The Dragon Painter Part 6

It could not be said that the meal was convivial. Ume-ko had received orders from her father not to appear. Tatsu's eyes, even as he ate, roamed ever along the corridors of the house, out to the garden, and pried at the closed edges of the fusuma. This restlessness brought to the host new apprehension. Such tension could not last. Tatsu must be enticed from the house.

After some hesitation and a spasmodic clearing of the throat, the old man asked, "Will you accompany me, young sir, upon a short walk to the city?"

"Why should I go to the city?"

"Ah--er--domo! it is, as you know, the centre of the universe, and has many wonderful sights,--great temples, theatres, wide shops for selling clothes--"

"I care nothing for these things."

"There are gardens, too; and a broad, shining river. Shall we not go to the autumn flowering garden of the Hundred Corners?"

"To such a place as that I would go alone,--or with her," said the boy, his disconcerting gaze fixed on the other's face. "When is the Dragon Maiden to appear?"

Kano looked down upon the matting. He cleared his throat again, drained a fresh cup of tea, and answered slowly, "Since she and I are of the city,--not the mountains,--and must abide in some degree by the city's social laws, you will not see her any more at all, unless it be arranged that you become her husband."

"And then,--if I become what you say,--how soon?" the other panted.

"I shall need to speak with the women of my house concerning this,"

said Kano in a troubled voice. He too, though Tatsu must not dream it, chafed at convention. He longed to set the marriage for next week,--next day, indeed,--and have the waiting over. Kano hated, of all things, to wait. Something might befall this untrained citizen at any hour,--then where would the future of the Kano name be found?

He had scarcely noted how the boy crouched and quivered in his place, as an animal about to spring. This indecision was a goad, a barb. Yet he was helpless! The memory of Ume's whispered words came back: "He, too, has power of the G.o.ds. . . . Believe, sir, that you, as I, are subject to his will." How could it be permitted of the G.o.ds that two beings like themselves,--fledged of divinity, touched with ethereal fire,--were under bondage to this wrinkled fox!

Tatsu flung himself sidewise upon the floor, and made as if to rise; then, in a dull reaction, settled back into his place. "You say she is not to come before me in this house to-day?"

"No, nor on other days, until your marriage."

"Then I go forth into the city,--alone," said the boy. He rose, but Kano stopped him.

"Wait! I shall accompany you, if but a little way. You do not know the roads. You will be lost!"

"I could return to this place from the under-rim of the world," said Tatsu. "Bound, crippled, blindfold,--I should come straight to it."

"Maybe, maybe," said Kano, "nevertheless I will go."

Tatsu would have defied him, outright, but Ume's words remained with him. Nothing mattered, after all, if he was some day to gain her. He must be patient, put a curb upon his moods! This was a fearful task for one like him, but he would strive for self-control just as one throws down a tree to bridge a torrent. After the Dragon Maid was won,--well then,--this halting insect man need not trouble them. They left the house together, Tatsu in scowling silence at the unwelcomed comradeship, Kano hard put to it to match his steps with the boy's long, swinging mountain stride.

"What am I to do with this wild falcon for a month?" thought Kano, half in despair, yet smiling, also, at the humor. "He must be clothed,--but how? I would sooner sheathe a mountain cat in silks! The one hope of existence during this interval is to get him engrossed in painting; but where is he to paint? I dare not keep him in the house with Ume, nor with old Mata, neither, for she might poison him. If only Ando Uchida had not gone away, leaving no address!"

Meantime, in the Kano home, Mata and Ume moved about in different planes of consciousness. The elder was still irritated by the morning's event. She considered it a personal indignity, a family outrage, that her master should walk the streets of Yeddo with a vagabond possessing neither hat nor shoes, and only half a kimono.

Each tended, as usual, her allotted household tasks. There was no change in the outer performance of the hours, but Mata remained alert, disturbed, and the girl tranquilly oblivious. The old face searching with keen eyes the young noted with troubled frown the frequent smile, the intervals of listless dreaming, the sudden starts, as by the p.r.i.c.k of memory still new, and dipped in honey. There seemed to be in Ume-ko a gentle yearning for a human presence, though, to speak truly, Mata could not be certain that she was either heard or seen for fully one half of the time. The hour had almost reached the shadowless one of noon. Ume-ko's work was done. She had taken up her painting, only to put it listlessly to one side. The pretty embroidery frame met the same indignity. She sat now on the kitchen ledge, while Mata made the fire and washed the rice, toying idly with a white pebble chosen for its beauty from thousands on the garden path. Something in the childlike att.i.tude, the placid, irresponsible face, brought the old servant's impatience to a climax. She deliberately hurled a dart.

