"Oh, dear," cried Jack, "the poor little tot is hurt." She pushed through the crowd and reached the child. "What is the matter?" she asked the runner who knew a few words of English. But his vocabulary was not equal to the occasion and Jack could learn but little. However she made out that the child was hurt, and when the man took him in his arms to carry him to the nearest little cottage, she followed with the rest.
By this time the occupants of the other jinrikishas had alighted and, as one of their runners knew more English than the rest, they were able to get at facts. The little boy had been knocked down, had hit his head against a stone, was slightly stunned but was recovering.
"Where are his parents?" Jack inquired.
"He have none, honorable lady," replied the man addressed, who was the runner speaking English.
"Poor little rabbit!" exclaimed Jack compassionately. She stooped to pick up the little fellow and to set him on her knee where he sat looking at her unblinkingly with his queer little slits of eyes. Whether it was surprise or fear which made him so still she could not tell. She smiled down at him, but not a quiver passed over the little face. Jack took a coin from her purse and put it in his chubby fingers but he only looked at it gravely and made no response.
"He is like a graven image," remarked Jean who stood by. "Did you ever know such immovable gravity?" Presently Mary Lee who wore some flowers in her belt drew them forth and held them out to the little fellow, and then he smiled.
Jack gave him an ecstatic hug. "Isn't he the cunningest ever?" she cried. "I wish we could take him home. I would so love to have him."
"Oh, Jack, what an idea!" exclaimed Jean. "What in the world would you do with him?"
"I'd train him to be a cracker-jack of a servant and when I am married, I would take him into the house and he could live with me always."
"I never heard such nonsense," returned Jean. "I think he is all right. We must go on or we will never get to the lake."
Jack was very unwilling to give up her little brown boy, but knew that she could not keep the entire party there any longer, so after seeking out his proper guardian, who proved to be an aunt by marriage, they gave her some money and went on their way. But all the beauties of the lake and the mountains were of small interest compared to the little naked child they had tumbled over on their way.
Jack talked of little else. She had a baby bee in her bonnet as Nan expressed it and it was like her to become completely possessed with the idea of taking him home, once she had decided that she wanted to. "I am going to talk to mother about it," she declared, "and I am going to hunt up Miss Gresham and get her to come out here again with me to talk to the aunt. No doubt they would be only too glad to get rid of him, for you see they are such a poor looking set of people. We upset him and we ought to do something for him. Besides," she added after using all other arguments, "we could do some missionary work and make a Christian of him, so I am sure it would be worth while."
She was so in earnest that Nan did not laugh, but it was a habit of Jack's to make her duty wait upon her desires, and Nan knew that the missionary spirit was aroused for the occasion.
However, in some way or other Jack did get around her mother to a degree sufficient for her to give consent to a second visit to the village in Miss Gresham's company. Whether Jack had pictured the child's condition as so pitiful as to arouse her mother's commiseration or just how she had managed no one could exactly tell, but sufficient to say that Jack and Miss Gresham did go a day or two after and to the dismay of every one came back with the little lad, whose brown nakedness was covered by clothes fitted to his estate. These Jack had bought, with Miss Gresham's help, and the two had very much enjoyed their mission.
Miss Gresham had a way with children and, knowing Japanese fairly well, could manage the conversation without difficulty. She found that the child had no special claim upon any one. Both his parents were dead. His mother's sister had taken him but she, too, had died and those who now cared for him were no blood relation, but were too charitable to turn him away.
"Miss Gresham says she can keep him at the school as well as not," Jack informed her mother eagerly, "so we need not be bothered with him while we are traveling, and when we are ready to go she can find a way to send or bring him to Nagasaki when we sail for home."
"You seem to have bewitched Miss Gresham completely," said Mrs. Corner.
"She is the nicest kind of missionary lady," returned Jack heartily. "She is so different from my idea of such. Her brother is a medical missionary, and she has been out here ten years. She has been home but once in all that time. She has told me the most interesting things about her work. I shall always be interested in missions after this; I used rather to think them a bore, but after seeing the work in her school, and hearing what has been accomplished by the medical missionaries, I have changed my mind."
