Part II
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 todawn 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 wasannoying. 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 fastpressing 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 theyear 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 toask 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 beall 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 ofthe 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, hehurled 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 sitting with his backagainstone of the alcove pillars, his face enlivened by a mellow flush of drinks.
“Just out of luck,” he said, as soon as he saw the newcomers. “Your father’s been waiting for you till a moment ago,—and has just gone! Can’t tell you how sorry I am for you, Shin don! But, then, you were so late in coming,” he added, showing a look of displeasure as was not the wont of the man; and he heaved a sigh of disappointment. But Santa went into explanation for the delay and, when he told how they were detained by Tsuya on the point of their departure, Seiji burst out in a hearty laugh, holding his sides, and his good humour was at once restored. As for Shinsuké, he was even grateful to feel himself relieved of the embarrassment of meeting his father and of the danger of being dragged willy-nilly to his home.
“As long as you are here, you may as well take a little time for drinks,” Seiji said, inviting the young man. Whereat he began to recount his meeting with Shinsuké’s father.
The boatman had taken this evening a fare to a restaurant on the Daionji-mae, Asakusa. Taking chance of this trip, he called on Shinsuké’s parents at their home, not far from there, and got his father to come out here, which had given him as good opportunity as he could hope for. He went over the ground again with the old man, and had the thing thrashed out, well and proper. It would be hard to forgive the boy who had seduced his master’s daughter, said the father, but if the pair should stay away in disgrace, it would mean even adding to the wrongs done to the house of Suruga-ya, which he would not like to see. Should the young ones kill themselves in despair, the master’s family would lose its only heiress and go out of existence, even if the father were not to take his own sorrow into reckoning. When he thought of that side of the affair, he did not wish to hold out too strongly against them, though he realized that it would not be befitting that he should give his consent, or say one way or the other before the master ofthe Suruga-ya should have his say about it, as it properly should be. Therefore, the father would presume only so much as to say this, that if the Suruga-ya folk meant to forgive and forget about the thing, he was ready to let his son marry into their family, even though his own family would thereby pass out; for, he felt he should place the master’s interest before his own. In fact, if he had not had to consider Seiji’s good offices and ideas about the affair, the father said that he would surely, according to the boatman’s account, ferret out his son, if he had to go to the farthest ends of the world, and tear him to pieces. “Feel for my old heart,”—the father was quoted to have said, before he had it out in a man’s cry, no longer able to check his bitter heart. Whereupon, Seiji tried to appease him by making him see things from some other angle than where he was dead set.
“Forgive whatever wrong your son has done,—for my sake,—just to save my face,” Seiji’s appeal followed, according to himself. “If you have brought yourself round so far in the matter, your forgiveness is the only thing now in the way of settling, for I have practically got the Suruga-ya people to the point of giving theirs.”
When the talk had at length come to be closed over a drink of peace, Seiji said, he manoeuvred to make suggestion that the young man be brought over here that the father and son might be happy to see each other. It would give the old man a chance to give his boy a talk so he should do no more misconduct. “Not right or in order that I should do so now and here,” the father was said to haveinsistentlyremarked, in turning down the suggested idea, until he had finally to give way, almostin spiteof himself, to the boatman’s wish. So, he had waited, and waited pretty long; but, because Shinsuké was late and because the father who was a busy man always, had so much on hand just now, with the year-end close at hand, felt he could afford to sit here and while away no more time. So, he had gone, it was said, only a minute before Shinsuké came, despite repeated entreaty on the part of the boatman.
“See, such is the heart of a father!” Seiji commented. And those words seemed to quicken the young man to a keener sense of the wrongs of which he was guilty and of the old heart that was almost too good—a revelation, as he was led to feel. He drooped his head, bent himselflow upon his hands placed down in front, in an attitude of humble gratitude; tears trickled down on his bent knees.
