IV

The pebbles of the garden were slippery and cold under the feet that

pressed them. Also they hurt a little. Umè longed to return for her

straw sandals, but this freedom of the night was already far too

precious for jeopardy. She caught her robe about her throat and was

glad of the silken shawl of her long hair. How thickly shone the

stars! It must be close upon the hour of their waning, yet how big and

soft; and how companionable! She stretched her arms up to them, moving

as if they drew her down the path. They were more real, indeed, than

the dim and preternatural space in which she walked.

She looked slowly about upon that which should have been commonplace

and found the outlines alone to be unaltered. There were the hillock,

the house, the thick hedge-lines square at the corners with black bars

hard as wood against the purple night; there were the winding paths and

little courts of open gravel. She could have put her hand out, saying,

"Here, on this point, should be the tall stone lantern; here, in this

sheltered curve, a fern." Both lantern and fern would have been in

place; and yet, despite these evidences of the usual, all that once

made the sunlit garden space an individual spot, was, in this dim,

ghostly air, transformed. The spirit of the whole had taken on weird

meaning. It was as if Mata's face looked suddenly upon her with the

old abbot's eyes. Fantastic possibilities crouched, ready to spring

from every shadow. The low shrubs held themselves in attitudes of

flight. This was a world in which she had no part. She knew herself a

paradox, the violator of a mood; but the enchantment held her.

She had reached now the edge of the pond. It was a surface of polished

lacquer, darker than the night, and powdered thick with the gold of

reflected stars. Leaning over, she marvelled at the silhouette of her

own slim figure. It did not seem to have an actual place among these

frail phantasmagoria. As she stared on she noticed that the end of the

pond farthest from her, to the west, quivered and turned gray. She

looked quickly upward and around. Yes, there to the east was the

answering blur of light. Dawn had begun.

She ran now to the top of the moon-viewing hill. The earth was wider

here; the dawn more at home. Below her where the city used to be was

no city, only a white fog-sea, without an island. The cliff, black at

the base, rising gradually into thinner gray, drove through the air

like the edge of a coming world. A chill breeze swept out from the

hollow, breathing of waking grasses and of dew. The girl shivered, but

it was with ecstacy. "I climb this hillside for my couch, to-night!"

Was he too waking, watching, feeling himself intruder upon a soundless

ritual? There was a hissing noise as of a fawn hurrying down a tangled

slope. The hedge near the cliff end of the garden dipped and squeaked

and shook indignant plumes after a figure that had desecrated its green

guardianship, and was now striding ruthlessly across the enclosure.

Umè heard and saw; then wrung her hands in terror. It was he, of

course,--the Dragon Painter; and he would speak with her. What could

she do? Family honor must be maintained, and so she could not cry for

help. Why had her heart tormented her to go into the night? Why had

she not thought of this possibility? Because of it, life, happiness,

everything might be wrecked, even before they had dared to think of

happiness by name!

Tatsu had reached her. Leaning close he set his eyes to her face as

one who drinks deep and silently.

"I must not remain. Oh, sir, let me pass!" she whispered.

He did not speak or try to touch her. A second gust of wind came from

the cliff, blowing against his hand a long tress of her hair. It was

warm and perfumed, and had the clinging tenderness of youth. He

shivered now, as she was doing, and stood looking down at his hand.

Umè made a swift motion as if to pass him; but he threw out the barrier

of an arm.

"I have been calling you all the night. Now, at last, you have come.

Why did you never answer me upon the mountains?"

"Indeed, I could not. I was not permitted. As you must see for

yourself, lord, in this incarnation I am but a mortal maiden."

"I do not see it for myself," said Tatsu, with a low, triumphant laugh.

"I see something different!" Suddenly he reached forward, caught the

long ends of her hair and held them out to left and right, the full

width of his arms. They stood for a moment in intense silence, gazing

each into the face of the other. The rim of the dawn behind them cut,

with its flat, gold disc, straight down to the heart of the world.

"You a mortal!" said the boy again, exultantly. "Why, even now, your

face is the white breast of a great sea-bird, your hair, its shining

wings, and your soul a message that the gods have sent to me! Oh, I

know you for what you are,--my Dragon Maid, my bride! Have I not

sought you all these years, tracing your face on rocks and sand-beds of

my hills, hanging my prayers to every blossoming tree? Come, you are

mine at last; here is your master! We will escape together while the

stupid old ones sleep! Come, soul of my soul, to our mountains!"

He would have seized her, but a quick, passionate gesture of repulsion

kept him back. "I am the child of Kano Indara," she said. "He, too,

has power of the gods, and I obey him. Oh, sir, believe that you, as

I, are subject to his will, for if you set yourself against him--"

"Kano Indara concerns me not at all," cried Tatsu, half angrily. "It

is with you,--with you alone, I speak!"

Umè poised at the very tip of the hill. "Look, sir,--the plum tree,"

she whispered, pointing. So sudden was the change in voice and manner

that the other tripped and was caught by it. "That longest, leafy

branch touches the very wall of my room," she went on, creeping always

a little down the hill. "If you again will write such things to me,

trusting your missive to that branch, I shall receive it, and--will

answer. Oh, it is a bold, unheard-of thing for a girl to do, but I

shall answer."

