Part III
Part III
PART III
IN the days Shinsuké lived with his own folk, he was often taken by his father to the home of a certain gambler master by the name of Kinzo, with whom his father maintained some sort of personal relations. It was to this place that Shinsuké had to take himself on the night of his murderous deeds. Whilst the earlier part of Kinzo’s life was marked with irregularities, of which violence and bullying were no inconspicuous features, yet with his fortune made and his discretion matured, he had entered on a new sort of life these two or three years, since reaching the age of fifty, and he was now known to be a man, very rational and restrained, so different from the man of his quondam profession, and with a ready hand and a big heart for others that should need his help.
Having given an outline of the happenings of the night to the man he had come to place his confidence in, Shinsuké asked to be hidden under his roof for the time being, on the promise that he should surrender himself to justice as soon asTsuya had been found. In telling his story, however, Shinsuké accounted himself for the end of Santa, but did not touch on what concerned the boatman’s wife.
“Shinsuké san, if you want my help, perhaps you can have it; but there is one thing I don’t quite seem to get clear. Now, you’ve told me you have come here straight upon killing Santa. I see you are cut up pretty badly, but your clothes look none the worse for it. I don’t understand that.”
Kinzo was prompt to observe. Stung with this point-blank thrust, Shinsuké cringed with terror. Before leaving Seiji’s place, he thought he had made sure to cleanse himself thoroughly. Once told of it, he could see it all for himself; for he found blood not only curdled on his finger nails and about his neck, but even above his left temple, gluing the hair into a patchy tuft. He could not but make a clean breast of it all.
“I had guessed as much.— Now that your story is straightened out, I don’t see why I shouldn’t take the thing on my hands, be as just and fair with you as you have been with me, and we can perhaps put our work together to find the girl you call Tsuya. But before we do anything, Imust have you understand this, that my idea is that you should give up yourself as soon as you have found your sweetheart. Now, take it from a man who knows what he talks about, for there was a time when I killed a man or two myself,—that once you get the feel of it, it’s mighty hard to wash your hands of it for all time. You’ve never been what I might call a bold boy, but now it’s all different. There is nothing more for you to stop at, and that means your temptations will be now many and often. You are now, Shinsuké san, placed where a step one way or the other counts a lot. Unless you take yourself in hand and do a lot of thinking, you are bound to roll down and down until you will be the devil himself. If I told you that I would insist on your stepping out to get your punishment, and would hear of nothing short of it, you would think I was a pretty heartless sort of a man, and I know it. But, you see, your life, even if saved now, would do, if anything, harm but no good, to yourself or to the world you live in. It would simply mean that there will be some more man killing, and nothing more.”
Shinsuké could not quite grasp what Kinzo was driving at by what he meant to be his advice.Had he not owned up everything on his conscience? And had he not shown penitence for the same? Why this unless he were clear and firm in mind about what he should and was to do? He could see no reason why there should be any fears about his going wrong. In all the earnestness of a true heart, he pledged his word, again and again, that he would never fail to surrender himself to the fate that was justly to claim him.
It was as if a beast, once aroused, had been tamed down again; Shinsuké was once more the being of gentle and peaceful habits that he was before. The happenings of that night were recalled as in a dream that had been dreamt in the hours of his mind preyed upon by the devil. He might flee, it was suggested, and seek shelter, until the thing should have blown over, with a gambler, living at Omiya, Bushu, with whom Kinzo was under pledge of brothers. But this would be foreclosing any chance of finding Tsuya. Besides, to give a happy turn to the situation, the affair had apparently passed off without causing any speakable stir in town. Early in the morning after Shinsuké came, Kinzo went in a casual way over the ground along the plaster wallenclosing the Lord Hosokawa’s mansion. He found neither blood which had evidently been washed away by the rain of the night, nor the umbrella which Shinsuké remembered of having left on the scene. The only thing visible was remains of the souvenir box from the restaurant Kawacho, trampled and mashed under feet. As for the boatman Seiji, he seemed to have been led to the theory that Santa, with the crime on his hand, stretched it a step and ran away with the money he took by killing his wife. Therefore, in the possible event of his falling in with Shinsuké, the boatman would certainly be dismayed, but never likely to think of turning him over to the law. That was also what Kinzo had gathered by secretly working through a certain boatman he was intimate with. As a next step, Kinzo had the young man shed off the clothes of unpleasant memory, and let him take a winter suit out of his own wardrobe. The old man’s care went so far in fitting him up as to have him paint mole marks on his face.
Disguised, by day, as a vendor of straw sandals and, by night, as a wandering macaroni man, Shinsuké was left much to himself to go about in the streets, chiefly of Fukagawa.
Soon, the year was at its end, and the new year opened, the eighth year of the Bunsei era[12]. Shinsuké made a point of prowling in the Takabashi way, every day, about the neighbourhood of the boatman’s house. A space of twenty or so days had scarce passed ere a third woman was taken into his home, and his business went on thriving, as before. That Tsuya had been sold off into bondage was patent beyond a doubt, Shinsuké considered. To leave nothing to chance, he went to the Tachibana-cho and furtively peered into the shop where he had once served. He found, or fancied to have found, the place filled with so much deserted stillness as he had never seen, and there were, of course, no signs of the young mistress being back. Instead, he stumbled upon the rumour that the master, broken-hearted over his daughter’s escapade, had been taken badly ill, kept his sick bed since the year before. Shinsuké was so unbearably grieved to hear it that he told himself he should never again turn his face that way.
