The Dragon Painter Part 3

His hands trembled. In his nervous excitement the papers fell, scattering broadcast over the floor.

Tatsu's dark face flashed into light. "My pictures! My pictures!" he cried aloud, like a child. "They always blow off down the mountain!"

Kano picked up a study at random. It was of a mountain tarn lying quiet in the sun. Trees in a windless silence sprang straight upward from the brink. Beyond and above these a few tall peaks stood thin and pale, cutting a sky that was empty of all but light.

"Where is the dragon here?" challenged the old man.

"Asleep under the lake."

"And where here?" he asked quickly, in order to hide his discomfiture.

The second picture was a scene of heavy rain descending upon a village.

"Oh, I perceive for myself," he hurried on before Tatsu could reply.

"The dragon lies full length, half sleeping, on the soaking cloud."

Tatsu's lip curled, but he remained silent.

The old man's hands rattled among the edges of the papers. "Ah, here, Master Painter, are you overthrown!" he cried triumphantly, lifting the painting of a tall girl who swayed against a cloudy background. The lines of the thin gray robe blew lightly to one side. The whole figure had the poise and lightness of a vision; yet in the face an exquisite human tenderness smiled out. "Show me a dragon here," repeated Kano.

Tatsu looked troubled and, for the first time, studied intently the countenance of his host. "Surely, honored sir, if you are a painter, as you say you are, its meaning must be plain. Look more closely. Do you not see on what the maiden stands?"

"Of course I see," snapped Kano. "She stands among rocks and weeds, and looks marvellously like----" He broke off, thinking it better not to mention his daughter's name. "But I repeat, no dragon-thought is here."

Tatsu reached out, took the picture, and tore it into shreds. Then he rose to his feet. "Good-by," he said. "I shall now make a quick returning. You are of the blind among men. My painting was the Dragon Maid, standing on the peaks of earth. All my life I have sought her.

The people of my village think me mad because of her. By reason that I cannot find, I paint. Good-by!"

"Good-by!" echoed the other. "What do you mean? What are you saying?"

The face of a horrible possibility jeered at him. His heart pounded the lean ribs and stood still. Tatsu was upon his feet. In an instant more he would be gone forever.

"Tatsu, wait!" almost screamed the old man. "Surely you cannot mean to return when you have but now arrived! Be seated. I insist! There is much to talk about."

"I have nothing to talk about. When a thing is to be done, then it is best to do it quickly. Good-by!" He wheeled toward the deepening night, the torn and soiled blue robe clinging to him as to the figure of a primeval G.o.d.

"Tatsu! Tatsu!" cried the other in an agony of fear. "Stop! I command!"

Tatsu turned, scowling. Then he laughed.

"No, no, I did not mean the word 'command.' I entreat you, Tatsu, because you are young and I am old; because I need you. Dear youth, you must be hungered and very weary. Remain at least until our meal is served."

"I desire no food of yours," said Tatsu. "Why did you summon me when you had nothing to reveal? You are no artist! And I pine, already, for the mountains!"

"Then, Tatsu, if I am no artist, stay and teach me how to paint. Yes, yes, you shall honorably teach me. I shall receive reproof thankfully.

I need you, Tatsu. I have no son. Stay and be my son."

The short, scornful laugh came again. "Your son! What could you do with a son like me? You love to dwell in square cages, and wear smooth shiny clothes. You eat tasteless foods and sleep like a coc.o.o.n that is rolled. My life is upon the mountains; my food the wild grapes and the berries that grow upon them. The pheasants and the mountain lions are my friends. I stifle in these lowlands. I cannot stay. I must breathe the mountains, and there among the peaks some day--some day--I shall touch her sleeve, the sleeve of the Dragon Maiden whom I seek.

Let me go, old man! I have no business in this place!"

In extremes of desperation one clutches at the semblance of a straw. A last, wild hope had flashed to Kano's mind. "Come nearer, Tatsu San,"

he whispered, forcing his face into the distortion of a smile. "Lean nearer. The real motive of my summons has not been spoken."

Compelled by the strange look and manner of his host, Tatsu retraced a few steps. The old voice wheedled through the dusk. "In this very house, under my mortal control, the Dragon Maiden whom you seek is hidden."

Tatsu staggered back, then threw himself to the floor, searching the speaker's face for truth. "Could you lie to me of such a thing as this?" he asked.

"No, Tatsu, by the spirits of my ancestors, I have such a maiden here.

Soon I shall show you. Only you must be patient and very quiet, that she may manifest herself."

"I shall be quiet, Kano Indara."

Kano, shivering now with excitement and relief, clapped hands loudly and called on Mata's name. The old dame entered, skirting warily the vicinity of the "madman."

"Mata, fix your eyes on me only while I am speaking," began her master.