"I should like better that you meet me here each morning at this hour,"

said Tatsu.

The girl looked about her swiftly, gave a little cry, and clasped her

hands together. "See, lord, the day comes fast. Mata, my old nurse,

may already be astir. I saw a flock of sparrows fly down suddenly to

the kitchen door. And there, above us, on the great camphor tree, the

sun has smitten with a fist of gold!"

Tatsu gazed up, and when his eyes returned to earth he found himself

companionless. He threw himself down, a miserable heap, clasping his

knees upon the hill. No longer was the rosy dawn for him. He found no

timid beauty in the encroaching day. His sullen look fastened itself

upon the amado beneath the plum tree. The panels were now tightly

closed. The house itself, soundless and gray in the fast brightening

space, mocked him with impassivity.

A little later, when the neighborhood reverberated to the slamming of

amado and the sharp rattle of paper dusters against taut shoji panes;

when fragrant faggot smoke went up from every cottage, and the street

cries of itinerant venders signalled domestic buying for the day, Mata

discovered the wild man in the garden, and roused her sleeping master

with the news. She went, too, to Umè's room, and was reassured to see

the girl apparently in slumber within a neat bed, the andon burning

temperately in its corner, and the whole place eloquent of innocence

and peace, Kano shivered himself into his day clothes (the process was

not long), and hurried out to meet his guest.

"O Haiyo gozaimasu!" he called. "You have found a good spot from which

to view the dawn."

"Good morning!" said Tatsu, looking about as if to escape.

"Come, enter my humble house with me, young sir. Breakfast will soon

be served."

Tatsu rose instantly, though the gesture was far from giving an effect

of acquiescence. He shook his cramped limbs with as little ceremony as

if Kano were a shrub, and then turned, with the evident intention of

flight. Suddenly the instinct of hunger claimed him. Breakfast! That

had a pleasant sound. And where else was he to go for food! He

wheeled around to his waiting host. "I thank you. I will enter!" he

said, and attempted an archaic bow.

Mata brought in to them, immediately, hot tea and a small dish of

pickled plums. Kano drew a sigh of relief as he saw Tatsu take up a

plum, and then accept, from the servant's hands, a cup of steaming tea.

These things promised well for future docility.

It could not be said that the meal was convivial. Umè-ko had received

orders from her father not to appear. Tatsu's eyes, even as he ate,

roamed ever along the corridors of the house, out to the garden, and

pried at the closed edges of the fusuma. This restlessness brought to

the host new apprehension. Such tension could not last. Tatsu must be

enticed from the house.

After some hesitation and a spasmodic clearing of the throat, the old

man asked, "Will you accompany me, young sir, upon a short walk to the

city?"

"Why should I go to the city?"

"Ah--er--domo! it is, as you know, the centre of the universe, and has

many wonderful sights,--great temples, theatres, wide shops for selling

clothes--"

"I care nothing for these things."

"There are gardens, too; and a broad, shining river. Shall we not go

to the autumn flowering garden of the Hundred Corners?"

"To such a place as that I would go alone,--or with her," said the boy,

his disconcerting gaze fixed on the other's face. "When is the Dragon

Maiden to appear?"

Kano looked down upon the matting. He cleared his throat again,

drained a fresh cup of tea, and answered slowly, "Since she and I are

of the city,--not the mountains,--and must abide in some degree by the

city's social laws, you will not see her any more at all, unless it be

arranged that you become her husband."

"And then,--if I become what you say,--how soon?" the other panted.

"I shall need to speak with the women of my house concerning this,"

said Kano in a troubled voice. He too, though Tatsu must not dream it,

chafed at convention. He longed to set the marriage for next

week,--next day, indeed,--and have the waiting over. Kano hated, of

all things, to wait. Something might befall this untrained citizen at

any hour,--then where would the future of the Kano name be found?

He had scarcely noted how the boy crouched and quivered in his place,

as an animal about to spring. This indecision was a goad, a barb. Yet

he was helpless! The memory of Umè's whispered words came back: "He,

too, has power of the gods. . . . Believe, sir, that you, as I, are

subject to his will." How could it be permitted of the gods that two

beings like themselves,--fledged of divinity, touched with ethereal

fire,--were under bondage to this wrinkled fox!

Tatsu flung himself sidewise upon the floor, and made as if to rise;

then, in a dull reaction, settled back into his place. "You say she is

not to come before me in this house to-day?"

"No, nor on other days, until your marriage."

"Then I go forth into the city,--alone," said the boy. He rose, but

Kano stopped him.

"Wait! I shall accompany you, if but a little way. You do not know

the roads. You will be lost!"

"I could return to this place from the under-rim of the world," said

Tatsu. "Bound, crippled, blindfold,--I should come straight to it."

"Maybe, maybe," said Kano, "nevertheless I will go."

