The Dragon Painter Part 9

In such wise did the old servant fret and ponder, but no a.s.surance came. A true insight into art might have opened many doors to her.

Yet, through a life devoted to the externals of it, Mata had been tolerant of beauty, rather than at one with it. The impractical view of life which art seemed to demand of its devotees was enough to arouse suspicion, if not her actual dislike. Uchida was a hero because he had been bold enough to shake himself free from lethargic influences, and achieve a shining and substantial success.

But even had the key of art been thrust into the old dame's groping hand, and even had her master guided her, there was an inner chamber of Ume's heart which they could not have found. Ume herself had not known of it until that first instant when, now three weeks ago, a strange young face, hung about with shadows, had peered into her father's gate.

With the first sound of his voice, she had entered in, had knelt before a shrine whereon, wrapped in fire, a Secret lay. Ever since she had needed to guard that shrine, not, indeed, for fear that the light would falter, but rather that it might not leap up, and lay waste her being.

As one guards a flame, so Ume-ko, with silence and prayer and self-enforced tranquillity, guarded the sacred spark from winds of pa.s.sion. Each day at dawn, and again at twilight of each day, it flamed high and was hard to conquer, for with dawn a letter was hers--held in the night-wet branches of her dragon-plum, and each night when Mata and her father thought her sleeping, an answer was written, and committed to the keeping of the tree.

When Tatsu did not paint, or rest from sheer exhaustion, he was writing. Ume, bending above his words, shivering at times, or weeping, marvelled that the tissue had not charred beneath the thoughts burned into it. Tatsu's phrases were like his paintings, unusual, vital, almost demoniac in force, shot through and through at times with the bolt of an almost unbearable beauty. Her own words answered his, as the tree-tops answer storm, with music. Verse alone could ease the girl of her ecstacy, and each recorded and triumphed in the demolition of yet another day. "Another stone, beloved, thrust down from the dungeon wall that severs us!"

Swiftly the heap of wedding garments grew. There were delicate kimonos, as thin and gray as mist, with sunset-colored inner robes of silk; gowns of linen and cotton for indoor wear; bath and sleeping robes with great designs of flowers, birds, or landscapes; silken bed-quilts and bright floor cushions; great sashes crusted like bark with patternings of gold; dainty toilet accessories of hairpins, girdles, collarettes, shopping-bags, purses, jewel-cases,--and new sandals of various sorts, each with velvet thongs of some delicate hue.

The sewing was, of course, done at home. Mata would have trusted this sacred rite to no domination but her own. She worked incessantly, planning, cutting, scolding,--hurrying off to the shopping district for some forgotten item, conferring with Ando Uchida about the details of Tatsu's outfit, then returning, flushed with success and importance, to new home triumphs.

Ume sewed steadily all day. Her painting materials had been put meekly aside, and, as a further precaution at old Mata's hands, hidden under the kitchen flooring. Toward the last it was found necessary to employ an a.s.sistant, a seamstress, known of old to Mata. Her companionship, as well as her sewing, proved a boon. Seated upon the springy matting, with waves of shimmering silk tumultuous about them, the old dames chatted incessantly of other brides and other wedding outfits they had known. Marvellous were their tales of married life, some of them designed to cheer, others to warn the silent little third figure, that of the bride-to-be. As a matter of fact, Ume never listened. The noise and buzz of incessant conversation affected her pleasantly, but remotely, as the chatter of distant sparrows. The girl had too much within herself to think of.

"May Kwannon have mercy upon my young mistress," sighed the nurse, one day, as Ume left the room.

"Does she require mercy? I thought--she appears to me honorably--er--undisturbed," ventured the seamstress, with one swift upward look of interest.

"Yes, she appears,--many of us appear,--but can she be happy? That is what I wish to know. The creature she is being forced to marry is more like a mountain-lion than a man!"

"Ma-a-a! Is he dangerous? Will he bite her?" questioned the other, hopefully.

"Amida alone knows what he will do with her," croaked Mata, in a sepulchral voice.

The subject was one not to be readily relinquished. "The facts being honorably as you relate," began the hired seamstress, her needle held carefully against the light for threading, "how is it that the august father of the ill.u.s.trious young lady permits such a marriage?"

Mata's eyes gleamed sharp and bright as the needle. "Because he is as mad as the wild man, and all for pictures! They would strip their own skins off if that made better parchment. Miss Ume has been influenced by them, and now is to be sacrificed. Alas! the evil day!" and Mata wiped away some genuine tears on the hem of a night-robe she had finished.

