The Kingdom of Slender Swords

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE BISHOP ASKS A QUESTION

  Bishop Randolph lived in the quarter of Tokyo called Ts'kiji--a sectionof "made-ground" in the bay, composed, as the ancient vestry jest hadit, of the proverbial tomato-cans. It was flat and low, and its innercanal in the old days had formed the boundary of the extraterritorialdistrict given over by a reluctant government to the residence offoreigners.

  It was a mile from the great, double-moated park of the Imperial Palace,from the Diet and the Foreign Office, whither, scarcely a generationago, representatives of European powers had galloped on horse-back, witha mounted guard against swashbuckling "two-sword men." The streets,however, on which once an American Secretary of Legation, so spurring,had been cut in two by a single stroke of a thirsting _samurai_ sword,were peaceful enough in this era of _Meiji_. The cathedral, the college,the low brown hospital and the lines of red-brick mission houses stoodon grassy lawns behind green hedges which gave a suggestion of a quietEnglish village. A couple of the smaller Legations still clung to theirancient sites and the quarter boasted, besides, a score of ambitiousEuropean residences and a modern hotel.

  In the rectory the bishop sat at tiffin with the archbishop of theRussian Cathedral, a man of seventy-eight, gray-bearded andpatriarchal--another St. Francis Xavier. In this foreign field the pairhad been friends during more than a score of years. Both were equallybroad-minded, had long ago thrown down the sectarian barriers too apt toprevail in less restricted communities. To a large extent they wereconfidants. The archbishop spoke little English, and the bishop noRussian and but "inebriate" French (as he termed it), so that their talkwas habitually in Japanese. When they had finished eating both men bowedtheir heads in a silent grace. The Russian, as he rose, made the sign ofthe cross.

  As they entered the library a wrinkled house-servant sucked in hisbreath behind them.

  "Will the thrice-eminent guest deign to partake of a little worthlesstobacco?" he inquired, in the ceremonious honorifics of the vernacular.

  The thrice-eminent shook his head, and the bishop answered: "Honorablethanks, Honda-_San_, our guest augustly does not smoke."

  At the table they had been talking of the great dream of both--theChristianization of modern Japan. The archbishop continued theconversation now:

  "As I was saying, the great stumbling-block is the language. It is allright for you and me, who have had twenty years at it, but our helpershaven't. His code of courtesy forbids a Japanese to seem to correcteven when we are absurdly wrong. One of my boys"--so the bishopaffectionately referred to his younger coadjutors--"was preaching theother day on 'The Spiritual Attributes of Mankind.' He meant to usethe word _ningen_, man in the wide sense. He preached, he thought,with a good deal of success--the people seemed particularly grave andattentive. Afterward he asked an old Japanese what he thought of thesubject. The man replied that he had felt much instructed to findthere were so many things to be said about it. He added that hehimself generally ate them boiled. My young man had used the word_ninjin_--carrots. 'The Spiritual Attributes of Carrots!' And a wholesermon on it. Imagine it!"

  The archbishop threw back his head and laughed. Then the conversationdrifted again into the serious. "Of course," said the bishop, "there isat bottom the oriental inability to separate racial traits, to realizethat Christianity has made Christendom's glories, not her shames. TheJapanese are essentially a spiritually-minded people. Some of the West'smost common vices they are strangely without. And their code ofevery-day morals--well, we can throw very few stones at them there!"

  The archbishop nodded.

  "Few, indeed," he said. "No Japanese Don Juan ever could exist. AJapanese woman would be scandalized by a Greek statue. She would recoilat a French nude. She would fly with astonishment and shame from thesight of a western ballet. Our whole system strikes the Oriental as notonly monstrous but disgustingly immoral. It seems to him, for instance,sheer barbarity for a man to love his wife even half as well as he doeshis own mother and father. A curious case in point happened not so longago. A peasant had a mother who became blind. He consulted the villagenecromancer, who told him if his mother could eat a piece of human heartshe would get her sight back. The peasant went home in tears and toldhis wife. She said, 'We have only one boy. You can very easily getanother wife as good or better than me, but you might never have anotherson. Therefore, you must kill me and take my heart for your mother.'They embraced, and he killed her with his sword. The child awoke andscreamed. Neighbors and the police came. In the police court thepeasant's tale moved the judges to tears. They quite understood. Theydidn't condemn the man to death. Really the one who ought to have beenkilled was the necromancer."

  "And this," said the bishop musingly, "only a few miles from where theywere teaching integral calculus and Herbert Spencer!"

  His visitor sat a while in thought. "By the way," he said presently,changing the subject, "I passed your new Chapel the other day. It isvery handsome. Your niece, I think you told me, built it. May I ask--"

  "Yes," said the host, "it is my dead sister's child, Barbara--JohnFairfax's daughter."

  A look passed between them, and the bishop rose and paced up and down, ahabit when he was deeply moved. "She came back to Japan with me," hecontinued. "I am to take her to see the Chapel this afternoon. Yesterdayshe told me that she intends it to be dedicated to her father's memory."

  For a moment there was no reply. Then the other said: "You have heardnothing of Fairfax all these years?"

  "Not a word."

  "She has never known?"

  The bishop shook his head. "She believes he died before her mother leftJapan." He paused before the window, his back to the other. "He was myfriend!" he said; "and I loved him. I gave my sister to him, and sheloved him, too!"

  "I remember," said the archbishop slowly. "She went back to America fromNagasaki. How strange it was! She never told any one why she left him?"

  "Never a word. She died before I went to America again. She left me aletter which hinted at something wholly unforgivable--almost Satanic, itmust have seemed to her."

  "And he?"

  "Disappeared. He was thought to have gone to China. Perhaps he is alivethere yet. I have always wondered. If so, how is he living--in whatway?" The bishop turned abruptly. "In view of what we know, can I lendmyself to the dedication of this house of our Lord to a memory that maybe infamous? I ask you as a friend."

  The older man was a long time silent.

  "'His ways are past finding out,'" he said at length. "I am conscious,sometimes, of a hidden purpose in things. The daughter's memory of herfather is a beautiful thing. Let us not destroy it!"