“Now, come to think of it, we’ve quite forgotten our drinks while we were at this thing,” remembered the boatman. “Let us hope for the best, now; and, in the meantime, celebrate the success we are headed for. We’ll drink hearty and proper! To be right, we should have geishas, but, you being too handsome a boy, I shouldn’t put any more pitfalls in your way!”
Seiji pressed drinks on him with an insistence that was matched only by his generous spirit; and the young man drank much. He was not of the sort that may be described to relish the taste of saké, but was of that sort that could keep his wits or his head up, however much he might drink, thanks perhaps to his hardy physique. In spite of his reluctant mind, he accepted each and all of the cups offered him in quick succession, and drank it with grace, out of his respect for the spirit of the occasion.
Then, Santa’s prediction began to prove true. The sky had been completely overcast, before they were aware. The falling off of the winds was soon followed by big drops of rain that camepattering upon the eaves. In no time, it grew into a torrent and began to pour down, as if the sky and the river had been turned into one sheet of water. Whilst their voices were oft deadened amidst the fury that went on with such violence as to make them marvel that their little room was not shaken up, the three men went on with their drinking, for some time yet. There were no signs of slackening in rain.
“It must be getting on the fourth hour,[11]” Seiji was impatient. “I have yet another piece of business to go as far as Koume. But what am I going to do in this sort of weather?” He gave way to his vexed mind, and, there was even a trace of viciousness in his gesture as he clapped his hands to summon the attendant maid.
“Shin don, you will excuse me, as I have but little more time unless I go in the palanquin. But no rushing for you,—may as well take more drinks and stay with Santa as long as you wish.”
On this line of parting words, he took his leave.
The two men had stayed behind for another hour or so, waiting for a visible change in the weather, when Shinsuké concluded that it would be a long waiting that brought no reward. Therewas his unexpressed concern for Tsuya, too. He declared himself as going, sure as he was to be drenched. It was suggested that he should take the palanquin; for, Santa could just as well take his boat over to a place for the night and follow later on foot. Shinsuké would not hear of the offer, insisting to share with him the lot of the rainy journey by foot.
“Well, it might not be so dreadfully bad, after all,” Santa said in agreeing. “For a good walker, it’ll be just a nice little run over to Takabashi. We can borrow umbrellas here. Suppose then we just tuck up our clothes smart, and run down along the riverside way.”
Santa congratulated that there was no wind abroad, as he possessed himself of a lantern proffered by the tea house and prepared himself to lead the way. Shinsuké took up at the end of a rope a box that was to be for Tsuya’s benefit, a part and parcel of the memory of the feast of the evening. They had their clogs secured on themselves, each making fast his own pair by passing the end of the sash across below the lace supports on the footgear. Their limbs bared up to the knees, they started out from Kawacho’s.
They spoke not to each other; for they gave alltheir mind to the rain and darkness through which they battered their way. Only a little way down the line ere they were drenched through. Up to the end of the Ryogoku-bashi bridge; thence to the right, and now out in front of the mansion of the Lord Hosokawa. Almost in the next instant, Santa gave a little startled cry when his lantern had been blown out;—a wind should have been expected on the water front. At this late hour of night, there was neither traffic nor life to give them a light along this riverside road which was never lively or cheerful, and which was now desolated by the stormy rain. After the light was blown out, darkness pressed on them with a grim force, as if it threatened to suck them into its abysmal pitch. And was it a trick of their own minds that even the rain now appeared to beat upon their ears with a greater intensity of jarring note?
“I am sailing all right in the dark, but you should look out for yourself, Shin don,” Santa was howling the warning. “You have drunk rather heavy to-night, don’t you know?” And heavy had he drunk, it was true; as much as three pints, as he could make out. His host and Santa, out of their apparent concern for his condition,repeatedly asked him, saying, “Are you all right yet?” However, he found himself in no worse a condition than a first flush; his feet hugged the earth firm and steady at each step. In fact, it was rather his companion, he thought, that needed care.