"O kinodoku Sama, my spirit is poisoned by your grief," murmured the other, sympathetically. "Yet, in your place, I should find great comfort in the outfit of your mistress. Never, even in the sewing halls of princes, could more beautiful silks be gathered." She looked about slowly, with the air of a professional who sees something really worthy of regard.

Mata's face cleared. "Since the G.o.ds allow it, I should not complain,"

she admitted. "Indeed, Mr. Uchida and I are doing well by the young couple in the matter of silks and house furnishings. And--whisper this not--no one but he and I dream from what source these splendid fabrics come!"

Mata had thrust a poisoned arrow of curiosity into her listener, and knew it. Some day, perhaps the very day before the wedding, she might reveal it. For the present, as she said, no one but herself and Uchida knew.

More than once during sewing hours, Ume-ko herself had wondered how her father was able to give her silks of such beauty and variety. With the unthrift of the true artist, Kano was always poor. The old man would have been as surprised and far angrier than his daughter, had he known that Tatsu's pictures, stolen craftily by the confederates, Uchida and Mata, and sold in Yokohama for about a tenth of their true value, were the source of this sudden affluence. Tatsu remained ignorant, also.

But, provided they took no image of Ume's face, he would not have cared at all. New garments, new mats, dainty household furnishings, were showered upon him, too; but they might have been autumn leaves, for all the interest he showed.

To gain his Dragon Maid,--to know that in this life she was irrevocably his,--that was Tatsu's one conscious thought.

The wedding day came at last. Ume-ko had written no letter on the eve of it, but all night long she felt that he was near her, leaning on the breast of the plum tree, scaling the steeps above her, wandering, a restless ghost of joy, about the moon-silvered cemetery, speaking perhaps, as equal, to his primeval G.o.ds. So close, already were these two, that even in absence, each felt always something of the other's mood. It was a sleepless night to the girl, also. She cowered close about the Secret, until its fierce light scorched her. She pressed down her lids with strong, white fingers, but the glory streamed through. So, tortured by intolerable bliss, she suffered, until the dawn came in.

Quite early in the day the bride's trousseau and gifts were sent to Tatsu's home. They made a train that filled the neighbors' eyes with wonder and Mata's swelling heart with pride. There were lacquered chests and cases of drawers, all filled with clothing. Each great square package was covered with a decorated cloth, and swung from a gilded staff borne on the shoulders of two stout coolies. There were boxes of cakes, fruit, and eggs; and jinrikishas piled with a medley of gifts. Even Kano was impressed. Uchida rubbed his two fat hands together and laughed at everything. Ume-ko, watching the moving shadows pa.s.s under her father's gate-roof, closed her eyes quickly and caught her breath. The next gift from the Kano home was to be herself.

By this time autumn was upon the year. A few early chrysanthemums opened small golden suns in the garden. Dodan bushes and maples hinted at a crimson splendor soon to follow. The icho trees stood like pyramids of gold; and suzuki gra.s.s upon the hillsides brushed a cloudless blue sky with silken fingers. In the garden, autumn insects sang. Ume-ko's kirigirisu which, some weeks before, she had released from its cage, had, as if in grat.i.tude made a home among the lichens of the big plum tree. Ume believed that she always knew its voice from among the rest, no matter how full the chorus of silver chiming.

She had gone back to her room, and sat now, in the centre of it, staring toward the garden. Noon had crept upon it, devouring all shadow. Her eyes saw little but the golden blur. A fusuma opened softly, and two women, Mata and the attendant seamstress, came mincing and smirking toward her, each with an armful of white silk. Ume rose like an automaton. They began her toilet, talking the while in low voices. They robed her in white with a thin lining-edge of crimson, and threw over her shining hair a veil of tissue. Some one outside called that the bride's kuruma was at the gate. Old Kano entered the room, smiling. His steps creaked and rustled with new silk. Ume turned for one fleeting glimpse of her plum tree. It seemed to stir and wave green leaves toward her. With head down-bent, the girl followed her father through the house.

Mata helped them into the two new, shining jinrikishas, a dragon-crest blazoned on the one for Ume's use. She scolded the kuruma men in her shrill voice, giving a dozen instructions in one sentence, and pretending anger at their answering jests. On the doorstep stood the little seamstress ready to cast a handful of dried peas. When Kano and Ume-ko were off, Mata scrambled excitedly into her own vehicle. Her human steed, turning round for an impudent and good-natured stare, drawled out an unprintable remark. The seamstress shrieked "sayonara"

and pelted s.p.a.ce with the peas. Afterward she ran on foot down the slope of the hill and joined the smiling crowd of lookers-on. Soon it was over. The peddler picked up his pack, and the children their toys.

Gates opened or slid aside in panels to receive their owners. The jangling of small gate-bells made the hillside merry for an instant, then busy silence again took possession.

