Part 6
“We are only beginning to understand each other.”
“I am a bird of passage, as you know. I have to fly on my road.”
The air grew tragic.
Then Oscar said:
“What will you do when you tire of flying?”
“Sah!”
“Well?”
“I’ll return to Los Angeles and induce you to marry me with my honourable Oriental oratory. Will that do?”
We interchanged our nimble look. We laughed afterward.
After he left Schuyler’s, I said to myself that I would not mind positively if he would kiss me. The kiss must be on my brow, however. Lips are too personal.
I wrote a note, beseeching him not to forget to kiss me at my farewell.
Then I chewed the note.
I reviled my folly.
31st—Street walking is a delight.
I’ll mirror my face in the glass of the shop windows ambling by.
I dropped a handkerchief to-day.
A gentle gentleman—man behind me should be young and good looking always—picked it up. His respectful “Pardon me—” made me feel as if I were living in the silver-armoured age of chivalry.
Shall I drop something again?
I observed a variety of form in raising the skirt.
One lifted a bit of the left by her finger-tips. Another pulled up the right edge of her front. Another clinched out the centre of her back, showing a significant fist. A corpulent one stepped, holding up both sides of her front. The miserable underskirt revealed itself in red.
Which mode is becoming to me?
Jan. 1st, 1900—Is to-day the opening of another century?
Happy New Year!
I will send a lot of “Shinnen omedeto” to Tokio.
Isn’t this a queer New Year?
No shimenawa along the façades with flitting gohei!
No “gate pine tree”!
No sambow for an oblation unto the gods in any room!
No rice-bread! No golden toso for the cup!
I mingled with a neighbour’s girls for a “rope-jumping.”
We played hide-and-seek. I offered ten cents reward to the one who detected me. I abandoned the unprofitable job after emptying out all my change.
Miss Olive called on a bicycle.
I persuaded her to let me try on her bloomers. She exchanged them for my walking skirt which was four inches shorter.
We hurried to the garden.
She helped me on the wheel.
Such a bad Meriken girl!
She slipped her hand from it. I fell on a bush. The touchy rose thorned in my hand.
2nd—I made a discovery.
Mother Schuyler’s teeth are all false.
I have no chance to explore whether her hair is a wig.
She chains a big bunch of keys to her waist. Its rattle sounds housewifely.
She forgot it, laying it on the sitting-room table.
I knotted it to my waist-strap.
I jiggled it.
“Jaran, jaring, jaran, jaran!”
3rd—The sayonara dinner was given. Mrs. Ellis’ folks joined us.
Mother Schuyler repeated every ten minutes her query, “when would I visit them again?”
Mr. Oscar set his depressive look on me. I wasn’t brave enough to encounter it.
I slid away from confronting him.
I found him an elegant young man. He impressed me as an image of Apollo.
Only God knows when I will reprint my footsteps on the soil of Los Angeles!
I felt awfully sorry in leaving such an agreeable company.
“Fold your tent like the Arabs, And silently steal away.”
How sad!
4th—Good-bye, Mr. Parrot!
SAN FRANCISCO, 5th.
I am again at Mrs. Willis’.
San Francisco!
Such miraculous San Francisco water!
I will taste bliss again in drinking the midnight water, stretching out my arm from the bed.
6th—I tied Dorothy’s hair in Nippon style.
She pleased me much by remembering the Japanese words I taught her.
She is a cute dear.
The mode had been the “O’tabaco bon.”
I straightened her hair with my wet hand.
I added a tiny bit of crimson crape.
She looked a lovely fairy.
7th—Rainy day!
The heavily reserved weather confines me in the pose of genius.
My hair lounged down my shoulders. Disorder is the first step in being a genius, I fancy. My eyes should be rolled up to the sky in divine tragicalness.
I have had a greediness for the name of novelist.
To-day I found myself in the crisis where I must scribble or die.
I regret to say that mine is a love story also, as every beginner’s book has been. I hope everybody will be contented with “The Destiny,” a respectable title for my fiction. Who says it is the style of name employed one hundred years ago?
The book will be concluded with three hundred pages.
Now I wonder whether a long story is in demand.
## Chapter I, is as follows:
WHEN THE MOON ROSE.
This story begins when the moon rose.
