiness had only been intended as a prelude to a hfe- time of grief, she said no word to sadden him. AU his complicated masculine belongings were laid out and wrapped in tissue paper, were packed with scrupulous care; he was a little surprised, when he opened his portmanteau on the steamer, to find the roll of money he had given her, neatly pinned into the sleeve of his dinner jacket. He was first puzzled, then rather angry; then he concluded that it would come in nicely to pay his wine bill on board. And of the woman he did not think again, for there was a golden-haired lady on the ship, who at once claimed his attention for the rest of the voyage. He was sitting on deck with this siren in the moonlight, saying some pretematurally senti- mental things, when Him^'s mother stood on the shore, watching his steamer growing smaller every moment. When it had dropped below 5 the horizon, and the last faint plume of smoke had disappeared, the woman turned and fol- lowed a steep path that led to a cottage hanging on the cliff like a sea-bird's nest. There was a light behind the paper window, and at the vis- itor's knock a poor, aged woman thrust back the screen and looked out. Ham, the forsaken, held the child towards her without speaking. The old woman took it, and motioned to the mother to come in. She shook her head. " I enter not," she said. " I who have tasted happiness will not feed on grief. My lord is gone, and I give you the child. Be more faithful to her than you were to me, O Sakura San, so shall all your sins be for- given you!" Then she turned away and ran down the path and threw herself into the sea. She swam out to deep water, and returned no more. Sakura was the poorest of all the shell gath- erers. Had she, and old Akibara, the priest, been less poor they would not have taken the stranger's money for Haru That happened a year earlier. Now, Sakura was a lonely old woman whose two young grandsons, the hope of her age, had been drowned in the last win- ter's storms. So she kept the baby in her hut at night, and carried it on her back in the day- time when she was seeking for shells ; and she tended it with great love and kindness, both for poor Haru's sake and because it seemed a gift to her sore old heart. She could remem- ber her brave boys with less bitterness soon; and in time Him^, with her dark eyes and fair brow and mystic smile, became the light and comfort of her failing years. A tender, devoted daughter was the girl to the woman who had fostered her, sweet and reverent in all her ways; but those ways were sometimes strange and silent, and she held aloof from the island children hke a king's daughter among peasants. And now and again she would be alone, quite alone, whether by day or night it mattered not — alone but for the sea. Perhaps some remote western ancestor had sent down his passion for it to this eastern waif, 7 through her father's careless material nature; if so, it seemed to be all she had inherited from him, for of her bodily form she was her mother's child. Haru came of a race which has dwelt so long apart, has kept the sources of national generation so pure of aUen strains, that where it gives one parent it gives the fulness of its own pecuUar physical perfection, careless, as it would seem, of all strengths and beauties for- eign to the deliberate selection of one rare type. In apparent frailty, in enduring strength, woman is there made royal in the dust, by the towering spirit that will outdo her master in fortitude and smile immaciUately as she lays down life and honour for his sovereign whim. But no man held power over Him^'s life as yet. The brown fisher lads would have climbed many a time to the old hut on the rocks with presents from the sea, had the girl ever given them a look or word of encouragement. Her delicate beauty drew their eyes to follow her when she passed by, but she looked at none; and the people said she was proud, and the presents of fresh-caught fish and tinted shells went to rosy, laughing maidens who could value the chance of getting kind, hard-working husbands. Him^ had never given her future a thought. The present, with its home love, its golden poverty untroubled by a care, the tender, protecting beauty of land and sea and sky, were all she had ever known, all she knew how to wish for. Her shell gathering provided for the few necessaries of life, and now that her swift young feet knew each cranny of rock and stretch of sand where the sea cast up its har- vest, O Bassan need work no more. She could sit at home in her sunny nest on the cliff, bless- ing her child as Hime flitted down to the shore, and waiting for her return before she would touch the little evening meal, so daintily pre- pared, so gratefully acknowledged as a largess from the misty, kindly powers that ruled the world. But, in fact, one power governed old Saku- ra's existence — ^her adoring affection for the 9 girl. Never was king's daughter more cher- ished