"I guess I have to go now," he said, "Toro"s waiting."
Monsieur"s eyes flashed suspiciously. "Who"s waiting?" he asked.
"Toro, he is Seki"s brother, he knows how to build awful nice houses and blockades too."
"Blockades?" repeated Monsieur, "what kind of blockades?"
"Like the soldiers make, we watch them all the time; come on, I will show you."
The two made their way down the steps slowly, for Monsieur could go only a little way at a time. Toro looked mildly surprised when June came back with a companion, but he did not give a second glance at Monsieur, who was evidently a familiar figure about the town.
For a long time the two children played in the sand, and Monsieur sat beside them and acted as interpreter, speaking first to one in j.a.panese, and then to the other in English, giving directions and suggestions and proving a first-rate play-fellow.
"Why, you know a lot about forts and mines and blockades and things, don"t you?" asked June.
Monsieur looked absently across the lake. "Alas!" he said grimly, half to himself, "I know too much for their good and for mine."
When the temple bell from the hillside boomed the supper hour, the boys gathered up their things and started home.
"Good-by," said June to Monsieur, "I hope you"ll come back and play with us another day."
Monsieur bowed very politely, but he did not answer, his half-closed eyes still rested on the little forts that the boys had been making in the sand, and his thoughts seemed to be far away.
When June reached the street, he turned to wave a good-by, but Monsieur was hobbling down the hill, his figure, in spite of the crutches, looking very straight and stiff against the evening sky.
CHAPTER V
IT was a long time before June saw Monsieur again, for there were picnics up the river, with lunches cooked on the bank, there were jolly little excursions in sampans, and trips to the tea-houses, and flower shows, and an endless round of good times. Seki San kept June out of doors all day, and watched with glee the color return to his cheeks, and the angles of his slender body turn into soft curves.
At night, she and June and Toro, with Tomi frisking and sneezing at their heels, would join the happy, chattering crowd that thronged the streets, and would make their way to the flower market where tall flaming torches lit up the long stalls of flowers, and where merchants squatting on their heels spread their wares on the ground before them,--curious toys, old swords, and tea-pots with ridiculous long noses. And in front of every door was a great shining paper lantern with queer signs painted on it, and other gay lanterns of all shapes and sizes and colors went dancing and bobbing up and down the streets like a host of giant fireflies.
It was no wonder that June hated to go to bed when so much was happening outside. Only the promise of a story moved him when Seki gave the final word. But for the sake of a story he would have gone to the moon, I believe, and stayed there too.
When at last he was bathed and cuddled down in his nest on the floor with a huge kimono--four times as big as the ones Seki wore--spread over him, Seki would sit on her heels beside him, sewing with an endless thread, which she only cut off from the reel when the seam was finished.
And June would watch her pretty, plump little hands, and the shadows of her moving fingers as he listened to queer tales of the sea-G.o.ds and their palace under the waves. Sometimes she would tell of the old samurai and their dark deeds of revenge, of attacks on castles, and fights in the moats, and the imaginary clashing of swords and shouts of men would get so real to June that he would say:
"I don"t want any more scareful ones to-night. Please tell me about the little mosquito boy."
Then Seki would begin: "Very long times ago, lived very good little boy, who never want to do anything but reverence his mother and his father, and his grandfathers and grandmothers. All times he think it over to himself how he can serve his parents. One night the wind blow up from the south and bring a thousand hundred _ka_, mosquito you call him, and they bite very much. So good little boy takes off all his clothes and lies at the door of his house so mosquitoes bite him and get so full of boy that they have not room more for father and mother." At which point June would never fail to laugh with delight, and Seki would look hurt and puzzled and say, "Not funny, June, very fine, kind, and n.o.ble of good little boy."
After Seki had put out the light and joined the rest of the family in the garden, June would lie very still and the thoughts that had been crowded down in the bottom of his heart all day would come creeping up and whisper to him. "Mother is a long way off; suppose she has gotten lost and never comes back again. Perhaps I haven"t got a father any more, maybe the soldiers have put him in the ground as they did Teddy"s papa. Suppose I have to live here always and grow up to be a j.a.panese man, and never see the ranch in California nor my pony any more?" And a big sob would rise in his throat and he was glad of the dark, for the tears would come no matter how hard he tried to keep them back. But he never called Seki, nor let any one know. Sometimes he got up and got his little gun and took it back to bed with him; it was so much easier to be a soldier if you had a gun in your hand.
But one morning when he awoke, two delightful things happened. First he saw up in the air, apparently swimming about over the house-tops, an enormous red fish as large as he was, and when he ran to the door there were others as far as he could see waving and floating about tall poles that were placed outside nearly every house.
Without waiting to be dressed he rushed into the garden to ask Seki San what it all meant. When she saw him, she dropped the letter she was reading and came toward him as fast as her little pigeon toes would carry her.
"It"s from your mother," she cried, her face beaming with joy. "She did never get losted at all. She is with your father now, and he will have the strength again, and they will come back so sooner as he can journey.
