CHAPTER VIII.
THE COMPASSIONATE GOD, JIZU.
Miss Campbell was very dubious about having invited Mme. Fontaine to dine.
"Of course she was very kind," she remarked, "and we owe her a great deal, but I wish we could show our appreciation in some other way. We don't know anything about her: who she is; where she came from; whether she has any family."
"But, my dear cousin," said Mr. Campbell, who had wandered about the world so much that he was accustomed to taking people without any questions, "what difference does it make? You say she is refined and well-bred. We know she is kind because of what she did for us. But I will make some inquiries about her if you like—"
"I never liked mixed bloods," interrupted Miss Campbell, not listening to her relation.
"Everybody has some mixture of bloods," laughed Billie. "Look at
Mary—French and English; look at Elinor—Scotch and Irish."
"No, no," protested Miss Campbell "Those aren't the kinds of mixtures I referred to. It's those queer Oriental bloods—yellow people and white people."
The others all smiled indulgently. Miss Campbell was just a little old-fashioned lady with old-fashioned restricted views, they thought. She was the only one of the motor party who had not fallen under the spell of Mme. Fontaine, and apparently the only cause for her objection was because this charming stranger was part Japanese and wrote for the newspapers.
That evening Mr. Campbell endeavored to set her fears at rest.
"I have inquired about your mysterious Mme. Fontaine," he said. "She is a widow. Her husband was editor of a paper in Shanghai. She herself is a writer and a newspaper correspondent. She has written several novels published in Shanghai, and she is generally considered to be a very bright person. She has been living in Tokyo not quite a year and goes out very little."
This fragment of her history only seemed to deepen the atmosphere of romance which enveloped the "Widow of Shanghai," as Mr. Campbell would call her, and the Motor Maids rather eagerly awaited the evening when she was to dine with them.
In the meantime, they were to receive a ceremonious call from the family of Yoritomo Ito, and he himself was to act as interpreter for the three Japanese ladies, his mother, his aunt and his sister. They appeared one afternoon in two jinrikshas and such a bowing and smiling was never seen before. The day had been sultry and hot and tea was served in the summer-house in the garden by the little maids attached to the household. Miss Campbell was sorry that the pretty Onoye, flower of the staff, did not appear. However, these things were all left to O'Haru, and she said nothing.
Yoritomo's sister, O'Kami San (that is to say: the honorable Miss Kami), spoke a very little English. This fact she had bashfully hidden from the girls on the occasion of their first meeting. But when Billie, through Yoritomo, asked his sister to walk in the garden, she answered herself:
"Receive thanks. Honorable walk will confer pleasure."
Assuredly the Japanese-English dictionaries and phrase books must all use the most stilted and ceremonious English words, so Billie thought.
"'Receive thanks and confer pleasure!' How absurd!"
But then Billie did not realize that the Japanese language abounds in such ceremonious words and high-sounding phrases and, in order to keep the spirit of the original, translations are generally literal.
Off they trooped down a garden path, followed by the reproachful eyes of Miss Helen Campbell, who found it a decided strain on the nerves to keep a second-hand conversation going. Nancy lingered behind and helped her out by giving Yoritomo an account of their accident on Arakawa Ridge. This he immediately passed on to his mother and aunt.
In the meantime, O'Kami San, trotting along beside Billie, with Mary and Elinor following behind, might have just stepped out of a Japanese fan. She was so entirely unreal and cunning that the girls had no eyes for the rosy rain of cherry blossoms dropping from the trees, nor the lovely vista of garden with its flaming bushes of azaleas and cool green clumps of ferns. Out of compliment to the season O'Kami San wore a robe of delicate pink embroidered all over with sprays of cherry blossoms in deeper shades. Her obi, or sash, was of pale green silk. Her hair was elaborately pompadoured and drawn up in the back into a large glossy roll held in place with tortoise shell pins. No doubt it had taken hours to arrange; two, at the very least.
Billie patted her own smooth rolls serenely.
"Suppose I had to sleep with my neck on a little wooden bench every night to preserve my coiffure," she thought. "I think I'd just lay my head on the executioner's block and say, 'Strike it off. It's not worth the trouble.'"
"Think garden pretty, O'Kami San?" began Mary, whose method of talking with the Japanese was to preserve only the framework of a sentence and drop all articles and small words.
