Mr. Carteret and Others by David Gray - HTML preview

 

VI

THE MEDAL OF HONOR STORY

Nature had made Caswell short, swarthy, high cheek-boned, with dark hair and narrow dark eyes, and for ten years he had been sitting at the feet of the Priest of Lake Biwa, dressing as the Japanese dress, leading their life, and thinking as far as an Occidental may their thought. In these ten years the inscrutable expression of the East had begun to dawn in his eyes. His cheek-bones grew more prominent. His nose had begun to flatten. He was a text for those who hold that the soul makes the face. He could also sit upon the floor with his feet tucked under him for indefinite periods, so that it was not strange that among the Japanese he often passed as Nipon Jin (Japanese man).

One May morning he was in the Kin-Ka-Kuji, sitting by the water on the lower balcony of the temple, watching the ancient carp as they slowly wove and interwove among the lily stems, waiting to be fed. He often came to the garden in May because the tourists were apt not to be there then, for they desert Kioto when the summer heat has begun, and it was his habit to come early in the day because the beauty of the place renews itself with each morning’s dew and the fragrance of the new flowers, as if in the first hours of the day a woman should be a girl again.

None of Caswell’s friends knew what the esoterism of Biwa was or was not; whether the venerable one with the shriveled, monkey-like face had a sweeter communion with the eternal than others, or was a deceiver, for the disciple never wrote or spoke of his experience, but it was a fact that he had acquired the calmness of the East and that was much, for he had his reasons for desiring peace. After his decade of meditation he could regard the hurryings of men, the catching of trains, and the yoke of small annoyances to which society bends its neck, as one inside watches the buzzing of unclean flies against the pane without.

He opened a book of verses by a Japanese poet and gazed across the little, many-islanded lake, whose surface was a sisterhood of silver pools, each framed in the new green of the young lotus pads. The bamboos on the opposite bank glistened faintly as the intermittent touch of an unfelt, unsuspected breeze stroked their plumes. The air was sweet with pine and the pungent aroma of maples in new foliage, and with perfumes from unseen gardens.

To Caswell each year of the past ten, “More weary seemed the sea, weary the oar.” Of late the decision had been ripening to shut the door forever upon his old world, and that morning a divine approval of his course seemed to float into his soul upon a tide of peace. He closed his eyes for a time; then he opened them with a fresh thirst for the beauty of the place. Suddenly he started, for he heard a voice. It was a woman’s voice, speaking with a cultivated New England intonation, but literal and unsympathetic. His impulse was to flee.

“The temple is called Kin-Ka-Kuji or Roku-onji,” said the voice, evidently reading from a guide-book, “from Kin-Ka-Ku, meaning golden pavilion. In thirteen ninety-seven Yoshimitsu retired from the shogunate—”

“Auntie,” interrupted another voice, “sha’n’t we shut the guide-book? The garden is lovely enough as a garden.”

This was a woman’s voice, too, but soft and young, with low, resonant tones that brought a thrill to the senses as sometimes comes with the breath of a remembered perfume.

Caswell glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw a party of tourists filing toward the temple on the path along the border of the lake. At the head marched a gray-haired woman with a kind but somewhat aggressive countenance. She carried an open guide-book. At her heels was a fat, squat, shaven-headed Japanese boy, the guide. Behind him there was a girl. He had only an instant’s glimpse of her, but he knew that it was the girl that had spoken; lithe, slender, exquisite in white. He looked across the lake again, but he looked without seeing. The garden was full of the sweetness of blue eyes, the softness of fair hair and the loveliness of a girl’s smile.

For a moment it was as if the priest of Biwa had never been. His pulses throbbed, a choking seized his throat. Then the habit of years asserted itself. With an effort of will his mind grew calm and the vision faded. Again he saw the lake, the bamboos upon the opposite shore, the carp in the water weeds at his feet.

“What has the circumstance, the external, to do with the abiding me, the eternal?” he murmured. Then he looked again from the corner of his eye toward the tourists.

