The Dragon Painter Part 5

Ume remained in her chamber. She had not been seen since the dance.

All her fusuma and shoji were closed. Mata, in leaving her master, looked tentatively toward this room, but after an imperceptible pause kept on down the central pa.s.sageway of the house to the bathroom, at the far end. The place smelled of steam, of charcoal fumes, and cedar wood. With two long, thin iron "fire-sticks," Mata poked, from the top, the heap of darkening coals in the cylindrical furnace that was built into one end of the tub. For the protection of the bather this was surrounded with a wooden lattice which, being always wet when the furnace was in use, never charred. The tub itself was of sugi-wood.

After years of service it still gave out unfailingly its aromatic breath, and felt soft to the touch, like young leaves. Sighing heavily, the old servant bared her arm and leaned over to stir the water, to draw down by long, elliptical swirls of motion the heated upper layers into cold strata at the bottom. She then wiped her arm on her ap.r.o.n and went to the threshold of the guest-room to inform the waiting occupant. "In ten minutes more, without fail, the water will be at right heat for your augustness."

Now, in the kitchen, a great searching among jars and boxes on high shelves told of preparation for the occasional brew. Again she thought of calling Ume. Ume could reach the highest shelf without standing on an inverted rice-pot, or the even more precarious fish-cleaning bench.

And again, for a reason not quite plain to herself, Mata decided not to call. She threw a fresh handful of twigs and dried ferns to the sleeping ashes of the brazier, set a copper skillet deep into the answering flame, and began dropping dried bits of herbs into the simmering water. Instantly the air was changed,--was tinged and interpenetrated with hurrying, spicy fumes, with hints of a bitter bark, of jellied gums, of resin, and a compelling odor which should have been sweet, but was only nauseating. The steam a.s.sumed new colors as it rose. Each sprite of aromatic perfume when released plunged into noiseless tumult with opposing fumes. The kitchen was a crucible, and the old dame a mediaeval alchemist. The flames and smoke striving upward, as if to reach her bending face, made it glow with the hue of the copper kettle, a wrinkled copper, etched deep with lines of life, of merriment, perplexity, of shrewd and practical experience.

As she stirred, testing by nose and eye the rapid completion of her work, she was determining to put aside for her own use a goodly share of the beneficent fluid. The coming of the wild man had unnerved her terribly. In the threatening family change she could perceive nothing but menace. Apprehension even now weighed down upon her, a foreshadowing of evil that had, somehow, a present hostage in the deep silence of Ume's room. Of what was her nursling thinking? How had it seemed to her, so guarded, and so delicately reared, this being summoned like a hired geisha to dance before a stranger,--a ragged, unkempt, hungry stranger! Even her father's well-known madness for things of art could scarcely atone to his child for this indignity.

Kano had gone promptly to his bath. He was now emerging. His bare feet grazed the wooden corridor. Mata ran to him. "Good! Ah, that was good!" he said heartily. "Five years of aches have I left in the tub!" Within his chamber the andon was already lighted, and the long, silken bed-cushions spread. Mata a.s.sisted him to slip down carefully between the mattress and the thin coverlid. She patted and arranged him as she would a child, and then went to fetch the draught. "Mata, thou art a treasure," he said, as she knelt beside him, the bowl outstretched. He drained the last drop, and the old friends exchanged smiles of answering satisfaction. Before leaving him she trimmed and lowered the andon so that its yellow light would be a mere glimmer in the darkness.

She moved now deliberately to Ume's fusuma, tapping lightly on the lacquered frame. "Miss Ume! O Jo San!" she called. Nothing answered.

Mata parted the fusuma an inch. The j.a.panese matted floor, even in darkness, gives out a sort of ghostly, phosph.o.r.escent glow. Thus, in the unlit s.p.a.ce Mata could perceive that the girl lay at full length, her Dragon Robe changed to an ordinary house dress, her long hair unbound, her face turned downward and hidden on an outstretched arm.

It was not a pose of grief, neither did it hint of slumber.

