Captain June.

by Alice Hegan Rice.

CAPTAIN JUNE

CHAPTER I

JUNE had never sat still so long during the whole six years of his existence. His slender body usually so restless and noisy was motionless; his hands too fond of teasing and mischief lay limp in his lap, even his tongue was still and that was the most wonderful of all.

The only part of him that stirred was a sparkling pair of gray eyes that were looking out upon the strangest world they had ever seen.

The entire day had been one of enchantment, from the first waking hour when he discovered that the engines on the big steamer where he had lived for seventeen days had stopped, and that the boat was actually lying at anchor just off the coast of j.a.pan. Seki San, his j.a.panese nurse who had cared for him ever since he was a baby, had been so eager to look out of the port-hole that she could scarcely attend to her duties, and the consequence was that he had to stand on the sofa and hook his mother's dress and help her with the little pins at the back of the neck while Seki San finished the packing. June could not dress himself but he knew a great deal about hooks and eyes and belt pins.

When mother got in a hurry she lost things, and experience had taught him that it was much easier to fasten the pin where it belonged than to spend fifteen minutes on the floor looking for it.

At last when all the bags and trunks were ready, and the pilot and the health officer had come aboard, and everybody had waited until they could not wait another moment, the pa.s.sengers were brought ash.o.r.e in a wheezy, puffy launch, and were whirled up to the hotel in queer little buggies drawn by small brown men with bare legs and mushroom hats, and great sprawling signs on their backs.

Since then June had sat at a front window too engrossed to speak. Just below him lay the Bund or sea-road, with the wall beyond where the white waves broke in a merry splash and then fell back to the blue water below. Out in the harbor there were big black merchant steamers, and white men-of-war, there were fishing schooners, and sampans with wobbly, crooked oars. But the street below was too fascinating to see much beyond it. Jinrikishas were coming and going with pa.s.sengers from the steamers and the coolies laughed and shouted to each other in pa.s.sing.

Women and girls clattered by on wooden shoes with funny bald-headed, slant-eyed babies strapped on their backs. On the hotel steps, a little girl in a huge red turban and a gorgeous dress of purple and gold was doing handsprings, while two boys in fancy dress sang through their noses and held out fans to catch the pennies that were tossed from the piazza above.

If Cinderella, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Aladdin and Ali Baba had suddenly appeared, June would not have been in the least surprised. It was where they all lived, there could be no possible doubt as to that.

Here was the biggest picture book he had ever seen, the coming true of all the fairy-tales he had ever heard.

He was dimly conscious that in the room behind him Seki San was unpacking trunks and boxes, and that his mother was coming and going and leaving hurried instructions. Once he heard her say, "Don't say anything to him about it, Seki, I'll tell him when he has to be told." But just then a man went by with a long pole across his shoulder and round baskets on each end, and in the baskets were little shining silver fishes, and June forgot all about what his mother was saying.

June's father was a young army officer stationed in the Philippines.

June was born there but when still a baby he had been desperately ill and the doctor had sent him back to the States and said he must not return for many years. It was a great grief to them all that they had to be separated, but Capt. Royston had gotten two leaves of absence and come home to them, and now this summer June and his mother had come all the way from California to meet him in j.a.pan.

June was not his real name. It was Robert Rogers Royston, Junior, but mother said there never could be but one Robert for her, and father did not like the Rogers for a Christian name, so they called him Junior, and Junior soon got bobbed off into June. The name suited him too, for a sunshinier little chap you never saw. He never seemed to know that he was not as strong as other boys, and when his throat was very bad and his voice would not come, why he sat up in bed and whistled, just the keenest, cheeriest, healthiest whistle you ever heard.

It was on the indoor days that Seki San used to tell him about her wonderful country across the sea, of the little brown houses with the flower gardens on the roofs, of the constant clatter, clatter of the wooden shoes, and the beautiful blossoms that rained down on you like snow.

"Where are the blossoms?" he demanded, suddenly turning in his chair.

"You said they came down thick and white and that I could let them fall over my face."

Seki San did not answer, she was kneeling beside a very disconsolate figure that lay on the bed with face buried in the pillows. When June spoke, his mother sat up and pushed back her tumbled hair. She was a very little mother with round eyes and lips as red as June's, only now her eyes were red and her lips trembling.

