contour, was smooth and unwrinkled as a girl's, for Japanese women age
slowly. It was hard to believe she was the mother of the tall man now
holding her at arm's length and looking down at her with such deep,
questioning eyes.
"Where is my sister, Yuki?" he demanded, hoarsely.
"Yuki?" Madam Omatsu smiled with saintly confidence. She had retired.
Would they pray wait till morning? Ah, how was her honorable son, her
august offspring? She began fondling her boy now, stroking his face,
standing on tiptoe to kiss it, ecstatically smoothing and caressing his
hands, feeling his strange clothes, and laughing joyously at their
likeness to those of her dead husband's. But the dark shadow on Taro's
face was deepening, nor would he return or submit to his mother's
caresses till his fears regarding his sister were stilled.
"Send for her," he said, briefly, and she knew he would not be gainsaid.
Send for her! Ah, Madam Omatsu begged her noble son's pardon ten million
times, but she had made a great mistake. His sister had, of course,
retired, but it was not within their augustly miserable and honorably
unworthy domicile. She had gone out on a visit to some friends.
Taro undid the clinging hands and pushed her from him, his brooding eyes
glaring.
"Where?"
Where? Why, it was only a short distance--perhaps two rice-fields'
lengths from their house.
"The house?--the people's name?"
Madam Omatsu whitened a trifle. Her eyes narrowed, her lips quivered.
She tried once more frantically to prevaricate.
The people's name? She could not quite recall, but the next day--the
next day surely--
"Ah-h," said her son, with delirious brutality, "you are deceiving me,
lying to me. I demand to know where she is. I am her rightful guardian.
I must see her at once."
Madam Omatsu protested with faint vehemence, but she did not weep. She
even essayed a little laugh, that reminded Jack eerily of Yuki. In the
dimly lighted room she looked strangely like her daughter, save that she
was much smaller and quite thin and frail, whereas Yuki was rosy and
healthy.
Taro was speaking to her in Japanese, in a sharp, cruel voice, and she
was answering gently, meekly, humbly, consolingly. Jack felt sorry for
her. Suddenly Taro threw her hands from him, with a gesture of sheer
despair and exhausted patience.
"I can learn nothing from her, nothing," he said in English. Then he
turned on her again. "Listen," he said: "You are my mother, and as such
I honor you, but you must not deceive me. I know all; know that my
sister was married to an American; know how she was married, if you call
such marriage. They do not consider it so, as you must know. What do you
know of this, my mother? It could not have happened without your
knowledge?"
The mother broke down at last. All was indeed lost if he knew that much.
She sank in a heap at his feet, and again the other man was reminded of
her daughter.
Taro raised her, not ungently, curbing his emotions.
"Pray speak to me the truth," he implored.
"It was for you," she said, faintly, in Japanese. "I desired it, I, your
mother; and, afterwards, she also, she, your sister. It was a small
sacrifice, my son."
"Sacrifice! What do you mean?" he cried.
"Alas, we had not the money to keep you at the American school, and
later, when you desired to return, it was still harder."
"Oh, my God!"
She went on, speaking brokenly in Japanese. After he had gone to America
their little fortune had been swept away, but of this they had kept him
in ignorance, fearing that he would not remain in the university did he
know how poor they had become. The house belonged to him; they could not
sell it. There had been but poor crops in their few remaining acres of
rice-fields; their income became smaller and smaller. One by one their
servants and coolies had to be sacrificed, till there were only a very
few left, and these refused to be paid for their services. They had
secured money in what manner they could, and sent it to him. It was
hard, but they loved him.
Then Yuki, unknown to her mother, had gone up to Tokyo each day and
learned the arts of the geisha; later she invented dances and songs of
her own, and soon she was able to command a good price at one of the
chief tea-gardens in Tokyo.
