"It is a word that all must some day use," persisted the young wife,
gently. "Tell me, beloved, if death indeed should come--?"
"It would be for both. It could not be for one alone."
"No, no!" she cried aloud, lifting her white face as if in appeal to
heaven. "Do not say that, lord! Do not think it! If I, the lesser
one, should be chosen of death, surely you would live for our
father,--for the sake of art!"
"I would kill myself just as quickly as I could!" said Tatsu, doggedly.
"What comfort would painting be? I painted because I had you not."
"Because--you--had--me--not," mused little Umè-ko, her eyes fixed
strangely upon the river.
"Come," said Tatsu, rudely, "did I not forbid you to speak of death?
Too much has been said. Besides, the fate of ordinary mortals should
have no potency for such as we. When our time comes for pause before
rebirth we shall climb together some high mountain peak, lifting our
arms and voices to our true parents, the gods of storm and wind. They
will lean to us, beloved,--they will rush downward in a great passion
of joy, catching us and straining us to immortality!"
By this they were from sight and hearing of the river, and had begun to
thread the maze of narrow city streets in which now lamps and tiny
electric bulbs and the bobbing lanterns of hurrying jinrikisha men had
begun to twinkle. In the darker alleys the couple walked side by side.
Umè, at times, even rested a small hand on her husband's sleeve. In
the broad, well-lighted thoroughfares he strode on some paces in
advance while Umè followed, in decorous humility, as a good wife
should. Few words passed between them. The incident at the willow
tree had left a gloomy aftermath of thought.
In the Kano home the simple night meal of rice, tea, soup, and pickled
vegetables was already prepared. Mata motioned them to their places in
the main room where old Kano was already seated, and served them in the
gloomy silence which was part of the general strain. Throughout the
whole place reproach hung like a miasma.
This evening, almost for the first time, Tatsu reflected, in full
measure, the despondency of his companions. The elder man, glancing
now and again toward him, evidently restrained with difficulty a flow
of bitter words. Once he spoke to his daughter, fixing sunken eyes
upon her. "The crimson lacquered wedding-chest that was your mother's,
to-day has been sold to buy us food." Umè clenched her little hands
together, then bowed far over, in token that she had heard. There were
no words to say. For weeks now they had lived upon such money as
this,--namida-kane,--"tear-money" the Japanese call it.
Tatsu, helpless in his place, scowled and muttered for a moment, then
rose and hurried out, leaving the meal unfinished. Umè watched him
sadly, but did not follow. This was so unusual a thing that Tatsu,
alone in their chamber, was at first astonished, then alarmed. For ten
minutes or more he paced up and down the narrow space, pride urging him
to await his wife's dutiful appearance. In a short while more he felt
the tension to be unbearable. A sinister silence flooded the house.
He hurried back to the main room to find that Umè and old Kano were not
there. He began searching the house, all but the kitchen.
Instinctively he avoided old Mata's domain, knowing it to be the lair
of an enemy. At last necessity drove him to it also. Her face leered
at him through a parted shoji. He gave a bound in her direction.
Instantly she had slammed the panels together; and before he could
reopen them had armed herself with a huge, glittering fish-knife.
"None of your mountain wild-cat ways for me!" she screamed.
In spite of wretchedness and alarm the boy laughed aloud. "I wish not
to hurt you, old fool," he said. "I desire nothing but to know where
my wife is."
"With her father," snapped the other.
"Yes, but where,--where? And why did she go without telling me? Where
did he take her? Answer quickly. I must follow them."
"I have no answers for you," said Mata. "And even if I had you would
not get them. Go, go, out of my sight, you Bearer of Discord!" she
railed, feeling that at last an opportunity for plain speaking had
arrived. "This was a happy house until your evil presence sought it.
Don't glare at me, and take postures. I care neither for your tall
figure nor your flashing eyes. You may bewitch the others, but not old
Mata! Oh, Dragon Painter! Oh, Dragon Painter! The greatest since
Sesshu!" she mimicked, "show me a few of the wonderful things you were
to paint us when once you were Kano's son! Bah! you were given my
nursling, as a wolf is given a young fawn,--that was all you wanted.
You will never paint!"
"Tell me where she is or I'll--" began the boy, raving.
"No you won't," jeered Mata, now in a transport of fury. "Back, back,
out of my kitchen and my presence or this knife will plunge its way
into you as into a devil-fish. Oh, it would be a sight! I have no
love for you!"
"I care not for your love, old Baba, old fiend, nor for your knife.
Where did my Umè go? You grin like an old she-ape! Never, upon my
mountains did I see so vicious a beast."
"Then go back to your mountains! You are useless here. You will not
even paint. Go where you belong!"
