Part 3

From their elevation on the hill they could see below them the beautiful city of Tokyo, with its many-colored lights and intricate maze of streets. And all about them the hills, the meadows, the valleys and forests bore eloquent testimony to the labor of the Color Queen.

Pink, white, and blushy-red twigs of cherry and plum blossoms, idly swaying, flung out their suave fragrance on the flattered breeze, the volatile handmaid of young May, who had freed all the imprisoned perfumes, unhindered by the cynic snarl of the jealous winter, and with silent, pursuasive wooing had taught the dewy-tinctured air to please all living nostrils. So from the glowing and thrilling thoughts that tremble on the young tree of life is love distilled and, unmindful of the assembling of the baffled powers of cold caution and warning fear, the heart is filled with fountain tumults it cannot dissemble.

Jack Bigelow was fascinated and bewildered at the turn events had taken. He was very good and gentle to her, and for several days after the ceremony she seemed quite happy and contented. Then she disappeared, and for a week he saw nothing of her.

He greatly missed her--his little bride of three or four days. He longed ardently for her return, and her absence alarmed him. Her little arts and witcheries had grown on him even in this short period of their acquaintance.

Towards the end of the week she slipped into the house quietly, and went about her household duties as though nothing unusual had occurred. She did not offer to tell him where she had been, and he felt strangely unwilling to force her confidence.

Instead of becoming better acquainted with her, each day found him more puzzled and less capable of knowing or understanding her. Now she was clinging, artless, confiding, and again shrewd and elfish. Now she was laughing and singing and dancing as giddily as a little child, and again he could have sworn she had been weeping, though she would deny it stoutly, and pooh-pooh and laugh away such an idea.

He asked her one day how she would like to be dressed in American clothes. She mimicked him. She mimicked everything and every one, from the warbling of the birds to the little man and maid who waited on them.

"I loog lige this," she said, and humped a bustle under her ridiculously tight omeshi, and slipped his large sun hat over her face. Then she laughed out at him, and flung her arms tightly about his neck.

"You wan' me be American girl?"

"You are a witch, Yuki-san," he said.

"I wan' new dress," she returned, promptly, and held a pink little palm out. He frowned. He almost disliked her when she spoke of money. He filled her hands, however, with change from his pockets, and when she broke away from him, which she did as soon as she had obtained the money, he wanted to take it back. Her pretty laughter sifted out to him through the shoji at the other side, and he knew she was mocking him again.

"It is her natural love of dress and finery," he told himself. "It is the eternal feminine in her, and it is bewitching."

The next day, as she sat opposite to him, eating her infinitesimal bit of a breakfast--a plum, a small fish, and a tiny cup of tea--all on a little black lacquer tray, he announced mysteriously that he was going "on business" to the city.

She desired to accompany him, as became a dutiful wife.

No, he told her, that was impossible. His mission was of a secret nature, which could not be divulged until his return.

Then she insisted that she would follow behind him after the manner of a slave; and when he laughed at her, she begged quite humbly and gently that he would condescend to honorably permit her to go with him, and then he was for telling her his whole pretty story, and the surprise he had concocted to please her, when she grew capricious and insisted that she would not stir one little bit of an inch from the house, and that he must go all alone to the city and attend to his great, magnificent business!

He went down to Tokyo, and in his boyish, blundering fashion he purchased silk and crépe and linen sufficient for fifty gowns for her.

She thanked him extravagantly. She could not imagine what she would do with so much finery. Her honorable person was augustly insignificant, and could not accommodate so much merchandise.

"Now," he thought with inward satisfaction, "that ghost of a money question will be laid. She has everything she wants and shall have. I want to do for her, and give her things without being wheedled into it. It is that which irritates me."

But a few days later she came to him breathless and flustered. Lo! some one had stolen all the beautiful goods he had bought her. It was neither their man nor maid. No, no! that was altogether impossible. They were honest, simple folk, who feared the gods. But they were all quite gone--where she could not say. Who had taken them, she could not guess. Perhaps she, her unworthy self, and he, his honorable augustness, had been extremely wicked in their former state, and the gods were now punishing them in their present life. It would be wicked and unavailing to attempt to search for the missing goods. It was the will of the gods. Maybe the gods had been offended at such ruthless extravagance. Ah, yes, that was a better solution of the theft. Of course the gods were angry. What gods would not be? It was sinful to buy so many things at once.

