Part 8

They undressed her, submissive as a little child, and put her into the berth of a little stateroom, which seemed to Yuki, who had never in her life before been on board a vessel of any sort, save the tiny craft about the rivers at her home, like a tiny cage or vault, wherein she, exhausted and weary, had been put to die.

She lay there with the surging bustle of the ship's noises overhead and the tremulous growl of the waters beneath the ship droning in her ears like the melancholy ringing of a dying curfew-bell at twilight.

The ayah reported to the manager's wife, an ex-comic-opera prima donna, that she was resting and sleeping; but when that impetuous, big-hearted woman peeped in on her, she found Yuki's eyes wide open. She whirled into the small stateroom, almost filling it with her large person, and sat down beside the poor little weary girl and looked at her with friendly and approving eyes.

"You are like a pretty picture on a fan," she said; "the prettiest Japanese girl I've seen. I think we'll be fine friends, don't you?"

Yuki could only assent with a weary little nod of her head. She closed her eyes.

"You are not so dreadfully sick, are you?" said the American. "I thought maybe we could have a nice little gossip together. You see, my husband's the boss of this whole outfit that we've got along with us, and I don't know that there's one of the whole lot I've ever cared to associate with before. You're different. Now, ain't I good to speak out just what's on my mind, eh?"

"I _ought_ to thang you," said Yuki, feebly, "but I am too weary to be perlite."

"Then you shall be left alone, you child, you," said the other; then she kissed Yuki lightly, and went out of the door.

But after she had gone Yuki's passivity left her. She sat up quivering, and then with nervous quickness she began to dress herself. She could not open the door of the stateroom. She was unused to strange doors that required the pushing of springs and bolts. She had lived in a land where bolts and locks were almost unknown, where a shoji fell apart at a touch of a hand. Now she pushed hard against the door, but, as she had not turned the handle, it refused to move. A terror possessed her that they had locked her in this tiny, awful cell, to which penetrated no light save that which filtered through a small porthole against which the waters beat and beat.

She flung herself desperately against the door, battering it with her tiny hands; she felt herself growing dizzy and blind as the ship rocked and swayed beneath her feet. She tried to pace the tiny length of the stateroom, her sense of terrible loneliness and homesickness deepening with every moment. The moving of the ship horrified her, and the knowledge that it was taking her farther and farther from her home across the immense bottomless sea filled her with a terror akin to nothing She had ever known in her life before.

In the sickening, wearying dazzle of the few days previous to their sailing, the girl's mind had held but one thought--to go far away from the scenes of her pain; now perhaps the reaction had come, and her terror at the step she had taken appalled her. Memory, which had been thrust out of sight by the ever-present nagging pain that had blinded her to all else, now asserted its power, merciless and invincible. She pressed her hands to her head, as though to blot out forever from her mind the pitiless ghosts that haunted her.

Like the wraiths that come and vanish in a nightmare, the events of her life came to her one by one--the happy childhood with her brother, their passionate devotion to each other, her grief at his departure for America, the months of struggle that had followed, sacrifices made for him, her attempts to make a living sufficient for his maintenance in America, and then--her marriage! After that, memory held no other thought but the immeasurable craving and longing that was almost madness for the voice, the touch, the sight of the man she had loved and left.

It was three days before her illness ended. Then, having begged the consent of the woman who attended her, she crept up the companion-way and out on deck, where the passengers were disporting and enjoying themselves.

She had looked forward to the time when she would regain sufficient strength to leave her prison-cell, for such she regarded her stateroom. In the strange medley of ideas which had curiously woven themselves into a maze in her mind, she had imagined that once in the open on deck she would see once more the shores of her home, Fujiyama's lofty peak smiling against its celestial background, and hanging like a mirage in mid-air.

But there was no sight visible to her, as, with her hand shading her eyes, she looked out before her, save a vast, cold, pitiless waste of surging waters, jumping up to meet the sky, which smiled or glowered with its moods.

* * * * *

In the months that followed, Yuki met with nothing but kindness from the American theatrical manager and his wife. With them she went to China, India, the Philippines, and finally to Australia. From all these different points the American theatrical scout drew together a motley troupe of jugglers, fancy dancers, wizards, fencers, and performers of one sort and another, with which he hoped to make a larger fortune in America. He had combined business with this long pleasure trip, for he was on his bridal tour at the time.

By some remarkable intuition peculiar sometimes to the gayest and most frivolous hearted of women of the world, the wife of the theatrical manager had gained some insight into the cause of the pitiful sensitiveness and shrinking shyness of the queer little Japanese girl with the blue eyes, to whom she had taken an extravagant fancy.

