Chapter 11

"A son!" Tatsu knew well what the old man meant. He lifted his eyes and stared out, mute, into the narrowing band of light. The old man drew his thin form very straight, moved a few feet that he might look squarely into the other's face, and said deliberately. "So did I mourn the young wife whom I loved, and so, if I know men, will you mourn, Kano Tatsu. Of such enduring stuff will be your grief for Umè-ko."

It was said. The old man's promise had been torn like a leaf,--not to be mended or recalled,--torn and flung at his listener's feet. Yet such was the simplicity of utterance, such the nobility of poise, the beauty of the old face set like a silver wedge into the deepening mist, that Tatsu could only give him look for look, with no resentment. The young voice had taken on strangely the timbre of the old as, in equal soberness, he answered,

"Such, Kano Indara, though I be burdened with years as many as your own,--will be the never-ceasing longing for my lost wife, Umè-ko."

A little sob, loosed suddenly upon the night, sped past them. "What was it? Who is there?" cried Tatsu, sharply, wheeling round.

Kano began to shake. "Perhaps--perhaps a night-bird," he stammered out.

"A bird!" echoed Tatsu. "That sound was human. It is a woman, the Presence that has hung about me! Put down your arms,--you cannot keep me back!"

"Be still!" cried out old Kano in the voice of angry kings. "Nothing will happen,--nothing, I say, if you act thus like the untamed creature that you were! Your fate is still in my hands, Kano Tatsu!"

Tatsu fell down upon his knees, pulling at the old man's sleeves. "Father, father, have pity! I will be self-controlled and docile as I have been these long, long months. But now there is a thing so great that would possess me, my soul faints and sickens. Father, I ask your help, your tenderness. I think I have wronged you from the first,--my father!"

Suddenly the old man hurled his staff away and sank weeping into the stronger arms. "I fear, I fear!" he wailed. "It may be still too early. But she said not,--the abbot counselled it! O gods of the Kano home!"

"Father," asked Tatsu, rising slowly to his feet, his arms still close about the other, "can it be joy that is to find me, even in this life?"

"Wait, you shall see," cried the old man, now laughing aloud, now weeping, like a hysterical girl. "You shall see in a moment! My dead wife takes me by the hand and leads me from you,--just a little way, dear Tatsu, just here among the shadows. No longer are the shadows for you,--joy is for you. Yes, Uta-ko, I 'm coming. The young love springs like new lilies from the old. Stand still, my son; be hushed, that joy may find you."

He faltered backward and was lost. Upon the hillside came a stillness deeper than any previous interval of pause. From it the nightingale's low note thrust out a wavering clew. The day had gone, and a few stars dotted the vault of the sky. Tatsu threw back his head. There was no pain in the gesture now; he was trying to make room in his soul for an unspeakable visitor. The arch of heaven had grown trivial. Eternity was his one boundary. The stars twinkled in his blood.

He heard the small human sob again, just at his elbow. All at once he was frozen in his place; he could not turn or move. His arms hung to his sides, his throat stiffened in its upward lines. And then a little hand, stealing from a nun's gray sleeve, slipped into his, and in a pause, a hush, it was before the full splendor of love's cry, he turned and saw that it was Umè-ko, his wife.

* * * * * *

Yeddo and modern Tokyo alike give entertainment to the traditional nine days' wonder. Sometimes the wonder does not fade at all, and so it was with the case of Tatsu and his wife. If he had been an idol, he was now a demigod, Umè-ko sharing the sweet divinity of human tenderness with him.

Had it all happened a century before, the people would have built for them a yashiro, with altar and a shrine. Here they would have been worshipped as gods still in the flesh, and lovers would have prayed to them for aid and written verses and burned sweet incense.

Being of modern Tokyo, most of this adulation went into newspaper articles. Old men envied Kano his dutiful daughter, young men envied Tatsu his beautiful and loving wife. The print-makers, indeed, perpetrated a series of representations that put old Kano's artistic teeth on edge. First there was Umè at the willow; then Tatsu, in the same place, taking his mad plunge for death's oblivion; Umè, the hooded acolyte, kneeling in the sick chamber at the head of her husband's bed; Umè, the nun, standing each day at twilight on the edge of the temple cliff to catch a glimpse of him she loved; and, at the last, Tatsu and Umè rejoined beside the tomb of Kano Uta-ko. Fortunately these pictures were never seen by the two most concerned.

They went away on a second bridal journey, this time to Tatsu's native mountains in Kiu Shiu. While there, the good friend Ando Uchida was to be sought, and made acquainted with the strange history of the previous months.

Mata and her old master remained placidly at home. They had no fears. At the appointed date--only a week more now--the two would come back, as they had promised, to begin the long, tranquil life of art and happiness. There were to be great pictures! Kano chuckled and rubbed his lean hands together, as he sat in his lonely room. Then the thought faded, for a tenderer thought had come. In a year or more, if the gods willed, another and a keener blessedness might be theirs.

To dream quite delicately enough of this, the old man shut his eyes. Oh, it was a dream to make the springtime of the world stir at the roots of being! A tear crept down from the blue-veined lids, making its way through wrinkles, those "dry river-beds of smiles." If the baby fingers came,--those small, fearless fingers that were one's own youth reborn,--they would press out all fretful lines of age, leaving only tender traceries. He leaned forward, listening. Already he could hear the tiny feet echo along the rooms, could see small, shaven heads bowing their first good morning to the O Ji San,--revered, beloved patriarch of the home! How old Mata would idolize and scold and pet them! A queer old soul was Mata, with faults, as all women have, but in the main, a treasure! Good times were coming for the old folks in that house! So sat Kano, dreaming, in his empty chamber; and unless we have eternity to spare, nodding beside him on the mats, we must bow, murmuring, "Sayo-nara!"