The small boy continued to remain under Miss Gresham's care, and was the loadstone which drew all the girls to the mission school more frequently than any one of them could have prophesied. Little Toku was quite placid during this change, the only objection he made being to clothes, which, in the state of the weather, seemed perfectly reasonable to every one. He was serene, well cared for and happy.
"At all events," Jack said to Miss Gresham, "if I can't take him home with me I shall see to it that he is provided for. Nan says she will help me, and I know you will see to it that he is brought up properly."
"I will certainly do that," Miss Gresham promised. "He is a dear, bright little fellow, and the girls all make a great fuss over him. He is the youngest in the school, you see."
"I hope to persuade mother to let us have him," Jack went on, "but if I can't I shall feel a stronger interest in Japan than ever."
And so the small Toku remained at the school while the Corners went on with their sightseeing.
CHAPTER XVII
IN A TYPHOON
"Time is growing short," said Jack one morning in August, "and we have not seen the Inland Sea nor Kobe nor have we climbed Fuji."
"There is a Japanese proverb which says that there are two kinds of fools," remarked Nan; "one has never climbed Fujisan and the other has climbed it twice."
"Set me down for the first kind," said Jean, "for I don't intend to do any such fool trick as to climb a mountain nearly thirteen thousand feet high."
"If we are going to do a lot of other things, I don't see how any of us are to undertake that stunt," said Eleanor. "I vote we pick out the things we cannot reasonably pass over and then take the leavings as we can."
"Good girl," cried Jack. "That is the ticket. Tell us, Nan, oh, honorable lady of the guide-book, what is it up to us to see?"
Nan spread out her map, propped her two elbows on the table before her and began making investigations while the others chattered away about Fuji, Lake Biwa and other things that had lately interested them.
"I wish I could remember all the stories about Fuji," said Jean looking at her neat note-book. "I know that Biwa is called the Lake of the Lute on account of its shape. There is a legend that tells of its having been formed by the sun-goddess at the time of a great earthquake. The rice-fields of the poor people were all destroyed but in their stead was seen this lake full of fish."
"It was at the same time that Fujisan was formed," Mary Lee went on with the tale. "It has so many pretty poetical names; one is the Mountain of the White Lotus, because it rises, all snowy white, from out the stagnant fields at its base."
"And Japan is called the 'Islands of the Dragon-Fly,'" put in Eleanor; "I wonder why."
"There is a story of that, too," said Jean. "I have it somewhere in my note-book. It was when the god Izanami shook from his spear bits of sand and mud that stayed among the reeds of a watery place and became dry land. It was in the form of a dragon-fly that the dry part spread out and so the god called it the Land of the Dragon-Fly."
"Fuji is called the Holy White Mountain, too," put in Jack.
Here Nan looked up. "I think I have puzzled it out," she announced; "we can go from here to Osake, and then to Kobe. We must see Miyajima and Sakusa; they are so interesting. There is a great tori-i at Miyajima which is fine. They say the beauty of the Inland Sea is beyond anything, so we can stop along its shores and get to Nagasaki in time to sail when we have planned to."
"What is at Susaki, or whatever the name is?" inquired Eleanor.
"It is Sakusa, and it is not very far from Matsue; we ought to go to Matsue, for it is a very old and very interesting city. We could go to Kitzuki from there. Let me see how it would work out." She turned again to her map. "From here to Kobe and then to Matsue. I think we could manage it, but there would be some cross-country going. It would make a tremendously interesting trip. I will see what Aunt Helen says. For my own part I should like the cross-country trip, but perhaps mother wouldn't."
"She might take an easier route and one of us could stay with her," suggested Mary Lee.
"I would be perfectly willing to," spoke up Jean, who loved her ease and was not so keen for variety as to sacrifice comfort to it.
"I don't care a rap about those old stuffy places. Just because they are old doesn't recommend them to me. I would really rather stay in a pleasant bright city and go about in a 'riky when I want to see anything."
"Very well, that lets us out," remarked Jack. "I am in for anything, Nan, the wilder and queerer, the better."
"So am I," responded Eleanor.
"Me, too," put in Mary Lee.