Its silvery rays—it was six P.M. of April—fell on the Shiba park in laughter.
My heroine jogged along into the park, singing a light song.
“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you? Thirteen and seven, you say? You are young enough to marry——”
Let me explain about her a bit!
Her name is O Hana San.
Thirteen years old. Thirteen? It is the age when the flower of girlhood starts to bloom.
Bewitching Hana!
Do you remember a well by the glorious cherry tree in the park? The ’rikisha men moisten their parched lips at the “Heaven-Sent.” That is its name, sir.
Miss Hana looked down into the well.
She began to adjust her hair. The first worry of a girl after thirteen would naturally be about her hair.
She gazed up to the cherry blossoms and exclaimed:
“Utsukushii nah! Lovely!”
Then she found her face again in the well-mirror, thinking what a charming O Hana San it would make with the flowers on her hair.
My worthy readers, I suppose it is the time some one must enter.
He came.
He was a little boy.
I will not mention his name just yet.
He came close to her and pinched her little back. Both blushed, facing each other. They were quite strangers.
The evening zephyrs stirred the cherry blossoms. They planted themselves silently among the falling petals, as ethereal as snow.
“I delight to stand in the storm of petals, don’t you?” Hana inclined her head a trifle in speaking.
The woman always speaks first.
“Let me see your school book!” again she said.
“Why?”
He put it in her tiny hand.
“Thanks! Arigato!”
She bowed low. When she put the book on her shoulder, she was running away, singing:
“Miss Honourable Moon, how old are you?”
The boy stood aghast.
* * * * * * *
The author of this story found O Hana San again by the same well on the next evening.
The boy’s book in her hand, of course.
She paced around the well, muttering:
“He must come, because the moon rose.”
But he was not seen.
* * * * *
My next chapter will be “The Second Meeting.”
8th—My precious Ada again!
How could I live without her?
We hastened to a circus.
If I were a boy, I could earn a heap of money selling “Pea—nuts! Lemon—ade!”
How those clowns did tumble!
If I could share in such fun!
The ringmaster was the handsomest man in the world, in shiny boots and heavenly hat. How splendidly his whip cracked!
The clack dashed like a burst of bamboo.
“Wouldn’t you be glad to be the lady on horseback? I would truly. Glance at her daring grace!” I whispered to Miss Ada.
Even the seal performed.
We laughed till tears dropped.
The circus had twenty elephants. Think!
Our Imperial Menagerie of Tokio has only one. How poor!
9th—Last night I went over to Mrs. Consul’s to be given a lesson in card-playing.
“Cribbage would be the thing. Why? Because the Lambs took much pleasure in it,” she said.
“How is poker?” I suggested.
“Gambling game!” she protested.
“I delight in gambling, Mrs. Consul,” I proclaimed.
* * * * *
I had a wicked dream.
What do you imagine?
I ran away with a circus rider.
10th—I made the acquaintance of a Japanese woman.
She must have been passing her thirty springs. I could be accurate in my scale, being one of her sisterhood.
A cigar-stand keeper in Dupont Street.
Her name is O Fuji San.
Mrs. Wistaria brought a box of cigarettes that my uncle had ordered.
The morning is unoccupied in such a retail shop. Nobody puffs much before lunch. She set herself in a tête-à-tête.
The chastity of a wife may be measured by her solo on her husband. Woman’s greatest joy often lies in lamenting the faults of her teishu.
Mrs. Wistaria spoke of her husband’s being ill. I was to accept any chance for squandering my feelings. I sympathised, repeating, “Komaru nei! How sad!”
She said that she was going to leave the city for a week for the spring of San Jose, to take care of her infirm dear.
“I fear I may lose my customers,” she flagged.
Her husband was afflicted with rheumatism.
I promised to call at her store.
Japs never visit an invalid without a present.
Champagne? It’s too ostentatious a drink. It’s like a highly rouged woman.
The loving-eyed claret should be chosen.
I sent half a dozen bottles to Mrs. Wistaria’s.
A charity woman should be dressed in black and white. I went to Dupont street, however, in my grey dress.
Her husband struggled to entertain me. His clumsy smile appeared all the time at the wrong cue.
Poor Mr. What’s-his-name!
Their business was an absurdly small affair.
