CHAPTER III

Only one who has been in bondage all of his days can appreciate that thrill that comes with sudden freedom. The Americans had set Sunny free. She had been bound by law to the man Hirata through an iniquitous bond that covered all the days of her young life--a bond into which the average geisha is sold in her youth. Sunny's mother had signed the contract when starvation faced them, and reassured by the promises of Hirata.

What price and terms the avaricious Hirata extracted from the Americans is immaterial, but they took precautions that the proceeding should be in strict accord with the legal requirements of Japan. The American consul and Japanese lawyers governed the transaction. Hirata, gloated with the unexpected fortune that had come to him through the sale of the apprentice-geisha, overwhelmed the disgusted young men, whom he termed now his benefactors, with servile compliments, and hastened to comply with all their demands, which included the delivery to Sunny of the effects of her mother. Goto bore the box containing her mother's precious robes and personal belongings into the great living room.

Life had danced by so swiftly and strangely for Sunny in these latter days, that she had been diverted from her sorrow. Now, as she slowly opened the bamboo chest, with its intangible odour of dear things, she experienced a strangling sense of utter loss and pain. Never again would she hear that gentle voice, admonishing and teaching her; never again would she rest her tired head on her mother's knee and find rest and comfort from the sore trials of the day; for the training of the apprentice-geisha is harsh and spartan like. As Sunny lifted out her mother's sparkling robe, almost she seemed to see the delicate head above it. A sob broke from the heart of the girl, and throwing herself on the floor by the chest, she wept with her face in the silken folds. A moth fluttered out of one of the sleeves, and hung tremulously above the girl's head. Sunny, looking up, addressed it reverently:

"I will not hurt you, little moth. It may be you are the spirit of my honourable mother. Pray you go upon your way," and she softly blew up at the moth.

It was that element of helplessness, a feminine quality of appeal about Sunny, that touched something in the hearts of her American friends that was chivalrous and quixotic. Always, when Sunny was in trouble, they took the jocular way of expressing their feelings for their charge. To tease, joke, chaff and play with Sunny, that was their way. So, on this day, when they returned to the house, to find the girl with her tear-wet face pressed against her mother's things, they sought an instant means, and as Jerry insisted, a practical one, of banishing her sadness. After the box had been taken from the room, Goto and Jinx told some funny stories, which brought a faint smile to Sunny's face. Monty proffered a handful of sweets picked up in some adjacent shop, while Bobs sought scientifically to arouse her to a semblance of her buoyant spirits by discussing all the small live things that were an unfailing source of interest always to the girl, and pretended an enthusiasm over white rabbits which he declared were in the garden. Jerry broached his marvellous plan, pronounced by Professor Barrowes to be preposterous, unheard of and impossible. In Jerry's own words, the scheme was as follows:

"I propose that we organise and found a company or Syndicate, all present to have the privilege of owning stock in said company; its purpose being to take care of Sunny for the rest of her days. Sooner or later we fellows must return to the U. S. We are going to provide for Sunny's future after we are gone."

Thus the Sunny Syndicate Limited came into being. It was capitalised at $10,000, paid in capital, a considerable sum in Japan, and quite sufficient to keep the girl in comfort for the rest of her days. Professor Timothy Barrowes was unanimously elected President, J. Lyon Crawford (Jinx) treasurer; Robert M. Mapson (Bobs), secretary of the concern, and Joseph Lamont Potter, Jr. (Monty), though under age, after an indignant argument was permitted to hold a minimum measure of stock and also voted a director. J. Addison Hammond, Jr. (Jerry), held down the positions of first vice-president, managing director and general manager and was grudgingly admitted to be the founder and promoter of the great idea, and the discoverer of Sunny, assets of aforesaid Syndicate.

At the initial Board meeting of the Syndicate, which was riotously attended, the purpose of the Syndicate was duly set forth in the minutes read, approved and signed by all, which was, to wit, to feed, clothe, educate and furnish with sundry necessities and luxuries the aforesaid Sunny for the rest of her natural days.

The education of Sunny strongly appealed to the governing president, who, despite his original protest, was the most active member of the Syndicate. He promptly outlined a course which would tend to cultivate those hitherto unexplored portions of Sunny's pliable young mind. A girl of almost fifteen, unable to read or write, was in the opinion of Professor Barrowes a truly benighted heathen. What matter that she knew the Greater Learning for Women by heart, knew the names of all the gods and goddesses cherished by the Island Empire; had an intimate acquaintance with the Japanese language, and was able to translate and indite epistles in the peculiar figures intelligible only to the Japanese. The fact remained that she was in a state of abysmal ignorance so far as American education was concerned. Her friends assured her of the difficulty of their task, and impressed upon her the necessity of hard study and co-operation on her part. She was not merely to learn the American language, she was, with mock seriousness, informed, but she was to acquire the American point of view, and in fact unlearn much of the useless knowledge she had acquired of things Japanese.