Tatsu would have defied him, outright, but Umè's words remained with

him. Nothing mattered, after all, if he was some day to gain her. He

must be patient, put a curb upon his moods! This was a fearful task

for one like him, but he would strive for self-control just as one

throws down a tree to bridge a torrent. After the Dragon Maid was

won,--well then,--this halting insect man need not trouble them. They

left the house together, Tatsu in scowling silence at the unwelcomed

comradeship, Kano hard put to it to match his steps with the boy's

long, swinging mountain stride.

"What am I to do with this wild falcon for a month?" thought Kano, half

in despair, yet smiling, also, at the humor. "He must be clothed,--but

how? I would sooner sheathe a mountain cat in silks! The one hope of

existence during this interval is to get him engrossed in painting; but

where is he to paint? I dare not keep him in the house with Umè, nor

with old Mata, neither, for she might poison him. If only Ando Uchida

had not gone away, leaving no address!"

Meantime, in the Kano home, Mata and Umè moved about in different

planes of consciousness. The elder was still irritated by the

morning's event. She considered it a personal indignity, a family

outrage, that her master should walk the streets of Yeddo with a

vagabond possessing neither hat nor shoes, and only half a kimono.

Each tended, as usual, her allotted household tasks. There was no

change in the outer performance of the hours, but Mata remained alert,

disturbed, and the girl tranquilly oblivious. The old face searching

with keen eyes the young noted with troubled frown the frequent smile,

the intervals of listless dreaming, the sudden starts, as by the prick

of memory still new, and dipped in honey. There seemed to be in Umè-ko

a gentle yearning for a human presence, though, to speak truly, Mata

could not be certain that she was either heard or seen for fully one

half of the time. The hour had almost reached the shadowless one of

noon. Umè-ko's work was done. She had taken up her painting, only to

put it listlessly to one side. The pretty embroidery frame met the

same indignity. She sat now on the kitchen ledge, while Mata made the

fire and washed the rice, toying idly with a white pebble chosen for

its beauty from thousands on the garden path. Something in the

childlike attitude, the placid, irresponsible face, brought the old

servant's impatience to a climax. She deliberately hurled a dart.

"I suppose you know, Miss Umè, that your father may actually adopt this

goblin from Kiu Shiu!"

"Ah, do you mean Sir Tatsu? Yes, I know. He, my father, has always

longed to have a son."

"A son is desirable when the price is not too great," said the old

dame, nodding sagely. "You are old enough to realize also, Miss Kano

Umè-ko, what is the meaning of adoption into a family where there is a

daughter of marriageable age."

Umè's face drooped over until the pebble caught a rosy glow. The old

servant chuckled. "Eh, young mistress, you know what I mean? You are

thinking of it?"

"I am trying very hard not to think of it," said Umè.

"Ma-a-a! And I have little wonder for that fact! Your father will

sacrifice you without a tear,--he cares but for pictures. And Mata is

helpless,--Mata cannot help her babe! Arà! It is a world of dust!"

"How old was my mother when she came here, Mata?"

"Just eighteen. Younger than you are now, my treasure."

"She was both beautiful and happy, you have said."

"Yes, both, both! Ah, how time speeds for the old. It seems but a

short year or more that we two entered here together, she and I. From

childhood I had nursed her. I thought your father old for her, in

spite of his young heart and increasing fame. But he loved her truly,

and has mourned for her. Even now he prays thrice daily before her

ihai on the shrine. And she loved him,--almost too deeply for a woman

of her class. She loved him, and was happy!"

"Only one year!" sighed Umè. "But it must be a great thing to be happy

even for one year. Some people are not happy ever at all."

"One must not think of personal happiness,--it is wicked. Does not

even your old mumbling abbot on the hill tell you so much? And now, of

all times, do not start the dreaming. You will be sacrificed to art,"

said Mata, gloomily.

"Do I look like my mother, Mata San?"

The old dame wiped her eyes on her sleeve that she might see more

clearly. Something in the girl's pure, upraised face caught at her

heart, and the tears came afresh. "Wait," she whispered; "stay where

you are, and you shall see your mother's face." She went into her tiny

chamber, and from her treasures brought out a metal mirror given her by

the young wife, Uta-ko. "Look,--close," she said, placing it in Umè's

hand. "That is the bride of nineteen years ago. Never have you looked

so like her as at this hour!"

Kano came back alone,--tired, dusty, and discouraged. Tatsu had

escaped him, he said, at the first glimpse of the Sumida River. There

was no telling when he might return,--whether he would ever return. To

attempt control of Tatsu was like caging a storm in bamboo bars.

Mata's eyes narrowed at this recital. "Yet I fervently thank the gods

for him," said the speaker, sharply, in defiance of her look.

Restored to comparative serenity, Kano, later in the afternoon, sent

for his daughter, and condescended to unfold to her those plans in

which she played a vital part.

"Umè-ko, my child, you have always been a good and obedient daughter.

I shall expect no opposition from you now," he began, in the manner of

a patriarch.

Umè bowed respectfully. "Thank you, dear father. What has arisen that

you think I may wish to oppose?"

"I did not say that I expected you to oppose anything. I said, on the

contrary, it was something I expected you not to oppose."

