Frances Little

“ I am wild with impatience to be gone but neither bribes nor threats will hurry the coolies who take their time harnessing the donkeys and the camels.
A ring of ossified men, women and children have formed about me, staring with unblinking eyes, till I feel as if I was full of peep holes. It is not life, for neither youth nor love nor sorrow has ever passed this way. The tiniest emotion would shrivel if it dared begin to live. Maybe they are better so. But then, they have never known Jack. ”

“ NIKKO, July, 1911.
Summer in Japan is no joke, especially if you are waiting for letters. I know perfectly well I can't hear from you and Jack for an age, and yet I watch for the postman three times a day, as a hungry man waits for the dinner-bell.
The days in Yokohama were too much like a continuous Turkish bath, and I fled to Nikko, the ever moist and mossy. Two things you can always expect in this village of "roaring, wind-swept mountains,"—rain and courtesy. One is as inevitable as the other, and both are served in quantities. ”

“ PEKING, APRIL, 1912. Back once again, Mate, in the City of Golden Dusts. Glorious spring sunshine, and the whole world wrapped in a tender haze. Everything has little rainbows around it and the very air is studded with jewels.
Soldiers are still marching; flags are flying; drums are thumping and it is all to the tune of Victory for the Revolutionists. But best of all Jack is well! To me Peking is like that first morning of Eve's in the Garden of Eden. ”

“ I am staying in a semi-foreign hotel which is tucked away in a pocket in the side of a mountain as comfy as a fat old lady in a big rocker who glories in dispensing hospitality with both hands. Just let me put my head out of my room door and the hall fairly blossoms with little maids eager to serve. A step toward the entrance brings to life a small army of attendants bending as they come like animated jack-knives on a live wire. ”

“ So far as Sada is concerned, it is admiration gone to waste. Even if she were not gaily indifferent, she is too absorbed in the happy days she thinks are awaiting her. Poor child! Little she knows of the limited possibilities of a Japanese girl's life; and what the effect of the painful restrictions will be on one of her rearing, I dare not think.
Once she is under the authority of Uncle, the Prince, the Seeker, and all mankind will be swept into oblivion; and, until such time as she can be married profitably and to her master's liking, she will know no man. ”

“ The Legations grouped around the hotel are triply guarded. The shift, shift, shift of soldiers' feet as they march the streets rubs my nerves like sandpaper.
Rest and sleep are impossible. We seem constantly on the edge of a precipice, over which, were we to go, the fate awaiting us would reduce the tortures of Hades to pin-pricks. The Revolutionists have the railroads, the bandits the rivers. Yet, if I don't reach Japan in twelve days now, I will be too late. Poor Sada San! ”

“ In most things the begoggled lady was a visionary with a theory that if you don't talk about a thing it does not exist; and like most of her kind she swept the disagreeables into a dust heap and made for the high places where all was lovely. And yet she had toiled with the girl through all the difficulties of the Japanese language; and, to give her a musical education, had pinched to the point of buying one hat in eight years!
Now it is all done and Sada is launched on the high seas of life with a pleasure-house for a home and an unscrupulous Uncle with unlimited authority for a chaperon. ”

“ The disillusioner is seldom forgiven. I do not know what plans are being worked out behind Uncle's lowered eyelids. But I do know his idea of duty does not include keeping such a valuable asset as a bright and beautiful niece hid away for his solitary joy. In fact, he would consider himself a neglectful and altogether unkind relative if he did not marry Sada off to the very best advantage to himself. In the name of all the Orient, what else is there to do with a girl, and especially one whose blood is tainted with that of the West? ”

“ Blessed Sada! Only the cocksureness of youth made her blind to the check her enthusiasm was meant to receive in the first encounter of the new life. She had always met people on equal terms, most men falling easy victims. She was blissfully ignorant that Mura, by directing his conversation to me, meant to convey to her that well-bred girls in this enchanted land lowered their eyes and folded their hands when they talked in the presence of a MAN, if they dared to talk at all. ”

“ He stayed right where he was. All right, old Uncle, thought I, if stay you will, then I shall use all a woman's power to beguile you and a woman's wit to out-trick you, so I can make you show your hand. It is going to be a game with the girl as the prize. It is also going to be like playing leap-frog with a porcupine. He has cunning and authority to back him, and I have only my love for Sada.
For a time I talked at random, directing my whole conversation to him as the law demands. By accident, or luck, I learned that the weak point in his armor of polite reserve was color prints. ”

“ The boatmen on the silvery river, who always wave their head rags in salute, the women hoeing in the fields with babies on their backs, stop long enough to say good day and good luck. The laughing red-cheeked coolie girls pause in their work of driving piles for the new bridge to have a little talk about the wonders of a foreigner's head. With bated breath they watch while I give them proof that my long hatpins do not go straight through my skull.
The sunny greetings of multitudes of children lift the shadows from the darkest day, and always there is the glorious scenery ”

“ And, Mate, the first thing the looters do when they enter a house is to snatch down the telephones and take them out to burn; for, as one rakish bandit explained, they were the talking-machines of the foreign devils and, if left, might reveal the names of the looters!
High-born ladies with two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. ”

“ So would Jack. And both would say it is unworthy. That's just it. It is the measly little unworthies that nag one to desperation. Besides, Mate, I shrink from any more trouble, any more heart-aches as I would from names. The terror of the by-gone years creeps over me and covers the present like a pall.
There is only one thing left to do. Work. Work and dig, till there is not an ounce of strength left for worry. I stay in the kindergarten every available minute. The unstinted friendship of the kiddies over there, is the heart's-ease for so many of life's hurts. ”

