FROM a poor but honored farmer of Echizen, Yamada Kwacho had grown to be a rich and prominent merchant of Tokyo. At the advice of the Lord of Echizen, Kwacho had gone to Tokyo soon after the Restoration, where, taking advantage of the modern craze for Western things then raging in the capital, he had invested the price of his little farm in one of the first “European” stores in Tokyo. His business had prospered and grown rapidly to huge dimensions. Now, while Kwacho was still in the prime of life, he found himself richer in worldly wealth than his former master the Lord of Echizen even in his best days.
The young farmer of Echizen had been content to remain in his humble class, though honors were offered him by his lord. The rich and prominent merchant of Tokyo was still at heart the conservative and independent young farmer of Echizen. Despite the fact that his great wealth would have purchased for him an entrée to a high society, Kwacho made no effort to emerge from his life of quiet and obscure ease. Possibly, too, an experience of his early married life caused him to look askance and with disfavor upon the lives of the society people. At all events a pretty home in a suburb of Tokyo, and the society of a few simple neighbors, quite contented him.
Whether the ambitions of Ohano kept the level of those of her husband, was not a matter of any determination. The mistress of a comfortable home, the comely wife of a respected citizen, and the mother of five sons and one daughter, she appeared contented with her lot.
There had always been a weak and soft element in the character of Ohano, however. In youth it had come near to being the cause of her complete ruin. But for the sturdy nature of her husband, Ohano might never have recovered morally. In latter years this weakness of disposition took the form of an almost childish delight in dwelling secretly in her own mind upon experiences in her life which she would not have breathed aloud even to her favorite god, much less to her sombre husband. Strangely enough, too, Ohano had far more affection for her daughter than for her sons,—a most uncommon thing in a Japanese woman.
As a little girl, Masago had been remarkable chiefly for her docile and quiet ways. This apathy of nature, peculiar in a child of her class, had been variously regarded by the teachers in the public school she had attended. Some had pronounced her dull and even sullen, while others insisted that her impassiveness showed an innate refinement and delicacy of birth and caste. Masago was very pretty after a delicate Yamato fashion. Unlike her sturdy young brothers, round-faced, rugged, and brimming over with health and spirits, Masago was oval-faced, her eyes were long and dreamy, her mouth small, the lips thin and prettily curved. Her skin was of a fine texture, and her little hands were quite as beautiful as those of the princesses who attended the Peeresses’ school.
Masago’s schoolmates thought her quiet disposition indicative of secretiveness and even slyness. She had never been known to express herself on any question, though no one gave closer attention to any matter under controversy than she. The consequence was that as she grew older her girl friends, at first sceptical and dubious of her quiet, unexpressive face, finally ended in confiding to her their various secrets; for well they knew that while they might expect no exchange of confidences, their secrets were well guarded within Masago’s silent little head and as safe as if unspoken.
Ohano, too, was quick to take advantage of the child’s listening talent and receptive mind. In spite of the fact that Masago was coming to an age when all such confidences should have been strictly kept from her, Ohano found herself gradually pouring out to her daughter those fascinating and forbidden secrets which still remained in her mind. She would sit opposite her daughter for hours at a time and describe graphically the palaces of Kyoto. It would have occurred to one older than Masago that, for one in her caste, Ohano’s knowledge of these places was unusual. But the child asked few questions and appeared to be absorbed in her mother’s glowing narrative. Only once she said, lifting her strange long eyes to her mother’s face:—
“It is in the palace I belong, mother, is it not?” And before Ohano was conscious of her words she had replied:—
“There, indeed, you belong of right, Masago.”
When Masago had reached her seventeenth year, she expressed her first independent wish to her family. It was that she be sent to a finishing school in Kyoto.
At her suggestion, made directly to him, Kwacho was disgruntled. She had had sufficient education for a maiden of her class, he insisted. What was more, he desired her to make an early marriage and had already begun negotiations for her betrothal.
Masago listened to her father’s words without replying, beyond a wordless bow of submission to his will. She did not argue the matter with him, since she knew that Ohano, without diplomacy and craft, had yet great influence with Kwacho. So the young girl went quietly to her mother, whom she found happily employed in washing a small barking chin on the rear veranda of the house. She looked back smilingly at her daughter over her shoulder as she rubbed the dog’s twitching little body.
“He is white enough,” said Masago, quietly, indicating the chin with a slight movement of her head. At this verdict Ohano released the dog. He darted about the veranda for a moment, shaking his still wet little body, then rushed through the shoji indoors, disappearing under a mat over a warm hibachi, where he shivered in comfort.