To each member of the Syndicate Professor Barrowes assigned a subject in which he was to instruct Sunny. Himself he appointed principal of the "seminary" as the young men merrily named it; Jerry was instructor in reading and writing, Bobs in spelling, Jinx in arithmetic, and to young Monty, aged seventeen, was intrusted the task of instructing Sunny in geography, a subject Professor Barrowes well knew the boy was himself deficient in. He considered this an ideal opportunity, in a sort of inverted way, to instruct Monty himself. To the aid and help of the Americans came the Reverend Simon Sutherland, a missionary, whose many years of service among the heathen had given to his face that sadly solemn expression of martyr zealot. His the task to transform Sunny into a respectable Christian girl.

Sunny's progress in her studies was eccentric. There were times when she was able to read so glibly and well that the pride of her teacher was only dashed when he discovered that she had somehow learned the words by heart, and in picking them out had an exasperating habit of pointing to the wrong words. She could count to ten in English. Her progress in Geography was attested to by her admiring and enthusiastic teacher, and she herself, dimpling, referred to the U. S. A. as being "over cross those west water, wiz grade flag of striped stars."

However, her advance in religion exceeded all her other attainments, and filled the breast of the good missionary with inordinate pride. An expert and professional in the art of converting the heathen, he considered Sunny's conversion at the end of the second week as little short of miraculous, and, as he explained to the generous young Americans, who had done so much for the mission school in which the Reverend Simon Sutherland was interested, he was of the opinion that the girl's quick comprehension of the religion was due to a sort of reversion to type, she being mainly of white blood. So infatuated indeed was the good man by his pupil's progress that he could not forbear to bring her before her friends, and show them what prayer and sincere labour among the heathen were capable of doing.

Accordingly, the willing and joyous convert was haled before an admiring if somewhat sceptical circle in the cheerful living room of the Americans. Here, her hands clasped piously together, she chanted the prepared formula:

"Gentlemens"--Familiar daily intercourse with her friends brought easily to the girl's tongue their various nicknames, but "Gentlemens" she now addressed them.

"I stan here to make statements to you that I am turn Kirishitan."

"English, my dear child. Use the English language, please."

"--that I am turn those Christian girl. I can sing those--a-gospel song; and I are speak those--ah--gospel prayer, and I know those cat--cattykussem like--like----"

Sunny wavered as she caught the uplifted eyebrow of the missionary signalling to her behind the back of Professor Barrowes. Now the words began to fade away from Sunny. Alone with the missionary it was remarkable how quickly she was able to commit things to memory. Before an audience like this, she was as a child who stands upon a platform with his first recitation, and finds his tongue tied and memory failing. What was it now the Reverend Simon Sutherland desired her to say? Confused, but by no means daunted, Sunny cast about in her mind for some method of propitiating the minister. At least, she could pray. Folding her hands before her, and dropping her Buddhist rosary through her fingers, she murmured the words of that quaint old hymn:

"What though those icy breeze, He blow sof' on ze isle Though evrything he pleases And jos those man he's wild, In vain with large kind The gift of those gods are sown, Those heathen in blindness Bow down to wood and stone."

They let her finish the chant, the words of which were almost unintelligible to her convulsed audience, who vainly sought to strangle their mirth before the crestfallen and sadly hurt Mr. Sutherland. He took the rosary from Sunny's fingers, saying reprovingly:

"My dear child, that is not a prayer, and how many times must I tell you that we do not use a rosary in our church. All we desire from you at this time is a humble profession as to your conversion to Christianity. Therefore, my child, your friends and I wish to be reassured on that score."

"I'd like to hear her do the catechism. She says she knows it," came in a muffled voice from Bobs.

"Certainly, certainly," responded the missionary. "Attention, my dear. First, I will ask you: What is your name?"

Sunny, watching him with the most painful earnestness indicative of her earnest desire to please, was able to answer at once joyously.

"My name are Sunny--Syndicutt."

The mirth was barely suppressed by the now indignant minister, who glared in displeasure upon the small person so painfully trying to realise his ambitions for her. To conciliate the evidently angry Mr. Sutherland, she rattled along hurriedly:

"I am true convert. I swear him. By those eight million gods of the heavens and the sea, and by God-dam I swear it that I am nixe Kirishitan girl."

* * * * *

A few minutes later Sunny was alone, even Professor Barrowes having hastily followed his charges from the room to avoid giving offence to the missionary, whose angry tongue was now loosened, and flayed the unhappy girl ere he too departed in dudgeon via the front door.

* * * * *

That evening, after the dinner, Sunny, who had been very quiet during the meal, went directly from the table to her room upstairs, and to the calls after her of her friends, she replied that she had "five thousan words to learn him to spell."

