a soul that we know yet, but I’ve brought some good company along,
anyway,” and he shook the suspiciously shaped bundle, from which came a
gurgle that explained his meaning. “We shan’t lack inspiration for our
poems even if the plums are not in bloom.”
It was early in the season, and the great gray trees of the plum-garden
showed only here and there a pink bud pushing its way outward. For
a real poet the suggestion of beauty to come might mean more than
its later fulfillment, but to the two thoughtless youths who seated
themselves upon a blanket-covered bench beneath the trees, clapping
their hands loudly until a red-cheeked maid brought them tea and
cakes, then took out their writing-cases, poem-cards, and saké-bottles
to seek a borrowed inspiration, the bare, gnarled trunks gave little
material for composition. For a while they thought and wrote in
silence, but the quiet and beauty of the place did not appeal to their
excitement-pampered tastes, and it was Komura at last who dashed his
effort to the ground, shut up his writing-case with a snap, and jumped
into his clogs.
“Come on, old man, I can show you an adventure worth two of this,” he
cried,--“an adventure that Yoshitsuné[47] himself might envy!”
Tēichi rose to the bait, glad enough to leave a place in the seclusion
of which unwelcome thoughts kept crowding and would not be driven out.
“I’m with you, boy, lead on!” he shouted. “Wait till I pay the
tea-money, and then we’re off.”
In the long jinrikisha ride to Fukagawa that followed, Komura took the
lead, and Tēichi, sleepy with the saké he had taken, sat loosely in his
little carriage, with red face and closed eyes. At last they stopped at
a neat gateway in a green bamboo fence, and Komura roused him from his
slumbers with a shake.
“Here we are now. Collect yourself and put on your prettiest manners,
for we are to make a call upon a real lady,--one whom even you, with
all your aristocratic notions, would be glad to marry if you could.”
Tēichi, prepared for any adventure with a young person of doubtful
reputation, shrank back at his friend’s words.
“But her father! What would her father think?”
“Old Iijima, her father, is far enough away. No fear of him! He’s taken
up with a young wife, and leaves his daughter here alone because the
two women cannot live in one house. He’ll never know. Trust the girl
to keep her secret. I’ve called on her once or twice before,” and he
winked in a meaning way.
Still reluctant, for some spark of honor yet remained to him, but
curious to see the young woman, Tēichi pocketed his scruples. Komura
rang the bell at the gate, and soon, on clattering clogs, an elderly
maid-servant answered the summons.
“Welcome, Dr. Komura,” she said, bowing and smiling. “Come in and
bring with you your honorable companion.”
Komura, with an air of professional gravity, entered the gate,
introducing his friend as Dr. Ogiwara.
“And how is your mistress since my last visit?” he inquired. “Her
father bade me call again and make sure that she was improving.”
“Truly, she is much better, doctor, but still she is restless and
feverish at times, and sometimes I fear that all is not well. I will
call her and let you see her.”
“Remember, O Kuni San, give her no hint that I am a physician. Tell her
only that a friend of her father has come with a message from him.”
“Indeed, doctor, I will give no hint,” answered O Kuni, bowing
profoundly as she left the room.
Komura and Ogiwara discussed their tea and cake in silence while the
maid was gone, for paper walls have ears, and eyes as well, and
discretion in speech and act is a necessary precaution in a Japanese
house.
Soon there was a double pattering of feet without, the sliding doors
were pushed open, and a graceful, slender girl, dressed in the
_montzuki_ or ceremonial dress, crouching at the threshold, bowed
humbly to the two young men, greeting them as friends of her father and
murmuring polite and hospitable phrases.
Komura bowed in return, introduced Ogiwara, gave a long hypothetical
message from her father, and inquired deferentially after her health.
When at last the bows and speeches of ceremony were over, the real
visit began. Komura, as usual, was the leader of the conversation, but
Ogiwara, sitting almost in silence beside him, used his eyes to good
effect. Never had he seen such beauty in a woman, never such charming
ways, such bashful, winning smiles. He compared her in his mind with
the creatures to whom of late his attentions had been given, and
with a revulsion of feeling despised himself that he had thought them
fascinating. And through his mind went ringing Komura’s words,--“a real
lady--one whom even you would be glad to marry.”
