The Breath of the Gods Part 15

"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 zashiki, 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 fashionable, 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 shines 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 zashiki, 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 wishing 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 sunshine 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 zashiki, 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 fashion, but without bordering plants or bricks. Many of the small bushes were resultant from seed-packets mailed by Yuki in Washington. 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.

The eastern side of the house contained, so to speak, its executive offices, dining-room, servants' quarters, pantry, kitchen, and well-shed. Along this portion (except by the kitchen, which stepped down unaided to a bare earth floor) strips of narrow veranda and convenient stepping-stones led into a vegetable garden, small wood-yard, and strawberry patch. The longest bit of veranda had the dignity of a rail,--a mere upright strip of board, edged heavily on top with bamboo, and pierced with openings cut into the shapes of swallows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TETSUJO'S HOUSE AND GARDEN]

It was here, the morning after Yuki's arrival, that the women of the household were to be found. Suzume chattered incessantly as she washed the breakfast-dishes and pa.s.sed inward to arrange them on the pantry shelves. Little Maru San, a few feet away, out in the sunshine of the garden, scrubbed at pieces of a ripped-up kimono in a tub that stood high on its own three legs. Afterward she rinsed the bits and spread them smoothly to dry on a board. The tailless white cat, disdainfully satiate after a meal of tea, rice, and fish-bones, curled itself up in a fork of the bare persimmon-tree to sleep. Maru's favorite bantam c.o.c.k, followed at a respectful distance by two wives and an unidentified black chick, sauntered along the kitchen drain, his yellow eye slanted for a swimming flake of white. The clear, windless air had a smell of new-washed leaves and of foreign violets. Yuki's heart stirred with the deep homeliness of it all. Iriya, noting her expression, asked brightly, "Is my dear one just a little happy to be at home?"

"No, mother, not a little happy, but very, very happy. It has been a long time."

Iriya was hanging out a bed-quilt of plaid silk, the squares three feet across and of superb coloring. "Yes," she repeated, "it has been a long time."

"Why did you let me go at all?" cried Yuki, pa.s.sionately. "I was your only one. You must have missed me sorely. Sometimes I feel that I never should have gone."

"Hush, my jewel." Iriya gave an apprehensive glance toward the other side of the house. "Say not such words where the kind father may hear.

He was so proud of you. It was his dearest wish, and Lord Hagane, our daimyo, advised it also. You see, we had no son, and Tetsujo was not willing to give me up that another wife might bring this hope to pa.s.s.

He has been a good master to me, has Onda Tetsujo."

A glow of loving pride softened the regret that this thought of the son, that had not been given, always brought to her.

Suzume looked up from her dish-tub, wrinkling with shrewd smiles. "You have no son--but what of it? Some day you will have a grand son-in-law, a young prince, maybe. Yuki-ko will make a marriage to bring glory to us all."

Yuki drooped her head. "I don't want to think of marriage yet. I just want to stay here in this precious home and try to win back some of those four long years which I have lost."

"But you are nineteen, Miss Yuki,--nearer twenty, in fact. A terrible age for a young lady of rank to be caught single."

"I wish it could be as you wish, my Yuki," sighed Iriya. "But, as Suzume says, you are nearing twenty. I pray the G.o.ds that my son-in-law may not be of too exalted station to receive adoption into this family, instead of your being absorbed into his. That would be the greatest joy life holds for me. But, alas! I am a selfish, talkative old woman to let such thoughts escape. I should wish your marriage to be only that which may possibly serve your country and repay your father for his sacrifices."

Yuki lifted a small queer look. "In America, where my father sent me, I was taught, in the matter of marriage, to do some of the thinking myself."

Iriya caught her breath. Suzume stopped washing to stare. Maru, looking up with her round mouth formed for a "Ma-a-a!" jostled the tub in her excitement. It went over with a "swash." The soapy water, with drifting islands of blue cloth, flowed out swiftly, carrying the pompous bantam and his family on the unexpected tide. The cat opened one green eye, then the other.

"Come, my child," said Iriya, quickly, to Yuki, "condescend to bear me company to the guest-chamber. I have the flowers to arrange. Perhaps, in America, you have learned some new and beautiful composition."

Yuki's queer look deepened into a naughty little laugh and shrug as she turned to obey. She knew perfectly why her mother wished to get her from the hearing of Suzume and Maru. Tokio is not free from gossip, and, though Suzume was devoted to the family she served, she dearly loved the start, the incredulity, the deepening interest of a listener's face.

To her mother's last suggestion Yuki replied, "I fear not, mother. The only idea of arrangement they have in America is to get many different flowers together, chop them to the same length of stem, and push them down evenly into a shapeless vase with other flowers painted on the sides."

"Ah," said Iriya, crestfallen and surprised, "we shall not then adopt the foreign arrangement."

The mother and daughter clasped hands, swinging them as children do, and moved along the narrow veranda. They were now skirting the closed shoji of the dining-room. In turning the corner, the plum-tree came into full sight. A hundred blossoms must have opened since the dawn. Yuki broke from her mother with a cry, ran to the tree, and threw her arms about the great trunk. "Oh, you are the most beautiful tree in the whole world!" she said aloud, and looked with adoration up into its shining branches.

As Iriya reached her, she lowered her gaze. "Do you remember, mother, that morning four years ago, when I went away, how I clung to this tree last of all, sobbing from my heart the poem that my father taught me?--

"Though bereft and poor, I in exile wandering Far on mount and moor, Happy plum beside my door, Oh, forget not thou the spring."

"I remember well," said Iriya, and drew her daughter's outstretched hand to her cheek.

Something shone suddenly in Yuki's eyes. "And I wept so pa.s.sionately that father, half in tears himself, came and entreated me to cease. He said that if I shed more tears upon it, his tree, like that of Michizane, might rise through the air and follow me to exile."

"Yes," smiled Iriya; "often have I recalled it in the time of spring, standing under this tree alone."