"I await respectfully the words which shall tell me what it is I am not

to oppose," said Umè-ko, quite innocently, with another bow. Kano put

on his horn-rimmed spectacles. There was something about his daughter

not altogether reassuring. His prearranged sentences began to slip

away, like sand.

"I will speak briefly. I wish you to become the wife of the Dragon

Painter, that we may secure him to the race of Kano. He has no name of

his own. He is the greatest painter since Sesshu!" The speaker waved

his hands. All had been said.

In the deep, following silence each knew that old Mata's ear felt, like

a hand, at the crevice of the shoji.

"Father, are you sure,--have you yet spoken to--to--him," Umè-ko

faltered at last. "Would he augustly condescend?"

"Condescend!" echoed the old man with a laugh. "Why, he demanded it

last night, even in the first hour of meeting. He was angered that I

did not give you up at once. He says you are his already. Oh, he is

strange and wild, this youth. There are no reins to hold him, but--he

is a painter!"

A grunt of derision came from the kitchen wall. Umè sat motionless,

but her face was growing very pale.

"Well," said her father with impatience, "do you agree? And what is

the earliest possible date?"

"I must consult with Mata," whispered the girl.

"She listens at the crack. Consult her now," said Kano.

The old dame threw aside the shoji like an armor, and walked in. "Yes,

ask me what I think! Ask the old servant who has nursed Miss Umè from

her birth, managed the house, scrubbed, haggled, washed, and broken her

old bones for you! This is my advice,--freely given,--make of the

youth her jinrikisha man, but not her husband!"

"Impertinent old witch!" cried Kano. "You are asked for nothing but

the earliest possible date for the marriage!"

"Do you give yourself so tamely to a dangerous wild creature from the

hills?" Mata demanded of the girl.

"Yes, yes, she'll marry him," said Kano, before her words could come.

"The date,--the earliest possible hour! Will two weeks be too soon?"

"Two weeks!" shrieked the old dame, and staggered backward. "Is it of

the scavenger's daughter that you speak?"

"Four weeks, then,--a month. It cannot be more. I tell you, woman,

for a longer time than this I cannot keep the youth at bay. Is a month

decent in convention's eyes?"

Mata began to sob loudly in her upraised sleeve.

"I see that it is at least permissible," said Kano, grimly. "What a

weak set of social idiots we are, after all. Tatsu is right to scorn

us! Well, well, a month from this date, deep in the golden heart of

autumn, will the wedding be."

"If the day be propitious and the stars in harmony," supplemented Mata.

"She shall not be married in the teeth of evil fortune, if I have to

murder the Dragon Painter with my fish-knife!"

"Oh, go; have the stars arranged to suit you. Here's money for it!"

He fumbled in his belt for a purse of coin, threw it to the mats, and,

over the old dame's stooping back, motioned Umè-ko permission to

withdraw. The girl went swiftly, thankful for the release.

"A good child,--a daughter to thank the gods for," chuckled Kano, as

she left.

Mata looked sharply about, then leaned to her master's ear. "You are

blind; you are an earth-rat, Kano Indara. This is not the usual

submission of a silly girl. Umè is thinking things we know nothing of.

Did you not see that her face was as a bean-curd in its whiteness? She

kept so still, only because she was shaking in all directions at once.

There, look at her now! She is fleeing to the garden with the

uncertain step of one drunk with deep foreboding!"

"Bah! you are an old raven croaking in a fog! Go back to your pots. I

can manage my own child!"

"You have never yet managed her or yourself either," was the spoiled

old servant's parting shaft.

Kano sat watching the slender, errant figure in the garden. Yes, she

had taken it calmly,--more calmly than he could have hoped. How

beautiful was the poise, even at this distance, of the delicate throat,

and the head, with its wide crown of inky hair! Each motion of the

slow-strolling form in its clinging robes was a separate loveliness.

Kano drew a long sigh. He could not blind himself to Tatsu's savagery.

This was not the sort of husband that Umè had a right to expect from

her father's choice,--a youth not only penniless, and without family

name, but in himself unusual, strange, with look, voice, gesture,

coloring each a clear contrast to the men that Umè-ko had seen. He

could not bear the thought of her unhappiness, and yet, at any

sacrifice, Tatsu must be kept an inmate of their home.

The girl had stopped beside the sunlit pond, leaning far over. She did

not seem to note the clustering carp at all, but rather dwell upon her

own image, twisted and shot through with the gold of their darting

bodies. Now, with dragging feet she went to the moon-viewing hill,

remaining in the shadow of it, and pausing for long thought. Her eyes

were on the cliff, now raised to the camphor tree. Suddenly she

shivered and hid her face. What was the tumult of that ignorant young

breast?

The old man rose and went to an inner room where hung the Butsudan, the

shrine. He stood gazing upon the ihai of his wife. His lips moved,

but the breath so lightly issued that the flame on the altar did not

stir. "She, our one child, has come now to the borders of that

woman-land where I cannot go with her," he was saying. "Thou art the

soul to guide, and give her happiness, thou, the dear one of my

life,--the dead young mother who has never really died!" He folded his

hands now, and bowed his head. The small flame leaned to him. "Namu

Amida Butsu, Namu Amid a Butsu," murmured the old man.