and watched over than Him^ of the bare feet and long dark hair. Twice a year Sakura spent at least a week in choosing a new ki- mono for her darling. Nothing more costly than cotton crape was dreamed of for the ma- terial, and even this required many an unseen self-denial on the old woman's part. Of these Him6 knew nothing; and when she had to walk far for but a meagre harvest of the capricious shells, would console herself with the thought that yesterday's better luck had provided the good O Bassan * with tea and tobacco for a few days to come; and that, sitting on her doorstep in the sun, filling her little pipe or mending Hime's clothes, she did not dream how tired were Himg's feet, nor how her head ached with constant stooping for the minute trea- sures, some of which were almost as small as seed pearls, and only too ready to bury their rosy surfaces deep in the rippled sand. Him^ did not count it as a trial to seek for * Grandmother, old lady. lo them; it seemed little enough to do for O Bas- san; and meanwhile O Bassan, with single- hearted faithfulness, would go for days without her pipe, would do without food till Hime's return, in order to save a few cash towards the child's pleasure in the new summer robe. Should it be pale blue, with white butterflies printed thereon? Or would that lovely grey with boughs of pink cherry blossoms please her best? It would never do to make a mistake in such an important matter! So to each came the crowning grace of sacrifice for Love — the only gift that ensures his immortality. In that simple life, so untrammelled by the world, so close to the great sources of things. Nature held the old heart and the young one in a strong embrace, and every aspect of her face was fair and friendly to them. Sakura would as soon have feared for a gull on the wing as for Hime when the child was away on her lonely expeditions. And for the girl herself lonehness had no more terrors II than it has for the wild creatures of the woods and waves. She knew every spot along the coast, both of island and mainland, where Ught feet could rest and firm hand cling; she could tell by the talking of the sea, as she lay on her bed in her cottage, what was planning among the waves for days beforehand; in storm or cahn, by sunlight or starlight, she was happy and safe in a world without a fear. From the time she was a tiny thing she would sidle away from O Bassan's arm on moonlit nights and creep to the doorstep, and lie there in dreamy happiness, feasting her unconscious soul on the fulness of beauty around her, while it infused itself into her dawning senses with beneficent, unchecked power. Quick and changeful of mood, indeed, was the silent child, but undisturbed and un- afraid. A mere atom of pure life, less than a grain of sand in the universal scheme, yet precious because perfect and complete. Hime's part in the great human symphony struck a note so light as scarcely to be heard, yet in its place it was necessary, inestimable, because each vibration was in faultless harmony with the keynote of the whole. As she grew older, Him6 left the worn threshold of the cottage for the brown path that wound, between myrtle and camellia shrubs chastened and thinned by the salt wind, to where a cranny of the rocks made a little seat, lined with spare sweet grasses, whence the blue and silver of the ocean could be seen spreading away on every side from the island promontory. The island itself, its rocks and woods, the old temple and the few fishing huts, seemed light as a handful of sea- weed flung on the waves. Him^ sometimes thought she could feel it floating out to sea beneath her feet; and since her shells mostly threw them- selves like sycophants on the skirts of the mainland, she would look at the dim shore and wonder vaguely how far it would recede, and whether she would be able to borrow a boat for her harvesting in future. That was only 13 when the high spring tides covered the nar- row dune that connects Enoshima with the coast. Days went by at those times before it could be crossed again on foot; but Him6 came to trust the motherland to hold her small green continent safe for her through all the swelling floods, and she was ever the first on the long sweeps of sand after some mighty storm had stirred the sources of the deep and flung new largess of shells as a peace offering to the shore. As the years went on, and Him6 grew strong of limb and swift of foot, she would be out and away in moonlight or starlight, without a word said, for her ear told her that if the deep sea- swell sounded loud against the rocks it was bringing the big pearly shells up from the depths for her; that some tiny cove, of which she alone knew the approach, would be all scattered with gleamings; that shells white and thin as butterflies' wings would have travelled up with others — great velvety cups, brown without and orange within — cups whose sharp, 14 scalloped edges would grind the