She had stopped and was standing by the water’s edge, gazing across toward the other shore. He saw her mild, wondering eyes animated with the delight of the garden, the broad, low brow above them, the lines of a sweet, firm mouth parted in a smile, the gleam of white teeth, and then behind her, what he had not noticed before, a great-framed youth with tow hair and a frank, kindly face bronzed with a tropical sun. And as the girl gazed across the little lake the youth gazed at the girl.

Caswell brought his eyes back to his book of verses. His philosophy suddenly seemed to have grown more effective. He smiled inwardly, for an Occidental sense of humor slumbered in the ashes of his old self. Then he became grave again. “Am I a thistledown upon the breeze?” he muttered. He repeated one of the mental formulas which the Buddhists of his sect used to compose the mind and open its doors to the all-pervasive soul.

The party of tourists came on and mounted the balcony. They passed him before they noticed him, for he was in the corner at the end. The girl looked at the view and the young man furtively watched the girl, but the older woman spied Caswell sitting on the floor with his feet under him, an open book in his lap, gazing stolidly across the lake. Her curiosity was aroused.

“Who is that?” she said to the fat Japanese boy.

The Japanese boy sucked in his breath and bowed low.

“Yais, sank you,” he said laboriously; “he is, what you say, temple man.”

“Do you mean a priest?” asked his interrogator.

“Sank you, ah, no, not priest,” sucking his breath again. “I sink perhaps priest, some day.”

“Be careful, Auntie,” suggested the girl, in a low tone. “You know so many of them speak English.”

“I haven’t said anything to hurt his feelings,” she answered. “It’s no disgrace to be a priest, for they are not exactly like other heathens. Ask him,” she added to the boy, “if he speaks English.”

The boy had often seen Caswell, but he did not know what he was or whence, except that he was a friend of one of the priests. He put the question. Caswell muttered something in Japanese without looking up.

“He say he spek no English.”

“There,” said the aunt, “I knew he couldn’t understand.”

“You speak very well,” said the girl to the Japanese boy.

The fat boy doubled over in a bow, sucked his breath, and beamed. “Ah, no! Sank you,” he said, “sank you ver’ much.”

“Ah, yes,” said the girl, smilingly. “Where did you learn?”

“At Kioto mission school,” he responded.

“So you are going to be a missionary,” said the aunt. “How interesting! You are a good boy.”

“Sank you,” said the boy, “yais, I am temple man boy; some day, perhaps, priest.”

“Buddhist priest?” repeated the aunt in surprise.

The boy sucked his breath and bowed.

The young man laughed quietly.

“I think this is rather extraordinary,” said the aunt.

“It is rather the rule,” said the young man. “The Japanese appreciate our missionary efforts, only they use them in their own way. It is useful to have a temple boy who speaks a little English.”

“Well,” said the aunt, “it ought to be reported or something. I don’t see why the people of America should pay for educating Buddhist priests.”

“Neither do the Japanese,” replied the young man, “only they accept what they regard as our eccentricities without raising questions.”

“The young man seems to be intelligent,” thought Caswell.

The aunt made no reply, but stood meditating for a few moments. Then she opened the guide-book, in which she had her finger at the place.

“In the second story, there are paintings by Kano Masanobi. At the top is the golden pavilion. We can give it half an hour. Take off your shoes,” she added; “we mustn’t waste time.”

She leaned against the rail and extended a foot so that the Japanese boy could remove the shoe.

The young man began unlacing his shoes, but Caswell noticed that the girl stood leaning on the rail. Presently she turned to her aunt.

“I think I’ll not go in,” she said.

The young man stopped unlacing his shoes, and Caswell saw that the girl noticed it.

“But, my dear child,” said her aunt, “what an extraordinary idea! You must!”

“No,” she said, gently but firmly; “if you will let me, I think I should rather wait here. You take Mr. Williams and show him the pictures and explain them to him.”

“But,” said her aunt, “I didn’t bring you to Japan to sit on a dock and look at the water. You could do that at home.”

“Please don’t insist,” said the girl, appealingly.

“But I must insist,” said her aunt. “It’s for your own good.”

“But you see you don’t understand,” said the girl, dropping her voice despairingly.

Her aunt approached her. “Are you ill?” she asked. “Is anything the matter?”

The girl put her arms about her aunt’s neck and whispered something in her ear.

