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Another random document with
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 PART I
IT was around the tolling of the fifth hour in the early evening that a
fish monger, of the next street, in a flush of drink and a rush of self-
imposed urgency, sped into the pawn-broking shop of Suruga-ya on
one of his visits, which were more regular than his financial
programme ever seemed to be. He jingled money in his breast
pocket, singled forth two silver pieces, quite bright and new, just
given him, as he explained, by an officer living in the Ginza way, and
asked back such of his dress things as he was evidently to need for
the New Year’s holidays,—livery coat, outer gown, and so forth, now
neglected for three months in pledge. After he left, the business part
of the Suruga-ya, usually so lively, was again to remain quiet without
a single more caller to break the stillness, a thing probably
accountable by the bad weather that evening. Shinsuké who had
been buried in reading, his face between his hands, just behind the
counter railing, literature served in a yellow paper cover of no more
importance than its author, now remembered the little brazier under
his nose and, trying to stir up the fire, well-nigh gone out, muttered to
himself, “What a cold evening!” Then, reaching out his hand to the
apprentice boy, sitting two or three feet off, dozing away in an
undisturbed nap, Shinsuké pulled his ear.
“Shota, wake up for a moment. Sorry to send you out in this
sleeting miserable weather, but I want you to run over like a good
boy to the macaroni house, on the Muramatsu-cho[1], and tell them
to bring two bowls of hot boiled macaroni with fried fish for me,—and
take for yourself whatever you like, too; it’s our bargain.”
“That’s fine! Now that I’m awake, I feel cold and a little hungry.
Before the Master comes back, I’ll let you treat me to something
warm and nice.”
The youngster bestirred himself, tucking up the lower part of his
clothes and, snatching down a broad-brimmed rain hat hung near
the entrance, sailed out into the sleet and cold.
 In the meantime, Shinsuké straightened up the things on the
counter, put the padlock on the store-house, and closed the main
entrance door on the street. “We shall be late coming home to-night,
may even have to stay over till to-morrow morning;—see carefully
that the doors are all fastened, and everything is in order”: said his
master in the early evening, when he was leaving with his wife, on
their visit to a relative over in Yotsuya, just gone into mourning.
Remembering this parting order, Shinsuké, a lantern in hand, set out
looking carefully around, from the kitchen door to the back entrance
gate, up the flight of steps leading from the maids’ quarters, to the
doors on the balcony perched on the roof for clothes line, making
sure of bars and bolts everywhere. As he retraced his way down the
steps, his lantern threw its dim light bringing out of the darkness the
faces of two servant maids, slumbering away so comfortably under
heavy bed-clothes.
“Are you already asleep, O-Tami don[2]?” His query, though
voiced in a tone raised above the ordinary, received no response.
Softening his footfalls even more carefully, through the hallway,
whose wood floor was so cold for his bare feet to hug, he came
round to look over a train of sliding panels that screened the
verandah from a space of inner garden.
The verandah led to one of the best rooms of the house, where a
bed-room lantern shed an elfish light upon the paper doors. It was
generally used by the master and mistress for their living room, fitted
as it was, with the family mortuary shrine, a large sized brazier, a tea
cupboard, and other articles of household paraphernalia. To-night,
Tsuya, the young mistress, had evidently taken it for herself and
gone to bed there.
“Ah, how warm and snug it must be in that room there!” As the
thought flashed through his mind, suddenly he seemed to find
himself face to face with the miseries of his own wretched self, of the
life meted out to a man in menial servitude; his eyes, aglow with
envy, lingered on the soft glow on the paper.
He had now for a full year nursed a deep love for Tsuya whose
feeling toward him was as tender and enduring. However madly they
might love one another, his master’s daughter was out of his reach.
Had he been born to a family of name and means, he would claim
this beautiful Tsuya as his own. It was his wont thus to lament his
own misfortunes in life.