She had taken Yuki under her personal charge, and sheltered and shielded the girl from the overbold scrutiny of those with whom they daily came in contact. It was many months, however, before she learned her history. In fact, it was only a few days before their expected departure for America, the great country in the west, which seemed to Yuki as far distant as the stars above her.

As the time for their departure, which had been delayed already much longer than the manager had anticipated, drew nearer, Yuki grew more depressed and restless, so that to the exaggerated fancy of the American woman she seemed to be fading away and entering into what she emphatically called "the last stages of consumption."

She cornered the girl relentlessly, and finally wrung from her the whole pitiful, tragic story of her life. How homesick and weary she had been ever since she had left Japan, how her heart seemed to faint whenever she thought of that final interview with her brother, and of the immeasurable longing for the man she loved, and whom she had married "for jus' liddle bid while."

All the big, romantic heart of the American woman went out to her as she took her into her arms and mingled her own honest tears with Yuki's.

"You sha'n't go to America," she said, drying her eyes with a tiny piece of lace which served as a handkerchief. "You are going right back to Japan, bag and baggage of you. I'm going with you, to see you get there O.K."

"Bud--" began Yuki, weakly.

"Never mind, now. I know he expects to sail in a week. I don't. I'm boss! See!"

XVIII

THE SEASON OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOM

In summer the fields of Japan are alive with color--burning flat lowlands shimmering with the dazzling gleam of the natane and azalea blossoms. In autumn the leaves, as well as the blossoms, have caught all the tints of heaven and earth, and in winter the gods are said to be resting after their riotous ramblings during the warm months. But in the spring-time they awake, and in their lavish renewed youth bless hill and dale and meadow and forest with an abandon unlike any other time of year. It is the season of the cherry blossom, of the mating of the birds, the babbling of the brooks, and the chattering and unfolding anew of all the beauties of nature.

It was two years from the day when Jack and Yuki had married each other in the spring-time. And Jack was back in Tokyo. Recalled thither by a telegram from the police headquarters, he was preparing to depart for America, where the police claimed they had positive evidence that Yuki had gone. He was staying at an American hotel in the city proper, and his heart on this day sickened and yearned for the little house only a few miles away that he longed and yet dreaded to see again.

Now that he contemplated leaving Japan, the dread possibility that Yuki might still be in the country and that he would be placing the distance of thousands and thousands of miles of land and water between them, depressed and weighed on his mind, despite the really plausible proof the police board had that she had gone to America with a theatrical company--that of the very man he himself had witnessed coaxing her to go with him.

The afternoon previous to the day set for sailing, his melancholy and morbidness grew in intensity. With no fixed purpose in view he started out from his hotel, tramped half-way across Tokyo, then hailed a jinrikisha and gave the runner orders to take him to the little house that had formerly been his home, and which he had struggled against visiting ever since his return to Tokyo.

As in a dream the interminable stretch of rice-fields, blue mountains, and valleys and hamlets, stretching away into misty outlines, flashed by him, and he noted only half absently how the heels of his runner were all worn hard just as if they had dried in the sun. Yuki once had called his attention to this.

"The honorable soles are the same," she had said. "It is the perpetual running. The gods have mercifully protected the feet from pain."

The landscape about him, familiar as the face of a mother, gave him no pain now. He was conscious only of a sense of ineffable rest and peace, as a traveller who has wandered long feels when nearing home. And soon the runner had stopped with a jerk, and was doubling over and waiting for his pay.

Should he humbly wait for his excellency to condescend to return to the city?

"Just for a little while," Jack told him absently. And he went through the little garden gate and up the pebbled adobe path, now arched on either side by two rows of cherry-blossom trees, that met at the top and made a bower under which to walk.

When he had pushed the door backward and stepped inside he paused irresolute, his heart paining him with its rapid beating. Coming from out the blaze of the out-door light into the shadowed room, his vision dazzled him. But gradually the objects inside grew upon his consciousness, and a rosy pain, an ecstasy that stung him with its sweetness, shot upward like a dawn through all his being.

He scarcely dared breathe, so potent was the influence of the place upon him. He feared to stir, lest the spell, ghostly and entrancing as the influence of a magic hand, might vanish into mistland, for with all the immeasurable pain that rushed to his heart in a flame was mingled a tentative, exquisite pleasure--a survival of the old joy he had once known.

And there came back to his mind whisperings of the old mysterious romances she had been wont to ramble into. What was that tale of the spirit which haunted and was felt but never seen? Was there not behind it all some mysterious possibility of such a spirit? For the very furnishings of the room, the mats, the vases, the old broken-down hammock, and his big tobacco-bon, each and all of them suddenly assumed a personality--the personality of one he loved.