Komura, heated by saké and flushed with the success of his adventure,
chatted gayly on, growing more and more familiar, less like the
gentleman he affected to be, until there came upon the face of his
little hostess, and of her maid as well, a look of disgust not
unmingled with terror. Little by little he dropped the niceties of
language, the subtle use of honorifics that marks the intercourse
between persons of gentle breeding, and talked to the little lady
with the easy, coarse, patronizing familiarity that he was wont to
use toward the women of his acquaintance. Tēichi was wakened from his
reverie by seeing his companion lean forward and lay an impudent hand
upon the shoulder of his shocked and shrinking hostess. Instantly the
samurai training of his youth came to the front. He seized Komura by
the wrist.
“Dog!” he hissed between set teeth, “would you insult a lady in her own
house?”
Holding him in an iron grasp, he turned to little Tsuyu, crouching
frightened with Kuni behind her.
“If the young lady will kindly retire with her maid, I will see that
this rude fellow troubles the house no longer.”
With hasty bows and hurried apologies for the trouble they were causing
him, the women withdrew, and Ogiwara, partly by force and partly by
persuasion, dragged Komura to his kuruma, tumbled him in, and ordered
the runner to take him to his lodgings. For himself, the day of
careless pleasure was ended, and he went to his home as fast as his men
could carry him, thinking the while with remorse of the timid smiles,
the frightened, pleading eyes of his little hostess.
For Tēichi, though at first he did not know it, was in love. Day
and night the small house by the river, with its charming mistress,
seemed calling him. He had relapsed into his old loneliness, for the
thought of Komura was hateful to him; and though the two men met at
lectures and other university work, they did nothing more than exchange
greetings. All intimacy had vanished since the struggle in O Tsuyu’s
quiet guest-room. As the months went by, old Hanzo, seeing his master
moping alone at home, reading the Chinese classics, studying from huge
foreign books, eating sparingly and without relish, drinking not at
all, grew alarmed. He had enjoyed the old days of wild dissipation; he
did not care for so stern and grave a master, who wanted nothing and
was pleased with nothing, and brought no friends nor presents to the
house.
“Is the master ill, that he goes abroad no more?” he suggested
deferentially.
“Nay, Hanzo, not ill, only sad and lonely.”
“But if you will permit the suggestion from one so unworthy, would
it not be well for the master to seek relief from his sadness and
loneliness by going out and seeing his friends or some of the sights of
the town?”
“Indeed, Hanzo, your care for me is most commendable, but I have
already seen too much of my friends and of the town. A little rest is
what I need most;” and Tēichi relapsed into silence.
Hanzo sat pondering, his head bowed, his hands drawn up within his blue
cotton sleeves. At last he spoke again:--
“Will the master pardon my stupidity if I make a suggestion?”
“Say on, Hanzo, I am listening.”
The old man bowed his head upon his hands.
“Master, I know a man. He is of low birth and a most unworthy person,
a cousin of my own. He has a poor, mean boat, with a matted deck-house
amidships, and in this boat he sculls along the river, taking out
pleasure parties by the day. If it is desired to fish, he will supply
the bait and tackle. Would it not save your honor from his sadness to
spend a day thus upon the river?”
“Good Hanzo,” said the young man, touched by his servant’s
thoughtfulness in his behalf, “send for your cousin. Perhaps a day upon
the river is what I need. If he has no other engagement, we will go
to-morrow.”
And so it came about that the next day Ogiwara, lying on the mats of
a house-boat of spotless white wood, and propelled by strong arms,
found himself on the river Sumida, watching with lazy interest the
crowds of small craft that fill the stream above the iron bridge. Small
steam ferry-boats towing strings of passenger barges sputtered along
on their way to Mukojima and Hōrikiri, well patronized to-day, for the
great iris-beds were in full bloom. Women and brightly dressed girls
were there in plenty, and Tēichi scanned them eagerly in the hope
that he might catch some glimpse of the sweet face that haunted his
dreams. Other house-boats too, like his own, were there, in which whole
families sat and gossiped on the mats, sipping tea, smoking pipes,
playing games, and taking vast delight in the life and movement of the
river. Fast racing barges, too, came scurrying along under the impulse
of the strong young arms of their student crews, picked men from the
University, the Naval School, and many other of the higher schools of
the city.