The neighbourhood of the canal road was given up for the present. Each of those places in town quartering licensed or geisha houses, was takenup in order and looked into. He extended his range of search so far as Koume, Hashiba, Iriya, on the outward line of the city, and scoured even through such places as were known for the fashion and wealth of the town to keep their villas and mistresses. When the second month of the year drew to its close, he was little beyond where he had started. A little more spell of time, and the cherry trees began to come out in bloom along the riverside of Mukojima. A gauzy drape of mist was hung across the sky of springtime and peace. There came days of benign warmth which seemed to cast a spell of sleep even on him who was out and about the streets calling out his wares. The pendulum of time had swung to spring tide which had brought to his heart keen pangs of love and sorrow. And he longed so much to see Tsuya, to see her if only in the fleetest moments of dream.
“Shinsuké san, I am wondering if the girl you are looking for isn’t the same one that calls herself Somékichi, a geisha of the Nakacho quarters.”
Such was the glad tidings Kinzo brought home one evening in late April. Kinzo had treated, he explained, himself and a couple or so of his men at the tea house Obanaya, in Fukagawa, the sameevening. One of the geisha called into the party happened to fit closely the description that had been given him by the young man. To begin with, she had eyelids of rather heavy appearance, though a girl of rare prettiness, and her eye brows full even to the point of masculine sternness, more or less. When she smiled, her eye tooth on the right side was slightly disclosed under the upper lip and, because of its appearance out of line with the other teeth, made her smiling face all the more attractive. Her habit of giving a slight twist to her lips and pressing her teeth on the lower lip when engaged in conversation. Her voice with a ring of exquisite richness that seemed to make a straight appeal to a man’s heart. These characteristics so coincided with what Kinzo had been told about Tsuya that he went so far as to make a sly inquiry into her case. It was learnt that a gambler named Tokubey, living at Sunamura, stood as her guarantor. He was also able to ferret out the information that this man Tokubey was a thimble-rigger, a mean character disliked even amongst his own professional people, and that there was most likely a friendship between this man and the boatman Seiji, though not in anyopen way. With so much raked in, there was scarce room for doubt. Shinsuké was also ready to concur in the same opinion.
“So, there seems mighty little chance of making a mistake about this. But there’s something I don’t quite understand. I’m afraid you will not like me for telling you this, in case this girl turns out to be the real one; nevertheless,—”
With this introduction, Kinzo went on to tell him about the girl in question what he had heard as being passed around as talk of the gay quarters. It was only about a month and a half ago that this girl Somékichi began to appear at the Nakacho; but the fame of the girl, what of her musical talent, her likeable personality and brightness, her beauty to match anybody in the whole of that part of town, was soon on everybody’s lips. She became the rage of the place. A young son of a rich cloth trader of down town, a certain military officer of the “Hatamoto”[13]class, and five or six other men about town had lost their heads over her, had been cleaned out of almost incredible amounts of money, whilst theywere hotly making what had proved nothing but a wild goose chase. It was generally conjectured amongst people of the quarter that this man Tokubey, being infatuated with her himself, always put himself between the girl and whomever he had cause to be jealous of. The owner of the geisha house, under whose banner she listed herself was no other than Tokubey’s mistress who carried on the business with his capital. And not a day passed but there were squabbles or fights amongst these triangular figures. As the upshot of the thing, the mistress of the house had been packed off only about ten days since, and Somékichi was now the most important figure in the house, thus winning for herself a nitch amongst the leading, and most honoured of the geisha. And so, gossips had it that Tokubey was too heartless a man, of course, but Somékichi, yet so young, had a nerve as wonderfully distinct as her looks were.
However, it was quite open to question whether she had surrendered herself to Tokubey, as gossips seemed to make it out, added Kinzo his own opinion, as if he wished to inspire the young man with more cheerful hopes. It was quite probable, in his opinion, that Tokubey, too,should be faring exactly as badly as the other men, just exciting himself on a chase that was to take him nowhere. A woman who was a cynosure of jealous eyes was naturally exposed to shafts of slander, one half of which may generally be regarded as fiction. What had struck Kinzo as remarkable, however, from what he saw of her at his party, was that she displayed herself so sophisticated that he would scarce imagine that she had been brought up in a rich pawnbroker’s family till a few months ago. From the way she had carried herself off, there was seen nothing about her of distress that might be expected of one grieving over the loss of the man to whom she had given her body and soul. She laughed and was gay throughout, drinking so heartily as few women would. If she was taking it, and probably she was, to drown her sorrows, of course, it was not so difficult to understand.
“In any case, you will go there and see her for yourself,” concluded Kinzo. “I’ve left a word at Obanaya’s so they will take care of you, if you go alone.”
Apart from what had been remarked concerning Tokubey, that was certainly not palatable, allelse seemed to point to one and the same theory, as Shinsuké went over and put them together. Hearty drinking, sophistication, unwarrantable gaiety, and all this plausibly fitted to her case as he conceived it in her downward slide. Let her appear as dissolute as she would for aught he cared, thought Shinsuké, if only she had remained faithful to himself.
On the morrow Shinsuké shaved himself, and his mole marks were washed off in the bath. He had again givenhimselfthe neat and spruce air of former days. Even though the blot once left on his mind by his dire crimes was never to be washed out, his eyes had the same look of frank appeal and trustfulness, and his fresh-coloured, rounded cheeks betrayed no trace of pallid anguish. And now there was the remotest chance, so remote as to be almost negligible, that Shinsuké might be seen on the way by the boatman Seiji, who, in such event, might be goaded into any sort of covert, cowardly assault upon him by the fear of his past being divulged through him;—this the thoughtfulness of Kinzo. Arrangements had been made, therefore, for the young man to leave in the palanquin about the closing in of evening, when little exposure on his part wouldbe necessary. And was not the meeting about to be with Somékichi this night,—was it not going to be his leave taking of her, and of this world?