She affected great distress over the loss, and her husband, somewhat bewildered at her elaborate apologies for the thief who had stolen them, tried to comfort her by saying he would buy her double the quantity again, whereat she became very solemn.

"No, no," she said. "Bedder give me money to buy. I will purchase jus' liddle bit each time--to please the gods."

VI

THE ADVENTURESS

The man in the hammock was not asleep, for in spite of the lazy, lounging attitude, and the hat which hid the gray eyes beneath, he was very much awake, and keenly interested in a certain small individual who was sitting on a mat a short distance removed from him. He had invited her several times to reduce that distance, but up to the present she had paid no heed to his suggestions. She was amusing herself by blowing and squeezing between her lower lip and teeth the berry of the winter cherry, from which she had deftly extracted the pulp at the stem. She continued this strange occupation in obstinate indifference to the persuasive voice from the hammock.

"I say, Yuki, there's room for two in this hammock. Had it made on purpose."

She continued her cherry-blowing without so much as making a reply, though one of her blue eyes looked at him sideways, and then solemnly blinked.

"What's the matter, Yuki? Got the dumps again, eh?"

No reply.

"Look here, Mrs. Bigelow, I'll come over and elope forcibly with you if you don't obey me."

She dimpled scornfully.

"Ah, that's right! Smile, Yuki. You're so pretty, so bewitching, so irresistible when you smile."

Yuki nodded her head coolly.

"How you lige me smiling forever?" she suggested.

"That wouldn't do," he said, grinning at her from beneath his tipped hat. "That would be tiresome." "Tha's why I don' smiling to-day."

"Why?"

"All yistidy I giggling."

He shouted with laughter at her.

"Move your mat here, Yuki," indicating a spot close to his hammock. "I want to talk to you."

"My ears are--"

"Too small to hear from that distance," finished her husband. "Come."

"Thangs," with great dignity, "I am quide comfor'ble. I don' wan' sit so near you, excellency."

"Why, pray?"

"Why? Hm! I un'erstan'. Tha's because I jus' your liddle bit slave."

"You're my wife, you little bit fraud."

"Wife? Oh, I dunno." She pretended to deliberate.

"Then you've tricked me into a false marriage, madam," declared her husband, with great wrath.

"Tha's fault nakoda."

"What is?"

"Thad you god me for wife, and," slowly, "servant."

"Fault! Come here, servant, then. Servants must obey."

"Nod so bad master, making such grade big noises," she laughed back daringly. "Besides, servant must sit long way off from thad same noisy master."

"And wife?"

"Oh, jus' liddle bit nearer." She edged perhaps half an inch closer to him. "Wife jus' liddle bit different from servant."

"Look here, Mrs. Bigelow, you're not living up to your end of the contract. You swore to honor and obey--"

She laughed mockingly.

"Yes, you did, madam!"

"I din nod. Tha's jus' ole Kirishitan marriage."

He sat up amazed.

"What do you know of the Christian marriage service?"

"Liddle bit."

"Come over here, Yuki."

"You like me sing ad you?"

"Come over here."

"How you like me danze?--liddle bit summer danze?"

"Come over here. What's a summer dance, anyhow?"

She ran lightly indoors, and was back so soon that she seemed scarcely to have left him. She had slipped on a red-and-yellow flimsy kimono, and had decked her hair and bosom with flaming poppies.

"Tha's summer sunshine," she said, spreading her garment out on each side with a joyous little twirl. "I am the Sun-goddess, and you?--you jus' the col', dark earth. I will descend and warm you with my sunshine." For a moment she stood still, her head thrown back, her face shining, her lips parted and smiling, showing the straight little white teeth within. Then she danced softly, ripplingly, back and forth. The summer winds were sighing and laughing with her. Her face shone out above her lightly swerving figure, her little hands and bare arms moved with inimitable grace.

"You are a genius," he said to her, when she had subsided, light as a feather blown to his feet.

"Tha's sure thing," she agreed, roguishly.