As they dropped downstream the pleasure-boats grew fewer, and the
cargo-boats--junks, schooners, and small coasting steamers--were moored
or anchored near the storehouses from which the city is fed. And then,
still lower down, they came into a place where small houses stood in
gardens running down to the water’s edge.
Ogiwara left the fishing to Hanzo, and spent his time in a meditation
that was still conscious of the continually changing scene through
which they moved.
“Look, Hanzo, is not this Fukagawa we are passing?”
“Truly, master, it is Fukagawa.”
“And, Hanzo, do you see that gate that opens toward the river? Bid your
cousin bring the boat close to the gate, that I may see therein.”
Softly the boat glided to the open gate, and Tēichi looked into a
little garden, green and damp and shady, with an iris-bed in full bloom
close to a miniature pond. As he stepped from the boat O Kuni came
running to him, her clogs making no sound on the soft, mossy earth.
“Welcome,” she said; “please enter our humble cottage. My young lady
has been waiting so long for you, and you did not come! Now she is very
ill. She cannot eat, and she is growing thinner every day. She will be
so glad that you have come!”
Tēichi walked up through the pleasant garden, stepped upon the polished
piazza, and as O Kuni pushed aside the _shoji_, bowed low, murmuring
polite phrases of pleasure at meeting O Tsuyu again. As he lifted his
head and looked at the lady of his dreams, his heart, just now madly
elated, fell like a lump of lead in his breast; for it was the same
sweet face and smile, but pale and wan; the same graceful figure, but
so thin that the loose robe she wore seemed to have nothing within it.
“Oh, I am so glad,--so glad,” she said, and tears rose in her eyes and
rolled down her hollow cheeks. “It is long since you were here! Why did
you not come before?”
Very gently he soothed her, and in a long, long talk they told their
love. How swiftly the hours passed! It was only when the setting sun
turned the river into molten gold that they remembered anything of time
and place. Then Tsuyu started with a shudder:--
“Oh, go! go!” she said. “What if my father should find you here!”
“Give me, then, some token of your love,--something to draw me back to
you,--a pledge that you are mine and I am yours.”
Hurriedly she drew from a little cupboard in the _tokonoma_ a white
wooden case, and from it took a gold-lacquered incense-box.
“Here,” she said, “this was my mother’s. I have always kept it with
me until now. The half of it I give to you,--a pledge of love through
seven lives.”
He took it from her with eager hands, lifted it to his face and touched
it reverently to his forehead, then hid it in his sleeve.
“Through seven lives I will be true,” he said.
Just then there was a loud whirr of kuruma wheels without, a clatter of
clogs upon the stone walk. With a hissing rush the sliding-doors flew
open, and a man’s face, distorted with rage, was looking down upon them
both.
“Fellow, who are you who dare to enter my daughter’s house in my
absence?”
There was a rush, a struggle,--Ogiwara felt himself overpowered, and
was awaiting death from the sharp, short dirk of his adversary, when O
Tsuyu’s soft arm was thrown around him, her gentle voice cried:--
“Father, oh, father, kill me instead! I am the wicked one.”
The voice died in a gurgle, and Ogiwara shouted hoarsely at the wretch,
who had buried his knife in the soft round throat of his daughter.
“Master,”--it was Hanzo’s well-trained servant’s voice,--“master,
a dream is troubling your slumber, and the boat has reached her
mooring-place. Will it please you to permit me to pay my worthless
cousin and seek kurumas for our return?”
Tēichi, opening his dazed eyes, saw about him the busy river,--the
pleasure-boats, the little steamers, the holiday-makers returning from
their flower-viewing,--and knew that it was only a dream. With a sigh,
partly of regret that he had not really seen his beloved, and greatly
of relief that he might hope to find her some day in the land of the
living, he rose, and soon was rattling through the prosaic modern
streets toward his home in Negishi.
As he took off his clothing for the night, he felt a flat, hard
something in his sleeve, and searching there he found a piece of golden
lacquer, the lid of an incense-box. Upon it had been painted by some
great artist of the past the seven flowers of autumn, and here and
there, on the polished, gleaming surface, slight spots, as of mould,
had begun to show themselves. “A pledge of love through seven lives!”
Surely it was a dream, and yet--this lacquered box--where did it come
from?