"The mountains,--the mountains!" sobbed the boy, under his breath.
"Yes, I must go to them or my soul will go without me! Perhaps the
kindlier spirits of the air will tell me where she is!" With a last
distracted gesture he fled from the house and out into the street.
Mata listened with satisfaction as she heard him racing up the slope
toward the hillside. "I wish it were indeed a Kiu Shiu peak he
climbed, instead of a decent Yeddo cliff," she muttered to herself, as
she tied on her apron and began to wash the supper dishes. "But, alas,
he will be back all too soon, perhaps before my master and Miss Umè
come down from the temple."
In this surmise the old dame was, for once, at fault. Tatsu did not
return until full daylight of the next morning. He had been wandering,
evidently, all night long among the chill and dew-wet branches of the
mountain shrubs. His silken robe was torn and stained as had been the
blue cotton dress, that first day of his coming. At sight of his
sunken eyes and haggard look Umè-ko's heart cried out to him, and it
was with difficulty that she restrained her tears. But she still had a
last appeal to make, and this was to be the hour.
In response to his angry questions, she would answer nothing but that
she and her father had business at the temple. More than this, she
would not say. As he persisted, pleading for her motives in so leaving
him, and heaping her with the reproaches of tortured love, she suddenly
threw herself on the mat before him, in a passion of grief such as he
had not believed possible to her. She clasped his knees, his feet, and
besought him, with all the strength and pathos of her soul, to make at
least one more attempt to paint. He, now in equal torment, with tears
running along his bronzed face, confessed to her that the power seemed
to have gone from him. Some demon, he said, must have stolen it from
him while he slept, for now the very touch of a brush, the look of
paint, frenzied him.
Umè-ko went again to her father, saying that she again had failed. The
strain was now, indeed, past all human endurance. The little home
became a charged battery of tragic possibilities. Each moment was a
separate menace, and the hours heaped up a structure already tottering.
At dawn of the next day, Tatsu, who after a restless and unhappy night
had fallen into heavy slumber, awoke, with a start, alone. A pink
light glowed upon his paper shoji; the plum tree, now entirely
leafless, threw a splendid shadow-silhouette. At the eaves, sparrows
chattered merrily. It was to be a fair day: yet instantly, even before
he had sprung, cruelly awake, to his knees, he knew that the dreaded
Something was upon him.
On the silken head-rest of Umè's pillow was fastened a long, slender
envelope, such as Japanese women use for letters. Tatsu recoiled from
it as from a venomous reptile. Throwing himself face down upon the
floor he groaned aloud, praying his mountain gods to sweep away from
his soul the black mist of despair that now crawled, cold, toward it.
Why should Umè-ko have left him again, and at such an hour? Why should
she have pinned to her pillow a slip of written paper? He would not
read it! Yes, yes,--he must,--he must read instantly. Perhaps the
Something was still to be prevented! He caught the letter up, held it
as best he could in quivering hands, and read:
Because of my unworthiness, O master, my heart's beloved, I have been
allowed to come between you and the work you were given of the gods to
do. The fault is all mine, and must come from my evil deeds in a
previous life. By sacrifice of joy and life I now attempt to expiate
it. I go to the leaning willow where the water speaks. One thing only
I shall ask of you,--that you admit to your mind no thought of
self-destruction, for this would heavily burden my poor soul, far off
in the Meido-land. Oh, live, my beloved, that I, in spirit, may still
be near you. I will come. You shall know that I am near,--only, as
the petals of the plum tree fall in the wind of spring, so must my
earthly joy depart from me. Farewell, O thou who art loved as no
mortal was ever loved before thee.
Your erring wife,
Umè-ko.
* * * * * *
In his fantastic night-robe with its design of a huge fish, ungirdled
and wild of eyes, Tatsu rushed through the drowsy streets of Yeddo.
The few pedestrians, catching sight of him, withdrew, with cries of
fear, into gateways and alleys.
At the leaning willow he paused, threw an arm about it, and swayed far
over like a drunkard, his eyes blinking down upon the stream. Umè-ko's
words, at the time of their utterance scarcely noted, came now as an
echo, hideously clear. "That which fell here would be carried very
swiftly out to sea." His nails broke against the bark. She,--his
wife,--must have been thinking of it even then, while he,--he,--blind
brute and dotard--sprawled upon the earth feeding his eyes of flesh
upon the sight of her. But, after all, could she have really done it?
Surely the gods, by miracle, must have checked so disproportionate a
sacrifice! Suddenly his wandering gaze was caught and held by a little
shoe among the willow roots. It was of black lacquer, with a thong of
rose-colored velvet. With one cry, that seemed to tear asunder the
physical walls of his body, he loosed his arm and fell.