He had a time-table of the dates of sailing of the Japanese line they were to travel by, and a stateroom engaged on each boat sailing for the next month.
One after one he relinquished them, by telegraph, as the days slipped by.
They stopped off for two weeks at a high mountain inn that they liked; and several times they rested for days in some spot that pleased her fancy.
He watched her face. When it grew fatigued, he gave directions to the Japanese courier who had joined them at a point on the journey, and they left the train at the next station.
The courier came and went like a shadow along the route—sometimes ahead of them and sometimes following, but always at hand when he was needed.
Eleanor grew to watch for his face as if he were a kind of meteor that played a game with them.
“There he is!” she would exclaim at some station as she looked out and caught a glimpse of him. “There he is, Richard!” And if the train went on without him, she would press her face to the glass and lean forward to watch till he was out of sight.
“What a wonderful people!” she said. “When I see him I seem to understand—almost! And then he is gone! Is he going with us—all the way?”
“Perhaps so,” said Richard. “I had arranged with him only to San Francisco. But we can keep him on if you like.... There will be plenty like him on the boat. They are all Japs on the boat.”
On the steamer they were, as Richard had predicted, all Japanese. Not only the crew and attendants, but many of the passengers showed the dark skin and straight hair of the race to the west. There were Chinese, too, and strange foreign faces that Richard More did not know. A few Americans were on board—bound on business or pleasure to China and Japan—but the majority of the passengers were of alien race.
Richard More and his wife sat day after day in their steamer-chairs, looking out to sea and watching the strange faces drift between them and the horizon line.... They came and went, dreamlike and vague.... Now a face would silhouette itself on the sky, turbaned and dark and motionless against the approaching west; and now gesticulating hands moved swiftly, and sharp staccatoed words flitted by them along the deck. They were in a foreign world, a cosmopolite world—a restless, moving strangeness of life.... It was not possible not to feel, deep underneath, the common tie of race or nation that made them one.... Only a boat moving to the west—and the faces moving with it.