This for a season had brought them in a fair income, and for a time they
were enabled to send him even more than the usual allowance. Then came
his request for his passage money. Alas! they were but weak and silly
women. They had forgotten to save against this event in their desire to
keep him in comfort. Nakodas had approached Yuki, and tempting offers
were made to her. She had resisted all of them, for she was then below
the age when girls usually marry, but sixteen years of age. Only when it
became imperative to raise the passage money would she even listen to
the pursuasion of her mother and of the nakoda. They had pointed out to
her the great advantage, and finally, as the brother's letters grew more
insistent, she had broken down and given in. After that time she had
assisted them in their efforts to secure her a suitable husband. They
had been exceptionally successful, for she had married a foreigner who
would likely leave her soon, which was fortunate in Omatsu's mind, one
whose excellent virtues and whose wealth were above question. This was
all there was to tell. She prayed and besought her honorable son's
pardon.
During her recital Taro had leaned towards her, listening with bated
breath to every word that escaped her lips. His thin, nervous face was
horribly drawn, his hands were clinched tightly at his side, his whole
form was quivering. He tried to regain his scattered senses, and his
hand vaguely wandered to his brow, pushing back the thick black hair
that had fallen over it.
"You cannot understand," he said to the other man, his voice scarcely
recognizable for its labor. "It was for me, me, my little sister sold
herself. To keep me in comfort and ease! Snowflake for me! And they kept
me in ignorance. I did not even dream they were in straitened
circumstances. Oh, had I not willing hands and an eager heart to work,
to slave for them? Why should the whole burden have fallen on her, my
little, frail sister? But it has always been so. There is no such thing
as justice in this land for the woman."
Jack heard him raving, understood, and bowed his head in impotent
sorrow.
"Has your mother given you any information of her whereabouts?" he
suddenly broke in.
Taro had forgotten that they were seeking her. His mother's story had
held all his attention. The horror aroused by that recital of devotion,
the thought of the months of her sweet life which she had sacrificed for
him, and then how he had repulsed her, pressed on his poor numbed
senses. But Jack's inquiry recalled him. A thousand dark surmises
regarding her overwhelmed him.
"Yes, yes--where is she?" he asked, huskily.
She had been with her husband some days now. Madam Omatsu expected her
home soon, and this time she would never again return to him.
Taro's eyes were inflamed. "And she has not returned? She should be here
now! Ah, it is plain to be seen what has happened. She may be taking her
life at this moment. It is what a Japanese girl would do. She had the
blood of heroes in her veins; she would not falter."
All of a sudden he turned upon his friend. Then the full agony caused by
his sister's disappearance and her great sacrifice descended upon him,
and he tottered. Before Jack could stay him, he swayed forward and, as
he fell, struck his forehead upon the corner of a heavy chair that had
been his father's. When Jack raised the head of the unconscious man he
found blood flowing from a wide cut over the left eye.
There were hurrying feet throughout the house, terrified whispers, and
sobs, and, above all, a mother's voice raised in terrible anguish.
XIV
A STRUGGLE IN THE NIGHT
By day and night they kept their unrelaxing watch by the bedside of the
sick man. Ever he tossed and turned and muttered and cried aloud, one
word alone on his lips--his sister's name.
Tenderly the mother smoothed the fevered brow, softly she stroked the
restless hands, and tried to still their fever between her own cool,
soothing ones. Thin lines had traced their shadows on her worn face;
gray threads had come to mingle with the glossy black of her hair. But
she never permitted herself, after that first night of anguish, to
betray her emotions, for, if she did, well she knew she would be refused
the precious labor of nursing her boy. And she kept her sleepless,
tireless watch night and day. Her maid begged her to lie down herself
and rest, but she shook her head with bright, dry eyes. Rest for her?
While he lay tossing thus? Nay! perhaps when he should find the rest,
the gods would permit her also a respite; till then she must keep her
watch.
She smiled pathetically when the white-faced American boy tried to
insist that she should sleep, with the little air of authority he had
assumed in the household. But with the gentle smile she also shook her
head in negation.
"Let me take your place," he pleaded. "He is dear to me also."
Still she smiled, such a shadowy, heart-aching smile, and turned back to
the sick-bed.
Jack Bigelow went back to Tokyo, and began his vigilant search for the
missing girl. The services of the entire metropolitan police board were
called forth, and money was not spared. The nakoda who had brought about
their marriage was put through a vigorous catechism, but he could tell
them nothing. The proprietor of the tea-garden swore she had not
returned to him, and when he bewailed the misfortune which was filling
his house and gardens with officers, Jack consoled him by paying
liberally for the loss he claimed he was suffering.
