University of Virginia Library

V.

Ever since the Japanese girl had visited her, Beryl had been reproaching herself because she fancied that she might have been kinder to her. Beryl Evans was a creature of impulse. She could not bear to think of anyone in pain, and so could not forget the white, wistful, wounded face of the Japanese girl. She wondered whether she was actually suffering. Somebody had told her that they did not suffer much—these Japanese women—they had so little heart! But Beryl was not so sure of this—and, besides, did they not also add to this that so many of her countrywomen had created hearts in them. That was the American conceit, she thought. The Japanese women did have hearts—only they did not show it—and so when some of them did love a foreigner then the foreigners took the full credit of awakening the heart, not merely in the one woman, but the race itself. Her thoughts tortured her so that she confided in her brother, Philip, a young fellow of eighteen who was with her. She shrank from telling Montrose, fearing that the mention of the Japanese girl would recall more vividly to him his sister's sad death.

“You see, Phil,” she said, “it wasn't her fault at all. She never knew anything about Elinore, and he was so cruel to her.”

Philip proposed that they pay her a visit, and accordingly, they set out for that purpose. It was only the day after the Japanese girl had killed herself, so that when they reached the little house, they (having heard nothing of the tragedy) were astonished to hear the sounds of loud weeping in the house.

In answer to their knock, an amazing horde of Japanese came outside. They were inclined to be brusque and hostile to the strangers, for they fancied them to be relatives of Crowder, and it was only after a good deal of persuasion and diplomacy on the part of Beryl and her brother that they consented to their entering the house.

When Beryl saw the dead Japanese girl reposing on a bed of cherry and wild plum blossoms, she became so weak that she sank down to the floor, and laying her head against the cot on which the girl was lying, wept as if she had been a near and dear friend to her.

“Oh, think of it, Phil—two of them—both so good and lovely—for him—a thing like him.”

She turned to the relative who had acted as spokesman to them.

“What will become of the children? Who will take them?”

“All the relatives were willing and even eager to have her oldest child—who was, like themselves, a Japanese girl- -but as for the other—the little one with the sun in her hair and eyes,” he shrugged his shoulders, “he himself had not much use for the half-castes. They were usually good-for- nothing—erratic, hot-tempered, jealous—”

Yes, Beryl and Philip had already heard of the isolated lives of the half-castes. Who that has lived in Japan has not known of it?