"You may go in the other room, Seki San," she said, "I want to talk to June by himself."

June sidled up cautiously and took a seat near her on the bed. The one unbearable catastrophe to him was for his mother to cry. It was like an earthquake, it shook the very foundations on which all his joys were built. Sometimes when the postman forgot to leave a letter, and occasionally when he was sick longer than usual, mother cried. But those were dark, dreadful times that he tried not to think about. Why the tears should come on this day of all days he could not understand.

She put her arm around him and held him close for a long time before she spoke. He could feel the thump, thump of her heart as he leaned against her.

"June," she said at last, "you are going to be a soldier like father, aren't you?"

June's eyes brightened. "Yes, and carry a sword!" he said.

"There is something more than a sword that a soldier has to have."

"A gun?"

Mother shook her head. "It's courage, June! It's something I haven't got a sc.r.a.p of. You'll have to be brave for us both!"

"I'm not afraid," declared June. "I go to bed in the dark and go places by myself or anything."

"I don't mean that way," said his mother. "I mean doing hard things just because they are right, staying behind for instance when--when somebody you love very much has to go away and leave you."

June sat up and looked at her. "Who's going away?" he demanded.

Mother's voice faltered. "Father's terribly ill with a fever, June. The letter was waiting here, it is from our old doctor in Manila, he says, 'Come on first steamer, but don't bring the boy.'" The earth seemed suddenly to be slipping from under June's feet, he clutched at his mother's hand. "I am going too!" he cried in quick alarm, "I won't stay behind, I can't, mother!"

Her arm tightened about him. "But I don't dare take you, June, think of the terrible heat and the fever, and you are the only little boy I've got in the world, and I love you so!"

"I won't take the fever," protested June. "I'll be good. I'll mind every word Seki says."

"But Seki isn't going. She wants to take you home with her down to a little town on the Inland Sea, where there are all sorts of wonderful things to do. Would you stay with her, June, while I go to father?"

Her voice pleaded with eagerness and anxiety, but June did not heed it.

Slipping from her arms, he threw himself on the floor and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. All the joys of the enchanted country had vanished, nothing seemed to count except that mother was thinking of leaving him in this strange land and sailing away from him across the sea.

"Don't cry so, June, listen," pleaded his mother. "I have not decided, I am trying to do what is best."

But June refused to be consoled. Over and over he declared that he would not stay, that he would rather have the fever, and die than to be left behind.

By and by the room grew still, his mother no longer tried to pacify him, only the ticking of the little traveling clock on the table broke the stillness. He peeped through his fingers at the silent figure in the chair above him. He had never seen her look so white and tired, all the pretty smiles and dimples seemed gone forever, her eyes were closed and her lips were tightly drawn together. June crept close and slipped his hand into hers. In an instant her arms were about him.

"I don't know what to do, nor where to turn," she sobbed. "I am afraid to take you and afraid to leave you. What must I do?"

June was sure he did not know but when mothers are little and helpless and look at you as if you were grown up, you have to think of a way. He was standing beside her with his arm around her neck, and he could feel her trembling all over. Father often said in his letters, "Be sure to take care of that little Mother of yours," but it had always seemed a joke until now. He sighed, then he straightened his shoulders:

"I'll stay, Mudderly," he said, then he added with a swallow, "Maybe it will help me to be a soldier when I get big!"

CHAPTER II

"SEKI SAN, look at the old woman with black teeth! What made them black?

What have the little girls got flowers in their hair for? What are they ringing the bell for?"

Seki San sitting on her heels at the car window tried to answer all June's questions at once. The sad parting was over. Mrs. Royston had left in the night on the steamer they had crossed in, and the Captain and the Purser and all the pa.s.sengers were going to take care of her until she got to Hong Kong, and after that it was only a short way to Manila, and once she was with Father, June felt that his responsibility ceased.

When they first boarded the train, June had sat very quiet. If you wink fast and swallow all the time, you can keep the tears back, but it does not make you feel any better inside.

"If G.o.d has got to take somebody," June said at length gloomily, "I think He might take one of my grandmothers. I have got four but one of them is an old maid."

"Oh no," said Seki, "she isn't."