The Dragon Painter Part 4

And Tatsu listened without sound or motion; only his eyes burned like beacons in a windless night. Kano wriggled himself backward on the matting that the triumph of his face might not be seen. Now and again he leaned forward stealthily and filled Tatsu's cup.

The unaccustomed fluid was already pouring in a fiery torrent through the boy's vivid brain. His hands, slipped within the tattered blue sleeves, grasped tightly each the elbow of the other arm. His ecstacy was a drug, enveloping his senses; again it was a fire that threatened the very altar of his soul. Through it all he, as Ume-ko, realized fulfilment. Here in this desert of men's huts he had gained what all the towering mountains had not been able to bestow. Here was his bride, made manifest, his mate, the Dragon Maid, found at last through centuries of barren searching! Surely, if he should spring now to his feet, catch her to him and call upon his mountain G.o.ds for aid, they would be hurled together to some paradise of love where only he and she and love would be alive! He trembled and caught in his breath with a sob. Kano glided a few feet nearer, and struck the matting sharply with his hand.

Suddenly the dance was over. Ume-ko, quivering now in every limb, sank to the floor. She bowed first to the guest of honor, then to her father. Touching her wet eyes with a silken sleeve she moved backward to the rear of the room where she seated herself upright, motionless as the wall itself, between the two tall candles. Tatsu's eyes never left her face. Old Kano, in the background, rocked to and fro, and, after a short pause of waiting, clapped his hands for Mata.

"Hai-ie-ie-ie-ie!" came the thin voice, long drawn out, from the kitchen. She entered with a tray of steaming food, placing it before Tatsu. A second tray was brought for the master, and a fresh bottle of wine. Ume-ko sat motionless against the silver fusuma, an ivory image, crowned and robed in shimmering gray.

The odor of good food attracted Tatsu's senses if not his eyes. He ate greedily, hastily, not seeing what he ate. His manners were those of an untutored mountain peasant.

"Dragon Maid," purred Kano, "weariness has come upon you. Retire, I pray, and deign to rest."

"No!" said Tatsu, loudly. "She shall not leave this room."

"My concern is for the august maiden who has found favor in your sight," replied Kano, with a deprecating gesture. "Here, Tatsu, let me fill your cup."

Tatsu threw his cup face down to the floor, and put his lean, brown hand upon it. "I drink no more until my cup of troth with the maiden yonder."

Ume-ko's startled eyes flew to his. She trembled, and the blood slowly ebbed from her face, leaving it pale and luminous with a sort of wonder.

"Go!" said Kano again, and, in a daze, the girl rose and vanished from the room.

Tatsu had hurled himself toward her, but it was too late. He turned angrily to his host. "She is mine! Why did you send her away?"

"Gently, gently," cooed the other. "In this incarnation she is called my daughter."

"I believe it not!" cried Tatsu. "How came she under bondage to you?

Have I not sought her through a thousand lives? She is mine!"

"Even so, in this life I am her father, and it is my command that she will obey."

Tatsu rocked and writhed in his place.

"She is a good daughter," pursued the other, amiably. "She has never yet failed in docility and respect. Without my consent you shall not touch her,--not even her sleeve."

"I have sought her through a thousand lives. I will slay him who tries to keep her from me!" raved the boy.

"To kill her father would scarcely be a fortunate beginning," said Kano, tranquilly. "Your hope lies in safer paths, dear youth. There are certain social conventions attached even to a Dragon Maid. Now if you will calm yourself and listen to reason----"

Tatsu sprang to his feet and struck himself violently upon the brow.

The hot wine was making a whirlpool of his brain. "Reason! convention!

safety! I hate them all! Oh, you little men of cities! Farmyard fowls and swine, running always to one sty, following always one lead,--doing things in the one way that other base creatures have marked out----"

Kano laughed aloud. His whole life had been a protest against conventionality, and this impa.s.sioned denunciation came from a new world. The sound maddened Tatsu. He leaped to the veranda, now a mere ledge thrust out over darkness, threw an arm about the slender corner-post, and strained far out, gasping, into the night. Kano filled his pipe with leisurely deliberation. The time was past for fear.

In a few moments the boy returned, his face ugly, black, and sullen.

"I will be your son if you give me the maiden," he muttered.