"Then if Aunt Helen will go, we shall be all right," rejoined Nan closing her book with satisfaction.
As a result of all this, Kyoto was left behind and the party turned toward the south. At Kobe they left Jean and her mother while the rest went on to the marvelous temples at Nara, then back to pick up Mrs. Corner and Jean and to travel on along the shores of the beautiful Inland Sea to arrive at last at the sacred island of Miyajima, where a wonderful tori-i rising out of the water appeared mysterious and strangely picturesque under a sunset sky. A little further on, they left Jean and her mother, the others taking the trip across country to the ancient city of Matsue.
"Well, it was something of a jaunt, but I don't believe we shall regret it," said Nan looking from her window upon a fair lake and a range of mountain peaks which made a background for the queer old town. "I am crazy for a short turn about the place, a view of Daisen, which they say is much like Fuji."
"You certainly are enterprising, Nan," said her aunt. "Aren't you tired?"
"A little, but not so much but I can walk more. The city looks quite flat, Aunt Helen, but the hills beyond are beautiful. It was a feudal stronghold until quite modern times and it must still show remnants of its use-to-be-ness. There are three special quarters, the shopkeeping part, the temple and the residence section. There is a great castle, too, about which there are the grimmest kinds of legends. There are ever and ever so many temples. I wonder if we shall have time to see them all."
"Not if we do all the other things your energetic mind has planned."
Miss Helen was quite right, for a fierce typhoon came sweeping up the land that very night, and before it every one trembled and thanked heaven to be under shelter. The day had been so depressingly hot as to be most uncomfortable in the lowlands. By evening all were gasping for breath and then came a queer sensation as if one were unsteadily trying to keep his balance. The girls arose from their beds, groped their way to one another and sat huddled together in Miss Helen's room to which they went with one consent.
"Do you suppose it is an earthquake?" queried Eleanor shakily.
"I shouldn't be at all surprised," returned Miss Helen. "There!" As she exclaimed, the whole house seemed to rock from side to side, then came a sweep and rush of rain, a perfect deluge, which threatened to engulf everybody and everything in its furious attack. There had been much running back and forth before the storm broke. The wooden shutters were secured, the doors bolted. There were weird sounds outside, gusts that went shrieking up the hills, thunderous sounds of lashing waves and roaring streams, heard once in a while between the dashing rain which never ceased. At intervals was felt the alarming tremor which made the girls all huddle closer together with white faces and nervous clutchings of one another's hands.
"There is one thing," whispered Nan trying to be encouraging, "if we go we shall all go together."
"But I wish mother and Jean were here," said Jack chokingly.
Mary Lee gave a convulsive sob, and Eleanor broke down completely. "I wish I had never come," she wailed. "I wish I had stayed home with my mother, and I wish Neal were here. Oh, dear, why did I come to this dreadful place?"
"My dear children," spoke Miss Helen from her bed, "don't get hysterical. I imagine the worst is over. Do try to calm yourselves. No doubt they have had storms like this before and the house has stood, as you see. It sounds dreadful, but I do not believe we shall have a truly upheaving earthquake. Some slight unsettling always accompanies a typhoon, I have been told."
"Do you think this is a typhoon?" asked Eleanor trying to stop her tears.
"I imagine so; it seems very like the descriptions of such storms as I have read about."
"I verily do believe it is not quite so furious," remarked Nan.
"But we can't be sure." Eleanor was still apprehensive. "I could never go to bed this night."
"Nor I," came from one and another.
They all sat in silence till Jack spoke. "I wonder if poor little Toku is all right. I expect he is scared to death," she said mournfully.
Eleanor giggled hysterically. "I don't believe he knows anything about it. He is probably sleeping the sleep of the innocent," she said.
Somehow Jack's remark relieved the tension, and, as it was evident that the gale was less violent, they all began to be more cheerful though there was no sleep for any of them that night. At last only the lashing waves and the rush of water along the streets remained of the noises of earth and sky, and by daylight the girls crept back to their beds to sleep uneasily till it was time to get up.
The typhoon had left its mark behind in the overthrow of trees and the snapping of wires, the tearing down of signs and the wrenching off of roofs. Later on came accounts of damage in the hills, of the washing away of bridges and the complete demolition of paths.
