Part 7 (1/2)
”She listens at the crack. Consult her now,” said Kano.
The old dame threw aside the shoji like an armor, and walked in. ”Yes, ask me what I think! Ask the old servant who has nursed Miss Ume from her birth, managed the house, scrubbed, haggled, washed, and broken her old bones for you! This is my advice,--freely given,--make of the youth her jinrikisha man, but not her husband!”
”Impertinent old witch!” cried Kano. ”You are asked for nothing but the earliest possible date for the marriage!”
”Do you give yourself so tamely to a dangerous wild creature from the hills?” Mata demanded of the girl.
”Yes, yes, she'll marry him,” said Kano, before her words could come.
”The date,--the earliest possible hour! Will two weeks be too soon?”
”Two weeks!” shrieked the old dame, and staggered backward. ”Is it of the scavenger's daughter that you speak?”
”Four weeks, then,--a month. It cannot be more. I tell you, woman, for a longer time than this I cannot keep the youth at bay. Is a month decent in convention's eyes?”
Mata began to sob loudly in her upraised sleeve.
”I see that it is at least permissible,” said Kano, grimly. ”What a weak set of social idiots we are, after all. Tatsu is right to scorn us! Well, well, a month from this date, deep in the golden heart of autumn, will the wedding be.”
”If the day be propitious and the stars in harmony,” supplemented Mata.
”She shall not be married in the teeth of evil fortune, if I have to murder the Dragon Painter with my fish-knife!”
”Oh, go; have the stars arranged to suit you. Here's money for it!”
He fumbled in his belt for a purse of coin, threw it to the mats, and, over the old dame's stooping back, motioned Ume-ko permission to withdraw. The girl went swiftly, thankful for the release.
”A good child,--a daughter to thank the G.o.ds for,” chuckled Kano, as she left.
Mata looked sharply about, then leaned to her master's ear. ”You are blind; you are an earth-rat, Kano Indara. This is not the usual submission of a silly girl. Ume is thinking things we know nothing of.
Did you not see that her face was as a bean-curd in its whiteness? She kept so still, only because she was shaking in all directions at once.
There, look at her now! She is fleeing to the garden with the uncertain step of one drunk with deep foreboding!”
”Bah! you are an old raven croaking in a fog! Go back to your pots. I can manage my own child!”
”You have never yet managed her or yourself either,” was the spoiled old servant's parting shaft.
Kano sat watching the slender, errant figure in the garden. Yes, she had taken it calmly,--more calmly than he could have hoped. How beautiful was the poise, even at this distance, of the delicate throat, and the head, with its wide crown of inky hair! Each motion of the slow-strolling form in its clinging robes was a separate loveliness.
Kano drew a long sigh. He could not blind himself to Tatsu's savagery.
This was not the sort of husband that Ume had a right to expect from her father's choice,--a youth not only penniless, and without family name, but in himself unusual, strange, with look, voice, gesture, coloring each a clear contrast to the men that Ume-ko had seen. He could not bear the thought of her unhappiness, and yet, at any sacrifice, Tatsu must be kept an inmate of their home.
The girl had stopped beside the sunlit pond, leaning far over. She did not seem to note the cl.u.s.tering carp at all, but rather dwell upon her own image, twisted and shot through with the gold of their darting bodies. Now, with dragging feet she went to the moon-viewing hill, remaining in the shadow of it, and pausing for long thought. Her eyes were on the cliff, now raised to the camphor tree. Suddenly she s.h.i.+vered and hid her face. What was the tumult of that ignorant young breast?
The old man rose and went to an inner room where hung the Butsudan, the shrine. He stood gazing upon the ihai of his wife. His lips moved, but the breath so lightly issued that the flame on the altar did not stir. ”She, our one child, has come now to the borders of that woman-land where I cannot go with her,” he was saying. ”Thou art the soul to guide, and give her happiness, thou, the dear one of my life,--the dead young mother who has never really died!” He folded his hands now, and bowed his head. The small flame leaned to him. ”Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amid a Butsu,” murmured the old man.
Out by the hill, a b.u.t.terfly, snow white, rested a moment on the young girl's hair. She was again looking at the cliff, and did not notice it.
V
Ando Uchida, from his green seclusion among the bamboo groves of Meguro, sent, from time to time, a scout into the city. First an ordinary hotel kotsukai or man-servant was employed. This experiment proved costly as well as futile. The kotsukai demanded large payment; and then the creature's questions to Mata were of a nature so crude and undiplomatic that they aroused instant suspicion, causing, indeed, the threat of a dipper of scalding water.