"Say to the Dragon Maid whom we keep in the chamber by the great plum tree that I, Kano Indara, command her to appear. The costume must be worn; and let her enter, singing. These are my instructions. a.s.sist the maiden to obey them. Go!"

His piercing look froze the questions on her tongue. "And Mata," he called again, stopping her at the threshold, "bring at once some heated sake,--the best,--and follow it closely with the evening meal."

"Kashikomarimas.h.i.ta," murmured the servant, dutifully. But within the safety of her kitchen she exploded into execrations, muttering prophecies of evil, with lamentations that a Mad Thing from the mountains had broken into the serenity of their lives.

Tatsu, who had listened eagerly to the commands, now flung back his head and drew a long breath. "My life being spent among wild creatures," he murmured as if to himself, "little skill have I in judging the ways of men. How shall I believe that in this desert of houses a true Dragon Maiden can be found?" Again he turned flashing eyes upon his host. "I mistrust you, Kano Indara! Your thin face peers like a fox from its hole. If you deceive me,--yet must I remain,--for should she come----"

"You shall soon perceive for yourself, dear Dragon Youth."

Mata entered with hot sake. "Go! We shall serve ourselves," said Kano, much to her relief.

"I seldom drink," observed Tatsu, as the old man filled his cup. "Once it made of me a fool. But I will take a little now, for I am very weary with the long day."

"Indeed, it must be so; but good wine refreshes the body and the mind alike," replied the other. It was hard to pour the sake with such shaking hands, harder still to keep his eyes from the beautiful sullen face so near him, and yet he forced the wrinkled eyelids to conceal his dawning joy. In Tatsu's strange submission, the artist felt that the new glory of the Kano name was being born.

III

For a long interval the two men sat in silence. Kano leaned forward from time to time, filling the small cup which Tatsu--half in revery it seemed--had once more drained. The old servant now and again crept in on soundless feet to replace with a freshly heated bottle of sake the one grown cold. So still was the place that the caged cricket hanging from the eaves of Ume's distant room beat time like an elfin metronome.

Two of the four walls of the guest-room were of shoji, a lattice covered with translucent rice-paper. These opened directly upon the garden. The third wall, a solid one of smoke-blue plaster, held the niche called "tokonoma," where pictures are hung and flower vases set.

The remaining wall, opening toward the suite of chambers, was fashioned of four great sliding doors called fusuma, dull silver of background, with paintings of shadowy mountain landscape done centuries before by one of the greatest of the Kanos. It was in front of these doors that Mata now placed two lighted candles in tall bronze holders.

Outside, the garden became a blur of soft darkness. Within, the flickering yellow light of the candles danced through the room, touching now the old face, now the young, each set hard in its own lines of concentrated thought. Weird shadows played about the mountains on the silver doors, and hid in far corners of the matted floor.

All at once the two central fusuma were apart. No slightest sound had been made, yet there, in the narrow rectangle, stood a figure,--surely not of earth,--a slim form in misty gray robes, wearing a crown of intertwisted dragons, with long filigree chains that fell straight to the shoulders. In one hand was held an opened fan of silver.

Tatsu gave a convulsive start, then checked himself. He could not believe the vision real. Not even in his despairing dreams had the Dragon Maid appeared so exquisite. As he gazed, one white-clad foot slid a few inches toward him on the shining floor. Another step, and she was in the room. The fusuma behind her closed as noiselessly as they had opened. Tatsu shivered a little, and stared on. With equal intensity the old man watched the face of Tatsu.

The figure had begun to sway, slightly, at full length, like long bands of perpendicular rain across the face of a mountain. A singing voice began, rich, pa.s.sionate, and low, matching with varying intonation the marvellous postures of fan and throat and body. At first low in sound, almost husky, it flowered to a note long held and gradually deepening in power. It gathered up shadows from the heart and turned them into light.

Ume-ko danced (or so she would have told you) only to fulfil her father's command; yet, before she had reached the room, she knew that it would be such a dance as neither she nor the old artist had dreamed of. That first glimpse of Tatsu's face at the gate had registered for her a notch upon the Revolving Wheel of Life. His first spoken word had aroused in her strange mystic memories from stranger hiding places.

Karma entered with her into the little guest-room where she was to dance and charged the very air with revelation. The words of the old cla.s.sic poem she had in her ignorance believed familiar, she knew that she was now for the first time really to sing.

"Not for one life but for the blossoming of a thousand lives, shall I seek my lover, shall I regain his love," she sang. No longer was it Ume-ko at all, but in actual truth the Dragon Maid, held from her lover by a jealous G.o.d, seeking him through fire and storm and sea, peering for him into the courts of emperors, the shrines of the astonished G.o.ds, the very portals of the under-world.