Part 8

Then moving along the rock, she came to the edge and began to clamber down. There were clefts in the rock which Koma had cut as a boy, and she had no difficulty in descending. She dropped to the ground as lightly as a bird. Turning about, a sudden little cry escaped her lips.

She stood as if rooted to the ground, regarding with dilated eyes the figure before her. He did not speak. His eyes were upon her face, and he was watching her startled expression with an eager glance. Then she took a step towards him, holding out both her hands.

“Komazawa!” she cried. “It is you!”

He did not touch her outstretched hands, and she shrank back as if struck.

“You, too!” she said, and her hand sought her head bewilderedly.

“I, too?” he repeated, stupidly.

“Yes,” she cried. “I understand why you are here, why you do not speak to me and embrace me as of old. Ah, it is all very plain.”

“What is very plain?” he asked, still keeping his distance from her.

“Why you are here. They have sent you to find me, to give me over to those strangers. It is cruel, cruel!” she cried, covering her face with her hands.

“It is not true!” he cried, going to her and taking her hands from her face and holding them closely in his own.

She did not seek to release them, but permitted them to remain passively in his, as she looked up into his face through her tears.

“It is not true,” he repeated, softly.

“Yet you were not glad to see me,” she said, tremulously.

“Ah, but I was,” he replied, in that same soft, subtle voice which, somehow, vaguely thrilled her.

“You did not speak to me.”

“Your face—your sudden appearance—startled me; I could not speak for a moment,” he said.

“Yet even now,” she said, catching her breath, “you do not embrace me.”

He dropped her hands slowly and drew back a pace.

“It would not be right—now,” he said, huskily.

“I do not understand,” she said. “Have we not always embraced each other?”

“We were children before,” he said, “but now—embraces are for—for lovers only.”

She looked at him a long moment in wondering silence, a slow, pink glow spreading gradually over her face. Then she repeated, slowly, almost falteringly:

“For—for lovers!”

He turned his eyes away from her face. She put a timid hand upon his arm.

“Yet,” she said, “Yamashiro Yoshida was my lover, and—and we did not embrace.”

“Ah, no, thank the Heavens!” he cried, impetuously, again possessing himself of her hands. “You were safe from such things here, little one. Yet you have much to learn—much, and I—” His eyes became purple and his chin squared in strong resolution. “I’m going to teach you,” he said.

“Teach me?” she faltered. “What will you teach me?”

“The meaning of love,” he said, the words escaping him as if he could not control them.

“You will be my lover?” she said, timid wonder in her eyes.

He could not speak for some moments. Then—

“Ah, what have I been saying? Little one, you do not know, you cannot dream of the extent of your own innocence. I would be less than man if your words did not pierce my heart and thrill my whole being. Yet I am not altogether selfish—no—though I have spent years of my life among those who were so. I will not take advantage of the little one. She shall have every opportunity her birth, her beauty, demands. You will go with your father, Hyacinth. Nay, do not interrupt me. It will be for your good. You must see this other world, to which you rightfully belong. Then when you have come to years of womanhood you can decide for yourself.”

“I am already a woman,” she said, tremulously.

“Only a child—a little girl,” he said, softly; “a poor little one who has been imprisoned so long she has come to believe her own cage is gilded, and will not take her freedom when the doors are opened.”

Earnestly she looked into his face.

“And if I go to the West country, you, too, will go with me, will you not, Koma?”

He shook his head, smiling sadly.

“No. I would not have the right.”

“I will not go, then,” she said, simply. “If they should force me I can be as brave as others. I would take my life.”

“No, you would not do so, for then you would break our hearts.”

“Yet you have no pity for mine,” she said, near to tears now.

“Poor little heart!” he whispered, tenderly.

After a moment she inquired, quietly:

“And did you come with my august parent, then?”

“On the same steamer—yes. It was an accidental meeting.”

“Ah, then you did not come back for the purpose of helping them?”

“No, I had another purpose. I came to break your betrothal with Yamashiro Yoshida.”

“Well, they have saved you that trouble,” she said, sighing.

He regarded her keenly.

“Why do you sigh? You have regrets?”