On the fifth day the mystery of the girl's disappearance still remained
unsolved. Large rewards were offered for a clew to her whereabouts. The
police were sure that she was somewhere in Tokyo, and Jack urged them to
continue unremitting search in the city, but each night dawned upon
their fruitless efforts. Now some one had seen a girl of her description
entering a tea-house on the eve of her disappearance; another had seen
her selling flowers in the market-place; and yet another swore she had
gone on board a German vessel with a dried-up foreigner. This last
person could not be mistaken--a Japanese girl with blue eyes and red
hair. But each clew was found wanting and proved false.
Then back to Yuki's home, sick-hearted, disappointed, weary, went Jack
Bigelow. A servant met him with the blessed news that the man down with
brain fever was improving; that a merciful calm had at last come to him,
and that now he slept. Wearied from his fruitless endeavors to find some
clew to Yuki's whereabouts, the first good news in days unnerved the
young man. He sat down, covering his eyes with his hands. He was badly
in need of rest himself, but his mind was full of the mother in the
sick-room overhead.
Madam Omatsu, was she resting?
No, she still kept her watch, but she was very weak, and they feared she
would break down if they could not prevail on her to rest.
Jack went slowly up the stairs, tapped softly on the shoji, and then
entered the sick-room.
Taro lay on the heavy English bed, with its white coverlets and
curtains, his face upturned.
"You must rest," Jack whispered to the woman with the wan face and
wasted form, kneeling by the bedside.
She shook her head, resisting.
"I beg you to," pleaded Jack, and, though she could not understand him,
she knew what he was saying, and still resisted.
"Come," he said, gently, and put his hands upon her shoulders. "See, he
sleeps now. It is well, and you will be too weak and faint to minister
to him when he awakes, otherwise."
But she protested that her health was excellent; that she would not
leave her son. He stooped down, and attempted to raise her gently to her
feet, but she would not permit him.
He saw the tired droop of the eyes. "She will fall asleep soon," he said
to himself, and so sat down beside her, putting his arm about her and
pillowing her head on his shoulder. She did not restrain him. She looked
gratefully into the frank, inviting eyes. She sighed, her head wavered
and dropped. The room was very still and silent. Gradually the woman
fell asleep, and as she slept she sighed from ineffable weariness.
Jack looked towards the silent figure on the bed. The grayness of the
approaching night gave the face an expression that was sinister in the
extreme. He shuddered and averted his face. The little form in his arms
grew heavier.
"She will rest better lying down," he thought, and carried her into the
adjoining room and laid her softly down. Then he took the lighted andon,
and, carrying it into the sick-room, set it in a corner near the bed,
and drew down the shutters. After this, he went back to the bed, and
stood for a minute looking down on the sleeping man, an expression of
infinite sadness on his face. Taro stirred, the hand lying outside the
coverlet contracted, then closed spasmodically; the expression of the
face became terrifying. He moaned. It seemed to Jack as if the sleeping
man was haunted by a terrible nightmare which robbed him of the rest
that should have found him.
And it was with Taro as Jack had thought. He was in the midst of a fever
dream--a nightmare. He thought his little sister, Snowflake, knelt by
his bedside and soothed and ministered to his wants. He felt rested and
at peace at last; but, alas! just as he was slipping into happy oblivion
a dark form loomed up beside his sister, bent over, and clutched at her.
She struggled wildly at first, then weakly; finally her struggles
ceased, and she lay very still and white. The man lifted her up and
carried her away. After a time he came back, and now Taro felt his
breath on his own face. He was bending over him. In a dim haze he saw
the face, and recognized it as that of his friend, Jack Bigelow! He
tried to reach out and grasp him, to strike and kill him, but he was at
the mercy of some invisible power which benumbed him and held him down.
His limbs refused to move, he was unable to lift so much as a finger,
stir an eyelash, and all the time the man's breath was on his face,
stealing into his nostrils and suffocating him.