butterflies' wings to powder after another turn of the tide ; that the deep volutes of the cowries would be packed with thousands of tiny rosy petals, hard and gleaming to the eye, but so fragile that only one in a score would be perfect after its rough journey to land; that here and there a crimson gem, tinted like the sunset, would lie glistening to her hand; or that, joy of joys, had the surges raked but deep enough, she might find a great rainbow-tinted thing, shimmering like an opal, turned on its side to let the seven winds sing through its seven mystic orifices, of which O Bassan had told her that they were made by the sea-king's daughter, that she might tie the shells to her hair when the sea-king made a feast. Only three or four times had Him^ found and handled one of these beauties, and then she had involuntarily glanced out over the waves thinking that the sea-princess might come riding in on one to claim her lost property. Him^ decided that she IS would beg very hard to be allowed to keep her treasure. But not always did she rove to ply her call- ing; sometimes the night would draw her for its own sake, and then she would lie for hours on the dim starlit sands, waiting with them for the melancholy magic of a waning moon; and when the moon was full, ah! then the ivory warmth of it would thrill through every nerve, intoxicating her with the mere ecstasy of liv- ing, till she felt as if she had wings and must rise and sail out on the night, free bird at last between sea and sky. Such a night was this — a night of high summer — with balmy airs blowing up from the south, and a white moon floating languid among the misty stars and throwing a fan of living argent down upon the sea. Him6 had walked far that day; and when the shells had been picked and counted, and laid aside for Sakura to carry down to the merchant to-mor- row, when Sakura herself was sleeping soundly, the girl had slipped away down the rocky l6 path to a cove on the southern side of the island, where no fishermen ever beached their boats, and where she could forget her weariness in the surf, whose cool caress always seemed to renew her life from inexhaustible springs. Her upper garments were hidden safe and dry behind a big stone on the shore, her long hair fell in a mantle to her knees, and she loved to feel the clean salt water lave and play with it, float it into her eyes, and then send it streaming out behind her as she put out her strength and swam through the billows to shore. Sounds carry far on the sea at night. Faint and sweet, a bar of music was wafted over the water to the little mermaid's ear. Above the whisper of the sea around her it came, distant yet clear — a song of boats out under the moon, a song of another clime. Hime had never heard anything like it before, but her pulses answered with sudden joy, as if she were entering on her rightful heritage. It seemed to be telling her her own true name, to be taking some hitherto unsponsored element 17 of her being into its airy keeping, and Him6 sang back the answer in full, vibrating strains, that rose to her lips (still wet with the kiss of the sea) without volition of her own. Then a slender boat shot round the point, the wild, sweet tune danced nearer over the tide, and Hime, touched by sudden fear, turned and swam with quick, smooth strokes to shore. Fear! She had never felt it yet; but this violation of her solitude, and the strange emo- tion roused by the song that had found so prompt an answer from her lips, had set her heart beating wildly in her breast. With a bound she was on the sand; there was a twin- kle of white feet, a vision of a lithe form swathed in an enveloping cloud of dark hair flashed across the open space all bathed in moonlight, and as quickly disappeared in the shadow of the rocks. As she cowered there, breathless and wonder- ing, she heard the song taken up again, with delicate underchords from some strange in- strument, and words unknown to her. But it i8 called forth no answer now, though Hime had to put her hand over her mouth to keep back the music that came welling up in her throat. Then there was silence but for the splash of nearing oars. The famihar sound restored her courage; the warm air was already drying her limbs, and, kneeling in her place, she slipped on her robe, wound her girdle round her waist, and looked for a way of escape. Yes, she saw that from where she crouched she could gain the upward path without traversing the open strand. But, innocent child of nature though she might be, she was none the less a child of earth, and, had all the terrors still unnamed in her vocabulary stalked the shore, she would have faced them for the one instant necessary to satisfy her eager curiosity. Who was this that had broken into her sanctuary, that had set such new tumult dancing in her pulses, had called such spon- taneous answer from her uncommanded hps ? Who? The oars were plying no longer; a boat's keel grated on the