The month of March was at hand. Tempestuous winds howled and whirled in
the pine and camphor trees, in the flame-like, springing bamboo groves,
and under temple eaves. The air was full of petals and scraps of green.
Sometimes a tiny flake of flint stung the face, and between the teeth an
uncomfortable grit blew in. Angry gray clouds piled high from the north,
westward from the Atlantic, eastward from that "rough and black" water
we call the Yellow Sea. The very firmament was in torment. The wind,
combated at once by many currents, tore at times great eddies in the
gray, letting the sun down in avalanches of light. Yuki saw the shadow
and the sun pass, like fleeting ghosts, across the garden; felt the
chill and warmth alternating in their wakes. The wind tossed cruelly the
branches of cherry-trees, where sharp-pointed buds in clusters, just
showing a first hint of pink, were set. The plum-tree was bare but for a
few timid green leaves. Now and then a twig or branch snapped, and fell
sharply on the gravelled pathway, where instantly one of the blue-robed
gardeners advanced to pick it up.
In the cowed house Yuki moved like some waxen automaton, living only in
the one sense of hearing. Every cry from the street, every wind-jangle
of the gate-bell, sent her currents of hope and apprehension. Tetsujo
grimly ignored the intensifying strain, but Iriya's pitying eyes turned
more often to her child. The servants kept to themselves, whispering and
exchanging glances.
Now the bamboo hedges which shut out the main street-line bent over, at
times almost to the earth, writhing, stretching, and squeaking at the
confining strips of wood that sought to hold them erect. Besides the
hedge-bamboo, "sa-sa," the fence had an inner line of cruel
orange-thorn.
Yuki had watched the elemental conflict greedily. Suddenly a snatch of
Carmen's love-song rode the wind. It was the sound she had expected. Her
little hands sought each other within the silken sleeves, and clutched
so fiercely that a nail snapped. Again came the song, nearer this time,
just without the gate. It was a strange, incongruous note, as if an
English lark should rise from the bruised and battered hedge. Yuki heard
a movement in the next room, where Tetsujo sat among his books. Perhaps
it was coincidence that Suzumé brought her, exactly at this moment, a
fresh tray of tea. The blue gardeners strolled together into full view,
and stooped, as if to discuss the condition of a botan bush, now beaten
down.
Square upon the back of one of them fell a queer winged missive, a scrap
of foreign paper weighted with a pebble. Yuki saw it clearly. Old
Suzumé, with a stifled gasp, crouched in her place. The girl poured tea
for herself, and drank it calmly. The pelted gardener, without so much
as a look around, lifted the scrap of paper as if it had been a broken
bud, and slipped it, weight and all, into his sleeve.
The Carmen song stopped. Suzumé, with a last sly glance, slipped from
the room. Yuki pressed one hand to her throat. It would be no harm to
sing the answering strain. What though her father and her jailers heard?
If once the song sped forth, not even their craft could recall it.
Pierre would understand, then, that she heard, but was a prisoner; that
even the written note he threw could not be received. Once, twice, the
white lips parted, and the slender throat stiffened for an answering
phrase; but no sound came. It was as in nightmare dreams, where one
seeks to cry aloud, and finds that the voice is gone.
Now her father was on his feet. She heard his long, swinging stride go
through the house. At the door she heard him kick his wooden clogs, and
give a gruff order to O Maru San. Then the harsh scraping feet passed
along the garden stones, the little bell clamored, and the gate-panel
closed with a bang.
"Ma-a-a!" she heard old Suzumé cry. "This is not the master I have known
for fifty years. He must be bewitched by a fox." Maru gave a little
giggle, which the elder woman quickly suppressed. Iriya, in the
guest-room, moved like a cat. Yuki knew that all were against
her,--spies, enemies. Passages from the Psalms of her Christian Bible
came to the girl. "They compass me round about on every side. I am set
in the midst of snares." She ran out into the garden, now, listening for
sounds of violence from the street. Nothing came but the wailing of
wind. Tetsujo returned as abruptly as he had gone. Yuki, steeling
herself against the look of aversion certain to be met, went before him,
not questioning, but searching his face with haggard eyes for some
possible sign of at least a will-conflict between him and Pierre. She
fancied, in her abnormal state of mind, that something of Pierre's
thought must cling to his enemy, and so be transmitted to her. But
Tetsujo's face was as blank and expressionless as the glazed side of one
of Suzumé's tea-jars on the kitchen shelf.