“No danger here,—but you’re far worse off, do you know it?” He was straining his voice to shout back his answer. And it was probably deadened by the noise of the ruffled stream; for Santa gave no response.
There intervened a few moments of silence. They had covered about five or six yards in silence when, all of a sudden, a crisp voice snapped, right under his nose, in an unexpected taunt—
“No more words out of your foul mouth, you drunken fool!”
Shinsuké was scarcely given the time to reason out the challenge which was not to be imagined as coming from Santa. For, almost as instantly, the cold point of a blade slashed into his shoulder. A quick twist of the body had saved him from anything serious, he felt. But a sudden paralysis ran over the right half of his neck, and upward, a deadened feeling, as ripped by sharp nails, andhalf of his face was so deadened in the same side as if it had been snapped off.
“Who’s this? Speak!” shouted Shinsuké, as he strove to steady his tottering feet for a quick run.
“Drunken slob that you can’t know my voice!” retorted the other. “For our Boss, I must have your head, and I’ve brought you here to get it.” The assailant leapt forth to pursue and pounce upon his victim, guided by his voice.
Shinsuké pushed his backagainstthe plastered wall on a house premise, and whirled round the handle of his umbrella in frantic defence. Twice or so he trounced off the other who, however, quickly managed to close in and drive a thrust into his flesh,—somewhere in the lower part of his body. Having pinned him fast by grasping him by the bosom, the man came on cutting him up, and his blows, though not well aimed, were none the less furious. After that, neither one of them knew how it fared. They groaned and roared like two beasts pitted against each other, and filthy invectives were hurled back and forth, as their deadly struggle went on in dirt and water. Shinsuké brought his whole weight to bear upon his two hands as he wrenched the opponent’sright hand to force the weapon out of his clutch. They again clinched, and again parted only to close in yet once again in desperate fury and in all that it detailed, the while Shinsuké began to feel within him such a stock of prowess as he had never imagined himself capable of. Santa who was in a worse condition from drinks began at length to lose his ground before the stronger power of sinew, until his sword was at last wrested out of his hand. Undaunted still, he hurled himself against Shinsuké. As quickly almost, he threw Santa down, rode astride his body, drove the blade through the scalp, sawed and grated therewith against the bone, even as the rat gnawed at its bone. The man was dead, quickly.
Then, Shinsuké could understand neither wherefore he had killed nor whereby he had been driven to all this atrocity. He had been goaded into a desperate decision that there was to be no escape save by killing the man; and kill him he did, as in a half dream;—that was about as far as he could make it out for himself. Apart from the shock to his nerves, he still felt in himself, despite several wounds suffered, the presence of so much animal force that he marveled, “Howeasy a work it was to kill a man!”
What claimed his attention next, was the question whether he should run away or surrender himself to the law. In any event, it would not be too late, he concluded, if he went first to see his Tsuya, before he made up his mind one way or the other. The sight of the body of the man who had been capable of laughter, anger and fight till a moment ago, now but a lump of flesh, lying there like a log, so suddenly speechless as almost to appear ludicrous. He felt about the body with his toes, and his sensation of dread was not unmingled with a sense of amused mockery. Somehow, he seemed to see what was called as human in the imagery of a mechanism contrived with extreme ingenuity,—and with a sense of humour. To prevent the discovery of any clues for the time being, he threw the corpse and the weapon into the river. In the rain that kept up with unabated vigour, he started off, at a run, for the boatman’s home at Takabashi.