“Well, then, I must bid you a good-bye,” said Shinsuké in his deeply moved voice, putting his hands low, as the time of his departure drew near.
“Now, come to think of it, but this may be the last time we see one another. If this girl, Somékichi, turns out to be your girl, Tsuya chan, you need not trouble yourself to come back here, and you will take yourself straight to the officer, to-morrow. It will be mighty hard for you—I know—, but if you let her keep you a couple or so days, you will lose your grip on yourself. If you account for yourself like a true man, you can leave the rest to me. And let your mind be at ease about your old man, too; for I’ll take good care of him!”
What Kinzo had seen of the young man, of the creditable way he had carried himself since coming under his shelter, led him to the trusting belief he would not efface himself were he given a free hand now. There was a fear none the less that Shinsuké, under the sway of Tsuya’s mind, might take his life into his own hand even asshe might hers. Wherefore, he put Shinsuké under probation as he asked—
“How would you intend to do by Tsuya chan, if you saw her?”
“I’ll persuade her out of what she is doing,” his answer was prompt and clearly enunciated, as coming from a firmly set mind. “I will see that she goes back to her father’s home.”
“That’s the word!” Kinzo was pleased. “Now, you are talking like the good honourable soul that I used to know before.” Then, he took out a bundle of money and placed it before Shinsuké for his farewell present. Shinsuké declined it as not needed for his purpose, since he had had savings from his business during these four months. With ready acquiescence, Kinzo took back his offering. He felt that the young man would not benefit himself by having on him more money than really necessary.
There was on that evening a faint breath of wind that came bearing a balmy warmth out of the south, and in the moonbeams coming through the wreaths of gauzy mist, the face of each soul passing in the street appeared so softly white as the magnolia flower as even to suggest its fragrance,—one of those eves that spring, only in thefullness of her heart, can bear forth. Shinsuké’s palanquin went straight on through the Takabashi line, and to the Kuroecho; a turn to the left before the first “torii” or gateway to the Hachiman temple, the carriage came to a halt in front of the entrance porch of the Obana-ya. Tea-houses were not unknown to him; yet never had he been to one placed, as this was, in the heart of a gay quarter.
His announcement of himself was received and echoed among the waiting hands as “the guest that the master of Narihira-cho had sent,” serving as a sort of pass-word commanding suave attention. He was shown into a good sized room way in back, an isolated suite which looked on a garden with clusters of green foliage amongst which a lantern was seen in a flickering glow behind its paper shade of trellis frame. He could scarce believe that amidst the place of gaiety and pleasures so boisterously pursued, there should be a place of such sequestered peace, and of such refined taste.
“Let me see a girl called Somékichi, and I want no other geisha”: his request, voiced as it was in a tone of such uncompromising insistence, gave a suggestion of mockery. He might wellhave been taken for a man about town who, so assured of his own matchless comeliness, had come with his mind bent upon this rage for masculine passion,purposelyattired in a simplicity that was almost ungainly, to make his conquest all the more romantic and savoury.
It was after time had drawn out to be burdensome for Shinsuké, who sat waiting with his back leaned against the alcove post, that the door directly behind him was opened. Showing a slight and dainty tilt in the head which supported elaborately made coiffeur, Somékichi had entered; she was no other than the girl of his quest. She was dressed that night in a lined dress of striped blue crepe over an under-gown of silk finely dappled on a bluish brown ground, girt with a sash of black satin heavily embroidered chrysanthemum flowers with gold threads, showing below, at each step, the fringe of chequered silk petticoat, and in a toilet of light powder. A change into a piquant brilliancy, quite befitting a girl reputed to be the sensation of the place.
A quick glance at the back of the man, and Tsuya broke into a flurry, pattering her soft bare feet as if they clung at each step to the fresh covered mat on the floor, and coming round infront, face to face with him, she gave a little cry of keen happiness. In an instant, her face lost its colour for the suddenness of happy shock, but, in the next, she sank herself close before him, almost upon his laps.
“Oh, what happiness to find you again and safe!” she said, pressing her hands strongly upon his knees, as she spurted out her joy. “How Iwantedto see you! Oh, how I longed!”
“To-morrow I amtogive up myself,—and such a girl as this.”—forthwith, the thought flashed through his mind. He was conscious of a mad desire to live rising in his mind.
It was a long story since they parted from each other, at the closing of that unforgettable day, the twentieth of December;—and she was the first to give her account. On the same evening, soon after Shinsuké was called away, the boatman’s wife announced that there was little doing that evening and all were due for an evening off, and all of the servant maids and hired men were sent out somewhere under such pretext. The wife and Tsuya, left alone in the house, were having a chat when that downpour of rain came on. Amidst those torrents, Seiji came home heavily drunk, followed by two or three strangers.Without a word or warning, he had her bound, hand and foot, and thrust into a palanquin in which she was carried off to the home of Tokubey, at Sunamura. Everything having been undoubtedly prearranged, there were waiting for her there a merry batch of men, half a dozen or so of ruffians, including Tokubey himself, apparently intent on having a jolly time of it. She was dragged out in the midst of those men who sat in a circle for their feasting, to be mocked and jeered at. About her own life, however, she was never in much fear; for, those men were all gloating over her with unexpressed desire, she felt. The worst they would do, therefore, would be selling her off to a brothel after they had made unsuccessful attempts to win her mind; they would not harm what they prized dear. Upon such reasoning thought, she felt herself physically protected and accepted the situation boldly. They would oft threaten her with death, but never would she wince or yield. She was only in deep concern for Shinsuké, for whom her heart would yearn that she could sleep neither by day nor by night.