Unable to breathe longer that overweighted air, Yuki caught up a gray
shawl from her room, and went boldly out again into the garden. The rain
had ceased entirely. The wind, though fiercer when it came, came at
increasing intervals. Through one of these temporary lulls Yuki reached
the bleak little pond. The encircling rocks appeared older, grimmer, and
more shrunken. A few of the bordering plants had been twisted and split.
One was overturned, its ochre roots clutching at the unfriendly air, the
evergreen branches plunged deep into quivering gray water.
As if in wonder that so frail a creature as a girl should dare its
strength, the storm, crouching and growling for a last effort, hurled
the full bulk of its viewless majesty upon her. She was beaten bodily
upon the rocks. But for the protecting shawl she might have been
blinded, or the long black hair torn from her. For an instant breath
stopped; but in the wake of it came exultation. Lifting her head, she
smiled a challenge to the storm to snatch her faint soul from her lips,
and bear it far, like a petal, on that streaming tide of heaven. The
blue-robed gardeners, crouching in the shelter of a rock, stared at her
in wonder. Iriya's face came for one white instant to the veranda and
vanished. Yuki could hear the very timbers groan. The bands of dead
bamboo, lashed in horizontal strips to the living hedge, squeaked and
buckled, and squeaked again, in absurd imitation of animate torture. In
the pond the pear-shaped water was smitten into one gelatinous, cowering
mass.
Suddenly the wind went. Sounds all about her of stress and terror
changed into whimpers, whispers, moans, and small complainings. The
pond-water sprang up in small simultaneous waves which all pawed and
clamored at the rooks for explanation. Yuki stood upright, realizing
dully her slow return to sanity and poise. The storm had swept her, for
a moment, out of her own reach. In the recoil she grudged her soul its
habitation.
Now the nonchalant gardeners crossed her path, making respectful
salutation in transit. Her eyes followed them absently, but all at once
became glued to a small sagging point in the left sleeve of the shorter
man. As they disappeared around the corner plum-tree, she sank to one of
the rocks. As if she had not enough to bear already, without the torture
of speculation on the purport of those written words she was never to
see! Her hands fell limp, her head sank. The gray shawl crept by
unnoticed inches to the earth.
Wearily the girl opened the portals of her thought to the same hopeless
throng of shrouded visitors,--conjectures, all of them, moving solemnly
one behind the other,--creatures without a face,--half-animate forms
with no clear direction or purpose except to move on. What was to be the
end of it all, for her? There was no answer to that. Tetsujo apparently
would neither disown her nor relinquish his determination to marry her
quickly. It did not seem much to ask, only to be let alone; and yet in
some strange way this had come to be a priceless, impossible boon.
Pierre's note she would never see. She had not been able to answer his
Carmen song. One way alone remained open for communication, and that was
Gwendolen's telegram. She had faith that, in some way, this would get to
her. At the cry, "Dempo!" she had determined to rush out in person and
demand it. Even though this succeeded, she could not fix great hope on
its content. Surely no thought would come to Pierre but the old loving,
desperate, appealing cry, "Be true, be faithful, and we may yet find
happiness!" How the foreigners harped upon that thought of personal
happiness! It was, to most of them, the one definite aim in life. To
Pierre--dear, beautiful, joyous Pierre--it was life itself. A Japanese
is taught from childhood to look upon happiness as the casual flower of
his evergreen garden,--the lotos on a still pond of duty. It is never an
incentive, never in itself a conscious reward. She had tried to teach
Pierre this, but he had laughed at her, and said it was because Japanese
did not know how to love.
