It was the season of Seed Rain. The country was green and fragrant and
the crops thirstily absorbed the rain. The villagers sat at their
thresholds, some of them even indolently lounging in the open, unmindful
or perhaps enjoying the seething rain, an antidote for the heat, which
was somewhat sweltering for the season.
Children were playing in the street, nimbly jumping over the puddle
ponds, or climbing, with the agility of monkeys, the trees that lined
the streets, and about whose boughs they hung in various attitudes of
daring delight.
One small boy had climbed to the very tip of a bamboo, and there he
clung by his feet, swaying with the shakings of the slender tree, and
the motion of those below him—far below him.
It was not often that the son of Madame Aoi was permitted such absolute
freedom. Indeed, it was only upon those occasions when Komazawa,
momentarily blind to the reproach of his mother’s sad eyes, literally
thrust away the bonds which seemed to hold and chain him to their quiet
household and burst out and beyond their reach. Surely, at the tip of
this long, perilous bamboo he was quite beyond the reach of little
Madame Aoi and her old servant, Mumè. But even in his present lofty
position Komazawa had kept his eyes from the possible glimpse of his
mother. His feet clung to the tree only because his hands were engaged
in covering his ears.
Yet, even in the open, Komazawa was alone. The neighbors’ children
played in little bodies and groups together, and Komazawa from his perch
watched them with the same ardent wistfulness with which he was wont to
regard them from the door of his little isolated home.
Old Mumè was angry. Her voice had become hoarse, and she was tired of
her position in the rain, for the bamboo gave but scant shelter. She
shook the tree angrily.
“Do not so,” entreated the gentle Aoi. “See how the tree bends. Take
care lest it become angry with us and vent its vengeance upon my son.
But, pray you, good Mumè, return to the home and give food and succor to
our honorable guest.”
As Mumè shuffled off, her heavy clogs clicking against the pavement, Aoi
called up, entreatingly, to the truant:
“Ah, Koma, Koma, son, do pray come down.”
But Komazawa, with head thrown backward, was whistling to the clouds. He
was very well content, and it pleased him much to be wet through. How
long he sat there, whistling softly strange airs and imagining wild and
fanciful things, he could not have told, since the passage of time in
these days of freedom was a thing which he noted little.
Gradually he became aware that the rain was becoming colder and the sky
had darkened. Komazawa looked downward. There was nothing but darkness
beneath him. He shivered and shook his little body and head, the hair of
which was weighted with rain. Komazawa began to slide downward, feeling
the way with his feet and hands. It was quite a journey down. In the
darkness he had knocked his little shins against out-jutting broken
boughs. He landed with both feet upon something palpitating and
soft—something that caught its breath in a sigh, then inclosed him in
its arms.
Komazawa guilty, but not altogether tamed, spoke no words to his mother.
He stood stiffly and quietly still while she felt his wetness with her
hands. But he threw off the cape in which she endeavored to wrap him. He
was obliged to stand on tiptoe to put it back around his mother, and as
this was an undignified position, his bravado broke down. Gradually he
nestled up against her, and—strange marvel in Japan!—these two embraced
and kissed each other.
After a while, as they trudged silently down the street homeward,
Komazawa inquired, in a sharp little voice, as he looked up
apprehensively at his mother:
“And the honorable stranger, mother?”
Aoi hesitated. The hand about her son trembled somewhat. His thin little
fingers clutched it almost viciously. He flushed angrily.
“Why do you not answer me?” he asked, with peevishness.
“I have not seen the honorable one,” said Aoi, gently.
“Pah!” snapped the boy. “No, certainly, and we do not wish to see her.
We do not like such bold intrusion.”
“Nay, son,” she reproved, “we must not so regard it. Let us remember the
words of the good master, the august missionary.”
“What words?” inquired Koma, tartly. “Why, his excellency does not even
know of the coming of the woman, since he is gone three days from Sendai
now.”
“Ah, but my son, do you not remember that he taught us to treat with
kindness the stranger within our gates?”
Koma made a sound of disapproval, his little, ill-tempered face puckered
in a frown. After a moment he inquired again:
“But where is the woman, mother?”
Aoi regarded her small son almost apologetically.
“She is within our humble house,” she replied.
Koma pulled his hand from hers with a jerk. For a time he walked beside
her in silence. He was strangely old for his years, and already he
showed the inheritance of his father’s pride.
“Mother,” he said, “we do not wish the stranger to disturb our home. My
father would not have permitted it. We are happy alone together. What do
we want with this woman stranger?”
“But, my son, she is very ill.”
“She should have stayed at the honorable tavern. We do not keep a
hostelry.”
Aoi sighed.
“Well,” she said, hopefully, “let us bear with her for a little while
and afterwards—”
“We will turn her out,” quickly finished the boy.
“We will entreat her to remain,” said Aoi. “It would be proper for us to
do so. But the stranger will not be lacking in all courtesy. She will
not remain.”
They had reached their home. Now they paused on the threshold, the
mother regarding the son somewhat appealingly, and he with his sulky
head turned from her. Aoi pushed the sliding-doors apart. A gust of wind
blew inward, flaring up the light of the dim andon and then
extinguishing it. The house was in darkness.
Suddenly a voice, a piercing, shrill voice, rang out through the silent
house.
“The light, the light!” it cried; “oh, it is gone, gone!”
Koma clutched his mother’s hand with a sudden, tense fear.
“The light!” he repeated. “Quickly, mother; the honorable one fears the
darkness. Quickly, the light!”
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