What she had expected was to come out before long. The boatman Seiji had her placed—as badas locked her up—in a room for the obvious reason which was to bring him there every day.
“I have been in love with you ever so long,” he owned. “The fact is, that it was all a part of my plan to inspire Shinsuké with the idea to run away with you. Whatever wickedness I am guilty of, was from my desire to get you. So, feel for me, and be my mistress, as I ask you. Consent, and all you wish for shall be yours!”
To her question about Shinsuké’s whereabouts, however, he would never give clear cut answer. “Oh, that one?—Well, you may as well forget about him,” he would say sometimes. “I’ve sent him back to his old man’s home, the other day.” There was of course no question but this was a lie. It was as certain that the while he kept up his pretense, the boatman had never taken their case either to her folks or Shinsuké’s, since he took the couple under his roof. Tsuya had concluded that Shinsuké had ten to one been murdered, and yet she was not so easy to give him up for lost for all time.
This confinement went on for rather a long period of time, from the twentieth of December to around February. Patient and determined as the boatman was, he was met by as dogged amind on her part who would yield herself neither to threat nor cajolery. She was not freed from this state of confinement until Tokubey who had followed the affair was at last moved to make intercession for her, and perhaps convinced Seiji that he would be better rewarded otherwise than by torment. Now placed under strict watch, she was sometimes running on little errands, and at some other times was served with servile flattery that was but disgusting. It was to a new line of tactics, of thawing her heart with kindness, that Seiji’s mind had swung to, now.
Tokubey was a man of about the same age as Seiji, but of a mind, presumably, capable of deeper craft and design; under a consistently suave appearance he never permitted himself to show a ruffled or real man. It was a fact that under casual observation he could be taken for a man of good sense and heart. He interposed his mind between Seiji and Tsuya, with a different tune for each one, as he meant to make him or her dance thereto. Tokubey was particularly attentive to make use of sly moments to impress her mind with his kindness, which was as cheap as its motive was thin. “So, this man, too, has his eyes on me!” Tsuya was quick to perceive it,and began to give herself an air of one leaning on his growing kindness, to put him off his guard as much as possible, to make him the more open to attack, later on. The first chance she should get, she would flee from Sunamura and set out on her quest for Shinsuké.
One evening when she was waiting upon him—and upon his whims—with drinks, she said between soliloquy and question: “I have given up Shinsuké for good and true; but I’m wondering what’s become of the man.” Whereupon, quite to her surprise, Tokubey’s lips dropped a story that gave her a dreadful inkling of what had hitherto been completely screened from her. That Seiji caused, on that night, his faithful Santa to kill Shinsuké on the riverside road; that the same Santa, for some reason or other, got a new notion into his head, after his deed, and killed the boatman’s wife by strangling, to run away with their money; that Seiji had since taken to himself a third wife;—all these things told by Tokubey, though not as information at first hand, appeared to fit in line with circumstances of the case. Tsuya felt that she had been now brought where she should abandon all hopes for Shinsuké. From that hour she had set her heart, she said,upon taking vengeance, somehow—some when,—upon Seiji for the sake of the man lost to her forever.
It was shortly after this that Tokubey made his proposition to the boatman which was somewhat in the following strain:—“You will have to wait for ever to win the girl over, for your purpose. But she is too precious a jewel to be sunk into the mud of a brothel. Suppose you let me have her for a good price, and I’ll see if she wouldn’t appear as a geisha through our house at the Naka-cho.” Seiji found it difficult to give her up, and it was his reluctant consent that he gave at last, when he broke himself of his desire and washed his hands of her.
“Were you yet a maiden it would make all the difference. And what I ask you to be is a geisha. Will you not do this, just to meet me half-way, if for nothing else?” Tokubey’s demand, because it was garbed as a humble entreaty, could not very well be turned down. If she were to be sold off to a house, she would fare far worse; there was no getting away from that. Tokubey had saved her from this infamy, and, besides, what he proposed to her and begged her to do was on the ground where her chastity of body,at least, was to be protected. It had taken on such a complexion that Shinsuké, she thought, would not feel himself wronged, even if he were to know of it in the world beyond. Since she would rather stay away from her parents’ home for good, there had to be something to keep her independent, and what was now being pondered upon appeared to her to be of all things the one for which she was by nature best equipped. Once she had made up her mind upon the subject, it was a proposition such as she could scarce have better,—if she were to make it upon her own terms. Her agreement, therefore, was given without much farther ado.
Since her appearance as a geisha, she had quickly won her way to the line of first-raters. She had worked the debt off herself, and was now in a free position to work on her own account. To be true, she was under more or less obligation to Tokubey, yet she was mistress of herself and of a house. When she had found herself again free to act on her mind, she secretly engaged men to work on the case of Shinsuké, whom she could never forget. Her effort, however, was rewarded with no success beyond what came to bear out Tokubey’s story, in regard to Santa’s deed andthe boatman’s new wife. All this collaborating to point to Shinsuké’s death, she had now little else save to accept it finally. And so, everything was flung to the winds, in the face of fate. She had nowadays come to live a care-free life, if he forgave her for saying this, and lived much the way after her own mind, enjoying what gaiety her independent ways and buoyant nature could glean out of her new life. And there was no business so delightful as that of the geisha, in her opinion; nothing so sweet as to wheedle money out of dolts of men who knew no better. Now, to crown her happiness, she had refound this night her long-lost sweetheart, and what happiness to think that it was now in her power to make it possible for him to live and be as happy as she was.
