Thus under, as it were, a double ban of displeasure, did the new
generation of Kano, Tatsu and Umè-ko, begin life in the little cottage
beneath the hill. They were given Umè's chamber near which the plum
tree grew, an adjoining room having been previously fitted up for
Tatsu's painting. As in the other cottage, inviting rectangles of
silk, already stretched and sized, stood in blank rows against the
walls. Even the fusuma were of new paper, offering, it would seem, to
any inspired young artist, a surface of alluring possibilities.
Paints, brushes, and vessels without number made an array to tempt, if
only the tempting were not so obvious.
Umè-ko, watching closely the expression of her husband's face as he was
first led into this room, drew old Kano aside, and urged that more tact
and delicacy be used in leading Tatsu back to a desire for creative
work. She herself, she hinted with deprecating sweetness, might do
much if only allowed to follow her own loving instincts. But Kano had
lost confidence in his daughter and bluntly told her so. Tatsu had
been adopted and married in order to make him paint, and paint he
should! Also it was Umè-ko's duty to influence him in whatever way and
method her father thought best. Let her succeed,--that was her sole
responsibility. So blustered Kano to himself and Mata, and not even
the malicious twinkle of the old servant's eye pointed the way to
wisdom.
Naturally Umè-ko did not succeed. Tatsu merely laughed at her flagrant
efforts at duplicity. He felt no need of painting, no desire to paint.
He had won the Dragon Maiden. Life could give him no more! There was
no anger or resentment in his feeling toward Kano, or even the old
scourge Mata. No, he was too happy! To lie dreaming on the fragrant,
matted floor near Umè, where he could listen to her soft breathing and
at times pull her closer by a silken sleeve,--this was enough for
Tatsu. Nothing had power to arouse in him a sense of duty, of
obligation to himself, or to his adopted father. He would not argue
about it, and could scarcely be said to listen. He lived and moved and
breathed in love as in a fourth dimension. To the old man's frequent
remonstrances he would turn a gentle, deprecating face. He had
promised Umè-ko never again to speak rudely to their father. Besides,
why should he? The outer world was all so beautiful and sad and
unimportant. A sunset cloud, or a bird swinging from a hagi spray
could bring sharp, swift tears to his eyes. Beauty could move him, but
not old Kano's genuine sufferings. Yet, the old man, bleating from the
arid rocks of age, was doubtless a pathetic spectacle, and must be
listened to kindly.
Finding the boy thus obdurate, Kano turned the full force of his
discontent on Umè-ko. She endured in silence the incessant railing.
Each new device urged by the distracted Kano she carried out with
scrupulous care, though even with the performance of it she knew
hopelessness to be involved. For hours she remained away from home,
hidden in a neighbor's house or in the temple on the hill, it being
Kano's thought that perhaps, in this temporary loss of his idol, Tatsu
might seek solace in the paint room. But Tatsu, raging against the
conditions which made such tyranny possible, stormed, on such
occasions, through the little house, and up and down the garden,
pelting the terrified gold-fish in their caves, stripping leaves and
tips from Kano's favorite pine-shrubs, or standing, long intervals of
time, on the crest of the moon-viewing hillock, from which he could
command vistas of the street below.
"There 's your jewel of a painter," old Mata, indoors, would say.
"Look at him, master,--a noble figure, indeed, standing on one leg like
a love-sick stork!" And Kano, helpless before his own misery and the
old dame's acrid triumph, would keep silence, only muttering
invocations to the gods for self-control.
Often the young wife pretended a sudden desire for her own artistic
work. She would go hurriedly to the little painting chamber, gather
complex paraphernalia, and assume the pose of eager effort. Tatsu
always followed her but, once within the room, bent such laughing eyes
of comprehension that she dared not look into his face. Nevertheless
she would paint; tracing, mechanically, the bird and flower studies in
which she had once taken delight. Just in the midst of some specially
delicate stroke, Tatsu would snatch her hands away, press them against
his lips, his eyes, his throat, hurl the painting things to the four
corners of the room, drag her down to his strong embrace, and triumph
openly in the victory of love. The young wife, longing from the first
to yield, attempted always to repel him, protesting in the words her
father had bade her use, and urging him to rouse himself and paint, as
she was doing. Then the young god would laugh magnificent music,
drowning the last pathetic echo of old Kano's remembered voice.