Oh! I could die for the happiness!"
June jumped up and down, and Seki San giggled, and Tomi barked until the family came out to see what was the matter.
"And what did she say? Tell me!" demanded June.
"All this, and this, and this," said Seki, spreading out the closely written sheets. Then with many pauses and much knitting of brows and pointing of fingers, she read the letter aloud. There was very little about the sad journey, or the dreadful fever, or the life at the hospital. It was mostly about June, whether he was well, whether he was very unhappy, if he coughed at night, if he missed her very much.
"And these at the end I sink I can not read," concluded Seki, pointing to a long row of circles and dots.
June looked over her shoulder. "Why Seki!" he exclaimed, "that"s the only part I can read! They are kisses and hugs, I showed her how to make them. That long one is a pink kiss, and this starry one is silver with golden spangles," he laughed with delight; then his eye catching sight of the fish overhead, he said:
"Say Seki, why did they put out the fish? Is it because my father is getting well?"
Seki San smilingly shook her head.
"It"s a matsuri, a festival," she explained; "this is the boys" day and wherever a boy live, they put out a big paper fish with round mouth open so----, and when the wind flow in, the fish grow big and fat and make like swim in the air."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""It"s a Matsuri--a festival," Seki explained."]
"But why do they put out fishes?" persisted June.
""Tis the carp fish," said Seki San, "because the carp very strong and brave, he swim against the current, fight his way up the waterfall, not afraid of the very bad discouragings, like good boy should be."
June was much more interested in the fish than in the moral, and when Toro brought a big red one for him and a paper cap and banner, he hastened away to be dressed so that he could be ready for the festivities.
Taking it all in all, it was about the happiest day he had ever spent in his life. When he and Toro started forth the streets were already full of people, men and women in holiday attire, little girls in bright red petticoats and fancy pins in their hair, every boy with a fish on a stick, small children with bald-headed babies tied on their backs, all trotting merrily along to the matsuri.
Everywhere June went a crowd went behind him, for a little foreign boy with gray eyes and fair hair, and strange foreign clothes was one of the greatest sights of the day. Sometimes a woman would stop him and look at his hat or his shoes, and a circle would close in and Toro would be bombarded with questions. But the people were always so polite, and their admiration was so evident, that June was rather pleased, and when he smiled and spoke to them in English, they bowed again and again, and he bowed back, then they all laughed.
It was a terrible trial to June not to be able to ask questions. He was brimful of curiosity and everything he saw and heard had a dozen questions hanging to it. Usually Seki San supplied the answers but to-day Toro was in command, and while he was a very careful little guide, keeping tight hold of June"s hand, pointing out all the interesting sights, and trying to explain by sign and gesture, still he did not know a single word of English.
After pa.s.sing through many gay streets they came to a tall red gate which June had come to recognize as the entrance to sacred ground. But inside it was not in the least like any churchyard he had ever seen. It was more like the outside of a circus where everything delightful was happening at once. On one side was a sandman making wonderful pictures on the ground with colored sand. First he made a background of fine white sand, then out of papers folded like cornucopias he formed small streams of black and red sand, skilfully tracing the line of a mountain, using a feather to make the waves of the sea, and a piece of silver money to form the great round moon, and before you knew it there was the very picture you had seen on fans and screens and tea-pots ever since you could remember, even down to the birds that were flying across the moon.
Then there were jugglers and tight rope walkers, and sacred pigeons that lit on your head and shoulders and ate corn out of your hand. June thought he had never seen such greedy pigeons before. Two or three perched on his hand at once, and scolded and pushed each other, and even tried to eat the b.u.t.tons off his blouse!
Up the mountain side, flanked by rows of stone lanterns, ran a wide flight of steps and at the top was the gate-way to the temple itself. On either side were sort of huge cages, and in them the most hideous figures June had ever seen! They were fierce looking giants with terrible gla.s.s eyes and snarling mouths with all the teeth showing, just as the Ogre"s did in the fairy tale. One was painted all over green, and the other was red, and they held out clutching fingers as if ready to pounce upon the pa.s.ser-by. While June was looking at them and feeling rather glad that they were inside the cages, he saw two old men dressed in white, climb slowly up the steps and kneel before the statues. Bowing their heads to the earth and muttering prayers, they took from their belts some slips of paper, and after chewing them into wads began gravely to throw them at the fierce green demon behind the bars.
June giggled with joy, this was something he could quite understand.
Taking advantage of Toro"s attention being distracted, he promptly began to make wads too, and before Toro could stop him he was vigorously pelting the scowling image. In an instant there was angry remonstrance and a group of indignant worshipers gathered around. Fortunately Seki San appeared on the scene in time to prevent trouble.
"But I was only doing what the others did!" explained June indignantly.
"It is no harm done," said Seki, rea.s.suringly after a few words to those about her, "you not understand our strange ways. These are our Nio or temple guardians that frighten away the evil, bad spirits."
"What makes the pilgrims throw at them, then?" asked June.