XI

With April came the cherry-flowers, wistaria, and peonies; with iris in

the bud, and shy hedge-violets; wonder of yama buki shrubs that played

gold fountains on the hills, and the swift, bright contagion of young

grass. Even from old Kano's moon-viewing hillock one might see, in

looking out across the desert of gray city roofs, round tops of cherry

trees rising like puffs of rosy smoke. From out the face of the temple

cliff long, supple fronds of ferns unrolled, bending uncertain arms

toward the garden. The tangled sasa-grass rustled new sleeves of silk;

and the great camphor tree, air-hung in blue, seemed caught in a

jewelled mesh of chrysoprase and gold.

Down in the lower level of the garden, too, springtime busied itself

with beauty. The potted plants, once Umè-ko's loved charges, had

become now, quite mysteriously to himself, Tatsu's companions and his

special care. Among the more familiar growths a few foreign bushes had

been given place, a rose, a heliotrope, and a small, frightened

cyclamen. Slips of chrysanthemum needed already to be set for the

autumn yield. Tatsu, watering and tending them, thought with wistful

sadness upon these plans for future enjoyment. "We are all bound upon

the wheel of life," he said to them. "Would that with me, as you, the

turning were but for a single season!"

"My son," the elder man began abruptly, at a certain noonday meal about

the middle of the month, "how is it that you never go with me to the

temple on the hill?"

Tatsu looked up from his rice-bowl in some surprise. The relations

between these two, though externally kind, had never approached

intimacy. Kano indeed idolized his adopted son with pathetic and

undisguised fervor; but with Tatsu, though other things might have been

forgiven, the old man's continued disrespect to his daughter's memory,

his refusal to join even in the simplest ceremony of devotion, kept

both him and old Mata chilled and distant. The one possible

explanation,--aside from that of wanton cruelty,--was a thing so

marvellous, so terrible in implied suggestion, that the boy's faint

soul could make for it no present home; let it drift, a great luminous

nebula of hope, a little longer on the rim of nothingness.

The answer now to Kano's question betrayed a hint of the more rational

animosity.

"You had never seemed to desire it. And I have my place of worship

here."

"Yes, I know. Of course I knew that!" the other hurried on in some

agitation. Then he paused, as if uncertain how to word the following

thought. "I do wish it!" he broke forth, with an effort. "I make

request now that you go with me, this very day, at twilight."

"If it is your honorable desire," said Tatsu, bowing in indifferent

acquiescence. A moment later he had finished his meal, and rose to go.

Kano moved restlessly on the mats. He drew out the solace of a little

pipe, but his nervous fingers fumbled and shook so, that the slim rod

of bamboo tipped with silver escaped him, and went clattering down

among the empty dishes of the tray. Mata's apprehensive face showed

instantly at a parting of the kitchen fusuma. She sighed aloud, as she

noted a great triangle chipped from the edge of an Imari bowl. Only

two of those bowls had remained; now there was but one.

"Tatsu, my son, may I depend upon you? This day, as soon as the light

begins to fail?"

Tatsu, in the doorway, paused to look. Evidently the speaker struggled

with a strong excitement. Something in the twitching face, the eager,

shifting eyes, brought back a vision of that meal on the evening that

preceded Umè's death, when she and her father had leaned together,

whispering, ignoring him, and afterward had left the house, giving him

no hint of their errand. He felt with dread a premonition of new

bitterness.

"I shall be ready at the twilight hour," he said, and went to his room.

That afternoon Tatsu did little painting. Silent and motionless as one

of the frames against the wall, he sat staring for long intervals out

upon the garden. The sunshine gave no pleasure, only a blurring of his

sight. Beauty was not there for him, this day. He was thinking of

those hours of October sunlight, when the whole earth reeled with joy,

for Umè-ko was of it! Where was she now? And what had there been in

Kano's look and voice to rouse those sleeping demons of despair? Could

any new sorrow await him at the temple? No, his present condition had

at least the negative value of absolute void. From nothing, nothing

could be taken; and to it, nothing be supplied!

In spite of this colorless assurance it was with something of

reluctance, of shrinking, that he prepared to leave the house. Few

words were spoken between the two. Catching up the skirts of narrow,

silken robes a little higher, they tucked the folds into their belts,

and side by side began the long, slow climbing of the road.