Only one word reached Caswell, though they were close to him. It was the word “stocking.”

The aunt’s face immediately grew severe. The girl blushed and looked down.

Caswell almost laughed. He understood. At least he thought he understood. This exquisite creature had a hole in her stocking.

But the big youth remained immovable, like a crouching statue with a shoe-lacing in his fingers.

“It was thoughtless of you not to have taken care—”

“Please!” said the girl, and she put her hand over her aunt’s mouth.

“Well, it’s your own loss,” said the aunt. “I shall write your mother about it. Come, Mr. Williams,” she added, “we have no time to waste. You know these paintings are by the old masters of Japan.”

The young man hesitated. “I don’t think it is civil to leave you,” he said, clumsily, to the girl.

“It’s her own fault,” said the aunt. “You mustn’t be sorry for her.”

“She is quite right,” said the girl, calmly. “You must go in and see the pictures.”

The aunt went in and the young man followed without a word. He was embarrassed.

The girl turned to the rail again, and leaning on it gazed down into the water at the carp. She seemed contented to be alone, and to have the young man with her aunt. It surprised Caswell.

A few feet away he was sitting on the floor, with his eyes seemingly on the book in his lap. But the page was a blank. He was stealthily watching the movements of the girl. She had come like a message from a far country—a country, after all, his own—and to him the message was what the first smell of the June clover fields is to the city man when he goes back to the farm of his boyhood.

How long he sat in this way, Caswell could not have told, but suddenly he heard a muffled step on the balcony, and he knew that the youth was coming back. He knew, too, that the girl also had heard the step, for he saw the color deepen in the side of her cheek and throat and in her little ear. But she made no move.

“Simple one that I am,” he said to himself. “She knew that he would come.”

The youth made a noise as he took his shoes, and the girl turned.

“Where is auntie?” she asked.

“I left her,” said the youth, coloring. “I should rather be here.”

“It is too bad that you are missing the pictures,” she said.

He shook his head.

“Haven’t you some biscuits to feed to the fish?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “The fat boy provided us.” He felt in his pocket and handed her several wafers of rice flour.

She broke one of them and let the crumbs fall. “They say these fish are very old,” she observed; “hundreds of years, and they come regularly to the balcony to be fed. Think of all the interesting people who have thrown crumbs to them!”

“Can you think of any one as interesting as you?” he said, half playfully.

She made no answer, but continued feeding the carp. “That biggest one,” she observed, “looks very wise. I wonder if he remembers what the Shoguns gave him.”

“Probably all crumbs are very much alike to him,” said the youth.

He finished putting on his shoes and joined her by the rail.

“We ought to take a walk about,” he suggested, after a pause. “There are a number of things to see—the Shogun’s well, the Shogun’s island, and the hill in the distance, the silk hat mountain which he used to have covered with white silk on hot July days so that it would look like snow.”

“The mountain is outside the garden,” said the girl. “It would be too far to go to it. Anyway,” she added, “I don’t think I had better leave the balcony. You see, auntie might come down. Where are you going, after you leave Kioto?” she asked, presently.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “There are two friends of mine in my regiment coming up to get rid of the fever. I may join them and go into the mountains. But I’m so well now that I really have no excuse to stay here much longer.”

“I should think that it would be nice to spend a summer in Japan with brother officers whom you knew well,” she observed.

“Do you?” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Wasn’t it odd,” she continued, after a pause, “that we should meet you out here when we hadn’t seen you for a year and a half, and then on the other side of the world?”

“Yes, it was odd,” he said, but he smiled a little as if to hint that it was not so very odd, if one knew the inside facts.

“Of course, we had heard how you had been wounded,” she went on, slowly, “but we thought you were still in the Philippines.”

“I heard in a letter from home,” he said, “that you expected to come to Japan, but I didn’t know where you were to be.”

She looked down at the carp again and crumbled another biscuit for them. “You promised last night,” she said, “to tell me how you won the Medal of Honor. Will you tell me now?”

Caswell started in spite of himself and looked at the youth with surprise. “Williams!” he said to himself. “That is so; it was a Lieutenant Victor Williams.” He knew the story. Every newspaper on the coast of Asia had printed it. “It is strange,” he thought. “He is only a boy.”

