Chapter 8

"Naw, you don't," said Joe; "you kin go on an' skate, and I'll watch you."

The arrangement proved entirely satisfactory so long as Mittie paused on every other round to rest or to get him to adjust a strap, or to hold her hat, but when Ben Schenk arrived on the scene, the situation was materially changed.

It was sufficiently irritating to see Ben go through an exhaustive exhibition of his accomplishments under the admiring glances of Mittie, but when he condescended to ask her to skate, and even offered to teach her some new figures, Joe's irritation rose to ire. In vain he tried to catch her eye; she was laughing and clinging to Ben and giving all her attention to his instructions.

Joe sat sullen and indignant, savagely biting his nails. He would have parted with everything he had in the world at that moment for three paltry nickels!

On and on went the skaters, and on and on went the music, and Joe turned his face to the wall and doggedly waited. When at last Mittie came to him flushed and radiant, he had no word of greeting for her.

"Did you see all the new steps Mr. Ben learnt me?" she asked.

"Naw," said Joe.

"Does yer foot hurt you, Joe?"

"Naw," said Joe.

Mittie was too versed in masculine moods to press the subject. She waited until they were out under the starlight in the clear stretch of common near home. Then she slipped her hand through his arm and said coaxingly--

"Say now, Joe, what you kickin' 'bout?"

"Him," said Joe comprehensively.

"Mr. Ben? Why, he's one of our best friends. Maw likes him better'n anybody I ever kept company with. What have all you fellers got against him?"

"He was black marveled at the hall all right," said Joe grimly.

"What for?"

"It ain't none of my business to tell what for," said Joe, though his lips ached to tell what he knew.

"Maw says all you fellows are jealous 'cause he talks so pretty and wears such stylish clothes."

"We might, too, if we got 'em like he done," Joe began, then checked himself. "Say, Mittie, why don't yer maw like me?"

"She says you haven't got any school education and don't talk good grammar."

"Don't I talk good grammar?" asked Joe anxiously.

"I don't know," said Mittie; "that's what she says. How long did you go to school?"

"Me? Oh, off and on 'bout two year. The old man was always poorly, and Maw, she had to work out, till me an' the boys done got big enough to work. 'Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids. Don't I talk like other fellers, Mittie?"

"You talk better than some," said Mittie loyally.

After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully. He thought of the few educated people he knew--the boss at the shops, the preacher up on Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade. Yes, there was a difference. Being clean and wearing good clothes were not the only things.

When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.

One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.

"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter."

Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.

"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him."

"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.

"I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!"

"All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the stuffin' out of me now."

And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus.

The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.

"It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along."

"Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement.

"Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like."

Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition.

"You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.

Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said.

"For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes."

"Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.

"I ain't sayin'," went on Mittie. "What do you do of nights, hang around the hall?"

"Naw," said Joe indignantly. "There ain't nobody can say they've sawn me around the hall sence I've went with you!"

"Well, where do you go?"

"I'm trainin'," said Joe evasively.

"I don't believe you like me as much as you used to," said Mittie plaintively.

Joe looked at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her. The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the twilight.

"Yes, I like you all right," he said, twisting his big, grease-stained hands in embarrassment. "You're the onliest girl I ever could care about. Besides, I couldn't go with no other girl if I wanted to, 'cause I don't know none."

Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk's glib protestations, reinforced by Mrs. Beaver's own zealous approval, should have in time outclassed the humble Joe? The blow fell just when the second term of night school was over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited joy.

He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into the Beavers' when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs. Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow aperture of the front door. She sat in silent majesty, her hands just succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist. Had she closed her eyes, she might have passed for a placid, amiable person, whose angles of disposition had also become curves. But Mrs. Beaver did not close her eyes. She opened them as widely as the geography of her face would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.

Mrs. Beaver was a born manager; she had managed her husband into an untimely grave, she had managed her daughter from the hour she was born, she had dismissed three preachers, induced two women to leave their husbands, and now dogmatically announced herself arbiter of fashions and conduct in Rear Ninth Street.

"No, she can't see you," she said firmly in reply to Joe's question. "She's going out to a dance party with Mr. Schenk."