The city roofs beneath them hurried off to the edge of the world like

ripples left in the gray sand-bed of a stream. Above the plain the

mist drew in its long, horizontal lines of gray.

About half the distance up the steep the temple bell above them sounded

six slow, deliberate strokes. First came the sonorous impact of the

swinging beam against curved metal, then the "boom," the echo,--the

echoes of that echo to endless repetition, sifting in layers through

the thinner air upon them, sweeping like vapor low along the hillside

with a presence and reality so intense that it should have had color,

or, at least, perfume; settling in a fine dew of sound on quivering

ferns and grasses, permeating, it would seem, with its melodious

vibration the very wood of the houses and the trunks of living trees.

Reaching at last the temple court, old Kano took the lead, crossed the

wide-pebbled space, and halted with his companion at the edge of the

cliff. A cry of wonder came from Tatsu's lips; that low, inimitable

cry of the true artist at some new stab of beauty. Delicately the old

man withdrew, and hid himself in the shadow of the temple.

Tatsu stared out, alone. He saw the round bay like a mirror,--like

Umè's mirror; and to the west the peak of Fuji, a porphyry cone against

the sunset splendor. No wonder that the gray nuns came here at this

hour, or that she, the slender, isolated one, lingered to drain the

last bright drop of beauty! He looked about now to discover her tree.

Yes, there it was, quite close; not a willow as he had sometimes

thought, but a young maple, unusually upright of growth. It had been

leafless, but now the touch of spring had lighted every twig with a

pale flame-point of red. He recalled that in the autumn it had made a

crimson heart against the sky; and later had sent down into the Kano

garden frail alms of ruby films. Umè had loved to catch them in her

hands, wondering at their brightness, and trying to make him wonder,

too. Love-letters of the passing year, she called them; songs dyed

with the autumn's heart's-blood of regret that he must yield the sweet,

warm earth to his gray rival, winter. She had pretended that the

small, crossed veinlets of the leaves were Chinese ideographs which it

was given her to decipher. Holding him off with one outstretched arm

she would have read to him,--fantastic, exquisite interpreter of

love,--but he, mad brute, had caught the little hands, the autumn

leaves, and crushed them to one hot glow, crying aloud that nature,

beauty, love were all made one in her. Such grief he must have given

many times.

He threw his head hack as in sudden hurt, a gesture becoming habitual

to him, and drew a long, impatient, tremulous sigh. As if to cast

aside black thought, he strode over quickly to the maple tree, flung an

arm around it, and leaned over to stare down into his garden with the

gray nun's eyes. There it was, complete, though in miniature;--rocks,

pines, the pigmy pool, the hillock squatting in one corner like an old,

gray garden toad, and in another corner, scarcely of larger size, the

cottage.

Kano plucked nervously at his sleeve. "You lean too far. Come, Tatsu,

I have a--a--place to show you."

Tatsu wheeled with a start. Try as he would he shivered and grew

faint, even yet, at the sound of Kano's voice breaking abruptly in upon

a silence. He gave a nod of acquiescence and, with downbent head,

followed his guide diagonally across the temple court, past the wide

portico where sparrows and pigeons fought for night-quarters in the

carved, open mouths of dragons, along the side of the main building

until, to Tatsu's wonder, they stopped before a little gate in the

nunnery wall.

"I thought it was almost death for a man to enter here!" exclaimed the

boy.

"For most men it is," said Kano, producing a key of hammered brass

about nine inches long. "But I desired to go the short path to the

cemetery, and it lies this way. As I have told you, the abbot was my

boyhood's friend."

Within the convent yard,--a sandy space enclosed in long, low buildings

of unpainted wood,--Tatsu saw a few gray figures hurrying to cover; and

noticed that more than one bright pair of eyes peered out at them

through bamboo lattices. Over the whole place brooded the spirit of

unearthly peace and sweetness which had been within the gift of the

holy bishop and his acolytes even at that time of torment in the

hospital cell. The same faint Presence, like a plum tree blossoming in

the dark, stole through the young man's senses, luring and distressing

him with its infinite suggestions of lost peace.

