 | Chapter IV Miss Spring Morning |  |
4. Chapter IV
Yokohama was a-flutter with banners, flags and lanterns. It wore its holiday dress gayly and triumphantly. Mrs. Tyrrell's sewing lay idly upon her lap. She had put on her glasses, and was watching the crowds of passers-by as they swept along the street. In their thin, bright, and flimsy dresses, they seemed to her like flower-petals blowing before a wind. Nothing but color and light! Even their faces seemed to harmonize with the tawdry articles they waved so gayly, and with their as tawdry apparel.
They seemed unreal--figures of some strange, fantastic world to which she felt helplessly she could never adapt herself.
Her reverie was interrupted by the impetuous entrance of her son. He came in from the outdoors bare-headed, his light auburn hair curling moistly about his fine head, and giving him that curiously boyish look which never seemed to have entirely left Jamison Tyrrell, though he was past thirty.
“Whew, it's hot!” he exclaimed, tossing his hat, which he had crushed under his arm, across the room to a table. “But, let me tell you, this has been one fine day for me. Wish you'd seen some of the types I got in the quarter.”
Mrs. Tyrrell blinked her glasses from her nose, and they hung by their black ribbon suspended from her ear. Her features were sharp and fine, and she was very near-sighted.
“Oh Jamy, I do wish you'd keep away from that part of the city. Father Daly's been telling us that all sorts of crimes are committed in the slums of Yokohama, and particularly at this time, when the war--”
Her son stopped her further speech by gayly placing his big white hands under her chin, and laying his warm, boyish cheek against her own. The contact melted and thrilled her as always, and she put back her hands to hold him there.
“Now aren't you the old fretter,” he reproved. “You'd borrow trouble from the sunshine itself.”
Mrs. Tyrrell sighed.
“There you go,” he growled in reproof, “heaving such murdering sighs. Now what in the world is there to trouble you about?”
“Oh Jamy dear, I wish we were at home,” she said plaintively. “There's no telling what might happen to us here.
“We're just as safe here as in our little beds at home.”
“Oh, we can't be sure of that at all. These Japanese-- they really hate us, dear, and they might do anything if things were to go against them with the Russians. I believe they consider us all alike, as indeed we are, at bottom, we Western people.”
“You needn't worry about the Japs. They're on their good behavior--trying to ‘make good,’ in the eyes of the civilized world. They wouldn't have anything happen to us here now for anything in the world. They're terribly sensitive about it. Besides, you do them a great wrong, Mother. They are really a remarkably fine people. Now look out there, will you?” He turned her face around to the window. “Do you see anything to worry about from a smiling crowd like that?”
“They seem friendly and harmless enough, I suppose,” she admitted grudgingly, “but Jamy dear, there's something about them[5]--I don't know what--that is unreal, queer-- unlike us in every way.”
“Nonsense.”
“I suppose it is just prejudice,” she sighed, “but somehow, they don't seem the same as we are at all. They are so light--I was going to say trifling--like a lot of foolish children.” She hesitated and added plaintively: “Oh, I dare say I wrong them.”
“You do, Mother,” declared her son earnestly, releasing her.
“Well--maybe,” admitted his mother, and with the dissatisfied, distressed look still on her face, she fell to work again.
“Now you've always been mighty fond of Taggy,” suggested her son.
“Oh no, I have not,” said his mother gravely. “It took me some time to--er--appreciate him.”
“That's right,” jeeringly laughed Jamison. “‘Appreciate!’ Taggy is like olives, eh, an acquired taste, but awfully good once you really get to know him.”
“Then, he was educated in America,” said Mrs. Tyrrell. “He became just like one of us. I never thought of Mr. Taganouchi as Japanese at all. With that little mustache he wore, and his very distinguished bearing, why--he might have belonged to any land rather than Japan. In fact, Jamy, I fancy Mr. Taganouchi, living so long in America, really became as one of us, and at heart was scarcely Japanese at all.”
“Taggy not Japanese! Why, he is typical. His Western civilization was the merest veneer on Taggy. He was really Japanese to the last drop of his blood! I wish you'd seen him on his last night in Japan.” After a moment's thought he added: “No, I'm glad you did not. I want you to retain your good opinion of old Taggy.”
His mother looked up anxiously, and her son answered her look with a smile of assurance.
“Oh, Taggy's all right, Mother. You needn't lose faith in him. He's doing a fine thing now, you know--an inspiring, noble thing.”
“Then what did you mean just now?” inquired his mother. “We--ll, we had a little discussion about a certain matter. Our view points are widely different.”
“Why, I thought you and he were in ideal accord--that was why you got on so well together?”
“So did I, till I came out here, and in fact we are in most things; but, as I told you, at bottom Taggy is pure Japanese, and I--” he beamed radiantly at his mother--“in spite of being under the magical spell of this unspeakably charming fairy-land, I'm American--with a ‘foine’ old Irish ancestry behind me.”
He stooped over her and gave her a warm hug and noisy kiss.
“Oh, I love to hear you say that,” said she. “I have been so afraid, dear, that you were getting too fond--too infatuated with this country. You are such an enthusiast, and so temperamental. I knew exactly the effect a country like this would have upon you.”
He laughed, stretching his arms above him.
“Japan is a cordial, an elixir divine for jaded, tired eyes and nerves. I admit the spell and lure of the country,
“I'm not so sure of that,” said his mother quietly. “I rather fancy your own glasses are quite rose-colored.”
“Maybe they are,” said Jamison Tyrell softly, and sauntering to the window, he looked down dreamily into the street below. All unconsciously he began softly to whistle the haunting little air which had caught the attention of Spring-morning, and as he did so, suddenly there came up before him the exquisite, startled young face of the girl again. The air slightly wavered on his lips. He leaned against the casement in a day-dream, luring and fantastic.
| Chapter IV Miss Spring Morning | |