The Kingdom of Slender SwordsRives, Hallie Erminie
History
The Kingdom of Slender Swords
Rives, Hallie Erminie
East and West -- Fiction; Japan -- History -- Meiji period, 1868-1912 -- Fiction
A passenger leaning near her was whistling _Sally in our Alley_ under
his breath and a Japanese steward was emptying over the side a vase of
wilted flowers. A breath of rose scent came to her, mixed with a faint
smell of tobacco, and these and the whistled air awoke a sudden
reminiscence. Her gaze went past the clustered shipping, beyond the gray
line of buildings and the masses of foliage, and swam into a tremulous
June evening seven years past.
She saw a wide campus of green sward studded with stately elms festooned
with electric lights that glowed in the falling twilight. Scattered
about were groups of benches each with its freight of dainty frocks, and
on one of them she saw herself sitting, a shy girl of sixteen, on her
first visit to a great university. Men went by in sober black gown and
flat mortar-boards, young, clean-shaven, and boyish, with arms about one
another's shoulders. Here and there an orange "blazer" made a vivid
splash of color and groups in white-flannels sprawled beneath the trees
under the perfumed haze of briar-wood pipes that mingled with the
near-by scent of roses. From one of the balconies of the ivied
dormitories that faced the green came the mellow tinkle of a mandolin
and the sound of a clear tenor:
"Of all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like pretty Sally.
She is the darling of my heart--"
The groups about her had fallen silent--only one voice had said: "That's
'Duke' Daunt." Then the melody suddenly broke queerly and stopped, and
the man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "I'm going in. It's time
to dress anyway." And somehow his voice had seemed to break queerly,
too.
Duke Daunt! The scene shifted into the next day, when she had met him
for a handful of delirious moments. For how long afterward had he
remained her childish idol! Time had overlaid the memory, but it started
bright now at the sound of that whistled tune.
Her uncle's voice recalled her. He was handing her his binoculars. She
took them, chose a spot well forward and glued her eyes to the glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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