Ohano emptied out the water across a flower bed, and unrolled her sleeves. She was flushed with her exercise, and the water had splashed her gown. Her hair, too, was dishevelled, but she was the picture of the healthy housewife, as she turned to her daughter.
The latter, in her perfect neatness, made a contrast to the mother, who surveyed her with fond approval.
“Well, Masago, have you finished your embroidery?” she asked pleasantly.
The girl shook her head silently.
“Go, then; get your frame now,” said Ohano, “and we will work together.”
“No,” said Masago, seating herself on a veranda mat, and leaning back against the railing, “I don’t want to work. I want to talk to you.”
Ohano’s plump body quickly seated itself opposite Masago. The opportunity for a morning gossip with Masago was something she never denied herself.
She had just opened her mouth to begin, When Masago quietly put her hand over the red orifice.
“No; do not speak for a moment, mother, but listen to me.”
Masago smiled faintly at the expression in her mother’s eyes and continued rapidly:—
“Listen. I am seventeen years now,—old enough, almost, my father says, to be married. But I do not wish to marry.”
“But—” began Ohano.
“No; do not interrupt me. I want to go away to school,—a private school in Kyoto, where other rich men send their daughters, and where I, too, can sometimes see those palaces and maybe the noble ladies and gentlemen you have told me so much about.”
“But, Masago, every maiden of your age wishes to marry; and your father has chosen—”
“Let me finish, if you please, or I will not talk to you at all. I do not know why it is, but I have no desire to marry; and sometimes I feel like one who is stifling in this miserable little town. Why should we, who have more wealth than many of those in Tokyo who live in palaces, be caged up here, like birds with clipped wings? What is the use of having that wealth if we may not use it? Oh, there are so many joyful happenings in the capital every day and every night. I read about it in those papers which father brings home sometimes from Tokyo. The city is so gay and brilliant, mother, and there are so many peculiar foreigners to see. I was made for such a place—not for this dull, quiet town. Why, I would even be content to see all this as an outsider, but to have to remain here when—Oh!”
She struck her hands together with an eloquent motion. Ohano stared at her aghast, regarding her flushing face and snapping eyes.
“Oh, mother,” she continued, “many people say I do not belong here. They recognize my difference from themselves,—everybody here. You know it is so. Ever since I was a little girl when you would tell me the fairy tales of those palaces in Kyoto—”
“They were not fairy tales,” said Ohano, gently.
“No, but I thought them so—then. And I imagined that some day the gods would befriend me, and that I would belong to that joyful world of which you spoke. And now to come to seventeen years and to be given right away in marriage to some foolish youth before I have had any chance to see—”
Her voice broke, and her emotion was so unusual a thing that Ohano could not bear to see it. Both her heart and tongue were stirred.
“You have a right to see it,” she said. “You belong to it—are a part of it, Masago. Your own father is—”
She clapped her hands over her mouth in consternation and sudden fright at what she was about to divulge.
Masago became very white, her eyes dilated, her thin nostrils quivered. She fixed her strange, long eyes full on those of her mother. Then she seized her by the shoulders. She spoke in a whisper:—
“You have something to tell me. Now—speak at once.”
Half an hour later Masago was alone on the veranda of her home. She sat in an attitude of intense absorption. Her downcast eyes were looking at the slender fingers of her hands, spread out in her lap. They were thin, shapely little fingers, the nails rosy and perfect in shape. Masago had been studying them absently for some time. Suddenly she held up one little hand, then slowly brought it to her face.
“That was the reason they were so beautiful—my hands!” she said softly.
That night Ohano would not let her husband sleep until he had made her a promise. They lay on their respective mattresses under the same mosquito netting. It was quite in vain for Kwacho to sleep while the voice of Ohano droned on. After listening for fully two hours to a steady stream of childish eloquence and reproach, and answering only in gruff monosyllables, he sprang up in bed and demanded of his better half whether she intended to remain awake all night. Whereat that small but stubborn individual raised herself also, and, propping her elbows on her knees, informed the irate Kwacho that such was her intention, and that, in fact, she did not expect to sleep any night again until he had made some concession to the ambition of their only daughter, which, after all, was a most praiseworthy one,—a desire for more learning.
Kwacho’s answer was not the result of a sudden appreciation of Masago’s virtues, but he was sleepy and tired, too. There was much to be done at the store on the morrow, and Ohano’s suggestion that she intended to keep awake for other nights was not a relishing prospect.
“She shall go on one condition,” he said.
“Yes?” eagerly inquired his wife.
“That she is first betrothed to Kamura Junzo.”
“There will be no trouble as to that,” said Ohano, with conviction, and lying down drew the quilt over her. A few minutes later the twain were at rest.