Her assurance in herself always tickled him immensely. He threw his hat at her with such good aim that it settled upon her head. She approved his clever shot, laughed at him, and then, pulling it over her eyes, lay down on the mats and imitated his favorite attitude to a nicety. He laughed uproariously. He was in fine humor. They had been married over a month now, and she had not left him save that first time. He was growing pretty sure of her now.

She perceived his good-humor, and immediately bethought herself to take advantage. She put the rim of his hat between her teeth, imitated a monkey, and crawled towards him, pretending to beg for her performance. He stretched his long arms out and tried to reach her, but she was far enough off to elude him.

"You godder pay," she said, "for thad nize entertainments I giving you."

He threw her a sen. She made a face. "That all?" she said, in a dreadfully disappointed voice, but, despite her acting, he saw the greedy eagerness of her eyes. All the good-humor vanished.

"Look here, Yuki," he said, with a disagreeable glint in his eyes, "you've had a trifle over fifty dollars this week. I don't begrudge you money, but I'll be hanged if I'm going to have you dragging it out of me on every occasion and upon every excuse you can make. You have no expenses. I can't see what you want with so much money, anyhow."

"I godder save," said Yuki, mysteriously, struck with this brilliant excuse for her extravagance.

"What for?"

"Why, same's everybody else. Some day I nod have lods money. Whad I goin' do then? Tha's bedder save, eh?"

"I've married you. I'll never let you want for anything."

"Oh, you jus' marry me for liddle bit while."

"You've a fine opinion of me, Yuki."

"Yes, fine opinion of you," she repeated after him.

"There's enough money deposited in a bank in Tokyo to last you as long as you live. If it's ever necessary for me to leave you for a time, you will not want for anything, Yuki."

"But," she said, argumentatively, "when you leaving me I henceforward a widder. I nod marry with you any longer. Therefore I kin nod take your money." This last with heroic pride.

"Boo! Your qualms of conscience about using my money are, to say the least, rather extraordinary."

"When you leaving me--" she commenced again.

"Why do you persist in that? I have no idea of leaving you."

"What!" She was quite frightened. "You goin' stay with me forever!" There was far more fear than joy in her voice.

"Why not?" he demanded, sharply, watching her with keen, savage eyes.

"My lord," she said, humbly, "I could nod hear of thad. It would be wrong. Too grade sacrifice for you honorable self."

He was not sure whether she was laughing at him or not.

"You needn't be alarmed," he said, gruffly. "I'm not likely to stay here forever." He turned his back on her.

Suddenly he felt her light little hand on his face. She was standing close by the hammock. He was still very angry and sulky with her. He closed his eyes and frowned. He knew just how she was looking; knew if he glanced at her he would relent ignominiously. She pried his eyes gently open with her fingers, and then kissed them, as softly as a tiny bird might have done. Gradually she crawled into the hammock with him, regardless of non-assistance.

"Augustness," she said, her arms about his neck now, though she was sitting up and leaning over him. "Listen ad me."

"I'm listening."

"Look ad me."

He looked, frowned, smiled, and then kissed her. She laughed under her breath, such a queer, triumphant, mocking small laugh. It made him frown again, but she kissed the frown into a smile once more. Then she sat up.

"Pray excuse me. I wan' sit ad your feet and talk ad you."

"Can't you talk here?" he demanded, jealously.

"Nod so well. I gittin' dazzled. Permit me," she coaxed. He released her grudgingly. She sat close to him on the floor. She sighed heavily, hypocritically.

"What is it now?"

"Well, you know I telling you about those moneys."

"Yes," he said, wearily. "Let's shut up on this money question. I'm sick of it."

"I lige make confession ad you."

"Well?"

"I god seventeen brudders and sisters!" she said, with slow and solemn emphasis.

"What!" He almost rolled out of the hammock in his amazement.

"Seventeen!" She nodded with ominous tragedy in her face and voice.

"Where do they live?"

"Alas! in so poor part of Tokyo."

"And your father and mother?"

"Alas! Also thad fadder an' mudder so ole lige this." She illustrated, bowing herself double and walking feebly across the floor, coughing weakly.

"Well?" he prompted sharply.

"I god take all thad money thad ole fadder an mudder an' those seventeen liddle brudders an sisters. Tha's all they god in all the whole worl'."

"But don't any of them work? Aren't any of them married? What's the matter with them all?"