"Honorable Young Lady of the House," said Mata, now more severely, "I came to announce your bath. The august father having already entered and withdrawn, it is your turn."

This time Ume answered her, not, however, changing her position. "I do not care to take the bath to-night. You enter, I pray, without further waiting. I--I--should like to be left alone, nurse. I myself will unroll the bed and light the andon."

Mata leaned nearer. Her voice was a theatrical whisper. "Is it that you are outraged, my Ume-ko, at your father's strange demand upon you?

I was myself angered. He would scarcely have done so much for a Prince of the Blood,--and to make you appear before so crude and ignorant a thing as that--"

Ume sat upright. "No, I am angered at nothing. I only wish to be alone. Ah, nurse, you have always spoiled me,--give me my way."

Mata went off grumbling. She wished that Ume had shown a more natural indignation. The hot bath, however, notwithstanding Kano's five lost years of pain presumably in solution, brought her ease of body, as did the soothing potion, ease of mind.

All night long the old folks heavily slept; and all night long little Ume-ko drifted in a soft, slow rising flood of consciousness that was neither sleep nor waking, though wrought of the intertwining strands of each. Again she saw the dark face in the gateway. It was a mere picture in a frame, set for an artist's joy. Then it seemed a summons, calling her to unfamiliar paths,--a prophecy, a clew. Again she heard his voice,--an echo made of all these things, and more. She tried to force herself to think of him merely as an artist would think; how the lines of the shoulders and the throat flowed upward, like dark flame, to the altar of his face. How the hair grew in flame upon his brow, how the dark eyes, fearless and innocent with the look of primeval youth, indeed, held a strange human pain of searching. The mere remembered pictures of him rose and fell with her as sea-flowers, or long river gra.s.s; but when there came remembered shiver of his words, "I drink no more until my cup of troth with the maiden yonder!" then all drifting ceased; illusion was at an end. With a gasp she felt herself falling straight down through a swirling vortex of sensation, to the very sand-bed of the stream. Now she was sitting upright (the sand-bed had suddenly become the floor of her little room), her hands pressing a heart that was trying to escape, her young eyes straining through the darkness to see,--ah!--she could see nothing at all for the shining!

She listened now with bated breath, thinking that by some unconscious cry she might have aroused the others. No, Kano breathed on softly, regularly, in the next room; while from the kitchen wing came unfaltering the beat of Mata's nasal metronome.

In one such startled interval of waking her caged cricket had given out its plaintive cry. All at once it seemed to Ume-ko an unbearable thing for any spark of life to be so prisoned. She longed to set him free, but even though she opened wide her shoji, the outer night-doors, the amado stretched, a relentless opaque wall, along the four sides of the house.

She lay quiet now for a long time. "I will return with the sun," he had said. She wished that the cricket were indeed outside, and could tell her of the first dawn-stirring. It was very close and dark in the little room. She had not lighted the andon after all. It could not be so dark outside. With very cautious fingers she began now to separate the shoji that opened on the garden side. A breath of exquisite night air rushed in to her from the lattices above the amado. It would be a difficult matter to push even one of these aside without waking the house. Yet, there were two things in her favor; the unusually heavy sleep of her companions and the fact that the amado had a starting point in their long grooves from a shallow closet very near her room.

So instead of having to remove the whole chain, each clasping by a metal hand, its neighbor, she had but to unbar the initial panel, coax it noiselessly apart just far enough to emit a not too bulky form, and then the night would be hers.

There had been in the girl's life so little need of cunning or of strategy that her innocent adventure now brought a disturbing sense of crime. She had unlatched the first amado in safety, and had her white arms braced to push it to one side, when, suddenly she thought, "I am acting like a thief! Perhaps I am feeling like a thief! This is a terrible thing and must displease the G.o.ds." Her hands dropped limply, she must not continue with this deed. Somewhere near her feet the cricket gave out an importunate chirp. She stooped to him, feeling about for the little residence with tender, groping hands. She must give him freedom, though she dared not take it for herself. Yet it would be sweet to breathe the world for its own sake once more before he--and the sun--returned.

