Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873

I looked at my watch. After eight! Pshaw! I will let this train go, and will telegraph to the office. I can take the night train, and thus lose only a few hours. So I stayed.

What rare power had Bessie in the very depths of her trouble, and with her face pale and eyes so heavy with her last night's vigil—what gift that helped her to be gay? Apparently not with an effort, not forced, she was as joyous and frank as her sunniest self. No exaggeration of laughter or fun, but the brightness of her every-day manner, teasing and sparkling round Aunt Sloman, coquetting very naturally with me. It was a swift change from the gloomy atmosphere we had left behind in the parlor, and I basked in it delighted, and feeling, poor fool! that the storm was cleared away, and that the time for the singing of birds was come.

I was the more deceived. I did not know all of Bessie yet. Her horror of a scene, of any suspicion that there was discord between us, and her rare self-control, that for the moment put aside all trouble, folded it out of sight and took up the serene old life again for a little space.

"Aunt Maria," said Bessie, pushing aside her chair, "won't you take care of Mr. Munro for a little while? I have a letter to write that I want him to take to New York."

Aunt Maria would be happy to entertain me, or rather to have me entertain her. If I would read to her, now, would I be so kind, while she washed up her breakfast cups?

How people can do two things at once I am sure I cannot understand; and while the maid brought in the large wooden bowl, the steam of whose household incense rose high in the air, I watched impatient for the signal to begin. When the tea-cups were all collected, and Aunt Sloman held one by the handle daintily over the "boiling flood," "Now," she said with a serene inclination of her head, "if you please."

And off I started at a foot-pace through the magazine that had been put into my hands. Whether it was anything about the "Skelligs," or "Miss Sedgwick's Letters," or "Stanley-Livingstone," I have not the remotest idea. I was fascinated by the gentle dip of each tea-cup, and watched from the corner of my eye the process of polishing each glittering spoon on a comfortable crash towel.

Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to her old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father's, and would approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the hurried marriage and ocean journey.

"What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don't you think so, Mrs. Sloman?" I said at last, after I had gone through three several papers on subjects unknown.

I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman smiled a white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, "Yes; I will go and send her to you."

"Oh, don't hurry her," I said falsely, hoping, however, that she would.

Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me, coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression, and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily, "Young man, I am pining for a walk."

"In the rain?"

"Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder—a blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen before.

"The very thing for shipboard," I whispered as I looked at her admiringly.

Her face was flushed enough now, but she made no answer save to stoop down and pat the silly little terrier that had come trotting into the room with her.

"Fidget shall go—yes, he shall go walking;" and Fidget made a gray ball of himself in his joy at the permission.

Up the hill again we walked, with the little Skye terrier cantering in advance or madly chasing the chickens across the road.

"Did you finish your letter satisfactorily?" I asked, for I was fretting with impatience to know its contents.

"Yes. I will give it to you when you leave to-night."

"Shall we say next Saturday, Bessie?" said I, resolving to plunge at once into the sea of our late argument.

"For what? For you to come again? Don't you always come on Saturday?"

"Yes, but this time I mean to carry you away."

A dead pause, which I improved by drawing her hand under my arm and imprisoning her little gray glove with my other hand. As she did not speak, I went on fatuously: "You don't need any preparation of gowns and shawls; you can buy your trousseau in London, if need be; and we'll settle on the ship, coming over, how and where we are to live in New York."

"You think, then, that I am all ready to be married?"

"I think that my darling is superior to the nonsense of other girls—that she will be herself always, and doesn't need any masquerade of wedding finery."

"You think, then," coldly and drawing her hand away, "that I am different from other girls?" and the scarlet deepened on her cheek. "You think I say and do things other girls would not?"

"My darling, what nonsense! You say and do things that other girls cannot, nor could if they tried a thousand years."

"Thanks for the compliment! It has at least the merit of dubiousness. Now, Charlie, if you mention Europe once in this walk I shall be seriously offended. Do let us have a little peace and a quiet talk."

"Why, what on earth can we talk about until this is settled? I can't go back to New York, and engage our passage, and go to see Judge Hubbard—I suppose you were writing to him this morning?"

She did not answer, but seemed bent on making the dainty print of her foot in the moist earth of the road, taking each step carefully, as though it were the one important and engrossing thing in life.

"—Unless," I went on, "you tell me you will be ready to go back with me this day week. You see, Bessie dear, I must sail on the fixed day. And if we talk it over now and settle it all, it will save no end of writing to and fro."

"Good-morning!" said a gay voice behind us—Fanny Meyrick's voice. She was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk with you?"

CHAPTER V

If I could have changed places with Fidget, I could scarce have expressed my disapproval of the new-comer more vehemently than he. Miss Meyrick seemed quite annoyed at the little dog's uncalled-for snapping and barking, and shook her umbrella at him in vain. I was obliged to take him in hand myself at last, and to stand in the road and order him to "Go home!" while the two young ladies walked on, apparently the best of friends.