Out by the hill, a butterfly, snow white, rested a moment on the young

girl's hair. She was again looking at the cliff, and did not notice it.

V

Ando Uchida, from his green seclusion among the bamboo groves of Meguro,

sent, from time to time, a scout into the city. First an ordinary hotel

kotsukai or man-servant was employed. This experiment proved costly as

well as futile. The kotsukai demanded large payment; and then the

creature's questions to Mata were of a nature so crude and undiplomatic

that they aroused instant suspicion, causing, indeed, the threat of a

dipper of scalding water.

The next messenger was an insect peddler, Katsuo Takanaka by name. It

was the part of this youth to search daily among the bamboo stems and

hillside grasses of Meguro for the musical suzu-mushi, the hataori, and

the kirigirisu. These he incarcerated in fairy cages of plaited straw,

threaded the cages into great hornets' nests that dangled from the two

ends of his creaking shoulder-pole, and started toward the city in a

perfect storm of insect music. The noise moved with him like a cloud.

It formed, as it were, a penumbra of fine shrilling, and could be heard

for many streets in advance. This itinerant merchant was commissioned to

haunt the Kano gate until impatience or curiosity should fling it wide

for him. Then, after having coaxed old Mata into making a purchase, he

was to engage her in conversation, and extract all the domestic

information he could. Unfortunately for the acquisition of paltry news,

it was Umè-ko, not Mata, who came out to purchase. The seller, watching

those slim, white fingers as they fluttered among his cages, the delicate

ear bent to mark some special chime, forgot the words of Ando Uchida,

otherwise, Mr. S. Yetan, of Chikuzen, forgot everything, indeed, but the

beauty of the girlish face near him.

He left the house in a dream more dense than the multitudinous clamor of

his burden. "Alas!" thought Katsuo, as he stumbled along, unheeding the

beckoning hands of mothers, or the arresting cries of children in many

gateways, "Had I been born a samurai of old, and she an humble maiden!

Even as an Eta, an outcast, would I have loved and sought her. Now in

this life I am doomed to catch insects and to sell them. Perhaps in my

coming rebirth, if I am honest and do not tell to the ignorant that a

common mimi is a silver-voiced hataorimushi,--perhaps----"

Ando's third envoy was chosen with more thoughtful care. This time it

was none other than a young priest from the temple of Fudo-Bosatsu in

Meguro. He was an acolyte sent forth with bowl and staff to beg for aid

in certain temple repairs. Ando promised a generous donation in return

for information concerning the Kano family. Being assured that the

motive for this curiosity was benevolent rather than mischievous, the

priest consented to make the attempt. He reached the Kano gate at noon,

within a few days after Tatsu's arrival. Mata opened to his call. Being

herself a Protestant, opposed to the ancient orders and their methods,

she gave him but a chilly welcome. Her interest was aroused, however, in

spite of herself, by the fact that he neither chanted his refrain of

supplication nor extended the round wooden bowl.

"I shall not entreat alms of money in this place," he said, as if in

answer to her look of surprise, "I am weary, and ask but to rest for a

while in the pleasant shade of your roof."

Without waiting for Mata's rejoinder, Umè-ko, who had heard the words of

the priest, now came swiftly to the veranda. "Our home is honored, holy

youth, by your coming," she said to him. "Enter now, I pray, into the

main guest-room, where I and my father may serve you."

The priest refused this homage (much to Mata's inward satisfaction),

saying that he desired only the stone ledge of the kitchen entrance and a

cup of cold water.

After his first swift upward look he dared not raise his eyes again. The

sweetness of her young voice thrilled and troubled him. But for his

promise to Uchida he would have fled at once, as from temptation.

Umè-ko, seeing his embarrassment, withdrew, but not until she had made an

imperious gesture to old Mata, commanding her to serve him with rice and

tea.

After a short struggle with himself the priest decided to accept the

offer of food. Old Mata, he knew, was to be his source of information.

The old dame served him in conscious silence. Her lips were compressed

to wrinkled metal. The visitor, more accustomed to old women than to

young, smiled at the rigid countenance, knowing that a loquacity

requiring so obvious a latch is the more easily freed. He planned his

first question with some care.

"Is this not the home of an artist, Kano by name?"

Mata tossed her gray hair. "Of the only Kano," she replied, and shut her

lips with a snap.

"The only Kano, the only Kano," mused the acolyte over his tea.

"So I said, young sir. Is it that your hearing is honorably

non-existent?"

"Then I presume he is without a son," said the priest as if to himself,

and stirred the surmise into his rice with the two long wooden chopsticks

Mata had provided.

The old dame's muscles worked, but she kept silence.

Umè-ko, now in her little chamber across the narrow passage, with a bit

of bright-colored sewing on her knees, could hear each word of the

dialogue. Mata's shrill voice and the priest's deep tones each carried

well. The girl smiled to herself, realizing as she did the conflict

between love of gossip and disapproval of Shingon priests that now made a

paltry battlefield of the old dame's mind. The former was almost sure to

win. The priest must have thought this, too, for he finished his rice in

maddening tranquillity, and then stirred slightly as if to go. Mata's

speech flowed forth in a torrent.