Yuki fixed thoughtful eyes on a small shrivelled tuft of fern near her
feet. Its once graceful fronds were cruelly bruised and twisted, first
by frost, and now by this pitiless storm. "I know how it feels," thought
Yuki. "My father's harshness, my mother's suffering, and my own desire
to be faithful have so wrung and bruised my heart." After a pause she
said aloud, "I wonder if it thinks itself really dead?" She stooped down
slowly, and parted the sodden, clinging scraps of brown. In the heart a
nest of tiny leaflets curled, like baby glow-worms, close wrapped in
silky filaments of down. They seemed to shrink from her icy fingers, as
if to say: "Let us be still! We are only asleep. Those tattered brown
bed-curtains keep us warm."
Yuki stood upright again. The expression of her face was altered, and
her eyes now slowly softened into tears. "My poor Pierre! my poor
Pierre!" she whispered. "If he were just a little more noble, if he were
a Japanese, he would say, 'It is best that you should obey your parents,
and serve at once your native land.' But he will not say it! And I have
promised!" She leaned over for another moment, heaping the dead
fern-leaves above their sleeping youth, then walked slowly to the house.
One star, at least, shone clear in her troubled firmament. If Pierre
should, through Gwendolen's intercession, or through some awakened
vision of his own, telegraph, urging her to be true to her better self,
no matter what the grief to her plighted love,--then she could wish to
marry that great man, Hagané, to pay her filial debt to the now stricken
parents, to show her love and loyalty to Nippon! Of course there was no
hope that Pierre would do this; but if he should,--if he should--!
The wind came again and again, but never so terribly as for that one
moment by the pond. Ordinary sounds of domestic life arose from the Onda
household, and from the neighbors around it. Cocks began to crow, as if
the storm-clearing was of their own contrivance; sparrows chirped. The
white tailless cat picked a dainty way along the outer edges of bamboo
gutters. Cries of belated peddlers came cheerily from the street.
"To-o-fu-u! To-o-fu-u-u!" called the bean-curd man, with his
characteristic upward inflection on the last syllable.
"Chi-chee! Ichiban chi-chee!" cried the milk-peddler, trotting between
the shafts of his small, closed cart. He was very proud of this cart,
and because of it considered himself the most aristocratic
kitchen-visitor on the hill. Its color was a loud, blasphemous blue. On
the sides, in letters of yellow edged with black, were two inscriptions.
The first, in Chinese ideographs, announced prompt delivery of the
richest and freshest milk. Below it, in English, glowed the startling
line, "Fresh Ox-Milk Every Hours." Suzumé had long been a patron of the
blue cart. A little thin-necked milk-bottle dangled, now empty, by a bit
of white cord, just without the gate. This the milk-boy removed,
substituting one that was full, though equally stopperless.
The soba-ya (buckwheat-man), lurching and skimming along under a bent
kiri-wood pole that bore at one end a chest of drawers and at the other
a steaming furnace with bowls, copper-pots, and a ladle, naturally had
little voice left for vociferous proclamation. His coming was indicated,
at long range, by the click and shiver of copper drawer-handles beating
in unison against half-filled boxes. According to the quantity of dry
buckwheat in each drawer, the handle uttered a different note. Needless
to say, this burdened hawker loitered long at each gate; but at the Onda
entrance he stayed longest of all. It was Maru's happy privilege to
bargain with these several venders. Her heart found an answering thump
and shiver as the soba-ya drew near.
"Honorably steamed, or augustly raw, O maiden of the lovely
countenance?" asked he of the blushing one.
"Augustly boiled, to-day, kind sir,--if you can graciously condescend to
bestow the amount of two sens' worth," rejoined Maru, sucking in her
breath with ceremonious emphasis as she presented a small green bowl.
This flirtation was already becoming talked of in the neighborhood. More
than one curious "ba-san" (old woman), relieved by age from personal
domestic cares, sought peepholes and crannies in neighboring hedges when
the smell of buckwheat warmed the air.
The buckwheat man bestowed an encouraging smile. "The noblest of my
customers invariably prefer my worthless viands honorably boiled," said
he, with a side glance from under the brim of his malachite Derby.
"As for that, you, by preparing so deliciously the delectable food, make
buying necessary," simpered the purchaser with a rosier glow.
A slim and seemingly boneless cur, who also had nostrils for hot
buckwheat, scraped a stealthy way along the hedge toward them. He felt
that the flirtation might have possibilities for him.