"So we shall have to give up Kitzuki altogether," Nan announced after an interview with the proprietor of the hotel. "It would not be safe, they say. But it is not so very far to Sakusa, and if we wait long enough we may be able to get there, though we shall have to walk even then."
"You don't catch this child walking." Jack spoke with decision.
"Well, we don't want to go to-day anyhow," Nan answered, "and as it is pretty bad everywhere after the storm we'd better just hold our horses till we can decide what is best. There are enough excursions to satisfy us, probably, though I am awfully disappointed not to go to Kitzuki."
"What is its particular vanity?" inquired Eleanor.
"It is first of all a very holy place, according to Japanese creeds, then it is a very fashionable seaside resort."
"The latter appeals to me more strongly than the former," Eleanor declared, "but I can resign myself to leaving it out of our itinerary if there are any dangers. What is this Sakusa that you are so keen about?"
Nan hesitated before she answered. "There are some interesting ceremonies take place there, and there is a temple."
"A temple!" said Eleanor scornfully. "I have seen temples till I am worn out with them. What are the ceremonies?"
"I know," spoke up Jack as Nan again hesitated. "I have been reading up. Sakusa is the place where lovers make a pilgrimage and tie wishes on the trees. The wishes are supposed to come true and there are queer charms sold there and all sorts of funny doings."
"Oh!" Eleanor gave Nan a swift look, which Nan, seeing, resented.
"Oh, I am not so very anxious about it," she said nonchalantly, "though I think those odd customs are always interesting to see. If you all don't care about going or if there is anywhere else you prefer, why just let us leave it out."
"I am crazy to go," said Eleanor. "I suppose we can join any band of pilgrims that we see going up and down the breadth of the land. They really have a pretty good time of it, I fancy. The old folks particularly. I haven't a doubt but some of those old ladies get no other outing; you always see them moseying along as cheerful as the next, although they may have walked far and have not had much to sustain them on the way. You get up the excursion, Nan, and we will be your happy band of pilgrims."
"I'm going out to see what it looks like after the storm," announced Jack. "Come along, any one who wants to go."
Mary Lee and Eleanor decided to accept this invitation and Nan was left to her guide-books. "You'd better join us," were their parting words.
"Tell me where you are going and perhaps I will come and hunt you up," returned Nan.
"We shall go to the great bridge," Jack told her. "It is always interesting there."
So they passed out and it was a couple of hours before they returned. In the meantime Nan had occupied herself in various ways, but had found no time to go to the bridge to meet the others. They came in hilarious from their walk.
"Why didn't you come, Nan?" asked Eleanor. "We waited for you ever so long. Neal wanted to come back for you but Jack said he might miss you, as you would probably be on your way."
"Neal!" Nan looked up startled. Then she recovered herself. "Oh, your brother," she said with too great a show of indifference. "What is he doing here?"
"He came to see if we were all alive after the typhoon. The papers reported a great deal of damage in this part of the country and so he rushed over to see whether we were sound in life and limb."
"And where is he now?" inquired Miss Helen, to Nan's relief asking the question she would have put but for a self-consciousness she could not overcome.
"Oh, he has gone off with Jack. She is showing him the town, but we were tired and wouldn't go."
Gone off with Jack, very willingly of course, thought Nan. He was so little eager to see her that he had not even returned for a moment's greeting. She wondered how many letters Jack had received from him during this interval, and again she began to build up the altar of sacrifice upon which she would lay her heart. "Was it worth while going out to see the havoc?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Yes, it was rather interesting to see what was going on down by the wharves. We saw a good many funny things."
"Suppose we go, Aunt Helen," proposed Nan suddenly. "We have been cooped up all morning and I have been reading about a little temple of Jizo which they say is worth while. These others don't care about temples, so we won't insist upon their going. What do you say?"
Miss Helen agreed to the proposition and they began to make ready.
"Aren't you going to stay for lunch?" queried Mary Lee.
"No, we will get something at a tea-house on the way," replied Nan, and was off without further remark.