Even as she went on with her account, she had taken a good quantity of drinks. Her eyes which now looked into his were as flushed as if blood threatened to exude out of their corners. “Fill my cup, sweetheart!” she asked, with her cup held out, as she drew nearer to him. “It’s ever so long since you gave me a cupful!”
“Tsu chan, it is myself that must ask your forgiveness! I’m no longer a man fit to live withyou!” Whereon, Shinsuké suddenly adjusted himself into a solemn attitude, taking her hands off himself, as she pressed still nearer to him. The account of his dreadful crimes he gave, and he gave it in full and so straight as if he might have meant to fling it into the face of the young woman raptured over her own cup of joy.
“—So, you see that I should go and take my punishment, even to-morrow. I owe no less to that man of Narihira-cho. To die—to die, if once I can see you—my mind has been made up, now a long time! Forgive me all!” He broke into tears, as he flung himself on the floor.
“If you must die, I will not live, either. But how you worry yourself, like the man you’ve always been!” Without much display of any particular emotion, Tsuya gave utterance to her mind, her body left loosely heaped just as it had broken down, like a drunken man in his final loss of legs, even to the point of abelchthat tersely punctuated her words.
“Of course, I am to blame for the whole thing—if it comes to that,” she went on. “But the more I hear of your story about killing them, the better and more solid reason I think you had for doing it. About Seiji’s woman, too, it was a caseof squaring yourself with him,—I don’t see anything particularly wrong about it. In fact, I’m even glad you did it. I am, indeed!—Now, look here, Shin don, if you didn’t give yourself away, the old man, of Narihira-cho, wouldn’t hand in the case to the officer, would he? There’s nobody else wise to the game. They don’t call too much honesty a virtue, nowadays!”
“How you talk!” he was astounded, and fixed on her a stern lode of rebuke. But as he began with his persuasive effort, his was a tone of beseeching tenderness.
“There is something in what you say, but I would never forgive myself if I were to stay away from the hand of the law. Step out, own up everything, and take the punishment I deserve,—that’s what I owe to my master, my old father, and Kinzo, and no less. The fact is, I have something to ask you,—it’s the last wish of my life. I want you to quit this sort of life—the earlier even by a day, the better,—and go back to your folks. The master took it so badly about you that he’s kept to his sick bed ever since last year; and if this you do not know, I do. Let him see you again, and I know he will be happy; he will never be the one to nurse grievances against youfor so long a time, or to keep harping on what’s done and past. About the account you owe to Tokubey, you can tell your father and he will be just ready to settle it off for you, I am sure!”
“Enough of that! I wouldn’t think of it for a moment!” she turned her face away, in an instant huff. “I know I belong where I am now, as I told you a while ago. All that of being a lady means nothing to me, not to my taste. If you love me, let me be!”
“There you are again, with your old perversity! What a heart that should—that you could be deaf to this from the lips of a man about to die! For this I should have suffered! No soul so rotten I have seen or heard of but thinks of what should be done for the love of his parents. Or, can it mean that you yourself, knowing of the worst in the trade of the geisha, have become rotten even to your heart?”
“Rotten,—yes, rotten I am! Have no more goodness to think of my papa or mama,—not even in my dreams!” She pulled herself up with wilful petulance. As suddenly almost, she turned and collapsed, burying her face on his shoulder; she began to appeal and beseech, in a voice broken by violent sobs. “Why have we found each otheragain after such a long time, if only to quarrel and make us feel miserable? Because you are not right, Shin don! You shall have your wish,—your last wish, as you say,—ask me anything and I will do it. But never shall you give yourself away! If you want to die, I will not let you! If you talked of it as a thing for some time after, it might be different. That you would go to-morrow when we’ve met only to-night,—oh, you are too heartless!”
Swept over by the violent passion of the woman who would listen neither to reason nor rhyme, Shinsuké was overwhelmed into a helpless silence, though his mind gave no promise of change. She was at last brought round to another mind. “Perhaps, I shouldn’t press my own way, too much. Let us be friends again, at least. And stay a couple of days or so with me, upstairs in our place.” She was insistent, begged, appealed to his heart.
“Knowing of harsh words between us and they not made up, I couldn’t go to my death in peace;” Shinsuké aired what was aimed at once to be an apology to his conscience and an attempt at glossing over his own weakness before her: he had given way to her entreaty.
“We can’t be quite at home or free to do all our talking in here. Before you should change your mind, let us leave this place. We’ll drink over at our place, upstairs.”
At last, Tsuya was now a happy woman, happy beyond measure. Lifting herself to her feet, uncertain to respond to her mind, she took him by the hand and urged him to go, persistently.
They took the precaution not to leave the Obana-ya in company. They fell in together at a corner a little way off. Along the path bathed in the pale shimmer of a mist veiled moon, the shadows of two love-doves were printed, as the pair plodded on with their hearts filled with almost nameless emotions, as on that night of their flight. Facing the garden of the Buddhist temple, Eitai-ji, which occupied a space within the premises of the Hachiman Temple, on the one side story along the bank of a canal, there was seen a house with a lantern hung outside the front entrance illumining forth the name of “Tsuta-ya” which was Tsuya’s present home. The house itself was not large, but two or three geisha serving under her, a servant maid in attendance, choice wood-work and upholstery in display in the upstairs room, bespoke of a homeand living of fair comfort. A little girl of fifteen or sixteen years, came out as far as the lattice door at the entrance to greet her mistress who, having whispered something in her ear, went in, unshod herself hurriedly, and led the way for him up the stairs.