“Yes,” she admitted, “for if they had not cast me off I could have remained in Japan. Now—” Her voice faltered and she turned her head away.

“Now?” he repeated.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “I begin to see there is nothing else to be done. I am resigned.”

“You are resigned,” he repeated, disappointment showing in his transparent face.

“Yes,” she said, with a fleeting upward glance at his face.

She suddenly laughed quite merrily.

“Come,” she said, “let us go home. I must humbly submit myself to the august will of my honorable parent.”

Koma said never a word. Manlike, he was regretting his late words of advised self-sacrifice.

XXIV

It was a slow pilgrimage homeward that these two young people made, for they stopped at every familiar place on the hills and by the bay that they had known as children. And, like children, they dipped their faces in the shining water of the little brook that wound its way around the hills and fell in a tiny waterfall below into the bay.

They slipped into a darkened temple, touching with reverent, loving fingers the deserted images within. At the little village on the shore, where they had lived together as children, they halted and lunched at a tiny tavern whose garden was the shore of the bay. And when they had struck the road that led to Sendai they turned their steps backward and wandered along the white beach of Matsushima.

The girl, whose heart had been so heavy for days with the thought of leaving her home, now with the light-heartedness of a child seemed to have forgotten all her troubles and to revel in the joy of living.

But a gentle melancholy was upon Komazawa. It was with something of reproach that he answered the merry chatter of his companion.

“Yonder,” she said, pointing across the bay, while her long sleeve, falling back, disclosed her soft, dimpled arm, “is the naked island Hadakajima. See, it is not changed at all, Koma. Do you remember those times when you would carry me on your shoulder and step from rock to rock in the bay until you had reached Hadakajima?”

“Yes,” he said, watching her eyes.

She looked up at him sideways, then drooped her lashes downward.

“You would not do the same to-day?” she said.

“You are not the same—child,” he replied.

“Ah, no,” she sighed. “I am changed, alas!”

“Why ‘alas’?”

“The change does not please you,” she said.

“Ah, but it does.”

“Yet you were kinder to me then.”

He did not reply. She raised her face.

“Is it not so?”

“Perhaps,” he replied.

“Then you must have loved me more then,” she said.

“No, that is not true.”

“No? Do you still love me, then?”

“I cannot answer you,” he said. “If I were to tell you my heart you would not believe me, because you would not understand.”

“Ah, but I would, indeed,” she said, softly.

“You are innocent,” he said, regarding her thoughtfully, “but you are a coquette by nature.”

“What is that?”

“One who makes a jest of love.”

“And what is love?”

“Your heart will tell you some day.”

“Yet I would have your heart tell me now.”

“Love is a rosy pain of the heart.”

“Then I do not feel it,” she said, stretching out her little, pink fingers over her heart, “for mine thrills and beats with joyous palpitations. Yet”—she looked up at him seriously—“perhaps that, too, is another of the moods of this love.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Love is capricious.”

Hyacinth sighed and looked out wistfully across the bay.

“It is a strange word,” she said, vaguely.

“Yes, strange,” he said. “I have lived years in England, but I had to return to Nippon to learn its meaning.”

“Yet you have been back but a day,” she said, tremulously.

“And love is born in a moment,” he whispered, and took her hand softly in his own.

She withdrew it quickly, and turned from him in a sudden panic of incomprehensible fear, the morning had wrought such a change in her.

“We must be going home,” she said. “Nay, we must hurry.”

And after that they walked homeward swiftly in silence, each afraid to speak to the other.

XXV

As Hyacinth passed up the little garden-path she saw a familiar face at the open shoji of the guest-room.

“It is Yamashiro Yoshida,” she said to Koma.

“What does he want?” her companion demanded, with such unexpected harshness that the girl broke into a silvery peal of laughter.

“The gods alone know. We shall see. Ah, but he is welcome!”

Aoi met them at the door. Her poor, little, anxious face hurt the girl more than if she had heaped her with reproaches. With an unwonted tenderness she threw her arms about the mother’s neck and pressed her face against hers, whispering over and over again.

“How I love you! It is so good to see you again.”

“Yoshida is within,” said Aoi, when the girl had released her. “He comes alone.”