It must have been close upon midnight. The cold air relentlessly
oozed its way into the house. While at a pause in the verandah hall,
Shinsuké shivered as he had to feel the cold draughts coming in
between the sliding doors. Out of the warm depths of his bosom, he
pulled out his hand to take the lantern and relieve his right hand,
which was now chilled to the aching point, and on which he kept
blowing his warm breath. He could feel his thighs so bare and chilly
in their touch against each other, as if they were not his own. His
shivers, however, may not have been accountable by the cold only.
“Is that you. Shin don?” hailed Tsuya, just as he was going past
outside the sleeping room. She either awoke just then, or had been
awake throughout. Then, she apparently opened the shade over the
globe-shaped lantern to turn it toward the hall, for the glow on the
paper outside was thrown into a brighter light.
“Yes, it is myself. The master’s late, and I thought I should go
around to make sure about the doors.”
“You’re ready to turn in, now?”
“No, I shall just stay up all night until the Master comes home.”
As he spoke those words, he lowered himself on his knees
outside the room, placing his hands down, correctly putting himself in
an attitude of respect due to the daughter of the family. Almost at the
same instant, the screen doors were pushed back, opening about a
foot wide.
“It is cold out there; come in and shut the doors behind.” Combing
back her stray hair, she sat up amidst the silk quilts, her long-lashed
eyes fixed, in open adoration, on the face of the man, which, even in
a subdued light, appeared so white and handsome.
“They have all gone to bed, I suppose?”
 “No, young mistress, I expect Shota back from his errand every
second. As soon as he comes, he shall be sent to bed, and until then
—”
“Oh, patience and more patience until I shall have no more!—
When we have got to-night such a chance as we can ever hope for!
Now, listen, Shin don, I hope you, after all this time, are ready to-
night, with your mind made up?”
Tsuya, covered only by her under-robe of bright red dappled
crepe which clung close to the lines of her form, sat unmindful of her
white feet peeking out, in their dainty arrangement, from under the
quilts, as she put her hands together, as in the manner of prayer
offering.
“Whatever do you mean by being ready and so forth, my young
mistress?”
Overcome by the force of the beauty before him, a force that
seemed to sweep away his soul, the man lifted his eyes in a stare
almost too frank and childlike for his twenty years, and waited for the
very answer he was afraid to give to himself.
“Run away with me to Fukagawa, to-night. That’s all I’m going to
say. See how I pray you!”
“Impossible,” he said; but he was really troubled to think how he
might steel himself against what seemed to tempt him with a
stupendous force of voluptuous bewitchery. Since he came into the
service here, as a young lad of fourteen, he had got on so well that
his master had come to repose in him so much confidence as he
would do in few young men. A year or two more of patience and
good work, and his master would set him up in business and, if he
could not have the happiness of marrying the lovely Tsuya, he would
be on his way to whatever fortune and name he might desire. What,
then, would be the happiness of his old parents who were living only
in hopes of such time? The idea of taking advantage of a girl still too
young, the daughter of his own master, was preposterous; he could
not—he should not do it; repeatedly he told himself.
 “So, Shin don, you’ve forgotten what you promised me the other
day, have you? Yes, now I see it all through. It was only a plaything
you meant to make of me. And when it came to that, you would
throw me away. It is as plain as I would ever care to see it.”
“It is nothing of the sort that—”
He was about to extend his comforting hands to Tsuya who was
heaving her shoulders with half-stifled sobs, when there came a loud
and persistent knocking on the front door. Taken aback by the
youngster’s announcement of himself, Shinsuké suddenly sprang to
his feet, lantern in hand, a picture of consternation.
“Later, then, I shall be sure to come when Shota has been sent to
bed, and we shall talk it over, as you please. If you are of so strong a
mind as you say, I will think once again, and—”
It was after some moments of a tender struggle that he could
detach himself from Tsuya’s clinging hands. Returning to the front
part of the house, again fully composed, he hastened to open the
small side-door.
“Oh, I’m frozen!” cried the boy, as he darted in, almost head over
heels.
“It’s turned to snow. Shin don,” he reported, brushing off the snow
on the broad hat. “It looks sure like going to pile up thick to-night.”

