VII
There was joy in the house in Azalea Street. Soichi had come home. His work at the university was finished, and despite his dislike for study he had taken high place in honor of the father who wished him to. Now he had returned to make a beginning in the career Kutami had planned for him. But for a time there was to be no work. Father and mother and son were to play a little together and give rein to the pleasure of the reunion. After that the new venture would take all the effort of both men.
Kutami intended to branch out. The old business was good enough for him, but the son was worthy of something better. He should be a banker, and already the Commoner had arranged with some of his wealthy business associates for the founding of the new institution which should give Soichi his opportunity. The friends who gathered at the comfortable house to celebrate the joyful return of the young man, discussed the new project with unflagging enthusiasm, and all predicted a proud success for Soichi. The sake cups were often exchanged and many cigarettes perfumed the air. There was no flaw anywhere.
It was the next afternoon that Kutami, trudging along through Timber Street on his way back from his office, and turning over in his mind his plans for his son, passed the house of Jukichi. A drizzling rain was falling, but the Commoner, secure under the wide shelter of his yellow, oiled-paper umbrella, cared nothing for that. As he passed the gate of the Samurai a gust of wind swirling through the street tilted the umbrella sharply back, and Kutami glanced up just in time to see old Chukei, the matchmaker, coming out.
“Oho!” he said, as he saw the middleman, “a wedding, eh? I wonder what lucky young fellow it can be who is to have Kudo-san’s daughter for his wife.”
He paused for a moment, looking after thenakodoas he strode toward the city, then turned and went on. It was no affair of his after all, and before he had reached his own home he was back again in the absorbing subject of Soichi and the new bank, and had forgotten all about Jukichi’s daughter.
Shrewd old Chukei had met a puzzling rebuff. The circumstances were everything that to his mind foreshadowed a successful negotiation. But he had been sent away with almost no explanation. Thenakodoshook his head and plodded along, wondering what to do.
O-Mitsu was happy. Not soon again, she thought, would this particular middleman return to her father’s house with his annoying business. With unwonted lightness of heart she went about her work. Then when the rain ceased and the sun came out, she stepped out into the yard and on the tallgetasthat guarded her dainty feet from the mud, took her way up the path toward her favorite spotamong the pines by the old shrine. The world was greatly changed for her since last she looked out upon that familiar scene. The sails of the fishing-boats bellied out under the fresh breeze, the spray dashed over their bows, the trees swayed and nodded, everywhere was life and activity. The whole world sang and her heart with it.
She stood a long time gazing down at the spreading sea, quite unconscious that another had climbed the steep path, one who now found even a more entrancing picture before his eyes than the wonderful view below them. It was Soichi, come to visit the old shrine. All unprepared for the vision that came so suddenly before him as he turned to look down on the well-remembered shore, it was hard to stifle his admiration and surprise.
Leaning a little against a gnarled old pine, she stood motionless, her strong profile and the exquisite curve of her chin revealed unwittingly to him as he paused, half concealed by a clump of trees. Back over the years since he had seen her, the rush of memory took him to that day when she had told him that she knew his secret. He saw her again standing in the road and bidding him, with a smile, come onwith her. And now that little girl was this beautiful woman! She had not changed, and yet she was all changed.
Slowly the tide of emotion swelled within him. He could not remember that he had ever thought she was a pretty girl, and in the years he had spent at the university he had scarcely thought of her at all. He had seen many pretty girls there, but never had one affected him like this. Now he saw at a glance that she was wonderfully beautiful, and the more he looked the more wonderful she became. It dawned on him that she was much the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and immediately he had an almost irresistible longing to go to her at once and tell her so.
An unhappy thought of himself restrained him. They were no longer schoolfellows. She was the daughter of a Samurai and he—Poor Soichi! Not even his university life had taken from his own consciousness all taint of the old disgrace. He did not know, because he had had no experience, that love isheiminas well asshizoku, a Commoner as often as a Gentleman, and that there is never advantage in loving a girl unless you tell her so.
He moved a little, and a snapping twig toldher that some one was near. She turned quickly and their eyes met. A long moment they stood so and neither spoke, yet in that moment the whole world changed for each of them. Under his steady gaze she felt the blush come tingling up her throat and spread across her cheeks. Like one grown fast to the ground on which he rested, he stood and only stared. His brain refused to act, his tongue to work. Then she moved, and the spell was broken.
“O-Mitsu-san!” he cried, and tone and glance told all he would have uttered.
With all her face rosy with warm blood she gazed fearlessly back into his eyes, and murmured softly a single word, yet one instinct with the feeling of a thousand.
“Thou,” she said, in the old familiar language of their childhood.
Even as eyes and look had spoken for him when voice and tongue were mute, so had she answered. His ugly doubts of himself fled at first sight of her smile and it was the old Soichi who sprang forward to her side. A thousand questions trembled on his lips and struggled in vain for utterance. His unruly tongue refused its function, and he stopped in confusion,even his bold eyes falling before her smiling glance. It was the girl, older than he in such matters by hundreds of years of heritage, who said lightly after a little pause:
“I did not know that you had come home.”
A dozen emotions fought together for expression, but all were crowded back, and he answered in commonplace:
“I have been here nearly a week.”
“So long?” she said, questioning.
He fancied he caught a note of reproach in her tone, so far had his self-esteem come back, and a pang of regret crossed him at the thought that he had lost those days.
“I am a fool,” he said irrelevantly, but with air so dejected that one far less clever than she would have followed his thought.
She laughed merrily, and the sound of her voice completed his undoing. He was back to elemental simplicity again, and the passion that was uppermost in his heart came bursting out with truthful bluntness.
“You are the most beautiful woman in all the world,” he said.
Again the blush swept across her face and the long lashes fell over the merry eyes. The flood-gate of his speech was lifted at last. Thetorrent of his emotion flowed forth with the rush of waters long pent up, telling her the ancient story he had known all his life, but which only that last quarter hour had revealed to him. And the girl, listening with fluttering heart, heard more than he said, for he was answering the question she had asked herself, and she understood now her hot protest at the message of thenakodo.
They sat down by the great rock on the far slope of the hill, where the thick pines screened them from the view of visitors to the shrine, and where the sea lay blue, strong, and peaceful below them. For an hour of which no power ever could rob them, heart was laid bare to heart. Innocently, simply, with the peace of the glorious day, they prattled of the wonder that was theirs, the discovery they alone of all the world had made, and never a thought cloud floated across their heaven to disturb the serenity of its sunshine.