The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1910-10-26
CHAPTER |.
Where the Day Begins.

lluy uIulllS, dlulc Will lllC IiiOO,
throb throb of the steel deck as the
black ocean leviathan swept on to-
ward it's harbor resting-place.
All that Japanese April day she
had been in a state of tremulOus eX-
citement. She had crept from her
berth at dawn to see the hazy sun
come up in a Rosicrucian flush as
weirdly soft as mirage, to strain
her eyes for the first filmy feather of
land Long before the gray-green
wisp showed on the horizon, the sight
of a numbering junk with its square
sail laced across with white stripes,
and it's bronze seamen, with white
loin-cloth and sweat-band about the
forehead, naked and thewed like
sculptures, as they swayed from the
clumsy tilIer, had sent thrill through
her. And as the first far peaks
etched themselves on the robin s-egg
blue as impalpable and ethereal as a
perfume, she felt warm drops coming
with rush to her eyes.
For Japan, every sight and sound
of it, had been woven with the
earliest imaginings of Barbara's Or
phaned life. Her father she had never
seen. Her mother she remembered
only as a vague, widowed figure. In
japan they two had met and had mar
ried, and after a single year her moth
err had returned to her own place
and people broken-hearted and alone.
In the month of her return Barbara
had been born. A year ago her aunt,
to whom she owed the care Of her
young girlhood, had died, and Bar
bara had found herself, at twenty
three, mistress of liberal fortune
and of her own future. Japan had
always exercised potent spell over
her Imagination. She pictured it as a
land of strange glowing trees, OF
queer costumes and weird, fantastic
buildings. More than all, it was the
land of her mothers liferOmance,
where her father had loved and died.
There was one other tangible tie
her uncle, her mothers brother, was
Episcopal bishop of Tokyo. He was
returning now from half years visit
in America, and this fact, coupled
with an invitation from Patricia Dand-
ridge, the daughter of the American
ambassador, with whom Barbara had
chummed one California winter, had
constituted an opportunity wholly al
Turing.
A shadow fell beside her and she
turned. 1t was her uncle. His clean
shaver face beamed at her over his
clerical collar.
isn't it glorious?' she breathed.
It's better than champagne! It's like
pins and needles in the tips of your
fingers. There's positively an odor
in the air like camellias. And did any
one ever see such colors?" She point
ed to the shore dead-ahead, now a
serrated background of deep tones,
swimming in the infinite gold of the
tropic afternoon.
Bishop Randolph was a bachelor,
past middle age, rudy and with eyes
softened by habitual good-humor.
Japan gets into the blood" he said
musingly. Il often think of the old
lady who committed suicide at Nikko.
She left letter which said: By favor
of the gods, | am too dishonorably Odd
to hope to revisit this jewel-glorious
spot, SO l prefer augustly to remain
here forever!' | have had something
of the same feeling, sometimes. ] re-
member yet the first time | saw the
coast. That was twenty-five years ago.
We watched it together-your father
and Just as we two are doing now"
She looked at him with sudden
eagerness, for of his own accord he
had never before spoken of her dead
father. The latter had always seemed
very real parsonage, but how little
she knew about him! The aunt who
had brought her up--her mothers sis
ter-had never talked of him, and her
uncle she had seen but twice since
she had been old enough to wonder
But, little by little, cleaning a fact
here and there, she mad constructed a
slender history of him. 1t told OF
mingled blood, birthplace on Med
iterranean island and a gypsy child
hood. There was a thin sheaf of vel
lowed manuscript in her possession
that had been left her among her
mothers scanty papers, fragment OF
an old diary of his. Many leaves had
been ruthlessly cut from it, but in
the pages that were left she had found
bits of fotsam; broken memory-pic
lures of his own mother which had
strangely touched her, of a bitter
youth in England and America, over
Swallowed by the haunting fear of