It was about an hour later that the young apprentice, having done
justice to his share of the mid-night repast, crawled into bed and fell
asleep. The wind seemed to have blown itself out; but the snow was
evidently going on, for a dead stillness had settled outside on the
streets whence all life had been driven off to slumber. Shinsuké
came back with a few lumps of charcoal which he had taken out of
the trap in the kitchen floor. When they were fed to the fire in his
brazier, he crouched down because he knew no better, a helpless,
lone figure in a corner of the shop. Even as he remained at such a
pause, his thoughts went out to the back quarters of the house
where the young mistress must be awaiting him, with no thought of
sleep. With those things racing through his mind, he felt himself
besieged by the force of his own fate—a fate that seemed to come
on and over him now to determine the course of his life for all time. If
only his master would come back soon, this dreadful temptation
would of itself pass away; his thoughts would, in some moments,
take on such complexion.
There was in back a faint noise of screens being slid, to be
followed by what seemed to be a stealthy tread in the verandah hall.
Shinsuké suddenly leapt to his feet and stole his way toward the
room where he had left her. It was done out of his fear lest the young
mistress, petulant as she was, should make a scene that was to be
averted at all costs. The two found each other where the hall had a
turn.
“Are you all ready, Shin don? I have brought with me enough
money to carry us on for some time. I’ll let you take care of this purse
and everything.”
Tsuya pulled her hands back into her sleeves, and, bulging out
the black satin trimmings across her breast, took out of the depths of
her bosom a purse of yellow cloth which was almost thrust into his
hands. Its weight could not be of less than ten large gold pieces[3].
“To take not only you away, but even my master’s money;—God’s
vengeance would be heavy!” His protest, however, went no farther;
for he was easily to succumb to her wishes.
“But it seems to be snowing, unfortunately—I shouldn’t mind; but
you would be frozen to death, if you were to walk all the way out to
Fukagawa, in this terrible weather. So, I say, Tsu chan[4], why not
some other time as well?—and a chance there sure will be yet!”
In speaking of Fukagawa, they had in mind the home of a certain
boatman living in that part of Fukagawa which is called Takabashi.
Seiji, the boatman in case, had been patronized by the Suruga-ya
family for ten long years. What with clam-gathering picnics to the
sand-bars around the forts of Shinagawa and the customary parties
at the river festivity of Ryogoku, he had made himself familiar with
Tsuya and Shinsuké. In addition to the calls he was in custom to
make at the time of the “Bon”[5] holidays and just before the New
Year, he would occasionally pay his respects to the Suruga-ya. It
was his wont as much as his privilege to seat himself, on such
occasions, in a corner of the kitchen over a treat of drinks, and
plunge into an open admiration of the beautiful daughter of the
house.
“Talk of a picture of prettiness, I’ve seen nothing to beat our young
lady here,” he would glibly start off. “I don’t care what people say, I
say there isn’t anybody in this big town to match with this beautiful
thing here. Asking for pardon for me saying this, if she were a geisha
girl, I would never stay behind, such as I am, yet not without a
stretch of time ahead of me to be as old as fifty.”
As he would harp away in his droll fashion, he would sometimes
even allow himself so much liberty as to lay his hold on Tsuya’s
sleeve, saying: “Be good, O-Tsu chan, and grant me the wish of my
life,—bless me with a cupful from your own hands. Not for a long
time—just one cupful, and never more than that—”
And the folk would laugh at what they looked on as a good
natured mimicry of one who might make bold to advance on her
attention.[6]
A man trading on river traffic, running wherries to carry fares
going up to and coming from Yanagibashi, Fukagawa, Sanya,
Yoshiwara, the gay quarters clustered along and about the only
watercourse of the town, and living mostly within the pale of a world
where wine flowed and folks feared not to talk of sins, the boathouse
master Seiji was a man of enough understanding, and he may well
have sensed, for some time now, the love that had secretly been
growing between the young lady of the family and the young man.