At the farther wall of the court they came to an answering door. This

was already unlocked and partially ajar. It opened directly upon the

highest terrace of the cemetery which led down steeply in great,

curved, irregular steps to a plain. The crimson light in the west had

almost gone. Here to the north, where rice-fields and small huddled

villages stretched out as far as the eye could see, a band of hard,

white light still rested on the horizon, throwing back among the

hillside graves a pale, metallic sheen. Each shaft of granite was thus

divided, one upright half, blue shadow, the other a gray-green gleam.

All looked of equal height. A gray stone Buddha on his lotos pedestal,

or the long graceful lines of a standing Jizo, only served to emphasize

the uniformity.

This was a place most dear to Kano, and had been made so to his child.

He even loved the look of the tombs. "Gray, splintered stalagmites of

memory," he had called them, and when the child Umé had learned the

meaning of the simile she had put her little finger to a spot of lichen

and asked, "Then are these silver spots our tears?"

The old man stepped down very softly to the second tier. A nightingale

was calling low its liquid invocation, "Ho-ren-k-y-y-o-o-o!" Perhaps

old Kano moved so softly that he might not lose the echoes of this cry.

The two men seemed alone in the silent scene. Once Tatsu thought his

eye caught a swift flicker, as of a gray sleeve, but he was not sure.

At any rate he would not think of it, or speculate, or marvel! He was

beginning to tremble before the unknown. The sense of shrinking, of

miracle, of being, perhaps, too small to contain the thing decreed,

bore hard upon him. With it came a keen impression of the unreality of

the material universe,--of Buddhist illusion. Even these adamantine

records of death, rising on every side to challenge him,--even these

might recombine their particles before his very eyes,--might shiver

into mist and float down to the plain to mingle with the smoke of

cooking as it rose from the peasant huts. Anything might happen, or

nothing!

Kano had stopped short before a grave. For once Tatsu was glad to hear

his voice.

"Here lie the clean ashes of my young wife, Kano Uta-ko," said the old

man, without preface or explanation.

"In former days, before--before my illness, I came here often," said

the other. His eyes hung on the written words of the kaimyo. "If you

grieved deeply, it must have been great solace that you could come thus

to her grave," he added wistfully. Then, as Kano still remained

silent, he read aloud the beautiful daishi, "A flower having blossomed

in the night, the Halls of the Gods are Fragrant."

Kano drew a long sigh. "For nineteen years I have mourned her," he

went on slowly. "As you know, a son was not given to us. She died at

Umè's birth. I could not bring myself to replace her, even in the dear

longing for a son."

"A son!" Tatsu knew well what the old man meant. He lifted his eyes

and stared out, mute, into the narrowing band of light. The old man

drew his thin form very straight, moved a few feet that he might look

squarely into the other's face, and said deliberately. "So did I mourn

the young wife whom I loved, and so, if I know men, will you mourn,

Kano Tatsu. Of such enduring stuff will be your grief for Umè-ko."

It was said. The old man's promise had been torn like a leaf,--not to

be mended or recalled,--torn and flung at his listener's feet. Yet

such was the simplicity of utterance, such the nobility of poise, the

beauty of the old face set like a silver wedge into the deepening mist,

that Tatsu could only give him look for look, with no resentment. The

young voice had taken on strangely the timbre of the old as, in equal

soberness, he answered,

"Such, Kano Indara, though I be burdened with years as many as your

own,--will be the never-ceasing longing for my lost wife, Umè-ko."

A little sob, loosed suddenly upon the night, sped past them. "What

was it? Who is there?" cried Tatsu, sharply, wheeling round.

Kano began to shake. "Perhaps--perhaps a night-bird," he stammered out.

"A bird!" echoed Tatsu. "That sound was human. It is a woman, the

Presence that has hung about me! Put down your arms,--you cannot keep

me back!"

"Be still!" cried out old Kano in the voice of angry kings. "Nothing

will happen,--nothing, I say, if you act thus like the untamed creature

that you were! Your fate is still in my hands, Kano Tatsu!"

Tatsu fell down upon his knees, pulling at the old man's sleeves.

"Father, father, have pity! I will be self-controlled and docile as I

have been these long, long months. But now there is a thing so great

that would possess me, my soul faints and sickens. Father, I ask your

help, your tenderness. I think I have wronged you from the first,--my

father!"