pebbles; it was being >9 t dragged up from the water's edge. Him6 crept to the end of her rocky screen and looked ^ out. ^ j[^ A man was stooping to examine something TP^ on the ground; still bending, he moved a step f>f or two in her direction. The moon was shining back at him from a line of delicate footprints that had filled with water — ^Hime's footprints, eading straight as an arrow to her rock. The man straightened himself and looked towards her. She saw a white forehead above the searchng eyes; rings of dark gold hair shining in the moonlight; a tall, erect form dressed in the close-fitting garments that foreigners always wore. The man stretched out his hands to- wards her, as if questioning and entreating at once. Then Him6 darted back to the stairway of the rocks, and climbed it faster than she had ever done in her life. When she reached the spot where a narrow, unprotected ledge must bring her into view, she paused and listened intently. The man's strangeness alone had alarmed her; no fear of rude advance entered her mind; had it been one of her own countrymen beaching his boat at midnight in her cove she would only have wondered what could have made him choose such remote harbourage. But the apparition of a foreigner was at all times disturbing; and here, at such an hour, was so unprecedented an occurrence that Him€ felt it could not be ac- counted for by ordinary reasoning, and became conscious of a distinct longing for the reassur- ing clasp of O Bassan's warm old hand. Wondering whether it would be wiser to dart across the open space, or to wait under cover of the shrubs till the intruder should have departed, Him6 hesitated, and in that pause the notes of a song floated up from the sands below and filled the night with tender melody. It was but a love song of the West, a lilting tune that the man had heard from Italian boatmen under the Massa cliffs, but the happy voice and heart of him made it sound in Hime's ears like the carol of wind and sea under the midday sun, and it sang the love out of her breast as she clung to the rock in the fragrant shadow of the myrtle boughs with shining eyes and parted lips, while the little green leaves pressed against the ardent pallor of her cheeks. There were only the leaves to see her, and they closed round loyally, and hid her from the young man's sight. He had tracked her foot- steps to the base of the cliff, and was standing there now, pausing in his song to listen. Had the music arrested the shy bird in her flight? The response that had come to him, as she floated idly on the sea, had startled and de- lighted him. Then he had caught a glimpse of the fleeting figure on the sapds, and had found the dainty tracks which told him that the vision was mortal maid; but when Him6 thought he had detected her beside her rock, he was but holding out his hands in supplica- tion to one unseen by him; the moon was shining fuU into his eyes, so that they could descry little else. Thus he listened for a moment, and then once more tried music's lure. The pas- sionate Italian melody rang out on the warm ^ alien air. "lo non voglio gran cosa, lo non cerco uno regno, V: Ma vorria chilla rosa JgC Sulament' a vasa!" * ^^ Nothing but the hand of death could have kept the rush of song back in the girl's throat now. She raised her head, and the pure, wordless notes welled out in the silver night over the silver sea. * "I ask not for greatness, I seek not to reign. But I long for that rose Just to kiss it again!" 23 CHAPTER II asrittsber an& Samurai ^^^^^i^jfe^a*^"^' O the man below, M ^^^ those notes came as one 'Bl I^ more link in the magic chain of beauty which for months past had been daz- zling his eyes and captivat- ing his imagination. _ri^!.vap^ A year before, as he y?^ ' was sitting, weary and *-' despondent, in his Lon- ' don chambers, there had come upon him one of those moods of vague wretchedness to which all enthusiastic temperaments must occasionally succumb. Young, prosperous, talented, he at last pos- sessed that which a few years earUer would have satisfied every aspiration. How he had then pictured this very hfe in London! The uncle to whom he owed (and from whom he 25 expected) everything had, in some vicarious reaction against his own indolent existence, rendered only too easy by a fortune inherited, not earned, insisted on the necessity of busi- ness-like work for his nephew and heir. Charles Barrington might find new mistakes to make, but he should not, if it could be prevented, repeat those of his elder, who realised, mistily and late, that the surest way to banish pleasure from life is to seek pleasure alone. That for- ward nymph hath but a shallow pate, though a large vocabulary, and, like some lazy bungler of a cook, she serves up the same insipid dish day after day by different names, till the weary and cheated epicure pushes them all away, and consults his doctor about his alarming loss of appetite. "But you never did a