xt71vh5cc82c https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt71vh5cc82c/data/mets.xml Little, Frances, 1863-1941. 1915  books b92-224-31182838 English Century, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. House of the misty star  : a romance of youth and hope and love in old Japan / by Frances Little (Fannie Caldwell Macaulay) text House of the misty star  : a romance of youth and hope and love in old Japan / by Frances Little (Fannie Caldwell Macaulay) 1915 2002 true xt71vh5cc82c section xt71vh5cc82c 













  The House
of the Misty Star

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She quickly walked across the burning coal



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      The House

of the Misty Star
     A ROMANCE OF YOUTH AND
     HOPE AND LOVE IN OLD JAPAN


                By
          Frances Little
          (Fannie Caldwell Macaulay)
    Author of "The Lady of the Decoration," etc.



  New York
The Century Co.
     1915

 



























     Copyright, i915, by
     THE CENTURY CO.

     Copyright, 1914, 1iq5, by
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY


   Published, April, I9i5

 
































TO A FAITHFUL, FRIEND
  NUI SHIOME
       OF
     TOKIO.

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                CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                      PAGE
   I ENTER JANE GRAY . .3. . . . . . . . . 3
   II KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS . . . . . . . .     i6
   IIIZURA  . .  . . . . . . .  . . ..  . . . 32
   IV JANE GRAY BRINGS HOME A MAN . . .     55
   V A CALL AND AN INVITATION  . . . . . . . 70
   VI ZURA WINGATE'S VISIT . . . . . . . . . 85
 VII AN INTERRUPTED DINNER . . . . . . . . 95
 VIII MR. CHALMERS SEES THE GARDEN AND HEARS
       THE TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
  IX JANE HOPES; KISHIMOTO DESPAIRS .  .   125
  X ZURA GOES TO THE FESTIVAL .   . . .   138
  XI A BROKEN SHRINE . . . . . . . . .      147
  XII A DREAM COMES TRUE. . .    ... . . .   I58
  XIII A THANKSGIVING DINNER . . . . .        174
  XIV WHAT THE SETTING SUN REVEALED  . . . .190
  XV PINKEY CHALMERS CALLS AGAIN .  . .  . 203
  XVI ENTER KOBU, THE DETECTIVE. .   .. . .   218
XVII A VISIT TO THE KENCHO. . .  .. . . .   235
XVIII A VISITOR FROM AMERICA . . . . . . . . 243
XIX "THE END OF THE PERFECT DAY'" . . . .  260

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       LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

She quickly walked across the burning coal . Frontispiece
                                                   PAGE
Through the sinister shadows of Flying Sparrow Street . 13

Zura Wingate advanced to my lowly seat on the floor, and
   listlessly put out one hand to greet me . . . . . 39

The bowing, bending, and indrawing of breath  . . . 75

Page started forward. A sound stopped him  . . . . 113

" God in Heaven. How can I tell her! ... . . . . . 187

"Oh, God! A thief! It's over! "   . . . . . . . 245

Oh! boy, boy, I thought I 'd lost you . . . . . . . 263

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The House



of the Misty



S t a r

  








           The House

     of the Misty Star


                      I

              ENTER JANE GRAY

IT must have been the name that made me take
   that little house on the hilltop. It was mostly
view, but the title -supplemented by the very
low rent -suggested the first line of a beautiful
poem.
  Nobody knows who began the custom or when,
but for unknown years a night-light had been kept
burning in a battered old bronze lantern swung just
over my front door. Through the early morning
mists the low white building itself seemed made of
dreams; but the tiny flame, slipping beyond the low
curving eaves, shone far at sea and by its light the
Japanese sailors, coming around the rocky Tongue
of Dragons point in their old junks, steered for
                      3