"Much pretty. Me—like honorable garden and beautiful American ladee," answered O'Kami, speaking slowly and distinctly.
English pronunciation never seemed to trouble the Japanese. It was only choice of words and construction.
"What do you do all day, O'Kami San?" asked Elinor.
"Much honorable work," answered the Japanese girl. "Cook-ing; sew-ing"; she pointed to her kimono; "mu-seek; book-stu-dee. Ah, much work to become wife."
"You are not thinking of marrying, surely? Your brother says you are only sixteen," protested Mary.
O'Kami nodded her head and smiled.
"Arrange all the day before to this."
"Do you love him?" asked Mary, in an awed tone of voice.
O'Kami looked puzzled. The word "love" she had not learned.
"O'Kami much happy. Honorable mother of husband not any more. Gone." She pointed up.
"Goodness!" broke in Elinor. "She means that there will be no mother-in-law, so the marriage is sure to be a happy one. What a mother-in-law ridden place this country is!"
She spoke too rapidly for the Japanese girl to grasp the meaning of any word except "mother-in-law."
"Mother-in-law," she repeated slowly. "Little Japanese girl much afraid to great mother-in-law."
The girls laughed and O'Kami's silvery note mingled with theirs.
"I found something quite new and interesting in the garden the other day," observed Mary. "Or rather not quite new, but quite old. Who wants to see it?"
"Lead on, Macduff," ordered Billie.
"It's an old shrine," continued Mary. "Komatsu says it's to the Compassionate God, Jizu. He's sitting cross-legged in a little niche in the hillside below the bridge and he has a beautiful frame of clematis vines around him. I think he's delightful."
O'Kami San was unable to grasp the meaning of this rapid fire of words, at least it seemed to her to be a rapid fire. Most people are under the impression that a foreign language is spoken faster than their own. But she trotted along beside the others, always with the same polite, intelligent smile, as if she understood every word.
Having crossed the bridge, they followed a narrow path through a grove of pine trees. The path took an unexpected curve to the right and led them around the side of a grassy embankment under which sat the stone image of the Compassionate God, Jizu. The inscrutable smile of the nation hovered on the lips of the ancient idol, and his compassionate stone eyes looked out upon the green little world around him with a gentle tolerance. Time and tempests had worn away his arms and softened the outlines of his stone countenance. He was indeed a graven image of kindly mien and of a certain majesty of expression.
But there was, another visitor at the shrine of the Compassionate God. She lay flat on her face in a tumbled, many-colored little heap before the gray old image at whose feet was her offering: a pitiful little bunch of wild roses. She had been sobbing. It was easy to tell. The storm of weeping had passed now and she lay quite still, but at intervals there was that catch in the breath which follows a period of bitter crying.
The three American girls paused at the edge of the miniature lawn about the shrine and exchanged embarrassed glances. O'Kami Sail drew back a step or two. It was their intention to creep away as noiselessly as possible and leave the unhappy worshiper at the shrine none the wiser that she had been observed by profane, foreign eyes. But at this moment a temple bell not far off sent out a clear silver note in the stillness. The bright-colored heap stirred into life and the sorrowful worshiper rose and looked about her bewildered.
It was Onoye, as they had suspected, and Mary recalled that it was the second time she had seen the Japanese girl crying miserably when she thought she was alone.
Onoye tried to smile when she saw the three young ladies of the house looking at her with great concern. She ran to Billie and fell on her knees.
"Forgive, gracious lady," she said, endeavoring to compose her expression to its usual tranquility.
"Why, you poor dear, what have I to forgive?" exclaimed Billie, trying to raise Onoye to her feet.
"Why are you so unhappy, Onoye? Is there anything we can do for you?" asked Elinor.
"Do tell us and let us help you," put in Mary.
But Onoye was silent.
"O'Kami San, will you not ask her?" said Billie. "Perhaps she would tell you in Japanese when she can't in English."
At the words "O'Kami San," Onoye jumped to her feet in subdued excitement.
"O'Kami San," she repeated.
The two Japanese girls confronted each other. They spoke in low, rapid voices and their faces were so calm and unemotional they might have been two Japanese dolls wound tip to move the lips and occasionally make a slight gesture with one hand. Presently Onoye slipped from her obi a small package done up in crÍpe paper and gave it to O'Kami, who concealed it in the voluminous folds of her own kimono. They exchanged low, ceremonious bows and Onoye hurried away, while O'Kami turned to the mystified young-Americans with an apologetic smile.