Under the guise of looking into the water, he bent forward intently to listen. He was curious to hear that extraordinary narrative from the young man’s own lips.

“It doesn’t make much of a story,” Williams replied. “The first thing we knew, a lot of hombres got around us and cooped us up in a stone church. Bradshaw, my captain, was knocked over in the first firing.”

“Killed?” she asked.

“Yes!” he said. “After that—” He stopped because they heard her aunt calling his name from the balcony overhead.

“Yes!” he answered. “What is it?”

“I wondered where you had gone,” she called down. “I just missed you.”

“He’s telling me a story,” said the girl, looking up.

“He ought to be seeing these things of Kano Masanobi,” her aunt replied.

“You are awfully good to worry about me,” he said. “My mind isn’t worth it.”

She made no reply and went back into the temple.

“Please go on,” said the girl.

“Where was I?” he said. “Oh, yes, Bradshaw was hit and we were in the church, and that is about all there was to it. We had to stay there till we were relieved.”

“But you were wounded,” she said.

“Yes!” he answered. “It came near being serious, but it really was funny.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You remember,” he said, “the last summer that I was home?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember that I took some snapshots of a lot of you in the sailboat?”

“Yes,” she answered. “It was the day when you climbed part way up the mast and took us in the cockpit. You never sent me any of the prints.”

“Is that so?” he said. “Well, you see most of them turned out badly, but there was one that I found in my kit when I got out to the Islands, and sometimes I used to carry it about in a card-case.” (He put his hand where the left breast-pocket would have been in a khaki blouse.) “In fact, I rather got into the habit of carrying it, as one gets into the habit of carrying a bunch of keys that don’t unlock anything, or a pocket piece. Besides, when it was hot up-country, it was refreshing to have a look at the cool lake and all you people in the boat. Well, when I was hit the bullet came through the left breast-pocket.”

“And went through the picture?” she said.

“That was the funny part of it,” he answered. “When we started on this particular hike—”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“They call any expedition or march a hike.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Well, when we started I took a blouse along, although one generally hikes in a blue shirt like the men.” He paused and she looked at him inquiringly. “But you see,” he went on, “I wore a soiled blouse and carelessly left the card-case at my quarters in a clean one.”

She looked at him with a perplexed expression. “Then the bullet didn’t go through the picture?” she said.

“No, that was the joke on the bullet. Instead of having the picture in my pocket what do you suppose I did have?”

She thought for a moment. “A locket,” she suggested, “or a prayer-book.”

“No,” he said, smiling, “a tooth-brush. The bone handle made the bullet glance so that instead of going through, it went around and did nothing worse than scrape a few ribs.”

She looked at him wonderingly for a moment and then dropped her eyes.

“Would you like to see it?” he asked.

“The tooth-brush,” she queried, “or the bullet?”

“No, the picture,” he said, laughing.

“Yes,” she answered.

He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out a worn leather card-case. He opened it and produced an envelop. From the envelop he took a small, unmounted photograph and handed it to the girl.

She studied it in silence and a smile broke over her face. “Isn’t it funny of Agnes?” she asked. “She doesn’t seem to have any nose.”

“That’s so,” he said. “Do you make out Ann, next to George in the stern sheets?”

They leaned on the rail and bent over the faded print till their heads almost touched.

“That’s Bess next to me in the sweater,” she went on, “and there’s Winkle.”

“Do you remember,” he said, “the boom knocked him overboard just before and he would shake himself on your skirt?”

“Dear little dog!” she murmured. “I don’t think my head came out very well,” she observed, after a pause. “Something must have been the matter with the film or the paper. There’s a smudged spot all over it.”

“The climate is very damp in the Islands,” he said. “Give it back to me.”

Their eyes met as she handed the picture back and she dropped hers. Caswell saw the color stealing into the side of her face again.

She moved a step away and gazed down into the water. “That big carp is getting all the crumbs,” she said.

He handed her another wafer and replaced the picture in his pocket.

There was a long silence. The girl spoke first.

“But what did they give you the Medal of Honor for?” she said, slowly dropping crumbs to the fish.

“That is a question that has puzzled me before,” he answered.