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



home and rest. To them it was a welcome beacon.
They called the place " The House of the Misty
Star."
  In it for thirty years I have toiled and taught
and dreamed. From it I have watched the ships
of mighty nations pass - some on errands of peace;
some to change the map of the world. Through its
casements I have seen God's glory in the sunsets
and the tenderness of His love in the dawns. The
pink hills of the spring and the crimson of the
autumn have come and gone, and through the
carved portals that mark the entrance to my home
have drifted the flotsam and jetsam of the world.
They have come for shelter, for food, for curiosity
and sometimes because they must, till I have earned
my title clear as step-mother-in-law to half the waifs
and strays of the Orient.
  Once it was a Chinese general, seeking safety
from a mob. Then it was a fierce-looking Russian
suspected as a spy and, when searched, found to
be a frightened girl, seeking her sweetheart among
the prisoners of war. The high, the low, the meek,
and the impertinent, lost babies, begging pilgrims
and tailless cats -all sooner or later have found
their way through my gates and out again, barely
touching the outer edges of my home life. But
                       4

 


ENTER JANE GRAY



things never really began to happen to me, I mean
things that actually counted, until Jane Gray came.
After that it looked as if they were never going to
stop.
  You see I 'd lived about fifty-eight years of solid
monotony, broken only by the novelty of coming
to Japan as a school teacher thirty years before
and, although my soul yearned for the chance to
indulge in the frills of romance, opportunity to do
so was about the only thing that failed to knock at
my door. From the time I heard the name of
Ursula Priscilla Jenkins and knew it belonged to
me, I can recall but one beautiful memory of my
childhood. It is the face of my mother in its frame
of poke bonnet and pink roses, as she leaned over to
kiss me good-by. I never saw her again, nor my
father. Yellow fever laid heavy tribute upon our
southern United States. I was the only one left
in the big house on the plantation, and my old
black nurse was the sole survivor in the servants'
quarters. She took me to an orphan asylum in a
straggly little southern town where everything from
river banks to complexions was mud color.
  Bareness and spareness were the rule, and when
the tall, bony, woman manager stood near the yel-
low-brown partition, it took keen eyes to tell just
                        5

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



where her face left off and the plaster began. She
did not believe in education. But I was born with
ideas of my own and a goodly share of ambition.
I learned to read by secretly borrowing from the
wharf master a newspaper or an occasional maga-
zine which sometimes strayed off a river packet.
Then I paid for a four years' course at a neigh-
boring semi-college by working and by serving the
other students. I did everything - from polishing
their shoes to studying their lessons for them; it
earned me many a penny and a varied knowledge
of human nature. But nothing ever happened to
me as it did to the other girls. I never had a holi-
day; I was never sick; I never went to a circus;
and I never even had a proposal.
  One night I went to church and heard a mission-
ary from Japan speak. My goodness! how that
man could say words! His appeal for workers to
go to the Flowery Kingdom was as convincing as
the hump on his nose, as irresistible as the fire in
his eyes. The combination ended in my coming as
a teacher to the eager Nipponese, who were all
athirst for English. Japan I knew was a country
all by itself. and not a slice off of China; that it
raised rice, kimonos and heathen. Otherwise it
was only a place on the map. Whatever the new
                       6

 


             ENTER JANE GRAY

country might hold, at least, I thought, it would
open a door that would lead me far away from the
drab world in which I lived.
  My appointment led me to the little city of Hiji-
yama, overlooking the magical Inland Sea. It is
swung in the cleft of a mountain like a clustered
jewel tucked in the folds of a giant velvet robe. It
is a place of crumbling castles and lotus-filled moats.
Here progress hesitated before the defiant breath of
the ancient gods. For centuries a city of content,
whispers of greater things finally reached the listen-
ing ears of eager youth, fired ambition, demandtd
things foreign, especially the English language, and
I came in on this great wave.
  I found near contentment and sober joy in my
work and my beautiful old garden. But deep down
in my heart I was waiting, ever waiting, for some-
thing to happen -something big, stirring, and tre-
mendous, something romantic and poetical; but it
never did. Year after year I wore the groove of
my life deeper, but never slipped out of it, and one
day was so like another it was hard to believe that
even a night separated them.
  Then without the slightest warning the change
came. One day in my mail I found a letter from
a student which read as follows:
                        7

