The Lady of the Decoration Part 4

Under promise that I will not write a long letter, I am allowed to begin one to you this morning. Miss Lessing wrote you last week that I had been sick. The truth is I tried to do too much, and paid up for it by staying in bed two whole weeks. Perhaps I will acquire a little sense in the next world; I certainly haven't in this! j.a.pan wasn't made for restless, energetic people. If you can't learn to be lazy, you can't last long.

I can never tell you how good Miss Lessing has been, sleeping right by me, taking care of me and loving me like I was her own child. The girls too, have been so good sending me gifts almost every hour in the day. One little girl got up at prayers the other night, and, folding her hands, said: "Oh Lord, please make the Skipping Sensei well, and help me to keep my mouth shut so it will be quiet, for she has been good to us and we all do love her much." Heaven knows the "Skipping Sensei" needs all the prayers of the congregation!

Just as soon as school is over, Miss Dixon and I start for Russia. It's a good thing that vacation is near for I am tired of being a Missionary lady, and a school-marm, in fact I am tired of being good.

Don't worry about me, for I am all right. I've just run down and need a little fun to wind me up for another year.

KOBE, July 16, 1902.

Does July 16th mean anything to you? It does to me. Just one year ago today the gates of that old Union Depot shut between me and all that was dear to me, and I went out into the big world to fight my big fight alone. Well, I am still fighting, Mate, and probably will be to the end of the campaign.

As you see I am in Kobe waiting for my pa.s.s-port to go to Russia. If there is anything you want to know about pa.s.s-ports just apply to me. With all confidence, I sailed down to the Consulate and was met by a pair of legs attached to a huge mustache and the funniest little b.u.t.ton of a head you ever saw. I think the Lord must have laughed when he got through making that man! He was horribly bored with life in general, and me in particular. He motioned me wearily to a chair beside a table, and, handing me a paper, managed to sigh: "Fill in."

The questions were about like this: Who was your father? What are you doing out of your own country? Was anybody in your family ever hung?

How many teeth have you?

I wrote rapidly until I got to "When were you born?" b.u.t.ton-Head was standing by me, so I looked up at him helplessly and told him that was one thing I _never_ could remember. He said I would have to, and I said I couldn't. He pranced around for fifteen minutes, and I pretended to be racking my brain.

Then he handed me a Bible, and said in a stern voice: "Swear." I told him that I couldn't, that I never had sworn, that ladies didn't do it in America, wouldn't he please do it for me?

About this time Miss Dixon spoiled the fun by laughing, so I had to behave. After we had spent two hours and three dollars in that dingy old office, we departed, but our troubles were not over. No sooner had we reached the hotel than b.u.t.ton-Head appeared with more papers. "You failed to describe yourself," he mournfully announced, handing me another slip.

I had not had my dinner and I was cross, but I seized a pen determined to make short work of it. How tall? Easily told. Black or white? Very easy. Kind of chin? Round and rosy. Shape of face? Depends on time and place. Hair? Pure gold. Eyes? Now I knew they were green but that did not sound poetic enough so I appealed to Dixie. She thought for a while, then said, "Not gray nor brown, I have it, they are syrup colored!" So I put it down along with a lot of other nonsense.

Now the papers have to be sent to Tokyo for approval, then back here again where I will have to do some more signing and swearing. Isn't this enough to discourage people from ever going anywhere?

The news about the sailboat is great. How many of you will be up at the Cape this summer? Is Jack going? When I think of the starlight nights out in the boat, and the long lazy mornings on the beach, I get absolutely faint with longing. Heretofore I haven't _dared_ to enjoy things, and now, when I might, I am an exile heading for Siberia! Oh, well! perhaps there will be starlight nights in Siberia, who knows?

VLADIVOSTOCK, SIBERIA, August 16, 1902.

If I should write all I wanted to say this morning, my letter would reach across the Pacific! I didn't believe it was possible for me ever to have such a good time again.

When we came, we brought a letter of introduction to a Mrs. Heath. She has a beautiful big house, and a beautiful big heart, and she took us right into both.

The day after we arrived, I was standing on her piazza looking down the bay, when I saw a battle-s.h.i.+p come sailing in under a salute of seventeen guns from the fort. It turned out to be the "Victor," and you never knew such rejoicing. Mrs. Heath knows all the navy people and her house is a favorite rendezvous. Before night, we had met many old acquaintances, among them my Nagasaki friend, "Vermont."

It has been tremendously jolly and I can't deny that I have been outrageously frivolous for a missionary! But to save my life I can't conjure up the ghost of a regret! And what is more, I have been contaminating Dixie! I have kept her in such a giddy whirl that she says I have paralysed her conscience! I have dressed her up and trotted her along to lunches, teas and dinners, to concerts on sea and land, and once, Oh! awful confession, I bulldozed her into going to the theatre! The consequence is that she has gotten entirely well and looks ten years younger. Her chief trouble was that she had surrounded herself with a regular picket fence of creed and dogma, and was afraid to lift her eyes for fear she would catch a glimpse through the cracks, of the beautiful world which G.o.d meant for us to enjoy. It gave me particular joy to pull a few palings off that picket fence!

Most of my time is spent on the water with Vermont. I don't find it half bad out on the bewitching Uzzuri Bay when the moon is s.h.i.+ning and the music floats over the water, to discuss love with a fascinating youth!

