Through these dark, monotonous thoughts, her father's voice, low, rich, and sonorous, with the jerky melodic chant and rhythm imposed by long reading aloud of Chinese literature, flowed up and finally compelled her. So had she been taught to read in childhood, before her long sojourn in a foreign land.
"'Let me now return, for my farm and garden are growing wild! As the boat skims lightly along the water, the wind plays with my sleeves. O boatman! how far yet to my home? So far, and yet the hour so late! Now, now at last I see my own loved gate, and enter with joyous rush.'" The deep tones rose as in triumph, then sank again to infinite tenderness. "'The paths to my steps are growing up wild with grass, but the pine and the chrysanthemums still flourish. With my children in my arms I enter the house, drink a refreshing draught, and gaze, and gaze again at the shadows under the garden trees.
"'Return! Return! Why should I not return? Let me renounce the intercourse and pleasure of the world! Let me and the world renounce each other! There is nothing more for me to derive from the world!—
"'The farmers come in and tell me that spring is approaching. There are rumors of war in the West. But why should they interfere with my rambles? The trees put on a smile and begin to bud. The streams look busy and begin to flow. What joy to see all things fall due at their season! And yet I am reminded that my season, too, is almost come. Alas! The lodging of man in this Inn of the Universe is but for a single season!'"
Yuki's hands were pressed against her breast. In the samurai's slow, fervid utterance one could feel each word fill and thrill the heroic heart before utterance came to the lips. He was deriving strength and comfort from the immortal ode. "'Commit then, O soul, thyself upon the current of things!'" rose the exulting pæan. "'Let me choose my own time. Let me go out for my solitary walk! Let me hobble about the farm on my friendly cane. Let me toil up the Eastern hill, look the clear brook in the face, and sing it my dying songs. So let me end my days as days of themselves may end. So shall my joy flow on with the eternal will of Heaven!'"
Yuki sat upright, her wide eyes fixed, as it were, upon the viewless flight of echo. "And they of the Western world say that my people have no true religion, no deep belief. Their souls crawl, where ours take wings! Nippon, Nippon, my country!"
The magnificence of her nation's past, the heroism, self-sacrifice inherent in her countrymen, the passionate craving for what is spiritual and sublime, the belief in watchful spirits of dead ancestors, in the divinity and guidance of dead Emperors manifest in the living flesh, came in a flood and bore up the girl's spirit in a tide of light. What were foreign education, foreign friendship, foreign pledges,—love itself,—to a girl of Yamato Damashii? She was Japanese, one small animate cell in a living tissue of race. To serve her country, that, indeed, should be life's worth. "Pierre, Pierre," she sobbed. "I shall not bring you joy, nor can you give to me the duty that it is my part to bear. Let me go, dear one, let me go, and pray to our Christian God that your kisses fade from me, and your blue eyes be turned away. If I were only myself I would die, or defy for you everything. But I am not myself; I am what my ancestors, my parents and my country have made me; I am only one shivering mote of dust in my country's shining destiny. Let me go, my dear; Kwannon will bless you!"
Slow, helpful tears began to course, unfelt, along her white cheeks. All at once the physical exhaustion of long, sleepless nights and days unendurable began to tell on her. The glossy head bent over, lower and lower. Tetsujo, after a long pause, had begun an heroic epic of the Heiké clan. The words were indistinct, a sort of splendid blur. She had an impression of horses, arms, war-shouts, and of fluttering banners on distant hills. Then all sounds began to die away. She smiled faintly, and stretched out her slender young limbs upon the soft matting. Soon she was asleep, with the long, regular breaths of childhood.
Without stirring, she remained in the unconscious pose for hours. Iriya, peeping in upon her, choked back a little sob of thanksgiving, and turned away to kneel, in her room, before the ancestral shrine. Lights burned here always, and the pleasant aroma of fresh tea was seldom absent. With hands struck very softly together, that the sleeper should not be disturbed, Iriya supplicated the gods of her home and of her nation that the child should be given clearer vision. A European would have demanded personal happiness for her daughter. The Japanese soul sees deeper, and asks, as the highest boon, power to carry out, in this life, that which has been decreed, and so, for the future, to achieve a nobler attitude.