 



THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



0! Most Respected Teacher.
  How it was our great pleasure to write your noble per-
sonage. When I triumphed to my native home after
speaking last lesson before your honorable face, my
knowledge was informed by rumors of gossip that in most
hateful place in city of Hijiyama was American lady.
She wear name of Miss Jaygray. Who have affliction of
kind heart and very bad health. Also she have white hair
and no medicine. Street she live in have also Japanese
gentlemans what kill and steal and even lie. Very bad
for lady who have nice thought for gentlemans, and speak
many words about Christians God. Now not one word
can she speak. Her sicker too great. Your great coun-
try say "Unions is strong and we stand together till
divided by falling out." Please union with lady coun-
tryman and also divide. She very tired. I think little
hungry too.
                                   Yours verily
                                           TAKATA.
  (Some little more.) Go down House of Flying-Spar-
row Street and discover Tube-Rose Lane. There maybe
you see policeman. He whistle his two partner. Hand
in hand they show you bad gentlemens street where lives
sick ladys mansion.

  I hastened at once to the succor of my sick coun-
trywoman. The way led through streets obscure
and ill-kept, the inhabitants covertly seeking shelter
as the policemen and I approached. It was a sec-
                          8

 


            ENTER JANE GRAY

tion I knew to be the rendezvous of outcasts of
this and neighboring cities. It was a place where
the bravest officer never went alone. For making
a last stand for the right to their pitiful sordid lives,
the criminals herded together in one desperate band
when danger threatened any of the brotherhood.
The very stillness of the streets bespoke hidden
iniquity. Every house presented a closed front.
Surely, I thought, ignorance of conditions could be
the only excuse for any woman of any creed choos-
ing to live in such surroundings as these.
  In the cleanest of the hovels I found Iliss Gray,
her middle-aged figure shrunken to the proportions
of a child. There was no difficulty in finding the
cause of her illness. She was half-starved. Her
reason for being in that section was as senseless
as it was mistaken, except to one whose heart had
been fired by a passion for saving souls. After
being revived by a stimulant from my emergency
kit, she told me her name, which I already knew,
that she was an American and her calling that
of a missionary. I thought I knew every type
of the profession and I was proud to call many
of them my friends, but Miss Gray was an orig-
inal model, peculiar in quality and indefinite in pat-
tern.
                       9

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



  " Does your Mission Board give you permission
to live in a place or fashion like this " I asked
sternly.
  " Have n't any Board," she answered weakly.
"I 'm an Independent."
  "Independent what " I demanded.
  "Independent Daughter of Hope."
  Her appearance was a libel on any variety of in-
dependence and a joke on hope, but I waited for
the rest of the story.
  She said that the Order to which she belonged
was not large. She was one of a small band of
women bound by a solemn oath to go where they
could and seek to help and uplift fallen humanity
by living the life of the native poor. She had
chosen Japan because it was "so pretty and po-
etical." She had worked her way across the Pacific
as stewardess on a large steamer, and had landed
in Hijiyama a few months before with enough cash
to keep a canary bird in delicate health for a month.
Her enthusiasm was high, her zeal blazed. If only
her faith were strong enough to stand the test, her
need for food and clothing would be supplied from
somewhere. " Now," she moaned, " something has
happened. Maybe my want of absolute trust
brought me to it. I 'm sick and hungry and I 've
                      I0

 