What does it matter if he is talking about "the other one"? Don't you suppose that I am glad to know that somewhere in this wide world there's a man that can be loyal to his sweetheart even though she is ten thousand miles away?

I ask occasional questions and don't listen to the answers, and he pours out his confessions and thinks I am lovely. He really is one of the dearest fellows I ever met, and I am glad for that other girl with all my heart.

I like several of the other men very much but they bother me with questions. They refuse to believe that I am connected with a mission, and consider it all as a huge joke.

I wish you could see this place. It is built in terraces up the greenest of mountains and forms a crescent around the bay. Everybody seems to be in uniform of some kind, and soldiers and sailors are at every turn. The streets are a glittering panorama of strange color and form. At night everything is ablaze, bands playing, uniforms glittering, and flags flying. It is all just one intense thrill of life and rhythm, and the cloven foot of my worldliness never fails to keep time.

But when daylight comes and all the sordid ugliness is revealed, disgust takes the place of fascination. The streets are crowded with thousands of degraded Chinese and Koreans, who, even in their brutality, are not as bad as the ordinary Russians.

Through this ma.s.s of poverty and degradation dash handsome carriages filled with richly clad people. The drivers wear long blue plush blouses with red sleeves and belt, and trousers tucked in high boots. On their heads they wear funny little hats that look as if they had been sat on. They generally stand up while driving and lash the poor horses into a dead run from start to finish. Many of them are ex-convicts and can never leave Siberia. If their cruelty to horses is any criterion of their cruelty to their fellow men, I can't help thinking they deserve their punishment.

I won't dare to mail this letter until I get out of Russia for they are so cranky about their blessed old country. They would not even let me have a little flag to send to the boys at home! I found out to-day that a policeman comes every day to see what we have been doing, what hours we keep, etc. In fact every movement is watched, and one day when we returned to the hotel, we found that all our possessions had been searched, and the police had even left their old cigar stumps among our things! The more you see of Russia, the more deeply you fall in love with Uncle Sam!

Several days ago Mrs. Heath gave us a tennis-tea and we had a jolly time. The tea was served under the trees from a steaming samovar, around which gathered representatives of many nations. There were many unp.r.o.nounceable gentlemen, and one real English Lord, who considered Americans, "frightfully amusing."

I thought I had forgotten how to play tennis but I hadn't. That undercut that Jack taught us won me a reputation.

It is only when I stop to think, that I realize how far I am from home! When I wonder where you all are this minute, and what you are doing, I feel as if I were on a visit to the planet Mars, and had no communication whatever with the world.

Think of me, Mate, in Siberia, eating fish with a spoon, and drinking coffee from a gla.s.s! Verily, when old Sister Fate found she could not down me, she must have decided to play pranks with me!

My box of new clothes arrived just before I started, and I have had use for everything. When I get on the white coat suit and the white hat, I feel like a dream.

The weather is simply glorious, like our best October days at home. Nothing could be more unlike than Russia and j.a.pan! one is a great oil painting, tragic, majestic, grand, while the other is an exquisitely dainty water color full of suns.h.i.+ne and flowers.

Callers have come so I must close. Life is a very pretty game after all, especially when you get wise enough to look on.

VLADIVOSTOCK, SIBERIA, September 1, 1902.

Just a short letter to tell you that we leave Vladivostock to-night. I am all broken up; it has been the happiest summer that I have had for years and I can't bear to think of it being over.

It has been so long since Peace and I have been acquainted that I hardly yet dare look her full in the face for fear she will take flight and leave me in utter darkness again. Even if she has not come to live with me, she is at least my next door neighbor, and I offer her incense that she may abide.

Now I might as well confess that if it were not for Memory there is no telling what Peace might do! Poor old Memory! I'd like to throttle her sometime and bury her in a deep hole. Yet she has served me many a good turn, and often laid a restraining hand on impulse and thought. But she is like a poor relation, always turning up at the wrong time!

For instance, on a gorgeous moonlight night on the Uzzuri Bay when you are out in a sampan with a pigtail who neither sees nor hears, and your companion is clever enough to be fascinating and daring enough to say things he "hadn't oughter," and the music and the moonlight gets into your head, and you feel young and reckless and sentimental, then all of a sudden Memory recalls another moonlight night when the youth and the romance weren't merely make believe, and your mind travels wearily over the intervening years, and you sit up straight and look severe and put your hands behind you!

Oh! I am clinging to my ideal, Mate, never fear. I've held on to her garments until they are tattered and torn. You introduced me to her and I have never lost sight of her entirely.

This afternoon the Victor sailed for the Philippines. As she pa.s.sed Mrs. Heath's cottage where we had all promised to be, she dipped her colors. I felt pretty blue for I knew my good times were on board, and were sailing out of sight.

I am now at the hotel, trunk and boxes packed, waiting to start. Cinderella is not going to wait for the stroke of twelve; she has donned her sober garments and is ready to be whisked back to the cinders on the hearth. I am glad hard work is ahead; a solid grind seems necessary for my soul's salvation.

Farewell, vain earth! I love you not wisely but too well.

Why can't people be nice to one without being too nice? And why can't you be horrid to people without being too horrid? Selah.