"I suppose you know, Miss Ume, that your father may actually adopt this goblin from Kiu Shiu!"

"Ah, do you mean Sir Tatsu? Yes, I know. He, my father, has always longed to have a son."

"A son is desirable when the price is not too great," said the old dame, nodding sagely. "You are old enough to realize also, Miss Kano Ume-ko, what is the meaning of adoption into a family where there is a daughter of marriageable age."

Ume's face drooped over until the pebble caught a rosy glow. The old servant chuckled. "Eh, young mistress, you know what I mean? You are thinking of it?"

"I am trying very hard not to think of it," said Ume.

"Ma-a-a! And I have little wonder for that fact! Your father will sacrifice you without a tear,--he cares but for pictures. And Mata is helpless,--Mata cannot help her babe! Ara! It is a world of dust!"

"How old was my mother when she came here, Mata?"

"Just eighteen. Younger than you are now, my treasure."

"She was both beautiful and happy, you have said."

"Yes, both, both! Ah, how time speeds for the old. It seems but a short year or more that we two entered here together, she and I. From childhood I had nursed her. I thought your father old for her, in spite of his young heart and increasing fame. But he loved her truly, and has mourned for her. Even now he prays thrice daily before her ihai on the shrine. And she loved him,--almost too deeply for a woman of her cla.s.s. She loved him, and was happy!"

"Only one year!" sighed Ume. "But it must be a great thing to be happy even for one year. Some people are not happy ever at all."

"One must not think of personal happiness,--it is wicked. Does not even your old mumbling abbot on the hill tell you so much? And now, of all times, do not start the dreaming. You will be sacrificed to art,"

said Mata, gloomily.

"Do I look like my mother, Mata San?"

The old dame wiped her eyes on her sleeve that she might see more clearly. Something in the girl's pure, upraised face caught at her heart, and the tears came afresh. "Wait," she whispered; "stay where you are, and you shall see your mother's face." She went into her tiny chamber, and from her treasures brought out a metal mirror given her by the young wife, Uta-ko. "Look,--close," she said, placing it in Ume's hand. "That is the bride of nineteen years ago. Never have you looked so like her as at this hour!"

Kano came back alone,--tired, dusty, and discouraged. Tatsu had escaped him, he said, at the first glimpse of the Sumida River. There was no telling when he might return,--whether he would ever return. To attempt control of Tatsu was like caging a storm in bamboo bars.

Mata's eyes narrowed at this recital. "Yet I fervently thank the G.o.ds for him," said the speaker, sharply, in defiance of her look.

Restored to comparative serenity, Kano, later in the afternoon, sent for his daughter, and condescended to unfold to her those plans in which she played a vital part.

"Ume-ko, my child, you have always been a good and obedient daughter.

I shall expect no opposition from you now," he began, in the manner of a patriarch.

Ume bowed respectfully. "Thank you, dear father. What has arisen that you think I may wish to oppose?"

"I did not say that I expected you to oppose anything. I said, on the contrary, it was something I expected you not to oppose."

"I await respectfully the words which shall tell me what it is I am not to oppose," said Ume-ko, quite innocently, with another bow. Kano put on his horn-rimmed spectacles. There was something about his daughter not altogether rea.s.suring. His prearranged sentences began to slip away, like sand.

"I will speak briefly. I wish you to become the wife of the Dragon Painter, that we may secure him to the race of Kano. He has no name of his own. He is the greatest painter since Sesshu!" The speaker waved his hands. All had been said.

In the deep, following silence each knew that old Mata's ear felt, like a hand, at the crevice of the shoji.

"Father, are you sure,--have you yet spoken to--to--him," Ume-ko faltered at last. "Would he augustly condescend?"

"Condescend!" echoed the old man with a laugh. "Why, he demanded it last night, even in the first hour of meeting. He was angered that I did not give you up at once. He says you are his already. Oh, he is strange and wild, this youth. There are no reins to hold him, but--he is a painter!"

A grunt of derision came from the kitchen wall. Ume sat motionless, but her face was growing very pale.

"Well," said her father with impatience, "do you agree? And what is the earliest possible date?"

"I must consult with Mata," whispered the girl.