"Come now, this is much better," said Kano, with a genial smile. "We shall discuss the matter like rational men."

Tatsu ground his teeth so that the other heard him.

"Have a pipe," said Kano.

"I want no pipe."

"At least make yourself at ease upon the cushion while I speak."

"I am more at ease without it," said the boy, flinging the velvet square angrily across the room. "Ugh! It is like sitting on a dead cat. Kindly speak without further care for me. I am at ease!"

Kano glanced at the burning eyes, the quivering face and twitching muscles with a smile. The intensity of ardor touched him. He drew a short sigh, the look of complacency left his for an instant, and he began, deliberately, "As you may have gathered from my letter, I am without a son."

Tatsu nodded shortly.

"Worse than this, among all my disciples here in Yeddo there has appeared none worthy to inherit the name and traditions of my race.

Now, dear youth, when I first saw these paintings of yours, the hope stirred in me that you might be that one."

"Do you mean that I should paint things as paltry as your own?"

"No, not exactly, though even from my poor work you might gain some valuable lessons of technique."

"I know not that word," said Tatsu. "When I must paint, I paint. What has all this to do with the Dragon Maiden?"

"Softly, softly; we are coming to that now," said Kano. "If, after trial, I should find you really worthy of adoption, nothing could be more appropriate than for you to become the husband of my daughter."

Tatsu dug his nails into the matting of the floor.

"Suitable--appropriate--husband!" he groaned aloud. "Farmyard cackle,--all of it. Oh, to be joined in the manner of such earthlings to a Dragon Maid like this! Old man, cannot even you feel the horror of it? No, your eyes blink like a pig that has eaten. You cannot see.

She should be made mine among storm and wind and mist on some high mountain peak, where the G.o.ds would lean to us, and great straining forests roar out our marriage hymn!"

"There is indeed something about it that appeals to me. It would make a fine subject for a painting."

"Oh, oh," gasped Tatsu, and clutched at his throat. "When will you give her to me, Kano Indara? Shall it be to-night?"

"To-night? Are you raving!" cried the astonished Kano. "It would be at the very least a month."

Tatsu rose and staggered to the veranda. "A month!" he whispered to the stars. "Shall I live at all? Good-night, old man of clay," he called suddenly, and with a light step was down upon the garden path.

Kano hurried to him. "Stop, stop, young sir," he called half clicked, now, with laughter. "Do not go in this rude way. You are my guest.

The women are even now preparing your bed."

"I lie not on beds," jeered Tatsu through the darkness. "Vile things they are, like the ooze that smears the bottom of a lake. I climb this hillside for my couch. To-morrow, with the sun, I shall return!"

The voice, trailing away through silence and the night, had a tone of supernatural sweetness. When it had quite faded Kano stared on, for a long time, into the fragrant solitude. Stars were out now by thousands, a gold mosaic set into a high purple dome. Off to the south a wide blur of artificial light hung above the city, the visible expression, as it were, of the low, human roar of life, audible even in this sheltered nook. To the north, almost it seemed within touch of his hands, the temple cliff rose black, formidable, and impressive, a gigantic wall of silence. The camphor tree overhead was thrown out darkly against the stars, like its own shadow. The velvety boom of the temple bell, striking nine, held in its echoes the color and the softness of the hour.

Kano, turning at last from the veranda, slowly re-entered the guest-room, and seated himself upon one of the cushions that had aroused Tatsu's scorn. A dead cat,--forsooth! Well to old bones a dead cat might be better than no cushion! Mata had come in very softly. "I prayed the G.o.ds for him," Kano was muttering aloud, "and I thank them that he is here. To-morrow I shall make offering at the temple. Yet I have thanks, too, that there is but one of him. Ah, Mata,--you? My hot bath, is it ready? And, friend Mata, do you recall a soothing draught you once prepared for me at a time of great mental strain,--there was, I think, something I wished to do with a picture, and the picture would not allow it. I should like a draught like that to-night."

"Kashikomarimas.h.i.ta. I recall it," said old Mata, grimly, "and I shall make it strong, for you have something worse than pictures to deal with now."

"Thanks. I was sure you would remember," smiled the old man, and Mata, disarmed of her cynicism, could say no more.