However, he breathed never a word about it, in any way, if he did
know, strangely enough of a man who enjoyed so much to talk. The
first time that he ever came out with his knowledge of the affair was
about a month ago when he paid one of his casual visits, after what
he said had been a trip to Yanagibashi, and gave airing to what had
lain in the back of his head. For that day, the family had planned a
theatre party, from which Tsuya excused herself under a feigned
pretext of illness; for a chance to be alone in the company of
Shinsuké was too precious. Not to disappoint the whole family on her
sole account, her parents took their two maids instead, and went out
to the theatre in the early morning.[7] The shop had been left in
charge of the little Shota alone, while Shinsuké had been spending
most of his time at the bedside of Tsuya, charged with what was
termed as nursing the ill young lady. It was just at one of such times
that the boatman Seiji tripped in, his face florid and jolly, as usual,
from drinking. He ahemed, smirked, and went straight in to slap the
young man on the shoulder.
“Shin don, I wish you all the luck and pleasure! You thought I
knew nothing about this, didn’t you? It’s a long time, believe me,
since I smelt a rat. People are blind, but mighty hard to pull the wool
over my eyes. Not that I mean to speak to our master about it. So,
you might as well own up to it, now. And, why couldn’t I be of some
help to you, some time? Only natural, I say, that it should come to
this, when a beautiful young lady is living in the same house as a
boy as handsome as those we see only on the stage. And me,—a
funny thing,—for, if I see a young pair like yourselves, madly in love
with each other and in trouble, I want to do something just to help
them out,—somehow,—I don’t care how much trouble it means,—so
I may see them happy together, always. It’s some queer thing in me
that does it, I suppose.”
Taken quite off their guard, the young pair helplessly looked at
one another, as they felt cold shudders run down their backs. Seiji,
however, framed himself in an air of so knowing assurance and
worked himself up into voluble exuberance, for the reason he
seemed to know the best.
“A man who means to love must never be so weak-kneed. Might
as well come out with the whole thing, and why not? You shouldn’t
keep such a thing in your young hearts and suffer. It would be a far
sight better—a short cut, too, if I were to take the whole thing up with
the master and reason him into allowing you both to marry. No
flattery, but Shin don ought to be a good enough man, what of his
handsomeness, clean mind, and cleverness. I should be surprised if
our master wouldn’t agree to it.”
 “If that were possible, we should ask him ourselves, without giving
you the trouble.”
The young Shinsuké was inveigled, in spite of himself, into giving
a full account of the situation they were in. Tsuya was the sole
heiress of the family, and he was the only child his old parents had;
each was bound to remain in his or her own family. However much
they might think, there was no way in which to make their marriage
possible.[8]
“I would kill myself, if we couldn’t be together!”
Tsuya broke down on this, after she had followed the rueful
account of her beloved one; she sobbed as one no longer able to
fight down her rising emotion.
“Calm yourself, young lady, calm yourself,” consoled the boatman.
“Now, I know what I could do. Listen to me. You will run away from
here and come to my place. It will be just a way to get round the
trouble, and I know what I talk about. You can leave the rest to me. I
will see the old folks of both sides, and, depend on it, I shall reason it
out with them and get them to agree to it!”
In fact, the young lovers had talked of eloping earlier in the very
same evening. Seiji’s suggestion came to prompt Tsuya in her ready
decision, right then and there. Shinsuké, however, had not been able
to see his way quite so clear in his decision to this day, and even to
this moment.
“Do you mean to back out, now?”
As she spoke, she clasped the wrists of the man who still lingered
in a pensive attitude, his hands folded and his head drooped low.
With her form bent over, like a bamboo bough under a heavy weight,
she leaned herself against him. She fidgeted, fretted, and shook him,
threatening with “I’ll kill myself, if you don’t come.”
“I give way! I can’t be firm! And let things take care of themselves,
for I go with you, as you say.”
Shinsuké quickly went back to the shop, and pulled his own
wicker box out of the deep recess of the closet. He took out of it a
heavy cotton dress and changed it for the one he had on. It was a
gift out of his father’s old wardrobe and the only piece of clothing that
had not been given him during these years of service. He felt he
could not go off in any of these clothes without his thanks to his
master. Then, going to the case at the side entrance, he noiselessly
picked out Tsuya’s lacquered pair of rain-clogs which he hugged
tightly under his arm, as if he treasured them, in retracing his way to
the verandah.