“What!” she cried, in mock surprise. “The brave Yoshida ventures out alone? Well, and what does he want?”

“Nay, he would not tell me. He will speak only to you, little one.”

“Very well. Let him speak,” and she pushed the doors gayly aside and entered the oxashishi. She was not aware that Koma had entered also until, following the glance of Yoshida, she perceived Koma behind her. Then her voice rippled merrily, and she spoke affectionately to Yamashiro Yoshida.

“Why, Yamashiro Yoshida, what brings you here? I had not dreamed of the blessings the gods had in store for me. I am so affected by the light of your presence that I am rendered speechless,” which last was quite untrue, as both the young men could have attested.

Yoshida bowed himself to the ground; and now, oblivious of the presence of the intruder, Koma, replied:

“Ah, beauteous one, I am come to bring you a most insignificant present, and to beseech you to pardon the rudeness of my family and to permit our betrothal to continue.”

The girl took the gift slowly and held it on the palm of her hand. It was a very exquisitely lacquered box, and she knew without opening it that it contained some very valuable complexion powder. Her lover, however, could not have told from her face the effect of his words and gift upon her.

Her eyes were inscrutable, her lips pressed closely together. She seemed to be examining the box with critical eyes, as though she were weighing its value.

Without a word of response, she suddenly crossed to the tokonona and drew out from underneath it a fairly large box. Its contents she removed slowly, setting the articles in a semicircle on the floor about her. Soon she was quite encircled by the contents. Then, with one little, pointing finger, she spoke:

“This obi, Yamashiro Yoshida, was your first gift. It was given on the day of our betrothal. I have never worn it. It was too rich for one so small as I.”

She looked full into the face of Yoshida, and then with a fleeting glance she saw the face of Koma. She smiled ever so sweetly.

“These pins, Yoshida, are costly, but murderous appearing. Once they pricked my head.”

She stuck them into the sash of the obi.

“These bracelets,” she said, “are just exactly like the ones you gave to the geisha Morning Glory.”

She laid them beside the pins.

“This kimono, honorable Yoshida, is so heavy its weight would break the back of one so humble as I.”

“Lady,” said Yamashiro Yoshida, haughtily, “you make a jest of my gifts. I assure you I do not appreciate it. Why do you thus enumerate them? Is it not ungracious?”

Sweetly the girl swept all of the gifts into a heap together, then, rising with them in her arms, she crossed to Yoshida.

“Yamashiro Yoshida,” she said, “I never loved you, yet I betrothed myself to you because of the magnificence of your gifts. I was an ignorant child. Then you and your august parents cast me off because of my honorable origin, which you despised. Now you come to attempt to buy me with another gift. But I am no longer a silly child, and I give you back not only that new gift, but—all—all—all—all. Take them—take them quickly.”

She thrust them into his arms. Angrily he attempted to refuse them. They fell crashing to the floor. A man’s rich voice suddenly broke out into laughter.

“It is an insult!” cried Yamashiro Yoshida, furiously, trampling upon his gifts, half by accident, half blindly. He glared at the sweetly smiling face of the girl—glared at the laughing Komazawa; then he clapped his hands violently.

“My shoes!” he fairly shouted at Mumè, as she answered his summons.

He kicked his feet into his shoes, stamped on the floor furiously, then turned on his heel and left the house in a fine rage.

XXVI

As the irate Yoshida vanished through the doors, Hyacinth clapped her hands with a childish gesture of delight. She looked at Koma, now regarding her gravely, then, with a dimpling smile, she sat down on the mats among the despised gifts. These she tossed about gayly.

“He has gone away,” she said, “mad as three devils of Osaka, but what matter? He has left the gifts! Such a silly lover, such a foolish one!”

She began to collect the gifts, folding the obi and the rich kimono.

“You are not going to keep them?” said Koma, standing over her and looking down at her gravely.

“Not going to keep them? Why, the lover refused to accept their return.”

“Yes, but you don’t want them.”

“But I do,” she protested, patting the folded obi lovingly.

“Why, you told him you did not.”

“Oh,” she said, airily. “That’s just foolish pride. I was just talking—through my head.”

She laughed mischievously.

“That’s liddle slang I learned at mission-house,” she said.