"My poor master has no son indeed, no true son of his house; but

lately,--within this very week----" She caught herself back as with a

rein, snatched up the empty tea-pot, hurried to the kitchen and returned

partly self-conquered, if not content. She told herself that she must

not gossip about the master's affairs with a beggarly priest.

Determination hardened the wrinkles of her face.

If the priest perceived these new signs of taciturnity, he ignored them.

"Your master being verily the great artist that you say, it is a thing

doubly to be regretted that he is without an heir," persisted the

visitor, with kind, boyish eyes upon old Mata's face. The old woman

blinked nervously and began to examine her fingernails. "Alas!" sighed

he, "I fear it is because this Mr. Kano is no true believer, that he has

not prayed or made offerings to the gods."

Mata had a momentary convulsion upon the kitchen floor, and was still.

The priest kept gravity upon his mouth, but needed lowered lids to hide

the twinkles in his eyes. "True religion is the greatest boon," he

droned sententiously. "Would that your poor master had reached

enlightenment!"

Umè-ko in her room forgot her sewing, and leaned a delicate ear closer to

the shoji.

Old Mata's wall of reserve went down with a crash. "He believes as you

believe!" she cried out shrilly. "All your Shingon chants and

invocations and miracles he has faith in. Is that not what you call

enlightenment? He and Miss Umè worship together almost daily at the

great temple above us on the hill. The two finest stone lanterns there

are given in the name of my master's dead young wife. Her ihai is in

this house, and an altar, and they are well tended, I assure you! My

master is a true believer, poor man, and what has his belief brought him?

Ma-a-a! all this mummery and service and what has come of it?"

"I perceive with regret that you are not of the Shingon sect," remarked

the priest.

"Me? I should say not!" snorted Mata. "I am a Protestant, a good

Shinshu woman,--that's what I am, and I tell you so to your face! When I

pray, I know what I am praying for. I trust to my own good deeds and the

intercession of Amida Butsu. No muttering and mummery for me!"

"Ah!" said the priest, a most alluring note of interest now audible in

his voice, "your master has so zealously importuned the gods, and, you

say, with no result?"

"Ay, a result has come," answered the old dame, sullenly. "Within this

week the gods--or the demons--have heard my master, for a wild thing from

the hills is with us!"

"Wild thing? Do you mean a man?"

"A semblance of a man, though none such will you see in the streets of a

respectable town."

"But does your master----" began the priest, in some perplexity.

Mata cut him short. "Because he can smear ink on paper with a brush, my

master dotes on him and says he will adopt him!"

The woman's fierce sincerity transmitted vague alarm. Slipping his hands

within his gray sleeves, the acolyte began fingering his short rosary as

he asked, "Is the--wild man now under this very roof?"

"Not under a roof when he can escape it, you may be sure! He comes to us

only when driven by hunger of the stomach or the eyes. Doubtless at this

moment he wallows among the ferns and sa-sa grass of the mountain side,

or lies face down in the cemetery near my mistress' grave. He is mad, my

master is mad, and Miss Umè, if she really gives herself in marriage to

the mountain lion, madder than all the rest!"

"That beautiful maiden whom I saw will be given to such a one?" asked the

priest, in a startled way.

"Such are the present plans," said the other in deep despair, and huddled

herself together on the floor.

Umè-ko, in her room across the hallway, had half risen. It really was

time to check the old servant's vulgar garrulity. But the silence that

followed the last remark checked her impulse. After all, what did it

matter? No one could understand or needed to understand.

Meanwhile Mata, at first unconscious of anything but her own dark

thoughts, became gradually aware of a strange look in the face of the

priest. He, on his part, was wondering whether, indeed, the beauty of

Umè-ko were not the sole cause of his patron's interest in the Kano

family. After watching him intently for a few moments the old woman

wriggled nearer and whispered in a tone so low that Umè could not catch

the words, "Perhaps, after all, Sir Priest, you, being of their belief,

perceive this to be a case where charms and spells are advisable. I am

convinced that this house is bewitched, that the Dragon Painter has a

train of elementals in attendance. Now, if we could only drive him

forever from the place. Have you, by any chance, a powder, or an amulet,

or a magic invocation you could give me?"

"No, no! I dare not!" said the other, in an agitated voice. He reached

out for his bowl and, with a single leap, was down upon the earth. Mata

caught him by his flying skirts. "See here," she entreated, "I will make

it worth your while, young sir, I will give donations to your temple----"

"I dare not. I have no instructions to meddle with such things. Let me

now give the house a blessing, and withdraw. But I can tell you for your

comfort," he added, seeing the disappointment in her wrinkled face, "if,

as you assure me, this is a house of faith, no presence entirely evil

could dwell within it."

He got away before she could repeat her importunities; and the old dame

returned to the kitchen, muttering anathemas against the mystic powers

she had just attempted to invoke.

