Miss Spring Morning :: :: University of Virginia Library

Mrs. Tyrrell thrust her needle into her emery strawberry and put her sewing by. For some time her attention had wandered from her work, to stray always with something of wistfulness and anxiety toward that smooth brown head resting there against the back of the great leather chair by the blazing fireplace. Well she knew that though her son was with her, there in this pleasant room, his thoughts were very far away, as for hours at a time, he remained there silently gazing into the gleaming bosom of his fire. And she was right. In the glow of the fire, he saw as in a dream that other land he had loved so well. Always it seemed to Jamison to be suffused in a misty haze, as if a dim veil were gently laid upon its blue hills and fields, and he wondered dreamily, if they were but shadow landscapes he had seen. Had he indeed lived in that far-away fairyland, or was it but a figment of his fancy? Had his arms, indeed, closed so passionately about that little palpitating sweet child of the Orient, upon whom all his senses of delight and desire had so intensely centered? There in the light of his fire, again he saw her small, dusky face. It shone up at him, appealing, laughing, mocking, hurting and bruising his soul. And even its memory, it seemed to him, had the power still to thrill and torment him.

He felt his mother's hand upon his cheek, and arousing himself with an effort, came to his feet.

“It's been such a wonderful day,” she said, in that tremulous, almost deprecating way she always used now in addressing him. “Oh, Jamy,” she went on, her eyes shining as she looked up at him, “you don't know how good it is to have you here, at home, with us again.”

He wandered across to the great bay window and looked out over a wide expanse of rolling lawns that extended to the edge of woods, bronzed and reddened under the touch of the coming autumn. He was thinking how strangely clear and vivid were the American fall colors. The country seemed alive, not vaguely asleep, as that other land in which he had sojourned so long, and to which he had felt a certain passionate loyalty after the death of his wife. It was the insistent prayerful letters of his mother, the fact that she was in poor health, and also his desire to see his little girl, whose beauty his mother described so extravagantly in her letters, that had induced him to return at last. It had

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been his intention of making but a transient visit to his home. He was very sure he would not be able long to resist the sweet, luring call of that other land, to which he believed, as many white men have before him, that he more truly belonged. By some fantastic error of fate, he told himself, he had been born white, but his inclinations, his heart, his soul, these he firmly believed, were purely Japanese.

Now he felt unable to account for the restful sense of contentment and peace that pervaded his whole being. It was as if he were experiencing the sensations of some restless wandering expatriate who had roamed the world over, but at last had found his way—home!

And as he looked out at the clean-cut, homely, preposterously conventional, inartistic landscape, Jamison was conscious, with a sense of ludicrous amazement, that he loved it. Even as he admitted this, to him, startling fact, a burst of merry, ringing, wholesome laughter was wafted to him from the edge of the woods.

Over the green clipped lawns, darting in and out among the flowering hydrangea bushes, the vigorous, graceful form of a young woman was seen, as with pretended speed she eluded the reach of the child who followed, shouting to her with overflowing joy.

As they burst into the quiet living-room, with its rich and somber furnishings, the light from the blazing logs seemed to leap up and dance upon their faces, and it seemed to the man that never in his life had he seen faces fairer or dearer.

The big girl, graceful and light in her movements, with her fine, clear-cut face and wonderful coloring, the gray, candid eyes and large frank mouth, was very good to look at, and the elfish grace and beauty of the child was something to hold the eye entranced and delighted.

With a deep, sweeping movement, Edith bent, and with the strength of a young athlete, she tossed the child upon her shoulder, and there in triumph the small rogue sat, smiling down at her father, and daring him to reach her.

He reached up impulsively to take her, and as she struggled to retain her place, his hand came in close, warm contact with Edith's cheek. Her flushed face, with its red, parted lips, was close to his own. Their eyes met, as it seemed to him, for the first time, and suddenly Jamison Tyrrell was conscious of a new, a wonderful awakening. In one great flash of overwhelming and illuminating intelligence, he knew then that all that had gone before in his life was but a sweet aberration from which at last he had emerged—sane!