On the crest of the hill, by the Street-of-Hollyhocks, a wall opened in a huge gate of heavy burnished beams studded with great iron rivet-heads. Here resided no less a personage than an Imperial Princess. Beside the gate stood a conical sentry-box, in which all day, while the gate was open, stood a soldier of the Household Guards. The box was empty now.
Opposite the gate, a hedged lane opened, into which she turned, and presently the song ceased. She had come to the newly built Chapel. Her father's name was on the household list of the temple across the way, but she herself walked each Sunday to Ts'kiji, to attend the bishop's Japanese service in the Cathedral. When, influenced by a school-mate, she had wished to become a Christian, the old samurai had interposed no objection. With the broad tolerance of the esoteric Buddhist, to whom all pure faiths are good, he had allowed her to choose for herself. She had grown to love the strangely new and beautiful worship with its singing, its service in a tongue that she could understand, its Bible filled with marvelous stories of old heroes, and with vivid imagery like that of the Kojiki, the "Record of Ancient Matters" or the Man-yoshu, the "Collection of a Myriad Leaves," over whose archaic characters her father was always poring. She had ceased to visit the temple, but otherwise the change had made little difference in her placid life. With the simplicity with which the Japanese of to-day kneels with equal faith before a plain Shinto shrine and a golden altar of Buddha, she had continued the daily home observances. Each morning she cleaned the butsu-dan—refilled its tiny lamp with vegetable oil, freshened its incense-cup and water bowl, and dusted its golden shrine of Kwan-on which held the scroll inscribed with the spirit names of a hundred ancestors, and the ihai, or mortuary tablet, of her dead mother. Though she no longer prayed before it, it still signified to her the invisible haunting of the dead—the continuing loving presence of that mother who waited for her in the Meidoland.
For many days Haru had watched the progress of the Chapel building. The Cathedral was a good two miles distant, but this was near her home; here she would be able to attend more than the weekly Sunday service. To-night, as she looked at the cross shining in the moonlight, she thought it very beautiful. A tiny symbol like it, made of white enamel, was hung on a little chain about her neck. It had been given her by the bishop the day of her confirmation. She drew this out and swung it about her finger as she walked on.
In the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods were no huge and gloomy compounds. It was a roadway of humbler shops and homes, bordered with mazes of lantern fire, and lively with pedestrians. At a meager shop, pitifully small, whose shoji were wide open, Haru paused. A smoky oil lamp swung from the ceiling, and under its glow, a woman knelt on the worn tatamé. Beside her, on a pillow, lay a newborn baby, and she was soothing its slumber by softly beating a tiny drum close to its ear. She nodded and smiled to Haru's salutation.
"Hai! Ojo-San," she said. "Go kigen yo! Deign augustly to enter."
"Honorable thanks," responded Haru, "but my father awaits my unworthy return. Domo! Aka-San des'ka? So this is Miss Baby! Ishikichi will have a new comrade in this little sister."
"Poison not your serene mind with contemplation of my uncomely last-sent one!" said the woman, pridefully tilting the pillow so as to show the tiny, vacuous face. "Are not its hands degradedly well-formed?"
"Wonderfully beyond saying! The father is still exaltedly ill?"
"It is indeed so! I have not failed to sprinkle the holy water over Jizo, nor to present the straw sandals to the Guardians-of-the-Gate. Also I have rubbed each day the breast of the health-god; yet O-Binzuru does not harken. Doubtless it is because of some sin committed by my husband in a previous existence! I have not knowledge of your Christian God, or I would make my worthless sacrifices also to Him."
"He heals the sick," said Haru, "but He augustly loves not sacrifice—as He exaltedly did in olden time," she hastily supplemented, recalling certain readings from the Old Testament.