             ENTER JANE GRAY

failed. Oh! I wanted to help these sweet people;
I wanted to save their dear souls."
  I was skeptical as to this special brand of philan-
thropy, but I was touched by the grief of her dis-
appointed hopes. I knew the particular sting. At
the same time my hand twitched to shake her for
going into this thing in so impractical a way.
Teaching and preaching in a foreign land may in-
clude romance, but I 've yet to hear where the most
enthusiastic or fanatical found nourishment or in-
spiration on a diet of visions pure and simple.
While there must be something worth while in a
woman who could starve for her belief, yet in the
eyes of the one before me was the look of a trust-
ing child who would never know the practical side
of life any more than she would believe in its ugli-
ness. It was not faith she needed. It was a guard-
ian.
  " Maybe I had better die," she wailed. " Dead
missionaries are far too few to prove the glory of
the cause."
  I suggested that live ones could glorify far more
than dead ones, and told her that I was going to
take her home with me and put strength into her
body and a little judgment into her head, if I could.
  She broke out again. "Oh, I cannot go! I
                        ITI

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



must stay here! If work is denied me, maybe it
is my part to starve and prove my faith by selling
my soul for the highest price."
  Although I was to learn that this was a favorite
expression of Miss Gray's, the meaning of which
she never made quite clear to me, that day it sounded
like the melancholy mutterings of hunger. For
scattering vapors of pessimism, and stirring up
symptoms of hope, I'd pin my faith to a bowl of
thick hot soup before I would a book full of ser-
mons.
  Without further argument I called to some coolies
to come with a " kago," a kind of lie-down-sit-up
basket swung from a pole, and in it we laid the
weak, protesting woman.
  The men lifted it to their shoulders and the lit-
tle procession, guarded fore and aft by a policeman,
moved through the sinister shadows of Flying
Sparrow street to the clearer heights of " The
House of the Misty Star."
  Long training had strengthened, and association
had verified my unshakable belief that the most
essential quality of the very high calling of a mis-
sionary, is an unlimited supply of consecrated corn-
monsense. So far, not a vestige of it had I dis-
covered in the devotee I was taking to my home,
                      12

 






















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            ENTER JANE GRAY

but Jane Gray was as full of surprises as she was
of sentiment.
  She not only stayed in my house, but with her
coming the spell of changeless days was broken.
It was as if her thin hand held the charm by which
my door of opportunity was flung wide, and
through it I saw my garden of dreams bursting into
flower.



'5

 









II



             RISHIMOTO SAN CALLS

I HAD always been dead set against taking a
    companion permanently into my home. For
one reason I heeded the warning of the man who
made the Japanese language. To denote " peace "
he drew a picture of a roof with a woman under
it. Evidently being a gentleman of experience, he
expressed the word " trouble " by adding another
person of the same sex to the picture without chang-
ing the size of the roof.
  Then, too, there was my cash account to settle
with. Ever since I 'd been drawing a salary from
the National Education Board of Missions, I felt
like apologizing to the few feeble figures that stared
accusingly at me from my small ledger, for the de-
mands I made upon them for charity, for sickness,
and for entertainment of all who knocked at my
door.
  My classes were always crowded, but there were
times when the purses of my students were more
                       i6

 

KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



lean than their bodies. Frequently such an one
looked at me and said, " Moneys have all flewed
away from my pockets. Only have vast consum-
ing fire for learning." It being against my prin-
ciple to see anybody consumed while I had a rin,
there was nothing to do but make up to the Board
what I had failed to collect.
  These circumstances caused me to hesitate risk-
ing the peace of my household, or putting one more
responsibility on my purse.
  Then sweet potatoes decided me. It was a mat-
ter of history that famine, neither wide-spread nor
local, ever gained a foothold where " Satsuma
Emo" flourished. This year they were fatter and
cheaper than ever before. I knew dozens of ways
to fix them, natural and disguised; so I bought an
extra supply and made up my mind to keep Jane
Gray.
  The little missionary thrived in her new environ-
ment as would a drooping plant freshly potted. As
she grew stronger, she hinted at trying once again
to live in her old quarters, that she might fast and
work and pray for her sinners. I promptly sup-
pressed any plans in that direction.
  After all, I had been a lonelier woman than I
realized, and Jane was like a kitten with a bell
                       I7

