I thought that question was too cruel, but Miyo calmly replied: “Young Master, ‘The rust of one’s own sword can be brightened only by one’s own effort.’ I am still paying the penalty of my life mistake.”
Very gravely she went across the room to a big chest and took out a small, flat package. It was a square of purple crêpe bearing our crest. With a serious face she unfolded it, showing a brocade charm bag such as we children used to wear to hold the paper blessing of the priest. The gold threads were a little ravelled and the heavy scarlet cord mellowed with age.
Miyo lifted it reverently to her forehead.
“The Honourable Mistress gave it to me,” she said to Brother, “the night she let my lover and me through the water gate. It held square silver coins—all that I needed.”
“Ah!” Brother exclaimed excitedly, “I know! I was a little boy. It was dark and I saw her coming back alone, carrying a lantern. But I never understood what it meant.”
Miyo hesitated a moment; then she told us.
When she was employed in our house, she was very young, and because she was the sister of Father’s faithful Jiya, she was allowed much freedom. A youthful servant, also of our house, fell in love with her. For young people to become lovers without the sanction of proper formalities was a grave offence in any class, but in a samurai house hold it was a black disgrace to the house. The penalty was exile through the water gate—a gate of brush built over a stream and never used except by one of the eta, or outcast, class. The departure was public, and the culprits were ever after shunned by everyone. The penalty was unspeakably cruel, but in the old days severe measures were used as a preventive of law-breaking.
Mother always rigidly obeyed every law of the household, but she saved Miyo from public disgrace by taking the lovers quietly, at midnight, and herself opening the big swinging gate for them to pass. No one ever knew the truth.
“It is said,” concluded Miyo sadly, “that the hearts of those who pass the water gate are purified by the gods; but even so, the penalty of a lawbreaker can never be evaded. In secret I have paid the penalty, and my children were saved from disgrace by the heavenly kindness of the Honourable Mistress of the Inagaki.”
We all sat quiet for a moment. Then Brother said bitterly:
“The Honourable Mistress of the Inagaki was many times more merciful to the servants of her household than to her one and only son.”
Impatiently he pushed his cushion aside and abruptly said good night.
The next morning our road wound along the side of a mountain stream awkwardly threading its way through a series of angular gullies, finally ending abruptly in a swift, sloping leap into a wide, shallow river, which we crossed on a boat poled by coolies. This river was the scene of one of Jiya’s most exciting stories. Father, on one of his hurried trips to Tokyo, had found it flooded and had ordered his coolies to place his palanquin on a platform and carry it on their heads through the whirling waves to the opposite shore. One man was drowned.
As our jinrikishas rolled along I thought of how often Father had gone over that road amidst the state and pomp of old Japan; and now his two dear ones—his eldest and his youngest—were following the same path in rented jinrikishas, simply garbed and with no attendants except a wheezy old coolie with a baggage horse. How strange it seemed.
At last we reached Takasaki—the place from which the celebrated “land steamer” started on its puffing way to Tokyo. That was the first time that I ever saw a railway train. It looked to me like a long row of little rooms, each with a narrow door opening on to the platform.
It was late in the afternoon, and I was so weary that I have little recollection of anything except a scolding from Brother, because I, feeling that I was entering some kind of a house, stepped out of my wooden shoes, leaving them on the platform. Just before the train started, they were handed in at the window by an official whose special duty it was to gather all the shoes from the platform before the starting of every train. I went to sleep at once, and the next thing I knew we were in Tokyo.
XIII
Foreigners
My Tokyo relatives had arranged for me to live with them and attend a celebrated school for girls, where English was taught by a man who had studied in England. This I did for several months, but my brother was not satisfied. The girls were required to give much attention to etiquette and womanly accomplishments; and since my uncle lived in a stately mansion, a great part of my time at home was occupied with trifling formalities. Brother said that I was receiving the same useless training that had been given him, and, since I was to live in America, I must have a more practical education.
Once more my poor brother was totally misunderstood by our kindred on account of his stubborn opposition to all advice; but finally Father’s old friend, Major Sato, suggested a mission school that his wife had attended and which bore the reputation of being the best girls’ school for English in Japan. This pleased Brother and, since it was a rule of the school that each pupil should have a resident guardian, Major Sato accepted the responsibility and it was arranged that, until the beginning of the next term, some weeks away, I should be a member of the Sato household. Major Sato’s wife was a quiet, gentle lady, unassuming in manner, but with a hidden strength of character most unusual. Having no daughter, she accepted me as her own and in numberless
