Part 15 (1/2)

”She is the orphaned child of Suzume's dead husband's stepson,”

continued Iriya, placidly. ”About two years ago she was left quite dest.i.tute, so of course her natural home was here. Maru is a good girl, and of much help to us.”

”Ah, Mistress, Mistress,” cried old Suzume, nearly tripping on her clogs to reach them, ”you know well that Maru is a very cat in the sun for laziness.” The speaker struggled hard to look severe.

”Hai, hai,” said Maru, in deprecating confirmation, and bobbed over to the matting.

”Why, o jo san, in my opinion Maru is not worth the honorable rice she puts in her gluttonous mouth,” said Suzume, on a high note of satisfaction. ”Yet the kind mistress here, besides food and occasional outworn garments, allows her sixty sen each month for spending. Ah, Kwannon Sama, of divine compa.s.sion, will reward our mistress for her kind heart!”

Iriya laughed, a merry, low laugh, as young as Yuki's own.

”I thank you, Suzume; but do you realize that the master sits alone in the zas.h.i.+ki, with no tea, no coal, no--”?

”D[=o]-mo!” exclaimed the old woman, and scrambled rapidly to her feet.

”But I become more and more the fool with age, as a tree gathers lichen.

I will attend.”

”Be at leisure, honorable, ancient relative; I will fetch the tea,” said Maru.

”No,” cried Yuki, suddenly stretching out a hand; ”I want to take it just as I used to as a little girl. I think it will please my father.

Let me take it, Suzume San!”

Maru paused with round, incredulous eyes. ”Ara!” cried old Suzume, scarcely knowing whether she were the more pleased or astonished. ”A fas.h.i.+onable, wonderful young lady, educated in America, with numberless young j.a.panese n.o.blemen waiting to marry her,--and she wishes to bear the tray like a tea-house musume! Ma-a-a! How strange! Yet it is a good desire. The mistress's face s.h.i.+nes with it. It shows your heart has not changed color, o jo san. I will prepare at once. Come, lazy fatling!”

This last remark was of course addressed to Maru.

In his wide, dim zas.h.i.+ki, or reception-room,--a.n.a.logous to the drawing-room of the West,--Tetsujo sat alone. He was glad for a moment of solitude. His mind did not move swiftly on any subject. The bewilderment of his first vision of Yuki, changed from a clinging j.a.panese child to an alert, self-possessed American, had not altogether pa.s.sed. Then that bobbing, blue-eyed he-creature on the hatoba,--he had given sour food for thought. What language was it that the thing had tried to speak, what wish to utter? Well, at least Yuki was safe now among her home people, away from the influence of all such mountebanks.

In a few days she would be wis.h.i.+ng to don again her j.a.panese dress, and then he could begin to believe he had a child.

The Onda residence faced directly to the north, thus giving the big guest-chamber and the outlying garden a southern exposure. Two sides of the room, the south and the west, had removable shoji. The inner walls were partly of plaster, partly of sliding, opaque panels of gold, called fusuma. These were painted in war-like designs by Kano artists. To-day the western shoji were all closed; but the sun, just reaching them, shed a mellow tone of light throughout the room. All southern shoji were out, admitting, as it were, the fine old garden as part of the decoration of the room. The day had deepened into one of those quite common to the Tokio winter, where the suns.h.i.+ne battles with a white glamour, scarcely to be called mist, and yet with the softening tone of it. No young spring growth was waking in the garden. All was sombre-green, ochre, or cold gray,--pines and evergreen azaleas, heaped rocks, stone lanterns, bridge, and the pear-shaped water of a pond. In line and structure the garden was still a thing of beauty, planned in an artist's mind. It had the look of a stained-gla.s.s window done in faded hues, of old tapestry, of wrought metal. At the corner of the guest-room veranda stood a huge old plum-tree just coming into white bloom.

Smiling Yuki, in tailor-made American gown and black stockings, brought in the tray and knelt before her father. The old warrior flushed with pleasure. ”Why, this is better than I could have thought!”

”I told you I was just your little girl,” said Yuki. ”And oh, father, I do feel so queerly young and real again! I see everything around me just as I wish. It is like making things come true in dreams.” Tetsujo caught her by a slender shoulder, looking deep, deep into answering eyes. For once, no troubled thoughts rose to blur the vision. Suddenly he smiled.

”Then make _my_ dream come true, my Yuki; remove the shapeless foreign garment.”

Yuki sprang to her feet, laughing with delight. ”Yes, yes, that is the next real thing to do, of course. I will borrow a kimono from mother, as my trunks have not arrived. But don't let them bring in dinner till I get back. I am so hungry for a real dinner!”

”The soup shall not even be poured,” promised Tetsujo. She gave a little bow like the dart of a humming-bird, and would have sped past him, but he, catching at a fold of her skirt, detained her. She stopped, and seeing the expression of his face, her own sobered. ”Welcome, my daughter,” said Tetsujo, in a tone that trembled; ”welcome, child of my ancestors,--the last of an honorable race!”

CHAPTER NINE

Next to the zas.h.i.+ki, or guest-room, around by the corner of the big plum-tree on which, now, great snowy pearls of buds opened with every hour, was the master's benkyo-beya, or study, where sets of Chinese and j.a.panese cla.s.sics, often running into a hundred volumes, had snug place in fragrant cabinets of unvarnished cypress wood.

Contiguous to this, along the western side, and bounded ten feet farther by the fusuma of her parents' chamber, Yuki's little sleeping-room was tucked away. The stately garden, curving around by the plum-tree, spread here wider paths and less pretentious hillocks. Just in front of Yuki's shoji and the narrow veranda which ran unchecked along the south and west of the house, two sedate gray stones led into a gravelled s.p.a.ce.

Here were flower-beds somewhat in foreign fas.h.i.+on, but without bordering plants or bricks. Many of the small bushes were resultant from seed-packets mailed by Yuki in Was.h.i.+ngton. Imported pansies, alyssum, geraniums, marigolds, and ragged-robins grew here in springtime in friendly proximity to indigenous asters, columbine, pinks, and small ground-orchids. These flower s.p.a.ces were now vacant but for tiny springing communities of chrysanthemum shoots, bare stems of peony with swollen red buds at the tip, and a few indispensable small pines. Beyond it all was the tall hedge of sa-sa shutting out the street, and its ugly inner rind of thorn.