"Alas! No. All of them too young to worg or marry, excellency."

"_All_ of them too young?"

"Yes. Me--how ole _I_ am? Oldes' of all! I am twenty-eight--no, thirty years ole," she declared, solemnly.

He nearly collapsed. He knew she was a mere child; knew, moreover, that she was lying to him. She had done so before.

"Even if you are thirty, I fail to see how you can have seventeen brothers and sisters younger than yourself."

She lost herself a moment. Then she said, triumphantly, "My fadder have two wives!"

He surveyed her in studious silence a moment. Her attitude of trouble and despair did not deceive him in the slightest. Nevertheless, he wanted to laugh outright at her, she was such a ridiculous fraud.

"Do you know what they'd call you in my country?" he said, gravely.

She shook her head.

"An adventuress!"

"Ah, how _nize_!" She sighed with envious blissfulness. "I wish I live ad your country--be adventuressesses."

"How much do you want now, Yuki?"

She pretended to calculate on his fingers.

"Twenty-five dollar," she announced.

He gave it to her, and she slipped it into the bosom of her kimono. He watched her curiously, wondering what she did with all the money she secured from him.

All of a sudden she put this question to him.

"Sa-ay, how much it taking go ad America?"

"How much? Oh, not much. Depends how you go. Four hundred, or five hundred dollars, possibly."

She groaned. "How much come ad Japan?"

"The same."

She sighed. "Sa-ay, kind augustness, I wan' go ad America. Pray give me money go there."

"I'll take you some day, Yuki."

She retreated before this offer.

"Ah, thangs--yes, some day, of course." Then, after a meditative moment: "Sa--ay, it taking more money than thad three-four hundled dollar whicheven?"

"Yes; about that much again for incidentals--possibly more."

She sighed hugely this time, and he knew she was not affecting.

A few days later, poking among her pretty belongings, as he so much liked to do--she was out in the garden gathering flowers for their dinner-table--he found her little jewel-box. Like everything else she possessed, it was daintily perfumed. At the top lay the few pieces of jewelry he had bought for her on different occasions when he had taken her on trips to the city. He lifted the top tray, and then he saw something that startled him. It was a roll of bank-bills. He took it out and counted it. There was not quite one hundred and fifty dollars. He calculated all he had given her. It amounted to a little over twice this sum. She had been saving, after all! What was her object?

And, his suspicions awakened by this discovery, he searched uneasily further through her apartments, and discovered, rolled like a huge piece of carpet and covered over by a large basket, the crépe and silks she had protested were stolen.

VII

MY WIFE!

The second time his wife left him, Jack Bigelow was very wretched. He missed her exceedingly, though he would not have admitted it, for he was also very angry with her.

When she had gone away that first time, so soon after their marriage, he had not felt her absence as he did now, for then she had not become a necessity to him. But she had lived with him now two whole months, and had become a part of his life. She was not a mere passing fancy, and he knew it was folly to endeavor so to convince himself, as in his resentment at her treatment he was trying to do.

The house was desolate without her. Everywhere there were evidences of his little girl. Here a pair of her tiny sandals, some piece of tawdry kanzashi for her hair, her koto, samisen, and little drum; in the zashishi, in her own little room, and all over the house lingered the faint odor of her favorite perfume, so subtle it made the young man weak.

He grew to hate the silence of the rooms. Their household had always been small, with just a man and maid to wait on them; and now only one presence gone from it, and yet how painfully quiet the place had grown! He realized what all her little movements had become to him. He stayed out-doors as much as he could, only to return restlessly to the house, with a faint hope that perhaps she was hiding somewhere in it, and playing some prank on him, as she was fond of doing, bursting out from some unexpected place of hiding. But there was no trace of her anywhere; and when the second day actually passed, the realization that she was indeed gone forced itself home to him, leaving him stupid with rage and despair.

He was bitterly angry with her. She had no right to leave him like this, without a word of explanation. How was he to know where she had gone or what might happen to her? And the thought of anything dire really overtaking her nearly drove him distracted. He hung around the balconies of the house, wandered down into the garden, and strayed restlessly about. And all the time he knew he was waiting for her, and in the waiting doubling his misery.