"Receive excuses and pardon grant," she said.
Billie made a superhuman effort not to laugh, while Mary stooped to break off a spray of azaleas and Elinor examined intently a stunted pine tree planted in a big green jar near the path.
Japanese gardeners are very fond of cultivating these dwarf trees. Some of the tiniest are said to be of great age. The arrested development contorts the venerable branches into strange twisted forms but they put forth blossoms and foliage with systematic dignity.
"What is the matter with our little maid? Were you able to find out?"
Billie asked the visitor.
But O'Kami San was not inclined to be communicative, and they were obliged to return to the summer-house with their curiosity entirely unsatisfied. In the meantime, Miss Campbell and Nancy were in a painful state of embarrassment about what to say next. The conversation had come to a dead stop, while Miss Campbell, with a flushed face, raised her eyes to heaven with a prayerful look and Nancy endeavored to say a few words about the weather. Yoritomo was inclined to be silent, too. He kept his eyes on the floor and only raised them to transmit Miss Campbell's remarks to his mother and aunt.
"Will you ask your mother, Mr. Ito, if—she suffers from rheumatism from sitting on the floor so much?" asked Miss Campbell, groaning mentally and sending up a prayer that the visitors would see fit to bring the visit to an immediate end.
There was a short colloquy between mother and son, during which Mme. Ito smiled blandly and waved her fan to and fro.
"No, Madam, my mother does not have that complaint," answered her son in precise English.
Miss Campbell flashed a glance of black reproach at Nancy, as much as to say:
"It's your turn now, ungrateful girl. Speak, for heaven's sake."
Nancy exchanged a hopeless glance with the distracted lady. Then she remarked:
"Mr. Ito, is your aunt married?"
Yoritomo smiled broadly.
"She is a widow," he replied. "In Japan all widows cut their hair short."
"But what a strange custom," objected Nancy. "That would keep them from ever marrying a second time. I'm sure I should never cut my hair if my husband died. I should use hair tonic to make it grow longer and thicker."
Yoritomo laughed outright and communicated Nancy's views to his relatives. They laughed, too, and contemplated her knot of chestnut curls with much admiration.
There came another uncomfortable pause. Two simultaneous winged prayers went up into the ether and relief was granted in an unexpected and startling guise. Billie and her friends had just returned and tea and refreshments of a light volatile nature were being passed for the fourth time, by order of Miss Campbell. The visitors were elaborately declining all further nourishment when Nancy saw an arm raised from behind a thick clump of shrubbery near the summer-house. It was clothed in nondescript brown and long fingers clutched a stone. The arm gave a swift circular movement, as if to gain impetus. Then it went backward with a movement of a pitcher about to throw a ball.
"Yoritomo," shrieked Nancy, for the stone seemed to be aimed straight at his head.
In the fraction of an instant the young Japanese had ducked and the stone had crashed into the summer-house and fallen at his feet, making a dent in the floor.
Undoubtedly Nancy had saved his life.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Miss Campbell, but Mme. Ito and her sister and daughter were perfectly calm and silent, as were also the Japanese maids, gathered in a frightened group behind them.
"I never saw people take on so little," Miss Campbell observed later, describing the incident to her cousin.
Nancy wept softly. It was never very difficult for her to weep and she emerged from one of these gentle paroxysms—even as the flowers after a summer rain—a little dewy but refreshed.
Yoritomo vaulted over the rail of the summer-house and ran in the direction of the group of shrubbery. But, of course, no one was there. Who could expect an assassin to wait and be caught?
"I think we had better get into the house at once," ordered Miss Campbell, and taking Mme. Ito's arm, she hurried the little lady up the path, calling to the others to follow. Once in the drawing-room, all the windows were ordered closed and the doors locked, while Komatsu was sent to search the premises.
"What is your opinion, Mr. Ito?" asked Billie. "Was it an enemy of yours or some one who wanted to exterminate us because we are foreigners?"
But Yoritomo could not enlighten her.
"I cannot say," was all they could get out of him.
He was only deeply chagrined, as was his mother, that the American ladies should have been subjected to such treatment in Japan.
The Campbell party finally arrived at the conclusion that it was an insane person, and Mr. Campbell immediately engaged a day and night watchman and reported the matter to the police.