Hanzo had no special reason to be proud of the successful issue of his
effort for his master’s entertainment. Ogiwara grew more silent and
ascetic. He spent long hours alone in his room with closed doors, and
once, when the old man had placed his eye to a tongue-made hole in
the paper of the _shoji_, he had seen him looking at a gold-lacquered
box-lid like one demented.
“The master is surely crazy,” he said to Koma. “I will go to his friend
Komura San, and tell him about it.”
Komura heard the story of Ogiwara’s strange freak with unchanging
face and half-closed eyes that looked not once upon the humble Hanzo,
crouched at the threshold and bowing at the end of every sentence. When
he spoke, it was only to chide Hanzo politely for his officiousness,
and tell him that he need not fear for his place.
“The master will soon recover,” he said patronizingly. “I have seen
young fellows before who thought they were in love. When he knows the
girl is beyond his reach, he will be himself again.”
Not many days later, Komura, pocketing his pride, called at the villa
in Negishi.
“What’s happened to you, old fellow?” he said to Ogiwara, after the
first greetings were over. “You look as if you had been living with
ghosts until you were all ready to become one yourself!”
Tēichi started. The color rushed to his face, then left him pale as
death. Komura rattled on, observing but giving no sign:--
“You have been shy of all the fellows since our last adventure, at
Fukagawa. You need society. What do you say to some kind of a spree
to-night?”
Tēichi shuddered. He could not look Komura in the face when he thought
of his coarse manners and low behavior, and O Tsuyu’s frightened eyes.
He muttered something scarcely intelligible about his studies and the
necessity for hard work if he would get his degree with his class.
Komura was angry. Here he had gone more than half way, and now Ogiwara
refused to take one step toward renewing their old comradeship.
“When you get your degree, if you ever do,” he said with a sneer, “I
hope it will bring you better success as a physician than you have had
so far. Do you know the effect of your last professional call?”
His companion was at last roused to interest.
“Komura,” he said, “if you are not ashamed to speak of that day, I need
not be. Tell me what you mean.”
Into his eyes rushed the spirit of his race. Komura remembered the
stories Ogiwara had told him in his roistering days of the practice in
jiu-jitsu, in sword-play, in archery, and with modern firearms, that
had been his training under his father’s roof. The sneer changed for a
wheedling tone of apology as he watched Tēichi’s strong brown fingers
twitching with emotion.
“Why, Ogiwara, how long is it since you have become so dignified that
you cannot take a joke? I meant no harm, but that hot samurai blood of
yours is always on the lookout for an insult. I only meant that the
girl was dead. She died a few weeks after our visit.”
“Dead!” Tēichi looked at Komura as if only half comprehending. “Dead!
Then it was not a dream! He did kill her after all!”
“No one killed her,” rejoined Komura testily. “How you do go ahead of a
fellow’s words! She just died. Kuni told me, and said she grew very ill
after our visit, and when she died your name was on her lips.”
“My name!” Tēichi’s voice rose into a wail. “No wonder that I dream of
her by night and think of her by day. It is her spirit that comes to
me,--her spirit that cannot rest because I love her so.”
He buried his face in his sleeves and his whole body shook with sobs,
while Komura, a fierce grin of satisfaction on his face at the revenge
that was his, sat and watched him.
When Tēichi lifted his head, Komura, his features moulded into an
expression of sympathetic gravity, was still sitting near him.
“Why, Ogiwara, old man,” he said, “I had no idea that you were so hard
hit. Can I do anything for you? I have got you into this trouble, and I
would do anything to help you out.”
“Go, call me a priest,” said Ogiwara. “I would have masses said for
that sweet soul, for it cannot rest.”
“Ogiwara,”--Komura’s voice was as smooth as the rustle of silk, and he
laid his hand sympathetically upon his companion’s arm,--“if you will
permit one who shares your grief to advise you, let me speak before I
carry out your will.”
“Say on,” answered the younger man, “and if you have aught to suggest
that will be of help to her or to me, be quick with it.”
“Ogiwara, it is you she loves, and your companionship she seeks. The
sing-song prayers of a thousand priests will be nothing to her. Don’t
you know that one visit to her grave, one offering of incense and fresh
water and flowers from you, will be dearer to her than your whole
fortune spent in masses?”
“Let us go to her grave! Come quickly!” Tēichi leaped to his feet and
seized Komura. “We will go at once.”
