N the Bluff overlooking Mississippi Harbor, Yokohama, stood a man gazing seaward. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. An April squall was ruffling the streaked waters of the bay, and the sky was cold and yellow. He was a forlorn figure of a man. His suit, a blue serge, shiny at the elbows, purple across the shoulders and frayed at the cuffs and heels, hung dejectedly upon his gaunt form, except at moments when the wind whipped it against his legs and arms. There was rather a pitiful expression of jauntiness in the Norfolk pattern of the coat, an experimental apology to the world at large for the low estate into which it had fallen. The man's hat was a gray fedora, sweat-stained and broken fore and aft the center crease. His shoes were canvas with rubber soles; and they were gray, too, but with dirt, coal dust and street dust, ground into the cotton fabric.
His cheeks were hollow and his blue eyes revolved in caverns. His chin bristled with a bronze stubble, and this added to the general raggedness of his appearance. He had that morning left a hospital.
He was staring at a ship which was weighing anchor. From her stern a flag fluttered ruddily and cheerily his own. It was to see this flag that the man, weak from long illness, had climbed the Bluff, to see it homeward-bound, to watch it until it was a pink speck in the distance. He had done this many times in the past. A fire filled his eyes; and the tears which rose up and overflowed in no wise dimmed that fire. Old Glory! Never again should any man laugh at it, insult it, trample it. The flag of idealists, the brave and the magnanimous! America! War—for humanity, for right as against might! The man rubbed his eyes.
Oh, the infinite yearning to be aboard that ship, homeward-bound!
For three long bitter years he had striven to reach the goal, a ship, only to be tripped and flung back each time by a craving which he called The Thing, flung back a little lower each time, a little less fine in the grain.
The water boiled white at the stern of the ship. She swung in a half-circle, and the flag stood out clearly. The watcher took off his hat, squared his shoulders and intoned,
War! And he had heard of it only that morning! He stood uncovered until the bit of pink reached the vanishing point, then he put on his hat and walked away.
Drink and pneumonia. Some men fight instinctively to live, and still die. He hadn't fought, and yet here he was, out in the world again. It had seemed to him that morning that death had no interest in human beings nobody cared for. But now every drop of blood in his body cried out to live. He had a fine unselfish thing to do; to make his body strong and straight, and then to say, “Here I am, take me!” He knew that he was going to do it.
He plodded on. By and by he found himself outside the grilled court of the Grand Hotel. He saw a newspaper in the gutter and eagerly picked it up. It was an English newspaper, printed in Hongkong, dated April tenth, six days old. He brushed the dirt from it and put it into a pocket. He would read it that night.
Two rickshaws rolled up to the curb. One contained a white-haired woman with a face serenely beautiful and hauntingly sad. Someone's mother, thought the man by the grill. Then his glance strayed to the passenger in the second rickshaw. His intake was so sharp that it nicked the sore spot in his lungs. It was as if the veil had suddenly been lifted and for the first time permitted him to see the depth of the pit toward which he had been drifting. Once, thousands of years ago, he had known young women like yonder one.
That the two were mother and daughter was made evident a moment later. The elder stepped down from her rickshaw and walked back.
“Want me to carry some of the bundles, Jeanie?”
“I can carry them, Mumsy.”
The daughter was dressed in heavy white flannel. She wore over this a white woolen sweater with a full collar. On one of the lapels was a flag-pin. In her belt was a small bouquet of white blossoms. From where he stood the outcast could not tell what they were.
The girl stepped out of the rickshaw lightly, turned and gathered up the bundles; but in turning away from the vehicle, she stumbled slightly, and the bundles toppled and went rolling about on the sidewalk.
HE man sprang forward and began picking them up. The stooping caused things to whirl for a moment. When he finally retrieved the last bundle and stood up, he saw the girl as through a fog.
“Thank you!”
Her eyes appraised him swiftly. She saw the indelible marks of recent illness, the stubble, the hollow eyes, the shabby clothes; and she started to open her purse.
“No, Miss!”