“ My temperature took a tumble when I saw proofs of a hard and fast marriage ceremony, signed and counter-signed by a missionary brother who meant business.
You say it is a sordid tale? Mate, I know a certain spot in this Land of Blossoms, where only foreigners are laid to rest, which bears testimony to a hundred of its kind—strange and pitiful destinies begun with high and brilliant hopes in their native land; and when illusions have faded, the end has borne the stamp of tragedy, because suicide proved the open door out of a life of failure and exile. ”

“ A break in happiness is sometimes hard to mend. The blossom does not return to the tree after the storm, no matter how beautiful the sunshine; and the awful fear of the faintest echo of past sorrow made my heart as numb as a snowball. To the old terror of loneliness was added fear for Jack's safety. ”

“ The possibilities of Japanese women are amazing even to one who thinks he knows them. They look as if made for decoration only, and with a flirt of their sleeves they bring out a surprise that turns your ideas a double somersault. Here they were, laughing and chatting like a bunch of fresh schoolgirls for whom life was one long holiday. ”

“ The trouble is she may fall in love with him, and it is altogether unnecessary for any other woman to get her feelings disturbed over Jack.
I fail to see the force of his argument that it is not safe nor wise for any woman in that country, and yet for him to show wild enthusiasm over the presence of the Britisher. No, Jack has lost his head over intellect. It may take a good sharp blow for him to realize that intellect, pure and simple, is an icy substitute for love. Like most men he is so deadly sure of one, he is taking a holiday with the other. ”

“ The way the mob and the soldier-bandits got into the city is a story that makes any tale of the Arabian Nights fade away into dull myth.
Some years ago a Manchu official, high in command, espied a beautiful flower-girl on the street and forthwith attached her as his private property. So great was her fascination, the tables were turned and he became the slave—till he grew tired. He not only scorned her, but he deserted her. Though a Manchu maid, the Revolution played into her tapering fingers the opportunity for the sweetest revenge that ever tempted an almond-eyed beauty. ”

“ There was a tradition that once in the long ago a missionary and his wife lived in the village. Through an awful epidemic of cholera they stuck to their posts, nursed and cared for the people. Their only child was the price they paid for their constancy. To each generation the story had been told, and through all the years faithful watch had been kept over the little enclosure. Now it was all a-glimmer with lanterns shaped like birds and butterflies. ”

“ Mate, I heard a missionary speak a profound truth, when he said that no Japanese would ever be worth while till all his relatives were dead. Their power is a chain forged around individual freedom.
She had such loving thoughts of Uncle, Sada sobbed, before she came. She longed to make his home happy and be one of his people. She loved the beautiful country of her mother and craved its friendship.
Miss West had drilled it into her conscience that marriage was holy, and impossible without love. (Bless you, Susan!) ”

“ Every raindrop on the pines was a prism; the mountain a brocade of blossom. To the right Fuji, the graceful, ever lovely Fuji; capricious as a coquette and bewitching in her mystery, with a thumbnail moon over her peak, like a silver tiara on the head of a proud beauty; at her base the last fleecy clouds of the day, gathered like worshipers at the feet of some holy saint. ”

“ Any time you are out of a job and want to overwork all your faculties and a few emotions, try chaperoning a young room-mate answering to the name of Sada San, who is one-half American dash, and the other half the unnamable witchery of a Japanese woman; a girl with the notes of a lark in her voice when she sings to the soft twang of an old guitar. ”

“ But I will not stand by and see the girl, whose very loneliness is a plea, sacrificed without some kind of a struggle to help her. At the present writing I feel about as effective as a February lamb, and every move calls for tact. Wish I had been born with a needle wit instead of a Roman nose! For if Uncle has a glimmer of a suspicion that I would befriend Sada at the cost of his plans, so surely as the river is lost in the sea, Sada would disappear from my world until it was too late for me to lend a hand. ”

“ The pure aristocrats seldom lower the social bars to those of mixed blood. I wonder, Mate, if the ghost of failure, who was her father, could see the inheritance of inevitable suffering he has left his child, what his message would be to those who would recklessly dare a like marriage?
Sada goes to Kioto in the morning. She promises not to show resistance, but to keep quiet and alert, writing me at every opportunity.
I am sure Uncle's delight in securing so rich a prize as Hara will burst forth in a big wedding-feast and many rich clothes for the trousseau. ”

“ You know perfectly well, Mate, Jack does not speak in this frivolous manner of his beloved work. The interpretation is wholly mine. But I dare not be serious over it. I must push any thought of his danger to the further ends of nowhere.
Jack thinks the native doctors have put up a brave fight, but so far the laugh has been all on the side of the frisky germ.
It blasts everything it touches and is most fastidious. Nobody can blame it for choosing as its nesting-place the little soft furred Siberian marmots, which the Chinese hunt for their skin. ”

“ Officials and clerks worked to exhaustion, satisfying demands, hoping to placate the mob and avert the unthinkable results of a riot. Countless soldiers swarmed the streets with fixed bayonets. But the bloodless witch has no claim to one single heart-beat of loyalty from the unpaid wretches who wear the Imperial uniform; and when by simply tying a white handkerchief on their arms they go over in groups of hundreds to the Revolutionists, they are only repaying treachery in its own foul coin.
Though I hate to leave Jack even for an hour, I have to get out each day for some fresh air. ”

“ At night outside the huge pile of brick and stone, inclosing and guarding the city from lawless bandits, life is not worth a whistle. A dismayed little giggle went round the crowd of late tea revelers as we looked up the twenty-five feet of smooth wall topped by heavy battlements. Just when we had about decided that our only chance was to stand on each other's shoulders and try to hack out footholds with a bread knife, some one suggested that we try the effect of college yells on the gentlemen within. ”