Part 8 (1/2)
Old Mata's wall of reserve went down with a crash. ”He believes as you believe!” she cried out shrilly. ”All your s.h.i.+ngon chants and invocations and miracles he has faith in. Is that not what you call enlightenment? He and Miss Ume wors.h.i.+p together almost daily at the great temple above us on the hill. The two finest stone lanterns there are given in the name of my master's dead young wife. Her ihai is in this house, and an altar, and they are well tended, I a.s.sure you! My master is a true believer, poor man, and what has his belief brought him?
Ma-a-a! all this mummery and service and what has come of it?”
”I perceive with regret that you are not of the s.h.i.+ngon sect,” remarked the priest.
”Me? I should say not!” snorted Mata. ”I am a Protestant, a good s.h.i.+nshu woman,--that's what I am, and I tell you so to your face! When I pray, I know what I am praying for. I trust to my own good deeds and the intercession of Amida Butsu. No muttering and mummery for me!”
”Ah!” said the priest, a most alluring note of interest now audible in his voice, ”your master has so zealously importuned the G.o.ds, and, you say, with no result?”
”Ay, a result has come,” answered the old dame, sullenly. ”Within this week the G.o.ds--or the demons--have heard my master, for a wild thing from the hills is with us!”
”Wild thing? Do you mean a man?”
”A semblance of a man, though none such will you see in the streets of a respectable town.”
”But does your master----” began the priest, in some perplexity.
Mata cut him short. ”Because he can smear ink on paper with a brush, my master dotes on him and says he will adopt him!”
The woman's fierce sincerity transmitted vague alarm. Slipping his hands within his gray sleeves, the acolyte began fingering his short rosary as he asked, ”Is the--wild man now under this very roof?”
”Not under a roof when he can escape it, you may be sure! He comes to us only when driven by hunger of the stomach or the eyes. Doubtless at this moment he wallows among the ferns and sa-sa gra.s.s of the mountain side, or lies face down in the cemetery near my mistress' grave. He is mad, my master is mad, and Miss Ume, if she really gives herself in marriage to the mountain lion, madder than all the rest!”
”That beautiful maiden whom I saw will be given to such a one?” asked the priest, in a startled way.
”Such are the present plans,” said the other in deep despair, and huddled herself together on the floor.
Ume-ko, in her room across the hallway, had half risen. It really was time to check the old servant's vulgar garrulity. But the silence that followed the last remark checked her impulse. After all, what did it matter? No one could understand or needed to understand.
Meanwhile Mata, at first unconscious of anything but her own dark thoughts, became gradually aware of a strange look in the face of the priest. He, on his part, was wondering whether, indeed, the beauty of Ume-ko were not the sole cause of his patron's interest in the Kano family. After watching him intently for a few moments the old woman wriggled nearer and whispered in a tone so low that Ume could not catch the words, ”Perhaps, after all, Sir Priest, you, being of their belief, perceive this to be a case where charms and spells are advisable. I am convinced that this house is bewitched, that the Dragon Painter has a train of elementals in attendance. Now, if we could only drive him forever from the place. Have you, by any chance, a powder, or an amulet, or a magic invocation you could give me?”
”No, no! I dare not!” said the other, in an agitated voice. He reached out for his bowl and, with a single leap, was down upon the earth. Mata caught him by his flying skirts. ”See here,” she entreated, ”I will make it worth your while, young sir, I will give donations to your temple----”
”I dare not. I have no instructions to meddle with such things. Let me now give the house a blessing, and withdraw. But I can tell you for your comfort,” he added, seeing the disappointment in her wrinkled face, ”if, as you a.s.sure me, this is a house of faith, no presence entirely evil could dwell within it.”
He got away before she could repeat her importunities; and the old dame returned to the kitchen, muttering anathemas against the mystic powers she had just attempted to invoke.
On the priest's return, Ando questioned him eagerly. He gained, almost with the first words, certainty of his own freedom. With Tatsu safely arrived, and the betrothal to Kano Ume-ko an outspoken affair, then had the time come for him--Ando Uchida--to rea.s.sume the pleasant role of friend and benefactor.
He moved into Yeddo before nightfall. His first visit was, of course, to Kano. Elaborately he explained to the sympathetic old man how he had been summoned by telegram into a distant province to attend the supposed death-bed of a relative, how that relative had, by a miracle, recovered.
”So now,” he remarked in conclusion, ”I am again at your service, and shall take the part not only of nakodo in the coming marriage, but of temporary father and social sponsor to our unsophisticated bridegroom.”
Certainly nothing could have been more opportune than Uchida's reappearance, or more welcome than his proposed a.s.sistance. Mata, indeed, hastened to give a whole koku of rice to the poor in thank-offering that one sensible person besides herself was now implicated in the wedding preparations.
Uchida justified, many times over, her belief in him. In the district near the Kano home he rented, in Tatsu's name, a small cottage, paying for it by the month, in advance. With Mata's a.s.sistance, not to mention a small colony of hirelings, the floors were fitted with new mats, the woodwork of the walls, the posts, and veranda floors polished to a mirror-like brightness, and even the tiny garden set with new turf and flowering plants. Tatsu was lured down from the mountain side and persuaded to remain at night and part, at least, of each day, in this little haven of coming joy.
A secluded room was fitted up as a studio, for his sole use. Here were great rectangles of paper, rolls of thin silk, stretching frames, water holders, mult.i.tudinous brushes, and all the exquisite pigment that j.a.panese love of beauty has drawn from water, earth, and air; delicate infusions of sea-moss, roots, and leaves, saucers of warm earth ground to a paste, precious vessels of powdered malachite, porphyry, and lapis lazuli. But the boy looked askance upon the expensive outlay. His wild nature resented so obvious a lure. It seemed unworthy of a Dragon Painter to accept this mult.i.tude of material devices. He had painted on flakes of inner bark, still quivering with the life from which he had rudely torn them. Visions limned on rock and sand had been the more precious for their impermanence. Here, every stroke was to be recorded, each pa.s.sing whim and mood registered, as in a book of fate.
For days the little workroom remained immaculate. Kano began to fret.
Ando Uchida, the wise, said, ”Wait.” It was Mata who finally precipitated the crisis. One rainy morning, being already in an ill humor over some trifling household affair, she was startled and annoyed by the sudden vision of Tatsu's head thrust noiselessly into her kitchen.
Rudely she had slammed the shoji together, calling out to him that he had better be off doing the one thing he was fit to do, rather than to be skulking around her special domain. Tatsu had, as rudely, reopened the shoji panels, tearing a large hole in the translucent paper. ”He had come merely for a glimpse of the Dragon Maid,” he told the angry dame.
”In a few days more she was to be his wife, and this maddening convention of keeping him always from her was eating out his vitals with red fire,”