Catching her anew he would crush her against his breast, fondling her
with that tempestuous gentleness that surely no mere man of earth could
know, would drag up her faint soul to him through eyes and lips until
she felt herself but a shred of ecstacy caught in a whirlwind of
immortal love.
"So that we be together,
Even the Hell of the Blood Lake,
Even the Mountain of Swords,
Mean nothing to us at all!"
He would sing, in the words of an old Buddhist folk-song. At such
supreme heights of emotion she knew, consciously, that Kano's grief and
disappointment were nothing. She did not really care whether Tatsu
ever touched a brush again,--whether, indeed, the whole visible world
fretted itself into dust. She and Tatsu had found each other! The
rest meant nothing at all!
Such moments were, however, the isolated and the exceptional. As the
days went by they became less frequent, and, by a strange law of
contrasts, with diminution exacted a heavier toll. The strain of
antagonisms within the little home became almost unbearable. Neither
Kano nor Tatsu would yield an inch, and between them, like a white
flower between stones, little Umè-ko was crushed. A new and
threatening trouble was that of poverty. Tatsu would not paint; Kano,
in his wretchedness could not.
The young wife went often now to the temple on the hill. Tatsu
generally went with her, remaining outside in the courtyard or at the
edge of the cliff, under the camphor tree, while she was praying
within. Her entreaties were all for divine guidance. She implored of
the gods a deeper insight into the cause of this strange trouble now
upon them, and besought, too, that in her husband, Tatsu, should be
awakened a recognition of his duties, and of the household needs. Kano
visited the temple, also, and spent long hours in conference with his
personal friend, the abbot. Even old Mata, abandoning for the moment
her Protestantism and reverting to the yearning (never entirely
stifled) for mystic practises, went to an old charlatan of a
fortune-teller, and purchased various charms and powders for driving
the demons from the unconscious Tatsu. Umè-ko soon discovered this,
and the fear that Tatsu would be poisoned added to a load of anxiety
already formidable.
By the end of October, Yeddo's most golden and most perfect month, no
hours brought happiness to the little bride but those stolen ones in
which she and her husband were wont to take long walks together,
sometimes into the country, again through the mazes of the great
capital. Even at these times of respite she was only too well aware
how Kano and the old nurse sat together at home, lamenting the gross
selfishness of the young,--deciding, perhaps, upon the next loved
painting or household treasure to be sold for buying rice. Tatsu, now
as unreasonable and obstinate as Kano himself, still refused to admit
unhappiness or threatened destitution. He and Umè-ko could go to the
mountains, he said. "The mountains were, after all, their true home.
Once there the Sennin and the deities of cloud would see that they did
not suffer."
On an afternoon very near the end of the month the young couple took
such a walk together. Their course lay eastward, crossing at right
angles the main streets of the great city, until they reached the
shores of the Sumida River, winding down like a road of glass. They
had emerged into the famous district of Asakusa, where the great temple
of Kwannon the Merciful attracts daily its thousands of worshippers.
Here the water course is bounded by fashionable tea-houses, many
stories high, and here the great arched bridges are always crowded.
Leaving this busy heart of things, they sauntered northward, finding
lonelier shores, and soon wide fields of green, until they reached a
bank whereon grew a single leaning willow. The body of this tree,
bending outward, sent its long, nerveless leaves in a perpetual green
rain to the surface of the stream, where sudden swarms of minnows, like
shivers in a glass, assailed the deceptive bait. The roots of the
tree--great yellowish, twisted ropes of roots--clutched air, earth, and
water in their convolutions. Among them the current, swifter here than
in mid-stream, uttered at times a guttural, uncanny sound as of
spectral laughter.
Umè-ko stood, one slender arm about the trunk, looking out, with
mournful eyes, upon the passing river show. On the farther bank grew a
continuous wall of cherry trees in yellowing leaf, and above them
glowed the first hint of the coming sunset. Rising against the sky a
temple roof, tilted like the keel of a sunken vessel, cut sharp lines
into the crimson light.
Tatsu flung himself full length upon the bank. He patted the soil with
its springing grasses, and felt his heart flow out in love to it. Then
he reached up, caught at the drifting gauze of Umè's sleeve, and made
as if to pull her down. Umè clasped the tree more tightly.