As Nan disappeared from view, Eleanor turned to Mary Lee. "Well," she exclaimed, "what do you make out of that?"
Mary Lee shook her head. "It is beyond me. I really thought she cared, but it looks as if she didn't. I wonder if, after all, she likes Rob Powell. There may have been a misunderstanding or a quarrel or something like that."
"Maybe, but I'll stake my best hat that she is in love with some one, and I really did hope it was Neal. Do you suppose by any accident that she has gone off in this way because she is jealous of Jack, is miffed because Neal didn't come back with us?"
"She would have some reason to, it seems to me."
"It seems so to me, too. You don't suppose Jack has been putting notions in Neal's head, do you?"
"What kind of notions?"
"Oh, making him think Nan has a single steady at home or something of that kind."
"I am sure Jack wouldn't do it with any malicious intent, but she may have done it inadvertently. You see we are rather in the dark ourselves and cannot swear to anything. Nan is expansive enough about some things, but she is the most elusive person when it comes to an affair of the heart. I have been puzzled a score of times myself about her. She gets very high-flown romantic ideas about sacrifice and all that kind of thing, and if she took it into her head that Jack must be interested in Neal she would go the whole length. I know she did have some such fancy a while ago, but I said enough to disabuse her mind of it, I thought."
"Well, I must talk to Neal," decided Eleanor.
"What will you tell him?"
"Goodness knows. What can I tell him? That Jack is fond of Carter and that Nan is not pledged to any one?"
Mary Lee shook her head doubtfully.
"What we do must be done quickly," declared Eleanor. "Once you are all out of this country, good-bye to Neal's chances."
"How long is he going to be here?"
"Don't know. I haven't had a chance to ask him. He can often stay till he is recalled, but no one knows the hour or minute that may be. This much is certain; he was certainly more interested in Nan than I have ever known him to be in any one. He didn't say so in so many words, but he said enough to make me sure of it, and I am convinced that he wouldn't have been so eager for opportunities of getting her off to herself if he hadn't been pretty far gone."
"Then why under the sun did he march off with Jack to-day without a word with Nan?"
"That is where you have me, my child. There is something queer and we have to find out. Suppose you tackle Jack and I will get at Neal. Between us we may be able to find out the truth."
Mary Lee agreed to this, but her opportunity did not come that day nor the next. Nan and Mr. Harding met with a polite greeting, much less effusive than that which had passed between the young man and Jack on his arrival. But for the furtive glances which he gave Nan, when he thought no one was looking, Eleanor and Mary Lee would have been convinced of his absolute indifference. Nan, herself, did not once look his way unless compelled to.
"There is this about it," confessed Eleanor, when the two conspirators got together. "They are entirely too deadly indifferent for it to be altogether natural. It is my opinion they have quarreled. Have you noticed how Neal watches Nan when he thinks no one is looking?"
"And how she never looks at him at all?" returned Mary Lee. "I have not seen them exchange a dozen remarks since your brother came, and Nan has scarcely mentioned him to me. When she has, it has been because I dragged his name into the conversation."
"It is vastly more suspicious than if there were not this studied ignoring the one of the other."
"Of course it is," agreed Mary Lee.
"Poor old Neal; I hate to have him unhappy," said Eleanor.
"Poor old Nan; I can't bear to have her unhappy."
They both laughed. Then Mary Lee exclaimed, "I have just thought of something that makes me sure it is all on account of Jack and that Rob isn't in it at all."
"Do tell me."
"Nan asked me a while ago upon a certain occasion, don't ask me when it was, please, Nell, but she asked me then if I didn't think it was almost as hard to give up one whom you loved to another as to have him taken from you to another world. You know, Nell, I can't talk of such things very much, and this was a sacred hour, but I thought I would tell you."
Eleanor put her arm around her friend. "It is dear of you to tell me. I understand, Mary Lee, and because it was a sacred hour you can be sure that Nan spoke from the very depths of her heart."
"That is exactly it. It doesn't prove anything, but it meant more than I realized at the time, of that we can be sure. Yes, we must get some light on this subject and do it soon." Here Nan herself came into the room and the girls, in a very lively manner, tried to appear as if they had been talking over their days at college.