“I want you to send those presents back to this Yamashiro.”

“Send all those lovely presents back?”

She shook her head.

“Could not do it,” she said. “Too great sacrifice.”

“I will buy you all the things you want.”

She stared up at him amazedly.

“You?”

“Yes,” he replied, flushing, “I—why not?”

“Well, but”—she regarded him doubtfully—“you are not rich like Yamashiro Yoshida.”

“How do you know?” he asked, quietly.

She regarded him dubiously.

“When I get those presents from you,” she said, “then I will return these. That right?”

He pulled the box over to the centre of the floor, and thrust the gifts into it, snapping the lid down tightly. Then, going to the door, he called for Mumè to take the box at once to the Yamashiros.

Having disposed of this question, he turned his attention again to Hyacinth. She was sitting in the centre of the room, her chin on her hand, pensively regarding him.

“How,” she said, “are you going to make me those gifts if I am to go away to that West country, and you will not go with me?”

“You are going to stay here,” he said; and she knew from the expression in his eyes and the tone of his voice that he meant what he said.

“But what of my august parent?”

“Will you follow my advice exactly?”

She nodded in assent.

“When he comes you are to make a request of him.”

“Yes?”

“Ask him—beg him even—to permit you to remain one month in Sendai with us. Then tell him that after that you will go wherever your rightful guardian shall direct.”

“He will not consent,” she said, depression seizing upon her—“these august barbarians are hard as rock. They never move—no, never.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody,” she said, “but I observe.”

“Where did you observe it?” he persisted.

She looked at him sideways a moment without replying. Then she dimpled and smiled.

“In the mission-house people and in—you, Koma,” she said.

“Promise me that you will make the request?”

“Very well, I will make that foolish promise. But”—she thrust out a little red underlip in a bewitching pout—“one month will soon come to an end, and after that?”

“After that you will leave the rest to me,” he said.

XXVII

In the guest-room of Madame Aoi’s house, the Lorrimers had waited fully a half-hour. Their patience was wellnigh exhausted. Lorrimer’s nervousness and anxiety threatened to result in utter collapse. The events of the last few months, through which this dissipated man of the world had suddenly found himself to be the father of a child he had never seen, and by the woman his conscience had never ceased to tell him he had wronged, were having their effect upon him.

He was a weak-natured man, easily ruled through his affections; but he was not bad-hearted. Many years ago the woman who was now his wife had prevailed upon him to divorce another wife that he might marry her. Richard Lorrimer’s affection for his second wife had evaporated during the honeymoon, and was nameless and dead in twelve months. Since then his life with her had been dull, aimless, purposeless, broken in its monotony only at intervals by the woman’s spasmodic efforts to fan the flame into life.

Now a strange and novel emotion was stirring the soul—if soul it could be called in such a nature—of Richard Lorrimer. He had a feverish, almost childish, longing to see, to possess, this child—his own. He was too sluggish and indolent by nature to have an imagination which would have pictured her in his mind. He had a hazy idea that she would be like any other American child, that she would, of course, be shy of him at first, but that the natural feeling of a child for its father would assert its power. He felt certain that she would prove a source of pleasure and comfort to him.

Nervously he paced the floor, with irregular, broken strides, stopping now and then to look about him, or to answer the impatient remarks that escaped his wife’s lips.

“This is beautiful,” she said. “I suppose we are to wait here all day.”

Lorrimer glanced about the room.

“Do you suppose there’s a bell somewhere?” he asked, fretfully.

“What a question! Did you ever see a bell in a Japanese house?”

“The hotels all have them,” he answered.

“This is not a hotel.”

Lorrimer winced at her retorts. He said, a trifle apologetically:

“You see, my dear, the woman said she was dressing, or something like that.”

“Then we may as well go back to Mr. Blount’s. These Japanese women are inordinately vain, and spend hours in dressing.”

“My daughter is not Japanese,” said her husband, mildly.

The woman pursed her lips.

“I wonder what you really expect to see, Dick?” she said, looking at him curiously. “You’re all unstrung.”

Just then Aoi appeared at the door. She came towards them in a state of repressed excitement, and she welcomed her guests with stammering and uncertain words, though she courtesied so repeatedly that the visitors became uneasy.

