He heard her soothing the child within and the sound of its subdued
cries. Finally, comforted, it must have slept, for there was no further
sound within.
Matsuda pushed open the shoji door. The house and furniture were his. He
would enter when he pleased.
She was standing behind the shoji, as though awaiting his coming. Her
baby was strapped to her back and she held something clasped close to
her heart. It was a large black book. Matsuda recognized it. She spoke
in unfaltering accents.
“Pray you walk in, Matsuda Isami. The furniture is waiting to be taken.
Truly an empty house will be of more comfort than one dressed in what
belongs to you.”
“An empty house?” he repeated. “But I do not propose to empty my house.
The house, too, is mine since I bought it within the month.”
“Ah,” she said, “I suspected as much. Very well, take also the house,
most honorable Matsuda Isami. We will leave it at once.”
He followed her down the path for a space. When he seized her sleeve,
she shook it from his grasp.
“Do not make claim upon us, also, Matsuda Isami,” she scornfully mocked.
“It is not possible you purchased us, too?”
“No, but I shall do so, Madame Azalea.”
“Oh, no, that is not possible.”
Her proud and stubborn demeanor caused him to change his tone.
“Listen,” he said. “By the law you are no longer the wife of the
barbarian. He has deserted you and hence you are divorced. Become wife
with me. My house awaits your coming, and I have sworn to possess you.”
“I would rather wed with Death,” was her answer.
[Illustration:
“‘My house awaits your coming, and I have sworn to possess you.’”
(Page 162)
]
He turned in savage exasperation and ran toward the house. She, standing
still now, watched him enter. A moment later she heard his hoarse
laughter and the crashing of articles within. Sick despair crept through
her being, freezing her faculties. She could not move, but stood like
one fascinated, watching the trembling of the house itself. It shivered,
swayed and shook from side to side, as though a very tempest were
sweeping it within. Then suddenly there was an upheaval, a splintering
crash, and the little house upon the hill was a mass of broken debris.
Matsuda, his passion unsatisfied with the destruction of the furniture,
had seized the main pole of the house—the support of the frail
structure—and had shaken it with such violence that the house itself had
collapsed. A providence which seems by some irony of fate to watch over
the fortunes of the evil, had saved the man himself from so much as a
scratch. He was snorting and puffing like a bull as he sped down the
hill past the trembling, shrinking Azalea.
A sound escaped her lips. It could not be called a cry. She made a
little rush toward the fallen house, then stopped and covered her eyes
with her sleeves. She was homeless, without means, and upon her back her
warm, sleeping babe hung heavy and helpless.
Dazedly, almost blindly, Azalea made her way down the hill slope, across
the little bridge that spanned the narrow river in the valley below, up
another hill, and on through the fields. She had come to the house of
her step-mother. At least she had never been denied a roof there.
Her knock was timid and faint. As though expecting her, Madame Yamada
hastened to the door. Azalea spoke in the weariest, the faintest of
accents.
“Excellent mother-in-law, my house has fallen and I am without money and
very tired. I wish to come into my father’s house a little while.”
Madame Yamada laughed shrilly.
“The doors of your father’s house,” she said, “are closed to the one who
has dishonored them.”
Azalea stood in silence. Even in her misery, her pride withheld her from
pleading. She bowed her head in apathetic politeness.
“Say no more, then,” she said. “We will go elsewhere.”
[Illustration:
“The shadows of the night were her only covering, and the soft, mossy
grass her mattress.”
(Page 166)
]
That night she slept under the open skies. The shadows of the night were
her only covering, and the soft, mossy grass her mattress. She slept
well, as the exhausted often do, and felt nor knew the discomfort of her
unusual bed, for she was close to the ruin of her home that had been,
and near, too, to the little mission house. Her last thought ere she
slept was a vague and almost childish remembrance of an argument she had
once had with her husband. She had protested against the locking of the
mission house, declaring that locks were unknown and unneeded in Japan.
He had insisted that thieves might enter the place and despoil the
little church of its few possessions. Now Azalea thought with a strange
feeling of bitter triumph that she had proved herself right. Oh, if the
little church were but open, what a haven of refuge it would prove now
for her and for their child. Who had better right to its protection than
the wife and offspring of the priest of the church?
------------------------------------------------------------------------