The whole stock hardly valued above one hundred dollars.
I thought I could conduct it rightly.
I was carried away by a sudden fancy.
“Can’t you leave your store in my hands, while you are away? Say yes! No?” I pressed myself upon them eagerly.
They were amazed.
“High-born lady like you? Oh, no! Doshite, doshite! Think! Do you know this is the toughest part of the town?” Mrs. Wistaria tried to make me retreat.
I couldn’t listen to her, my whole soul being absorbed in my new caprice.
I thought it remarkably romantic.
I left the store to bring uncle to talk the matter over.
Mrs. Wistaria’s store was neighboured by every saloon. The fuddling sounds overflowed in song:
“Hello ma baby, hello ma honey——”
11th—Now he is my beloved uncle.
He assured me of his help in carrying out my freak.
“You are fitting me for a slightly better rôle, I fancy,” he said, venturing to add even one or two of his good-natured giggles. “The secretaryship of a cigar-stand is a rather more hopeful occupation than carrying your wraps through the street.”
Everything was arranged.
Mrs. Wistaria and her husband set off for San Jose.
I am a merchant-lady.
The first thing I did was to put up a dignified sign with the following black letters:
MORNING GLORY CIGAR STORE.
I borrowed a picture from Mrs. Willis’ parlour, and placed it by the slot machine.
It is the picture of a dear Injun sitting against a woodland fire with a respectable pipe, whose smoke sails up to the yellow moon. What resignation! What dream! What joy! It did suit beautifully for the cigar-stand.
I love to see a man smoking. The elfish smoke acts like a merry-hearted May gossamer. When I observe a man’s eye pursuing his smoke, I say to myself that his soul must be stepping nearer to his ideal. The road of smoke is the road of poesy.
A noble trade is tobacco.
Man’s hermitage is situated only in smoking, I should say.
I divested my uncle of his coat. I begged him to hold a bucket and a piece of cloth for a moment.
“Are you ready to wash the windows, Uncle?” I said.
“Traitor, Morning Glory!” He flashed his accusing glare.
Docile old man!
He cleaned four windows of the kitchen, which was also the dining-room and the parlour.
I paid him five cents for each.
I said: “It’s good fun to hire the chief secretary of the Nippon Mining Company to rub windows, isn’t it?”
And I laughed.
Then I forced him to buy a cigar.
“You made some twenty cents out of me. Your turn is coming, my uncle!” I said.
I sold him a box of Lillian Russell cigars for three dollars. The real price was two.
Ha, ha, ha!
12th—I invited my precious Ada to my store to dine _à la Japonaise_.
One Jap restaurant catered to it.
“Irrashaimashi! Condescend to enter!” I showered my wooden-clogged greeting over Ada.
From “The Klondyke,” my neighbouring saloon, a nigger song was flapping in.
“If you ain’t got no money, you needn’t come round.”
Happy Ada San!
She was about to join in it, when I brought her into my great dining-room.
(Beg pardon, it was a paltry kitchen!)
Everything was seen on the table.
Japanese dinner has no strict order of courses. You are a frolicsome butterfly among the dishes set like flowers before you. You may flit straight to any one which catches your whim.
“Take your honourable chop-sticks!” I said.
Poor Miss Ada!
“How shall I manage with one stick?” she raised her eyelids in questioning meekness.
I bade her to split the stick in two. It was a brand new wooden one. I showed her how to finger it.
She nibbled a bit from each dish. Every time she tasted she looked upon me with a suspicious smile.
And how she slipped her sticks at the critical moment!
The sight amused me hugely.
“How dare I swallow raw fishes!” she said shrinking.
“What delight I taste in them!” I slammed back at her timidity.
Then I dipped a few cuts of the fishes into a porcelain soy pan for my mouth.
I even trampled into her fish-dish by and by.
She was literally terrified.
The feast was over. I said, “Go yukkuri! Honourable not-to-be-in-a-hurry!” I slid away.
I tied my white apron like a shop girl. I was glad that I did not forget to push a lead-pencil through my hair. I presented myself to Ada carrying a cigarette box.
“Will you buy tobacco for your lord?”
I spread the box before her.
“How much for one packet,” she asked with the charming arrogance of a customer.
She was acting also.