"Where at?" demanded Joe, who still trembled in her presence.

"Somewheres down town," said Mrs. Beaver, "to a real swell party."

"He oughtn't to take her to no down-town dance," said Joe, his indignation getting the better of his shyness. "I don't want her to go, and I'm going to tell her so."

"In-deed!" said Mrs. Beaver in scorn. "And what have you got to say about it? I guess Mr. Schenk's got the right to take her anywhere he wants to!"

"What right?" demanded Joe, getting suddenly a bit dizzy.

"'Cause he's got engaged to her. He's going to give her a real handsome turquoise ring, fourteen-carat gold."

"Didn't Mittie send me no word?" faltered Joe.

"No," said Mrs. Beaver unhesitatingly, though she had in her pocket a note for him from the unhappy Mittie.

Joe fumbled for his hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small Ridders bearing joyously down upon him.

"Joe!" shrieked Lottie, arriving first, "Maw says hurry on home; we got another new baby to our house."

During the weeks that followed, Rear Ninth Street was greatly thrilled over the unusual event of a home wedding. The reticence of the groom was more than made up for by the bulletins of news issued daily by Mrs. Beaver. To use that worthy lady's own words, "she was in her elements!" She organised various committees--on decoration, on refreshment, and even on the bride's trousseau, tactfully permitting each assistant to contribute in some way to the general grandeur of the occasion.

"I am going to have this a real showy wedding," she said from her point of vantage by the parlour window, where she sat like a field-marshal and issued her orders. "Those paper fringes want to go clean across every one of the shelves, and you all must make enough paper roses to pin 'round the edges of all the curtains. Ever'thing's got to look gay and festive."

"Mittie don't look very gay," ventured one of the assistants. "I seen her in the kitchen cryin' a minute ago."

"Mittie's a fool!" announced Mrs. Beaver calmly. "She don't know a good thing when she sees it! Get them draperies up a little higher in the middle; I'm going to hang a silver horseshoe on to the loop."

The wedding night arrived, and the Beaver cottage was filled to suffocation with the _élite_ of Rear Ninth Street. The guests found it difficult to circulate freely in the room on account of the elaborate and aggressive decorations, so they stood in silent rows awaiting the approaching ceremony. As the appointed hour drew near, and none of the groom's family arrived, a few whispered comments were exchanged.

"It's 'most time to begin," whispered the preacher to Mrs. Beaver, whose keen black eyes had been watching the door with growing impatience.

"Well, we won't wait on nobody," she said positively, as she rose and left the room to give the signal.

In the kitchen she found great consternation: the bride, pale and dejected in all her finery, sat on the table, all the chairs being in the parlour.

"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.

"He ain't come!" announced one of the women in tragic tones.

"Ben Schenk ain't here?" asked Mrs. Beaver in accents so awful that her listeners quaked. "Well, I'll see the reason why!"

Out into the night she sallied, picking her way around the puddles until she reached the saloon at the corner.

"Where's Ben Schenk?" she demanded sternly of the men around the bar.

There was an ominous silence, broken only by the embarrassed shuffling of feet.

Drawing herself up, Mrs. Beaver thumped the counter.

"Where's he at?" she repeated, glaring at the most embarrassed of the lot.

"He don't know where he's at," said the man. "I rickon he cilebrated a little too much fer the weddin'."

"Can he stand up?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.

"Not without starchin'," said the man, and amid the titter that followed, Mrs. Beaver made her exit.

On the corner she paused to reconnoitre. Across the street was her gaily lighted cottage, where all the guests were waiting. She thought of the ignominy that would follow their abrupt dismissal, she thought of the refreshments that must be used to-night or never, she thought of the little bride sitting disconsolate on the kitchen table.

With a sudden determination she decided to lead a forlorn hope. Facing about, she marched weightily around to the rear of the saloon and began laboriously to climb the steps that lead to the hall. At the door she paused and made a rapid survey of the room until she found what she was looking for.

"Joe Ridder!" she called peremptorily.

Joe, haggard and listless, put down his billiard-cue and came to the door.

