Part 12 (1/2)

In spite of wretchedness and alarm the boy laughed aloud. ”I wish not to hurt you, old fool,” he said. ”I desire nothing but to know where my wife is.”

”With her father,” snapped the other.

”Yes, but where,--where? And why did she go without telling me? Where did he take her? Answer quickly. I must follow them.”

”I have no answers for you,” said Mata. ”And even if I had you would not get them. Go, go, out of my sight, you Bearer of Discord!” she railed, feeling that at last an opportunity for plain speaking had arrived. ”This was a happy house until your evil presence sought it.

Don't glare at me, and take postures. I care neither for your tall figure nor your flas.h.i.+ng eyes. You may bewitch the others, but not old Mata! Oh, Dragon Painter! Oh, Dragon Painter! The greatest since Sesshu!” she mimicked, ”show me a few of the wonderful things you were to paint us when once you were Kano's son! Bah! you were given my nursling, as a wolf is given a young fawn,--that was all you wanted.

You will never paint!”

”Tell me where she is or I'll--” began the boy, raving.

”No you won't,” jeered Mata, now in a transport of fury. ”Back, back, out of my kitchen and my presence or this knife will plunge its way into you as into a devil-fish. Oh, it would be a sight! I have no love for you!”

”I care not for your love, old Baba, old fiend, nor for your knife.

Where did my Ume go? You grin like an old she-ape! Never, upon my mountains did I see so vicious a beast.”

”Then go back to your mountains! You are useless here. You will not even paint. Go where you belong!”

”The mountains,--the mountains!” sobbed the boy, under his breath.

”Yes, I must go to them or my soul will go without me! Perhaps the kindlier spirits of the air will tell me where she is!” With a last distracted gesture he fled from the house and out into the street.

Mata listened with satisfaction as she heard him racing up the slope toward the hillside. ”I wish it were indeed a Kiu s.h.i.+u peak he climbed, instead of a decent Yeddo cliff,” she muttered to herself, as she tied on her ap.r.o.n and began to wash the supper dishes. ”But, alas, he will be back all too soon, perhaps before my master and Miss Ume come down from the temple.”

In this surmise the old dame was, for once, at fault. Tatsu did not return until full daylight of the next morning. He had been wandering, evidently, all night long among the chill and dew-wet branches of the mountain shrubs. His silken robe was torn and stained as had been the blue cotton dress, that first day of his coming. At sight of his sunken eyes and haggard look Ume-ko's heart cried out to him, and it was with difficulty that she restrained her tears. But she still had a last appeal to make, and this was to be the hour.

In response to his angry questions, she would answer nothing but that she and her father had business at the temple. More than this, she would not say. As he persisted, pleading for her motives in so leaving him, and heaping her with the reproaches of tortured love, she suddenly threw herself on the mat before him, in a pa.s.sion of grief such as he had not believed possible to her. She clasped his knees, his feet, and besought him, with all the strength and pathos of her soul, to make at least one more attempt to paint. He, now in equal torment, with tears running along his bronzed face, confessed to her that the power seemed to have gone from him. Some demon, he said, must have stolen it from him while he slept, for now the very touch of a brush, the look of paint, frenzied him.

Ume-ko went again to her father, saying that she again had failed. The strain was now, indeed, past all human endurance. The little home became a charged battery of tragic possibilities. Each moment was a separate menace, and the hours heaped up a structure already tottering.

At dawn of the next day, Tatsu, who after a restless and unhappy night had fallen into heavy slumber, awoke, with a start, alone. A pink light glowed upon his paper shoji; the plum tree, now entirely leafless, threw a splendid shadow-silhouette. At the eaves, sparrows chattered merrily. It was to be a fair day: yet instantly, even before he had sprung, cruelly awake, to his knees, he knew that the dreaded Something was upon him.

On the silken head-rest of Ume's pillow was fastened a long, slender envelope, such as j.a.panese women use for letters. Tatsu recoiled from it as from a venomous reptile. Throwing himself face down upon the floor he groaned aloud, praying his mountain G.o.ds to sweep away from his soul the black mist of despair that now crawled, cold, toward it.

Why should Ume-ko have left him again, and at such an hour? Why should she have pinned to her pillow a slip of written paper? He would not read it! Yes, yes,--he must,--he must read instantly. Perhaps the Something was still to be prevented! He caught the letter up, held it as best he could in quivering hands, and read:

Because of my unworthiness, O master, my heart's beloved, I have been allowed to come between you and the work you were given of the G.o.ds to do. The fault is all mine, and must come from my evil deeds in a previous life. By sacrifice of joy and life I now attempt to expiate it. I go to the leaning willow where the water speaks. One thing only I shall ask of you,--that you admit to your mind no thought of self-destruction, for this would heavily burden my poor soul, far off in the Meido-land. Oh, live, my beloved, that I, in spirit, may still be near you. I will come. You shall know that I am near,--only, as the petals of the plum tree fall in the wind of spring, so must my earthly joy depart from me. Farewell, O thou who art loved as no mortal was ever loved before thee.

Your erring wife, Ume-ko.

In his fantastic night-robe with its design of a huge fish, ungirdled and wild of eyes, Tatsu rushed through the drowsy streets of Yeddo.

The few pedestrians, catching sight of him, withdrew, with cries of fear, into gateways and alleys.

At the leaning willow he paused, threw an arm about it, and swayed far over like a drunkard, his eyes blinking down upon the stream. Ume-ko's words, at the time of their utterance scarcely noted, came now as an echo, hideously clear. ”That which fell here would be carried very swiftly out to sea.” His nails broke against the bark. She,--his wife,--must have been thinking of it even then, while he,--he,--blind brute and dotard--sprawled upon the earth feeding his eyes of flesh upon the sight of her. But, after all, could she have really done it?

Surely the G.o.ds, by miracle, must have checked so disproportionate a sacrifice! Suddenly his wandering gaze was caught and held by a little shoe among the willow roots. It was of black lacquer, with a thong of rose-colored velvet. With one cry, that seemed to tear asunder the physical walls of his body, he loosed his arm and fell.

IX

His body was found some moments later by old Kano and a bridge keeper.