CHAPTER VI

Time and environment work miracles. It is interesting to study the phases of emotion that one passes through as he emerges from youth into manhood. The exaggerated expressions, the unalterable conclusions, the tragic imaginings, the resolves, which he feels nothing can shake, how sadly and ludicrously and with what swiftness are they dissipated.

It came to pass that Sunny's friends across the sea reached a period where they thought of her vaguely only as a charming and amusing episode of an idyllic summer in the Land of the Rising Sun. Into the oblivion of the years, farther and farther retreated the face of the Sunny whose April smile and ingenuous ways and lovely face had once so warmed and charmed their young hearts.

New faces, new scenes, new loves, work and the claims and habits that fasten upon one with the years--these were the forces that engrossed them. I will not say that she was altogether forgotten in the new life, but at least she occupied but a tiny niche in their sentimental recollections. There were times, when a reference to Japan would call forth a murmur of pleasureable reminiscences, and humorous references to some remembered fantastic trick or trait peculiar to the girl, as:

"Do you remember when Sunny tried to catch that nightingale by putting salt near a place where she thought his tail might rest? I had told her she could catch him by putting salt on his tail, and the poor kid took me literally."

Jinx chuckled tenderly over the memory. In the first year after his return to America Jinx had borne his little friend quite often in mind, and had sent her several gifts, all of which were gratefully acknowledged by the Reverend Simon Sutherland.

"Will you ever forget" (from Bobs) "her intense admiration for Monty's white skin? She sat on the bank of the pool for nearly an hour, with the unfortunate kid under water, waiting for her to go away, while she waited for him to come out, because she said she wanted to see what a white body looked like 'wiz nothing but skin on for clothes.' I had to drag her off by main force. Ha, ha! I'll never forget her indignation, or her question whether Monty was 'ashamed his body.' The public baths of Nagasaki, you know, were social meeting places, and introductions under or above water quite the rule."

"I suppose," said Jerry, pulling at his pipe thoughtfully, "we never will get the Japanese point of view anent the question of morals."

"It's the shape of their eyes. They see things slant-wise," suggested Jinx brilliantly.

"But Sunny's eyes, as I recall them," protested Bobs, "were not slanting, and she had their point of view. You'll recall how the Proff had much ado to prevent her taking her own quaint bath in our 'lake' in beauty unadorned."

A burst of laughter broke forth here.

"Did he now? He never told me anything about that."

"Didn't tell me either, but I _heard_ him. He explained to Sunny in the most fatherly way the whole question of morals from the day of Adam down, and she got him so tangled up and ashamed of himself that he didn't know where he was at. However, as I recall it, he must have won out in the contention, for you'll recall how she voiced such scathing and contemptuous criticism later on the public bathers of Japan, whom she said were 'igrant and nod god nize Americazan manner and wear dress cover hees body ad those bath.'"

"Ah, Sunny was a darling kid, take it from me. Just as innocent and sweet as a new-born babe." This was Jinx's sentimental contribution, and no voice arose to question his verdict.

So it will be perceived that her friends, upon the rare occasions when she was recalled to memory, still held her in loving, if humorous regard, and it was the custom of Jerry to end the reminiscences of Sunny with a big sigh and a dumping of the ash from his pipe, as he dismissed the subject with:

"Well, well, I suppose she's the Empress of Japan by now."

All of them were occupied with the concerns and careers that were of paramount importance to them. Monty, though but in his twenty-first year, an Intern at Bellevue; Bobs, star reporter on the _Comet_; Jinx, overwhelmingly rich, the melancholy and unwilling magnet of all aspiring mothers-in-law; Jerry, an outlaw from the house of Hammond, though his engagement to Miss Falconer bade fair to reinstate him in his parents' affections. He was doggedly following that star of which he had once told Sunny. Eight hours per day in an architect's office, and four or six hours in his own studio, was the sum of the work of Jerry. He "lived in the clouds," according to his people; but all the great deeds of the world, and all of the masterpieces penned or painted by the hand of man, Jerry knew were the creations of dreamers--the "cloud livers." So he took no umbrage at the taunt, and kept on reaching after what he had once told Sunny was that Jade of fortune--Beauty.

Somewhere up the State, Professor Barrowes pursued the uneven tenor of his way as Professor of Archeology and Zoology in a small college. Impetuous and erratic, becoming more restless with the years, he escaped the irritations and demands of the class room at beautiful intervals, when he indulged in a passion of research that took him into the far corners of the world, to burrow into the earth in search of things belonging to the remote dead and which he held of more interest than mere living beings. His fortunes were always uncertain, because of this eccentric weakness, and often upon returning from some such quest his friends had much ado to secure him a berth that would serve as an immediate livelihood. Such position secured, after considerable wire pulling on the part of Jerry and other friends, Professor Barrowes would be no sooner seated in the desired chair, when he would begin to lay plans for another escape. An intimate friendship existed between Jerry and his old master, and it was to Jerry that he invariably went upon his return from his archeological quests. Despite the difference in their years, there was a true kinship between these two. Each comprehended the other's aspirations, and in a way the passion for exploration and the passion for beauty is analogous. Jerry's parents looked askance at this friendship, and were accustomed to blame the Professor for their son's vagaries, believing that he aided and abetted and encouraged Jerry, which was true enough.

Of all Sunny's friends, Professor Barrowes, alone, kept up an irregular communication with the Sutherlands. Gratifying reports of the progress of their protégé came from the missionary at such times. Long since, it had been settled that Sunny should be trained to become a shining example to her race--if, in fact, the Japanese might be termed her race. It was the ambition of the good missionary to so instruct the girl that she would be competent to step into the missionary work, and with her knowledge of the Japanese tongue and ways, her instructor felt assured they could expect marvels from her in the matter of converting the heathen.

It is true the thought of that vivid little personality in the grey rôle of a preacher, brought somewhat wry faces to her friends, and exclamations even of distaste.

"Gosh!" groaned Jinx sadly, "I'd as lieves see her back on the tightrope."

"Imagine Sunny preaching! It would be a raving joke. I can just hear her twisting up her eight million gods and goddesses with our own deity," laughed Bobs.

"Like quenching a firefly's light, or the bruising of a butterfly's wings," murmured Jerry, dreamily, his head encircled with rings of smoke.

But then one becomes accustomed to even a fantastic thought. We accredit certain qualities and actions to individuals, and, in time, in our imaginations at least, they assume the traits with which we have invested them. After all, it was very comforting to think of that forlorn orphan child in the safe haven of a mission school.

So the years ran on and on, as they do in life, and as they do in stories such as this, and it came to pass, as written above, that Sunny disappeared into the fragrant corners of a pretty memory. There is where Sunny should perhaps have stayed, and thus my story come to a timely end.

Consider the situation. A girl, mainly of white blood, with just a drop of oriental blood in her--enough to make her a bit different from the average female of the species, enough, say, to give a snack of that savage element attributed to the benighted heathen. Rescued by men of her father's race from slavery and abuse; provided for for the rest of her days; under the instruction of a zealous and conscientious missionary and his wife, who earnestly taught her how to save the souls of the people of Japan. Sunny's fate was surely a desirable one, and as she progressed on the one side of the water, her friends on the other side were growing in sundry directions, ever outward and upward, acquiring new responsibilities, new loves, new claims, new passions with the passing of the years. What freak of fate therefore should interpose at this juncture, and thrust Sunny electrically into the lives of her friends again?