The life, interesting as it was, might have proven lonely, had it not been for Seki"s younger brother, Toro, who was two years older than June. Although neither could understand a word the other said, yet a very great friendship had sprung up between them. "We understand just like dogs," June explained to Seki San.
All day long the two boys played down by the river bank, paddling about in the shallow shimmering water, building boats and putting them out to sea, sailing their kites from the hill top, or best of all, sitting long hours on the parade grounds watching the drilling of the soldiers.
Sometimes when they were very good, Seki San would get permission for them to play in the daimyo"s garden and those days were red-letter days for June. The garden was very old and very sacred to the j.a.panese, for in long years past it had belonged to an old feudal lord, and now it was the property of the Emperor.
From the first June had cherished a secret belief that somewhere in its leafy bowers he would come across the Sleeping Beauty. It was all so old and so still that even the breezes whispered as they softly stirred the tree-tops. In the very heart of the garden a little blue lake smiled up at the sky above, and all about its edges tall flags of blue and gold threw their bright reflections in the water below. A high-arched bridge all gray with moss, led from one tiny island to another, while along the sh.o.r.e old stone lanterns, very stiff and stern, stood sentinel over the quiet of the place. Here and there a tempting little path led back into mysterious deeps of green, and June followed each one with the half expectancy of finding the cobwebby old place, and the vine-grown steps, and the Sleeping Beauty within.
One day when they were there, Toro became absorbed in a little house he was building for the old stork who stood hour after hour under the cool shadow of the arching bridge. June, getting tired of the work, wandered off alone, and as he went deeper into the tangle of green, he thought more and more of the Sleeping Beauty.
It was cool and mysterious under the close hanging boughs, and the sunshine fell in white patches on the head of an old stone Buddha, whose nose was chipped off, and whose forefinger was raised in a perpetual admonition to all little boys to be good. Just ahead a low flight of stairs led up to a dark recess where a shrine was half concealed by a tangle of vines and underbrush. June cautiously mounted the steps; he was making believe that he was the prince in the fairy-tale, and that when he should push through the barrier of brier roses he would find the Sleeping Beauty within the shrine.
As he reached the top step, a sound made him pause and catch his breath.
It was not the ripple of the falling water that danced past him down the hillside, it was not the murmur of the wind in the bamboos overhead; it was the deep regular breathing very close to him of some one asleep. For a moment June wanted to run away, but then he remembered the golden hair and blue eyes of the princess and with heart beating very fast, he pushed through the underbrush and stumbled over some one lying in the gra.s.s.
CHAPTER IV
BUT when June picked himself up and turned about, he found a very curious looking man sitting up glaring at him. He had a long pointed nose, and fierce little eyes that glowed like red hot cinders, and a drooping white mustache so long that it almost touched the lapels of his shabby French uniform.
"What do you mean by falling over me like that?" he demanded indignantly.
"I--I--thought you was somebody else," June faltered lamely.
The man glared more fiercely than ever: "You were looking for some one!
You were sent here to watch someone! Who did you think I was? Answer me this moment."
He had caught June by the arm and was glaring at him so savagely that June blurted out in terror.
"I thought you was the Sleeping Beauty."
For a moment, suspicion lingered in the man"s face, then his eyes went to and his mouth went open, and he laughed until June thought he would never get the wrinkles smoothed out of his face again.
"The Sleeping Beauty, eh?" he said. "Well, whom do you think I am now?"
June smiled in embarra.s.sment. "I know who you look like," he said, half doubtfully.
"Who?"
"The White Knight," said June.
"Who is he?"
"In "Alice in Wonderland,"" explained June. Then when he saw the man"s look of perplexity, he added incredulously, "Didn"t you _never_ hear of "Alice in Wonderland"?"
The man shook his head.
June was astounded; he didn"t know that such ignorance existed in the world.
"Didn"t you never go to school?" he asked sympathetically.
"Oh yes, a little," said the man, with a funny smile, "but tell me about this White Knight."
June sat down quite close to him and began confidentially:
"He was the one that met Alice in the wood. Don"t you remember just before she was going to be queen? He kept falling off his horse first on one side and then on the other, and he would have to climb up again by the mouse traps."
"The mouse traps, on horse-back?"
"Yes, the Knight was afraid the mice _might_ come and he didn"t want them to run over him. Besides he invented the mouse traps and course, you know, somebody had to use them."
"Of course," said the man taking June"s hand and looking at it as a person looks at something that he has not seen for a very long time.
"He invented lots of things," went on June earnestly, "bracelets for the horse"s feet to keep off shark-bites, and something else to keep your hair from falling out."
"Eh! what"s that?" said his companion rubbing his hand over his own bald head.
June"s eyes twinkled. "You ought to train it up on a stick," he said, "like a vine. That was what the White Knight said, that hair fell off because it hung down. It couldn"t fall up, could it?"
At this they both had a great laugh and the man said:
"So I am the White Knight, am I?"
"Just your mustache," said June; "it was when you was mad that you looked like him most. You"re lots gooder looking than the picture.
What"s your real name?"
"Monsieur Garnier,--no, Carre," he corrected himself quickly. "What is your name?"
"June," then he added formally, "Robert Rogers Royston, Junior"s the rest of it."
"How did you come here?" asked Monsieur.
June told him at length; it was delightful to find some one beside Seki San who understood English, and it was good fun to be telling all about himself just as if he were some other little boy.
"So your father is a soldier!" said Monsieur, and June noticed that a curious wild look came into his eyes and that his fingers, which had knots on them, plucked excitedly at his collar. "Ah! yes, I, too, was a soldier, a soldier of France, one time attache of the French Legation, at Tokyo, later civil engineer in the employ of the j.a.panese Government, now----!" he shrugged his shoulders and his nostrils quivered with anger. "Now a cast-off garment, a thing useless, undesired." He tried to rise and June saw that he used crutches and that it was very difficult for him to walk.
"Do you want me to help you?" he asked.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""Do you want me to help you?""]
The man waved him aside. His eyes had changed into red hot cinders again, and he seemed to have forgotten that June was there. "I ask help from n.o.body," he muttered fiercely, "I live my own life. The beggarly j.a.panese I would never accept from, and my own country does not see fit to help me." His chest heaved with wrath, and he twisted his mustache indignantly.
"Why don"t you go home?" asked June.
Monsieur turned on him fiercely: "Go home? Mon Dieu, do you suppose there is a waking hour that I am not thinking, longing, praying to be back in France? Do you suppose I have left any stone unturned? Any plan unmade that might take me away from this hateful place? It has been fourteen, fifteen years since I came away. It was a j.a.panese that had me dismissed from the service; he bore tales to the minister, he told what was not true. Oh, then I had honor, I was too proud to explain, but now!" he lifted a pair of crippled hands to Heaven, and shook them violently at the trees above, "now I know that honor does not pay, it is not worth while. I will give anything to get back to France!"
June sat still and watched him. He had never seen anyone behave so queerly, and he was very much mixed up as to what it was all about.