For nine days she remained in the house of Matsuda Isami. He put her
into the great sleeping chamber above the ozashishi, removed the paper
shoji from the house and slid into its place the winter wooden sliding
walls and doors. Thus they were safe from spying intruders, and she
might not leave the house, since the wooden street doors were fast.
Outside her room the woman Natsu-san remained. Matsuda himself moved
into the ozashiki, and from there he kept guard over the woman in the
chamber above.
When first the serving-woman Natsu-san entered the chamber to serve her,
she found the girl crouched off in the farthest corner of the room,
whither she had crept after Matsuda Isami had set her in the room. She
was numb with cold, hunger and fear. Her feverish mind could not follow
the tangled sequence of events that had passed over her that night. She
dimly recalled that sudden flash of and on light at the end of her
wanderings, the touch of arms of seeming supernatural strength which had
crushed her aching body as they carried her up and into this room of
fears. The room had no light save what sifted into it from a takahiri
(lantern) in the hall, which the servant had set by the dividing doors.
“I have brought food,” she said briefly, and set the tray on the floor
by the famished Azalea. She reached out a trembling hand and cautiously,
fearfully touched and felt of the food. Reassured of what she touched,
her hands seized upon the contents of the tray. She found the milk, warm
and sweet, and in a moment she had slipped the child out of its bag,
laid its limp and listless little body at her feet and thrust the nipple
of the bottle between the tiny, parted lips.
Some one in the night put a slumber robe upon her. Her weakness and
exhaustion gave way. She slept. But in the early morning, turning in her
sleep instinctively to reach out for her child, she missed it, and
started with a cry of fright and anguish that rang out wildly through
the silent house.
It was five days before they put the child back into her arms. At the
end of that period she put her head at the feet of Matsuda Isami, swore
by the eight million gods of heaven that she was his humblest and
meekest of slaves, and promised to do whatsoever he should command if he
would but return to her her child. After that she was like a mechanical
puppet. The woman Natsu-san dressed her in softest silken crepe, loaded
down her little fingers with rich jewels, and drew the hair, fallen so
wildly about her face, back into smooth mode. She moved about like one
in a dream, a nightmare from which she could not wake nor extricate her.
She was but a passive doll in the hands of the woman, and did not even
move her hands to assist the servant in attiring her. But when they
brought the child, she rushed upon the woman, seized it with savage
force from her arms, and then fell to weeping over it in such a way that
the one she was hereafter to name “master” feared for her reason, and
left her for the nonce alone. Thus a respite of a few days was given
her.
Physical strength crept back into her wasted body, bringing health, too,
to her bewildered mind. Memory—burning, invincible, accusing—awoke, told
her that she was about to become a thing more outcast than ever, because
she would be guilty of that sin the most unpardonable of any a woman of
his (her husband’s) people could commit. She could not delude herself
with the fancy that she would be the wife of Matsuda Isami, whatever the
law might be, for she had pledged an eternal faith to her true husband
and the child was the connecting link between them. Now as from day to
day she waited in fear for the time to come when Matsuda Isami should
claim her promise, a promise she dared not break if she would keep her
child, there flooded back upon her the teachings of her husband. Now at
last she knew she believed in the faith of the Kirishitan and before
that faith she stood convicted. She did not attempt to justify her
actions by her sufferings. There was no justification in the creed of
his religion. His last words to her had been: “Have faith always. Be
true to me, my love, and to yourself. I will return.” Yet how had he
kept his word to her. There had not come to her one word or sign since
his departure. If he had sent word to her the great waters that divided
them must have swallowed it up. There was nothing left to her now save
the child, and for his sake she would sell herself and become wife to
Matsuda Isami.
[Illustration]
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