The amado went back as if of itself. In an instant Ume's face was among the dew-wet leaves of the plum tree. Oh, it was sweet! The night smelled of silence and the stars. She threw back her head to drink it like a liquid. She lifted the insect in its cage. By holding it high, against a star of special brightness, she could see the tiny bit of life gazing at her through its bars. She opened the door of the cage, and set it among the twigs of the plum. Then barefooted, ungirdled, with hair unbound, she stepped down upon the stone beneath the tree, and then to the garden path.

IV

The pebbles of the garden were slippery and cold under the feet that pressed them. Also they hurt a little. Ume longed to return for her straw sandals, but this freedom of the night was already far too precious for jeopardy. She caught her robe about her throat and was glad of the silken shawl of her long hair. How thickly shone the stars! It must be close upon the hour of their waning, yet how big and soft; and how companionable! She stretched her arms up to them, moving as if they drew her down the path. They were more real, indeed, than the dim and preternatural s.p.a.ce in which she walked.

She looked slowly about upon that which should have been commonplace and found the outlines alone to be unaltered. There were the hillock, the house, the thick hedge-lines square at the corners with black bars hard as wood against the purple night; there were the winding paths and little courts of open gravel. She could have put her hand out, saying, "Here, on this point, should be the tall stone lantern; here, in this sheltered curve, a fern." Both lantern and fern would have been in place; and yet, despite these evidences of the usual, all that once made the sunlit garden s.p.a.ce an individual spot, was, in this dim, ghostly air, transformed. The spirit of the whole had taken on weird meaning. It was as if Mata's face looked suddenly upon her with the old abbot's eyes. Fantastic possibilities crouched, ready to spring from every shadow. The low shrubs held themselves in att.i.tudes of flight. This was a world in which she had no part. She knew herself a paradox, the violator of a mood; but the enchantment held her.

She had reached now the edge of the pond. It was a surface of polished lacquer, darker than the night, and powdered thick with the gold of reflected stars. Leaning over, she marvelled at the silhouette of her own slim figure. It did not seem to have an actual place among these frail phantasmagoria. As she stared on she noticed that the end of the pond farthest from her, to the west, quivered and turned gray. She looked quickly upward and around. Yes, there to the east was the answering blur of light. Dawn had begun.

She ran now to the top of the moon-viewing hill. The earth was wider here; the dawn more at home. Below her where the city used to be was no city, only a white fog-sea, without an island. The cliff, black at the base, rising gradually into thinner gray, drove through the air like the edge of a coming world. A chill breeze swept out from the hollow, breathing of waking gra.s.ses and of dew. The girl shivered, but it was with ecstacy. "I climb this hillside for my couch, to-night!"

Was he too waking, watching, feeling himself intruder upon a soundless ritual? There was a hissing noise as of a fawn hurrying down a tangled slope. The hedge near the cliff end of the garden dipped and squeaked and shook indignant plumes after a figure that had desecrated its green guardianship, and was now striding ruthlessly across the enclosure.

Ume heard and saw; then wrung her hands in terror. It was he, of course,--the Dragon Painter; and he would speak with her. What could she do? Family honor must be maintained, and so she could not cry for help. Why had her heart tormented her to go into the night? Why had she not thought of this possibility? Because of it, life, happiness, everything might be wrecked, even before they had dared to think of happiness by name!

Tatsu had reached her. Leaning close he set his eyes to her face as one who drinks deep and silently.

"I must not remain. Oh, sir, let me pa.s.s!" she whispered.

He did not speak or try to touch her. A second gust of wind came from the cliff, blowing against his hand a long tress of her hair. It was warm and perfumed, and had the clinging tenderness of youth. He shivered now, as she was doing, and stood looking down at his hand.

Ume made a swift motion as if to pa.s.s him; but he threw out the barrier of an arm.

"I have been calling you all the night. Now, at last, you have come.

