He went out on the veranda, seated himself on the rail, back against a post, reflecting. What a rack of emotional storm and stress had suddenly swept upon them, engulfing them, unexpectedly, whirling them about like straws in a typhoon. So that had been the result of his carefully planned pure, passion-free relationship; how little man might control such things. And he had asked her to marry him. Jun-san's words came to him. What if she had consented? He would then have been tied to her now, for life. For life, with this Japanese girl! Would happiness have come of it, not merely the swirling high tide of youthful passion of the first years, but during the long years, decades, when constant living together would reduce existence to the humdrum of every day. He tried to imagine the situation a score of years hence, when she would be over forty, when the glamor of youth, the sparkle of newness, the exotic charm of kimono and strange ornaments should have passed away, when her mode of thought would no longer be fresh and original to him, but when the oddness of her ideas would have become stale, irritating even. They might at such time be living in San Francisco, or New York, or London; he did not intend to live the rest of his life in Japan. How would life in such places be for them, an elderly-aged American and a middle-aged Japanese woman? Marriage must have a firmer foundation to build upon than mere attraction of beauty, spell, fascination of exotic charm; to last it must depend on the ingredient of intelligence, common growth of mind, ideals. His first marriage came back into his mind warningly, and even there chances for endurance of the relation had been so much stronger. And yet he did love this girl. Were it not for the appalling thought of the possibility of what coming decades might bring, he would not hesitate. Could he, for instance, be certain that he would live but three, or five years longer, he would have insisted, persuaded, won her by sheer impetuosity of wooing. But—— No, Jun-san was probably right; did he venture to tie himself to this girl for life, he would be playing a game of chance with fate with the cards probably stacked against him. And still he wanted her, craved for her, would probably be able to overcome her misgivings; but what if he did? Would not come the time when she might recall to him that she had been right, that he had brought only unhappiness to her? No, he must give her up.
"Good-morning, asenebo-san, sleepy-head." She had crept up to him playfully, like a child and stood beside him laughing, radiant, with a freshness like a flower from the bath. Not a trace of the soul-stirring emotions of the night before. "Soon we shall have breakfast, and after lunch we shall go back to Tokyo."
"You forget that the trains may not be running then. Have they had any news down below?"
"Oh, it will be only a twenty-four hour strike. That was decided. Of course, they don't know anything, the inn people, but I know." She was enjoying her superiority of knowledge. "That was decided on some time ago, only I didn't know it would come so soon. Don't you know that while workers are allowed to organize unions, the Imperial Railways men are not allowed to form them, because they are Government employees. That's just why we wanted this strike, the first real nation-wide strike, to come from them, just to strike fear into these governing classes, to show them how powerless they really are. So a lot of the most important railroad men, engineers and conductors, all over Japan, wherever we could find them, were organized secretly, and we trusted that when they struck the others would come along, for they are all resentful since the Government cut the freight rates and cut their wages for the benefit of the rich people who own the freight. Of course, the authorities suspected something, but they couldn't find out just what was going to happen and when it was going to come off. And they will punish a lot of the leaders, no doubt. But let them put them in jail; it will only make us stronger. I'm so glad that this really happened; we thought it would be almost impossible to bring it through."
How intensely he disliked hearing her talk like this. Who the devil were these "we"? Why should this beautiful, slender girl be stirring her white fingers in this mess. These words, the sordid jargon of class passion and hate, seemed so grotesquely incongruous issuing from rose-petal child lips that should have been humming the lilting songs of maidenhood.
"Sadako-san," he could not keep impatience out of his voice, "what the deuce are you doing in this mess, anyway? Such things are not for girls like you. It will bring you only unhappiness. Why don't you drop it?"
"I have told you. Some one must do this work. I have no one who cares for me; and there are many other girls in this, just as in your country where women do their share. Why shouldn't Japanese women be as brave and strong as yours?"
Damn this craze after modernity! He wished Japan had never been opened to the Western civilization, to suffering the pangs of re-birth, the seething flux of reconstruction that sucked so many lives inexorably into the maelstrom.
She noticed his frown. "You are angry with me, Hugh-san. Is it because I didn't tell you about this before?"
"No, I want none of your confidences about all that stuff; I don't want to hear you talk about it." He snapped his fingers impatiently. Hang it all!