“To-day is the memorial day of Lord Nono Sama. My sweet Oku San, allow me to make a reduction!”
Then we laughed.
[Illustration:
Drawn by Genjiro Yeto “HOW DARE I SWALLOW RAW FISHES!” ]
13th—I created much noise in the Jap colony!
Why not?
Many brown men pause by my store and buy, simply because they can address a word or two to me.
They are silly, aren’t they?
I announce that I am tired of their faces. I have never met one progressive-seeming Oriental since I landed. They are like a dry tree. Are their souls dying?
“Well, that’s why, they have no girl,” my uncle conclusioned.
He is so bright once in a while.
Why not make love with Meriken musume?
I said I would petition the Tokio government to transplant her women.
It may ruin the Japanese girl’s name, was my afterthought, if they ship only the homely gang.
Lovely girl has no longing to sail over the ocean. She has plenty of chance to grow a flower bride at home.
I pity my native boys of this city.
“Jap! Jap!”
They are dashed with such exclamations from every corner.
As for me the sound of “Jap” is my taste, so I spray it in my writing.
I took up again my knitting work which I had commenced on the seas. Nothing could be more decent to fill up my leisure in the store.
My little neck fell, as I was intent on my stocking.
Some one spoke above my head: “How is business?”
“So, so!” I replied in businesslike reserve.
I lifted my face.
Oya, he was Mr. Consul.
“Will you sell me a cigar?”
“Things are becoming awfully high. Mine is a distinctly dear store. Do you know it, Mr. Consul?”
“I’m prepared to pay more at the beautiful girl’s,” he began to titter.
“General Arthur cigar has leaped one dollar higher since Monday, and——”
“You don’t mean it!” He mimicked a sudden alarm.
14th—O funny drunkard!
To-day one fellow established himself before my store. He fixed his amazing eyes on my face, and extended his hairy hand.
“Hel-lo, Japanese!” he stuttered.
He wanted to shake hands with me.
I lengthened my arm, and slapped his face. I withdrew directly within, and watched him from a hole.
“Ha, ha! She got mad—ha, ha, ha!”
He was in a tip-top state of mind.
“Let me help myself!”
He pilfered one cigar from the shelf. He struck a match. He bit the cigar.
“Good!” he muttered.
He tossed himself away with ludicrous dignity, singing:
“Pon pili, yon, pon, pon!”
“This is undeniably a tough place!” I exclaimed.
15th—Night has just arrived.
Only ten minutes ago a white-capped “Jim” (I overheard people calling him so) lighted a paper lantern labelled “Tomales.” He is an eating-stand keeper across the street. The loafers passed. There was some time to watch the lazy parade. It was a blank hour of Saturday when he could puff a whiff of smoke.
The prankish songs ceased.
Even in Dupont Street I am given a page of dream.
The barkeeper of “Remember the Maine” called at my store.
“Remember the Maine?”
It is a name cheap as the grimness of a toothless woman.
Mr. Barkeeper had something to say, I imagined.
I offered a stem of cigarette.
“Do you ever hear a bloody cry at night?” he began his chapter, gathering a medley of gravity on his brow.
“Scream? No!”
“Never mind!”
He turned aside. I thought he was playing a threadbare artifice of a story-teller to tantalise my fancy.
“Tell me why!”
I knew I became his victim.
“I fear I do scare you.”
“No! I never——” I leaned forward.
“To begin with——”
He stopped, looking around.
“Your kitchen—don’t be scared—is close by a haunted room of a house on Pine Street. It’s no story. A chorus girl lived—well, some five years ago—in that house with her step-mother. Just think! The old hen of sixty-five fell in love with her daughter’s lover. Do you understand? She saw one morning the young fellow kissing her daughter. She went crazy. She shot him. Isn’t it awful? The murderess leaned against the wall by your kitchen, and cried, ‘I killed him!’ I swear to you that it is all true. So, people say, a wail is heard at night from your side.”
“Mah! Mah!” I breathed.
“That is all.”
He retired heavily.
Do I believe it?
“No! No!” I denied.
But I was thickly swarmed by sickening air. How could I trust me in the kitchen!
I closed the store.
I pasted up a piece of paper whereon was written: “NO BUSINESS TO-NIGHT.”
16th—I had a stomach-ache this morning. I couldn’t rise.