"D[=o]-mo!" said the peddler, with deprecating nods. "The stuff is poor,
I fear. It is but your divine condescension and pitying heart that make
you encourage me." He lifted the copper lid of his cauldron, and began
ladling out a goodly portion of the slippery ware.
"Who is the mad young foreigner with yellow hair who now haunts the foot
of this hill?" asked the peddler, during his precarious occupation.
"Ma-a!" cried Maru under her breath. She craned her neck to look
furtively up and down the street, and then asked in a confidential
whisper, "Is there indeed such a person at the foot of this august
hill?"
"I speak simple truth. Surely you know of him. In all the roads he is to
be seen. He moves so quickly the children say there are two of him. They
cry at his approach, though he flings them many rin and sen, and hide
faces in their mothers' sleeves."
"Repeat it not from me," cautioned Maru. "Aunt Suzumé would surely
scorch me with her pipe, should she hear me gossiping. But he is a grand
foreigner, son of a king, who is wild with love to marry our Miss Yuki;
but she repels him, for she is asked in marriage by a much greater
person, of Japan,--a very, very great prince!" Maru swelled her fat
chest like a pigeon. The interest in her auditor's face thrilled her.
She opened her mouth for further revelations, when a sneeze from the
kitchen brought her caution. "I--I dare not tell his name," she added
weakly.
"You are honorably to be commended for your prudence," gravely declared
the soba-ya, though he was swallowing hard this lump of disappointment.
"Prudence is an excellent quality, particularly in a wife. Is it
true--er--ahem!--is it true, small round one, that the ancient dame who
presides over the kitchen of your noble household is, indeed, your one
surviving relative?"
"Te-he-he!" giggled little Maru in blissful discomfort. "She truly is, O
most worthy sir,--but why should you wish to know?"
"Much reason is existent," said the other, with such meaning that Maru,
after an enraptured gasp, let the entire contents of the bowl tilt, and
then fall with a wet thud to the earth. The white cur, having well
calculated his chances, reaped the reward of intelligence if not of
virtue, and went down the hill with a yelp of joy.
"Kwannon help me!" cried the girl at this catastrophe. "For this a great
beating may be honorably bestowed upon me!"
"Nay, maiden, be calm!" said the gallant youth. "Free of charge will I
restore it. Give me the bowl!" Tremblingly she did so. Their fingers met
beneath the sage-green rim. Maru's round face glowed more like a peony
than ever.
"Maru! Ma-_roo_!" came a voice from within. "Is the buckwheat-man
boiling you, that so long you remain? Worthless vagabond! Let him leave
at once!"
"It is Aunt Suzumé! I must go! Again to-morrow you will augustly pause
at our broken-down step, will you not?"
"Though in the night I should make divine retirement, yet to-morrow at
this hour would my ghost return to bring your buckwheat!" protested the
swain. With one more gasp of ecstasy, and the crossing of two pairs of
small slanting eyes, the lovers separated. A moment later the peculiar
click and chitter of the metal handles came back through dying gusts of
wind.
* * * * *
Tetsujo, immediately after luncheon, returned to his book-room, where
now he spent all his waking hours. After some indeterminate search among
his well-worn favorites, he took down a volume of Toemmei's poems, a
venerable old Chinese classic, and began to read aloud. Iriya, in the
kitchen, had already begun to discuss the evening meal. Yuki sat,
listlessly, with folded hands, in her own room, next to the library. Her
one thought now was to hear the cry "Dempo!" which should announce the
coming of Gwendolen's telegram. To look out upon an indefinite period of
such days as these was almost more than the girl's brave spirit could
endure. Yet, to Pierre she had given an oath. She had let him break the
long hairpin. If he commanded her "Be firm and true," she would be true,
no matter what came!
Through these dark, monotonous thoughts, her father's voice, low, rich,
and sonorous, with the jerky melodic chant and rhythm imposed by long
reading aloud of Chinese literature, flowed up and finally compelled
her. So had she been taught to read in childhood, before her long
sojourn in a foreign land.