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



around its neck -one grows used to its playing
about the house and misses it when gone. She also
resembled a fixed star in her belief that she had
been divinely appointed to carry a message of hope
to the vilest of earth, and I felt that the same power
had charged me with the responsibility of impressing
her with a measure of commonsense.
  So we compromised for a while at least. She
would stay with me, and I would not interfere with
her work in the crime section, nor give way to re-
marks on the subject.
  I was sure the conditions in the Quarter would
prove impossible, but as some people cannot be con-
vinced unless permitted to draw their own diagram
of failure, it was best for her to try when she was
able to make the effort.
  The making of an extra room in a Japanese house
is only a matter of shifting a paper screen or so
into a ready-made groove. It took me some time
to decide whether I should screen off Jane in the
corner that commanded a full view of the wonder-
ful sea, or at the end where by sliding open the
paper doors she could step at once into the fairy
land of my garden.
  Jane decided it herself. I discovered her
stretched in an old wheel-chair before the open

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



doors, looking into the sun-flooded greenery of the
garden, and heard her softly repeating,

           "Fair as plumes of dreams
              In a land
           Where only dreams come true,
           And flutes of memory waken
              Longings forgotten."

  Any one who felt that way about my garden had
a right to live close to it.
  In half an hour Jane was established. My en-
thusiasm waned a bit the next day when I found
all the pigeons in the neighborhood fluttering about
the open door, fearlessly perching on the invalid's
lap and shoulders while she fed them high-priced
rice and dainty bits of dearly-bought chicken.
  I dispersed the pigeons with a flap of my apron
and with forced mildness protested. " I 'm obliged
to ask you to be less generous. The price of rice
is higher than those pigeons can fly and, as for
chicken, it's about ten sen a feather. There's
abundant food for you; but we cannot afford to
feed all the fowls of the air."
  "Oh! dear Miss Jenkins, I couldn't drive them
away. The cunning things! Every coo they ut-
tered sounded like a love word."
                       I9

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



  I hoped it was the patient's physical weakness,
and not a part of her nature.
  I could not possibly survive a steady diet of
emotion so tender that it bubbled over at the flutter
of a pigeon's wing.
  I 'd brought it on myself, however, and I was de-
termined to share my home and my life with Jane
Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with
the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor ex-
cuse of a body seemed the last place power of
any kind would choose for a habitation. I was
not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my
companion, but from the day of her arrival unusual
events popped up to speak for themselves.
  A nearby volcano, asleep for half a century, blew
off its cap, covering land and sea with ashes and
fiery lava. All my pink roses bloomed weeks earlier
than they had any business to, and for the first time
in years my old gardener got drunk. Between
dashes of cold water on his head he tearfully wailed
my unexpressed sentiments, in part:
  "Too many damfooly things happen all same
time. Evil spirit get loose. Sake help me fight.
Me nice boy. Mle ve'y good boy but I no like for-
eign devil what is."
  Then one day, about a month after my family
                       20

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



had been enlarged, I had just wheeled my newly
acquired responsibility out in the garden to sun
when Kishimoto San called. He often came for
consultation. While his chief interest in life was
to keep Hijiyama strictly Japanese and rigidly
Buddhist, he was also superintendent of schools for
his district and educational matters gave us a com-
mon interest. However, the late afternoon was
an unusual hour for him to appear and one glance
at his face showed trouble of a personal nature had
drawn heavy lines in his mask of calmness. I had
known Kishimoto San for twenty years. Part of
him I could read like a primer; the other part was
a sealed volume to which I doubt if even Buddha
had the key. Sometimes when he was calling I
wished Gabriel would appear in my doorway and
announce the end of the world to see, if without
omitting a syllable, Kishimoto would keep on to the
end of the last phrase in the greeting prescribed
for the occasion.
  The ceremony off his mind, he sat silent, unre-
sponsive to the openings I tried to make for a be-
ginning. Not till I had exhausted small talk of
current events and asked after his family in par-
ticular instead of his ancestors in general, did his
tongue loosen.
                       21