"Tatsu," she said, "I implore you not to think always of me. Look,
beloved, the thin white sails of the rice-boats pass, and, over yonder,
children in scarlet petticoats dance beneath the trees."
"I have eyes but for my wife," said wilful Tatsu.
Umè-ko drew the sleeve away. She would not meet his smile. "Alas,
shall I forever obscure beauty!"
"There is no beauty now but in you! You are the sacred mirror which
reflects for me all loveliness."
"Dear lord, those words are almost blasphemy," said Umè, in a
frightened whisper. "Look, now, beloved, the light of the sun sinks
down. Soon the great moon will come to us."
"What care I for a distant moon, oh, Dragon Maid," laughed Tatsu.
Umè's outstretched arm fell heavily to her side. "Alas!" she said
again. "From deepest happiness may come the deepest pain. You dream
not of the hurt you give."
"I give no hurt at all that I cannot more than heal," cried Tatsu, in
his masterful way. But Umè's lips still quivered, and she turned her
face from him.
In the silence that followed, the water among the willow roots gave out
a rush and gurgle, a sound of liquid merriment,--perhaps the laugh of a
"Kappa" or river sprite, mocking the perplexities of men. Umè-ko
leaned over instantly, staring down into the stream.
[Illustration: "Umè-ko leaned over instantly, staring down into the
stream."]
"How deep it is, and strong," she whispered, as if to her own thought
"That which fell in here would be carried very swiftly out to sea."
Tatsu smiled dreamily upon her. In his delight at her beauty, the
delicate poise of body with its long, gray drifting sleeves, he did not
realize the meaning of her words. One little foot in its lacquered
shoe and rose-velvet thong, crushed the grasses at the very edge of the
bank. Suddenly the earth beneath her shivered. It parted in a long
black fissure, and then sank, with sob and splash, into the hurrying
water. Umè tottered and clung to the tree. Tatsu, springing up at a
single bound, caught her back into safety. The very branches above
them shook as if in sentient fear. Umè felt herself pressed,--welded
against her husband's side in such an agony of strength that his
beating heart seemed to be in her own body. She heard the breath rasp
upward in his throat and catch there, inarticulate. He began dragging
her backward, foot by foot. At a safe distance he suddenly
sank--rather fell--to earth bearing her with him, and began moaning
over her, caressing and fondling her as a tiger might a rescued cub.
"Never go near that stream again!" he said hoarsely, as soon as he
could speak at all. "Hear me, Umè-ko, it is my command! Never again
approach that tree. It is a goblin tree. Some dead, unhappy woman,
drowned here in the self-death, must inhabit it and would entice you to
destruction. Oh, Umè, my wife,--my wife! I saw the black earth
grinning beneath your feet. I cannot bear it! Come away from this
place at once,--at once! The river itself may reach out snares to us."
"Yes, lord, I will come," she panted, trying to loosen the rigid arms,
"but I am faint. This high bank is safe, now. And, lord, when you so
embrace and crush me my strength does not return."
Tatsu grudgingly relaxed his hold. "Rest here then, close beside me,"
he said. "I shall not trust you, even an inch from me."
The river current in the tree roots laughed aloud.
Across and beyond the road of glass, the sky grew cold now and blue,
like the side of a dead fish. A glow subtle and unmistakable as
perfume tingled up through the dusk.
"The Lady Moon," whispered Umè, softly. Freeing her little hands she
joined them, bent her head, and gave the prayer of welcome to O Tsuki
Sama.
Tatsu watched her gloomily. "I pray to no moon," he said. "I pray to
nothing in this place."
A huge coal barge on its way to the Yokohama harbor glided close to
them along the dark surface of the tide. At the far end of the barge a
fire was burning, and above it, from a round black cauldron, boiling
rice sent up puffs of white, fragrant steam. The red light fell upon a
ring of faces, evidently a mother and her children; and on the broad,
naked back of the father who leaned far outward on his guiding pole.
Umè turned her eyes away. "I think I can walk now," she said.
Tatsu rose instantly, and drew her upward by the hands. A shudder of
remembered horror caught him. He pressed her once more tightly to his
heart. "Umè-ko, Umè-ko, my wife,--my Dragon Wife!" he cried aloud in a
voice of love and anguish. "I have sought you through the torments of
a thousand lives. Shall anything have power to separate us now?"
"Nothing can part us now, but--death," said Umè-ko, and glanced, for an
instant, backward to the river.