day's work in your life, sir," said the young man when his uncle laid before him a scheme which involved two years of hard study, to be followed by many more of doubtfully remunerative labour. "Why should I become a mining expert when there 26 L is not the slightest necessity for me to earn my living? The thing is preposterous! I protest!" Mr Harrington shook his head very solemnly. "I am giving you the only chance of enjoying your life after you are thirty! " he declared. "If you start now with a large allowance and unlimited credit, by the time you are my age there will not be a thing in the world you really want for its own sake. Can you imagine a more miserable, irritating position?" "Yes," said Charlie promptly; "to want all the best things for their own sakes now as I do — - good things, healthy things, that would keep me sane and sound till I was eighty, and to be kicked out to work like a convict at something I wouldn't be seen dead with. It's a bit too much to ask of any man." "Three hundred a year for two years, my boy, and, after that, just double what you make. That is my last word." And Mr Harrington left the room, fearing that the sight of the lad's dismay might weaken 27 ^ the vigour of his wise resolution. "We are all getting too old and too rich," he said to himself; "we have found out all that mere money can do. The currency has depreciated, and the "Q^ only insurance policy for the next generation's ^^ happiness is to ascertain that humanity has not depreciated with it. Charlie will buy a big bonus with a few years' hard work!" Mr Barrington's fortune had been made in the insurance business by his father, and the heir had learnt its lingo during his tutelage. A man of narrow, undeveloped ideas and fitful will power, he had fixed on the mining expert's career as the most promising one for Charlie; and the question as to whether his nephew's impulsive, imaginative disposition fitted him for it or not, in no way affected his own con- viction that he had chosen better for him than the boy of nineteen could have chosen for himself. Perhaps he was right. Charhe's mental maps at that stage of hfe were rendered value- less, as guides, by the complications of a 28 thousand intersecting lines, all leading in different directions, and generally breaking ofF before reaching any distinct object. The commonplace indulgences which might have proved a snare to his uncle's coarser tempera- ment, presented few attractions to the boy's fastidious, over-cultivated tastes. No guard- ian's restrictions could debar him from entering on the heritage of books, music, art, which is bestowed with indiscriminating bounty on the wise and foohsh ahke in our England to-day. Seer and clown, poet and Philistine, artisan and king's son, all may hear the same divine music, read the same inamortal classic, contem- plate, in verity or in faithful reproduction, the same undying loveUness of Greek sculpture and Italian painting; but, as in a still higher order of election, the maxim holds good that many are called and few chosen. May not the day come when it will be asked whether these apparent benefits have resulted, as their givers intended, in really elevating and purifying coarser natures than those which first called 29 them forth? Whether they have not, on the contrary, already widened the borders of Philistia, and crowded the haunted realms of beauty with gross self-seekers eager to per- suade their own mediocrity that there is nothing so great and fair as to be beyond their appre- hension ? Our fathers and mothers used higher thoughts and simpler words to govern and express their lives; the half-educated prigs who deafen us with the cant phrases of artistic hypocrisy, aifect to shudder or go into fits of laughter at their forbears' crude taste in colour and decoration, at their humble notions of enjoyment and culture. But on the thinker who is not dazzled by all this cheap glitter the conviction forces itself that there was more sincerity and harmony, and therefore more of art, in the fair ordering of every detail of life, from the bleaching of fine linen and making preserves, to providing for the well-being of family and fellow-townsman, than in giving up the untutored eye and ear to the magnificent 30 ^ emotions called forth by glories meant as guerdons to the elect, as encouragement to the striving and the pure in heart, but not meant as a debauch of pleasure for the masked sensualist who snatches at the unearned feast and goes away intoxicated, unmanned, believing him- self a god, and sneering at the humble worker to whom plain duty is all in all. Nowhere are the unassuming virtues of fru- gaUty, self-restraint, family duty, and love of home, more respected and adhered to than in the countries which gave us Wagner, Beethoven, Michelangelo. Nowhere are those virtues in less repute than in England to-day — Eng- land, who calls herself the protector of the world's art treasures, who sends