Five minutes later a breathless figure presented himself at the Beaver kitchen. He had on a clean shirt and his Sunday clothes, and while he wore no collar, a clean handkerchief was neatly pinned about his neck.

"Everybody but the bride and groom come into the parlour," commanded Mrs. Beaver. "I'm a-going to make a speech, and tell 'em that the bride has done changed her mind."

Joe and Mittie, left alone, looked at each other in dazed rapture. She was the first to recover.

"Joe!" she cried, moving timidly towards him, "ain't you mad? Do you still want me?"

Joe, with both hands entangled in her veil and his feet lost in her train, looked down at her through swimming eyes.

"Want yer?" he repeated, and his lips trembled, "gee whiz! I feel like I done ribbeted a hoop round the hull world!"

The signal was given for them to enter the parlour, and without further interruption the ceremony proceeded, if not in exact accordance with the plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in Rear Ninth Street.

THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN

O Sana San stood in the heart of a joyous world, as much a part of the radiant, throbbing, irresponsible spring as the golden butterfly which fluttered in her hand. Through the close-stemmed bamboos she could see the sparkling river racing away to the Inland Sea, while slow-moving junks, with their sixfold sails, glided with almost imperceptible motion toward a far-distant port. From below, across the rice-fields, came the shouts and laughter of naked bronze babies who played at the water's edge, and from above, high up on the ferny cliff, a mellow-throated temple bell answered the call of each vagrant breeze. Far away, shutting out the strange, big world, the luminous mountains hung in the purple mists of May.

And every note of color in the varied landscape, from the purple irises whose royal reflection stained the water below, to the rosy-tipped clover at the foot of the hill, was repeated in the kimono and _obi_ of the child who flitted about in the grasses, catching butterflies in her long-handled net.

It was in the days of the Japanese-Russian War, but the constant echo of the great conflict that sounded around her disturbed her no more than it did the birds overhead. All day long the bugles sounded from the parade-grounds, and always and always the soldiers went marching away to the front. Around the bend in the river were miniature fortifications where recruits learned to make forts and trenches, and to shoot through tiny holes in a wall at imaginary Russian troopers. Down in the town below were long white hospitals where twenty thousand sick and wounded soldiers lay. No thought of the horror of it came to trouble O Sana San. The cherry-trees gladly and freely gave up their blossoms to the wind, and so much the country give up its men for the Emperor. Her father had marched away, then one brother, then another, and she had held up her hands and shouted, "Banzai!" and smiled because her mother smiled. Everything was vague and uncertain, and no imagined catastrophe troubled her serenity. It was all the will of the Emperor, and it was well.

Life was a very simple matter to O Sana San. She rose when the sun climbed over the mountain, bathed her face and hands in the shallow copper basin in the garden, ate her breakfast of bean-curd and pickled fish and warm yellow tea. Then she hung the quilts over poles to sun, dusted the screens, and placed an offering of rice on the steps of the tiny shrine to Inari, where the little foxes kept guard. These simple duties being accomplished, she tied a bit of bean-cake in her gaily colored handkerchief, and stepping into her _geta_, went pattering off to school.

It was an English school, where she sat with hands folded through the long mornings, passively permitting the lessons to filter through her brain, and listening in smiling patience while the kind foreign ladies spoke incomprehensible things. Sometimes she helped pass the hours by watching the shadows of the dancing leaves outside; sometimes she told herself stories about "The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Blossom," or about "Momotaro, the Little Peach Boy." Again she would repeat the strange English words and phrases that she heard, and would puzzle out their meaning.

But the sum of her lore consisted in being happy; and when the shadow of the mountains began to slip across the valley, she would dance back along the homeward way, singing with the birds, laughing with the rippling water, and adding her share of brightness to the sunshine of the world.

As she stood on this particular morning with her net poised over a butterfly, she heard the tramping of many feet. A slow cavalcade was coming around the road,--a long line of coolies bearing bamboo stretchers,--and in the rear, in a jinrikisha, was a foreign man with a red cross on his sleeve.