Jack noted the gasping of his friend with alarm, and stooped over for
the purpose of removing the pillow to give him relief. But at the touch
of his hand, as he attempted to raise the head on the pillow, the life
blood started vividly, madly, through the man on the bed, and suddenly
he had sprung into wild life. Jack saw the terrible gleam of two
delirious eyes, and stood magnetized. With lightning fury the raving man
had thrown aside the bedclothes, sprung from the bed, and thrown himself
on the other with such force that the two came to the ground together,
the madman on top.
"I have you now!--traitor! betrayer!" he said, as his hands felt Jack's
warm throat.
Jack had been taken so by surprise that he was dazed in the first
moment, and in the next realized that he was powerless to defend
himself. He was in the grasp of one temporarily insane, one whose lithe,
physical strength he already knew well. It would be useless to fight
against that strength. His salvation lay in being passive and feigning
unconsciousness; but could he do this with those terrible fingers
closing around his throat, throttling the life out of him? Now they
pressed hard, now relaxed, now caressed his neck and throat, rubbed it,
pinched only to press again. He was playing with him! Jack did not stir.
He had closed his eyes, and was praying for strength to meet
unflinchingly whatever fate held for him.
"Where have you put her?" came the fierce whisper, close to his ear.
"Where did you carry her to? Hah! you are silent. Have I silenced you
like this and this? You are cold; you cannot breathe now, nor smile nor
laugh at her. No, not while I have my hand here to press so and so. Once
you were my friend, and I loved you. But now--so you killed her! Now I
will kill you like this and this and this!"
Jack was becoming weaker and weaker. The white-shrouded figure sitting
on him leaned forward, staring dreadfully, but his victim saw nothing,
heard nothing. Suddenly it seemed as if another had sprung upon him and
was beating his life out. He dimly heard a woman's cries, and,
intermingled, a terrible laughter. Then life and consciousness seemed to
depart, and he knew no more.
When he regained consciousness he found himself on a bed. A woman was
leaning over him, bathing his head, smoothing and caressing it--a woman
with an angelic face, so like Yuki's when she had nursed him during a
brief illness that in his weakness he fainted at the mere dream of her
sweet presence. But it was not Yuki; it was the mother. She had been
awakened by the talking and cries in the sickroom, and, rushing to the
door, had looked in on the terrible scene. Japanese women have little or
no fear of physical disaster for themselves. She raised a fearful cry to
arouse the household, then flung herself on the two men, and with her
puny strength sought to divide them. At first her son laughed and
resisted her, but when her white face flashed before him his grip grew
weak, and he staggered back, dazed by the rush of returning reason. He,
too, had taken her for the ghost of his lost sister!
The alarmed household had flocked into the room. Gently they prevailed
on him to return once more to the bed, as weak as a child now.
Jack was not seriously hurt. In his shattered, nervous condition,
however, the shock had temporarily unhinged him, and for several days he
lay in bed, waited on and attended by the gentle Omatsu, who went like a
sweet, soothing spirit back and forth between the two rooms, who called
him "son," and was to him as if she were indeed his mother, till she
could not approach him but he kissed her hands and blessed her from his
heart.
XV
THE VOW
The happy sadness of the brown autumn had faded in a yellow gleam of
light. December had entered the land with a little drift of frost and
snow which had surprised the country, for December is not usually a cold
month in Japan. Its advent shook the little housewives into action and
life. New mats of rice straw were being laid, and every nook and corner
dusted with fresh bamboo brooms and dusters, for the Japanese begin to
prepare a month in advance for the New Year season, and all the country
seems to wake into active life and present a holiday appearance.
But the old palace, where dwelt the Burton family, kept its garment of
perpetual gloom, and stood out in mocking contrast to the neighboring
houses. No window was thrown open, no door turned in to air the place
and give it the sunshine of the coming New Year.
Thick as the dust that had gathered about its unkept rooms, the shadow
of death pervaded the place. Vast shadows, mysterious and oppressive,
crept in, enshrouding it with their ghostly presence. From afar off the
drone of a curfew bell was heard, its slow, mournful cadence seeming to
drift into a dirge. Outside the early winds of winter were wailing a
requiem, and all the spirits of the air floated about and beat against
the sombre palace.