The sight of the girl at a pause there. He was almost aghast to
think that she meant to go out in this bitterly cold weather in such
attire; her hair bared to be seen in its freshly made coiffure, silk
checker dress of bright gold and black, heavy sash of brocaded satin
girt just below the breast,—and nothing to cover her feet.[9] She who
had always shown, with a woman’s instinct, a partiality for the
piquant manner of the geisha, would assert her taste even before
such a venture.
“Come, here is our way,” said Shinsuké, as he dropped into the
garden, by pushing the doors open two or three feet at the end of the
verandah. The snow which had been going on without stir or noise,
had already lain to a depth of a few inches. Wattle-fence, shrub-
beds, and the wainscoted walls round the verandah corner were all
covered with an alabaster mantle. He felt for the feet of the girl who
sat over the edge of the verandah. In the faintest half-light of the
snow, he managed to place the soft, but icy, soles of her feet over
the bottom of clogs. And it was with tremulous hearts that they
measured each step that made a slish-slash as it sank into the snow.
At last, they made their way as far as the little gate in the back-side
wall. Through this and crossing a line of board-walk over a sewer
passage, cautious of any noise, they stole out into the open street.
The sky was overcast, but the snow, partly spent out, fluttered
down in large, occasional flakes. It was warmer than they had
expected. Under one umbrella spread over them, the girl held the
handle and the young man’s hand closed over hers. By way of the
Tachibana-cho, they directed their way to the Hama-cho.
 The soft lines of Shinsuké’s appearance belied his strength, for he
was a youth of good height, muscular, with a stock of sinewy power
above the average. As he felt his nerves gripped by surging
emotions, he would oft tighten his clasping hand with such a
convulsive force that Tsuya felt as if her right hand, so small and frail
and now chilled to freezing point, were about to be crushed out. And
she would as oft give a little cry of pain. “Nothing the matter with you,
I hope, Shin don?” she would ask at such times, with concern in her
voice, lifting her searching eyes into his. And her long-slit eyes
glistened even in the dark with a glow, as of a strong mind.
When they had crossed the New Great Bridge, there came eight
strokes of midnight. The clanging note of the bell, floating out and far
in its resonant roar, seemed to summon to its wild shriek the soul of
the water, now swelled to its full on a flow of sea tide, with its bosom
bared to the falling snow, moved on with a chill and stillness of
death.
Tsuya who had remained sparing of words till now broke the
silence: “That bell is so fascinating,—it’s so much like what we see
on the stage!”
“Well, your nerves are stronger than mine,” Shinsuké retorted,
showing a grin that was mirthless, and even bitter. They returned to
silence after this, and remained so until they reached the boatman’s
house, perched on the side of the Onagigawa stream.
Part II
 PART II
TO settle the thing right and proper, you shouldn’t be too hasty, you
know. Ten days or so of patience. In the meantime, you had better
stay away from people as much as possible. Our rooms upstairs
shall be at your disposal—just keep your happy selves in there, and I
wish you all pleasure!
So said Seiji, as he received the young pair. His wife and all the
menial hands were properly instructed and warned. Their
friendliness was excelled only by their hospitable eagerness to serve
their wants. However, ten days had gone by, and even a month had
passed, without any tangible good news from the boatman.
“Seiji san[10] is a busy man and, because things didn’t turn out
just as he had hoped, he might be staying back, though he wouldn’t
like to disappoint us as yet.”
It was a piece of suspicion that had begun to dawn upon
Shinsuké’s mind. Tsuya, however, would take the situation in a more
philosophical vein.
“Why worry yourself like that, dear?” she would say. “Now that
we’ve run away together, what difference if we were never taken
back by our folks? We might just as well take up a home for us two
only. Why, we might be better off that way, after all, and who knows?
I’ve never felt so happy in all my life, as I do now. Little care, let me
tell you, if I never went home to them!”