Stepping on tip-toe, he crossed the room and stooped to touch the little drum, the sticks of which were snapped in twain. And then he suddenly remembered how she had broken them because he had complained one day that her drum disturbed him. He had liked the koto and the samisen; the drum she had beaten on when she mocked him. Now the sight of it beat against his brain and heart.

He could not bear the sight of those little broken sticks. He tried to cover them with his handkerchief, as if they were the evidence of a crime.

"The place is haunted!" he said, and scarce knew his own hollow voice, which the echoes of the silent room mocked back at him.

"I shall go mad," he said, and again the echoes repeated, "Mad! mad! mad!"

Then he covered his eyes, and sat in the silence, motionless and still.

* * * * *

From afar off there came to him the melancholy sweetness of the bells of a neighboring temple. They caused his hearing exquisite pain. What memories were recalled by them! But now every toll of the bells, slow and muffled, seemed to speak of baffled hope and despair. There was no balm in their sweet monotone. Would they never cease? Why were they so loud? They had not been so formerly. Now they filled all the land with their ringing. What were they tolling for, and, ah, why had the ghostly visitants of his house caught up the tone, and softly, sweetly, with piercing cadence, chanted back and echoed the sighing of the bells?

The house was full of music, inexpressibly dear and familiar. He started to his feet, trembling like one afflicted with ague. And gradually words, in a fairy language that he had learned to love, began to form themselves into the melody of a voice.

Slowly, painfully, like one led by unseen, subtle, persuasive hands, he went forward, and up and up the spiral stairs till he had reached her chamber, and there he stood, like one who has come far and can go no farther.

One other presence besides himself was within. This he knew, and still could not comprehend. He could see her plainly, just as she had been in life--her little, shining head, her dear, small hands, the long, blue, misty eyes, and the small mouth with the little pathetic droop that had come to it in the last few days they had been together. She stood with her hands raised, dreamily loitering before a mirror, putting cherry blossoms in her hair on either side of her head. But at the prolonged silence that ensued she turned slowly about, and then she saw the man standing silently in the doorway.

She was not a girl to scream or faint, but she went gray with fear, and stood perfectly still there in the middle of the room. Then gradually her eyes travelled upward to the man's face, and there they remained transfixed.

For a long while they faced each other thus, both with hearts that seemed not to beat. Then the man made a movement towards her, a passionate, wild movement, and she had dropped the flowers from her hands, and had gone to meet him. The next moment he was crushing her to him. When he released her but a moment, it was to hold her again and yet again, as though he feared to find her gone, and his arms empty once more, as they had been for so long. He could only breathe her name--"Yuki! Yuki! My wife! My wife!"

Neither tried to explain. There was time enough for that. They were absorbed alone in the fact that they were together at last.

Some one noisily entered the house and whirled up the stairs. It was the American girl. She gazed in upon them with eyes and mouth agape in amazement.

"Well, I never!" she ejaculated, and went out and down the steps, sobbing aloud.

"Such a romance! Such a nice, big fellow, too! And, oh, dear me, I've lost her sure enough now forever! Bother men, anyhow!" and she jumped into Jack's jinrikisha and bade the man take her on the instant to Tokyo.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the lovers had wandered out into the open air. He was holding both her hands in his, and his eyes were straying hungrily over her face; her eyes bewitched him; her lips thrilled him.

The thousand petals of cherry blossoms were falling about them, and the birds had all flown to their garden and were twittering and bursting their little throats with melody. A fugitive wind came up from the bay and tossed the little scattering curls about her ears and temples. A strand of her hair swept across his hand. He stooped and kissed it reverently, and she laughed and thrilled under the touch of his lips.

"I love you with all my soul," he said. "Do not laugh at me now."

She said, "Dear my lord, I will never laugh more ad you. I laugh only for the joy ad being with you."

"I will take you to my home," he said.

"I will follow you to the end of the world and beyond," said she.

"And we will come back here again, love. We will take up the broken threads of our lives and piece them together."

"They shall never again be broken," she said. But he must needs spoil her divine faith. "Till death do us part," he added.

"No, no. We will have the faith of our simple peasant folk. We are weded for ever an' ever."

"Yes, forever," he repeated.

THE END

Transcriber Notes:

Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.

Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.

Throughout the dialogues, there were very many words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.

Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.

In the frontispiece, a closing bracket was added after "See p. 8".

On page 22, "craêpe" was replaced with "crêpe".

On page 122, "balony" was replaced with "balcony".

On page 159, the period before "and later," was replaced with a comma.

On page 160, "pursuasion" was replaced with "persuasion".

On page 226, "weded" was replaced with "wedded".

End of Project Gutenberg's A Japanese Nightingale, by Winnifred Eaton