“But we cannot go now. I do not know where she is buried. Rest here
quietly for a few days while I find out. Then I will come and lead you
to it.”
Komura’s voice was softer than the murmur of the summer breeze through
a garden. Tēichi looked into his eyes, which answered back his gaze
with the innocent unconsciousness of a kitten, then released his hold.
“I will wait,” he said, “but come soon, for I cannot bear a long
delay.” His mouth was twitching, beads of perspiration stood on his
forehead, and a deadly pallor followed the flush of anger.
Komura bowed and slipped away, thanking his lucky stars that he was
alive, and vowing that it would be a long time before he trusted
his precious skin with that lunatic again. Nor would he have been
reassured if he had seen his friend shut himself tightly in his room,
draw from his sleeve a gold-lacquered box-lid, and sit looking at
it with streaming eyes until the long summer day died gently into
twilight, and Hanzo with silent step stole into the room to find his
master’s head fallen upon his little desk, while in his hand he still
clutched the bit of lacquer.
And so the wretched days slipped by, and August with its steaming heat
and myriad odors hung over the drooping city. Only the great white
lotus[48] blossoms in the Castle moats, drawing their beauty from the
black and evil-smelling slime, basked in the sultry sunshine.
“Flowers of the dead,” thought Ogiwara, “spirits that rise like hers
from the foulness and evil below, and bear without scathe the heavenly
glory that wilts all others!”
The festival of O Bon[49] has come, and along the city streets are
kindled fires to light the returning spirits to their homes; on every
porch and balcony are hung lanterns, glowing balls of light, some with
long streamers that wave and flutter in the breeze, or bits of glass
that tinkle as if ghostly hands were making music; and in every home,
before the ancestral tablets are set special offerings of fruits and
fresh vegetables; while in the graveyards, tombs are cleared from moss,
newly served with food and drink, and decorated with lanterns.
In the little house in Negishi, Ogiwara had set beside the tablets of
his father and mother a new and costly one on which the name of Tsuyu
was engraved. And as he made the offerings which filial piety and
his own affection enjoined before the other two, he offered yet more
abundant gifts to the memorial of her whom he had come to call his
“spirit bride.” He was alone. Hanzo and Koma had for once left their
small house in the yard to visit the graves of their parents on the
other side of the city. He sat on the veranda, looking into the damp
greenness of the garden that seemed resting from the stifling heat of
the day. The lanterns above his head glowed softly, great fireflies
flickered among the shrubbery. Peace such as he had not known for
months stole over his spirit.
There was a clicking of clogs and a sound of gentle voices in the
lane. Tēichi started. There was something strange yet familiar in
their tones. He stepped down from the veranda into a pair of garden
sandals, and walked noiselessly to the hedge, through which he peered.
Two figures were moving toward the gate, one of them carrying an O Bon
lantern and leading the other by the hand. The light shone upon their
white faces, and he could see as they drew near that the lantern-bearer
was O Kuni, and by her side walked little Tsuyu.
There was no fear nor hesitation in his walk as he hurried to the gate
to welcome them. There she was, not as he had seen her in his dream,
pale and hollow-cheeked, but bright, girlish, charming, as she had been
on the day of his visit to her home. When she saw him, one little hand
went shyly to her face, and her flowing sleeve hid all but her shining
eyes from his enchanted gaze.
“Welcome,” he said, bowing low. “Welcome to my humble home. Enter, if
it please you, and let me offer you some slight refreshment.”
With many formal bows and deprecating phrases they were at last
installed in his guest-room. The lantern, a translucent globe of white
paper, with trailing streamers and a bunch of many-colored peonies at
the top, was hung from the eaves, where it glowed and waved its paper
streamers in the cool breeze that had sprung up at their entrance.
With curious eyes O Tsuyu looked at the tablets on the sacred shelf.
The tiny streams of smoke that had been rising straight as needles
toward the low ceiling, now wavered and twisted into strange shapes.
“The tablets of your honorable ancestors?” she said.
“Yes, truly,” answered Tēichi, feeling uncomfortable as he thought of
the offerings he had just made to the spirit of one who was now beside
him in the body.
O Kuni San bowed, and in a humble voice began the story of all that had
happened since the memorable visit to the cottage in Fukagawa.