“For our Boss I must have your head”:—these words of Santa were recalled. It was easy to see now that Seiji was anything but what he had believed him to be, and that his place must be nothing but a den of blackguards working behindthe mask of the boatman. It was as easy to see that Seiji had the attempt made upon his life, because he wished to work his own game with Tsuya. Seeing that the boatman excused himself from the party on the pretext of going to Koume, it was possible that something had befallen Tsuya, already. If the entire household should be involved in the conspiracy, the absence of Seiji from home would be no reason for him to sail into the place without due precaution. In any case, Shinsuké thought, it would not be so simple to see Tsuya. The longer his mind lingered on the subject, the more bitterly vexed was he with himself for allowing himself so neatly to be caught in their trap; and vexed and bitter he grew until a fierce hatred for the boatman and a passion for vengeance burst upon him.
“Kill a man kill two—what’s the difference? If necessary, I’ll strike to death that dog of the boatman. And right then and there I’ll dispatch myself for justice!” In some moments of desperation, he thought it out as far as his own end; yet, live he would at all costs until he should see Tsuya of his devoted heart. And what if he should see her never more? Before the sadness of such a thought, the passion against the boatmanseemed to fade out of his heart only to be filled with a painful sense of misery and desolation that was unbearable and overwhelming.
In order to make his visit as quiet as possible, he began to steal his way from four or five yards before the house. Making his way into the narrow passage flanking the house, he put his ear against the kitchen door, almost expecting to hear Tsuya crying in distress; but not a voice within; all appeared to have gone to bed. The weather could never have been more favourable for such task, and he thought he could afford some noise. He boldly thought of forcing the last of the sliding doors out of the groove. Under his gathered strength, however, he was instantly to be surprised by the yielding of the door, probably never bolted, lightly sliding back a measure. There was only a sleep-room lantern in the back room, shedding its faint glow, but no signs suggestive of any untoward happening. Nevertheless, he did not forget the precaution to pick up a carving knife, hung up by the sink in the kitchen, and concealed it in his bosom, before he went in, picking his stealthy way. And he had made his way just about as far as the foot of the stairs, when—
“Who’s there? Is that you, Santa?” It was the boatman’s wife who challenged him, her voice scarce above a whisper.
“Yes, it’s myself,” Shinsuké returned, in a tone as low and husky as hers, when he arrested his step sharp and short.
“Well, how did it come off—all’s well?” she continued with her query, in a note of concern. The woman, placed close by the brazier and over the foot-warmer, had evidently been waiting for Santa’s return, without a wink of sleep. And strangely enough, the hired men who usually slept in the adjoining room were missed there, this night. Had Tsuya been taken off somewhere, he asked in thought, and it almost left him aghast.
“No fear, I’ve done my part right and neatly,” he spoke, imitating Santa’s voice, as he brusquely shoved back the screens and put in his appearance before the woman. Continuing in the same low voice which sounded all the more awesome because of its tone of forced softness, he said—
“Tell me where Tsu chan is.”
“Why, it’s Shin don!” she gasped; but spoke no more. On the verge of fainting, she fought for self-possession by strained effort, the while she blindly groped in mind for some wile tocover up the situation. Shinsuké’s mien, however, was too forbidding and deadly to permit her such a chance. Nor did he realize it until now he discovered himself in the light of the lantern. Not only his clothes, ripped into shreds, but his own body were blotched several spots with mud, rain, and blood,—a ghastly sight unfit for any earthly being. Shinsuké gave a start to see it, but forthwith he knew he should abandon any hope to conceal his murderous deed.
“Whatever have you been up to, Shin don?” she asked, with a semblance of confidence when she had sufficiently composed herself.
“What have I been up to, you ask? I’ve killed your Santa! But, if you tell me where Tsu chan is, your life will be spared.” He held forth the knife under her nose, with threat in his voice and manner. The woman remained in command of herself, and her coolness was feigned to the point of exasperation.
“She’s no doubt upstairs,” she said, and, having lighted her long pipe, calmly puffed at it, her chin stuck out at an angle at once indifferent and aggressive.