Professor Barrowes, furtively wiping his eyes and then his glasses, shook them at his protesting young charges and asserted that the missionary was quite within his rights in punishing Sunny by giving her 500 lines to write.

"She's been at it all day," was the disgusted comment of Monty. "It's a rotten shame, to put that poor kid to copying that little hell of a line."

"Sir," said the Professor, stiffening and glaring through his glasses at Monty, "I wish you to know that line happens to be taken from a--er--book esteemed sacred, and I have yet to learn that it had its origin in the infernal regions as suggested by you. What is more, I may say that Miss Sunny's progress in reading and spelling, arithmetic, and geography has not been what I had hoped. Accordingly I have instructed her that she must study for an hour in the evening after dinner, and I have further advised the young lady that I do not wish her to leave the house on any pleasure expedition this evening."

A howl of indignant protest greeted this pronouncement and the air was electric with bristling young heads.

"Say, Proff. Sunny promised to go out with me this evening. She knows a shop where they sell that sticky gum drop stuff that I like, and we're going down Snowdrop Ave. to Canal Lane. Let her off, just this time, will you?"

"I will not. She must learn to spell Cat, Cow, Horse and Dog and such words as a baby of five knows properly before she can go out on pleasure trips."

Jinx ponderously sat up on his favourite sofa, the same creaking under him as the big fellow moved. In an injured tone he set forth his rights for the evening to Sunny.

"Sunny has a date with me to play me a nice little sing-song on that Jap guitar of hers. I'm not letting her off this or any other night."

"She made a date with me too," laughed Bobs. "We were to star gaze, if you please. She says she knows the history of all the most famous stars in the heavens, and she agreed to show me the exact geographical spot in the firmament where that Amaterumtumtum, or whatever she calls it, goddess, lost her robes in the Milky Way just while she was descending to earth to be an ancestor to the Emperor of Japan." Mockingly Bobs bowed his head in solemn and comical imitation of Sunny at the mention of the Emperor.

Jerry was thinking irritably that Sunny and he were to have stolen away after supper for a little trip in a private junk, owned by a friend of Sunny's, and she said that the rowers would play the guitar and sing as the gondoliers of Italy do. Jerry had a fancy for that trip in the moonlight, with Sunny's little hand cuddled up in his, and the child chattering some of her pretty nonsense. Confound it, the little baggage had promised her time to every last one of her friends, and so it was nearly every night in the week. Sunny had much ado making and breaking engagements with her friends.

"It strikes me," said Professor Barrowes, stroking his chin humorously, "that Miss Sunny has in her all the elements that go to the making of a most complete and finished coquette. For your possible edification, gentlemen, I will mention that the young lady also offered to accompany me to a certain small temple where she informs me a bonze of the Buddhist religion has a library of er--one million years, so claims Miss Sunny, and this same bonze she assured me has a unique collection of ancient butterflies which have come down from prehistoric days. Ahem!--er--I shall play fair with you young gentlemen. I desire very much to see the articles I have mentioned. I doubt very much the authenticity of the same, but have an open mind. I shall, however, reserve the pleasure of seeing these collections till a more convenient period. In the meanwhile I advise you all to go about your respective concerns, and I bid you good-night, gentlemen, I bid you good-night."

* * * * *

The house was silent. The living room, with its single reading lamp, seemed empty and cold, and Professor Barrowes with a book whose contents would have aforetime utterly absorbed him, as it dealt with the fascinating subject of the Dinornis, of post-Pliocene days, found himself unable to concentrate. His well-governed mind had in some inexplicable way become intractable. It persisted in wandering up to the floor above, where Professor Barrowes knew was a poor young girl, who was studying hard into the night. Twice he went outdoors to assure himself that Sunny was still studying, and each time the glowing light, and the chanting voice aroused his further compunction and remorse. Unable longer to endure the distracting influence that took his mind from his favourite study, the Professor stole on tiptoe up the stairs to Sunny's door. The voice inside went raucously on.

"C-a-t--dog. C-a-t--dog. C-a-t--dog!"

Something about that voice, devoid of all the charm peculiar to Sunny, grated against the sensitive ear at the keyhole, and accordingly he withdrew the ear and applied the eye. What he saw inside caused him to sit back solidly on the floor, speechless with mirthful indignation.

Hatsu, the maid, sat stonily before the little desk of her mistress, and true to the instructions of Sunny, she was loudly chanting that C-a-t spelled Dog.

Outside the window--well, there was a lattice work that ascended conveniently to Sunny's room. Her mode of exit was visible to the simplest minded, but the question that agitated the mind of Professor Barrowes, and sent him off into a spree of mirthful speculation was which one of the members of the Sunny Syndicate Limited had Miss Sunny Sindicutt eloped with?