On the priest's return, Ando questioned him eagerly. He gained, almost

with the first words, certainty of his own freedom. With Tatsu safely

arrived, and the betrothal to Kano Umè-ko an outspoken affair, then had

the time come for him--Ando Uchida--to reassume the pleasant role of

friend and benefactor.

He moved into Yeddo before nightfall. His first visit was, of course, to

Kano. Elaborately he explained to the sympathetic old man how he had

been summoned by telegram into a distant province to attend the supposed

death-bed of a relative, how that relative had, by a miracle, recovered.

"So now," he remarked in conclusion, "I am again at your service, and

shall take the part not only of nakodo in the coming marriage, but of

temporary father and social sponsor to our unsophisticated bridegroom."

Certainly nothing could have been more opportune than Uchida's

reappearance, or more welcome than his proposed assistance. Mata,

indeed, hastened to give a whole koku of rice to the poor in

thank-offering that one sensible person besides herself was now

implicated in the wedding preparations.

Uchida justified, many times over, her belief in him. In the district

near the Kano home he rented, in Tatsu's name, a small cottage, paying

for it by the month, in advance. With Mata's assistance, not to mention

a small colony of hirelings, the floors were fitted with new mats, the

woodwork of the walls, the posts, and veranda floors polished to a

mirror-like brightness, and even the tiny garden set with new turf and

flowering plants. Tatsu was lured down from the mountain side and

persuaded to remain at night and part, at least, of each day, in this

little haven of coming joy.

A secluded room was fitted up as a studio, for his sole use. Here were

great rectangles of paper, rolls of thin silk, stretching frames, water

holders, multitudinous brushes, and all the exquisite pigment that

Japanese love of beauty has drawn from water, earth, and air; delicate

infusions of sea-moss, roots, and leaves, saucers of warm earth ground to

a paste, precious vessels of powdered malachite, porphyry, and lapis

lazuli. But the boy looked askance upon the expensive outlay. His wild

nature resented so obvious a lure. It seemed unworthy of a Dragon

Painter to accept this multitude of material devices. He had painted on

flakes of inner bark, still quivering with the life from which he had

rudely torn them. Visions limned on rock and sand had been the more

precious for their impermanence. Here, every stroke was to be recorded,

each passing whim and mood registered, as in a book of fate.

For days the little workroom remained immaculate. Kano began to fret.

Ando Uchida, the wise, said, "Wait." It was Mata who finally

precipitated the crisis. One rainy morning, being already in an ill

humor over some trifling household affair, she was startled and annoyed

by the sudden vision of Tatsu's head thrust noiselessly into her kitchen.

Rudely she had slammed the shoji together, calling out to him that he had

better be off doing the one thing he was fit to do, rather than to be

skulking around her special domain. Tatsu had, as rudely, reopened the

shoji panels, tearing a large hole in the translucent paper. "He had

come merely for a glimpse of the Dragon Maid," he told the angry dame.

"In a few days more she was to be his wife, and this maddening convention

of keeping him always from her was eating out his vitals with red fire,"

so declared Tatsu, and let the consuming passion blaze in his sunken eyes.

But Mata, undismayed, stood up in scornful silence. She was gathering

herself together like a storm, and in an instant more had hurled upon him

the full terror of her vocabulary. She called him a barbarian, a

mountain goat,--a Tengu,--better mated to a fox spirit or a she-demon

than to a decent girl like her young mistress. She denounced her

erstwhile beloved master as a blind old dotard, and the idolized Umè, she

declared a weak and yielding idiot. Tatsu's attempts at retort were

swept away with a hiss. For a while he raged like a flame upon the

doorstep, but he was no match for his vigorous opponent. It was

something to realize his own defeat. Gasping, he turned to the friendly

rain and would have darted from the gate when, with a swoop like a

falcon, Mata was bodily upon him. He threw his right arm upward as if to

escape a blow, but the old dame did not belabor him. She was trying to

thrust something hard and strange into his other hand. He glanced toward

it. The last indignity of an umbrella! "Open it, madman!" she cried

shrilly after him, "and hold your robe up; it is one of your new silk

ones!"

Tatsu had never used an umbrella in his life. Now he opened it eagerly.

Anything to escape that frightful voice! In the windy street he clutched

at his fluttering skirts as he had seen other men do, and, with a last

terrified backward glance, ran breathlessly toward the haven of his

temporary home.

The little house was empty. Tatsu was thankful for so much. The rooms

were already pre-haunted by dreams of Umè-ko. Tatsu felt the peace of it

sink deep into his soul. Instinctively his wandering feet led him into

the little painting room. As usual, the elaborate display of artist

materials chilled him. After his recent exasperation he longed to ease

his heart of a sketch, but obstinacy held him back. He sat down in the

centre of the space. A bevy of small, squeaking sounds seemed to enclose

him. It took him some moments to recognize them as the irritating

rustling of his silken dress. He sprang to his feet, tore off the new

and expensive girdle of brocade, flung it into one corner and the

offending robe into another, and remained standing in the centre of the

small space clad only in his short white linen under-robe.