Since coming to this new abode, Tsuya had completely changed;
she was more buoyant, jolly and bold. Their window looked down,
almost straight below, upon a stone built bank which rose sharp over
a narrow canal running into the Sumida river. Hither would daily be
brought a swarm of roofed wherries to take on parties of men and
geisha who had brought with them the spirit of the gay quarters in
Fukagawa and up the river. Nor was it a rare happening that some of
these parties should take up rooms partitioned from the young pair’s
room only by the doors of paper screen, and plunge into a free and
open jollity, as careless as it was annoying. It was not long before
Tsuya began to pick many ways and manners from these people she
saw or heard. Her hair which was done in a maiden style when she
left her home soon had to be changed. On the fourth day after she
came here, she had her hair washed and combed back into an easy
knot at the back of her head, with only a single comb stuck in side-
wise, a style of comfort at the expense of decorum. Donning a
dressing gown of garish pattern that the boatman’s wife offered her
against the cold and the frequent practice of smoking crowned her
attempt to imitate what was thought to be the “at home” manners of
a geisha. When she picked up some words from the vernacular of
the prostitute class and unwittingly used them a couple or so times,
Shinsuké thought he should step in and call a halt.
“What language for you to speak?” he said, with his brow knit with
displeasure. “Why should you have to take to the ways of those
wretches? I am even too proud to speak of them.” He fought for his
and their dignity of mind. It was not difficult to imagine that, but for
his Tsuya, he might have remained true to the accepted idea of the
regular life of a man.
It was small heed, however, that the young woman would give to
his ideas on such lines. She had been completely carried away by
her own happiness and her satisfaction with the new life, and made it
a life of frivolous laughter, from morn till night. And just to feel the
fulness of her heart, she would even rhapsodize her whims and
fancies at meals, ordering this dish and that to indulge in epicurean
luxury. She would grow generous every third day or so and declare a
wholesale treat to the entire family, remembering even the hired
boatmen. Through the thoughtfulness of Seiji there were always
bottles of drink at dinner in the evening. When she held out her cup
to be filled, it was done with a gesture of one still unused, but drink
she would with an eagerness to assimilate the ways of the hardy
sex. Some nights when she was too heavily affected by drinking, her
face would glow with such a passion as possible only of a frenzied
rage. She would writhe and wallow, her body a veritable flame,
giving him no sleep through the night. They were swept and dragged
into a whirling eddy of pleasure which seemed to threaten to choke
out their very lives.
So time wore on. The busy year-end was fast pressing on. The
market day of the Hachiman shrine on the fifteenth of December was
past. Still there was no news they had so anxiously awaited.
“I’m just now talking to your folks, in the thick of my fight. Four or
five days’ more of patience!” Such was the refrain the boatman
would harp on, with a drawn look of sincere sorrow, whenever he
saw the pair and was asked to explain. And they would invariably
feel that they should not press him beyond that point.
“Seiji san, what’s been done has been done, though I must ask a
thousand pardons of my master, and if we are not to hope to go back
there, we must have it so. We have prepared our minds for the
worst, and, therefore, ready to set us up in a home of our own, if it
has to come to that. There will be no disappointment or sorrow to
drive us to anything extreme or rash, I assure you. So, tell us, I pray
you, how you have fared with them and how you stand now; for we
must know. We can’t let it go on much longer, just living off your
goodness!” Shinsuké’s earnest appeal, however, would always meet
with a response more benevolent than it was ever satisfactory.
“No worrying on my account,” the boatman would answer. “Of
course, if I saw that things weren’t going on right, I’d have given it up
and be done with it. The fact is, I’ve been up there half a dozen times
now and have given them about as good talkings as I knew how, and
the old folks, both sides, seem to begin to see things in my way. ‘If
the young ones are so madly in love as to run away,’ I always tell
them, ‘they should be made man and wife. If not, it means their
parents are not quite fair and refuse to see things as they ought to.’