"'Let me now return, for my farm and garden are growing wild! As the
boat skims lightly along the water, the wind plays with my sleeves. O
boatman! how far yet to my home? So far, and yet the hour so late! Now,
now at last I see my own loved gate, and enter with joyous rush.'" The
deep tones rose as in triumph, then sank again to infinite tenderness.
"'The paths to my steps are growing up wild with grass, but the pine and
the chrysanthemums still flourish. With my children in my arms I enter
the house, drink a refreshing draught, and gaze, and gaze again at the
shadows under the garden trees.
"'Return! Return! Why should I not return? Let me renounce the
intercourse and pleasure of the world! Let me and the world renounce
each other! There is nothing more for me to derive from the world!--
"'The farmers come in and tell me that spring is approaching. There are
rumors of war in the West. But why should they interfere with my
rambles? The trees put on a smile and begin to bud. The streams look
busy and begin to flow. What joy to see all things fall due at their
season! And yet I am reminded that my season, too, is almost come. Alas!
The lodging of man in this Inn of the Universe is but for a single
season!'"
Yuki's hands were pressed against her breast. In the samurai's slow,
fervid utterance one could feel each word fill and thrill the heroic
heart before utterance came to the lips. He was deriving strength and
comfort from the immortal ode. "'Commit then, O soul, thyself upon the
current of things!'" rose the exulting pæan. "'Let me choose my own
time. Let me go out for my solitary walk! Let me hobble about the farm
on my friendly cane. Let me toil up the Eastern hill, look the clear
brook in the face, and sing it my dying songs. So let me end my days as
days of themselves may end. So shall my joy flow on with the eternal
will of Heaven!'"
Yuki sat upright, her wide eyes fixed, as it were, upon the viewless
flight of echo. "And they of the Western world say that my people have
no true religion, no deep belief. Their souls crawl, where ours take
wings! Nippon, Nippon, my country!"
The magnificence of her nation's past, the heroism, self-sacrifice
inherent in her countrymen, the passionate craving for what is spiritual
and sublime, the belief in watchful spirits of dead ancestors, in the
divinity and guidance of dead Emperors manifest in the living flesh,
came in a flood and bore up the girl's spirit in a tide of light. What
were foreign education, foreign friendship, foreign pledges,--love
itself,--to a girl of Yamato Damashii? She was Japanese, one small
animate cell in a living tissue of race. To serve her country, that,
indeed, should be life's worth. "Pierre, Pierre," she sobbed. "I shall
not bring you joy, nor can you give to me the duty that it is my part to
bear. Let me go, dear one, let me go, and pray to our Christian God that
your kisses fade from me, and your blue eyes be turned away. If I were
only myself I would die, or defy for you everything. But I am not
myself; I am what my ancestors, my parents and my country have made me;
I am only one shivering mote of dust in my country's shining destiny.
Let me go, my dear; Kwannon will bless you!"
Slow, helpful tears began to course, unfelt, along her white cheeks. All
at once the physical exhaustion of long, sleepless nights and days
unendurable began to tell on her. The glossy head bent over, lower and
lower. Tetsujo, after a long pause, had begun an heroic epic of the
Heiké clan. The words were indistinct, a sort of splendid blur. She had
an impression of horses, arms, war-shouts, and of fluttering banners on
distant hills. Then all sounds began to die away. She smiled faintly,
and stretched out her slender young limbs upon the soft matting. Soon
she was asleep, with the long, regular breaths of childhood.
Without stirring, she remained in the unconscious pose for hours. Iriya,
peeping in upon her, choked back a little sob of thanksgiving, and
turned away to kneel, in her room, before the ancestral shrine. Lights
burned here always, and the pleasant aroma of fresh tea was seldom
absent. With hands struck very softly together, that the sleeper should
not be disturbed, Iriya supplicated the gods of her home and of her
nation that the child should be given clearer vision. A European would
have demanded personal happiness for her daughter. The Japanese soul
sees deeper, and asks, as the highest boon, power to carry out, in this
life, that which has been decreed, and so, for the future, to achieve a
nobler attitude.
* * * * *
Just at the hour of twilight Iriya returned, and kneeling, called
softly, "Yuki-ko--my heart's treasure--you must awake."