O Sana San scrambled up the bank and watched with smiling curiosity as the men halted to rest. On the stretcher nearest her lay a young Russian prisoner with the fair skin and blond hair that are so unfamiliar to Japanese eyes. His blanket was drawn tight around his shoulders, and he lay very still, with lips set, gazing straight up through the bamboo leaves to the blue beyond.

Then it was that O Sana San, gazing in frank inquisitiveness at the soldier, saw a strange thing happen. A tear formed on his lashes and trickled slowly across his temple; then another and another, until they formed a tiny rivulet. More and more curious, she drew yet nearer, and watched the tears creep unheeded down the man's face. She was sure he was not crying, because soldiers never cry; it could not be the pain, because his face was very smooth and calm. What made the tears drop, drop on the hard pillow, and why did he not brush them away?

A vague trouble dawned in the breast of O Sana San. Running back to the field, she gathered a handful of wild flowers and returned to the soldier. The tears no longer fell, but his lips quivered and his face was distorted with pain. She looked about her in dismay. The coolies were down by the river, drinking from their hands and calling to one another; the only person to whom she could appeal was the foreigner with the red cross on his arm who was adjusting a bandage for a patient at the end of the line.

With halting steps and many misgivings, she timidly made her way to his side; then placing her hands on her knees, she bowed low before him. The embarrassment of speaking to a stranger and a foreigner almost overwhelmed her, but she mustered her bravest array of English, and pointing to the stretcher, faltered out her message:

"Soldier not happy very much is. I sink soldier heart sorry."

The Red Cross orderly looked up from his work, and his eyes followed her gesture.

"He is hurt bad," he said shortly; "no legs, no arms."

"_So--deska_?" she said politely, then repeated his words in puzzled incomprehension: "Nowarms? Nowarms?"

When she returned to the soldier she gathered up the flowers which she had dropped by the wayside, and timidly offered them to him. For a long moment she waited, then her smile faded mid her hand dropped. With a child's quick sensitiveness to rebuff, she was turning away when an exclamation recalled her.

The prisoner was looking at her in a strange, distressed way; his deep-set gray eyes glanced down first at one bandaged shoulder, then at the other, then he shook his head.

As O Sana San followed his glance, a startled look of comprehension sprang into her face. "Nowarms!" she repeated softly as the meaning dawned upon her, then with a little cry of sympathy she ran forward and gently laid her flowers on his breast.

The cavalcade moved on, under the warm spring sun, over the smooth white road, under the arching cryptomerias; but little O Sana Sun stood with her butterfly net over her shoulder and watched it with troubled eyes. A dreadful something was stirring in her breast, something clutched at her throat, and she no longer saw the sunshine and the flowers. Kneeling by the roadside, she loosened the little basket which was tied to her _obi_ and gently lifted the lid. Slowly at first, and then with eager wings, a dozen captive butterflies fluttered back to freedom.

* * * * *

Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners. To one of the small rooms at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the only way she knew.

O Sana San's heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand. Her mother, in whom smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after day to the hospital.

The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her visits became a matter of course.

And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he turned his head to listen for the patter of the little _tabi_ that was sure to sound along the hall.

Sometimes she would bring her picture-books and read him wonderful stories in words he did not understand, and show him the pictures of Momotaro, who was born out of a peach and who grew up to be so strong and brave that he went to the Ogres' Island and carried off all their treasures,--caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels which made the tide come or go, coral and amber and tortoise-shell,--and all these things the little Peach Boy took back to his kind old foster mother and father, and they all lived happily forever after. And in the telling O Sana Man's voice would thrill, and her almond eyes grow bright, while her slender brown finger pointed out the figures on the gaily colored pages.

Sometimes she would sing to him, in soft minor strains, of the beauty of the snow on the pine-trees, or the wonders of Fuji-San.

And he would pucker his white lips and try to whistle the accompaniment, to her great amusement and delight.

Many were the treasures she brought forth from the depths of her long sleeves, and many were the devices she contrived to amuse him. The most ambitious achievement was a miniature garden in a wooden box--a wonderful garden where grasses stood for tall bamboo, and a saucer of water, surrounded by moss and pebbles, made a shining lake across which a bridge led through a _torii_ to a diminutive shrine above.