The maid fetched me some toast and a cup of coffee.
I think it is very nice to eat in bed.
17th—Mrs. Wistaria and her husband returned from San Jose.
She lavished on me her thousand arigatos.
She said I sold sixty per cent more than on any previous week.
She wished me to condescend to accept a “meagre” fifteen dollars as a share of the profits.
I refused it.
18th—My letter to Miss Pine Leaf (who wept with me reading Keats’ love-letters one mournful night) is as follows:
“MATSUBA SAN:
‘Hitofude mairase soro.
‘I have the honour to present a brief writing.’
“Let me omit the shopworn form of Japanese letter-writing! Its redundant ‘honourables’ are more cheap than honourable.
“Satetoya!
“Shall I begin my letter with a deep bow?
“Bow?
“I use it occasionally before Meriken San for sport’s sake. But it is degenerating, in my opinion, to comic opera, like the tortoise-shell-framed spectacles of a Chinese doctor.
“Now I address you with a thousand kisses.
“The kiss is the thing to begin with for up-to-date girls.
“It is useful, as a poem is useful in filling up space in magazine-making. Woman—even a loftily learned American woman—cannot be ready always with her rhetoric of expression. The kiss comes to her relief in the crisis whenever she fails in speech.
“The kiss is everything.
“The Jap girl is intimate with the art of crying.
“A kiss is as eloquent as a tear.
“I suppose the cleverness of American woman is graded by the way she handles it. It strikes me that every white girl is perfectly at home with it.
“She is awfully bright.
“You wonder why she is so?
“There is one reason that I can tell you. It is because she has a serious job to pick out her husband herself. I don’t think it is fair to blame her growing insipid after marriage. Every one feels tired when a weighty work is done. What would be her doom if she were stupid? An old maid is such a sad sight, like a broken clock, or a cradle after baby’s death. Isn’t it dreadful to have nothing to rejoice in but a customary tea or books? Literary critic is one occupation left for her. Worse than death!
“I am pained to state that our brown sisters are extremely behind time.
(“There are lots of exceptions, of course, like honourable you and Miss M. G.)
“I am talking of common Jap musumes.
“Naturally so.
“They are like those waiting at the station for the next train. They have only to doze and wait for the footsteps of a matchmaker with a young man.
“I am grateful to the Nippon government for stimulating education in women.
“But I advise her to imprison all the matchmakers. Then the girls will wake up at once, like one who has everything on her back after papa’s passing.
“That is one process to brighten them, I think.
“Am I not logical?
“Your last tegami questioned me whether the American lady was charming.
“Are you attentive to western sea painting?
“How does it impress you when you are close by it? Only a jumble of paint, isn’t it? So with Meriken woman!
“You should be off half a dozen steps to estimate her beautiful captivation. You would be horrified, otherwise, by her hairy skin.
“I love her.
“She has no headache like the Japs. (By the way, I will call Japan, hereafter, the country of headache.) She lives in a comedy.
“Nothing turns bad in Amerikey.
“‘Tragedy To Be a Woman,’ could only be seen on a fiction thrown in a moth-trodden second-hand store.
“Police never bother.
“Such a deliverance!
“I am delighted with my Meriken Kenbutsu.
“Sayonara!
Yours,
“MORNING GLORY”
19th—I forced Uncle to swear to me that he would overlook everything I did, in consideration of my great service in darning his socks.
I peeled off my shoes to begin with.
I sat like a Turk.
“Why do you frown like an Oni in hell?” I acidified my smile. I held my needle and thread suspended in the air, while I said: “What is a Trust?”
“Be quiet!” he exclaimed.
He didn’t even glance at me, being engaged in writing in the other nook.
“Uncle, your hair ought to be curled. I will step in to-morrow morning, and turn it up before you awake. What do you think, Uncle? Oji San!”
“Morning Glory San!”
He emitted a growl of satanic despotism, and soon resumed his work gracefully.
I thought what a scandal if he were penning a love letter to Mrs. Schuyler, junior.
I rose. I approached him with secret step. I fell on him from his massy back and cried:
“What are you scribbling?”
Erai, my honourable uncle!
He was translating Gibbon’s “History of Rome.”
I was stunned from the shame of taking him to be in such a wretched line even in fancy.