At dusk consciousness returned to the dying man, and weakly, though
intelligently, he looked about him, and even smiled faintly at the
wailing and moaning that crept upward from the rooms below, where the
few old retainers of the household, who had been in the service of the
family long before Taro had been born, and had stayed by them after
their fortunes had fallen, were huddled together and loudly lamenting
the approaching death of the son of the house.
Before a tiny shrine in a corner of the room was the prostrate form of
the mother. Her lips were dumb, but her speaking eyes wailed out her
prayer to all the gods for mercy. And at the bedside, his face in his
hands, knelt Jack Bigelow. Perhaps he, too, was praying to the one and
only God of his people.
"Burton," he said, as the sick man stirred, "you have something to say
to me?"
He bent over and wiped the dews that lay thick as a frost on lips and
brow.
"My sister--" Taro began with painful slowness.
"My wife--" whispered the other, his voice breaking, and then, as Taro
seemed unable to proceed, he put his mouth close down to his ear.
"Burton, our grief is a common one. I swear by everything I hold sacred
and holy that I will never cease in my efforts to find my wife! Nothing
that strength or money can do shall be spared. I will take no rest till
she is found. Before God, I will right this wrong I have unconsciously
done you and yours--and mine!"
Taro's eyes, wide and bright, fixed Jack's steadfastly. His long, thin
hand stirred and quivered, and attempted to raise itself. Without a word
Jack took it in his own. He had understood that mute effort to mean
belief and confidence in him. And, kneeling there in the melancholy
dusk, he held Taro's hand between his own until it was stiff and cold.
Whither had the soul of the Eurasian drifted? Out and along the
interminable and winding journey to the Meido of his maternal ancestors,
or to give an account of itself to the great
Man-God-three-in-one-Creator of his father?
* * * * *
The mother crept from the shrine with stealing step, her white face like
a mask of death, her small, frail hands outstretched, like those of one
gone blind.
A consciousness of her eerie approach thrilled Jack Bigelow. He dropped
Taro's hand and turned towards her, standing before and hiding the sight
of the dead from her. In the dim shadows of the deepening twilight she
looked as frail and ethereal as a wraith, for she had clothed herself in
all the vestal garments of the dead.
With somewhat of the heroism of her feudal ancestors Omatsu had prepared
herself to face and undertake that perilous journey into the unknown
with her son. In the pitiful tangled reasoning that had wrestled in the
bosom of this Japanese woman, always there had disturbed the beauty of
such a sacrifice the doubt as to whether the gods would indeed receive
her with this son of hers who had dedicated his soul to an alien and
strange God. But she had prepared herself to risk the consequences. And
now she stood there swaying and tottering in all her ghastly attire,
while opposite to her stood the tall, fair-haired foreigner with the
pitying gray eyes of her own dead lord.
She essayed to speak, but her voice was barely above a parched whisper.
"Anata?" (Thou). It was a gentle word, spoken as a question, as though
she would ask him, "Condescend to speak your honorable desire with me?"
"Mother!" he only said--"dear mother!"
* * * * *
At Taro's funeral Jack Bigelow made the acquaintance of his wife's
family. He had not imagined it possible for any one to have so many
relatives. They came from all parts of the country, distant and close
cousins and uncles and aunts, and even an old grandfather and
grandmother, the former very decrepit and quite blind. And they all
lined up in order, and wept real or artificial tears and muttered
prayers for the soul of the dead boy.
A few of them were rich and important men of high rank in Japan; some of
them were suave and courteous, coming merely for form's sake and for the
honor of the family; most of them were of the type of the decayed
gentility of Japan--poor but proud, dignified but humble in their
dignity.
They all regarded Jack with the same grave, stoical gaze peculiar to the
better-class Japanese, betraying in no way by their expression surprise
or resentment at his presence among them. As a matter of fact, none of
the family were aware of the relation in which he stood to them, and so
had occasion for no real animus against him, regarding him merely as a
friend of Taro's. But in his supersensitive condition Jack imagined that
they looked upon him as an intruder, perhaps as one who had brought
distress and havoc upon their household.
When, however, after the funeral the little mob of friends and relatives
had gradually dispersed till there was none left besides himself and
Omatsu, the intense loneliness and silence of the big house grated upon
his nerves, so that he would have welcomed the wailing of the servants,
which had now been buried in the grave.