‘Very well,’ I tell them then, ‘if you don’t want to take them back, I will
take them in until you are ready to change your minds. And while
they are with me, you may depend on me for good care!’” “Now, you
see,” he said, in dismissing the subject with a touch of flippant
humour, “there is nothing for you to worry about!”
No matter how perplexing and difficult the question may have
become, old folks would certainly detest the idea of dragging it on
into New Year, the time of all times, and let it darken their life when
they were particularly anxious to call in happy auspices. Everything
would, therefore, be settled, they reasoned, before the year would be
over, at the latest. Shinsuké hugged such hopes and anxiously
awaited the dawn of the year which seemed to hold forth so many
promises.
The indulgent way of life they pursued daily told on the fund of ten
gold pieces that Tsuya had brought from home, and there remained
now less than a half of the amount. “You can’t greet New Year with
the cheer that five paltry gold pieces can give,” she explained, as
she called in the aid of her hair dressing woman, who was secretly
charged to trade for money a pair of silver fringed prong-pins
wherewith Tsuya had once decked her maidenly hair. And her
generosity was maintained; for on the night of the seventeenth, the
farm fair, one of the last events of the year, she handed out a present
of three small gold pieces to be distributed among the hired hands,
as her remembrance of the season.
It was three days after this, at an early hour of the evening,
Shinsuké and Tsuya were about to sit at table, when Santa, one of
the hired boatmen, came clattering up the stairs. “I have brought
good news for you,” he told to Shinsuké. “I have just got a word from
our Boss. He is now with your father at the restaurant Kawacho, up
the Yanagibashi way. It is going on nicely, he says, and thinks the
thing is likely to be settled. So he tells me to get you in a boat and
come over there straight away. But he thinks, if two of you came, it
might be a bit awkward to carry on the talk. Sorry for the young lady,
he says, but he will ask her to stay here.” “A bit of a rest up for your
dear man, I say,” he turned to Tsuya. “Evening off once in a blessed
while won’t be anybody’s heart-break.”
“But I fear something,—somehow,” Tsuya said, as a sudden
change came over her look, sinking in a depressed mood. It was
good news, to be true, yet who was to know but things might not
take just such a turn that her Shinsuké’s going should be for all time,
that he might not be taken away back to his father’s home. Fear
seized her; and there were fears that pressed on her mind. Nor was
Shinsuké in any better condition of mind. It was for this very moment
that he had so longed for, to be sure; yet, brought face to face with it,
he felt himself helpless against a series of fears that loomed to cast
grim shadows over his mind. What appeared to him the most
misgiving part of it all in prospect, was the idea of brazenly dragging
himself before his father to ask for his grace, without having obtained
the forgiveness of his master against whom he had perpetrated such
wrongs as he shuddered to think of. Insistently pressed on by Santa
who kept saying, “Hurry, as fast as we can make it!”, the young man
but briefly fitted himself up and went down the stairs concealing
within him a leaden heart.
Almost in the same moment, Tsuya was in his tracks and at his
heels, for what reason she knew best. Just as the two men were
about to step into the boat, she caught them by their sleeves.
“Santa san,” she spoke to the boatman, “no offence to you, I
assure you, but I can’t feel—somehow—things are just right. Take
me along, too, I pray you. You will never get into trouble on my
account—I’ll see you don’t!”
“Aha, ha! What should I hear but this stuff and nonsense, young
lady?” Santa, who had regardlessly sprung into the wherry,
guffawed, even as he began to untie the fastening rope. “You’re at
the tricks of a spoilt child,—but you sure don’t mean it! No trouble for
me or anything, I tell you; but what is all this fuss for? As if
somebody were going to gobble him up! Just leave it to my Boss,
and everything will be all right. You ought to see—I know, you do see
—that your going there would simply mean poking a stick in the
wheel—when it’s going on famously, too!”
“If it has to be that way, I could keep myself in some other room
and wait while the talking goes on. So, don’t go without me, for
goodness’ sake! I don’t know why, but I do feel that I shouldn’t let
him go alone, to-night.”—She nimbly took a small gold piece out of
her sash folds.