her clerks and seamstresses to Athens, Beriin, Rome, for their hohday trips, who crowds her opera and concert halls with such audiences as the beloved composers could never draw in the lands which gave them birth. Not to her will be granted such grace. Where is our symphony, our picture, our 31 monument? Where can we show one worthy product of all this cheapening of art for the masses? We are nursing pulse and rye in greenhouses that have cost millions, and we still hope to gather the fruit of our labours in gorgeous exotic blooms. In matters of art the best of us can sometimes appreciate, the best of us cannot produce. Charles Barrington at nineteen was uncertain whether he wished to shed the lustre of his name on music or poetry or painting. Nature had given him a correct ear and a sweet tenor voice — this last a thing so rare among northern folk that he might, perhaps, be excused for regarding it as a great gift — but the partial mother had also endowed him with an eye for colour and a distinct sense of verse — and these three were not one. Each talent was seem- ingly jealous of the rest; and every time he met with some small discouragement in the exercise of one of them he would fling it aside and open his arms to another, with the joyous certainty that he was thus returning to his true 32 vocation. He had not taken to heart the verity, so profoundly apprehended by all master workers, that the inborn gift is but a seedhng — success in its use the result of long and patient toil. For a little time there was a war of wills be- tween the uncle and nephew, but the younger man at last submitted, although with a very bad grace. Had he loved and believed in but one thing, he could have trusted himself to it sufficiently to brave a little poverty in its pursuit; but, undecided, dazzled, perplexed by his facilities in so many directions, he had no well-formed intentions to oppose, to Mr Barrington's limited yet complete conclusions; and the stubborn, ignorant elder carried the day against his sensitive, cultivated, but still incompetent, junior. For two years Charles worked under his new teachers, and, to his immense surprise, passed a somewhat stiff examination with some credit. Another two years went by in travel- ling as assistant to a distinguished expert, 33 and at the end of that time the young man found, to his further amazement, that he was exceedingly happy, and that he Uked his work. It had shown him strange places and interest- ing men; it had given him self-confidence and stimulated his vanity — a useful quality enough when properly employed; and it seemed about to put him in the ranks of the world's workers, for good, when Mr Barrington died, and his nephew found himself master of his own destiny, with a considerable fortune to be the servant thereof. In a moment the scene changed. Independ- ence was his, why work for it ? What so sor- did as the desire to make more money when one had already all that one could reasonably wish to spend? In going over his uncle's papers he found a Uttle bundle of his own verses, carefully sorted and labelled, as if the senior had prized in secret what he had con- demned, on principle, in public. It was a soft summer evening, and Charlie tead over his effusions as he smoked a fragrant 34 cigar. The windows were open to the garden, swallows were circling low under the calm, sunset sky, and whiffs of perfume came in from the roses and jessamines on the terrace. The old charm took possession of him again; again the verse rang musical in his ears, as the warm air brought dreams of sweetness up from the south; and that evening Charlie wrote a poem which, he told himself, was good — ^the real thing at last. He sent it to a magazine, where it was printed with two costly illustrations intended for something quite different, which had gone astray; and then the poet came to London, to be at the heart of things, as he told himself. For a month or two he revelled in refined delights; he made friends with some hangers- on of the literary world and acquaintance with one or two of its stars. When he discovered that they had never heard his name, that although they would not condescend to talk what they termed "shop," they intimated with indulgent pity that it was useless for any 35 aspirant to dream of reaching the pinnacle on which their own towering genius had alighted, he withdrew from their society, and decided that the time had come for him to make his marii. So he sat down at his writing-table in his luxurious rooms to do it. Alas! the world's surface is hard and polished, and the marking of it requires an incisive pen driven with concentrated force. Charlie's implement was like the old, ever- lasting pencil which one filched, as a child, from some antiquated work-box; it would bend before it would write, and spoiled paper without leaving legible words. To drop met- aphor, he found that there was no new thought in his mind worth transcribing, and