Of those days at the home of the Suruga-ya where their love was possible only in snatches, all the sweeter because clandestine; and of those days at the boatman’s home on the front of the Onagikawa canal, a period of twenty days or so, brief as a dream, passed in the joys of a madcap love, no longer trammeled by fear or care, but occasionally exposed to boatmen’s teasing chaffs which seemed but to add zest to their enjoyment:—of these Tsuya so fondly remembered, and these memories out of the past made her bemoan their love that was to be so fleeting and vain.
“I remember you scolded me one time when I called myself after the manner of a geisha; but you won’t mind it, if I do now, will you?” And she was at once speaking in the bold vernacular of her trade. When she caught him calling her by the less familiar name of “Tsu chan,” as he had been wont to do, she rebuked him for the manner she considered as cold. Even if for thisnight only, she asked him to feel himself her true wedded man and call her “O-Tsuya.” “And for that I shall no longer call you ‘Shin don’,” she said, “but you will be ‘Shin san’,[14]as my husband should be.”
Drinks he had taken in plenty and wished for no more. But she would not hear of it, and pressed them upon him, almost pouring down through parted lips. Of Shinsuké who had once boasted of such a capacity for drinks, it was strange that he should become so easily susceptible to the effect of saké,[15]unless, perhaps, a real taste for the drink, of which he was now capable, had put a finer edge on the fibre of his nerves as well. For, as time scored its hours, he could feel the drink imbuing deeper and deeper into his system, melting even to the marrow of his bones.
Three short days to stay, and that was to end their love for all time; on this their hearts were set, and their minds attuned thereto. Sitting before a display of dishes ordered from a near-by restaurant, they drank one bottle of saké afteranother, from morn till night. Neither to sleep nor to awake, the passion-crazed pair lived to measure out their numbered days, until by the close of the third day, they were so fagged out that their own minds seemed distant and dazed, even in their waking hours. And after all that, once their minds brought to that angle, they could not put their fingers on a single thing that was particularly sweet to be recalled. The happiest memory, after all, appeared to be that of the first evening; of those moments of their hurried retreat from the tea house Obana-ya. And one thing that came back to Shinsuké’s mind as a vague memory was what he gave to Tsuya of his troubled mind, about daybreak of this day, under the maddening spurs of drink.
“You’ve got to be very ready with your tongue,” he remarked, “but I should doubt if you, down in your true heart, love me half so much as you used to. That man Tokubey, I understand, is a man of means, sense and everything else;—such a world of difference between him and myself! The sooner I give myself away to the officer, the better for your sake, I know!”
“Oh, stuff! If you mean to play the jealous husband for my entertainment, nix for mine!I don’t relish that sort of thing. I don’t know what you’re thinking of me, but I do know this: except to you, I have never given myself away—”
“More strange that Tokubey should put up so much cash for you!”
“Give me all the more credit for that! I haven’t exactly killed a man, but when it comes to wicked business like that, I know a thing or two to teach you!”
Wherewith the man was satisfied at once. He repented of his mistrusting mind, whining for joy, “Forgive me! Forgive me!”
“To me who know so little about the ways of the people you are with, things seemed so strange that I became suspicious. But now that I have so much from your own lips, as much as I wanted,—I can go and die happy!”
“You are generally so quiet and nice, never wanting to have too much your own way, so, a word of jealousy like that from your lips, once in a while, sounds to me all the sweeter—makes me want to love you the more for it!”
Never had he thought her so lovable as at this moment. He wanted, wished to love her strongly; in the tumult of his heart he became so bold ofmind that he would as lief cry, “Let everything else be damned!”
“Now, Shin san, things have gone this far; what difference to them if you staid back a little longer or shorter time? Stay with me half a year or so, I pray you!” Tsuya was alert to perceive her chance; she poured out her very soul into her words as she strove to sway his mind. What response was given her,scarcelyremembered he now,—beyond some expression, vague indeed, but indicative, if anything, of a mind drifting whither she willed. And no doubt but he was of such a mind in those hours.
Then, there followed a doze out of which they were not to awake before the second hour past noon. Again, they betook themselves to drinking; but, for some reason or other, they felt their hearts devoid of any such emotion of joy as they might expect to feel as memories of those hours of the morn. The last of their evenings was here, and the evening was still so young, and they sat there, a pair of helpless minds moping in gloom. There seemed to be naught for them save to seek in drinks the aid to buoy their spirits. But what more of drinks they took only brought on an aching stupor to their heads, depressingtheir minds still farther. It was impotent remorse that had stalked forth in the wake of orgies to assail their minds.
“Shin san, I hope you haven’t forgotten what you told me early this morning?”
Tsuya spoke as if struck by some passing thought, after a spell of silence that had endured some while, and her sober, grave tone was so foreign to her usual self that it might have been adopted for a studiedaffect. If not half a year, two or three days more, at least, she persistently urged him to stay; for it was her idea that they should live such a brief time as he should allow himself in a happier spirit yet to be coaxed out of the cups of saké. Shinsuké, for his part, was resolute about his move on the morrow and as insistent in his effort to persuade her to return to her parents’ home. Neither of them was ready to give in; their paths of thought diverged, and remained apart, as they sank deeper into gloomy silence.