“It’s not every day that I ask you to do such a thing for me, Santa
san,” Tsuya said, furtively offering the money up to the boatman’s
palm. “Once in a while, you might do me a good turn,—now!”
 “It’s only the other day you gave me a good piece,—no, you’re too
free of giving, and my Boss wouldn’t like it.” After a moment of his
unwonted indecision in such matter, he handed the proffered money
back to her. To this young boatman, seemingly the most important
one amongst Seiji’s hired hands, Tsuya had been most generous; of
him she had been most considerate. What seemed to be his stony
attitude just when she stood so badly in need of his help, was,
therefore, all the more wounding.
“I can appreciate the way you feel about me,” said Shinsuké, “but,
if your coming is just what Seiji san thought wasn’t the thing to do, I’d
hate to do so in face of the wish of the man who is giving himself all
this trouble on our account,—perhaps, a thing I should never forgive
myself for, afterward.” His apparent attempt to soothe her perturbed
mind and to console her into a new point of view, was however
scarcely more successful with her than it was with himself. For, as he
paused at the water’s edge in the half-light of the dusk fast closing
in, his face was washed with an uncanny pallor, and his shoulders
continued to tremble.
“Well, then, whatever trouble may come up after you have a talk
there, you will be sure,—won’t you?—to come back to me before you
do anything.”
“You may depend on me—,” replied Shinsuké, giving an emphatic
nod. “Not that I fear anything like that, though.” Night of all nights,
with the wish of his long yearning heart about to be granted!—he
might well have been pleased and happy, what time he really wanted
to cry from a sinking heart. Why could he not take Tsuya right here
and now and run away again, he even asked himself; for, he felt,
whereby his mind might be relieved of its weight.
There had been on that day, as rarely in winter, a wind from the
south, since early in the day, bearing on its wings an air of stagnant
warmth. Tsuya, what of a headache of which she had complained
since the morning, putting cure plaster on her temples, and of her
emotions stifled the while tears welled to her eyes during her
harangue with the boatman Santa, found herself now sunk in a
weary helplessness and languor of a half-sickness. Her tear-swelled
eyes, however, were strained in a fixed gaze, as she leaned against
the sash of her upstairs window and followed the boat outward bent.
It was still too early for the moon of the last quarter. A grim
monstrosity of cloud, heaving beyond the fire tower at the “New
Great Bridge,” outspreading swift and low in its menacing advance,
had soon over-run across half the face of the ebony sky; the drapery
of black night was lowered over the world of man. Santa’s boat, light
of movement, had sped on bearing away its torch fire which was
soon lost in the depths of river mists.
By the time the boat had cleared the mouth of the canal to glide
out into the mid-stream of the great river, Shinsuké had discovered
himself wrapt in the void expanse of blackness, his eyes fastened
upon a tiny speck of light that his long pipe gave, with a mind
dispelled of cheer.
“What an unpleasant night,” he muttered half to himself. “It looks
like bad weather to-morrow.”
“I’d like to see the good weather keep up till New Year, at least,”
opined Santa; “it looks like a slim chance, though. When the wind
falls off, it’s going to rain—any time now.” He changed now from pole
to oar. And the oar began to grind out a light squeak on its iron pivot
and its rhythmic beat went on as if it teased one moment the water,
lapping at the boatside, only the next moment to float away on its
coursing face. Then, Santa added: “But I did feel pretty sorry for your
young lady. I shouldn’t be surprised if she was now taking to drink.”
The restaurant Kawacho, of Yanagibashi, was in those days one
of the resorts of fashion. Shinsuké had been there two or three times
in his master’s train, while he was in the service. That Santa was a
familiar character here was patent; when he was hailed by waiting
maids while making his way through the hallway, he hurled at them a
teasing remark, quite to Shinsuké’s embarrassment, saying, “I’ve
brought for you to-night, girls, a boy as handsome as any actor you
love.” The two men were shown to a room looking out on the river, a
tea room fitted up in the choice of woodwork and upholstered with
the approval of the most fastidious taste. Seiji was discovered there