that he had not sufficient gift of tune and diction to produce verse readable for the sake of those qualities alone. Then he had a bitter moment. All he had desired and dreamed of a few years ago was now his, but he had lost or never possessed the power to make use of it in the way which he 36 would have chosen. "Either I am a brainless ass," he said to himself, "or I have had too much London, too much of other people's ideas, and they have choked off my own. I will give it one more chance, and go away for a change. That is what Stevenson did when he got stuck in 'Treasure Island.' I will go and see the East, and if I cannot write after that, I will give up the culture of everything but wheat and fat cattle, and be a happy fool for the rest of my Ufe. It is worth finding out, anyhow." This was a sane conclusion, which showed that if Charlie were something less than a poet neither was he altogether a fool. To the East he went, and enjoyed his wanderings greatly, though he found "London" in every place he visited, on every liner he boarded, in every port where his liner stopped. Good-looking, cheery, frankly interested in all he saw, he was a delightful companion, and many a party would gladly have counted him in its numbers for months at a time. His music was en- chanting of its kind; he was willing to sing 37 anything he was asked for — love songs for the girls on the promenade deck, hymns for the missionaries in the second cabin, or the latest "wheeze" from the music halls for the men in the smoking-room. Charlie and his man- dolin could have travelled round the world, free of expense, on millionaires' yachts from year's end to year's end; and the sweet notes of his well-trained voice had opened more than one heiress's heart to him, had made more than one married woman weep in secret over life's mistakes (the mistake generally took the form of a kind, steady, unmusical husband who was sorry when his wife could not manage to keep within her allowance), and Charlie's last success had been one which filled him with compunction and dismay, for he had caused a pale little Scottish governess, whose lover had been killed at Magersfontein, to go into hysterics one night when he sang: " Oh, you'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road, And I'll be in Scotland before ye!" 38 But, with all these experiences, Charlie had been spared one dispensation — ^he had not fallen in love. After months of travelling, during which he had scarcely heard a word of anything but English, he made up his mind that if he could not break away from roaming London he might as well go back at once to Mayfair. There must be, he told himself, something in this Eastern world more apart — ^more solemn, less familiar, than that which he had as yet encountered. So, when he reached Japan, he inquired for a teacher instead of for a guide, resolving at the cost of any trouble, to gain at least an idea of the language and thoughts of the people among whom he proposed to remain for awhile. He and the teacher were something of a surprise to one another. Charlie, waiting in his hotel sitting-room, expected to receive an elderly gentleman in flowing robes, with huge horn spectacles and long white beard, a modern repetition of the immortal Kobo 39 Daishi, the patron saint of scholars in Japan. It gave him quite a shock when a correct little visiting card, bearing the name and address of Mr Katsura Nakayama, Graduate of Prince- ton College, was put into his hands. This was immediately followed by the appearance of a slight, dark young man in a suit of blue serge, with a red tie, who addressed him in fluent and unmistakable American. On his part, Mr Nakayama had decided that his new pupil would prove to be some pale and earnest missionary intent on trans- lating revivalist hymns into Confucian num- bers. His brow cleared visibly when he found himself shaking hands with a young athletic- looking man, whose face was far too full of fun and good humour to belong to one burdened with cares about other people's souls, and whose suit of light tweeds bore no resemblance to any clerical uniform which had yet landed in Yokohama. "You wish to learn Japanese?" inquired the professor after the first civilities had been 40 exchanged and cigarette smoke was mellowing the atmosphere. "Colloquial, or the written language? Perhaps both?" "What is colloquial?" Charlie asked. "A dialect spoken on the Bund and nowhere else, I suppose? No, thanks; I want to be able to ask questions — and understand the answers too — from here to Hakodate. I want to talk and read and write, and feel generally at home, which I do not at all at this moment. Awful cheek, I suppose. They say it is pretty difficult. How long will it take me?" "From five to ten years, if you hustle," replied the other with a gleam of amusement in his black eyes. "Ah," said Charlie imperturbably; "and how much less if you hustle ? I did not know I was taking on a hfer!" The Japanese thought his new patron was making fun of him, and became rather digni- fied. "My time and energies belong to you this journey, sir," he replied gravely. "I am not in the habit of buncoing my employers. 