“But you must have done something,” she said.

“Well, there wasn’t anything to eat or drink in the church,” he began, “nor anything in the neighborhood as far as we knew, except cocoanuts, and I was afraid to go out to get them—”

He stopped, for her aunt’s voice was calling again from above. They looked up and saw her on the balcony of the third story.

“Mr. Williams,” she said, “you must come up and see the gold room.”

“Please, no,” he answered; “I’ve put on my shoes.”

“Yes, you must,” she insisted. “I sha’n’t come down until you do.”

“You had better go,” said the girl. “She means what she says.”

“I’ll be up at once,” he called. He took off his shoes and went in.

The girl finished crumbling the wafer to the carp, and watched them for a time as their grotesque mouths mechanically opened and shut upon the sinking flakes. Then she turned her eyes across the lake and embraced the prospect which Caswell had been absorbing when interrupted by her coming. Presently an idea moved her, and from a little bag she produced a gold pencil and a bit of paper and found a smooth place upon the rail. She wrote a few words, took a pin from her dress and fastened the paper to a post as if for a sign to persons coming out of the temple. She glanced quickly up, and seeing no one, slipped away around the end of the balcony.

When she was out of sight, Caswell’s eyes went back to his book of verses, but they carried no impressions from the page to his brain. The thoughts which had been aroused were insistent. They possessed him and he sat and battled with them. He was distracted from his reverie by the fluttering of the paper on the pin. A warm breeze had awakened and came in mimic gales which rippled the pools and set the bamboos on the farther bank in a silver shimmer. After the pin had resisted several onslaughts, a stronger air loosed it and sent the paper fluttering into the water.

Almost before it fell Caswell was on his feet. Then he checked himself. “It is not my business,” he thought. “Shall I interfere with the course of Fate?” He sat down. Then he rose again. “But perhaps I am the minister of Fate.” He leaned over the rail. The paper was slowly sinking, but he read under the clear water, “I am going to walk. Do you want to come?”

The young man’s stick was lying on the balcony. He took it and leaning over the rail fished up the wet paper. As he put his hand upon it, he heard a footfall, and turning saw the big lieutenant coming out of the temple. He had turned in time to catch the youth’s expression, as he perceived that the girl was not there.

“Oh!” said the youth, awkwardly. He saw that something had happened.

Caswell bowed in the Japanese manner, sucking his breath as if to a superior, and extended the dripping paper with the inscrutable countenance which the East had taught him.

The youth read it at a glance. “Thank you! Thank you, very much!” he said, impulsively; then remembering himself, he repeated his thanks in Japanese: “Arigato! Arigato! I understand,” he said, in answer to Caswell’s gesture toward the water. “The wind blew it in. You were very good.” He repeated the Japanese word again and bowed, and Caswell, bowing solemnly, backed off the balcony and left him.

“It was best so,” he thought, when he was on the path by the edge of the water.

He had come to the priest’s apartments, the little palace where the great Shogun had lived in his retirement, before he was conscious whither his steps were taking him. His thoughts were across eight thousand miles of sea. He looked around him with a start. “Shall I go in?” he said to himself. One of the priests, although of a different sect, was his friend. On the porch, a temple student saluted him. He was known because he often came, not only to talk with his friend, but to study the screens of Kano Tan Yu and Jakuchu, and the marvelous folding screens painted by Korin and Soami, and the kakemonos by those other ancient masters, Cho Densi and Shubun and Eishin.

He took the student’s welcome as an omen and slipped off his sandals. He was ushered in and, after saluting his friend, the temple tea was brought and they sat with it between them and discoursed. The temple tea was not as other tea, but superior. It was a powder made of the tenderest of the young leaves of certain choice plants. It possessed the secret flavors of spring, and the property of making the mind glow and the brain crystal clear without racking the nerves.

They talked for a time, but to Caswell it was with an effort. His soul that day had no meeting with his friend, and the priest was aware of it. He produced tobacco and they lit the little pipes and, inhaling a few whiffs, sat in silence.

Presently Caswell turned his head to listen. Through the paper screen which made the partition wall, he heard the girl’s voice; then the voice of her aunt. They were entering the room next.

