When the fields had turned from purple to gold and yellow, and Summer
was hot in the land, Azalea for the first time in two months crept from
her chamber and sat at the door of the cottage, her baby on her back.
She had been very ill and now she was as thin and fragile as a spirit.
Weak as she was Azalea had come to the door during the absence of Natsu,
to watch for the mail carrier. During her long illness, and almost from
the first day, she had been wont to turn her face always toward the
Street shoji, there to watch and wait with undying patience for the
coming of that carrier who should bring her word from her husband. But
every day, from the rising of the sun to its setting, she waited in
hungry vainness. She hindered the progress of her health and became
feverish and then delirious. Even in her delirium she would seize the
hands of the hard-faced Natsu and pitifully beseech her to bring her a
letter from her husband. Now July had come. Spring had gone and the
Spring baby had come. Still no word from the father to bless and cheer
them in their solitude. Azalea had been too ill in those days to wonder
why the woman Natsu attended her with such faithfulness. But as she grew
stronger she used to watch mutely the sullen-faced servant, moving about
her chamber, keeping it cleanly and even sweet with the flowers she
brought from the woods. Azalea would have wished to be on friendly terms
with her, but when she attempted speech with her Natsu remained grimly
silent, seldom even answering the timid questions of her mistress. On
this day when Azalea, by clinging with her hands to the dividing walls
of shoji, had made her weak way to the door step, Natsu was absent from
the house. She had gone to the house of Matsuda Isami.
The sun was warm and very good to feel. The baby, in its little bag on
her back, was no heavier a weight than the discarded obi. Azalea, though
weak, felt happier and more restful than she had in days. How good it
was to be out in the open air once more, to look up at the wide blue
sky, the abode of the great white God; to feel the touch of the soft
breezes and to hear the little babbling noise of the moving trees, the
wee creatures in the grass and the singing of the birds in the camphor
trees.
With chin resting upon her hands she sat there, absently dreaming. Her
position brought the sleeping baby’s head close against her neck. The
warmth of its contact comforted and thrilled her, just as the touch of
the child’s father had done. Ah, it was true she had waited long for
word from him, but he would not fail them! That small, soft head pressed
at her neck seemed to reassure her of this. She would grow strong again,
strong and happy as she had been. To Matsuda she gave no thought. The
one God was good and he would not permit this evil one to intrude again
upon her.
Some one spoke her name, and she lifted her head. Before her, in the
path, stood the bowing Okido. Mechanically, and without speaking, she
returned his salutation. She was too weak and listless to feel interest
in his unexpected call upon her, and did not question him.
Madame Azalea was recovered?
She nodded listlessly.
“Good!”
He shuffled his feet, waiting for an invitation to enter the house. The
indifferent silence of the girl was not encouraging, and the Summer sun
was very hot and uncomfortable upon his back. However, he was not to be
conquered by a woman’s unnatural silence and the heat of the Lord of
Day.
“I perceive, Madame Azalea,” he continued, “that the gods have been good
to you. You have a child.”
She smiled faintly.
“Yes,” she said, and for the first time he perceived the faintness and
weariness of her voice. He inquired with some anxiety:
“You are still ill?”
She shook her head.
“Quite well,” she said, “but when one has lain long upon the honorable
back, then one’s speech sometimes becomes exhausted.”
“Ah!”
This response, he took it, might be an intimation that she was not
strong enough for conversation. On the other hand, it was longer than
her previous monosyllabic answers, and therefore more encouraging. Well,
he would speak to her of the child. This subject must surely interest
her.
“Permit me to inquire,” he continued, with bland interest, “the sex of
your honorable offspring?”
“Male,” she answered simply.
“Ah! you are indeed fortunate.” He went a step nearer to her, looking
solicitously at the child’s head. The projecting gable above mother and
child was a sufficient shade for the upturned face of the sleeping
child; but the mother must be moved from her apathetic listlessness in
some way. So the Nakoda exclaimed in alarm:
“Do you not fear the sun upon your child’s young eyes will blind them?”
His words had the desired effect. She started and put back her hands
behind her head. Then, somewhat unsteadily, she arose.
“You will pardon us, if you please,” she said. “We must go into the
interior.”
Okido had hoped to be invited to enter, but her answer did not
disconcert him. He went up the little steps, and stretched out his hand
as if to assist her. Madame was too weak to walk alone; would she not
permit his most respectful assistance? She clung for support to the
front of the sliding door.
“Yes,” she said, “I am still augustly weak. So pray you, good-bye, kind
visitor.”
He bowed deeply to her, and then:
“Madame Azalea, permit me first to leave in your house a little gift for
your man child.”
She let him put into her hands a child’s tiny toy.
“You are very good,” she said.
“It is not I who am so well disposed toward your child,” he said, “but
one whose interest in it is such that he would give all his possessions
to it—if you would permit it.”
She raised her face, white and startled in expression now. Her hands
crept out from the sleeves.
“Ah,” she said, “of whom do you speak, good Okido?”
He did not answer her query, and her breath came excitedly.
“You speak of my husband? You have heard from him?”
“Not your husband, Madame Azalea,” he said, “but one who would become
so.”
She passed her hand bewilderedly over her brow.
“I do not understand,” she said.
Her strength had been already too much taxed. She turned from the Nakoda
and opened the shoji behind her. Then noiselessly she slipped into her
chamber, feeling her way through the room with her hands outstretched
like one gone blind. When she found the couch she tottered, rather than
lay, face down upon it in that instinctive fashion of the Japanese woman
to protect the child upon her back. Soon she slept the sleep of the
exhausted.
Some one sent fresh flowers in the early mornings to the house of
Azalea. They were sweet always with the sparkling dews upon them and
they filled the house with fragrance. Azalea delighted in them. They
were symbolic of the truth that there was sweetness in life in spite of
its melancholy. And so, in those days, she would sit before the flowers,
her little head bent above her sewing, and would attempt to fashion the
garments of her baby in imitation of the flowers themselves.
The baby grew in strength and beauty, a solemn-faced, large-eyed morsel
of humanity, with skin like a peach bloom in color, soft and fat and
delightful to the touch of the caressing mother.
If it had not been for that ceaseless, tireless waiting and watching for
the promised letters from the father of the child, and of his own
personal absence from the house, Azalea might have found complete
happiness in her child. But always by day she sat with her face turned
toward the West, and at night she trimmed and burned the light and set
it at the West shoji, that any time he might come would find her
waiting.
Often the man Okido would loiter by her house and stop a moment to chat
with her and to praise the child. Sometimes he brought a little gift,
and once he inquired very solicitously whether Madame Azalea was in need
of money. She had answered with careless pride:
“No, I have sufficient until his return.”
But the Nakoda’s question nevertheless worried her after his departure.
She went indoors and took down the little lacquer box in which she had
kept the money left her by her husband. It had been so full in the
beginning that she had laughed over its weight. Now the box was light as
though empty. There were only a few bits left. She shivered as she
closed the lid over them.
“Yet,” she said, with trembling lip, “it is not all gone. He will come
when but one bit remains.”
She burned more oil that night in the waiting room for him. Through the
night the bright red light twinkled against his coming. But he came not.
[Illustration]
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