41 If you are as much in earnest as I am you will make it a record trip. Let's start right here. Got any books?" "But — as to remimeration?" stammered Barrington, rather taken aback by the other man's direct methods. Mr Nakayama bowed stiffly. Charlie thought he had not made his mean- ing clear, and went on: "You see, it's like this, I do want all your time and energies, as you very nicely put it. I want you to travel with me, and talk for me, and give me lessons in railway trains, and tell me about the places we go to, you know. Now what sort of salary ought I to offer you? It is much better to settle these things 'right here.'" And he smiled kindly at the Princeton graduate. "I am not a guide, sir," said Nakayama, " but I will do what I can to make your travels pleasing — and instructive. For the rest, that which suits you will be quite agreeable to me." "How am I to know what is right?" mur- mured Charlie irritably, unaware that ques- 42 tions of payment in a case of this kind could never, in Nakayama's code, be discussed between gentlemen, but should be settled through a third party. There was short silence, and then Bar- rington said: "I used to pay my tutor two hundred pounds a year. Would that rate suit you ? Mind, I have no intention of staying for more than a few months. You ought to know that before you decide." Now, to tell the truth, Katsura Nakayama, like many another well-bom and well-educated Japanese, was desperately poor. He had been all but starving himself for a long time past in order to try and save enough to send an or- phaned younger brother to the American university where he himself had studied to such a good purpose. Six months of Mr Barrington's munificent pay would mean five hundred good American dollars. The boy could start in June. Katsura was so over- joyed that a slow flush mounted to his face and turned its paleness red. But he bowed deeply, 43 and spoke without a trace of emotion. "That will fix me," he said. "You are very generous, sir. I would have done it with pleasure for the advantage of your company." "Then that is all right!" CharUe exclaimed, much reHeved. "Now you had better go and get your traps, and we can take the 5.20 train to Miyanoshita." "Trunk or gripsack?" asked Nakayama very seriously. "Both if you like," was Charlie's reply. "We shall not see the Bund for a month or two, so take aU you are going to want." "It is an odd type of preceptor," mused Charlie as he watched his new acquaintance trot down the Bund with a bulky sun umbrella in one hand and a square parcel rolled up in a purple handkerchief in the other. "Not a bit what I expected, but a decent, nice chap, and I daresay he knows something besides school- boy American. Now for lunch." Precisely at half-past four Nakayama re- turned. Harrington, standing in the porch of 44 the Grand Hotel, had been watching his approach for some time before his identity revealed itself. A curious group had turned on to the Bund from a side street, and Charlie glanced at it with vague amusement, wondering what it signified. A small wooden box, heavily roped, was being carried between a man on the one side and a boy on the other. Various bundles were attached to it by different bits of string; a pair of boots, tied together by the laces, dangled below; a red blanket, tightly rolled, was stuffed through the cord on top, and on this lay a straw hat ineffectually wrapped in newspaper which fluttered madly in the breeze off the bay. A bundle tied up in a yellow handkerchief bobbed beneath, suggest- ing a carter's dinner. The boy who grasped the box on one side was a slender youth in a striped cotton robe. His head was bare, his feet shod with clogs, and he was laughing and gesticulating gaily. The other porter was dressed in foreign fashion as far as his knees, from which point 4S his legs were encased in white linen gaiters, and these strapped down over elastic-sided shoes. A bowler hat pushed well back on his head seemed to indicate that he found porter- ing warm work, and in his left hand he carried a bulging umbrella, with green tassels flying round the stick — an umbrella which Charlie, had seen that morning. They came to the hotel entrance, mounted the steps, and slowly deposited their queer burden. Then Katsura mopped his brow, placed his hat at a correct angle, and, looking round, recognised CharHe. "I am in time, I think," he said a little anxiously; "we'll make that train all right, Mr Barrington." "Why on earth did you not take a jinrikky ?" asked his pupil. "Fancy carrying all that stuff yourself!" And he looked at the green- painted box with fastidious dismay. "Too expensive," rephed Nakayama with- out a trace of embarrassment. "My brother helps me — saves fifteen cents." 46 *