CHAPTER IX
When the fields had turned from purple to gold and yellow, and Summer was hot in the land, Azalea for the first time in two months crept from her chamber and sat at the door of the cottage, her baby on her back. She had been very ill and now she was as thin and fragile as a spirit. Weak as she was Azalea had come to the door during the absence of Natsu, to watch for the mail carrier. During her long illness, and almost from the first day, she had been wont to turn her face always toward the Street shoji, there to watch and wait with undying patience for the coming of thatcarrier who should bring her word from her husband. But every day, from the rising of the sun to its setting, she waited in hungry vainness. She hindered the progress of her health and became feverish and then delirious. Even in her delirium she would seize the hands of the hard-faced Natsu and pitifully beseech her to bring her a letter from her husband. Now July had come. Spring had gone and the Spring baby had come. Still no word from the father to bless and cheer them in their solitude. Azalea had been too ill in those days to wonder why the woman Natsu attended her with such faithfulness. But as she grew stronger she used to watchmutely the sullen-faced servant, moving about her chamber, keeping it cleanly and even sweet with the flowers she brought from the woods. Azalea would have wished to be on friendly terms with her, but when she attempted speech with her Natsu remained grimly silent, seldom even answering the timid questions of her mistress. On this day when Azalea, by clinging with her hands to the dividing walls of shoji, had made her weak way to the door step, Natsu was absent from the house. She had gone to the house of Matsuda Isami.
The sun was warm and very good to feel. The baby, in its little bag on her back, was no heavier a weight than thediscarded obi. Azalea, though weak, felt happier and more restful than she had in days. How good it was to be out in the open air once more, to look up at the wide blue sky, the abode of the great white God; to feel the touch of the soft breezes and to hear the little babbling noise of the moving trees, the wee creatures in the grass and the singing of the birds in the camphor trees.
With chin resting upon her hands she sat there, absently dreaming. Her position brought the sleeping baby’s head close against her neck. The warmth of its contact comforted and thrilled her, just as the touch of the child’s father had done. Ah, it was true she had waited long for wordfrom him, but he would not fail them! That small, soft head pressed at her neck seemed to reassure her of this. She would grow strong again, strong and happy as she had been. To Matsuda she gave no thought. The one God was good and he would not permit this evil one to intrude again upon her.
Some one spoke her name, and she lifted her head. Before her, in the path, stood the bowing Okido. Mechanically, and without speaking, she returned his salutation. She was too weak and listless to feel interest in his unexpected call upon her, and did not question him.
Madame Azalea was recovered?
She nodded listlessly.
“Good!”
He shuffled his feet, waiting for an invitation to enter the house. The indifferent silence of the girl was not encouraging, and the Summer sun was very hot and uncomfortable upon his back. However, he was not to be conquered by a woman’s unnatural silence and the heat of the Lord of Day.
“I perceive, Madame Azalea,” he continued, “that the gods have been good to you. You have a child.”
She smiled faintly.
“Yes,” she said, and for the first time he perceived the faintness and wearinessof her voice. He inquired with some anxiety:
“You are still ill?”
She shook her head.
“Quite well,” she said, “but when one has lain long upon the honorable back, then one’s speech sometimes becomes exhausted.”
“Ah!”
This response, he took it, might be an intimation that she was not strong enough for conversation. On the other hand, it was longer than her previous monosyllabic answers, and therefore more encouraging. Well, he would speak to her of the child. This subject must surely interest her.
“Permit me to inquire,” he continued, with bland interest, “the sex of your honorable offspring?”
“Male,” she answered simply.
“Ah! you are indeed fortunate.” He went a step nearer to her, looking solicitously at the child’s head. The projecting gable above mother and child was a sufficient shade for the upturned face of the sleeping child; but the mother must be moved from her apathetic listlessness in some way. So the Nakoda exclaimed in alarm:
“Do you not fear the sun upon your child’s young eyes will blind them?”
His words had the desired effect. Shestarted and put back her hands behind her head. Then, somewhat unsteadily, she arose.
“You will pardon us, if you please,” she said. “We must go into the interior.”
Okido had hoped to be invited to enter, but her answer did not disconcert him. He went up the little steps, and stretched out his hand as if to assist her. Madame was too weak to walk alone; would she not permit his most respectful assistance? She clung for support to the front of the sliding door.
“Yes,” she said, “I am still augustly weak. So pray you, good-bye, kind visitor.”
He bowed deeply to her, and then:
“Madame Azalea, permit me first to leave in your house a little gift for your man child.”
She let him put into her hands a child’s tiny toy.
“You are very good,” she said.
“It is not I who am so well disposed toward your child,” he said, “but one whose interest in it is such that he would give all his possessions to it—if you would permit it.”
She raised her face, white and startled in expression now. Her hands crept out from the sleeves.
“Ah,” she said, “of whom do you speak, good Okido?”
He did not answer her query, and her breath came excitedly.
“You speak of my husband? You have heard from him?”
“Not your husband, Madame Azalea,” he said, “but one who would become so.”
She passed her hand bewilderedly over her brow.
“I do not understand,” she said.
Her strength had been already too much taxed. She turned from the Nakoda and opened the shoji behind her. Then noiselessly she slipped into her chamber, feeling her way through the room with her handsoutstretched like one gone blind. When she found the couch she tottered, rather than lay, face down upon it in that instinctive fashion of the Japanese woman to protect the child upon her back. Soon she slept the sleep of the exhausted.
Some one sent fresh flowers in the early mornings to the house of Azalea. They were sweet always with the sparkling dews upon them and they filled the house with fragrance. Azalea delighted in them. They were symbolic of the truth that there was sweetness in life in spite of its melancholy. And so, in those days, she would sit before the flowers, her little head bent above her sewing, and would attempt to fashion thegarments of her baby in imitation of the flowers themselves.
The baby grew in strength and beauty, a solemn-faced, large-eyed morsel of humanity, with skin like a peach bloom in color, soft and fat and delightful to the touch of the caressing mother.
If it had not been for that ceaseless, tireless waiting and watching for the promised letters from the father of the child, and of his own personal absence from the house, Azalea might have found complete happiness in her child. But always by day she sat with her face turned toward the West, and at night she trimmed and burned the light and set it at the West shoji, that anytime he might come would find her waiting.
Often the man Okido would loiter by her house and stop a moment to chat with her and to praise the child. Sometimes he brought a little gift, and once he inquired very solicitously whether Madame Azalea was in need of money. She had answered with careless pride:
“No, I have sufficient until his return.”
But the Nakoda’s question nevertheless worried her after his departure. She went indoors and took down the little lacquer box in which she had kept the money left her by her husband. It had been so full in the beginning that she had laughed over its weight. Now the box was light asthough empty. There were only a few bits left. She shivered as she closed the lid over them.
“Yet,” she said, with trembling lip, “it is not all gone. He will come when but one bit remains.”
She burned more oil that night in the waiting room for him. Through the night the bright red light twinkled against his coming. But he came not.