“It is a party of foreigners,” observed the priest. “They have doubtless been generous to the boy. Liberal foreigners are sometimes invited to partake of the temple tea. The tea money (chadai) goes to the restoration fund.”

“Is it so?” said Caswell. He was listening.

“I am afraid that I never could get used to sitting on my feet,” said her aunt.

“Poor auntie!” said the girl, and then she laughed, and as she laughed Caswell held his breath. It was a low, sweet, bubbling laugh; the laughter that is compelled by happiness in the heart, just as a fountain bubbles under a pressure of crystal water.

A moment later came the deeper tones of a man’s voice, also laughing, and the echo of the same happiness was in them.

Caswell smiled and a mist came into his eyes. He understood. He looked at the old priest, and he too was smiling.

“The young foreign lady has an agreeable voice,” observed the priest. “Unlike most.”

“Unlike most who travel here,” said Caswell, “she is of an honorable family.”

“Friends, no doubt, of your honorable family,” suggested the priest.

“No,” said Caswell. He realized that he did not even know her name. “But I know,” he continued. “One may know by the voice and the speech.”

“Assuredly, with us,” said the priest, “but I had thought that all families in America were equal.”

“Yes and no,” replied Caswell, absently. He had no mind for explaining the American system then. He was listening, for they were laughing again, although there seemed no reason for laughter in the conversation.

Presently Caswell rose and began his leave-taking, and the priest accompanied him to the porch where he had left his sandals. Beside the sandals they saw three pairs of shoes.

There was a pair of heavy men’s walking shoes, a pair of woman’s shoes of the type known as “common-sense,” and a third pair on which Caswell’s eyes rested. These were little Russia leather things, not new but with the workmanship and fine lines of the Oxford Street bootmaker, and they had the air of well-being which comes from proper trees and the care of an expert maid.

“It is a curious custom of the foreigners to make shoes out of leather,” observed the priest.

“It is, is it not?” said Caswell, but absently, for through the half-open wall panel he saw the party seated on the matting around the fire-pot which the fat temple boy had just deposited. The young man and the girl were sitting next one another. The aunt was examining a screen. Their backs were turned to him, so that Caswell could look without being seen. Suddenly, as he gazed at the little shoes, an idea came to him and he smiled.

The fat boy was coming out on his way for the tea and cakes, and as he passed Caswell stopped him.

The boy bowed ceremoniously.

“Did you remove the shoes of the honorable young foreign lady?” he inquired.

 

“Did you remove the shoes of the honorable young foreign lady?”

The boy bowed again and replied that he had indeed been so honored.

“In the foot of the stocking of the young foreign lady,” inquired Caswell, “was there not a hole?”

“Not the least hole,” replied the fat boy, wonderingly.

“No hole? Are you sure?” said Caswell.

“None,” said the boy.

“Thank you, that is all,” said Caswell, gravely. He looked at the little shoes again. “Simple one that I am,” he murmured.

“Is it true,” inquired the priest, “that foreign women wear stockings above their ankles and of colored fabrics?”

Caswell made no reply for a moment. The girl was speaking.

“But you never told me what you did to win your medal,” she said.

“It is true,” said Caswell, in reply to the priest’s question.

“But I should like to know,” said the girl.

“I finally got up the courage to go out after the cocoanuts,” said the youth, “after I was good and hungry.”

“But what else?” said the girl.

“But that was all—on my word,” said the youth, and they fell to laughing again.

“It is a curious custom,” observed the priest, referring to the stockings.

“It is,” said Caswell, politely, “is it not? And now I must depart,” he added.

He bowed his farewell. “Sayonara!” he said, “Sayonara!”

“Sayonara!” said the priest, bowing. “You will come soon again?”

Caswell straightened up. “I forgot to tell,” he said. “I shall not return soon. I am going to my own country.”

“Indeed, is it so? Is it so?” said the priest, gently. He bowed again and wished him the good wishes suitable to such a parting.

“Sayonara!” said Caswell. Then he walked toward the wicket gate that led out of the garden.

“He got up the courage to go out after the cocoanuts,” he murmured, as he walked away. He quickened his steps, but once he turned and looked back, for he heard their low, rippling laughter again.