“My daughter?” inquired Lorrimer, as soon as Aoi had ceased her kowtowing.

“She will come in a moment. The illustrious ones will pardon the child’s nervousness.”

“It is only natural,” said Lorrimer, quietly, biting his underlip in his own restlessness.

Aoi’s face, with its humble smile, suddenly appeared alert. She seemed to be listening.

“Ah, now she is coming, augustness,” she said, as she crossed to the doors and slowly pushed them aside.

The Lorrimers had not heard the soft patter of the little feet in the matted hall, for a Japanese girl’s tread in the house is almost soundless. Hence, when Aoi drew the sliding-doors apart, they had not expected to see the girl on the very threshold.

They started, simultaneously, at sight of the little figure. With drooping head, Hyacinth softly entered the room. At first glance she seemed no different from any other Japanese girl, save that she was somewhat taller. She was dressed in kimono and obi, her hair freshly arranged and shining in its smooth butterfly mode. Her face was bent to the floor, so that they could scarcely see more than its outline.

She hesitated a moment before them; then, as though unaware of the impetuous motion towards her of the man she knew was her father, she subsided to the mats and bowed her head at his feet.

The silence that ensued was painful. Then Mrs. Lorrimer gasped, hysterically:

“This is not—not she?”

Lorrimer stooped gently down to the little figure and lifted her to her feet. She raised her face, and for a moment these two whose lives were so strangely connected looked into each other’s faces. The father could not speak for some time, so intense were the emotions that assailed him. When he did find his voice, it was broken and trembling.

“My—my dear little daughter!” he said.

Then he bent and kissed her. She stood still, almost stonily, under his caress, but she did not return his embrace. She quietly withdrew her hands from his.

“It is unnatural—horrible,” said Mrs. Lorrimer, beneath her breath. Low as was her voice, it broke the spell of silence, which rested like a pall in the room. Lorrimer turned to her quietly.

“And this,” he said to Hyacinth, “is your—your mother.”

She turned her eyes slowly upon the woman, and looked at her steadily. Then she said, in clear English:

“You make mistake. My mother is dead.”

Again an embarrassed silence and constraint fell upon them all. This time it was Aoi who broke it. She turned her head from them as she spoke.

“Little one, it is your duty to accept the Engleesh lady as your mother.”

For the first time the girl’s unnatural calmness deserted her. She ran to Aoi, throwing her arms passionately about her.

“No, no,” she cried. “You are the only mother I know. I will never have another. No!”

“What are they saying to each other?” asked Mrs. Lorrimer, watching them curiously.

“My knowledge of Japanese is limited,” said her husband, heavily.

“The whole thing’s a farce,” she said.

“Do you find it so?” he asked, smiling bitterly.

“Oh, Dick, we can’t be expected to understand a girl—like that.”

“She is my daughter,” was his quiet reply; and there was a new dignity in his voice.

“Yes, but she is different from us, so utterly alien. Just look at her. Would any one believe she was your daughter?”

He looked over at the little figure now soothing the weeping Aoi, and his wife’s words found a hollow echo within him.

“Yet,” said Mrs. Lorrimer, thoughtfully, “she is still very young and quite pretty. A few years in the West may make a great change in her. Who knows, we may make quite a little civilized modern out of her yet. She is Richard Lorrimer’s daughter.”

As though she knew they were talking about her, Hyacinth left Aoi and came towards them, though she was careful to keep at a distance.

“Will my honorable father excuse our presence for to-day?” she said, in English.

“But you are going with us at once,” said Mrs. Lorrimer.

With a movement that in a Western girl would have seemed rudeness, Hyacinth turned her back slowly towards her step-mother and addressed her words solely to her father.

“If it please you, august father,” she said, “will you not deign to permit me to remain here with my—my friends till the time comes to leave Sendai?”

Her form of speech hurt her father strangely. He watched her face—unloving, emotionless, it seemed, when turned to his—and his own grew wistful. He was more than anxious to indulge her.

“Yes, yes, certainly,” he said. “I appreciate your feelings. By all means stay here if you wish. How long before—”