No one at all was left in the Kano home. The little cottage of Ume's birth, of her short, happy life and dawning fame, drew itself together in the unusual silence. Sunshine fell thick upon the garden, and warmed even the lazy gold-fish in their pigmy lake. In the plum-tree branch that touched Ume-ko's abandoned chamber, the cricket chirped softly to himself. He knew the Secret!

VII

Six days were gone. The marriage was a thing accomplished, yet old Kano sat, lean, dispirited, drowned apparently in depths of fathomless despair, in the centre of his corner room. Mata, busy about her household tasks, sometimes pa.s.sed across the matting, or flaunted a dusting-cloth within a partly opened shoji. At such moments her look and gesture were eloquent of disdain. Her patience, long tried by the kindly irritable master, was about at an end. Surely a spoiled old man-child like the crouching figure yonder would exhaust the forbearance of Jizo Sama himself!

Six days ago he had been happy,--indeed, too happy! for he and Uchida had drunk themselves into a condition of giggling bliss, and had needed to be taken away bodily from the bridal bower, hoisted into a double jinrikisha, and driven off ignominiously, still embracing, still pledging with tears an eternity of brotherhood. Yes, on that day Kano had hailed the earth as one broad, enamelled sake-cup, the air, a new infusion of heavenly brew. But now----

"Mata!" the thin voice came, "are you certain that this is but the sixth day of my son's wedding?"

"It is but the sixth day, indeed, since your daughter's sacrifice to a barbarian, if that is what you mean," returned Mata, with a belligerent flourish of her paper duster.

"That is what I meant," said the other, pa.s.sively. "Then the week is not to be finished until to-morrow at noon. Twenty-four hours of torture to me! I suppose that the ingrates will count time to the last shadow! Oh, Mata, Mata, you once were a faithful servant! Why did you let me make that foolish promise of giving them an entire week? A day would have been ample, then Tatsu and I could have begun to paint."

"Ara!" said Mata, uttering a sound more forcible than respectful. "Had it been a decent person thus married to my young mistress, instead of a mountain sprite, they should have had a month together!"

Kano groaned under the suggestion. "Then, heartless woman, at the end of the month you would have been without a master; for surely my sufferings would, in a month, have shrunk me to an insect gaki chirping from a tree."

"It is to me a matter of honorable amazement that in one week you are not already a gaki, with your incessant complaints," retorted the old dame, still unrelenting.

"If I could be sure he is painting all this interminable time," said Kano to himself, wringing the nervous hands together.

"You may be augustly sure he is not," chuckled the cruel Mata.

The old man got hastily to his feet. "Mata, Mata, your tongue is that of a viper,--a green viper, with stripes. I will go from its reach into the highway. Of course my son is painting. What else could he be doing?"

The old dame's laugh fell like salt upon a wound. Kano caught up a bamboo cane and, hatless, went into the street. It was odd, how often during this week he found need of walking; still stranger, how often his wanderings led him to the dodan hedge enclosing Tatsu's cottage.

He paused at the gate now, tormented by the reflection that he himself had drawn the bolt. How still it was in there! Not even a sparrow chirped. Could something be wrong? Suddenly a laugh rang out,--the low spontaneous laugh of a happy girl. Kano clutched the gate-post.

It was not the sort of laugh that one gives at sight of a splendid painting. It had too intimate, too personal, a ring. But surely Tatsu was painting! What else did he live for, if not to paint? The old man bore a heavy homeward heart.

Next day, exactly at the hour of noon, the culprits tapped upon Kano's wooden gate. During the morning the old man had been in a condition of feverish excitement, but now that the agony of waiting had forever ceased, he a.s.sumed a pose of indifference.

Tatsu entered first, as a husband should. In mounting the stone which served as step to the railless veranda, he shook off, carelessly, his wooden shoes. Ume-ko lifted them, dusted the velvet thongs, and placed them with mathematical precision side by side upon the flat stone. She then entered, placing her small lacquered clogs beside those of her husband.

Kano, from the tail of his eye, marked with approval these tokens of wifely submission. From a small aperture in the kitchen shoji, however (a peephole commanding a full view of the house), dour mutterings might have been heard, and a whispered lament that "she should have lived to see her young mistress wipe a Tengu's shoes!"

When the various genuflections and phrases of ceremonial greeting were at last accomplished, the old artist broke forth, "Well, well, son Tatsu, how many paintings in all this time?"

Tatsu looked up startled, first at the questioner, then at his wife.

She gave a little, convulsive giggle, and bent her shining eyes to the floor.

"I have not painted," said Tatsu, bluntly.

"Not painted? Impossible! What then have you done with all the golden hours of these interminable days?"