When I rejoined them Fanny Meyrick was talking fast and unconnectedly, as was her habit: "Yes, lodgings in London—the dearest old house in Clarges street. Such a butler! He looks like a member of Parliament. We stayed there once before for three days. I am just going to settle into an English girl. Had enough of the Continent. Never do see England now-a-days, nobody. All rush off. So papa is going to have a comfortable time. Embassy? Oh, I know the general well."

I looked beseechingly at Bessie. Why wouldn't she say that we too would be there in London lodgings? Perhaps, then, Fanny Meyrick might take the hint and leave us soon.

But Bessie gave no sign, and I relapsed into a somewhat impatient résumé of my own affairs. Yes: married quietly on Saturday; leave here on Monday morning train; take, yes, Wednesday's steamer. I could arrange it with my law-partners to be absent a little longer perhaps, that there might be some little rest and romance about the wedding-journey.

Two or three times in the course of that morning—for she stayed with us all the morning—Fanny Meyrick rallied me on my preoccupation and silence: "He didn't use to be so, Bessie, years ago, I assure you. It's very disagreeable, sir—not an improvement by any means."

Then—I think without any malice prepense, simply the unreasoning rattle of a belle of two seasons—she plunged into a description of a certain fête at Blankkill on the Hudson, the occasion of our first acquaintance: "He was so young, Bessie, you can't imagine, and blushed so beautifully that all the girls were jealous as could be. We were very good friends—weren't we?—all that summer?"

"And are still, I hope," said I with my most sweeping bow. "What have I done to forfeit Miss Meyrick's esteem?"

"Nothing, except that you used to find your way oftener to Meyrick Place than you do now. Well, I won't scold you for that: I shall make up for that on the other side."

What did she mean? She had no other meaning than that she would have such compensation in English society that her American admirers would not be missed. She did not know of my going abroad.

But Bessie darted a quick glance from her to me, and back again to her, as though some dawning suspicion had come to her. "I hope," she said quietly, "that you may have a pleasant winter. It will be delightful, won't it, Charlie?"

"Oh, very!" I answered, but half noting the under-meaning of her words, my mind running on deck state-rooms and the like.

"Charlie," said Miss Meyrick suddenly, "do you remember what happened two years ago to-day?"

"No, I think not."

Taking out a little book bound in Russia leather and tipped with gold, she handed it to Bessie, who ran her eye down the page: it was open at September 28th.

"Read it," said Fanny, settling herself composedly in her shawl, and leaning back against a tree with half-shut eyes.

"'September 28th'" Bessie read, in clear tones which had a strange constraint in them, "'Charlie Munro saved my life. I shall love him for ever and ever. We were out in a boat, we two, on the Hudson—moonlight—I was rowing. Dropt my oar into the water. Leaned out after it and upset the boat. Charlie caught me and swam with me to shore.'"

A dead silence as Bessie closed the book and held it in her hand.

"Oh," said I lightly, "that isn't worth chronicling—that! It was no question of saving lives. The New York boat was coming up, if I remember."

"Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar."

"So you see it would have picked us up, any how. There was nothing but the ducking to remember."

"Such a figure, Bessie! Imagine us running along the road to the gate! I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!"

To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie's cheek, I put out my hand for the book: "Let me write something down to-day;" and I hastily scribbled: "September 28. Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm congratulations."

"Will that do?" I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.

"Not at all," said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.—"Sorry to spoil your book, Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more. Let us go home."

As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.

"If Mr. Munro will take word to papa," she said, indicating that worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.

"We will walk on," said Bessie coldly. "Come, Fanny dear."

Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy! Bessie is angry. Why did I never tell her of the ducking? And yet when I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time for sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see why I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer confidences would allow of it.

No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman that another woman has loved him. To his wife—perhaps. But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know. After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row—I had been already disenchanted for some time before—I had scarce called at Meyrick Place more than civility required. The young lady was so inclined to exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer, that I felt like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met. And after I had met Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about—much pleasanter.

How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my congé for the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at the hotel to dinner.

"I will not be played upon in this way. Bessie knows that I stayed over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for to-morrow no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. & Co. If she chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in these few hours that we have together—Fanny Meyrick whom she hated yesterday—she may enjoy her friendship undisturbed by me."

So I loitered with my cigar after dinner, and took a nap on the sofa in my room. I was piqued, and did not care to conceal it. As the clock struck five I bethought me it was time to betake me to the Sloman cottage. A sound of wheels and a carriage turning brought me to the window. The two young ladies were driving off in Fanny Meyrick's phaeton, having evidently come to the hotel and waited while it was being made ready.

"Pique for pique! Serves me right, I suppose."

Evening found me at the Sloman cottage, waiting with Mrs. Sloman by the tea-table. Why do I always remember her, sitting monumental by the silver urn?

"The girls are very late to-night."

"Yes." I was beginning to be uneasy. It was nearing train-time again.

"Such lovely moonlight, I suppose, has tempted them, or they may be staying at Foxcroft to tea."

Indeed? I looked at my watch: I had ten minutes.

A sound of wheels: the phaeton drove up.

"Oh, Charlie," said Bessie as she sprang out, "you bad boy! you'll miss your train again. Fanny here will drive you to the hotel. Jump in, quick!"