Suddenly the old man hurled his staff away and sank weeping into the

stronger arms. "I fear, I fear!" he wailed. "It may be still too

early. But she said not,--the abbot counselled it! O gods of the Kano

home!"

"Father," asked Tatsu, rising slowly to his feet, his arms still close

about the other, "can it be joy that is to find me, even in this life?"

"Wait, you shall see," cried the old man, now laughing aloud, now

weeping, like a hysterical girl. "You shall see in a moment! My dead

wife takes me by the hand and leads me from you,--just a little way,

dear Tatsu, just here among the shadows. No longer are the shadows for

you,--joy is for you. Yes, Uta-ko, I 'm coming. The young love

springs like new lilies from the old. Stand still, my son; be hushed,

that joy may find you."

He faltered backward and was lost. Upon the hillside came a stillness

deeper than any previous interval of pause. From it the nightingale's

low note thrust out a wavering clew. The day had gone, and a few stars

dotted the vault of the sky. Tatsu threw back his head. There was no

pain in the gesture now; he was trying to make room in his soul for an

unspeakable visitor. The arch of heaven had grown trivial. Eternity

was his one boundary. The stars twinkled in his blood.

He heard the small human sob again, just at his elbow. All at once he

was frozen in his place; he could not turn or move. His arms hung to

his sides, his throat stiffened in its upward lines. And then a little

hand, stealing from a nun's gray sleeve, slipped into his, and in a

pause, a hush, it was before the full splendor of love's cry, he turned

and saw that it was Umè-ko, his wife.

[Illustration: "Then a little hand, stealing from a nun's gray sleeve,

slipped into his."]

* * * * * *

Yeddo and modern Tokyo alike give entertainment to the traditional nine

days' wonder. Sometimes the wonder does not fade at all, and so it was

with the case of Tatsu and his wife. If he had been an idol, he was

now a demigod, Umè-ko sharing the sweet divinity of human tenderness

with him.

Had it all happened a century before, the people would have built for

them a yashiro, with altar and a shrine. Here they would have been

worshipped as gods still in the flesh, and lovers would have prayed to

them for aid and written verses and burned sweet incense.

Being of modern Tokyo, most of this adulation went into newspaper

articles. Old men envied Kano his dutiful daughter, young men envied

Tatsu his beautiful and loving wife. The print-makers, indeed,

perpetrated a series of representations that put old Kano's artistic

teeth on edge. First there was Umè at the willow; then Tatsu, in the

same place, taking his mad plunge for death's oblivion; Umè, the hooded

acolyte, kneeling in the sick chamber at the head of her husband's bed;

Umè, the nun, standing each day at twilight on the edge of the temple

cliff to catch a glimpse of him she loved; and, at the last, Tatsu and

Umè rejoined beside the tomb of Kano Uta-ko. Fortunately these

pictures were never seen by the two most concerned.

They went away on a second bridal journey, this time to Tatsu's native

mountains in Kiu Shiu. While there, the good friend Ando Uchida was to

be sought, and made acquainted with the strange history of the previous

months.

Mata and her old master remained placidly at home. They had no fears.

At the appointed date--only a week more now--the two would come back,

as they had promised, to begin the long, tranquil life of art and

happiness. There were to be great pictures! Kano chuckled and rubbed

his lean hands together, as he sat in his lonely room. Then the

thought faded, for a tenderer thought had come. In a year or more, if

the gods willed, another and a keener blessedness might be theirs.

To dream quite delicately enough of this, the old man shut his eyes.

Oh, it was a dream to make the springtime of the world stir at the

roots of being! A tear crept down from the blue-veined lids, making

its way through wrinkles, those "dry river-beds of smiles." If the

baby fingers came,--those small, fearless fingers that were one's own

youth reborn,--they would press out all fretful lines of age, leaving

only tender traceries. He leaned forward, listening. Already he could

hear the tiny feet echo along the rooms, could see small, shaven heads

bowing their first good morning to the O Ji San,--revered, beloved

patriarch of the home! How old Mata would idolize and scold and pet

them! A queer old soul was Mata, with faults, as all women have, but

in the main, a treasure! Good times were coming for the old folks in

that house! So sat Kano, dreaming, in his empty chamber; and unless we

have eternity to spare, nodding beside him on the mats, we must bow,

murmuring, "Sayo-nara!"