She had once served her term in a house in the Yoshiwara, whence Seiji took her to himself uponthe death of his first wife. Although somewhat over-largely made, she was of white complexion, extremely attractive of figure; a woman in the early afternoon of her life, about thirty-two or three. Like a woman of strong will and nerves even to match a man’s, that she had always vauntedly claimed herself to be, she was capable of facing the situation without flinching, maintaining complete mastery over herself. It was also presumable that the woman who had always looked down on him as a lily bud of a man had accepted the profession of his killing as little more than an attempt to scare her out of her wits, and, for the very reason, made her best to present an unflinching front. Search had to be made upstairs, in any case, he considered; and he set about to bind her, hand and foot, to prevent her escape in the meantime.
“What’s this impudence from you, green clown!” She bolted upright, and rushed on to bring down the thing to which she had accredited so little of manhood. But with a blow dealt on her spine with such magnificent force that nearly knocked her senseless, she rolled off in a heap to the mercy of the man. The killing of one man had turned him into an adept at the trick ofadroitly bending, twisting, squeezing, knee-pressing the human body. It was with little ado that Shinsuké bound the woman, hand and foot, and gagged her.
With the aid of a lantern, he made his way upstairs. Rooms, closets, behind the screens, and no stone was left unturned; but Tsuya was not to be found. He had expected as much; nevertheless, when brought face to face with the situation which left him no longer in doubt as to her kidnaping, he felt himself as helpless as a child forlorn and astray, a pitiful prey to the dark thoughts that assailed his mind. With his face framed in a pathetic half-cry, he was down the stairs in the manner of a crazed man. Even hoping against hope, he went through all the rooms downstairs, looked all over the place, under the verandahs, too; but Tsuya was nowhere to be found.
“Come, own up where you’ve hidden her or your life is lost;” he said, when she was relieved of the gag. And as he demanded, he tapped on her cheek with the flat of the carving blade, to awaken her to a keener sense of what was in store for her.
The woman had remained in unperturbedsilence, with her eyes closed. It was some moments ere she partly opened her eyes at him, narrowing them into a gleam of hatred, and said: “I’m the sort too good to be monkeyed with by a snivelling jackass like you that’s yet wet behind the ears! You sang of killing,—well, nobody stops you.” Her eyes were again closed. She stirred not, firm as stone. It occurred to him suddenly that he had overlooked, in his search, the quarters given for the servant maids, and that it would be more fruitful to intimidate the maids than this hard-hearted wench. He flew over there. And strangely enough, again, he found there not one of the three maids who were wont to sleep there. There was little doubt that the hired members had been sent out ostensibly on errands, to be kept out of the way of conspiracy. Shinsuké then came back where the woman was and, for his own reason, unbound her at once. Throwing himself down before her, his head low to the floor, he put his hands together in the gesture of supplication, even in the manner and humbleness of a road-side beggar.
“Forgive me, I pray!” he was fervent. “I repent what I have done to you. I repent, I pray you—see how I pray you!—For mercy’s sake, don’t beangry with me any more! Have pity—have a heart—just tell me where my Tsuya is! That’s all I ask,—I pray you!”
“Well, you ought to know; you’ve been through the place. Why ask me?—That’s none of my business.”
“Why this pretending now?—what’s the use? It doesn’t take much wits to see that you are all in on this frame-up to take my girl away somewhere. Now, don’t you see how honest and fair I have been trying to be with you? Didn’t I tell you the first thing I came that I was here after killing Santa? Not that I want to find Tsuya and work any funny idea with her; nor that I want to catch your husband and square my account with him for what he’s done against me. I’m asking you this because I want to—I must—see my Tsuya—just once again while I live—to say a good-bye to her; for, to-morrow I’m going to give myself up to the magistrate. Now, just think of this, will you?—if I have something against you people, you can’t certainly charge any wrong against me. And when this man is asking you the last wish of his life, how can you not do it? Do this for me, and I will give you a man’s word that I will never tell anything to drag you or yourhusband into trouble no matter what torture I may have to suffer in court.”