“Oh, what’s the use! What’s the use of it all!” she muttered disconsolately, as she rose to her feet. She returned with hersamisen.[16]With adisplay of greater vim than was called for, she shoved open the sliding screens at the low, wide window. Placing herself over the sill, she began to play upon thesamisensome measures of theKatobushi.[17]Her voice of plaintive richness, of which well she may have been proud, floated out to fill the room with its melodious tremors, even arresting the steps of some wayfarers below on the street. “Can you not hear these words of song? Oh! can you not feel the soul of this music that you would still go away from me?”—of such words of appeal her eyes were eloquent, as they gave a quick glance, now and again, out of their corners. Far beyond the railing along the window, above the tree-tops rising over the temple, there had swung into view the sky of night bejewelled with stars that glittered as they peered down upon the figure of Tsuya.
It was about this time that some steps were slowly measured up the stairway, and the door to which they had their backs turned was carefully opened.
“To Shinsuké san, I believe I tender this greetingof first meeting. Know me please as Tokubey, of Sunamura.”
The man checked himself at the threshold and bowed low, a tobacco pouch of fancy leather dangling from his right hand. Clad in a heavy, easy silk gown of finely meshed pattern and a short outer-coat of bluish dapple of minute design, a man of prosperous dimensions, smooth of manner and apparently of mind, befitting the description given before.
“Will you two there be just quiet? I’m in the thick of my concert, don’t you see?” Her expostulation was flung at them brusquely, just as the two men were about to enter into the ceremony of mutual introduction. But, without so much as giving them a glance, she played on.
“Sorry to disturb you, but you are wanted at once. Let me have a word with you downstairs—I shan’t keep you long.”
At this moment, his eyes sought hers with a peculiar gleam, evidently intent on conveying to her a covert message.
“I know what I am wanted for, but you couldn’t budge me with a sledge-hammer, to-night! Just think! Going with my dearest body left here alone?—No, and you feel for me, and say nomore!”
“You are wrong. It is true there is that thing you remember about; but what I am now here for, concerns this very young man here, Shinsuké san.”
“How long have you kept yourself in here, anyhow?—that you should know Shin san by his name, when you’ve never seen him before?” She levelled her question, now laying hersamisenaside.
“Just a moment ago,” he explained. “But hearing you downstairs call out ‘Shin san’ every now and then, it wasn’t such a hard guessing. To find you hale and strong like this after all hopes were lost,” he turned to the young man, “why, what could be better—mean more happiness for O-Tsuya?”
“So, not much of poking in your nose. Well, if you must have it your way, let me hear it here.”
“Aha! Why’s that? You’ve got all the time on your hand, now that your best man’s been caught. Why not a minute off—downstairs—and I’m not going to keep you longer than that.”
A prey to vague, nameless fears, Shinsuké anxiously followed their bandied words. At first, he could not but feel misgivings whithertheir talk might lead; but Tokubey’s unchanging meekness and composure were soon to set him at ease in mind. He was even to feel sorry for him for showing admirable patience with her wayward manner of conducting the parley. Like a man of generally meek disposition that he was, Shinsuké was astounded to see how she twisted the man about her fingers, as if the name of “The Gambler Boss of Sunamura” meant to her nothing of awe or respect. From the Tsuya of before to the Somékichi of present—the change was no more brilliantly sweeping than the process had been one of conspicuous hardening of her character; and he secretly marveled thereat.
“Look, now, Tsuya,” Shinsuké interposed, in a low voice tempered with modesty. “Perhaps, it isn’t quite right of you to speak that way, when the boss has been so nice about it, as I followed you here. There’s nothing more, in particular, to keep you with me. Suppose, you go as he asks you, and be a good girl.”
“If you say so, I’ll go.” Her face broke into a sardonic grin, as she gave her acquiescence with such readiness as it was generally not her wont to show. Having adjusted her stray hair and her outer robe to correctness before a glass stand,she turned to say—
“Shin san, while I’m gone, you behave and be a good mama’s baby, won’t you? I shan’t be gone long. I would never think of going for anything, except for what he said it was something about yourself. Feel as if I couldn’t let it go without knowing it—for what it is worth.”
“It’s nothing to be worried over, anyhow. So, just put yourself at ease about it, and I wish you a very good evening.” On these parting words from Tokubey, they went down the stairs.
Could it be that somebody had come to claim him back to Kinzo’s place? Or, that the boatman Seiji had tracked him out, and come to protest with Tokubey? Despite the assuring words at his going, Shinsuké could not overcome his apprehensions, more or less. If the latter of his surmises should be the case, he would have little to fear, since he had but one more day to keep himself at large. If the former was the case, how should he account himself to the old man? For, had not Shinsuké gone and straightway broken faith with that man who advised him not to fail to surrender himself the very next day?—those words spoken at their last parting, in those moments which were almost sacred?
“What a woman of power she is! Why am I always turned into such a spineless weakling when I am with her? Come what will, I will not fail to go to-morrow and offer myself into the hand of justice!”
Shinsuké spurred his own mind to strength and determination.
The parley downstairs seemed to drag rather long. Save for occasional tappings of the smoking pipe for clearing its fire bowl, there was to be heard nothing of a noise, or, strangely, of Tsuya’s high-pitched voice. It was not before about one hour’s time had elapsed when she was heard to break the stillness for the first time. “Then, you will wait awhile. I’ll go and see what my man will say to that,” she spoke, and hurried up the stairs. There was an air of concern in her look, as she squatted before him, bringing her face close to his as if she were about to whisper confidences of grave import.
“Well, what’s up, anyhow?” he demanded, no longer able to remain silent before her manner that seemed to forbode no good.