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



  Then the floodgates of his pent-up emotion
opened and forth poured a torrent of anger, dis-
appointment, and outraged pride. I had never be-
fore seen a man so shaken, but then I had n't seen
many, much less one with the red blood of Daimyos
in his veins. He was a man whose soul dwelt in
the innermost place of a citadel built of ancient
beliefs and traditions.
  Out of the unchecked flood of denunciation, I
learned that he held Christianity responsible for his
woes. I, as a believer and an American, must hear
what he thought; as his friend I must advise him
if I could.
  In the twenty years that I had known the school
superintendent, he had always been reserved re-
garding his personal and family life. To me his
home was a vague, blurred background in which
possible members of his family moved. He sur-
prised me this day by referring in detail to the bit-
ter grief which had come to him in years gone by
through his only child.
  I had heard the story outside, but not even re-
motely had Kishimoto San ever before hinted that
he possessed a child. I knew his need for help must
be imperative, that the wound was torn afresh,
else he was too good a Buddhist to make " heavy
                      22

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



the ears of a friend" with a recital of his own
sorrows.
  He said he had been most ambitious for his
daughter. Years ago he had sent her to Yoko-
hama to study English and music. While there the
girl lived with his sister who had absorbed many
new ideas regarding liberty for women. Once he
was absent from Japan and without his knowledge
the girl married an American artist, Harold Win-
gate by name, and went with him to his country
to live.
  Kishimoto San had not seen her since her mar-
riage until lately. He had honorably prayed that
he never would. Some weeks before she had re-
turned to Hijiyama practically penniless, which was
bad, and a widow, which made it very difficult to
marry her off again; but worse still was the half-
breed child she had brought with her, a daughter
of about seventeen. This girl, whose name was
Zura, I soon found was the sore spot in Kishi-
moto San's grievance, the center around which his
storm of trouble brewed.
  It was like pouring oil on flames when I asked
particularly about the girl.
  Though he could speak English that was quite
understandable, he broke loose in Japanese hardly
                      23

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



translatable. " She is a wild, untamed barbarian.
She has neither manners nor modesty, and not only
dares openly to scorn the customs of my country
and religion, but defies my commands, my author-
ity."
  Knowing him as I did, I thought it must indeed
be a free, wild spirit to meet the blow of Kishimoto
San's will and not be crushed by the impact. My
interest in the girl increased in proportion to his
vehemence. I ventured to ask for details. They
came in a torrent.
  " It is not our custom for young girls to go on
the street unattended. I forbade her going. Deaf
to my orders, she strays about the streets alone and
dares to sail her own sampan. She handles it as
deftly as a common fisherman. She goes to out-
of-the-way places and there remains till it suits her
impudence to return to my house. In the hours of
the night she disturbs my meditations by sobbing
for her home and her father. She romps on the
highways with street children, who follow her as
they would a performing monkey."
  " But surely," I mildly interposed, " it is no great
breach of custom to play with children. Your
granddaughter is doubtless lonely and it may give
her pleasure."
                       24

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



  The face of my visitor stiffened.
  " Pleasure! " he repeated. " Does she not know
that a woman's only pleasure is obedience Is
there not enough of my blood in her to make her
bow to the law Twice she has told me to attend
to my own affairs! Told me! Her ancestor!
Her Master! " This last word he always pro-
nounced with a capital M.
  Kishimoto San was not cruel. Unlike many of
his countrymen, who are educated by modern meth-
ods as regarding laws governing women, he was
still an old-time Oriental in the raw.
  It was at this uncomfortable moment that the lit-
tle maid brought in tea. I instructed her to serve
it on the balcony which overlooked sea and moun-
tain. The appealing beauty of the scene always
soothed me as a lullaby would a restless child. I
hoped as much for my disturbed visitor. I gave
him his second cup of tea, and asked him whether
the mother could not control her daugther. It set
him going.
  " Her mother! " he scoffed. " Madam, if her
mother had been blest with the backbone of a jelly-
fish she would never have married a man whose
people were not her people, whose customs are as
far removed from hers as the East is from the
                      25

