Todd seldom gave himself over to self-communion, yet those long days in the bright loneliness of his wheat-fields had once bred the habit. An ominous and most mysterious factor in his thought was a sense of pre-knowledge, of a relentless inevitability, of the desirability, even, of the sacrifice. The thing came, like a predestined growth, from the soil of necessity. "Joint knit to joint expands the full formed fate." As if, indeed, some ghostly counsellor leaned to him, the event, from which his human, his conventional selves recoiled, shuddering, seemed to his spirit a thing designed, not cruelly, by the Gods themselves. Yet to think of Yuki—his little Yuki—dead with her youth folded like helpless wings about her! The man groaned and stumbled in his path, as, weeks before, Pierre Le Beau, dazed with a more ignoble grief, had groaned and stumbled on these very stones.
The day was Friday, the hour approaching five of the afternoon. Little girls in brilliant-colored kimonos played ball, or hop-scotch, or hide-and-seek around the corners of the streets. Solemn-looking babies, with a mat of black hair tipped to the backs of otherwise smoothly shaven heads, loitered, engrossed apparently in Zen meditation, in the vicinity of their elders. The clothes of these pygmy abbots being wadded both in front and back, one, in his abstraction, toppling over, might regain his equilibrium with a single bound, like round-bottomed toys that always stand on end. Infants of a size smaller had warm swallows' nests slung from the backs of elder sisters. These living burdens made no difference at all in the freedom of sports, or in the slumbers of those carried. In hop-scotch, the heads of the babes went up and down with each hop, until the slender necks should have snapped. But, no, babies were meant to pass most of their existence in this manner, and being Japanese, they took it philosophically. Sun, wind, or even a light snow might fall on the upturned faces, and sleep still line the swallow nest.
Schoolboys, in little squads, passed at intervals. Some among them must have been of the very lot who had once informed Pierre of the meaning of "Ikusa!" Many wore the foreign school uniform of dark-blue woollen cloth made into scanty trousers and "bob" jackets. With this outfit went, inevitably, coarse leather shoes. Other students had been to their homes to change the regulation school garb for the more comfortable wadded kimono, held in place by soft white girdles in endless yards of cloth, and completed with Japanese geta or clogs. All alike wore dark-blue military caps with the names of their school across the front in Chinese ideographs of gold. Their faces were smooth and brown; their eyes like dark jewels. They looked fearlessly upon the tall American. A few lifted their caps lightly, in token of respect, but many more stared, and often turned away with an independence very close upon audacity. Todd, in spite of his troubled reverie, was beguiled into smiling at them. Few indeed responded to his pleasant look. It savored to them of condescension. Abreast with a small battalion of young swaggerers, Todd, for an experiment, said distinctly, "Banzai Nippon!" The boys stood as if electrified. Todd pointed to his button of the Order of the Rising Sun. Suddenly caps and voices went high in air. "Banzai Nippon! Banzai Nippon!" they shouted. They crowded now about the minister, their faces all smiles, the mistrust vanished. They examined his button eagerly, then his watch-charm, his necktie, pin, and signet-ring.
"A-rr-e you the A-mer-i-kan?" asked one, in rheumatic English.
"Yes," answered Todd. "I am the new American minister,—A-mer-i-ca no Kōshi." This was one of the few Japanese phrases he had acquired.
"Banzai Nippon! Banzai Nippon!" came the renewed shout. "American good friend to Nip-pon—yes?" asked another lad.
"Huh! We all same lick off Russia's boots," growled a surly youth.
"Well, I hope you do,—though you mustn't say I said it!" laughed Todd. "Good-bye! Good-bye! You are fine boys!"
"Good-bye! Good-bye, sirr!" called out the boys after him, with caps in hand. It is to be regretted that most of them said, "Gooroo-bye-roo!" but the sentiment, at least, was faultless.
Todd, looking back to them, wondered whether there were any incipient Togos, Kurokis, and Haganès among the striplings. He sighed. The untarnished enthusiasms of youth are always saddening,—though very precious. One of the boys looked like Yuki. The likeness led him back, like a jailer, to his dark cell of meditation.