“Now, listen, Shin don! I’ve listened to you how you babbled this about our frame-up, and that about dragging us into trouble, and all that stuff you just seem to know all yourself. Well, show me proof of what you talk about, I ask you! It’s perhaps that you drove yourself out of your head when you killed the man. Whatever Santa may have done is none of my man’s business. You may go on and give up yourself to the officer, or square your account with the boss, or do anything you like about it, for aught I care.”
“If you are so clean and innocent as you make yourself out to be, why won’t you tell me where she is? And where is Seiji san gone, anyhow?”
The woman had visibly grown emboldened. It was in the attitude of defiant insolence that she faced him, her hands thrust into her bosom. Her voice was charged with icy mockery, as she said: “Where’s my husband, you ask?—He goes out every night, nowadays; you can’t expect me to keep track of him. As for Tsu chan, she said she was going as far as Hirokoji to a show, when she went out in the early evening, taking the maids along. But seeing that she’s so late, therehas happened something wrong, I presume.”
Even the while he listened to this piece of insolence from the woman, Shinsuké’s mind again took a terrible turn. “Bitch! What shall I give you for this?” he cursed her in thought. If there was to be no positive chance to wring out of her the truth, the whereabouts of Tsuya, he should not be hasty to surrender himself to justice, but stay back a month or even half a year, until he should find her. And troubled he was to think whether he could hope for his case to remain buried until such time. One thing looked certain before all else that this woman would be the one to turn in secret information against him—
Such a train of thoughts unrolled before his mind, the while Shinsuké stood there at a pause, uncertain, his eyes fixed upon the half-turned face of the woman who sat below him with one knee pulled sharply up, carelessly puffing away at her pipe, like one brazening it out with a supreme air of self-assurance.
“And is she not the wife of that man, Seiji? If she gives up her ghost for that man, I’ll be safe to take vengeance for whatever wrongs may have been done to Tsuya. That look of thewoman—with her chin stuck out, so insolent and proud, so cursedly sure of herself yet not sure at all of her own life about to be ended;—humour! And only a twist round her neck, one pressing on it—and there will be nothing of her but a carcass! All that is extremely funny!”
Instantly, his mind had taken a turn that was even more positive and fierce. In the same silence, he picked up a piece of hemp rope at his feet, and as swiftly twisted it round the neck of the woman. He followed out in practice precisely that which he had conjured up to his mind.
Once the deed completed, he suddenly felt himself fagged out, exhaustion no doubt coming in the wake of all the strain he had had to bear throughout. “I am a criminal of heavy offence”; the thought was driven him home, and he seemed suddenly to find the skin of his own hands and feet stained over with a hue of ghostly sombreness. If he was to take to immediate flight, these blood-soaked clothes would be out of the question. He went out into the kitchen and, stripping himself off, cleansed his self of all blood stains. There was fortunately found on the closet shelf what seemed to be one of Seiji’s suits, which he pulled out to put on himself. It proved to be a two piecesuit of heavy pongee, with cotton wadding, and a hard lined sash marked with centre stripes on a dark brown ground; precisely the sort of clothing to fit him up in attire of respectable quietness. Next, he gave his attention to the chest of drawers, out of which he took, in both gold and silver pieces, what was an approximation of three “ryo.” It was done at once to fill the need he stood in at the time, and to work for the ruse to lead the whole happening to burglary. The clothes he had shed off were rolled into a bundle with a heavy stone used for pickling purpose, and were consigned to the depths of the canal water. All these thus disposed of, all this precaution taken, he was turning himself upon the scene which offered no evidence to convict him of the murder of Santa or the woman. Or, he tried to force his recalcitrant self into such thoughts.
Without, the rain had ceased. In the sky clear and open, the midnight moon shone frosty and serene. He covered his head in a deep cap that he had not forgotten to bring. And, at the first corner of the wider thoroughfare, he passed before the patrol box, unchallenged.