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



West. My daughter was young. Had she mar-
ried one of her own country, all would have been
well. Her will would have been directed by her
mother-in-law. She was trained to obedience. See
what the teachings of your country do to our
women! In a letter she wrote telling me she had
gone, she thanked me for teaching her the laws
of submission. It helped her to bow to the com-
mands of this man when he bade her marry him,
and she loved him! Love! as if that had anything
to do with marriage. Now comes the result of this
accursed union -a troublesome girl who is neither
one thing nor the other, who laughs at the customs
of my country and upsets the peace of my house,
who boldly declares she is an American. She need
not herald it. In dress and manners she wears the
marks of her training."
  I offered no comment, but every moment served
to deepen my interest in this girl who could defy
a will which had ruled a whole island for half a
century.
  My silence seemed to irritate him. He turned
fiercely upon me.
  " Tell me, what kind of girls does America pro-
duce What is your boasted freedom for women
but license Is their place never taught them
                      26

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



Have they no understanding of the one great law
for women"
  I had been absent from my country many long
years, and while neither the best nor the worst had
come my way, America was my country, her peo-
ple my people, and they stood to me for all that was
great and honorable and righteous. The implica-
tion of Kishimoto's question annoyed me all the
more, because I knew him to be a keen observer and
not hasty in his conclusions.
  " Softly, Kishimoto San. You answered your
own question a few moments ago. The customs
of the two countries are as wide apart as the East
is from the West. Tastes differ in manners as well
as religion. If there are things in America that do
not please you, so there are many laws in Japan that
are repugnant to Americans. You are unjust to
hold my country responsible for your woes."
  " But I do hold it responsible. My granddaugh-
ter comes of its teaching. I meditate what kind of
religion it is that permits a girl to question her
elder's authority and to defy the greatest of laws,
filial piety. What manner of a country is it where
custom grants liberty to a girl that she may roam
the streets and sit in a public garden alone with a
man!"
                      27

 


THE HOUSE OF THE MISTY STAR



  This last was indeed serious. In my day and in
my town it could be done if the girl were so for-
tunate as to have something that stood for a male
cousin. But neither then nor now was it permis-
sible in a land of man-made laws for men. Unless
it was between husband and wife, private conversa-
tion, or a promenade just for two branded the par-
ticipants as bold, possibly evil.
  I asked for further details. Kishimoto San said
the young man was a minor officer on the steamer
by which his granddaughter and her mother had
crossed the Pacific. He thought he was an Amer-
ican. \Vhenever the ship coaled in a nearby port,
the young chap communicated with the girl and
together they walked and talked.
  The plain facts after all sounded harmless and
innocent. WVhat more natural than for a lonely
girl to seek for pastime the company of a youth of
her own kind But it could not be - not in Japan;
though as innocent as two baby kittens playing on
the green, it would bring shame upon the girl and
the family, which no deed of heroism would ever
erase from local history. Something must be done;
I asked Kishimoto San how I could be of assist-
ance.
  "I have been consulting with myself," he re-
                      28

 


KISHIMOTO SAN CALLS



plied in English. " Would you grant me permis-
sion to send her to you daily as a student Be-
sides her strange ways, she talks in strange Eng-
lish. I cannot find the same in any conversation
book. Her whole being has need of reconstruc-
tion."
  I was not in the reconstructing business, but a
young girl in the house meant youth and diversion
and a private pupil meant extra pay. WVhat a lit-
tle extra money would n't do in my house wasn't
worth adding up. In thought I repaired the roof
and bought new legs for the kitchen stove.
  My visitor, mistaking my silence for hesitation,
suggested, " First come and see her. Analyze her
conduct and grant me decision whether she is a
natural, free-born American citizen, as she boasts,
or if the gods have cursed her with a bold spirit.
She is of your country, your religion, if any, and
perhaps you can understand her. I fail to com-
prehend."
  He folded his arms for emphasis. The gleam of
the western sun caught the sheen of his silk kimono
and covered him w