And as the moonlight shone full on her face I looked inquiringly into her eyes.

"The letter," I said, "for Judge Hubbard?" hoping that she would go to the house for it, and then I could follow her for a word.

"Oh! I had almost forgotten. Here it is;" and she drew it from her pocket and held it out to me in her gloved hand. I pressed the hand to my lips, riding-glove and all, and sprang in beside Fanny, who was with some difficulty making her horse stand still.

"Good-bye!" from the little figure at the gate. "Don't forget, Fanny, to-morrow at ten;" and we were off.

By the wretched kerosene lamp of the car, going down, I read my letter, for it was for me: "I will not go to Europe, and I forbid you to mention it again. I shall never, never forget that I proposed it, and that you—accepted it. Come up to Lenox once more before you go."

This was written in ink, and was sealed. It was the morning's note. But across the envelope these words were written in pencil: "Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of you, when you return."

SARAH C. HALLOWELL.[TO BE CONTINUED.]

INSIDE JAPAN

A double pleasure rewards the pioneer who is the first to penetrate into the midst of a new people. Besides the rare exhilaration felt in treading soil virgin to alien feet, it acts like mental oxygen to look upon and breathe in a unique civilization like that of Japan. To feel that for ages millions of one's own race have lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered and died, living the fullness of life, yet without the religion, laws, customs, food, dress and culture which seem to us to be the vitals of our social existence, is like walking through a living Pompeii.

I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in which I dwell. Having already, in the central provinces of Japan, trodden many a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned to explore the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the peninsula lying between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean. A timely holiday and a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled by thousands on the mountain-slopes.

I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism, and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese. There were too many foreigners in Yeddo. In that city of only eight hundred thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred foreigners of all nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans. It was too much like home and too little like Japan. Should I go to Yokohama, the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line. What was the use of living in Japan? Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is brainful of "civilization," "progress," "reform," etc. I half suspect a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of the youths who wish to introduce law, religion, steam, language, frock-coats and tight boots by edict and ordinance. There was too much civilization. I yearned for something more primitive, something more purely Japanese; and tramping into the country I should find it. I should eat Japanese food—profanely dubbed "chow-chow;" sleep in Japanese beds—on the floor; talk Japanese—as musical as Italian; and live so much like an old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil. By that time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats, and finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out all irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.

So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo one afternoon, though it took several hours to do so: the big city is one of distances more magnificent than those of Washington. I started in a jin-riki-sha, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has already been described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all American readers. The "team" of this "man-power carriage" consists of two men, pulling tandem—one in the shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over his shoulder, and, until the recent passage of a law commanding decency, attired only in his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide. You take three coolies when you wish to be stylish, while four are not an unknown sensation in Yeddo. With these and fresh relays you can travel sixty, or even eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to run thirty miles on the stretch.

Of all the modes of traveling in Japan, the jin-riki-sha is the most pleasant. The kago is excruciating. It is a flat basket, swung on a pole and carried on the shoulders of two men. If your neck does not break, your feet go hopelessly to sleep. Headaches seem to lodge somewhere in the bamboos, to afflict every victim entrapped in it. To ride in a kago is as pleasant as riding in a washtub or a coffin slung on a pole. In some mountain-passes stout native porters carry you pickapack. Crossing the shallow rivers, you may sit upon a platform borne on men's shoulders as they wade. Saddle-horses are not to be publicly hired, but pack-horses are pleasant means of locomotion. These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed in straw sandals and the universally worn kimono, or blue cotton wrapper-like dress, which is totally unfitted for work of any kind, and which makes the slovens of Japan—a rather numerous class—always look as if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual girdle, from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord, fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled top-knot, is a blue cotton rag—not handkerchief, since such an article in Japan is always made of paper. This head-gear is usually fastened over the head by twisting the ends under the nose. With a rope six feet long he leads his horse, which trusts so implicitly to its master's guidance that we suspect the prevalence of blindness among the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod with iron, but with straw sandals, tied on thrice or oftener daily. Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats are unknown. The nags live on beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves and tops of succulent plants, with only an occasional wisp of hay or grass.

In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place which I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden of some forty summers—a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage. That she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions, but by the manner in which her hair was dressed. Japanese virgins and wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the musume or young maiden may be known. The widow who has resolved never to marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth skull, every hair of which is shaved off. A lady of rank may also be known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.

I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The populace of each village turned out en masse to see the foreigner, and they diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to boot-sole. Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner should be. But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of eight miles.

A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion the little woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep paths with the ejaculation, Mite yo! Mite yo! but when the beast stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if vainly trying to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a "You old beast! come on," started the animal on its travels. Finally, when the creature stopped to deliberate upon the propriety of going forward at all, the vials of the wrath of the Japanese spinster exploded, and I was tempted to believe her affections had been blighted. But when we met any of her friends on the road, or passed the wayside shops or farm-houses, the scolder of horses was the lady who wished all Ohaio ("Good-morning"), or remarked that the weather was very fine; and when joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, "Yes, it is the first time I have had the honor."