Why did you never answer me upon the mountains?"

"Indeed, I could not. I was not permitted. As you must see for yourself, lord, in this incarnation I am but a mortal maiden."

"I do not see it for myself," said Tatsu, with a low, triumphant laugh.

"I see something different!" Suddenly he reached forward, caught the long ends of her hair and held them out to left and right, the full width of his arms. They stood for a moment in intense silence, gazing each into the face of the other. The rim of the dawn behind them cut, with its flat, gold disc, straight down to the heart of the world.

"You a mortal!" said the boy again, exultantly. "Why, even now, your face is the white breast of a great sea-bird, your hair, its shining wings, and your soul a message that the G.o.ds have sent to me! Oh, I know you for what you are,--my Dragon Maid, my bride! Have I not sought you all these years, tracing your face on rocks and sand-beds of my hills, hanging my prayers to every blossoming tree? Come, you are mine at last; here is your master! We will escape together while the stupid old ones sleep! Come, soul of my soul, to our mountains!"

He would have seized her, but a quick, pa.s.sionate gesture of repulsion kept him back. "I am the child of Kano Indara," she said. "He, too, has power of the G.o.ds, and I obey him. Oh, sir, believe that you, as I, are subject to his will, for if you set yourself against him--"

"Kano Indara concerns me not at all," cried Tatsu, half angrily. "It is with you,--with you alone, I speak!"

Ume poised at the very tip of the hill. "Look, sir,--the plum tree,"

she whispered, pointing. So sudden was the change in voice and manner that the other tripped and was caught by it. "That longest, leafy branch touches the very wall of my room," she went on, creeping always a little down the hill. "If you again will write such things to me, trusting your missive to that branch, I shall receive it, and--will answer. Oh, it is a bold, unheard-of thing for a girl to do, but I shall answer."

"I should like better that you meet me here each morning at this hour,"

said Tatsu.

The girl looked about her swiftly, gave a little cry, and clasped her hands together. "See, lord, the day comes fast. Mata, my old nurse, may already be astir. I saw a flock of sparrows fly down suddenly to the kitchen door. And there, above us, on the great camphor tree, the sun has smitten with a fist of gold!"

Tatsu gazed up, and when his eyes returned to earth he found himself companionless. He threw himself down, a miserable heap, clasping his knees upon the hill. No longer was the rosy dawn for him. He found no timid beauty in the encroaching day. His sullen look fastened itself upon the amado beneath the plum tree. The panels were now tightly closed. The house itself, soundless and gray in the fast brightening s.p.a.ce, mocked him with impa.s.sivity.

A little later, when the neighborhood reverberated to the slamming of amado and the sharp rattle of paper dusters against taut shoji panes; when fragrant f.a.ggot smoke went up from every cottage, and the street cries of itinerant venders signalled domestic buying for the day, Mata discovered the wild man in the garden, and roused her sleeping master with the news. She went, too, to Ume's room, and was rea.s.sured to see the girl apparently in slumber within a neat bed, the andon burning temperately in its corner, and the whole place eloquent of innocence and peace, Kano shivered himself into his day clothes (the process was not long), and hurried out to meet his guest.

"O Haiyo gozaimasu!" he called. "You have found a good spot from which to view the dawn."

"Good morning!" said Tatsu, looking about as if to escape.

"Come, enter my humble house with me, young sir. Breakfast will soon be served."

Tatsu rose instantly, though the gesture was far from giving an effect of acquiescence. He shook his cramped limbs with as little ceremony as if Kano were a shrub, and then turned, with the evident intention of flight. Suddenly the instinct of hunger claimed him. Breakfast! That had a pleasant sound. And where else was he to go for food! He wheeled around to his waiting host. "I thank you. I will enter!" he said, and attempted an archaic bow.

Mata brought in to them, immediately, hot tea and a small dish of pickled plums. Kano drew a sigh of relief as he saw Tatsu take up a plum, and then accept, from the servant's hands, a cup of steaming tea.

These things promised well for future docility.