“Shin san, I suppose you wouldn’t—.” She suddenly checked herself, seemingly on some sudden thought. She rose again and went tosurvey outside the door, down the stairway to its foot, assuring herself there was no eavesdropping. She returned to her previous posture to resume in a voice subdued into a faint huskiness. “I suppose you wouldn’t care so much—would you?—if I tipped it off to that man Tokubey about you and what you intend to do about yourself—even to-morrow, for that matter—to take punishment for what you’ve done—. Really, it’s too late if you did, anyhow. I’ve just done it on my own initiative,—”
Shinsuké’s face blenched. And, for good reason; because, notwithstanding his mind prepared for his end, it was his fond hope to have seen himself accepted in terms of immaculate decency, even so long as he was to measure out his brief span of time.
“In the end it would have amounted to the same thing, one way or the other. But it isn’t anything I’d know to be out among people, and feel proud of. I really wish you hadn’t done that,—if possible.”
“But telling it was necessary, Shin san, unless I was to put your life itself in danger, to-night—” Whereat she again turned, casting an inquiring glance toward the door, before shewent on—
“And now coming to what Tokubey wanted to see me about. ‘Shin san is the man you love,’ he says to me, ‘so you can do what you want with him; no worrying on my account. Keep him upstairs as long as you care, and no objection. But for that,’ he goes on to say, ‘I want you to make yourself useful for my benefit, for this one night.’ It seems he has a little game up his sleeve that means easy money,—some stunt to pull off with myself working at the other end of it. And he wants me now to come with him over to Mukojima, to the country villa of a ‘hatamoto’ officer called Ashizawa. But, because I should not like to leave you here alone, I’ve been having it out with him—I wouldn’t agree so easily. Of course, it’s a fact that there is some arrangement for my going out to Mukojima,—but not when you are with me; besides, I do feel there’s something not quite right about this thing. It is true that he has always talked and behaved decently, on the face of it all; but the truth is that he means to get me eventually after he has worked me into a place where I couldn’t free myself from him for my obligations to him. Sensing that much about him, I am afraid he might get you out andkill you, if I were not home. And, again, it might be this; Seiji, having seen you somehow, has asked him to make an end to you. But if they knew you were a man just about ready to end his own life, I thought they wouldn’t think it necessary to do it themselves. All things considered, I reasoned myself into telling him the whole business. And there you are. But what else could I have done?”
“And what did he have to say?”
“‘That lamb of a boy to do that?’ he said in surprise,—and surprised he was, let me tell you!—But, anyway, he seemed satisfied with what I had told him; there’s little danger that he should get any foolish idea into his head.—So much for that, and now, listen, Shin san, from what I’ve been told—the way things stand—I don’t see how I could possibly help myself about this thing to-night. That is, after all, I should have to go over to Mukojima from now—”
Tsuya followed up with her insistent entreaty that he should stay another night, because she could not get back before next morning. She would never think of accepting the call from any other place or party, she explained, but to fail this summons from Ashizawa’s villa in Mukojimathis night, would mean a heap of trouble,—in fact, a difference of a hundred “ryo,” to put it in terms of money. Not only that, but there was so much frame-up and blackmail about this scheme, which she had been hatching with Tokubey to put over by means little short of downright swindling,—that everything had to be done just so and so and at such and such a time, or the whole thing would go crashing down to pieces.—She arrayed impressive facts, true and perhaps otherwise, in making out her case; and it was, presumably, her idea, in her eagerness to keep him another day, to provide a good solid peg to hang the persuasive effort.
The more he heard from her, the more depressed was he by his own helpless rage against the change seen in the young woman, dragged down so low. From the young lady of the well-honoured family of the Suruga-ya to a creature gone low so far as to assist in swindling an officer,—the change was but staggering. Bereft of any ardour to attempt to bring her back to her senses, he was only conscious of a consuming eagerness to get himself gone, with the least possible delay, from this place pregnant with danger as great to his body as to his mind.
“Why shouldn’t you accept the call, if it is such an important occasion as you say? Whatever we had to talk about we have done. It would be just having the same thing over again, if I stayed here a little longer. Perhaps, this business of yours is not an ill wind that blows us no good, if it can bring both of us to it now and say a good-bye to each other. For a man stepping into anooseround his neck, it wouldn’t make much difference if he were to do so a little sooner or later.”
Tsuya was now buried in thought, gloomily, her hand moving the short fire-picks aimlessly over the face of the ash bed in the brazier, over which she sat with her head drooped in apparent dejection. Following a pause of some moments, with the air of one just arrived at a decision of mind, she lifted her head and spoke in a dear and final note—
“If you are determined so strongly, there’s nothing else to be done. To tell you the truth, I hoped to go on keeping you here from day to day, until I should get you round, somehow, to my own ideas, for all time; but I’ve given it up. And, now, about this business to Mukojima, it’s all wrong what I said about coming back to-morrowmorning—just an excuse to keep you longer. Now, I ask you to wait for me only till the second hour after midnight, because I’ll be sure to come back by that time.”
Shinsuké professed his agreement, yet it was with such reluctance that she could not feel sure of the ground she was to tread. Then, she suggested that he should rather come over there to fetch her, around midnight, dressing himself up like an attendant man. Shinsuké’s outright refusal sent her into a rage. She saw no reason why she should not deserve that much consideration, when it was to be her last and only wish to burden him with. If he was not coming, she said, neither was she going to budge,—and Tokubey and everything else could go to perdition. As an outcome of their disagreement, Tokubey himself had to drag himself between them and offer arbitration. However, neither his effort to appease or coax her, nor his begging, fervid and almost humble, availed upon her mind. Only at long length did he succeed; it was a hard-earned acquiescence,—wrested from the young man.