She came back in four days, slipped into the house noiselessly and ran up to her room. He heard her, knew she had returned, but checked his first impulse to go to her, and threw himself back on a couch, where he assumed a careless attitude, which he relentlessly changed to a stern, unapproachable, forbidding one.

Suddenly he heard her voice. It came floating down the stairs, every weird minor note thrilling, mocking, fascinating him. "Toko-ton-yare ron-ton-ton!" she sang. Then the voice ceased a moment. She was waiting for him to call her. He did not move. He was certainly very angry with her. He would not forgive her readily.

She began beating on her drum. He heard her making a great noise in the little room up-stairs, and understood her object. She was trying to attract him. Suddenly she whirled down the stairs and burst in on him with a merry peal of laughter.

He ignored her sternly. She ceased her noise and laughter, and, approaching him, studied him with her head tilted bewitchingly on one side.

"You angery ad me, excellency?" she inquired with solicitude.

No reply.

"You very _mad_ ad me, augustness?"

Still no reply.

"You very _cross_ ad me, my lord?"

Jack regarded her in contemptuous silence.

She shouted now, a high, mocking, joyous note in her laughter.

"Hah! You very, very, very, very _affended_, Mister Bigelow?"

"It seems to please you, apparently," said Jack, scathingly, wasting his sarcasm, and turning his eyes from her.

She laughed wickedly.

"Ah, tha's so nize."

"What is?" he demanded, sharply.

"Thad you loog so angery. My! You loog like grade big--whad you call thad?--toranadodo." She knew how to pronounce "tornado," but she wanted to make him laugh. She failed in her purpose, however. She tried another way.

"_How_ you change!" She sighed with beatific delight.

Jack growled.

"Dear me! I thing you grown more nize-loogin," she said.

Jack got up and walked across to the window, turning his back deliberately on her, and whistling with forced gayety, his hands in his pockets. She approached him with feigned timidity and stood at his elbow.

"You glad see me bag, excellency?"

"No!" shortly.

This emphatic answer frightened her. She was not so sure of herself, after all.

"You wan' me go 'way?" she asked, in the smallest voice.

"Yes."

She loitered only a moment, and then "Ah-bah" (good-bye) she said softly.

He felt, for he would not turn around to see, that she was crossing the room slowly, reluctantly. He heard the shoji pushed aside, and then shut to. He was alone! He sprang forward and called her name aloud. She came running back to him and plunged into his arms. He held her close, almost fiercely. The anger was all gone. His face was white and drawn. The dread of losing her again had overpowered him. When she tried to extricate herself from his arms, he would not let her go. He sat down on one of the chairs, and held her on his knee. She was laughing now, laughing and pouting at his white face.

"My crashes!" she cried. "You loog lige ole Chinese priest ad the temple." She pulled a long face, and drew her pretty eyes up high with her finger tips; then she chanted some solemn words, mocking mirthfully her ancestors' religion.

But her husband was grave. He had not the heart to find mirth even in her naughtiness.

"Yuki," he said, "you must be serious for a moment and listen to me."

"I listenin', Mr. Solemn-Angery-Patch!" She meant "Cross-patch." "You loog lige--"

"Where did you go?"

"Oh, jus' liddle bit visit."

"Where did you go?" he repeated, insistently.

"Sa-ay, I forgitting."

"Answer me."

She pretended to think, and then suddenly to remember, sighing hypocritically the while.

"I lige forgitting," she said.

"Forgetting what?"

"Where I been."

"Why?"

"Tha's so sad. Alas! I visiting thad ole fadder an' mudder ninety-nine and one hundled years ole, and those seventeen liddle brudders an' sisters. You missing me very much?" she changed from the subject of her whereabouts.

"No!" he said, shortly, stung by her falsity.

"I don' sing so!"

"Where were you, Yuki?"

"Now, whad you wan' know for, sinze you don' like me whicheven?"

"Did I say so?"

"You say you don' miss."

"I lied," he said, bitterly. "Where were you?"

"Jus' over cross street, see my ole friend ad tea-garden."

"I thought you said you were visiting your people?"

She was not at all abashed.

"Sa-ay, firs' you saying you miss me; then thad you lie. Sa-ay, you big lie, I jus' liddle bit lie."

"Yuki, listen to me. If you leave me like this again, you need never come back. Do you understand?"

"Never?"

"I mean that."