He looked about, now, for a more congenial sheathing. If he could but

find the tattered blue kimono worn during that upward journey from Kiu

Shiu! Stained by berries and green leaves, torn by a thousand graceful

vines,--for laundering only a few vigorous swirls in a running stream

with a quick sun-drying on the river stones,--yet how comfortable, how

companionable it was! There had been a blue something folded on the

shelf of his closet. He found it, opened it wide in the air and would

have uttered a cry of joy but for the changed look of it. Even this had

not escaped Mata's desecrating hands! It was mended everywhere. The

white darning threads grinned at him like teeth. Also it was washed and

ironed, and smelled of foreign soap. For an instant he tore at it

angrily, and was minded to destroy it, but the sense of familiarity held

him. He wrapped it about him slowly and, with bent head, again seated

himself upon the floor.

The rain now fell in quivering wires of dull light. The world was strung

with them like a harp, and upon them the wind played a monotonous

refrain. Against the wall near Tatsu stood a light framework of wood

with the silk already stretched and dried for painting. At his other

hand a brush slanted sidewise from a bowl of liquid ink. The boy's

pulses leaped toward these things even while his lips curled in disdain

at the shallow decoy. "So they expect to trap me, these geese and

jailers who have temporary dominance over my life," thought he, in scorn.

No, even though he now desired it of himself, he would not paint! Let

him but gain his bride--then nothing should have power to sting or fret

him. But, oh, these endless days and hours of waiting! They corroded

his very thought as acid corrodes new metal. He felt the eating of it

now.

A spasm of pain and anger distorted his face. He gave a cry, caught up

suddenly the thick hake brush, and hurled it across the room toward the

upright frame of silk. It struck the surface midway, a little to the

left; pressed and worked against it as though held by a ghost, and then,

falling, dragged lessening echoes of stain.

Tatsu's mirthless laugh rang out against the sound of dripping rain. The

childish outburst had been of some relief. He looked defiantly toward

the white rectangle he had just defaced. Defaced? The boy caught in his

breath. He thrust his head forward, leaning on one hand to stare. That

bold and unpremeditated stroke had become a shadowed peak; the trailing

marks of ink a splendid slope. Had he not seen just such a one in Kiu

Shiu,--had he not scaled it, crying aloud upon its summit to the gods to

yield him there his bride?

Trembling now, and weak, he crawled on hands and knees toward the frame.

He had forgotten Kano, Uchida, Mata,--forgotten even Umè-ko. Fingers not

his own lifted the fallen brush. The wonderful cold wind of a dawning

frenzy swept clean his soul. He shivered; then a sirocco of fire

followed the void of the wind. The spot where his random blow had struck

still gleamed transparent jet. He dragged the blackened brush through a

vessel of clear water, then brandished it like the madman Mata thought

him. With the soft tuft of camel hair he blurred against the peak pale,

luminous vapor of new cloud. Turning, twisting sidewise, this way, then

that, the yielding implement, he seemed to carve upon the silk broad

silver planes of rock, until there rose up a self-revealing vision, the

granite cliff from which a thin, white waterfall leaps out.

[Illustration: "With the soft tuft of camel hair he blurred against the

peak pale, luminous vapor of new cloud."]

But this one swift achievement only whetted the famished appetite to more

creative ardor. Sketch after sketch he made, some to tear at once into

strips, others to fling carelessly aside to any corner where they might

chance to fall, others, again, to be stored cunningly upon some remote

shelf to which old Kano and Uchida and Mata could not reach, but whence

he, Tatsu, the Dragon Painter, should, in a few days more, withdraw them

and show them to his bride. The purple dusk brimmed his tiny garden, and

yet he could not stop. Art had seized him by the throat, and shook him,

as a prey. Uchida, peering at him from between the fusuma, perceived the

glory and turned away in silence; nor for that day nor the next would he

allow any one to approach the frenzied boy. The elder man had, himself

in youth, fared along the valleys of art, and knew the signals on the

peaks.

Tatsu, unconscious that the house was not still empty, painted on.

Sometimes he sobbed. Again an ague of beauty caught him, and he needed

to hurl himself full length upon the mats until the ecstacy was past.

Just as the daylight went he saw, upon the one great glimmering square of

silk as yet immaculate, a dream of Umè-ko, the Dragon Maiden, who had

danced before him. This was an apparition too holy to be limned in

artificial light. When the sun came, next day, he knew well what there

was for him to do. He placed the frame upright, where the first pink

beam would find it. Brushes, water vessels, and paints were placed in

readiness, with such neatness and precision that old Kano's heart would

have laughed in pleasure. That night the shoji and amado were not

closed. Tatsu did not sleep. It was a night of consecration. He walked

up and down, sometimes in the narrow room, sometimes in the garden.

Often he prayed. Again he sat in the soft darkness, before the ghostly

glimmer of the silk, tracing upon it visions of ethereal light. When, at

last, the dawn came in, Tatsu bowed to the east, with his usual prayer of

thankful piety, then, with the exaltation still upon him, lifted the

silver thread of a brush and drew his first conscious outline of the

woman soon to be his wife.

[Illustration: "He walked up and down, sometimes in the narrow room,

sometimes in the garden."]